That was Gita’s last talk with her grandmother. The next day Mr. Donald
called, and on the following the old lady had what the nurse alluded to
vaguely as one of her attacks. Two nights later she died quietly in her
sleep. At the earliest moment consistent with cherished proprieties,
Topper telephoned to Mrs. Pleyden, and she came to the manor an hour
later.
“Polly had a telegram from Bar Harbor yesterday asking her to a
house-party,” she said sympathetically to Gita, looking as if she would
kiss her if she dared, “and she went off last night. But she’ll be home
in a few days and I know she’d want you to come to us for a bit. You
will, won’t you, my dear? You’ve hardly had time to get accustomed to
this gloomy old house. Do run up and pack a bag.”
But Gita shook her head. She felt uncommonly bereft. Her grandmother was
a person to be missed, whether she had unconsciously grown fond of her
or not. At all events she felt a desire to stand by until the last of
the ceremonies. And the old house, in which so many of her blood had
lived and died, mysteriously held her.
“You are very kind,” she said. “And I’ll be glad to see Polly when she
comes back. But I’d better stay here. I’m sure grandmother would have
wished it. If—if—you’ll attend to things, though, I’d be grateful.”
“I will indeed.” Mrs. Pleyden was a tall slender woman, admirably
dressed and poised, but although her life for the most part was spent in
a round of bridge, she was by nature executive and always willing to
exercise her talent. Her house in Chelsea and her apartment in New York
were models of bland extravagance and housewifely skill. In an earlier
day she would have been a “leader,” and, as it was, her large and
exclusive circle deferred to her and regarded her as a personage.
Between herself and Polly there was an unspoken compact. Mrs. Pleyden
moved with the times, and life had taught her philosophy.
“Better go out of doors,” she continued. “Perhaps you will change your
mind later, but meanwhile don’t stay in the house any more than you can
help. I’ll do the telephoning, and Topper always knows what to do. He’s
seen many a funeral in this house.”
Gita shuddered and went out into the garden.
The more intimate of her grandmother’s friends were in and out
constantly during the next three days. Flowers arrived by the
motor-load. The heavy perfume in the unaired rooms was unendurable. It
seemed to Gita as if all the dead Carterets had fertilized the roots of
those flowers and contributed their odor of decay.
The old lady lay in state, not in the drawing-room but in the great
central hall. Her face looked like an ancient wax mask. It was devoid of
expression, and it had had so much in life! Gita did not give it a
second glance. She preferred to remember that wise sarcastic old face on
the pillows, lit by the indomitable dark brilliancy of the eyes.
Mrs. Pleyden had telephoned to a New York house for Gita’s mourning and
it arrived early on the day of the funeral. It was merely a straight
little frock of crêpe de Chine and a black straw hat like an inverted
bowl, from which a short veil of chiffon depended. Gita wondered what
her grandmother would have thought of it. Her crêpe veils no doubt had
trailed the ground like those of the afflicted in French provincial
towns.
She rummaged in the drawers of a chest in the old lady’s room and found
a long necklace of jet and oxidized silver and put it on. The act made
her feel less modern than usual, but she thought, somewhat humorously,
that her grandmother would approve of this subtle, if momentary, linking
of her unruly descendant with the past.
She had heard the rolling of many motors, and as she descended the broad
stair she saw that the hall as well as the large and smaller
drawing-rooms were crowded with ladies and gentlemen, who, as she
learned later, had come not only from Atlantic City, but from
Philadelphia and many of the country estates in New Jersey. It was a
last tribute from friends and acquaintances that would have pleased Mrs.
Carteret, although she would have regarded it as a matter of course. The
Carteret funerals had always been affairs of state, a signal for all
affiliated clans.
There were even reporters on the lawn.
Topper, in a rusty dress suit, once in the wardrobe of Mr. Carteret, and
black gloves, was master of ceremonies, and Andrew, the old gardener,
bent nearly double with rheumatism, had been given a chair near the
casket. The other servants, housemaid and cook, were more recent
acquisitions, but sniffled audibly. Topper’s eyes were red, but no
Carteret could have presented a more immobile front to the world.
Mr. Donald, the family lawyer, met Gita at the foot of the stair and
offered his arm. She was conscious of a ripple of decorous interest and
several hundred examining eyes as they made their way to the upper end
of the hall and took the seats reserved for them. There were no young
people present. Polly, who had returned the night before, had telephoned
that she would be over after the funeral; she would pass out if she
found herself at one of those hang-overs of barbarism.
Gita privately made up her own mind that it was the last funeral she
would ever attend. In an effort to look grave the company was as if
suddenly bereft of individuality, and all the women who possessed black
gowns wore them whether they were cut in the latest fashion or not. The
pall-bearers, most of them keen business or professional men, looked
like expressionless mutes. Mr. Donald, who was one of them, wore a band
of black cloth on his sleeve and flourished a handkerchief with a black
border. Polly would have said he looked like a walking monument to
conservatism, but he was an urbane and pleasant person, inclined to be
fatherly in manner to his younger clients and had been sincerely
attached to Mrs. Carteret.
The atmosphere was sickening. The day was hot and close. Several of the
women surreptitiously inhaled smelling-salts. The clergyman in his
Episcopal robes droned on interminably. Not a phrase of the long funeral
service could be omitted on so august an occasion. Gita felt as if she
were on the verge of hysterics. At her mother’s simple funeral on the
desert, where Millicent had asked to be buried—she was “tired of
traveling”—Gita had felt only numbness and desolation, and had
passively permitted herself, when it was over, to be carried off to San
Francisco by Mrs. Melrose to await a possible letter from Carteret
Manor. The numbness had not passed until she found herself alone in the
train, free of solicitudes and plans for her future, should Mrs.
Carteret ignore her. But today she felt a wild desire to laugh and shock
some sort of expression into these portentously solemn faces. What a
comedy! They were swooning with boredom and tuberoses, and what one of
them had really cared for her grandmother? More than once they must have
writhed under her merciless tongue. But it was an inherited ritual to
attend a Carteret funeral and they were stern devotees of the passing
conventions.
The sonorous voice rounded its final period. There was a sigh, a rustle.
Mr. Donald left her to join the pall-bearers. Mrs. Pleyden took her
firmly by the arm and led her past many staring eyes to her own motor.
“You are going with me to the cemetery,” she said kindly, “and then I’ll
turn you over to Mr. Donald, who’ll bring you home and read the will to
you in the library. . . . Abominable!” She had heard the click of a
camera. “But your features will hardly be distinguishable through that
veil. I only hope the paper is one that decent people take in.” She
looked askance at the necklace but concluded to ignore it. Tact never
failed her.