Gita, now that she was in command, had her meals served in the
breakfast-room, as nothing could make cheerful, in the daytime at least,
a long high room paneled to the ceiling, whose windows looked directly
into somber pine woods. This little room, facing the garden, was bright
and cheerful as the girls sat at lunch. It was a meal to satisfy the
appetite rather than caress the palate, for Mrs. Carteret, during the
last year of her life, had lived on broths, gruels, eggs, and milk, and
the cook had “got her hand out,” as she informed her new mistress
somewhat apprehensively: it had been an easy place and to the grumbling
of nurses she had been haughtily indifferent. Gita, who had a European
palate for flavors, had no intention of keeping her and asked Mrs.
Brewster if she knew of a good cook.
“I can’t afford a chef, of course,” she said, “and I don’t know enough
to train anyone, although I cooked for my mother and myself for a time
in San Francisco. But I hate the sight of a kitchen and my
accomplishments in that line were limited to meat and vegetables,
generally overdone. But I should be able to get a fairly decent cook for
what I pay this moron.”
“I know just the thing.” Elsie Brewster was delighted to be of service
to this girl whom she liked more every moment and was anxious to study.
“That is to say if your Topper would stand for it. The woman is
colored.”
“Topper’s opinion will not be asked,” said Gita coolly. “He will suit
his tastes to mine or leave. I have no sentiment about old servants, and
I am sure he must have saved a lot, to say nothing of my grandmother’s
legacy. I’ll make him a present of the discarded furniture and he can
set up another boarding-house in Atlantic City! Send your darky along.
I’m enormously obliged.”
“Oh, do keep Topper!” cried Elsie. “What would an old manor be without
an aged butler? He’s an indispensable part of the tradition.”
“Well, he can’t live forever,” said Gita practically. “And I think the
less you bother about traditions the better you get along. Old servants
think they own you, anyhow, and there’ll be only one master in this
house.”
“I don’t fancy he owned your grandmother. I used to see her sometimes
when I went to the Episcopal church with a friend, and thought her quite
the most imperious person I had ever seen. You looked just like her when
you said that.”
“Maybe. Or maybe it’s only because I can have things my own way for the
first time in my life.”
Elsie looked at her speculatively, wondering how she could get this odd
girl to talk about herself. Gita Carteret was a new type in her somewhat
limited experience, and it was a confirmed habit to edge everyone she
met under an avid and microscopic eye.
“You have met Miss Pleyden,” she began tentatively. “I wonder what you
think of her?”
“She’s a good sort. So are several of the other girls she has brought
here. Not unlike the San Francisco girls, only more so. But I never
could live their life. I fancy I’m old before my time.”
Mrs. Brewster laughed outright. “I never saw anyone look younger! It is
difficult to believe you are twenty-two.”
“Well,” said Gita gloomily, “I ought to look forty.”
“But you wouldn’t like to look forty. Come, now, own up.”
“You’re right, I wouldn’t.” Gita was forced to smile. “I suppose that
sounded like a grand little pose.”
“I can’t imagine you in a conscious pose of any sort. But, you know,
youth can go through a lot without being hopelessly scarred.
Otherwise—I have heard vaguely that you had a hard time for a few
years, if you’ll pardon me—you wouldn’t look a bare eighteen when you
are four years older. I felt very old myself at your age, for I had
loved my young husband devotedly; and now I feel, and look, younger,
and, I am willing to confide in you, I have almost forgotten the poor
man.”
She hoped, by throwing open a window in her own soul, to hear a quick
rattling of the shutters opposite, but Gita replied with a frown:
“Underground is the best place for husbands as far as my observation
goes. I think you were in luck.”
“Perhaps. Although he really was a delightful chap. Still, if he had
lived there is no doubt I should be doing the plain domestic act today:
several children, repetitional cares of a small house, teas and
bridge-parties for diversion. I doubt if I ever should have found
myself. The life of a business woman seems to me infinitely preferable,
and if I didn’t have this writing kink I’d be quite happy in it. Still,
I think every woman should marry, even if it cannot last, one way or
another. No woman can be thoroughly poised, able to look at life on all
sides, and with a clear analytical eye, unless she has lived with a man
in matrimony. Other thing is too one-sided.”
“Some women, perhaps. And as you’re a writer no doubt you have to know
it all. But there is no necessity for the masculine woman to marry.”
Elsie bent over her pudding. “Do you really think yourself masculine?”
she asked indistinctly.
“Of course I am!” Gita’s voice flew to its upper register. Her
grandmother’s and Polly’s gibes had made little impression on her
conscious mind. She ascribed them to personal interest and the
conventional viewpoint.
“Then—I must ask it—I can’t help it!—why don’t you cut off your
eyelashes?”
“Cut off my eyelashes!” Gita raised one narrow sunburnt hand and stroked
them tenderly. “If you want the truth I love my eyelashes.”
“Of course you do. And your lovely head and magnificent eyes and all the
rest of your beauty, badly as you treat it. But, my dear, I am going to
say it if you never speak to me again: you don’t look the least like a
boy and you never can.”
She expected to witness a full and final exhibition of the Carteret
temper, but to her surprise Gita answered gloomily: “I’ve begun to be
afraid I don’t. Two of those horrid men on the Boardwalk this morning
tried to flirt with me.”
“What did they say?” asked Elsie eagerly.
“I wouldn’t repeat it.” And her eyebrows were an unbroken black line
above flaming eyes at the memory of being called “Cutie.” She, Gita
Carteret!
“It might be one thing and it might be another,” observed Mrs. Brewster
cryptically. “A girl trying to look like a boy would only amuse some
men, but it might lead you into excessively disagreeable experiences
with others. To say nothing of—well——”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I fancy you have seen too much of one side of life and very little of
another. If you’ll take my advice you will go up to New York—I’d love
to go with you!—and buy a lot of feminine frocks and hats. Of course
you are in mourning but there are adorable black things.”
“I hate feminine frocks. Besides, if I’m good-looking I never would be
able to keep men off.”
“You never will, anyway, but you might have a—well, more satisfactory
measure of success if you cast yourself for the part of the cold and
indifferent beauty. That’s rather out of date, but as men today are
averse from effort of any sort in their relations with women, accustomed
to be met half-way, in short, I fancy you’d be able to manage. But do
you really never intend to marry?”
“I really do not! If you knew what I know of men your books wouldn’t be
fit for publication. What sort of stories do you write, anyway?
Realistic or romantic? Are those the terms?”
Once more Gita had eluded her, but she replied with every appearance of
eager response: “Terms are out of date but principle remains the same. I
write both. When I’m sad and tired I write romance, and when I’m feeling
particularly buoyant, I write small-town stuff, with husbands going
about the bedrooms in suspenders and forgetting to brush their teeth;
and revolting wives (both ways) scraping out the kitchen sink. I always
give particular prominence to grease. When the sink is clean, if it ever
is, she turns her attention to the fly-specks and marks of heads on the
wall-paper.”
Gita’s eyebrows were in their proper place and she was grinning
delightedly. “I think you’re a whacker!” she exclaimed. “Do you ever
write of New York? That is the one city I long to see—I’ve barely had a
glimpse of it. I’m going up to all the theaters and concerts and just
walk the streets. Will you come along? I’d love to have you.”
Mrs. Brewster’s eyes glowed, but she answered firmly: “I don’t know
anything I’d like better, but I simply won’t walk the streets with you
if you insist upon wearing those clothes—and that hat. In the first
place it’s a crime and in the second I dislike being conspicuous.”
Gita looked sulkily at her plate. “I’ve dressed like this since I was
sixteen. My mother didn’t like it, and she was the only person I cared
enough about to mind whether anyone liked it or not. But I’m used to it.
I should feel awkward and intolerably strange any other way.”
“Only for a time, and in mourning you wouldn’t notice it so much. You’d
be quite accustomed to it by the time you went into colors.”
“I should feel as if a part of my personality had been lopped off.”
“On the contrary, you’d give your personality its first chance to
develop itself. If you really had a hard masculine face—the kind that
goes with authentic masculoid characteristics—I wouldn’t say a word.
I’d not be interested enough. But your type of beauty—real beauty—is
the sort to express itself through clothes. Do you really hate beautiful
and expressive gowns?” she demanded. “Hate the sight of them on other
women?”
“Oh, I like to look at them well enough. And I see at once if details
are not right. I fancy I have what an old Frenchman I once knew called
‘le sentiment de la toilette.’ But all that is merely the same thing as
knowing a good picture from a bad. I was dragged through all the picture
galleries in Europe, and I lived in Paris off and on, where the women
are the best dressed in the world. I appreciated them the more because I
lived so much in French provincial towns, where the women are certainly
the worst dressed in the world. And my mother had lovely things when I
was little, and always managed to look better in old rags made over than
many that spent thousands a year. But I never longed for things
myself—never gave it a thought.”
“Because you had censored your mind so thoroughly. Don’t you really
think that if you hadn’t—for reasons best known to yourself—adopted
the rôle of pseudo-boy so young, you’d have been as feminine in all ways
as other girls?”
Gita, quite unconscious of Elsie’s delicate probing into her past,
answered obstinately: “Never thought about it. Or if I had I’d have been
glad of another excuse to spend as little as possible on myself. We were
frightfully poor, and even in San Francisco, where, for a time, we
thought the worst of our troubles were over, we just about made both
ends meet. At least we couldn’t save. If I’d been keen to dress like the
other girls we’d have been in debt up to our necks.”
Topper, who had received instructions to keep out of the room except
when he was serving, had made his final exit some time since, but the
girls lingered on with their coffee and cigarettes. Elsie made a curious
zigzagging movement along the table with a spoon, denting the cloth;
here and there she made an upward curve or straight mark as irregular in
height as the crooked line; then, suddenly, she broke off, skipped an
inch, and drew a high firm object that looked not unlike a barred gate.
“What on earth are you doing?” asked Gita curiously.
“Outlining your life as I imagine it—in a hazy sort of way. It has
never followed the even course of other girls of your class or you
wouldn’t be what you are. These upward curves and straight marks
represent abrupt changes and milestones. But that”—she pointed to the
last figure—“is more than a milestone. It represents a barrier that
shuts you off completely from your old life. It opened wide enough to
let you through but it is closed and sealed forever. You could not go
back if you wished, and I know that you wish nothing less. Behind that
barrier is a life you hate to remember. Before it, where you find
yourself now, are the pleasant places and all the most romantic girl
could have wished for, who was not too extravagant. Position, freedom,
an independent income, powerful and admiring friends, and the chance to
be stared at as an authentic beauty. Don’t you think you should change
with it? If you don’t you’re not as original as you look. Why! You’d be
merely commonplace, obstinate, content to go on being one thing all your
life. Don’t you know that the really intelligent woman these days crowds
as much variety into her life as life will permit? And adds as many
sides to her personality?”
“Ah!” Gita had turned pale. Her mouth was open and her nostrils
dilating, as if her heart were beating irregularly. “That is something I
never thought of. I do like change, and maybe I am obstinate—but I’m
not commonplace! . . . Perhaps the time _has_ come . . . anyhow I
promised my grandmother I’d let Mrs. Pleyden bring me out, and dress
like other girls. She was dying and had been very generous with me, and
I couldn’t help promising her. But she died a day or two later and I
hadn’t thought of it since. But of course I’ll have to keep my
promise—and I might as well begin now of my own free will,” she added
characteristically. “And if I really can’t look like a boy, what’s the
use? I suppose I’m too old for such nonsense anyhow. I used to feel a
lot older than I do now—and looked it, I imagine.” She shot an almost
apologetic glance at Elsie, who was beaming: she knew she had succeeded
where others had failed. “Reaction, I suppose, and I really never wore
such an ugly hat before. . . . But I won’t—and this is positive!—ever
marry, or even dance with men.”
“Oh, let the future take care of itself. I can think of nothing now but
of helping you buy frocks and hats in the New York shops. I know them
all—just where to go. Luckily the hat of the moment comes almost to the
bridge of the nose, and by the time fashion changes, your front and side
hair will have grown out. I’ll ask for my vacation now if you’ll really
start in right away to fit yourself out.”
“I will. And send the bills to Mr. Donald! Although he’s rather a dear
and sent me a check for two-fifty the other day. I’ve spent hardly any
of it. Come upstairs and see the jewels my grandmother gave me. I
suppose I’ll have to be forty before I can wear most of them, but it’s
jolly to have inherited lovely things to look at—although I’d forgotten
them till this minute!”