For a moment Gita felt more angry than astonished, and half rose. Then
she settled back with a laugh. “Someone’s mother is the very last——
Was she any relation of the Carterets?”
“Not that I know of, but types are not confined to families.”
“I don’t at all like being told I belong to a type.”
“But everyone does, my dear child.” Bylant smiled indulgently as he took
out his pipe. “It is the common lot, although nothing distresses the ego
more than to be reminded of it. But it is type accentuated, raised to
the nth degree, that makes the individual. You are like my mother in
certain respects, in others not at all, and yet you are the only person
I have ever met who reminded me of her. If you had been brought up here
at Carteret Manor the resemblance would be more striking still, but the
plus and the minus make you yourself and no one else. Don’t writhe under
the apprehension that your exact counterpart exists anywhere else in the
world! . . . On the other hand, if the conditions had been reversed, I
don’t doubt that my mother would have been, at your age, almost
precisely what you are today.”
Gita had been introduced to a new sensation. Titillated vanity conquered
pique. She had heard of the none too subtle methods of the American male
and eyed Bylant warily, then concluded he was harmless, and smiled
encouragingly. “I suppose, on the whole, I should be flattered,” she
said. “And your mother seems to have been one of the individuals. How
was she brought up?”
“In the most orthodox manner possible. A beautiful high-spirited
intelligent girl, she was educated partly in France, partly in New York,
and came out inevitably at eighteen. She had a winter of intoxicating
belledom and then married my father, who was her complement in looks,
being even lighter than I am, had that air of intense reserve that
suggests unfathomable depths, and the most charming manners. It was
blind surrender to the race-urge with the mental accompaniment of an
infant rooting in the proper place for nourishment. All the old-timers
are horrified at this new license of young people, but at least they
will avoid one mistake of their forerunners. They know exactly what is
the matter with them.
“The marriage was not a happy one. My father was dull, stubborn, and had
ideas as orthodox as himself on the subject of home rule. He was thrown
from his horse and killed when I was seven. After that she devoted
herself entirely to me—her parents died soon after she married—and
recovered all her old buoyancy and joy of life. Of course she had other
offers of marriage, and many friends; but although she liked society and
was too sane to hate an entire sex because one man had failed her, she
was too happy in her freedom and her child to be tempted for a moment.
She entertained enough to give the atmosphere of my home a certain
gayety and to initiate me into the ways of the minor world. I went to
boarding-school when the proper time came, for she was too wise to run
the risk of feminizing me, but I spent my vacations with her—we
traveled a good deal—and when I left Harvard and returned home with the
intention of adopting the profession of letters, she became my constant
companion and spoiled me for anyone else. She had a wide range of
interests, in life as well as in books—in which she had taken refuge
during my father’s régime—and magnificent spirits——”
“Well, those I haven’t got, at all events. I’ve felt blue or cross most
of my life.”
“I saw you dancing in the woods. You looked sixteen—no, ageless. . . .
Your spirits were in constant conflict with your luck and boiled over
into the wrong channels. If you had been commonplace your unhappy
experience would have made little impression on you.”
“Well, it made a lot, and if you care to hear it I’ll tell you something
about my own mother.”
He leaned over and emptied the ashes of his pipe into the lake. When he
turned to her his eyes were bright and his cheeks flushed, but his
expression betrayed nothing more than kindly interest. “Please do,” he
said warmly. “One confidence deserves another. I’ve heard scraps—you
are a much-discussed young person, you know—and I’m keen to hear the
story at first hand.”
“You’ll not put me in a book!” There was a very faint note of alarm in
her voice, and she experienced another titillation at the possibility.
“If you really do not want to be ‘put in a book’ you are even more
original than you look. But suppose we defer introducing anything so
extraneous to the moment as fiction? I certainly should not take such a
liberty without your consent after you had given me your confidence.
Just now I am only interested in discovering what has made you so
different from Bladina.”
This subtle touch completed the conquest of Gita’s jealous reserve. To
her increasing amazement she found herself unburdening her soul of the
poisonous accumulations of her twenty-two years. She told the chronicle
from the beginning, omitting no detail, extrinsic or subjective. If she
paused to remind herself that she was breaking the habit of a lifetime
and turning herself inside out—to a man! Of all things!—she concluded
that an author was much the same as a father confessor, but more
appreciative of high-lights; she knew that she was telling an
interesting story and telling it well.
Bylant, overwhelmingly interested in her both as a man and an ardent
psychologist, was quite aware of her attitude toward himself, and
although the man in him rebelled, for he was more in love with her every
moment, he consoled himself with the pregnant certainty that he was her
first confidant; and, whether she resented the act later or not, she was
creating an indissoluble bond. It was a long first step and he knew the
virtue of patience.
But Gita’s indifference to anything below the intellectual dome of her
new friend was complete. She felt buoyant and released, as if she had
suddenly been hauled out of a dungeon and introduced to light and
freedom, and she felt grateful and quite willing to take him on as a
doctor. He had certainly purged her soul. To talk about herself after
all these years of repression had been almost ecstatic and she knew she
had committed the wisest act of her life. But she concluded on a light
note.
“There, you’ve had it all! Not a pretty story, is it? And you must be
thankful I’m not your mother.”
“If you hadn’t been her psychological—and physiological—twin your
story would have been very different and you wouldn’t have told it.”