GITA, who was on her knees in the garden planting carnations, her favorite flower, but keeping one eye on Andrew and the new gardener, prepared to act summarily at any sign of violence on the old man’s part, turned her head as she heard a taxi rattle up the avenue. Then she sprang to her feet and ran toward the house. Her morning visitor was Elsie Brewster.
“Is anything the matter?” she asked anxiously. It was only ten o’clock and Elsie had never accepted an invitation to luncheon. No man in Atlantic City was more sternly devoted to business between the hours of nine and five than the capable Mrs. Brewster.
Elsie’s face, usually as placid as the pool in the woods, was flushed a bright pink and her eyes sparkled with excitement. “Something wonderful has happened!” she exclaimed. “And I had to come over and tell you at once.”
“Don’t tell me you’re being sent to Europe!” Gita had a sensation of blank dismay at the prospect of separation from this resourceful and interesting friend, the only one whose constant companionship she had ever craved.
“That wouldn’t excite me the least little bit. But don’t try to guess. I’ll tell you. Come into the library where it’s cool.”
Gita ripped off her gauntlets and threw them on the floor of the hall. Her broad-brimmed hat followed a yard farther on. “What on earth can it be?” she demanded impatiently. “Don’t tell me you’re engaged.” She glared at Elsie, who had removed her hat and thrown herself into one of the deep chairs by the window.
“No, no, my child, it’s not that or I shouldn’t have dared to face you. I’d have prepared the way by a note——”
“Well! What is it? What is it?”
“Did I ever tell you that I have a brother? I’ve hardly dared mention the word man in your presence.”
“Your mother once said something about a son out West, somewhere or other, and of course I assumed that those snap-shots all over the house of a young man in khaki were his. Not bad-looking as men go. Has he struck it rich?”
“I shall begin at the beginning.” Elsie had labored too long at craftsmanship to tell a story haphazardly. “You know, his medical course was interrupted by the war, and when he came home he returned to Columbia to finish. He hated to have me work, but mother’s income had diminished like that of everyone else, and he knew he could do far better by us later if he had a profession than if he chucked it and took a job with little or no future in it. Besides, he was always mad on the subject of surgery. He used to dissect rabbits in the back yard when he was eight, and when he was ten the cook broke her arm and he had it in splints before the doctor got there. Then, too, he had a lot of experience in the army, where he was always in attendance on some one of the surgeons. He got the Croix de Guerre for operating under fire when the surgeon in charge of the hospital had been killed, and then coolly loading the patients into an ambulance and driving it off as the Germans rushed the town. Well, he graduated about two years ago and went to Butte, Montana, with a fellow graduate—a doctor of medicine—whose father was in charge of a hospital there and had offered him the position of assistant surgeon. He hated to leave New York, to say nothing of us, but he felt that was not a chance to be missed. Well, there he was, pegging away, when what do you think happened?”
“How on earth should I know?” asked Gita crossly. “Do come to the point. I always read the last page of a story first, and you might have given me the climax as a starter and told me his biography later. I suppose he married a rich patient.”
“Not he. He’s worked too hard and he’s too much in love with his profession to have a thought to spare for women. No. A great surgeon, one of the greatest in New York, Dr. Gaunt, under whom he had served for a time in France, was visiting the hospital and saw him perform an operation on a miner who had been smashed up in a fashion more complicated than usual. Dr. Gaunt was not only much impressed but remembered he had thought Geoff uncommonly clever and resourceful when they had worked together in one of the base hospitals. He needed a young assistant, as the one he’d had for some time had developed incipient tuberculosis and gone to California. He asked Geoff to dinner that night, talked with him for four hours, and then invited him to go to New York. Of course Geoff clinched then and there. When he descended on us this morning and told us the story he said he still felt in a sort of daze. And of course it means a good income from the beginning. Dr. Gaunt will pay him a salary until he is assured of stepping into the personal practice of the former associate, and he is practically certain of that.”
“Fine,” said Gita temperately. “But I thought he had discovered a gold-mine at least.”
“Old stuff. I shouldn’t have liked that at all. But I wish you’d warm up. Don’t you see what it means to me?”
“Oh!” Gita sprang to her feet with a little squeal of delight. “Of course! It means you won’t have to work any more and can devote all your time to writing.” She did not kiss Elsie as another girl would have done, but seized her hand and pumped it up and down. “Now I am excited. It’s too wonderful.”
“That’s it, my dear. After I had got over being exultant for Geoff and he had told me to go straight to the store and hand in my resignation, I’m bound to say I forgot him and was filled with an entirely personal excitement. I never felt so happy in my life.”
“I should think so. I know what it is to be free.”
She looked at Elsie’s flushed face and sparkling eyes and wondered if the young author had what was known as temperament and had been severely repressing it. She was as curious about the secret places of the ego as Elsie herself. “I suppose you’ll give yourself up to an orgy of writing now,” she said. “Get to work on that novel and be famous this time next year?”
“I’ll write it anyhow. Oh!” Elsie sprang to her feet and lifted her arms. The color left her face and it glowed with a white radiance. “Oh! To know that I may have a career! A career! Whether you fail or set the world on fire cannot make so very much difference if only you have the opportunity to try for it, to work for it, to think of nothing else! And to be able to write constantly without interruption. You cannot imagine what it means.”
“Yes, I can,” said Gita sharply. “And it makes me feel like ten cents. I went to work in the garden this morning because I had nothing to do. I’m sick of the Boardwalk, and I can’t read all day.”
Elsie came down from the empyrean and regarded her charge anxiously. “You’re not getting bored? You!”
“Well, who wouldn’t be, in this house all alone? I think I’d have enjoyed it if you and Polly hadn’t put a lot of ideas into my head, for then I’d have been full of my new independence and freedom from sordid worries, and I always wanted to put in a lot of reading——”
“Why, you ungrateful little beast! I could shake you.”
“Sorry. I shouldn’t have said that, and of course that wouldn’t have lasted either. And of course I understand myself. I used to get a lot of gratification out of brooding and glooming. No doubt it’s that I miss.”
“Well! As long as you are honest with yourself you won’t come to much harm. But you’d have ended by being a sulky old maid—or worse. Stable endocrines can be unbalanced in time. But I should think your hours would be pretty well filled. You have this house to run, you ride, walk, swim, read, and see a good deal of your friends. Later, New York will be furiously interesting. I really don’t see what you have to complain of.”
“Well, what does it all lead to? It’s all very well for you to be in love with life and dance about and spread your wings. You’ve a gift, and a career in prospect—full of variety and suspense. The truth of the matter is, I suppose, that my nature craves drama. In a way I’ve had it all my life. Damn ugly drama, most of it. But with all sorts of climaxes and uncertainties, and a tremendous amount of personal effort and strife. D’you think I’m cut out for a society woman, a lady of the manor? Just about as much as I’m cut out for a husband and babies. Just about!”
“But, Gita! Surely you are enjoying this new life of yours? And you do fit it, and you do manage to get a great deal out of it.”
“Oh, yes, that’s true enough. I only go off at a tangent once in a while. But, you see, I’ve done hard thinking all my life, and I simply can’t help wondering every now and again what I’ll do when the novelty has entirely worn off and I’m bored stiff. I’m not really bored yet. Just looking ahead.”
“Well, just remind yourself that you are now in a position to command a good deal of novelty. This is only the prologue. Life takes care of the changes when one is free on the surface, not burrowing in one of the ruts. Even then things have been known to happen. Of course you’ll never fall in love (something she was not at all sure of; but she was wiser than Polly who had “trotted out” three young men for Gita’s inspection, and been “treated like a dog” for her pains), so you’ll probably miss the most exciting experience of all. But LIFE, when you are fairly launched in it! Oh, wait, my dear! Just wait!”
Gita shrugged her shoulders. “I’m waiting! All you say sounds very fine but it’s just glittering generalities. However—I am ungrateful and I’ll think no more about it. You’ll stay to lunch?”
But Elsie rose and put on her hat. “Not today. Tomorrow, if you’ll have me. But this is Geoff’s first day at home in over a year. I wish you’d dine with us tonight. Can’t you forget that Geoff is a man and merely think of him as my brother? After all, when you come out you’ll have to meet endless men, and talk to them, too.”
Gita gave her a hard stare. “If I thought——”
“Oh, no!” Elsie gave her rippling laugh. “I’m no matchmaker, and if I were you’d be the last person on earth whose love-destiny I’d dare have a hand in. I’m not sure you’ll even tolerate Geoff because he’s my brother. I don’t know what he may have done in his off moments but I do know that women don’t interest him and he makes no effort to talk to them. He’s rather silent, even with us. Carving up someone in his mind, I suppose. But I’d like to have you meet him, simply because he is my brother, and you, my dear, have become a part of my life.”
Gita kissed her for the first time. It was a peck, but it meant as much, Elsie knew, as the remark that followed. “I’ll come, of course, and I’ll try not to hate him.”