GITA glanced at her wrist-watch and sprang to her feet.
“A quarter past one! My old Topper will be wringing his hands. He’s served meals on time for fifty years and privately thinks me a disgrace to the Carterets because I hate regular hours and strew my things all over the house. You must come back to lunch with me. I’ve an excellent cook.”
Bylant dusted the pine-needles from his trousers. “I won’t be gallant and vow that a luncheon of bread and cheese in your company would be a feast for the gods, for I’m both hungry and highly appreciative of good cooking; and this is a morning sternly devoted to truth. I’ll come with the greatest pleasure in the world.”
His tone was gay and matter-of-fact, but Gita received the subtle message that super-formalities existed between them no longer. She shrugged her shoulders. Well, she had done the inconceivable. Why not take on a man friend for a change? And an author-man, at least, was far more understanding and stimulating, when it came to real conversation, than any woman she had known.
After luncheon they sat in the library, and for a time in silence, Bylant enjoying his cigar, his eyes roving appreciatively over the walls of books. It was a completely satisfying relic of the past, that old manor library, collected by men who had been intellectual in their own ponderous way; and an inimitable background for this spirited, rebellious, neoteric descendant who had inherited their handsome high-bred shell and cast out their prejudices, packing the space with idiosyncrasies of her own.
Gita followed his glance. “Those old tomes are pretty dull,” she said with a sigh. “But I learned something of the history of each of the countries I lived in—France, Belgium, Germany, Italy; we were even in England once for a few months—and it is time I knew more. I’m frightfully ignorant. I like history and biographies better than anything, but I must say it’s rather hard to lose oneself in musty pages covered with brown spots like freckles, and long esses. I don’t believe a Carteret bought a book later than 1830. But I peg away at it for two hours every evening, and on rainy days I yawn over them by the hour. I’ve made a virtuous resolution not to read a novel for six months.”
“I’ll send you some of the modern histories and biographies. They are equally—perhaps more—authentic, and their writers belong to this generation of the quick and are more fearful of dullness than of crime. Dullness is a crime, for that matter, for it has slaughtered more brains than excess.”
But he had no intention of discussing books with her. It should be another bond between them in the future and the fertile cause of frequent association; but the mood of the morning was still on her, her intoxicated ego still danced in those magnificent eyes, and he needed little adroitness to lead her to enlarge upon certain incidents of her past which, he protested, she had brushed aside too lightly to satisfy a greedy psychologist. Gita was not slow to understand that she was the most interesting study that had ever swum within the ken of this multifariously experienced novelist, and she rose to the bait.
He also gave her a more detailed account of his own life, particularly before the sudden death of his mother eight years ago; and if, when they finally parted, she did not feel that she knew him better, and he her, than anyone either of them had known in this life of many acquaintances and few friends, it was, he told himself grimly, through no fault of his.
“You’ll see me again in a day or two,” he said as they shook hands in the garden, whither they had migrated as the sun rode to the west. “I’m going to New York tomorrow to make a choice selection among my books for your delectation. May I bring them over on Friday?”
“Come to lunch if you like. It’s been very jolly and I’ll always be glad to see you—with or without the books.” Gita produced what she called her manor-manners without effort. This author-man had chased away the black clouds that always muttered on the horizon even when they did not overwhelm her and she felt intensely grateful to him. She liked him better than Elsie or Polly and he would be as little likely to make love to her.
He felt an impulse to ask her to meet him in the wood, but decided it would be a failure in tactics, and merely replied:
“I shall take advantage of your hospitality very often. I came to Atlantic City to get rid of a cold and have taken rooms in Chelsea for a month. But the life here has never interested me and I’ll look upon you as the best of good fellows if you’ll let me come often to this delightful old manor.”
“The door is always open, for Topper and I disagree on the subject of fresh air and burglars. As they used to say in California in the old Spanish days, ‘The house is yours. Burn it if you will.’ ”
And they both laughed, and parted, well pleased with themselves.