BUT time passed and Bylant betrayed no part of his purpose again. He had lingered on in Chelsea, and finally announced he would make no visits that year, nor return to New York until after Christmas; and while he told Gita frankly that he was remaining on her account, he was as matter-of-fact as if he were a tutor reluctant to leave a promising pupil.
Two days after Gita had sketched out her platform Mrs. Pleyden called her on the telephone and invited her for dinner on the following evening.
“You see, my dear, it is over four months since your grandmother’s death, and you must be dull at times,” she said with crisp sympathy. “I am sure she would agree with me that you should begin to see more of your future friends and associates (she means men, thought Gita), and before you go to New York for the winter. It will make things so much easier for you. And we are very informal. The men do not dress for dinner—of course the girls do!—but when the men are let off that means we are really informal.”
Gita, nothing loath, as Eustace would be there to sustain her, permitted herself to be frankly bored once a week and made no pretense of listening to anyone but Bylant; who sat always at the right of his admiring hostess. His mellow voice came to her across the excited chatter of the others, who, as she had expected, said nothing that interested her, even when she understood what they were talking about.
Bylant had his more distinguished friends down occasionally and one night he brought three to the manor to dinner. Gita dressed herself with even more interest in her appearance than usual and ordered Topper to bring up three bottles of vintage champagne from the cellar, and the cook to excel herself. At last she was to meet three of the most famous of the sophisticates, her future companions and friends. But one was fat, one was bald, and one after his second glass of champagne fell into a sentimental monologue inspired by his wife and two children. Nevertheless, their talk at times was scintillating and provocative, and their manner to herself irreproachable. One of the men at Polly’s last dinner had tried to snatch her hand under the table, his ankle receiving an answering caress from the sharp heel of her slipper; but these men, either because they were more interested in her dinner than herself, or because they looked upon her as Bylant’s private preserve, gave her no cause for future disquiet. She knew so much of their world from Eustace and Elsie that she was able to follow their somewhat random and ejaculatory talk and interpret their casual allusions. Their criticism of this author and that was given with sharp finality, and she rather admired their air of omniscience. She hoped she would acquire it herself when she was one of them. And they were rather lovable creatures, for their blasting comment was without bitterness and it was pleasant to bask in the atmosphere of people so thoroughly pleased with themselves. It was apparent they had a genuine appreciation of Eustace Bylant’s work, and took a friendly interest in Elsie’s. At Polly’s the conversation had been mainly of bootleggers. Not that this subject was one of indifference to the sophisticates; far from it; but the accident of fortune commanded a wider range of interests; and perhaps they were not averse from displaying their resources to this handsome young hostess who hung on their words.
“I liked them all,” said Gita enthusiastically to Bylant on the day following as they sat by the pool in the wood. “I hope they’ll come often. Next summer I shall have house-parties. I’ll know more of your friends by that time and if all are as clever and convenable as these it will be like having a salon. I should feel very proud.”
“Your occasional naïveté and humility are enchanting! But Elsie is going to Europe next summer. You will have to fall back on Mrs. Pleyden’s aunt.”
“I might be married.”
“Married!” Bylant, who had been lounging comfortably, sat up straight. “You?”
“It would be better in some ways,” said Gita musingly.
“What—what—you——” Bylant could hardly articulate.
“I think you’d do very well. What would you answer if I proposed to you?”
Bylant’s face, which had turned white, suddenly looked as if the blood would burst through the skin. “I don’t understand you,” he stuttered.
“Mean to say you don’t want to marry me?”
“Of course I do!” he exploded. “But how did you find it out?”
“Oh, I’m not as dense as you think. I suppose, as you’re really conventional, you’d have liked to do the proposing yourself.”
“Not a bit of it. I don’t care a damn——” And then a flicker of apprehension in Gita’s eyes, otherwise as cold and calm as the pool, struck a warning note in his consciousness. He sank back on his elbow. The blood ebbed from his face and he shrugged his shoulders.
“Let us have this out,” he said practically. “Unless, of course, you are cultivating your sense of humor.”
“Not at all. I’ve known for some time you intended to marry me, and when Mrs. Pleyden insisted I meet those one-ideaed tanked-up friends of Polly’s often enough to convince me of the utter boredom of a winter in their society, and always had you on hand to make them appear like morons by contrast (she doesn’t share Polly’s enthusiasm for my outrée self, you know), and when you trotted out three of your friends, infinitely superior, but by no means dangerous, I knew the siege was closing in.”
“Good lord!” muttered Bylant.
“You needn’t blush. I admire your tactics immensely.”
“I believe you’d see through a stone wall.”
“Say a gauze curtain with an arc-light behind it. I fancy I’ll get a lot of fun out of life.”
“I fancy you will.” His tones were as dry as his tongue.
“And I’d get a lot more with you than I could by myself——”
“But I thought marriage to you was anathema.” Bylant hardly knew what he was saying. What in heaven’s name was this incalculable girl driving at?
“In the commonplace sense, of course. But with us it would be different. We’d just hitch up as a matter of form, and then we could be together always.”
There was no rising inflection in her cool clear voice. Nor any accent of finality. She assumed, beyond question, that the arrangement would be as agreeable to him as to her royal self.
For a moment Bylant did not raise his eyes; he had kept them carefully lowered. Then he sat up and lit a cigarette. His tan did not conceal his pallor but his eyes were as calm and steady as those hard black diamonds opposite.
“I think I’ll accept your offer of marriage,” he said lightly. “You took my breath away or I shouldn’t have been so ungallant as to hesitate—seemingly. I hope you didn’t think me that?” His voice was whimsically anxious.
“I know men are not accustomed to being proposed to even now, although I wouldn’t put it past some of the girls. But I knew you’d take forever to summon up your courage, so why not take the bull by the horns—bad simile, that. You’re just a dear old ox.”
“Thanks!” Once more Bylant could hardly articulate, but the humor of the situation overcame him and he burst into a roar of laughter. Gita smiled in delighted response. She had hated to embarrass him, and any man must feel a bit of a fool who had forced a girl to propose to him.
“Of course,” he said at length, mopping his brow with one of the fine cambric handkerchiefs Gita had so often admired. “I should have asked you to marry me in time. I was only waiting on a propitious moment.”
“But you’re so slow and cautious you’d have kept putting it off—you’re really a little afraid of me, you know.”
“Oh, I am! I am!”
“And I want to be with you next winter, not Mrs. Pleyden. I suppose Polly has told you that gorgeous plan of hers, but it wouldn’t work, not if I know Mrs. Pleyden. She lets Polly have her own way—BUT. Well, she’d freeze the aliens out somehow, if only because she’d be afraid Polly—who’s much too good for the crowd she runs with—would take it into her head to marry one of them. The sense of class may skip a generation but it’s a little brass idol perched right in the middle of Mrs. Pleyden’s inner shrine. . . . I suppose there are hundreds of decent young chaps about, well-born and well-bred at that, but if there are they have no use for the hip-pocket crowd and run with girls of another sort. Too bad. Polly——”
“I’m not interested in Polly. I know no one better able to take care of herself. Are you giving me to understand that you want to marry me at once?”
“About the first of January. Things are all right now, and I’m safe from Mrs. Pleyden until she moves to New York. You won’t mind living at the manor in summer, I hope? And coming here off and on in winter? I really love the manor.”
“Oh, not at all! It is difficult to imagine you anywhere else. But I’ll have to see about an apartment in New York at once. My rooms——”
Gita sprang to her feet and danced on the turf. “And we’ll furnish it together! I always wanted to buy lovely things for a house. When mother and I were at our worst—living in one room in a pension—we used to amuse ourselves furnishing imaginary apartments. It was a regular game and helped a lot.”
“I think on the whole we’d better have a house.”
“Why? An apartment is much less trouble.”
“Well—you see—we’d each be more independent. I could have the top floor to myself—my typewriter makes a horrible racket——”
“I’d love to have a whole floor to myself, and I’d never go near yours. Elsie has me well trained. I’d never dare cross the threshold of her study.”
“You will make a model wife!”
“I hate that word. We’ll just be partners.”
“Right.” He rose also. “Let’s shake hands on it.”
She shook his hand heartily. Then she raised herself on tiptoe and pecked his cheek. “Now, you know I love you!” she exclaimed.
“Haven’t the least doubt of it,” he mumbled. “May I announce the engagement at once?”
“Do. Let’s have it over. Elsie will be delighted, and so will Mrs. Pleyden. Polly won’t, but Polly must find out sometime that she can’t have every least little thing her own way.”