GITA, who would not consent to sacrifice the least of her pines, bought a large tree in Atlantic City and decorated it with the help of Elsie and Polly. The young gardener was sent in quest of a cart-load of holly, and the vast chimneypiece in the hall and the heavy gilt frames of the Carterets were obliterated. The floor was waxed and the refectory table moved into one of the smaller drawing-rooms. There were to be thirty guests, chosen by Polly and Bylant, but Gita, suddenly remembering Dr. Pelham, wrote a brief note asking him to come if he could find time for anything so frivolous as a Christmas party. Somewhat to her surprise he accepted.
She delegated to Polly and Eustace the task of selecting a trifle for each of the guests, and the more practical Elsie undertook to buy substantial presents for the servants; but the gifts for themselves caused her a good deal of mental perturbation. She was generous by nature but hesitated to send any more bills to Mr. Donald. Bylant had been adamant to her desire to pay half the expense of furnishing the house, but under the tutelage of her two other friends, her trousseau had exceeded her income for the year, and Mr. Donald had formally “advised” her that he had been forced to sacrifice a valuable bond. She had replied haughtily that she had no intention of encroaching on her capital in the future but that marriage was not expected to wait upon income.
She finally poured out the contents of the jewel-casket on her bed one night, and pried out a diamond and emerald from the tiara. She had promised her grandmother not to sell any of the jewels but her conscience reminded her that nothing had been said about giving. A jeweler in Atlantic City set the emerald in a ring for Elsie and the diamond as a pendant on a thin platinum chain for Polly.
But there still remained the problem of Eustace. She rummaged the drawers of a court chest in her grandfather’s dressing-room and found a gold signet-ring with a lapis-lazuli scarab set in a richly carved hoop with tiny dragons on its shoulders. It was indisputably an antique and valuable, and eminently appropriate for a man of fastidious taste. But some submerged feminine instinct warned her that he would appreciate even more highly a supplementary present that betrayed some thought on her part and a modicum of personal sacrifice.
She went to the most expensive shop on the Boardwalk and ordered a dozen fine cambric handkerchiefs to be embroidered with his initials. He might have several dozen already, but at least he would be made subtly aware that she had not confined her attentions to his distinguished top-story. She sent the bill to Mr. Donald.
A few days before Christmas Polly arrived at the manor early in the morning and announced herself possessed of an inspiration.
“Why not have a fancy-dress party——”
“There’s no time.” Gita and Elsie protested in chorus.
“Yes, there is if all those cedar chests in the attic are full of old duds. Modern gowns in this old hall would look horrid and the men even worse. There must be stacks if this old manor runs true to form. They never sold things in those days and of course they were too good to pass on to the servants.”
The three raced one another up to the attic. The chests were locked, and as even Topper could not produce the keys, the gardener was sent for to pry them open. Then the carefully folded garments were shaken out and inspected. There was nothing more modern than the fashions of the eighteen-nineties, for by that time, no doubt, the Carteret ladies had begun to make over their fine clothes and wear them out. But anything later than 1830 was rejected with scorn. They sorted out gowns of taffeta and satin, mousseline-de-soie and velvet, in styles Pompadour, Empire, Watteau, and the Four Georges; tiny pointed waists, voluminous skirts, long trains and mere slips.
“We’ll have to powder our hair and wear corsets,” said Polly, “but we’ll set back a few centuries in that old hall, so who’ll mind a little discomfort?”
“Powdered bobbed hair will be a scream,” said Gita, who had been surveying her new possessions with dazzled eyes and hearing a ghostly patter of tiny feet along her nerves. “Why not wigs? One of the hair-dressers in Atlantic City could telephone for them.”
“Right. Leave it to me.”
Elsie, who had been investigating a chest, hitherto overlooked, lifted out a wedding-dress of heavy satin mellowed to old ivory and covered with priceless point-lace. “Did you ever see anything so lovely?” she gasped.
“I know who wore that!” cried Polly. “Your grandmother, Gita. I’ve seen it in an old album of granny’s, I remember—granny, who was one of her bridesmaids, got going about that wedding to mother one day and wondered why all that lace hadn’t been passed on to your aunt Evelyn when she married.”
Gita laid the gown across her arms and looked at it reverently. She knew the value of old lace, for her mother had possessed several fine pieces before they went to pay a gambling-debt, and part of her education had been in museums where there was always a room devoted to thread filigree; particularly beloved of Millicent. In Bruges and Brussels she had often seen the nuns at work. But although she had found several pieces of Irish and Honiton in a chest in her grandmother’s room, she had hardly glanced at them. Real lace didn’t match short skirts and bobbed hair.
But this mass of point d’Alençon was quite another matter, and she experienced the same sensation as when she had gazed first upon the soft sheen of her pearls.
“I shall be married in this,” she announced. “I’d intended to wear any old thing I happened to have on. But this——Oh, yes! And just as it is. The waist will have to be let out for I couldn’t stand a corset five minutes.”
“Gita!” Elsie, who was sitting back on her heels, suddenly sprang to her feet and clapped her hands. “It’s my turn to have an inspiration. Why don’t you marry Eustace on Christmas Eve—spring a surprise at the end of the party?”
Polly, who after months of intimacy with Gita sometimes felt as young as her years, fairly danced. “Gorgeous! It will be the night of our lives. I can see you stepping down those stairs with a powdered footman on either side——”
“Haven’t any footmen——”
“We’ll hire them—no, make two of the men dress up.”
“I can’t have a wedding like that without your mother and Mr. Donald.” Gita, surrounded by these ancestral feminine relics, was feeling every inch a Carteret.
“They’ll be told to arrive with Dr. Lancaster on the stroke of midnight—no, ten minutes before. Leave it to me.”
“But suppose Eustace—he’s the sort that hates to be rushed—I should think.”
“He hasn’t a thing to do but get the license and wedding-ring. Of course he won’t mind.”
Gita turned to Elsie, her brows drawn together. “What do you think? You ought to know him better than any of us.”
“I agree with Polly. Why shouldn’t he be enchanted?” Her eyes were shining, her cheeks burning.
“Why are you so anxious to marry me off in a hurry?” asked Gita suspiciously.
“Anxious? I’m no more anxious than Polly. I want to look on at a wonderful picture, that’s all. I intend to stand on that chair by the fireplace when you come down the stair.”
“But if I’m married like that I’ll have to have bridesmaids, and you’ll both come down behind me.”
“Bridesmaids——”
“Not much,” cried Polly. “We’d spoil the picture. We’ll be bridesmaids all right, but we’ll wait at the foot of the stairs. So will Eustace. Might as well turn all the old regulations upside down while we’re about it.”
Gita jerked up her shoulders. “Well. Have it your own way. But—well—I’m not in such a hurry to marry.”
Her hesitation was unaccountable to herself. What difference did a week make? She glanced at the dress on her arms. It had covered the slim body of a girl glowing with love for the man she was about to marry. Her own wedding would be a caricature of that wedding-day half a century ago. And again something stirred along her nerves, ghostly whisperings, no doubt, of the women who had laughed and loved and danced and coquetted in these gowns which should have been dust with themselves. . . . There was something both ironic and sinister in the living persistence of textile and fashion—over God’s own image! . . . Those Colonial women had loved and married as a matter of course, wasted their time on no problems beyond babies and death and a new gown for the governor’s ball. Life had been very simple in those old days in the Colonies.
She scowled and threw the gown on a box. “All right,” she said sharply. “I’ll speak to Eustace tonight. Now let’s pick out the gowns for the party, and you, Polly, cart off the rest for the other girls to choose from. I think I’ll take this one as it wasn’t made for corsets.”
She held up a narrow gown of gold-colored gauze with a low pointed neck, high belt, and short slashed puffed sleeves. Elsie chose a silk robe printed with foliage, with a Watteau pleat behind extending into a train, wide elbow-sleeves with deep ruffles of lace.
Polly, after rejecting eight or ten of the most elaborate gowns, professed herself satisfied with one of plum-colored velvet over a figured satin petticoat and long pointed waist, panniers and full skirts. Then they carried the gowns downstairs and put all but two into Polly’s motor and the gardener was told to take three chests containing masculine regalia to Eustace Bylant’s lodgings on the following morning.