“NOTHING AND NOBODY, BY ELIZABETH PELHAM” was published in the spring, and as critics and columnists pronounced it another notable contribution to undiluted Americanism and as her publisher’s enthusiasm expressed itself in picturesque advertising it had a fair success. The sale barely reached seven thousand copies, but the event established her in sophisticate society and the Lucy Stone League invited her to sit at the Speakers’ Table at their annual dinner.
“But privately I don’t think much of it,” she said to Gita. “They are all very kind and overlook defects because it is modern and sincere and rather disagreeable. But I know I’ll do better and better, and I never was so happy in my life.”
“Eustace thinks it a remarkable first novel, and I know it by heart. Seems all right to me.”
Elsie shook her head solemnly. “It has holes in it. But it is seeing your stuff in print that educates, not critics.”
They were in Gita’s sitting-room in the West Twelfth Street house, the windows open to the warm breezes of spring.
“How is Eustace’s book getting on?” asked Elsie, who was still able to interest herself in the work of other authors. “It should be nearly finished.”
“Haven’t seen him for two weeks. He has his meals sent upstairs. Says he always becomes the complete hermit toward the end. I suppose he doesn’t even shave.”
Gita was smoking placidly and Elsie looked at her speculatively.
“Your experiment has been a success,” she observed. “I wondered if it would——”
“Of course it has been a success. We’ve even had our little tiffs. Sometimes, particularly at the table, I feel almost domestic. But when we have an evening at home he comes downstairs to call and we have one of our old wonderful talks. The more I see of all these clever men the more I admire Eustace, for he has a mental grace that seems to be a sort of left-over and successfully eluded by the rest of them. I’ve missed him terribly these last weeks.”
“Too bad more husbands don’t take a leaf out of his book! In some ways your marriage is an ideal one.”
“All ways.”
“Well, of course all women wouldn’t think so.”
“More fools they.”
“Gita——” Elsie hesitated. She seldom pressed too close to this still incalculable friend, but no artistic faculty would continue to function without curiosity. Moreover, she was still more interested personally in Gita than in anyone she had ever known, save, possibly, Eustace Bylant.
“Well?” Gita, who had returned at two in the morning from a party at Potts Dawes’s, was sunken deep in her chair, enjoying the sensation of complete repose. She had lost some of her color, but her pink negligée shed a soft glow over her face that would have softened it as well had it not been for her hair, which, springing away from her face and very thick at the back, gave her, Elsie thought, the appearance of an eagle about to lift its wings and take flight. And her eyes, in spite of her mild dissipations, never looked heavy, although less fierce than formerly.
Gita had ceased to fear men and found many of Eustace’s friends as likable and amusing as she had anticipated. Whether a bride was sacrosanct even in a circle whose bugle-cry was scorn of tradition, or they cared for no reckoning with Bylant, or thought her too difficult game for a busy age, was a matter of indifference to her. They admired her extravagantly, but they let her alone. Once Peter Whiffle kissed her instep, but she had turned her eyes away from so much worse that she was inclined to be lenient and merely brushed him off as she would a mosquito. They discussed esoteric literature at odds with the censor for the rest of the evening.
“Gita——”
“Well—once more. You look as if you had something on your mind. Better get it off.”
“I can’t help wondering—I witnessed a good many changes before you married . . . but this winter in New York has changed you still more——”
“Developed, dear Elsie. You’re careless in the use of words, for a stylist. We don’t change, you know.”
“Not literally perhaps—unless, to be sure, the endocrines go wrong. But it looks a good deal like it sometimes! Perhaps ‘thawed’ would be a better word still. I shouldn’t be at all surprised to see you dancing next winter.”
“I don’t think so. There are some things I dislike as much as ever. Men are all very well as long as you don’t get too close to them. Then they smell of gin. And—well, I shouldn’t like it, that’s all. Some of those men are all right but it takes just one cocktail to turn two or three I could mention into silly beasts. If I danced with one I couldn’t refuse any of them and then anything might happen. So far, I’m safe from all but stuttering compliments on my eyelashes or my ears.”
Elsie laughed. “You’re safe enough. And probably right. There isn’t one of them, I fancy, who wouldn’t like to take you away from Eustace, but they’re afraid of you both. . . . But you have thawed, and you’ve become a good deal of a woman of the world; you’ve cast out a good many inhibitions and prejudices. You’ve got used to things. You even took Marian Starr Darsett for a drive the other day, and it is the particular pride of our sophisticates that she has had more lovers than any woman in the world for her age. You find her charming and you’ve grown as indifferent as the rest of us to conduct as long as the personality pleases you and jiggledy morals don’t interfere with table manners.”
“That’s all true. I look upon life as a pageant and am grateful for its variety and not out to reform it. Miss Darsett is a beauty and a genius and a charming creature; and her private life—personal rather; nothing very private about it—is her affair, not mine.”
“But don’t you see what a stride you’ve taken? Any hint of sex, even under the ægis of holy matrimony, utterly disgusted you. If Polly and I had been even the usual susceptible females, let alone Marian Darsetts, you’d have swept us out with a broom.”
“True enough. But that was owing to a neurosis, and you and Polly and Eustace, my grandmother and the life she made possible, did the sweeping. I am able to adjust myself, take life as I find it, that’s all.”
“Well, it’s a good deal! I’m wondering if you won’t go further and fall in love with Eustace.”
Gita stared at her. “With Eustace? What an idea! Why don’t you ask me if I don’t think of spoiling the very most ideal—and satisfactory—relationship that ever existed between a man and woman?”
“Well—that’s a matter of opinion.”
“Only one opinion under this roof.”
“Then you’ve changed—developed if you prefer it—less than I thought.”
“Odd if I should change in that respect.”
“Some women, you know, even women that have been inhibited for one reason or another. . . . You might fall in love with someone else. You’ve met a good many attractive men these last months.”
“None half as attractive as Eustace. He always both rests and stimulates me and his manners are flawless. More than can be said for most.”
“And do you mean to live like this for the rest of your life?”
“Of course. Why not? Life is perfect. When I look back on those long twenty-two years before I landed in Carteret Manor I can hardly realize my good luck.”
“Oh, I admit that. And you were doubly fortunate to have the mental equipment to make the most of it. But you’re missing something, you know.”
“I’m not.” Gita set her mouth obstinately. “Don’t talk that old tosh.”
“Call it what you like, but no woman escapes it. Even Polly is more than half in love with my brother.”
“Is she?” Gita opened her eyes. “She’s never said a word to me about it.”
“Bad sign, as you see her nearly every day. He’s been there to dine several times and I know they take walks together in the Park. I fancy the pursuit is on her side, but when a woman makes up her mind to marry a man she generally does.”
“Funny if Polly went back on that old hard-and-fast program of hers. And I don’t quite see her as the wife of a struggling young surgeon.”
“Nor I. But love has been known to do queer things to people. And Polly has the tenacity of the devil.”
“I always said she was far too good for her crowd, and I’ve seen signs more than once she was sick of it. But—well, but!”
“Exactly. She’ll blind herself and perhaps him for a time, but they’re not suited at all.”
“Have you given him a talking-to?”
“Do you think I’m an idiot?”
“I haven’t seen him since the night of the Christmas party. Then he looked like a beau cavalier and was certainly devoted to Polly.” She almost blushed as she remembered his explosive declaration to herself.
“I rather thought you’d made an impression on him,” said Elsie. “And that wouldn’t have done either. I suppose I don’t want him to marry at all. He’s the sort of man who is better off alone. Perhaps I’m all wrong. I’d be a fool if I thought I knew my own brother . . . I wish you’d ask them to dine and then tell me what you think of it.”
“I’ve asked him several times but he always gave some excuse. When Eustace has finished his book we’re going to have a celebration and I’ll tell Polly to bring him.”
“Well—if I were a different person, and you were a different person, I’d ask you to use your own wiles and break it up. But as it is——”
“I should think not!” Gita sprang to her feet. “Let’s go for a walk.”