IT was Mrs. Pleyden’s habit to move to Atlantic City in April and she began her usual preparations on the day after the party in spite of remonstrances from Polly.
“I’m sick to death of Atlantic City and besides I hear they’re having a rainy spring. I’ve a lot of things on here and simply can’t go.”
She was lying on a sofa in her mother’s bedroom and wore a pale green negligée in delicate harmony with the pink of her cheeks, unimpaired by a cacophonous winter. As usual she was smoking.
Mrs. Pleyden, who was packing her jewels for the safe-deposit vault in her bank, looked up critically.
“I wish you would not smoke so much, if only for the sake of your complexion. The house in Chelsea is ready and the servants go tomorrow. I am surprised you made any engagements.”
“I don’t think I’ll go,” announced Polly. “I can stay here with father. He told me yesterday he’d be delighted to have me, and if he can make himself comfortable with two servants and a caretaker I can.”
Mrs. Pleyden bent over the large box with an anxious line between her brows. It was seldom she came to an issue with her daughter.
“But—my dear—you would have a dull time. All the girls will have left shortly, either for Europe or the country—I dislike Europe since the war but if you’d like to go——”
“I shouldn’t.”
“Even before your friends left you couldn’t have parties. I don’t mean only in my absence but in that of the servants.”
“I’m sick of parties. I only want to be quiet for a while. Nothing very quiet about Atlantic City.”
“I am afraid, my dear, you have another reason. You want to be able to continue to see Dr. Pelham.”
“Well—what if I do? He’s the only man that interests me—makes me feel as if I had brains instead of jazz in my skull.”
“He’s an intellectual man, of course, and if he ever talks at all, no doubt what he says is illuminating. But aren’t you rather young for intellectual friendships? Better enjoy yourself while you are young and leave those until later. Besides, how about Park Leonard? I should think he was quite as clever as Dr. Pelham and a good deal more versatile. Certainly more your own sort.”
“I like him well enough but I happen to like Geoffrey Pelham better. He interests me and Park does not. Those things are not to be explained. Matter of spark, perhaps.”
“Isn’t it merely because he is rather difficult? You are used to having men fall in love with you, pursue you as Leonard does.”
“Maybe. What does it matter?”
Mrs. Pleyden abandoned diplomacy. It had come to what Polly herself would call a show-down.
“Do you intend to marry him?” she asked.
“I shouldn’t be surprised.”
“Have you thought what it means?”
“Financially? A flat in Harlem or the Bronx or commuting to some—at present—unknown suburb? Yes, I’ve thought of it—considerably. But if Nell Croydon and Hallie Le Kay can stand it I guess I can. Besides, I always like anything for a change! And in a few years he’ll have a large income. Dr. Gaunt told me the other day that his personal practice was increasing rapidly, and of course he has his associate fees.”
“Very well. If you are able to see yourself living—with resignation—in an uptown flat or suburban cottage, changing an incompetent servant at least once a month and making over your clothes, cut off from everything to which you have been accustomed, and with a man who hardly opens his mouth, I have nothing to say. But are you sure he is in love with you?”
“No, I am not, and that is what makes it exciting. I rather like doing all the work for a change. Waking him up. And don’t you imagine he never talks. He’s bored stiff at dinners, and that he comes at all means a good deal; but when we take walks together he opens up, and sometimes is almost boyish.”
“Ah. You are sure you can make him love you?”
“I am,” said Polly serenely. “Just you wait.”
“And”—Mrs. Pleyden took another plunge—“has it never occurred to you that he might love someone else?”
Polly sat up straight, dropping her cigarette. “What on earth put such an idea into your head?”
“Please pick up that cigarette before it burns a hole in the rug. I mean he is in love with Gita Carteret.”
Polly rose slowly to her feet, her eyes staring. “Mother! What are you saying?”
“I know what I am talking about. I saw him looking at her last night when he was pretending to listen to you. No man looks at a woman like that unless he loves her. And I watched them afterward in the dining-room. He said something that made her turn as white as a sheet and she didn’t speak for at least five minutes. It seems he’s not only in love with her but is not above making love to the wife of his best friend.”
“I don’t believe it! You imagined it—every bit of it! In the first place he wouldn’t do such a thing and in the second he wouldn’t dare. You don’t know Gita as I do. She’d have thrown a plate at him.”
“It is fortunate that her evident complaisance—reciprocation, shall I say?—averted a scandal. For unless all signs fail she’s in love with him.”
“You’re crazy. You hate Gita and you don’t like Geoffrey. You’ve let your imagination run away with you. That’s all.”
“Have I ever struck you as an imaginative woman? I doubt if there’s a more practical woman in New York. And I don’t hate Gita, although I disapprove of her, and was only too thankful when poor dear Eustace took her off my hands. A pleasant prospect for him!”
“You needn’t worry. Neither would do anything dishonorable even if there were anything in it, and there’s not. If you didn’t imagine it all you were mistaken.”
“Has he never talked to you about her?”
Polly raked her memory. “Yes—I suppose he has. It’s quite the thing to discuss Gita.”
“Hasn’t he talked of her a good deal? May not that be one secret of your attraction for him?”
“You are not very complimentary!”
“I don’t mean, my dear, that you couldn’t charm anyone you thought worth while, whether you let him talk to you about some other girl or not. I am merely trying to open your eyes.”
“Well, I’ll not believe it,” said Polly stubbornly. She was walking up and down the room, her eyes puzzled and angry. “But I’ll sound out Gita this very day. And warn her off the grass if I find she’s been flirting with him. She’s come out of her ‘fort’ to such an amazing extent this winter and has got so accustomed to men raving over her that no doubt she’s as keen as the next girl to stir a man up——”
“Do you believe that Gita is incapable of falling in love?”
“Yes, I do. When I first met her I got the impression she was just the sort to burn herself up over some man, but I know better now. No one could call her sub-normal, but she’s what is known as asexual. Shell’s all right but emotional content gone fluey. Do you know that she doesn’t live with Eustace? That they had an understanding to that effect?”
Mrs. Pleyden blushed slightly. “I inferred as much, but it cannot last.”
“Not with anyone but Gita. Perhaps not forever even with her. Time works wonders even to one’s inside. But no one but Eustace will turn the trick. He’s the man for her in every way and she really adores him in her own queer fashion. She’ll never give ten cents for Geoffrey Pelham nor anyone else.”
“I’m not so sure. She is Gerald Carteret’s daughter, and the living image of him. Nor were the Carteret women, although their virtue was proverbial, ever known as what you call asexual. The men were lawless, and Gita strikes me as more like them than like the women of her family. And although she started out in life by hating men you can see for yourself how she’s changed. Nothing she did would surprise me. You know how high-handed she is. What she wants she will have——”
“No more high-handed than I am. You forget this is the age of high-handedness. What we want we’ll damn well get. And the devil take the hindmost. Well, I’m off to dress.”