WHEN Polly entered she was standing before the long mirror of the dressing-table in her yellow bedroom, brushing her hair back and up. She liked the springing effect it gave her head, as if she were about to leap upward and fly, and she was full of vanity and had forgotten Geoffrey Pelham.
“Hullo, Polly darling,” she exclaimed. “You look as fresh as if you’d gone to bed at nine last night. I’m disgracefully lazy. I’ll be glad to get back to the manor and go to bed at a decent hour once more.”
“I’m tired of late hours, myself.” Polly adjusted her flexible spine to a comfortable chair and lit a cigarette. She wore a red gown and had painted her lips to match.
Gita smiled sympathetically. “Your mother told me she’s going to Atlantic City this week, but I hope you don’t mean to go before the party. You could stay here and sleep on that day-bed.”
“No, thanks. I lay down on it once! I’m not going with mother. Dad always keeps the apartment open and I’ll stay with him for a while.”
“Good! We leave in about ten days and it will be heavenly to have you here. I suppose you’ll be going about the same time?”
“I may stay here all summer.”
Gita, who had looked like a boy once more in her silk union suit, slipped a negligée of ivory-white silk and lace over her head and shook it down. “You made me get these things,” she grumbled. “I always feel rather a fool in them. What on earth are you staying in town all summer for? You’ll pass out with the heat.”
“You can always be comfortable in New York in summer if you stay in the house all day and live in north rooms. It just occurred to me I’d like a change.”
“It will be a change, all right.” Gita stretched herself on the despised day-bed and stuffed a cushion under her head. “Won’t you be bored to death?”
“Not while there’s a man in the offing.”
“Park Leonard?”
“No. Geoffrey Pelham.”
Gita, prepared, did not change countenance. “Interesting man, rather, but it seemed to me last night that Mr. Leonard exactly fitted into that old program of yours.”
“Forget what it was. Might have filled the bill once but Geoffrey Pelham is unique in my experience, and that suits me better.”
The girls’ eyes did not clash but met calmly.
“Well, you always get what you want, Polly dear,” said Gita, and felt an inclination to strangle her.
Polly blew a ring. “Mother said you flirted desperately with Geoffrey last night.”
“I!” Gita’s spine rose as if propelled by a spring. “I never flirted in my life and you know it.”
“I told her she was crazy, but she will have it that you have lost your heart at last.”
Gita gasped. “Lost my heart? I feel as if I were turning pea-green. It’s enough to make a dog sick.”
“So it is. You may be sure she didn’t convince me. If you ever did anything so commonplace we’d all be horribly disappointed. Now, you’re the one and only Gita. . . . But—do you know?—I think you’ve rather grown to like admiration, and are not above encouraging it.”
Gita shrugged and settled back to her pillow. “I’m vain enough. I even put cold cream on my face at night before I wash it. But I don’t flirt and I don’t encourage them. Just let them yap to their hearts’ content.”
“But do tell me that you think Geoffrey interesting,” cried Polly, still angling. “I’d be frightfully disappointed if you didn’t.”
“Yes—I’d call him interesting. He doesn’t say much, but he has a quality—magnetism, I suppose. And then he’s rather unsusceptible and that’s always intriguing. Glad he’s fallen in love with you if you want him.” Her conscience suddenly pricked. “By the way, he spoke of you with the greatest enthusiasm last night.”
“Did he?” Polly seldom blushed but she did now and her eyes sparkled. “What did he say?”
“Oh, a lot of things. Different. More admirable than all other girls rolled into one. Almost warmed up.” Gita had a very vague remembrance of what Geoffrey had said about Polly.
“Well, he ought to know something about me. We’ve seen enough of each other.”
“Are you really in love with him?” Gita infused her tones with warm interest.
“I have a queer feeling I am. I don’t like it very much. He’s not at all the sort of man I expected to marry, and it will be horrid to be poor—although I bluffed it out to mother just now. But—well—those things happen.”
“Don’t they! But I don’t quite get it. You don’t seem to fit the picture somehow. Sure you’re not deluding yourself? Novelty does wonders.”
“Don’t think I am. Got a queer feeling I never had before. Thrills and all that. Turn hot and cold. Lose my breath. Stay awake nights thinking about it. Dr. Pelham—at a time when I was still calling him that—told me that love in our sex was an over-secretion of hormones in interstitial cells adjacent to the Graafian follicles; stimulation induced by powerful photographic image of someone of the opposite sex on the mental lens, which responds to certain old memories in the subconscious. Makes me fearfully set up to be anything as scientific as that, but I fancy I’d feel about the same anyway. Only hope the sub won’t find it’s mistaken and go into retreat when I’m living in Harlem and marketing on Sixth Avenue of a morning.”
“And you really don’t think it will?”
“No, I don’t!” Polly suddenly became serious. “Oh, yes, I really don’t. It would be wonderful to make a man like that happy. Grow with him. Really amount to something. I shouldn’t mind being poor for a few years.”
Gita was appalled (albeit conscious of conflicting emotions underneath). She knew how little likely was Polly to realize her potentialities if she depended upon Geoffrey Pelham. For the moment she hated herself and him. What blind idiots men were.
To give herself time to think she went into her “ark” to get a cigarette. She cared little for smoking but a cigarette had its uses.
. . . If she really had any influence over him couldn’t she manage to steer him to Polly? He knew that his love for herself was hopeless and any man who made the mistake of falling in love with the wrong woman must come to his senses in time. Men were always falling in love with the wrong woman, getting over it, married, became fatuous fathers, and increased complacently in girth. Love was nothing but a superstition anyway. . . . Geoffrey was no fool to moon over one woman all his life. Besides, there was always the rebound if a sufficiently charming woman who wanted him was on the alert. . . . She wished she’d had more experience. Pretty delicate. She’d have to watch her chance; and also watch out.
She returned to the day-bed, and exclaimed with enthusiasm: “It would be perfectly splendid, Polly. You’d bring each other out. I’ve always believed that all you needed was to fall in love with a really fine man and I was always afraid you wouldn’t.”
Her eyes glowed with affection and Polly responded with a quick smile, wholly reassured. She’d been a brute to doubt Gita, and as a matter of fact she hadn’t. Her mother had stirred her up, thrown a wrench into her well-oiled mental machinery. That was all. Dear Gita.
Her face fell a little. “I’ll confide to you I don’t think he cares for me yet. I’m merely educating him up to it. That is the reason I’m staying on in town. Hope he’ll realize in time that I’m all in all.” Her tones were flippant again. “It takes an earthquake to wake some men up.”
“Why don’t you break your leg and then he’d not only set it but call daily and feel so sympathetic he’d find out right off he loved you? Pity for a beautiful frail helpless creature, bravely suffering, would turn the trick with any man not a stone, and you look lovely in bed.”
“That sounds almost romantic from you! No. It wouldn’t work. Mother would call in Dr. Gaunt and not let Geoffrey through the front door. But time is all I need and I mean to take it.”
“Atlantic City won’t be the same without you. I shall miss you terribly.” The words were automatic. Her mind was racing.
Polly rose and snapped her vanity-box. “If I pull it off sooner than I expect, I’ll leave town in a hurry. I long for salt water and long rides and a game of tennis. I suppose Geoffrey takes a vacation like other men and he could spend it in Atlantic City, to say nothing of weekends. You’re the best pal in the world and you’ve bucked me up. Had a séance with mother and was feeling down and out. When is the party?”
“Week from tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here with bells on. Don’t come down. You look tired, and if you find that ancient relic comfortable——Bye-bye.” And she ran down the stair.