EUSTACE had been carried upstairs. The nurse had arrived. Dr. Pelham was extracting the bullet on a hastily devised operating-table. The two girls sat before the fire Topper had made in the library, silent, after Elsie had explained that her brother had driven down to Atlantic City the day before on his monthly week-end visit.
It was evident that Gita intended to make no confidences, and Elsie could only guess what had happened. She herself had almost fainted when she saw Eustace lying there, helpless, unconscious, looking as if every drop of blood in his body had run out. She wondered impotently at the perversity of Fate. For the first time she admitted to herself that she loved him. Loyalty to Gita and to herself had kept that knowledge safely locked in a remote inner cell of her brain. . . . She believed that if he had never met Gita Carteret she could have won him. He had admired her and sought her out whenever they had happened to meet. When he had visited Atlantic City he had called on her. She had given up too easily, but at that time she had been infatuated with Gita and felt a white passion of desire to serve her and help her to happiness: after the girl’s long wretched experience. She had cheerfully sacrificed herself, had, indeed, not given her own claims a thought. No doubt there had been also a desire to serve him. And for this! She knew from Gita’s cold disdainful face that he had played his last desperate card and lost.
She asked abruptly: “Will you tell me why you are wearing that gown—powdered your hair?”
Gita jumped as if Elsie had flung something at her more solid than words. “Good heavens! I had forgotten all about it.” The color flooded her face and she turned her head aside. “I had a fancy—a notion——If you don’t mind I think I’ll not explain.”
Elsie made no reply and called on her imagination. But well as she believed she knew Gita she could think of nothing that may have possessed her to dress up as her great-great-grandmother with herself as sole audience. Merely a whim, no doubt. Heaven knew she was full of whims.
Gita, pale once more, turned and looked at her. “You are very angry with me,” she said. “Wouldn’t you have shot a man yourself if you’d found him prowling about your house at midnight in pitch-dark?”
“I don’t see how you could have helped knowing it was Eustace. Surely he must have spoken.”
“Well, I didn’t and he didn’t, and that’s all there is to it.” Her eyes hardened. “You look at me as if you hated me.”
Elsie shrugged her shoulders. “Eustace is a great man, and if he dies American literature will be the poorer.”
“He may be a great writer, but he is not a great man. Some difference. I don’t know that I’d even call him a great writer. That helpless adjective has been so bandied about it’s a wonder there’s any meaning left in it. He’s brilliant, distinguished, subtle, penetrating, and a stylist, but no writer of fiction can be great without drama, and he has no sense of drama at all. There’s not a great moment in one of his books——”
“Oh, for God’s sake don’t dissect the poor man’s books when he may be lying dead upstairs!” And then she added irresistibly: “We think him great, and perhaps are better able to judge.”
Gita laughed. “I know you think you are! Sophisticated Reputation Factory. Quite a going concern. Still—not for a moment am I assuming that Eustace Bylant couldn’t have got on by himself. He has indisputable talent and intellect. But not genius.”
“He’s a great psychologist.”
Gita’s lips twisted. “His psychology has a few holes in it. I’m not as incapable of judging as you think. And at least I think for myself.”
This unseemly quarrel was interrupted by the entrance of Dr. Pelham. Elsie sprang to her feet.
“Is he——”
“All right for the present. But his shoulder is badly shattered. I’ve given him an opiate and he’ll sleep for several hours. I’ll be over in the morning and bring a second nurse.”
Gita had risen also. “Come over to the dining-room,” she said. “I’ve told Topper to make coffee and sandwiches.”
Then she saw that he was staring at her—that dress—her powdered hair—why on earth hadn’t she had her wits about her and changed before they came? “You’ll excuse me,” she muttered. “I’m terribly bowled over. Topper will look after you—I can’t thank you enough——” And she fairly ran out of the room and up the stair. They heard a door slam.
“What does it all mean?” asked Pelham. It was the first time he had thought of anything but his patient’s welfare, and he turned to Elsie with a puzzled frown, speculation dawning in his eyes.
“Can’t you guess?” asked his sister shortly. “Well, if you can’t I’ll not tell you. If you don’t want that coffee, let’s go home.”
“But surely you’ll stay—with her?”
“No, I’ll not. I’m not sure I’ll ever enter this house again. Please come. I’ll make coffee for you at home.”
“Very well. Certainly.”
And with his brows still drawn and his mind racing he followed his sister out of the house.