WHEN Eustace had arrived with his luggage on the day after the wedding, Gita, anxious to make every amend for her thoughtlessness, had given him the state bedroom, Mrs. Carteret’s. One of the baths had been installed in the dressing-room and he had that side of the house to himself.
Although she had entered this room many times since her grandmother’s death she had always avoided glancing at the bed, fearing her lively imagination would project a vision of the old lady, high on her pillows.
She stood for a moment beside the bed after she had dismissed the nurse, wondering if she would always see Eustace there in the future. What a contrast! Her grandmother had looked a hundred. Eustace, the blood drained out of his face, narrowing his contours, looked years younger than his age. Almost a youth, in spite of his beard. Pathetic. No doubt, if she loved him she would be yearning over him with those maternal sensations authors of fiction were always reminding the reader—who should know the lesson by heart—surged up in every woman as soon as she fell in love. Well, she didn’t feel maternal a bit, but she certainly felt sorry for him. Elsie could do the maternalizing. Why didn’t she come?
But Elsie had telephoned to Polly, who was with her at that moment.
“I didn’t want Geoff to marry you,” she was saying. “I don’t mind telling you that. But Gita shan’t have him. I’d rather see him dead.”
“Gita?” Polly, who was sitting on the desk in the study swinging her feet, thrilled by the tragic tale of which Elsie had given her a bare hint on the telephone, almost fell off. She had responded to the urgent summons because she knew that Geoffrey was in Atlantic City, but although she had listened agape to the recital, she had merely assumed that Elsie was giving her an inside seat; certainly her due. “I don’t understand.”
“Oh, she’s in love with him and he with her. I’ve known it for some time.”
“Then mother was right,” muttered Polly, and although she rarely risked cutting lines on her lovely forehead, she frowned until her eyebrows met. “But it’s hard to believe it.”
“She’s only recently waked up to the fact—I can’t say just when—I’ve felt it in the air. He’s been interested from the first; that’s the reason he stayed away from her in town. I’ve seen a good deal of him this last winter—stayed with him, you remember. I soon discovered she was haunting him; and something must have happened the night of your mother’s party, for I took lunch with him next day and he was as nervous as a cat and wouldn’t let me mention Gita’s name——”
“I know!” And Polly repeated the shrewd observations of her mother.
“There you are! I don’t propose to have my brother’s life ruined. I don’t know what Eustace will do after this. I should think he’d never want to see her again, but possibly he may be more infatuated with her than ever, go on trying to win her. Fiction-writers are the complete morons where their own love-affairs are concerned. But he might consent to divorce her, and then Geoffrey would see no further reason for standing aside. That is if he could still love a woman who tried to murder her husband—but when men are mad about a woman’s black eyes——”
“But you surely don’t think Gita knew it was Eustace?” The digression was unpalatable.
“Yes, I do. She might have run up for her pistol, thinking it was a burglar, but he must have spoken——”
“Not if he went there with the purpose you think—might have thought it the wisest policy to——I can’t quite work it out. Didn’t she give you a hint of how it all happened? Are you sure she ever believed it was a burglar? May there not have been an interview in which Eustace lost his head—and the pistol went off accidentally?”
“I’d think that a plausible explanation if it were not that the shooting took place downstairs in the library, and she’s not the sort to carry a pistol round, even at night—she hadn’t gone to bed, either. No, she heard him in the library, went up and got her pistol, then guessed who it was, saw her chance, and shot him.”
But Polly shook her always reasonable head. “Gita is no double-dyed movie villainess. I believe her story—and I’m rather surprised at you.” She looked at Elsie sharply, and guessed her secret. “It’s not like you, you know.”
Elsie sighed, and ran her fingers through her hair as if its light weight on her head were intolerable. “I don’t enjoy being hard and suspicious, but I feel as if I never could forgive her—and I simply can’t go there at present. But you must. Gita shan’t have Geoffrey! Everything she wants! It would be a little too much!”
Polly stepped down to the floor. “I’ll go. And if it’s war to the knife, all right. Gita’ll not get him, not while I’m on the job.” Her eyes were almost black and her pretty coral mouth was a straight line with sharp corner-depressions. “Trust me.”
“Geoffrey isn’t the man to think about the wife of his friend, lying helpless,” Elsie reminded her insistently. “He’ll turn to you with relief. That’s your chance. Take it. He must believe—half believe—that Gita did it intentionally; and he is—ought to be—the sort of man to be revolted. I wish human nature were more of a chart!”
Gita, hearing the door open softly, turned expectantly and was amazed to see Polly instead of Elsie. She drew her over into a corner of the room and Polly whispered:
“Elsie telephoned and of course I came at once. Have sent for my trunks and I’ll stay till he’s well. She’s got to a place in her new novel where she doesn’t dare drop it (Polly concocted this hastily), but she knows you’ll understand, and will be over before long.”
“Oh? That’s the first clumsy lie I ever heard you get off. It’s plain Elsie still thinks I tried to kill Eustace.”
“What if she does? What does it matter? She’ll get over it—ought to be rather grateful to you—have my suspicions——”
“Yes, it was plain enough last night. Poor Elsie! Well, I’ll give her every chance. But I can’t think why she doubts my word.” And her lip, for the first time since she was a child, quivered.
Polly, whose affection was not even threatened, for she guessed shrewdly that Gita’s pride and almost fanatical sense of honor would prompt her to avoid Geoffrey Pelham and give herself a clear field, patted her hand. “Cheer up. I’ll make her see daylight as soon as she gets over this attack of temperament. That’s what it amounts to. She’s every bit as fond of you as I am.”