GITA was sitting on the edge of her bed when Topper brought Elsie’s message.
“Tell her to come up—no, show her into the drawing-room.”
She had been beating her heels on the floor, frowning at the window. It was open and voices drifted up from the garden. They were Polly’s and Geoffrey Pelham’s.
It had been a trying week! Another “wooing game.” Polly had “wooed” Geoffrey under her very nose. Exercised every blandishment in her repertory. Anxious when her surgeon was anxious. Gay when his brow relaxed. Sweet, womanly, inexhaustibly and multifariously charming. A white vamp!
And Geoffrey almost clung to her.
She ought to hate her but she didn’t. Odd, but after all, why should she? Certainly, she couldn’t accuse her of treachery; Polly knew nothing of her feeling for Geoffrey. If Mrs. Pleyden had implanted a doubt in her daughter’s egotistical bosom, she had been given the opportunity to pluck it out and had succeeded. She had been sincere enough that day. The lid was still on!
And hadn’t she conclusively renounced Geoffrey Pelham to Polly that night when she had taken out her soul and skewered it? Why shouldn’t someone find happiness in this world if such a thing as happiness really existed?
“Oh, Lord, what a mess!” She sighed. “Eustace wants me. Elsie wants Eustace. Polly wants Geoffrey. Geoffrey wants me. And I? Nothing apparently. I feel as empty as an old hogshead on a junk-pile.”
And in truth she had never, not even in the old days, felt so depressed. This cataclysm had literally left nothing in her life but her manor! Her three friends were lost irretrievably. To resume any sort of relationship with Eustace was unthinkable. Polly would drift away, absorbed in her husband. Elsie had betrayed her.
She felt a deep and harsh resentment toward Elsie. Not for a moment had she believed in the “cold.” That Elsie should have doubted her cut her to the quick. . . . For a night, possibly, shocked as she was, and facing for the first time the fact of her love for the man. But she should have come to her senses before this.
Perhaps she had loved Elsie more than any of the three, and the hurt had gone deeper. Well, she loved her no longer. And she indulged in some bitter musings of her own on the friendship of women.
But she felt terribly alone. Stranded. And she had lost that old boyish independence and hostility to her kind which had made loneliness far from insupportable. Well, she must erect another superstructure.
Polly’s laugh floated up, sustained, as it were, on the deeper notes of her playmate; now quite relieved of anxiety for his distinguished patient and friend. The tapping of her heels became a rat-tat-tat.
“Come.”
Someone had knocked at her door. The day nurse opened it, her face no longer solemn. She was smiling as one who had a pleasant message to deliver. Gita’s heart deliquesced.
“Dr. Pelham promised Mr. Bylant he might see you when he waked up; he’s so much better,” said the nurse. “He’s just had his broth and is looking forward to your visit.”
Gita managed to get to her feet and walk steadily over to her dressing-table. She brushed her hair, powdered, and wished that she rouged and used a lip-stick. She lingered over these superfluities of her toilette as long as she dared, with that woman standing behind her. What was she thinking? She had been told the truth, but did she believe it? Why not? She remembered a story she had once read of a woman killing an idolized husband who had returned at night unexpectedly and been mistaken for a burglar.
What did it matter? She rose from her chair and looked at the nurse much as her grandmother may have done when her arrogant instinct of caste was uppermost.
“You may go out into the garden,” she said. “And kindly tell Mrs. Brewster, when she arrives, that I’ll be down presently.”
It is no longer possible for any but the disappearing ladies of the old régime to “sweep by” those they wish to impress or ignore, for the skirt of the period, short hair, and a limp or free swinging carriage, have put an end to such extrinsic aid to importance. But Gita managed to pass those interested eyes with a cold blankness that gave the innocent object of her disdain the feeling she had somehow evaporated, no longer existed. But she was as sensible as most nurses, and quite used to human vagaries.
“You’ll not stay too long?” she suggested mildly. “Ten minutes, I should think. He’s not very strong yet.”
But Gita was crossing the hall, apparently afflicted with deafness.
She hesitated a moment with her hand on the knob, her knees shaking a little. What would be his cue? Well, whatever it was she would take it. Invalids must be humored.
Bylant was propped up in the bed, very pale and thin, but he smiled whimsically and put out his hand. She shook it limply and sank down into a chair by the bed, her gaze wandering to the window.
His voice was as whimsical as his eyes. “You served me right, my dear,” he said. “Don’t imagine I’ve held it against you for a moment.”
“Of course I didn’t know it was you,” she muttered.
“Of course not! And I hope you won’t hesitate to shoot the next man who breaks into your house. Be sure it will not be I!”
Gita stirred uneasily. But she was relieved that the interview was not to be pitched in the tragic key. Trust Eustace to carry anything off!
“It is I who should ask to be forgiven,” he continued. “But I went progressively mad after you left. Do you remember a book I once gave you to read—‘The Cave Man Within Us’? Well, the cave man in me got the best of several centuries of superimpositions. I remember Darwin says somewhere that man, even in the best of our poor civilizations, is so close to the incalculable æons of savagery behind us, the wonder is the veneer remains on him at all. But I promise you that my veneer shan’t rub off again.”
“Your psychology failed you,” said Gita dryly.
“It did!” he said smiling. “It did!”
She thrust out her foot and gazed at the toe of her shoe. She reminded herself she must not excite him but she would have liked a “show-down” then and there.
She glanced up. He was looking at her pleadingly.
“You haven’t said you forgive me.”
“Oh, yes, of course I forgive you. Forget it and get well.”
She rose but he put out his hand and detained her. “I’d like you to stay.”
“The nurse only gave me ten minutes.”
“Damn the nurse.”
“And Elsie telephoned she was coming. She must be downstairs now. It’s the first time. She thinks I shot you on purpose. Elsie is a very loyal friend of yours—more than she is of mine!”
“Is she?” His voice was indifferent.
“I’ll ask her to read to you as soon as you are better.”
“I detest being read to. It makes me nervous.”
“Well, tell you all the news, then. You know you’ll be glad to see her——”
“I want to see you. You’ll come in every day?” His eyes were entreating but his face was composed. Not likely he would make a fool of himself twice.
“Oh—of course—as often as you like. I owe you that much.” And she smiled ruefully. But she gave a deep inner sigh of relief as the nurse opened the door with a sprightly:
“Time’s up, Mrs. Bylant.”
“Mrs. Bylant!”