Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

“ Tonight she was not only the guest of honor but the only other girl present, and—she made a wild dive among the shades of her ancestors—she was Miss Carteret of Carteret Manor. She may have accepted the rôle under protest but accepted it she had, and to behave like a sulky outlaw and cast a shade over the feast would no longer be tolerated. Elsie loved her and if she were disappointed would give no sign, but Gita imagined with a shudder the cold disapproval of Mrs. Pleyden if she sat like a sphinx at her table with a picked man on either side to entertain. ”

“ His white wig was tied with a blue ribbon, and altogether he looked as little like a hard-working surgeon of the twentieth century as possible. She noticed swiftly that his eyebrows were darker than she had thought, and that the blue of his eyes was intensified by the costume.
It was evident that he had entered into the spirit of the masquerade, for his habitual expression of nervous concentration had been replaced by—mingled boyish wonder and delight in his unexpected good looks? Gita knew that even as a boy he had been serious and ambitious and known few of the common impulses of youth. ”

“ But there is always something artificial in the friendship of women. It is a harness lightly worn and has a faint suggestion of carnival about it. Flowers must bedeck the harness, flowers of propinquity, common interests, ambitions, tastes, mutualities of all kinds in their particular sphere. Above all, a dissimilar taste in men. Nature designed them for one purpose only, to carry on the race and guard it in childhood, and if Mind today laughs at her ingenuous plan, she has her subtle revenges. When the flowers wither the harness falls off.
Elsie realized this with a sigh. ”

“ Mind, you are to dress every night for dinner, as your grandmother wished, and you are to look at yourself approvingly in the glass later when you’ve on one of those nightgowns.”
But Gita felt bewildered and at times almost unhappy. She opened the doors of the mahogany wardrobe, which had sheltered so many changes of fashion, and fingered the soft texture of her gowns, and felt a thrill of pleasure in their flowing lovely lines. She folded and refolded the dainty contents of the drawers of the oaken carved highboy, as old as the manor, which still smelled faintly of lavender. ”

“ If she had been brought up at Carteret Manor, as her grandmother had insinuated, she would have been a Carteret to her still recalcitrant spine.
While drawing these wise conclusions she quite forgot poor Millicent, who, after all, had contributed, both by blood and counsel, a modicum of sweetness and adaptability—to say nothing of good manners when Gita chose to use them. No Carteret had ever been called adaptable or sweet. Their grim handsome hard faces were of men—and women—whom life had favored not chastened, and had bred out less powerful cross-strains necessarily introduced by marriage. ”

“ Polly had made up her mind to marry Geoffrey Pelham and felt no misgivings, for life had given her confidence in herself and her power to charm. For five years men had admired, loved, pursued her, and when she wanted a thing it was hers; why not? Nor was there a rival in the field. If Geoffrey had been captivated by Gita for a time it was quite patent he had given her up as a bad job. Who wouldn’t? Both her mother and Elsie had made a mistake. She hadn’t been asleep this last week, she had kept a sharp eye on Gita, missing no change of expression nor inflection. ”

“ In San Francisco Gita was almost happy for two years. She enjoyed her school, the cool electric climate, the magnificent views, the drifting fogs, the long walks over the hills, and the Chinese cook’s admirable confections. Millicent’s friends were as faithful as she had anticipated, and Gita drifted into a semi-intimacy with girls who filled her at first with wonder and then with emulation. They were very modern young people, with the wisdom of the serpent, a fixed intent to do as they pleased, and a canny ability to take care of themselves. ”

“ The stately trio reached the foot of the stair and Eustace took Gita’s hand and led her forward, unmindful of Mr. Donald’s crooked arm and heightened color. The bridesmaids spread out their trains and stepped daintily behind. The candelabra were lowered with a sigh of relief and Pelham advanced to his position as best man. The ceremony began.
Once Eustace felt Gita’s hand twitch as if she would snatch it away, but he held it firmly. Dr. Lancaster had a deep solemn voice and it boomed out much as it had done at the funeral ceremonies eight months before. ”

“ She could remain here for the rest of her life if she chose, denying even Eustace hospitality, and she had a sense of freedom, of buoyancy, vastly different from the superficial enjoyments of the past winter in New York. They had been novel and entrancing, but both novelty and charm had worn thin; and they had served their purpose. No woman is complete until she has had her experience of the lighter pleasures of life; barely conscious of the depths underneath until frivolities turn into débris and balance is established. ”

“ Behind that barrier is a life you hate to remember. Before it, where you find yourself now, are the pleasant places and all the most romantic girl could have wished for, who was not too extravagant. Position, freedom, an independent income, powerful and admiring friends, and the chance to be stared at as an authentic beauty. Don’t you think you should change with it? If you don’t you’re not as original as you look. Why! You’d be merely commonplace, obstinate, content to go on being one thing all your life. ”

“ But after a dance with Miss Pleyden, during which he believed that ridiculous illusions had fled forever, he had deliberately sought Gita in the drawing-room, determined to have done with nonsense forthwith.
He was a practical man in a practical age, a surgeon with a brilliant future, a man who wanted no woman in his life to distract him, certainly not the wife of Eustace Bylant. A surgeon, of all men, should find nothing romantic in the most resplendent of women. ”

“ But Gita had no intention of telling anything. She had once obeyed an egotistical impulse and the present mess was the result.
But something must happen to make the night memorable. No hope of anything fortuitous. Impossible to turn over, and be rescued, in these narrow channels. Not a soul on the meadows but themselves. . . . She wasn’t cold, after all—rarely was, for that matter. That fur coat was a wedding-present from Mrs. Pleyden . . . well, let her thoughts scatter.
Their eyes met with that quick spontaneous smile of youth to youth, which may mean all or nothing. ”

“ Nature had endowed her superlatively, and a neurosis, inevitable in a sensitive aspiring fastidious girl, had given her a rabid hatred of a sex designed, among other purposes, to complete her own. Her abhorrence of sex in all its manifestations had been, in a measure, a subtle protest against thwarted romance: an invention of the Teutonic-Nordics, to be sure, but none the less potent when rubbed in by the centuries. Nor had modernism killed it. Realists were not so much realists from reaction or conviction as from resentment at their own inability to realize it. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She had lived in an atmosphere of sex since she came to New York and its vibrations had glanced off her as harmlessly as lightning from basalt. If she no longer regarded the subject with profound distaste she was totally uninterested. Eustace had taught her that men could be clean and decent and wholly admirable, and as a rule she chose to see only the fine side of the others and viewed their moral divagations with indifference. ”

“ Gita had gazed at him fascinated for a moment and then dropped her eyes. A curious thrill rippled over her nerves, and she hid her hands under the table.
“I’ll take it back,” she said hastily. “You know how carelessly and exaggeratedly we use words these days. I only meant that any girl would expect a proposal—after such devotion——”
“Devotion! She knows I enjoy her society. She knows I’ve never given anything further a thought—any more than she has herself. There’s never been a glance of sentiment between us. She amuses herself with one man after another. ”

“ While a young musical-comedy actress was giving the convolutions of a skirt-dance, spontaneously invented, Gita found an empty chair behind a door and indulged in a yawn. She suddenly felt bored with New York and parties. And clever people could be as monotonous in time as the more stereotyped society to which Mrs. Pleyden had introduced her. What did it all amount to? They went on like this winter after winter and not one of them looked blasé, not even Marian Starr Darsett, who was reputed to be entering upon her hundred-and-ninth love-affair. ”

“ Meanwhile a boy and a girl, blonde and brunette. That’s the perfect life.”
Gita laughed for the first time since she had left San Mateo for the desert. “Wonderful if life were as simple as that! Why are you so sure you are going to have your own way in everything?”
“If you know what you want and go for it you get it.” Miss Pleyden had a crisp metallic voice, which, Gita inferred, expressed her ego more veritably than her lovely shell.
“That may be,” said Gita. “All things being equal. Life has always dandled you on her lap and fondled your golden curls. ”