“I’ll never marry! Never! Never!” Now Gita’s voice was harsh and defiant.
“Fiddlesticks. All girls say that. I said it myself—and did not marry until I was twenty-seven. I was too fond of being a belle—I had more scalps at my belt than any girl of my time.” Again her gaze turned inward. “My father was one of the founders of Atlantic City—one of that group of far-sighted men that all Philadelphia laughed at—and put more than a penny in the old United States Hotel. Ah, what gay times we had! That old hotel was the scene of my triumphs, season after season. People of quality went to resorts in those days. Now they avoid them as they would the plague, if one may judge from the hordes on the Boardwalk. I used to be wheeled up and down in one of those chairs before I was bed-ridden . . . Nothing but tourists——”
“Well, why not?” demanded Gita, who was growing restless. “It is a public walk and even tourists want to enjoy themselves, I suppose.”
Mrs. Carteret, recalled, drew her scant brows together. “I am not talking of rights,” she said coldly. “I merely regret a time when the beach and even the Boardwalk was a promenade of fashion, of beautiful well-dressed women and handsome men. They were better to look at, and I happen to dislike common and undistinguished people. I hope you do not think yourself ‘democratic,’ among other things?”
“Certainly I do. About the only decent treatment I’ve ever had has been from ‘common’ people—until we went to California, at all events. It was gentlemen, men of my father’s class, that made my mother’s life unendurable. And we hardly set up to be aristocrats on five cents a year.”
“Your mother should have written me she was in such dire straits. I knew that your father was living extravagantly in Europe but I never suspected he was spending his capital. He told me on both his visits that he was temporarily hard up. The first time I lent him a large sum of money. The second time I refused, under the advice of Mr. Donald’s father, and reproached him with extravagance. He flew into a terrible temper, flung himself out of the house, and never even wrote to me again. Well, he died soon after. . . . But I would never have permitted his wife and child to suffer.”
“My mother would have starved before she would have taken a cent from a Carteret.”
“She should not have permitted her child to starve. . . . However—there is one question I should like to ask before we go further—and I have other things to say. I wish you would move your chair into the light. I can hardly see you.”
Gita moved her chair obediently although with an impatient jerk.
Mrs. Carteret regarded her grandchild with a penetrating sharp gaze.