“You are very kind,” she said. “And I’ll be glad to see Polly when she comes back. But I’d better stay here. I’m sure grandmother would have wished it. If—if—you’ll attend to things, though, I’d be grateful.”
“I will indeed.” Mrs. Pleyden was a tall slender woman, admirably dressed and poised, but although her life for the most part was spent in a round of bridge, she was by nature executive and always willing to exercise her talent. Her house in Chelsea and her apartment in New York were models of bland extravagance and housewifely skill. In an earlier day she would have been a “leader,” and, as it was, her large and exclusive circle deferred to her and regarded her as a personage. Between herself and Polly there was an unspoken compact. Mrs. Pleyden moved with the times, and life had taught her philosophy.
“Better go out of doors,” she continued. “Perhaps you will change your mind later, but meanwhile don’t stay in the house any more than you can help. I’ll do the telephoning, and Topper always knows what to do. He’s seen many a funeral in this house.”
Gita shuddered and went out into the garden.
The more intimate of her grandmother’s friends were in and out constantly during the next three days. Flowers arrived by the motor-load. The heavy perfume in the unaired rooms was unendurable. It seemed to Gita as if all the dead Carterets had fertilized the roots of those flowers and contributed their odor of decay.
The old lady lay in state, not in the drawing-room but in the great central hall. Her face looked like an ancient wax mask. It was devoid of expression, and it had had so much in life! Gita did not give it a second glance. She preferred to remember that wise sarcastic old face on the pillows, lit by the indomitable dark brilliancy of the eyes.
Mrs. Pleyden had telephoned to a New York house for Gita’s mourning and it arrived early on the day of the funeral. It was merely a straight little frock of crêpe de Chine and a black straw hat like an inverted bowl, from which a short veil of chiffon depended. Gita wondered what her grandmother would have thought of it. Her crêpe veils no doubt had trailed the ground like those of the afflicted in French provincial towns.
She rummaged in the drawers of a chest in the old lady’s room and found a long necklace of jet and oxidized silver and put it on. The act made her feel less modern than usual, but she thought, somewhat humorously, that her grandmother would approve of this subtle, if momentary, linking of her unruly descendant with the past.
She had heard the rolling of many motors, and as she descended the broad stair she saw that the hall as well as the large and smaller drawing-rooms were crowded with ladies and gentlemen, who, as she learned later, had come not only from Atlantic City, but from Philadelphia and many of the country estates in New Jersey. It was a last tribute from friends and acquaintances that would have pleased Mrs. Carteret, although she would have regarded it as a matter of course. The Carteret funerals had always been affairs of state, a signal for all affiliated clans.
There were even reporters on the lawn.