“Oh, let the future take care of itself. I can think of nothing now but of helping you buy frocks and hats in the New York shops. I know them all—just where to go. Luckily the hat of the moment comes almost to the bridge of the nose, and by the time fashion changes, your front and side hair will have grown out. I’ll ask for my vacation now if you’ll really start in right away to fit yourself out.”
“I will. And send the bills to Mr. Donald! Although he’s rather a dear and sent me a check for two-fifty the other day. I’ve spent hardly any of it. Come upstairs and see the jewels my grandmother gave me. I suppose I’ll have to be forty before I can wear most of them, but it’s jolly to have inherited lovely things to look at—although I’d forgotten them till this minute!”
CHAPTER IX
Gita, for the first time since her childhood, possessed a completely feminine wardrobe. Mrs. Brewster had set her face against even the most girlish and apotheosized of tailored suits, and persuaded Gita to buy a soft black frock of unbroken lines, to which were attached white linen cuffs above the half-sleeves, and a long white collar about the sloping neck; the opening, after furious controversy, displayed the lace of a camisole. Little frocks for the morning, suitably if austerely embellished. A soft silk hat pulled down over the ears, but with an ascending brim that revealed sleek sweeping eyebrows, and a tri-cornered one of straw. Two dinner-gowns, one of satin and one of georgette. Peach-bloom underwear, silk stockings, slippers, uncompromisingly feminine shoes. Mr. Donald paid the bills with a sigh of relief. What had brought his difficult client to her senses he knew not but drew the natural inference. He hoped the man was the right sort and would hasten to relieve him of an onerous responsibility. If he were not he would do his duty and remonstrate, but the girl was over age; and no one could blame him if she showed as poor judgment in husbands as she did in other things. She was the only young woman of his acquaintance who inspired in him no fatherly sentiments whatever. She reminded him of a prancing colt with a vicious pull on the bit, and he had been moved to wish that she were one and he could give her a taste of the whip.
He made subtle inquiries and learned that she lunched in Chelsea or Ventnor occasionally, and that she was more frequently in the society of Elsie Brewster, at which he frowned. Still, Mrs. Brewster was a steady-going young woman, as feminine as Polly Pleyden, and a good deal more respectable. And of course she was a lady—according to middle-class American standards—although the family had never aspired to social eminence and were not even Episcopalians. But the mother came of respectable Atlantic City stock (out of New England), and although Mr. Pelham had been in trade (hardware), like his father before him, he had been an educated man, a fine citizen, and a member of the Chamber of Commerce. Elsie had graduated with honors from the High School, and was now considered one of the rising young business women of Atlantic City. She had the respect and admiration of everyone. Still, Mr. Donald knew that Mrs. Carteret would not have permitted the intimacy, and he frowned in sympathy. He knew better than to remonstrate with Gita, however. All he longed for in that quarter was peace and quiet. Democracy was the rage among the young fools anyway.
Elsie, who prided herself justly upon being a psychologist, had insisted that Gita abandon pajamas and buy at least six nightgowns of fine cambric, delicately embroidered and trimmed with lace. Gita had protested, as she had done steadily throughout the entire program—although, being honest, she wondered if it were not for the pleasure of yielding, not merely the angry mutterings of outraged habit—but had jerked her shoulders finally and growled: “Have your own way, but I’ll feel like a fool. Lots of the girls wear pajamas.” “Yes, but they offend my artistic sense. I’d as soon arrange roses in my best bowl with weeds instead of maidenhair.”
She had also wrung from Gita a promise to give her old clothes “from the skin out” to one of Mrs. Pelham’s charities, and shuddered when she found in the trunk Gita fetched in a taxi a plentiful supply of B.V.D’s.
“You are thorough!” she exclaimed. “I only hope you’ll keep it up. 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. She put on one of her white linen frocks in the morning and adjusted the black accessories with conscientious precision, or looked admiringly at her reflection in the “psyche mirror,” clad in white skirt and black silk sweater. She dressed for dinner in the black georgette, and shot a fleeting glance at herself when robed more simply but more elaborately for the night. Her hair, encouraged by violent brushing and a tonic, was springing out all over her head with an exultant life of its own.
But she was suffering from spiritual growing-pains, and felt as if she were learning to use a new and unclassified set of muscles and nerve arcs. There was a more superficial readjustment as well, for she found silk “queer” after B.V.D’s. and fancied it scratched her. The high-heeled slippers hurt her feet, and she was trying to limber her spine and cultivate the careless grace of other girls, although she had no intention of looking as if she were too weak to stand up straight. Elsie was erect without rigidity, and of course she could get the hang of the thing if she tried hard enough.