Oh, the old house had got her! It was remaking her in a way, and at this conclusion she sometimes rebelled. She had looked upon Gita Carteret as a crystallized and unique individuality, and to be reconstructed by a combination of circumstances and ghosts gave her ego some intemperate moments; but finally she reasoned that as everyone was the sum of his ancestors, what she was developing into had really composed the foundations of her being, and was now enjoying its first opportunity to express itself. 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.
Gita had forgotten Eustace Bylant almost as soon as he had left her; forgot him as promptly after each subsequent visit; or, if he drifted across her memory, it was merely as a sympathetic and instructive mind, whose devotion to his mother had struck a responsive chord, and then delivered her own of its burden. As a man he was non-existent. Although she analyzed herself ruthlessly and as often as occasion demanded, on sex, either in herself or other women, she had never wasted a thought. She might resent being a “female,” but as to what it involved aside from its disabilities was no concern of hers. She had read enough to know that some women went through life as frigid as the disembodied, and she concluded, when she thought about the matter at all, that she belonged in their class. Odd if she did not, with her springs poisoned before they had reached the surface. Anyhow, it was one more matter for congratulation and pointed the wings of her freedom.
Polly strolled in on her one day when she was standing before the portrait of her grandmother, whimsically making faces at the intolerant beauty who had harbored no doubts of HER place in the general scheme, and laughed aloud.
“Why don’t you stick your tongue out at her?” she asked. “I often wanted to when I was a kid.”
Gita whirled, frowning. “I didn’t hear you!”
“Glad you didn’t. Caught another glimpse of your innards. Eustace Bylant would express it more stylistically, no doubt. Hear you’ve been seeing a lot of him lately. What’s happened? Thought you’d no use for men.”
“He’s brought me some books—jolly good ones.”
“But he’s a man, my dear. A two-legged, upstanding, at least eighty-eight-per-cent man.”