Remembering her mother’s love of old French furniture, she haunted auction-rooms and picked up a set of eight pieces covered with tapestry framed in wood painted black and decorated with gilt bow-knots; which, the auctioneer assured his public, had once graced a château in Brittany. At all events it graced the big drawing-room in West Twelfth Street, and, mindful of man’s love of comfort, she had a large davenport and several easy chairs made that harmonized in color if not in dubious antiquity. The rug was black velvet, the walls were pale gray, and hung eventually with odd old landscapes painted by long-forgotten artists for former Bylants and Carterets. Singly they were caricatures of art, but together, and monopolizing the field, they completed the atmosphere of lightness and charm, and this room also faced south.
Bylant, who was about to re-lease his house in Albany, reserved the dining-room furniture; his family silver, long stored, was little inferior to that of Carteret manor, and included Dutch pieces brought to the settlement from Holland in the early seventeenth century. The chairs were Jacobean and a Knickerbocker Kas served as a sideboard and for the display of the larger pieces of silver. He also sent for two fine tapestries; and hoped that his prosperous brothers in art with fashionable socialist tendencies would not cut him. His own chambers had been comfortable but severe, and so was his refuge under the roof.
The narrow hall was painted white and furnished only with a high wide chair made in Connecticut in the seventeenth century, from the Flemish pattern, and an English ecclesiastical chest.
Gita had been so absorbed in this furnishing of her city home, and in the fulfillment of an old day-dream, that she barely remembered she was to occupy the house with a canonical husband, and Bylant was by no means blind to her attitude. He was impatient with himself when he recognized that he was seething with dull masculine resentment, and heroically made and remade an effort to adapt himself to his fantastic situation with philosophy, and trust to time and daily association to do its inevitable work. To be the sulky misused husband was no part of his program; but playing the rôle of sympathetic friend and intellectual partner under that narrow roof was a discouraging prospect to a highly organized nervous system, already overstrained by months of directing a naturally mobile temperament into channels of unbroken repose—during long hours on duty, at least—and acting the part of a sexless intelligence. He foresaw attacks of nervous irritability in the seclusion of his fortress upstairs.
CHAPTER XXI
Gita, who would not consent to sacrifice the least of her pines, bought a large tree in Atlantic City and decorated it with the help of Elsie and Polly. The young gardener was sent in quest of a cart-load of holly, and the vast chimneypiece in the hall and the heavy gilt frames of the Carterets were obliterated. The floor was waxed and the refectory table moved into one of the smaller drawing-rooms. There were to be thirty guests, chosen by Polly and Bylant, but Gita, suddenly remembering Dr. Pelham, wrote a brief note asking him to come if he could find time for anything so frivolous as a Christmas party. Somewhat to her surprise he accepted.
She delegated to Polly and Eustace the task of selecting a trifle for each of the guests, and the more practical Elsie undertook to buy substantial presents for the servants; but the gifts for themselves caused her a good deal of mental perturbation. She was generous by nature but hesitated to send any more bills to Mr. Donald. Bylant had been adamant to her desire to pay half the expense of furnishing the house, but under the tutelage of her two other friends, her trousseau had exceeded her income for the year, and Mr. Donald had formally “advised” her that he had been forced to sacrifice a valuable bond. She had replied haughtily that she had no intention of encroaching on her capital in the future but that marriage was not expected to wait upon income.
She finally poured out the contents of the jewel-casket on her bed one night, and pried out a diamond and emerald from the tiara. She had promised her grandmother not to sell any of the jewels but her conscience reminded her that nothing had been said about giving. A jeweler in Atlantic City set the emerald in a ring for Elsie and the diamond as a pendant on a thin platinum chain for Polly.
But there still remained the problem of Eustace. She rummaged the drawers of a court chest in her grandfather’s dressing-room and found a gold signet-ring with a lapis-lazuli scarab set in a richly carved hoop with tiny dragons on its shoulders. It was indisputably an antique and valuable, and eminently appropriate for a man of fastidious taste. But some submerged feminine instinct warned her that he would appreciate even more highly a supplementary present that betrayed some thought on her part and a modicum of personal sacrifice.
She went to the most expensive shop on the Boardwalk and ordered a dozen fine cambric handkerchiefs to be embroidered with his initials. He might have several dozen already, but at least he would be made subtly aware that she had not confined her attentions to his distinguished top-story. She sent the bill to Mr. Donald.