Flora’s little Christmas house party for her daughter was a small
affair, after all, but to Gabrielle’s confused eyes there seemed to be
eighteen laughing and talking persons rather than eight in the sitting
room when she came in. The girls had flung off their big coats, but
still wore hats, and were apparently only warming their hands and
finishing their greetings before being distributed in bedrooms upstairs.
From the group, however, Sylvia instantly separated, and Gabrielle
forgot everything else in the pleasure of seeing her cousin again.
Sylvia gave her a warm, laughing kiss and stood talking to her with one
arm still about her, holding the younger girl off while she studied her
face.
“Well, Gay! How you’ve grown up--and with the hair up, too! Mamma wrote
me all about you, but I had quite a different sort of person in mind!
How dare you be fair among all us black Flemings!”
And with her arm still about Gay, she turned to the others for the
introductions. Last of all came David’s greeting with his kindly smile
and keen-eyed inspection, and when his hand touched hers Gabrielle was
conscious of that same suffocating flutter at her heart again and dared
scarcely raise her eyes.
“Mamma, you’re simply a miracle worker!” Sylvia was saying, gratefully.
“I knew there’d be fires, and I knew you’d realize how weary and
cold we are, but upon my word, I hardly know Wastewater! This room is
actually civilized. I promise you nothing for the halls,” Sylvia said
to her guests, “but we can run through them at full speed. And as long
as the _rooms_ are warm----”
She was beautiful, no question of it. Dark, vivid, and glowing, yet
with something queenly and superb about her, too. Instantly it seemed
to Gay that she had never been parted from Sylvia, that all these
separated school years had been a dream. Years ago, as a bony, pallid,
big-toothed little girl, it had been decided that a balmier climate
than Wastewater would be wise for Gay, and she had been bundled off to
the Southern branch of the Boston convent quite contentedly and had
been happy there. But now she remembered how close she and Sylvia had
been in the days of sand castles and flower ladies, and that Sylvia
even then had had this same bright, sweet, responsive manner that was
yet impressive and fine, with something of conscious high integrity in
it; something principled and constructive even in her gayest moods.
Sylvia was really--Gay came back to the word with another little prick
of envy--really “superior.” She was poised where Gay was simple; she
was definite, where Gay was vague; her voice had pleasant affectations,
she broadened her a’s in the Boston manner.
And Sylvia’s youth and her fresh, glowing beauty kept these things from
being in the least displeasing. She was happy, now, delighted with the
unwonted warmth and brightness of the old house, delighted to be home,
and perhaps delighted, too, to find herself already the most important
person here, with these friends of hers seeing this big, imposing old
mansion as some day to be all her own.
“Not tea, Maria!” she said, eagerly, to the old servant. “Mamma, I
congratulate you upon introducing anything like tea into Wastewater!”
For Maria, followed by Daisy, one of the newer maids, was indeed
beaming behind a loaded tray.
“I thought we’d dine about seven, dear,” said Flora, crimped, rustling,
flushed with excitement. “And that you might like the hot drink after
your trip. It’s not six yet.”
“I assure you, girls,” Sylvia laughingly said, “my mother’s treating
you like royalty! I’ve been telling them all the way down,” resumed
Sylvia, now dispensing the tea with quick murmurs and dextrous quiet
movements that Gay secretly admired, “that we are absolutely Victorian
here, and rather uncomfortable into the bargain.”
“Tea’s Victorian,” Gabrielle said, as she paused. “It’s just plain
bread and butter,” she added, smiling at the elder Miss Montallen
hospitably.
“Tea’s Victorian, of course, and I daresay coal fires and lamps and
comfort are Victorian, too, and I like them both too much to find any
fault with terminology, Gay!” Sylvia said, cheerfully.
“We live in just such a country house outside of Quebec; we’re quite
accustomed to country winters,” murmured the charming voice of the
older Miss Montallen. The travellers drank their tea standing,
exclaimed over the delicious home-made bread. The young men were rather
silent, exchanging little friendly murmurs and grins, except that the
one named Frank du Spain attached himself instantly to Gabrielle; Flora
chatted, Sylvia made the right comments, David stood by the mantel,
tall, pleased, smiling at them all. Gay hardly identified the other men
until dinner-time, so entirely monopolized was her attention by the one.
Meanwhile, Sylvia was delighted again, upstairs. Nothing could make
Wastewater anything but old-fashioned, clumsy, draughty. But the old
rooms did look hospitable and comfortable, the beds were heaped with
covers, and there were two more airtight stoves roaring here. Daisy
and Sarah were rushing about with great pitchers of hot water; the
girls scattered their effects from room to room, and went to and fro in
wrappers, laughing and running.
Sylvia’s usual room was on the second floor, next her mother’s. But
for this occasion Flora had grouped all the young persons on the third
floor, where the rooms were smaller, better lighted in winter, and
connecting.
Outside the snow fell--fell. The world was wrapped in winding sheets,
muffled and disguised, and the snow fell softly on the surface of
the running, white-capped waves, and was devoured by them. Whenever
a window was opened, a rush of pure cold snowy air rushed in and the
bare-armed girls who had wanted a breath of it had to shut it out,
laughing and gasping, once more.
But inside Wastewater’s old walls there were noise and merriment, songs
about the old piano, laughing groups about the fires, and the delicious
odours, the clatter and tinkle of china and silver around the solemnly
wavering candles on the dining-room table.
Gabrielle could not talk much, for Sylvia and these particular friends
had shared several holidays, and their chatter was of other times
and places. But her cheeks glowed with excitement, and she moved her
star-sapphire eyes from one face to another eagerly, as if unwilling to
lose a word of their talk. And again, Sylvia was always “superior.”
She was evidently a girl who took her college life seriously; studied
and excelled, and enjoyed studying and excelling. She was prominent
in various undergraduate organizations; interested in the “best”
developments of this and that element in school life, the “best” way
to handle problems of all sorts. Laura and Gwen Montallen immensely
admired her, Gabrielle could see, and were continually referring to her
in little affectionate phrases: “Ah, yes, but you see you can do that
sort of thing, Sylvia, for they’ll all listen to _you_!” or “Sylvia
here, with her famous diplomacy, went straight to the Dean----”
The men, Gabrielle thought, were unusually nice types, too. They were
all in the early twenties, none was rich, and all seemed serious and
ambitious. Bart Montallen was to have a small diplomatic berth when
he graduated in June; Arthur Tipping was already well started toward
a junior membership in his uncle’s law firm and spoke concernedly of
“making a home” for his mother and little sisters as soon as he could;
and Frank du Spain was a joyous, talkative youth, who confessed, when
he sat next to Gay at dinner, that his people were not especially
pleased with his college record, and that, unless he wanted trouble
with his parents, he had to “make good, by gum.” He told Gay that his
father had a ranch near Pasadena, and Gay widened her eyes and said
wistfully, “It sounds delicious!” David, looking approvingly at her
from the head of the table, thought the velvet gown with the embroidery
collar and cuffs a great success.
Altogether the young guests were simple, unspoiled, enthusiastic about
the delicious triumph of a meal, and over the pleasantness of being
free from studies and together. Gay, impressed by this and anxious to
establish cousinlike relations with Sylvia, said something of it rather
shyly when Sylvia came in for a few friendly moments of chat alone,
late that night.
The evening had been delightful, Gay thought; for a while they had all
played a hilarious card game for the prize David offered, the prize
being a large conch shell which David himself had selected upon a
hilarious and candlelighted search through the freezing wilderness of
some of the downstairs rooms. And then they had stood talking about the
fire, and finally had grouped themselves about it; the girls packed
into chairs in twos, the men on the floor, for five more minutes--and
five more!--of pleasant, weary, desultory conversation. David had held
his favourite position, during this talk, standing, with one arm on
the mantel and his charming smile turned to the room, and Gabrielle
noticed, or thought she did, that he rarely moved his eyes from
Sylvia’s face.
But when he did, it was almost always to give her, Gay, a specially
kind look; every moment--she could not help it!--made him seem more
wonderful, and every one of his rare words deepened the mysterious tie
that drew her, strangely confused, strangely happy, and strangely sad,
nearer and nearer to him.
There was another portrait of Roger here, this one painted in about his
fortieth year; handsomer than ever, still smiling, a book open before
him on a table, a beautiful ringed hand dropped on a collie’s lovely
feathered ruff.
“That was your father, Mr. Fleming?” Gwen Montallen had asked, looking
up at Roger’s likeness.
“Stepfather. My father died before I was born,” David said, with his
ready, attentive interest. “My mother married Mr. Fleming when I was
only a baby.”
“And where does Gabrielle come in?” asked Gwen, who had taken a fancy
to the younger girl and was showing it in the kindly modern fashion.
“Well, let’s see. Gay’s mother was Aunt Flora’s sister,” David
elucidated. “They were Flemings, too. It’s complicated,” admitted
David, smilingly. “To get us Flemings straightened out you really have
to go back thirty years, to the time I was a baby. My mother was a
young widow then, who had married a David Fleming, who was a sort of
cousin of Uncle Roger. He doesn’t come into the story at all----”
“And that’s Uncle Roger?” Laura Montallen asked, looking up at the
picture.
“That’s Uncle Roger,” David nodded. “I was only a baby when my mother
married him, and he was the only father I remember. A year after she
married him, my mother had another boy baby, so there were two of us
growing up here together.”
“Ah, you’ve a half-brother?” Laura asked.
“I think I have,” David answered, with a grave smile. “But Tom ran away
to sea when he was about fourteen--fifteen years ago now, and we’ve
not heard of him since!”
“Is it fifteen years?” they heard Flora say, in a low tone, as if to
herself.
“But how romantic!” Gwen said, with round eyes. “Wouldn’t you know
a wonderful old place like this,” the girl added, as in the little
silence they heard the winter wind whine softly about the sealed
shutters of Wastewater, “wouldn’t you know that an old place like this
would have a story! So there’s a runaway son?”
“We did hear from him once, from Pernambuco, and once from Guam,
David!” Gay reminded him, animatedly.
“Do get it in order,” Laura begged. “I’ve not yet fitted Sylvia in,
much less Gabrielle!”
“Well,” David said, returning to his story. “So there was my
mother--she was pretty, wasn’t she, Aunt Flora?”
“Beautiful!” Flora said, briefly.
“There was my mother, Uncle Roger her husband, and Tom and me,” resumed
David. “Then--this was an old-fashioned household, you know--there was
a sort of cousin of his”--David nodded at the picture--“whom we called
Aunt John. That was my Aunt Flora’s mother, and she kept house for us
all, and Aunt Flora and Aunt Lily were her daughters. Oh, yes, and
then there was Uncle Roger’s younger brother Will, who used to play
the banjo and sing--what _was_ that song about the boy ‘and his sister
Sue!’ The boy that ate the green apples, Aunt Flora, and ‘A short time
ago, boys, an Irishman named Daugherty, was elected to the Senate by a
very large majority’----”
“Oh, wonderful!” said Laura Montallen, and Gay said eagerly, “Oh,
David, go on!”
“I wish I could remember it all,” David said, regretfully. “And there
was another about the Prodigal Son, and one about ‘the blow almost
killed Father’----”
“Oh, David, David!” said Aunt Flora, between a laugh and a sob.
“Well, anyway, Tom and I used to think Uncle Will’s songs the most
delightful things we ever heard,” David went on. “So that was the
family when I was very small: Mother, Dad, as we both called Uncle
Roger, Aunt Flora, Aunt Lily--who was very delicate and romantic--Uncle
Will and his banjo, and of course Aunt John, who was a little wisp of a
gray woman----What is it, Gay?”
For Gay had made a sudden exclamation.
“Nothing,” the girl said, quickly, clearing her throat. She looked very
pale in the warm firelight.
“Then they sent Tom and me off to school in Connecticut. And then,” and
David’s voice lowered suddenly, and he looked straight ahead of him
into the coals, “then our mother died very suddenly--do you remember
that you drove the buckboard into Crowchester to meet us, Aunt Flora,
when we came home?”
“Ah, yes!” Flora said, from a deep reverie.
David, fitting it all together in his memory, remembered now that in
here, chronologically, came Flora’s engagement to Roger Fleming. But
he looked up at the picture above the mantel, and then at her face,
absent-eyed and stern now, and cupped in her hand, as if to promise
that that secret at least should not be betrayed.
“Less than a year after my mother’s death,” he went on, “Uncle Roger
married again, a very young girl--Cecily--Kent, was it, Aunt Flora?”
“Cecily Kent,” Flora echoed, briefly.
“Who was very delicate, and who was in fact dying for years,” David
went on. “Anyway, that same year Aunt Flora married Uncle Will
and--well, that’s where Sylvia comes in, and little Aunt Lily married
a man named Charpentier, and that’s where Gabrielle comes in. And a
few years later Tom ran away. That broke my stepfather’s heart, and
I suppose his wife’s health didn’t cheer him up exactly. And then my
stepfather’s little second wife died, and then Uncle Will died,” David
summarized it all rapidly, “and after he had hunted my half-brother,
Tom, for years, _he_ died!” And David finished with a final nod toward
Roger’s picture.
“And you’ve never found Tom? Not even when his father died?”
“We don’t know that he knows it, even. It was just before all the
confusion and change of the big war.”
“Yes, but if your Aunt Lily was only a third cousin of your stepfather,
and married a man named Charpentier, he--your stepfather, I
mean--wasn’t really any relation to Gabrielle, then?” Gwen persisted,
with another puzzled look from the portrait to Gay’s glowing face.
“A sort of distant cousin, but that goes pretty far back,” Flora said,
unexpectedly, breaking through another conversation that she had
been having on the other side of the fireplace. “My sister and I were
cousins of Roger Fleming, third cousins, and my mother lived here,
kept house for him, for years. My husband was William Fleming, Roger’s
brother. But Gabrielle is my sister’s child--a sister named Lily, who
died many years ago.”
“It’s hopelessly tangled!” Gay said, with a laugh.
“No, but look--look here!” Gwen Montallen had persisted. Gently
catching Gay by the shoulder, for they were all standing at the moment,
she wheeled her about so that the company could encompass with one look
the painted likeness of the man of forty and the eighteen-year-old
girl. “Do you see it, Laura?” she said, eagerly. “The mouth and the
shape of the eyes--I saw it the instant she came into the room!”
“I see it,” young Bart Montallen agreed, with a nod. “For a while I
couldn’t think who Miss Gabrielle looked like, and then I knew it was
the picture.”
“Nonsense!” Sylvia said, looking from one to the other. “Uncle Roger
had such black hair and such a white skin----”
“Really your colouring, Sylvia,” David suggested. “But apart from the
colouring,” he added. “I see the likeness. Look at Gay’s mouth--look,
Aunt Flora----”
“No, you may see it in the picture,” Flora said, with her voice
plunging in her throat like a candle flame in the wind. “But they--they
are not alike. Lily--my sister--Gabrielle’s mother--was dark, with rosy
cheeks, something like Roger. But Roger--Roger never looked much like
that picture--he hated it--always said it made him look fat----”
She was battling so obviously for calm that Sylvia remembered, with
sudden compunction, that Mamma was the last of her generation, after
all, and that--it was no secret!--she had certainly once, if not twice,
been engaged to marry Roger Fleming. Sylvia exchanged a significant
warning look with David, and they immediately guided the conversation
into safer channels. But David was shocked and astonished to notice a
few minutes later that his aunt’s forehead, under the festive crimping
of the gray hair, was wet.
That was all of that. Nobody apparently paid any more attention to the
trivial episode, unless Gay felt an odd and indefinable satisfaction in
being thought like Uncle Roger, in being thus included in the Fleming
ranks.
She was trying to see this likeness at her own mirror an hour later,
when Sylvia, brushing her hair and in a red wrapper infinitely
becoming, came in.
“The girls are asleep,” reported Sylvia, “and I don’t like to light my
lamp because Gwen is in with me. I stayed downstairs a few minutes to
talk to David--I see him so little nowadays.”
A sharp stiletto twisted in Gay’s heart. She could see them lingering
in the darkened room, by the dying fire: Sylvia so beautiful, with
her glossy black coils of hair drooping, and her face glowing with
firelight and winter roses, and David looking down at her with that
kindly, half-amused, half-admiring look. Just a few moments’ intimate
talk, perhaps only of Sylvia’s affairs, perhaps only of her mother’s
health, but binding these two together in that old friendship, kinship,
utter ease and understanding, mutual liking and admiration.
Despair came suddenly upon Gabrielle, and she wanted to get away--away
from Sylvia’s superiorities and advantages, away from Sylvia’s long
outdistancing upon the road to David’s friendship. Gay thought,
braiding and brushing her own long hair, that she did not want Sylvia’s
money, she did not want anything that Sylvia had, she only wanted to be
where she need not hear about it!
“They all say such kind things of you, Gay,” Sylvia told her, with that
pleasantness that was quite unconsciously, and only faintly, tinged
with patronage.
It was then that Gay, aware of little pin-pricks of hurt pride, said
something of the delightful quality of the guests.
“The Sisters had the idea that all college girls are either terrible
bobbed-haired flappers who smoke cigarettes,” Gay said, laughing, “or
blue-stockings who think science can disprove all that religion has
ever claimed!”
Sylvia smiled at her through the mirror.
“And what made you think I could make such girls my friends?” she
asked, lightly reproachful, with an air of quietly posing her cousin,
and even in this pleasant little phrase Gay detected the pretty
pride in herself, her line, her blood, her code and intelligence and
judgment that indeed actuated all that Sylvia did. “No, the Montallens
are--unusual,” Sylvia added, half to herself. “And so,” she said,
smiling, as she dextrously pinned up her rich black braid, “so it was
all the nicer that they should like my cousin Gabrielle! Tell me,” she
went on, “how do things go here? Are you happy--getting nicely rested?
Not too lonely?”
“Rested?” Gay echoed, at a loss.
“Between school,” Sylvia explained, “and--and what?”
She said the last word with a really winning and interested smile, and
sat looking expectantly at Gay, with an air almost motherly.
“Or have you plans?” she elucidated, as Gay looked puzzled. “Is there
something you tremendously want to do? If you are like me,” Sylvia
added, now with just a hint of academic enlightenment in her voice,
“you have forty, instead of one! I almost wish sometimes that I had
to choose what I would do. I adore teaching! I love languages. I’d
love anything to do with books--old books, reviewing books, library
work, even bindings. My professor of economics wants me to go after a
doctor’s degree and my English man wants me to write books. So there
you are! And here is David telling me that I must learn to manage my
own estate.”
Gay flushed, and hated herself for flushing. She had often enough,
in the last quiet weeks, thought that she would like to work, to do
anything rather than dream through all her quiet days at Wastewater;
she had thought vaguely of little tea shops with blue cotton runners,
and the companionship of some little girl of fourteen who would adore
her--of offices--schools----
But embarrassed and taken by surprise, with her thoughts in no sort of
order, she stammered, half laughingly, she knew not why, that she had
thought she might like to be an actress. Sylvia’s look of astonishment
was so perfectly what it should have been that Gay felt even less
comfortable than before.
“But, my dear child,” she said, amusedly, “I don’t believe that would
be practical! We have--absolutely--no connections in that line, you
know. And you’re quite too young. I don’t mean,” Sylvia went on,
kindly, as Gay, hot-cheeked, was silent, very busy with night ribbons,
“I don’t mean that it isn’t a splendid profession for some women. But
it takes character, it takes experience, associations. What makes you
feel that you are fitted for it? Have you--you can’t have!--seen more
than a dozen plays in your life?”
“I just thought of it!” Gay said, with an uncomfortable laugh.
“Then I think I should just stop thinking of it!” Sylvia said. And with
an affectionate arm about Gay’s waist, she nodded toward the thick rope
of tawny braided hair. “Such pretty hair. Gay!”
“Yours is gorgeous, Sylvia,” the younger girl returned. “I noticed
to-night that it is so black that it actually made David’s dinner coat
look gray when you stood beside him.”
“I like my black wig,” Sylvia returned, contentedly, “because
it’s--_Fleming_. I don’t think I should feel quite right with anything
but the family hair! But when all’s said and done this colour of yours
is the hair of the poets, Gay.”
She said it charmingly, and she meant it, too. For like many women of
unchallenged beauty, Sylvia was very simple and unselfconscious about
her appearance, and seemed to take no more personal credit for the
milk-white skin, rose cheeks, and midnight hair than for her perfect
digestion or the possession of her senses.
“You’re the one who looks like Uncle Roger, Sylvia!”
“In colouring, perhaps. How much do you remember him, Gay?”
“Oh, clearly. I was nearly seven when he died, you know.”
“I really loved him,” Sylvia said, dreamily. “And I hope I can keep up
all the old traditions and customs he loved so here at Wastewater. I
inherit a love for him,” she added, with a significant look and smile.
“There’s no question that my mother loved him dearly for years. Oh,
she loved my father, too, later on, and perhaps in a finer way,” went
on Sylvia, who could fit such meaningless phrases together with all
the suavity of college-bred twenty. “But her first love was for Uncle
Roger.”
“Do you think he----?” Gay began, and paused.
“He----? Go on, Gay. Do you mean did he break the engagement? No,”
Sylvia stated, definitely. “I imagine he did not. He was a gentleman,
after all! But probably there was a quarrel--Mamma was much admired and
a beauty--and she’s a perfect Lucifer for pride, you know, and neither
one would give way.”
Gay accepted this with all the pathetic faith of her years. She could
not possibly imagine Aunt Flora as a beauty; but every middle-aged
woman who talked of her own youth had been one, and Gay was perfectly
willing to believe the last a beautiful generation. She thought of
a picture she had seen of Aunt Flora as a bride, in a plumed hat,
enormous puffed sleeves, a five-gored skirt sweeping the ground,
a wasp-waist with a chatelaine bag dangling from the belt, and a
long-handle parasol held out like Bo-Peep’s crook, and lost the thread
of Sylvia’s conversation.
There was not much more. Sylvia expressed for the twentieth time her
entire delight and gratitude for all that had been done to start the
house party successfully and parted from Gay with a final kiss and a
few warm words about the pleasantness of having a nice little cousin
in the house. It was only when the room was dark, that Gay, snuggling
resolutely down against icy pillows to sleep, began to review the whole
long day with that wearisome thoroughness that is a special attribute
of tired, excited eighteen on a winter night.
The flowers, the dusting, the beds, the tramp in the woods, the funny
old woman bunching herself along in the snow, the arrival and the tea,
and the warm rooms and icy halls, and the splendid dinner and the
talk----
Gay ached all over. With her eyelids actually shutting she said to
herself in a panic that she was too tired to sleep.
Her big room was dark, cool, full of dim shapes; but a fan of friendly
light came through the hall transom, and she could hear men’s voices
somewhere, laughing and talking gruffly; David and the boys, there was
nothing to fear. Outside the snow fell, whispering, tickling, piling up
solemnly and steadily in the dark.
After all, it was the little old woman who had Gay’s last conscious
thought. The girl started wide-awake from her first drowsing slipping
into unconsciousness, with her heart hammering again, and her wild eyes
roving the room for a whole frightened minute, before its familiar
peace lulled her into calm again.
That writhing, shadowy white-and-gray thing, in the white-and-gray
shadow of the hedge, and in the muffling softness of the curtaining
snow. Horse--big dog--child--no, it was a terrible yellow-faced old
woman! What a whining cry she had given! And how astonishing later had
been her recognition of Flora and Margret!
Well, whether she had walked home in the blizzard or gone up the
chimney on a broomstick was, after all, not Gay’s affair. But she had
most assuredly not been driven in to Keyport or Crowchester by John!
Gay thought that she was meeting this old forlorn, half-witted thing
again in the snowy lane--but this time David was with her....