The next morning David was surprised, and a little touched, to have his
aunt come up to him in the shadowy upper hall and embrace him warmly.
It was a long time since he had had such a kiss from Aunt Flora.
“Sylvia’s just hinted it to me--I’m so glad, my dear, dear boy!” said
Flora. “She doesn’t want anything said of it--I understand! She wants
it just as if nothing had happened, until June--I understand! But I
must let you know that I am so delighted, David.”
And pressing his hands with a display of emotion very rare in her she
hurried on. But for this David might almost believe that he had dreamed
that little conversation with Sylvia in the firelight last night.
Sylvia really showed less feeling than her mother; Aunt Flora was quite
visibly beaming over the thought.
Yet Sylvia did show some; she was demure and sweet with David, and on
New Year’s Eve they had a few moments’ grave conversation about the
future.
“Perhaps there’ll be a young Mrs. Fleming here next year, Sylvia?”
“Oh, not quite so soon, I think. Promise me, promise me you won’t hurry
matters! But some day----” And she let her smooth, warm hand rest in
his until they were interrupted by her mother’s entrance into the room.
Sylvia went back to college early on the day after New Year’s Day, and
David took her in to Boston, promising his aunt, however, that he would
return to Wastewater that night. And late in the afternoon, before
Sylvia went, she found an opportunity to give Gay a hint of the state
of affairs.
The two girls had managed to establish a real friendliness and were
merry and confidential and full of chatter together. Now Gay had asked
curiously, as in an ice-cold bedroom she watched Sylvia packing her
things:
“Sylvia, do you hate to go back?”
“Well, yes and no,” Sylvia said, thoughtfully. “In a way, I wish June
would hurry, and in another way I want to get every scrap of sweetness
out of my last college days. I shall be tremendously busy when I get
home, of course, for weeks and weeks, and then it’s possible--I won’t
say definitely, but it’s possible that Mamma and I may go abroad for a
few months, after that. I feel as if, in a way, I owed Mamma a holiday.”
Gay’s face was radiant with sympathy.
“Oh, you will love it!” she said, enthusiastically, as she wrapped
the big comforter tightly about her and curled her feet up in the big
armchair. Sylvia, shuddering, blew upon her own fingers as she gave a
last look about the room.
“There, everything’s in!” she said. “Do let’s get downstairs and have
some tea as a celebration!” And to herself Sylvia added, “I wonder if
she realizes that I don’t plan to take her with us?”
But Gay was thinking: “She can’t care for David or she wouldn’t be
making plans to go away!” and in the queer, indefinable happiness that
came with this conviction, she could well afford to be indifferent to
her own plans for the summer.
When they were downstairs again and shuddering with cold, as the
heavenly warmth of the sitting room enveloped them Sylvia said:
“I should love to give Mamma a really happy time, because--next
winter--there may be changes----”
Gay, kneeling by the hearth and hammering a great smoking lump of coal
with a poker, felt salt in her mouth, and her heart sank like a leaden
weight. Sylvia’s serious yet happy tone was unmistakable. The younger
girl did not turn.
“You mean--you and David----?” she said, thickly, putting one arm
across her eyes as if the smoke had blinded her.
“I think so,” Sylvia answered, smiling quietly and mysteriously.
Gay took her chair. “I always thought so!” she said, bravely. “Has it
been settled--long?”
“It isn’t settled now!” Sylvia responded, in a little tone of merry
warning and alarm. “But I have promised”--and her smile was that of the
consciously beloved and courted woman--“I have promised to think about
it!”
When David came down with the suitcases a few minutes later Sylvia
was alone. Gay did not come in until just before dinner, and then
she seemed quiet and grave. David suspected that Sylvia’s departure
and the ending of the happy holidays were depressing her, but two or
three times, catching her serious glance fixed upon himself during the
evening, he was puzzled by something more serious than this, something
almost reproachful, almost accusing.
However, he forgot it in the confusion of the early start the next
morning, and when he returned to Wastewater late that evening, Gay
seemed quite herself. David stayed on comfortably from day to day, and
the three settled to a pleasant, if monotonous and quiet, life.
Gay worked busily at her music and with her books all morning and now
and then had the additional interest of a postcard from one of the
Montallens, or one of Frank du Spain’s singularly undeveloped and
youthful letters to answer. David was painting a study of the old sheds
and fences on the western side of the house, buried in a heavy snow,
with snow-laden trees bowed about them, and as a fresh blizzard came
along early in the year, and the first study was extremely successful,
he delayed to make a second.
In the cold afternoons he and Gay usually went for long walks, talking
hard all the way, and David found it as often astonishingly stimulating
to get her views of men and affairs and books as it was pleasant to
guide her or influence her. Sometimes, bundled to the ears, she would
rush out to the old cow yard to stand behind him as he painted, and
what she said of his work, he thought, was always worth hearing. He was
to have an exhibition in New York for a week in the early spring, and
it was at Gay’s suggestion that he did some small water colours for it.
“There!” she said. “Now those things that you call ‘notes’--those
are perfectly delightful! And many a person who couldn’t--or
wouldn’t--spend several hundred dollars for a picture would love one of
those.”
“Lots of fellows either throw them out as rubbish or give them away,”
David protested.
“Yes, but yours are so lovely, David! I can’t think that most men would
make such nice ones. This little one--I’ll tell you what it’s like,”
said Gay, with a brightening face, “It’s like a little Diziani in the
Louvre!”
These little touches of familiarity with the field so infinitely
interesting to him were delightful to David. He would spend whole
winter afternoons going over his European catalogues with her and
identifying picture after picture. Gay made him mark the “notes” at a
hundred dollars each.
“Catalogue them separately under ‘notes,’” she suggested one morning,
“and then let’s give each one of them a name.” And following some line
of thought she presently added dreamily, “David, does the money part
matter so tremendously to you?”
“Does--God bless the child!” answered David, with a glance toward the
sketches he was assorting in the big upstairs room in which he worked
at Wastewater. “Of course it does!”
Gay, who had been making some little sketches herself on a large bare
block with a very sharp pencil, laughed at his tone. Outside a January
rain was sleeting roughly against the windows, the casements rattled. A
small oil stove was burning in the cool gray daylight of the room, the
air was faintly scented with the odour of kerosene and hot metal.
“Why, what would you do if you had more money?” Gay asked.
“Oh, Lord----!” David began. “Well, I’d take a studio near Rucker’s,”
he began. “At least, I might. And probably about once in every three
years I’d go across and study in Europe. I’d buy one of Neil Boone’s
pictures to-morrow,” went on David, warming suddenly, “and I’d buy one
every three months, to keep the poor fellow from committing suicide
before people begin to find out what a marvel he is.”
“Is he so clever, David?”
“Oh----” David said, briefly, almost impatiently. “The uses of
adversity are sweet, Gay,” he added, working busily with an eraser on a
smudged pencil sketch, “but Boone has had a little too much of a good
thing! He idolized his wife, and she died, and I think he feels that
it might have been different if she’d had less want and care. He’s mad
about his kid, and a well-to-do sister has him in Washington. Boone
can’t afford to keep him.”
“I must say that you don’t seem to want money so much for yourself,”
said Gay, laughing. “You _might_ get a studio, and you _might_ go
abroad. I’ll tell you what I think,” finished Gay, “you’d like money
principally because, when a man’s pictures sell, it’s proof that he is
succeeding in his profession!”
“Well, I shouldn’t wonder if you’re right, Gay,” David said, surprised
at the shrewdness of the analysis.
“Because, if you and Sylvia----” the girl was beginning, animatedly.
She stopped. Her face was crimson. “Perhaps I wasn’t supposed to know
that,” she stammered, smiling.
“Not much to know,” David said, also a little red. “It--it’s indefinite
until Sylvia chooses to have it definite,” he added. And then, with
what was suddenly a rough, almost an angry manner, for David, he went
on: “But what were you going to say, Gay? Did you mean that if Sylvia
and I were married I _would_ be rich?”
“Nothing quite so crude, David!” she answered, readily, with an
apologetic smile. “I was contrasting the pleasure you would get from
a--well, from a really sensational success with your exhibition,” Gay
went on, feeling for words, “to the pleasure any amount of money just
put into your hand would give you! You and Sylvia can do anything you
like, I suppose, but I know it won’t make you feel like working any
less!”
It was said with her innocent, sisterly smile, and with her usual
unspoiled earnest interest, but David felt oddly uncomfortable whenever
he thought of it throughout the day. A dozen times he wondered exactly
what the situation would be if Sylvia were in--well, in Gay’s position,
looking to her husband for everything.
He could not be more fond of her, he was glad to think. Indeed, David
thought, Sylvia’s character would probably come out in far finer
colours under these circumstances than it was apt to do as it was. To
receive all that Sylvia was to receive upon coming of age, to be so
clever, so beautiful, and so admired, was sure to prove more or less
upsetting. As for the rest, he wished heartily that it had been his
good fortune to fall in love with a woman who had not a penny!
Not that Sylvia would be anything but charming in her attitude to his
income and her own. She would glide over any conceivable awkwardness
with her own native fineness. She would ask--he knew exactly how
prettily--“David, should I buy a new fur coat, do you think? David,
would another maid be an awful extravagance?” There would never be a
word or a hint to remind him that after all the safety-deposit box, and
the check books, and indeed the very roof over their heads, were hers.
It was not that that he feared. But he did fear her quite natural
opinion that money was extremely important. It was important to her. It
was important to almost everyone. But it was not important to David.
If their friends would think him fortunate in winning so clever and
beautiful and charming a wife, well and good. But he knew that they
would go on to the consideration of her wealth, if indeed many of them
did not actually commence there. “Pretty comfortable for him, she has
scads of money!” the world would say, and Sylvia--unfortunately!--could
hardly help having her own convictions upon that score, too.
Of course dear old David would love to be rich! Sylvia would think.
Here he had been struggling along on a few thousands a year, making no
complaints, happy in his work, travelling, with a keenly anxious eye on
his checkbook, spending nothing on clothes, giving one odd and curious
little presents that yet were so pitifully inexpensive, anxious about
those exhibitions of canvases that as yet did not sell very fast--what
could be more delightful than sudden riches to David? To buy him a big
car, a big fur coat, to entertain their friends at the finest hotels,
to travel, to pick up odd books and canvases, to have smart luggage, a
beautiful home--who wouldn’t like such a change?
Well, David knew himself that he would not. He realized perfectly that
one of the difficulties of his early married life would be to persuade
his rich young wife that he really preferred his old corduroys to paint
in, that he really liked little restaurants, that he hated big hotels.
Far happier for him if Gay, for example, had been the heiress. Then
he and Sylvia would have been the poor relations, would have had the
tramping, the little studio in Keyport, the frugal trips abroad so
full of adventures and excitements, and always the beloved old family
homestead to turn to for holidays and special occasions. That would
be a realler sort of living than he was apt to experience with all
Sylvia’s charming responsibilities and exaction upon his shoulders.
There would be a distinct loss of something free and personal,
something far higher and purer and more wonderful than even old Uncle
Roger’s money, in David’s marriage. And he knew now that he could never
expect Sylvia to see that loss. To Sylvia any one who could be rich,
and who saw even the tiniest scrap of advantage anywhere in remaining
poor, was stupid to the point of annoyance.
Well, it would all work out somehow, David thought philosophically,
thinking these things seriously upon a certain bitter night late in
January. A heavy storm was brewing again, for the winter was unusually
severe, but he had resolved to turn his back upon it; he must get down
into the city and arrange matters for the April exhibition. He would
leave Wastewater the next day, after almost six weeks in which the days
had seemed to fly by.
It was almost midnight now; Gay, who had seemed out of spirits
to-night, had gone upstairs early, and Aunt Flora had followed her an
hour ago. But David sat on by the fire, not so much reading the book
he held in his hand, as musing, and occasionally leaning forward to
stir the last of the coals. The passage to bed was a long and chilly
one, the halls were cold, his room would be cold; he felt a deep, lazy
disinclination to stir.
* * * * *
Suddenly and hideously in the darkness and night he heard a wild
scream, followed by other screams, all piercing, high--the shrieks of a
woman in mortal terror. David, with a quick exclamation, started to his
feet, ran to the door, opened it and shouted into the blackness of the
hall, snatched the lamp from the centre table, and, always shouting,
ran up toward the evident source of the confusion; which was in the
direction of his room and Gay’s, on the floor above.
It had all taken place so quickly and was so unspeakably horrifying
and alarming that David had no time to think of his own emotions until
he reached the upper hall and rushed into Gay’s room. He set the light
on a table, and caught the girl, who was blundering blindly about the
doorway, in his arms.
“Gay--for God’s sake--what is it!” he said, drawing her into the hall,
holding her tight, and looking beyond her into the dimness of the room.
“Oh, David--David!” she sobbed, clinging to him. “Oh, David, it’s that
old woman again! She’s in my room--I saw her! She had a candle in her
hand--I tell you I saw her!”
“You had a dream, dear!” David said, tenderly. “She must have had a bad
dream!” David explained to Flora, who came upstairs carrying a candle,
and with a ghastly face, and to Hedda and Trude, who appeared from
another direction, frightened and pale.
“Oh, no--no--no! I didn’t dream it!” Gabrielle said, still gasping and
clinging tight to David, but in a somewhat quieter tone. “No, I didn’t
dream it! She--I had just put out the light and she--she came into my
room----”
“Now, don’t get excited, dear,” David interrupted the rising tone
reassuringly. “We’re all here, and she can’t hurt you! What did you
think you saw?”
“She came to my door,” Gabrielle whispered, with a heaving breast and
a dry throat. “She was--she was----” Her voice rose on a shrill note
of terror in spite of herself, and she looked into David’s eyes with a
pathetic childish effort to control herself. “She was--smiling at me!”
Gabrielle whispered.
David felt his own flesh creep; it was Flora’s voice that said somewhat
harshly:
“Come down to Sylvia’s room for the rest of the night, Gabrielle.”
They were all in the doorway of Gabrielle’s room; the lamp that David
had carried upstairs he had placed just within it, in a sort of alcove.
Now he picked up the light and said reassuringly:
“Look here, dear, nobody’s gone out of the hall! We’ll go all over your
room, and open the wardrobes, and look under the bed----”
He had gotten so far, turning courageously into the apartment, when he
stopped, and Gabrielle screamed again. For the light now shone upon the
girl’s tumbled bed, her desk, her bureau, her bookshelves. And standing
close to the latter, with bright mad eyes fixed upon them all, and
something of the hunted look of a cornered yet unfrightened animal, was
a small, bent old woman, with gray hair straggling out upon the gray
shawl she wore over her shoulders, and an extinguished candle in the
stick she carried in her hands.
David’s heart came into his mouth with shock; there was an uncanny and
fearful quality about such an apparition in the quiet winter night and
in the shadowy old house. Flora, behind him, made a sound of despair,
and Hedda and Trude moaned together. Afterward, it seemed to him odd
that it was Gabrielle who spoke.
The girl was still shaken badly, but the lights and the voices had
instantly dissipated the horrifying mystery and fear, and although
Gay was pale and spoke with a somewhat dry throat, it was steadily
enough, it was even with a pathetic sort of reassurance in her voice,
and a trembling eagerness to quiet the strange visitor, to restore the
fantastic unnaturalness of the scene to something like the normal.
“You--you frightened me so!” she said to the little old woman, gently,
touching her on the arm, even trying to draw about the shaking little
old figure the big slipping gray shawl. “You--she didn’t mean any harm,
David,” Gay said, with her breath coming easier every second. “She--I
think she’s a little----” A significant lifting of Gay’s eyebrows
finished the sentence. “Margret knows her--Aunt Flora knows who she
is!” she added, appealingly.
“I wanted to see you, dear, and Flora wouldn’t let me!” the old woman
said, tearfully and childishly, catching Gay’s hands and beginning to
mumble kisses over them.
David made a sudden exclamation.
“Is it--I’ve not seen her for twenty years!” he said, with a puzzled
look at his aunt, about whose shaking form he immediately put a bracing
arm. “Isn’t it your mother, Aunt Flora? Is it Aunt John? I thought she
was dead.”
“Yes--just help me take her to her room, David,” Flora said, feverishly
and blindly. “Just--take her arm, Hedda. We’ll get her all comfortable,
and then I’ll explain. I’ll explain to you and Gabrielle--you needn’t
be afraid of this happening again--I’ll--I’ll----Let Trude take her,
Gabrielle.”
“But she doesn’t want to go, do you, dear?” Gay asked, pitifully.
And David thought her youth and beauty, the hanging rope of glorious
tawny hair, the slim figure outlined in her plain little embroidered
nightgown, and the kimono she had caught up, contrasted to that shaking
old creature’s feebleness and wildness, were the most extraordinary
things he had ever seen in his life. But then the whole thing was like
a crazy dream.
“But she must go,” Flora reiterated, firmly, her voice shaking and raw,
her face streaked with green lines across its pallor.
“Aunt John,” David pleaded, gently, taking an elbow that controlled
a thin old yellow hand like a hanging bird’s claw. For he remembered
the days when “Aunt John” had kept house for them all, when Flora was
a brisk young woman, and Lily only a timid, romantic girl, when his
own mother was mistress of Wastewater, and poor Tom and himself the
idolized small boys of the family.
“What are you calling me ‘Aunt John’ for, David Fleming?” said the old
woman, shrilly and suddenly. “Mamma died years and years ago, didn’t
she, Flora? I’m your Aunt Lily, and I came down to see my girl!”
Hedda and Trude exclaimed together; but David sensed instantly that
they were not surprised. Flora choked, caught blindly at the back of a
chair, and stood staring; David, in his quick glance, saw that her lips
were moving. But she made no sound.
Then it was at Gabrielle that they all looked; Gabrielle, who
stood tall and young and ashen in the uncertain lamplight, with
her magnificent, pathetically widened eyes, like shadowy gray star
sapphires, moving first to Flora’s face, and then to David’s, and then
back to the little woman beside her, whose hand, or claw, she still
held in her own.
David saw her breast rise and fall suddenly, but there was in her
bearing no sign that she was conscious of his presence, or that of the
maids or Flora. She bent down toward the forlorn little mowing and
mumbling creature, looking into the wandering eyes.
“I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you see me!” Gay said, gently, in just
the essence of her own beautiful voice. To David every syllable seemed
to throb and flower like a falling star in the unearthly silence of
the room. Outside a winter wind whined, branches creaked, the ivy at
Gay’s window crackled as a load of snow slipped from its dry twigs;
they could hear the distant muffled sound of the cold sea, tumbling and
booming among the rocks.
The lamp flared up in a sudden draught, burned steadily again. Great
shadows marched and wheeled on the ceiling. The two maids stared with
dilated eyes. Flora caught at David with fierce fingers.
“Don’t--don’t let her talk! She’s not responsible, David! I tell you
it’s all a mistake--no harm done--I won’t have Gabrielle worried----”
“Don’t worry about me, Aunt Flora!” Gay’s voice said. And again it
sounded strange to David; it had a sad and poignant sweetness that
seemed to have more in common with the icy night, and the streaming
winter moonlight, and the cold sea, than with this troubled little
human group. “I’m glad to know. I never would have been afraid of you
if I had known,” Gay said, to the little bent old woman. “I won’t be
frightened again. You can--you can see me as much as you like. If
you’re Lily, I’m--I’m your little girl, you know--Mother.”