Down to dinner under the threat of the revolver. She was intolerant now
of the smallest resistance. She got them sitting there in the same
travesty, forced them to eat, forced them to entertain her with their
conversation. “No glum faces!” she said sharply. It was hard enough to
look glum under those additions to nature; Bertie’s nose especially had
a convivial air, it imposed upon him a gross jollity he was very far
from feeling. They ate turkey and plum-pudding, unwillingly, choking
back, according to their natures, their fury or their tears. Lydia had
not stinted their fare; but then, she had never been niggardly. There
was a lavishness in her providing; there were raisins, almonds, brandy;
and she urged the appetites of her guests with an ironical though
genuine hospitality. “Christmas dinner, you know,” she said to them as
she heaped the food upon their plates. They protested; she nearly
laughed at the piteous protest in their eyes shining out through their
ridiculous trappings. But she remembered the forty years, and the
laughter died unborn.
Forty years—and she had got them to herself. She would let them off
nothing.