XIII
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.