Flora, at the words, had risen slowly to her feet, staring blindly ahead of her, and with a hurried and suffocated word had turned from her place at the table. And before David could get to her, or Sylvia make anything but a horrified exclamation, she had fainted.
This had been on Tom’s third evening at home, a close summer night that had afforded Flora ample excuse for feeling oppressed. Yet Gay, looking about the circle as the days went by—David as always thoughtful and sympathetic, if he was more than usually silent, Sylvia beautiful and serene, if also strangely subdued, Tom seeming to belong so much less to Wastewater, with his strange manners and his leathery skin, than any of the others, Aunt Flora severe and terrible—felt arising in her again all the fearful apprehensions of her first weeks there, almost a year ago.
What was going to happen? her heart hammered incessantly. What was going to happen?
What could happen? These were not the days of mysterious murders and secret passages, dark deeds in dark nights! Why did Wastewater suddenly seem a dreadful place again, a place that was indeed allied to the measureless ocean, with its relentless advance and retreat, and to the dark woods, behind which red sunsets smouldered so angrily, but that had nothing in common with the sweet village life of Crowchester and Keyport, where happy children played through vacation days and little boats danced in and out.
“I am afraid!” Gabrielle whispered to herself, more than once, as the blazing blue days of August went by, and the moon walked across the sea in the silent, frightening nights. David and Tom were there, seven or eight maids, gardener, chauffeur, stableman—yet she was afraid. “If we are only all out of here before winter comes!” she would think, staring at the high, merciless sky, where distant wisps of cloud drifted against the merciless bright distances of the summer sea. She could not face another winter at Wastewater!
David was quiet in these days, spending long hours with Tom, painting, taking solitary walks before breakfast, Gabrielle knew. The girl would look at him wistfully; ah, why couldn’t they all seem as young as they were! Why weren’t they all walking, talking, picnicking together as other families did! David was always kind, always most intelligently sympathetic in any problem; but he seemed so far away! She could not break through the wall that seemed to have grown between them. It made her quiet, unresponsive, in her turn.
David, watching her, thought what a mad dream his had been, of Gabrielle as his wife! and felt himself, bitterly, to be a failure. Had he taken his place years ago in the world of business and professional men, had he risen to a reputation and an income, he might have had the right to speak now! As it was, she was as inaccessible, from the standpoint of his poverty, his stupid silences and inexperience, as a star. She had no thought of him, except as a useful older brother, and talking business with Tom. He was an idling fool of an unsuccessful painter in a world full of conversational, pleasant failures. He hated himself, his canvases and palettes, his paltry four thousand a year, his old sickening complacencies over a second-hand book or a volume of etchings. Life had become insufferable to him, and David told himself that if it had not been for Tom’s needs he would have disappeared for another long year of painting in Europe—or in China!
As it was, he had to see her every day, the woman who filled all the world with exquisite pain for him, and with an agonizing joy. She came downstairs, pale and starry-eyed, in her thin white gown and shady hat, on these hot days, she asked him a simple question, she pleaded without words for his old friendship and understanding.
He could not give it. And one day Sylvia asked him if he had noticed that Tom was falling in love with Gay.
David stood perfectly still. For a few seconds he had a strange brassy taste in his mouth, a feeling that the world had simply stopped. Everything was over. Hope was dead within him.