So Roger travelled, hoped, came and went untiringly, and Flora kept Wastewater open, ready for the runaway’s return, and meanwhile a home, a headquarters for all the other members of the family. Here David himself came for all his vacations, here Lily crept back, crushed, almost vacant-minded, deserted by her “travelling agent,” and with a tawny-headed baby girl something a little worse than fatherless.
Will Fleming, who had protested for cheerful idle years that office work would kill him, had proved his words when Sylvia was only four by quite simply dying of pneumonia during a long absence in the West, and so Flora and Lily were alone again at Wastewater, but with the two little girls to take their places as the children of the old place. Flora’s child, Sylvia, was a superbly proud little creature, tall, imperious, with scarlet cheeks, the white Fleming skin, the black Fleming eyes, indeed as absolute a “black Fleming” as ever had been born. Lily’s Gabrielle, three years younger, was a thin, nervous, tawny-headed little creature, full of impish excitements and imaginings. Roger would find the two little girls, when he came back weary-hearted and sick, playing “flower ladies” with much whispering and subdued laughter in the old garden, or penning crabs and small sea creatures in pebbly prisons on the shore.
One day, only a few weeks before his death, Roger had a long talk with David, walking back and forth along the garden paths that were sweating and panting under the breath of an untimely summer day in mid-May. There was no sun; a sort of milky mist lay over the sea; the warm plants dripped, and smelled of hothouses. David remembered watching the slow silky heaving of the obscured ocean as his stepfather talked.
“I made my will when you were only a baby, Dave—when Tom was born. That’s—my God, that’s twenty years ago. But I put a codicil in a week or two back, giving Will’s child—Sylvia here—the whole of it in case—he may have got mixed up in this sea warfare, you know—in case the boy never comes home. But he will! I gave Will’s widow—poor Flora—all that my own mother left, when Will died; that’ll take care of her and of Sylvia; Tom’ll see that they stay here at Wastewater if they want to. And Flora’ll care for poor Lily’s child. Your father fixed you pretty well—I’ve left you the Boston houses to remember your stepfather by. You’ve been like my own son to me, David. I’ve had a long run for my money,” Roger said somewhat sadly that same evening, looking up at his own portrait over the mantel, when the men were alone in the sitting room. “But a better man would have made a better job of it! Tom’ll come home, though, and there’ll be Flemings here again, boys and girls, David, to keep the old place warm.”
“I hope you’ll keep it warm yourself,” David had answered, cheerfully. “You’re not fifty-three yet!”
“No, Dave—I’ve lived too hard. I’ve broken the machinery,” Roger said; and it was true. “I remember my twenty-first birthday,” he went on, musingly, “when Oates turned the estate over to me. He was a nice fellow—forty, I suppose, making perhaps six thousand a year, and with half-a-dozen children. Homely little sandy fellow—he doesn’t look a day older to-day. I remember his watching me, I’d a hatful of florists’ and tailors’ bills to pay—watching me scribble off checks for twice his year’s income, right there in his office. I bought my dog, ‘Maggie’—that was ‘Queen Vic’s’ mother—that day. They were great years, David; young men don’t know anything like them to-day—but a better man might have made a better job of them! I didn’t want a wife—I wanted all the women in the world, until the day your mother walked in here with you in her arms, and that was a dozen years later. I wish we’d had a houseful like you, David—I wish Tom had had sisters and brothers—might have held the boy! Well,” the master of Wastewater had ended, “if Tom’s not here, turn it all over to Flora’s girl when she’s twenty-one. Women manage these things better. Sylvia’ll have her fun and build for the future, too. Or maybe she and the boy may make a match of it—they’re both Flemings, Dave. And more than that—your Aunt Flora has a score to settle with me—there’s a sort of poetic justice in her daughter’s getting it all. She—she cared, in her way—she’s not a woman to care easily, either. And she forgave my marrying your mother—she stood by your mother. But when it came to Cecily—Flora and I were to have been married then, you know—she won’t mention her name to this day! I’ve treated a good many women badly,” Roger had confessed, with a twitch of his handsome mouth, “but I never treated any one as badly as poor Flora.”
David had been pleased, and secretly amused, to see that the old incorrigible smile was lighting his stepfather’s magnificent eyes. Upon whatever episodes in the past Roger’s mind was moving, he found them sweet. David liked to fancy the bustled and chignonned ladies of the ’Eighties thrilling over “Papagontier” roses from the irresistible Roger Fleming of Wastewater, the two-button kid gloves that agitated the clicking fans in the opera house when this winner of hearts sauntered in.
And after all, Death had come kindly, as Life had, to Black Roger Fleming. There had been one more hope about Tom; Roger had been eagerly and confidently flinging clothes into his well-worn trunk, telephoning, shouting directions, exulting in the need for action, all through a sweet June morning. Sylvia, nine years old, and Gabrielle, six, had been running at full speed along the upper hall, and they saw him come to his door—saw him fall, with one hand clutching his heart.
Aunt Lily’s periodic melancholia had developed into a more serious condition now, and she was away on one of her long absences in a sanitarium. But David was there. Flora was there, the old servants were there to fly to Roger’s side—already far too late. He had been warned of his heart; this was not utterly unexpected.
Three days later David wrote a letter to Tom, launched it out into the great world with little hope that he would ever read it. He was the heir, there was a large estate, he must come home.