“He has a school, huh?”
“No, I mean his type of work.”
“I get you,” Tom said, good-naturedly. “I’m glad about him and Sylvia,” he added, after thought. “Engaged, are they?”
“Well, I suppose they will be. There was an understanding between them—he has something, you know, and Aunt Flora has an income, too. Your father settled something on her when Uncle Will died.”
“Do you suppose it’s money that’s holding them back?”
“I don’t imagine so. I think perhaps it’s all the change and confusion, and the business end of things.”
“I could fix ’em up!” Tom suggested, magnificently. “I wish to God,” he added, uneasily, under his breath, and without irreverence, “that something would happen! The place makes me feel creepy, somehow. It’s—voodoo. I wish David would marry and take that death’s head of an old woman off with him—Aunt Flora. And then I’d like to beat it somewhere—Boston or New York—see some life! Theatres—restaurants—that sort of thing!”
Gabrielle did not ask what disposition he would make of herself under this arrangement. She knew.
She was down among the flowering border shrubs of the garden on the quiet September day when David unexpectedly came home. The whole world was shrouded in a warm, soft mist; the waves crept in lifelessly, little gulls rocked on the swells. Trees about Gabrielle were dripping softly, not a leaf stirred, and birds hopped like shadows, like paler shadows, and vanished against the quiet, opaque walls that shut her in.