“You may have seen a reflection of some light in the trunk room, up above where you are,” Flora suggested. “Perhaps Maria or Hedda went up there with John and your trunk.”
“No, for they didn’t take my trunk until next day! But they might have gone up there to make room,” Gabrielle conceded, cheerfully, distressed at the continued pallor of her aunt’s face.
“I’ll have Hedda and Maria go all over everything,” Flora said. “I’ll tell them to lock everything and look over everything to-morrow.” And with a mottled hand that shook badly, she resumed her manipulation of the cards, and Gabrielle for a time thought no more about the matter.
The two lonely women had a turkey on Thanksgiving Day, and Flora a telegram from Sylvia. And not long after that it was time to prepare for Sylvia’s homecoming at Christmas.
This, Gabrielle perceived, was to be an event quite unparalleled by any of the sober festivities at Wastewater since Uncle Roger’s day. Last Christmas Flora had gone to Sylvia, shut in the college infirmary with a sharp touch of influenza, and last summer Sylvia had taken a six weeks’ extension course, and had spent only odd weeks and week-ends at Wastewater; she had not been enough at home to alter in any way the quiet routine of the household.
But this was different. The Christmas holidays, beginning with a little Christmas house party, would be almost like a housewarming—a sort of forerunner of Sylvia’s attaining her majority and becoming the real owner and the mistress of Wastewater. Sylvia would be twenty-one in late June, when David and her mother would end their long guardianship and surrender to her her inheritance from Black Roger Fleming. Tom was legally, technically, dead; the family felt now that he was truly dead, and every passing year had helped to entrench Flora in her feeling of security. If she had ever expected his return, she did so no longer. The courts had confirmed Sylvia’s expectations. David and Flora had administered her affairs carefully—Flora felt that to her Wastewater would always be home, and that her beautiful child would be rich.
Gabrielle, speculating upon Sylvia’s prospects, had long ago satisfied herself that whatever they were, David would share them. It was the logical, the probable thing; Gabrielle had indeed taken it half for granted, for years. Now, when she heard the quiet little note of admiration in his voice when he spoke of Sylvia, when she studied Sylvia’s pictures and found them beautiful, when she realized how pledged he was to the service of Sylvia’s interests, anxious to do everything that Sylvia would approve, she appreciated that forces as strong as love bound them together, and she fancied—and not without a little wistful pain—that love might easily—easily!—be there too. Everything, everything for Sylvia.
The scale upon which the preparations for the Christmas house party were commenced was astonishing to Gabrielle. She had not supposed her aunt capable of even thinking in such terms. Aunt Flora had always been the last person in the world to associate with thoughts of lavish hospitality, generous and splendid entertaining.
But Aunt Flora went about this business of getting ready with a sure and steady hand that astonished Gabrielle, who could remember nothing of the old days of Wastewater’s splendour.
By mid-December some of the big downstairs rooms were opened, and Margret, aged, gray, wrinkled like a rosy apple, and always with a kindly word for Gabrielle, was directing the other servants in the disposition of the furniture. Linen covers came off, mirrors were rubbed, and fires crackled in the unused fireplaces. The chairs were pushed to sociable angles, and whenever there was sunlight the windows were opened wide to receive it.