Gay and David stood up, and Gay realized then for the first time that she had had her fingers gripped tightly on David’s arm, and for some obscure reason felt a little self-conscious about it.
They all went downstairs, and there were no more confidences that night. To Gay, who was tired out with felicity, the rest was all a blur. She managed to hang up the lace gown carefully, but left her other clothing and her slippers where they fell, and tumbled into bed with her massed hair untouched, nearer sleep already than waking.
And the next day was confusing, too. Even the girls looked weary, and the packing went on between yawning and laughing reminiscences, and congratulations upon what had really been a great success.
Outside were a low unfriendly sky and a strong wind across the snow. The sea was rough and wild, bare branches bent and whipped noisily about in the garden, and windows rattled. The house seemed big and blank this morning, with fallen leaves and oddly disposed furniture standing in the forlornly empty rooms that had looked so bright and gay last night. John was in the house, with dry sacking bagged over his boots as he moved palms about. But there was a roaring fire in the airtight stove in the dining room, and another in the downstairs sitting room, and the young persons, waiting for the sleigh to take them to their train, gathered there.
David kept rather close to Gay, in an unobtrusive big-brotherly manner, during the good-byes, and once he nodded to her and said briefly: “All fixed. Don’t worry,” but if Sylvia saw these cryptic indications she had no explanation of them until the following day. She did note, she remembered afterward, that Frank du Spain’s farewells to them all, and especially to David and Gay, were rather odd; not quite pugnacious, not quite defiant, but with an odd touch of some such quality. David enlightened her on the next afternoon, when the family was alone again.
This was Christmas Day, and they had all gone in the sleigh to Crowchester to church in the morning, and, although Wastewater had hardly even now recovered from its unwonted festivities, there had been the usual great turkey, icy red cranberry jelly, crackling celery, and bubbling mince pies that indicated a fresh celebration. This meal, served in the warm dining room at half-past two, after the cold drive and wait, had reduced all the family to a state bordering upon comfortable coma. Sylvia, sleepily declaring that she meant to take a brisk walk, collapsed into an armchair before the fire immediately after the mid-afternoon dinner. David, determining from moment to moment to go upstairs and get into tramping clothes, took a chair on the other side; Flora went up to her room, where she indulged in the unheard-of relaxations of her wrapper and a nap on the top of her stiff, cold bed, with a comforter over her; and Gay, whose skin felt prickly and whose head heavy, and who had enjoyed the mince pies and the chestnut dressing and the walnuts only too well, wrapped herself up warmly, left a message with Maria, and slipped quietly out of the side door.
John was going into Keyport at five to take Margret home after the last of the Christmas dinner had been discussed in the kitchen; Gabrielle would walk the three miles in the roaring wind, and he could bring her home.
The gale tore at her gaily, whistled in her ears, stung her flushed face into chilly bloom again; rushes of spray blew across the dune road, and the sea boiled and tumbled beside her. Gulls were blown overhead, balanced yet tipped sidewise in the wild airs. The wind sang high above her.
Other pedestrians, similarly affected by Christmas cheer, were walking bundled and blown and bent forward, along the roads, and these and Gay exchanged joyous shouts of “Merry Christmas!” It was good—it was good—the girl exulted, to be out on such a day!