Hedda and Trude exclaimed together; but David sensed instantly that they were not surprised. Flora choked, caught blindly at the back of a chair, and stood staring; David, in his quick glance, saw that her lips were moving. But she made no sound.
Then it was at Gabrielle that they all looked; Gabrielle, who stood tall and young and ashen in the uncertain lamplight, with her magnificent, pathetically widened eyes, like shadowy gray star sapphires, moving first to Flora’s face, and then to David’s, and then back to the little woman beside her, whose hand, or claw, she still held in her own.
David saw her breast rise and fall suddenly, but there was in her bearing no sign that she was conscious of his presence, or that of the maids or Flora. She bent down toward the forlorn little mowing and mumbling creature, looking into the wandering eyes.
“I’m sorry they wouldn’t let you see me!” Gay said, gently, in just the essence of her own beautiful voice. To David every syllable seemed to throb and flower like a falling star in the unearthly silence of the room. Outside a winter wind whined, branches creaked, the ivy at Gay’s window crackled as a load of snow slipped from its dry twigs; they could hear the distant muffled sound of the cold sea, tumbling and booming among the rocks.
The lamp flared up in a sudden draught, burned steadily again. Great shadows marched and wheeled on the ceiling. The two maids stared with dilated eyes. Flora caught at David with fierce fingers.
“Don’t—don’t let her talk! She’s not responsible, David! I tell you it’s all a mistake—no harm done—I won’t have Gabrielle worried——”
“Don’t worry about me, Aunt Flora!” Gay’s voice said. And again it sounded strange to David; it had a sad and poignant sweetness that seemed to have more in common with the icy night, and the streaming winter moonlight, and the cold sea, than with this troubled little human group. “I’m glad to know. I never would have been afraid of you if I had known,” Gay said, to the little bent old woman. “I won’t be frightened again. You can—you can see me as much as you like. If you’re Lily, I’m—I’m your little girl, you know—Mother.”
CHAPTER X
The night that followed was one of the strange, abnormal times that seemed—David thought more than once—so peculiarly appropriate, so peculiarly in tone with the atmosphere of Wastewater; with the empty, dusky, decaying rooms, with the shadowy mirrors clouded with mould, with the memories, the tragedies, the ghosts and echoes that on a bitter winter night seemed to throng the old place.
Outside there was a sharp frost, and when the massed silent snow slipped from the branches of the old elms, an occasional crack like a pistol shot sounded through the night. A cold bright moon moved over the packed snow, and the sea swelled with booming, sullen rushes over the rocks. Clocks seemed, to David, to stand still; to mark strange hours.