Kathleen Thompson Norris

“ David was an artist, he adored beauty in youth, in words, in voices. Here he found them all combined in this eager creature who ended her tale with tears in her glorious eyes and a smile that asked for his sympathy twitching her splendid mouth. Told so plainly, under the dreaming autumn sky, in the thinning soft autumn sunlight of the old garden, the whole thing had a quite memorable pathos and charm, and when he thought of Gabrielle—as David did often in the days to come—he always thought of her standing by the sundial in the morning freshness, telling him the story of the doll’s house. ”

“ Tom said. “And she’s not been burning an hour!”
“Tom, it must be almost morning,” Gabrielle whispered, too dazed with the night’s events to believe herself yet awake.
In answer he twisted his wrist about; and in the pink light she saw the tiny face of his watch. Not yet one o’clock!
“What I can’t understand,” David said, “is why five hundred men aren’t here from Keyport or Crowchester—of course there’s a terrible tide, and that road through the dunes to Tinsall’s may be under water. But you’d think a mob would be out here to watch the old place go!” ”

“ David asked, slowly.
“If I marry him. And I like him, David—ah, truly I do! I feel so badly for him. I feel as if it would be a real—a real life, for me,” persisted little Gabrielle, gallantly, feeling for words, “to fill Wastewater with guests and hospitality and happiness again. I can’t bear to have him feel that, poor as I am, and—and nameless—and he knows I am nameless!—still, I couldn’t love him. It will make him bitter, and ugly, and he’ll go off again, and perhaps die. I’ve had to be kind, to put anything definite off, and so I’ve said nothing to anybody—not even Sylvia. ”

“ The face at which David was staring now so thoughtfully had been one of the handsomest of its generation. When Roger Fleming, arrogant, young, rich, had posed for this picture, now a whole third of a century ago, the world had been at his feet.
What a different world it had been, mused David; a world without an electric light or bell or street car to disturb it—without a moving picture or an automobile! But Roger Fleming, this exquisite, negligently smiling gentleman pictured with the bay horse and the slim greyhound, had missed none of these things from his crowded life. ”

“ She rose at once and followed Gabrielle into the little upper hall, and Gabrielle put her arm about her. Sylvia seemed confused and shaken; she said in a worried, quick tone:
“Mamma is very, very ill! David tells me he thought she was, even before she had the shock of the fire. I feel as if I were in a terrible dream—I can’t believe what he tells me,” added poor Sylvia, “I can’t—I shall never believe that my mother could be—could be capable—my mother! whom I love so dearly——” She stopped.
“It doesn’t mean that one can’t love—one’s mother,” Gabrielle suggested, timidly. ”

“ On the day that Sylvia and her guests were coming from the north, and David probably from the south, there was no sunshine. There was a cold, unsteady, wind, and a cold, hard, low-hung mackerel sky, under which the sea moved rough and restless, topped with racing caps of white. All the world was gray and forlorn; distances were shortened, the little houses in Crowchester and Keyport were closed against the weather and showed no sign of life except the varying plumes of smoke that rose from their frosted roofs. ”

“ No woman could possibly contemplate marriage with him with any enthusiasm; least of all this beautiful woman of twenty, whose wealth was the smallest of her advantages. David was not a particularly successful painter, past thirty, leading the quietest and least thrilling of lives. It was a part of the conscientiousness that these brilliant Flemings and their exactions had bred in him, that he felt himself in honour bound now not to complicate Gabrielle’s problems by any hint of his own personal hopes or fears. She needed him too much, in the management of her own and Tom’s business, for that. ”

“ Every turn of her head, every movement, every direct look from her star-sapphire eyes, had deepened the old impression that there was nobody quite like her in the world.
Nobody so gracious, so quietly joyous, nobody else at once so youthful and so wise. A hundred times, by some quality of being simply and eagerly happy just in the springtime, and the garden, and his company, she reminded him of the long-ago little girl Gabrielle, and yet, at twenty, David thought her already a woman. ”

“ Gay accepted this with all the pathetic faith of her years. She could not possibly imagine Aunt Flora as a beauty; but every middle-aged woman who talked of her own youth had been one, and Gay was perfectly willing to believe the last a beautiful generation. She thought of a picture she had seen of Aunt Flora as a bride, in a plumed hat, enormous puffed sleeves, a five-gored skirt sweeping the ground, a wasp-waist with a chatelaine bag dangling from the belt, and a long-handle parasol held out like Bo-Peep’s crook, and lost the thread of Sylvia’s conversation. ”

“ Gabrielle saw milk-white frost in the upturned clods in the garden; the light was hardly gone when a harsh moonlight lay upon the bare black world.
There was a good deal of air stirring in the night, and toward morning it grew so cold that the girls, chattering and shaking, met in the halls, seeking blankets and hot bottles. Gay and Sylvia knocked on David’s door; he must take extra covering to Tom; David’s teeth clicked and his laughter had a ghoulish sound as he obeyed. ”

“ Wastewater in its old and arrogant days were gone. Roger with his vanity and arrogance was gone, Lily with her tears, Cecily frightened and saddened in her youth, Flora with her dark repressions and thwarted love.
The old Sylvia was gone, too, and in her academically complacent place was the much more human Mrs. Tom Fleming. And David was gone; never again would he be only the dreamy, detached painter, the amused older brother and audience for the younger folk, the philosopher who looked at love dispassionately. ”

“ When he finally came Gay was in the garden. For spring had come to Wastewater, and David’s fancy of finding her before a fire in the sitting room had been outdated by two full weeks of sunshine. There was fresh green grass sprouting about the old wall, there were daisy-starred stretches of it under the massed blossoms of the fruit trees; gracious shadows lay long and sweet everywhere over new green leaves; the willows were jade fountains of foliage, the maples uncurling moist little red and gold tendrils, and the lilacs were rustling columns of clean new leafage and plumy blossom. ”

“ David, stretched luxuriously in his chair, was free to study her, as she sat erect and beautiful in the pleasant mingling of gray afternoon light and warm firelight. He had always had a definite feeling of admiration, loyalty, affection for and confidence in Sylvia, and he felt it still. But for the first time, in this past week, she had seemed oddly to take her place down on the comfortable level of other human beings. She no longer seemed—as she so long had seemed—a creature unique and apart, a little more beautiful, more fortunate, more clever than the rest. ”

“ The relief of not having to think of Wastewater, Aunt Flora, and—and, yes, of Sylvia, too, made him feel a sort of shamed joy. In that arrangement he would always have been self-conscious, fighting against nameless and subtle and cramping opposition for his identity and his freedom. If he wanted a studio in Wastewater, he knew just how Sylvia would cushion it and beautify it. If he wanted old Rucker to come up and paint for a while, he knew just how Aunt Flora, abetted by Sylvia, would ask innocently: “How long will Mr. Rucker be with us, David?” ”

“ Wastewater’s wide walls; the doctor, Flora weeping on David’s arm, Gay standing straight and alone, and the awestruck maids were all her little funeral train. It was Flora who seemed to feel the loss most, and with surprising force; she seemed broken and aged, and it was for Gabrielle to comfort her.
“I never supposed it would be so,” Flora repeated, over and over. “That I would be the last—that Will and Roger and Lily would all be gone before me!”
She would not stay in bed; Flora did not belong to the generation that can eat and read and idle comfortably under covers. ”

“ The doctor came and went at five without waking either Tom or Gabrielle; a cold dawn was over the world when the girl stirred under her heap of comforters and sat up blinking and rosy, wondering for a long stupefied minute where she was and why Tom should be stretched out sound asleep a few feet away. Margret had come out from Keyport, John’s wife and daughter were lamenting and sympathizing in the disordered kitchen, and two or three score of sightseers were already picking their way about the ruins of what had been Wastewater. ”