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The photographer was a tremendous success. So many of our guests might never have otherwise had an opportunity to be photographed, and I enjoyed observing them decide how they wished to be preserved for the years to come.
Since Atticus and I had had no wedding portrait—and, indeed, the status of our marriage had changed so much since that day in any case—it was an especial pleasure to pose for a portrait together at this stage of our life. And then what delight to include Sybil and Roderick. If only Vivi and George had been able to join us, our family would have been complete. But fortunately there would be many more Christmases—and it was remarkable to think that both Vivi and I would have borne children by the time the next one arrived.
It gave me a different kind of pleasure to see young Mr. Waring and Bob bring Mrs. Flood to be photographed with them. Atticus had ridden out with Mrs. Flood in a sleigh to visit the elder Warings, and his findings had evidently satisfied all parties. Mrs. Flood was still half afraid of her great good fortune in finding her child alive and healthy.
“But you hardly know me yet,” she told Mr. Waring, as the photographer waited. “It’s too soon for me to claim to be a member of your family.”
Mr. Waring must have seen the longing in her eyes, for it was plain even to me. He took her hand. “But you are,” he said simply.
A tentative smile touched her lips, but then she looked down at little Bob, who had seemingly not let go of her hand all this while. “May I join you, Bob?”
The boy nodded, gazing up at her with an echo of her smile. Suddenly I could see a resemblance between them in the curve of their lips and the shape of their brow. It removed all doubt that the two belonged together.
I found myself blinking away a tear. How sentimental I had become since falling pregnant! Nevertheless, how could I help but be moved by this reunion of mother and child, and the new bond being forged by poor Mrs. Flood, who had suffered so much, and kind young Mr. Waring?
Then Atticus’s arm went around my waist, and I found him smiling down at me. “You’ve done good work here,” he said in an undertone.
“It wasn’t really my doing, or at least not alone. Sybil helped me connect things.”
“She is quite a force of nature,” he acknowledged. “I can see how you grew to be so fond of her, though you are so different.” Then, as if suspecting he had been too free with praise of her, he bent his head to speak softly into my ear. “She would never be as perfect a mistress of Gravesend as you, my love. Or as tender and wise a mother as you will be.”
“Flatterer,” I muttered, though I was ridiculously pleased.
“Nor would she look as magnificent in a certain purple and black gown,” he said in a different voice, and I smothered a laugh.
“I’ll be sure to wear it the next time the two of us are dining alone together,” I promised, and from the look in my husband’s eyes one might have thought that this alone had made his Christmas complete.
Only one thing remained to trouble me, and it hovered at the back of my mind through the rest of the day and into the evening, as we played charades and sang Christmas carols to the accompaniment of Roderick’s violin. When at long last we all parted to retire, I detained Sybil.
“Tell me one thing,” I said, softly so that our husbands would not hear. “Is Gravesend truly free of ghosts?”
She smiled. “I cannot claim absolute certainty, Clara, but my strong instinct is that there are no ghosts here. You needn’t worry about that.”
Despite her disclaimer, her manner was so very certain that I felt the hope rise in my heart: perhaps there were no such things as ghosts after all—either in Gravesend or in the world at large. She might have been speaking figuratively about spirits earlier, and it was possible that in her career as “medium” she was simply using dramatic techniques and knowledge of human nature—both of which she had doubtless learned from her years in the theater—to bring comfort and peace of mind to the superstitious.
The idea was wonderfully reassuring. Naturally she would not admit to such a thing, but this winking statement of hers surely meant that the world operated just as I thought—that there were no spectral inhabitants of the human sphere, no unpredictable supernatural occurrences to frighten us.
“Thank you,” I said, and embraced her. “That is my best Christmas gift—knowing that I need never fear ghosts again.”
Her brow furrowed and she made as if to speak; then, as if thinking better of it, she smiled.
“Merry Christmas, dear Clara,” she said.
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