Life and Gabriella Part 14

"Remember, dear, that Judge Crowborough is coming to dinner."

"I'll remember. Is there any one else?"

"Mrs. Crowborough, of course, and Colonel Buffington, and one or two others. n.o.body that you will care for except the judge and Patty and Billy."

"I shan't forget, but I may be a little late getting home. Good-bye, my dear, until evening."

Bending over her chair, he kissed her flushed cheek, while George remarked carelessly: "I'll see you later, father, when I've had a bath and a shave."

After the gentle tones of Mr. Fowler, the vitality of George's voice sounded almost brutal, and he added just as carelessly when the front door had shut softly: "The old man looks seedy, doesn't he, mother?"

A worried look brought out three startling lines in Mrs. Fowler's forehead, and Gabriella observed suddenly that there were tiny crow's feet around her blue eyes where the whites were flecked ever so faintly with yellow. Though she was well into the mid-fifties, her carefully preserved skin had kept the firmness and the texture of youth, and she still flushed easily and unbecomingly as she had done as a girl.

"He hasn't been a bit well, George. I am very anxious about him. You know when he worries over his business, he doesn't eat his meals, and as soon as he stops eating he begins to have nervous dyspepsia. He has just had a bad attack; that's why he looks so run down and haggard."

"Can't the doctor do anything for him?"

"He gave him some drops, but it is so hard to get your father to take medicine. Rest is what he needs, and, of course, that is out of the question while things are so unsettled. You must help him all you can, my boy, and Gabriella and I will manage with each other's company."

Her bright smile was still on her lips, but Gabriella noticed that she pushed her b.u.t.tered roll away as if she were choking.

In the early afternoon, when George had gone to join his father in the office, and Gabriella, seated at a little white and gold desk in the room which had been Patty's, was just finishing a letter to her mother, Mrs. Fowler came in, and pushing a chintz-covered chair close to the desk, sank into it and laid her small nervous hand on the arm of her daughter-in-law. She was wearing a velvet bonnet, with strings, and a street gown of black broadcloth, which fitted her like a glove and accentuated, after the fashion of the 'nineties, her small, compact waist and the deep substantial curves of her bosom and hips. Her eyes, behind the little veil of spotted tulle which reached to the tip of her nose, were bright and wistful, and though her colour was too high, a smile of troubled sweetness lent it a peculiar charm of expression.

"How nice you look, my dear," she said, with her pleasant manner, which no anxiety, hardly any grief, could dispel. "Are you very busy, or may I talk to you a little while?"

Drawing closer to her, Gabriella raised the plump little hand to her lips. Beneath the surface pleasantness of Mrs. Fowler's life--that pleasantness which wrapped her like a religion--she was beginning to discern a deep disquietude.

"I want to talk to you, mamma," she said, and her manner was a caress.

"You love George very much, dear?" asked Mrs. Fowler so suddenly that Gabriella looked at her startled.

For a minute the girl could not speak. "Oh, yes; oh, yes," she answered presently, and choked over the words.

"We wanted so much to go to your wedding--we were afraid you would think it strange that we stayed away, but Archibald had his attack just then, and on top of it he was terribly worried about his affairs. We have had a very hard year, and we feel so sorry, both of us, that we can't do more for your pleasure. As it is, we are cutting down our expenses in every way, and I have even decided to give up my carriage the first of next year.

"I know, I know," said Gabriella, who had never had a carriage, and to whom the giving up of one seemed the smallest imaginable sacrifice. "We mustn't add to your cares," she went on after a minute. "Wouldn't it be better, really better, if we were to take an apartment at once instead of waiting until June?"

"Until June?" repeated Mrs. Fowler vaguely, and she added quickly: "It is the greatest pleasure to have you here. Since Patty went I get so terribly lonely, and I don't think it would be at all wise for you to go to yourselves. George has hardly anything except what his father is able to give him, you know. The poor boy hasn't the least head for business."

"But we shouldn't need much. I am sure I could manage just with what George makes--no matter how little it is."

For an instant Mrs. Fowler looked at her thoughtfully.

"You could, but George couldn't," she answered.

"You mean he is extravagant?"

"He has never had the slightest idea of the value of money--that is one of the things you must teach him. He is a dear boy, but he has never made a success of anything he has undertaken, and his father thinks he is too unpractical ever to do so. But you must try to get him to live within your means, my dear, or you will both be miserable. Try to keep him from borrowing."

"But he refuses to talk to me about his work. It bores him," said Gabriella; and her simple soul, trained to regard debt as a deeper disgrace than poverty, grew suddenly troubled. In her childhood they had gone without food rather than borrow, she remembered.

"The matter with dear George," pursued Mrs. Fowler--and from the sweetness of her manner she might have been paying him a compliment--"is that he has never been steady. He doesn't stick at anything long enough to make it a success. If he were left to himself he would speculate wildly, and this is why his father is obliged to overlook all that he does in the office. It is just here that you can be of such wonderful help to him, Gabriella, by your influence. This is why I am telling you."

But had she any influence over him? In spite of his pa.s.sion for her had she ever turned him by so much as a hair's breadth from the direction of his impetuous desires? Once only she had withstood him--once only she had triumphed, and for that triumph she had paid by a complete surrender! She had been too glad to yield, too fearful of bringing a cloud over the sunny blue of his eyes.

"I want to help him--I want you to tell me how I can help him," she said earnestly. "While we are with you this winter, you must teach me how to do it. Before we begin housekeeping in the summer, I want to learn all I possibly can about George's affairs. He won't talk to me about practical matters, so you must do it."

"But where are you going, Gabriella? I thought you had decided to live with us?"

"But didn't George tell you? Surely he must have told you. We are to take an apartment in June so my mother can come to us. I felt, of course, that I couldn't leave mother, and George understands. He was perfectly lovely about it."

"I see, I see," murmured Mrs. Fowler, as if she were thinking of something else. "Well, that will all come right, dear, I hope."

Rising abruptly, she began to draw on her gloves. "If you only knew how I long to make you happy," she said softly; "as happy as I have been with George's father."

"They are so unlike," answered Gabriella, and the next day when she remembered the admission, she wondered how it had slipped from her.

"Yes, they are unlike," agreed Mrs. Fowler. "George takes after me, and I am a frivolous person. But there doesn't live a better man than my husband," she added, glowing. "I've been his wife for thirty years, and in all that time I don't believe he has ever thought first of himself.

Yes, it was thirty years ago that I drove through the streets with my bridal veil on, and felt so sorry for all the girls I saw who were not going to be married. To-day I feel exactly the same way--sorry for all the women who couldn't have Archibald for a husband. I've lived with him thirty years, I've borne him children, and I'm still sorry for all the other women--even for you, Gabriella."

"He seems so kind," said Gabriella; "I felt that about him, and it's the best thing, after all, isn't it?" It was the best thing, and yet she knew that George was not kind--that he was not even good-tempered.

"Yes, it's the best thing, after all, in marriage," answered the older woman; "it's the thing that wears."

"I have always wanted the best of life," rejoined Gabriella thoughtfully; and she went on gravely after a moment: "I couldn't love George any more than I do, but I wish that in some ways he would grow like his father."

"The boy has a very sweet nature," replied George's mother, "and I hope marriage will steady him." It was a warning, Gabriella knew, and she wondered afterwards if her silent acquiescence in Mrs. Fowler's judgment had not been furtive disloyalty to George.

"A great deal will depend on you, dear, for he is very much in love,"

resumed Mrs. Fowler when Gabriella did not speak, and she repeated very solemnly, "I hope marriage will steady him."

In her heart Gabriella was hoping so, too, but all she said was, "I promise you that I will do all I can." She had given her word, and, looking into her eyes, Mrs. Fowler understood that her daughter-in-law was not one to give her word lightly. Gabriella would keep her promise.

She would do her best, whatever happened.

The older woman, with her life's history behind her, watched the girl for a minute in silence. There was so much that she longed to say, so much that could never be spoken even between women. She herself was an optimist, but her optimism had been wrung from the bitter core of experience. Her faith was firm, though it held few illusions, for, if she was an optimist, she was also a realist. She believed in life, not because it had satisfied her, but because she had had the wisdom to understand that the supreme failure had been, not life's, but her own.

If she could only have lived it again and lived it differently from the beginning! If she could only have used her deeper wisdom not to regret the past, but to create the future! Much as she had loved her husband, she knew now that she had sacrificed him to the world. Much as she had loved her children, she would have sacrificed them, also, had it been possible. To the tin G.o.ds she had offered her soul--to the things that did not matter she had yielded up the only things that mattered at all.

And she knew now that, in spite of her clearness of vision, the worldliness which had ruined her life was still bound up in all that was essential and endurable in her nature. She still wanted the illusions as pa.s.sionately as if she believed in their reality; she still winced as sharply at the thought of Patty's marriage and of all that Patty had given up. In the case of George, she admitted that it was her fault--that she had spoiled him--but how could she have helped it? She remembered how he had looked as a child, with his round flushed face, his chestnut curls, and his eager, questioning eyes. He had been a beautiful child, more beautiful even than Patty, and because of his beauty she had been able to refuse him nothing. Then she thought of his boyhood, of his reckless extravagance at college; of the tales of his wildness to which she had shut her ears; of his debts, and still of his debts, which she had paid out of the housekeeping money because she was afraid to let his father know of them. Yes, George, in spite of his sweet nature, had given them a great deal of trouble, so much trouble that she had been quite reconciled to his marriage with any respectable girl. The memory of a chorus girl with whom he had once entangled himself still gave her a shiver at the heart when she recalled it.

Money, always more money, had gone into that; and at last, just as she had grown hopeless of saving him, he had met this fine, sensible Gabriella, who looked so strong, so competent, and there had come an end to the disturbing stories which reached her at intervals. Surely it was proof of her son's inborn fineness that from the pink perfection of girlhood he should have chosen the capable Gabriella! At first she had regretted his choice, hoping, as the worldly and the unworldly alike hope for their sons, that the object of George's disinterested affection would prove to be wealthy. Then at the sight of Gabriella she had surrendered completely. The girl was fine all through, this she could see as soon as she looked at her. She liked her n.o.ble though not beautiful face, with the broad clear forehead from which the soft dark hair was brushed back so simply, and, most of all, she liked the charm and sympathy in her voice. George had chosen well, and if she could trust his choice, why could she not trust him to be true to it?

"I wonder if you would like to put on your hat and come with me?" she asked, obeying an impulse. "I'm going to drive up to Patty's with some curtains for her bedroom."

"Oh, I'd love to," replied Gabriella with eagerness, for she hated inaction, and it was impossible to spend a whole afternoon merely thinking about one's happiness. "It won't take me a minute to get ready."

While she put on her hat and coat, Mrs. Fowler watched her thoughtfully, saying once: "It is quite cool, you'd better bring your furs, dear."

When Gabriella answered frankly, "I haven't any, I never had any furs in my life," a tender expression crept into the rather hard blue eyes of her mother-in-law, and she said quickly: "Well, I've a set of white fox that I am too old to wear, and you shall have it."

"But what of Patty?" asked Gabriella, for she had grown up thinking of other people and she couldn't break the habit of twenty years in a minute.