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Life and Gabriella by Ellen Glasgow

E >> Ellen Glasgow >> Life and Gabriella




"Do you know the name of this one? I'd like to remember it."

"Yes, it's Carr. I asked for her card. C-a-r-r. I think she's a widow."

From her retreat behind one of the velvet curtains Madame overheard this
conversation, and a few minutes later she stopped Gabriella on her way
out, and said amiably that it would not be necessary for her to leave
the showroom to-morrow.

"I believe you can do better there than in the workroom," she added,
"and, after all, that is really very important--to tell people what they
want. It is astounding how few of them have the slightest idea what
they are looking for."

"But I want to get that hat right. I left it unfinished, and I don't
like to give up while it is wrong," replied Gabriella, not wholly
pleased by the command.

But Madame, of a flightier substance notwithstanding her business
talents, waved aside the remark as insignificant and without bearing
upon her immediate purpose.

"I am going to try you with the gowns," she said resolutely; "I want to
see if you catch on there as quickly as you did with the hats--I mean
with the sale, of course, for your work, I'm sorry to say, has been
rather poor so far. But I'll try you with the next customer who comes to
place a large order. They are always so eager for new suggestions, and
you have suggestions of a sort to make, I am sure. I can't quite tell,"
she concluded uncertainly, "whether or not your ideas have any practical
value, but they sound well as you describe them, and to talk
attractively helps; there is no doubt of that."

It was closing time, and Miss Fisher, one of the skirt fitters, came up,
in her black alpaca apron with a pair of scissors suspended by red tape
from her waist, to ask Madame a question. As Mrs. Bydington had not kept
her appointment, was it not impossible to send her gown home as they had
promised?

"Oh, it makes no difference," replied Madame blandly, for she was in a
good humour. "She'll come back when she is ready. The next time she is
here, by the way, I want her to see Mrs. Fowler--I mean Mrs. Carr. She
has worn out every one else in the place, and yet she is never
satisfied; but I'd like her to take that pink velvet from Gautier,
because nobody else is likely to give the price." The day was over and
Madame's blandness was convincing evidence of her satisfaction.

As Gabriella passed through the last showroom, where the disorder of the
sale was still visible, she saw Miss Murphy, the handsomest and the
haughtiest of the young women, wearily returning the few rejected hats
to the ivory-tinted cases.

"You are glad it is over, I know," she remarked sympathetically, less
from any active interest in Miss Murphy's state of feeling than from an
impulsive desire to establish human relations with her fellow
saleswoman. If Miss Murphy would have it so, she preferred to be
friendly.

"I am so tired I can hardly stand on my feet," replied Miss Murphy,
piteously. Her pretty rose-leaf skin had faded to a dull pallor; there
were heavy shadows under her eyes; her helmet of wheaten-red hair had
slipped down over her forehead, and even her firmly corseted figure
appeared to have grown limp and yielding. Without her offensive elegance
she was merely a pathetic and rather silly young thing.

"I'll help you," said Gabriella, taking up several hats from a chair.
"The others have gone, haven't they?"

"They got out before I'd finished waiting on that middle-aged frump who
doesn't know what she wants any more than the policeman out there at the
corner does. She's made me show her all we've got left, and after she'd
tried them all on, she said they're too high, and she's going to think
over them before she decides. She's still waiting for something, and my
head's splitting so I can hardly see what I'm doing." With a final
surrender of her arrogance, she grew suddenly confidential and
childish. "I'm sick enough to die," she finished despairingly, "and I've
got a friend coming to take me to the theatre at eight o'clock."

"Well, run away. I'll attend to this. But I'd try to rest before I went
out if I were you."

"You're a perfect peach," responded Miss Murphy gratefully. "I said all
along I didn't believe you were stuck up and snobbish."

Then she ran out, and Gabriella, after surveying the customer for a
minute, selected the most unpromising hat in the case, and presented it
with a winning smile for the woman's inspection.

"Perhaps something like this is what you are looking for?" she remarked
politely, but firmly.

The customer, an acidulous, sharp-featured, showily dressed person--the
sort, Gabriella decided, who would enjoy haggling over a
bargain--regarded the offered hat with a supercilious and guarded
manner, the true manner of the haggler.

"No, that is not bad," she observed dryly, "but I don't care to give
more than ten dollars."

"It was marked down from thirty," replied Gabriella, and her manner was
as supercilious and as guarded as the other's. There were women, she had
found, who were impressed only by insolence, and, when the need arose,
she could be quite as insolent as Miss Murphy. Unlike Miss Murphy,
however, she was able to distinguish between those you must encourage
and those you must crush; and this ability to draw reasonable
distinctions was, perhaps, her most valuable quality as a woman of
business.

"I don't care to pay more than ten dollars," reiterated the customer in
a scolding voice. Rising from her chair, she fastened her furs, which
were cheap and showy, with a defiant and jerky movement, and flounced
out of the shop.

That disposed of, Gabriella put on her coat, which she had taken off
again for the occasion, and went out into the street, where the night
had already fallen. After her long hours in the overheated air of the
showrooms, she felt refreshed and invigorated by the cold wind, which
stung her face as it blew singing over the crossings. Straight ahead
through the grayish-violet mist the lights were blooming like flowers,
and above them a few stars shone faintly over the obscure frowning
outlines of the buildings. Fifth Avenue was thronged, and to her anxious
mind there seemed to be hollowness and insincerity in the laughter of
the crowd.

At the house in East Fifty-seventh Street, from which she would be
moving the next day, she found Judge Crowborough awaiting her in the
dismantled drawing-room, where packing-cases of furniture and pictures
lay scattered about in confusion. In the dreadful days after Archibald
Fowler's death, the judge had been very kind, and she had turned to him
instinctively as the one man in New York who was both able and willing
to be of use to her. Though he had never attracted her, she had been
obliged to admit that he possessed a power superior to superficial
attractions.

"I dropped in to ask what I might do for you now?" he remarked with the
dignity of one who possesses an income of half a million dollars a year.
"It's a pity you have to leave this house. I remember when Archibald
bought it--somewhere back in the 'seventies--but I suppose there's no
help for it, is there?"

"No, there's no help." She sat down on a packing-case, and he stood
gazing benevolently down on her with his big, soft hands clasped on the
head of his walking-stick and his overcoat on his arm. "I've rented
three rooms in one of the apartments of the old Carolina over on the
West Side near Columbus Avenue. The rest of the apartment is rented to
art students, I believe, and we must all use the same kitchen and the
same bath-tub," she added with a laugh. "Of course it isn't luxury, but
we shan't mind very much as soon as we get used to it. I couldn't be
much poorer than I was before my marriage."

"But the children? You've got to have the children looked after."

"I've been so fortunate about that," her voice was quite cheerful again.
"There's a seamstress from my old home--Miss Polly Hatch--who has known
me all my life, and she is coming to sleep in a little bed in my room
until we can afford to rent an extra bedroom. As long as she has to work
at home anyhow, she can very easily look after the children while I am
away. They are good children, and as soon as they are big enough I'll
have to send them to school--to the public school, I'm afraid." This,
because of Fanny's violent opposition, was a delicate point with her.
She felt that she should like to start the children at a private school,
but it was clearly impossible.

"The boy won't be big enough for a year or two, will he?" He was
interested, she saw, and this unaffected interest in her small affairs
moved her almost to tears.

"I wanted him to go to kindergarten, but, of course, I cannot afford it.
He is only four and a half, and I'm teaching him myself in the
evenings. Already he can read very well in the first reader," she
finished proudly.

For a minute the judge stared moodily down on her. His sagging cheeks
took a pale purplish flush, and he bit his lower lip with his large
yellow teeth, which reminded Gabriella of the tusks of a beast of prey.
Then he laid his overcoat and his stick carefully down on a
packing-case, and held out his hand.

"I'm going now, and there's one thing I want to ask you--have you any
money?"

It was out at last, and she looked up composedly, smiling a little
roguishly at his embarrassment.

"I have six hundred dollars in bank for a rainy day, and I am making
exactly fifteen dollars a week."

"But you can't live on it. Nobody could live on it even without two
children to bring up."

She shook her head. "Oh, Judge Crowborough, how little you rich men
really know! I've got to live on it until I can do better, and I hope
that will be very soon. If I am worth anything now, in three months I
ought to be worth certainly as much as twenty-five dollars a week. In a
little while--as soon as I've caught on to the business--I'm going to
ask for a larger salary, and I think I shall get it. Twenty-five dollars
a week won't go very far, but you don't know how little some people can
live on even in New York."

"As soon as the six hundred dollars go you'll be headed straight for
starvation," he protested, sincerely worried.

"Perhaps, but I doubt it."

"How much do you have to pay for your rooms?"

"Twenty-five dollars a month. It isn't much of a place, you see, as far
as appearances go. Fortunately, I have a little furniture of my own
which Mrs. Fowler had given me."

His embarrassment had passed away, and he was smiling now at the
recollection of it.

"Well, you're a brick, little girl," he said, "and I like your spirit,
but, after all, why can't you put your pride in your pocket, and let me
lend you a few thousands? You needn't borrow much--not enough to keep a
carriage--but you might at least take a little just to show you aren't
proud--just to show you'll be friends. It seems a downright shame that I
should have money to throw away, and you should be starting out to pinch
and scrape on fifteen dollars a week. Fifteen dollars a week! Good Lord,
what are we coming to?"

She was not proud, and she wanted to be friends, but she shook her head
obstinately, though she was still smiling. "Not now--not while I can
help it--but if I ever get in trouble--in real trouble--I'll remember
your offer. If the children fall ill or I lose my place, I'll come to
you in a minute."

"Honour bright? It's a promise?"

"It's a promise."

"And you'll let me keep an eye on you?"

She laughed with the natural gaiety which he found so delightful. "You
may keep two eyes on me if you will!"

He had already reached the door when, turning suddenly, he said with
heavy gravity: "You don't mind my asking what you're going to do about
George, do you?

"No, I don't mind. As soon as I can afford it, I shall get my freedom,
but everything costs, you know, even justice."

"I could help you there, couldn't I?"

From the gratitude in her eyes he read her horror of the marriage which
still bound her. "You could--and, oh, if you would, I'd never, never
forget it," she answered.

Then they parted, and he went out into the cold, with a strange warmth
like the fire of youth at his heart, while she ran eagerly up the
uncarpeted stairs to the nursery.

The trunks were packed, the boxes were nailed down, and the two children
were playing shipwreck while they ate a supper of bread and milk at a
table made from the bare top of a packing-case. Several days before the
nurse had left without warning, and Miss Polly sat now, in hat and
mantle, on one of the little beds which would be taken down the next day
and sent over to the apartment on the West Side.

"I've been to the Carolina and unpacked the things that had come," she
said at Gabriella's entrance. "Those rooms ain't so bad as New York
rooms go; but it does seem funny, don't it, to cook in the same kitchen
with a lot of strangers you never laid eyes on befo'? I br'iled some
chops for the children right alongside of an old maid who had come all
the way up from New Orleans to study music--imagine, at her age! Why,
she couldn't be a day under fifty! And on the other side there was the
mother of a girl who's at the art school, or whatever you call it, where
they teach you paintin'. They are from somewhere up yonder in New
England and their home folks had sent 'em a pumpkin pie. She gave me a
slice of it, but I never did think much of pumpkin. It can't hold a
candle to sweet potato pudding, and I wouldn't let the children touch
it for fear it might set too heavy in the night. I ain't got much use
for Yankee food, nohow."

"I hope the place is perfectly sanitary," was Gabriella's anxious
rejoinder. "The front room gets some sunshine in the afternoon, doesn't
it?"

"It's a horrid street. I don't want to live there," wailed Fanny, who
had rebelled from the beginning against her fallen fortunes. "I got my
white shoes dirty, and there were banana peels all about. A man has a
fruit-stand in the bottom of our house. Don't let's go there to live,
mother."

"You'll have to wear black shoes now, darling, and you mustn't mind the
fruit-stand. It will be a good place to buy oranges."

"I like it," said Archibald stoutly. "I like to slide on banana peels,
and I like the man. He has black eyes and a red handkerchief in his
pocket. Will you buy me a red handkerchief, mamma? He has a boy, too. I
saw him. He can skate on roller skates, and the boy has a dog and the
dog has a black ear. May I have roller skates for my birthday, and a
dog--a small one--and may I ask the boy up to play with me?"

"But the boy is ugly and so is the dog. I hate ugly people," complained
Fanny.

"I like ugly people," retorted Archibald, glowering, not from anger, but
from earnestness. "Ugly people are nicer than pretty ones, aren't they,
mamma? Pang is nicer than Fanny."

He was always like that even as a baby, always on the side of the
unfortunate, always fighting valiantly for the under dog. With his large
head, his grotesque spectacles, and his pouting lips, he bore a curious
resemblance to a brownie, yet when one observed him closely, one saw
that there was a remarkable blending of strength and sweetness in his
expression.

The next day Miss Polly finished the moving, and at six o'clock
Gabriella went home in the Harlem elevated train to the grim,
weather-beaten apartment house on the upper West Side. The pavements, as
Fanny had scornfully observed, were not particularly clean; the air, in
spite of the sharp wind which blew from the river, had a curiously
stagnant quality; and the rumble of the elevated road, at the opposite
side of the house, reached her in a vibrating undercurrent which was
punctuated now and then by the staccato cries of the street. The house,
which had been built in a benighted and spacious period, stood now as an
enduring refuge for the poor in purse but proud in spirit. A few studios
on the roof were still occupied by artists, while the hospitable
basement sheltered a vegetable market, a corner drug-store, a
fruit-stand, and an Italian bootblack. Within the bleak walls, from
which the stucco had peeled in splotches, the life of the city had ebbed
and flowed for almost half a century, like some deep wreck-strewn
current which bore the seeds of the future as well as the driftwood of
the past on its bosom. One might never have set foot outside those
gloomy doors and yet have seen the whole of life pass as in a vivid
dream through the dim halls, lighted by flickering gas and carpeted in
worn strips of brown carpet. And once inside the apartments one might
have found, sometimes, cheerfulness, beauty of line and colour, and a
certain spaciousness which the modern apartment house, with its rooms
like closets, its startling electricity, and its more hygienic
conditions of living, could not provide. It was because she could find
space there that Gabriella, guided by Miss Polly, had rented the rooms.

She passed the drug-store and the fruit-stand, entered the narrow hail,
where a single gas-jet flickered dimly beside the door of the elevator,
and after touching the bell, stood patiently waiting. After a time she
rang again, and presently, with deliberate ease and geniality, the negro
who worked the elevator descended slowly, with a newspaper in his hand,
and opened the door for her.

"Good evening, Robert," she said pleasantly, for he also was from
Virginia, and the discovery of the bond between them had given Gabriella
a feeling of confidence. Like Miss Folly, she had never become entirely
accustomed to white servants.

The ropes moved again, the elevator ascended perilously to the fifth
floor, and Gabriella walked quickly along the hall, and slipped her
latchkey into the keyhole of the last apartment. As the door opened, a
woman in worn black came out and spoke to her in passing. She was the
old maid of Miss Folly's narrative, and her face, ardent, haggard, with
the famished look which comes from a starved soul, gazed back at
Gabriella with a touching expression of admiration and envy. There were
spots of vivid colour in her cheeks, and this brightness, combined with
her gray hair, gave her a theatrical and artificial appearance.

"I have been playing to your little boy, Mrs. Carr," she said with the
manner which Miss Polly had described as "flighty." "He came into my
room when he heard the piano, and it was a real pleasure to play for
him."

"You are very good," returned Gabriella, wondering vaguely who she was,
for she was obviously the kind of woman people wondered about. "I hope
Archibald didn't make himself troublesome."

"Oh, no, I enjoyed him. My name is Danton. I am Miss Danton," she added
effusively, "and I'm so glad you have come into this apartment. My room
is the one next to yours."

Then she fluttered off, with her look of spiritual hunger, and Gabriella
closed the door and went on to her rooms, which were at the opposite end
of the hail from the kitchen. On the way she passed the pretty art
student, who was coming from the bathroom, with a freshly powdered face
and a pitcher of water in her hand, and again she was obliged to stop to
hear news of the children.

"I'm so glad to have your little girl here. I want to paint her. I'm
just crazy about her face," said the girl, whose name she learned
afterwards was Rosy Plover. Though she was undeniably pretty, and had
just powdered her face with scented powder, she had a slovenly, unkempt
appearance which Gabriella, from that moment, associated with art
students. "If she'd only dress herself properly, she'd be a beauty," she
thought, with the aversion of one who is an artist in clothes. She
herself, after her long, hard day, was as neat and trim as she had been
in the morning. Her severe black suit was worn with grace, and hung
perfectly; her crape collar was immaculately fresh; her mourning veil
fell in charming folds over her hat brim. "It's a pity some one can't
tell her," she mused, as she smiled and hurried on to the doubtful
seclusion of her own end of the apartment.

With the opening of the door, the children fell rapturously into her
arms, and while she took off her hat and coat, Miss Polly laid the
table for supper in front of the ruddy glow of the fire. On the fender a
plate of buttered toast was keeping warm, a delicious aroma of coffee
scented the air, and a handful of red carnations made a cheerful bit of
colour in the centre of the white tablecloth. It was a pleasant picture
for a tired woman to gaze on, and the ruddy glow of the fire was
reflected in Gabriella's heart while she enfolded her children. After a
day in Madame's hothouse atmosphere, it was delightful to return to this
little centre of peace and love, and to feel that its very existence
depended upon the work of her brain and hands. The children, she
realized, had never loved her so dearly. In better days, when she was
rarely separated from them for more than a few hours at a time, they had
seemed rather to take her care and her presence for granted; but now,
after an absence of nine hours, she had become a delight and an
enchantment, something to be looked forward to and longingly talked
about through the whole afternoon.

"Mother, you've been away forever," said Fanny, folding her veil for her
and putting away her furs.

"Are you going every day just like this for ever and ever?

"Every day, darling, but I'm here every night. Shall I run back to the
kitchen and broil the chops, Miss Polly?"

But the chops were already broiled, for Miss Polly had finished her
sewing early, and she had beaten up two tiny cups of custard for the
children.

"It's nicer than nursery suppers, isn't it, Fanny?" asked Archibald a
little later while he ate his bread and milk from a blue bowl. "Mother,
I like being poor. Let's stay poor always."

A phrase of Mrs. Fowler's, "happiness costs so little," floated through
Gabriella's mind as she poured Miss Folly's coffee out of the tin coffee
pot. She was so tired that her body ached; her feet were smarting and
throbbing from the long standing; and her eyes stung from the cold wind
and the glare of the elevated train; but she knew that in spite of these
discomforts she was not unhappy--that she was, indeed, far happier than
she had been for the past six years in the hushed suspense of her
father-in-law's house. When she had carried the supper things back to
the sink in the kitchen, had taught the children their lessons, heard
their prayers, and put them to bed, she repeated the words to herself
while she sat sewing beside the lamp in front of the comforting glow of
the fire, "After all, happiness costs so little."

The next morning, and on every morning throughout the winter, she was up
by six o'clock, and had taken in the baker's rolls and the bottle of
milk from the outer door before Miss Polly or the children were
stirring. Then, having dressed quickly, she ran back to the kitchen and
made the coffee and boiled the eggs while the other lodgers were still
sleeping. Sometimes the mother of one of the art students would join her
over the gas range, but usually her neighbours slept late and then
darted through the hall in kimonos, with tumbled hair, to a hurried
breakfast at the kitchen table.

Her life was so busy that there was little time for anxiety, and less
for futile and painful dwelling upon the past. To get through the day as
best she could, to start the children well and in a good humour, to make
herself useful, if not indispensable, to Madame, to return with a mind
clear and fresh enough to give Fanny and Archibald intelligent lessons,
to sew on their clothes or her own until midnight, and then to drop into
bed, with aching limbs and a peaceful brain, too tired even to
dream--these things made the life that she looked forward to, week after
week, month after month, year after year. It was a hard life, as Miss
Polly often remarked, but hard or soft, her strength was equal to it,
her health was good, her interest in her work and in her children never
flagged for a minute. Only on soft spring days, coming home in the dusk,
she would sometimes pass carts filled with hyacinths, and in a wave the
memory of Arthur and of her first love would rush over her. Then she
would see Arthur's face, gentle, protective, tender, as it had looked on
that last evening, and for an instant her lost girlhood and her
girlhood's dream would envelop her like the fragrance of flowers. At
such moments she thought of this love as tenderly as a mother might have
thought of the exquisite dead face of an infant who had lived only an
hour. Though it was over, though it bore no part, with its elusive
loveliness, in her practical plans for the future, this dream became
gradually, as the years passed, the most radiant and vital thing in her
life. Though it was so vague as to be without warmth, it was as vivid
and as real as light. The knowledge that in the past she had known
perfect love, even though in her blindness she had thrust it aside, was
a balm which healed her wounds and gave her courage to go on, friendless
and alone, into the loveless stretch of the future. There was hardly a
minute of her day for the next three years which was not sweetened by
this hyacinth-scented dream of the past, there was hardly an hour of her
drudgery which was not ennobled and irradiated by the splendour of this
love that she had lost.

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