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Life and Gabriella by Ellen Glasgow

E >> Ellen Glasgow >> Life and Gabriella




As she sat there behind the mammoth coffee urn, from which a spiral of
steam floated, her handsome face irradiated the spirit of kindness.
Because of her rather short figure, she appeared at her best when she
was sitting, and now, with her large, tightly laced hips hidden beneath
the table and her firm, jet-plastered bosom appearing above it, she
presented a picture of calm and matronly beauty. Not once did she seem
to think of herself or her own breakfast. Even while she buttered her
toast and drank her steaming coffee, her bright blue eyes travelled
unceasingly over the table, first to her husband's plate, then to
Gabriella's, then to her son's. It was easy to see that she was the
dominant and vital force in the household. She ruled Archibald, less
indirectly perhaps, but quite as consistently as Cousin Pussy ruled
Cousin Jimmy.

"My dear, you must eat your breakfast," she said urgently to her
daughter-in-law. "Archibald, let me give you your second cup of coffee.
Remember what a trying day you have before you, and make a good
breakfast. It is so hard to get him to eat," she explained to Gabriella;
"I have to coax him to drink his two cups of coffee, for if he doesn't
he is sure to come home with a headache."

"Well, give me a cup, Evelyn," replied Mr. Fowler, in his gentle voice,
yielding apparently to please her. In his youth he must have been very
handsome, Gabriella thought; but now, though he still retained a certain
distinction, he had the look of a man who has been drained of his
vitality. What surprised her--for she had heard him described as "a hard
man in business"--was the suggestion of the scholar in his appearance.
With his narrow, carefully brushed head, his dreamy and rather wistful
blue eyes behind gold-rimmed glasses, his stooping, slender shoulders,
and his long, delicate hands covered with prominent veins, he ought to
have been either a poet or a philosopher.

"You must be happy with us, my dear," he had said to Gabriella, showing
a minute later such gentle eagerness to return to a part of the
newspaper which Gabriella had never read and did not understand, that
his wife remarked pityingly: "Read your paper, Archibald, and don't let
our chatter disturb you. There are a thousand things I want to say to
the children."

"Well, it's time for me to be going, Evelyn," Mr. Fowler responded,
reluctantly folding the pages; "I'll look into this on the way down."

"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. Nobody 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 buttered 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 passion 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 gods 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
passionately 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 noble 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.

"Oh, Patty has all the furs she'll need for years. We spent every penny
we had on Patty before she married," answered Mrs. Fowler, but she was
saying to herself: "Yes, the girl is the right wife for him. I am sure
she is the right wife for him."

The Park was brilliant with falling leaves, and as they drove beneath a
perfect sky beside a lake which sparkled like sapphire, Gabriella,
lifting her chin above the white furs, said rapturously, "Oh, I am so
happy! Life is so beautiful!"

A shadow stole into the eyes with which Mrs. Fowler was watching the
passing carriages, and the fixed sweetness about her mouth melted into
an expression of yearning. Tears veiled the faces of the women who spoke
to her in passing, for she was thinking of her first drive in the Park
with her husband, and though her marriage had been a happy one, she felt
a strange longing as if she wanted to weep.

"I never saw such wonderful horses," said Gabriella. "Cousin Jimmy would
be wild about them;" and she added impetuously, "But the hats aren't in
the least like the one I am wearing." A misgiving seized her as she
realized that her dresses, copied by Miss Polly with ardent fidelity
from a Paris fashion book, were all hopelessly wrong. She wondered if
her green silk gown with the black velvet sleeves was different in style
from the gowns the other women were wearing under their furs? Had
sleeves of a different colour from the bodice, which Miss Polly
considered the last touch of elegance, really gone out of fashion?

The carriage passed out of the Park, and turning into one of the streets
on the upper West Side stopped presently before a small dingy apartment
house, where a dozen ragged children were playing leapfrog on the
pavement.

"Patty has the top floor--there's a studio." Drawing her skirts away
from the children, for her generation feared contact with the lower
classes, Mrs. Fowler walked briskly to the low brown steps, on which an
ash can stood waiting for removal. Inside, where the hall smelled
uninvitingly of stale cooking, they rang for the elevator under a dim
yellow light which revealed a hundred secret lines in their faces.

"I can't imagine how Patty puts up with the place," remarked Patty's
mother dejectedly. "You wouldn't believe the trouble we went to to start
her well. She was the acknowledged beauty of her winter--everybody was
crazy about her looks--and the very week before she ran off with Billy
she had a proposal from the Duke of Toxbridge. Of course, if I'd ever
dreamed she had a fancy for Billy, I'd have kept him out of her sight
instead of allowing him to paint her portrait whenever she had any time
she could spare. But who on earth would have suspected it? Billy King,
whom she had known all her life, as poor as a church mouse, and the kind
of painter whose work will never 'take' if he lives to be a thousand!
His portraits may be good art--I don't pretend to know anything about
that--but I do know pictures of pretty women when I see them, and his
women are frights, every last one of them. If you're thin, he paints
your skeleton, and if you're fat, he makes you as square as a house,
and, thin or fat, he always gives you a blue and yellow complexion. He
wouldn't even make Patty white, though I implored him to do it--and he
made her look exactly ten years older than her age."

"I've never seen any portraits of living people--only of ancestors,"
said Gabriella, "and I am so much interested."

"Well, you mustn't judge them by Billy's, my dear, even if he did get
all those prizes in Paris. But I always said the French were queer, and
if they hadn't been, they would never have raved so over the things
Billy painted. Now, Augustus Featherfield's are really charming. One can
tell to look at his portraits that he paints only ladies, and he gives
them all the most perfectly lovely hair, whether they have it or not.
Some day I'll take you to his studio and let you see for yourself."

The elevator descended, creaking beneath the weight of a negro youth who
seemed half asleep, and a little later, creaking more loudly, it bore
them slowly upward to the top of the house.

"I feel as if I were taking my life in my hands whenever I come here,"
observed Mrs. Fowler, in the tone of dispassionate resignation with
which she always discussed Patty and the surroundings amid which Patty
lived. Marching resolutely, though disapprovingly, down a long hall, she
pressed a small bell at the side of a door, and stood, holding tightly
to the bundle of curtains, while her expression of unnatural
pleasantness grew almost painful in its determination. Here, also, they
waited some time, and when at last the door was opened by an agitated
maid, without an apron, and they were led into a long, queerly furnished
studio, with a balcony from which they had a distant cloudless view of
the river, Gabriella felt for a minute that she must have fallen into a
dream. Long afterwards she learned that Billy's studio was charming,
with its blurred Italian tapestries, which had faded to an exquisite
tone, with its broken torsos of old marble, warming to deep ivory in the
sunlight, with its ecstatic haloed saints praying against dim Tuscan
landscapes, with its odd and unexpected seats of carved stone on which
the cushions made strange splotches and pools of colour. At the time,
seen through provincial eyes, it seemed merely "queer" to her; and
queerer still appeared the undraped figures of women, all lean lines and
violet shadows, which, unframed and unhung, filled the dusty corners.

"The river is lovely, but it is so far away," she said, turning her
abashed eyes from the nude figures, and thinking how terribly they would
have shocked the innocence of Cousin Jimmy.

"I always look at the river when I come here," responded Mrs. Fowler,
and her tone implied that the river at least was perfectly proper. "A
month ago the colours were wonderful."

In the drive, which they could see from a corner view, a few old men,
forgotten by time, warmed themselves in the sunlight. Far below, the
river reflected the changeable blue of the sky, while the autumnal
pageantry on the horizon was fading slowly, like a burned-out fire, to
the colour of ashes.

"Mother, dear, I'm so glad," said a gay voice in the doorway, and
turning quickly, Gabriella stared with wide eyes at the vision of
Patty--of Patty in some soft tea-gown, which borrowed its tone from the
old tapestries on the wall, with her honey-coloured hair hanging over
her shoulders, and her eyes as fresh as blue flowers in the ivory pallor
of her face.

"And this is Gabriella," she added, holding out her arms. "What a
darling you are to come so soon, Gabriella."

She was a tall girl, so tall that she stooped to kiss Gabriella, whose
height measured exactly five feet and seven inches, and she was
beautiful with the faultless beauty which is seen only once or twice in
a generation, but which, seen once, is never forgotten. For Patty's
beauty, as a poet once wrote of a dead woman, was the beauty of destiny,
the beauty that changes history and turns men into angels or into
beasts. Though Gabriella had seen lovely skins on Southern
women--rose-leaf skins, magnolia skins, peach-blossom skins--she had
seen nothing that resembled the exquisite colour and texture of Patty's
face.

"The curtains were finished, so I brought them," said Mrs. Fowler,
pointing to the bundle. "I wanted Gabriella to see the Park. You are
coming to-night without fail, aren't you, Patty?"

"Without fail, even if we have to walk," answered Patty. "You can't
imagine how much it costs to get about when one lives so far uptown.
That's one reason we are anxious to move. Billy has been looking for a
studio for weeks, and, do you know, he has really found one at last.
Harry Allen is moving out of the Rubens Building, and we are going to
take his studio on the top floor. We're awfully lucky, too, to get it,
for it is the first vacancy there for years."

"But it's over a stable, isn't it?" asked Mrs. Fowler. "How could you
possibly live there? And the East Side way down there is just as bad as
up here"

"I believe there is a stable, but it won't bother us--we're too high,"
replied Patty.

"Well, we can't stop; Gabriella hasn't unpacked her trunks," returned
Mrs. Fowler; "but be sure to come early, Patty. I want your father to
see you."

"I wish there wasn't going to be anybody else. I want to talk to my
sister. Isn't it lovely to have a sister, and mamma was too selfish to
give me one. Do you call her 'mamma,' too, Gabriella?"

"Of course she calls me 'mamma,'" answered Mrs. Fowler before Gabriella
could speak, "and she is a much better daughter already than you ever
were."

"And a much better son, too, than George ever was?" asked Patty slyly.

"We aren't talking about George. George has settled down," said Mrs.
Fowler quickly, too quickly it occurred to Gabriella, who was eager to
hear all that the daring Patty would say. "Don't you think those white
furs look well on Gabriella?"

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