Viola Gwyn Part 19

"About you and Barry?"

"Well,--not so much about me and Barry as about the way I--Oh, you needn't smile, mother. He isn't going to make any fuss about Barry.

He told me in plain words that he did not care whether I married him or not,--or ran away with him, for that matter. You will not get much support from him, let me tell you. And now I have something I want to say to you. We may as well have it out now as any other time. I am going to marry Barry Lapelle." There was a ring of defiance in her voice.

Rachel Gwyn looked at her steadily for a moment before responding to this out-and-out challenge.

"I think it would be only fair of you," she began, levelly, "to tell Mr. Lapelle just what he may expect in case he marries you.

Tell him for me that you will never receive a penny or an inch of land when I die. I shall cut you off completely. Tell him that. It may make some difference in his calculations."

Viola flared. "You have no right to insinuate that he wants to marry me for your money or your lands. He wants me for myself,--he wants me because he loves me."

"I grant you that," said Mrs. Gwyn, nodding her head slowly, "He would be a fool not to want you--now. You are young and you are very pretty. But after he has been married a few years and you have become an old song to him, he will feel differently about money and lands. I know Mr. Lapelle and his stripe. He wants you now for yourself, but when you are thirty years old he will want you for something entirely different. At any rate, you should make it plain to him that he will get nothing but you,--absolutely nothing but you. Men of his kind do not love long. They love violently--but not long. Idle, improvident men, such as he is, are able to crowd a whole lot of love into a very short s.p.a.ce of time. That is because they have nothing much else to do. They run through with love as they run through with money,--quickly. The man who wastes money will also waste love. And when he has wasted all his love, Barry Lapelle will still want money to waste. Be good enough to make him understand that he will never have a dollar of my money to waste,--never, my child, even though his wife were starving to death."

Viola stared at her mother incredulously, her face paling. "You mean--you mean you would let me starve,--your own daughter? I--why, mother, I can't believe you would be so--"

"I mean it," said Rachel Gwyn, compressing her lips.

"Then," cried Viola, hotly, "you are the most unnatural, cruel mother that ever--"

"Stop! You will not find me a cruel and inhuman mother when you come creeping back to my door after Barry Lapelle has cast you off. I am only asking you to tell him what he may expect from me.

And I am trying hard to convince you of what you may expect from him. There's the end of it. I have nothing more to say."

"But I have something more to say," cried the girl. "I shall tell him all you have said, and I shall marry him in spite of everything. I am not afraid of starving. I don't want a penny of father's money.

He did not choose to give it to me; he gave half of all he possessed to his son by another woman, he ignored me, he cut me off as if I were a--"

"Be careful, my child," warned Rachel Gwyn, her eyes narrowing. "I cannot permit you to question his acts or his motives. He did what he thought was best,--and we--I mean you and I--must abide by his decision."

"I am not questioning your husband's act," said Viola, stubbornly.

"I am questioning my FATHER'S act."

Mrs. Gwyn started. For a second or two her eyes wavered and then fell. One corner of her mouth worked curiously. Then, without a word, she turned away from the girl and left the room.

Viola, greatly offended, heard her ascend the stairs and close a door; then her slow, heavy tread on the boards above. Suddenly the girl's anger melted. The tears rushed to her eyes.

"Oh, what a beast I was to hurt her like that," she murmured, forgetting the harsh, unfeeling words that had aroused her ire, thinking only of the wonder and pain that had lurked in her mother's eyes,--the wonder and pain of a whipped dog. "The only person in all the world who has ever really loved me,--poor, poor old mother."

She stared through her tears at the flames, a little pucker of uncertainty clouding her brow. "I am sure Barry never, never can love me as she does, or be as kind and good to me," she mused.

"I wonder--I wonder if what she says is true about men. I wish he had not gone to drinking to-day. But I suppose the poor boy really couldn't help it. He hates so to be disappointed."

Later on, at supper, she abruptly asked:

"Mother, how old is Kenneth?"

They had spoken not more than a dozen words to each other since sitting down to table, which was set, as usual, in the kitchen.

Both were thoughtful;--one of them was contrite.

Rachel Gwyn, started out of a profound reverie, gave her daughter a sharp, inquiring look before answering.

"I do not know. Twenty-five or six, I suppose."

"Did you know his mother?"

"Yes," after a perceptible pause.

"How long after she died were you and father married?"

"Your father had been a widower nearly two years when we were married," said Rachel, steadily.

"Why doesn't Kenneth spell his name as we do?"

"Gwyn is the way it was spelled a great many years ago, and it is the correct way, according to your father. It was his father, I believe, who added the last two letters,--I do not know why, unless it was supposed to be more elegant."

"It seems strange that he should spell it one way and his own son another," ventured the girl, unsatisfied.

"Kenneth was brought up to spell it in the new-fangled way, I guess,"

was Rachel Gwyn's reply. "You need not ask me questions about the family, Viola. Your father never spoke of them. I am afraid he was not on good terms with them. He was a strange man. He kept things to himself. I do not recollect ever hearing him mention his first wife or his son or any other member of his family in,--well, in twenty years or more."

"I should think you would have been a little bit curious. I know I should."

"I knew all that was necessary for me to know," said Rachel, somewhat brusquely.

"Can't you tell me something more about father's people?" persisted the girl.

"I only know that they lived in Baltimore. They never came west.

Your father was about twenty years old when he left home and came to Kentucky. That is all I know, so do not ask any more questions."

"He never acted like a backwoodsman," said Viola. "He did not talk like one or--"

"He was an educated man. He came of a good family."

"And you are different from the women we used to see down the river.

Goodness, I was proud of you and father. There isn't a woman in this town who--"

"I was born in Salem, Ma.s.sachusetts, and lived there till I was nearly twenty," interrupted Mrs. Gwyn, calmly. "I taught school for two years after my father died. My mother did not long survive him. After her death I came west with my brother and his wife and a dozen other men and women. We lived in a settlement on the Ohio River for several years. My brother was killed by the Indians.

His widow took their two small children and went back to Salem to live. I have never heard from her. We did not like each other. I was glad to have her go."

"Where did you first meet father?"

She regretted the question the instant the words were out of her mouth. The look of pain,--almost of pleading,--in her mother's eyes caused her to reproach herself.

"Forgive me, mother," she cried. "I did not stop to think. I know how it hurts you to talk about him, and I should have--"

"Be good enough to remember in the future," said Rachel Gwyn, sternly, her eyes now cold and forbidding. She arose and stalked to the kitchen window, where she stood for a long time looking out into the gathering darkness.

"Clear the table, Hattie," said Viola, presently. "We are through."

Then she walked over to her mother and timidly laid an arm across her shoulder.

"I am sorry, mother," she said.