Life and Gabriella Part 11

"Very well, dearest, I shan't bother you," she said cheerfully, "only, of course, I couldn't possibly leave mother with Jane and Charley. She doesn't realize it, but she would be perfectly miserable."

"She told me that leaving Richmond was like death to her."

"That's only because she knows she's going," answered Gabriella, but her endeavour to explain her mother's habit of mind appeared to her to be so hopeless that she added unconvincingly: "You can't imagine how dependent she is on me. Jane doesn't know how to manage her at all, though they are so much alike."

"Well, of course, if we live at home--"

"But you promised me we'd be to ourselves, George; you can't have forgotten it. We talked it over, every bit of it, and I told you in the beginning I couldn't leave mother."

"If you loved me enough to marry me, I should think you'd be willing to give up your family for me." He spoke doggedly; it was his way to speak doggedly when he was driving a point.

"It isn't that, dear, you know it isn't that."

Taking a letter from his pocket, he drew a sheet of blue note paper, closely interlined, from the envelope, and handed it to her.

"You can see for yourself how it is," he said in an aggrieved voice. By his tone he had managed to put her in the wrong as utterly as if she, not he, were trying to break her word. Yet she had told him in the very beginning that she could not leave her mother; she had refused to engage herself to him until he had offered Mrs. Carr a home with them. It had all been carefully arranged at the start, and now, within a month of their marriage, he had apparently forgotten that the matter was settled.

Leaning forward until the light fell on the paper, she read with trembling lips:

My Dear Son:

Your letter was a blow to me because you had said nothing of Gabriella's plan to bring her mother to New York to live with her, and, of course, this makes it out of the question that you should come straight to us. Now that Patty has gone--poor child, I am afraid she will live to repent her rashness--your father and I had quite looked forward to having you young people in the house; but we haven't room, even if I could bring myself to face the prospect of a rival mother-in-law under the same roof with me--and frankly I can't. And your father has simply put his foot down on the idea. As you know he hasn't been very well of late--the doctor says he is threatened with diabetes--so my one thought is to spare him every useless anxiety. He sleeps very badly and doesn't seem able, even at night, to detach his mind from his business worries. If he hadn't had such a bad summer, he might have been able to help you start housekeeping, but there have been a great many failures in the last few months, and he says he is obliged to cut down all his expenses in order to tide over the depression in the market. We are trying to retrench in every possible way, and, for this reason, I fear we shall hardly be able to go down to your wedding. This is a terrible disappointment to us both, and your father is particularly distressed because he will not be able to add to your income this year. Of course, if you should change your mind and decide to come to us, we can get Patty's old room ready for you at once, and turn yours into a sitting-room. Think this over and let me know as soon as you possibly can.

I see Patty occasionally. She is in high spirits, but looking a little thinner, I think. Billy has painted a portrait of Mrs.

Pletheridge, but it isn't a bit flattering, and he wouldn't let her wear her pearls, so I'm afraid she won't buy it. I don't believe he will ever make anything of himself. What a waste when Patty might have been d.u.c.h.ess of Toxbridge. Though I am not a bit worldly, I can't help regretting all that she has lost.

Your loving mother,

EVELYN FOWLER.

When she had folded the letter and given it back to him, Gabriella dropped her hands in her lap and sat gazing thoughtfully at the square of sunlight by the window.

"If you cared as much as I do, you'd be willing to give up your family,"

he said suddenly, encouraged not only by her manner, which appeared yielding, but by his secret ineradicable conviction that her love was greater than his. Across the romantic screen of his features there flashed a swift change of expression, like the flicker of light on a coloured mask. If she could only have looked through the charming vacancy of his face, she would have been surprised to discover the directness and simplicity of his mental processes. He wanted his way, and he meant, provided it was humanly possible, to have whatever he wanted.

"It isn't that, George. Love has nothing to do with it. It is a question of right."

For a minute he surveyed her moodily; then, rising from her side on the sofa, he took two steps to the window and looked up at the boughs of the poplar tree. The gray squirrel was still there, and he watched it attentively while he pondered his answer. Yes, the whole trouble with Gabriella was too much conscience. This conscience of hers had got in his way before now, and he had suddenly an uneasy feeling, as if he had struck against the vein of iron which lay beneath the rich bloom of her pa.s.sion. The thought of her opposition, of her secret hardness, bitterly angered him. He wanted her--no other woman could satisfy him--but he wanted her utterly different from what she was. He was seized with an indomitable desire to make her over, to change her entirely from that Gabriella with whom he had fallen in love. Of course, she was right as far as the mere facts of the case were concerned. He had promised that her mother should live with them; but he felt indignantly that it was an act of disloyalty for her to be right at his expense. She ought to have given in, and she ought to have given in gracefully, there was no question of that. When a woman loved a man as much as she loved him, it was unreasonable of her to let these innumerable little points of fact come between them; it was ungenerous of her to cling so stubbornly to her advantage. Her very quietness--that look of gentle obstinacy which refused either to fight back or to surrender--irritated him almost to desperation. His temper, always inflammable, suddenly burst out, and he felt that he wanted to shake her. He wanted, indeed, to do anything in the world except the sensible thing of walking out of the house and leaving her to reflection.

"I should think your first duty would be to your husband," he said, while the streak of cruelty which was at the heart of his love showed like a livid mark on the surface of his nature. His mind was conscious of but a single thought while he stood there in the wind which fluttered the curtains and filled the room with the roving scents of October, and this was the bitter longing to make Gabriella over into the girl that he wanted her to become. Though it cost him her love, he felt that he must punish her for being herself.

"Do you mean always to put your mother before me?" he asked pa.s.sionately, after a minute.

Still she did not answer, and in the deep, earnest eyes that she turned on him he saw not anger, not sorrow even, but wonder. As he stretched out his hand, it fell on Mrs. Carr's window box, where a rose geranium remained bright green in the midst of the withered stems of the clove pinks, and the scent of the leaves, as he crushed them between his fingers, evoked a swift memory of Gabriella in one of her soft moods, saying over and over, "I love you! Oh, I do love you!" At the image his temper changed as if by magic, and crossing the room, he bent down and kissed her with a fierceness that bruised her lips.

"I adore you, Gabriella," he said.

Though she had seen these sudden changes in him before, she had never grown wholly used to them. Her deeper nature, with its tranquil brightness, untroubled by pa.s.sing storms, was unprepared for the shallow violence which swept over him, leaving no visible trace of its pa.s.sage.

No, she could not understand him--she could only hope that after they were married the blindness would pa.s.s from her love, and she would attain that completer knowledge for which she was striving so patiently.

The transforming miracle of marriage, she trusted, would reveal this mystery, with so many others.

"How can you hurt me so, George?" she asked with reproachful tenderness.

"It's because you are so stubborn, darling. If you weren't so stubborn I shouldn't do it. Do you know you get almost mulish at times," he added, laughing, while she moved nearer and rubbed her cheek softly against his sleeve.

"You frighten me," she whispered. "I was just beginning to believe that you really meant it."

"Oh, lovers always quarrel. There's nothing in that."

"But I hate to see you angry. It would almost kill me if it lasted longer than a minute. Never let it last, will you, George?"

"Of course not, Goosey. It never has lasted, has it?"

"Goosey" was one of his favourite names for her. He liked it because it gave him a merry feeling of superiority when he said it, and Gabriella liked it for perhaps the same reason. In the first ardour of her self-surrender she caught eagerly at any straw that she might cast on the flame of her pa.s.sion.

"And I'm not really stubborn, dear. Tell me that I'm not really stubborn."

"You darling! I was only teasing you."

"I'll do anything on earth for you that I can, George."

"I know you will, dearest, and you don't honestly care more for your family, do you?"

"I love you better than all the rest of the world put together. There are times when I think it must be wrong to love any man as much as I love you. My grandmother used to say that when you loved like that you 'tempted Providence.' Isn't it dreadful to believe that you could tempt Providence by loving?"

He kissed her throat where a loosened strand of dark hair had fallen against the whiteness.

"Will you do what I ask, Gabriella?"

So it was all to begin over again! He had not really given in, he had not really yielded even while he was kissing her. She closed her eyes, leaning her head on his shoulder. For a moment she felt as if a physical pain were pressing into her forehead.

"Will you do it, Gabriella?" It was as if he put his soul into his voice, wooing her tenderly away from her better judgment. He was testing his power to dominate her; and never had she felt it so vividly, never had her will been so incapable of resisting him as at that instant.

Moving slightly in his arms she looked at the clear red brown of his throat, at his sensitive mouth, with the faint dent in the lower lip, at his bright blue eyes, which had grown soft while he pleaded. His physical power over her was complete, and he knew it. Her flesh had become as soft as flowers in his arms, while her eyes, like dark flames, trembled and fell away from his look.

"It isn't only the thing itself, darling, but I don't like you to refuse me. It hurts me that you won't do what I ask of you."

"If it were anything else, George."

"But it isn't anything else. It is just that I want you to myself--all to myself, after we are married."

"Don't ask me, dearest. If you only knew how it makes me suffer."

Her voice was a caress when she answered, but, as he told himself pa.s.sionately, she had not yielded an inch. Once again he had run against the iron hidden under the bloom.

"Then you refuse absolutely?" he asked, and though his voice quivered still, it was no longer from tenderness. He hated stubbornness, and, most of all, he hated it in the woman who was going to be his wife. A life of continual contradiction, he felt, would be intolerable. A strong will, which he had always admired in himself, became a positive failing in Gabriella. A woman's strength lay, after all, not in force of character, but in sweetness of nature. And yet how lovely she was! How soft, how sweet she looked as she gazed up at him with her radiant eyes.

There was a fascination for him in her tall slenderness, in the graceful curve of her head, which drooped slightly like a dark flower on its stem. Everything about her charmed him, and yet he had never called her beautiful in his thoughts.

"I told you how it was, dear, when you first asked me to marry you," she said, with infinite patience. "I told you that it wasn't fair to ask you to take mother, but that I couldn't possibly leave her alone in her old age. Jane's home is wretchedly unhappy--she can never tell when Charley is to be counted on--and it would kill mother to be dependent on Charley even if he were willing. I see your side, George, indeed, indeed, I do, but I can't--I simply can't act differently. I have always known it was my duty to look after mother--nothing can change that, not even love.