Life and Gabriella Part 16

At five minutes of eight o'clock he came in, with a lighted cigar in his mouth. For the first few days after her marriage there had been a pleasant excitement in the scent of George's cigars in her bedroom. Now, however, habit had dulled the excitement, and the smell of tobacco gave her a headache.

"Oh, George, you are late!" she exclaimed, sinking the lesser into the greater offence after the habit of wives. As if he had all night instead of five minutes before him in which to dress, he stood in the centre of the room, blandly looking her over.

"You're all right," he said after a pause. "I met a fellow at the club I hadn't seen for a year. He had been hunting big game in Africa, and he was telling me about it. By Jove, that is life!"

They had been married but a month; it was their first day at home, and he could linger at the club to talk of big game while she waited for him. Flushed, excited, he stood there on the white bearskin rug midway between the bed and the wood-fire, while she felt his charm stealing like a drug over her senses. Though she had begun to realize the thinness of his mental qualities, she was still as completely in the power of his physical charm as she had been on the day of her wedding.

In the flickering light of the fire he appeared to diffuse the glamour of romance, of adventure; and she felt that this single day in New York had left a vital impression upon him. It was as if he had become suddenly more alive, more inexplicable in his simplicity; and, though she had grasped vaguely the fact that his personality was composed of innumerable reactions, she had never really understood before how entirely he was the creature of his environment. It was as if the very essence of his soul floated there, a variable and fluid quant.i.ty, forever changing form and colour beneath the shallow ripples of his personality. She had seen him in many moods, but never in this one. Did he possess a deeper subtlety than she had imagined or was it the sincerity of his nature that defied a.n.a.lysis?

"Did you enjoy yourself?" she asked cheerfully. Tell me about it."

"Oh, it was rather jolly," he replied, and she knew that this was as much as she should ever get out of him. Beyond a few stock phrases, words hardly existed for him at all, or existed only in foreign languages, for, having been educated abroad, he spoke French and German fluently, if without felicity. Already his inarticulateness was like an enc.u.mbering veil between them--a veil in which she struggled as helplessly as a moth in a net. And only a month ago she had believed that the very immensity of his nature rendered him dumb.

"Then you had better hurry, dear. Dinner is at eight, and you have only a minute."

"You go down and tell them not to wait. I was detained downtown, but it won't take me a second to dress."

As he pa.s.sed under the electric light by the mirror, she saw his face with exaggerated distinctness, as if it were held under a microscope, and a heaviness, which she had never noticed before, marred the edge of his profile. If he hadn't been George, would she have said that he looked stupid at the moment? For a flas.h.i.+ng instant of illumination she saw him with a vision that was not her own, but a stranger's, with a pitiless clearness unsoftened by any pa.s.sion. Then the clearness faded rapidly before an impulse of tenderness, and she told herself that he was merely handsome, gay, and careless, as he had been on their honeymoon. If he would only talk to her, she felt that he would be perfect.

"Yes, I'm going. Come as soon as you can," she said; and catching up her satin train, she descended the oak staircase to the drawing-room, where a fire was burning and the lights were shaded in crimson.

Twenty minutes later, seated at the round table, which was bright with chrysanthemums in tall silver vases, she looked with a feeling of resentment at George's empty place. Why was he so careless? Time had for him, she realized, as little meaning as words had. Then, in the midst of her disquietude, she caught the serene blue eyes of George's mother fixed upon her. With her young face, her red lips, and her superb shoulders rising out of the rich black lace of her gown, Mrs. Fowler looked almost beautiful. Had Patty not been present, with her loveliness like a summer's day, her mother would have seemed hardly more than a girl; but who could s.h.i.+ne while Patty, beside that long, lean man with the gray imperial, smiled with lips that were like a scarlet flower in her face?

There were only four guests, but these four, as Mrs. Fowler had said, "counted for something." The long, lean man beside Patty was one Colonel Buffington, a Virginia lawyer, who had wandered North in search of food in the barren years after the war. As his mind was active in a patient acc.u.mulative fas.h.i.+on, he had become in time a musty storehouse of war anecdotes, and achieving but moderate success in his law practice, his chief distinction, perhaps, was as a professional Southerner. Combining a genial charm of manner with as sterile an intellect as it is possible to attain, he was generally regarded as a perfect example of "the old school," and this picturesque reputation made him desirable as a guest at club dinners as well as at the larger gatherings of the various Southern societies. His conversation, which was entirely anecdotal, consisted of an elaborate endless chain of more or less historical "stories." Social movements and the development of civilization interested him as little as did art or science--for which he entertained a chronic suspicion due to the indiscretions of Darwin. Change of any kind was repugnant to his deeper instincts, and of all changes the ones relating to the habits of women appeared to him to interfere most unwarrantably with the Creator's original plan. For the rest he had the heart of a child, would strip the clothes from his back to give to a friend, or even to an enemy, and possessed an infallible gift for making a dinner successful.

On Colonel Buffington's right sat Mrs. Hamilton, a very pretty, very sprightly widow, with her hair coiled into the fas.h.i.+onable Psyche knot, and the short puffs of her sleeves emphasizing the hour-gla.s.s perfection of her figure. Next to Mrs. Hamilton there was Billy King, who wore a white flower in his b.u.t.tonhole and looked like a soldier out of uniform, and beyond Billy sat Mrs. Crowborough, whom he was trying despairingly to entertain. She, renowned and estimable woman, was planning in her mind what she should say at a board meeting of one of her pet charities on the morrow, a charity which, like all of her favourite ones, concerned itself with the management and spiritual elevation of girl orphans. Tall, raw-boned, strung with jet, Mrs.

Crowborough, who had been married for her money, looked as sympathetic as a moral principle or an organized charity. Unfortunately, for she was rather heavy in company, Judge Crowborough was obliged by custom to bring her to dinner; and she came willingly, inspired less by sociability than by the virtuous instinct which animated her being. Mr.

Fowler had taken her in to dinner, and while she lent an inert attention to Billy's jests, he talked across Gabriella to Judge Crowborough, who was eating his soup with the complete absorption of a man to whom the smallest of his appet.i.ties is sacred. It was a grievance of Mrs.

Fowler's that her husband would never, as she said, "pay any attention to women," and in order to feel a.s.sured of even so much as a cheerful noise at his end of the table, she was obliged to place within hearing distance of him somebody who could talk fluently, if not eloquently, of the stock market.

To Gabriella's surprise, her father-in-law, who had appeared inert and listless at breakfast, became, in the stimulating presence of the judge, not only awake, but mildly animated. She had felt before the charm in his scholarly face, with its look of detached spirituality so strangely out of keeping with the calling he pursued; and she recognized now the quality of controlled force which had enabled him to hold his own in the financial whirlpool of his country. Had the girl known more of life, she would have understood that in the American business world there were hundreds of such men winning their way and leaving their mark at that moment of history--men whose natures were redeemed from grossness by the peculiar idealism they infused into their material battles. Of Scotch-Irish inheritance, the direct descendant of one Gregory Truesdale, who had died a martyr for Presbyterianism, Archibald Fowler was inspired by something of the austere devotion which had fortified his religious ancestor. Since his college days his private life had been irreproachable. Though he was a stronger character than his wife, he regarded her with almost superst.i.tious reverence, and made no decision above Wall Street without consulting her. His heart, and as much of his time as he could spare from business, were hers, and she made the most of them. Women, as women, did not attract him, and he avoided them except at his own table, where custom constrained him to be polite.

After a few courteous words to Mrs. Crowborough, he had turned with relief to her husband.

"You've got a bright chap in your office, Stanley," he said; "that fellow Latham. I was talking to him this morning. He's from Colorado, isn't he?"

"Oh, yes, they're all from the West now," responded the judge--he had sat on the bench in his youth. "Ten years ago the bright ones were from the South, but you Southerners are outstripped to-day, and it's the men from the West who are doing it. There's a fundamental reason there, I suppose, if you go deep enough," he added, fingering the ends of his short gray moustache while he kept an eye on his champagne gla.s.s.

"We've done with mere cla.s.sifying and imitation, and we're waiting for a fresh explosion of raw energy. Now for pure constructive imagination the North and South don't hold a candle--they simply don't hold a candle--to the West. Mark my words, in twenty-five years there'll hardly be a big railroad man in the country who wasn't born in sight of the Rockies."

Unlike Mr. Fowler, whose mind ran in a groove leading directly to business, the judge had a natural bent toward generalization, and when dining, preferred to discuss impersonal topics. He was a tall, florid man with an immense paunch flattened by artificial devices, and a vitality so excessive that it overflowed in numberless directions--in his hearty animal appet.i.tes, in his love of sports, in his delight in the theatre and literature, particularly in novels of the sentimental and romantic school, in his fondness for the lighter operas, and in his irrepressible admiration for pretty women. His face, large, ruddy, with a hooked nose, where the red was thickly veined with purple, and protruding lips over square yellow teeth that gripped like the teeth of a bulldog, aroused in Gabriella a quick repulsion which only the genial humour of his smile overcame. That he should have married his wife for her money was less amazing to the girl than that his wife should have married him for any reason whatsoever. Only a moral principle or a charitable inst.i.tution, she felt, could have endured him and survived.

But in spite of his repulsiveness he had evidently experienced the natural activities of humanity. He had taken a wife; he had begotten children; he had judged other men; he had dug into the bowels of the earth for mines, and had built railroads on its surface; he had made gra.s.s grow in deserts and had turned waste places into populous cities; he had read romances and heard music; he had attained a social position securely founded upon millions of dollars--and all these things he had achieved through his unconquerable colossal vitality. "I wonder why they put him by me," thought Gabriella. "I shall never get on with him."

Then he turned to her and said bluntly, between two mouthfuls of lobster: "So you're George's wife! Handsome chap George, but he hasn't much head for business. He lacks the grip of the old man. Where's he to-night?"

"He got home so late that he wasn't ready for dinner. He'll be down in a minute."

"It's a bad habit. He oughtn't to be late. Now, I haven't been late for dinner for twenty years."

"I'm afraid he doesn't pay much attention to time. I'll try to change him."

"You won't. No woman alive ever changed a man's habits. All you can do is to hide them."

That his blunt manner was an affectation, she was quick to discern.

While he talked to her, he looked at her knowingly with his light fishy eyes, and by his look and his tone he seemed to establish an immediate intimacy between them--as if he and she were speaking a language which was foreign to the rest of the table. He appeared to be kind, she thought, and on his side he was thinking that she was a nice girl, with an attractive face and remarkable eyes. On the whole, he preferred brown eyes, though his wife's were the colour of slate. "Why the deuce did she marry that fool?" he questioned impatiently.

Across the table Billy King was working hopelessly but valiantly to engage Mrs. Crowborough's attention. What a splendid figure he had, and how clean and fine was the modelling of his features! He was just the man a girl like Patty would fall in love with, and Gabriella no longer felt that. Patty's beauty was wasted. Once or twice she caught fleeting glances pa.s.sing between them, and these glances, so winged with happiness, spoke unutterable and ecstatic things.

A hush dropped suddenly on the table, and in this hush she heard the voice of Colonel Buffington telling a story in dialect. It was an immemorial anecdote of Cousin Jimmy's--she had heard him tell it a dozen times--and while she listened, it made her feel comfortably at home.

"'Uncle Amos,' I said to him, 'we've been together thirty years, but we've got to part. You're a drunkard and a thief and a worthless darky all round, and you've lived on my place ever since the war without doing a lick of work for your keep. I've stood it as long as I can, but there's an end to human endurance. Yes, Amos, the time has come for us to part.'

"Hi! Ma.r.s.e Beverly,' said the old rascal, 'whar you gwine?"

"Capital!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the judge softly. "Capital!" And he added for Gabriella's ear: "Buffington tells the best negro stories of any man I know. Ought to have heard him at the club the other night."

Gabriella did not answer; Cousin Jimmy's story had made her think of Cousin Jimmy, with his soft heart and his dark s.h.i.+ning eyes like the eyes of a good and gentle dog. Then she thought of her mother, and reminded herself that she must ask George when they were to begin the hunt for an apartment. He had said they were very hard to find when you wanted them.

Another hush fell, and Colonel Buffington was just beginning a second story--one of Uncle Meriweather's this time--when George came in from the drawing-room, and after a murmured apology, took his seat between Patty and Mrs. Hamilton.

"That's a handsome boy," said the judge in a husky whisper to Gabriella, "but he hasn't much to say for himself, has he?"

His manner of playful intimacy conveyed the impression that the secret understanding between them did not include Gabriella's husband. George was an outsider, but this hideous old man, with his curious repelling suggestion of over-ripeness, as of fruit that is beginning to rot at the core, was the dominant personality in her mind at the moment. She wondered if he knew how repulsive he was, and while she wondered, the judge, unaware of his tragic plight, went on eating lobster with unimpaired relish. His importance, founded upon a more substantial basis than mere personal attraction, had risen superior not only to morality, but to the outward failings of the flesh. Had he been twice as repulsive, she realized that his millions would have commanded a respect denied to both beauty and virtue.

"I wonder how any woman can stand him," mused Gabriella. Then, glancing across the table at Mrs. Crowborough, she realized something of the amazing insensibility of the more ethereal s.e.x. No man, not even in the last extremity, could have loved a woman as ugly as Judge Crowborough was. The roughest man would have had sufficient esthetic sense to have been shocked into revolt; yet a woman, a refined and intelligent woman, had married the judge and survived it. She appeared now, not only expressionless and unrevolted, but filled with a healthy zest for social reforms and the spiritual welfare of girl orphans.

"Well, I've learned something of life to-night," thought Gabriella while she watched her.

Later in the evening, when she pa.s.sed into the drawing-room, with Mrs.

Crowborough, bleak, unbending, and trailing her chains of jet, she comforted herself again with the reflection that what she was "seeing"

might not be particularly exciting, "but it was life."

On a short, hard sofa near the fire, beside Fatty, who bloomed like a white rose under the red-shaded light, she listened to Mrs. Fowler's unflagging efforts to "get on" with the judge's wife. Never had the dauntless little woman revealed more surprising resourcefulness, never had she talked so vivaciously, never had she appeared so relentlessly pleasant. It was as if she said in the face of Mrs. Crowborough's insensibility, which was the insensibility not of mind, but of inanimate matter, "Whatever you do, you can't keep me from being sweet." And in this strained sweetness there was something touching, something wistful, a hint of inner weariness which showed now and then beneath the restless vivacity.

"Isn't it funny," said Patty suddenly, "how much mamma cares about things that don't matter at all? You wouldn't believe it to look at her, but she is in her heart the most worldly one of the family. Father wouldn't give a tallow candle for anything that isn't real."

A log broke in the centre, and fell, scattering a shower of golden embers over the hearth. Rising quickly, with one of her sprightly movements, Mrs. Fowler reached for a pair of small bra.s.s tongs and pushed the broken log back on the andirons. Then she threw some fresh wood on the flames, and resumed her seat with an animated gesture as if the incident had enlivened her.

"Now they are talking about the everlasting Pletheridges," whispered Patty. "I never understand how mother can take so much interest in those people just because they are rich."

But to Gabriella it was more inconceivable still that her mother-in-law, with the bluest blood of Virginia in her veins, should regard with such artless reverence the social activities of the granddaughter of a tavern-keeper. In her native State an impoverished branch of Mrs.

Fowler's family still lived on land which, tradition said, had been granted one of her ancestors by Charles the Second in recognition of distinguished services to that dubious monarch; yet she could long enviously for a closer acquaintance with the plutocratic descendant of an Irish tavern-keeper--an honest man, doubtless, who had laid the foundations of his fortune in a string of halfway houses stretching from New York to Chicago.

"Yes, I dined with Mrs. Pletheridge once," she was saying in the tone in which her royalist ancestor might have acknowledged a command from his King.

"It always makes me angry, I can't help it," pursued Patty. "If dear mamma had only some other weakness--cards or wine or clothes or anything else. It's queer, with all her pride, how little social backbone she has. Now to hear her talk, you would imagine that that vulgar sn.o.b, whose father kept hotels and married one of his chambermaids, had conferred an honour by inviting her to dinner. And the funniest part is that, for all her good breeding, and her family portraits, and her t.i.tled ancestors, mother hasn't half so much respect for the genuine New Yorkers--I mean the New Yorkers whose names really mean something--as she has for these mushroom plutocrats. She had set her heart on George marrying one of them, you know, but it's a jolly good thing he didn't."

"That's the girl he told me about," said Gabriella. "Was he ever interested in her?"

"Not for a minute. We're awfully contrary about our love affairs. We will marry for love--even mother did though she may have forgotten it.

We never marry the people--" She clipped off the sentence, but Gabriella caught it up with a laugh:

"I know," she said gaily, "you never marry the people your family pick out for you."