Life and Gabriella Part 51

"No, not that, but I didn't dream you were so handsome. I thought mother was the beauty of the family. But what a wonderful dress you have on!

Are they wearing all those flounces around the hips?"

"There is no doubt about it, you are getting a lot better looking as you grow older," observed Charley, with genial pleasantry.

"She keeps herself up. There is a great deal in that," remarked Jane, and the speech was so characteristic of her that Gabriella tossed back gaily:

"Well, I'm not old, you know. I am only thirty-eight."

"She married so young," said Mrs. Carr mournfully. "I hope none of your girls will marry young, Jane. Gabriella must be a warning to them and to clear little f.a.n.n.y."

"But you married young, mother, and so did I," replied Jane, a trifle tartly.

For some incommunicable reason Jane's sweetness had become decidedly p.r.i.c.kly. Charley's reformation had left her with the hurt and incredulous air of a missionary whose heathen have been converted under his eyes by a rival denomination: and obeying an entirely natural impulse, she appeared ever so slightly, and in the most refined manner possible to revenge herself on the other members of her family. Though she had of late devoted her attention to the a.s.sociated Charities and the Confederate Museum, neither of these worthy objects provided so agreeable an opportunity for the exercise of her benevolent instincts as did the presence of a wayward husband in the household. For there could be no question of the thoroughness of Charley's redemption. The very cut of his clothes, the very colour of his necktie, proclaimed a triumph, for the prohibition party.

At last they were packed tightly in the touring car, and Charley, after imparting directions with the manner of a man who regards himself as the fount of wisdom, began expounding the noisy gospel of progress to Gabriella. Mrs. Carr, who had never been active, and was now over seventy, was visibly excited by the suddenness with which she had been whisked from the platform, and while they shot away from the station, she clutched her c.r.a.pe veil despairingly to the sides of her face, and fixed her blank and terrified stare on her son-in-law. After a whispered conference with Jane, Gabriella discovered that her mother was less afraid of an accident than she was of fresh air. "She's afraid of neuralgia," whispered Jane, "but the doctor says the air can't possibly do her any harm."

In Franklin Street the trees were in full leaf, and the charming vista through which Gabriella looked at the sunset, softened mercifully the impending symbols of the ironic Spirit of Progress. It was modern; it was progressive; yet there was the ancient la.s.situde of spring in the faint suns.h.i.+ne; and the women pa.s.sing under the vivid green of the elms and maples moved with a flowing walk which one did not see in Fifth Avenue. On the porches, too, groups were a.s.sembled in chairs after the Southern fas.h.i.+on, while children, in white frocks and gay sashes, accompanied by negro nurses wheeling perambulators, made a spring pageant in the parks. Though the gardens had either disappeared or dwindled to mere emerald patches of gra.s.s, a few climbing roses, of modern varieties, lent brightness and fragrance to the solid, if undistinguished, architecture of the houses.

"That's the finest apartment house in the city!" exclaimed Charley, with enthusiasm. "Looks pretty tall, doesn't it? But it's nothing to the height of some of the buildings downtown. As for changes--well, I hope Jane will take you on Broad Street to-morrow, and then you'll see what we're doing. Why, there's not a shop left there now where you used to deal. Brandywine's--you recollect old Brandywine & Plummer's, don't you?--isn't there any longer. Got a new department store, with a restaurant and a bas.e.m.e.nt in the very spot where it used to be. Look sharp now, we're coming to a hospital. That belongs to Dr. Browning. You don't remember Dr. Browning. After your day, I reckon. He's a young chap, but he's got his hospital like all the rest, and every bed filled--he told me so yesterday. But they've all got their hospitals.

Darrow--you recollect Darrow who used to be old Dr. Walker's a.s.sistant--well, he's got his, too, just around the corner on the next street. They say he cuts up more people than any man in the South except Spendlow--".

"I miss the old-fas.h.i.+oned flowers," said Gabriella to her mother in one of Charley's plethoric pauses. "The microphylla roses and s...o...b..a.l.l.s."

"Everybody is planting crimson ramblers and hydrangeas now," responded Mrs. Carr, with something of her son-in-law's pride in the onward movement of her surroundings.

"Here are the monuments!" cried Charley, who had treated each apartment house or hospital as if it were a bright, inestimable jewel in the city's crown. "You don't see many streets finer than this in New York, do you?"

"It looks very pretty and attractive," answered Gabriella, as they swung dangerously round a statue, and then started in a race up the avenue, "but I miss the shrubs and the flowers."

"Oh, there are flowers enough. You just wait till you get on a bit.

We've got some urns filled with hydrangeas, that queer new sort between blue and pink. But what do you want with shrubs? All they're good for is to get in your way whenever you want to look out into the street. Mrs.

Madison was telling me only yesterday that she cut down the lilac bushes in her front yard because they kept her from recognizing the people in motor cars. Look at that house now, that's one of the finest, in the city. Rus.h.i.+ngton built it--he made his money in fertilizers, and the one next with the green tiles belongs to Hanly, the tobacco trust fellow, you know, and this whopper on the next square is where Albertson lives.

He made his pile out of railroad stocks--he's one of the banking firm of Albertson, Jacobstein, Moss & Company. Awfully clever fellows, but too tricky for me, I give them a wide berth when I go out to do business--"

"But where are the old people--the people I used to know?"

"Oh, they're scattered about everywhere, but they haven't got most of the money. A lot of 'em live up here, and a lot are down in Franklin Street in the same old houses."

"Tell me about Cousin Jimmy."

"He's up here, too. p.u.s.s.y planned that red brick house with the green shutters next door to us. I reckon Jimmy is about as prosperous as is good for him, but he's getting on. He must be over seventy now. He has a son who is a chip of the old block, and his youngest daughter was the prettiest girl who ever came out here. Margaret will tell you about her."

"And the Peytons?" Her voice trembled, and she looked hastily away from the keen eyes of Margaret.

"They are still in the old home--at least Arthur lives there with his Cousin Nelly. You know Mrs Peyton died about nine or ten years ago?"

"Yes, I heard it."

"She was getting on, but it was a great loss to Arthur. Somehow, I could never make up my mind about Arthur. He was bright enough as a young chap, and we used to think he would have a brilliant future; but when the time came, he never seemed to catch on. He wasn't progressive, and he has never amounted to much more than he did when he left college.

What I say about him is that he had the wrong ideas--Yes, Jane, I mean exactly what I say, he had the wrong ideas. He doesn't know what he is driving at. No progress, no push, no punch in him."

"Why, Charley," murmured Mrs. Carr reproachfully, while Jane, recovering her nagging manner with an accession of spirit, remonstrated feelingly: "Charley, you really must be more careful what you say."

"Oh, fudge!" retorted Charley, with playful rudeness. "You see she's at it still, Gabriella," he pursued, winking audaciously. "If it isn't one thing, it's another, but she wouldn't be satisfied with perfection.

Well, here we are. There are the hydrangeas. I hope you're pleased."

"I declare, those waste papers have blown right back again on the gra.s.s, and I had them picked up the last thing before I left," said Jane in a tone of annoyance.

"Never mind the papers; Gabriella isn't looking for papers," returned Charley, while he helped Mrs. Carr out of the motor and up the steps.

"So here you are, mother, and the air didn't kill you."

"I may have neuralgia to-morrow. You never can tell," replied Mrs. Carr.

"I shouldn't worry about the papers, Jane. n.o.body can help the way they blow about. I want Gabriella to see the children the first thing."

As they entered the house Jane's children, a flock of five girls and two boys, fluttered up to be introduced, and among them Gabriella discovered the composed baby of Jane's tragic flight. It seemed an age ago, and she felt not thirty-eight, but a thousand.

After dinner Charley, who had eaten immoderately, unfolded the evening paper under the electric lamp in the library, and dozed torpidly while the girls plied their aunt with innumerable questions about New York and the spring fas.h.i.+ons. "It will be lovely to have f.a.n.n.y with us at the White Sulphur. I know her clothes will be wonderful," they chirped happily, cl.u.s.tering eagerly about the sofa on which Gabriella was sitting. Jane's children, deriving from some hardy stock of an earlier generation, were handsome, vigorous, optimistic in blood and fibre, and so uncompromisingly modern that Gabriella wondered how Mrs. Carr, with her spiritual neuralgia and her perpetual mourning, had survived the unceasing currents of fresh air with which they surrounded her.

"Yes, things have changed. It is the age," thought Gabriella; and presently, when Cousin Jimmy and Cousin p.u.s.s.y came in to welcome her, she repeated: "Yes, it is the age. There is no escaping it."

"Why, my dear child, you are looking splendidly," trilled Cousin p.u.s.s.y, with her old delightful manner and her flattering vision so different from Florrie's. She was still trim, plump, and rosy, though her hair was now snow white and her pretty face was covered with cheerful wrinkles.

"You're handsomer than you ever were in your life, and the dash of gray on your temples doesn't make you look, a day older--not a day. Some people turn gray so very young. I remember Cousin Becky Bollingbroke's hair was almost white by the time she was thirty-five. It runs like that in some families. But you look just as girlish as ever. It's wonderful, isn't it, Cousin f.a.n.n.y, the way the women of this generation stay girls until they are fifty? I don't believe you'll ever look any older, Gabriella, than you do now. Of course, I suppose your business has something to do with it, but if I met you for the first time, it would never cross my mind that you were a day over twenty-five."

"Well, well, so little Gabriella went to New York and became a dressmaker," observed Jimmy, who was seldom original, "and she's the same Gabriella, too. I always said, you know, that she was the sort you could count on."

Age, though it had not entirely pa.s.sed him by, had, on the whole, treated him with great gentleness. He was a remarkably handsome old man, with a distinguished and courtly presence, a head of wonderful white hair, which looked as if it had been powdered, a ruddy unwrinkled face, and the dark s.h.i.+ning eyes of the adventurous youth he had never lost.

"Of course, she couldn't have been a dressmaker here where everybody knows her," purred Cousin p.u.s.s.y, with her arm about Gabriella, "but in New York it is different, and they tell me that even t.i.tled women are dressmakers in London."

"Well, she has pluck," declared Cousin Jimmy, as he had declared eighteen years ago at the family council. "There's nothing like pluck when it comes to getting along in the world."

Then they sat down in Jane's library, which, contained most of the things Gabriella a.s.sociated with the old parlour in Hill Street, and Cousin p.u.s.s.y asked if Gabriella had found many changes.

"A great many. Everything, looks new to me except this room. The only thing I miss here is the horsehair sofa."

"I keep that in the back hall," said Jane. "The town does look different up here, but the Peytons' house is just as you remember it--even the scarlet sage is in the garden. Miss Nelly plants it still every summer."

A lovely light shone in Gabriella's eyes, and Cousin p.u.s.s.y watched it tenderly, while a smile hovered about the corners of her shrewd though still pretty mouth.

"It has been such a disappointment that Arthur hasn't done more in his profession," she said presently, "but, as I was saying to Mr. Wrenn only the other day, I have always felt that dear Gabriella was to blame for it."

"The trouble with Arthur," observed Charley, awaking truculently from his doze, "is that he's got the wrong ideas. When a man has the wrong ideas in these days, he might as well go out and hang himself."

"Well, I don't know that I'd call his ideas wrong exactly," reasoned Cousin Jimmy, with the judicial manner befitting the best judge of tobacco in Virginia; "I shouldn't call them wrong, but they're out of date. They belong to the last century."

"I always say that dear Arthur is a perfect gentleman of the old school," remonstrated Mrs. Carr, meekly obstinate. "There aren't many of them left now, so I tell myself regretfully whenever I see him."

"And there'll be fewer than ever by the time you Suffragists get your rights," remarked Charley, with bitterness, while Mrs. Carr, incensed by the word, which she a.s.sociated with various indelicacies, stared at him with an indignant expression.