c.
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA
 
 BOOKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 ANCIENT LAW 
 
 THE BATTLE-GROUND 
 
 THE DELIVERANCE 
 
 THE FREEMAN, AND OTHER POEMS 
 
 THE MILLER OF OLD CHURCH 
 
 THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN 
 
 VIRGINIA 
 
 THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 
 
 WHEEL OF LIFE
 
 LIFE AND 
 GABRIELLA 
 
 THE STORY OF A WOMAN'S COURAGE 
 BY ELLEN GLASGOW 
 
 AUTHOR OF 
 *' THE BATTLK GROUND," "THE ROMANCE OF A PLAIN MAN," KTC. 
 
 LONDON 
 OHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 
 
 1916
 
 PRINTED IN GARDEN CITY N.Y., U.S.A. 
 
 cAll Rights Reserved, including that of translation 
 into Foreign Languages, including the Scandinavian. 

 
 I 
 
 | CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK FIRST THE AGE OF FAITH 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. Presents a Shameless Heroine ... 3 
 
 II. Poor Jane ......... 30 
 
 III. A Start in Life . ..... . 61 
 
 IV. Mirage . ...... . . 90 
 
 V. The New World ... .... . 122 
 
 VI. The Old Serpent ..... . . 148 
 
 VII. Motherhood . . , . . . . . 176 
 
 g 
 
 BOOK SECOND^-THE AGE OF 
 KNOWLEDGE 
 
 o 
 
 ^> 
 
 "* I. Disenchantment ....... 211 
 
 II. A Second Start in Life ..... 241 
 
 IH. Work .......... 274 
 
 IV. The Dream and the Years .... 300 
 
 V. Success ......... 331 
 
 VI. Discoveries ........ 368 
 
 VH. Readjustments ....... 406 
 
 t VIIL The Test . . . . . . . . . 444 
 
 The Past ....'..... 476 
 
 The Dream and the Reality . * . 501
 
 IS 
 
 BOOK FIRST 
 THE AGE OF FAITH
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 
 
 AFTER a day of rain the sun came out suddenly at 
 five o'clock and threw a golden bar into the deep Vic 
 torian gloom of the front parlour. On the window-sill, 
 midway between the white curtains, a pot of blue 
 hyacinths stood in a cracked china plate, and as the 
 sunlight shone into the room, the scent of the blossoms 
 floated to the corner where Gabriella was patiently 
 pulling basting threads out of the hem of a skirt. For 
 a minute her capable hands stopped at their work, and 
 raising her smooth dark head she looked compassion 
 ately at her sister Jane, who was sitting, like a frozen 
 image of martyrdom, in the middle of the long horse 
 hair sofa. Three times within the last twelve months 
 Jane had fled from her husband's roof to the protection 
 of her widowed mother, a weak person of excellent 
 ancestry, who could hardly have protected a sparrow 
 had one taken refuge beneath her skirt. Twice before 
 Mrs. Carr had wept over her daughter's woes and re 
 turned her, a sullen saint, to the arms of the discreetly 
 repentant Charley; but to-day, while the four older 
 children were bribed to good behaviour with bread 
 and damson preserves in the pantry, and the baby 
 was contentedly playing with his rubber ring in his 
 mother's arms, Gabriella had passionately declared 
 that "Jane must never, never go back!" Nothing so 
 
 3
 
 4 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 dreadful as this had ever happened before, for the 
 repentant Charley had been discovered making love to 
 his wife's dressmaker, a pretty French girl whom Jane 
 had engaged for her spring sewing because she had more 
 "style" than had fallen to the austerely virtuous lot of 
 the Carr's regular seamstress, Miss Polly Hatch. "I 
 might have known she was too pretty to be good," 
 moaned Jane, while Mrs. Carr, in her willow rocking- 
 chair by the window, wiped her reddened eyelids on 
 the strip of cambric ruffling she was hemming. 
 
 Unmoved among them the baby beat methodically 
 on his mother's breast with his rubber ring, as indiffer 
 ent to her sobs as to the intermittent tearful "coos" of 
 his grandmother. He had a smooth bald head, fringed, 
 like the head of a very old man, with pale silken hair 
 that was almost white in the sunshine, and his eyes, as 
 expressionless as marbles, stared over the pot of hya 
 cinths at a sparrow perched against the deep blue sky 
 on the red brick wall of the opposite house. From be 
 neath his starched little skirt his feet, in pink crocheted 
 shoes, protruded with a forlorn and helpless air as if they 
 hardly belonged to him. 
 
 "Oh, my poor child, what are we going to do?" 
 asked Mrs. Carr in a resigned voice as she returned to 
 her hemming. 
 
 "There's nothing to do, mother," answered Jane, 
 without lifting her eyes from the baby's head, without 
 moving an inch out of the position she had dropped 
 into when she entered the room. Then, after a sobbing 
 pause, she defined in a classic formula her whole phi 
 losophy of life: "It wasn't my fault," she said. 
 
 "But one can always do something if it's only to 
 scream," rejoined Gabriella with spirit.
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 5 
 
 "I wouldn't scream," replied Jane, while the pale 
 cast of resolution hardened her small flat features, "not 
 not if he killed me. My one comfort," she added 
 pathetically, "is that only you and mother know how 
 he treats me." 
 
 Her pretty vacant face with its faded bloom re 
 sembled a pastel portrait in which the artist had for 
 gotten to paint an expression. "Poor Jane Gracey," 
 as she was generally called, had wasted the last ten 
 years in a futile effort to hide the fact of an unfortunate 
 marriage beneath an excessively cheerful manner. She 
 talked continually because talking seemed to her the 
 most successful way of "keeping up an appearance." 
 Though everybody who knew her knew also that 
 Charley Gracey neglected her shamefully, she spent 
 twelve hours of the twenty-four pretending that she 
 was perfectly happy. At nineteen she had been a belle 
 and beauty of the willowy sort; but at thirty she had 
 relapsed into one of the women whom men admire in 
 theory and despise in reality. She had started with a 
 natural tendency to clinging sweetness; as the years 
 went on the sweetness, instead of growing fainter, 
 had become almost cloying, while the clinging had hys 
 terically tightened into a clutch. Charley Gracey, who 
 had married her under the mistaken impression that 
 her type was restful for a reforming rake, (not realizing 
 that there is nothing so mentally disturbing as a fool) 
 had been changed by marriage from a gay bird of the 
 barnyard into a veritable hawk of the air. His behav 
 iour was the scandal of the town, yet the greater his 
 sins, the intenser grew Jane's sweetness, the more twin 
 ing her hold. "Nobody will ever think of blaming you, 
 darling," said Mrs. Carr consolingly. "You have be-
 
 6 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 haved beautifully from the beginning. We all know 
 what a perfect wife you have been." 
 
 "I've tried to do my duty even if Charley failed in 
 his," replied the perfect wife, unfastening the hooks of 
 her small heliotrope wrap trimmed with tarnished silver 
 passementerie. Above her short flaxen "bang" she 
 wore a crumpled purple hat ornamented with bunches 
 of velvet pansies; and though it was two years old, and 
 out of fashion at a period when fashions changed less 
 rapidly, it lent an air of indecent festivity to her tearful 
 face. Her youth was already gone, for her beauty had 
 been of the fragile kind that breaks early, and her wan, 
 aristocratic features had settled into the downward 
 droop which comes to the faces of people who habitu 
 ally "expect the worst." 
 
 "I know, Jane, I know," murmured Mrs. Carr, 
 dropping her thimble as she nervously tried to hasten 
 her sewing. "But don't you think it would be a com 
 fort, dear, to have the advice of a man about Charley? 
 Won't you let me send Marthy for your Cousin Jimmy 
 Wrenn?" 
 
 "Oh, mother, I couldn't. It would kill me to have 
 everybody know I'm unhappy!" wailed Jane, breaking 
 down. 
 
 "But everybody knows anyway, Jane," said Gabri- 
 ella, sticking the point of her scissors into a strip of 
 buckram, for she was stiffening the bottom of the skirt 
 after the fashion of the middle 'nineties. 
 
 "Of course I'm foolishly sensitive," returned Jane, 
 while she lifted the baby from her lap and placed him 
 in a pile of cushions by the deep arm of the sofa, where 
 he sat imperturbably gazing at the blue sky and the 
 red wall from which the sparrow had flown. "You
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 7 
 
 can never understand my feelings because you are so 
 different." 
 
 "Gabriella is not married," observed Mrs. Carr, 
 with sentimental finality. "But I'm sure, Jane I'm 
 just as sure as I can be of anything that it wouldn't do 
 a bit of harm to speak to Cousin Jimmy Wrenn. Men 
 know so much more than women about such matters." 
 
 In her effort to recover her thimble she dropped her 
 spool of thread, which rolled under the sofa on -which 
 Jane was sitting, and while she waited for Gabriella 
 to find it, she gazed pensively into the almost deserted 
 street where the slender shadows of poplar trees slanted 
 over the wet cobblestones. Though Mrs. Carr worked 
 every instant of her time, except the few hours when 
 she lay in bed trying to sleep, and the few minutes when 
 she sat at the table trying to eat, nothing that she began 
 was ever finished until Gabriella took it out of her 
 hands. She did her best, for she was as conscientious 
 in her way as poor Jane, yet through some tragic per 
 versity of fate her best seemed always to fall short 
 of the simplest requirements of life. Her face, like 
 Jane's, was long and thin, with a pathetic droop at the 
 corners of the mouth, a small bony nose, always slightly 
 reddened at the tip, and faded blue eyes beneath an 
 even row of little flat round curls which looked as if 
 they were plastered on her forehead. 
 
 Thirty-three years before, in the romantic and fiery 
 'sixties, she had married dashing young Gabriel Carr 
 for no better reason apparently than that she was 
 falling vaguely in love with love; and the marriage, 
 which had been one of reckless passion on his side, had 
 been for her scarcely more than the dreamer's hesi 
 tating compromise with reality. Passion, which she
 
 8 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 t had been taught to regard as an unholy attribute im 
 planted by the Creator, with inscrutable wisdom, in 
 the nature of man, and left out of the nature of woman, 
 had never troubled her gentle and affectionate soul; 
 and not until the sudden death of her husband did she 
 begin even remotely to fall in love with the man. But 
 I when he was once safely dead she worshipped his mem 
 ory with an ardour which would have seemed to her 
 indelicate had he been still alive. For sixteen years 
 she had worn a crape veil on her bonnet, and she still 
 went occasionally, after the morning service was over 
 on Sunday, to place fresh flowers on his grave. Now 
 that his "earthly nature," against which she had strug 
 gled so earnestly while he was living, was no longer in 
 need of the pious exorcisms with which she had treated 
 its frequent manifestations, she remembered only the 
 dark beauty of his face, his robust and vigorous youth, 
 the tenderness and gallantry of his passion. For her 
 daughters she had drawn an imaginary portrait of him 
 which combined the pagan beauty of Antinous with 
 the militant purity of Saint Paul; and this romantic 
 blending of the heathen and the Presbyterian virtues 
 had passed through her young imagination into the 
 awakening soul of Gabriella. 
 
 By the town at large Mrs. Carr's sorrow was alluded 
 to as "a beautiful grief," yet so deeply rooted in her 
 being was the instinct to twine, that for the first few 
 years of her bereavement she had simply sat in her 
 widow's weeds, with her rent paid by Cousin Jimmy 
 Wrenn and her market bills settled monthly by Uncle 
 Beverly Blair, and waited patiently for some man to 
 come and support her. 
 
 When no man came, and Uncle Beverly died of a
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 9 
 
 stroke of apoplexy with his will unsigned, she had 
 turned, with the wasted energy of the unfit and they- 
 incompetent, to solve the inexplicable problem of in-| 
 digent ladyhood. And it was at this crucial instant 
 that Becky Bolingbroke had put her awful question: 
 "Have you made up your mind, Fanny, what you are 
 going to do?" That was twelve years ago, but deep 
 down in some secret cave of Fanny's being the ghastly 
 echo of the words still reverberated through the empti 
 ness and the silence. 
 
 "Don't you think, darling," she pleaded now, as she 
 had pleaded to Becky on that other dreadful occasion, 
 "that we had better send immediately for Cousin 
 Jimmy Wrenn?" 
 
 "I I can't think," gasped Jane, "but you may if 
 you want to, mother." 
 
 "Send, Gabriella," said Mrs. Carr quickly, and she 
 added tenderly, while Gabriella dropped her work and 
 ran to the outside kitchen for Marthy, the coloured 
 drudge, "you will feel so much better, Jane, after you 
 have had his advice." 
 
 Then at the sight of Jane's stricken face, which had 
 turned blue as if from a sudden chill, she hurriedly 
 opened the drawer of her sewing machine, and taking 
 out a bottle of camphor she kept there, began tremu 
 lously rubbing her daughter's forehead. As she did so, 
 she remembered, with the startling irrelevance of the 
 intellectually untrained, the way Jane had looked in her 
 veil and orange blossoms on the day of her wedding. 
 
 "I wonder what on earth we have done to deserve 
 our troubles?" she found herself thinking while she 
 put the stopper back into the bottle and returned to 
 her sewing.
 
 10 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Marthy has gone, mother," said Gabriella, with 
 her cheerful air as she came back into the room, "and I 
 shut the children in the laundry with Dolly who is doing 
 the washing." 
 
 "I hope they won't make themselves sick with pre 
 serves," remarked Jane, with the first dart of energy 
 she had shown. "Perhaps I'd better go and see. If 
 Fanny eats too much we'll be up all night with 
 her." 
 
 "I told Dolly not to let them stuff," answered 
 Gabriella, as she sat down by the window and threaded 
 her needle. She was a tall, dark girl, slender and 
 straight as a young poplar, with a face that was frank 
 and pleasant rather than pretty, and sparkling brown 
 eyes which turned golden and grew bright as swords 
 when she was angry. Seen by the strong light of the 
 window, her face showed sallow in tone, with a certain 
 nobility about the bony structure beneath the soft 
 girlish flesh, and a look of almost stern decision in the 
 square chin and in the full rich curve of the mouth. 
 Her hair, which was too fine and soft to show its thick 
 ness, drooped from its parting at the side in a dark 
 wing over her forehead, where it shadowed her arched 
 black eyebrows and the clear sweet gravity of her eyes. 
 As she bent over her sewing the thin pure lines of her 
 body had a look of arrested energy, of relaxed but ex 
 uberant vitality. 
 
 "You won't go to the dance to-night, will you, 
 Gabriella?" inquired Mrs. Carr nervously. 
 
 "No, I'm not going," answered the girl regretfully, 
 for she loved dancing, and her white organdie dress, 
 trimmed with quillings of blue ribbon, lay upstairs on 
 the bed. "I'll never dance again if only Jane won't go
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 11 
 
 back to Charley. I'll work my fingers to the bone to 
 help her take care of the children." 
 
 "I'll never, never go back," chanted Jane with fever 
 ish passion. 
 
 "But I thought Arthur Peyton was coming for you," 
 said Mrs. Carr. "He will be so disappointed." 
 
 "Oh, he'll understand he'll have to," replied Gabri- 
 ella carelessly. 
 
 The sunshine faded slowly from the hyacinths on the 
 window-sill, and drawing her crocheted cape of purple 
 wool closer about her, Mrs. Carr moved a little nearer 
 the fireplace. Outside the March wind was blowing 
 with a melancholy sound up the long straight street, 
 and rocking the glossy boughs of an old magnolia tree 
 in the yard. From the shining leaves of the tree a few 
 drops of water fell on the brick pavement, where several 
 joyous sparrows were drinking, and farther off, as bright 
 as silver in the clear wind, a solitary church spire rose 
 above the huddled roofs of the town. When the wind 
 lulled, as it did now and then, a warm breath seemed 
 to stir in the sunshine, which grew suddenly brighter, 
 while a promise of spring floated like a faint provocative 
 scent on the air. And this scent, so vague, so roving, 
 that it was like the ghostly perfume of flowers, stole at 
 last into the memory, and made the old dream of youth 
 and the young grow restless at the call of Life, which 
 sang to the music of flutes in the brain. But the wind, 
 rising afresh, drove the spirit of spring from the street, 
 and swept the broken leaves of the magnolia tree over 
 the drenched grass to the green-painted iron urns on 
 either side of the steps. 
 
 The house, a small brick dwelling, set midway of an 
 expressionless row and wearing on its front a look of
 
 12 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 desiccated gentility, stood in one of those forgotten 
 streets where needy gentlewomen do "light house 
 keeping" in an obscure hinterland of respectability. 
 Hill Street, which had once known fashion, and that 
 only yesterday, as old ladies count, had sunk at last 
 into a humble state of decay. Here and there the edges 
 of porches had crumbled; grass was beginning to sprout 
 by the curbstone; and the once comfortable homes had 
 opened their doors to boarders or let their large, high- 
 ceiled rooms to the impoverished relicts of Confed 
 erate soldiers. Only a few blocks away the stream of 
 modern progress, sweeping along Broad Street, was rap 
 idly changing the old Southern city into one of those 
 bustling centres of activity which the press of the com 
 munity agreed to describe as "a metropolis"; but this 
 river of industrialism was spanned by no social bridge 
 connecting Hill Street and its wistful relicts with the 
 statelier dignities and the more ephemeral gaieties of 
 the opposite side. To be really "in society" one must 
 cross over, either for good and all, or in the dilapidated 
 "hack" which carried Gabriella to the parties of her 
 schoolmates in West Franklin Street. 
 
 For in the middle 'nineties, before social life in Rich 
 mond had become both complicated and expensive, it 
 was still possible for a girl in Gabriella's position pro 
 vided, of course, she came of a "good family" to sew 
 all day over the plain sewing of her relatives, and in the 
 evening to reign as the acknowledged belle of a ball. 
 "Society," it is true, did not reach any longer, except 
 in the historic sense, to Hill Street; but the inhabitants 
 of Hill Street, if they were young and energetic, not 
 infrequently made triumphant excursions into "so- 
 ciety." Though Gabriella was poor and sewed for her
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 13 
 
 living, she had been, from the moment she left school, 
 one of the most popular girls in town. To be sure, she 
 was neither so pretty as Florrie Spencer nor so clever 
 as Julia Caperton, but in the words of Julia's brother 
 Algernon, she was "the sort you could count on." 
 Even in her childhood it had become the habit of those , 
 about her to count on Gabriella. Without Gabriella," 
 her mother was fond of saying, it would have been im 
 possible to keep a roof over their heads. 
 
 Twelve years before, when they had moved into the 
 house in Hill Street, Mrs. Carr had accepted from 
 Jimmy Wrenn the rent of the first floor and the outside 
 kitchen, which was connected with the back porch by 
 a winding brick walk, overgrown with wild violets, 
 while the upper story was let to two elderly spinsters, 
 bearing the lordly, though fallen, name of Peterbor 
 ough. These spinsters, like Mrs. Carr, spent their 
 lives in a beautiful and futile pretence the pretence 
 of keeping up an appearance. They also took in the 
 plain sewing of their richer relatives, who lived in 
 Franklin Street, and sent them little trays of sweel 
 things as soon as the midday dinner was over on Sun 
 day. Sometimes they would drop in to see Mrs. Carr 
 just before supper was ready, and then they would 
 pretend that they lived on tea and toast because they 
 were naturally "light eaters," and that they sewed all 
 day, not for the money, but because they liked to have 
 "something to do with their hands." They were tall 
 thin women in organdie caps and black alpaca dresses 
 made with long basques which showed a greenish cast 
 in the daylight. The walls of their rooms were covered 
 with family portraits of the colonial period, and Mrs. 
 Carr, who had parted with most of her treasures, often
 
 14 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 wondered how they had preserved so many proofs of a 
 distinguished descent. Even her silver had gone first 
 the quaint old service with the Bolton crest, which 
 had belonged to her mother; then, one by one, the 
 forks and spoons; and, last of all, Gabriella's silver 
 mug, which was carried, wrapped in a shawl, to the 
 shop of old Mr. Camberwell. She was a woman who 
 loved inanimate things with the passion which other 
 women give only to children, and a thousand delicate 
 fibres of sentiment knit her soul to the portraits on the 
 wall, to the furniture with which she lived, to the silver 
 and glass that had once belonged to her mother. When 
 one after one these things went from her, she felt as if 
 the very roots of her being were torn up from the warm 
 familiar earth in which they had grown. "There's 
 nothing left in the parlour that I shouldn't be ashamed 
 to have your grandmother look at," she had once con 
 fessed to her daughters. 
 
 Seen by the light of history, this parlour, in which so 
 much of Gabriella's childhood was spent, was not with 
 out interest as an archaic survival of the fundamental 
 errors of the mid- Victorian mind. The walls were 
 covered with bottle-green paper on which endless pro 
 cessions of dwarfed blue peacocks marched relentlessly 
 toward an embossed border the result of an artistic 
 frenzy of the early 'eighties. Neither Mrs. Carr nor 
 Jimmy Wrenn, who paid the rent, had chosen this 
 paper, but having been left on the dealer's hands, it 
 had come under the eye of the landlord, who, since he 
 did not have to live with it, had secured it at a bargain. 
 Too unused to remonstrance to make it effective, Mrs. 
 Carr had suffered the offending decoration in meek 
 ness, while Jimmy, having a taste for embossment,
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 15 
 
 honestly regarded the peacocks as "handsome." From 
 the centre of the ceiling a massive gilt chandelier, elab 
 orately festooned with damaged garlands, shed, when 
 it was lighted, a dim and troubled gloom down on the 
 threadbare Axminster carpet. Above the white mar 
 ble mantelpiece, the old French mirror, one of the few 
 good things left over from a public sale of Mrs. Carr's 
 possessions, reflected a pair of bronze candelabra with 
 crystal pendants, and a mahogany clock, which had 
 kept excellent time for half a century and then had 
 stopped suddenly one day while Marthy was cleaning. 
 In the corner, between the door and the window, there 
 was a rosewood bookcase, with the bare shelves hidden 
 behind plaited magenta silk, and directly above it hung 
 an engraving of a group of amiable children feeding fish 
 in a pond. Across the room, over the walnut whatnot, a 
 companion picture represented the same group of 
 children scattering crumbs before a polite brood of 
 chickens in a barnyard. Between the windows a third 
 engraving immortalized the "Burial of Latane" in the 
 presence of several sad and resigned ladies in crinolines, 
 while the sofa on which Jane sat was presided over by 
 a Sully portrait of the beautiful Angelica Carr, wearing 
 a white scarf on her head and holding a single rose in 
 her hand. This portrait and a Saint Memin drawing 
 of Mrs. Carr's grandfather, the Reverend Bartholomew 
 Berkeley as a young man in a high stock, were the sol 
 itary existing relics of that consecrated past when Fanny 
 Berkeley was "not brought up to do anything.'* 
 
 To Mrs. Carr, whose mind was so constituted that 
 any change in her surroundings produced a sensation 
 of shock, the room was hallowed by the simple fact that 
 she had lived in it for a number of years. That an ob-
 
 16 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ject or a custom had existed in the past appeared to her 
 to be an incontestible reason why it should continue to 
 exist in the present. It was distressing to her to be 
 obliged to move a picture or to alter the position of a 
 piece of furniture, and she had worn one shape of bon 
 net and one style of hairdressing, slightly modified to 
 suit the changing fashions, for almost twenty years. 
 Her long pale face, her pensive blue eyes, and her look 
 of anxious sweetness, made a touching picture of fem 
 inine incompetence; and yet it was from this pallid 
 warmth, this gentle inefficiency of soul, that the buoy 
 ant spirit of Gabriella had sprung. 
 
 For Gabriella was the incarnation of energy. From 
 the moment of her birth when, in the words of 
 her negro "mammy" she had looked "as peart as life," 
 she had begun her battle against the enveloping twin 
 powers of decay and inertia. To the intense secret 
 mortification of her mother, who had prayed for a 
 second waxlike infant after the fashion of poor Jane, 
 she had been a notoriously ugly baby (almost as ugly 
 as her Aunt Becky Bollingbroke who had never married) , 
 and as she grew up, this ugliness was barely redeemed 
 by what Jane, in her vague way, described as "the 
 something else in her face." According to Cousin 
 Jimmy, who never recognized charm unless its mani 
 festations were soft and purring, this "something else" 
 was merely "a sunny temper"; and one of the constant 
 afflictions of Gabriella's childhood was overhearing 
 her mother remark to visitors: "No, she isn't so pretty 
 as poor Jane, but, as Cousin Jimmy tells us, she is 
 blessed with a sunny temper." 
 
 " Give me that ruffle, mother, and I'll whip the lace 
 on while we're waiting," she said now, laying aside the
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 17 
 
 skirt of her Easter dress, and stretching out her hand 
 for the strip of cambric in her mother's lap. But Mrs. 
 Carr did not hear, for she was gazing, with the concen 
 trated stare of Jane's baby, at a beautiful old lady who 
 was walking slowly through the faint sunshine on the 
 opposite pavement. 
 
 "I wonder where Mrs. Peyton can be coming from 
 in her best dress?" she remarked, forgetting Jane for an 
 instant while her sense of tragedy yielded to the keener 
 impulse of curiosity. 
 
 "She never goes anywhere but to church or to the 
 Old Ladies' Home," replied Gabriella. "Arthur says she 
 hasn't paid a call since her husband's death." 
 
 "Well, I haven't made one, except of course to my 
 relatives, for fifteen years," rejoined Mrs. Carr a trifle 
 tartly. Then her manner lost its unusual asperity, and 
 she added excitedly, "They're coming now, Jane. 
 There's Cousin Jimmy and he's bringing Cousin Pussy 
 and Uncle Meri weather !" 
 
 "Oh, mother, I can't possibly see them! I feel as if 
 it would kill me!" cried Jane in desperation. 
 
 "Give her the camphor, mother," said Gabriella with 
 grim humour as she went to open the door. 
 
 "Brace yourself, my darling. They are coming," 
 pleaded Mrs. Carr, as she slipped her arm under Jane's 
 head. At the first hint of any excitement she invariably 
 lost her presence of mind and became distracted; and 
 Jane's hysterical outbursts never failed to convince 
 her, though they usually left the more skeptical Gabri 
 ella unmoved. "Don't you think you would feel 
 better if you lay back on the pillows?" she urged. 
 
 Then the bell rang, and before Jane could swallow 
 her sobs, her sister ushered in Jimmy and Pussy
 
 18 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Wrenn, who were closely followed by the ponderous 
 figure of Uncle Meriweather, a gouty but benign old 
 gentleman, whose jet-black eyebrows and white im 
 perial gave him a misleading military air. 
 
 "Well, well, my dear, what's this I hear about 
 Charley?" demanded Cousin Jimmy, whose sprightly 
 manner was never sprightlier than in the hour of trag 
 edy or the house of mourning. "What does he mean 
 by letting you run away from him?" 
 
 "I've done my duty by Charley. I've never, never 
 failed in my duty!" wept Jane, breaking down on 
 Pussy's tender bosom, and waking the sleeping baby. 
 
 "We know, darling, we know," said Pussy, patting 
 Jane's shoulder, while Jimmy drew a white silk hand 
 kerchief from his pocket, and hid his face under the 
 pretence of blowing his nose. 
 
 To see a woman cry never failed to wring a sym 
 pathetic tear from Jimmy. Though he was a man of 
 hard common sense, possessed of an inflexible de 
 termination to make money, there was a soft spot inside 
 of him which was reached only by the distress of one 
 of the opposite sex. The suffering particularly the 
 financial suffering of men left him unmoved. He 
 could foreclose a mortgage or press a debt (as long as 
 1 the debtor's wife or daughter did not appeal to him) as 
 well as another; but the instant a skirt fluttered on the 
 horizon that soft something inside of him appeared, as 
 he expressed it, "to give way." Apart from their 
 afflictions, he had an eye, he used to boast, for but one 
 woman in the world, and she, thank God, was his wife. 
 Handsome, portly, full-blooded, and slightly overfed, 
 he had let Pussy twine him about her little finger ever 
 since the afternoon when he had first seen her,
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 19 
 
 small, trim, and with "a way with her," at the age of 
 six. 
 
 "Poor, poor child," said Pussy, cuddling Jane and 
 the baby together against her sympathetic bosom. 
 "Something must be done, Cousin Fanny. Some 
 thing must be done,'as Mr. Wrenn said on the way down, 
 if it's only for the satisfaction of letting Charley know 
 what we think of him." 
 
 "We've got to put down our pride and take some 
 step," declared Jimmy, wondering vaguely how he 
 could have forgotten the spirited utterance his wife 
 attributed to him. "I'm all for the authority of the 
 husband, of course, and the sanctity of the home, and 
 everything according to the Bible and all that but, 
 bless my soul, there's got to be a limit to what a woman 
 is expected to stand. There're some things, and I 
 know Uncle Meriweather will agree with me, that it 
 jsn't in human nature to put up with." 
 
 "If I were forty years younger I'd call him out and 
 give him a whipping he wouldn't forget in a jiffy," 
 blustered Uncle Meriweather, feebly violent. "There's 
 no way of defending a lady in these Godforsaken days. 
 Why, I remember when I was a boy, my poor father 
 God bless him! you recollect him, don't you Fanny? 
 never used a walking stick in his life and could read 
 print without glasses at ninety " 
 
 "Making love to the dressmaker," pursued Jimmy, 
 whose righteous anger refused to be turned aside from 
 its end. 
 
 "Don't you think, Cousin Fanny," whispered Pussy, 
 "that Gabriella had better leave the room?" 
 
 "Gabriella? Why, how on earth can we spare her?" 
 Mrs. Carr whispered back rather nervously. Then,
 
 20 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 beneath Pussy's compelling glance, she added timidly: 
 "Hadn't you better go, darling, and see what the chil 
 dren are doing?" 
 
 "They are playing in the laundry," replied Gabriella 
 reassuringly. "I told Dolly not to let them go out of 
 her sight." 
 
 "She knows so much already for her age," murmured 
 Mrs. Carr apologetically to Pussy. 
 
 "I don't know what Mr. Wrenn will think of your 
 staying, dear," said Pussy, smiling archly at the girl. 
 "Mr. Wrenn, I was just saying that I didn't know what 
 you would think of Gabriella's staying in the room." 
 
 Jimmy's large handsome face, with its look of per 
 petual innocence the incorruptible innocence of a 
 man who has never imagined anything turned help 
 lessly in the direction of his wife. All things relating 
 to propriety came, he felt instinctively, within the 
 natural sphere of woman, and to be forced, on the spur 
 iof the moment, to decide a delicate question of man 
 ners, awoke in him the dismay of one who sees his 
 accustomed prop of authority beginning to crumble. 
 Surely Pussy knew best about things like that! He 
 would as soon have thought of interfering with her 
 housekeeping as of instructing her in the details of 
 ladylike conduct. And, indeed, he had not observed 
 that Gabriella was in the room until his wife, for her 
 own purpose, had adroitly presented the fact to his 
 notice. 
 
 "Gabriella in the room?" he repeated in perplexity. 
 " Why, you'd better go, hadn't you, Gabriella? Oughtn't 
 she to go, Pussy?" 
 
 "Just as you think best, dear, but it seems to me 
 
 " Certainly she ought to go," said Uncle Meriweather
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 21 
 
 decisively. "The less women and girls know about 
 such matters, the better. I don't understand, Fanny, 
 how you could possibly have consented to Gabriella's 
 being present." 
 
 "I didn't consent, Uncle Meriweather," protested 
 poor Mrs. Carr, who could not bear the mildest rebuke 
 without tears; "I only said to Pussy that Gabriella 
 knew a great deal more already than she ought to, and 
 I'm sure I'm not to blame for it. If I'd had my way 
 she would have been just as sheltered as other girls." 
 
 "Don't cry, mother, it isn't your fault," said Ga 
 briella. "Uncle Meriweather. if you make mother 
 cry I'll never forgive you. How can she help all these 
 dreadful things going on? " 
 
 She was sensible, she was composed, she was per 
 fectly sweet about it; but, and this fact made Pussy 
 gasp with dismay, she did not budge an inch from her 
 position. With her clear grave eyes, which lost their 
 sparkle when she grew serious, and her manner of 
 eager sympathy, she appeared, indeed, to be the only 
 one in the room who was capable of facing the situation 
 with frankness. That she meant to face it to the end, 
 Pussy could not doubt while she looked at her. 
 
 "Oh, it doesn't matter about Gabriella. She knows 
 everything," said Jane, with the prickly sweetness of 
 suffering virtue. 
 
 "But she's a young girl young girls oughtn't to hear 
 such things," argued Uncle Meriweather, feeling help 
 lessly that something was wrong with the universe, and 
 that, since it was different from anything he had ever 
 known in the past, he was unable to cope with it. Into 
 his eyes, gentle and bloodshot above his fierce white 
 moustache the eyes of one who has never suffered
 
 22 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the painful process of thinking things out, but has ac 
 cepted his opinions as unquestioningly as he has ac 
 cepted his religion or the cut of his clothes there came 
 the troubled look of one who is struggling against 
 forces that he does not understand. For Gabriella 
 was serious. There was not the slightest hope in the 
 disturbed mind of Uncle Meriweather that she was 
 * \ anything but perfectly serious. Caprice, being a 
 womanly quality, was not without a certain charm for 
 him. He was quite used to it; he knew how to take it; 
 he had been taught to recognize it from his childhood 
 up. It was pretty, it was playful; and his mind, if 
 so ponderous a vehicle could indulge in such activity, 
 was fond of play. But after the first perplexed minute 
 or two he had relinquished forever the hope that 
 Gabriella was merely capricious. Clearly the girl knew 
 what she was talking about; and this knowledge, so 
 surprising in one of her age and sex, gave him a 
 strange dreamy sense of having just awakened from 
 sleep. 
 
 "I must say I like girls to be girls, Fanny," he pur 
 sued testily; "I reckon I'm only an old fogy, but I 
 like girls to be girls. When a woman loses her inno 
 cence, she loses her greatest charm in the eyes of a 
 man of the right sort of a man. Pluck the peach 
 with the bloom on it, my poor father used to say. He 
 didn't believe in all this new-fangled nonsense about 
 the higher education of women none of his daughters 
 could do more than read and write and spell after a 
 fashion, and yet look what wives and mothers they 
 made! Pokey married three times, and was the mother 
 of fourteen children, nine of them sons. And are we 
 any better off now than then, I ask? Whoever heard
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 23 
 
 of a woman running away from her husband before the 
 war, and now here is poor Jane " 
 
 "But it isn't my fault, Uncle Meriweather ! " cried 
 Jane, in desperation at his obtuseness. "I've tried 
 to be the best wife I could ask Charley if I haven't. 
 He neglected me long before I let any one know even 
 mother. I forgave him again and again, and I'd go on 
 forgiving him forever if he would let me. I've told 
 him over and over that I was going to be a faithful wife 
 to him if he killed me." 
 
 "Of course, my dear, I'm not meaning to reproach 
 you," said Uncle Meriweather, overcome by the effect 
 of his words. "We all know that you've stood as 
 much as any woman could and keep her self-respect. 
 It isn't possible, I suppose, for you to go on living with 
 Charley?" 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't bear a separation, not a legal one at 
 any rate," groaned Mrs. Carr. "Of course she must 
 come away for a time, but nobody must hear of it or 
 it would kill me. They are one in the sight of God, 
 and my dear old father had such a horror of separa 
 tions." 
 
 "Well, I'd kick him out I'd kick him out so quickly 
 he wouldn't know it," declared Jimmy. " If a daughter 
 of mine were married to that scamp, she'd never lay 
 eyes on him except over my dead body. I reckon God 
 would enjoy the sight of his getting his deserts." 
 
 Deep down in Cousin Jimmy, deeper than sentiment, 
 deeper than tradition, deeper even than the solid bed 
 rock of common sense, there was the romantic essence 
 of his soul, which hated baseness with a fiery hatred. V 
 His ruddy face, still boyish in spite of his fifty years, 
 blanched slowly, and there came into his soft dark eyes
 
 24 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the look he had worn at Malvern Hill under the fire of 
 the enemy. 
 
 At the sight Gabriella thrilled as she did when drums 
 were beating and armies were marching. "Oh, Cousin 
 Jimmy, don't let her go back!" she cried. 
 
 "I can't go back to him now! I can never, never go 
 back to him again!" intoned Jane with passionate 
 energy. 
 
 "No, God bless her, she shan't go back," declared 
 Jimmy, as profoundly stirred as Gabriella. 
 
 "But the children? What will become of the chil 
 dren?" demanded Mrs. Carr, not of Jimmy, but of the 
 universe. Her helpless gaze, roving wildly from face 
 to face, and resting nowhere, was like the gaze of a 
 small animal caught in & trap. "If Jane separates 
 the children from their father what will people 
 think of her?" she asked, still vainjy addressing 
 Heaven. 
 
 "As long as she is right it doesn't matter what people 
 think," retorted Gabriella; but her protest, unlike 
 her mother's, was directed to the visible rather than 
 to the invisible powers. The thought of Jane's chil 
 dren of the innocent souls so unaware of the awful 
 predicament in which they- were placed that their bodies 
 could be devouring bread and damson preserves in the 
 laundry the poignant thought of these children moved 
 her more deeply than she had ever been moved before 
 in her twenty years. A passion for self-sacrifice 
 rushed through her with the piercing sweetness of 
 religious ecstasy. Nothing like this had ever happened 
 to her before not when she was confirmed, not when 
 she had stood at the head of her class, not when she 
 had engaged herself to Arthur Peyton two years be-
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 25 
 
 fore. It was the pure flame of experience at its highest 
 point that burned in her. 
 
 "I will take care of the children," she said breath 
 lessly. "I will give up my whole life to them. I will 
 get a place in a store and work my fingers to the bone, 
 if only Jane will never go back." 
 
 For a moment there was silence; but while Gabriella 
 waited for somebody to answer, she felt that it was a 
 silence which had become vocal with inexpressible 
 things. The traditions of Uncle Meri weather, the 
 conventions of Mrs. Carr, the prejudices of Jimmy, 
 and the weak impulses of Jane, all these filled the dusk 
 through which the blank faces of her family stared 
 back at her. Then, while she stood white and trem 
 bling with her resolve with the passionate desire to 
 give herself, body and soul, to Jane and to Jane's 
 children the voice of Experience spoke pleasantly, 
 but firmly, through Cousin Pussy's lips, and it dealt 
 with Gabriella's outburst as Experience usually deals 
 with Youth. 
 
 "You are a dear child, Gabriella," it said; "but how 
 in the world could you help Jane by going into a store? " 
 
 In the midst of the emotional scene, Cousin Pussy 
 alone remained sweetly matter-of-fact. Though she 
 was not without orderly sentiments, her character had 
 long ago been swept of heroics, and from her arched 
 gray hair, worn a la Pompadour, to her pretty foot in 
 its small neat boot, she was a practical soul who had 
 as little use for religious ecstasy as she had for down 
 right infidelity. There seemed to her something posi 
 tively unnatural in Gabriella's manner a hint of that 
 "sudden conversion" she associated with the lower 
 classes or with the negroes.
 
 26 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "You are a dear child," she repeated, biting her 
 fresh lips; "but how will you help Jane by going into 
 a store?" 
 
 "I can trim hats," returned Gabriella stubbornly. 
 "Mr. Brandywine will take me into his new millinery 
 department, I know, for I said something to him about 
 it the other day." 
 
 " Oh, Gabriella, not in a store ! It would kill mother !" 
 cried Jane, with the prophetic wail of Cassandra. 
 
 "Not in a store!" echoed Mrs. Carr; "you couldn't 
 work in a store. If you want to work," she concluded 
 feebly, "why can't you work just as well in your home?" 
 
 "But it isn't the same thing, mother," explained 
 Gabriella, with angelic patience. "Nobody will get 
 me to make hats at home, and, besides, I've got to 
 learn how to do it. I've got to learn business methods." 
 
 "But not in a shop, my dear," protested Uncle 
 Meriweather in the precise English of his youth. 
 
 "Bless my heart!" chuckled Cousin Jimmy. "Busi 
 ness methods! You're as good as a show, Gabriella, 
 and, by George! you've plenty of pluck. I like pluck 
 in man or woman." 
 
 "I shouldn't encourage her if I were you, Mr. Wrenn," 
 said Cousin Pussy, almost forgetting to be indirect. 
 
 "Well, of course, I don't approve of that store busi 
 ness," replied Jimmy, deprecatingly, "but I can't 
 help liking pluck when I see it. Look here, Gabriella, 
 if you're bent on working, why don't you turn in and 
 teach?" 
 
 "Yes, let her teach by all means," agreed Uncle 
 Meriweather, with genuine enthusiasm for the idea. 
 "I've always regarded teaching as an occupation that 
 ought to be restricted by law to needy ladies."
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 27 
 
 "But I can't teach, I don't know enough, and, be 
 sides, I'd hate it," protested Gabriella. 
 
 "I'm sure you might start a school for very little 
 children," said Mrs. Carr. "You don't have to know 
 much, to teach them, and you write a very good hand." 
 
 "What about plain sewing?" asked Pussy in her 
 ready way. "Couldn't you learn to make those new 
 waists all the girls are wearing?" 
 
 " I haven't the patience to sew well. Look how hard 
 mother works, making buttonholes with stitches so 
 fine you can hardly see them, and yet she doesn't get 
 enough to put bread into her mouth, and but for her 
 relatives she'd have been in the poorhouse long ago. 
 I'm tired of being on charity just because we are wo 
 men. Now that Jane has come home for good I am 
 simply obliged to find something to do." 
 
 "I don't mind your wanting to work, dear, I think 
 it's splendid of you," returned Pussy, "but I do feel 
 that you ought to work in a ladylike way a way that 
 wouldn't interfere with your social position and your 
 going to germans and having attention from young 
 men and all that." 
 
 "Why don't you make lampshades, Gabriella?" 
 demanded Jane in an emphatic burst of inspiration. 
 "Sophy Madison earns enough from lampshades to 
 send her sister and herself to the White Sulphur Springs 
 every summer." 
 
 "Sophy makes all the lampshades that anybody 
 wants, and, besides, she gets orders from the North 
 she told me so yesterday." 
 
 "Gabriella crochets beautifully," remarked Mrs. 
 Carr a little nervously because of the failure of her 
 first suggestion. "The last time I went to see Miss
 
 28 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Matoaca Chambers in the Old Ladies' Home, she told 
 me she made quite a nice little sum for her church by 
 crocheting mats." 
 
 "And Gabriella can cook, too," rejoined Pussy, with 
 exaggerated sprightliness, for she felt that Mrs. Carr's 
 solution of the problem had not been entirely felici 
 tous. "Why doesn't she try sending some of her angel 
 food to the Woman's Exchange? " 
 
 Jimmy, who had listened to this advice with the ex 
 pression of tolerant amusement he always wore when 
 women began to talk about the more serious affairs of 
 life in his presence, made an honest, if vulgar, attempt 
 to lighten the solemnity of the situation with a joke. 
 
 "Gabriella isn't trying to earn church money. 
 You're out gunning for a living, aren't you, Ella?" he 
 inquired. 
 
 "I'm sick of being dependent," repeated Gabriella, 
 ivhile her face grew stern. "Do you think if Jane had 
 lad enough money to live on that she would ever have 
 stood Charley so long? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I should, Gabriella. Marriage is sacred to 
 me!" exclaimed Jane, whose perfect wifeliness atoned, 
 even in the opinion of Jimmy, for any discrepancies in 
 logic. "Nothing on earth could have induced me to 
 leave him until until this happened." 
 
 The conviction that she had never at any moment 
 since her marriage "failed in her duty to Charley" lent 
 a touching sanctity to her expression, while the bitter 
 lines around her mouth faded in the wan glow that 
 flooded her face. Whatever her affliction, however 
 intense her humiliation, Jane was supported always by 
 the most comforting of beliefs the belief that she had 
 been absolutely right and Charley absolutely wrong
 
 PRESENTS A SHAMELESS HEROINE 29 
 
 through the ten disillusioning years of their married 
 life. Never for an instant never even in a nightmare 
 had she been visited by the disquieting suspicion 
 that she was not entirely blameless. 
 
 "Well, you've left him now anyway," said Gabriella, 
 with the disarming candour which delighted Jimmy and 
 perplexed Uncle Meri weather, "so somebody has got 
 to help you take care of the children." 
 
 " She shall never come to want as long as Pussy and 
 I have a cent left," declared Cousin Jimmy, and his 
 voice expressed what Mrs. Carr described afterward 
 as "proper feeling." 
 
 "And we'd really rather that you'd earn less and 
 keep in your own station of life," said Pussy decisively. 
 
 "If you mean that you'd rather I'd work buttonholes 
 or crochet mats than go into a store and earn a salary, 
 then I can't do it," answered Gabriella, as resolute, 
 though not so right-minded, as poor Jane. "I'd rather* 
 lie than be dependent all my life, and I'm going to earnj 
 
 Vjdie thai 
 pny livi 
 
 living if I have to break rocks to do it.'
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 POOR JANE 
 
 SUPPER was over, and Gabriella, still in the dress she 
 had worn all day, was picking up the children's clothes 
 from the floor of her room. According to Mrs. Carr's 
 hereditary habit in sorrow or sickness, Jane had been 
 served in bed with tea and toast, while several small 
 hard cots had been brought down from the attic and 
 arranged in the available space in the two bedrooms. 
 As Gabriella looked at the sleeping children, who had 
 kicked the covering away, and lay with round rosy 
 limbs gleaming in the lamplight, she remembered that 
 Arthur Peyton was coming at nine o'clock to take her 
 to Florrie's party, and she told herself with grim deter 
 mination that she would never go to a party again. 
 The Berkeley conscience, that vein of iron which lay 
 beneath the outward softness and incompetence of 
 her mother and sister, held her, in spite of her tempting 
 youth, to the resolution she had made. She had 
 told Jimmy that she meant to earn her living if she 
 had to break rocks to do it, and Gabriella, like 
 Pussy, came of a race that "did not easily change its 
 mind." 
 
 Turning to the bureau, she smoothed out the chil 
 dren's hair ribbons and pinned them, in two tight little 
 blue and pink rolls, to the pincushion. Then, taking 
 up a broken comb, she ran it through the soft lock of 
 
 so
 
 POOR JANE 31 
 
 hair that fell like a brown wing over her forehead. Her 
 bright dark eyes, fringed in short thick lashes and set 
 wide apart under arched eyebrows, gazed questioningly 
 back at her from a row of german favours with which 
 she had decorated the glass; and it was as if the face 
 of youth, flickering with a flamelike glow and intensity, 
 swam there for an instant in the dim greenish pool of 
 the mirror. Beneath the charm of the face there was 
 the character which one associates, not with youth, 
 but with age and experience. Beneath the fine, clear 
 lines of her head and limbs, the tall slenderness of her 
 figure, the look of swiftness and of energy, which was 
 almost birdlike in its grace and poise, there was a 
 strength and vigour which suggested a gallant boy 
 rather than the slighter and softer frame of a girl. 
 
 While she stood there, Gabriella thought regretfully 
 of all that it would mean to give up her half-dependent 
 and wholly ladylike existence and go to work in a shop. 
 Necessity not choice was driving her; and in spirit 
 she looked back almost wistfully to the securely circum 
 scribed lot of her grandmother. For there was little of 
 the rebel in her temperament; and had she been free 
 to choose, she would have instinctively selected, guided 
 by generations of gregarious ancestors, the festive 
 girlhood which Cousin Pussy had so ardently described. 
 She wanted passionately all the things that other girls 
 had, and her only quarrel, indeed, with the sheltered 
 life was that she couldn't afford it. In the expressive 
 phrase of Cousin Jimmy, the sheltered life "cost money," 
 and to cost money was to be beyond the eager grasp of 
 Gabriella. 
 
 The door opened as if yielding under protest, and 
 Marthy entered, still hurriedly tying the strings of the
 
 32 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 clean apron she had slipped on over her soiled one before 
 answering the door-bell. 
 
 " Yo' beau done come, Miss Ella. Ain't you gwine? " 
 
 "No, I'm not going to the party, Marthy, but ask 
 him to wait just a minute." 
 
 "He's settin' over yonder in de parlour wid his over 
 coat on." 
 
 "Well, ask him to take it off; I'll be there in a mo 
 ment." She spoke as gravely as Marthy had done, yet 
 in her face there was a light play of humour. 
 
 Two years ago she would have thrilled with joy at the 
 thought that Arthur was waiting for her; but in those 
 two years since her engagement she had grown to look 
 upon her first love as the gossamer, fairylike romance 
 of a child. For months she had known that the en 
 gagement must be broken sooner or later; and she knew 
 now, while she listened to Marthy 's shuffling feet has 
 tening to deliver her message, that she must break it 
 to-night. In the dim pool of her mirror a face looked 
 back at her that was not the face of Arthur Peyton; 
 she saw it take form there as one sees a face grow grad 
 ually into life from the dimness of dreams. It was, she 
 told herself to-night, the very face of her dream that she 
 saw. 
 
 "Well, I must get it over," she said with a sternness 
 which gave her a passing resemblance to the Saint 
 Memin portrait of the Reverend Bartholomew Berke 
 ley; " I've got to get it over to-night, and whatever hap 
 pens I've got to be honest." Then, with a last glance 
 at the sleeping children, she lowered the gas, and went 
 across the darkened hall, which smelt of pickles and 
 bacon because one end of it was used as a storeroom. 
 
 The parlour had been swept since the family council
 
 POOR JANE 33 
 
 had deliberated there over Jane's destiny. The scraps 
 of cambric had been gathered up from the threadbare 
 arabesques in the carpet; the chairs had been placed at 
 respectable distances apart; the gas-jets in the chan 
 delier were flaming extravagantly under the damaged 
 garlands; and the sewing machine had been wheeled 
 into the obscurity of the hall, for it would have humili 
 ated Gabriella's mother to think that her daughter re 
 ceived young men in a room which looked as if some 
 body had worked there. 
 
 When Gabriella entered, Arthur Peyton was standing 
 in front of the fireplace, gazing abstractedly at his re 
 flection in the French mirror. Though his chestnut 
 hair was carefully brushed, he had instinctively lifted 
 his hand to smooth down an imaginary lock, and while 
 he did this, he frowned slightly as if at a recollection that 
 had ruffled his temper. His features were straight 
 and very narrow, with the look of sensitiveness one 
 associates with the thoroughbred, and the delicate 
 texture of his skin emphasized this quality of high- 
 breeding, which was the only thing that one remem 
 bered about him. In his light-gray eyes there was a 
 sympathetic expression which invariably won the hearts 
 of old ladies, and these old ladies were certain to say of 
 him afterward, "such a gentleman, my dear almost 
 of the old school, you know, and we haven't many of 
 them left in this hurrying age." 
 
 He had done well, though not brilliantly, at college, 
 for his mind, if unoriginal, had never given anybody, 
 not even his mother, the least bit of trouble. For 
 three years he had worked with admirable regularity 
 in the office of his uncle, Carter Peyton, one of the most 
 distinguished lawyers in the Virginia of his period, and
 
 34 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 it was generally felt that young Arthur Peyton would 
 have "a brilliant future." For the present, however, 
 he lived an uneventful life with his widowed mother in a 
 charming old house, surrounded by a walled garden, in 
 Franklin Street. Like the house, he was always in 
 perfect order; and everything about him, from his 
 loosely fitting clothes and his immaculate linen to his 
 inherited conceptions of life, was arranged with such 
 exquisite precision that it was impossible to improve 
 it in any way. He knew exactly what he thought, and 
 he knew also his reason, which was usually a prece 
 dent in law or custom, for thinking as he did. His opin 
 ions, which were both active and abundant, were all 
 perfectly legitimate descendants of tradition, and the 
 phrase "nobody ever heard of such a thing," was quite 
 as convincing to him as to Mrs. Carr or to Cousin Jimmy 
 Wrenn. 
 
 "Gabriella, aren't you going?" he asked reproach 
 fully as the girl entered. 
 
 "Oh, Arthur, we've had such a dreadful day! Poor 
 Jane has left Charley for good and has come home, with 
 all the children. We've been busy dividing them 
 among us, and we're going to turn the dining-room into 
 a nursery." 
 
 " Left Charley? That's bad, isn't it? " asked Arthur 
 doubtfully. 
 
 "I feel so sorry for her, Arthur. It must be terrible 
 to have love end like that." 
 
 " But she isn't to blame. Everybody knows that she 
 has forgiven him again and again." 
 
 "Yes, everybody knows it," repeated Gabriella, as if 
 she drew bitter comfort from the knowledge, "and she 
 says now that she will never, never go back to him."
 
 POOR JANE 35 
 
 For the first time a shadow appeared in Arthur's clear 
 eyes. 
 
 "Do you think she ought to make up her mind, 
 darling, until she sees whether or not he will reform? 
 After all, she is his wife." 
 
 "That's what mother says, and yet I believe Charley 
 is the only person on earth mother really hates. Now 
 Cousin Jimmy and I will do everything we can to keep 
 her away from him." 
 
 "I think I shouldn't meddle if I were you, dearest. 
 She'll probably go back to him in the end because of the 
 children." 
 
 "But I am going to help her take care of the chil 
 dren," replied Gabriella stanchly. "Of course, my life 
 will be entirely different now, Arthur," she added 
 gently. "Everything is altered for me, too, since yes 
 terday. I have thought it all over for hours, and I am 
 going to try to get a place in Brandywine's store." 
 
 "In a store?" repeated Arthur slowly, and she saw 
 the muscles of his mouth tighten and grow rigid. 
 
 "Mother doesn't like the idea any more than you do, 
 but what are we to come to if we go on in the old aim 
 less way? One can't make a living out of plain sewing, 
 and though, of course, Charley will be supposed to pro 
 vide for his children, he isn't exactly the sort one can 
 count on. Brandywine's, you see, is only a beginning. M 
 What I mean is that I am obliged to learn how to sup-| | 
 port myself." 
 
 "But couldn't you work just as well in your home, 
 darling?" 
 
 "People don't pay anything for home work. You 
 must see what I mean, Arthur." 
 
 "Yes, I see," he replied tenderly; but after a mo-
 
 36 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ment's thought, he went on again with the gentle ob 
 stinacy of a man whose thinking had all been done for 
 him before he was born. "I wish, though, that you 
 would try to hold out a little longer, working at home 
 with your mother. In a year or two we shall be able to 
 marry." 
 
 "I couldn't," said Gabriella, shaking her head. 
 "Don't urge me, Arthur." 
 
 "If you would only consent to live with mother, we 
 might marry now," he pursued, after a minute, as if he 
 had not heard her. 
 
 "But it wouldn't be fair to her, and how could I ask 
 her to take mother and Jane and the children? No, 
 I've thought it all out, dear, and I must go to work." 
 
 "But I'll work for them, Gabriella. I'll do anything 
 on earth rather than see you ordered about by old 
 Brandy wine." 
 
 "He won't order me about," answered Gabriella 
 cheerfully; "but mother feels just as you do. She says 
 I am going out of my class because I won't stay at home 
 and work buttonholes." 
 
 "You couldn't go out of your class," replied Arthur, 
 with an instinctive gallantry which even his distress 
 could not overcome; "but I can't get used to the 
 thought of it, darling I simply can't. You're so sacred 
 to me. There's something about the woman a man 
 loves that's different from every other woman, and 
 the bare idea of your working in a shop sickens me. I" 
 always think of you as apart from the workaday world. 
 I always think of you as a star shining serenely above 
 
 the sordid struggle Overwhelmed by the glowing 
 
 train of his rhetoric, he broke down suddenly and caught 
 passionately at the cool hand of Gabriella.
 
 POOR JANE 37 
 
 As he looked at her slender finger, on which he had 
 placed her engagement ring two years before, it seemed 
 to him that the situation was becoming intolerable 
 that it was an affront not only to his ideal of Gabriella, 
 as something essentially starlike and remote, but to 
 that peculiar veneration for women which he always 
 spoke and thought of as "Southern." His ideal woman / 
 was gentle, clinging, so perfectly a "lady" that she 
 would have perished had she been put into a shop ; and, 
 though he was aware that Gabriella was a girl of much 
 character and determination, his mind was so con 
 structed that he was able, without difficulty, to think 
 of her as corresponding to this exalted type of her sex. 
 By the simple act of falling in love with her he had en- " 
 dowed her with every virtue except the ones that she 
 actually possessed. 
 
 "I know, I know," said Gabriella tenderly, for she 
 saw that he suffered. Her training had been a hard 
 one, though she had got it at home, and in a violent re 
 action from the sentimentality of her mother and Jane 
 she had become suspicious of any language that sounded 
 " flowery " to her sensitive ears. With her clear-sighted 
 judgment, she knew perfectly well that by no stretch 
 of mind or metaphor could she be supposed to resemble 
 a star that she was not shining, not remote, not even 
 "ideal" in Arthur's delicate sense of the word. She 
 had known the horrors of poverty, of that bitter genteel 
 poverty which must keep up an appearance at any cost; 
 and she could never forget the grim days, after the death 
 of Uncle Beverly Blair, when they had shivered in 
 fireless rooms and gone for weeks without butter on their 
 bread. For the one strong quality in Mrs. Carr's char 
 acter was the feeling she spoke of complacently, though 
 
 ^99965
 
 38 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 modestly, as "proper pride"; and this proper pride, 
 which was now resisting Gabriella's struggle for inde 
 pendence, had in the past resisted quite as stubbornly 
 the thought of an appeal to the ready charity of her mas 
 culine relatives. To seek a man's advice had been from 
 her girlhood the primal impulse of Mrs. Carr's nature; 
 but, until Fate had starved her into sincerity, she had 
 kept alive the ladylike fiction that she was in need of 
 moral, not material, assistance. ' 
 
 "Of course, if there were any other way, Arthur," 
 said Gabriella, remembering the earlier battles with 
 her mother, and eager to compromise when she could 
 do so with dignity; "but how can I go on being depend 
 ent on Cousin Jimmy and Uncle Meriweather. Neither 
 of them is rich, and Cousin Jimmy has a large family." 
 
 Of course she was reasonable. The most disagreeable 
 thing about Gabriella, Jane had once said, was her in 
 veterate habit of being reasonable. But then Jane, 
 who was of an exquisite sensibility, felt that Gabriella's 
 reasonableness belonged to a distinctly lower order of 
 intelligence. When all was said, Gabriella saw clearly 
 . because she had a practical mind, and a practical mind 
 is usually engrossed with material matters. 
 
 " I understand exactly how you feel, dear, but if only 
 you could go on just as you are for a few years longer," 
 said Arthur, sticking to his original idea with a tenacity 
 which made it possible for him to argue for hours and 
 yet remain exactly where he had started. Though they 
 talked all night, though she convinced him according to 
 all the laws and principles of logic, she knew that he 
 would still think precisely what he had thought in the 
 beginning, for his conviction was rooted, deeper than 
 reason, in the unconquerable prejudices which had
 
 POOR JANE 39 
 
 passed from the brain into the very blood of his race. 
 He would probably say at the end: "I admit all that 
 you tell me, Gabriella, but my sentiment is against it;" 
 and this sentiment, overruling sense, would insist, with 
 sublime obstinacy, that Gabriella must not work in a 
 shop. It would ignore, after the exalted habit of senti 
 ment, such merely sordid facts as poverty and starva 
 tion (who ever heard of a woman of good family starving 
 in Virginia?) , and, at last, if Gabriella were really in love 
 with Arthur, it would triumph over her finer judgment 
 and reduce her to submission. But while she watched 
 him, in the very minute when, failing for words, he 
 caught her in his arms, she said to herself, suddenly 
 chilled and determined: "I must get it over to-night, 
 and I've got to be honest." The scent of the hyacinths 
 floated to her again, but it seemed to bring a cold wind, 
 as if a draught had blown in through the closed slats of 
 the shutters. 
 
 "Everything has changed, Arthur," she said, "and 
 I don't think I ought to go on being engaged." Then 
 because her words sounded insincere, she added sternly : 
 " Even if we could be married and of course we can't 
 be I I don't feel that I should want to marry. I 
 am not sure that I love you enough to marry you." 
 
 It was all so unromantic, so unemotional, so utterly 
 different from the scene she had pictured when she 
 imagined what "breaking her engagement" would be 
 like. Then she had always thought of herself as dis 
 solving in tears on the horsehair sofa, which had become 
 sacred to the tragedy of poor Jane; but, to her surprise, 
 she did not feel now the faintest inclination to cry. It 
 ought to have been theatrical, but it wasn't not even 
 when she took off her engagement ring, as she had read
 
 40 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 in novels that girls did at the decisive instant, and laid 
 it down on the table. When she remembered this after 
 wards, it appeared rather foolish, but Arthur seemed not 
 to notice it, and when Marthy came in to light the fire 
 in the morning, she found the ring lying on a copy of 
 Gray's Elegy and brought it back to Gabriella. 
 
 "I'll never give you up," said Arthur stubbornly, and 
 knowing his character, she felt that he had spoken the 
 truth. He could not give her up even had he wished 
 it, for, like a belief, she had passed from his brain into 
 the fibre of his being. She had become a habit to him, 
 and not love, but the inability to change, to cease 
 thinking what he had always thought, to break a fixed 
 manner of life, would keep him faithful to her in his 
 heart. 
 
 "I'm sorry oh, I'm sorry," she murmured, longing 
 to have it over and to return to Jane and the children. 
 It occurred to her almost resentfully that love was not 
 always an unmixed delight. 
 
 "Is there any one else, Gabriella?" he asked with a 
 sudden choking sound in his voice. "I have sometimes 
 thought in the last four or five months that there 
 might be that you had changed that He 
 
 stopped abruptly, and she answered him with a beauti 
 ful frankness which would have horrified the imper 
 ishable, if desiccated, coquetry of her mother. 
 
 "There is some one else and there isn't," she replied 
 simply. "I mean I think of some one else very often 
 of some one who isn't in my life at all from whom 
 I never hear " 
 
 "Is it George Fowler?" 
 
 She bowed her head, and, though she did not blush, 
 her eyes grew radiant.
 
 POOR JANE 41 
 
 "And you have known him less than a year? " 
 
 Again she bowed her head without speaking. What 
 was there, after all, that she could say in justification 
 of her behaviour? 
 
 A groan escaped him, smothered into a gentle mur 
 mur of protest. "And I thought women were more 
 constant than men!" he exclaimed with something of 
 the baffled and helpless feeling which had overtaken 
 Uncle Meriweather while he regarded Gabriella. 
 
 The generalization was not without interest for 
 Gabriella. 
 
 "I thought so, too," she observed dispassionately. 
 "I thought so, too, and that is why it was such a 
 dreadful surprise to me when it happened. You your 
 self aren't more shocked and surprised than I was in 
 the beginning," she added. 
 
 "But you've got used to the thought, I suppose?" 
 
 "Well, one has to, you see. What else is there to 
 do? I always understood from mother" she went 
 on with the same eager interest, as if she were stumbling 
 upon new and important intellectual discoveries "I 
 always understood that women never fell in love with 
 men first I mean until they had had positive proof 
 that their love would be returned. But in this case 
 that didn't seem to matter at all. Nothing mattered, 
 and the more I fought against it and tried to be true 
 to my engagement, the more I found myself being false. 
 It's all very strange," she concluded, "but that is just 
 how it happened." 
 
 "And he knows nothing about it?" 
 
 "Oh, no. I told him I was engaged to you, and then 
 he went away." 
 
 For an instant he was silent, and watching his face,
 
 42 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 so carefully guarded and controlled by habit that it 
 had the curious blank look of a statue's, Gabriella 
 could form no idea of the suppressed inarticulate suffer 
 ing in his heart. 
 
 "And if he came back would you marry him?" he 
 asked. 
 
 Before replying she sat for a minute gazing down on 
 her folded hands and weighing each separate word of 
 her answer. 
 
 "I should try not to, Arthur," she said at last, "but 
 tout I am not sure that I should be able to help it." 
 
 When at last he had said "good-bye" rather grimly, 
 and gone out of the door without looking back, she 
 was conscious of an immense relief, of a feeling that 
 she could breathe freely again after an age of oppres 
 sion. There was a curious sense of unreality about the 
 hour she had just passed through, as if it belonged not 
 to actual life, but to a play she had been rehearsing. 
 She had felt nothing. The breaking of her engage 
 ment had failed utterly to move her. 
 
 After bolting the front door, she turned out the gas 
 in the parlour, pushed back the lump of coal in the 
 grate in the hope of saving it for the morrow, and went 
 cautiously down the hall to her room. As she passed 
 her mother's door, a glimmer of light along the thresh 
 old made her pause for a minute, and while she hesi 
 tated, an anxious voice floated out to her : 
 
 "Gabriella, is that you?" 
 
 "Yes, mother, do you want anything?" 
 
 "Jane has one of her heart attacks. I put her to 
 bed in my room because it is more comfortable than 
 the dining-room. Don't you think you had better go 
 back and wake Marthy?"
 
 POOR JANE 43 
 
 "Is she ill? Let me come in," answered Gabriella, 
 pushing open the door and brushing by Mrs. Carr, who 
 stood, shrunken and shivering, in a gray flannel wrap 
 per and felt slippers. 
 
 Though Jane's attacks were familiar occurrences, 
 they never failed to produce an immediate panic in the 
 household. As a child of nine, Gabriella remembered 
 being aroused in the middle of a bitter night, hastily 
 wrapped in her mother's shawl and a blanket, and 
 hurried up the staircase to Jane, who had broken her 
 engagement to Charley the evening before. Jane, 
 pale, angelic, palpitating, appeared to draw her last 
 breath as they entered, while the old doctor supported 
 her in his arms, and Marthy, in a frenzy of service, 
 rattled the dead embers in the grate. It had all been 
 horribly vivid, and when Jane had murmured Charley's 
 name in a dying voice, they had stood, trembling and 
 blue with cold, around her bed, waiting for the end. 
 But the end had not come, and three months later 
 Jane was married to Charley Gracey. 
 
 After that scene, Gabriella had associated Jane's 
 attacks with a freezing January night and a fireless 
 grate (though the last but one had occurred in mid- 
 August), and she was relieved now to find a fire burn 
 ing in her mother's room and a kettle singing merrily 
 on the fender. The elder children, with their flannel 
 petticoats pinned over their thin little shoulders, were 
 sitting straight and stiff on a box couch which had been 
 turned into a bed, and their strange little faces looked 
 wan and peaked in the firelight. 
 
 Jane was really ill, Gabriella decided, after a glance 
 at her sister. Nothing except acute suffering could 
 have given her that ghastly pallor or made her eyes
 
 44 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 sink so far back in her head. She lay quite motion 
 less on the far side of the big tester bed, staring straight 
 up at the ceiling with an expression which terrified 
 Gabriella, though she had seen it on her sister's face 
 at least a dozen times before to-night. 
 
 "Has Arthur gone?" asked Mrs. Carr in a voice that 
 sounded as if she were running. 
 
 " Yes. Did you want him, mother? " 
 
 "I thought we might send him for the doctor and 
 for Charley. Don't you think Charley ought to be 
 told of her condition? She has asked for the children." 
 
 " Have you given her the digitalis? " 
 
 "I can't make her swallow it. There are the drops 
 on the table by the bed. My hands tremble so I had 
 to measure them three times." 
 
 Taking the glass from the table, Gabriella bent over 
 her sister and implored her to swallow the drops, but, 
 without appearing to hear her voice, Jane still stared 
 blankly upward, with the rigid, convulsed look of a 
 woman who has been stricken with dumbness. Her 
 flaxen hair, damp with camphor, which Mrs. Carr had 
 wildly splashed on her forehead, clung flat and close 
 to her head, while the only pulse in her body seemed to 
 beat in irregular, spasmodic throbs in her throat. 
 
 "Don't go, mother. I'll wake Marthy," cried Ga 
 briella, for Mrs. Carr, inspired by the spirit of panic, 
 was darting out of the door in her felt slippers. Then, 
 while the children, crying distractedly, rushed to Jane's 
 bedside, the girl ran out of the house and along the 
 brick walk to the kitchen and the room above it where 
 Marthy lived the little life she had apart from her work. 
 In answer to Gabriella's call she emerged entirely dressed 
 from the darkness; and at the news of Jane's illness
 
 POOR JANE 45 
 
 I she was seized with the spurious energy which visits 
 
 her race in the moment of tragedy. She offered at 
 
 once to run for the doctor, and suggested, without a 
 
 hint from Gabriella, that she had better leave word, 
 
 on her way home, for Marse Charley. 
 
 "I knowed 't wuz comin' jez ez soon ez I lay eyes 
 on 'er," she muttered, for she was an old family serv 
 ant. "Dar ain' no use 'n tryin' ter come betweenst 
 dem de good Lawd is done jine tergedder fur worse. A 
 baid husban'! Hi! Dar ain't un 'oman erlive, I 
 reckon, dat 'ouldn't ruther own a baid husban' den 
 no husban' at all. You all is got to teck 'em de way 
 dey's made, en dar's moughty few un um dat is made 
 right." 
 
 Still muttering, she stumbled down the walk and 
 out of the gate, while Gabriella returned to her mother's 
 room and hurried the weeping children into their shoes 
 and stockings. Mrs. Carr, still in her flannel wrapper, 
 with her little flat gray curls screwed up on pins for the 
 night, and her thin ankles showing pathetically above 
 her felt slippers, ran nervously to and fro with mustard 
 plasters and bottles of hot water which she continually 
 refilled from the kettle on the fender. Occasionally 
 she paused long enough to hold the camphor to Jane's 
 nose or to lift the quilt from the bottom of the bed and 
 then put it carefully back in the very spot where it 
 had lain before she had touched it. And because she 
 was born to take two steps to every one that was neces 
 sary, because she could not accomplish the simplest 
 act without a prodigious waste of energy and emotion, 
 because she died twenty deaths over the slightest 
 anxiety, and, most of all, because she was the last person 
 on earth who ought to have been burdened with poverty
 
 46 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 and hard work and an unhappily married daughter 
 because of all these things Mrs. Carr wore herself to 
 a shadow in the quarter of an hour they spent waiting 
 for the doctor and Charley Gracey. 
 
 Though she had brought Jane through at least a 
 dozen "attacks,'* she still lost her presence of mind as 
 completely as on that January night when, utterly 
 distraught, she had hurried Gabriella to the first death 
 bed scene of her sister; she still grew as forgetful of 
 herself and her own feelings, and, in obedience to some 
 profound law of her nature, she still as confidently 
 "expected the worst." For Mrs. Carr's philosophy, 
 like Jane's, was of that active but dreary sort that 
 thrives best upon misery. Just as Jane, who had lost 
 every illusion about Charley, went on loving him in 
 spite of it, so Mrs. Carr, having lost her illusions about 
 life, retained a kind of wistful fondness for the thing 
 that had wounded her. 
 
 The door-bell rang sharply, and Gabriella went to 
 let in the doctor, a brisk, authoritative young man of 
 the new school, who had learned everything there was 
 to be known about medicine except the way to behave 
 in a sickroom, and who abhorred a bedside manner as 
 heartily as if it were calomel or castor oil. His name 
 was Darrow, and he was the assistant of old Dr. 
 Walker, Mrs. Carr's family physician, who never went 
 out at night since he had passed his seventieth birth 
 day. Gabriella, who liked him because he was not 
 anecdotal and gave small doses of medicine, hastily 
 led the way to her mother's room before she ran 
 back to meet Charley Gracey at the door of the dark 
 parlour. 
 
 "You can't see her now. The doctor is with her/'
 
 POOR JANE 47 
 
 she whispered. "I'll make a light in here and you can 
 wait." 
 
 "Let me," said Charley, quite as pleasantly as if he 
 were not a bad husband, while he found a match and 
 struck it on the sole of his foot. Then, as the gas flared 
 up, he exclaimed, with a low whistle, "By Jove ; you're 
 a sight, Gabriella!" 
 
 "Well, it's your fault," replied Gabriella sharply, 
 letting him see, as she told herself, exactly what she 
 thought of him. "You've made Jane so ill we thought 
 she was dying." 
 
 "I'm sorry for that," he said, suddenly smitten with 
 gravity. "Is she really so bad?" 
 
 His charming freckled face, with its irrepressible 
 humour, grew almost grotesquely solemn, while the ha 
 bitual merriment faded slowly from his light-gray eyes, 
 leaving them empty of expression. He was a short, 
 rather thick-set man, not particularly good-looking, 
 not particularly clever, but possessing a singular, if un 
 accountable, charm. Everybody liked Charley, though 
 nobody respected him. He was a scamp, but a lovable 
 scamp, while Jane, with the best intentions in the world, 
 had managed to make every virtue unattractive. When 
 people condemned him, they said that he was " utterly 
 unprincipled"; when they softened in their judgment, 
 they admitted that he had " the best heart in the world." 
 
 "I suppose it isn't any worse than other attacks," 
 answered Gabriella, "but you know what they are like." 
 
 "Yes, I know," replied Charley. "Oh, Lord, 
 don't I?" 
 
 "She asked mother to send for you," continued 
 Gabriella. "She wants you to know that she has 
 forgiven you/'
 
 48 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Has she?" said Charley, without elation. Turning 
 away, he stared for a minute or two at the engraving of 
 the children feeding fish in a pond; then, with his eyes 
 still glued to the picture, he burst out passionately: 
 "Gabriella, I'd hoped she wouldn't this time!" 
 
 "If I were she," retorted Gabriella crushingly, "I 
 would never speak to you again until the day of my 
 death." 
 
 "If she were you," rejoined Charley, with barefaced 
 audacity, "I'd have been a good husband. Why, I 
 was simply starving to be a good husband when I mar 
 ried Jane. It's my ideal in life. I'm all for the do 
 mestic thing by nature. I was tired positively dog- 
 tired of the other kind. I wanted a wife. I adored 
 I've always adored babies 
 
 "If that is true," returned Gabriella sternly, for she 
 was not disposed to soften to Charley, and in her heart 
 she deeply resented what she called Jane's "weakness," 
 "if that is true why do you behave so outrageously to 
 Jane and the children? Why can't you be decent?" 
 
 "I could," answered Charley, with engaging lucidity, 
 "if she were less so. It's her infernal virtue I can't 
 stand, Gabriella. No man could stand it without tak 
 ing to drink." 
 
 "But you knew she was that way. She was always 
 trying to make people better. It is her mission. Why, 
 I remember one winter night before you were married 
 mother got me out of bed in the cold to come and hear 
 Jane forgive you beautifully about something." 
 
 "That was the first time, and it was very touching. 
 I suppose the first time always is touching. Of course, 
 I didn't know she meant to keep it up. No man could 
 possibly have kept it up," said Charley, with bitterness,
 
 POOR JANE 49 
 
 "but she married me to reform me, and it is the only 
 thing she has really enjoyed about her marriage. She's 
 a born reformer. I haven't eaten a thing I cared about, 
 nor drank a drop I wanted, nor used a bad word I was 
 fond of, since I married, without being nagged at about 
 it. She loved me for my vices, and yet she hasn't let me 
 keep a single one not even the smallest not even 
 cigarettes. Nag! Good God! She's nagged me to 
 perfection ever since the day of our wedding when she 
 made me sign the pledge before she let me kiss her!" 
 
 "Well, that doesn't make it any easier for us or for 
 the children," replied Gabriella, without sympathy; 
 "and if you don't think of Jane, you might at least 
 think of your children." 
 
 "Of course it's hard on the kids," admitted Charley 
 ruefully. "But as for Jane now, will you tell me 
 what would become of Jane after she had reformed me? 
 Why, she'd be bored to death. She'd be a martyr with 
 out any martyrdom. When she made me give up to 
 bacco, she lost interest in everything for a week. She 
 was like your Uncle Meriweather after the surrender. 
 There wasn't anything left to fight about, and fighting 
 was all he could do 
 
 "I believe I really believe you have been drinking," 
 interrupted Gabriella with cold disgust. "Suppose 
 Jane were to die?" 
 
 "She won't die. She'll be all right as soon as she has 
 forgiven me." 
 
 He was not only bad, she told herself, he was per 
 fectly shameless. He appeared to have been born 
 without the faintest sense of responsibility. And yet, 
 while Gabriella listened to him, she realized that, in 
 some ways, he might be a less trying companion than
 
 50 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 poor Jane. His candour was as simple, as unaffected, 
 as the serene artlessness of a child. It was impossible 
 not to believe in his sincerity. Though she "despised 
 him," as she told herself, still she was obliged to admit 
 that there was something to be said on his side. The 
 harsh judgment of youth of youth that never tries 
 to understand, that never makes allowances softened 
 under the influence of Charley's reprehensible charm. 
 Even badness, Gabriella conceded grudgingly, might be 
 easier to live with in some circumstances than a too 
 exalted self -righteousness. 
 
 "If you'll bring Jane to that way of thinking," re 
 torted Charley, with vulgar frankness, "I'll give you 
 five hundred dollars down. If you'll thoroughly cor 
 rupt her mind and persuade her to neglect her duty to 
 me, I'll make it a thousand." 
 
 He was jesting! It was monstrous, with Jane lying 
 ill in her mother's room; it was indecent; it was grossly 
 immoral; but he was actually jesting! Not even scan 
 dal, not even the doctor's presence in the house, could 
 suppress his incorrigible spirit of levity. "If I were 
 Jane, I'd never speak to him," thought Gabriella, and 
 the question flashed through her mind, "how in the 
 world could she ever have loved him?" It was impos 
 sible for her to conceive of any situation when Charley 
 could have made a girl fall in love with him. Though 
 she had heard stories of his early conquests, she had 
 never believed them. There were times when she al 
 most liked him, but it was the kind of liking one gave 
 to an inferior, not to an equal. She admitted his charm, 
 but it was the charm of an irresponsible creature the 
 capricious attraction of a child or an animal. Her 
 common sense, she told herself, would keep her from
 
 POOR JANE 51 
 
 making a mistake such as Jane had made with her life; 
 and, besides, she was utterly devoid of the missionary 
 instinct which had lured Jane to destruction. "If I 
 ,ever marry, it will be different from that," she thought 
 [passionately. " It will be utterly different ! " 
 
 The door of Mrs. Carr's room opened suddenly, 
 Marthy's name was called in a high voice, and the doc 
 tor was heard saying reassuringly: "She is over the 
 worst. There is no need to worry." 
 
 "Don't send me in there alone, Gabriella," begged 
 Charley piteously. "I'd rather face bullets than Jane 
 in an attack." His bravado had deserted him, and he 
 appeared positively craven. The stiffness seemed to 
 have gone not only out of his character, but out of his 
 clothes also. Even his collar had become limp with 
 emotion. 
 
 "Well, I don't care," answered Gabriella, "you've 
 got to stand it. There's no use squirming when you've 
 only yourself to blame." With a malicious pleasure, 
 she watched the consternation in Charley's face, while 
 the doctor's footsteps came rapidly down the hall and 
 stopped at the threshold of the parlour. 
 
 "You may go in, Mr. Gracey your wife is asking for 
 you; but be very careful not to say anything that might 
 disturb her. Just keep her as quiet as you can for a 
 few hours." 
 
 Then the door in the distance opened again, and Mrs. 
 Carr, in the hollow tones of destiny, called: "Gabriella, 
 Jane is waiting to speak to her husband." 
 
 "Come, Charley," ordered Gabriella, grimly, and a 
 moment later she pushed him across her mother's thresh 
 old and turned back into the hall. "I hope she'll 
 make him squirm," she said to herself, with relish.
 
 52 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Nothing, she felt, except the certainty of Charley's 
 squirming, could make up to her for the half-hour she 
 had just spent with him. 
 
 She was still standing there when Jane's medicine 
 came from the druggist at the corner, and for a while 
 she waited outside the door, fearing to lighten Charley's 
 punishment by her entrance. The medicine had to be 
 measured in drops, and she went into the dining-room, 
 where the children were huddled together in an im 
 provised bed, and diluted the mixture with water be 
 fore she could persuade herself to go into her mother's 
 room. Even then she hesitated until she remembered 
 that the doctor had said Jane must take the first dose 
 immediately. Not by her, if she could help it, should 
 the divine wrath of the furies be appeased. 
 
 But with the first touch of her hand on the knob, 
 Charley's flippant voice greeted her with, "Won't you 
 come in, Gabriella?" and swallowing her angry retort, 
 she entered stiffly, with the glass held out straight 
 before her. Charley, on his knees beside the bed, with 
 his arm under his wife's pillow, stared up at his sister- 
 in-law with the guilty look of a whipped terrier, while 
 Jane, pallid, suffering, saintly, rested one thin blue- 
 veined hand on his shoulder. Her face was the colour 
 of the sheet, her eyes were unnaturally large and sur 
 rounded by violet circles; and her hair, drenched with 
 camphor, spread over the pillow like the hair of a 
 drowned woman. Never had she appeared so broken, 
 so resigned, so ineffably spiritual; and Gabriella's soli 
 tary comfort was the thought that Jane's attack had con 
 quered Charley as completely as it had conquered the 
 rest of them. 
 
 " Gabriella, I've forgiven him," said Jane, with faint-
 
 POOR JANE 53 
 
 ing sweetness, "and he wants you and mother to do so. 
 He has promised to be good in the future.'* 
 
 "Well, I shan't forgive him for keeping me up all 
 night," answered Gabriella resentfully, and she felt 
 that even if it killed Jane, she could not keep back her 
 reply. "I can't answer for mother, but I haven't for 
 given him and I never shall." She felt her anger hard 
 ened to a rock inside of her, and it hurt her so that 
 she put the glass hurriedly down on the table and ran 
 out of the room. As she closed the door behind her 
 she heard Jane saying gently: "Yes, I forgive you, 
 Charley, but I can't help feeling that you don't love 
 me as you ought to." 
 
 An old cape of her mother's was lying on a chair in 
 the hall, and, throwing it over her shoulders, Gabriella 
 went out on the porch and stood breathing quickly in 
 the cold air, with her hand pressed on her bosom, which 
 rose and fell as if she had been running. She was not 
 only furious, she was grossly affronted, though she had 
 1 known from the beginning, she said to herself, exactly 
 how it would end. She had never trusted Jane no, not 
 for a minute; she had never really trusted her mother. 
 Something had told her that Jane had never meant in 
 her heart to leave Charley, that she was only making a 
 scene, after the immemorial habit of women, before 
 going back to him. And yet, though she had suspected 
 this all along, she was as indignant as if she had been 
 deceived by a conspiracy of the three of them. Her 
 sense of decency was outraged. She despised Jane 
 because she had no strength of character; but even 
 while this thought was still in her mind, she admitted 
 that Jane had had sufficient strength of character to 
 upset the household, bring Charley to repentance, and
 
 54 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 emerge, faint but victorious, from the wreck of their 
 peace. Yes, she despised Jane, though it was impos- 
 sible to deny that Jane's methods were successful, 
 
 ce she had got what she wanted. 
 
 The street was very quiet, for it was in the small gray 
 hours between midnight and dawn, and a solitary 
 policeman, strolling by on his beat, appeared as wan 
 and spectral as the bare boughs of the poplar trees 
 beneath which he moved. The wind was still blowing 
 over the brow of the hill, and now and then it tossed a 
 wisp of straw or a handful of dust on the porch where 
 Gabriella was standing. As it swept onward it drove 
 a flock of shadows, like black birds, up the open street 
 into the clear space under the old-fashioned gas lamp 
 at the corner. All the lights were out in the neigh 
 bouring houses, but from a boarding-house down the 
 block there floated suddenly the gay snatch of a waltz 
 played on a banjo with a broken string. Then the 
 music stopped, the policeman passed, and Gabriella 
 and the wind were alone in the street. Overhead the 
 stars shone dimly through a web of mist; and it seemed 
 to her that the sadness of the sky and the sadness of 
 the earth had mingled there in the long straight street 
 where the wind blew with a melancholy sound between 
 rows of silent and darkened houses. 
 
 A noise in the hall made her turn, and, looking up, 
 she saw the gaunt figure of Miss Amelia Peterborough 
 standing in the bend of the staircase. In her hand the 
 old maid held a twisted candlestick of greenish brass, 
 and the yellow flame of the candle cast a trembling, 
 fantastic shadow on the wall at her back. Her head, 
 shorn of the false "front" she wore in the day, appeared 
 to have become all forehead and beaked nose; her eyes
 
 POOR JANE 55 
 
 had dwindled to mere points of blackness; her mouth, 
 sunken and drawn over toothless gums, was like the 
 mouth of a witch. The wind, blowing in gusts through 
 the open door, inflated her gray shawl and the skirt of 
 her dressing-gown, while, with each flutter of her gar 
 ments, the grotesque shadow on the white wall danced 
 and gibbered behind her. And, as she gazed down on 
 the girl, it was as if the end of life, with its pathos, its 
 cruelties, its bitterness and its disillusionment, had 
 stopped for a fleeting instant to look back at life in the 
 pride and ignorance of its beginning. 
 
 "There was so much moving about, I thought some 
 thing might have happened," said Miss Amelia apolo 
 getically, while Gabriella, closing the door, shut the 
 draught from the staircase. 
 
 "Jane had one of her heart attacks," answered the 
 girl. "I'm so sorry we waked you." 
 
 But she was thinking while she spoke, "So that is 
 old age so that is what it means to be old?" There 
 was a vague compassion in the thought, but it held no 
 terror, for the decay of Miss Amelia seemed as utterly 
 remote and detached from her own life as one of the 
 past ages in history. The youth in her brain created 
 a radiant illusion of immortality. By no stretch of 
 the imagination could she picture herself like the infirm 
 and loveless creature before her. Yet she knew, with 
 out realizing it, that Miss Amelia had once been young, 
 that she had once even been beautiful. There was a 
 legend, fading now into tradition, that her lover had 
 been killed in a duel, fought for her while she was 
 still a girl, and that she had worn only white or black 
 since that day she who was now well over eighty. 
 She had known love; a man had died for her; it was
 
 56 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 said that she had been a famous coquette in the 'thir 
 ties; and now she stood there, grotesque and sexless, 
 with her eyes empty of dreams and of memories, and her 
 face as gray and sinister as the face of her shadow. 
 
 "I hope she is better, poor child," she said, for, like 
 the rest of Richmond, she believed Jane to be all saint 
 and Charley all sinner. "If I can be of any help, be 
 sure to let me know." 
 
 "Yes, I'll let you know, thank you. I hope we didn't 
 disturb Miss Jemima." 
 
 The younger Miss Peterborough called "the happy 
 one" by Gabriella and Mrs. Carr because she was al 
 ways cheerful, though, as far as any one could tell, 
 she had nothing and had never had anything to be 
 cheerful about was named Jemima. A chronic in 
 valid, from some obscure trouble which had not left 
 her for twenty years, she was seldom free from pain, 
 and yet Gabriella had never seen her (except at funerals, 
 for which she entertained a perfectly healthy fondness 
 as diversions free to the poor) without a smile on her 
 face. 
 
 "Sister Jemima doesn't wake easily. She is a sound 
 sleeper and she's getting a little hard of hearing"; and 
 lifting the candlestick to light her way, Miss Amelia 
 turned back up the stairs, while the flame flitted like a 
 golden moth into the dimness. 
 
 "Poor old thing," thought Gabriella, imagining in 
 her Ignorance that she could understand the tragedy 
 of Miss Amelia's life; "poor old thing, she must have 
 had a terrible time." 
 
 As she approached her mother's door, Charley came 
 out, glanced at her sheepishly, and hurried to where his 
 hat hung on the walnut hatrack in the front hall.
 
 POOR JANE 57 
 
 Then, as if overcoming his first impulse to avoid her, 
 he beckoned to her furtively, and said in a sepulchral 
 whisper: "Gabriella, be very careful what you say to 
 her." 
 
 The audacity of it! This from Charley, the aban 
 doned, the depraved, the unutterably abhorrent in her 
 sight. Without replying, she turned indignantly away 
 and opened her mother's door. 
 
 Lying in the middle of the bed now, and slightly 
 propped with pillows, Jane was sipping a second dose 
 t of medicine from a glass Mrs. Carr held to her lips. 
 
 "I know you don't understand my forgiving him, 
 Gabriella," she said very gently, "but some day, after 
 you are married, you will realize that I do it from a 
 sacred duty from a sacred duty," she repeated firmly, 
 while the shining light of martyrdom illumined her 
 features. 
 
 "Well, it's none of my business," answered Gabriella 
 crossly, "but the sooner you do it, I suppose the sooner 
 you will have to do it again." If only for once Jane 
 would be direct, if only she would be natural, if only 
 she would speak the truth and not fiction. 
 
 " Oh, no, dear, you don't understand him any better 
 than you do me," said Jane as sweetly as ever in spite 
 of Gabriella's deplorable loss of temper. "He is really 
 dreadfully penitent, and he sees that he hasn't always 
 treated me as he ought to have done. But you'll know 
 ^what I mean when you marry, Gabriella. She'll under 
 stand me then, won't she, mother? " 
 
 "I'm sometimes tempted to hope that Gabriella will 
 never marry," replied Mrs. Carr with the uncompro 
 mising bitterness of abject despair; "the Carrs all seem 
 to marry so badly."
 
 58 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 In her normal mood she would never have uttered 
 this heresy, for she belonged to a generation that re 
 garded even a bad marriage as better for a woman than 
 no marriage at all; but the night had worn her out, and 
 one of her spells of neuralgia, which followed fatigue, 
 was already beginning in her face. The purple cro 
 cheted "fascinator" she had caught up at the doctor's 
 entrance was still on her head, and her long pale face, 
 beneath the airy scallops, appeared frozen in an expres 
 sion of incurable melancholy. For the rest she had been 
 too frightened, too forgetful of herself and her own 
 comfort even to put on her stockings, though Gabriella 
 had begged her to do so. "Don't think about me. 
 Attend to poor Jane," she had repeated over and 
 over. 
 
 "Mother, go into my room and get into bed," com 
 manded Gabriella, whose patience, never abundant, 
 was ebbing low. "If you don't get some sleep your 
 neuralgia won't be any better." 
 
 "It isn't any better. I don't expect it to be any 
 better." 
 
 "Well, you must go to bed or it will get worse. I'll 
 heat you a cup of milk and wrap you up in warm 
 blankets." 
 
 " Don't worry about me, dear. Think of poor Jane." 
 
 "We've been thinking of Jane all night, and you 
 need it now more than she does. I can tell by your 
 eyes how you are suffering." 
 
 In the first streak of dawn, which was beginning to 
 glimmer faintly on the window-panes, Mrs. Carr looked 
 as if she had withered overnight. 
 
 "It's only my left temple," she said dully; "otherwise 
 I am quite well. No, dear, I must rub Jane's forehead
 
 POOR JANE 59 
 
 until she falls asleep. The doctor said it was important 
 that we should keep her soothed." 
 
 But it was a law of Gabriella's nature that she 
 never knew when she was beaten. Failure aroused the 
 sleeping forces within her, and when these forces were 
 once liberated, the spasmodic efforts of Mrs. Carr and 
 the indirect methods of Jane were alike powerless to 
 oppose them. At such times a faint flush rose to her 
 pale cheeks, her eyes shone with a burning darkness, 
 while her mouth lost its fresh young red and grew hard 
 in outline. 
 
 "You must go to bed, mother," she repeated in a 
 voice which Mrs. Carr would have obeyed had it issued 
 from the wall or a piece of furniture. 
 
 Fifteen minutes later Gabriella stood authoritatively 
 beside the bed, while her mother, with a mustard plaster 
 at the back of her neck, obediently sipped hot milk from 
 a teacup. Mrs. Carr had surrendered to the conquering 
 spirit of her daughter, but her surrender, which was 
 unwilling and weakly defiant, gave out presently a 
 last feeble flicker of resistance. 
 
 "Don't you think, Gabriella, we might arrange to 
 live with Jane?" she asked. "It would be a saving of 
 expense for us both, and we might be so helpful about 
 the children." 
 
 "And about Charley, too, I suppose," suggested Ga 
 briella maliciously. 
 
 Mrs. Carr, having been born without a sense of hu 
 mour, never understood the broadest joke unless it was 
 illustrated; but even to her it became evident, after a 
 moment's anxious thought, that Gabriella was teasing 
 her. 
 
 "You seem to forget that he is her husband," she
 
 60 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 replied, with a pathetic clutch at her dignity, which, 
 owing perhaps to the purple "fascinator" and the 
 mustard plaster, she failed completely to recapture. 
 Then, as she finished the milk and handed back the 
 empty cup to her daughter, she added wearily, for life, 
 as she often said to herself of late, was becoming almost 
 too much for her, and she was feeling worn out and 
 old: 
 
 "My one comfort, Gabriella, is the thought that 
 Arthur Peyton loves you. There couldn't be anybody 
 more unlike Charley." 
 
 "There couldn't be," agreed Gabriella mildly, for 
 she felt that another blow would prostrate her mother.
 
 CHAPTER HI 
 
 A START IN LIFE 
 
 IN THE late 'seventies and early 'eighties the most 
 important shop in the town of Gabriella's birth was 
 known to its patrons (chiefly ladies in long basques, 
 tightly tied back skirts, and small eccentric bonnets) as 
 Brandywine & Plummer's drygoods store. At that 
 period, when old Mrs. Carr, just completing her nine 
 tieth year with a mind fixed upon heaven, would have 
 dropped dead at the idea that her granddaughter 
 should ever step out of her class, Gabriella's mother 
 bought her dresses (grosgrain of the very best quality) 
 from Major Brandywine. To be sure, even in those 
 days, there were other shops in the city for was not 
 Broad Street already alluded to in the newspapers as 
 "the shopping thoroughfare of the South?" but, 
 though they were as numerous as dandelions in June, 
 these places were by no means patronized so widely by 
 "the best people." Small shops, of course, carrying 
 a single line of goods and supplying their particular 
 products to an exacting and discriminating class, held 
 their own even against the established reputation of 
 Brandywine & Plummer's. O 'Council's linen store, 
 Twitlow's china store, Mrs. Tonk's doll store, and 
 Green & Brady's store for notions all these were situ 
 ated in Broad Street hardly a stone's throw from the 
 Second Market. But none of these, excellent as they 
 
 61
 
 62 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 were, could bear comparison with the refined at 
 mosphere, so different from the vulgar bustle of a 
 modern department store, which enveloped one in the 
 quiet gloom of Brandywine & Plummer's. In the first 
 place, one could be perfectly sure that one would be 
 waited on by a lady for Brandywine & Plummer's, 
 with a distinguished Confederate soldier at its head and 
 front, provided an almost conventual shelter for dis 
 tressed feminine gentility. There was, for instance, 
 Miss Marye of the black silk counter, whose father had 
 belonged to Stuart's cavalry and had fallen at Yellow 
 Tavern; there was Miss Meason of the glove counter, 
 and there was Mrs. Burwell Smith of the ribbon coun 
 ter for, though she had married beneath her, it was 
 impossible to forget that she was a direct descendant of 
 Colonel Micajah Burwell, of Crow's Nest Plantation. 
 
 Then, if one happened to be in search of cotton goods, 
 one would be almost certain to remark on the way 
 home: "Miss Peters, who waited on me in Brandy- 
 wine's this morning, has unmistakably the manner of a 
 lady," or "that Mrs. Jones in Brandy wine's must be 
 related to the real Joneses, she has such a refined 
 appearance." And, at last, in the middle 'nineties, 
 after the opening of the new millinery department, 
 which was reached by a short flight of steps, decorated 
 at discreet intervals with baskets of pink paper roses, 
 customers were beginning to ask : " May I speak to Miss 
 Gabriella for a minute? I wish to speak to Miss Gabri- 
 ella about the hat she is having trimmed for me." 
 
 For here, also, because of what poor Jane called her 
 "practical mind," the patrons of Brandywine & Plum 
 mer's were learning that Gabriella was "the sort you 
 could count on." As far as the actual work went, she
 
 A START IN LIFE 63 
 
 could not, of course, hold a candle (this was Mr. Plum- 
 mer's way of putting it) to Miss Kemp or Miss Tread- 
 way, who had a decided talent for trimming; but no 
 customer in balloon sleeves and bell-shaped skirt was 
 ever heard to remark of these young women as they 
 remarked of Gabriella, "No, I don't want anybody else, 
 please. She takes such an interest." To take an in 
 terest in other people might become quite as marketable 
 an asset, Mr. Plummer was discovering, after fifty years 
 of adherence to strictly business methods, as a gift for 
 the needle; and, added to her engaging interest, Gabri 
 ella appeared to know by instinct exactly what a cus 
 tomer wanted. 
 
 "I declare Miss Kemp had almost persuaded me to 
 take that brown straw with the green velvet bandeau 
 before I thought of asking Gabriella's advice," Mrs. 
 Spencer was overheard saying to her daughter, as she 
 paused, panting and breathless, at the head of the short 
 flight of steps. 
 
 "Oh, Gabriella always had taste; I'll ask her about 
 mine," Florrie tossed back gaily in the high fluting 
 notes which expressed so perfectly the brilliant, if 
 slightly metallic, quality of her personality. 
 
 Beside her mother, a plump, bouncing person, with a 
 noisy though imperfectly articulate habit of speech, 
 and the prominent hips and bust which composed the 
 "fine figure" of the period, Florrie seemed to float 
 with all the elusive, magic loveliness of a sunbeam. 
 From the shining nimbus of her hair to her small trip 
 ping feet she was the incarnation of girlhood of that 
 white and gold girlhood which has intoxicated the im 
 agination of man. She shed the allurement of sex as 
 unconsciously as a flower sheds its perfume. Though
 
 64 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 her eyes were softly veiled by her lashes, every male 
 clerk in Brandywine & Plummer's was dazzled by the 
 deep blue light of her glances. In her red mouth, with 
 its parted lips, in the pure rose and white of her flesh, in 
 the rich curve of her bosom, which promised already the 
 "fine figure" of her mother, youth and summer were 
 calling as they called in the velvet softness of the June 
 breeze. Innocent though she was, the powers of Life 
 had selected her as a vehicle for their inscrutable ends. 
 
 "Where is Miss Carr? I must speak to Miss Carr, 
 please," she said to one of the shop girls who came up, 
 eager to serve her. "Will you tell her that Miss 
 Spencer is waiting to speak to her?" 
 
 Responding to the girl's artless stare of admiration, 
 she threw a friendly glance at her before she turned 
 away to try on a monstrous white Leghorn hat deco 
 rated around the crown with a trellis of pink roses. 
 Unless she happened to be in a particularly bad hu 
 mour and this was not often the case Florrie was im- 
 perturbably amiable. She enjoyed flattery as a cat 
 enjoys the firelight on its back, and while she purred 
 happily in the pleasant warmth, she had something of 
 the sleek and glossy look of a pretty kitten. 
 
 "How does this look on me, mother?" she asked 
 over her shoulder of Mrs. Spencer, who was babbling 
 cheerfully in her loud tones to Miss Lancaster, the 
 forewoman. 
 
 Though some of the best blood in Virginia, profusely 
 diluted with some of the worst, flowed comfortably in 
 Mrs. Spencer's veins, it was impossible even for her 
 relatives to deny that she could be at times decidedly 
 vulgar. Having been a conspicuous belle and beauty 
 of a bold and dashing type in her youth, she now de-
 
 A START IN LIFE 65 
 
 voted her middle-age to the enjoyment of those pleas 
 ures which she had formerly sacrificed to the preserva 
 tion of her figure and her complexion. Though she still 
 dyed her somewhat damaged hair, and strenuously 
 pinched in her widening waist, she had ceased, since her 
 fiftieth birthday, to forego the lesser comforts of the 
 body. As she was a person of small imagination, and 
 of no sentiment, it is probable that she was happier now 
 than she had been in the days when she suffered the 
 deprivations and enjoyed the triumphs of beauty. 
 
 "What's that, Florrie?" she inquired shrilly. "No, 
 I shouldn't get that if I were you. It doesn't flare 
 enough. I'm crazy about a flare." 
 
 "But I want a pink bandeau, mother," replied 
 Florrie a little pettishly, as she patted her golden-red 
 fringe. "I wonder where Gabriella is? Isn't she ever 
 coming, Miss Lancaster?" 
 
 "I thought I saw her when I came in," observed Mrs. 
 Spencer, craning her handsome neck, which was run 
 ning to fat, in the direction of the trimming room. 
 "Florrie, just turn your head after a minute and look at 
 the hat Patty Carrington is buying pea green, and it 
 makes her face look like a walnut. She hasn't the 
 faintest idea how to dress. Do you think I ought to 
 speak to her about it?" 
 
 "No, let her alone," replied Florrie impatiently. 
 "Is this any better than the Leghorn? " 
 
 "Well, I must say I don't think there is much style 
 about it, though, of course, with your hair, you can 
 carry off anything. Isn't it odd how exactly she in 
 herited my hair, Miss Lancaster? I remember her 
 father used to say that he would have fallen in love with 
 a gatepost if it had had golden-red hair."
 
 66 LIFE AND GABBIELLA 
 
 Miss Lancaster, a thin, erect woman of fifty, with 
 impassive features, and iron-gray hair that looked as if 
 it were rolled over wood, glanced resignedly from Mrs. 
 Spencer's orange-coloured crimps to the imprisoned sun 
 light in Florrie's hair. 
 
 "I'd know you were mother and daughter any 
 where," she remarked in the noncommittal manner she i 
 had acquired in thirty years of independence; "and she 
 is going to have your beautiful figure, too, Mrs. 
 Spencer." 
 
 "Well, I reckon I'll lose my figure now that I've 
 stopped dieting," remarked the lively lady, casting an 
 appreciative glance in the mirror. "Florrie tells me I 
 wear my sleeves too large, but I think they make me 
 look smaller." 
 
 **" "They are wearing them very large in Paris," replied 
 \ Miss Lancaster, as if she were reciting a verse out of a 
 catalogue. She had, as she sometimes found occasion 
 to remark, been "born tired," and this temperamental 
 weariness showed now in her handsome face, so wrinkled 
 and dark around her bravely smiling eyes. Where she 
 came from, or how she spent her time between the hour 
 she left the shop and the hour she returned to it, the 
 two women knew as little as they knew the intimate 
 personal history of the Leghorn hat on the peg by the 
 mirror. Beyond the fact that she played the part of a 
 sympathetic chorus, they were without curiosity about 
 her life. Their own personalities absorbed them, and 
 for the time at least appeared to absorb Miss Lan 
 caster. 
 
 <x^ "I like the Leghorn hat," said Florrie decisively, as 
 she tried it on for the third time, "but I'll wait till I ask 
 Gabriella's opinion."
 
 A START IN LIFE 67 
 
 "I hope she's getting on well here," said Mrs. Spen 
 cer, who found it impossible to concentrate on Florrie's 
 hat. "Don't you think it was very brave of her to go 
 to work, Miss Lancaster?" 
 
 "I understood that she was obliged to," rejoined Miss 
 Lancaster, with the weary amiability of her professional 
 manner. 
 
 "She might have married, I happen to know that," 
 returned- Mrs. Spencer. "Arthur Peyton has been in 
 love with her ever since she was a child, and there was a 
 young man from New York last winter who seemed 
 crazy about her. Florrie, don't you think George 
 Fowler was just crazy about Gabriella? " 
 
 "I'm sure I don't know, mother. He paid her a 
 great deal of attention, but you never can tell about 
 men." 
 
 "Julia Caperton told me, and, of course, she's very 
 intimate with George's sister, that he went back to New 
 York because he heard that Gabriella was engaged to 
 Arthur. Florrie, do you suppose she is really engaged 
 to Arthur?" 
 
 Thus appealed to, Florrie removed the Leghorn hat 
 from her head, and answered abstractedly: "Jane 
 thought so, but if she is engaged, I don't see why she 
 should have started to work. I know Arthur would 
 hate it." 
 
 "But isn't he too poor to marry?" inquired Mrs. 
 Spencer, whose curiosity was as robust as her constitu 
 tion. "Haven't you always understood that the 
 Peytons were poor, Miss Lancaster, in spite of the lovely 
 house they live in?" 
 
 Her large, good-humoured face, which had once been 
 as delicate as a flower, but was now growing puffed and
 
 68 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 mottled under a plentiful layer of rice powder, became 
 almost violently animated, while she adjusted her belt 
 with a single effective jerk of her waist. Though 
 Bessie Spencer was admitted to have one of the kindest 
 hearts in the world, she was chiefly remarkable for 
 her unhappy faculty of saying the wrong thing at the 
 wrong time. An inveterate, though benevolent, gossip, 
 she would babble on for hours, reciting the private 
 affairs of her relatives, her friends, and her neighbours. 
 I Everybody feared her, and yet everybody was assured 
 that "she never meant any harm." The secrets of the 
 town flowed through her mind as grist flows through a 
 mill, and though she was entirely without malice, she 
 contrived, in the most innocent manner, to do an in 
 calculable amount of injury. Possessing a singularly 
 I active intelligence, and having reached middle-age 
 I without acquiring sufficient concentration to enjoy 
 Ibooks, she directed a vigorous, if casual, understand 
 ing toward the human beings among whom she lived. 
 She knew everything that it was possible to know about 
 the people who lived in Franklin Street, and yet her 
 mind was so constituted that she never by any chance 
 knew it correctly. Though she was not old, she had 
 already passed into a proverb. To receive any state 
 ment with the remark, "You have heard that from 
 Bessie Spencer," was to cast doubt upon it. 
 
 "You don't think I'm getting any stouter, do you, 
 Miss Lancaster?" she inquired dubiously, with her 
 hands on her hips and her eyes measuring the dimen 
 sions of her waist. " I'm making up my mind to try one 
 of those B. and T. corsets that Mrs. Murray is wearing. 
 She told me it reduced her waist at least three inches." 
 "Oh, you aren't like Mrs. Murray she didn't meas-
 
 A START IN LIFE 69 
 
 ure a fraction under thirty inches," replied Miss Lan 
 caster, with her patient politeness. Then, after a 
 pause, which Mrs. Spencer's nimble wit filled with a 
 story about the amazing number of mint juleps Mrs. 
 Murray was seen to drink at the White Sulphur Springs 
 last summer, Florrie exclaimed eagerly: 
 
 "Why, there is Gabriella! Won't you get her for us, 
 Miss Lancaster?" 
 
 Near one of the long windows, beyond which large 
 greenish flies were buzzing around the branch of a 
 mulberry tree in the alley, Gabriella was trying a purple 
 hat on a prim-looking lady who regarded herself in the 
 mirror with a furtive and deprecating air as if she were 
 afraid of being unjustly blamed for her appearance. 
 "I'm not sure but I don't think it suits me exactly," 
 she appeared to murmur in a strangled whisper, while 
 she twisted her mouth, which held a jet-headed hatpin, 
 into a quivering grimace. 
 
 " She's waiting on Matty French," said Mrs. Spencer, 
 and she added impulsively, "I wonder what it is that 
 men see in Gabriella. You wouldn't call her really 
 pretty, would you, Miss Lancaster?" 
 
 " Well, not exactly pretty, but she has an interesting 
 face. It is so full of life." 
 
 "Can't you get her, mother?" asked Florrie; and 
 Mrs. Spencer, always eager to oblige, rustled across the 
 room and pounced vivaciously upon the prim lady and 
 Gabriella. 
 
 "We've been looking for you everywhere, Gabriella," 
 she began, nodding agreeably to Miss French. "Florrie 
 has tried on all the hats in the room, and she wants you 
 to tell her if that white Leghorn is becoming. Good 
 morning, Matty! That blue wing is so stylish. I
 
 70 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 think you are .very sensible to wear colours and not to 
 stick to black as Susie Chamberlain does. It makes 
 her look as old as the hills, and I believe she does it 
 just to depress people. Life is too short, as I said when 
 I left off mourning, to be an ink blot wherever you go. 
 And it doesn't mean that she grieves a bit more for her 
 husband than anybody else does. Everybody knows 
 they led a cat and dog's life together, and I've even 
 heard, though I can't remember who told me, that 
 she was on the point of getting a divorce when he died. 
 Are you going? Well, I'm glad you decided on that 
 blue hat. I don't believe you'll ever regret it. Good 
 bye. Be sure and come to see me soon. Gabriella, 
 will you help Florrie about her hat now? I declare, I 
 thought Matty would never get through with you. 
 And, of course, we didn't want anybody but you to wait 
 on us. We were just saying that you had the most 
 beautiful taste, and it is so wise of you to go out to work 
 and not sit down and sew at home in order to support 
 your position. A position that can't support itself 
 isn't much of a prop, my husband used to say. But I 
 don't believe you'll stay here long, you sly piece. 
 You'll be married before the year is up, mark my word. 
 The men are all crazy about you, everybody knows 
 that. Why, Florrie met George Fowler in the street 
 this morning, and when he asked after you, his face 
 
 turned as hot as fire, she said " 
 
 Gabriella's face, above her starched collar with its 
 neat red tie, was slowly flooded with colour. Her 
 brown eyes shone golden under her dark lashes, and 
 Mrs. Spencer told herself that the girl looked almost 
 pretty for a minute. "If she wasn't so sallow, she'd 
 be really good looking."
 
 A START IN LIFE 71 
 
 Happily unaware that her face had betrayed her, 
 Gabriella slid back a glass door, took a hat out of the 
 case, and answered indifferently, while she adjusted the 
 ribbon bow on one side of the crown: 
 
 "I didn't know Mr. Fowler had come back. I 
 haven't seen him for ages." 
 
 From her small, smooth head to her slender feet she 
 had acquired in three months the composed efficiency 
 of Miss Lancaster; and one might have imagined, as 
 Mrs. Spencer remarked to Florrie afterwards, that "she 
 had been born in a hat shop." 
 
 But instead of the weary patience of Miss Lancaster^ 
 she brought to her work the brimming energy and the 
 joyous self-confidence of. youth. It was impossible 
 to watch her and not realize that she had given both 
 ability and the finer gift of personality to the selling of 
 hats. Had she started life as a funeral director instead 
 of a milliner, it is probable that she would have infused/ 
 into the dreary business something of the living qualiUj 
 of genius. 
 
 "Oh, Florrie hadn't seen him for ages either," chirped 
 Mrs. Spencer, with her restless eyes on the hat in Ga- 
 briella's hand. "I don't know whether I ought to 
 tell you or not, but you and Florrie are so intimate I 
 suppose I might as well Julia Caperton told Florrie 
 that George came back because he heard in some way 
 that you had broken your engagement to Arthur. Of 
 course, as I told Julia afterwards, you hadn't mentioned 
 a word of it to me, but I've got eyes and I can't help 
 using them. I was obliged to see that George was 
 simply out of his mind about you. It would be a 
 splendid match, too, for they say his father has made 
 quite a large fortune since he went to New York "
 
 72 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Mother!" interrupted Florrie sternly, over her 
 shoulder, "you know Julia told you not to breathe a 
 single word as coming from her. She is the bosom 
 friend of George's sister." 
 
 "But, Florrie, I haven't told a soul except Gabriella, 
 and I know she wouldn't repeat a thing that I said to 
 her." 
 
 "Now, isn't that exactly like mother?" observed 
 Florrie, with the casual disapprobation of youth. 
 "She was on the point of telling Miss Lancaster all 
 about it when I stopped her." 
 
 "Why, Florrie, I didn't say a word except that men 
 were crazy about Gabriella you know I didn't. Of 
 course, I talk a great deal," she pursued in an ag 
 grieved, explanatory tone to Gabriella, "but I never 
 repeat a word not a single word that is told me in 
 confidence. If Julia had asked me not to tell Gabriella 
 what she said, I shouldn't have dreamed of doing so." 
 
 "Oh, it doesn't matter in the least, Mrs. Spencer," 
 said Gabriella hastily, "only there isn't a word of truth 
 in it." 
 
 The becoming flush was still in her cheeks, and she 
 poised a hat over Florrie's head with a swift, flying 
 grace which Mrs. Spencer had never noticed in her 
 before. "I wonder if Gabriella can really care about 
 George?" she thought quickly. "But if it is George 
 she is in love with, why on earth did she start to work 
 in a shop?" Then suddenly, following a flash of light, 
 she reasoned it out to her complete satisfaction. "It 
 must have been that she didn't know that George 
 cared that is why she is blushing so at this minute." 
 
 An hour or so later, when Florrie and her mother had 
 fluttered volubly downstairs, and the exhausted as-
 
 A START IN LIFE 73 
 
 sistants were putting the hats away before closing the 
 cases, Gabriella went into the dressing-room, where 
 Miss Nash, a stout, pleasant-looking girl, was sitting in 
 a broken chair, with her shoes off, her blue serge skirt 
 rolled back from her knees, and her head bowed, over 
 her crossed arms, on the window-sill. 
 
 At Gabriella's entrance she glanced up, and remarked 
 cheerfully: "My feet were killing me. I just had to 
 take off my shoes." 
 
 "They do get dreadfully tired," assented Gabriella 
 in the tone of sympathetic intimacy she had caught 
 from the other girls. 
 
 i Her naturally friendly spirit had refused to "hold 
 aloof" from her companions, as her mother had begged 
 her to do, and at the end of three months she had learned 
 'things about most of them which interested her pro- 
 | f oundly. One supported an invalid father, another 
 k had a family of six little brothers and sisters to care 
 for, and still another had lost her lover through a rail- 
 S*oad accident only two days before her marriage. 
 Several of them were extravagantly loud, one or two 
 Were inclined to be vulgar; but the others were quite 
 4 as refined and gentle as the girls with whom she had 
 Igrown up, and what impressed her about them all was 
 .their courageous and yet essentially light-hearted 
 I Southern spirit. To her surprise, she found an utter 
 r absence of jealousy among them. The elder women 
 were invariably kind and helpful, and though she liked 
 the girls, she soon discovered in herself a growing feel 
 ing of respect for these older women. They repre 
 sented a different type, for the hardness she noticed in 
 some of the younger girls was entirely lacking in the 
 women of Miss Lancaster's generation. Many of
 
 74 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 them even her mother would have called well born, 
 and one and all, they were almost painfully ladylike. 
 With their thin, erect figures, their wan, colourless 
 faces, their graying hair, and their sweet Southern 
 voices, they imparted a delicate social air to the shop. 
 
 Usually Gabriella stopped to talk to the girls who 
 crowded in from the workroom, brushing shreds of 
 silk or ribbon from their skirts, but to-day her mind 
 wandered while she answered Miss Nash, and when, a 
 minute later, Miss Lancaster spoke to her on her way 
 out, and asked her to match the flowers for Florrie's 
 hat, she was obliged to make an effort before she could 
 recall her roving attention. She was thinking not of 
 Florrie's hat, but of Mrs. Spencer's words, "He has 
 come back because he heard that your engagement 
 was broken." And at the first insurgent rise of emo 
 tion, she ceased to be the business woman and became 
 merely an imaginative girl, dreaming of love. 
 
 "They aren't quite the right shade, are they?" she 
 asked with an uncertainty which was tactful rather 
 than sincere, "or, perhaps, the ribbon might be darker? " 
 
 Her eyes questioned Miss Lancaster, who moved a 
 step nearer the window as she held the bolt of ribbon 
 toward the daylight. 
 
 "Well, we'd better look at it again in the morning. 
 You are in a hurry, Miss Carr?" 
 
 "Oh, no, I've all the time in the world," answered 
 Gabriella, though she longed to be out with the June 
 scents and her dreams, "but I am sure the ribbon 
 ought to be a deeper blue to tone with the ragged 
 robins." 
 
 "You've a wonderful eye for colour, that's why I ask 
 your advice," said the other, and a sudden friendliness
 
 A START IN LIFE 75 
 
 shone in her tired eyes, for she had liked Gabriella from 
 the beginning. That the girl possessed a genuine gift 
 of taste, the elder woman had already discovered. 
 For herself, Miss Lancaster had always hated the sight 
 of hats, and had taken up the work merely because a 
 place in Brandywine & Plummer's had been offered 
 her shortly after her father, a gallant fighter but a poor 
 worker, had gone to end his kindly anecdotal days in 
 the Home for Confederate Soldiers. She was a re 
 pressed, conscientious woman, who had never been 
 /younger than she was now at fifty, and who regarded 
 youth, not with envy, but with admiring awe. For 
 she, also, patient and uncomplaining creature, belonged 
 to that world of decay and inertia from which Gabriella 
 had revolted. It was a world where things happened 
 to-day just as they happened yesterday, where no 
 miracles had occurred since the miracles of Scripture, 
 where people hated change, not because they were sat 
 isfied, but because they were incapable of imagination. 
 Miss Lancaster, who had never wanted anything with 
 passion, except to be a perfect lady, was proud of the 
 fact that she had been twenty years in business with- 
 iout losing her "shrinking manner." 
 
 "Yes, you have an eye for colour," she repeated 
 gently; "if you could only learn to sew, you might 
 command a most desirable position." 
 
 "I despise sewing," replied Gabriella, with serene 
 good-humour, "and I could never learn, even at school, 
 anything that I despised. But I suppose I can always 
 tell somebody else how it ought to be done." 
 
 Then, because her work always interested her, she 
 forgot the disturbing words Mrs. Spencer had spoken 
 she forgot even her impatience to feel the June air in
 
 76 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 her face. Her best gift, the power of mental controL 
 enabled her to bring the needed discipline to her emo 
 tion; and when the moment of her release came, she 
 found that the brief restlessness had passed from her 
 mind. "There's no use letting myself get impatient," 
 she thought; "I've got to stick to it, so it won't do a 
 bit of good to begin wriggling." 
 
 All the other girls had gone home before her, and on 
 the sidewalk Miss Meason, of the glove counter, stood 
 talking about the spring sales to Mr. Brandywine. As 
 Gabriella passed them, in her white shirtwaist and dark 
 belted skirt, they looked thoughtfully after her until 
 her sailor hat, with the scarlet band, crossed Broad 
 Street and disappeared on the opposite side. 
 
 "She's a remarkable girl," observed Mr. Brandy- 
 wine, with his paternal manner. "I hope she is begin 
 ning to feel at home with us." 
 
 "I believe she'd feel at home anywhere," replied 
 Miss Meason, "and she's obliged to get on. There's 
 no doubt of it." 
 
 "A pleasant face, too. Not exactly pretty, I sup 
 pose, but you would call it a pleasant face." 
 
 "Oh, well, I'd call her pretty in her way," answered 
 Miss Meason. "Her eyes are lovely, and she has a 
 singularly bright expression. I always say that a 
 bright expression makes up for anything." 
 
 "Her mother was a beauty in her day," said Mr. 
 Brandywine reminiscently; "she was the snow and 
 roses sort, and her eldest daughter took after her, 
 though she is a wreck now, poor lady." 
 . "That's Charley Gracey," remarked Miss Meason 
 tartly, for she had the self-supporting woman's con 
 tempt for the rake. "Yes, she was lovely as a girl.
 
 A START IN LIFE 77 
 
 I remember as well as if it were yesterday how happy 
 she looked when I sold her her wedding gloves. She is 
 a beautiful character, too, they say, but somehow 
 Gabriella, even as a child, appealed to me more. She 
 has three times the sense of her sister." 
 
 Then they shook hands and parted, while Gabriella, 
 tripping through the Second Market, was saying to her 
 self : "There's not the least bit of sense in your think 
 ing about him, Gabriella." 
 
 In Hill Street, maple and poplar trees were in full 
 leaf, and little flakes of sunshine, as soft as flowers, 
 were scattered over the brick pavement. Beyond the 
 housetops the sky was golden, and at the corner the 
 rusty ironwork of an old balcony had turned to the 
 colour of bronze. The burning light of the sunset 
 blinded her eyes, while an intense sweetness came to her 
 from the honeysuckle clambering over a low white 
 porch; and this light and this sweetness possessed an 
 ineffable quality. Life, which had been merely placid 
 a few hours before, had become suddenly poignant 
 every instant was pregnant with happiness, every detail 
 was piercingly vivid. Her whole being was flooded 
 with a sensation of richness and wonder, as if she 
 had awakened with surprise to a different world 
 from the one she had closed her eyes on a minute 
 before. 
 
 As she crossed the street she saw her mother's head 
 above a box of clove pinks in the window; and a little 
 later the front do.or opened and Miss Polly Hatch, a 
 small, indomitable spinster who sewed out by the day, 
 walked rapidly between the iron urns and stopped under 
 the creamy blossoms of the old magnolia tree in the 
 yard.
 
 78 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "It's too late for your ma to be workin', Gabriella. 
 You'd better stop her." 
 
 Pausing in the middle of the walk, she comfortably 
 tucked under her arm an unwieldy bundle she carried, 
 and added, with the shrewdness which was the result of a 
 long and painful experience with human nature: "It's 
 funny ain't it? how downright mulish your ma can 
 be when she wants to?" 
 
 "I can't do a thing on earth with her," answered 
 Gabriella in distress. ''You have more influence over 
 her than I have, Miss Polly." 
 
 Miss Polly, who had the composed and efficient 
 bearing of a machine, shook her head discouragingly as 
 she opened the gate and passed out. 
 
 "I reckon she's set for good and all," she remarked 
 emphatically, and went on her way. 
 
 "Mother, it's time to stop sewing and think about 
 supper," called Gabriella gaily, as she ran into the room 
 and bent to kiss her mother, who turned a flat, soft cheek 
 in her direction, and remarked gloomily: "Gabriella, 
 you've had a visitor." 
 
 Not for worlds would Mrs. Carr have surrendered to 
 the disarming cheerfulness of her daughter's manner; 
 for since Gabriella had gone to work in a shop, her 
 mother's countenance implied that she was piously 
 resigned to disgrace as well as to poverty. It was in 
 conceivable to her that any girl with Berkeley blood in 
 her veins could be so utterly devoid of proper pride as 
 Gabriella had proved herself to be; and the shock of this 
 discovery had left a hurt look in her face. There were 
 days when she hardly spoke to the girl, when refusing 
 food, she opened her lips only to moisten her thread, 
 when the slow tears seemed forever welling between
 
 A START IN LIFE 79 
 
 her reddened eyelids. As they had just passed through 
 one of these painful periods, Gabriella was surprised to 
 find that, for the moment at least, her mother appeared 
 to have forgotten her righteous resentment. Though 
 it could hardly be said that Mrs. Carr spoke cheerfully 
 since cheerfulness was foreign to her nature at least 
 she had spoken. Of her own accord, unquestioned and 
 unurged, she had volunteered a remark to her daughter; 
 and Gabriella felt that, for a brief respite, the universe 
 had ceased to be menacing. J 
 
 "Gabriella, you have had a visitor," repeated Mrs. 
 Carr, and it was clear that her sorrow (she never yielded 
 to passion) had been overcome by a natural human 
 eagerness to tell her news. 
 
 "Not Cousin Jimmy?" asked the girl lightly. 
 
 "No, you could never guess, if you guessed all 
 night." 
 
 "Not Charley Gracey surely? I wouldn't speak to 
 him for the world." 
 
 Though Jane had returned to Charley, and even 
 Mrs. Carr, feeling in her heart that her younger daugh 
 ter had dealt her the hardest blow, had been heard to 
 say that she "pitied her son-in-law more than she cen 
 sured him," Gabriella had not softened in her im 
 placable judgment. 
 
 "Of course it wasn't Charley. I shouldn't have 
 mentioned it if it had been, because you are so bitter 
 against him. But it was somebody you haven't seen 
 for months. Do you remember Evelyn Randolph's 
 son who paid you so much attention last winter?" 
 
 "George Fowler! Has he been here?" asked Gabri 
 ella, and her voice quivered like a harp. 
 
 "I told Marthy to say you were out. Of course I
 
 80 LIFE AND GABRDELLA 
 
 wasn't fit to see company, but he caught sight of me on 
 his way to the gate and came back on the porch to 
 speak to me. He remembered all about my having 
 gone to school with his mother, and it seems she had 
 told him about the time she was Queen of May and I 
 maid of honour. I asked him how Evelyn stood living 
 in New York, but he said she likes it better than his 
 father does. Archie Fowler insists that he is coming 
 back to Virginia to end his days. They seem to have 
 plenty of money. I expect Archie has made a fortune 
 up there or he wouldn't be satisfied to live out of 
 Virginia." 
 
 "Did George ask when I'd be at home?" inquired 
 Gabriella. 
 
 Though she knew that it was unwise to divert her 
 mother's attention from the main narrative, her whole 
 body ached with the longing to hear what George had 
 said of her, and she felt that it was impossible to resist 
 the temptation to question. 
 
 "He said something about you as he was going away, 
 but I can't remember whether he asked when you 
 would be in or not." In spite of the fact that Mrs. 
 Carr had the most tenacious memory for useless detail, 
 she was never able to recall the significant points of an 
 interview. 
 
 " He didn't ask where I was? " 
 
 The question was indiscreet, for it jerked Mrs. Carr's 
 mind back with violence from its innocent ramble into 
 the past, while it reminded her of Gabriella's present 
 unladylike occupation. She shut her lips with soft 
 but obstinate determination, and Gabriella, watching 
 her closely, told herself that "wild horses couldn't 
 drag another word out of her mother to-night." The
 
 A START IN LIFE 81 
 
 girl longed to talk it over; but she might have tried as 
 successfully to gossip with the angel on a marble tomb 
 stone. She wanted to hear what George had said, to 
 ask how he was looking, and to wonder aloud why he 
 had come back. She wanted to throw herself into her 
 mother's arms and listen to all the little important 
 things that filled the world for her. If only the aloof 
 virtue in Mrs. Carr's face would relax into a human ex 
 pression ! 
 
 Taking of? her hat, Gabriella went into the bedroom, 
 and then, coming back again after a short absence, re 
 marked with forced gaiety: "I suppose he didn't have 
 anything interesting to tell you, did he?" 
 
 "No." Though the light had almost waned, Mrs. 
 Carr broke off a fresh piece of thread and leaned nearer 
 the window, while she tried to find the eye of the needle. 
 
 "Let me thread your needle, mother. It is too late 
 to work, anyway. You will ruin your eyesight." 
 
 "I have never considered my eyesight, Gabriella." 
 
 "I know you haven't, and that's why you ought to 
 begin." 
 
 As it was really growing too dark to see, Mrs. Carr 
 rolled the thread back on the spool, stuck the needle 
 into the last buttonhole, and folding the infant's dress 
 on which she was working, laid it away in her straw 
 work-basket. 
 
 "Will you light the gas, Gabriella?" 
 
 "Don't work any more to-night, mother. It is al 
 most supper time." 
 
 Without replying, Mrs. Carr moved with her basket 
 to a chair under the chandelier. Once seated there, 
 she unfolded the dress, took the needle from the un 
 finished buttonhole, and tried again unsuccessfully to
 
 82 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 run the thread through the eye. Then, while Gabriella 
 rushed to her aid, she removed her glasses and patiently 
 polished them on a bit of chamois skin she kept in her 
 basket. 
 
 "Don't you feel as if you could eat a chop to-night, 
 mother?" 
 
 "I haven't been able to swallow a morsel all day, 
 Gabriella." 
 
 "I've saved you a little cream. Shall I make you 
 a toddy?" 
 
 "I don't want it. Drink it yourself, dear." 
 {^ After this there followed one of those pauses which 
 fill not only the room, but the universe with a fury of 
 sound. There were times when Gabriella felt that she 
 could stand anything if only her mother would fly into 
 a rage when she positively envied Florrie Spencer 
 because her plebeian parent scolded her at the top of 
 her voice instead of maintaining a calm and ladylike 
 reticence. But Mrs. Carr was one of those women who 
 never, even in the most trying circumstances, cease 
 to be patient, who never lose for an instant so much as 
 the palest or the thinnest of the Christian virtues. 
 
 Going into the bedroom, Gabriella changed from her 
 shirtwaist into a gown of flowered muslin, with sleeves 
 that looked small beside the balloon ones of the season, 
 and a skirt which was shrunken and pale from many 
 washings the summer before. She had worn the frock 
 when she met George, and though it was old, she knew 
 it was becoming, and she told herself joyfully that 
 if she put it on to-night, "something must come of it." 
 As she smoothed her hair by the dim gas-jet over the 
 mirror, she saw again the face of George as it had first 
 smiled down on her beneath the boughs of a mimosa
 
 A START IN LIFE 83 
 
 tree in Mrs. Spencer's front garden. At the time, a 
 year ago, she was engaged to Arthur she had even 
 called the placid preference she felt for him "being 
 in love" but while she talked to George she had found 
 herself thinking, "I wonder how it would feel to be 
 engaged to a man like this instead of to Arthur?" 
 Then, since all Southern engagements of the period were 
 secret, she had seen a good deal of George during the 
 summer; and in the autumn, while she was still trying 
 to make believe that it was merely a friendship, he 
 had gone back to New York without saying good-bye. 
 She had tried her best to stop thinking of him, and until 
 this evening, she had never really let herself confess 
 that she cared. But if she didn't care why was she so 
 happy to-night? If she didn't care why was there such 
 intoxicating sweetness in the thought of his return? 
 If she didn't care why had she dressed herself so care 
 fully in the flowered muslin he had once said that he 
 liked? Her face, smiling back at her from the mirror, 
 was suffused with a delicate glow not pink, not white, 
 but softly luminous as if a lamp, shining behind it, 
 enkindled its expression. She had never seen herself 
 so nearly pretty, and with this thought in her mind, 
 she went back to her mother, who was still working 
 buttonholes under the chandelier. 
 
 "Marthy has brought the lamp, mother. Why 
 don't you move over to the table?" 
 
 "I can see perfectly, thank you, Gabriella." 
 
 "I hate to see you working. Let me finish those 
 buttonholes." 
 
 "I'd rather get through them myself, dear." 
 
 "Have you seen Jane to-day?" 
 
 "No."
 
 84 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Has Cousin Pussy been here?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Did you get out for a walk?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 The appalling silence again filled the room like a fog, 
 and Gabriella, moving cautiously about in it, began 
 straightening chairs and picking up shreds of cambric 
 from the carpet. She felt suddenly that she could not 
 endure the strain for another minute, and glancing at 
 Mrs. Carr's bent head, where the thin hair was wound 
 into a tight knot and held in place by a tortoise-shell 
 comb with a carved top, she wondered how her mother 
 could possibly keep it up day after day as she did? 
 But, if she had only known it, this silence, which tried 
 her nerves to the breaking point, was positively sooth 
 ing to her mother. Mrs. Carr could keep it up not 
 only for days and weeks, but, had it been necessary, 
 she could have kept it up with equal success for half a 
 lifetime. While she sat there, working buttonholes 
 in a bad light, she thought quite as passionately as 
 Gabriella, though her mental processes were different. 
 She thought sadly, but firmly, with a pensive melan 
 choly not untinged with pleasure, that "life was be 
 coming almost too much for her." It seemed incred 
 ible to her that after all her struggles to keep up an 
 appearance things should have turned out as they had; 
 it seemed incredible that after all her sacrifices her 
 children should not consider her more. "They have 
 no consideration for me," she reflected, while she took 
 the finest stitch possible to the needle she held. "If 
 Jane had considered me she would never have married 
 Charley. If Gabriella had considered me, or anybody 
 but herself, she would not have gone to work in a
 
 A START IN LIFE 85 
 
 store." No, they had never considered her, they had 
 never asked her advice before acting, though she had 
 brought them into the world and had worked like a 
 slave in order to keep them in that respected station 
 of life in which they had been born. Then, her sorrow 
 getting the better of her resolution, she turned her 
 head and spoke: 
 
 "1 know you never tell me anything on purpose, 
 Gabriella, but I think I have a right to know whether 
 or not you have discarded Arthur for good." 
 
 "I told you all about it, mother. I told you I found 
 I was mistaken." 
 
 "I suppose you never thought for a moment how 
 much it would distress me? Though Lydia Peyton 
 is so much older than I am, she was always my best 
 friend we often stayed in the room together when we 
 were girls. I had set my heart on your marrying her 
 son." 
 
 "I know that, mother, and I am very sorry, but when 
 it came to the point I couldn't marry him. You can't 
 make yourself care " 
 
 "I should have thought that my wishes might in 
 fluence you. I should never wish you to do anything 
 that wasn't for your good, Gabriella." 
 
 "Of course, mother, you've given up your life to us. 
 I know that, and Jane knows it as well as I do. That's 
 why I want to earn money enough to let you rest. I 
 want you to stop work for good and be happy." 
 
 "There are worse things than work," replied Mrs. 
 Carr in a tone which implied that Gabriella had brought 
 them upon her. 
 
 After a pause, in which her needle flew mournfully, 
 she added: "I hope for your own sake that you will
 
 86 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 marry some good man before you lose your attractions. 
 Poor Becky Bollingbroke proved to me how unfortu 
 nate it is for a woman to remain unmarried." 
 
 For an instant Gabriella looked at her mother with 
 out replying. She felt tempted strongly tempted, 
 she told herself to say something cross. Then the 
 sight of the bent gray head, of the bowed shoulders, 
 of the knotted needle-pricked fingers, pierced her 
 heart. Though she could not always agree with her 
 mother, she loved her devotedly, and the thought that 
 she must lose her some day had been the most terrible 
 nightmare of her childhood. 
 
 "Don't worry about me, mother, dear," she answered 
 tenderly. "I can always take care of myself. I can 
 manage my life, you know that, don't you?" Then 
 she stopped quickly while her heart gave a single bound 
 and lay quiet. She had heard the click of the gate, 
 and a minute later, as Mrs. Carr gathered up her sew 
 ing, there was a ring at the bell. 
 
 "It can't be a visitor before supper, can it, Ga 
 briella?" 
 
 "I think not, mother, but I shouldn't run away if I 
 were you." 
 
 " I'd better go. I don't feel dressed. Wait a minute, 
 Marthy, and let me get out of the room before you open 
 the door." She fled, clutching her work-basket, while 
 Gabriella, turning to lower the flaming wick of the 
 lamp, heard George's voice at the door and his foot 
 steps crossing the hall. 
 
 "I knew something would happen," she thought 
 wildly, as she went forward to meet him. 
 
 "I saw you pull down the shade as I was going by," 
 he began rather lamely; and she hardly heard his words
 
 A START IN LIFE 87 
 
 because of the divine tumult in her brain. Her heart 
 sang; her pulses throbbed; every drop of her blood 
 seemed to become suddenly alive with ecstasy. Under 
 the tarnished garlands of the chandelier his face looked 
 younger, gayer, more intensely vivid than it had 
 looked in her dreams. It was the face of her dreams 
 made real; but with what a difference! She saw his 
 crisp brown hair brushed smoothly back from its part 
 ing, his blue eyes, with their gay and conquering look, 
 the firm red brown of his cheek, and even the bluish 
 shadow encircling his shaven mouth. In his eyes, 
 which said enchanting things, she could not read the 
 trivial and commonplace quality of his soul for he 
 was not only a man, he was romance, he was adventure, 
 he was the radiant miracle of youth ! 
 
 "Florrie told me this morning that you had come 
 back," she answered coldly, as she held out her 
 hand. 
 
 Her words seemed to come to her from a distance 
 from the next room, from the street outside, from the 
 farthest star but while she uttered them, she knew that 
 her words meant nothing. She shed her joy as if it 
 were fragrance; and her softness was like the magnolia- 
 scented softness of the June night. Even her mother 
 would not have known her, so greatly had she changed 
 in a minute. Of the businesslike figure in the sailor 
 hat and trim shirtwaist of the Gabriella who had said, 
 "I can manage my life" there remained only an out 
 line. The very feet of the capable woman had changed ! 
 into the shrinking and timid feet of a lovesick girl. 
 She was afraid to go forward, afraid to move, afraid to 
 breathe lest she break the wonderful spell of the magic. 
 Not only her basic common sense, but the very soul
 
 88 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 that shaped her body had become as light, as sweet, as 
 formless as liquid honey. 
 
 But of course, she knew nothing of this. She was 
 innocent of deception; she was innocent even of any 
 definite purpose to allure. The thought in her mind, 
 if there were any thought, which is doubtful, was 
 that she must be composed, she must be indifferent if 
 it killed her. 
 
 "I know I've come at an awkward hour, but I simply 
 couldn't go by after I saw you." 
 
 "Won't you stay?" she asked, trying in vain to shut 
 out the ominous sound of Marthy bringing their scant 
 supper. She remembered, with horror, that she had 
 ordered only two chops, and a wave of rebellion swept 
 over her because life always spoiled its divine instants. 
 
 "No, I can't stay. I've an engagement for supper. 
 I merely wanted to see you. You've no idea how I've 
 wanted to see you." 
 
 "Have you?" said Gabriella in so low a voice that he 
 hardly heard her. Then, lifting her glowing eyes, she 
 added softly, "I am glad that you wanted to." 
 
 "There were times when I simply couldn't get you 
 out of my mind," he responded, and went on almost 
 joyously, with the romantic look which had first en 
 chanted her imagination. "You see I believed that 
 you were going to marry Arthur Peyton. Julia 
 told me that your engagement was broken. That was 
 why I came back. Didn't you guess it?" 
 
 "Yes, I guessed it," she answered simply, and all the 
 softness, the sweetness, the beauty of her feeling passed 
 into her voice. 
 
 Then, in the very midst of her happiness, there oc 
 curred one of those sordid facts which appear to spring,
 
 A START IN LIFE 89 
 
 like vultures, upon the ineffable moments. She heard 
 the bell the awful supper bell which her mother in 
 sisted upon having rung because her parents had had 
 it rung for generations before her. As the horrible 
 sound reverberated through the house, Gabriella felt 
 that the noise passed through her ears, not into her 
 brain, but into the very depths of her suffering soul. 
 
 "There, I must go," said George, without embar 
 rassment, for which she blessed him. From his manner, 
 the supper bell might have made a delightful harmony 
 instead of a hideous discord. "I'll see you to-morrow, 
 if I may. May I, Gabriella?" 
 
 He smiled charmingly as he went, and looking after 
 him, a minute later, over the clove pinks in the window- 
 box, she saw him turn and gaze back at her from the 
 opposite pavement.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 MIRAGE 
 
 ON A bright Sunday in October Mrs. Carr stopped 
 on her way from church to tell Mrs. Peyton of Gabri- 
 ella's engagement. A crape veil, slightly scented with 
 camphor, hung from her bonnet, and in her gloved 
 hands she carried a bunch of yellow chrysanthemums, 
 for she intended to go on to Hollywood, where her hus 
 band was buried. The sermon had been unusually 
 inspiring, and there was a pensive exaltation in her look 
 as she laid her hand on the gate of the walled garden. 
 
 "If it couldn't be Arthur and of course my heart 
 was set on her marrying Arthur I suppose George is 
 the one I should have chosen," she said to Mrs. Pey 
 ton with tender melancholy as she turned her soft, 
 clammy cheek, which was never warm even in summer, 
 to be kissed. 
 
 There was nothing against George that she could 
 advance even to Gabriella. He was well born, for his 
 mother had been a Randolph; he was comfortably rich 
 (at least his father was); he was good-looking; he was 
 almost arrogantly healthy yet because she was obliged 
 to regret something, she found herself clinging fondly 
 to the memory of Arthur. "If it could only have been 
 Arthur," she repeated sadly, gazing through the French 
 window of the drawing-room to the garden where beds 
 of scarlet sage flaunted brilliantly in the sunshine. 
 
 90
 
 MIRAGE 91 
 
 "I hope and pray that dear Gabriella will be happy," 
 replied Mrs. Peyton, a beautiful old lady, with wonder 
 ful white hair under the widow's niching in her bonnet. 
 yThe exquisite simplicity of her soul was reflected in 
 the rose-leaf delicacy of her skin, in her benignant and 
 innocent smile, in the serene and joyous glance of her 
 eyes. Never in her life had she thought evil of any 
 one, and she did not mean to begin on the verge of the 
 grave, with the hope of a peaceful eternity before her. 
 If dear Gabriella had "discarded" dear Arthur, then 
 she could only hope and pray that dear Gabriella would 
 not live to regret it. 
 
 "She will be married at once, I suppose?" she said, 
 and beamed as happily as if Gabriella had not disap 
 pointed the dearest hope of her heart. "There is no 
 need to wait, is there?" 
 
 "They have decided on the 17th of November. I 
 wanted you to know it first of all, Lydia, so I haven't 
 mentioned it to a soul except to Cousin Jimmy Wrenn." 
 
 "You will live with dear Jane, will you not? Poor 
 child, what a blessing you will be to her." 
 
 "No, I shall be with Jane only for a month or two 
 until Gabriella and George have taken a house in New 
 York. She wouldn't consent to be married so soon until 
 I promised to live with them. But how on earth shall 
 I ever manage to go so far away, Lydia? To think of 
 being so far from Hollywood almost breaks my heart, 
 and yet what can I do?" 
 
 Mrs. Peyton's loving gaze enfolded not only her vis 
 itor, but the house and the dreamy garden where frost 
 was already blighting the flowers. 
 
 "I understand your feeling, of course, Fanny," she 
 said, "but you must think of Gabriella. How different
 
 92 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 it will be for her if her mother is with her. I shall miss 
 you every minute, but for the sake of that splendid 
 child of yours, I must not allow myself to be sorry." 
 
 If Mrs. Carr's features could have lost the fixed im 
 pression of a lifetime, they would have appeared almost 
 cheerful while her old friend held her hand and gazed 
 benignly upon her; but so relaxed had the muscles of 
 her face become that, even when her spirits rose, her 
 countenance did not alter, and the flicker of light in 
 her smile only served to illumine its profound melan 
 choly. 
 
 "I try to think of Gabriella," she answered, "but I 
 oughtn't to forget poor Jane. Whenever I remember 
 her, I begin to reproach myself." 
 
 "Don't reproach yourself, Fanny. There is nothing 
 on earth for which you can justly be blamed. I am 
 / sure you have never considered your own wishes for a 
 * minute in your life. If ever a mother gave up every 
 thing for her children, you have done so, Fanny, and 
 you needn't deny it. But tell me about Gabriella. 
 How thankful you ought to be that she has given up 
 that work in a store!" 
 
 "If it had been God's will, I suppose I must have 
 borne it, Lydia, but I felt as if it was killing me." 
 
 "The dear child has a strong character," observed 
 Mrs. Peyton, and it seemed to her, while she thought 
 of Gabriella, that a strong character was a beautiful 
 and wonderful thing. 
 
 "You would hardly know Gabriella, she is so 
 
 changed," replied Mrs. Carr. "I declare I sometimes 
 
 think that I never saw a girl so wildly in love as she is. 
 
 She positively worships George, and when I look at her, 
 
 \ I remember Becky Bollingbroke's saying that a smart
 
 MIRAGE 93 
 
 [woman in love is worse than a silly one. She has that 
 [much more to get foolish with, poor Becky used to 
 say." 
 
 "How happy it must make you," murmured the 
 other. "There is nothing in life I'd rather see than my 
 Arthur happily married." 
 
 "I always thought that he and Gabriella were made 
 for each other, but one never can tell " 
 
 "That must be Gabriella now," said Mrs. Peyton as 
 the bell rang. "Is she coming for you?" 
 
 "Yes, Cousin Jimmy was to bring her, and then drive 
 me out to Hollywood. Isn't that Arthur's voice talk 
 ing to her?" 
 
 "Poor boy," whispered Mrs. Peyton, and then she 
 rustled forward and enveloped Gabriella in a warm em 
 brace. "My darling girl, your mother has just told 
 me," she said. 
 
 "And Gabriella has just told me," added Arthur at 
 her elbow. Though there was a hurt look in his eyes, 
 his manner was perfect. Years afterwards, whenever j 
 f Gabriella thought of him, she remembered how perfect / 
 nis manner was on that morning. 
 
 "I wanted you to know first of all," said Gabriella. 
 
 As the old lady looked at her with loving eyes, it 
 seemed to her that the girl was softly glowing with hap 
 piness. She accepted joy as she accepted sorrow, with 
 quietness, but there was a look in her face which made 
 her appear, for the moment, transfigured. A radiance 
 like that of a veiled flame shone in her eyes; the cool 
 tones of her voice had grown richer and gentler; and at 
 last, as Mrs. Peyton said to herself, Gabriella, the sen 
 sible and practical Gabriella, was sweet with the honey 
 suckle sweetness of Jane.
 
 94 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 " She must be over head and ears in love," she thought; 
 and the next minute, "I wonder how it will end?" 
 
 The question brought a pang to her kind old heart, 
 which longed to make everybody, and particularly her 
 boy Arthur, happy. Then, because her eyes were fill 
 ing, she stroked the girl's arm gently, and said : 
 
 "That's a pretty dress, my dear. I never saw you 
 look better." 
 
 "She's really getting pretty," remarked Mrs. Carr. 
 "Cousin Jimmy was saying only yesterday that if 
 Gabriella keeps it up, she'll be a better looking old lady 
 than Jane." 
 
 "Well, I think her a very pretty young one," replied 
 Mrs. Peyton. "She hasn't such small features as Jane 
 has, but there is more in her face. Now, I'm willing 
 to wager that George thinks her a beauty." 
 
 Gabriella laughed happily. "He hasn't the faintest 
 idea what I look like, but he declares he won't be a 
 bit disappointed if he finds out some day that I am 
 
 ugly." 
 
 The glow of youth, of hope, of love, gave to her ex 
 pressive face an almost unearthly brightness. She 
 seemed to draw to her all that was vital and alive in the 
 dim old house, so filled with memories, and in the Oc 
 tober pageantry of the garden. It was the day of her 
 miracle, and against the splendour of the scarlet sage, 
 she shone with an unforgettable radiance. 
 
 When, a little later, Mrs. Carr, in Cousin Jimmy's 
 buggy, with her bunch of chrysanthemums held rigidly 
 in her lap, drove off at an amble to Hollywood, and 
 Gabriella, turning to wave her hand, had vanished be 
 hind the corner of the gray wall, Mrs. Peyton said 
 gently:
 
 MIRAGE 95 
 
 "She looked very happy, dear boy. You and I must 
 pray for her happiness." 
 
 The beauty which all her life she had created through 
 faith awoke in Arthur's suffering heart while she spoke 
 to him. She demanded nobility of being, and it ex 
 isted; she exacted generosity of nature, and it was there. 
 By her mere presence, by the overflowing love in her 
 heart, she not only banished jealousy and envy, but 
 made the very idea of them unthinkable. 
 
 "She is obliged to be happy. It is her nature," 
 answered Arthur, for his disposition was hardly less 
 perfect than his manner. 
 
 Crossing Broad Street, which wore its look of Sab 
 bath sleepiness, Gabriella hurried on to Hill Street, and 
 saw George waiting for her between the two green- 
 painted urns filled with the summer's fading bloom of 
 portulaca. 
 
 He was staring straight upward at one of the poplar 
 trees, where a gray squirrel was playing among the 
 branches, and for several minutes before he was aware 
 of her presence, she watched him with her impassioned, 
 yet not wholly uncritical, gaze. The sunlight sparkled 
 in his eyes, which shone brightly blue against the red 
 brown of his flesh; and between his smiling lips, which 
 were thick and somewhat loosely moulded, she saw the 
 gleaming whiteness of his teeth. She could not explain 
 she had never even tried to understand why this 
 face, which was not in the least a remarkable one, 
 should so profoundly appeal to her. When George was 
 absent, his look haunted her with the intensity of an 
 hallucination; when at last she saw it again, she felt 
 that nothing else in the world mattered to her, so 
 supreme was the contentment that swept over her.
 
 96 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Though she was more intelligent than Jane, not even 
 Jane herself had surrendered so unconditionally to the 
 primal force. At least Jane had made exactions, but 
 so complete was the subjugation of Gabriella that 
 she exacted nothing, not even a return of her love. 
 To give was all she asked, and in the giving she bloomed 
 into a beauty and fullness of nature which Jane's small, 
 closed soul could never attain. 
 
 "George!" she called, and went swiftly toward him. 
 
 He turned, threw away the cigar in his hand, and held 
 open the gate while she entered. 
 
 "There's a jolly little beggar up in the poplar," he 
 said; "I've been watching him for ten minutes." 
 
 Then, as she passed before him into the parlour, he 
 shut the door, and catching her in his arms, kissed the 
 back of her neck. 
 
 "Oh, George!" she murmured, and her voice was like 
 music. Even to his short-sighted vision there was 
 pathos at the heart of her happiness the pathos of 
 ignorance, of innocence, of the reckless generosity of 
 soul that spends its best for the pure joy of spending. 
 With the instinctive miserliness of the man who real 
 izes that passion to last must be hoarded, not scattered, 
 he had drawn back almost unconsciously from the 
 simple abandonment of her love. He wanted her be 
 cause the deep discomfort of his nature could not be 
 satisfied without her; but in possessing her he did not 
 mean to give up anything else. Never for an instant 
 had he deluded himself with the mystic ecstasies of 
 Gabriella. The passion which had changed her whole 
 being as if by a miracle, had altered neither his funda- 
 , mental egoism nor his superficial philosophy. He 
 loved her, he knew, as much as it was possible for him
 
 MIRAGE 97 
 
 to love any woman; but he was still able to take a pro 
 found and healthy interest in his physical comfort. In 
 one thing, however, they were passionately agreed, 
 and that was that the aim and end of their marriage 
 was to make George perfectly happy. 
 
 "You are sweet enough to eat this morning," he 
 said as he kissed her. 
 
 "I told Mrs. Peyton that you didn't know whether 
 I was pretty or ugly," she answered merrily. 
 
 "It isn't beauty that takes a man, though women 
 think so," he rejoined lightly, and yet as if he were 
 imparting one of the basic facts of experience. "I 
 don't know what it is but it's something else, and 
 you've got it, Gabriella." 
 
 She looked at him with luminous eyes. 
 
 "I've got you," she answered in a whisper; "that's 
 all nothing else on earth matters. I want nothing 
 but love." 
 
 "But you let me go away for six months. I could 
 never understand that." 
 
 "I had to, George. I couldn't be mean even for 
 you, could I?" 
 
 "Well, I don't know." His gaze dwelt on her mood 
 ily. "Sometimes I wonder if you haven't too much 
 conscience in your body?" 
 
 Careless as were his words, they brought stinging 
 tears to her eyes. Her throat ached with the longing 
 to pour out her love; but it seemed to her suddenly that 
 a wall of personality had risen between them, and that 
 she could only beat blindly against the impenetrable 
 mass that divided them. She knew now that he could 
 never understand, and yet the knowledge of this inten 
 sified rather than diminished her love. The mere
 
 98 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 physical attraction, which she had glorified into pas 
 sion, was invested with the beauty and the mystery of 
 an unattainable ideal. 
 
 "I believe you are going to cry, darling. Don't be 
 so serious," he said, laughing. 
 
 "But you know tell me you know that I love you.'* 
 
 " Of course I know it. Am I blind or a fool? " 
 
 Then before the glowing worship in her face, he 
 caught her in his arms, while he said over and over, "I 
 love you ! I love you ! " 
 
 He held her close, thrilling at her touch, seeking her 
 warm lips with an eagerness which comforted her be 
 cause she was too inexperienced to understand how 
 ephemeral was its nature and its sweetness. 
 
 "Promise to love me always, George, as you do now," 
 she said, passionately trying to make the fugitive joy 
 immortal. 
 
 "If you'll tell me how to help it, I shall be grateful," 
 he retorted as gaily as if her eyes had not filled with 
 tears. 
 
 "Swear it!" 
 
 "I swear it. Now, are you satisfied?" 
 
 "I don't believe it. I'll never believe that you love 
 u, , me as much as I love you. Nobody could." 
 
 In his heart he agreed with her. That Gabriella 
 loved him more than he loved her was a fact to which 
 he was easily reconciled. He loved her quite as much 
 as he could love anybody except himself and be com 
 fortable, and if she demanded more, she merely proved 
 herself to be an unreasonable person. Women did 
 \ love more than men, he supposed, but what else were 
 I they here for? During the six months when he had 
 Ithought that she belonged to another, she had, he told
 
 MIRAGE 99 
 
 [himself, almost driven him out of his mind; but pos- 
 I session once assured, he had speedily recovered his 
 health and his sanity. Her worship flattered him, and 
 in this flattery she had, perhaps, her strongest hold on 
 his heart. Nothing in his engagement had pleased him 
 nore than the readiness with which she had given up 
 icr work at his request. He abhorred independence 
 n a wife; and Gabriella's immediate and unresisting 
 icquiescence in his desire appeared to him to establish 
 the fact of her essential and inherent femininity. Had 
 not all laws, as well as all religions, proclaimed that 
 woman should be content to lay down not only her 
 life but her very identity for love; and that Gabriella 
 was womanly to the core of her nature, in spite of her 
 work in Brandywine's millinery department, it was 
 impossible to doubt while he kissed her. There were 
 times, indeed, when the exaltation of Gabriella's 
 womanliness seemed to have left her without a will of 
 her own; when, in a divine submission to love, she ap 
 peared to exist only for the laudable purpose of making 
 her lover happy. 
 
 "I'd do anything on earth for you, Gabriella," said 
 George suddenly. "I wonder if you would make a 
 sacrifice for me if I asked it?" From his face as he 
 looked down on her it was evident that he was not 
 speaking from impulse, but that he had seized an op 
 portune moment. 
 
 "You know I would, George. I'd give up the whole 
 world for you. I'd beg my bread with you by the road 
 side." 
 
 "Well, it isn't so bad as that, darling it's only about 
 your mother coming to us so soon. I've had a letter 
 from home, and it seems that father has had losses and 

 
 100 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 can't help me out as he intended to do. He's always 
 either losing or making piles of money, so don't bother 
 your precious head about that. In six months he'll 
 probably be making piles again, but, in the meantime, 
 mother suggests that we should postpone taking a 
 house, and come and live with her for a few months." 
 
 "I'd rather live on your income, George, no matter 
 how small it is. I'm an awfully good manager, and 
 you'd be surprised to see how far I can make a little 
 money go. Why can't we take an apartment some 
 where in an inexpensive neighbourhood one just big 
 enough for mother and you and me? " 
 
 "We couldn't live half so well in the first place, and, 
 besides, I'd hate like the devil to see you working your 
 self to death and losing your looks. That's just ex 
 actly what Patty is doing. She was the family's 
 greatest investment, you know. Everything we had 
 for years was spent on her because she was such a 
 ripping beauty, and mother set her heart on her marry 
 ing nothing less than a duke. So we sent her abroad 
 to be educated and squandered a fortune on her clothes, 
 and then, just as mother was gloating over her triumphs, 
 the very day after the Duke of Toxbridge proposed to 
 her, Patty walked out one morning and married Billy 
 King at the Little Church Around the Corner. Billy, 
 of course, hasn't a cent to his name except what he 
 makes painting blue pictures, and that's precious little. 
 They're up on the West Side now, living in four rooms 
 with neighbours who fry onions at nine o'clock in the 
 morning next door to them, and half the time Patty 
 hasn't even a maid, I believe, and has to do her work 
 with the help of a charwoman." 
 
 "And is she happy?" There was eagerness in Ga-
 
 MIRAGE 101 
 
 briella's voice, for she was sure that she should love 
 Patty. 
 
 "Oh, yes, Patty is happy, but mother isn't. It's 
 rough on mother." 
 
 "I think she ought to have told your mother before 
 she married." 
 
 " Well, Patty thought she could stand the fuss better 
 after she'd done it than she could before. She said 
 she needed the support of knowing they couldn't stop 
 it. Cheeky, wasn't it?" 
 
 "And is she really so beautiful?" 
 "Ripping," said George; "simply ripping." 
 "I know I shall love her. Is she dark or fair?" 
 "I never thought about it, but she's a towering 
 beauty something between dark and fair, I suppose. 
 She has golden hair, you know." 
 
 His arm was around her, and lifting her earnest face 
 to his, Gabriella began in her softest voice: "I shouldn't 
 mind a bit living like that, George honestly I 
 shouldn't." 
 
 "Yes, you would. It would be rotten." 
 "I wish you would tell me just how much we shall 
 have to live on, dear. Even if it is very, very little, 
 it would be so much better not to expect anything from 
 your father. If the worst comes to the worst, I can 
 always go back to work, you know, and I feel as if I 
 ought to help because you are so generous about want 
 ing mother to live with us." 
 
 He frowned slightly, while a dark flush rose to his 
 forehead. Already Gabriella was learning how dan 
 gerously easy it was to irritate George. Serious dis 
 cussions always appeared to disturb him, and at the 
 first allusion to the responsibilities he had assumed, she
 
 102 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 could see the look of bored restlessness creep into his 
 face. It was evidently abhorrent to him to hear her 
 talk about business; but with her practical nature and 
 her fundamental common sense it was impossible that 
 she should be content to remain in a fool's paradise of 
 financial mysteries. She had only the vaguest idea 
 how he earned a living, and a still vaguer one of what 
 that living represented. There was an impression in 
 her mind that he worked in his father's office somewhere 
 in Wall Street he had once given her the number 
 and that he went "downtown" every morning after 
 breakfast and did not get home to luncheon. Cousin 
 Jimmy had once told her that George's father was a 
 stockbroker, but this information conveyed little to 
 her mind. The men she knew in Richmond were 
 lawyers, doctors, clergymen, or engaged, like Cousin 
 Jimmy, in the "tobacco business," and she supposed 
 that "a stockbroker" must necessarily belong to a 
 profession which was restricted to New York. The 
 whole matter was hazy in her thoughts, but she hoped 
 in time, by intelligent and tactful application, to over- 
 come her ignorance as well as George's deeply rooted 
 objection to her enlightenment. 
 
 "Well, you see, my income is uncertain, Gabriella. 
 It depends a good deal upon the stock market and the 
 sort of stuff we've been buying. Look here, darling, 
 don't, for heaven sake, get the business bee in your 
 bonnet. A mannish woman is worse than poison, an^L 
 about stocksthe more attractive 
 
 _ 
 
 youwill ^Be7 MotFef lias lived for thirty years with 
 father, and she doesn't know any more how he makes 
 his money than you do at this minute." 
 
 This was as lucid, she suspected, as George was ever
 
 MIRAGE 103 
 
 likely to be on the subject, and, since he was becoming 
 visibly annoyed, she abandoned her fruitless search for 
 information. After she was married there would be 
 time and opportunity to find out all that she wanted to 
 know; and even if he never told her anything more 
 /well, she was quite accustomed to the masculine habit 
 never telling women anything more. Her mother 
 and Jane were as ignorant of finance as they had been 
 in their cradles; Cousin Pussy spoke of the "tobacco 
 business" as if it were a sacred mystery superior to the 
 delicate feminine faculties; and while Gabriella was 
 engaged to Arthur, he had fallen into the habit of gently 
 reminding her that she "knew nothing of law." 
 
 "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 hope 
 less 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
 
 104 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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 care 
 fully 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,
 
 MIRAGE 105 
 
 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 wed 
 ding. 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 Duchess 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
 
 106 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 have looked through the charming vacancy of his face, 
 she would have been surprised to discover the direct 
 ness and simplicity of his mental processes. He wanted 
 his way, and he meant, provided it was humanly pos 
 sible, 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 
 v Jktruck against the vein of iron which lay beneath the 
 Irich bloom of her passion. The thought of her opposi 
 tion, 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
 
 MIRAGE 107 
 
 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, in 
 deed, 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 passionately, 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 hi 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 cross 
 ing the room, he bent down and kissed her with a fierce 
 ness that bruised her lips. 
 
 "I adore you, Gabriella," he said. 
 
 Though she had seen these sudden changes in him
 
 108 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 before, she had never grown wholly used to them. Her 
 deeper nature, with its tranquil brightness, untroubled 
 by passing storms, was unprepared for the shallow 
 violence which swept over him, leaving no visible trace 
 of its passage. No, she could not understand him 
 she could only hope that after they were married the 
 blindness would pass from her love, and she would 
 attain that completer knowledge for which she was 
 striving so patiently. The transforming miracle of mar 
 riage, 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?" 
 
 SI y " 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 
 I might cast on the flame of her passion.
 
 MIRAGE 109 
 
 "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 dom 
 inate 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.
 
 110 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "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 passionately, 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 tender 
 ness. 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 intol- 
 i erable. A strong will, which he had always admired 
 I in himself, became a positive failing in Gabriella. A 
 I woman's strength lay, after all, not in force of char 
 acter, 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 fas 
 cination 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
 
 MIRAGE 111 
 
 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, in 
 deed, 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. She 
 worked for us while we were little, and it is trouble 
 that has made her what she is to-day. You must 
 see that I am right, George; you can't possibly help 
 it." 
 
 But he couldn't see it. If the truth had been twice 
 as evident, if Gabriella had been twice as reasonable, he 
 could still have seen only his wishes. 
 
 "I am only asking you to do what is best for us both, 
 Gabriella." 
 
 "But how can it be best for me to become an un 
 grateful child, George?" 
 
 Neither of them wanted to quarrel, yet in a minute 
 the barbed words were flying between them; in a minute 
 they faced each other as coldly as if they had been 
 strangers instead of adoring lovers. At the last, he 
 looked at her an instant in silence while she sat per 
 fectly motionless with her deep eyes changing to gold 
 in the sunlight; then, turning on his heel, without a 
 word, he left the house, and walked rapidly over the 
 coloured leaves on the pavement. As he passed under 
 the poplar tree the gray squirrel darted gaily along a 
 bough over his head, but he did not look up; and a 
 minute later Gabriella saw him cross the street and 
 vanish beyond the pointed yew tree in the yard at the 
 corner. 
 
 "I wonder if this is the end?" she thought bitterly, 
 and she knew that even if it were the end, that even if
 
 112 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 she died of it, she could never give way. Something 
 stronger than herself that vein of iron in her soul 
 would not bend, would not break though every fibre 
 of her being struggled against it. All the happiness of 
 her life vanished with George as he passed beyond 
 the yew tree at the corner, yet she sat there with her 
 hands still folded, her lips still firm, watching the tree 
 long after its pointed dusk had hidden her lover's figure. 
 Had she followed her desire as lightly as George fol 
 lowed his, she would have run after him as he disap 
 peared, and bringing him back to the room he had left, 
 dissolved in tears on his breast. She longed to do 
 this, but the vein of iron held her firm in spite of herself. 
 She could not move toward him, she could not even 
 have put out her hand had he entered. 
 
 The bell rang, and her blood drummed in her ears; 
 but it was only Cousin Jimmy bringing Mrs. Carr back 
 from the cemetery. Hearty, deep-chested, meticu 
 lously brushed and groomed, he wore his Sunday frock 
 with an unnatural stiffness, as if he were still hearing 
 Pussy's parting warning to be "careful about his 
 clothes." His dark hair, trained for twenty years 
 from a side parting, shone with the lustre of satin, and 
 his shining eyes, so like the eyes of adventurous youth, 
 wore their accustomed Sabbath look of veiled and 
 ashamed sleepiness. 
 
 " So you're going to take the old lady to New York 
 with you, Gabriella? " 
 
 " I can't bear to think of it, Cousin Jimmy," remarked 
 Mrs. Carr, while she adjusted her crape veil over the 
 back of her chair. " I don't see how I can stand living 
 in the North." 
 
 "Well, what about our friend Charley? Do you
 
 MIRAGE 113 
 
 think you could get on any better with Charley for a 
 son-in-law? " 
 
 " You oughtn't to joke about it, Cousin Jimmy. It is 
 too serious for joking." 
 
 "I beg your pardon, Cousin Fanny but where is 
 George, Gabriella? I thought he was to meet you here." 
 
 "He had to go just before you came. Don't you 
 think mother is looking well?" 
 
 "As well as I ever saw her. I was telling her so as 
 we drove back from Hollywood. All she needs is to 
 leave off moping for a while and she'd lose ten years of 
 her age. Why, I tell you if it were I, I'd jump at the 
 chance to go to New York for a few years. If there 
 wasn't a single thing there except the theatres, I'd 
 jump at it. You can go to a different show every night 
 of your life, Cousin Fanny." 
 
 "I have never been inside of a theatre in my life. 
 You ought to know me better than to think it," replied 
 Mrs. Carr, while the corners of her mouth drooped. 
 She had laid her bag of grosgrain silk on the table at 
 her elbow, and untying the strings of her bonnet, she 
 neatly rolled them into two tight little wads which she 
 fastened with jet-headed pins. 
 
 "You make her go, honey, when you get hold of her," 
 said Jimmy to Gabriella in a sympathetic aside. " What 
 she needs is bracing up I was saying so to Pussy only 
 this morning. 'If you could just brace up Cousin 
 Fanny, she'd be as well as you or I,' was what I said to 
 her. Now I don't believe there's a better place on 
 earth to brace a body up than old New York. I 
 remember I took my poor old father there just a month 
 or two before his last illness, when he was getting over a 
 spell of lumbago, and it worked on him like magic. We
 
 114 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 stayed at the Fifth Avenue Hotel you must be sure 
 to get a dinner at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, Cousin 
 Fanny and went to a show every blessed night for a 
 week. It made the old man young again, upon my 
 word it did, and he was still talking about it when he 
 came down with his last illness. Well, I must be going 
 home to Pussy now. The boys and I went out squirrel 
 hunting yesterday, and Pussy promised me Brunswick 
 stew for dinner. Now, don't you forget to brace up, 
 Cousin Fanny. That's all on earth you need. The 
 world ain't such a bad place, after all, when you sit 
 down and think right hard about it." 
 
 He went out gaily, followed by Mrs. Carr's accusing 
 eyes to the hatrack, where he stopped to take his glossy 
 silk hat from a peg. Turning in the buggy as he drove 
 off, he waved merrily back at them with the whip before 
 he touched the fat flanks of his gray. 
 
 "Cousin Jimmy means well, but he has a most un 
 fortunate manner at times," observed Mrs. Carr. 
 "What is the matter, Gabriella? Have you a head 
 ache?" 
 
 "Oh, no, but the sunshine is so strong." 
 
 "Then you'd better lower the shade. Why, what 
 in the world has happened to my rose geranium? I 
 was just going to pot it for the winter." 
 
 "I'm sure it isn't hurt, mother. George broke the 
 leaves when he was looking out of the window." 
 
 "I thought he was going to stay for dinner. Did 
 you make the jelly and syllabub? " 
 
 "I made it, but he wouldn't stay." 
 
 "Well, we'll send some upstairs to Miss Jemima. 
 Do you know she had to have the doctor this morning? 
 I met him as I was going out, and he said he was sorry
 
 MIRAGE 115 
 
 to hear I was going to leave Richmond. I can't im 
 agine where on earth he could have heard it, for I 
 haven't mentioned it to a soul except Lydia Peyton. 
 Yes, I believe I did speak of it to Bessie Spencer at the 
 meeting of the Ladies' Aid Society the other day. 
 Where are you going, Gabriella? Would you mind 
 putting my bonnet in the bandbox?" 
 
 No, Gabriella wouldn't mind, and taking the folds of 
 crape in her arms, she went to get the green paper 
 bandbox out of the closet. Though she had sacrificed 
 her happiness for her mother, she felt that it would be 
 impossible for her to listen with a smiling face to her 
 innocent prattle. 
 
 In the afternoon, when Mrs. Carr, with a small and 
 inconspicuous basket in her hand, had set out on her 
 Sunday visit to the Old Ladies' Home, and Marthy, 
 attired in an apron with an embroidered bib, had taken 
 the jelly and syllabub upstairs to Miss Jemima, Ga 
 briella sat down in her mother's rocking-chair by the 
 window, and tried desperately to be philosophical. 
 The sound of the old maids from the floor above 
 descending on their way to a funeral disturbed her for 
 a minute, and she thought with an extraordinary clear 
 ness, "That is what my life will be if George never comes 
 back. That is what it means to be old." And there 
 was a morbid pleasure in pressing this thought, like a 
 pointed weapon, into her heart. "That is all there will 
 be for me that will be my life," she went on after an 
 instant of throbbing anguish. "I had no right to think 
 of marriage with mother dependent on me, and the 
 best thing for me to do is to start again with Mr. 
 Brandywine. George was right in a way. Yes, it is 
 hard on him, and I was wrong ever to think of it ever
 
 116 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 to let him fall in love with me." The mere thought 
 that George was right in a way gave her singular com 
 fort, and while she dwelt on it, the discovery seemed 
 to throw a vivid light on the cause of the quarrel. Of 
 course, she had expected too much of him. It was 
 natural that he should not want to be burdened with 
 her family. What she had looked upon as selfishness 
 was only the natural instinct of a man in love with a 
 woman. He had said that he wanted her to himself, 
 and to want her to himself appeared now to be the most 
 reasonable desire in the world. 
 
 Yes, she had acquitted George; but, in acquitting 
 him, it was characteristic of her that she should not have 
 yielded an inch of her ground. She drew comfort from 
 declaring him innocent, but it was the tragic comfort of 
 one who blesses while she renounces. George's blame- 
 lessness did not alter in the least her determination to 
 cling to her mother. 
 
 The afternoon wore on; the soft golden light on the 
 pavement was dappled with shadows; and the wind, 
 blowing over the iron urns in the yard, scattered the 
 withered leaves of portulaca over the grass. Though 
 the summer still lingered, and flowers were blooming 
 behind the fences along the street, the faint violet haze 
 of autumn was creeping slowly over the sunshine. Now 
 and then an acquaintance, returning from afternoon 
 service, looked up to bow to her, and while the daylight 
 was still strong, Marthy, resplendent in Sunday raiment, 
 came out of the little green gate at the side of the yard 
 and passed, mincing, in the direction of the negro 
 church. Then the door opened slowly, and the two old 
 maids came in and stopped for a minute at the parlour 
 door to see if Gabriella "had company,"
 
 MIRAGE 117 
 
 "Such a lovely evening, my dear" they never used 
 the word afternoon "we went all the way to the 
 cemetery. She was buried in her grandfather's lot, 
 you know, in the old part up on the hill. It was a 
 beautiful drive, but Amelia and I couldn't help think 
 ing of the poor young thing all the time." 
 
 It was Miss Jemima who had spoken, and her kind, 
 plain face, all puffs and pleasant wrinkles, had not yet 
 relaxed from the unnatural solemnity it had worn at 
 the funeral. She was seldom grave, and never de 
 spondent, though to Gabriella she appeared to lead 
 an unendurable life. Unlike Miss Amelia, she had not 
 even a happy youth and a lover to look back upon; she 
 had nothing, indeed, except her unfailing goodness and 
 patience to support her. 
 
 "I don't like to see you alone, honey," she said, 
 untying the strings of her black silk bonnet, which fitted 
 her cheerful features like a frame. "If the doctor 
 hadn't told me to go to bed as soon as I came in, we'd 
 sit a while with you for company." 
 
 She felt that it was morbid and unnatural in Gabriella 
 to sit alone in a dim room when there were so many 
 young people out in the streets. "You mark my words, 
 there's some reason back of Gabriella's moping all by 
 herself," she remarked to Miss Amelia as she took off 
 her "things" a few minutes later. "It wouldn't sur 
 prise me a bit to hear that she'd had a fuss with her 
 sweetheart." 
 
 "I declare, sister Jemima, you are too sentimental 
 to live," observed Miss Amelia as she filled the tea 
 kettle on the fender. "Anybody would think to hear 
 you talk that there was nothing in life except making 
 love."
 
 118 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Well, there isn't anything else so interesting when 
 you're young. You used to think so yourself, sister 
 Amelia." 
 
 Standing gaunt and black, with the tea kettle held 
 out stiffly before her, Miss Amelia turned her tragic 
 face on her sister. 
 
 "Well, I reckon you don't know much about it," 
 she responded with the unconscious cruelty of age. 
 Having been once the victim of a great passion, she had 
 developed at last into an uncompromising realist, wholly 
 devoid of sentimentality, while Miss Jemima, lacking 
 experience, had enveloped the unknown in a rosy veil 
 of illusion. 
 
 "You don't have to know a thing to think about it, 
 sister Amelia," replied the invalid timidly as she put 
 on her flannel wrapper and fastened it with a safety 
 pin at the throat. 
 
 "Well, I reckon it's all right for a girl like Gabriella," 
 said Miss Amelia crushingly, "but when you look back 
 on it from my age, you'll know it isn't worth a row of 
 pins in a life." 
 
 And beside the window downstairs Gabriella was 
 thinking passionately: "Shall I ever grow old? Is it 
 possible that I shall ever grow old like that?" 
 
 With the bare question, terror seized her the terror 
 of growing old without George, the terror of dying 
 before she had known the full beauty of life. Looking 
 ahead of her at the years empty of love, she saw them 
 like a gray road, leaf strewn, wind swept, deserted, and 
 herself creeping through them, as bent, as wrinkled, 
 as disillusioned, as Miss Amelia. The very image of a 
 life without love was intolerable to her since she had 
 known George for love meant George, and only
 
 MIRAGE 119 
 
 George, in her thoughts. That she could ever be 
 happy again, ever take a natural pleasure in life if she 
 lost him, was unimaginable to her at the instant. She 
 loved him, she had loved him from the first moment she 
 saw him, she would never, though she lived a million 
 years, love any one else. It was as absurd to think that 
 she could love again as that a flower could bloom afresh 
 when its petals were withered. No, without George 
 there was only loveless old age there was only the 
 future of Miss Amelia before her. And she clung to 
 this idea with a horror which Miss Amelia, who seldom 
 reflected that she was loveless and by no means con 
 sidered herself an object of pity, would have despised. 
 
 "I have no right to marry George, and yet if I don't 
 marry him I shall be miserable all my life," she told 
 herself with a sensation of panic. It would be so long, 
 the rest of her life, and without George it was as 
 desolate as the gray road of her vision. All the beau 
 ties of the universe, all the miracles of hope, of youth, of 
 spring; her health, her intellect, her capacity for work 
 and for taking pleasure in little things all these were 
 as nothing to her if she lost George out of her life. "I 
 oughtn't to marry him," she repeated, "but if I don't 
 rnarry him I shall be miserable every minute until I 
 die." 
 
 Then a terror more awful than any she had yet suf 
 fered clutched at her heart. Suppose he should never 
 come back! Suppose he had really meant to leave her 
 for good! Suppose he had ceased to love her since he 
 went out of the house! The possibility was so agoniz 
 ing that she rose blindly from her chair and turned 
 from the ^"How as if the quiet street, filled with the 
 dreamy suusiime of October, had offered an appalling,
 
 120 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 an unbelievable sight to her eyes. If he had ceased to 
 love her, she was helpless; and this sense of helplessness 
 ykwoke a feeling of rage in her heart. If he did not come 
 * back, she could never go after him. She could only 
 ysit and wait until she grew as old and as ugly as Miss 
 Amelia. While the minutes, which seemed hours, 
 dragged away, she wept the bitterest tears of her life 
 tears not of wounded love, but of anger because she 
 nnnld HQ nnthinnf hilt wait. 
 
 fhile she wept the bell rang. When she did not 
 answer it, it rang again, and after an interminable 
 pause the footsteps of Miss Amelia were heard descend 
 ing the stairs. Then the door opened and shut, the 
 footsteps began their slow ascent of the stairs, and after 
 an eternity of silence, she knew that George had entered 
 the room. 
 
 Wiping her eyes on the ruffle of the sofa pillow, she 
 sat up and faced him, while her pride hardened again. 
 
 "Gabriella, I have come back." 
 
 "I see you have," she answered coldly, and choked 
 over a sob. 
 
 "What are you crying about, Gabriella?" 
 
 "I I have a headache." 
 
 "Have you thought about me at all to-day?" 
 
 "A little." 
 
 He laughed softly, the laugh of a conqueror. 
 
 "I'm glad at least that I didn't give you the head 
 ache." 
 
 " You didn't, I had it anyway." 
 
 He was radiant, he was as fresh as the wind. Never 
 in his life had he looked so gay, so handsome, so kind. 
 His blue eyes were brimming with light. The mere 
 fact of being alive appeared to fill him with ecstasy.
 
 MIRAGE 121 
 
 And she loved him for his gaiety, for his lightness, for 
 the ease with which he took for granted her unchange 
 able love. She longed with all her soul and body to 
 prove this love by a surrender more complete than any 
 she had made in the past. She longed to say: "I am 
 yours to do with as you please, and nothing in the uni 
 verse matters but you and my love for you." The 
 very core of her nature longed to say this to him; but 
 her indomitable pride, which even passion could not 
 overcome, kept her sitting there in silence while she 
 felt that her heart was bursting with happiness. 
 
 "Have you thought it over, Gabriella?" 
 
 She nodded. To save her life, she felt, she could not 
 utter a word without sobbing. 
 
 "And you have absolutely and finally decided to have 
 your way?" 
 
 This time she shook her head, but the tears fell on 
 her cheeks and she did not brush them away. From 
 his voice she knew that she had triumphed, but there 
 was no delight in the knowledge. She did not want to 
 triumph; she wanted only to yield to him and to make 
 him happy by yielding. 
 
 "0 George!" she cried suddenly, and held out her 
 arms to him. 
 
 As he looked down at her his expression changed 
 suddenly to one of intense sadness. From his face, 
 which had grown pale, he might have been contem 
 plating the Eternal Verities, though, in reality, he was 
 considering nothing more exalted than the dreary pros 
 pect of a lifetime spent in the society of Mrs. Carr. 
 Then, as Gabriella enfolded him, he laughed softly. He 
 had given in, but he knew in the very instant of his 
 defeat that he should some day turn it to victory.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE NEW WORLD 
 
 GABRIELLA stood in front of the station, ecstat 
 ically watching George while he struggled for a 
 cab. In the pale beams of the early sunshine her face 
 looked young, flushed, and expectant, as if she had just 
 awakened from sleep, and her eyes, following her hus 
 band, were the happy eyes of a bride. She wore a new 
 dress of blue broadcloth, passionately overtrimmed by 
 Miss Polly Hatch; on her head a blue velvet toque from 
 Brandywine's millinery department rested as lightly as 
 a benediction; and her hands clasped Arthur's wedding 
 present, a bag of alligator skin bearing her initials in 
 gold. One blissful month ago she and George had been 
 married, and now, on the reluctant return from a camp 
 in the Adirondacks, they were confronting the disillu 
 sioning actuality of the New York streets at eight o'clock 
 in the morning. While Gabriella waited, shivering a 
 a little, for the air was sharp and her broadcloth dress 
 was not warm, she amused herself planning a future 
 which appeared to consist of inexhaustible happiness. 
 And mingling with her dreams there were divine mem 
 ories of the last month and of her marriage. After 
 that one quarrel George, she told herself, had been 
 "simply perfect." His manner to her mother had been 
 beautiful; he had been as eager as Gabriella to obliterate 
 all memory of the difference between them, though, of 
 
 122
 
 THE NEW WORLD 123 
 
 course, after his yielding that supreme point she had 
 felt that she must give up everything else and the 
 giving up had been rapture. He had shown not the 
 faintest disposition to crow over her when at last, after 
 consulting Mrs. Carr, she had told him that her mother 
 really preferred to stay with Jane until summer, though 
 he had remarked with evident relief: "Then we'll put 
 off looking for an apartment. It's easier to find one 
 in the summer anyway, and in the meantime you can 
 talk it over with mother." 
 
 After this everything had gone so smoothly, so ex 
 quisitely, that it was more like a dream than like actual 
 life when she looked back on it. She saw herself in the 
 floating lace veil of her grandmother, holding white 
 roses in her hand, and she saw George's face the face 
 of her dreams come true looking at her out of a starry 
 mist, while in the shining wilderness that surrounded 
 them she heard an organ playing softly "The Voice 
 That Breathed O'er Eden." Then the going away! 
 The good-byes at the station in Richmond; her mother's 
 face, pathetic and drawn against the folds of her crape 
 veil; Cousin Jimmy, crimson and jovial; Florrie's violent 
 waving as the train moved away; Miss Jemima, with 
 her smiling, pain-tortured eyes, flinging a handful of 
 rice; the last glimpse of them; the slowly vanishing 
 streets, where the few pedestrians stopped to look after 
 the cars; the park where she had played as a child; the 
 brilliant flower-beds filled with an autumnal bloom of 
 scarlet cannas; the white-aproned negro nurses and 
 the gaily decorated perambulators; the clustering 
 church spires against a sky of pure azure; the negro 
 hovels, with frost-blighted sunflowers dropping brown 
 seeds over the paling fences; the rosy haze of it all; and
 
 124 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 her heart saying over and over, "There is nothing but 
 * love in the world! There is nothing but love in the 
 world!" 
 
 "I've got a cab the last one," said George, pushing 
 his way through the crowd, and laying his hand on her 
 arm with a possessive and authoritative touch. "Let 
 me put you in, and then I'll speak to the driver." 
 
 As he gave the address she watched him, still fas 
 cinated with the delicious strangeness of it all. It was 
 like an adventure to have George whisk her so per 
 emptorily into a cab, and then stand with his foot on 
 the step while he curtly directed the driver. Nothing 
 could surpass the romance the supreme exciting ro 
 mance of life. Every minute was an event; every 
 act of George's was as thrilling as a moment in melo 
 drama. And as they drove through the streets, over 
 the pale bands of sunshine, she had a sense of lightness 
 and wonder, as if she were driving in a world of magic 
 toward ineffable happiness. 
 
 "Isn't it strange to be here together, George?" she 
 said. "I can hardly believe it." But in her heart she 
 was thinking: "I shall never want anything but love in 
 my life. If I have George I shall never want anything 
 else." The bedraggled, slatternly figures of the women 
 sweeping the pavements in the cross-street through 
 which they were driving filled her with a fugitive sad 
 ness, so faint, so pale that it hardly dimmed the serene 
 brightness of her mood. "I wish they were all as 
 happy as I am," she thought; "and they might be if 
 they only knew the secret of happiness. If they only 
 knew that nothing in the world matters when one has 
 love in one's heart." 
 
 "You'll believe it soon enough when we turn into
 
 THE NEW WORLD 125 
 
 Fifth Avenue," replied George, glancing with disgust 
 out of the window. A month of intimacy had increased 
 the power of his smile over her senses, and when he 
 ^turned to her again after a minute, she felt something 
 of the faint delicious tremor of their first meeting. Al 
 ready she was beginning to discover that beyond his 
 expressive eyes he had really very little of importance 
 to express, that his prolonged silences covered poverty of 
 ideasjather than abundance of feeling, that his limited 
 vocabulary was due less to reticence than to the simple 
 inarticulateness of the primitive mind. Through the 
 golden glamour of her honeymoon there had loomed 
 suddenly the discovery that George was not clever 
 but cleverness mattered so little, she told herself, as 
 long as he loved her. 
 
 "I hope your mother will like me," she said nervously 
 after a minute. 
 
 "I'll be sorry for her if she doesn't." 
 
 "Do I look nice?" 
 
 "Of course you do. I never saw you when you 
 didn't." 
 
 "I feel so dreadfully untidy. I never tried to dress 
 in a sleeping-car before." 
 
 "It did rock, didn't it?" 
 
 "I'll never travel again at night if I can help it. 
 There's a cinder in your eye; let me get it out for you." 
 It thrilled her pleasantly to remove the cinder with the 
 corner of her handkerchief, and to order him to sit still 
 whenever the cab jolted. It was incredibly young, 
 incredibly foolish, but it was all a part of the wonderful 
 enchantment in which she moved. The cinder had 
 made an agreeable episode, but when it had been re 
 moved there was nothing more for them to talk about.
 
 126 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ' In four weeks of daily and hourly companionship they 
 
 had said very easily, Gabriella had found, everything 
 
 they had longed so passionately to say to each other. 
 
 It was strange it was positively astounding how soon 
 
 they had talked themselves empty of ideas and fallen 
 
 back upon repetition and ejaculation. Before her 
 
 marriage she had thought that a lifetime would be too 
 
 ' short to hold the full richness of their confidences; and 
 
 I yet now, after a month, though they still made love, 
 
 they had ceased, almost with relief, to make conver- 
 
 | sation. 
 
 After turning into Fifth Avenue they drove for ages 
 between depressing examples in brownstone of an archi 
 tecture which, like George, was trying rather vaguely 
 to express nothing; and then rolling heavily into Fifty- 
 seventh Street stopped presently before one of the 
 solemn houses which stood, in the dignity of utter 
 ugliness, midway of a long block. "They are all so 
 alike I don't see how I shall ever know where I live," 
 thought Gabriella. Then, as George helped her out of 
 the cab, the door opened as if by magic, and beyond 
 the solemn manservant she saw the short, stout figure 
 of a lady in a tightly fitting morning gown of black 
 silk. Hurrying up the steps, she was pressed against 
 a large smooth bosom which yielded as little as if it 
 had been upholstered in leather. 
 
 "My dear daughter! my dear Gabriella!" exclaimed 
 the lady in a charming voice; and looking down after 
 the first kiss, Gabriella saw a handsome, slightly florid 
 face, with the vivacious smile of a girl and a beautiful 
 forehead under a stiffly crimped arch of gray hair which 
 looked as hard and bright as silver. 
 
 "I've been up since seven o'clock waiting for you.
 
 THE NEW WORLD 127 
 
 You must be famished. Come straight in to breakfast. 
 Your father is already at the table, George. Poor 
 man, he has to start downtown so dreadfully early." 
 
 Bright, effusive, vivacious, and as emphatically 
 Southern as if she had never left Franklin Street, Mrs. 
 Fowler took off Gabriella's hat and coat, kissed her 
 several times while she was doing so, and at last, still 
 talking animatedly, led them into the dining-room. 
 
 "Archibald, here they are," she said in a tone of un 
 affected delight, while a thin, serious-looking man, with 
 anxious eyes, pale, aristocratic features, and skin that 
 had a curious parchment-like texture, put down the 
 Times, and came forward to meet them. Though he 
 did not speak as he kissed her, Gabriella felt that there 
 was sincere, if detached, friendliness in his little pat on 
 her shoulder. He led her almost tenderly to her chair; 
 and as soon as she was comfortably seated and supplied 
 with rolls and bacon, resigned her contentedly to his 
 wife and the butler. His manner of gentle abstrac^ 
 tion, which Gabriella attributed first to something he 
 had just read in the newspaper, she presently discovered 
 to be his habitual attitude toward all the world except * 
 Wall Street. He ate his breakfast as if his attention 
 were somewhere else; he spoke to his son and his 
 daughter-in-law kindly, but as if he were not thinking 
 about them; he treated his wife, whom he adored, as 
 if he had not clearly perceived her. In the profound 
 abstraction in which he lived every impression appeared 
 to have become blurred except the tremendous im 
 pression of whirling forces; every detail seemed to 
 have been obscured except the gigantic details of "Busi 
 ness." His manner was perfectly well-bred, but it was 
 the manner of a man who moves through life rehearsing
 
 128 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 a part of which he barely remembers the words. From 
 the first minute it was evident to Gabriella that her 
 father-in-law adored his wife as an ideal, though he 
 seemed scarcely aware of her as a person. He had given 
 her his love, but his interests, his energies, his attention 
 were elsewhere. 
 
 "Is that the way George will treat me as if I were 
 only a dream woman?" thought Gabriella while she 
 watched her father-in-law over the open sheet of the 
 Times. Then, with her eyes on her husband, she 
 realized that he was of his mother's blood, not his 
 father's. Business could never absorb him. His rest 
 lessness, his instability, his love of pleasure, would pre 
 vent the sapping of his nature by one supreme interest. 
 
 The table, like everything else in the room, was solid, 
 heavy, and expensive. On the floor a heavy and ex 
 pensive carpet, with a pattern in squares, stretched 
 to the heavy and expensive moulding which bordered 
 a heavy and expensive paper. Mrs. Fowler's taste, 
 like Jimmy's (he was her third cousin), leaned appar 
 ently toward embossment, for behind a massive re 
 pousse silver service she sat, as handsome and sub 
 stantial as the room, with her face flushing in splotches 
 from the heat of her coffee. 
 
 Some twenty-odd years before the house had been 
 furnished at great cost, according to the opulent taste 
 of the early 'seventies, and, unchanged by severer and 
 more frugal fashions, it remained a solid monument to 
 the first great financial deal of Archibald Fowler. It 
 was at the golden age, when, still young and energetic, 
 luck had come to him in a day, that he had bought the 
 brownstone house in Fifty-seventh Street, and his 
 wife, also young and energetic, had gone out "to get
 
 THE NEW WORLD 129 
 
 whatever she liked." Trained in a simple school during 
 the war, and brought up in the formal purity of high- 
 ceiled rooms furnished in Chippendale and Sheraton, 
 her natural tastes were, nevertheless, as ornate as the 
 interiors of the New York shops. Though the blood 
 of colonial heroes ran in her veins, she was still the 
 child of her age, and her age prided itself upon being 
 entirely modern in all things from religion to furni 
 ture. 
 
 As she sat there behind the mammoth coffee urn, from 
 which a spiral of steam floated, her handsome face ir 
 radiated 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 ex 
 plained 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."
 
 130 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "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 philoso 
 pher. 
 
 "You must be happy with us, my dear," he had said 
 to Gabriella, showing a minute later such gentle eager 
 ness to return to a part of the newspaper which Ga 
 briella had never read and did not understand, that his 
 wife remarked pityingly: "Read your paper, Archi 
 bald, 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 Buffing- 
 ton, 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,
 
 THE NEW WORLD 131 
 
 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 sud 
 denly 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 unbe 
 comingly 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
 
 132 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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?" 
 
 t 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 star 
 tled. 
 
 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
 
 THE NEW WORLD 133 
 
 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 apart 
 ment 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 thought- 
 fully. 
 
 "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."
 
 134 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "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 any 
 thing 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
 
 THE NEW WORLD 135 
 
 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 per 
 fectly 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 won 
 dered 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."
 
 136 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "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 after 
 wards if her silent acquiescence in Mrs. Fowler's judg 
 ment 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. 
 
 FThe 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! 
 she could only have used her deeper wisdom not
 
 THE NEW WORLD 137 
 
 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 worldli- t 
 ness 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 
 lad given up. In the case of George, she admitted 
 that it was her fault that she had spoiled him but 
 low could she have helped it? She remembered how 
 ic had looked as a child, with his round flushed face,, 
 lis chestnut curls, and his eager, questioning eyes. He 
 lad 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 
 lis wildness to which she had shut her ears; of his debts, 
 and still of his debts, which she had paid out of the house- 
 seeping money because she was afraid to let his father 
 mow of them. Yes, George, in spite of his sweet 
 aature, had given them a great deal of trouble, so much 
 .rouble that she had been quite reconciled to his mar- 
 iage with any respectable girl. The memory of a 
 chorus girl with whom he had once entangled himself 
 itill gave her a shiver at the heart when she recalled it. 
 Money, always more money, had gone into that; and 
 it last, just as she had grown hopeless of saving him,
 
 138 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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 disin 
 terested 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."
 
 THE NEW WORLD 139 
 
 "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 sweet 
 ness 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 long 
 ing 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?
 
 140 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 The carriage passed out of the Park, and turning into 
 one of the streets on the upper West Side stopped pres 
 ently 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." Draw 
 ing 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 every 
 body 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 when 
 ever 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
 
 THE NEW WORLD 141 
 
 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 inter 
 ested." 
 
 "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 per 
 fectly lovely hair, whether they have it or not. Some 
 day I'll take you to his studio and let you see for your 
 self." 
 
 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 up 
 ward to the top of the house. 
 
 "I feel as if I were taking my life in my hands when 
 ever I come here," observed Mrs. Fowler, in the tone 
 of dispassionate resignation with which she always dis 
 cussed 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 cur 
 tains, 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
 
 142 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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 in 
 nocence 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 pag 
 eantry 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 tapes 
 tries on the wall, with her honey-coloured hair hanging
 
 THE NEW WORLD 143 
 
 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 Ga 
 briella had seen lovely skins on Southern women 
 rose-leaf skins, magnolia skins, peach-blossom skins 
 she had seen nothing that resembled the exquisite col 
 our and texture of Patty's face. 
 
 "The curtains were finished, so I brought them," said 
 Mrs. Fowler, pointing to the bundle. "I wanted Ga 
 briella to see the Park. You are coming to-night with 
 out 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."
 
 144 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "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 set 
 tled 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?" 
 
 "She looks like the snow queen in them. Does it 
 matter what I wear to-night? Who is coming? " 
 
 "Nobody you will care about only Judge and Mrs. 
 Crowborough and Colonel Buffington." 
 
 "That old bore of a colonel! And why do you have 
 to ask the judge again so soon? He looks like a turkey 
 gobbler, Gabriella, and he has so much money that it is 
 impossible to judge him by the standards of other 
 people, everybody says that even Billy." 
 
 "Hush, Patty. You mustn't corrupt Gabriella." 
 
 "If the judge doesn't, I shan't, mamma." 
 
 "Well, your father has the greatest respect for him, 
 and as for asking him often to dinner, it isn't by any 
 means so easy to get him as you think. I don't suppose
 
 THE NEW WORLD 145 
 
 there's another man in New York who is invited out so 
 often and goes out so little." 
 
 "Papa is a sweet innocent," observed Patty mali 
 ciously, "but if you can stand the judge, mamma, dear, 
 I am sure I can, especially as I shan't have to sit by 
 him. That honour will be reserved for poor Gabriella. 
 I wish you didn't have to go, but you really must, I 
 suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, we must go. Come, Gabriella, or you won't 
 *have time to get into your trunks before dinner." 
 
 On the drive home Mrs. Fowler was grimly silent, 
 while the sweetness about her mouth ebbed slowly away, 
 leaving the faintest quiver of the muscles. For the 
 first time Gabriella saw George's mother look as she 
 must look in her sleep, when the artificial cheerfulness 
 of her expression faded into the profound unconscious 
 ness which drowns not only happiness, but the very 
 pretence of happiness. So here, also, was insincerity, 
 here, also, was the striving, not for realities, but for ap 
 pearances! In a different form she saw her mother's 
 struggle again that struggle, without beginning and 
 without end, which moved always in a circle and led 
 nowhere. Was there no sincerity, no reality even in 
 love? Was George, too, only a shadow? And the 
 visible sadness of the November afternoon, with its 
 faint haze like the haze of a dream landscape, seemed a 
 part of this invisible sadness which had sprung from 
 nothing and which would change and pass away in a 
 breath. " If things would only last," she thought, look 
 ing with wistful eyes on the gold and purple around her. 
 "If things would only last, how wonderful life would be ! " 
 
 "To think that all Patty's beauty should have been 
 thrown away," said Mrs. Fowler suddenly.
 
 146 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Though Gabriella had never seen Billy, she was in 
 clined at the moment, in her mood of dissatisfaction 
 with the universe, to sympathize with Mrs. Fowler's 
 view of the matter. To her frugal mind, trained to 
 economy of material, it seemed that Patty was altogether 
 too much for a poor man even though he could paint 
 her in lean lines and violet shadows. 
 
 Upstairs she found her trunks in her bedroom, and 
 after she had unpacked her wedding-gown of white 
 satin, removed the tissue paper stuffing from the 
 sleeves, and shaken out the creases with gentle hands, 
 she sat down and pondered deeply the problem of 
 dressing for dinner. By removing the lace yoke, she 
 might make the gown sufficiently indecorous for the 
 fashion of the period, and her only evening dress, the 
 white muslin she had worn to dances in Richmond, she 
 reflected gloomily, would appear absurd in New York. 
 
 "I wish I didn't look such a fright," she said aloud, 
 as she ripped and sewed. Then, in a flash, her mind 
 wandered from herself, and she thought: "I wonder 
 why George didn't tell his mother that we are going to 
 take an apartment? I wonder why he didn't tell her 
 that mother is coming in June? When he comes I must 
 ask him." 
 
 Looking at the clock, she saw that it was after seven, 
 and hurriedly taking the last few stitches, she laid the 
 gown on the bed, bathed her face in cold water, and 
 then, sitting down before her dressing-table, drew the 
 pins from her hair. In some obscure way she felt her 
 self a different person from the bride who had watched 
 George so ecstatically at the station that morning. She 
 could not tell how she had altered, and yet she felt 
 perfectly conscious that an alteration had taken place
 
 THE NEW WORLD 147 
 
 in her soul that she was not the same Gabriella that 
 life could never be again exactly as it had been be 
 fore. Nothing and yet everything seemed to have hap 
 pened to her in a day. Her face, gazing gravely back 
 at her from the mirror, looked young and wistful, the 
 face of one who, like a bird flying suddenly out of dark 
 ness against a lamp, is bewildered by the first shock of 
 the light. 
 
 When her hair was arranged in the simple way she 
 had always worn it, she slipped her dress over her bare 
 shoulders, and fastened it slowly for Miss Polly had 
 no patience with "back fastenings" while she told 
 herself again that George would not be satisfied. She 
 knew that her gown was provincial, knew that she 
 lacked the "dash" he admired in women; and from the 
 first she had been mystified by a love which could, while, 
 still passionately desiring her, wish her different in so 
 many ways. "I'd like him to be proud of me, but I 
 suppose he never will be," she thought dejectedly, 
 "and yet he fell in love with me just as I was, and he 
 did not fall in love with any of the dashing women he 
 knows," she added quickly, consoled by the reflection. 
 "And of course in a few things I wish him different, too. 
 I wish he wasn't so careless. He is so careless that I 
 shall have to be twice as careful, I shall have to look 
 after him all the time. Even to-night he has forgotten 
 about the dinner, and he'll be obliged to dress in a hurry, 
 which he hates." 
 
 Glancing at the clock again, she saw that it was a 
 quarter of eight, and still George had not come.
 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 
 
 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 mid 
 way between the bed and the wood-fire, while she 
 felt his charm stealing like a drug over her senses. 
 Though sheJhad begun to realize the thinness of his men 
 tal 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 ap- 
 
 148
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 149 
 
 peared to diffuse the glamour of romance, of adven 
 ture; 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 quantity, 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 
 analysis? 
 
 "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 encumbering 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."
 
 150 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 As he passed 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 flashing 
 instant of illumination she saw him with a vision that 
 was not her own, but a stranger's, with a pitiless clear 
 ness unsoftened by any passion. 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 shine 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.
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 151 
 
 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 accumulative fashion, he had be 
 come 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 infal 
 lible 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 fashionable Psyche knot, and the short puffs 
 of her sleeves emphasizing the hour-glass perfection of 
 her figure. Next to Mrs. Hamilton there was Billy King, 
 who wore a white flower in his buttonhole and looked
 
 152 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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 or 
 ganized charity. Unfortunately, for she was rather 
 heavy in company, Judge Crowborough was obliged 
 by custom to bring her to dinner; and she came will 
 ingly, inspired less by sociability than by the vir 
 tuous 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 appetities 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 
 assured 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 spiritual 
 ity so strangely out of keeping with the calling he pur 
 sued; and she recognized now the quality of controlled
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 153 
 
 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 de 
 votion 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 superstitious 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 funda 
 mental reason there, I suppose, if you go deep enough," 
 he added, fingering the ends of his short gray moustache
 
 154 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 while he kept an eye on his champagne glass. "We've 
 done with mere classifying 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 general 
 ization, and when dining, preferred to discuss imper 
 sonal 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 appetites, 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 ad 
 miration 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 
 institution, 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
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 155 
 
 on its surface; he had made grass 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 in 
 timacy 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 ques 
 tioned impatiently.
 
 156 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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 passing be 
 tween them, and these glances, so winged with happi 
 ness, 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 com 
 fortably 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! Marse Beverly,' said the old rascal, 'whar 
 you gwine?" ! 
 
 " Capital ! " ejaculated 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 shining 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
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 157 
 
 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 Buflmgton 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 im 
 pression 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 person 
 ality 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 eat 
 ing 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 mil 
 lions 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 sex. No man, 
 hot 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
 
 158 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 have been shocked into revolt; yet a woman, a refined 
 and intelligent woman, had married the judge and sur 
 vived 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 passed into the draw- 
 
 ing-rojom, 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 Patty, 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 re 
 sourcefulness, 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
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 159 
 
 of golden embers over the hearth. Rising quickly, with 
 one of her sprightly movements, Mrs. Fowler reached 
 for a pair of small brass 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 Pleth- 
 eridges," 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, tradi- ^f k 
 tion said, had been granted one of her ancestors by vc>Tf 
 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," pur 
 sued 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 snob, whose father kept hotels and
 
 160 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 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 titled ancestors, mother hasn't 
 half so much respect for the genuine New Yorkers I 
 mean the New Yorkers whose names really mean some 
 thing 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." 
 
 "Well, of course, Billy went dreadfully hard with 
 them at least with mother. She wanted the Duke of 
 Somewhere so very badly. But it was Billy or nobody 
 for me. I'd have married Billy," she added while her 
 beautiful face grew stern, "if I'd had to walk all the 
 way across the world to him." 
 
 "He looks as if he were worth it," admitted Gabriella. 
 
 " He is, but that probably wasn't my reason for marry 
 ing him. One never knows why one marries, I sup 
 pose, unless one marries for money and then it is so 
 beautifully simple. Now, you and George don't seem 
 a bit alike, but it all happened on the spur of the mo 
 ment, didn't it? " 
 
 "It always seems that way when one looks back, 
 doesn't it?" asked Gabriella. "But what I can't
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 161 
 
 understand" she brought it out with a frown "is 
 why marriage doesn't change one. I used to think I'd 
 be different, but I'm not. And even love seems to 
 leave people wanting everything else just as badly. 
 Your mother has had a perfect love she told me so 
 and yet it hasn't kept her from wanting all the other 
 things in life, has it? I wish I could work it out," she 
 finished, a little sadly, for she was thinking of her 
 mother's cry on the night of Jane's attack: "I am 
 tempted to hope Gabriella will never marry. The 
 Carrs all marry so badly!" Why had those words 
 come back to her to-night? She had not remembered 
 them for months, she had even forgotten that she had 
 heard them, and now they floated to her as clearly as 
 if they had been spoken aloud. 
 
 In a little while Billy came in, and when, after a few 
 moments of spasmodic affability, Mrs. Crowborough 
 rose and pleaded an early board meeting on the mor 
 row, Gabriella watched Patty wrap her honey-coloured 
 head in a white scarf and then stand, waiting for a 
 cab, in the doorway. Happiness, with so many people 
 an invisible attribute, encircled Patty like a garment of 
 light. It crowned her white brow under the glory of 
 her hair; it shone in her eyes; it rippled in her 
 smile; it lingered in a beam of sunshine on her lips. 
 With her arm in Billy's she looked back laughing from 
 the steps, and it seemed to Gabriella that all the bright 
 ness of life was going with them into the darkness. 
 Beside the curbstone an old cab horse, dazzled by the 
 light from the door, turned his head slowly toward 
 them ; and the look in his eyes, wistful, questioning, ex 
 pectant, seemed to say, " This is not life, but a miracle." 
 And from his box the red-cheeked, wheezy Irish driver
 
 162 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 gazed down on Patty with the same wistfulness, the 
 same questioning, the same expectancy. 
 
 "I never see Patty go off in a cab that I don't feel 
 she has thrown herself away," observed Mrs. Fowler, 
 yawning, while she turned to the staircase. "Archibald, 
 I hope you had a really good time with the judge. I 
 must say it is like ploughing to talk to his wife." 
 
 Upstairs in her room a little later Gabriella said to 
 George: "Patty was telling me about the girl your 
 mother wanted you to marry." 
 
 He was pouring out a glass of water, and, absorbed in 
 the act, he merely grunted for answer. It was his dis 
 agreeable habit to grunt when grunting saved effort. 
 
 "I wish you'd talk to me, George. It is so annoying 
 to be grunted at." 
 
 "Well, what do you want?" he replied amiably 
 enough. "Patty is a regular sieve, you know. Never 
 tell her a secret." 
 
 "Did you ever like that girl really? " 
 
 "The girl mother had in mind?" Having emptied 
 the glass, he returned it to the tray and came over to 
 her. "Yes, but if you want the truth, I preferred the 
 girl in the chorus the one the old lady got in a blue 
 funk about, you know. She's still there, the last but 
 one from the end, in the Golden Slipper. I'll take you 
 to see it some night." 
 
 "Men are strange," observed Gabriella, with philo 
 sophic detachment. "Now I couldn't feel the slightest 
 interest in a man in comic opera. Did she really 
 attract you?" 
 
 "Um humph," he was grunting again. 
 
 " Wasn't she terribly common? " 
 
 "Um humph."
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 163 
 
 "Wasn't she vulgar?" 
 
 "Rather. They all are." 
 
 "And fast?" 
 
 "Regular streak of lightning." 
 
 Then it was that Gabriella arrived at an understand 
 ing of masculine nature. " You never can tell what men 
 will like," she concluded. 
 
 While she spoke he winked at her from the mirror 
 into which he was looking mirrors always fascinated 
 George and he could never keep away from them 
 and there was in his face the whimsical and appealing 
 naughtiness of a child. Suddenly Gabriella felt that 
 as far as character and experience counted, she 
 was immeasurably older than George. Her supe 
 rior common sense made her feel almost middle-aged 
 when he was in one of his boyish moods. At the age 
 of nine she had not been so utterly irresponsible as 
 George was at twenty-six; as an infant in arms she 
 had probably regarded the universe with a profounder 
 philosophy. Though of course George was charming, 
 he was without any sense of the deeper purpose of 
 life. Like a child he must have what he wanted, and 
 like a child he sulked when he was thwarted and grew 
 angelic when his wishes were gratified. A single day 
 had taught her that his father could not depend on him 
 in business, that his mother could not trust him even 
 I to remember a dinner engagement. Gabriella loved 
 him, she had chosen him, she told herself now, and she 
 meant to abide by her choice; but she was not blind, 
 she was not a fool, and she was deficient in the kind of 
 loyalty which obliges one to lie even in the sanctity 
 of one's own mind. She would be true to him, but she 
 I would be true with her eyes open, not shut.
 
 164 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "George," she said presently, while she loosened her 
 hair, "your father told me you didn't stay more than 
 an hour in the office." The question, "What were you 
 doing?" rose to her lips, but she strangled the words 
 before they escaped her. Her mind was quick to grasp 
 facts, and she had learned already something of a 
 man's instinctive dislike to being made to give an ac 
 count of himself. 
 
 "You've been hearing too much gossip to-night," he 
 rejoined gaily. "Take care what you listen to." 
 
 " Don't joke, dear. I wish you would tell me things." 
 
 "There isn't anything to tell, is there?" 
 
 "Is your father very rich? " 
 
 "Not very. Did you think you were marrying a 
 millionaire?" 
 
 "I never thought about it, but everybody at home 
 thinks he has a great deal of money, and yet your 
 mother talks as if she were poor." 
 
 "Well, he made a pile of money in a big deal about 
 ten years ago, and the papers had a lot about it. After 
 that he lost it, or most of it, and the papers didn't tell. 
 The fact is, he's always either making or losing, and 
 now he's losing. That's why they wanted me to put 
 off our marriage." 
 
 " They wanted you to put it off? " 
 
 " Mother did the old man never interferes. She had 
 got into her head, you see, that the only way for me to 
 make a living was to marry one, so it was a little while 
 before she could get used to the idea that I was going 
 to marry because I wanted to, not because my family 
 wanted me to. She was a brick though when she 
 found out I was in earnest. Mother is true blue when 
 you know how to take her."
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 165 
 
 "But you never told me." 
 
 "You bet I didn't. If I had, as likely as not, you 
 would be Gabriella Mary Carr at this minute." 
 
 Drawing gently out of his grasp, which had grown 
 possessive, she stood looking at him with a smile in 
 which tenderness and irony mingled; and the tenderness 
 was her own, while the irony seemed to belong to the 
 vision of an impersonal spectator of life. The smile 
 fascinated him. He could not withdraw his gaze from 
 it, and yet it had the disturbing effect of placing her at 
 an emotional distance. 
 
 "Your mother is very good to me," she said, "but I 
 feel somehow as if I had taken an unfair advantage of 
 her. And you hadn't even told her," she added, "that 
 we are going to take an apartment in June." 
 
 "Oh, that's all right there's plenty of time," he 
 responded irritably. "Only you mustn't make moun 
 tains out of molehills." 
 
 Then, because she dreaded his anger, she gave up her 
 point as she had given up many before. He was ir 
 responsible, but he was hers and she loved him. 
 
 "I am so sleepy," she said, stifling a yawn, "that 
 I feel as if I could cry." 
 
 ? Marriage, at the end of a month, had already dis- 
 ciplined the fearless directness of Gabriella. She had 
 learned not to answer back when she knew she was 
 right; she had learned to appear sweet when her inner 
 spirit demanded a severe exterior; she had learned to 
 hold h^r tongue when a veritable torrent of words rose to 
 her lips. And these lessons, which George's temper and 
 her own reason had taught her, remained with her in 
 the future, long after she had forgotten George and the 
 ^severity of her schooling. 't
 
 166 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 x 
 
 There were many things for her to learn, and the 
 lessons of that first day and night stretched through 
 the winter and well into the beginning of spring. Ac 
 companying Mrs. Fowler on her busy rounds, she dis 
 covered that here also, as in the house in Hill Street, 
 the chief end of life was to keep up an appearance; 
 here also the supreme effort, the best energies, were 
 ; devoted to a sham to a thing which had no actual 
 lexistence. Though Mrs. Fowler was rich beside Mrs. 
 Carr, Gabriella soon found out that she was not nearly 
 so rich as her neighbours were, not nearly so rich as her 
 position in society exacted that she should be. She 
 was still not rich enough to be spared the sordid, nerve- 
 racking effort to make two ends meet without a visible 
 break. Her small economies, to Gabriella's surprise, 
 were as rigid as Mrs. Carr's; and though she lived in 
 surroundings which appeared luxurious to the girl, there 
 was almost as little ready money to spend as there had 
 been in Mrs. Carr's household. Bills were made reck 
 lessly, and dinner parties were given at regular intervals; 
 for Mrs. Fowler, who denied herself a hundred small 
 comforts of living, who gave up cream in her coffee and 
 bought her butter from a grocer below Washington 
 Square, took quite as a matter of course the fact that 
 she must, as she put it, "pay off social scores." Though 
 they ate the simplest food in the market for six days 
 of the week, on the seventh, hothouse flowers bloomed 
 profusely in the lower rooms and champagne flowed 
 abundantly into the delicate Venetian glasses on the 
 round table. To be sure, Mrs. Fowler's gown may have 
 been two seasons old, but it was covered with rare laces, 
 which she had picked up during her summers abroad; 
 and her pearls the string was short, but really good,
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 167 
 
 for she had matched it in Paris shone, rich and costly, 
 around her still beautiful neck. After one of these 
 dinners the family lived on scraps and looked at fading 
 flowers for days, while Mrs. Fowler, with the air of one 
 who has done her duty, sat upstairs before the little 
 French writing-desk in her room, and patiently added 
 accounts from morning till night. A strained look 
 would come into her plump, firm face, three little 
 wrinkles would appear between her eyebrows, and her 
 blue eyes, circled by faint shadows, would grow dark 
 and anxious. Then, when at last the accounts were 
 finished and the unpaid bills laid away in a pigeonhole, 
 she would remark with animation : 
 
 "I don't see how on earth I am ever to pay all these 
 bills," and, after changing her dress, set out to bring 
 her butcher or her grocer to reason. On one of these 
 days she took Gabriella (they went in the stage because 
 she had given up her carriage) on a hunt for bargains in 
 underwear, and, to the girl's astonishment, her mother- 
 in-law, who presented so opulent an appearance on the 
 surface, purchased for herself a supply of cheap and 
 badly made chemises and nightgowns. As she grew 
 to know Mrs. Fowler better, she found that the ex 
 penditures of that redoubtable woman, in spite of her 
 naturally delicate tastes, were governed by one of the 
 most elementary principles of economy. Through 
 long habit she had acquired a perception as unerring 
 as instinct, and this perception enabled her to tell 
 exactly where extravagance was useful and where it 
 failed in its effect. She had learned to perfection never 
 to spend money on things that did not show a result. 
 An appearance was what she strove for, and one's che 
 mises and nightgowns, however exquisite in themselves,
 
 168 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 could not very well contribute to one's external appear 
 ance. "Of course I like good underclothes," she re 
 marked cheerfully to her daughter-in-law, "but, after 
 all, nobody sees them." 
 
 ^ This was so different from the poverty-stricken point 
 of view of Gabriella's childhood, that the girl puzzled 
 over it afterwards when she sat in her corner of the stage. 
 Mrs. Carr had kept up an appearance, too, she reflected, 
 but, like the old maids on the floor above, she had kept 
 
 \Lit up even to herself. Perhaps the difference lay in the 
 immense gulf which divided the appearance of Hill 
 Street from the appearance of the East Fifties. Mrs. 
 Fowler was obliged by the public opinion she obeyed 
 to. appear affluent, while Mrs. Carr was merely con 
 strained not to appear destitute. On the whole Ga- 
 briella felt that she preferred the safe middle distance 
 between the two exacting standards of living. 
 
 But, though she might disapprove of her mother- 
 in-law's philosophy, there was no question about her 
 fervent admiration for her disposition. It was Mrs. 
 Fowler's habit to appear "sweet," and never once did 
 Gabriella see her lose her temper, never once, no matter 
 how hard the day or how exasperating the accounts, did 
 she show so much as a passing hint of irritability. Her 
 temper was so angelic that it was the more surprising 
 George should not have inherited a trace of it. 
 
 If George had not inherited his mother's nature, he 
 revealed, as time went on, even less resemblance to the 
 perfect reasonableness of his father's temperament. 
 Ever since her first day in the house, Gabriella had been 
 drawn to her father-in-law with an affection which his 
 wife, for all her preoccupied kindness, had not inspired. 
 She respected him for his calm strength, against which
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 169 
 
 the boisterous moods of George reacted as harmlessly as 
 the whims of a child, and she liked him for his unfailing 
 courtesy, for his patience, for his gentleness, which made 
 , her feel that he was, in spite of the material nature of his 
 occupation, the only member of the household who pos 
 sessed even a glimmer of spirituality. All day long, and 
 the greater part of the night, he thought about money, 
 and yet he had escaped the spiritual corruption which the 
 ceaseless pursuit of wealth had produced in the other rich 
 men whom Gabriella met in his house. It was as if some 
 subtle alchemy in his soul had transmuted the baser 
 qualities into the pure gold of character; and sometimes 
 ,the girl wondered if the fact that he worked not for 
 ( himself but for others had preserved him from the 
 
 grosser contamination of money. For he seemed to 
 
 * think of himself so little, that after three months in his 
 house, Gabriella was still ignorant of his interests apart 
 from his work, except, of course, his absorbing interest 
 in the morning papers. From the time he got up at 
 seven o'clock until he went to bed punctually on the 
 stroke of ten, he appeared to order his life with the 
 single purpose of giving as little trouble as was 
 compatible with living at all. His tastes were the 
 simplest; he drank only boiled water; he ate two eggs 
 and a roll with his coffee at breakfast; he spent hardly a 
 third as much on his clothes as George spent; and be 
 yond an occasional visit to his club in the evening, 
 he seemed to have absolutely no recreation. His life 
 
 *was in the stock market, and it was a life of almost 
 monastic simplicity and self-sacrifice. If he had any 
 pleasure, except the pleasure of providing his wife with 
 the money for her dinner parties, which bored him ex 
 cruciatingly, Gabriella had never discovered it. "He
 
 170 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 asks so little for himself that it is pathetic," she re 
 marked to George one night, when Mr. Fowler had gone 
 upstairs, carrying the evening papers to bed with him. 
 
 "Oh, well, he gets what he asks for," retorted George 
 indifferently, "and that's more than the rest of us can 
 say." 
 
 George was in a bad humour; he had been in a bad 
 humour for weeks; and for this reason Gabriella 
 had put off from day to day telling him that she ex 
 pected a child in the autumn. All her efforts to soothe 
 had merely exasperated him; and there were days 
 when her presence worked him into a fit of nervous 
 irritability. After four months of marriage prolonged 
 boredom had replaced the passionate tenderness of 
 their honeymoon. Why this should be so she was too 
 well-balanced emotionally to understand. She saw 
 only the outward evidences of change, of gradual 
 disillusionment; and though at first she wept a little 
 while she wondered, she ended by drying her tears 
 and attributing his casual indifference and his explosive 
 violence alike to some obscure disturbing condition of 
 health. Every evening, except when there were guests, 
 he spent at his club; he came to bed late, and his waking 
 hour was filled with complaint about the number and 
 the size of his bills. He treated these bills as if they 
 had been gratuitous insults, as if they had leaped, with 
 out reason for being, out of a malign world to assai) 
 him. As yet Gabriella had bought nothing; and she 
 dreaded the time when her clothes would wear out 
 beyond the hope of repairing, and she should be obliged 
 to add another bill to the growing pile under the silver 
 paper weight on the little white and gold desk. 
 
 But in the last few weeks even this anxiety had
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 171 
 
 faded from her mind, for the miracle of life which stirred 
 in her body had diffused its golden halo around every 
 trivial incident of her existence. After days of physical 
 wretchedness, which she had hidden from George, she 
 sat one evening, utterly at peace, in front of the fire in 
 the room which had been Patty's before her marriage. 
 It was past midnight, and she was waiting for George 
 to come home because she felt that she could not sleep 
 until she had told him. In the morning he had been 
 unusually gentle, and as he left the house, she had said 
 to herself a little sternly that he must know about the 
 child before the day was over. A secret consultation 
 with her mother-in-law had strengthened her resolution. 
 "Don't keep it from him another day, Gabriella," Mrs. 
 Fowler had urged. "It will make such a difference. I 
 shall never forget Archibald's joy when I told him George 
 was coming. Men are like that about children, you 
 know." 
 
 "Yes, I'll tell him to-night," Gabriella had answered; 
 and sitting now in the rocking-chair by the fire, she 
 began to wonder if George would be exactly like other 
 men about children. 
 
 The house was very still, but even in its stillness it 
 exhaled the nervous apprehension which she felt to be its 
 living character as if George's parents, sleeping two 
 doors away, had dropped their guard for the night, and 
 allowed their anxious thoughts the freedom of the halls 
 until daybreak. And these thoughts, which had be 
 come like invisible presences to the girl, wandered up 
 and down the dim staircase, where the lowered lights 
 awaited George's return, invaded the drawing-room, 
 filled with stuffy red velvet chairs, so like crouching 
 human beings in the darkness, and even thronged
 
 172 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 about her threshold, ready to spring inside at the in 
 stant when George should open the door. While her 
 fire burned brightly on the andirons, and rosy shadows 
 danced on the white rug beside her bed, on the lace 
 coverlet turned back for the night, on the deep pillows 
 with their azure lining showing through the delicate 
 linen of the slips, on her simple nightdress, in which the 
 buttonholes were so beautifully worked by her mother, 
 while she looked at these things it was easy for her to 
 shut out the apprehensions of yesterday. But these 
 apprehensions would come with George and they would 
 not go until George left her again. The house with its 
 heavy late- Victorian furniture, its velvet carpets which 
 muffled footsteps, its thick curtains which hid doorways, 
 its red walls, its bevelled mirrors, its substantial and 
 costly ornaments, its solid paintings in solid frames 
 the house and all that it contained diffused for Gabriella 
 an inescapable atmosphere, and this atmosphere was 
 like the one in which she had waited expectantly in 
 her childhood for the roof to be sold over her head. 
 Now, as then, she waited for something to happen, and 
 this something was a fact of dread, a shape of terror, 
 which must be ignored as long as its impending presence 
 was not directly before one's eyes. But with the look 
 she was familiar, for she had seen it in her mother's 
 face as far back as she could remember. It was as 
 sociated in her mind with the need of money, with scant 
 food, with scant fires, with a brooding and sinister hush 
 in the house. With the knowledge of these things in 
 her mind how could she hope that George would be 
 glad of the child that was coming to them in the autumn? 
 And yet to Mrs. Fowler the news had appeared to 
 bring no additional anxiety. She had seemed pleased
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 173 
 
 rather than otherwise, mildly interested, animatedly 
 sympathetic. 
 
 "I am afraid it will be very expensive," Gabriella 
 had reminded her a little timidly, feeling frankly 
 apologetic when she thought of all the trouble she must 
 bring to the harassed and over-burdened little woman. 
 
 But into Mrs. Fowler's face there had come the look 
 with which she was accustomed to receive the sug 
 gestion that her dinner parties were an extravagance. 
 That economy which she practised so rigidly, which 
 was so elastic to cover little pleasures and the minor 
 comforts of life, broke like a cobweb when she tried to 
 stretch it over larger needs and desires. The severity 
 of her self-denial was directed entirely against the 
 trivial and the unessential. With regard to the indis 
 pensable materials for happiness, she seemed to feel that 
 she possessed an unquestionable right to enjoy them at 
 any cost; and she had reassured Gabriella with an 
 optimism which appeared perfectly genuine. After 
 talking to her the girl had felt that she might allow 
 herself to be happy if only George would change back 
 into his old way. 
 
 Four months ago, at the beginning of her marri 
 age, she had told herself that she needed only the 
 daily intimacy of life to make her understand him. 
 Now, after living with him, she felt that she was grow 
 ing to understand him less every hour that the relation 
 which ought to have brought them spiritually closer, 
 had ended by thrusting them to an incalculable distance 
 from each other. Of the nervous reactions which he 
 had suffered she knew nothing. All she saw clearly was 
 that the widening breach between them would soon be 
 come impassable unless it could be filled by their new
 
 174 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 love for the child. The power to hold him must slip from 
 her hands to the child's, and she was more than ready, 
 she was even eager, to relinquish it. In the last few 
 months her feeling for George had altered, and, though 
 she was hardly conscious of the change in herself, her 
 love for him had become less passionate and more 
 maternal. The tenderness was there, but the yearn 
 ing, the delight in his mere physical presence was gone. 
 Like every other emotion that she had felt in the past, 
 her love for her husband had become absorbed in the 
 passion, the longing, the delight with which she enfolded 
 the thought of her child. 
 
 "I wonder if mother felt like this about me," she 
 would say to herself, and the wonder was like a cord 
 drawing her back to her mother and to her own baby 
 hood. Then George would become strangely vaguCj 
 strangely remote in her thoughts; and her mother would 
 seem nearer to her than everything except the child 
 under her heart. 
 
 But since her talk with Mrs. Fowler, who had shown 
 her photographs of George as a baby, some in long 
 clothes, some in his first short frock, with a woolly 
 lamb in his hands, some in a velvet suit, with his lus 
 trous curls falling over a lace collar, Gabriella had felt 
 that she possessed a new understanding of her husband 
 and of the imperative needs of his nature. The child 
 quality in him, the eternal boy that he betrayed some 
 times by accident, appeared to her now to be the salient 
 attribute of his character. After all, because of this 
 quality, which was at once his charm and his weakness, 
 she could not judge him as harshly as she might judge 
 another man, she could not demand of him the gravity 
 and the restraint of his father, who had never been young.
 
 THE OLD SERPENT 175 
 
 "I ought not to have kept it from him. His mother 
 is right. She understands him better than I do," she 
 thought, as she looked at the clock. "If I had told 
 him sooner he might be with me now." 
 
 Through the muffled stillness of the house the sound 
 of the opening front door stole up to her, and she heard 
 George come in and stop for a minute to take off his hat 
 and coat in the lower hall. Then she heard his foot 
 steps move to the staircase; and while she listened she 
 had a curious intuitive sense that it was not George 
 at all, but a stranger who was coming to her, and that 
 this stranger walked like a very old man. She heard 
 him reach the bend in the stairs, and without stopping 
 to put out the light, pass on to her door, which was the 
 first on the landing. As he reached the top of the 
 stairs, he stumbled once; then she heard his hand on the 
 knob and a fumbling sound as if the knob would not 
 turn. The door seemed to take an eternity to open, 
 and while she sprang up with the clutch of terror at her 
 heart, she felt again the sharp, agonizing premonition 
 that a stranger was approaching her. 
 
 " George ! " she called in a strangled voice, and waited, 
 standing, for him to enter.
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 MOTHERHOOD 
 
 AT NOON the next day Mrs. Fowler came into Ga- 
 briella's room and found her sewing beside the window 
 which looked on a gray expanse of sky and street, where 
 a few snowflakes were falling. 
 
 "Did you tell him, dear?" she asked, arranging a 
 handful of red roses in a little alabaster vase on the 
 desk. 
 
 No, Gabriella had not told him. She felt now that 
 she should never be able to tell him, but all she said was : 
 
 " I didn't get a chance. How lovely those roses are." 
 
 Mrs. Fowler set the vase where the gray light fell on 
 it, and then turning with empty hands from the desk, 
 asked gently: 
 
 "Aren't you making a mistake, dear?" Her move 
 ments were like those of a character in a play who is 
 made to fill in an awkward pause with some mechanical 
 action. 
 
 "I couldn't tell him last night," replied Gabriella; 
 " he was sick all night." 
 
 She was very pale, even her lips had lost their rich 
 colour, and her eyes had a drawn and heavy look as 
 if she had not slept. Without looking at her mother- 
 in-law, she went on with 'her sewing, working button 
 holes of exquisite fineness in a small white garment. 
 In her lap there was a little wicker basket filled with 
 
 176
 
 MOTHERHOOD 177 
 
 spools of thread and odd bits of lace and cambric; and 
 every now and then she stopped her work and gazed 
 thoughtfully down on it as if she were trying to decide 
 how she might use the jumble of scraps that it con 
 tained. 
 
 " Gabriella," said Mrs. Fowler suddenly, after she had 
 watched her a moment, "did anything happen last 
 night?" 
 
 " Happen? No, what could have happened? " 
 
 "At what time did George come in? " 
 
 "About one o'clock. I sat up for him." 
 
 "Was was anything the matter with him? Was he 
 in any way different? " 
 
 "He was sick. He was sick all night." A look of 
 disgust crossed her face while she stopped to wipe away 
 a drop of blood from her finger. "I don't remember 
 pricking my finger since I was a child," she remarked. 
 
 "You are keeping something from me," said Mrs. 
 Fowler; and sitting down in the small chair by 
 the desk, she leaned her elbow, in her full sleeve of 
 violet cashmere, on the edge of the blotting-pad. She 
 was wearing a morning gown made, as all her house 
 gowns were made, after the princess style, and Gabriella 
 could see the tight expanse of her bosom rising and 
 falling under a garniture of purple and silver passemen 
 terie. Her hair, fresh from the crimping pins, rose in 
 stiff ridges from her forehead, and her bright red lips 
 were so badly chapped from cold that they cracked a 
 little when she smiled. She looked as hard as granite 
 though in reality her heart was breaking with pity. 
 
 "I want to help you," she said, "and I can't if you 
 keep things back." 
 
 " I told you George was sick. I was up all night with
 
 178 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 him." Again a look of disgust, which she could not con 
 trol, flickered and died in her face. 
 
 "But you oughtn't to have let him keep you awake. 
 You need all the sleep you can get. When he comes 
 in late he must sleep in the spare room across the 
 hall." 
 
 "His things are all in here and he would come in to 
 get them; that would wake me." 
 
 For a moment Mrs. Fowler hesitated while the strug 
 gling breath grew more irregular under the passemen 
 terie on her bosom. The ripe colour faded from her 
 cheeks and her lips looked blue in the harsh light from 
 the window. 
 
 "I think I'd better speak to George," she said. 
 " He is spoiled and he always thinks first of his own com 
 fort. I suppose it's the way we brought him up but 
 when he understands, he will be more considerate." 
 
 For the first time Gabriella laid down her sewing and, 
 leaning forward in her chair, fixed her eyes, with their 
 look of deep stillness, of wistful expectancy, on the face 
 of her mother-in-law. 
 
 "Would you mind telling me if George was ever 
 ever wild about women?" she asked, and though her 
 voice was very low and quiet, her words seemed to echo 
 loudly through the hushed suspense in her brain. It 
 was as if every piece of furniture, every vacant wall, 
 every picture, and every pane of glass, repeated the 
 sound. 
 
 The pleasant smile on Mrs. Fowler's lips became 
 suddenly painful. As if she were suffering a physical 
 hurt, she put her handkerchief to her mouth while she 
 answered: 
 
 "He was once but that was before he fell in love
 
 MOTHERHOOD 179 
 
 with you. We hoped that you would be able to steady 
 him that marriage would make him settle down." 
 
 "Did he drink then?" 
 
 "A little not enough to make him show it. I 
 never saw him really show it but once, and then he was 
 dreadfully sick. Was was he like that last night? " 
 
 For a long minute, while she looked out of the win 
 dow at the falling snowflakes, Gabriella did not reply. 
 Then she spoke in a voice that was sternly accusing. 
 
 "You ought to have told me. I ought to have 
 known." Her own wild passion for George was for 
 gotten. She felt only a sense of outrage, of wounded 
 and stunned resentment., They had treated her as 
 if she were a child or a fool. That she had been a fool 
 she was not prepared to admit at the instant and yet 
 it was less than a year ago, that June night when she 
 had watched George over the clove pinks while her 
 heart melted with happiness. She had had her way, 
 and she was already regretting her madness. "Is this 
 what love comes to?" she asked herself bitterly as she 
 watched the white flakes whirling out of the gray sky. 
 "Is this what it all comes to in the end, or am I different 
 from other women?" 
 
 Moistening her dry lips with the tip of her tongue, 
 Mrs. Fowler smiled bravely, though there were tears 
 in her eyes. "Archibald wanted to, but I wouldn't let 
 him," she replied; "I hoped that you would make 
 everything different. He was so much in love with 
 you. I thought you could do anything with him." 
 
 Though her reasoning failed to convince Gabriella, 
 it was sufficiently forcible to justify her in her own 
 judgment, and with an easier conscience, she settled 
 comfortably behind the impregnable defences of the
 
 180 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 maternal instinct. After all, she had only done what 
 she believed to be best for her boy. She had not been 
 selfish, she had not even been thoughtless, she had been 
 merely a mother. 
 
 "I wish you would tell me what really happened 
 last night, Gabriella," she said, and her tone showed 
 that she had recovered her shaken confidence in the 
 righteousness of her cause. 
 
 "I can't tell you," answered Gabriella. "What 
 good would it do? George was disgusting, that was 
 all." She spoke sternly, for no lingering tenderness 
 softened the judgment of her youth and her injured 
 pride. How could she possibly have tenderness for a 
 man who had tired of her in four months, who had be 
 come so lost to common decency that he could let her 
 see him revoltingly drunk? And she had held her head 
 so high, she had so despised Jane for her weakness and 
 folly! At the moment she knew that she was helpless, 
 . but deep down within her she felt that this helplessness 
 
 would not last that the wings of her soul were still 
 
 strong, still free, still untouched by the shame her body 
 
 had suffered. With a single effort she could break the 
 
 net of passion, and escape into the wonderful world 
 
 which surrounded her. Like Jane, she had been a fool, 
 -but, unlike Jane, she would not stay a fool always. 
 
 "You seem so hard, Gabriella," said Mrs. Fowler. 
 "Is it because you are young? Young people never 
 make allowances." 
 
 The taste of bitterness rose to Gabriella's lips. 
 
 "I suppose I am hard," she answered, "and I am 
 ' going to stay so. There is safety in hardness." 
 
 Remembering Jane, remembering the hereditary 
 weakness of the Carrs, who had all married badly, she
 
 MOTHERHOOD 181 
 
 told herself that in hardness lay her solitary refuge from 
 despair. After all, it was better to be hard than to 
 break. 
 
 "You can't judge George quite as you would other 
 men," began George's mother, and she was aware after 
 a minute that the maternal instinct had in this instance 
 led her to defeat. 
 
 "I am not judging other men," replied George's wife 
 coldly; "I am judging George." Against men as men 
 she had never even thought of cherishing a grievance. 
 All her life she had looked to some man as to the saviour 
 of the family fortunes, and her vision was still true 
 enough to perceive that, as a human being, Archibald 
 Fowler was finer and bigger than his wife, that Billy 
 was finer and bigger than Patty. She had found men 
 less the servants of mere instinct than she liad found 
 women, less the passive and unresisting vehicles of the 
 elemental impulses. Then, too, they were so seldom 
 the victims of life, and there was in her nature a fierce 
 contempt for a victim. She despised people who sub 
 mitted to circumstances, who resigned themselves to 
 necessity, as if resignation were a virtue instead of a 
 Vice. 
 
 "Well, you must try not to worry, dear; worry is so 
 bad for you. I am so sorry it happened. You won't 
 mind my speaking to George, will you?" 
 
 Gabriella shook her head. "I don't care what you 
 say to him." 
 
 "Do you feel able to come down to lunch? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, perfectly. I am simply dying for a cup of 
 tea, and afterwards I think I'll go out for a walk. One 
 gets so stuffy and dull when one stays in the house." 
 
 Her manner had changed as if by magic. In putting
 
 182 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the thought of George out of her mind she seemed to 
 have put aside her resentment and despondency. 
 
 In the evening George came home, looking a little 
 yellow, with a box of gardenias in his hand; but the 
 scent of the flowers sickened Gabriella, and she put 
 them out of the room while she dressed for dinner. The 
 attention, instead of pleasing her, brought an ironic 
 twist to her lips, though she thanked George quite as 
 courteously as if he had been a stranger to her. At 
 dinner when Mr. Fowler abruptly asked his son why 
 he had not been to the office, she kept her eyes 
 fixed on her plate, in which she seemed to see palely 
 reflected the anxious pleasantness of her mother-in- 
 law's smile. It hardly occurred to her to wonder where 
 George had spent his day, though, when she met Mr. 
 Fowler's kind and tired look, a pang shot through her 
 heart. She was sorrier for George's father than she was 
 for herself. He looked so lonely, yet so patient. He 
 ' so obviously needed help, and no one appeared to notice 
 
 * it, not even his wife, who began planning a dinner party 
 in the futile effort to come to George's assistance. It 
 
 'was by coming to George's assistance in every difficulty, 
 Gabriella surmised, that his mother had made George 
 what he was; and the girl saw in imagination an 
 endless line of subterfuges, of pitiful excuses and feeble 
 justifications, all hidden in the tortuous labyrinthine 
 
 * windings of the maternal instinct. She saw, with the 
 . relentless vision of a Hebrew prophet, the inevitable 
 . ruin of the love that does not submit to wisdom as its 
 . law. 
 
 More than seven months afterwards, when she lay in 
 her room with her child in the crook of her arm, she 
 prayed passionately that some supreme Power would
 
 'MOTHERHOOD 183 
 
 grant her the strength not of emotion, but of reason. 
 All her life she had suffered from an unrestrained indul 
 gence of the virtues from love running to waste 
 through excess, from the self-sacrifice that is capable 
 of everything but self-discipline, from the intemperate 
 devotion to duty that is as morbid as sin. Balance, 
 moderation, restraint these seemed to her, lying there 
 with her child on her arm, to be the things most worth 
 striving for. She saw her mother, worn to a shadow 
 by the unnecessary deaths she had died, by the useless 
 crucifixions she had endured; she saw Jane, haggard, 
 wan, with her sweetness turning to bitterness because 
 , it was wasted; and again she found herself asking for 
 balance, moderation, restraint. The child, a little 
 girl, with George's eyes and hair like gauze, had liberated 
 Gabriella from the last illusions of her girlhood. 
 
 And yet, though Gabriella prayed for moderation, 
 she found after a few months that motherhood was 
 absorbing the full strength of her nature. George 
 hardly existed for her; he came and went like the passing 
 of a shadow, and she began gradually to sink her life 
 into the life of her child. Not until the winter was she 
 brought back to a sharp realization of her neglected 
 duty to her mother; and this came with a letter from 
 Mrs. Carr during the last week in January. Mrs. Carr 
 was still living with Jane, and though she had accepted 
 mildly Gabriella's reasons for postponing her coming 
 to New York, she was beginning somewhat plaintively 
 to question. She had made little effort to hide her 
 disappointment at not being with her daughter when 
 her grandchild was born, for, in spite of the fact that 
 she had tragically assisted at the entrance of Jane's six 
 children into the world, she still possessed an insatiable
 
 184 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 appetite for the perpetually recurring scenes of birth 
 and death. Then only did her natural bent of mind 
 appear to be justified by universal phenomena. 
 
 And now on this morning in January, when Frances 
 Evelyn, the baby, lay good and quiet in her crib, Ga- 
 briella read over again the disturbing letter she had 
 just received from her mother. 
 
 MY DEAR DAUGHTER: 
 
 Jane wrote you that I had had a slight attack of 
 
 pneumonia, so you understood why I was obliged to 
 
 let so long a time go by without sending you a letter. 
 
 Though I have been out of bed now for more than a 
 
 fortnight, I still feel so weak and good for nothing 
 
 that I am hardly equal to the exertion of writing. 
 
 Then, too, I have had some trouble with my wrist 
 
 the right one and this has made it really painful for 
 
 me to hold a pen or even a fork. The doctor thinks it is 
 
 a nervous affection and that it will pass away as soon 
 
 as I get back my strength, and I am sure I hope and 
 
 pray that it will. But sometimes I feel as if I should 
 
 never get any stronger, and of course while my wrist 
 
 is crippled I am unable to do any sewing. This has 
 
 depressed me very much, for poor Jane has so many 
 
 worries of her own that I dread being dependent on 
 
 her, and Charley has not been at all well this winter, 
 
 though kinder and more considerate than I have ever 
 
 known him to be. He has his faults, but I have always 
 
 .felt that he was not entirely responsible and that we 
 
 J ought to pity rather than blame him. Women can 
 
 (i never be too thankful that they are spared by a merciful 
 
 4 Providence the temptations which seem to beset men. 
 
 'When we consider how much more sheltered our lives 
 
 .are, we ought to be lenient in our judgment, and I 
 
 cannot help feeling that God meant us to be so when he 
 
 'gave us more spiritual natures than those of men. Dr. 
 
 .'Preston gave a very instructive and impressive talk
 
 MOTHERHOOD 185 
 
 * on that subject before the Ladies' Aid Society of our 
 church the week before I was taken sick. Indeed, I 
 am afraid I caught the cold that led to pneumonia 
 sitting in Charley's pew, which gets a bad draught 
 from the door of the Sunday-school room. 
 
 I must apologize for this dull letter, as I haven't been 
 able to get out even to market. Before I was taken 
 ill I used to do all of Jane's marketing, and you know 
 what a place the market is for meeting people and hear 
 ing all the latest news. There are, however, two things 
 to tell you, and you'll never be able to guess them. 
 First, poor Miss Amelia Peterborough is dead. She 
 was stricken with paralysis a week ago when she was 
 all alone in the house Miss Jemima was at a funeral 
 and she never regained consciousness until the end, 
 which came at three o'clock Sunday night. Poor Miss 
 Jemima, I feel so sorry for her. She keeps up beauti 
 fully and is very pious and resigned. They say she 
 will go into the Old Ladies' Home as soon as the ar 
 rangements can be made. 
 
 The other piece of news is more cheerful, though, for 
 my part, life seems so short and so uncertain that I 
 can't see much cheerfulness anywhere. So many 
 people are dying that you can't help wondering who 
 will be next, and as Dr. Preston said when he called 
 on me during my illness, our only substantial hope is in 
 a blessed hereafter. My one regret will be leaving my 
 children and grandchildren, and especially my precious 
 little Frances Evelyn, whom I have never seen. I 
 have no doubt that Mrs. Fowler was far more useful 
 than I could have been at the time of your trial, but it 
 was a great disappointment to me not to be able to 
 receive the little darling into the world. 
 
 But I had entirely forgotten that I started to tell you 
 about Florrie Spencer's marriage to Algernon Caperton. 
 Of course I couldn't go, but Jane says the wedding was 
 lovely and that Florrie looked really beautiful. Bessie 
 had on rose-coloured brocade. Did you ever hear of 
 such a thing at her age? She was just as gay and
 
 186 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 flirtatious as a girl, Charley said, and she sent me some 
 of the cake and a bottle of champagne, which, of course, 
 I didn't touch. It is a pity she is so loud, for there 
 isn't a kinder heart in the world. Florrie and Algernon 
 are going to New York on their wedding trip. Isn't it 
 exactly like Florrie to want to go to all the theatres? 
 They send you word, by the way, that they are cer 
 tainly coming to see you and the baby. 
 
 And now that I have told all my news, I must write a 
 little about myself, though I am afraid you will be upset 
 by what I am obliged to tell you. I put it off as long as 
 I could for I do hate to worry you but the doctor 
 has just been to see me and he says I must go to Florida 
 immediately to stay until the bad weather is over. I 
 told him I couldn't possibly afford it the trip would 
 take a great deal of money but he insisted that I 
 should write and tell you exactly what he said. He said 
 my lungs were very weak and that he ordered the change 
 you know they never seem to consider expense 
 and when he was leaving, he stopped in the hall to speak 
 to Jane about it. Poor Jane, she is so worried that she 
 has almost gone deranged over my health, but as far 
 as I am concerned I feel that I would rather pass away 
 than cause so much trouble and upset everybody. 
 Jane, as you know, hasn't a cent to her name, and it 
 is out of the question her asking Charley, because he 
 has had a very bad winter financially. Even Cousin 
 Jimmy stopped sending me the rent of the house since 
 I moved to Jane's, and as for Uncle Meriweather, 
 he has been obliged to give up his business and go to 
 live with his niece in the country. So, much as I hate 
 to ask you, my dear child, I feel that you would rather 
 I did so and that I ought to be perfectly frank about 
 the situation, particularly since poor Jane feels so 
 deeply her inability to help me. I am afraid I should 
 need about four hundred dollars, as I have bought 
 nothing to wear for years. Bessie Spencer has told 
 me of a very reasonable place where I could board, and 
 it is just possible that she will be going herself by the
 
 MOTHERHOOD 187 
 
 r 
 
 time I am ready. If for any reason you are unable to 
 let me have the money, just destroy this letter and don't 
 think about it again. I wouldn't cause you a moment's 
 worry for anything in the world. 
 
 With love to George and a dozen kisses for my pre 
 cious little grandchild, 
 
 Your devoted mother, 
 
 FANNY CARE. 
 
 Did I remember to tell you that Miss Polly Hatch 
 has gone to New York to look after her nephew's 
 children? He lost his wife a few months ago, and was 
 left with four little children, the youngest only a year 
 old. 
 
 r 
 
 So her punishment had come! As Gabriella dropped 
 the letter into her lap, and looked at little Frances, so 
 good and happy in her crib, she felt that she was pun 
 ished not only for her reckless marriage, but for all the 
 subterfuge, all the deceit which had followed it. She 
 had not told her mother the truth, for she, also, had 
 been chiefly concerned with "keeping up an appear 
 ance." For the purpose of shielding George, who was 
 blandly indifferent to her shielding, she had lied to her 
 mother, if not in words, yet in an evasion of the truth, 
 and the result was that her lies and her evasions had 
 recoiled not on George's head, but on her own. For 
 George wouldn't care. So little value did he place 
 upon Mrs. Carr's good opinion, that he would not care 
 even if Gabriella were to tell her the truth. And if 
 she had only been honest! If she had only refused to 
 lie because custom exacted that a wife should be willing 
 to lie in defense of her husband. Some obscure strain 
 of dogmatic piety struggled in the convulsed depths of 
 her being, as if she had been suddenly brought up 
 against the vein of iron in her soul against the moral
 
 188 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 law, stripped bare of clustering delusions, which her 
 ancestors had known and fought for as "the Berkeley 
 conscience." The Berkeley conscience, bred for cen 
 turies on a militant faith, told her now that she was 
 punished because she had lied to her mother. 
 
 Then, as if this reversion to primitive theology had 
 been merely an automatic reaction of certain nerve 
 cells, she saw and condemned the childlike superstition. 
 No, she was not punished so quickly; but she had been 
 a fool, and she was paying the price of her incredible 
 folly. How little, how pitifully little she knew of the 
 world, after all! A year ago, on that horrible night, 
 she had thought that her lesson was finished, but it was 
 only beginning. Her immense, confiding ignorance 
 would lead her into other abysses. And again, as on the 
 morning after that night of revelation, she resolved 
 passionately that she would not stay a fool always 
 that she would not become a victim of life. 
 
 The empty bottle had slipped to one side of the crib, 
 and little Frances lay smiling at the friendly universe, 
 with her wet mouth wide open and her blue eyes, so 
 like George's, sparkling with laughter. The down on 
 her head, as fine and soft as spun silk, made tiny rings 
 over her pink skull, which was as clear and delicate as 
 an eggshell; and these golden rings filled Gabriella 
 with a tenderness so poignant that it brought tears to 
 her eyes. Whatever her mother may have thought 
 about the world, it was perfectly obvious that Frances 
 Evelyn considered her part in it remarkably jolly. To 
 be a well baby in an amiable universe was her ideal of 
 felicity. 
 
 When George came up to luncheon, which he did 
 sometimes now, he went straight to the nursery for a
 
 MOTHERHOOD 189 
 
 glimpse of his daughter. Ever since little Frances had 
 lost her first hair and gained her golden down, he had 
 taken an interest in the rapid stages of her development; 
 and, though he never "wasted time," as he said, in the 
 nursery, he liked to look in once a day and see whether 
 or not she had changed in the night. On her side the 
 baby treated her father as if he were an inexhaustible 
 family joke, to be enjoyed not too seriously, but with a 
 polite recognition of its humorous points. If she were 
 sucking her bottle when he entered, she immediately 
 stopped and laughed at him while the rubber nipple 
 dropped from her toothless gums; if she awoke and 
 discovered him at the side of her crib, she greeted him 
 with subdued but inappeasable merriment; if he lifted 
 her in his arms, her crocheted shoes could barely con 
 tain the kicks of her ecstatic feet. And because she 
 was a jolly little beggar, George grew, after a time, to 
 cherish a certain fondness for her. There was some use 
 in a laughing baby, but he hated anything, child, wo 
 man, or animal, that cried. 
 
 On this particular day the baby happened to be 
 asleep when he entered, so, without stopping, he went 
 into Gabriella's bedroom, where the perfume of roses 
 mingled with the scent of the burning logs on the 
 andirons. 
 
 "That's a good fire," he observed, stopping on the 
 hearth-rug. "I don't wonder you hate to go out." 
 
 "Yes, the room was a little chilly, so I lit the fire for 
 the baby's bath. I don't usually have one," replied 
 Gabriella, explaining her apparent extravagance. 
 
 "Has she been well? " 
 
 "She is always well. I haven't had a day's anxiety 
 about her since she was born."
 
 190 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "But she isn't very old yet." Already little Frances 
 was supplying conversational material to her parents. 
 
 "I wish you would sit down, George," said Gabriella, 
 with a change of tone. "I want to read you a part of a 
 letter from mother." 
 
 " Can't you tell me instead? " 
 
 "If you'd rather. You know I never told mother 
 why we couldn't have her to live with us. I never told 
 her anything. I simply made excuses." 
 
 "That was all right, wasn't it?" He was plainly 
 nervous. 
 
 "At the time I thought I couldn't do differently, 
 but now " 
 
 She gave him the letter, and while he unfolded it 
 awkwardly, she watched him anxiously and yet without 
 interrupting his reading. Beyond the simple facts, 
 she had told him nothing, and it was characteristic of 
 her that she did not embellish these facts with pic 
 turesque phrases. She herself was so insensible to the 
 appeal of rhetoric that she hardly thought of it as likely 
 to influence anybody. Then, too, in moments of in 
 tense feeling she had always a sensation of dumb 
 ness. 
 
 "I'm awfully sorry about her illness," he said, "but 
 when you think of it, the best thing that could have 
 happened to her was not to come to New York. This 
 climate would have been the end of her." 
 
 "Will you let me have the money, George? I will 
 try to save in every way that I can. I've made all the 
 baby's clothes, as it is, and I can easily make the few 
 things I need, also. Since the baby came I have 
 stopped calling with your mother." 
 
 A flush rose to his face. "I know you've been a
 
 MOTHERHOOD 191 
 
 regular brick about money, Gabriella. I never saw a 
 woman buy as little as you do, and you always manage 
 to look well dressed." 
 
 She smiled with faint irony. Her clothes were 
 dowdy, for she had turned the broadcloth dress she had 
 had at her marriage and was wearing it in the street; 
 but if he thought her well dressed, it seemed hardly 
 fair to undeceive him. Had she been any other wo 
 man, she reflected, he would probably have looked at 
 her long enough to discover that she had grown de 
 cidedly shabby. 
 
 Since the baby's birth, as she told him, she had 
 stopped calling with her mother-in-law, and a black net 
 dress, given her by Mrs. Fowler because it had grown 
 too small in the waist, was still presentable enough \f or 
 the family dinners. But she never worried about her 
 appearance, and it was a relief to find that George was 
 quite as indifferent on the subject as she was. In 
 the days of their honeymoon he had been so particular 
 that she had spent hours each day before the mir 
 ror, 
 
 "Will you let me have the money, George?" she 
 
 asked again. The form of the request had not changed, 
 
 but there was a deeper note in her voice: the irony, 
 
 which had been at first only a glancing edge to her 
 
 smile, a subdued flash in her eyes, had passed now into 
 
 her speech. George, looking sideways at the slightly 
 
 austere charm of her profile, thought suddenly, "Ga- 
 
 briella is growing hard." He noticed, too, for the first 
 
 \time, that she looked older since the birth of the baby, 
 
 that her bosom was fuller and that her figure, which had 
 
 * always been good, was now lovely in its long flowing 
 
 . lines. She was handsomer than she had been before
 
 192 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 her marriage, for her complexion had become clearer 
 since she had lived in the North, and though she was 
 still pale, her skin was losing its sallow tone. 
 
 Yet, though he thought her more attractive than 
 she had been as a girl, she had ceased to make the 
 faintest appeal to his senses. There were times even 
 when he wondered how she had ever appealed to him, 
 for she had not been beautiful, and beauty had always 
 seemed to him to be essential in the women with whom 
 one fell in love. But, however it had happened, still 
 it had happened, and she was now his wife and the 
 mother of the adorable Frances Evelyn. 
 
 "I'm awfully cut up about it, Gabriella," he said, 
 "but honestly I am out of the money. I couldn't lay 
 my hands on it just now to save my life." 
 
 His excuses convinced him while he uttered them, but 
 he had barely paused before Gabriella demolished them 
 with a single blow of her merciless logic. 
 
 "You were talking last night about buying a horse," 
 she replied. 
 
 He frowned resentfully, and she immediately re 
 gretted her words. By speaking the truth she had 
 defeated her purpose. 
 
 "It isn't as if I were buying a horse for pleasure," 
 he answered doggedly; "I am dependent on exercise 
 you can see for yourself how I've gone off in the last 
 two or three months. Of course if the horse were 
 simply for enjoyment, like a carriage, it would be dif 
 ferent. But mother has given up her carriage," he 
 concluded triumphantly. 
 
 He was a spendthrift, she realized, but he was a 
 spendthrift with a streak of stinginess in his nature. 
 Though he enjoyed gratifying his own desires, which
 
 MOTHERHOOD 193 
 
 were many, it pained him inexpressibly to witness ex 
 travagance on the part of others, and by a curious twist 
 of the imagination, all money spent by Gabriella ap 
 peared to him to be an extravagance. To be sure, he 
 had just told her that she was a brick about money, 
 but that had been intended as a warning to virtue rather 
 than as an encouragement to weakness. There was, 
 to be sure, a vague understanding that she might make 
 bills when they were unavoidable; but so in want of 
 spending money had she been since her marriage, that 
 several times she had been obliged to borrow car fare 
 from her mother-in-law. When she had asked George 
 for an allowance, however small, he had put her off with 
 the permission to charge whatever she bought in the 
 shops. As the bills apparently never lessened, and 
 her conscience revolted from debt, she had gone without 
 things she needed rather than accept the barren generos 
 ity of his promises. At Christmas her father-in-law 
 had given her fifty dollars in gold, and with this she 
 had bought presents for her mother and Jane and the 
 servants. 
 
 In the old days in Hill Street she had had little 
 enough, but at least that little had really belonged to 
 her; and since her marriage she had learned that when 
 one is poor, it is better to live surrounded by want. 
 To be poor in the midst of wealth to be obliged to 
 support a fictitious affluence on one's secret poverty 
 this was after all to know the supreme mortification of 
 I spirit. There were days when she almost prayed that 
 Niie brooding suspense would assume a definite shape, 
 that the blow would fall, the crash come, and ruin 
 envelop them all. Any visible fact would be better 
 than this impending horror of the imagination this
 
 194 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ( silent dread so much worse than any reality of failure 
 , which encompassed them with the impalpable thick 
 ness and darkness of a cloud. 
 
 "Then I can't help my mother even if it's a matter of 
 life and death?" she asked. 
 
 "I don't believe it's as bad as that, Gabriella. Ten 
 chances to one the rest of the winter will be mild, and she 
 would find Florida too depressing. You never can tell 
 about doctors, you know. It's their business to make 
 trouble. Now you mustn't let yourself worry there's 
 anxiety enough without that, heaven knows. Why, 
 just look at father! He has lost almost all he ever had 
 he is simply staving off failure for I don't know how 
 long, and yet from mother's manner who on earth would 
 suspect that there is anything wrong? Now that's 
 what I call pluck. By Jove " 
 
 Again her impetuous spirit dangerous gift ! flashed 
 out recklessly in defence of the truth. 
 
 "Then why don't you try to help your father, 
 George?" she asked. "He tells me that you rarely go 
 down to the office." Her voice vibrated, but the stern 
 lines of her mouth, which had lost its rich softness 
 under the stress of her anger, hardly quivered. 
 
 His frown darkened to a scowl. The calm disdain 
 in her manner made him feel that he hated her, and he 
 told himself stubbornly that if she had been gentler, if 
 she had been more womanly, he would have done what 
 she asked of him, forgetting in his rage that, if she had 
 been these things, he would have found even less dif 
 ficulty in refusing her. 
 
 "You know as well as I do that I can't stand office 
 work when I'm not fit," he returned sullenly. "It 
 plays the devil with my nerves."
 
 MOTHERHOOD 195 
 
 Her case was hopeless. If it had not been so in the 
 beginning, she had ruined it by her irrefutable argu 
 ments, and while he rambled on moodily, making ex 
 cuses for his neglect of business, she sat silently plan 
 ning ways by which she might get the money for her 
 mother. To ask her father-in-law was, of course, out 
 of the question; and Mrs. Fowler, beyond a miracu 
 lously extended credit, due probably to the shining 
 bubble of her husband's financial security, was as 
 penniless as Gabriella. Unless she could find something 
 to sell there seemed little likelihood of securing four 
 hundred dollars in a day. It was imperative, then, that 
 she should find something to sell; and remembering 
 her mother's tragic visits to old Mr. Camberwell, she 
 ran hastily over her few personal possessions. As her 
 wedding gifts had been entirely in the form of clothes 
 the donors doubtless surmising that the wife of a rich 
 man's son would have other gifts in abundance there 
 remained only the trinkets George and George's parents 
 had given her. All through luncheon, while Mrs. 
 Fowler, with an assumed frivolity which Gabriella 
 found more than usually depressing, rippled on over 
 the warmed-over salmon, the girl mentally arranged 
 and sorted in their cases a diamond brooch, an ame 
 thyst necklace, a bracelet set with pearls, and a topaz 
 heart she occasionally wore on a gold chain, which 
 she valued because it had belonged to her grandmother. 
 Once she stopped, and lifting her hand, looked apprais- 
 ingly at her engagement ring for an instant, while Mrs. 
 Fowler, observing her long gaze, remarked caressingly : 
 
 "I always thought it an unusually pretty stone, my 
 dear. George knows a good deal about stones." 
 Then, as if inspired by an impulse, she added quickly:
 
 196 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Wasn't George upstairs before lunch? I thought I 
 heard his voice." 
 
 "Yes, but he said he had an engagement at the club." 
 
 "I wonder if he knows I have asked the Capertons to 
 dinner to-night? You know I got Florrie's card the 
 other day. She is here on her wedding journey, but 
 even then she doesn't like to be quiet, for she is her 
 mother all over again. I used to know Bessie very well. 
 Kind hearted, but a little vulgar." 
 
 "I didn't tell George. Perhaps you had better 
 telephone him." 
 
 "Oh, well, he usually conies up to dinner because of 
 the baby. I've asked one or two people to meet Florrie, 
 for I remember that Bessie's one idea of enjoyment was 
 to be in a crowd. The Crowboroughs are coming and 
 the Thorntons and the Blantons." 
 
 "I'll be dressed in time," responded Gabriella, but 
 she was thinking rapidly, "I can sell the diamond 
 brooch and the bracelet and, if it is necessary, the 
 amethyst necklace. The brooch must have cost at 
 least three hundred dollars." 
 
 The meal was finished in silence, for even Mrs. 
 Fowler's cheerfulness would flag now and then with 
 out a spur; and Gabriella made no effort to keep up 
 the strained conversation. As soon as they had 
 risen from the table, she ran upstairs to dress for 
 the street, and then, before going out, she sat down 
 at her desk, and wrapped up the brooch and the brace 
 let in tissue paper. For a minute she gazed, undecided, 
 at the amethyst necklace. Mr. Fowler had given it 
 to her, and she hated to part with it. George's gifts 
 meant nothing to her now, but she felt a singular fond 
 ness for the amethyst necklace.
 
 MOTHERHOOD 197 
 
 v 
 
 "I'd better take it with me," she thought; and wrap 
 ping it with the others, she put the package into her 
 little bag, and went out of the room. It was her habit 
 to stop for a last look at little Frances before she left 
 the house, but to-day she hurried past the nursery, and 
 ran downstairs and out of doors, where Mrs. Fowler 
 was getting into a hansom with the assistance of Bur 
 rows, the English butler. 
 
 "May I drop you somewhere, Gabriella?" inquired 
 Mrs. Fowler, while Burrows arranged the parcels on 
 the seat of the hansom. In the strong sunshine all the 
 little lines which were imperceptible in the shadow of the 
 house lines of sleeplessness, of anxiety, of prolonged 
 aching suspense appeared to start out as if by magic 
 in her face. And over this underlying network of 
 anxious thoughts there dropped suddenly, like a veil, 
 that look of artificial pleasantness. She would have 
 died sooner than lift it before one of the servants. 
 
 "No, thank you. I need the walk," answered Ga 
 briella, stopping beside the hansom. "You will be 
 tired if you do all those errands. May I help you? " 
 
 "No, no, dear, take your walk. I am so glad the 
 storm is over. It will be a lovely afternoon." 
 
 Then the hansom drove off; Burrows, after a longing 
 glance at the blue sky, slowly ascended the brownstone 
 steps; and Gabriella, closing her furs at the throat, for 
 the wind was high, hurried in the direction of Fifth 
 Avenue. 
 
 The streets were still white after the storm; piles of 
 new fallen snow lay in the gutters ; and when Gabriella 
 crossed Madison Avenue, the wind was so strong that it 
 almost lifted her from the ground. Above the shining 
 whiteness of the streets there was a sky of spring; and
 
 198 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 spring was blossoming in the little cart of a flower 
 vendor, which had stopped to let the traffic pass at the 
 corner. There were few people out of doors, and these 
 few appeared remote and strangely unreal between the 
 wintry earth and the April sky. Beside the gutters, 
 where the street cleaners were already at work, wagons 
 drawn by large, heavy horses moved slowly from cross 
 ing to crossing. At Forty-second Street the traffic was 
 blocked by one of these wagons; and from the windows 
 of the stage, which had stopped by the sidewalk, the 
 eyes of the passengers stared with moody resignation 
 at the hurrying pedestrians. And it seemed to Ga- 
 briella that these faces wore, one and all, the look of 
 .secret anxiety, the faint network of lines which she 
 had seen in the face of her mother-in-law. "I wonder 
 if I have it, too," she thought, pausing before a shop 
 window. But her reflection flashed back at her from 
 the glass, smooth, stern, unsmiling, as if her features 
 had been sculptured in marble. 
 
 Below Fortieth Street there was the shop of a jewel 
 ler she sometimes went to with Mrs. Fowler in that lady's 
 despairing quest for suitable wedding presents at mod 
 erate prices; and something in the kindly, sympathetic 
 face of the clerk who waited on them made Gabriella 
 decide suddenly to trust him. As she unwrapped the 
 tissue paper rather nervously, and keeping back the 
 necklace, laid the brooch and the bracelet on the square 
 of purple velvet he spread out on the counter, she raised 
 her eyes to his with a look that was childlike in its ap 
 peal. Again she thought of the morning on which they 
 had surreptitiously taken her silver mug, hidden in Mrs. 
 Carr's gray and black shawl, to the shop of old Mr. Cam 
 ber well.
 
 MOTHERHOOD 199 
 
 "How much might I get for these? I have worn 
 them only a few times. They do not suit me," she 
 said. 
 
 For a minute the clerk looked at her reflectively, but 
 without curiosity; then lifting the trinkets from the 
 square of velvet, he passed behind a green curtain 
 into an adjoining room. After a short absence, in 
 which she nervously examined an assortment of travel 
 ling clocks, he came back and told her that they would 
 give her four hundred and fifty dollars for the two 
 pieces. 
 
 "The stones alone are worth that," he added, "and, 
 of course, they will have to be reset before we can sell 
 them." 
 
 " May I have the check now? " 
 
 "Shall we send it to you by mail?" 
 
 "No, I must have it now. I want it this afternoon 
 immediately . ' ' 
 
 He yielded, still with his reflective but incurious 
 manner; and when she left the shop a quarter of an hour 
 later the check was in her little bag beside the amethyst 
 necklace. "I am glad I didn't have to sell the neck 
 lace," she thought. "Now I'll find a hotel and write 
 to mother, and it will all be settled. It will all be 
 settled," she repeated in a joyous tone; and this joy- 
 ousness, overflowing her breast, showed in her eyes, in 
 the little quivering smile on her lips, and in her light 
 and buoyant step over the snow. A weight had been 
 lifted from her heart, and she felt at peace with the 
 world, at peace with the shivering passers-by, at peace 
 even with George. The wind, hastening her walk, 
 stung her face till it flushed through its pallor, and sent 
 the warm blood bounding with happiness through her
 
 200 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 veins. Under the stainless blue of the sky, it seemed 
 to her that the winter's earth was suddenly quickening 
 with the seeds of the spring. 
 
 In the Waldorf she found a corner which was de 
 serted, except for an elderly man with a dried face and 
 a girl in a green hat, who appeared to be writing to her 
 lover; and sitting down at a little desk behind a lamp, 
 she wrote to her mother without mentioning George, 
 without explaining anything, without even making ex- 
 * cuses for her failure to keep her promise. She knew 
 now that George had never meant that her mother 
 should live with them, that he had never meant that 
 they should take an apartment, that he had lied to her, 
 without compunction, from the beginning. She knew 
 this as surely as she knew that he was faithless and 
 selfish, as surely as she knew that he had ceased to love 
 her and would never love her again. And this knowl 
 edge, which had once caused her such poignant agony, 
 seemed now as detached and remote as any tragedy in 
 ancient history. She was barely twenty-two, and her 
 love story had already dwindled to an impersonal bio 
 graphical interest in her mind. 
 
 When she had finished her letter, she placed the check 
 inside of it, and then sat for a minute pensively watch 
 ing the girl in the green hat, whose face paled and red 
 dened while she wrote to her lover. 
 
 "It seems a hundred years ago since I felt like that," 
 she thought, "and now it is all over." Then because 
 melancholy had no part in her nature, and she was too 
 practical to waste time in useless regrets, she rose 
 quickly from the desk, and went out, while the ex 
 hilaration of her mood was still proof against the dan 
 gerous weakness of self-pity. "It's life I'm living, not.
 
 MOTHERHOOD 201 
 
 a fairy tale," she told herself sternly as she posted the 
 letter and left the hotel. "It's life I'm living, and life 
 is hard, however you take it." For a few blocks she 
 walked on briskly, thinking of the shop windows and of 
 the brightness and gaiety of the crowd in Fifth Avenue; 
 but in spite of her efforts, her thoughts fluttered back 
 presently to herself and her own problems. "After all, 
 t you can't become a victim unless you give in," she 
 said grimly; "and I'll die rather than become a vic 
 tim." 
 
 Her walk kept her out until five o'clock, and when 
 she entered the house at that hour she found her 
 mother-in-law in the front hall giving directions to 
 Burrows. At sight of Gabriella she paused breath 
 lessly, and said with undisguised nervousness : 
 
 "A very queer-looking person who says she was sent 
 by your mother has just come to see you, dear a 
 seamstress of some kind, I fancy. As she looked quite 
 clean, I let her go upstairs to the nursery to wait for 
 you. I hope you don't mind. She was so eager to 
 see the baby." 
 
 "Oh, it's Miss Polly!" cried Gabriella; and without 
 stopping to explain, she ran upstairs and into the nur 
 sery, where little Frances was cooing with delight in 
 Miss Polly's arms. 
 
 The seamstress' small birdlike face, framed by the 
 silk quilling of her old lady's bonnet, broke into a 
 hundred cheerful wrinkles at the sight of Gabriella. 
 Even the grotesqueness of her appearance of her 
 fantastic mantle trimmed with bugles, made from her 
 best wrap in the 'seventies, of her full alpaca skirt, with 
 its wide hem stiffened by buckram, of her black cotton 
 gloves, and her enormous black broadcloth bag even
 
 202 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 these things could not extinguish the pleasure Gabriella 
 felt in the meeting. If Miss Polly was ridiculous at 
 home, she was twice as ridiculous in New York, but 
 somehow it did not seem to matter. The sight of her 
 brought happy tears to the girl's eyes, and in the at 
 tempt to hide them, she buried her face in the warm, 
 flower-scented neck of little Frances. 
 
 " She's the peartest baby I ever saw," remarked Miss 
 Polly with pride. "Wouldn't yo' ma dote on her?" 
 
 "Wouldn't she? But how did you leave mother 
 and Jane and the children? The baby must be a big 
 boy now." 
 
 "He's runnin' around all the time, and never out of 
 mischief. I never saw such a child for mischief. I 
 was tellin' yo' ma so last week. There's another baby 
 on the way with Jane, you know." 
 
 "How in the world will she take care of it? I sup 
 pose Charley is just the same? " 
 
 "Well, if you ask me, Gabriella, I never was so dead 
 set against Mr. Charley as the rest of you. I helped 
 raise Jane from the time she was no higher than that 
 and I ain't sayin' nothin' against her except that Mr. 
 Charley ain't half as bad to my mind as she makes him 
 out. Some men respond to naggin' and some don't 
 that's what I said to her one day when she broke down 
 and cried on my shoulder and you've got to be mighty 
 particular when you begin to nag that you're naggin' 
 the right sort. But she won't listen, not she. 'If I 
 don't tell Charley of his faults, who's goin' to?' she 
 asks. You know Jane always did talk pretty free to 
 me ever since she was a little girl. Well, there are some 
 people that simply can't stand bein' told of their faults, 
 and Mr. Charley is one of 'em. It ain't the kind of
 
 MOTHERHOOD 203 
 
 treatment that agrees with him, and if I'd been in Jane's 
 
 place, I reckon I'd have found it out long ago. But it 
 
 /ain't her way to learn anything you know that as well 
 
 J as I do. She's obliged to make the world over even if it 
 
 drops to pieces in her hands." 
 
 " She doesn't seem to have done much with Charley." 
 
 "Well, you mark my words, Mr. Charley ain't bad, 
 but he's full of natur', and Jane, is the kind of woman 
 that's never happy unless she's gettin' the better of 
 natur'. Whatever's natural is plum wrong, that's the 
 way she looks at it; but mind you, I ain't sayin' she's all 
 in the right. Naggin' ain't a virtue to my mind any 
 mo' than drink is, but Jane, she can't see it that way, 
 and there ain't a bit of use tryin' to make her. She's 
 .soft, but she's mulish, and the hardest thing on earth 
 to push is a mule that looks soft." 
 
 "It's such a pity, but I suppose nothing will change 
 her. Tell me about mother." 
 
 "Yo' ma looks downright po'ly. What with her 
 sickness and her bother about Jane and the bad weather, 
 she ain't managin' to keep as spry as I'd like to see her. 
 From the stitch in her back she has most of the time 
 it wouldn't surprise me any day to hear that she'd 
 come down with kidney trouble, and she breathes so 
 short that consumption has crossed my mind mo' than 
 once when I was talkin' to her." 
 
 Miss Polly, having, as she expressed it, "an eye for 
 symptoms," possessed an artistic rather than a scientific 
 interest in disease; and the vivid realism of her descrip 
 tions had often, on her "sewing days" at home, reduced 
 Gabriella to faintness, though Mrs. Carr, with her more 
 delicate sensibilities, was able to listen with apparent 
 enjoyment to the ghastly recitals. Not only had Miss
 
 204 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Polly achieved in her youth a local fame as a "sick 
 nurse," but, in the days when nursing was neither sani 
 tary nor professional, she was often summoned hastily 
 from her sewing machine to assist at a birth or a burial 
 in one of the families for whom she worked. And happy 
 always, as befits one whose life, stripped bare of ephem 
 eral blessings, is centred upon the basic realities, she 
 was never happier than when she put down her sewing, 
 took off her spectacles, exchanged her apron for a 
 mantle, and after carefully tying her bonnet strings, 
 departed for a triumphant encounter with the Eternal 
 Issues. 
 
 "I am so anxious about mother," said Gabriella. 
 "Did she tell you she was going to Florida?" 
 
 "She cert'ny did. She was real full of it, and she 
 talked a lot about you all up here the baby and you 
 and Mr. George. You know I ain't laid my eyes on Mr. 
 George mo' than three times in my life. Well, I reckon 
 I'd better be gettin' along back, or the children will 
 miss me. I've got four children to do for now, and one 
 of 'em ain't any bigger than Frances. It does seem 
 funny don't it, for an old maid to have her hands full 
 of children? But, you know, I always did dote on 
 children. There wouldn't be half so much fun in this 
 [world if it wan't for children and men, and there ain't a 
 Wite of difference between them under their skins. 
 Yes, I can find my way back real easy. I always 
 was good at finding my way about, and all I've got to 
 do is to set out and walk in that direction till I come 
 to a car over yonder by that high building, and as soon 
 as I get on I'll ask the conductor to put me off right at 
 my do'." 
 
 When she had gone, Gabriella went back into the
 
 MOTHERHOOD 205 
 
 nursery, and stood looking down at little Frances, 
 who had fallen asleep, with the smile of an angel on her 
 face. "I wonder if I can be the least bit like Jane?" 
 she said aloud while she watched the sleeping child. 
 
 George did not come home to dinner; and the wonder 
 was still in Gabriella's mind when she dressed herself 
 in her black net gown, and went downstairs to meet 
 Florrie, who looked younger and more brilliant than 
 ever in a dress of white and silver brocade. Florrie's 
 husband, a dreamy, quiet man, the safe kind of man, 
 Gabriella reflected, who inevitably marries a dangerous 
 woman regarded his noisy wife with a guileless admi 
 ration which was triumphantly surviving a complete 
 submergence in the sparkling shallows of Florrie's per 
 sonality. He was a man of sense and of breed 
 ing. He possessed the ordinary culture of a gentleman 
 as well as the trained mind of a lawyer, yet he appeared 
 impervious alike to the cheapness of Florrie's wit and 
 the vulgarity of her taste. Her beauty had not only 
 blinded him to her mental deficiencies; it had actually 
 deluded him into a belief in her intelligence. He 
 treated her slangy sallies as if they were an original 
 species of humour; he accepted the sweeping comment 
 of her ignorance as if it had been an inspired criticism 
 of life. While she chattered, parrotlike, to the judge, 
 who was obviously impressed by her appearance, Alger 
 non listened to her ejaculatory conversation with a mix 
 ture of admiration and awe. 
 
 "How do you think Florrie is looking?" he asked in a 
 low tone of Gabriella, while his wife's laugh, high, 
 shrill, penetrating in its dry soprano quality, fluted 
 loudly on the opposite side of the table. Beside Patty's 
 patrician loveliness, as serene and flawless as that of a
 
 206 y LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 marble goddess, Florrie appeared cheap, common, and 
 merely pretty to Gabriella. The hard brilliancy of her 
 surface was like a shining polish which would wear off 
 with sleep and have to be replenished each morning; 
 and while she watched her, Gabriella saw, in imagina 
 tion, a vaguely ominous outline surrounding her which 
 might have been the uncertain edge of her mother's 
 shadow. In twenty-five years Florrie would be the 
 image of her mother protuberant hips, pinched waist, 
 mottled complexion, and hopelessly tarnished hair; yet, 
 with this awful prospect before him, Algernon could 
 appear not only tolerant, but positively adoring. He 
 had seen Bessie he had known her for years and he 
 could marry her daughter! 
 
 "I never saw her look handsomer," said Gabriella, 
 "that white and silver gown is very becoming." 
 
 "That's what I told her, but she wouldn't believe me. 
 She thought it was too plain for her style. Your sister- 
 in-law is something of Florrie's type, isn't she? Not 
 quite so striking a figure, perhaps, but the same sort 
 of colouring." 
 
 Was it possible that for the first time in his life the 
 simple Algernon was speaking in irony? Turning in 
 her chair, she looked questioningly into his kind, grave 
 face, so empty of humour, into his serious gray eyes, 
 which followed each movement of his wife's with ad 
 miring attention. No, he was not ironic; he was per 
 fectly solemn. It was a miracle a miracle not of piety, 
 but of passion that she was witnessing. 
 
 "Yes, Patty is lovely," she answered, thinking, as 
 she reflected upon the eccentricities of love, how much 
 too good he was for his wife. 
 
 Across the table Florrie's voice was heard exclaiming:
 
 MOTHERHOOD 207 
 
 "Now, you don't mean it! Well, I'm just as flattered 
 as I can be!" and Gabriella surmised that she was 
 completing her conquest of the judge. 
 
 "It's wonderful how well she gets on with every 
 body," observed Algernon. "She's never at a loss for a 
 word, and I tell her if I had her ready wit, I'd be the 
 greatest lawyer in Virginia to-day. Have you noticed 
 the way she is managing Judge Crowborough?" 
 
 "She always gets on well with men," acquiesced 
 Gabriella, though without the enthusiasm of Alger 
 non. "Do you remember what a belle she always was 
 at the germans?" Though she was willing to admit 
 that love was the ruling principle of life, it occurred to 
 her that Algernon would be more amusing if he were less 
 abundantly supplied with that virtue. 
 
 They talked of nothing but Florrie until the women 
 went into the drawing-room; and there, from the safe 
 haven of a window, Gabriella listened to Florrie's cease 
 less prattle about herself. She was as egotistical, as 
 effervescent, as she had been as a schoolgirl; and it 
 seemed to Gabriella that she was hardly a day older. 
 Her eyes, of a grayish blue, like pale periwinkles, were 
 as bold, as careless, as conquering in their glances; her 
 hair was still as dazzling; her face, with its curious re 
 semblance in shape to the face of a pretty cat, was still 
 as frank, as naive, as confiding in its innocence. If she 
 had changed at all, it was that, since her marriage to the 
 silent Algernon, she had become even more talkative 
 than she had been in her girlhood. Her vivacity was 
 as disturbing as the incessant buzzing of a June beetle. 
 
 "Well, you need never tell me again that you 
 wouldn't rather live in New York, Gabriella," she 
 fluted at parting, "because I shan't believe a single word
 
 208 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 of it. Why, we've been to the theatre every night for 
 a fortnight, and we haven't seen half the good plays that 
 are going on. Algy wanted to stay at Niagara Falls 
 you know we went to Niagara Falls first but it was so 
 deadly quiet I couldn't stand it. 'I don't care if I am 
 married,' I said to Algy, 'what I want is the theatre.'" 
 
 After she had gone, adoringly wrapped up by Alger 
 non, Patty turned to her mother with a little malicious 
 grimace : 
 
 "I know it's horrid to say she's dreadful, mamma, but 
 she really is." 
 
 "Don't, Patty, it isn't kind, and, besides, she's a 
 friend of Gabriella's. What I can't understand," she 
 added, "is how Bessie ever came out of Virginia, yet 
 there were always a few like her. You don't remember 
 Pussy Prime, do you? Of course you don't, she died 
 long before your day, but she was just that loud, bois 
 terous kind, and all the men were in love with her." 
 
 "Well, if I'm ever born again," remarked Gabriella, 
 as she kissed Patty good-night, "I hope I'll be born a 
 fat blonde. They always get taken care of." 
 
 She ascended the stairs wearily to her room. Yes, 
 she was barely twenty-two and love was over forever. 
 "I couldn't hold a man six months," she thought de 
 jectedly, "and yet Florrie, who is a fool and vulgar, will 
 be adored all her life."
 
 BOOK SECOND 
 THE AGE OF KNOWLEDGE
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 
 
 IN JULY Gabriella joined her mother in the mountains 
 of Virginia, and when she returned in the autumn, she 
 found that the character of her home had changed per 
 ceptibly during her absence. Brightness had followed 
 gloom; the fog of suspense had dissolved, and the 
 hazy sunshine of an ambiguous optimism flooded the 
 house. What the change implied she could not imme 
 diately discover; but before the first day was over she 
 surmised that the financial prospects of her father-in- 
 law had improved since the spring. If she had had any 
 doubt of his rising fortunes, the sight of the diminished 
 pile of bills on Mrs. Fowler's desk would have quickly 
 dispelled it. 
 
 And even George had apparently altered for the bet 
 ter. His improved finances had sweetened his temper 
 and cast the shining gloss of prosperity over his appear 
 ance; and, in a measure at least, time had revived in him 
 the ardent, if fluctuating, emotions of the lover. For 
 three months after her return, he evinced a fervent senti 
 ment for Gabriella, which she, who was staunchly paying 
 the price of her folly, received with an inner shrinking 
 but an outward complaisance. Her feeling for George 
 was quite dead so dead that it was impossible for any 
 artificial stimulus to revive it but she had learned that 
 marriage is founded upon a more substantial basis than 
 
 211
 
 212 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the romantic emotions of either a wife or a husband. 
 Though she had ceased to love George, she could still be 
 amiable to him; and it occurred to her at times that if 
 one had to choose between the two not necessarily insep 
 arable qualities of love and amiability, George was not 
 losing greatly by the exchange. When, however, at the 
 end of three months, George's capricious symptoms 
 disappeared as suddenly as they had come, and his 
 attentions lapsed into casual expressions of a nonchalant 
 kindness, she drew a breath of relief, and devoted her 
 happiest days to the nursery. There at least she had 
 found a stable refuge amid the turmoil of selfish human 
 desires. 
 
 In the house, which like George, began presently 
 to show the gloss of prosperity, the winter brought a 
 continuous flashing stream of gaiety, in which Mrs. 
 Fowler darted joyously about like some bright hungry 
 minnow beneath the iridescent ripples of a brook. 
 There were new rugs, new curtains, new gowns, new 
 bonnets ; and Gabriella was led compliantly from dress 
 maker to milliner, until she lost in the process her look 
 of shabbiness and developed into the fashionable curv 
 ing figure of the period. She had always liked clothes; 
 her taste was naturally good; and as she followed eag 
 erly from shop to shop, she recalled the three months 
 she had spent in Brandywine's millinery department, 
 and the rudiments of a trade she had learned there. 
 "I'd rather design my next gown myself," she said one 
 ' day to Mrs. Fowler, while they were looking at French 
 models in the establishment of Madame Dinard, who 
 had been born an O'Grady. "I know I can do better 
 than these, and besides I shan't meet duplicates of my 
 self every time I go out." That night she dreamed of
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 213 
 
 hats and gowns, and the next morning she drew pictures 
 of them in coloured chalk. "It's the only talent I ever 
 had," she remarked gaily to her mother-in-law, "and it 
 is running to waste." 
 
 Madame, who regarded the sketches with uncom 
 promising disdain, showed great interest in the practical 
 application of Gabriella's ideas to the dressing of Mrs. 
 Fowler. 
 
 "Yes, you have undoubtedly ideas," she said, dis 
 carding in her enthusiasm the accent she had spent 
 twenty years in acquiring, "and there is nothing so rare 
 in any department in any walk of life as ideas. 
 You have style, too," she pursued admiringly, turning 
 her eyes on Gabriella's figure in one of her Parisian 
 models. "It is very rare such chic. You wear your 
 clothes with a grace." 
 
 "That, also, is a marketable asset in a dressmaker," 
 laughed Gabriella. "Do you know I ought to have 
 been a dressmaker, Madame. Only I hate the very 
 sight of a needle." 
 
 "But I never sew! I haven't had a needle in my 
 hand for twenty years no, not for thirty," protested 
 Madame. 
 
 "Then I mustn't give up hope. If I ever have to 
 earn my living, I'll come to you, Madame." 
 
 Then Madame bowed and smiled and shrugged as 
 if at a gracious jest, and Mrs. Fowler observed in her 
 crisp, matter-of-fact manner: "Yes, my daughter has a 
 genuine instinct for dress, and, as you say, that is very 
 rare. She carries her clothes well, doesn't she? It's 
 such a blessing to be tall though my husband insists 
 t that the women who have ruled the world have always 
 been small ones. But I do love a fine figure, and she
 
 214 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 looks so distinguished in that cherry-coloured cloth, 
 doesn't she?" 
 
 To all of which Madame agreed, as she bowed them 
 out, with her ingratiating professional manner. 
 
 "It's so lovely to have clothes," said Gabriella, sink 
 ing back in the victoria, "money is one of the best gifts 
 of the gods, isn't it? " 
 
 "It's hard to do without it," replied Mrs. Fowler, 
 brisk and perfectly businesslike even in her generaliza 
 tions. "I expect the worst suffering in the world comes 
 from poverty." 
 
 Then, after a thoughtful pause, she added with the 
 practical air of one who scorns to be abstract: "But 
 do you know I sometimes think Archibald and I'd 
 both be happier if we had never made any money at 
 all I mean, of course, except just enough to live simply 
 somewhere in the South. When once you begin, you 
 can't stop, and I wish sometimes we had never begun." 
 Above the narrow black velvet strings of her bonnet, her 
 round florid face, from which the fine tracery of lines 
 had vanished, assumed the intent and preoccupied 
 expression which Gabriella associated with the pile of 
 unpaid bills on the little French desk. "I believe 
 Archibald feels that way, too," she concluded after a 
 minute, while her firm and unemotional lips closed to 
 gether over the words. 
 
 "But you enjoy it so much when you have it." 
 
 "That's just the trouble. You have to enjoy it as 
 quickly as you can because you never know when you 
 are going to lose every bit of it without warning. It's 
 been that way ever since I married rich one year, 
 poor the next, or poor for two years and then rich for 
 three. Life has been a seesaw with prosperity at one
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 215 
 
 end of the plank and poverty at the other. Of course 
 I know," she pursued, with characteristic lucidity, 
 "that you think me dreadfully extravagant, but we'd 
 just as well spend it as lose it, and it's sure to be one 
 thing or the other." 
 
 "But couldn't you save something? Couldn't you 
 put by something for the future?" Saving for the 
 future was one of the habits of Gabriella's frugal past 
 which still clung to her. 
 
 "That would go, too. If we ever come to ruin 
 and heaven knows we've been on the brink of it before 
 this Archibald would not keep back a penny. That's 
 his way, and that's one of the reasons I spend all we 
 have up to the very margin of his income." 
 
 The logic of this was so confusing that Gabriella was 
 obliged to stop and puzzle it out. At the end she could 
 only admit that Mrs. Fowler's reasoning processes, 
 which were by nature singularly lucid and exact, showed 
 at times a remarkable subtlety as if some extraneous 
 hybrid faculty had been grafted on the simple parent 
 stock of her mind. 
 
 "I can't help feeling, though," resumed the practical 
 little lady before Gabriella had reached the end of her 
 analysis, "that I'd be a great deal happier at this min 
 ute if we'd been poor all our lives." 
 
 "It wouldn't have suited George," observed George's 
 wife with an inflection of irony. 
 
 "He mightn't have liked it, but I believe it would 
 have been a great deal better for him," replied Mrs. 
 Fowler, while she bowed gravely to a woman in a passing 
 victoria. "There are many things George can't be 
 blamed for, and the way he was brought up is one of 
 them. Of course, he's no good whatever as a business
 
 216 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 man his father hardly ever sees him in the office but 
 it's useless to scold him about it, for it only exasperates 
 him. But he might have been a sensible, steady boy, if 
 he had been brought up in some small place in the South 
 where there was nothing to tempt him." 
 
 That there was any place in the South small enough 
 not to afford temptation to George seemed improbable 
 to Gabriella; but she felt that Mrs. Fowler's earnest 
 belief, supported as it was by the unshakable prop of 
 maternal feeling, hardly justified the effort she must 
 make to dispel it; and she had still no answer ready 
 when the carriage turned into Fifty-seventh Street, 
 and stopped beside the pavement where little Frances 
 they had already begun to call her Fanny sat in a 
 perambulator. Flushed and smiling, with her red 
 mouth gurgling delightedly, and a white wool lamb 
 clasped in her arms, the adorable child was certainly 
 worth any seesaw of destiny, any disillusioning experi 
 ence of marriage. 
 
 Before the beginning of the next winter Gabriella's 
 second child was born a brown, sturdy boy, who came 
 into the world with a frowning forehead and crying 
 lustily from rage (so the nurse said) not from fright. 
 He was named Archibald after his grandfather, 
 who developed immediately a passionate fondness 
 for him. His eyes were brown like the eyes of the 
 Carrs, though by the time he was two years old, he was 
 discovered to be painfully near-sighted, a weakness 
 which Mrs. Carr, when she heard of it, insisted he must 
 have inherited from his father's side of the family. He 
 was not nearly so beautiful a baby as little Fanny had 
 been; but he was from the very beginning a child of 
 much character, strong, mutinous, utterly uncompro-
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 217 
 
 mising in his attitude toward life. When he was first 
 put into shoes he fought with desperation, and sur 
 rendered at last, neither to persuasion nor to punish 
 ment, but to an exhaustion so profound that he slept for 
 hours with his small protesting feet doubled under him 
 and sobs of fury still bursting from his swollen lips. 
 The next day the struggle began again, and Mrs. 
 Fowler remarked sympathetically: 
 
 "You'll never be able to break his will, Gabriella. 
 He is unmanageable." 
 
 "I don't want to break his will, mamma," replied 
 Gabriella, for she belonged to a less Scriptural genera 
 tion, "but he must be disciplined, if it kills me." Pale, 
 gentle, resolute, she waited for Archibald to surrender. 
 In the end she carried her point and won the adoring 
 obedience of Archibald. There was a magnanimous 
 strain in him even at that age, Gabriella used to say, 
 and though he fought to the bitter end, he bore no 
 malice after he was once soundly defeated. 
 
 Long afterwards, when Gabriella looked back on the 
 next few years of her life, she could remember nothing 
 of them except the tremendous difference that the 
 children had made. All the rest was blotted out, a 
 drab blur of what Mrs. Fowler described with dignity 
 as "social duties," moving always against the variable 
 atmosphere of the house, which was gay or sombre, 
 light or gloomy, according to the fluctuating financial 
 conditions in Wall Street. There were extravagant 
 winters and frugal winters; winters of large entertain 
 ments and winters of "women's luncheons"; but always 
 the summers shimmered green and peaceful against the 
 blue background of the Virginia mountains. The sum 
 mers she loved even in memory; but of the winters she
 
 Mt- 
 
 218 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 could recall but one glowing vision, and that was of 
 Patty. Though she had lost George, she had gained 
 Patty, and it was impossible to deny that Patty might 
 be compensation for almost any lack. 
 ^ For the rest she made few friends, partly from reserve, 
 partly from the shyness she always felt in the presence of 
 strangers. It was difficult to establish fundamental 
 relations at dinners or even at women's luncheons; 
 social reforms were scarcely beginning to be fashion 
 able; and apart from the reading which she did in 
 order, as she said, "to keep her mind open," her life 
 
 narFowed down gradually to a single vivid centre of 
 .activity. She lived in her children and in the few books 
 she obtained from the library (since the purchase of 
 books, even in extravagant years, represented gross 
 prodigality to Mrs. Fowler) in Patty's friendship, and 
 in the weekly gossiping letters she received from her 
 
 I mother. 
 
 Mrs. Carr had long ago given up her plan to live with 
 Gabriella and George; and a failure of circumstances, 
 which fitted so perfectly into the general scheme of her 
 philosophy, had done much to fortify the natural 
 melancholy of her soul. Since even so gentle a pessimist 
 was not devoid of a saving trace of spiritual arrogance, 
 she found consoling balm in the thought that she had 
 refrained from reminding Gabriella how very badly 
 the Carrs had all married. There was, for example, 
 poor Gabriel's brother Tom, whose wife had "gone 
 deranged" six months after her wedding, and poor 
 Gabriel's sister Johanna, who had died (it was common 
 gossip) of a broken heart; and besides these instances, 
 nobody could possibly maintain that Jane had not made 
 a disastrous choice when she had persisted, against the
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 219 
 
 urgent advice of her mother, in marrying Charley. 
 Yes, the Carrs had all married badly, reflected Mrs. 
 Carr, with the grief of a mother and the pride of a philos 
 opher whose favourite theory has been substantially 
 verified every one of them, with, of course, the solitary 
 exception of poor Gabriel himself. 
 
 Her weekly letters, pious, gossipy, flowing, reached 
 Gabriella regularly every Monday morning, and were 
 read at breakfast while Mr. Fowler studied the financial 
 columns of the newspaper, and his wife opened her 
 invitations in the intervals between pouring out cups 
 of coffee and inquiring solicitously if any one wanted 
 cream and sugar. 
 
 "What's the news?" George would sometimes ask 
 carelessly; and Gabriella would glance down the pages 
 covered with the formless characters of Mrs. Carr's fine 
 Italian handwriting (the ladylike hand of the 'sixties), 
 and read out carefully selected bits of provincial gossip, 
 to which a cosmopolitan dash was usually contributed 
 by the adventures, matrimonial or merely amorous, of 
 Florrie Caperton. Hard, dashing, brilliant on the 
 surface at least, a frank hedonist by inclination, if not 
 by philosophy, Florrie had triumphantly smashed her 
 *way through the conventions and the traditions of 
 centuries. 
 
 "It's really dreadfully sad about Florrie," wrote Mrs. 
 Carr. "I am so sorry for poor Bessie, who must feel 
 it more than she lets any one see. While Algernon 
 was alive we always hoped he would keep Florrie 
 straight (you remember how everybody used to talk 
 about her when she was a girl), but now he has been, 
 dead only a year and a half, and she has already married 
 4 again and gotten a divorce from her second husband.
 
 220 LITE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 You know she ran away with a man named Tom West- 
 cott nobody ever heard of him, but she met him at 
 the White Sulphur Springs, where he had something 
 to do with the horses, I believe and the marriage 
 turned out very badly, though for my part I don't 
 believe he was the least bit to blame. Florrie is so 
 reckless that she would make any man unhappy, 
 and two weeks after the wedding she was separated 
 from him and was back here with Bessie, looking as 
 well and pretty as I ever saw her. You know black 
 was so becoming to her that she didn't take it off even 
 when she eloped, and now after her divorce she always 
 wears it, just as if she were still in mourning for poor 
 Algernon. Nobody would believe, unless they had 
 seen her in it, how very loud black can be. I used to 
 think widows ought to wear it because it kept them 
 from being noticed, but on Florrie it is the most con 
 spicuous thing you ever imagined as Cousin Jimmy 
 says it simply makes her blaze, and you know how strik 
 ing she always was anyway. I am sure I should think 
 it would be embarrassing for her to go in the street in 
 New York where nobody knows that she is really a 
 lady or at least that she was born a lady on her father's 
 side and this reminds me (I declare I ramble on so I 
 can never remember what I started to say) but this 
 reminds me that she has just been in to tell Jane that 
 she is going to New York to take an apartment some 
 where downtown; she told me the street and the num 
 ber, but I have forgotten both of them. Jane says she 
 looks more beautiful than ever after her last tragic 
 experience (though she doesn't seem to think it tragic 
 at all), but I was brought up to believe that a divorced 
 woman, even if she is in the right, ought to live in a
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 221 
 
 retired way and show that she feels her position. Now, 
 I saw Florrie for a minute as she was going out and she 
 ran on like a girl of sixteen you would think from her 
 talk that she is not a bit sensitive about the unfortu- 
 ate situation she is in. She had on a huge bunch 
 of violets, and Cousin Pussy tells me another man is 
 paying her the most devoted attention. Please don't 
 mention this to a soul I hate so to spread gossip 
 but I felt that you ought to be prepared, for Florrie 
 will certainly come to see you, and you must be kind 
 and polite to her, though I do not think you ought ever 
 to be intimate again. It is not as if she were merely unfor 
 tunate many divorced women are that, and we sym 
 pathize with them because they show^that they realize 
 ' their position but I cannot believe that Florrie is un- 
 . fortunate if she allows another man to pay her such 
 marked attention, and even accepts handsome presents 
 from him. So do be careful, my child, and if you find 
 yourself in an embarrassing situation, consult Mrs. 
 Fowler and be guided by her advice." 
 
 "Florrie Spencer is coming to New York," said 
 Gabriella on the morning she received Mrs. Carr's 
 letter. "You know she has just been divorced from 
 her second husband somebody she met at the White 
 Sulphur Springs." 
 
 George looked up interested, from his breakfast. 
 
 "Florrie coming, is she?" he remarked. ''Well, 
 she's great fun. I wonder if she has her eye on any 
 body now?" 
 
 "Not on you, I hope," observed his father, who joked 
 mildly on the mornings when the news was good; "but 
 she's a beautiful woman, and she'll doubtless be able to 
 get whatever she has set either her heart or her eye on."
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "She'll marry again within six months," prophesied 
 Mrs. Fowler, with an anxious glance in the direction of 
 her husband's coffee cup. "Poor Algy, I always thought 
 he was a hundred times too good for her," she added, 
 while she abstractedly buttered her toast. It was 
 one of their extravagant years, and the butter was 
 delicious. 
 
 "He adored her," said Gabriella. "I shall never 
 forget the evening they spent here. He couldn't keep 
 his eyes away from her. It she had been the most 
 admirable character on earth he couldn't have loved 
 her better." 
 
 "As if a man ever loved a woman because of her 
 character!" remarked Mrs. Fowler, from the security of 
 her experience. 
 
 Several months later Florrie arrived, gay, brilliant, 
 and beautiful, with her waxlike complexion as un- 
 lined by care as if it had been on the face of a doll. 
 Though she had lightened her mourning since Mrs. Carr 
 had described her to Gabriella, she still wore black, and 
 her flaring skirt, her inflexible collar, and her lace 
 sleeves, narrow at the shoulder and full at the wrists, 
 resembled a fashion plate. Perched at a daring angle 
 above her wheaten-red pompadour, with its exaggerated 
 Marcel wave, she wore a curiously distorted hat 
 of black velvet, lavishly overtrimmed with ostrich 
 feathers; and before this miracle of style, Gabriella be 
 came at once oppressively aware of her own lack of the 
 quality which Florrie would have described as "dash." 
 Already Florrie's figure was becoming slightly too pro 
 tuberant for the style of the new century, and after kiss 
 ing Gabriella effusively, she stood for a minute strug 
 gling for breath, in the attitude of her mother, with
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 223 
 
 her hands pressed to the palpitating sides of her 
 waist. 
 
 "I told mother I was certainly coming to see you 
 right straight," began Florrie, while, with her recovered 
 breath, her figure curved as suddenly as if it were moved 
 by a spring into the fashionable bend of the period. 
 "I've been perfectly crazy to come, but between dress 
 makers and theatres and I don't know what else, I 
 simply haven't had a minute in which I could sit down 
 and breathe. Mother says I ought to be downright 
 ashamed of myself for being so frivolous when I've just 
 got out of such a scrape did you ever hear before of 
 anybody getting married for two weeks, Gabriella? 
 But I know you never did you needn't trouble to 
 tell me so. Well, mother says I oughtn't to look so 
 pleased, and I tell her there might be some sense in 
 that if I'd stayed in the scrape, but if I haven't a right 
 to look pleased at getting out, I'd like to know who has. 
 It was all too funny for words, now, wasn't it? Of 
 course, I shouldn't dream of talking to everybody like 
 this even if I am a big talker, I reckon I know when to 
 hold my tongue and when not to but I've always 
 told you everything, Gabriella, and I don't mind the 
 least bit in the world telling you about this. It always 
 relieves my mind to talk to somebody I can trust, and 
 I know I can trust you. Don't you remember the way 
 I used to run in on rainy afternoons when you lived way 
 over in Hill Street, and tell you all about Fred Dudley 
 and Barbour Willis? And then I used to come and 
 talk about poor Algy by the hour. Wasn't it too dis 
 tressing about poor Algy? I don't believe I'll ever get 
 over it if I live to be a hundred, and even if I do run on 
 like this, it doesn't mean that my heart isn't broken
 
 ] LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 simply broken because it is. Mother used to say, 
 after father died, that you couldn't measure a widow's 
 grief by the length of her veil; and that's just exactly 
 the way I feel about Algy. I know you'll understand, 
 Gabriella, because you always understand every- 
 thing- 
 
 "He was so deeply in love with you," observed Ga 
 briella sympathetically, while Florrie, diving amid the 
 foam of her laces, brought out a tiny handkerchief, and 
 delicately pecked at the corner of her eye, not near 
 enough to redden the lid and not far enough away to 
 disturb the rice powder on the side of her nose. 
 
 "He was crazy about me to the very last, you never 
 saw anything like it. Of course we weren't a bit alike, 
 I don't mind telling you so, Gabriella, because I know 
 you'll never repeat it. We weren't really congenial, 
 for Algy was just wrapped up in his law books, and 
 there were whole days together when he wouldn't open 
 his mouth, but that didn't seem to make any difference 
 because, as he used to say, one of us had to listen 
 sometimes. But, you know, mother says a pair of op- 
 posites makes the happiest marriage, and after being 
 married to Algy, I feel how true that is. I got into 
 the habit of talking so much when I used to run on 
 about nothing to cheer him up he was always so grave 
 and glum even as a boy, you remember and during his 
 last illness you know he died of Bright's disease, poor 
 darling, and it came on just like that ! he used to make 
 me talk to him for hours and hours just to keep him from 
 thinking. Well, well, that's all over now, and I don't 
 care what anybody says, my heart's buried with Algy. 
 I don't believe you were ever in love but once either, 
 were you, Gabriella?" she inquired cheerfully.
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 225 
 
 "Well, what about Mr. Westcott? Is that his 
 name?" asked Gabriella, without malice. As a study 
 Florrie had always interested her, for she regarded her 
 less as an individual than as an awful example of 
 the utter futility of moral maxims. Florrie was with 
 out intelligence, without feeling, without imagination, 
 virtue, breeding, or good taste, yet possessing none of 
 these qualities, she had by sheer beauty and "dash" 
 achieved all the ends for which these qualities usually 
 strive. Good humour she had as long as one did not 
 get in her way; but, beyond this single redeeming grace, 
 she was as empty of substance as a tinted shell filled 
 with sea foam. If power and efficiency are the two 
 supreme attributes of success, then by all the laws and 
 principles of logic, Florrie ought to have been a failure. 
 But she was not a failure. She was a fool whose incom 
 parable foolishness had conferred not only prosperity, 
 but happiness upon her. She shone, she scintillated, 
 she diffused the glow of success. Though she was 
 undeserving of admiration, she had been surfeited on it 
 from her childhood ; though she was devoid of the moral 
 excellence which should command love, by a flashing 
 glance or a waving curl, she could bring the most exalted 
 love down from the heavens. There was no question 
 that Algernon had really loved her to distraction, and 
 Algernon was a man of sense, of breeding, of distinction. 
 As for Florrie, she had, of course, as little capacity for 
 loving as she had for thinking. 
 
 "Tom Westcott! I declare, Gabriella, I am almost 
 ashamed to tell you about him. You've never been to 
 a Virginia summer resort, so you couldn't understand 
 that there is something about a Virginia summer resort 
 that just seems to make any man better than none at all.
 
 226 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 You get so bored, you know, that you'd flirt with a 
 lamp-post if there wasn't anything human around; and 
 when you haven't laid eyes on a real sure enough man 
 for several months,-it's surprising how easy it is to take 
 up with the imitation ones. Of course, I don't mean 
 that Tom wasn't all right as far as family and all that 
 goes; but he was simply no earthly account he was 
 just mean all through, and as soon as I found it out, I 
 packed right straight up and left him. After Algy I 
 couldn't have stood one of that sort, and there was no 
 sense in my trying to. Life is too short, I always say, 
 for experiments. There's no use sticking to a bad job 
 when you can get away from it. That's the trouble 
 with so many women, you know; they try and try to 
 stand the wrong man when they know all the time that 
 it isn't a particle of use, and that they are just bringing 
 wrinkles into their faces; and then by the time they give 
 up, they're all worn out and it's too late to look about 
 for another chance. Now, I've seen too much of that 
 kind of thing, and so I thought two weeks weren't long 
 enough to bring wrinkles in my face, but they were 
 plenty long for me to find out whether or not I could 
 stand any man on earth. So here I am in little old 
 New York instead of being stuck away in some God 
 forsaken Virginia town, where there isn't even a 
 theatre, darning stockings for a family of children. 
 
 But there's no use talking about that " And 
 
 Florrie, who had been born a lady on her father's 
 side, adjusted her pompadour under the high bandeau 
 of her hat, and rose with a dashing air from the 
 sofa. 
 
 "I'd love to see the babies, darling," she said; "I'm 
 just crazy about babies."
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 227 
 
 "They are out in the Park. I'm so sorry. Perhaps 
 they are coming in now, I hear the door-bell." 
 
 But it was George instead of the children; and he 
 entered presently with a moody look, which vanished 
 quickly before the brilliant vision of Florrie. 
 
 "I thought I heard you," he observed with the casual 
 intimacy of an old playmate, "so I came in. Have you 
 got fixed yet? What about the apartment? You'd 
 better let me help you hunt for it?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm not sure about the apartment. I may take 
 a house a teeny weeny one, you know," said Florrie, 
 as she bent softly toward him, scented and blooming. 
 If one didn't know there wasn't really a bit of harm in 
 her, one would be puzzled just what to think of her, 
 Gabriella reflected. Amid the perfect order of Gabri- 
 ella's inner life, the controlled emotion, the serene effi 
 ciency, the balanced power, Florrie's noisy beauty pro 
 duced a disturbing effect. She liked her because she 
 had known her from childhood, and it was impossible 
 to think any harm of a girl one had played with at 
 school; but she could not deny that Florrie was vul 
 gar. As a matter of fact, Florrie's mother had been 
 vulgar before her, and the thin strain of refinement 
 inherited from her father's stock had obviously been 
 overborne by the torrential vulgarity of the maternal 
 blood. 
 
 "A house? Well, that's even better," replied George. 
 "I've no use for apartments, have I, Gabriella?" 
 
 His effrontery was incredible! That he should joke 
 about his broken promise before Florrie amazed Ga 
 briella even after her disillusioning experience with 
 him. 
 
 "Then I'll get you to help me. Will you lend him
 
 228 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 to me, darling?" trilled Florrie piercingly from the door, 
 where she stood in a striking pose which revealed her 
 "fine figure" to the best advantage. The request was 
 directed to Gabriella, but her blue eyes mocked a chal 
 lenge to George while she spoke. 
 
 "Oh, I'll give him," answered Gabriella pleasantly. 
 There was no harm in it, she told herself innocently 
 again; but it was a pity that Florrie, with her remark 
 able beauty, should be quite so ill bred. 
 
 Five minutes later when George came back from 
 putting Florrie into her hansom, he remarked care 
 lessly: 
 
 "She's got a figure all right." 
 
 "Yes, she looks beautiful in black. No wonder she 
 won't leave it off." 
 
 "By Jove, to think it's little Florrie! Why, I don't 
 believe there's a finer figure in New York. When she 
 passed by the club yesterday the men were breaking 
 their necks to look out of the window." Then, as if 
 struck by a sudden suspicion, he added quickly: 
 "Where did she get her money from? I thought Algy 
 died rather hard up." 
 
 "I never heard much about it. Mrs. Spencer must 
 give her something." 
 
 "I don't believe the old lady has a penny over three 
 thousand a year, and that won't do in New York. 
 This Westcott didn't have anything, did he?" 
 
 "It never occurred to me to ask," replied Gabriella 
 indifferently. What did it matter to George where 
 Florrie got her money? But, then, George was always 
 like that, and though he never made a penny himself, 
 he was possessed of an insatiable curiosity about the 
 amount and the sources of other people's incomes.
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 229 
 
 "Well, it looks queer," he observed with intense 
 interest after a prolonged pause. "That short pearl 
 necklace she had on couldn't have cost a cent under 
 ten thousand dollars." 
 
 "It was lovely. I noticed how well the pearls 
 matched," replied his wife. She was not in the least ex 
 cited about the methods by which Florrie had obtained 
 the necklace all that was a part of the miraculous way 
 she got everything she wanted in life but she liked the 
 pearls and she had envied Florrie while she looked at 
 them. 
 
 A deep furrow had appeared between George's eye 
 brows, and his mouth sagged suddenly at the corners, 
 giving his face the ugly look Gabriella distrusted and 
 dreaded. While she watched him she recalled vaguely 
 that she had once thought the latent brutality in his 
 face an expression of power. How young she had been 
 when she married him! How inconceivably ignorant! 
 Yet at twenty years she had imagined herself wise 
 enough to judge a man. She had deluded herself with 
 the sanctified fallacy that mere instinct would guide 
 her aright that her marriage would be protected from 
 disaster by the infallible impulse which she had mis 
 taken for love. 
 
 "I wonder," said George with a suddenness that 
 startled her out of her musing "I wonder if it can be 
 Winston Camp!" 
 
 And Gabriella, who had forgotten Florrie, looked 
 up to remark absentmindedly : "Winston Camp? You 
 mean the man who dined here last winter and couldn't 
 eat anything but nuts?" 
 
 In the months that followed George did not mention 
 Florrie again, and if he pursued his investigations into
 
 230 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the obscure sources of her livelihood, his researches did 
 not lead him back in the direction of Gabriella. But, 
 from the day of Florrie's visit, it seemed to Gabriella, 
 when she thought of it afterwards, his casual indifference 
 began to develop into brutal neglect. Not that she re 
 gretted his affection, or even his politeness, not that she 
 cared in the least what his manner was this she made 
 quite plain to herself but her passion to see life clearly, 
 to test experience, to weigh events, brought her al 
 most breathlessly round again to the question, "What 
 does it mean? Is there something hidden? Am I still 
 the poor abject fool that Jane was or am I beginning 
 really to be myself?" 
 
 "You aren't looking well, Gabriella," said Mrs. 
 Fowler at breakfast one morning when George, as she 
 confided afterwards to Patty, had behaved unspeakably 
 to his wife before his father came down. "I want you 
 to go about with me more, as you used to do before the 
 children took up all your time." 
 
 Gabriella had just crossed George's will about some 
 thing a mere trifle, something about calling on Florrie 
 and he had turned to her with a look of hatred in his 
 eyes, a kind of nervous, excitable hatred which she had 
 never seen until then. "Why does he look at me like 
 that?" she had thought quite coldly; "and why should 
 he have begun all of a sudden to hate me? Why should 
 my words, my voice, my gestures even, exasperate him 
 so profoundly? Of course he has stopped loving me, 
 but why should that make him hate me? I stopped 
 loving him, too, long ago, yet there is only indifference, 
 not hate, in my heart." 
 
 "You must go about with me more, dear," repeated 
 Mrs. Fowler, in obedience to a vague but amiable in-
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 231 
 
 stinct, which prompted her to shield George, to deceive 
 Gabriella, to deny the truth of facts, to do anything on 
 earth except acknowledge the actual situation in which 
 she found herself. "Don't you think she ought to go 
 about more, George?" 
 
 "I don't care what she does," returned George bru 
 tally, while his blue eyes squinted in the old charming 
 way from which all charm had departed. "I don't care 
 I don't care He checked himself, snapping his 
 
 words in two with a virulent outburst of temper, and 
 then, rising hurriedly, as his father entered the room, 
 he left the table with his breakfast uneaten. 
 
 "He's so nervous. I can't imagine what's the mat 
 ter. I hope Burrows wasn't in the pantry. Did you 
 say anything to hurt his feelings before you came down, 
 Gabriella?" asked Mrs. Fowler, distractedly, with one 
 eye on her daughter-in-law and the other on the pantry 
 door, through which the discreet Burrows had disap 
 peared at the opportune instant. 
 
 "No, I haven't said anything that I can remember," 
 answered Gabriella with calmness. It occurred to her 
 that George's behaviour was hardly that of a man whose 
 "feelings" had been wounded, but she made no audible 
 record of her reflection; "and of course 111 go out with 
 you if you want me to," she added, for she felt sincerely 
 sorry for her mother-in-law, even though she had ruined 
 George in his infancy. "I am going to the library to 
 return a book, and we might pay some calls after 
 wards." 
 
 "That's just what I was thinking," responded Mrs. 
 Fowler, embarrassed, bewildered. Was it possible, 
 she asked herself, that Gabriella had not noticed 
 George's outrageous behaviour?
 
 232 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 But Gabriella did not "go about" with her mother- 
 in-law that season, for a higher will than Mrs. Fowler's 
 frustrated that lady's benevolent intentions. To a 
 casual glance it would have seemed the merest accident 
 which disturbed these felicitous plans, but such acci 
 dents, when Gabriella looked back on them afterwards, 
 appeared to her to be woven into the very web and 
 pattern of life. It was plainly incredible that her whole 
 existence should be changed merely because Archibald 
 was naughty, as incredible as the idea that Destiny 
 should have used so small a medium for the accomplish 
 ment of its tragic designs. 
 
 But Archibald had hardly reached the Park before he 
 was brought home, resisting with all his strength, because 
 he had given his shoes and stockings away; and the next 
 ten minutes, while Gabriella gently reasoned with him 
 on the pavement, were pregnant with consequences. 
 
 "He's fierce, that's what he is," declared the nurse, 
 who was Irish and militant. "He kicked me so I'm 
 
 nCB _ - ^i^ ^__-~^- ""' J 
 
 black and blue, ma'am, all over the shins, and every bit 
 because I wouldn't let him pull off his shoes and socks 
 and give 'em to a barefooted boy in the Park. You 
 tell her, darlin'" to Frances, who stood, bright-eyed 
 and indignant, in her white fur coat and little fur cap 
 which she wore drawn down tight over her curls 
 "you tell your mamma, darlin', you tell her how fierce 
 and bold he was, and how he kicked me about the shins 
 because I wouldn't let him take off his shoes and 
 socks." 
 
 "The poor boy wanted 'em! I won't wear 'em! I 
 will give 'em to the poor boy!" screamed Archibald, 
 furious, scowling, struggling in the restraining hold of 
 his nurse. He was a robust, thick-set child of four
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 233 
 
 years, with a thatch of dark-brown hair, and strange 
 near-sighted brown eyes, behind spectacles which he 
 had worn from the time he could walk. 
 
 "What is it, Archibald? Tell me about it. Tell 
 mother," pleaded Gabriella while he struggled desper 
 ately to escape from her tender grasp. "Who was the 
 poor boy and where did you see him?" 
 
 "He oughtn't to have been in the Park, ought he, 
 mamma?" inquired Frances, who was guiltless of demo 
 cratic tendencies. "Ragged people have no right to 
 be in the Park, have they?" 
 
 "Hush, darling, I want to hear what Archibald has to 
 say. Tell me about him, Archibald. Shall you and I 
 go out to look for him?" 
 
 "If you do, he'll pull his shoes and socks right off 
 again," insisted Frances emphatically. "He had got 
 one quite off and had given it to the boy before we saw 
 him, and Nanny was obliged to go and take it back, and 
 I had to hold Archibald while she put it on him. He 
 screamed very loud and everybody stopped to ask what 
 was the matter, and one old gentleman with a long 
 beard, like Moses in the Bible, gave Archibald a little 
 box of candy he took it out of his pocket but Archi 
 bald threw it away, and kept on hollerin' louder than 
 ever " 
 
 "That's right, darlin', you tell her," urged nurse, a 
 stout woman with a red face and three gold teeth in the 
 front of her mouth. 
 
 "I understand now. Don't tell any more, Fanny," 
 said Gabriella. "Now, Archibald dear, will you stop 
 crying and be good?" 
 
 "Am," replied Archibald sullenly, twisting out of 
 her hands.
 
 234 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Am what, darling?" 
 
 "Am good." 
 
 "Well, will you stop crying?" 
 
 "Have." 
 
 "Then what do you want? Shall we go back and 
 look for the poor boy?" 
 
 "Hadn't any shoes. Feet were red. Wanted to 
 give him shoes, 'cause I had plenty more at home. 
 Nanny jerked him back. Hated Nanny. Hoped she 
 would die. Hoped bears would eat her. Hoped tigers 
 would eat her. Hoped lions would eat her. Hoped 
 robins would cover her with leaves in the Park " 
 
 While he sobbed out his accusations against nurse, 
 Gabriella, holding his hand tightly in hers, turned 
 toward Fifth Avenue, and by the time he was pacified, 
 they had walked several blocks together, with nurse 
 and Fanny sedately bringing up the rear. Then, at 
 last, having reasoned him alike out of his temper and 
 his generosity, Gabriella retraced her steps, and enter 
 ing the house with her latchkey, ran quickly up the 
 stairs to the closed door of Mrs. Fowler's room. As 
 she raised her hand to knock the sound of her own name 
 reached her, and almost involuntarily she hesitated for 
 an instant. 
 
 "Yes, Gabriella is out. I saw her a minute ago on 
 her way to the Park with the children." 
 
 "Well, somebody ought to tell her, mother. I think 
 it is perfectly outrageous to keep her in ignorance. 
 Everybody is talking about it." 
 
 "Oh, Patty, you couldn't! How on earth could 
 you tell her a thing like that?" wailed George's mother, 
 and she went on with a plaintive sigh as Gabriella 
 opened the door: "George was always so mad about
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 235 
 
 beauty, and though Gabriella has a fine face, she isn't 
 exactly 
 
 Then, at the startling apparition of Gabriella, with 
 her face paling slowly above her black furs and her large 
 indignant eyes fixed on them both, Mrs. Fowler wavered 
 and broke off with a pathetic clutch at the pleasantness 
 which had entirely departed from her manner. "Why, 
 Gabriella, I didn't know you had come in! I was just 
 
 saying to Patty " It was, as she said afterwards 
 
 to her husband, exactly as if her mind had become sud 
 denly blank. She couldn't to save her life think of a 
 single word to add to her sentence, and all the time 
 Gabriella was standing there, as white as a ghost, with 
 her accusing eyes turning slowly from one to the other 
 of them. "Somehow I just couldn't lie to her when she 
 looked like that, and the truth seemed too dreadful," 
 Mrs. Fowler added that night to Archibald. "Damn 
 George!" was Mr. Fowler's fervent retort. "And it 
 took me so by surprise I almost fainted, for I'd never 
 in my life heard him swear before," his wife had 
 commented later. "But aren't men strange? To 
 think he knew how all the time and kept it to him 
 self! I declare they are entirely too secretive for any 
 thing!" 
 
 "I heard what you were saying when I knocked," 
 began Gabriella, with perfect composure. "I don't 
 quite know what it was about, but I think I think " 
 
 "It was nothing, dear; Patty and I were gossiping," 
 replied Mrs. Fowler, with an eagerness that was almost 
 violent. "Oh, Patty, you wouldn't ! "for Patty had 
 broken in, conquering and merciless, with the dec 
 laration: "If you don't tell Gabriella, mamma, I'm 
 going to. It's outrageous, anyhow, I've always said
 
 236 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 so, the way people keep things from women. Gabriella 
 has a right to know what everybody is saying." 
 
 "Of course I've a right to know," rejoined Gabriella, 
 with a firmness before which Mrs. Fowler felt herself 
 gradually dissolving "melting away" was the descrip 
 tion she gave of her feeling. "If anybody has a right 
 to know, I suppose I have. Of course, it's about George. 
 I know that much, anyhow," she added quietly. 
 
 "I don't believe it's half so bad as they say," pro 
 tested Mrs. Fowler feverishly. "I don't believe he 
 really keeps her. His father says he couldn't possibly 
 do it on the allowance he gives him, and, you know, 
 George doesn't make a cent himself not a cent. He 
 never supported himself in his life " 
 
 She paused breathlessly, with a bright and confident 
 glance as if she had made a point a minor one per 
 haps, but still a point in George's favour. The jet 
 fringe on her bosom, which had rattled furiously with 
 her excited palpitations, became gradually quiet, and 
 as she pressed her lips firmly with her handkerchief, 
 which she had rolled into a ball, she appeared to be 
 pressing her customary smile back into place. 
 
 "It won't last, Gabriella," she began again very 
 suddenly with renewed assurance. "These things 
 never last, and I think Patty is quite wrong to insist 
 upon telling you. Of course it is humiliating for a 
 time, but but" she hesitated, and then brought out 
 triumphantly "he married very young, you know, and 
 men aren't like women there's no use pretending they 
 are. Now when a woman loves a man " 
 
 "But, you see, I don't love George," answered Ga 
 briella, and her awful words seemed to reverberate 
 through the horrified silence that surrounded her.
 
 DISENCHANTMENT 237 
 
 "Not love him? O Gabriella! Of course, it's nat 
 ural that you should feel angry and wounded, and that 
 your pride should resent what looks like an affront 
 to you; but you can't mean in your heart that you've 
 got over caring. Women don't change so easily. Why, 
 you're his wife poor foolish boy that he is and 
 Florrie- 
 
 " So it's Florrie? " observed Gabriella, with a strangely 
 dispassionate interest. It was queer, she reflected 
 afterwards, that she had not felt the faintest curiosity 
 about the woman. 
 
 "I always suspected that there was something wrong 
 about her," pursued Mrs. Fowler, reassured by the 
 knowledge that she was placing the blame where it 
 belonged according to all the laws of custom and 
 tradition. "I must say I never liked her manner and 
 her way of dressing, and she made eyes at every man 
 she was introduced to even at Archibald " 
 
 "Well, I didn't believe there was any real harm in 
 her," said Gabriella, in a tone she might have used at 
 one of her mother-in-law's luncheons. She was still 
 standing near the door, in the very spot where she had 
 paused at her entrance, with her head held high above 
 the black fur at her throat, and one gloved hand play 
 ing with a bit of cord on the end of her muff. She 
 could not possibly have taken it better. Bad as the 
 situation was, it might have been a hundred times worse 
 except for Gabriella's composure, thought Mrs. Fowler 
 discreetly, adding with an inexplicable regret, that in her 
 youth women were different. Yes, they had shown more 
 feeling then, though they had behaved perhaps less well 
 in a crisis. In spite of her gratitude and she was 
 sincerely grateful to her daughter-in-law for not making
 
 238 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 a scene she became conscious presently that she was 
 beginning to cherish an emotion not unlike resentment 
 on George's account. That the discovery of George's 
 faithlessness should be received so coolly by George's 
 wife appeared almost an affront to him. Mrs. Fowler 
 liked Gabriella, she was fond of her and nobody could 
 look in the girl's face and not see that she was a fine 
 woman but there were times, and this was one of 
 them, when she thought her a little hard. Had Ga 
 briella wept, had she raged, had she threatened Florrie's 
 life or happiness, it might have been painful, but at 
 least it would have been human; and above all things 
 Mrs. Fowler felt that she liked women to be human. 
 
 "Nothing that anybody says or does can excuse 
 George," said Patty sternly. "He has behaved abom 
 inably, and if I were Gabriella, I'd simply wash my 
 hands of him. I don't care if he is my brother, that 
 doesn't make me blind, does it? If he were my hus 
 band," she concluded passionately, "I'd feel just the 
 same way about it." 
 
 "Oh, you mustn't! Oh, Patty, hush, it's wicked! 
 It's sinful!" moaned Mrs. Fowler, shutting her eyes, 
 as if the sight of Patty's indignant loveliness gave her a 
 headache. "Don't try to harden Gabriella's heart 
 against him. Don't try to make her think she's really 
 stopped loving him." 
 
 Gabriella's answer to this outburst was a look which, 
 as poor Mrs. Fowler said afterwards, "cut her to the 
 heart." Backing weakly to a chair, the valiant little 
 lady sat down suddenly, because she felt that her legs 
 were giving way beneath the weight of her body. And, 
 though she was unaware of its significance, her action 
 was deeply symbolical of the fa.il.ure of the^ old order
 
 -f wAT 
 DISENCHANTMENT 239 
 
 (to withstand the devastating advance of the new 
 spirit. She felt vaguely that she wished women and 
 things were both what they used to be; but this, since 
 she had little jmagmation, was as far as she penetrated 
 into the psychology of Gabriella's behaviour. 
 
 "But, you see, you're making the mistake of thinking 
 that I love George," said Gabriella, with a reasonable 
 ness which made Mrs. Fowler feel that she wanted to 
 scream, "and I don't love him I don't love him at all. 
 I haven't loved him for a long time not since the night 
 I saw him drunk. How could I love a man I've seen 
 drunk disgustingly drunk a man I couldn't respect? 
 I'm not made that way, and I can't help it. Some 
 women may be like that, but I'm not. I couldn't, even 
 if I wanted to, love a man who has treated me as 
 George has done. I don't see how any woman could 
 any woman with a particle of pride and self-respect. 
 Of course I had to live with him after I married him," 
 she finished abruptly. "Marriage isn't made for love. 
 I used to think it was but it isn't 
 
 "But, Gabriella, you don't mean you can't 
 
 Mrs. Fowler was really pitiable, for, after all, George 
 was her son, and the ties of blood would not break so 
 easily as the ties of marriage. In the depths of her 
 humiliation she had almost convinced herself that she 
 had never respected George, that she had never believed 
 in him, forgetting the pride and adoration of her young 
 motherhood. Whatever George did she could not 
 change his relation to her she could not shatter the 
 one indissoluble bond that holds mankind together. 
 
 "Gabriella, you don't you can't " she repeated 
 
 wildly. 
 
 Then, as Gabriella turned quickly and left the room,
 
 240 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Mrs. Fowler rose stoically to her feet, adjusted her 
 belt with a tremulous movement of her hands, and 
 smiled bravely as she went to the mirror to put on her 
 hat. Heartbroken and distraught of mind though she 
 was, she submitted instinctively to the lifelong tyranny 
 of appearances.
 
 CHAPTER H 
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 
 
 WITH deliberation Gabriella walked the length of 
 the hall to her room, turned and locked the door after 
 she had entered, and took off her hat and wraps and 
 put them away in the closet. Her head was still car 
 ried high and her eyes were defiant and dark in the 
 marble-like pallor of her face. Except for her burning 
 eyes and the scarlet line of her tightly closed lips, she 
 looked as still and as cold as a statue. 
 
 "I'd rather die than have them know that it made 
 any difference," she thought. "I'd rather die than 
 have them know that I cared." Then sinking into a 
 chair by the dressing-table, she laid her head on her 
 arm and wept tears, not of wounded love, but of deep 
 and passionate anger. 
 
 She had spoiled her life! Because of her mad and 
 headstrong folly, she had spoiled her life, and she was 
 barely twenty-seven! Had she been the veriest fool 
 she couldn't have done worse she who had thought 
 . herself so sensible, so strong, so efficient ! Jane couldn't 
 have done worse, and yet she had always despised 
 Jane for her weakness. But she had been as weak 
 as Jane, she had been as unreasonable, she had 
 been as incredibly sentimental and silly. And even 
 in her folly she had irretrievably failed. She had made 
 her choice, and yet she had not been able to keep the 
 
 241
 
 242 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 thing she had chosen. George had tired of her 
 * here was the sharpest sting a man had tired of her 
 after a few months had tired of her while she was still 
 deeply in love with him. Her humiliation, while she 
 sat there strangling her sobs, was so intense that it 
 ran in little flames over her body. At the moment she 
 was not angry with George, she was not even angry 
 with Florrie. It was as if all the slumbering violence 
 of her nature was aroused to a burning and relentless 
 hatred of her own weakness. This emotion, which was 
 so profound, so torrential, in its force that it seemed to 
 shake the depths of her being, left room for no other 
 feeling for no other thought in her consciousness. 
 She had but one life to live, and by her own fault, she 
 had ruined it in its beginning. 
 
 Then her mood changed, and she sat up, straight 
 and stern, while she wiped her reddened eyelids with an 
 impetuous and resolute gesture. No, she was not 
 crushed; she would not allow herself even to be hurt. 
 Her lot might be as sordid as Jane's, but she would make 
 it different by the strength and the effectiveness of her 
 resistance. She would never submit as Jane submitted; 
 she would never become, through sheer inertia, a part 
 of the ugliness that enveloped her. Thanks to the vein 
 \of iron in her soul she would never no, not if she 
 idied fighting become one of the victims of life. 
 
 Going into the dressing-room, she bathed her eyes 
 with cold water; and she was still drying them before the 
 mirror when the children came in, flushed and bloom 
 ing, with their hands in Miss Polly Hatch's. What 
 splendid children they were, she thought, looking 
 wistfully at their eager faces. Any father, any mother 
 in the world, might be proud of them. Fanny, the el-
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 243 
 
 der, was like an angel in her white fur coat and pert 
 little cap, with her short golden curls like bunches of 
 yellow silk on her shoulders, and her blue eyes, as grave 
 as a philosopher's, beaming softly under her thick jet- 
 black lashes. She was not particularly bright; she was, 
 for her age, an unconscionable snob; but no one could 
 deny that she was as beautiful as an angel to look 
 at. 
 
 "Miss Polly wanted to kiss me, mamma, but I 
 wouldn't," she said coolly as she examined a little bundle 
 of sewing the seamstress had put down on the table. 
 "I needn't kiss people if I don't want to, need I? Arch 
 ibald doesn't like to kiss either. He's naughty about 
 it sometimes when ladies ask him to. He doesn't like 
 scratchin'. Isn't it funny to call kissing, 'scratchin'? 
 He told me Miss Polly scratched him and he didn't like 
 it. He is afraid of her because she is so ugly. Why 
 are you ugly, Miss Polly? Couldn't you help it? Did 
 God make you ugly just for fun? Why doesn't he 
 make everybody pretty? I would if I were God. What 
 is God's last name? Archibald says it is Walker. Is 
 it Walker, mamma, and how does Archibald know? 
 Who told him 
 
 Wlien at last she was suppressed and sent out of 
 the room with the nurse, she went at a dancing step, 
 turning to make faces at Archibald, who stood stol 
 idly at his mother's knee, biting deep bites into a red 
 apple Miss Polly had given him. He was not a hand 
 some child, even Gabriella admitted that his spec 
 tacles spoiled his appearance; but he was remarkably 
 intelligent for his four years, and he was so strong and 
 sturdy that he had never had a day's illness in his life. 
 His face was unusually thoughtful and expressive, and
 
 244 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 his eyes, in spite of the disfiguring glasses, were large, 
 brown, and beautiful, with something of the luminous 
 softness of Cousin Jimmy's. Though she could not 
 remember her father, it pleased Gabriella to think that 
 Archibald was like him, and Miss Polly declared, with 
 conviction, that he was "already his living image." 
 Of the two children, for some obscure reason which she 
 could not define and which was probably rooted in in- 
 /stinct, Gabriella had the greater tenderness for her 
 J son; and though she denied this preference to herself, 
 Mrs. Fowler and Miss Polly had both commented upon 
 it. Even his temper, which was uncontrollable at 
 J times, endeared him to her, and the streak of savage in 
 his nature seemed to awaken some dim ancestral mem 
 ories in her brain. 
 
 "Thank Miss Polly for the apple and run away to 
 Fanny," said his mother, after she had held him pressed 
 closely to her breast for a minute. While she did so, she 
 felt, with profound sadness, that her whole universe had 
 dwindled down to her children. Of all her happiness 
 only her children remained to her. 
 
 "Don't want to run," replied Archibald with beaming 
 good humour. In his passion for brevity he eliminated 
 pronouns whenever it was possible. 
 
 "But Fanny is waiting for you." 
 
 "Would rather stay with mother than go with Fanny 
 and Mutton." That was another of his eccentric 
 ities. Just as he had insisted that God's "last name 
 was Walker," so he had begun of his own accord, and 
 for no visible reason, to call nurse "Mutton." He was 
 always fitting names of his own invention to persons; 
 and in his selection he was guided by a principle so ob 
 scure that Gabriella had never been able to discover its
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 245 
 
 origin. Thus his grandmother from the first had been 
 "Budd," and he had immediately started to call Miss 
 Polly "Pang." 
 
 "Don't you want to go back to the Park, Archibald? 
 You must finish your walk." 
 
 "Will the poor boy be there?" He never forgot 
 anything. It was quite probable that he would inquire 
 for "the poor boy" a year hence. 
 
 "Perhaps. You might take him an apple and a 
 penny." 
 
 He stood gravely considering the plan, with one hand 
 in his mother's and one on Miss Polly's knee. 
 
 "I'll take Pang to nurse him," he said when he had 
 decided against the suggestion of the apple and the 
 penny. "He hasn't any nurse, and Fanny wouldn't 
 like him to have hers. I'll take Pang." 
 
 "But Pang isn't a nurse, dear. There, now, run to 
 Fanny. Miss Polly lives so far away she can't stay 
 very long." 
 
 He went obediently, for he was usually amenable to 
 his mother's commands, stopping only once at the 
 door to ask if "Pang lived as far away as God and could 
 she manage to get a message to Him about the poor boy 
 needing shoes?" 
 
 "I declare I can't make out that child to save my 
 soul," remarked Miss Polly as he shut the door carefully 
 and ran down the hall to the nursery. "The more I 
 study him the curiouser he seems to me. If he wan't 
 so quick about some things you might think his wits 
 were sort of addled but they ain't, are they? Now, 
 whatever do you reckon put the notion in his head to 
 call me 'Pang?'" 
 
 All the smiling, circular wrinkles in her face were
 
 246 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 working with amusement while her little black eyes 
 twinkled like jet beads above the ruddy creases in her 
 cheeks. 
 
 "I can't imagine, for he must have made up the word 
 for himself. But don't you think he is like father, Miss 
 Polly? I love to hear you say so." 
 
 "That child? Why, he's the very spit of yo' pa, 
 Gabriella, and there ain't any two ideas about it. I 
 thought so the very first time I ever saw him, and now 
 that I come to think of it, it is exactly like yo' pa to be 
 makin' up all kinds of foolish names out of nothin'. 
 Yo' pa used to call me Poll Parrot, that he did." 
 
 "Mother thinks Archibald is going to be very much 
 like him. She saw him in the mountains last summer." 
 
 "So she told me when I was down home. You ain't 
 looking a bit well, Gabriella. You've got exactly the 
 look Miss Letty Marshall had before she came down 
 with heart complaint. The doctors were fussin' over 
 her for weeks before they could find out what the 
 trouble was, but I said all along it wan't nothin' in the 
 world but a bruised heart, and sure enough that was 
 just what they found out was the matter. You ain't 
 had a feelin' of heart burn after you eat, have you? 
 Sometimes it don't take you that way, though; you just 
 begin to have palpitations when you go up and down 
 stairs and then you start to wakin' up in the night 
 with shortness of breath. That's the way my Aunt 
 Lydy had it. You know I nursed her till she died, and 
 I've seen her get right black in the face when she 
 stooped to pick up a pin. It's her daughter Lydy that's 
 waiting on old Mrs. Peyton now. You know Mrs. 
 Peyton was feelin' kind of run down so her son Arthur 
 I call him Arthur to his face because I used to sew
 
 'A SECOND START IN LIFE 247 
 
 there when he wan't more'n knee high well, Arthur 
 said she'd have to have somebody to wait on her every 
 minute and she thought she'd rather have Lydy than 
 anybody else because Lydy was always so handy in a 
 sickroom. That was six months ago, and Lydy's been 
 stayin' on there ever since. She says there ain't any 
 body on earth like Mr. Arthur, and she never could 
 make out why you didn't marry him. He ain't ever 
 had an eye for anybody but you, and he's got yo' pic 
 ture the one in the white dress on his bureau and he 
 keeps a rose in a vase before it all the time. That 
 I ain't much like a man, but then there always was a heap 
 of a girl in Arthur in little ways, wan't there? " 
 
 "I wonder why I didn't marry him?" said Gabriella 
 softly; and not until Miss Polly answered her, was she 
 aware that she had spoken aloud. In her spiritual 
 
 J reaction from the grosser reality of passion, the delicacy 
 and remoteness of Arthur's love borrowed the pious 
 and mystic qualities of religious worship. She had 
 
 ^seen the sordid and ugly sides of sex; and she felt now a 
 profound disgust for the emotion which drew men and 
 women together for the light in the eyes, the touch of 
 the lips, the clinging of the hands. Once she had ideal 
 ized these things into love itself; now the very memory 
 
 i of them filled her with repulsion. She still wanted love, 
 but a love so pure, so disembodied, so ethereal that it 
 was liberated from the dominion of flesh. In the be 
 ginning, as a girl, she had accepted love as the supreme 
 good, as the essential reality; now, utterly disillu 
 sioned, she asked herself: "What is there left in life? 
 What is the thing that really counts, after all? What 
 is the possession that makes all the striving worth while 
 in the end? At twenty-seven love is over for me, and
 
 248 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 if love is over, what remains to fill the rest of my life? 
 There must be something else there must be a reality 
 somewhere which is truer, which is profounder, than 
 love." This, she knew, was the question which neither 
 tradition nor custom could answer. Religion, perhaps, 
 might have helped her; but it was characteristic of her 
 generation that she should give religion hardly a thought 
 as a possible solution of the problem of life. She 
 wanted substance, facts, experience; she wanted to ex 
 amine, to analyze, to discover; and it was just here that 
 religion hopelessly failed her as a guide. Faith she had 
 had in her cradle faith in life, faith in love, faith in 
 herself; and it was faith that had brought her to this 
 bleak disenchantment of spirit. No, she wanted knowl 
 edge now, not faith; she wanted truth, not illusion. 
 
 "Well, you never can tell about a thing like that," 
 Miss Polly was saying in her sprightly way, quite as if 
 she were discussing the pattern of a dress or the stitch 
 ing of a seam. "It was feelin', I reckon, and feelin' is 
 one of the things nobody can count on. But you did 
 mighty well, even if you didn't marry Arthur. I saw Mr. 
 George downtown yesterday, when I went around to 
 Stern's to match the edging for a baby dress, and I 
 thought to myself I'd seldom seen a ha'ndsomer piece 
 of flesh than he was. He was walkin' along up Fifth 
 Avenue with Florrie Spencer I'll always call her Flor- 
 rie Spencer I don't care how many times she marries 
 and everybody in the street turned right plumb round to 
 look at 'em. She's prettier than she ever was, ain't 
 she? And such a fit as her dress was! One of them 
 trailin' black things that fit as tight as wax over the 
 hips and flares out all round the feet. She was holdin* 
 up her skirts to show her feet, I reckon, and her collar
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 249 
 
 was so high behind her ears, she could hardly turn her 
 head to look at Mr. George. But I never saw anybody 
 with more style no, not if it was that Mrs. Pletheridge 
 who is everlastingly in the Sunday papers. I declare 
 Florrie's waist didn't look much bigger round than the 
 leg of that table honestly it didn't and her hat was 
 perched on a bandeau so high that you could see the new 
 sort of way she'd gone and had her hair crimped they 
 call it Marcellin' up here, don't they?" 
 
 "Was she with George?" asked Gabriella indiffer 
 ently. 
 
 "They were goin' to some restaurant or another for 
 tea, I reckon, and they certainly were a fine-lookin' 
 pair. I wish you could have seen 'em. Not that you 
 wouldn't have been a match for 'em," she added con 
 solingly. "You and Mr. George look mighty well 
 when you're together. You're just on a level, and if 
 you could manage to tighten yo' corset a little mite at the 
 waist, and hold yo'self with that bend out at the back the 
 way Florrie does, you'd have pretty near as fine a figure 
 as she has. Ain't it funny," she added irrelevantly, "but 
 I was just study in' last night about the way yo' ma used 
 to say that all yo' folks married badly. I reckon she 
 got that idea along of yo' pa's kin. You don't recollect 
 much about 'em, but one of yo' pa's brothers married a 
 woman who went clean deranged inside of a year and 
 tried to kill him. Then there was yo' Cousin Nelly 
 Harrison she married badly, or only middlin' well 
 anyway. There certainly was a lot of 'em when you 
 come to think not countin' Jane and Mr. Charley, and 
 I can't help what happens," she concluded sentimen 
 tally, "I ain't ever goin' back on Mr. Charley not 
 after the way he sent me two loads of coal the winter I
 
 250 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 was laid up with rheumatism and couldn't work. Well, 
 it's about time for me to be goin', Gabriella. If you 
 want me for anything, you just drop me a line to say 
 so. William's children are gettin' so big, I can come out 
 for the day 'most any time now, and if William's 
 courtin' goes on all right, I reckon he won't be wantin* 
 me much longer. He's been waitin' on a young woman 
 right steady for more'n six months, and it wouldn't 
 surprise me a bit if something was to come of it befo*. 
 summer." 
 
 "Then you'd go South again, wouldn't you?" There 
 was a wistful sound in Gabriella's voice as she put the 
 question. Miss Polly was a tiresome person, but at 
 least she was faithful, and long habit had established a 
 bond of tolerance, if not of affection, between them. In 
 the last few months Gabriella had grown to look upon 
 her as the one living association with her childhood, 
 and she was so lonely that she dreaded to sever the 
 single tie with the past that still remained to her. "I 
 believe she'd work her fingers to the bone for me, and, 
 of course, she can't help being so garrulous," she thought. 
 
 "I reckon I will, if it comes to that, but I'd hate like 
 anything to leave you and the children," answered Miss 
 Polly. "I feel somehow as if I belonged up here with 
 you all, and I've grown real fond of Archibald." 
 
 "Yes, I'd hate to give you up," said Gabriella, as 
 she let her go and turned back again into the room. 
 Her brain had worked quickly while Miss Polly was 
 talking, and the undercurrent of gossip had helped, 
 rather than retarded, the clearness and rapidity of her 
 thoughts. All her weakness, all her anger had passed. 
 She saw the situation without exaggeration and without 
 illusion, for she had made her decision in the few minutes
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 251 
 
 between the entrance and the departure of the seam 
 stress. The embittering memories of her life with 
 George were submerged in the invigorating waves of 
 energy that flooded her being. Her inert body re 
 sponded to the miraculous restoration of her spirit; 
 and, while she walked swiftly from the door to the win 
 dow, she had a sensation of lightness and ease as if she 
 had just awakened from a refreshing sleep. For seven 
 years all the strength of her character had been drained 
 by the supreme function of motherhood; but now her 
 children had ceased to need the whole of her life, and 
 she was free to belong at least in part to herself free to 
 
 Center unrestricted into the broader human activities. 
 
 *And, above all, she was free from George. She had 
 escaped from the humiliating bondage of her marriage; 
 for, since he had broken the tie between them, she 
 realized with a strange, an almost unnatural, exhilara 
 tion, how little except duty how little except the bare 
 legal husk of the marriage contract still held her to 
 him. She had loved him once, but she loved him no 
 
 longer, and she resolved passionately that she would 
 "hot allow her life to be spoiled because of a single mis 
 take. Seven years were lost out of her youth, it was 
 true, but those years had given her her children, and so 
 they were not wasted in spite of the mistakes she had 
 made, of the shame she had suffered. Judged simply 
 as a machine she was of greater value at twenty-seven 
 than she had been at twenty, and a part of this value 
 lay in her deeper knowledge of life. She had had her 
 adventure, and she was cured forever of adventurous 
 desires. Her imagination, as well as her body, was 
 firmer, harder, more disciplined than it had been in her 
 girlhood; and if her vision of the universe was less
 
 252 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 sympathetic, it was also less sentimental. The bluest 
 eyes in the world, she told herself sternly, could not 
 trouble her fancy to-day, nor could the wildest romance 
 quicken her pulses. 
 
 A wagon, filled with blue and white hyacinths, passed 
 by in the street, and while she watched it, there flashed 
 into her mind, with the swiftness of light, a memory of 
 the evening when she had broken her engagement to 
 Arthur. All her life he had loved her, and, but for an 
 accident, she might have married him. If she had not 
 seen George at Florrie's party if she had not seen him 
 under a yellow lantern, with t,ae glow in his eyes, and a 
 dreamy waltz floating from the arbour of roses at the 
 end of the garden if this had not happened, she would 
 have married Arthur instead of George, and her whole 
 life would have been different. Because of a single 
 instant, because of a chance meeting, she had wrecked 
 the happiness of three lives. Now, when the bloom had 
 dropped from her love, it was impossible for her to 
 gather the withered leaves and bare stems in her hands 
 and find any fragrance about them; it was impossible 
 for her to understand how or why she had followed so 
 fleeting an impulse. People had told her that love 
 lasted forever, yet she knew that her emotion for George 
 was so utterly dead that there was no warmth left in 
 the ashes. It had all been so vivid once, and now it was 
 as dull and colourless as the dust drifting after the blue 
 and white hyacinths. 
 
 From the trail of dust and the fragrance of the 
 hyacinths, Arthur's face floated up to her, grave, gentle, 
 and thin-featured, with its look of detached culture, of 
 nameless distinction. She recalled the colour of his 
 eyes, as clear and cool as running water, his sensitive
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 253 
 
 lips under the thin, brown moustache, and his slender, 
 aristocratic hands, with their touch as soft and as 
 tender as a woman's. "He had intellect he had 
 culture I suppose these are the things that really 
 matter," she thought, for George, she knew, possessed 
 neither of these qualities. And, as she remembered 
 Arthur, she was stirred, not by tenderness, but by a 
 passionate gratitude. He had loved her, and by loving 
 her, he had saved her pride from defeat. In the 
 hour of her deepest humiliation, she found comfort in 
 the knowledge of his bleeding heart, of his tragic and 
 beautiful loyalty; for thorgh she was strong enough to 
 live without love, she was not strong enough to live 
 with the thought that no man had ever loved her. 
 
 For a few minutes she allowed her fancy to play with 
 the comforting memory of Arthur's devotion with 
 the image of her photograph on his bureau and the 
 single rose in the vase he kept always before it. "But 
 for an accident I might have loved him," she said, and 
 the thought of this love which might have been sent a 
 wave of sweetness to her heart. "I might have loved 
 him and been happy." The vision was so danger 
 ously beautiful that she put it resolutely away from 
 her, and told herself, with an effort to be philosophical, 
 that there was no use whatever in regretting the past, 
 and since love was over for her, she must set her mind 
 to solve the problem of work. "I've got my life to 
 live," she said with stoical calmness, "and however bad 
 it is I've nobody to blame for it but myself." 
 
 Then, because she had only one talent, however 
 small, she changed her dress, and went out to ask for a 
 position as designer, saleswoman, or milliner in the 
 house of Dinard.
 
 254 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 The Irish woman, voluble, painted, powdered, be- 
 wigged, and with the remains of her handsome figure 
 laced into a black satin gown, nodded her false golden 
 locks and smiled an ambiguous smile when she heard 
 the explanation of young Mrs. Fowler's afternoon 
 call. 
 
 "But, no, it ees impossible," she protested, forgetting 
 her foreign shrug and preserving with difficulty the 
 trace of an accent. Then, becoming suddenly natural 
 as she realized that no immediate profit was to be 
 derived from affectation, she added decisively, "you 
 have no training, and I have quite as many salesladies 
 as I need at this season. Not that you are not chic," 
 she hastened to conclude, "not that you would not in 
 appearance be an adornment to any establishment." 
 
 "I am willing to do anything," said Gabriella, press 
 ing her point with characteristic tenacity. "I want to 
 learn, you know, I want to learn everything I possibly 
 can. You yourself told me that I had a natural gift 
 for designing, and I am anxious to turn it to some ac 
 count. I believe I can make a very good milliner, 
 and I want to try." 
 
 "But what would Madame Fowler, your mother-in- 
 law, say to this? Surely no one would want to earn 
 her living unless she was obliged to." 
 
 For Madame had known life, as she often remarked, 
 and the knowledge so patiently acquired had gone far 
 to confirm her natural suspicion of human nature. 
 She had got on, as she observed in confidential moments, 
 b TT believing in nobody; and this skepticism, which was 
 fundamental and rooted in principle, had inspired her 
 behaviour not only to her patrons, but to her husband, 
 her children, her domestic servants, her tradespeople,
 
 A SECOND START IN LIFE 255 
 
 and the policeman at the corner. Thirty years ago 
 she had suspected the entire masculine world of amo 
 rous designs upon her person; to-day, secretly numbering 
 her years at sixty-two, and publicly acknowledging forty- 
 five of them, she suspected the same world of equally 
 active, if less romantic, intentions regarding her purse. 
 And if she distrusted men, she both distrusted and 
 despised women. She distrusted and despised them 
 because they were poor workers, because they were 
 idlers by nature, because they allowed themselves to 
 be cheated, slighted, underpaid, underfed, and op 
 pressed, and, most of all, she despised them because 
 they were the victims of their own emotions. Love 
 was all very well, she was accustomed to observe, 
 as a pleasurable pursuit, but, as with any other pur 
 suit, when it began to impair the appetite and to affect 
 the quality and the quantity of one's work, then a 
 serious person would at once contrive to get rid of the 
 passion. And Madame prided herself with reason upon 
 being a strictly serious person. She had been through 
 the experience of love innumerable times; she had lost 
 four husbands, and, as she pointed out with compla 
 cency, she was still living. 
 
 In the dubious splendour of her showrooms, which 
 were curtained and carpeted in velvet, and decorated 
 with artificial rose-bushes flowering magnificently from 
 white and gold jardinieres, six arrogant young women, in 
 marvellously fitting gowns of black satin, strolled back 
 and forth all day long, or stood gracefully, with the exag 
 gerated curve of the period, awaiting possible customers. 
 Though they were as human within as Madame Dinard 
 and beneath her make-up she was very human indeed 
 nothing so variable as an expression ever crossed the
 
 
 256 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 waxlike immobility of their faces; and while they trailed 
 their black satin trains over the rich carpets, amid the 
 lustrous piles of silks and velvets which covered the 
 white and gold tables, they appeared to float through an 
 atmosphere of eternal enchantment. Watching them, 
 Gabriella wondered idly if they could ever unbend at the 
 waist, if they could ever let down those elaborate and 
 intricate piles of hair. Then she overheard the tallest 
 and most arrogant of them remark, "I'm just crazy 
 about him, but he's dead broke," and she realized that 
 they also belonged to the unsatisfied world of human 
 ity. 
 
 Madame, who had slipped away to answer the tele 
 phone, came rustling back, and sank, wheezing, into a 
 white and gilt chair, which was too small to contain the 
 whole of her ample person. Though she had spoken 
 quite sharply at the telephone, her voice was melli 
 fluous when she attuned it to Gabriella. 
 
 "That gown is perfect on you," she remarked in 
 honied accents. " It was one of my best models last sea 
 son, and as I said before, Madame, you are so fortunate 
 as to wear your clothes with a grace." She was urbane, 
 but she was anxious to be rid of her, this young Mrs. 
 Fowler could see at a glance. "Your head is well set 
 on your shoulders, and that is rare very rare! It 
 would surprise you to know how few women have heads 
 that are well set on their shoulders. Yes, I understand. 
 You wish to learn, but not to make a living. That is 
 very good, for the only comfortable way for a woman 
 to make her living is to marry one a man is the only 
 perfectly satisfactory means of livelihood. I tell this 
 to my daughter, who wishes to go on the stage. If you 
 are looking for pleasure, that is different, but when
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 257 
 
 ^ you talk of a living well, there is but one way to 
 insure it, and that is to marry a man who is able to pro- 
 
 ' vide it either as allowance or as alimony. The best 
 that a woman can do gives her only bread and meat 
 
 t an existence, not a living. Only a man can provide 
 one with the essential things with clothes and jewels 
 and carriages and trips to Europe. These are the im 
 portant things in life, and what woman was ever able 
 to procure these except from a man?" 
 
 Her face, so thickly covered with rouge and liquid 
 powder that it was as expressionless as a mask, turned 
 its hollow eyes on a funeral which was slowly passing 
 in the street; and though her creed was hardly the kind 
 to fortify one's spiritual part against the contemplation 
 of death, she surveyed the solemn procession as tran 
 quilly as any devoted adherent of either religion or phi 
 losophy could have done. Not a shadow passed over 
 her fantastic mockery of youth as she glanced back at 
 her visitor. 
 
 "But you have worked you have supported your 
 self," insisted Gabriella with firmness. 
 
 "Myself and six children, to say nothing of three 
 husbands. Yes, I supported three of my four hus 
 bands, but what did I get out of it?" replied Madame, 
 shrugging her ample shoulders. "What was there in 
 it for me? Since we are talking freely, I may say that 
 I have worked hard all my life, and I got nothing out 
 of it that I couldn't have got with much less trouble by a 
 suitable marriage. Of course this is not for my girls to 
 hear. I don't tell them this, but it is true nevertheless. 
 
 kMen should do the work of the world, and they should 
 
 I support women; that is how God intended it, that is 
 according to both nature and religion; any priest will
 
 258 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 say as much to you." And she, who had deified both 
 God and Nature, wagged her false golden head toward 
 the funeral procession. 
 
 "Yet you have been successful. You have built up a 
 good business. The work has repaid you." 
 
 "A woman's work!" She snapped her gouty fingers 
 vivith a playful gesture. "Does a woman's work ever 
 repay her? Think of the pleasures I have missed in my 
 life the excursions, the theatres, the shows. All these 
 ; I might have had if I hadn't shut myself up every day 
 until dark. And now you wish to do this ! You with 
 your youth, with your style, with your husband!" 
 
 She protested, she pleaded, she reasoned, but in the 
 end Gabriella won her point by the stubborn force of 
 her will. Madame would take her for a few weeks, a 
 few months, a few years, as long as she cared to stay 
 and gave satisfaction. Madame would have her taught 
 what she could learn, would discover by degrees the 
 natural gifts and the amount of training already possessed 
 by young Mrs. Fowler. Young Mrs. Fowler, on the other 
 hand, must "stand around" when required in the show 
 rooms (it was just here that Gabriella won her victory) ; 
 she must assist at the ordering of gowns, at the selec 
 tions, and while Madame's patrons were fitted, young 
 Mrs. Fowler must be prepared to assume graceful atti 
 tudes in the background and to offer her suggestions 
 with a persuasive air. Suggestions, even futile ones, 
 offered in a charming voice from a distinguished figure 
 in black satin had borne wonderful results in Madame's 
 experience. 
 
 "I began that way myself, Mrs. Fowler. You may 
 not believe it, but I was once slenderer than you are 
 my waist measured only nineteen inches and my bust
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 259 
 
 thirty-six just the figure a man most admires. The 
 result was, you see, that I have had four husbands, 
 though it is true that I supported three of them, and it 
 is always easy to marry if one provides the support. 
 Men are like that. It is their nature. Yes, I began 
 that way with little training, but much natural talent, 
 and a head full of ideas. If one has ideas it is always 
 possible to become a success, but they are rarer even 
 than waists measuring nineteen inches. And I had 
 charm, though you might not believe it now, for charm 
 does not wear. But I made my way up from the bot 
 tom, first as errand girl, at the age of ten, and I made it, 
 not by work, for I could never handle a needle, but by 
 ideas. They were once plentiful, and now they are so 
 scarce," she broke off with a sigh of resignation which 
 seemed to accept every fact of experience except the 
 fact of age. "It was a hard life, but it was life, after 
 all. One is not put here to be contented, or one would 
 dread death too much for the purpose of God." In 
 spite of her uncompromising materialism, she was not 
 without an ineradicable streak of superstition which she 
 would probably have called piety. 
 
 "I am ready to begin at once to-morrow," said 
 Gabriella, and she added without explanation, obeying, 
 perhaps, an intuitive feeling that to explain a statement 
 is to weaken it, "and I should like to be called by my 
 maiden name while I am here just Mrs. Carr, if you 
 don't mind." 
 
 To this request Madame agreed with effusion, if not 
 with sincerity. For her own part she would have pre 
 ferred to speak of her saleswoman as young Mrs. Fow 
 ler; but she reflected comfortably that many of her 
 patrons would know young Mrs. Fowler by sight at
 
 260 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 least, and to the others she might conveniently drop a 
 word or two in due season. To drop a word or two 
 would provide entertainment throughout the length 
 of a fitting; and, for the rest, the mystery of the situa 
 tion had its charm for the romantic Irish strain in her 
 blood. The prospect of securing both entertainment 
 and mystery at the modest expenditure of fifteen dol 
 lars a week impressed her as very good business, 
 for she combined in the superlative degree the opposite 
 qualities of romance and economy. To be sure, ex 
 cept for the advertisement she afforded and the 
 gossip she provided, young Mrs. Fowler might not 
 prove to be worth even her modest salary; but there 
 was, on the other hand, a remote possibility that she 
 might turn out to be gifted, and Madame would then 
 be able to use her inventiveness to some purpose before 
 the gifted one discovered her value. In any case, Ma 
 dame was at liberty to discharge her with a day's notice, 
 and her salary would hardly be increased for three 
 months even should she persist in her eccentricity and 
 develop a positive talent for dressmaking. And if 
 young Mrs. Fowler could do nothing else, Madame re 
 flected as they parted, she could at least receive cus 
 tomers and display models with an imposing, even an 
 aristocratic, demeanour. 
 
 To receive Madame's customers and display Ma- 
 dame's models were the last occupations Gabriella would 
 have chosen had she been able to penetrate Madame's 
 frivolous wig to her busy brain and detect her prudent 
 schemes for the future; but the girl was sick of her 
 iependence on George's father, and, in the revolt 
 her pride, she would have accepted any honest 
 work which would have enabled her to escape from the
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 261 
 
 I insecurity of her position. Of her competence to earn 
 . a living, of her ability to excel in any work that she 
 ? undertook, of the sufficiency and soundness of her 
 ( resources, she was as absolutely assured as she had 
 (been when she entered the millinery department 
 of Brandywine & Plummer. If Madame, starting 
 penniless, had nevertheless contrived, through her na 
 tive abilities, to support three husbands and six chil 
 dren, surely the capable and industrious Gabriella 
 might assume smaller burdens with the certainty of 
 moderate success. It was not, when one considered 
 it, the life which one would have chosen, but who, 
 since the world began, had ever lived exactly the 
 life of his choice? Many women, she reflected stoi 
 cally, were far worse off than she, since she started 
 not only with a modicum of business experience (for 
 surely the three months with Brandywine & Plum- 
 tmer might weigh as that) but with a knowledge of 
 4 the world and a social position which she had found 
 to be fairly marketable. That Madame Dinard would 
 have accepted an unknown and undistinguished appli 
 cant for work at a salary of fifteen dollars a week 
 she did not for an instant imagine. This inadequate 
 sum, she concluded with a touch of ironic humour, rep 
 resented the exact value in open market of her marriage 
 to George. 
 
 In the front room, where a sparse mid-winter collec 
 tion of hats ornamented the scattered stands, she 
 stopped for a few minutes to inspect, with a critical eye, 
 the dingy array. "I wonder what makes them buy 
 so many they can't sell?" she said half aloud to the 
 model at which she was gazing. "Nobody would 
 wear these hats certainly nobody who could afford
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 to buy Parisian models. I could design far better 
 hats than these, I myself, and if I were the head of the 
 house I should never have accepted any of them, no 
 matter who bought them. I suppose, after all, it's the 
 fault of the buyer, but it's a waste it's not economy." 
 Lifting a green velvet toque trimmed with a skinny 
 white ostrich feather from the peg before which she was 
 standing, she surveyed the august French name em 
 blazoned in gold on the lining. "Everything isn't good 
 that conies from Paris," she thought, with a shrug which 
 was worthy of Madame at her best. " Why, I wonder, 
 can't Americans produce 'ideas' themselves? Why do 
 we always have to depend on the things the French 
 send over to us? Half the hats and gowns Madame has 
 aren't really good, and yet she makes people pay 
 tremendous prices for things she knows are bad and 
 undistinguished. All that ought to be changed, and 
 if I ever succeed, if I ever catch on, I am going to 
 change it." An idea, a whole flock of ideas, came 
 to her while she stood there with her rapt gaze on 
 the green velvet toque, which nobody had bought, 
 and which she knew would shortly be "marked down," 
 august French name included, from forty to fifteen 
 and from fifteen to five dollars. Her constructive 
 imagination was at work recreating the business, 
 and she saw it in fancy made over and made right from 
 the bottom she saw Madame's duplicity succeeded by 
 something of Brandywine & Plummer's inflexible hon 
 esty, and the flimsy base of the structure supplanted 
 by a solid foundation of credit. For she had come 
 often enough to Dinard's to discern the slipshod and 
 unsystematic methods beneath the ornate and ex 
 travagant surface. Her naturally quick powers of ob-
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 263 
 
 servation had detected at a glance conditions of which 
 the elder Mrs. Fowler was never aware. To sell gowns 
 and hats at treble their actual value, to cajole her cus- 
 
 ^tomers into buying what they did not want and what 
 did not suit them, to give inferior goods, inferior work 
 manship, inferior style wherever they would be ac 
 cepted, and to get always the most money for the least 
 possible expenditure of ability, industry, and honesty 
 these were the fundamental principles, Gabriella had 
 already discovered, beneath Madame's flourishing, but 
 shallow-rooted, prosperity. Brandywine & Plummer 
 did not carry Parisian models; their shop was not fash 
 ionable in the way that the establishment of a New 
 York dressmaker and milliner must be fashionable; 
 but the standard of excellence in all things excepting 
 
 * style was far higher in the old Broad Street house in the 
 middle 'nineties than it was at Madame Dinard's dur 
 ing the early years of the new century. Quality had 
 been essential in every hat that went from Brandywine 
 & Plummer's millinery department; and Gabriella, de 
 riving from a mother who worked only in fine linen, 
 rejected instinctively the cheap, the tawdry, and the 
 inferior. She had heard a customer complain one day 
 of the quality of the velvet on a hat Madame had made 
 to order; and pausing to look at the material as she 
 went out, she had decided that the most prosperous 
 house in New York could not survive many incidents of 
 that deplorable sort. To be sure, such material would 
 not have been supplied to Mrs. Pletheridge, or even to 
 the elder Mrs. Fowler, who, though Southern, was 
 always particular and very often severe; but here 
 again, since this cheap hat had been sold at a high price, 
 was a vital weakness in Madame's business philosophy.
 
 264 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 On the whole, there were many of Madame's methods 
 which might be improved; and when Gabriella passed 
 through the ivory and gold doorway into the street, 
 she had convinced herself that she was preeminently 
 designed by Nature to undertake the necessary work 
 of improvement. The tawdriness she particularly dis 
 liked the trashy gold and ivory of the decorations, 
 the artificial rose-bushes from which the dust was never 
 removed, the sumptuous velvet carpets which were not 
 taken up in the summer. 
 
 While she was crossing the street a man joined her; 
 and glancing up as soon as she was clear of the traffic, 
 she saw that it was Judge Crowborough. In the last 
 seven years her dislike for him had gradually disap 
 peared, and though she had never found him attractive, 
 she had grown to accept the general estimate of his 
 character and ability. A man so gifted ought not 
 to be judged as severely as poorer or less actively 
 intelligent mortals; and as long as other men did not 
 | judge him, she felt no inclination to usurp so unfeminine 
 a prerogative. He had always been kind to her, and 
 she understood now from his manner that he meant to 
 be still kinder. It occurred to her at once that he knew 
 of George's infatuation for Florrie, and that he was 
 chivalrously extending to George's wife a sympathy 
 which he would probably have withheld in such circum 
 stances from his own. Had it been possible she would 
 have liked to explain to him that in her case his 
 sympathy was not needed; but she realized, with 
 resentment, that one of her most galling burdens would 
 be the wasted pity which her unfortunate situation 
 would inspire in the friends of the family. Social 
 conventions made it impossible for her to tell the world,
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 265 
 
 including Judge Crowborough, that George's infidelity 
 was a matter of slight importance to her, since it struck 
 only at her pride, not at her heart. Her pride, it is 
 true, had suffered sharply for an hour; but so super- 
 was the wound that the distraction of seeking 
 work had been almost sufficient to heal it. 
 
 "A most extraordinary day for January," remarked 
 the judge as they reached a corner. "You hardly 
 need your furs, the air is so mild." 
 
 Overhead small, birdlike clouds drifted in flocks 
 across a sky of changeable brightness, and the wind, 
 blowing past the tray of a flower vendor at the corner, 
 was faintly scented with violets. It was 'one of those 
 rare days when happiness seems as natural as the wind 
 or the sunlight, when the wildest dreams appear not 
 too wild to come true in reality, when one hopes by 
 instinct and believes, not with the reason, but with the 
 blood. To Gabriella, forgetting her humiliation, it 
 was a day when life for the sake of the mere act of liv 
 ing when life, in spite of disappointment and loss 
 and treachery and shame, was enough to set the heart 
 bounding with happiness. For she was one of those 
 who loved life, not for what it brought to her of pleasure, 
 but for what it was in itself. 
 
 "Yes, it is a lovely afternoon," she answered, and 
 added impulsively: "It is good to be alive, isn't it?" 
 She had forgotten George, but even if she had remem 
 bered him, it would have made little difference. For 
 six years, not for a few hours, George had been lost to 
 her; and in six years one has time to forget almost any 
 thing. 
 
 The judge's answer to this was a look which pene 
 trated like a flash of light into her brain. By this
 
 266 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 light she read all that he thought of her, and she saw 
 that he was divided between admiration of her spirit 
 and an uneasy suspicion of its perfect propriety. Her 
 offence, she knew, was that, being by all the logic of 
 facts an unhappy wife, she should persist so stubbornly 
 in denying the visible evidence of her unhappiness. 
 Had her denial been merely a pretence, it would, ac 
 cording to his code, have appeared both natural and 
 womanly; but the conviction that she was sincere, that 
 she was not lying, that she was not even tragically 
 "keeping up an appearance," increased the amazement 
 and suspicion with which he had begun to regard 
 her. He walked on thoughtfully at her side, fingering 
 the end of his long yellowish-gray moustache, and 
 bending his sleepy gaze on the pavement. When he 
 was thinking, he always looked as if he were falling 
 asleep, and he seldom made a remark, even to a woman, 
 without thinking it over. Into his small steel-gray 
 eyes, surrounded by purplish and wrinkled puffs of 
 skin, there crept the cautious and secretive look he 
 wore at directors' meetings, while a furtive smile flick 
 ered for an instant across his loose mouth under the 
 drooping ends of his moustache. His ungainly body, 
 with its curious suggestion of over-ripeness, of waning 
 power, straightened suddenly as if in reaction from 
 certain destructive processes within his soul. Though 
 he was only just passing his prime, he had lived so 
 rapidly that he bore already the marks of age in his 
 face and figure. 
 
 "Yes, it's good to be alive," he assented, for there was 
 nothing in either his philosophy or his experience to con 
 tradict this simple statement. "I've always maintained, 
 by the way, that happiness is the chief of the virtues."
 
 , SECOND START IN LIFE 267 
 
 For an instant Gabriella looked at the sky; then turn 
 ing her candid eyes to his, she answered: "Happiness 
 and courage. I put courage first before everything." 
 
 Her gaze dropped, but not until she had seen his 
 look change and the slightly cynical smile the smile 
 of one who has examined everything and believes 
 in nothing fade from his lips. She had touched some 
 chord deep down within him of which he had long 
 ago forgotten even the existence some echoed har 
 mony of what had been perhaps the living faith of his 
 youth. 
 
 "You're a gallant soul," he said briefly, and she won 
 dered what it was that he knew, what it was that he was 
 keeping back. 
 
 At the corner where they parted, he stood for a few 
 moments, holding her hand in his big, soft grasp while he 
 looked down on her. The suspicion and the cynicism 
 had gone from his face, and she understood all at once 
 why people still trusted him, still liked him, notwith 
 standing his reputation, notwithstanding even his 
 repulsiveness. He was all that he was immoral, he 
 was repulsive but he was something else also he was 
 human. 
 
 When she entered the house her first feeling was that 
 the old atmosphere had returned, the old suspense, the 
 old waiting, the old horror of impending calamity. A 
 nervous dread made her hesitate to mount the steps, 
 to go to her room, to inquire in a natural voice for the 
 children. It was imaginary, of course, she assured her 
 self, but it was very vivid as long as it lasted. Then 
 she noticed that the usual order of the hall was dis 
 turbed, and when she rang, Burrows came, with a hur 
 ried, apologetic manner, after keeping her waiting.
 
 268 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Mrs. Fowler's fur scarf hung on the massive oak post 
 of the staircase; the cards in the little tray on the hall 
 table were scattered about; and the petals of a yellow 
 chrysanthemum were strewn over the carpet. 
 
 Burrows, instead of explaining the confusion, ap 
 peared embarrassed when she questioned him, and 
 spurred by a sharp foreboding, she ran up the stairs 
 to her mother-in-law's sitting-room. At her entrance 
 a trembling voice wailed in a tone of remonstrance : 
 
 "Oh, Gabriella, have you been out?" 
 
 "Yes, I've been out. Mamma, what is the matter?" 
 
 "I looked for you everywhere. Archibald has been 
 here, but he has just gone out again. I have never seen 
 
 him so deeply moved so so indignant ' Mrs. 
 
 Fowler broke off, bit her lip nervously, and paused 
 while she tried to swallow her sobs. Her hat lay on a 
 chair at her side, and in her hands she held a pair of 
 half-soiled white gloves, which she smoothed out on her 
 knee, as if she were hardly aware of what she was doing. 
 In her blue eyes, so like George's, there was an agonizing 
 terror and suspense. Her usually florid face was pale 
 to the lips; and this pallor appeared to accentuate the 
 dark, faintly lined shadows beneath her eyes and the 
 grayness of her rigidly waved hair. 
 
 "Courage!" said Gabriella in a whisper to herself, 
 and aloud she asked gently: "Dear mamma, what is 
 it? Don't be afraid. I can bear it." 
 
 "Archibald has ordered George out of the house. 
 He George, I mean had given him his promise not 
 to see Florrie again, and it seems that he he broke it. 
 There has been a dreadful scene. I never imagined 
 that Archibald could be so angry. He was terrible 
 and he is ill anyway and in great trouble about his
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 269 
 
 financial affairs. I have been worried to death 
 about him for weeks. He says things are going 
 so badly downtown that he can't stave off the crash 
 
 i any longer, and now this this She broke down 
 
 utterly, burying her convulsed face in her hands, which 
 even in the instant of horror and tragedy, Gabriella 
 
 r noticed, had been manicured since the morning. 
 "George has gone we think he has gone off with 
 Florrie," she cried, "and he he will never come back 
 as long as Archibald lives." 
 
 She was not thinking of Gabriella. True to the 
 deepest instincts of her nature, she thought first of her 
 son, then of her husband. It was not that she did not 
 care for her daughter-in-law, did not sympathize; but 
 the fact remained that Gabriella was only George's wife 
 to her, while George was flesh of her flesh, bone of her 
 bone, soul of her soul. Though her choice was not 
 deliberate, though it was unconscious and instinctive 
 nevertheless, she had chosen. At the crucial moment 
 instinct had risen superior to reason, and she had 
 chosen, not with her judgment, but with every quiver 
 ing nerve and fibre of her being. Gabriella was right, / 
 but George was her son; and had it been possible to ^ 
 secure George's happiness by sacrificing the right to the 
 wrong, she would have made that sacrifice without hesi 
 tation, without scruple, and without regret. 
 
 "There's his father now," she whispered, lifting her 
 disfigured face. "Oh, Gabriella, I believe it will kill 
 me!" 
 
 While Gabriella stood there waiting for George's 
 father to enter, and listening to his slow, deliberate 
 tread on the stairs, the heavy, laborious tread of a man 
 who is uncertain of his strength, she remembered
 
 270 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 vividly, as if she were living it over again, the night she 
 had waited by her fire to tell George that his first child 
 was to be born. Many thoughts passed through her 
 mind, and at last these thoughts resolved themselves 
 into a multitude of crowding images all distinct and 
 vivid images of George's face. She saw his face as she 
 had first seen and loved it, with its rich colouring, its 
 blue-gray eyes, like wells of romance she had once 
 thought, its look of poetry and emotion which had cov 
 ered so much that was merely commonplace and gross. 
 She saw him as he had looked at their marriage, as he 
 had looked, bending over her after her first child was 
 born, and then she saw him as he had parted from her 
 that morning flushed, sneering, a little coarsened, but 
 still boyish, still charming. Well, it was all over now. 
 It had been over so long that she had even ceased to 
 regret it for she was not by nature one of the women 
 who could wear mourning for a lifetime. 
 
 The door opened: Archibald Fowler came in very 
 slowly; and the first sight of his face brought home to 
 her with a shock the discovery that he was the one of 
 them who had suffered most. He looked an old man; 
 his gentle scholar's face had taken an ashen hue; and his 
 eyes were the eyes of one who has only partially recov 
 ered from the blow that has prostrated him. 
 
 "My dear child," he said; "my dear daughter," and 
 laid his hand on her shoulder. 
 
 She clung to him, feeling a passionate pity, not for 
 herself, but for him. "You have too much to bear," 
 she murmured caressingly. "You mustn't take it like 
 this. You must try to get over it. For all our sakes 
 you must try to get over it." The irony of it all that 
 she should be consoling her husband's father for her
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 271 
 
 husband's desertion of her did not appear to her until 
 long afterwards. At the time she thought only that she 
 that somebody must make the tragedy easier for 
 him to bear. 
 
 "Come and sit down, Archibald," said Mrs. Fowler 
 pleadingly. "Let me give you a glass of sherry and a 
 biscuit; you are too tired to talk." 
 
 There was the old devotion in her manner, but there 
 was also a new deference. For the first time in thirty 
 years of marriage he had shown his strength to her, not 
 his gentleness; for the first time he had opposed his will 
 to hers in the cause of justice, and he had conquered 
 her. In spite of her anguish, something of the romantic 
 expectancy of her first love had returned to her heart 
 and it showed in her softened voice, in her timid caresses, 
 in her wistful eyes, which held a pathetic and startled 
 brightness. He had triumphed in honour; and if her 
 defeat had not involved George, she could almost have 
 gloried in the completeness of her surrender. 
 
 He sat down with the air of a man who is not entirely 
 awake to his surroundings; and his wife, after ordering 
 the sherry, hovered over him with the touching solici 
 tude of one who is living for the moment in the shadow 
 of memory. While he sipped the wine, he waited until 
 Burrows' footsteps had passed down the staircase, and 
 then said with his usual quietness: 
 
 "There is something else, Evelyn, that I kept back. 
 I couldn't tell you while you were so worried about 
 George, but there is something else ' 
 
 She caught the words from him eagerly, with a ges 
 ture almost of relief. 
 
 "You mean it has come at last. I suspected it, and, 
 oh, Archibald, I don't care I don't care! "
 
 272 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "There were several failures to-day in Wall Street, 
 
 and " He broke off as if he were too tired to go on, 
 
 and added slowly after a moment: "I am too old to be 
 gin again. I'd like to go back home to go back to the 
 South for my old age. Yes, I'm old." 
 
 But his wife was on her knees beside him, with her 
 arms about his neck and her face hidden on his breast. 
 
 "I don't care, I never cared," she said in a voice that 
 was almost exultant. "We can be happy on so little 
 happier than we've ever been in our lives just you and 
 I to grow old together. We can go home to Virginia 
 to some small place and be happy. Happiness costs so 
 little." 
 
 Slipping away, Gabriella went into the hall, and pass 
 ing her room, noiselessly pushed open the door of the 
 nursery, where the children were sleeping. A night 
 lamp was burning in one corner under a dark shade, 
 and the nurse's knitting, a pile of white yarn, was 
 lying on the table in the circle of green light, which 
 was as soft as the glimmer of a glow-worm in a thicket. 
 In their two little beds, separated by a strip of white 
 rug, the children were sleeping quietly, with a wonder 
 ful freshness, like the dew of innocence, on their 
 faces. Frances lay on her back, very straight and 
 prim even in sleep, with the sheet folded neatly under 
 her dimpled chin, her hands clasped on her breast, 
 and her golden curls spread in perfect order over the 
 lace-trimmed pillow. Her miniature features, framed 
 in the dim gold of her hair, had the trite prettiness of an 
 angel on a Christmas card; and beside her ethereal 
 loveliness there was something gnome-like in the 
 dark sturdiness of Archibald, who slept on his side, 
 with his fists pressed tightly under the pillow, and the
 
 SECOND START IN LIFE 273 
 
 frown produced by near-sightedness still wrinkling his 
 forehead. Though he was not beautiful, he showed 
 already the promise of character in his face, and his per 
 sonality, which was remarkably developed for a child 
 of his age, possessed a singular charm. He was the 
 kind of child people describe as "unlike other children." 
 His temperament was made up of surprises, and this 
 quality of unexpectedness inspired in his mother a devo 
 tion that was almost tragic in its intensity. Never had 
 she loved the normal Frances Evelyn as she loved 
 Archibald. 
 
 As she looked down on them, sleeping so peacefully 
 in the green light, a wave of sadness swept over her, 
 and she thought of them suddenly as fatherless, im 
 poverished, and unprotected, dependent on her un 
 tried labour for their lives and their happiness. Then, 
 before the anxiety could take possession of her mind, / 
 she put it from her, and whispered, "Courage!" as she \J 
 turned away and went out of the room.
 
 CHAPTER IH 
 
 WORK 
 
 THEY had planned the future so carefully that there 
 was a pitiless irony in the next turn of the screw for 
 when they tried to awaken Archibald Fowler in the 
 morning, he did not stir, and they realized presently, 
 with the rebellious shock such tragedies always bring, 
 that he had died in the night that all that he had stood 
 for, the more than thirty years of work and struggle, 
 had collapsed in an hour. When the first grief, the first 
 excitement, was over, and life began to flow quietly 
 again in its familiar currents, it was discovered that the 
 crash of his fortune had occurred on the day of his son's 
 flight and disgrace, and that the two shocks, coming 
 together, had killed him. While they sat in the dark 
 ened house, surrounded by the funereal smell of crape, 
 the practical details of living seemed to matter so little 
 that they scarcely gave them a thought. Not until 
 weeks afterwards, when Patty and Billy had sailed for 
 France, and Mrs. Fowler, shrouded in widow's weeds, 
 had gone South to her old home, did Gabriella find 
 strength to tear aside the veil of mourning and con 
 front the sordid actuality. Then she found that the 
 crash had buried everything under the ruins of 
 Archibald Fowler's prosperity that nothing remained 
 except a bare pittance which would insure his widow 
 \/ only a scant living on the impoverished family acres. 
 
 274
 
 WORK 275 
 
 For the rest there was nothing, and she herself was 
 as poor as she had been in Hill Street before her 
 marriage. 
 
 Walking back from the station after bidding her 
 mother-in-law a tearful and tender good-bye, she tried 
 despairingly to gather her scattered thoughts and 
 summon all her failing resources; but in front of her 
 plans there floated always the pathetic brightness of 
 Mrs. Fowler's eyes gazing up at her from the heavy 
 shadow of the crape veil she had lifted. So that was 
 the end a little love, a little hope, a little happiness, 
 and then separation and death. Effort appeared not 
 only futile, but fantastic, and yet effort, she knew, must 
 be made if she were to ward off destitution. She must 
 recover her cheerfulness, she must be strong, she must 
 be confident. Alone, penniless, with two children to 
 support, she could not afford to waste her time and her 
 energy in useless regret. Whatever it cost her, she must 
 keep alive her fighting courage and her belief in life. 
 She had youth, health, strength, intelligence, resource 
 fulness on her side; and she told herself again that there 
 were thousands of women living and fighting around her 
 who were far worse off than she. "What others have 
 done, I can do also, and do better," she murmured aloud 
 as she walked rapidly back to Dinard's. 
 
 In the long front room the crowded mid-winter sale 
 was in progress, and the six arrogant young women, 
 goaded into a fleeting semblance of activity, were dis 
 playing dilapidated "left over" millinery to a throng of 
 unfashionable casual customers. Madame, herself., 
 scorned these casual customers, but her scorn was as 
 water unto wine compared with the burning disdain of 
 the six arrogant young women. They sauntered to and
 
 276 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 fro with their satin trains trailing elegantly over the 
 carpet, with their fashionable curves accentuated as 
 much as it was possible for pride to accentuate them, 
 with their condescending heads turning haughtily above 
 the high points of their collars. As Gabriella entered 
 she saw the tallest and the most scornful of them, whose 
 name was Murphy, insolently posing in the green velvet 
 toque before a jaded hunter of reduced millinery, who 
 shook her plain, sensible head at the hat as if she wished 
 it to understand that she heartily disapproved of it. 
 
 Madame was not visible, but Gabriella found her a 
 little later in the workroom, where she was volubly 
 elucidating obscure points in business morality to the 
 forewoman. Of all the women employed in the house, 
 this particular forewoman was the only one who ap 
 peared to Gabriella to be without pretence or affectation. 
 She was an honest, blunt, capable creature, with a 
 face and figure which permanently debarred her from 
 the showrooms, and a painstaking method of work. 
 There was no haughtiness, no condescension, about her. 
 She had the manner of one who, being without for 
 tuitous aids to happiness, is willing to give good measure 
 of ability and industry in return for the bare necessaries 
 of existence. "She is the only genuine thing in the 
 whole establishment," thought Gabriella while she 
 watched her. 
 
 If Miss Smith, the forewoman, had been in ignorance 
 of the failure and death of Archibald Fowler, she would 
 probably have read the announcement in Madame's 
 face as she watched her welcome the wife of his son. 
 There was nothing offensive, nothing unkind, nothing 
 curt; but, in some subtle way, the difference was em 
 phasized between the eccentric daughter-in-law of a
 
 WORK 277 
 
 millionaire and an inexperienced young woman who 
 must work for her living. For the welcome revealed 
 at once to the observant eyes of Miss Smith the signifi 
 cant detail that Madame's role had changed from the 
 benefited to the benefactor. And, as if this were not 
 enough for one morning's developments, it revealed 
 also that Gabriella's fictitious value as a saleswoman 
 was beginning to decline; for Madame was disposed 
 jto scorn the sort of sensational advertisement which 
 the newspapers had devoted of late to the unfortunate 
 Fowlers. At one moment there had been grave doubt 
 in Madame's mind as to whether or not she should 
 employ young Mrs. Fowler in her respectable house; 
 then, after a brief hesitation, she had shrewdly de 
 cided that ideas were worth something even when 
 lacking the support of social position and financial 
 security. There were undoubtedly possibilities in 
 Gabriella; and disgrace, Madame concluded cheerfully, 
 could not take away either one's natural talent or one's 
 aristocratic appearance. That the girl had distinction, 
 even rare distinction, Madame admitted while she 
 nodded approvingly at the severe black cloth gown with 
 its collar and cuffs of fine white crape. The simple 
 arrangement of her hair, which would have ruined many 
 a pretty face, suited the ivory pallor of Gabriella's 
 features. Mourning was becoming to her, Madame 
 decided, and though she was not beautiful, she was un 
 usually charming. 
 
 "She has few good points except her figure, and yet 
 the whole is decidedly picturesque," thought Madame 
 as impersonally as if she were criticising a fashion plate. 
 "Very young men would hardly care for her for very 
 young men demand fine complexions and straight noses
 
 278 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 but with older men who like an air, who admire grace, 
 she would be taking, and women, yes, women would 
 undoubtedly find her imposing. But she is not the sort 
 to have followers," she concluded complacently. 
 
 "Shall I go to the workroom?" asked Gabriella in a 
 businesslike voice when she had taken off her hat, 
 " or do you wish me at the sale? " ^, 
 
 Her soul shrank from the showrooms, but she had 
 determined courageously that she would not allow her 
 soul to interfere with her material purpose, and her 
 purpose was to learn all that she could and to make her 
 self indispensable to Madame. Only by acquiring a 
 thorough knowledge of the business and making herself 
 indispensable could she hope to succeed. And success 
 / was not merely desirable to her; it was vital. It meant 
 the difference between food and hunger for her children. 
 
 "Miss Smith will find something for you to do this 
 morning," replied Madame, politely, but without enthu 
 siasm. "If there is a rush later on in the millinery, I 
 will send for you to help out." 
 
 In the old days, when Dinard's was a small and ex 
 clusive house in one of the blocks just off Fifth Avenue, 
 Madame would have scorned to combine the making of 
 gowns and hats in a single establishment; but as she ad 
 vanced in years and in worldly experience, she discov 
 ered that millinery drew the unwary passer-by even 
 more successfully than dressmaking did. Then, too, 
 hats were easy to handle; they sold for at least four 
 or five times as much as they actually cost; and so, 
 gradually, while she was still unaware of the disinte 
 grating processes within, Madame's principles had crum 
 bled before the temptation of increasing profits. A 
 / lapse of virtue, perhaps, but Madame, who had been
 
 WORK 279 
 
 born an O'Grady, was not the first to discover that one's 
 virtuous principles are apt to modify with one's years. 
 The time was when she had despised false hair, having a 
 natural wealth of her own, and now, with a few thin gray 
 strands hidden under her golden wig, she had become 
 morally reconciled to necessity. "It is a hard world, 
 and one lives as one must," was her favourite maxim. 
 
 On the whole, however, having a philosophic bent 
 of mind, she endeavoured to preserve, with rosy cheeks 
 and golden hair, several other cheerful fictions of her 
 youth. The chief of these, the artless delusion that, in 
 spite of her obesity, her wig and her rouge, she still had 
 power to charm the masculine eye, offered to her lively 
 nature a more effective support than any virtuous prin 
 ciple could have supplied. A perennial, if ridiculous, 
 coquetry sweetened her days and added sprightliness 
 to the gay decline of her life. Being frankly material, 
 she had confined her energies to the two unending pur 
 suits of men and money, and having captured four 
 husbands and acquired a comfortable bank account, 
 she might have been content, had she been as discreet 
 as she was provident, to rest on her substantial achieve 
 ments. But the trouble with both men and money, 
 when considered solely as rewards to enterprise, is 
 that the quest of them is inexhaustible. One's in 
 come, however large, may reasonably become larger, 
 and there is no limit to the number of husbands a pru 
 dent and fortunate woman may collect. And so age, 
 which is, after all, a state of mind, not a term of years, 
 was rendered harmless to Madame by her simple plan 
 of refusing to acknowledge that it existed. This came 
 of keeping one's head, she sometimes thought, though 
 she never put her thought into words this and all
 
 280 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 things else, including financial security and the per 
 petual pursuit of the elusive and lawless male. For at 
 sixty-two she still felt young and she believed herself to 
 be fascinating. 
 
 But Gabriella, patiently stitching bias velvet bands 
 on the brim of a straw hat for the early spring trade, 
 felt that she was sustained neither by the pleasures of 
 vanity nor by the sounder consolations of virtue. Her 
 philosophy was quite as simple, if not so material, as 
 Madame's. Human nature was divided between the 
 
 victors and the victims, and the chief thing was not 
 i to let oneself become a victim. Her theory, like 
 I those of greater philosophers, was rooted not in reason, 
 
 but in character, and she believed in life with all the 
 sanguine richness of her blood. Of course it was a 
 struggle, but she was one of those vital women who en 
 joy a struggle who choose any aspect of life in prefer- 
 j ence to the condition of vegetative serenity. Unhappi- 
 . ness, which is so largely a point of view, an attitude of 
 mind, had passed over her at a time when many women 
 i would have been consecrated to inconsolable misery. 
 \ She was penniless, she was unloved, she was deserted by 
 ' her husband, she had lost, in a few weeks, her friends, 
 .1 her home, and her family, and she faced the future alone, 
 j f except for her dependent and helpless children yet in 
 ' spite of these things, though she was thoughtful, wor- 
 ried, and often anxious, she realized that deep down 
 in her the essential core of her being was not unhappy. 
 
 .When she had tried and failed, and lost her health and 
 i ner children if such sorrows ever came to her, then 
 
 there would be time enough for unhappiness. Now, 
 she was only twenty-seven; the rich, wonderful world 
 surrounded her; and this world, even if she put love
 
 WORK 281 
 
 out of her life, was brimming over with beauty. It 
 was good to be alive; it was good to watch the crowd 
 in the street, to see the sunlight on the pavement, 
 to taste the air, to feel the murmurous currents of the 
 city flow around her as she walked home in the twi 
 light. It was good to earn her bread and to go back 
 in the evening to the joyful shouts of two well and happy 
 children. She saw it all as an adventure the whole of 
 life and the imperative necessity was to keep to the 
 last the ardent heart of the true adventurer. While 
 she stitched with flying fingers, there passed before 
 her the pale sad line of the victims of those who 
 ftiad resigned themselves to unhappiness. She saw 
 *her mother, anxious, pensive, ineffectual, with her 
 widow's veil, her drooping eyelids, and her look of 
 mournful acquiescence, as of one who had grown old 
 expecting the worst of life; she saw poor Jane, tragic, 
 martyred, with the feeble virtue and the cloying sweet 
 ness of all the poor Janes of this world ; and she saw Uncle 
 * Meriweather wearing his expression of worried and re- 
 < sentful helplessness, as if he had been swept onward 
 against his will by forces which he did not understand. 
 All these people were victims, and from these people 
 she had sprung. Their blood was her blood; their 
 traditions were her traditions; their religion was her 
 religion; even their memories were her memories. But 
 something else, which was not theirs, was in her nature, 
 and this something else had been born in the instant 
 when she revolted against them. Perhaps the fighting 
 t spirit of her father of that father who had gone out 
 ' like a flame in his youth had battled on her side when 
 she had turned against the inertia and decay which had 
 walled in her girlhood.
 
 282 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 In the afternoon Madame summoned her into the 
 showrooms, and she assisted the exhausted young 
 women at the sale of slightly damaged French hats to 
 the unfashionable purchasers who preferred to pay rea 
 sonable prices. While she served them, which she did 
 with a cheerfulness, an interest, and an amiability that 
 distinguished her from the other saleswomen, she won 
 dered how they could have so little common sense as to 
 allow themselves to be deluded by the French labels 
 on the soiled linings? She could have made a better 
 hat in two hours than any one of those she sold at the 
 reduced price of ten dollars; yet even the dingiest 
 of them at last found a purchaser, and she saw the green 
 velvet toque, which had been rejected by the sensible 
 middle-aged woman in the morning, finally pass into the 
 possession of a hard-featured spinster. What amazed 
 her, for she had a natural talent for dress, was the in 
 fallible instinct which guided the vast majority of 
 these customers to the selection of the inappropriate. 
 A few of them had taste, or had learned from experi 
 ence what they could not wear; but by far the larger 
 number displayed an ignorance of the most elemen 
 tary principles of dress which shocked and astonished 
 Gabriella. The obese and middle-aged winged straight 
 as a bird toward the coquettish in millinery; the lean 
 and haggard intuitively yearned for the picturesque; the 
 harsh and simple aspired to the severely smart. Yet 
 beneath the vain misdirection of impulses there was 
 some obscure principle of attraction which ruled the 
 absurdity of the decisions. Each woman, Gabriella 
 discovered after an attentive hour at the sale, was 
 dressing not her actual substance, but some pas- 
 sionately cherished ideal of herself which she had
 
 WORK 283 
 
 stored in a remote and inaccessible chamber of her 
 brain. 
 
 In all of the tedious selections Gabriella assisted with 
 the pleasant voice, the ready sympathy, and the quick 
 understanding which had made her so popular when 
 she had worked for the old shop in Broad Street. The 
 truth was that human nature interested her even in its 
 errors, and her pleasant manners were simply the out 
 ward manifestation of an unaffected benevolence. 
 
 "I shouldn't mind going there if they were all like 
 that one," remarked a customer, who had bought three 
 hats, in the" hearing of Madame as she went out; "but 
 some of them are so disagreeable you feel like slapping 
 their faces. Once last winter I had that tall girl with 
 red hair the handsome, stuck-up one, you know and 
 I declare she was so downright impertinent that I got 
 straight up and walked out without buying a thing. 
 Then I was so angry that I went down to Paula's and 
 paid seventy-five dollars for this hat I've got on. It 
 was a dreadful price, of course, but you'll do anything 
 when you're in a rage." 
 
 "Do you know the name of this one? I'd like to 
 remember it." 
 
 "Yes, it's Carr. I asked for her -card. C-a-r-r. I 
 think she's a widow." 
 
 From her retreat behind one of the velvet curtains 
 Madame overheard this conversation, and a few minutes 
 later she stopped Gabriella on her way out, and said 
 amiably that it would not be necessary for her to leave 
 the showroom to-morrow. 
 
 " I believe you can do better there than in the work 
 room," she added, "and, after all, that is really very 
 important to tell people what they want. It is
 
 284 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 astounding how few of them have the slightest idea 
 what they are looking for." 
 
 "But I want to get that hat right. I left it unfin 
 ished, and I don't like to give up while it is wrong,'* 
 replied Gabriella, not wholly pleased by the command. 
 
 But Madame, of a flightier substance notwithstanding 
 her business talents, waved aside the remark as insig 
 nificant and without bearing upon her immediate pur 
 pose. 
 
 "I am going to try you with the gowns," she said res 
 olutely; "I want to see if you catch on there as quickly 
 as you did with the hats I mean with the sale, of 
 course, for your work, I'm sorry to say, has been rather 
 poor so far. But I'll try you with the next customer 
 who comes to place a large order. They are always 
 so eager for new suggestions, and you have suggestions 
 of a sort to make, I am sure. I can't quite tell," she 
 concluded uncertainly, "whether or not your ideas have 
 any practical value, but they sound well as you describe 
 them, and to talk attractively helps; there is no doubt 
 of that." 
 
 It was closing time, and Miss Fisher, one of the skirt 
 fitters, came up, in her black alpaca apron with a pair 
 of scissors suspended by red tape from her waist, to ask 
 Madame a question. As Mrs. Bydington had not kept 
 her appointment, was it not impossible to send her 
 gown home as they had promised? 
 
 "Oh, it makes no difference," replied Madame 
 blandly, for she was in a good humour. "She'll come 
 back when she is ready. The next time she is here, by 
 the way, I want her to see Mrs. Fowler I mean Mrs. 
 Carr. She has worn out every one else in the place, and 
 yet she is never satisfied; but I'd like her to take that
 
 WORK 285 
 
 pink velvet from Gautier, because nobody else is likely 
 to give the price." The day was over and Madame's 
 blandness was convincing evidence of her satisfaction. 
 
 As Gabriella passed through the last showroom, 
 where the disorder of the sale was still visible, she saw 
 Miss Murphy, the handsomest and the haughtiest of 
 the young women, wearily returning the few rejected 
 hats to the ivory-tinted cases. 
 
 "You are glad it is over, I know," she remarked sym 
 pathetically, less from any active interest in Miss Mur 
 phy's state of feeling than from an impulsive desire to 
 establish human relations with her fellow saleswoman. 
 If Miss Murphy would have it so, she preferred to be 
 friendly. 
 
 "I am so tired I can hardly stand on my feet," re 
 plied Miss Murphy, piteously. Her pretty rose-leaf 
 skin had faded to a dull pallor; there were heavy 
 shadows under her eyes; her helmet of wheaten-red 
 hair had slipped down over her forehead, and even 
 her firmly corseted figure appeared to have grown limp 
 and yielding. Without her offensive elegance she was 
 merely a pathetic and rather silly young thing. 
 
 "I'll help you," said Gabriella, taking up several hats 
 from a chair. "The others have gone, haven't they?" 
 
 "They got out before I'd finished waiting on that 
 middle-aged frump who doesn't know what she wants 
 any more than the policeman out there at the corner 
 does. She's made me show her all we've got left, and 
 after she'd tried them all on, she said they're too high, 
 and she's going to think over them before she decides. 
 She's still waiting for something, and my head's splitting 
 so I can hardly see what I'm doing." With a final 
 surrender of her arrogance, she grew suddenly confiden-
 
 286 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 tial and childish. "I'm sick enough to die," she fin 
 ished despairingly, "and I've got a friend coming to 
 take me to the theatre at eight o'clock." 
 
 "Well, run away. I'll attend to this. But I'd try 
 to rest before I went out if I were you." 
 
 "You're a perfect peach," responded Miss Murphy 
 gratefully. "I said all along I didn't believe you were 
 stuck up and snobbish." 
 
 Then she ran out, and Gabriella, after surveying the 
 customer for a minute, selected the most unpromising 
 hat in the case, and presented it with a winning smile 
 for the woman's inspection. 
 
 "Perhaps something like this is what you are looking 
 for? " she remarked politely, but firmly. 
 
 The customer, an acidulous, sharp-featured, showily 
 dressed person the sort, Gabriella decided, who would 
 enjoy haggling over a bargain regarded the offered 
 hat with a supercilious and guarded manner, the true 
 manner of the haggler. 
 
 "No, that is not bad," she observed dryly, "but I 
 don't care to give more than ten dollars." 
 
 "It was marked down from thirty," replied Gabriella, 
 and her manner was as supercilious and as guarded as 
 the other's. There were women, she had found, who 
 were impressed only by insolence, and, when the need 
 m arose, she could be quite as insolent as Miss Murphy. 
 Unlike Miss Murphy, however, she was able to dis 
 tinguish between those you must encourage and those 
 you must crush; and this ability to draw reasonable 
 distinctions was, perhaps, her most valuable quality 
 as a woman of business. 
 
 "I don't care to pay more than ten dollars," reiter 
 ated the customer in a scolding voice. Rising from her
 
 WORK 287 
 
 chair, she fastened her furs, which were cheap and 
 showy, with a defiant and jerky movement, and flounced 
 out of the shop. 
 
 That disposed of, Gabriella put on her coat, which 
 she had taken off again for the occasion, and went out 
 into the street, where the night had already fallen. 
 After her long hours in the overheated air of the show 
 rooms, she felt refreshed and invigorated by the cold 
 wind, which stung her face as it blew singing over the 
 crossings. Straight ahead through the grayish-violet 
 mist the lights were blooming like flowers, and above 
 them a few stars shone faintly over the obscure frowning 
 outlines of the buildings. Fifth Avenue was thronged, 
 and to her anxious mind there seemed to be hollowness 
 and insincerity in the laughter of the crowd. 
 
 At the house in East Fifty-seventh Street, from 
 which she would be moving the next day, she found 
 Judge Crowborough awaiting her in the dismantled 
 drawing-room, where packing-cases of furniture and 
 pictures lay scattered about in confusion. In the 
 dreadful days after Archibald Fowler's death, the 
 judge had been very kind, and she had turned to him 
 instinctively as the one man in New York who was 
 both able and willing to be of use to her. Though 
 he had never attracted her, she had been obliged to 
 admit that he possessed a power superior to superficial 
 attractions. 
 
 "I dropped in to ask what I might do for you now?" 
 he remarked with the dignity of one who possesses 
 an income of half a million dollars a year. "It's 
 a pity you have to leave this house. I remember 
 when Archibald bought it somewhere back in the 
 'seventies but I suppose there's no help for it, is there?"
 
 288 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "No, there's no help." She sat down on a packing- 
 case, and he stood gazing benevolently down on her 
 with his big, soft hands clasped on the head of his 
 walking-stick and his overcoat on his arm. "I've 
 rented three rooms in one of the apartments of the 
 old Carolina over on the West Side near Columbus 
 Avenue. The rest of the apartment is rented to art 
 students, I believe, and we must all use the same kitchen 
 and the same bath-tub," she added with a laugh. "Of 
 course it isn't luxury, but we shan't mind very much 
 as soon as we get used to it. I couldn't be much poorer 
 than I was before my marriage." 
 
 "But the children? You've got to have the children 
 looked after." 
 
 "I've been so fortunate about that," her voice was 
 quite cheerful again. "There's a seamstress from my 
 old home Miss Polly Hatch who has known me all 
 my life, and she is coming to sleep in a little bed in 
 my room until we can afford to rent an extra bedroom. 
 As long as she has to work at home anyhow, she can 
 very easily look after the children while I am away. 
 They are good children, and as soon as they are big 
 enough I'll have to send them to school to the public 
 school, I'm afraid." This, because of Fanny's violent 
 opposition, was a delicate point with her. She felt 
 that she should like to start the children at a private 
 school, but it was clearly impossible. 
 
 "The boy won't be big enough for a year or two, will 
 he?" He was interested, she saw, and this unaffected 
 interest in her small affairs moved her almost to 
 tears. 
 
 "I wanted him to go to kindergarten, but, of course, I 
 cannot afford it. He is only four and a half, and I'm
 
 WORK 289 
 
 teaching him myself in the evenings. Already he can 
 read very well in the first reader," she finished proudly. 
 
 For a minute the judge stared moodily down on her. 
 His sagging cheeks took a pale purplish flush, and he bit 
 his lower lip with his large yellow teeth, which reminded 
 Gabriella of the tusks of a beast of prey. Then he laid 
 his overcoat and his stick carefully down on a packing- 
 case, and held out his hand. 
 
 "I'm going now, and there's one thing I want to ask 
 you have you any money?" 
 
 It was out at last, and she looked up composedly, 
 smiling a little roguishly at his embarrassment. 
 
 "I have six hundred dollars in bank for a rainy day, 
 and I am making exactly fifteen dollars a week." 
 
 "But you can't live on it. Nobody could live on it 
 even without two children to bring up." 
 
 She shook her head. "Oh, Judge Crowborough, how 
 little you rich men really know! I've got to live on it 
 until I can do better, and I hope that will be very soon. 
 If I am worth anything now, in three months I ought 
 to be worth certainly as much as twenty-five dollars 
 a week. In a little while as soon as I've caught on to 
 the business I'm going to ask for a larger salary, and I 
 think I shall get it. Twenty-five dollars a week won't 
 go very far, but you don't know how little some people 
 can live on even in New York." 
 
 "As soon as the six hundred dollars go you'll be 
 headed straight for starvation," he protested, sincerely 
 worried. 
 
 "Perhaps, but I doubt it." 
 
 "How much do you have to pay for your rooms?" 
 
 "Twenty-five dollars a month. It isn't much of a 
 place, you see, as far as appearances go. Fortunately,
 
 290 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 I have a little furniture of my own which Mrs. Fowler 
 had given me." 
 
 His embarrassment had passed away, and he was 
 smiling now at the recollection of it. 
 
 "Well, you're a brick, little girl," he said, "and I like 
 your spirit, but, after all, why can't you put your pride 
 in your pocket, and let me lend you a few thousands? 
 You needn't borrow much not enough to keep a car 
 riagebut you might at least take a little just to show 
 you aren't proud just to show you'll be friends. It 
 seems a downright shame that I should have money 
 to throw away, and you should be starting out to pinch 
 and scrape on fifteen dollars a week. Fifteen dollars a 
 week! Good Lord, what are we coming to?" 
 
 She was not proud, and she wanted to be friends, but 
 she shook her head obstinately, though she was still 
 smiling. "Not now not while I can help it but if I 
 ever get in trouble in real trouble I'll remember 
 your offer. If the children fall ill or I lose my place, 
 I'll come to you in a minute." 
 
 "Honour bright? It's a promise?" 
 
 "It's a promise." 
 
 "And you'll let me keep an eye on you?" 
 
 She laughed with the natural gaiety which he found so 
 delightful. "You may keep two eyes on me if you 
 will!" 
 
 He had already reached the door when, turning sud 
 denly, he said with heavy gravity: "You don't mind 
 my asking what you're going to do about George, do 
 
 you?" 
 
 "No, I don't mind. As soon as I can afford it, I 
 shall get my freedom, but everything costs, you know, 
 even justice."
 
 WORK 291 
 
 "I could help you there, couldn't I?" 
 
 From the gratitude in her eyes he read her horror of 
 the marriage which still bound her. "You could and, 
 oh, if you would, I'd never, never forget it," she an 
 swered. 
 
 Then they parted, and he went out into the cold, 
 with a strange warmth like the fire of youth at his 
 heart, while she ran eagerly up the uncarpeted stairs to 
 the nursery. 
 
 The trunks were packed, the boxes were nailed down, 
 and the two children were playing shipwreck while they 
 ate a supper of bread and milk at a table made from the 
 bare top of a packing-case. Several days before the 
 nurse had left without warning, and Miss Polly sat 
 now, in hat and mantle, on one of the little beds which 
 would be taken down the next day and sent over to the 
 apartment on the West Side. 
 
 "I've been to the Carolina and unpacked the things 
 that had come," she said at Gabriella's entrance. 
 "Those rooms ain't so bad as New York rooms go; but 
 it does seem funny, don't it, to cook in the same kitchen 
 with a lot of strangers you never laid eyes on befo'? 
 I br'iled some chops for the children right alongside of 
 an old maid who had come all the way up from New 
 Orleans to study music imagine, at her age! Why, 
 she couldn't be a day under fifty! And on the other 
 side there was the mother of a girl who's at the art 
 school, or whatever you call it, where they teach you 
 paintin'. They are from somewhere up yonder in New 
 England and their home folks had sent 'em a pumpkin 
 pie. She gave me a slice of it, but I never did think 
 much of pumpkin. It can't hold a candle to sweet 
 potato pudding, and I wouldn't let the children touch
 
 292 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 it for fear it might set too heavy in the night. I ain't 
 got much use for Yankee food, nohow." 
 
 "I hope the place is perfectly sanitary," was Gabri- 
 ella's anxious rejoinder. "The front room gets some 
 sunshine in the afternoon, doesn't it?" 
 
 "It's a horrid street. I don't want to live there," 
 wailed Fanny, who had rebelled from the beginning 
 against her fallen fortunes. "I got my white shoes 
 dirty, and there were banana peels all about. A man 
 has a fruit-stand in the bottom of our house. Don't 
 let's go there to live, mother." 
 
 "You'll have to wear black shoes now, darling, and 
 you mustn't mind the fruit-stand. It will be a good 
 place to buy oranges." 
 
 "I like it," said Archibald stoutly. "I like to slide 
 on banana peels, and I like the man. He has black eyes 
 and a red handkerchief in his pocket. Will you buy me 
 a red handkerchief, mamma? He has a boy, too. I 
 saw him. He can skate on roller skates, and the boy 
 has a dog and the dog has a black ear. May I have 
 roller skates for my birthday, and a dog a small one 
 and may I ask the boy up to play with me?" 
 
 "But the boy is ugly and so is the dog. I hate ugly 
 people," complained Fanny. 
 
 "I like ugly people," retorted Archibald, glowering, 
 not from anger, but from earnestness. "Ugly people 
 are nicer than pretty ones, aren't they, mamma? Pang 
 is nicer than Fanny." 
 
 He was always like that even as a baby, always on the 
 side of the unfortunate, always fighting valiantly for 
 the under dog. With his large head, his grotesque spec 
 tacles, and his pouting lips, he bore a curious resemblance 
 to a brownie, yet when one observed him closely, one
 
 WORK 293 
 
 saw that there was a remarkable blending of strength 
 and sweetness in his expression. 
 
 The next day Miss Polly finished the moving, and at 
 six o'clock Gabriella went home in the Harlem elevated 
 train to the grim, weather-beaten apartment house on the 
 upper West Side. The pavements, as Fanny had scorn 
 fully observed, were not particularly clean; the air, in 
 spite of the sharp wind which blew from the river, had a 
 curiously stagnant quality; and the rumble of the ele 
 vated road, at the opposite side of the house, reached 
 her in a vibrating undercurrent which was punctuated 
 now and then by the staccato cries of the street. The 
 house, which had been built in a benighted and spacious 
 period, stood now as an enduring refuge for the poor in 
 purse but proud in spirit. A few studios on the roof 
 were still occupied by artists, while the hospitable 
 basement sheltered a vegetable market, a corner drug 
 store, a fruit-stand, and an Italian bootblack. Within 
 the bleak walls, from which the stucco had peeled 
 in splotches, the life of the city had ebbed and flowed 
 for almost half a century, like some deep wreck-strewn 
 current which bore the seeds of the future as well as the 
 driftwood of the past on its bosom. One might never 
 have set foot outside those gloomy doors and yet 
 have seen the whole of life pass as in a vivid dream 
 through the dim halls, lighted by flickering gas and 
 carpeted in worn strips of brown carpet. And once 
 inside the apartments one might have found, some 
 times, cheerfulness, beauty of line and colour, and 
 a certain spaciousness which the modern apartment 
 house, with its rooms like closets, its startling elec 
 tricity, and its more hygienic conditions of living, 
 could not provide. It was because she could find
 
 294 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 space there that Gabriella, guided by Miss Polly, had 
 rented the rooms. 
 
 She passed the drug-store and the fruit-stand, en 
 tered the narrow hall, where a single gas-jet flickered 
 dimly beside the door of the elevator, and after touching 
 the bell, stood patiently waiting. After a time she rang 
 again, and presently, with deliberate ease and geniality, 
 the negro who worked the elevator descended slowly, 
 with a newspaper in his hand, and opened the door for 
 her. 
 
 , "Good evening, Robert," she said pleasantly, for he 
 , also was from Virginia, and the discovery of the bond 
 ' between them had given Gabriella a feeling of confi- 
 dence. Like Miss Polly, she had never become entirely 
 . accustomed to white servants. 
 
 The ropes moved again, the elevator ascended peri 
 lously to the fifth floor, and Gabriella walked quickly 
 along the hall, and slipped her latchkey into the key 
 hole of the last apartment. As the door opened, a 
 woman in worn black came out and spoke to her in 
 passing. She was the old maid of Miss Polly's nar 
 rative, and her face, ardent, haggard, with the famished 
 look which comes from a starved soul, gazed back at 
 Gabriella with a touching expression of admiration and 
 envy. There were spots of vivid colour in her cheeks, 
 and this brightness, combined with her gray hair, gave 
 her a theatrical and artificial appearance. 
 
 "I have been playing to your little boy, M!rs. Carr," 
 she said with the manner which Miss Polly had described 
 as "flighty." "He came into my room when he heard 
 the piano, and it was a real pleasure to play for him." 
 
 "You are very good," returned Gabriella, wondering 
 vaguely who she was, for she was obviously the kind of
 
 WORK 295 
 
 woman people wondered about. "I hope Archibald 
 didn't make himself troublesome." 
 
 "Oh, no, I enjoyed him. My name is Danton. I 
 am Miss Danton," she added effusively, "and I'm so 
 glad you have come into this apartment. My room is 
 the one next to yours." 
 
 Then she fluttered off, with her look of spiritual 
 hunger, and Gabriella closed the door and went on to 
 her rooms, which were at the opposite end of the hall 
 from the kitchen. On the way she passed the pretty 
 art student, who was coming from the bathroom, with a 
 freshly powdered face and a pitcher of water in her 
 hand, and again she was obliged to stop to hear news of 
 the children. 
 
 "I'm so glad to have your little girl here. I want to 
 paint her. I'm just crazy about her face," said the girl, 
 whose name she learned afterwards was Rosy Plover. 
 Though she was undeniably pretty, and had just pow 
 dered her face with scented powder, she had a slovenly, 
 unkempt appearance which Gabriella, from that mo 
 ment, associated with art students. "If she'd only 
 dress herself properly, she'd be a beauty," she 
 thought, with the aversion of one who is an artist in 
 clothes. She herself, after her long, hard day, was as 
 neat and trim as she had been in the morning. Her 
 severe black suit was worn with grace, and hung per 
 fectly; her crape collar was immaculately fresh; her 
 mourning veil fell in charming folds over her hat brim. 
 "It's a pity some one can't tell her," she mused, as she 
 smiled and hurried on to the doubtful seclusion of her 
 own end of the apartment. 
 
 With the opening of the door, the children fell rap 
 turously into her arms, and while she took off her hat
 
 296 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 r 
 
 and coat, Miss Polly laid the table for supper in front 
 
 of the ruddy glow of the fire. On the fender a plate of 
 
 buttered toast was keeping warm, a delicious aroma 
 
 of coffee scented the air, and a handful of red carnations 
 
 made a cheerful bit of colour in the centre of the white 
 
 tablecloth. It was a pleasant picture for a tired woman 
 
 to gaze on, and the ruddy glow of the fire was reflected 
 
 in Gabriella's heart while she enfolded her children. 
 
 After a day in Madame's hothouse atmosphere, it was 
 
 delightful to return to this little centre of peace and 
 
 love, and to feel that its very existence depended upon 
 
 the work of her brain and hands. The children, she 
 
 1 realized, had never loved her so dearly. In better days, 
 
 ' when she was rarely separated from them for more than 
 
 ' a few hours at a time, they had seemed rather to take 
 
 I her care and her presence for granted; but now, after an 
 
 absence of nine hours, she had become a delight and an 
 
 , enchantment, something to be looked forward to and 
 
 longingly talked about through the whole afternoon. 
 
 "Mother, you've been away forever," said Fanny, 
 folding her veil for her and putting away her furs. 
 "Are you going every day just like this for ever and 
 ever? " 
 
 "Every day, darling, but I'm here every night. 
 Shall I run back to the kitchen and broil the chops, Miss 
 Polly?" 
 
 But the chops were already broiled, for Miss Polly 
 had finished her sewing early, and she had beaten up 
 two tiny cups of custard for the children. 
 
 "It's nicer than nursery suppers, isn't it, Fanny?" 
 asked Archibald a little later while he ate his bread and 
 milk from a blue bowl. "IVtother, I like being poor. 
 Let's stay poor always."
 
 WORK 297 
 
 A phrase of Mrs. Fowler's, "happiness costs so 
 little," floated through Gabriella's mind as she poured 
 Miss Polly's coffee out of the tin coffee pot. She was 
 so tired that her body ached; her feet were smarting 
 and throbbing from the long standing; and her eyes 
 stung from the cold wind and the glare of the elevated 
 train; but she knew that in spite of these discomforts 
 she was not unhappy that she was, indeed, far happier 
 than she had been for the past six years in the hushed 
 suspense of her father-in-law's house. When she had 
 carried the supper things back to the sink in the kitchen, 
 had taught the children their lessons, heard their pray 
 ers, and put them to bed, she repeated the words to her 
 self while she sat sewing beside the lamp in front of the 
 comforting glow of the fire, "After all, happiness costs 
 so little." 
 
 The next morning, and on every morning throughout 
 the winter, she was up by six o'clock, and had taken in 
 the baker's rolls and the bottle of milk from the outer 
 door before Miss Polly or the children were stirring. 
 Then, having dressed quickly, she ran back to the 
 kitchen and made the coffee and boiled the eggs while 
 the other lodgers were still sleeping. Sometimes the 
 mother of one of the art students would join her 
 over the gas range, but usually her neighbours slept 
 late and then darted through the hall in kimonos, with 
 tumbled hair, to a hurried breakfast at the kitchen 
 table. 
 
 Her life was so busy that there was little time for 
 anxiety, and less for futile and painful dwelling upon 
 the past. To get through the day as best she could, to 
 start the children well and in a good humour, to make 
 herself useful, if not indispensable, to Madame, to re-
 
 298 LIFE AND GABftlELLA 
 
 turn with a mind clear and fresh enough to give Fanny 
 and Archibald intelligent lessons, to sew on their clothes 
 or her own until midnight, and then to drop into bed, 
 with aching limbs and a peaceful brain, too tired even to 
 dream these things made the life that she looked for 
 ward to, week after week, month after month, year after 
 year. It was a hard life, as Miss Polly often remarked, 
 but hard or soft, her strength was equal to it, her health 
 was good, her interest in her work and in her children 
 never flagged for a minute. Only on soft spring days, 
 coming home in the dusk, she would sometimes pass 
 carts filled with hyacinths, and in a wave the memory of 
 Arthur and of her first love would rush over her. Then 
 she would see Arthur's face, gentle, protective, tender, 
 as it had looked on that last evening, and for an instant 
 her lost girlhood and her girlhood's dream would envelop 
 her like the fragrance of flowers. At such moments 
 she thought of this love as tenderly as a mother might 
 have thought of the exquisite dead face of an infant 
 who had lived only an hour. Though it was over, 
 though it bore no part, with its elusive loveliness, in her 
 practical plans for the future, this dream became grad 
 ually, as the years passed, the most radiant and vital 
 thing in her life. Though it was so vague as to be with 
 out warmth, it was as vivid and as real as light. The 
 knowledge that in the past she had known perfect love, 
 even though in her blindness she had thrust it aside, 
 was a balm which healed her wounds and gave her cour 
 age to go on, friendless and alone, into the loveless 
 stretch of the future. There was hardly a minute of her 
 day for the next three years which was not sweetened by 
 this hyacinth-scented dream of the past, there was 
 hardly an hour of her drudgery which was not ennobled
 
 WORK 299 
 
 and irradiated by the splendour of this love that she had 
 lost. 
 
 Of George even of George as the father of her chil 
 dren she rarely thought. He had dropped out of her 
 life like any other mistake, like any other illusion, and 
 she was too sanguine by nature, too buoyant, too full 
 of happiness and of energy, to waste herself on either 
 mistakes or illusions. During the months when she 
 had waited for her freedom she had resolutely put the 
 thought of him out of her mind, and when at last her 
 divorce was granted, she dismissed the fact as com 
 pletely as if it had not changed the entire course of her 
 life. The past was over, and only that part of it should 
 live which contributed sweetness and beauty to the 
 present only that part of it which she could use in the 
 better and stronger structure of the future. Whatever 
 living meant in the end, she told herself each morning 
 as she started out to her work, it must mean, not res 
 ignation, not inertia, but endeavour, enterprise, and 
 [courage.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE DEEAM AND THE YEARS A 1 
 
 IN ONE of the small fitting-rooms, divided by red vel 
 vet curtains on gilt rods from the long showroomsjjof 
 Madame Dinard, a nervous group, comprising the 
 head skirt fitter, the head waist fitter, Miss Bellman, 
 the head saleswoman, and Madame herself, stood dis 
 consolately around the indignant figure of Mrs. Weed- 
 erman Pletheridge, who, attired in one of Madame's 
 costliest French models, was gesticulating excitedly 
 in the centre of four standing mirrors. For three years 
 Mrs. Pletheridge had lived in Paris, and her return to 
 New York, and to the dressmaking establishments of 
 Fifth Avenue, was an event which had shaken Dinard's, 
 if not the fashionable street in which it stood, to its 
 foundations. 
 
 "I don't know what is the matter with it," she said 
 fussily, "but it doesn't suit me, and yet it looked so 
 well in the hand. I wonder if I could wear it if yoi 
 were to take out some of this fulness, and change the 
 set of the sleeves? The fashions this spring are per 
 fectly hopeless." 
 
 "Why, it suits you to perfection, Madame. Just 
 stitch or two like this and this and it will look as if it 
 were designed for you by Worth. Is it not so, Miss 
 Bellman? Don't you think it is wonderful on Ma 
 dame?" 
 
 soo
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 301 
 
 Miss Bellman, having learned her part, agreed 
 effusively, and then each of the fitters, as she was ap 
 pealed to in turn, contributed an enraptured assent to 
 the discussion. The price of the gown was a thousand 
 dollars, and Mrs. Pletheridge's favourable decision was 
 worth exactly that much in terms of money to Dinard's. 
 As the season had been scarcely a brisk one, Madame 
 was particularly anxious to have her more extreme 
 models taken off her hands. "It was unpacked only 
 yesterday," she lied suavely, "and no one else has had 
 so much as a glimpse of it." 
 
 "I can't imagine what is the matter with it," Mrs. 
 Pletheridge sighed dejectedly, while she regarded her 
 ample form with a resentful and critical gaze. As long 
 as one had nothing else to worry about, Madame re 
 flected without sympathy, one might find cause for 
 positive distress in the fact that a gown appeared to 
 better advantage in the hand than on one's person. 
 The truth and the truth, as sometimes happens, was 
 the last thing Mrs. Pletheridge cared to admit was 
 that she had grown too stout to wear pronounced fash 
 ions. 
 
 "Nothing could be more charming," insisted Madame 
 with increased effusion, "but if you are in doubt, let us 
 ask the opinion of Mrs. Carr. She has the true eye of 
 the artist a wonderful eye. I don't know whether 
 you remember Mrs. Archibald Fowler or not?" she 
 added as the skirt fitter sped in search of Gabriella; 
 "this is her daughter-in-law. Her husband ran away 
 with another woman about three years ago. It made 
 a great sensation at the time, and his wife got a divorce 
 from him afterwards. Ever since then she has been in 
 my establishment."
 
 302 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 No, Mrs. Pletheridge did not remember Mrs. Fowler; 
 but, having had a notorious amount of trouble with 
 her own husbands, she was amiably disposed toward 
 the unfortunate daughter-in-law of the lady she couldn't 
 remember. Thirty years ago, as a pretty, vulgar, 
 kind-hearted girl, she had captured with a glance 
 the eldest son of the newly rich Pletheridge, who 
 had, perhaps, inherited his grandfather's genial ad 
 miration for chambermaids; but, to-day, after a gener 
 ation of self-indulgence, her prettiness had coarsened, 
 her vulgarity had hardened, and her kind heart 
 had withered, through lack of cultivation, to the size 
 of a cherry. And, from having had everything she 
 wanted for so long, she had at last reached that melan 
 choly state of mind when she could think of nothing 
 more to want. 
 
 A brisk step crossed the room outside, the curtains 
 were parted with a commanding movement, and Gabri- 
 ella joined the anxious group surrounded by the four 
 mirrors. 
 
 "Did you send for me, Madame?" she asked, and 
 
 waited, grave, attentive, and perfectly composed, with 
 
 her hand, the small, strong hand of the Carrs, on 
 
 the curtain. Her hair was brushed severely back 
 
 from her candid forehead, and though her figure had 
 
 grown somewhat heavier and less girlish in line, she 
 
 still wore her plain black dress and white collar with an 
 
 incomparable distinction. Through all the hardship 
 
 and suffering of the last three years she had kept her 
 
 ' look of bright intelligence, of radiant energy. In dress 
 
 i and manner she was the successful woman of business, 
 
 k butshe was the woman of business with something added. 
 
 Though she spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, her voice
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 303 
 
 had a vibrating quality; though she wore only the 
 plainest clothes, her grace, her good-breeding, her 
 indefinable charm, softened the severity. 
 
 "Mrs. Pletheridge is uncertain about this gown," ex 
 plained Madame, "but I tell her that it suits her to per 
 fection, as well as if it had been designed for her by 
 Worth. Do you not agree with me, Mrs. Carr? You 
 have, as I said to her, the true eye of the artist." 
 
 Without changing her position or moving a step 
 into the room, Gabriella attentively regarded the gown 
 and the wearer. From the mirror Mrs. Pletheridge 
 stared back at her ill-humouredly, with a spiteful 
 gleam in her small black eyes between the carefully 
 darkened lids. 
 
 "I can't imagine what is the matter with it," she 
 reiterated, as if she were repeating a sad refrain, and her 
 manner was as insolent as Miss Murphy's had been to 
 the casual customer. 
 
 For an instant Gabriella returned her look with the 
 steady gaze of one who, having achieved the full courage 
 of living, has attained also a calm insensibility to the 
 shafts of arrogance. Three years ago she would have 
 flinched before Mrs. Pletheridge's disdain, but in those 
 three years she had passed beyond the variegated tissue 
 of appearances to the bare structure of life she had 
 worked and wept and starved and suffered and to-day 
 her soul was invulnerable against even more destructive 
 weapons than the contempt of a plutocrat. Perhaps, 
 too, though she assured herself that she was without 
 snobbishness, there was a secret satisfaction in the 
 knowledge that one of her ancestors had been a general 
 under Washington while the early Pletheridges were 
 planting potatoes in a peasant's patch in Ireland.
 
 304 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Her dignity was more assured than Madame's; for 
 she was perfectly aware of a fact to which Madame 
 was blind, and this was, that, in spite of her position 
 in the social columns of the newspapers and her multi 
 tudinous possessions, Mrs. Pletheridge was not, and 
 could never be, a lady. While Gabriella stood there 
 these thoughts flashed recklessly through her mind; 
 yet she answered Madame's question as frankly and 
 honestly as if the woman they were staring at with 
 such intentness had not been the tragic vulgarian she 
 was. 
 
 "I think the gown doesn't suit her at all," she said 
 quietly to Madame, who made a horrified face at her 
 over the sumptuous shoulder of Mrs. Pletheridge. 
 "There is too much of it, too much billowy lace every 
 where." She did not add that the coral and silver 
 brocade gave Mrs. Pletheridge a curious resemblance 
 to an overblown prize hollyhock. 
 
 Madame's horrified face changed, as if under a spell, 
 to one of abject despair; and a menacing frown con 
 vulsed the puffy features of Mrs. Pletheridge, while 
 she burst out of her gorgeous sheath with a petulant 
 haste which expressed her inward perturbation better 
 than words could have done. For a minute one could 
 have heard a flower drop in the fitting-room; then the 
 offended customer spoke, and her words, when she 
 found them, were not lacking in either force or effective 
 ness. "No, there's no use trying on anything else, I 
 have an appointment at Cambon's." Cambon was 
 Dinard's hated and wholly incompetent rival; and until 
 this illuminating instant Madame had never suspected 
 that her particular Mrs. Pletheridge had ever entered 
 the high white doors of Cambon's establishment.
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 305 
 
 "But, surely, we have something else. There is a 
 lovely Doucet model in white and silver " 
 
 But no, Mrs. Pletheridge would have none of the 
 lovely model. "Give me my skirt at once," she com 
 manded haughtily, bending her opulent bosom and hold 
 ing the lacy frills of her petticoat together while Agnes, 
 the youngest and the gentlest of the assistants, knelt at 
 her feet with her dress skirt held invitingly open on the 
 floor. As she inserted the toe of her exquisitely shod 
 foot into the opening, she remarked maliciously: "It is 
 impossible to find decent clothes in New York one 
 might as well give up trying. Paris dressmakers send 
 you only their failures." And, having crushed Madame 
 to silence, she finished her dressing, fastened her black 
 lace veil with a flying swallow in diamonds, flung her 
 feather boa over her shoulders, and taking up her gold 
 chain bag, studded with rubies, marched out of the 
 establishment with all the pomp and impressiveness of a 
 military parade. 
 
 "I've lost her. She will never come back," moaned 
 Madame, and burst into tears. 
 
 "But she couldn't possibly have worn that gown. 
 She would have found it out as soon as she got home," 
 replied Gabriella reassuringly, though her heart was 
 almost as heavy as Madame's. 
 
 It was all her fault, of course, as Madame, recover 
 ing her voice as she lost her temper, began immediately 
 to tell her. It was all her fault, and yet how could 
 she have stood there and lied to the woman in cold 
 blood because Madame expected it of her as a part of 
 her work? That she had infuriated Madame and im 
 perilled her position she realized perfectly; but, realizing 
 this, she still felt that she could not have told Mrs.
 
 306 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Pletheridge that the gown was becoming to her. 
 "There are times when one has to be honest no 
 matter what happens," she thought rebelliously, while 
 she went back to the workroom. Had Madame dis 
 charged her on the spot she would not have been sur 
 prised, and it was with a sensation of relief that she 
 presently saw the forewoman measuring a dose of 
 aromatic spirits of ammonia, and heard that the crisis 
 was passing. A little later, when she went into the 
 showroom with a hat for Miss Bellman, she encoun 
 tered Madame bonneted, cloaked, panting, with moist 
 eyes and raddled cheeks, preparing to take a slow 
 airing in a hansom. As she was assisted into the 
 vehicle by Miss Murphy and the driver, Madame 
 pressed her beringed hand to her forehead with a 
 despairing gesture; then the driver cracked his whip, 
 the horse started, and the hansom disappeared up 
 Fifth Avenue. 
 
 "What under the sun did you do to her?" inquired 
 Miss Murphy, holding her wheaten-red pompadour 
 down in the wind. "I declare I thought at first it was 
 murder!" 
 
 "I told her the truth, when she asked me, that was 
 all." 
 
 "Well, I never! Now what, in the name of goodness, 
 possessed you?" 
 
 "I had to. I don't see how I could have kept 
 from it." 
 
 "Good gracious! There're always ways, but what 
 sort of truth was it? You see, it's been so long since 
 I've met one," she explained airily, "that I don't even 
 know what they're like." 
 
 "It was about Mrs. Pletheridge's gown the one she
 
 SZZf ' / w u/ 
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 307 
 
 wanted her to buy, you know. I told her it didn't 
 suit her. And it didn't you know it didn't," she 
 concluded emphatically. 
 
 "Of course it didn't, but I don't see why you had 
 to go and tell her." 
 
 "She asked me. They both asked me, and if I'd 
 lied she wouldn't have believed me. You can't fool 
 people so outrageously, and I wouldn't if I could. It 
 isn't honest, and it isn't good business." 
 
 "Anything is good business that gets by," remarked 
 Miss Murphy, who had a philosophy. "I must go 
 indoors or this wind will blow all my puffs away." 
 
 She departed breezily; and Gabriella, returning to 
 the workroom, spent her afternoon patiently stitching 
 flat garlands of flowers on the brim of a hat. When 
 she left the house at six o'clock the April weather was 
 so lovely that she decided to walk all the way home; 
 and while she moved rapidly with the crowd in Fifth 
 Avenue, she considered anxiously the possible disas 
 trous results of Madame's anger. Between her and 
 absolute want there stood only her salary, and she had 
 deliberately she realized now how deliberate her reply 
 had been undermined that thin and insecure protec 
 tion. Though she was now earning as much as thirty 
 dollars a week, an illness of a year ago, when she had 
 been obliged to stop work for several months, had ex 
 hausted the remains of the modest nest-egg with which 
 she had started; and to lose her place, she knew, would 
 mean either starvation or beggary. There was no one, 
 with the exception of Cousin Jimmy, of whom she 
 could beg, and to beg of him would be a tacit confes 
 sion that she had failed as a breadwinner. In Mrs. 
 Carr's last letter Charley had appeared in a new light as
 
 308 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 a reformed character, a devoted attendant at church, 
 and an enthusiastic convert to the prohibition party; 
 and Gabriella had gathered from her mother's pious 
 rambling that, like other sinners who have outlived 
 temptation, he was devoting his middle years to a 
 violent crusade against the moderate indulgences of 
 the abstemious. But Charley, she felt, was out of 
 the question. She would die before she would stoop 
 to ask help of a man she had despised as heartily as 
 she had once despised Charley. She must sink or 
 swim by her own strength, not by another's. 
 
 "I wonder why I did it?" she asked herself again, 
 and again she could not answer the question. She 
 felt that she might have lied had it been merely a lie 
 and not a test of courage before her; but she could not 
 lie simply because she was afraid of speaking the truth. 
 In every character there is one supreme vice or virtue 
 which strikes the deepest root and blossoms most lux 
 uriantly, and in the character of Gabriella this virtue was 
 courage. At the crucial moments of life some primor 
 dial instinct prompted her to fight, not to yield. "I 
 ought to have been evasive, I suppose," she thought 
 regretfully. "But how could I have been?" There 
 were instants, she had discovered, when wisdom sur 
 rendered to the more militant virtues. 
 
 When she reached home she found Fanny, who was 
 fretfully recovering from influenza, lying on the sofa 
 in the living-room, with Miss Polly busily stitching at 
 her side, while Archibald, excited by a strenuous 
 afternoon with the son of the Italian fruit dealer, was 
 kneeling before the window, making mysterious signs 
 to a group of yellow-haired German children in the 
 apartment house on the opposite side of the street.
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 309 
 
 Both children were eagerly expecting their mother, 
 and as soon as she entered they grew animated and 
 cheerful. 
 
 She kissed and cuddled them, and listened sympa 
 thetically to their excited stories of the day, and of 
 Dr. French, who had been to see Fanny, and who had 
 waited as long as he could. 
 
 "He's going to take us for a drive to-morrow, 
 mother, and we're to sit in the carriage while he goes 
 in to pay his calls, and then he's to show us the river 
 and we're to stop somewhere to have tea." 
 
 "Did he stay long?" asked Gabriella of Miss Polly. 
 
 "For more than an hour," replied Miss Polly, and 
 commented shrewdly after a minute: "It looks to me 
 as if there was more in that young man than you can 
 see on the surface, Gabriella." 
 
 A blush tinged Gabriella's cheek, but she shook her 
 head almost indignantly. "Oh, there's nothing of that 
 kind," she answered emphatically, and rose to take off 
 her hat and prepare supper. 
 
 Since her illness of a year ago, when she had sum 
 moned the strange young doctor who had once been 
 the assistant of the Fowlers' family physician, she had 
 grown to feel a certain dependence upon Dr. French 
 as the only useful friend who was left to her. He was 
 a thin, gray-eyed, fair-haired young man, who practised 
 largely among the poor, from choice rather than from 
 necessity, since Dr. Morton had given him an excellent 
 start in life. His pale, ascetic face had attracted 
 Gabriella from their first meeting; there was the flame- 
 like enthusiasm of the visionary in his eyes; and he 
 had, she thought, the most beautiful and sympathetic 
 hands she had ever seen. Even Fanny, who was
 
 310 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 usually impervious to sensitive impressions, felt the 
 charm of his touch when he stroked her forehead or 
 placed his long, delicate fingers on her wrist. From 
 that first visit he had been a source of comfort and 
 strength to Gabriella; but of late she had felt moments 
 of uneasiness when she was with him. Was it possible, 
 she asked herself now, as she went back to the kitchen 
 to stew the oysters Miss Polly had bought for supper, 
 that the kindly doctor was misinterpreting the simple 
 and unaffected nature of her friendship? For herself 
 she felt that she had put the reality of love out of her 
 life, and that if the emotion existed for her at all, it 
 existed only as a dream and a regret. She enshrined 
 the memory of Arthur in something of the sentimental 
 worship which Mrs. Carr had consecrated to Gabriel 
 after she had lost him. It was an exquisite consolation 
 ' to her to feel that if things had been otherwise, she 
 f might have loved a man with the whole of her nature 
 , with both body and spirit; there were even moments 
 in the spring of the year, when, softened by the caress 
 ing air and the scent of hyacinths, she felt that she 
 f did so love a memory; but beyond this her feeling 
 was as bodiless and ethereal as the vague image to 
 ^ which it was dedicated. And yet this gentle regret 
 was all that she wanted of love. 
 
 In the kitchen she found Miss Danton, the musical 
 spinster, making her scant supper of tea and toast on 
 the gas-range. Though the hectic flush still burned in 
 Miss Danton's cheeks, the famished look in her eyes 
 seemed to have devoured all the strength of her body, 
 and she moved like one who has run to the point of 
 exhaustion and is about to drop to the ground. L 
 ago Gabriella had heard her story, and she understood
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 311 
 
 now that the yearning in her face was the yearning 
 for life, which she had rejected in her youth, and 
 which, in middle-age, had eluded her. As a young 
 girl, aflame with temperament, she had sacrificed her 
 self to a widowed father and a family of little brothers 
 and sisters in a small town in the South. For thirty 
 years she had fought down her dreams and her im 
 pulses; for thirty years she had cooked, washed, 
 ironed, and sewed, until the children had all grown up 
 and married, and her father, after a long illness, had 
 died in her arms. On her fifty-second birthday her 
 freedom had come freedom not only from cares and 
 responsibilities, but from love, from duty, from the 
 constant daily thought that she was necessary to some 
 one who depended on her. At fifty-three, with broken 
 health and a few thousand dollars brought from the sale 
 of the old home, she had come to New York to study 
 music as she had dreamed of doing when she was 
 young. And the tragedy of it was that she had a gift, 
 she had temperament, she had genuine artistic feeling. 
 
 "When I remember the way I used to cook for the 
 children," she remarked while she measured a teaspoon- 
 ful of green tea into a little Japanese tea-pot, "why, 
 I'd think nothing of roasting a turkey when we had 
 one at Christmas or Thanksgiving, and now, I declare, 
 it seems too much trouble to do more than make a 
 pot of tea. Sometimes I don't even take the trouble 
 to toast my bread." 
 
 "You ought to eat," replied Gabriella, briskly. 
 "When one gets run dcwn, one never looks at life 
 fairly." True to her fundamental common sense, she 
 had never underestimated the importance of food as a 
 prop for philosophy.
 
 312 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I'd never eat if I could help it," rejoined Miss 
 Danton, with the abhorrence of the aesthetic tempera 
 ment for material details. "It's queer the thoughts 
 I have sometimes," she added irrelevantly as she sat 
 down before the kitchen table, and poured out a cup 
 of tea. "I don't know what's come over me, but I'd 
 give anything on earth if it wasn't wicked I'd almost 
 give my soul to be your age and to be starting to live 
 my life. I never had any life. It wasn't fair. I 
 never had any," she repeated bitterly, dropping a lump 
 of sugar into her cup. 
 
 "Well, I've had my troubles, too," observed Gabri- 
 ella, busily stirring the oysters. 
 
 "You've had them and you'll have others. It 
 doesn't matter nothing really matters as long as 
 you're young. It's all a part of the game, trouble and 
 everything else everything except old age and death. 
 I'm getting old I'm getting old, and I began too late, 
 and that's the worst that can happen to a woman. 
 /Do you know I never had a love affair in my life," she 
 pursued bitterly after a moment. "I never had love, 
 .or pleasure, or anything but work and duty and now 
 it's too late. It's too late for it all," she finished, 
 rising to take her toast from the oven. 
 
 "Poor thing, she exaggerates so dreadfully," thought 
 
 Gabriella. "I believe it comes from drinking too much 
 
 green tea"; and she resolved that she would never 
 
 touch green tea as long as she lived. Like most women 
 
 I whose love had ended not in unf ulfilment, but in satiety 
 
 I and bitterness, she was inclined to deny the supreme 
 
 importance of the passion in the scheme of life. As a 
 
 ( deserted wife and the mother of two children, she felt 
 
 \that she could live for years without the desire, without
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 313 
 
 even the thought of romantic love in her mind. "I 
 wonder why I, who have known and lost love, should 
 be so much freer from that obsession than poor Miss 
 Danton, who has never been loved in her life?" she 
 asked herself while she carried the supper tray down 
 the long hall and into the living-room. 
 
 Some hours later, when the children were asleep, 
 and Gabriella sat darning Archibald's stockings beside 
 the kerosene lamp, she described to Miss Polly the 
 scene with Madame and Mrs. Pletheridge. 
 
 "I don't know how it will end. She may discharge 
 me to-morrow," she deliberated, as she cut off a 
 length of black darning cotton, and bent over to thread 
 her needle. "I wonder what I ought to do?" 
 
 "Well, now, ain't that exactly like you, Gabriella," 
 scolded Miss Polly; "but when you come to think of 
 it," she conceded after a minute or two, "I reckon 
 we're all made like that in the beginning. Why, I 
 remember way back yonder in the 'seventies how I 
 was always tryin' to persuade a woman with a skinny 
 figure not to wear a cuirass basque and a woman with 
 a stout figure not to put on a draped polonaise. I got 
 to know better presently, and you will, too, before 
 you've been at it much longer. They all think they 
 can look like fashion plates the skinniest and the 
 stoutest alike and there ain't a bit of use tryin' to 
 undeceive 'em. The last thing a woman ever sees 
 straight is her figure." 
 
 "I can't help feeling," demurred Gabriella, forsaking 
 the moral issue for the argument of mere expediency, 
 "that honesty is good business." 
 
 "Well, it ain't," retorted Miss Polly sharply. "It 
 may be good religion and good behaviour, but there's
 
 314 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 one thing it certainly ain't, and that is good business. 
 How many of these rich men we read about in the 
 papers do you reckon spend their time settin' around 
 and bein' honest? Mind you I ain't sayin' I'd lie or 
 steal myself, Gabriella, but I'm poor, and what I'm 
 sayin' is that when you feel that way about it, you're 
 as likely to stay poor as not." 
 
 But the next day, life, with one of those startling 
 surprises which defy philosophy and make drama, 
 confirmed the most illogical of Gabriella's assumptions. 
 Madame, coming in late, with a blotched face and 
 puffy eyelids, had dispatched her to the workroom, 
 and she was sitting before one of the long tables, 
 embroidering azure beads on a black collar, when Agnes 
 darted through the door and jerked the needle out of 
 her hand. 
 
 "Madame is asking for you. Come as quick as 
 you can!" she cried excitedly, and sped back again to 
 the shelter of the artificial rose-bushes at the end of the 
 hall. 
 
 Rising hurriedly, and brushing the scraps of silk 
 from her cloth skirt as she walked, Gabriella followed 
 the sound of Madame's wheedling voice, and found 
 herself, as she parted the curtains of a fitting-room, in 
 the opulent presence of Mrs. Pletheridge. 
 
 "Yes, as I told you, we trust implicitly to Mrs. 
 Carr's eye. She has the true eye of the artist," 
 Madame simpered fawningly as she entered. 
 
 "Did you send for me?" asked Gabriella, business 
 like and alert on the threshold. 
 
 "Good morning, Mrs. Carr! I told Madame Dinard 
 that I wanted you to wait on me. I want some one 
 who tells me the truth," explained Mrs. Pletheridge
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 315 
 
 so graciously that Gabriella would hardly have recog 
 nized her. Something sleep, pleasure, or pious medi 
 tation had altered overnight not only her temper 
 but even the fleshly vehicle of its uncertain manifesta 
 tions. Her features appeared to have adjusted them 
 selves to the size of her face, and she spoke quite 
 affably, though still with her manner of addressing an 
 inferior. 
 
 "I want you to show me something that will really 
 suit me," she said. "I think the grayish-green cloth 
 from Blandin might be copied in silver, but I should 
 like you to see it on me. I know you will tell me 
 what you really think." Her voice faltered and deep 
 ened to a note of pathos. 
 
 "Poor woman," thought Gabriella, "it must be hard 
 for her to get people to tell her what they really think," 
 and she added exultantly while she went for the gowns: 
 "If I satisfy her now, I am saved with Madame!' 
 
 When she returned, with the green cloth in one hand 
 and a charming lavender crepe tea-gown in the other, 
 she approached Mrs. Pletheridge with the manner of 
 intelligent sympathy, of serene and smiling competence, 
 which had made her so valuable to Madame as a sales 
 woman. She had the air not only of seeking to please, 
 but of knowing just how to go about the difficult matter 
 of pleasing. With the eye of an artist in dress, she 
 analyzed Mrs. Pletheridge's possibilities; and soften 
 ing here and there her pronounced features, suc 
 ceeded presently in producing a charming and harmo 
 nious whole. By the time a dozen gowns were tried on 
 and their available points discussed and criticised in 
 detail, Mrs. Pletheridge had given the largest order ever 
 received by the house, and was throwing out enthusi-
 
 316 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 astic hints of an even greater munificence in the future. 
 She left at last in a thoroughly good humour not 
 only with Dinard's, but with her own rejuvenated at 
 tractions; and Gabriella, exhausted but triumphant, 
 watched Agnes gather up the French models from 
 chairs and sofas and carry them back to the obscurity 
 of the closets. In her heart there was both peace 
 and rejoicing because her belief in life had been justi 
 fied. In spite of Madame, in spite of Miss Polly, 
 in spite of experience, the day had proved that it was, 
 after all, "good business" to be honest. Though she 
 was still in debt, though she was still compelled to 
 scrimp and save over market bills, nevertheless she felt 
 that her work had progressed beyond the experimental 
 stages, and that her place at Dinard's was secured until 
 some better opening appeared. For that morning at 
 least she had made herself indispensable to Madame. 
 For years, she knew, Madame had striven fawningly 
 for the exclusive patronage of Mrs. Pletheridge, and 
 she, Gabriella, had attained it, without loss of pride or 
 self-respect, by a few words of honest and sensible criti 
 cism. She had applied her intelligence to the situation, 
 and her intelligence had served Dinard's more success 
 fully than Madame's duplicity had done. 
 
 At home she found Dr. French, who had just 
 brought the delighted children back from their drive. 
 When she thanked him, she saw that there was a glow 
 of pleasure in his rather delicate face, and that this 
 glow lent an expression of ecstasy to his dark-gray eyes 
 the eyes of a mystic and a dreamer. "I wonder how 
 he ever became a physician," she thought. "He is 
 more like a priest like a priest of the Middle Ages." 
 But aloud she only said: "You have done them a world
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 317 
 
 of good. Fanny has got some of her colour back 
 already, and that means an appetite for supper." 
 
 "We had tea," broke in Archibald, with enthusiasm, 
 "but it was really milk, and we had cake, but it was 
 really bread and butter." He looked so well and vig 
 orous that Gabriella called the doctor's attenton to 
 the animation in his face. "If only he didn't have to 
 wear glasses," she said. "I'm so afraid it will interfere 
 with his love of sports. His ambition is to be captain 
 of a football team and to write poetry." 
 
 "It's a queer combination," responded the doctor, 
 smiling his slightly whimsical smile. He was rather 
 short, with an almost imperceptible limp, and he had, 
 as he put it, "never gone in for sports." "There's so 
 much else when one comes to think of it," he added, 
 pausing, with his hat in his hand, at the door; "there 
 are plenty of ways of having fun even without football." 
 Then he turned away from the children, and said di 
 rectly to Gabriella: 
 
 "Will you come out with me to-morrow? It is 
 Sunday." 
 
 "And leave the children?" she asked a little blankly. 
 
 "And leave the children!" He was laughing, but it 
 occurred to her suddenly, for the first time, that her 
 maternal raptures were beginning to bore him. For a 
 year she had believed that his interest in her was mainly 
 a professional interest in the children; and now she was 
 confronted with the disturbing fact that he wanted to 
 be rid of the children for a few hours at least, that he 
 evidently saw in her something besides the overwhelm 
 ing force of her motherhood. 
 
 "But I never leave them on Sunday. It is the only 
 day I have with them," she answered.
 
 318 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Don't go, mother! You mustn't go!" cried Fanny, 
 and clung to her. 
 
 "Oh, very well," returned Dr. French, dismissing the 
 subject with irritation. "But you look pale, and I 
 thought the air might do you good." 
 
 He went away rather abruptly, while Gabriefla stood 
 looking at Miss Polly in regret and perplexity. "I 
 hope I didn't hurt his feelings by declining," she said; 
 and then, as the children raced into the nursery to take 
 off their coats, she added slowly, "He couldn't expect 
 me to go without them." 
 
 "If you want to know what I think," replied Miss 
 Polly flatly, "it is that he's just sick to death of the 
 children. You've stuck them down his throat until 
 he's had as much of them as he can swallow." 
 
 For a moment Gabriella considered this ruefully. 
 
 "You don't honestly believe that he's interested 
 in me in that way?" she demanded in a horrified 
 whisper. 
 
 "I don't know but one way in which a man's ever in 
 terested in a woman," retorted Miss Polly. "It's 
 either that way or it's none at all, as far as I can see. 
 But if I was you, honey, I'd drop him a little encour 
 agement now and then, just to keep up his spirits. 
 Men ain't no mo' than flesh and blood, after all, and 
 it's natural that he shouldn't be as crazy about the 
 children as you are." 
 
 "But why should I encourage him? Even if you are 
 right, I couldn't marry him. I could never marry 
 again." 
 
 "I'd like to know why not, if you get a chance? 
 You're free enough, ain't you?" 
 
 "Yes, it isn't that but I couldn't."
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 319 
 
 "You ain't hankerin' after George, are you, Gabri- 
 ella?" 
 
 "After George? No!" responded Gabriella with so 
 sincere an accent that Miss Polly jumped. 
 
 "Well, I'm glad you ain't," observed the seamstress 
 soothingly as she stooped to pick up her sewing. "I 
 shouldn't think he was worth hankerin' after, myself, 
 but you've looked kind of peaked and thin this spring, 
 so I've just been wonderin'." 
 
 "I never loved George. It was madness, nothing 
 else," returned Gabriella, and she really believed it. 
 
 "Well, your thinkin' it madness now don't mean it 
 wan't love ten years ago," commented Miss Polly, 
 with the shrewdness of a detached and observant 
 spinster. 
 
 "I suppose you're right," admitted Gabriella thought 
 fully. Though she had not mentioned Arthur, her I 
 mind was full of him, and she was perfectly convinced ^ 
 that she had loved him all her life even during her / 
 brief period of "madness." It was a higher love, she/ 
 felt, so much higher, indeed, that it had been too spirit 
 ual, too ethereal, to take root in the earthly soil from 
 which her passion for George had sprung. But, if it 
 were not love, why was it that every faint stirring of herl 
 emotions revived the memory so poignantly? Why 
 was it that Miss Polly's sentimental interpretation of 
 the doctor's interest evoked the image of Arthur? 
 
 "No, I never think of George never," she repeated, 
 and her fine, pure features assumed an expression of 
 sternness. <c But I shan't marry again," she went on 
 after a pause in which Miss Polly's sewing-machine 
 buzzed cheerfully over its work. "I've had enough 
 of marriage to last me for one lifetime."
 
 320 LIFE AND GABBIELLA 
 
 The machine stopped, and Miss Polly, snipping the 
 thread as she came to the end of a seam, turned squarely 
 to answer. "Don't you be too sure about that, honey. 
 You may have had enough to last you for ten years or 
 so, but wait till you've turned forty, and if the hank- 
 erin' for love don't catch you at forty, you may begin 
 to expect it somewhere around fifty. Why, just look 
 at that poor piano-play in' old maid in there. Wouldn't 
 you think she'd have done with it? Well, she ain't 
 she ain't, and you ain't either, for that matter, I don't 
 care how hard you argue!" 
 
 "There are ten happy years ahead of me anyhow!" 
 rejoined Gabriella, with a ringing laugh the laugh, as 
 Dr. French had once remarked, of a woman who is 
 sound to the core. She had triumphed over the past, 
 and was not afraid, she told herself valiantly, of the 
 future. 
 
 At the beginning of July the children went with Miss 
 Polly to the country, and Gabriella, after seeing them 
 off, turned back alone to begin a long summer of 
 economy and drudgery. In order to keep Fanny and 
 Archibald out of town she was obliged to deny herself 
 every unnecessary comfort luxuries she had given up 
 long ago and to stay at Dinard's, in Madame's place, 
 through the worst weeks of the year, when the show 
 room was deserted except for an occasional stray South 
 erner, and even the six arrogant young women were 
 away on vacations. Even if she had had the chance, 
 the money for a trip would have been lacking, and to 
 fill Madame's conspicuous place gave her, she realized, 
 a certain importance and authority in the house. There 
 was opportunity, in a small way, to work out some of 
 her ideas of system and order, and there was sufficient
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 321 
 
 time to think out a definite and practical plan for the / 
 future. Her aim from the first had been, not only to 
 catch on, but to master the details of the business, and 
 she knew that, in spite of Madame's sporadic attempts 
 to keep her in her place, she was gradually making her 
 self felt she was slowly impressing her individual^ 
 methods upon the establishment. Madame was no 
 longer what she once was, and the business was showing 
 it. She was getting old, she was growing tired, and her 
 naturally careless methods of work were fastening upon 
 her. In the last years she had offered less and less 
 resistance to her tendency to let go, to leave loose ends 
 ungathered, to allow opportunities to slip out of her 
 grasp, to be inexact and unsystematic. There was 
 urgent need of a strong hand at Dinard's, if the business 
 was to be kept from running gradually downhill, and 
 Gabriella became convinced, as the days passed, that 
 hers was the only hand in the house strong enough to 
 check the perilous descent to failure. Her plans were i 
 made, her scheme arranged, but, as Madame was both 
 jealous and suspicious, she saw that she must move very 
 cautiously. 
 
 There were times since this is history, not romance 
 when her spirits flagged and her strength failed her. 
 The heat of the summer was intense, and the breathless 
 days dragged on interminably into the breathless 
 nights. When her work was over she would wait until 
 the last of her fellow-workers had gone home, and then 
 walk across to Sixth Avenue and take the Harlem ele 
 vated train for her deserted rooms, which appeared 
 more desolate, more ugly than ever because the children 
 were absent. In the lonely kitchen for Miss Danton 
 and the art students were all away she would eat her
 
 322 LIFE AND GABRffiLLA 
 
 supper of bread and tea, which she drank without 
 cream because it was more economical; and then, 
 lighting her lamp, she would sew or read until midnight. 
 Sometimes, when it was too hot for the lamp, and she 
 found it impossible to work by the flickering gas, she 
 would sit by her window and look down on the panting 
 humanity in the street below on the small shop 
 keepers seated in chairs on the sidewalk, on the little 
 son of the Italian fruiterer playing with his dog, on the 
 three babies of the Jewish tobacco merchant, sprawling 
 in the door of the tiny shop which was pressed like a 
 sardine between a bakery and a dairy. She was alone 
 in the apartment, and there were late afternoons when 
 the grim emptiness of the rooms seemed haunted, when 
 she shrank back in apprehensive foreboding as she 
 turned her key in the lock, when the profound silence 
 within preyed on her nerves like an obsession. On 
 these days she dreaded to go down the long hall to 
 the kitchen, where the fluttering clothes-lines on fire- 
 escapes at the back of the next apartment house offered 
 the only suggestion of human companionship in the 
 unfriendly wilderness of the city. The sight of the 
 children's toys, of Fanny's story books, of Archibald's 
 roller skates, moved her to tears once or twice; and 
 when this happened she caught herself up sharply and 
 struggled with the vague, malignant demon of mel 
 ancholy. 
 
 "Whatever comes, I must not lose my courage," 
 she told herself at such times. "If I lose my courage 
 I shall have nothing left." 
 
 Then she would put on her hat, and go down into the 
 street, where the unwashed children swarmed like in 
 sects over the pavements, and the air was as hot and
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 323 
 
 parched as the air of a desert. If the mother of the Jew- 
 : ish babies sat on her doorstep, she would stop for a little 
 talk with her about the heat and the health of the chil 
 dren, and the increasing price of whatever one happened 
 to buy in the market, or, perhaps, if the fruit stall still 
 kept open, she would ask after the Italian's little boy, 
 and stop to pat Archibald's friend, the white mongrel 
 with the black ear. She had left her acquaintances 
 when she left Fifty-seventh Street, and, with the 
 exception of Judge Crowborough, who telephoned 
 occasionally to inquire if she needed assistance, she was 
 without friends in New York. Patty wrote often 
 from Paris, but Billy was happy with his work, and 
 they said nothing of returning to America. In the 
 whole city, outside of Dinard's, she knew only Dr. 
 French, and from him she had had no word or sign for 
 several months. 
 
 It was on one of these depressing evenings, while she 
 was boiling an egg in the kitchen, that the ringing of the 
 door-bell reverberated with an uncanny sound through 
 the empty apartment. Spurred by an instinctive fear 
 of a telegram, she ran to open the door, and found Dr. 
 French standing in the dimly lighted hall, with the 
 negro Robert grinning cheerfully at his back. 
 
 "I am so glad," she said, "so glad," and her voice 
 shook in spite of the effort she made. 
 
 "I've been thinking about you all summer," he ex 
 plained, "and the other day I passed you in the street 
 as you were coming from work. You are not looking 
 well. Is it the heat?" 
 
 "No, it isn't the heat. I think it is the loneliness. 
 You see it is so different not having the children to come 
 back to in the afternoon, and when I get lonely I see
 
 324 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 things in false proportions. This apartment has been 
 like a grave to me all summer." 
 
 She led the way into the living-room, where her sew 
 ing, a blue cambric frock she was scalloping for Fanny, 
 was lying on the chair by the window. "Things are all 
 upset. I hope you won't mind," she added apologet 
 ically while she folded the dress and laid it aside, "but 
 nothing seems to matter when I sit here all by myself." 
 
 "What are you doing?" 
 
 "Oh, I work all day. There is really very little to do 
 except plan for the autumn, and I like that. Madame 
 is in Paris, and I am in charge of the place." 
 
 "And in the evenings?" 
 
 She laughed with recovered spirit. "In the evening 
 I sew and read and mope." 
 
 "Well, we must change all that," he said, with a 
 tenderness which brought tears to her eyes. "Why 
 can't you come out with me somewhere to dinner?" 
 
 Three years ago, when she was first separated from 
 George, she would have evaded the suggestion ; but to 
 night, at the end of the long summer, she caught eagerly 
 at the small crumb of pleasure. 
 
 " Oh, I'd love to ! Only wait until I put out the stove 
 and tidy my hair." 
 
 "I want to see what you have to eat," he remarked in 
 his whimsical tone, as he followed her back into the 
 kitchen. "Only an egg!" 
 
 "It is so hot. I wasn't hungry, but I am now," she 
 
 replied gaily, her thin face flushing to beauty. After 
 
 her loneliness there was a delight in being cared for, in 
 
 f f being scolded. "But for the mistake I made this might 
 
 I happen to me always," she thought, and her mind went 
 
 ' back to Arthur.
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 325 
 
 When she came out of her room, wearing a fresh linen 
 blouse, with her hair smoothly brushed, and her eyes 
 sparkling with pleasure, he was gazing abstractedly 
 down into the street, and she was obliged to speak 
 twice to him before he heard her and turned. At last 
 he broke away, almost with an effort, from his medita 
 tion, and when he looked at her she saw that there was 
 the mystic gleam in his eyes the light as of a star 
 shining through clouds which attracted her so strongly. 
 The thought flashed through her vague impressions, 
 "He loves me. I may win him by a smile, by a word, 
 by a look," and, for a minute, she rested on the cer 
 tainty with an ineffable sense of peace, of ease, of deep 
 inward rejoicing. "Love is everything. There is 
 nothing worth while except love," she thought; and 
 love meant to her then, not passion, not even romance, 
 but comfort, tenderness, and the companionship that 
 sweetens the flat monotony of daily living. Then, 
 beneath the beauty and sweetness of the vision, she felt 
 the vein of iron in her soul as she had felt it whenever 
 she struggled to escape the sterner issues of life. The 
 face of Arthur rose in her memory, tender, wistful, 
 protecting, and young with the eternal youth of desire. 
 No, love was not for her again. Not for the second 
 time would she betray the faith of her Dream. 
 
 They dined at a little French restaurant, where the 
 green-shaded lights, festooned with grape leaves, shed a 
 romantic pallor over their faces, and the haunting 
 refrains of an Italian love song stirred the buried ghosts 
 in their hearts. The doctor made her drink a glass of 
 champagne; and after her frugal meals and the weaken 
 ing effect of the heat and the loneliness, the sparkle of 
 the wine, mingling with the music and the lights, sent
 
 326 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 a sudden rush of joy through her veins. Her courage 
 came back to her, not in slow drops, but in a radiant 
 flood, which pervaded her being. After the lonely 
 months there was delight in the clasp of a friend's hand, 
 in the glance of a friend's eye, in the sound of a friend's 
 voice speaking her name. Life appeared divinely 
 precious at the instant; and by life she meant not hap 
 piness, not even fulfilment, but the very web, the very 
 texture and pattern of experience. 
 
 "You're better already," he said, with a solicitude 
 that was more intoxicating than wine to her. "How I 
 wish I'd known all summer that you were here. I 
 might have done something to make you happy, and 
 now I've missed my chance." 
 
 "I don't think I've ever been so happy as I am to 
 night," she answered simply, and then after a pause 
 she let fall word by word, "After all, it takes so little 
 to make me happy." 
 
 "One can tell that to look at you. You have the air 
 of happiness. I noticed it the first moment I saw you. 
 And yet you have not had an easy life. There must 
 have been terrible hours for you in the past." 
 
 "No, I haven't had an easy life, but I love it. I 
 mean I love living." 
 
 "I know, I understand," he said softly. "It is the 
 true American spirit optimism springing out of a 
 struggle. Do you know you have always made me 
 think of the American spirit at its best of its un 
 quenchable youth, its gallantry, its self-reliance " 
 
 They walked back slowly through the hot, close 
 streets, and sat for an hour beside her window-sill on 
 which a rose geranium was blooming in an earthen pot. 
 Now and then a breeze entered warily, stealing the
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 327 
 
 fragrance from the rose geranium, and rippling the dark, 
 straying tendrils of Gabriella's hair. By the dim light 
 she saw the wistful pallor of his face, and his blue eyes, 
 with their exalted look, which moved her heart to an 
 inexpressible tenderness. 
 
 "You are so different from other physicians," she 
 said in perplexity, "I can't think of you as one, no mat 
 ter how hard I try. All the others I have known, even 
 old Dr. Walker, were materialists." 
 
 "Well, I got in some way. There are fools in every 
 school, I suppose. But if it's any comfort to you, 
 they've done their best to get rid of me. They don't 
 like my theories." When he talked of his work he 
 seemed all at once another man to her, and she dis 
 cerned presently, while she listened to his earnest voice, 
 that he was one of the men whose emotional natures 
 are nourished by an abstract and impersonal passion- 
 by the passion for science, for truth in its concrete 
 form. After all, he was a mystic only in his eyes. 
 Beneath his dreamer's face he was a scientist to the 
 last drop of his blood, to the last fibre of his being. 
 "He can't be hurt deeply through the heart," she 
 thought; "only through the mind." 
 
 "I've wondered about you all summer," he repeated 
 presently, "and yet I kept away partly, I suppose, 
 because I was thinking too much of you." 
 
 At his change of tone from the impersonal to the 
 tender all the frozen self-pity in her heart seemed to 
 melt suddenly, threatening in its overflow the very 
 foundations of her philosophy. The temptation to 
 yield utterly, to rest for a while not on her strength, but 
 on his, assailed her with the swiftness and the violence 
 of a spiritual revulsion. For an instant she surrendered
 
 328 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 to the uncontrollable force of this desire; then she drew 
 quickly back while the world about her the room, 
 the window, the bare skeleton of the elevated road, the 
 street, and even the rose geranium blooming on the sill 
 became as remote and impalpable as a phantom. 
 
 "It has been a long summer," she heard herself say 
 ing from a distance in a thin and colourless voice. 
 
 "And you suffered?" 
 
 " Sometimes, but I'm interested in my work, and I've 
 been thinking and planning all summer." 
 
 For a moment he was silent, and though she did not 
 look at him, she could feel his intense gaze on her face. 
 The breeze, scented with rose geranium, touched her fore 
 head like the healing and delicate stroke of his fingers. 
 
 "You are still so young, so vital, not to have some 
 thing else in your life," he went on presently in a voice 
 so charged with feeling that her eyes filled while she lis 
 tened to it. 
 
 "I have had love, and I have my children." 
 
 "But you will love again? You will marry again 
 some day?" 
 
 She shook her head, hearing, above the street cries 
 and the muffled rumble of the elevated train, a voice 
 that said: "I shall never give you up, Gabriella!" To 
 her weakened nerves there appeared, with the vividness 
 of an hallucination, the memory of Arthur as he had 
 looked in her school-days when she had first loved him; 
 and in this hallucination she saw him, not as he was in 
 reality, but divinely glorified and enkindled by the light 
 her imagination had created around him. 
 
 "No, I shall never love again, I shall never love 
 again," she answered at last, while a feeling of exultation 
 surged through her.
 
 THE DREAM AND THE YEARS 329 
 
 "You mean," his voice shook a little, "that your hus 
 band still holds you? " 
 
 "My husband? No, I never think of my husband." 
 "Is there some one else?" 
 
 Before answering she looked up at him, and by his 
 face she knew that her reply would cost her his friend 
 ship. She wanted his friendship at the moment she 
 felt that she would gladly give a year of her life for it. 
 It meant companionship instead of loneliness, it meant 
 plenty instead of famine. Yet only for an instant, only 
 while she stopped to draw breath, did she hesitate. 
 "Women must learn to be honourable," she found her 
 self thinking suddenly with an extraordinary intensity. 
 "Yes, there is some one else there has always been 
 some one else," she said, driven on by an impulsive de 
 sire for full confession, for absolute candour. "When I 
 met George I was engaged to another man, and I have 
 loved that man all my life." 
 
 She had confessed all, she told herself; and the re- 
 f markable part was that she really believed her confes- 
 , sion she was honestly convinced that she had spoken 
 * only the truth. Her soul, like the soul of Cousin 
 f Jimmy, sheltered a romantic strain which demanded 
 ' that one supreme illusion should endure amid a world 
 ^ of disillusionment. Because she was obliged to believe 
 1 in something or die, she had built her imperishable 
 Dream on the flame-swept ruins of her happiness. 
 "He must be a big man if he can fill a life like yours," 
 said Dr. French. 
 
 "I don't know why I told you," she faltered; "I have 
 never told any one else. It is my secret." 
 "Well, it is safe with me. Don't be afraid." 
 For the few minutes before he rose to go they talked
 
 330 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 indifferently of other things. She had lost him, she 
 knew, and while she held his hand at parting, she felt 
 a sharp regret for what was passing out of her life for 
 the one chance of love, of peace, of a tranquil and com 
 monplace happiness. But beneath the regret there was 
 a hidden spring of joy in her heart. At the instant of 
 trial she had found strength to be true to her Dream.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 SUCCESS 
 
 "I DECLARE you're real pretty to-night, honey," re 
 marked Miss Polly from the floor, where she knelt pin 
 ning up the hem of a black serge skirt she was making 
 for Gabriella. "Some days you're downright plain, 
 and then you flame out just like a lamp. Nobody 
 would ever think to look at you that you'd be thirty- 
 seven years old to-morrow." For it was the evening 
 before Gabriella's birthday, and she was at the end of 
 her thirty-sixth year. 
 
 "I feel young," she answered brightly, "and I feel 
 happy. The children are well, and I've had all the 
 success I could ask. Some day I'm going to own Ma- 
 dame's business, Miss Polly." 
 
 "I reckon she's gettin' mighty old, ain't she?" 
 
 "She gave up the work years ago, and I believe 
 she'd be glad to sell out to me to-morrow if I had the 
 money." 
 
 "I wish you had. It would be nice for you to be at 
 the head, now wouldn't it?" rejoined Miss Polly, speak 
 ing with difficulty through a mouthful of pins. 
 
 "Yes, I wish I had, but I've thought and thought, 
 and I don't see how I could borrow enough. I've some 
 times thought of asking Judge Crowborough to invest 
 some money in the business. It would be investing, the 
 returns are so good." 
 
 331
 
 332 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "He'd do it in a minute, I expect. He always set a 
 lot of store by you, didn't he? " 
 
 "He used to, but somehow I hate to ask favours." 
 
 "You were always a heap too proud. Don't you re 
 member how you'd never eat the other children's cake 
 when you were a child unless you had some of your own 
 to offer 'em?" 
 
 Gabriella laughed. "No, I don't remember, but it 
 sounds like me. I was horrid." 
 
 "There was always a hard streak somewhere down in 
 you, and you don't mind my sayin' that you ain't get- 
 tin' any softer, Gabriella. There are times now when 
 your mouth gets a set look like your Aunt Becky Bolling- 
 broke's. You don't recollect her, I 'spose, but she never 
 married." 
 
 "Well, I married," Gabriella flippantly reminded 
 her; "so it can't be that." 
 
 Though the hard work of the last ten years had left 
 its visible mark upon her, and she looked a little older, 
 a little tired, a little worn, experience had added a rare 
 spiritual beauty to her face, and she was far handsomer 
 than she had been at twenty. The rich sprinkling of 
 silver in the heavy waves of hair over her ears framed 
 the firm pale oval of her face with a poetic and mysteri 
 ous darkness, and gave depth and softness to her bril 
 liant eyes. For the struggle, which had stolen her first 
 freshness and left faintly perceptible lines in her expres 
 sive face, had not robbed her of the eyes and the heart 
 of a girl. 
 
 "I don't count George, somehow," retorted Miss 
 Polly. "That wan't like marryin' a real man, you 
 know, and, when all's said and done, a lone woman gets 
 mighty hard and dried up."
 
 SUCCESS 333 
 
 "But I can't marry when there's nobody to marry 
 me," laughed Gabriella. "I haven't seen a man for 
 seven years except in the street or occasionally in the 
 shop. Men have either passed me by without seeing 
 me or they have wanted to sell me something." 
 
 At the sound of the children's voices she slipped out of 
 the serge skirt, and began hurriedly fastening the old 
 black silk gown she wore at dinner. Through all the 
 i years of toil and self-denial she had preserved a certain 
 formality of living, a gracious ease of manner, which 
 she kept for the evenings with her children. Cares 
 were thrust away then, to be taken up again as soon as 
 Fanny and Archibald were in bed, and no matter how 
 hard the day had been, she was always cheerful, always 
 gay and light-hearted for the dinner hour by the fire 
 side. Not often had she been too poor to buy a handful 
 of flowers for the table, and never once, except during 
 her illness, had she come home too tired to change to 
 the black silk gown, which she had turned and made 
 from bishop sleeves to small ones, and from "dropped" 
 shoulders to high ones, for the last six or seven years. 
 The damask on the table was darned and mended, but 
 it was always spotlessly fresh. In winter the fire was 
 made up brightly in the evenings; in summer the room 
 was deliciously scented with rose geranium and helio 
 trope from the box in the window. For ten years she 
 had not had a holiday; she had worked harder than a 
 man, harder than any servant, for she had worked from 
 dawn until midnight; but into her hard life she had in 
 stilled a mialitvof soul which had enabled her to endure 
 
 the^iraja-without breaking. ".No hi'eis so hard that 
 you can't make it easier by the way you take it," she 
 had said to herself in the beginning; and remembering
 
 334 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 always that courage is one of the eternal virtues, she 
 had disciplined her mind as well as her body to firmness 
 ind elasticity of fibre. "Nobody, except myself, is ever 
 going to make me happy," she would repeat over and 
 over again when the day was wearying and the work 
 heavy. "I want to be happy. I have a right to be 
 happy, but it depends on myself." 
 
 This indestructible belief in her "right to happiness" 
 supported her through the hardest hours of her life, and 
 diffused an invigorating atmosphere not only in her 
 home, but even in her long working hours at Dinard's. 
 The children grew and strengthened in its bracing air; 
 Miss Polly quickly responded to it; the women in the 
 workroom breathed it in as if it were the secret of health, 
 and even Madame showed occasional signs that she was 
 not entirely impervious to its vital and joyous influence. 
 It was not always easy for Gabriella to keep the light 
 in her eyes and the faith in her heart. There were days 
 when both seemed to fail her, when, with aching body 
 and depressed mind, she felt that she could not look be 
 yond the immediate suffering minute, when she told 
 herself despairingly that she had lost everything in 
 losing her courage. But bad days passed as irrevocably 
 as good ones; and left her, when they were over, with 
 her strong soul unshaken, and her philosophy of happi 
 ness still undestroyed. Like other human beings, she 
 found that her moods were largely controlled by her 
 physical health. 
 
 "Oh, mother dear, I went down to meet you, and I 
 missed you by just five minutes," said Fanny, kissing 
 her cheek. "I wanted you to go with me to look at the 
 house in London Terrace. Miss Polly and I are crazy 
 about it."
 
 SUCCESS 335 
 
 "I know," said Gabriella tenderly, while she feasted 
 her eyes on her daughter. 
 
 The old apartment house in which they had spent the 
 last ten years would be torn down in the summer, and 
 Fanny and Miss Polly had devoted the past week to an 
 exhaustive hunt for a home. 
 
 "Then you'll look at it to-morrow, won't you, 
 mother? " urged Fanny. " We can get the upper rooms 
 and they are larger than these. There is a little yard 
 in front, with an elm tree and a rose-bush, and plenty 
 of space for flowers." 
 
 "I can't recall the house exactly," said Gabriella 
 thoughtfully. "It must be in a row, isn't it? I have 
 a vague recollection of some old houses, with fronts of 
 stuccoed pilasters, and rather nice yards. But West 
 Twenty -third Street is too far away, dear. I don't like 
 the neighbourhood. Wouldn't you rather be in 
 Park Avenue?" Her ignorance of New York, though 
 she had lived there seventeen years, amazed Fanny, 
 who was a true child of the city. 
 
 "Carlie Herndon lives in that row, mother" Carlie 
 Herndon, the daughter of a distinguished and unpopular 
 novelist, was Fanny's best friend for the moment 
 "and I could always go out with her in the eve 
 ning." 
 
 "It isn't the location I should have liked, Fanny," 
 said Gabriella, weakly yielding, as she always yielded 
 to her daughter; "but if you really fancy the house, 
 I'll try to look at it on my way home to-morrow. One 
 has to be very careful about the plumbing in these 
 old houses. I insist upon good plumbing. After that, 
 you may have what you want." 
 
 "Oh, it has brand-new bathrooms, Mrs. Mallon told
 
 336 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 me so, and she's lived there until a year ago. And if 
 you had only seen the new apartments we looked at, 
 mother, nothing on the East Side that would have held 
 us under twenty-five hundred a year, and even at 
 that the bedrooms were no bigger than closets, and 
 you'd have to have electric light all day in the bath 
 room. We searched everywhere, didn't we, Miss 
 Polly?" 
 
 "West Twenty-third Street is mighty far out of the 
 way, honey," observed Miss Polly cautiously. 
 
 "Oh, but I'd have Carlie, and she's my best friend," 
 persisted Fanny, with caressing obstinacy. 
 
 "Well, we'll see, precious," said Gabriella, while she 
 assured herself that if Fanny cost her every penny she 
 had, at least the child was worth what she spent on her. 
 To a superficial observer, Fanny would probably have 
 appeared merely an attractive girl, of Jane's willowy 
 type, with something of Jane's trite prettiness of fea 
 ture; but to Gabriella, who suffered from a maternal 
 obliquity of vision, she seemed both brilliant and beau 
 tiful. Of course she was selfish, but this selfishness, as 
 long as it was clothed in her youth and loveliness, was 
 as inoffensive as the playfulness of a kitten. Her 
 face was round and shallow, with exquisite colouring 
 which veiled the flatness and lack of character in 
 her features. Above her azure eyes her hair, which 
 was not plentiful, but fine and soft, and as yellow as 
 ripe corn, broke in a shining mist over her forehead. 
 All her life, by being what she was, she had got, with 
 out effort, everything that she wanted. She had got 
 dolls when she wanted dolls; she had got Miss Lud- 
 well's expensive school when she wanted an expen 
 sive private school; she would get the house in West
 
 SUCCESS 337 
 
 Twenty-third Street to-morrow, and when she began to 
 want love, jshe would^gej Jt L as_gasily and as undeservedly 
 as she got everything else. She was very expensive, 
 but, like the flowers on the table and the spotless dam 
 ask and the lace in Gabriella's sleeves, she was one of 
 her mother's luxuries to be paid for by additional hours 
 of work and thought. 
 
 "Wasn't Archibald with you?" inquired Gabriella, 
 while she pushed the chairs into place and tidied the 
 room. 
 
 "He stopped at the library. There's his ring now. 
 I'll open the door." 
 
 She ran out, and Gabriella, with the tablecloth in her 
 hand, stood waiting for Archibald to enter. In her eager 
 expectancy, in the wistful brightness of her eyes, in the 
 tender quivering of her lips, she was like a girl who is 
 awaiting a lover. Every evening, after her day's work, 
 she greeted her son with the same passionate tenderness. 
 Never had it lessened, never, even when she was most 
 discouraged, had she failed to summon her strength 
 and her sweetness for this beatific end to the day. For 
 Archibald was more than a son to her. As he grew older 
 their characters became more perfectly adjusted, and 
 the rare bond of a deep mental sympathy held them to 
 gether. Fanny loved her as a spoiled child loves the 
 ^dispenser of its happiness; but in Archibald's devotion 
 .there was something of the worship of a man for an 
 ideal. 
 
 Flushed and hungry, the boy came in, and after kiss 
 ing her hurriedly, ran off to wash his face and hands be 
 fore dinner. When he came back the table was laid, 
 with a bunch of lilacs in a cut glass vase over the 
 darned spot in the tablecloth, and Miss Polly was
 
 338 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 bringing in the old-fashioned soup tureen, which had 
 belonged to Gabriella's maternal grandmother. 
 
 "If you don't sit right straight down everything will 
 be cold," said Miss Polly severely, for this was her cus 
 tomary manner of announcing dinner. Every night 
 for ten years she had threatened them with a cold din 
 ner while she served them a hot one. 
 
 With a child on either side of her, Gabriella sat down, 
 and ladled the soup out of the old china tureen. It was 
 her consecrated hour the single hour of her toiling 
 day that she dedicated to personal happiness; and be 
 cause it was her hour, her life had gradually centred 
 about it as if it were the divine point of her universe 
 the pivot upon which her whole world revolved. Noth 
 ing harsh, nothing sordid, nothing sad, ever touched 
 the sacred precincts of her twilight hour with her chil 
 dren. 
 
 "I can beat any boy at school running, mother," 
 said Archibald, watching his plate of soup hungrily as 
 it travelled toward him. "If my eyes won't let me be 
 captain of a football team, I'm going to become the 
 champion runner in America. I bet I can, if I try." 
 
 "I shouldn't wonder, dear. It's good for you, too. 
 I never saw you look better." 
 
 He was a tall, thin boy, with a muscular figure, and 
 thick brown hair, which was always rumpled. Through 
 his ugly spectacles his eyes showed large, dark, and as 
 beautifully soft as a girl's. His mind was remarkably 
 keen and active, and there was in his carriage something 
 of Gabriella's capable and commanding air, as if, like 
 her, he embodied those qualities which compel ac 
 knowledgement. Though she had never admitted it 
 even to herself, he was her favourite child.
 
 SUCCESS 339 
 
 When dinner was over she had the children to her 
 self to the gracious, unhurried self she gave them 
 until ten o'clock. Then their books were put away, 
 and after she had kissed them good-night, and tucked 
 the covers about them, she came back to the living- 
 room, and sat down to her sewing with Miss Polly. 
 The ease and cheerfulness dropped from her at the ap 
 proach of midnight, and while the two women bent 
 over their needles they talked of their anxieties, and 
 planned innumerable and intricate ways of economy. 
 
 "Fanny's school costs so much, and, of course, she 
 must have clothes. All the other girls dress so expen 
 sively." 
 
 "You spend three times as much on her as you do on 
 Archibald." 
 
 "I know," her voice melted to the mother note, "but 
 Archibald is different. He is a man, and he will make 
 his way in the world. Then, too, his expenses will be 
 trebled next year when he goes off to school, and after 
 that, of course, will come college. I don't believe any 
 thing or anybody can keep Archibald back," she went 
 on proudly. "Do you know he talks already of going 
 to work in a shipping office in order to help me?" 
 
 "It's a pity about his eyes." 
 
 "There's nothing wrong except near-sightedness, but 
 he'll have to wear glasses all his life." 
 
 For a minute Miss Polly stitched almost furiously, 
 while her small weatherbeaten face, with its grotesque 
 features, was visited by an illumination that softened 
 and ennobled its ugliness. From living entirely in the 
 lives of others, she had attained the spiritual serenity 
 and detachment of a saint as well as the saint's immun 
 ity from the intenser personal forms of suffering. Long
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 habit had accustomed her to think of herself only in 
 connection with somebody's need of her, and beyond 
 this she hardly appeared as an individual existence 
 even in her own secret reflections. As far as it is possi 
 ble to achieve absolute unselfishness in a world planned 
 upon egoistic principles Miss Polly had achieved it; 
 and the result was that she was almost perfectly happy. 
 
 "Fanny seems right set on goin' down to Twenty- 
 third Street, don't she?" she inquired, after an interval 
 of musing. 
 
 "It's all because Carlie lives in the row, and by next 
 year, after we've had all the trouble of moving, she'll 
 find another bosom friend and want to go to Park 
 Avenue." 
 
 "It's a real comfortable sort of house, more like Rich 
 mond than New York, and I reckon we could get flow 
 ers to grow there just about as well as they did in Hill 
 f Street." 
 
 "I don't like having those O'Haras on the lower floor. 
 If they are loud and common, it might be very dis- 
 \ agreeable." 
 
 "There ain't but one, a man, and he's hardly ever 
 there, the caretaker's wife told me. She said he was 
 almost always in the West, and anyway his lease 
 is up next year, and he thinks he'll give up his rooms. 
 She says he has made piles of money in mines some 
 where out West, and he only keeps those rooms because 
 they used to belong to a man who picked him out of 
 the street when he was a little boy selling newspapers. 
 That caretaker's wife seems to be a mighty kind- 
 hearted creature, but she talks as if she was never goin' 
 to stop." 
 
 "I think I could afford to take an apartment in Park 

 
 SUCCESS 341 
 
 Avenue," returned Gabriella, dismissing the name of 
 O'Hara; "but, of course, I want to save as much as I 
 can in order to invest in the business. If it wasn't for 
 that, I could stop scraping and pinching. I can't bear, 
 though, to think of leaving nothing for the children 
 when I die." 
 
 "Go away from here, honey. The idea of your 
 talkin' about dyin' ! You look healthier than you ever 
 did in your life, only you're gettin' that set look again 
 about your mouth." 
 
 "I wonder if I'm growing hard," said Gabriella, stop 
 ping to glance in the mirror. "I suppose that's the 
 problem of life for the working woman not to grow 
 hard." In some ways, she realized, Miss Polly was 
 right. She was a handsome woman, as Madame occa 
 sionally informed her; but she was no longer shrinking, 
 she was no longer alluringly feminine. To dress smartly 
 for Dinard's was a part of her work, and she had grown 
 quite indifferent to having men turn and stare after her 
 in the street or when she entered a restaurant. But 
 the men who stared never spoke to her as they did to 
 Fanny when she was alone. They regarded her ad 
 miringly, but she aroused neither disrespect nor the 
 protective instinct in their minds. Only when she 
 smiled her face grew as young as her eyes, and with 
 the powdering of silver on her hair, gave her a look 
 of radiance and charm ; but at other times, when she was 
 grave or preoccupied with the management of Dinard's, 
 the "set look" that Miss Polly dreaded hardened her 
 mouth. 
 
 "I wish you could go easier now for a while," resumed 
 the little seamstress, after a pause which she had filled 
 with vague speculations about Gabriella's sentimental
 
 J 
 
 342 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 prospects. "I just hate like anything to see you wear 
 ing yourself out. Of course I'd like you to own part of 
 the business, and I can't help thinkin' that the judge 
 could get you the money as easy as not. It ain't as if 
 you couldn't pay him the interest regular, is it?" she 
 pursued with the financial helplessness of a woman who 
 has never thought in terms of figures. "You couldn't 
 be doin' any better, could you? There ain't anybody 
 can run the business as well as you do, I don't care who 
 'tis." 
 
 "I sometimes think," returned Gabriella deliberately, 
 while she draped a lace bertha on a white silk frock she 
 was making for Fanny, "that I will try to borrow the 
 money." 
 
 "It couldn't hurt, could it?" 
 
 "No, I don't suppose it could hurt." 
 
 Her eyes were on the lace, which she was adjusting 
 over the shoulder, and Miss Polly followed her gaze 
 with a look which was not entirely approving. 
 
 "There ain't a bit of sense in your wearin' yourself 
 out over that child," said the seamstress "presently, 
 with so sharp an accent that Gabriella glanced up 
 quickly from her work. "It was just the way Mrs. 
 Spencer started Florrie, and it ain't right." 
 
 "Florrie!" exclaimed Gabriella, startled, and she 
 added slowly, "I wonder what has become of her? I 
 haven't thought of her fo'r years." 
 
 "It was a mean trick she played you, Gabriella. I'd 
 never have believed it of Florrie if I hadn't been there 
 to see it with my own eyes." 
 
 "Yes, it was mean," assented Gabriella, but there 
 was no anger in her voice. She had left the past 
 so far behind her that its disappointments and its
 
 SUCCESS 343 
 
 cruelties had become as dim and shadowy to her imag 
 ination as if they had been phantoms of the mind in 
 stead of actual events through which she had lived. 
 
 "Well, I'm glad she didn't spoil your life for you, 
 honey." 
 
 "No, she didn't spoil my life. Don't I look happy? 
 And Madame told me to-day that my figure was dis 
 tinguished.' Now, when a woman's life is spoiled her 
 figure and her complexion are the first things to show it." 
 
 "Of course you ain't gettin' slouchy, I don't mean 
 anything like that. But I hate to see you workin* your 
 fingers to the bone and bringin' lines around your eyes 
 when you ought to be taken care of. I don't hold with 
 women workin' unless they're obliged to." 
 
 "But I'm obliged to. How on earth could I take 
 care of the children if I didn't work?" 
 
 For a minute there was an austere silence while Miss 
 Polly reflected grimly that Gabriella Mary she thought 
 of her as "Gabriella Mary" in moments of disapproba 
 tion " was gettin' almost as set as her ma." 
 
 "You could marry," she said flatly at last, stopping 
 to press down the hem she had turned with the blunted 
 nail of her thumb. "Of course your ma would be dead 
 against it, but there ain't any reason in the world why 
 you shouldn't go back home and marry Arthur Peyton, 
 as you ought to have done seventeen years ago." 
 
 Though Gabriella laughed in reply, there was no 
 merriment in the sound, and a look of sadness crept 
 into the eyes she turned away from the sharp gaze of 
 the little seamstress. 
 
 "You've forgotten that I haven't seen him for seven 
 teen years," she answered. 
 
 "That don't make any difference in his sort, and you
 
 344 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 know it. He ain't ever married anybody else, and he 
 ain't goin' to. The faithfulness that ought to be spread 
 over the whole sex gets stored up in a few, and he's one 
 of 'em." 
 
 "He has never written to me. No, he must have 
 got over it," responded Gabriella, with an impassioned 
 emphasis, "and, besides, even if he cared, I don't want 
 to marry again. My children are enough for me." 
 
 "It won't look that way next year when both the 
 children are away at school, and when they once break 
 away from your apron strings they're the sort that will 
 go the way they want to and look out for their own hap 
 piness. You won't have much of Archibald while he's 
 at school and college, and Fanny will marry befo' she's 
 twenty just as sure as you live. Why, she's already got 
 her head full of beaux. Have you noticed that picture 
 of an actor she keeps on her bureau?" 
 
 "Yes," admitted Gabriella anxiously, "I've noticed 
 it, but when I asked her about it, she only laughed." 
 
 After this the conversation dropped, and the two 
 women put away their work for the night; but hours 
 later, while Miss Polly lay in her hard little bed won 
 dering if it would be possible to "fix" things between 
 Gabriella and Arthur, the stern heroine of her romance 
 wept a few tender tears on her pillow. 
 
 In the morning, with the tears still ready to spring 
 at a touch, Gabriella read a letter from her mother, 
 which she had found, beside the baker's rolls, at the 
 door. 
 
 Richmond, Thursday. 
 MY DEAR CHILD: 
 
 As the others are all out to-night, and I have finished 
 the mat I was crocheting, I thought I would send you
 
 SUCCESS 345 
 
 a letter to reach you on your birthday instead of 
 the telegram from the family. I am so thankful to 
 hear that you keep well and happy and that Fanny 
 has quite recovered from her cold. It was thought 
 ful of you to send the check, and I shall find it very 
 useful, though Jane refuses to let me pay any board 
 since Charley has inherited such a large income from 
 his brother Tom. I sent you all the papers about the 
 dreadful accident on the River road in which poor Tom 
 and his wife were killed, but you haven't heard yet 
 that Tom left his new house in Monument Avenue 
 they had only just moved into it and almost all of 
 his property to Charley. Of course, this will make a 
 great difference in our manner of living; but just now 
 none of us can think of anything except poor Tom and 
 Gertrude, to whom we were all so deeply attached. 
 No amount of money could in any way soften the blow 
 of their loss, and the accident has given me such a 
 horror of automobiles, though both Charley and Jane 
 tell me this is very foolish. 
 
 To turn to more cheerful subjects, I can't begin to 
 tell you how much the last photograph of Fanny has 
 been admired. She is such a lovely girl, almost as 
 pretty, we think, as Jane used to be when she first 
 grew up, and I'm sure there could be no higher praise 
 than that. You pleased me by saying that Archibald 
 is like his grandfather, even if he isn't so handsome, 
 and that he has a strong character. Good looks 
 aren't nearly so important in a man as they are in 
 a woman, and, you know, I don't think that men are 
 as handsome to-day as they used to be when I was a 
 girl. They have lost something I can't make out 
 just what it is. 
 
 Charley and Jane are at the Prohibition meeting. 
 It is the first time they have gone anywhere since the 
 accident, but we all felt that Tom and Gertrude would 
 have wanted them to go for the sake of the cause. I 
 don't suppose you would recognize Charley now if 
 you were to meet him. He is entirely changed, and I
 
 346 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 believe our new minister is the reason for it, though 
 Jane likes to think that her influence reclaimed him. 
 But, you remember, neither you nor I ever thought 
 that Jane went about reforming Charley in the right 
 way; and even now, though I wouldn't hurt dear 
 Jane's feelings for anything in the world, I am afraid 
 she nags Charley and the children too much. Of course, 
 she means it for the best. No one could look at the 
 dear child without realizing what a beautiful character 
 she is. 
 
 But the change in Charley is really remarkable, and 
 he won't allow a drop of alcohol to come into the 
 house not even as medicine. I can't help feeling 
 sorry for poor old Uncle Meriweather, who despises 
 grape juice and misses his mint julep when he comes 
 to dine on Sunday; but Charley forbids Jane to make 
 him a julep, and I suppose he is right since he says it 
 is a matter of principle. Even Jane, however, thinks 
 dear Charley is going a little too far when he refuses to 
 let me have the sherry and egg the doctor ordered. 
 However, I tell Jane that, since Charley feels so strongly 
 about my taking it, she must not try to persuade him 
 against his convictions. Dr. Darrow doesn't know 
 that I stopped the sherry when Charley found out I 
 was buying it. Perhaps the plain eggs will do me quite 
 as much good. Anyhow, I wouldn't let my health 
 stand in the way of Charley's salvation. 
 
 Margaret has gone out to a concert, and you would 
 never guess who came to take her. I said to her when 
 she was starting, "Well, I'm going to sit straight down 
 and write your Aunt Gabriella that you've gone out 
 with her old sweetheart." But doesn't it make you 
 realize how time flies when you think of Arthur Peyton's 
 paying attention to Jane's daughter? Of course, it 
 isn't anything serious everybody knows that he has 
 never recovered from his feeling for you but last 
 winter he took Margaret to two germans and to any 
 number of plays. I believe Jane would be really 
 pleased if he were to take a fancy to Margaret, but I
 
 SUCCESS 347 
 
 don't think there is the faintest chance of it, for his 
 Cousin Lizzie told me last winter that she couldn't 
 mention your name in his presence. She says his 
 faithfulness is perfectly beautiful, and she ought to 
 know for she has lived with him ever since his mother's 
 death. Of course, he has never accomplished very 
 much in his profession. Charley says all the men 
 downtown look upon him as a failure; but, then, he is 
 such a perfect gentleman, and, as I tell Charley and 
 Jane, one can't have everything. How different your 
 \ life would have been, my dear daughter, if you had 
 * listened to the prayers of your mother, and married a 
 gentle Christian character like Arthur Peyton. 
 
 But I mustn't let my thoughts run away with me. 
 Of course, even if your heart had not been broken, it 
 would be impossible for you to think of another man 
 as long as your husband is living. No pure woman 
 could do that, and when people tell me about divorced 
 women who remarry, I always maintain that they are 
 not what my mother and I would call "pure women." 
 I would rather think of you nursing your broken heart 
 forever in solitude than that you should put such a 
 blot upon your character and the name of the Carrs. 
 Of course, you were right to divorce George after he 
 forsook you for Florrie even his mother tells everybody 
 that you were right but the thought of a second 
 marriage would, I know, be intolerable to your refined 
 and sensitive nature. After all, he is still your husband 
 in the sight of God, and I said this to Miss Lizzie 
 Peyton when we were talking of Arthur. 
 
 It is almost eleven o'clock, and I must stop and 
 undress. Kiss the dear children, and remember me 
 kindly to Miss Polly. 
 
 Your loving MOTHER. 
 
 As she refolded the letter Gabriella stood for an 
 instant with her dreaming gaze on the delicate Italian 
 handwriting on the envelope.
 
 348 " LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "It's amazing how wide the gulf is between the 
 generations," she thought, not without humour. "I 
 believe mother thinks of George oftener than I do, 
 and I'd marry Arthur to-morrow if he wanted me to 
 except for the children." 
 
 Then, as Archibald rushed into the room, she caught 
 him in her arms, and held him hungrily to her bosom. 
 
 "My darling, you want to keep your mother, don't 
 
 you?" 
 
 "I jolly well do. What's the trouble, mother? I 
 believe it's all that sitting up over Fanny's old dresses. 
 Why don't you make something pretty for yourself?" 
 
 "She has to have things, and you love me just as 
 well without them, don't you?" 
 
 "But I want you to have them, too. I like you to 
 look pretty, and you are pretty." 
 
 "Then I can look pretty in plain clothes, can't I?" 
 
 "I tell you what I am going to do," he hesitated a 
 minute, knitting his heavy brows over his spectacles, 
 which looked so odd on a boy. "Next summer when 
 school is over I'm going to work and make some money 
 so you can have a velvet dress in the autumn a black 
 velvet dress with lace on it lots of lace and a hat with 
 feathers." 
 
 "You foolish boy!" laughed Gabriella. "Do you 
 think for an instant I'd let you?" Her voice was gay, 
 but when he had broken away from her clasp, and was 
 racing along the hall for his school books, she turned 
 aside to wipe the tears from her eyes. 
 
 "It's wrong, but I love him more than I love Fanny," 
 she said. "I love him more than all the rest of the 
 world." 
 
 An hour later, sitting beside an Italian labourer in
 
 SUCCESS 349 
 
 fan elevated train, she tried hard to keep her mind on 
 the day's work and on the morning paper, which she 
 held open before her for in adopting a business life 
 she had adopted instinctively a man's businesslike 
 habits. A subtle distinction divided her from the 
 over-dressed shopgirls around her as completely as her 
 I sex separated her from the portly masculine bread 
 winner in the opposite seat. Her tailored suit of black 
 serge, with its immaculate white collar and cuffs, had 
 an air of charming simplicity, and the cameolike outline 
 of her features against the luminous background of the 
 
 J window-pane was the aristocratic racial outline of the 
 Carrs. In the whirlpool of modern business she still 
 
 V preserved the finer attributes which Nature had bred 
 in her race. The bitter sweetness of the mother's in 
 heritance, grafted on the hardy stock of the Carr char 
 acter, had flavoured without weakening the daughter's 
 spirit, and, though few of the men in the train glanced 
 in the direction of Gabriella, the few who noticed her 
 in her corner surmised by intuition that she possessed 
 not only the manner, but the heart of a lady. She was 
 not particularly handsome, not particularly young, and 
 her charm was scarcely the kind to flash like a lantern 
 before the eye of the beholder. To the portly bread 
 winner she was probably a nice-looking American 
 business woman, nothing more; to the Italian labourer 
 ishe was, doubtless, a lady with a pleasant face, who 
 would be polite if you asked her a question; and to the 
 other passengers she must have appeared merely a 
 woman reading her newspaper on her way -down to 
 work. Her primal qualities of force, restraint, and 
 capability were the last things these superficial ob 
 servers would have thought of; and yet it was by these
 
 350 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 qualities that she must succeed or fail in her struggle 
 for life. 
 
 When she reached Dinard's she found Miss Smith, 
 the only woman in Madame's employ who was ever 
 punctual, ill-humouredly poking the spring hats out 
 of the cases. Miss Smith, who excelled \n the cardinal 
 virtues, manifested at times a few of those minor 
 frailties by which the cardinal virtues are not infre 
 quently attended. Her one pronounced fault was a 
 bad temper, and on this particular morning that fault 
 was conspicuous. As she carried the hats from the 
 cases to the window, which she was decorating with 
 the festive millinery of the spring, she looked as if she 
 were resisting an impulse to throw Madame's choicest 
 confections at the jovial figure of the traffic policeman. 
 Gabriella, who was used to what she called the "pecu 
 liarities" of the forewoman, said "good morning" with 
 her bright amiability, and hurried back to the dim 
 regions where she changed from her street suit to 
 the picturesque French gown which she wore in the 
 showroom. When she came out again Miss Smith 
 had finished ornamenting the white pegs in the window, 
 and was vigorously upbraiding a messenger boy who 
 had delivered a parcel at the wrong door. 
 
 "You are always so prompt," remarked Gabriella 
 cheerfully, as she arranged the hats in the front room. 
 Her rule of business conduct was simple, and con 
 sisted chiefly of the precept that whatever hap 
 pened she must keep her temper. Never once, never 
 even in Madame's most trying moments, had she 
 permitted herself to appear angry; and her strict adher 
 ence to this resolution had established her in an enviable 
 position of authority. Obeying unconsciously some
 
 SUCCESS 351 
 
 inherited strain of prudence in her nature, she had 
 sacrificed her temper on the solid altar of business 
 expediency. 
 
 "Somebody has to be on time, I guess," replied Miss 
 Smith snappishly. "I'd like to know who would be 
 here if I wasn't? " 
 
 She was a thin, soured, ugly little woman, with an 
 extraordinary capacity for work, and an excess of ner 
 vous vitality bordering on hysteria. Gabriella, who 
 knew something of her story, was aware of the self- 
 sacrificing goodness of her private life, and secure in her 
 own unclouded cheerfulness, could afford to smile tol 
 erantly at the waspish sting. 
 
 "It's a pity we can't get more system here," she ob 
 served, for Miss Smith, she knew, was no tale-bearer. 
 "The waste of time and misdirected energy are appal 
 ling. The business would be worth three times as much 
 to anybody who could give her whole attention to it, 
 but, as Madame is forever telling us, her health keeps her 
 from really overlooking things." 
 
 "I wonder why she doesn't sell out?" asked 
 Miss Smith, suddenly good-humoured and interested. 
 "There's a lot in it for the right person, and it isn't in 
 nature that she can hold on much longer. If I could 
 find the money, I'd buy it and cut down expenses until 
 I made a big profit. It would be easy enough." Then 
 she added, while she slammed the ivory-tinted door of a 
 case: "I wish you could run the house, Mrs. Carr. 
 You are so pleasant to work with. Nothing ever seems 
 to depress you." 
 
 "It would be nice, wouldn't it?" responded Gabri 
 ella promptly, and as she said the words, she decided 
 that she would try to borrow the money from Judge
 
 352 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Crowborough. For three months she had been strug 
 gling to bring herself to the point of asking his help 
 er at least his advice and now, in a flash, without 
 argument or discussion, she had settled the question. 
 "It's a simple business proposition a promising in 
 vestment," she thought. "I'll ask him to get the 
 money for me at a fair interest to get me enough any 
 how to give me control of the business. The worst he 
 can do is to refuse," she concluded, with a kind of for 
 lorn optimism; "at least he can't kill me." 
 
 Making a hurried excuse, she went back to the tele 
 phone, and calling up the judge, asked for an appoint 
 ment in his office at five o'clock. From his surprised 
 response she inferred his curiosity, and from his hearty 
 acquiescence, she gathered that his surprise was not 
 an unpleasant one. "At five o'clock, then. It is so 
 good of you. There is a little matter of business. Yes, 
 I know how kind you are, and of course your advice 
 is invaluable. I can't think of anybody else on earth 
 I can ask. Oh, thank you. Yes, at five o'clock. I 
 shan't be late and I promise to keep you but a min 
 ute. Good-bye. What? Oh, yes, I'll come straight 
 from Dinard's." 
 
 His voice, eager and friendly over the telephone, had 
 given her confidence, and when she went back to the 
 showroom, where the saleswomen were assembling, she 
 was already planning the interview. 
 
 At eleven o'clock Madame, who never arrived earlier, 
 was seen descending from a hansom, and a few minutes 
 later she waddled, wheezing, asthmatic, and infirm of 
 joints, through the ivory and gold doorway. Like some 
 fantastically garlanded Oriental goddess of death, her 
 rouged and powdered face nodded grotesquely beneath
 
 SUCCESS 353 
 
 the flowery wreath on her hat. The indestructible 
 . youth of her spirit, struggling valiantly against the inert 
 weight of the flesh, had squeezed her enormous figure 
 into the curveless stays of the period, and had painted 
 into some ghastly semblance of health the wrinkled skin 
 of her cheeks. For underneath the decaying mockery 
 of Madame's body, the indomitable soul of Madame still 
 fought the everlasting battle of mind against matter, of 
 the immaterial against the material elements. 
 
 "There was no use my trying to get here any sooner," 
 she began in an apologetic tone when she was face to 
 face with Gabriella behind the red velvet curtains of her 
 private office. "My asthma was so bad all night, I had 
 to doze sitting up, and I didn't get any sound sleep until 
 daybreak. If I don't begin to mend before long I'll 
 have to give up, that's all there is to it. There ain't any 
 use my trying to hold on much longer. I'm too sick 
 to think about fighting, and sometimes I don't care 
 what becomes of the business. I want to go to some 
 high place in Europe where I can get my breath, and I'm 
 going to stay there, I don't care what happens. There 
 ain't any use my trying to hold on," she repeated dis 
 consolately. 
 
 Gabriella's opportunity had come, and she grasped it 
 with the quickness of judgment which had enabled her 
 to achieve her moderate success. 
 
 "I believe I could carry on this business," she said, and 
 her quiet assurance impressed Madame's turbulent tem- 
 per. With a brief return of her mental alertness, the 
 old woman studied her carefully. 
 
 "I don't want any responsibility. I want to be rid 
 of the whole thing," she said after a pause. 
 
 Gabriella nodded comprehendingly. "I believe I
 
 354 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 could carry it on successfully," she repeated. "Your 
 customers like me. I think I understand how the busi 
 ness ought to be run. I have been here ten years, and 
 I feel perfectly confident that I could make it suc 
 cessful." 
 
 "I've had offers good offers," observed Madame 
 warily, for she was incapable of liberating herself at the 
 age of seventy- two from the lifelong suspicion that some 
 one was taking advantage of her, that something was be 
 ing got from her for nothing, " and, of course, I was only 
 joking about having to stop work," she added, "I am 
 retiring from choice, not from necessity." 
 
 "I understand," agreed Gabriella quietly. 
 
 "But I should like you to have the name," pursued 
 Madame. "A little money would be necessary, of 
 course perhaps you might buy a half interest that 
 would be simple. You could make a big success 
 of it with your social position and your wealthy ac 
 quaintances. Surely you can find some one who is 
 ready to make such a splendid investment?" 
 
 "Perhaps," admitted Gabriella, as quietly as before. 
 Unlike Madame, who, being an incurable idealist, had 
 won her victories not by accepting but by evading 
 facts, Gabriella was frankly skeptical about the prac 
 tical value of either her social position or her wealthy 
 acquaintances. Neither possession impressed her at 
 the moment as marketable, except in the vivid imagi 
 nation of Madame, and her social position, at least, 
 was constructed of a very thin and unsubstantial 
 fabric. Guided by the prudent streak in her character, 
 she rested her hope not upon incorporeal possessions, 
 but upon the solid bodies of her patrons that must 
 be clothed. Her imposing acquaintances would avail
 
 SUCCESS 355 
 
 her scarcely more, she suspected, than would the noble 
 ghost of that ancestor who was a general in the Revo 
 lution. What she relied on was the certainty that she 
 knew her work, and that Madame's customers from the 
 greatest to the least, from Mrs. Pletheridge to poor 
 Miss Peterson, who bought only one good gown a year, 
 admitted the thoroughness of her knowledge. She had 
 got on by learning all that there was to learn about 
 the details of the work, and she stood now, secure and 
 unassailable, on the foundation of her achievement, 
 'n ten years she had fulfilled her resolution she had 
 nade herself indispensable. By patience, by hard 
 work, by self-control, by ceaseless thought, and by 
 nnumerable sacrifices, she had made herself indis- 
 )ensable; and the result was that, as Madame weak- 
 mod, she had grown steadily stronger. Without her 
 Dinard's would have dropped long ago to the position 
 )f a second-rate house, and she was aware that Madame 
 mderstood this quite as clearly as she did. For what 
 ever Madame's executive ability may have been in the 
 past, it had dwindled now to the capricious endeavours 
 of a chronic invalid of an aging invalid, notwithstand 
 ing her desperate struggle for youth. Half as much 
 energy as Madame had spent resisting Nature might 
 have won for her a sanctified memory had it been di 
 rected toward the practice of piety, or a tablet of im 
 perishable granite had it been devoted to as tireless a 
 pursuit of art or science. To her battle against age 
 she had brought the ambition of a conqueror and the 
 devotion of a martyr; and at the last, even to-day, there 
 was a superb defiance in her refusal to acknowledge 
 defeat, in her demand that her surrender should be 
 regarded as a capitulation.
 
 ALL 
 356 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "In a day or two I hope to be able to discuss my 
 plan with you," said Gabriella, and she could not keep 
 the softness of pity out of her voice. So this was what 
 life came to, after all? For an instant she felt the over 
 whelming discouragement which is the portion of those 
 who approach life not through vision, but through out 
 ward events, who seek a solution not in the deeper con 
 sciousness of the spirit, but in the changing surface of 
 experience. Then, even before her glance had left 
 Madame's golden head, her natural optimism regained 
 control of her mind, and she told herself stoutly that if 
 this was Madame's present, then it followed logically 
 that Madame must have had a past, and that past must 
 have been an agreeable one. It was inconceivable that 
 she should defy the laws of God for the sake of a pro 
 longation of tragedy. 
 
 "It is a splendid investment," croaked the old 
 woman in the midst of Gabriella's painful reflections. 
 "The house was never more flourishing." 
 
 The ruling principle which decreed that Gabriella 
 should keep her temper had disciplined her not less 
 thoroughly in the habit of holding her tongue. The 
 house was in a flourishing condition; but she remem 
 bered how fragile and thinly rooted had been its showy 
 prosperity when she had entered it; and had she cared 
 to confound Madame utterly, she might have reminded 
 her of that unwritten history of the past ten years in 
 which the secret episode of Mrs. Pletheridge occurred. 
 For Gabriella was not inclined to underrate her own 
 efficiency, and her confidence was supported by the 
 knowledge that if she left Dinard's the most fashion 
 able of Madame's clientele would follow her. 
 
 "You'll never have such another opportunity not
 
 SUCCESS 357 
 
 if you live to be a hundred. At your age I should have 
 jumped at the idea," persisted Madame. 
 
 "So should I," responded Gabriella merrily, "if I 
 were sure of landing on my feet." 
 
 "You'll always land on your feet you're that sort. 
 'You've got push, and it's push that counts most in 
 business. A woman may have all the brains in the 
 world, but without push she might as well give up the 
 .struggle. That was what brought me up in spite of 
 four husbands and six children," pursued Madame, 
 while she took out a small flask from one of the drawers 
 of her desk and measured out, as she remarked in pa 
 renthesis, "a little stimulant." "Yes, I had a great 
 success in my line, and if I could only have kept clear 
 of men, I might have saved a fortune to retire on in my 
 old age. But I had a natural taste for men, and they 
 were the ruin of me. As soon as I lost one husband and 
 managed to get on a bit, another would come, and I 
 couldn't resist him. I never could resist marriage; 
 that was the undoing of me as a woman of business." 
 
 "Four husbands, and yet you were remarkably suc 
 cessful," observed Gabriella, because it was the only 
 thing with a cheerful sound she could think of to utter, 
 and an intermittent cheerful sound was all that Ma 
 dame required from a listener when she was under the 
 enlivening influence of brandy. 
 
 "But think what I might have done with my talent 
 if I had remained a widow, as you have done. It was 
 my misfortune to attract men whether I wanted to or 
 not," wheezed Madame, wiping her eyes; "some women 
 are like that." 
 
 " So I have heard," murmured Gabriella, seeing that 
 Madame paused for the note of encouragement.
 
 358 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I don't suppose that has been your trouble, for 
 there's a stand-offishness about you that puts men at a 
 distance, and they don't like to be put at a distance. 
 Then, though your figure is very fine for showing off 
 models, it isn't exactly the kind that men lean to. If 
 you'd fatten up it might be different, but that would 
 spoil you for the clothes, and that, after all, is more 
 important. It's strange, isn't it? " she croaked, with an 
 alcoholic chuckle, "how partial men are to full figures 
 even after they have gone out of fashion?" 
 
 And with this wonder still ringing in her ears, Gabri- 
 ella turned away to attend a customer, who demanded, 
 in cool defiance of man and nature, to be transformed 
 into a straight silhouette. 
 
 Gabriella had not seen Judge Crowborough for 
 several years, and her first impression, when she entered 
 his office at five o'clock, was one of surprise at his 
 ugliness. Though he had changed but little since their 
 first meeting at Mrs. Fowler's dinner, the years had 
 softened her memory of his appearance, and she had 
 skilfully persuaded herself that one should not judge a 
 man by a repelling exterior, which, after all, might 
 cover a great deal of goodness. After George's flight 
 and Archibald Fowler's death he had been very kind to 
 her. "I don't know what I should have done without 
 him at that time," she thought now, as she stood with, 
 his big, soft hand clasping hers and his admiring 
 fishy eyes on her face. "No, it is impossible to judge 
 by appearances, and all men think well of him, all men 
 respect him," she concluded, feeling suddenly reassured. 
 
 "It's been a long time it must be nearly three 
 years since I saw you," he remarked, with flattering 
 geniality, "and you look younger than ever."
 
 SUCCESS y 359 
 
 "Hard work keeps me young, then. I work very 
 hard." Her charming smile flashed like an edge of 
 light on her lips, and lent glow and fervor to her pale 
 face beneath the silver-brightened cloud of her hair. 
 She read his admiration in the bold gaze he fastened 
 upon her, and though she was without coquetry, she 
 was conscious that her vanity was agreeably soothed. 
 
 "What is it? Dressmaking?" He was obviously 
 interested. 
 
 " Yes dresses and hats. Hats are rather my specialty. 
 I manage things now almost entirely at Dinard's. Have 
 you ever heard of the house?" 
 
 He nodded. "I remember. That's where you went 
 after Archibald died, wasn't it?" His memory amazed 
 her. What a mind for trifles he had! What a won 
 derful man he was for his years! 
 
 "Yes, I've been there ever since. I've done well as 
 things go, but, of course, it has been hard. It has been 
 a hard life." 
 
 "And you never came to me. I wanted to help 
 you. I'd have done anything I could to make it easier 
 for you, but you were so proud. You'd have got on 
 twice as well if you had given up your pride." 
 
 The telephone rang, and while he answered it, she 
 watched his broad, slouching back, his swelling paunch 
 overflowing now above the stays he wore to reduce it, 
 the coarsened flesh of his neck, bulging above the edge 
 of his collar, and the shining baldness on the top of 
 his head, which gave an appearance of commanding 
 intellect to his empurpled forehead. How hideous he 
 was, how revolting, and yet what a power! A face 
 like his on a woman would have condemned her to 
 isolation and misery, but, so far as one could judge, it
 
 360 LITE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 had scarcely interfered with his happiness. His mental 
 force had risen superior to his face, to his paunch, to 
 his whole repulsive appearance. Greater than Madame 
 because of his sex, he had achieved a triumph over the 
 corporeal mass of his body which she, fortified and 
 abetted by a hundred cosmetics and manipulations, 
 could never attain. Where Madame relied on futile 
 artificial aids in her battle against decay, he hurled 
 the tremendous power of his personality, and ugliness 
 became at once as insignificant as immorality in his 
 life. "One can't judge him by the standards of other 
 men," thought Gabriella, using a remembered phrase of 
 Fifty-seventh Street. 
 
 Judge Crowborough was still talking earnestly into 
 the telephone, and she gathered vaguely that his ear 
 nestness related to a donation he had promised his church. 
 "Raise two hundred thousand, and I'll double it," he 
 said abruptly, and hung up the receiver. "We want 
 a new organ something really fine, you know," he 
 observed casually as he turned back to Gabriella. 
 "We are moving everything is moving up, and the 
 church has to keep step with the age. You can't keep 
 progress out of religion any more than you can out of 
 business not that I'm in favour of modernism or any 
 of that stuff but we've got to keep moving." He 
 spoke with conviction, and there was no doubt that 
 he sincerely believed himself to be an important factor 
 in the religious movement of his country. Then his 
 tone changed to one of intimate friendliness and he 
 asked: "Have you heard any music this winter? If 
 I'd only known about you, I'd have sent you tickets 
 to the opera." 
 
 "The children go sometimes," she answered. That
 
 SUCCESS 361 
 
 he should imagine her buying opera tickets for herself, 
 with the children needing every penny she made, 
 seemed to her ridiculous; but rich men were always like 
 that, she reflected a little scornfully. 
 
 "If I'd only remembered about you," he murmured, 
 and turning heavily in his chair, he added authorita 
 tively: "Now tell me about it. Tell me the whole 
 -j^hing straight through. I am going to help you." 
 !\ She told him rapidly, and while she talked a sense of 
 perfect peace and security enveloped her. It was so 
 long since she had been able to ask advice of a man; 
 it was so long since anybody bigger and stronger than 
 she had undertaken to adjust her perplexities. The 
 past returned to her as a dream, and she felt again that 
 absolute reliance on the masculine ability to control 
 events, to ease burdens, to remove difficulties, which 
 had visited her in her childhood when Cousin Jimmy 
 appeared in the front parlour in Hill Street. "It's won- 
 iderful how men manage things," she thought. "It's won- 
 jderful being a man. Everything is so simple for men." 
 
 "Well, don't worry a minute longer. It's all as easy 
 as as possible," observed the great man serenely when 
 she had finished. "From what you tell me it looks as if 
 it were a pretty good investment to begin with, and there 
 are plenty of people around looking for ways to invest 
 money. I'm looking for ways myself, when it comes to 
 that," he proclaimed, with a paternal smile as he sank 
 back on the luxurious leather cushions of his chair. 
 
 "You are so good," she responded gratefully, "so 
 good"; and she was speaking sincerely. 
 
 With his casual gaze, which seemed to turn inward, 
 fixed on the ceiling above her head, he invited her 
 confidence by a few perfectly chosen expressions of
 
 362 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 comprehension and sympathy. The acuteness and 
 activity of his mental processes delighted her while he 
 questioned her. After the slovenly methods of Madame, 
 after the loose reasoning and the muddled thinking of 
 all the women she met in the course of her work, there 
 was a positive pleasure in following the exactness and 
 inflexibility of his logic. His reasoning was orderly, 
 neat, elastic, without loose ends or tangled skeins to 
 unravel, and she felt again, while she listened to him, 
 the confidence which had come to her as soon as 
 she entered his office. He was efficiency incarnate, 
 and from her childhood up she had respected efficiency. 
 In an hour, in less time than it had taken her to tell 
 her story, he had lifted the weight from her shoulders, 
 had mastered the details of Madame's intricate prob 
 lems, and had outlined the terms by which Gabriella 
 could accept the old woman's offer without placing her 
 self under financial obligations. Her pride, he had 
 discerned at a glance, shrank from obligation, and he 
 was as alert to save her pride as he was to make a 
 good bargain with Madame. 
 
 "It's a good thing. It's good business. Don't think 
 I'm losing for a minute," he said as she rose to go, and 
 she felt that some secret delicacy, the last feeling she 
 would have attributed to him, was prompting his words. 
 
 "I can't tell you what a relief it is to talk to you," 
 she said, holding out her hand while she hesitated 
 between the desk and the door. "I can't even begin 
 to tell you how grateful I am. I haven't had any one 
 to advise me since I left Richmond, and it is such a 
 comfort." 
 
 "Well, I'll give you the best advice in my power. 
 I'll give you the very best," he replied as frankly as if
 
 SUCCESS 363 
 
 he were discussing his gift to the church. "What's 
 more, I'll think it over a bit while I'm at the Hot 
 Springs, and talk to you about it when I come back. 
 I suppose I can always get you on the telephone, 
 can't I?" 
 
 His manner was still casual and business-like, and 
 it did not change by so much as a shade when he 
 moved a step nearer and put his arm about her waist. 
 If he had taken down his hat or lighted a cigar, he 
 would probably have performed either action with the 
 same air of automatic efficiency; and she realized, in 
 
 /the very instant of her amazement, that his manner 
 
 ^ was merely an authoritative expression of his power. 
 
 What astonished her most in the incident, after all, 
 
 was not the judge's share in it, but the vividness and 
 
 coolness of her own mental impressions. She was not 
 
 / frightened, she was not even disturbed, she was merely 
 ^ disgusted. Never before had she understood so clearly 
 the immeasurable distance that divided the Gabriella 
 of seventeen years ago from the Gabriella who released 
 herself calmly from the appalling clasp of the cas 
 ual and business-like old man. To the Gabriella who 
 had loved George such, an episode would have ap 
 peared as an inconceivable horror. Now, with her 
 worldly wisdom and her bitter knowledge of love, she 
 found herself regarding the situation with sardonic 
 humour. The stupendous, the incredible vanity of 
 man! she reflected disdainfully. Was there ever a 
 man too ugly, too repulsive, or too old to delude 
 himself with the belief that he might still become the 
 object of passion? 
 
 "Now you've spoiled it," she said shortly, but without 
 embarrassment. "Now you've spoiled it." She put 
 
 J
 
 364 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the case to him plainly, the Gabriella who would have 
 blushed and trembled and wept seventeen years ago. 
 
 "But I meant nothing," he said, genuinely disturbed. 
 "I assure you I am truly sorry if I have offended 
 
 you. It was nothing a mere matter of " the word 
 
 "habit," she knew, hovered on his lips, though he did 
 not utter it, and broke off inconclusively. 
 
 So there had not been even the excuse of emotion 
 about it. He had embraced her as instinctively, as 
 methodically, as he might have switched on the electric 
 ^Jight over his desk. Here again she was brought to a 
 stop before an overwhelming realization of the funda 
 mental differences between man and woman. To 
 
 i think of woman behaving like that merely because it 
 
 I had become a matter of habit! 
 
 Vg^ 
 
 "I always liked you, you know," he said abruptly, 
 with a sincere emphasis. 
 
 "Well, there are different ways of liking," she re 
 joined coldly, "and I happen not to care for this way." 
 
 "If you don't like it, I'll never do it again," he prom 
 ised, almost humbly. "I'll be a good friend to you, 
 honestly I will. I'll treat you as if you were you 
 were 
 
 "A gentleman," finished Gabriella, and smiled in 
 spite of herself. After all, what was the use of resent 
 ing the facts of life? What was the use of reproaching 
 the mud that spattered over one's clothes? 
 I "Well, that's a bargain. I'll treat you as a gentle 
 man." There was a fine quality about the man, she 
 could not deny it. 
 
 "I'll forgive you then and forget it." It was the 
 tolerant Gabriella who spoke the Gabriella of dis 
 illusioning experience and a clear vision of life not
 
 SUCCESS 365 
 
 the impassioned idealist of the 'nineties. When all 
 was said, you had to take men and things as you found 
 them. That was philosophy, and that was also 
 "good business." It was foolish to apply romantic 
 theories to the positive actuality. 
 
 "Well, you are a gentleman," exclaimed the judge, 
 with facetiousness. "That's why I always liked you, I 
 suppose. You're straight and you're honest, and there's 
 no nonsense about you." 
 
 If he had only known ! She thought of the romantic 
 girl of the 'nineties, of her buoyant optimism, her child 
 like ignorance, her violent certainties, and of her tri 
 umphant, "I can manage my life!" If he had only 
 known how she had "muddled things " at the beginning, 
 would he have said that she had "no nonsense about 
 her?" 
 
 In the subway, a little later, clinging to a dirty 
 strap, with a blackened mechanic in the seat before 
 her, a box of tools at her feet, and a garlic-scented 
 charwoman jolting against her shoulder, she was over 
 come by a sudden cloud of despondency. Her courage, 
 her hopefulness, her philosophy, seemed to melt like 
 frost in her thoughts, leaving behind only a sodden 
 sense of loss, of emptiness, of defeat. "I've had a mean 
 "life," she said to herself resentfully. "I've had a mean 
 life. What has ever happened to me that was worth 
 Vhile? What have I ever had except hard work and 
 .disappointment? I am thirty-seven years old. My 
 t youth is going, and I have nothing to show for it but 
 ten years of dressmaking. The best of my life is over, 
 and when I look back on it, it is only a blank." It was 
 as if the interview with the great man she had just left 
 had completed the desolating retrospect of a lifetime.
 
 366 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Was there nothing but disenchantment ahead of her? 
 Was life merely the dropping of illusion after illusion, 
 the falling of petals at the first touch from a flower 
 that is beginning to fade? "Yes, nothing has ever 
 happened to me that was worth while," she repeated, 
 forgetting her children for the moment. Then, because 
 the heavy air stifled her, she left the car and turned into 
 West Twenty-third Street where the lights were coming 
 out softly in the spring twilight. Though it was too 
 late to go over the house Fanny wanted, it occurred to 
 her that she might look at the outside of it before she 
 took the Harlem elevated train at one of the West Side 
 stations. The walk would do her good and perhaps 
 blow away the disquieting recollections of her encounter 
 with Judge Crowborough. Not until her mood changed, 
 she determined, would she go back to the children. 
 
 At the corner she bought a bunch of lilacs because 
 a man held them out to her temptingly when she ap 
 proached, and as she buried her face in the blossoms, 
 she said resolutely: "No, I haven't had a mean life. 
 It can't be mean unless I think it so, and I won't I 
 won't. After all, it isn't the kind of life you have, but 
 the way you think about it that matters." 
 
 The air was deliciously mild; streaks of pale gold 
 lingered above the grim outlines of the buildings; and 
 the wild, sweet spirit of spring fluttered like an impris 
 oned creature in the gray streets of the city. It was 
 May again, and the pipes of Pan were fluting the an 
 cient songs in the ancient racial fields of the memory. 
 There was a spring softness in the fleecy white of the 
 clouds, in the flowing gold of the sunset, in the languor 
 ous kiss of the breeze, in the gentle rippling waves of the 
 dust on the pavement. For years she had been so tran-
 
 SUCCESS 367 
 
 quil, and now suddenly, at the flitting touch of the 
 spirit of spring, she knew that youth was slipping, slip 
 ping, and that with youth, went romance, enchantment, 
 ^adventure. It was slipping from her, and she had never 
 really held it. She had had only the second-rate; she 
 had missed the best always the best of life, the best of 
 love, the best of endeavour and achievement. She had 
 missed the finer reality. From somewhere, from the 
 past or the present, from the dream or the actuality, 
 her young illusions and her young longings rushed over 
 her, driven by the fragrance of the lilacs, which was 
 stinging her blood into revolt. Only an instant the 
 revolt lasted, but in that instant of vision nothing mat 
 tered in life except romance, enchantment, adventure. 
 
 "Yes, I've missed life," she thought, and the regret 
 was still in her mind when one of those miracles which 
 in our ignorance we call accidents occurred. Out of the 
 lilac-scented twilight, out of the wild, sweet spirit of 
 spring, a voice said in her ear, "Alice, you waited!" 
 
 Turning quickly, she had a vivid impression of 
 height, breadth, bigness, of roughened dark red hair, 
 of gray eyes so clean that they looked as if they had 
 been washed by the sea. Then the voice spoke again: 
 "I beg your pardon. It was a mistake." And the 
 next instant she was alone in the street. ''
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 DISCOVERIES 
 
 "WHO is Alice?" she wondered on her way home, 
 "and for whom was she waiting? " A shopgirl perhaps, 
 and he was, probably not a clerk in a shop he looked 
 more like a mechanic but hardly a gentleman. Not, 
 at any rate, what her mother or Jane would call a 
 gentleman not the kind of gentleman that George was, 
 or Charley Gracey, for instance. He was doubtless 
 devoid of those noble traditions by and through which, 
 her mother had always told her, a gentleman was 
 made out of a man the traditions which had cre 
 ated Arthur and Cousin Jimmy as surely as they 
 had created George and Charley. "I wonder what 
 tradition really amounts to?" she thought, while she 
 stood on the rear platform of a Harlem train, grasping 
 the handle of the door as the car swung round a curve 
 "All my life I have been getting farther away from 
 it a woman has to, I suppose, when she works and 
 if I get away from it myself how can I honestly hold tc 
 it for men, who, according to mother, can't be gentle- 
 en without it?" Then reverting to her first question! 
 she resumed musingly: "Who is Alice? It would be 
 rather amusing to be Alice for one evening, and to find out 
 what it means to be loved by a man like that, even if he 
 isn't a gentleman. He was, I think, the cleanest crea 
 ture, I ever saw, and it wasn't just the cleanness of soap 
 
 368
 
 DISCOVERIES 369 
 
 and water it went deeper than that. It was the 
 cleanness of the winds and the sea as if his eyes had 
 been washed by the sea. I wonder who Alice is? A 
 common little shopgirl probably from Sixth Avenue, 
 with padded hair and painted lips, and smelling of 
 cheap powder. That's just the kind of girl to fascinate 
 a big, strong, simple creature like that. Yes, of course, 
 Alice is cheap and tawdry and vulgar, with no sub 
 stance to her mind." She tried to think of Arthur, but 
 her mental image of him had become as thin and un 
 substantial as a shadow. 
 
 When she reached the apartment, Fanny rushed 
 into her arms, and inquired breathlessly if she had 
 taken the house? 
 
 "We went down again to look at it, mother, and we 
 like it even better than ever. It will be so lovely to 
 live next door to Carlie. We can tango every evening, 
 and Carlie knows a lot of boys who come in to dance 
 because the floor is so good." 
 
 Her cheeks flushed while she talked, and, for the mo 
 ment, she lost entirely her resemblance to Jane, who 
 was never animated, though she made a perpetual 
 murmurous sound. Unlike Jane, Fanny was vivacious, 
 pert, and, for her years, extraordinarily sophisticated. 
 Already she dressed with extreme smartness; already 
 she was thinking of men as of possible lovers; and 
 already she was beginning, in her mother's phrase, 
 "to manage her life." Her trite little face, in its mist 
 of golden hair, which she took hours to arrange, still 
 reminded one of the insipid angel on a Christmas card; 
 but in spite of the engaging innocence of her look, 
 she was prodigiously experienced in the beguiling 
 arts of her sex. Almost from the cradle she had
 
 370 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 had "a way" with men; and her "way" was as far 
 superior in finesse to the simple coquetry of Cousin 
 Pussy as the worldliness of Broadway was superior to 
 the worldliness of Hill Street. From her yellow hair, 
 which she wore very low over her forehead and ears, 
 to her silk stockings of the gray called "London smoke," 
 which showed coquettishly below her "hobble" skirt, 
 and above the flashing silver buckles on her little 
 pointed shoes of patent leather, Fanny was as uncom 
 promisingly modern in her appearance as she was in her 
 Mastes or her philosophy. Her mind, which was small 
 land trite like her face, was of a curiously speculative 
 /bent, though its speculations were directed mainly 
 toward the by-paths of knowledge which Gabriella, in 
 her busy life, had had neither the time nor the inclina 
 tion to explore. For Fanny was frankly interested in vice 
 vj with the cool and dispassionate interest of the inquiring 
 'spectator. She was perfectly aware of the social evil; 
 and unknown to Gabriella she had investigated, 
 through the ample medium of the theatre and fiction, 
 every dramatic phase of the traffic in white slaves. 
 Her coolness never deserted her, for she was as temper 
 amental as a fish, and, for all the sunny white and gold 
 of her surface, she had the shallow restlessness of a 
 meadow brook. At twelve years of age she had de 
 voted herself to music and had planned an operatic 
 career; at fourteen, she had turned to literature, and 
 was writing a novel; and a year later, encouraged by 
 her practical mother, she had plunged into the move 
 ment for woman suffrage, and had marched, in a white 
 dress and carrying a purple banner, through an admir- 
 jing crowd in Fifth Avenue. To-day, after a variable 
 period, when she had dabbled in kindergarten, wood
 
 DISCOVERIES 371 
 
 engraving, the tango, and settlement work, she was 
 /k studying for the stage, and had fallen in love with a 
 matinee idol. Gabriella, who had welcomed the wood 
 engraving and the kindergartening and had been sym 
 pathetically, though impersonally, aware of the suf 
 frage movement, just as she had been aware many years 
 before of the Spanish War, was deeply disturbed by her 
 daughter's recent effervescence of emotion. 
 
 "I suppose she'll get over it. She gets over every 
 thing," she had said to Miss Polly, drawing painful 
 comfort from the shallowness and insincerity of Fan 
 ny's nature, "but something dreadful might happen 
 while she is in one of her moods." 
 
 "Not with Fanny," Miss Polly had replied reassur 
 ingly. "Fanny knows more already than you and I 
 put together, and she's got about as much red blood 
 as a lemon. She ain't the sort that things happen to, 
 so don't you begin to worry about her. She's got 
 mighty little sense, that's the gospel truth, but the 
 little she's got has been sharpened down to a p'int." 
 
 "I can't help feeling that she hasn't been well brought 
 up. I did what I could, but she needed more time and 
 care than I could give her. It wasn't, of course, as if 
 I'd chosen to neglect her. I have been obliged to work 
 or she would have starved." 
 
 "Oh, well, I wouldn't bother about that. It's like 
 wishing chickens back in the shell after they're 
 hatched there ain't a particle of use in it. If you ask 
 me what I think then, I'd say that Fanny would be 
 just exactly what she is if you'd raised her down yonder 
 in Virginia. Her father's in her as well as you, and it 
 seems to me that she grows more like him every day 
 that she lives. Now, Archibald is your child, any-
 
 372 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 body can tell that at a glance. It's queer, ain't it, 
 how the boys almost always seem to take after the 
 mother? " 
 
 "But Charley has a splendid daughter. Think of his 
 Margaret." 
 
 "Of course, there ain't any rule that works out every 
 time^but you know, I'll always take up for Mr. Charley 
 if it's with the last breath I draw. It ain't always the 
 woman that gets the worst of marriage, though to hear 
 some people talk you'd think it was nothin' but turkey 
 and plum puddin' for men. But it ain't, I don't care 
 who says so, and if anybody but a saint could have 
 married Jane without takin' to drink, I'd like to have 
 seen him try it, that's all." 
 
 That was three weeks ago, and to-night, while Fanny 
 rattled on about the house in West Twenty-third Street, 
 her mother watched her with a tolerant affection in 
 which there was neither admiration nor pride. She 
 J was not deluded about Fanny's character, though the 
 maternal mote in her eye obscured her critical vision of 
 her appearance. But, notwithstanding the fact that 
 .she thought Fanny beautiful, she was clearly aware that 
 / the girl had never been, since she left the cradle, any 
 thing but a source of anxiety; and for the last week or 
 two Gabriella had been more than usually worried 
 about her infatuation for the matinee idol. In spite of 
 Miss Polly's assurances that Fanny was too calculating 
 for rash adventures, Gabriella had spent several sleep 
 less nights over the remote possibility of an entangle 
 ment, and her anxiety was heightened by the fact that 
 the child told her nothing. They were so different 
 that there was little real sympathy between them, and 
 confidences from daughter to mother must spring, she
 
 J 
 
 DISCOVERIES 373 
 
 knew, from fulness of sympathy. "I wonder if she 
 ever realizes how hard I have worked for her?" she 
 thought. "How completely I've given up my life?" 
 And there rose in her thoughts the wish that her 
 children could have stayed children forever. "As long 
 as they were little, they filled my We, but as soon as 
 they get big enough for other things, they break away 
 from me even Archibald will change when he goes 
 away to school next year, and I shall never have him 
 again as he is now." At the very time, she knew, when 
 yfehe needed them most when middle-age was approach- 
 /ing her children were failing her not only as com 
 panions, but as a supreme and vital reason for living. 
 If they could have stayed babies, she felt that she 
 should have been satisfied to go on forever with nothing 
 else in her life; but in a little while they would grow 
 up and begin to lead their own intense personal lives, 
 while she, having outlived her usefulness, would be 
 left with only her work, with only dressmaking and 
 millinery for a life interest. "Something is wrong with 
 "" me," she thought sternly; "the visit to the judge must 
 have upset me. I don't usually have such wretched 
 thoughts in the evening." 
 
 "Did you bring me your school report, darling?" 
 she asked. 
 
 Yes, Fanny had brought it, and she drew it forth 
 reluctantly from the pages of a novel. It was im 
 possible to make her study. She was as incapable of 
 application as a butterfly. "I thought you were going 
 to do better this month, Fanny," said Gabriella re 
 proachfully. 
 
 "Oh, mother dear, I want to leave school. I hate 
 it! Please let me begin to study for the stage. You
 
 374 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 know you always said the study of Shakespeare was 
 improving." 
 
 They were in the midst of the argument when Archi 
 bald came in, and he showed little sympathy with 
 Fanny's dramatic ambition. 
 
 "The stage? Nonsense! What you want is to get 
 safely married," he remarked scornfully, and Gabriella 
 agreed with him. There was no doubt in her mind 
 that for some women, and Fanny promised to be one 
 of these, marriage was the only safeguard. Then she 
 looked at Archibald, strong, sturdy, self-reliant, and 
 clever; and she realized, with a pang, that some day 
 he also would marry that she must lose him as well 
 as Fanny. 
 
 "I've had a letter from Pelham Forest, dear," she 
 said Pelham Forest was a school in Virginia "and I 
 am making up my mind to let you go there next 
 autumn." 
 
 "And then to the University of Virginia where 
 Grandfather went?" 
 
 "Yes, and then to the University of Virginia." 
 Though she tried to speak lightly, the thought of the 
 coming separation brought a pang to her heart. 
 
 "Well, I'd rather work," said Archibald stoutly. "I 
 don't want to go away to school. I'd a long sight 
 rather start in with a railroad or a steamship company 
 and make my way up." 
 
 "But, darling, I couldn't bear that. You must have 
 an education. It's what I've worked for from the 
 beginning, and when you've finished at the university, 
 I want to send you abroad to study. If only Fanny 
 would go to college, too, I'd be so happy." 
 
 "Don't you waste any money on Fanny's education/*
 
 DISCOVERIES 375 
 
 retorted Archibald, "because it isn't worth it. What 
 we ought to do is to get to work and let you take a rest. 
 The first money I make, I'm going to spend on giving 
 you pretty clothes and a rest." 
 
 | "I don't want to rest, dear," replied Gabriella, with 
 { a laugh. "I'm not an old lady yet, you silly boy." 
 j How ridiculous it was that he always spoke of her work 
 ! as if it were a hardship a burden from which she 
 must be released at the first opportunity. That was 
 so like Cousin Jimmy, a survival, she supposed, from 
 \the tradition of the South. Unlike Fanny, whose 
 horizon was bounded by her personal inclinations, 
 Archibald seemed never to think of himself, never to 
 put either his comfort or his career before his love for 
 his mother. To attempt to shape Fanny's character 
 was like working in tissue paper, but there was stout 
 substance in Archibald. Gabriella had tried hard 
 she told herself over and over again that she had tried 
 as hard as she could with both of her children; and 
 with one of them at least she felt that she had succeeded. 
 There was, she knew, the making of a splendid man 
 in her son; and his very ugliness, which had been so 
 noticeable when he was a child, was developing now 
 into attractiveness. For it was the ugliness of strength, 
 not of weakness, and there was no trace in his nature of 
 the self-indulgence which had ruined his father. 
 
 "But I don't want to go to college, mother dear," 
 protested Fanny, who always addressed Gabriella as 
 "dear" when she was about to become intractable; 
 "I want to go on the stage." 
 
 "You are not to see another play, except when I take 
 you, for a whole year. Remember what I tell you, 
 Fanny!" replied Gabriella sternly. Not Mrs. Carr
 
 376 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 herself, not Cousin Becky Bollingbroke, of sanctified 
 memory, could have regarded an actress's career with 
 greater horror than did the advanced and independent 
 Gabriella. Any career, indeed, appeared to her to be 
 out of the question for Fanny (a girl who couldn't even 
 get on a street car without being spoken to), and of 
 all careers the one the stage afforded was certainly the 
 last she would have selected for her daughter. 
 
 "I'll remember," responded Fanny coolly, and 
 Gabriella knew in her heart that the girl would dis 
 obey her at the first opportunity. It was impossible to 
 chaperon her every minute, and Fanny, unchaperoned, 
 was, in the realistic phrase of her brother, "looking for 
 trouble." 
 
 "I'll send her to boarding-school next year," Gabri 
 ella determined; and she reflected gloomily that with 
 Fanny and Archibald both away, she might as well be 
 a bachelor woman. 
 
 "Well, children, you're both going away next winter," 
 she said positively. "I can't look after you, Fanny, 
 and make your living at the same time, so I shall send 
 you to boarding-school. What do you say to Miss 
 Bradfordine's?" 
 
 "That's up on the Hudson, mother. I don't want 
 to go out of New York." Fanny was genuinely 
 alarmed at last. 
 
 "The farther away from New York the better, my 
 daughter." 
 
 "What will you do here all alone with Miss Polly?" 
 
 "Oh, we'll do very well," answered Gabriella with 
 cheerful promptness; "you need not worry about me." 
 
 "If I'm good this summer, will you change your 
 mind, mother?"
 
 DISCOVERIES 377 
 
 "Try being good, and see." Though Gabriella spoke 
 sweetly, it was with the obstinate sweetness of Mrs. 
 Carr. One thing she had resolved firmly in the last 
 quarter of an hour: Fanny should go away to boarding- 
 school next September. 
 
 "Ain't you goin' to walk in the suffrage parade this 
 year, Fanny? " inquired Miss Polly, who always thought 
 it necessary to interrupt an argument between Gabriella 
 and her daughter. 
 
 "I haven't anything to wear," replied Fanny pet 
 tishly. Her brief interest in "votes for women" had 
 evaporated with the entrance of the matinee idol into 
 her life. 
 
 "There's a lovely white gown just in from Paris I'll 
 get for you," said Gabriella pleasantly. She was tired, 
 for she had had a trying day; but long ago, when her 
 children were babies, she had determined that she 
 would never permit herself to speak sharply to them. 
 In Fanny's most exasperating humours, Gabriella tried 
 to remember her own youthful mistakes, tried to be 
 lenient to George's faults which she recognized in the 
 girl's character. 
 
 "As if anybody needed to be dressed up to march!" 
 exclaimed Archibald scornfully, and he added: "She's 
 always acting, isn't she, mother?" 
 
 "Hush, dear, you mustn't tease your sister," Gabri 
 ella admonished the boy, though her voice when she 
 spoke to him was attuned to a deeper and softer note. 
 
 "If you make me go to boarding-school next year, 
 I don't care whether you take the rooms in Twenty- 
 third Street or not," said Fanny sullenly, for, in spite 
 of her fickle temperament, there was a remarkable 
 tenacity in her thwarted inclinations.
 
 378 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Very well. I'll look at the house and decide 
 to-morrow." As the servant came in to lay the table, 
 Gabriella dismissed the subject of Fanny's school, and 
 opened the book it chanced to be a volume of Brown 
 ing which she was reading aloud to the children. 
 
 "I am really worried about Fanny," she said to Miss 
 Polly at midnight, while she lingered in the living-room 
 before going to bed. "I honestly don't know what to 
 make of her, and I feel, somehow, that she is one of 
 my failures." 
 
 "Well, you can't expect everything to go the way 
 you want it. Did you see the judge?" 
 
 "Yes, I saw him, but it was no use." Her visit to 
 Judge Crowborough appeared to her perturbed mind 
 as a piece of headstrong and extravagant folly, and she 
 dismissed it from her thoughts as she had dismissed 
 heavier burdens in the past. "Men simply won't 
 treat women in business as they treat men, and I 
 don't see, unless human nature changes, how it is to 
 be helped. But what about the house in Twenty-third 
 Street? Do you think I ought to look at it?" 
 
 "It was the most homelike place we saw, by a long 
 way. There ain't many places in New York where 
 you can have a flower-bed in the front yard." 
 
 "Do you think Fanny will be happy there? A year 
 before this stage mania seized her, you know, she was 
 wild to move to Park Avenue." 
 
 "Well, you know I've got a suspicion," Miss Polb 
 dropped her voice to a whisper. "Of course it ain'l 
 nothin' but a suspicion, for she never opens her moul 
 about it to me, but I've got a right smart suspicion thai 
 that young actor she is so crazy about lives somewhei 
 down there in that neighbourhood, and she thii
 
 DISCOVERIES 379 
 
 she could watch him go by in the street. I don't be 
 lieve, you know, that she's ever so much as spoken to 
 him in her life." 
 
 "It's impossible!" exclaimed Gabriella, for this 
 revelation of Miss Pollys discernment was astonishing 
 to her; "but if that's the case," she added gravely, "I 
 oughtn't to think of moving into the house." 
 
 "Oh, well, I don't know that he's anywhere very 
 near, and Fanny's goin' to be at boarding-school for a 
 year or two and away with Jane at the White Sulphur 
 in the summers. She won't be there much anyhow, 
 will she?" 
 
 "Not much, but how I shall miss her and, of course, 
 if I miss her, I'll miss Archibald even more, because 
 he gives me no anxiety. It's odd," she finished 
 abruptly, "but I've been depressed all day. I suppose 
 my birthday has something to do with it." 
 
 "You ain't often like that, Gabriella. I never saw 
 anybody keep in better spirits than you do." 
 
 "I'm happy, but the spring makes me restless. I 
 feel as if I'd missed something I ought to have had." 
 
 "All of us feel that way at times, I reckon, but it 
 don't last, and we settle down comfortably after a while 
 to doin' without what we haven't got. And you've 
 been mighty successful, honey. You've succeeded in 
 everything you undertook except marriage." 
 
 "Yes, except my marriage." 
 
 "Well, I reckon things happen and you can't do 'em 
 over again," observed the little seamstress, with the 
 natural fatalism of the "poor white" of the South. 
 
 As she undressed and got into bed, Gabriella told 
 herself cheerfully that there was, indeed, no need to 
 worry over things that you couldn't change after they
 
 380 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 happened. From the open window a shaft of light fell 
 on her mirror, and while she watched it, she tried to 
 convince her rebellious imagination that she was per 
 fectly satisfied, that life had given her all that she had 
 ever desired. "I have more than most women any 
 how," she insisted, weakening a little. "I've accom 
 plished what I undertook, and by the time I'm fifty, 
 if things go well, I may become a rich woman. I'll be 
 able to give Fanny everything that she wants, and if 
 she hasn't married, we can go abroad every summer, 
 and Archibald can join us in Switzerland or the Tyrol. 
 About Archibald, at least, I can feel perfectly easy. He 
 is the kind of boy to succeed. He is strong, he hasn't a 
 weakness, and I am sure there isn't a brighter boy in the 
 world." Around the shaft of light in the mirror a 
 stream of sparks, like tiny comets, began to form 
 and quiver back and forth as if they were flying. "It's 
 a pity the judge can't help me, but it wouldn't do. I'd 
 never forget what happened to-day, and you can never 
 , tell when trouble like that is coming. I'll either make 
 Madame give me half the profits for managing the 
 business or I'll go to Blakeley & Grymn at a salary of 
 ten thousand a year. She won't let me go, of course, 
 because she knows I'd take two thirds of her customers 
 with me. Then I'll invest all I can save in the business 
 until finally I am able to buy it entirely " An ele 
 vated train passed the corner, and while the rumble 
 died slowly in the distance, she found herself thinking 
 of Arthur. "How different my life might have been if 
 I had only stayed true to him. That's the happiest 
 lot that could fall to a woman, to be loved by a man as 
 faithful and tender as Arthur." For a few minutes she 
 lay, without thought, watching the lights quiver and
 
 DISCOVERIES 381 
 
 dance in the mirror, and listening to the faint rumble of 
 the elevated train far up the street. Then, just as she 
 was falling asleep, a question flashed out of the flicker 
 ing lights into her mind, and she started awake again. 
 "I wonder who Alice is?" she said aloud to the night. 
 
 Several weeks later, at the end of a busy day, Gabriella 
 stood in front of the house in London Terrace, watch 
 ing her furniture as it passed across the pavement 
 and up the flagged walk into the hall. The yard 
 was neglected and overgrown with dandelions and 
 wire-grass; but an old rose-bush by the steps was in 
 full bloom, and already Miss Polly was surveying the 
 tangled weeds with the eye of a destroyer. 
 
 "I declare I'm just hungerin' for flowers," she said 
 wistfully, following the dining-room table as far as the 
 foot of the steps where Gabriella stood. "The very 
 first thing in the morning before I get breakfast, I'm 
 goin' to sow some mignonette and nasturtium seeds in 
 that border along the wall, and fix some window boxes 
 with clove pinks and sweet alyssum in 'em like your ma 
 used to have in summer. I reckon that's why I was 
 so set on this place from the first. It looks more like 
 Richmond in old times than it does like New York." 
 
 Beyond the grass and weeds, over which Gabriella 
 was gazing, the street was so quiet for the moment 
 that it might have been one of those forgotten squares 
 in Richmond (she had never called them blocks) where 
 needy gentlewomen still practised "light housekeep- 
 ;ing" in the social twilight of the last century. Now 
 and then a tired man or woman slouched by from work; 
 once a newsboy stopped at the gate to shout the name 
 of his paper in belligerent accents; and a few wagons or 
 a clanging car passed rapidly in the direction of Broad-
 
 382 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 way. From the corner of Ninth Avenue the elevated 
 road, which seemed to her at times the only permanent 
 thing in her surroundings, still roared and rumbled its 
 disturbing undercurrent in her life. 
 
 "I think we shall be quite comfortable here," she 
 said, watching the last piece of furniture pass through 
 the door. "Where are the children?" The air had 
 the rich softness of summer, and the roving fragrance 
 from the old garden rose-bush by the steps awakened 
 a strange homesickness in her heart that mysterious 
 homesickness which the spring gives us for places we 
 have never seen. 
 
 "The children are upstairs fixing their rooms," re 
 plied Miss Polly, stooping to pluck up a weed by the 
 roots. " I reckon I'd better go and tell Minnie to begin 
 gettin' dinner, hadn't I?" 
 
 "Yes, I'll come in presently. I hate to leave the air 
 and the roses." 
 
 "I wish we had the whole house, Gabriella." 
 
 "It would be ever so much nicer, because I'm afraid 
 the man on the first floor is dreadfully common. I don'1 
 like the look of that golden-oak hatrack in the hall." 
 
 "Well, men never did have much taste. Think of 
 the things your Cousin Jimmy would admire if Miss 
 Pussy didn't tell him not to. Do you recollect that 
 paper in your parlour at home? Now Mr. Jimmj 
 thought that paper downright handsome. I've hearc 
 him say so." 
 
 "It was dreadful, but, do you know, I designed 
 gown last winter in peacock blue like that paper, anc 
 it was a tremendous success. Poor mother, I wish sh< 
 could have seen it peacock blue with an embossec 
 border."
 
 DISCOVERIES 383 
 
 "You may laugh about it now, but I don't believe 
 your mother minded it much. People in old times 
 didn't let things get on their nerves the way they do 
 to-day." 
 
 She went indoors to attend to the dinner table; 
 and as Gabriella turned back to the steps, she heard 
 the gate slam and a man's voice exclaim heartily: 
 " I'll see you about it to-morrow." Then a figure came 
 rapidly up the walk a large, free figure, with a 
 buoyant swing, which awoke a trivial and fleeting asso 
 ciation in her memory. Without noticing her, the man 
 stooped for an instant beside the rose-bush, plucked a 
 bud, and held it to his nostrils as he turned to the steps. 
 His voice, singing a snatch of ragtime which she recog 
 nized without recalling the name of it } rang out, gay and 
 powerful, as he approached her. 
 
 "I've seen him somewhere. Who can he be?" she 
 thought, and then swiftly, as in a blaze of light, she re 
 membered the May afternoon in West Twenty-third 
 Street, and "Alice," whom she had wondered about 
 and forgotten. She had again a vivid impression of big 
 ness, of freshness, and of gray eyes that reminded her 
 vaguely of the colour of a storm on the sea. 
 
 " Good evening ! " he remarked with impersonal friend 
 liness as he passed her; and from the quality of his voice 
 she inferred, as she had done on that May afternoon, 
 that he was without culture, probably without educa 
 tion. 
 
 He went inside; the door of his front room opened 
 and shut, and after a minute or two the snatch of rag 
 time floated merrily through his window. If there was 
 anything on earth she disliked, she reflected impa 
 tiently, it was a comic song.
 
 384 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "He isn't a gentleman. I was right, he is common," 
 she thought disdainfully, as she went indoors and as 
 cended the stairs. "And he may make it very dis 
 agreeable for us if he insists on bringing common people 
 into the house." There was a vague impression in her 
 mind that the males of the lower classes were invariably 
 noisy. 
 
 "I saw the man on the first floor as I came up," she 
 remarked to Miss Polly. "I hope he isn't going to be 
 an annoyance." 
 
 "Mrs. Squires says he's never in evenings. He 
 gets all his meals out except breakfast, and she fixes 
 that for him. She told me he was hardly ever here 
 unless he was eatin' or sleepin', so I don't reckon he'll 
 bother us." 
 
 "Well, I'm glad of that, because he isn't the kind of 
 person I'd like the children to see anything of. You 
 can tell that he is quite common." 
 
 "What does he look like? Is he rough?" 
 
 "Oh, no, he is good looking enough a fine animal. 
 I suppose he's handsome in a way, and he was dressed 
 very carefully, but, of course, he isn't a gentleman.' 
 For the second time this stranger had made her feel 
 that she had missed something in life, and she felt al- 
 most that she hated him. 
 
 "Oh, well, I don't reckon it will hurt us to pass him 
 in the hall," replied Miss Polly soothingly, "as long as 
 he don't bring in any diseases." 
 
 The next day they settled comfortably in the upper 
 rooms and, as far as sound or movement went, the 
 floor below might have been tenanted by the dead. 
 When she went out Gabriella passed the dreadful hat- 
 rack of golden-oak in the lower hall; and after a
 
 DISCOVERIES 385 
 
 day or two she noticed that it held a collection of 
 soft felt hats, two overcoats of good cut and material, 
 and an assortment of gold-headed walking-sticks, which 
 appeared never to be used. Though she tried to ignore 
 the presence of the hatrack, there was an aggressive 
 masculinity about it which revived in her the almost 
 forgotten feeling of having "a man in the house." The 
 mere existence of a man of an unknown man on the 
 first floor, altered the character not only of the lower 
 hall, but of the entire house; it was, she felt instinctively, 
 a different place from a house occupied by women 
 alone. She had seen so little of men in the last ten 
 years that she had almost forgotten their distinguishing 
 characteristics, and the scent of tobacco stealing through 
 the closed door of the front room downstairs came 
 as a fresh surprise when she passed out in the morn 
 ing. "I suppose I'm getting old maidish," she thought. 
 "That comes of leading a one-sided life. Yes, I am 
 getting into a groove." And she determined that she 
 would go out more in the evenings and try to take an 
 interest in the theatre and the new dances. But even 
 while she was in the act of resolving, she realized that 
 when her hard day's work was over, and she came 
 home at six o'clock, she was too tired, too utterly worn 
 out, for anything except dinner and bed. There was 
 still the cheerful hour with the children (that she 
 had kept up in the busiest seasons); but when the 
 question of going out was discussed at dinner, she usu 
 ally ended by sending the children to a lecture or a 
 harmless play with Miss Polly. "When you work 
 jas hard as I do, there isn't much else for you in life," 
 she concluded regretfully, and there swept over her, as 
 on that May afternoon, a sense of failure, of dissatisf ac-
 
 386 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 tion, of disappointment. Youth was slipping, slipping, 
 and she had missed something. 
 
 At such moments she thought sadly of her life, of its 
 possibilities and its significance. It ought in the nature 
 of things, she felt, to mean so much more than it had 
 meant; it ought to have been so much more vital, so 
 much more satisfying and complete. As it was, she 
 could remember of it only scattered ends, frayed places, 
 useless beginnings, and broken promises. With how 
 I many beliefs had she started, and now not one of them 
 i remained with her well, hardly one of them! The 
 / dropping of illusion after illusion that was what the 
 I years had brought to her as they passed; for she saw 
 that she had always been growing farther and farther 
 away from tradition, from accepted opinions, from the 
 dogmas and the ideals of the ages. The experience and 
 the wisdom of others had failed her at the very be- 
 i ginning. 
 
 At the end of the week, when she and Miss Polly 
 were watering seeds in the yard one afternoon at sunset, 
 the man from the first floor came leisurely up the walk, 
 and removing a big black cigar from his mouth, wished 
 them "good evening" as he passed. 
 
 "Good evening," responded Gabriella coolly. She 
 had resolved that there should be no interchange of 
 unnecessary civilities between the first floor and the 
 upper storeys. "One can never tell how far men of 
 that class will presume," she thought sternly. 
 
 "Don't you think he's good lookin', honey?" inquired 
 Miss Polly in a whisper when O'Hara had entered the 
 house with his latchkey and closed the door after him. 
 
 "Is he? I didn't look at him." 
 
 "You wouldn't think he'd ever had a day's sickness
 
 DISCOVERIES 387 
 
 in his life. I reckon he's as big as your Cousin Micajah 
 Berkeley was. You don't recollect him, do you?" 
 
 "He died before I was born. Are those wisps of 
 gray green, in the border, pinks, Miss Polly?" 
 
 "Clove pinks like your ma used to raise. It ain't 
 the right time to set 'em out, but I sent all the way down 
 to Richmond for 'em. I'm goin' to get a microphylla 
 rose, too, in the fall. Do you reckon it would grow up 
 North, Gabriella?" 
 
 "Well, we might try, anyhow. Where are the chil 
 dren?" 
 
 "Fanny's over at Carlie's, an' Archibald said he 
 was goin' to the gymnasium befo' dinner. He's just 
 crazy about gettin' as strong as the man on the first 
 floor. He was punching a ball this mornin', and Archi 
 bald saw him. I never knew the boy to take such a 
 sudden fancy." 
 
 "When did he speak to him?" asked Gabriella, and 
 her tone had a touch of asperity so unusual that Miss 
 Polly exclaimed in astonishment: "For goodness sake, 
 Gabriella, what has come over you? Do you feel any 
 sort of palpitations? Shall I run after the harts 
 horn?" 
 
 "No, I'm not ill, but I don't like Archibald to pick up 
 acquaintances I know nothing about." 
 
 "I reckon if you're goin' to sample all Archibald's 
 acquaintances, you'll have a job on your hands. You 
 ain't gone an' taken a dislike to Mr. O'Hara for nothin', 
 have you?" 
 
 "Oh, no, but I have to be careful about the children. 
 Suppose he should begin speaking to Fanny?" She 
 had been vividly aware of the man as he passed, and the 
 sensation had provoked her. "If it wasn't for Alice, I
 
 388 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 shouldn't have given him another thought," she told 
 herself savagely. "Imagine me at my age blushing 
 because a strange man spoke to me in the street!" 
 
 "You needn't worry about his admirin' Fanny," 
 replied Miss Polly, in her matter-of-fact manner, while 
 she lifted the green watering-pot. "He was on the 
 steps when she set out for school this mornin', an' he 
 didn't notice her any more than he did me. Fanny 
 ain't the sort he takes notice of, I could see that in a 
 minute." 
 
 "Then he must be blind." There was a resentful 
 sound in Gabriella's voice. "It embarrasses me when 
 I get on a street car with her because the men stare so." 
 
 "Well, he didn't stare. But it's a mighty good 
 thing that all men haven't got the same kind of eyes, 
 ain't it? What I could never make out was why men 
 ever marry women who haven't got curly hair, an' 
 yet they do it every day they go right straight out 
 an' do it with their wits about 'em." 
 
 The front door opened suddenly, and the man came 
 out again, and descended the walk with the springy 
 step Gabriella had noticed at their first meeting. Not 
 withstanding his size, he moved with the lightness and 
 agility of a boy, and without looking at him she could 
 see, as she bent over the flower-bed, that he had the 
 look of exuberant vitality which accompanies perfect 
 physical condition. Without meaning to, without 
 knowing why she did it, she glanced up quickly and 
 met his eyes. 
 
 "So you are making a garden?" he remarked, and 
 stopped beside the freshly turned flower-bed. Against 
 the gray twilight the red of his hair was like a dark 
 flame, and the vivid colour appeared to intensify the
 
 DISCOVERIES 389 
 
 sanguine glow in his face, the steady gaze of his eyes, 
 and the cheerful heartiness of his voice. 
 
 "He is cyclonic," she said to herself. "Yes, that is 
 the word he is cyclonic but he isn't a gentleman." 
 
 "It's a pity to let the yard run to waste," she re 
 sponded, with an imperiousness which took Miss 
 Polly's breath away, though it left the irrepressible 
 O'Hara still buoyantly gay and kind. 
 
 " Now it takes a woman to think of that," he observed 
 with an off-hand geniality which she felt was directed 
 less toward herself than toward an impersonal universe. 
 " I like to look at that old rose-bush when it is in bloom, 
 but the idea" (he pronounced it idee) "of planting 
 anything would never have occurred to me." 
 
 Gabriella's lips closed firmly, while she sprinkled the 
 earth with an air of patient finality which made Miss 
 Polly think of Mrs. Carr on one of her neuralgic days. 
 
 "What's that stringy looking grass over there?" 
 pursued the man, undismayed by her manner. 
 
 " Clove pinks." Nothing, she told herself indignantly, 
 could persuade her to encourage the acquaintance of 
 a man who mispronounced his words so outrageously. 
 
 "And here?" He pointed to the flower-bed she was 
 watering. 
 
 "Mignonette and nasturtium seeds." 
 
 "When will they come up?" 
 
 "Very soon if they're watered." 
 
 "And they'll bloom about July, I guess?" 
 
 "They ought to bloom all summer. In the autumn, 
 If we have room, we're going to plant some dahlias, 
 and a row of hollyhocks against the house. By next 
 summer the yard will look much better." 
 
 "By George!" he exclaimed abruptly, and after a
 
 390 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 minute or two: "Do you know, I can remember the 
 first time I ever saw a flower or the first time I took 
 notice of one, anyway. It was red a red geranium. 
 There was a whole cart of 'em, and that's why I 
 noticed 'em, I expect. But a red geranium is a Jim- 
 dandy flower, ain't it?" 
 
 To this outburst Gabriella made no reply. Her will 
 had hardened with the determination not to be drawn 
 into conversation, and while he waited with his eager 
 gray eyes so like the alert, wistful eyes of a great 
 dog on her profile, she began carelessly plucking up 
 spears of grass from the flower-bed. 
 
 For a minute he waited expectantly; then, as she did 
 not look up, he remarked, "So long!" in a voice of 
 serene friendliness, and went on to the gate. He had 
 actually said "So long" to her, Gabriella, and he had 
 said it with a manner of established intimacy ! 
 
 "Well, what do you think of that?" she demanded 
 scornfully of Miss Polly when he had disappeared up 
 the street. 
 
 "I reckon he don't know any better, honey. You 
 don't learn much about manners in a mine, I 'spose, 
 and when he ain't down in a mine, Mrs. Squires says 
 he's building railroads across deserts. She says he 
 ain't ever had anything, education or money, that he 
 didn't pick up for himself, and you oughtn't to judge 
 him as you do some others you've known. Anyway, 
 she says he's made a big pile of money." 
 
 "I believe you're taking up for him, Miss Polly. 
 Has he bewitched you?" 
 
 "I don't like to see you hard, Gabriella. You're 
 almost always so tolerant. It ain't like you to sit in 
 judgment."
 
 DISCOVERIES 391 
 
 "I am not sitting in judgment, but I don't see why 
 I'm obliged to be friendly with a strange man who says 
 'idee.' It would be bad for the children." 
 
 "Mrs. Squires has known him for thirty years he's 
 forty-five now and she says it's a miracle the way he's 
 come up. He was born in a cellar." 
 \ "I dare say he has a great deal of force, but you must 
 . admit that blood tells, Miss Polly." 
 t "I never said it didn't, Gabriella only that there's 
 I much more credit to a man that conies up without it." 
 * ' "Oh, I'll admire him all you please," retorted Gabri 
 ella, "if you'll promise to keep him away from the 
 children." 
 
 Though she spoke sharply, the sharpness was directed 
 not to Miss Polly, but to herself to her own incom 
 prehensible childishness. The man interested her; 
 already she had thought of him daily since she first came 
 to the house; already she had begun to wonder about 
 him, and she realized that she should wonder still more 
 i because of what Miss Polly had told her. When he 
 had approached her in the yard, she had been vaguely 
 disturbed, vaguely thrilled by the strangeness and the 
 mystery surrounding him; she had been subtly aware 
 of his nearness before she heard his step, and turning, 
 found his eyes fixed upon her. Her own weakness in 
 not controlling her curiosity, in recurring, in spite of her 
 determined resolve to that first meeting, in allowing a 
 coarse, rough stranger yes, a coarse, rough, unedu 
 cated stranger, she insisted desperately to hold her 
 attention for a minute the incredible weakness of 
 these things goaded her into a feeling of positive 
 anger. For ten years there had been no men in 
 her life, and now at thirty-seven, when she was almost
 
 392 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 middle-aged, she was beginning to feel curious about 
 the history of the first good-looking man she encoun 
 tered about a mere robust, boisterous embodiment of 
 masculinity. "What difference can it make to me 
 who Alice is?" she demanded indignantly. "What 
 possible difference?" She forced herself to think 
 tenderly of Arthur; but during the last few months 
 the image of Arthur had receded an immeasurable 
 distance from her life. His remoteness and his unreality 
 distressed her; but try as she would, she could not 
 recall him from the gauzy fabric of dreams to the 
 tangible substance of flesh. 
 
 "It isn't that I care for myself," she said to Miss 
 Polly abruptly, as if she were defending herself against 
 an unspoken accusation. "I am a working woman, 
 and a working woman can't afford to be snobbish 
 certainly a dressmaker can't but I must look after 
 my children. That is an imperative duty. I must 
 see that they form friendships in their own class." 
 
 But life, as she had already discovered, has a sardonic 
 manner of its own in such crises. That night she 
 planned carefully, lying awake in the darkness, the 
 subterfuges and excuses by which she would keep 
 Archibald away from O'Hara, and the very next after 
 noon when she came home from work she found con 
 fusion in the street, a fire engine at the corner, and, 
 on the steps of her home, the boy clinging rapturously 
 to the hand of the man. 
 
 "You ought to have been here, mother," cried 
 Archibald in tones of ecstatic excitement. "We had 
 a fire down the street in that apartment house and 
 before the firemen came Mr. O'Hara went in and got 
 out a woman and some children who had been over-
 
 DISCOVERIES 393 
 
 come by smoke. He had to lower them from a fire- 
 escape, and he got every one of them out before the 
 engine could get here. I saw it all. I was on the 
 corner and saw it all. 
 
 "I hope Mr. O'Hara wasn't hurt," remarked Gabri- 
 ella, but her voice was not enthusiastic. 
 
 "To hear the kid run on," responded O'Hara, over 
 powered by embarrassment, "you'd think I'd really 
 done something, wouldn't you? Well, it wasn't any 
 thing. It was as easy as as eating. Now, I was caught 
 down in a mine once in Arizona " 
 
 "Tell me about it. Mother, ask him to tell you 
 about it," entreated Archibald. The boy was obviously 
 consumed with curiosity and delight. Gabriella had 
 never seen him so enthusiastic, so swept away by 
 emotion. Already, she suspected, he had fallen a 
 victim to the passion of hero worship, and O'Hara the 
 man who spoke of "idees" was his hero! "I shall 
 have to be careful," she thought. "I shall have to be 
 very careful or Archibald will come under his influence." 
 
 "Well, I guess I must be going along," remarked 
 O'Hara, a little nervously, for he was evidently confused 
 by her imperious manner. "A fellow is expecting me 
 to dinner over at the club." 
 
 "But I want to hear about the mine. Mother, make 
 him tell us about the mine!" cried Archibald insistently. 
 
 "I'll tell you another time, sonny. We'll get to 
 gether some day when your mother don't want you, 
 and we'll start off on a regular bat. How would you 
 like that?" 
 
 "When?" demanded the boy eagerly. His fear of 
 losing O'Hara showed in the fervour with which he 
 spoke, in the frantic grasp with which he still clung to
 
 394 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 his hand. It occurred to Gabriella suddenly that she 
 ought to have thrown Archibald more in the compan 
 ionship of men, that she had kept him too much with 
 women, that she had smothered him in her love. This 
 was the result of her selfish devotion that he should 
 turn from her to the first male creature that came into 
 his life! 
 
 Her heart was sore, but she said merely: "That is 
 very kind of you, Mr. O'Hara, but I'm afraid I mustn't 
 let my boy go off on a regular bat without me." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I may, mother. Say I may," interrupted 
 Archibald with rebellious determination. 
 
 "Well, we'll see about it when the time comes." 
 She turned her head, meeting O'Hara's gaze, and for 
 an instant they looked unflinchingly into each other's 
 eyes. In her look there was surprise, indignation, and 
 a suspicion of fear why should he, a stranger, come 
 between her and her son? and in his steady gaze 
 there was surprise, also, but it was mingled, not with 
 indignation and fear, but with careless and tolerant 
 amusement. She knew from his smile that he was 
 perfectly indifferent to her resentment, that he was 
 even momentarily entertained by it, and the knowledge 
 enraged her. The glance he gave her was as impersonal 
 as the glance he gave Miss Polly or the rose-bush or the 
 street with its casual stream of pedestrians. It was 
 the glance of a man who had lived deeply, and to 
 whom living meant action and achievement rather than 
 criticism or philosophy. He would not judge her, 
 she understood, simply because his mind was not 
 in the habit of judging. His interest in her was 
 merely a part of his intense, zestful interest in life. 
 She shared with Miss Polly and Archibald, and any
 
 DISCOVERIES 395 
 
 chance object that attracted his attention for an 
 instant, the redundant vitality of his inquiring 
 spirit. "No wonder he has worked his way up with 
 all that energy," she reflected. "No wonder he has 
 made money." His face, with its clear ruddiness, 
 was the face of a man who has breathed strong winds 
 and tasted the sharp tang of sage and pine; and she 
 noticed again that his deep gray eyes had the unwaver 
 ing look of eyes that have watched wide horizons of 
 sea or desert. There was no suggestion of the city 
 about him, though his clothes were well cut, and she 
 was quick to observe, followed the latest styles of Fifth 
 Avenue. "Yes, he is good looking," she admitted 
 reluctantly. "There is no question about that, and he 
 has personality, too of a kind." His hat was in his 
 hand a soft hat of greenish-gray felt and her eye 
 rested for a moment on his uncovered head with its 
 thick waves of red hair, a little disordered as if a high 
 wind had roughened them. "If he only had breeding 
 or education, he might be really worth while," she added 
 almost approvingly. 
 
 When he spoke again O'Hara ignored Gabriella, and 
 turned his alert questioning glance on the little seam 
 stress. Fanny had sauntered up the walk to join 
 the group Fanny in all the glory of her yellow curls, 
 and her "debutante slouch" and he bowed gravely 
 to her without the faintest change of expression. If 
 he admired Fanny's beauty and pitied Miss Polly's 
 plainness, there was no hint of it in the indifferent 
 look he turned from the girl to the old woman. 
 
 "The next time you're planting things," he said 
 earnestly, "I wish you'd set out a red geranium. I 
 saw a cart of 'em go by in the street this morning and
 
 396 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 I had half a mind to buy a pot or two for the yard. 
 If I get some, will you put 'em out?" 
 
 "Why, of course, I will. I'll be real glad to," 
 responded Miss Polly, agreeably flattered by his 
 request. "Is there any special place you want me to 
 plant them?" 
 
 "Anywhere I can see 'em from the window. I'd 
 like to look at 'em while I eat my breakfast. And 
 while we are about it, wouldn't it be just as well to 
 set out a whole bed of 'em?" he asked with a munifi 
 cent gesture which included in one comprehensive 
 sweep the weeds, the walk, the elm tree, the blos 
 soming rose-bush, and the freshly turned flower- 
 borders. The large free movement of his arm ex 
 pressed a splendid scorn of small things, of little 
 makeshifts, of subterfuges and evasions. 
 
 "Don't you think it would cut up the yard too much 
 to make another bed?" asked Gabriella, inspired by 
 the whimsical demon of opposition. It was true that 
 she had no particular fondness for red geraniums; but 
 if Miss Polly had expressed, on her own account, a 
 desire to plant the street with them, she would never 
 have thought of objecting. 
 
 "Well, the yard ain't much to brag of anyhow," 
 replied Miss Polly with that careful penetration 
 which never sees below the surface of things. "To 
 tell the truth I've always had a sort of leanin' toward 
 geraniums myself especially rose geraniums. I don't 
 know why on earth," she concluded with animated 
 wonder, "I never thought of putting rose geraniums in 
 that window box along with the sweet alyssum. They 
 would have been the very things and they don't take 
 so much watering."
 
 DISCOVERIES 397 
 
 "That's a bargain, then," said O'Hara, with his 
 ringing laugh which made Gabriella smile in spite of 
 herself. Then, after shaking hands with each one of 
 the group, he went down the walk and passed with his 
 vigorous stride in the direction of Broadway. 
 
 When the gate had closed, and his large figure had 
 vanished in the distance, Gabriella said sternly: 
 "Archibald, you must not lose your head over strangers. 
 We know nothing on earth about Mr. O'Hara except 
 that he lives in 1 this house." 
 
 "Oh, but, mother, he was splendid at the fire! You 
 ought to have seen him holding a girl by one arm out 
 of the window. He was as brave as a fireman, every 
 body said so, didn't they, Miss Polly?" 
 
 "Men of that sort always have courage," observed 
 
 Gabriella contemptuously, and despised herself for the 
 
 remark. What was the matter with her this afternoon? 
 
 Why did this man arouse in her the instinct of combat- 
 
 iveness, the fever of opposition? Was it all because 
 
 ,she suspected him of a vulgar intrigue with a shopgirl? 
 
 .And why had she decided so positively that Alice was 
 
 vulgar? Certainly, she, a dressmaker, should be the 
 
 Jast to condemn shopgirls as vulgar. 
 
 "I declare, I can't begin to make you out, Gabriella," 
 said Miss Polly uneasily. "I never heard you talk 
 about folks bein' common before. It don't sound like 
 
 you." 
 
 "Well, he is common, you know," protested Gabri 
 ella, with a strange, almost tearful violence. "Why 
 did he have to shake hands with us all with each one 
 of us, even Fanny, when he went away? We'd hardly 
 spoken to him." 
 
 "I don't know what's come over you," observed the
 
 398 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 seamstress gloomily. "I reckon I'm common, too, 
 so I don't notice it. But I must say I like the way 
 he spoke about geraniums. He showed a real nice 
 feelin'." 
 
 The words were hardly out of her mouth before 
 Gabriella had caught her in her arms. "I know I'm 
 horrid, dear Miss Polly," she said penitently, "but I 
 don't like Mr. O'Hara." 
 
 "Then I shouldn't see any more of him than I was 
 obliged to, honey, and there ain't a bit of use in Archi 
 bald's goin' with him if you don't want him to." 
 
 "I don't like to forbid him. Of course, I know 
 nothing against the man it is only a feeling." 
 
 "Well, feelin's are mighty queer things sometimes," 
 remarked Miss Polly, scoring a triumph which left the 
 indignant Gabriella at her mercy; "and when I come 
 to think of it, I don't recollect that yours have always 
 been such good judges of folks." 
 
 The geraniums arrived in a small cart the next 
 morning, but O'Hara did not appear, and for several 
 weeks, though Gabriella glanced suspiciously at the 
 hatrack each morning when she passed through the 
 hall, there was no sign of life in his rooms. Then one 
 afternoon he reappeared as suddenly as he had vanished, 
 and she found Archibald with him in the yard when 
 she came home at six o'clock. That the boy would be 
 her difficulty, she knew by instinct, for he had been 
 seized by one of those unaccountable romantic fancies 
 to which the young of the race are disposed. Though 
 the sentiment was certainly far less dangerous than 
 Fanny's passion for the matinee idol, since it revealed 
 itself principally as a robust and wholly masculine am 
 bition to follow in the footsteps of adventure, Ga-
 
 DISCOVERIES 399 
 
 briella fought it almost as fiercely as she had fought 
 Fanny's incipient love affair. 
 
 "He is making Archibald rough," she said to Miss 
 Polly, after a fortnight of unavailing opposition to the 
 new influence in Archibald's life. "Until we came 
 here," she added despondently, "Archibald loved me 
 better than anything in the world, and now he seems to 
 think of nothing but this man." 
 
 "It looks to me as if it was mighty good for the 
 child, honey. You can't keep a boy tied to your apron- 
 strings all the time. Archibald needs a father the 
 same as other boys, and if he hasn't got one, he's either 
 goin' to break loose or he's goin' to become a molly 
 coddle. You don't want to make a mollycoddle of him, 
 do you?" 
 
 "Of course not," answered Gabriella honestly, for, in 
 spite of her strange fits of unreasonableness, she was 
 still sensible enough in theory. "I've tried hard to 
 keep him manly not to spoil him, you know that as 
 well as I do. And it isn't that I object to his making 
 friends. I'd give anything in the world if he could 
 know Arthur. If it had been Arthur," she went on 
 gently, "I should have been glad to have him come 
 first. I shouldn't have cared a bit if he had loved Arthur 
 better than me." 
 
 "You oughtn't to talk like that, Gabriella, for you 
 know just as well as can be that Archibald don't love 
 anybody better than he loves you. As far as I can 
 make out though, Mr. O'Hara sets him a real good ex 
 ample. I don't see that he's doin' the child a particle 
 of harm, and I don't believe you see it either. To be 
 sure you don't think much of football, but it's a long 
 ways better than loafin' round with nothin' to do, and
 
 400 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 this boy scout business that Archibald talks so much 
 about sounds all right to me. Now, he never would 
 have thought a thing about that except for Mr. O'Hara." 
 
 "Yes, that's all right. I approve of that, but I 
 can't help hating to see a stranger get so strong an in 
 fluence over my son. It isn't fair of him." 
 
 "Then why don't you tell him to stop it. I believe 
 he'd be sensible about it, and if I was you, I'd have it 
 every bit out with him." 
 
 "If it doesn't stop, I'll find some way of showing him 
 that I object to the friendship. But, after all, it may 
 be only a fancy of Archibald's. Anyhow, I'll wait a 
 while before I take any step." 
 
 At the beginning of August Gabriella sent the chil 
 dren to the country with Miss Polly, and sailed, on a 
 fast boat, for a brief visit to the great dress designers of 
 Paris. Ever since Madame's age and infirmities had 
 forced her to relinquish this annual trip, Gabriella had 
 taken her place, and all through the year she looked 
 forward to it as to the last of her youthful adventures. 
 On her last visit, Billy and Patty had been in Switzer 
 land; but this summer they met her at Cherbourg; and 
 she spent several brilliant days with them before they 
 flitted off again, and left her to the doubtful consider 
 ation of dressmakers and milliners. Patty, who ap 
 peared to grow younger and lovelier with each passing 
 year, came to her room the evening before they parted, 
 and asked her in a whisper if she had heard of George 
 or Florrie in the ten years since their elopement? 
 
 "Not a word not a single word, darling. I haven't 
 heard his name mentioned since I got my divorce." 
 
 "You didn't know, then, that Florrie left him six 
 months after they ran away? "
 
 DISCOVERIES 401 
 
 "No, I didn't know. Does he ever write to you?" 
 "Not to me, but mother hears from him every now 
 and then when he wants money badly. Of course she 
 doesn't have much to send him, but she gives him every 
 penny she can spare.- A year ago she had a letter from 
 some doctor in New Jersey telling her that he was treat 
 ing George for the drink habit, and that he needed to 
 be kept somewhere for treatment for several months. 
 We sent her the money she needed, Billy and I, but 
 in her next letter she said that George had escaped from 
 ,'the hospital and that she hadn't heard of him since. 
 That must have been about six months ago." 
 
 "It's dreadful for his mother," observed Gabriella, 
 with vague compassion, for she felt as if Patty were 
 speaking of a stranger whose face she was incapable of 
 visualizing in her memory. In the last ten years she 
 had not only forgotten George, but she had forgotten 
 as completely the Gabriella who had once loved him. 
 Though it was still possible for her to ^voke the hollow 
 images of the past, she could not restore to these images 
 even the remotest semblance of reality and passion. 
 It was as if some nerve the sentimental nerve had 
 atrophied. She could remember George as she remem 
 bered the house in Fifty-seventh Street or her wedding- 
 gown which Miss Polly had made; she could say to her 
 self, "I loved him when I married him," or, "It was in 
 such a year that he left me"; but the empty phrases 
 awoli^ no responsive echoes in her heart; and it would 
 have been impossible to imagine a woman less crushed 
 or permanently saddened by the wreck of her happi 
 ness. "I suppose it's hard work that keeps me from 
 thinking about the past," she reflected while she 
 watched Patty's beautiful face framed by the pale gold
 
 402 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 of her hair. "I suppose it's work that has driven 
 everything else out of my thoughts." 
 
 "Have you any idea what became of Florrie?" she 
 asked, moved by a passing curiosity. 
 
 "She left George for a very rich man she met in Lon 
 don. I believe he had a wife already, but things like 
 that never stood in Florrie's way." 
 
 "It's queer, isn't it, because she really has a kind 
 heart." 
 
 "Yes, she is kind-hearted when you don't get in 
 her way, but she was born without any morality just as 
 some people are born without any sense of smell or 
 hearing. I know several women over here who are like 
 that American women, too and, do you know, they 
 are all surprisingly successful. Nobody seems to sus 
 pect their infirmity, least of all the men who become 
 their victims." 
 
 "I sometimes think," observed Gabriella cynically, 
 "that men like women to be without feeling. It saves 
 them so much trouble." 
 
 The next day Patty fluttered off like a brilliant 
 butterfly, and Gabriella began to suffer acute home 
 sickness for the house in Twenty-third Street and her 
 children. Not once during her stay in Paris did the 
 thought of O'Hara enter her mind; and so completely 
 had she ceased to worry about his friendship for Archi 
 bald that it was almost a shock to her when, after 
 landing one September afternoon, she drove up to the 
 gate and found the man and the boy standing together 
 beside a flourishing border of red geraniums, which ap 
 peared almost to cover the yard. 
 
 "Oh, look, Ben, there's mother!" cried Archibald; 
 and turning quickly, the two came to meet her.
 
 DISCOVERIES 403 
 
 "My darling, I thought you were still in the coun 
 try," said Gabriella, kissing her son. 
 
 "We've been here almost a week. The place closed, 
 so we decided to come back to town. It's much nicer 
 here," replied Archibald eagerly. He looked sunburned 
 and vigorous, and it seemed to Gabriella that he had 
 grown prodigiously in six weeks. 
 
 "Why, you look so much taller, Archibald!" she 
 exclaimed, laughing with happiness, "or, perhaps, I've 
 been thinking of you as a little boy." Then, while her 
 manner grew formal, she held out her hand to O'Hara. 
 "How do you do, Mr. O'Hara?" 
 
 He was standing bareheaded in the faint sunshine, 
 and while her eyes rested on his dark red hair, still 
 moist and burnished from brushing, his tanned and 
 glowing face, and on the tiny flecks of black in the 
 clear gray of his eyes, she was startled by a sensation 
 of strangeness and unreality as if she were looking into 
 his face for the first time. 
 
 "Oh, we're well. I've been playing with Archibald. 
 Did you have a good crossing?" 
 
 "It was smooth enough, but I got so impatient. I 
 wanted to be with the children." 
 
 "Well, I went once, and I was jolly glad to get back 
 again. There was nothing to do over there but loaf 
 and lie around." 
 
 There would be nothing else for him, of course, she 
 reflected; and she wondered vaguely if he had ever 
 entered a picture gallery? What would Europe offer 
 to a person possessing neither culture nor a passion 
 for clothes? 
 
 The driver had placed her bags inside the gate; and 
 O'Hara took charge of them as if it were the most
 
 404 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 natural thing in the world to carry for a fellow tenant. 
 Upstairs in the sitting-room he put his burden down, 
 unfastened the straps, and commented upon the leather 
 of a bag she had bought in Paris. 
 
 "I'd like to have a grip like that myself. Is there 
 anything else I can help about?" 
 
 "No, thank you." She was embracing Fanny, and 
 she did not glance at him as she responded: "You are 
 very kind, but my trunks are arranged for." 
 
 At this he went without a word, and Gabriella began 
 a joyous account of her trip to the children. 
 
 "Year after next, if you work hard with your French, 
 you may both go with me. Then you'll be big enough 
 to look after each other while I am with the dress 
 makers." 
 
 "Oh, tell me about the dressmakers, mother. What 
 did you bring me?" urged Fanny, prettily excited by 
 the thought of her gifts. "I need dreadfully some 
 dancing frocks. Carlie has a lovely one her mother 
 has just bought for her." 
 
 "I have all your autumn dresses, darling; everything 
 you can possibly need at Miss Bradfordine's." 
 
 Fanny's eager face grew suddenly fretful. "Am I 
 really to go away to school, mother? " 
 
 "Really, precious, both you and Archibald. Think 
 of your poor lonely mother." Breaking off with a 
 start she glanced inquiringly about the room, and turned 
 a hurt look on Miss Polly. "Why, where is Archibald? 
 I thought he was in the room." 
 
 "I reckon he must have gone down after Mr. O'Hara. 
 They had just got back from a ball game, and I 'spose 
 they felt like talking about it. He'll be up again in a 
 minute, because Mr. O'Hara goes out at six o'clock."
 
 DISCOVERIES 405 
 
 "But I've just come home." Her lip trembled. "I 
 should think Archibald would rather be with me." 
 
 "Oh, he won't stay, and you'll have him all the 
 evening. Archibald is just crazy about gettin' you 
 back." 
 
 Taking off her hat, a jaunty twist of black velvet 
 from Paris, Gabriella went into her bedroom and changed 
 to a gown of clear blue crape, which she took out of 
 the new bag. When she came out again, with her arms 
 filled with Fanny's gifts, there was a flush in her usually 
 pale face, and her eyes were bright with determination. 
 
 "I put these in my bag, Fanny, so you wouldn't have 
 to wait for the trunks. Try on this little white silk." 
 
 "Oh, mother, you look so sweet in that blue gown!" 
 
 "I got it for almost nothing, dear, but the colour is 
 lovely." Turning restlessly away, she walked to the 
 window and stood looking over Miss Polly's window box 
 down on the brilliant border of red geraniums. 
 
 "Has Archibald come upstairs yet, Miss Polly?" 
 
 "Not yet, but he'll be up directly. Don't you 
 worry." 
 
 For an instant Gabriella hesitated; then crossing the 
 room with a resolute step, she turned, with her hand 
 on the knob, and looked back at the startled face of 
 the little seamstress, who was fastening Fanny's white 
 gown. 
 
 "Well, I'm going after him," she said sternly; "I am 
 going straight downstairs to find him."
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 READJUSTMENTS 
 
 FOR a minute Gabriella stood outside the door of 
 what had once been the drawing-room of the house, 
 while she listened attentively to the sound of animated 
 voices within. Then suddenly Archibald's breezy 
 laugh rang out into the hall, and raising her hand from 
 the knob, she knocked softly on the white-painted 
 panel of the door. 
 
 "Come in!" called O'Hara's voice carelessly; and 
 Gabriella entered and imperatively held out her hand to 
 her son, who was standing by the window. 
 
 "Come, Archibald, I want you," she said gravely. 
 "You went off without seeing your gifts." She had 
 invaded the sitting-room of a strange man, but her 
 purpose was a righteous one, and there was no embar 
 rassment in her manner. 
 
 "Oh, mother, are they upstairs? I'll run up and 
 see them!" cried Archibald delightedly. "I thought 
 they were all in the trunks." 
 
 Darting past her in a flash, he bounded up the stair 
 case, while Gabriella stood facing O'Hara, who had 
 risen and thrown away his cigar at her entrance. The 
 room was still fragrant with tobacco; there was a light 
 cloud of smoke over the mignonette in the window 
 box, and beyond it, she could see the dim foliage of the 
 elm tree waving over the flagged walk to the gate. With 
 
 406
 
 READJUSTMENTS 407 
 
 an eye trained to recognize the value of details, she 
 saw that the sitting-room was furnished with the same 
 deplorable taste which had selected the golden-oak 
 hatrack and the assortment of ornamental walking- 
 sticks. The woodwork had been stained to match 
 the oak of the barbarous writing-table, which held a 
 distorted bronze lamp, with the base composed of a 
 heavily draped feminine figure, a massive desk set, 
 also of bronze, a pile of newspapers, a dictionary, and 
 several dull-looking books with worn covers and dog's 
 eared pages. She noticed that the chairs were all 
 large and solid, with deep arms and backs upholstered 
 in red leather, which looked as if it would never wear 
 out, that the rug was good, and that, except for a few 
 meretricious oil paintings on the greenish walls, the 
 room was agreeably bare of decoration. After her first 
 hesitating glance, she surmised that a certain expensive 
 comfort was the end sought for and achieved, and that 
 in the furnishing beauty had evidently been estimated 
 in figures. 
 
 "Mr. O'Hara," she began firmly, "I wish you would 
 not take my son away from me." 
 
 He did not lower his gaze, and she saw, after an 
 instant in which he appeared merely surprised, a look 
 of amusement creep into his expressive eyes. Within 
 four walls, in his light summer clothes, with the gauzy 
 drift of tobacco smoke over his head, he looked larger 
 and more irrepressibly energetic than he had done out 
 of doors. 
 
 "I am sorry you feel that way," he returned very 
 slowly after a pause. Already she had discovered that 
 he had great difficulty with his words except when he 
 was stirred by excitement into self-forgetfulness. At
 
 408 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 other times he seemed curiously inarticulate, and she 
 saw now that, while she waited for his answer, he was 
 groping about in his mind for a suitable phrase in 
 which to repel her accusation. 
 
 "I appreciate your interest in him," she resumed 
 smoothly, "but he is with you too much. I do not 
 know you. I know nothing in the world about you." 
 
 "Well Again he hesitated as if over an im 
 
 pediment in his speech. Then, finding with an effort 
 the words he needed, he went on more easily: "If 
 there's anything you'd like to know, I guess you can ask 
 me." 
 
 She frowned slightly, and leaving the door moved 
 resolutely to the writing-table, where she stopped 
 with her hand on the pile of newspapers. Against 
 the indeterminate colour of the walls her head, witl 
 its dark, silver-powdered hair, worn smooth and close 
 after the Parisian fashion, showed as clear and fine as 
 an etching. In her blue summer gown she looked 
 almost girlish in spite of the imperious dignity of her 
 carriage; and from her delicate head to her slender 
 feet, she diffused an air of fashion which perplexed and 
 embarrassed him, though he was unaware of the con 
 scious art which produced it. 
 
 "The only thing I'd like to know about you," she 
 answered, " is why you have taken so sudden a fancy to 
 my son?" 
 
 At this he laughed outright, with a boyish zest which 
 dispelled the oppressive formality of her manner. He 
 was completely at his ease again, and while he ran 
 his hand impatiently through his hair, he answered 
 frankly: 
 
 "Well, you see, when it comes to that, I didn't take
 
 READJUSTMENTS 409 
 
 any sudden fancy, as you call it I didn't take any 
 fancy at all it was the other way about. The boy is 
 a nice boy a bully good boy, anybody can see that 
 and I like boys, that's all. When he began trotting 
 round after me, we got to be chums in a way, but 
 it would have been the same with any other boy who 
 had come to the house especially," he added with a 
 clean blow given straight from the shoulder, "if he'd 
 been a decent chap that a parcel of women were making 
 into a muff." 
 
 For a minute anger, righteous anger, kept her silent; 
 then she responded with stateliness: "I suppose-I have 
 a right to decide how my son shall be brought up?" 
 
 He met her stern gaze with a smile; and in the midst 
 of her resentment she was distinctly aware of the im 
 peccable honesty of his judgment. The peculiar breezi- 
 ness she had always thought of as "Western" sounded 
 in his voice as he answered : 
 
 "By George, I'm not so sure that you have!" 
 
 Before his earnestness she felt her anger melt slowly 
 away. The basic reasonableness of her character 
 her passion to investigate experience, to examine facts, 
 ', to search for truth this temperamental attitude sur 
 vived the superficial wave of indignation which had 
 swept over her. 
 
 "So you think I am making a mistake with Archi 
 bald?" she asked quietly; and growing tired of standing, 
 she sank instinctively into one of the capacious leather- 
 covered chairs by the table. "But the question is 
 are you able to judge? " 
 
 "Well, I'm a man, and I hate to see a boy coddled. 
 It's going to be devilish hard on the kid when he grows 
 up."
 
 410 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Perhaps you're right" her manner had grown 
 softer "and because I've thought of this, I am going 
 to send him away to school this autumn in a few 
 weeks. Much as it will hurt me to part with them, I 
 am going to send both of my children away from me. 
 I have made the arrangements." 
 
 Insensibly the note of triumph had crept into her voice. 
 By the simple statement of her purpose she had vin 
 dicated her motherhood to this man. She stood clear 
 now of his aspersions on her wisdom and her devotion. 
 
 "I don't know much about girls," he replied, seating 
 himself on the opposite side of the table, where the 
 green light from the shaded lamp fell directly on his 
 features. "I can't remember ever noticing one until 
 I grew up, and then I was afraid to death of them, 
 particularly when they were young but I've been a 
 boy, and I know all about boys. There isn't a bloom 
 ing thing you could tell me about boys ! " he concluded 
 with animation. 
 
 "And you think that all boys are alike?" 
 
 "More or less under the skin. Of course some are 
 washed and some are dirty I was dirty but they're 
 all boys, every last one of them, and all boys are just 
 kids. With the first money I made out West, I started 
 a lodging-house for them the dirty ones down in the 
 Bowery," he added. "They can get a wash and a 
 supper and a night's lodging in a bed with real sheets 
 any night in the year." 
 
 She was suddenly interested. "Do you care for 
 boys just because you were a boy yourself?" she asked. 
 
 "Because I was such a God-forsaken little chap, I 
 guess. You were never down in a cellar, I suppose, the 
 kind of cellar people live in? Well, I was born in one,
 
 READJUSTMENTS 411 
 
 and my father had killed himself the week before be 
 cause he was ill with consumption, and couldn't get 
 work. He'd been a teamster, and he lost his job 
 when he came., down with pneumonia, and after they 
 let him out of the hospital, he looked such a scarehead 
 that nobody would employ him. After he died," my 
 mother struggled on somehow, taking in washing or 
 scrubbing floors God knows how she managed it! 
 and by the time I was five, and precious big for my age, 
 I was in the street selling papers. I used to say I was 
 seven when anybody asked me, but I wasn't more than 
 five; and I remember as plain as if it was yesterday, 
 the way mother used to take me to a corner of Broad 
 way, and put a bundle of papers in my arms, and 
 how I used to hang on to the coppers when the bigger 
 boys tried to get 'em away from me. Sometimes I'd 
 get an extra dime or nickel, and then we'd have Irish 
 stew or fried onions for supper. After my mother 
 died, when I was about eight, I still kept on selling 
 papers because I didn't know what else to do, but I 
 didn't have any place to sleep then, so I used to crawl 
 into machine shops or areas (he said "aries") or ware 
 houses, when the watchmen weren't looking. In 
 summer I'd sometimes hide under a bush in the park, 
 and the policeman would never see me until I slipped 
 by him in the morning. There was one policeman I 
 hated like the devil, and I used to swear that I'd get 
 even with him if it took me all the rest of my life." 
 For a moment he paused, brooding complacently. "I 
 did get even with him, too," he added, "and it didn't 
 take me more than twenty years." 
 
 "You never forget anything? " 
 
 "Forget?" he laughed shortly. "When you find a 

 
 412 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 thing I forget, it'll be so small you'll have to put on 
 spectacles to recognize it!" 
 
 She nodded comprehendingly. "And after that? " 
 
 "After that they caught me and sent me to school, 
 and I learned to read and write and do sums I always 
 had a wonderful head for figures but after school I 
 went on selling papers so I'd have something to eat 
 
 The door burst open, and Archibald rushed in to 
 show the evening clothes Gabriella had brought him 
 from Paris. 
 
 "They are jolly, mother! May I keep them on? " 
 
 "If you like, dear, but they'll have to be altered a 
 little. The coat doesn't quite fit across the shoulders." 
 
 "You're a dandy, kid, a regular dandy," observed 
 O'Hara, with humorous gravity. 
 
 After a few moments Archibald rushed off again, 
 and Gabriella made an uncertain movement to follow 
 him. "I must go," she said, without rising, and added 
 abruptly: "So you got on in spite of everything?" 
 
 "Right you are!" He leaned back in his chair and 
 regarded her with benevolent optimism. "You can 
 always get on if the stuff is in you. I meant to get 
 on, and a steam engine couldn't have kept me back. 
 It's the gospel truth that I believe I came into the world 
 meaning to get out of that cellar, and it was the same 
 thing with areas and ash-bins. I knew all the time I 
 wasn't going to keep grubbing a living out of an ash- 
 bin. I was always growing, shooting up like one of 
 those mullein stalks out there, and eating? Great 
 Scott! I used to eat so much when I was a kid that 
 mother starved herself near to death so as to give 
 me a square meal. By the time I was twelve I had 
 grown so fast that I got a job at cleaning the streets
 
 READJUSTMENTS 413 
 
 my first job from the city. But I never went hungry. 
 As far as I recollect I never went hungry except the 
 time I beat my way out to Chicago ' 
 
 Without moving, without lowering her eyes from his 
 face, Gabriella listened, while she clasped and unclasped 
 the hands in her lap. There is a personality that 
 compels attention, and she realized for the first time 
 that O'Hara possessed it. A new vision of life had 
 opened suddenly before her, and she felt, with the 
 illuminating intensity of a religious conversion, that 
 the world she had been living in was merely a fiction. 
 In spite of her experience she had really known nothing 
 of life. 
 
 "Yes, a lot of 'em went hungry, but I never did," 
 he resumed in a tone of frank congratulation. "Some 
 times, of course, I'd go without supper or breakfast, 
 but that was nothing that was not being really 
 hungry, you know. I always managed, even when I 
 was at school, to make enough to keep satisfied. What 
 I minded most," he added musingly, "was not having 
 a regular place to go home to at night, and that's why 
 I started that lodging-house. When you've slept in 
 holes and on benches, and under freight cars, and hidden 
 away in machine shops, you know there's nothing on 
 God's earth not a blessed thing that can take the 
 place of a real sure enough bed with real sure enough 
 sheets and pillow cases on it." 
 
 "But how did you come out of it? How did you 
 succeed? For you have succeeded beyond your dreams, 
 haven't you?" 
 
 "Beyond my dreams?" He threw back his big, 
 bright head, laughing happily. "Did any man alive 
 ever succeed beyond his dreams? Why, I used to
 
 414 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 dream of being President, and I guess I shan't be 
 President this side of the Great Divide, shall I? But 
 I made money, if that's what you mean. Why, I have 
 a million to-day to every dollar I had when I was 
 twenty. Do you mind my smoking? I can't talk unless 
 I've got hold of a cigar." 
 
 While he struck a match, she noticed with surprise 
 how very neat and orderly he was about the ashes of 
 his cigars, which lay in an exact gray heap in the 
 massive bronze ash-tray. What a pity, she thought, 
 moved by a feeling of compassion, that he had had no 
 advantages ! 
 
 "I'll tell you how I got on," he pursued after a 
 minute, leaning forward with the cigar in his hand it 
 was a good cigar, she knew from the smell of it. "Do 
 you see this room?" he glanced proudly about him- 
 "do you know why I keep this place even when I am 
 in the West?" She shook her head, and he went on 
 with a kind of half -ashamed, whimsical tenderness: 
 "Well, a man lived here once you never heard of a 
 common Irishman just a common Irish politician 
 the Tammany sort, just the sort the newspapers are so 
 down on. I guess he wasn't strong on civic morality 
 as they call it, and the social conscience and all the 
 other new-fashion catchwords, but he found me out 
 there in the snow one night selling newspapers without 
 any overcoat, and he brought me in and gave me one 
 of his. He was a little fellow not big as the Irish 
 usually grow and I could wear his clothes, though I 
 wasn't thirteen at the time. The coat wasn't an old 
 one, either," he explained with retrospective compla 
 cency; "no, sirree, he had just bought it, and he made 
 me take it off after I'd tried it on and sit down at the
 
 READJUSTMENTS 415 
 
 table in that back room there it's all just as he left 
 it and eat supper with him the best supper I ever 
 had in my life before or since, you may take my word 
 for it. Then when I'd finished he gave me a dollar 
 
 and told me to go out and rent a bed ' He broke 
 
 off, glanced about the room with the pride of ownership, 
 and added softly: "Who'd ever have thought on that 
 night that this place would one day belong to me? " 
 
 "Did you see him again?" 
 
 "After that he never lost sight of me. He got me a 
 room, he sent me to school not that he thought much 
 of education, the more's the pity and when I was 
 through with school he got me into the Mechanics' 
 Institute, and gave me a job at engineering. But the 
 job was too small for me, and so was New York there 
 ain't room enough here to get on without stepping on 
 somebody's toes and when I was twenty I set out to 
 beat my way to Chicago, and went clean out to Arizona. 
 That's a long story I'll tell you that some day, for 
 I've been everything on earth you can be in order to 
 keep alive, and done pretty much everything you can 
 do with two hands that will earn you a square meal. 
 I've cut corn and ploughed fields, and greased wheels, 
 and chopped wood, and mended machinery, and cleaned 
 the snow away, and once out in some little town 
 in Arizona, I even dug a grave because the sexton 
 was down with pneumonia. I've been brakesman, 
 and freightman, and, after that, freight agent. That 
 was just before I struck it rich in Colorado. I was 
 one of the first men at Bonanza City, and when 
 I went there with the railroad I was on the very 
 first train that ever ran there the whole town was 
 just a row of miners' shacks near the foot of old Bonanza.
 
 416 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 It's the richest mineral streak in the State, and yet 
 twenty-five years ago, before the C. A. & F. W. tapped 
 it, there wasn't even a saloon out there at Bonanza 
 City. When you wanted a drink and that didn't 
 worry me, for I haven't tasted anything but water 
 since I was twenty-five you had to go all the way to 
 Olympia to get it; and what was worse, all the ore 
 had to go to Olympia, too, on a little no account branch 
 road to be shipped over the main line. Well, as 
 soon as I discovered Bonanza City I said that had to 
 change, and it did change. I guess I did as much 
 to make that town as any man out there, and to-day 
 I own about two thirds of it. I've got a house on 
 Phoenix Avenue, and I gave the town a church and a 
 theatre and the ground for a library. We've got one 
 of the handsomest churches in the State," he pro 
 claimed with his unconquerable optimism, "and we've 
 just begun growing. Why, in ten years more Bonanza, 
 City will be in the race with Denver." 
 
 "And what about your friend?" she asked, finding 
 it difficult to become enthusiastic over the most pro 
 gressive town in Colorado, a State which she always 
 pictured imaginatively as a kind of rocky desert, 
 inhabited by tribes of gregarious invalids, which one 
 visited for the sake of the scenery or the climate, when 
 one had exhausted the civilized excitements of Europe. 
 
 "I am coming back to him," he responded with a 
 manner of genial remonstrance. "You just give me 
 time. But I'd honestly like you to see Bonanza City. 
 Why, :.t would take your breath away if I told you it 
 hadn't even begun to grow twenty years ago. You 
 people in New York don't know what progress means. 
 Why, out there in Bonanza City we do things while
 
 READJUSTMENTS 417 
 
 you're thinking about doing them. But to come back 
 to Barney that was his name, Barney McGoldrick 
 after I made my pile out of Bonanza, I used to strike 
 here once in a while to see how he was getting along, 
 and when he died I took these rooms just as he left 
 'em. There wasn't a chick or a child to come after 
 him, but he had a string of pensioners as long as the 
 C. A. & F. W. His money it must have been half 
 a million all went to charity, but I kept on in the 
 rooms." 
 
 "What kind of man was he?" she asked, sincerely 
 interested. 
 
 "What kind? " He pondered the question with deep 
 puffs of his cigar. " Well, do you know, I don't believe, 
 to save my life, I could tell you. The more you know 
 of men, and of women, too, for they're all alike, the 
 more you understand, somehow, that you can't judge 
 unless you've been right in the other man's place 
 unless you know exactly what they've had to pull up 
 against and how hard they have pulled. Now, if I 
 was drawing my last breath, and you asked me what 
 I thought of Barney McGoldrick, I'd be obliged to 
 answer that he was the best man I ever knew, though 
 there are others in this town, I guess, and the news 
 papers among 'em, who would tell you that he 
 was He broke off abruptly, and she waited 
 
 without speaking, until he solaced himself with his 
 cigar, and went on less boisterously: "It's a downright 
 shame, isn't it, that the same man can't manage to 
 corner all the virtues. I can't explain how it is, 
 but I've noticed that the virtues don't seem able to 
 work along peaceably in one another's company, for if 
 they did, I guess we'd have pure saints or pure sinners
 
 418 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 instead of the mixed lot we've got to make a world 
 out of. I've seen a man who wouldn't have lied or 
 stolen to save his wife from starving, and who was the 
 first in the pew at church every Sunday, grind the 
 flesh and blood out of his factory girls until they were 
 driven into the streets, or crush the very life out of the 
 little children he put to work in his mills. Yes, and 
 I've seen a tombstone over him with 'I know that my 
 Redeemer liveth' carved an inch deep in the marble. 
 Well, Barney wasn't like that, but he had his weak 
 nesses, and they were the kind people don't raise 
 marble tombstones over. I never had a taste for 
 politics 'myself, but it seems to be like any other 
 weakness, and to drag a man a little lower down if it 
 once gets too strong a hold on him. It's all right, 
 of course, if you keep it in moderation, but there's 
 precious few chaps, particularly if it's in their blood, 
 and they're Irish, who can keep the taste under control. 
 Barney was the most decent man to women I ever 
 knew. He wouldn't have hurt one for a million dollars, 
 in a factory or out of it, and he was faithful to his old 
 wife up to the day of her death and long after. He 
 grieved for her till he died, and I don't believe any 
 woman ever asked his help without getting it. His 
 private life was absolutely clean, but his public moral 
 ity well, I guess that wasn't exactly spotless. At any 
 rate, they had an investigation there was a committee 
 of citizens appointed to sit in judgment on his record. 
 The chairman was a pillar of the church and a public 
 benefactor; he had led every political reform for a 
 generation; and I happened to know that he kept two 
 mistresses up somewhere in the Bronx, and his wife, 
 who was old and ugly, wore herself to a shadow be-
 
 READJUSTMENTS 419 
 
 cause he neglected her. Mark you, I'm not upholding 
 Barney, but, good Lord! ain't it queer how easy men 
 get off when they just sin against women and not 
 against men or against the State?" 
 
 "It's all queer." She rose from the leather chair, 
 and held out her hand. "I'm glad I came in, Mr. 
 O'Hara. Some day you must tell me the rest." 
 
 "The rest?" His embarrassment had descended 
 upon him, and he was awkwardly stammering for 
 words, with her cool hand in his grasp. As long 
 as his enthusiasm had lasted he had talked fluently 
 and naturally, swept away from his self -consciousness; 
 but with the return of the formal amenities he became 
 i as ill at ease and shy as a boy. "There ain't anything 
 more except that we're building a railroad out there, 
 and I'm going back to finish it next spring if I'm 
 alive." 
 
 The September breeze entered from the dim stretch 
 of yard, under the waving elm boughs, and in an 
 instant the room was filled with the fragrance of 
 mignonette. 
 
 "But you won't be if you never get your dinner," 
 she retorted, as she smiled brilliantly. Then, turning 
 quickly, she crossed the threshold, and went down the 
 hall to the staircase. 
 
 She was tremendously excited, and while she mounted 
 the stairs she felt that she had not been so alive, so 
 filled with energy since her girlhood in Richmond. 
 It was as if a closed door into the world had been 
 suddenly flung open, and she knew that she had 
 passed beyond the narrow paths of convention into 
 the sunny roads and broad fields of vision. In a mo 
 ment of enlightenment she saw deeper and farther than
 
 420 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 she had ever dreamed of seeing before. "It teaches 
 one not to judge," she thought, with a stab of self- 
 reproach, "it teaches one not to judge others until one 
 really knows." Twice before to-night, on the day when 
 she resolved for the sake of Jane's children to go to 
 work, and again on the June evening when George 
 returned to her, she had felt this sudden quickening of 
 life, this magical sense of the unexplored mystery anc 
 beauty of the world that surrounded her. But she 
 had been very young then, and on that June evening 
 she had been deeply in love. To-night, she assura 
 herself, there was no touch of personal romance, 
 some inexplicable way the talk with O'Hara had re 
 newed her broken connection with her Dream, anc 
 she felt closer in sympathy to Arthur than she 
 been able to feel for months. No, this awakening 
 utterly different from the awakening of love, for it 
 shed its illumination not on a single person, but on the 
 whole of humanity. O'Hara had moved her, not as 
 man, but as a force a force as impersonal as the wine 
 or the sea, which had swept her intellect away from it 
 ' anchorage in the deeps of tradition. She had thought 
 herself free, but she understood now that she had never 
 really broken away that in spite of her struggles 
 escape, the past had still held her. To-night it 
 more than an awakening, it was a conversion througl 
 which she was passing, and she knew she could never 
 again believe as she had believed a few hours ago, that 
 she could never judge again as unintelligently as she 
 had judged yesterday. "So that is a man's world,," 
 and then with a rush of impulse: "What a mean little 
 life I have been living what a mean little life!" For 
 she really knew nothing of life except dressmaking:
 
 READJUSTMENTS 421 
 
 she was familiar with no part of it except the way to 
 jDinard's. She had been living a little life, with little 
 'standards, little creeds, little compromises. And yet, 
 though the personality of O'Hara had enlarged her 
 vision of the world, it had not altered her superficial 
 view of the man. She still saw him outwardly at 
 least without the glamour of romance she still thought 
 of him as boisterous, uneducated, slangy but she was 
 beginning almost unconsciously to distinguish between 
 the faults of manner and the faults of character; she 
 was beginning to be tolerant. 
 
 From Fanny's open door a humming voice floated 
 
 out to her, and going inside, she found the girl, in a 
 
 new frock, practising a dance step before the mirror. 
 
 "This is the lame duck, mother, but it's different 
 
 i from the one we danced last year." 
 
 "Yes, dear, it's very pretty." Stopping before the 
 ; dressing-table, Gabriella frowned on the photograph of 
 ; a young man in a silver frame a young man with a 
 ; fascinating smile and inane features. 
 
 "Fanny, where did you get this? " 
 
 "Oh, mother, I didn't mean you to see it. I meant 
 to put it away." 
 
 "Where did you get it?" 
 
 "He sent it to me. I wrote and asked him for it, 
 and it has his autograph. Isn't he handsome? That's 
 just the way he looked in 'Stolen Sweets' last winter." 
 
 "Well, he looks like a calf, I think," returned Ga 
 briella severely. "I suppose you may keep it out until 
 you get tired of it, but please try to be sensible, Fanny." 
 Though she spoke jestingly, she was secretly disturbed 
 by the discovery of the photograph. "If she were not 
 pretty, it wouldn't matter," she thought, "but she
 
 422 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 is so pretty that almost any man might be tempted 
 to begin a flirtation. Thank Heaven, she didn't take a 
 fancy to Mr. O'Hara. That would have been a 
 calamity." For, in spite of the fact that she had be 
 come personally reconciled to O'Hara, she was as 
 firmly resolved as ever to keep Fanny out of his sight. 
 "You know so many nice boys, dear," she resumed 
 after a minute, "that I think you might be content 
 to let actors alone." 
 
 "But boys are so stupid, mother." Fanny's tone 
 was withering in its disdain. "They are wrapped up 
 in sports, and I despise sports." 
 
 "Then you oughtn't to tease them as you do. You're 
 too young to have fancies." 
 
 "I am sixteen." 
 
 "Well, that is much too young for anything of 
 that sort. I like you to have boy friends, but I don't 
 like you to be foolish. What has become of that at 
 tractive boy, Garlic's brother? He doesn't come here 
 any more, and I'm afraid you've hurt his feelings." 
 
 "Oh, mother," hummed Fanny to the music of the 
 lame duck as she practised before the mirror, "how 
 can you really hurt a man?" 
 
 The next morning when Gabriella, in a Parisian 
 gown of black taffeta and one of the absurdly small 
 hats of the autumn, started for Dinard's, she found 
 herself thinking, not of Fanny's flirtation, but of her 
 long talk with O'Hara. She cast a friendly glance on 
 the golden-oak hatrack as she passed for O'Hara had 
 risen in her regard since she had discovered that he had 
 not selected the furniture on the first floor and then 
 stopping for a few moments on the front steps, she 
 closed her eyes, and inhaled the fragrance of the
 
 READJUSTMENTS 423 
 
 mignonette in the window box. The yard was brilliant 
 in the early sunshine; and at the gate she saw the wife 
 of the caretaker, who had looked after the flowers in 
 her absence. Detaining the woman by a gesture, she 
 joined her in the street, and the two started together 
 to walk the long blocks that stretched to Fifth Avenue. 
 
 "You are going home early to-day, Mrs. Squires." 
 
 "Yes, ma'am; it's Johnny's birthday and I promised 
 to take him up to the Bronx. Mr. O'Hara had his 
 breakfast at seven, and I got through earlier than 
 usual. He is so tidy that there ain't much to do except 
 to dust around a little." 
 
 She was a neat, red-faced woman, in rusty mourning 
 for a child she had lost in the early summer, and while 
 she talked, Gabriella felt an irresistible impulse to 
 question her about O'Hara. "She has known him for 
 thirty years, and I can find out more from her than I 
 could discover for myself in six months," she thought; 
 but she only said indifferently: 
 
 "You've worked at this house a long time, haven't 
 you?" 
 
 "For thirty years ever since I came here at eighteen 
 as housemaid to Mr. McGoldrick. My husband was 
 coachman for Mr. McGoldrick, you know he drove 
 the prettiest pair of bays in New York and that was 
 how I met him. When we married, Mr. McGoldrick 
 set us up, and John drove his carriage for him as long 
 as he lived. I often wonder what the old gentleman 
 would think of everybody having automobiles. They 
 were just beginning to come into fashion when he died." 
 
 "You knew Mr. O'Hara then?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, he was a great deal with Mr. McGoldrick. 
 After he went West we didn't see much of him for a
 
 424 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 time that was while he was making his money. Then 
 he came back and brought his wife to a place here to 
 be treated 
 
 "His wife?" 
 
 "Didn't you know? She died a few years ago, but 
 before that he used to keep her with some doctor over 
 on Long Island, and he went regularly to see her every 
 Sunday afternoon as long as she lived." 
 
 "What was the matter?" 
 
 "Drugs. Drugs and drink, too, they said, though I 
 never knew for certain about that. But they couldn't 
 do anything with her. They tried all the cures any 
 body ever heard of, and she went back every time. No 
 sooner would one thing fail, however, than Mr. O'Hara 
 would hear of something or other over in Europe, 
 and make them begin trying it. Finally for the last 
 ten or twelve years she was quite out of her mind 
 clean crazy, they said, and didn't know anybody. 
 But he still went to see her every Sunday when he was 
 staying in town, and he still made the doctors go on 
 trying new things. He never gave up till the very 
 last. Mr. McGoldrick used to say of him that he was 
 the sort that would go on hoping in hell." 
 
 " Who was she? "Where did he meet her? " 
 
 "God only knows. He never would say much about 
 her even to Mr. McGoldrick, but John always stuck it 
 out that she was never the right sort in the beginning, 
 and that Mr. O'Hara got tangled up with her somewhere 
 in a mining town out West, and couldn't get out. I've 
 heard she was a chambermaid or a barmaid or some 
 thing in a miners' hotel, but I don't know, and nobody 
 else knows, for Mr. O'Hara never opened his mouth 
 about her. All we know positive is that she must have
 
 READJUSTMENTS 425 
 
 been a drug fiend long before he ever married her, and 
 that he stuck to her for better or for worse until she 
 died and was buried. Some men are like that, you 
 know, a few of 'em. When a thing once belongs to 
 'em, no matter what it is or how little it's worth, 
 they'll go through fire and water for the sake of it 
 and it makes no difference whether it's a woman or a 
 railroad or a dog or a mine. They've got the sense of 
 responsibility like a disease. You see, Mr. O'Hara is 
 that sort, and you might as well try to turn a steam 
 roller as to start to reason him out of a notion. It 
 would have been as easy as talking for him to have got 
 a divorce. Time and again Mr. McGoldrick used to 
 I go after him about it, and talk himself hoarse; but it 
 didn't do any good, not a particle. Instead of getting 
 free out there in the West where it was easy, he kept on 
 lugging that crazy woman back and forth, trying to 
 . cure her long after everybody else had given up hope 
 and was wishing that she was dead." 
 
 "Well, I suppose he loved her." 
 
 "No, ma'am, that's the funny part, but it didn't 
 look like love to me not like what men call love, any 
 way. If it had been love, it would have worn itself out 
 long ago. Who on earth could love a crazy, yellow, 
 shrieking, cursing creature like that? I saw her some 
 times when he'd send me to take things down to her, 
 and I tell you it wasn't love not man's love, anyhow 
 that made him do what he did." 
 
 "Then it must have been something finer even than 
 love," Gabriella acquiesced after a moment. "It's 
 strange, when we come to think of it, how often we find 
 spirituality in places where we'd never expect it to be." 
 
 "I don't know that I'd call Mr. O'Hara spiritual
 
 426 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 exactly," replied Mrs. Squires thoughtfully. "I don't 
 believe he ever puts his foot inside a church, and I've 
 heard him swear when he got ready till you'd expect 
 the roof to drop in on you, but when you come to think 
 of it," she concluded, "I guess there's a good deal of 
 religion floating around outside of walls." 
 
 At the next corner they parted, and as the caretaker 
 stopped to shake hands with Gabriella and thank her 
 for a birthday present for Johnny, she added nervously: 
 "I hope I haven't said anything that I oughtn't to have 
 said, Mrs. Carr. Mr. O'Hara has been as good as gold 
 to me, and I shouldn't like him to hear I'd been talk 
 ing about him." 
 
 "He shan't hear, I promise you"; and while Mrs. 
 Squires hurried, reassured, to her home in Sixth Avenue, 
 Gabriella walked briskly with the crowd which was 
 streaming along Twenty-third Street into Broadway. 
 
 A week ago she would scarcely have noticed the 
 people about her. For ten years she had gone every 
 morning to her work through the streets, and she 
 had felt herself to be as aloof from the masses as the 
 soaring skyscraper at the corner of Broadway. The 
 psychology of the crowd had not touched her; even 
 when she walked with it, when she made a part of it, 
 she had felt herself to be detached from its purposes. 
 
 To-day, however, a change had come over her, and 
 she was happy with a large and impersonal happiness 
 which seemed to belong less to herself than to the 
 throng which surged about her and gathered her in. 
 Her little standards, her little creeds, had become a 
 part of the larger standards and creeds of humanity. 
 In Broadway, moving onward with the other workers 
 who were returning to the day's work, she was aware
 
 READJUSTMENTS 427 
 
 of an invisible current of joy which flowed from the 
 crowd into her thoughts and through her thoughts 
 back again into the crowd. For the first time she was 
 feeling and thinking in unison with the multitude. 
 
 That night, when she sat alone with Miss Polly, she 
 said to her suddenly: 
 
 "I believe I was wrong to wish Archibald not to see 
 anything of Mr. O'Hara. Yesterday we had a long 
 talk, and I think he must have some very fine traits." 
 
 "Maybe," replied Miss Polly, a little snappishly. 
 "I never could see what set you so against him, Ga- 
 briella." 
 
 "Oh, he is dreadfully slangy, and, of course, he isn't 
 educated. I suppose if I mentioned Hamlet to him, 
 he'd think I was talking about some town in Okla 
 homa." 
 
 "Well, I reckon he's been his own Hamlet," retorted 
 Miss Polly; "and knowing about Hamlet don't make 
 a man, anyhow. George knew all about Hamlet, but 
 it didn't make him easy to live with." 
 
 "Yes, that's just it. What did George's advantages 
 do for him? I used to think it was love that mattered 
 most," she said musingly' after a pause, "and then, 
 when love failed, I began to think it was culture. 
 But I see now that it is something else. Do you ever 
 wonder what the essential thing really is, Miss Polly?" 
 
 "No, I never wonder," responded Miss Polly tartly, 
 but when you stew it down to the bones, I reckon it's 
 just plain character." 
 
 "Yes, if you can't have both culture and character, 
 of course character is the more important. But think 
 how much that man might have made of the university 
 training that was wasted on George." While she
 
 428 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 spoke there came back to her in snatches a conversa 
 tion she had had with an Englishman on the boat last 
 summer, and she remembered that he had alluded to 
 Judge Crowborough as "a man of the broadest cul 
 ture." Surely the "broadest culture" must include 
 character, and yet she could feel even now the casual 
 and business-like clasp of the judge, she could see 
 again the admiring gleam in his small, fishy eyes. 
 "After all, I suppose it is a kind of spiritual conscious 
 ness that makes character," she said aloud, "and 
 you can't train that into a man if he isn't born with 
 it." 
 
 "It seems to me that Mr. O'Hara has done mighty 
 well, all things considered," pursued Miss Polly, and 
 she inquired suspiciously: "Did Mrs. Squires ever tell 
 you anything about his marriage?" 
 
 "I met her this morning on my way to work, and she 
 told me about it." 
 
 "Well, what do you make of it? Don't it beat any 
 thing you ever heard?" 
 
 "It does. There's not the slightest doubt of it. 
 And, do you know," Gabriella went on hurriedly, 
 "that story made a remarkable impression on me 
 I've been thinking about it ever since. It made me 
 see everything differently, and I've even asked myself 
 if I had enough patience with George. If I wasn't too 
 hard and intolerant with him in the beginning?" 
 
 "I shouldn't worry about that, honey, because I 
 don't believe it would have made any difference if 
 you'd been gentler. It's the stuff in a man, I reckon, 
 that counts more than the way a woman handles him. 
 You couldn't have saved George any more than that 
 other woman could ruin the man downstairs."
 
 READJUSTMENTS 429 
 
 "Perhaps not." Rising from her chair, Gabriella 
 drew the pins from the smooth, close coil of her hair. 
 "But I see things so differently since I had that talk 
 with Mr. O'Hara. I am glad to have him for a friend," 
 she added generously, "but of course I still feel the 
 same about Fanny. I hope he won't begin to notice 
 Fanny." 
 
 "Well, he won't. He ain't thinkin' about it. I 
 declare, Gabriella," the little woman went on with a 
 change of tone, "your head don't look much bigger 
 than a pincushion with your hair fixed that way. It 
 makes you seem mighty young, but there ain't many 
 women that could stand it." 
 
 "It's the fashion in Paris. I have to be smart. 
 Do you suppose many people guess that I wear extreme 
 styles," she added laughingly, "because they are so 
 hard to sell?" 
 
 "You certainly do look well in 'em. I never saw 
 anybody with more natural style. Why, you can put 
 on those slouchy things without a piece of corset and 
 look as if you'd just stepped out of a fashion plate." 
 
 "When you aren't pretty, you're obliged to be 
 smart." 
 
 "Well, of course you never had the small features 
 and pink and white colouring that Jane had; but you 
 always had a way of your own even as a girl, and you're 
 handsomer now than you ever were in your life. If 
 you were to ask Mr. O'Hara, I bet you he'd say you 
 were a heap better lookin' than Fanny." 
 
 A gasp broke from Gabriella, and she turned from 
 the mirror to stare blankly at the seamstress. "Mr. 
 O'Hara! Why, what in the world made you think of 
 him?"
 
 430 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 But Miss Polly had grown suddenly impenetrable. 
 "Oh, nothin'," she responded evasively; "I've just 
 seen him look at you both when you were together." 
 
 Gabriella laughed brightly. "Oh, he looks at 
 everything. I never saw such eyes." 
 
 There was the note of accomplishment, of success, 
 in her voice, and she brushed her fine, soft hair with long, 
 vigorous strokes which had in them something of 
 this same quality of unwavering confidence. To look 
 at her as she sat, relaxed yet dominant, before the glass, 
 was to recognize that she was a woman who had achieved 
 the purpose of her life, who had succeeded in whatever 
 she had undertaken. Not a great purpose, perhaps 
 there were hours when her purpose seemed to her 
 to be particularly trivial but still, great or small, 
 she had accomplished it. She was not only directing 
 Dinard's now she was Dinard's. Without her the 
 business would collapse like a house of cards, and it 
 was because she knew this, because Madame also 
 knew this, that she had been able to perfect the ar 
 rangements she had planned that May afternoon after 
 her depressing visit to Judge Crowborough. For she 
 managed the house of Dinard's now by an arrangement 
 which gave her one third of the profits; and in the last 
 six months, since this scheme had gone into effect, the 
 business had grown tremendously in certain directions. 
 The millinery department, for instance, which Madame 
 had once treated with such supercilious disdain, had 
 become to-day the most fashionable hat shop in 
 Fifth Avenue. The work was hard, but the returns 
 were wonderful; and with a strange gloating, she told 
 herself that she was making money always more 
 money for the children. "When Farmy finishes school
 
 READJUSTMENTS 431 
 
 year after next, we'll take a large apartment in Park 
 Avenue, and spend every summer in Europe," she con 
 cluded. 
 
 In the morning she rather expected to see O'Hara, 
 but a month passed before she met him one evening 
 in October, when she came home late from work. The 
 autumn rains had come and gone, destroying the 
 fugitive bloom of Miss Polly's flower-beds, and scat 
 tering the leaves of the elm tree in a moist, delicately 
 tinted carpet over the grass. An hour ago the sun had 
 set in a purple cloud, and beneath the electric lights, 
 which shone through the fog with a wan and spectral 
 glimmer, the dark outlines of the city assumed an 
 ominous vagueness. There was no light in the house; 
 and the deserted yard, silvered from frost and strewn 
 with dead leaves, which lay in wind-drifts along the 
 flagged walk, had the haunted aspect of a place where 
 youth and happiness have passed so recently that the 
 fragrance of them still lingers. 
 
 "Archibald went off to school without telling you 
 good-bye," she said in a friendly voice. "He was 
 much disappointed." 
 
 Stopping in the walk, he looked at her with unaf 
 fected surprise. 
 
 "Why, I thought that was what you wanted!" 
 
 She met this quite honestly. "Not after I talked to 
 you." 
 
 "What in thunder did I say to change your opinion 
 of me?" The strong west wind blowing around him 
 and lifting the roughened red hair from his forehead, 
 appeared to lessen by contrast the breezy animation 
 of his manner. 
 
 "It wasn't anything you said," she answered simply.
 
 432 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I found out you were different from what I thought, 
 that is all." 
 
 "Then you must have thought something!" he 
 laughed aloud. 
 
 "I was afraid at first that you might have a bad in 
 fluence over Archibald." 
 
 " Oh, the kid ! " His mirth was as irrepressible as his 
 energy. 
 
 "You see I have to be very careful," she went on 
 gently. "I want to do my best by him." 
 
 At this he turned on her with sudden earnestness. 
 "You can't do your best by being too careful take my 
 word for it. If you want him to be a man, don't 
 begin by making a mollycoddle of him. Let him rough 
 it a bit, or it will be twice as hard for him when he 
 grows up." 
 
 "But I do I do. I am sending him away from me. 
 Isn't that right?" 
 
 "You bet it is. Let him learn his own strength. 
 I've lived among men ever since I was born, and I tell 
 you, nine times out of ten, the boy who is tied to his 
 mother's apron-strings, loses his grip when he is turned 
 out into the world. At the first knock-down he goes 
 under.'" 
 
 Instinctively she flinched. If only he wouldn't! 
 
 "After he leaves school of course he will go to the 
 university," she said. 
 
 "That's right," he agreed emphatically, and pur 
 sued a little wistfully: "Now, that's what I was 
 cheated out of, and there've been times when I'd have 
 given my right arm to have been through college 
 instead of having to keep my mouth shut and then 
 run home and look up the meaning of things in an
 
 READJUSTMENTS 433 
 
 encyclopaedia. It's a handicap, not knowing things. 
 Nobody who hasn't had to get along in spite of it 
 knows what a darned handicap it is!" 
 
 "But you read, don't you?" 
 
 "Not much. Never had time to form the habit. 
 But I've read Shakespeare at least I've read Julius 
 Caesar six times," he explained. "I had it in the 
 desert once where there wasn't a newspaper for two 
 months. And I've read the Kings, too most of 'em." 
 
 "But not Hamlet?" She was smiling as she looked 
 from him into the street. 
 
 He shook his head with a laugh. "Too much 
 meandering in that. I don't like talk unless it is 
 straight." 
 
 Though he was upon the most distant terms of ac 
 quaintance with the English language, it occurred to her 
 that he probably possessed a knowledge of men and things 
 which no university training could have given him. 
 
 "It is wonderful," she remarked, touched to sym 
 pathy by his confession, "that you should have suc 
 ceeded." 
 
 "Oh, any man could have done it any man, that 
 is, who loved a fight as much as I do. It was half luck 
 and half bulldog grip, I suppose. When I once get my 
 grip on a thing, I'll hold on no matter what happens. 
 There ain't the power this side of Kingdom Come that 
 could make me let go if I don't want to." 
 
 She thought of his wife, of his losing fight against 
 the craving for morphine, and she replied very gently: 
 "If you hadn't been a good fighter, I suppose you would 
 have been beaten long ago." 
 
 "So long ago," he retorted with jovial humour, 
 'that you wouldn't have known me."
 
 434 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 An impulse of curiosity urged her to an utterly ir 
 relevant response. "I wonder if you have known 
 many women?" She felt that she should like to hear 
 his story from him, there in the deserted yard; but when 
 he answered her, he revealed a personal reticence worthy 
 of the aristocratic traditions of Mrs. Carr. "Oh, I 
 haven't had time for them," he replied indifferently. 
 
 "Perhaps there aren't so many in Bonanza City?" 
 
 "Oh, there're plenty," he rejoined gaily, "if you take 
 the trouble to look for them." 
 
 "And you didn't?" They had entered the house, 
 and she spoke merrily as she crossed to the staircase. 
 
 "Well, the sort I found didn't take my fancy, you 
 see!" he tossed back playfully from his door. 
 
 Her foot was on the lowest step, when, hesitating 
 with a birdlike movement, she looked at him over her 
 right shoulder. 
 
 "Well, that's a pity. A woman could have told you 
 a good many things," she observed. 
 
 "For instance?" He was still jesting. 
 
 Poised for flight, she gazed back at him, challenging 
 his eyes. 
 
 "Oh, not to collect gold-headed walking-sticks, not 
 to believe in golden-oak, and not to be so extravagantly 
 slangy." 
 
 As she ran up the staircase, a burst of laughter fol 
 lowed her in the midst of which she distinguished the 
 retort: "Well, I own to the slang, but I inherited the 
 oak, and the sticks were all given me by women." 
 
 The temptation to fling back, "of a sort?" came to 
 her; but she conquered it as she passed demurely into 
 the sitting-room, where Miss Polly was reading the 
 afternoon paper before an open fire. "I mustn't get
 
 READJUSTMENTS 435 
 
 too friendly," she told herself, reprovingly. "It is 
 better to keep up a certain formality." And she deter 
 mined that at the next meeting she would be dignified 
 and aloof. 
 
 But the next meeting did not occur until January, 
 for O'Hara went West the following day, and for more 
 than two months Miss Polly and Gabriella were alone 
 in the house. Though she was working doubly hard 
 at Dinard's, the loneliness of the winter evenings after 
 the Christmas holidays were over became almost 
 intolerable to Gabriella; and the bleak month of 
 January stretched ahead of her in an interminable 
 prospect of cold and gloom. For the past ten years 
 the children had absorbed her life, after her working 
 hours, so entirely that the parting from them had 
 been an unbearable wrench, and had left her with an 
 aching feeling as if an arm had been cut away. She 
 had had little time to make friends; the streets of the 
 city isolated her as completely as if they had been spaces 
 of uninhabited wilderness; and, except for her casual 
 remarks to Miss Polly, she had lived from day to day 
 without speaking a word that was not directly concerned 
 with the management or the sales of Dinard's. Since 
 her divorce, obeying perhaps some inherited tradition, 
 she had avoided men almost instinctively; and even if 
 she had cared to make friends among them, her life 
 was so narrow that it would have been almost impossible 
 for her to do so. When she was not too tired, she still 
 read as widely as she could; but at thirty-seven books 
 had become but a poor substitute for the more robust hu 
 man activities. As the theatres and the lecture rooms 
 offered the only opportunities of relaxation and amuse 
 ment, she went twice a week, accompanied by the
 
 436 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 little seamstress, who appeared to thrive on self-sacrifice, 
 to see a play that was noticed in the papers, or to listen to 
 explanatory descriptions of the scenery of South America 
 or the grievances of the oppressed natives of Asia. 
 
 "You mustn't let yourself mope, honey," urged Miss 
 Polly, one snowy morning in January, when Gabriella 
 was putting on a fur coat, cut in the latest fashion, which 
 had been left on her hands after the mid- winter sales. 
 "The children had to go sooner or later, and it's just 
 as well it happened while you are young enough to get 
 over it. A boy never stays at home anyway, and 
 you know I always told you Fanny was the sort to 
 marry before she is out of her teens." 
 
 "Oh, I'm not moping, but of course I can't help 
 missing them. The house seems so empty." 
 
 " It's obliged to be empty with only us two women in it. 
 I declare I got such a creepy feelin' about burglars last 
 night that I kept wishin' Mr. O'Hara would hurry up 
 and come home. Mrs. Squires says she was expectin' 
 him all last week, but he didn't turn up, so she is kind 
 of lookin' for him to-day." 
 
 "Is she?" Gabriella's voice was charged with sincere 
 thankfulness. Merely to know that there was a man 
 on the first floor afforded a sense of security; and an 
 occasional meeting with him would make, she was 
 aware, a trivial diversion from the monotony of her 
 existence. The loneliness of the winter had driven her 
 like a storm-swept bird back to the enduring refuge 
 of her Dream; but, after all, the flesh and blood pres 
 ence of O'Hara could not seriously interfere with the 
 tender and pensive visions her memory spun of the 
 past. Every morning, standing beside her window and 
 gazing on the bleak street and the bare elm boughs, she
 
 READJUSTMENTS 437 
 
 thought of Arthur and of her first love, with a pious and 
 reverent mind for they occupied in her day the hour 
 and mood which her mother, belonging to a more 
 orthodox generation, piously dedicated to "Daily 
 Strength for Daily Need." But never for an instant 
 would it have occurred to the granddaughter of that 
 sanctified snob, Bartholomew Berkeley, who despised 
 the lower orders and fraternized with the Deity in his 
 pulpit every Sabbath, that the red-blooded and boister 
 ous O'Hara the man of force and slang could by 
 any accident usurp the sacred shrine where the con 
 secrated relics of her first love reposed. Before the 
 whirlwind of O'Hara's energy, she would congratulate 
 herself that her Arthur, with the milder fluid of the 
 Peytons in his veins, would never allow himself to be 
 carried away by his impulses. 
 
 " Well, I'm glad he's coming back, if it's only to protect 
 us," she said, while she fastened her fur coat. "I won 
 der what he has been doing out West all this time? " 
 
 "Makin' money, I reckon. They say he makes so 
 much he don't know what to do with it." 
 
 "We could teach him, couldn't we? But he ought 
 to marry and let his wife spend it for him. Only," she 
 concluded carelessly, "I suppose he'd select some dizzy 
 /chorus girl who would bring him to ruin. Men of his 
 kind always pick out chorus girls, don't they?" 
 
 "I thought 'twas the other sort that did that," 
 observed Miss Polly, fresh from the perusal of the 
 Sunday newspapers; "Dukes and society men and the 
 sons of millionaires." 
 
 "Perhaps. Maybe they're all alike," and taking 
 up her umbrella, Gabriella started bravely out into the 
 / storm.
 
 438 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 At six o'clock, when she struggled back along Twenty- 
 third Street, the wind had changed, and the storm 
 driving furiously down the long blocks caught her in a 
 whirl of blinding snowflakes. In the swirling whiteness 
 of the distance, the black outlines of the city appeared 
 remote and shadowy, while the waning lights, which 
 shone like dim moons at the crossing, revealed the 
 ghostly figures of a few struggling pedestrians. 
 
 The gate was open, and she had almost reached it, 
 when the lurching form of a man, emerging suddenly 
 from the storm, was flung against her with such vio 
 lence that she fell back for support on the icy railing 
 of the yard. Then, as the obscure figure, drawing 
 away from her with a staggering motion, began fum 
 bling blindly at the gate, she caught sight of a ghastly 
 face, which looked as if it had been stricken by an 
 incurable illness. The man wore no overcoat; a 
 knitted muffler was wrapped tightly about his neck; 
 and she saw that the hands fumbling at the gate were 
 red and trembling from cold. 
 
 Steadying herself against the fence, she drew her 
 purse from her muff, and she had already taken out a 
 piece of silver, when she heard her name called in a 
 voice which sounded vaguely familiar, though it awoke 
 no immediate associations in her mind. 
 
 "Gabriella! My God! I was looking for you, Ga- 
 briella!" 
 
 With the money still in her hand, she stooped to look 
 into his face. 
 
 "You don't know me. I'm George," he said in an 
 angry voice as if he were about to burst into tears. 
 "I'm George, but you don't know me." 
 
 The storm drove him against her, and he clung weakly
 
 READJUSTMENTS 439 
 
 to her arm, crying softly in a terrified whimper like a 
 child that is awaking from a horrible nightmare. 
 Though she did not realize that he was dying, not of 
 disease, but of drink, the thought shot through her 
 mind: "So this is George. So this is what George 
 has come to George who took everything that he 
 wanted!" 
 
 "Where are you going?" she asked, for the shock 
 had restored him to some poor semblance of sanity. 
 
 "I was looking for you. I heard you lived down 
 here, and I knew you'd take me in. I've been ill 
 I'm ill enough to die, and they turned me out of the 
 hotel. There was a woman who stole everything I 
 had. She stole it and ran off in the night, damn her!" 
 
 He shivered violently while he spoke, and she saw a 
 glassy look creep into his eyes and over his face, as if 
 his features had been frozen in an instant of terror. 
 Panic seized her lest he should die there in the street, 
 and she grasped his arm almost roughly as if she would 
 shake him back into life. As she supported him his 
 teeth began to rattle, not as the teeth of the living 
 chatter from fear, but as the teeth of a dead man might 
 rattle when he is jolted in his coffin. For a minute she 
 felt the madness of her panic pass from her pulses to 
 her brain, and her terror of him turned her as cold as 
 the sleet-covered iron railing against which she leaned. 
 A cowardly impulse tempted her to desert him and run 
 for her life, to seek shelter behind bolted doors, to leave 
 him there alone to freeze to death at her gate. 
 
 "Gabriella, I'm afraid," he whined, clinging to her 
 arm. " I'm afraid, Gabriella. You can't let go of me ! " 
 
 An unspeakable loathing swept over her; his very 
 touch seemed contamination; and while she turned
 
 440 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 toward the gate, she knew that every fibre of her flesh, 
 every quiver of her nerves, revolted against the thing 
 she was doing. But something stronger than her 
 flesh or her nerves the vein of iron in her soul 
 decided the issue. 
 
 "Come in with me, and I'll take care of you," she 
 said. "There is the step. Don't stumble. Here, steady 
 yourself with the umbrella. We are almost there now." 
 Her voice was cold and hard; but the words were those 
 she might have used to Archibald had she been leading 
 him in out of the storm. 
 
 Still whimpering and stumbling, George clung to 
 her with his desperate clutch, while she dragged him 
 up the short walk, which was deep in snow, to the six 
 steps, which appeared to her to reach upward into 
 eternity. As she approached the house, a light shone 
 out suddenly in one of the windows and a sense of 
 safety, of perfect security descended upon her, for 
 she knew that it was the red glimmer of O'Hara's 
 fire. With the sensation, she heard again her mother's 
 voice speaking above the storm: "Gabriella, we'll 
 send immediately for your Cousin Jimmy Wrenn!" 
 So, in the old days of her childhood, Cousin Jimmy had 
 brought her this feeling of relief in the midst of distress. 
 
 Opening the door with her latchkey, she dragged 
 George into the hall, where her thankful eyes fell on 
 O'Hara's overcoat, from which the water was still 
 dripping. For an instant she was tempted to call to 
 him; then checking the impulse, she went on to the 
 staircase, which she ascended with difficulty because 
 George's legs seemed to give way when he tried to lift 
 them to a step. At last, after what she felt to be an 
 eternity, they reached the upper floor, and she pushed
 
 READJUSTMENTS 441 
 
 her burden into Archibald's room, where he fell like a 
 log on the hearthrug. The sound of his fall shook the 
 house, and when Miss Polly came running in, with a 
 cry of alarm, Gabriella almost expected to see O'Hara 
 behind her. But O'Hara did not come, and before 
 the seamstress could recover from the palpitations the 
 shock had produced, George was on his feet again, and 
 was staring blankly, as if fascinated, at the reflection 
 of the electric light in the mirror. 
 
 "It's George," Gabriella explained in a harsh voice. 
 "I found him in the street. He was looking for me, 
 and I couldn't leave him to freeze. I think he's either 
 drunk or ill. I don't know which it is, but it sounds 
 like pneumonia." 
 
 "God have mercy!" exclaimed Miss Polly, which 
 was quite as lucid as she ever became in a crisis. Her 
 face had turned blue, she was trembling with terror, 
 and the violence of her palpitations almost exceeded 
 the painful sounds in George's chest. "If there was 
 only a man we could send for," she wailed hysterically. 
 "Oh, Gabriella, if there was only a man!" 
 
 "Well, there's the doctor," replied Gabriella shortly. 
 "You'd better telephone for him at once. Get the 
 nearest one. I think his name is McFarland." 
 
 "And a nurse? You'll want a nurse, won't you?" 
 
 "I'll want anything I can get, and I'll want it 
 quickly. There, hurry, while I find a bathrobe of 
 Archibald's. He's wet through soaking wet. He 
 must have been out all day in the storm." 
 
 Miss Polly vanished into the dimness of the hall, and 
 after a few minutes Gabriella heard her fluttering voice 
 demanding a telephone number as if she were still sup 
 plicating the Deity.
 
 442 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Take off your wet clothes while I get you a drink 
 and some hot blankets!" said Gabriella when she had 
 found one of Archibald's bathrobes in the closet. It 
 occurred to her that George was really incapable of 
 undressing himself, but she felt that she would rather 
 die than touch him again. The loathing which had 
 overpowered her outside in the storm became stronger 
 in the close air of the house. "I can't touch him. I 
 don't care what happens I can't touch him," she told 
 herself, while she placed the flannel robe on the rug, 
 and hurried back to the kitchen. Her whole body was 
 benumbed and chilled, not from cold, but from disgust, 
 yet her mind was almost unnaturally active, and she 
 found herself thinking over and over again: "So this is 
 the man I loved, this is the man I married instead of 
 Arthur!" 
 
 When she came back with a cup of broth and some 
 hot blankets, she found George in the flannel gown of 
 Archibald's, with his wet clothes on the floor at his 
 feet, from which he had forgotten to remove his shoes. 
 He drank the soup greedily, while Miss Polly lighted the 
 wood-fire she had laid in the open grate. 
 
 "The heat's comin* up all right in the radiator," 
 she said, "but I thought a blaze might make him 
 more comfortable." 
 
 "Yes, it's better," replied Gabriella sternly, while 
 she stooped to unlace George's boots. There was no 
 compassion in her heart, and it seemed to her, while 
 she struggled with the wet lacing, that the fumes of 
 whiskey spread contagion and disease over the room. 
 She was not only hard and bitter she felt that she 
 loathed him with unspeakable loathing. 
 
 "I declare, Gabriella, I believe he has gone de-
 
 READJUSTMENTS 443 
 
 ranged!" Miss Polly cried out sharply, dropping the 
 poker and starting to her feet in an erratic impulse of 
 flight. 
 
 With the flannel gown clutched tightly to his chest, 
 where the dull rattling sounds went on unceasingly, 
 George was staring in fascinated intensity at the 
 reflection of the electric light in the mirror. Then 
 suddenly, with a scream of terror, he lifted the poker 
 Miss Polly had dropped, and flung it over Gabriella's 
 head in the direction of the dressing-table. At the 
 noise of breaking glass, Gabriella rose from her knees, 
 and said in the hard, quiet voice she had used ever 
 since the first shock of the meeting: 
 
 "If you are afraid, lock yourself in your room, Miss 
 Polly. I am going downstairs for Mr. O'Hara." 
 
 Without waiting for a response, she ran out into the 
 hall and down the staircase, while her eyes clung to the 
 comforting glimmer of light under the drawing-room 
 door. As her feet touched the lowest step, the door 
 opened quickly, and O'Hara stood on the threshold.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE TEST 
 
 "I KNEW something was wrong," he said, emerging, 
 big and efficient, from the firelight, "and I was just 
 coming up." Before she could answer she felt his 
 warm grasp on her hands, and it seemed to her suddenly 
 that it was not only her hands he enfolded, but her 
 agonized and suffering mind. 
 
 "There's a man up there " she faltered helplessly. 
 "I was once married to him long ago oh, long ago. 
 Just now I found him in the street and he seems to be 
 out of his mind. We are frightened." 
 
 But he seemed not to hear her, not to demand an 
 explanation, not even to wait to discover what she 
 wanted. Already his long stride was outstripping her 
 on the staircase, and while she followed more slowly, 
 pausing now and then to take breath, she realized 
 thankfully that the situation had passed completely 
 away from her power of command. As Miss Polly's 
 strength to hers, so was her strength to O'Hara's. 
 
 Faint, despairing moans issued from Archibald's 
 room as she reached the landing; and going inside, 
 she saw George wrestling feebly with O'Hara, who hel( 
 him with one hand while with the other he wave( 
 authoritative directions to Miss Polly. 
 
 "Get the bed ready for him, with plenty of hot 
 blankets. He's about at the end of his rope now. 
 
 444
 
 THE TEST 445 
 
 It's a jag, but it's more than a jag, too. If I'm not 
 mistaken he's in for a case of pneumonia." 
 
 Miss Polly, hovering timidly at a safe distance, held 
 out the blankets and the hot water bottles, while 
 O'Hara carried George across the room to the bed, and 
 then covered him warmly. When he turned to glance 
 about his gaze fell on Gabriella, and he remarked bluntly : 
 "You'd better get out. You aren't wanted." 
 
 "But 1 am obliged to be here. It is my business, 
 not yours," she replied, while a sensation of sickness 
 passed over her. 
 
 For a moment he regarded her stubbornly. "Well, 
 I don't know whose business it was a minute ago," he 
 rejoined, "but it's mine now. I am boss of this par 
 ticular hell, and you're going to keep out of it. I guess 
 I know more about D. T. than you and Miss Polly 
 put together would know in a thousand years." 
 
 She was very humble. In the sweetness of her relief, 
 of her security, she would have submitted cheerfully not 
 only to slang, but to downright profanity. It was one 
 of those unforgettable instants when character, she 
 understood, was more effective than culture. Even 
 Arthur would have appeared at a disadvantage beside 
 O'Hara at that moment. 
 
 "I think I ought to help you," she insisted. 
 
 "Well, I think you oughtn't. Out you go! I guess 
 I know what I'm up against." 
 
 Before she could protest, before she could even re 
 sist, he had pushed her out into the hall, and while she 
 still hesitated there at the head of the staircase, the door 
 opened far enough to allow the huddled figure of Miss 
 Polly to creep through the crack. Then the key turned 
 in the lock; and O'Hara's voice was heard pacifying
 
 446 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 George as he might have pacified a child or a lunatic. 
 After a few minutes the shrieks stopped suddenly; the 
 door was unlocked again for a minute, and there 
 floated out the reassuring words: 
 
 "Don't stand out there any longer. It's as right as 
 right. I've got him buffaloed !" 
 
 "What does he mean?" inquired Gabriella helplessly 
 of the seamstress. 
 
 "I don't know, but I reckon it's all right," responded 
 Miss Polly. "He seems to know just what to do, and 
 anyhow the doctor'll be here in a minute. It seems 
 funny to give him whiskey, don't it, but that was the 
 first thing Mr. O'Hara thought of." 
 
 "I suppose his heart was weak. He looked as if he 
 were dying," answered Gabriella. "He asked for more 
 whiskey, didn't he?'* 
 
 "Yes; I'm goin' right straight to get it. Oh, Gabri 
 ella, ain't a man a real solid comfort sometimes?" 
 
 Without replying to this ejaculation, Gabriella went 
 after the whiskey, and when she came back with the 
 bottle in her hand, she found the doctor on the landing 
 outside the locked door. He was a stranger to her, 
 and she had scarcely begun her explanation when 
 O'Hara called him into the room. 
 
 "The sooner you take a look at him the better." 
 Everything was taken out of her hands everything, 
 even her explanation of George's presence in her apart 
 ment. 
 
 As there was nothing more for her to do, she went 
 back to the sitting-room, where a fire burned brightly, 
 and began to talk to Miss Polly. 
 
 "I don't know what I should have done if he hadn't 
 been here," she said.
 
 THE TEST 447 
 
 "Who? Mr. O'Hara? Well, it certainly was provi 
 dential, honey, when you come to think of it." 
 
 The door of Archibald's room opened and shut, and 
 the doctor came down the hall to the telephone. They 
 heard him order medicines from a chemist near-by; 
 and then, after a minute, he took up the receiver, and 
 spoke to a nurse at the hospital. At first he gave 
 merely the ordinary directions, but at the end of the 
 conversation he said sharply in answer to a question: 
 "No, there's no need of a restraining sheet. He's too 
 far gone to be violent. It is only a matter of hours. 
 
 His voice stopped, and Gabriella went out to him. 
 "Will you tell me what you think, Doctor?" she asked. 
 
 "Is he your husband?" He had a blank, secretive 
 face, with light eyes, and a hard mouth so different, 
 she thought from the poetic face of Dr. French. 
 
 "I divorced him ten years ago." 
 
 He looked at her searchingly. "Well, he may last 
 until morning, but it is doubtful. His heart has given 
 out." 
 
 "Is there anything I can do?" 
 
 "No. Morphine is the only thing. We are going 
 to try camphorated oil, but there is hardly a chance 
 not a chance." He turned to go back into the room, 
 then stopped, and added in the same tone of profes 
 sional stoicism: "The nurse will be here in half an 
 hour, and I shall wait till she comes." 
 
 When Gabriella went back to the sitting-room, Miss 
 Polly was weeping. "I followed you and heard what 
 he said. Oh, Gabriella, ain't life too awful!" 
 
 "I'll be glad when the nurse comes," answered 
 Gabriella with impatience. Emotionally she felt as 
 if she had turned to stone, and she had little inclination
 
 448 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 to explore the trite and tangled paths of Miss Polly's 
 philosophy. 
 
 The nurse, a stout, blond woman in spectacles, ar 
 rived on the stroke of the half -hour, and after talking 
 with her a few minutes, the doctor took up his bag and 
 came to tell Gabriella that he would return about day 
 break. "I've given instructions to the nurse, and Mr. 
 O'Hara will sit up in case he is needed, but there is 
 nothing to do except keep the patient perfectly quiet 
 and give the hypodermics. It is too late to try any 
 thing else." 
 
 "May I go in there?" 
 
 "Well, you can't do any good, but you may go in if 
 you'd rather." 
 
 Then he went, as if glad of his release, and after 
 Gabriella had prevailed upon Miss Polly to go to bed, 
 she changed her street dress for a tea-gown, and threw 
 herself on a couch before the fire in the sitting-room. 
 An overpowering fatigue weighed her down; the yellow 
 firelight had become an anodyne to her nerves; and 
 after a few minutes in which she thought confusedly 
 of O'Hara and Cousin Jimmy, she let herself fall 
 asleep. 
 
 When she awoke a man was replenishing the fire, and 
 as she struggled drowsily back into consciousness, she 
 realized that he was not Cousin Jimmy, but O'Hara, and 
 that he was placing the lumps of coal very softly in the 
 fear of awaking her. 
 
 "Hallo, there!" he exclaimed when he turned with 
 the scuttle still in his hand; "so you're awake, are 
 you?" 
 
 She started up. "I've been asleep!" she exclaimed 
 in surprise.
 
 THE TEST 449 
 
 "You looked like a kid when I came in," he responded 
 cheerfully, and she reflected that even the presence of 
 death could not shadow his jubilant spirit. "I went 
 back to the kitchen to make some coffee for the nurse 
 and myself, and I thought you might like a cup. It's 
 first-rate coffee, if I do say it. Two lumps and a little 
 cream, I guess that's the way. I rummaged in the ice 
 box, and found a bottle of cream hidden away at the 
 back. That was right, wasn't it?" 
 
 A strange, an almost uncanny feeling of reminiscence, 
 of vague yet profound familiarity, was stealing over 
 her. It all seemed to have happened before, some 
 where, somehow the slow awakening to the large 
 dark form in the yellow firelight, O'Hara's sudden 
 turning to look at her, his exuberance, his sanguine 
 magnetism, and even the cup of coffee he made and 
 brought to her side. She felt that it was the most 
 natural thing in the world to awake and find him there 
 and to drink his coffee. 
 
 "It's good," she answered; "I had no dinner, and I 
 am very hungry." 
 
 "I thought you'd be. That's why I brought a snack 
 with it." He was cutting a chicken sandwich on the 
 tray he had placed under the green shaded light, and 
 after a minute he brought it to her and held the cup 
 while she ate. A nurse could not have been gentler 
 about the little things she needed; yet she knew that 
 he was rough, off-hand, careless she could imagine 
 that he might become almost brutal if he were crossed 
 in his purpose. She had believed him to be so simple; 
 but he was in reality, she saw, a mass of complexities, 
 of actions and reactions, of intricacies and involutions 
 of character.
 
 450 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I don't know what I should have done if you hadn't 
 been here," she said gratefully while she ate the sand 
 wich and he sat beside her holding her cup. "But I'm 
 so unused to being taken care of," she added with a 
 trembling little laugh, "that I don't quite know how 
 to behave." 
 
 "Oh, you would have got on all right," he rejoined 
 carelessly; "but I'm glad all the same that I was here." 
 
 She motioned toward the hall. "Has there been any 
 change?" 
 
 "No, there won't be until morning. He'll last that 
 long, I think. We're giving him a hypodermic every 
 four hours, but it really ain't any good, you know. It 
 is merely professional." For a minute he was silent, 
 watching her gravely; then recovering his casual 
 manner, he added: "I shouldn't let it upset me if I 
 were you. Things happen that way, and we've got to 
 take them standing." 
 
 She shook her head. "I'm not upset. I'm not 
 feeling it in the least. Somehow, I can't even realize 
 that I ever knew him. If you told me it was all a 
 dream, I should believe you." , 
 
 "Well, you're a plucky sort. I could tell that the 
 first minute I saw you." 
 
 "It's not pluck. I don't feel things, that's all. I 
 suppose I'm hard, but I can't help it." 
 
 "Hard things come useful sometimes; they don't 
 break." 
 
 "Yes, I suppose if I'd been soft, I should have broken 
 long ago," she replied almost bitterly. 
 
 After putting the plate and cup aside, he sat down 
 by the table, and gazed at her attentively for a long 
 moment. "Well, you look as soft as a white rose any-
 
 THE TEST 451 
 
 how," he remarked with a curiously impersonal air of 
 criticism. 
 
 A rosy glow flooded her face. It was so long since 
 any man had commented upon her appearance that 
 she felt painfully shy and displeased. 
 
 "All the same I've had a hard life," she returned 
 with passionate earnestness. "I married when I was 
 twenty, and seven years later my husband left me for 
 another woman." 
 
 "The one in there?" 
 
 She shuddered. " Yes, the one in there." 
 
 "The darn fool!" he exclaimed briefly. 
 
 "There was a divorce, and then I had my two chil 
 dren to support and educate. Because I had a natural 
 talent for dressmaking, I turned to that, and in the 
 end I succeeded. But for ten years I never heard a 
 word of the man I married until I met him down 
 stairs in the street." 
 
 "And you brought him in?" 
 
 "What else could I do? He was dying." 
 
 "Do you know what he was doing out there? " 
 
 "He was looking for me, I think. He thought I 
 would take him in." 
 
 "Well, it's strange how things work out," was his 
 comment after a pause. "There's something in it 
 somewhere that we can't see. It's impossible to reason 
 it out or explain it, but life has a way of jerking you 
 up at times and making you stand still and think. I 
 know I'm putting it badly, but I can't talk I never 
 could. Words don't mean much to me, and yet I 
 
 know I know " He hesitated, and she watched 
 
 his thought struggle obscurely for expression. "I 
 know you can't slip away from things and be a quitter,
 
 452 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 / 
 
 no matter how hard you try. Life pulls you back 
 again and again till you've learned to play the game 
 squarely." 
 
 He was gazing into the fire with a look that was 
 strangely spiritual on his face, which was half in shadow, 
 half in the transfiguring glow of the flames. For the 
 second time she became acutely aware of the hidden sub 
 tleties beneath his apparent simplicity. 
 
 "I've felt that myself often enough," he resumed 
 presently in a low voice. "I've been pulled up by 
 something inside of me when I was plunging ahead 
 with the bit in my teeth, and it's been just exactly as 
 if this something said: 'Go steady or you'll run amuck 
 and bu'st up the whole blooming show.' You can't talk 
 about it. It sounds like plain foolishness when you 
 put it into words, but when it comes to you, no matter 
 where you are, you have to stand still and listen." 
 
 "And is it only when you are running amuck that 
 you hear it? " she asked. 
 
 "No, there' ve been other times a few of them. 
 Once or twice I've had it come to me up in the Rockies 
 when there didn't seem more than a few feet between 
 me and the sky, and then there was a time out on the 
 prairie when I was lost and thought I'd never get to 
 the end of those darned miles of blankness. Well, 
 I've had a funny road to travel when I look back at 
 it." 
 
 "Tell me about some of the women you knew in the 
 West." An insatiable curiosity to hear the truth about 
 his marriage seized her; but no sooner had she yielded 
 to it than she felt an impulsive regret. What right 
 had she to pry into the hidden sanctities of his past? 
 
 A frown contracted his forehead, but he said merely:
 
 THE TEST 453 
 
 "Oh, there wasn't much about that," and she felt 
 curiously baffled and resentful. "I think I'll go and 
 take a look in there," he added, rising and walking 
 softly in the direction of the room at the end of the hall. 
 
 He was gone so long that Gabriella, crushing down 
 the revolt of her nerves, went to the door, and opening 
 it very gently, looked cautiously into the room. The 
 window was wide open to the night, where the snow was 
 still falling, and beside the candlestand at the head of 
 the bed the nurse was filling a hypodermic syringe 
 from a teaspooon. By the open window O'Hara stood 
 inhaling the frosty air; and Gabriella crossed the floor 
 so silently that he did not notice her presence until he 
 turned to watch the nurse give the injection. 
 
 Then he said in a whisper: "You'd better go out. 
 You can't do any good." But she made an impatient 
 gesture of dissent, and stopping between the bed and 
 the wall, waited while the nurse bared George's arm 
 and inserted the point of the needle. He was lying so 
 motionless that she thought at first that he was already 
 dead; but presently he stirred faintly, a shiver ran 
 through the thin arm on the sheet, and a low, half- 
 strangled moan escaped from his lips. Had she come 
 upon him in a hospital ward, she knew that she should 
 not have recognized him. He was not the man she 
 had once loved; he was not the father of her children; 
 he was only a stranger who was dying in her house. 
 She could feel nothing while she looked down at him. 
 When she tried to remember her young love she could 
 recall but a shadow. That, too, was dead; that, too, had 
 not left even a memory. 
 
 As she bent there above him she made an effort to 
 remember what he had once been, to recall his face as
 
 454 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 she had first seen it, to revive the burning radiance of 
 that summer when they had been lovers. But a gray 
 veil of forgetfulness wrapped the past; and her mind, 
 when she tried to bring back the emotions of seventeen 
 years ago, became vacant. For so long she had 
 stoically put the thought of that past out of her life, that 
 when she returned to it now, she found that only ashes 
 remained. Then a swift stab of pity pierced her heart 
 like a blade, and she saw again, not George her lover, 
 not George her husband, but the photograph Mrs. 
 -Fowler had shown her of the boy in velvet clothes with 
 the wealth of curls over his lace collar. So it was that 
 boy who lay dying like a stranger in the bed of his son ! 
 
 She turned hurriedly and went out without speaking, 
 without looking back when she opened the door. 
 
 "If one could only understand it," she said aloud as 
 she entered the sitting-room; and then, with a start of 
 surprise, she realized that O'Hara had followed her. 
 "You walked so softly I didn't hear you," she explained. 
 
 " The rugs are thick, and I have on slippers. My boots 
 were soaking when I came in, and I'd just taken them 
 off when you called." 
 
 They sat down again in front of the fire; and while 
 she stared silently at the flames, with her chin on her 
 hand and her elbow on the arm of the chair, he burst 
 out so unexpectedly that she caught her breath in a 
 gasp: 
 
 "You didn't know that I was married, too, did 
 you?" His words, and even more than his words, his 
 voice filled with suppressed emotion, awoke her from 
 her reverie in which she had been dreaming of Arthur. 
 
 She smiled evasively, remembering her promise to 
 Mrs. Squires.
 
 THE TEST 455 
 
 He hesitated again, and then spoke with an effort. 
 "Well, it was hell!" he said grimly. 
 
 "I know" she was very gentle, full of understanding 
 and sympathy "but you went through it bravely." 
 
 "I stuck to her." His hand clenched while he 
 answered. Then, after a pause in which she watched 
 him struggle against some savage instinct for secrecy, 
 he added quietly: "If she were alive to-day, I'd be 
 sticking to her still." 
 
 - "You must have loved her." It was all she could 
 think of to say, and yet the words sounded trite and 
 canting as soon as she had uttered them. 
 
 Lifting his head quickly, he made a contemptuous 
 gesture of dissent. "No, it wasn't that. I never 
 loved her, except, perhaps, just at the first. But 
 there's something that comes before love, I guess. I 
 don't know what it is, but there's something. It may 
 be just plain doggedness, but after I married her there 
 wasn't anything on top this earth that could have 
 made me give up and let go. As soon as I found what 
 I was up against it was morphine I knew I'd either 
 got to fight it out or be a quitter, and I've never been 
 a quitter. Until she got so bad she had to be shut up 
 I kept a home for her out there in Colorado, and I 
 lived with her in hell as long as she wasn't too bad to 
 be out of a hospital. Then I brought her on here 
 and we found a private place down on Long Island 
 where she stayed till she died " 
 
 "And you still saw her?" 
 
 "Except when I was out West, and that's where I 
 was most of the time, you know. My work was out 
 there, and there's nothing like hell behind you to keep 
 you running. I made piles of money those years,
 
 456 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 That's all I ever cared for about money just making 
 it. I'd fight the devil to get it, but after I've once 
 got it, I'll give it to the first fool who comes begging. 
 But the getting of it is great." 
 
 "How long did it last?" 
 
 "My marriage? Going on eighteen years. She was 
 down on Long Island for the last ten of them." 
 
 "Then you lived with her eight. Was she always 
 always " 
 
 "Took it before I ever married her, and I found it- 
 out in a month. She wasn't so much to blame as you 
 might think," he pursued thoughtfully. "You see 
 she had a tough time of it, and she was little and weak, 
 and everything was against her. She came out West 
 first to teach school, and then she got mixed up with 
 some skunk of a man who pretended to marry her 
 when he had a wife living in Chicago, and after that 
 I guess she went on taking a dope just to keep up her 
 spirits and ease the pain of some spinal trouble she'd 
 had since she was a child. There was nothing bad in 
 her rshe was just weak and I began to feel sorry for 
 her, and so I did it. If I had it to do over again, I'm 
 not so sure I'd act differently. She was a poor little 
 creature that didn't have any man to look after her, 
 and I was just muddling along anyway, thinking about 
 money. Heaven knows what would have become of her 
 if I hadn't happened along when I did." 
 
 He had lifted his head toward the light, while he 
 ran his hand through his hair, and again she saw the 
 look, so like spiritual exaltation, transfigure his face. 
 Before this man, who had sprung from poverty and 
 dirt, who had struggled up by his own force, over 
 coming and triumphing, fighting and winning, fighting
 
 THE TEST 457 
 
 and holding, fighting and losing, but always fighting 
 before this man, who had been born in a cellar, she felt 
 suddenly humbled. Without friends, without knowl 
 edge, except the bitter knowledge of the streets, he 
 had fought his fight, and had kept untarnished a 
 certain hardy standard of honour. Beside this tre 
 mendous achievement she weighed his roughness, his 
 ignorance of books and of the superficial conventions, 
 and she realized how little these things really mattered 
 how little any outside things mattered in the final 
 judgment of life. She thought of George, dying a 
 drunkard's death in the room at the end of the hall 
 of George whose way had been smoothed for him from 
 birth, who had taken everything that he had wanted. 
 
 "I wish there was something I could do for you 
 something to help you," she said impetuously. "But 
 I never saw any one who seemed to need help so little." 
 
 His face brightened, and she saw that her words 
 had brought a touching wistfulness into his eyes. 
 
 "Well, if you'd let me come and talk to you some 
 times" he answered shyly. "There're a lot of things 
 I'd like to talk to you about things I don't know, 
 things I do know, and things I half know." 
 
 From the brilliant look she turned on him, he under 
 stood that he must have given her pleasure, and she 
 saw the smile return to his face. 
 
 "I'll tell you everything I know and welcome," she 
 replied readily; "but that isn't much. Better than 
 that, I'll read to you." 
 
 "If you don't mind, I think I'd rather you'd just 
 talk." Then he rose with one of his abrupt movements. 
 "I'd better look in again now. The nurse might want 
 something."
 
 458 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I feel that you oughtn't to stay up," urged Gabri- 
 ella, rising as he turned away from her. "You have 
 done all you can." 
 
 His only response was an impatient negative gesture, 
 and without looking at her, he crossed the room quickly 
 and went out into the hall. Hardly a. minute had 
 passed, and she was still standing where he had left her, 
 when he returned and said in a whisper: 
 
 "He is going now very quietly. Will you come?" 
 
 She shook her head, crying out sharply: "No! no!" 
 Then before something in his face her opposition 
 melted swiftly away, and she added: "Yes, I'll come. 
 He might like to have some one by him who knew 
 him as he used to be." 
 
 "After all, he got the worst of it, poor devil!" he 
 answered gently as he opened the door. 
 
 By a miracle of memory her resentment was swept 
 out of her thoughts, and she was conscious of an in 
 finite pity. In George's face, while she watched it, 
 there flickered back for an instant the glory of that 
 enchanted spring when she had first loved him. Of 
 his brilliant promise, his ardent youth, there remained 
 only this fading glimmer in the face of a man who 
 was dying. And it seemed to her suddenly that she 
 saw embodied in this wreck of youth and love all the 
 inscrutable mystery not of death, but of life. Her 
 tears fell quickly, and while they fell O'Hara's grasp 
 enfolded her hand. 
 
 "It's over now. The best thing that could happen 
 to him has happened," he said, and the touch of his 
 hand was like the touch of life itself, consoling, strength 
 ening, restoring. 
 
 In the days that followed it was as if the helpful
 
 THE TEST 459 
 
 spirit of Cousin Jimmy had returned to her in the 
 unfamiliar character of O'Hara. The ghastly details 
 of George's burial were not only taken out of her hands, 
 she was hardly permitted to know even that they were 
 necessary. All explanations were made, not by her, 
 but by O'Hara; and when they returned together from 
 the cemetery, Gabriella brought with her a feeling that 
 she had been watching something that belonged to 
 O'Hara laid in the earth. But when she tried to 
 thank him, she found that he was apparently unaware 
 that he had done anything deserving of gratitude. 
 
 "Oh, that's nothing. Anybody would have done 
 it," he remarked, and dismissed the subject forever. 
 
 For a week after this she did not see him again; and 
 then one Saturday afternoon, when she was leaving 
 Dinard's, they met by chance and walked home 
 together. It was the first time she had been in the 
 street with him, and she was conscious of feeling 
 absurdly young and girlish she, the mother of a 
 daughter old enough to have love affairs! A soft 
 flush the flush of youth tinted her pale cheek; her 
 step, which so often dragged wearily after the day's 
 work, was as buoyant as Fanny's; and her low, beautiful 
 laugh was as gay as if she were not burdened by 
 innumerable anxieties. As they passed a shop window, 
 her reflection flashed back at her, and she thought hap 
 pily: "Yes, it is true, you are better looking at thirty- 
 seven, Gabriella, than you were at twenty.'* 
 
 "Shall we walk down?" asked O'Hara, and added: 
 "So that was your shop? I am glad that I saw it. 
 But what do you do there all day?" 
 
 She laughed merrily. "Put in pins and take them 
 out again. Design, direct, scold, and flatter. We are
 
 460 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 getting in the spring models now, and it's very ex 
 citing." 
 
 He glanced down at her figure, noting, as if for the 
 first time, the narrowness at the feet, the large loose 
 waist, and the bunchiness around the hips. 
 
 "Did you make that?" he inquired. 
 
 "This coat? Oh, no; it came from Paris. It was 
 left on my hands," she explained, "or I shouldn't be 
 wearing it. I wear only what people won't buy, you 
 know." 
 
 "No, I didn't know," he returned abstractedly, and 
 she observed humorously after a minute that he was 
 not thinking of her because he was thinking so pro 
 foundly about her clothes. It was his way, she had 
 discovered, to concentrate his mind intensely upon the 
 object before him, no matter how trivial or insignificant 
 it might appear. He seemed never to have learned 
 how to divide either his interest or his attention. 
 
 "If you could make what you wanted," he remarked, 
 "I should think you'd make them more comfortable. 
 Are you going to wear those hobble skirts this spring?" 
 
 "They'll be narrow at the feet but very bunchy at 
 the top doesn't that sound delightful? I am making 
 a white taffeta for Fanny that has five or six yards of 
 perfectly good material puffed out in the most ridiculous 
 way at the back over a petticoat of silver lace." 
 
 Her spirits felt so light, so effervescent, that she 
 wanted to jest, to laugh, to talk nonsense interminably; 
 and after his first moments of bewilderment, when h< 
 appeared still unable to detach his mind from his 
 business, he entered gaily and heartily into her mood. 
 His perplexities once disposed of, he gave himself en 
 tirely to the enjoyment of the walk with her, am
 
 THE TEST 461 
 
 she noticed for the first time his boyish delight in 
 the simplest details of life. With the simplicity of a 
 man to whom large pleasures are unknown, he threw 
 himself whole-heartedly into the momentary diversion of 
 small ones. Every person in the crowd, she discovered, 
 excited his interest, and his humour bubbled over at the 
 most insignificant things at the grimace of a newsboy 
 who offered him a paper, at the absurd hat worn by a 
 woman in a motor car, at the expression of disgusted 
 solemnity on the face of a servant in livery, at the gig 
 gles of an over-dressed girl who hung on the arm of 
 an anaemic and exhausted admirer. Never before had 
 she encountered such vitality, such careless, pure, and 
 uncalculating joy of life. There was a tonic quality in 
 his physical presence, and while she walked at his side 
 down Fifth Avenue she felt as if she were swept onward 
 by one of the health-giving, pine-scented winds of Colo 
 rado. And she told herself reassuringly that only a man 
 who had lived decently could have kept himself so extra 
 ordinarily young and exuberant at forty-five. 
 
 The shop windows, particularly those displaying 
 men's shirtings, enchanted him; and he stopped a 
 moment before each one, while she yielded as obligingly 
 as she might have yielded to a fancy of Archibald's, 
 though she was aware that her son would have scorned 
 to look into a window. 
 
 "It's so seldom I get out on the Avenue, that's why 
 I like it, I suppose," he remarked while they were 
 surveying a festive arrangement of pink madras. 
 
 She smiled up at him, and her smile, gay as it was, 
 held a touch of maternal solicitude. Notwithstanding 
 his bigness and his success and his forty-five years, 
 there was something appealingly boyish about him.
 
 462 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "It would be so easy to get out, wouldn't it?" she 
 asked as they walked on again. 
 
 "Well, there ain't much fun when you are by your 
 self." 
 
 "But you know plenty of people." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know people enough in a business way, 
 but that don't mean having friends, does it? Of 
 course, I've men friends scattered everywhere," he 
 added. "The West is full of 'em, but it's funny when 
 
 you come to think of it ' He broke off, hesitated 
 
 an instant, and then went on again: "It's funny, but 
 I don't believe I ever had a woman friend in my life 
 I mean a friend who wasn't just the wife of some man 
 I knew in business." 
 
 The confession touched her, and she answered im 
 pulsively: "Well, that's just what I want to be to you 
 a good friend." 
 
 He laughed, but his eyes shone as he looked down on 
 her. " If you'd only take the trouble." 
 
 "It won't be any trouble not a bit of it. After 
 your goodness to me, how could I help being your 
 friend?" 
 
 Lifting her eyes she would have met his squarely 
 while she spoke, but he was not looking at her he 
 appeared, indeed, to be looking almost obstinately 
 away from her. 
 
 "There wasn't anything in what I did," he responded 
 in a barely audible voice, and she understood that he 
 was embarrassed by her gratitude. 
 
 "But there was something in it there was a great 
 deal in it," she insisted. It was so easy to be natural 
 with a man, so easy to be candid and sincere when 
 there was no question of sentiment, and she thought
 
 THE TEST 463 
 
 almost gratefully of the elusive and mysterious Alice. 
 The faintest suggestion of romance would have spoiled 
 things in the beginning; but thanks to the hidden Alice, 
 she might be as kind and frank as she pleased. Besides, 
 she was nearly thirty-eight, and a woman of thirty- 
 eight might certainly be trusted to make a friend of a man 
 of forty-five. 
 
 IWith this thought, over which the memory of Arthur 
 brooded benevolently, in her mind, she said warmly: 
 "It will make so much difference to me, too, having a 
 real friend in New York." 
 
 He turned to her with a start. "Do you mean that 
 I could make a difference to you? " 
 
 "The greatest difference, of course," she rejoined 
 brightly, eager to convince him of his importance in her 
 life. "I can't tell you you would never understand 
 how lonely I get at times, and now with the children 
 away it is worse than ever the loneliness, I mean, and 
 the feeling that there isn't anybody one could turn to 
 in trouble." 
 
 For a minute he appeared to ponder this deeply. 
 "Well, you could always come to me if you needed any 
 thing," he answered at last, and she felt intuitively that 
 for some reason he was distrustful either of himself or 
 of her. "I am not here very much of my time, but 
 whenever I am, I am entirely at your service." 
 
 "But that's only half of it." She was determined to 
 reassure him. "A friendship can't be one-sided, can 
 it? And it isn't fair when you give everything, that 
 I should give nothing." 
 
 His scruples surrendered immediately to her argu 
 ment. "You give everything you give happiness," 
 he said a strange speech certainly from the twilight
 
 464 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 lover of Alice. However, as she reasoned clearly after 
 her first perplexity, men were often strange when one 
 least expected or desired strangeness. At thirty-seven, 
 whatever else life had denied her, she felt that it had 
 granted her a complete understanding of men; and it 
 was out of this complete understanding that she ob 
 served brightly after a minute : 
 
 "Well, if you feel that way, we are obliged to be 
 friends." At least she would prove by her frankness 
 that she was not one of those foolish women who are 
 always taking things seriously. 
 
 "Yes, you give happiness. You scatter it, all over 
 the place," he went on, groping an instant after the right 
 words. 
 
 "Cousin Jimmy used to say," she laughed back, 
 "that I had a sunny temper." 
 
 "That's it that's what I meant," he replied eagerly; 
 and she was impressed again by his utter inability to 
 make light conversation. When he was once started, 
 when he had lost himself in his subject, she knew tha 
 he could speak both fluently and convincingly; but she 
 realized that he simply couldn't talk unless he hac 
 something to say. In order to put him at his ease 
 again, she remarked with pleasant firmness: "Do you 
 know there is something about you that reminds me o: 
 my Cousin Jimmy. It gives me almost a cousinly 
 feeling for you." 
 
 She had the air of expecting him to be interested 
 but he met it with the rather vague interrogation 
 "Cousin Jimmy?" 
 
 "The cousin who always came to our help when we 
 were in trouble. We used to say that if the bread didn't 
 rise, mother sent for Cousin Jimmy."
 
 THE TEST 465 
 
 Though he laughed readily enough, she could see 
 that his attention was still wandering. "I never had a 
 cousin," he returned after a pause, "or a relation of any 
 sort, for that matter." 
 
 His voice was curiously distant, and she was con 
 scious of a slight shock, as if she had run against 
 one of the hard places in his character. "Well, I've 
 done my best , " she thought impatiently . " If he doesn't 
 want to be friends he needn't be." Then, with a change 
 of manner, she observed flippantly: " Sometimes one's 
 relatives are useful and sometimes they're not." Really, 
 he was impossibly heavy except in a crisis; and one could 
 scarcely be expected to produce crises in order to put 
 him thoroughly at his ease. 
 
 As he made no response to -her trite remark, she, 
 also, fell silent, while they turned into Twenty-third 
 Street, and began the long walk to Ninth Avenue. 
 Once or twice, glancing inquiringly into his face, which 
 wore a preoccupied look, she wondered if he were think 
 ing of Alice. Then, as the silence became suddenly 
 oppressive, she ventured warily in the effort to dispel 
 it: "I hope you are not disturbed about anything?" 
 
 "Disturbed?" He turned to her with a start. 
 "No, I was only wondering if you knew how much your 
 friendship would mean to me." 
 
 It was out at last, and confirmed once more in her 
 knowledge of men, she retorted gaily: "How can I 
 know if you won't take the trouble to tell me?" After 
 all, she reflected cheerfully, the education she had 
 derived from George and Judge Crowborough, though 
 lacking in the higher branches, was fundamentally 
 sound. All men were alike in one thing at least they 
 invariably disappointed one's expectations.
 
 466 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I've been trying to tell you for a quarter of an 
 hour," he answered, "and I didn't know how to put 
 it." 
 
 "But at last you didn't have to put it at all," she 
 said laughingly; "it simply put itself, didn't it?" 
 
 "I am still wondering," he persisted gravely. 
 
 "Wondering if I know?" She spoke in the sweetly 
 practical tone of one who is firmly resolved not to per 
 mit any nonsense. "Yes, I do know that is, I know 
 there are ways in which I might be useful to you." 
 
 "For instance?" 
 
 "Well, there are some little some very little things 
 I might tell you if we were friends real friends," she 
 made this plain, "just as two men might be." 
 
 "But the very last things two men would tell each 
 other," he was laughing now, "are the little things the 
 things about slang and walking-sticks and oak furni 
 ture." 
 
 So he hadn't forgotten! The recollection of her 
 impertinence confused her, and she hastened to make 
 light of it by protesting gaily: "I was only joking. 
 Of course, you didn't take that seriously." 
 
 "I don't know how much more seriously," he replied 
 emphatically, "I could have taken it." 
 
 "But you haven't thought of it since? " 
 
 "What would you say if I told you I hadn't thought 
 of anything else?" 
 
 "Then I wish I hadn't said it." She was obviously 
 worried by his admission. "It was horrid of me 
 perfectly horrid. I ought to have been ashamed of 
 myself. I had no right to criticise you, and you have 
 been so heavenly kind." 
 
 "After that" he appeared to be hammering the
 
 THE TEST 467 
 
 idea into her mind "I was so grateful I'd have done 
 almost anything. Do you know," he burst out with 
 evident emotion, "that was the first criticism I mean 
 downright honest criticism I've ever had in my life. 
 Nobody that is nobody who knew ever thought 
 enough of me before to tell me where I was wrong." 
 
 It was all a pathetic mistake, she saw, but she saw 
 also that it was impossible for her to explain it away. 
 She could not tell him the ugly truth that she had been 
 merely laughing at him when he had believed, in his 
 beautiful simplicity, that she was speaking as a friend. 
 Though she felt ashamed, humbled, remorseful, there 
 was nothing that she could say now which would not 
 hurt him more than the original misunderstanding had 
 done. 
 
 In her desire to atone as far as possible, she remarked 
 recklessly: "I only wish I could be of some real help 
 to you." 
 
 "You can," he answered frankly. "You can let me 
 come to see you sometimes before I go West again." 
 
 "You are going back in the spring?" 
 
 He laughed happily, drawing himself erect with a 
 large, free movement as if he needed to stretch his 
 limbs. "I can't stand more than six months of the 
 East, and I've been here a year now, off and on. After 
 a time I begin to want air. I want to breathe." 
 
 "Yet you lived here once." 
 
 "A sort of life, yes, but that don't count." 
 
 "What does count with you, I wonder?" She was 
 smiling up at him,' and as they passed under a street 
 light her eyes shone with a misty brightness through 
 her veil of dotted net. 
 
 For a minute he thought over her question. "I
 
 468 
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 guess fighting does," he answered at last. "Getting on 
 in spite of hard knocks, and smashing things that stand 
 in your way. I like the feeling that comes after you've 
 put through a big deal or got the better of the desert or 
 the mountains. I got joy in Arizona out of my first 
 silver mine; but I didn't get the joy exactly out of the 
 silver. I don't suppose you understand." 
 
 " Oh, yes, I do. I understand perfectly. It's the pure 
 spirit of adventure. Whenever we do a thing for the 
 sake of the struggle, not for the thing itself, it's pure 
 adventure, isn't it? " 
 
 "Well, I like money," he said with the air of being 
 entirely honest. "I'm not a romantic chap, don't 
 think that about me. I care a lot about money, only 
 after I've made it, somehow, I never know what to do 
 with it. All I want for myself is a place to sleep and 
 a bite to eat I'm not over-particular what it is and 
 clothes to wear, good clothes, too but I don't give a 
 hang for motor cars except to go long distances in when 
 there are no trains running." 
 
 It was the commonplace problem, worked out in 
 intricate detail, of the newly rich, of the uncultivated 
 rich, of the rich whose strenuously active processes of 
 enrichment had permanently closed all other highways 
 to experience. Seventeen years ago the Gabriella of 
 Hill Street would have had only disdain for the newly 
 rich and their problems; but life, which had softened 
 her judgment and modified her convictions, had com 
 pletely reversed her inherited opinion of such a case as 
 O'Hara's. Though he was as raw as unbaked brick, 
 she was penetrating enough to discern that he was 
 also as genuine; and, so radically had events altered 
 her point sf view, that at thirty-seven she found genuine
 
 THE TEST 469 
 
 rawness more appealing than superficial refinement. 
 George had wearied her of the sham and the superficial, 
 of gloss without depth, of manner without substance, 
 of charm without character. 
 
 "But there is so much that you might do to help," 
 she said presently. "After all, money is power, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 "Misused power too often," he answered. "Of 
 course, you can always build lodging-houses and tene 
 ments and hospitals; but when you come squarely 
 down to facts, I've never in my life tried to help a man 
 by giving him money that I haven't regretted it. 
 Why, I've ruined men by helping to make their way too 
 easy at the start." 
 
 "Perhaps you're right," she admitted; "I don't know 
 much about it, I confess; but I should have been 
 spared a great deal of suffering if I had had some 
 thing to start with when I was obliged to make my 
 living." 
 
 "That's different." His voice had grown gentle in an 
 instant. "I can't think of your ever having had a hard 
 time. You seem so strong, so successful, so happy." 
 
 If she had answered straight from her heart, Gabri- 
 ella would have retorted frankly: "A good deal of that 
 is in the shape of my face and the way I dress," but 
 instead of speaking sincerely, she remarked with im 
 personal cheerfulness: "Oh, well, happiness, like every 
 thing else, is mainly a habit, isn't it? I cultivated the 
 habit of happiness at the most miserable time of my 
 life, and I've never quite lost it.". 
 
 "But I don't like to think of your ever having 
 worried," he protested. 
 
 Of her ever having worried! Was he becoming
 
 470 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 dangerously sentimental or was it merely a random 
 spark of his unquenchable Western chivalry? 
 
 Though she told herself emphatically again that she 
 was not falling in love with O'Hara, though she was per 
 fectly faithful in her heart to the memory of Arthur, still 
 she was vividly aware with every drop of her blood, with 
 every beat of her pulses, of the man at her side. And 
 through her magn.etic sense of his nearness there flowed to 
 her presently a deeper and clearer perception of the multi 
 tudinous movements of life which surrounded her of 
 the variable darkness out of which lights flashed and 
 gigantic spectacular outlines loomed against a dim 
 background of sky, of the vague shapes stirring, 
 swarming, creating there in the darkness, and always 
 of the pitiless, insatiable hunger from which the city 
 had sprung. For the first time, flowing like a current 
 from the mind of the man beside her, there came to 
 her an understanding of her own share in the common 
 progress of life for the first time she felt herself to be 
 not merely a woman who lived in a city, but an integral 
 part of that city, one cell among closely packed millions 
 of cells. Something of the responsibility she felt for 
 her own children seemed to spread out and cover the 
 city lying there in its dimness and mystery. 
 
 "But I don't like to think of your ever having 
 worried," he repeated. 
 
 "Oh, it's over now," she returned, severely matter-of- 
 fact. "It took me years to make my way, but I've 
 made it at last, and I may settle down to a comfortable 
 middle-age without the dread of the poorhouse to spur 
 me into activity. My business is doing very well; our 
 , i custom has doubled in the last two or three years." 
 
 "But wasn't it a tough pull at one time?" 
 
 I
 
 THE TEST 471 
 
 "It was hard; but what isn't? Of course, when I 
 was obliged to work from nine till six and then come 
 lome to cook the children's dinner and teach them 
 their lessons, I used to be tired out by the end of the 
 lay but that lasted only a few years: five or six at 
 ;he most and now I can afford to let Fanny wear 
 mported gowns when she goes out to parties." 
 
 Though she spoke gaily, making a jest of her 
 truggle, she saw the gravity of his face deepen until 
 lis features looked almost wooden. 
 
 'And through it all you kept something that so 
 many other women seem to lose when they work 
 ! or a living," he said. "You've kept your your 
 harm.". 
 
 Again she found herself on the point of exclaiming 
 frankly: "Heaven knows I've tried to!" and again, 
 checking herself, she proceeded cautiously: "I've never 
 understood why charm should be merely a hothouse 
 flower." 
 
 "I suppose it does depend a good deal upon a sunny 
 temper," he rejoined in his blindness. 
 
 They had reached the gate, and stopping him when 
 he would have entered, she said with the directness of 
 a man: "So we're friends, and you're coming to see 
 me?" 
 
 "Yes, I'm coming," he replied gravely. Then, 
 standing beside the gate, he watched her while she 
 went up the walk and opened the door with her key. 
 
 Upstairs, with her knitting on her lap and her feet 
 on the fender, Miss Polly looked up to observe: "You're 
 late, Gabriella. You must have walked all the way." 
 
 "Yes, I walked all the way. Mr. O'Hara joined 
 me."
 
 472 
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Where did you run across him?" 
 
 "Just as I left the shop. He was walking down 
 Fifth Avenue." 
 
 "Do you reckon he was waitin' outside?" 
 
 "Oh, no, he said he had been up to Fifty-ninth Street 
 on business." 
 
 "Well, the walk certainly did you good. You are 
 bloomin' like a rose." 
 
 "The air was delicious, and I really like talking to 
 Mr. O'Hara. He is quite interesting after you get 
 over the first impression, and he isn't nearly so ignorant 
 about things as I imagined. He has thought a great 
 deal even if he hasn't read very much. It's wonderful, 
 isn't it, what the West can do with a man? Now, if 
 he'd stayed in New York he would have been merely 
 impossible, but because he has lived out of doors he 
 has achieved a certain distinction. I can understand a 
 woman falling in love with him just because of his 
 force and his bigness. They are the qualities a woman 
 ikes most, I think." 
 
 "He must have made a great deal of money." 
 
 "Yes, he's rich, and that's a good thing. I like 
 money tremendously, though I used to think that I 
 didn't. I wonder if he had been poor if I should 
 lave liked him quite so much?" she asked herself 
 honestly. 
 
 "I don't 'spose you could ever ever bring yourself 
 to think of him, honey? It would be a mighty good 
 thing in some ways." 
 
 Gabriella, being in a candid mood, pondered the 
 question without subterfuge or evasion. "Of course 
 I've passed the sentimental age," she answered. "If 
 Mr. O'Hara had been poor, I suppose I should never
 
 THE TEST 473 
 
 have thought of him; but his money does make a 
 difference. It stands for success, achievement, and 
 ability, and I like all those qualities. Then he is rough 
 in many ways, but he isn't a bit vulgar. He has 
 genuine character. There is absolutely no pretence 
 about him." 
 
 "You could catch him in a minute," replied Miss 
 Polly hopefully, animated by the inveterate match 
 making instinct of her class. 
 
 Gabriella laughed merrily. "Oh, yes, I might 
 capture him if I went questing for him. I am not a 
 child. But put that out of your head forever, Miss 
 Polly. I have given him clearly to understand that 
 there must be no nonsense, though, for the matter of 
 that, I doubt if he needed the warning. There is an 
 Alice." 
 
 "I reckon it would take more than an Alice to stand 
 in the way if you wanted him," insisted the little 
 seamstress, possessed by an obstinate conviction that 
 fate could provide no happiness apart from marriage. 
 
 "Perhaps. But you see I don't want him." Gabriella 
 had become perfectly serious, and to Miss Polly's 
 amazement a hint of petulance showed in her manner. 
 "Everything of that kind was over for me long ago. 
 I never think of love now, and if I did there wouldn't 
 be but one but one " 
 
 "I know, honey," agreed Miss Polly, suddenly 
 softened, "and I'd give anything on earth if you and 
 Arthur could come together again." 
 
 "It wouldn't be any use. I made my choice, and 
 I have had to abide by it. He could never forgive 
 
 me " She stopped as if she were choking, and Miss 
 
 Polly said sympathetically:
 
 474 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "Well, I wish he had a chance to, that's all. Why 
 don't you run down to Richmond for a few days this 
 spring to see your folks? Your ma and all would 
 be so glad to see you, and it ain't as if you had 
 the children to keep you back. The thing that worries 
 me," she added with feeling, "is the thought of your 
 spendin' the summer here without the children. If 
 Archibald goes to camp from school and Fanny joins 
 Jane at the White Sulphur Springs as soon as her 
 school is out, you won't have them at all, will you?" 
 
 "No, but they will be happy; that is the only thing 
 that matters." 
 
 "It seems all wrong to me. What do you get out of 
 life, honey?" 
 
 "What do any of us get out of it, dear little Miss 
 Polly, except the joy of triumphing? It's overcoming 
 that really matters, nothing else, and it is the same thing 
 to you and to me that it is to the man downstairs. I 
 am happy because in my little way I stood the test of 
 struggle, and so are you, and so is Mr. O'Hara." 
 
 "But you're young yet, and it ain't natural for you 
 to live as you're doin'. Lots of women marry when 
 they're older than you are." 
 
 "Oh, yes, if they want to " 
 
 For a minute the little seamstress rattled her news 
 paper while she looked at her without replying. Then, 
 after folding the paper, and removing her spectacles, 
 she asked grimly: "Can you look me in the eyes, 
 Gabriella, and tell me that you ain't still hankerin' after 
 Arthur?" 
 
 The blush of a girl made the business-like Gabriella 
 appear as young and as piquantly feminine as her 
 daughter.
 
 THE TEST 475 
 
 "No, Miss Polly, I cannot," she answered with in 
 comparable directness; "I have loved Arthur all my 
 life." 
 
 "That's just what I thought all along, and yet you 
 went off and married somebody else." Excited by 
 the unexpected confession, Miss Polly was quivering 
 with sympathy. 
 
 In that supreme instant of self-revelation Gabriella 
 answered this accusation as if it had been uttered by 
 her remorseful conscience. "But that wasn't love," 
 she said slowly; "it was my youth craving experience; 
 it was my youth reaching after the unknown, the un 
 tried, the undiscovered. We all go questing for ad 
 venture one way or another, I suppose, but it was not 
 the reality." 
 
 "I wonder what is," said Miss Polly in a whisper; 
 I wonder what is, Gabriella? " 
 
 "That," replied Gabriella softly, "is what I am still 
 trying to discover."
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE PAST 
 
 IT WAS the morning of Gabriella's thirty-eighth 
 birthday, and she was standing, with her hat on, before 
 the window of her sitting-room, gazing with dreaming 
 eyes at the young leaves on the elm tree. The day's 
 work was ahead of her, but for a little while, stand 
 ing there by the open window, she gave herself, with a 
 sense of pleasure, of abandonment, to the rare luxury of 
 regret. Out of her whole year it was the one day when, 
 for a few hours, she permitted herself to think sadly of 
 the past and the future, when she cherished in her heart 
 something of the gentle melancholy of her mother's ret 
 rospective philosophy. 
 
 In the street, beyond the narrow yard, where the 
 grass lay like a veil, there was a curious deadening of 
 sounds, as if the traffic had become suddenly muffled in 
 the languorous softness of spring. Out of this im 
 aginary stillness floated the sharp twittering of spar 
 rows and the bright laugh of a child at play in one of 
 the neighbouring yards. Above the grim outlines of the 
 city the sky shone divinely clear and blue, flecked 
 by a single cloud, soft as an eagle's feather, which 
 drifted in a mist of light above the horizon. The 
 city, beneath that azure sky, borrowed the transparent 
 brightness of an object that is imprisoned in crystal. 
 White magic had transformed it for an hour, and the 
 
 476
 
 THE PAST 477 
 
 street, the houses, the shining elm tree, and the distant 
 frowning brows of the skyscrapers, all seemed as un 
 real as the vivid yet impalpable images in a dream. 
 And into this world of crystal there drifted, like the 
 essence of spring, the dreamy fragrance from the win 
 dow box filled with white hyacinths. 
 
 While she stood there Gabriella thought pensively 
 of many things. She thought of the day's work be 
 fore her, of the gown she was designing for Mrs. 
 Pletheridge, of Fanny's latest lover, the brother of a 
 schoolmate, of the clothes she should send the child 
 to the White Sulphur Springs, of her mother, and of 
 Jane's eldest daughter, Margaret : and then very slowly, 
 with the scent of the hyacinths drowning all merely 
 prosaic memories, she began to think hopelessly and 
 tenderly of Arthur Peyton. She thought of him as he 
 had looked on the day when she had told him of her 
 engagement of the sympathetic expression in his 
 eyes, and of his beautiful manner, which she had 
 felt at the time she could never forget. Well, after 
 eighteen years she had not forgotten it. Compared 
 with Arthur, all other men seemed to her as unreal 
 as shadows. "How could Miss Polly imagine that I'd 
 think of Ben O'Hara after a love like that?" she re 
 flected indignantly. 
 
 And then, perhaps because for a shadow he was 
 so solidly substantial, she became aware that O'Hara's 
 image was trespassing upon the hallowed soil of her 
 reverie. To be sure, she had seen a great deal of him 
 since George's death, when he had been so wonder 
 fully considerate and helpful. Scarcely a day had 
 passed since then that he had not brightened by 
 some reminder of his friendship. They had spent
 
 478 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 long evenings together; and occasionally, accompanied 
 by the delighted Miss Polly, they had gone to din 
 ner at a restaurant and later to a concert or a play. 
 That he had been almost too kind it was impossible 
 for her to deny; but she had tried her best to repay 
 him she had, when one came to the point, done 
 as much as she could to remedy the defects of his 
 education. At first she had given zest, sympathy, 
 eagerness, to her self-appointed task of making 
 him over; then, as the months went by, a sense 
 of doubt, of discouragement, of approaching failure, 
 had tempered her enthusiasm, and at last she had 
 realized that her work, except in the merest details, 
 had been ineffectual and futile. The differences, which 
 she had regarded as superficial, were, in reality, funda 
 mental. It was impossible to make him over because 
 he was so completely himself. He stood quite definitely 
 for certain tendencies in democracy, and by no ingenious 
 manipulation coulcTshe twist Turn about until he pre 
 sented the sham appearance of moving in the opposite 
 
 ^ direction. For the logic of her failure was perfectly 
 simple he couldn't see, however hard he tried, the 
 things she wanted him to look at. The difficulty was 
 far deeper than a mere matter of finish, or even of educa 
 tion for it was, after all, not one of manner, but of 
 material. Day by day she had realized more clearly 
 that the problem confronting them was one which 
 involved their different standards of living and their 
 
 ,; individual philosophies. The things which she re 
 garded as essential were to him only the accidental 
 variations of life. He had lived so long in touch with 
 the basic realities with vast spaces and the stark 
 aspect of desert horizons, with droughts, and winds,
 
 THE PAST 479 
 
 and the unquenchable pangs of thirst and hunger, with 
 the vital issues of birth and death in their most primi 
 tive forms he had lived so long in touch with the 
 simplest and most elemental forces of Nature, that his 
 spirit, as well as his vision, had adjusted itself to a 
 trackless and limitless field of view. No, what he was 
 now he must remain, since to change him, except in 
 trivial details, was out of her power. 
 
 And of course he had his virtues she would have 
 been the last to deny him his virtues. Whenever she 
 applied the touchstone of character, she realized how 
 little alloy there was in the pure gold of his nature. 
 He was truthful, he was generous, he was brave, kind, 
 and tolerant; but his virtues, like his personality, were 
 large, flamboyant, and without gradations of colour. 
 Custom had not pruned their natural luxuriance, nor 
 had tradition toned down the violence of their con 
 trasts. They were experimental, not established vir 
 tues, as obviously the expression of the man himself as 
 was his uncultivated preference for red geraniums. For 
 he possessed, she admitted, a sincerity such as she had 
 not believed compatible with human designs certainly 
 not with human achievement. According to the code 
 of the sheltered half of her sex according to the in 
 flexible code of her mother and Jane he was not 
 a gentleman. He lacked breeding, he lacked taste, 
 he lacked the necessary education of schools; but 
 in other ways, in ways peculiarly his own, she was 
 beginning dimly to realize that he possessed qualities 
 immeasurably larger than any superficial lack in his 
 nature. In balance, moderation, restraint in all the 
 gracious attributes with which Arthur was endowed in 
 her memory, in all the attributes she had particularly
 
 480 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ' esteemed in the past she understood that O'Hara 
 would undoubtedly fall below her inherited standards. 
 But, failing in these things, he had been able to com 
 mand her respect by the sheer force of his character. 
 Though he had, as he had confessed to her, gone down 
 into hell, she could not talk to him for an hour without 
 recognizing that he had never lost a natural chivalry of 
 mind beside which the cultivated chivalry of manner ap 
 peared as exotic as an orchid in a hothouse. Even 
 Arthur, she was aware, would have lied to her for her own 
 good; but she would have trusted O'Hara to speak the 
 truth to her at any cost. In this, as well as in his 
 practical efficiency, and his crude yet vital optimism, 
 he embodied, she felt, the triumphs and the failures of 
 American democracy this democracy of ugly fact 
 and of fine ideals, of crooked deeds and of straight 
 feeling, of little codes and of large adventures, of puny 
 lives and of heroic deaths this democracy of the 
 i smoky present and the clear future. "If this is our raw 
 ; material to-day," she thought hopefully, "what will the 
 , finished and signed product of to-morrow be? " 
 
 "Gabriella, ain't these lovely?" 
 
 Whirling out of the sunshine, she saw Miss Polly 
 holding a rustic basket of primroses and cowslips. 
 "Mr. O'Hara wants to know if he may speak to you 
 for a minute before you go out? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, I'm not in a hurry this morning." Then 
 Miss Polly disappeared and an instant later the vacant 
 space in the doorway was filled exuberantly by O'Hara. 
 
 "I wanted to be the first to wish you a happy birth 
 day," he began, a little shyly, a little awkwardly, 
 though his face was flushing with pleasure. 
 
 "The flowers are wonderful!" For a minute, while
 
 THE PAST 481 
 
 she answered him, he seemed to be a part of the unreal 
 intense brightness of the world outside of that magic 
 world where the elm tree and the grass and the sunny 
 street were all imprisoned in crystal. He diffused a 
 glowing consciousness of success, a sanguine faith in 
 the inherent goodness of experience. For, as she had 
 discovered long ago, O'Hara was one of those who 
 stood not for the elimination of struggle, but for the 
 complete acceptance of life. He had sprung out of 
 ugliness, he had lived intimately with evil; and yet 
 more than any one she had ever known, he seemed ,' ', 
 to her to radiate the simple, uncalculating joy of living. 
 He was the strongest person she knew, as well as the 
 happiest. He had never evaded facts, never feared a 
 risk, never shirked an issue, never lacked the hardy, ad 
 venturous courage of battle. In his own words, life had 
 never "found him a quitter." 
 
 He stood in front of her now, fresh, smiling, robust, 
 with his look of suddenly arrested energy, and the dark 
 red of his hair, which was still moist from his bath, 
 striking a vivid note against the cool grays and blues 
 of the background. The sunshine, falling through the 
 open window, warmed the ruddy tan of his face, and 
 made his eyes like pools of clear light in which the 
 jubilant spirit of the spring was reflected. "After all, 
 it isn't what one does, it is what one is, that matters," 
 she thought while she looked at him. "At the end, 
 as Miss Polly said, it is character, not circumstances, 
 that counts." 
 
 " I've been all over New York this morning looking for 
 that basket," he said. Though he had been so eager 
 to make light of his services to her in her trouble, she 
 was amused from time to time by a childlike vanity
 
 482 LIFE AND GABREELLA 
 
 which prompted him to impress her with the value of 
 small attentions; and this she was swift to recognize 
 as the opposite of Arthur's delicacy. It was the only 
 littleness she had observed in O'Hara so far this 
 reluctance to hide his smaller lights under a bushel 
 and in its place, it was amusing. Here was an obvious 
 instance where nature unassisted by training appeared 
 to fall short. 
 
 "They couldn't be lovelier if you'd gone all over the 
 world," she responded sincerely. 
 
 Before answering her he hesitated a moment, and 
 she watched pityingly the struggle he was making 
 toward an impossible self-expression. The thing he 
 wanted to say, the thing struggling so pathetically in 
 the inarticulateness of his feeling, would not, she knew, 
 be uttered in words. 
 
 "You are the first woman I ever wanted to send 
 flowers to," he said presently; and added with abject 
 infelicity: "It's strange, isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes, it's strange," she assented pleasantly. Though 
 his words were ineffectual, she was aware suddenly of a 
 force before which she felt a vague impulse of flight. 
 Now, if ever, she understood that she must keep their 
 relations as superficial as she had always meant them 
 to be that she must cling with all her strength to the 
 comfortable surface of appearances. " But you haven't 
 had many women friends, have you?" 
 
 "I've wanted to give other things," he went on hur 
 riedly; "but not flowers. I never thought of flowers 
 until I met you." 
 
 "That's nice for me." She was growing nervous, 
 and in her nervousness she precipitated the explosion 
 by venturing rashly: "But there's Alice, too, isn't there,
 
 THE PAST 483 
 
 to like them?" Her voice was firm and friendly. 
 Once for all she intended him to understand how aloof 
 she stood from any sentimental advances. 
 
 "Alice?" For an instant his response hung fire, 
 enveloped in a fog of perplexity. Then, with an air of 
 dispelling the cloud, he made a vigorous gesture of 
 denial, and moved nearer to her with the swiftness and 
 directness of a natural force. "Why, Alice was you! 
 You were Alice all the time! " he exclaimed energetically. 
 
 "You mean " She checked herself in alarm, 
 
 paralyzed the next instant by the tremendous, unex 
 pected blow of her discovery. 
 
 "So you thought there was somebody else!" The 
 delight in his face kept her silent, amazed, incapable 
 of explanation. His arm was still outstretched, as if 
 he were brushing aside the last flimsy barrier between 
 them, and his voice, with its unrestrained and radiant 
 joy, stirred some faintly quivering echoes in the secret 
 depths of her being. It was as if the jubilant spirit 
 of spring had flowered suddenly in his look. 
 
 "There wasn't anybody else." He came still nearer, 
 and she stood there, startled, incredulous, powerless 
 either to retreat or to prevent the inevitable instant 
 that was approaching. "At least, there wasn't any 
 body I ever knew named Alice except a school teacher 
 when I was a kid. She was good and she was pretty 
 like you, and I used to dream about her after school, 
 and every evening at dusk I would go out of my 
 way to speak to her in Sixth Avenue. Once she told 
 me that she'd wait for me to grow up and get rich so 
 I could marry her, and after I went out to Arizona I 
 used to think about her a lot. When I came on you 
 suddenly, standing there in the dusk with your hands
 
 484 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 full of lilacs, it all came back to me because you looked 
 like her, with your dark hair and your tall slender- 
 ness. Then before I knew what I was doing I called 
 you by her name. I oughtn't to have done it," he 
 finished ecstatically, "but I'm jolly glad now that I did." 
 
 So he also, the man of action and of enterprise, he, 
 the worker and the adventurer, so he also cultivated his 
 garden of dreams! 
 
 "I didn't know I didn't know ' she found 
 
 herself murmuring faintly in protest. 
 
 " But you know now !" His voice rang out exultantly, 
 and, though she felt that the thing she feared and 
 dreaded was coming upon her, she still stood there 
 without moving a step, without lifting a hand, mes 
 merized, enchanted, by the force of the man. "You 
 know now," he repeated. "You know now, Gabriella, 
 and you knew all along." 
 
 It was true. In spite of her surprise, in spite of her 
 shrinking, in spite of her evasion, she confessed it in her 
 heart. She had known all the time. Something deep 
 down in her, something secret and profound and clair 
 voyant, had discerned the truth from the beginning. 
 
 "No! no!" she cried out sharply, for, mistaking her 
 silence, he had stooped to her with the directness which 
 impelled all his movements, which so easily brushed 
 aside and discarded intervening encumbrances, and had 
 kissed her on the lips. 
 
 For an instant, in the merciless tenderness of his 
 arms, her resistance melted from her. Beneath the 
 crash of the storm she did not think, she did not struggle, 
 she did not murmur. Her consciousness seemed sus 
 pended, and with her consciousness, her memory, her 
 judgment, even her passionate unshaken loyalty to the
 
 THE PAST 485 
 
 love of her youth. Then, after the moment of weakness, 
 of passive submission, it was as if her soul and body 
 caught fire at a flash, and a quiver of anger ran through 
 her, enkindling her glance and nerving her spirit. 
 
 "But I do not love you! I never meant that I loved 
 you!" she cried. 
 
 At her words his arms dropped to his sides, and he 
 stood as if turned to stone, with only his questioning 
 eyes and the vivid red of his hair seeming alive. There 
 was no need now for her to struggle. At her first 
 movement to escape he had released her and drawn 
 to a distance. 
 
 "You don't love me?" he stammered. "Why, I saw 
 it. I've seen it for weeks. I see it now in your face." 
 
 "You see nothing nothing." She denied it bitterly. 
 "I liked you as a friend. I did not think of this. I 
 never suspected it. I don't love you. I don't love 
 you in the least." 
 
 He was very still. The jubilant spirit of the spring 
 had ebbed away from his look, and even in the height 
 of her anger she was struck by the change in his face. 
 
 "I don't believe you," he said gravely after a minute. 
 "I don't believe you." 
 
 "You must believe me. I don't love you. I have 
 never thought of you except as a friend. I have loved 
 another man all my life." 
 
 ' Her voice rose accusingly, triumphantly, and so 
 fervent was her look that she might have been repeating 
 a creed. It was as if she hoped by convincing him 
 /to persuade her own rebellious heart of the truth she 
 proclaimed. 
 
 Now at last he understood. She had been lucid 
 enough even for the crystalline lucidity of his thought.
 
 486 
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 "I am sorry. I made a mistake," he said quietly, 
 and after the exultant note of a few moments ago 
 there was a dull level of flatness in his voice. "I am 
 sorry. There don't seem to be anything else that I 
 can say or do, but but it wouldn't have happened if 
 
 I had understood " He paused, looked at her 
 
 closely for a minute, and then added stubbornly, with 
 an echo of the old confidence in his tone: "I still don't 
 believe it." 
 
 "It is true, nevertheless." She was trembling with 
 indignation, and this indignation, in spite of her nat 
 ural fairness, was not directed against herself, against 
 her own blindness and folly. Though she knew that 
 she was to blame, she was furious, not with herself, 
 but with O'Hara. He had insulted her, and she resolved 
 bitterly that she would never forgive him. Even now, 
 whenever she was silent, she could still feel his kiss 
 on her mouth, and the vividness of the sensation stung 
 her into passionate anger. She was no longer the 
 reasonable and competent Gabriella, who had so suc 
 cessfully "managed her life"; she was primitive 
 woman in the grip of primitive anger; and balance, 
 moderation, restraint, had flown from her soul. The 
 very mystery of her feeling, its complexity, its sudden 
 ness, its remorselessness these emotions worked to 
 gether to deepen the sense of insult, of injury, with 
 which she burned. 
 
 "It is true, and you have no right to doubt it. You 
 have no right." She caught her breath sharply, and 
 then went on with inexcusable harshness: "Even if 
 there hadn't been any one else, I should never I 
 could never in the world " 
 
 Her loss of self-control gave him an advantage,
 
 THE PAST 487 
 
 which he was either too generous or too stupid to 
 perceive. "Well, forget all about it. I am going 
 now," he answered quietly. 
 
 While she watched him moving away from her, she 
 was conscious of an inexplicable longing to stab him 
 again more deeply before she lost him forever. It was 
 intolerable to her that he should leave her while she was 
 still indignant, that he should evade her just resentment 
 by the natural cowardice of flight. 
 
 "I can't forget it," she said; "how can you expect 
 me to?" 
 
 For an instant he seemed on the point of smiling. 
 Then, turning at the door, he walked back to where 
 she was standing, and said gravely: "When I came in 
 here it was to ask you to marry me, and, if it's the 
 last word I ever speak, I thought you understood that 
 you knew how I felt. I was even fool enough to think 
 you would be willing to marry me. That's all I can 
 say. I haven't any other excuses." 
 
 For the second time he went to the door, opened it, 
 and then turning quickly, came back again. "I am 
 not the sort to change, and I shan't change about this. 
 You are a free woman, and if you ever feel that you 
 made a mistake, if you ever want me or need me, you 
 can just come to me. I shan't stop caring for you, 
 and if you choose to come, I'll be waiting. I be 
 lieved you were meant for me when I first saw you 
 and I believe it now. In spite of all you say, I am going 
 to keep on believing it " 
 
 He went out, closing 1 the door softly, and five minutes 
 later, feeling extraordinarily young, she watched him 
 pass through the gate, and walk as buoyantly as ever 
 in the direction of Broadway. While she looked after
 
 488 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 him she wondered suddenly why novelists alway. 
 dropped their heroines as soon as they passed twenty- 
 seven? "If I'd been in a play, they'd have put me 
 in the background, dressed in lavender, and made 
 me look on and do fancywork," she thought humor 
 ously, "but this is real life, and I've just had a 
 real love scene on my thirty-eighth birthday. He 
 couldn't have been more romantic if I'd been Fanny," 
 she mused with an agreeable complacency. "It's only 
 in books and plays that people stop falling in love 
 when they pass the twenties. I don't believe they ever 
 stop in real life. I believe it goes on forever." And 
 glancing at the glass, she added truthfully: "I want 
 love more to-day than I wanted it when I was twenty 
 and so does Ben O'Hara." 
 
 A sensation of stifling, as if her throat were clos 
 ing together, oppressed her suddenly, and picking up 
 her hand-bag, she ran downstairs and out of the 
 house. 
 
 By the time she reached Broadway her anger had 
 ebbed, but the oppression, the feeling that she was 
 being slowly smothered, was still in her throat and 
 bosom. After all, seen in the sober light of reason, 
 why had she been so indignant? There had been a 
 misapprehension; he had thought that she was in love 
 with him, and thinking so, he had kissed her. That 
 was the case plainly stated; and what was there in this 
 to send a burning rush of anger to her heart? What 
 was there in this that had made her turn and insult 
 him? For the first time in her life she had lost 
 her temper without cause, and had raged, she told 
 herself sternly, like a fury. And beneath her rage she 
 had been conscious always of some vague, incompre-
 
 THE PAST 489 
 
 hensible disloyalty to Arthur of a feeling of humilia 
 tion, of self-reproach, which appeared ridiculous when 
 she remembered that she had been kissed against her 
 will and without warning. But, in spite of this, she 
 knew intuitively, with a knowledge deeper than reason, 
 that the glory of her Dream had paled in the moment 
 when she lay in O'Hara's arms. 
 
 A subtle change had come over the spirit of spring 
 since she had left the elm tree and the emerald veil of 
 the grass. It was no longer jubilant, but languorous, 
 wistful, haunting, as if it eternally pursued, through 
 the fugitive seasons, an immortal and ineffable beauty. 
 The enchanted crystal had been shattered in an instant, 
 and she saw life now, not imprisoned in magical sun 
 shine, but gray, sordid, monotonous, as utterly hopeless 
 as the faces thronging in Broadway. Yet not many 
 months ago she had seen in these same faces the inward 
 hope, the joy in sadness, the gaiety in disappointment, 
 which had brightened the world for her. Then she 
 had been aware of an invisible current flowing from the 
 crowd to herself; but to-day this shining current was 
 broken or turned aside, and she felt detached, adrift, 
 and distrustful of the future. That mental correspond 
 ence with the mood of the crowd, with the life of 
 the city, which had come to her first on the brilliant 
 morning in September, and then again when she walked 
 home with O'Hara in the winter's dusk which had 
 released a new faculty in her soul, and had given 
 lier a fresh perception of human responsibilities 
 this had deserted her so utterly that she could 
 barely remember its miraculous visitation. Then her 
 personal life had seemed to become a part of the life 
 of the street, of the sky, of the mysterious city outlined
 
 490 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 against the gray background of dusk. To-day she 
 walked alone and without sympathy through the 
 , crowd. Her feet dragged, and she felt dully that she 
 had lost her share in both the street and the sky. The 
 very faces of the men and women around her those 
 lethargic foreign faces which crowded out the finer 
 American type awoke in her the sensation of hope 
 less revolt which one feels before the impending de 
 struction of higher forms by masses of inert and con 
 scienceless matter. She thought gloomily: "I have 
 lost the vision there is no hope either for me or for 
 America except in the clear vision of the future." And 
 while she spoke there passed over her the vague feeling 
 of loss, of something missing, as if a precious possession 
 had slipped from her grasp. 
 
 Her morning's work was unusually trying, and at 
 one o'clock, when she put on her hat before going out to 
 lunch, she asked herself dejectedly: "What can be the 
 matter with me? Before I go home I'll take a taxicab 
 and drive up Riverside for an hour. If only the children 
 were here, I should not feel so depressed." She remem 
 bered regretfully that Archibald and Fanny would be 
 away all summer; and then from thinking of her children, 
 she passed by almost insensible degrees of despondency 
 to meditating pensively about Arthur Peyton. What 
 a wreck, what an inconceivably stupid wreck she had 
 made of her happiness! 
 
 As she entered the outer showroom on her way to the 
 street, she heard the voice of Miss Murphy attuned to 
 a cooing pitch, and glancing around a little painted 
 cabinet, filled with useless ornaments, which stood in 
 the centre of the floor, she beheld a dazzling head of 
 reddish gold before one of the elaborately decorated
 
 THE PAST 491 
 
 French mirrors. While she advanced the red-gold 
 waves, worn with extreme flatness over a forehead of 
 pearly whiteness, were submerged for a minute in the 
 smallest and roundest hat in the shop, and from a 
 fashionable figure, reminding her vaguely of an ambula 
 tory dressmaker's model, there issued a high, fluting 
 note of delighted ejaculation. 
 
 "This is just exactly what I've been looking all over 
 New York for! Now, isn't it too funny for anything 
 that I should have found it right here the very minute 
 I came in?" As Gabriella's face flashed back from the 
 mirror the fashionable figure sprang suddenly to life, 
 and the voice, still fluting delightedly, exclaimed : 
 
 "Why, Gabriella! Where on earth did you come 
 from?" 
 
 For a minute sheer amazement kept Gabriella cling 
 ing helplessly to the ridiculous cabinet, from the top of 
 which an artificial rose-bush seemed to shower artificial 
 pink petals down on her head. Then/recovering her 
 self, with a sharp effort of will, she went forward a few 
 steps beyond the shelter of the cabinet, and said com 
 posedly: 
 
 "How do you do, Florrie? I did not recognize you 
 at first." 
 
 For it was Florrie herself, Florrie in the flesh, Florrie, 
 glowing, sparkling, prosperous, victorious. Her figure, 
 conforming to the latest mode, had lost its pinched 
 protuberances, and was long, slender, sinuous in its per 
 fection of line. Beneath the small round hat, her hair, 
 glossy with brilliantine, was like melted gold in the 
 large loose waves which revealed the rosy tips of her 
 ears. She was thirty-nine, and she looked scarcely a 
 day over twenty-five. The peach-blossom texture of
 
 492 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 her skin was as unlined by care or pain as if she 
 had spent the last ten years immured in a convent; for 
 in this case, at least, Gabriella realized while she looked 
 at her, the retribution which awaits upon sinners had 
 been tardy in its fulfilment. 
 
 As she moved toward her, without noticing the 
 friendly hand that Florrie held out, Gabriella was 
 conscious of an ironical inclination to laugh. Though 
 she felt no bitter personal resentment against Florrie 
 for, after all, Florrie had not been able to hurt 
 her there struggled in her bosom an indignation more 
 profound, more moving, than any merely personal 
 emotion could be. Her resentment was directed not 
 against Florrie, but against some abstract destiny 
 which had permitted Florrie to have her way without 
 paying the price. For on the pinnacle of a destructive 
 career, unsinged by the conflagration she had so care 
 lessly started, Florrie was poised securely, crowned, 
 triumphant, rejoicing. On her dazzling height, suc 
 cessful and happy, she was as far removed as one could 
 imaginably be from the repentant Magdalen of tradi 
 tion. The memory of George's face as it looked in 
 death floated before the austere mental vision of Ga 
 briella, and she reflected grimly that tradition was not 
 always the mirror of life. For in this one case at least, 
 the man, not the woman, had been the victim of nat 
 ural law, and Florrie, fool though she was, had shown 
 herself at the hour of requital to be stronger than fate. 
 /'By that instinctive wisdom, which is so much older, 
 so much truer than civilization, she had triumphed over 
 the ordination of life. In refusing to suffer she had 
 blunted every weapon with which Nature might have 
 punished her in the end. Not by virtue, since she had
 
 THE PAST 493 
 
 none, but by pure insensibility, she had escaped the 
 I wages of sin. She was a sensualist whose sensuality, 
 hard, metallic, glittering, encased her like armour. 
 
 At Gabriella's approach Miss Murphy fluttered off 
 cooingly in the direction of a fresh customer, and only 
 the festively garlanded French mirror witnessed the 
 meeting of the two who had been schoolgirls together. 
 Swift as an arrow there shot through Gabriella's mind, 
 "I wonder what Ben O'Hara would think of her?" 
 Then she checked the dangerous flight of her fancy, for 
 she remembered that O'Hara's thoughts about anything 
 no longer concerned her. 
 
 "Are you buying a hat?" inquired Florrie curiously. 
 
 "No, I belong here. I am Madame Dinard." 
 
 "You don't mean it! I never should have believed 
 it! The idea of your being a dressmaker. That's why 
 you look so smart, I suppose. You're the smartest 
 thing I've seen anywhere, but you look older, Ga- 
 briella." 
 
 "Well, you don't." It was perfectly true. Except 
 for the gaudy decorations and the twanging accents of 
 the arrogant young women, Gabriella might have 
 imagined herself in the last century atmosphere of Broad 
 Street in the middle 'nineties. 
 
 "I must tell you about the things I use." Florrie 
 was always generous. "But, I declare if I'd known 
 this place was yours, I'd have got my hats here ages 
 ago. Of course I knew it was dreadfully swell, but I 
 thought the prices were beyond anything." 
 
 "They are," responded Gabriella with business-like 
 brevity, while she glanced about for the flitting Miss 
 Murphy. 
 
 "Look here, Gabriella, I hope you don't bear me any
 
 494 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 malice," Florrie burst out solicitously, for her frankness, 
 like her sensuality, was elemental in its audacity. 
 "You oughtn't to if you know what I saved you from," 
 she proceeded convincingly. "Anyway, we were chums 
 long before either of us ever thought about a man, and I 
 didn't really do you a bit of harm. It wasn't as if you 
 cared about George, was it? " 
 
 "No, it wasn't as if I'd cared about him." Gabriella 
 was answering the appeal as truthfully as if Florrie 
 had been the most excellent of her sex. "You didn't 
 harm me in any way not in any way," she repeated 
 with firmness. 
 
 "That's just the way I told mother you'd look at it. 
 I knew you were always so broad-minded even as a girl. 
 Then there isn't any reason we shouldn't be friends just 
 as we used to be." 
 
 Gabriella shook her head, polite but implacable in 
 her refusal. "It isn't what you did to me, Florrie," 
 she answered gently, "it's what you are that I can't 
 forgive. I can imagine that a good woman might do 
 almost anything might even run off with another 
 woman's husband, but you aren't good. You wouldn't 
 be good if you'd spent your life in a convent." 
 
 A quick flush the flush of temper stained the 
 pearly whiteness of Florrie's skin. "Oh, of course, if 
 you don't want to," she retorted, a little shrilly, though 
 she tried to subdue her rebellious voice to the pitch of 
 Fifth Avenue. "I only thought that being a working 
 woman, you wouldn't have so very many friends, and you 
 might get lonely. I had seats at the opera every night 
 last winter, and time and again I'd have been glad to have 
 given them to you. Then, too, I might have been able 
 to bring you some custom. I know any number of rich
 
 THE PAST 495 
 
 women who don't think anything of paying a thousand 
 dollars for a dress " 
 
 Her insolence was so evidently the result of anger 
 that Gabriella, without interrupting the flow, waited 
 courteously until she paused. 
 
 "No, you cannot do anything for me, Florrie." 
 Though Gabriella's voice was crisp and firm, her face 
 looked suddenly older, and little lines, stamped by 
 weariness and regret, appeared at the corners of her still 
 brilliant eyes. "I don't wish you any harm," she went 
 on more softly. "If you were in trouble I'd do what 
 I could for you, but somehow I don't seem able to 
 forgive you for being what you are. Would you like 
 to look at anything else?" she inquired in her pro 
 fessional tone. "Miss Murphy is waiting to show you 
 some hats." 
 
 Her cheeks were burning when she passed out of the 
 ivory and gold door, saluted deferentially by the at 
 tendant in livery. "The effrontery!" she thought, 
 "the barefaced effrontery!" and then, as her eyes fell 
 on Florrie's trim little electric coupe beside the curb, 
 she exclaimed mentally, recalling George's animated 
 perplexity about the pearl necklace, "I wonder how in 
 the world she does it?" 
 
 The meeting with Florrie appeared to her, as she 
 walked home that afternoon, to be the last touch 
 needed to push her into a state of utter despon 
 dency. The oppressive languor of the day had ex 
 hausted her strength, and when she left Dinard's she 
 felt too indifferent, too spiritless even for the drive 
 in the Park. It was still light when she got out of 
 the stage at Twenty-third Street, and while she strolled 
 listlessly down the blocks on the West Side, she had
 
 496 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 again that curious sensation of smothering which had 
 come to her after her talk with O'Hara. 
 
 At the corner of Sixth Avenue a young Italian, with 
 the face of a poet, was roasting peanuts in a little 
 kerosene stove beside a flickering torch which enkindled 
 the romantic youth in his eyes. Farther away some 
 ragged children were dancing to the music of a hand- 
 organ, which ground out a melancholy waltz; and from a 
 tiny flower stall behind the stand of a bootblack there 
 drifted the intense sweetness of hyacinths. An old 
 negro, carrying a basket of clothes, passed her in the 
 middle of the block, and she thought: "That might 
 have been in Richmond that and the hand-organ and 
 the perfume of hyacinths." A vision of Hill Street 
 floated before her the long straight street, with the 
 sudden drop of ragged hill at the end; the old houses, 
 with crumbling porches and countless signs: "Boarders 
 Wanted" in the windows between the patched curtains; 
 the irregular rows of tulip poplar, elm, or sycamore trees 
 throwing their crooked shadows over the cobblestones; 
 the blades of grass sprouting along the edges of the 
 brick pavement the vision of Hill Street as she 
 remembered it twenty years ago in her girlhood; and 
 then the image of her mother's face gazing out beneath 
 the creamy blossoms and the dark shining leaves of 
 the old magnolia tree. " Everything must have changed, 
 I'd hardly recognize it," she thought. "Nobody we 
 know lives on that side now, mother says. Yes, 
 it has been a long time." She sighed, and then a 
 little laugh broke from her lips, as she remembered 
 that Charley, who had recently been West on a busi 
 ness trip, had brought home the good news that 
 Richmond was as progressive as Denver. "At least
 
 THE PAST 497 
 
 it seems so to Charley," Mrs. Carr had hastened to 
 add, "but you know how proud Charley is of all our 
 newness. He says there is not a street in the West 
 that looks fresher or more beautiful than Monument 
 Avenue, and I am sure that is a great comfort. Cousin 
 Jimmy says it shows what the South can do when it 
 tries." 
 
 "I'd like to go back," mused Gabriella, walking 
 more and more slowly. "I haven't been home for 
 eighteen years, and I am thirty-eight to-day." With 
 the fugitive sweetness of the hyacinths there rushed 
 over her again the feeling that life was slipping, slipping, 
 and that she was missing something infinitely precious, 
 something infinitely desirable. It was the panic of 
 fleeting youth, of youth unsatisfied, denied, and still 
 insatiable. 
 
 As she entered the gate she saw that O'Hara's 
 windows were dark, and while a sigh of relief escaped 
 her, she felt a swift contraction of her throat as if 
 she had become suddenly paralyzed and was unable 
 to swallow. "I hope he has gone," she said to herself 
 in a whisper. "If he has gone, everything will be so 
 much easier." But even to herself she could not 
 explain what it was that would be made easier. Her 
 relief was so vague that when she endeavoured to put 
 it into words it seemed to dissolve and evaporate. 
 
 Miss Polly was watering the flowers in the window 
 box, and turning, with the green watering-pot in her 
 hand, she stared at Gabriella in silence for a minute 
 before she exclaimed anxiously: "Mercy on us, Gabri 
 ella, what on earth is the matter?" 
 
 "Nothing. I've had a hard day, and I'm tired." 
 
 "Well, you lie right straight down as soon as you
 
 498 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 take off your hat. I declare you look ten years older 
 than you did this morning." 
 
 "I have seen Florrie for a minute." 
 
 "I reckon that was enough to upset anybody. Did 
 she say she was sorry?" 
 
 "Sorry! She looked as if she had never been sorry 
 for anything in her life. She was handsomer than 
 ever don't you remember how much you always 
 admired her figure? and she didn't look a day over 
 twenty-five. I don't believe she has ever known what 
 it is to feel a regret." 
 
 "Well, you just wait, honey," responded Miss Polly 
 consolingly, "you just wait. She'll be punished yet 
 as sure as you're born." 
 
 "Oh, I'm not waiting for that. I don't wish her to 
 be punished. Why should I? She is what she is." 
 
 "Do you s'pose she knows about George?" 
 
 "I doubt it. She didn't speak of his death. She is 
 quite capable of forgetting that she ever knew him, and 
 if she does think of him, it is probably as a man who 
 betrayed her innocence. You may be sure she has 
 twisted it all about until every shred of the blame rests 
 on somebody else. Florrie isn't the only woman who 
 is made like that, but I believe," she reasoned it out 
 coolly, "that it is her way of keeping her youth." 
 
 Miss Polly had put down the watering-pot, and she 
 came presently with a bottle of camphor to the sofa 
 where Gabriella was lying. "Are you sure you wouldn't 
 like me to rub your head?" she inquired. "Dinner 
 will be ready in a minute, but I shouldn't change my 
 dress if I were you." 
 
 Gabriella rose slowly to a sitting position, and then 
 stood up while she pushed the camphor away. "I
 
 THE PAST 499 
 
 hate the smell of it," she answered; "it makes me think 
 of one of Jane's attacks. And, besides, I don't need it. 
 There is nothing in the world the matter with me." 
 A moment later, to Miss Polly's unspeakable amaze 
 ment, she sank down again, flung her arms over the 
 back of the sofa, and burst into tears. 
 
 "Well, I never!" ejaculated Miss Polly, rooted to 
 the spot. "Well, I never!" In the ten years she had 
 lived with Gabriella she had never seen her cry not 
 even after George's flight and she felt as if the solid 
 ground on which she stood had crumbled without 
 warning, and left her insecurely balanced in space. 
 "Something certainly must be wrong, for it ain't like 
 you to give way. Are you real sure you ain't got a 
 pain somewhere?" 
 
 Shaking her head, and swallowing her sobs with an 
 effort, Gabriella rose to her feet. "I'm just tired out, 
 that's all," she said, strangely humble and deprecating. 
 
 "You must have been working too hard. It ain't 
 right." For a minute or two the little seamstress 
 brooded anxiously; then guided by an infallible instinct, 
 she added decisively: "It's been a long time since 
 you've seen your ma, and she's gettin' right smart 
 along. Why don't you run down home for a few days 
 while the flowers are blooming?" 
 
 A change passed over Gabriella's face, and drying 
 her eyes, she looked down on Miss Polly with a lovely 
 enigmatical smile. 
 
 "I wonder if I might?" she said doubtfully. 
 
 "There ain't any earthly reason why you shouldn't. 
 To-morrow's Friday, and they can get along without 
 you at Dinard's perfectly well till the first of the week." 
 
 "Oh, yes, they can get along. I was only wonder-
 
 500 
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ing" a faint breeze stole in through the window, 
 wafting toward her the scent of wet flowers "I was 
 only wondering" her eyes grew suddenly radiant, 
 and lifting her arms, she made a gesture as of one 
 escaping from bondage "I was only wondering if I 
 might go to-morrow," she said.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 
 
 AT THE upper station a little group stood awaiting 
 her, and as the train pulled slowly to the platform, 
 Gabriella distinguished her mother's pallid face framed 
 in the hanging crape of her veil; Jane, thin, anxious, 
 anaemic, with her look of pinched sweetness; Charley, 
 florid, portly, and virtuously middle-aged, and their 
 eldest daughter Margaret, a blooming, beautiful girl. 
 Alighting, Gabriella was embraced by Mrs. Carr, who 
 shed a few gentle tears on her shoulders. 
 
 "Gabriella, my child, I thought you would never 
 come back to us," she lamented; "and now everything 
 is so changed that you will hardly recognize it as home." 
 
 "Well, if she can find a change that isn't for the 
 better, I hope she'll point it out and let me make a 
 note of it," boasted Charley, with hilarity. "I tell 
 you what, Gabriella, my dear, we're becoming a number 
 one city. Everything's new. We haven't left so 
 much as an old brick lying around if we could help it. 
 If you were to go back there to Hill Street, you'd 
 scarcely know it for the hospitals and schools we've 
 got there, and as for this part of the town well, I 
 reckon the apartment houses will fairly take your 
 breath away. Apartment houses! Well, that's what 
 I call progress apartment houses and skyscrapers, 
 and we've got them, too, down on Main Street. I'll 
 
 501
 
 502 
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 show them to you to-morrow. Yes, by George, we're 
 progressing so fast you can hardly see how we grow. 
 Why, there wasn't a skyscraper or an apartment house 
 in the city when you left here, and precious few hos 
 pitals. But now well, I'll show you! We're the 
 hospital city of the South, and more than that, we're 
 becoming a metropolis. Yes, that's the word we're 
 becoming a metropolis. If you don't believe me, just 
 watch as we go up Franklin Street to Monument 
 Avenue. I suppose you thought of us still as a poor 
 folksy little Southern city, with a lot of ground going 
 to waste in gardens and green stuff. Well, you just wait 
 till you see Monument Avenue. It's the handsomest 
 boulevard south of Washington. It's all new, every 
 brick of it. There's not a house the whole way up that 
 isn't as fresh as paint, and the avenue is just as straight 
 
 as if you'd drawn it with a ruler 
 
 But the change in the city, Gabriella reflected while 
 she embraced Jane, was as nothing compared to the 
 incredible change in Charley himself. Middle-age had 
 passed over him like some fattening and solidifying 
 process. He was healthy, he was corpulent, he was 
 prosperous, conventional, and commonplace. If Gabri 
 ella had been seeking, with Hogarthian humour, to 
 portray the evils of torpid and self-satisfied respect 
 ability, she could scarcely have found a better picture 
 of the condition than Charley presented. And the 
 more Charley expanded, the more bloodless and wan 
 Jane appeared at his side. Her small, flat face, with its 
 yellowish and unhealthy tinge, its light melancholy 
 eyes, and its look of lifeless and inhuman sanctifica- 
 tion, exhaled the dried fragrance of a pressed flower. 
 So disheartening was her appearance to Gabriella that
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 503 
 
 it was a relief to turn from her to the freshness of 
 Margaret, handsome, athletic, with cheeks like roses and 
 the natural grace of a young animal. 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Gabriella, I hadn't any idea you were 
 like this!" cried the girl with naive enthusiasm. 
 
 "You thought of me as gray-haired and wearing a 
 bonnet and mantle?" 
 
 "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 dear little 
 Fanny." 
 
 "But you married young, mother, and so did I," 
 replied Jane, a trifle tartly. 
 
 For some incommunicable reason Jane's sweetness 
 had become decidedly prickly. Charley's reformation 
 had left her with the hurt and incredulous air of a mis 
 sionary 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
 
 504 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 devoted her attention to the Associated Charities and 
 the Confederate Museum, neither of these worthy ob 
 jects provided so agreeable an opportunity for the exer 
 cise 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 re 
 demption. The very cut of his clothes, the very colour 
 of his necktie, proclaimed a triumph for the prohibi 
 tion party. 
 
 At last they were packed tightly in the touring car, 
 and Charley, after imparting directions with the man 
 ner of a man who regards himself as the fount of wis 
 dom, 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 crape 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 lassitude of 
 spring in the faint sunshine; and the women passing 
 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 assembled
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 505 
 
 \ in chairs after the Southern fashion, 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 disap- 
 1 peared or dwindled to mere emerald patches of grass, a 
 few climbing roses, of modern varieties, lent brightness 
 and fragrance to the solid, if undistinguished, architec 
 ture 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 & Plum- 
 mer's, don't you? isn't there any longer. Got a new 
 department store, with a restaurant and a basement 
 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 hos 
 pitals. Darrow you recollect Darrow who used to 
 be old Dr. Walker's assistant 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-fashioned flowers," said Gabriella 
 to her mother in one of Charley's plethoric pauses. 
 "The microphylla roses and snowballs." 
 
 "Everybody is planting crimson ramblers and hy-
 
 506 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 drangeas 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. Rush- 
 ington 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
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 507 
 
 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. Pussy 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 young 
 est 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 reproach 
 fully, 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 rude-
 
 508 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 ness. "You see she's at it still, Gabriella," he pursued, 
 winking audaciously. "If it isn't one thing, it's an 
 other, 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 grass, 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. Nobody 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 fashions. "It will be lovely to have 
 Fanny with us at the White Sulphur. I know her 
 clothes will be wonderful," they chirped happily, 
 clustering eagerly about the sofa on which Gabriella 
 was sitting. Jane's children, deriving from some hardy 
 stock of an earlier generation, were handsome, vigor 
 ous, optimistic in blood and fibre, and so uncompromis-
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 509 
 
 ingly modern that Gabriella wondered how Mrs. Carr, 
 with her spiritual neuralgia and her perpetual mourn 
 ing, 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 Pussy 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 Pussy, 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 Fanny, 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 some 
 thing 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 passed him by, had,
 
 510 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 on the whole, treated him with great gentleness. He 
 was a remarkably handsome old man, with a dis 
 tinguished and courtly presence, a head of wonderful 
 white hair, which looked as if it had been powdered, a 
 ruddy unwrinkled face, and the dark shining 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 
 Pussy, with her arm about Gabriella, "but in New 
 York it is different, and they tell me that even titled 
 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 con 
 tained most of the things Gabriella associated with 
 the old parlour in Hill Street, and Cousin Pussy asked 
 if Gabriella had found many changes. 
 
 "A great many. Everything looks new to me ex 
 cept this room. The only thing I miss here is the horse 
 hair 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 
 Pussy 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,
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 511 
 
 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 associated with various indelicacies, stared 
 at him with an indignant expression. 
 
 "Charley, be careful what you say," nagged Jane 
 acridly from her corner. "Now that so many of our 
 relatives have gone in for suffrage, you mustn't be in 
 tolerant." 
 
 "I cannot help it, Jane. I shall never knowingly 
 bow to one even if she is related to me," announced Mrs. 
 Carr more assertively than Gabriella would have be 
 lieved possible. 
 
 "Well, for my part, Cousin Fanny, I can't feel that 
 it hurts me to bow to anybody," said Pussy, with her 
 unfailing kindness of heart. "Why, I even bowed to 
 Florrie Spencer last winter. I wanted to cut her, but 
 I just couldn't bring myself to do it when I met her
 
 512 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 face to face. I hope you don't mind, dear," she whis 
 pered to Gabriella. "I suppose I oughtn't to have 
 mentioned her, but I forgot." 
 
 "Oh, it doesn't matter in the least," responded 
 Gabriella cheerfully. "I bowed to her myself the day 
 before I left New York." 
 
 Though she tried to be independent, to be advanced 
 and resolute, she felt the last eighteen years receding 
 slowly from her consciousness. The family point of 
 view, the family soul, had enveloped her again, and, in 
 spite of her experience and her success, she seemed 
 inwardly as young and ignorant as on the evening 
 when she broke her engagement to Arthur. The spirit 
 of the place had defeated her individual endeavour. 
 Except for the wall paper of pale gray, and the Persian 
 rugs on the floor, Jane's library might have been the 
 old front parlour in Hill Street, and it was as if the 
 French mirror, the crystal candelabra, the rosewood 
 bookcases, with their diamond-shaped panes lined with 
 fluted magenta silk, the family portraits, the speckled en 
 gravings of the Burial of Latane and of the groups of 
 amiable children feeding chickens and fish it was as if 
 these inanimate objects exuded a spiritual anodyne which 
 enfeebled the will. Across the hall, in the modern 
 pink and gray drawing-room, the five girls were playing 
 bridge with several young men whom Gabriella remem 
 bered as babies, and the sounds of their voices floated 
 to her now and then as thinly as if they had come out of a 
 phonograph. "There is nothing better than peace, 
 after all," she thought, while her eyes rested tenderly 
 on the simple, affectionate face of Cousin Jimmy. 
 "Goodness and peace, these things are really worth 
 while."
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 513 
 
 Then the telephone rang gently, and after a minute 
 Margaret, who had gone to answer it, came in with a 
 roguish smile on her lips. "Aunt Gabriella, Mr. Pey 
 ton wishes to come to-morrow at five," she said; and the 
 roguish smile flitted from her lips to the lips of Cousin 
 Pussy, and from Cousin Pussy to each sympathetic and 
 watchful face in the group. 
 
 "You may say what you please," argued Charley, 
 still truculent, "the whole trouble with Arthur is that 
 he has got the wrong ideas." 
 
 At five o'clock the next day the family crowded into 
 the touring car for an excursion, and left Gabriella in 
 a deserted house to receive the lover of her girlhood. 
 Before going Mrs. Carr bad-embraced her sentimentally; 
 Charley had dropped one of his broad jokes on the 
 subject of the reunion; Jane had murmured sweetly 
 that there was no man on earth she admired as much 
 as she did Arthur; and the girls had effusively compli 
 mented Gabriella on her appearance. Even Willy, the 
 baby of eighteen years ago, had prophesied with hilarity 
 that "Old Arthur Peyton wasn't coming for nothing." 
 One and all they appeared to take her part in the 
 romance for granted; and while she waited in the 
 drawing-room, gazing through the interstices of Jane's 
 new lace curtains into the avenue, where beyond the 
 flying motor cars the grassy strip in the middle of the 
 street was dappled with shadows, she wondered if she 
 also were taking Arthur's devotion for granted. She 
 had not seen him for eighteen years, and yet she was 
 awaiting him as expectantly as if he were still her lover. 
 Would his presence really quiet this strange new rest 
 lessness in her heart this restlessness which had come
 
 514 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 to her so suddenly after her meeting with Florrie? 
 Was it true that her youth was slipping from her 
 before she had grasped all the happiness that life offered ? 
 Or was it only the stirring of the spring winds, of the 
 young green against the blue sky, of the mating birds, 
 of the roving, provocative scents of flowers, of the check 
 ered light and shade on the grassy strip under the 
 maples? Was it all these things, or was it none of them, 
 that awoke this longing, so vague and yet so unquench 
 able, in her heart? 
 
 A car stopped in the street outside, the bell rang, 
 and she watched the figure of a trim mulatto maid flit 
 through the hall to the door. An instant later Arthur's 
 name was announced, and Gabriella, with her hands 
 in his clasp, stood looking into his face. It had been 
 eighteen years since they parted, and in those eighteen 
 years she had carried his image like some sacred talisman 
 in her breast. 
 
 "How little you've changed, Gabriella," he said 
 after a moment of silence in which she told herself 
 that he was far better looking, far more distinguished 
 than she had remembered him. "You are larger than 
 you used to be, but your face is as girlish as ever." 
 
 "And I have two children nearly grown," she replied 
 with a trembling little laugh; "a daughter who is al 
 ready thinking of the White Sulphur." 
 
 They sat down in the pink chairs on the gray carpet, 
 and leaned forward, looking into each other's faces as 
 tenderly as they had done when they were lovers. 
 
 "It's hard to believe it," he answered a little stiffly, 
 in his dry and gentle voice, which held a curious note 
 of finality, of failure. For the first time, while he 
 spoke, she let her eyes rest frankly upon him, and there
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 515 
 
 came to her, as she did so, a vivid realization of the 
 emptiness and aimlessness of his life. He looked 
 handsomer than ever; he looked stately and formal 
 and impressive; but he looked old though he was only 
 forty-five he looked old and ineffectual and acquies 
 cent. The fighting strength, such as it was, had gone 
 out of him, and the stamp of failure was on him, from 
 his high, pale, intellectual forehead, where the fine 
 brown hair had retreated to the crown of his head, to 
 his narrow features, and his relaxed slender limbs, 
 with their slow and indolent movements. He was one 
 of those, she felt intuitively, who had stood aloof from 
 the rewards as well as from the stains of the struggle, who 
 had withered to the core, not from age, but from an 
 inherent distrust of all effort, of all endeavour. For his 
 immobility went deeper than any physical habit: it 
 attacked, like an incurable malady, the very fibre and 
 substance of his nature. With his intellect, his training, 
 his traditions, she discerned, with a flash of insight, 
 that he had failed because he lacked the essential faith 
 in the future. He had lost, not because he had risked, 
 but because he had hesitated, not because he had loved 
 ease, but because he had feared effort. For fear of a 
 misstep, he had not dared to go forward; from dread 
 of pain, he had refused the opportunity of happiness. 
 She knew now why he had never come to her, why he 
 had let her slip from his grasp. All that was a part of his 
 failure, of his distrust of life, of his profound negation 
 of spirit. 
 
 "Yes, it is hard," she assented; and there came over 
 her like a sudden sense of discomfort, of physical 
 hardship, the knowledge that, in the very beginning, 
 she was trying to make conversation. Meeting his
 
 516 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 sympathetic smile the smile that still delighted the 
 impressionable hearts of old ladies she told herself 
 obstinately, with desperate determination, that she 
 was not disappointed, that he was just as she had 
 remembered him, dear and lovable and kind and con 
 ventional. When she recalled what he had been at 
 twenty-seven, it appeared inevitable to her that at 
 forty-five he should have settled a little more firmly 
 into the mould of the past, that his opinions should 
 have crystallized and imprisoned his mind immovably in 
 the centre of them. 
 
 She told him what she could about Archibald and 
 Fanny about her choice of schools, her maternal pride 
 in Archibald's intellect and Fanny's appearance, her 
 hopeful plans for the future and he listened attentively, 
 with his manner of slightly pompous consideration, 
 while he passed one of his long narrow hands over his 
 forehead. When she had finished her vivacious recital, 
 he began to talk slowly and gravely about himself, 
 with the tolerant and impersonal detachment of one 
 who has reduced life to a gesture, a manner. " I wonder 
 if he has ever really cared about anything even about 
 me?" she questioned, after a minute; but while the 
 thought was still in her mind, he mentioned his mother's 
 name, and it was impossible to doubt the sincerity of 
 his sorrow and his tenderness. "I have seemed only 
 half alive since I lost her," he said; and the words 
 were like a searchlight which flashed over his character 
 and illumined its obscurities. Did his whole attitude 
 of immobility and negation result from the depth and the 
 intensity of his feeling, from the exquisite reticence and 
 sensitiveness of his soul? 
 
 "I know, I know," she murmured in a voice of sym-
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 517 
 
 pathy. After all, she was not disappointed in him. 
 He was as tender, as chivalrous, as noble as she had 
 believed him to be. The Dream was true; and yet 
 in spite of its truthfulness, it seemed to evaporate 
 slowly while she sat there in Jane's pink satin chair and 
 looked out at the sunlight. Only the restlessness, the 
 inappeasable longing in her heart had not changed. 
 Looking across the hall into the library she could see 
 the old French mirror reflecting the bronze candelabra, 
 with crystal pendants, and the thought flitted into 
 her brain: "It is all real. I am here, talking to Arthur. 
 It is every bit true." But her words failed to convince 
 her, and she had a curious sensation of vagueness and 
 thinness, as if their low, gentle voices were issuing from 
 shadows. 
 
 "I should like to show you some of our improve 
 ments," he said presently, with a faintly perceptible 
 ripple of animation. "I wonder if you would care to 
 come out in my car? We might go up Monument 
 Avenue into the country." 
 
 The idea was delightful, she told him with convincing 
 enthusiasm; and while she ran upstairs to put on her 
 hat, he went out to the car, which was standing in front 
 of the house. So preoccupied was he with his reflec 
 tions, that when Gabriella appeared, he started almost 
 as if he had forgotten that he was waiting for her. 
 
 The air was as soft and fragrant as summer; the 
 grassy strip under the young maples was diapered with 
 sunlight, and an edge of rosy gold was tinting the far 
 horizon. As they sped up the avenue Arthur pointed 
 out the houses to her as possessively as Charley had 
 done the afternoon before, and in the pride with which 
 he told her the cost of them she recognized an admi-
 
 518 
 
 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 rable freedom from envy or bitterness. If he had not 
 achieved things, his attitude seemed to say, it was be 
 cause he had never been in the race, because he had 
 preferred to stand aside and enjoy the reposeful enter 
 tainment of the spectator. 
 
 The avenue, which swept on indefinitely after the 
 houses had stopped, dwindled at last to two straight and 
 narrow walks binding the town to the country with 
 bands of concrete. The pines had fallen in blackened 
 ruins, and where Gabriella remembered thickets of 
 wildflowers there were masses of red clay furrowed by 
 cart wheels. 
 
 "You see, we're developing all this property now," 
 observed Arthur, in a gratified tone as they whirled 
 past an old field intersected by a concrete walk which 
 informed the curious that it was "Arlington Avenue." 
 "Honeysuckle Lane has gone, too, and we're grading 
 a street there now in front of the old Berkeley place." 
 
 "The growth has been wonderful," said Gabriella, a 
 little pensively; "but do you remember how lovely 
 Honeysuckle Lane used to be? That's where we went 
 for wild honeysuckle in the spring." 
 
 "Oh, we'll find plenty of honeysuckle farther out. 
 I gathered a big bunch of it for Cousin Nelly yesterday." 
 
 For a while they sped on in silence. Arthur was 
 intent on the wheel, and Gabriella could think of 
 nothing to say to him that she had not said in Jane's 
 drawing-room. When at last they left the desolation 
 < of improvement, and came out into the natural coun 
 try, the sun was already low, and the forest of pines 
 along the glowing horizon was like an impending storm. 
 Once Arthur stopped, and they got out to gather wild 
 honeysuckle by the roadside; then with the sticky,
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 519 
 
 heavily scented blossoms in her lap, they went on again 
 toward the sunset, still silent, still separated by an 
 impalpable barrier. "He is just what I thought he 
 would be," she thought sadly. "He is just where I 
 left him eighteen years ago, and yet it is different. In 
 some inexplicable way it is different from what I ex 
 pected." And she told herself that the fault was her 
 own that she had changed, hardened, and become 
 hopelessly matter-of-fact that she had lost her youth 
 and her sentiment. 
 
 Suddenly, as if the action had been forced upon him 
 by the steady pressure of some deep conviction, some 
 inner necessity, Arthur turned his face toward her, and 
 asked gently: "Gabriella, do you ever think of the 
 past?" 
 
 Facing the rosy sunset, his features looked wan and 
 colourless, and she noticed again that he seemed to 
 have dried through and through, like some rare fruit 
 that has lain wrapped in tissue paper too long. 
 
 She looked at him with wistful and sombre eyes. 
 Now that the desired moment had come, she felt only 
 that she would have given her whole future to escape be 
 fore it overtook her, to avoid the inevitable crowning 
 hour of her destiny. 
 
 "I think of it very often," she answered truthfully, 
 while she buried her face in the intoxicating bloom of 
 the honeysuckle. 
 
 "Do you remember my telling you once that I'd 
 never give you up that I'd never stop caring? " 
 
 "Yes, I remember but, oh, Arthur, you mustn't 
 
 " She sat up with a start, gazing straight ahead 
 
 into the rose and gold of the afterglow. From the 
 deserted road, winding flat and dun-coloured in the
 
 520 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 soft light, she heard another voice the strong and 
 buoyant voice of O'Hara saying: "I'm not the sort 
 to change "and then over again, "I'm not the sort 
 to change " 
 
 "I suppose it's too late," Arthur went on, with his 
 patient tenderness. "Things usually come too late 
 for me or else I miss them altogether. That's been 
 
 the way always and now ' With his left hand 
 
 he made a large, slow, commemorative gesture. 
 
 "You're the best the kindest " An urgent 
 
 desire moved her to stop him before he put into words 
 the feeling she could see in his face. Though she knew 
 that it was but the ghost of a feeling, the habit of a de 
 sire, which had become interwoven with his orderly and 
 unchangeable custom of life, she realized nevertheless 
 that its imaginary vividness might cause him great 
 suffering. A vision of what might have been eighteen 
 years ago of their possible marriage rose before her 
 while she struggled for words. How could her ener 
 getic nature have borne with his philosophy of hesita 
 tion, her imperative affirmation of life with his denial of 
 effort, her unconquered optimism with his deeply rooted 
 mistrust of happiness? 
 
 There was beauty in his face, in his ascetic and over- 
 refined features, in his sympathetic smile and his cul 
 tured voice; but it was the beauty of resignation, of 
 defeat nobly borne, of a spirit confirmed in the bitter 
 sweetness of renouncement. "It would make an old 
 woman of me to marry him," she thought, "an old, 
 patient, resigned woman." 
 
 "Most things have slipped by me," he resumed pres 
 ently, while they raced down a long hill toward the 
 black pines and the fading red of the afterglow. In a
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 521 
 
 marshy pond near the roadside frogs were croaking, 
 while from the darkening fields, encircled with webs of 
 mist, there floated the mingled scents of freshly mown 
 grass, of dewy flowers, of trodden weeds, of ploughed 
 earth, of ancient mould all the fugitive and im- 
 memorially suggestive odours of the country at twilight. 
 And at the touch of these scents, some unforgotten 
 longing seemed to stir in her brain as if it had slept 
 there, covered by clustering memories, from another life 
 time. She wanted something with an unbearable inten 
 sity; the vague and elusive yearning for happiness had 
 become suddenly poignant and definite. In that instant 
 she knew unerringly that she was in love not with a 
 dream, but with a fact, that she was in love not with 
 Arthur, but with O'Hara. For days, weeks, months, 
 she had been blindly groping toward the knowledge; 
 and now, in a flash of intuition, it had come to her 
 like one of those discoveries of science, which baffle 
 investigators for years, and then miraculously re 
 veal themselves in a moment of insight. Her first an 
 tagonism, her injustice, her unreasonable resentments 
 and suspicions, she recognized now, in the piercing 
 light of this discovery, as the inexplicable disguises of 
 love. And she was not old she was not even middle- 
 aged she was as young as Fanny, as young as the 
 eternal, ageless spirit of romance, of adventure. This 
 was life in her pulses, in her brain, in her heart life, 
 not pale, not bitter sweet, but sparkling, glowing, bub 
 bling like wine. 
 
 At the foot of the long hill Arthur turned the car, 
 and they flew back between the dim fields where the 
 croaking of frogs sounded louder in the darkness. 
 Ahead of them the lights of the car flitted like golden
 
 522 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 moths over the dust of the road, and in the sky, 
 beyond the thin veil of mist, the stars were shining over 
 the city. Spring, which possessed the earth, bloomed 
 in Gabriella's heart with a wonderful colour, a wonderful 
 fragrance. She was young again with the imperish 
 able youth of magic, of enchantment. To love, to 
 hope, to strive, this was both romance and adventure. 
 
 "Is it too late, then, Gabriella?" asked Arthur, after 
 a long silence, and in his voice there was the sound of 
 suffering acquiescence. 
 
 "I'm afraid it is, dear Arthur," she answered softly, 
 and they did not speak again until the lights blazed 
 over them, and they ran into Monument Avenue. 
 After all, it was too late. What could she have added 
 to the answer she had given him? 
 
 When they reached the house, he did not come in 
 with her, and tears stained her face while she went 
 slowly up the steps, and stood beside Jane's hydrangeas 
 with her hand on the bell. Then, as the door opened 
 quickly, she saw her mother waiting, with an eager, 
 expectant look, at the door of the library, and heard her 
 excited voice murmur: "Well, dear?" 
 
 "We had a lovely drive, mother. Arthur is just as I 
 remembered him, except that he has grown so much 
 older." 
 
 A disappointed expression crossed Mrs. Carr's face. 
 "Is that all? " she asked regretfully. 
 
 Gabriella laughed happily. "That is all only I 
 found out exactly what I wanted to know." 
 
 For the rest of the week she devoted herself to her 
 mother with a solicitude which aroused in the brain of 
 that melancholy lady serious apprehensions of a hasten 
 ing decline; and when her visit was over, she pack'
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 523 
 
 her trunks, with girlish, delicious thrills of happiness, 
 and started back to New York. 
 
 "Do you really think I am failing so rapidly, Ga- 
 briella?" Mrs. Carr inquired anxiously while they 
 waited for the train on the platform of the upper station. 
 
 "Failing? Why, no, mother. You look splendidly," 
 Gabriella assured her, a little surprised, a little startled. 
 "Why should you ask me such a thing? " 
 
 "Oh, nothing, dear. I had a fancy," murmured 
 Mrs. Carr meekly; and then as the train rushed into 
 view, she kissed her daughter reproachfully, and stood 
 gazing after her until the last coach and the last white 
 jacket of the dining-car attendants vanished in the 
 smoky sunshine of the distance. 
 
 Through the long day, lying back in her chair, with 
 her eyes on the flying green landscape, Gabriella 
 thought of the discovery she had made while she was 
 driving with Arthur. The restlessness, the uncer 
 tainty, the vague yet poignant longing for an indefinite 
 good, had passed out of her happy and exultant heart. 
 In obedience to the law of her nature, which decreed 
 that she should move swiftly and directly toward the 
 end of her destiny, she was returning to O'Hara as 
 resolutely, as unswervingly, as she had fled from him. 
 
 "It's strange how little I've ever understood, how 
 little I've ever known myself," she thought, staring 
 vacantly at a severe spinster, with crimped hair and a 
 soured expression, who sat before the opposite window. 
 I've gone on in the dark, making mistakes and dis 
 coveries from the very beginning, undoing and doing 
 over again, creating illusions and then destroying them 
 always moving, always changing, always growing 
 new directions. A year ago I'd have laughed at
 
 524 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the idea that I could love any man but Arthur that 
 of all men I could love Ben O'Hara; and to-day I know 
 that he is the future for me that he is the beginning 
 again of my youth. A year ago I thought only how I 
 might change him, how I might make him over, and 
 now I realize that I shall never change him, that I shall 
 never make him over, and that it doesn't really matter. 
 /It isn't the vital thing. The vital thing is character, 
 and I wouldn't change that if I could. For the rest, 
 I shall probably always wish him different in some 
 ways, just as I wish myself different. I'd like to have 
 him more like Arthur on the surface, just as I'd like 
 to have myself more like Fanny. I'd like to give him 
 Arthur's manner just as I'd like to give myself Fanny's 
 complexion. But it isn't possible. He will always be 
 what he is now, and, after all, it is what he is it is not 
 something else that I want " 
 
 With a glimmer of the clairvoyant insight which had 
 come to her on the country road, she understood that 
 O'Hara was for her an embodied symbol of life that 
 she must either take him or leave him completely and 
 without reserve or evasion. He was not an ideal. In 
 the love she felt for him there was none of the senti 
 mental glamour of her passion for George. She saw 
 his imperfections, but she saw that the man was bigger 
 than any attributes, that his faults were as nothing 
 compared to the abundance of his virtues, and that, 
 perfect or imperfect, the tremendous fact remained that 
 she loved him. 
 
 In the opposite chair, the severe spinster had taken 
 a strip of knitted silk out of her bag, and was working 
 industriously on a man's necktie of blue and gray. 
 From her intent and preoccupied look, from the nervous
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 525 
 
 twitching of her thin lips, the close peering of her 
 near-sighted eyes, through rimless glasses which she 
 wore attached by a gold chain to her hair, she might 
 have found in the act of knitting a supreme consolation 
 for the inexorable denials of destiny. "I wonder if it 
 satisfies her, just knitting?" thought Gabriella. "Has 
 she submitted like Arthur to chance, to the way things 
 happen when one no longer resists? Is she really con 
 tented merely to knit, or is she knitting as a condemned 
 prisoner might knit while he is waiting for the scaffold?" 
 And while she watched the patient fingers, she added: 
 "One must either conquer or be conquered, and I will 
 never be conquered." 
 
 It was eight o'clock when she reached New York, 
 and as she drove the short distance to West Twenty- 
 third Street she began to wonder when she should see 
 O'Hara, and what she should say to him. In the end 
 she decided that she would wait for a chance meeting, 
 that she would let it happen when it would without 
 moving a step or lifting a hand. Before many days 
 they would be obliged to meet in the yard or the hall, 
 and some obscure, consecrated tradition of sex, some 
 secret strain of her mother's ineradicable feminine in 
 stinct, opposed the direct and sensible way. "As soon as 
 I meet him and in the end I shall surely meet him 
 everything will be right," she thought, with her eyes on 
 the streets where the spring multitude of children were 
 swarming. And from this multitude of children, of 
 young, ardent, and adventurous life, there seemed to 
 emanate a colossal and irresistible will the will to be, 
 to live, to love, to create, and to conquer. 
 
 The taxicab turned swiftly into Twenty-third Street, 
 and while it stopped beside the pavement, she saw that
 
 526 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 Mrs. Squires was standing, with her arms on the gate, 
 staring into the street. As Gabriella alighted, the 
 woman came forward and said, with suppressed emo 
 tion, while she wiped her eyes on the back of her hand: 
 "You came just a minute too late to say good-bye to 
 Mr. O'Hara." 
 
 "Good-bye? But where has he gone?" 
 "He has gone to Washington to-night. To-morrow 
 he is starting to the West." 
 
 "When is he coming back? Did he tell you?" 
 At this Mrs. Squires broke down. "He ain't ever 
 coming back, that's what I'm crying for. He's given 
 up his rooms, and his furniture all went to the auction 
 yesterday. He says he's going to live out in Colorado 
 or Wyoming for the rest of his life, and he didn't even 
 tell me where I could write to him. It's a great loss 
 to me, Mrs. Carr. I'd got used to him and his ways, 
 and when you've once got used to a man, it ain't easy 
 to give him up." 
 
 She sobbed audibly as she finished; and it seemed to 
 Gabriella that a lifetime of experience passed in the 
 instant while she stood there, with her pulses drumming 
 in her ears, her throat contracting until she struggled 
 for breath, and the lights of the city swimming in a 
 nebulous blur before her eyes. Yet in that instant, as 
 in eve~y crisis of her life, she turned instinctively to 
 action, to movement, to exertion, however futile. 
 While she walked across the pavement to the waiting 
 cab, for the crowning and ultimate choice of her life, 
 she abandoned forever the authority and guide of tra 
 dition. Tradition, she knew, bade her sit and wait 
 on destiny until she withered, like Arthur, to the vital 
 core of her nature; but something mightier than tradi-
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 527 
 
 tion, something which she shared with the swarming 
 multitude of children in the streets the will to live, 
 to strive, and to conquer this had risen superior to the 
 empty rules of the past. With her hand on the door of 
 tirertaxicab, she spoke rapidly to the driver: "Drive 
 back to the station as fast as you can, there is not a min 
 ute to lose." 
 
 When the cab started, she leaned forward, with her 
 hands clasped on her knees, and her eyes on the street, 
 where the children were playing. Because of the 
 children, they drove very slowly, and once, when the 
 traffic held them up for a few minutes, she felt an impulse 
 to scream. Suppose she missed him, after all ! Suppose 
 she lost him in the station! Suppose she never saw 
 him again! And beside this possibly it seemed to her 
 that all the other suffering of her life George's deser 
 tion, her humiliation, her struggle to make a living for 
 her children, the loneliness of the long summers, her 
 poverty and hunger and self-denial that all these 
 things were merely superficial annoyances. "If we 
 don't go on, I shall die," she said aloud suddenly; 
 "if we don't go on, I shall die," and when at last the 
 cab started again, she heard the words like an under 
 current beneath the innumerable noises of the street, 
 "If we don't go on, I shall die." 
 
 The taxicab stopped; a porter ran forward to take her 
 bag, and while she thrust the money into the driver's 
 hand, she heard her voice coolly and calmly giving 
 directions. 
 
 "I must catch the next train to Washington." 
 
 "Have you got your ticket, Miss?" 
 
 She stared back at him blankly. Though she saw 
 his lips moving, it was impossible for her to distinguish
 
 528 LIFE AND GABRIELLA 
 
 the words because she was still hearing in a muffled 
 undercurrent the roar of the streets. 
 
 "Have you got your ticket?" They were passing 
 through the station now, and he explained hurriedly: 
 "You can't go through the gate without a ticket." 
 
 She drew out her purse, and panic seized her afresh 
 while she waited before the window behind a bald- 
 headed man who counted his change twice before he 
 would move aside, and let her step into his place. 
 Then, when the ticket was given to her, she turned 
 and ran after the porter through the gate and down the 
 steps to the platform. As she ran, her eyes wavered 
 to the long platform, and the little groups gathered 
 beside the waiting train, which seemed to shake like a 
 moving black and white picture. 
 
 "Suppose I miss him, after all! Suppose I never 
 see him again!" she thought, and all that was young 
 in her, all that was vital and alive, strained forward as 
 her feet touched the platform. Except for several 
 coloured porters and a woman holding a child by 
 the hand, the place was deserted. Then a man stepped 
 quickly out of one of the last coaches, and by his 
 bigness and the red of his hair, she knew that it was 
 O'Hara. At the first sight of him the panic died sud 
 denly in her heart, and the old peace, the old sense of 
 security and protection swept over her. Her face, 
 which had been lowered, was lifted like a flower that 
 revives, and her feet, which had stumbled, became the 
 swift, flying feet of a girl. It was as if both her spirit 
 and her body sprang toward him. 
 
 At the sound of his name, he turned and stood 
 motionless, as if hardly believing his vision. 
 
 "I came back because I couldn't help it," she said.
 
 THE DREAM AND THE REALITY 529 
 
 But he was always hard to convince, and he waited 
 now, still transfixed, still incredulous. 
 
 "I came back because I wanted you more than any 
 thing else," she added. 
 
 "You came back to me?" he asked, slowly, as if 
 doubting her. 
 
 "I came back to you. I wanted you," she repeated, 
 and her voice did not quaver, her eyes did not drop from 
 his questioning gaze. It was all so simple at last; it 
 was all as natural as the joyous beating of her heart. 
 
 "And you'll marry me now to-morrow? " 
 
 It was the ultimate test, she knew, the test not only 
 of her love for O'Hara, but of her strength, her firm 
 ness, her courage, and of her belief in life. The choice 
 was hers that comes to all men and women sooner or 
 later the choice between action and inaction, between 
 endeavour and relinquishment, between affirmation 
 and denial, between adventure and deliberation, be 
 tween youth and age. One thought only made her 
 hesitate, and she almost whispered the words: 
 
 "But the children?" 
 
 He laughed softly. "Oh, the children are always 
 there. We're not quitters," and in a graver tone, he 
 asked for the second time: "Will you come with me 
 now, Gabriella? " 
 
 At the repeated question she stretched out her hands, 
 while she watched the light break on his face. 
 
 "I'll come with you now anywhere toward the 
 future," she answered. 
 
 THE END
 
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