Part 3 (1/2)
His features were straight and very narrow, with the look of sensitiveness one a.s.sociates with the thoroughbred, and the delicate texture of his skin emphasized this quality of high-breeding, which was the only thing that one remembered 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 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 precedent in law or custom, for thinking as he did. His opinions, which were both active and abundant, were all perfectly legitimate descendants of tradition, and the phrase ”n.o.body 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 reproachfully 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.”
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 children,” replied Gabriella stanchly. ”Of course, my life will be entirely different now, Arthur,” she added gently. ”Everything is altered for me, too, since yesterday. 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 aimless way? One can't make a living out of plain sewing, and though, of course, Charley will be supposed to provide for his children, he isn't exactly the sort one can count on.
Brandywine's, you see, is only a beginning. What I mean is that I am obliged to learn how to support 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 moment's thought, he went on again with the gentle obstinacy 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 Brandywine.”
”He won't order me about,” answered Gabriella cheerfully; ”but mother feels just as you do. She says I am going out of my cla.s.s because I won't stay at home and work b.u.t.tonholes.”
”You couldn't go out of your cla.s.s,” 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 s.h.i.+ning serenely above the sordid struggle--”
Overwhelmed by the glowing train of his rhetoric, he broke down suddenly and caught pa.s.sionately at the cool hand of Gabriella.
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”