CHAPTER X
MOTHER AND DAUGHTER
Rachel Gwyn was seated at the parlor window when Viola entered the house. She was there ten or fifteen minutes later when her daughter came downstairs.
"May I have a word with you, mother?" said the girl, from the doorway, after waiting a moment for her mother to take some notice of her presence.
She spoke in a very stiff and formal manner, for there had been no attempt on the part of either to make peace since the trying experiences of early morning. Viola had sulked all day, while her mother preserved a stony silence that remained unbroken up to the time she expressed a desire to be alone with Kenneth when he called.
Apparently Mrs. Gwyn did not hear Viola's question. The girl advanced a few steps into the room and stopped again to regard the motionless, unresponsive figure at the window. Mrs. Gwyn's elbow was on the sill, her chin resting in the hand. Apparently she was deaf to all sound inside the room.
A wave of pity swept over Viola. All in an instant her rancour took flight and in its place came a longing to steal over and throw her arms about those bent shoulders and whisper words of remorse. Desolation hung over that silent, thinking figure. Viola's heart swelled with renewed anger toward Kenneth Gwynne.
What had he said or done to wound this stony, indomitable mother of hers?
The room was cold. The fire had died down; only the huge backlog showed splotches of red against the charred black; in front of it were the faintly smoking ashes of a once sprightly blaze. She shivered, and then, moved by a sudden impulse, strode softly over and took down from its peg beside the fireplace the huge turkey wing used in blowing the embers to life. She was vigorously fanning the backlog when a sound from behind indicated that her mother had risen from the chair. She smiled as she glanced over her shoulder.
Her mother was standing with one of her hands pressed tightly to her eyes. Her lips were moving.
"He is Robert--Robert himself," she was murmuring. "As like as two peas. I was afraid he might be--would be--" The words trailed off into a mumble, for she had lowered her hand and was staring in dull surprise at Viola.
"What is it, mother?" cried the girl, alarmed by the other's expression. "What were you saying?"
After a moment her mother said, quite calmly: "Oh, it's you, is it? When did you get home?"
"A few minutes ago. How cold it is! The fire is almost out. Shall I get some kindling and start it up?"
"Yes. I don't know how I came to let it go down."
When Viola returned from the kitchen with the fagots and a bunch of shavings, the older woman was standing in front of the fireplace staring moodily down at the ashes. She moved to one side while her daughter laid the kindling and placed three or four sticks of firewood upon the heap. Not a word was spoken until after Viola had fanned a tiny flame out of the embers and lighted the shavings with a spill.
"I met my brother out there in the grove," said she, rising and brushing the wood dust from her hands.
"Yes?"
"I thought maybe you and he had been discussing Barry Lapelle and me and what happened last night, so I started to give him a piece of my mind," said Viola, crimsoning.
A faint smile played about the corners of Mrs. Gwyn's lips. "I can well imagine his astonishment," she said, drily.
"He knew all about it, even if he did not get it from you, mother," said the girl, darkly. "Phin Striker told him everything."
"Everybody in town will know about it before the week is out," said the mother, a touch of bitterness in her voice. "I would have given all I possess if it could have been kept from Kenneth Gwynne. Salt in an open sore, that's what it is, Viola. It smarts, oh, how it smarts."
Viola, ignorant of the true cause of her mother's pain, snapped her fingers disdainfully.
"That's how much I care for his opinion, one way or the other. I wouldn't let him worry me if I were you, mother. Let him think what he pleases. It's nothing to us. I guess we can get along very well without his good opinion or his good will or anything else. And I will not allow him to interfere in my affairs. I told him so in plain words out there awhile ago. He comes here and the very first thing he does is to--"
"He will think what he pleases, my child," broke in her mother; "so do not flatter yourself that he will be affected by your opinion of him. We will not discuss him, if you please. We have come to an understanding on certain matters, and that is all that is necessary to tell you about our interview. He will go his own way and we will go ours. There need be no conflict between us."
Viola frowned dubiously. "It is all very well for you to take that attitude, mother. But I am not in the same position. He is my half-brother. It is going to be very awkward. He is nothing to you,--and people will understand if you ignore him,--but it--it isn't quite the same with me. Can't you see?"
"Certainly," admitted Mrs. Gwyn without hesitation. "You and he have a perfect right to be friendly. It would not be right for me to stand between you if you decide to--"
"But I do not want to be friendly with him," cried the girl, adding, with a toss of her head,--"and I guess he realizes it by this time. But people know that we had the same father. They will think it strange if--if we have nothing to do with each other. Oh, it's terribly upsetting, isn't it?"
"What did he say to you out there?"
"He was abominable! Officious, sarcastic, insolent,--"
"In plain words, he gave you a good talking to," interrupted Mrs. Gwyn, rather grimly.
"He said some things I can never forgive."
"About you and Barry?"
"Well,--not so much about me and Barry as about the way I--Oh, you needn't smile, mother. He isn't going to make any fuss about Barry. He told me in plain words that he did not care whether I married him or not,--or ran away with him, for that matter. You will not get much support from him, let me tell you. And now I have something I want to say to you. We may as well have it out now as any other time. I am going to marry Barry Lapelle." There was a ring of defiance in her voice.
Rachel Gwyn looked at her steadily for a moment before responding to this out-and-out challenge.
"I think it would be only fair of you," she began, levelly, "to tell Mr. Lapelle just what he may expect in case he marries you. Tell him for me that you will never receive a penny or an inch of land when I die. I shall cut you off completely. Tell him that. It may make some difference in his calculations."
Viola flared. "You have no right to insinuate that he wants to marry me for your money or your lands. He wants me for myself,--he wants me because he loves me."
"I grant you that," said Mrs. Gwyn, nodding her head slowly, "He would be a fool not to want you--now. You are young and you are very pretty. But after he has been married a few years and you have become an old song to him, he will feel differently about money and lands. I know Mr. Lapelle and his stripe. He wants you now for yourself, but when you are thirty years old he will want you for something entirely different. At any rate, you should make it plain to him that he will get nothing but you,--absolutely nothing but you. Men of his kind do not love long. They love violently--but not long. Idle, improvident men, such as he is, are able to crowd a whole lot of love into a very short space of time. That is because they have nothing much else to do. They run through with love as they run through with money,--quickly. The man who wastes money will also waste love. And when he has wasted all his love, Barry Lapelle will still want money to waste. Be good enough to make him understand that he will never have a dollar of my money to waste,--never, my child, even though his wife were starving to death."
Viola stared at her mother incredulously, her face paling. "You mean--you mean you would let me starve,--your own daughter? I--why, mother, I can't believe you would be so--"
"I mean it," said Rachel Gwyn, compressing her lips.
"Then," cried Viola, hotly, "you are the most unnatural, cruel mother that ever--"
"Stop! You will not find me a cruel and inhuman mother when you come creeping back to my door after Barry Lapelle has cast you off. I am only asking you to tell him what he may expect from me. And I am trying hard to convince you of what you may expect from him. There's the end of it. I have nothing more to say."
"But I have something more to say," cried the girl. "I shall tell him all you have said, and I shall marry him in spite of everything. I am not afraid of starving. I don't want a penny of father's money. He did not choose to give it to me; he gave half of all he possessed to his son by another woman, he ignored me, he cut me off as if I were a--"
"Be careful, my child," warned Rachel Gwyn, her eyes narrowing. "I cannot permit you to question his acts or his motives. He did what he thought was best,--and we--I mean you and I--must abide by his decision."
"I am not questioning your husband's act," said Viola, stubbornly. "I am questioning my FATHER'S act."
Mrs. Gwyn started. For a second or two her eyes wavered and then fell. One corner of her mouth worked curiously. Then, without a word, she turned away from the girl and left the room.
Viola, greatly offended, heard her ascend the stairs and close a door; then her slow, heavy tread on the boards above. Suddenly the girl's anger melted. The tears rushed to her eyes.
"Oh, what a beast I was to hurt her like that," she murmured, forgetting the harsh, unfeeling words that had aroused her ire, thinking only of the wonder and pain that had lurked in her mother's eyes,--the wonder and pain of a whipped dog. "The only person in all the world who has ever really loved me,--poor, poor old mother." She stared through her tears at the flames, a little pucker of uncertainty clouding her brow. "I am sure Barry never, never can love me as she does, or be as kind and good to me," she mused. "I wonder--I wonder if what she says is true about men. I wish he had not gone to drinking to-day. But I suppose the poor boy really couldn't help it. He hates so to be disappointed."
Later on, at supper, she abruptly asked:
"Mother, how old is Kenneth?"
They had spoken not more than a dozen words to each other since sitting down to table, which was set, as usual, in the kitchen. Both were thoughtful;--one of them was contrite.
Rachel Gwyn, started out of a profound reverie, gave her daughter a sharp, inquiring look before answering.
"I do not know. Twenty-five or six, I suppose."
"Did you know his mother?"
"Yes," after a perceptible pause.
"How long after she died were you and father married?"
"Your father had been a widower nearly two years when we were married," said Rachel, steadily.
"Why doesn't Kenneth spell his name as we do?"
"Gwyn is the way it was spelled a great many years ago, and it is the correct way, according to your father. It was his father, I believe, who added the last two letters,--I do not know why, unless it was supposed to be more elegant."
"It seems strange that he should spell it one way and his own son another," ventured the girl, unsatisfied.
"Kenneth was brought up to spell it in the new-fangled way, I guess," was Rachel Gwyn's reply. "You need not ask me questions about the family, Viola. Your father never spoke of them. I am afraid he was not on good terms with them. He was a strange man. He kept things to himself. I do not recollect ever hearing him mention his first wife or his son or any other member of his family in,--well, in twenty years or more."
"I should think you would have been a little bit curious. I know I should."
"I knew all that was necessary for me to know," said Rachel, somewhat brusquely.
"Can't you tell me something more about father's people?" persisted the girl.
"I only know that they lived in Baltimore. They never came west. Your father was about twenty years old when he left home and came to Kentucky. That is all I know, so do not ask any more questions."
"He never acted like a backwoodsman," said Viola. "He did not talk like one or--"
"He was an educated man. He came of a good family."
"And you are different from the women we used to see down the river. Goodness, I was proud of you and father. There isn't a woman in this town who--"
"I was born in Salem, Massachusetts, and lived there till I was nearly twenty," interrupted Mrs. Gwyn, calmly. "I taught school for two years after my father died. My mother did not long survive him. After her death I came west with my brother and his wife and a dozen other men and women. We lived in a settlement on the Ohio River for several years. My brother was killed by the Indians. His widow took their two small children and went back to Salem to live. I have never heard from her. We did not like each other. I was glad to have her go."
"Where did you first meet father?"
She regretted the question the instant the words were out of her mouth. The look of pain,--almost of pleading,--in her mother's eyes caused her to reproach herself.
"Forgive me, mother," she cried. "I did not stop to think. I know how it hurts you to talk about him, and I should have--"
"Be good enough to remember in the future," said Rachel Gwyn, sternly, her eyes now cold and forbidding. She arose and stalked to the kitchen window, where she stood for a long time looking out into the gathering darkness.
"Clear the table, Hattie," said Viola, presently. "We are through."
Then she walked over to her mother and timidly laid an arm across her shoulder.
"I am sorry, mother," she said.
To this Mrs. Gwyn did not reply. She merely observed: "We have had very little sleep in the last six and thirty hours. Come to bed, child."
As was her custom, Rachel Gwyn herself saw to the locking and bolting of the doors and window shutters at the front of the house. To-night Viola, instead of Hattie, followed the tall black figure from door to window, carrying the lighted candle. They stood together, side by side, in the open front door for a few moments, peering at the fence of trees across the road.
Off in the distance some one was whistling a doleful tune. The spring wind blowing in their faces was fresh and moist, a soft wind laden with the smell of earth. A clumsy hound came slouching around the corner of the little porch and, wagging his tail, stopped below them; the light shone down into his big, glistening eyes. Viola spoke to him softly. He wagged his tail more briskly.
Rachel had turned her head and was looking toward the house that was to be Kenneth's home. Its outlines could be made out among the trees to the right, squat and lonely in a setting less black than itself.
"Before long there will be lights in the windows again," she was saying, more to herself than to Viola. "A haunted house. Haunted by a living, mortal ghost. Eh?" she cried out, sharply, turning to Viola.
"I did not speak, mother."
A look of awe came to Rachel's eyes.
"I was sure I heard--" she began, and then, after a short pause, laughed throatily. "I guess it was the wind. Come in. I want to lock the door."
Viola was a long time in going to sleep. It seemed to her as she lay there, staring wide awake, that everything in the world was unsettled and topsy-turvy. Nothing could ever be right again. What with the fiasco of the night just gone, the appearance of the mysterious brother, the counterbalancing of resolve and remorse within her troubled self, the report of Barry's lapse from rectitude, her mother's astounding sophistry, her tired brain was in such a whirl as never was.
There was a new pain in her breast that was not of thwarted desires nor of rancour toward this smug, insolent brother who had come upon the scene. It hurt her to think that up to this night she had known so little, ay, almost nothing, about her own mother's life. For the first time, she heard of Salem, of her mother's people and her occupation, of the journey westward, of the uncle who was killed by the Indians and the wife who turned back; of unknown cousins to whom she was also unknown. There was pain in the discovery that her mother was almost a stranger to her.