Life and Gabriella: The Story of a Woman's CourageGlasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
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Life and Gabriella: The Story of a Woman's Courage
Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
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 improvised bed, and diluted the mixture with
water before 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 surrounded 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 solitary comfort was the thought
that Jane's attack had conquered Charley as completely as it had
conquered the rest of them.
"Gabriella, I've forgiven him," said Jane, with fainting 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
forgiven him and I never shall." She felt her anger hardened 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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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