Mary Shura: Gabrielle

"I am ashamed of her," his mother said bluntly. "She may look like other girls, but you hear the things she talks about—people using makeup and running away from home. And an actress! It’s like an insult to flaunt an actress in the company of decent people."

David’s voice rose ominously before he got it under control. "Now listen, Mother," he said fiercely. "I don’t like that talk, and I don’t like your acting as if you’re doing me a favor by having Gabrielle here. Granny was the one who suggested asking her to visit, if you remember."

For some reason that Gabrielle didn’t really understand, his words made his mother even angrier. "Now see here," she hissed at him, "don’t go saying anything you’ll regret when you’ve come to your senses. It’s bad enough that Mrs. Forrester and the Thompsons had to come calling with her here. I’m reasonably sure we got Mrs. Forrester away without learning the truth, and Mollie and her mother are not likely to spread gossip that could affect them later."

"But they came," David reminded her triumphantly. "They wanted to see Gabrielle. My other friends do, too."

"Curiosity is a human weakness," she told him. "They’d act the same way if somebody caught Jesse James and hauled him into town. People always troop to see a spectacle. But you are not taking her out among our friends, and that’s the end of that."

David must have just walked away and left her because Gabrielle heard Mrs. Wesley call him to come back. After a few minutes, the back door slammed.

Gabrielle crept out from behind the wall of hollyhocks with her face flaming. David’s grandmother had been right that first day in the garden. Eavesdroppers didn’t hear good of themselves. But they got more questions answered than they would have thought to ask.

Maybe knowing was even worth the pain.

That night David brought the buggy around as soon as dinner was over. He held out his hand for Gabrielle to get up into the seat. As he mounted the seat beside her, he called back to the two women on the porch, "We’ll be back at sundown like I promised."

"Have a nice ride," Grandma Harper called.

His mother glared after them in silence.

"Where are we going?" Gabrielle asked as the horse cantered down the lane and then turned west away from the river.

"To a very special place," he told her.

That wouldn’t be the town then, Gabrielle decided. But that was all right. Who was she to pour grist into the mills of gossip?

"How do you like the house where we are living now?" David asked after a few moments of silent riding.

"I love it," Gabrielle said truthfully. "I especially like the wide porches around it and the stained-glass window above the door into the front hall."

He nodded and flipped his reins across the back of the horse, causing the animal to pick up speed. The sun was poised on the top of a ridge of trees when David turned from the main road to drive up a curving lane. When he brought the buggy to a stop, she leaned forward to look. She saw nothing but a sloping pasture studded here and there with clumps of locust trees.

"There," David said, winding the reins of the horse and turning to take her into his arms. "That is where I will build our house. Right on the crest of the hill where we will get a cross-breeze and you will have a good view of the countryside."

Gabrielle pulled away. "Please, David, don’t make me angry."

He loosened his grip, but kept one arm around her shoulder. "You don’t understand, do you, Gabrielle ? This is my land, good, rich growing land. And it’s mine to do with as I please. Grandpa Harper left it to me in his will, free and clear. You can have any house you want built here. And flowers, any kind of flowers you want to grow."

When Gabrielle remained silent, not knowing how to tell him what she had to say, he rushed on.

"But if you don’t like this place, we can always take that other house, the one we’re living in now."

She stared at him in astonishment. "Your mother’s house? What are you saying?"

He took her hand and kneaded it between his own. "That’s Granny’s house, not Mother’s. Granny only lets us live there because we had no place else to go after my father took off. Granny will leave that place to me in her will. She’s so crazy about you that she wouldn’t mind moving if you wanted to live there right now."

"David," she said, after drawing a deep breath, "you’re going too fast. I haven’t said I would marry you. You mustn’t make plans like that, even in your mind."

He laughed softly and seized her again, shutting off her words with a demanding kiss. She pulled back and turned away angrily. "I never said I’d marry you, and I won’t even talk about it if you can’t quit that."

"It’s the dark guy on the boat who’s making you act like this," he said.

"And stop that, too," she told him. "If you want to know one of the big things that’s holding me back, it’s the river. I could never live where I couldn’t even see the river. Maybe I couldn’t ever even live without the river under me. But I don’t know yet. I really don’t know."

"That’s one of the big things," he said. "What else?"

She sighed. How could she tell him that she knew how his mother felt without revealing how much she had heard?

When she had been silent a long time, he glanced at the sky and sighed, too. The sun was gone, leaving only a ruddy glow above the tops of the trees. Tiny, dark shapes dipped and darted against that band of light. Gabrielle knew they were either chimney swifts or the bats from the hill caves David had told her about earlier. She assured herself they were chimney swifts.

"I promised Granny I would be back," he said resignedly.

They rode a long time in silence. Always before he had quickly recovered his good humor after she had pushed him away. This time he was different. His tone was still angry when he finally spoke. "What else do you want from me, Gabrielle ? You know you have me. You know I can never settle for another woman after you. What are you after that I haven’t offered you?"

She almost gasped. Did he really think she was bargaining with him? She took a deep, steadying breath.

"I’m asking for nothing, David. I am only telling you that I am not sure I could ever live apart from the river."

The last warm sunset rays set that wonderful coppery glow on his fine face and lit his hair. How handsome he was, and how tortured he must be by what he must see as only her stubbornness. She put her hand gently on his arm.

They were at the foot of the lane. He slapped the reins hard across the horse’s back. "The river," he said scathingly. "All you can think about is that stupid muddy river. A river is nothing but a watery thread that winds between the good land on its banks. The river is nothing. This is the real world."

"Your world," she told him quietly. Then they were at the front of the house.

The shadowy figure of Mrs. Wesley watched from the porch. David helped Gabrielle down in silence and left her to make her way into the house alone as he put away the horse and buggy.

GABRIELLE looked over her clothes a half dozen times before going to Grandma Harper’s room to ask for her help.

"You couldn’t put on anything you wouldn’t be pretty in," Grandma Harper told her, smiling.

"But I haven’t the faintest idea what anybody wears to a barn dance," Gabrielle wailed. "I’ve never even watched one, much less been to one."

Grandma Harper rose and put her work back into the quilting basket beside her rocking chair. "Then let’s go along to your room and have a look at your things. My gracious, this is like the old times when my friends and I tried on everything but the kitchen curtains before we could decide what to sashay out in."