Books: Miss Gibbie Gault

K >> Kate Langley Bosher >> Miss Gibbie Gault

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Neither lightning nor thunder could silence her tongue, however,
and, though at some distance from the window near which Mrs. Moon
and Mrs. Burnham were sitting, she talked on with slight regard to
their attention, from time to time opening her eyes, only to shut
them quickly again it a flash of lightning caused fresh fright.

"I might have known it was going to storm like this," she said after
a while, "for last night was the hottest night I ever felt in my life.
When I went to bed I didn't think I was going to sleep a wink, and I
wouldn't if I'd stayed awake and thought about it. The mosquitoes were
perfectly awful. Biggest things I ever saw. I thought once there were
bats in the room. Sakes alive! that reminds me I haven't ordered a thing
for dinner! I didn't intend to stay here a minute; just stopped by on my
way to Mr. Blick's, and here it is after one o'clock! I get so tired of
those everlasting three meals a day that I almost wish there were no
such things as stomachs. I would wish it if Mr. Tate wasn't in the feed
business. Half one's time is spent in getting something to put in them
and the other half in suffering from what we put. Do you all ever have
dyspepsia? I do --awful. And not a doctor in town knows what to do
for it. I take more medicine--"

"Maybe that is what gives it to you." Mrs. Burnham looked at Mrs.
Moon and smiled. When she first came to Yorkburg she had wondered
why Mrs. Tate was called "Buzzie," but she had long since found out,
also the fitness of the appellation. "I guess I am queer about
medicine," she went on, bending over to see if there were any breaks
in the clouds. "I rarely take it. There is nothing so apt to keep you
sick."

"That's so. And after a while we'll all have to be Christian
Scientists or New Thoughters or some other thing that don't call in
doctors. I wish I was one this minute. I'd rather think something
than swallow something, and nobody but the rich can afford to be sick
these days. If you say you've got a plain everyday sort of pain the
doctor puts a name on it and yanks you to a hospital and cuts it out
before he's sure what the thing really is. If you live you're lucky.
If you don't--well, you're dead. That's all. And if you're tired out
and fidgety and feel like crying as much as you want to, they say
you're a nervous prostrationer and tie you to a trained nurse at
twenty-five dollars a week, and don't let you see friend or relative
until you're better or worse. I tell you Mr. Tate would go crazy if
he had to hand out twenty-five dollars a week to have a girl in white
wait on me. And I wouldn't blame him. If I were a young man I'd think
a long time before I'd get married these days. A man wouldn't buy a
horse unless he knew it was healthy, but he'd marry a girl without
knowing. But I never saw a man who wouldn't rather butt his own head
his own way then be told he didn't have to, and nobody gets thanked
for telling. Mercy! I'm hot; nearly melting. Is it still raining,
Beth?"

Mrs. Moon got up and raised the window. "Not very much, and the
clouds seem to be scattering. I should think you would be roasting,
way over in that corner with all those cushions around you. Why
don't you come by the window? The air feels so fresh and good."

"No, sir!" Mrs. Tate opened her eyes, but closed them quickly again.
"There goes another flash of lightning! The thunder is getting better,
but I'm not going to sit by an open window as long as there's any of
it left. But I'm hot, all right. Seems to me Yorkburg is a great deal
hotter in summer now than it used to be. That's only natural, I
suppose, as everything in Yorkburg has changed. If old General Wright
and Mr. Brockenborough and Major Alden and Judge Gault and some others
of their day could come back they wouldn't know it. They were the
lordliest, high-handedest bunch of old aristocrats that ever lived,
and they ruled this town like they owned it. Specially Major Alden.
He didn't have a bit of business sense, Father Tate used to say, but
he'd had money all his life and he would spend it; and when there
wasn't any to spend he spent on just the same. Major Alden didn't
really believe the Almighty made common people. He thought they came
up like weeds and underbrush and, though you couldn't cut them down
exactly, you must keep them down somehow. He really believed it.
Some people think so now."

"Certainly his granddaughter doesn't." Mrs. Burnham put down her
work and took up a palm-leaf fan and began to use it, running her
finger around the neck of her collar to loosen it. "I don't think
anybody in Yorkburg begins to understand what Mary Cary is doing
here, or what she means to certain people--"

"I don't suppose we do"--Mrs. Moon started to say something, but
Mrs. Tate was ahead of her--"And no one in the world would ever
have imagined Mary would do things like that. But that's Mary.
From childhood no one ever knew what she'd be doing next. She
certainly is looking pretty, but she isn't the beauty her mother
was. I'm like Miss Gibbie in one thing. I believe in a sure-enough
hell. They say real smart people don't any more except preachers
who have to and women who want to. Miss Gibbie says she wouldn't
believe in it if it hadn't been for the war, but I believe in it
because some things have to be burned out, and Major Alden needed
to have his pride purified. You knew he used to be a beau of Miss
Gibbie's, didn't you?"

Mrs. Burnham shook her head. "No, I know little of Yorkburg's
personal history."

"Well, he was. She never was a raging beauty, but she had more men
in love with her than any girl she ever knew, mother used to say,
and more sense than all the rest put together. That's what I think
was so funny. Men don't care for sense in a woman. If she can sign
coal tickets and market tickets, and look after them, and be
good-looking and nice it's all they care for. I never knew how to
make out a check until my own daughter showed me. What's the use?
Never had a dollar in bank in my life. Mr. Tate's the kind of man
who thinks a woman ought to come to her husband for everything, and
as he never gives me money unless I ask for it, and I don't ask
until I need it to spend right away, it has no chance to get in a
bank. I don't mean I have to worry Mr. Tate. He gives me all he can,
and, besides, I always did think it was a mistake in a woman to know
too much about business things. Men don't like it. I've always made
it a rule never to do anything Mr. Tate could do for me. I've often
noticed one or the other is going to be helpless, and I'd rather be
waited on than wait."

She settled herself more comfortably on the sofa and again opened
her eyes cautiously. "Of course I'm old-fashioned. Young people have
very different ideas from their parents. Girls plank themselves right
straight alongside of men and say they are just as smart as men are.
Of course they are. Women have always known it, but they used to have
too much sense to tell it. Nowadays they tell everything. The easiest
thing on earth to fool is a man. He just naturally loves helplessness,
and when Aylette married I told her for mercy's sake not to be one of
these new-fashioned kind of wives, but be a clinger. She doesn't like
clingers, and sometimes I'm afraid she's too smart to be real happy.
She takes after her grandfather Tate. I certainly do thank the Lord He
didn't see fit to make me clever. I've often heard my mother say a smart
woman had a hard time in life."

"I wonder why Miss Gibbie did not marry." Mrs. Burnham was
looking at Mrs. Moon. "If she had so many beaux it is strange she
did not marry."

"Now who on earth could think of Miss Gibbie Gault being married!"
The cushion dropped from the top of Mrs. Tate's head and she
stooped to pick it up. "Her independent tongue was laughed at and
her witty speeches repeated, but what home could have stood her?
She knew better than to get married. If she ever loved anybody,
nobody ever knew it, mother used to say, but I always have believed
she did. She certainly is one queer person. Mrs. Porter asked her
last week to give something to the choir fund and she said she'd do
nothing of the kind, and she thought the people ought to be paid for
having to listen to squeaks like we had instead of paying them to
squeak, and she wouldn't give a cent. She holds on to what she's got
like paper to the wall, Mrs. Porter says."

Mrs. Moon got up and pressed the button by the door, and when
the maid appeared spoke to her.

"Mrs. Tate and Mrs. Burnham will stay to dinner, Harriet. See
that there are places at the table for them."

"Indeed I can't stay to dinner." Mrs. Tate jumped up and came
toward the window. "I believe it's stopped raining, and if the
thunder is over I'll have to run on home. When I left there
everything looked like scrambled eggs, and nobody knows where
I am, and I wouldn't telephone just after a storm for forty dollars.
There's the sun. I'm going. Good-bye." And picking up her skirts
with both hands she ran down the steps and out into the street and
across it to her house, half-way down the square.

Coming back from the door to which they had followed her, Mrs.
Moon and Mrs. Burnham laughed good-naturedly. "How do you suppose
she manages it?" both asked, and then laughed again at the
oneness of thought.

"I've often wondered why she didn't lose breath," said Mrs.
Burnham, taking her seat this time in the hall for the few minutes
longer she could stay. "But I wouldn't dare try to see how she does
it. She's worse than Mrs. McDougal. Did you hear of the letter she
wrote Miss Gibbie? Mrs. McDougal, I mean. I'm so glad she's coming
home before we go away. To hear her tell of her trip will be better
than the minstrels. When are you going away, Mrs. Moon?"

The latter shook her head. "I don't know. I'm trying to make Mr.
Moon go with me, but I'm afraid there's no use in even hoping it.
Richard says it's for the family he is working as he does, and he
is honest in thinking it, but if I and the children were to die
to-morrow he'd begin the day after the funeral and keep at it
just as persistently as ever."

Mrs. Burnham looked down at her work as if examining closely the
stitches she had just put in. Mr. Moon was the richest man in
Yorkburg, but not for years had he and his wife gone off together
for a holiday. Presently she looked up. "Men are queer, aren't
they? I suppose all wives wish sometimes they could mix up, as
one does dough, a whole bunch of husbands and cut them out in new
patterns with some of each other's qualities in each. There's Mr.
Corbin. He doesn't work enough. Mr. Moon works too much. I saw Mr.
Corbin on this front porch the other day reading Plato's
/Republic/ as though it were the first reading. It was the
third he told me. Mr. Moon--"

"Never heard of Plato's /Republic/, or if he did has forgotten
it." Mrs. Moon laughed, but as pushing back a sigh. "His republic
is Yorkburg and the mills. He can never go away. Often I wonder if
it is worth it, the money he is making. He gives me everything on
earth but what I want most."

Mrs. Burnham again bent over her work. "A woman has to pay full
price for a successful husband," she said, presently. "Perhaps Mr.
Corbin's philosophy isn't all wrong. He has no wealth, no fame, no
great position, but he has gotten something out of life many men
miss."

"And his wife has gotten much some other women miss. Men who make
money never seem to have time to enjoy it until too late. In
business it's the game men love. They build big houses, fill them
with fine furniture and servants, give their wives beautiful
clothes and carriages--and then find they have no home. I wish
I didn't feel as I do about money, but I've come to see it's the
most separating thing on earth."

She stopped and laughed with something of embarrassment. "This
is a queer subject you and I have drifted into. We both have
husbands of whom we should be proud, but--" Her lips quivered.
"Men say women don't understand. Perhaps they don't; but when
Mr. Moon was not so busy and we could take the buggy, shabby
though it was, and go for a long afternoon in the country and
talk over our plans, and whether we could afford this or whether
that, it was a far happier ride than I take now in the automobile.
He gave me one this spring, but he has no time to go with me."
Her eyes filled. "There are some things women understand too well."

For a moment there was silence, then she drew her chair closer to
the open door. "But a woman shouldn't be silly, should she? I often
think of what my old mammy told me the day I was married. 'Don't
never forget, honey, that what you's marryin' is a man,' she said,
'and don't be expectin' of all the heavenly virtues in him. They
ain't thar."

Mrs. Burnham laughed. "They are not. In a woman 'they ain't thar,'
either. Miss Matoaca Brockenborough says from observation there is
something to be said on both sides." She looked up. "You knew Miss
Matoaca was going away with Miss Gibbie Gault and Mary Cary,
didn't you? She hasn't been out of Yorkburg for years and is
as excited about it as if she were sixteen. She's going as Mary's
guest, you know."

"Yes, I know." Mrs. Moon's voice was suddenly troubled. "It
is all right, of course, but I can't understand why Mary keeps
things so to herself. It isn't like her. She isn't rich. Her uncle
is, but I'm sure it isn't his money she's spending. Last week Miss
Ginnie Grant and her old mother were sent off for a month's stay
in the mountains. I don't understand--"

"I don't either." Mrs. Burnham got up and smiled in the perplexed
face before her. "But when the time comes we will all understand,
and until then I'm willing to wait. Mary is acting for some one else,
I suppose. Several people have been suggested, some men, some women.
Somebody said they'd heard a very rich patient of her uncle's out in
Michigan was sending her the money to use as she saw best, and others
say John Maxwell got some one to buy the bonds for him, but--"

"I don't believe it's John. Of course I don't know." Mrs. Moon
got up. "I wish you would stay to dinner. We have peach cream
to-day. It's very nice. You'd better stay."

"I wish I could. Peach cream is terribly tempting, but if I'm not
at the table Mr. Burnham is as injured as if I'd done him a grievous
wrong. He's the only child I have, you know, and I guess he's
rather--"

Mrs. Moon smiled in the laughing face. "I guess he is. Good-bye."

Chapter XVI

MEN AND HUSBANDS

When Mrs. Burnham reached the house in which Miss Gibbie lived she
hesitated for a moment, hand on the gate, then opened it and walked
slowly up the brick box-bordered path to the steps of the pillared
porch. The door was open, and inside was Miss Gibbie, the morning
paper in her hand.

A quick, absorbing glance took in each detail of the well-kept
grounds, the beds of old-fashioned flowers, the fine old trees and
stately house, but not until the porch was reached did she look
toward the open door.

As she neared it she lowered her parasol, and at its click Miss
Gibbie's eyes peered over the top of the paper and looked at her.

"Good-morning! May I come in?"

Miss Gibbie put the paper on the chair by her side, took off her
glasses, wiped them, put them back, and again looked at her visitor.

"Not until I look at you for half a minute," she said. "Raise that
parasol and stand just where you are. There! That's right! In the
doorway you look like a Roisart I saw some years ago in France.
I wanted to buy it, but the man imagined I was one of those fool
Americans who value a thing according to its price, and charged
what he thought he could get. He got nothing. Come in. Do you make
you own clothes?"

"I make my summer ones." Mrs. Burnham's face lighted with
amusement, and, as she took the chair Miss Gibbie pushed toward
her, she brushed back the stray strands of hair the breeze had
blown across her face, and fastened them securely.

"I told some one the other day you were an illustration of what
I have always contended, and that is a woman can look well in very
inexpensive clothes if she has sense enough to get the right kind.
I hear you have a good deal of sense."

"I have in some things." Mrs. Burnham laughed and took the fan
Miss Gibbie held toward her. "I've shown it to-day by coming to
see you. Of course I shouldn't, according to regulations, as you
won't come to see me, but I wanted to see you and so I came. Do
you mind--that I have come?"

The sweet, fine face of the questioner flushed and, at sight of
it, Miss Gibbie smiled, then tapped it with the tip of the
turkey-wing fan.

"I am glad you have come. You are so fresh and cool in that white
dress it's good to look at you. Did you go to the lecture last night?
I hear the Mother's Club is made up of old maids and childless married
women; but as they're the only ones who know anything about children
nowadays, it's very proper they should issue edicts concerning them.
What was the lecture about?"

"'Lungs and Livers.' and it was fine. It really was. How to breathe
properly and how to make your liver behave itself are things few
understand, according to Doctor Mallby. I love to hear him. He gets
so mad with ignorance and stupidity. You would have enjoyed him."

"I never go to organ recitals." Miss Gibbie waved her fan as if to
brush away unpleasant suggestions. "Have you seen anything of the
Pryors lately? Some one told me Lizzie Bettie was trying to make
her mother and Maria go away. The whole business ought to be
separated from each other. Nothing so gets on your nerves as seeing
from each other. Nothing so gets on your nerves as seeing the same
sort of faces day after day. And of course they wouldn't think it
proper to smile under three months at least.

"They certainly seem to be grieved by their father's death. I had
no idea how many people loved Mr. Pryor, or how--"

"Little his family guessed it. They took William for granted, like
they take everything else in life. And now it's too late to let him
know how they loved him. My dear"--Miss Gibbie leaned forward
suddenly--"you love your husband? Then tell him so. If he is a good
husband tell him that also. There's nothing a man can stand so much
of as praise. A woman can make a good husband out of almost any kind
of man if she will just go about it right."

"But suppose she doesn't know how? It takes a long time for
women to understand men."

"Do they ever?" Miss Gibbie's penetrating eyes were losing no shade
of the color rising slowly in Mrs. Burnham's face. "But isn't it
because they spend so much time wondering why men don't understand
them? The best of men, you believe, are selfish? They are. I am not
one of the people who thinks the Lord did such a mighty work when He
made man, but if a woman can make up her mind to marry him, it is
generally her fault if she doesn't keep his love to the end--"

"Oh, I don't think so!" Mrs. Burnham's voice was vehement in protest.

"Of course you don't. You are a married woman. I am not. I did not
say always. I said generally, and I mean what I say. My dear"--again
Miss Gibbie leaned forward--"I have been young and now am old, and I
have watched many lives. With only occasional exceptions a woman has
just about the kind of husband she makes the man she marries become."

"I don't think that, either. A man's character is supposedly formed
before he marries; and, besides, a woman ought not to be required to
make the kind of husband she wants. She certainly can't make him
intelligent, or brilliant, or able, just because she wants him to be."

"I never said anything about making a husband intelligent or brilliant
or able. Many miserable wives have husbands of that kind. Any woman
of sense wants a man of sense--but most of all she wants to be his
first thought in life. And when she isn't it's usually because of
selfishness or sensitiveness or stupidity on her part."

"But look at the men who are--who are--"

"Who are what?" Miss Gibbie's eyes met Mrs. Burnham's steadily.
"Unfaithful? And why? Oh, I know some men should be burned up
like garbage taken from the kitchen door, but I'm talking now of
the man who starts right, starts loving his wife. If there's anything
in him she can make more. The more may not be much, but it's better
than the less."

"But how?"

"My dear madam"--the turkey-wing fan made broad and leisurely
strokes backward and forward--"you and asking me concerning that
with which I have no experience, merely an opinion. I never felt
equal to assuming the responsibility of a man, not was I sure the
reward was worth the effort. But listen!" The fan stopped. "Had I
been willing to marry I should have felt the blame and shame were
mine had I not kept the love my husband gave me and increased it
with time."

Mrs. Burnham leaned forward. Her hands unconsciously clasped tightly.

"Tell me," she said, "how can one do it?"

"In what way, you mean? How should I know? Besides, it would
depend on how much the wife loved her husband, how much she
wanted to keep his love. The ways would be as varied as the types
of man to be dealt with. I've never seen a man who valued anything
he got too easily, anything that held itself cheap, and the woman
who doesn't inspire some reverence--"

"But you said just now the woman ought to tell her husband how
much she loved him."

"Did I? I thought I said she ought to tell him she loved him. Men
love to pursue. Something still to be won, something that may be
lost, is something he should never forget. Neither should she. I did
say just now a man could stand a full amount of praise. I've known
good husbands made of mighty unpromising material. A woman of tact
and judgment can do much with little. I've seen them do it."

She leaned back in her chair, and in her keen gray eyes was a
gleam of the gay twinkle of her youth.

"It isn't bad judgment to make a man believe he is something. He
is by nature inclined to it, and a little encouragement is good for
most people. So is a better understanding. Most miserable marriages
come from misunderstanding, with pride and stubbornness as its cause.
I once know a girl, a very wealthy girl, whose health failed shortly
after she married. Her husband was young, gay, selfish. Got to leaving
her, and she was too proud to let him see she cared. He thought she
didn't care, thought her absorbed in herself. One night, coming in late,
he saw a light in her room and called good-night on the way to his. She
had kept the light, a gas-lamp, by her side, hoping he would come in.
There was something she wanted to say, so she wrote in the note she
left, but when he passed by she wrote the note, turned her face to the
lamp, put out the light and turned on the gas. The next morning they
found the note in her hand."

Mrs. Burnham drew in her breath. "How horribly he must have felt!"

"He did. Didn't marry again for thirteen months. The next wife was
sensible. There was no more suffering in silence. As her husband he
walked upright forever after."

Mrs. Burnham twisted her handkerchief around the handle of her fan.
"I feel so sorry for a man when he loses his wife."

"You do what?" Miss Gibbie's voice was little less than a shriek,
and she sat upright, her fan at arm's-length.

"Feel sorry--" The look on Miss Gibbie's face stopped her and her
own flushed. "Yes, I do," she protested, bravely. "Men are so
helpless and they seem so bewildered."

Miss Gibbie lay back, relaxed and limp, her eyes closed. "My dear
child, you are younger than I thought." Her eyes opened as
significantly as they had closed, and the turkey-wing fan tapped
one pink cheek and then the other.

"My dear, don't worry over widowers. For the first six weeks
they are doubtless troubled. They don't know where their clothes
belong and they can't find their shoes, and they're learning a great
many things they didn't know. But man is recuperative and philosophic.
Oh, I don't mean all men. All men are no more alike than all women,
only aliker. But you've probably never watched widowers carefully. I
have. The transformation that takes place in the ex-husband is something
like that in little boys when they first begin to notice little girls.
Both use more soap and water, both brush their hair and their clothes
more carefully, and select their cravats with more caution, and there
isn't a piece of femininity that passes that isn't looked at with
speculation in the eye."

She waved her fan with a comprehensive sweep. "Even the most
modest of released husbands get inflated. Of course if there
are children there are complications, but a woman generally
attends to complications. Haven't you ever noticed the way a
first-year widower walks? In his own eyes he's a target, and those
eyes are always roving to see who is looking his way. He's right,
for a good many women look. Men have a large capacity for loving,
and many of them deserve another chance at happiness."

Mrs. Burnham opened her handkerchief and wiped her lips. Somehow
it was shocking, but Miss Gibbie's voice was beyond resistance.

"But surely you think men grieve?" she began.

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