Books: Miss Gibbie Gault
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Kate Langley Bosher >> Miss Gibbie Gault
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He looked at the writhing, twisting woman steadily, and out of his
eyes went all pity and patience. "The name of Pugh is a very honest
one," he said presently. "And a man who takes good care of horses
is worthier than he who takes no care of his family. If there is
nothing else, I must bid you good-morning."
"There is something else." She rose from the sofa on which she had
been sitting and, baffled, threw prudence to the wind. She could
bring from him neither regret nor sympathy, neither explanation nor
apology. Frankly the night before he had told his part. Clearly this
morning he had not changed his mind. No. She was not through.
"And why, may I ask, was this interest in my daughter's affairs taken
so suddenly? I understand you alone were not interested, but by another
beguiled into this traitorous help. To get Lily out of the way fits
well into the scheming plans of your helper. As a woman, I have been
ashamed to see how you have been pursued by one who had no mother to
direct her. She has thrown herself at your head, at your feet, has
given you no chance to escape, and now I suppose is triumphant--"
John turned. "Of whom are you speaking?"
"Of whom? You know very well of whom. Since childhood Mary Cary
has--"
"Don't you dare!" His hand went out as if to hold back further words.
"Don't you dare call her name in this room." He went over to a window
and opened it, letting the cold air in with a rush. "Miss Cary is the
one woman in the world I want for my wife. She is the only woman I've
ever given a thought to, and if she does not marry me I do not marry.
A dozen times I have asked her. A dozen times she has refused. She
does not enter into this discussion. Whatever else you forget, you
are to remember that. Am I understood in regard to Miss Cary?"
Mrs. Deford's shoulders shrugged, then her eyes grew glassy. Suddenly
she fell back upon the sofa as if faint, then suddenly again her mind
was changed and her finger pointed toward the door.
"Go!" she said. "I consider you have insulted me. Go!"
Chapter XXIII
THE GUILD AGAIN
The Needlework Guild was again meeting with Mrs. Tate. Since its
adjournment in May no meetings had been called by Mrs. Pryor, its
president, and October had passed with nothing done.
Six months of retirement from her usual round of activities had
seemed to Mrs. Pryor the proper allotment of time for a widow to
absent herself from all places of a semi-public nature; and in
adherence to her views she was waiting for six months to pass.
Rumors of restlessness reaching her, however, she had called a
meeting for November, which meeting, held on the morning following
the Porter's party, had an attendance that would have been
gratifying had its cause not been well understood.
Every chair was taken when Miss Honoria Brockenborough, who rarely
honored the guild by her presence, came in, and Mrs. Tate, jumping
up, offered her seat, then stepped into the hall and called the
maid.
"Run over to Mrs. Corbin's and get me three or four of her
dining-room chairs," she said, in a half-whisper, easily heard
through the open door. "Both of those you brought out of my room
are broken, and you'll have to take them out as soon as you come
back. Tell her girl to help you, and do, pray, hurry! Don't stand
looking at me like that, with your lip hanging down like a split
gizzard. Go on! bring six, and for goodness' sake don't stop and
talk! Soon as you come in put some more coal on the fire. Mittie
Muncaster look blue already."
Incessant chatter had preceded the calling of the meeting to order,
and only by restraint were the opening exercises endured, reports
heard, and suggestions for the winter's work discussed. These over,
with a sigh of expectancy or anxiety, according to temperament, the
ladies settled down to their sewing, and chairs were drawn closer
to the fire.
"I certainly am glad it isn't raining or hailing or snowing this
morning," began Mrs. Tate, shaking out the gown of unbleached cotton
on which she had been supposedly sewing during the past season.
"What is the matter with this thing, anyhow? I believe I've gone and
put a sleeve in the neck. Everybody knows I could never sew. Mr. Tate
knew it when I married him, for I told him I'd rather handle a
pitchfork than a needle. I might hold a pitchfork, but a needle I
can't. What 'd I tell you! Mine's gone already!"
Triumphantly she looked at Mrs. Webb, who had taken the twisted
garment from her hands and was ripping the sleeve from the neck.
According to Mrs. Webb's ideas, it had been basted in. According to
Mrs. Tate's, it had been sewed, but as there was no argument, and
the needle was indeed gone, Mrs. Tate got up and went over to the
fire. Punching it, she made the coals crackle and blaze cheerily,
and, pulling up her skirt, she leaned against the mantel and looked
happily around the well-filled room.
"You certainly ought to feel complimented, Mrs. Pryor," she said,
nodding toward that lady's back. "I don't believe we've had a meeting
like this since you've been president. I thought everybody would be
so tired after the party we wouldn't have anybody at all, but
everything in Yorkburg is wide-awake this morning. There'll be a lot
of visits paid to-day. I wonder if Miss Gibbie Gault will be here?"
"Of course she won't! Miss Gibbie never comes unless she has
something to say." Mrs. Pryor's long black veil was thrown back over
her bonnet, and, standing by the table on which were yards of cottons
to be cut into gowns, she took up her scissors and ran her fingers
carefully down their edge. "I understand Laura Deford has sent for
Miss Gibbie. She has something to say to her this morning."
"Then she'll have to go to her and say it." Mrs. Webb looked up, and
for a moment her fingers stopped their rapid sewing. "You don't
suppose Miss Gibbie is going to Mrs. Deford's just because Mrs.
Deford sent for her, do you? If Laura knows what's good for her,
and what she's doing, she will let Miss Gibbie alone."
"But that's what she don't know." Miss Lizzie Bettie Pryor's voice
was as blunt as usual. "If ever there was a wild woman it's Laura
Deford this minute. I've been with her all the morning, and she don't
know salt from seaweed. She sent for John Maxwell and says he told her
not to dare call Mary Cary's name in his presence, and that he never
expects to marry any woman on earth."
"I don't believe it!" Mrs. Moon sat upright. "Mrs. Deford must be
insane."
"She is." Miss Lizzie Bettie bit off a strand of cotton. "She'll
cool down after a while, but just at present she don't know what
she's talking about. If ever a woman wanted a man for a son-in-law
she wanted John Maxwell. The flesh-pots of his Egypt are after her
heart. I feel sorry for her, but she had no business behaving as
she's done for months past."
"I don't wonder John helped the runaways." Mrs. Corbin threaded her
needle at arm's-length. "Safety lay in flight of some sort, and as
he will never fly as long as Mary Cary is here, the sensible thing
was to help shoo Lily off. Mrs. Deford will have to let him alone now.
Poor thing! It does seem strange how the cup that's bitterest is the
one we always have to drink. I don't suppose any of us would scramble
or push to get in the Pugh family, but Mr. Corbin says young Pugh is
one of the finest young men in town, and he thinks Lily is lucky to
get him. Of course, Mr. Corbin's opinion is just a man's, but Lily's
best friend couldn't think she had any more sense than she needed,
and she's the kind that fades before thirty. She's got a pretty
complexion and lovely hair, but her nose--A girl with a nose like
Lily's ought to be thankful to marry anybody, Mr. Corbin says."
"That's what I say!" Mrs. Tate's right foot was held out to the
blazing coals, and her hands held tightly the rumpled shirt. "I tell
you we have to follow the fashion, and it's the fashion now to forget
what we used to remember. The Pughs certainly are plain, and that
oldest girl, the fat, married one, must be hard to swallow, but they
say that young one, Kitty I believe is her name, is going to marry
Jim McFarlane. The McFarlanes are as good as the Defords any day, if
Jim is as lazy and good-for-nothing as he's good-looking. Jim is my
cousin, and I ought to know."
"So you will be connected with the Pughs also?" Mrs. Pryor turned,
scissors in hand, and looked significantly at Mrs. Tate. "The Pughs
will believe themselves in society after a while; will try, no doubt,
to find a family tree."
"It could be a horse-chestnut." Mrs. Tate nodded at Mrs. Pryor. I
always did say a person wasn't responsible for their kin, and pride
and shame in them don't speak much for yourself. I'm glad Aylette
didn't marry Billy Pugh, but if she had I wouldn't be ranting around
like Laura Deford is doing this minute. I guess I'd have given her
a piece of my mind, and gone out and gotten her some wedding clothes.
A girl certainly ought to have pretty things when she gets married,
even if you don't think much of her taste in men. When Aylette was
married I ran more ribbon in her clothes--pink and blue and lavender.
I told her she might be a widow, and it was well to be ready. She
didn't want lavender, but I love it, and I would put some in. I don't
suppose a girl ever does marry just the kind of man her mother would
like her to. I wouldn't want Aylette to know it, but I never have
understood what she saw in Mr. Penhurst to fall in love with. He's
from Worcester, Massachusetts." Mrs. Tate's hand went up and her eyes
rolled ceilingward. "What he thinks of this part of the world wouldn't
do to be written out!"
"And what we think of his wouldn't, either!" Miss Lizzie Bettie
Pryor's head nodded so emphatically at Mrs. Tate that the latter sat
down. "All I ask of people from his section of the world is to stay
away from ours. I wish I could make a law forbidding people north of
Mason and Dixon's line to come to Yorkburg. We don't want to know
anything about them--what they think or what they say or what they
do. If I could I'd put a glass top on Yorkburg and keep it always as
the one spot in Virginia that remembers the past and is true to it."
"I'm mighty glad you can't make laws or put on glass tops." Mrs.
Moon smiled good-naturedly. "If it wasn't for the people north of
Mason and Dixon's line the woolen-mills would have to close and
there'd be no butter for my bread. A good many other things would
be affected also, and Yorkburg would waste away were it not for
your unloved friends beyond the line. Certainly the inn would have
to close, and the Colonial Arms and--"
"Better waste away and die than decay in ideals and traditions and
heritage!" Miss Lizzie Bettie looked around the room. "Here we are
educating everything in Yorkburg. Next year two new handsome
schools will be opened and filled with the riffraff of the town.
What are we going to do with them after they're educated? Our
streets have been torn up for months--"
"But they'll be lovely when finished." Mrs. Corbin laid down her
work. "You know yourself, Lizzie Bettie, how Mary Cary fought for
brick pavements instead of asphalt, because she said they suited
Yorkburg better. And you know how she's worked to save all the old
things and have the new ones to suit. In a few years this will be
the prettiest town in the country. That Mr. Black who bought those
ugly old shacks and stores, and pulled them down, making pretty
open spaces of their lots, certainly has been a good friend to
Yorkburg. I don't care what line he came over. I'm glad he came,
and if he would only stay here long enough Mr. Corbin and I surely
would ask him to tea."
"Who is this Mr. Black?" Mrs. Pryor looked in first one direction
and then another." I would like to know something of this
mysterious individual who comes here, buys property, pulls down
our oldest houses--"
"Oldest eyesores." Mrs. Webb borrowed Mrs. Moon's scissors. "He
certainly has put up some pretty old-fashioned-looking houses in
their place. I was crazy for one, but Mr. Webb was so slow they
were all taken before he spoke." She sighed. "A woman might as
well try to move a mountain as to hurry a man when he don't want
to do a thing. I've spoken for the next one, if there are any
next."
"Who is this Mr. Black?" Again Mrs. Pryor asked the question.
"Nobody knows who he is, but I believe he is John Maxwell."
Miss Puss Jenkins, who had come in late, spoke from her seat near
the door, and instinctively all turned toward her.
"John Maxwell!" Half a dozen voices repeated the name, but Miss
Lizzie Bettie Pryor was the first to protest.
"Nonsense!" she said. "How can one man be another? I've seen Mr.
Black several times. He's a sharp, shrewd, business-looking man
who seems to know Mary Cary very well. Whenever he is in town he
spends a good deal of time with her, I hear. He may be acting for
somebody else, but it is not John Maxwell. The latter is not the
kind of man to let anybody else attend to his business."
"Well, anyhow, I heard somebody say it was John Maxwell who bought
those bonds and didn't want anybody to know it." Miss Puss was not
to be crushed by Lizzie Bettie Pryor. "Of course, it's all guesswork,
but a lot of money has been spent in this place in the last year. Not
only on streets and schools and cleaning up and prizes for the
prettiest back-yards and trees and things for Milltown, but on people.
A dozen people that I know of were sent off on trips during the summer.
People who couldn't afford to go. And it was always the same thing
Mary Cary would tell. She'd just laugh and say Yorkburg's friend had
asked her to do it. Yorkburg's friend never sent me anywhere. Everybody
knows John Maxwell is Mary Cary's friend."
"So is Miss Gibbie Gault." Mrs. Tate, who was making tatting on her
fingers with Mrs. Burnham's cotton, looked up. "Miss Gibbie is
certainly her friend, but I don't suppose anybody would waste time
thinking she was doing all these things."
"I imagine not!" Mrs. Pryor's voice was decisive. Then her face
changed, and with an expression suitable to recent affliction she
folded her hands and shook her head.
"It is, indeed, distressing," she began, "to see a young girl so
defy public opinion as Mary Cary does. For over a year she has been
back in Yorkburg, and save for the weeks she was away on a summer
holiday there has been no one of them in which she has not been
discussed whenever two or three have met together."
"She certainly has!" Mrs. Tate's assent was eager, if undesired.
"Her coming back has been like the raising of the dead. If there
ever was a dull place, it was this one before she came. Somehow since
she got here things look like they've taken a tonic, and so do we.
Mary always did have a way of making you sit up and take notice and
enjoying yourself."
Mrs. Pryor touched the bell. "As I was saying, Mary Cary is one of the
people--I say it in all charitableness--who will always be talked about,
just as--just as--"
"The sun would be talked about if it came out at night." Mrs. Tate felt
no grudge and helped out willingly.
"Just as anybody would be talked about who is so very--very alive. I
am sure she means well, but it is the Christian duty of some one to
point out to her the mistakes she is making. She is spending money
freely. Where does it come from?" Mrs. Pryor forgot her weeds, and
her voice was the voice of the May meeting. "Where does that mysterious
money come from? Everybody knows Gibbie Gault has money, but has
anybody ever known her to give a dollar of it away? Go to her when
you will and ask her to subscribe to this or contribute to that and
she waves you out. Who has ever seen her name on any list of givers
to anything. The money her father left her has increased enormously
in value I've been told. She's a good business woman. Nobody denies
that, but what will she present to her Maker when she stands before
Him at the bar of judgment. And what are the words which she will
hear?"
"Couldn't any of us guess that." Miss Mittie Muncaster went up to the
grate and put on a large lump of coal. "I reckon a good many people
would like to know what other people are going to have said to them at
the bar of judgment. The thought of hell is a great comfort to some
people. I certainly am glad the Lord's got to judge me, and not women.
But, speaking of Mary Cary, I hear she's awfully worried about Lily's
running away. She thinks it was so disrespectful to her mother not to
tell her first and run afterward, if her mother still held out. Mary
don't know Mrs. Deford. Lily wanted to take her head with her when she
ran. There are mothers and mothers, and Mrs. Deford isn't the kind Mary
keeps in her heart. I bet she gives it to John when she sees him."
"Since this Mr. Fielding has been here, no one sees John with Mary
any more." Mrs. Corbin put her needle between her lips. "Who is this
Mr. Fielding? I don't like his looks a bit. He's never been here
before."
Miss Honoria Brockenborough got up to go. Her lorgnette, the only one
in town except Mrs. Deford's, was held to her eyes, and for a moment
she looked at Mrs. Corbin.
"His presence here is a disgrace to Yorkburg." Her tone was icy. "I
have heard very strange things of late. It is his money, I understand,
which Mary Cary has been spending. He has as much as admitted it
himself."
Chapter XXIV
THE PIECE OF PAPER
Standing in front of the library fire, Miss Gibbie held her hands out
to it blaze. "This room isn't warm enough. Jackson isn't half attending
to the furnace. I wish you'd ring for him to put on more coal. Jackson
is losing his mind of late. If he wasn't a church member I'd think he
was seeking, he's been so doleful the last few days. They are
half-cracked, every one of them, when their meetings begin."
"Jackson has undigested dyspepsia. He told me so himself just before
supper." Mary Cary opened the coal-bin, and with the tongs lifted a
large lump of coal and put it in the grate. "It must be a dreadful
thing to have, judging by his expression." She laughed and wiped her
hands on her handkerchief. "I suggested peppermint and hot water, but
he looked so reproachfully at me that I changed it to Compound Elixir
of Hexagonal Serafoam. He's anxious to try that."
"What is it?"
"I don't know." She shook her head. "But the sound pleased him, so
I'm going to give him some calomel to-morrow under the new name. It's
nonsense to say there's nothing in a name. There's money in it, cure
in it, and comfort of mind. Why don't you sit down?"
Miss Gibbie walked over to the library-table, took up a magazine,
opened it, put it down and took up another. Mary, following her
with her eyes, seeing the restlessness which possessed her and the
restraint she was obviously trying to exercise, was puzzled, and
again she asked: "Why don't you sit down?"
"I think it's because I prefer to stand. But it may be because I've
been sitting for hours hearing people tell the same thing over in a
different way. Just sixteen people have been here to-day and every
single one of them told me every single thing about the party; how
pretty Polly Porter looked, and what a sight Georganna Brickhouse
made of herself in a light-blue dress, suitable for sixteen, and how
good the supper was, all except the salad. That was a new-fashioned
mess Mrs. Deford made after a recipe brought from Maine. Mittie
Muncater's nose is still up. Things have come to a pretty pass when
Maine recipes are used in Virginia, Mittie says. You'd think Yorkburg
had been insulted. And every single one of the sixteen said their say
over the runaway. Mourned, groaned, or were glad, according to their
feelings. Some weren't at all surprised. Been expecting it. That was
Lizzie Bettie Pryor and Puss Jenkins. Some people always know a thing
is going to happen after it happens. And some won't believe it though
in front of their face. You, too, have been airing your views on
runaway marriages ever since you came in. For a person who doesn't
intend to get married you have very decided views concerning
matrimony."
"That's way I never expect to get married. If I didn't have views,
I might. I've never said I didn't approve of people marrying. I do.
Though why they want to, I don't see. Life has enough disappointments
without finding that marriage is another. It certainly can't be a
cheerful realization, that of discovering your husband is a very
different man from what you thought him."
"Nor a very cheerful discovery for a man when he realizes the woman
he loves is really a child! My dear Mary Cary, don't imagine the
discoveries of character and temperament, of idiosyncrasies and
peculiarities, are all on the woman's side. A man has to stand much.
There are times when a woman may be an angel, but others when she
behaves as if her ancestry was in a different direction. No wizard
works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies
called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or
woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of
experiencing, some sort of a fool. They play with happiness as though
it were a toy, and learn too late they've thrown away the only thing
worth having in life. By-the-way, speaking of happiness, has this Mr.
Horatio Fielding gone yet?"
Mary Cary drew the big wing chair closer to the fire and sat upon its
arm, one slippered foot on the fender. "No. He has not gone yet. He
goes to-morrow, I believe."
"He does!" Miss Gibbie looked at the face opposite, and over her own
again swept indecision. During supper she had been too incensed to
trust herself to tell what that afternoon had reached her ears, and
yet it must to told. Were it possible to spare her she would spare. It
was not possible. Kind friends were too ready to spread cruel things.
It was best she should hear from her what must be heard.
"This Mr. Fielding," she began, taking a seat on the far end of the
big old-fashioned sofa, well out of the firelight. "Is he a man of
honor? Can you depend upon statements he makes?"
"A man of honor?" Miss Gibbie was looked at questioningly. "I don't
know what you mean. He's abominably blatant and nouveau, and a
terrible trial to talk to. But dishonorable--There's been no
occasion for him to act dishonorably. His statements are mostly about
his father's wealth and the kind of machine he likes best and his
tailor in Piccadilly and cafes in Paris. I don't know how correct they
are. I didn't half hear them. I could think of other things when he was
talking, and generally brought them in for that purpose."
"And yet for some days past you have been constantly with this
abominably blatant and terribly trying person. You have driven home
with him at eight o'clock at night."
"I have. Why shouldn't I? I wouldn't have driven with him at four if
I shouldn't have driven with him at eight. I did that the night I was
caught by the storm at Miss Matoaca Brockenborough's. She was sick,
and Mr. Fielding talked with Miss Honoria in the parlor while I was
up-stairs with Miss Matoaca. I would have come here, but I had some
important letters to write that night and didn't let Mr. Fielding come
in. He drove back and left the horse at Mr. Pugh's stable."
"Had he been drinking?"
Mary Cary got up from the arm of the chair, her face incredulous.
"Drinking? No, he hadn't been drinking. That is, I don't suppose he
had. How could I tell? He talked a lot and laughed at the way Miss
Honoria introduced him to all the family portraits, and the superior
air in which she told him the history of each. I remember he called
her Miss Icicle."
"How did he happen to go there with you?"
"We'd been to drive. He'd never seen the bluff and was interested
in the battle fought there. I made him leave me at Miss Matoaca's,
but he insisted on coming back to go out home with me. I was too
tired to argue." She brushed her hair back as if tired again. "The
rain kept us, and it was eight before we got off."
"I have been told Miss Honoria was not the only one who gave
information that afternoon. When was it? Day before yesterday, I
believe. He made statements which Miss Honoria seemed to find
more startling, if not so amusing, as those he made to her."
"Did he?" Mary straightened one of the tall white candles in the
candelabrum of many prisms on the end of the mantelpiece near which
she stood. Her voice was not interested. "I believe he did tell me
Miss Honoria was a cut-glass catechiser and very much interested in
me."
"He did not tell you his answers to your questions, I suppose?"
"He certainly didn't. I cared for neither questions nor answers."
She turned and looked at Miss Gibbie and laughed indifferently.
"Mr. Fielding seems to have become suddenly important. You sound
like a cross-examining lawyer. He goes to-morrow, and I never expect
to see him again. Why this interest?"
Miss Gibbie looked down at the tip of her slipper. Stooping, she
straightened its bow. "Because of some very silly things I heard
this afternoon." She put the other foot on the rung of the chair in
front of her and carefully smoothed its ribbon with fingers that
twitched. "Honoria Brockenborough claims he told her the money you
have been spending in Yorkburg came from him, that the bonds were
bought by his broker, and that he was Yorkburg's friend."
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