Books: Miss Gibbie Gault
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Kate Langley Bosher >> Miss Gibbie Gault
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Indifference slipped off as a garment, and, at Miss Gibbie's words,
Mary Cary stiffened in rigid horror and unbelief. For a moment she
stared at her as if not understanding, and her hand went to her
throat. She choked in her effort to speak, and her eyes flashed
fire.
"I don't believe it!" The moment between her bearing and speaking
was tense. "He said--" her breath came unevenly--"he said /he/
was Yorkburg's friend? /He/ had given money I had spent! He--
And I--alone in the world!"
She threw out her hands as though to ward off some dreadful thing,
then dropped in the big wing chair and buried her face in her arms.
"Mary! Mary!" Miss Gibbie, terrified by the unexpected effect of her
words, leaned over the twisting figure and put her hand upon it. The
hand was shaken off. For the first time in her life Miss Gibbie Gault
was helpless and afraid.
"Mary!"
"Don't! Don't touch me! Don't speak to me!" She got up and threw
back her head, then looked at the clock. "What time is it?" She walked
over to the bell and pressed it. "You've often said deep down in every
woman was something dangerous. All of us have something we'd die for
quickly. And I--all I have--is just myself."
"What are you going to do?" Miss Gibbie sat down limply in the chair
from which Mary had just risen. "Why did you ring? You aren't going
to take seriously the thing I have told you? The man is being looked
after. John is attending to him to-night."
"John!"
The word came involuntarily, and her head was turned quickly lest
its spasm of pain be seen. "What has John to do with it?"
"A very good deal." Miss Gibbie's breath was coming back. The shock
and fury in Mary's face had frightened her as not in years had she
been frightened. "John has heard these rumors and will settle their
source. What do you want, Celia?"
"You rang, did you not?" Celia, hands on the curtains, waited.
"I rang. I want my coat and hat." Mary Cary turned to her. "I want
you, too, for a little while, Celia. Get ready, please, to go out
with me." She went over to the desk and took from one of its many
pigeon-holes paper and pencil. "I am going to Miss Honoria
Brockenborough's."
"What are you going there for?" Miss Gibbie's voice made pretence
of petulance. "What do you want to see her for?"
"Didn't you tell me when people said things about you that were not
true you made them sign a paper to that effect? Were Miss Honoria
Brockenborough dying she'd have to sign that paper to-night. She has
lied, or the man of whom she spoke has lied, and either the one or
the other or both shall say so. Don't you see"--for the first time
her voice broke, and again she put her hand to her throat--"don't
you see she is taking from me all--everything I have. When I was here,
a child, a bit of sea-weed, I knew my life depended--on just myself.
All the eyes of all the world did not matter so much as my own. You
do not know what it means to be alone in life!"
She stopped as if something had suddenly given way, and on her knees
her face was hidden in Miss Gibbie's lap.
Only the crackling of the coal in the grate broke the stillness of
the room. Presently Miss Gibbie spoke, lifted the white, drawn
face to hers.
"I do not know what it means to be alone in life? It is about all of
life I do know!" Out of her voice she struggled to keep bitterness,
made effort to laugh. "And do you suppose I would let Honoria
Brockenborough scatter her righteous assertions a minute longer than
they were heard? Puss Jenkins left me at four o'clock. An hour later
I was back home." She opened her beaded bag. "There is your piece of
paper!" She shook it in the air. "Honoria Brockenborough is now in
bed with an attack of nervous collapse. I hope it will keep her there
some time. Matoaca hasn't stopped crying since the guild meeting this
morning, and for the first time in her life has bitterly reproached
her Sister Superior who felt it her Christian duty to repeat what she
now says she understood a hope-inflated, love-mad, half-tight fool
had said. Queer old place, Mary, this big world! Queer little place
this old Yorkburg! Not one person in forty thousand can repeat a
statement what repeated can be very differently constructed. I thought
it was as well Honoria Brockenborough should have a few remarks made
to her. She's had them. The doctor is, doubtless, with her now. Do
you want this paper?"
Mary Cary took the paper held toward her. As she read it the color
came back slowly in her face, and the short, shivering breath grew
quiet again.
"Yes," she said, "I want it." With a sob she leaned toward the older
woman. "I told you I was all--alone. And already you--Miss Gibbie!
Miss Gibbie!"
In each other's arms they clung as mother and child.
Chapter XXV
THE CONCLUSION OF A MATTER
You say, then, you did not make the statements the lady credits you
with? You will take oath to that?"
"Of course I will." Horatio Fielding's shifty brown eyes looked for
a moment into John Maxwell's relentless gray ones, then dropped
uneasily. "What in the devil is all this about, anyhow? You come in
on a fellow with some damned gossip a lot of old cats have been
telling in their sewing society and accuse him of it before he knows
what you're talking about. I don't even know what you're getting at."
"I am getting at the truth or falsehood of certain statements
attributed to you. Cut that out--I prefer to talk to you sober." He
waved his hand toward the table on which were bottles of brandy and
White Rock. "You know what these statements are. To repeat them is
unnecessary. The lady who claims she understood you to make them
has repeated them to, among others, a Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse. Mr.
Brickhouse claims he approached you on the subject and you neither
affirmed nor denied them. You are to do one or the other, and do
it now."
Horatio Fielding's face flushed. "I am--am I? Who says so?"
"I say so."
John Maxwell came closer. He looked down on the short, full figure
with the round, red face, and the round, red face grew redder. The
restraint of the larger man, his height and breadth and radiation
of power and purpose stung him, and for a moment he yielded to
bravado. A look in the face above his checked him, however, and he
changed his manner.
"Oh, I'm perfectly willing to deny what I didn't do!" He shrugged
his shoulders. "To hear you one would think I wasn't a gentleman.
Of course I didn't say I'd furnished Mary Cary with money--"
"We are speaking of Miss Cary."
He bowed smilingly. "Miss Cary with money to spend on people here,
or had bought bonds, or was Yorkburg's unknown friend. I said I'd
be glad to do it, as I was a friend of Yorkburg's and would like
to be a better one."
"Sit down at that table."
"What for?" Horatio Fielding's shoulders went back and the dots in
his tan-colored vest showed plainly. "I prefer to stand."
"I prefer you to sit. There's paper and pen and ink at that table.
Three letters at my dictation, and if you hurry you can catch that
ten-ten train."
"I'll be damned if I do!"
"You'll be damned if you don't. To make you understand what you
have done is impossible. To make you make what amends you can,
isn't. Sit down and write."
Three letters, one to Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse, one to Miss Honoria
Brockenborough, one to Miss Gibbie Gault, were written sulkily and
in words supplied by John Maxwell. Signed and in their envelopes,
John put them in his pocket, then again looked at his watch. "You
have plenty of time," he said, "and if you know what's good for you
you'll get out from here and be quick at it."
"Get out nothing!" With a swift movement of his hand Horatio Fielding
poured out a full measure of brandy and drank it. "I'd like to know
what you've got to do with this thing, anyhow! That's the worst of a
little hell of a town like this. Nothing in it but a lot of relics
and old-maid men and pussy-cat women spying on a girl because she's
young and pretty. That cut-glass icicle with an antique nose asked me
so many questions that I thought I'd let her know all the goods wasn't
in this part of the world. She walked me around the room three times
showing me a bunch of old duffers in wigs and knee-breeches, and
half-dressed women with caps or curls. Said she didn't suppose we had
family portraits in Nevada. I told her what we did have. If she chose
to say I said what she says, she did it because she hates people with
money worse than snake poison. All her class is muggy on money. Thinks
it common to have it. But they've got a long reach all right, and can
be very smirky to the face when they smell the stuff. As for
questions--" John being near the window, he took hastily another drink
of brandy. "She asked enough to make a catechism. I didn't mind her
quizzers. She's on the sour, and I thought I'd help her enjoy herself. I
told her I didn't mind Mary Cary's having been an orphan. I was willing
to marry her, parents or no parents."
/"Willing!"/ John turned. His right arm went out, and from Horatio
Fielding's nose blood spurted over the spotted vest, down the legs of
his well-creased trousers, and settled on his patent-leather shoes.
Howling, he sprang toward the larger man. With his foot John kicked him
in the air, and as he came down on the floor stood over him as he would
a puppy.
"I can't fight you. I'm too much bigger," he said, spitting toward the
fireplace. "To shake a rat would be as easy. But I don't promise to
keep my hands off much longer. You're a liar! If you didn't say all
Miss Brockenborough says you said, you implied it. At college you
cheated, and you'd smirch a good name in a minute if your own interests
could be helped. I'd rather not have blood on my hands, and I haven't
time for a trial, but if you don't get out of this town to-night you'll
be shipped out in a box to-morrow. You're got an hour. Are you going?"
Horatio Fielding got up, his handkerchief to the bleeding nose. "If it
takes the last cent I've got on earth I'll make you pay for this," he
said, thickly. He pulled out another handkerchief and put it to his
cut lip. "I believe you've broken my nose."
"I hope I have. You're lucky it's not your neck." John took a card
out of his pocket-book and handed it to the shaking figure. "That's
my address in New York. If you want to see me again you can find me
without trouble. Next time I'll kill you."
But Horatio Fielding was out of the room. An hour later at the station
John Maxwell saw him step stiffly into the sleeper for the West, and,
shrugging his shoulders, he turned away and went rapidly up the street.
Walking toward Pelham Place, he reached the house in which Miss
Gibbie was waiting, but he could not trust himself to go in. At the
door he left a note, then walked down King Street and into the
Calverton road.
For hours he walked. The moon, clear and serene, hung calmly above
him, and in the sandy road shadows cast by the stripped branches of
trees and shrubs swayed and danced, beckoned or stood still. The air
was cold and stinging, and the silence, soft as the pale light of the
meaningless moon, was unbroken save by the whispering of the wind.
Presently at the top of a hill he sat down under a big bare tree and
leaned his back against it. Far off in the distance the lights of
Yorkburg twinkled like fireflies in the hazy darkness, and at his left
a soft, luminous ball was gathering into shape and brilliance. With a
roar it rushed through the outskirts of the little town before its long
black tail of cars could be defined, and as its vibrations reached him
John struck a match and took out his watch.
"The one-twelve," he said, "and fifteen minutes late." A cigar was
lighted slowly, and a long, deep whiff taken. Watching its spirals of
smoke curl lazily upward, his eyes narrowed and he nodded toward them.
"When the Lord made woman"--he was looking now at a light in a
group of trees not very far away--"I wonder if He ever realized the
trouble she could give a man!"
Chapter XXVI
THE SURRENDER
Save the light from the shaded lamp on the library-table and the glow
of the dancing flames on the hearth, the room was in shadow.
Mary Cary had drawn the curtains, straightened chairs and books,
rearranged the flowers, refilled the inkstand on her open desk,
brushed the bits of charred wood under the logs on the andirons,
turned on every light, and then, seeing nothing else to do that would
permit of movement, had taken her seat near the table.
John Maxwell, standing by the mantelpiece, watched her with eyes
half amused, half impatient, but with no comment, and for some
minutes neither had spoken. When she was seated, however, a magazine
in her lap, he walked around the room and turned off all lights
except that of the lamp; then came back and took the chair opposite
hers.
"This is such an interesting number," she said, opening the magazine
and shuffling its pages as if they were cards. "I suppose you have
seen it?"
"No. I haven't seen it." He leaned forward, his hands clasped between
his knees, his eyes holding her steadily. "Don't you think, Mary,
this foolishness between us has gone on long enough?"
"What foolishness?" She put the magazine on the table and tapped it
with her fingers, looking away from him and into the leaping flames.
"Has there been any foolishness between us? I didn't know it."
"What would you call it?"
"I wouldn't--" she took up her handkerchief and examined the initial
on it with critical intentness--"I wouldn't call it anything. We are
very good friends."
"Are we?"
"I've always thought so. If I'm mistaken--" She bit her lip nervously.
"At least we used to be. But friendship is so insecure. That of years
is killed in a moment and--"
"A thousand evidences forgotten if there be one imaginary failure,
one seeming neglect. But I'm not speaking of friendship."
A step behind made him turn, and as Hedwig came in he got up and
took the telegram she handed him with only half-concealed
irritation. Mary Cary, too, stood up, and as Hedwig left the room
the bit of yellow paper was handed her.
"So Mr. Bartlett is coming himself," she said, reading and handing
the paper back. "That is much the best. I thought he was too busy.
Does Miss Gibbie know?"
"Not yet." The telegram was put in his pocket. "Whether she wants
to or not, Miss Gibbie will have to let Yorkburg know who its
friend is. I don't doubt she meant well. To do things as nobody
else does them is to her irresistible. But how a woman of her sense
and understanding of human nature could fail to see the
complications of a situation in which secrecy and mystery were
elemental parts is beyond my comprehension."
"But that's because you're a man." She nodded toward him with
something of the old bantering air. She and I were just women, and
women don't see clearly--like men. After mistakes are out on the
table, even a woman can see them, but it takes a man to see them
before they are made. Of course, it was a queer way of doing things,
but it was her way. Everybody is queer."
"I don't deny it."
"And if she didn't want her left hand to know what the right was
doing, why tell it? Everybody has a pet something they take
literally in the Bible. Miss Gibbie likes the sixth chapter of
Matthew. A great many people seem never to have read it."
"And a great many people who try to practically apply the teachings
of their Master are called cranks and crazy. Until human nature is
born again, human tongues will talk and human noses sniff and human
ears listen for what is ugly and unkind. The partnership into which
you and Miss Gibbie entered was all right in purpose and intent, but
you forgot in your calculations the perversities of the people you
were trying to help. People will pardon anything sooner than a
secret."
"I suppose I will have to tell how Tree Hill was given me, and about
the bonds and the fifty thousand dollars and the baths and the tired
and sick people sent away. How do you suppose it can be told--in the
way she will mind least, I mean?"
John, leaning against his end of the mantel, looked at the girl at
hers, and laughed in her troubled eyes.
"The decision will hardly rest with us. Mr. Bartlett comes to-morrow
to meet Mr. Moon and several other gentlemen invited for the purpose.
The money deposited with his company to be used for Yorkburg in
coming years will be staggering to Mr. Walstein. Miss Gibbie is a
wizard in some things, and in business a genius, yet of this little
scheme she made a mess and put you in a--How to let Yorkburg know
who its unknown friend is will be settled by Mrs. McDougal, I imagine.
I had a little talk with her this morning. She has understood all the
time who was putting up the money, but she had sense enough to keep
her understanding to herself. I told her she could let it out. She
flew home for eggs, and there'll be few of her customers who won't
have a visit from her to-day. You won't have to tell the name of
Yorkburg's friend."
For a moment there was silence. Then abruptly he crossed over to her,
took her hands in his, and held them with an intensity that hurt.
"Mary! Mary!" In his arms he gathered her, crushed her, lifted her
face to his and kissed it, kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair. "We
will come back for Christmas, but we are to be married at once."
She struggled to draw away, but his strong arms held her until breath
came unsteadily; then, as again she tried to free herself, he held her
off, gripping her hands.
"Is there nothing to tell me, Mary?"
"To tell you?" The long lashes shielding the awakened eyes quivered.
He bent closer to hear her. "What do you want me to tell you?"
"That you--love me." His faced whitened. "For my much love is there
not even a little, Mary?"
She shook her head, her eyes still upon the rug. Then she looked up.
"I never love--a little. For your much love I have-- Oh, John, John,
don't leave me any more! Don't leave me here alone!"
* * * * *
"I suppose"--she punched the cushion on the sofa beside her into first
one shape and then another--"I suppose there must always be something
we wish there wasn't. I don't like your world. I don't want to marry
in it. It's so queer how things get mixed up and twisted in life. I
believe in the old-fashioned things, and do not want that which the men
and women of your world want. What would mere externals mean if your
heart was not happy, or if one's life was spent on parade with no one
to care for you--just for yourself."
"In this particular case"--he smiled in the brilliant, anxious
eyes--"there is some one to care for you--just for yourself."
"I know, but--" She drew away. "I can't talk if-- You really
mustn't, John! I think I'd better sit in that chair."
"I think you hadn't. Go on. But what?"
"I don't like your kind of life. I mean the kind the people you know
lead. When I used to visit Geraldine French I was always finding
points of likeness in it to my early training. We had to do so many
things we didn't want to, just because other people did them.
Everything was cut according to a pattern. I don't like rules and
regulations. I like Yorkburg. Here love counts."
"Love counts everywhere. Unfortunately, it's the rules and regulations
that don't count in many worlds. Custom controls, I admit. But it's
because love counts I need you, Mary. All of us get tired of it, the
cap and bells, the sham and show, and underneath we know are eternal
verities we pretend to forget. Eternal verities don't let you forget.
Don't you see what you have done? You have made me understand what
life could mean. In what you call my world are many who do not seem
to know. There is something very terribly needing to be done there."
"What is there needing to be done?"
"To marry for love-- Oh, I don't mean there is no marrying for love."
He laughed in the shocked, wide-opened eyes. "I mean there is nothing
so deceptive as love's counterfeit, and other considerations masquerade
under it unguessed, perhaps. Many men and women are, doubtless,
honest in thinking when they marry that they love each other, but if
they live long enough a large proportion find out their mistake."
"Oh no! I don't believe it! I know too many happy marriages to
believe a thing like that. The trouble is--"
He looked in the protesting eyes. "The trouble is what?"
"That people imagine what they start with will last through life. As
if love alone stood still, did not grow more or become less. I do not
wonder at the unhappy marriages. I wonder there are not more of them."
"More of them? Were I to count the enviably happy couples I know
there would barely be a dozen."
"A dozen?" She turned toward him in pretended unbelief. "In you world,
do you know a dozen?"
"In you world, do you know more?"
"Many more."
"Could you name them? Not the outwardly, the seemingly happy ones,
but those who are happier with each other under any circumstances
than they would be apart under any conditions. Do you know many
married people who come under this head?"
For a moment she did not answer, then turned to him questioning,
troubled eyes. "Why do you ask such things, John? Our ideals of
happiness may not be those of others. I know many happily married
people. I've always believed in love, am always going to believe in
it, and if unhappiness follows many marriages it is because there is
not love enough. Happiness is such a tender thing!" She drew her
hands away and clasped them tightly. "One should so carefully guard
it, and instead--"
His eyes were missing no throb of the heart that sent recurring waves
of color to her quivering face. "Instead?"
"It is taken as a right, rather than an award. And then there is
weeping or storming or sneering when it is lost."
"Then we shall take it"--he lifted her hand to his lips--"as the
award of life, and guard it. It needs guarding. In any world its
hold is insecure."
Presently she again looked up and smoothed her hair. "But, John"--
she shook her head doubtfully--"I shall be such a shock to your
friends. I want, don't you see, to be free, to do what I want to do,
not what I should be a code of custom. The Martha of me would break
forth when most she should be quiet, and keep you always uneasy. I
never know what Martha is going to say to do."
"That's why I love Martha! It's so wearing to always know what a
person is going to say and do. If you were just all Mary--" He
laughed, measuring her hand against his and looking carefully at its
third finger. "You'll be a joy, my Mary Martha, and the more shocks
you give the better for us." He took out a note-book and opened it.
"What day is this? Saturday--let me see. Thanksgiving is on the
twenty-sixth. You will want to be here, I suppose?"
"I certainly will!" She sat suddenly upright.
"And you want to be back for Christmas?"
"I certainly do. What are you talking about?" Her face crimsoned.
"You don't suppose I'm really going--"
"I don't suppose anything about it. The matter is no longer in your
hands. Three weeks from to-day will be the second of December. That
will give us time, say, for a bit of Bermuda and back here for the
holidays. Mary Cary"--he took her hands in his--"three weeks from
to-day you are to marry me."
"But Miss Gibbie! We can't leave her here by herself. Couldn't she
go, too? She'd love Bermuda. Don't you think, John, she could go,
too?"
"I think not!" John's nod was decisive. "I prefer taking this trip
with just my wife."
Mary leaned back on the sofa as if swept by a sudden realization.
"I don't know what we've been thinking about. To go away and leave
Miss Gibbie like this would--"
"Make her indeed and in truth the friend of Yorkburg. To win its
love she must give more than money. You have done much for her,
opened her eyes to much, and she is beginning to understand. She
has had a hard fight. To conquer herself, to give you up has
meant--"
"Oh, John, John!" With a half-sob her hands went out to him. "For
us the days ahead seem glad and beautiful. For her--To leave her,
to leave my people, my little orphans, would be more than selfish.
I can't, John, I can't!"
He bent over and gathered her close to his heart, laughed unsteadily
in the face he lifted to his. "You have no choice, my dear. You are
mine now. Forever mine!"
Chapter XXVII
A TIE THAT BINDS
Before the fire in Miss Gibbie's sitting-room Mrs. McDougal held up
her left foot to the crackling coals and watched the steam curl away
from the wet sole of her shoe with beaming satisfaction. Her skirt,
wet around the hem, was drawn up to her knees, her coat, well
sprinkled, was on the back of a chair, and in her lap her hat lay limp
and spiritless.
From the once upright tail feathers of her haughtiest rooster which
adorned one side of the hat, the breast of a duck adorning the other,
tiny globules of water trickled slowly into the brim; and as she held
it over the fender the feather yielded to circumstance and drooped
dejectedly.
"Now, ain't that just like folks!" she said, holding it off and looking
at it in high derision. "Look at that thing, Miss Gibbie, peart as the
first crocus and proud as cuffy when the weather was good, and at the
first touch of dampness or discouragement flop it goes, and no more
spirit than a convict in court! It certainly is strange how many things
in nature is like human beings. Now this here rooster and this here
duck"--she smoothed the breast and ran her fingers down the
feathers--"just naturally had no use for each other. If fowls could do
what you call sniff, they sniffed, and when one took the right-hand side
of the yard, the other took the left. And yet here is their remains,
side by side, a decoratin' of my hat. It ain't only flowers of the field
what flourish and are cut down, it's everything what stands up,
specially hopes and desires, and things like that. The only thing in
life we can be certain sure of is death, ain't it? But I never did feel
any call to be cockin' my eye at death just because I knew it had to
come. When it do come I hope there'll be grace given to meet it
handsome, and go with it like I'm glad, but I ain't a-goin' to be
sittin' on the doorstep lookin' out for it. I'm not hankerin' after
heaven yet. There's a long time to stay there. Funny how many people is
willin' to be separated from their loved ones, and how they put off
joinin' of 'em as long as possible. I don't deny I'm fond of life. I
just love to live!"
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