Miss Gibbie Gault Part 13

"Yes'm, she did. She wouldn't let me tell you she was down here.

Said she knew I had so much to do, she just ran in to help fix the table. Did you ever see anything as lovely as that basket of lilies of the valley and mignonette? They look like they're nodding and peeping at you, and these little vases of them in between the candlesticks are just to fill in, she says. She brought her candle-shades because she didn't think you had any to go with lilies of the valley and mignonette. These came from Paris and were very cheap, she says; but ain't they the prettiest things! These mats are the finest Cluny she's ever seen, she told me. I don't see how she can remember so many different kinds of lace. I hope I won't forget to close the shutters and light the candles. She didn't want to put the candlesticks on the table; said they were for to-night, and she thought it was nicer to have daylight and air than lighted candles and dimness.

But I read in a fashion magazine that candles were always used in high society these days, though not of course where people do natural things, and I begged her to let them stay on. She did, but she said you must decide."

"Shut up, Jane! You're such a fool! Your tongue and Mrs. McDougal's, as she says, are two of a pair, and, once started, never stop. I'll do some things for some people, but I perspire for n.o.body. This is the latest spring and the hottest May I've ever known, and if those shutters were closed there'd be trouble. The second generation uses candles in the daytime at a sitting-down lunch. This house is over a hundred years old. Take them off!"

She waved her hand toward the table, then looked around the large high-ceilinged room, with its wainscoting of mahogany, its ma.s.sive old-fashioned furniture, its portraits of her great and great-great- grand-parents on the walls, the mirror over the mantel, the heavy red velvet hangings over the curtains at the long windows, the old-patterned silver on the sideboard, the gla.s.s and china in the presses, and again she waved her hand. This time with a wide, inclusive sweep.

"Next week this room must be put in its summer clothes. Red in warm weather has an enraging quality that is unendurable." She turned toward the door. "You've done very well, Jane. I want lunch promptly, and, remember, things to-night must be as plain as they are pretty this morning. Did everything come all right?"

"Everything. Mickleton always sends beautiful things. I know the ladies never ate anything like them."

But Miss Gibbie did not hear. Again in her room she rang once more. This time but once the bell was pressed, and almost instantly her maid was at her side.

At her dressing-table Miss Gibbie turned. "Get out that light-gray satin gown with the rose-point lace in the sleeves," she said, "and the stockings and slippers to match it. To-night I want that old black silk, the oldest one. When the ladies come tell Celia to show them up-stairs in the front room if they wish to come up. You will be up there. And keep my door closed. To-night do the same thing, only see that my door is locked to-night. If it isn't, Puss Jenkins will lose her way in there trying to find it. What time is it?"

"Quarter to twelve."

"I'll be down-stairs at one-twenty. Lunch is at one-thirty. Some will get here by one o'clock. Show them the drawing-room if there are signs of wandering round the house. You can go!"

Emmeline closed the door noiselessly, and Miss Gibbie, left alone, put down the pearl breast-pin she had been holding and took her seat in the chintz-covered chair, with its gay peac.o.c.ks and poppies, and put her feet on the footstool in front. In the mirror over the mantel she nodded at herself.

"I wonder what makes you such a contrarious person, Gibbie Gault?

Wonder why you will do things that make people say mean things about you? But that's giving people pleasure. Some people would rather hear something mean about other people, especially if they're prosperous, than listen to the greatest opera ever sung. Not all people, but even good people, slow at everything else, are quick to believe ugly things of others. Isn't it a pity there can't be a little more love and charity in this world, a little more confidence and trust?"

She unfastened the belt at her waist and threw it on the table. "Mary says there's more of it than I know, and maybe there is--maybe there is! But won't Benny Brickhouse be raging when he leaves here to-night!

He's been smacking his lips and patting his stomach all day over the thought of a Gault dinner. I know he has. Terrapin and canvas-backs, champagne, and Nesselrode pudding are all a jumble in his mind this minute. And to give him vegetable soup and ham and cabbage and half-cooked goose!" She beat the arm of her chair and screwed her eyes tight in antic.i.p.ation of his disappointment, then again nodded to the face in the mirror.

"Next time, Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse, you will probably be more careful how you talk of ladies. Miss Gibbie Gault is a stingy old cat, is she? She's too free in her speech for you, talks too plainly, is a dangerous old woman with advanced views, is she? And she oughtn't to have let a young girl like Mary Cary go before a lot of men and talk as she talked last Monday night in the council chamber, ought she? But she knows how to give a good dinner all right. You'll give her credit for that. The trouble with people who make remarks about cats is they forget cats have claws, and the trouble with Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse is he made his remarks to Puss Jenkins. Percolator Puss can't keep from telling her own age, and a woman who does that who's still hoping isn't responsible for the words of her mouth.

"And Sn.o.bby Deford will be here, too. She has heard I entertained lords and ladies in London and is anxious to see how I do it.

I'll show her how I don't. I'm an old crank who tries to ride rough-shod over everybody, she says, and I spend much too much money on my table; but if I do it she don't mind eating my good things. Don't she? Well, she'll get a chance to-night. In Miss Patty Moore's millinery store she strew these posies at me, and Annie Steele caught them. a.s.senting Annie didn't throw any back, as Annie is merely as a.s.senter, but neither of the honorable ladies who were coming to break my bread knew that Susie McDougal's ears were hearing ears. Susie says pompous-cla.s.s people often act as if plainer-cla.s.s ones weren't made of flesh and blood.

"And Mrs. Deford thinks, with Mr. Brickhouse, that there's to be champagne to-night. She is fond of c.o.c.ktails and champagne--things I prefer women not to care for--but she will get neither here. A mistake never escapes her eagle eye, and the use of the wrong knife or fork is a shuddering crime. If Jackson would drop one or the other down the back of that very low-neck dress she wears so much I'd give him an extra dollar. I don't suppose I ought to mention it but"--she took up a piece of paper on the table at her side and examined it carefully--"if it could be arranged--" She waved the paper in the air. "Now that is as good and wholesome a bunch of women as are on earth! And they aren't stupid, either. Pity so many good people are dull!"

Again she examined the paper, reading the names aloud: "Mrs. Corbin, Mrs. Moon, Mrs. Tate--Buzzie isn't the brainiest person in the world, but one of the funniest--Mrs. Tazewell, Mrs. Burnham--I like that young woman, she's got sense--Miss Matoaca Brockenborough, Miss Mittie Muncaster, and Miss Amelia Taylor. I'm the fourth spinster. For a place the size of Yorkburg that's an excellent group of women, though they don't speak French or wear Parisian clothes. Mittie Muncaster says she makes all of hers without a pattern, and they look it, but, as women go, they're above the average."

She took up another slip of paper and glanced over it: "Mr. and Mrs.

Porter, Mr. and Mrs. Steele, Mr. James and Miss Puss Jenkins, Mr.

Brickhouse and Mrs. Deford, Judge Lynn and myself. They haven't left a leg for Mary Cary to stand on since her talk before the council, and yet, on the whole, I haven't heard as much about it as I expected. That little piece of information concerning her English grand-father was efficacious. That her father was an unknown actor has long been a source of satisfaction to certain Yorkburgers, and to learn that his blood was not only Bohemian but blue, and worse still, distinguished, was hard on them.

"Yes"--she tapped the table with the tips of her fingers--"I was sorry it was best to mention Mary's English relations, but it was.

As long as people are weighed and measured according to what they come from rather than what they are it is at times necessary to state a few facts of family history. Stock rises or falls according to reports. Some mouths have to be treated and the sort of salve one uses depends upon the sores. Not yet can a person be taken at face value.

Ancestor-worship isn't all Chinese. An ill-bred gentleman-born is still welcomed where an ill-born well-bred man is not invited. Queer place, this little planet in which we swing through s.p.a.ce, Gibbie Gault, and nothing in it queerer than you. A million or two years from now we may see clearly, approach sense and civilization, and in the mean time you get up and dress yourself so as to be ready for your guests!"

Chapter XII

THE BARGAIN

She held out her hand. "How do you do? Where is Mary this afternoon?

Sit down and stop staring at me like that. I'm no Chinese idol. If I choose to put on a mandarin coat and sit on my front porch, whose business is it but mine!"

"n.o.body's, madam!" John Maxwell bent over and shook Miss Gibbie's hand vigorously. "You are indeed no Chinese idol. But in such gorgeousness you might be twin sister to that fearless lady of long finger-nails and no soul, the Do-wagger Empress of China, as Mrs. McDougal called her. She was a woman of might and a born boss.

I understand you are letting the people of this town know you are living here again. I've come to hear about the parties."

He drew a chair close to Miss Gibbie's, and took from her lap the turkey-wing fan. "That's a fine coat you've got on. Did you wear that yesterday?"

"I did not. Too hot. And then Annie Steele has such poppy eyes they might have fallen in her soup-plate had I put in on, and her husband can't stand any more expense from Annie. She's the kind of wife who cries for what it wants, and he's the kind of husband who gives in to tears. But they're happy. Neither one has any sense.

Where's Mary?"

"I don't know. Seeing something about a party she is going to give the orphan-asylum children on her birthday, I believe. Some time off yet, but she's always ahead of time. I went by Mrs. Moon's this morning, and several of the lunchers came in and told of the war-whoops of the diners. Best show I've been to in years. From their reports I thought I'd better come up and see if there were any sc.r.a.ps of you left."

"I'm all here." Miss Gibbie took the fan from his hand and began to use it; then threw back her head and laughed until the keen gray eyes were full of tears. "Wasn't it mean of me? Wasn't it mean to invite people to your house and not have for them one single thing worth eating, especially when they had come for the sole purpose of enjoying a good dinner, and finding out whether or not I followed the traditions of my fathers? What does Mary think about it?"

John bent over, hands clasped loosely between his knees. "Pretty rough. She is particular about who she invites to her house, but, having invited them, she--"

"Treats them properly. Very correct. Mary is young and life is before her. I am old and going to do as I choose."

"But why do you ask people of that kind to your house? If you don't admire them--"

"What nonsense!" Miss Gibbie's chin tilted and she looked at John with an eye at an angle that only Miss Gibbie could attain. "When one gives formal dinner-parties people are usually invited for a purpose not pleasure. I have known my guests of last night for many years. 'Tis true I've seen little of them for the past twenty, but I'm back here to live, and it was necessary they should understand certain things they didn't seem to be taking in. They're a bunch of bulldozers and imagine others are in awe of them--socially, I mean.

In all their heads together there aren't brains enough to make anything but trouble, but empty heads and idle hands are dangerous, and kings can be killed by cats. Don't you see this town is dividing itself into factions? Already one element is arraying itself against the other, and Mary Cary is the cause of it. It was time to let the opposing element understand I understood the situation; also that I had heard certain remarks it had pleased them to make; also, again, that I am not as extravagant as they had been told. A good, plain table is what I keep--only last night it wasn't good. You should have seen it!"

Miss Gibbie leaned back in her chair and fanned with wide, deliberate strokes. "I fixed the flowers. They were sunflowers fringed with honeysuckle in a blue gla.s.s pitcher--colonial colors as befitted my ancestried guests. The pitcher was Tildy's. My dear"--she tapped John's knee with the tip of her fan--"don't bother about them. You can't make some people mad. As long as they think I have money they won't cut my acquaintance. They'll abuse me, yes. Everybody is abused who can't be used; but they'll come to the next party if it's given to a celebrity and there's the promise of champagne. Of course last night I couldn't say all the things I wanted to say; that's the disadvantage of being a hostess, but I think they understand Mary Cary is a friend of mine.

Mary doesn't approve of my methods. Sorry, but methods depend upon the kind of people with whom you have to deal. Love is lost on some natures, and certain individuals use weapons she doesn't touch. Anybody can stab in the back; it takes an honest person to fight fair, and a strictly honest person is as rare as one with good manners. All Mrs. Deford wants is the chance to stab. But what about the lunch? Was that abused, too?"

"Not on your life! Didn't you say you had some cigars around here?

I've used all of mine and can't get your kind in town." He got up and started indoors. "As I order the kind you keep for company, I don't mind smoking them. May I have one?"

She waved her fan. "In the library behind the Brittanica. Keep them there to save Jackson from the sin of smoking them. Best darky on earth, but helping himself isn't stealing, of course. What did they say about the lunch?"

John lighted his cigar and took a good whiff. "You're a sensible woman, Miss Gibbie, to let a fellow smoke a thing like that. It begets love and charity. What did they say about the lunch? Let me see: Most beautiful thing ever seen in Yorkburg, most delicious things to eat, most of them never tasted or heard of before; perfect service, exquisite lace table-cloth or lace something, patriarchal silver, ancestral china, French food, table a picture, you another.

Said you looked like a d.u.c.h.ess in that old-fashioned gray satin gown.

Mrs. Tate declared anybody could tell you were a lady the minute they saw your feet, even if they didn't know who you were, but Mrs. Burnham thought it was your hands that gave you away. Your hands are rather remarkable."

John patted the latter, then flicked the ashes from his cigar. "I didn't tell them, but I could have done so, that it wasn't an idiosyncrasy, but sense, that made you wear elbow sleeves all the time. An arm and wrist and hand like yours have no right to be hidden."

"Nonsense, nonsense!" Again the fan was waved, but Miss Gibbie's lips twitched. "Vanity in a woman of my age is past pardon. I don't like anything to touch my wrist, and sleeves are in the way. Tell me"--she leaned toward him--"is Mary worried with me?"

"Not that I know of. I have scarcely seen her for two days. She's been having so many committee meetings, and so many people have been after her for this and for that, and some sick child at the asylum had to be visited so often, that except in the evenings I have hardly had time to speak to her. And then she is so tired I don't like to keep her up. She can't stand this sort of thing, Miss Gibbie. It will wear her out, and it ought to be stopped." He got out of his chair and began to walk up and down the porch, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his cigar. "It's got to be stopped."

"Who is going to stop it?"

"I know who'd like to stop it." He stood in front of her. "Aren't you going to help me, Miss Gibbie?"

"I am not." She looked up into the strong face now suddenly serious.

"I mean in the way you mean. I am going to keep her from wearing herself out, but she is not doing that. Hedwig takes care of her and sees that she gets proper food and rest and is spared a thousand things other women have to contend with. And it doesn't hurt anybody to be busy. If you don't think about something else you think about yourself, and the most ruinous of all germs is the ego germ. She isn't likely to be attacked, for she has good resistance, but it's in the air, and I don't want her to get it. She is very happy."