Miss Gibbie Gault Part 27

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, Ma.s.sachusetts." 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 gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s 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 b.u.t.ter 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 s.p.a.ces 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.

"n.o.body 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 a.s.sent 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. n.o.body 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 h.e.l.l 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 pa.s.s 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."