Miss Gibbie Gault Part 28

"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-gla.s.s 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."

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 a.s.sertions 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 d.a.m.ned 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 d.a.m.ned if I do!"