Miss Gibbie Gault Part 29

"You'll be d.a.m.ned 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 h.e.l.l of a town like this. Nothing in it but a lot of relics and old-maid men and p.u.s.s.y-cat women spying on a girl because she's young and pretty. That cut-gla.s.s 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 cla.s.s 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 n.o.body 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."