Miss Gibbie Gault Part 30

"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 circ.u.mstances 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? Sat.u.r.day--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 circ.u.mstance 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 c.o.c.kin' 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!"

"Which you won't do long if you go out in weather like this. I've never seen such a storm in November. Are you sure your stockings aren't wet?"

Miss Gibbie, in her big chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, looked at Mrs. McDougal half irritably, half perplexedly. To walk from Milltown to Pelham Place in a heavy snow with no overshoes and no umbrella was just like her. She shouldn't have come, and yet Miss Gibbie was not sorry she had come. There were times when Mrs.

McDougal's chatter was unendurable, but others when her philosophy of life had a common-sense value that systems of belief and articles of faith failed to supply. To-day was one of the latter times. She was rather glad to see her. Leaning forward, she repeated the question: "Are you sure your stockings are not wet?"

"Sure as I'm a sinner." Mrs. McDougal held up first one shoe and then the other. "Just the soles were wet, and their sizzlin' don't mean anything. They're an inch thick, them soles are. Them's McDougal's shoes." She held her feet out proudly. "I always did say, Miss Gibbie, if you couldn't have what you wanted in life, for the love of the Lord don't whine about it, but work it off and get a smile on! I'd a heap rather have a telephone in my house and just step up to it and call for one of them takin cabbys, like we saw at Atlantic City, and come a-scootin' and a-honkin' up to your door and step out superior and send up a card with Mrs. Joel B. McDougal on it than to put on two pairs of McDougal's socks first, and them pull away at his shoes and wrap my legs in newspapers to keep my skirts from slushin' of 'em. I'd a heap rather done that. But a lot of life ain't what we'd rather. It's what is. And my grandmother always told me there warn't nothin' in life what showed the stock you come from as the way you took what come to you. I never did have no use for a whimperer. Of course, I'm plain. Born Duke and married McDougal, but whenever I get in a fog and can't see clear, and so tired out I can't eat, and plum run down, I say to myself, 'Your folks ain't ever flunked yet, and you keep your head where the Lord put it.' He put it up. Folks see me laugh a lot. I do. I couldn't learn to play on the painer, though I'm clean crazy about music. I couldn't learn none of the things I yearned for inside, so I said to myself, 'You learn to laugh, laugh hearty.' And somehow it's helped a lot, laughin' has.

There's many a time I done it to keep tears back. Ain't n.o.body but has tears to shed some time or other. But 'tain't no use in keepin' a tank of 'em to be tapped at every slip up. When I get so I can't keep mine back any longer I goes to the woodhouse and locks the door and has it out. But that's just when I'm tired and there don't seem nothin' ahead.

I tell the Lord about it. Tell Him there ain't nothin' human can help.

Just Him. And if He don't, I'm done for. Ain't ever been a time yet that when I come right down to it and says, 'Lord, I need You,' that the help ain't handed out. I mean help to take hold again and keep on laughing. I don't ask for automobiles and a brick house and fur coats and plum-puddin's. Never did think the Lord was in that kind of supply business. But when I says, 'You and Me got to fight this thing out,' He ain't ever gone back on me yet. Yes'm, these here is McDougal's shoes. I was thankful enough they was in the house to put on. I always was lucky, though. But just listen at me a-runnin' on worse'n Mis' Buzzie Tate. And I ain't even answered your question as to what I come for. Maybe it's because I'm not sure how you'll take it."

Miss Gibbie leaned over and with the poker broke a large lump of coal, making it blaze and roar in licking, outleaping flames. "What is it?

I'm not dangerous, I hope."

"No'm, you're not dangerous." Mrs. McDougal straightened her now dry skirt. "But you might think I was audacious, which is what I am, I reckon. I don't mean nothin' like that, and I ain't got no more use for familiarity than you have, but my grandmother always told me if you heard anything kind about a person 'twas your business to pa.s.s it on same as unkind things is pa.s.sed. And I just want to tell you that the day I was takin' them eggs around, the day Mr. John told me in words what I'd long known without 'em, as to who Yorkburg's friend was, I heard so many downright grat.i.tudes and appreciations along with the surprise and the raisin' up of hands and eyes that I wonder your ears didn't burn plum off. I ain't sayin' 'twas fulsome praise they chucked at you. It warn't. You ain't the kind what folks is free with. You can't help it, never havin' been thrown much with back-yards and acquainted chiefly with the parlor. But all that's wanted is the chance to love you. They know you're their friend. You've proved it by acts, instead of words, the usual way, and if'n you could see fit to sometimes pay a visit when Miss Mary goes away--"

She stopped. Miss Gibbie pushed her chair back farther in the shadow, and with her hand shaded her face. For a long moment there was silence, then Mrs. McDougal examined carefully the soles of her shoes, after which she took up her hat and smoothed the breast of the once sniffy duck.

"I ain't a-goin' to say anythin' about Miss Mary's leavin' Yorkburg,"

she said, presently, "except this--I had to go to the woodhouse about it and get plum down on my knees and own up I was cussin' mean and selfish not to be smilin' glad she and Mr. John were goin' to get married. They're young, Miss Gibbie, and it's nature for young folks to love each other and go hand in hand through life. Me and you both is thankful his hand is for her and hers is for him. But your heart can be thankful and ache, too. If you'll be excusin' of my seemin'

free, I just wanted to tell you yours ain't the only one what's had a great big, heavy, lovin' somethin' on it right here"--she put her closed hand on her breast--"ever since we heard the news. And it's because of that lump we ain't ever goin' to let her know we're anything but joyful. We want that weddin' to be a regular bunch of bells.

Christmas and Easter and marriage all in one. She do look sometimes as if it will break her heart to go away and leave all she loves so here, and particular you. She don't let me speak of it, but I told her it was the lot of woman to follow on, and, of course, if she'd let herself be beguiled into lovin' a man she'd have to yield up a heap for the pleasure of his company. Never did seem to me matrimony did their name and their home and their friends and their kinfolks and their wages, if they work for a livin', and take what's given 'em for the rest of their natural lives. No'm. I ain't never seen where marriage did much for women. I never had a beau. I warn't but seventeen when McDougal asked me to marry him, and, not havin' a bit of sense, I said yes. That's all the courtin'