Miss Gibbie Gault Part 7

Was it a hundred or a thousand years ago that she used to sit on this same stool at her father's knees and recite Latin verbs to him, and as reward have him read her tales of breathless adventure and impossible happenings, all the more delicious because forbidden by her prosaic mother? She was seven when her mother died, but she barely remembered her, and had she lived they would hardly have been great friends. Her mother's pride was in pickles and preserves and brandy peaches; in parties where the table groaned, the servants also, and in the looking well after the ways of her household. But of a child's heart and imagination she knew little. She was a true woman, but a housekeeper had taken her place, and neither her father nor herself had been seriously affected by her death.

And what splendid comrades she and her father were after her mother left them! He would let no one teach her but himself, and how he loved to show her off to his friends, putting her on top of the dining-room table and making her recite in Latin bits from an ode of Horace, in French a fable of La Fontaine's, in English a sonnet of Sh.e.l.ley or extracts from Shakespeare's plays, and then letting her dance the heel-and-toe shuffle taught her secretly by the darkies on the place.

What a selfish little pig she had been allowed to be! How selfish both of them had been! Their books a pa.s.sion, travel their delight, most people but persons who bored or bothered, they had lived largely apart, come and gone as they chose, cared little for what others said or thought; and yet when the war came they were back, pa.s.sionate defenders of their cause, and in their hearts hot hate for those who sought to crush it.

And then it was pride measured its lance with love, and won. The awakening of her womanhood and the mockery of life had come together, hand in hand, and henceforth she was another creature.

In her chair Miss Gibbie shivered. It was not the sudden gust of wind that caused the sudden chill, but the scent of the micrafella roses just under the window which the wind had brought; and her arms, interlocked, were pressed closer to her breast. "Gibbie Gault, what a fool you are!" she said, under her breath. "But how much bigger a fool you were nearly fifty years ago!"

Seventeen. Young, vivid, brilliant, beautiful. Yes, beautiful! Nothing is so beautiful as youth, and she had much more than youth. The G.o.ds had been good to her up to then, and then they taunted her, made spring in her heart love for one only--love that must be crushed and killed, for the man who alone could inspire it wore the hated blue, was there to fight against her people, and never must she marry him, she told herself. On a visit North she had met him, and it was a whim of fate that he should be captain of one of the companies taking possession of Yorkburg, with headquarters in the Roy house, next to her own. A whim of fate! Friend and foe they met daily, and battle was never waged more hotly than was theirs. On his part, determination that never yields. On hers, pride that never surrenders. And then one day there was a change of orders. His regiment was sent away and to battle. Lest the horror, the terror of it all undo her, she had bid him go, refused to promise in the years to come she would ever be his wife, and the look on his fine, brave face had followed her through life.

A month later he was brought back and by her order to her house.

Fatally wounded, in delirium her name was ever on his lips, but in his eyes blankness. And on her knees by his bed she had twisted in an agony of prayer that for one moment, but one moment, light might come into them that she might pray for pardon ere he died. But no light came and he died, not knowing that for her love, too, was dead.

Again Miss Gibbie stirred, for again she seemed to see herself. This time she was by an open grave. White, rigid, erect, she watched with tearless eyes the lowering, not of a mere body in the ground, but the burying of all youth has the right to ask of life. Out of the future were gone for her the dreams of girlhood and a woman's hopes. The bareness and emptiness of coming years froze the blood in her heart, and when she turned away she lifted her head and bid life do its worst.

Nothing could matter now.

Darker than the days of battle were the days of peace, and she made her father close the house and go away. For years they wandered where they would, but always were back for the month of June; and no one remembered that the twenty-first was the date of Colleen McMasters's death, or know that on that day his grave was visited, and there alone a woman yielded to the memories that ever filled her heart.

When her father died life in Yorkburg was impossible. With a tilt of her chin at its dulness, a wave of her hand at its narrowness, and eyes closed to its happy content, she had gone back to London and reopened the house which had become known for her sharp wit, her freedom of speech, and her disregard of persons who had for commendation but inherited position; and there for years had what she called headquarters, but never thought of or spoke of as home.

She pulled her chair closer to the window and, with elbows on its sill and chin on her crossed hands, looked out into the soft silence of the night.

"What a time for seeing clearly, seeing things just as they are, this midnight is, Gibbie Gault! In the darkness wasted time stares you in the face and facts refuse to turn their backs. And you thought once the waste was all the other way--thought you were wise to stand off and watch the little comedies and tragedies, the pitiful strivings for place and power, the sordid struggles for bread and meat, the stupid ones for cap and bells! The motives and masques, the small deceptions and the large hypocrisies of life interested you immensely, didn't they? Take the truth out and face it. You tell other people the truth--tell it to yourself. A selfish old pig, that's what you were, and thinking yourself clever all the while. Clever! And why? Because all your life you have been a student of history, of human happenings, and of man's behavior to his fellow-man, and particularly to woman, you thought you knew life, didn't you? You didn't! Because you were an evolutionist and recognized Nature's disregard of human values, the impartial manifestations of her laws, and the reckoning which their violation demands, you thought science must satisfy. Science doesn't satisfy. With ignorance and superst.i.tion, with life's cruelties and injustice, with human helplessness, you could quarrel well, but beyond the sending out of checks to serve as a soothing-syrup to your enc.u.mbrance of a conscience what did you ever do to give a lift to anything? Nothing! And the pity is there are many like you!

"'Cui-bono-itis.' That's what you had, Gibbie Gault--'cui-bono-itis.'

Bad thing! Almost as hard on the people about you as the 'ego-itis' of to-day. Pity people can't die of their own diseases instead of killing other people with them. Great pity!"

The moon was gone. Only in faint lines of light was the blackness of the sky broken, and as she looked out over the trees in the garden below, and down the street, asleep and still, the scene changed, and no longer was she in Yorkburg, but in the little village of Chenonceaux, at the Inn of Le Bon Laboureur. Her friend, Miss Rawley, of Edinborough, was with her. They were taking their coffee outdoors at a table placed where they could best get the breeze and see the roses climbing over the lattice-work of the little hotel, with its pots of red geraniums in the windows. And in the door the young proprietor was smiling happily, for down the long, straight, tree-lined road an automobile which had just left the chateau was coming, and he had visions of what it would mean.

"I didn't." She nodded her head. "It's a way life has, this bringing of somebody across our path, this taking of somebody out of it, as incidentally as if we were flies. Well, that's what I used to think most of us were. Flies! Those who weren't flies were spiders. Some buzzed, some bit, and all in a net--all! And to think of the way I was taken by the shoulders and turned around! Made to see all I'd been doing was squinting at life with my nose turned up. Just that! Because I had seen the just man perish in his righteousness, and the wicked prosper in his wickedness, I thought, with my ancient friend, that time and chance happeneth to all, and people and pigs had much in common. What an old fool you were, Gibbie Gault! Take your pill! You saw life as you wanted to see it, and, giving nothing to it, got nothing out of it. Right!

"Queer what a kiss can do--just one!" She drew in her breath and felt it all again. The automobile had stopped. A party of Americans had gotten out and, slowly drinking her coffee, she watched them. A man and his wife, two children, a nurse, and a young girl, twenty, perhaps.

Something about her, something of glow and vividness and warmth, held her, and a faint memory was stirred. A clear, fresh voice called to the chauffeur as she sprang out of the car and came close to the table near which she was sitting, and then she heard her name spoken in joyous surprise.

"It's Miss Gibbie Gault! Oh, Aunt Katherine, it is Miss Gibbie Gault!"

Without warning, two strong young arms were thrown around her neck and on her lips a hearty kiss was pressed. "Oh, Miss Gibbie, I'm so glad to see you! /I'm so glad!/ I'm Mary Cary who used to live in Yorkburg. You don't mind my kissing you, do you? I couldn't help it, I really couldn't! It's /so/ good to see some one from Yorkburg!"

And she was hugged again, hugged hard.

"Nearly three years ago!" Her lips quivered. "And a different world you've been living in since. Somebody was really glad to see you. It makes a great difference in life when some one is glad to see you!"

Was it fate, chance, circ.u.mstance that had brought the girl to her?

She did not know. Once she would have said. Maybe G.o.d needed them together, was Mary's view, and she never commented on Mary's views.

In that at least she had learned to hold her tongue. But it did not matter. They were here in Yorkburg, lives closely interknit, and here, in the home in which she had been born, she was to live henceforth. And if but close to her she could keep the girl who had warmed her heart and opened her eyes she would ask nothing more of life.

For two years and more they had been together. Instantly she had wanted her, and, never hesitating in efforts to get what she wanted, a month after the meeting at the little Inn of Le Bon Laboureur she invited her to be her guest in a trip around the world. The invitation was blunt. She had long wanted to take this trip, had long been looking for the proper companion. She had a dog, but he wasn't allowed to come to the table. Would she go? Her uncle and aunt would not let her miss the chance. They made her go. Doctor Alden and his wife were sensible people.

And then the night in Cairo when Mary came in her room, sat on the stool at her feet, and, crossing her arms on her lap, looked up in her face and said they must go home. The holiday had been long and happy, but more of it would be loss of time. And home was Yorkburg. A visit to Michigan first, long talks with her uncle and aunt, and then whatever she was to do in life was to be done in Yorkburg. There was a little money, something her uncle had invested for her when she first went to live with him, until she decided on some sort of work. She would teach, perhaps, and she would rather it would be in the little town in which she had found a home when homeless and without a friend. She was not willing to live with anybody or anywhere without work. She was anxious to be about it. When could they start?

"And of course I started. Started just when she said. Did just what she wanted and some things she didn't. Trotted on back to the old pasture-land where old sheep should graze, and here I am to stay until the call comes. Whoever thought you'd come back to Yorkburg, Gibbie Gault! Back to shabby, sleepy, satisfied old Yorkburg! Well, you're here! Mary Cary made you come. She loves it, always wanting to do something for it; helping every broken-down old thing in it; laughing at its funny ways, and keeping straight along in hers. And for what?

To-morrow everybody will be talking about the meeting to-night. About other things she's doing. Small thanks she'll get, and if you tell her so she'll say if you do things for thanks you don't deserve them. Bless my soul, if it isn't raining!"

A sudden downpour of rain startled her, and she sat upright; then, at a noise behind, turned and saw Mary Cary coming in the door.

"Oh, Miss Gibbie, I could spank you! I really could! You aren't even five years old at times. It has turned almost cold, and raining hard, and here you are sitting by an open window!" She felt the gown of the older woman anxiously. "I believe it's damp. If you don't get in bed I'm going to--"

"Do what?" Miss Gibbie got out of her chair, threw off the mandarin coat with its golden dragons, and kicked her slippers toward the door.

"What are you going to do?"

"Put you in it. Get in and let me cover you up! Are you sure you aren't cold? Sure?"

"Sure." Miss Gibbie mimicked the anxious tones of the girl now bending over and tucking the covering round her warm and tight. "What did you come in here for, anyhow? Go to bed!"

"I knew you'd left the window open, and it has turned so cool. I was afraid there was too much air." She stooped over and kissed her.

"Good-night! Don't get up to breakfast. I'll see you during the day."

With a swift movement she turned off the light on the candle-stand and was gone, and under the covering Miss Gibbie hid her face in the pillow.

"Dear G.o.d," she said. "Dear G.o.d, she's all I've got. I'm an old woman, and she's all I've got!"

Chapter VII

PEGGY

"m.u.t.h.e.r say, please, sir, send her four eggs' worth of salt pork, and two eggs' worth of pepper, and five eggs' worth of mola.s.ses. And she say I can have pickle with the last egg."

The eyes which had been critically searching the pickle-jar on the counter as the eggs were carefully taken out of a basket looked confidently in Mr. Blick's face, and a red little tongue licked two red lips in quivering expectation of the salty sourness awaiting them.

"Please, sir, I'd like that one." A dirty little fore-finger pointed to a long, fat cuc.u.mber lying slightly apart from its fellows. "That's the one, Mr. Blick. No, not that one--/that/ one!" and the finger was pressed resolutely against the jar. "And would you please, sir, give it to me before you weigh out the things?"

"Oh, Peggy dear, what a little pig you are! The very biggest in the jar, and such a wicked-looking pickle, Peggy! Why not get an apple, instead?"

Peggy turned joyously at the sound of the voice behind her. "Oh, Miss Mary Cary, I'm so glad it's you. I thought it was Miss Lizzie Bettie Pryor!"

Mr. Blick laughed. The relief in Peggy's voice was so unqualified that the man, standing in the door watching the little group, laughed also.

Miss Cary turned toward him. "This is Peggy, John--my little friend, Peggy McDougal. Wipe your hands, Peggy, and speak to Mr. Maxwell, who has come from New York to see Yorkburg, and--and the places he used to know."

Peggy wiped her hands carefully on the handkerchief held out to her, then advanced toward the man, still standing in the doorway, but now with his hat in his hand.

"How do you do, Mr. John Maxwell from New York?" she said, gravely; in her eyes critical inspection of the face before her. "I know about you. m.u.t.h.e.r says you used to live in Yorkburg, but your m.u.t.h.e.r didn't like it. I hope you like it, and will stay a long time and come again. Miss Mary Cary says it's nicer than New York."

John Maxwell took the offered hand as ceremoniously as it was given.

"Thank you! I do like Yorkburg, and I hope to come again." He laughed amusedly in the upturned eyes which were searching his. "It is nicer than New York. Miss Cary is quite right."

"New York's bigger, ain't it?"

"Yes"--hesitatingly--"some bigger. But I don't believe there's anything there like you--"