Miss Gibbie Gault Part 19

She leaned back in her chair, and in her keen gray eyes was a gleam of the gay twinkle of her youth.

"It isn't bad judgment to make a man believe he is something. He is by nature inclined to it, and a little encouragement is good for most people. So is a better understanding. Most miserable marriages come from misunderstanding, with pride and stubbornness as its cause.

I once know a girl, a very wealthy girl, whose health failed shortly after she married. Her husband was young, gay, selfish. Got to leaving her, and she was too proud to let him see she cared. He thought she didn't care, thought her absorbed in herself. One night, coming in late, he saw a light in her room and called good-night on the way to his. She had kept the light, a gas-lamp, by her side, hoping he would come in.

There was something she wanted to say, so she wrote in the note she left, but when he pa.s.sed by she wrote the note, turned her face to the lamp, put out the light and turned on the gas. The next morning they found the note in her hand."

Mrs. Burnham drew in her breath. "How horribly he must have felt!"

"He did. Didn't marry again for thirteen months. The next wife was sensible. There was no more suffering in silence. As her husband he walked upright forever after."

Mrs. Burnham twisted her handkerchief around the handle of her fan.

"I feel so sorry for a man when he loses his wife."

"You do what?" Miss Gibbie's voice was little less than a shriek, and she sat upright, her fan at arm's-length.

"Feel sorry--" The look on Miss Gibbie's face stopped her and her own flushed. "Yes, I do," she protested, bravely. "Men are so helpless and they seem so bewildered."

Miss Gibbie lay back, relaxed and limp, her eyes closed. "My dear child, you are younger than I thought." Her eyes opened as significantly as they had closed, and the turkey-wing fan tapped one pink cheek and then the other.

"My dear, don't worry over widowers. For the first six weeks they are doubtless troubled. They don't know where their clothes belong and they can't find their shoes, and they're learning a great many things they didn't know. But man is recuperative and philosophic.

Oh, I don't mean all men. All men are no more alike than all women, only aliker. But you've probably never watched widowers carefully. I have. The transformation that takes place in the ex-husband is something like that in little boys when they first begin to notice little girls.

Both use more soap and water, both brush their hair and their clothes more carefully, and select their cravats with more caution, and there isn't a piece of femininity that pa.s.ses that isn't looked at with speculation in the eye."

She waved her fan with a comprehensive sweep. "Even the most modest of released husbands get inflated. Of course if there are children there are complications, but a woman generally attends to complications. Haven't you ever noticed the way a first-year widower walks? In his own eyes he's a target, and those eyes are always roving to see who is looking his way. He's right, for a good many women look. Men have a large capacity for loving, and many of them deserve another chance at happiness."

Mrs. Burnham opened her handkerchief and wiped her lips. Somehow it was shocking, but Miss Gibbie's voice was beyond resistance.

"But surely you think men grieve?" she began.

"Of course I do. Some of them wouldn't change if they could, and all of them hate interruptions. But men are sensible. With them something ended is over, and you can't do business with a broken heart. And business is what man is made for. Business and pleasure."

"I don't think men forget." In Mrs. Burnham's eyes was the far-away look that meant the memory of other days.

"Perhaps they don't. Just cease to remember. Whichever it is, I approve of it, envy it. There are many admirable qualities in men.

As I said just now, the average man will make a good husband if he has any encouragement, and all a woman has the right to ask of him is to think of her in life. Men are not much on memories. They want something definite and tangible, and memories are poor company for any one."

Mrs. Burnham looked up. The banter in Miss Gibbie's voice had changed to bitterness, but it was gone as quickly as the shadow that flitted for a moment over her face.

Miss Gibbie pushed back her chair, opened the bag hanging from her belt, and took from it a handkerchief of finest thread.

"Speaking of company reminds me of Mary, whose uncle and aunt, three children and nurse went home yesterday. She's been like a bird since they've been here. Sang in her sleep one night, she was so happy to have them. But six extra people for three weeks is wearing on flesh and blood, no matter how much you love them, and she's pretty tired. I understand you and Mary are good friends. How did it happen?"

"She made it happen. It was when my baby died." Mrs. Burnham hesitated and her face whitened. "I don't think I could make any one understand what she was to me them. When we came to Yorkburg I was an entire stranger, and for some weeks I met no one except the members of my husband's church. Many of the latter are dear and lovely, but the most interesting from a--"

"Human standpoint. Go on!"

"From a human standpoint were the mill people, the factory people, the plain people, to whom Mr. Burnham is giving his life, and it was in connection with what Miss Cary was doing that we met her.

At first I could not do very much to help, and Mr. Burnham was so busy and so interested he didn't know how lonely I was--"

"Of course. So busy making people good he had little time to make his wife happy. And not for the world would you have let him seen you were lonely. Been selfish, wouldn't it?"

"Wouldn't it have been?"

"Selfish? No. Sensible. My dear, there are some men whose heads have to be held while an opening is made with a gimlet before they will take a thing in. You husband is doubtless a good man, but doubtless also dense. How long before your baby was born did you come to Yorkburg?"

"Four months. We had been married six years and I was so happy over its coming that I wanted to help in everything, and tried to do too much. When we got to Yorkburg I had to be very quiet and the days were very long. Miss Cary was one of the first persons who called on me, and several times she took me to drive. Then the baby came.

I was very ill for two weeks and was just beginning to get better, when suddenly the baby died."

She stopped. Her handkerchief, twisted into a tight cord, was knotted nervously. "I can't talk of it. I had waited so long, I wanted a child, a little child of my own, that there was nothing I would not have suffered. But to go down into the valley of the shadow--and come back with empty arms--" She drew in her breath, but her eyes were dry. "Even Mr. Burnham didn't understand. He was distressed and disappointed, but because I got well nothing else seemed to matter much. But he didn't know--no man can know-- the awful ache in your heart, the awful emptiness of your arms when your baby is taken out of them. One day everything in me seemed to stop. I couldn't feel, or think, or talk. Mr. Burnham must have been frightened, for he got up suddenly and left the room. After a while he came back, then left again, and a few minutes later the door opened and closed, and Mary Cary was inside. As she came toward me I saw she had on no coat or hat. And then she was on her knees by my bed, and I was in her arms and held close to her heart.

"Oh, I can't tell--" Her voice broke in a half-sob she tried to smother. "No one can ever know what it meant to me, but I knew she understood, and suddenly the something that had been tight and cruel snapped, and for the first time tears came."

"I understand, child. I understand." Miss Gibbie patted the twisting hands softly. "Every woman has a corner in her heart she keeps covered. And the thing in life that's hardest is to hold your head up and smile and hide the ache. But it must be held up. That's the woman's part. I'm glad you and Mary are good friends. She tells me you and Mr. Burnham have been a great help to her, and she needs the help you and he can give. I'm about as much use as a shoestring for a b.u.t.toned boot. Never could stand smeary people with bad teeth.

But possibly I wouldn't take a bath every day, either, if I didn't have a clean tub and hot water, with good soap and towels. Mary says I wouldn't. And if I had to cook, and mind babies, and make clothes, and live with a tobacco-chewer and pipe-smoker, and get up before light and hurry him off to a factory, and wash and dress the children for school, and then clean and cook some more, maybe I wouldn't be-- quite like I am now. Maybe I wouldn't--"

"I am very sure of it." Mrs. Burnham's laugh was half a sigh. "Poor people make us dreadfully mad at times, and we call them s.h.i.+ftless and improvident and lazy, and some of them are. They are ignorant and untrained. But the woman who is doing the hardest, bravest work in the world to-day is the wife of the workingman, struggling to be respectable and make her children so on wages that often aren't human, much less Christian. When I build a monument it's to be to 'Unknown Mothers.'"

She got up and pushed back her chair. "When are you going away, Miss Gibbie? I'm so glad you are making Mary go with you." She hesitated and with the tip of her parasol outlined the pattern of the rug at her feet.

"Miss Puss Jenkins came to see me night before last and she said such queer things she'd heard." Again she hesitated, and in her face the color rose to the roots of her hair. "I don't suppose I ought to speak of it, but when any one says anything about Mary I get so hot I'm not--"

"What did Puss say?" Miss Gibbie sat upright and the fan in her hand was still.

"She didn't say anything herself, but it was what Mrs. Deford said that--"

"What did Mrs. Deford say?"

"Miss Puss said she practically admitted her daughter Lily was engaged to Mr. Maxwell, though you'd tried your best to get him for Mary." She stopped. "I didn't mean to tell that. It's too silly to be repeated."

Miss Gibbie lay back in her chair and covered her face with the turkey- wing fan, and from behind it came laughter such as Mrs. Burnham had never heard from her before. "John engaged to Lily Deford! To /Lily Deford!/ My dear, he'd much rather be engaged to me. Lily's mother goes with Lily." She put down the fan and wiped her eyes. "Poor Sn.o.bby! I've tried to get John for Mary, have I? And she has tried to get him for herself, has she? Though this you don't tell me. I'm afraid as a purveyor of gossip you will never be a success. Puss is a past-master. On your way home just stop at her house, will you, and tell her I want to see her at once."

Chapter XVII

IN WHICH MARY CARY IS PUZZLED

She was glad to be alone. The day had been happy, but happiness can only hold weariness in abeyance, not prevent it, and she was very tired. Miss Gibbie had protested against the giving of this party two days before they were to start for their summer holiday.

But to go away without letting the children have the long, joyful day in the open would have worried her, and she had insisted on their coming.

Their joy had given her pleasure, and she was glad to have them, but of late she had been conscious of a restlessness too vague to be a.n.a.lyzed, too uncertain to be defined. And yet this restlessness was definite enough to depress, and it was with relief she had stood at the gate and waved good-bye to the last little hand waving in turn to her. Then she had gone back to the house and to the companions.h.i.+p of her understanding friends, the stars.

Watching them, she nodded. "What does anything matter, Mary Cary, if you just can look the stars in the face and tell them you've tried? They are going to keep on s.h.i.+ning a good many million years after your little day is done, and the thing you are to remember is that they're under the clouds when you can't see them, and you also are to remember--"

The sound of footsteps behind made her turn from the railing of the porch against which she had been leaning and look toward the doorway. Hedwig was coming through it.

"Mr. Ash, he at the telephone is, and he would like much to know if you will him see this evening."

"Indeed I won't!" She looked perplexedly at the woman before her.

"I'm so tired, Hedwig. Tell him I'm sleepy and can't see anybody.

I mean, tell him I am very busy and have a good deal to do. Tell him anything you want, only don't let him come. I'm going to sit here for a while. Lock up the house and close the windows. If any one else telephones say I'm asleep, or dead, or anything. I'm so cross, Hedwig! Don't mind me, but I want to be alone."