Miss Gibbie Gault Part 6

"Yes, I remember. She made us all chip in. Right, too. It costs forty dollars a month to run that room, and we don't pay but twenty. Don't know where the other twenty comes from, but she does, and that goes in mill-town."

"She's got a clear head, Miss Cary has. And the reason I like to hear her talk is I can hook on to what she says." Mr. Flournoy walked over to the window and measured the distance to a given spot below with his lips. "No beatin' round to keep you from knowin' what she means. What kind of slush was that Bailly a.s.s Brickhouse tryin' to get off, anyhow?

Any of you catch on?

"Didn't listen. Heard his junk before. He says he traces himself back to Adam in this town, but if he ever give it as much as a ginger-cake it's been kept a secret. Here comes Miss Cary now."

Mr. Jernigan took off his hat, and on his finger twirled it round and round. "My wife's been sick in bed ten weeks come Friday," he said, presently, "and there ain't been a one of 'em Miss Cary hasn't been to bring her some outdoor thing, as well as other kinds. Mollie says when she comes in the room, spring things come with her."

He stood aside, then took the hand held out as she came toward him.

"Didn't we have a grand meeting?" she said, nodding lightly to first one and then the other. "I believe it's going to be all right, and you can tell your wives their children will go to a high-school yet. I'm so glad all you men came. Thank you very much--"

"You didn't need us." The man standing next to the steps laughed. "The work was done before to-night. You had your ducks in a row all right."

"And not a single one quacked wrong! Didn't they do beautifully? Thank everybody for coming. Good-night." And in the darkness they could hear her laughing with Mrs. Moon and Mrs. Corbin as they went together down the street.

A few minutes later in Miss Gibbie's library she was dancing that lady of full figure round and round the room, and not for some seconds would she stop.

"Oh, Miss Gibbie, if you'd just been there! Not a sign of fight from any one, and as to fireworks, there wasn't a pop-cracker! Mr. Benny Brickhouse orated, of course, and Mrs. McDougal was irrepressible, but without them it would have been solemn--/solemn!/ I tried not talk too much. Men don't like it; they like women to listen to them, but to-night they--"

"Like sheep before their shearer, were dumb--as I'll be dead if you don't sit sown. Sit down!"

"I can't." And Miss Gibbie was waltzed around once more. "I don't understand, but it's going to be all right. Men are certainly funny.

For weeks every member of the council has pooh-hooded me, thought my audaciousness was outrageousness, shook their heads and waved me out, and didn't begin to listen seriously until a week ago. To-night they were little lambs!"

"If you'll stop b.u.t.ting round like a goat and go to bed I'll hear about these lambkins to-morrow. I sat up to tell you good-night, not to hear you talk. It's nearly twelve o'clock. Of course they came round!

Wind-watchers, all of them! That 3 per cent. got them. I told you if you made it 4 it wouldn't go through."

"Some one wanted to know who Mr. Black was, and Mr. Billisoly asked if your name was on the taxpayers' pet.i.tion. It's like a play with the princ.i.p.al character left out. Suppose--"

"Suppose nothing! Go to bed and go to sleep! Your eyes are as big as saucers, blue saucers at that. I don't want to hear another word,"

and with a kiss as quick as the look that swept the flushed face was scrutinizing, Miss Gibbie waved her to the door.

"But aren't you coming? It's nearly twelve o'clock!"

"And why do I live alone save to do as I please? No, I'm not coming.

Go to bed!"

At the door, hand on k.n.o.b, Mary Cary turned. "How did Mr. Milligan know about my English grandfather? Who told him he was a chief justice?"

"I did. And for good reasons. I don't tell my reasons. Go to bed!"

"When did you tell him?"

"This morning after I left you. /Are/ you going to bed?"

"I don't see what you told him for. I don't like my grandfathers. I can't imagine--"

"There are many things you can't imagine, and more you don't understand. /Go to bed!/"

In her room Mary Cary stood before the tall, old-fas.h.i.+oned bureau, with its small swinging gla.s.s, and brushed her hair mechanically and with thoughts afar off; then putting down her brush laid it on a letter she had not seen before.

"Why, it's John's!" she said. "I wonder how it got here?" She held it up, then put it back again. "It must have come on the last mail and Hedwig brought it in. Silly!"

She braided her hair slowly, tied on its ribbons, then knelt by the big tester bed to say her prayers. Her face rested sideways on the open palms of her hands, crossed one on the other, and her eyes closed sleepily.

"I'm too tired to read it to-night, and to-morrow I will be too busy.

But I'm glad it's here. In case of trouble--or anything, John is such-- a sure help."

Chapter VI

MIDNIGHT

The heat was oppressive. Miss Gibbie turned off all lights save the one on the candle-stand by the high mahogany bed, with its valance of white pique, drew the large wing chair close to the open window and sat down in it. Over her gown she had put on a mandarin coat bought somewhere in China, and on her feet were the slippers embroidered for her by a j.a.panese girl she had sent to a hospital in Nagasaki.

The moon, coming out of its hiding place, for a moment poised clear and cool in a trough of gray banked by curling clouds of black, sent a thread of pale light upon the golden dragons on the coat, flashed on the slippers, and was lost in the darkness under which it darted. Miss Gibbie, watching, nodded toward it, and tapped the stool on which her feet rested with the tip of her toes.

"The moon is like one's self," she said. "Go where you will you can't get rid of it. Spooky thing, a moon. One big eye. Don't like it!"

She lay back in her chair and rested her hands on its arms. From the garden below the night wind brought soft fragrance of lilacs and crepe-myrtle, of bleeding-heart and wall-flower, of cow-slips and candy-tuft, and as they blew in and out, like the touch of unseen hands, they stirred old memories--made that which was dead, alive again.

"You're a fool, Gibbie Gault--a fool! You are too old to care as you care; too old to take up what you've turned your back on all these years. You are too old--too old!"

Suddenly she sat up. "Too old, am I? I'll see about that! The tail end of anything isn't its valuable part, and of a life it's usually useless, but it is all I have left, and I'll be jammed if I don't do something with it. And were I a man I wouldn't say I'll be jammed. Men have so many advantages over women!"

Again she leaned back in her chair and tapped its arms with her long, slender fingers. "I wonder how long I have to live. One--five--ten years? What puppets we humans are--what puppets! Born without permission, dying when it is neither pleasant nor convenient, we are made to march or crawl through life on the edge of a precipice from which at any moment we may be knocked over. And we're told we should believe the experience is a privilege!" Both hands were lifted. "A privilege! Mary thinks it is, thinks parts of it very pleasant, but Mary never was a field in which she didn't find a four-leaf clover, and I never saw one in which I did. 'Look for it,' she tells me." She shook her head. "It isn't that. The pitiful part of life is when one cares so little for what life gives!"

The tips of her fingers were brought together, then opened and shut mechanically. "And once I cared so much! Who doesn't care when they are young and wonderful things are ahead? Who doesn't care? And now to be caring again after the long, long, useless years! To be caring again!"

She closed her eyes and smiled a queer, twisted little smile. "It's got me!" she said. "Old or not, it's got me! and it's a poor life that it doesn't get! But who would have thought at your age, Gibbie Gault, you would let another life do with yours what it will? And that's what you are doing; you are letting Mary Cary do with you what she will! Well, suppose I am?" The keen gray eyes opened with a snap, and without warning stinging tears sprang in them. "Suppose I am? I've been a selfish old fool and shut out the only thing worth the having in life, and do you think now it's given me I am going to turn my back on it?

In all this big world sheis the only person who really loves me--the only one I really love. And do you think?"--she nodded fiercely as if to some one before her, then crumpled in a sudden heap in her chair.

"Oh, G.o.d, don't let her go out of my life! I'm an old woman and she's all I've got! All I've got!"

For some moments she lay still, then reached out for her handkerchief.

"What a variety of fools one female can be! Sit up and behave yourself, Gibbie Gault! You came near making a bargain with the Lord then, and if there's one thing more than another that must be hard for Him to have patience with it's a person who tries to make a deal with Him. 'Prosper me and I'll pray you' is the prayer of many. 'Keep evil from me; hold death back; take care of me, and I'll build a new church, send out a missionary, give my tenth and over! Don't hurt me, and I'll be good!'

Who doesn't pray like that some time or other in life? Well, you came near doing it yourself. Propitiation is an instinct, and money is all some have to offer as a bribe. To love mercy, to deal justly, and to walk humbly with one's Maker are terms too hard for most of us. Much easier to dope one's conscience with money. It's the only thing I've got, money is, and there have been times when I'd have given its every dollar for the thing it couldn't get. I came near mentioning it just now!"

She wiped her eyes resentingly, rubbed her cheeks none too gently, then opened her handkerchief and smoothed it into damp folds.

"Tears! Who would believe Gibbie Gault had a tear duct!" She shook her head. "Gibbie Gault has everything every other woman has, and if she chooses to hide a hungry heart under a sharp tongue whose business is it? People may talk about her as much as they please, but they sha'n't feel sorry for her!" She threw her handkerchief on the table.

"What idiots we are to go masquerading through life! All playing a part--all! Pretending not to care when we do care. Pretending we do when we don't. What a shabby little sham most of this thing called life is! What a shabby little sham!"

She changed her position, recrossed her feet and folded her arms. "If Mary were here she would say I needed a pill. Perhaps I need two, but not the pink ones already prepared. Everybody has a pill that's hard to swallow. /My/ pill might go down easily with some, and over theirs I might not blink, but--Well, a pill is a pill; facts are facts, and old age is old age. The thing is to face what is, shake your fist at it if necessary, but never meet it, if disagreeable, half-way. I never meet anything half-way. But it's a cruel trick time plays on us, this making of body and brain a withered, wrinkled thing, whimpering for warmth and food and sleep, and babbling of the past. It's a cruel trick!"

Out on the still air the clock in St. John's church steeple struck twelve strokes with clear deliberation. From the hall below they were repeated, and from the mantel behind her the hour chimed softly. She closed her eyes. "Twelve o'clock! Time for ladies of my age to be in bed. Not going to bed! And my age hasn't yet reached the babbling-of-the-past stage. It will never reach that, Gibbie. Never!"