Miss Gibbie Gault Part 14

"Is she?"

"Why not? Isn't she leading the life she wants to lead? She has a pa.s.sion for service. She has a home of her own, simple, but complete; is earning an income sufficient to take care of herself, and has besides, a little money, every cent of which she gives away, however; and, above all, she has the power of making people love her. What more could a girl want?"

"Is it enough?"

"Quite enough!" Miss Gibbie's eyes flashed into John Maxwell's.

"Why not enough? She has work to do, a place to fill, is needed, and is bringing cheer and suns.h.i.+ne to others. There is a great deal to be done for Yorkburg, and being that rare thing, a leader, she has already started much that will make great changes later on. Sit down and stop looking at me that way! She has quite enough."

John threw his cigar away and took the chair she pushed toward him.

"I don't believe we do understand each other as well as we thought,"

he said, again leaning forward and clasping his hands together. "I know what Mary is to you. I saw it that first day I joined you at Windemere, and during the weeks we were together I saw also it wasn't Mary alone I'd have to win, but there'd be you to fight as well. I told you in the beginning just where I stood. I've kept nothing from you and I'm fighting fair, but neither you nor anybody else on G.o.d's earth can keep me from trying to make her my wife. Life is before us--"

"And behind me."

He flushed. "I didn't mean that. I mean that Mary is not to sacrifice herself to an idea, to a condition, if I can help it. I'm with her in all this work for the old place. I love it. I've tried to prove it in more than words, and I would not ask her to give it up entirely. A home can always be kept here, but another sort of home is meant for Mary. And it's the one I want to make for her."

"Your mother's?"

John's steady eyes looked in the stormy ones. "No--not my mother's.

When Mary is my wife she goes to the home of which she is to be the mistress. Like you, my mother--"

"Objects to matrimony. I understand Mrs. Maxwell is as much opposed to your marriage as I am to Mary's. That should be a stimulus to both of you. Opposition is a great incentive, but in this case the trouble is with Mary herself. Would you marry her, anyhow?"

"I would." He smiled. "I'd take Mary any way I could get her. Oh, I used to have theories of my own about such things, but love knocks theories into nothingness. It makes us do things we never thought we would, doesn't it?"

Miss Gibbie turned her head away from his understanding eyes, and tapped the porch impatiently with her foot.

"It makes fools of most people. But as long as we've mentioned it we might as well have this out, Mary doesn't want to marry anybody.

She is happy, and you are not to be coming down here trying to make her change her mind, trying to take her away!"

"Who is going to stop it?"

They were her words, and at remembrance of them her face changed and over it swept sudden understanding, and her hand went helplessly toward him.

"John," she said, "I'm an old woman and she's all I've got. Don't take her from me! Don't take her away!"

He frowned slightly, but he took the hand which he had never before seen tremble, and smoothed it gently. "Not from you, Miss Gibbie. I wouldn't take her out of your life. She would let nothing or n.o.body do that, but for years I have been waiting--"

"How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven in October."

She sat suddenly upright. "An infant! She will be twenty-three in June. And I--I am sixty-five. Your life, as you said, is before you, yours and hers. Mine is behind, but in the little of mine left I need her. Will you hold off for a while? Listen! she doesn't know she loves you. Doesn't know the reason she has never loved any one else is because there is but one man in her life, and that is you.

I didn't want to tell you this, didn't want you to know it, don't want her to know it--yet. She is a child still, though so verily a woman in much. She has owned you since that first visit you made to Michigan, a big, awkward, red-faced boy of seventeen, with the same fearless eyes you've got now and the same determined mouth. You've told me about it and she's told me about it and how all you said at first was 'How'd do, Mary? I'm here.' And you've been 'here' ever since. Don't you see she takes you for granted? The best of women will do that and never guess how rare a thing is a strong man's love. For you there's but one woman in the world, but a woman is the strangest thing G.o.d's made yet, and there are no rules by which to understand her. And you don't understand Mary. Until she does what it is in her heart to do here--gets rid of some of the regulations that use to enrage her as a child, starts flowers where are weeds, and opens eyes that are shut--she couldn't be happy. But listen! I am going to tell you what for cold, hard years I pretended not to believe. A woman's heart never ceases to long for the love that makes her first in life, and after a while Mary will know her arms were meant to hold children of her own."

For a moment there was silence, and then Miss Gibbie spoke again.

"Let her alone, John. Let her find for herself that the best community mother should be the woman who has borne children and knows the depths of human experience are needed to reach its heights.

She has her own ideas of service; so have I. Mine are that most people you try to help are piggy and grunt if you happen to step on their toes. She says they grunt only when the stepping is not by accident, and the pigginess is often with the people who help. As benefactors they want to own the benefactored. Perhaps they do. She knows much more of the behind-the-scenes of life than I do. But I know some things she doesn't, and a good many you don't. If I didn't like you, boy, I wouldn't tell you what I'm going to tell you, and that is, stay away and let her miss you. I'd tell you to keep on and nag her to death, and make her despise you for your weakness. She'll never marry a man she doesn't respect, even if she loved him, and love is by no means dependent on respect."

Miss Gibbie nibbled the tip of her turkey-wing fan for a moment of stillness, unbroken save for the twitter of birds in the trees near by, then turned once more to the man by her side.

"I'll be honest with you. I don't want her to marry you or anybody else. I want to keep her with me; but I'll be square. It will be hands off until she decides for herself. If you will say nothing to her for a year I will say nothing before her against marriage in general, and I've said a great deal in the past. And, moreover, I will wrap my blessing up to-day and hand it out a year hence if you deserve it, even if the handing breaks my heart." She held out her hand. "Is it a bargain?"

"I don't know whether it is or not." He interlocked his fingers and looked down on the floor of the porch. The ridges in his forehead stood out heavily, and his teeth bit into his under lip. "It is asking a good deal, and I don't like to make a promise I might not be able to fulfil. A year is a long time. She might need me. Something might happen."

"About your only chance. Don't you see she needs something to wake her up? I'm not going to wake her. I want her to sleep on. I'm selfish and don't deny it. But, of course, do as you choose." She waved her fan with a wash-my-hands-of-you air, and settled herself back in her chair. "I've been a fool to talk as I have, perhaps, but I couldn't see a dog hit his tail on a fence and not tell him it was barbed if I knew it and he didn't. Being a man, you must think it over, I suppose, and take a week to find out what a woman could tell you in the wink of an eye. A man's head is no better than a cocoanut where his heart is concerned."

"If I should do this," he said, presently, "and anything should happen in which she needed me, and you did not let me know, did not send for me, I--"

"Don't be tragic, /mon enfant/. And in the mean time I don't mind telling you she is coming down the street. I wouldn't turn my head, if I were you, though that big hat she's got on, with the wreath of wild roses, is very becoming. She ought always to wear white. She is inside the gate now." His hand was given a quick warm grasp.

"Boy--boy--I've been young. If she needs you I will let you know."

Chapter XIII

A GRATEFUL CONVALESCENT

"Ain't it pink and white and whispery to-day?" she said to herself.

"The birds are having the best time, and the sun looks like it's singing out loud, it's so bursting bright. 'Tain't hard to love anybody on a day like this."

Peggy's thin little fingers played with the spray of roses on her lap, and her big brown eyes roved first in one direction and then the other as she followed the movements of the girl on the lawn cutting fresh flowers for the house; then as the latter came closer she held out a wasted little hand, but drew it back before it was seen.

It was her first day outdoors for three weeks, and it was very good to be in the open air again. She leaned back in the steamer-chair filled with pillows, in which she had been placed an hour before, and stretched out her feet luxuriously. Over them a light blanket had been thrown, and as she smoothed the pink kimona which covered her gown she sighed in happy content.

"This is me, Peggy McDougal, who lives in Milltown," she went on, talking to herself, "but right now feeling like she might be in heaven. My! but I'm glad I ain't, though, 'cause there mightn't be anybody in heaven I know, and this place where Miss Mary Cary lives is happy enough for me. m.u.t.h.e.r say I'd been dead and buried before this if'n it hadn't been for Miss Mary. I reckon I would. Some nights I thought I was goin' to strangle sure, and the night I had that sinker spell, and pretty near faded out, I saw Miss Mary, when 'twas over, put her head down on the table and just cry and cry. Look like she couldn't help it. She thought I didn't know a thing. But I did.

I knowed she cared. Warn't it funny for a lady like her to care about a little child like me what comes of factory folks and ain't got nothin' ahead but plain humbleness?

"And diphtheria is a ketchin' disease m.u.t.h.e.r says. That's why Miss Mary picked me up so quick and brought me out here when the doctor said I had it. If'n she hadn't Teeny might have took it from me, 'cause we sleep in the bed together, and Susie might, too, for she's in the same room, and all the twins might, the little ones and the big ones, and m.u.t.h.e.r would have been worked to death a-nursin' of me and a-cookin'

for the rest. And I might have died and been put in the ground, and then they'd had to pay for the funeral, and there warn't a cent for it.

m.u.t.h.e.r couldn't have paid for a funeral out of eggs, 'cause coffins have gone up, and the hens don't lay 'em fast enough, and 'twould have took too many. I wish hens could lay more than one egg a day. Roosters ain't a bit of 'count for eggs."

She put her hands behind her head and drew in a deep breath. "But I ain't dead." Suddenly the wasted little fingers were pressed over tightly closed eyes. "Oh Lord," she said, soberly, "I'm very much obliged to you for lettin' of me live. I hope n.o.body will ever be sorry I didn't die. Help me to grow up and be like Miss Mary Cary.

Lookin' out, like her, for little children what ain't got anybody special to be lookin' after them. 'Course I had my m.u.t.h.e.r and father, but they had so much to do, and didn't have the money, and diphtheria takes money. Poor people ain't got it. If'n I don't ever have any money, please help me to help some other way. Maybe I might be cheerfuler. Amen."

"h.e.l.lo, Peggy. Sleep?"

Mary Cary's hands, flower-filled, were held close to Peggy's face, and at sound of her voice Peggy's eyes opened joyfully. "Oh, Miss Mary, you skeered me! I thought you were way down by the gate.

/Ain't/ they lovely! Ain't they LOVELY!" And Peggy's little pug nose sniffed eagerly the roses held close to them.

"Hardly anything left but roses now, but June is the rose month. Lend me one of your cus.h.i.+ons and I'll sit down awhile and cool off before I go in."

She laid the flowers carefully on the ground, threw the cus.h.i.+on beside them and, pulling Peggy's chair closer to the large chestnut-tree, whose branches made a wide circle of shade in the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne, sat down, then rested her hand in Peggy's lap and smiled in her happy eyes.

"It's good to have you out here, Peggy child," she said. "You'll soon have cheeks like peaches. This suns.h.i.+ne and fresh air will paint them for you and make the color stick. Did you have some milk at ten?"

"Yes'm, thank you. Milk and eggs, too. Reckon I'll be bustin' fat by this time next week if'n I keep on swallowin' all them things Miss Hedwig brings me. She certainly is a good lady, that Miss Hedwig is. She's got roses in her cheeks, and ain't her light hair pretty? She wears it awful plain, just parted and brushed back, but it's like the silk in corn. Is that all the name she's got-- Hedwig?"