Miss Gibbie Gault Part 17

"Of course she didn't. And if Yorkburg knew what was good for it, all these Yankee ideas Mary Cary is bringing down here would be stopped. She spends money in every direction, sends this person away and that one away, and gives picnics and parties to people n.o.body ever heard of until lately. People of that cla.s.s are ruined by having the things done for them that she is doing. After awhile they'll be wanting to move up on King Street and expect us to speak to them as if they were our friends."

"She says they are hers."

"Perhaps they are." Mrs. Deford's lips again made their favorite curve.

"She evidently has a strong leaning toward poor whites. But there is one direction in which she will lean in vain, and that is--Oh, well--"

She put her head on the side and shrugged her shoulders. "I really feel very sorry for her, but a girl can't make a man love her just because she wants him to."

"And a woman can't make a man marry where she'd like him to." Miss Lizzie Bettie pinned on her hat hurriedly. "That's a black cloud coming toward us. If we don't look out we'll get caught in a storm.

When congratulations are in order let us know. Good-bye. Come on, Miss Puss." And without further waste of words she was gone.

In the street she and Miss Puss hurried in one direction, Mrs.

Steele and Miss Georganna in another, and half-way home the rain began to fall. The one parasol was hastily opened and held close down over their heads, so close that a couple coming toward them with umbrella held in the same position as theirs b.u.mped into them.

With a hurried apology they pa.s.sed on, but not before Miss Lizzie Bettie had seen who they were.

She turned and looked behind and then at Miss Puss. "A new way to come from Sarah Sue Moon's house," she said. "That's the second time this week I've seen them together."

"Who is it?" Miss Puss pulled her skirts up higher and stepped carefully aside from a puddle of water. "I can't see a thing with your parasol right over my face. Who was it?"

"Lily Deford and that Pugh boy. The one who stays in the bank."

"What!" Miss Puss stopped in the now pouring rain. "In broad daylight? I've heard they've been seen together several times lately in the evenings. His father keeps a livery stable and his father before him! Do you suppose Laura knows?"

"Of course she doesn't! Lily's soul doesn't belong to her, and if her mother knew this boy was in love with her--well, she mightn't kill him, but he'd be safer out of sight. Of all the ambitious mothers I've ever seen--Do pray hurry, Miss Puss!

We'll be drenched if you don't walk faster!"

Chapter XV

BUZZIE

"Who in the world would have thought this morning it was going to rain like this? But that's weather; you never can tell what it's going to do. Just like women. Good gracious! Did you see that flash of lightning?"

Mrs. Tate, sitting on Mrs. Moon's front porch, clapped her hands to her ears and shut her eyes tight, then got up quickly. "You all may stay out here if you want to, but I'm going in. I never did think it was right to tempt Providence, and if there was a feather bed in the house I'd get on it. Can't the windows be lowered, Beth, and somebody start the pianola and turn on the lights? A thunderstorm like this gives me such a sinking feeling in my stomach I feel like I'm sitting on a trap-door with a broken catch. My love! there goes another one!"

Mrs. Moon laughed and got up. "I guess we had better go in, Mrs. Burnham, the porch is getting so wet. I hope Miss Georganna Brickhouse and Mrs. Steele got home before the rain.

I saw them coming from Mrs. Deford's just now." She pulled the chairs quickly forward as a sudden heavy deluge beat in almost to the door, and called to the maid to lower the windows; then, inside the sitting-room, took up her sewing, Mrs. Burnham taking up hers also.

But sewing was not for Mrs. Tate. As another peal of thunder drowned the downpour of rain she ran to the sofa and piled around her the cus.h.i.+ons upon it. Putting one under her feet, another on her head, and clasping one close to her breast with her crossed arms, she closed her eyes tight and sat in huddled terror waiting for the storm to pa.s.s.

Neither lightning nor thunder could silence her tongue, however, and, though at some distance from the window near which Mrs. Moon and Mrs. Burnham were sitting, she talked on with slight regard to their attention, from time to time opening her eyes, only to shut them quickly again it a flash of lightning caused fresh fright.

"I might have known it was going to storm like this," she said after a while, "for last night was the hottest night I ever felt in my life.

When I went to bed I didn't think I was going to sleep a wink, and I wouldn't if I'd stayed awake and thought about it. The mosquitoes were perfectly awful. Biggest things I ever saw. I thought once there were bats in the room. Sakes alive! that reminds me I haven't ordered a thing for dinner! I didn't intend to stay here a minute; just stopped by on my way to Mr. Blick's, and here it is after one o'clock! I get so tired of those everlasting three meals a day that I almost wish there were no such things as stomachs. I would wish it if Mr. Tate wasn't in the feed business. Half one's time is spent in getting something to put in them and the other half in suffering from what we put. Do you all ever have dyspepsia? I do --awful. And not a doctor in town knows what to do for it. I take more medicine--"

"Maybe that is what gives it to you." Mrs. Burnham looked at Mrs.

Moon and smiled. When she first came to Yorkburg she had wondered why Mrs. Tate was called "Buzzie," but she had long since found out, also the fitness of the appellation. "I guess I am queer about medicine," she went on, bending over to see if there were any breaks in the clouds. "I rarely take it. There is nothing so apt to keep you sick."

"That's so. And after a while we'll all have to be Christian Scientists or New Thoughters or some other thing that don't call in doctors. I wish I was one this minute. I'd rather think something than swallow something, and n.o.body but the rich can afford to be sick these days. If you say you've got a plain everyday sort of pain the doctor puts a name on it and yanks you to a hospital and cuts it out before he's sure what the thing really is. If you live you're lucky.

If you don't--well, you're dead. That's all. And if you're tired out and fidgety and feel like crying as much as you want to, they say you're a nervous prostrationer and tie you to a trained nurse at twenty-five dollars a week, and don't let you see friend or relative until you're better or worse. I tell you Mr. Tate would go crazy if he had to hand out twenty-five dollars a week to have a girl in white wait on me. And I wouldn't blame him. If I were a young man I'd think a long time before I'd get married these days. A man wouldn't buy a horse unless he knew it was healthy, but he'd marry a girl without knowing. But I never saw a man who wouldn't rather b.u.t.t his own head his own way then be told he didn't have to, and n.o.body gets thanked for telling. Mercy! I'm hot; nearly melting. Is it still raining, Beth?"

Mrs. Moon got up and raised the window. "Not very much, and the clouds seem to be scattering. I should think you would be roasting, way over in that corner with all those cus.h.i.+ons around you. Why don't you come by the window? The air feels so fresh and good."

"No, sir!" Mrs. Tate opened her eyes, but closed them quickly again.

"There goes another flash of lightning! The thunder is getting better, but I'm not going to sit by an open window as long as there's any of it left. But I'm hot, all right. Seems to me Yorkburg is a great deal hotter in summer now than it used to be. That's only natural, I suppose, as everything in Yorkburg has changed. If old General Wright and Mr. Brockenborough and Major Alden and Judge Gault and some others of their day could come back they wouldn't know it. They were the lordliest, high-handedest bunch of old aristocrats that ever lived, and they ruled this town like they owned it. Specially Major Alden.

He didn't have a bit of business sense, Father Tate used to say, but he'd had money all his life and he would spend it; and when there wasn't any to spend he spent on just the same. Major Alden didn't really believe the Almighty made common people. He thought they came up like weeds and underbrush and, though you couldn't cut them down exactly, you must keep them down somehow. He really believed it.

Some people think so now."

"Certainly his granddaughter doesn't." Mrs. Burnham put down her work and took up a palm-leaf fan and began to use it, running her finger around the neck of her collar to loosen it. "I don't think anybody in Yorkburg begins to understand what Mary Cary is doing here, or what she means to certain people--"

"I don't suppose we do"--Mrs. Moon started to say something, but Mrs. Tate was ahead of her--"And no one in the world would ever have imagined Mary would do things like that. But that's Mary.

From childhood no one ever knew what she'd be doing next. She certainly is looking pretty, but she isn't the beauty her mother was. I'm like Miss Gibbie in one thing. I believe in a sure-enough h.e.l.l. They say real smart people don't any more except preachers who have to and women who want to. Miss Gibbie says she wouldn't believe in it if it hadn't been for the war, but I believe in it because some things have to be burned out, and Major Alden needed to have his pride purified. You knew he used to be a beau of Miss Gibbie's, didn't you?"

Mrs. Burnham shook her head. "No, I know little of Yorkburg's personal history."

"Well, he was. She never was a raging beauty, but she had more men in love with her than any girl she ever knew, mother used to say, and more sense than all the rest put together. That's what I think was so funny. Men don't care for sense in a woman. If she can sign coal tickets and market tickets, and look after them, and be good-looking and nice it's all they care for. I never knew how to make out a check until my own daughter showed me. What's the use?

Never had a dollar in bank in my life. Mr. Tate's the kind of man who thinks a woman ought to come to her husband for everything, and as he never gives me money unless I ask for it, and I don't ask until I need it to spend right away, it has no chance to get in a bank. I don't mean I have to worry Mr. Tate. He gives me all he can, and, besides, I always did think it was a mistake in a woman to know too much about business things. Men don't like it. I've always made it a rule never to do anything Mr. Tate could do for me. I've often noticed one or the other is going to be helpless, and I'd rather be waited on than wait."

She settled herself more comfortably on the sofa and again opened her eyes cautiously. "Of course I'm old-fas.h.i.+oned. Young people have very different ideas from their parents. Girls plank themselves right straight alongside of men and say they are just as smart as men are.

Of course they are. Women have always known it, but they used to have too much sense to tell it. Nowadays they tell everything. The easiest thing on earth to fool is a man. He just naturally loves helplessness, and when Aylette married I told her for mercy's sake not to be one of these new-fas.h.i.+oned kind of wives, but be a clinger. She doesn't like clingers, and sometimes I'm afraid she's too smart to be real happy.

She takes after her grandfather Tate. I certainly do thank the Lord He didn't see fit to make me clever. I've often heard my mother say a smart woman had a hard time in life."

"I wonder why Miss Gibbie did not marry." Mrs. Burnham was looking at Mrs. Moon. "If she had so many beaux it is strange she did not marry."

"Now who on earth could think of Miss Gibbie Gault being married!"

The cus.h.i.+on dropped from the top of Mrs. Tate's head and she stooped to pick it up. "Her independent tongue was laughed at and her witty speeches repeated, but what home could have stood her?

She knew better than to get married. If she ever loved anybody, n.o.body ever knew it, mother used to say, but I always have believed she did. She certainly is one queer person. Mrs. Porter asked her last week to give something to the choir fund and she said she'd do nothing of the kind, and she thought the people ought to be paid for having to listen to squeaks like we had instead of paying them to squeak, and she wouldn't give a cent. She holds on to what she's got like paper to the wall, Mrs. Porter says."

Mrs. Moon got up and pressed the b.u.t.ton by the door, and when the maid appeared spoke to her.

"Mrs. Tate and Mrs. Burnham will stay to dinner, Harriet. See that there are places at the table for them."

"Indeed I can't stay to dinner." Mrs. Tate jumped up and came toward the window. "I believe it's stopped raining, and if the thunder is over I'll have to run on home. When I left there everything looked like scrambled eggs, and n.o.body knows where I am, and I wouldn't telephone just after a storm for forty dollars.

There's the sun. I'm going. Good-bye." And picking up her skirts with both hands she ran down the steps and out into the street and across it to her house, half-way down the square.

Coming back from the door to which they had followed her, Mrs.

Moon and Mrs. Burnham laughed good-naturedly. "How do you suppose she manages it?" both asked, and then laughed again at the oneness of thought.

"I've often wondered why she didn't lose breath," said Mrs.

Burnham, taking her seat this time in the hall for the few minutes longer she could stay. "But I wouldn't dare try to see how she does it. She's worse than Mrs. McDougal. Did you hear of the letter she wrote Miss Gibbie? Mrs. McDougal, I mean. I'm so glad she's coming home before we go away. To hear her tell of her trip will be better than the minstrels. When are you going away, Mrs. Moon?"

The latter shook her head. "I don't know. I'm trying to make Mr.

Moon go with me, but I'm afraid there's no use in even hoping it.

Richard says it's for the family he is working as he does, and he is honest in thinking it, but if I and the children were to die to-morrow he'd begin the day after the funeral and keep at it just as persistently as ever."

Mrs. Burnham looked down at her work as if examining closely the st.i.tches she had just put in. Mr. Moon was the richest man in Yorkburg, but not for years had he and his wife gone off together for a holiday. Presently she looked up. "Men are queer, aren't they? I suppose all wives wish sometimes they could mix up, as one does dough, a whole bunch of husbands and cut them out in new patterns with some of each other's qualities in each. There's Mr.

Corbin. He doesn't work enough. Mr. Moon works too much. I saw Mr.

Corbin on this front porch the other day reading Plato's /Republic/ as though it were the first reading. It was the third he told me. Mr. Moon--"