Miss Gibbie Gault Part 20

Hedwig hesitated, drew the long, low chair closer to the railing and smoothed the cus.h.i.+ons on it, then turned and left the porch.

After a moment she came back and seeing the girl still leaning against the railing, stood by her side and looked at her in silence.

"Is there anything you wish, Hedwig?"

"No, mein Fraulein. Only"--the fingers of the strong white hands were interlaced--"only you a busy day have had, and busy weeks you have had also. And you have forgot that you of flesh and blood are too made. You think you of spirit are and do not wear out.

But everything, it wears out, mein Fraulein, and you are tired more than you know. You have nothing eat all day."

"Oh yes, I have. I ate my lunch with the children. Didn't they have a beautiful time? How many were here, do you think?"

"Will you not in the chair sit?" Hedwig pushed the chair a little closer. "There were of the little orphans sixty-one, and of their minders, five. Can I not your feet rub a little bit, mein Fraulein?

You on them have been all the long day."

"You certainly may, and you're a dear to think of it. My feet get so tired, and you know how to rest them so nicely. Thank you, Hedwig."

With an indrawing breath of which she was not conscience, Mary Cary leaned back in the chair and her hands dropped in her lap.

On her knees Hedwig knelt and drew off the slippers, and with soft, firm movements, learned in her hospital days, began to rub first one foot and then the other.

"Your feet, they tired get, mein Fraulein, because they are not for the body big enough. Look! I can cover it with my hand! Your body is not large, but your feet"--she laughed as if the thought were funny--"your feet is like your heart. They are a child's!"

Mary Cary shook her head. "No, nothing about me is like a child any more, Hedwig. Sometimes I wonder if I ever was one, like other children, I mean. When I lived here in the asylum I thought I was a child, but I was only half one them. I played with the children, ate with them, studied and worked with them, but it was only part of me that did it, the outside part. The inside lived in another world, a world I used to make up and put people and things in which were very different from what I saw about me. And then as I grew older I saw so much that seemed hard and unjust and unfair, saw so much that was beautiful and nice to have and yet did not make people happy that I began to wonder and think again, just as I did when I was little, only in a different way. And now sometimes I wonder if I ever was really a child or just somebody always puzzling over something, always wanting to help and not knowing how--just making mistakes."

Hedwig looked up. In her Fraulein's voice was a tone she did not know, and on the lashes of her closed eyes she thought she saw tears.

It was something very new and strange, and sudden fear filled her.

She could as soon think of the sun shedding darkness as the spirit before her failing, and this apparent surrender to something that hurt and depressed she could not understand.

"He who does not make mistakes does not do anything. He is an onlooker and a sneerer. Mein Fraulein does much, and the mistakes not yet are many. The good G.o.d is helping her, and He in her heart puts wonder as to why things be as they be, and love that she may try them to better make. But He will not like it if she forget herself too much altogether, and remember but the others. Mein Fraulein is very tired to-night."

"But I've no business being tired, Hedwig." Her hands went up to her hair and she fastened the stray strands more securely.

"It's been so lovely to have Uncle Parke and Aunt Katherine and the children; and everything is going all right, and my little orphans have had a happy day, and I'm going away on a beautiful trip and--It's just foolishness being tired." She threw back her head.

"I'm not tired! Just cross as two sticks, and what about I couldn't even guess. Weren't the children funny and didn't they look nice? You're sure everybody had plenty to eat, didn't you, Hedwig?"

"If they did not a plenty have, mein Fraulein, it was because their little stomachs were not big enough for more. They swallowed all they could hold, but taste is good to the tongue even though there is no more room. They one good day have had, and they will sleep happy and tired to-night. They love you, mein Fraulein. They love you because you have not them forgot, and because you do not forget when you, too, were little and unloved and n.o.body cared. Love it a great thing is."

Mary Cary sat upright and her clear laughter broke the stillness of the soft night air. "Did you talk to that little Minna Haskins, Hedwig, or hear her talk? Her imagination is worse than mine ever was, but memory is her specialty. There's nothing she doesn't remember. She's only eight, but she goes back to the prehistoric without a blink. She certainly had a good time to-day."

"She have. A most very good time. I saw her and I heard her, and she say the queer things for a child. I was giving some of the children sandwiches and lemonade before lunch, and I heard three or four talking so loud and arguing like that I went to see what the matter it was, and guess, mein Fraulein, what that little Minna Haskins she did say?"

"I can't guess. n.o.body could guess what Minna would say."

"The children, they were disputing as to what they remembered before they little orphans were, and one, she said she knew when she but four years old was and lived in the country with chickens and eggs and apple-trees like you here have. And another little girl said she could recollect when her father died and they had crepe on the door, and she was not but three, and then that little Minna Haskins her head did toss, and she said that was nothing, that she remembered perfectly the day she was born. That there wasn't a soul in the house but her grandmother, as her mother she had gone out to buy a new hat. And when she came back and saw her there with her hair all curled--her grandmother had curled it--she was so surprised she died from joy, and that's why she's an orphan."

Again Mary Cary's laughter broke the stillness. "What a dreadful thing to remember! Poor little thing! A too-active brain isn't much of a blessing with nothing to direct or control it. That will do, Hedwig.

Thank you so much. My feet feel ever so much better; it was just the standing that tired them. But you are dead tired yourself, and there'll be so much to do to-morrow that you ought to be in bed this minute.

You'll be such a help to everybody and the change will do you good."

"I would content be to stay or go, whichever it were the best. But I am glad to be with you." In the doorway she stood a moment, smoothing the folds of her ap.r.o.n, but this time she did not look around.

"Did you get the letter on the desk, mein Fraulein? I thought maybe you did not know it there was."

"Yes, thank you. I saw it. Good-night, Hedwig. And, Hedwig, wake me to-morrow at seven, will you? I have so much I want to do."

As Hedwig went inside the hall the clock near the door struck nine, and, at sound of the clear strokes, Mary Cary stirred and changed her position. The night was very still. Through the vines which draped the porch the moon shone calm and cool and serene in a sky as cloudless as a lake of silver, and out of the mult.i.tude of stars here and there some glowed so clearly that their points gleamed sharp and bright.

The restful stillness after the noisy day was good, and her eyes closed. For some time she lay back in her chair, and presently the old habit of her childhood a.s.serted itself and, opening her eyes, she nodded as if to some one and began to talk softly.

"Eight months and two weeks you've been back here, Mary Cary, and everybody certainly has been good to you--that is, almost everybody-- and you are just as happy as a person has a right to be. You always have known, or Martha has, that n.o.body can have everything just as they want it, and people will be pecky sometimes, and there will come down days as well as up ones. But you have so much to be thankful for that you'd be a selfish, silly creature, a weak and wicked creature, if you let anything, /anything/, make you the least bit tired or-- lonely, or make you wish for--for what you've got no business wis.h.i.+ng for. Martha certainly is ashamed of you, Mary. You always did have a horrid habit of asking what's the use of doing this or doing that, and it's pure selfishness and laziness that asks questions of that sort.

You might have married money and lived in a big city and given parties to people who didn't want to come, but had to just to let the others know they were invited; and you might have had automobiles and Paris clothes, but you watched that and didn't like it." In the darkness she shook her head. "You certainly didn't. You tried it when visiting you rich friends, and then your inquiring nature did have some sense, because it kept on asking inside what it was all for. n.o.body seemed to want to go where they went, or to enjoy what they did, and yet they were bored to death at home. The men talked money and the women talked clothes, and everybody seemed to be trying to make a noise so as not to hear something they're bound to hear, and to turn their backs on something that's got to be faced; and you kept looking for the pudding and could only find the meringue, and you don't like meringue much even if it is pretty to see. And then you had the chance to come here. That is, you made up your mind you might help a little here, not being needed specially anywhere else; and then this wonderful offer came. Not one person in forty thousand ever was situated just as you've been, or had what you have to do with. I wonder why more rich people wouldn't rather give their money away while living and get pleasure out of it, than keep it until they're dead for somebody else to fuss over. I guess they hate to give it up until the last minute. It hurts some people to part with what they don't want, much less with what they don't want any one else to have. And I've been so glad to be here. People think it's funny my living alone, and Miss Gibbie living in her big house alone.

But if we want out dining-room chairs on top the table instead of around it, we like to feel we can have them that way, and n.o.body to say we can't. As Mrs. McDougal says, 'we're individuals,' and 'it isn't every kind what can congeal in running a house.' Mrs. McDougal says a lot of true things. But John"--she put her hand down and drew from under her belt a letter--"John never said in his life a truer one than that I was so alone here. I've been so busy and happy I didn't know I was alone, but since the big Aldens and the little Aldens went home I've felt sometimes I was just a bit of a boat in a great big sea, and I wasn't sure where I was going, though pulling as hard as I could pull."

She leaned forward in her chair and, with elbows on knees and chin in her hands, looked down upon the floor of the porch and tapped it with her foot.

"But everybody is queer at times. Men are just as queer as women, and John isn't a bit different from the rest. I wonder if there is anybody in the world, /anybody/, who doesn't disappoint you if you know them long enough! There's John." She held the letter between the palms of her hands and tapped her lips with it. "This is the first letter I've had from him in three weeks. Says he is so busy he has no chance to write. Busy! For nearly ten years he's never been too busy. n.o.body is too busy to do what they want to do. If you can't take time you can always make it. And John is just proving he's only a man. Somehow I thought he wasn't like the rest. But he is. All of them are alike, every single one. And you can just write to him to-night, Mary Cary, and tell him if he's so busy you're sorry he bothered to write at all."

She sat up and took the sheet of paper out of its envelope. "Three pages! Used to write a book. I think John must be crazy. He'd better send nothing than a measly little thing with nothing in it, like that!

And going to Norway in August! Mentions it as if it were around the corner." Her face clouded and her brow ridged perplexedly. "I don't understand John. He didn't ask me a thing about it--what I thought of it, or say how long he'd be away, or anything. And Norway is such a long way off."

Chapter XVIII

PICTURES IN THE FIRE

Peggy looked up into the face laughing down into hers, and the big brown eyes blinked.

"You've got red apples in your cheeks this mornin', Miss Mary, and your eyes is just as s.h.i.+nin' as them ocean waves we saw last summer, when the sun made 'em sparkle in silver splashes. Just as blue, too.

I ain't ever seen such blue eyes and long lashes as you've got, but you don't often have real red apples in your cheeks."

"It's the weather. Who could help having red apples in stinging air like this? And who isn't glad to be living when every single tree is dressed in green and gold, or brown and tan, or yellow and red, and the sun is just laughing at you, and dancing for joy? It's such a nice world, Peggy, this world is, if we'll just keep our eyes open to the pretty things in it, and our hearts to its good things. Of course we have to see the ugly ones; if we didn't we might b.u.mp into them, and get hurt or soiled or something. But seeing and keeping on looking are very different things. Wait a minute, Peggy! Let's stop and take a good breath now we're at the top of the hill. Isn't it lovely up here, and isn't the air delicious? It's good to be living to-day!"

Peggy put her hands on her hips in imitation of the girl by her side, and tried to draw in a deep breath as slowly as she did, but her first effort was not successful, and the exhalation was abrupt. Mary Cary laughed.

"You'll have to practise, Peggy. It isn't easy at first, but our lungs deserve a bath as surely as our bodies, and this is such grand air in which to give it to them. Did you get any chincapins yesterday?"

"Wash and Jeff's hats full. We strung five strings last night and ate the rest. I took Araminta Winters one string. I don't like Araminta.

She's a whiney little p.u.s.s.y cat, and sly as a fox, but she's sick and can't go after nuts or anything, and I thought you'd like her to have one. I didn't want her to have it. She told a story on me once and I ain't ever forgot it. I reckon 'twould be a good thing if she was to die."

"Good gracious, Peggy! You sound like a vivisectionist. Araminta's mother wouldn't agree with you. She loves Araminta, if you don't."

"No'm, she don't--that is, she ain't any way crazy 'bout her. Mothers feel bound to love what they've borned, I reckon, but Araminta ain't anything to be dyin' anxious to have around. She's ugly as sin and got sore eyes, and when you see her comin' you run if you see her before she sees you. There's a lot of folks like that, ain't there, Miss Mary? m.u.t.h.e.r say there is."

"Oh, I don't know. If you didn't see the funny side you might run, but I nearly always see the funny side, and all kinds of people interest me."

Peggy shook her head. "All folks ain't got a funny side to see.

They're just naturally nasty. Always seein' what's wrong and talkin'

about it. m.u.t.h.e.r says some folks is born to poke for rubbish, and if they can't find a thing mean to say they'll say it anyhow.

Crittersizers, I believe she calls 'em. Some who ain't good at anything else is great at that, she says."

"Very true, my solemn Peggy, but you shouldn't know it." Mary Cary laughed. "And if we don't like 'crittersizers,' then don't let's criticise. It was my besetting sin, Peggy, and it took me a long time to learn we all have rubbish in us, and it wasn't a bit hard to see the ugly things in people. And unless we can rake the rubbish out and get rid of it, it doesn't do much good to talk about it. People used to make me so /mad!/"