Miss Gibbie Gault Part 24

"Got here yesterday! Didn't come out, didn't telephone, spent the evening at the Defords', and with Lily the first thing this morning.

Wants to see me this evening!" Her head went up. "I guess not. His time will probably be short. With me it will certainly be short.

What did he come for if only to stay a little while?" In her face indignation faded into incredulity and her lips curved. "To see the little powder puff, I suppose! Well, he can see her. I'll certainly not take his time. For nearly six months it has pleased him to stay away, to write sc.r.a.ps of letters at long intervals, to send nothing, do nothing that he used to do. And now he comes back and expects me to receive him with outstretched arms. He expects wrong!"

She reached the Moon's gate, hesitated, and walked on. Lunch was to be taken with them, but the sudden transition from expected sensations to the unexpected made it best to stay in the cold air a while longer, and without a look toward the house she pa.s.sed it hurriedly.

What was the matter with John? For ten years he had been the friend who never failed--the friend to whom she could always turn and know what to find; the one to whom subconsciously all things were referred, and who, without always agreeing with her, always stood by her. What was the matter with him?

Walking as if to catch a train, and yet without looking where she was going, she turned into Pelham Place and neared Miss Gibbie's house. Her eyes were upon it in indecision, and not seeing the puddle of water ahead, she stepped into it and splashed well with mud the low shoes and thin stockings she was wearing. The sudden chill provoked her, and she looked down at her wet feet.

"Of course he saw I had on no overshoes. He always sees the things I leave off and don't do and thinks I'm nothing but a child.

Suppose I am! What business is it of his whether I wear overshoes or not? What business is it of his what I do or where I go or what I say? We are nothing to each other!"

The thought stopped her. For a moment she s.h.i.+vered in the damp, penetrating wind, then hurriedly pa.s.sed Miss Gibbie's house. She would not go in. No one must see her until she grew calmer. But what was she angry about? She didn't know, only--only for weeks she had been looking forward to John's coming. She had expected him the first of October, but the month pa.s.sed and he had not come.

Then came a hurried note merely saying he would reach Yorkburg on the thirtieth, and the vague unrest of past days faded. She hadn't been as nice to John as she ought to have been, had taken too much as a matter of course perhaps, but this time she was going to be really very good. There were many things to talk over, and she wanted, too, to hear about his trip. She had visited Norway, but the stay was short, and she would like to go again. She had honestly intended to be very nice, and only a few hours ago she had talked with Hedwig about supper, deciding on the things John liked best. And now--

She laughed, and for the first time in her life her laughter had a bitter tinge.

"Good-morning! The girl worth while is the girl who can smile, when the rain--"

She looked up. The man in front of her was blocking her way. He touched his hat, but did not lift it, and at sight of him she frowned. There were times when she loathed Horatio Fielding.

"Good-morning!" Her tone was short, then, a sudden thought occurring, she changed it. "You evidently like to walk in the rain as much as I do. Suppose you come out to tea to-night. I was going to telephone, but this will save time." She started to pa.s.s on. "We have tea at seven."

"I'll be there. In front of your fire is the place for me. But can't I walk with you? You seem in an awful hurry this morning."

"I am. Have an engagement. Will see you to-night." And as if to escape what was unendurable she hurried on, and again turned into King Street.

"Two stories in half an hour is doing well for one who hates a lie as nothing on earth is hated," she said under her breath, holding the umbrella close down over her head. "A little more time and you may lie without effort. You told John you had an engagement. I thought I did, with him. And you had no more idea of telephoning Mr. Fielding before you saw him than of telephoning the--I'd much rather telephone the latter. He'd certainly be more entertaining and far more polished. It isn't Mr. Fielding's dulness that is so unpardonable, but his horrible c.o.c.ksureness and insufferable a.s.surance.

He doesn't eat with his knife, but only from obvious restraint, and in an unguarded moment he'll do it yet. He could never be convinced that if a woman had fine clothes and carriages and bejewelled fingers and throat that she could wish for something else. To him a woman is property." She drew in her breath. "After a visit from him I need prayers and want incense. And I've asked him to eat John's supper to-night!"

The wind had changed, and the rain, coming down in heavy, s.h.i.+fting sheets, beat upon her umbrella with such force that only with difficulty could it be held. Her feet were wet, loose strands of hair, damp and breeze-blown, brushed in irritating tappings across her face, and as she again neared Mrs. Moon's house she knew she must go in.

Sarah Sue had seen her coming, and the door was opened when she reached it. "What in the world made you go by here half an hour ago instead of coming in?" she asked, taking the umbrella and helping off with the raincoat. "I knocked on the window and called you, but you didn't hear. Aren't your shoes wet? Soaking! Come right on up to my room and put your feet on my fender and get them good and hot.

My slippers and stockings are too big, but you can keep them on until yours are dry. I don't understand why you didn't come in first."

Sarah Sue led the way up-stairs, followed by Mary Cary, who had submitted to comments and questions and the off-taking of wraps without reply, but halfway up the steps she stopped and turned back.

"A package was left here for you just now," she said. "I'd better give it to you before I forget." She took up the bundle on the hall-table and came back with it.

"What is it?" Mary's voice was indifferent as she broke the wrapping; then as she saw the writing on it she frowned. "It's nothing--just my overshoes." She threw them down the steps and under the table from which Sarah Sue had taken them.

Chapter XXI

THE RELEASE

On the fifteenth of each October the turkey-wing fan, rarely out of Miss Gibbie's hands in warm weather, was put away in camphor, and on that evening knitting-needles and white Shetland wool were brought out. In a basket of rare weaving these materials now lay on the library table near which Miss Gibbie sat, but as yet they were untouched, for before the open fire her hands lay idle in her lap. Every now and then she lifted first one foot and then the other and put it on the fender, and presently she drew closer the tall screen with its framed square of tapestried lambs and shepherdess wrought by her grandmother's fingers many years ago. Placing it so that her face might be protected from the scorching heat of the dancing flames, she tilted it at the right angle, and then tilted her head also.

"No use blistering my face because young people prefer to be fools!"

she said, presently. "And what fools! You might have known, Gibbie Gault, you'd make a mess of it if you put your finger in a lovers'

pie. If life has taught you nothing else it has taught you to let people do their own paddling, and yet at your age you tried to steer a man in a way he didn't want to go. You thought it was the wisest way, and in the end would bring him to the promised land, but your mistake lay in not letting him fall overboard the way he preferred to fall. A man would rather fail according to his own ideas than succeed according to another's. And you certainly can't say this little arrangement of yours concerning John and Mary has proven a brilliant one. Of the three simpletons, just at present, you deserve what's coming to you more than the other two, for better than they you understand that women is an unknown quant.i.ty. Even her Maker couldn't antic.i.p.ate her behavior, and when she wills to torment a man she has seemingly neither soul not sense. In your wise and worldly advice to John you forgot Mary's possibilities of denseness, and your meddlesome medicine has had the wrong effect."

She sighed queerly and changed the left foot on the fender to the right, and again tapped the arms of her chair with the tips of her delicately pointed fingers. "What a silly, sensitive little thing this self-love, this pride of ours, is! And it's Mary's hardiest sin.

She wouldn't let the angels of heaven take her up to-day and put her down to-morrow, and while she laughs at much in life, there are certain things she doesn't smile at. A friend who fails in her eyes isn't even in a cla.s.s with toads. She has an idea that John is no longer the friend of old. She does not say so, has apparently forgotten he's living, rarely mentions his name, and doesn't know that my old eyes see clearly how gayly miserable she is. I have pretended to be blind, and have encouraged the idea that John was interested in that pink-and-white offspring of Sn.o.bby Deford. What a bunch of idiots we all have been, and I the biggest of all--the biggest of all!"

At the library door Celia stood, hand on k.n.o.b. "Mr. Maxwell is here, Miss Gibbie. Will you see him?"

"I will." Miss Gibbie leaned back in her chair, put her feet on the stool in front of it, and crossed her hands in her lap. "And bring in tea at once."

"It is good of you to let me see you." John Maxwell bent over the beautiful hand held out to him, but the boyish banter of other days was gone. Before Miss Gibbie was no pretence, and his face was that of a man who no longer has time to waste or the will for wasting.

"Not good at all. If you hadn't come I should have sent for you."

She tilted the screen at a different angle. "Sit down, and sit where I can see you. But first put that table a little closer to me. Here's Celia with the tea."

The table was moved and the large silver tray with its little silver legs was placed upon it, the lamp under the kettle lighted, and Celia waved out, and again Miss Gibbie leaned back.

"What day did you get here?" she asked. "Time has such a somersault way of pa.s.sing, one can't keep up with it. How long have you been here?"

"Ten days. I came on the twenty-ninth, and this is the eighth of November."

"When are you going away?"

"I don't know." John crossed his right leg over his left, s.h.i.+fted his position and shaded his eyes with his hand.

Miss Gibbie took up the tea-caddy. "Do you think you've accomplished great things by coming? Judging by your manner of late, not to mention your looks, you haven't been drunk with happiness since you reached this town of historic importance and modern inconsequence. But of course--" she tilted the spout of the kettle into the teapot--"my suggestion that you stay where you belong was a mere woman's, and you saw fit to ignore it. Men like to bring blessings on their head--and my friend John Maxwell is most verily a man."

"You seem to forget it." He got up and began to walk backward and forward the length of the room. "I wonder if I am sometimes. When I see that round, red, moon-faced pig driving around town with Mary, taking long horseback rides with her, and going to see her whenever he pleases, I don't know how I keep from killing him. He isn't fit to be in the same town with her. I know the man, went to school with him. He's a cad and a coward and a big fat fool. He has some money-- that is, his father has--and a smearing of education, but he's coa.r.s.e and common and not to be trusted. Van Orm was a gentleman at least, and if Mary wanted--"

"Does Mary know as much of your friend Mr. Fielding as you do?"

Miss Gibbie handed him a cup of tea, but he waved it back.

"If she doesn't it's because she's trying to be blind and deaf. I have seen practically nothing of her since I came down. You think I shouldn't have come. Perhaps I shouldn't, but I'm here, and for the present am going to stay. For six months I've held off, but through them we've been generally friendly, and I was hoping it might work, the thing you suggested. I stayed away as long as I could. But I had to come. I had to see for myself--see how she was, even if I came through h.e.l.l."

"A trip through h.e.l.l might help many men. The trouble is they might not be able to pa.s.s though. Ten days of it--"

"Is more than man is meant to stand. You are quite right." He stopped and looked down at her. "What is it? What is the matter with Mary?

she is horribly polite, but were I a leper she could not hold herself more aloof. Morning, noon, and night she has engagements, and frequently with that bra.s.s-coated mine-owner of the Middle West. Do you think"--his face darkened, fear had unnerved him--"do you think she has any idea of marrying him?"

Miss Gibbie's head turned. The cup on its way to her lips was held back and her left eye closed.

"Marrying whom? That Fielding person?" The tea was blown into bubbles. "He uses a toothpick in public. Do you think Mary would marry a thing of that kind?"

He laughed begrudgingly. "I can't imagine it, but neither can I imagine why she is doing what she does--why she treats me as if I were the most incidental acquaintance."

Miss Gibbie put down her cup, and pushed her chair a little farther from the fire. "You don't have to, John. There are some things G.o.d doesn't expect of a man. One is to see through a woman. He knows the limitations of the male, and won't hold you responsible. Sit down!"

She waved to the chair in front of her. "I can't talk to any one I can't see."