The basket in Mrs. McDougal's hands was dropped as if its every egg were a coal of living fire.
"Kingdom come and glory be! Kingdom come—and—glory be!" She clapped first her right hand on her left and then her left on her right and stared into Mr. Blick's beaming black eyes as if through them rather than his mouth the information just received was to be confirmed. Then she sat down on a soap-box and rocked in unqualified delight.
"Kingdom come and glory be! What 'd you tell me a thing like that for when I was a-standin' up? I might have sat down in that bucket of lard 'stead of on a keg of herrings—or is it soap?" She looked down with sudden anxiety on the seat she had taken without thought. "I been long a-hopin' somethin' like this would happen, but I wasn't expectin' of it to come this way. Kingdom come and glory be!"
Again Mrs. McDougal rocked backward and forward, her arms this time tightly clasped as if hugging a cherished possession. Presently she threw back her head and laughed until the tears rolled down her cheeks.
"Can't help it, Mr. Blick—can't help it! To think of Pa Pugh and Ma Deford in the course of nature being grandparents of the same unsuspectin' infant! One and the same! I've never heard tell that the devil was much on laughin', but he's a good grinner, and he'll be just enjoyin' of himself to-day. That he will. And so will I. Bein' human, I chuckle when I gets a chance. Kingdom come and glory be!"
From a mysterious arrangement in the back of her skirt Mrs. McDougal pulled out a handkerchief, made from the remains of an old sheet, and wiped her eyes with it. Then she got up and leaned upon the counter behind which Mr. Blick stood waiting for a chance to speak; his round, red cheeks redder than usual, and his beady little eyes blinking with importance.
"Tell me about it," she said. "I must have been dead and buried not to have heard no speculations. Now I come to think of it, I did hear the children say they seen Mr. Billy Pugh and Miss Lily Deford sneakin' along in the shank of the evenin', all alone by themselves. But I ain't paid no attention to it. Mrs. Deford don't think people like the Pughs is fitten to spit on, but she owes Mr. Pugh this minute a bill, I bet you, for carriage rides, what's bigger than she will ever pay. Maybe now he won't press her for it, bein' they're so close connected from henceforth and forever on." And once more Mrs. McDougal's hands came together with a resounding smack.
"But tell me about it." She leaned farther over the counter. "When did it happen, and where did they go, and how did the news come? Do pray shake your tongue, Mr. Blick, and say something. You're as bad as McDougal, and slower 'n molasses in winter runnin' down a hill. Is she come to yet? Now, if 'twas just death, I could go by and leave my sympathies. Even mill folks is counted then, for people like to say poor people come and shed tears. It sounds hopeful for heaven. But in marriage it's different. Congratulations is presumptuous, lessen they come from kinfolks and friends, I reckon, and Mrs. Deford wouldn't care to get the kind I'd like to give. Pride is a sure destroyer, and as for haughty spirits!—I ain't no student of history, but I've watched Yorkburg and I've seen right many different kinds of falls. I don't make no pretence of bein' a Miss Mary Cary kind of Christian. I'm just a church kind, who goes regular when I got the clothes, and talks mean about my fellow-members when they make me mad. 'Tain't no set of people which talks more about each other than church members. Seems like 'tis their chief delight. It's a heap easier and more soothin' to go to church and feel you kind of got a permit to say what you oughtn't than to try to live like Christ. But if you ain't a-goin' to tell me about the runaway I'll just leave my eggs and step over and see Miss Puss Jenkins. Miss Puss will talk to anybody, anywhere, day or night. All you got to do is to ask your first question and take your seat. If 'n you ain't got nothin' to say—"
"How can I say it if you don't let a word get in noway, nohow?" Mr. Blick was huffy. He had much to say, and thus far had been forced to dumbness. "Don't anybody know anything much. They was both at the party last night, and Mrs. Porter says that's what comes of givin' folks like the Pughs an inch. Mr. John Maxwell asked her for an invitation for Billy, and she gave it, being it was Mr. Maxwell who asked, and the result was he run off and married—"
"Miss Lily! That he did! Bein' plain, he took an ell. Bein' proud, she'll give him hell!—Mrs. Deford will. Just listen at that! I'm gettin' to be a regular rhymer. Swell people certainly do have advantage over humble ones. I tell you now, when I get to heaven I ain't a-goin' to be in no particular hurry to be a saint with a halo. I want first to be privileged to say unto others what they've said unto us. But I don't want to do that till get through with Eve. She's the first person I'm goin' to make a bee-line to. If ever a woman did need shakin', it's Eve. As for Adam—" She waved her hand. "A man what hides behind a woman's petticoats, or whatever she's wearin' at the time, and says 'she made me do it,' I got my opinion of. Bein' a Bible character, I don't speak of him in public often, but I ain't never felt no call to be proud of him for a first father. It do look, though, as if all men since Adam has been makin' of women an excuse. She's always handy to blame things on. Reckon somebody will be sayin' next Miss Lily made Mr. Billy fall in love with her."
"They say Mrs. Deford is holding of Miss Mary Cary responsible for the running away." Mr. Blick began to weigh out certain orders which had been delayed by the coming of Mrs. McDougal. "Miss Puss Jenkins was in here this morning before breakfast and she says Mrs. Deford is as near crazy as a lady like her could be. It seems Mr. Maxwell took Miss Lily to the party last night, and, while her ma was there, too, she slipped home and changed her dress and got her valise. Billy Pugh did the same thing. Mr. Maxwell helped, though they say they didn't tell him anything about it until last night, and he had to wear his dress clothes. They caught the ten-ten train and went as far as Vinita, where the preacher was waiting, Billy having gotten the license from the county clerk during the day. Mr. Maxwell went with them and was them married and caught the twelve-twenty train back, bringing with his a note for Mrs. Deford."
"I reckon she's been swoonin' ever since, ain't she?" Mrs. McDougal took up a handful of dried peaches and ran them through her fingers. "She don't look like a swooner. She'd do better at swearin', I reckon, and yet faintin' is always considered a high-class sign."
"Fainting!" Mr. Blick patted the butter in the scale and took a pinch off. "Miss Puss Jenkins says she walked the floor the rest of the night, and is walking yet. What she hasn't said about Mr. John Maxwell ain't in human speech, but this morning she began on Miss Mary Cary and is holding of her responsible just now. The hotter she got with Mr. Maxwell, the cooler he got, Miss Puss says. She was with her when he came back with the note, and if he was the kind that got scared he'd be shaking yet. But he ain't that kind. He told her they'd made up their minds to get married and when she calmed down she'd be much obliged to him for going with them and seeing it was well done. She was too raging for him to say much, and he didn't stay long, so I was told."
Mrs. McDougal wiped her mouth. "Well, sir, I felt somethin' in the air when I waked up this mornin', and I could tell by my bones Yorkburg was shook by somethin'. It don't take much to make Yorkburg shake, and it ain't had nothin' to talk about lately. This will give it somethin'. Miss Lily Deford and Mr. Billy Pugh married! Whom the Lord loveth He chaseth! He sure must be fond of Mrs. Deford! Well, all I've got to say is I hope they'll stay away until the thunder and lightning is over. A caterpillar has about as much chance to stand up straight as Miss Lily to meet her ma in argument. I tell you now I wouldn't like that longnet thing she puts to her eye to stare at me if I was alone with her." She took up her basket. "Is the eggs out? I don't know what I come for. My breath and brains is clean gone this mornin'. I wonder if Miss Puss Jenkins is home? I think I'll just step up the street and ask her if she's got any more of them missionary aprons to sell." She winked at Mr. Blick. "Ain't folks funny? And don't we have to make believe a lot in life? Miss Puss has told so many people she makes aprons for her missionary money that she believes it sure enough. I make out I believe it, too. It helps her feelin's and pays your bills. She says she has so much time and so little to do that she makes aprons. Well, good-bye, Mr. Blick. Much obliged to you for telling what you know, but my grandmother always told me to go to females when wantin' details. A man ain't much on trimmin's. Good-bye!" And with a wave of her hand she was gone.
* * * * *
An hour later John Maxwell, walking up and down in Mrs. Deford's parlor, stood for a moment in front of the mirror between the windows and smiled grimly at the face reflected in it. "Moral!" he said. "When doing unto others as you'd have them do to you, be sure there's no mother-in-law in it. I'm as innocent as a lamb, and, like the lamb, am getting it in the neck, all right. I thought to do a kindness, and am called a criminal. Poor creature! She was as crazy last night as any March hare that ever hopped. When she was through with me I was, let me see"—he counted on his fingers—"I was an instigator, an abetter, a thief, a rascal, a double-dealer and hypocrite, a deceiver and destroyer, a traitor and a flirt, a socialist and anarchist. I was everything but a man."
He whistled softly and looked toward the door. "I'd give fifteen cents if I could smoke during the coming interview. It's a gentleman's only way of relieving his feelings when a lady is taking his head off. I held in last night after stating facts, and stood the storm, but I don't promise to do it again. I'm tired of this nonsense. If there are high horses this morning, the tragedy queen must mount and rant alone."
A noise as of deep breathing made him turn. In the doorway Mrs. Deford stood tense, rigid, erect. A trailing black wrapper replaced the low-cut shabby satin gown of the evening before. The pallor of her face was heightened by a liberal use of powder which ended under her eyes, where pencil-marks had been added to their usual lines to give emphasis to the shock. And as she slowly advanced she measured each step as though unequal to another.
With an inclination of the head John waited until she had taken her seat. Her tactics had changed. So had his. For a brief moment he stood in front of her, then spoke, and his voice and manner made her look up as she had not intended to look.
"You have sent for me," he said. "I will be obliged if you will say quickly what you have to say." He took out his watch. "I have an engagement in less than fifteen minutes—"
"You have!" She half rose. His words were as match to tinder. "I have an engagement for the rest of my life with shame and disgrace and disappointment. You have helped to bring them on me and you tell me to hurry—to /hurry!/ Her right hand flew out with tragic eloquence. "That I receive you in my house is beyond my understanding."
"And mine, madam. Shall I leave?" He smiled and started toward the door.
"You shall not!" With frantic energy her arm was waved. "Have you no heart in your bosom that you can so treat the agony in my breast! My child who has in her veins the best blood in the State married to a—to a—what?"
A clean, honest man, who loves her. Your daughter is very fortunate, Mrs. Deford."
"Fortunate!" Her voice was a half-shriek. "She is disgraced and so am I. Who are his people?" She shuddered. "From what does he come?"
"As the ceremony is over, the important question just now is where is he going? His salary in the bank here is exactly eighty-three dollars thirty-three and one-third cents per month. A bank in which I am a director in New York is looking for a certain kind of young man. I wired to-day to hold the place for Billy. I think it can be managed. The salary is three thousand a year. There is nothing to bring Lily back to Yorkburg. I understood last night you would never recognize her husband. Pity! New York is rather a nice place to visit. Mother can find them a suitable apartment, and Billy is not apt to worry you about coming on. I wrote mother last night to make it pleasant for them and turn over my man and the machine until I get back." He again took out his watch. "Is there anything else? My time is up."
"Mine isn't, and you are not to go!" Her arm waved up and down. "Do you think /lending/ your automobile a few days will make up for our walking the rest of our lives? Do you think I expected Lily and myself to /walk/ through life? I tell you /no!/ I expected to ride! And what is three thousand a year when there might have been thirty! But the suffering of a mother's heart is not to be understood by a selfish man. You have been a traitor! In the darkness of the night you helped my daughter marry a man whose father has hitched up horses for me to ride behind. A man by the name of P-u-g-h!" She blew out the word by letters, her lips trembling on each. Again she repeated it—"P-u-g-h!"
He looked at the writhing, twisting woman steadily, and out of his eyes went all pity and patience. "The name of Pugh is a very honest one," he said presently. "And a man who takes good care of horses is worthier than he who takes no care of his family. If there is nothing else, I must bid you good-morning."
"There is something else." She rose from the sofa on which she had been sitting and, baffled, threw prudence to the wind. She could bring from him neither regret nor sympathy, neither explanation nor apology. Frankly the night before he had told his part. Clearly this morning he had not changed his mind. No. She was not through.
"And why, may I ask, was this interest in my daughter's affairs taken so suddenly? I understand you alone were not interested, but by another beguiled into this traitorous help. To get Lily out of the way fits well into the scheming plans of your helper. As a woman, I have been ashamed to see how you have been pursued by one who had no mother to direct her. She has thrown herself at your head, at your feet, has given you no chance to escape, and now I suppose is triumphant—"
John turned. "Of whom are you speaking?"
"Of whom? You know very well of whom. Since childhood Mary Cary has—"
"Don't you dare!" His hand went out as if to hold back further words. "Don't you dare call her name in this room." He went over to a window and opened it, letting the cold air in with a rush. "Miss Cary is the one woman in the world I want for my wife. She is the only woman I've ever given a thought to, and if she does not marry me I do not marry. A dozen times I have asked her. A dozen times she has refused. She does not enter into this discussion. Whatever else you forget, you are to remember that. Am I understood in regard to Miss Cary?"
Mrs. Deford's shoulders shrugged, then her eyes grew glassy. Suddenly she fell back upon the sofa as if faint, then suddenly again her mind was changed and her finger pointed toward the door.
"Go!" she said. "I consider you have insulted me. Go!"
The Needlework Guild was again meeting with Mrs. Tate. Since its adjournment in May no meetings had been called by Mrs. Pryor, its president, and October had passed with nothing done.
Six months of retirement from her usual round of activities had seemed to Mrs. Pryor the proper allotment of time for a widow to absent herself from all places of a semi-public nature; and in adherence to her views she was waiting for six months to pass. Rumors of restlessness reaching her, however, she had called a meeting for November, which meeting, held on the morning following the Porter's party, had an attendance that would have been gratifying had its cause not been well understood.
Every chair was taken when Miss Honoria Brockenborough, who rarely honored the guild by her presence, came in, and Mrs. Tate, jumping up, offered her seat, then stepped into the hall and called the maid.
"Run over to Mrs. Corbin's and get me three or four of her dining-room chairs," she said, in a half-whisper, easily heard through the open door. "Both of those you brought out of my room are broken, and you'll have to take them out as soon as you come back. Tell her girl to help you, and do, pray, hurry! Don't stand looking at me like that, with your lip hanging down like a split gizzard. Go on! bring six, and for goodness' sake don't stop and talk! Soon as you come in put some more coal on the fire. Mittie Muncaster look blue already."
Incessant chatter had preceded the calling of the meeting to order, and only by restraint were the opening exercises endured, reports heard, and suggestions for the winter's work discussed. These over, with a sigh of expectancy or anxiety, according to temperament, the ladies settled down to their sewing, and chairs were drawn closer to the fire.
"I certainly am glad it isn't raining or hailing or snowing this morning," began Mrs. Tate, shaking out the gown of unbleached cotton on which she had been supposedly sewing during the past season. "What is the matter with this thing, anyhow? I believe I've gone and put a sleeve in the neck. Everybody knows I could never sew. Mr. Tate knew it when I married him, for I told him I'd rather handle a pitchfork than a needle. I might hold a pitchfork, but a needle I can't. What 'd I tell you! Mine's gone already!"
Triumphantly she looked at Mrs. Webb, who had taken the twisted garment from her hands and was ripping the sleeve from the neck. According to Mrs. Webb's ideas, it had been basted in. According to Mrs. Tate's, it had been sewed, but as there was no argument, and the needle was indeed gone, Mrs. Tate got up and went over to the fire. Punching it, she made the coals crackle and blaze cheerily, and, pulling up her skirt, she leaned against the mantel and looked happily around the well-filled room.
"You certainly ought to feel complimented, Mrs. Pryor," she said, nodding toward that lady's back. "I don't believe we've had a meeting like this since you've been president. I thought everybody would be so tired after the party we wouldn't have anybody at all, but everything in Yorkburg is wide-awake this morning. There'll be a lot of visits paid to-day. I wonder if Miss Gibbie Gault will be here?"
"Of course she won't! Miss Gibbie never comes unless she has something to say." Mrs. Pryor's long black veil was thrown back over her bonnet, and, standing by the table on which were yards of cottons to be cut into gowns, she took up her scissors and ran her fingers carefully down their edge. "I understand Laura Deford has sent for Miss Gibbie. She has something to say to her this morning."
"Then she'll have to go to her and say it." Mrs. Webb looked up, and for a moment her fingers stopped their rapid sewing. "You don't suppose Miss Gibbie is going to Mrs. Deford's just because Mrs. Deford sent for her, do you? If Laura knows what's good for her, and what she's doing, she will let Miss Gibbie alone."
"But that's what she don't know." Miss Lizzie Bettie Pryor's voice was as blunt as usual. "If ever there was a wild woman it's Laura Deford this minute. I've been with her all the morning, and she don't know salt from seaweed. She sent for John Maxwell and says he told her not to dare call Mary Cary's name in his presence, and that he never expects to marry any woman on earth."
"I don't believe it!" Mrs. Moon sat upright. "Mrs. Deford must be insane."
"She is." Miss Lizzie Bettie bit off a strand of cotton. "She'll cool down after a while, but just at present she don't know what she's talking about. If ever a woman wanted a man for a son-in-law she wanted John Maxwell. The flesh-pots of his Egypt are after her heart. I feel sorry for her, but she had no business behaving as she's done for months past."
"I don't wonder John helped the runaways." Mrs. Corbin threaded her needle at arm's-length. "Safety lay in flight of some sort, and as he will never fly as long as Mary Cary is here, the sensible thing was to help shoo Lily off. Mrs. Deford will have to let him alone now. Poor thing! It does seem strange how the cup that's bitterest is the one we always have to drink. I don't suppose any of us would scramble or push to get in the Pugh family, but Mr. Corbin says young Pugh is one of the finest young men in town, and he thinks Lily is lucky to get him. Of course, Mr. Corbin's opinion is just a man's, but Lily's best friend couldn't think she had any more sense than she needed, and she's the kind that fades before thirty. She's got a pretty complexion and lovely hair, but her nose—A girl with a nose like Lily's ought to be thankful to marry anybody, Mr. Corbin says."
"That's what I say!" Mrs. Tate's right foot was held out to the blazing coals, and her hands held tightly the rumpled shirt. "I tell you we have to follow the fashion, and it's the fashion now to forget what we used to remember. The Pughs certainly are plain, and that oldest girl, the fat, married one, must be hard to swallow, but they say that young one, Kitty I believe is her name, is going to marry Jim McFarlane. The McFarlanes are as good as the Defords any day, if Jim is as lazy and good-for-nothing as he's good-looking. Jim is my cousin, and I ought to know."
"So you will be connected with the Pughs also?" Mrs. Pryor turned, scissors in hand, and looked significantly at Mrs. Tate. "The Pughs will believe themselves in society after a while; will try, no doubt, to find a family tree."
"It could be a horse-chestnut." Mrs. Tate nodded at Mrs. Pryor. I always did say a person wasn't responsible for their kin, and pride and shame in them don't speak much for yourself. I'm glad Aylette didn't marry Billy Pugh, but if she had I wouldn't be ranting around like Laura Deford is doing this minute. I guess I'd have given her a piece of my mind, and gone out and gotten her some wedding clothes. A girl certainly ought to have pretty things when she gets married, even if you don't think much of her taste in men. When Aylette was married I ran more ribbon in her clothes—pink and blue and lavender. I told her she might be a widow, and it was well to be ready. She didn't want lavender, but I love it, and I would put some in. I don't suppose a girl ever does marry just the kind of man her mother would like her to. I wouldn't want Aylette to know it, but I never have understood what she saw in Mr. Penhurst to fall in love with. He's from Worcester, Massachusetts." Mrs. Tate's hand went up and her eyes rolled ceilingward. "What he thinks of this part of the world wouldn't do to be written out!"
"And what we think of his wouldn't, either!" Miss Lizzie Bettie Pryor's head nodded so emphatically at Mrs. Tate that the latter sat down. "All I ask of people from his section of the world is to stay away from ours. I wish I could make a law forbidding people north of Mason and Dixon's line to come to Yorkburg. We don't want to know anything about them—what they think or what they say or what they do. If I could I'd put a glass top on Yorkburg and keep it always as the one spot in Virginia that remembers the past and is true to it."
"I'm mighty glad you can't make laws or put on glass tops." Mrs. Moon smiled good-naturedly. "If it wasn't for the people north of Mason and Dixon's line the woolen-mills would have to close and there'd be no butter for my bread. A good many other things would be affected also, and Yorkburg would waste away were it not for your unloved friends beyond the line. Certainly the inn would have to close, and the Colonial Arms and—"
"Better waste away and die than decay in ideals and traditions and heritage!" Miss Lizzie Bettie looked around the room. "Here we are educating everything in Yorkburg. Next year two new handsome schools will be opened and filled with the riffraff of the town. What are we going to do with them after they're educated? Our streets have been torn up for months—"
"But they'll be lovely when finished." Mrs. Corbin laid down her work. "You know yourself, Lizzie Bettie, how Mary Cary fought for brick pavements instead of asphalt, because she said they suited Yorkburg better. And you know how she's worked to save all the old things and have the new ones to suit. In a few years this will be the prettiest town in the country. That Mr. Black who bought those ugly old shacks and stores, and pulled them down, making pretty open spaces of their lots, certainly has been a good friend to Yorkburg. I don't care what line he came over. I'm glad he came, and if he would only stay here long enough Mr. Corbin and I surely would ask him to tea."
"Who is this Mr. Black?" Mrs. Pryor looked in first one direction and then another." I would like to know something of this mysterious individual who comes here, buys property, pulls down our oldest houses—"
"Oldest eyesores." Mrs. Webb borrowed Mrs. Moon's scissors. "He certainly has put up some pretty old-fashioned-looking houses in their place. I was crazy for one, but Mr. Webb was so slow they were all taken before he spoke." She sighed. "A woman might as well try to move a mountain as to hurry a man when he don't want to do a thing. I've spoken for the next one, if there are any next."
"Who is this Mr. Black?" Again Mrs. Pryor asked the question.
"Nobody knows who he is, but I believe he is John Maxwell."
Miss Puss Jenkins, who had come in late, spoke from her seat near the door, and instinctively all turned toward her.
"John Maxwell!" Half a dozen voices repeated the name, but MissLizzie Bettie Pryor was the first to protest.
"Nonsense!" she said. "How can one man be another? I've seen Mr. Black several times. He's a sharp, shrewd, business-looking man who seems to know Mary Cary very well. Whenever he is in town he spends a good deal of time with her, I hear. He may be acting for somebody else, but it is not John Maxwell. The latter is not the kind of man to let anybody else attend to his business."
"Well, anyhow, I heard somebody say it was John Maxwell who bought those bonds and didn't want anybody to know it." Miss Puss was not to be crushed by Lizzie Bettie Pryor. "Of course, it's all guesswork, but a lot of money has been spent in this place in the last year. Not only on streets and schools and cleaning up and prizes for the prettiest back-yards and trees and things for Milltown, but on people. A dozen people that I know of were sent off on trips during the summer. People who couldn't afford to go. And it was always the same thing Mary Cary would tell. She'd just laugh and say Yorkburg's friend had asked her to do it. Yorkburg's friend never sent me anywhere. Everybody knows John Maxwell is Mary Cary's friend."
"So is Miss Gibbie Gault." Mrs. Tate, who was making tatting on her fingers with Mrs. Burnham's cotton, looked up. "Miss Gibbie is certainly her friend, but I don't suppose anybody would waste time thinking she was doing all these things."
"I imagine not!" Mrs. Pryor's voice was decisive. Then her face changed, and with an expression suitable to recent affliction she folded her hands and shook her head.
"It is, indeed, distressing," she began, "to see a young girl so defy public opinion as Mary Cary does. For over a year she has been back in Yorkburg, and save for the weeks she was away on a summer holiday there has been no one of them in which she has not been discussed whenever two or three have met together."
"She certainly has!" Mrs. Tate's assent was eager, if undesired. "Her coming back has been like the raising of the dead. If there ever was a dull place, it was this one before she came. Somehow since she got here things look like they've taken a tonic, and so do we. Mary always did have a way of making you sit up and take notice and enjoying yourself."
Mrs. Pryor touched the bell. "As I was saying, Mary Cary is one of the people—I say it in all charitableness—who will always be talked about, just as—just as—"
"The sun would be talked about if it came out at night." Mrs. Tate felt no grudge and helped out willingly.
"Just as anybody would be talked about who is so very—very alive. I am sure she means well, but it is the Christian duty of some one to point out to her the mistakes she is making. She is spending money freely. Where does it come from?" Mrs. Pryor forgot her weeds, and her voice was the voice of the May meeting. "Where does that mysterious money come from? Everybody knows Gibbie Gault has money, but has anybody ever known her to give a dollar of it away? Go to her when you will and ask her to subscribe to this or contribute to that and she waves you out. Who has ever seen her name on any list of givers to anything. The money her father left her has increased enormously in value I've been told. She's a good business woman. Nobody denies that, but what will she present to her Maker when she stands before Him at the bar of judgment. And what are the words which she will hear?"
"Couldn't any of us guess that." Miss Mittie Muncaster went up to the grate and put on a large lump of coal. "I reckon a good many people would like to know what other people are going to have said to them at the bar of judgment. The thought of hell is a great comfort to some people. I certainly am glad the Lord's got to judge me, and not women. But, speaking of Mary Cary, I hear she's awfully worried about Lily's running away. She thinks it was so disrespectful to her mother not to tell her first and run afterward, if her mother still held out. Mary don't know Mrs. Deford. Lily wanted to take her head with her when she ran. There are mothers and mothers, and Mrs. Deford isn't the kind Mary keeps in her heart. I bet she gives it to John when she sees him."
"Since this Mr. Fielding has been here, no one sees John with Mary any more." Mrs. Corbin put her needle between her lips. "Who is this Mr. Fielding? I don't like his looks a bit. He's never been here before."
Miss Honoria Brockenborough got up to go. Her lorgnette, the only one in town except Mrs. Deford's, was held to her eyes, and for a moment she looked at Mrs. Corbin.
"His presence here is a disgrace to Yorkburg." Her tone was icy. "I have heard very strange things of late. It is his money, I understand, which Mary Cary has been spending. He has as much as admitted it himself."
Standing in front of the library fire, Miss Gibbie held her hands out to it blaze. "This room isn't warm enough. Jackson isn't half attending to the furnace. I wish you'd ring for him to put on more coal. Jackson is losing his mind of late. If he wasn't a church member I'd think he was seeking, he's been so doleful the last few days. They are half-cracked, every one of them, when their meetings begin."
"Jackson has undigested dyspepsia. He told me so himself just before supper." Mary Cary opened the coal-bin, and with the tongs lifted a large lump of coal and put it in the grate. "It must be a dreadful thing to have, judging by his expression." She laughed and wiped her hands on her handkerchief. "I suggested peppermint and hot water, but he looked so reproachfully at me that I changed it to Compound Elixir of Hexagonal Serafoam. He's anxious to try that."
"What is it?"
"I don't know." She shook her head. "But the sound pleased him, so I'm going to give him some calomel to-morrow under the new name. It's nonsense to say there's nothing in a name. There's money in it, cure in it, and comfort of mind. Why don't you sit down?"
Miss Gibbie walked over to the library-table, took up a magazine, opened it, put it down and took up another. Mary, following her with her eyes, seeing the restlessness which possessed her and the restraint she was obviously trying to exercise, was puzzled, and again she asked: "Why don't you sit down?"
"I think it's because I prefer to stand. But it may be because I've been sitting for hours hearing people tell the same thing over in a different way. Just sixteen people have been here to-day and every single one of them told me every single thing about the party; how pretty Polly Porter looked, and what a sight Georganna Brickhouse made of herself in a light-blue dress, suitable for sixteen, and how good the supper was, all except the salad. That was a new-fashioned mess Mrs. Deford made after a recipe brought from Maine. Mittie Muncater's nose is still up. Things have come to a pretty pass when Maine recipes are used in Virginia, Mittie says. You'd think Yorkburg had been insulted. And every single one of the sixteen said their say over the runaway. Mourned, groaned, or were glad, according to their feelings. Some weren't at all surprised. Been expecting it. That was Lizzie Bettie Pryor and Puss Jenkins. Some people always know a thing is going to happen after it happens. And some won't believe it though in front of their face. You, too, have been airing your views on runaway marriages ever since you came in. For a person who doesn't intend to get married you have very decided views concerning matrimony."
"That's way I never expect to get married. If I didn't have views, I might. I've never said I didn't approve of people marrying. I do. Though why they want to, I don't see. Life has enough disappointments without finding that marriage is another. It certainly can't be a cheerful realization, that of discovering your husband is a very different man from what you thought him."
"Nor a very cheerful discovery for a man when he realizes the woman he loves is really a child! My dear Mary Cary, don't imagine the discoveries of character and temperament, of idiosyncrasies and peculiarities, are all on the woman's side. A man has to stand much. There are times when a woman may be an angel, but others when she behaves as if her ancestry was in a different direction. No wizard works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of experiencing, some sort of a fool. They play with happiness as though it were a toy, and learn too late they've thrown away the only thing worth having in life. By-the-way, speaking of happiness, has this Mr. Horatio Fielding gone yet?"
Mary Cary drew the big wing chair closer to the fire and sat upon its arm, one slippered foot on the fender. "No. He has not gone yet. He goes to-morrow, I believe."
"He does!" Miss Gibbie looked at the face opposite, and over her own again swept indecision. During supper she had been too incensed to trust herself to tell what that afternoon had reached her ears, and yet it must to told. Were it possible to spare her she would spare. It was not possible. Kind friends were too ready to spread cruel things. It was best she should hear from her what must be heard.
"This Mr. Fielding," she began, taking a seat on the far end of the big old-fashioned sofa, well out of the firelight. "Is he a man of honor? Can you depend upon statements he makes?"
"A man of honor?" Miss Gibbie was looked at questioningly. "I don't know what you mean. He's abominably blatant and nouveau, and a terrible trial to talk to. But dishonorable—There's been no occasion for him to act dishonorably. His statements are mostly about his father's wealth and the kind of machine he likes best and his tailor in Piccadilly and cafes in Paris. I don't know how correct they are. I didn't half hear them. I could think of other things when he was talking, and generally brought them in for that purpose."
"And yet for some days past you have been constantly with this abominably blatant and terribly trying person. You have driven home with him at eight o'clock at night."
"I have. Why shouldn't I? I wouldn't have driven with him at four if I shouldn't have driven with him at eight. I did that the night I was caught by the storm at Miss Matoaca Brockenborough's. She was sick, and Mr. Fielding talked with Miss Honoria in the parlor while I was up-stairs with Miss Matoaca. I would have come here, but I had some important letters to write that night and didn't let Mr. Fielding come in. He drove back and left the horse at Mr. Pugh's stable."
"Had he been drinking?"
Mary Cary got up from the arm of the chair, her face incredulous. "Drinking? No, he hadn't been drinking. That is, I don't suppose he had. How could I tell? He talked a lot and laughed at the way Miss Honoria introduced him to all the family portraits, and the superior air in which she told him the history of each. I remember he called her Miss Icicle."
"How did he happen to go there with you?"
"We'd been to drive. He'd never seen the bluff and was interested in the battle fought there. I made him leave me at Miss Matoaca's, but he insisted on coming back to go out home with me. I was too tired to argue." She brushed her hair back as if tired again. "The rain kept us, and it was eight before we got off."
"I have been told Miss Honoria was not the only one who gave information that afternoon. When was it? Day before yesterday, I believe. He made statements which Miss Honoria seemed to find more startling, if not so amusing, as those he made to her."
"Did he?" Mary straightened one of the tall white candles in the candelabrum of many prisms on the end of the mantelpiece near which she stood. Her voice was not interested. "I believe he did tell me Miss Honoria was a cut-glass catechiser and very much interested in me."
"He did not tell you his answers to your questions, I suppose?"
"He certainly didn't. I cared for neither questions nor answers." She turned and looked at Miss Gibbie and laughed indifferently. "Mr. Fielding seems to have become suddenly important. You sound like a cross-examining lawyer. He goes to-morrow, and I never expect to see him again. Why this interest?"
Miss Gibbie looked down at the tip of her slipper. Stooping, she straightened its bow. "Because of some very silly things I heard this afternoon." She put the other foot on the rung of the chair in front of her and carefully smoothed its ribbon with fingers that twitched. "Honoria Brockenborough claims he told her the money you have been spending in Yorkburg came from him, that the bonds were bought by his broker, and that he was Yorkburg's friend."
Indifference slipped off as a garment, and, at Miss Gibbie's words, Mary Cary stiffened in rigid horror and unbelief. For a moment she stared at her as if not understanding, and her hand went to her throat. She choked in her effort to speak, and her eyes flashed fire.
"I don't believe it!" The moment between her bearing and speaking was tense. "He said—" her breath came unevenly—"he said /he/ was Yorkburg's friend? /He/ had given money I had spent! He— And I—alone in the world!"
She threw out her hands as though to ward off some dreadful thing, then dropped in the big wing chair and buried her face in her arms.
"Mary! Mary!" Miss Gibbie, terrified by the unexpected effect of her words, leaned over the twisting figure and put her hand upon it. The hand was shaken off. For the first time in her life Miss Gibbie Gault was helpless and afraid.
"Mary!"
"Don't! Don't touch me! Don't speak to me!" She got up and threw back her head, then looked at the clock. "What time is it?" She walked over to the bell and pressed it. "You've often said deep down in every woman was something dangerous. All of us have something we'd die for quickly. And I—all I have—is just myself."
"What are you going to do?" Miss Gibbie sat down limply in the chair from which Mary had just risen. "Why did you ring? You aren't going to take seriously the thing I have told you? The man is being looked after. John is attending to him to-night."
"John!"
The word came involuntarily, and her head was turned quickly lest its spasm of pain be seen. "What has John to do with it?"
"A very good deal." Miss Gibbie's breath was coming back. The shock and fury in Mary's face had frightened her as not in years had she been frightened. "John has heard these rumors and will settle their source. What do you want, Celia?"
"You rang, did you not?" Celia, hands on the curtains, waited.
"I rang. I want my coat and hat." Mary Cary turned to her. "I want you, too, for a little while, Celia. Get ready, please, to go out with me." She went over to the desk and took from one of its many pigeon-holes paper and pencil. "I am going to Miss Honoria Brockenborough's."
"What are you going there for?" Miss Gibbie's voice made pretence of petulance. "What do you want to see her for?"
"Didn't you tell me when people said things about you that were not true you made them sign a paper to that effect? Were Miss Honoria Brockenborough dying she'd have to sign that paper to-night. She has lied, or the man of whom she spoke has lied, and either the one or the other or both shall say so. Don't you see"—for the first time her voice broke, and again she put her hand to her throat—"don't you see she is taking from me all—everything I have. When I was here, a child, a bit of sea-weed, I knew my life depended—on just myself. All the eyes of all the world did not matter so much as my own. You do not know what it means to be alone in life!"
She stopped as if something had suddenly given way, and on her knees her face was hidden in Miss Gibbie's lap.
Only the crackling of the coal in the grate broke the stillness of the room. Presently Miss Gibbie spoke, lifted the white, drawn face to hers.
"I do not know what it means to be alone in life? It is about all of life I do know!" Out of her voice she struggled to keep bitterness, made effort to laugh. "And do you suppose I would let Honoria Brockenborough scatter her righteous assertions a minute longer than they were heard? Puss Jenkins left me at four o'clock. An hour later I was back home." She opened her beaded bag. "There is your piece of paper!" She shook it in the air. "Honoria Brockenborough is now in bed with an attack of nervous collapse. I hope it will keep her there some time. Matoaca hasn't stopped crying since the guild meeting this morning, and for the first time in her life has bitterly reproached her Sister Superior who felt it her Christian duty to repeat what she now says she understood a hope-inflated, love-mad, half-tight fool had said. Queer old place, Mary, this big world! Queer little place this old Yorkburg! Not one person in forty thousand can repeat a statement what repeated can be very differently constructed. I thought it was as well Honoria Brockenborough should have a few remarks made to her. She's had them. The doctor is, doubtless, with her now. Do you want this paper?"
Mary Cary took the paper held toward her. As she read it the color came back slowly in her face, and the short, shivering breath grew quiet again.
"Yes," she said, "I want it." With a sob she leaned toward the older woman. "I told you I was all—alone. And already you—Miss Gibbie! Miss Gibbie!"
In each other's arms they clung as mother and child.
You say, then, you did not make the statements the lady credits you with? You will take oath to that?"
"Of course I will." Horatio Fielding's shifty brown eyes looked for a moment into John Maxwell's relentless gray ones, then dropped uneasily. "What in the devil is all this about, anyhow? You come in on a fellow with some damned gossip a lot of old cats have been telling in their sewing society and accuse him of it before he knows what you're talking about. I don't even know what you're getting at."
"I am getting at the truth or falsehood of certain statements attributed to you. Cut that out—I prefer to talk to you sober." He waved his hand toward the table on which were bottles of brandy and White Rock. "You know what these statements are. To repeat them is unnecessary. The lady who claims she understood you to make them has repeated them to, among others, a Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse. Mr. Brickhouse claims he approached you on the subject and you neither affirmed nor denied them. You are to do one or the other, and do it now."
Horatio Fielding's face flushed. "I am—am I? Who says so?"
"I say so."
John Maxwell came closer. He looked down on the short, full figure with the round, red face, and the round, red face grew redder. The restraint of the larger man, his height and breadth and radiation of power and purpose stung him, and for a moment he yielded to bravado. A look in the face above his checked him, however, and he changed his manner.
"Oh, I'm perfectly willing to deny what I didn't do!" He shrugged his shoulders. "To hear you one would think I wasn't a gentleman. Of course I didn't say I'd furnished Mary Cary with money—"
"We are speaking of Miss Cary."
He bowed smilingly. "Miss Cary with money to spend on people here, or had bought bonds, or was Yorkburg's unknown friend. I said I'd be glad to do it, as I was a friend of Yorkburg's and would like to be a better one."
"Sit down at that table."
"What for?" Horatio Fielding's shoulders went back and the dots in his tan-colored vest showed plainly. "I prefer to stand."
"I prefer you to sit. There's paper and pen and ink at that table. Three letters at my dictation, and if you hurry you can catch that ten-ten train."
"I'll be damned if I do!"
"You'll be damned if you don't. To make you understand what you have done is impossible. To make you make what amends you can, isn't. Sit down and write."
Three letters, one to Mr. Benjamin Brickhouse, one to Miss Honoria Brockenborough, one to Miss Gibbie Gault, were written sulkily and in words supplied by John Maxwell. Signed and in their envelopes, John put them in his pocket, then again looked at his watch. "You have plenty of time," he said, "and if you know what's good for you you'll get out from here and be quick at it."
"Get out nothing!" With a swift movement of his hand Horatio Fielding poured out a full measure of brandy and drank it. "I'd like to know what you've got to do with this thing, anyhow! That's the worst of a little hell of a town like this. Nothing in it but a lot of relics and old-maid men and pussy-cat women spying on a girl because she's young and pretty. That cut-glass icicle with an antique nose asked me so many questions that I thought I'd let her know all the goods wasn't in this part of the world. She walked me around the room three times showing me a bunch of old duffers in wigs and knee-breeches, and half-dressed women with caps or curls. Said she didn't suppose we had family portraits in Nevada. I told her what we did have. If she chose to say I said what she says, she did it because she hates people with money worse than snake poison. All her class is muggy on money. Thinks it common to have it. But they've got a long reach all right, and can be very smirky to the face when they smell the stuff. As for questions—" John being near the window, he took hastily another drink of brandy. "She asked enough to make a catechism. I didn't mind her quizzers. She's on the sour, and I thought I'd help her enjoy herself. I told her I didn't mind Mary Cary's having been an orphan. I was willing to marry her, parents or no parents."
/"Willing!"/ John turned. His right arm went out, and from Horatio Fielding's nose blood spurted over the spotted vest, down the legs of his well-creased trousers, and settled on his patent-leather shoes. Howling, he sprang toward the larger man. With his foot John kicked him in the air, and as he came down on the floor stood over him as he would a puppy.
"I can't fight you. I'm too much bigger," he said, spitting toward the fireplace. "To shake a rat would be as easy. But I don't promise to keep my hands off much longer. You're a liar! If you didn't say all Miss Brockenborough says you said, you implied it. At college you cheated, and you'd smirch a good name in a minute if your own interests could be helped. I'd rather not have blood on my hands, and I haven't time for a trial, but if you don't get out of this town to-night you'll be shipped out in a box to-morrow. You're got an hour. Are you going?"
Horatio Fielding got up, his handkerchief to the bleeding nose. "If it takes the last cent I've got on earth I'll make you pay for this," he said, thickly. He pulled out another handkerchief and put it to his cut lip. "I believe you've broken my nose."
"I hope I have. You're lucky it's not your neck." John took a card out of his pocket-book and handed it to the shaking figure. "That's my address in New York. If you want to see me again you can find me without trouble. Next time I'll kill you."
But Horatio Fielding was out of the room. An hour later at the station John Maxwell saw him step stiffly into the sleeper for the West, and, shrugging his shoulders, he turned away and went rapidly up the street. Walking toward Pelham Place, he reached the house in which Miss Gibbie was waiting, but he could not trust himself to go in. At the door he left a note, then walked down King Street and into the Calverton road.
For hours he walked. The moon, clear and serene, hung calmly above him, and in the sandy road shadows cast by the stripped branches of trees and shrubs swayed and danced, beckoned or stood still. The air was cold and stinging, and the silence, soft as the pale light of the meaningless moon, was unbroken save by the whispering of the wind. Presently at the top of a hill he sat down under a big bare tree and leaned his back against it. Far off in the distance the lights of Yorkburg twinkled like fireflies in the hazy darkness, and at his left a soft, luminous ball was gathering into shape and brilliance. With a roar it rushed through the outskirts of the little town before its long black tail of cars could be defined, and as its vibrations reached him John struck a match and took out his watch.
"The one-twelve," he said, "and fifteen minutes late." A cigar was lighted slowly, and a long, deep whiff taken. Watching its spirals of smoke curl lazily upward, his eyes narrowed and he nodded toward them.
"When the Lord made woman"—he was looking now at a light in a group of trees not very far away—"I wonder if He ever realized the trouble she could give a man!"
Save the light from the shaded lamp on the library-table and the glow of the dancing flames on the hearth, the room was in shadow.
Mary Cary had drawn the curtains, straightened chairs and books, rearranged the flowers, refilled the inkstand on her open desk, brushed the bits of charred wood under the logs on the andirons, turned on every light, and then, seeing nothing else to do that would permit of movement, had taken her seat near the table.
John Maxwell, standing by the mantelpiece, watched her with eyes half amused, half impatient, but with no comment, and for some minutes neither had spoken. When she was seated, however, a magazine in her lap, he walked around the room and turned off all lights except that of the lamp; then came back and took the chair opposite hers.
"This is such an interesting number," she said, opening the magazine and shuffling its pages as if they were cards. "I suppose you have seen it?"
"No. I haven't seen it." He leaned forward, his hands clasped between his knees, his eyes holding her steadily. "Don't you think, Mary, this foolishness between us has gone on long enough?"
"What foolishness?" She put the magazine on the table and tapped it with her fingers, looking away from him and into the leaping flames. "Has there been any foolishness between us? I didn't know it."
"What would you call it?"
"I wouldn't—" she took up her handkerchief and examined the initial on it with critical intentness—"I wouldn't call it anything. We are very good friends."
"Are we?"
"I've always thought so. If I'm mistaken—" She bit her lip nervously. "At least we used to be. But friendship is so insecure. That of years is killed in a moment and—"
"A thousand evidences forgotten if there be one imaginary failure, one seeming neglect. But I'm not speaking of friendship."
A step behind made him turn, and as Hedwig came in he got up and took the telegram she handed him with only half-concealed irritation. Mary Cary, too, stood up, and as Hedwig left the room the bit of yellow paper was handed her.
"So Mr. Bartlett is coming himself," she said, reading and handing the paper back. "That is much the best. I thought he was too busy. Does Miss Gibbie know?"
"Not yet." The telegram was put in his pocket. "Whether she wants to or not, Miss Gibbie will have to let Yorkburg know who its friend is. I don't doubt she meant well. To do things as nobody else does them is to her irresistible. But how a woman of her sense and understanding of human nature could fail to see the complications of a situation in which secrecy and mystery were elemental parts is beyond my comprehension."
"But that's because you're a man." She nodded toward him with something of the old bantering air. She and I were just women, and women don't see clearly—like men. After mistakes are out on the table, even a woman can see them, but it takes a man to see them before they are made. Of course, it was a queer way of doing things, but it was her way. Everybody is queer."
"I don't deny it."
"And if she didn't want her left hand to know what the right was doing, why tell it? Everybody has a pet something they take literally in the Bible. Miss Gibbie likes the sixth chapter of Matthew. A great many people seem never to have read it."
"And a great many people who try to practically apply the teachings of their Master are called cranks and crazy. Until human nature is born again, human tongues will talk and human noses sniff and human ears listen for what is ugly and unkind. The partnership into which you and Miss Gibbie entered was all right in purpose and intent, but you forgot in your calculations the perversities of the people you were trying to help. People will pardon anything sooner than a secret."
"I suppose I will have to tell how Tree Hill was given me, and about the bonds and the fifty thousand dollars and the baths and the tired and sick people sent away. How do you suppose it can be told—in the way she will mind least, I mean?"
John, leaning against his end of the mantel, looked at the girl at hers, and laughed in her troubled eyes.
"The decision will hardly rest with us. Mr. Bartlett comes to-morrow to meet Mr. Moon and several other gentlemen invited for the purpose. The money deposited with his company to be used for Yorkburg in coming years will be staggering to Mr. Walstein. Miss Gibbie is a wizard in some things, and in business a genius, yet of this little scheme she made a mess and put you in a—How to let Yorkburg know who its unknown friend is will be settled by Mrs. McDougal, I imagine. I had a little talk with her this morning. She has understood all the time who was putting up the money, but she had sense enough to keep her understanding to herself. I told her she could let it out. She flew home for eggs, and there'll be few of her customers who won't have a visit from her to-day. You won't have to tell the name of Yorkburg's friend."
For a moment there was silence. Then abruptly he crossed over to her, took her hands in his, and held them with an intensity that hurt.
"Mary! Mary!" In his arms he gathered her, crushed her, lifted her face to his and kissed it, kissed her lips, her eyes, her hair. "We will come back for Christmas, but we are to be married at once."
She struggled to draw away, but his strong arms held her until breath came unsteadily; then, as again she tried to free herself, he held her off, gripping her hands.
"Is there nothing to tell me, Mary?"
"To tell you?" The long lashes shielding the awakened eyes quivered.He bent closer to hear her. "What do you want me to tell you?"
"That you—love me." His faced whitened. "For my much love is there not even a little, Mary?"
She shook her head, her eyes still upon the rug. Then she looked up. "I never love—a little. For your much love I have— Oh, John, John, don't leave me any more! Don't leave me here alone!"
* * * * *
"I suppose"—she punched the cushion on the sofa beside her into first one shape and then another—"I suppose there must always be something we wish there wasn't. I don't like your world. I don't want to marry in it. It's so queer how things get mixed up and twisted in life. I believe in the old-fashioned things, and do not want that which the men and women of your world want. What would mere externals mean if your heart was not happy, or if one's life was spent on parade with no one to care for you—just for yourself."
"In this particular case"—he smiled in the brilliant, anxious eyes—"there is some one to care for you—just for yourself."
"I know, but—" She drew away. "I can't talk if— You really mustn't, John! I think I'd better sit in that chair."
"I think you hadn't. Go on. But what?"
"I don't like your kind of life. I mean the kind the people you know lead. When I used to visit Geraldine French I was always finding points of likeness in it to my early training. We had to do so many things we didn't want to, just because other people did them. Everything was cut according to a pattern. I don't like rules and regulations. I like Yorkburg. Here love counts."
"Love counts everywhere. Unfortunately, it's the rules and regulations that don't count in many worlds. Custom controls, I admit. But it's because love counts I need you, Mary. All of us get tired of it, the cap and bells, the sham and show, and underneath we know are eternal verities we pretend to forget. Eternal verities don't let you forget. Don't you see what you have done? You have made me understand what life could mean. In what you call my world are many who do not seem to know. There is something very terribly needing to be done there."
"What is there needing to be done?"
"To marry for love— Oh, I don't mean there is no marrying for love." He laughed in the shocked, wide-opened eyes. "I mean there is nothing so deceptive as love's counterfeit, and other considerations masquerade under it unguessed, perhaps. Many men and women are, doubtless, honest in thinking when they marry that they love each other, but if they live long enough a large proportion find out their mistake."
"Oh no! I don't believe it! I know too many happy marriages to believe a thing like that. The trouble is—"
He looked in the protesting eyes. "The trouble is what?"
"That people imagine what they start with will last through life. As if love alone stood still, did not grow more or become less. I do not wonder at the unhappy marriages. I wonder there are not more of them."
"More of them? Were I to count the enviably happy couples I know there would barely be a dozen."
"A dozen?" She turned toward him in pretended unbelief. "In you world, do you know a dozen?"
"In you world, do you know more?"
"Many more."
"Could you name them? Not the outwardly, the seemingly happy ones, but those who are happier with each other under any circumstances than they would be apart under any conditions. Do you know many married people who come under this head?"
For a moment she did not answer, then turned to him questioning, troubled eyes. "Why do you ask such things, John? Our ideals of happiness may not be those of others. I know many happily married people. I've always believed in love, am always going to believe in it, and if unhappiness follows many marriages it is because there is not love enough. Happiness is such a tender thing!" She drew her hands away and clasped them tightly. "One should so carefully guard it, and instead—"
His eyes were missing no throb of the heart that sent recurring waves of color to her quivering face. "Instead?"
"It is taken as a right, rather than an award. And then there is weeping or storming or sneering when it is lost."
"Then we shall take it"—he lifted her hand to his lips—"as the award of life, and guard it. It needs guarding. In any world its hold is insecure."
Presently she again looked up and smoothed her hair. "But, John"— she shook her head doubtfully—"I shall be such a shock to your friends. I want, don't you see, to be free, to do what I want to do, not what I should be a code of custom. The Martha of me would break forth when most she should be quiet, and keep you always uneasy. I never know what Martha is going to say to do."
"That's why I love Martha! It's so wearing to always know what a person is going to say and do. If you were just all Mary—" He laughed, measuring her hand against his and looking carefully at its third finger. "You'll be a joy, my Mary Martha, and the more shocks you give the better for us." He took out a note-book and opened it. "What day is this? Saturday—let me see. Thanksgiving is on the twenty-sixth. You will want to be here, I suppose?"
"I certainly will!" She sat suddenly upright.
"And you want to be back for Christmas?"
"I certainly do. What are you talking about?" Her face crimsoned."You don't suppose I'm really going—"
"I don't suppose anything about it. The matter is no longer in your hands. Three weeks from to-day will be the second of December. That will give us time, say, for a bit of Bermuda and back here for the holidays. Mary Cary"—he took her hands in his—"three weeks from to-day you are to marry me."
"But Miss Gibbie! We can't leave her here by herself. Couldn't she go, too? She'd love Bermuda. Don't you think, John, she could go, too?"
"I think not!" John's nod was decisive. "I prefer taking this trip with just my wife."
Mary leaned back on the sofa as if swept by a sudden realization."I don't know what we've been thinking about. To go away and leaveMiss Gibbie like this would—"
"Make her indeed and in truth the friend of Yorkburg. To win its love she must give more than money. You have done much for her, opened her eyes to much, and she is beginning to understand. She has had a hard fight. To conquer herself, to give you up has meant—"
"Oh, John, John!" With a half-sob her hands went out to him. "For us the days ahead seem glad and beautiful. For her—To leave her, to leave my people, my little orphans, would be more than selfish. I can't, John, I can't!"
He bent over and gathered her close to his heart, laughed unsteadily in the face he lifted to his. "You have no choice, my dear. You are mine now. Forever mine!"
Before the fire in Miss Gibbie's sitting-room Mrs. McDougal held up her left foot to the crackling coals and watched the steam curl away from the wet sole of her shoe with beaming satisfaction. Her skirt, wet around the hem, was drawn up to her knees, her coat, well sprinkled, was on the back of a chair, and in her lap her hat lay limp and spiritless.
From the once upright tail feathers of her haughtiest rooster which adorned one side of the hat, the breast of a duck adorning the other, tiny globules of water trickled slowly into the brim; and as she held it over the fender the feather yielded to circumstance and drooped dejectedly.
"Now, ain't that just like folks!" she said, holding it off and looking at it in high derision. "Look at that thing, Miss Gibbie, peart as the first crocus and proud as cuffy when the weather was good, and at the first touch of dampness or discouragement flop it goes, and no more spirit than a convict in court! It certainly is strange how many things in nature is like human beings. Now this here rooster and this here duck"—she smoothed the breast and ran her fingers down the feathers—"just naturally had no use for each other. If fowls could do what you call sniff, they sniffed, and when one took the right-hand side of the yard, the other took the left. And yet here is their remains, side by side, a decoratin' of my hat. It ain't only flowers of the field what flourish and are cut down, it's everything what stands up, specially hopes and desires, and things like that. The only thing in life we can be certain sure of is death, ain't it? But I never did feel any call to be cockin' my eye at death just because I knew it had to come. When it do come I hope there'll be grace given to meet it handsome, and go with it like I'm glad, but I ain't a-goin' to be sittin' on the doorstep lookin' out for it. I'm not hankerin' after heaven yet. There's a long time to stay there. Funny how many people is willin' to be separated from their loved ones, and how they put off joinin' of 'em as long as possible. I don't deny I'm fond of life. I just love to live!"
"Which you won't do long if you go out in weather like this. I've never seen such a storm in November. Are you sure your stockings aren't wet?"
Miss Gibbie, in her big chair on the opposite side of the fireplace, looked at Mrs. McDougal half irritably, half perplexedly. To walk from Milltown to Pelham Place in a heavy snow with no overshoes and no umbrella was just like her. She shouldn't have come, and yet Miss Gibbie was not sorry she had come. There were times when Mrs. McDougal's chatter was unendurable, but others when her philosophy of life had a common-sense value that systems of belief and articles of faith failed to supply. To-day was one of the latter times. She was rather glad to see her. Leaning forward, she repeated the question: "Are you sure your stockings are not wet?"
"Sure as I'm a sinner." Mrs. McDougal held up first one shoe and then the other. "Just the soles were wet, and their sizzlin' don't mean anything. They're an inch thick, them soles are. Them's McDougal's shoes." She held her feet out proudly. "I always did say, Miss Gibbie, if you couldn't have what you wanted in life, for the love of the Lord don't whine about it, but work it off and get a smile on! I'd a heap rather have a telephone in my house and just step up to it and call for one of them takin cabbys, like we saw at Atlantic City, and come a-scootin' and a-honkin' up to your door and step out superior and send up a card with Mrs. Joel B. McDougal on it than to put on two pairs of McDougal's socks first, and them pull away at his shoes and wrap my legs in newspapers to keep my skirts from slushin' of 'em. I'd a heap rather done that. But a lot of life ain't what we'd rather. It's what is. And my grandmother always told me there warn't nothin' in life what showed the stock you come from as the way you took what come to you. I never did have no use for a whimperer. Of course, I'm plain. Born Duke and married McDougal, but whenever I get in a fog and can't see clear, and so tired out I can't eat, and plum run down, I say to myself, 'Your folks ain't ever flunked yet, and you keep your head where the Lord put it.' He put it up. Folks see me laugh a lot. I do. I couldn't learn to play on the painer, though I'm clean crazy about music. I couldn't learn none of the things I yearned for inside, so I said to myself, 'You learn to laugh, laugh hearty.' And somehow it's helped a lot, laughin' has. There's many a time I done it to keep tears back. Ain't nobody but has tears to shed some time or other. But 'tain't no use in keepin' a tank of 'em to be tapped at every slip up. When I get so I can't keep mine back any longer I goes to the woodhouse and locks the door and has it out. But that's just when I'm tired and there don't seem nothin' ahead. I tell the Lord about it. Tell Him there ain't nothin' human can help. Just Him. And if He don't, I'm done for. Ain't ever been a time yet that when I come right down to it and says, 'Lord, I need You,' that the help ain't handed out. I mean help to take hold again and keep on laughing. I don't ask for automobiles and a brick house and fur coats and plum-puddin's. Never did think the Lord was in that kind of supply business. But when I says, 'You and Me got to fight this thing out,' He ain't ever gone back on me yet. Yes'm, these here is McDougal's shoes. I was thankful enough they was in the house to put on. I always was lucky, though. But just listen at me a-runnin' on worse'n Mis' Buzzie Tate. And I ain't even answered your question as to what I come for. Maybe it's because I'm not sure how you'll take it."
Miss Gibbie leaned over and with the poker broke a large lump of coal, making it blaze and roar in licking, outleaping flames. "What is it? I'm not dangerous, I hope."
"No'm, you're not dangerous." Mrs. McDougal straightened her now dry skirt. "But you might think I was audacious, which is what I am, I reckon. I don't mean nothin' like that, and I ain't got no more use for familiarity than you have, but my grandmother always told me if you heard anything kind about a person 'twas your business to pass it on same as unkind things is passed. And I just want to tell you that the day I was takin' them eggs around, the day Mr. John told me in words what I'd long known without 'em, as to who Yorkburg's friend was, I heard so many downright gratitudes and appreciations along with the surprise and the raisin' up of hands and eyes that I wonder your ears didn't burn plum off. I ain't sayin' 'twas fulsome praise they chucked at you. It warn't. You ain't the kind what folks is free with. You can't help it, never havin' been thrown much with back-yards and acquainted chiefly with the parlor. But all that's wanted is the chance to love you. They know you're their friend. You've proved it by acts, instead of words, the usual way, and if'n you could see fit to sometimes pay a visit when Miss Mary goes away—"