miss gibbie's carriage was at the gate, and before the others know what to say she conducted mrs. pryor out of the room, put her in the carriage herself, and gave the order to jackson to drive her home. "tell maria to telephone me here in half an hour how william is," she called, "and if you need me let me know," then went back into the house where all were talking at once.
"do you reckon he is really ill, miss gibbie?" inquired mrs. webb, and "he's so uncomplaining they might not know he was ill," said mrs. moon, while mrs. tazewell, full of sympathy, thought they ought to adjourn and go see if there was not something they could do.
"which of those questions do you want me to answer first?" miss gibbie, taking mrs. pryor's chair, waved the turkey-wing fan back and forth, but with fingers not so firm as they had been before the message came, and as she spoke the room became quiet again.
"do i hope william pryor is seriously ill?" she began, her keen gray eyes dim with something rarely seen in them. "do i hope william is going to die? i do. for thirty-nine years he has been the husband of lizzie pryor, and he has earned his reward. i don't believe in a golden-harp heaven. not being musical, william and i wouldn't know what to do with a harp. i believe in a heaven where we get away from some people and get back to others, and god knows i hope william will have a little respite before lizzie joins him.
"i don't know mr. pryor very well," said mrs. brent, who had moved closer to the table in the general uprising due to mrs. pryor's departure, "but i've always felt sorry for him somehow. he had such a patient, frightened face, and was so polite."
"that was what ruined him." miss gibbie's voice was steady again. "many wives are ruined by over-politeness. they take advantage of it, and make their husbands spend their lives in an eternal effort to please. that's what poor william was forever attempting to do, and never succeeding. he was apology in the flesh. no matter what he did in the morning he had to explain it at night."
"he had to," broke in mrs. tate, who still held her needle between finger and thumb. "if he didn't, mrs. pryor breathed so through her nose you couldn't say in the house with her. i was there once when she wanted to go to her sister's in washington to get new dresses for maria and anna belle and sue, and mr. pryor had ventured to say he didn't have the money. you ought to have seen her! she hardly spoke to me, and louisa told me afterward they didn't see her teeth for a week, she kept her lips down on them so tight. poor mr. pryor, i saw him a day or two afterward on his way home to dinner, and he looked like he would rather go to—"
"hell. speak out. i would, had i been he." miss gibbie blew her nose, put the handkerchief back in the bag hanging from her belt, took out her spectacles and laid them on the table. "any kind of woman can be endured better than a sulking woman. she's worse than a nagger, and home is a place of perdition with that kind in it. but in a sense william deserved what he got. he let her marry him."
"oh, she didn't ask him!" mrs. burnham was from the north, and her voice was astonished interrogation. "surely she didn't ask him!"
"no. she made him ask her. made him feel so sorry for her, cried over herself and her loneliness so persistently that william, being a man, walked in. six weeks later they were married."
"i wonder if it was really true the way they say she used to do," and
mrs. tate, whose needle was now lost, was again fanning vigorously.
"what way?" miss gibbie turned so quickly toward her that mrs. tate jumped.
"why, i heard when she was first married that if she couldn't have just what she wanted, or if mr. pryor did anything she didn't like, she would lie flat down on her back and kick her heels on the floor so loud you could hear it all over the house. i don't believe it was true."
"you don't? well, it was, with this difference. when she wanted a thing for herself, she lay on her back and kicked. when she wanted it for the children, she lay on her stomach and cried. either way she got what she wanted."
the turkey-wing fan waved back and forth, then miss gibbie got up. "this is dirty work we are doing. i prefer to make my remarks to people's faces so they can remark back. and this isn't what i came to this meeting for. i know the talk that has been going around lately about mary cary. lizzie pryor has led it, and i came here this morning to tell her so. the people in yorkburg are like all other people. they pat the fat shoulder, and shake the full hand, and eat of the bounty, and then, when some jealous-minded, squint-eyed christian, so-called, starts questions and speculations, everybody repeats them and some try to answer."
"but why are you talking to us like this, miss gibbie? we are mary's friends and oughtn't to be taken to task for what we haven't done and don't approve of," said mrs. corbin. "we—"
"then if you are mary's friends you will tell other people what i am telling you. you will cut short all this twaddle about her great wealth and western ways and numberless beaux. it's the last that sticks so in puss jenkins's throat. puss never had a beau herself, and she can't get reconciled to mary's many."
"oh, she did have one." mrs. moon spoke for the first time since mrs.
pryor left. "don't you remember mr. thoroughgood?"
"he never courted her. he told me so himself. he thought over it and prayed over it, and at last decided he'd do it, but he never did. he bought her a box of candy for which he paid sixty cents—told me that, too—and went to the house prepared to speak the word. i remember the night very well. he tiptoed up the front steps and stood on the porch where he could hear voices in the parlor. puss and her mother were talking, and 'mercy on me,' he said, 'i never had such a narrow escape in all my life. she was scolding her mother, quarreling with her, lecturing her for something. i tell you i tiptoed down in a hurry.'"
miss gibbie made the mincing steps of mr. thoroughgood and so mimicked his thin, piping voice that all laughed, then she nodded at mrs. moon—"i got the candy.
"but to go back to mary. she has heard some of the things said about her, and so have i. mrs. deford told her yorkburg did not need to be washed and ironed, and lizzie bettie pryor wrote her a note informing her southern people had no sympathy with northern ideas, and if she wished to keep her old friends in yorkburg she should be more careful in making new acquaintances. now this is what i want understood. she is my friend. if any one wishes to ask questions about her, come to me. for statements made against her i will go to them. she has no mother. i have no child. as long as i am here and she is here, we are to be reckoned with together. this is what i came here to say. you can repeat it. i will see that lizzie pryor and her daughters hear it, and mrs. deford and puss jenkins and mr. benny brickhouse—"
the door opened noisily and again the maid-servant's head was thrust in. "mis' tate," she said, excitedly, "somebody done phone from mis' pryor's and say mr. pryor done gone and died. she say please somebody come on down there quick, that mis' pryor is just carryin' on awful."
the ladies sprang to their feet with shocked and frightened faces, but it was miss gibbie who spoke.
"poor william!" she said. "poor william! lizzie knew he could never eat sausage, and she had it this morning for breakfast!"
