the heat was oppressive. miss gibbie turned off all lights save the one on the candle-stand by the high mahogany bed, with its valance of white pique, drew the large wing chair close to the open window and sat down in it. over her gown she had put on a mandarin coat bought somewhere in china, and on her feet were the slippers embroidered for her by a japanese girl she had sent to a hospital in nagasaki.
the moon, coming out of its hiding place, for a moment poised clear and cool in a trough of gray banked by curling clouds of black, sent a thread of pale light upon the golden dragons on the coat, flashed on the slippers, and was lost in the darkness under which it darted. miss gibbie, watching, nodded toward it, and tapped the stool on which her feet rested with the tip of her toes.
"the moon is like one's self," she said. "go where you will you can't get rid of it. spooky thing, a moon. one big eye. don't like it!"
she lay back in her chair and rested her hands on its arms. from the garden below the night wind brought soft fragrance of lilacs and crepe-myrtle, of bleeding-heart and wall-flower, of cow-slips and candy-tuft, and as they blew in and out, like the touch of unseen hands, they stirred old memories—made that which was dead, alive again.
"you're a fool, gibbie gault—a fool! you are too old to care as you care; too old to take up what you've turned your back on all these years. you are too old—too old!"
suddenly she sat up. "too old, am i? i'll see about that! the tail end of anything isn't its valuable part, and of a life it's usually useless, but it is all i have left, and i'll be jammed if i don't do something with it. and were i a man i wouldn't say i'll be jammed. men have so many advantages over women!"
again she leaned back in her chair and tapped its arms with her long, slender fingers. "i wonder how long i have to live. one—five—ten years? what puppets we humans are—what puppets! born without permission, dying when it is neither pleasant nor convenient, we are made to march or crawl through life on the edge of a precipice from which at any moment we may be knocked over. and we're told we should believe the experience is a privilege!" both hands were lifted. "a privilege! mary thinks it is, thinks parts of it very pleasant, but mary never was a field in which she didn't find a four-leaf clover, and i never saw one in which i did. 'look for it,' she tells me." she shook her head. "it isn't that. the pitiful part of life is when one cares so little for what life gives!"
the tips of her fingers were brought together, then opened and shut mechanically. "and once i cared so much! who doesn't care when they are young and wonderful things are ahead? who doesn't care? and now to be caring again after the long, long, useless years! to be caring again!"
she closed her eyes and smiled a queer, twisted little smile. "it's got me!" she said. "old or not, it's got me! and it's a poor life that it doesn't get! but who would have thought at your age, gibbie gault, you would let another life do with yours what it will? and that's what you are doing; you are letting mary cary do with you what she will! well, suppose i am?" the keen gray eyes opened with a snap, and without warning stinging tears sprang in them. "suppose i am? i've been a selfish old fool and shut out the only thing worth the having in life, and do you think now it's given me i am going to turn my back on it? in all this big world sheis the only person who really loves me—the only one i really love. and do you think?"—she nodded fiercely as if to some one before her, then crumpled in a sudden heap in her chair. "oh, god, don't let her go out of my life! i'm an old woman and she's all i've got! all i've got!"
for some moments she lay still, then reached out for her handkerchief. "what a variety of fools one female can be! sit up and behave yourself, gibbie gault! you came near making a bargain with the lord then, and if there's one thing more than another that must be hard for him to have patience with it's a person who tries to make a deal with him. 'prosper me and i'll pray you' is the prayer of many. 'keep evil from me; hold death back; take care of me, and i'll build a new church, send out a missionary, give my tenth and over! don't hurt me, and i'll be good!' who doesn't pray like that some time or other in life? well, you came near doing it yourself. propitiation is an instinct, and money is all some have to offer as a bribe. to love mercy, to deal justly, and to walk humbly with one's maker are terms too hard for most of us. much easier to dope one's conscience with money. it's the only thing i've got, money is, and there have been times when i'd have given its every dollar for the thing it couldn't get. i came near mentioning it just now!"
she wiped her eyes resentingly, rubbed her cheeks none too gently, then opened her handkerchief and smoothed it into damp folds.
"tears! who would believe gibbie gault had a tear duct!" she shook her head. "gibbie gault has everything every other woman has, and if she chooses to hide a hungry heart under a sharp tongue whose business is it? people may talk about her as much as they please, but they sha'n't feel sorry for her!" she threw her handkerchief on the table. "what idiots we are to go masquerading through life! all playing a part—all! pretending not to care when we do care. pretending we do when we don't. what a shabby little sham most of this thing called life is! what a shabby little sham!"
she changed her position, recrossed her feet and folded her arms. "if mary were here she would say i needed a pill. perhaps i need two, but not the pink ones already prepared. everybody has a pill that's hard to swallow. /my/ pill might go down easily with some, and over theirs i might not blink, but—well, a pill is a pill; facts are facts, and old age is old age. the thing is to face what is, shake your fist at it if necessary, but never meet it, if disagreeable, half-way. i never meet anything half-way. but it's a cruel trick time plays on us, this making of body and brain a withered, wrinkled thing, whimpering for warmth and food and sleep, and babbling of the past. it's a cruel trick!"
out on the still air the clock in st. john's church steeple struck twelve strokes with clear deliberation. from the hall below they were repeated, and from the mantel behind her the hour chimed softly. she closed her eyes. "twelve o'clock! time for ladies of my age to be in bed. not going to bed! and my age hasn't yet reached the babbling-of-the-past stage. it will never reach that, gibbie. never!"
was it a hundred or a thousand years ago that she used to sit on this same stool at her father's knees and recite latin verbs to him, and as reward have him read her tales of breathless adventure and impossible happenings, all the more delicious because forbidden by her prosaic mother? she was seven when her mother died, but she barely remembered her, and had she lived they would hardly have been great friends. her mother's pride was in pickles and preserves and brandy peaches; in parties where the table groaned, the servants also, and in the looking well after the ways of her household. but of a child's heart and imagination she knew little. she was a true woman, but a housekeeper had taken her place, and neither her father nor herself had been seriously affected by her death.
and what splendid comrades she and her father were after her mother left them! he would let no one teach her but himself, and how he loved to show her off to his friends, putting her on top of the dining-room table and making her recite in latin bits from an ode of horace, in french a fable of la fontaine's, in english a sonnet of shelley or extracts from shakespeare's plays, and then letting her dance the heel-and-toe shuffle taught her secretly by the darkies on the place. what a selfish little pig she had been allowed to be! how selfish both of them had been! their books a passion, travel their delight, most people but persons who bored or bothered, they had lived largely apart, come and gone as they chose, cared little for what others said or thought; and yet when the war came they were back, passionate defenders of their cause, and in their hearts hot hate for those who sought to crush it.
and then it was pride measured its lance with love, and won. the awakening of her womanhood and the mockery of life had come together, hand in hand, and henceforth she was another creature.
in her chair miss gibbie shivered. it was not the sudden gust of wind that caused the sudden chill, but the scent of the micrafella roses just under the window which the wind had brought; and her arms, interlocked, were pressed closer to her breast. "gibbie gault, what a fool you are!" she said, under her breath. "but how much bigger a fool you were nearly fifty years ago!"
seventeen. young, vivid, brilliant, beautiful. yes, beautiful! nothing is so beautiful as youth, and she had much more than youth. the gods had been good to her up to then, and then they taunted her, made spring in her heart love for one only—love that must be crushed and killed, for the man who alone could inspire it wore the hated blue, was there to fight against her people, and never must she marry him, she told herself. on a visit north she had met him, and it was a whim of fate that he should be captain of one of the companies taking possession of yorkburg, with headquarters in the roy house, next to her own. a whim of fate! friend and foe they met daily, and battle was never waged more hotly than was theirs. on his part, determination that never yields. on hers, pride that never surrenders. and then one day there was a change of orders. his regiment was sent away and to battle. lest the horror, the terror of it all undo her, she had bid him go, refused to promise in the years to come she would ever be his wife, and the look on his fine, brave face had followed her through life.
a month later he was brought back and by her order to her house. fatally wounded, in delirium her name was ever on his lips, but in his eyes blankness. and on her knees by his bed she had twisted in an agony of prayer that for one moment, but one moment, light might come into them that she might pray for pardon ere he died. but no light came and he died, not knowing that for her love, too, was dead.
again miss gibbie stirred, for again she seemed to see herself. this time she was by an open grave. white, rigid, erect, she watched with tearless eyes the lowering, not of a mere body in the ground, but the burying of all youth has the right to ask of life. out of the future were gone for her the dreams of girlhood and a woman's hopes. the bareness and emptiness of coming years froze the blood in her heart, and when she turned away she lifted her head and bid life do its worst. nothing could matter now.
darker than the days of battle were the days of peace, and she made her father close the house and go away. for years they wandered where they would, but always were back for the month of june; and no one remembered that the twenty-first was the date of colleen mcmasters's death, or know that on that day his grave was visited, and there alone a woman yielded to the memories that ever filled her heart.
when her father died life in yorkburg was impossible. with a tilt of her chin at its dulness, a wave of her hand at its narrowness, and eyes closed to its happy content, she had gone back to london and reopened the house which had become known for her sharp wit, her freedom of speech, and her disregard of persons who had for commendation but inherited position; and there for years had what she called headquarters, but never thought of or spoke of as home.
she pulled her chair closer to the window and, with elbows on its sill and chin on her crossed hands, looked out into the soft silence of the night.
"what a time for seeing clearly, seeing things just as they are, this midnight is, gibbie gault! in the darkness wasted time stares you in the face and facts refuse to turn their backs. and you thought once the waste was all the other way—thought you were wise to stand off and watch the little comedies and tragedies, the pitiful strivings for place and power, the sordid struggles for bread and meat, the stupid ones for cap and bells! the motives and masques, the small deceptions and the large hypocrisies of life interested you immensely, didn't they? take the truth out and face it. you tell other people the truth—tell it to yourself. a selfish old pig, that's what you were, and thinking yourself clever all the while. clever! and why? because all your life you have been a student of history, of human happenings, and of man's behavior to his fellow-man, and particularly to woman, you thought you knew life, didn't you? you didn't! because you were an evolutionist and recognized nature's disregard of human values, the impartial manifestations of her laws, and the reckoning which their violation demands, you thought science must satisfy. science doesn't satisfy. with ignorance and superstition, with life's cruelties and injustice, with human helplessness, you could quarrel well, but beyond the sending out of checks to serve as a soothing-syrup to your encumbrance of a conscience what did you ever do to give a lift to anything? nothing! and the pity is there are many like you!
"'cui-bono-itis.' that's what you had, gibbie gault—'cui-bono-itis.' bad thing! almost as hard on the people about you as the 'ego-itis' of to-day. pity people can't die of their own diseases instead of killing other people with them. great pity!"
the moon was gone. only in faint lines of light was the blackness of the sky broken, and as she looked out over the trees in the garden below, and down the street, asleep and still, the scene changed, and no longer was she in yorkburg, but in the little village of chenonceaux, at the inn of le bon laboureur. her friend, miss rawley, of edinborough, was with her. they were taking their coffee outdoors at a table placed where they could best get the breeze and see the roses climbing over the lattice-work of the little hotel, with its pots of red geraniums in the windows. and in the door the young proprietor was smiling happily, for down the long, straight, tree-lined road an automobile which had just left the chateau was coming, and he had visions of what it would mean.
"i didn't." she nodded her head. "it's a way life has, this bringing of somebody across our path, this taking of somebody out of it, as incidentally as if we were flies. well, that's what i used to think most of us were. flies! those who weren't flies were spiders. some buzzed, some bit, and all in a net—all! and to think of the way i was taken by the shoulders and turned around! made to see all i'd been doing was squinting at life with my nose turned up. just that! because i had seen the just man perish in his righteousness, and the wicked prosper in his wickedness, i thought, with my ancient friend, that time and chance happeneth to all, and people and pigs had much in common. what an old fool you were, gibbie gault! take your pill! you saw life as you wanted to see it, and, giving nothing to it, got nothing out of it. right!
"queer what a kiss can do—just one!" she drew in her breath and felt it all again. the automobile had stopped. a party of americans had gotten out and, slowly drinking her coffee, she watched them. a man and his wife, two children, a nurse, and a young girl, twenty, perhaps. something about her, something of glow and vividness and warmth, held her, and a faint memory was stirred. a clear, fresh voice called to the chauffeur as she sprang out of the car and came close to the table near which she was sitting, and then she heard her name spoken in joyous surprise.
"it's miss gibbie gault! oh, aunt katherine, it is miss gibbie gault!"
without warning, two strong young arms were thrown around her neck and on her lips a hearty kiss was pressed. "oh, miss gibbie, i'm so glad to see you! /i'm so glad!/ i'm mary cary who used to live in yorkburg. you don't mind my kissing you, do you? i couldn't help it, i really couldn't! it's /so/ good to see some one from yorkburg!" and she was hugged again, hugged hard.
"nearly three years ago!" her lips quivered. "and a different world you've been living in since. somebody was really glad to see you. it makes a great difference in life when some one is glad to see you!"
was it fate, chance, circumstance that had brought the girl to her? she did not know. once she would have said. maybe god needed them together, was mary's view, and she never commented on mary's views. in that at least she had learned to hold her tongue. but it did not matter. they were here in yorkburg, lives closely interknit, and here, in the home in which she had been born, she was to live henceforth. and if but close to her she could keep the girl who had warmed her heart and opened her eyes she would ask nothing more of life.
for two years and more they had been together. instantly she had wanted her, and, never hesitating in efforts to get what she wanted, a month after the meeting at the little inn of le bon laboureur she invited her to be her guest in a trip around the world. the invitation was blunt. she had long wanted to take this trip, had long been looking for the proper companion. she had a dog, but he wasn't allowed to come to the table. would she go? her uncle and aunt would not let her miss the chance. they made her go. doctor alden and his wife were sensible people.
and then the night in cairo when mary came in her room, sat on the stool at her feet, and, crossing her arms on her lap, looked up in her face and said they must go home. the holiday had been long and happy, but more of it would be loss of time. and home was yorkburg. a visit to michigan first, long talks with her uncle and aunt, and then whatever she was to do in life was to be done in yorkburg. there was a little money, something her uncle had invested for her when she first went to live with him, until she decided on some sort of work. she would teach, perhaps, and she would rather it would be in the little town in which she had found a home when homeless and without a friend. she was not willing to live with anybody or anywhere without work. she was anxious to be about it. when could they start?
"and of course i started. started just when she said. did just what she wanted and some things she didn't. trotted on back to the old pasture-land where old sheep should graze, and here i am to stay until the call comes. whoever thought you'd come back to yorkburg, gibbie gault! back to shabby, sleepy, satisfied old yorkburg! well, you're here! mary cary made you come. she loves it, always wanting to do something for it; helping every broken-down old thing in it; laughing at its funny ways, and keeping straight along in hers. and for what? to-morrow everybody will be talking about the meeting to-night. about other things she's doing. small thanks she'll get, and if you tell her so she'll say if you do things for thanks you don't deserve them. bless my soul, if it isn't raining!"
a sudden downpour of rain startled her, and she sat upright; then, at a noise behind, turned and saw mary cary coming in the door.
"oh, miss gibbie, i could spank you! i really could! you aren't even five years old at times. it has turned almost cold, and raining hard, and here you are sitting by an open window!" she felt the gown of the older woman anxiously. "i believe it's damp. if you don't get in bed i'm going to—"
"do what?" miss gibbie got out of her chair, threw off the mandarin coat with its golden dragons, and kicked her slippers toward the door. "what are you going to do?"
"put you in it. get in and let me cover you up! are you sure you aren't cold? sure?"
"sure." miss gibbie mimicked the anxious tones of the girl now bending over and tucking the covering round her warm and tight. "what did you come in here for, anyhow? go to bed!"
"i knew you'd left the window open, and it has turned so cool. i was afraid there was too much air." she stooped over and kissed her. "good-night! don't get up to breakfast. i'll see you during the day." with a swift movement she turned off the light on the candle-stand and was gone, and under the covering miss gibbie hid her face in the pillow.
"dear god," she said. "dear god, she's all i've got. i'm an old woman, and she's all i've got!"
