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 miss
lizzie 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."
