Miss Gibbie Gault. Kate Langley Bosher
Miss Gibbie came farther in the room, laid her bag and turkey-wing fan on the table over which Mrs. Pryor was presiding, and, without a good-morning to the others, took her seat and began the pulling-off of her white cotton gloves.
"What's all this nonsense about St. Paul and women, Lizzie?" she began, laying the gloves by the bag and taking up the fan. "I heard that last remark, but Mr. Pryor didn't. Do you ever tell Mr. Pryor about St. Paul's opinions? I hope, some of these eternal times, I am going to know St. Paul. His epistles don't speak of a wife, but I've always imagined he had one, and of the kind who didn't agree with you, Lizzie, that women should keep silent and learn of their husbands at home—like you learn of yours."
The white ribbon strings which tied Miss Gibbie's broad-brimmed white straw hat under her chin were unfastened and thrown back over her shoulders, the sprig muslin skirt was spread out carefully, and the turkey-wing fan lifted from her lap, but for a moment Mrs. Pryor did not speak.
Her face, not given to flushing, had colored at Miss Gibbie's words. She pressed her lips firmly together and looked around the room as if asking for Christian forbearance for so irreverent a speech as had just been heard; then she rose.
"I do not care to discuss St. Paul. When a woman sits in judgment upon one of the disciples of the Lord—"
"Don't get your Biblical history mixed, Lizzie. St. Paul was not one of the twelve. He was an apostle, a writer of epistles. I admire him, but, from his assertions concerning women, he must have had some in his family who gave him trouble. Whenever you hear a man in public insisting on keeping women in their place, keeping them down and under, not letting them do this or letting them do that, you may be certain he is a managed man. But if you won't discuss St. Paul with a sinner such as I, we willgo back to the person you were discussing, and I will discuss her with Christians such as you. Who was it? If it wasn't Mary Cary I will give ten dollars to your heathen fund." She looked around the room and then at Mrs. Webb. "Was it Mary Cary, Virginia?"
Mrs. Webb, biting a strand of cotton held at arm's-length from the spool, nodded, then threaded her needle.
"Yes, we were talking about her work here in Yorkburg, and Mrs. Pryor was telling us she had engaged the /General Maury/ to take the orphan children to Wayne Beach on the fourteenth, and—"
"Lizzie wanted to know where the money was coming from? For a Christian woman, Lizzie, your curiosity in money matters is unrighteous. If money is honestly come by, what business is it of ours how it is spent?"
"Why doesn't she tell how it is come by?" Mrs. Pryor's voice was high and sharp. "Mary Cary has been back in Yorkburg seven months—"
"Seven months and two weeks," corrected Mrs. Tate, pointing her unthreaded needle at Mrs. Pryor.
"She was a penniless orphan until thirteen"—the interruption was ignored—"and, so far as we've heard, she has never had a fortune left her, and yet after nine years' absence she comes back, has a beautiful home, a horse, and a runabout, keeps three servants, gives to everything, spends freely, and never tells how she gets the money."
"And that's something good people will never forgive, will they,
Lizzie?"
Miss Gibbie Gault leaned forward and tapped the table on which Mrs. Pryor's hands were resting with the tip of the turkey-wing fan. "Though one feeds the hungry and clothes the naked, brings cleanliness out of dirt, and gladness where was dulness, makes flowers grow where were weeds, it profiteth nothing—if one's business is not told. Be honest, Lizzie. Isn't that so?"
Mrs. Moon glanced anxiously at the clock on the mantel just under the portrait of Mrs. Tate's great-grandfather, and hurriedly folded her work. She never came to a meeting of the Needlework Guild if she thought it likely Miss Gibbie would be there. But Miss Gibbie was even less regular than Miss Honoria Brockenborough, and her attendance to-day was evidently for a purpose. By herself Miss Gibbie was an Occasion, a visit to her was an experience that gave color and life to the dullest of days, and she did not deny her enjoyment of Miss Gibbie's comments on people and things. But Mrs. Pryor and Miss Gibbie together made an atmosphere too electrical for her peace-loving nature, and she was wondering if it were possible to get away when the door opened and Mrs. Tate's maid put her head inside.
"Mis' Pryor," she said, and her eyes seemed all whites, "somebody at the telephone say for you to come on home' that Mr. Pryor done took sick on the street and they've brung him in. Miss Lizzie Bettie say to come on quick."
Every woman turned in her seat. From some came exclamations of frightened sympathy. From others a movement to rise, as if the summons had come to them, but Mrs. Pryor waved them back.
"I don't think it is anything serious," she said, bluntly. "I can't even go to a meeting in peace. Lizzie Bettie is so excitable. Mr. Pryor has been having attacks of indigestion for months. He ate sausage this morning for breakfast. He knows he can't eat sausage."
Chapter II
THE VIEWS OF MISS GIBBIE
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,