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, 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!"