BUZZIE
"Who in the world would have thought this morning it was going
to rain like this? But that's weather; you never can tell what
it's going to do. Just like women. Good gracious! Did you see
that flash of lightning?"
Mrs. Tate, sitting on Mrs. Moon's front porch, clapped her hands
to her ears and shut her eyes tight, then got up quickly. "You all
may stay out here if you want to, but I'm going in. I never did
think it was right to tempt Providence, and if there was a feather
bed in the house I'd get on it. Can't the windows be lowered, Beth,
and somebody start the pianola and turn on the lights? A
thunderstorm like this gives me such a sinking feeling in my
stomach I feel like I'm sitting on a trap-door with a broken
catch. My love! there goes another one!"
Mrs. Moon laughed and got up. "I guess we had better go
in, Mrs. Burnham, the porch is getting so wet. I hope Miss
Georganna Brickhouse and Mrs. Steele got home before the rain.
I saw them coming from Mrs. Deford's just now." She pulled the
chairs quickly forward as a sudden heavy deluge beat in almost
to the door, and called to the maid to lower the windows; then,
inside the sitting-room, took up her sewing, Mrs. Burnham taking
up hers also.
But sewing was not for Mrs. Tate. As another peal of thunder
drowned the downpour of rain she ran to the sofa and piled around
her the cushions upon it. Putting one under her feet, another on
her head, and clasping one close to her breast with her crossed
arms, she closed her eyes tight and sat in huddled terror waiting
for the storm to pass.
Neither lightning nor thunder could silence her tongue, however,
and, though at some distance from the window near which Mrs. Moon
and Mrs. Burnham were sitting, she talked on with slight regard to
their attention, from time to time opening her eyes, only to shut
them quickly again it a flash of lightning caused fresh fright.
"I might have known it was going to storm like this," she said after
a while, "for last night was the hottest night I ever felt in my life.
When I went to bed I didn't think I was going to sleep a wink, and I
wouldn't if I'd stayed awake and thought about it. The mosquitoes were
perfectly awful. Biggest things I ever saw. I thought once there were
bats in the room. Sakes alive! that reminds me I haven't ordered a thing
for dinner! I didn't intend to stay here a minute; just stopped by on my
way to Mr. Blick's, and here it is after one o'clock! I get so tired of
those everlasting three meals a day that I almost wish there were no
such things as stomachs. I would wish it if Mr. Tate wasn't in the feed
business. Half one's time is spent in getting something to put in them
and the other half in suffering from what we put. Do you all ever have
dyspepsia? I do --awful. And not a doctor in town knows what to do
for it. I take more medicine--"
"Maybe that is what gives it to you." Mrs. Burnham looked at Mrs.
Moon and smiled. When she first came to Yorkburg she had wondered
why Mrs. Tate was called "Buzzie," but she had long since found out,
also the fitness of the appellation. "I guess I am queer about
medicine," she went on, bending over to see if there were any breaks
in the clouds. "I rarely take it. There is nothing so apt to keep you
sick."
"That's so. And after a while we'll all have to be Christian
Scientists or New Thoughters or some other thing that don't call in
doctors. I wish I was one this minute. I'd rather think something
than swallow something, and nobody but the rich can afford to be sick
these days. If you say you've got a plain everyday sort of pain the
doctor puts a name on it and yanks you to a hospital and cuts it out
before he's sure what the thing really is. If you live you're lucky.
If you don't--well, you're dead. That's all. And if you're tired out
and fidgety and feel like crying as much as you want to, they say
you're a nervous prostrationer and tie you to a trained nurse at
twenty-five dollars a week, and don't let you see friend or relative
until you're better or worse. I tell you Mr. Tate would go crazy if
he had to hand out twenty-five dollars a week to have a girl in white
wait on me. And I wouldn't blame him. If I were a young man I'd think
a long time before I'd get married these days. A man wouldn't buy a
horse unless he knew it was healthy, but he'd marry a girl without
knowing. But I never saw a man who wouldn't rather butt his own head
his own way then be told he didn't have to, and nobody gets thanked
for telling. Mercy! I'm hot; nearly melting. Is it still raining,
Beth?"
Mrs. Moon got up and raised the window. "Not very much, and the
clouds seem to be scattering. I should think you would be roasting,
way over in that corner with all those cushions around you. Why
don't you come by the window? The air feels so fresh and good."
"No, sir!" Mrs. Tate opened her eyes, but closed them quickly again.
"There goes another flash of lightning! The thunder is getting better,
but I'm not going to sit by an open window as long as there's any of
it left. But I'm hot, all right. Seems to me Yorkburg is a great deal
hotter in summer now than it used to be. That's only natural, I
suppose, as everything in Yorkburg has changed. If old General Wright
and Mr. Brockenborough and Major Alden and Judge Gault and some others
of their day could come back they wouldn't know it. They were the
lordliest, high-handedest bunch of old aristocrats that ever lived,
and they ruled this town like they owned it. Specially Major Alden.
He didn't have a bit of business sense, Father Tate used to say, but
he'd had money all his life and he would spend it; and when there
wasn't any to spend he spent on just the same. Major Alden didn't
really believe the Almighty made common people. He thought they came
up like weeds and underbrush and, though you couldn't cut them down
exactly, you must keep them down somehow. He really believed it.
Some people think so now."
"Certainly his granddaughter doesn't." Mrs. Burnham put down her
work and took up a palm-leaf fan and began to use it, running her
finger around the neck of her collar to loosen it. "I don't think
anybody in Yorkburg begins to understand what Mary Cary is doing
here, or what she means to certain people--"
"I don't suppose we do"--Mrs. Moon started to say something, but
Mrs. Tate was ahead of her--"And no one in the world would ever
have imagined Mary would do things like that. But that's Mary.
From childhood no one ever knew what she'd be doing next. She
certainly is looking pretty, but she isn't the beauty her mother
was. I'm like Miss Gibbie in one thing. I believe in a sure-enough
hell. They say real smart people don't any more except preachers
who have to and women who want to. Miss Gibbie says she wouldn't
believe in it if it hadn't been for the war, but I believe in it
because some things have to be burned out, and Major Alden needed
to have his pride purified. You knew he used to be a beau of Miss
Gibbie's, didn't you?"
Mrs. Burnham shook her head. "No, I know little of Yorkburg's
personal history."
"Well, he was. She never was a raging beauty, but she had more men
in love with her than any girl she ever knew, mother used to say,
and more sense than all the rest put together. That's what I think
was so funny. Men don't care for sense in a woman. If she can sign
coal tickets and market tickets, and look after them, and be
good-looking and nice it's all they care for. I never knew how to
make out a check until my own daughter showed me. What's the use?
Never had a dollar in bank in my life. Mr. Tate's the kind of man
who thinks a woman ought to come to her husband for everything, and
as he never gives me money unless I ask for it, and I don't ask
until I need it to spend right away, it has no chance to get in a
bank. I don't mean I have to worry Mr. Tate. He gives me all he can,
and, besides, I always did think it was a mistake in a woman to know
too much about business things. Men don't like it. I've always made
it a rule never to do anything Mr. Tate could do for me. I've often
noticed one or the other is going to be helpless, and I'd rather be
waited on than wait."
She settled herself more comfortably on the sofa and again opened
her eyes cautiously. "Of course I'm old-fashioned. Young people have
very different ideas from their parents. Girls plank themselves right
straight alongside of men and say they are just as smart as men are.
Of course they are. Women have always known it, but they used to have
too much sense to tell it. Nowadays they tell everything. The easiest
thing on earth to fool is a man. He just naturally loves helplessness,
and when Aylette married I told her for mercy's sake not to be one of
these new-fashioned kind of wives, but be a clinger. She doesn't like
clingers, and sometimes I'm afraid she's too smart to be real happy.
She takes after her grandfather Tate. I certainly do thank the Lord He
didn't see fit to make me clever. I've often heard my mother say a smart
woman had a hard time in life."
"I wonder why Miss Gibbie did not marry." Mrs. Burnham was
looking at Mrs. Moon. "If she had so many beaux it is strange she
did not marry."
"Now who on earth could think of Miss Gibbie Gault being married!"
The cushion dropped from the top of Mrs. Tate's head and she
stooped to pick it up. "Her independent tongue was laughed at and
her witty speeches repeated, but what home could have stood her?
She knew better than to get married. If she ever loved anybody,
nobody ever knew it, mother used to say, but I always have believed
she did. She certainly is one queer person. Mrs. Porter asked her
last week to give something to the choir fund and she said she'd do
nothing of the kind, and she thought the people ought to be paid for
having to listen to squeaks like we had instead of paying them to
squeak, and she wouldn't give a cent. She holds on to what she's got
like paper to the wall, Mrs. Porter says."
Mrs. Moon got up and pressed the button by the door, and when
the maid appeared spoke to her.
"Mrs. Tate and Mrs. Burnham will stay to dinner, Harriet. See
that there are places at the table for them."
"Indeed I can't stay to dinner." Mrs. Tate jumped up and came
toward the window. "I believe it's stopped raining, and if the
thunder is over I'll have to run on home. When I left there
everything looked like scrambled eggs, and nobody knows where
I am, and I wouldn't telephone just after a storm for forty dollars.
There's the sun. I'm going. Good-bye." And picking up her skirts
with both hands she ran down the steps and out into the street and
across it to her house, half-way down the square.
Coming back from the door to which they had followed her, Mrs.
Moon and Mrs. Burnham laughed good-naturedly. "How do you suppose
she manages it?" both asked, and then laughed again at the
oneness of thought.
"I've often wondered why she didn't lose breath," said Mrs.
Burnham, taking her seat this time in the hall for the few minutes
longer she could stay. "But I wouldn't dare try to see how she does
it. She's worse than Mrs. McDougal. Did you hear of the letter she
wrote Miss Gibbie? Mrs. McDougal, I mean. I'm so glad she's coming
home before we go away. To hear her tell of her trip will be better
than the minstrels. When are you going away, Mrs. Moon?"
The latter shook her head. "I don't know. I'm trying to make Mr.
Moon go with me, but I'm afraid there's no use in even hoping it.
Richard says it's for the family he is working as he does, and he
is honest in thinking it, but if I and the children were to die
to-morrow he'd begin the day after the funeral and keep at it
just as persistently as ever."
Mrs. Burnham looked down at her work as if examining closely the
stitches she had just put in. Mr. Moon was the richest man in
Yorkburg, but not for years had he and his wife gone off together
for a holiday. Presently she looked up. "Men are queer, aren't
they? I suppose all wives wish sometimes they could mix up, as
one does dough, a whole bunch of husbands and cut them out in new
patterns with some of each other's qualities in each. There's Mr.
Corbin. He doesn't work enough. Mr. Moon works too much. I saw Mr.
Corbin on this front porch the other day reading Plato's
/Republic/ as though it were the first reading. It was the
third he told me. Mr. Moon--"
"Never heard of Plato's /Republic/, or if he did has forgotten
it." Mrs. Moon laughed, but as pushing back a sigh. "His republic
is Yorkburg and the mills. He can never go away. Often I wonder if
it is worth it, the money he is making. He gives me everything on
earth but what I want most."
Mrs. Burnham again bent over her work. "A woman has to pay full
price for a successful husband," she said, presently. "Perhaps Mr.
Corbin's philosophy isn't all wrong. He has no wealth, no fame, no
great position, but he has gotten something out of life many men
miss."
"And his wife has gotten much some other women miss. Men who make
money never seem to have time to enjoy it until too late. In
business it's the game men love. They build big houses, fill them
with fine furniture and servants, give their wives beautiful
clothes and carriages--and then find they have no home. I wish
I didn't feel as I do about money, but I've come to see it's the
most separating thing on earth."
She stopped and laughed with something of embarrassment. "This
is a queer subject you and I have drifted into. We both have
husbands of whom we should be proud, but--" Her lips quivered.
"Men say women don't understand. Perhaps they don't; but when
Mr. Moon was not so busy and we could take the buggy, shabby
though it was, and go for a long afternoon in the country and
talk over our plans, and whether we could afford this or whether
that, it was a far happier ride than I take now in the automobile.
He gave me one this spring, but he has no time to go with me."
Her eyes filled. "There are some things women understand too well."
For a moment there was silence, then she drew her chair closer to
the open door. "But a woman shouldn't be silly, should she? I often
think of what my old mammy told me the day I was married. 'Don't
never forget, honey, that what you's marryin' is a man,' she said,
'and don't be expectin' of all the heavenly virtues in him. They
ain't thar."
Mrs. Burnham laughed. "They are not. In a woman 'they ain't thar,'
either. Miss Matoaca Brockenborough says from observation there is
something to be said on both sides." She looked up. "You knew Miss
Matoaca was going away with Miss Gibbie Gault and Mary Cary,
didn't you? She hasn't been out of Yorkburg for years and is
as excited about it as if she were sixteen. She's going as Mary's
guest, you know."
"Yes, I know." Mrs. Moon's voice was suddenly troubled. "It
is all right, of course, but I can't understand why Mary keeps
things so to herself. It isn't like her. She isn't rich. Her uncle
is, but I'm sure it isn't his money she's spending. Last week Miss
Ginnie Grant and her old mother were sent off for a month's stay
in the mountains. I don't understand--"
"I don't either." Mrs. Burnham got up and smiled in the perplexed
face before her. "But when the time comes we will all understand,
and until then I'm willing to wait. Mary is acting for some one else,
I suppose. Several people have been suggested, some men, some women.
Somebody said they'd heard a very rich patient of her uncle's out in
Michigan was sending her the money to use as she saw best, and others
say John Maxwell got some one to buy the bonds for him, but--"
"I don't believe it's John. Of course I don't know." Mrs. Moon
got up. "I wish you would stay to dinner. We have peach cream
to-day. It's very nice. You'd better stay."
"I wish I could. Peach cream is terribly tempting, but if I'm not
at the table Mr. Burnham is as injured as if I'd done him a grievous
wrong. He's the only child I have, you know, and I guess he's
rather--"
Mrs. Moon smiled in the laughing face. "I guess he is. Good-bye."