THE PIECE OF PAPER
Standing in front of the library fire, Miss Gibbie held her hands out
to it blaze. "This room isn't warm enough. Jackson isn't half attending
to the furnace. I wish you'd ring for him to put on more coal. Jackson
is losing his mind of late. If he wasn't a church member I'd think he
was seeking, he's been so doleful the last few days. They are
half-cracked, every one of them, when their meetings begin."
"Jackson has undigested dyspepsia. He told me so himself just before
supper." Mary Cary opened the coal-bin, and with the tongs lifted a
large lump of coal and put it in the grate. "It must be a dreadful
thing to have, judging by his expression." She laughed and wiped her
hands on her handkerchief. "I suggested peppermint and hot water, but
he looked so reproachfully at me that I changed it to Compound Elixir
of Hexagonal Serafoam. He's anxious to try that."
"What is it?"
"I don't know." She shook her head. "But the sound pleased him, so
I'm going to give him some calomel to-morrow under the new name. It's
nonsense to say there's nothing in a name. There's money in it, cure
in it, and comfort of mind. Why don't you sit down?"
Miss Gibbie walked over to the library-table, took up a magazine,
opened it, put it down and took up another. Mary, following her
with her eyes, seeing the restlessness which possessed her and the
restraint she was obviously trying to exercise, was puzzled, and
again she asked: "Why don't you sit down?"
"I think it's because I prefer to stand. But it may be because I've
been sitting for hours hearing people tell the same thing over in a
different way. Just sixteen people have been here to-day and every
single one of them told me every single thing about the party; how
pretty Polly Porter looked, and what a sight Georganna Brickhouse
made of herself in a light-blue dress, suitable for sixteen, and how
good the supper was, all except the salad. That was a new-fashioned
mess Mrs. Deford made after a recipe brought from Maine. Mittie
Muncater's nose is still up. Things have come to a pretty pass when
Maine recipes are used in Virginia, Mittie says. You'd think Yorkburg
had been insulted. And every single one of the sixteen said their say
over the runaway. Mourned, groaned, or were glad, according to their
feelings. Some weren't at all surprised. Been expecting it. That was
Lizzie Bettie Pryor and Puss Jenkins. Some people always know a thing
is going to happen after it happens. And some won't believe it though
in front of their face. You, too, have been airing your views on
runaway marriages ever since you came in. For a person who doesn't
intend to get married you have very decided views concerning
matrimony."
"That's way I never expect to get married. If I didn't have views,
I might. I've never said I didn't approve of people marrying. I do.
Though why they want to, I don't see. Life has enough disappointments
without finding that marriage is another. It certainly can't be a
cheerful realization, that of discovering your husband is a very
different man from what you thought him."
"Nor a very cheerful discovery for a man when he realizes the woman
he loves is really a child! My dear Mary Cary, don't imagine the
discoveries of character and temperament, of idiosyncrasies and
peculiarities, are all on the woman's side. A man has to stand much.
There are times when a woman may be an angel, but others when she
behaves as if her ancestry was in a different direction. No wizard
works such enigmatical changes as that master of human destinies
called Love. Lives are glorified or ruined by it, and no man or
woman experiences it who is not more or less, in the process of
experiencing, some sort of a fool. They play with happiness as though
it were a toy, and learn too late they've thrown away the only thing
worth having in life. By-the-way, speaking of happiness, has this Mr.
Horatio Fielding gone yet?"
Mary Cary drew the big wing chair closer to the fire and sat upon its
arm, one slippered foot on the fender. "No. He has not gone yet. He
goes to-morrow, I believe."
"He does!" Miss Gibbie looked at the face opposite, and over her own
again swept indecision. During supper she had been too incensed to
trust herself to tell what that afternoon had reached her ears, and
yet it must to told. Were it possible to spare her she would spare. It
was not possible. Kind friends were too ready to spread cruel things.
It was best she should hear from her what must be heard.
"This Mr. Fielding," she began, taking a seat on the far end of the
big old-fashioned sofa, well out of the firelight. "Is he a man of
honor? Can you depend upon statements he makes?"
"A man of honor?" Miss Gibbie was looked at questioningly. "I don't
know what you mean. He's abominably blatant and nouveau, and a
terrible trial to talk to. But dishonorable--There's been no
occasion for him to act dishonorably. His statements are mostly about
his father's wealth and the kind of machine he likes best and his
tailor in Piccadilly and cafes in Paris. I don't know how correct they
are. I didn't half hear them. I could think of other things when he was
talking, and generally brought them in for that purpose."
"And yet for some days past you have been constantly with this
abominably blatant and terribly trying person. You have driven home
with him at eight o'clock at night."
"I have. Why shouldn't I? I wouldn't have driven with him at four if
I shouldn't have driven with him at eight. I did that the night I was
caught by the storm at Miss Matoaca Brockenborough's. She was sick,
and Mr. Fielding talked with Miss Honoria in the parlor while I was
up-stairs with Miss Matoaca. I would have come here, but I had some
important letters to write that night and didn't let Mr. Fielding come
in. He drove back and left the horse at Mr. Pugh's stable."
"Had he been drinking?"
Mary Cary got up from the arm of the chair, her face incredulous.
"Drinking? No, he hadn't been drinking. That is, I don't suppose he
had. How could I tell? He talked a lot and laughed at the way Miss
Honoria introduced him to all the family portraits, and the superior
air in which she told him the history of each. I remember he called
her Miss Icicle."
"How did he happen to go there with you?"
"We'd been to drive. He'd never seen the bluff and was interested
in the battle fought there. I made him leave me at Miss Matoaca's,
but he insisted on coming back to go out home with me. I was too
tired to argue." She brushed her hair back as if tired again. "The
rain kept us, and it was eight before we got off."
"I have been told Miss Honoria was not the only one who gave
information that afternoon. When was it? Day before yesterday, I
believe. He made statements which Miss Honoria seemed to find
more startling, if not so amusing, as those he made to her."
"Did he?" Mary straightened one of the tall white candles in the
candelabrum of many prisms on the end of the mantelpiece near which
she stood. Her voice was not interested. "I believe he did tell me
Miss Honoria was a cut-glass catechiser and very much interested in
me."
"He did not tell you his answers to your questions, I suppose?"
"He certainly didn't. I cared for neither questions nor answers."
She turned and looked at Miss Gibbie and laughed indifferently.
"Mr. Fielding seems to have become suddenly important. You sound
like a cross-examining lawyer. He goes to-morrow, and I never expect
to see him again. Why this interest?"
Miss Gibbie looked down at the tip of her slipper. Stooping, she
straightened its bow. "Because of some very silly things I heard
this afternoon." She put the other foot on the rung of the chair in
front of her and carefully smoothed its ribbon with fingers that
twitched. "Honoria Brockenborough claims he told her the money you
have been spending in Yorkburg came from him, that the bonds were
bought by his broker, and that he was Yorkburg's friend."
Indifference slipped off as a garment, and, at Miss Gibbie's words,
Mary Cary stiffened in rigid horror and unbelief. For a moment she
stared at her as if not understanding, and her hand went to her
throat. She choked in her effort to speak, and her eyes flashed
fire.
"I don't believe it!" The moment between her bearing and speaking
was tense. "He said--" her breath came unevenly--"he said /he/
was Yorkburg's friend? /He/ had given money I had spent! He--
And I--alone in the world!"
She threw out her hands as though to ward off some dreadful thing,
then dropped in the big wing chair and buried her face in her arms.
"Mary! Mary!" Miss Gibbie, terrified by the unexpected effect of her
words, leaned over the twisting figure and put her hand upon it. The
hand was shaken off. For the first time in her life Miss Gibbie Gault
was helpless and afraid.
"Mary!"
"Don't! Don't touch me! Don't speak to me!" She got up and threw
back her head, then looked at the clock. "What time is it?" She walked
over to the bell and pressed it. "You've often said deep down in every
woman was something dangerous. All of us have something we'd die for
quickly. And I--all I have--is just myself."
"What are you going to do?" Miss Gibbie sat down limply in the chair
from which Mary had just risen. "Why did you ring? You aren't going
to take seriously the thing I have told you? The man is being looked
after. John is attending to him to-night."
"John!"
The word came involuntarily, and her head was turned quickly lest
its spasm of pain be seen. "What has John to do with it?"
"A very good deal." Miss Gibbie's breath was coming back. The shock
and fury in Mary's face had frightened her as not in years had she
been frightened. "John has heard these rumors and will settle their
source. What do you want, Celia?"
"You rang, did you not?" Celia, hands on the curtains, waited.
"I rang. I want my coat and hat." Mary Cary turned to her. "I want
you, too, for a little while, Celia. Get ready, please, to go out
with me." She went over to the desk and took from one of its many
pigeon-holes paper and pencil. "I am going to Miss Honoria
Brockenborough's."
"What are you going there for?" Miss Gibbie's voice made pretence
of petulance. "What do you want to see her for?"
"Didn't you tell me when people said things about you that were not
true you made them sign a paper to that effect? Were Miss Honoria
Brockenborough dying she'd have to sign that paper to-night. She has
lied, or the man of whom she spoke has lied, and either the one or
the other or both shall say so. Don't you see"--for the first time
her voice broke, and again she put her hand to her throat--"don't
you see she is taking from me all--everything I have. When I was here,
a child, a bit of sea-weed, I knew my life depended--on just myself.
All the eyes of all the world did not matter so much as my own. You
do not know what it means to be alone in life!"
She stopped as if something had suddenly given way, and on her knees
her face was hidden in Miss Gibbie's lap.
Only the crackling of the coal in the grate broke the stillness of
the room. Presently Miss Gibbie spoke, lifted the white, drawn
face to hers.
"I do not know what it means to be alone in life? It is about all of
life I do know!" Out of her voice she struggled to keep bitterness,
made effort to laugh. "And do you suppose I would let Honoria
Brockenborough scatter her righteous assertions a minute longer than
they were heard? Puss Jenkins left me at four o'clock. An hour later
I was back home." She opened her beaded bag. "There is your piece of
paper!" She shook it in the air. "Honoria Brockenborough is now in
bed with an attack of nervous collapse. I hope it will keep her there
some time. Matoaca hasn't stopped crying since the guild meeting this
morning, and for the first time in her life has bitterly reproached
her Sister Superior who felt it her Christian duty to repeat what she
now says she understood a hope-inflated, love-mad, half-tight fool
had said. Queer old place, Mary, this big world! Queer little place
this old Yorkburg! Not one person in forty thousand can repeat a
statement what repeated can be very differently constructed. I thought
it was as well Honoria Brockenborough should have a few remarks made
to her. She's had them. The doctor is, doubtless, with her now. Do
you want this paper?"
Mary Cary took the paper held toward her. As she read it the color
came back slowly in her face, and the short, shivering breath grew
quiet again.
"Yes," she said, "I want it." With a sob she leaned toward the older
woman. "I told you I was all--alone. And already you--Miss Gibbie!
Miss Gibbie!"
In each other's arms they clung as mother and child.