Miss Gibbie Gault | Page 5

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, 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