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The Turmoil, A Novel
by Booth Tarkington
December, 1997 [Etext #1098]
The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington
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The Turmoil. A novel by Booth Tarkington
1915.
To Laurel.
There is a midland city in the heart of fair, open country, a dirty and
wonderful city nesting dingily in the fog of its own smoke. The stranger
must feel the dirt before he feels the wonder, for the dirt will be upon him
instantly. It will be upon him and within him, since he must breathe it, and
he may care for no further proof that wealth is here better loved than
cleanliness; but whether he cares or not, the negligently tended streets
incessantly press home the point, and so do the flecked and grimy citizens. At
a breeze he must smother in the whirlpools of dust, and if he should decline
at any time to inhale the smoke he has the meager alternative of suicide.
The smoke is like the bad breath of a giant panting for more and more riches.
He gets them and pants the fiercer, smelling and swelling prodigiously. He
has a voice, a hoarse voice, hot and rapacious trained to one tune: "Wealth!
I will get Wealth I will make Wealth! I will sell Wealth for more Wealth! My
house shall be dirty, my garment shall be dirty, and I will foul my neighbor
so that he cannot be clean--but I will get Wealth! There shall be no clean
thing about me: my wife shall be dirty and my child shall be dirty, but I
will get Wealth!" And yet it is not wealth that he is so greedy for: what the
giant really wants is hasty riches. To get these he squanders wealth upon the
four winds, for wealth is in the smoke.
Not so long ago as a generation, there was no panting giant here, no heaving,
grimy city; there was but a pleasant big town of neighborly people who had
understanding of one another, being, on the whole, much of the same type. It
was a leisurely and kindly place--"homelike," it was called--and when the
visitor had been taken through the State Asylum for the Insane and made to
appreciate the view of the cemetery from a little hill, his host's duty as
Baedeker was done. The good burghers were given to jogging comfortably about
in phaetons or in surreys for a family drive on Sunday. No one was very rich;
few were very poor; the air was clean, and there was time to live.
But there was a spirit abroad in the land, and it was strong here as
elsewhere--a spirit that had moved in the depths of the American soil and
labored there, sweating, till it stirred the surface, rove the mountains, and
emerged, tangible and monstrous, the god of all good American hearts--
Bigness. And that god wrought the panting giant.
In the souls of the burghers there had always been the profound longing for
size. Year by year the longing increased until it became an accumulated
force: We must Grow! We must be Big! We must be Bigger! Bigness means
Money! And the thing began to happen; their longing became a mighty Will. We
must be Bigger! Bigger! Bigger! Get people here! Coax them here! Bribe
them! Swindle them into coming, if you must, but get them! Shout them into
coming! Deafen them into coming! Any kind of people; all kinds of people!
We must be Bigger! Blow! Boost! Brag! Kill the fault-finder! Scream and
bellow to the Most High: Bigness is patriotism and honor! Bigness is love and
life and happiness! Bigness is Money! We want Bigness!
They got it. From all the states the people came; thinly at first, and
slowly, but faster and faster in thicker and thicker swarms as the quick years
went by. White people came, and black people and brown people and yellow
people; the negroes came from the South by the thousands and thousands,
multiplying by other thousands and thousands faster than they could die. From
the four quarters of the earth the people came, the broken and the unbroken,
the tame and the wild--Germans, Irish, Italians, Hungarians, Scotch, Welsh,
English, French, Swiss, Swedes, Norwegians, Greeks, Poles, Russian Jews,
Dalmatians, Armenians, Rumanians, Servians, Persians, Syrians, Japanese,
Chinese, Turks, and every hybrid that these could propagate. And if there
were no Eskimos nor Patagonians, what other human strain that earth might
furnish failed to swim and bubble in this crucible?
With Bigness came the new machinery and the rush; the streets began to roar
and rattle, the houses to tremble; the pavements were worn under the tread of
hurrying multitudes. The old, leisurely, quizzical look of the faces was lost
in something harder and warier; and a cockney type began to emerge
discernibly--a cynical young mongrel, barbaric of feature, muscular and
cunning; dressed in good fabrics fashioned apparently in imitation of the
sketches drawn by newspaper comedians. The female of his kind came with him
--a pale girl, shoddy and a little rouged; and they communicated in a nasal
argot, mainly insolences and elisions. Nay, the common speech of the people
showed change: in place of the old midland vernacular, irregular but clean,
and not unwholesomely drawling, a jerky dialect of coined metaphors began to
be heard, held together by GUNNAS and GOTTAS and much fostered by the public
journals.
The city piled itself high in the center, tower on tower for a nucleus, and
spread itself out over the plain, mile after mile; and in its vitals, like
benevolent bacilli contending with malevolent in the body of a man, missions
and refuges offered what resistance they might to the saloons and all the
hells that cities house and shelter. Temptation and ruin were ready
commodities on the market for purchase by the venturesome; highwaymen walked
the streets at night and sometimes killed; snatching thieves were busy
everywhere in the dusk; while house-breakers were a common apprehension and
frequent reality. Life itself was somewhat safer from intentional destruction
than it was in medieval Rome during a faction war--though the Roman murderer
was more like to pay for his deed--but death or mutilation beneath the wheels
lay in ambush at every crossing.
The politicians let the people make all the laws they liked; it did not matter
much, and the taxes went up, which is good for politicians. Law-making was a
pastime of the people; nothing pleased them more. Singular fermentation of
their humor, they even had laws forbidding dangerous speed. More marvelous
still, they had a law forbidding smoke! They forbade chimneys to smoke and
they forbade cigarettes to smoke. They made laws for all things and forgot
them immediately; though sometimes they would remember after a while, and
hurry to make new laws that the old laws should be enforced--and then forget
both new and old. Wherever enforcement threatened Money or Votes --or
wherever it was too much to bother--it became a joke. Influence was the law.
So the place grew. And it grew strong. Straightway when he came, each man
fell to the same worship:
Give me of thyself, O Bigness:
Power to get more power!
Riches to get more riches!
Give me of thy sweat that I may sweat more!
Give me Bigness to get more Bigness to myself,
O Bigness, for Thine is the Power and the Glory!
And there is no end but Bigness, ever and for ever!
The Sheridan Building was the biggest skyscraper; the Sheridan Trust Company
was the biggest of its kind, and Sheridan himself had been the biggest builder
and breaker and truster and buster under the smoke. He had come from a
country cross-roads, at the beginning of the growth, and he had gone up and
down in the booms and relapses of that period; but each time he went down he
rebounded a little higher, until finally, after a year of overwork and
anxiety--the latter not decreased by a chance, remote but possible, of
recuperation from the former in the penitentiary--he found himself on top,
with solid substance under his feet; and thereafter "played it safe." But his
hunger to get was unabated, for it was in the very bones of him and grew
fiercer.
He was the city incarnate. He loved it, calling it God's country, as he
called the smoke Prosperity, breathing the dingy cloud with relish. And when
soot fell upon his cuff he chuckled; he could have kissed it. "It's good! It's
good!" he said, and smacked his lips in gusto. "Good, clean soot; it's our
life-blood, God bless it!" The smoke was one of his great enthusiasms; he
laughed at a committee of plaintive housewives who called to beg his aid
against it. "Smoke's what brings your husbands' money home on Saturday night,
"he told them, jovially. "Smoke may hurt your little shrubberies in the front
yard some, but it's the catarrhal climate and the adenoids that starts your
chuldern coughing. Smoke makes the climate better. Smoke means good health:
it makes the people wash more. They have to wash so much they wash off the
microbes. You go home and ask your husbands what smoke puts in their pockets
out o' the pay-roll--and you'll come around next time to get me to turn out
more smoke instead o' chokin' it off!"
It was Narcissism in him to love the city so well; he saw his reflection in
it; and, like it, he was grimy, big, careless, rich, strong, and unquenchably
optimistic. From the deepest of his inside all the way out he believed it was
the finest city in the world. "Finest" was his word. He thought of it as his
city as he thought of his family as his family; and just as profoundly
believed his city to be the finest city in the world, so did he believe his
family to be--in spite of his son Bibbs--the finest family in the world. As a
matter of fact, he knew nothing worth knowing about either.
Bibbs Sheridan was a musing sort of boy, poor in health, and considered the
failure--the "odd one"--of the family. Born during that most dangerous and
anxious of the early years, when the mother fretted and the father took his
chance, he was an ill-nourished baby, and grew meagerly, only lengthwise,
through a feeble childhood. At his christening he was committed for life to
"Bibbs" mainly through lack of imagination on his mother's part, for though it
was her maiden name, she had no strong affection for it; but it was "her turn"
to name the baby, and, as she explained later, she "couldn't think of anything
else she liked AT ALL!" She offered this explanation one day when the sickly
boy was nine and after a long fit of brooding had demanded some reason for his
name's being Bibbs. He requested then with unwonted vehemence to be allowed
to exchange names with his older brother, Roscoe Conkling Sheridan, or with
the oldest, James Sheridan, Junior, and upon being refused went down into the
cellar and remained there the rest of that day. And the cook, descending
toward dusk, reported that he had vanished; but a search revealed that he was
in the coal-pile, completely covered and still burrowing. Removed by force and
carried upstairs, he maintained a cryptic demeanor, refusing to utter a
syllable of explanation, even under the lash. This obvious thing was wholly a
mystery to both parents; the mother was nonplussed, failed to trace and
connect; and the father regarded his son as a stubborn and mysterious fool, an
impression not effaced as the years went by.
At twenty-two, Bibbs was physically no more than the outer scaffolding of a
man, waiting for the building to begin inside--a long-shanked, long-faced,
rickety youth, sallow and hollow and haggard, dark-haired and dark-eyed, with
a peculiar expression of countenance; indeed, at first sight of Bibbs Sheridan
a stranger might well be solicitous, for he seemed upon the point of tears.
But to a slightly longer gaze, not grief, but mirth, was revealed as his
emotion; while a more searching scrutiny was proportionately more puzzling--he
seemed about to burst out crying or to burst out laughing, one or the other,
inevitably, but it was impossible to decide which. And Bibbs never, on any
occassion of his life, either laughed aloud or wept.
He was a "disappointment" to his father. At least that was the parent's word
--a confirmed and established word after his first attempt to make a "business
man" of the boy. He sent Bibbs to "begin at the bottom and learn from the
ground up" in the machine-shop of the Sheridan Automatic Pump Works, and at
the end of six months the family physician sent Bibbs to begin at the bottom
and learn from the ground up in a sanitarium.
"You needn't worry, mamma," Sheridan told his wife. "There's nothin' the
matter with Bibbs except he hates work so much it makes him sick. I put him
in the machine-shop, and I guess I know what I'm doin' about as well as the
next man. Ole Doc Gurney always was one o' them nutty alarmists. Does he
think I'd do anything 'd be bad for my own flesh and blood? He makes me
tired!"
Anything except perfectly definite health or perfectly definite disease was
incomprehensible to Sheridan. He had a genuine conviction that lack of
physical persistence in any task involving money must be due to some subtle
weakness of character itself, to some profound shiftlessness or slyness. He
understood typhoid fever, pheumonia, and appendicitis--one had them, and
either died or got over them and went back to work--but when the word
"nervous" appeared in a diagnosis he became honestly suspicious: he had the
feeling that there was something contemptible about it, that there was a
nigger in the wood-pile somewhere.
"Look at me," he said. "Look at what I did at his age! Why, when I was
twenty years old, wasn't I up every morning at four o'clock choppin' wood--
yes! and out in the dark and the snow--to build a fire in a country grocery
store? And here Bibbs has to go and have a DOCTOR because he can't--Pho! it
makes me tired! If he'd gone at it like a man he wouldn't be sick."
He paced the bedroom--the usual setting for such parental discussions--in his
nightgown, shaking his big, grizzled head and gesticulating to his bedded
spouse. "My Lord!" he said. "If a little, teeny bit o' work like this is too
much for him, why, he ain't fit for anything! It's nine-tenths imagination,
and the rest of it--well, I won't say it's deliberate, but I WOULD like to
know just how much of it's put on!"
"Bibbs didn't want the doctor," said Mrs. Sheridan. "It was when he was here
to dinner that night, and noticed how he couldn't eat anything. Honey, you
better come to bed."
"Eat!" he snorted. "Eat! It's work that makes men eat! And it's imagination
that keeps people from eatin'. Busy men don't get time for that kind of
imagination; and there's another thing you'll notice about good health, if
you'll take the trouble to look around you, Mrs. Sheridan: busy men haven't
got time to be sick and they don't GET sick. You just think it over and
you'll find that ninety-nine per cent. of the sick people you know are either
women or loafers. Yes, ma'am!"
"Honey," she said again, drowsily, "you better come to bed."
"Look at the other boys," her husband bade her. "Look at Jim and Roscoe. Look
at how THEY work! There isn't a shiftless bone in their bodies. Work never
made Jim or Roscoe sick. Jim takes half the load off my shoulders already.
Right now there isn't a harder-workin', brighter business man in this city
than Jim. I've pushed him, but he give me something to push AGAINST. You
can't push 'nervous dyspepsia'! And look at Roscoe; just LOOK at what that
boy's done for himself, and barely twenty-seven years old-- married, got a
fine wife, and ready to build for himself with his own money, when I put up
the New House for you and Edie."
"Papa, you'll catch cold in your bare feet," she murmured. "You better come
to bed."
"And I'm just as proud of Edie, for a girl," he continued, emphatically, "as I
am of Jim and Roscoe for boys. She'll make some man a mighty good wife when
the time comes. She's the prettiest and talentedest girl in the United
States! Look at that poem she wrote when she was in school and took the prize
with; it's the best poem I ever read in my life, and she'd never even tried to
write one before. It's the finest thing I ever read, and R. T. Bloss said so,
too; and I guess he's a good enough literary judge for me-- turns out more
advertisin' liter'cher than any man in the city. I tell you she's smart!
Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise the New House--and I guess
you had your finger in that, too, mamma! This old shack's good enough for me,
but you and little Edie 'll have to have your way. I'll get behind her and
push her the same as I will Jim and Roscoe. I tell you I'm mighty proud o'
them three chuldern! But Bibbs--" He paused, shaking his head. "Honest,
mamma, when I talk to men that got ALL their boys doin' well and worth their
salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs."
Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. "You did the best
you could, papa," she said, impatiently, "so come to bed and quit reproachin'
youself for it."
He glared at her indignantly. "Reproachin' myself!" he snorted. "I ain't
doin' anything of the kind! What in the name o' goodness would I want to
reproach myself for? And it wasn't the 'best I could,' either. It was the
best ANYBODY could! I was givin' him a chance to show what was in him and
make a man of himself--and here he goes and gets 'nervous dyspepsia' on me!"
He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and muttered
his way morosely into bed.
"What?" said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.
"More like hook-worm, I said," he explained, speaking louder. "I don't know
what to do with him!"
Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long course
for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and "zwieback" as the basis of
instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he was considered
near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a nurse and a cane. These
and subsequent months saw the planning, the building, and the completion of
the New House; and it was to that abode of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when
the cane, without the nurse, was found sufficient to his support.
Edith met him at the station. "Well, well, Bibbs!" she said, as he came
slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train. She
gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick glance at
him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. "Do you think they
ought to 've let you come? You certainly don't look well!"
"But I certainly do look better," he returned, in a voice as slow as his gait;
a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak quickly he
stammered. "Up to about a month ago it took two people to see me. They had
to get me in a line between 'em!"
Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first quick
glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint, troubled
distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some obligation of business
to visit a "bad" ward in a hospital. She was nineteen, fair and slim, with
small, unequal features, but a prettiness of color and a brilliancy of eyes
that created a total impression close upon beauty. Her movements were eager
and restless: there was something about her, as kind old ladies say, that was
very sweet; and there was something that was hurried and breathless. This was
new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he
bent upon her a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting
for an automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.
"That's the new car," she said. "Everything's new. We've got four now,
besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two."
"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.
"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in his tone
had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"
"You look--" He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her trim
brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown and
green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad mode--
all suited to the October day.
"How do I look?" she insisted.
"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted watch of
platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!" That was a
substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and preoccupation,
manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance away from him, did
not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive intimacies.
"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his glance.
"Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an evening thing, for
the theater--by my day wrist-watch is out of gear. Bobby Lamhorn broke it
yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you want Claus to help you in?"
"Oh no," said Bibbs. "I'm alive." And after a fit of panting subsequent to
his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course, I have to TELL
people!"
"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to move
rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station. "Mother
said she'd hardly expected you this month."
"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he explained,
gently. "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't keep me any longer,
because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They told me to go home
--and I didn't have any place else to go. It 'll be all right, Edith; I'll
sit in the woodshed until after dark every day."
"Pshaw!" She laughed nervously. "Of course we're all of us glad to have you
back."
"Yes?" he said. "Father?"
"Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?" She did not turn to
him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly forward.
"No," he said; "father hasn't written."
She flushed a little. "I expect I ought to 've written sometime, or one of
the boys--"
"Oh no; that was all right."
"You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often planned to
write--and then, just as I was going to, something would turn up. And I'm
sure it's been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of course we knew mamma
was writing often and--"
"Of course!" he said, readily. "There's a chunk of coal fallen on your glove,
Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I'd almost forgotten
how sooty it is here."
"We've been having very bright weather this month--for us." She blew the
flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a cold
tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for a decoration. "Yes,"
said Bibbs. "It's very gay." A few moments later, as they passed a corner,
"Aren't we going home?" he asked.
"Why, yes!" Did you want to go somewhere else first?"
"No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?"
"No. This is right. We're going straight home."
"But we've passed the corner. We always turned--"
"Good gracious!" she cried. "Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't you know we
were in the New House?"
"Why, no!" said Bibbs. "Are you?"
"We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know--" She broke off,
flushing again, and then went on hastily: "Of course, mamma's never been so
busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do anything but keep on the hop.
Mamma couldn't even come to the station to-day. Papa's got some of his
business friends and people from around the OLD-house neighborhood coming
to-night for a big dinner and 'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but
mamma's got it all on her hands. She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she
did, papa would have her up again before--"
"Of course," said Bibbs. "Do you like the new place, Edith?"
"I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's the finest
house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa bought one thing
I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that's perfectly beautiful; it's
the first thing you see as you come in the front hall, and it's eleven feet
long. But he would have that old fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street
house hung up in the new dining-room. You remember it--a table and a
watermelon sliced open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny
lemons, with two dead prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a
furniture-store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than
any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's
horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby
Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then
told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he
did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She makes me tired!
Sibyl!"
Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to awkwardness,
vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full gaze always to the
front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation of her sister-in-law.
"SIBYL!" she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed to strike
fire on her lips. "I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't have married somebody
from HERE that would have done us some good! He could have got in with Bobby
Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and Bobby 'd have introduced him to the
nicest girls in town, but instead of that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl
Rink! I met some awfully nice people from her town when mamma and I were at
Atlantic City, last spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even
HEARD of 'em!"
"I thought you were great friends with Sibyl," Bibbs said.
"Up to the time I found her out!" the sister returned, with continuing
vehemence. "I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan lately --"
"It's only lately?"
"Well--" Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. "Of course, I always did
see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about ROSCOE!"
"It seems," said Bibbs, in laconic protest, "that she married him."
The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous laughter,
and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: "Why, she'd have married YOU!"
"No, no," he said; "she couldn't be that bad!"
"I didn't mean--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--I didn't mean--"
"Never mind, Edith," he consoled her. "You see, she couldn't have married me,
because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as mercenary as all that
she'd have been too clever. The head doctor even had to lend me the money for
my ticket home."
"I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU," Edith babbled. "I only meant I
thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to marry somebody
she'd have married anybody that asked her."
"Yes, yes," said Bibbs, "it's all straight." And, perceiving that his
sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set matters
prefectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
"Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her," she continued, a moment later. "Too
lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a MAN,
I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave herself!"
"'Behave'?"
"Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere," said Edith, characteristically evasive
when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and in this not
unique of her sex.
Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. "Business is crawling
up the old streets," he said, his long, tremulous hand indicating a vasty
structure in course of erection. "The boarding-houses come first and then
the--"
"That isn't for shops," she informed him. "That's a new investment of papa's
--the 'Sheridan Apartments.'"
"Well, well," he murmured. "I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well enough
known here already."
"Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!" she said, impatiently. "I guess there
isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't know who we
are. But we aren't in with the right people."
"No!" he exclaimed. "Who's all that?"
"Who's all what?"
"The 'right' people.'"
"You know what I mean: the best people, the old families--the people that
have the real social position in this town and that know they've got it."
Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. "I
thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it didn't
know it," he said. "I've always understood that it was very unsatisfactory,
because if you thought about it you didn't have it, and if you had it you
didn't know it."
"That's just bosh," she retorted. "They know it in this town, all right! I
found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building out in
this direction. The right people in this town aren't always the
society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don't all
belong to any one club--they're taken in all sorts into all their clubs--but
they're a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling and they're just
as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about anywhere in the world.
Most of 'em were here long before papa came, and the grandfathers of the girls
of my age knew each other, and--"
"I see," Bibbs interrupted, gravely. "Their ancestors fled together from many
a stricken field, and Crusaders' blood flows in their veins. I always
understood the first house was built by an old party of the name of Vertrees
who couldn't get along with Dan'l Boone, and hurried away to these parts
because Dan'l wanted him to give back a gun he'd lent him."
Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. "You mustn't repeat that story,
Bibbs, even if it's true. The Vertreeses are THE best family, and of course
the very oldest here; they were an old family even before Mary Vertrees's
great-great-grandfather came west and founded this settlement. He came from
Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives there YET--some of the best
people in Lynn!"
"No!" exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.
"And there are other old families like the Vertreeses," she went on, not
heeding him; "the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston Smiths--"
"Strange names to me," he interrupted. "Poor things! None of them have my
acquaintance."
"No, that's just it!" she cried. "And papa had never even heard the name of
Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see him, and
he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his wages from the
pay-roll on Saturday night! HE told us about it, and I thought I just
couldn't live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr. Vertrees has always
lived on his income, and papa didn't know him, of course. They're the
stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And to crown it all, papa
went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees country mansion--it's in the
very heart of the best new residence district now, and that's where the New
House is, right next door to them--and I must say it makes their place look
rather shabby! I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers,
but she never did any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa's break
I doubt if she'll do that! They haven't called."
"And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing Dan'l
Boone's gun, the chances that they WILL call--"
"Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him understand
that," said Edith, demurely, "and he's promised to try and meet Mr. Vertrees
and be nice to him. It's just this way: if we don't know THEM, it's
practically no use in our having build the New House; and if we DO know them
and they're decent to us, we're right with the right people. They can do the
whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother
to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn't done
it; and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not to know us, I'm darn sure Mrs. Lamhorn
'll never come. That's ONE thing Sibyl didn't manage! She SAID Bobby offered
to bring his mother--"
"You say he is a friend of Roscoe's?" Bibbs asked.
"Oh, he's a friend of the whole family," she returned, with a petulance which
she made an effort to disguise. "Roscoe and he got acquainted somewhere, and
they take him to the theater about every other night. Sibyl has him to lunch,
too, and keeps--" She broke off with an angry little jerk of the head. "We
can see the New House from the second corner ahead. Roscoe has built straight
across the street from us, you know. Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a
snake, sometimes--the way she pulls the wool over people's eyes! She honeys
up to papa and gets anything in the world she wants out of him, and then makes
fun of him behind his back--yes, and to his face, but HE can't see it! She
got him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it
was--"
"Good heavens!" said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and the
car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. "Is that the New
House?"
"Yes. What do you think of it?"
"Well," he drawled, "I'm pretty sure the sanitarium's about half a size
bigger; I can't be certain till I measure."
And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously: "But
it's beautiful!"
It was gray stone, with long roofs of thick green slate. An architect who
loved the milder "Gothic motives" had built what he liked: it was to be seen
at once that he had been left unhampered, and he had wrought a picture out of
his head into a noble and exultant reality. At the same time a
landscape-designer had played so good a second, with ready-made accessories of
screen, approach and vista, that already whatever look of newness remained
upon the place was to its advantage, as showing at least one thing yet clean
under the grimy sky. For, though the smoke was thinner in this direction, and
at this long distance from the heart of the town, it was not absent, and
under tutelage of wind and weather could be malignant even here, where cows
had wandered in the meadows and corn had been growing not ten years gone.
Altogether, the New House was a success. It was one of those architects'
successes which leave the owners veiled in privacy; it revealed nothing of the
people who lived in it save that they were rich. There are houses that cannot
be detached from their own people without protesting: every inch of mortar
seems to mourn the separation, and such a house--no matter what be done to
it--is ever murmurous with regret, whispering the old name sadly to itself
unceasingly. But the New House was of a kind to change hands without emotion.
In our swelling cities, great places of its type are useful as financial
gauges of the business tides; rich families, one after another, take title and
occupy such houses as fortunes rise and fall--they mark the high tide. It was
impossible to imagine a child's toy wagon left upon a walk or driveway of the
New House, and yet it was--as Bibbs rightly called it-- "beautiful."
What the architect thought of the "Golfo di Napoli," which hung in its vast
gold revel of rococo frame against the gray wood of the hall, is to be
conjectured--perhaps he had not seen it.
"Edith, did you say only eleven feet?" Bibbs panted, staring at it, as the
white-jacketed twin of a Pullman porter helped him to get out of his overcoat.
"Eleven without the frame," she explained. "It's splendid, don't you think?
It lightens things up so. The hall was kind of gloomy before."
"No gloom now!" said Bibbs.
"This statue in the corner is pretty, too," she remarked. "Mamma and I bought
that." And Bibbs turned at her direction to behold, amid a grove of tubbed
palms, a "life-size," black-bearded Moor, of a plastic compositon painted with
unappeasable gloss and brilliancy. Upon his chocolate head he wore a gold
turban; in his hand he held a gold-tipped spear; and for the rest, he was red
and yellow and black and silver.
"Hallelujah!" was the sole comment of the returned wanderer, and Edith, saying
she would "find mamma," left him blinking at the Moor. Presently, after she
had disappeared, he turned to the colored man who stood waiting, Bibbs's
traveling-bag in his hand. "What do YOU think of it?" Bibbs asked, solemnly.
"Gran'!" replied the servitor. "She mightly hard to dus'. Dus' git in all
'em wrinkles. Yessuh, she mighty hard to dus'."
"I expect she must be," said Bibbs, his glance returning reflectively to the
black bull beard for a moment. "Is there a place anywhere I could lie down?"
"Yessuh. We got one nem spare rooms all fix up fo' you, suh. Right up
staihs, suh. Nice room."
He led the way, and Bibbs followed slowly, stopping at intervals to rest, and
noting a heavy increase in the staff of service since the exodus from the
"old" house. Maids and scrubwomen were at work under the patently nominal
direction of another Pullman porter, who was profoundly enjoying his own
affectation of being harassed with care.
"Ev'ything got look spick an' span fo' the big doin's to-night," Bibbs's
guide explained, chuckling. "Yessuh, we got big doin's to-night! Big
doin's!"
The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished in every
particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it pleasant-- though,
indeed, any room with a good bed would have seemed pleasant to him after his
journey. He stretched himself flat immediately, and having replied "Not now"
to the attendant's offer to unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made an exit
on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed overseer --in the
hall without. Said the emerging one: "He mighty shaky, Mist' Jackson. Drop
right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all black. Rich folks gotta go same as
anybody else. Anybody ast me if I change 'ith 'at ole boy --No, suh! Le'm
keep 'is money; I keep my black skin an' keep out the ground!"
Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. "Yessuh, he look tuh me like
somebody awready laid out," he concluded. And upon the stairway landing, near
by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were likewise pessimistic.
"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper. "It give me a turn to see him go
by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell me: d'it make ye
kind o' sick to look at um?"
"Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!"
"Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--" She
fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age like
drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her husband and her
daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence she had was given
almost wholly to comprehending and serving those two, and except in the
presence of one of them she was nearly always absent-minded. Edith lived all
day with her mother, as daughters do; and Sheridan so held his wife to her
unity with him that she had long ago become unconscious of her existence as a
thing separate from his. She invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him
through them when she did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy
with the inmost spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not
comprehend it and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known but one
actual altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the
early days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable
impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he had
thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of "The Black Crook."
But she had not once referred to this during the last ten years.
Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled more
than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time and to be
vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down over some unruly
internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's door.
At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and the
rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
"Don't go, mother," he said. "I'm not asleep." He swung his long legs over
the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder, restraining
him; and he lay flat again.
"No," she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, "I just come for a minute, but
I want to see how you seem. Edith said--"
"Poor Edith!" he murmured. "She couldn't look at me. She--"
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came back to
the bedside. "You look a great deal better than what you did before you went
to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body can see that right
away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't got much color--"
"No," he said, "I haven't much color."
"But you will have when you get your strength back."
"Oh yes!" he responded, cheerfully. "THEN I will."
"You look a great deal better than what I expected."
"Edith must have a great vocabulary!" he chuckled.
"She's too sensitive," said Mrs. Sheridan, "and it makes her exaggerate a
little. What about your diet?"
"That's all right. They told me to eat anything."
"Anything at all?"
"Well--anything I could."
"That's good," she said, nodding. "They mean for you just to build up your
strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you at the
sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's only a little
time ago. How long was it?"
"Eight months, I think."
"No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was longer 'n I
thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely even time to write
more than just a line to ask how you were gettin' along, but I told Edith to
write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked Jim to, too, and they both said they
would, so I suppose you've kept up pretty well on the home news."
"Oh yes."
"What I think you need," said the mother, gravely, "is to liven up a little
and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this morning,
after we got your telegram; and that's what 'll stimilate your appetite, too.
He was talkin' over his plans for you--"
"Plans?" Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light with
his hand, so that he might see her better. "What--" He paused. "What plans
is he making for me, mother?"
She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade. "Well, you
better talk it over with HIM," she said, with perceptible nervousness. "He
better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any call, exactly, to go
into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway." She came and stood by the
bedside once more. "But you must remember, Bibbs, whatever papa does is for
the best. He loves his chuldern and wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em
--and you'll always find he's right in the end."
He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and she
rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it. "You get
a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night."
"You--you mean--he--" Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too quickly.
Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly, "Does father
expect me to come down-stairs this evening?"
"Well, I think he does," she answered. "You see, it's the 'house-warming,' as
he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought to be around us, as
well as the old friends and other folks. It's just what he thinks you
need--to take an interest and liven up. You don't feel too bad to come down,
do you?"
"Mother?"
"Well?"
"Take a good look at me," he said.
"Oh, see here!" she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. "You're not so bad off
as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you any harm
to please your--"
"It isn't that," he interrupted. "Honestly, I'm only afraid it might spoil
somebody's appetite. Edith--"
"I told you the child was too sensitive," she interrupted, in turn. "You're a
plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look like you been
through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all there is to it."
"All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I can!"
"It 'll do you good," she returned, rustling into the hall. "Now take a nap,
and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get dressed up
before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!"
Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something she had
said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over interminably.
"His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--"
And then, taking the place of "his plans for you," after what seemed a long,
long while, her flurried voice came back to him insistently, seeming to
whisper in his ear: "He loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves
his chuldern"--"you'll find he's always right--you'll find he's always
right--" Until at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and
distorted realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing
that came out of the wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing
within the room, and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky,
bridging the whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black smoke,
and out of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over,
"His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--" And then there
was nothing.
He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care
against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting to
his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that it flew
up, letting in a pale sunset.
He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the next house,
as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, "the old Vertrees country mansion."
It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the Sheridans' by a young
hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box of a house with a giant
salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been spared for a long time, and no
one could have put a name to the color of it, but in spite of that the place
had no look of being out at heel, and the sward was as neatly trimmed as the
Sheridans' own.
The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of the
New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly opposite
the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make a little knoll
upon which stood a small rustic "summer-house." It was almost on a level with
Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and it was easy for him to imagine
the present dynasty of Vertreeses in grievous outcry when they had found this
retreat ruined by the juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the
"summer-house" was pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the lookof a place
wherein little girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and
"housekeeping," or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull
on warm afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of
dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.
Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kinship with
anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-glass beside the window and
paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He looked the
mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long and
earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic seance his manner was
profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent upon
classifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become pessimistic. He
shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his head again, and
continued to shake it slowly, in complete disapproval.
"You certainly are one horrible sight!" he said, aloud.
And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly, he was
vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic aperture of the
"summer-house" and staring full into his window--straight into his eyes, too,
for the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the flashingly censorious
withdrawal of her own. Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine,
the manner of her action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect
that she was in the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and
tending, and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to
any other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she had
allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of things of
which she was in reality unconscious.
Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the same
time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan or belonging
to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained composure, and
sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of the Vertreeses. An
elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door and came to meet her.
"Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?"
"Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows," said Mary Vertrees.
"I got caught at it."
"Mary!" cried her mother. "Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!"
"We'll go, just the same," the daughter returned. "I suppose those women
would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground."
"But WHO saw you?" insisted Mrs. Vertrees.
"One of the sons, I suppose he was. I believe he's insane, or something. At
least I hear they keep him in a sanitarium somewhere, and never talk about
him. He was staring at himself in a mirror and talking to himself. Then he
looked out and caught me."
"What did he--"
"Nothing, of course."
"How did he look?"
"Like a ghost in a blue suit," said Miss Vertrees, moving toward the street
and waving a white-gloved hand in farewell to her father, who was observing
them from the window of his library. "Rather tragic and altogether
impossible. Do come on, mother, and let's get it over!"
And Mrs. Vertrees, with many misgivings, set forth with her daughter for their
gracious assault upon the New House next door.
Mr. Vertrees, having watched their departure with the air of a man who had
something at hazard upon the expedition, turned from the window and began to
pace the library thoughtfully, pending their return. He was about sixty; a
small man, withered and dry and fine, a trim little sketch of an elderly
dandy. His lambrequin mustache--relic of a forgotten Anglomania--had been
profoundly black, but now, like his smooth hair, it was approaching an equally
sheer whiteness; and though his clothes were old, they had shapeliness and a
flavor of mode. And for greater spruceness there were some jaunty touches;
gray spats, a narrow black ribbon across the gray waistcoat to the eye-glasses
in a pocket, a fleck of color from a button in the lapel of the black coat,
labeling him the descendant of patriot warriors.
The room was not like him, being cheerful and hideous, whereas Mr. Vertrees
was anxious and decorative. Under a mantel of imitation black marble a merry
little coal-fire beamed forth upon high and narrow "Eastlake" bookcases with
long glass doors, and upon comfortable, incongruous furniture, and upon
meaningless "woodwork" everywhere, and upon half a dozen Landseer engravings
which Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sometimes mentioned to each other, after thirty
years of possession, as "very fine things." They had been the first people in
town to possess Landseer engravings, and there, in art, they had rested, but
they still had a feeling that in all such matters they were in the van; and
when Mr. Vertrees discovered Landseers upon the walls of other people's houses
he thawed, as a chieftain to a trusted follower; and if he found an edition of
Bulwer Lytton accompanying the Landseers as a final corroboration of culture,
he would say, inevitably, "Those people know good pictures and they know good
books."
The growth of the city, which might easily have made him a millionaire, had
ruined him because he had failed to understand it. When towns begin to grow
they have whims, and the whims of a town always ruin somebody. Mr. Vertrees
had been most strikingly the somebody in this case. At about the time he
bought the Landseers, he owned, through inheritance, an office-building and a
large house not far from it, where he spent the winter; and he had a country
place--a farm of four hundred acres--where he went for the summers to the
comfortable, ugly old house that was his home now, perforce, all the year
round. If he had known how to sit still and let things happen he would have
prospered miraculously; but, strangely enough, the dainty little man was one
of the first to fall down and worship Bigness, the which proceeded straightway
to enact the role of Juggernaut for his better education. He was a true
prophet of the prodigious growth, but he had a fatal gift for selling good and
buying bad. He should have stayed at home and looked at his Landseers and
read his Bulwer, but he took his cow to market, and the trained milkers milked
her dry and then ate her. He sold the office-building and the house in town
to buy a great tract of lots in a new suburb; then he sold the farm, except
the house and the ground about it, to pay the taxes on the suburban lots and
to "keep them up." The lots refused to stay up; but he had to do something to
keep himself and his family up, so in despair he sold the lots (which went up
beautifully the next year) for "traction stock" that was paying dividends; and
thereafter he ceased to buy and sell. Thus he disappeared altogether from the
commercial surface at about the time James Sheridan came out securely on top;
and Sheridan, until Mrs. Vertrees called upon him with her "anti-smoke"
committee, had never heard the name.
Mr. Vertrees, pinched, retired to his Landseers, and Mrs. Vertrees "managed
somehow" on the dividends, though "managing" became more and more difficult as
the years went by and money bought less and less. But there came a day when
three servitors of Bigness in Philadelphia took greedy counsel with four
fellow-worshipers from New York, and not long after that there were no more
dividends for Mr. Vertrees. In fact, there was nothing for Mr. Vertrees,
because the "traction stock" henceforth was no stock at all, and he had
mortgaged his house long ago to help "manage somehow" according to his
conception of his "position in life"--one of his own old-fashioned phrases.
Six months before the completion of the New House next door, Mr. Vertrees had
sold his horses and the worn Victoria and "station-wagon," to pay the arrears
of his two servants and re-establish credit at the grocer's and butcher's--
and a pair of elderly carriage-horses with such accoutrements are not very
ample barter, in these days, for six months' food and fuel and service. Mr.
Vertrees had discovered, too, that there was no salary for him in all the
buzzing city--he could do nothing.
It may be said that he was at the end of his string. Such times do come in
all their bitterness, finally, to the man with no trade or craft, if his
feeble clutch on that slippery ghost, Property, shall fail.
The windows grew black while he paced the room, and smoky twilight closed
round about the house, yet not more darkly than what closed round about the
heart of the anxious little man patrolling the fan-shaped zone of firelight.
But as the mantel clock struck wheezily six there was the rattle of an outer
door, and a rich and beautiful peal of laughter went ringing through the
house. Thus cheerfully did Mary Vertrees herald her return with her mother
from their expedition among the barbarians.
She came rushing into the library and threw herself into a deep chair by the
hearth, laughing so uncontrollably that tears were in her eyes. Mrs. Vertrees
followed decorously, no mirth about her; on the contrary, she looked vaguely
disturbed, as if she had eaten something not quite certain to agree with her,
and regretted it.
"Papa! Oh, oh!" And Miss Vertrees was fain to apply a handkerchief upon her
eyes. "I'm SO glad you made us go! I wouldn't have missed it--"
Mrs. Vertrees shook her head. "I suppose I'm very dull," she said, gently. "I
didn't see anything amusing. They're most ordinary, and the house is
altogether in bad taste, but we anticipated that, and--"
"Papa!" Mary cried, breaking in. "They asked us to DINNER!"
"What!"
"And I'm GOING!" she shouted, and was seized with fresh paroxysms. "Think of
it! Never in their house before; never met any of them but the daughter-- and
just BARELY met her--"
"What about you?" interrrupted Mr. Vertrees, turning sharply upon his wife.
She made a little face as if positive now that what she had eaten would not
agree with her. "I couldn't!" she said. "I--"
"Yes, that's just--just the way she--she looked when they asked her!" cried
Mary, choking. "And then she--she realized it, and tried to turn it into a
cough, and she didn't know how, and it sounded like--like a squeal!"
"I suppose," said Mrs. Vertrees, much injured, "that Mary will have an
uproarious time at my funeral. She makes fun of--"
Mary jumped up instantly and kissed her; then she went to the mantel and,
leaning an elbow upon it, gazed thoughtfully at the buckle of her shoe,
twinkling in the firelight.
"THEY didn't notice anything," she said. "So far as they were concerned,
mamma, it was one of the finest coughs you ever coughed."
"Who were 'they'?" asked her father. "Whom did you see?"
"Only the mother and daughter," Mary answered. "Mrs. Sheridan is dumpy and
rustly; and Miss Sheridan is pretty and pushing--dresses by the fashion
magazines and talks about New York people that have their pictures in 'em. She
tutors the mother, but not very successfully--partly because her own
foundation is too flimsy and partly because she began too late. They've got
an enormous Moor of painted plaster or something in the hall, and the girl
evidently thought it was to her credit that she selected it!"
"They have oil-paintings, too," added Mrs. Vertrees, with a glance of gentle
price at the Landseers. "I've always thought oil-paintings in a private house
the worst of taste."
"Oh, if one owned a Raphael or a Titian!" said Mr. Vertrees, finishing the
implication, not in words, but with a wave of his hand. "Go on, Mary. None
of the rest of them came in? You didn't meet Mr. Sheridan or--" He paused
and adjusted a lump of coal in the fire delicately with the poker. "Or one of
the sons?"
Mary's glance crossed his, at that, with a flash of utter comprehension. He
turned instantly away, but she had begun to laugh again.
"No," she said, "no one except the women, but mamma inquired about the sons
thoroughly!"
"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees protested.
"Oh, most adroitly, too!" laughed the girl. "Only she couldn't help
unconsciously turning to look at me--when she did it!"
"Mary Vertrees!"
"Never mind, mamma! Mrs. Sheridan and Miss Sheridan neither of THEM could
help unconsiously turning to look at me--speculatively--at the same time! They
all three kept looking at me and talking about the oldest son, Mr. James
Sheridan, Junior. Mrs. Sheridan said his father is very anxious 'to get Jim
to marry and settle down,' and she assured me that 'Jim is right cultivated.'
Another of the sons, the youngest one, caught me looking in the window this
afternoon; but they didn't seem to consider him quite one of themselves,
somehow, though Mrs. Sheridan mentioned that a couple of years or so ago he
had been 'right sick,' and had been to some cure or other. They seemed
relieved to bring the subject back to 'Jim' and his virtues--and to look at
me! The other brother is the middle one, Roscoe; he's the one that owns the
new house across the street, where that young black-sheep of the Lamhorns,
Robert, goes so often. I saw a short, dark young man standing on the porch
with Robert Lamhorn there the other day, so I suppose that was Roscoe. 'Jim'
still lurks in the mists, but I shall meet him to-night. Papa--" She stepped
nearer to him so that he had to face her, and his eyes were troubled as he
did. There may have been a trouble deep within her own, but she kept their
surface merry with laughter. "Papa, Bibbs is the youngest one's name, and
Bibbs--to the best of our information--is a lunatic. Roscoe is married.
Papa, does it have to be Jim?"
"Mary!" Mrs. Vertrees cried, sharply. "You're outrageous! That's a perfectly
horrible way of talking!"
"Well, I'm close to twenty-four," said Mary, turning to her. "I haven't been
able to like anybody yet that's asked me to marry him, and maybe I never
shall. Until a year or so ago I've had everything I ever wanted in my life
--you and papa gave it all to me--and it's about time I began to pay back.
Unfortunately, I don't kow how to do anything--but something's got to be
done."
"But you needn't talk of it like THAT!" insisted the mother, plaintively.
"It's not--it's not--"
"No, it's not," said Mary. "I know that!"
"How did they happen to ask you to dinner?" Mr. Vertrees inquired, uneasily.
"'Stextrawdn'ry thing!"
"Climbers' hospitality," Mary defined it. "We were so very cordial and easy!
I think Mrs. Sheridan herself might have done it just as any kind old woman on
a farm might ask a neighbor, but it was Miss Sheridan who did it. She played
around it awhile; you could see she wanted to--she's in a dreadful hurry to
get into things--and I fancied she had an idea it might impress that Lamhorn
boy to find us there to-night. It's a sort of house-warming dinner, and they
talked about it and talked about it--and then the girl got her courage up and
blurted out the invitation. And mamma--" Here Mary was once more a victim to
incorrigible merriment. "Mamma tried to say yes, and COULDN'T! She swallowed
and squealed--I mean you coughed, dear! And then, papa, she said that you and
she had promised to go to a lecture at the Emerson Club to-night, but that her
daughter would be delighted to come to the Big Show! So there I am, and
there's Mr. Jim Sheridan--and there's the clock. Dinner's at seven-thirty!"
And she ran out of the room, scooping up her fallen furs with a gesture of
flying grace as she sped.
When she came down, at twenty munutes after seven, her father stood in the
hall, at the foot of the stairs, waiting to be her escort through the dark. He
looked up and watched her as she descended, and his gaze was fond and
proud--and profoundly disturbed. But she smiled and nodded gaily, and, when
she reached the floor, put a hand on his shoulder.
"At least no one could suspect me to-night," she said. "I LOOK rich, don't I,
papa?"
She did. She had a look that worshipful girl friends bravely called "regal."
A head taller than her father, she was as straight and jauntily poised as a
boy athlete; and her brown hair and her brown eyes were like her mother's, but
for the rest she went back to some stronger and livelier ancestor than either
of her parents.
"Don't I look too rich to be suspected?" she insisted.
"You look everything beautiful, Mary," he said, huskily.
"And my dress?" She threw open her dark velvet cloak, showing a splendor of
white and silver. "Anything better at Nice next winter, do you think?" She
laughed, shrouding her glittering figure in the cloak again. "Two years old,
and no one would dream it! I did it over."
"You can do anything, Mary."
There was a curious humility in his tone, and something more--a significance
not veiled and yet abysmally apologetic. It was as if he suggested something
to her and begged her forgiveness in the same breath.
And upon that, for the moment, she became as serious as he. She lifted her
hand from his shoulder and then set it back more firmly, so that he should
feel the reassurance of its pressure.
"Don't worry," she said, in a low voice and gravely. "I know exactly what you
want me to do."
It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there was
an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room, and after a
preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to converse--necessarily at the
tops of their voices. The whole company of fifty sat at a great oblong table,
improvised for the occasion by carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an
improvisation, it seemed a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores
of crystal and silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and
white roses--an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three
marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the center and one at each end, white
miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing. They were
models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan Building, the Sheridan
Apartments, and the Pump Works. Nearly all the guests recognized them without
having to be told what they were, and pronounced the likenesses superb.
The arrangement of the table was visably baronial. At the head sat the great
Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him; then on each
side came the neighbors of the "old" house, grading down to vassals and
retainers--superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments, and the like-- at
the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a consolation for the less
important. Here, too, among the thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a
meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could look at him and eat.
Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were wholesome
folk who understood that dinner meant something intended for introduction into
the system by means of an aperture in the face, devised by nature for that
express purpose. And besides, nobody looked at Bibbs.
He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong enough
to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting effort, and the
talk that went on about him was too fast and too fragmentary for his drawl to
keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when each of his neighbors in turn,
after a polite inquiry about his health, turned to seek livelier reponses in
other directions. For the talk went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose
over the throbbing of the orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and
china and glass, and there was a mighty babble.
"Yes, sir! Started without a dollar." . . . "Yellow flounces on the
overskirt--" . . . "I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger this
year,' I says." . . . "Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one weeks." . . .
"One of the bigest men in the bigest--" ... "The wife says she'll have to let
out my pants if my appetite--" . . . "Say, did you see that statue of a Turk
in the hall? One of the finest things I ever--" . . . "Not a dollar, not a
nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I says, and so he ups and--" .
. . "Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost now.". . . "Well, they got their
raise, and they went in big." . . . "Yes, sir! Not a dollar to his name, and
look at what--" . . . "You wait! The population of this town's goin' to hit
the million mark before she stops." . . . "Well, if you can show me a bigger
deal than--"
And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the continual
booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the sentence, "Yes,
young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's just what'll do it for
my boys--they got to make two blades o' grass grow where one grew before!" It
was his familiar flourish, an old story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed
for the edification of Mary Vertrees.
It was a great night for Sheridan--the very crest of his wave. He sat there
knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big, smooth, red
face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the simplest,
happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health, of good cheer,
and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none bought, and showed most
of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was thick, and as unruly as a farm
laborer's; his chest was deep and big beneath its vast facade of starched
white linen, where little diamonds twinkled, circling three large pearls; his
hands were stubby and strong, and he used them freely in gestures of marked
picturesqueness; and, though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he
had not lost the look of readiness and activity.
He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at every
one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they were noisy;
and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure, and, of course,
met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had discovered that he
had very foggy notions of the difference between a band and an orchestra, and
when it was made clear to him he had held out for a band until Edith
threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra they hired consoled him, and
he had now no regrets in the matter.
He kept time to the music continually--with his feet, or pounding on the table
with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate or a glass,
without permitting these side-products to interfere with the real business of
eating and shouting.
"Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!" he would bellow down the length of the table
to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the "Toreador" song,
perhaps. "Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy Lee'!" And when the
leader would shake his head apologetically in answer to an obedient shriek
from Mrs. Sheridan, the "Toreador" continuing vehemently, Sheridan would roar
half-remembered fragments of "Nancy Lee," naturally mingling some Bizet with
the air of that uxorious tribute.
"Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! "A sail-er's wife a
sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! "Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy Lee! Oh,
Na-hancy Lee!"
"HAY, there, old lady!" he would bellow. "Tell 'em to play 'In the Gloaming.'
In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee--Well, if they don't know that,
what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'? THAT'S good music! That's the
kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs. Callin, get 'em singin' down in
your part o' the table. What's the matter you folks down there, anyway?
Larboard watch, ahoy!"
"What joy he feels, as--ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board watch,
ahoy!"
No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans' table
had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than conviction,
it bore none now; though "mineral waters" were copiously poured from bottles
wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved wholly satisfactory to almost
all of the guests. And certainly no wine could have inspired more turbulent
good spirits in the host. Not even Bibbs was an alloy in this night's
happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had said, he had "plans for Bibbs"--plans
which were going to straighten out some things that had gone wrong.
So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then,
forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps, turning to
Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the table at his right,
he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less naive than he had paid her
that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired the autobiographical impulse in
every man who met her--it needed but the sight of her.
The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the jocund host
as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the rubicund king and
the starry princess of this spectacle--they paid court to each other, and
everybody paid court to them. Down near the sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs
sat, there was audible speculation and admiration. "Wonder who that lady
is--makin' such a hit with the old man." "Must be some heiress." "Heiress?
Golly, I guess I could stand it to marry rich, then!"
Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees with an
almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect Sheridan's pastoral
gaieties--and other things--would have upon her, but she seemed delighted with
everything, and with him most of all. She treated him as if he were some
delicious, foolish old joke that she understood perfectly, laughing at him
almost violently when he bragged--probably his first experience of that kind
in his life. It enchanted him.
As he proclaimed to the table, she had "a way with her." She had, indeed, as
Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the feast began. Since
his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed upon him so protracted a
full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the look, his lovely neighbor said--and
it was her first speech to him--
"I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!"
Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and "Why?" was all he managed to say.
She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a mystification
equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one, reflected Edith,
could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would "really flirt" with
married men--she was obviously the "opposite of all that." Edith defined her
as a "thoroughbred," a "nice girl"; and the look given to Roscoe was
astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and she was another whom it puzzled
--though not because its recipient was married.
"Because!" said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. "And also
because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times ahead for both
of us if we don't get along."
Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been brought
up to believe that when a man married he "married and settled down." It was
"all right," he felt, for a man as old as his father to pay florid compliments
to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but for himself--"a young married
man"--it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't even be quite moral. He knew that young
married people might have friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl
and Lamhorn never "flirted"--they were always very matter-of-fact with each
other. Roscoe would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she
hoped he was susceptible.
"Yes--we're neighbors," he said, awkwardly.
"Next-door neighbors in houses, too," she added.
"No, not exactly. I live across the street."
"Why, no!" she exclaimed, and seemed startled. "Your mother told me this
afternoon that you lived at home."
"Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the street."
"But you--" she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into her
cheek. "But I understood--"
"No," he said; "my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year, but
that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course."
"I--I see," she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from him
and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the name, "Mr.
James Sheridan, Jr." And from that moment Roscoe had little enough cause for
wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing coquetries.
Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor to "get
through with old Roscoe," as he thought of it, and give a bachelor a chance.
"Old Roscoe" was the younger, but he had always been the steady wheel-horse of
the family. Jim was "steady" enough, but was considered livelier than Roscoe,
which in truth is not saying much for Jim's liveliness. As their father
habitually boasted, both brothers were "capable, hard-working young business
men," and the principal difference between them was merely that which resulted
from Jim's being still a bachelor. Physically they were of the same type:
dark of eyes and of hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was
several inches taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth
of the father. Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could
have sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing "rich
suitings in dark mixtures."
Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of
color, which increased his approbation. "What's that old Roscoe saying to
you, Miss Vertrees?" he asked. "These young married men are mighty forward
nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush."
"Am I blushing?" she said. "Are you sure?" And with that she gave him ample
opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted upon Roscoe.
"I think you must be mistaken," she continued. "I think it's your brother who
is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion."
"How?"
She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as confidential
as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. "By trying to begin with him
a courtship I meant for YOU!"
This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a
nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized that he
wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was instantly snared by
that realization.
"By George!" he said. "I guess you're the kind of girl that can say anything
--yes, and get away with it, too!"
She laughed again--in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was
laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and she
said: "But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not. I wish
you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a change to get away with YOU?"
"More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!" Jim was inspired to
reply. "Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making fun of me
like that."
"I mightn't be so much in fun as you think," she said, regarding him with
sudden gravity.
"Well," said Jim, in simple honesty, "you're a funny girl!"
Her gravity continued an instant longer. "I may not turn out to be funny for
YOU."
"So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can manage
to be satisfied." And with that, to his own surprise, it was his turn to
blush, whereupon she laughed again.
"Yes," he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, "I can see you're
the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really means
anything!"
"'Laugh'!" she cried, gaily. "Why, it might be a matter of life and death!
But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once, considering the
mistake I made with your brother."
Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and nonsense
with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it; he was but too
sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a consciousness that he could
never quite know this giddy and alluring lady, no matter how long it pleased
her to play with him. But he mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.
"Put what question?" he said, breathlessly.
"As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family," she returned, speaking
slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, "I think it would be well for me
to know at once whether you are already walking out with any young lady or
not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?"
"Not yet," he gasped. "Are you?"
"NO!" she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime
proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.
Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a lively
conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss Vertrees was
"starting rather picturesquely with Jim." And he added, languidly, "Do you
suppose she WOULD?"
For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed interested
in the clasp of a long "rope" of pearls, a loop of which she was allowing to
swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table and following with
her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the clasp at the end of the
loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty, but hers was not the kind of
prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous accessories, and jeweled
head-dresses are dangerous--they may emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.
"I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim," repeated
Mr. Lamhorn.
"I heard you." There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her eyes, no
matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just now she did not
care to cover it; she looked sullen. "Starting any stronger than you did with
Edith?" she inquired.
"Oh, keep the peace!" he said, crossly. "That's off, of course."
"You haven't been making her see it this evening--precisely," said Sibyl,
looking at him steadily. "You've talked to her for--"
"For Heaven's sake," he begged, "keep the peace!"
"Well, what have you just been doing?!"
"SH!" he said. "Listen to your father-in-law."
Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having begun
to play "The Rosary," to his vast content.
"I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM," he roared, beating the measures with
his fork. "EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM--What's the matter
with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a thousand
dollars YOU sing! Why'n't--"
"Mr. Sheridan," she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, "you don't
know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways, and my
soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say something
important."
"I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!" the father threatened,
more delighted with her than ever. "By gosh! if I was his age--or a widower
right NOW--"
"Oh, wait!" cried Mary. "If they'd only make less noice! I want Mrs.
Sheridan to hear."
"She'd say the same," he shouted. "She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I
couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age--"
"You must listen to your father," Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who had
grown read again. "He's going to tell us how, when he was your age, he made
those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup--and you could see for yourself
he didn't get them out of his sleeve!"
At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. "Look here, young lady!"
he roared. "Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you--or I'm goin' to
kiss you!"
Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed "too awful," but Mary
Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.
"Both!" she cried. "Both! The one to make me forget the other!"
"But which--" he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian
trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen. "Jim,"
he roared, "if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send you back to
the machine-shop with Bibbs!"
And Bibbs--down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and watching Mary
Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich little girl in a
garden--Bibbs heard. He heard--and he knew what his father's plans were now.
Mrs. Vertrees "sat up" for her daughter, Mr. Vertrees having retired after a
restless evening, not much soothed by the society of his Landseers. Mary had
taken a key, insisting that he should not come for her and seeming confident
that she would not lack for escort; nor did the sequel prove her confidence
unwarranted. But Mrs. Vertrees had a long vigil of it.
She was not the woman to make herself easy--no servant had ever seen her in a
wrapper--and with her hair and dress and her shoes just what they had been
when she returned from the afternoon's call, she sat through the slow night
hours in a stiff little chair under the gaslight in her own room, which was
directly over the "front hall." There, book in hand, she employed the time in
her own reminiscences, though it was her belief that she was reading Madame de
Remusat's.
Her thoughts went backward into her life and into her husband's; and the
deeper into the past they went, the brighter the pictures they brought her--
and there is tragedy. Like her husband, she thought backward because she did
not dare think forward definitely. What thinking forward this troubled couple
ventured took the form of a slender hope which neither of them could have
borne to hear put in words, and yet they had talked it over, day after day,
from the very hour when they heard Sheridan was to build his New House next
door. For--so quickly does any ideal of human behavior become an antique
--their youth was of the innocent old days, so dead! of "breeding" and
"gentility," and no craft had been more straitly trained upon them than that
of talking about things without mentioning them. Herein was marked the most
vital difference between Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees and their big new neighbor.
Sheridan, though his youth was of the same epoch, knew nothing of such
matters. He had been chopping wood for the morning fire in the country
grocery while they were still dancing.
It was after one o'clock when Mrs. Vertrees heard steps and the delicate
clinking of the key in the lock, and then, with the opening of the door,
Mary's laugh, and "Yes--if you aren't afraid--to-morrow!"
The door closed, and she rushed up-stairs, bringing with her a breath of cold
and bracing air into her mother's room. "Yes," she said, before Mrs. Vertrees
could speak, "he brought me home!"
She let her cloak fall upon the bed, and, drawing an old red-velvet
rocking-chair forward, sat beside her mother after giving her a light pat
upon the shoulder and a hearty kiss upon the cheek.
"Mamma!" Mary exclaimed, when Mrs. Vertrees had expressed a hope that she had
enjoyed the evening and had not caught cold. "Why don't you ask me?"
This inquiry obviously made her mother uncomfortable. "I don't--" she
faltered. "Ask you what, Mary?"
"How I got along and what he's like."
"Mary!"
"Oh, it isn't distressing!" said Mary. "And I got along so fast--" She broke
off to laugh; continuing then, "But that's the way I went at it, of course.
We ARE in a hurry, aren't we?"
"I don't know what you mean," Mrs. Vertrees insisted, shaking her head
plaintively.
"Yes," said Mary, "I'm going out in his car with him to-morrow afternoon, and
to the theater the next night--but I stopped it there. You see, after you
give the first push, you must leave it to them while YOU pretend to run away!"
"My dear, I don't know what to--"
"What to make of anything!" Mary finished for her. "So that's all right! Now
I'll tell you all about it. It was gorgeous and deafening and tee-total. We
could have lived a year on it. I'm not good at figures, but I calculated that
if we lived six months on poor old Charlie and Ned and the station-wagon and
the Victoria, we could manage at least twice as long on the cost of the
'house-warming.' I think the orchids alone would have lasted us a couple of
months. There they were, before me, but I couldn't steal 'em and sell 'em,
and so--well, so I did what I could!"
She leaned back and laughed reassuringly to her troubled mother. "It seemed
to be a success--what I could," she said, clasping her hands behind her neck
and stirring the rocker to motion as a rhythmic accompaniment to her
narrative. "The girl Edith and her sister-in-law, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan, were
too anxious about the effect of things on me. The father's worth a bushel of
both of them, if they knew it. He's what he is. I like him." She paused
reflectively, continuing, "Edith's 'interested' in that Lamhorn boy; he's
good-looking and not stupid, but I think he's--" She interrupted herself with
a cheery outcry: "Oh! I mustn't be calling him names! If he's trying to make
Edith like him, I ought to respect him as a colleague."
"I don't understand a thing you're talking about," Mrs. Vertrees complained.
"All the better! Well, he's a bad lot, that Lamhorn boy; everybody's always
known that, but the Sheridans don't know the everybodies that know. He sat
between Edith and Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan. SHE'S like those people you wondered
about at the theater, the last time we went--dressed in ball-gowns; bound to
show their clothes and jewels SOMEwhere! She flatters the father, and so did
I, for that matter--but not that way. I treated him outrageously!"
"Mary!"
"That's what flattered him. After dinner he made the whole regiment of us
follow him all over the house, while he lectured like a guide on the Palatine.
He gave dimensions and costs, and the whole b'ilin' of 'em listened as if they
thought he intended to make them a present of the house. What he was proudest
of was the plumbing and that Bay of Naples panorama in the hall. He made us
look at all the plumbing--bath-rooms and everywhere else--and then he made us
look at the Bay of Naples. He said it was a hundred and eleven feet long, but
I think it's more. And he led us all into the ready-made library to see a
poem Edith had taken a prize with at school. They'd had it printed in gold
letters and framed in mother-of-pearl. But the poem itself was rather simple
and wistful and nice--he read it to us, though Edith tried to stop him. She
was modest about it, and said she'd never written anything else. And then,
after a while, Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan asked me to come across the street to her
house with them--her husband and Edith and Mr. Lamhorn and Jim Sheridan--"
Mrs. Vertrees was shocked. "'Jim'!" she exclaimed. "Mary, PLEASE--"
"Of course," said Mary. "I'll make it as easy for you as I can, mamma. Mr.
James Sheridan, Junior. We went over there, and Mrs. Roscoe explained that
'the men were all dying for a drink,' though I noticed that Mr. Lamhorn was
the only one near death's door on that account. Edith and Mrs. Roscoe said
they knew I'd been bored at the dinner. They were objectionably apologetic
about it, and they seemed to think NOW we were going to have a 'good time' to
make up for it. But I hadn't been bored at the dinner, I'd been amused; and
the 'good time' at Mrs. Roscoe's was horribly, horribly stupid."
"But, Mary," her mother began, "is--is--" And she seemed unable to complete
the question.
"Never mind, mamma. I'll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid? I'm
sure he's not at all stupid about business. Otherwise--Oh, what right have I
to be calling people 'stupid' because they're not exactly my kind? On the big
dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the Sheridan Building--"
"Oh, no!" Mrs. Vertrees cried. "Surely not!"
"Yes, and two other things of that kind--I don't know what. But, after all, I
wondered if they were so bad. If I'd been at a dinner at a palace in Italy,
and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver peices had referred to
some great deed or achievement of the family, I shouldn't have felt superior;
I'd have thought it picturesque and stately--I'd have been impressed. And
what's the real difference? The icing is temporary, and that's much more
modest, isn't it? And why is it vulgar to feel important more on account of
something you've done yourself than because of something one of your ancestors
did? Besides, if we go back a few generations, we've all got such hundreds of
ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one or two to be proud of
ourselves about. Well, then, mamma, I managed not to feel superior to Mr.
James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn't see anything out of place in the
Sheridan Building in sugar."
Mrs. Vertrees's expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the conclusion
of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head gravely. "My dear,
dear child," she said, "it seems to me--It looks--I'm afraid--"
"Say as much of it as you can, mamma," said Mary, encouragingly. "I can get
it, if you'll just give me one key-word."
"Everything you say," Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, "seems to have the air of
--It is as if you were seeking to--to make yourself--"
"Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like
him."
"Not exactly, Mary. That wasn't quite what I meant," said Mrs. Vertrees,
speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. "But you said that--
that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs. Sheridan's
unentertaining--"
"And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at dinner,
and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I--" And then it
was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter understood,
Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
"Well," she asked, gravely, "is there anything else I can do? You and papa
don't want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is the only
thing to be done, it seems it's up to me not to let it distress me. That's
all there is about it. isn't it?"
"But nothing MUST distress you!" the mother cried.
"That's what I say!" said Mary, cheerfully. "And so it doesn't. It's all
right." She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own
room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against the
foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet. "Mother, you've
told me a thousand times that it doesn't really matter whom a girl marries."
"No, no!" Mrs. Vertrees protested. "I never said such a--"
"No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It's true, isn't it, that marriage
really is 'not a bed of roses, but a field of battle'? To get right down to
it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn't she? One man as well as
another?"
"Oh, my dear! I'm sure your father and I--"
"Yes, yes," said Mary, indulgently. "I don't mean you and papa. But isn't it
propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there must be
something in it."
"Mary, I can't bear for you to talk like that." And Mrs. Vertrees lifted
pleading eyes to her daughter--eyes that begged to be spared. "It sounds
--almost reckless!"
Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. "Never fret, dear!
I'm not likely to do anything I don't want to do--I've always been too
thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does our choosing
for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more than THAT! How
could there be any more propinquity than the very house next door?"
She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door this
time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. "Oh, the one that
caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one--"
"Did he speak of it?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
"No. He didn't speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn't meet him. But
he isn't insane, I'm sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when he's not.
Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was 'well enough';
and it may be he's only an invalid. He looks dreadfully ill, but he has
pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if--if one were in the Sheridan
family"--she laughed a little ruefully--"he might be interesting to talk to
sometimes, when there was too much stocks and bonds. I didn't see him after
dinner."
"There must be something wrong with him," said Mrs. Vertrees. "They'd have
introduced him if there wasn't."
"I don't know. He's been ill so much and away so much--sometimes people like
that just don't seem to 'count' in a family. His father spoke of sending him
back to a machine-shop or some sort; I suppose he meant when the poor thing
gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr. Sheridan mentioned him, and
he happened to be looking straight at me; and he was pathetic-looking enough
before that, but the most tragic change came over him. He seemed just to die,
right there at the table!"
"You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?"
"Yes."
"Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling."
"No," said Mary, thoughtfully, "I don't think he is; but he might be
uncomprehending, and certainly he's the kind of man to do anything he once
sets out to do. But I wish I hadn't been looking at that poor boy just then!
I'm afraid I'll keep remembering--"
"I wouldn't." Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there was the
remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. "I'd keep my mind on pleasanter
things, Mary."
Mary laughed and nodded. "Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and probably,
if all were known, too good--even for me!"
And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden were
off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
Edith, glancing casually into the "ready-made" library, stopped abruptly,
seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the pearl-framed and golden-
lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read it:
Fugitive
I will forget the things that sting:
The lashing look, the barbed word.
I know the very hands that fling
The stones at me had never stirred
To anger but for their own scars.
They've suffered so, that's why they strike.
I'll keep my heart among the stars
Where none shall hunt it out. Oh, like
These wounded ones I must not be,
For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
So, none shall hurt me. Far and free
Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
"Bibbs!" Edith's voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she came
into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than that
warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.
Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by the
poem. "Pretty young, isn't it?" he said. "There must have been something
about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can't believe the poem did it."
She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a low voice:
"I don't think it's very nice of you to bring it up at all, Bibbs. I'd like a
chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn't want them to frame it,
and I wish to goodness papa'd quit talking about it; but here, that night,
after the dinner, didn't he go and read it aloud to the whole crowd of 'em!
And then they all wanted to know what other poems I'd written and why I didn't
keep it up and write some more, and if I didn't, why didn't I, and why this
and why that, till I thought I'd die of shame!"
"You could tell 'em you had writer's cramp," Bibbs suggested.
"I couldn't tell 'em anything! I just choke with mortification every time
anybody speaks of the thing."
Bibbs looked grieved. "The poem isn't THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were
only seventeen when you wrote it."
"Oh, hush up!" she snapped. "I wish it had burnt my fingers the first time I
touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where it was. I
had no business to take it, and I've been ashamed--"
"No, no," he said, comfortingly. "It was the very most flattering thing ever
happen to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the machine-shop,
and it's pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to--"
"But I DON'T like it!" she exclaimed. "I don't even understand it--and papa
made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The truth is I
never dreamed it 'd get the prize."
"Maybe they expected father to endow the school," Bibbs murmered.
"Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn't write a LINE! I
hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn's always teasing me about how I 'keep
my heart among the stars.' He makes it seem such a mushy kind of thing, the
way he says it. I hate it!"
"You'll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another name
you might find--"
"Oh, hush up! I'll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first chance I
get." She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. "I'd like to think I
could hope to hear the last of it before I die!"
"Edith!" he called, as she went into the hall.
"What's the matter?"
"I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used to me?"
"What on earth do you mean?" she said, coming back as far as the threshold.
"When I first came you couldn't look at me," Bibbs explained, in his
impersonal way. "But I've noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if
I'd--"
"It's because you look so much better," she told him, cheerfully. "This month
you've been here's done you no end of good. It's the change."
"Yes, that's what they said at the sanitarium--the change."
"You look worse than 'most anybody I ever saw," said Edith, with supreme
candor. "But I don't know much about it. I've never seen a corpse in my
life, and I've never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you mustn't
judge by me. I only know you do look better, I'm glad to say. But you're
right about my not being able to look at you at first. You had a kind of
whiteness that--Well, you're almost as thin, I suppose, but you've got more
just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody could look at you now,
Bibbs, and no--not get--"
"Sick?"
"Well--almost that!" she laughed. "And you're getting a better color every
day, Bibbs; you really are. You're getting along splendidly."
"I--I'm afraid so," he said, ruefully.
"'Afraid so'! Well, if you aren't the queerest! I suppose you mean father
might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough. I heard him
say something about it the night of the--" The jingle of a distant bell
interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. "Bobby Lamhorn! I'm going to
motor him out to look at a place in the country. Afternoon, Bibbs!"
When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf, his eye
wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted almost
entirely of handsome "uniform editions": Irving, Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith,
Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon, Prescott, Thackeray,
Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and
Tasso. There were shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of
"famous classics," of "Oriental masterpieces," of "masterpieces of oratory,"
and more shelves of "selected libraries" of "literature," of "the drama," and
of "modern science." They made an effective decoration for the room, all
these big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a
reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but
Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them considered them
a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that
nobody else considered them at all. Himself, he disturbed not one.
There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house, and
white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs. "Awready, Mist'
Bibbs," he announced. "You' ma say wrap up wawm f' you' ride, an' she cain'
go with you to-day, an' not f'git go see you' pa at fo' 'clock. Aw ready,
suh."
He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in the
manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the hall they
passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket opened the door
with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the chauffeur in the car which
stood waiting in the driveway.
"It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this 'statue' when I first
came home, George," said Bibbs, thoughtfully. "What did you tell me?"
"Yessuh!" George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown
reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. "You ast me
when you firs' come home, an' you ast me nex' day, an' mighty near ev'y day
all time you been here; an' las' Sunday you ast me twicet." He shook his head
solemnly. "Look to me mus' be somep'm might lamiDAL 'bout 'at statue!"
"Mighty what?"
"Mighty lamiDAL!" George, burst out laughing. "What DO 'at word mean, Mist'
Bibbs?"
"It's new to me, George. Where did you hear it?"
"I nev' DID hear it!" said George. "I uz dess sittin' thinkum to myse'f an'
she pop in my head--'lamiDAL,' dess like 'at! An' she soun' so good, seem
like she GOTTA mean somep'm!"
"Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes--"
"Do she?" cried George. "WHAT she mean?"
"It's exactly the word for the statue," said Bibbs, with conviction, as he
climbed into the car. "It's a lamiDAL statue."
"Hiyi!" George exulted. "Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL
statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o' trouble to dus'!" "I expect she is!" said
Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept from
sight.
George turned to Mist' Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in the
hallway. "Same he aw-ways say, Mist' Jackson--'I expec' she is!' Ev'y day he
try t' git me talk 'bout 'at lamiDAL statue, an' aw-ways, las' thing HE say,
'I expec' she is!' You know, Mist' Jackson, if he git well, 'at young man go'
be pride o' the family, Mist' Jackson. Yes-suh, right now I pick 'im fo'
firs' money!"
"Look out with all 'at money, George!" Jackson warned the enthusiast. "White
folks 'n 'is house know 'im heap longer 'n you. You the on'y man bettin' on
'im!"
"I risk it!" cried George, merrily. "I put her all on now--ev'y cent! 'At
boy's go' be flower o' the flock!"
This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for the
meaning of "lamiDAL," differed radically from another prediction concerning
Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some twenty minutes later.
Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees beside him, in
his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon the highroad. The two
cars were going in opposite directions, and the occupants of Jim's had only a
swaying glimpse of Bibbs sitting alone on the back seat--his white face
startlingly white against cap and collar of black fur--but he flashed into
recognition as Mary bowed to him.
Jim waved his left hand carelessly. "It's Bibbs, taking his constitutional,"
he explained.
"Yes, I know," said Mary. "I bowed to him, too, though I've never met him. In
fact, I've only seen him once--no, twice. I hope he won't think I'm very
bold, bowing to him."
"I doubt if he noticed it," said honest Jim.
"Oh, no!" she cried.
"What's the trouble?"
"I'm almost sure people notice it when I bow to them."
"Oh, I see!" said Jim. "Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is funny."
"Is he? How?" she asked. "He strikes me as anything but funny."
"Well, I'm his brother," Jim said, deprecatingly, "but I don't know what he's
like, and, to tell the truth, I've never felt exactly like I WAS his brother,
the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half alive to me. Of
course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we were too big to play
with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his own age. He'd rather just
sit in the house and mope around by himslef. Nobody could ever get him to DO
anything; you can't get him to do anything now. He never had any LIFE in him;
and honestly, if he is my brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan is the
laziest man God ever made! Father put him in the machine-shop over at the
Pump Works--best thing in the world for him--and he was just plain no account.
It made him sick! If he'd had the right kind of energy--the kind father's
got, for instance, or Roscoe, either--why, it wouldn't made him sick. And
suppose it was either of them--yes, or me, either--do you think any of us
would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it, but Bibbs
Sheridan 'll never amount to anything as long as he lives."
Mary looked thoughtful. "Is there any particular reason why he should?" she
asked.
"Good gracious!" he exclaimed. "You don't mean that, do you? Don't you
believe in a man's knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much money his
father's got? Hasn't the business of this world got to be carried on by
everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we've got and see other
fellows get ahead of us? If we've got big things already, isn't it every
man's business to go ahead and make 'em bigger? Isn't it his duty? Don't we
always want to get bigger and bigger?"
"Ye-es--I don't know. But I feel rather sorry for your brother. He looked so
lonely--and sick."
"He's gettin' better every day," Jim said. "Dr. Gurney says so. There's
nothing much the matter with him, really--it's nine-tenths imaginary.
'Nerves'! People that are willing to be busy don't have nervous diseases,
because they don't have time to imagine 'em."
"You mean his trouble is really mental?"
"Oh, he's not a lunatic," said Jim. "He's just queer. Sometimes he'll say
something right bright, but half the time what he says is 'way off the
subject, or else there isn't any sense to it at all. For instance, the other
day I heard him talkin' to one of the darkies in the hall. The darky asked
him what time he wanted the car for his drive, and anybody else in the world
would have just said what time they DID want it, and that would have been all
there was to it; but here's what Bibbs says, and I heard him with my own ears.
'What time do I want the car?' he says. 'Well, now, that depends--that
depends,' he says. He talks slow like that, you know. 'I'll tell you what
time I want the car, George,' he says, 'if you'll tell ME what you think of
this statue!' That's exactly his words! Asked the darky what he thought of
that Arab Edith and mother bought for the hall!"
Mary pondered upon this. "He might have been in fun, perhaps," she suggested.
"Askin' a darky what he thought of a piece of statuary--of a work of art!
Where on earth would be the fun of that? No, you're just kind-hearted--and
that's the way you OUGHT to be, of course--"
"Thank you, Mr. Sheridan!" she laughed.
"See here!" he cried. "Isn't there any way for us to get over this Mister and
Miss thing? A month's got thirty-one days in it; I've managed to be with you
a part of pretty near all the thirty-one, and I think you know how I feel by
this time--"
She looked panic-stricken immediately. "Oh, no," she protested, quickly. "No,
I don't, and--"
"Yes, you do," he said, and his voice shook a little. "You couldn't help
knowing."
"But I do!" she denied, hurriedly. "I do help knowing. I mean--Oh, wait!"
"What for? You do know how I feel, and you--well, you've certainly WANTED me
to feel that way--or else pretended--"
"Now, now!" she lamented. "You're spoiling such a cheerful afternoon!"
"'Spoilin' it!'" He slowed down the car and turned his face to her squarely.
"See here, Miss Vertrees, haven't you--"
"Stop! Stop the car a minute." And when he had complied she faced him as
squarely as he evidently desired her to face him. "Listen. I don't want you
to go on, to-day."
"Why not?" he asked, sharply.
"I don't know."
"You mean it's just a whim?"
"I don't know," she repeated. Her voice was low and troubled and honest, and
she kept her clear eyes upon his.
"Will you tell me something?"
"Almost anything."
"Have you ever told any man you loved him?"
And at that, though she laughed, she looked a little contemptuous. "No," she
said. "And I don't think I ever shall tell any man that--or ever know what it
means. I'm in earnest, Mr. Sheridan."
"Then you--you've just been flirting with me!" Poor Jim looked both furious
and crestfallen.
"Not on bit!" she cried. "Not one word! Not one syllable! I've meant every
single thing!"
"I don't--"
"Of course you don't!" she said. "Now, Mr. Sheridan, I want you to start the
car. Now! Thank you. Slowly, till I finish what I have to say. I have not
flirted with you. I have deliberately courted you. One thing more, and then
I want you to take me straight home, talking about the weather all the way. I
said that I do not believe I shall ever 'care' for any man, and that is true.
I doubt the existence of the kind of 'caring' we hear about in poems and plays
and novels. I think it must be just a kind of emotional TALK-- most of it.
At all events, I don't feel it. Now, we can go faster, please."
"Just where does that let me out?" he demanded. "How does that excuse you
for--"
"It isn't an excuse," she said, gently, and gave him one final look, wholly
desolate. "I haven't said I should never marry."
"What?" Jim gasped.
She inclined her head in a broken sort of acquiescence, very humble,
unfathomably sorrowful.
"I promise nothing," she said, faintly.
"You needn't!" shouted Jim, radiant and exultant. "You needn't! By George!
I know you're square; that's enough for me! You wait and promise whenever
you're ready!"
"Don't forget what I asked," she begged him.
"Talk about the weather? I will! God bless the old weather!" cried the
happy Jim.
Through the open country Bibbs was borne flying between brown fields and
sun-flecked groves of gray trees, to breathe the rushing, clean air beneath a
glorious sky--that sky so despised in the city, and so maltreated there, that
from early October to mid-May it was impossible for men to remember that blue
is the rightful color overhead.
Upon each of Bibbs's cheeks there was a hint of something almost resembling a
pinkishness; not actual color, but undeniably its phantom. How largely this
apparition may have been the work of the wind upon his face it is difficult
to calculate, for beyond a doubt it was partly the result of a lady's bowing
to him upon no more formal introduction than the circumstance of his having
caught her looking into his window a month before. She had bowed definitely;
she had bowed charmingly. And it seemed to Bibbs that she must have meant to
convey her forgiveness.
There had been something in her recognition of him unfamiliar to his
experience, and he rode the warmer for it. Nor did he lack the impression
that he would long remember her as he had just seen her: her veil
tumultuously blowing back, her face glowing in the wind--and that look of gay
friendliness tossed to him like a fresh rose in carnival.
By and by, upon a rising ground, the driver halted the car, then backed and
tacked, and sent it forward again with its nose to the south and the smoke.
Far before him Bibbs saw the great smudge upon the horizon, that nest of
cloud in which the city strove and panted like an engine shrouded in its own
steam. But to Bibbs, who had now to go to the very heart of it, for a
commanded interview with his father, the distant cloud was like an implacable
genius issuing thunderously in smoke from his enchanted bottle, and
irresistibly drawing Bibbs nearer and nearer.
They passed from the farm lands, and came, in the amber light of November
late afternoon, to the farthermost outskirts of the city; and here the sky
shimmered upon the verge of change from blue to gray; the smoke did not
visibly permeate the air, but it was there, nevertheless-- impalpable, thin,
no more than the dust of smoke. And then, as the car drove on, the chimneys
and stacks of factories came swimming up into view like miles of steamers
advancing abreast, every funnel with its vast plume, savage and black,
sweeping to the horizon, dripping wealth and dirt and suffocation over league
on league already rich and vile with grime.
The sky had become only a dingy thickening of the soiled air; and a roar and
clangor of metals beat deafeningly on Bibbs's ears. And now the car passed
two great blocks of long brick buildings, hideous in all ways possible to
make them hideous; doorways showing dark one moment and lurid the next with
the leap of some virulent interior flame, revealing blackened giants, half
naked, in passionate action, struggling with formless things in the hot
illumination. And big as these shops were, they were growing bigger,
spreading over a third block, where two new structures were mushrooming to
completion in some hasty cement process of a stability not over-reassuring.
Bibbs pulled the rug closer about him, and not even the phantom of color was
left upon his cheeks as he passed this place, for he knew it too well.
Across the face of one of the buildings there was an enormous sign: "Sheridan
Automatic Pump Co., Inc."
Thence they went through streets of wooden houses, all grimed, and adding
their own grime from many a sooty chimney; flimsey wooden houses of a
thousand flimsy whimsies in the fashioning, built on narrow lots and nudging
one another crossly, shutting out the stingy sunlight from one another; bad
neighbors who would destroy one another root and branch some night when the
right wind blew. They were only waiting for that wind and a cigarette, and
then they would all be gone together--a pinch of incense burned upon the
tripod of the god.
Along these streets there were skinny shade-trees, and here and there a
forest elm or walnut had been left; but these were dying. Some people said
it was the scale; some said it was the smoke; and some were sure that asphalt
and "improving" the streets did it; but Bigness was in too Big a hurry to
bother much about trees. He had telegraph-poles and telephone-poles and
electric-light-poles and trolley-polls by the thousand to take their places.
So he let the trees die and put up his poles. They were hideous, but nobody
minded that; and sometimes the wires fell and killed people--but not often
enough to matter at all.
Thence onward the car bore Bibbs through the older parts of the town where
the few solid old houses not already demolished were in transition: some,
with their fronts torn away, were being made into segments of
apartment-buildings; others had gone uproariously into trade, brazenly
putting forth "show-windows" on their first floors, seeming to mean it for a
joke; one or two with unaltered facades peeped humorously over the tops of
temporary office buildings of one story erected in the old front yards.
Altogether, the town here was like a boarding-house hash the Sunday after
Thanksgiving; the old ingredients were discernible.
This was the fringe of Bigness's own sanctuary, and now Bibbs reached the
roaring holy of holies itself. The car must stop at every crossing while the
dark-garbed crowds, enveloped in maelstroms of dust, hurried before it.
Magnificent new buildings, already dingy, loomed hundreds of feet above him;
newer ones, more magnificent, were rising beside them, rising higher; old
buildings were coming down; middle-aged buildings were coming down; the
streets were laid open to their entrails and men worked underground between
palisades, and overhead in metal cobwebs like spiders in the sky.
Trolley-cars and long interurban cars, built to split the wind like
torpedo-boats, clanged and shrieked their way round swarming corners;
motor-cars of every kind and shape known to man babbled frightful warnings
and frantic demands; hospital ambulances clamored wildly for passage;
steam-whistles signaled the swinging of titanic tentacle and claw; riveters
rattled like machine-guns; the ground shook to the thunder of gigantic
trucks; and the conglomerate sound of it all was the sound of earthquake
playing accompaniments for battle and sudden death. On one of the new steel
buildings no work was being done that afternoon. The building had killed a
man in the morning--and the steel-workers always stop for the day when that
"happens."
And in the hurrying crowds, swirling and sifting through the brobdingnagian
camp of iron and steel, one saw the camp-followers and the pagan women--there
would be work to-day and dancing to-night. For the Puritan's dry voice is
but the crackling of a leaf underfoot in the rush and roar of the coming of
the new Egypt.
Bibbs was on time. He knew it must be "to the minute" or his father would
consider it an outrage; and the big chronometer in Sheridan's office marked
four precisely when Bibbs walked in. Coincidentally with his entrance five
people who had been at work in the office, under Sheridan's direction, walked
out. They departed upon no visible or audible suggestion, and with a
promptness that seemed ominous to the new-comer. As the massive door clicked
softly behind the elderly stenographer, the last of the procession, Bibbs had
a feeling that they all understood that he was a failure as a great man's
son, a disappointment, the "queer one" of the family, and that he had been
summoned to judgment--a well-founded impression, for that was exactly what
they understood.
"Sit down," said Sheridan.
It is frequently an advantage for deans, school-masters, and worried fathers
to place delinquents in the sitting-posture. Bibbs sat.
Sheridan, standing, gazed enigmatically upon his son for a period of silence,
then walked slowly to a window and stood looking out of it, his big hands,
loosely hooked together by the thumbs, behind his back. They were soiled, as
were all other hands down-town, except such as might be still damp from a basin.
"Well, Bibbs," he said at last, not altering his attitude, "do you know what
I'm goin' to do with you?"
Bibbs, leaning back in his chair, fixed his eyes contemplatively upon the
ceiling. "I heard you tell Jim," he began, in his slow way. "You said you'd
send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn't propose to Miss Vertrees.
So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But--"
"But what?" said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.
"Isn't there somebody you'd let ME propose to?"
That brought his father sharply round to face him. "You beat the devil!
Bibbs, what IS the matter with you? Why can't you be like anybody else?"
"Liver, maybe," said Bibbs, gently.
"Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there's nothin' wrong with you organically.
No. You're a dreamer, Bibbs; that's what's the matter, and that's ALL the
matter. Oh, no one o' these BIG dreamers that put through the big deals.!
No, sir! You're the kind o' dreamer that just sets out on the back fence and
thinks about how much trouble there must be in the world! That ain't the
kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs; it's the kind that borrows fifteen cents
from his wife's uncle's brother-in-law to get ten cent's worth o' plug
tobacco and a nickel's worth o' quinine!"
He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned again to
the window.
"Look out there!" he bade his son. "Look out o' that window! Look at the
life and evergy down there! I should think ANY young man's blood would
tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young men
are doin' in this town!" He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk in the
middle of the room. "Look at what I was doin' at your age! Look at what
your own brothers are doin'! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look at Jim! I made
Jim president o' the Sheridan Realty Company last New-Year's, with charge of
every inch o' ground and every brick and every shingle and stick o' wood we
own; and it's an example to any young man--or ole man, either--the way he
took ahold of it. Last July we found out we wanted two more big warehouses
at the Pump Works-- wanted 'em quick. Contractors said it couldn't be done;
said nine or ten months at the soonest; couldn't see it any other way. What
'd Jim do? Took the contract himself; found a fellow with a new cement and
concrete process; kept men on the job night and day, and stayed on it night
and day himself--and, by George! we begin to USE them warehouses next week!
Four months and a half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim's one o'
these fellers that make miracles happen! Now, I don't say every young man
can be like Jim, because there's mighty few got his ability, but every young
man can go in and do his share. This town is God's own country, and there's
opportunity for anybody with a pound of energy and an ounce o' gumption. I
tell you these young business men I watch just do my heart good! THEY don't
set around on the back fence-- no, sir! They take enough exercise to keep
their health; and they go to a baseball game once or twice a week in summmer,
maybe, and they're raisin' nice families, with sons to take their places
sometime and carry on the work--because the work's got to go ON! They're
puttin' their life-blood into it, I tell you, and that's why we're gettin'
bigger every minute, and why THEY'RE gettin' bigger, and why it's all goin'
to keep ON gettin' bigger!"
He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing that
Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still fixed upon
the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan was impelled to
groan. "Oh, Lord!" he said. "This is the way you always were. I don't
believe you understood a darn word I been sayin'! You don't LOOK as if you
did. By George! it's discouraging!"
"I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger," said Bibbs,
bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. "I don't see just
why--"
"WHAT?" Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and staring
across it incredulously at his son.
"I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?"
"Great God!" shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his clenched
fist. "A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the poorest
day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question--"
"I did once," Bibbs interrupted; "when I was in the machine-shop. I--"
"Wha'd he say?"
"He said, 'Oh, hell!'" answered Bibbs, mildly.
"Yes, I reckon he would!" Sheridan swung away from the desk. "I reckon he
certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now, myself!"
"It's the same answer, then?" Bibbs's voice was serious, almost tremulous.
"Damnation!" Sheridan roared. "Did you ever hear the word Prosperity, you
ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the word
PROGRESS?"
He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging, his
throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. "Now then," he said, huskily,
when the anguish had somewhat abated, "what do you want to do?"
"Sir?"
"What do you WANT to do, I said."
Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. "What--what do--I--what--"
"If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you do?"
Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound shyness. He
bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his shoe, which he
moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to the desk in school.
"What would you do? Loaf?"
"No, sir." Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it made
was unquestionably a guilty sound. "I suppose I'd--I'd--"
"Well?"
"I suppose I'd try to--to write."
"Write what?"
"Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps."
"That all?"
"Yes, sir."
"I see," said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was putting
upon himself. "That is, you want to write, but you don't want to write
anything of any account."
"You think--"
Sheridan got up again. "I take my hat off to the man that can write a good
ad," he said, emphatically. "The best writin' talent in this country is
right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine for good
writin'--look on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money for that kind
o' writin'. Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it! I've tried it, and I
can't do it. I tell you an ad's got to be written so it makes people do the
hardest thing in this world to GET 'em to do: it's got to make 'em give up
their MONEY! You talk about 'poems and essays.' I tell you when it comes to
the actual skill o' puttin' words together so as to make things HAPPEN, R. T.
Bloss, right here in this city, knows more in a minute than George Waldo
Emerson ever knew in his whole life!"
"You--you may be--" Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered in a
cough.
"Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take up with
the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and essays'! My Lord,
Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a newspaper without havin' to
see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper on 'Jane Eyre,' or 'East Lynne,' at
the God-Knows-What Club. And 'poetry'! Why, look at Edith! I expect that
poem o' hers would set a pretty high-water mark for you, young man, and it's
the only one she's ever managed to write in her whole LIFE! When I wanted
her to go on and write some more she said it took too much time. Said it
took months and months. And Edith's a smart girl; she's got more energy in
her little finger than you ever give me a chance to see in your whole body,
Bibbs. Now look at the facts: say she could turn out four or five poems a
year and you could turn out maybe two. That medal she got was worth about
fifteen dollars, so there's your income--thirty dollars a year! That's a
fine success to make of your life! I'm not sayin' a word against poetry. I
wouldn't take ten thousand dollars right now for that poem of Edith's; and
poetry's all right enough in its place--but you leave it to the girls. A
man's got to do a man's work in this world!"
He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over, tapped
Bibbs confidentially on the knee. "This city's got the greatest future in
America, and if my sons behave right by me and by themselves they're goin' to
have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty fair share. I love this town. It's
God's own footstool, and it's made money for me every day right along, I
don't know how many years. I love it like I do my own business, and I'd
fight for it as quick as I'd fight for my own family. It's a beautiful town.
Look at our wholesale district; look at any district you want to; look at the
park system we're puttin' through, and the boulevards and the public
statuary. And she grows. God! how she grows!" He had become intensely
grave; he spoke with solemnity. "Now, Bibbs, I can't take any of it--nor
any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds--away with me in my shroud when I
have to go. But I want to leave my share in it to my boys. I've worked for
it; I've been a builder and a maker; and two blades of grass have grown where
one grew before, whenever I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to
grow. I've built big, and I want the buildin' to go on. And when my last
hour comes I want to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're
fit to take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs, when that hour comes I want to
know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to hold of big things. Bibbs,
when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've made mine, here
below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my boys."
He leaned back, deeply moved. "There!" he said, huskily. "I've never spoken
more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want you to
understand--and not think me a mean father. I never had to talk that way to
Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk, Bibbs."
"I see," said Bibbs. "At least I think I do. But--"
"Wait a minute!" Sheridan raised his hand. "If you see the least bit in the
world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son set here and
talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries. And you must
understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys and have him come back
on me the way you did, and have to be sent to a sanitarium because he
couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right down to it, Bibbs. I've had a
whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney about you, one time another, and I
reckon I understand your case just about as well as he does, anyway! Now
here, I'll be frank with you. I started you in harder than what I did the
other boys, and that was for your own good, because I saw you needed to be
shook up more'n they did. You were always kind of moody and mopish--and you
needed work that 'd keep you on the jump. Now, why did it make you sick
instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of done? I
pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look here, ain't it really because he
just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says, 'that's it. If he'd enjoyed it, it
wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it, and that affects his nervous system
The more he tries it, the more he hates it; and the more he hates it, the
more injury it does him.' That ain't quite his words, but it's what he
meant. And that's about the way it is."
"Yes," said Bibbs, "that's about the way it is."
"Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but to make
you like it!"
Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
ghostly. "I can't," he said, in a low voice. "I can't."
"Can't go back to the shop?"
"No. Can't like it. I can't."
Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had reasoned
exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than a father should,
only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and mysterious stubbornness
which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic from childhood. "By George,
you will!" he cried. "You'll go back there and you'll like it! Gurney says
it won't hurt you if you like it, and he says it 'll kill you if you go back
and hate it; so it looks as if it was about up to you not to hate it. Well,
Gurney's a fool! Hatin' work doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to
kill you, whether you hate it or not. I've never made a mistake in a
serious matter in my life, and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in
the first place. And I'm goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back there
and vindicate my judgment. Gurney says it's all 'mental attitude.' Well,
you're goin' to learn the right one! He says in a couple more months this
fool thing that's been the matter with you 'll be disappeared completely and
you'll be back in as good or better condition than you were before you ever
went into the shop. And right then is when you begin over--right in that
same shop! Nobody can call me a hard man or a mean father. I do the best I
can for my chuldern, and I take full responsibility for bringin' my sons up
to be men. Now, so far, I've failed with you. But I'm not goin' to keep ON
failin'. I never tackled a job YET I didn't put through, and I'm not goin'
to begin with my own son. I'm goin' to make a MAN of you. By God! I am!"
Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. "You say you give
me a couple of months?" he said.
Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. "Gurney said two months more
would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get yourself in
the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are up! Good-by!"
"Good-by, sir," said Bibbs, meekly.
Bibbs's room, that neat apartment for transients to which the "lamidal"
George had shown him upon his return, still bore the appearance of temporary
quarters, possibly because Bibbs had no clear conception of himself as a
permanent incumbent. However, he had set upon the mantelpiece the two
photographs that he owned: one, a "group" twenty years old--his father and
mother, with Jim and Roscoe as boys--and the other a "cabinet" of Edith at
sixteen. And upon a table were the books he had taken from his trunk: Sartor
Resartus, Virginibus Puerisque, Huckleberry Finn, and Afterwhiles. There
were some other books in the trunk--a large one, which remained unremoved at
the foot of the bed, adding to the general impression of transiency. It
contained nearly all the possessions as well as the secret life of Bibbs
Sheridan, and Bibbs sat beside it, the day after his interview with his
father, raking over a small collection of manuscripts in the top tray. Some
of these he glanced through dubiously, finding little comfort in them; but
one made him smile. Then he shook his head ruefully indeed, and ruefully
began to read it. It was written on paper stamped "Hood Sanitarium," and
bore the title, "Leisure."
A man may keep a quiet heart at seventy miles an hour, but not if he is
running the train. Nor is the habit of contemplation a useful quality in the
stoker of a foundry furnace; it will not be found to recommend him to the
approbation of his superiors. For a profession adapted solely to the pursuit
of happiness in thinking, I would choose that of an invalid: his money is
time and he may spend it on Olympus. It will not suffice to be an amateur
invalid. To my way of thinking, the perfect practitioner must be to all
outward purposes already dead if he is to begin the perfect enjoyment of
life. His serenity must not be disturbed by rumors of recovery; he must lie
serene in his long chair in the sunshine. The world must be on the other side
of the wall, and the wall must be so thick and so high that he cannot hear
the roaring of the furnace fires and the screaming of the whistles. Peace--
Having read so far as the word "peace," Bibbs suffered an interruption
interesting as a coincidence of contrast. High voices sounded in the hall
just outside his door; and it became evident that a woman's quarrel was in
progress, the parties to it having begun it in Edith's room, and continuing
it vehemently as they came out into the hall.
"Yes, you BETTER go home!" Bibbs heard his sister vociferating, shrilly. "You
better go home and keep your mind a little more on your HUSBAND!"
"Edie, Edie!" he heard his mother remonstrating, as peacemaker.
"You see here!" This was Sibyl, and her voice was both acrid and tremulous.
"Don't you talk to me that way! I came here to tell Mother Sheridan what I'd
heard, and to let her tell Father Sheridan if she thought she ought to, and I
did it for your own good."
"Yes, you did!" And Edith's gibing laughter tooted loudly. "Yes, you did!
YOU didn't have any other reason! OH no! YOU don't want to break it up
between Bobby Lamhorn and me because--"
"Edie, Edie! Now, now!"
"Oh, hush up, mamma! I'd like to know, then, if she says her new friends
tell her he's got such a reputation that he oughtn't to come here, what about
his not going to HER house. How--"
"I've explained that to Mother Sheridan." Sibyl's voice indicated that she
was descending the stairs. "Married people are not the same. Some things
that should be shielded from a young girl--"
This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. "'Shielded from a
young girl'!" she shrilled. "You seem pretty willing to be the shield! You
look out Roscoe doesn't notice what kind of a shield you are!"
Sibyl's answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan's flurried attempts at
pacification were renewed. "Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good, and
you'd oughtn't to--"
"Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa--"
"Now, now! I'm not going to tell him to-day, and maybe--"
"You've got to promise NEVER to tell him!" the girl cried, passionately.
"Well, we'll see. You just come back in your own room, and we'll--"
"No! I WON'T 'talk it over'! Stop pulling me! Let me ALONE!" And Edith,
flinging herself violently upon Bibbs's door, jerked it open, swung round it
into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself, face down,
upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no perception of Bibbs's
presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a passion of tears, she beat
the coverlet and pillows with her clenched fists. "Sneak!" she babbled aloud.
"Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!"
Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward the
door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some sound of
his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.
"Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago."
"Yes. I came back, though. I'm sorry--"
"Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?"
"Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I'm going out."
"No; don't go." She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob, and
repeated her request. "Don't go. I don't mind you; you're quiet, anyhow.
Mamma's so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don't mind you at all, but I
wish you'd sit down."
"All right." And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. "Go ahead and
cry all you want, Edith," he said. "No harm in that!"
"Sibyl told mamma--OH!" she began, choking. "Mary Vertrees had mamma and
Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had some women
there that Sibyl's been crazy to get in with, and she just laid herself out
to make a hit with 'em, and she's been running after 'em ever since, and now
she comes over here and says THEY say Bobby Lamhorn is so bad that, even
though they like his family, none of the nice people in town would let him in
their houses. In the first place, it's a falsehood, and I don't believe a
word of it; and in the second place I know the reason she did it, and, what's
more, she KNOWS I know it! I won't SAY what it is--not yet--because papa and
all of you would think I'm as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe's such a fool
he'd probably quit speaking to me. But it's true! Just you watch her;
that's all I ask. Just you watch that woman. You'll see!"
As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching "that woman." Glancing from the
window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old house next
door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked quickly up the path
to the door, undoubtedly with the intention of calling. But he did not
mention this to his sister, who, after delivering herself of a rather vague
jeremiad upon the subject of her sister-in-law's treacheries, departed to her
own chamber, leaving him to his speculations. The chief of these concerned
the social elasticities of women. Sibyl had just been a participant in a
violent scene; she had suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to
set her quivering with resentment; and yet she elected to betake herself to
the presence of people whom she knew no more than "formally." Bibbs
marveled. Surely, he reflected, some traces of emotion must linger upon
Sibyl's face or in her manner; she could not have ironed it all quite out in
the three or four minutes it took her to reach the Vertreeses' door.
And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment
wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to
master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit
anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a
casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose that
brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely
intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its
antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may and
does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex as well,
finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is a type that
has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought greater, save for
the check put upon its power by intelligent women and by its own "lack of
perspective," for it is a type that never sees itself. Sibyl followed her
impulses with no reflection or question--it was like a hound on the gallop
after a master on horseback. She had not even the instinct to stop and
consider her effect. If she wished to make a certain impression she believed
that she made it. She believed that she was believed.
"My mother asked me to say that she was sorry she couldn't come down," Mary
said, when they were seated.
Sibyl ran the scale of a cooing simulance of laughter, which she had been
brought up to consider the polite thing to do after a remark addressed to her
by any person with whom she was not on familiar terms. It was intended
partly as a courtesy and partly as the foundation for an impression of
sweetness.
"Just thought I'd fly in a minute," she said, continuing the cooing to
relieve the last doubt of her gentiality. "I thought I'd just behave like
REAL country neighbors. We are almost out in the country, so far from
down-town, aren't we? And it seemed such a LOVELY day! I wanted to tell you
how much I enjoyed meeting those nice people at tea that afternoon. You see,
coming here a bride and never having lived here before, I've had to depend on
my husband's friends almost entirely, and I really 've known scarcely
anybody. Mr. Sheridan has been so engrossed in business ever since he was a
mere boy, why, of course--"
She paused, with the air of having completed an explanation.
"Of course," said Mary, sympathetically accepting it.
"Yes. I've been seeing quite a lot of the Kittersbys since that afternoon,"
Sibyl went on. "They're really delightful people. Indeed they are! Yes--"
She stopped with unconscious abruptness, her mind plainly wandering to
another matter; and Mary perceived that she had come upon a definite errand.
Moreover, a tensing of Sibyl's eyelids, in that moment of abstraction as she
looked aside from her hostess, indicated that the errand was a serious one
for the caller and easily to be connected with the slight but perceptible
agitation underlying her assumption of cheerful ease. There was a
restlessnes of breathing, a restlessness of hands.
"Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter were chatting about some to the people here
in town the other day," said Sibyl, repeating the cooing and protracting it.
"They said something that took ME by surprise! We were talking about our
mutual friend, Mr. Robert Lamhorn--"
Mary interrupted her promptly. "Do you mean 'mutual' to include my mother
and me?" she asked.
"Why, yes; the Kittersbys and you and all of us Sheridans, I mean."
"No," said Mary. "We shouldn't consider Mr. Robert Lamhorn a friend of
ours."
To her surprise, Sibyl nodded eagerly, as if greatly pleased. "That's just
the way Mrs. Kittersby talked!" she cried, with a vehemence that made Mary
stare. "Yes, and I hear that's the way ALL you old families here speak of
him!"
Mary looked aside, but otherwise she was able to maintain her composure. "I
had the impression he was a friend of yours," she said; adding, hastily, "and
your husband's"
"Oh yes," said the caller, absently. "He is, certainly. A man's reputation
for a little gaiety oughtn't to make a great difference to married people, of
course. It's where young girls are in question. THEN it may be very, very
dangerous. There are a great many things safe and proper for married people
that might be awf'ly imprudent for a young girl. Don't you agree, Miss
Vertrees?"
"I don't know," returned the frank Mary. "Do you mean that you intend to
remain a friend of Mr. Lamhorn's, but disapprove of Miss Sheridan's doing
so?"
"That's it exactly!" was the naive and ardent response of Sibyl. "What I
feel about it is that a man with his reputation isn't at all suitable for
Edith, and the family ought to be made to understand it. I tell you," she
cried, with a sudden access of vehemence, "her father ought to put his foot
down!"
Her eyes flashed with a green spark; something seemed to leap out and then
retreat, but not before Mary had caught a glimpse of it, as one might catch a
glimpse of a thing darting forth and then scuttling back into hiding under a
bush.
"Of course," said Sibyl, much more composedly, "I hardly need say that it's
entirely on Edith's account that I'm worried about this. I'm as fond of
Edith as if she was really my sister, and I can't help fretting about it. It
would break my heart to have Edith's life spoiled."
This tune was off the key, to Mary's ear. Sibyl tried to sing with pathos,
but she flatted.
And when a lady receives a call from another who suffers under the stress of
some feeling which she wishes to conceal, there is not uncommonly developed a
phenomenon of duality comparable to the effect obtained by placing two
mirrors opposite each other, one clear and the other flawed. In this case,
particularly, Sibyl had an imperfect consciousness of Mary. The Mary
Vertrees that she saw was merely something to be cozened to her own frantic
purpose--a Mary Vertrees who was incapable of penetrating that purpose.
Sibyl sat there believing that she was projecting the image of herself that
she desired to project, never dreaming that with every word, every look, and
every gesture she was more and more fully disclosing the pitiable truth to
the clear eyes of Mary. And the Sibyl that Mary saw was an overdressed
woman, in manner half rustic, and in mind as shallow as a pan, but possessed
by emotions that appeared to be strong--perhaps even violent. What those
emotions were Mary had not guessed, but she began to suspect.
"And Edith's life WOULD be spoiled," Sibyl continued. "It would be a
dreadful thing for the whole family. She's the very apple of Father
Sheridan's eye, and he's as proud of her as he is of Jim and Roscoe. It
would be a horrible thing for him to have her marry a man like Robert
Lamhorn; but he doesn't KNOW anything about him, and if somebody doesn't tell
him, what I'm most afraid of is that Edith might get his consent and hurry on
the wedding before he finds out, and then it would be too late. You see,
Miss Vertrees, it's very difficult for me to decide just what it's my duty to
do."
"I see," said Mary, looking at her thoughtfully, "Does Miss Sheridan seem
to--to care very much about him?"
"He's deliberately fascinated her," returned the visitor, beginning to
breathe quickly and heavily. "Oh, she wasn't difficult! She knew she wasn't
in right in this town, and she was crazy to meet the people that were, and
she thought he was one of 'em. But that was only the start that made it easy
for him--and he didn't need it. He could have done it, anyway!" Sibyl was
launched now; her eyes were furious and her voice shook. "He went after her
deliberately, the way he does everything; he's as cold-blooded as a fish.
All he cares about is his own pleasure, and lately he's decided it would be
pleasant to get hold of a piece of real money--and there was Edith! And
he'll marry her! Nothing on earth can stop him unless he finds out she won't
HAVE any money if she marries him, and the only person that could make him
understand that is Father Sheridan. Somehow, that's got to be managed,
because Lamhorn is going to hurry it on as fast as he can. He told me so
last night. He said he was going to marry her the first minute he could
persuade her to it--and little Edith's all ready to be persuaded!" Sibyl's
eyes flashed green again. "And he swore he'd do it," she panted. "He swore
he'd marry Edith Sheridan, and nothing on earth could stop him!"
And then Mary understood. Her lips parted and she stared at the babbling
creature incredulously, a sudden vivid picture in her mind, a canvas of
unconscious Sibyl's painting. Mary beheld it with pity and horror: she saw
Sibyl clinging to Robert Lamhorn, raging, in a whisper, perhaps-- for Roscoe
might have been in the house, or servants might have head. She saw Sibyl
entreating, beseeching, threatening despairingly, and Lamhorn--tired of
her--first evasive, then brutally letting her have the truth; and at last,
infuriated, "swearing" to marry her rival. If Sibyl had not babbled out the
word "swore" it might have been less plain.
The poor woman blundered on, wholly unaware of what he had confessed. "You
see," she said, more quietly, "whatever's going to be done ought to done
right away. I went over and told Mother Sheridan what I'd heard about
Lamhorn--oh, I was open and aboveboard! I told her right before Edith. I
think it ought all to be done with perfect frankness, because nobody can say
it isn't for the girl's own good and what her best friend would do. But
Mother Sheridan's under Edith's thumb, and she's afraid to ever come right
out with anything. Father Sheridan's different. Edith can get anything she
wants out of him in the way of money or ordinary indulgence, but when it
comes to a matter like this he'd be a steel rock. If it's a question of his
will against anybody else's he'd make his will rule if it killed 'em both!
Now, he'd never in the world let Lamhorn come near the house again if he knew
his reputation. So, you see, somebody's got to tell him. It isn't a very
easy position for me, is it, Miss Vertrees?"
"No," said Mary, gravely.
"Well, to be frank," said Sibyl, smiling, "that's why I've come to you."
"To ME!" Mary frowned.
Sibyl rippled and cooed again. "There isn't ANYBODY even made such a hit
with Father Sheridan in his life as you have. And of course we ALL hope
you're not going to be exactly an outsider in the affairs of the family!"
(This sally with another and louder effect of laughter.) "And if it's MY
duty, why, in a way, I think it might be thought yours, too."
"No, no!" exclaimed Mary, sharply.
"Listen," said Sibyl. "Now suppose I go to Father Sheridan with this story,
and Edith says it's not true; suppose she says Lamhorn has a good reputation
and that I'm repeating irresponsible gossip, or suppose (what's most likely)
she loses her temper and says I invented it, then what am I going to do?
Father Sheridan doesn't know Mrs. Kittersby and her daughter, and they're out
of the question, anyway. But suppose I could say: 'All right, if you want
proof, ask Miss Vertrees. She came with me, and she's waiting in the next
room right now, to--"
"No, no," said Mary, quickly. "You mustn't--"
"Listen just a minute more," Sibyl urged, confidingly. She was on easy
ground now, to her own mind, and had no doubt of her success. "You naturally
don't want to begin by taking part in a family quarrel, but if YOU take part
in it, it won't be one. You don't know yourself what weight you carry over
there, and no one would have the right to say you did it except out of the
purest kindness. Don't you see that Jim and his father would admire you all
the more for it? Miss Vertrees, listen! Don't you see we OUGHT to do it,
you and I? Do you suppose Robert Lamhorn cares a snap of his finger for her?
Do you suppose a man like him would LOOK at Edith Sheridan if it wasn't for
the money?" And again Sibyl's emotion rose to the surface. "I tell you he's
after nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's money-pile,
over there, next door! He'd marry ANYBODY to do it. Marry Edith?" she
cried. "I tell you he'd marry their nigger cook for THAT!"
She stopped, afraid--at the wrong time--that she had been too vehement, but a
glace at Mary reassured her, and Sibyl decided that she had produced the
effect she wished. Mary was not looking at her; she was staring straight
before her at the wall, her eyes wide and shining. She became visibly a
little paler as Sibyl looked at her.
"After nothing on earth but to get his finger in that old man's money-pile,
over there, next door!" The voice was vulgar, the words were vulgar--and the
plain truth was vulgar! How it rang in Mary Vertrees's ears! The clear
mirror had caught its own image clearly in the flawed one at last.
Sibyl put forth her best bid to clench the matter. She offered her bargain.
"Now don't you worry," she said, sunnily, "about this setting Edith against
you. She'll get over it after a while, anyway, but if she tried to be
spiteful and make it uncomfortable for you when you drop in over there, or
managed so as to sort of leave you out, why, I've got a house, and Jim likes
to come there. I don't THINK Edith WOULD be that way; she's too crazy to
have you take her around with the smart crowd, but if she DID, you needn't
worry. And another thing--I guess you won't mind Jim's own sister-in-law
speaking of it. Of course, I don't know just how matters stand between you
and Jim, but Jim and Roscoe are about as much alike as two brothers can be,
and Roscoe was very slow making up his mind; sometimes I used to think he
actually never WOULD. Now, what I mean is, sisters-in-law can do lots of
things to help matters on like that. There's lots of little things can be
said, and lots--"
She stopped, puzzled. Mary Vertrees had gone from pale to scarlet, and now,
still scarlet indeed, she rose, without a word of explanation, or any other
kind of word, and walked slowly to the open door and out of the room.
Sibyl was a little taken aback. She supposed Mary had remembered something
neglected and necessary for the instruction of a servant, and that she would
return in a moment; but it was rather a rude excess of absent-mindedness not
to have excused herself, especially as her guest was talking. And, Mary's
return being delayed, Sibyl found time to think this unprefaced exit odder
and ruder than she had first considered it. There might have been more
excuse for it, she thought, had she been speaking of matters less
important--offering to do the girl all the kindness in her power, too!
Sibyl yawned and swung her muff impatiently; she examined the sole of her
show; she decided on a new shape of heel; she made an inventory of the
furniture of the room, of the rugs, of the wall-paper and engravings. Then
she looked at her watch and frowned; went to a window and stood looking out
upon the brown lawn, then came back to the chair she had abandoned, and sat
again. There was no sound in the house.
A strange expression began imperceptibly to alter the planes of her face, and
slowly she grew as scarlet as Mary--scarlet to the ears. She looked at her
watch again--and twenty-five minutes had elapsed since she had looked at it
before.
She went into the hall, glanced over her shoulder oddly; then she let herself
softly out of the front door, and went across the street to her own house.
Roscoe met her upon the threshold, gloomily. "Saw you from the window," he
explained. "You must find a lot to say to that old lady."
"What old lady?"
"Mrs. Vertrees. I been waiting for you a long time, and I saw the daughter
come out, fifteen minutes ago, and post a letter, and then walk on up the
street. Don't stand out on the porch," he said, crossly. "Come in here.
There's something it's come time I'll have to talk to you about. Come in!"
But as she was moving to obey he glanced across at his father's house and
started. He lifted his hand to shield his eyes from the setting sun, staring
fixedly. "Something's the matter over there," he muttered, and then, more
loudly, as alarm came into his voice, he said, "What's the matter over
there?"
Bibbs dashed out of the gate in an automobile set at its hightest speed, and
as he saw Roscoe he made a genture singularly eloquent of calamity, and was
lost at once in a cloud of dust down the street. Edith had followed part of
the way down the drive, and it could be seen that she was crying bitterly.
She lifted both arms to Roscoe, summoning him.
"By George!" gasped Roscoe. "I believe somebody's dead!"
And he started for the New House at a run.
Sheridan had decided to conclude his day's work early that afternoon, and at
about two o'clock he left his office with a man of affairs from foreign
parts, who had traveled far for a business conference with Sheridan and his
colleagues. Herr Favre, in spite of his French name, was a gentleman of
Bavaria. It was his first visit to our country, and Sheridan took pleasure
in showing him the sights of the country's finest city. They got into an
open car at the main entrance of the Sheridan Building, and were driven
first, slowly and momentously, through the wholesale district and the retail
district; then more rapidly they inspected the packing-houses and the
stock-yards; then skirmished over the "park system" and "boulevards"; and
after that whizzed through the "residence section" on their way to the
factories and foundries.
"All cray," observed Herr Favre, smilingly.
"'Cray'?" echoed Sheridan. "I don't know what you mean. 'Cray'?"
"No white," said Herr Favre, with a wave of his hand toward the long rows of
houses on both sides of the street. "No white lace window-curtains; all cray
lace window-curtains."
"Oh. I see!" Sheridan laughed indulgently. "You mean 'GRAY.' No, they
ain't, they're white. I never saw any gray ones."
Herr Favre shook his head, much amused. "There are NO white ones," he said.
"There is no white ANYTHING in your city; no white window-curtains, no white
house, no white peeble!" He pointed upward. "Smoke!" Then he sniffed the
air and clasped his nose between forefinger and thumb. "Smoke! Smoke
ef'rywhere. Smoke in your insites." He tapped his chest. "Smoke in your
lunks!"
"Oh! SMOKE!" Sheridan cried with gusto, drawing in a deep breath and
patently finding it delicious. "You BET we got smoke!"
"Exbensif!" said Herr Favre. "Ruins foliage; ruins fabrics. Maybe in summer
it iss not so bad, but I wonder your wifes will bear it."
Sheridan laughed uproariously. "They know it means new spring hats for 'em!"
"They must need many, too!" said the vistior. "New hats, new all things, but
nothing white. In Munchen we could not do it; we are a safing peeble."
"Where's that?"
"In Munchen. You say 'Munich.'"
"Well, I never been to Munich, but I took in the Mediterranean trip, and I
tell you, outside o' some right good scenery, all I saw was mighty dirty and
mighty shiftless and mighty run-down at the heel. Now comin' right down TO
it, Mr. Farver, wouldn't you rather live here in this town than in Munich? I
know you got more enterprise up there than the part of the old country I saw,
and I know YOU'RE a live business man and you're associated with others like
you, but when it comes to LIVIN' in a place, wouldn't you heap rather be here
than over there?"
"For me," said Herr Favre, "no. Here I should not think I was living. It
would be like the miner who goes into the mine to work; nothing else."
"We got a good many good citizens here from your part o' the world. THEY
like it."
"Oh yes." And Herr Favre laughed deprecatingly. "The first generation, they
bring their Germany with them; then, after that, they are Americans, like
you." He tapped his host's big knee genially. "You are patriot; so are
they."
"Well, I reckon you must be a pretty hot little patriot yourself, Mr.
Farver!" Sheridan exclaimed, gaily. "You certainly stand up for your own
town, if you stick to sayin' you'd rather live there than you would here.
Yes, SIR! You sure are some patriot to say THAT--after you've seen our city!
It ain't reasonable in you, but I must say I kind of admire you for it; every
man ought to stick up for his own, even when he sees the other fellow's got
the goods on him. Yet I expect way down deep in your heart, Mr. Farver,
you'd rather live right here than any place else in the world, if you had
your choice. Man alive! this is God's country, Mr. Farver, and a blind man
couldn't help seein' it! You couldn't stand where you do in a business way
and NOT see it. Soho, boy! Here we are. This is the big works, and I'll
show you something now that 'll make your eyes stick out!"
They had arrived at the Pump Works; and for an hour Mr. Favre was personally
conducted and personally instructed by the founder and president, the buzzing
queen bee of those buzzing hives.
"Now I'll take you for a spin in the country," said Sheridan, when at last
they came out to the car again. "We'll take a breezer." But, with his foot
on the step, he paused to hail a neat young man who came out of the office
smiling a greeting. "Hello, young fellow!" Sheridan said, heartily. "On
the job, are you , Jimmie? Ha! They don't catch you OFF of it very often, I
guess, though I do hear you go automobile-ridin' in the country sometimes
with a mighty fine-lookin' girl settin' up beside you!" He roared with
laughter, clapping his son upon the shoulder. "That's all right with me--if
it is with HER! So, Jimmie? Well, when we goin' to move into your new
warehouses? Monday?"
"Sunday, if you want to," said Jim.
"No!" cried his father, delighted. "Don't tell me you're goin' to keep your
word about dates! That's no way to do contractin'! Never heard of a
contractor yet didn't want more time."
"They'll be all ready for you on the minute," said Jim. "I'm going over both
of 'em now, with Links and Sherman, from foundation to roof. I guess they'll
pass inspection, too!"
"Well, then, when you get through with that," said his father, "you go and
take your girl out ridin'. By George! you've earned it! You tell her you
stand high with ME!" He stepped into the car, waving a waggish farewell, and
when the wheels were in motion again, he turned upon his companion a broad
face literally shining with pride. "That's my boy Jimmie!" he said.
"Fine young man, yes," said Herr Favre.
"I got two o' the finest boys," said Sheridan, "I got two o' the finest boys
God ever made, and that's a fact, Mr. Farver! Jim's the oldest, and I tell
you they got to get up the day before if they expect to catch HIM in bed! My
other boy, Roscoe, he's always to the good, too, but Jim's a wizard. You saw
them two new-process warehouses, just about finished? Well, JIM built 'em.
I'll tell you about that, Mr. Farver." And he recited this history,
describing the new process at length; in fact, he had such pride in Jim's
achievement that he told Herr Favre all about it more than once.
"Fine young man, yes," repeated the good Munchner, three-quarters of an hour
later. They were many miles out in the open country by this time.
"He is that!" said Sheridan, adding, as if confidentially: "I got a fine
family, Mr. Farver--fine chuldern. I got a daughter now; you take her and
put her anywhere you please, and she'll shine up with ANY of 'em. There's
culture and refinement and society in this town by the car-load, and here
lately she's been gettin' right in the thick of it--her and my
daughter-in-law, both. I got a mighty fine daughter-in-law, Mr. Farver. I'm
goin' to get you up for a meal with us before you leave town, and you'll
see--and, well, sir, from all I hear the two of 'em been holdin' their own
with the best. Myself, I and the wife never had time for much o' that kind
o' doin's, but it's all right and good for the chuldern; and my daughter
she's always kind of taken to it. I'll read you a poem she wrote when I get
you up at the house. She wrote it in school and took the first prize for
poetry with it. I tell you they don't make 'em any smarter 'n that girl, Mr.
Farver. Yes, sir; take us all round, we're a pretty happy family; yes, sir.
Roscoe hasn't got any chuldern yet, and I haven't ever spoke to him and his
wife about it--it's kind of a delicate matter--but it's about time the wife
and I saw some gran'-chuldern growin' up around us. I certainly do hanker
for about four or five little curly-headed rascals to take on my knee. Boys,
I hope, o' course; that's only natural. Jim's got his eye on a mighty
splendid-lookin' girl; lives right next door to us. I expect you heard me
joshin' him about it back yonder. She's one of the ole blue-bloods here, and
I guess it was a mighty good stock--to raise HER! She's one these girls that
stand tight up and look at you! And pretty? She's the prettiest thing you
ever saw! Good size, too; good health and good sense. Jim 'll be just right
if he gets her. I must say it tickles ME to think o' the way that boy took
ahold o' that job back yonder. Four months and a half! Yes, sir--"
He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain the
stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before they reached
the city on their return, and it was after five when Sheridan allowed Herr
Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where boys were shrieking extra
editions of the evening paper.
"Now, good night, Mr. Farver," said Sheridan, leaning from the car to shake
hands with his guest. "Don't forget I'm goin' to come around and take you up
to--Go on away, boy!"
A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, "Extry! Secon'
Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!"
"Get out!" laughed Sheridan. "Who wants to read about accidents? Get out!"
The boy moved away philosophically. "Extry! Extry!" he shrilled. "Three
men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed! Extry!
Extry!"
"Don't forget, Mr. Farver." Sheridan completed his interrupted farewells.
"I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner. I'll be here for you
about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope you 'njoyed the drive much as
I have. Good night--good night!" He leaned back, speaking to the chauffer.
"Now you can take me around to the Central City barber-shop, boy. I want to
get a shave 'fore I go up home."
"Extry! Extry!" screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds like
bats in the dusk. "Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT! Extry!" It
struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many "Extras"; they printed
"Extras" for all sorts of petty crimes and casualties. It was a mistake, he
decided, critically. Crying "Wolf!" too often wouldn't sell the goods; it
was bad business. The papers would "make more in the long run," he was sure,
if they published an "Extra" only when something of real importance happened.
"Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!" a boy squawked under his nose,
as he descended from the car.
"Go on away!" said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked to see the
youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had thus cried
his wares.
"Say, Yallern," said this second, hoarse with awe, "'n't chew know who that
IS?"
"Who?"
"It's SHERIDAN!"
"Jeest!" cried the first, staring insanely.
At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and
Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head barber. The
barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was their habit to give
him a "reception," his entrance being always the signal for a flurry of
jocular hospitality, followed by general excesses of briskness and gaiety.
But it was not so this evening.
The shop was crowded. Copies of the "Extra" were being read by men waiting,
and by men in the latter stages of treatment. "Extras" lay upon vacant seats
and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened the
door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering of a
firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men turned their
prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of amazing silence in the
shop.
The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau. His
left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic section of
his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung poised above it, the
razor motionless. And then, roused from trance by the door's closing, he
accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence. The barber remembered that there
are no circumstances in life--or just after it-- under which a man does not
need to be shaved.
He stepped forward, profoundly graave. "I be through with this man in the
chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan," he said, in a hushed tone. "Yessuh." And
of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly, "You goin' RESIGN?" he
demanded in a fierce undertone. "You goin' take Mist' Sheridan's coat?" He
sent an angry look round the shop, and the barbers, taking his meaning,
averted their eyes and fell to work, the murmur of subdued conversation
buzzing from chair to chair.
"You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan," said the head barber, gently. "I
fix nice chair fo' you to wait in."
"Never mind," said Sheridan. "Go on get through with your man."
"Yessuh." And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed by
Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not know what
to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious demand for the
meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had been imposed upon him
by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by the odd look every man in the
shop had bent upon him.
Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of the shop,
and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching quickly shifted,
furtive glances here and there. He made this brief survey after wondering if
one of the barbers had died suddenly, that day, or the night before; but
there was no vacancy in either line.
The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of the
"Extra" there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it. The first
of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him: Fatally Faulty.
New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to Death with Inventor. Seven
Escape When Crash Comes. Death Claims--
Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering the print
from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before him, pale and
gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
"I've come for you, father," said Bibbs. "Here's the boy with your coat and
hat. Put them on and come home."
And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the strength
and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what calamity had
befallen him. But he was frightened.
Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop, but as
they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his son's sleeve
with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood face to face.
"What--what--" His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it, he was
so frightened.
"Extry!" screamed a newsboy straight in his face. "Young North Side
millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!"
"Not--JIM!" said Sheridan.
Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
"And YOU come to tell me that?"
Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and in the
first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the unuttered cry of
accusation:
"Why wasn't it you?"
Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three days
later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite in his mind:
the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and Bibbs wondered how many
million times that had happened since men first made a word to name the sons
of one mother. Almost literally he had buried his strong brother, for
Sheridan had gone to pieces when he saw his dead son. He had nothing to help
him meet the shock, neither definite religion nor "philosophy" definite or
indefinite. He could only beat his forehead and beg, over and over, to be
killed with an ax, while his wife was helpless except to entreat him not to
"take on," herself adding a continuous lamentation. Edith, weeping, made
truce with Sibyl and saw to it that the mourning garments were beyond
criticism. Roscoe was dazed, and he shirked, justifying himself curiously be
saying he "never had any experience in such matters." So it was Bibbs, the
shy outsider, who became, during this dreadful little time, the master of the
house; for as strange a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a
death. He met the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time
for the funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and he
selected Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other things.
Jim had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the rites with a
picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs wished to avoid this,
but upon reflection he offered no objection--he divined that the Knights and
their service would be not precisely a consolation, but a satisfaction to his
father. So the Knights led the procession, with their band playing a dirge
part of the long way to the cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in
two lines, plumed hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the
carriages pass between.
"Mighty fine-lookin' men," said Sheridan, brokenly. "They all--all liked
him. He was--" His breath caught in a sob and choked him. "He was--a Grand
Supreme Herald."
Bibbs had divined aright.
"Dust to dust," said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
shivered, execpt Bibbs, when it came to "Dust to dust." Bibbs stood passive,
for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as a familiar
neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long, long time, and even
now he could prophesy no protracted separation between himself and dust. The
machine-shop had brought him very close, and if he had to go back it would
probably bring him closer still; so close--as Dr. Gurney predicted--that no
one would be able to tell the difference between dust and himself. And
Sheridan, if Bibbs read him truly, would be all the more determined to "make
a man" of him, now that there was a man less in the family. To Bibbs's
knowledge, no one and nothing had ever prevented his father from carrying
through his plans, once he had determined upon them; and Sheridan was
incapable of believing that any plan of his would not work out according to
his calculations. His nature unfitted him to accept failure. He had the
gift of terrible persistence, and with unflecked confidence that his way was
the only way he would hold to that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who
understood very well, in his passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a
way which might make, not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for
the thought.
He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The truth about
Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had so thoroughly formed
the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings that no doubt he had
forgotten--by this time--where he had put some of them, especially those
which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his feelings about his father
where they could not be found. He was strange to his father, but his father
was not strange to him. He knew that Sheridan's plans were conceived in the
stubborn belief that they would bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself;
and whatever the result was to be, the son had no bitterness. Far otherwise,
for as he looked at the big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost
unbearable pity laid hands upon Bibbs's throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his
lip quivering; Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse
against her husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.
It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and Bibbs
nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line of waiting
carriages. Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay and see the grave filled; the
rest were to go. The groups began to move away over the turf; wheels creaked
on the graveled drive; and one by one the carriages filled and departed, the
horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he
knew that his father kept looking back as he went toward the carriage, and
that was a thing he did not want to see. But after a little while there were
no sounds of wheels or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that
every one had gone. A coupe had been left for him, the driver dozing
patiently.
The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it, and
Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking
thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock
beneath the darkening November sky. "It's too bad!" he half whispered, his
lips forming the words--and his meaning was that it was too bad that the
strong brother had been the one to go. For this was his last thought before
he walked to the coupe and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all alone, on the
other side of the drive.
She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope
where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric
and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards: urn-crowned
columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and shop-carved
children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting--in unthought
pathos--their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such a background,
Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long and slender,
and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the undertaker's coupe out
of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the box and the shaggy horses
standing patiently in attitudes without hope and without regret. But for
Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting --she was a vivid, living
creature of a beautiful world. And a graveyard is not the place for people
to look charming.
She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and confused
than Bibbs. In "Edith's" poem he had declared his intention of hiding his
heart "among the stars"; and in his boyhood one day he had successfully
hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade of other boys or of
girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were only a few
fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All his life Bibbs
had kept himself to himself--he was but a shy onlooker in the world.
Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the unexpected lady before him
had causes other than his shyness and her unexpectedness. For Mary Vertrees
had been a shining figure in the little world of late given to the view of
this humble and elusive outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts
beating faster than those of the actors in the spectacle. Thus with Bibbs
now. He started and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness,
his fingers fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.
"Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, "I'm afraid you'll have to take me home with you.
I--" She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.
"Why--why--yes," Bibbs stammered. "I'll--I'll be de--Won't you get in?"
In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then Mary
withour more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing the door.
"You're very kind," she said, somewhat breathlessly. "I should have had to
walk, and it's beginning to get dark. It's three miles, I think."
"Yes," said Bibbs. "It--it is beginning to get dark. I--I noticed that."
"I ought to tell you--I--" Mary began, confusedly. She bit her lip, sat
silent a moment, then spoke with composure. "It must seem odd, my--"
"No, no!" Bibbs protested, earnestly. "Not in the--in the least."
"It does, though," said Mary. "I had not intended to come to the cemetery,
Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came and whispered to
me that 'the family wished me to'--I think your sister sent him. So I came.
But when we reached here I--oh, I felt that perhaps I--"
Bibbs nodded gravely. "Yes, yes," he murmured.
"I got out on the opposite side of the carriage," she continued. "I mean
opposite from--from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in the
other direction; and I didn't realize how little time--it takes. From where
I was I couldn't see the carriages leaving--at least I didn't notice them.
So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here. I didn't know the
other people in the carriage I came in, and of course they didn't think to
wait for me. That's why--"
"Yes," said Bibbs, "I--" And that seemed all he had to say just then.
Mary looked out through the dusty window. "I think we'd better be going
home, if you please," she said.
"Yes," Bibbs agreed, not moving. "It will be dark before we get there."
She gave him a quick little glance. "I think you must be very tired, Mr.
Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be," she said, gently. "If you'll
let me, I'll--" And without explaining her purpose she opened the door on
her side of the coupe and leaned out.
Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
"Driver!" she called, in her clear voice, loudly. "Driver! We'd like to
start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan's,
please." The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs once
more. "I noticed that he was asleep when we got in," she said. "I suppose
they have a great deal of night work."
Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice. "I've
never been able to apologize quickly," he said, with his accustomed slowness,
"because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe whipped me once, when we
were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil. It took me so long to tell him
it was an accident, he finished before I did."
Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle voice
or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state of their
vehicle was an "accident." She had formed a casual impression of him, not
without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was unlike any of her
cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she saw a picture he had
not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy hammering a smaller, sickly
boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not that picture alone; others flashed
before her. Instantaneously she had a glimpse of Bibbs's life and into his
life. She had a queer feeling, new to her experience, of knowing him
instantly. It startled her a litttle; and then, with some surprise, she
realized that she was glad he had sat so long, after getting into the coupe,
before he noticed that it had not started. What she did not realize,
however, was that she had made no response to his apology, and they passed
out of the cemetery gates, neither having spoken again.
Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was silence.
The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a rich presence
for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the two could see the
other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither had any sense of being
alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling presently on paved streeets;
there were the sounds, as from a distance, of the plod-plod of the horses;
and sometimes the driver became audible, coughing asthmatically, or saying,
"You, JOE!" with a spiritless flap of the whip upon an unresponsive back.
Oblongs of light from the lamps at street-corners came swimming into the
interior of the coupe and, thinning rapidly to lances, passed utterly,
leaving greater darkness. And yet neither of these two last attendants at
Jim Sheridan's funeral broke the silence.
It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it--too late. Abruptly she
realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her
companion and not talking to him. "Mr. Sheridan," she began, not knowing
what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized the
queerness of this drive--"Mr. Sheridan, I--"
The coupe stopped. "You, JOE!" said the driver, reproachfully, and climbed
down and opened the door.
"What's the trouble?" Bibbs inquired.
"Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan's, sir."
Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn't be true and that it mustn't
be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
"What?" Bibbs demanded.
"We're there, sir," said the driver, sympathetically. "Next house north of
Mr. Sheridan's."
Bibbs descended to the curb. "Why, yes," he said. "Yes, you seem to be
right." And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front windows of
Mr. Vertrees's house Mary got out, unassisted.
"Let me help you," said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she was
several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
"Oh no," she murmured. "I think I can--" She meant that she could get out
of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already accomplished
this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
"You, JOE!" cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he rumbled
away at his team's best pace--a snail's.
"Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan," said Mary, stiffly. She did
not offer her hand. "Good night."
"Good night," Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked beside
her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran. Realization
of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her, beginning to shock her;
she stepped aside from the light that fell through the glass panels of the
door and withheld her hand as it touched the old-fashioned bell-handle.
"I'm quite safe, thank you," she said, with a little emphasis. "Good night."
"Good night," said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the street he
looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out from
the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
"Where are your eyes, Bibbs?" demanded Roscoe. "Sleep-walking, as usual?"
But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. "Come over to our house for a little
while, Bibbs," she urged. "I want to--"
"No, I'd better--"
"Yes. I want you to. Your father's gone to bed, and they're all quiet over
there--all worn out. Just come for a minute."
He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with real
feeling: "'All worn out!' Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And I don't
wonder; you've done every bit of the work of it. You mustn't get down sick
again. I'm going to make you take a little brandy."
He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and was
grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the decanters
on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much heavier libation
in a larger glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl leaned against the
sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and recalling the names of the
donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed Bibbs to remain longer when he
rose to go, and then, as he persisted, she went with him to the front door.
He opened it, and she said:
"Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses' house when we met you. How
did you happen to be there?"
"I had only been to the door," he said. "Good night, Sibyl."
"Wait," she insisted. "We saw you coming out."
"I wasn't," he explained, moving to depart. "I'd just brought Miss Vertrees
home."
"What?" she cried.
"Yes," he said, and stepped out upon the porch, "that was it. Good night,
Sibyl."
"Wait!" she said, following him across the threshold. "How did that happen?
I thought you were going to wait while those men filled the-- the--" She
paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
"I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there," he said, reluctantly. "She had
walked away for a while and didn't notice that the carriages were leaving.
When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one left."
She regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow breathlessness.
"And she drove home from Jim's funeral--with you!"
Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually over
her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the door shut
behind her.
Bibbs went home pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed. The
laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it seemed to
him that she had only affected to effort to suppress it and that she wished
it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had she wished to
impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement? He found no answer,
but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he wished that he had not
encountered her.
At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering about the
house, several mournfully admiring the "Bay of Naples," and others occupied
with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for trains. Edith and her
mother had retired to some upper fastness, but Bibbs interviewed Jackson and
had the various groups of relatives summoned to the dining-room for food.
One great-uncle, old Gideon Sheridan from Boonville, could not be found, and
Bibbs went in search of him. He ransacked the house, discovering the missing
antique at last by accident. Passing his father's closed door on tiptoe,
Bibbs heard a murmurous sound, and paused to listen. The sound proved to be
a quavering and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
"The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that; we
got to remember that! I'm a-gittin' along, James; I'm a-gittin' along, and
I've seen a-many of 'em go--two daughters and a son the Lord give me, and He
has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away!
Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the Shuhite says,
'He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people, nor any remaining in
his dwellings.' Bildad the Shuhite--"
Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in his
underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging backward
and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard and gazing at
the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but Uncle Gideon paid
no attention.
"Bibdad the Shuhite spake and his says, 'If thy children have sinned against
Him and He have cast them away--"
There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows rattled.
The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but Uncle Gideon
leaped from his chair. "My God!" he cried. "What's that?"
There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall. Bibbs
went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down, discovered the
source of the distubance. Gideon's grandson, a boy of fourteen, had brought
his camera to the funeral and was taking "flash-lights" of the Moor. Uncle
Gideon, reassured by Bibbs's explanation, would have returned to finish his
quotation from Bildad the Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little
argument persuaded him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed,
after closing the door of his father's room.
He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing several
attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs; and it was a
relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile was waiting to
convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train. They were the last
to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing to his own room.
He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to the
window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where Mary Vertrees
lived. Then he open his trunk, took therefrom a small note-book half filled
with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
Laughter after a funeral. In this reaction people will laugh at
anything and at nothing. The band plays a dirge on the way to the cemetery,
but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are out of hearing, it
strikes up, "Darktown is Out To-night." That is natural-- but there are women
whose laughter is like the whirring of whips. Why is it that certain kinds
of laughter seem to spoil something hidden away from the laughers? If they
do not know of it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it?
Yet it does. Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones. It is not
out of place anywhere. But a woman who has been betrothed to a man would not
look beautiful at his funeral. A woman might look beautiful, though, at the
funeral of a man whom she had known and liked. And in that case, too, she
would probably not want to talk if she drove home from the cemetery with his
brother: nor would she want the brother to talk. Silence is usually either
stupid or timid. But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
drawls so slowly, when he doesn't stammer, that nobody has time to listen to
him, silence is advisable. Nevertheless, too much silence is open to
suspicion. It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum. It may be dignity,
or it may be false teeth. Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become
perceptible in a small inclosure, such as a closed carriage. The ghost of
gasoline rising from a lady's glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside
her than all the scents of Arcady in spring. It depends on the lady--but
there ARE! Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may be three
feet. When it is three feet you have not time to say a great deal before you
reach the end of it. Still, it may be that one should begin to speak. No one
could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of the people that are
in this world. There are some so wonderful you do not understand how the
dead COULD die. How could they let themselves? A falling building does
not care who falls with it. It does not choose who shall be upon its roof
and who shall not. Silence CAN be golden? Yes. But perhaps if a woman
of the world should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the
length of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort! Even if she
thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had heard from others that he
was a disappointment to his own people, even if she had seen for herself that
he was a useless and irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him
at least to speak--she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
sounds, if he only barked. If he did not even try, but sat every step of the
way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a frozen fish. And she
might be right. She might be right if she thought him about as pleasant a
companion as--as Bildad the Shuhite!
Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a period
of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown and
slippers, and went softly out into the hall--to his father's door. Upon the
floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the evening, to
place upon a table in Sheridan's room--but the food was untouched. Bibbs
stood listening outside the door for several minutes. There came no sound
from within, and he went back to his own room and to bed.
In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his
experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little pause
--sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is a curious
half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person experiencing it may
not know for that instant his own name or age or sex, he may be acutely
conscious of depression or elation. It is the moment, as we say, before we
"remember"; and for the first time in Bibbs's life it came to him bringing a
vague happiness. He woke to a sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a
boy waking to a birthday. But when the next moment brought him his memory,
he found nothing that could explain his exhilaration. On the contrary, under
the circumstances it seemed grotesquely unwarranted. However, it was a brief
visitation and was gone before he had finished dressing. It left a little
trail, the pleased recollection of it and the puzzle of it, which remained
unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the morning is not usually the
result of a drive home from a funeral. No wonder the sequence evaded Bibbs
Sheridan!
His father had gone when he came down-stairs. "Went on down to 's office,
jes' same," Jackson informed him. "Came sat breakfas'-table, all by 'mself;
eat nothin'. George bring nice breakfas', but he di'n' eat a thing. Yessuh,
went on down-town, jes' same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I reckon putty much
ev'y-thing goin' go on same as it yoosta do."
It struck Bibbs that Jackson was right. The day passed as other days had
passed. Mrs. Sheridan and Edith were in black, and Mrs. Sheridan cried a
little, now and then, but no other external difference was to be seen. Edith
was quiet, but not noticeably depressed, and at lunch proved herself able to
argue with her mother upon the propriety of receiving calls in the earliest
stages of "mourning." Lunch was as usual--for Jim and his father had always
lunched down-town--and the afternoon was as usual. Bibbs went for his drive,
and his mother went with him, as she sometimes did when the weather was
pleasant. Altogether, the usualness of things was rather startling to Bibbs.
During the drive Mrs. Sheridan talked fragmentarily of Jim's childhood. "But
you wouldn't remember about that," she said, after narrating an episode.
"You were too little. He was always a good boy, just like that. And he'd
save whatever papa gave him, and put it in the bank. I reckon it 'll just
about kill your father to put somebody in his place as president of the
Realty Company, Bibbs. I know he can't move Roscoe over; he told me last
week he'd already put as much on Roscoe as any one man could handle and not
go crazy. Oh, it's a pity--" She stopped to wipe her eyes. "It's a pity
you didn't run more with Jim, Bibbs, and kind o' pick up his ways. Think
what it'd meant to papa now! You never did run with either Roscoe or Jim any,
even before you got sick. Of course, you were younger; but it always DID
seem queer--and you three bein' brothers like that. I don't believe I ever
saw you and Jim sit down together for a good talk in my life."
"Mother, I've been away so long," Bibbs returned, gently. "And since I came
home I--"
"Oh, I ain't reproachin' you, Bibbs," she said. "Jim ain't been home much of
an evening since you got back--what with his work and callin' and goin' to
the theater and places, and often not even at the house for dinner. Right
the evening before he got hurt he had his dinner at some miser'ble rest'rant
down by the Pump Works, he was so set on overseein' the night work and
gettin' everything finished up right to the minute he told papa he would. I
reckon you might 'a' put in more time with Jim if there'd been more
opportunity, Bibbs. I expect you feel almost as if you scarcely really knew
him right well."
"I suppose I really didn't, mother. He was busy, you see, and I hadn't much
to say about the things that interested him, because I don't know much about
them."
"It's a pity! Oh, it's a pity!" she moaned. "And you'll have to learn to
know about 'em NOW, Bibbs! I haven't said much to you, because I felt it was
all between your father and you, but I honestly do believe it will just kill
him if he has to have any more trouble on top of all this! You mustn't LET
him, Bibbs--you mustn't! You don't know how he's grieved over you, and now
he can't stand any more--he just can't! Whatever he says for you to do, you
DO it, Bibbs, you DO it! I want you to promise me you will."
"I would if I could," he said, sorrowfully.
"No, no! Why can't you?" she cried, clutching his arm. "He wants you to go
back to the machine-shop and--"
"And--'like it!" said Bibbs.
"Yes, that's it--to go in a cheerful spirit. Dr. Gurney said it wouldn't
hurt you if you went in a cheerful spirit--the doctor said that himself,
Bibbs. So why can't you do it? Can't you do that much for your father? You
ought to think what he's done for YOU. You got a beautiful house to live in;
you got automobiles to ride in; you got fur coats and warm clothes; you been
taken care of all your life. And you don't KNOW how he worked for the money
to give all these things to you! You don't DREAM what he had to go through
and what he risked when we were startin' out in life; and you never WILL
know! And now this blow has fallen on him out of a clear sky, and you make
it out to be a hardship to do like he wants you to! And all on earth he asks
is for you to go back to the work in a cheerful spirit, so it won't hurt you!
That's all he asks. Look, Bibbs, we're gettin' back near home, but before we
get there I want you to promise me that you'll do what he asks you to.
Promise me!"
In her earnestness she cleared away her black veil that she might see him
better, and it blew out on the smoky wind. He readjusted it for her before
he spoke.
"I'll go back in as cheerful a spirit as I can, mother," he said.
"There!" she exclaimed, satisfied. "That's a good boy! That's all I wanted
you to say."
"Don't give me any credit," he said, ruefully. "There isn't anything else
for me to do."
"Now, don't begin talkin' THAT way!"
"No, no," he soothed her. "We'll have to begin to make the spirit a cheerful
one. We may--" They were turning into their own driveway as he spoke, and
he glanced at the old house next door. Mary Vertrees was visible in the
twilight, standing upon the front steps, bareheaded, the door open behind
her. She bowed gravely.
"'We may'--what?" asked Mrs. Sheridan, with a slight impatience.
"What is it, mother?"
"You said, 'We may,' and didn't finish what you were sayin'."
"Did I?" said Bibbs, blankly. "Well, what WERE we saying?"
"Of all the queer boys!" she cried. "You always were. Always! You haven't
forgot what you just promised me, have you?"
"No," he answered, as the car stopped. "No, the spirit will be as cheerful
as the flesh will let it, mother. It won't do to behave like--"
His voice was low, and in her movement to descend from the car she failed to
here his final words.
"Behave like who, Bibbs?"
"Nothing."
But she was fretful in her grief. "You said it wouldn't do to behave like
SOMEBODY. Behave like WHO?"
"It was just nonsense," he explained, turning to go in. "An obscure person I
don't think much of lately."
"Behave like WHO?" she repeated, and upon his yielding to her petulant
insistence, she made up her mind that the only thing to do was to tell Dr.
Gurney about it.
"Like Bildad the Shuhite!" was what Bibbs said.
The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was Sheridan's
custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the library, while his
wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old habit) or allowed herself to be
repeatedly baffled by one of the simpler forms of solitaire. To-night she
did neither, but sat in her customary chair, gazing at the fire, while
Sheridan let the unfolded paper rest upon his lap, though now and then he
lifted it, as if to read, and let it fall back upon his knees again. Bibbs
came in noiselessly and sat in a corner, doing nothing; and from a
"reception-room" across the hall an indistinct vocal murmur became just
audible at intervals. Once, when this murmur grew louder, under stress of
some irrepressible merriment, Edith's voice could be heard--"Bobby, aren't
you awful!" and Sheridan glanced across at his wife appealingly.
She rose at once and went into the "reception-room"; there was a flurry of
whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith and her suitor
changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned to her
chair in the library.
"They won't bother you any more, papa," she said, in a comforting voice.
"She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this evening, and I
said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she said she'd already told
him he could." She paused, then added, rather guiltily: "I got kind of a
notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much as he used to. Maybe-- maybe you
better ask Roscoe, papa." And as Sheridan nodded solemnly, she concluded, in
haste: "Don't say I said to. I might be wrong about it, anyway."
He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs. Sheridan
broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that brought tears.
"That Miss Vertrees was a good girl," she said. "SHE was all right."
Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of thought,
for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
"Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?" she faltered.
"Did you--
He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair. "I
fixed it," he said, in a husky voice. "I moved Cantwell up, and put Johnston
in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among the four men with
salaries high enough to take it." He went to her, put his hand upon her
shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath. "It's my bedtime,
mamma; I'm goin' up." He dropped the hand from her shoulder and moved slowly
away, but when he reached the door he stopped and spoke again, without
turning to look at her. "The Realty Company 'll go right on just the same,"
he said. "It's like--it's like sand, mamma. It puts me in mind of chuldern
playin' in a sand-pile. One of 'em sticks his finger in the sand and makes a
hole, and another of 'em 'll pat the place with his hand, and all the little
grains of sand run in and fill it up and settle against one another; and
then, right away it's flat on top again, and you can't tell there ever was a
hole there. The Realty Company 'll go on all right, mamma. There ain't
anything anywhere, I reckon, that wouldn't go right on--just the same."
And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread upon
the stairs.
Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son. "It's
so forlong," she said, chokingly. "That's the first time he spoke since he
came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a' hurt him to hear Edith
laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to let him come, right the very
first evening this way; she'd oughtn't to done it! She just seems to lose
her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what Sibyl said the other
day, and--and you heard what--what--"
"What Edith said to Sibyl?" Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
"We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!" she wailed. "Oh, it looks as if
movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares me!"
She put both her hands over her face. "Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you only wasn't
so QUEER! If you could only been a kind of dependable son! I don't know
what we're all comin' to!" And, weeping, she followed her husband.
Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man who
has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called "the
smoking-room"--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up in no
welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to a less
conspicuous adjacency.
"Good evening," said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a leather
easy-chair near them.
"What is it?" asked Edith, plainly astonished.
"Nothing," he returned, smiling.
She frowned. "Did you want something?" she asked.
"Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I sha'n't be
going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be anybody left for me
to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn."
"'CHAT with'!" she echoed, incredulously.
"I can talk about almost anything," said Bibbs with an air of genial
politeness. "It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about business --if
that's what you happened to be talking about. But you aren't in business,
are you, Mr. Lamhorn.
"Not now," returned Lamhorn, shortly.
"I'm not, either," said Bibbs. "It was getting cloudier than usual, I
noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain
to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised."
He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of which had
now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he sat expectantly,
looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if implying that it was
their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with a mixture of astonishment
and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was obviously disturbed, though Bibbs
had been as considerate as possible in presenting the weather as a topic.
Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in his mind at any time except
"personalities"--he could talk about people and he could make love. Bibbs,
wishing to be courteous, offered the weather.
Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude in the
leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for the
rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would move, and
Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.
"I was just going," he said, rising.
"Oh NO!" Edith cried, sharply.
"Yes. Good night! I think I--"
"Too bad," said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor, while
Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She heard Bibbs
offering to "help" Lamhorn with his overcoat and the latter rather curtly
declining assistance, these episodes of departure being followed by the
closing of the outer door. She ran into the hall.
"What's the matter with you?" she cried, furiously. "What do you MEAN? How
did you dare come in there when you knew--"
Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up the
stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs came up, a
few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
"Oh, Bibbs," she said, shaking her head woefully, "you'd oughtn't to distress
your sister! She says you drove that young man right out of the house.
You'd ought to been more considerate."
Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's naive
shadow motionless across its threshold. "Yes," he said. "He doesn't appear
to much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse of one."
Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: "You call yourself one?"
"No, no," he answered. "I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't claim --"
But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
"There," he said, sighing. "That's almost the first time in my life I ever
tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly in what I
tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!"
"You hurt her feelin's," she groaned. "You must 'a' gone at it too rough,
Bibbs."
He looked upon her wanly. "That's my trouble, mother," he murmured. "I'm a
plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man."
For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. "Hush your nonsense!"
she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile appearing. "You go
to bed."
He kissed her and obeyed.
Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-table.
"You mustn't do that under a misapprehension," he warned her, when they were
alone in the dining-room.
"Do what under a what?" she asked.
"Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'" he told
her, gravely. "I have a prejudice against that young man."
She laughed. "I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
prejudices against!" In mockery she adopted the manner of one who implores.
"Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR influence with papa
against him!" And she laughed louder.
"Listen," he said, with peculiar earnestness. "I'll tell you now,
because--because I've decided I'm one of the family." And then, as if the
earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further, he continued, in his
usual tone, "I'm drunk with power, Edith."
"What do you want to tell me?" she damanded, brusquely.
"Lamhorn made love to Sibyl," he said.
Edith hooted. "SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat between
us the other day when I the same of accused her of it, and said something
like that to you afterward--"
"No," he said, gravely. "I KNOW."
"How?"
"I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
Lamhorn--"
Edith screamed with laughter. "You were with ROSCOE--and you heard Lamhorn
making love to Sibyl!"
"No. I heard them quarreling."
"You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!" she cried. "You say he made love to her
because you heard them quarreling!"
"That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by the way
they quarrel."
"You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?"
"Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!--it's always
certain--"
Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. "You ought to
know. You've had so much experience, yourself!"
"I haven't any, Edith," he said. "My life has been about as exciting as an
incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at things."
"Well, then," she said, "if you look out through the glass you must know what
effect such stuff would have upon ME!" She rose, visibly agitated. "What if
it WAS true?" she dmanded, bitterly. "What if it was true a hundred times
over? You sit there with your silly face half ready to giggle and half ready
to sniffle, and tell me stories like that, about Sibyl picking on Bobby
Lamhorn and worrying him to death, and you think it matters to ME? What if I
already KNEW all about their 'quarreling'? What if I understood WHY she--"
She broke off with a violent gesture, a sweep of her arm extended at full
length, as if she hurled something to the ground. "Do you think a girl that
really cared for a man would pay any attention to THAT? Or to YOU, Bibbs
Sheridan!"
He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady. She
met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she had spoken
and he meant to agree with what she said.
"Ah, yes," he said. "I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm sorry,
Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see until you see
for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out of it--especially
me!"
"That's sensible," she responded, curtly. "You're most surprising of all
when you're sensible, Bibbs."
"Yes," he sighed. "I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith."
Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and George
appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting there, he
announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch upon the
shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely
glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over fifty,
in spite of Sheridan's habitual "ole Doc Gurney." He was gray, however,
almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
"Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs," he said, not rising.
"Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here in front of me--between
me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you."
"You mean you're too sleepy to move," returned Bibbs, complying. "I think
you'll notice that I'm getting worse."
"Taken on about twelve pounds," said Gurney. "Thirteen, maybe."
"Twelve."
"Well, it won't do." The doctor rubbed his eyelids. "You're so much better
I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just where you are.
You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down-- all the way. I suppose
you know why your father wants to know."
Bibbs nodded. "Machine-shop."
"Still hate it?"
Bibbs nodded again.
"Don't blame you!" the doctor grunted. "Yes, I expect it 'll make a lump in
your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you've got the
old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?"
"What's the use?" Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. "My kind of writing!"
"Yes," the doctor agreed. "I suppose it you broke away and lived on roots
and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention of editors'
you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred dollars a
year by the time you're fifty."
"That's about it," Bibbs murmured.
"Of course I know what you want to do," said Gurney, drowsily. "You don't
hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noice and jar and
dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.' You'd like to go
somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask on a balcony,
smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow fat on it and have a
delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I can lie
like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he'll lose another of his boys
if you don't go to Sicily?"
"I don't want to go to Sicily," said Bibbs. "I want to stay right here."
The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his patient a
sharp glance. "It's a risk," he said. "I think we'll find you're so much
better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick. Something's got hold of
you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical as you used to be. But I warn
you: I think the shop will knock you just as it did before, and perhaps even
harder, Bibbs."
He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. "Well, when we go over you
this afternoon what are we going to say about it?"
"Tell him I'm ready," said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
"Oh no," Gurney laughed. "Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We'll see.
Don't forget I said to walk down."
And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor informed
Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing. "Here's a
new 'situation' for a one-act farce," he said, gloomily, to his next patient
when Bibbs had gone. "Doctor tells a man he's well, and that's his death
sentence, likely. Dam' funny world!"
Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon this
point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any point, so
discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a dingy afternoon, and
the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight, but to his nostrils, though
most of the pedestrians were so saturated with the smell they could no longer
detect it. Nearly all of them walked hurriedly, too intent upon their
destinations to be more than half aware of the wayside; they wore the
expressions of people under a vague yet constant strain. They were all
lightly powdered, inside and out, with fine dust and grit from the hard-paved
streets, and they were unaware of that also. They did not even notice that
they saw the smoke, though the thickened air was like a shrouding mist. And
when Bibbs passed the new "Sheridan Apartments," now almost completed, he
observed that the marble of the vestibule was already streaky with soot, like
his gloves, which were new.
That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way from
his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought which continued
till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by a street parallel
to that on which the New House fronted, and in his preoccupation he walked a
block farther than he intended, so that, having crossed to his own street, he
approached the New House from the north, and as he came to the corner of Mr.
Vertrees's lot Mr. Vertrees's daughter emerged from the front door and walked
thoughtfully down the path to the old picket gate. She was unconscious of
the approach of the pedestrian from the north, and did not see him until she
had opened the gate and he was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as
she saw him she started visibly. And if this thing had happened to Robert
Lamhorn, he would have had a thought far beyond the horizon of faint-hearted
Bibbs's thoughts. Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his thought. He would
have said:
"You jumped because you were thinking of me!"
Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand closing
the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction Bibbs was
walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they should walk
together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had paused in his slow
stride, and there elapsed an instant before either spoke or moved--it was no
longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each to seem to say, by look and
attitude, "Why, it's YOU!"
Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's name as
if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to a stop
simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began to walk on
together he contrived to find his voice.
"I--I--hate a frozen fish myself," he said. "I think three miles was too
long for you to put up with one."
"Good gracious!" she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. "Mr. Sheridan, you're lovely
to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say it's turning
cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn't know each other
well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for me to have made
you bring me home, and after I went into the house I decided I should have
walked. Besides, it wasn't three miles to the car-line. I never thought of
it!"
"No," said Bibbs, earnestly. "I didn't, either. I might have said something
if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though; I must remember that,
and not worry about it later. I think I'm talking, though it doesn't sound
intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I ever met you again I'd
turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what it said. I--"
She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one which
Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, "a cripple would crawl
five miles to hear." And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs's father's son
took heart to forget some of his trepidation. "I'll be any kind of idiot,"
he said, "if you'll laugh at me some more. It won't be difficult for me."
She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary
perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated
description of him to her mother just after she had seen him for the first
time. "Rather tragic and altogether impossible." It seemed to her now that
she must have been blind.
They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of one of
them.
"I'll keep on talking," Bibbs continued, cheerfully, "and you keep on
laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I'm
making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered by my
bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and that makes me
bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm afraid of what I'll
think of myself later if I don't keep talking--talking now, I mean --and I'm
afraid of what I'll think of myself if I do. And besides these two things,
I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't remember talking as much as this more than
once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always in me to do it, though,
the first time I met any one who didn't know me well enough not to listen."
"But you're not really talking to me," said Mary. "You're just thinking
aloud."
"No," he returned, gravely. "I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making vocal
sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the subject of
what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change it, but I don't know
how. I haven't any experience in talking, and I don't know how to manage
it."
"You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan," she said. "Not
even if you really talked about yourself." She turned her face toward him as
she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was pathetically amazed by the
look she gave him. It was a glowing look, warmly friendly and understanding,
and, what almost shocked him, it was an eagerly interested look. Bibbs was
not accustomed to anything like that.
"I--you--I--I'm--" he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks grew
almost vivid.
She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came into
his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how "queer"
many people might think him; but he did not seem "queer" to Mary Vertrees; he
seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
He waited, and became coherent. "YOU say something now," he said. "I don't
even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny man's
solo! You--"
"No," she interrupted. "I'd rather play your accompaniment."
"I'll stop and listen to it, then."
"Perhaps--" she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a gesture with
her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were approaching. "Do
you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?"
"I suppose I could," he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her.
"But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I'd better say
anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason I don't
want to see the church is that I have a feeling it's where you're going, and
where I'll be sent back."
She shook her head in cheery negation. "Not unless you want to be. Would
you like to come with me?"
"Why--why--yes," he said. "Anywhere!" And again it was apparent that he
spoke in simple truthfulness.
"Then come--if you care for organ music. The organist is an old friend of
mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man. He had a degree
from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up everything for
music. That's he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like Beethoven, doesn't
he? I think he knows that, perhaps, and enjoys it a little. I hope so."
"Yes," said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. "I think Beethoven
would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people."
"I haven't kept you?" Mary said to the organist.
"No, no," he answered, heartily. "I would not mind so only you should shooer
come!"
"This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me."
The organist looked bluntly surprised. "Iss that SO?" he exclaimed. "Well,
I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink. He iss
musician himself, then, of course."
"No," said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. "I--I played
the--I tried to play--" Fortunately he checked himself; he had been about to
offer the information that he had failed to master the jews'-harp in his
boyhood. "No, I'm not a musician," he contented himself with saying.
"What?" Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. "Young man, you are fortunate! I
play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You are
the first one EVER!"
They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist finished
speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary Vertrees in a dazed way
that was not of her preceiving; for, though she stopped as he did, her gaze
followed the organist, who was walking away from them toward the front of the
church, shaking his white Beethovian mane roguishly.
"It's false pretenses on my part," Bibbs said. "You mean to be kind to the
sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going back to work in
a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to play, hadn't I?"
"No," said Mary, beginning to walk forward. "Not unless you don't like great
music."
He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of pipes
ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns; they covered
all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's figure, reaching its high
perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian magician ludicrously daring the
attempt to conrol a monster certain to overwhelm him.
"This afternoon some Handel!" he turned to shout.
Mary nodded. "Will you like that?" she asked Bibbs.
"I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know anything
about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If I knew enough to
pretend, I would."
"No," said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, "you wouldn't."
She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air; the
hugh empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people listening
filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with it. The two sat
intensely still, the great sound all round about them, while the church grew
dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a tiny star of light. His white
head moved from side to side beneath it rhythmically, or lunged and recovered
with the fierceness of a duelist thrusting, but he was magnificently the
master of his giant, and it sang to his magic as he bade it.
Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was wholly
unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life. Unlike the tale,
it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought him to the enchanted cave,
and that--for Bibbs--was what made its magic dazing. It seemed to him a
long, long time since he had been walking home drearily from Dr. Gurney's
office; it seemed to him that he had set out upon a happy journey since then,
and that he had reached another planet, where Mary Vertrees and he sat alone
together listening to a vast choiring of invisible soldiers and holy angels.
There were armies of voices about them singing praise and thanksgiving; and
yet they were alone. It was incredible that the walls of the church were
not the boundaries of the universe, to remain so for ever; incredible that
there was a smoky street just yonder, where housemaids were bringing in
evening papers from front steps and where children were taking their last
spins on roller-skates before being haled indoors for dinner.
He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew it
could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to her, saying:
"You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know the dream that these
sounds bring to me?" And it seemed to him as though she answered
continually: "I hear! I hear that strain, and I hear the new one that you
are hearing now. I know the dream that these sounds bring to you. Yes, yes,
I hear it all! We hear--together!"
And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow except the
vague planes of the windows and the organist's light, with the white head
moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness that the girl sitting beside
him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see her as plainly as ever in the
darkness, though he did not look at her. And all the mighty chanting of the
organ's multitudinous voices that afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be chorusing
of her and interpreting her, singing her thoughts and singing for him the
world of humble gratitude that was in his heart because she was so kind to
him. It all meant Mary.
But when she asked him what it meant,on their homeward way, he was silent.
They had come a few paces from the church without speaking, walking slowly.
"I'll tell you what it meant to me," she said, as he did not immediately
reply. "Almost any music of Handel's always means one thing above all others
to me: courage! That's it. It makes cowardice of whining seem so
infinitesimal--it makes MOST things in our hustling little lives seem
infinitesimal."
"Yes," he said. "It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering every way
to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town to-morrow. And yet
there isn't anything down there worth getting to. They're like servants
drudging to keep the house going, and believing the drudgery itself is the
great thing. They make so much noise and fuss and dirt they forget that the
house was meant to live in. The housework has to be done, but the people who
do it have been so overpaid that they're confused and worship the housework.
They're overpaid, and yet, poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken
can't have. Of course, when the world gets to paying its wages sensibly that
will be different."
"Do you mean 'communism'?" she asked, and she made their slow pace a little
slower--they had only three blocks to go.
"Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very sensible
now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and can't!
'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's fair for all
the strong runners to start from the same mark and give the weak ones a fair
distance ahead, so that all can run something like even on the stretch. And
wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if they could all cross the winning-line
together? Who really enjoys beating anybody--if he sees the beaten man's
face? The only way we can enjoy getting ahead of other people nowadays is by
forgetting what the other people feel. And that," he added, "is nothing of
what the music meant to me. You see, if I keep talking about what it didn't
mean I can keep from telling you what it did mean."
"Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?" she asked. "Triumph and
praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me."
"Yes, they were all there," Bibbs said. "I don't know the name of what he
played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man that makes the
music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and the name he puts to
it can't make much difference--except to himself and people very much like
him, I suppose."
"I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that."
"I image music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of the
people who hear it," Bibbs went on, musingly, "according to their own natures
as much as according to the music itself. The musician might compose
something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy Grail, and some
people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting, and some would think of
how good they were themselves, and a boy might think of himself at the head
of a solemn procession, carrying a banner and riding a white horse. And
then, if there were some jubilant passages in the music, he'd think of a
circus."
They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did not open it.
Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her kindnesses--not to be
prompt in leaving him.
"After all," she said, "you didn't tell me whether you liked it."
"No. I didn't need to."
"No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said you were
trying to keep from telling me what it did mean."
"I can't keep from telling it any longer," he said. "The music meant to
me--it meant the kindness of--of you."
"Kindness? How?"
"You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--"
"No," she said, decidedly. "I thought perhaps you'd like to hear Dr. Kraft
play. And you did."
"It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were playing."
Mary laughed. "I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin--Grieg-- Chaminade. You
wouldn't listen!"
Bibbs drew a deep breath. "I'm frightened again," he said, in an unsteady
voice. "I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--" He paused, and the
words sank to a murmur.
"Oh, if you want ME to play for you!" she said. "Yes, gladly. It will be
merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play like a hundred
thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when any one's willing to
listen, and if you--" She stopped, checked by a sudden recollection, and
laughed ruefully. "But my piano won't be here after to-night. I--I'm
sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid that if you'd like me to play to you
you'd have to come this evening."
"You'll let me?" he cried.
"Certainly, if you care to."
"If I could play--" he said, wistfully, "if I could play like that old man in
the church I could thank you."
"Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon, but--"
"Yes," said Bibbs. "It was the greatest happiness I've ever known."
It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain honesty, and
he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying anything especially
significant, that she knew it was the truth. For a moment she was
nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went in. "You'll come after dinner,
then?"
"Yes," he said, not moving. "Would you mind if I stood here until time to
come in?"
She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the response
of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted windows of the
New House, as though bidding him to run home to his dinner.
That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.
Music can come into a blank life, and fill it. Everything that is beautiful
is music, if you can listen.
There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand piano.
There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge with the running
of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to see what you are hearing and
to hear what you are seeing.
There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to a sparkling
sea. The air about such a woman is bracing, and when she is near you, you
feel strong and ambitious; you forget that the world doesn't like you. You
think that perhaps you are a great fellow, after all. Then you come away and
feel like a boy who has fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher.
You'll be whipped for it--and ought to be.
There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon. But they
do not have the "Greek profile." I do not believe Helen of Troy had a "Greek
profile"; they would not have fought about her if her nose had been quite
that long. The Greek nose is not the adorable nose. The adorable nose is
about an eighth of an inch shorter.
Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the piano.
Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such things as the
primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a machine-shop into music.
But not if he had to work in it. Wagner was always dealing in immensities--a
machine-shop would have put a majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.
There is a mystery about pianos, it seems. Sometimes they have to be "sent
away." That is how some people speak of the penitentiary. "Sent away" is a
euphuism for "sent to prison." But pianos are not sent to prison, and they
are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is sent to them. Why are pianos "sent
away"--and where?
Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless life.
Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the gloomy house of
that life as if some stray angel just happened to perch on the roof-tree,
resting and singing. And the night after such a day is lustrous and splendid
with the memory of it. Music and beauty and kindness--those are the three
greatest things God can give us. To bring them all in one day to one who
expected nothing--ah! the heart that received them should be as humble as it
is thankful. But it is hard to be humble when one is so rich with new
memories. It is impossible to be humble after a day of glory.
Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter than the
Greek nose. It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.
There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a conquering hero.
But the sick tramp had better remember that's what he is. Take care, take
care! Humble's the word!
That "mystery about pianos" which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery to Mr.
Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time Bibbs scribbled
the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone up-stairs upon Bibbs's
departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees sat until after midnight
in the library, talking. And in all that time they found not one cheerful
topic, but became more depressed with everything and with every phase of
everything that they discussed--no extraordinary state of affairs in a family
which has always "held up its head," only to arrive in the end at a point
where all it can do is to look on helplessly at the processes of its own
financial dissolution. For that was the point which this despairing couple
had reached--they could do nothing except look on and talk about it. They
were only vaporing, and they knew it.
"She needn't to have done that about her piano," vapored Mr. Vertrees. "We
could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have consulted
me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details with the--the
dealer."
"She thought that it might be--annoying for you," Mrs. Vertrees explained.
"Really, she planned for you not to know about it until they had
removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--to mention it.
You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this morning. She has
another ides, too, I'm afraid. It's--it's--"
"Well?" he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.
"Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided, of course--it
was about her furs."
"No!" he exclaimed, quickly. "I won't have it! You must see to that. I'd
rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her."
"I'll try not," his wife promised. "Of course, they're very handsome."
"All the more reason for her to keep them!" he returned, irritably. "We're
not THAT far gone, I think!"
"Perhaps not yet," Mrs. Vertrees said. "She seems to be troubled about
the--the coal matter and--about Tilly. Of course the piano will take care of
some things like those for a while and--"
"I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to--"
"You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way," she said, comfortingly.
"She arranged with the--with the purchaser that the men will come for it
about half after five in the afternoon. The days are so short now it's
really quite winter."
"Oh, yes," he agreed, moodily. "So far as that goes people have a right to
move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors, I suppose, even
by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying much attention just
now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office early the morning after
the funeral."
Mrs. Vertrees made a little sound of commiseration. "I don't believe that
was because he wasn't suffering, though. I'm sure it was only because he
felt his business was so important. Mary told me he seemed wrapped up in his
son's succeeding; and that was what he bragged about most. He isn't vulgar
in his boasting, I understand; he doesn't talk a great deal about his--his
actual money--though there was something about blades of grass that I didn't
comprehend. I think he meant something about his energy--but perhaps not.
No, his bragging usually seemed to be not so much a personal vainglory as
about his family and the greatness of this city."
"'Greatness of this city'!" Mr. Vertrees echoed, with dull bitterness. "It's
nothing but a coal-hole! I suppose it looks 'great' to the man who has the
luck to make it work for him. I suppose it looks 'great' to any YOUNG man,
too, starting out to make his fortune out of it. The fellows that get what
they want out of it say it's 'great,' and everybody else gets the habit. But
you have a different point of view if it's the city that got what it wanted
out of you! Of course Sheridan says it's 'great'."
Mrs. Vertrees seemed unaware of this unusual outburst. "I believe," she
began, timidly, "he doesn't boast of--that is, I understand he has never
seemed so interested in the--the other one."
Her husband's face was dark, but at that a heavier shadow fell upon it; he
looked more haggard than before. "'The other one'," he repeated, averting
his eyes. "You mean--you mean the third son--the one that was here this
evening?"
"Yes, the--the youngest," she returned, her voice so feeble it was almost a
whisper.
And then neither of them spoke for several long minutes. Nor did either look
at the other during that silence.
At last Mr. Vertrees contrived to cough, but not convincingly. "What--
ah--what was it Mary said about him out in the hall, when she came in this
afternoon? I heard you asking her something about him, but she answered in
such a low voice I didn't--ah--happen to catch it."
"She--she didn't say much. All she said was this: I asked her if she had
enjoyed her walk with him, and she said, 'He's the most wistful creature I've
ever known.'"
"Well?"
"That was all. He IS wistful-looking; and so fragile--though he doesn't seem
quite so much so lately. I was watching Mary from the window when she went
out to-day, and he joined her, and if I hadn't known about him I'd have
thought he had quite an interesting face."
"If you 'hadn't known about him'? Known what?"
"Oh, nothing, of course," she said, hurriedly. "Nothing definite, that is.
Mary said decidely, long ago, that he's not at all insane, as we thought at
first. It's only--well, of course it IS odd, their attitude about him. I
suppose it's some nervous trouble that makes him--perhaps a little queer at
times, so that he can't apply himself to anything--or perhaps does odd
things. But, after all, of course, we only have an impression about it. We
don't know--that is, positively. I--" She paused, then went on: "I didn't
know just how to ask--that is--I didn't mention it to Mary. I didn't--I--"
The poor lady floundered pitifully, concluding with a mumble. "So soon
after--after the--the shock."
"I don't think I've caught more than a glimpse of him," said Mr. Vertrees.
"I wouldn't know him if I saw him, but your impression of him is--" He broke
off suddenly, springing to his feet in agitation. "I can't image her--oh,
NO!" he gasped. And he began to pace the floor. "A half-witted epileptic!"
"No, no!" she cried. "He may be all right. We--"
"Oh, it's horrible! I can't--" He threw himself back into his chair again,
sweeping his hands across his face, then letting them fall limply at his
sides.
Mrs. Vertrees was tremulous. "You mustn't give way so," she said, inspired
for once almost to direct discourse. "Whatever Mary might think of doing, it
wouldn't be on her own account; it would be on ours. But if WE
should--should consider it, that wouldn't be on OUR own account. It isn't
because we think of ourselves."
"Oh God, no!" he groaned. "Not for us! We can go to the poorhouse, but Mary
can't be a stenographer!"
Sighing, Mrs. Vertrees resumed her obliqueness. "Of course," she murmured,
"it all seems very premature, speculating about such things, but I had a
queer sort of feeling that she seemed quite interested inthis --" She had
almost said "in this one," but checked herself. "In this young man. It's
natural, of course; she is always so strong and well, and he is--he seems to
be, that is--rather appealing to the--the sympathies."
"Yes!" he agreed, bitterly. "Precisely. The sympathies!"
"Perhaps," she faltered--"perhaps you might feel easier if I could have a
little talk with some one?"
"With whom?"
"I had thought of--not going about it too brusquely, of course, but perhaps
just waiting for his name to be mentioned, if I happened to be talking with
somebody that knew the family--and then I might find a chance to say that I
was sorry to hear he'd been ill so much, and-- Something of that kind
perhaps?"
"You don't know anybody that knows the family."
"Yes. That is--well, in a way, of course, one OF the family. That Mrs.
Roscoe Sheridan is not a--that is, she's rather a pleasant-faced little
woman, I think, and of course rather ordinary. I think she is interested
about--that is, of course, she'd be anxious to be more intimate with Mary,
naturally. She's always looking over here from her house; she was looking
out the window this afternoon when Mary went out, I noticed--though I don't
think Mary saw her. I'm sure she wouldn't think it out of place to--to be
frank about matters. She called the other day, and Mary must rather like
her--she said that evening that the call had done her good. Don't you think
it might be wise?"
"Wise? I don't know. I feel the whole matter is impossible."
"Yes, so do I," she returned, promptly. "It isn't really a thing we should
be considering seriously, of course. Still--"
"I should say not! But possibly--"
Thus they skirmished up and down the field, but before they turned the lights
out and went up-stairs it was thoroughly understood between them that Mrs.
Vertrees should seek the earliest opportunity to obtain definite information
from Sibyl Sheridan concerning the mental and physical status of Bibbs. And
if he were subject to attacks of lunacy, the unhappy pair decided to prevent
the sacrifice they supposed their daughter intended to make of herself.
Altogether, if there were spiteful ghosts in the old house that night,
eavesdropping upon the woeful comedy, they must have died anew of laughter!
Mrs. Vertrees's opportunity occurred the very next afternoon. Darkness had
fallen, and the piano-movers had come. They were carrying the piano down the
front steps, and Mrs. Vertrees was standing in the open doorway behind them,
preparing to withdraw, when she heard a sharp exclamation; and Mrs. Roscoe
Sheridan, bareheaded, emerged from the shadow into the light of the doorway.
"Good gracious!" she cried. "It did give me a fright!"
"It's Mrs. Sheridan, isn't it?" Mrs. Vertrees was perplexed by this informal
appearance, but she reflected that it might be providential. "Won't you come
in?"
"No. Oh no, thank you!" Sibyl panted, pressing her hand to her side. "You
don't know what a fright you've given me! And it was nothing but your
piano!" She laughed shrilly. "You know, since our tragedy coming so
suddenly the other day, you have no idea how upset I've been--almost
hysterical! And I just glanced out of the window, a minute or so ago, and
saw your door wide open and black figures of men against the light, carrying
something heavy, and I almost fainted. You see, it was just the way it
looked when I saw them bringing my poor brother-in-law in, next door, only
such a few short days ago. And I thought I'd seen your daughter start for a
drive with Bibbs Sheridan in a car about three o'clock--and--They aren't back
yet, are they?"
"No. Good heavens!"
"And the only thing I could think of was that something must have happened to
them, and I just dashed over--and it was only your PIANO!" She broke into
laughter again. "I suppose you're just sending it somewhere to be repaired,
aren't you?"
"It's--it's being taken down-town," said Mrs. Vertrees. "Won't you come in
and make me a little visit. I was SO sorry, the other day, that I was--ah--"
She stopped inconsequently, then repeated her invitation. "Won't you come
in? I'd really--"
"Thank you, but I must be running back. My husband usually gets home about
this time, and I make a little point of it always to be there."
"That's very sweet." Mrs. Vertrees descended the steps and walked toward the
street with Sibyl. "It's quite balmy for so late in November, isn't it?
Almost like a May evening."
"I'm afraid Miss Vertrees will miss her piano," said Sibyl, watching the
instrument disappear into the big van at the curb. "She plays wonderfully,
Mrs. Kittersby tells me."
"Yes, she plays very well. One of your relatives came to hear her yesterday,
after dinner, and I think she played all evening for him."
"You mean Bibbs?" asked Sibyl.
"The--the youngest Mr. Sheridan. Yes. He's very musical, isn't he?"
"I never heard of it. But I shouldn't think it would matter much whether he
was or not, if he could get Miss Vertrees to play to him. Does your daughter
expect the piano back soon?"
"I--I believe not immediately. Mr. Sheridan came last evening to hear her
play because she had arranged with the--that is, it was to be removed this
afternoon. He seems almost well again."
"Yes." Sibyl nodded. "His father's going to try to start him to work."
"He seems very delicate," said Mrs. Vertrees. "I shouldn't think he would be
able to stand a great deal, either physically or--" She paused and then
added, glowing with the sense of her own adroitness--"or mentally."
"Oh, mentally Bibbs is all right," said Sibyl, in an odd voice.
"Entirely?" Mrs. Vertrees asked, breathlessly.
"Yes, entirely."
"But has he ALWAYS been?" This question came with the same anxious
eagerness.
"Certainly. He had a long siege of nervous dyspepsia, but he's over it."
"And you think--"
"Bibbs is all right. You needn't wor--" Sibyl choked, and pressed her
handkerchief to her mouth. "Good night, Mrs. Vertrees," she said, hurriedly,
as the head-lights of an automobile swung round the corner above, sending a
brightening glare toward the edge of the pavement where the two ladies were
standing.
"Won't you come in?" urged Mrs. Vertrees, cordially, hearing the sound of a
cheerful voice out of the darkness beyond the approaching glare. "Do!
There's Mary now, and she--"
But Sibyl was half-way across the street. "No, thanks," she called. "I
hope she won't miss her piano!" And she ran into her own house and plunged
headlong upon a leather divan in the hall, holding her handkerchief over her
mouth.
The noise of her tumultuous entrance was evidently startling in the quiet
house, for upon the bang of the door there followed the crash of a decanter,
dropped upon the floor of the dining-room at the end of the hall; and, after
a rumble of indistinct profanity, Roscoe came forth, holding a dripping
napkin in his hand.
"What's your excitement?" he demanded. "What do you find to go into
hysterics over? Another death in the family?"
"Oh, it's funny! she gasped. "Those old frost-bitten people! I guess
THEY'RE getting their come-upance!" Lying prone, she elevated her feet in
the air, clapped her heels together repeatedly, in an ecstasy.
"Come through, come through!" said her husband, crossly. "What you been up
to?"
"Me?" she cried, dropping her feet and swinging around to face him.
"Nothing. It's them! Those Vertreeses!" She wiped her eyes. "They've had
to sell their piano!"
"Well, what of it?"
"That Mrs. Kittersby told me all about 'em a week ago," said Sibyl. "They've
been hard up for a long time, and she says as long ago as last winter she
knew that girl got a pair of walking-shoes re-soled and patched, because she
got it done the same place Mrs. Kittersby's cook had HERS! And the night of
the house-warming I kind of got suspicious, myself. She didn't have one
single piece of any kind of real jewelry, and you could see her dress was an
old one done over. Men can't tell those things, and you all made a big fuss
over her, but I thought she looked a sight, myself! Of course, EDITH was
crazy to have her, and--"
"Well, well?" he urged, impatiently.
"Well, I'm TELLING you! Mrs. Kittersby says they haven't got a THING! Just
absolutely NOTHING--and they don't know anywhere to turn! The family's all
died out but them, and all the relatives they got are very distant, and live
East and scarcely know 'em. She says the whole town's been wondering what
WOULD become of 'em. The girl had plenty chances to marry up to a year or so
ago, but she was so indifferent she scared the men off, and the ones that had
wanted to went and married other girls. Gracious! they were lucky! Marry
HER? The man that found himself tied up to THAT girl--"
"Terrible funny, terrible funny!" said Roscoe, with sarcasm. "It's so funny
I broke a cut-glass decanter and spilled a quart of--"
"Wait!" she begged. "You'll see. I was sitting by the window a little while
ago, and I saw a big wagon drive up across the street and some men go into
the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute I got the idea
they were moving out--the house has been foreclosed on, Mrs. Kittersby says.
It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was out riding with Bibbs.
Well, I thought I'd see, so I slipped over--and it was their PIANO! They'd
sold it and were trying to sneak it out after dark, so nobody'd catch on!"
Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but resumed, as her husband seemed about
to interrupt the narrative. "Wait a minute, can't you? The old lady was
superintending, and she gave it all away. I sized her up for one of those
old churchy people that tell all kinds of lies except when it comes to so
many words, and then they can't. She might just as well told me outright!
Yes, they'd sold it; and I hope they'll pay some of their debts. They owe
everybody, and last week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with
Mr. Vertrees. Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn't
know WHEN she'd seen any money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as
that girl in you LIFE?"
"What girl? Their cook?"
"That Vertrees girl! Don't you see they looked on our coming up into this
neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and out, and
here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll the girl up in
her old things, made over, and send her out to get a Sheridan --she's GOT to
get one! And she just goes in blind; and she tries it on first with YOU.
You remember, she just plain TOLD you she was going to mash you, and then she
found out you were the married one, and turned right square around to Jim and
carried him off his feet. Oh, Jim was landed--there's no doubt about THAT!
But Jim was lucky; he didn't live to STAY landed, and it's a good thing for
him!" Sibyl's mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity.
"Well, she couldn't get you, because you were married, and she couldn't get
Jim, because Jim died. And there they were, dead broke! Do you know what
she did? Do you know what she's DOING?"
"No, I don't," said Roscoe, gruffly.
Sibyl's voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity. "BIBBS!
She waited in the grave-yard, and drove home with him from JIM'S FUNERAL!
Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn't COLD!"
She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. "Bibbs!" she shrieked.
"Bibbs! Roscoe, THINK of it! BIBBS!"
He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that. "And
yesterday," she continued, between paroxysms--"yesterday she came out of the
house--just as he was passing. She must have been looking out--waiting for
the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window! And she got him there
last night--to 'PLAY' to him; the old lady gave that away! And to-day she
made him take her out in a machine! And the cream of it is that they didn't
even know whether he was INSANE or not--they thought maybe he was, but she
went after him just the same! The old lady set herself to pump me about it
to-day. BIBBS! Oh, my Lord! BIBBS!"
But Roscoe looked grim. "So it's funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of
pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too."
"Oh, it might," she returned, sobering. "It might, if those people weren't
such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they'd had the decency to come down off
the perch a little I probably wouldn't think it was funny, but to see 'em sit
up on their pedestal all the time they're eating dirt --well, I think it's
funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen Elizabeth, and expects people
to wallow on the ground before her until they get near enough for her to give
'em a good kick with her old patched shoes--oh, she'd do THAT, all
right!--and then she powders up and goes out to mash--BIBBS SHERIDAN!"
"Look here," said Roscoe, heavily; "I don't care about that one way or
another. If you're through, I got something I want to talk to you about. I
was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim."
At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. "What is
it?"
"Well," he began, frowning, "what I was going to say then--" He broke off,
and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in his hand,
threw it pettishly into a corner. "I never expected I'd have to say anything
like this to anybody I MARRIED; but I was going to ask you what was the
matter between you and Lamhorn."
Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. "Well?"
"I felt the time had come for me to know about it," he went on. "You never
told me anything--"
"You never asked," she interposed, curtly.
"Well, we'd got in a way of not talking much," said Roscoe. "It looks to me
now as if we'd pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good many
people do. I don't say it wasn't my fault. I was up early and down to work
all day, and I'd come home tired at night, and want to go to bed soon as I'd
got the paper read--unless there was some good musical show in town. Well,
you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or so, I began to see
something was wrong. I couldn't help seeing it."
"Wrong?" she said. "What like?"
"You changed; you didn't look the same. You were all strung up and excited
and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then, Lamhorn had
been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long ago you got to
picking on him about every little thing he did; you got to quarreling with
him when I was there and when I wasn't. I could see you'd been quarreling
whenever I came in and he was here."
"Do you object to that?" asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.
"Yes--when it injures my wife's health!" he returned, with a quick lift of
his eyes to hers. "You began to run down just about the time you began
falling out with him." He stepped close to her. "See here, Sibyl, I'm going
to know what it means."
"Oh, you ARE?" she snapped.
"You're trembling," he said, gravely.
"Yes. I'm angry enough to do more than tremble, you'll find. Go on!"
"That was all I was going to say the other day," he said. "I was going to
ask you--"
"Yes, that was all you were going to say THE OTHER DAY. Yes. What else have
you to say to-night?"
"To-night," he replied, with grim swiftness, "I want to know why you keep
telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here."
She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, "And what else
did Edith want you to ask me?"
"I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn," he said,
fiercely.
"Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in there
on your way home this evening, didn't you? Didn't she tell you then what I
said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?"
"No, she didn't!" he vociferated, his voice growing louder. "She said, 'You
tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see her,
because he isn't going to do it!' That's what she said! And I want to know
what it means. I intend--"
A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. "Dinner is ready," she said,
and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the dining-room.
Roscoe disregarded the interruption.
"I intend to know exactly what has been going on," he declared. "I mean to
know just what--"
Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.
"Oh, you DO!" she cried, shrilly. "You mean to know just what's what, do
you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your wife, and
then you come home making a scene before the servants and humiliating me in
their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn't hear every word you
said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go on! Go and eat your
dinner alone--because I won't eat with you!"
And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon her, and
dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room slam
overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.
At seven o'clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing through
the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast, found a couple
of scribbled sheets of note-paper lying on the floor. A window had been open
in Bibbs's room the evening before; he had left his note-book on the
sill--and the sheets were loose. The door was open, and when Bibbs came in
and closed it, he did not notice that the two sheets had blown out into the
hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting and put the sheets in his coat
pocket, intending to give them to George or Jackson for return to the owner,
but he forgot and carried them down-town with him. At noon he found himself
alone in his office, and, having a little leisure, remembered the bits of
manuscript, took them out, and glanced at them. A grance was enough to
reveal that they were not epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a
"private letter" that came into his possession in that way, though in a
"matter of business" he might have felt it his duty to take advantage of an
opportunity afforded in any manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that
Bibbs's scribblings were only a sample of the kind of writing his son
preferred to the machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would
be justified in reading them.
It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy generalization of
a companion, and will wear the most agreeable expression of accepting it as
the law, and then--days afterward, when the thing is a mummy to its
promulgator--she will inquire out of a clear sky: "WHY did you say that the
people down-town have nothing in life that a chicken hasn't? What did you
mean?" And she may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very
difficult--you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.
Yet, what does the rooster lack? He has food and shelter; he is warm in
winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but dozens. He has a
clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he walks in his April orchard
under a roof of flowers. He must die, violently perhaps, but quickly. Is
Midas's cancer a better way? The rooster's wives and children must die. Are
those of Midas immortal? His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but
Midas's life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.
The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh himself
anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster doesn't get. The
office-building has an elevator, the rooster flies up to the bough. Midas
has a machine to take him to his work; the rooster finds his worm underfoot.
The "business man" feels a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits
late at wine after the day's labor; next morning he curses his head because
it interferes with the work--he swears never to relieve that pressure again.
The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is in his favor.
The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the weather.
Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the weather. The
rooster thinks only of the moment; Midas provides for to-morrow. What does
he provide for to-morrow? Nothing that the rooster will not have without
providing.
The rooster and the prosperous worker: they are born, they grub, they love;
they grub and love grubbing; they grub and they die. Neither knows beauty;
neither knows knowledge. And after all, when Midas dies and the rooster
dies, there is one thing Midas has had and rooster has not. Midas has had
the excitement of accumulating what he has grubbed, and that has been his
life and his love and his god. He cannot take that god with him when he
dies. I wonder if the worthy gods are those we can take with us.
Midas must teach all to be as Midas; the young must be raised in his
religion--
The manuscript ended there, and Sheridan was not anxious for more. He
crumpled the sheets into a ball, depositing it (with vigor) in a waste-basket
beside him; then, rising, he consulted a Cyclopedia of Names, which a
book-agent had somehow sold to him years before; a volume now first put to
use for the location of "Midas." Having read the legend, Sheridan walked up
and down the spacious office, exhaling the breath of contempt. "Dam' fool!"
he mumbled. But this was no new thought, nor was the contrariness of Bibbs's
notes a surpise to him; and presently he dismissed the matter from his mind.
He felt very lonely, and this was, daily, his hardest hour. For a long time
he and Jim had lunched together habitually. Roscoe preferred a club luncheon,
but Jim and his father almost always went to a small restaurant near the
Sheridan Building, where they spent twenty minutes in the consumption of food,
and twenty in talk, with cigars. Jim came for his father every day, at five
minutes after twelve, and Sheridan was again in his office at five minutes
before one. But now that Jim no longer came, Sheridan remained alone in his
office; he had not gone out to lunch since Jim's death, nor did he have
anything sent to him--he fasted until evening.
It was the time he missed Jim personally the most--the voice and eyes and
handshake, all brisk and alert, all business-like. But these things were not
the keenest in Sheridan's grief; his sense of loss went far deeper. Roscoe
was dependable, a steady old wheel-horse, and that was a great comfort; but it
was in Jim that Sheridan had most happily perceived his own likeness. Jim was
the one who would have been surest to keep the great property growing greater,
year by year. Sheridan had fallen asleep, night after night, picturing what
the growth would be under Jim. He had believed that Jim was absolutely
certain to be one of the biggest men in the country. Well, it was all up to
Roscoe now!
That reminded him of a question he had in mind to ask Roscoe. It was a
question Sheridan considered of no present importance, but his wife had
suggested it--though vaguely--and he had meant to speak to Roscoe about it.
However, Roscoe had not come into his father's office for several days, and
when Sheridan had seen his son at home there had been no opportunity.
He waited until the greater part of his day's work was over, toward four
o'clock, and then went down to Roscoe's office, which was on a lower floor.
He found several men waiting for business interviews in an outer room of the
series Roscoe occupied; and he supposed that he would find his son busy with
others, and that his question would have to be postponed, but when he entered
the door marked "R. C. Sheridan. Private," Roscoe was there alone.
He was sitting with his back to the door, his feet on a window-sill, and he
did not turn as his father opened the door.
"Some pretty good men out there waitin' to see you, my boy," said Sheridan.
"What's the matter?"
"Nothing," Roscoe answered indistinctly, not moving.
"Well, I guess that's all right, too. I let 'em wait sometimes myself! I
just wanted to ask you a question, but I expect it 'll keep, if you're workin'
something out in your mind!"
Roscoe made no reply; and his father, who had turned to the door, paused with
his hand on the knob, staring curiously at the motionless figure in the chair.
Usually the son seemed pleased and eager when he came to the office. "You're
all right, ain't you?" said Sheridan. "Not sick, are you?"
"No."
Sheridan was puzzled; then, abruptly, he decided to ask his question. "I
wanted to talk to you about that young Lamhorn," he said. "I guess your
mother thinks he's comin' to see Edith pretty often, and you known him longer
'n any of us, so--"
"I won't," said Roscoe, thickly--"I won't say a dam' thing about him!"
Sheridan uttered an exclamation and walked quickly to a position near the
window where he could see his son's face. Roscoe's eyes were bloodshot and
vacuous; his hair was disordered, his mouth was distorted, and he was deathly
pale. The father stood aghast.
"By George!" he muttered. "ROSCOE!"
"My name," said Roscoe. "Can' help that."
"ROSCOE!" Blank astonishment was Sheridan's first sensation. Probably
nothing in the world could have more amazed his than to find Roscoe--the
steady old wheel-horse--in this condition. "How'd you GET this way?" he
demanded. "You caught cold and took too much for it?"
For reply Roscoe laughed hoarsely. "Yeuh! Cold! I been drinkun all time,
lately. Firs' you notice it?"
"By George!" cried Sheridan. "I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal
lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you. Boh!
To see you like a common hog!"
Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gensture. "Hog!"
he repeated, chuckling.
"Yes, a hog!" said Sheridan, angrily. "In business hours! I don't object to
anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor, if a man
keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one to baste him if
he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe. It ain't MY way. I
let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way on a grown-up son in
moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them men out there are waitin'
to talk business with a drunkard? You think you can come to your office and
do business drunk? By George! I wonder how often this has been happening and
me not on to it! I'll have a look over your books to-morrow, and I'll--"
Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying, contriving to
hold himself in position by clutching the back of the heavy chair in which he
had been sitting.
"Hoo--hoorah!" he cried. "'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you want
to--outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing innerfere business
hours! Business! Thassit! You're right, father. Drink! Die! L'everything
go to hell, but DON' let innerfere business!"
Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling his own
office, overhead. "Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's suite and get
rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in room two-fourteen.
There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows on the Kinsey business.
Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over with Roscoe, and tell 'em to
come back day after to-morrow at two. You needn't come in to let me know
they're gone; we don't want to be disturbed. Tell Pauly to call my house and
send Claus down here with a closed car. We may have to go out. Tell him to
hustle, and call me at Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!"
Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. "Drunk in business
hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk, mus'n' gamble,
mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours! All right any other time. Kill
'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't in business hours! Fine! Mus'n' have
any trouble 't 'll innerfere business. Keep your trouble 't home. Don' bring
it to th' office. Might innerfere business! Have funerals on Sunday--might
innerfere business! Don' let your wife innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL
your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em ALL for
home use! If you got die, go on die 't home--don' die round th' office!
Might innerfere business!"
Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his back
to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his father's
significant posture.
"You know wh' I think?" he went on. "I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly any
'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked, an' he got
killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at me, I ask
you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look whass happen' to me! Fine!"
He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable gesture, and,
immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair and caromed to the floor
with a crash, remaining prostrate for several minutes, during which Sheridan
did not relax his apparent attention to the newspaper. He did not even look
round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up by holding to
the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed in the
prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile. He rubbed his
dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
"What--what you ask me while ago?" he said.
"Nothin'."
"Yes, you did. What--what was it?"
"Nothin'. You better sit down."
"You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I
won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!"
The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and said,
"Right down." Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and brought
them to his son. "Get into this coat," he said. "You're goin' home."
"All ri'," Roscoe murmured, obediently.
They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through the outer
office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and told the
operator to take on no more passengers until they reached the ground floor.
Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the automobile without
lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his own house in the same
manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a word in the interval.
Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room without
meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door her heard from
within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant fragments of song:
WHO looks a mustang in the eye? ... With a leap from the ground To the saddle
in a bound. And away--and away! Hi-yay!
It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any musical
symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him whistle --and it seemed
the last touch of irony that the useless fool should be merry to-day.
To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he did
not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked the door.
He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and came to
the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety manifest and was
but partially reassured by his explanation that his lunch had "disagreed" with
him a little.
Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had become
hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from white-jacket's
salver. "Here's another difference between Midas and chicken," Sheridan
remarked, grimly. "Midas can eat rooster, but rooster can't eat Midas. I
reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he had the advantage
there."
Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to his
plate without dropping it and to respond, "Yes--he crows over it."
Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for he
could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with pleasure,
thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon to her. "Did
you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!" she exclaimed. "I
declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right handsome!"
"He's got to be such a gadabout," Edith giggled.
"I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before anybody
was up," said Sheridan. "I reckon if people lose things in this house and
expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do."
"What was it he lost?" asked Edith.
"He knows!" her father returned. "Seems to me like I forgot to bring it home
with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty
important, belongin' to a busy man like him." He affected to search his
pockets. "What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I remember
leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket."
"Good place for it," Bibbs murmured, still red.
Sheridan gave him a grin. "Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up early
enough to fine things before I do!"
It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the evening,
to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
"My time's here at last," he said, as they sat together in the melancholy
gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano. That removal had
left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs. Vertrees that neither of them
had crossed the threshold since the dark day; but the gas-light, though from a
single jet, shed no melancholy upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that
knew the glowing presence of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.
"Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off any
longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my face. He
means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence. Hard labor for
life, I think."
Mary shook her head. "I don't think so. He's too kind."
"You think my father's KIND?" And Bibbs stared at her.
"Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's only
that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand any other
way."
"Ah yes," said Bibbs. "If that's what you mean by 'kind'!"
She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. "It's going
to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?"
"Oh--self-pity!" he returned, smiling. "This has been just the last flicker
of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work. There'd be no
loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he could do best; but
the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I have to give it up.
To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."
"What is it like--exactly?"
"I get up at six," he said. "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me, which is
aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin buckets, and tin
buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty, and I'm at work in my
overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and work again from one till
five."
"But the work itself?"
"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me a heavier
job because I wasn't good enough."
"But what will you do? I want to know."
"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there a
'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's what
I'll be sent back to."
"But what is it?" she insisted.
Bibbs explained. "It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of zinc
into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little circles.
All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at a certain
angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it."
He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade paler,
and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have known it and
wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems
incredible!" she exclaimed. "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine nine
hours a day! No wonder--" She broke off, and then, after a keen glance at
his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad hand at it'!"
He laughed ruefully. "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say it.
You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of rhythmical
crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."
"How often is that?"
"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more than
one a second."
"And you're close to it?"
"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more gaily.
"The others don't mind . You see, it's something wrong with me. I have an
idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and duck a little
every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I was a treat to the
other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me back. They used to
laugh at me all day long."
Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting on the
arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She was staring
at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
"It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you," she said, in a low
voice. "No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the leisure
to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them published for
you--"
"Can't you SEE him?" Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in his
voice. "If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can imagine his
taking such a notion, he's have had R. T. Bloss put up posters all over the
country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a Punch!' No. It's just as
well he never got the--But what's the use? I've never written anything worth
printing, and I never shall."
"You could!" she said.
"That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to do."
"You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!"
"It isn't," said BIBBS, honestly. "I never could--but you're the kindest lady
in this world, Miss Vertrees."
She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was. "That
sounds wrong," she said, impulsively. "I mean 'Miss Vertrees.' I've thought
of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't you rather call me
'Mary'?"
Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
"Wouldn't you?" she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
"If I CAN!" he said, in a low voice.
"Ah, that's very pretty!" she laughed. "You're such an honest person, it's
pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety." She became grave
again immediately. "I hear myself laughing as if it were some one else. It
sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity." She got up restlessly,
crossed the room and leaned against the wall, facing him. "You've GOT to go
back to that place?"
He nodded.
"And the other time you did it--"
"Just over it," said Bibbs. "Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of a
repetition so much as--"
"So much as what?" she prompted, as he stopped.
Bibbs looked up at her shyly. "I want to say it, but--but I come to a dead
balk when I try. I--"
"Go on. Say it, whatever it is," she bade him. "You wouldn't know how to say
anything I shouldn't like."
"I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say," he returned,
moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he seemed to feel
awkward, thoroughly. "You see, all my life--until I met you--if I ever felt
like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying things is a new trick for
me, and this--well, it's just this: I used to feel as if I hadn't ever had
any sort of a life at all. I'd never been of use to anything or anybody, and
I'd never had anything, myself, except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now
it's different--I'm still of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect
of being useful, but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful
and happy experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've
lived it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you
have, this strange, beautiful, happy little while!"
He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had to
say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not speak, but
a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had gone back to her
chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room was so quiet that the
sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and loud.
And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. "If you think
it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make it last."
"Yes," said Bibbs, as faintly.
"You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?"
"Yes," he gulped.
"But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over."
He tried to evade her. "Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--"
"No," she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. "You said what you did
because you think the shop's going to kill you."
"No, no!"
"Yes, you do think that!" She rose to her feet again and came and stood
before him. "Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm a
friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said-- and you did
mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium. The shop
sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!"
And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid in
generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
"If I mean THAT much to you," she cried, "they can't harm you! Go back to the
shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the machines crash
their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash that deafens you is
that much nearer the evening and me!"
He stumbled to his feet. "You say--" he gasped.
"Every evening, dear Bibbs!"
He could only stare, bewildered.
"EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!" And she held out
her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. "If I could,
I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you," she said. "But
all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep remembering that
your friend stands beside you. And when the work is done --won't the night
make up for the day?"
Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of kindness.
But all he could say was, huskily, "To think you're there-- with me--standing
beside the old zinc-eater--"
And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what it
meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his father
sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before him. "I'm
cured, father," he said. "When do I go back to the shop? I'm ready."
The desolate and grim old man did not relax. "I was sittin' up to give you a
last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time! I just
wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take you over there
by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you just one more day.
Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to the eleventh hour! All
right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the month. Think you can get
up in time?"
"Six o'clock," Bibbs responded, briskly. "And I want to tell you--I'm going
in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!"
"That's YOUR lookout!" his father grunted. "They'll put you back on the
clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week."
"More than I'm worth, too," said Bibbs, cheerily. "That reminds me, I didn't
mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant--"
"Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!"
"I just wanted you to know. Good night, father."
"G'night!"
The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became inaudible,
and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat staring angrily at
the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slipers could be heard descending, and
Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression and the state of her
toilette being those of a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on
one side, has got up to look for burglars.
"Papa!" she exclaimed, drowsily. "Why'n't you go to bed? It must be goin' on
'leven o'clock!"
She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the fire.
"What's the matter?" she asked, sleep and anxiety striving sluggishly with
each other in her voice. "I knew you were worried all dinner-time. You got
something new on your mind besides Jim's bein' taken away like he was. What's
worryin' you now, papa?"
"Nothin'."
She jeered feebly. "N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't you?"
"He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning," said Sheridan.
"Just the same as he did before?"
"Just pre-CISELY!"
"How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?" she asked, timidly.
"Until he KNOWS something!" The unhappy man struck his palms together, then
got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he talked.
"He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly in the six
months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn it! Do you
suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to learn it? No! And I
ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went there I had 'em set him on
the simplest machine we got--and he stuck there! How much prospect would
there be of his learnin' to run the whole business if he can't run the easiest
machine in it? I sent him there to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He
didn't LIKE it! That boy's whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something
mulish that's against everything I want him to do. I don't know what it is,
but it's got to be worked out of him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple
question than what it was when we were young. My idea is that, outside o'
union troubles, the man that can manage workin'-in men is the man that's been
one himself. Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business,
and HE set himself to balk on the first job! That's what he did, and the
balk's lasted close on to three years. If he balks again I'm just done with
him! Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!"
"I knew there was something else," said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over a yawn.
"You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--'less you'll tell
me?"
"Suppose something happened to Roscoe," he said. "THEN what'd I have to look
forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A lummix!
A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a groove!"
"Roscoe?" she yawned. "You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than he
does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better go up
to bed, papa."
"Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it means,
keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE, let alone makin'
it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked away in chunks, big
and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out o' the woods, pack
after pack, to see what they can tear off for themselves; and if that dead
man's chuldern ain't on the job, night and day, everything he built 'll get
carried off. Carried off? I've seen a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel
in a cyclone--there wasn't even a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've
seen it, time and again. My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME!
It don't seem like I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys
right than I have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to
be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's got
to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd make you
think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll hear somebody
hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a 'great unrest'! There
ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's goin' to do to us in the
end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose, but it's frothin' and bubblin'
in the boiler. This country's been fillin' up with it from all over the world
for a good many years, and the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with.
Church ain't what it used to be. Nothin's what it used to be--everything's
turned up from the bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the
air. There's an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're
goin' to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is loose.
Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and the worst!
You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And the woods are
full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto: 'Get the other
fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's built as I have, when
he's built good and strong, and made good things grow and prosper--THOSE are
the fellows that lay for the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit of it
and put their names to it! And what's the use of my havin' ever been born, if
such a thing as that is goin' to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked
my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and
scattered soon as I'm in the ground?"
He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding the
troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled thunderously;
the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this is a time for young
men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never was such a time
before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is despoiled while he
sleeps--yes, by George! if a may lays down they'll eat him before he
wakes!--but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky! This
is the business man's day; it used to be the soldier's day and the statesman's
day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil!
turmoil!--and you got to go out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it
yourself, or you'll only be a dead man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive.
And that's what my son Bibbs has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather
do now than go out and do his part by me. And if anything happens to
Roscoe--"
"Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense," Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. "There isn't anything goin'
to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about nothin'.
Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?"
Sheridan halted. "All right, mamma," he said, with a vast sigh. "Let's go
up." And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy glow of the
fire.
"Did you speak to Roscoe?" she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her drowsiness.
"Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?"
"No. I will to-morrow."
But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did Sheridan
see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the fourth day of the
month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine in the morning, when
Sheridan happened to be alone.
"They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me."
"Sit down," said Sheridan, rising.
Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and then
walked away, smiling bitterly. "Boh!" he exclaimed. "Still at it!"
"Yes," said Roscoe. "I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What about
it?"
"I reckon I better adopt some decent young man," his father returned. "I'd
bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I would!"
"Better do it," Roscoe assently, sullenly.
"When 'd you begin this thing?"
"I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is."
"Leave that talk out! You know what I mean."
"Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until the other
day."
Sheridan began cutting. "It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your office.
He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him, and he came
through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You been leavin'
your office for drinks every few hours for the last three weeks. I been over
your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't done any work, to count,
in a month."
"All right," said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. "It's all true."
"What you goin' to do about it?"
Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. "I can't stand very much talk
about it, father," he said, pleadingly.
"No!" Sheridan cried. "Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?" He
dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. "I can't stand to talk
about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out what's the
matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!"
Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
"You can't straighten me out."
"See here!" said Sheridan. "Can you go back to your office and stay sober
to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple o' huskies
to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand if they see you
tryin' to take it?"
"You needn't worry about that," said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
resentment. "I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst."
"Well, what have you got?"
"Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you."
"We'll see about that!" said Sheridan, harshly. "Now I can't fool with you
to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my office. You bring
your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last Sunday-- but you come
to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the women-folks are workin' the
phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober till then? You better be sure,
because I'm going to send Abercrombie down to your office every little while,
and he'll let me know."
Roscoe paused at the door. "You told Abercrombie about it?" he asked.
"TOLD him!" And Sheridan laughed hideously. "Do you suppose there's an
elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?"
Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
"WHO looks a mustang in the eye? Changety, chang, chang! Bash! Crash! BANG!"
So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen because of
the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that the uproar was
rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the afternoon of the
fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the swing and clash of the
metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling improvisations of his own
among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash with vocal imitations:
Fearless and bold, Chang! Bash! Behold! With a leap from the ground To the
saddle in a bound, And away--and away! Hi-YAY! WHO looks a chang, chang, bash,
crash, bang! WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash? NIGHT'S on the way
EACH time I say, Hi-YAY! Crash, chang! Bash, chang! Chang, bang, BANG!
The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the air was
thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually; everything was
implacably in motion--nowhere was there a rest for the dizzied eye. The first
time he had entered the place Bibbs had become dizzy instantly, and six months
of it had only added increasing nausea to faintness. But he felt neither now.
"ALL DAY LONG I'LL SEND MY THOUGHTS TO YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT
YOUR FRIEND STANDS BESIDE YOU." He saw her there beside him, and the greasy,
roaring place became suffused with radiance. The poet was happy in his
machine-shop; he was still a poet there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and
sang:
Away--and away! Hi-YAH! Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG! Wild are his eyes,
Fiercely he dies! Hi-YAH! Crash, bash, bang! Bash, CHANG! Ready to fling Our
gloves in the ring--
He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen. Their
great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him standing with
Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded to those nearest
him--he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of them --but he kept his
attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily, never turning from his
machine. Now and then he varied his musical programme with remarks addressed
to the zinc-eater.
"Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if you don't
try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's right-- YOU'LL never
get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a nice, shiny one."
The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to Gurney's
ear and shouted fiercely: "Talkin' to himself! By George!"
Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.
Bibbs returned to song:
Chang! Chang, bash, chang! It's I! WHO looks a mustang in the eye? Fearless
and bo--
His father grasped him by the arm. "Here!" he shouted. "Let ME show you how
to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n you used
to be, but that's no way to handle--Get out the way and let me show you once."
"Better be careful," Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.
"Careful? Boh!" Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. "What you
talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so abused
you're goin' wrong in the head?"
"'Abused'? No!" shouted Bibbs. "I was SINGING--because I 'like it'! I told
you I'd come back and 'like it.'"
Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply, but began
to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it awkwardly --and with
bad results.
"Here!" he shouted. "This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin' to
it, if you put your mind on it." By his own showing then his mind was not
upon it. He continued to talk. "All you got to look out for is to keep it
pressed over to--"
"Don't run your hand up with it," Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.
"Run nothin'! You GOT to--"
"Look out!" shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang forward.
But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and the zinc-eater
had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers. He swore vehemently,
and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops over himself and Bibbs, but
Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:
"Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch my
bag. It's in my machine, outside."
And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor still
grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin. Sheridan had
lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at his son as the
latter handed the bag to Gurney.
"You go on back to your work," he said. "I've had worse snips than that from
a pencil-sharpener."
"Oh no, you haven't!" said Gurney.
"I have, too!" Sheridan retorted, angrily. "Bibbs, you go on back to your
work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc Gurney tryin'
to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs a little
court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back on your
job."
"All right," said Bibbs.
"HERE!" Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door. "You
watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I slipped,
or I wouldn't got scratched, but you--YOU'RE liable to get your whole hand cut
off! You keep your eyes open!"
"Yes, sir." And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.
Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him
outside, where conversation was possible. "I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll
have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you for
a drive and leave you at home."
"Can't," said Bibbs. "Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows."
"No, you don't," the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. "He wants me to take
you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much harm these
four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks have got that old
man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your house! But I don't need
to go over you. I can see with my eyes half shut--"
"Yes," Bibbs interrupted, "that's what they are."
"I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's made
the difference?"
"I like the machine," said Bibbs. "I've made a friend of it. I serenade it
and talk to it, and then it talks back to me."
"Indeed, indeed? What does it say?"
"What I want to hear."
"Well, well!" The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot repeatedly.
"Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take the time off that
he allowed for the examination, and--"
"Not at all," said Bibbs. "I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till five
o'clock. I tell you I LIKE it!"
"Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write."
"I don't know about that," Bibbs said, thoughtfully; "but the zinc-eater
doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being in
business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be content
to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days."
"You do beat the devil!" exclaimed Gurney. "Your father's right when he tells
me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing when He made
you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm off. Go on back to
your murdering old machine." He climbed into his car, which he operated
himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately in motion. "Well, I
rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him not to slide his hand
along too far, and that he got hurt because he didn't pay attention to your
warning, and because he was trying to show you how to do something you were
already doing a great deal better than he could. You tell him I'll be around
to look at it and change the dressing to-morrow morning. Good-by."
But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than change
the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of its kind, and
Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was rebellious and scornful,
being brought to a degree of tractability only by means of horrible threats
and talk of amputation. However, he appeared at the dinner-table with his
hand supported in a sling, which he seemed to regard as an indignity, while
the natural inquiries upon the subject evidently struck him as deliberate
insults. Mrs. Sheridan, having been unable to contain her solicitude several
times during the day, and having been checked each time in a manner that
blanched her cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at
five, to omit any reference to the injury and to avoid even looking at the
sling if they possibly could.
The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to arrive
either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and the members of
the family were all seated at the table within two minutes after she and
Roscoe had entered the house.
It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged,
awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression, as she
sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was that of a
person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent. Roscoe looked ill;
Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and explosive. Bibbs had more
color than any of these, and there was a strange brightness, like a light,
upon his face. It was curious to see anything so happy in the tense gloom of
that household.
Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never once
looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance, heavily
charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like Edith, kept his
eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself with the viands
thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting it to his mouth. He did
not once look at his father, though his father gazed heavily at him most of
the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and between Roscoe and his father,
some bitter wireless communication seemed continually to be taking place
throughout the long silences prevailing during this enlivening ceremony of
Sabbath refection.
"Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?" his mother asked, in the effort
to break up one of those ghastly intervals.
"What did you say, mother?"
"Didn't you go to church this morning?"
"I think so," he answered, as from a roseate trance.
"You THINK so! Don't you know?"
"Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!"
"Which one?"
"Just down the street. It's brick."
"What was the sermon about?"
"What, mother?"
"Can't you hear me?" she cried. "I asked you what the sermon was about?"
He roused himself. "I think it was about--" He frowned, seeming to
concentrate his will to recollect. "I think it was about something in the
Bible."
White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and lean upon
Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. "He don't know they WAS any suhmon!"
he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue. "All he know is he
was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!" George was right.
"Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?" Sibyl asked.
"No," he answered. "No, I didn't go alone."
"Oh?" Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry, and
followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. "OH!"
Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that completed
the conversation at the lugubrious feast.
Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to other
parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the library,
but was not well received.
"YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks," Sheridan
commanded.
Bibbs retreated. "Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!" he said.
However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his mother
and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn, according to
their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her feet together and
looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room, examining a brooch which
she had detached from her throat; and Mrs. Sheridan was looking over a
collection of records consisting exclusively of Caruso and rag-time. She
selected one of the latter, remarking that she thought it "right pretty," and
followed it with one of the former and the same remark.
As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad doorway,
seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead, he favored
Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left the room, George
stepping aside for her to precede him, and then disappearing after her in the
hall with an air of successful diplomacy. He made it perfectly clear that
Edith had given him secret instructions and that it had been his pride and
pleasure to fulfil them to the letter.
Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with curious
eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.
"What's that?" she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.
"Here's another right pretty record," said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting-- with
patent nervousness--not to hear. And she unloosed the music.
Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a little
while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold chair, with
his eyes closed.
"Where did Edith go?" she asked, curiously.
"Edith?" he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. "Is she gone?"
Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing, still
tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was suddenly at
high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp excitement. She
listens intently.
When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the library,
during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and husky; "I won't
say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well let me alone!"
But there were other sound: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low protesting
cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started another record, a
sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of Sibyl. She walked down
the hall and straight into the smoking-room.
Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became
instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to foot,
and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.
But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so white.
At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences became
nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and contorting her
lips to the semblance of a smile.
"Sit just as you were--both of you!" she said. And then to Edith: "Did you
tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?"
"You march out of here!" said Edith, fiercely. "March straight out of here!"
Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.
"Did you tell her I'd been telphoning you I wanted you to come?"
"Oh, good God!" Lamhorn said. "Hush!"
"You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?" she cried. "You knew that!"
"HUSH!" he begged, panic-stricken.
"That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't
come--you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say! You
were TIRED of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand times before,
and you wouldn't come! No! No! NO!" she stormed. "You wouldn't even come for
five minutes, but you could tell that little cat! And SHE told my husband!
You're a MAN!"
Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to
Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to her
feelings. "Get out of this house!" she shrieked. "This is my father's house.
Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!"
"No! No! I mustn't SPEAK--"
"Don't you DARE!"
Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously, fronting
each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled and rose and
cracked--they screeched. They could be heard over the noise of the
phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could be heard all
over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could have been heard in
the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.
"You told my husband!" screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to
Edith's. "You told my husband! This man put THAT in you hands to strike me
with! HE did!"
"I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's TIME
your husband--"
They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. "Do you want the neighbors in?"
Sheridan thundered.
There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his mother
in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved slowly toward
the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the hall, and through
it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily, his eyes on the
ground.
"NOW THEN!" said Sheridan to Lamhorn.
The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the vicious
gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction of
the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and Jackson
and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan. They fled
lightly.
"Papa, papa!" wailed Mrs. Sheridan. "Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't to
been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!"
There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of the
fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. "Now then!" he
repeated. "You goin' to leave my house?"
"He will NOT!" sobbed Edith. "Don't you DARE order him out!"
"Don't you bother, dear," said Lamhorn, quietly. "He doesn't understand. YOU
mustn't be troubled." Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very handsome,
and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught eyes a persecuted
noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels --the rabble
being enacted by her father.
"Don't come back, either!" said, Sheridan, realistic in this impersonation.
"Keep off the premises!" he called savagely into the hall. "This family's
through with you!"
"It is NOT!" Edith cried, breaking from her mother. "You'll SEE about that!
You'll find out! You'll find out what 'll happen! What's HE done? I guess if
I can stand it, it's none of YOUR business, is it? What's HE done, I'd like
to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you s'pose he told ME? She
was crazy about him soon as he began going there, and he flirted with her a
little. That's everything he did, and it was before he met ME! After that he
wouldn't, and it wasn't anything, anyway --he never was serious a minute about
it. SHE wanted it to be serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up.
He told her long ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and--"
"Yes," said Sheridan, sternly; "that's HIS side of it! That 'll do! He
doesn't come in this house again!"
"You look out!" Edith cried.
"Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on the
premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie look up this
young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count on earth! He's no
good! He's NOTHIN'! But it wouldn't matter if he was George Washington,
after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!"
"But, papa," Mrs. Sheridan began, "if Edie says it was all Sibyl's fault,
makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor--"
"'S enough!" he roared. "He keeps off these premises! And if any of you so
much as ever speak his name to me again--"
But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of
his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother. However,
Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her husband in the
library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her pass, roused himself
from reverie, and strolled in after her.
"She locked her door," said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully. "She
wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room."
"Well," said her husband, "she can settle her mind to it. She never speaks to
that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow-- Here! You
tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it's my orders. No, you
needn't. I'll tell 'em myself."
"Better not," said Bibbs, gently.
His father glared at him.
"It's no good," said Bibbs. "Mother, when you were in love with father --"
"My goodness!" she cried. "You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to
that--"
"Edith feels about him just what you did about father," said Bibbs. "And if
YOUR father had told you--"
"I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!" she declared, angrily.
"So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?" said Sheridan. "What is
it?"
"Let her see him all she wants."
"You're a--" Sheridan gave it up. "I don't know what to call you!"
"Let her see him all she wants," Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. "You're up
against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling you'd have a
chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your determination,
father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll beat you. You can't
keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about him the way she does now.
You can't make her think less of him, either. Nobody can. Your only chance
is that she'll do it for herself, and if you give her time and go easy she
probably will. Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that's just what
you don't want, and as you DON'T want it, you'd better --"
"I can't stand any more!" Sheridan burst out. "If it's come to BIBBS advisin'
me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that nigger George?
Maybe HE'S got some plan how I better manage my family. Bibbs, for God's sake
go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'! Oh, Lord! here's wisdom;
here's--"
"Bibbs," said Mrs. Sheridan, "if you haven't got anything to do, you might
step over and take Sibyl's wraps home--she left 'em in the hall. I don't
think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now."
"All right." And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and delivered
them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only, "Forgot these,"
and, "Good night, Roscoe," cordially and cheerfully, and returned to the New
House. His mother and father were still talking in the library, but with
discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his own room, and there he
proceeded to write in his note-book.
There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote].
Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes
very wide awake when it dies. Let it alone until then.
You cannot reason with love or with any other passion. The wise
will not wish for love--nor for ambition. These are passions
and bring others in their train--hatreds and jealousies--all
blind. Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.
What a turbulence is love! It is dangerous for a blind thing to be
turbulent; there are precipices in life. One would not cross a
mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes. Lovers do. Friendship
walks gently and with open eyes.
To walk to church with a friend! To sit beside her there! To rise when
she rises, and to touch with one's thumb and fingers the other half of
the hymn-book that she holds! What lover, with his fierce ways,
could know this transcendent happiness?
Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring. There is no
labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a
friend is thinking of you as you labor. So you sing at your work.
For the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love
it!
Love is demanding and claiming and insistent. Friendship is all
kindness--it makes the world glorious with kindness. What color
you see when you walk with a friend! You see that the gray sky
is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm
browns and is marvelously sculptured--the air becomes
iridescent. You see the gold in brown hair. Light floods
everything.
When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give you
nothing richer. You pray that there will be no change in anything
for ever.
What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your
friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to
adore! On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you
without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer
when you ask her why she does not wear them. You will say no
more, because you understand. She looks beautiful in her furs;
you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that
they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her
chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to
look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of
taking cold. So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you
had not thought it out.
This theory is satisfactory except that it does not account for
the absence of the muff. Ah, well, there must always be a mystery
somewhere! Mystery is a part of enchantment.
Manual labor is best. Your heart can sing and your mind can dream
while your hands are working. You could not have a singing heart
and a dreaming mind all day if you had to scheme out dollars, or
if you had to add columns of figures. Those things take your
attention. You cannot be thinking of your friend while you write
letters beginning "Yours of the 17th inst. rec'd and contents duly
noted." But to work with your hands all day, thinking and
singing, and then, after nightfall, to hear the ineffable kindness
of your friend's greeting--always there--for you! Who would
wake from such a dream as this?
Dawn and the sea--music in moonlit gardens--nightingales
serenading through almond-groves in bloom--what could bring such
things into the city's turmoil? Yet they are here, and roses
blossom in the soot. That is what it means not to be alone! That
is what a friend gives you!
Having thus demonstrated that he was about twenty-five and had formed a
somewhat indefinite definition of friendship, but one entirely his own (and
perhaps Mary's) Bibbs went to bed, and was the only Sheridan to sleep soundly
through the night and to wake at dawn with a light heart.
His cheerfulness was vaguely diminished by the troublous state of affairs of
his family. He had recognized his condition when he wrote, "Who would wake
from such a dream as this?" Bibbs was a sympathetic person, easily touched,
but he was indeed living in a dream, and all things outside of it were veiled
and remote--for that is the way of youth in a dream. And Bibbs, who had never
before been of any age, either old or young, had come to his youth at last.
He went whistling from the house before even his father had come down-stairs.
There was a fog outdoors, saturated with a fine powder of soot, and though
Bibbs noticed absently the dim shape of an automobile at the curb before
Roscoe's house, he did not recognize it as Dr. Gurney's, but went cheerily on
his way through the dingy mist. And when he was once more installed beside
his faithful zinc-eater he whistled and sang to it, as other workmen did to
their own machines sometimes, when things went well. His comrades in the shop
glanced at him amusedly now and then. They liked him, and he ate his lunch at
noon with a group of Socialists who approved of his ideas and talked of
electing him to their association.
The short days of the year had come, and it was dark before the whistles blew.
When the signal came, Bibbs went to the office, where he divested himself of
his overalls--his single divergence from the routine of his
fellow-workmen--and after that he used soap and water copiously. This was his
transformation scene: he passed into the office a rather frail young
working-man noticeably begrimed, and passed out of it to the pavement a
cheerfully pre-occupied sample of gentry, fastidious to the point of elegance.
The sidewalk was crowded with the bearers of dinner-pails, men and boys and
women and girls from the work-rooms that closed at five. Many hurried and
some loitered; they went both east and west, jostling one another, and Bibbs,
turning his face homeward, was forced to go slowly.
Coming toward him, as slowly, through the crowd, a tall girl caught sight of
his long, thin figure and stood still until he had almost passed her, for in
the thick crowd and the thicker gloom he did not recognize her, though his
shoulder actually touched hers. He would have gone by, but she laughed
delightedly; and he stopped short, startled. Two boys, one chasing the other,
swept between them, and Bibbs stood still, peering about him in deep
perplexity. She leaned toward him.
"I knew YOU!" she said.
"Good heavens!' cried Bibbs. "I thouhgt it was your voice coming out of a
star!"
"There's only smoke overhead," said Mary, and laughed again. "There aren't any
stars."
"Oh yes, there were--when you laughed!"
She took his arm, and they went on. "I've come to walk home with you, Bibbs.
I wanted to."
"But were you here in the--"
"In the dark? Yes! Waiting? Yes!"
Bibbs was radiant; he felt suffocated with happiness. He began to scold her.
"But it's not safe, and I'm not worth it. You shouldn't have--You ought to
know better. What did--"
"I only waited about twelve seconds," she laughed. "I'd just got here."
"But to come all this way and to this part of town in the dark, you--"
"I was in this part of town already," she said. "At least, I was only seven
or eight blocks away, and it was dark when I came out, and I'd have had to go
home alone--and I preferred going home with you."
"It's pretty beautiful for me," said Bibbs, with a deep breath. "You'll never
know what it was to hear your laugh in the darkness--and then to --to see you
standing there! Oh, it was kike--it was like--How can I TELL you what it was
like?" They had passed beyond the crowd now, and a crossing-lamp shone upon
them, which revealed the fact that again she was without her furs. Here was a
puzzle. Why did that adorable little vanity of hers bring her out without
them in the DARK? But of course she had gone out long before dark. For
undefinable reasons this explanation was not quite satisfactory; however,
allowing it to stand, his solicitude for her took another turn. "I think you
ought to have a car," he said, "especially when you want to be out after dark.
You need one in winter, anyhow. Have you ever asked your father for one?"
"No," said Mary. "I don't think I'd care for one particularly."
"I wish you would." Bibbs's tone was earnest and troubled. "I think in
winter you--"
"No, no," she interrupted, lightly. "I don't need--"
"But my mother tried to insist on sending one over here every afternoon for
me. I wouldn't let her, because I like the walk, but a girl--"
"A girl likes to walk, too," said Mary. "Let me tell you where I've been this
afternoon and how I happened to be near enought to make you take me home.
I've been to see a little old man who makes pictures of the smoke. He has a
sort of warehouse for a studio, and he lives there with his mother and his
wife and their seven children, and he's gloriously happy. I'd seen one of his
pictures at an exhibition, and I wanted to see more of them, so he showed them
to me. He has almost everthing he ever painted; I don't suppose he's sold
more than four or five pictures in his life. He gives drawing-lessons to keep
alive."
"How do you mean he paints the smoke?" Bibbs asked.
"Literally. He paints from his studio window and from the street-- anywhere.
He just paints what's around him--and it's beautiful."
"The smoke?"
"Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs of
cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and smoky
sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow columns of smoke
going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing with the hazy light in the
distance; and he has others with the broken sky-line of down-town, all misted
with the smoke and puffs and jets of vapor that have colors like an orchard in
mid-April. I'm going to take you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs."
"You're showing me the town," he said. "I didn't know what was in it at all."
"There are workers in beauty here," she told him, gently. "There are other
painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of things."
"I didn't know."
"No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself 'greater,'
one could live here all one's life and know only the side of it that shows."
"The beauty-workers seem buried very deep," said Bibbs. "And I imagine that
your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest of all. My
father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one of your friend's
pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples," but he wouldn't get one of those.
He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible--unless he could use it for an
advertisement."
"Yes," she said, thoughtfully. "And really he's the town. They ARE buried
pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs."
"And yet it's all wonderful," he said. "It's wonderful to me."
"You mean the town is wonderful to you?"
"Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city is
only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than the
horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater all day
long, helping me. Mary--" He stopped with a gasp. "That's the first time
I've called you 'Mary'!"
"Yes." She laughed, a little tremuously. "Though I wanted you to!"
"I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk home
with me. That must be it." "Women like to have things said," Mary
informed him, her tremulous laughter continuing. "Were you glad I came for
you?"
"No--not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up and
up--over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way most of
the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person I was then
seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at all. It seems long,
long ago. I was gloomy and sickly--somebody else-- somebody I don't
understand now, a coward afraid of shadows--afraid of things that didn't
exist--afraid of my old zinc-eater! And now I'm only afraid of what might
change anything."
She was silent a moment, and then, "You're happy, Bibbs?" she asked.
"Ah, don't you see?" he cried. "I want it to last for a thousand, thousand
years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I wouldn't have
one thing different--nothing, nothing!"
"Dear Bibbs!" she said, and laughed happily.
Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith, after
his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had decided that
he was "a member of the family"; but he appeared to have relapsed to the
retired list after that one attempt at participancy--he was far enough
detached from membership now. These were turbulent days in the New House, but
Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he seemed an absent-minded
stranger, present by accident and not wholly aware that he was present. He
would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant imaginings and dear reminiscences of
his own, while battle raged between Edith and her father, or while Sheridan
unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them.
The happy dreamer wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered
out again unawakened. He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for
Edith and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night, not
long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first days of
Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her frequently, and
to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or no, Gurney received from
his hysterical patient a variety of pungent information which would have
staggered anybody but a family physician. Among other things he was given to
comprehend the change in Bibbs, and why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump
in the operator's gizzard as of yore.
Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and shrieking in
pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting herself; her
condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of that of a child after
a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling mother all about the hurt
and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself hoarse when Gurney withheld
morphine. She went from the beginning to the end in a breath. No protest
stopped her; nothing stopped her.
"You ought to let me die!" she wailed. "It's cruel not to let me die! What
harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive? Just look at
my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and look what that got
me into!--look where I am now! He brought me to this town, and what did I
have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't even know the right crowd!
If they had, it might have been SOMETHING! I had nothing--nothing--nothing in
the world! I wanted to have a good time --and how could I? Where's any good
time among these Sheridans? They never even had wine on the table! I thought
I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read
about, and travel, and go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these
Sheridans! I did the best I could; I did, indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried
to live. Every woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess!
Things were just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that
frozen crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd
have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was getting
him away from me. She did it, too! She got him! A girl with money can do
that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what could I do? What
can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand it--and I
couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that Vertrees girl--and she could
have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt her. It wouldn't have done
her any harm to help me THAT little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that
she wouldn't even take the trouble to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!"
Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky whisper,
though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half upright, and the
nurse restrained her. "I'd get up out of this bed to show her she can't do
such things ot me! I was absolutely ladylike, and she walked out and left me
there alone! She'll SEE! She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket was
fairly underground, and she thinks she's landed that poor loon--but she'll
see! She'll see! If I'm ever able to walk across the street again I'll show
her how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help! It wouldn't
have hurt her any--it wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith needn't have told what
she told Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone. And HE told her I
bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him. He needn't have done it! He
needn't--needn't--" Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion,
though she would go over it all again as soon as her strength returned. She
lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway,
"Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured. "I don't want to see you." And as he
turned away she added, "I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe."
Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings, and she had
the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the disadvantage of a
mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her husband's sharp tutelage,
proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to telephoning Lamhorn from shops
whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary distraction over a
counter.
Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only the
lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan, like legions
of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly fuel by opposing
to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool, and thus set her on
fire.
Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her father,
and kept her bed between times to let him see what his violence had done to
her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing fast, she said
pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she went away; it was
impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not think always of him.
Perhaps in New York she might forget a little. She had written to a school
friend, established quietly with an aunt in apartments--and a month or so of
theaters and restaurants might bring peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he
gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a Monday morning, wearing violets
with her mourning and having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs.
She might have kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her
departure had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater,
that evening, to find her gone. "I suppose they'll be maried ther," he said,
casually.
Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up, fuming.
"Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted. "I don't want to
be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you are! She's through
with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept away from him a few weeks,
and I KEPT her away, and it did the business. For Heaven's sake, go on out o'
here!"
Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk sling
was still round Sheridan's neck, but not word of Gurney's and no excruciating
twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The wounds, slight
enough originally, had become infected the first time he had dislodged the
bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had the habit of gesture; he
could not "take time to remember," he said, that he must be careful, and he
had also a curious indignation with his hurt; he refused to pay it the
compliment of admitting its existence.
The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan Building
to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which the doctor felt had
become necessary. But he was a little before the appointed time and was
obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom-- there was a directors' meeting
of some sort in Sheridan's office. The door was slightly ajar, leaking
cigar-smoke and oratory, the latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
"No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!" he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
breaking into thunder, "I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick! You'd
lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his hind leg at
you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what if it is?
There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to keep OUR money
tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a crack
because some fool newspaper says the market's a little skeery! You listen to
every street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try to scare ME out
of a big thing! We're IN on this-- understand? I tell you there never WAS
better times. These are good times and big times, and I won't stand for any
other kind o' talk. This country's on its feet as it never was before, and
this city's on its feet and goin' to stay there!" And Gurney heard a series
of whacks and thumps upon the desk. "'Bad times'!" Sheridan vociferated, with
accompanying thumps. "Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you!
We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all,
gentlemen. The loan goes!"
The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened in. His
guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his right hand.
The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage as best he might;
and then he said what he had to say on the subject of Roscoe and Sibyl, his
opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile reception. But the result of
this conversation was that by telephonic command Roscoe awaited his father, an
hour later, in the library at the New House.
"Gurney says your wife's able to travel," Sheridan said brusquely, as he came
in.
"Yes." Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude which
had become his habit. "Yes, she is."
"Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!"
"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way," Roscoe protested, drearily.
"No, I hear YOU wouldn't!" There was a bitter gibe in the father's voice, and
he added: "It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll stay there. I
shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you least of all!"
"It's no use your talking that way," said Roscoe. "You won't do any good."
"Well, when are you comin' back to your office?" Sheridan used a brisker,
kinder tone. "Three weeks since you showed up there at all. When you goin'
to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the foolishness and start
in again? You ought to be able to make up for a lot o' lost time and a lot o'
spilt milk when that woman takes herself out o' the way and lets you and all
the rest of us alone."
"It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to you.
I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!"
"Wait a minute before you talk that way!" Sheridan began his sentry-go up and
down the room. "I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good men about
sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin' right again,
down in your office?"
"They must be good men." Roscoe nodded indifferently. "I thought I was doing
about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle it."
"Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty men
drive harder 'n I do, and--"
"Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with 'em.
They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use the rest of
their lives. The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by domestic
difficulties'!"
"You set there and tell me you give up?" Sheridan's voice shook, and so did
the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the despondent
figure. "Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come down there
again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any more. The work
ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry you, and you can get
shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't fastened on you yet. Don't
say--"
"It's no use on earth," Roscoe mumbled. "No use on earth."
"Look here! If you want another month's vacation--"
"I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?"
"Gurney!" Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. "It's Gurney, Gurney,
Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The doctor
says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get its Work done
if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this blattin'--'Oh, oh!
Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your NERVES!' So he says you got
'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and emotional strain.' They always
got to stick the Work in if they see a chance! I reckon you did have the
'emotional strain,' and that's all's the matter with you. You'll be over it
soon's this woman's gone, and Work's the very thing to make you quit frettin'
about her."
"Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?"
"Shut up!" Sheridan bellowed. "I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel like
shootin' anybody that says it to me!" He fumed and chafed, swearing
indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. "Look here; do you think
you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?"
"I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own, outside
the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not."
"It is? You could 'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at your
age?"
"No. But it's mine, and it's enough."
"My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit there! I
suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket, and all you have
to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right here, you'll never see
one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and what would you know about
handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from now? Because I intend to STAY
here a little while yet, my boy! They'd either get it away from you or you'd
sell for a nickel and let it be split up and --" He whirled about, marched to
the other end of the room, and stood silent a moment. Then he said, solomnly:
"Listen. If you go out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin' on God's
green earth to depend on but your brother--and you know what he is. I've
depended on you for it ALL since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam'
doctor, and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and
that certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all
a lie. Men don't break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell
you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and a
little gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into MOVING
businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I won't let
you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if you lay down
you prove you ain't the man I thought you were." He cleared his throat and
finished quietly: "Roscoe, will you take a month's vacation and come back and
go to it?"
"No," said Roscoe, listlessly. "I'm through."
"All right," said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a table, went
to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son. "Good-by."
Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes. "Best
I can do," he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. "I figure it
out a good deal like this," he said. "I didn't KNOW my job was any strain,
and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what I hear, I was just up to
the limit of my nerves from overwork, and the-- the trouble at home was the
extra strain that's fixed me the way I am. I tried to brace, so I could stand
the work and the trouble too, on whiskey --and that put the finish to me!
I--I'm not hitting it as hard as I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon,
if I can get to feeling a little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I
don't know. I'm all in--and the doctor says so. I thought I was running
along fine up to a few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and
didn't know it. Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your daughter-in-law
and going to stay that way. She didn't do anything wicked. It was a shock to
me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had done--encouraging that fellow to
hang around her after he began trying to flirt with her, and losing her head
over him the way she did. I don't deny it was a shock and that it 'll always
be a hurt inside of me I'll never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't
understand a woman's nature." Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and
desolate earnest. "A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive
people, and traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can
give her the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or New
Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman has to have something in
her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I was. I never understood
till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and I believe if you'd heard
her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly about her; I believe you might
have forgiven her like I have. That's all. I never cared anything for any
girl but her in my life, but I was so busy with business I put it ahead of
her. I never THOUGHT about her, I was so busy thinking business. Well, this
is where it's brought us to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I
feel the way you do when anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word
'business' makes me dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I
believe if I had to go down-town and step inside that office door I'd fall
down on the floor, deathly sick. You talk about a 'month's vacation'-- and I
get just as sick. I'm rattled--I can't plan--I haven't got any plans--can't
make any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as
I can--and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we--"
His father rustled the paper. "I said good-by, Roscoe."
"Good-by," said Roscoe, listlessly.
Sheridan waited until he heard the sound of the outer door closing; then he
rose and pushed a tiny disk set in the wall. Jackson appeared.
"Has Bibbs got home from work?"
"Mist' Bibbs? No, suh."
"Tell him I want to see him, soon as he comes."
"Yessuh."
Sheridan returned to his chair and fixed his attention fiercely upon the
newspaper. He found it difficult to pursue the items beyond their explanatory
rubrics--there was nothing unusual or startling to concentrate his attention:
"Motorman Puts Blame on Brakes. Three Killed when Car Slides."
"Burglars Make Big Haul." "Board Works Approve Big Car-line
Extension." "Hold-up Men Injure Two. Man Found in Alley, Skull
Fractured." "Sickening Story Told in Divorce Court." "Plan New
Eighteen-story Structure." "School-girl Meets Death under
Automobile." "Negro Cuts Three. One Dead." "Life Crushed Out.
Third Elevator Accident in Same Building Causes Action by
Coroner." "Declare Militia will be Menace. Polish Societies
Protest to Governor in Church Rioting Case." "Short $3,500 in
Accounts, Trusted Man Kills Self with Drug." "Found Frozen.
Family Without Food or Fuel. Baby Dead when Parents Return Home
from Seeking Work." "Minister Returned from Trip Abroad Lectures
on Big Future of Our City. Sees Big Improvement during Short
Absence. Says No European City Holds Candle."
(Sheridan nodded approvingly here.)
Bibbs came through the hall whistling, and entered the room briskly. "Well,
father, did you want me?"
"Yes. Sit down." Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire, holding
out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.
"I came within seven of the shop record to-day," he said. "I handled more
strips thand any other workman has any day this month. The nearest to me is
sixteen behind."
"There!" exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. "What'd I tell you? I'd like
to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn't right in sending you there-- I would
just like to hear him! And you--ain't you ashamed of makin' such a fuss about
it? Ain't you?"
"I didn't go at it in the right spirit the other time," Bibbs said, smiling
brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. "I didn't know the
difference it meant to like a thing."
"Well, I guess I've pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I
HAVE! I said the shop 'd be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn't
hurt you, and it hasn't. It's been just exactly what I said it would be.
Ain't that so?"
"Looks like it!" Bibbs agreed, gaily.
"Well, I'd like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead o'
hurting you, it's been the makin' of you--physically. You're a good inch
taller'n what I am, and you'd be a bigger man than what I am if you'd get some
flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin' a little. Physically, it's started
you out to be the huskiest one o' the whole family. Now, then,
mentally--that's different. I don't say it unkindly, Bibbs, but you got to do
something for yourself mentally, just like what's begun physically. And I'm
goin' to help you."
Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his son's,
and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs's knee confidentially. "I got plans for you,
Bibbs," he said.
Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. "I--I'm all right
now, father."
"Listen." Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone of a
reasonable man reasoning. "Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow to-day,
and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been expectin' it
some little time back. Well, it's got to be met. Now I'll be frank with you.
As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn't ever called you exactly strong.
You been a little weak both ways, most of your life. Not but what I think you
GOT a mentality, if you'd learn to use it. You got will-power, I'll say that
for you. I never knew boy or man that could be stubborner--never one in my
life! Now, then, you've showed you could learn to run that machine best of
any man in the shop, in no time at all. That looks to me like you could learn
to do other things. I don't deny but what it's an encouragin' sign. I don't
deny that, at all. Well, that helps me to think the case ain't so hopeless as
it looks. You're all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain't as
poor material as I thought. Your tellin' me about comin' within seven strips
of the shop's record to-day looks to me like encouragin' information brought
in at just about the right time. Now, then, I'm goin' to give you a raise. I
wanted to send you straight on up through the shops--a year or two, maybe--
but I can't do it. I lost Jim, and now I've lost Roscoe. He's quit. He's
laid down on me. If he ever comes back at all, he'll be a long time pickin'
up the strings, and, anyway, he ain't the man I thought he was. I can't count
on him. I got to have SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I'm down to this:
you're my last chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got
and see if we can't develop 'em a little. Who knows? And I'm goin' to put my
time in on it. I'm goin' to take you right down-town with ME, and I won't be
hard on you if you're a little slow at first. And I'm goin' to do the big
thing for you. I'm goin' to make you feel you got to do the big thing for me,
in return. I've vindicated my policy with you about the shop, and now I'm
goin' to turn right around and swing you 'way over ahead of where the other
boys started, and I'm goin' to make an appeal to your ambition that 'll make
you dizzy!" He tapped his son on the knee again. "Bibbs, I'm goin' to start
you off this way: I'm goin' to make you a director in the Pump Works Company;
I'm goin' to make you vice-president of the Realty Company and a
vice-president of the Trust Company!"
Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. "Oh no!" he cried.
Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. "Yes, sir! And
there's some pretty fat little salaries goes with those vice-presidencies, and
a pinch o' stock in the Pump Company with the directorship. You thought I was
pretty mean about the shop--oh, I know you did!--but you see the old man can
play it both ways. And so right now, the minute you've begun to make good the
way I wanted you to, I deal from the new deck. And I'll keep on handin' it
out bigger and bigger every time you show me you're big enough to play the
hand I deal you. I'm startin' you with a pretty big one, my boy!"
"But I don't--I don't--I don't want it!" Bibbs stammered.
"What 'd you say?" Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.
"I don't want it, father. I thank you--I do thank you--"
Sheridan looked perplexed. "What's the matter with you? Didn't you
understand what I was tellin' you?"
"Yes."
"You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered--"
"I know, I know! But I can't take it."
"What's the matter with you?" Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.
"Your head feel funny?"
"I've never been quite so sane in my life," said Bibbs, "as I have lately. And
I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right life. I'm earning my
daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages are enough. I don't want any
more money, and I don't deserve any--"
"Damnation!" Sheridan sprang up. "You've turned Socialist! You been
listening to those fellows down there, and you--"
"No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't it."
Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially. "Then
what is it? What's the matter?"
"Nothing," he son returned, nervously. "Nothing--except that I'm content. I
don't want to change anything."
"Why not?"
Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. "I'll tell you, father, if
I can. I know it may be hard to understand--"
"Yes, I think it may be," said Sheridan, grimly. "What you say usually is a
LITTLE that way. Go on!"
Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at every
possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream--a rough hand
stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and made vague
drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his eyes lowered.
"You weren't altogether right about the shop--that is, in one way you weren't,
father." He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan stood facing him,
expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt. "That's difficult to
explain," Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of
his finger. "I--I believe the shop might have done for me this time if I
hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to-- oh, not only to bear it, but to be
happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it. I want to go on just as I am. And of
all things on earth that I don't want, I don't want to live a business life--I
don't want to be drawn into it. I don't think it IS living--and now I AM
living. I have the healthful toil--and I can think. In business as important
as yours I couldn't think anything but business. I don't--I don't think
making money is worth while."
"Go on," said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
"It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see," said Bibbs. "You think
this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being rich and
powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools because the
city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they used to because
some people--not rich and powerful people--have thought the thoughts to teach
the children. And yet when you've been reading the paper I've heard you
objecting to the children being taught anything except what would help them to
make money. You said it was wasting the taxes. You want them taught to make
a living, but not to live. When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town;
now it's hideous. What's the use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I
don't think all this has meant really going ahead--it's just been getting
bigger and dirtier and noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many
ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you
think I'm an utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and
politics just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman
that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and
dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it? And
supposed she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time, and was
always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep clean what
she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the house altogether
unpeaceful and unlivable--"
"Just one minute!" Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy, "If
you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?"
"I don't quite--"
"I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything whatever
in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon any subject or
question you've thought about and talked about? Can you mention one single
time when you were proved to be right?"
He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only, "If
I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm right about
this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due to bring up my
average."
"Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you probably
couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been balkin' all
your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do, you'd let out SOME
kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet I can't seem to remember once when
you didn't have to lay down and do what I said. But go on with your remarks
about our city and the business of this country. Go on!"
"I don't want to be a part of it," said Bibbs, with unwonted decision. "I
want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went down
there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money enought
to--"
"No," his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. "You've never had to
earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me remind
you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty fair food;
you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these noisy
housekeepers--me, for instance--decided to let you do your own housekeepin'.
May I ask what your proposition would be?"
"I'm earning nine dollars a week," said Bibbs, sturdily. "It's enough. I
shouldn't mind at all."
"Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?"
"My work!" Bibbs answered. "And I've done so well on that clipping-machine I
believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job. I
could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade
than be in business--I should, infinitely!"
"You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!" But Sheridan struggled
with his temper and again was partially successful in controlling it. "You
better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're either goin' down with me to
my office Monday morning--or--you can go to plumbing!"
"All right," said Bibbs, gently. "I can get along."
Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. "O God," he said, "this
boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a week, and now
his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for him?" Then he flung
his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture of dismissal. "Get out
o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a whale's thigh-bone, but it's
cracked spang all the way across! You hated the machine-shop so bad when I
sent you there, you went and stayed sick for over two years--and now, when I
offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the shop
like a calf for its mammy! You're cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here!
One son died, one quit, and one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P.
Ellersly's wife had a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the
house. First morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar
plate-glass window out into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty
dandelion!' That's what you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin',
'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what
you bust! Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you
are, I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn
you--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out of you
that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while I'm able to
stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin' at you till they
get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't let me hear from you
again till you can come and tell me you've waked up, you poor, pitiful,
dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"
Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it, for
once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by his father's
last word.
There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm nor
that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the consciousness
of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of Mary. All was
right in his world has he sat with her, reading Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine
and Palomides. The sorrowful light of the gas-jet might have been May morning
sunshine flashing amber and rose through the glowing windows of the
Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held
out to bring him such golden nights as these, all the king's horses and all
the king's men might not serve to break the spell.
Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and
Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to
discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever there
was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that while they were together,
and it was light, she looked at him all the time.
When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little
while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said: "There's
something I want to read over. This:
You would think I threw a window open on the dawn...She has a soul
that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like an
ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for
everything.... I shall never understand it all. I do not know
how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak
of it ...
He stopped and looked at her.
"You boy!" said Mary, not very clearly.
"Oh yes," he returned. "But it's true--especially my knees!"
"You boy!" she murmured again, blushing charmingly. "You might read another
line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a
mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it--I can give it to you: "A
little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!"
"I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one, unless I
have to decide to study plumbing."
"No." She shook her head. "You love and want what's beautiful and delicate
and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and have always
wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever
known, and that's what you were wistful for."
Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two
the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. "Why, no," he said; "I wanted
something else more than that. I wanted you."
"And here I am!" she laughed, completely understanding. "I think we're like
those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough Burgundian
cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that
the devil was dead."
"He isn't, though," said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began
a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. "He gets into the
clock whenever I'm with you." And, sighing deeply, he rose to go.
"You're always very prompt about leaving me."
"I--I try to be," he said. "It isn't easy to be careful not to risk
everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you look
tired--"
"Have you ever?"
"Not yet. You always look--you always look--"
"How?"
"Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something,
you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it.
If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that look--and I'd never give
up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on
your part, and yet I don't quite understand why it should be, either." He
smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. "Mary, you haven't a 'secret
sorrow,' have you?"
For answer she only laughed.
"No," he said; "I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think that's
why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in your own life,
and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to happiness, too. But
there's one little time in the twenty-four hours when I'm not happy. It's
now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal every time it comes--and
then, when I've left the house, there's a bad little blankness, a black void,
as though I were temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in
my mind that I'm really beginning another day that's to end with YOU again.
Then I cheer up. But now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and
so--good night." And he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little
aware, "I hate it!"
"Do you?" she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood
motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.
"Mary! Your eyes are so--" He stopped.
"Yes?" But she looked quickly away.
"I don't know," he said. "I thought just then--"
"What did you think?"
"I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to
understand--and didn't."
She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. "My eyes are pleased,"
she said. "I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go."
"But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it," he said.
She inclined her head. "Yes. I'll--'let it'!"
"Going to church," said Bibbs. "It IS going to church when I go with you!"
She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had
formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever speaking
of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the doorway until he
reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and looked back, and she
waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to the New House, and looked
back again, and Mary was not in the doorway, but the door was open and the
light shone. It was as if she meant to tell him that she would never shut him
out; he could always see that friendly light of the open doorway--as if it
were open for him to come back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of
the New House came between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed
to him the beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol
of herself and of her ineffable kindness.
And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine snow
swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was strewn with
tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that she was there,
waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the storm touched her.
When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she went into an unlit room
across the hall from that in which they had spent the evening, and, looking
from the window, watched him until he was out of sight. The storm made that
difficult to-night, but she caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that
stood between the two houses, and saw that he turned to look back again.
Then, and not before, she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across
the street. They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed
the front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper
windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of
one of them. Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night she had seen
those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.
But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for his
last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white already upon
his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the lee of the sheltering
wing of the New House.
A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became aware of
a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the library: Sheridan
cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice rising to an agonized
squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled detonations-- the
outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then Gurney, sharply
imperious, "Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand in that sling, I
say!"
"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a tragedy;
and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which he had first
beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the eyes of Bibbs. "Look
at 'at lamidal statue!"
Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine-- painted
colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human; and gilded and
silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous palms like the spoil of a
barbarians' battle. There had been a massacre in the oasis --the Moor had
been hurled headlong from his pedestal.
"He hit 'at ole lamidal statue," said George. "POW!"
"My father?"
"YESshu! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's I kin
telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't takin' on
'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago. You done miss'
it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what he was. POW! he hit
'er! Yessuh!" He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a crumpled telegraph form.
"Here what come," he said. "I pick 'er up when he done stompin' on 'er. You
read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn 'er ovuh to you soon's you come
in."
Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to Mrs.
Sheridan.
Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my
health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married
this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure you
will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am
happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address
when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like
him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.
Edith Lamhorn.
George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors of
the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just then,
would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For that reason he
was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade room, intending to keep
out of sight, when he heard Sheridan vociferously demanding his presence.
"Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him in.
Now you'll SEE!" And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into the hall,
beckoned to her son.
Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white cotton,
his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was striding up and
down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that he seemed to be
wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot; his forehead was
heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken loose, and there were
blood-stains upon his right cuff.
"THERE'S our little sunshine!" he cried, as Bibbs appeared. "THERE'S the hope
o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--"
"Keep you hand in that sling," said Gurney, sharply.
Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. "For God's sake, sing
another tune!" he cried. "You said you 'came as a doctor but stay as a
friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize ME --"
"Oh, talk sense," said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. "What do you
want Bibbs to say?"
"You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,' oh
Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'! You sat
up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many another man you
knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!" He swung toward the quiet
figure waiting in the doorway. "Bibbs, will you come down-town with me Monday
morning and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a directorship,
stock, and salaries? I ask you."
"No, father," said Bibbs, gently.
Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
"Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week, instead
of takin' up my offer?"
"Yes, sir."
"And I'd like the doctor to hear: What 'll you do if I decide you're too
high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my shop?"
"Find other work," said Bibbs.
"There! You hear him for yourself!" Sheridan cried. "You hear what--"
"Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him."
Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and broke,
piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to be a
PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he wants to
be a plumber so he can THINK!"
He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
"There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance to
live," he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his throat.
"That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway yonder!"
Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding, and
tossed it into the open bag. "What's the matter with giving Bibbs a chance to
live?" he said, coolly. "I would if I were you. You've had TWO that went
into business."
Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. "Joe Gurney," he
said, when he could command himself so far, "are you accusin' me of the
responsibility for the death of my son James?"
"I accuse you of nothing," said the doctor. "But just once I'd like to have
it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here, too." He got
up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind his back and
smiling. "Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable," he said. "You were
bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you and him, both, to
understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at the risk of his life.
Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And he did go, and he's made
good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't you let him off now? He
wants to write, and how do you know that he couldn't do it if you gave him a
chance? How do you know he hasn't some message-- something to say that might
make the world just a little bit happier or wiser? He MIGHT--in time--it's a
possibility not to be denied. Now he can't deliver any message if he goes
down there with you, and he won't HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down
with you is likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as
the shop did, the first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But I
tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill something
that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical body, and
you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so why not let it live? You've
about come to the end of your string, old fellow. Why not stop this perpetual
devilish fighting and give Bibbs his chance?"
Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. "What 'fighting?'"
"Yours--with nature." Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce
antagonist equably. "You don't seem to understand that you've been struggling
against actual law."
"What law?"
"Natural law," said Gurney. "What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something powerful
that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't against HER,
but you set yourself against the power that had her in its grip, and it shot
out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk! What's taken Roscoe from you?
Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU wanted to send the load
across the broken bridge, and you thought you could bully or coax the cracked
thing into standing. Well, you couldn't! Now here's Bibbs. There are
thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead--and so is he. It
wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be twice as good a business man as Jim
and Roscoe put together."
"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has the kind
and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in anything--if he
ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain asleep. I like him
that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead
aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT to lead. Blindly, he's been
fighting for the chance to lead it--he's obeying something that begs to stay
alive within him; and, blindly, he knows you'll crush it out. You've set your
will to do it. Let me tell you something more. You don't know what you've
become since Jim's going thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a
bafflement stronger than your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming
fury against the very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law
that took Jim from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules.
The very self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night. The
LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip the law
--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to wield it and
twist it--"
The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. "Yes! And by God,
I will!"
"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.
"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely. "That's
for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me tell you!
"Defied the lighning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half a man he'd 'a'
got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the lightning --we hitch it
up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A man nowadays would just as
soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!"
"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney. "Will you be a really big man now
and--"
"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!" Sheridan began to walk to and fro
again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot his bolt
the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target
seemed unaware of the marksman.
"I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder," Sheridan went
on, "and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I don't! I
suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I mightn't need a son!
Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!"
"Oh, put your hand back!" said Gurney, wearily.
There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in
the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and half-way
across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs. Sheridan shrieked
and sprang toward it.
"Let it lay!" he shouted, fiercely. "Let it lay!" And, weeping, she obeyed.
"Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put
upon it. "I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's wonderful where property
goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy--you remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy,
solid banker. He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was
president at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years
more. He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon
the day before he died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond
edge! He used to eat a bag o' peanuts and and apple for lunch; but he wasn't
stingy --he was just livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or
automobiles--he had his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty near
bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole man used to
pass one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on
the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak to him? God! he
wouldn't 'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at
the bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd 'a'
had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin' every day of his
life was workin' for that cigarette boy! Tracy thought it was for the bank;
he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood and the blood of his
brain for the bank, but he wasn't. It was every bit--from the time he went in
at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick
of it just slavin' for that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy.
AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it,
though he chased him off the front steps of his house once. The day after
Tracy died his old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any
Tracy bank any more! And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a
cigarette son-in-law!"
Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and Sheridan
once more returned it to the sling.
"My son-in-law likes Florida this winter," Sheridan went on. "That's good,
and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be there next
winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear it can be done
in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got me to spend that much
on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't give me a minute's rest till I
turned over the same to her. And she's got it, besides what I gave her to go
East on. It 'll be gone long before this time next year, and when she comes
home and leaves the cigarette behind-- for good--she'll get some more. MY
name ain't Tracy, and there ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the
Sheridan family. And there ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and
endowin' and trusteein', nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm
gone! Edith 'll be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through
with that cigarette, but--"
"By the way," interposed Gurney, "didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that Bibbs
warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?"
Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed and
stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his wounded hand,
and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively, sprang to catch and
protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away, tearing the bandage. He
hammered the table till it leaped.
"Fool!" he panted, choking. "If he's shown gumption enough to guess right the
first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin' him on!" And,
struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs, thrusting forward his
convulsed face, which was deathly pale. "My name ain't Tracy, I tell you!" he
screamed, hoarsely. "You give in, you stubborn fool! I've had my way with you
before, and I'll have my way with you now!"
Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
"splendid look" of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage in a
struggle, so that he would "never give up."
"No. You can't have your way," he said. And then, obeying a significant
motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.
Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her husband's room
at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the darkened chamber. At the
"old" house they had shared a room, but the architect had chosen to separate
them at the New, and they had not known how to formulate an objection,
although to both of them something seemed vaguely reprehensible in the new
arrangement.
Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the aperture when
he spoke.
"Oh, I'm, AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."
She came and sat by the bed. "I woke up thinkin' about it," she explained.
"And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must be right, and I knew
you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake, so-- well, you got plenty other
troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it
looks like."
"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.
"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she continued. "He's
a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to say he
seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds right bright.
'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the time, when he says
things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got company, because they'd think
he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet, look at the way he did when
Jim--when Jim got hurt. He took right hold o' things. 'Course he'd been sick
himself so much and all--and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind
o' green about what to do in that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold,
and everything went off all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr.
Gurney says he's got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right
considerable of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such
a large practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well,
what he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd
amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You heard
him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs 'll be a bigger business man than what Jim and
Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't that exactly
what he says?"
"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest. "Gurney's
crazier 'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was true--what of it?"
"Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married. You
know where he goes all the time--"
"Oh, Lord, yes!" Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall,
leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. "You better go
back to sleep. He runs over there--every minute she'll let him, I suppose.
Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it."
"WHY ain't there?" she urged. "I know better--there is, too! You wait and
see. There's just one thing in the world that 'll wake the sleepiest young
man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't care who he is or how
sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it into his head to
pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and chuldern of his own.
THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll see. I've known dozens o'
cases, and so 've you--moony, no-'count young men, all notions and talk, goin'
to be ministers, maybe or something; and there's just this one thing takes it
out of 'em and brings 'em right down to business. Well, I never could make
out just what it is Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a
minister exactly --he's so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS--but I
know this is goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say
that Bibbs has got the idea in his head yet--'r else he wouldn't be talkin'
that fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on.
But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him out.
He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll want all the salary and
stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more. That girl's
the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give things to! She's pretty
and fine-lookin', and things look nice on her, and I guess she'd like to have
'em about as well as the next. And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days,
either, and she'll be pretty ready for the change. I saw her with her sleeves
rolled up at the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday
their cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another one. He
says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good while, and now they're
doin' the cookin,' too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that unless she's told
him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind o' stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is
too up in the clouds to notice anything like that for himself. They've never
asked him to a meal in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either-- he's
kind of innocent. Now I was thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly
mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me maybe
if--"
Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn. "You're
barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!"
"Why am I?" she demanded, crossly. "Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?"
"Because you are. There's nothin' in it."
"I'll bet you," she said, rising--"I'll bet you he goes to church with her
this morning. What you want to bet?"
"Go back to bed," he commanded. "I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's
nothin' in it, I tell you."
She shook her head perplexedly. "You think because--because Jim was runnin'
so much with her it wouldn't look right?"
"No. Nothin' to do with it."
"Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?"
"Yes, I do," he grunted. "Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I
ain't had any yet!"
"Well--" She went to the door, her expression downcast. "I thought
maybe--but--" She coughed prefatorily. "Oh, papa, something else I wanted to
tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night when the
telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well, Sibyl wants to come over
this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants to say to us. It 'll
be the first time she's been out since she was able to sit up--and I reckon
she wants to tell us she's sorry for what happened. They expect to get off by
the end o' the week, and I reckon she wants to feel she's done what she could
to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's what he said. I 'phoned him again about
Edith, and he said it wouldn't disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it;
she was sure all along it was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got
all that foolishness pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I
thought was, no use bein' rough with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a good
deal--and I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account. You'll--you'll
be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?"
He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had pulled over
his head.
"What?" she said, timidly. "I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl all
right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?"
He threw the coverlet off furiously. "I presume so!" he roared.
She departed guiltily.
But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to church with
Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost. Nevertheless, Bibbs
and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's house with the purpose of
going to church. That was their intention, and they had no other. They meant
to go to church.
But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation as
they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and Bibbs
was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with Mary's
rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other at this time.
It also happened that, though they were a little jostled among groups of
people in the vicinity of the church, they passed this somewhat prominent
edifice without being aware of their proximity to it, and they had gone an
incredible number of blocks beyond it before they discovered their error.
However, feeling that they might be embarrassingly late if they returned, they
decided that a walk would make them as good. It was a windless winter
morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground. So they walked, and for
the most part they were silent, but on their way home, after they had turned
back at noon, they began to be talkative again.
"Mary," said Bibbs, after a time, "am I a sleep-walker?"
She laughed a little, then looked grave. "Does your father say you are?"
"Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He has
quite a list."
"You mustn't mind," she said, gently. "He's been getting some pretty severe
shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs. I've always
been sure he's very big."
"Yes. Big and--blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any
consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow stronger.
Stronger for what? For nothing."
"Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for
something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and his
kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see it--so great
none of us could see it."
"No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground--"
"Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight," she finished for
him, cheerily.
"Into the smoke," said Bibbs. "Look at the powder of coal-dust already
dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the little
pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of soot on your
cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well have thrown it on
you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have taken his chance of my
whipping him for it if I could."
"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so rhetorically?
IS there?"
"Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each. One landed
since I mentioned the first."
She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in
transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were
entirely matter-of-course about it.
An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary for the
last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the soot. "There!"
said the elderly wife. "You're always wrong when you begin guessing about
strangers. Those two young people aren't honeymooners at all--they've been
married for years. A blind man could see that."
"I wish I did know who threw that soot on you," said Bibbs, looking up at the
neighboring chimneys, as they went on. "They arrest children for throwing
snowballs at the street-cars, but--"
"But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in the
houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make. I wonder
what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year. Yes, we pay the
price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have money to pay or none."
"Who is it gets the pay?" said Bibbs.
"Not I!" she laughed.
"Nobody gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some of
the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to get."
"Yes," she said, smiling to him, and nodding. "And you don't want it, and you
don't need it."
"But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?" He had told her of his
father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and
picturesqueness of their setting forth. "You think I'm right?"
"A thousand times!" she cried. "There aren't so many happy people in this
world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy. If it's a
dream--keep it!"
"The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate it as I never
hated the shop!" he said. "I hate it! And the city itself, the city that the
money shuffle has made--just look at it! Look at it in winter. The snow's
tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the ugliness is winning; it's
making the snow hideous; the snow's getting dirty on top, and it's foul
underneath with the dirt and disease of the unclean street. And the dirt and
the ugliness and the rush and the noise aren't the worst of it; it's what the
dirt and ugliness and rush and noise MEAN--that's the worst! The outward
things are insufferable, but they're only the expression of a spirit--a blind
enbryo of a spirit, not yet a soul--oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead'
nonsense! Oughtn't it all to be a fellowship? I shouldn't want to get ahead
if I could--I'd want to help the other fellow to keep up with me."
"I read something the other day and remembered it for you," said Mary. "It was
something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint: 'In the first
picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a great city, full of all
kinds of happy life: children, and lovers walking, and ladies leaning from the
windows all down great lengths of street leading to the city walls; and there
the gates are wide open, letting in a space of green field and cornfield in
harvest; and all round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing
from a lttle walled graveyard."
"And if I painted," Bibbs returned, "I'd paint a lady walking in the street of
a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile life-- children being
taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying to get richer, and ladies
who'd given up trying to wash their windows clean, and the gates of the city
wide open, letting in slums and slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all
round this lady's head a great rain of swirling soot--" He paused, adding,
thoughtfully: "And yet I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek. It was
just as if I were your brother-- the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub
it off for you. Still, Edith never--"
"Didn't she?" said Mary, as he paused again.
"No. And I--" He contented himself with shaking his head instead of offering
more definite information. Then he realized that they were passing the New
House, and he sighed profoundly. "Mary, our walk's almost over."
She looked as blank. "So it is, Bibbs."
They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly to a
stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with Sibyl, who
was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her illness, however,
walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not taking his arm. The two
crossed the street without appearing to see Mary and her companion, and
entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary gazed after them gravely,
but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.
"Mary," he said, "you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?"
"No, Bibbs." And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him instantly
unreasonably happy.
"I know you want to go in--" he began.
"No. I don't want to."
"I mustn't keep you standing her, and I mustn't go in with you--but--I just
wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning, grumbling about
soot and all that--while all the time I--Mary, I think it's been the very
happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do. And --I don't know just
why--but it's seemed to me that it was one I'd always remember. And you," he
added, falteringly, "you look so--so beautiful to-day!"
"It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs."
"Mary, will you tell me something?" he asked.
"I think I will."
"It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them ever just
fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much colder, you
don't--you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?"
Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.
"Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more
questions?"
"Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?"
"Because I found I'd be warmer without them!" She caught his hand quickly in
her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into the house.
It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth
will so often make even a ready-made library the actual "living-room" of a
family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed. Thus it was with
Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and figures;
who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting --when he
was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.
He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the far end
of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a
solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the
length of his coat and the closeness of his Saturday-night shave; and his
expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but the
most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his sling.
Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at him,
but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were nervously
moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room. There was a
deadly silence.
But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she was
unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them. She
spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed to
memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.
"Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me, and
I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the way I acted.
I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and to say I
know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never happen again,
because it's been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come back, some day, I
hope you'll see that you've got a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed
of again. I want to ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I
haven't any feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in
her new life. I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a
poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would
feel a good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not
to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur again to
make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enought to excuse it this
time."
He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him, never
lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the agitation
of her hands within the muff.
"All right," he said at last.
She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of heavy
tears when the eyelids lifted.
"Thank you," she said. "There's something else--about something different--I
want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it, too."
"She's up-stairs in her room," said Sheridan. "Roscoe--"
Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and begin to
ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the chance for
precisely the effect she wanted.
"No, let me go," she said. "I want to speak to her a minute first, anyway."
And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see Bibbs
enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his room, had
overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter Edith,
thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of the
circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the recollection there
had flashed the thought--out of her own experience-- that people are often
much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by words directly
addressed to them. Sibyl intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to
overhear. She did not hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she
believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was
going to say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
girl who had affronted her.
Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's mood, and
she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again, in her
presence, she would (as she thought of it) "have a fit right there." She
heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her hair before a
mirror.
"I was just coming down," she said, as the door opened.
"Yes, he wants you to," said Sibyl. "It's all right, mother Sheridan. He's
forgiven me."
Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh, wiped
her eyes, and applied powder.
"And I hope Edith will be happy," Sibyl added, inciting more applications of
Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
"Yes, yes," murmured the good woman. "We mustn't make the worst of things."
"Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear it,
too," said Sibyl. "We better go down, mother Sheridan."
She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came to a
spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. "I want to tell you about it
first," she said, abruptly. "It isn't a secret, of course, in any way; it's
something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the whole family knows
it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL not to
understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all. But I want to just
kind of go over it first with you; it 'll kind of help me to see I got it all
stratight. I haven't got any reason for saying it except the good of the
family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the other, of course, except for
that. I oughtn't to 've behaved the way I did that night, and it seems to me
if there's anything I can do to help the family, I ought to, because it would
help show I felt the right way. Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's
to keep the family from being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family
just made use of and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more
heart than so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run
as--as Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell
you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way."
Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to write.
He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the preceding
Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon paper before
they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for they were but
gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem, and if he could
carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it-- he would venture it upon
an editor. For he had his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor
and thinking--he could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for
poems, to the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out
of home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere. His
father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced the
prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He could find
a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary he
would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays--on
Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be
interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his door
for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to
him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some polite way of
asking her to go away. But, as she went on, he started violently, dropping
manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
"I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan," she said, "but this old
Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all THEY got out
of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a little longer. Roscoe told
me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the streets more 'n
two years, tryin' to get a job he could call a 'position,' and couldn't land
it. You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?"
"Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while back,"
said Mrs. Sheridan. "And now they're doin' the cookin', too."
Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. "I hope they find
something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!"
Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy-- of all
the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last would have
been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was happening, and
that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that heavy blows were
falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to him that he and Mary were
being struck and beaten physically--and that something hideous impended. He
wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but he could not; he could only stand,
swallowing and trembling.
"What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this," said Sibyl,
sharply. "Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees started after
Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not! They'd got a notion he
might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was
insane, the very first day Bibbs took the daughter out auto-riding!" She
paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan, but listening intently. There was
no sound from within the room.
"No!" exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
"It's the truth," Sibyl declared, loudly. "Oh, of course we were all crazy
about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up here, and we
thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to read her! Her family
were down and out when it came to money--and they had to go after it, one way
or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but she found out pretty
quick he was married, and she turned right around to Jim--and she landed him!
There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and if he'd lived you'd had another
daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I stand here telling you the God's
truth about it! Well--when Jim was left in the cemetery she was waiting out
there to drive home with Bibbs! Jim wasn't COLD--and she didn't know whether
Bibbs was insane or not, but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys
left. She had to get him."
The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not, in
Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke with the
rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
"What I feel about it is," she said, "it oughtn't to be allowed to go on. It's
too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made such a fool of,
and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of! I like poor Bibbs,
but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd have to realize he isn't
the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall in love with. He's
better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he WAS--just kind of a long
white rag in good clothes. And girls like men with some SO to 'em--SOME sort
of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever looked at poor Bibbs before, and
neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It
was only when her and her family got desperate that she--"
Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door. He
stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women screamed.
"Oh, good heavens!" cried Sibyl. "Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't--" She
seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. "Come on, mother
Sheridan!" she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady obeyed, Sibyl
left a trail of noisy exclamations: "Good gracious! Oh, I wouldn't--Too bad!
I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his feelings! Not for the
world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But, good heavens--"
She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the
stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
following; he had gone back into his room.
"He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!" stammered Mrs. Sheridan. "I--I wish--"
"Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it," said Sibyl. "I shouldn't
wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened. Come on!"
And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance to
Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account of what
had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the fact that it
was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.
"But as I told mother Sheridan," she said, in conclusion, "it might turn out
for the very best that he did hear--just that way. Don't you think so, father
Sheridan?"
He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top of his
head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no sign of
being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's character;
but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it was Bibbs whom she desired to
impress, and she was content in that matter.
"I'm sure it was all for the best," she said. "It's over now, and he knows
what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just hearing a thing
that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he knows I haven't got any ax to
grind except his own good and the good of the family."
Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward the
stairway. "I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin'," she said. "He did look
terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him that was--I don't
know what. I never saw anybody look like he did. He looked--so queer. It
was like you'd--" She called down the hall, "George!"
"Yes'm?"
"Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?"
"Yes,m. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil' him
nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm." He departed.
"What do you expect he wants a fire for?" she asked, turning toward her
husband. "The house is warm as can be, I do wish I--"
"Oh, quit frettin'!" said Sheridan.
"Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you meant it
for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much harm if--"
"Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the family?
Why, she--"
"I don't know, I don't know," the troubled woman quavered. "If he liked her
it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't ever taken
much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there was more chance
of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If she wants to marry
him--"
Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. "She don't!" he said. "You're
barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a girl."
"But, father Sheridan, didn't she--"
He cut her short. "That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
wrong. So do you, mamma."
Sibyl cried out, "Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--"
"She did not," he said, curtly. "She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him down
cold."
"But that's impossi--"
"It's not. I KNOW she did."
Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
"And YOU needn't worry," he said, turning to his wife. "This won't have any
effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow. D' you
think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she wouldn't take JIM? She's
a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her, but if she'd ever
given him one sign of encouragement the way you women think, he wouldn't of
acted the stubborn fool he has--he'd 'a' been at me long ago, beggin' me for
some kind of a job he could support a wife on. There's nothin' in it--and I've
got the same old fight with him on my hands I've had all his life--and the
Lord knows what he won't do to balk me! What's happened now 'll probably only
make him twice as srubborn, but --"
"SH!" Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. "That's his
step--he's comin' down-stairs." She shrank away from the door as if she
feared to have Bibbs see her. "I--I wonder--" she said, almost in a
whisper--"I wonder what he'd goin'--to do."
Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose, frowning, but
remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved toward Sibyl, who stared
uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as the slow steps descended the
stairs and came toward the library.
Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked slowly
from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his father. Then he
came and stood before him.
"I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me," he said, gently. "You won't,
any more. I'll take the job you offered me."
Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs had
left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he went as
slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went nervously
back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had gone from the
house.
Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known before;
it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in her mourned for
him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been done to him,
though she did not know what it was. She went up to his room.
The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick, charred
ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the large upper tray,
which she remembered to have seen full of papers and note-books, was empty.
And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given up the mysterious vocation he
had hoped to follow--and that he had given it up for ever. She thought it was
the wisest thing he could have done-- and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat
upon the bed and wept a little before she went down-stairs.
So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage
upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad, thin
young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual wariness and
habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing the third--and all
three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's
relatives.
"How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?" the husband whispered.
"He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now."
The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. "Well, I don't know," she returned. "He
looks to me like he had his own troubles."
"I expect he has, like anybody else," said the young husband, "but I guess we
could stand a good deal if we had his money."
"Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby 'll be as well fixed as
the Sheridans. You can't tell." She glanced back at Bibbs, who had turned
north. "He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like."
"So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess," said the young
husband, with bitter admiration.
Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she started,
clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at the door.
"Bibbs!" she cried. "What is the matter? I saw something was terribly wrong
when I--You look--" She paused, and he came in, not lifting his eyes to hers.
Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with his head up and his
wistful gaze seeking hers. "Ah, poor boy!" she said, with a gesture of
understanding and pity. "I know what it is!"
He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a chair.
"You needn't tell me," she said. "They've made you give up. Your father's
won--you're going to do what he wants. You've given up."
Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. "Bibbs," she
said. "I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be glad you
came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come because you were
happy." She did not speak again for a little while; then she said:
"Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about it? Do you want to?"
Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her a
question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his words.
"Mary," he said, "could you marry me?"
"What did you say, Bibbs?" she asked, quietly.
His tone and attitude did not change. "Will you marry me?"
Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white. She rose
slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first incredulously,
then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in her wide eyes; it
was like a spoken question. The room filled with strangeness in the long
silence--the two were so strange to each other. At last she said:
"What made you say that?"
He did not answer.
"Bibbs, look at me!" Her voice was loud and clear. "What made you say that?
Look at me!"
He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
"What was it that made you?" she said. "I want you to tell me."
She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that intensity
of wonder. "You've given up--to your father," she said, slowly, "and then you
came to ask me--" She broke off. "Bibbs, do you want me to marry you?"
"Yes," he said, just audibly.
"No!" she cried. "You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it that's
happened?"
"Nothing."
"Wait," she said. "Let me think. It's something that happened since our walk
this morning--yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened that--" She
stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and dawning
comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New House.
Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, "I do--I do want you to
--marry me, if--if--you could."
She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. "Bibbs, do you--" Her voice
was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper. "Do you think I'm --in
love with you?"
"No," he said.
Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it did not
seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it. "Why?"
"I've had nothing but dreams," Bibbs said, desolately, "but they weren't like
that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me." He smiled faintly, though
still he did not look at Mary. "And when I first came home Edith told me
Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She meant it to
express Sibyl's extremeity, you see. But I hardly needed either of them to
tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as--well, not as particularly
captivating!"
Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. "Those two!" she
exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: "Lamhorn! That's
like them!" She turned away, went to the bare little black mantel, and stood
leaning upon it. Presently she asked: "WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan say that
'no girl' could care about you?"
"To-day."
Mary drew a deep breath. "I think I'm beginning to understand--a little."
She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and in her voice.
"Answer me once more," she said. "Bibbs, do you know now why I stopped
wearing my furs?"
"Yes."
"I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?"
"I--I heard her say--"
"I think I know what happened, now." Mary's breath came fast and her voice
shook, but she spoke rapidly. "You 'heard her say' more than that. You 'heard
her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I tried first to
marry your brother--and then--" But now she faltered, and it was only after a
convulsive effort that she was able to go on. "And then--that I tried to
marry--you! You 'heard her say' that-- and you believe that I don't care for
you and that 'no girl' could care for you--but you think I am in such an
'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you -- And so, not wanting me, and believing
that I could not want you-- except for my 'extremity'--you took your father's
offer and then came to ask me--to marry you! What had I shown you of myself
that could make you--"
Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon the
lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
"Mary, Mary!" he cried, helplessly. "Oh NO--you--you don't understand."
"I do, though!" she sobbed. "I do!"
He came and stood beside her. "You kill me!" he said. "I can't make it
plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was
always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent--I did nothing but
lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all about my idiotic
distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that
had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You seemed to lean
down--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me. I never dreamed I could do
anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need anything to be done for you
by anybody. And to-day I heard that--that you--"
"You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money," she sobbed.
"And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed that I had--"
"No!" he said, quickly. "I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for
me--for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except
generously--to give. I said I couldn't make it plain!" he cried,
despairingly.
"Wait!" She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously, like
a child. "Help me up, Bibbs." Then, when she was once more upon her feet,
she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but reassuringly,
as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her.
And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his
own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
"Let me tell you what you want to tell me," she said. "You can't, because you
can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me and you're too gentle
to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You didn't believe that I'd
tried to make you fall in love with me--"
"Never! Never for an instant!"
"You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--"
"No, no, no!"
"I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared
for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you. But you thought
that I might marry you without being in love with you because you did believe
I had tried to marry your brother, and--"
"Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--"
"Were desperately poor," she said. "You can't even say that! Bibbs, it was
true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!" And she sank down into
the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
"Mary," he groaned, "I didn't know you COULD cry!"
"Listen," she said. "Listen till I get through--I want you to understand. We
were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had been, and we didn't know
what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was plenty, but my father wanted to
take advantage of the growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but
instead--well, just about the time your father finished building next door we
found we hadn't anything. People say that, sometimes, meaning that they
haven't anything in comparison with other people of their own kind, but we
really hadn't anything--we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO
anything. You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'--and I
wonder myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the
daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a wave of
the hand made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be either
married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry. The
poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there--and I didn't know
how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how to be anything except a
well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and I couldn't be a well-to-do old
maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been raised to know how to do. I went out
to be fascinating and be married. I did it openly, at least, and with a kind
of decent honesty. I told your brother I had meant to fascinate him and that
I was not in love with him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry
him. I think I did mean to mary him. I had never cared for anybody, and I
thought it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited
fondness. I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to marry him I
never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage is--it's
sacrilege--something would have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your
sister-in-law, Sibyl. She meant no harm--but she was horrible, and she put
what I was doing into such horrible words--and they were the truth--oh! I SAW
myself! She was proposing a miserable compact with me--and I couldn't breathe
the air of the same room with her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a
right to assume that I WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to
your brother--just a quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his
pardon, and I said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never
got it. That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you
know what I did--and you know--ME!" She pressed her clenched hands tightly
against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. "Couldn't
you--Isn't there--Won't you--" he stammered. "Mary, I'm going with father.
Isn't there some way you could use the money without--without --"
She gave a choked little laugh.
"You gave me something to live for," he said. "You kept me alive, I think
--and I've hurt you like this!"
"Not you--oh no!"
"You could forgive me, Mary?"
"Oh, a thousand times!" Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture, and
just touched his own for an instant. "But there's nothing to forgive."
"And you can't--you can't--"
"Can't what, Bibbs?"
"You couldn't--"
"Marry you?" she said for him.
"Yes."
"No, no, no!" She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she did,
she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a little. "I
can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?"
"Mary--"
"No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--please--"
"MARY--"
"Never, never, never!" she cried, in a passion of tears. "You mustn't come
any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!"
Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he got
himself to the door and out of the house.
Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to the New
House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but so that the
others might hear.
"When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would be apt
to care enough about me to marry me, you were right," he said. "I thought
perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me. It proved what
you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She refused."
And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he had
entered it.
"He's SO queer!" Mrs. Sheridan gasped. "Who on earth would thought of his
doin' THAT?"
"I told you," said her husband, grimly.
"You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--"
"I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM, didn't
I?"
Sibyl was altogether taken aback. "Do you supose it's true? Do you suppose
she WOULDN'T?"
"He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed up
fine with his girl," said Sheridan. "Not to me, he didn't!"
"But why would--"
"I told you," he interrupted, angrily, "she ain't that kind of a girl! If you
got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with, though I'd pretty
near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about my dead boy's private
affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him, and it was a good, straight
letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he never saw it. She wrote it the
afternoon he was hurt."
"I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon," said
Roscoe. "Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it--I was waiting for
you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It was just before
we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came and called me."
Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down, for,
although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they were dimmed
by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed--after some further
fragmentary discourse--visably elated. After all, the guilty had not been
exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the less surely, that her injury
had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a contented glance upon the old
house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe crossed the street.
When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while she
said, uneasily, "Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs about that
letter?"
"I don't know," he answered, walking moodily to the window. "I been thinkin'
about it." He came to a decision. "I reckon I will." And he went up to
Bibbs's room.
"Well, you goin' back on what you said?" he inquired, brusquely, as he opened
the door. "You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?"
"No," said Bibbs.
"Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't know as
you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the Lord knows
you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!" Sheridan was baffled.
This was not what he wished to say, but his words were unmanageable; he found
himself unable to control them, and his querulous abuse went on in spite of
him. "I can't say I expect much of you--not from the way you always been, up
to now--unless you turn over a new leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to
think you're goin' to do THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real
GIT-up, I reckon the whole office 'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever
goin' to show any, you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show
it to-morrow."
"Yes--I'll try."
"You better, if it's in you!" Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He ad always
been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed bewitched.
He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own angry
astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold like a
drudge-driver. "You better come down there with your mind made up to hustle
harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you, or you'll not get on
very good with me, I tell you! The way to get ahead--and you better set it
down in your books--the way to get ahead is to do ten times the work of the
hardest worker that works FOR you. But you don't know what work is, yet. All
you've ever done was just stand around and feed a machine a child could
handle, and then come home and take a bath and go callin'. I tell you you're
up against a mighty different proposition now, and if you're worth your
salt--and you never showed any signs of it yet--not any signs that stuck out
enough to bang somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take
notice--well, I want to say, right here and now--and you better listen,
because I want to say just what I DO say. I say--"
He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a hopeless
blank.
Bibbs looked up patiently--an old, old look. "Yes, father; I'm listening."
"That's all," said Sheridan, frowning heavily. "That's all I came to say, and
you better see 't you remember it!"
He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him with a
crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure. He stopped
just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more. Then abruptly he
turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead liberally covered with
perspiration.
"Look here," he said, crossly. "That girl over yonder wrote Jim a letter --"
"I know," said Bibbs. "She told me."
"Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it--" The door closed
on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence was
nevertheless audible--"if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either."
And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin' and
not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to inquire what
Bibbs "said," but after a second thought she decided not to speak at all. She
merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal communication was given over
between them for the rest of that afternoon.
Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next morning, and
she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she worried about what
might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She felt that everything
depended on how Bibbs "took hold," and upon her husband's return in the
evening she seized upon the first opportunity to ask him how things had gone.
He was non-committal. What could anybody tell by the first day? He'd seen
plenty go at things well enough right at the start and then blow up. Pretty
near anybody could show up fair the first day or so. There was a big job
ahead. This material, such as it was--Bibbs, in fact--had to be broken in to
handling the work Roscoe had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must
take Jim's position in the Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him
again in a month.
But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed remarks of
his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small restaurant where it
had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and she took this to be an
encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon as they left the table, and
her husband was not communicative after reading his paper.
She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of business,
although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and only in the
evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner. Usually Bibbs was
silent, except when directly addressed, but on the first evening of the third
week of his new career he offered an opinion which had apparently been the
subject of previous argument.
"I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms,
father," he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. "Abercrombie
agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him."
"You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen," Sheridan returned, "but you
can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof fell because
it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather conditions. I want
that building put just the way Jim planned it."
"You can't have it," said Bibbs. "You can't, because Jim planned for the
building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one--the one that didn't
fall--is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for storage. It won't
stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both buildings down as
quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and cheapest in the long
run for that type."
Sheridan looked sarcastic. "Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms
while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?"
"Rent," Bibbs returned, promptly. "We'll lose money if we don't rent,
anyhow--they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter your
attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount of stuff they've
got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until we could patch up
those process perils--and the Krivitch Manufacturing Company's plant is empty,
right across the street. I took an option on it for us this morning."
Sheridan's expression was queer. "Look here!" he said, sharply. "Did you go
and do that without consulting me?"
"It didn't cost anything," said Bibbs. "It's only until to-morrow afternoon
at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then."
"Oh, you did?" Sheridan's tone was sardonic. "Well, just suppose you
couldn't convince me."
"I can, though--and I intend to," said Bibbs, quietly. "I don't think you
understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up."
"Now, see here," said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; "suppose I had my mind set
about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was--well, kind of a
matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right."
Bibbs looked at him compassionately. "I'm sorry if you have a sentiment about
it, father," he said. "But whether you have or not can't make a difference.
You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and that won't do.
And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want one that will stand.
Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend sentiment in this particular
kind of affair."
"Oh, you don't?"
"No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it."
Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. "Why are you 'sorry'?" he asked,
curiously.
"Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon," said Bibbs, "and I
had him condemn both those buildings."
"What?"
"He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us--afraid you'd see he
lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them--they've got to come down now."
Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows.
Finally he said, "How long did they give you on that option to convince me?"
"Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon."
"All right," said Sheridan, not relaxing. "I'm convinced."
Bibbs jumped up. "I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch agent.
He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle it this
evening."
Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his expression
did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that startled his wife.
It had been a long time since she had heard anything resembling a chuckle from
him, and this sound--although it was grim and dry--bore that resemblance.
She brightened eagerly. "Looks like he was startin' right well, don't it,
papa?"
"Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I wanted-- that's
why he had the inspector up there, so 't he'd have me beat before we even
started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't reasonably defend
SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option for Us'! 'Stuff piled
up on Us'!"
There was always an alloy for Mrs. sheridan. "I don't just like the way he
looks, though, papa."
"Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you start
to frettin' about IT!"
"No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and--"
"I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then," said Sheridan.
"You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I expect."
"Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And he'd
begun to fill out some, but--"
Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to her,
patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being still heavily
bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. "That's the way it is with you,
mamma--got to take your frettin' out one way if you don't another!"
"No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he begun to
get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some way."
"Yes, he may 'a' lost something," said Sheridan. "I expect he's lost a whole
lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin' poetry
and--"
"No," his wife persisted. "I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday, when
he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't readin'."
"Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?"
"He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't
believe."
"Look, here!" said Sheridan. "Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there the
rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did one big
thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had to go and bust
clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over there, and it stopped
his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty fair pay for what he lost.
I guess a good many young men have had to get over worries like his; they got
to lose SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the procession
nowadays--and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a
considerable long way ahead. Why, a year from now I'll bet you he won't know
there ever WAS such a thing as poetry! And ain't he funny? He wanted to stick
to the shop so's he could 'think'! What he meant was, think about something
useless. Well, I guess he's keepin' his ming pretty occupied the other way
these days. Yes, sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his
trance, but it certainly did the business." He patted his wife's shoulder
again, and then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous
laugh.
"Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!"
And so Bibbs sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers. But no
One came to scourge him forth, for this was the temple of Bigness, and the
changing of money was holy worship and true religion. The priests wore that
"settish" look Bibbs's mother had seen beginning to develop about his mouth
and eyes--a wary look which she could not define, but it comes with service at
the temple; and it was the more marked upon Bibbs for his sharp awakening to
the necessities of that servicce.
He did as little "useless" thinking as possible, giving himself no time for
it. He worked continuously, keeping his thoughts still on his work when he
came home at night; and he talked of nothing whatever except his work. But he
did not sing at it. He was often in the streets, and people were not allowed
to sing in the streets. They might make any manner of hideous uproar--they
could shake buildings; they could out-thunder the thunder, deafen the deaf,
and kill the sick with noise; or they could walk the streets or drive through
them bawling, squawking, or screeching, as they chose, if the noise was
traceably connected with business; though street musicians were not tolerated,
being considered a nuisance and an interference. A man or woman who went
singing for pleasure through the streets--like a crazy Neopolitan--would have
been stopped, and belike locked up; for Freedom does not mean that a citizen
is allowed to do every outrageous thing that comes into his head. The streets
were dangerous enough, in all conscience, without any singing! and the Motor
Federation issued public warnings declaring that the pedestrian's life was in
his own hands, and giving directions how to proceed with the least peril.
However, Bibbs Sheridan had no desire to sing in the streets, or anywhere. He
had gone to his work with an energy that, for the start, at least, was bitter,
and there was no song left in him.
He began to know his active fellow-citizens. Here and there among them he
found a leisurely, kind soul, a relic of the old period of neighborliness,
"pioneer stock," usually; and there were men--particularly among the merchants
and manufacturers--"so honest they leaned backward"; reputations sometimes
attested by stories of heroic sacrifices to honor; nor were there lacking some
instances of generosity even nobler. Here and there, too, were book-men, in
their little leisure; and, among the Germans, music-men. And these, with the
others, worshiped Bigness and the growth, each man serving for his own sake
and for what he could get out of it, but all united in their faith in the
beneficence and glory of their god.
To almost all alike that service stood as the most important thing in life,
except on occasion of some such vital, brief interregnum as the dangerous
illness of a wife or child. In the way of "relaxation" some of the servers
took golf; some took fishing; some took "shows"--a mixture of infantile and
negroid humor, stockings, and tin music; some took an occasional debauch; some
took trips; some took cards; and some took nothing. The high priests were
vigilant to watch that no "relaxation" should affect the service. When a man
attended to anything outside his business, eyes were upon him; his credit was
in danger--that is, his life was in danger. And the old priests were as
ardent as the young ones; the million was as eager to be bigger as the
thousand; seventy was as busy as seventeen. They stove mightily against one
another, and the old priests were the most wary, the most plausible, and the
most dangerous. Bibbs learned he must walk charily among these--he must wear a
thousand eyes and beware of spiders indeed!
And outside the temple itself were the pretenders, the swarming thieves and
sharpers and fleecers, the sly rascals and the open rascals; but these were
feeble folk, not dangerous once he knew them, and he had a good guide to point
them out to him. They were useful sometimes, he learned, and many of them
served as go-betweens in matters where business must touch politics. He
learned also how breweries and "traction" companies and banks and other
institutions fought one another for the political control of the city. The
newspapers, he discovered, had lost their ancient political influence,
especially with the knowing, who looked upon them with a skeptical humor,
believing the journals either to be retained partisans, like lawyers, or else
striving to forward the personal ambitions of their owners. The control of
the city lay not with them, but was usually obtained by giving the hordes of
negroes gin-money, and by other largesses. The revenues of the people were
then distributed as fairly as possible among a great number of men who had
assisted the winning side. Names and titles of offices went with many of the
prizes, and most of these title-holders were expected to present a busy
appearance at times; and, indeed, some among them did work honestly and
faithfully.
Bibbs had been very ignorant. All these simple things, so well known and
customary, astonished him at first, and once--in a brief moment of forgetting
that he was done with writing--he thought that if he had known them and
written of them, how like a satire the plainest relation of them must have
seemed! Strangest of all to him was the vehement and sincere patriotism. On
every side he heard it--it was a permeation; the newest school-child caught
it, though just from Hungary and learning to stammer a few words of the local
language. Everywhere the people shouted of the power, the size, the riches,
and the growth of their city. Not only that, they said that the people of
their city were the greatest, the "finest," the strongest, the Biggest people
on earth. They cited no authorities, and felt the need of none, being
themselves the people thus celebrated. And if the thing was questioned, or if
it was hinted that there might be one small virtue in which they were not
perfect and supreme, they wasted no time examining themselves to see if what
the critic said was true, but fell upon him and hooted him and cursed him, for
they were sensitive. So Bibbs, learning their ways and walking with them,
harkened to the voice of the people and served Bigness with them. For the
voice of the people is the voice of their god.
Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs, and the
door between the two rooms usually stood open--the father had established that
intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was alone, Sheridan came in,
some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his hand.
"Bibbs," he said, "I don't like to butt in very often this way, and when I do
I usually wish I hadn't--but for Heaven's sake what have you been buying that
ole busted inter-traction stock for?"
Bibbs leaned back from his desk. "For eleven hundred and fifty-five dollars.
That's all it cost."
"Well, it ain't worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to know
that. I don't get your idea. That stuff's deader 'n Adam's cat!"
"It might be worth something--some day."
"How?"
"It mightn't be so dead--not if We went into it," said Bibbs, coolly.
"Oh!" Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, "Who'd you buy it
from?"
"A broker--Fansmith."
"Well, he must 'a' got it from one o' the crowd o' poor ninnies that was
soaked with it. Don't you know who owned it?"
"Yes, I do."
"Ain't sayin', though? That it? What's the matter?"
"It belonged to Mr. Vertrees," said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to his
desk.
"So!" Sheridan gazed down at his son's thin face. "Excuse me," he said.
"Your business." And he went back to his own room. But presently he looked
in again.
"I reckon you won't mind lunchin' alone to-day"--he was shuffling himself into
his overcoat--"because I just thought I'd go up to the house and get THIS over
with mamma." He glanced apologetically toward his right hand as it emerged
from the sleeve of the overcoat. The bandages had been removed, finally, that
morning, revealing but three fingers-- the forefinger and the finger next to
it had been amputated. "She's bound to make an awful fuss, and it better
spoil her lunch than her dinner. I'll be back about two."
But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately that
Mrs. Sheridan's lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from the lonely
table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his overcoat in the
hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.
"What's the matter, papa?" she asked, quickly. "Has anything gone wrong? You
ain't sick?"
"Me!" He laughed loudly. "Me SICK?"
"You had lunch?"
"Didn't want any to-day. You can give me a cup o' coffe, though."
She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn she
said querulously, "I just know there's something wrong."
"Nothin' in the world," he responed, heartily, taking a seat at the head of
the table. "I thought I'd talk over a notion o' mine with you, that's all.
It's more women-folks' business than what it is man's, anyhow."
"What about?"
"Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile--"
"To look at your hand? How's he say it's doin'?"
"Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile--"
Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. "I guess it's time you had him, too. I
KNEW Bibbs--"
"Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE
anything's the matter. You don't suppose I'm goin' to take any chances with
BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an' ole Gurney had a
talk. He's a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on me what he said
about Bibbs havin' brains if he ever woke up. Then I thought he must want to
get something out o' me, he go so flattering--for a minute! 'Bibbs couldn't
help havin' business brains,' he says, 'bein' YOUR son. Don't be surprised,'
he says--'don't be surprised at his makin' a success,' he says. 'He couldn't
get over his heredity; he couldn't HELP bein' a business success--once you got
him into it. It's in his blood. Yes, sir' he says, 'it doesn't need MUCH
brains,' he says, 'an only third-rate brains, at that,' he says, 'but it does
need a special KIND o' brains,' he says, 'to be a millionaire. I mean,' he
says, 'when a man's given a start. If nobody gives him a start, why, course
he's got to have luck AND the right kind o' brains. The only miracle about
Bibbs,' he says, 'is where he got the OTHER kind o' brains--the brains you
made him quit usin' and throw away.'"
"But what'd he say about his health?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded, impatiently, as
George placed a cup of coffee before her husband. Sheridan helped himself to
cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.
"I'm comin' to that," he returned, placidly. "See how easy I manage this cup
with my left hand, mamma?"
"You been doin' that all winter. What did--"
"It's wonderful," he interrupted, admiringly, "what a fellow can do with his
left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well's I ever could with my
right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I believe I RATHER
sign with my left. That's all I ever have to write, anyway--just the
signature. Rest's all dictatin'." He blew across the top of the cup
unctuously. "Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole Gurney says he
believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o' mind he was in about
the machine-shop--that is, if he could some way get to feelin' about business
the way he felt about the shop--not the poetry and writin' part, but--" He
paused, supplementing his remarks with a motion of his head toward the old
house next door. "He says Bibbs is older and harder 'n what he was when he
broke down that time, and besides, he ain't the kind o' dreamy way he was
then--and I should say he AIN'T! I'd like 'em to show ME anybody his age
that's any wider awake! But he says Bibbs's health never need bother us again
if--"
Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. "I don't see any help THAT way. You know
yourself she wouldn't have Jim."
"Who's talkin' about her havin' anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him LOOK
at her! She needn't 'a' got so mad, just because he asked her, that she won't
let him come in the house any more. He's a mighty funny boy, and some ways I
reckon he's pretty near as hard to understand as the Bible, but Gurney kind o'
got me in the way o' thinkin' that if she'd let him come back and set around
with her an evening or two sometimes--not reg'lar, I don't mean--why--Well, I
just thought I'd see what YOU'D think of it. There ain't any way to talk
about it to Bibbs himself--I don't suppose he'd let you, anyhow--but I thought
maybe you could kind o' slip over there some day, and sort o' fix up to have a
little talk with her, and kind o' hint around till you see how the land lays,
and ask her --"
"ME!" Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. "No." She shook
her head decidedly. "It wouldn't do any good."
"You won't try it?"
"I won't risk her turnin' me out o' the house. Some way, that's what I
believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN'T--and,
what's more, it 'd only make things worse. If people find out you're runnin'
after 'em they think you're cheap, and then they won't do as much for you as
if you let 'em alone. I don't believe it's any use, and I couldn't do it if
it was."
He sighed with resignation. "All right, mamma. That's all." Then, in a
livelier tone, he said: "Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this
morning. All healed up. Says I don't need 'em any more."
"Why, that's splendid, papa!" she cried, beaming. "I was afraid--Let's see."
She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket. "Wait
a minute," he said, smiling. "Now it may give you just a teeny bit of a
shock, but the fact is--well, you remember that Sunday when Sibyl came over
here and made all that fuss about nothin'--it was the day after I got tired o'
that statue when Edith's telegram came--"
"Let me see your hand!" she cried.
"Now wait!" he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand. "The
truth is, mamma, that I kind o' slipped out on you that morning, when you
wasn't lookin', and went down to ole Gurney's office--he'd told me to, you
see--and, well, it doesn't AMOUNT to anything." And he held out, for her
inspection, the mutilated hand. "You see, these days when it's all dictatin',
anyhow, nobody 'd mind just a couple o'--"
He had to jump for her--she went over backward. For the second time in her
life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.
It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own room,
still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat that the
"fuss" she was making irked him far more than his physical loss. He permitted
her to think that he meant to return directly to his office, but when he came
out to the open air he told the chauffeur in attendance to await him in front
of Mr. Vertrees's house, whither he himself proceeded on foot.
Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as manna in the
wilderness; it came from heaven--by what agency he did not particularly
question. The broker informed him that "parties were interested in getting
hold of the stock," and that later there might be a possible increase in the
value of the large amount retained by his client. It might go "quite a ways
up" within a year or so, he said, and he advised "sitting tight" with it. Mr.
Vertrees went home and prayed.
He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own again.
It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and his wife shared
his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her piano, and as for
furs--spring was on the way, she said. But they paid the butcher, the baker,
and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook once more. It was this servitress
who opened the door for Sheridan and presently assured him that Miss Vertrees
would "be down."
He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed and
beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the cook. She had
a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second, but it vanished at
the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes by a soft brilliance,
while color rushed in her cheeks.
"Don't be surprised," he said. "Truth is, in a way it's sort of on business I
looked in here. It 'll only take a minute, I expect."
"I'm sorry," said Mary. "I hoped you'd come because we're neighbors."
He chuckled. "Neighbors! Sometimes people don't see so much o' their
neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so--lately."
"You'll stay long enough to sit down, won't you?"
"I guess I could manage that much." And they sat down, facing each other and
not far apart.
"Of course, it couldn't be called business, exactly," he said, more gravely.
"Not at all, I expect. But there's something o' yours it seemed to me I ought
to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it myself and explain
how I happened to have it. It's this--this letter you wrote my boy." He
extended the letter to her solomnly, in his left hand, and she took it gently
from him. "It was in his mail, after he was hurt. You knew he never got it,
I expect."
"Yes," she said, in a low voice.
He sighed. "I'm glad he didn't. Not," he added, quickly--"not but what you
did just right to send it. You did. You couldn't acted any other way when it
came right down TO it. There ain't any blame comin' to you--you were
above-board all through."
Mary said, "Thank you," almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed low.
"You'll have to excuse me for readin' it. I had to take charge of all his
mail and everything; I didn't know the handwritin', and I read it all-- once I
got started."
"I'm glad you did."
"Well"--he leaned forward as if to rise--"I guess that's about all. I just
thought you ought to have it."
"Thank you for bringing it."
He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might have
something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this glance, and sat
with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.
"Well, I expect I better be gettin' back to the office," he said, rising
desperately. "I told--I told my partner I'd be back at two o'clock, and I
guess he'll think I'm a poor business man if he catches me behind time. I got
to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days--with THAT fellow keepin'
tabs on me!"
Mary rose with him. "I've always heard YOU were the hard driver."
He guffawed derisively. "Me? I'm nothin' to that partner o' mine. You
couldn't guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end o'
the job. I shouldn't be surprised he'd give me the grand bounce some day, and
run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is--once he goes AT a
thing!"
"No," she smiled. "I didn't know you had a partner. I'd always heard--"
He laughed, looking away from her. "It's just my way o' speakin' o' that boy
o' mine, Bibbs."
He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of careless
geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, "How IS Bibbs?"
but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the silence became
embarrassing.
"Well, I guess I better be gettin' down there," he said, at last. "He might
worry."
"Good-by--and thank you," said Mary.
"For what?"
"For the letter."
"Oh," he said, blankly. "You're welcome. Good-by."
Mary put out her hand. "Good-by."
"You'll have to excuse my left hand," he said. "I had a little accident to
the other one."
She gave a pitying cry as she saw. "Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!"
"Nothin' at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow." He laughed jovially.
"Did anybody tell you how it happened?"
"I heard you hurt your hand, but no--not just how."
"It was this way," he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down again.
"You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the youngest o' my
boys--the one that used to come to see you sometimes, after Jim--that is, I
mean Bibbs. He's the one I spoke of as my partner; and the truth is that's
what it's just about goin' to amount to, one o' these days--if his health
holds out. Well, you remember, I expect, I had him on a machine over at a
plant o' mine; and sometimes I'd kind o' sneak in there and see how he was
gettin' along. Take a doctor with me sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so
robust, you might say. Ole Doc Gurney--I guess maybe you know him? Tall,
thin man; acts sleepy--"
"Yes."
"Well, one day I an' ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook to show
Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I wouldn't listen,
and I didn't look out--and that's how I got my hand hurt, tryin' to show Bibbs
how to do something he knew how to do and I didn't. Made me so mad I just
wouldn't even admit to myself it WAS hurt--and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney
had to take kind o' radical measures with me. He's a right good doctor, too.
Don't you think so, Miss Vertrees?"
"Yes."
"Yes, he is so!" Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and gossip
with all day on his hands. "Take him on Bibbs's case. I was talkin' about
Bibbs's case with him this morning. Well, you'd laugh to hear the way ole
Gurney talks about THAT! 'Course he IS just as much a friend as he is
doctor--and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if he was in the family. He
says Bibbs isn't anyways bad off YET; and he thinks he could stand the pace
and get fat on it if--well, this is what'd made YOU laugh if you'd been there,
Miss Vertrees--honest it would!" He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at
her. She was gazing straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted,
and--visibly--she was breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was
growing furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went
on, determined now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his voice to
one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still maintained a tone
which indicated that ole Doc Gurney's opinion was only a joke he shared with
her. "Yes, sir, you certainly would 'a' laughed! Why, that ole man thinks
YOU got something to do with it. You'll have to blame it on him, young lady,
if it makes you feel like startin' out to whip somebody! He's actually got
THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to gettin' better while he worked over there at
the shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin' good. And he says if you
could manage to just stand him hangin' around a little-- maybe not much, but
just SOMEtimes--again, he believed it 'd do Bibbs a mighty lot o' good.
'Course, that's only what the doctor said. Me, I don't know anything about
that; but I can say this much--I never saw any such a MENTAL improvement in
anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs. I expect you'd find him a good
deal more entertaining than what he used to be--and I know it's a kind of
embarrassing thing to suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to
ask you to stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin' to ole Doc
GURNEY, he's got you on his brain so bad--"
Mary jumped. "Mr. Sheridan!" she exclaimed.
He sighed profoundly. "There! I noticed you were gettin' mad. I didn't --"
"No, no, no!" she cried. "But I don't understand--and I think you don't.
What is it you want me to do?"
He sighed again, but this time with relief. "Well, well!" he said. "You're
right. It 'll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could with you,
all the time. I just hoped you'd let that boy come and see you sometimes,
once more. Could you?"
"You don't understand." She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful
gesture. "Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I'd tried to make your
oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and asked me to
marry him--because he was sorry for me. And I CAN'T see him any more," she
cried in distress. "I CAN'T!"
Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. "You mean because he thought that
about you?"
"No, no! What he thought was TRUE!"
"Well--you mean he was so much in--you mean he thought so much of you --" The
words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan's tongue; he seemed to be in
doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he bravely
repeated them. "You mean he thought so much of you that you just couldn't
stand him around?"
"NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he'd
respected me--too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and he'd
have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he knew I
would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan," she said. "But the cheap, bad things
one has done seem always to come back--they wait, and pull you down when
you're happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he wasn't 'in love' with me
at all."
"He wasn't? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to do-- it
was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad--he just threw it away
and walked right up and took the job he swore he never would-- just for you.
And it looks to me as if a man that'd do that must think quite a heap o' the
girl he does it for! You say it was only because he was sorry, but let me
tell you there's only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for! Yes, sir!"
"No, no," she said. "Bibbs isn't like other men--he would do anything for
anybody."
Sheridan grinned. "Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays," he said. "For
instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn't believe in 'sentiment in
business.' But that's neither here nor there. What he wanted was, just plain
and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was afraid his thinkin' so much OF
you had kind o' sickened you of him--the way it does sometimes. But from the
way you talk, I understand that ain't the trouble." He coughed, and his voice
trembled a little. "Now here, Miss Vertrees, I don't have to tell
you--because you see things easy--I know I got no business comin' to you like
this, but I had to make Bibbs go my way instead of his own--I had to do it for
the sake o' my business and on his own account, too--and I expect you got some
idea how it hurt him to give up. Well, he's made good. He didn't come in
half-hearted or mean; he came in--all the way! But there isn't anything in it
to him; you can see he's just shut his teeth on it and goin' ahead with dust
in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin' at it, he's got nothin' to work
FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your friendship, and I believe
--honest--that's what hurt him the worst. Now you said we'd talk plain. Why
can't you let him come back?"
She covered her face desperately with her hands. "I can't!"
He rose, defeated, and looking it.
"Well, I mustn't press you," he said, gently.
At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face. "Ah!
He was only sorry for me!"
He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty, and it
confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear that even
Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a change came over
him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radient.
"Don't! Don't" she cried. "You mustn't--"
"I won't tell him," said Sheridan, from the doorway. "I won't tell anybody
anything!"
There was a heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the
sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty,
thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt, sulphurous
acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men liked to breathe
and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their wives and babies and
sweethearts. The growth of the city was visible in the smoke and the noise
and the rush. There was more smoke than there had been this day of February a
year earlier; there was more noise; and the crowds were thicker--yet quicker
in spite of that. The traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were
independent--they retained some habits of the old market-town period, and
would cross the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed
more frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the
motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane
nervousness. So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves were
killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main trouble was that
they could not make the citizens realize that it was actually and mortally
perilous to go about their city. It was strange, for there were probably no
citizens of any length of residence who had not personally known either some
one who had been killed or injured in an accident, or some one who had
accidentally killed or injured others. And yet, perhaps it was not strange,
seeing the sharp preoccupation of the faces--the people had something on their
minds; they could not stop to bother about dirt and danger.
Mary Vertrees was not often down-town; she had never seen an accident until
this afternoon. She had come upon errands for her mother connected with a
timorous refurbishment; and as she did these, in and out of the department
stores, she had an insistent consciousness of the Sheridan Building. From the
street, anywhere, it was almost always in sight, like some monstrous
geometrical shadow, murk-colored and rising limitlessly into the swimming
heights of the smoke-mist. It was gaunt and grimy and repellent; it had
nothing but strength and size--but in that consciousness of Mary's the great
structure may have partaken of beauty. Sheridan had made some of the things he
said emphatic enought to remain with her. She went over and over them--and
they began to seem true: "Only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for!"
"Gurney says he's got you on his brain so bad--" The man's clumsy talk began
to sing in her heart. The song was begun there when she saw the accident.
She was directly opposite the Sheridan Building then, waiting for the traffic
to thin before she crossed, though other people were risking the passage,
darting and halting and dodging parlously. Two men came from the crowd behind
her, talking earnestly, and started across. Both wore black; one was tall and
broad and thick, and the other was taller, but noticeably slender. And Mary
caught her breath, for they were Bibbs and his father. They did not see her,
and she caught a phrase in Bibbs's mellow voice, which had taken a crisper
ring: "Sixty-eight thousand dollars? Not sixty-eight thousand buttons!" It
startled her queerly, and as there was a glimpse of his profile she saw for
the first time a resemblance to his father.
She watched them. In the middle of the street Bibbs had to step ahead of his
father, and the two were separated. But the reckless passing of a truck,
beyond the second line of rails, frightened a group of country women who were
in course of passage; they were just in front of Bibbs, and shoved backward
upon him violently. To extricate himself from them he stepped back, directly
in front of a moving trolley-car--no place for absent-mindedness, but Bibbs
was still absorbed in thoughts concerned with what he had been saying to his
father. There were shrieks and yells; Bibbs looked the wrong way--and then
Mary saw the heavy figure of Sheridan plunge straight forward in front of the
car. With absolute disregard of his own life, he hurled himself at Bibbs like
a football-player shunting off an opponent, and to Mary it seemed that they
both went down together. But that was all she could see--automobiles, trucks,
and wagons closed in between. She made out that the trolley-car stopped
jerkily, and she saw a policeman breaking his way through the instantly
condensing crowd, while the traffic came to a standstill, and people stood up
in automobiles or climbed upon the hubs and tires of wheels, not to miss a
chance of seeing anything horrible.
Mary tried to get through; it was impossible. Other policemen came to help
the first, and in a minute or two the traffic was in motion again. The crowd
became pliant, dispersing--there was no figure upon the ground, and no
ambulance came. But one of the policemen was detained by the clinging and
beseeching of a gloved hand.
"What IS the matter, lady?"
"Where are they?" Mary cried.
"Who? Ole man Sheridan? I reckon HE wasn't much hurt!"
"His SON--"
"Was that who the other one was? I seen him knock him--oh, he's not bad off,
I guess, lady. The ole man got him out of the way all right. The fender
shoved the ole man around some, but I reckon he only got shook up. They both
went on in the Sheridan Building without any help. Excuse me, lady."
Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator, ascending.
"Whisk-broom up in the office," Sheridan was saying. "You got to look out on
those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got any call to blow,
though--because I tried to cross after you did. That's how I happened to run
into you. Well, you want remember to look out after this. We were talkin'
about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand flat for that ninety-nine-year
lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather take it that way, and I don't know
but--"
"No," said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; "he won't get it. Not
from Us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you in five
minutes." He followed his father into the office anteroom--and convinced him.
Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color, Bibbs went into his
own room and closed the door.
He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his side
was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he wanted to
rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again. He knew that his
father had not "happened" to run into him; he knew that Sheridan had
instantly--and instinctively--proved that he held his own life of no account
whatever compared to that of his son and heir. Bibbs had been unable to speak
of that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan, just as instinctively, had swept
the matter aside--as of no importance, since all was well--reverting
immediately to business.
Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he had never
perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and indomitable--and
lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's very self; laughing at the
lightning and at wounds and mutilation; conquering, irresistible--and blindly
noble. For the first time in his life Bibbs began to understand the meaning
of being truly this man's son.
He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said, Bibbs
had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He had given his
word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary Vertrees in her need.
And he shivered with horror of himself, thinking how he had gone to her to
offer it, asking her to marry him--with his head on his breast in shameful
fear that she would accept him! He had not known her; the knowing had lost
her to him, and this had been his real awakening; for he knew now how deep had
been that slumber wherein he dreamily celebrated the superiority of
"friendship"! The sleep-walker had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and
life, finding himself a failure in both. He had made a burnt offering of his
dreams, and the sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was
left for him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in
that, though it was indeed no more than "dust in his mouth." If there had
been anything "to work for --"
He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets below.
He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms--and he looked across, over the
roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast, foggy heart of the
smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly against it, chattering with
steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while tiny figures of men walked on
threads in the dull sky. Buildings would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was
being served.
But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here, where
his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and how had the
kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had begun the work,
but in their old age their orators had said for them that they had toiled and
risked and sacrificed that their posterity might live in peace and wisdom,
enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well, their posterity was here--and there
was only turmoil. Where was the promised land? It had been promised by the
soldiers of all the wars; it had been promised to this generation by the
pioneers; but here was the very posterity to whom it had been promised,
toiling and risking and sacrificing in turn--for what?
The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously
beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in it --a
broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like a titanic
voice, discordant, hoarse, rustily metallic--the voice of the god, Bigness.
And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its servants.
"Come and work!" it seemed to yell. "Come and work for Me, all men! By your
youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I sommon you
to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By your love of
home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By your hope of
children I summon you!
"You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, you Master and
Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness. You shall give
your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and worship of my
ugliness! You shall perish still worshipping Me, and your children shall
perish knowing no other god!"
And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's voice
booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words, but the tone was
exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed hand. Bibbs guessed
that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of Bigness to some visitor from
out-of-town.
And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But with
the old, old thought again,, "What for?" Bibbs caught a glimmer of far, faint
light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled and conquered, and
must all his life go on struggling and inevitably conquering, as part of a
vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served blindly--but was the impulse blind?
Bibbs asked himself if it was not he who had been in the greater hurry, after
all. The kiln must be fired before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was
not crowned with marble in a day.
Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of some hugh
music struggling to be born of the turmoil. "Ugly I am," it seemed to say to
him, "but never forget that I AM a god!" And the voice grew in sonorousness
and in dignity. "The highest should serve, but so long as you worship me for
my own sake I will not serve you. It is man who makes me ugly, by his worship
of me. If man would let me serve him, I should be beautiful!"
Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in the vague
contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a giganitc figure with feet
pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders disappearing in the clouds,
a colossus of steel and wholly blackened with soot. But Bibbs carried his
fancy further--for there was still a little poet lingering in the back of his
head--and he thought that up over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant
labored with his hands in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what
he made there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--"
It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang fiercely.
He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice inside
it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled violently as he
picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had been mistaken--yet it
was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly kind, too, and ineffably like
the one he hungered most to hear.
"Who?" he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.
"Mary."
He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: "IS IT?"
There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
"Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--"
"Yes--Mary?"
"I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs. They said
you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know for myself."
"No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary. It was father who came nearer it. He
saved me."
"Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd until you
had gone. And I wanted to KNOW."
"Mary--would you--have minded?" he said.
There was a long interval before she answered.
"Yes."
"Then why--"
"Yes, Bibbs?"
"I don't know what to say," he cried. "It's so wonderful to hear your voice
again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know anything except that I
AM talking to you! It IS you--Mary?"
"Yes, Bibbs!"
"Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since I --since
then. You looked--oh, how can I tell you? It was like a man chained in a
cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary. Mary, won't you--let me see
you again--near? I think I could make you really forgive me--you'd have to--"
"I DID--then."
"No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any more."
"That wasn't the reason." The voice was very low.
"Mary," he said, even more tremulously than before, "I can't--you COULDN'T
mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you-- care?"
There was no answer.
"Mary?" he called, huskily. "If you mean THAT--you'd let me see you--
wouldn't you?"
And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all, but if it
did, the words were, "Yes, Bibbs--dear."
But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so light, so
almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came from the air.
Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining eyes. The
door of his father's room had opened.
Mary stood upon the threshold.
THE END
End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Turmoil, by Booth Tarkington