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