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 the 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.
“Bildad the Shuhite spake and he 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 disturbance. 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 opened 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!
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 hear 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 forlone,” 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 be 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 demanded, 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 as 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 demanded, 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 if 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 noise 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 perceiving; 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 control 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 huge 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.