WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...With a leap from the groundTo the saddle in a bound.And away—and away!Hi-yay!
WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...With a leap from the groundTo 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, though 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 find 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'd 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 slippers 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'-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 man 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 assented, 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!”
“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 groundTo 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 wayEACH time I say,Hi-YAY!Crash, chang! Bash, chang! Chang, bang, BANG!
Fearless and bold,Chang! Bash! Behold!With a leap from the groundTo 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 wayEACH 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-YAY!Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!Wild are his eyes,Fiercely he dies!Hi-YAH!Crash, bash, bang! Bash, CHANG!Ready to flingOur gloves in the ring—
Away—and away!Hi-YAY!Crash, bash, crash, bash, CHANG!Wild are his eyes,Fiercely he dies!Hi-YAH!Crash, bash, bang! Bash, CHANG!Ready to flingOur 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—
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 listened 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 sounds: 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 telephoning 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 your 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.