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 as 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....
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?”
“YESsuh! 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.
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 lightning,' 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 an 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 embryo 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 a 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 little 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 here, 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.