It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual “living-room” of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed. Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting—when he was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.
He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his Saturday-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his sling.
Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room. There was a deadly silence.
But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.
“Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me, and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the way I acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life. I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a good deal happier—and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enough to excuse it this time.”
He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him, never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the agitation of her hands within the muff.
“All right,” he said at last.
She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
“Thank you,” she said. “There's something else—about something different—I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it, too.”
“She's up-stairs in her room,” said Sheridan. “Roscoe—”
Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
“No, let me go,” she said. “I want to speak to her a minute first, anyway.”
And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the recollection there had flashed the thought—out of her own experience—that people are often much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not hesitate—her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the girl who had affronted her.
Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) “have a fit right there.” She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her hair before a mirror.
“I was just coming down,” she said, as the door opened.
“Yes, he wants you to,” said Sibyl. “It's all right, mother Sheridan. He's forgiven me.”
Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh, wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
“And I hope Edith will be happy,” Sibyl added, inciting more applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
“Yes, yes,” murmured the good woman. “We mustn't make the worst of things.”
“Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear it, too,” said Sibyl. “We better go down, mother Sheridan.”
She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. “I want to tell you about it first,” she said, abruptly. “It isn't a secret, of course, in any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the whole family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all. But I want to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help me to see I got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it except the good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the other, of course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I did that night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help the family, I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way. Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family just made use of and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more heart than so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as—as Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way.”
Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it—he would venture it upon an editor. For he had his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking—he could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to the crashing of the strong machine—and if his father turned him out of home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere. His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs—he faced the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays—on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on, he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
“I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,” she said, “but this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it. You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?”
“Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while back,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “And now they're doin' the cookin', too.”
Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. “I hope they find something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!”
Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy—of all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically—and that something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
“What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,” said Sibyl, sharply. “Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not! They'd got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took the daughter out auto-riding!” She paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan, but listening intently. There was no sound from within the room.
“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
“It's the truth,” Sibyl declared, loudly. “Oh, of course we were all crazy about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up here, and we thought she'd get us IN—but it didn't take ME long to read her! Her family were down and out when it came to money—and they had to go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around to Jim—and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well—when Jim was left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs! Jim wasn't COLD—and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not, but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get him.”
The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not, in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
“What I feel about it is,” she said, “it oughtn't to be allowed to go on. It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made such a fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of! I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall in love with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he WAS—just kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like men with some GO to 'em—SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she—no, SIR! not till she'd tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got desperate that she—”
Bibbs—whiter than when he came from the sanitarium—opened the door. He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women screamed.
“Oh, good heavens!” cried Sibyl. “Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't—” She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. “Come on, mother Sheridan!” she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: “Good gracious! Oh, I wouldn't—too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But, good heavens—”
She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not following; he had gone back into his room.
“He—he looked—oh, terrible bad!” stammered Mrs. Sheridan. “I—I wish—”
“Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it,” said Sibyl. “I shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened. Come on!”
And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.
“But as I told mother Sheridan,” she said, in conclusion, “it might turn out for the very best that he did hear—just that way. Don't you think so, father Sheridan?”
He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl—it was Bibbs whom she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
“I'm sure it was all for the best,” she said. “It's over now, and he knows what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it's SO—and he knows I haven't got any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the family.”
Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward the stairway. “I wish—I wish I knew what he was doin',” she said. “He did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him that was—I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did. He looked—so queer. It was like you'd—” She called down the hall, “George!”
“Yes'm?”
“Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?”
“Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil' him nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm.” He departed.
“What do you expect he wants a fire for?” she asked, turning toward her husband. “The house is warm as can be, I do wish I—”
“Oh, quit frettin'!” said Sheridan.
“Well, I—I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much harm if—”
“Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the family? Why, she—”
“I don't know, I don't know,” the troubled woman quavered. “If he liked her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't ever taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there was more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If she wants to marry him—”
Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. “She don't!” he said. “You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a girl.”
“But, father Sheridan, didn't she—”
He cut her short. “That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess wrong. So do you, mamma.”
Sibyl cried out, “Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim—”
“She did not,” he said, curtly. “She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him down cold.”
“But that's impossi—”
“It's not. I KNOW she did.”
Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
“And YOU needn't worry,” he said, turning to his wife. “This won't have any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow. D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs—after she wouldn't take JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her, but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has—he'd 'a' been at me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife on. There's nothin' in it—and I've got the same old fight with him on my hands I've had all his life—and the Lord knows what he won't do to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as stubborn, but—”
“SH!” Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. “That's his step—he's comin' down-stairs.” She shrank away from the door as if she feared to have Bibbs see her. “I—I wonder—” she said, almost in a whisper—“I wonder what he's goin'—to do.”
Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose, frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.
Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his father. Then he came and stood before him.
“I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me,” he said, gently. “You won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me.”
Sheridan did not speak—he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had gone from the house.
Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant—something in her mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his room.
The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick, charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow—and that he had given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have done—and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a little before she went down-stairs.
So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing the third—and all three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives.
“How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?” the husband whispered. “He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left now.”
The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. “Well, I don't know,” she returned. “He looks to me like he had his own troubles.”
“I expect he has, like anybody else,” said the young husband, “but I guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money.”
“Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well fixed as the Sheridans. You can't tell.” She glanced back at Bibbs, who had turned north. “He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like.”
“So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess,” said the young husband, with bitter admiration.
Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at the door.
“Bibbs!” she cried. “What is the matter? I saw something was terribly wrong when I—You look—” She paused, and he came in, not lifting his eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. “Ah, poor boy!” she said, with a gesture of understanding and pity. “I know what it is!”
He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a chair.
“You needn't tell me,” she said. “They've made you give up. Your father's won—you're going to do what he wants. You've given up.”
Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. “Bibbs,” she said. “I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish. I can be glad you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if you'd come because you were happy.” She did not speak again for a little while; then she said: “Bibbs—dear—could you tell me about it? Do you want to?”
Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his words.
“Mary,” he said, “could you marry me?”
“What did you say, Bibbs?” she asked, quietly.
His tone and attitude did not change. “Will you marry me?”
Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks—she grew red and then white. She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with strangeness in the long silence—the two were so strange to each other. At last she said:
“What made you say that?”
He did not answer.
“Bibbs, look at me!” Her voice was loud and clear. “What made you say that? Look at me!”
He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
“What was it that made you?” she said. “I want you to tell me.”
She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that intensity of wonder. “You've given up—to your father,” she said, slowly, “and then you came to ask me—” She broke off. “Bibbs, do you want me to marry you?”
“Yes,” he said, just audibly.
“No!” she cried. “You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it that's happened?”
“Nothing.”
“Wait,” she said. “Let me think. It's something that happened since our walk this morning—yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened that—” She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New House.
Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, “I do—I do want you to—marry me, if—if—you could.”
She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. “Bibbs, do you—” Her voice was as unsteady as his—little more than a whisper. “Do you think I'm—in love with you?”
“No,” he said.
Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware of it. “Why?”
“I've had nothing but dreams,” Bibbs said, desolately, “but they weren't like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me.” He smiled faintly, though still he did not look at Mary. “And when I first came home Edith told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that she'd have married ME. She meant it to express Sibyl's extremity, you see. But I hardly needed either of them to tell me. I hadn't thought of myself as—well, not as particularly captivating!”
Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. “Those two!” she exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt: “Lamhorn! That's like them!” She turned away, went to the bare little black mantel, and stood leaning upon it. Presently she asked: “WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan say that 'no girl' could care about you?”
“To-day.”
Mary drew a deep breath. “I think I'm beginning to understand—a little.” She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes and in her voice. “Answer me once more,” she said. “Bibbs, do you know now why I stopped wearing my furs?”
“Yes.”
“I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?”
“I—I heard her say—”
“I think I know what happened, now.” Mary's breath came fast and her voice shook, but she spoke rapidly. “You 'heard her say' more than that. You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and on that account I tried first to marry your brother—and then—” But now she faltered, and it was only after a convulsive effort that she was able to go on. “And then—that I tried to marry—you! You 'heard her say' that—and you believe that I don't care for you and that 'no girl' could care for you—but you think I am in such an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was—that you— And so, not wanting me, and believing that I could not want you—except for my 'extremity'—you took your father's offer and then came to ask me—to marry you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you—”
Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms upon the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
“Mary, Mary!” he cried, helplessly. “Oh NO—you—you don't understand.”
“I do, though!” she sobbed. “I do!”
He came and stood beside her. “You kill me!” he said. “I can't make it plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all self. It was always you that gave and I that took. I was the dependent—I did nothing but lean on you. We always talked of me, not of you. It was all about my idiotic distresses and troubles. I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that had no mortal or human suffering except by sympathy. You seemed to lean down—out of a rosy cloud—to be kind to me. I never dreamed I could do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need anything to be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that—that you—”
“You heard that I needed to marry—some one—anybody—with money,” she sobbed. “And you thought we were so—so desperate—you believed that I had—”
“No!” he said, quickly. “I didn't believe you'd done one kind thing for me—for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought of me except generously—to give. I said I couldn't make it plain!” he cried, despairingly.
“Wait!” She lifted her head and extended her hands to him unconsciously, like a child. “Help me up, Bibbs.” Then, when she was once more upon her feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him ruefully and faintly, but reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her. And that smile of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his own eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
“Let me tell you what you want to tell me,” she said. “You can't, because you can't put it into words—they are too humiliating for me and you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true? You didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me—”
“Never! Never for an instant!”
“You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me—”
“No, no, no!”
“I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew I cared for you—but you didn't think I might be—in love with you. But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and—”
“Mary, I only knew—for the first time—that you—that you were—”
“Were desperately poor,” she said. “You can't even say that! Bibbs, it was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!” And she sank down into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was agonized.
“Mary,” he groaned, “I didn't know you COULD cry!”
“Listen,” she said. “Listen till I get through—I want you to understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never had been, and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich; there was plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but instead—well, just about the time your father finished building next door we found we hadn't anything. People say that, sometimes, meaning that they haven't anything in comparison with other people of their own kind, but we really hadn't anything—we hadn't anything at all, Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything. You might wonder why I didn't 'try to be a stenographer'—and I wonder myself why, when a family loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought to go and be stenographers.' It's curious!—as if a wave of the hand made you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be either married comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry. The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there—and I didn't know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how to be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife—and I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd been raised to know how to do. I went out to be fascinating and be married. I did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent honesty. I told your brother I had meant to fascinate him and that I was not in love with him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant to marry him. I think I did mean to marry him. I had never cared for anybody, and I thought it might be there really WASN'T anything more than a kind of excited fondness. I can't be sure, but I think that though I did mean to marry him I never should have done it, because that sort of a marriage is—it's sacrilege—something would have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your sister-in-law, Sibyl. She meant no harm—but she was horrible, and she put what I was doing into such horrible words—and they were the truth—oh! I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable compact with me—and I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I WOULD. But I couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother—just a quick scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and I said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never got it. That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs. Now you know what I did—and you know—ME!” She pressed her clenched hands tightly against her eyes, leaning far forward, her head bowed before him.
Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her. “Couldn't you—Isn't there—Won't you—” he stammered. “Mary, I'm going with father. Isn't there some way you could use the money without—without—”
She gave a choked little laugh.
“You gave me something to live for,” he said. “You kept me alive, I think—and I've hurt you like this!”
“Not you—oh no!”
“You could forgive me, Mary?”
“Oh, a thousand times!” Her right hand went out in a faltering gesture, and just touched his own for an instant. “But there's nothing to forgive.”
“And you can't—you can't—”
“Can't what, Bibbs?”
“You couldn't—”
“Marry you?” she said for him.
“Yes.”
“No, no, no!” She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what she did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her a little. “I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?”
“Mary—”
“No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more—please—”
“MARY—”
“Never, never, never!” she cried, in a passion of tears. “You mustn't come any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never, never!”
Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture, he got himself to the door and out of the house.
Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned to the New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly, but so that the others might hear.
“When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one would be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,” he said. “I thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss Vertrees to marry me. It proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of her. She refused.”
And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly as he had entered it.
“He's SO queer!” Mrs. Sheridan gasped. “Who on earth would thought of his doin' THAT?”
“I told you,” said her husband, grimly.
“You didn't tell us he'd go over there and—”
“I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM, didn't I?”
Sibyl was altogether taken aback. “Do you supose it's true? Do you suppose she WOULDN'T?”
“He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things fixed up fine with his girl,” said Sheridan. “Not to me, he didn't!”
“But why would—”
“I told you,” he interrupted, angrily, “she ain't that kind of a girl! If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it over with, though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk a whole lot about my dead boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim she couldn't take him, and it was a good, straight letter, too. It came to Jim's office; he never saw it. She wrote it the afternoon he was hurt.”
“I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,” said Roscoe. “Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it—I was waiting for you while you were in there so long talking to her mother. It was just before we saw that something was wrong over here, and Edith came and called me.”
Sibyl shook her head, but she remembered. And she was not cast down, for, although some remnants of perplexity were left in her eyes, they were dimmed by an increasing glow of triumph; and she departed—after some further fragmentary discourse—visibly elated. After all, the guilty had not been exalted; and she perceived vaguely, but none the less surely, that her injury had been copiously avenged. She bestowed a contented glance upon the old house with the cupola, as she and Roscoe crossed the street.
When they had gone, Mrs. Sheridan indulged in reverie, but after a while she said, uneasily, “Papa, you think it would be any use to tell Bibbs about that letter?”
“I don't know,” he answered, walking moodily to the window. “I been thinkin' about it.” He came to a decision. “I reckon I will.” And he went up to Bibbs's room.
“Well, you goin' back on what you said?” he inquired, brusquely, as he opened the door. “You goin' to take it back and lay down on me again?”
“No,” said Bibbs.
“Well, perhaps I didn't have any call to accuse you of that. I don't know as you ever did go back on anything you said, exactly, though the Lord knows you've laid down on me enough. You certainly have!” Sheridan was baffled. This was not what he wished to say, but his words were unmanageable; he found himself unable to control them, and his querulous abuse went on in spite of him. “I can't say I expect much of you—not from the way you always been, up to now—unless you turn over a new leaf, and I don't see any encouragement to think you're goin' to do THAT! If you go down there and show a spark o' real GIT-up, I reckon the whole office'll fall in a faint. But if you're ever goin' to show any, you better begin right at the beginning and begin to show it to-morrow.”
“Yes—I'll try.”
“You better, if it's in you!” Sheridan was sheerly nonplussed. He had always been able to say whatever he wished to say, but his tongue seemed bewitched. He had come to tell Bibbs about Mary's letter, and to his own angry astonishment he found it impossible to do anything except to scold like a drudge-driver. “You better come down there with your mind made up to hustle harder than the hardest workin'-man that's under you, or you'll not get on very good with me, I tell you! The way to get ahead—and you better set it down in your books—the way to get ahead is to do ten times the work of the hardest worker that works FOR you. But you don't know what work is, yet. All you've ever done was just stand around and feed a machine a child could handle, and then come home and take a bath and go callin'. I tell you you're up against a mighty different proposition now, and if you're worth your salt—and you never showed any signs of it yet—not any signs that stuck out enough to bang somebody on the head and make 'em sit up and take notice—well, I want to say, right here and now—and you better listen, because I want to say just what I DO say. I say—”
He meandered to a full stop. His mouth hung open, and his mind was a hopeless blank.
Bibbs looked up patiently—an old, old look. “Yes, father; I'm listening.”
“That's all,” said Sheridan, frowning heavily. “That's all I came to say, and you better see't you remember it!”
He shook his head warningly, and went out, closing the door behind him with a crash. However, no sound of footsteps indicated his departure. He stopped just outside the door, and stood there a minute or more. Then abruptly he turned the knob and exhibited to his son a forehead liberally covered with perspiration.
“Look here,” he said, crossly. “That girl over yonder wrote Jim a letter—”
“I know,” said Bibbs. “She told me.”
“Well, I thought you needn't feel so much upset about it—” The door closed on his voice as he withdrew, but the conclusion of the sentence was nevertheless audible—“if you knew she wouldn't have Jim, either.”
And he stamped his way down-stairs to tell his wife to quit her frettin' and not bother him with any more fool's errands. She was about to inquire what Bibbs “said,” but after a second thought she decided not to speak at all. She merely murmured a wordless assent, and verbal communication was given over between them for the rest of that afternoon.
Bibbs and his father were gone when Mrs. Sheridan woke, the next morning, and she had a dreary day. She missed Edith woefully, and she worried about what might be taking place in the Sheridan Building. She felt that everything depended on how Bibbs “took hold,” and upon her husband's return in the evening she seized upon the first opportunity to ask him how things had gone. He was non-committal. What could anybody tell by the first day? He'd seen plenty go at things well enough right at the start and then blow up. Pretty near anybody could show up fair the first day or so. There was a big job ahead. This material, such as it was—Bibbs, in fact—had to be broken in to handling the work Roscoe had done; and then, at least as an overseer, he must take Jim's position in the Realty Company as well. He told her to ask him again in a month.
But during the course of dinner she gathered from some disjointed remarks of his that he and Bibbs had lunched together at the small restaurant where it had been Sheridan's custom to lunch with Jim, and she took this to be an encouraging sign. Bibbs went to his room as soon as they left the table, and her husband was not communicative after reading his paper.
She became an anxious spectator of Bibbs's progress as a man of business, although it was a progress she could glimpse but dimly and only in the evening, through his remarks and his father's at dinner. Usually Bibbs was silent, except when directly addressed, but on the first evening of the third week of his new career he offered an opinion which had apparently been the subject of previous argument.
“I'd like you to understand just what I meant about those storage-rooms, father,” he said, as Jackson placed his coffee before him. “Abercrombie agreed with me, but you wouldn't listen to him.”
“You can talk, if you want to, and I'll listen,” Sheridan returned, “but you can't show me that Jim ever took up with a bad thing. The roof fell because it hadn't had time to settle and on account of weather conditions. I want that building put just the way Jim planned it.”
“You can't have it,” said Bibbs. “You can't, because Jim planned for the building to stand up, and it won't do it. The other one—the one that didn't fall—is so shot with cracks we haven't dared use it for storage. It won't stand weight. There's only one thing to do: get both buildings down as quickly as we can, and build over. Brick's the best and cheapest in the long run for that type.”
Sheridan looked sarcastic. “Fine! What we goin' to do for storage-rooms while we're waitin' for those few bricks to be laid?”
“Rent,” Bibbs returned, promptly. “We'll lose money if we don't rent, anyhow—they were waiting so long for you to give the warehouse matter your attention after the roof fell. You don't know what an amount of stuff they've got piled up on us over there. We'd have to rent until we could patch up those process perils—and the Krivitch Manufacturing Company's plant is empty, right across the street. I took an option on it for us this morning.”
Sheridan's expression was queer. “Look here!” he said, sharply. “Did you go and do that without consulting me?”
“It didn't cost anything,” said Bibbs. “It's only until to-morrow afternoon at two o'clock. I undertook to convince you before then.”
“Oh, you did?” Sheridan's tone was sardonic. “Well, just suppose you couldn't convince me.”
“I can, though—and I intend to,” said Bibbs, quietly. “I don't think you understand the condition of those buildings you want patched up.”
“Now, see here,” said Sheridan, with slow emphasis; “suppose I had my mind set about this. JIM thought they'd stand, and suppose it was—well, kind of a matter of sentiment with me to prove he was right.”
Bibbs looked at him compassionately. “I'm sorry if you have a sentiment about it, father,” he said. “But whether you have or not can't make a difference. You'll get other people hurt if you trust that process, and that won't do. And if you want a monument to Jim, at least you want one that will stand. Besides, I don't think you can reasonably defend sentiment in this particular kind of affair.”
“Oh, you don't?”
“No, but I'm sorry you didn't tell me you felt it.”
Sheridan was puzzled by his son's tone. “Why are you 'sorry'?” he asked, curiously.
“Because I had the building inspector up there, this noon,” said Bibbs, “and I had him condemn both those buildings.”
“What?”
“He'd been afraid to do it before, until he heard from us—afraid you'd see he lost his job. But he can't un-condemn them—they've got to come down now.”
Sheridan gave him a long and piercing stare from beneath lowered brows. Finally he said, “How long did they give you on that option to convince me?”
“Until two o'clock to-morrow afternoon.”
“All right,” said Sheridan, not relaxing. “I'm convinced.”
Bibbs jumped up. “I thought you would be. I'll telephone the Krivitch agent. He gave me the option until to-morrow, but I told him I'd settle it this evening.”
Sheridan gazed after him as he left the room, and then, though his expression did not alter in the slightest, a sound came from him that startled his wife. It had been a long time since she had heard anything resembling a chuckle from him, and this sound—although it was grim and dry—bore that resemblance.
She brightened eagerly. “Looks like he was startin' right well don't it, papa?”
“Startin'? Lord! He got me on the hip! Why, HE knew what I wanted—that's why he had the inspector up there, so't he'd have me beat before we even started to talk about it. And did you hear him? 'Can't reasonably defend SENTIMENT!' And the way he says 'Us': 'Took an option for Us'! 'Stuff piled up on Us'!”
There was always an alloy for Mrs. Sheridan. “I don't just like the way he looks, though, papa.”
“Oh, there's got to be something! Only one chick left at home, so you start to frettin' about IT!”
“No. He's changed. There's kind of a settish look to his face, and—”
“I guess that's the common sense comin' out on him, then,” said Sheridan. “You'll see symptoms like that in a good many business men, I expect.”
“Well, and he don't have as good color as he was gettin' before. And he'd begun to fill out some, but—”
Sheridan gave forth another dry chuckle, and, going round the table to her, patted her upon the shoulder with his left hand, his right being still heavily bandaged, though he no longer wore a sling. “That's the way it is with you, mamma—got to take your frettin' out one way if you don't another!”
“No. He don't look well. It ain't exactly the way he looked when he begun to get sick that time, but he kind o' seems to be losin', some way.”
“Yes, he may 'a' lost something,” said Sheridan. “I expect he's lost a whole lot o' foolishness besides his God-forsaken notions about writin' poetry and—”
“No,” his wife persisted. “I mean he looks right peakid. And yesterday, when he was settin' with us, he kept lookin' out the window. He wasn't readin'.”
“Well, why shouldn't he look out the window?”
“He was lookin' over there. He never read a word all afternoon, I don't believe.”
“Look, here!” said Sheridan. “Bibbs might 'a' kept goin' on over there the rest of his life, moonin' on and on, but what he heard Sibyl say did one big thing, anyway. It woke him up out of his trance. Well, he had to go and bust clean out with a bang; and that stopped his goin' over there, and it stopped his poetry, but I reckon he's begun to get pretty fair pay for what he lost. I guess a good many young men have had to get over worries like his; they got to lose SOMETHING if they're goin' to keep ahead o' the procession nowadays—and it kind o' looks to me, mamma, like Bibbs might keep quite a considerable long way ahead. Why, a year from now I'll bet you he won't know there ever WAS such a thing as poetry! And ain't he funny? He wanted to stick to the shop so's he could 'think'! What he meant was, think about something useless. Well, I guess he's keepin' his mind pretty occupied the other way these days. Yes, sir, it took a pretty fair-sized shock to get him out of his trance, but it certainly did the business.” He patted his wife's shoulder again, and then, without any prefatory symptoms, broke into a boisterous laugh.
“Honest, mamma, he works like a gorilla!”