_ He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then,
observing that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with
his eyes still fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat
plaintive, Sheridan was impelled to groan. "Oh, Lord!" he said.
"This is the way you always were. I don't believe you understood a
darn word I been sayin'! You don't LOOK as if you did. By George!
it's discouraging!"
"I don't understand about getting--about getting bigger," said Bibbs,
bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. "I don't
see just why--"
"WHAT?" Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and
staring across it incredulously at his son.
"I don't understand--exactly--what you want it all bigger for?"
"Great God!" shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his
clenched fist. "A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the
poorest day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question--"
"I did once," Bibbs interrupted; "when I was in the machine-shop.
I--"
"Wha'd he say?"
"He said, 'Oh, hell!'" answered Bibbs, mildly.
"Yes, I reckon he would!" Sheridan swung away from the desk. "I
reckon he certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right
now, myself!"
"It's the same answer, then?" Bibbs's voice was serious, almost
tremulous.
"Damnation!" Sheridan roared. "Did you ever hear the word Prosperity,
you ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear
the word PROGRESS?"
He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest
surging, his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. "Now
then," he said, huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated,
"what do you want to do?"
"Sir?"
"What do you WANT to do, I said."
Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. "What--what do--I--what--"
"If I'd let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you
do?"
Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him--a profound
shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe
of his shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit
called to the desk in school.
"What would you do? Loaf?"
"No, sir." Bibbs's voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound
it made was unquestionably a guilty sound. "I suppose I'd--I'd--"
"Well?"
"I suppose I'd try to--to write."
"Write what?"
"Nothing important--just poems and essays, perhaps."
"That all?"
"Yes, sir."
"I see," said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was
putting upon himself. "That is, you want to write, but you don't want
to write anything of any account."
"You think--"
Sheridan got up again. "I take my hat off to the man that can write
a good ad," he said, emphatically. "The best writin' talent in this
country is right spang in the ad business to-day. You buy a magazine
for good writin'--look on the back of it! Let me tell you I pay money
for that kind o' writin'. Maybe you think it's easy. Just try it!
I've tried it, and I can't do it. I tell you an ad's got to be
written so it makes people do the hardest thing in this world to GET
'em to do: it's got to make 'em give up their MONEY! You talk about
'poems and essays.' I tell you when it comes to the actual skill
o' puttin' words together so as to make things HAPPEN, R. T. Bloss,
right here in this city, knows more in a minute than George Waldo
Emerson ever knew in his whole life!"
"You--you may be--" Bibbs said, indistinctly, the last word smothered
in a cough.
"Of COURSE I'm right! And if it ain't just like you to want to take
up with the most out-o'-date kind o' writin' there is! 'Poems and
essays'! My Lord, Bibbs, that's WOMEN'S work! You can't pick up a
newspaper without havin' to see where Mrs. Rumskididle read a paper
on 'Jane Eyre,' or 'East Lynne,' at the God-Knows-What Club. And
'poetry'! Why, look at Edith! I expect that poem o' hers would set
a pretty high-water mark for you, young man, and it's the only one
she's ever managed to write in her whole LIFE! When I wanted her to
go on and write some more she said it took too much time. Said it
took months and months. And Edith's a smart girl; she's got more
energy in her little finger than you ever give me a chance to see in
your whole body, Bibbs. Now look at the facts: say she could turn
out four or five poems a year and you could turn out maybe two. That
medal she got was worth about fifteen dollars, so there's your income
--thirty dollars a year! That's a fine success to make of your life!
I'm not sayin' a word against poetry. I wouldn't take ten thousand
dollars right now for that poem of Edith's; and poetry's all right
enough in its place--but you leave it to the girls. A man's got to
do a man's work in this world!"
He seated himself in a chair at his son's side and, leaning over,
tapped Bibbs confidentially on the knee. "This city's got the
greatest future in America, and if my sons behave right by me and by
themselves they're goin' to have a mighty fair share of it--a mighty
fair share. I love this town. It's God's own footstool, and it's
made money for me every day right along, I don't know how many years.
I love it like I do my own business, and I'd fight for it as quick
as I'd fight for my own family. It's a beautiful town. Look at our
wholesale district; look at any district you want to; look at the
park system we're puttin' through, and the boulevards and the public
statuary. And she grows. God! how she grows!" He had become
intensely grave; he spoke with solemnity. "Now, Bibbs, I can't take
any of it--nor any gold or silver nor buildings nor bonds--away with
me in my shroud when I have to go. But I want to leave my share in
it to my boys. I've worked for it; I've been a builder and a maker;
and two blades of grass have grown where one grew before, whenever
I laid my hand on the ground and willed 'em to grow. I've built big,
and I want the buildin' to go on. And when my last hour comes I want
to know that my boys are ready to take charge; that they're fit to
take charge and go ON with it. Bibbs, when that hour comes I want
to know that my boys are big men, ready and fit to hold of big things.
Bibbs, when I'm up above I want to know that the big share I've made
mine, here below, is growin' bigger and bigger in the charge of my
boys."
He leaned back, deeply moved. "There!" he said, huskily. "I've never
spoken more what was in my heart in my life. I do it because I want
you to understand--and not think me a mean father. I never had to
talk that way to Jim and Roscoe. They understood without any talk,
Bibbs."
"I see," said Bibbs. "At least I think I do. But--"
"Wait a minute!" Sheridan raised his hand. "If you see the least bit
in the world, then you understand how it feels to me to have my son
set here and talk about 'poems and essays' and such-like fooleries.
And you must understand, too, what it meant to start one o' my boys
and have him come back on me the way you did, and have to be sent
to a sanitarium because he couldn't stand work. Now, let's get right
down to it, Bibbs. I've had a whole lot o' talk with ole Doc Gurney
about you, one time another, and I reckon I understand your case just
about as well as he does, anyway! Now here, I'll be frank with you.
I started you in harder than what I did the other boys, and that was
for your own good, because I saw you needed to be shook up more'n
they did. You were always kind of moody and mopish--and you needed
work that'd keep you on the jump. Now, why did it make you sick
instead of brace you up and make a man of you the way it ought of
done? I pinned ole Gurney down to it. I says, 'Look here, ain't it
really because he just plain hated it?' 'Yes,' he says, 'that's it.
If he'd enjoyed it, it wouldn't 'a' hurt him. He loathes it, and
that affects his nervous system. The more he tries it, the more he
hates it; and the more he hates it, the more injury it does him.'
That ain't quite his words, but it's what he meant. And that's about
the way it is."
"Yes," said Bibbs, "that's about the way it is."
"Well, then, I reckon it's up to me not only to make you do it, but
to make you like it!"
Bibbs shivered. And he turned upon his father a look that was almost
ghostly. "I can't," he said, in a low voice. "I can't."
"Can't go back to the shop?"
"No. Can't like it. I can't."
Sheridan jumped up, his patience gone. To his own view, he had
reasoned exhaustively, had explained fully and had pleaded more than
a father should, only to be met in the end with the unreasoning and
mysterious stubbornness which had been Bibbs's baffling characteristic
from childhood. "By George, you will!" he cried. "You'll go back
there and you'll like it! Gurney says it won't hurt you if you like
it, and he says it'll kill you if you go back and hate it; so it looks
as if it was about up to you not to hate it. Well, Gurney's a fool!
Hatin' work doesn't kill anybody; and this isn't goin' to kill you,
whether you hate it or not. I've never made a mistake in a serious
matter in my life, and it wasn't a mistake my sendin' you there in the
first place. And I'm goin' to prove it--I'm goin' to send you back
there and vindicate my judgment. Gurney says it's all 'mental
attitude.' Well, you're goin' to learn the right one! He says in a
couple more months this fool thing that's been the matter with you'll
be disappeared completely and you'll be back in as good or better
condition than you were before you ever went into the shop. And right
then is when you begin over--right in that same shop! Nobody can call
me a hard man or a mean father. I do the best I can for my chuldern,
and I take full responsibility for bringin' my sons up to be men.
Now, so far, I've failed with you. But I'm not goin' to keep ON
failin'. I never tackled a job YET I didn't put through, and I'm not
goin' to begin with my own son. I'm goin' to make a MAN of you. By
God! I am!"
Bibbs rose and went slowly to the door, where he turned. "You say
you give me a couple of months?" he said.
Sheridan pushed a bell-button on his desk. "Gurney said two months
more would put you back where you were. You go home and begin to get
yourself in the right 'mental attitude' before those two months are
up! Good-by!"
"Good-by, sir," said Bibbs, meekly. _