_ Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and
George appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was
waiting there, he announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but
friendly touch upon the shoulder as a complement to the handshaking,
and left her.
Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he
merely glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was
not over fifty, in spite of Sheridan's habitual "ole Doc Gurney."
He was gray, however, almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always
he looked drowsy.
"Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs," he said,
not rising. "Wants me to 'look you over' again. Come around here
in front of me--between me and the fire. I want to see if I can
see through you."
"You mean you're too sleepy to move," returned Bibbs, complying.
"I think you'll notice that I'm getting worse."
"Taken on about twelve pounds," said Gurney. "Thirteen, maybe."
"Twelve."
"Well, it won't do." The doctor rubbed his eyelids. "You're so much
better I'll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just
where you are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down
--all the way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know."
Bibbs nodded. "Machine-shop."
"Still hate it?"
Bibbs nodded again.
"Don't blame you!" the doctor grunted. "Yes, I expect it'll make
a lump in your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell
him you've got the old lump there yet? You still want to write,
do you?"
"What's the use?" Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. "My kind of writing!"
"Yes," the doctor agreed. "I suppose it you broke away and lived on
roots and berries until you began to 'attract the favorable attention
of editors' you might be able to hope for an income of four or five
hundred dollars a year by the time you're fifty."
"That's about it," Bibbs murmured.
"Of course I know what you want to do," said Gurney, drowsily. "You
don't hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show--the noise
and jar and dirt, the scramble--the whole bloomin' craze to 'get on.'
You'd like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and
bask on a balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You'd grow
fat on it and have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what
do you say? I can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father
he'll lose another of his boys if you don't go to Sicily?"
"I don't want to go to Sicily," said Bibbs. "I want to stay right
here."
The doctor's drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his
patient a sharp glance. "It's a risk," he said. "I think we'll find
you're so much better he'll send you back to the shop pretty quick.
Something's got hold of you lately; you're not quite so lackadaisical
as you used to be. But I warn you: I think the shop will knock you
just as it did before, and perhaps even harder, Bibbs."
He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. "Well, when we go
over you this afternoon what are we going to say about it?"
"Tell him I'm ready," said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
"Oh no," Gurney laughed. "Not quite yet; but you may be almost.
We'll see. Don't forget I said to walk down."
And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor
informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be
pleasing. "Here's a new 'situation' for a one-act farce," he said,
gloomily, to his next patient when Bibbs had gone. "Doctor tells a
man he's well, and that's his death sentence, likely. Dam' funny
world!"
Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon
this point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on
any point, so discouraging was the young man's improvement. It was a
dingy afternoon, and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs's sight,
but to his nostrils, though most of the pedestrians were so saturated
with the smell they could no longer detect it. Nearly all of them
walked hurriedly, too intent upon their destinations to be more than
half aware of the wayside; they wore the expressions of people under
a vague yet constant strain. They were all lightly powdered, inside
and out, with fine dust and grit from the hard-paved streets, and they
were unaware of that also. They did not even notice that they saw the
smoke, though the thickened air was like a shrouding mist. And when
Bibbs passed the new "Sheridan Apartments," now almost completed, he
observed that the marble of the vestibule was already streaky with
soot, like his gloves, which were new.
That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the
way from his brother's funeral, and this incited a train of thought
which continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route
was by a street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and
in his preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so
that, having crossed to his own street, he approached the New House
from the north, and as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees's lot
Mr. Vertrees's daughter emerged from the front door and walked
thoughtfully down the path to the old picket gate. She was
unconscious of the approach of the pedestrian from the north, and did
not see him until she had opened the gate and he was almost beside
her. Then she looked up, and as she saw him she started visibly.
And if this thing had happened to Robert Lamhorn, he would have had
a thought far beyond the horizon of faint-hearted Bibbs's thoughts.
Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his thought. He would have said:
"You jumped because you were thinking of me!"
Mary was the picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand
closing the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction
Bibbs was walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they
should walk together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had
paused in his slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either
spoke or moved--it was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for
each to seem to say, by look and attitude, "Why, it's YOU!"
Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other's
name as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came
to a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they
began to walk on together he contrived to find his voice.
"I--I--hate a frozen fish myself," he said. "I think three miles was
too long for you to put up with one."
"Good gracious!" she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which
restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. "Mr. Sheridan, you're
lovely to put it that way. But it's always the girl's place to say
it's turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we
didn't know each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an
imposition for me to have made you bring me home, and after I went
into the house I decided I should have walked. Besides, it wasn't
three miles to the car-line. I never thought of it!"
"No," said Bibbs, earnestly. "I didn't, either. I might have said
something if I'd thought of anything. I'm talking now, though;
I must remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I'm
talking, though it doesn't sound intelligent even to me. I made up
my mind that if I ever met you again I'd turn on my voice and keep it
going, no mater what it said. I--"
She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees's laugh was one
which Bibbs's father had declared, after the house-warming, "a cripple
would crawl five miles to hear." And at the merry lilting of it
Bibbs's father's son took heart to forget some of his trepidation.
"I'll be any kind of idiot," he said, "if you'll laugh at me some
more. It won't be difficult for me."
She did; and Bibbs's cheeks showed a little actual color, which
Mary perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and
irritated description of him to her mother just after she had seen
him for the first time. "Rather tragic and altogether impossible."
It seemed to her now that she must have been blind.
They had passed the New House without either of them showing--or
possessing--any consciousness that it had been the destination of
one of them.
"I'll keep on talking," Bibbs continued, cheerfully, "and you keep on
laughing. I'm amounting to something in the world this afternoon.
I'm making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don't be bothered
by my bleating out such things as that. I'm really frightened, and
that makes me bleat anything. I'm frightened about two things: I'm
afraid of what I'll think of myself later if I don't keep talking--
talking now, I mean--and I'm afraid of what I'll think of myself if
I do. And besides these two things, I'm frightened, anyhow. I don't
remember talking as much as this more than once or twice in my life.
I suppose it was always in me to do it, though, the first time I met
any one who didn't know me well enough not to listen."
"But you're not really talking to me," said Mary. "You're just
thinking aloud."
"No," he returned, gravely. "I'm not thinking at all; I'm only making
vocal sounds because I believe it's more mannerly. I seem to be the
subject of what little meaning they possess, and I'd like to change
it, but I don't know how. I haven't any experience in talking, and
I don't know how to manage it."
"You needn't change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan," she
said. "Not even if you really talked about yourself." She turned
her face toward him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was
pathetically amazed by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look,
warmly friendly and understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it
was an eagerly interested look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything
like that.
"I--you--I--I'm--" he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks
grew almost vivid.
She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance
that came into his face. There was something about him, too, that
explained how "queer" many people might think him; but he did not
seem "queer" to Mary Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural
person she had ever met.
He waited, and became coherent. "YOU say something now," he said.
"I don't even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing
the funny man's solo! You--"
"No," she interrupted. "I'd rather play your accompaniment."
"I'll stop and listen to it, then."
"Perhaps--" she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a
gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they
were approaching. "Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?"
"I suppose I could," he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at
her. "But I don't want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me
I'd better say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit.
The other reason I don't want to see the church is that I have a
feeling it's where you're going, and where I'll be sent back."
She shook her head in cheery negation. "Not unless you want to be.
Would you like to come with me?"
"Why--why--yes," he said. "Anywhere!" And again it was apparent
that he spoke in simple truthfulness.
"Then come--if you care for organ music. The organist is an old
friend of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He's a dear old man.
He had a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he
gave up everything for music. That's he, waiting in the doorway.
He looks like Beethoven, doesn't he? I think he knows that, perhaps
and enjoys it a little. I hope so."
"Yes," said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. "I think
Beethoven would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like
other people."
"I haven't kept you?" Mary said to the organist.
"No, no," he answered, heartily. "I would not mind so only you
should shooer come!"
"This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me."
The organist looked bluntly surprised. "Iss that SO?" he exclaimed.
"Well, I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle
playink. He iss musician himself, then, of course."
"No," said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. "I--I
played the--I tried to play--" Fortunately he checked himself; he
had been about to offer the information that he had failed to master
the jews'-harp in his boyhood. "No, I'm not a musician," he contented
himself with saying.
"What?" Dr. Kraft's surprise increased. "Young man, you are
fortunate! I play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone.
You are the first. You are the first one EVER!" _