_ The room to which he conducted his lagging charge was furnished
in every particular like a room in a new hotel; and Bibbs found it
pleasant--though, indeed, any room with a good bed would have seemed
pleasant to him after his journey. He stretched himself flat
immediately, and having replied "Not now" to the attendant's offer
to unpack the bag, closed his eyes wearily.
White-jacket, racially sympathetic, lowered the window-shades and made
an exit on tiptoe, encountering the other white-jacket--the harassed
overseer--in the hall without. Said the emerging one: "He mighty
shaky, Mist' Jackson. Drop right down an' shet his eyes. Eyelids all
black. Rich folks gotta go same as anybody else. Anybody ast me if
I change 'ith 'at ole boy--No, suh! Le'm keep 'is money; I keep my
black skin an' keep out the ground!"
Mr. Jackson expressed the same preference. "Yessuh, he look tuh me
like somebody awready laid out," he concluded. And upon the stairway
landing, near by, two old women, on all-fours at their work, were
likewise pessimistic.
"Hech!" said one, lamenting in a whisper. "It give me a turn to see
him go by--white as wax an' bony as a dead fish! Mrs. Cronin, tell
me: d'it make ye kind o' sick to look at um?"
"Sick? No more than the face of a blessed angel already in heaven!"
"Well," said the other, "I'd a b'y o' me own come home t' die once--"
She fell silent at a rustling of skirts in the corridor above them.
It was Mrs. Sheridan hurrying to greet her son.
She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age
like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her
husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence
she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those
two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always
absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do;
and Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long
ago become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his.
She invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when
she did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the
inmost spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not
comprehend it and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known
but one actual altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years
past, in the early days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to
enhance the favorable impression he believed himself to be making upon
some capitalists, he had thought it necessary to accompany them to a
performance of "The Black Crook." But she had not once referred to
this during the last ten years.
Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes
rustled more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many
at a time and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting
a skirt down over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she
opened Bibbs's door.
At sight of the recumbent figure she began to close the door softly,
withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the knob and
the rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.
"Don't go, mother," he said. "I'm not asleep." He swung his long
legs over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his
shoulder, restraining him; and he lay flat again.
"No," she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, "I just come for
a minute, but I want to see how you seem. Edith said--"
"Poor Edith!" he murmured. "She couldn't look at me. She--"
"Nonsense!" Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came
back to the bedside. "You look a great deal better than what you did
before you went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body
can see that right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you
haven't got much color--"
"No," he said, "I haven't much color."
"But you will have when you get your strength back."
"Oh yes!" he responded, cheerfully. "THEN I will."
"You look a great deal better than what I expected."
"Edith must have a great vocabulary!" he chuckled.
"She's too sensitive," said Mrs. Sheridan, "and it makes her
exaggerate a little. What about your diet?"
"That's all right. They told me to eat anything."
"Anything at all?"
"Well--anything I could."
"That's good," she said, nodding. "They mean for you just to build up
your strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see
you at the sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and
that's only a little time ago. How long was it?"
"Eight months, I think."
"No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was
longer'n I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely
even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'
along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked
Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept
up pretty well on the home news."
"Oh yes."
"What I think you need," said the mother, gravely, "is to liven up
a little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin'
this morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate
your appetite, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you--"
"Plans?" Bibbs, turning on his side, shielded his eyes from the light
with his hand, so that he might see her better. "What--" He paused.
"What plans is he making for me, mother?"
She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.
"Well, you better talk it over with HIM," she said, with perceptible
nervousness. "He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had
any call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now,
anyway." She came and stood by the bedside once more. "But you must
remember, Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best. He loves his
chuldern and wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always
find he's right in the end."
He made a little gesture of assent, which seemed to content her; and
she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened
it. "You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for
to-night."
"You--you mean--he--" Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too
quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked,
quietly, "Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?"
"Well, I think he does," she answered. "You see, it's the 'house-
warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought
to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's
just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up. You
don't feel too bad to come down, do you?"
"Mother?"
"Well?"
"Take a good look at me," he said.
"Oh, see here!" she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. "You're not so
bad off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't
do you any harm to please your--"
"It isn't that," he interrupted. "Honestly, I'm only afraid it might
spoil somebody's appetite. Edith--"
"I told you the child was too sensitive," she interrupted, in turn.
"You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look
like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's
all there is to it."
"All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it,
I can!"
"It 'll do you good," she returned, rustling into the hall. "Now take
a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to
get dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now,
Bibbs!"
Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something
she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over
interminably. "His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for
you--his plans for you--" And then, taking the place of "his plans
for you," after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice
came back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: "He
loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern"--
"you'll find he's always right--you'll find he's always right--"
Until at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and
distorted realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great
black wing that came out of the wall and stretched over his bed--it
was a black wing within the room, and at the same time it was a black
cloud crossing the sky, bridging the whole earth from pole to pole.
It was a cloud of black smoke, and out of the heart of it came a
flurried voice whispering over and over, "His plans for you--his plans
for you--his plans for you--" And then there was nothing.
He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a
care against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and,
getting to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade
so that it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.
He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the
next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, "the old
Vertrees country mansion." It stood in a broad lawn which was
separated from the Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big,
square, plain old box of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a
cupola. Paint had been spared for a long time, and no one could have
put a name to the color of it, but in spite of that the place had no
look of being out at heel, and the sward was as neatly trimmed as the
Sheridans' own. _