_ Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself
at every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream
--a rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a
table and made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke
he kept his eyes lowered. "You weren't altogether right about the
shop--that is, in one way you weren't, father." He glanced up
apprehensively. Sheridan stood facing him, expressionless, and made
no attempt to interrupt. "That's difficult to explain," Bibbs
continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of his
finger. "I--I believe the shop might have done for me this time if
I hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to--oh, not only to bear it,
but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it. I want to go on just
as I am. And of all things on earth that I don't want, I don't want
to live a business life--I don't want to be drawn into it. I don't
think it IS living--and now I AM living. I have the healthful toil
--and I can think. In business as important as yours I couldn't think
anything but business. I don't--I don't think making money is worth
while."
"Go on," said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.
"It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see," said Bibbs. "You
think this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being
rich and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the
schools because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more
than they used to because some people--not rich and powerful people--
have thought the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've
been reading the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being
taught anything except what would help them to make money. You said
it was wasting the taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but
not to live. When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now
it's hideous. What's the use of being big just to be hideous? I mean
I don't think all this has meant really going ahead--it's just been
getting bigger and dirtier and noisier. Wasn't the whole country
happier and in many ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and
quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an utter fool, father, but,
after all, though, aren't business and politics just the housekeeping
part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman that not only made her
housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and dirtily that the
whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it? And suppose
she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time, and was
always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep
clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the
house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable--"
"Just one minute!" Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible
courtesy, "If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about
anything?"
"I don't quite--"
"I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything
whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon
any subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can
you mention one single time when you were proved to be right?"
He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only,
"If I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm
right about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be
due to bring up my average."
"Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you
probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You
been balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you
to do, you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet
I can't seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do
what I said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the
business of this country. Go on!"
"I don't want to be a part of it," said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.
"I want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I
went down there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for
money enough to--"
"No," his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. "You've
never had to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say.
Now, let me remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're
eatin' pretty fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just
suppose one o' these noisy housekeepers--me, for instance--decided
to let you do your own housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition
would be?"
"I'm earning nine dollars a week," said Bibbs, sturdily. "It's
enough. I shouldn't mind at all."
"Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?"
"My work!" Bibbs answered. "And I've done so well on that clipping-
machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week
at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure.
I'd rather have a trade than be in business--I should, infinitely!"
"You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!" But Sheridan
struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in
controlling it. "You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're
either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning--or--you can go
to plumbing!"
"All right," said Bibbs, gently. "I can get along."
Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. "O God," he
said, "this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine
dollars a week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do
nothin' for him?" Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in
a furious gesture of dismissal. "Get out o' this room! You got a
skull that's thicker'n a whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang
all the way across! You hated the machine-shop so bad when I sent you
there, you went and stayed sick for over two years--and now, when I
offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the
shop like a calf for its mammy! You're cracked! Oh, but I got a fine
layout here! One son died, one quit, and one's a loon! The loon's
all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had a crazy brother, and they
undertook to keep him at the house. First morning he was there he
walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass window out into the
yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' That's what
you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look at the
pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you bust!
Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are,
I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn you
--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out of
you that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while
I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'
at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and
don't let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've
waked up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"
Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it,
for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by
his father's last word.
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 has 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....
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!" _