_ 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 SO 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'd 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. _