_ The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the
large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers
and note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs
had given up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow--and
that he had given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest
thing he could have done--and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat
upon the bed and wept a little before she went down-stairs.
So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.
As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of
passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face;
a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual
anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a
perambulator containing the third--and all three were newly cleaned,
Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife's relatives.
"How'd you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?" the husband
whispered. "He's one of the sons, and there ain't but two left
now."
The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. "Well, I don't know," she
returned. "He looks to me like he had his own troubles."
"I expect he has, like anybody else," said the young husband, "but
I guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money."
"Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby'll be as well
fixed as the Sheridans. You can't tell." She glanced back at
Bibbs, who had turned north. "He walks kind of slow and stooped
over, like."
"So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess," said the
young husband, with bitter admiration.
Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she
started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him
at the door.
"Bibbs!" she cried. "What is the matter? I saw something was
terribly wrong when I--You look--" She paused, and he came in,
not lifting his eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold
he had come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers.
"Ah, poor boy!" she said, with a gesture of understanding and pity.
"I know what it is!"
He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into
a chair.
"You needn't tell me," she said. "They've made you give up. Your
father's won--you're going to do what he wants. You've given up."
Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.
She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him.
"Bibbs," she said. "I can be glad of one thing, though it's selfish.
I can be glad you came straight to me. It's more to me than even if
you'd come because you were happy." She did not speak again for a
little while; then she said: "Bibbs--dear--could you tell me about
it? Do you want to?"
Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked
her a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had
misunderstood his words.
"Mary," he said, "could you marry me?"
"What did you say, Bibbs?" she asked, quietly.
His tone and attitude did not change. "Will you marry me?"
Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks--she grew red and then white.
She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first
incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous
in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled
with strangeness in the long silence--the two were so strange to each
other. At last she said:
"What made you say that?"
He did not answer.
"Bibbs, look at me!" Her voice was loud and clear. "What made
you say that? Look at me!"
He could not look at her, and he could not speak.
"What was it that made you?" she said. "I want you to tell me."
She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that
intensity of wonder. "You've given up--to your father," she said,
slowly, "and then you came to ask me--" She broke off. "Bibbs,
do you want me to marry you?"
"Yes," he said, just audibly.
"No!" she cried. "You do not. Then what made you ask me? What
is it that's happened?"
"Nothing."
"Wait," she said. "Let me think. It's something that happened since
our walk this morning--yes, since you left me at noon. Something
happened that--" She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of
amazement and dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had
gone to the New House.
Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, "I do--I do want
you to--marry me, if--if--you could."
She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. "Bibbs, do you--"
Her voice was as unsteady as his--little more than a whisper. "Do
you think I'm --in love with you?"
"No," he said.
Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word;
it did not seem to come from Mary's parted lips, but he was aware
of it. "Why?"
"I've had nothing but dreams," Bibbs said, desolately, "but they
weren't like that. Sibyl said no girl could care about me." He
smiled faintly, though still he did not look at Mary. "And when
I first came home Edith told me Sibyl was so anxious to marry that
she'd have married ME. She meant it to express Sibyl's extremity,
you see. But I hardly needed either of them to tell me. I hadn't
thought of myself as--well, not as particularly captivating!"
Oddly enough, Mary's pallor changed to an angry flush. "Those
two!" she exclaimed, sharply; and then, with thoroughgoing contempt:
"Lamhorn! That's like them!" She turned away, went to the bare
little black mantel, and stood leaning upon it. Presently she
asked: "WHEN did Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan say that 'no girl' could
care about you?"
"To-day."
Mary drew a deep breath. "I think I'm beginning to understand--a
little." She bit her lip; there was anger in good truth in her eyes
and in her voice. "Answer me once more," she said. "Bibbs, do you
know now why I stopped wearing my furs?"
"Yes."
"I thought so! Your sister-in-law told you, didn't she?"
"I--I heard her say--"
"I think I know what happened, now." Mary's breath came fast and
her voice shook, but she spoke rapidly. "You 'heard her say' more
than that. You 'heard her say' that we were bitterly poor, and
on that account I tried first to marry your brother--and then--"
But now she faltered, and it was only after a convulsive effort
that she was able to go on. "And then--that I tried to marry--you!
You 'heard her say' that--and you believe that I don't care for you
and that 'no girl' could care for you--but you think I am in such
an 'extremity,' as Sibyl was--that you-- And so, not wanting me,
and believing that I could not want you--except for my 'extremity'
--you took your father's offer and then came to ask me--to marry
you! What had I shown you of myself that could make you--"
Suddenly she sank down, kneeling, with her face buried in her arms
upon the lap of a chair, tears overwhelming her.
"Mary, Mary!" he cried, helplessly. "Oh NO--you--you don't
understand."
"I do, though!" she sobbed. "I do!"
He came and stood beside her. "You kill me!" he said. "I can't
make it plain. From the first of your loveliness to me, I was all
self. It was always you that gave and I that took. I was the
dependent--I did nothing but lean on you. We always talked of me,
not of you. It was all about my idiotic distresses and troubles.
I thought of you as a kind of wonderful being that had no mortal
or human suffering except by sympathy. You seemed to lean down
--out of a rosy cloud--to be kind to me. I never dreamed I could
do anything for YOU! I never dreamed you could need anything to
be done for you by anybody. And to-day I heard that--that you--"
"You heard that I needed to marry--some one--anybody--with money,"
she sobbed. "And you thought we were so--so desperate--you believed
that I had--"
"No!" he said, quickly. "I didn't believe you'd done one kind
thing for me--for that. No, no, no! I knew you'd NEVER thought
of me except generously--to give. I said I couldn't make it
plain!" he cried, despairingly.
"Wait!" She lifted her head and extended her hands to him
unconsciously, like a child. "Help me up, Bibbs." Then, when she
was once more upon her feet, she wiped her eyes and smiled upon him
ruefully and faintly, but reassuringly, as if to tell him, in that
way, that she knew he had not meant to hurt her. And that smile
of hers, so lamentable, but so faithfully friendly, misted his own
eyes, for his shamefacedness lowered them no more.
"Let me tell you what you want to tell me," she said. "You can't,
because you can't put it into words--they are too humiliating for me
and you're too gentle to say them. Tell me, though, isn't it true?
You didn't believe that I'd tried to make you fall in love with me--"
"Never! Never for an instant!"
"You didn't believe I'd tried to make you want to marry me--"
"No, no, no!"
"I believe it, Bibbs. You thought that I was fond of you; you knew
I cared for you--but you didn't think I might be--in love with you.
But you thought that I might marry you without being in love with you
because you did believe I had tried to marry your brother, and--"
"Mary, I only knew--for the first time--that you--that you were--"
"Were desperately poor," she said. "You can't even say that!
Bibbs, it was true: I did try to make Jim want to marry me. I did!"
And she sank down into the chair, weeping bitterly again. Bibbs was
agonized.
"Mary," he groaned, "I didn't know you COULD cry!"
"Listen," she said. "Listen till I get through--I want you to
understand. We were poor, and we weren't fitted to be. We never
had been, and we didn't know what to do. We'd been almost rich;
there was plenty, but my father wanted to take advantage of the
growth of the town; he wanted to be richer, but instead--well,
just about the time your father finished building next door we
found we hadn't anything. People say that, sometimes, meaning
that they haven't anything in comparison with other people of their
own kind, but we really hadn't anything--we hadn't anything at all,
Bibbs! And we couldn't DO anything. You might wonder why I didn't
'try to be a stenographer'--and I wonder myself why, when a family
loses its money, people always say the daughters 'ought to go and
be stenographers.' It's curious!--as if a wave of the hand made
you into a stenographer. No, I'd been raised to be either married
comfortably or a well-to-do old maid, if I chose not to marry.
The poverty came on slowly, Bibbs, but at last it was all there--
and I didn't know how to be a stenographer. I didn't know how to
be anything except a well-to-do old maid or somebody's wife--and
I couldn't be a well-to-do old maid. Then, Bibbs, I did what I'd
been raised to know how to do. I went out to be fascinating and be
married. I did it openly, at least, and with a kind of decent
honesty. I told your brother I had meant to fascinate him and that
I was not in love with him, but I let him think that perhaps I meant
to marry him. I think I did mean to marry him. I had never cared
for anybody, and I thought it might be there really WASN'T anything
more than a kind of excited fondness. I can't be sure, but I think
that though I did mean to marry him I never should have done it,
because that sort of a marriage is--it's sacrilege--something would
have stopped me. Something did stop me; it was your sister-in-law,
Sibyl. She meant no harm--but she was horrible, and she put what
I was doing into such horrible words--and they were the truth--oh!
I SAW myself! She was proposing a miserable compact with me--and
I couldn't breathe the air of the same room with her, though I'd so
cheapened myself she had a right to assume that I WOULD. But I
couldn't! I left her, and I wrote to your brother--just a quick
scrawl. I told him just what I'd done; I asked his pardon, and
I said I would not marry him. I posted the letter, but he never
got it. That was the afternoon he was killed. That's all, Bibbs.
Now you know what I did--and you know--ME!" She pressed her
clenched hands tightly against her eyes, leaning far forward, her
head bowed before him.
Bibbs had forgotten himself long ago; his heart broke for her.
"Couldn't you--Isn't there--Won't you--" he stammered. "Mary,
I'm going with father. Isn't there some way you could use the
money without--without--"
She gave a choked little laugh.
"You gave me something to live for," he said. "You kept me alive,
I think--and I've hurt you like this!"
"Not you--oh no!"
"You could forgive me, Mary?"
"Oh, a thousand times!" Her right hand went out in a faltering
gesture, and just touched his own for an instant. "But there's
nothing to forgive."
"And you can't--you can't--"
"Can't what, Bibbs?"
"You couldn't--"
"Marry you?" she said for him.
"Yes."
"No, no, no!" She sprang up, facing him, and, without knowing what
she did, she set her hands upon his breast, pushing him back from her
a little. "I can't, I can't! Don't you SEE?"
"Mary--"
"No, no! And you must go now, Bibbs; I can't bear any more--
please--"
"MARY--"
"Never, never, never!" she cried, in a passion of tears. "You
mustn't come any more. I can't see you, dear! Never, never,
never!"
Somehow, in helpless, stumbling obedience to her beseeching gesture,
he got himself to the door and out of the house.
Sibyl and Roscoe were upon the point of leaving when Bibbs returned
to the New House. He went straight to Sibyl and spoke to her quietly,
but so that the others might hear.
"When you said that if I'd stop to think, I'd realize that no one
would be apt to care enough about me to marry me, you were right,"
he said. "I thought perhaps you weren't, and so I asked Miss
Vertrees to marry me. It proved what you said of me, and disproved
what you said of her. She refused."
And, having thus spoken, he quitted the room as straightforwardly
as he had entered it.
"He's SO queer!" Mrs. Sheridan gasped. "Who on earth would thought
of his doin' THAT?"
"I told you," said her husband, grimly.
"You didn't tell us he'd go over there and--"
"I told you she wouldn't have him. I told you she wouldn't have JIM,
didn't I?"
Sibyl was altogether taken aback. "Do you supose it's true? Do you
suppose she WOULDN'T?"
"He didn't look exactly like a young man that had just got things
fixed up fine with his girl," said Sheridan. "Not to me, he didn't!"
"But why would--"
"I told you," he interrupted, angrily, "she ain't that kind of
a girl! If you got to have proof, well, I'll tell you and get it
over with, though I'd pretty near just as soon not have to talk
a whole lot about my dead boy's private affairs. She wrote to Jim
she couldn't take him, and it was a good, straight letter, too.
It came to Jim's office; he never saw it. She wrote it the afternoon
he was hurt."
"I remember I saw her put a letter in the mail-box that afternoon,"
said Roscoe. "Don't you remember, Sibyl? I told you about it--I
was waiting for you while you were in there so long talking to her
mother. It was just before we saw that something was wrong over
here, and Edith came and called me." _