________________________________________________
_ He expanded this theme once more; and thus he continued to entertain
the stranger throughout the long drive. Darkness had fallen before
they reached the city on their return, and it was after five when
Sheridan allowed Herr Favre to descend at the door of his hotel, where
boys were shrieking extra editions of the evening paper.
"Now, good night, Mr. Farver," said Sheridan, leaning from the car to
shake hands with his guest. "Don't forget I'm goin' to come around
and take you up to--Go on away, boy!"
A newsboy had thrust himself almost between them, yelling, "Extry!
Secon' Extry. Extry, all about the horrable acciDENT. Extry!"
"Get out!" laughed Sheridan. "Who wants to read about accidents?
Get out!"
The boy moved away philosophically. "Extry! Extry!" he shrilled.
"Three men killed! Extry! Millionaire killed! Two other men killed!
Extry! Extry!"
"Don't forget, Mr. Farver," Sheridan completed his interrupted
farewells. "I'll come by to take you up to our house for dinner.
I'll be here for you about half-past five to-morrow afternoon. Hope
you 'njoyed the drive much as I have. Good night--good night!" He
leaned back, speaking to the chauffer. "Now you can take me around
to the Central City barber-shop, boy. I want to get a shave 'fore
I go up home."
"Extry! Extry!" screamed the newsboys, zig-zagging among the crowds
like bats in the dusk. "Extry! All about the horrable acciDENT!
Extry!" It struck Sheridan that the papers sent out too many
"Extras"; they printed "Extras" for all sorts of petty crimes and
casualties. It was a mistake, he decided, critically. Crying "Wolf!"
too often wouldn't sell the goods; it was bad business. The papers
would "make more in the long run," he was sure, if they published an
"Extra" only when something of real importance happened.
"Extry! All about the hor'ble AX'nt! Extry!" a boy squawked under
his nose, as he descended from the car.
"Go on away!" said Sheridan, gruffly, though he smiled. He liked
to see the youngsters working so noisily to get on in the world.
But as he crossed the pavement to the brilliant glass doors of the
barber-shop, a second newsboy grasped the arm of the one who had
thus cried his wares.
"Say, Yallern," said this second, hoarse with awe, "'n't chew know
who that IS?"
"Who?"
"It's SHERIDAN!"
"Jeest!" cried the first, staring insanely.
At about the same hour, four times a week--Monday, Wednesday, Friday,
and Saturday--Sheridan stopped at this shop to be shaved by the head
barber. The barbers were negroes, he was their great man, and it was
their habit to give him a "reception," his entrance being always
the signal for a flurry of jocular hospitality, followed by general
excesses of briskness and gaiety. But it was not so this evening.
The shop was crowded. Copies of the "Extra" were being read by men
waiting, and by men in the latter stages of treatment. "Extras" lay
upon vacant seats and showed from the pockets of hanging coats.
There was a loud chatter between the practitioners and their recumbent
patients, a vocal charivari which stopped abruptly as Sheridan opened
the door. His name seemed to fizz in the air like the last sputtering
of a firework; the barbers stopped shaving and clipping; lathered men
turned their prostrate heads to stare, and there was a moment of
amazing silence in the shop.
The head barber, nearest the door, stood like a barber in a tableau.
His left hand held stretched between thumb and forefinger an elastic
section of his helpless customer's cheek, while his right hand hung
poised above it, the razor motionless. And then, roused from trance
by the door's closing, he accepted the fact of Sheridan's presence.
The barber remembered that there are no circumstances in life--or
just after it-- under which a man does not need to be shaved.
He stepped forward, profoundly grave. "I be through with this man
in the chair one minute, Mist' Sheridan," he said, in a hushed tone.
"Yessuh." And of a solemn negro youth who stood by, gazing stupidly,
"You goin' RESIGN?" he demanded in a fierce undertone. "You goin'
take Mist' Sheridan's coat?" He sent an angry look round the shop,
and the barbers, taking his meaning, averted their eyes and fell to
work, the murmur of subdued conversation buzzing from chair to chair.
"You sit down ONE minute, Mist' Sheridan," said the head barber,
gently. "I fix nice chair fo' you to wait in."
"Never mind," said Sheridan. "Go on get through with your man."
"Yessuh." And he went quickly back to his chair on tiptoe, followed
by Sheridan's puzzled gaze.
Something had gone wrong in the shop, evidently. Sheridan did not
know what to make of it. Ordinarily he would have shouted a hilarious
demand for the meaning of the mystery, but an inexplicable silence had
been imposed upon him by the hush that fell upon his entrance and by
the odd look every man in the shop had bent upon him.
Vaguely disquieted, he walked to one of the seats in the rear of
the shop, and looked up and down the two lines of barbers, catching
quickly shifted, furtive glances here and there. He made this brief
survey after wondering if one of the barbers had died suddenly, that
day, or the night before; but there was no vacancy in either line.
The seat next to his was unoccupied, but some one had left a copy of
the "Extra" there, and, frowning, he picked it up and glanced at it.
The first of the swollen display lines had little meaning to him:
Fatally Faulty. New Process Roof Collapses Hurling Capitalist to
Death with Inventor. Seven Escape When Crash Comes. Death Claims--
Thus far had he read when a thin hand fell upon the paper, covering
the print from his eyes; and, looking up, he saw Bibbs standing before
him, pale and gentle, immeasurably compassionate.
"I've come for you, father," said Bibbs. "Here's the boy with your
coat and hat. Put them on and come home."
And even then Sheridan did not understand. So secure was he in the
strength and bigness of everything that was his, he did not know what
calamity had befallen him. But he was frightened.
Without a word, he followed Bibbs heavily out throught the still shop,
but as they reached the pavement he stopped short and, grasping his
son's sleeve with shaking fingers, swung him round so that they stood
face to face.
"What--what--" His mouth could not do him the service he asked of it,
he was so frightened.
"Extry!" screamed a newsboy straight in his face. "Young North Side
millionaire insuntly killed! Extry!"
"Not--JIM!" said Sheridan.
Bibbs caught his father's hand in his own.
"And YOU come to tell me that?"
Sheridan did not know what he said. But in those first words and
in the first anguish of the big, stricken face Bibbs understood the
unuttered cry of accusation:
"Why wasn't it you?"
Standing in the black group under gaunt trees at the cemetery, three
days later, Bibbs unwillingly let an old, old thought become definite
in his mind: the sickly brother had buried the strong brother, and
Bibbs wondered how many million times that had happened since men
first made a word to name the sons of one mother. Almost literally
he had buried his strong brother, for Sheridan had gone to pieces
when he saw his dead son. He had nothing to help him meet the shock,
neither definite religion nor "philosophy" definite or indefinite.
He could only beat his forehead and beg, over and over, to be killed
with an ax, while his wife was helpless except to entreat him not to
"take on," herself adding a continuous lamentation. Edith, weeping,
made truce with Sibyl and saw to it that the mourning garments were
beyond criticism. Roscoe was dazed, and he shirked, justifying
himself curiously by saying he "never had any experience in such
matters." So it was Bibbs, the shy outsider, who became, during
this dreadful little time, the master of the house; for as strange
a thing as that, sometimes, may be the result of a death. He met
the relatives from out of town at the station; he set the time for
the funeral and the time for meals; he selected the flowers and he
selected Jim's coffin; he did all the grim things and all the other
things. Jim had belonged to an order of Knights, who lengthened the
rites with a picturesque ceremony of their own, and at first Bibbs
wished to avoid this, but upon reflection he offered no objection--
he divined that the Knights and their service would be not precisely
a consolation, but a satisfaction to his father. So the Knights led
the procession, with their band playing a dirge part of the long way
to the cemetery; and then turned back, after forming in two lines,
plumed hats sympathetically in hand, to let the hearse and the
carriages pass between.
"Mighty fine-lookin' men," said Sheridan, brokenly. "They all--all
liked him. He was--" His breath caught in a sob and choked him.
"He was--a Grand Supreme Herald."
Bibbs had divined aright.
"Dust to dust," said the minister, under the gaunt trees; and at that
Sheridan shook convulsively from head to foot. All of the black group
shivered, except Bibbs, when it came to "Dust to dust." Bibbs stood
passive, for he was the only one of them who had known that thought as
a familiar neighbor; he had been close upon dust himself for a long,
long time, and even now he could prophesy no protracted separation
between himself and dust. The machine-shop had brought him very
close, and if he had to go back it would probably bring him closer
still; so close--as Dr. Gurney predicted--that no one would be able
to tell the difference between dust and himself. And Sheridan, if
Bibbs read him truly, would be all the more determined to "make a
man" of him, now that there was a man less in the family. To Bibbs's
knowledge, no one and nothing had ever prevented his father from
carrying through his plans, once he had determined upon them; and
Sheridan was incapable of believing that any plan of his would not
work out according to his calculations. His nature unfitted him to
accept failure. He had the gift of terrible persistence, and with
unflecked confidence that his way was the only way he would hold to
that way of "making a man" of Bibbs, who understood very well, in his
passive and impersonal fashion, that it was a way which might make,
not a man, but dust of him. But he had no shudder for the thought.
He had no shudder for that thought or for any other thought. The
truth about Bibbs was in the poem which Edith had adopted: he had
so thoroughly formed the over-sensitive habit of hiding his feelings
that no doubt he had forgotten--by this time--where he had put some
of them, especially those which concerned himself. But he had not
hidden his feelings about his father where they could not be found.
He was strange to his father, but his father was not strange to him.
He knew that Sheridan's plans were conceived in the stubborn belief
that they would bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and
whatever the result was to be, the son had no bitterness. Far
otherwise, for as he looked at the big, woeful figure, shaking and
tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid hands upon Bibbs's throat.
Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering; Edith wept audibly; Mrs.
Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her husband; but Bibbs knew
that his father was the one who cared.
It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels,
and Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward
the line of waiting carriages. Roscoe understood--Bibbs would stay
and see the grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began
to move away over the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive;
and one by one the carriages filled and departed, the horses setting
off at a walk. Bibbs gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that
his father kept looking back as he went toward the carriage, and that
was a thing he did not want to see. But after a little while there
were no sounds of wheels or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing
up, saw that every one had gone. A coupe had been left for him,
the driver dozing patiently. _
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