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The Turmoil, a novel by Booth Tarkington

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_ They had reached the head of the central aisle, and as the organist
finished speaking Bibbs stopped short, turning to look at Mary
Vertrees in a dazed way that was not of her preceiving; for, though
she stopped as he did, her gaze followed the organist, who was walking
away from them toward the front of the church, shaking his white
Beethovian mane roguishly.

"It's false pretenses on my part," Bibbs said. "You mean to be kind
to the sick, but I'm not an invalid any more. I'm so well I'm going
back to work in a few days. I'd better leave before he begins to
play, hadn't I?"

"No," said Mary, beginning to walk forward. "Not unless you don't
like great music."

He followed her to a seat about half-way up the aisle while Dr. Kraft
ascended to the organ. It was an enormous one, the procession of
pipes ranging from long, starveling whistles to thundering fat guns;
they covered all the rear wall of the church, and the organist's
figure, reaching its high perch, looked like that of some Lilliputian
magician ludicrously daring the attempt to conrol a monster certain
to overwhelm him.

"This afternoon some Handel!" he turned to shout.

Mary nodded. "Will you like that?" she asked Bibbs.

"I don't know. I never heard any except 'Largo.' I don't know
anything about music. I don't even know how to pretend I do. If
I knew enough to pretend, I would."

"No," said Mary, looking at him and smiling faintly, "you wouldn't."

She turned away as a great sound began to swim and tremble in the air;
the huge empty space of the church filled with it, and the two people
listening filled with it; the universe seemed to fill and thrill with
it. The two sat intensely still, the great sound all round about
them, while the church grew dusky, and only the organist's lamp made a
tiny star of light. His white head moved from side to side beneath it
rhythmically, or lunged and recovered with the fierceness of a duelist
thrusting, but he was magnificently the master of his giant, and it
sang to his magic as he bade it.

Bibbs was swept away upon that mighty singing. Such a thing was
wholly unknown to him; there had been no music in his meager life.
Unlike the tale, it was the Princess Bedrulbudour who had brought
him to the enchanted cave, and that--for Bibbs--was what made its
magic dazing. It seemed to him a long, long time since he had been
walking home drearily from Dr. Gurney's office; it seemed to him
that he had set out upon a happy journey since then, and that he
had reached another planet, where Mary Vertrees and he sat alone
together listening to a vast choiring of invisible soldiers and holy
angels. There were armies of voices about them singing praise and
thanksgiving; and yet they were alone. It was incredible that the
walls of the church were not the boundaries of the universe, to remain
so for ever; incredible that there was a smoky street just yonder,
where housemaids were bringing in evening papers from front steps and
where children were taking their last spins on roller-skates before
being haled indoors for dinner.

He had a curious sense of communication with his new friend. He knew
it could not be so, and yet he felt as if all the time he spoke to
her, saying: "You hear this strain? You hear that strain? You know
the dream that these sounds bring to me?" And it seemed to him as
though she answered continually: "I hear! I hear that strain, and
I hear the new one that you are hearing now. I know the dream that
these sounds bring to you. Yes, yes, I hear it all! We hear--
together!"

And though the church grew so dim that all was mysterious shadow
except the vague planes of the windows and the organist's light,
with the white head moving beneath it, Bibbs had no consciousness
that the girl sitting beside him had grown shadowy; he seemed to see
her as plainly as ever in the darkness, though he did not look at her.
And all the mighty chanting of the organ's multitudinous voices that
afternoon seemed to Bibbs to be chorusing of her and interpreting her,
singing her thoughts and singing for him the world of humble gratitude
that was in his heart because she was so kind to him. It all meant
Mary.


But when she asked him what it meant, on their homeward way, he was
silent. They had come a few paces from the church without speaking,
walking slowly.

"I'll tell you what it meant to me," she said, as he did not
immediately reply. "Almost any music of Handel's always means
one thing above all others to me: courage! That's it. It makes
cowardice of whining seem so infinitesimal--it makes MOST things
in our hustling little lives seem infinitesimal."

"Yes," he said. "It seems odd, doesn't it, that people down-town are
hurrying to trains and hanging to straps in trolley-cars, weltering
every way to get home and feed and sleep so they can get down-town
to-morrow. And yet there isn't anything down there worth getting to.
They're like servants drudging to keep the house going, and believing
the drudgery itself is the great thing. They make so much noise and
fuss and dirt they forget that the house was meant to live in. The
housework has to be done, but the people who do it have been so
overpaid that they're confused and worship the housework. They're
overpaid, and yet, poor things! they haven't anything that a chicken
can't have. Of course, when the world gets to paying its wages
sensibly that will be different."

"Do you mean 'communism'?" she asked, and she made their slow pace
a little slower--they had only three blocks to go.

"Whatever the word is, I only mean that things don't look very
sensible now--especially to a man that wants to keep out of 'em and
can't! 'Communism'? Well, at least any 'decent sport' would say it's
fair for all the strong runners to start from the same mark and give
the weak ones a fair distance ahead, so that all can run something
like even on the stretch. And wouldn't it be pleasant, really, if
they could all cross the winning-line together? Who really enjoys
beating anybody--if he sees the beaten man's face? The only way we
can enjoy getting ahead of other people nowadays is by forgetting what
the other people feel. And that," he added, "is nothing of what the
music meant to me. You see, if I keep talking about what it didn't
mean I can keep from telling you what it did mean."

"Didn't it mean courage to you, too--a little?" she asked. "Triumph
and praise were in it, and somehow those things mean courage to me."

"Yes, they were all there," Bibbs said. "I don't know the name of
what he played, but I shouldn't think it would matter much. The man
that makes the music must leave it to you what it can mean to you, and
the name he puts to it can't make much difference--except to himself
and people very much like him, I suppose."

"I suppose that's true, though I'd never thought of it like that."

"I imagine music must make feelings and paint pictures in the minds of
the people who hear it," Bibbs went on, musingly, "according to their
own natures as much as according to the music itself. The musician
might compose something and play it, wanting you to think of the Holy
Grail, and some people who heard it would think of a prayer-meeting,
and some would think of how good they were themselves, and a boy might
think of himself at the head of a solemn procession, carrying a banner
and riding a white horse. And then, if there were some jubilant
passages in the music, he'd think of a circus."

They had reached her gate, and she set her hand upon it, but did
not open it. Bibbs felt that this was almost the kindest of her
kindnesses--not to be prompt in leaving him.

"After all," she said, "you didn't tell me whether you liked it."

"No. I didn't need to."

"No, that's true, and I didn't need to ask. I knew. But you said
you were trying to keep from telling me what it did mean."

"I can't keep from telling it any longer," he said. "The music meant
to me--it meant the kindness of--of you."

"Kindness? How?"

"You thought I was a sort of lonely tramp--and sick--"

"No," she said, decidedly. "I thought perhaps you'd like to hear
Dr. Kraft play. And you did."

"It's curious; sometimes it seemed to me that it was you who were
playing."

Mary laughed. "I? I strum! Piano. A little Chopin--Grieg--
Chaminade. You wouldn't listen!"

Bibbs drew a deep breath. "I'm frightened again," he said, in an
unsteady voice. "I'm afraid you'll think I'm pushing, but--" He
paused, and the words sank to a murmur.

"Oh, if you want ME to play for you!" she said. "Yes, gladly. It
will be merely absurd after what you heard this afternoon. I play
like a hundred thousand other girls, and I like it. I'm glad when
any one's willing to listen, and if you--" She stopped, checked by
a sudden recollection, and laughed ruefully. "But my piano won't be
here after to-night. I--I'm sending it away to-morrow. I'm afraid
that if you'd like me to play to you you'd have to come this evening."

"You'll let me?" he cried.

"Certainly, if you care to."

"If I could play--" he said, wistfully, "if I could play like that
old man in the church I could thank you."

"Ah, but you haven't heard me play. I KNOW you liked this afternoon,
but--"

"Yes," said Bibbs. "It was the greatest happiness I've ever known."

It was too dark to see his face, but his voice held such plain
honesty, and he spoke with such complete unconsciousness of saying
anything especially significant, that she knew it was the truth.
For a moment she was nonplussed, then she opened the gate and went
in. "You'll come after dinner, then?"

"Yes," he said, not moving. "Would you mind if I stood here until
time to come in?"

She had reached the steps, and at that she turned, offering him the
response of laughter and a gay gesture of her muff toward the lighted
windows of the New House, as though bidding him to run home to his
dinner.

That night, Bibbs sat writing in his note-book.

Music can come into a blank life, and fill it. Everything that
is beautiful is music, if you can listen.

There is no gracefulness like that of a graceful woman at a grand
piano. There is a swimming loveliness of line that seems to merge
with the running of the sound, and you seem, as you watch her, to
see what you are hearing and to hear what you are seeing.

There are women who make you think of pine woods coming down to
a sparkling sea. The air about such a woman is bracing, and when
she is near you, you feel strong and ambitious; you forget that
the world doesn't like you. You think that perhaps you are a great
fellow, after all. Then you come away and feel like a boy who has
fallen in love with his Sunday-school teacher. You'll be whipped
for it--and ought to be.

There are women who make you think of Diana, crowned with the moon.
But they do not have the "Greek profile." I do not believe Helen
of Troy had a "Greek profile"; they would not have fought about her
if her nose had been quite that long. The Greek nose is not the
adorable nose. The adorable nose is about an eighth of an inch
shorter.

Much of the music of Wagner, it appears, is not suitable to the
piano. Wagner was a composer who could interpret into music such
things as the primitive impulses of humanity--he could have made a
machine-shop into music. But not if he had to work in it. Wagner
was always dealing in immensities--a machine-shop would have put a
majestic lump in so grand a gizzard as that.

There is a mystery about pianos, it seems. Sometimes they have to
be "sent away." That is how some people speak of the penitentiary.
"Sent away" is a euphuism for "sent to prison." But pianos are not
sent to prison, and they are not sent to the tuner--the tuner is
sent to them. Why are pianos "sent away"--and where?

Sometimes a glorious day shines into the most ordinary and useless
life. Happiness and beauty come caroling out of the air into the
gloomy house of that life as if some stray angel just happened to
perch on the roof-tree, resting and singing. And the night after
such a day is lustrous and splendid with the memory of it. Music
and beauty and kindness--those are the three greatest things God
can give us. To bring them all in one day to one who expected
nothing--ah! the heart that received them should be as humble as
it is thankful. But it is hard to be humble when one is so rich
with new memories. It is impossible to be humble after a day of
glory.

Yes--the adorable nose is more than an eighth of an inch shorter
than the Greek nose. It is a full quarter of an inch shorter.

There are women who will be kinder to a sick tramp than to a
conquering hero. But the sick tramp had better remember that's
what he is. Take care, take care! Humble's the word!

That "mystery about pianos" which troubled Bibbs had been a mystery
to Mr. Vertrees, and it was being explained to him at about the time
Bibbs scribbled the reference to it in his notes. Mary had gone
up-stairs upon Bibbs's departure at ten o'clock, and Mr. and Mrs.
Vertrees sat until after midnight in the library, talking. And in all
that time they found not one cheerful topic, but became more depressed
with everything and with every phase of everything that they discussed
--no extraordinary state of affairs in a family which has always "held
up its head," only to arrive in the end at a point where all it can
do is to look on helplessly at the processes of its own financial
dissolution. For that was the point which this despairing couple had
reached--they could do nothing except look on and talk about it. They
were only vaporing, and they knew it.

"She needn't to have done that about her piano," vapored Mr. Vertrees.
"We could have managed somehow without it. At least she ought to have
consulted me, and if she insisted I could have arranged the details
with the--the dealer."

"She thought that it might be--annoying for you," Mrs. Vertrees
explained. "Really, she planned for you not to know about it until
they had removed--until after to-morrow, that is, but I decided to--
to mention it. You see, she didn't even tell me about it until this
morning. She has another idea, too, I'm afraid. It's--it's--"

"Well?" he urged, as she found it difficult to go on.

"Her other idea is--that is, it was--I think it can be avoided,
of course--it was about her furs."

"No!" he exclaimed, quickly. "I won't have it! You must see to that.
I'd rather not talk to her about it, but you mustn't let her."

"I'll try not," his wife promised. "Of course, they're very
handsome."

"All the more reason for her to keep them!" he returned, irritably.
"We're not THAT far gone, I think!"

"Perhaps not yet," Mrs. Vertrees said. "She seems to be troubled
about the--the coal matter and--about Tilly. Of course the piano
will take care of some things like those for a while and--"

"I don't like it. I gave her the piano to play on, not to--"

"You mustn't be distressed about it in ONE way," she said,
comfortingly. "She arranged with the--with the purchaser that
the men will come for it about half after five in the afternoon.
The days are so short now it's really quite winter."

"Oh, yes," he agreed, moodily. "So far as that goes people have a
right to move a piece of furniture without stirring up the neighbors,
I suppose, even by daylight. I don't suppose OUR neighbors are paying
much attention just now, though I hear Sheridan was back in his office
early the morning after the funeral." _

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