________________________________________________
_ Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling
his own office, overhead. "Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's
suite and get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him
in room two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o'
fellows on the Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have
to go over with Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow
at two. You needn't come in to let me know they're gone; we don't
want to be disturbed. Tell Pauly to call my house and send Claus down
here with a closed car. We may have to go out. Tell him to hustle,
and call me at Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!"
Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. "Drunk in
business hours! Thass awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get
drunk, mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours!
All right any other time. Kill 'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't
in business hours! Fine! Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere
business. Keep your trouble 't home. Don' bring it to th' office.
Might innerfere business! Have funerals on Sunday--might innerfere
business! Don' let your wife innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL
your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em
ALL for home use! If you got die, go on die 't home--don' die round
th' office! Might innerfere business!"
Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with
his back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware
of his father's significant posture.
"You know wh' I think?" he went on. "I think Bibbs only one the
fam'ly any 'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married.
Jim worked, an' he got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look
at me! Jus' look at me, I ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business
man. Look whass happen' to me! Fine!" He lifted his hand from
the sustaining chair in a deplorable gesture, and, immediately
losing his balance, fell across the chair and caromed to the floor
with a crash, remaining prostrate for several minutes, during which
Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to the newspaper.
He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.
Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up
by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having
progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less
volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.
"What--what you ask me while ago?" he said.
"Nothin'."
"Yes, you did. What--what was it?"
"Nothin'. You better sit down."
"You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that.
Well, I won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!"
The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear
and said, "Right down." Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a
closet and brought them to his son. "Get into this coat," he said.
"You're goin' home."
"All ri'," Roscoe murmured, obediently.
They went out into the main hall by a side door, not passing through
the outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped
it, and told the operator to take on no more passengers until they
reached the ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got
into the automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked
into his own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father
having spoken a word in the interval.
Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room
without meeting any of his family. But as he passed Bibbs's door he
heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant
fragments of song:
WHO looks a mustang in the eye?... With a leap from the ground to the
saddle in a bound. And away--and away! Hi-yay!
It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any
musical symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him whistle
--and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool should
be merry to-day.
To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and
he did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and
locked the door.
He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and
came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety
manifest and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his
lunch had "disagreed" with him a little.
Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had
become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
white-jacket's salver. "Here's another difference between Midas and
chicken," Sheridan remarked, grimly. "Midas can eat rooster, but
rooster can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks
to me like he had the advantage there."
Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to
his plate without dropping it and to respond, "Yes--he crows over it."
Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--
for he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with
pleasure, thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course
jargon to her. "Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child
has!" she exclaimed. "I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look
right handsome!"
"He's got to be such a gadabout," Edith giggled.
"I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
anybody was up," said Sheridan. "I reckon if people lose things in
this house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as
I do."
"What was it he lost?" asked Edith.
"He knows!" her father returned. "Seems to me like I forgot to bring
it home with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something
pretty important, belongin' to a busy man like him." He affected to
search his pockets. "What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to
me like I remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-
basket."
"Good place for it," Bibbs murmured, still red.
Sheridan gave him a grin. "Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up
early enough to find things before I do!"
It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
"My time's here at last," he said, as they sat together in the
melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.
That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.
Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark
day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy
upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing
presence of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.
"Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put
off any longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would
save my face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my
sentence. Hard labor for life, I think."
Mary shook her head. "I don't think so. He's too kind."
"You think my father's KIND?" And Bibbs stared at her.
"Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart.
It's only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't
understand any other way."
"Ah yes," said Bibbs. "If that's what you mean by 'kind'!"
She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes.
"It's going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?"
"Oh--self-pity!" he returned, smiling. "This has been just the last
flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work.
There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that
he could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless
--so I have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."
"What is it like--exactly?"
"I get up at six," he said. "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin
buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty,
and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon,
and work again from one till five."
"But the work itself?"
"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me
a heavier job because I wasn't good enough."
"But what will you do? I want to know."
"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there
a 'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and
that's what I'll be sent back to."
"But what is it?" she insisted.
Bibbs explained. "It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips
of zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into
little circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into
the jaws at a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it."
He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have
known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems
incredible!" she exclaimed. "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a
machine nine hours a day! No wonder--" She broke off, and then,
after a keen glance at his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD
have been a 'bad hand at it'!"
He laughed ruefully. "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."
"How often is that?"
"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
than one a second."
"And you're close to it?"
"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more
gaily. "The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with
me. I have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I
flinch and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't
get over it. I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll
be glad to see me back. They used to laugh at me all day long."
Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting
on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek.
She was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in
them.
"It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you," she said, in
a low voice. "No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you
to the leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to
have them published for you--"
"Can't you SEE him?" Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in
his voice. "If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can
imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up
posters all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with
a Punch!' No. It's just as well he never got the--But what's the
use? I've never written anything worth printing, and I never shall."
"You could!" she said.
"That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried
to do."
"You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!"
"It isn't," said BIBBS, honestly. "I never could--but you're the
kindest lady in this world, Miss Vertrees."
She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
"That sounds wrong," she said, impulsively. "I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'
I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't
you rather call me 'Mary'?"
Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
"Wouldn't you?" she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
"If I CAN!" he said, in a low voice.
"Ah, that's very pretty!" she laughed. "You're such an honest person,
it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety."
She became grave again immediately. "I hear myself laughing as if
it were some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great
calamity." She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against
the wall, facing him. "You've GOT to go back to that place?"
He nodded.
"And the other time you did it--"
"Just over it," said Bibbs. "Two years. But I don't mind the
prospect of a repetition so much as--"
"So much as what?" she prompted, as he stopped.
Bibbs looked up at her shyly. "I want to say it, but--but I come
to a dead balk when I try. I--"
"Go on. Say it, whatever it is," she bade him. "You wouldn't know
how to say anything I shouldn't like."
"I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say," he
returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--
he seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. "You see, all my life--until
I met you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead.
Saying things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this:
I used to feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd
never been of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything,
myself, except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it's different--
I'm still of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being
useful, but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful
and happy experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm
glad I've lived it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you
sometimes, as you have, this strange, beautiful, happy little while!"
He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he
had to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did
not speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she
had gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby
old room was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed
sharp and loud.
And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible.
"If you think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want
to--to make it last."
"Yes," said Bibbs, as faintly.
"You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't
you?"
"Yes," he gulped.
"But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over."
He tried to evade her. "Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his
overalls--"
"No," she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. "You said what you
did because you think the shop's going to kill you."
"No, no!"
"Yes, you do think that!" She rose to her feet again and came and
stood before him. "Or you think it's going to send you back to the
sanitarium. Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you
that! You see I'm a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant
what you said--and you did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go
back to the sanitarium. The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!"
And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall,
splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
"If I mean THAT much to you," she cried, "they can't harm you! Go
back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let
the machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember
each crash that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!"
He stumbled to his feet. "You say--" he gasped.
"Every evening, dear Bibbs!"
He could only stare, bewildered.
"EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!" And she
held out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous
clasp. "If I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine
with you," she said. "But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you.
You must keep remembering that your friend stands beside you. And
when the work is done--won't the night make up for the day?"
Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of
kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, "To think you're there
--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--"
And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found
what it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend. _
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