________________________________________________
_ Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told
Edith, after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that
he had decided that he was "a member of the family"; but he appeared
to have relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at
participancy--he was far enough detached from membership now. These
were turbulent days in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever
in the turbulence--he seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by
accident and not wholly aware that he was present. He would sit,
faintly smiling over pleasant imaginings and dear reminiscences of
his own, while battle raged between Edith and her father, or while
Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily
to endure them. The happy dreamer wandered into storm-areas like a
somnambulist, and wandered out again unawakened. He was sorry for
his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith and for Sibyl, but their
sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday
night, not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during
the first days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be
with her frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether
he would or no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety
of pungent information which would have staggered anybody but a family
physician. Among other things he was given to comprehend the change
in Bibbs, and why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the
operator's gizzard as of yore.
Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and
shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration
of that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and
telling mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled
herself hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the
beginning to the end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing
stopped her.
"You ought to let me die!" she wailed. "It's cruel not to let me die!
What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?
Just look at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home,
and look what that got me into!--look where I am now! He brought me
to this town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they
didn't even know the right crowd! If they had, it might have been
SOMETHING! I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world! I wanted
to have a good time --and how could I? Where's any good time among
these Sheridans? They never even had wine on the table! I thought
I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet attractive people
I'd read about, and travel, and go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all
I got was these Sheridans! I did the best I could; I did, indeed!
Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every woman's got a right to live,
some time in her life, I guess! Things were just beginning to look
brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen crowd across the street
were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd have started us with the
right people--and then I saw how Edith was getting him away from me.
She did it, too! She got him! A girl with money can do that to a
married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what could I do? What
can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand
it--and I couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that Vertrees
girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt
her. It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT little! She
treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take the trouble
to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!"
Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky
whisper, though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half
upright, and the nurse restrained her. "I'd get up out of this bed
to show her she can't do such things to me! I was absolutely
ladylike, and she walked out and left me there alone! She'll SEE!
She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground,
and she thinks she's landed that poor loon--but she'll see! She'll
see! If I'm ever able to walk across the street again I'll show her
how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help! It
wouldn't have hurt her any--it wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith
needn't have told what she told Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her
to let me alone. And HE told her I bored him--telephoning him I
wanted to see him. He needn't have done it! He needn't--needn't--"
Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion, though she
would go over it all again as soon as her strength returned. She lay
panting. Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway,
"Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured. "I don't want to see you."
And as he turned away she added, "I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe."
Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also
the disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced
to telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother
into a momentary distraction over a counter.
Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion.
Her whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything
that separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered
by only the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but
Sheridan, like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and
fed it hourly fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore
she should cool, and thus set her on fire.
Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with
her father, and kept her bed between times to let him see what his
violence had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him
to breathing fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble
better if she went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with
Lamhorn and not think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might
forget a little. She had written to a school friend, established
quietly with an aunt in apartments--and a month or so of theaters
and restaurants might bring peace. Sheridan shouted with relief;
he gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a Monday morning
wearing violets with her mourning and having kissed everybody good-by
except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have kissed Bibbs, but he failed to
realize that the day of her departure had arrived, and was surprised,
on returning from his zinc-eater, that evening, to find her gone.
"I suppose they'll be maried there," he said, casually.
Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
fuming. "Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted.
"I don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot
you are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be
kept away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the
business. For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!"
Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black
silk sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's
and no excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in
the sling. The wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected
the first time he had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long
delayed. Sheridan had the habit of gesture; he could not "take time
to remember," he said, that he must be careful, and he had also a
curious indignation with his hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment
of admitting its existence.
The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which
the doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before the
appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom
--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's office.
The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the
latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
"No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!" he heard the big voice rumbling, and
then, breaking into thunder, "I tell you NO! Some o' you men make
me sick! You'd lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug
flipped his hind leg at you! You say money's tight all over the
country. Well, what if it is? There's no reason for it to be tight,
and it's not goin' to keep OUR money tight! You're always runnin'
to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a crack because some fool
newspaper says the market's a little skeery! You listen to every
street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try to scare ME
out of a big thing! We're IN on this--understand? I tell you there
never WAS better times. These are good times and big times, and I
won't stand for any other kind o' talk. This country's on its feet
as it never was before, and this city's on its feet and goin' to stay
there!" And Gurney heard a series of whacks and thumps upon the desk.
"'Bad times'!" Sheridan vociferated, with accompanying thumps.
"Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you! We're in the
promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all, gentlemen.
The loan goes!"
The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened
in. His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with
his right hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh
damage as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the
subject of Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected,
a warmly hostile reception. But the result of this conversation was
that by telephonic command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later,
in the library at the New House.
"Gurney says your wife's able to travel," Sheridan said brusquely, as
he came in.
"Yes." Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude
which had become his habit. "Yes, she is."
"Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!"
"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way," Roscoe protested, drearily.
"No, I hear YOU wouldn't!" There was a bitter gibe in the father's
voice, and he added: "It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll
stay there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you
least of all!"
"It's no use your talking that way," said Roscoe. "You won't do any
good."
"Well, when are you comin' back to your office?" Sheridan used a
brisker, kinder tone. "Three weeks since you showed up there at all.
When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the
foolishness and start in again? You ought to be able to make up for
a lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes
herself out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone."
"It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say
to you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!"
"Wait a minute before you talk that way!" Sheridan began his
sentry-go up and down the room. "I suppose you know it's taken two
pretty good men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and
get 'em runnin' right again, down in your office?"
"They must be good men." Roscoe nodded indifferently. "I thought I
was doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could
handle it."
"Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are
plenty men drive harder'n I do, and--"
"Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with
'em. They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use
the rest of their lives. The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by
domestic difficulties'!"
"You set there and tell me you give up?" Sheridan's voice shook, and
so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward
the despondent figure. "Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say
you'll come down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin'
to trouble you any more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you
haven't got her to worry you, and you can get shut o' this nasty
whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't fastened on you yet. Don't say--"
"It's no use on earth," Roscoe mumbled. "No use on earth."
"Look here! If you want another month's vacation--"
"I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?"
"Gurney!" Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. "It's Gurney,
Gurney, Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin'
to with everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,'
and, 'The doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country
expect to get its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-
goats keep up this blattin'--'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood;
you'll ruin your NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion
induced by overwork and emotional strain.' They always got to
stick the Work in if they see a chance! I reckon you did have the
'emotional strain,' and that's all's the matter with you. You'll be
over it soon's this woman's gone, and Work's the very thing to make
you quit frettin' about her."
"Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?"
"Shut up!" Sheridan bellowed. "I'm so sick o' that man's name I
feel like shootin' anybody that says it to me!" He fumed and chafed,
swearing indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. "Look
here; do you think you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you?
How much you worth?"
"I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not."
"It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think,
at your age?"
"No. But it's mine, and it's enough."
"My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit
there! I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the
bucket, and all you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me
tell you right here, you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o'
business now, and what would you know about handlin' it five or ten
or twenty years from now? Because I intend to STAY here a little
while yet, my boy! They'd either get it away from you or you'd sell
for a nickel and let it be split up and--" He whirled about, marched
to the other end of the room, and stood silent a moment. Then he
said, solemnly: "Listen. If you go out now, you leave me in the
lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth to depend on but your brother
--and you know what he is. I've depended on you for it ALL since Jim
died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor, and he says maybe you
won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that certainly you won't
be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all a lie. Men don't
break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell you, you can
shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and a little
gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into MOVING
businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I
won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because
if you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were."
He cleared his throat and finished quietly: "Roscoe, will you take
a month's vacation and come back and go to it?"
"No," said Roscoe, listlessly. "I'm through."
"All right," said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a
table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
"Good-by." _
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