________________________________________________
_ Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was
striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages
that he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were
bloodshot; his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar
had broken loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
"THERE'S our little sunshine!" he cried, as Bibbs appeared. "THERE'S
the hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--"
"Keep you hand in that sling," said Gurney, sharply.
Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. "For God's
sake, sing another tune!" he cried. "You said you 'came as a doctor
but stay as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up
and criticize ME--"
"Oh, talk sense," said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. "What
do you want Bibbs to say?"
"You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--
'hysterical,' oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got
'hysterical' over nothin'! You sat up there tellin' me I didn't
have as heavy burdens as many another man you knew. I just want you
to hear THIS. Now listen!" He swung toward the quiet figure waiting
in the doorway. "Bibbs, will you come down-town with me Monday morning
and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock,
and salaries? I ask you."
"No, father," said Bibbs, gently.
Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
"Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
instead of takin' up my offer?"
"Yes, sir."
"And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're
too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in
my shop?"
"Find other work," said Bibbs.
"There! You hear him for yourself!" Sheridan cried. "You hear
what--"
"Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him."
Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
broke, piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants
to be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into
business--he wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!"
He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left
hand. "There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's
my chance to live," he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave
ashes in his throat. "That's my one chance to live--that thing you
see in the doorway yonder!"
Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been
winding, and tossed it into the open bag. "What's the matter
with giving Bibbs a chance to live?" he said, coolly. "I would
if I were you. You've had TWO that went into business."
Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. "Joe
Gurney," he said, when he could command himself so far, "are you
accusin' me of the responsibility for the death of my son James?"
"I accuse you of nothing," said the doctor. "But just once I'd like
to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here,
too." He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands
behind his back and smiling. "Look here, old fellow, let's be
reasonable," he said. "You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop
again, and I gave you and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that
if he went it was at the risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He
said he wanted to go. And he did go, and he's made good there. Now,
see: Isn't that enough? Can't you let him off now? He wants to
write, and how do you know that he couldn't do it if you gave him
a chance? How do you know he hasn't some message-- something to say
that might make the world just a little bit happier or wiser? He
MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be denied. Now he can't
deliver any message if he goes down there with you, and he won't HAVE
any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is likely to injure
his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the shop did, the
first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But I tell you
one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill something
that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical
body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so why not let
it live? You've about come to the end of your string, old fellow.
Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his
chance?"
Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. "What 'fighting?'"
"Yours--with nature." Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his
fierce antagonist equably. "You don't seem to understand that you've
been struggling against actual law."
"What law?"
"Natural law," said Gurney. "What do you think beat you with Edith?
Did Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question
something powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you,
and you weren't against HER, but you set yourself against the power
that had her in its grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won
in a walk! What's taken Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much
strain, old man; but YOU wanted to send the load across the broken
bridge, and you thought you could bully or coax the cracked thing
into standing. Well, you couldn't! Now here's Bibbs. There are
thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead--and so is he.
It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be twice as good a business
man as Jim and Roscoe put together."
"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has
the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success
in anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to
remain asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit
for the life you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life
he OUGHT to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead
it--he's obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and,
blindly, he knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it.
Let me tell you something more. You don't know what you've become
since Jim's going thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a
bafflement stronger than your normal grief. You're half mad with a
consuming fury against the very self of the law--for it was the very
self of the law that took Jim from you. That was a law concerning
the cohesion of molecules. The very self of the law took Roscoe from
you and gave Edith the certainty of beating you; and the very self of
the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night. The LAW beats you. Haven't
you been whipped enough? But you want to whip the law--you've set
yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to wield it and
twist it--"
The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. "Yes!
And by God, I will!"
"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.
"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
"That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me
tell you! "Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been
half a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin'
the lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a
black-steer! A man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin'
a wood-shed!"
"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney. "Will you be a really big man
now and--"
"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!" Sheridan began to walk to and
fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot
his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best,
but the target seemed unaware of the marksman.
"I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder," Sheridan
went on, "and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I
don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I
mightn't need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!"
"Oh, put your hand back!" said Gurney, wearily.
There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right
hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the
table and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black
tail. Mrs. Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
"Let it lay!" he shouted, fiercely. "Let it lay!" And, weeping,
she obeyed. "Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for
the sudden hush he put upon it. "I got a spender for a son-in-law!
It's wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man
Tracy--you remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went
into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president
at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years
more. He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the
afternoon the day before he died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank?
It was diamond edge! He used to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple
for lunch; but he wasn't stingy--he was just livin' in his business.
He didn't care for pie or automobiles--he had his bank. It was an
institution, and it come pretty near bein' the beatin' heart o' this
town in its time. Well, that ole man used to pass one o' these here
turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the streets.
Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak to him? God! he wouldn't 'a'
coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at the
bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin' in FRONT the bank he'd
'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin' every
day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy! Tracy thought it
was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood
and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't. It was every
bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at
eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for that
turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN
KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died
his old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy
bank any more! And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a
cigarette son-in-law!"
Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
"My son-in-law likes Florida this winter," Sheridan went on. "That's
good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll
be there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and
I hear it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's
woman got me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith
wouldn't give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her.
And she's got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be
gone long before this time next year, and when she comes home and
leaves the cigarette behind--for good--she'll get some more. MY name
ain't Tracy, and there ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the
Sheridan family. And there ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and
endowin' and trusteein', nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive
when I'm gone! Edith'll be back, and she'll get a girl's share when
she's through with that cigarette, but--"
"By the way," interposed Gurney, "didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that
Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?" _
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