________________________________________________
_ Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed
and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with
his wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him
ineffectively, sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan
wrenched it away, tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till
it leaped.
"Fool!" he panted, choking. "If he's shown gumption enough to guess
right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'
him on!" And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs,
thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. "My
name ain't Tracy, I tell you!" he screamed, hoarsely. "You give in,
you stubborn fool! I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my
way with you now!"
Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering
that "splendid look" of Mary's which he had told her would give him
courage in a struggle, so that he would "never give up."
"No. You can't have your way," he said. And then, obeying a
significant motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving
them struggling.
Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her
husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the
darkened chamber. At the "old" house they had shared a room, but
the architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had
not known how to formulate an objection, although to both of them
something seemed vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.
Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the
aperture when he spoke.
"Oh, I'm, AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."
She came and sat by the bed. "I woke up thinkin' about it," she
explained. "And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must
be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake,
so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't
goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like."
"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.
"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she
continued. "He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I
honestly have to say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll
say something sounds right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't,
and a good deal of the time, when he says things, why, I have to feel
glad we haven't got company, because they'd think he didn't have any
gumption at all. Yet, look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got
hurt. He took right hold o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself
so much and all--and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind
o' green about what to do in that kind o' trouble--still, he did take
hold, and everything went off all right; you'll have to say that much,
papa. And Dr. Gurney says he's got brains, and you can't deny but
what the doctor's right considerable of a man. He acts sleepy, but
that's only because he's got such a large practice--he's a pretty
wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well, what he says last night
about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd amount to if he
ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You heard him,
papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what Jim and
Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't that
exactly what he says?"
"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.
"Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was
true--what of it?"
"Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get
married. You know where he goes all the time--"
"Oh, Lord, yes!" Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the
wall, leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair.
"You better go back to sleep. He runs over there--every minute
she'll let him, I suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it."
"WHY ain't there?" she urged. "I know better--there is, too! You
wait and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the
sleepiest young man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't
care who he is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when
he takes it into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and
have a home and chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out
after the money! You'll see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've
you--moony, no-'count young men, all notions and talk, goin' to be
ministers, maybe or something; and there's just this one thing takes
it out of 'em and brings 'em right down to business. Well, I never
could make out just what it is Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem
he wants to be a minister exactly--he's so far-away you can't tell,
and he never SAYS--but I know this is goin' to get him right down to
common sense. Now, I don't say that Bibbs has got the idea in his
head yet--'r else he wouldn't be talkin' that fool-talk about nine
dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on. But it's COMIN',
papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him out. He will!
And I can tell you this much, too: he'll want all the salary and
stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more.
That girl's the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give
things to! She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look nice on
her, and I guess she'd like to have 'em about as well as the next.
And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days, either, and she'll be
pretty ready for the change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up
at the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday
their cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another
one. He says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good
while, and now they're doin' the cookin,' too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't
know that unless she's told him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind
o' stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the clouds to notice
anything like that for himself. They've never asked him to a meal
in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either--he's kind of
innocent. Now I was thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly
mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me
maybe if--"
Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.
"You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!"
"Why am I?" she demanded, crossly. "Why am I barkin' up the wrong
tree?"
"Because you are. There's nothin' in it."
"I'll bet you," she said, rising--"I'll bet you he goes to church
with her this morning. What you want to bet?"
"Go back to bed," he commanded. "I KNOW what I'm talkin' about;
there's nothin' in it, I tell you."
She shook her head perplexedly. "You think because--because Jim
was runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?"
"No. Nothin' to do with it."
"Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?"
"Yes, I do," he grunted. "Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep.
I ain't had any yet!"
"Well--" She went to the door, her expression downcast. "I thought
maybe--but--" She coughed prefatorily. "Oh, papa, something else
I wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last
night when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well,
Sibyl wants to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has
something she wants to say to us. It'll be the first time she's been
out since she was able to sit up--and I reckon she wants to tell us
she's sorry for what happened. They expect to get off by the end
o' the week, and I reckon she wants to feel she's done what she could
to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's what he said. I 'phoned him again
about Edith, and he said it wouldn't disturb Sibyl, because she'd
been expectin' it; she was sure all along it was goin' to happen;
and, besides, I guess she's got all that foolishness pretty much out
of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought was, no use bein' rough
with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a good deal--and I don't think
we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account. You'll--you'll be kind o'
polite to her, won't you, papa?"
He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had
pulled over his head.
"What?" she said, timidly. "I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat
Sibyl all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you,
papa?"
He threw the coverlet off furiously. "I presume so!" he roared.
She departed guiltily.
But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to
church with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have
lost. Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr.
Vertrees's house with the purpose of going to church. That was their
intention, and they had no other. They meant to go to church.
But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a
conversation as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking
to the right and Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward
glance converged with Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking
far beyond the other at this time. It also happened that, though they
were a little jostled among groups of people in the vicinity of the
church, they passed this somewhat prominent edifice without being
aware of their proximity to it, and they had gone an incredible number
of blocks beyond it before they discovered their error. However,
feeling that they might be embarrassingly late if they returned, they
decided that a walk would make them as good. It was a windless winter
morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground. So they walked,
and for the most part they were silent, but on their way home, after
they had turned back at noon, they began to be talkative again.
"Mary," said Bibbs, after a time, "am I a sleep-walker?"
She laughed a little, then looked grave. "Does your father say you
are?"
"Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names.
He has quite a list."
"You mustn't mind," she said, gently. "He's been getting some pretty
severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him,
Bibbs. I've always been sure he's very big."
"Yes. Big and--blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without
any consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to
grow stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing."
"Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger
for something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what
he and his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T
see it--so great none of us could see it."
"No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving
underground--"
"Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight," she
finished for him, cheerily.
"Into the smoke," said Bibbs. "Look at the powder of coal-dust
already dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's
from the little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's
a fleck of soot on your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air;
he might as well have thrown it on you. It would have been braver,
for then he'd have taken his chance of my whipping him for it if
I could."
"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so
rhetorically? IS there?"
"Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each.
One landed since I mentioned the first."
She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded
in transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They
were entirely matter-of-course about it. _
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