“That’s sensible,” she responded, curtly. “You’re most surprising of all when you’re sensible, Bibbs.”
“Yes,” he sighed. “I’m a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me, Edith.”
Thawing so far as to smile, she underwent this brief ceremony, and George appeared, summoning Bibbs to the library; Dr. Gurney was waiting there, he announced. And Bibbs gave his sister a shy but friendly touch upon the shoulder as a complement to the handshaking, and left her.
Dr. Gurney was sitting by the log fire, alone in the room, and he merely glanced over his shoulder when his patient came in. He was not over fifty, in spite of Sheridan’s habitual “ole Doc Gurney.” He was gray, however, almost as thin as Bibbs, and nearly always he looked drowsy.
“Your father telephoned me yesterday afternoon, Bibbs,” he said, not rising. “Wants me to ‘look you over’ again. Come around here in front of me — between me and the fire. I want to see if I can see through you.”
“You mean you’re too sleepy to move,” returned Bibbs, complying. “I think you’ll notice that I’m getting worse.”
“Taken on about twelve pounds,” said Gurney. “Thirteen, maybe.”
“Twelve.”
“Well, it won’t do.” The doctor rubbed his eyelids. “You’re so much better I’ll have to use some machinery on you before we can know just where you are. You come down to my place this afternoon. Walk down — all the way. I suppose you know why your father wants to know.”
Bibbs nodded. “Machine-shop.”
“Still hate it?”
Bibbs nodded again.
“Don’t blame you!” the doctor grunted. “Yes, I expect it’ll make a lump in your gizzard again. Well, what do you say? Shall I tell him you’ve got the old lump there yet? You still want to write, do you?”
“What’s the use?” Bibbs said, smiling ruefully. “My kind of writing!”
“Yes,” the doctor agreed. “I suppose it you broke away and lived on roots and berries until you began to ‘attract the favorable attention of editors’ you might be able to hope for an income of four or five hundred dollars a year by the time you’re fifty.”
“That’s about it,” Bibbs murmured.
“Of course I know what you want to do,” said Gurney, drowsily. “You don’t hate the machine-shop only; you hate the whole show — the noise and jar and dirt, the scramble — the whole bloomin’ craze to ‘get on.’ You’d like to go somewhere in Algiers, or to Taormina, perhaps, and bask on a balcony, smelling flowers and writing sonnets. You’d grow fat on it and have a delicate little life all to yourself. Well, what do you say? I can lie like sixty, Bibbs! Shall I tell your father he’ll lose another of his boys if you don’t go to Sicily?”
“I don’t want to go to Sicily,” said Bibbs. “I want to stay right here.”
The doctor’s drowsiness disappeared for a moment, and he gave his patient a sharp glance. “It’s a risk,” he said. “I think we’ll find you’re so much better he’ll send you back to the shop pretty quick. Something’s got hold of you lately; you’re not quite so lackadaisical as you used to be. But I warn you: I think the shop will knock you just as it did before, and perhaps even harder, Bibbs.”
He rose, shook himself, and rubbed his eyelids. “Well, when we go over you this afternoon what are we going to say about it?”
“Tell him I’m ready,” said Bibbs, looking at the floor.
“Oh no,” Gurney laughed. “Not quite yet; but you may be almost. We’ll see. Don’t forget I said to walk down.”
And when the examination was concluded, that afternoon, the doctor informed Bibbs that the result was much too satisfactory to be pleasing. “Here’s a new ‘situation’ for a one-act farce,” he said, gloomily, to his next patient when Bibbs had gone. “Doctor tells a man he’s well, and that’s his death sentence, likely. Dam’ funny world!”
Bibbs decided to walk home, though Gurney had not instructed him upon this point. In fact, Gurney seemed to have no more instructions on any point, so discouraging was the young man’s improvement. It was a dingy afternoon, and the smoke was evident not only to Bibbs’s sight, but to his nostrils, though most of the pedestrians were so saturated with the smell they could no longer detect it. Nearly all of them walked hurriedly, too intent upon their destinations to be more than half aware of the wayside; they wore the expressions of people under a vague yet constant strain. They were all lightly powdered, inside and out, with fine dust and grit from the hard-paved streets, and they were unaware of that also. They did not even notice that they saw the smoke, though the thickened air was like a shrouding mist. And when Bibbs passed the new “Sheridan Apartments,” now almost completed, he observed that the marble of the vestibule was already streaky with soot, like his gloves, which were new.
That recalled to him the faint odor of gasolene in the coupe on the way from his brother’s funeral, and this incited a train of thought which continued till he reached the vicinity of his home. His route was by a street parallel to that on which the New House fronted, and in his preoccupation he walked a block farther than he intended, so that, having crossed to his own street, he approached the New House from the north, and as he came to the corner of Mr. Vertrees’s lot Mr. Vertrees’s daughter emerged from the front door and walked thoughtfully down the path to the old picket gate. She was unconscious of the approach of the pedestrian from the north, and did not see him until she had opened the gate and he was almost beside her. Then she looked up, and as she saw him she started visibly. And if this thing had happened to Robert Lamhorn, he would have had a thought far beyond the horizon of faint-hearted Bibbs’s thoughts. Lamhorn, indeed, would have spoken his thought. He would have said: “You jumped because you were thinking of me!”
CHAPTER XV
MARY WAS THE picture of a lady flustered. She stood with one hand closing the gate behind her, and she had turned to go in the direction Bibbs was walking. There appeared to be nothing for it but that they should walk together, at least as far as the New House. But Bibbs had paused in his slow stride, and there elapsed an instant before either spoke or moved — it was no longer than that, and yet it sufficed for each to seem to say, by look and attitude, “Why, it’s YOU!”
Then they both spoke at once, each hurriedly pronouncing the other’s name as if about to deliver a message of importance. Then both came to a stop simultaneously, but Bibbs made a heroic effort, and as they began to walk on together he contrived to find his voice.
“I — I — hate a frozen fish myself,” he said. “I think three miles was too long for you to put up with one.”
“Good gracious!” she cried, turning to him a glowing face from which restraint and embarrassment had suddenly fled. “Mr. Sheridan, you’re lovely to put it that way. But it’s always the girl’s place to say it’s turning cooler! I ought to have been the one to show that we didn’t know each other well enough not to say SOMETHING! It was an imposition for me to have made you bring me home, and after I went into the house I decided I should have walked. Besides, it wasn’t three miles to the car-line. I never thought of it!”
“No,” said Bibbs, earnestly. “I didn’t, either. I might have said something if I’d thought of anything. I’m talking now, though; I must remember that, and not worry about it later. I think I’m talking, though it doesn’t sound intelligent even to me. I made up my mind that if I ever met you again I’d turn on my voice and keep it going, no mater what it said. I—”
She interrupted him with laughter, and Mary Vertrees’s laugh was one which Bibbs’s father had declared, after the house-warming, “a cripple would crawl five miles to hear.” And at the merry lilting of it Bibbs’s father’s son took heart to forget some of his trepidation. “I’ll be any kind of idiot,” he said, “if you’ll laugh at me some more. It won’t be difficult for me.”
She did; and Bibbs’s cheeks showed a little actual color, which Mary perceived. It recalled to her, by contrast, her careless and irritated description of him to her mother
just after she had seen him for the first time. “Rather tragic and altogether impossible.” It seemed to her now that she must have been blind.
They had passed the New House without either of them showing — or possessing — any consciousness that it had been the destination of one of them.
“I’ll keep on talking,” Bibbs continued, cheerfully, “and you keep on laughing. I’m amounting to something in the world this afternoon. I’m making a noise, and that makes you make music. Don’t be bothered by my bleating out such things as that. I’m really frightened, and that makes me bleat anything. I’m frightened about two things: I’m afraid of what I’ll think of myself later if I don’t keep talking — talking now, I mean — and I’m afraid of what I’ll think of myself if I do. And besides these two things, I’m frightened, anyhow. I don’t remember talking as much as this more than once or twice in my life. I suppose it was always in me to do it, though, the first time I met any one who didn’t know me well enough not to listen.”
“But you’re not really talking to me,” said Mary. “You’re just thinking aloud.”
“No,” he returned, gravely. “I’m not thinking at all; I’m only making vocal sounds because I believe it’s more mannerly. I seem to be the subject of what little meaning they possess, and I’d like to change it, but I don’t know how. I haven’t any experience in talking, and I don’t know how to manage it.”
“You needn’t change the subject on my account, Mr. Sheridan,” she said. “Not even if you really talked about yourself.” She turned her face toward him as she spoke, and Bibbs caught his breath; he was pathetically amazed by the look she gave him. It was a glowing look, warmly friendly and understanding, and, what almost shocked him, it was an eagerly interested look. Bibbs was not accustomed to anything like that.
“I — you — I — I’m—” he stammered, and the faint color in his cheeks grew almost vivid.
She was still looking at him, and she saw the strange radiance that came into his face. There was something about him, too, that explained how “queer” many people might think him; but he did not seem “queer” to Mary Vertrees; he seemed the most quaintly natural person she had ever met.
He waited, and became coherent. “YOU say something now,” he said. “I don’t even belong in the chorus, and here I am, trying to sing the funny man’s solo! You—”
“No,” she interrupted. “I’d rather play your accompaniment.”
“I’ll stop and listen to it, then.”
“Perhaps—” she began, but after pausing thoughtfully she made a gesture with her muff, indicating a large brick church which they were approaching. “Do you see that church, Mr. Sheridan?”
“I suppose I could,” he answered in simple truthfulness, looking at her. “But I don’t want to. Once, when I was ill, the nurse told me I’d better say anything that was on my mind, and I got the habit. The other reason I don’t want to see the church is that I have a feeling it’s where you’re going, and where I’ll be sent back.”
She shook her head in cheery negation. “Not unless you want to be. Would you like to come with me?”
“Why — why — yes,” he said. “Anywhere!” And again it was apparent that he spoke in simple truthfulness.
“Then come — if you care for organ music. The organist is an old friend of mine, and sometimes he plays for me. He’s a dear old man. He had a degree from Bonn, and was a professor afterward, but he gave up everything for music. That’s he, waiting in the doorway. He looks like Beethoven, doesn’t he? I think he knows that, perhaps and enjoys it a little. I hope so.”
“Yes,” said Bibbs, as they reached the church steps. “I think Beethoven would like it, too. It must be pleasant to look like other people.”
“I haven’t kept you?” Mary said to the organist.
“No, no,” he answered, heartily. “I would not mind so only you should shooer come!”
“This is Mr. Sheridan, Dr. Kraft. He has come to listen with me.”
The organist looked bluntly surprised. “Iss that SO?” he exclaimed. “Well, I am glad if you wish him, and if he can stant my liddle playink. He iss musician himself, then, of course.”
“No,” said Bibbs, as the three entered the church together. “I — I played the — I tried to play—” Fortunately he checked himself; he had been about to offer the information that he had failed to master the jews’-harp in his boyhood. “No, I’m not a musician,” he contented himself with saying.
“What?” Dr. Kraft’s surprise increased. “Young man, you are fortunate! I play for Miss Vertrees; she comes always alone. You are the first. You are the first one EVER!”
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 perceiving; 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 control 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 he
ar 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.
CHAPTER XVI
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.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 171
