Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “Yes. Sit down.” Sheridan got up, and Bibbs took a seat by the fire, holding out his hands to the crackling blaze, for it was cold outdoors.

  “I came within seven of the shop record to-day,” he said. “I handled more strips than any other workman has any day this month. The nearest to me is sixteen behind.”

  “There!” exclaimed his father, greatly pleased. “What’d I tell you? I’d like to hear Gurney hint again that I wasn’t right in sending you there — I would just like to hear him! And you — ain’t you ashamed of makin’ such a fuss about it? Ain’t you?”

  “I didn’t go at it in the right spirit the other time,” Bibbs said, smiling brightly, his face ruddy in the cheerful firelight. “I didn’t know the difference it meant to like a thing.”

  “Well, I guess I’ve pretty thoroughly vindicated my judgement. I guess I HAVE! I said the shop’d be good for you, and it was. I said it wouldn’t hurt you, and it hasn’t. It’s been just exactly what I said it would be. Ain’t that so?”

  “Looks like it!” Bibbs agreed, gaily.

  “Well, I’d like to know any place I been wrong, first and last! Instead o’ hurting you, it’s been the makin’ of you — physically. You’re a good inch taller’n what I am, and you’d be a bigger man than what I am if you’d get some flesh on your bones; and you ARE gettin’ a little. Physically, it’s started you out to be the huskiest one o’ the whole family. Now, then, mentally — that’s different. I don’t say it unkindly, Bibbs, but you got to do something for yourself mentally, just like what’s begun physically. And I’m goin’ to help you.”

  Sheridan decided to sit down again. He brought his chair close to his son’s, and, leaning over, tapped Bibbs’s knee confidentially. “I got plans for you, Bibbs,” he said.

  Bibbs instantly looked thoroughly alarmed. He drew back. “I — I’m all right now, father.”

  “Listen.” Sheridan settled himself in his chair, and spoke in the tone of a reasonable man reasoning. “Listen here, Bibbs. I had another blow to-day, and it was a hard one and right in the face, though I HAVE been expectin’ it some little time back. Well, it’s got to be met. Now I’ll be frank with you. As I said a minute ago, mentally I couldn’t ever called you exactly strong. You been a little weak both ways, most of your life. Not but what I think you GOT a mentality, if you’d learn to use it. You got will-power, I’ll say that for you. I never knew boy or man that could be stubborner — never one in my life! Now, then, you’ve showed you could learn to run that machine best of any man in the shop, in no time at all. That looks to me like you could learn to do other things. I don’t deny but what it’s an encouragin’ sign. I don’t deny that, at all. Well, that helps me to think the case ain’t so hopeless as it looks. You’re all I got to meet this blow with, but maybe you ain’t as poor material as I thought. Your tellin’ me about comin’ within seven strips of the shop’s record to-day looks to me like encouragin’ information brought in at just about the right time. Now, then, I’m goin’ to give you a raise. I wanted to send you straight on up through the shops — a year or two, maybe — but I can’t do it. I lost Jim, and now I’ve lost Roscoe. He’s quit. He’s laid down on me. If he ever comes back at all, he’ll be a long time pickin’ up the strings, and, anyway, he ain’t the man I thought he was. I can’t count on him. I got to have SOMEBODY I KNOW I can count on. And I’m down to this: you’re my last chance. Bibbs, I got to learn you to use what brains you got and see if we can’t develop ’em a little. Who knows? And I’m goin’ to put my time in on it. I’m goin’ to take you right down-town with ME, and I won’t be hard on you if you’re a little slow at first. And I’m goin’ to do the big thing for you. I’m goin’ to make you feel you got to do the big thing for me, in return. I’ve vindicated my policy with you about the shop, and now I’m goin’ to turn right around and swing you ‘way over ahead of where the other boys started, and I’m goin’ to make an appeal to your ambition that’ll make you dizzy!” He tapped his son on the knee again. “Bibbs, I’m goin’ to start you off this way: I’m goin’ to make you a director in the Pump Works Company; I’m goin’ to make you vice-president of the Realty Company and a vice-president of the Trust Company!”

  Bibbs jumped to his feet, blanched. “Oh no!” he cried.

  Sheridan took his dismay to be the excitement of sudden joy. “Yes, sir! And there’s some pretty fat little salaries goes with those vice-presidencies, and a pinch o’ stock in the Pump Company with the directorship. You thought I was pretty mean about the shop — oh, I know you did! — but you see the old man can play it both ways. And so right now, the minute you’ve begun to make good the way I wanted you to, I deal from the new deck. And I’ll keep on handin’ it out bigger and bigger every time you show me you’re big enough to play the hand I deal you. I’m startin’ you with a pretty big one, my boy!”

  “But I don’t — I don’t — I don’t want it!” Bibbs stammered.

  “What’d you say?” Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.

  “I don’t want it, father. I thank you — I do thank you—”

  Sheridan looked perplexed. “What’s the matter with you? Didn’t you understand what I was tellin’ you?”

  “Yes.”

  “You sure? I reckon you didn’t. I offered—”

  “I know, I know! But I can’t take it.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious. “Your head feel funny?”

  “I’ve never been quite so sane in my life,” said Bibbs, “as I have lately. And I’ve got just what I want. I’m living exactly the right life. I’m earning my daily bread, and I’m happy in doing it. My wages are enough. I don’t want any more money, and I don’t deserve any—”

  “Damnation!” Sheridan sprang up. “You’ve turned Socialist! You been listening to those fellows down there, and you—”

  “No, sir. I think there’s a great deal in what they say, but that isn’t it.”

  Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially. “Then what is it? What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing,” his son returned, nervously. “Nothing — except that I’m content. I don’t want to change anything.”

  “Why not?”

  Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. “I’ll tell you, father, if I can. I know it may be hard to understand—”

  “Yes, I think it may be,” said Sheridan, grimly. “What you say usually is a LITTLE that way. Go on!”

  Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream — a rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his eyes lowered. “You weren’t altogether right about the shop — that is, in one way you weren’t, father.” He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt. “That’s difficult to explain,” Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of his finger. “I — I believe the shop might have done for me this time if I hadn’t — if something hadn’t helped me to — oh, not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it. I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I don’t want, I don’t want to live a business life — I don’t want to be drawn into it. I don’t think it IS living — and now I AM living. I have the healthful toil — and I can think. In business as important as yours I couldn’t think anything but business. I don’t — I don’t think making money is worth while.”

  “Go on,” said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.

  “It hasn’t seemed to get anywhere, that I can see,” said Bibbs. “You think this city is rich and powerful — but what’s the use of its being rich and powerful? They don’t teach the children any more in the schools because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they used to because some people — not rich and powerful people — have thought the
thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you’ve been reading the paper I’ve heard you objecting to the children being taught anything except what would help them to make money. You said it was wasting the taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live. When I was a little boy this wasn’t an ugly town; now it’s hideous. What’s the use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don’t think all this has meant really going ahead — it’s just been getting bigger and dirtier and noisier. Wasn’t the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I’m an utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren’t business and politics just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn’t you despise a woman that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it? And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time, and was always having additions built to her house when she couldn’t keep clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable—”

  “Just one minute!” Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy, “If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?”

  “I don’t quite—”

  “I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon any subject or question you’ve thought about and talked about? Can you mention one single time when you were proved to be right?”

  He was flourishing the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only, “If I’ve always been wrong before, surely there’s more chance that I’m right about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due to bring up my average.”

  “Yes, I thought you wouldn’t see the point. And there’s another you probably couldn’t see, but I’ll take the liberty to mention it. You been balkin’ all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do, you’d let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now — and yet I can’t seem to remember once when you didn’t have to lay down and do what I said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of this country. Go on!”

  “I don’t want to be a part of it,” said Bibbs, with unwonted decision. “I want to keep to myself, and I’m doing it now. I couldn’t, if I went down there with you. I’d be swallowed into it. I don’t care for money enough to—”

  “No,” his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. “You’ve never had to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me remind you: you’re sleepin’ in a pretty good bed; you’re eatin’ pretty fair food; you’re wearin’ pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o’ these noisy housekeepers — me, for instance — decided to let you do your own housekeepin’. May I ask what your proposition would be?”

  “I’m earning nine dollars a week,” said Bibbs, sturdily. “It’s enough. I shouldn’t mind at all.”

  “Who’s payin’ you that nine dollars a week?”

  “My work!” Bibbs answered. “And I’ve done so well on that clipping-machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I’m sure. I’d rather have a trade than be in business — I should, infinitely!”

  “You better set about learnin’ one pretty dam’ quick!” But Sheridan struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in controlling it. “You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you’re either goin’ down with me to my office Monday morning — or — you can go to plumbing!”

  “All right,” said Bibbs, gently. “I can get along.”

  Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. “O God,” he said, “this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a week, and now his money’s gone to his head! Can’t You do nothin’ for him?” Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture of dismissal. “Get out o’ this room! You got a skull that’s thicker’n a whale’s thigh-bone, but it’s cracked spang all the way across! You hated the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick for over two years — and now, when I offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy! You’re cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit, and one’s a loon! The loon’s all I got left! H. P. Ellersly’s wife had a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-glass window out into the yard. He says, ‘Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!’ That’s what you’re doin’! You want to spend your life sayin’, ‘Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!’ and you don’t care a tinker’s dam’ what you bust! Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are, I’ll take you with me Monday morning, and I’ll work you and learn you — yes, and I’ll lam you, if I got to — until I’ve made something out of you that’s fit to be called a business man! I’ll keep at you while I’m able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I’ll be whisperin’ at you till they get the embalmin’-fluid into me! Now go on, and don’t let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you’ve waked up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin’ SLEEP-WALKER!”

  Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it, for once; but there was more than that — he seemed to be startled by his father’s last word.

  CHAPTER XXV

  THERE WAS SLEET that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading Maurice Maeterlinck’s Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of the gas-jet might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights as these, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men might not serve to break the spell.

  Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all the time.

  When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said: “There’s something I want to read over. This:”

  You would think I threw a window open on the dawn.... She has a

  soul that can be seen around her — that takes you in its arms like

  an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you

  for everything.... I shall never understand it all. I do not know

  how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak

  of it....

  He stopped and looked at her.

  “You boy!” said Mary, not very clearly.

  “Oh yes,” he returned. “But it’s true — especially my knees!”

  “You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly. “You might read another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn’t read it — I can give it to you: ‘A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!’”

  “I! I’m one of the hands at the Pump Works — and going to stay one, unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”

  “No.” She shook her head. “You love and want what’s beautiful and delicate and serene; it’s really art that you want in your life, and have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever known, and that’s what you were wistful for.”

  Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. “Why, no,” he said; “I wanted something
else more than that. I wanted you.”

  “And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding. “I think we’re like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I’m just the rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that the devil was dead.”

  “He isn’t, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. “He gets into the clock whenever I’m with you.” And, sighing deeply he rose to go.

  “You’re always very prompt about leaving me.”

  “I — I try to be,” he said. “It isn’t easy to be careful not to risk everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you look tired—”

  “Have you ever?”

  “Not yet. You always look — you always look—”

  “How?”

  “Care-free. That’s it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I’d keep remembering that look — and I’d never give up! It’s a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don’t quite understand why it should be, either.” He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. “Mary, you haven’t a ‘secret sorrow,’ have you?”

  For answer she only laughed.

  “No,” he said; “I can’t imagine you with a care in the world. I think that’s why you were so kind to me — you have nothing but happiness in your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to happiness, too. But there’s one little time in the twenty-four hours when I’m not happy. It’s now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal every time it comes — and then, when I’ve left the house, there’s a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I’m really beginning another day that’s to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But now’s the bad time — and I must go through it, and so — good night.” And he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, “I hate it!”