Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “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.

  CHAPTER XXVII

  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 wa
s 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.

  An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary for the last block or so, and passed ahead during the removal of the soot. “There!” said the elderly wife. “You’re always wrong when you begin guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren’t honeymooners at all — they’ve been married for years. A blind man could see that.”

  “I wish I did know who threw that soot on you,” said Bibbs, looking up at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. “They arrest children for throwing snowballs at the street-cars, but—”

  “But they don’t arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in the houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make. I wonder what’s the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year. Yes, we pay the price for living in a ‘growing town,’ whether we have money to pay or none.”

  “Who is it gets the pay?” said Bibbs.

  “Not I!” she laughed.

  “Nobody gets it. There isn’t any pay; there’s only money. And only some of the men down-town get much of that. That’s what my father wants me to get.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling to him, and nodding. “And you don’t want it, and you don’t need it.”

  “But you don’t think I’m a sleep-walker, Mary?” He had told her of his father’s new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and picturesqueness of their setting forth. “You think I’m right?”

  “A thousand times!” she cried. “There aren’t so many happy people in this world, I think — and you say you’ve found what makes you happy. If it’s a dream — keep it!”

  “The thought of going down there — into the money shuffle — I hate it as I never hated the shop!” he said. “I hate it! And the city itself, the city that the money shuffle has made — just look at it! Look at it in winter. The snow’s tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the ugliness is winning; it’s making the snow hideous; the snow’s getting dirty on top, and it’s foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise aren’t the worst of it; it’s what the dirt and ugliness and rush and noise MEAN — that’s the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but they’re only the expression of a spirit — a blind embryo of a spirit, not yet a soul — oh, just greed! And this ‘go ahead’ nonsense! Oughtn’t it all to be a fellowship? I shouldn’t want to get ahead if I could — I’d want to help the other fellow to keep up with me.”

  “I read something the other day and remembered it for you,” said Mary. “It was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint: ‘In the first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a great city, full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers walking, and ladies leaning from the windows all down great lengths of a street leading to the city walls; and there the gates are wide open, letting in a space of green field and cornfield in harvest; and all round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing from a little walled graveyard.”

  “And if I painted,” Bibbs returned, “I’d paint a lady walking in the street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile life — children being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying to get richer, and ladies who’d given up trying to wash their windows clean, and the gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all round this lady’s head a great rain of swirling soot—” He paused, adding, thoughtfully: “And yet I believe I’m glad that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were your brother — the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for you. Still, Edith never—”

  “Didn’t she?” said Mary, as he paused again.

  “No. And I—” He contented himself with shaking his head instead of offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were passing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. “Mary, our walk’s almost over.”

  She looked as blank. “So it is, Bibbs.”

  They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly to a stop, the door of Roscoe’s house opened, and Roscoe came out with Sibyl, who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her illness, however, walking rather quickly at her husband’s side and not taking his arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary and her companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary gazed after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.

  “Mary,” he said, “you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?”

  “No, Bibbs.” And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him instantly unreasonably happy.

  “I know you want to go in—” he began.

  “No. I don’t want to.”

  “I mustn’t keep you standing here, and I mustn’t go in with you — but — I just wanted to say — I’ve seemed very stupid to myself this morning, grumbling about soot and all that — while all the time I — Mary, I think it’s been the very happiest of all the hours you’ve given me. I do. And — I don’t know just why — but it’s seemed to me that it was one I’d always remember. And you,” he added, falteringly, “you look so — so beautiful to-day!”

  “It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs.”

  “Mary, will you tell me something?” he asked.

  “I think I will.”

  “It’s something I’ve had a lot of theories about, but none of them ever just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it’s so much colder, you don’t — you never wear them at al
l any more. Why don’t you?”

  Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily. “Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more questions?”

  “Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?”

  “Because I found I’d be warmer without them!” She caught his hand quickly in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into the house.

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  IT IS THE consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual “living-room” of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed. Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting — when he was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.

  He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-glass window at the far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his Saturday-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his sling.

  Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at him, but down at her muff, in which, it could be seen, her hands were nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room. There was a deadly silence.

  But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.

  “Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me, and I would hate to have you think I don’t appreciate it, from the way I acted. I’ve come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never happen again, because it’s been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come back, some day, I hope you’ll see that you’ve got a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven’t any feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life. I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a good deal happier — and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enought to excuse it this time.”