He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and
came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety
manifest and was but partially reassured by his explanation that his
lunch had “disagreed” with him a little.
Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appetite had
become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from
white-jacket's salver. “Here's another difference between Midas and
chicken,” Sheridan remarked, grimly. “Midas can eat rooster, but rooster
can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he
had the advantage there.”
Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to
his plate without dropping it and to respond, “Yes--he crows over it.”
Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for
he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with
pleasure, though the reference to Midas and roosters was of course
jargon to her. “Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child
has!” she exclaimed. “I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right
handsome!”
“He's got to be such a gadabout,” Edith giggled.
“I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before
anybody was up,” said Sheridan. “I reckon if people lose things in this
house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do.”
“What was it he lost?” asked Edith.
“He knows!” her father returned. “Seems to me like I forgot to bring it
home with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty
important, belongin' to a busy man like him.” He affected to search
his pockets. “What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I
remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket.”
“Good place for it,” Bibbs murmured, still red.
Sheridan gave him a grin. “Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up
early enough to find things before I do!”
It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the
evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.
“My time's here at last,” he said, as they sat together in the
melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.
That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.
Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark
day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy
upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing presence
of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.
“Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off
any longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my
face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.
Hard labor for life, I think.”
Mary shook her head. “I don't think so. He's too kind.”
“You think my father's KIND?” And Bibbs stared at her.
“Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's
only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand
any other way.”
“Ah yes,” said Bibbs. “If that's what you mean by 'kind'!”
She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. “It's
going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?”
“Oh--self-pity!” he returned, smiling. “This has been just the last
flicker of revolt. Nobody minds work if he likes the kind of work.
There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he
could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I
have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer.”
“What is it like--exactly?”
“I get up at six,” he said. “I have a lunch-basket to carry with me,
which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin
buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty,
and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and
work again from one till five.”
“But the work itself?”
“It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me a
heavier job because I wasn't good enough.”
“But what will you do? I want to know.”
“When I left,” said Bibbs, “I was 'on' what they call over there a
'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's
what I'll be sent back to.”
“But what is it?” she insisted.
Bibbs explained. “It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of
zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little
circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at
a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it.”
He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade
paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have
known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.
“You do that all day long?” she asked, and as he nodded, “It seems
incredible!” she exclaimed. “YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine
nine hours a day! No wonder--” She broke off, and then, after a keen
glance at his face, she said: “I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad
hand at it'!”
He laughed ruefully. “I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to
say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of
rhythmical crashing--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle.”
“How often is that?”
“The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more
than one a second.”
“And you're close to it?”
“Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap,” he said, turning to her more
gaily. “The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I
have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and
duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I
was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me
back. They used to laugh at me all day long.”
Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting
on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She
was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.
“It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you,” she said, in a
low voice. “No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the
leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them
published for you--”
“Can't you SEE him?” Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in
his voice. “If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can
imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up
posters all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a
Punch!' No. It's just as well he never got the--But what's the use? I've
never written anything worth printing, and I never shall.”
“You could!” she said.
“That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to
do.”
“You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!”
“It isn't,” said BIBBS, honestly. “I never could--but you're the kindest
lady in this world, Miss Vertrees.”
She gave him a flashing glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.
“That sounds wrong,” she said, impulsively. “I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'
I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't
you rather call me 'Mary'?”
Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.
“Wouldn't you?” she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
“If I CAN!” he said, in a low voice.
“Ah, that's very pretty!” she laughed. “You're such an honest person,
it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety.” She
became grave again immediately. “I hear myself laughing as if it were
some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity.”
She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall,
facing him. “You've GOT to go back to that place?”
He nodded.
“And the other time you did it--”
“Just over it,” said Bibbs. “Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of
a repetition so much as--”
“So much as what?” she prompted, as he stopped.
Bibbs looked up at her shyly. “I want to say it, but--but I come to a
dead balk when I try. I--”
“Go on. Say it, whatever it is,” she bade him. “You wouldn't know how to
say anything I shouldn't like.”
“I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say,” he
returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he
seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. “You see, all my life--until I met
you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying
things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this: I used to
feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been
of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself,
except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it's different--I'm still
of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful,
but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy
experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've lived
it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have,
this strange, beautiful, happy little while!”
He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had
to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not
speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had
gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room
was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and
loud.
And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. “If you
think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make
it last.”
“Yes,” said Bibbs, as faintly.
“You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?”
“Yes,” he gulped.
“But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over.”
He tried to evade her. “Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--”
“No,” she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. “You said what you did
because you think the shop's going to kill you.”
“No, no!”
“Yes, you do think that!” She rose to her feet again and came and stood
before him. “Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.
Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm
a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said--and you
did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium.
The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!”
And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall,
splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
“If I mean THAT much to you,” she cried, “they can't harm you! Go
back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the
machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash
that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!”
He stumbled to his feet. “You say--” he gasped.
“Every evening, dear Bibbs!”
He could only stare, bewildered.
“EVERY evening. I want you. They sha'n't hurt you again!” And she held
out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. “If
I could, I'd go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,”
she said. “But all day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep
remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is
done--won't the night make up for the day?”
Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance
of kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, “To think you're
there--with me--standing beside the old zinc-eater--”
And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what
it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.