When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his
father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before
him. “I'm cured, father,” he said. “When do I go back to the shop? I'm
ready.”
The desolate and grim old man did not relax. “I was sittin' up to give
you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's about time!
I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not to make me take
you over there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I'd give you
just one more day. Well, you got to it before I did--pretty close to
the eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It's the first o' the
month. Think you can get up in time?”
“Six o'clock,” Bibbs responded, briskly. “And I want to tell you--I'm
going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll 'like it'!”
“That's YOUR lookout!” his father grunted. “They'll put you back on the
clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week.”
“More than I'm worth, too,” said Bibbs, cheerily. “That reminds me, I
didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I meant--”
“Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!”
“I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.”
“G'night!”
The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat
staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could
be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique
expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who,
after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for
burglars.
“Papa!” she exclaimed, drowsily. “Why'n't you go to bed? It must be
goin' on 'leven o'clock!”
She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to
the fire. “What's the matter?” she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
sluggishly with each other in her voice. “I knew you were worried all
dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
taken away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?”
“Nothin'.”
She jeered feebly. “N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't
you?”
“He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,” said Sheridan.
“Just the same as he did before?”
“Just pre-CISELY!”
“How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?” she asked, timidly.
“Until he KNOWS something!” The unhappy man struck his palms together,
then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he
talked. “He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn to tend properly
in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it till he DOES learn
it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to
learn it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him, either! When he went
there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine we got--and he stuck
there! How much prospect would there be of his learnin' to run the whole
business if he can't run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there
to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn't LIKE it! That boy's
whole life, there's been a settin' up o' something mulish that's against
everything I want him to do. I don't know what it is, but it's got to be
worked out of him. Now, labor ain't any more a simple question than what
it was when we were young. My idea is that, outside o' union troubles,
the man that can manage workin'-men is the man that's been one himself.
Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE
set himself to balk on the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's
lasted close on to three years. If he balks again I'm just done with
him! Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything,
anyhow!”
“I knew there was something else,” said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over
a yawn. “You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--'less
you'll tell me?”
“Suppose something happened to Roscoe,” he said. “THEN what'd I have to
look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A
lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip o' zinc along a
groove!”
“Roscoe?” she yawned. “You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's the
strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than
he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five years. You better
go up to bed, papa.”
“Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
means, keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE, let
alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates hacked
away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves
come out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off
for themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the job, night
and day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried off? I've seen
a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--there wasn't even
a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen it, time and again.
My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to ME! It don't seem like
I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I
have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring 'em up to be guards
to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build
bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool's job nowadays--a man's
got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd
make you think the millennium had come--but right the next breath you'll
hear somebody hollerin' about 'the great unrest.' You BET there's a
'great unrest'! There ain't any man alive smart enough to see what it's
goin' to do to us in the end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose,
but it's frothin' and bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been
fillin' up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and
the old camp-meetin' days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it
used to be. Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the
bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's
an awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin'
to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and
the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made it. And
the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only one motto:
'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!' And when a man's
built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and made good things
grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide
in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it! And what's
the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin'
to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked my life and soul into my
business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed and scattered soon as I'm in
the ground?”
He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. “You think this is
a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there never
was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard
is despoiled while he sleeps--yes, by George! if a man lays down they'll
eat him before he wakes!--but the live man can build straight up till
he touches the sky! This is the business man's day; it used to be the
soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is OURS! And it ain't a
Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil! turmoil!--and you got to go out and
live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you'll only be a dead
man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive. And that's what my son Bibbs
has been doin' all his life, and what he'd rather do now than go out and
do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe--”
“Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense,” Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. “There isn't anything
goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin' yourself about
nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?”
Sheridan halted. “All right, mamma,” he said, with a vast sigh. “Let's
go up.” And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy
glow of the fire.
“Did you speak to Roscoe?” she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
drowsiness. “Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?”
“No. I will to-morrow.”
But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the
fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at nine
in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
“They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me.”
“Sit down,” said Sheridan, rising.
Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and
then walked away, smiling bitterly. “Boh!” he exclaimed. “Still at it!”
“Yes,” said Roscoe. “I've had a couple of drinks this morning. What
about it?”
“I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,” his father returned.
“I'd bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I
would!”
“Better do it,” Roscoe assented, sullenly.
“When'd you begin this thing?”
“I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is.”
“Leave that talk out! You know what I mean.”
“Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until the
other day.”
Sheridan began cutting. “It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him,
and he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't work. You
been leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the last three
weeks. I been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven't
done any work, to count, in a month.”
“All right,” said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. “It's all true.”
“What you goin' to do about it?”
Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. “I can't stand very much
talk about it, father,” he said, pleadingly.
“No!” Sheridan cried. “Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?”
He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. “I can't stand to
talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to find out
what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you out!”
Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
“You can't straighten me out.”
“See here!” said Sheridan. “Can you go back to your office and stay
sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple
o' huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o' your hand
if they see you tryin' to take it?”
“You needn't worry about that,” said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
resentment. “I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst.”
“Well, what have you got?”
“Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you.”
“We'll see about that!” said Sheridan, harshly. “Now I can't fool with
you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come last
Sunday--but you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when the
women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober
till then? You better be sure, because I'm going to send Abercrombie
down to your office every little while, and he'll let me know.”
Roscoe paused at the door. “You told Abercrombie about it?” he asked.
“TOLD him!” And Sheridan laughed hideously. “Do you suppose there's an
elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?”
Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.