Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith,
after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had
decided that he was “a member of the family”; but he appeared to have
relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at participancy--he
was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days
in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he
seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly
aware that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant
imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between
Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the
sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer
wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again
unawakened. He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith
and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.
Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night,
not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first
days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her
frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or
no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent
information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.
Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and
why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as
of yore.
Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and
shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting
herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of
that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling
mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself
hoarse when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the
end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.
“You ought to let me die!” she wailed. “It's cruel not to let me die!
What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?
Just look at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and
look what that got me into!--look where I am now! He brought me to this
town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't
even know the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING!
I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world! I wanted to have a good
time--and how could I? Where's any good time among these Sheridans? They
never even had wine on the table! I thought I was marrying into a rich
family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and
go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did
the best I could; I did, indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every
woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were
just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen
crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd
have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was
getting him away from me. She did it, too! She got him! A girl with
money can do that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what
could I do? What can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but
try to stand it--and I couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that
Vertrees girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't
have hurt her. It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT
little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take
the trouble to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!”
Sibyl's voice, hoarse from babbling, became no more than a husky
whisper, though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half
upright, and the nurse restrained her. “I'd get up out of this bed to
show her she can't do such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and
she walked out and left me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after
Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground, and she thinks she's
landed that poor loon--but she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able
to walk across the street again I'll show her how to treat a woman in
trouble that comes to her for help! It wouldn't have hurt her any--it
wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith needn't have told what she told
Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone. And HE told her I
bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him. He needn't have done
it! He needn't--needn't--” Her voice grew fainter, for that while,
with exhaustion, though she would go over it all again as soon as her
strength returned. She lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing
disheveled in the doorway, “Don't come in, Roscoe,” she murmured. “I
don't want to see you.” And as he turned away she added, “I'm kind of
sorry for you, Roscoe.”
Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings,
and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the
disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her
husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to
telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into
a momentary distraction over a counter.
Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her
whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that
separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only
the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan,
like legions of other parents, intensified her passion and fed it hourly
fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool,
and thus set her on fire.
Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her
father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence
had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing
fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she
went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not
think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.
She had written to a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in
apartments--and a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring
peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and
she left upon a Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and
having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have
kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her departure
had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that
evening, to find her gone. “I suppose they'll be maried there,” he said,
casually.
Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up,
fuming. “Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!” he snorted. “I
don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you
are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept
away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business.
For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!”
Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk
sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no
excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The
wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he
had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had
the habit of gesture; he could not “take time to remember,” he said,
that he must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his
hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.
The Saturday following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan
Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which
the doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before
the appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an
anteroom--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's
office. The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the
latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.
“No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!” he heard the big voice rumbling, and then,
breaking into thunder, “I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick!
You'd lose your confidence in Almighty God if a doodle-bug flipped his
hind leg at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what
if it is? There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to
keep OUR money tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide
your nickels in a crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a
little skeery! You listen to every street-corner croaker and then
come and set here and try to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on
this--understand? I tell you there never WAS better times. These are
good times and big times, and I won't stand for any other kind o' talk.
This country's on its feet as it never was before, and this city's on
its feet and goin' to stay there!” And Gurney heard a series of whacks
and thumps upon the desk. “'Bad times'!” Sheridan vociferated, with
accompanying thumps. “Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you!
We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all,
gentlemen. The loan goes!”
The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened
in. His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his
right hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage
as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of
Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile
reception. But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic
command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the
New House.
“Gurney says your wife's able to travel,” Sheridan said brusquely, as he
came in.
“Yes.” Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected attitude
which had become his habit. “Yes, she is.”
“Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!”
“Oh, I wouldn't put it that way,” Roscoe protested, drearily.
“No, I hear YOU wouldn't!” There was a bitter gibe in the father's
voice, and he added: “It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll
stay there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you
least of all!”
“It's no use your talking that way,” said Roscoe. “You won't do any
good.”
“Well, when are you comin' back to your office?” Sheridan used a
brisker, kinder tone. “Three weeks since you showed up there at all.
When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the
foolishness and start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a
lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself
out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone.”
“It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to
you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!”
“Wait a minute before you talk that way!” Sheridan began his sentry-go
up and down the room. “I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good
men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin'
right again, down in your office?”
“They must be good men.” Roscoe nodded indifferently. “I thought I was
doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle
it.”
“Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty
men drive harder'n I do, and--”
“Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with
'em. They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use
the rest of their lives. The last's my case, I guess--'complicated by
domestic difficulties'!”
“You set there and tell me you give up?” Sheridan's voice shook, and
so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the
despondent figure. “Don't do it, Roscoe! Don't say it! Say you'll come
down there again and be a man! This woman ain't goin' to trouble you any
more. The work ain't goin' to hurt you if you haven't got her to worry
you, and you can get shut o' this nasty whiskey-guzzlin'; it ain't
fastened on you yet. Don't say--”
“It's no use on earth,” Roscoe mumbled. “No use on earth.”
“Look here! If you want another month's vacation--”
“I know Gurney told you, so what's the use talking about 'vacations'?”
“Gurney!” Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. “It's Gurney, Gurney,
Gurney! Always Gurney! I don't know what the world's comin' to with
everybody runnin' around squealin', 'The doctor says this,' and, 'The
doctor says that'! It makes me sick! How's this country expect to get
its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this
blattin'--'Oh, oh! Don't lift that stick o' wood; you'll ruin your
NERVES!' So he says you got 'nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and
emotional strain.' They always got to stick the Work in if they see a
chance! I reckon you did have the 'emotional strain,' and that's all's
the matter with you. You'll be over it soon's this woman's gone, and
Work's the very thing to make you quit frettin' about her.”
“Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?”
“Shut up!” Sheridan bellowed. “I'm so sick o' that man's name I feel
like shootin' anybody that says it to me!” He fumed and chafed, swearing
indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. “Look here; do you
think you're doin' the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?”
“I've got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own,
outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not.”
“It is? You could'a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at
your age?”
“No. But it's mine, and it's enough.”
“My Lord! It's about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit
there! I suppose you think you'll get the rest when I kick the bucket,
and all you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right
here, you'll never see one cent of it. You go out o' business now, and
what would you know about handlin' it five or ten or twenty years from
now? Because I intend to STAY here a little while yet, my boy! They'd
either get it away from you or you'd sell for a nickel and let it be
split up and--” He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room,
and stood silent a moment. Then he said, solemnly: “Listen. If you go
out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin' on God's green earth
to depend on but your brother--and you know what he is. I've depended on
you for it ALL since Jim died. Now you've listened to that dam' doctor,
and he says maybe you won't ever be as good a man as you were, and that
certainly you won't be for a year or so--probably more. Now, that's all
a lie. Men don't break down that way at your age. Look at ME! And I tell
you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little GET-up and
a little gumption. Men don't go away for YEARS and then come back into
MOVING businesses like ours--they lose the strings. And if you could, I
won't let you--if you lay down on me now, I won't--and that's because if
you lay down you prove you ain't the man I thought you were.” He cleared
his throat and finished quietly: “Roscoe, will you take a month's
vacation and come back and go to it?”
“No,” said Roscoe, listlessly. “I'm through.”
“All right,” said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a
table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son.
“Good-by.”
Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes.
“Best I can do,” he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. “I
figure it out a good deal like this,” he said. “I didn't KNOW my job
was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur--from what
I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and
the--the trouble at home was the extra strain that's fixed me the way I
am. I tried to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on
whiskey--and that put the finish to me! I--I'm not hitting it as hard as
I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a
little more energy, I better try to quit entirely--I don't know. I'm all
in--and the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a
few months ago, but all the time I was ready to bust, and didn't know
it. Now, then, I don't want you to blame Sibyl, and if I were you
I wouldn't speak of her as 'that woman,' because she's your
daughter-in-law and going to stay that way. She didn't do anything
wicked. It was a shock to me, and I don't deny it, to find what she had
done--encouraging that fellow to hang around her after he began trying
to flirt with her, and losing her head over him the way she did. I don't
deny it was a shock and that it'll always be a hurt inside of me I'll
never get over. But it was my fault; I didn't understand a woman's
nature.” Poor Roscoe spoke in the most profound and desolate earnest.
“A woman craves society, and gaiety, and meeting attractive people, and
traveling. Well, I can't give her the other things, but I can give her
the traveling--real traveling, not just going to Atlantic City or
New Orleans, the way she has, two, three times. A woman has to have
something in her life besides a business man. And that's ALL I was. I
never understood till I heard her talking when she was so sick, and I
believe if you'd heard her then you wouldn't speak so hard-heartedly
about her; I believe you might have forgiven her like I have. That's
all. I never cared anything for any girl but her in my life, but I was
so busy with business I put it ahead of her. I never THOUGHT about her,
I was so busy thinking business. Well, this is where it's brought us
to--and now when you talk about 'business' to me I feel the way you do
when anybody talks about Gurney to you. The word 'business' makes me
dizzy--it makes me honestly sick at the stomach. I believe if I had
to go down-town and step inside that office door I'd fall down on the
floor, deathly sick. You talk about a 'month's vacation'--and I get just
as sick. I'm rattled--I can't plan--I haven't got any plans--can't make
any, except to take my girl and get just as far away from that office as
I can--and stay. We're going to Japan first, and if we--”
His father rustled the paper. “I said good-by, Roscoe.”
“Good-by,” said Roscoe, listlessly.