George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to
thunder. He could not reach the stairway without passing the open doors
of the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just
then, would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For
that reason he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade
room, intending to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan
vociferously demanding his presence.
“Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him
in. Now you'll SEE!” And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into
the hall, beckoned to her son.
Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white
cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was
striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that
he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot;
his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken
loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.
“THERE'S our little sunshine!” he cried, as Bibbs appeared. “THERE'S the
hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--”
“Keep you hand in that sling,” said Gurney, sharply.
Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. “For God's sake,
sing another tune!” he cried. “You said you 'came as a doctor but stay
as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize
ME--”
“Oh, talk sense,” said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. “What do
you want Bibbs to say?”
“You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,'
oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'!
You sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many
another man you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!” He
swung toward the quiet figure waiting in the doorway. “Bibbs, will you
come down-town with me Monday morning and let me start you with two
vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you.”
“No, father,” said Bibbs, gently.
Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.
“Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week,
instead of takin' up my offer?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're
too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my
shop?”
“Find other work,” said Bibbs.
“There! You hear him for yourself!” Sheridan cried. “You hear what--”
“Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him.”
Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and
broke, piping into falsetto: “He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to
be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he
wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!”
He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.
“There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance
to live,” he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his
throat. “That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway
yonder!”
Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding,
and tossed it into the open bag. “What's the matter with giving Bibbs a
chance to live?” he said, coolly. “I would if I were you. You've had TWO
that went into business.”
Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. “Joe Gurney,”
he said, when he could command himself so far, “are you accusin' me of
the responsibility for the death of my son James?”
“I accuse you of nothing,” said the doctor. “But just once I'd like
to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here,
too.” He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind
his back and smiling. “Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable,” he
said. “You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you
and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at
the risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And
he did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't
you let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he
couldn't do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some
message--something to say that might make the world just a little
bit happier or wiser? He MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be
denied. Now he can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you,
and he won't HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is
likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the
shop did, the first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But
I tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill
something that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his
physical body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so
why not let it live? You've about come to the end of your string, old
fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his
chance?”
Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. “What 'fighting?'”
“Yours--with nature.” Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce
antagonist equably. “You don't seem to understand that you've been
struggling against actual law.”
“What law?”
“Natural law,” said Gurney. “What do you think beat you with Edith? Did
Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something
powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't
against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its
grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk! What's taken
Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU
wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you
could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!
Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want
him to lead--and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be
twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together.”
“WHAT!” Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.
“Your son Bibbs,” said the doctor, composedly, “Bibbs Sheridan has
the kind and quantity of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in
anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain
asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life
you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT
to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it--he's
obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he
knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell
you something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going
thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than
your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the
very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law that took Jim
from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very
self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of
beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.
The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip
the law--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to
wield it and twist it--”
The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. “Yes! And by
God, I will!”
“So Ajax defied the lightning,” said Gurney.
“I've heard that dam'-fool story, too,” Sheridan retorted, fiercely.
“That's for chuldern and niggers. It ain't twentieth century, let me
tell you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jackass! If he'd been half
a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the
lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A
man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!”
“Well, what about Bibbs?” said Gurney. “Will you be a really big man now
and--”
“Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!” Sheridan began to walk to and
fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot
his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but
the target seemed unaware of the marksman.
“I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder,” Sheridan
went on, “and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I
don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I
mightn't need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!”
“Oh, put your hand back!” said Gurney, wearily.
There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand
in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table
and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.
Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.
“Let it lay!” he shouted, fiercely. “Let it lay!” And, weeping, she
obeyed. “Yes, sir,” he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the
sudden hush he put upon it. “I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's
wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy--you
remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as
messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he
built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there
from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he
died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used
to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't
stingy--he was just livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or
automobiles--he had his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty
near bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole
man used to pass one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants
cigarette boys on the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak
to him? God! he wouldn't 'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him
clean the cuspidors at the bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin'
in FRONT the bank he'd 'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy
was doin' every day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy!
Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and
his life-blood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't.
It was every bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in
harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for
that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T
EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased
him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died his
old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy bank
any more! And now”--his voice rose again--“and now I got a cigarette
son-in-law!”
Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and
Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.
“My son-in-law likes Florida this winter,” Sheridan went on. “That's
good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be
there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear
it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got
me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't
give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's
got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before
this time next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette
behind--for good--she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there
ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there
ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein',
nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll
be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that
cigarette, but--”
“By the way,” interposed Gurney, “didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that
Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?”
Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed
and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his
wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively,
sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away,
tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.
“Fool!” he panted, choking. “If he's shown gumption enough to guess
right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'
him on!” And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs,
thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. “My name
ain't Tracy, I tell you!” he screamed, hoarsely. “You give in, you
stubborn fool! I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my way
with you now!”
Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that
“splendid look” of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage
in a struggle, so that he would “never give up.”
“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.