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 enough to
excuse it this time.”
He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him,
never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the
agitation of her hands within the muff.
“All right,” he said at last.
She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of
heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.
“Thank you,” she said. “There's something else--about something
different--I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it,
too.”
“She's up-stairs in her room,” said Sheridan. “Roscoe--”
Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pass through the hall and
begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived
the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.
“No, let me go,” she said. “I want to speak to her a minute first,
anyway.”
And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see
Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his
room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for
bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed
her of the circumstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with
the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her own
experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by words
they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl
intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not
hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly
in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to
say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the
girl who had affronted her.
Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had
driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's
mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of
emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) “have
a fit right there.” She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting
a touch to her hair before a mirror.
“I was just coming down,” she said, as the door opened.
“Yes, he wants you to,” said Sibyl. “It's all right, mother Sheridan.
He's forgiven me.”
Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her
daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh,
wiped her eyes, and applied powder.
“And I hope Edith will be happy,” Sibyl added, inciting more
applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.
“Yes, yes,” murmured the good woman. “We mustn't make the worst of
things.”
“Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear
it, too,” said Sibyl. “We better go down, mother Sheridan.”
She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came
to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. “I want to tell you
about it first,” she said, abruptly. “It isn't a secret, of course, in
any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the
whole family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT
for us ALL not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all.
But I want to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind of help
me to see I got it all straight. I haven't got any reason for saying it
except the good of the family, and it's nothing to me, one way or the
other, of course, except for that. I oughtn't to've behaved the way I
did that night, and it seems to me if there's anything I can do to help
the family, I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way.
Well, what I want to do is to tell this so's to keep the family from
being made a fool of. I don't want to see the family just made use of
and twisted around her finger by somebody that's got no more heart than
so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as--as
Edith's mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I'll just tell
you how it looks to me and see if it don't strike you the same way.”
Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He
wished they wouldn't stand talking near his door when he was trying to
write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun
the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to
fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity
to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the
beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to
dare greatly with it--he would venture it upon an editor. For he had
his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking--he
could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to
the crashing of the strong machine--and if his father turned him out of
home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere.
His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs--he faced
the prospect of a working-man's lodging-house without trepidation. He
could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when
he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and
on Sundays--on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least
he wouldn't be interrupted by his sister-in-law's choosing the immediate
vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself,
but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could
think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on,
he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.
“I don't know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,” she said, “but
this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and
all THEY got out of it was an agreement that let's 'em live there a
little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has
been up and down the streets more'n two years, tryin' to get a job he
could call a 'position,' and couldn't land it. You heard anything about
it, mother Sheridan?”
“Well, I DID know they been doin' their own house-work a good while
back,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “And now they're doin' the cookin', too.”
Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. “I hope they find
something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!”
Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy--of
all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last
would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was
happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that
heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary's; it seemed to
him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically--and that
something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent,
but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.
“What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,” said
Sibyl, sharply. “Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees
started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was INSANE or not!
They'd got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and
Mrs. Vertrees ASKED me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took
the daughter out auto-riding!” She paused a moment, looking at Mrs.
Sheridan, but listening intently. There was no sound from within the
room.
“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.
“It's the truth,” Sibyl declared, loudly. “Oh, of course we were all
crazy about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up
here, and we thought she'd get us IN--but it didn't take ME long to read
her! Her family were down and out when it came to money--and they had to
go after it, one way or another, SOMEHOW! So she started for Roscoe; but
she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around
to Jim--and she landed him! There's no doubt about it, she had Jim, and
if he'd lived you'd had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as
I stand here telling you the God's truth about it! Well--when Jim was
left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs!
Jim wasn't COLD--and she didn't know whether Bibbs was insane or not,
but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get
him.”
The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not,
in Sibyl's mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke
with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.
“What I feel about it is,” she said, “it oughtn't to be allowed to go
on. It's too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don't want to see him made
such a fool of, and I don't want to see the family made such a fool of!
I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd
have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall
in love with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he
WAS--just kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like
men with some GO to 'em--SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! Nobody ever
looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd
tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got
desperate that she--”
Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door.
He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women
screamed.
“Oh, good heavens!” cried Sibyl. “Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't--”
She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. “Come
on, mother Sheridan!” she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady
obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: “Good gracious! Oh,
I wouldn't--too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his
feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But,
good heavens--”
She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of
the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not
following; he had gone back into his room.
“He--he looked--oh, terrible bad!” stammered Mrs. Sheridan. “I--I
wish--”
“Still, it's a good deal better he knows about it,” said Sibyl. “I
shouldn't wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened.
Come on!”
And completing their descent to the library, the two made their
appearance to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and
truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks,
and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had
overheard them.
“But as I told mother Sheridan,” she said, in conclusion, “it might turn
out for the very best that he did hear--just that way. Don't you think
so, father Sheridan?”
He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top
of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no
sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees's
character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl--it was Bibbs whom
she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.
“I'm sure it was all for the best,” she said. “It's over now, and
he knows what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just
hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it's SO--and he knows I
haven't got any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the
family.”
Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward
the stairway. “I wish--I wish I knew what he was doin',” she said. “He
did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him
that was--I don't know what. I never saw anybody look like he did.
He looked--so queer. It was like you'd--” She called down the hall,
“George!”
“Yes'm?”
“Were you up in Mr. Bibbs's room just now?”
“Yes'm. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil'
him nice fiah. I reckon he ain' feelin' so well. Yes'm.” He departed.
“What do you expect he wants a fire for?” she asked, turning toward her
husband. “The house is warm as can be, I do wish I--”
“Oh, quit frettin'!” said Sheridan.
“Well, I--I kind o' wish you hadn't said anything, Sibyl. I know you
meant it for the best and all, but I don't believe it would been so much
harm if--”
“Mother Sheridan, you don't mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the
family? Why, she--”
“I don't know, I don't know,” the troubled woman quavered. “If he liked
her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He's so queer, and he hasn't
ever taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there
was more chance of him bein' willin' to do what papa wants him to. If
she wants to marry him--”
Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. “She don't!” he said.
“You're barkin' up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain't that kind of a
girl.”
“But, father Sheridan, didn't she--”
He cut her short. “That's enough. You may mean all right, but you guess
wrong. So do you, mamma.”
Sibyl cried out, “Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim--”
“She did not,” he said, curtly. “She wouldn't take Jim. She turned him
down cold.”
“But that's impossi--”
“It's not. I KNOW she did.”
Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.
“And YOU needn't worry,” he said, turning to his wife. “This won't have
any effect on your idea, because there wasn't any sense to it, anyhow.
D'you think she'd be very likely to take Bibbs--after she wouldn't take
JIM? She's a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her,
but if she'd ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women
think, he wouldn't of acted the stubborn fool he has--he'd 'a' been at
me long ago, beggin' me for some kind of a job he could support a wife
on. There's nothin' in it--and I've got the same old fight with him on
my hands I've had all his life--and the Lord knows what he won't do
to balk me! What's happened now'll probably only make him twice as
stubborn, but--”
“SH!” Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. “That's his
step--he's comin' down-stairs.” She shrank away from the door as if
she feared to have Bibbs see her. “I--I wonder--” she said, almost in a
whisper--“I wonder what he's goin'--to do.”
Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose,
frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved
toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as
the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.
Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked
slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his
father. Then he came and stood before him.
“I'm sorry you've had so much trouble with me,” he said, gently. “You
won't, any more. I'll take the job you offered me.”
Sheridan did not speak--he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs
had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he
went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went
nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had
gone from the house.
Bibbs's mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known
before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant--something in her
mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been
done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his
room.
The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick,
charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the
large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and
note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given
up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow--and that he had
given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have
done--and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a
little before she went down-stairs.
So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.