The Turmoil (27 page)

When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said: “There’s something I want to read over. This:”

You would think I threw a window open on the dawn…. She has a soul that can be seen around her—that takes you in its arms like an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for everything…. I shall never understand it all. I do not know how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak of it….

He stopped and looked at her.

“You boy!” said Mary, not very clearly.

“Oh yes,” he returned. “But it’s true—especially my knees!”

“You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly. “You might read another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn’t read it—I can give it to you: ‘A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!’”

“I! I’m one of the hands at the Pump Works—and going to stay one, unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You love and want what’s beautiful and delicate and serene; it’s really art that you want in your life, and have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever known, and that’s what you were wistful for.”

Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. “Why, no,” he said; “I wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.”

“And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding. “I think we’re like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I’m just the rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that the devil was dead.”

“He isn’t, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. “He gets into the clock whenever I’m with you.” And, sighing deeply he rose to go.

“You’re always very prompt about leaving me.”

“I—I try to be,” he said. “It isn’t easy to be careful not to risk everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you look tired—”

“Have you ever?”

“Not yet. You always look—you always look—”

“How?”

“Care-free. That’s it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I’d keep remembering that look—and I’d never give up! It’s a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don’t quite understand why it should be, either.” He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. “Mary, you haven’t a ‘secret sorrow,’ have you?”

For answer she only laughed.

“No,” he said; “I can’t imagine you with a care in the world. I think that’s why you were so kind to me—you have nothing but happiness in your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to happiness, too. But there’s one little time in the twenty-four hours when I’m not happy. It’s now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal every time it comes—and then, when I’ve left the house, there’s a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I’m really beginning another day that’s to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But now’s the bad time—and I must go through it, and so—good night.” And he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, “I hate it!”

“Do you?” she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.

“Mary! Your eyes are so—” He stopped.

“Yes?” But she looked quickly away.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought just then—”

“What did you think?”

“I don’t know—it seemed to me that there was something I ought to understand—and didn’t.”

She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. “My eyes are pleased,” she said. “I’m glad that you miss me a little after you go.”

“But to-morrow’s coming faster than other days if you’ll let it,” he said.

She inclined her head. “Yes. I’ll—‘let it’!”

“Going to church,” said Bibbs. “It IS going to church when I go with you!”

She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway, but the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to tell him that she would never shut him out; he could always see that friendly light of the open doorway—as if it were open for him to come back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the beautiful symbol of her friendship—of her thought of him; a symbol of herself and of her ineffable kindness.

And she kept the door open—even to-night, though the sleet and fine snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was strewn with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did—she went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had spent the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he was out of sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that stood between the two houses, and saw that he turned to look back again. Then, and not before, she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe’s house across the street. They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed the front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper windows of Roscoe’s house flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of one of them. Mary felt the cold then—it was the third night she had seen those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.

But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe’s windows. He stopped for his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.

A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled detonations—the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then Gurney, sharply imperious, “Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand in that sling, I say!”

“LOOK!” George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the eyes of Bibbs. “Look at ‘at lamidal statue!”

Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine— painted colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human; and gilded and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous palms like the spoil of a barbarians’ battle. There had been a massacre in the oasis—the Moor had been hurled headlong from his pedestal.

“He hit ‘at ole lamidal statue,” said George. “POW!”

“My father?”

“YESsuh! POW! he hit ‘er! An’ you’ ma run tell me git doctuh quick ‘s I kin telefoam—she sho’ you’ pa goin’ bus’ a blood-vessel. He ain’t takin’ on ‘tall NOW. He ain’t nothin’ ‘tall to what he was ‘while ago. You done miss’ it, Mist’ Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet’ down, to what he was. POW! he hit’er! Yessuh!” He took Bibbs’s coat and proffered a crumpled telegraph form. “Here what come,” he said. “I pick ‘er up when he done stompin’ on ‘er. You read ‘er, Mist’ Bibbs—you’ ma tell me tuhn ‘er ovuh to you soon’s you come in.”

Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to Mrs. Sheridan.

Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal. Edith Lamhorn.

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.”