The Turmoil (33 page)

Sheridan had made the room next to his own into an office for Bibbs, and the door between the two rooms usually stood open—the father had established that intimacy. One morning in February, when Bibbs was alone, Sheridan came in, some sheets of typewritten memoranda in his hand.

“Bibbs,” he said, “I don’t like to butt in very often this way, and when I do I usually wish I hadn’t—but for Heaven’s sake what have you been buying that ole busted inter-traction stock for?”

Bibbs leaned back from his desk. “For eleven hundred and fifty-five dollars. That’s all it cost.”

“Well, it ain’t worth eleven hundred and fifty-five cents. You ought to know that. I don’t get your idea. That stuff’s deader’n Adam’s cat!”

“It might be worth something—some day.”

“How?”

“It mightn’t be so dead—not if we went into it,” said Bibbs, coolly.

“Oh!” Sheridan considered this musingly; then he said, “Who’d you buy it from?”

“A broker—Fansmith.”

“Well, he must ‘a’ got it from one o’ the crowd o’ poor ninnies that was soaked with it. Don’t you know who owned it?”

“Yes, I do.”

“Ain’t sayin’, though? That it? What’s the matter?”

“It belonged to Mr. Vertrees,” said Bibbs, shortly, applying himself to his desk.

“So!” Sheridan gazed down at his son’s thin face. “Excuse me,” he said. “Your business.” And he went back to his own room. But presently he looked in again.

“I reckon you won’t mind lunchin’ alone to-day”—he was shuffling himself into his overcoat—“because I just thought I’d go up to the house and get THIS over with mamma.” He glanced apologetically toward his right hand as it emerged from the sleeve of the overcoat. The bandages had been removed, finally, that morning, revealing but three fingers—the forefinger and the finger next to it had been amputated. “She’s bound to make an awful fuss, and better to spoil her lunch than her dinner. I’ll be back about two.”

But he calculated the time of his arrival at the New House so accurately that Mrs. Sheridan’s lunch was not disturbed, and she was rising from the lonely table when he came into the dining-room. He had left his overcoat in the hall, but he kept his hands in his trousers pockets.

“What’s the matter, papa?” she asked, quickly. “Has anything gone wrong? You ain’t sick?”

“Me!” He laughed loudly. “Me SICK?”

“You had lunch?”

“Didn’t want any to-day. You can give me a cup o’ coffee, though.”

She rang, and told George to have coffee made, and when he had withdrawn she said querulously, “I just know there’s something wrong.”

“Nothin’ in the world,” he responded, heartily, taking a seat at the head of the table. “I thought I’d talk over a notion o’ mine with you, that’s all. It’s more women-folks’ business than what it is man’s, anyhow.”

“What about?”

“Why, ole Doc Gurney was up at the office this morning awhile—”

“To look at your hand? How’s he say it’s doin’?”

“Fine! Well, he went in and sat around with Bibbs awhile—”

Mrs. Sheridan nodded pessimistically. “I guess it’s time you had him, too. I KNEW Bibbs—”

“Now, mamma, hold your horses! I wanted him to look Bibbs over BEFORE anything’s the matter. You don’t suppose I’m goin’ to take any chances with BIBBS, do you? Well, afterwards, I shut the door, and I an’ ole Gurney had a talk. He’s a mighty disagreeable man; he rubbed it in on me what he said about Bibbs havin’ brains if he ever woke up. Then I thought he must want to get something out o’ me, he go so flattering—for a minute! ‘Bibbs couldn’t help havin’ business brains,’ he says, ‘bein’ YOUR son. Don’t be surprised,’ he says—‘don’t be surprised at his makin’ a success,’ he says. ‘He couldn’t get over his heredity; he couldn’t HELP bein’ a business success—once you got him into it. It’s in his blood. Yes, sir’ he says, ‘it doesn’t need MUCH brains,’ he says, ‘an only third-rate brains, at that,’ he says, ‘but it does need a special KIND o’ brains,’ he says, ‘to be a millionaire. I mean,’ he says, ‘when a man’s given a start. If nobody gives him a start, why, course he’s got to have luck AND the right kind o’ brains. The only miracle about Bibbs,’ he says, ‘is where he got the OTHER kind o’ brains—the brains you made him quit usin’ and throw away.’”

“But what’d he say about his health?” Mrs. Sheridan demanded, impatiently, as George placed a cup of coffee before her husband. Sheridan helped himself to cream and sugar, and began to sip the coffee.

“I’m comin’ to that,” he returned, placidly. “See how easy I manage this cup with my left hand, mamma?”

“You been doin’ that all winter. What did—”

“It’s wonderful,” he interrupted, admiringly, “what a fellow can do with his left hand. I can sign my name with mine now, well’s I ever could with my right. It came a little hard at first, but now, honest, I believe I RATHER sign with my left. That’s all I ever have to write, anyway—just the signature. Rest’s all dictatin’.” He blew across the top of the cup unctuously. “Good coffee, mamma! Well, about Bibbs. Ole Gurney says he believes if Bibbs could somehow get back to the state o’ mind he was in about the machine-shop—that is, if he could some way get to feelin’ about business the way he felt about the shop—not the poetry and writin’ part, but—” He paused, supplementing his remarks with a motion of his head toward the old house next door. “He says Bibbs is older and harder’n what he was when he broke down that time, and besides, he ain’t the kind o’ dreamy way he was then—and I should say he AIN’T! I’d like ‘em to show ME anybody his age that’s any wider awake! But he says Bibbs’s health never need bother us again if—”

Mrs. Sheridan shook her head. “I don’t see any help THAT way. You know yourself she wouldn’t have Jim.”

“Who’s talkin’ about her havin’ anybody? But, my Lord! she might let him LOOK at her! She needn’t ‘a’ got so mad, just because he asked her, that she won’t let him come in the house any more. He’s a mighty funny boy, and some ways I reckon he’s pretty near as hard to understand as the Bible, but Gurney kind o’ got me in the way o’ thinkin’ that if she’d let him come back and set around with her an evening or two sometimes—not reg’lar, I don’t mean—why—Well, I just thought I’d see what YOU’D think of it. There ain’t any way to talk about it to Bibbs himself—I don’t suppose he’d let you, anyhow—but I thought maybe you could kind o’ slip over there some day, and sort o’ fix up to have a little talk with her, and kind o’ hint around till you see how the land lays, and ask her—”

“ME!” Mrs. Sheridan looked both helpless and frightened. “No.” She shook her head decidedly. “It wouldn’t do any good.”

“You won’t try it?”

“I won’t risk her turnin’ me out o’ the house. Some way, that’s what I believe she did to Sibyl, from what Roscoe said once. No, I CAN’T —and, what’s more, it’d only make things worse. If people find out you’re runnin’ after ‘em they think you’re cheap, and then they won’t do as much for you as if you let ‘em alone. I don’t believe it’s any use, and I couldn’t do it if it was.”

He sighed with resignation. “All right, mamma. That’s all.” Then, in a livelier tone, he said: “Ole Gurney took the bandages off my hand this morning. All healed up. Says I don’t need ‘em any more.”

“Why, that’s splendid, papa!” she cried, beaming. “I was afraid— Let’s see.”

She came toward him, but he rose, still keeping his hand in his pocket. “Wait a minute,” he said, smiling. “Now it may give you just a teeny bit of a shock, but the fact is—well, you remember that Sunday when Sibyl came over here and made all that fuss about nothin’ —it was the day after I got tired o’ that statue when Edith’s telegram came—”

“Let me see your hand!” she cried.

“Now wait!” he said, laughing and pushing her away with his left hand. “The truth is, mamma, that I kind o’ slipped out on you that morning, when you wasn’t lookin’, and went down to ole Gurney’s office—he’d told me to, you see—and, well, it doesn’t AMOUNT to anything.” And he held out, for her inspection, the mutilated hand. “You see, these days when it’s all dictatin’, anyhow, nobody’d mind just a couple o’—”

He had to jump for her—she went over backward. For the second time in her life Mrs. Sheridan fainted.

It was a full hour later when he left her lying upon a couch in her own room, still lamenting intermittently, though he assured her with heat that the “fuss” she was making irked him far more than his physical loss. He permitted her to think that he meant to return directly to his office, but when he came out to the open air he told the chauffeur in attendance to await him in front of Mr. Vertrees’s house, whither he himself proceeded on foot.

Mr. Vertrees had taken the sale of half of his worthless stock as manna in the wilderness; it came from heaven—by what agency he did not particularly question. The broker informed him that “parties were interested in getting hold of the stock,” and that later there might be a possible increase in the value of the large amount retained by his client. It might go “quite a ways up” within a year or so, he said, and he advised “sitting tight” with it. Mr. Vertrees went home and prayed.

He rose from his knees feeling that he was surely coming into his own again. It was more than a mere gasp of temporary relief with him, and his wife shared his optimism; but Mary would not let him buy back her piano, and as for furs—spring was on the way, she said. But they paid the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick-maker, and hired a cook once more. It was this servitress who opened the door for Sheridan and presently assured him that Miss Vertrees would “be down.”

He was not the man to conceal admiration when he felt it, and he flushed and beamed as Mary made her appearance, almost upon the heels of the cook. She had a look of apprehension for the first fraction of a second, but it vanished at the sight of him, and its place was taken in her eyes by a soft brilliance, while color rushed in her cheeks.

“Don’t be surprised,” he said. “Truth is, in a way it’s sort of on business I looked in here. It’ll only take a minute, I expect.”

“I’m sorry,” said Mary. “I hoped you’d come because we’re neighbors.”

He chuckled. “Neighbors! Sometimes people don’t see so much o’ their neighbors as they used to. That is, I hear so—lately.”

“You’ll stay long enough to sit down, won’t you?”

“I guess I could manage that much.” And they sat down, facing each other and not far apart.

“Of course, it couldn’t be called business, exactly,” he said, more gravely. “Not at all, I expect. But there’s something o’ yours it seemed to me I ought to give you, and I just thought it was better to bring it myself and explain how I happened to have it. It’s this—this letter you wrote my boy.” He extended the letter to her solemnly, in his left hand, and she took it gently from him. “It was in his mail, after he was hurt. You knew he never got it, I expect.”

“Yes,” she said, in a low voice.

He sighed. “I’m glad he didn’t. Not,” he added, quickly—“not but what you did just right to send it. You did. You couldn’t acted any other way when it came right down TO it. There ain’t any blame comin’ to you—you were aboveboard all through.”

Mary said, “Thank you,” almost in a whisper, and with her head bowed low.

“You’ll have to excuse me for readin’ it. I had to take charge of all his mail and everything; I didn’t know the handwritin’, and I read it all—once I got started.”

“I’m glad you did.”

“Well”—he leaned forward as if to rise—“I guess that’s about all. I just thought you ought to have it.”

“Thank you for bringing it.”

He looked at her hopefully, as if he thought and wished that she might have something more to say. But she seemed not to be aware of this glance, and sat with her eyes fixed sorrowfully upon the floor.

“Well, I expect I better be gettin’ back to the office,” he said, rising desperately. “I told—I told my partner I’d be back at two o’clock, and I guess he’ll think I’m a poor business man if he catches me behind time. I got to walk the chalk a mighty straight line these days—with THAT fellow keepin’ tabs on me!”

Mary rose with him. “I’ve always heard YOU were the hard driver.”

He guffawed derisively. “Me? I’m nothin’ to that partner o’ mine. You couldn’t guess to save your life how he keeps after me to hold up my end o’ the job. I shouldn’t be surprised he’d give me the grand bounce some day, and run the whole circus by himself. You know how he is—once he goes AT a thing!”

“No,” she smiled. “I didn’t know you had a partner. I’d always heard—”

He laughed, looking away from her. “It’s just my way o’ speakin’ o’ that boy o’ mine, Bibbs.”

He stood then, expectant, staring out into the hall with an air of careless geniality. He felt that she certainly must at least say, “How IS Bibbs?” but she said nothing at all, though he waited until the silence became embarrassing.

“Well, I guess I better be gettin’ down there,” he said, at last. “He might worry.”

“Good-by—and thank you,” said Mary.

“For what?”

“For the letter.”

“Oh,” he said, blankly. “You’re welcome. Good-by.”

Mary put out her hand. “Good-by.”

“You’ll have to excuse my left hand,” he said. “I had a little accident to the other one.”

She gave a pitying cry as she saw. “Oh, poor Mr. Sheridan!”

“Nothin’ at all! Dictate everything nowadays, anyhow.” He laughed jovially. “Did anybody tell you how it happened?”

“I heard you hurt your hand, but no—not just how.”

“It was this way,” he began, and both, as if unconsciously, sat down again. “You may not know it, but I used to worry a good deal about the youngest o’ my boys—the one that used to come to see you sometimes, after Jim—that is, I mean Bibbs. He’s the one I spoke of as my partner; and the truth is that’s what it’s just about goin’ to amount to, one o’ these days—if his health holds out. Well, you remember, I expect, I had him on a machine over at a plant o’ mine; and sometimes I’d kind o’ sneak in there and see how he was gettin’ along. Take a doctor with me sometimes, because Bibbs never WAS so robust, you might say. Ole Doc Gurney—I guess maybe you know him? Tall, thin man; acts sleepy—”

“Yes.”

“Well, one day I an’ ole Doc Gurney, we were in there, and I undertook to show Bibbs how to run his machine. He told me to look out, but I wouldn’t listen, and I didn’t look out—and that’s how I got my hand hurt, tryin’ to show Bibbs how to do something he knew how to do and I didn’t. Made me so mad I just wouldn’t even admit to myself it WAS hurt—and so, by and by, ole Doc Gurney had to take kind o’ radical measures with me. He’s a right good doctor, too. Don’t you think so, Miss Vertrees?”