“Never mind, mamma. I’ll say it. Is Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, stupid? I’m sure he’s not at all stupid about business. Otherwise — Oh, what right have I to be calling people ‘stupid’ because they’re not exactly my kind? On the big dinner-table they had enormous icing models of the Sheridan Building—”
“Oh, no!” Mrs. Vertrees cried. “Surely not!”
“Yes, and two other things of that kind — I don’t know what. But, after all, I wondered if they were so bad. If I’d been at a dinner at a palace in Italy, and a relief or inscription on one of the old silver pieces had referred to some great deed or achievement of the family, I shouldn’t have felt superior; I’d have thought it picturesque and stately — I’d have been impressed. And what’s the real difference? The icing is temporary, and that’s much more modest, isn’t it? And why is it vulgar to feel important more on account of something you’ve done yourself than because of something one of your ancestors did? Besides, if we go back a few generations, we’ve all got such hundreds of ancestors it seems idiotic to go picking out one or two to be proud of ourselves about. Well, then, mamma, I managed not to feel superior to Mr. James Sheridan, Junior, because he didn’t see anything out of place in the Sheridan Building in sugar.”
Mrs. Vertrees’s expression had lost none of its anxiety pending the conclusion of this lively bit of analysis, and she shook her head gravely. “My dear, dear child,” she said, “it seems to me — It looks — I’m afraid—”
“Say as much of it as you can, mamma,” said Mary, encouragingly. “I can get it, if you’ll just give me one key-word.”
“Everything you say,” Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, “seems to have the air of — it is as if you were seeking to — to make yourself—”
“Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like him.”
“Not exactly, Mary. That wasn’t quite what I meant,” said Mrs. Vertrees, speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. “But you said that — that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs. Sheridan’s unentertaining—”
“And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I—” And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.
Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.
“Well,” she asked, gravely, “is there anything else I can do? You and papa don’t want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is the only thing to be done, it seems it’s up to me not to let it distress me. That’s all there is about it, isn’t it?”
“But nothing MUST distress you!” the mother cried.
“That’s what I say!” said Mary, cheerfully. “And so it doesn’t. It’s all right.” She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet. “Mother, you’ve told me a thousand times that it doesn’t really matter whom a girl marries.”
“No, no!” Mrs. Vertrees protested. “I never said such a—”
“No, not in words; I mean what you MEANT. It’s true, isn’t it, that marriage really is ‘not a bed of roses, but a field of battle’? To get right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn’t she? One man as well as another?”
“Oh, my dear! I’m sure your father and I—”
“Yes, yes,” said Mary, indulgently. “I don’t mean you and papa. But isn’t it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there must be something in it.”
“Mary, I can’t bear for you to talk like that.” And Mrs. Vertrees lifted pleading eyes to her daughter — eyes that begged to be spared. “It sounds — almost reckless!”
Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. “Never fret, dear! I’m not likely to do anything I don’t want to do — I’ve always been too thorough-going a little pig! And if it IS propinquity that does our choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more than THAT! How could there be any more propinquity than the very house next door?”
She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. “Oh, the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one—”
“Did he speak of it?” Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.
“No. He didn’t speak at all, that I saw, to any one. I didn’t meet him. But he isn’t insane, I’m sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when he’s not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was ‘well enough’; and it may be he’s only an invalid. He looks dreadfully ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if — if one were in the Sheridan family” — she laughed a little ruefully— “he might be interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks and bonds. I didn’t see him after dinner.”
“There must be something wrong with him,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “They’d have introduced him if there wasn’t.”
“I don’t know. He’s been ill so much and away so much — sometimes people like that just don’t seem to ‘count’ in a family. His father spoke of sending him back to a machine-shop or some sort; I suppose he meant when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr. Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me; and he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic change came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!”
“You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?”
“Yes.”
“Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling.”
“No,” said Mary, thoughtfully, “I don’t think he is; but he might be uncomprehending, and certainly he’s the kind of man to do anything he once sets out to do. But I wish I hadn’t been looking at that poor boy just then! I’m afraid I’ll keep remembering—”
“I wouldn’t.” Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there was the remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. “I’d keep my mind on pleasanter things, Mary.”
Mary laughed and nodded. “Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and probably, if all were known, too good — even for me!”
And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.
CHAPTER VIII
EDITH, GLANCING CASUALLY into the “ready-made” library, stopped abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read it:
FUGITIVE
I will forget the things that sting:
The lashing look, the barbed word.
I know the very hands that fling
The stones at me had never stirred
To anger but for their own scars.
They’ve suffered so, that’s why they strike.
I’ll keep my heart among the stars
Where none shall hunt it out. Oh, like
These wounded ones I must not be,
For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
So, none shall hurt me. Far and free
Where my heart flies no one shall learn.
“Bibbs!” Edith’s voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.
Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by the poem. “Pretty young, isn’t it?” he said. “There must have been something about your looks that got the prize, Edith; I can’t believe the poem did it.”
She glanced hurriedly over her shoulder and spoke sharply, but in a low voice: “I don’t think it’s very nice of you to bring it up at all, Bibbs. I’d like a chance to forget the whole silly business. I didn’t want them t
o frame it, and I wish to goodness papa’d quit talking about it; but here, that night, after the dinner, didn’t he go and read it aloud to the whole crowd of ’em! And then they all wanted to know what other poems I’d written and why I didn’t keep it up and write some more, and if I didn’t, why didn’t I, and why this and why that, till I thought I’d die of shame!”
“You could tell ’em you had writer’s cramp,” Bibbs suggested.
“I couldn’t tell ’em anything! I just choke with mortification every time anybody speaks of the thing.”
Bibbs looked grieved. “The poem isn’t THAT bad, Edith. You see, you were only seventeen when you wrote it.”
“Oh, hush up!” she snapped. “I wish it had burnt my fingers the first time I touched it. Then I might have had sense enough to leave it where it was. I had no business to take it, and I’ve been ashamed—”
“No, no,” he said, comfortingly. “It was the very most flattering thing ever happen to me. It was almost my last flight before I went to the machine-shop, and it’s pleasant to think somebody liked it enough to—”
“But I DON’T like it!” she exclaimed. “I don’t even understand it — and papa made so much fuss over its getting the prize, I just hate it! The truth is I never dreamed it’d get the prize.”
“Maybe they expected father to endow the school,” Bibbs murmured.
“Well, I had to have something to turn in, and I couldn’t write a LINE! I hate poetry, anyhow; and Bobby Lamhorn’s always teasing me about how I ‘keep my heart among the stars.’ He makes it seem such a mushy kind of thing, the way he says it. I hate it!”
“You’ll have to live it down, Edith. Perhaps abroad and under another name you might find—”
“Oh, hush up! I’ll hire some one to steal it and burn it the first chance I get.” She turned away petulantly, moving to the door. “I’d like to think I could hope to hear the last of it before I die!”
“Edith!” he called, as she went into the hall.
“What’s the matter?”
“I want to ask you: Do I really look better, or have you just got used to me?”
“What on earth do you mean?” she said, coming back as far as the threshold.
“When I first came you couldn’t look at me,” Bibbs explained, in his impersonal way. “But I’ve noticed you look at me lately. I wondered if I’d—”
“It’s because you look so much better,” she told him, cheerfully. “This month you’ve been here’s done you no end of good. It’s the change.”
“Yes, that’s what they said at the sanitarium — the change.”
“You look worse than ‘most anybody I ever saw,” said Edith, with supreme candor. “But I don’t know much about it. I’ve never seen a corpse in my life, and I’ve never even seen anybody that was terribly sick, so you mustn’t judge by me. I only know you do look better, I’m glad to say. But you’re right about my not being able to look at you at first. You had a kind of whiteness that — Well, you’re almost as thin, I suppose, but you’ve got more just ordinarily pale; not that ghastly look. Anybody could look at you now, Bibbs, and no — not get—”
“Sick?”
“Well — almost that!” she laughed. “And you’re getting a better color every day, Bibbs; you really are. You’re getting along splendidly.”
“I — I’m afraid so,” he said, ruefully.
“‘Afraid so’! Well, if you aren’t the queerest! I suppose you mean father might send you back to the machine-shop if you get well enough. I heard him say something about it the night of the—” The jingle of a distant bell interrupted her, and she glanced at her watch. “Bobby Lamhorn! I’m going to motor him out to look at a place in the country. Afternoon, Bibbs!”
When she had gone, Bibbs mooned pessimistically from shelf to shelf, his eye wandering among the titles of the books. The library consisted almost entirely of handsome “uniform editions”: Irving, Poe, Cooper, Goldsmith, Scott, Byron, Burns, Longfellow, Tennyson, Hume, Gibbon, Prescott, Thackeray, Dickens, De Musset, Balzac, Gautier, Flaubert, Goethe, Schiller, Dante, and Tasso. There were shelves and shelves of encyclopedias, of anthologies, of “famous classics,” of “Oriental masterpieces,” of “masterpieces of oratory,” and more shelves of “selected libraries” of “literature,” of “the drama,” and of “modern science.” They made an effective decoration for the room, all these big, expensive books, with a glossy binding here and there twinkling a reflection of the flames that crackled in the splendid Gothic fireplace; but Bibbs had an impression that the bookseller who selected them considered them a relief, and that white-jacket considered them a burden of dust, and that nobody else considered them at all. Himself, he disturbed not one.
There came a chime of bells from a clock in another part of the house, and white-jacket appeared beamingly in the doorway, bearing furs. “Awready, Mist’ Bibbs,” he announced. “You’ ma say wrap up wawm f’ you’ ride, an’ she cain’ go with you to-day, an’ not f’git go see you’ pa at fo’ ‘clock. Aw ready, suh.”
He equipped Bibbs for the daily drive Dr. Gurney had commanded; and in the manner of a master of ceremonies unctuously led the way. In the hall they passed the Moor, and Bibbs paused before it while white-jacket opened the door with a flourish and waved condescendingly to the chauffeur in the car which stood waiting in the driveway.
“It seems to me I asked you what you thought about this ‘statue’ when I first came home, George,” said Bibbs, thoughtfully. “What did you tell me?”
“Yessuh!” George chuckled, perfectly understanding that for some unknown reason Bibbs enjoyed hearing him repeat his opinion of the Moor. “You ast me when you firs’ come home, an’ you ast me nex’ day, an’ mighty near ev’y day all time you been here; an’ las’ Sunday you ast me twicet.” He shook his head solemnly. “Look to me mus’ be somep’m might lamiDAL ‘bout ‘at statue!”
“Mighty what?”
“Mighty lamiDAL!” George, burst out laughing. “What DO ‘at word mean, Mist’ Bibbs?”
“It’s new to me, George. Where did you hear it?”
“I nev’ DID hear it!” said George. “I uz dess sittin’ thinkum to myse’f an’ she pop in my head— ‘lamiDAL,’ dess like ‘at! An’ she soun’ so good, seem like she GOTTA mean somep’m!”
“Come to think of it, I believe she does mean something. Why, yes—”
“Do she?” cried George. “WHAT she mean?”
“It’s exactly the word for the statue,” said Bibbs, with conviction, as he climbed into the car. “It’s a lamiDAL statue.”
“Hiyi!” George exulted. “Man! Man! Listen! Well, suh, she mighty lamiDAL statue, but lamiDAL statue heap o’ trouble to dus’!” “I expect she is!” said Bibbs, as the engine began to churn; and a moment later he was swept from sight.
George turned to Mist’ Jackson, who had been listening benevolently in the hallway. “Same he aw-ways say, Mist’ Jackson— ‘I expec’ she is!’ Ev’y day he try t’ git me talk ‘bout ‘at lamiDAL statue, an’ aw-ways, las’ thing HE say, ‘I expec’ she is!’ You know, Mist’ Jackson, if he git well, ‘at young man go’ be pride o’ the family, Mist’ Jackson. Yes-suh, right now I pick ’im fo’ firs’ money!”
“Look out with all ‘at money, George!” Jackson warned the enthusiast. “White folks ‘n ’is house know ’im heap longer’n you. You the on’y man bettin’ on ’im!”
“I risk it!” cried George, merrily. “I put her all on now — ev’y cent! ‘At boy’s go’ be flower o’ the flock!”
This singular prophecy, founded somewhat recklessly upon gratitude for the meaning of “lamiDAL,” differed radically from another prediction concerning Bibbs, set forth for the benefit of a fair auditor some twenty minutes later.
Jim Sheridan, skirting the edges of the town with Mary Vertrees beside him, in his own swift machine, encountered the invalid upon the highroad. The two cars were going in opposite directions, and the occupants of Jim’s had only a swaying glimpse of Bibbs sittin
g alone on the back seat — his white face startlingly white against cap and collar of black fur — but he flashed into recognition as Mary bowed to him.
Jim waved his left hand carelessly. “It’s Bibbs, taking his constitutional,” he explained.
“Yes, I know,” said Mary. “I bowed to him, too, though I’ve never met him. In fact, I’ve only seen him once — no, twice. I hope he won’t think I’m very bold, bowing to him.”
“I doubt if he noticed it,” said honest Jim.
“Oh, no!” she cried.
“What’s the trouble?”
“I’m almost sure people notice it when I bow to them.”
“Oh, I see!” said Jim. “Of course they would ordinarily, but Bibbs is funny.”
“Is he? How?” she asked. “He strikes me as anything but funny.”
“Well, I’m his brother,” Jim said, deprecatingly, “but I don’t know what he’s like, and, to tell the truth, I’ve never felt exactly like I WAS his brother, the way I do Roscoe. Bibbs never did seem more than half alive to me. Of course Roscoe and I are older, and when we were boys we were too big to play with him, but he never played anyway, with boys his own age. He’d rather just sit in the house and mope around by himself. Nobody could ever get him to DO anything; you can’t get him to do anything now. He never had any LIFE in him; and honestly, if he is my brother, I must say I believe Bibbs Sheridan is the laziest man God ever made! Father put him in the machine-shop over at the Pump Works — best thing in the world for him — and he was just plain no account. It made him sick! If he’d had the right kind of energy — the kind father’s got, for instance, or Roscoe, either — why, it wouldn’t have made him sick. And suppose it was either of them — yes, or me, either — do you think any of us would have stopped if we WERE sick? Not much! I hate to say it, but Bibbs Sheridan’ll never amount to anything as long as he lives.”
Mary looked thoughtful. “Is there any particular reason why he should?” she asked.
“Good gracious!” he exclaimed. “You don’t mean that, do you? Don’t you believe in a man’s knowing how to earn his salt, no matter how much money his father’s got? Hasn’t the business of this world got to be carried on by everybody in it? Are we going to lay back on what we’ve got and see other fellows get ahead of us? If we’ve got big things already, isn’t it every man’s business to go ahead and make ’em bigger? Isn’t it his duty? Don’t we always want to get bigger and bigger?”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 164