“Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, “I’m afraid you’ll have to take me home with you. I—” She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.
“Why — why — yes,” Bibbs stammered. “I’ll — I’ll be de — Won’t you get in?”
In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then Mary without more ado got into the coupe, and Bibbs followed, closing the door.
“You’re very kind,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I should have had to walk, and it’s beginning to get dark. It’s three miles, I think.”
“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It — it is beginning to get dark. I — I noticed that.”
“I ought to tell you — I—” Mary began, confusedly. She bit her lip, sat silent a moment, then spoke with composure. “It must seem odd, my—”
“No, no!” Bibbs protested, earnestly. “Not in the — in the least.”
“It does, though,” said Mary. “I had not intended to come to the cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came and whispered to me that ‘the family wished me to’ — I think your sister sent him. So I came. But when we reached here I — oh, I felt that perhaps I—”
Bibbs nodded gravely. “Yes, yes,” he murmured.
“I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,” she continued. “I mean opposite from — from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in the other direction; and I didn’t realize how little time it takes. From where I was I couldn’t see the carriages leaving — at least I didn’t notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here. I didn’t know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course they didn’t think to wait for me. That’s why—”
“Yes,” said Bibbs, “I—” And that seemed all he had to say just then.
Mary looked out through the dusty window. “I think we’d better be going home, if you please,” she said.
“Yes,” Bibbs agreed, not moving. “It will be dark before we get there.”
She gave him a quick little glance. “I think you must be very tired, Mr. Sheridan; and I know you have reason to be,” she said, gently. “If you’ll let me, I’ll—” And without explaining her purpose she opened the door on her side of the coupe and leaned out.
Bibbs started in blank perplexity, not knowing what she meant to do.
“Driver!” she called, in her clear voice, loudly. “Driver! We’d like to start, please! Driver! Stop at the house just north of Mr. Sheridan’s, please.” The wheels began to move, and she leaned back beside Bibbs once more. “I noticed that he was asleep when we got in,” she said. “I suppose they have a great deal of night work.”
Bibbs drew a long breath and waited till he could command his voice. “I’ve never been able to apologize quickly,” he said, with his accustomed slowness, “because if I try to I stammer. My brother Roscoe whipped me once, when we were boys, for stepping on his slate-pencil. It took me so long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I did.”
Mary Vertrees had never heard anything quite like the drawling, gentle voice or the odd implication that his not noticing the motionless state of their vehicle was an “accident.” She had formed a casual impression of him, not without sympathy, but at once she discovered that he was unlike any of her cursory and vague imaginings of him. And suddenly she saw a picture he had not intended to paint for sympathy: a sturdy boy hammering a smaller, sickly boy, and the sickly boy unresentful. Not that picture alone; others flashed before her. Instantaneously she had a glimpse of Bibbs’s life and into his life. She had a queer feeling, new to her experience, of knowing him instantly. It startled her a little; and then, with some surprise, she realized that she was glad he had sat so long, after getting into the coupe, before he noticed that it had not started. What she did not realize, however, was that she had made no response to his apology, and they passed out of the cemetery gates, neither having spoken again.
Bibbs was so content with the silence he did not know that it was silence. The dusk, gathering in their small inclosure, was filled with a rich presence for him; and presently it was so dark that neither of the two could see the other, nor did even their garments touch. But neither had any sense of being alone. The wheels creaked steadily, rumbling presently on paved streets; there were the sounds, as from a distance, of the plod-plod of the horses; and sometimes the driver became audible, coughing asthmatically, or saying, “You, JOE!” with a spiritless flap of the whip upon an unresponsive back. Oblongs of light from the lamps at street-corners came swimming into the interior of the coupe and, thinning rapidly to lances, passed utterly, leaving greater darkness. And yet neither of these two last attendants at Jim Sheridan’s funeral broke the silence.
It was Mary who preceived the strangeness of it — too late. Abruptly she realized that for an indefinite interval she had been thinking of her companion and not talking to him. “Mr. Sheridan,” she began, not knowing what she was going to say, but impelled to say anything, as she realized the queerness of this drive— “Mr. Sheridan, I—”
The coupe stopped. “You, JOE!” said the driver, reproachfully, and climbed down and opened the door.
“What’s the trouble?” Bibbs inquired.
“Lady said stop at the first house north of Mr. Sheridan’s, sir.”
Mary was incredulous; she felt that it couldn’t be true and that it mustn’t be true that they had driven all the way without speaking.
“What?” Bibbs demanded.
“We’re there, sir,” said the driver, sympathetically. “Next house north of Mr. Sheridan’s.”
Bibbs descended to the curb. “Why, yes,” he said. “Yes, you seem to be right.” And while he stood staring at the dimly illuminated front windows of Mr. Vertrees’s house Mary got out, unassisted.
“Let me help you,” said Bibbs, stepping toward her mechanically; and she was several feet from the coupe when he spoke.
“Oh no,” she murmured. “I think I can—” She meant that she could get out of the coupe without help, but, perceiving that she had already accomplished this feat, she decided not to complete the sentence.
“You, JOE!” cried the driver, angrily, climbing to his box. And he rumbled away at his team’s best pace — a snail’s.
“Thank you for bringing me home, Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, stiffly. She did not offer her hand. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Bibbs said in response, and, turning with her, walked beside her to the door. Mary made that a short walk; she almost ran. Realization of the queerness of their drive was growing upon her, beginning to shock her; she stepped aside from the light that fell through the glass panels of the door and withheld her hand as it touched the old-fashioned bell-handle.
“I’m quite safe, thank you,” she said, with a little emphasis. “Good night.”
“Good night,” said Bibbs, and went obediently. When he reached the street he looked back, but she had vanished within the house.
Moving slowly away, he caromed against two people who were turning out from the pavement to cross the street. They were Roscoe and his wife.
“Where are your eyes, Bibbs?” demanded Roscoe. “Sleep-walking, as usual?”
But Sibyl took the wanderer by the arm. “Come over to our house for a little while, Bibbs,” she urged. “I want to—”
“No, I’d better—”
“Yes. I want you to. Your father’s gone to bed, and they’re all quiet over there — all worn out. Just come for a minute.”
He yielded, and when they were in the house she repeated herself with real feeling: “‘All worn out!’ Well, if anybody is, YOU are, Bibbs! And I don’t wonder; you’ve done every bit of the work of it. You mustn’t get down sick again. I’m going to make you take a little brandy.”
He let her have her own way, following her into the dining-room, and was grateful when she brought him a tiny glass filled from one of the decanters on the sideboard. Roscoe gloomily poured for himself a much heavier libation in a larger
glass; and the two men sat, while Sibyl leaned against the sideboard, reviewing the episodes of the day and recalling the names of the donors of flowers and wreaths. She pressed Bibbs to remain longer when he rose to go, and then, as he persisted, she went with him to the front door. He opened it, and she said:
“Bibbs, you were coming out of the Vertreeses’ house when we met you. How did you happen to be there?”
“I had only been to the door,” he said. “Good night, Sibyl.”
“Wait,” she insisted. “We saw you coming out.”
“I wasn’t,” he explained, moving to depart. “I’d just brought Miss Vertrees home.”
“What?” she cried.
“Yes,” he said, and stepped out upon the porch, “that was it. Good night, Sibyl.”
“Wait!” she said, following him across the threshold. “How did that happen? I thought you were going to wait while those men filled the — the—” She paused, but moved nearer him insistently.
“I did wait. Miss Vertrees was there,” he said, reluctantly. “She had walked away for a while and didn’t notice that the carriages were leaving. When she came back the coupe waiting for me was the only one left.”
Sibyl regarded him with dilating eyes. She spoke with a slow breathlessness. “And she drove home from Jim’s funeral — with you!”
Without warning she burst into laughter, clapped her hand ineffectually over her mouth, and ran back uproariously into the house, hurling the door shut behind her.
CHAPTER XIII
BIBBS WENT HOME pondering. He did not understand why Sibyl had laughed. The laughter itself had been spontaneous and beyond suspicion, but it seemed to him that she had only affected the effort to suppress it and that she wished it to be significant. Significant of what? And why had she wished to impress upon him the fact of her overwhelming amusement? He found no answer, but she had succeeded in disturbing him, and he wished that he had not encountered her.
At home, uncles, aunts, and cousins from out of town were wandering about the house, several mournfully admiring the “Bay of Naples,” and others occupied with the Moor and the plumbing, while they waited for trains. Edith and her mother had retired to some upper fastness, but Bibbs interviewed Jackson and had the various groups of relatives summoned to the dining-room for food. One great-uncle, old Gideon Sheridan from Boonville, could not be found, and Bibbs went in search of him. He ransacked the house, discovering the missing antique at last by accident. Passing his father’s closed door on tiptoe, Bibbs heard a murmurous sound, and paused to listen. The sound proved to be a quavering and rickety voice, monotonously bleating:
“The Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! We got to remember that; we got to remember that! I’m a-gittin’ along, James; I’m a-gittin’ along, and I’ve seen a-many of ’em go — two daughters and a son the Lord give me, and He has taken all away. For the Lo-ord givuth and the Lo-ord takuth away! Remember the words of Bildad the Shuhite, James. Bildad the Shuhite says, ‘He shall have neither son nor nephew among his people, nor any remaining in his dwellings.’ Bildad the Shuhite—”
Bibbs opened the door softly. His father was lying upon the bed, in his underclothes, face downward, and Uncle Gideon sat near by, swinging backward and forward in a rocking-chair, stroking his long white beard and gazing at the ceiling as he talked. Bibbs beckoned him urgently, but Uncle Gideon paid no attention.
“Bildad the Shuhite spake and his says, ‘If thy children have sinned against Him and He have cast them away—’”
There was a muffled explosion beneath the floor, and the windows rattled. The figure lying face downward on the bed did not move, but Uncle Gideon leaped from his chair. “My God!” he cried. “What’s that?”
There came a second explosion, and Uncle Gideon ran out into the hall. Bibbs went to the head of the great staircase, and, looking down, discovered the source of the disturbance. Gideon’s grandson, a boy of fourteen, had brought his camera to the funeral and was taking “flash-lights” of the Moor. Uncle Gideon, reassured by Bibbs’s explanation, would have returned to finish his quotation from Bildad the Shuhite, but Bibbs detained him, and after a little argument persuaded him to descend to the dining-room whither Bibbs followed, after closing the door of his father’s room.
He kept his eye on Gideon after dinner, diplomatically preventing several attempts on the part of that comforter to reascend the stairs; and it was a relief to Bibbs when George announced that an automobile was waiting to convey the ancient man and his grandson to their train. They were the last to leave, and when they had gone Bibbs went sighing to his own room.
He stretched himself wearily upon the bed, but presently rose, went to the window, and looked for a long time at the darkened house where Mary Vertrees lived. Then he opened his trunk, took therefrom a small note-book half filled with fragmentary scribblings, and began to write:
Laughter after a funeral. In this reaction people will laugh at
anything and at nothing. The band plays a dirge on the way to the
cemetery, but when it turns back, and the mourning carriages are
out of hearing, it strikes up, “Darktown is Out To-night.” That
is natural — but there are women whose laughter is like the whirring
of whips. Why is it that certain kinds of laughter seem to spoil
something hidden away from the laughers? If they do not know of
it, and have never seen it, how can their laughter hurt it? Yet it
does. Beauty is not out of place among grave-stones. It is not
out of place anywhere. But a woman who has been betrothed to a
man would not look beautiful at his funeral. A woman might look
beautiful, though, at the funeral of a man whom she had known and
liked. And in that case, too, she would probably not want to talk
if she drove home from the cemetery with his brother: nor would
she want the brother to talk. Silence is usually either stupid or
timid. But for a man who stammers if he tries to talk fast, and
drawls so slowly, when he doesn’t stammer, that nobody has time to
listen to him, silence is advisable. Nevertheless, too much silence
is open to suspicion. It may be reticence, or it may be a vacuum.
It may be dignity, or it may be false teeth.
Sometimes an imperceptible odor will become perceptible in a small
inclosure, such as a closed carriage. The ghost of gasoline rising
from a lady’s glove might be sweeter to the man riding beside her
than all the scents of Arcady in spring. It depends on the lady —
but there ARE! Three miles may be three hundred miles, or it may
be three feet. When it is three feet you have not time to say a
great deal before you reach the end of it. Still, it may be that
one should begin to speak.
No one could help wishing to stay in a world that holds some of
the people that are in this world. There are some so wonderful
you do not understand how the dead COULD die. How could they let
themselves? A falling building does not care who falls with it.
It does not choose who shall be upon its roof and who shall not.
Silence CAN be golden? Yes. But perhaps if a woman of the world
should find herself by accident sitting beside a man for the length
of time it must necessarily take two slow old horses to jog three
miles, she might expect that man to say something of some sort!
Even if she thought him a feeble hypochondriac, even if she had
heard from others that he was a disappointment to his own people,
even if she had seen for herself that he was a useless and
irritating encumbrance everywhere, she might expect him at least
to speak — she might expect him to open his mouth and try to make
sounds, if he o
nly barked. If he did not even try, but sat every
step of the way as dumb as a frozen fish, she might THINK him a
frozen fish. And she might be right. She might be right if she
thought him about as pleasant a companion as — as Bildad the Shuhite!
Bibbs closed his note-book, replacing it in his trunk. Then, after a period of melancholy contemplation, he undressed, put on a dressing-gown and slippers, and went softly out into the hall — to his father’s door. Upon the floor was a tray which Bibbs had sent George, earlier in the evening, to place upon a table in Sheridan’s room — but the food was untouched. Bibbs stood listening outside the door for several minutes. There came no sound from within, and he went back to his own room and to bed.
In the morning he woke to a state of being hitherto unknown in his experience. Sometimes in the process of waking there is a little pause — sleep has gone, but coherent thought has not begun. It is a curious half-void, a glimpse of aphasia; and although the person experiencing it may not know for that instant his own name or age or sex, he may be acutely conscious of depression or elation. It is the moment, as we say, before we “remember”; and for the first time in Bibbs’s life it came to him bringing a vague happiness. He woke to a sense of new riches; he had the feeling of a boy waking to a birthday. But when the next moment brought him his memory, he found nothing that could explain his exhilaration. On the contrary, under the circumstances it seemed grotesquely unwarranted. However, it was a brief visitation and was gone before he had finished dressing. It left a little trail, the pleased recollection of it and the puzzle of it, which remained unsolved. And, in fact, waking happily in the morning is not usually the result of a drive home from a funeral. No wonder the sequence evaded Bibbs Sheridan!
His father had gone when he came down-stairs. “Went on down to ‘s office, jes’ same,” Jackson informed him. “Came sat breakfas’-table, all by ‘mself; eat nothin’. George bring nice breakfas’, but he di’n’ eat a thing. Yessuh, went on down-town, jes’ same he yoosta do. Yessuh, I reckon putty much ev’y-thing goin’ go on same as it yoosta do.”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 169