“Wouldn’t you?” she asked, without a trace of coquetry.
“If I CAN!” he said, in a low voice.
“Ah, that’s very pretty!” she laughed. “You’re such an honest person, it’s pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety.” She became grave again immediately. “I hear myself laughing as if it were some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity.” She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall, facing him. “You’ve GOT to go back to that place?”
He nodded.
“And the other time you did it—”
“Just over it,” said Bibbs. “Two years. But I don’t mind the prospect of a repetition so much as—”
“So much as what?” she prompted, as he stopped.
Bibbs looked up at her shyly. “I want to say it, but — but I come to a dead balk when I try. I—”
“Go on. Say it, whatever it is,” she bade him. “You wouldn’t know how to say anything I shouldn’t like.”
“I doubt if you’d either like or dislike what I want to say,” he returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet — he seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. “You see, all my life — until I met you — if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying things is a new trick for me, and this — well, it’s just this: I used to feel as if I hadn’t ever had any sort of a life at all. I’d never been of use to anything or anybody, and I’d never had anything, myself, except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it’s different — I’m still of no use to anybody, and I don’t see any prospect of being useful, but I have had something for myself. I’ve had a beautiful and happy experience, and it makes my life seem to be — I mean I’m glad I’ve lived it! That’s all; it’s your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have, this strange, beautiful, happy little while!”
He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and loud.
And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. “If you think it has been — happy — to be friends with me — you’d want to — to make it last.”
“Yes,” said Bibbs, as faintly.
“You’d want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes,” he gulped.
“But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it’s over.”
He tried to evade her. “Oh, a day-laborer can’t come in his overalls—”
“No,” she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. “You said what you did because you think the shop’s going to kill you.”
“No, no!”
“Yes, you do think that!” She rose to her feet again and came and stood before him. “Or you think it’s going to send you back to the sanitarium. Don’t deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I’m a friend, or I couldn’t do it. Well, if you meant what you said — and you did mean it, I know it! — you’re not going to go back to the sanitarium. The shop sha’n’t hurt you. It sha’n’t!”
And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid in generous strength, her eyes shining and wet.
“If I mean THAT much to you,” she cried, “they can’t harm you! Go back to the shop — but come to me when your day’s work is done. Let the machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!”
He stumbled to his feet. “You say—” he gasped.
“Every evening, dear Bibbs!”
He could only stare, bewildered.
“EVERY evening. I want you. They sha’n’t hurt you again!” And she held out her hand to him; it was strong and warm in his tremulous clasp. “If I could, I’d go and feed the strips of zinc to the machine with you,” she said. “But all day long I’ll send my thoughts to you. You must keep remembering that your friend stands beside you. And when the work is done — won’t the night make up for the day?”
Light seemed to glow from her; he was blinded by that radiance of kindness. But all he could say was, huskily, “To think you’re there — with me — standing beside the old zinc-eater—”
And they laughed and looked at each other, and at last Bibbs found what it meant not to be alone in the world. He had a friend.
CHAPTER XX
WHEN HE CAME into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood before him. “I’m cured, father,” he said. “When do I go back to the shop? I’m ready.”
The desolate and grim old man did not relax. “I was sittin’ up to give you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it’s about time! I just wanted to see if you’d have manhood enough not to make me take you over there by the collar. Last night I made up my mind I’d give you just one more day. Well, you got to it before I did — pretty close to the eleventh hour! All right. Start in to-morrow. It’s the first o’ the month. Think you can get up in time?”
“Six o’clock,” Bibbs responded, briskly. “And I want to tell you — I’m going in a ‘cheerful spirit.’ As you said, I’ll go and I’ll ‘like it’!”
“That’s YOUR lookout!” his father grunted. “They’ll put you back on the clippin’-machine. You get nine dollars a week.”
“More than I’m worth, too,” said Bibbs, cheerily. “That reminds me, I didn’t mean YOU by ‘Midas’ in that nonsense I’d been writing. I meant—”
“Makes a hell of a lot o’ difference what you meant!”
“I just wanted you to know. Good night, father.”
“G’night!”
The sound of the young man’s footsteps ascending the stairs became inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slippers could be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance, her oblique expression and the state of her toilette being those of a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has got up to look for burglars.
“Papa!” she exclaimed, drowsily. “Why’n’t you go to bed? It must be goin’ on ‘leven o’clock!”
She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to the fire. “What’s the matter?” she asked, sleep and anxiety striving sluggishly with each other in her voice. “I knew you were worried all dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim’s bein’ taken away like he was. What’s worryin’ you now, papa?”
“Nothin’.”
She jeered feebly. “N’ tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn’t you?”
“He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning,” said Sheridan.
“Just the same as he did before?”
“Just pre-CISELY!”
“How — how long you goin’ to keep him at it, papa?” she asked, timidly.
“Until he KNOWS something!” The unhappy man struck his palms together, then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his wont when he talked. “He’ll go back to the machine he couldn’t learn to tend properly in the six months he was there, and he’ll stick to it till he DOES learn it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself WHY I want him to learn it? No! And I ain’t a-goin’ to tell him, either! When he went there I had ’em set him on the simplest machine we got — and he stuck there! How much prospect would there be of his learnin’ to run the whole business if he can’t run the easiest machine in it? I sent him there to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He didn’t LIKE it! That boy’s whole life, there’s been a settin’ up o’ something mulish that’s against everything I want him to do. I don’t know what it is, but it’s got to be worked out of him. Now, labor ain’t any more a simple question than what it was when we were young. My idea is
that, outside o’ union troubles, the man that can manage workin’-men is the man that’s been one himself. Well, I set Bibbs to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE set himself to balk on the first job! That’s what he did, and the balk’s lasted close on to three years. If he balks again I’m just done with him! Sometimes I feel like I was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!”
“I knew there was something else,” said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over a yawn. “You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now— ‘less you’ll tell me?”
“Suppose something happened to Roscoe,” he said. “THEN what’d I have to look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things together? A lummix! A lummix that hasn’t learned how to push a strip o’ zinc along a groove!”
“Roscoe?” she yawned. “You needn’t worry about Roscoe, papa. He’s the strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better health than he does. I don’t believe he’s even had a cold in five years. You better go up to bed, papa.”
“Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don’t know what it means, keepin’ property together these days — just keepin’ it ALIVE, let alone makin’ it grow the way I do. I’ve seen too many estates hacked away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the wolves come out o’ the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can tear off for themselves; and if that dead man’s chuldern ain’t on the job, night and day, everything he built’ll get carried off. Carried off? I’ve seen a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone — there wasn’t even a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I’ve seen it, time and again. My Lord! when I think o’ such things comin’ to ME! It don’t seem like I deserved it — no man ever tried harder to raise his boys right than I have. I planned and planned and planned how to bring ’em up to be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to be builders to build, and build bigger. I tell you this business life is no fool’s job nowadays — a man’s got to have eyes in the back of his head. You hear talk, sometimes, ‘d make you think the millennium had come — but right the next breath you’ll hear somebody hollerin’ about ‘the great unrest.’ You BET there’s a ‘great unrest’! There ain’t any man alive smart enough to see what it’s goin’ to do to us in the end, nor what day it’s got set to bust loose, but it’s frothin’ and bubblin’ in the boiler. This country’s been fillin’ up with it from all over the world for a good many years, and the old camp-meetin’ days are dead and done with. Church ain’t what it used to be. Nothin’s what it used to be — everything’s turned up from the bottom, and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There’s an awful ruction goin’ on, and you got to keep hoppin’ if you’re goin’ to keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like bugs on the bottom of a board — after any piece o’ money they hear is loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most and the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you’ve made it. And the woods are full o’ mighty industrious men that’s got only one motto: ‘Get the other fellow’s money before he gets yours!’ And when a man’s built as I have, when he’s built good and strong, and made good things grow and prosper — THOSE are the fellows that lay for the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names to it! And what’s the use of my havin’ ever been born, if such a thing as that is goin’ to happen? What’s the use of my havin’ worked my life and soul into my business, if it’s all goin’ to be dispersed and scattered soon as I’m in the ground?”
He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating — little regarding the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. “You think this is a time for young men to be lyin’ on beds of ease? I tell you there never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps — yes, by George! if a man lays down they’ll eat him before he wakes! — but the live man can build straight up till he touches the sky! This is the business man’s day; it used to be the soldier’s day and the statesman’s day, but this is OURS! And it ain’t a Sunday to go fishin’ — it’s turmoil! turmoil! — and you got to go out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself, or you’ll only be a dead man walkin’ around dreamin’ you’re alive. And that’s what my son Bibbs has been doin’ all his life, and what he’d rather do now than go out and do his part by me. And if anything happens to Roscoe—”
“Oh, do stop worryin’ over such nonsense,” Mrs. Sheridan interrupted, irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. “There isn’t anything goin’ to happen to Roscoe, and you’re just tormentin’ yourself about nothin’. Aren’t you EVER goin’ to bed?”
Sheridan halted. “All right, mamma,” he said, with a vast sigh. “Let’s go up.” And he snapped off the electric light, leaving only the rosy glow of the fire.
“Did you speak to Roscoe?” she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her drowsiness. “Did you mention about what I told you the other evening?”
“No. I will to-morrow.”
But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did Sheridan see fit to enter his son’s house. He waited. Then, on the fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father’s office at nine in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
“They told me down-stairs you’d left word you wanted to see me.”
“Sit down,” said Sheridan, rising.
Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously, and then walked away, smiling bitterly. “Boh!” he exclaimed. “Still at it!”
“Yes,” said Roscoe. “I’ve had a couple of drinks this morning. What about it?”
“I reckon I better adopt some decent young man,” his father returned. “I’d bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I would!”
“Better do it,” Roscoe assented, sullenly.
“When’d you begin this thing?”
“I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is.”
“Leave that talk out! You know what I mean.”
“Well, I don’t know as I ever had too much in office hours — until the other day.”
Sheridan began cutting. “It’s a lie. I’ve had Ray Wills up from your office. He didn’t want to give you away, but I put the hooks into him, and he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn’t work. You been leavin’ your office for drinks every few hours for the last three weeks. I been over your books. Your office is way behind. You haven’t done any work, to count, in a month.”
“All right,” said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. “It’s all true.”
“What you goin’ to do about it?”
Roscoe’s head was sunk between his shoulders. “I can’t stand very much talk about it, father,” he said, pleadingly.
“No!” Sheridan cried. “Neither can I! What do you think it means to ME?” He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. “I can’t stand to talk about it any more’n you can to listen, but I’m goin’ to find out what’s the matter with you, and I’m goin’ to straighten you out!”
Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
“You can’t straighten me out.”
“See here!” said Sheridan. “Can you go back to your office and stay sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a couple o’ huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out o’ your hand if they see you tryin’ to take it?”
“You needn’t worry about that,” said Roscoe, looking up with a faint resentment. “I’m not drinking because I’ve got a thirst.”
“Well, what have you got?”
“Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you.”
“We’ll see about that!” said Sheridan, harshly. “Now I can’t fool with you to-day, and you get up out o’ that chair and get out o’ my office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn’t come last Sunday — but you come to-morrow. I’ll talk this out with you when the women-
folks are workin’ the phonograph, after dinner. Can you keep sober till then? You better be sure, because I’m going to send Abercrombie down to your office every little while, and he’ll let me know.”
Roscoe paused at the door. “You told Abercrombie about it?” he asked.
“TOLD him!” And Sheridan laughed hideously. “Do you suppose there’s an elevator-boy in the whole dam’ building that ain’t on to you?”
Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
CHAPTER XXI
“WHO looks a mustang in the eye?
Changety, chang, chang! Bash! Crash! BANG!”
So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater’s crash with vocal imitations:
Fearless and bold,
Chang! Bash! Behold!
With a leap from the ground
To the saddle in a bound,
And away — and away!
Hi-YAY!
WHO looks a chang, chang, bash, crash, bang!
WHO cares a dash how you bash and you crash?
NIGHT’S on the way
EACH time I say,
Hi-YAY!
Crash, chang! Bash, chang! Chang, bang, BANG!
The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually; everything was implacably in motion — nowhere was there a rest for the dizzied eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become dizzy instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea to faintness. But he felt neither now. “ALL DAY LONG I’LL SEND MY THOUGHTS TO YOU. YOU MUST KEEP REMEMBERING THAT YOUR FRIEND STANDS BESIDE YOU.” He saw her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place became suffused with radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop; he was still a poet there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 175