“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.
CHAPTER XXXII
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 above-board 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?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, he is so!” Sheridan now had the air of a rambling talker and gossip with all day on his hands. “Take him on Bibbs’s case. I was talkin’ about Bibbs’s case with him this morning. Well, you’d laugh to hear the way ole Gurney talks about THAT! ‘Course he IS just as much a friend as he is doctor — and he takes as much interest in Bibbs as if he was in the family. He says Bibbs isn’t anyways bad off YET; and he thinks he could stand the pace and get fat on it if — well, this is what’d made YOU laugh if you’d been there, Miss Vertrees — honest it would!” He paused to chuckle, and stole a glance at her. She was gazing straight before her at the wall; her lips were parted, and — visibly — she was breathing heavily and quickly. He feared that she was growing furiously angry; but he had led to what he wanted to say, and he went on, determined now to say it all. He leaned forward and altered his voice to one of confidential friendliness, though in it he still maintained a tone which indicated that ole Doc Gurney’s opinion was only a joke he shared with her. “Yes, sir, you certainly would ‘a’ laughed! Why, that ole man thinks YOU got something to do with it. You’ll have to blame it on him, young lady, if it makes you feel like startin’ out to whip somebody! He’s actually got THIS theory: he says Bibbs got to gettin’ better while he worked over there at the shop because you kept him cheered up and feelin’ good. And he says if you could manage to just stand him hangin’ around a little — maybe not much, but just SOMEtimes — again, he believed it’d do Bibbs a mighty lot o’ good. ‘Course, that’s only what the doctor said. Me, I don’t know anything about that; but I can say this much — I never saw any such a MENTAL improvement in anybody in my life as I have lately in Bibbs. I expect you’d find him a good deal more entertaining than what he used to be — and I know it’s a kind of embarrassing thing to suggest after the way he piled in over here that day to ask you to stand up before the preacher with him, but accordin’ to ole Doc GURNEY, he’s got you on his brain so bad—”
Mary jumped. “Mr. Sheridan!” she exclaimed.
He sighed profoundly. “There! I noticed you were gettin’ mad. I didn’t—”
“No, no, no!” she cried. “But I don’t understand — and I think you don’t. What is it you want me to do?”
He sighed again, but this time with relief. “Well, well!” he said. “You’re right. It’ll be easier to talk plain. I ought to known I could with you, all the time. I just hoped you’d let that boy come and see you sometimes, once more. Could you?”
“You don’t understand.” She clasped her hands together in a sorrowful gesture. “Yes, we must talk plain. Bibbs heard that I’d tried to make your oldest son care for me because I was poor, and so Bibbs came and asked me to marry him — because he was sorry for me. And I CAN’T see him any more,” she cried in distress. “I CAN’T!”
Sheridan cleared his throat uncomfortably. “You mean because he thought that about you?”
“No, no! What he thought was TRUE!”
“Well — you mean he was so much in — you mean he thought so much of you—” The words were inconceivably awkward upon Sheridan’s tongue; he seemed to be in doubt even about pronouncing them, but after a ghastly pause he bravely repeated them. “You mean he thought so much of you that you just couldn’t stand him around?”
“NO! He was sorry for me. He cared for me; he was fond of me; and he’d respected me — too much! In the finest way he loved me, if you like, and he’d have done anything on earth for me, as I would for him, and as he knew I would. It was beautiful, Mr. Sheridan,” she said. “But the cheap, bad things one has done seem always to come back — they wait, and pull you down when you’re happiest. Bibbs found me out, you see; and he wasn’t ‘in love’ with me at all.”
“He wasn’t? Well, it seems to me he gave up everything he wanted to do — it was fool stuff, but he certainly wanted it mighty bad — he just threw it away and walked right up and took the job he swore he never would — just for you. And it looks to me as if a man that’d do that must think quite a heap o’ the girl he does it for! You say it was only because he was sorry, but let me tell you there’s only ONE girl he could feel THAT sorry for! Yes, sir!”
“No, no,” she said. “Bibbs isn’t like other men — he would do anything for anybody.”
Sheridan grinned. “Perhaps not so much as you think, nowadays,” he said. “For instance, I got kind of a suspicion he doesn’t believe in ‘sentiment in business.’ But that’s neither here nor there. What he wanted was, just plain and simple, for you to marry him. Well, I was afraid his thinkin’ so much OF you had kind o’ sickened you of him — the way it does sometimes. But from the way you talk, I understand that ain’t the trouble.” He coughed, and his voice trembled a little. “Now here, Miss Vertrees, I don’t have to tell you — because you see things easy — I know I got no business comin’ to you like this, but I had to make Bibbs go my way instead of his own — I had to do it for the sake o’ my business and on his own account, too — and I expect you got some idea how it hurt him to give up. Well, he’s made good. He didn’t come in half-hearted or mean; he came in — all the way! But there isn’t anything in it to him; you can see he’s just shut his teeth
on it and goin’ ahead with dust in his mouth. You see, one way of lookin’ at it, he’s got nothin’ to work FOR. And it seems to me like it cost him your friendship, and I believe — honest — that’s what hurt him the worst. Now you said we’d talk plain. Why can’t you let him come back?”
She covered her face desperately with her hands. “I can’t!”
He rose, defeated, and looking it.
“Well, I mustn’t press you,” he said, gently.
At that she cried out, and dropped her hands and let him see her face. “Ah! He was only sorry for me!”
He gazed at her intently. Mary was proud, but she had a fatal honesty, and it confessed the truth of her now; she was helpless. It was so clear that even Sheridan, marveling and amazed, was able to see it. Then a change came over him; gloom fell from him, and he grew radiant.
“Don’t! Don’t” she cried. “You mustn’t—”
“I won’t tell him,” said Sheridan, from the doorway. “I won’t tell anybody anything!”
CHAPTER XXXIII
THERE WAS A heavy town-fog that afternoon, a smoke-mist, densest in the sanctuary of the temple. The people went about in it, busy and dirty, thickening their outside and inside linings of coal-tar, asphalt, sulphurous acid, oil of vitriol, and the other familiar things the men liked to breathe and to have upon their skins and garments and upon their wives and babies and sweethearts. The growth of the city was visible in the smoke and the noise and the rush. There was more smoke than there had been this day of February a year earlier; there was more noise; and the crowds were thicker — yet quicker in spite of that. The traffic policeman had a hard time, for the people were independent — they retained some habits of the old market-town period, and would cross the street anywhere and anyhow, which not only got them killed more frequently than if they clung to the legal crossings, but kept the motormen, the chauffeurs, and the truck-drivers in a stew of profane nervousness. So the traffic policemen led harried lives; they themselves were killed, of course, with a certain periodicity, but their main trouble was that they could not make the citizens realize that it was actually and mortally perilous to go about their city. It was strange, for there were probably no citizens of any length of residence who had not personally known either some one who had been killed or injured in an accident, or some one who had accidentally killed or injured others. And yet, perhaps it was not strange, seeing the sharp preoccupation of the faces — the people had something on their minds; they could not stop to bother about dirt and danger.
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 185