The Turmoil Part 33

"What'd you say?" Sheridan thought he had not heard aright.

"I don't want it, father. I thank you--I do thank you--"

Sheridan looked perplexed. "What's the matter with you? Didn't you understand what I was tellin' you?"

"Yes."

"You sure? I reckon you didn't. I offered--"

"I know, I know! But I can't take it."

"What's the matter with you?" Sheridan was half amazed, half suspicious.

"Your head feel funny?"

"I've never been quite so sane in my life," said Bibbs, "as I have lately. And I've got just what I want. I'm living exactly the right life. I'm earning my daily bread, and I'm happy in doing it. My wages are enough. I don't want any more money, and I don't deserve any--"

"d.a.m.nation!" Sheridan sprang up. "You've turned Socialist! You been listening to those fellows down there, and you--"

"No, sir. I think there's a great deal in what they say, but that isn't it."

Sheridan tried to restrain his growing fury, and succeeded partially.

"Then what is it? What's the matter?"

"Nothing," his son returned, nervously. "Nothing--except that I'm content. I don't want to change anything."

"Why not?"

Bibbs had the incredible folly to try to explain. "I'll tell you, father, if I can. I know it may be hard to understand--"

"Yes, I think it may be," said Sheridan, grimly. "What you say usually is a LITTLE that way. Go on!"

Perturbed and distressed, Bibbs rose instinctively; he felt himself at every possible disadvantage. He was a sleeper clinging to a dream--a rough hand stretched to shake him and waken him. He went to a table and made vague drawings upon it with a finger, and as he spoke he kept his eyes lowered. "You weren't altogether right about the shop--that is, in one way you weren't, father." He glanced up apprehensively. Sheridan stood facing him, expressionless, and made no attempt to interrupt.

"That's difficult to explain," Bibbs continued, lowering his eyes again, to follow the tracings of his finger. "I--I believe the shop might have done for me this time if I hadn't--if something hadn't helped me to--oh, not only to bear it, but to be happy in it. Well, I AM happy in it.

I want to go on just as I am. And of all things on earth that I don't want, I don't want to live a business life--I don't want to be drawn into it. I don't think it IS living--and now I AM living. I have the healthful toil--and I can think. In business as important as yours I couldn't think anything but business. I don't--I don't think making money is worth while."

"Go on," said Sheridan, curtly, as Bibbs paused timidly.

"It hasn't seemed to get anywhere, that I can see," said Bibbs. "You think this city is rich and powerful--but what's the use of its being rich and powerful? They don't teach the children any more in the schools because the city is rich and powerful. They teach them more than they used to because some people--not rich and powerful people--have thought the thoughts to teach the children. And yet when you've been reading the paper I've heard you objecting to the children being taught anything except what would help them to make money. You said it was wasting the taxes. You want them taught to make a living, but not to live. When I was a little boy this wasn't an ugly town; now it's hideous. What's the use of being big just to be hideous? I mean I don't think all this has meant really going ahead--it's just been getting bigger and dirtier and noisier. Wasn't the whole country happier and in many ways wiser when it was smaller and cleaner and quieter and kinder? I know you think I'm an utter fool, father, but, after all, though, aren't business and politics just the housekeeping part of life? And wouldn't you despise a woman that not only made her housekeeping her ambition, but did it so noisily and dirtily that the whole neighborhood was in a continual turmoil over it? And suppose she talked and thought about her housekeeping all the time, and was always having additions built to her house when she couldn't keep clean what she already had; and suppose, with it all, she made the house altogether unpeaceful and unlivable--"

"Just one minute!" Sheridan interrupted, adding, with terrible courtesy, "If you will permit me? Have you ever been right about anything?"

"I don't quite--"

"I ask the simple question: Have you ever been right about anything whatever in the course of your life? Have you ever been right upon any subject or question you've thought about and talked about? Can you mention one single time when you were proved to be right?"

He was flouris.h.i.+ng the bandaged hand as he spoke, but Bibbs said only, "If I've always been wrong before, surely there's more chance that I'm right about this. It seems reasonable to suppose something would be due to bring up my average."

"Yes, I thought you wouldn't see the point. And there's another you probably couldn't see, but I'll take the liberty to mention it. You been balkin' all your life. Pretty much everything I ever wanted you to do, you'd let out SOME kind of a holler, like you are now--and yet I can't seem to remember once when you didn't have to lay down and do what I said. But go on with your remarks about our city and the business of this country. Go on!"

"I don't want to be a part of it," said Bibbs, with unwonted decision.

"I want to keep to myself, and I'm doing it now. I couldn't, if I went down there with you. I'd be swallowed into it. I don't care for money enough to--"

"No," his father interrupted, still dangerously quiet. "You've never had to earn a living. Anybody could tell that by what you say. Now, let me remind you: you're sleepin' in a pretty good bed; you're eatin' pretty fair food; you're wearin' pretty fine clothes. Just suppose one o' these noisy housekeepers--me, for instance--decided to let you do your own housekeepin'. May I ask what your proposition would be?"

"I'm earning nine dollars a week," said Bibbs, st.u.r.dily. "It's enough. I shouldn't mind at all."

"Who's payin' you that nine dollars a week?"

"My work!" Bibbs answered. "And I've done so well on that clipping-machine I believe I could work up to fifteen or even twenty a week at another job. I could be a fair plumber in a few months, I'm sure. I'd rather have a trade than be in business--I should, infinitely!"

"You better set about learnin' one pretty dam' quick!" But Sheridan struggled with his temper and again was partially successful in controlling it. "You better learn a trade over Sunday, because you're either goin' down with me to my office Monday morning--or--you can go to plumbing!"

"All right," said Bibbs, gently. "I can get along."

Sheridan raised his hands sardonically, as in prayer. "O G.o.d," he said, "this boy was crazy enough before he began to earn his nine dollars a week, and now his money's gone to his head! Can't You do nothin' for him?" Then he flung his hands apart, palms outward, in a furious gesture of dismissal. "Get out o' this room! You got a skull that's thicker'n a whale's thigh-bone, but it's cracked spang all the way across! You hated the machine-shop so bad when I sent you there, you went and stayed sick for over two years--and now, when I offer to take you out of it and give you the mint, you holler for the shop like a calf for its mammy! You're cracked! Oh, but I got a fine layout here! One son died, one quit, and one's a loon! The loon's all I got left! H. P. Ellersly's wife had a crazy brother, and they undertook to keep him at the house. First morning he was there he walked straight though a ten-dollar plate-gla.s.s window out into the yard. He says, 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!'

That's what you're doin'! You want to spend your life sayin', 'Oh, look at the pretty dandelion!' and you don't care a tinker's dam' what you bust! Well, mister, loon or no loon, cracked and crazy or whatever you are, I'll take you with me Monday morning, and I'll work you and learn you--yes, and I'll lam you, if I got to--until I've made something out of you that's fit to be called a business man! I'll keep at you while I'm able to stand, and if I have to lay down to die I'll be whisperin'

at you till they get the embalmin'-fluid into me! Now go on, and don't let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you've waked up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin' SLEEP-WALKER!"

Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it, for once; but there was more than that--he seemed to be startled by his father's last word.

CHAPTER XXV

There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading Maurice Maeterlinck's Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of the gas-jet might have been May morning suns.h.i.+ne flas.h.i.+ng amber and rose through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights as these, all the king's horses and all the king's men might not serve to break the spell.

Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all the time.

When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said: "There's something I want to read over. This:"

You would think I threw a window open on the dawn.... She has a soul that can be seen around her--that takes you in its arms like an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for everything.... I shall never understand it all. I do not know how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak of it....

He stopped and looked at her.

"You boy!" said Mary, not very clearly.

"Oh yes," he returned. "But it's true--especially my knees!"

"You boy!" she murmured again, blus.h.i.+ng charmingly. "You might read another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn't read it--I can give it to you: 'A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!'"

"I! I'm one of the hands at the Pump Works--and going to stay one, unless I have to decide to study plumbing."

"No." She shook her head. "You love and want what's beautiful and delicate and serene; it's really art that you want in your life, and have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever known, and that's what you were wistful for."

Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. "Why, no," he said; "I wanted something else more than that. I wanted you."

"And here I am!" she laughed, completely understanding. "I think we're like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I'm just the rough Burgundian cross-bow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that the devil was dead."

"He isn't, though," said Bibbs, as a hoa.r.s.e little bell in the next room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. "He gets into the clock whenever I'm with you." And, sighing deeply he rose to go.