The Turmoil Part 36

"Go back to bed," he commanded. "I KNOW what I'm talkin' about; there's nothin' in it, I tell you."

She shook her head perplexedly. "You think because--because Jim was runnin' so much with her it wouldn't look right?"

"No. Nothin' to do with it."

"Then--do you know something about it that you ain't told me?"

"Yes, I do," he grunted. "Now go on. Maybe I can get a little sleep. I ain't had any yet!"

"Well--" She went to the door, her expression downcast. "I thought maybe--but--" She coughed prefatorily. "Oh, papa, something else I wanted to tell you. I was talkin' to Roscoe over the 'phone last night when the telegram came, so I forgot to tell you, but--well, Sibyl wants to come over this afternoon. Roscoe says she has something she wants to say to us. It'll be the first time she's been out since she was able to sit up--and I reckon she wants to tell us she's sorry for what happened.

They expect to get off by the end o' the week, and I reckon she wants to feel she's done what she could to kind o' make up. Anyway, that's what he said. I 'phoned him again about Edith, and he said it wouldn't disturb Sibyl, because she'd been expectin' it; she was sure all along it was goin' to happen; and, besides, I guess she's got all that foolishness pretty much out of her, bein' so sick. But what I thought was, no use bein' rough with her, papa--I expect she's suffered a good deal--and I don't think we'd ought to be, on Roscoe's account.

You'll--you'll be kind o' polite to her, won't you, papa?"

He mumbled something which was smothered under the coverlet he had pulled over his head.

"What?" she said, timidly. "I was just sayin' I hoped you'd treat Sibyl all right when she comes, this afternoon. You will, won't you, papa?"

He threw the coverlet off furiously. "I presume so!" he roared.

She departed guiltily.

But if he had accepted her proffered wager that Bibbs would go to church with Mary Vertrees that morning, Mrs. Sheridan would have lost.

Nevertheless, Bibbs and Mary did certainly set out from Mr. Vertrees's house with the purpose of going to church. That was their intention, and they had no other. They meant to go to church.

But it happened that they were attentively preoccupied in a conversation as they came to the church; and though Mary was looking to the right and Bibbs was looking to the left, Bibbs's leftward glance converged with Mary's rightward glance, and neither was looking far beyond the other at this time. It also happened that, though they were a little jostled among groups of people in the vicinity of the church, they pa.s.sed this somewhat prominent edifice without being aware of their proximity to it, and they had gone an incredible number of blocks beyond it before they discovered their error. However, feeling that they might be embarra.s.singly late if they returned, they decided that a walk would make them as good. It was a windless winter morning, with an inch of crisp snow over the ground. So they walked, and for the most part they were silent, but on their way home, after they had turned back at noon, they began to be talkative again.

"Mary," said Bibbs, after a time, "am I a sleep-walker?"

She laughed a little, then looked grave. "Does your father say you are?"

"Yes--when he's in a mood to flatter me. Other times, other names. He has quite a list."

"You mustn't mind," she said, gently. "He's been getting some pretty severe shocks. What you've told me makes me pretty sorry for him, Bibbs.

I've always been sure he's very big."

"Yes. Big and--blind. He's like a Hercules without eyes and without any consciousness except that of his strength and of his purpose to grow stronger. Stronger for what? For nothing."

"Are you sure, Bibbs? It CAN'T be for nothing; it must be stronger for something, even though he doesn't know what it is. Perhaps what he and his kind are struggling for is something so great they COULDN'T see it--so great none of us could see it."

"No, he's just like some blind, unconscious thing heaving underground--"

"Till he breaks through and leaps out into the daylight," she finished for him, cheerily.

"Into the smoke," said Bibbs. "Look at the powder of coal-dust already dirtying the decent snow, even though it's Sunday. That's from the little pigs; the big ones aren't so bad, on Sunday! There's a fleck of soot on your cheek. Some pig sent it out into the air; he might as well have thrown it on you. It would have been braver, for then he'd have taken his chance of my whipping him for it if I could."

"IS there soot on my cheek, Bibbs, or were you only saying so rhetorically? IS there?"

"Is there? There ARE soot on your cheeks, Mary--a fleck on each. One landed since I mentioned the first."

She halted immediately, giving him her handkerchief, and he succeeded in transferring most of the black from her face to the cambric. They were entirely matter-of-course about it.

An elderly couple, it chanced, had been walking behind Bibbs and Mary for the last block or so, and pa.s.sed ahead during the removal of the soot. "There!" said the elderly wife. "You're always wrong when you begin guessing about strangers. Those two young people aren't honeymooners at all--they've been married for years. A blind man could see that."

"I wish I did know who threw that soot on you," said Bibbs, looking up at the neighboring chimneys, as they went on. "They arrest children for throwing s...o...b..a.l.l.s at the street-cars, but--"

"But they don't arrest the street-cars for shaking all the pictures in the houses crooked every time they go by. Nor for the uproar they make.

I wonder what's the cost in nerves for the noise of the city each year.

Yes, we pay the price for living in a 'growing town,' whether we have money to pay or none."

"Who is it gets the pay?" said Bibbs.

"Not I!" she laughed.

"n.o.body gets it. There isn't any pay; there's only money. And only some of the men down-town get much of that. That's what my father wants me to get."

"Yes," she said, smiling to him, and nodding. "And you don't want it, and you don't need it."

"But you don't think I'm a sleep-walker, Mary?" He had told her of his father's new plans for him, though he had not described the vigor and picturesqueness of their setting forth. "You think I'm right?"

"A thousand times!" she cried. "There aren't so many happy people in this world, I think--and you say you've found what makes you happy. If it's a dream--keep it!"

"The thought of going down there--into the money shuffle--I hate it as I never hated the shop!" he said. "I hate it! And the city itself, the city that the money shuffle has made--just look at it! Look at it in winter. The snow's tried hard to make the ugliness bearable, but the ugliness is winning; it's making the snow hideous; the snow's getting dirty on top, and it's foul underneath with the dirt and disease of the unclean street. And the dirt and the ugliness and the rush and the noise aren't the worst of it; it's what the dirt and ugliness and rush and noise MEAN--that's the worst! The outward things are insufferable, but they're only the expression of a spirit--a blind embryo of a spirit, not yet a soul--oh, just greed! And this 'go ahead' nonsense! Oughtn't it all to be a fellows.h.i.+p? I shouldn't want to get ahead if I could--I'd want to help the other fellow to keep up with me."

"I read something the other day and remembered it for you," said Mary.

"It was something Burne-Jones said of a picture he was going to paint: 'In the first picture I shall make a man walking in the street of a great city, full of all kinds of happy life: children, and lovers walking, and ladies leaning from the windows all down great lengths of a street leading to the city walls; and there the gates are wide open, letting in a s.p.a.ce of green field and cornfield in harvest; and all round his head a great rain of swirling autumn leaves blowing from a little walled graveyard."

"And if I painted," Bibbs returned, "I'd paint a lady walking in the street of a great city, full of all kinds of uproarious and futile life--children being taught only how to make money, and lovers hurrying to get richer, and ladies who'd given up trying to wash their windows clean, and the gates of the city wide open, letting in slums and slaughter-houses and freight-yards, and all round this lady's head a great rain of swirling soot--" He paused, adding, thoughtfully: "And yet I believe I'm glad that soot got on your cheek. It was just as if I were your brother--the way you gave me your handkerchief to rub it off for you. Still, Edith never--"

"Didn't she?" said Mary, as he paused again.

"No. And I--" He contented himself with shaking his head instead of offering more definite information. Then he realized that they were pa.s.sing the New House, and he sighed profoundly. "Mary, our walk's almost over."

She looked as blank. "So it is, Bibbs."

They said no more until they came to her gate. As they drifted slowly to a stop, the door of Roscoe's house opened, and Roscoe came out with Sibyl, who was startlingly pale. She seemed little enfeebled by her illness, however, walking rather quickly at her husband's side and not taking his arm. The two crossed the street without appearing to see Mary and her companion, and entering the New House, were lost to sight. Mary gazed after them gravely, but Bibbs, looking at Mary, did not see them.

"Mary," he said, "you seem very serious. Is anything bothering you?"

"No, Bibbs." And she gave him a bright, quick look that made him instantly unreasonably happy.

"I know you want to go in--" he began.

"No. I don't want to."

"I mustn't keep you standing here, and I mustn't go in with you--but--I just wanted to say--I've seemed very stupid to myself this morning, grumbling about soot and all that--while all the time I--Mary, I think it's been the very happiest of all the hours you've given me. I do.

And--I don't know just why--but it's seemed to me that it was one I'd always remember. And you," he added, falteringly, "you look so--so beautiful to-day!"