The Turmoil Part 24

"By George!" cried Sheridan. "I THOUGHT I'd smelt it on you a good deal lately, but I wouldn't 'a' believed you'd take more'n was good for you.

Boh! To see you like a common hog!"

Roscoe chuckled and threw out his right arm in a meaningless gesture.

"Hog!" he repeated, chuckling.

"Yes, a hog!" said Sheridan, angrily. "In business hours! I don't object to anybody's takin' a drink if you wants to, out o' business hours; nor, if a man keeps his work right up to the scratch, I wouldn't be the one to baste him if he got good an' drunk once in two, three years, maybe.

It ain't MY way. I let it alone, but I never believed in forcin' my way on a grown-up son in moral matters. I guess I was wrong! You think them men out there are waitin' to talk business with a drunkard? You think you can come to your office and do business drunk? By George! I wonder how often this has been happening and me not on to it! I'll have a look over your books to-morrow, and I'll--"

Roscoe stumbled to his feet, laughing wildly, and stood swaying, contriving to hold himself in position by clutching the back of the heavy chair in which he had been sitting.

"Hoo--hoorah!" he cried. "'S my principles, too. Be drunkard all you want to--outside business hours. Don' for Gossake le'n'thing innerfere business hours! Business! Tha.s.sit! You're right, father. Drink! Die!

L'everything go to h.e.l.l, but DON' let innerfere business!"

Sheridan had seized the telephone upon Roscoe's desk, and was calling his own office, overhead. "Abercrombie? Come down to my son Roscoe's suite and get rid of some gentlemen that are waitin' there to see him in room two-fourteen. There's Maples and Schirmer and a couple o' fellows on the Kinsey business. Tell 'em something's come up I have to go over with Roscoe, and tell 'em to come back day after to-morrow at two.

You needn't come in to let me know they're gone; we don't want to be disturbed. Tell Pauly to call my house and send Claus down here with a closed car. We may have to go out. Tell him to hustle, and call me at Roscoe's room as soon as the car gets here. 'T's all!"

Roscoe had laughed bitterly throughout this monologue. "Drunk in business hours! Tha.s.s awf'l! Mus'n' do such thing! Mus'n' get drunk, mus'n' gamble, mus'n' kill 'nybody--not in business hours! All right any other time. Kill 'nybody you want to--'s long 'tain't in business hours! Fine! Mus'n' have any trouble 't'll innerfere business. Keep your trouble 't home. Don' bring it to th' office. Might innerfere business!

Have funerals on Sunday--might innerfere business! Don' let your wife innerfere business! Keep all, all, ALL your trouble an' your meanness, an' your trad--your tradegy--keep 'em ALL for home use! If you got die, go on die 't home--don' die round th' office! Might innerfere business!"

Sheridan picked up a newspaper from Roscoe's desk, and sat down with his back to his son, affecting to read. Roscoe seemed to be unaware of his father's significant posture.

"You know wh' I think?" he went on. "I think Bibbs only one the fam'ly any 'telligence at all. Won' work, an' di'n' get married. Jim worked, an' he got killed. I worked, an' I got married. Look at me! Jus' look at me, I ask you. Fine 'dustriss young business man. Look wha.s.s happen' to me! Fine!" He lifted his hand from the sustaining chair in a deplorable gesture, and, immediately losing his balance, fell across the chair and caromed to the floor with a crash, remaining prostrate for several minutes, during which Sheridan did not relax his apparent attention to the newspaper. He did not even look round at the sound of Roscoe's fall.

Roscoe slowly climbed to an upright position, pulling himself up by holding to the chair. He was slightly sobered outwardly, having progressed in the prostrate interval to a state of befuddlement less volatile. He rubbed his dazed eyes with the back of his left hand.

"What--what you ask me while ago?" he said.

"Nothin'."

"Yes, you did. What--what was it?"

"Nothin'. You better sit down."

"You ask' me what I thought about Lamhorn. You did ask me that. Well, I won't tell you. I won't say dam' word 'bout him!"

The telephone-bell tinkled. Sheridan placed the receiver to his ear and said, "Right down." Then he got Roscoe's coat and hat from a closet and brought them to his son. "Get into this coat," he said. "You're goin'

home."

"All ri'," Roscoe murmured, obediently.

They went out into the main hall by a side door, not pa.s.sing through the outer office; and Sheridan waited for an empty elevator, stopped it, and told the operator to take on no more pa.s.sengers until they reached the ground floor. Roscoe walked out of the building and got into the automobile without lurching, and twenty minutes later walked into his own house in the same manner, neither he nor his father having spoken a word in the interval.

Sheridan did not go in with him; he went home, and to his own room without meeting any of his family. But as he pa.s.sed Bibbs's door he heard from within the sound of a cheerful young voice humming jubilant fragments of song:

WHO looks a mustang in the eye?...

With a leap from the ground To the saddle in a bound.

And away--and away!

Hi-yay!

It was the first time in Sheridan's life that he had ever detected any musical symptom whatever in Bibbs--he had never even heard him whistle--and it seemed the last touch of irony that the useless fool should be merry to-day.

To Sheridan it was Tom o' Bedlam singing while the house burned; and he did not tarry to enjoy the melody, but went into his own room and locked the door.

CHAPTER XIX

He emerged only upon a second summons to dinner, two hours later, and came to the table so white and silent that his wife made her anxiety manifest and was but partially rea.s.sured by his explanation that his lunch had "disagreed" with him a little.

Presently, however, he spoke effectively. Bibbs, whose appet.i.te had become hearty, was helping himself to a second breast of capon from white-jacket's salver. "Here's another difference between Midas and chicken," Sheridan remarked, grimly. "Midas can eat rooster, but rooster can't eat Midas. I reckon you overlooked that. Midas looks to me like he had the advantage there."

Bibbs retained enough presence of mind to transfer the capon breast to his plate without dropping it and to respond, "Yes--he crows over it."

Having returned his antagonists's fire in this fashion, he blushed--for he could blush distinctly now--and his mother looked upon him with pleasure, thought the reference to Midas and roosters was of course jargon to her. "Did you ever see anybody improve the way that child has!" she exclaimed. "I declare, Bibbs, sometimes lately you look right handsome!"

"He's got to be such a gadabout," Edith giggled.

"I found something of his on the floor up-stairs this morning, before anybody was up," said Sheridan. "I reckon if people lose things in this house and expect to get 'em back, they better get up as soon as I do."

"What was it he lost?" asked Edith.

"He knows!" her father returned. "Seems to me like I forgot to bring it home with me. I looked it over--thought probably it was something pretty important, belongin' to a busy man like him." He affected to search his pockets. "What DID I do with it, now? Oh yes! Seems to me like I remember leavin' it down at the office--in the waste-basket."

"Good place for it," Bibbs murmured, still red.

Sheridan gave him a grin. "Perhaps pretty soon you'll be gettin' up early enough to find things before I do!"

It was a threat, and Bibbs repeated the substance of it, later in the evening, to Mary Vertrees--they had come to know each other that well.

"My time's here at last," he said, as they sat together in the melancholy gas-light of the room which had been denuded of its piano.

That removal had left an emptiness so distressing to Mr. and Mrs.

Vertrees that neither of them had crossed the threshold since the dark day; but the gas-light, though from a single jet, shed no melancholy upon Bibbs, nor could any room seem bare that knew the glowing presence of Mary. He spoke lightly, not sadly.

"Yes, it's come. I've shirked and put off, but I can't shirk and put off any longer. It's really my part to go to him--at least it would save my face. He means what he says, and the time's come to serve my sentence.

Hard labor for life, I think."

Mary shook her head. "I don't think so. He's too kind."

"You think my father's KIND?" And Bibbs stared at her.

"Yes. I'm sure of it. I've felt that he has a great, brave heart. It's only that he has to be kind in his own way--because he can't understand any other way."

"Ah yes," said Bibbs. "If that's what you mean by 'kind'!"

She looked at him gravely, earnest concern in her friendly eyes. "It's going to be pretty hard for you, isn't it?"

"Oh--self-pity!" he returned, smiling. "This has been just the last flicker of revolt. n.o.body minds work if he likes the kind of work.

There'd be no loafers in the world if each man found the thing that he could do best; but the only work I happen to want to do is useless--so I have to give it up. To-morrow I'll be a day-laborer."