The Turmoil Part 31

"The smoke?"

"Wonderful! He sees the sky through it, somehow. He does the ugly roofs of cheap houses through a haze of smoke, and he does smoky sunsets and smoky sunrises, and he has other things with the heavy, solid, slow columns of smoke going far out and growing more ethereal and mixing with the hazy light in the distance; and he has others with the broken sky-line of down-town, all misted with the smoke and puffs and jets of vapor that have colors like an orchard in mid-April. I'm going to take you there some Sunday afternoon, Bibbs."

"You're showing me the town," he said. "I didn't know what was in it at all."

"There are workers in beauty here," she told him, gently. "There are other painters more prosperous than my friend. There are all sorts of things."

"I didn't know."

"No. Since the town began growing so great that it called itself 'greater,' one could live here all one's life and know only the side of it that shows."

"The beauty-workers seem buried very deep," said Bibbs. "And I imagine that your friend who makes the smoke beautiful must be buried deepest of all. My father loves the smoke, but I can't imagine his buying one of your friend's pictures. He'd buy the 'Bay of Naples,' but he wouldn't get one of those. He'd think smoke in a picture was horrible--unless he could use it for an advertis.e.m.e.nt."

"Yes," she said, thoughtfully. "And really he's the town. They ARE buried pretty deep, it seems, sometimes, Bibbs."

"And yet it's all wonderful," he said. "It's wonderful to me."

"You mean the town is wonderful to you?"

"Yes, because everything is, since you called me your friend. The city is only a rumble on the horizon for me. It can't come any closer than the horizon so long as you let me see you standing by my old zinc-eater all day long, helping me. Mary--" He stopped with a gasp. "That's the first time I've called you 'Mary'!"

"Yes." She laughed, a little tremuously. "Though I wanted you to!"

"I said it without thinking. It must be because you came there to walk home with me. That must be it."

"Women like to have things said," Mary informed him, her tremulous laughter continuing. "Were you glad I came for you?"

"No--not 'glad.' I felt as if I were being carried straight up and up and up--over the clouds. I feel like that still. I think I'm that way most of the time. I wonder what I was like before I knew you. The person I was then seems to have been somebody else, not Bibbs Sheridan at all. It seems long, long ago. I was gloomy and sickly--somebody else--somebody I don't understand now, a coward afraid of shadows--afraid of things that didn't exist--afraid of my old zinc-eater! And now I'm only afraid of what might change anything."

She was silent a moment, and then, "You're happy, Bibbs?" she asked.

"Ah, don't you see?" he cried. "I want it to last for a thousand, thousand years, just as it is! You've made me so rich, I'm a miser. I wouldn't have one thing different--nothing, nothing!"

"Dear Bibbs!" she said, and laughed happily.

CHAPTER XXIII

Bibbs continued to live in the shelter of his dream. He had told Edith, after his ineffective effort to be useful in her affairs, that he had decided that he was "a member of the family"; but he appeared to have relapsed to the retired list after that one attempt at partic.i.p.ancy--he was far enough detached from membership now. These were turbulent days in the New House, but Bibbs had no part whatever in the turbulence--he seemed an absent-minded stranger, present by accident and not wholly aware that he was present. He would sit, faintly smiling over pleasant imaginings and dear reminiscences of his own, while battle raged between Edith and her father, or while Sheridan unloosed jeremiads upon the sullen Roscoe, who drank heavily to endure them. The happy dreamer wandered into storm-areas like a somnambulist, and wandered out again unawakened. He was sorry for his father and for Roscoe, and for Edith and for Sibyl, but their sufferings and outcries seemed far away.

Sibyl was under Gurney's care. Roscoe had sent for him on Sunday night, not long after Bibbs returned the abandoned wraps; and during the first days of Sibyl's illness the doctor found it necessary to be with her frequently, and to install a muscular nurse. And whether he would or no, Gurney received from his hysterical patient a variety of pungent information which would have staggered anybody but a family physician.

Among other things he was given to comprehend the change in Bibbs, and why the zinc-eater was not putting a lump in the operator's gizzard as of yore.

Sibyl was not delirious--she was a thin little ego writhing and shrieking in pain. Life had hurt her, and had driven her into hurting herself; her condition was only the adult's terrible exaggeration of that of a child after a bad bruise--there must be screaming and telling mother all about the hurt and how it happened. Sibyl babbled herself hoa.r.s.e when Gurney withheld morphine. She went from the beginning to the end in a breath. No protest stopped her; nothing stopped her.

"You ought to let me die!" she wailed. "It's cruel not to let me die!

What harm have I ever done to anybody that you want to keep me alive?

Just look at my life! I only married Roscoe to get away from home, and look what that got me into!--look where I am now! He brought me to this town, and what did I have in my life but his FAMILY? And they didn't even know the right crowd! If they had, it might have been SOMETHING!

I had nothing--nothing--nothing in the world! I wanted to have a good time--and how could I? Where's any good time among these Sheridans? They never even had wine on the table! I thought I was marrying into a rich family where I'd meet attractive people I'd read about, and travel, and go to dances--and, oh, my Lord! all I got was these Sheridans! I did the best I could; I did, indeed! Oh, I DID! I just tried to live. Every woman's got a right to live, some time in her life, I guess! Things were just beginning to look brighter--we'd moved up here, and that frozen crowd across the street were after Jim for their daughter, and they'd have started us with the right people--and then I saw how Edith was getting him away from me. She did it, too! She got him! A girl with money can do that to a married woman--yes, she can, every time! And what could I do? What can any woman do in my fix? I couldn't do ANYTHING but try to stand it--and I couldn't stand it! I went to that icicle--that Vertrees girl--and she could have helped me a little, and it wouldn't have hurt her. It wouldn't have done her any harm to help me THAT little! She treated me as if I'd been dirt that she wouldn't even take the trouble to sweep out of her house! Let her WAIT!"

Sibyl's voice, hoa.r.s.e from babbling, became no more than a husky whisper, though she strove to make it louder. She struggled half upright, and the nurse restrained her. "I'd get up out of this bed to show her she can't do such things to me! I was absolutely ladylike, and she walked out and left me there alone! She'll SEE! She started after Bibbs before Jim's casket was fairly underground, and she thinks she's landed that poor loon--but she'll see! She'll see! If I'm ever able to walk across the street again I'll show her how to treat a woman in trouble that comes to her for help! It wouldn't have hurt her any--it wouldn't--it wouldn't. And Edith needn't have told what she told Roscoe--it wouldn't have hurt her to let me alone. And HE told her I bored him--telephoning him I wanted to see him. He needn't have done it! He needn't--needn't--" Her voice grew fainter, for that while, with exhaustion, though she would go over it all again as soon as her strength returned. She lay panting. Then, seeing her husband standing disheveled in the doorway, "Don't come in, Roscoe," she murmured. "I don't want to see you." And as he turned away she added, "I'm kind of sorry for you, Roscoe."

Her antagonist, Edith, was not more coherent in her own wailings, and she had the advantage of a mother for listener. She had also the disadvantage of a mother for duenna, and Mrs. Sheridan, under her husband's sharp tutelage, proved an effective one. Edith was reduced to telephoning Lamhorn from shops whenever she could juggle her mother into a momentary distraction over a counter.

Edith was incomparably more in love than before Lamhorn's expulsion. Her whole being was nothing but the determination to hurdle everything that separated her from him. She was in a state that could be altered by only the lightest and most delicate diplomacy of suggestion, but Sheridan, like legions of other parents, intensified her pa.s.sion and fed it hourly fuel by opposing to it an intolerable force. He swore she should cool, and thus set her on fire.

Edith planned neatly. She fought hard, every other evening, with her father, and kept her bed betweentimes to let him see what his violence had done to her. Then, when the mere sight of her set him to breathing fast, she said pitiably that she might bear her trouble better if she went away; it was impossible to be in the same town with Lamhorn and not think always of him. Perhaps in New York she might forget a little.

She had written to a school friend, established quietly with an aunt in apartments--and a month or so of theaters and restaurants might bring peace. Sheridan shouted with relief; he gave her a copious cheque, and she left upon a Monday morning wearing violets with her mourning and having kissed everybody good-by except Sibyl and Bibbs. She might have kissed Bibbs, but he failed to realize that the day of her departure had arrived, and was surprised, on returning from his zinc-eater, that evening, to find her gone. "I suppose they'll be maried there," he said, casually.

Sheridan, seated, warming his stockinged feet at the fire, jumped up, fuming. "Either you go out o' here, or I will, Bibbs!" he snorted. "I don't want to be in the same room with the particular kind of idiot you are! She's through with that riff-raff; all she needed was to be kept away from him a few weeks, and I KEPT her away, and it did the business.

For Heaven's sake, go on out o' here!"

Bibbs obeyed the gesture of a hand still bandaged. And the black silk sling was still round Sheridan's neck, but no word of Gurney's and no excruciating twinge of pain could keep Sheridan's hand in the sling. The wounds, slight enough originally, had become infected the first time he had dislodged the bandages, and healing was long delayed. Sheridan had the habit of gesture; he could not "take time to remember," he said, that he must be careful, and he had also a curious indignation with his hurt; he refused to pay it the compliment of admitting its existence.

The Sat.u.r.day following Edith's departure Gurney came to the Sheridan Building to dress the wounds and to have a talk with Sheridan which the doctor felt had become necessary. But he was a little before the appointed time and was obliged to wait a few minutes in an anteroom--there was a directors' meeting of some sort in Sheridan's office. The door was slightly ajar, leaking cigar-smoke and oratory, the latter all Sheridan's, and Gurney listened.

"No, sir; no, sir; no, sir!" he heard the big voice rumbling, and then, breaking into thunder, "I tell you NO! Some o' you men make me sick!

You'd lose your confidence in Almighty G.o.d if a doodle-bug flipped his hind leg at you! You say money's tight all over the country. Well, what if it is? There's no reason for it to be tight, and it's not goin' to keep OUR money tight! You're always runnin' to the woodshed to hide your nickels in a crack because some fool newspaper says the market's a little skeery! You listen to every street-corner croaker and then come and set here and try to scare ME out of a big thing! We're IN on this--understand? I tell you there never WAS better times. These are good times and big times, and I won't stand for any other kind o' talk.

This country's on its feet as it never was before, and this city's on its feet and goin' to stay there!" And Gurney heard a series of whacks and thumps upon the desk. "'Bad times'!" Sheridan vociferated, with accompanying thumps. "Rabbit talk! These times are glorious, I tell you!

We're in the promised land, and we're goin' to STAY there! That's all, gentlemen. The loan goes!"

The directors came forth, flushed and murmurous, and Gurney hastened in. His guess was correct: Sheridan had been thumping the desk with his right hand. The physician scolded wearily, making good the fresh damage as best he might; and then he said what he had to say on the subject of Roscoe and Sibyl, his opinion meeting, as he expected, a warmly hostile reception. But the result of this conversation was that by telephonic command Roscoe awaited his father, an hour later, in the library at the New House.

"Gurney says your wife's able to travel," Sheridan said brusquely, as he came in.

"Yes." Roscoe occupied a deep chair and sat in the dejected att.i.tude which had become his habit. "Yes, she is."

"Edith had to leave town, and so Sibyl thinks she'll have to, too!"

"Oh, I wouldn't put it that way," Roscoe protested, drearily.

"No, I hear YOU wouldn't!" There was a bitter gibe in the father's voice, and he added: "It's a good thing she's goin' abroad--if she'll stay there. I shouldn't think any of us want her here any more--you least of all!"

"It's no use your talking that way," said Roscoe. "You won't do any good."

"Well, when are you comin' back to your office?" Sheridan used a brisker, kinder tone. "Three weeks since you showed up there at all.

When you goin' to be ready to cut out whiskey and all the rest o' the foolishness and start in again? You ought to be able to make up for a lot o' lost time and a lot o' spilt milk when that woman takes herself out o' the way and lets you and all the rest of us alone."

"It's no use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to you. I'm not going back to the office. I'm DONE!"

"Wait a minute before you talk that way!" Sheridan began his sentry-go up and down the room. "I suppose you know it's taken two pretty good men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get 'em runnin'

right again, down in your office?"

"They must be good men." Roscoe nodded indifferently. "I thought I was doing about eight men's work. I'm glad you found two that could handle it."

"Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty men drive harder'n I do, and--"