The Turmoil Part 34

"You're always very prompt about leaving me."

"I--I try to be," he said. "It isn't easy to be careful not to risk everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you look tired--"

"Have you ever?"

"Not yet. You always look--you always look--"

"How?"

"Care-free. That's it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I'd keep remembering that look--and I'd never give up! It's a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don't quite understand why it should be, either." He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. "Mary, you haven't a 'secret sorrow,' have you?"

For answer she only laughed.

"No," he said; "I can't imagine you with a care in the world. I think that's why you were so kind to me--you have nothing but happiness in your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to happiness, too. But there's one little time in the twenty-four hours when I'm not happy. It's now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal every time it comes--and then, when I've left the house, there's a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I'm really beginning another day that's to end with YOU again. Then I cheer up. But now's the bad time--and I must go through it, and so--good night." And he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, "I hate it!"

"Do you?" she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.

"Mary! Your eyes are so--" He stopped.

"Yes?" But she looked quickly away.

"I don't know," he said. "I thought just then--"

"What did you think?"

"I don't know--it seemed to me that there was something I ought to understand--and didn't."

She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. "My eyes are pleased," she said. "I'm glad that you miss me a little after you go."

"But to-morrow's coming faster than other days if you'll let it," he said.

She inclined her head. "Yes. I'll--'let it'!"

"Going to church," said Bibbs. "It IS going to church when I go with you!"

She went to the front door with him; she always went that far. They had formed a little code of leave-taking, by habit, neither of them ever speaking of it; but it was always the same. She always stood in the doorway until he reached the sidewalk, and there he always turned and looked back, and she waved her hand to him. Then he went on, halfway to the New House, and looked back again, and Mary was not in the doorway, but the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to tell him that she would never shut him out; he could always see that friendly light of the open doorway--as if it were open for him to come back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol of herself and of her ineffable kindness.

And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was strewn with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had spent the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he was out of sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that stood between the two houses, and saw that he turned to look back again. Then, and not before, she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street.

They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed the front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the shade of one of them. Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night she had seen those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after Bibbs had gone.

But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.

A stricken George, muttering hoa.r.s.ely, admitted him, and Bibbs became aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of m.u.f.fled detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then Gurney, sharply imperious, "Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand in that sling, I say!"

"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly expression with which he had first beheld the ruins his calamitous gesture laid before the eyes of Bibbs. "Look at 'at lamidal statue!"

Gazing down the hall, Bibbs saw heroic wreckage, seemingly Byzantine--painted colossal fragments of the shattered torso, appallingly human; and gilded and silvered heaps of magnificence strewn among ruinous palms like the spoil of a barbarians' battle. There had been a ma.s.sacre in the oasis--the Moor had been hurled headlong from his pedestal.

"He hit 'at ole lamidal statue," said George. "POW!"

"My father?"

"YESsuh! POW! he hit 'er! An' you' ma run tell me git doctuh quick 's I kin telefoam--she sho' you' pa goin' bus' a blood-vessel. He ain't takin' on 'tall NOW. He ain't nothin' 'tall to what he was 'while ago.

You done miss' it, Mist' Bibbs. Doctuh got him all quiet' down, to what he was. POW! he hit'er! Yessuh!" He took Bibbs's coat and proffered a crumpled telegraph form. "Here what come," he said. "I pick 'er up when he done stompin' on 'er. You read 'er, Mist' Bibbs--you' ma tell me tuhn 'er ovuh to you soon's you come in."

Bibbs read the telegram quickly. It was from New York and addressed to Mrs. Sheridan.

Sure you will all approve step have taken as was so wretched my health would probably suffered severely Robert and I were married this afternoon thought best have quiet wedding absolutely sure you will understand wisdom of step when you know Robert better am happiest woman in world are leaving for Florida will wire address when settled will remain till spring love to all father will like him too when knows him like I do he is just ideal.

Edith Lamhorn.

CHAPTER XXVI

George departed, and Bibbs was left gazing upon chaos and listening to thunder. He could not reach the stairway without pa.s.sing the open doors of the library, and he was convinced that the mere glimpse of him, just then, would prove nothing less than insufferable for his father. For that reason he was about to make his escape into the gold-and-brocade room, intending to keep out of sight, when he heard Sheridan vociferously demanding his presence.

"Tell him to come in here! He's out there. I heard George just let him in. Now you'll SEE!" And tear-stained Mrs. Sheridan, looking out into the hall, beckoned to her son.

Bibbs went as far as the doorway. Gurney sat winding a strip of white cotton, his black bag open upon a chair near by; and Sheridan was striding up and down, his hand so heavily wrapped in fresh bandages that he seemed to be wearing a small boxing-glove. His eyes were bloodshot; his forehead was heavily bedewed; one side of his collar had broken loose, and there were blood-stains upon his right cuff.

"THERE'S our little sunshine!" he cried, as Bibbs appeared. "THERE'S the hope o' the family--my lifelong pride and joy! I want--"

"Keep you hand in that sling," said Gurney, sharply.

Sheridan turned upon him, uttering a sound like a howl. "For G.o.d's sake, sing another tune!" he cried. "You said you 'came as a doctor but stay as a friend,' and in that capacity you undertake to sit up and criticize ME--"

"Oh, talk sense," said the doctor, and yawned intentionally. "What do you want Bibbs to say?"

"You were sittin' up there tellin' me I got 'hysterical'--'hysterical,'

oh Lord! You sat up there and told me I got 'hysterical' over nothin'!

You sat up there tellin' me I didn't have as heavy burdens as many another man you knew. I just want you to hear THIS. Now listen!" He swung toward the quiet figure waiting in the doorway. "Bibbs, will you come down-town with me Monday morning and let me start you with two vice-presidencies, a directorship, stock, and salaries? I ask you."

"No, father," said Bibbs, gently.

Sheridan looked at Gurney and then faced his son once more.

"Bibbs, you want to stay in the shop, do you, at nine dollars a week, instead of takin' up my offer?"

"Yes, sir."

"And I'd like the doctor to hear: What'll you do if I decide you're too high-priced a workin'-man either to live in my house or work in my shop?"

"Find other work," said Bibbs.

"There! You hear him for yourself!" Sheridan cried. "You hear what--"

"Keep you hand in that sling! Yes, I hear him."