The Turmoil Part 35

Sheridan leaned over Gurney and shouted, in a voice that cracked and broke, piping into falsetto: "He thinks of bein' a PLUMBER! He wants to be a PLUMBER! He told me he couldn't THINK if he went into business--he wants to be a plumber so he can THINK!"

He fell back a step, wiping his forhead with the back of his left hand.

"There! That's my son! That's the only son I got now! That's my chance to live," he cried, with a bitterness that seemed to leave ashes in his throat. "That's my one chance to live--that thing you see in the doorway yonder!"

Dr. Gurney thoughtfully regarded the bandage strip he had been winding, and tossed it into the open bag. "What's the matter with giving Bibbs a chance to live?" he said, coolly. "I would if I were you. You've had TWO that went into business."

Sheridan's mouth moved grotesquely before he could speak. "Joe Gurney,"

he said, when he could command himself so far, "are you accusin' me of the responsibility for the death of my son James?"

"I accuse you of nothing," said the doctor. "But just once I'd like to have it out with you on the question of Bibbs--and while he's here, too." He got up, walked to the fire, and stood warming his hands behind his back and smiling. "Look here, old fellow, let's be reasonable," he said. "You were bound Bibbs should go to the shop again, and I gave you and him, both, to understand pretty plainly that if he went it was at the risk of his life. Well, what did he do? He said he wanted to go. And he did go, and he's made good there. Now, see: Isn't that enough? Can't you let him off now? He wants to write, and how do you know that he couldn't do it if you gave him a chance? How do you know he hasn't some message--something to say that might make the world just a little bit happier or wiser? He MIGHT--in time--it's a possibility not to be denied. Now he can't deliver any message if he goes down there with you, and he won't HAVE any to deliver. I don't say going down with you is likely to injure his health, as I thought the shop would, and as the shop did, the first time. I'm not speaking as doctor now, anyhow. But I tell you one thing I know: if you take him down there you'll kill something that I feel is in him, and it's finer, I think, than his physical body, and you'll kill it deader than a door-nail! And so why not let it live? You've about come to the end of your string, old fellow. Why not stop this perpetual devilish fighting and give Bibbs his chance?"

Sheridan stood looking at him fixedly. "What 'fighting?'"

"Yours--with nature." Gurney sustained the daunting gaze of his fierce antagonist equably. "You don't seem to understand that you've been struggling against actual law."

"What law?"

"Natural law," said Gurney. "What do you think beat you with Edith? Did Edith, herself, beat you? Didn't she obey without question something powerful that was against you? EDITH wasn't against you, and you weren't against HER, but you set yourself against the power that had her in its grip, and it shot out a spurt of flame--and won in a walk! What's taken Roscoe from you? Timbers bear just so much strain, old man; but YOU wanted to send the load across the broken bridge, and you thought you could bully or coax the cracked thing into standing. Well, you couldn't!

Now here's Bibbs. There are thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead--and so is he. It wouldn't take half of Bibbs's brains to be twice as good a business man as Jim and Roscoe put together."

"WHAT!" Sheridan goggled at him like a zany.

"Your son Bibbs," said the doctor, composedly, "Bibbs Sheridan has the kind and quant.i.ty of 'gray matter' that will make him a success in anything--if he ever wakes up! Personally I should prefer him to remain asleep. I like him that way. But the thousands of men fit for the life you want him to lead aren't fit to do much with the life he OUGHT to lead. Blindly, he's been fighting for the chance to lead it--he's obeying something that begs to stay alive within him; and, blindly, he knows you'll crush it out. You've set your will to do it. Let me tell you something more. You don't know what you've become since Jim's going thwarted you--and that's what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than your normal grief. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the very self of the law--for it was the very self of the law that took Jim from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you to-night.

The LAW beats you. Haven't you been whipped enough? But you want to whip the law--you've set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to wield it and twist it--"

The voice broke from Sheridan's heaving chest in a shout. "Yes! And by G.o.d, I will!"

"So Ajax defied the lightning," said Gurney.

"I've heard that dam'-fool story, too," Sheridan retorted, fiercely.

"That's for chuldern and n.i.g.g.e.rs. It ain't twentieth century, let me tell you! 'Defied the lightning,' did he, the jacka.s.s! If he'd been half a man he'd 'a' got away with it. WE don't go showin' off defyin' the lightning--we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A man nowadays would just as soon think o' defyin' a wood-shed!"

"Well, what about Bibbs?" said Gurney. "Will you be a really big man now and--"

"Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!" Sheridan began to walk to and fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target seemed unaware of the marksman.

"I'm tryin' to make a big man out o' that poor truck yonder," Sheridan went on, "and you step in, beggin' me to let him be Lord knows what--I don't! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a SON-IN-LAW, I mightn't need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now--a spender!"

"Oh, put your hand back!" said Gurney, wearily.

There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and half-way across the room--a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs.

Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.

"Let it lay!" he shouted, fiercely. "Let it lay!" And, weeping, she obeyed. "Yes, sir," he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put upon it. "I got a spender for a son-in-law! It's wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy--you remember him, Doc--J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he died--over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used to eat a bag o' peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn't stingy--he was just livin' in his business. He didn't care for pie or automobiles--he had his bank. It was an inst.i.tution, and it come pretty near bein' the beatin' heart o' this town in its time. Well, that ole man used to pa.s.s one o' these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn't. Speak to him? G.o.d! he wouldn't 'a' coughed on him! He wouldn't 'a' let him clean the cuspidors at the bank! Why, if he'd 'a' just seen him standin'

in FRONT the bank he'd 'a' had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin' every day of his life was workin' for that cigarette boy!

Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin' his life and his life-blood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn't.

It was every bit--from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three--it was every last lick of it just slavin' for that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. AND TRACY DIDN'T EVEN KNOW HIS NAME! He died, not ever havin' heard it, though he chased him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died his old-maid daughter married the cigarette--and there AIN'T any Tracy bank any more! And now"--his voice rose again--"and now I got a cigarette son-in-law!"

Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.

"My son-in-law likes Florida this winter," Sheridan went on. "That's good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don't think he'll be there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe's woman got me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn't give me a minute's rest till I turned over the same to her. And she's got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It'll be gone long before this time next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette behind--for good--she'll get some more. MY name ain't Tracy, and there ain't goin' to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there ain't goin' to be any college foundin' and endowin' and trusteein', nor G.o.d-knows-what to keep my property alive when I'm gone! Edith'll be back, and she'll get a girl's share when she's through with that cigarette, but--"

"By the way," interposed Gurney, "didn't Mrs. Sheridan tell me that Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?"

Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively, sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away, tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.

"Fool!" he panted, choking. "If he's shown gumption enough to guess right the first time in his life, it's enough for me to begin learnin'

him on!" And, struggling with the doctor, he leaned toward Bibbs, thrusting forward his convulsed face, which was deathly pale. "My name ain't Tracy, I tell you!" he screamed, hoa.r.s.ely. "You give in, you stubborn fool! I've had my way with you before, and I'll have my way with you now!"

Bibbs's face was as white as his father's, but he kept remembering that "splendid look" of Mary's which he had told her would give him courage in a struggle, so that he would "never give up."

"No. You can't have your way," he said. And then, obeying a significant motion of Gurney's head, he went out quickly, leaving them struggling.

CHAPTER XXVII

Mrs. Sheridan, in a wrapper, noiselessly opened the door of her husband's room at daybreak the next morning, and peered within the darkened chamber. At the "old" house they had shared a room, but the architect had chosen to separate them at the New, and they had not known how to formulate an objection, although to both of them something seemed vaguely reprehensible in the new arrangement.

Sheridan did not stir, and she was withdrawing her head from the aperture when he spoke.

"Oh, I'm AWAKE! Come in, if you want to, and shut the door."

She came and sat by the bed. "I woke up thinkin' about it," she explained. "And the more I thought about it the surer I got I must be right, and I knew you'd be tormentin' yourself if you was awake, so--well, you got plenty other troubles, but I'm just sure you ain't goin' to have the worry with Bibbs it looks like."

"You BET I ain't!" he grunted.

"Look how biddable he was about goin' back to the Works," she continued.

"He's a right good-hearted boy, really, and sometimes I honestly have to say he seems right smart, too. Now and then he'll say something sounds right bright. 'Course, most always it doesn't, and a good deal of the time, when he says things, why, I have to feel glad we haven't got company, because they'd think he didn't have any gumption at all. Yet, look at the way he did when Jim--when Jim got hurt. He took right hold o' things. 'Course he'd been sick himself so much and all--and the rest of us never had, much, and we were kind o' green about what to do in that kind o' trouble--still, he did take hold, and everything went off all right; you'll have to say that much, papa. And Dr. Gurney says he's got brains, and you can't deny but what the doctor's right considerable of a man. He acts sleepy, but that's only because he's got such a large practice--he's a pretty wide-awake kind of a man some ways. Well, what he says last night about Bibbs himself bein' asleep, and how much he'd amount to if he ever woke up--that's what I got to thinkin' about. You heard him, papa; he says, 'Bibbs'll be a bigger business man than what Jim and Roscoe was put together--if he ever wakes up,' he says. Wasn't that exactly what he says?"

"I suppose so," said Sheridan, without exhibiting any interest.

"Gurney's crazier'n Bibbs, but if he wasn't--if what he says was true--what of it?"

"Listen, papa. Just suppose Bibbs took it into his mind to get married.

You know where he goes all the time--"

"Oh, Lord, yes!" Sheridan turned over in the bed, his face to the wall, leaving visible of himself only the thick grizzle of his hair. "You better go back to sleep. He runs over there--every minute she'll let him, I suppose. Go back to bed. There's nothin' in it."

"WHY ain't there?" she urged. "I know better--there is, too! You wait and see. There's just one thing in the world that'll wake the sleepiest young man alive up--yes, and make him JUMP up--and I don't care who he is or how sound asleep it looks like he is. That's when he takes it into his head to pick out some girl and settle down and have a home and chuldern of his own. THEN, I guess, he'll go out after the money! You'll see. I've known dozens o' cases, and so've you--moony, no-'count young men, all notions and talk, goin' to be ministers, maybe or something; and there's just this one thing takes it out of 'em and brings 'em right down to business. Well, I never could make out just what it is Bibbs wants to be, really; doesn't seem he wants to be a minister exactly--he's so far-away you can't tell, and he never SAYS--but I know this is goin' to get him right down to common sense. Now, I don't say that Bibbs has got the idea in his head yet--'r else he wouldn't be talkin' that fool-talk about nine dollars a week bein' good enough for him to live on. But it's COMIN', papa, and he'll JUMP for whatever you want to hand him out. He will! And I can tell you this much, too: he'll want all the salary and stock he can get hold of, and he'll hustle to keep gettin' more. That girl's the kind that a young husband just goes crazy to give things to! She's pretty and fine-lookin', and things look nice on her, and I guess she'd like to have 'em about as well as the next. And I guess she isn't gettin' many these days, either, and she'll be pretty ready for the change. I saw her with her sleeves rolled up at the kitchen window the other day, and Jackson told me yesterday their cook left two weeks ago, and they haven't tried to hire another one. He says her and her mother been doin' the housework a good while, and now they're doin' the cookin,' too. 'Course Bibbs wouldn't know that unless she's told him, and I reckon she wouldn't; she's kind o'

stiffish-lookin', and Bibbs is too up in the clouds to notice anything like that for himself. They've never asked him to a meal in the house, but he wouldn't notice that, either--he's kind of innocent. Now I was thinkin'--you know, I don't suppose we've hardly mentioned the girl's name at table since Jim went, but it seems to me maybe if--"

Sheridan flung out his arms, uttering a sound half-groan, half-yawn.

"You're barkin' up the wrong tree! Go on back to bed, mamma!"

"Why am I?" she demanded, crossly. "Why am I barkin' up the wrong tree?"

"Because you are. There's nothin' in it."

"I'll bet you," she said, rising--"I'll bet you he goes to church with her this morning. What you want to bet?"