University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI

So sang Bibbs, his musical gaieties inaudible to his fellow-workmen because of the noise of the machinery. He had discovered long ago that the uproar was rhythmical, and it had been intolerable; but now, on the afternoon of the fourth day of his return, he was accompanying the swing and clash of the metals with jubilant vaquero fragments, mingling improvisations of his own among them, and mocking the zinc-eater's crash with vocal imitations:

The long room was ceaselessly thundering with metallic sound; the air was thick with the smell of oil; the floor trembled perpetually; everything was implacably in motion—nowhere was there a rest for the dizzied eye. The first time he had entered the place Bibbs had become dizzy instantly, and six months of it had only added increasing nausea to faintness. But he felt neither now. "All day long I'll send my thoughts to you. You must keep remembering that your friend stands beside you." He saw her there beside him, and the greasy, roaring place became suffused with radiance. The poet was happy in his machine-shop; he was still a poet there. And he fed his old zinc-eater, and sang:

He was unaware of a sensation that passed along the lines of workmen. Their great master had come among them, and they grinned to see him standing with Dr. Gurney behind the unconscious Bibbs. Sheridan nodded to those nearest him—he had personal acquaintance with nearly all of them —but he kept his attention upon his son. Bibbs worked steadily, never turning from his machine. Now and then he varied his musical programme with remarks addressed to the zinc-eater.

"Go on, you old crash-basher! Chew it up! It's good for you, if you don't try to bolt your vittles. Fletcherize, you pig! That's right— you'll never get a lump in your gizzard. Want some more? Here's a nice, shiny one."

The words were indistinguishable, but Sheridan inclined his head to Gurney's ear and shouted fiercely: "Talkin' to himself! By George!"

Gurney laughed reassuringly, and shook his head.

Bibbs returned to song:

His father grasped him by the arm. "Here!" he shouted. "Letme show you how to run a strip through there. The foreman says you're some better'n you used to be, but that's no way to handle—Get out the way and let me show you once."

"Better be careful," Bibbs warned him, stepping to one side.

"Careful? Boh!" Sheridan seized a strip of zinc from the box. "What you talkin' to yourself about? Tryin' to make yourself think you're so abused you're goin' wrong in the head?"

"'Abused'? No!" shouted Bibbs. "I was singing—because I 'like it'! I told you I'd come back and 'like it.'"

Sheridan may not have understood. At all events, he made no reply, but began to run the strip of zinc through the machine. He did it awkwardly —and with bad results.

"Here!" he shouted. "This is the way. Watch how I do it. There's nothin' to it, if you put your mind on it." By his own showing then his mind was not upon it. He continued to talk. "All you got to look out for is to keep it pressed over to—"

"Don't run your hand up with it," Bibbs vociferated, leaning toward him.

"Run nothin'! You got to—"

"Look out!" shouted Bibbs and Gurney together, and they both sprang forward. But Sheridan's right hand had followed the strip too far, and the zinc-eater had bitten off the tips of the first and second fingers. He swore vehemently, and wrung his hand, sending a shower of red drops over himself and Bibbs, but Gurney grasped his wrist, and said, sharply:

"Come out of here. Come over to the lavatory in the office. Bibbs, fetch my bag. It's in my machine, outside."

And when Bibbs brought the bag to the washroom he found the doctor still grasping Sheridan's wrist, holding the injured hand over a basin. Sheridan had lost color, and temper, too. He glared over his shoulder at his son as the latter handed the bag to Gurney.

"You go on back to your work," he said. "I've had worse snips than that from a pencil-sharpener."

"Oh no, you haven't!" said Gurney.

"I have, too!" Sheridan retorted, angrily. "Bibbs, you go on back to your work. There's no reason to stand around here watchin' ole Doc Gurney tryin' to keep himself awake workin' on a scratch that only needs a little court-plaster. I slipped, or it wouldn't happened. You get back on your job."

"All right," said Bibbs.

"Here!" Sheridan bellowed, as his son was passing out of the door. "You watch out when you're runnin' that machine! You hear what I say? I slipped, or I wouldn't got scratched, but you—you're liable to get your whole hand cut off! You keep your eyes open!"

"Yes, sir." And Bibbs returned to the zinc-eater thoughtfully.

Half an hour later, Gurney touched him on the shoulder and beckoned him outside, where conversation was possible. "I sent him home, Bibbs. He'll have to be careful of that hand. Go get your overalls off. I'll take you for a drive and leave you at home."

"Can't," said Bibbs. "Got to stick to my job till the whistle blows."

"No, you don't," the doctor returned, smothering a yawn. "He wants me to take you down to my office and give you an overhauling to see how much harm these four days on the machine have done you. I guess you folks have got that old man pretty thoroughly upset, between you, up at your house! But I don't need to go over you. I can see with my eyes half shut—"

"Yes," Bibbs interrupted, "that's what they are."

"I say I can see you're starting out, at least, in good shape. What's made the difference?"

"I like the machine," said Bibbs. "I've made a friend of it. I serenade it and talk to it, and then it talks back to me."

"Indeed, indeed? What does it say?"

"What I want to hear."

"Well, well!" The doctor stretched himself and stamped his foot repeatedly. "Better come along and take a drive with me. You can take the time off that he allowed for the examination, and—"

"Not at all," said Bibbs. "I'm going to stand by my old zinc-eater till five o'clock. I tell you I like it!"

"Then I suppose that's the end of your wanting to write."

"I don't know about that," Bibbs said, thoughtfully; "but the zinc-eater doesn't interfere with my thinking, at least. It's better than being in business; I'm sure of that. I don't want anything to change. I'd be content to lead just the life I'm leading now to the end of my days."

"You do beat the devil!" exclaimed Gurney. "Your father's right when he tells me you're a mystery. Perhaps the Almighty knew what He was doing when He made you, but it takes a lot of faith to believe it! Well, I'm off. Go on back to your murdering old machine." He climbed into his car, which he operated himself, but he refrained from setting it immediately in motion. "Well, I rubbed it in on the old man that you had warned him not to slide his hand along too far, and that he got hurt because he didn't pay attention to your warning, and because he was trying to show you how to do something you were already doing a great deal better than he could. You tell him I'll be around to look at it and change the dressing to-morrow morning. Good-by."

But when he paid the promised visit, the next morning, he did more than change the dressing upon the damaged hand. The injury was severe of its kind, and Gurney spent a long time over it, though Sheridan was rebellious and scornful, being brought to a degree of tractability only by means of horrible threats and talk of amputation. However, he appeared at the dinner-table with his hand supported in a sling, which he seemed to regard as an indignity, while the natural inquiries upon the subject evidently struck him as deliberate insults. Mrs. Sheridan, having been unable to contain her solicitude several times during the day, and having been checked each time in a manner that blanched her cheek, hastened to warn Roscoe and Sibyl, upon their arrival at five, to omit any reference to the injury and to avoid even looking at the sling if they possibly could.

The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and the members of the family were all seated at the table within two minutes after she and Roscoe had entered the house.

It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed charged, awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's expression, as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon her husband, was that of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale and intent. Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked both ill and explosive. Bibbs had more color than any of these, and there was a strange brightness, like a light, upon his face. It was curious to see anything so happy in the tense gloom of that household.

Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She never once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick glance, heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing, and, like Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to occupy himself with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently, but not lifting it to his mouth. He did not once look at his father, though his father gazed heavily at him most of the time. And between Edith and Sibyl, and between Roscoe and his father, some bitter wireless communication seemed continually to be taking place throughout the long silences prevailing during this enlivening ceremony of Sabbath refection.

"Didn't you go to church this morning, Bibbs?" his mother asked, in the effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.

"What did you say, mother?"

"Didn't you go to church this morning?"

"I think so," he answered, as from a roseate trance.

"You think so! Don't you know?"

"Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!"

"Which one?"

"Just down the street. It's brick."

"What was the sermon about?"

"What, mother?"

"Can't you hear me?" she cried. "I asked you what the sermon was about?"

He roused himself. "I think it was about—" He frowned, seeming to concentrate his will to recollect. "I think it was about something in the Bible."

White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and lean upon Mist' Jackson's shoulder in the pantry. "He don't know they was any suhmon!" he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue. "All he know is he was with 'at lady lives nex' do'!" George was right.

"Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?" Sibyl asked.

"No," he answered. "No, I didn't go alone."

"Oh?" Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry, and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. "Oh!"

Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.

Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the library, but was not well received.

"You go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks," Sheridan commanded.

Bibbs retreated. "Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!" he said.

However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn, according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room, examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs. Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that she thought it "right pretty," and followed it with one of the former and the same remark.

As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead, he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left the room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then disappearing after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy. He made it perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions and that it had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the letter.

Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.

"What's that?" she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.

"Here's another right pretty record," said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting— with patent nervousness—not to hear. And she unloosed the music.

Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold chair, with his eyes closed.

"Where did Edith go?" she asked, curiously.

"Edith?" he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. "Is she gone?"

Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing, still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp excitement. She listened intently.

When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe's voice, querulous and husky; "I won't say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well let me alone!"

But there were other sound: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started another record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of Sibyl. She walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.

Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.

But Edith's shaking was not so violent as Sibyl's, nor was her face so white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.

"Sit just as you were—both of you!" she said. And then to Edith: "Did you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?"

"You march out of here!" said Edith, fiercely. "March straight out of here!"

Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.

"Did you tell her I'd been telephoning you I wanted you to come?"

"Oh, good God!" Lamhorn said. "Hush!"

"You knew she'd tell my husband, didn't you?" she cried. "You knew that!"

"Hush!" he begged, panic-stricken.

"That was a manly thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn't come—you wouldn't even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say! You were tired of what I had to say! You'd heard it all a thousand times before, and you wouldn't come! No! No! No!" she stormed. "You wouldn't even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat! And she told my husband! You're a man!"

Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to her feelings. "Get out of this house!" she shrieked. "This is my father's house. Don't you dare speak to Robert like that!"

"No! No! I mustn't speak—"

"Don't you dare!"

Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously, fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled and rose and cracked—they screeched. They could be heard over the noise of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could be heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could have been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.

"You told my husband!" screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to Edith's. "You told my husband! This man put that in your hands to strike me with! He did!"

"I'll tell your husband again! I'll tell him everything I know! It's time your husband—"

They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. "Do you want the neighbors in?" Sheridan thundered.

There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily, his eyes on the ground.

"Now then!" said Sheridan to Lamhorn.

The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan. They fled lightly.

"Papa, papa!" wailed Mrs. Sheridan. "Look at your hand! You'd oughtn't to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!"

There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. "Now then!" he repeated. "You goin' to leave my house?"

"He willnot!" sobbed Edith. "Don't you dare order him out!"

"Don't you bother, dear," said Lamhorn, quietly. "He doesn't understand. You mustn't be troubled." Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl's distraught eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels —the rabble being enacted by her father.

"Don't come back, either!" said, Sheridan, realistic in this impersonation. "Keep off the premises!" he called savagely into the hall. "This family's through with you!"

"It is not!" Edith cried, breaking from her mother. "You'll see about that! You'll find out! You'll find out what 'll happen! What's he done? I guess if I can stand it, it's none of your business, is it? What's he done, I'd like to know? You don't know anything about it. Don't you s'pose he told me? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there, and he flirted with her a little. That's everything he did, and it was before he met me! After that he wouldn't, and it wasn't anything, anyway —he never was serious a minute about it. She wanted it to be serious, and she was bound she wouldn't give him up. He told her long ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and—"

"Yes," said Sheridan, sternly; "that's his side of it! That 'll do! He doesn't come in this house again!"

"You look out!" Edith cried.

"Yes, I'll look out! I'd 'a' told you to-day he wasn't to be allowed on the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie look up this young man privately, and he's no 'count. He's no 'count on earth! He's no good! He's nothin'! But it wouldn't matter if he was George Washington, after what's happened and what I've heard to-night!"

"But, papa," Mrs. Sheridan began, "if Edie says it was all Sibyl's fault, makin' up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor—"

"'S enough!" he roared. "He keeps off these premises! And if any of you so much as ever speak his name to me again—"

But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.

"She locked her door," said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully. "She wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room."

"Well," said her husband, "she can settle her mind to it. She never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow— Here! You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it's my orders. No, you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself."

"Better not," said Bibbs, gently.

His father glared at him.

"It's no good," said Bibbs. "Mother, when you were in love with father —"

"My goodness!" she cried. "You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to that—"

"Edith feels about him just what you did about father," said Bibbs. "And if your father had told you—"

"I won't listen to such silly talk!" she declared, angrily.

"So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?" said Sheridan. "What is it?"

"Let her see him all she wants."

"You're a—" Sheridan gave it up. "I don't know what to call you!"

"Let her see him all she wants," Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. "You're up against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling you'd have a chance this way, but she isn't. She's got a lot of your determination, father, and with what's going on inside of her she'll beat you. You can't keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about him the way she does now. You can't make her think less of him, either. Nobody can. Your only chance is that she'll do it for herself, and if you give her time and go easy she probably will. Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that's just what you don't want, and as you don't want it, you'd better —"

"I can't stand any more!" Sheridan burst out. "If it's come to Bibbs advisin' me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where's that nigger George? Maybe he's got some plan how I better manage my family. Bibbs, for God's sake go and lay down! 'Let her see him all she wants'! Oh, Lord! here's wisdom; here's—"

"Bibbs," said Mrs. Sheridan, "if you haven't got anything to do, you might step over and take Sibyl's wraps home—she left 'em in the hall. I don't think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now."

"All right." And Bibbs bore Sibyl's wraps across the street and delivered them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only, "Forgot these," and, "Good night, Roscoe," cordially and cheerfully, and returned to the New House. His mother and father were still talking in the library, but with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his own room, and there he proceeded to write in his note-book.