________________________________________________
_ When he came into the New House, a few minutes later, he found his
father sitting alone by the library fire. Bibbs went in and stood
before him. "I'm cured, father," he said. "When do I go back to
the shop? I'm ready."
The desolate and grim old man did not relax. "I was sittin' up to
give you a last chance to say something like that. I reckon it's
about time! I just wanted to see if you'd have manhood enough not
to make me take you over there by the collar. Last night I made up
my mind I'd give you just one more day. Well, you got to it before
I did--pretty close to the eleventh hour! All right. Start in
to-morrow. It's the first o' the month. Think you can get up in
time?"
"Six o'clock," Bibbs responded, briskly. "And I want to tell you--
I'm going in a 'cheerful spirit.' As you said, I'll go and I'll
'like it'!"
"That's YOUR lookout!" his father grunted. "They'll put you back on
the clippin'-machine. You get nine dollars a week."
"More than I'm worth, too," said Bibbs, cheerily. "That reminds me,
I didn't mean YOU by 'Midas' in that nonsense I'd been writing. I
meant--"
"Makes a hell of a lot o' difference what you meant!"
"I just wanted you to know. Good night, father."
"G'night!"
The sound of the young man's footsteps ascending the stairs became
inaudible, and the house was quiet. But presently, as Sheridan sat
staring angrily at the fire, the shuffling of a pair of slipers
could be heard descending, and Mrs. Sheridan made her appearance,
her oblique expression and the state of her toilette being those of
a person who, after trying unsuccessfully to sleep on one side, has
got up to look for burglars.
"Papa!" she exclaimed, drowsily. "Why'n't you go to bed? It must be
goin' on 'leven o'clock!"
She yawned, and seated herself near him, stretching out her hands to
the fire. "What's the matter?" she asked, sleep and anxiety striving
sluggishly with each other in her voice. "I knew you were worried all
dinner-time. You got something new on your mind besides Jim's bein'
taken away like he was. What's worryin' you now, papa?"
"Nothin'."
She jeered feebly. "N' tell ME that! You sat up to see Bibbs, didn't
you?"
"He starts in at the shop again to-morrow morning," said Sheridan.
"Just the same as he did before?"
"Just pre-CISELY!"
"How--how long you goin' to keep him at it, papa?" she asked, timidly.
"Until he KNOWS something!" The unhappy man struck his palms
together, then got to his feet and began to pace the room, as was his
wont when he talked. "He'll go back to the machine he couldn't learn
to tend properly in the six months he was there, and he'll stick to it
till he DOES learn it! Do you suppose that lummix ever asked himself
WHY I want him to learn it? No! And I ain't a-goin' to tell him,
either! When he went there I had 'em set him on the simplest machine
we got--and he stuck there! How much prospect would there be of his
learnin' to run the whole business if he can't run the easiest machine
in it? I sent him there to make him THOROUGH. And what happened? He
didn't LIKE it! That boy's whole life, there's been a settin' up o'
something mulish that's against everything I want him to do. I don't
know what it is, but it's got to be worked out of him. Now, labor
ain't any more a simple question than what it was when we were young.
My idea is that, outside o' union troubles, the man that can manage
workin'-in men is the man that's been one himself. Well, I set Bibbs
to learn the men and to learn the business, and HE set himself to balk
on the first job! That's what he did, and the balk's lasted close on
to three years. If he balks again I'm just done with him! Sometimes
I feel like I was pretty near done with everything, anyhow!"
"I knew there was something else," said Mrs. Sheridan, blinking over
a yawn. "You better let it go till to-morrow and get to bed now--
'less you'll tell me?"
"Suppose something happened to Roscoe," he said. "THEN what'd I
have to look forward to? THEN what could I depend on to hold things
together? A lummix! A lummix that hasn't learned how to push a strip
o' zinc along a groove!"
"Roscoe?" she yawned. "You needn't worry about Roscoe, papa. He's
the strongest child we had. I never did know anybody keep better
health than he does. I don't believe he's even had a cold in five
years. You better go up to bed, papa."
"Suppose something DID happen to him, though. You don't know what it
means, keepin' property together these days--just keepin' it ALIVE,
let alone makin' it grow the way I do. I've seen too many estates
hacked away in chunks, big and little. I tell you when a man dies the
wolves come out o' the woods, pack after pack, to see what they can
tear off for themselves; and if that dead man's chuldern ain't on the
job, night and day, everything he built'll get carried off. Carried
off? I've seen a big fortune behave like an ash-barrel in a cyclone--
there wasn't even a dust-heap left to tell where it stood! I've seen
it, time and again. My Lord! when I think o' such things comin' to
ME! It don't seem like I deserved it--no man ever tried harder to
raise his boys right than I have. I planned and planned and planned
how to bring 'em up to be guards to drive the wolves off, and how to
be builders to build, and build bigger. I tell you this business life
is no fool's job nowadays--a man's got to have eyes in the back of his
head. You hear talk, sometimes, 'd make you think the millennium had
come--but right the next breath you'll hear somebody hollerin' about
'the great unrest.' You BET there's a 'great unrest'! There ain't
any man alive smart enough to see what it's goin' to do to us in the
end, nor what day it's got set to bust loose, but it's frothin' and
bubblin' in the boiler. This country's been fillin' up with it from
all over the world for a good many years, and the old camp-meetin'
days are dead and done with. Church ain't what it used to be.
Nothin's what it used to be--everything's turned up from the bottom,
and the growth is so big the roots stick out in the air. There's an
awful ruction goin' on, and you got to keep hoppin' if you're goin' to
keep your balance on the top of it. And the schemers! They run like
bugs on the bottom of a board--after any piece o' money they hear is
loose. Fool schemes and crooked schemes; the fool ones are the most
and the worst! You got to FIGHT to keep your money after you've made
it. And the woods are full o' mighty industrious men that's got only
one motto: 'Get the other fellow's money before he gets yours!' And
when a man's built as I have, when he's built good and strong, and
made good things grow and prosper--THOSE are the fellows that lay for
the chance to slide in and sneak the benefit of it and put their names
to it! And what's the use of my havin' ever been born, if such a
thing as that is goin' to happen? What's the use of my havin' worked
my life and soul into my business, if it's all goin' to be dispersed
and scattered soon as I'm in the ground?"
He strode up and down the long room, gesticulating--little regarding
the troubled and drowsy figure by the fireside. His throat rumbled
thunderously; the words came with stormy bitterness. "You think this
is a time for young men to be lyin' on beds of ease? I tell you there
never was such a time before; there never was such opportunity. The
sluggard is despoiled while he sleeps--yes, by George! if a may lays
down they'll eat him before he wakes!--but the live man can build
straight up till he touches the sky! This is the business man's day;
it used to be the soldier's day and the statesman's day, but this is
OURS! And it ain't a Sunday to go fishin'--it's turmoil! turmoil!--
and you got to go out and live it and breathe it and MAKE it yourself,
or you'll only be a dead man walkin' around dreamin' you're alive.
And that's what my son Bibbs has been doin' all his life, and what
he'd rather do now than go out and do his part by me. And if anything
happens to Roscoe--"
"Oh, do stop worryin' over such nonsense," Mrs. Sheridan interrupted,
irritated into sharp wakefulness for the moment. "There isn't
anything goin' to happen to Roscoe, and you're just tormentin'
yourself about nothin'. Aren't you EVER goin' to bed?"
Sheridan halted. "All right, mamma," he said, with a vast sigh.
"Let's go up." And he snapped off the electric light, leaving
only the rosy glow of the fire.
"Did you speak to Roscoe?" she yawned, rising lopsidedly in her
drowsiness. "Did you mention about what I told you the other
evening?"
"No. I will to-morrow."
But Roscoe did not come down-town the next day, nor the next; nor did
Sheridan see fit to enter his son's house. He waited. Then, on the
fourth day of the month, Roscoe walked into his father's office at
nine in the morning, when Sheridan happened to be alone.
"They told me down-stairs you'd left word you wanted to see me."
"Sit down," said Sheridan, rising.
Roscoe sat. His father walked close to him, sniffed suspiciously,
and then walked away, smiling bitterly. "Boh!" he exclaimed.
"Still at it!"
"Yes," said Roscoe. "I've had a couple of drinks this morning.
What about it?"
"I reckon I better adopt some decent young man," his father returned.
"I'd bring Bibbs up here and put him in your place if he was fit. I
would!"
"Better do it," Roscoe assently, sullenly.
"When'd you begin this thing?"
"I always did drink a little. Ever since I grew up, that is."
"Leave that talk out! You know what I mean."
"Well, I don't know as I ever had too much in office hours--until
the other day."
Sheridan began cutting. "It's a lie. I've had Ray Wills up from your
office. He didn't want to give you away, but I put the hooks into
him, and he came through. You were drunk twice before and couldn't
work. You been leavin' your office for drinks every few hours for the
last three weeks. I been over your books. Your office is way behind.
You haven't done any work, to count, in a month."
"All right," said Roscoe, drooping under the torture. "It's all
true."
"What you goin' to do about it?"
Roscoe's head was sunk between his shoulders. "I can't stand very
much talk about it, father," he said, pleadingly.
"No!" Sheridan cried. "Neither can I! What do you think it means to
ME?" He dropped into the chair at his big desk, groaning. "I can't
stand to talk about it any more'n you can to listen, but I'm goin' to
find out what's the matter with you, and I'm goin' to straighten you
out!"
Roscoe shook his head helplessly.
"You can't straighten me out."
"See here!" said Sheridan. "Can you go back to your office and stay
sober to-day, while I get my work done, or will I have to hire a
couple o' huskies to follow you around and knock the whiskey out
o' your hand if they see you tryin' to take it?"
"You needn't worry about that," said Roscoe, looking up with a faint
resentment. "I'm not drinking because I've got a thirst."
"Well, what have you got?"
"Nothing. Nothing you can do anything about. Nothing, I tell you."
"We'll see about that!" said Sheridan, harshly. "Now I can't fool
with you to-day, and you get up out o' that chair and get out o' my
office. You bring your wife to dinner to-morrow. You didn't come
last Sunday--but you come to-morrow. I'll talk this out with you when
the women-folks are workin' the phonograph, after dinner. Can you
keep sober till then? You better be sure, because I'm going to send
Abercrombie down to your office every little while, and he'll let me
know."
Roscoe paused at the door. "You told Abercrombie about it?" he asked.
"TOLD him!" And Sheridan laughed hideously. "Do you suppose there's
an elevator-boy in the whole dam' building that ain't on to you?"
Roscoe settled his hat down over his eyes and went out.
"WHO looks a mustang in the eye? Changety, chang, chang! Bash! Crash!
BANG!" _
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