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_ Looking once more from the window, Bibbs sculptured for himself--in
the vague contortions of the smoke and fog above the roofs--a gigantic
figure with feet pedestaled upon the great buildings and shoulders
disappearing in the clouds, a colossus of steel and wholly blackened
with soot. But Bibbs carried his fancy further--for there was still
a little poet lingering in the back of his head--and he thought that
up over the clouds, unseen from below, the giant labored with his
hands in the clean sunshine; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made
there--perhaps for a fellowship of the children of the children that
were children now--a noble and joyous city, unbelievably white--"

It was the telephone that called him from his vision. It rang
fiercely.

He lifted the thing from his desk and answered--and as the small voice
inside it spoke he dropped the receiver with a crash. He trembled
violently as he picked it up, but he told himself he was wrong--he had
been mistaken--yet it was a startlingly beautiful voice; startlingly
kind, too, and ineffably like the one he hungered most to hear.

"Who?" he said, his own voice shaking--like his hand.

"Mary."

He responded with two hushed and incredulous words: "IS IT?"

There was a little thrill of pathetic half-laughter in the instrument.
"Bibbs--I wanted to--just to see if you--"

"Yes--Mary?"

"I was looking when you were so nearly run over. I saw it, Bibbs.
They said you hadn't been hurt, they thought, but I wanted to know
for myself."

"No, no, I wasn't hurt at all--Mary. It was father who came nearer
it. He saved me."

"Yes, I saw; but you had fallen. I couldn't get through the crowd
until you had gone. And I wanted to KNOW."

"Mary--would you--have minded?" he said.

There was a long interval before she answered.

"Yes."

"Then why--"

"Yes, Bibbs?"

"I don't know what to say," he cried. "It's so wonderful to hear
your voice again--I'm shaking, Mary--I--I don't know--I don't know
anything except that I AM talking to you! It IS you--Mary?"

"Yes, Bibbs!"

"Mary--I've seen you from my window at home--only five times since
I --since then. You looked--oh, how can I tell you? It was like
a man chained in a cave catching a glimpse of the blue sky, Mary.
Mary, won't you--let me see you again--near? I think I could make
you really forgive me--you'd have to--"

"I DID--then."

"No--not really--or you wouldn't have said you couldn't see me any
more."

"That wasn't the reason." The voice was very low.

"Mary," he said, even more tremulously than before, "I can't--you
COULDN'T mean it was because--you can't mean it was because you--
care?"

There was no answer.

"Mary?" he called, huskily. "If you mean THAT--you'd let me see
you--wouldn't you?"

And now the voice was so low he could not be sure it spoke at all,
but if it did, the words were, "Yes, Bibbs--dear."

But the voice was not in the instrument--it was so gentle and so
light, so almost nothing, it seemed to be made of air--and it came
from the air.

Slowly and incredulously he turned--and glory fell upon his shining
eyes. The door of his father's room had opened.

Mary stood upon the threshold.

 

THE END.
The Turmoil. A novel by Booth Tarkington. _


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