The Turmoil Part 25

"What is it like--exactly?"

"I get up at six," he said. "I have a lunch-basket to carry with me, which is aristocratic and no advantage. The other workmen have tin buckets, and tin buckets are better. I leave the house at six-thirty, and I'm at work in my overalls at seven. I have an hour off at noon, and work again from one till five."

"But the work itself?"

"It wasn't muscularly exhausting--not at all. They couldn't give me a heavier job because I wasn't good enough."

"But what will you do? I want to know."

"When I left," said Bibbs, "I was 'on' what they call over there a 'clipping-machine,' in one of the 'by-products' departments, and that's what I'll be sent back to."

"But what is it?" she insisted.

Bibbs explained. "It's very simple and very easy. I feed long strips of zinc into a pair of steel jaws, and the jaws bite the zinc into little circles. All I have to do is to see that the strip goes into the jaws at a certain angle--and yet I was a very bad hand at it."

He had kept his voice cheerful as he spoke, but he had grown a shade paler, and there was a latent anguish deep in his eyes. He may have known it and wished her not to see it, for he turned away.

"You do that all day long?" she asked, and as he nodded, "It seems incredible!" she exclaimed. "YOU feeding a strip of zinc into a machine nine hours a day! No wonder--" She broke off, and then, after a keen glance at his face, she said: "I should think you WOULD have been a 'bad hand at it'!"

He laughed ruefully. "I think it's the noise, though I'm ashamed to say it. You see, it's a very powerful machine, and there's a sort of rhythmical cras.h.i.+ng--a crash every time the jaws bite off a circle."

"How often is that?"

"The thing should make about sixty-eight disks a minute--a little more than one a second."

"And you're close to it?"

"Oh, the workman has to sit in its lap," he said, turning to her more gaily. "The others don't mind. You see, it's something wrong with me. I have an idiotic way of flinching from the confounded thing--I flinch and duck a little every time the crash comes, and I couldn't get over it. I was a treat to the other workmen in that room; they'll be glad to see me back. They used to laugh at me all day long."

Mary's gaze was averted from Bibbs now; she sat with her elbow resting on the arm of the chair, her lifted hand pressed against her cheek. She was staring at the wall, and her eyes had a burning brightness in them.

"It doesn't seem possible any one could do that to you," she said, in a low voice. "No. He's not kind. He ought to be proud to help you to the leisure to write books; it should be his greatest privilege to have them published for you--"

"Can't you SEE him?" Bibbs interrupted, a faint ripple of hilarity in his voice. "If he could understand what you're saying--and if you can imagine his taking such a notion, he'd have had R. T. Bloss put up posters all over the country: 'Read B. Sheridan. Read the Poet with a Punch!' No. It's just as well he never got the--But what's the use? I've never written anything worth printing, and I never shall."

"You could!" she said.

"That's because you've never seen the poor little things I've tried to do."

"You wouldn't let me, but I KNOW you could! Ah, it's a pity!"

"It isn't," said BIBBS, honestly. "I never could--but you're the kindest lady in this world, Miss Vertrees."

She gave him a flas.h.i.+ng glance, and it was as kind as he said she was.

"That sounds wrong," she said, impulsively. "I mean 'Miss Vertrees.'

I've thought of you by your first name ever since I met you. Wouldn't you rather call me 'Mary'?"

Bibbs was dazzled; he drew a long, deep breath and did not speak.

"Wouldn't you?" she asked, without a trace of coquetry.

"If I CAN!" he said, in a low voice.

"Ah, that's very pretty!" she laughed. "You're such an honest person, it's pleasant to have you gallant sometimes, by way of variety." She became grave again immediately. "I hear myself laughing as if it were some one else. It sounds like laughter on the eve of a great calamity."

She got up restlessly, crossed the room and leaned against the wall, facing him. "You've GOT to go back to that place?"

He nodded.

"And the other time you did it--"

"Just over it," said Bibbs. "Two years. But I don't mind the prospect of a repet.i.tion so much as--"

"So much as what?" she prompted, as he stopped.

Bibbs looked up at her shyly. "I want to say it, but--but I come to a dead balk when I try. I--"

"Go on. Say it, whatever it is," she bade him. "You wouldn't know how to say anything I shouldn't like."

"I doubt if you'd either like or dislike what I want to say," he returned, moving uncomfortably in his chair and looking at his feet--he seemed to feel awkward, thoroughly. "You see, all my life--until I met you--if I ever felt like saying anything, I wrote it instead. Saying things is a new trick for me, and this--well, it's just this: I used to feel as if I hadn't ever had any sort of a life at all. I'd never been of use to anything or anybody, and I'd never had anything, myself, except a kind of haphazard thinking. But now it's different--I'm still of no use to anybody, and I don't see any prospect of being useful, but I have had something for myself. I've had a beautiful and happy experience, and it makes my life seem to be--I mean I'm glad I've lived it! That's all; it's your letting me be near you sometimes, as you have, this strange, beautiful, happy little while!"

He did not once look up, and reached silence, at the end of what he had to say, with his eyes still awkwardly regarding his feet. She did not speak, but a soft rustling of her garments let him know that she had gone back to her chair again. The house was still; the shabby old room was so quiet that the sound of a creaking in the wall seemed sharp and loud.

And yet, when Mary spoke at last, her voice was barely audible. "If you think it has been--happy--to be friends with me--you'd want to--to make it last."

"Yes," said Bibbs, as faintly.

"You'd want to go on being my friend as long as we live, wouldn't you?"

"Yes," he gulped.

"But you make that kind of speech to me because you think it's over."

He tried to evade her. "Oh, a day-laborer can't come in his overalls--"

"No," she interrupted, with a sudden sharpness. "You said what you did because you think the shop's going to kill you."

"No, no!"

"Yes, you do think that!" She rose to her feet again and came and stood before him. "Or you think it's going to send you back to the sanitarium.

Don't deny it, Bibbs. There! See how easily I call you that! You see I'm a friend, or I couldn't do it. Well, if you meant what you said--and you did mean it, I know it!--you're not going to go back to the sanitarium.

The shop sha'n't hurt you. It sha'n't!"

And now Bibbs looked up. She stood before him, straight and tall, splendid in generous strength, her eyes s.h.i.+ning and wet.

"If I mean THAT much to you," she cried, "they can't harm you! Go back to the shop--but come to me when your day's work is done. Let the machines crash their sixty-eight times a minute, but remember each crash that deafens you is that much nearer the evening and me!"

He stumbled to his feet. "You say--" he gasped.