Part 44 (2/2)

Sheridan and Bibbs, in fact, were at that moment in the elevator, ascending. ”Whisk-broom up in the office,” Sheridan was saying. ”You got to look out on those corners nowadays, I tell you. I don't know I got any call to blow, though--because I tried to cross after you did. That's how I happened to run into you. Well, you want to remember to look out after this. We were talkin' about Murtrie's askin' sixty-eight thousand flat for that ninety-nine-year lease. It's his lookout if he'd rather take it that way, and I don't know but--”

”No,” said Bibbs, emphatically, as the elevator stopped; ”he won't get it. Not from us, he won't, and I'll show you why. I can convince you in five minutes.” He followed his father into the office anteroom--and convinced him. Then, having been diligently brushed by a youth of color, Bibbs went into his own room and closed the door.

He was more shaken than he had allowed his father to perceive, and his side was sore where Sheridan had struck him. He desired to be alone; he wanted to rub himself and, for once, to do some useless thinking again.

He knew that his father had not ”happened” to run into him; he knew that Sheridan had instantly--and instinctively--proved that he held his own life of no account whatever compared to that of his son and heir. Bibbs had been unable to speak of that, or to seem to know it; for Sheridan, just as instinctively, had swept the matter aside--as of no importance, since all was well--reverting immediately to business.

Bibbs began to think intently of his father. He perceived, as he had never perceived before, the shadowing of something enormous and indomitable--and lawless; not to be daunted by the will of nature's very self; laughing at the lightning and at wounds and mutilation; conquering, irresistible--and blindly n.o.ble. For the first time in his life Bibbs began to understand the meaning of being truly this man's son.

He would be the more truly his son henceforth, though, as Sheridan said, Bibbs had not come down-town with him meanly or half-heartedly. He had given his word because he had wanted the money, simply, for Mary Vertrees in her need. And he s.h.i.+vered with horror of himself, thinking how he had gone to her to offer it, asking her to marry him--with his head on his breast in shameful fear that she would accept him! He had not known her; the knowing had lost her to him, and this had been his real awakening; for he knew now how deep had been that slumber wherein he dreamily celebrated the superiority of ”friends.h.i.+p”! The sleep-walker had wakened to bitter knowledge of love and life, finding himself a failure in both. He had made a burnt offering of his dreams, and the sacrifice had been an unforgivable hurt to Mary. All that was left for him was the work he had not chosen, but at least he would not fail in that, though it was indeed no more than ”dust in his mouth.” If there had been anything ”to work for--”

He went to the window, raised it, and let in the uproar of the streets below. He looked down at the blurred, hurrying swarms and he looked across, over the roofs with their panting jets of vapor, into the vast, foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries of steel were rising dimly against it, chattering with steel on steel, and screeching in steam, while tiny figures of men walked on threads in the dull sky. Buildings would overtop the Sheridan. Bigness was being served.

But what for? The old question came to Bibbs with a new despair. Here, where his eyes fell, had once been green fields and running brooks, and how had the kind earth been despoiled and disfigured! The pioneers had begun the work, but in their old age their orators had said for them that they had toiled and risked and sacrificed that their posterity might live in peace and wisdom, enjoying the fruits of the earth. Well, their posterity was here--and there was only turmoil. Where was the promised land? It had been promised by the soldiers of all the wars; it had been promised to this generation by the pioneers; but here was the very posterity to whom it had been promised, toiling and risking and sacrificing in turn--for what?

The harsh roar of the city came in through the open window, continuously beating upon Bibbs's ear until he began to distinguish a pulsation in it--a broken and irregular cadence. It seemed to him that it was like a t.i.tanic voice, discordant, hoa.r.s.e, rustily metallic--the voice of the G.o.d, Bigness. And the voice summoned Bibbs as it summoned all its servants.

”Come and work!” it seemed to yell. ”Come and work for Me, all men! By your youth and your hope I summon you! By your age and your despair I summon you to work for Me yet a little, with what strength you have. By your love of home I summon you! By your love of woman I summon you! By your hope of children I summon you!

”You shall be blind slaves of Mine, blind to everything but Me, your Master and Driver! For your reward you shall gaze only upon my ugliness.

You shall give your toil and your lives, you shall go mad for love and wors.h.i.+p of my ugliness! You shall perish still wors.h.i.+pping Me, and your children shall perish knowing no other G.o.d!”

And then, as Bibbs closed the window down tight, he heard his father's voice booming in the next room; he could not distinguish the words but the tone was exultant--and there came the THUMP! THUMP! of the maimed hand. Bibbs guessed that Sheridan was bragging of the city and of Bigness to some visitor from out-of-town.

And he thought how truly Sheridan was the high priest of Bigness. But with the old, old thought again, ”What for?” Bibbs caught a glimmer of far, faint light. He saw that Sheridan had all his life struggled and conquered, and must all his life go on struggling and inevitably conquering, as part of a vast impulse not his own. Sheridan served blindly--but was the impulse blind? Bibbs asked himself if it was not he who had been in the greater hurry, after all. The kiln must be fired before the vase is glazed, and the Acropolis was not crowned with marble in a day.

Then the voice came to him again, but there was a strain in it as of some high music struggling to be born of the turmoil. ”Ugly I am,” it seemed to say to him, ”but never forget that I AM a G.o.d!” And the voice grew in sonorousness and in dignity. ”The highest should serve, but so long as you wors.h.i.+p me for my own sake I will not serve you. It is man who makes me ugly, by his wors.h.i.+p of me. If man would let me serve him, I should be beautiful!”

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 suns.h.i.+ne; and Bibbs had a glimpse of what he made there--perhaps for a fellows.h.i.+p of the children of the children that were children now--a n.o.ble 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.”

<script>