The Turmoil, Booth Tarkington [best english novels for beginners .txt] 📗

you tell Jim,” he began, in his slow way. “You said you’d send him to the machine-shop with me if he didn’t propose to Miss Vertrees. So I suppose that must be your plan for me. But⁠—”

“But what?” said Sheridan, irritably, as the son paused.

“Isn’t there somebody you’d let me propose to?”

That brought his father sharply round to face him. “You beat the devil! Bibbs, what is the matter with you? Why can’t you be like anybody else?”

“Liver, maybe,” said Bibbs, gently.

“Boh! Even ole Doc Gurney says there’s nothin’ wrong with you organically. No. You’re a dreamer, Bibbs; that’s what’s the matter, and that’s all the matter. Oh, not one o’ these big dreamers that put through the big deals! No, sir! You’re the kind o’ dreamer that just sets out on the back fence and thinks about how much trouble there must be in the world! That ain’t the kind that builds the bridges, Bibbs; it’s the kind that borrows fifteen cents from his wife’s uncle’s brother-in-law to get ten cent’s worth o’ plug tobacco and a nickel’s worth o’ quinine!”

He put the finishing touch on this etching with a snort, and turned again to the window.

“Look out there!” he bade his son. “Look out o’ that window! Look at the life and energy down there! I should think any young man’s blood would tingle to get into it and be part of it. Look at the big things young men are doin’ in this town!” He swung about, coming to the mahogany desk in the middle of the room. “Look at what I was doin’ at your age! Look at what your own brothers are doin’! Look at Roscoe! Yes, and look at Jim! I made Jim president o’ the Sheridan Realty Company last New-Year’s, with charge of every inch o’ ground and every brick and every shingle and stick o’ wood we own; and it’s an example to any young man⁠—or ole man, either⁠—the way he took ahold of it. Last July we found out we wanted two more big warehouses at the Pump Works⁠—wanted ’em quick. Contractors said it couldn’t be done; said nine or ten months at the soonest; couldn’t see it any other way. What’d Jim do? Took the contract himself; found a fellow with a new cement and concrete process; kept men on the job night and day, and stayed on it night and day himself⁠—and, by George! we begin to use them warehouses next week! Four months and a half, and every inch fireproof! I tell you Jim’s one o’ these fellers that make miracles happen! Now, I don’t say every young man can be like Jim, because there’s mighty few got his ability, but every young man can go in and do his share. This town is God’s own country, and there’s opportunity for anybody with a pound of energy and an ounce o’ gumption. I tell you these young business men I watch just do my heart good! They don’t set around on the back fence⁠—no, sir! They take enough exercise to keep their health; and they go to a baseball game once or twice a week in summer, maybe, and they’re raisin’ nice families, with sons to take their places sometime and carry on the work⁠—because the work’s got to go on! They’re puttin’ their lifeblood into it, I tell you, and that’s why we’re gettin’ bigger every minute, and why they’re gettin’ bigger, and why it’s all goin’ to keep on gettin’ bigger!”

He slapped the desk resoundingly with his open palm, and then, observing that Bibbs remained in the same impassive attitude, with his eyes still fixed upon the ceiling in a contemplation somewhat plaintive, Sheridan was impelled to groan. “Oh, Lord!” he said. “This is the way you always were. I don’t believe you understood a darn word I been sayin’! You don’t look as if you did. By George! it’s discouraging!”

“I don’t understand about getting⁠—about getting bigger,” said Bibbs, bringing his gaze down to look at his father placatively. “I don’t see just why⁠—”

“What?” Sheridan leaned forward, resting his hands upon the desk and staring across it incredulously at his son.

“I don’t understand⁠—exactly⁠—what you want it all bigger for?”

“Great God!” shouted Sheridan, and struck the desk a blow with his clenched fist. “A son of mine asks me that! You go out and ask the poorest day-laborer you can find! Ask him that question⁠—”

“I did once,” Bibbs interrupted; “when I was in the machine-shop. I⁠—”

“Wha’d he say?”

“He said, ‘Oh, hell!’ ” answered Bibbs, mildly.

“Yes, I reckon he would!” Sheridan swung away from the desk. “I reckon he certainly would! And I got plenty sympathy with him right now, myself!”

“It’s the same answer, then?” Bibbs’s voice was serious, almost tremulous.

“Damnation!” Sheridan roared. “Did you ever hear the word Prosperity, you ninny? Did you ever hear the word Ambition? Did you ever hear the word progress?”

He flung himself into a chair after the outburst, his big chest surging, his throat tumultuous with gutteral incoherences. “Now then,” he said, huskily, when the anguish had somewhat abated, “what do you want to do?”

“Sir?”

“What do you want to do, I said.”

Taken by surprise, Bibbs stammered. “What⁠—what do⁠—I⁠—what⁠—”

“If I’d let you do exactly what you had the whim for, what would you do?”

Bibbs looked startled; then timidity overwhelmed him⁠—a profound shyness. He bent his head and fixed his lowered eyes upon the toe of his shoe, which he moved to and fro upon the rug, like a culprit called to the desk in school.

“What would you do? Loaf?”

“No, sir.” Bibbs’s voice was almost inaudible, and what little sound it made was unquestionably a guilty sound. “I suppose I’d⁠—I’d⁠—”

“Well?”

“I suppose I’d try to⁠—to write.”

“Write what?”

“Nothing important⁠—just poems and essays, perhaps.”

“That all?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I see,” said his father, breathing quickly with the restraint he was putting upon himself. “That is, you want to write, but you don’t want to write anything of any account.”

“You think⁠—”

Sheridan got up again. “I take my hat off to the man