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

use, father, I tell you. I know what Gurney was going to say to you. I’m not going back to the office. I’m done!”

“Wait a minute before you talk that way!” Sheridan began his sentry-go up and down the room. “I suppose you know it’s taken two pretty good men about sixteen hours a day to set things straight and get ’em runnin’ right again, down in your office?”

“They must be good men.” Roscoe nodded indifferently. “I thought I was doing about eight men’s work. I’m glad you found two that could handle it.”

“Look here! If I worked you it was for your own good. There are plenty men drive harder’n I do, and⁠—”

“Yes. There are some that break down all the other men that work with ’em. They either die, or go crazy, or have to quit, and are no use the rest of their lives. The last’s my case, I guess⁠—‘complicated by domestic difficulties’!”

“You set there and tell me you give up?” Sheridan’s voice shook, and so did the gesticulating hand which he extended appealingly toward the despondent figure. “Don’t do it, Roscoe! Don’t say it! Say you’ll come down there again and be a man! This woman ain’t goin’ to trouble you any more. The work ain’t goin’ to hurt you if you haven’t got her to worry you, and you can get shut o’ this nasty whiskey-guzzlin’; it ain’t fastened on you yet. Don’t say⁠—”

“It’s no use on earth,” Roscoe mumbled. “No use on earth.”

“Look here! If you want another month’s vacation⁠—”

“I know Gurney told you, so what’s the use talking about ‘vacations’?”

“Gurney!” Sheridan vociferated the name savagely. “It’s Gurney, Gurney, Gurney! Always Gurney! I don’t know what the world’s comin’ to with everybody runnin’ around squealin’, ‘The doctor says this,’ and, ‘The doctor says that’! It makes me sick! How’s this country expect to get its Work done if Gurney and all the other old nanny-goats keep up this blattin’⁠—‘Oh, oh! Don’t lift that stick o’ wood; you’ll ruin your nerves!’ So he says you got ‘nervous exhaustion induced by overwork and emotional strain.’ They always got to stick the Work in if they see a chance! I reckon you did have the ‘emotional strain,’ and that’s all’s the matter with you. You’ll be over it soon’s this woman’s gone, and Work’s the very thing to make you quit frettin’ about her.”

“Did Gurney tell you I was fit to work?”

“Shut up!” Sheridan bellowed. “I’m so sick o’ that man’s name I feel like shootin’ anybody that says it to me!” He fumed and chafed, swearing indistinctly, then came and stood before his son. “Look here; do you think you’re doin’ the square thing by me? Do you? How much you worth?”

“I’ve got between seven and eight thousand a year clear, of my own, outside the salary. That much is mine whether I work or not.”

“It is? You could’a pulled it out without me, I suppose you think, at your age?”

“No. But it’s mine, and it’s enough.”

“My Lord! It’s about what a Congressman gets, and you want to quit there! I suppose you think you’ll get the rest when I kick the bucket, and all you have to do is lay back and wait! You let me tell you right here, you’ll never see one cent of it. You go out o’ business now, and what would you know about handlin’ it five or ten or twenty years from now? Because I intend to stay here a little while yet, my boy! They’d either get it away from you or you’d sell for a nickel and let it be split up and⁠—” He whirled about, marched to the other end of the room, and stood silent a moment. Then he said, solemnly: “Listen. If you go out now, you leave me in the lurch, with nothin’ on God’s green earth to depend on but your brother⁠—and you know what he is. I’ve depended on you for it all since Jim died. Now you’ve listened to that dam’ doctor, and he says maybe you won’t ever be as good a man as you were, and that certainly you won’t be for a year or so⁠—probably more. Now, that’s all a lie. Men don’t break down that way at your age. Look at me! And I tell you, you can shake this thing off. All you need is a little get-up and a little gumption. Men don’t go away for years and then come back into moving businesses like ours⁠—they lose the strings. And if you could, I won’t let you⁠—if you lay down on me now, I won’t⁠—and that’s because if you lay down you prove you ain’t the man I thought you were.” He cleared his throat and finished quietly: “Roscoe, will you take a month’s vacation and come back and go to it?”

“No,” said Roscoe, listlessly. “I’m through.”

“All right,” said Sheridan. He picked up the evening paper from a table, went to a chair by the fire and sat down, his back to his son. “Goodbye.”

Roscoe rose, his head hanging, but there was a dull relief in his eyes. “Best I can do,” he muttered, seeming about to depart, yet lingering. “I figure it out a good deal like this,” he said. “I didn’t know my job was any strain, and I managed all right, but from what Gur⁠—from what I hear, I was just up to the limit of my nerves from overwork, and the⁠—the trouble at home was the extra strain that’s fixed me the way I am. I tried to brace, so I could stand the work and the trouble too, on whiskey⁠—and that put the finish to me! I⁠—I’m not hitting it as hard as I was for a while, and I reckon pretty soon, if I can get to feeling a little more energy, I better try to quit entirely⁠—I don’t know. I’m all in⁠—and the doctor says so. I thought I was running along fine up to a few