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

you till they get the embalmin’-fluid into me! Now go on, and don’t let me hear from you again till you can come and tell me you’ve waked up, you poor, pitiful, dandelion-pickin’ sleepwalker!”

Bibbs gave him a queer look. There was something like reproach in it, for once; but there was more than that⁠—he seemed to be startled by his father’s last word.

XXV

There was sleet that evening, with a whopping wind, but neither this storm nor that other which so imminently threatened him held place in the consciousness of Bibbs Sheridan when he came once more to the presence of Mary. All was right in his world as he sat with her, reading Maurice Maeterlinck’s Alladine and Palomides. The sorrowful light of the gas-jet might have been May morning sunshine flashing amber and rose through the glowing windows of the Sainte-Chapelle, it was so bright for Bibbs. And while the zinc-eater held out to bring him such golden nights as these, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men might not serve to break the spell.

Bibbs read slowly, but in a reasonable manner, as if he were talking; and Mary, looking at him steadily from beneath her curved fingers, appeared to discover no fault. It had grown to be her habit to look at him whenever there was an opportunity. It may be said, in truth, that while they were together, and it was light, she looked at him all the time.

When he came to the end of Alladine and Palomides they were silent a little while, considering together; then he turned back the pages and said: “There’s something I want to read over. This:”

You would think I threw a window open on the dawn.⁠ ⁠… She has a soul that can be seen around her⁠—that takes you in its arms like an ailing child and without saying anything to you consoles you for everything.⁠ ⁠… I shall never understand it all. I do not know how it can all be, but my knees bend in spite of me when I speak of it.⁠ ⁠…

He stopped and looked at her.

“You boy!” said Mary, not very clearly.

“Oh yes,” he returned. “But it’s true⁠—especially my knees!”

“You boy!” she murmured again, blushing charmingly. “You might read another line over. The first time I ever saw you, Bibbs, you were looking into a mirror. Do it again. But you needn’t read it⁠—I can give it to you: ‘A little Greek slave that came from the heart of Arcady!’ ”

“I! I’m one of the hands at the Pump Works⁠—and going to stay one, unless I have to decide to study plumbing.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You love and want what’s beautiful and delicate and serene; it’s really art that you want in your life, and have always wanted. You seemed to me, from the first, the most wistful person I had ever known, and that’s what you were wistful for.”

Bibbs looked doubtful and more wistful than ever; but after a moment or two the matter seemed to clarify itself to him. “Why, no,” he said; “I wanted something else more than that. I wanted you.”

“And here I am!” she laughed, completely understanding. “I think we’re like those two in The Cloister and the Hearth. I’m just the rough Burgundian crossbow man, Denys, who followed that gentle Gerard and told everybody that the devil was dead.”

“He isn’t, though,” said Bibbs, as a hoarse little bell in the next room began a series of snappings which proved to be ten, upon count. “He gets into the clock whenever I’m with you.” And, sighing deeply he rose to go.

“You’re always very prompt about leaving me.”

“I⁠—I try to be,” he said. “It isn’t easy to be careful not to risk everything by giving myself a little more at a time. If I ever saw you look tired⁠—”

“Have you ever?”

“Not yet. You always look⁠—you always look⁠—”

“How?”

“Carefree. That’s it. Except when you feel sorry for me about something, you always have that splendid look. It puts courage into people to see it. If I had a struggle to face I’d keep remembering that look⁠—and I’d never give up! It’s a brave look, too, as though gaiety might be a kind of gallantry on your part, and yet I don’t quite understand why it should be, either.” He smiled quizzically, looking down upon her. “Mary, you haven’t a secret sorrow, have you?”

For answer she only laughed.

“No,” he said; “I can’t imagine you with a care in the world. I think that’s why you were so kind to me⁠—you have nothing but happiness in your own life, and so you could spare time to make my troubles turn to happiness, too. But there’s one little time in the twenty-four hours when I’m not happy. It’s now, when I have to say good night. I feel dismal every time it comes⁠—and then, when I’ve left the house, there’s a bad little blankness, a black void, as though I were temporarily dead; and it lasts until I get it established in my mind that I’m really beginning another day that’s to end with you again. Then I cheer up. But now’s the bad time⁠—and I must go through it, and so⁠—good night.” And he added with a pungent vehemence of which he was little aware, “I hate it!”

“Do you?” she said, rising to go to the door with him. But he stood motionless, gazing at her wonderingly.

“Mary! Your eyes are so⁠—” He stopped.

“Yes?” But she looked quickly away.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I thought just then⁠—”

“What did you think?”

“I don’t know⁠—it seemed to me that there was something I ought to understand⁠—and didn’t.”

She laughed and met his wondering gaze again frankly. “My eyes are pleased,” she said. “I’m glad that you miss me a little after you go.”

“But tomorrow’s coming faster than other days if you’ll let it,” he said.

She inclined her head. “Yes. I’ll⁠—‘let it’!”

“Going to church,” said Bibbs. “It is going to church when I go with you!”

She