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By Booth Tarkington: Bibbs

Bibbs had to manage the funeral and ride from the cemetery with Mary Vertrees, but neither spoke. "He's not insane," said Mary to her mother. "He looks dreadfully ill, but has pleasant eyes."

Later Bibbs and Mary met as he was passing her gate. He apologized: "I--I hate a frozen fish myself, and that three miles was too long for you to put up with one. I've never been able to speak quickly, because if I tried I'd stammer. My brother Roscoe whipped me once for stepping on his slate-pencil. It took me so long to tell him it was an accident, he finished before I did." Instantly Mary saw his nature and suffering. They walked on and she invited him into the church to hear some Handel music. It meant, she said, one thing above all others to her--courage.

Thereafter Bibbs went often to the home of Mary Vertrees. "You see," he confided to her, "it is all so simple. I am to feed long strips of zinc into steel jaws that bite it into little circles, sixty-eight a minute. I used to flinch and the workmen laughed." "It sha'n't hurt you," exclaimed Mary. "All day long I'll send my thoughts to you, and you must remember that a friend stands beside you." Bibbs fed the old zinc-eater, discovered its musical rhythm, and sang his poetry in resonance therewith. At night Bibbs scribbled: Manual labor is best. Your heart can sing and your mind can breathe while your hands are working. What a turbulence is love! And lovers are blind. But friendship walks gently and with open eyes.

Trouble grew in the Sheridan household. Roscoe took to drink, then quit. He had enough--a few thousand a year. He had been so busy he had nearly lost his wife. "A woman has to have something in life besides a business man. Now we are going to Japan."

Sheridan sent for Bibbs, his only hope, offered him vice-presidencies, salaries, and shares; but Bibbs preferred happiness and nine dollars a week. "What's the use," he said, "of being just bigger, dirtier, and noisier?" That evening Bibbs and Mary read Maeterlinck together and he told her, "To-morrow I'm one of the hands of the pump-works and going to stay one, unless I am thrown out and decide to study plumbing." "Why not give Bibbs a chance to live?" said the family doctor. "There's something finer in Bibbs than his physical body. You're half mad with a consuming fury against the very self of law. But you want to beat the law! So Ajax defied the lightning!" "Yes! And, by God! I will!" cried Sheridan. "Ajax was a jackass. If he'd been half a man he'd 'a' got away with it; hitched it up and made it work for him like a black steer. I'll have my way with that stubborn fool, Bibbs." But Bibbs still said, "No."

Sunday afternoon Bibbs was working over a poem. He might venture it up on an editor and perhaps-- Then paper and pencil dropped as he stood up, paralyzed. Through the half-open door he heard Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan confiding to Mother Sheridan, "The Vertrees' house has been sold on foreclosure; they are allowed to live there a little longer." "Mr. Vertrees has been trying to get a 'position.'" "They have been doing their own cooking." "Those people were so hard up that Miss Vertrees started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was insane or not." "She had to get him." "If he'd stop to think, he'd known he wasn't the kind of a man any girl would be apt to fall in love with."

Bibbs quickly burned papers and notebooks, descended, and told his father, "I'll take the job you offered me," and went straight to Mary Vertrees and said, "Will you marry me?"

Mary drew it all out of Bibbs; then sank down, kneeling, tears overwhelming her. "I can't make it plain," said Bibbs. "I never dreamed I could do anything for you! I knew you never thought of me except generously--to give." "We were poor, and I think I did mean to marry your brother. But something stopped me from such a sacrilege. I posted the letter, but he never got it." "You kept me alive and I've hurt you like this," said Bibbs. "Could you forgive me, Mary?" "Oh, a thousand times! But there's nothing to forgive and you mustn't come to see me any more," she cried in a passion of tears. "Never, never, never!" He returned in time to tell his sister-in-law, in the presence of the family: "I proved what you said of me, and disproved what you said of Miss Vertrees. I asked her to marry me and she refused."

Bibbs went to his father and sat in the porch of the temple with the money-changers; worked and talked of nothing but work. He delved into the ways of the city and its political influence, and began to buy Intertraction shares, where the Vertrees' fortune had vanished. Soon the Vertrees were able to pay the butcher, hire a cook, and follow the broker's advice to keep the balance of their stock. Sheridan boasted that his plan for Bibbs was working out all right. Still, there was something wrong, and the doctor and Sheridan agreed that it might be a good thing if Miss Vertrees would permit Bibbs to see her--sometimes. "I had to make Bibbs go my way," Sheridan explained to Miss Vertrees, "but there isn't anything in it to him. He gave up every-thing he wanted and took the job he never would, just for you. There's only one girl he could feel that sorry for. Can't you let him come back?"

When Mary responded, "I can't! He was only sorry for me," the truth was out. "Don't--don't--" she cried. "You mustn't--" "I won't tell him. I won't tell anybody anything," said Sheridan. On a crowded down-town thoroughfare Mary saw Sheridan, at the risk of his life, spring before a moving trolley-car and with the whole force of his big body shunt Bibbs from impending danger. The crowd had shrieked warnings, but Bibbs had looked the wrong way.

High up in the Sheridan building, Bibbs sat down, shaking and sore. He realized that his father held his own life of no account compared with that of his son. Bibbs perceived what he had never perceived before--the shadowing of something enormous, indomitable, lawless, irresistible, and blindly noble. He looked out into the vast, foggy heart of the smoke. Dizzy traceries 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. Bigness was being served and there was only Turmoil. But what for?--the mighty question came to Bibbs with a new despair.