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

“Everything you say,” Mrs. Vertrees began, timidly, “seems to have the air of⁠—it is as if you were seeking to⁠—to make yourself⁠—”

“Oh, I see! You mean I sound as if I were trying to force myself to like him.”

“Not exactly, Mary. That wasn’t quite what I meant,” said Mrs. Vertrees, speaking direct untruth with perfect unconsciousness. “But you said that⁠—that you found the latter part of the evening at young Mrs. Sheridan’s unentertaining⁠—”

“And as Mr. James Sheridan was there, and I saw more of him than at dinner, and had a horribly stupid time in spite of that, you think I⁠—” And then it was Mary who left the deduction unfinished.

Mrs. Vertrees nodded; and though both the mother and the daughter understood, Mary felt it better to make the understanding definite.

“Well,” she asked, gravely, “is there anything else I can do? You and papa don’t want me to do anything that distresses me, and so, as this is the only thing to be done, it seems it’s up to me not to let it distress me. That’s all there is about it, isn’t it?”

“But nothing must distress you!” the mother cried.

“That’s what I say!” said Mary, cheerfully. “And so it doesn’t. It’s all right.” She rose and took her cloak over her arm, as if to go to her own room. But on the way to the door she stopped, and stood leaning against the foot of the bed, contemplating a threadbare rug at her feet. “Mother, you’ve told me a thousand times that it doesn’t really matter whom a girl marries.”

“No, no!” Mrs. Vertrees protested. “I never said such a⁠—”

“No, not in words; I mean what you meant. It’s true, isn’t it, that marriage really is ‘not a bed of roses, but a field of battle’? To get right down to it, a girl could fight it out with anybody, couldn’t she? One man as well as another?”

“Oh, my dear! I’m sure your father and I⁠—”

“Yes, yes,” said Mary, indulgently. “I don’t mean you and papa. But isn’t it propinquity that makes marriages? So many people say so, there must be something in it.”

“Mary, I can’t bear for you to talk like that.” And Mrs. Vertrees lifted pleading eyes to her daughter⁠—eyes that begged to be spared. “It sounds⁠—almost reckless!”

Mary caught the appeal, came to her, and kissed her gaily. “Never fret, dear! I’m not likely to do anything I don’t want to do⁠—I’ve always been too thoroughgoing a little pig! And if it is propinquity that does our choosing for us, well, at least no girl in the world could ask for more than that! How could there be any more propinquity than the very house next door?”

She gave her mother a final kiss and went gaily all the way to the door this time, pausing for her postscript with her hand on the knob. “Oh, the one that caught me looking in the window, mamma, the youngest one⁠—”

“Did he speak of it?” Mrs. Vertrees asked, apprehensively.

“No. He didn’t speak at all, that I saw, to anyone. I didn’t meet him. But he isn’t insane, I’m sure; or if he is, he has long intervals when he’s not. Mr. James Sheridan mentioned that he lived at home when he was ‘well enough’; and it may be he’s only an invalid. He looks dreadfully ill, but he has pleasant eyes, and it struck me that if⁠—if one were in the Sheridan family”⁠—she laughed a little ruefully⁠—“he might be interesting to talk to sometimes, when there was too much stocks and bonds. I didn’t see him after dinner.”

“There must be something wrong with him,” said Mrs. Vertrees. “They’d have introduced him if there wasn’t.”

“I don’t know. He’s been ill so much and away so much⁠—sometimes people like that just don’t seem to ‘count’ in a family. His father spoke of sending him back to a machine-shop or some sort; I suppose he meant when the poor thing gets better. I glanced at him just then, when Mr. Sheridan mentioned him, and he happened to be looking straight at me; and he was pathetic-looking enough before that, but the most tragic change came over him. He seemed just to die, right there at the table!”

“You mean when his father spoke of sending him to the shop place?”

“Yes.”

“Mr. Sheridan must be very unfeeling.”

“No,” said Mary, thoughtfully, “I don’t think he is; but he might be uncomprehending, and certainly he’s the kind of man to do anything he once sets out to do. But I wish I hadn’t been looking at that poor boy just then! I’m afraid I’ll keep remembering⁠—”

“I wouldn’t.” Mrs. Vertrees smiled faintly, and in her smile there was the remotest ghost of a genteel roguishness. “I’d keep my mind on pleasanter things, Mary.”

Mary laughed and nodded. “Yes, indeed! Plenty pleasant enough, and probably, if all were known, too good⁠—even for me!”

And when she had gone Mrs. Vertrees drew a long breath, as if a burden were off her mind, and, smiling, began to undress in a gentle reverie.

Edith, glancing casually into the “ready-made” library, stopped abruptly, seeing Bibbs there alone. He was standing before the pearl-framed and golden-lettered poem, musingly inspecting it. He read it:

Fugitive

I will forget the things that sting:
The lashing look, the barbed word.
I know the very hands that fling
The stones at me had never stirred
To anger but for their own scars.
They’ve suffered so, that’s why they strike.
I’ll keep my heart among the stars
Where none shall hunt it out. Oh, like
These wounded ones I must not be,
For, wounded, I might strike in turn!
So, none shall hurt me. Far and free
Where my heart flies no one shall learn.

“Bibbs!” Edith’s voice was angry, and her color deepened suddenly as she came into the room, preceded by a scent of violets much more powerful than that warranted by the actual bunch of them upon the lapel of her coat.

Bibbs did not turn his head, but wagged it solemnly, seeming depressed by the poem. “Pretty young,