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

“Yes, you did!” And Edith’s gibing laughter tooted loudly. “Yes, you did! You didn’t have any other reason! Oh no! You don’t want to break it up between Bobby Lamhorn and me because⁠—”

“Edie, Edie! Now, now!”

“Oh, hush up, mamma! I’d like to know, then, if she says her new friends tell her he’s got such a reputation that he oughtn’t to come here, what about his not going to her house. How⁠—”

“I’ve explained that to Mother Sheridan.” Sibyl’s voice indicated that she was descending the stairs. “Married people are not the same. Some things that should be shielded from a young girl⁠—”

This seemed to have no very soothing effect upon Edith. “ ‘Shielded from a young girl’!” she shrilled. “You seem pretty willing to be the shield! You look out Roscoe doesn’t notice what kind of a shield you are!”

Sibyl’s answer was inaudible, but Mrs. Sheridan’s flurried attempts at pacification were renewed. “Now, Edie, Edie, she means it for your good, and you’d oughtn’t to⁠—”

“Oh, hush up, mamma, and let me alone! If you dare tell papa⁠—”

“Now, now! I’m not going to tell him today, and maybe⁠—”

“You’ve got to promise never to tell him!” the girl cried, passionately.

“Well, we’ll see. You just come back in your own room, and we’ll⁠—”

“No! I won’t ‘talk it over’! Stop pulling me! Let me alone!” And Edith, flinging herself violently upon Bibbs’s door, jerked it open, swung round it into the room, slammed the door behind her, and threw herself, face down, upon the bed in such a riot of emotion that she had no perception of Bibbs’s presence in the room. Gasping and sobbing in a passion of tears, she beat the coverlet and pillows with her clenched fists. “Sneak!” she babbled aloud. “Sneak! Snake-in-the-grass! Cat!”

Bibbs saw that she did not know he was there, and he went softly toward the door, hoping to get away before she became aware of him; but some sound of his movement reached her, and she sat up, startled, facing him.

“Bibbs! I thought I saw you go out awhile ago.”

“Yes. I came back, though. I’m sorry⁠—”

“Did you hear me quarreling with Sibyl?”

“Only what you said in the hall. You lie down again, Edith. I’m going out.”

“No; don’t go.” She applied a handkerchief to her eyes, emitted a sob, and repeated her request. “Don’t go. I don’t mind you; you’re quiet, anyhow. Mamma’s so fussy, and never gets anywhere. I don’t mind you at all, but I wish you’d sit down.”

“All right.” And he returned to his chair beside the trunk. “Go ahead and cry all you want, Edith,” he said. “No harm in that!”

“Sibyl told mamma⁠—oh!” she began, choking. “Mary Vertrees had mamma and Sibyl and I to tea, one afternoon two weeks or so ago, and she had some women there that Sibyl’s been crazy to get in with, and she just laid herself out to make a hit with ’em, and she’s been running after ’em ever since, and now she comes over here and says they say Bobby Lamhorn is so bad that, even though they like his family, none of the nice people in town would let him in their houses. In the first place, it’s a falsehood, and I don’t believe a word of it; and in the second place I know the reason she did it, and, what’s more, she knows I know it! I won’t say what it is⁠—not yet⁠—because papa and all of you would think I’m as crazy as she is snaky; and Roscoe’s such a fool he’d probably quit speaking to me. But it’s true! Just you watch her; that’s all I ask. Just you watch that woman. You’ll see!”

As it happened, Bibbs was literally watching “that woman.” Glancing from the window, he saw Sibyl pause upon the pavement in front of the old house next door. She stood a moment, in deep thought, then walked quickly up the path to the door, undoubtedly with the intention of calling. But he did not mention this to his sister, who, after delivering herself of a rather vague jeremiad upon the subject of her sister-in-law’s treacheries, departed to her own chamber, leaving him to his speculations. The chief of these concerned the social elasticities of women. Sibyl had just been a participant in a violent scene; she had suffered hot insult of a kind that could not fail to set her quivering with resentment; and yet she elected to betake herself to the presence of people whom she knew no more than “formally.” Bibbs marveled. Surely, he reflected, some traces of emotion must linger upon Sibyl’s face or in her manner; she could not have ironed it all quite out in the three or four minutes it took her to reach the Vertreeses’ door.

And in this he was not mistaken, for Mary Vertrees was at that moment wondering what internal excitement Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan was striving to master. But Sibyl had no idea that she was allowing herself to exhibit anything except the gaiety which she conceived proper to the manner of a casual caller. She was wholly intent upon fulfilling the sudden purpose that brought her, and she was no more self-conscious than she was finely intelligent. For Sibyl Sheridan belonged to a type Scriptural in its antiquity. She was merely the idle and half-educated intriguer who may and does delude men, of course, and the best and dullest of her own sex as well, finding invariably strong supporters among these latter. It is a type that has wrought some damage in the world and would have wrought greater, save for the check put upon its power by intelligent women and by its own “lack of perspective,” for it is a type that never sees itself. Sibyl followed her impulses with no reflection or question⁠—it was like a hound on the gallop after a master on horseback. She had not even the instinct to stop and consider her effect. If she wished to make a