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

this murmur grew louder, under stress of some irrepressible merriment, Edith’s voice could be heard⁠—“Bobby, aren’t you awful!” and Sheridan glanced across at his wife appealingly.

She rose at once and went into the reception-room; there was a flurry of whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall⁠—Edith and her suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs. Sheridan returned to her chair in the library.

“They won’t bother you any more, papa,” she said, in a comforting voice. “She told me at lunch he’d phoned he wanted to come up this evening, and I said I thought he’d better wait a few days, but she said she’d already told him he could.” She paused, then added, rather guiltily: “I got kind of a notion maybe Roscoe don’t like him as much as he used to. Maybe⁠—maybe you better ask Roscoe, papa.” And as Sheridan nodded solemnly, she concluded, in haste: “Don’t say I said to. I might be wrong about it, anyway.”

He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs. Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that brought tears. “That Miss Vertrees was a good girl,” she said. “She was all right.”

Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of thought, for he nodded once more, affirmatively.

“Did you⁠—How did you fix it about the⁠—the Realty Company?” she faltered. “Did you⁠—”

He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair. “I fixed it,” he said, in a husky voice. “I moved Cantwell up, and put Johnston in Cantwell’s place, and split up Johnston’s work among the four men with salaries high enough to take it.” He went to her, put his hand upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous breath. “It’s my bedtime, mamma; I’m goin’ up.” He dropped the hand from her shoulder and moved slowly away, but when he reached the door he stopped and spoke again, without turning to look at her. “The Realty Company’ll go right on just the same,” he said. “It’s like⁠—it’s like sand, mamma. It puts me in mind of chuldern playin’ in a sand-pile. One of ’em sticks his finger in the sand and makes a hole, and another of ’em’ll pat the place with his hand, and all the little grains of sand run in and fill it up and settle against one another; and then, right away it’s flat on top again, and you can’t tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty Company’ll go on all right, mamma. There ain’t anything anywhere, I reckon, that wouldn’t go right on⁠—just the same.”

And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy tread upon the stairs.

Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son. “It’s so forlorn,” she said, chokingly. “That’s the first time he spoke since he came in the house this evening. I know it must ’a’ hurt him to hear Edith laughin’ with that Lamhorn. She’d oughtn’t to let him come, right the very first evening this way; she’d oughtn’t to done it! She just seems to lose her head over him, and it scares me. You heard what Sibyl said the other day, and⁠—and you heard what⁠—what⁠—”

“What Edith said to Sibyl?” Bibbs finished the sentence for her.

“We can’t have any trouble o’ that kind!” she wailed. “Oh, it looks as if movin’ up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck! It scares me!” She put both her hands over her face. “Oh, Bibbs, Bibbs! if you only wasn’t so queer! If you could only been a kind of dependable son! I don’t know what we’re all comin’ to!” And, weeping, she followed her husband.

Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man who has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room⁠—it was called “the smoking-room”⁠—where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up in no welcoming manner, at Bibbs’s entrance, and moved their chairs to a less conspicuous adjacency.

“Good evening,” said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a leather easy-chair near them.

“What is it?” asked Edith, plainly astonished.

“Nothing,” he returned, smiling.

She frowned. “Did you want something?” she asked.

“Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone upstairs; I shan’t be going up for several hours, and there didn’t seem to be anybody left for me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn.”

“ ‘Chat with’!” she echoed, incredulously.

“I can talk about almost anything,” said Bibbs with an air of genial politeness. “It doesn’t matter to me. I don’t know much about business⁠—if that’s what you happened to be talking about. But you aren’t in business, are you, Mr. Lamhorn?”

“Not now,” returned Lamhorn, shortly.

“I’m not, either,” said Bibbs. “It was getting cloudier than usual, I noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest. Rain tomorrow, I shouldn’t be surprised.”

He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of which had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he sat expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as if implying that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his gaze with a mixture of astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr. Lamhorn was obviously disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate as possible in presenting the weather as a topic. Bibbs had perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in his mind at any time except “personalities”⁠—he could talk about people and he could make love. Bibbs, wishing to be courteous, offered the weather.

Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs’s luxurious attitude in the leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent fixture for the rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope that he would move, and Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking silly.

“I was just going,” he said, rising.

“Oh no!” Edith cried, sharply.

“Yes. Good night! I think I⁠—”

“Too bad,” said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor, while Edith stood staring as the