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

and R. T. Bloss said so, too; and I guess he’s a good enough literary judge for me⁠—turns out more advertisin’ liter’cher than any man in the city. I tell you she’s smart! Look at the way she worked me to get me to promise the New House⁠—and I guess you had your finger in that, too, mamma! This old shack’s good enough for me, but you and little Edie’ll have to have your way. I’ll get behind her and push her the same as I will Jim and Roscoe. I tell you I’m mighty proud o’ them three chuldern! But Bibbs⁠—” He paused, shaking his head. “Honest, mamma, when I talk to men that got all their boys doin’ well and worth their salt, why, I have to keep my mind on Jim and Roscoe and forget about Bibbs.”

Mrs. Sheridan tossed her head fretfully upon the pillow. “You did the best you could, papa,” she said, impatiently, “so come to bed and quit reproachin’ yourself for it.”

He glared at her indignantly. “Reproachin’ myself!” he snorted. “I ain’t doin’ anything of the kind! What in the name o’ goodness would I want to reproach myself for? And it wasn’t the ‘best I could,’ either. It was the best anybody could! I was givin’ him a chance to show what was in him and make a man of himself⁠—and here he goes and gets ‘nervous dyspepsia’ on me!”

He went to the old-fashioned gas-fixture, turned out the light, and muttered his way morosely into bed.

“What?” said his wife, crossly, bothered by a subsequent mumbling.

“ ‘More like hookworm,’ I said,” he explained, speaking louder. “I don’t know what to do with him!”

III

Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and zwieback as the basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before he was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on a nurse and a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning, the building, and the completion of the New House; and it was to that abode of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the nurse, was found sufficient to his support.

Edith met him at the station. “Well, well, Bibbs!” she said, as he came slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from that train. She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes after a quick glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage to the street. “Do you think they ought to’ve let you come? You certainly don’t look well!”

“But I certainly do look better,” he returned, in a voice as slow as his gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak quickly he stammered. “Up to about a month ago it took two people to see me. They had to get me in a line between ’em!”

Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her first quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a faint, troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by some obligation of business to visit a “bad” ward in a hospital. She was nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but a prettiness of color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total impression close upon beauty. Her movements were eager and restless: there was something about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very sweet; and there was something that was hurried and breathless. This was new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change since he had last seen her, and he bent upon her a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood at the curb, waiting for an automobile across the street to disengage itself from the traffic.

“That’s the new car,” she said. “Everything’s new. We’ve got four now, besides Jim’s. Roscoe’s got two.”

“Edith, you look⁠—” he began, and paused.

“Oh, we’re all well,” she said, briskly; and then, as if something in his tone had caught her as significant, “Well, how do I look, Bibbs?”

“You look⁠—” He paused again, taking in the full length of her⁠—her trim brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of brown and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat in the mad mode⁠—all suited to the October day.

“How do I look?” she insisted.

“You look,” he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, “you look⁠—expensive!” That was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint and preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive intimacies.

“I expect I am!” she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of his glance. “Of course I oughtn’t to wear it in the daytime⁠—it’s an evening thing, for the theater⁠—but my day wristwatch is out of gear. Bobby Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he’s a regular rowdy sometimes. Do you want Claus to help you in?”

“Oh no,” said Bibbs. “I’m alive.” And after a fit of panting subsequent to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, “Of course, I have to tell people!”

“We only got your telegram this morning,” she said, as they began to move rapidly through the wholesale district neighboring the station. “Mother said she’d hardly expected you this month.”

“They seemed to be through with me up there in the country,” he explained, gently. “At least they said they were, and they wouldn’t keep me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get in. They told me to go home⁠—and I didn’t have any place else to go. It’ll be all right, Edith; I’ll sit in the woodshed until after dark every day.”

“Pshaw!” She laughed nervously. “Of course we’re all of us glad to have you back.”

“Yes?” he said. “Father?”

“Of course! Didn’t he write and tell you to come