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

home?” She did not turn to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face directly forward.

“No,” he said; “father hasn’t written.”

She flushed a little. “I expect I ought to’ve written sometime, or one of the boys⁠—”

“Oh no; that was all right.”

“You can’t think how busy we’ve all been this year, Bibbs. I often planned to write⁠—and then, just as I was going to, something would turn up. And I’m sure it’s been just the same way with Jim and Roscoe. Of course we knew mamma was writing often and⁠—”

“Of course!” he said, readily. “There’s a chunk of coal fallen on your glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word! I’d almost forgotten how sooty it is here.”

“We’ve been having very bright weather this month⁠—for us.” She blew the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.

He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun like a cold tin pan nailed up in a smokehouse by some lunatic, for a decoration. “Yes,” said Bibbs. “It’s very gay.” A few moments later, as they passed a corner, “Aren’t we going home?” he asked.

“Why, yes! Did you want to go somewhere else first?”

“No. Your new driver’s taking us out of the way, isn’t he?”

“No. This is right. We’re going straight home.”

“But we’ve passed the corner. We always turned⁠—”

“Good gracious!” she cried. “Didn’t you know we’d moved? Didn’t you know we were in the New House?”

“Why, no!” said Bibbs. “Are you?”

“We’ve been there a month! Good gracious! Didn’t you know⁠—” She broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: “Of course, mamma’s never been so busy in her life; we all haven’t had time to do anything but keep on the hop. Mamma couldn’t even come to the station today. Papa’s got some of his business friends and people from around the old-house neighborhood coming tonight for a big dinner and housewarming⁠—dreadful kind of people⁠—but mamma’s got it all on her hands. She’s never sat down a minute; and if she did, papa would have her up again before⁠—”

“Of course,” said Bibbs. “Do you like the new place, Edith?”

“I don’t like some of the things father would have in it, but it’s the finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me! Papa bought one thing I like⁠—a view of the Bay of Naples in oil that’s perfectly beautiful; it’s the first thing you see as you come in the front hall, and it’s eleven feet long. But he would have that old fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the new dining-room. You remember it⁠—a table and a watermelon sliced open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with two dead prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture-store years and years ago, and he claims it’s a finer picture than any they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it’s horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too, with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about its being such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on having it where he wanted it. She makes me tired! Sibyl!”

Edith’s first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her full gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her denunciation of her sister-in-law.

“Sibyl!” she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed to strike fire on her lips. “I’d like to know why Roscoe couldn’t have married somebody from here that would have done us some good! He could have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now, and Bobby’d have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but instead of that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some awfully nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic City, last spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even heard of ’em!”

“I thought you were great friends with Sibyl,” Bibbs said.

“Up to the time I found her out!” the sister returned, with continuing vehemence. “I’ve found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan lately⁠—”

“It’s only lately?”

“Well⁠—” Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. “Of course, I always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger about Roscoe!”

“It seems,” said Bibbs, in laconic protest, “that she married him.”

The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: “Why, she’d have married you!”

“No, no,” he said; “she couldn’t be that bad!”

“I didn’t mean⁠—” she began, distressed. “I only meant⁠—I didn’t mean⁠—”

“Never mind, Edith,” he consoled her. “You see, she couldn’t have married me, because I didn’t know her; and besides, if she’s as mercenary as all that she’d have been too clever. The head doctor even had to lend me the money for my ticket home.”

“I didn’t mean anything unpleasant about you,” Edith babbled. “I only meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to marry somebody she’d have married anybody that asked her.”

“Yes, yes,” said Bibbs, “it’s all straight.” And, perceiving that his sister’s expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set matters perfectly to rights, he chuckled silently.

“Roscoe’s perfectly lovely to her,” she continued, a moment later. “Too lovely! If he’d wake up a little and lay down the law, some day, like a man, I guess she’d respect him more and learn to behave herself!”

“ ‘Behave’?”

“Oh, well, I mean she’s so insincere,” said Edith, characteristically evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led, and in this not unique of her sex.

Bibbs contented himself with a noncommittal gesture. “Business is crawling up the old