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

streets,” he said, his long, tremulous hand indicating a vasty structure in course of erection. “The boardinghouses come first and then the⁠—”

“That isn’t for shops,” she informed him. “That’s a new investment of papa’s⁠—the ‘Sheridan Apartments.’ ”

“Well, well,” he murmured. “I supposed ‘Sheridan’ was almost well enough known here already.”

“Oh, we’re well enough known about!” she said, impatiently. “I guess there isn’t a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn’t know who we are. But we aren’t in with the right people.”

“No!” he exclaimed. “Who’s all that?”

“Who’s all what?”

“The ‘right people.’ ”

“You know what I mean: the best people, the old families⁠—the people that have the real social position in this town and that know they’ve got it.”

Bibbs indulged in his silent chuckle again; he seemed greatly amused. “I thought that the people who actually had the real what-you-may-call-it didn’t know it,” he said. “I’ve always understood that it was very unsatisfactory, because if you thought about it you didn’t have it, and if you had it you didn’t know it.”

“That’s just bosh,” she retorted. “They know it in this town, all right! I found out a lot of things, long before we began to think of building out in this direction. The right people in this town aren’t always the society-column ones, and they mix around with outsiders, and they don’t all belong to any one club⁠—they’re taken in all sorts into all their clubs⁠—but they’re a clan, just the same; and they have the clan feeling and they’re just as much We, Us and Company as any crowd you read about anywhere in the world. Most of ’em were here long before papa came, and the grandfathers of the girls of my age knew each other, and⁠—”

“I see,” Bibbs interrupted, gravely. “Their ancestors fled together from many a stricken field, and Crusaders’ blood flows in their veins. I always understood the first house was built by an old party of the name of Vertrees who couldn’t get along with Dan’l Boone, and hurried away to these parts because Dan’l wanted him to give back a gun he’d lent him.”

Edith gave a little ejaculation of alarm. “You mustn’t repeat that story, Bibbs, even if it’s true. The Vertreeses are the best family, and of course the very oldest here; they were an old family even before Mary Vertrees’s great-great-grandfather came west and founded this settlement. He came from Lynn, Massachusetts, and they have relatives there yet⁠—some of the best people in Lynn!”

“No!” exclaimed Bibbs, incredulously.

“And there are other old families like the Vertreeses,” she went on, not heeding him; “the Lamhorns and the Kittersbys and the J. Palmerston Smiths⁠—”

“Strange names to me,” he interrupted. “Poor things! None of them have my acquaintance.”

“No, that’s just it!” she cried. “And papa had never even heard the name of Vertrees! Mrs. Vertrees went with some anti-smoke committee to see him, and he told her that smoke was what made her husband bring home his wages from the payroll on Saturday night! He told us about it, and I thought I just couldn’t live through the night, I was so ashamed! Mr. Vertrees has always lived on his income, and papa didn’t know him, of course. They’re the stiffist, most elegant people in the whole town. And to crown it all, papa went and bought the next lot to the old Vertrees country mansion⁠—it’s in the very heart of the best new residence district now, and that’s where the New House is, right next door to them⁠—and I must say it makes their place look rather shabby! I met Mary Vertrees when I joined the Mission Service Helpers, but she never did any more than just barely bow to me, and since papa’s break I doubt if she’ll do that! They haven’t called.”

“And you think if I spread this gossip about Vertrees the First stealing Dan’l Boone’s gun, the chances that they will call⁠—”

“Papa knows what a break he made with Mrs. Vertrees. I made him understand that,” said Edith, demurely, “and he’s promised to try and meet Mr. Vertrees and be nice to him. It’s just this way: if we don’t know them, it’s practically no use in our having build the New House; and if we do know them and they’re decent to us, we’re right with the right people. They can do the whole thing for us. Bobby Lamhorn told Sibyl he was going to bring his mother to call on her and on mamma, but it was weeks ago, and I notice he hasn’t done it; and if Mrs. Vertrees decides not to know us, I’m darn sure Mrs. Lamhorn’ll never come. That’s one thing Sibyl didn’t manage! She said Bobby offered to bring his mother⁠—”

“You say he is a friend of Roscoe’s?” Bibbs asked.

“Oh, he’s a friend of the whole family,” she returned, with a petulance which she made an effort to disguise. “Roscoe and he got acquainted somewhere, and they take him to the theater about every other night. Sibyl has him to lunch, too, and keeps⁠—” She broke off with an angry little jerk of the head. “We can see the New House from the second corner ahead. Roscoe has built straight across the street from us, you know. Honestly, Sibyl makes me think of a snake, sometimes⁠—the way she pulls the wool over people’s eyes! She honeys up to papa and gets anything in the world she wants out of him, and then makes fun of him behind his back⁠—yes, and to his face, but he can’t see it! She got him to give her a twelve-thousand-dollar porch for their house after it was⁠—”

“Good heavens!” said Bibbs, staring ahead as they reached the corner and the car swung to the right, following a bend in the street. “Is that the New House?”

“Yes. What do you think of it?”

“Well,” he drawled, “I’m pretty sure the sanitarium’s about half a size bigger; I can’t be certain till I measure.”

And a moment later, as they entered the driveway, he added, seriously: “But