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

more. You don’t know what you’ve become since Jim’s going thwarted you⁠—and that’s what was uppermost, a bafflement stronger than your normal grief. You’re half mad with a consuming fury against the very self of the law⁠—for it was the very self of the law that took Jim from you. That was a law concerning the cohesion of molecules. The very self of the law took Roscoe from you and gave Edith the certainty of beating you; and the very self of the law makes Bibbs deny you tonight. The law beats you. Haven’t you been whipped enough? But you want to whip the law⁠—you’ve set yourself against it, to bend it to your own ends, to wield it and twist it⁠—”

The voice broke from Sheridan’s heaving chest in a shout. “Yes! And by God, I will!”

“So Ajax defied the lightning,” said Gurney.

“I’ve heard that dam’-fool story, too,” Sheridan retorted, fiercely. “That’s for chuldern and niggers. It ain’t twentieth century, let me tell you! ‘Defied the lightning,’ did he, the jackass! If he’d been half a man he’d ’a’ got away with it. We don’t go showin’ off defyin’ the lightning⁠—we hitch it up and make it work for us like a black-steer! A man nowadays would just as soon think o’ defyin’ a woodshed!”

“Well, what about Bibbs?” said Gurney. “Will you be a really big man now and⁠—”

“Gurney, you know a lot about bigness!” Sheridan began to walk to and fro again, and the doctor returned gloomily to his chair. He had shot his bolt the moment he judged its chance to strike center was best, but the target seemed unaware of the marksman.

“I’m tryin’ to make a big man out o’ that poor truck yonder,” Sheridan went on, “and you step in, beggin’ me to let him be Lord knows what⁠—I don’t! I suppose you figure it out that now I got a son-in-law, I mightn’t need a son! Yes, I got a son-in-law now⁠—a spender!”

“Oh, put your hand back!” said Gurney, wearily.

There was a bronze inkstand upon the table. Sheridan put his right hand in the sling, but with his left he swept the inkstand from the table and halfway across the room⁠—a comet with a destroying black tail. Mrs. Sheridan shrieked and sprang toward it.

“Let it lay!” he shouted, fiercely. “Let it lay!” And, weeping, she obeyed. “Yes, sir,” he went on, in a voice the more ominous for the sudden hush he put upon it. “I got a spender for a son-in-law! It’s wonderful where property goes, sometimes. There was ole man Tracy⁠—you remember him, Doc⁠—J. R. Tracy, solid banker. He went into the bank as messenger, seventeen years old; he was president at forty-three, and he built that bank with his life for forty years more. He was down there from nine in the morning until four in the afternoon the day before he died⁠—over eighty! Gilt edge, that bank? It was diamond edge! He used to eat a bag o’ peanuts and an apple for lunch; but he wasn’t stingy⁠—he was just livin’ in his business. He didn’t care for pie or automobiles⁠—he had his bank. It was an institution, and it come pretty near bein’ the beatin’ heart o’ this town in its time. Well, that ole man used to pass one o’ these here turned-up-nose and turned-up-pants cigarette boys on the streets. Never spoke to him, Tracy didn’t. Speak to him? God! he wouldn’t ’a’ coughed on him! He wouldn’t ’a’ let him clean the cuspidors at the bank! Why, if he’d ’a’ just seen him standin’ in front the bank he’d ’a’ had him run off the street. And yet all Tracy was doin’ every day of his life was workin’ for that cigarette boy! Tracy thought it was for the bank; he thought he was givin’ his life and his lifeblood and the blood of his brain for the bank, but he wasn’t. It was every bit⁠—from the time he went in at seventeen till he died in harness at eighty-three⁠—it was every last lick of it just slavin’ for that turned-up-nose, turned-up-pants cigarette boy. And Tracy didn’t even know his name! He died, not ever havin’ heard it, though he chased him off the front steps of his house once. The day after Tracy died his old-maid daughter married the cigarette⁠—and there ain’t any Tracy bank any more! And now”⁠—his voice rose again⁠—“and now I got a cigarette son-in-law!”

Gurney pointed to the flourishing right hand without speaking, and Sheridan once more returned it to the sling.

“My son-in-law likes Florida this winter,” Sheridan went on. “That’s good, and my son-in-law better enjoy it, because I don’t think he’ll be there next winter. They got twelve-thousand dollars to spend, and I hear it can be done in Florida by rich sons-in-law. When Roscoe’s woman got me to spend that much on a porch for their new house, Edith wouldn’t give me a minute’s rest till I turned over the same to her. And she’s got it, besides what I gave her to go East on. It’ll be gone long before this time next year, and when she comes home and leaves the cigarette behind⁠—for good⁠—she’ll get some more. My name ain’t Tracy, and there ain’t goin’ to be any Tracy business in the Sheridan family. And there ain’t goin’ to be any college foundin’ and endowin’ and trusteein’, nor God-knows-what to keep my property alive when I’m gone! Edith’ll be back, and she’ll get a girl’s share when she’s through with that cigarette, but⁠—”

“By the way,” interposed Gurney, “didn’t Mrs. Sheridan tell me that Bibbs warned you Edith would marry Lamhorn in New York?”

Sheridan went completely to pieces: he swore, while his wife screamed and stopped her ears. And as he swore he pounded the table with his wounded hand, and when the doctor, after storming at him ineffectively, sprang to catch and protect that hand, Sheridan wrenched it away, tearing the bandage. He hammered the table till it leaped.

“Fool!” he