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

of help me to see I got it all straight. I haven’t got any reason for saying it except the good of the family, and it’s nothing to me, one way or the other, of course, except for that. I oughtn’t to’ve behaved the way I did that night, and it seems to me if there’s anything I can do to help the family, I ought to, because it would help show I felt the right way. Well, what I want to do is to tell this so’s to keep the family from being made a fool of. I don’t want to see the family just made use of and twisted around her finger by somebody that’s got no more heart than so much ice, and just as sure to bring troubles in the long run as⁠—as Edith’s mistake is. Well, then, this is the way it is. I’ll just tell you how it looks to me and see if it don’t strike you the same way.”

Within the room, Bibbs, much annoyed, tapped his ear with his pencil. He wished they wouldn’t stand talking near his door when he was trying to write. He had just taken from his trunk the manuscript of a poem begun the preceding Sunday afternoon, and he had some ideas he wanted to fix upon paper before they maliciously seized the first opportunity to vanish, for they were but gossamer. Bibbs was pleased with the beginnings of his poem, and if he could carry it through he meant to dare greatly with it⁠—he would venture it upon an editor. For he had his plan of life now: his day would be of manual labor and thinking⁠—he could think of his friend and he could think in cadences for poems, to the crashing of the strong machine⁠—and if his father turned him out of home and out of the Works, he would work elsewhere and live elsewhere. His father had the right, and it mattered very little to Bibbs⁠—he faced the prospect of a workingman’s lodging-house without trepidation. He could find a washstand to write upon, he thought; and every evening when he left Mary he would write a little; and he would write on holidays and on Sundays⁠—on Sundays in the afternoon. In a lodging-house, at least he wouldn’t be interrupted by his sister-in-law’s choosing the immediate vicinity of his door for conversations evidently important to herself, but merely disturbing to him. He frowned plaintively, wishing he could think of some polite way of asking her to go away. But, as she went on, he started violently, dropping manuscript and pencil upon the floor.

“I don’t know whether you heard it, mother Sheridan,” she said, “but this old Vertrees house, next door, had been sold on foreclosure, and all they got out of it was an agreement that let’s ’em live there a little longer. Roscoe told me, and he says he heard Mr. Vertrees has been up and down the streets more’n two years, tryin’ to get a job he could call a ‘position,’ and couldn’t land it. You heard anything about it, mother Sheridan?”

“Well, I did know they been doin’ their own housework a good while back,” said Mrs. Sheridan. “And now they’re doin’ the cookin’, too.”

Sibyl sent forth a little titter with a sharp edge. “I hope they find something to cook! She sold her piano mighty quick after Jim died!”

Bibbs jumped up. He was trembling from head to foot and he was dizzy⁠—of all the real things he could never have dreamed in his dream the last would have been what he heard now. He felt that something incredible was happening, and that he was powerless to stop it. It seemed to him that heavy blows were falling on his head and upon Mary’s; it seemed to him that he and Mary were being struck and beaten physically⁠—and that something hideous impended. He wanted to shout to Sibyl to be silent, but he could not; he could only stand, swallowing and trembling.

“What I think the whole family ought to understand is just this,” said Sibyl, sharply. “Those people were so hard up that this Miss Vertrees started after Bibbs before they knew whether he was insane or not! They’d got a notion he might be, from his being in a sanitarium, and Mrs. Vertrees asked me if he was insane, the very first day Bibbs took the daughter out auto-riding!” She paused a moment, looking at Mrs. Sheridan, but listening intently. There was no sound from within the room.

“No!” exclaimed Mrs. Sheridan.

“It’s the truth,” Sibyl declared, loudly. “Oh, of course we were all crazy about that girl at first. We were pretty green when we moved up here, and we thought she’d get us in⁠—but it didn’t take me long to read her! Her family were down and out when it came to money⁠—and they had to go after it, one way or another, somehow! So she started for Roscoe; but she found out pretty quick he was married, and she turned right around to Jim⁠—and she landed him! There’s no doubt about it, she had Jim, and if he’d lived you’d had another daughter-in-law before this, as sure as I stand here telling you the God’s truth about it! Well⁠—when Jim was left in the cemetery she was waiting out there to drive home with Bibbs! Jim wasn’t cold⁠—and she didn’t know whether Bibbs was insane or not, but he was the only one of the rich Sheridan boys left. She had to get him.”

The texture of what was the truth made an even fabric with what was not, in Sibyl’s mind; she believed every word that she uttered, and she spoke with the rapidity and vehemence of fierce conviction.

“What I feel about it is,” she said, “it oughtn’t to be allowed to go on. It’s too mean! I like poor Bibbs, and I don’t want to see him made such a fool of, and I don’t want to see the family made such a fool