The Turmoil Part 37

"It must have been the soot on my cheek, Bibbs."

"Mary, will you tell me something?" he asked.

"I think I will."

"It's something I've had a lot of theories about, but none of them ever just fits. You used to wear furs in the fall, but now it's so much colder, you don't--you never wear them at all any more. Why don't you?"

Her eyes fell for a moment, and she grew red. Then she looked up gaily.

"Bibbs, if I tell you the answer will you promise not to ask any more questions?"

"Yes. Why did you stop wearing them?"

"Because I found I'd be warmer without them!" She caught his hand quickly in her own for an instant, laughed into his eyes, and ran into the house.

CHAPTER XXVIII

It is the consoling attribute of unused books that their decorative warmth will so often make even a ready-made library the actual "living-room" of a family to whom the shelved volumes are indeed sealed.

Thus it was with Sheridan, who read nothing except newspapers, business letters, and figures; who looked upon books as he looked upon bric-a-brac or crocheting--when he was at home, and not abed or eating, he was in the library.

He stood in the many-colored light of the stained-gla.s.s window at the far end of the long room, when Roscoe and his wife came in, and he exhaled a solemnity. His deference to the Sabbath was manifest, as always, in the length of his coat and the closeness of his Sat.u.r.day-night shave; and his expression, to match this religious pomp, was more than Sabbatical, but the most dismaying of his demonstrations was his keeping his hand in his sling.

Sibyl advanced to the middle of the room and halted there, not looking at him, but down at her m.u.f.f, in which, it could be seen, her hands were nervously moving. Roscoe went to a chair in another part of the room.

There was a deadly silence.

But Sibyl found a shaky voice, after an interval of gulping, though she was unable to lift her eyes, and the darkling lids continued to veil them. She spoke hurriedly, like an ungifted child reciting something committed to memory, but her sincerity was none the less evident for that.

"Father Sheridan, you and mother Sheridan have always been so kind to me, and I would hate to have you think I don't appreciate it, from the way I acted. I've come to tell you I am sorry for the way I did that night, and to say I know as well as anybody the way I behaved, and it will never happen again, because it's been a pretty hard lesson; and when we come back, some day, I hope you'll see that you've got a daughter-in-law you never need to be ashamed of again. I want to ask you to excuse me for the way I did, and I can say I haven't any feelings toward Edith now, but only wish her happiness and good in her new life.

I thank you for all your kindness to me, and I know I made a poor return for it, but if you can overlook the way I behaved I know I would feel a good deal happier--and I know Roscoe would, too. I wish to promise not to be as foolish in the future, and the same error would never occur again to make us all so unhappy, if you can be charitable enought to excuse it this time."

He looked steadily at her without replying, and she stood before him, never lifting her eyes; motionless, save where the moving fur proved the agitation of her hands within the m.u.f.f.

"All right," he said at last.

She looked up then with vast relief, though there was a revelation of heavy tears when the eyelids lifted.

"Thank you," she said. "There's something else--about something different--I want to say to you, but I want mother Sheridan to hear it, too."

"She's up-stairs in her room," said Sheridan. "Roscoe--"

Sibyl interrupted. She had just seen Bibbs pa.s.s through the hall and begin to ascend the stairs; and in a flash she instinctively perceived the chance for precisely the effect she wanted.

"No, let me go," she said. "I want to speak to her a minute first, anyway."

And she went away quickly, gaining the top of the stairs in time to see Bibbs enter his room and close the door. Sibyl knew that Bibbs, in his room, had overheard her quarrel with Edith in the hall outside; for bitter Edith, thinking the more to shame her, had subsequently informed her of the circ.u.mstance. Sibyl had just remembered this, and with the recollection there had flashed the thought--out of her own experience--that people are often much more deeply impressed by words they overhear than by words directly addressed to them. Sibyl intended to make it impossible for Bibbs not to overhear. She did not hesitate--her heart was hot with the old sore, and she believed wholly in the justice of her cause and in the truth of what she was going to say. Fate was virtuous at times; it had delivered into her hands the girl who had affronted her.

Mrs. Sheridan was in her own room. The approach of Sibyl and Roscoe had driven her from the library, for she had miscalculated her husband's mood, and she felt that if he used his injured hand as a mark of emphasis again, in her presence, she would (as she thought of it) "have a fit right there." She heard Sibyl's step, and pretended to be putting a touch to her hair before a mirror.

"I was just coming down," she said, as the door opened.

"Yes, he wants you to," said Sibyl. "It's all right, mother Sheridan.

He's forgiven me."

Mrs. Sheridan sniffed instantly; tears appeared. She kissed her daughter-in-law's cheek; then, in silence, regarded the mirror afresh, wiped her eyes, and applied powder.

"And I hope Edith will be happy," Sibyl added, inciting more applications of Mrs. Sheridan's handkerchief and powder.

"Yes, yes," murmured the good woman. "We mustn't make the worst of things."

"Well, there was something else I had to say, and he wants you to hear it, too," said Sibyl. "We better go down, mother Sheridan."

She led the way, Mrs. Sheridan following obediently, but when they came to a spot close by Bibbs's door, Sibyl stopped. "I want to tell you about it first," she said, abruptly. "It isn't a secret, of course, in any way; it's something the whole family has to know, and the sooner the whole family knows it the better. It's something it wouldn't be RIGHT for us ALL not to understand, and of course father Sheridan most of all.

But I want to just kind of go over it first with you; it'll kind 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 ma.n.u.script 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 working-man'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 ma.n.u.script 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 house-work a good while back," said Mrs. Sheridan. "And now they're doin' the cookin', too."

Sibyl sent forth a little t.i.tter 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 G.o.d'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 of!

I like poor Bibbs, but if he'd only stop to think a minute himself he'd have to realize he isn't the kind of man ANY girl would be apt to fall in love with. He's better-looking lately, maybe, but you know how he WAS--just kind of a long white rag in good clothes. And girls like men with some SO to 'em--SOME sort of dashingness, anyhow! n.o.body ever looked at poor Bibbs before, and neither'd she--no, SIR! not till she'd tried both Roscoe and Jim first! It was only when her and her family got desperate that she--"

Bibbs--whiter than when he came from the sanitarium--opened the door.

He stepped across its threshold and stook looking at her. Both women screamed.

"Oh, good heavens!" cried Sibyl. "Were you in THERE? Oh, I wouldn't--"

She seized Mrs. Sheridan's arm, pulling her toward the stairway. "Come on, mother Sheridan!" she urged, and as the befuddled and confused lady obeyed, Sibyl left a trail of noisy exclamations: "Good gracious! Oh, I wouldn't--too bad! I didn't DREAM he was there! I wouldn't hurt his feelings! Not for the world! Of course he had to know SOME time! But, good heavens--"

She heard his door close as she and Mrs. Sheridan reached the top of the stairs, and she glanced over her shoulder quickly, but Bibbs was not following; he had gone back into his room.