The Turmoil (23 page)

“Didn’t you go to church this morning, Bibbs?” his mother asked, in the effort to break up one of those ghastly intervals.

“What did you say, mother?”

“Didn’t you go to church this morning?”

“I think so,” he answered, as from a roseate trance.

“You THINK so! Don’t you know?”

“Oh yes. Yes, I went to church!”

“Which one?”

“Just down the street. It’s brick.”

“What was the sermon about?”

“What, mother?”

“Can’t you hear me?” she cried. “I asked you what the sermon was about?”

He roused himself. “I think it was about—” He frowned, seeming to concentrate his will to recollect. “I think it was about something in the Bible.”

White-jacket George was glad of an opportunity to leave the room and lean upon Mist’ Jackson’s shoulder in the pantry. “He don’t know they WAS any suhmon!” he concluded, having narrated the dining-room dialogue. “All he know is he was with ‘at lady lives nex’ do’!” George was right.

“Did you go to church all by yourself, Bibbs?” Sibyl asked.

“No,” he answered. “No, I didn’t go alone.”

“Oh?” Sibyl gave the ejaculation an upward twist, as of mocking inquiry, and followed it by another, expressive of hilarious comprehension. “OH!”

Bibbs looked at her studiously, but she spoke no further. And that completed the conversation at the lugubrious feast.

Coffee came finally, was disposed of quickly, and the party dispersed to other parts of the house. Bibbs followed his father and Roscoe into the library, but was not well received.

“YOU go and listen to the phonograph with the women-folks,” Sheridan commanded.

Bibbs retreated. “Sometimes you do seem to be a hard sort of man!” he said.

However, he went obediently to the gilt-and-brocade room in which his mother and his sister and his sister-in-law had helplessly withdrawn, according to their Sabbatical custom. Edith sat in a corner, tapping her feet together and looking at them; Sibyl sat in the center of the room, examining a brooch which she had detached from her throat; and Mrs. Sheridan was looking over a collection of records consisting exclusively of Caruso and rag-time. She selected one of the latter, remarking that she thought it “right pretty,” and followed it with one of the former and the same remark.

As the second reached its conclusion, George appeared in the broad doorway, seeming to have an errand there, but he did not speak. Instead, he favored Edith with a benevolent smile, and she immediately left the room, George stepping aside for her to precede him, and then disappearing after her in the hall with an air of successful diplomacy. He made it perfectly clear that Edith had given him secret instructions and that it had been his pride and pleasure to fulfil them to the letter.

Sibyl stiffened in her chair; her lips parted, and she watched with curious eyes the vanishing back of the white jacket.

“What’s that?” she asked, in a low voice, but sharply.

“Here’s another right pretty record,” said Mrs. Sheridan, affecting— with patent nervousness—not to hear. And she unloosed the music.

Sibyl bit her lip and began to tap her chin with the brooch. After a little while she turned to Bibbs, who reposed at half-length in a gold chair, with his eyes closed.

“Where did Edith go?” she asked, curiously.

“Edith?” he repeated, opening his eyes blankly. “Is she gone?”

Sibyl got up and stood in the doorway. She leaned against the casing, still tapping her chin with the brooch. Her eyes were dilating; she was suddenly at high tension, and her expression had become one of sharp excitement. She listens intently.

When the record was spun out she could hear Sheridan rumbling in the library, during the ensuing silence, and Roscoe’s voice, querulous and husky: “I won’t say anything at all. I tell you, you might just as well let me alone!”

But there were other sounds: a rustling and murmur, whispering, low protesting cadences in a male voice. And as Mrs. Sheridan started another record, a sudden, vital resolve leaped like fire in the eyes of Sibyl. She walked down the hall and straight into the smoking-room.

Lamhorn and Edith both sprang to their feet, separating. Edith became instantly deathly white with a rage that set her shaking from head to foot, and Lamhorn stuttered as he tried to speak.

But Edith’s shaking was not so violent as Sibyl’s, nor was her face so white. At sight of them and of their embrace, all possible consequences became nothing to Sibyl. She courtesied, holding up her skirts and contorting her lips to the semblance of a smile.

“Sit just as you were—both of you!” she said. And then to Edith: “Did you tell my husband I had been telephoning to Lamhorn?”

“You march out of here!” said Edith, fiercely. “March straight out of here!”

Sibyl leveled a forefinger at Lamhorn.

“Did you tell her I’d been telephoning you I wanted you to come?”

“Oh, good God!” Lamhorn said. “Hush!”

“You knew she’d tell my husband, DIDN’T you?” she cried. “You knew that!”

“HUSH!” he begged, panic-stricken.

“That was a MANLY thing to do! Oh, it was like a gentleman! You wouldn’t come—you wouldn’t even come for five minutes to hear what I had to say! You were TIRED of what I had to say! You’d heard it all a thousand times before, and you wouldn’t come! No! No! NO!” she stormed. “You wouldn’t even come for five minutes, but you could tell that little cat! And SHE told my husband! You’re a MAN!”

Edith saw in a flash that the consequences of battle would be ruinous to Sibyl, and the furious girl needed no further temptation to give way to her feelings. “Get out of this house!” she shrieked. “This is my father’s house. Don’t you dare speak to Robert like that!”

“No! No! I mustn’t SPEAK—”

“Don’t you DARE!”

Edith and Sibyl began to scream insults at each other simultaneously, fronting each other, their furious faces close. Their voices shrilled and rose and cracked—they screeched. They could be heard over the noise of the phonograph, which was playing a brass-band selection. They could be heard all over the house. They were heard in the kitchen; they could have been heard in the cellar. Neither of them cared for that.

“You told my husband!” screamed Sibyl, bringing her face still closer to Edith’s. “You told my husband! This man put THAT in your hands to strike me with! HE did!”

“I’ll tell your husband again! I’ll tell him everything I know! It’s TIME your husband—”

They were swept asunder by a bandaged hand. “Do you want the neighbors in?” Sheridan thundered.

There fell a shocking silence. Frenzied Sibyl saw her husband and his mother in the doorway, and she understood what she had done. She moved slowly toward the door; then suddenly she began to run. She ran into the hall, and through it, and out of the house. Roscoe followed her heavily, his eyes on the ground.

“NOW THEN!” said Sheridan to Lamhorn.

The words were indefinite, but the voice was not. Neither was the vicious gesture of the bandaged hand, which concluded its orbit in the direction of the door in a manner sufficient for the swift dispersal of George and Jackson and several female servants who hovered behind Mrs. Sheridan. They fled lightly.

“Papa, papa!” wailed Mrs. Sheridan. “Look at your hand! You’d oughtn’t to been so rough with Edie; you hurt your hand on her shoulder. Look!”

There was, in fact, a spreading red stain upon the bandages at the tips of the fingers, and Sheridan put his hand back in the sling. “Now then!” he repeated. “You goin’ to leave my house?”

“He will NOT!” sobbed Edith. “Don’t you DARE order him out!”

“Don’t you bother, dear,” said Lamhorn, quietly. “He doesn’t understand. YOU mustn’t be troubled.” Pallor was becoming to him; he looked very handsome, and as he left the room he seemed in the girl’s distraught eyes a persecuted noble, indifferent to the rabble yawping insult at his heels—the rabble being enacted by her father.

“Don’t come back, either!” said, Sheridan, realistic in this impersonation. “Keep off the premises!” he called savagely into the hall. “This family’s through with you!”

“It is NOT!” Edith cried, breaking from her mother. “You’ll SEE about that! You’ll find out! You’ll find out what’ll happen! What’s HE done? I guess if I can stand it, it’s none of YOUR business, is it? What’s HE done, I’d like to know? You don’t know anything about it. Don’t you s’pose he told ME? She was crazy about him soon as he began going there, and he flirted with her a little. That’s everything he did, and it was before he met ME! After that he wouldn’t, and it wasn’t anything, anyway—he never was serious a minute about it. SHE wanted it to be serious, and she was bound she wouldn’t give him up. He told her long ago he cared about me, but she kept persecuting him and—”

“Yes,” said Sheridan, sternly; “that’s HIS side of it! That’ll do! He doesn’t come in this house again!”

“You look out!” Edith cried.

“Yes, I’ll look out! I’d ‘a’ told you to-day he wasn’t to be allowed on the premises, but I had other things on my mind. I had Abercrombie look up this young man privately, and he’s no ‘count. He’s no ‘count on earth! He’s no good! He’s NOTHIN’! But it wouldn’t matter if he was George Washington, after what’s happened and what I’ve heard to-night!”

“But, papa,” Mrs. Sheridan began, “if Edie says it was all Sibyl’s fault, makin’ up to him, and he never encouraged her much, nor—”

“‘S enough!” he roared. “He keeps off these premises! And if any of you so much as ever speak his name to me again—”

But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his voice, and ran upstairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her pass, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.

“She locked her door,” said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully. “She wouldn’t even answer me. They wasn’t a sound from her room.”

“Well,” said her husband, “she can settle her mind to it. She never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow—Here! You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it’s my orders. No, you needn’t. I’ll tell ‘em myself.”

“Better not,” said Bibbs, gently.

His father glared at him.

“It’s no good,” said Bibbs. “Mother, when you were in love with father—”

“My goodness!” she cried. “You ain’t a-goin’ to compare your father to that—”

“Edith feels about him just what you did about father,” said Bibbs. “And if YOUR father had told you—”

“I won’t LISTEN to such silly talk!” she declared, angrily.

“So you’re handin’ out your advice, are you, Bibbs?” said Sheridan. “What is it?”

“Let her see him all she wants.”

“You’re a—” Sheridan gave it up. “I don’t know what to call you!”

“Let her see him all she wants,” Bibbs repeated, thoughtfully. “You’re up against something too strong for you. If Edith were a weakling you’d have a chance this way, but she isn’t. She’s got a lot of your determination, father, and with what’s going on inside of her she’ll beat you. You can’t keep her from seeing him, as long as she feels about him the way she does now. You can’t make her think less of him, either. Nobody can. Your only chance is that she’ll do it for herself, and if you give her time and go easy she probably will. Marriage would do it for her quickest, but that’s just what you don’t want, and as you DON’T want it, you’d better—”

“I can’t stand any more!” Sheridan burst out. “If it’s come to BIBBS advisin’ me how to run this house I better resign. Mamma, where’s that nigger George? Maybe HE’S got some plan how I better manage my family. Bibbs, for God’s sake go and lay down! ‘Let her see him all she wants’! Oh, Lord! here’s wisdom; here’s—”

“Bibbs,” said Mrs. Sheridan, “if you haven’t got anything to do, you might step over and take Sibyl’s wraps home—she left ‘em in the hall. I don’t think you seem to quiet your poor father very much just now.”

“All right.” And Bibbs bore Sibyl’s wraps across the street and delivered them to Roscoe, who met him at the door. Bibbs said only, “Forgot these,” and, “Good night, Roscoe,” cordially and cheerfully, and returned to the New House. His mother and father were still talking in the library, but with discretion he passed rapidly on and upward to his own room, and there he proceeded to write in his note-book.

There seems to be another curious thing about Love [Bibbs wrote]. Love is blind while it lives and only opens its eyes and becomes very wide awake when it dies. Let it alone until then.

You cannot reason with love or with any other passion. The wise will not wish for love—nor for ambition. These are passions and bring others in their train—hatreds and jealousies—all blind. Friendship and a quiet heart for the wise.

What a turbulence is love! It is dangerous for a blind thing to be turbulent; there are precipices in life. One would not cross a mountain-pass with a thick cloth over his eyes. Lovers do. Friendship walks gently and with open eyes.

To walk to church with a friend! To sit beside her there! To rise when she rises, and to touch with one’s thumb and fingers the other half of the hymn-book that she holds! What lover, with his fierce ways, could know this transcendent happiness?

Friendship brings everything that heaven could bring. There is no labor that cannot become a living rapture if you know that a friend is thinking of you as you labor. So you sing at your work. For the work is part of the thoughts of your friend; so you love it!

Love is demanding and claiming and insistent. Friendship is all kindness—it makes the world glorious with kindness. What color you see when you walk with a friend! You see that the gray sky is brilliant and shimmering; you see that the smoke has warm browns and is marvelously sculptured—the air becomes iridescent. You see the gold in brown hair. Light floods everything.

When you walk to church with a friend you know that life can give you nothing richer. You pray that there will be no change in anything for ever.

What an adorable thing it is to discover a little foible in your friend, a bit of vanity that gives you one thing more about her to adore! On a cold morning she will perhaps walk to church with you without her furs, and she will blush and return an evasive answer when you ask her why she does not wear them. You will say no more, because you understand. She looks beautiful in her furs; you love their darkness against her cheek; but you comprehend that they conceal the loveliness of her throat and the fine line of her chin, and that she also has comprehended this, and, wishing to look still more bewitching, discards her furs at the risk of taking cold. So you hold your peace, and try to look as if you had not thought it out.