The Turmoil (30 page)

“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 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! Nobody 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.

“He—he looked—oh, terrible bad!” stammered Mrs. Sheridan. “I—I wish—”

“Still, it’s a good deal better he knows about it,” said Sibyl. “I shouldn’t wonder it might turn out the very best thing could happened. Come on!”

And completing their descent to the library, the two made their appearance to Roscoe and his father. Sibyl at once gave a full and truthful account of what had taken place, repeating her own remarks, and omitting only the fact that it was through her design that Bibbs had overheard them.

“But as I told mother Sheridan,” she said, in conclusion, “it might turn out for the very best that he did hear—just that way. Don’t you think so, father Sheridan?”

He merely grunted in reply, and sat rubbing the thick hair on the top of his head with his left hand and looking at the fire. He had given no sign of being impressed in any manner by her exposure of Mary Vertrees’s character; but his impassivity did not dismay Sibyl—it was Bibbs whom she desired to impress, and she was content in that matter.

“I’m sure it was all for the best,” she said. “It’s over now, and he knows what she is. In one way I think it was lucky, because, just hearing a thing that way, a person can tell it’s SO—and he knows I haven’t got any ax to grind except his own good and the good of the family.”

Mrs. Sheridan went nervously to the door and stood there, looking toward the stairway. “I wish—I wish I knew what he was doin’,” she said. “He did look terrible bad. It was like something had been done to him that was—I don’t know what. I never saw anybody look like he did. He looked—so queer. It was like you’d—” She called down the hall, “George!”

“Yes’m?”

“Were you up in Mr. Bibbs’s room just now?”

“Yes’m. He ring bell; tole me make him fiah in his grate. I done buil’ him nice fiah. I reckon he ain’ feelin’ so well. Yes’m.” He departed.

“What do you expect he wants a fire for?” she asked, turning toward her husband. “The house is warm as can be, I do wish I—”

“Oh, quit frettin’!” said Sheridan.

“Well, I—I kind o’ wish you hadn’t said anything, Sibyl. I know you meant it for the best and all, but I don’t believe it would been so much harm if—”

“Mother Sheridan, you don’t mean you WANT that kind of a girl in the family? Why, she—”

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” the troubled woman quavered. “If he liked her it seems kind of a pity to spoil it. He’s so queer, and he hasn’t ever taken much enjoyment. And besides, I believe the way it was, there was more chance of him bein’ willin’ to do what papa wants him to. If she wants to marry him—”

Sheridan interrupted her with a hooting laugh. “She don’t!” he said. “You’re barkin’ up the wrong tree, Sibyl. She ain’t that kind of a girl.”

“But, father Sheridan, didn’t she—”

He cut her short. “That’s enough. You may mean all right, but you guess wrong. So do you, mamma.”

Sibyl cried out, “Oh! But just LOOK how she ran after Jim—”

“She did not,” he said, curtly. “She wouldn’t take Jim. She turned him down cold.”

“But that’s impossi—”

“It’s not. I KNOW she did.”

Sibyl looked flatly incredulous.

“And YOU needn’t worry,” he said, turning to his wife. “This won’t have any effect on your idea, because there wasn’t any sense to it, anyhow. D’you think she’d be very likely to take Bibbs—after she wouldn’t take JIM? She’s a good-hearted girl, and she lets Bibbs come to see her, but if she’d ever given him one sign of encouragement the way you women think, he wouldn’t of acted the stubborn fool he has—he’d ‘a’ been at me long ago, beggin’ me for some kind of a job he could support a wife on. There’s nothin’ in it—and I’ve got the same old fight with him on my hands I’ve had all his life—and the Lord knows what he won’t do to balk me! What’s happened now’ll probably only make him twice as stubborn, but —”

“SH!” Mrs. Sheridan, still in the doorway, lifted her hand. “That’s his step—he’s comin’ down-stairs.” She shrank away from the door as if she feared to have Bibbs see her. “I—I wonder—” she said, almost in a whisper—“I wonder what he’d goin’—to do.”

Her timorousness had its effect upon the others. Sheridan rose, frowning, but remained standing beside his chair; and Roscoe moved toward Sibyl, who stared uneasily at the open doorway. They listened as the slow steps descended the stairs and came toward the library.

Bibbs stopped upon the threshold, and with sick and haggard eyes looked slowly from one to the other until at last his gaze rested upon his father. Then he came and stood before him.

“I’m sorry you’ve had so much trouble with me,” he said, gently. “You won’t, any more. I’ll take the job you offered me.”

Sheridan did not speak—he stared, astounded and incredulous; and Bibbs had left the room before any of its occupants uttered a sound, though he went as slowly as he came. Mrs. Sheridan was the first to move. She went nervously back to the doorway, and then out into the hall. Bibbs had gone from the house.

Bibbs’s mother had a feeling about him then that she had never known before; it was indefinite and vague, but very poignant—something in her mourned for him uncomprehendingly. She felt that an awful thing had been done to him, though she did not know what it was. She went up to his room.

The fire George had built for him was almost smothered under thick, charred ashes of paper. The lid of his trunk stood open, and the large upper tray, which she remembered to have seen full of papers and note-books, was empty. And somehow she understood that Bibbs had given up the mysterious vocation he had hoped to follow—and that he had given it up for ever. She thought it was the wisest thing he could have done—and yet, for an unknown reason, she sat upon the bed and wept a little before she went down-stairs.

So Sheridan had his way with Bibbs, all through.

As Bibbs came out of the New House, a Sunday trio was in course of passage upon the sidewalk: an ample young woman, placid of face; a black-clad, thin young man, whose expression was one of habitual anxiety, habitual wariness and habitual eagerness. He propelled a perambulator containing the third—and all three were newly cleaned, Sundayfied, and made fit to dine with the wife’s relatives.

“How’d you like for me to be THAT young fella, mamma?” the husband whispered. “He’s one of the sons, and there ain’t but two left now.”

The wife stared curiously at Bibbs. “Well, I don’t know,” she returned. “He looks to me like he had his own troubles.”

“I expect he has, like anybody else,” said the young husband, “but I guess we could stand a good deal if we had his money.”

“Well, maybe, if you keep on the way you been, baby’ll be as well fixed as the Sheridans. You can’t tell.” She glanced back at Bibbs, who had turned north. “He walks kind of slow and stooped over, like.”

“So much money in his pockets it makes him sag, I guess,” said the young husband, with bitter admiration.

Mary, happening to glance from a window, saw Bibbs coming, and she started, clasping her hands together in a sudden alarm. She met him at the door.

“Bibbs!” she cried. “What is the matter? I saw something was terribly wrong when I—You look—” She paused, and he came in, not lifting his eyes to hers. Always when he crossed that threshold he had come with his head up and his wistful gaze seeking hers. “Ah, poor boy!” she said, with a gesture of understanding and pity. “I know what it is!”

He followed her into the room where they always sat, and sank into a chair.

“You needn’t tell me,” she said. “They’ve made you give up. Your father’s won—you’re going to do what he wants. You’ve given up.”

Still without looking at her, he inclined his head in affirmation.

She gave a little cry of compassion, and came and sat near him. “Bibbs,” she said. “I can be glad of one thing, though it’s selfish. I can be glad you came straight to me. It’s more to me than even if you’d come because you were happy.” She did not speak again for a little while; then she said: “Bibbs—dear—could you tell me about it? Do you want to?”

Still he did not look up, but in a voice, shaken and husky he asked her a question so grotesque that at first she thought she had misunderstood his words.

“Mary,” he said, “could you marry me?”

“What did you say, Bibbs?” she asked, quietly.

His tone and attitude did not change. “Will you marry me?”

Both of her hands leaped to her cheeks—she grew red and then white. She rose slowly and moved backward from him, staring at him, at first incredulously, then with an intense perplexity more and more luminous in her wide eyes; it was like a spoken question. The room filled with strangeness in the long silence—the two were so strange to each other. At last she said:

“What made you say that?”

He did not answer.

“Bibbs, look at me!” Her voice was loud and clear. “What made you say that? Look at me!”

He could not look at her, and he could not speak.

“What was it that made you?” she said. “I want you to tell me.”

She went closer to him, her eyes ever brighter and wider with that intensity of wonder. “You’ve given up—to your father,” she said, slowly, “and then you came to ask me—” She broke off. “Bibbs, do you want me to marry you?”

“Yes,” he said, just audibly.

“No!” she cried. “You do not. Then what made you ask me? What is it that’s happened?”

“Nothing.”

“Wait,” she said. “Let me think. It’s something that happened since our walk this morning—yes, since you left me at noon. Something happened that—” She stopped abruptly, with a tremulous murmur of amazement and dawning comprehension. She remembered that Sibyl had gone to the New House.

Bibbs swallowed painfully and contrived to say, “I do—I do want you to—marry me, if—if—you could.”

She looked at him, and slowly shook her head. “Bibbs, do you—” Her voice was as unsteady as his—little more than a whisper. “Do you think I’m —in love with you?”

“No,” he said.

Somewhere in the still air of the room there was a whispered word; it did not seem to come from Mary’s parted lips, but he was aware of it. “Why?”