________________________________________________
_ The outward usualness of things continued after dinner. It was
Sheridan's custom to read the evening paper beside the fire in the
library, while his wife, sitting near by, either sewed (from old
habit) or allowed herself to be repeatedly baffled by one of the
simpler forms of solitaire. To-night she did neither, but sat in
her customary chair, gazing at the fire, while Sheridan let the
unfolded paper rest upon his lap, though now and then he lifted it,
as if to read, and let it fall back upon his knees again. Bibbs
came in noiselessly and sat in a corner, doing nothing; and from a
"reception-room" across the hall an indistinct vocal murmur became
just audible at intervals. Once, when this murmur grew louder,
under stress of some irrepressible merriment, Edith's voice could be
heard--"Bobby, aren't you awful!" and Sheridan glanced across at his
wife appealingly.
She rose at once and went into the "reception-room"; there was a
flurry of whispering, and the sound of tiptoeing in the hall--Edith
and her suitor changing quarters to a more distant room. Mrs.
Sheridan returned to her chair in the library.
"They won't bother you any more, papa," she said, in a comforting
voice. "She told me at lunch he'd 'phoned he wanted to come up this
evening, and I said I thought he'd better wait a few days, but she
said she'd already told him he could." She paused, then added, rather
guiltily: "I got kind of a notion maybe Roscoe don't like him as much
as he used to. Maybe--maybe you better ask Roscoe, papa." And as
Sheridan nodded solemnly, she concluded, in haste: "Don't say I said
to. I might be wrong about it, anyway."
He nodded again, and they sat for some time in a silence which Mrs.
Sheridan broke with a little sniff, having fallen into a reverie that
brought tears. "That Miss Vertrees was a good girl," she said. "SHE
was all right."
Her husband evidently had no difficulty in following her train of
thought, for he nodded once more, affirmatively.
"Did you--How did you fix it about the--the Realty Company?" she
faltered. "Did you--"
He rose heavily, helping himself to his feet by the arms of his chair.
"I fixed it," he said, in a husky voice. "I moved Cantwell up, and
put Johnston in Cantwell's place, and split up Johnston's work among
the four men with salaries high enough to take it." He went to her,
put his hand upon her shoulder, and drew a long, audible, tremulous
breath. "It's my bedtime, mamma; I'm goin' up." He dropped the hand
from her shoulder and moved slowly away, but when he reached the door
he stopped and spoke again, without turning to look at her. "The
Realty Company'll go right on just the same," he said. "It's like--
it's like sand, mamma. It puts me in mind of chuldern playin' in a
sand-pile. One of 'em sticks his finger in the sand and makes a
hole, and another of 'em'll pat the place with his hand, and all the
little grains of sand run in and fill it up and settle against one
another; and then, right away it's flat on top again, and you can't
tell there ever was a hole there. The Realty Company'll go on all
right, mamma. There ain't anything anywhere, I reckon, that wouldn't
go right on--just the same."
And he passed out slowly into the hall; then they heard his heavy
tread upon the stairs.
Mrs. Sheridan, rising to follow him, turned a piteous face to her son.
"It's so forlone," she said, chokingly. "That's the first time he
spoke since he came in the house this evening. I know it must 'a'
hurt him to hear Edith laughin' with that Lamhorn. She'd oughtn't to
let him come, right the very first evening this way; she'd oughtn't
to done it! She just seems to lose her head over him, and it scares
me. You heard what Sibyl said the other day, and--and you heard
what--what--"
"What Edith said to Sibyl?" Bibbs finished the sentence for her.
"We CAN'T have any trouble o' THAT kind!" she wailed. "Oh, it looks
as if movin' up to this New House had brought us awful bad luck!
It scares me!" She put both her hands over her face. "Oh, Bibbs,
Bibbs! if you only wasn't so QUEER! If you could only been a kind
of dependable son! I don't know what we're all comin' to!" And,
weeping, she followed her husband.
Bibbs gazed for a while at the fire; then he rose abruptly, like a man
who has come to a decision, and briskly sought the room--it was called
"the smoking-room"--where Edith sat with Mr. Lamhorn. They looked up
in no welcoming manner, at Bibbs's entrance, and moved their chairs to
a less conspicuous adjacency.
"Good evening," said Bibbs, pleasantly; and he seated himself in a
leather easy-chair near them.
"What is it?" asked Edith, plainly astonished.
"Nothing," he returned, smiling.
She frowned. "Did you want something?" she asked.
"Nothing in the world. Father and mother have gone up-stairs; I
sha'n't be going up for several hours, and there didn't seem to be
anybody left for me to chat with except you and Mr. Lamhorn."
"'CHAT with'!" she echoed, incredulously.
"I can talk about almost anything," said Bibbs with an air of genial
politeness. "It doesn't matter to ME. I don't know much about
business--if that's what you happened to be talking about. But you
aren't in business, are you, Mr. Lamhorn.
"Not now," returned Lamhorn, shortly.
"I'm not, either," said Bibbs. "It was getting cloudier than usual,
I noticed, just before dark, and there was wind from the southwest.
Rain to-morrow, I shouldn't be surprised."
He seemed to feel that he had begun a conversation the support of
which had now become the pleasurable duty of other parties; and he
sat expectantly, looking first at his sister, then at Lamhorn, as
if implying that it was their turn to speak. Edith returned his
gaze with a mixture of astonishment and increasing anger, while Mr.
Lamhorn was obviously disturbed, though Bibbs had been as considerate
as possible in presenting the weather as a topic. Bibbs had
perceived that Lamhorn had nothing in his mind at any time except
"personalities"--he could talk about people and he could make love.
Bibbs, wishing to be courteous, offered the weather.
Lamhorn refused it, and concluded from Bibbs's luxurious attitude
in the leather chair that this half-crazy brother was a permanent
fixture for the rest of the evening. There was not reason to hope
that he would move, and Lamhorn found himself in danger of looking
silly.
"I was just going," he said, rising.
"Oh NO!" Edith cried, sharply.
"Yes. Good night! I think I--"
"Too bad," said Bibbs, genially, walking to the door with the visitor,
while Edith stood staring as the two disappeared in the hall. She
heard Bibbs offering to "help" Lamhorn with his overcoat and the
latter rather curtly declining assistance, these episodes of departure
being followed by the closing of the outer door. She ran into the
hall.
"What's the matter with you?" she cried, furiously. "What do you
MEAN? How did you dare come in there when you knew--"
Her voice broke; she made a gesture of rage and despair, and ran up
the stairs, sobbing. She fled to her mother's room, and when Bibbs
came up, a few minutes later, Mrs. Sheridan met him at his door.
"Oh, Bibbs," she said, shaking her head woefully, "you'd oughtn't
to distress your sister! She says you drove that young man right
out of the house. You'd ought to been more considerate."
Bibbs smiled faintly, noting that Edith's door was open, with Edith's
naive shadow motionless across its threshold. "Yes," he said. "He
doesn't appear to much of a 'man's man.' He ran at just a glimpse
of one."
Edith's shadow moved; her voice came quavering: "You call yourself
one?"
"No, no," he answered. "I said, 'just a glimpse of one.' I didn't
claim--" But her door slammed angrily; and he turned to his mother.
"There," he said, sighing. "That's almost the first time in my life
I ever tried to be a man of action, mother, and I succeeded perfectly
in what I tried to do. As a consequence I feel like a horse-thief!"
"You hurt her feelin's," she groaned. "You must 'a' gone at it too
rough, Bibbs."
He looked upon her wanly. "That's my trouble, mother," he murmured.
"I'm a plain, blunt fellow. I have rough ways, and I'm a rough man."
For once she perceived some meaning in his queerness. "Hush your
nonsense!" she said, good-naturedly, the astral of a troubled smile
appearing. "You go to bed."
He kissed her and obeyed.
Edith gave him a cold greeting the next morning at the breakfast-
table.
"You mustn't do that under a misapprehension," he warned her, when
they were alone in the dining-room.
"Do what under a what?" she asked.
"Speak to me. I came into the smoking-room last night 'on purpose,'"
he told her, gravely. "I have a prejudice against that young man."
She laughed. "I guess you think it means a great deal who you have
prejudices against!" In mockery she adopted the manner of one who
implores. "Bibbs, for pity's sake PROMISE me, DON'T use YOUR
influence with papa against him!" And she laughed louder.
"Listen," he said, with peculiar earnestness. "I'll tell you now,
because--because I've decided I'm one of the family." And then,
as if the earnestness were too heavy for him to carry it further,
he continued, in his usual tone, "I'm drunk with power, Edith."
"What do you want to tell me?" she demanded, brusquely.
"Lamhorn made love to Sibyl," he said.
Edith hooted. "SHE did to HIM! And because you overheard that spat
between us the other day when I the same of accused her of it, and
said something like that to you afterward--"
"No," he said, gravely. "I KNOW."
"How?"
"I was there, one day a week ago, with Roscoe, and I heard Sibyl and
Lamhorn--"
Edith screamed with laughter. "You were with ROSCOE--and you heard
Lamhorn making love to Sibyl!"
"No. I heard them quarreling."
"You're funnier than ever, Bibbs!" she cried. "You say he made love
to her because you heard them quarreling!"
"That's it. If you want to know what's 'between' people, you can--by
the way they quarrel."
"You'll kill me, Bibbs! What were they quarreling about?"
"Nothing. That's how I knew. People who quarrel over nothing!--it's
always certain--"
Edith stopped laughing abruptly, but continued her mockery. "You
ought to know. You've had so much experience, yourself!"
"I haven't any, Edith," he said. "My life has been about as exciting
as an incubator chicken's. But I look out through the glass at
things."
"Well, then," she said, "if you look out through the glass you must
know what effect such stuff would have upon ME!" She rose, visibly
agitated. "What if it WAS true?" she demanded, bitterly. "What if
it was true a hundred times over? You sit there with your silly face
half ready to giggle and half ready to sniffle, and tell me stories
like that, about Sibyl picking on Bobby Lamhorn and worrying him to
death, and you think it matters to ME? What if I already KNEW all
about their 'quarreling'? What if I understood WHY she--" She broke
off with a violent gesture, a sweep of her arm extended at full
length, as if she hurled something to the ground. "Do you think
a girl that really cared for a man would pay any attention to THAT?
Or to YOU, Bibbs Sheridan!"
He looked at her steadily, and his gaze was as keen as it was steady.
She met it with unwavering pride. Finally he nodded slowly, as if she
had spoken and he meant to agree with what she said.
"Ah, yes," he said. "I won't come into the smoking-room again. I'm
sorry, Edith. Nobody can make you see anything now. You'll never see
until you see for yourself. The rest of us will do better to keep out
of it--especially me!"
"That's sensible," she responded, curtly. "You're most surprising
of all when you're sensible, Bibbs."
"Yes," he sighed. "I'm a dull dog. Shake hands and forgive me,
Edith." _
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