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_ The Sheridans dined on Sundays at five. Sibyl had taken pains not to
arrive either before or after the hand was precisely on the hour; and
the members of the family were all seated at the table within two
minutes after she and Roscoe had entered the house.
It was a glum gathering, overhung with portents. The air seemed
charged, awaiting any tiny ignition to explode; and Mrs. Sheridan's
expression, as she sat with her eyes fixed almost continually upon
her husband, was that of a person engaged in prayer. Edith was pale
and intent. Roscoe looked ill; Sibyl looked ill; and Sheridan looked
both ill and explosive. Bibbs had more color than any of these, and
there was a strange brightness, like a light, upon his face. It was
curious to see anything so happy in the tense gloom of that household.
Edith ate little, but gazed nearly all the time at her plate. She
never once looked at Sibyl, though Sibyl now and then gave her a quick
glance, heavily charged, and then looked away. Roscoe ate nothing,
and, like Edith, kept his eyes upon his plate and made believe to
occupy himself with the viands thereon, loading his fork frequently,
but not lifting it to his mouth. He did not once look at his father,
though his father gazed heavily at him most of the time. And between
Edith and Sibyl, and between Roscoe and his father, some bitter
wireless communication seemed continually to be taking place
throughout the long silences prevailing during this enlivening
ceremony of Sabbath refection.
"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--" _
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