The Turmoil Part 3

She was one of those fat, pink people who fade and contract with age like drying fruit; and her outside was a true portrait of her. Her husband and her daughter had long ago absorbed her. What intelligence she had was given almost wholly to comprehending and serving those two, and except in the presence of one of them she was nearly always absent-minded. Edith lived all day with her mother, as daughters do; and Sheridan so held his wife to her unity with him that she had long ago become unconscious of her existence as a thing separate from his. She invariably perceived his moods, and nursed him through them when she did not share them; and she gave him a profound sympathy with the inmost spirit and purpose of his being, even though she did not comprehend it and partook of it only as a spectator. They had known but one actual altercation in their lives, and that was thirty years past, in the early days of Sheridan's struggle, when, in order to enhance the favorable impression he believed himself to be making upon some capitalists, he had thought it necessary to accompany them to a performance of "The Black Crook." But she had not once referred to this during the last ten years.

Mrs. Sheridan's manner was hurried and inconsequent; her clothes rustled more than other women's clothes; she seemed to wear too many at a time and to be vaguely troubled by them, and she was patting a skirt down over some unruly internal dissension at the moment she opened Bibbs's door.

At sight of the rec.u.mbent figure she began to close the door softly, withdrawing, but the young man had heard the turning of the k.n.o.b and the rustling of skirts, and he opened his eyes.

"Don't go, mother," he said. "I'm not asleep." He swung his long legs over the side of the bed to rise, but she set a hand on his shoulder, restraining him; and he lay flat again.

"No," she said, bending over to kiss his cheek, "I just come for a minute, but I want to see how you seem. Edith said--"

"Poor Edith!" he murmured. "She couldn't look at me. She--"

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Sheridan, having let in the light at a window, came back to the bedside. "You look a great deal better than what you did before you went to the sanitarium, anyway. It's done you good; a body can see that right away. You need fatting up, of course, and you haven't got much color--"

"No," he said, "I haven't much color."

"But you will have when you get your strength back."

"Oh yes!" he responded, cheerfully. "THEN I will."

"You look a great deal better than what I expected."

"Edith must have a great vocabulary!" he chuckled.

"She's too sensitive," said Mrs. Sheridan, "and it makes her exaggerate a little. What about your diet?"

"That's all right. They told me to eat anything."

"Anything at all?"

"Well--anything I could."

"That's good," she said, nodding. "They mean for you just to build up your strength. That's what they told me the last time I went to see you at the sanitarium. You look better than what you did then, and that's only a little time ago. How long was it?"

"Eight months, I think."

"No, it couldn't be. I know it ain't THAT long, but maybe it was longer'n I thought. And this last month or so I haven't had scarcely even time to write more than just a line to ask how you were gettin'

along, but I told Edith to write, the weeks I couldn't, and I asked Jim to, too, and they both said they would, so I suppose you've kept up pretty well on the home news."

"Oh yes."

"What I think you need," said the mother, gravely, "is to liven up a little and take an interest in things. That's what papa was sayin' this morning, after we got your telegram; and that's what'll stimilate your appet.i.te, too. He was talkin' over his plans for you--"

"Plans?" Bibbs, turning on his side, s.h.i.+elded his eyes from the light with his hand, so that he might see her better. "What--" He paused.

"What plans is he making for me, mother?"

She turned away, going back to the window to draw down the shade.

"Well, you better talk it over with HIM," she said, with perceptible nervousness. "He better tell you himself. I don't feel as if I had any call, exactly, to go into it; and you better get to sleep now, anyway."

She came and stood by the bedside once more. "But you must remember, Bibbs, whatever papa does is for the best. He loves his chuldern and wants to do what's right by ALL of 'em--and you'll always find he's right in the end."

He made a little gesture of a.s.sent, which seemed to content her; and she rustled to the door, turning to speak again after she had opened it.

"You get a good nap, now, so as to be all rested up for to-night."

"You--you mean--he--" Bibbs stammered, having begun to speak too quickly. Checking himself, he drew a long breath, then asked, quietly, "Does father expect me to come down-stairs this evening?"

"Well, I think he does," she answered. "You see, it's the 'house-warming,' as he calls it, and he said he thinks all our chuldern ought to be around us, as well as the old friends and other folks. It's just what he thinks you need--to take an interest and liven up. You don't feel too bad to come down, do you?"

"Mother?"

"Well?"

"Take a good look at me," he said.

"Oh, see here!" she cried, with brusque cheerfulness. "You're not so bad off as you think you are, Bibbs. You're on the mend; and it won't do you any harm to please your--"

"It isn't that," he interrupted. "Honestly, I'm only afraid it might spoil somebody's appet.i.te. Edith--"

"I told you the child was too sensitive," she interrupted, in turn.

"You're a plenty good-lookin' enough young man for anybody! You look like you been through a long spell and begun to get well, and that's all there is to it."

"All right. I'll come to the party. If the rest of you can stand it, I can!"

"It 'll do you good," she returned, rustling into the hall. "Now take a nap, and I'll send one o' the help to wake you in time for you to get dressed up before dinner. You go to sleep right away, now, Bibbs!"

Bibbs was unable to obey, though he kept his eyes closed. Something she had said kept running in his mind, repeating itself over and over interminably. "His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--" And then, taking the place of "his plans for you," after what seemed a long, long while, her flurried voice came back to him insistently, seeming to whisper in his ear: "He loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern--he loves his chuldern"--"you'll find he's always right--you'll find he's always right--" Until at last, as he drifted into the state of half-dreams and distorted realities, the voice seemed to murmur from beyond a great black wing that came out of the wall and stretched over his bed--it was a black wing within the room, and at the same time it was a black cloud crossing the sky, bridging the whole earth from pole to pole. It was a cloud of black smoke, and out of the heart of it came a flurried voice whispering over and over, "His plans for you--his plans for you--his plans for you--" And then there was nothing.

He woke refreshed, stretched himself gingerly--as one might have a care against too quick or too long a pull upon a frayed elastic--and, getting to his feet, went blinking to the window and touched the shade so that it flew up, letting in a pale sunset.

He looked out into the lemon-colored light and smiled wanly at the next house, as Edith's grandiose phrase came to mind, "the old Vertrees country mansion." It stood in a broad lawn which was separated from the Sheridans' by a young hedge; and it was a big, square, plain old box of a house with a giant salt-cellar atop for a cupola. Paint had been spared for a long time, and no one could have put a name to the color of it, but in spite of that the place had no look of being out at heel, and the sward was as neatly trimmed as the Sheridans' own.

The separating hedge ran almost beneath Bibbs's window--for this wing of the New House extended here almost to the edge of the lot--and, directly opposite the window, the Vertreeses' lawn had been graded so as to make a little knoll upon which stood a small rustic "summer-house." It was almost on a level with Bibbs's window and not thirty feet away; and it was easy for him to imagine the present dynasty of Vertreeses in grievous outcry when they had found this retreat ruined by the juxtaposition of the parvenu intruder. Probably the "summer-house" was pleasant and pretty in summer. It had the look of a place wherein little girls had played for a generation or so with dolls and "housekeeping,"

or where a lovely old lady might come to read something dull on warm afternoons; but now in the thin light it was desolate, the color of dust, and hung with haggard vines which had lost their leaves.

Bibbs looked at it with grave sympathy, probably feeling some kins.h.i.+p with anything so dismantled; then he turned to a cheval-gla.s.s beside the window and paid himself the dubious tribute of a thorough inspection. He looked the mirror up and down, slowly, repeatedly, but came in the end to a long and earnest scrutiny of the face. Throughout this cryptic seance his manner was profoundly impersonal; he had the air of an entomologist intent upon cla.s.sifying a specimen, but finally he appeared to become pessimistic. He shook his head solemnly; then gazed again and shook his head again, and continued to shake it slowly, in complete disapproval.

"You certainly are one horrible sight!" he said, aloud.

And at that he was instantly aware of an observer. Turning quickly, he was vouchsafed the picture of a charming lady, framed in a rustic aperture of the "summer-house" and staring full into his window--straight into his eyes, too, for the infinitesimal fraction of a second before the flas.h.i.+ngly censorious withdrawal of her own.

Composedly, she pulled several dead twigs from a vine, the manner of her action conveying a message or proclamation to the effect that she was in the summer-house for the sole purpose of such-like pruning and tending, and that no gentleman could suppose her presence there to be due to any other purpose whatsoever, or that, being there on that account, she had allowed her attention to wander for one instant in the direction of things of which she was in reality unconscious.

Having pulled enough twigs to emphasize her unconsciousness--and at the same time her disapproval--of everything in the nature of a Sheridan or belonging to a Sheridan, she descended the knoll with maintained composure, and sauntered toward a side-door of the country mansion of the Vertreeses. An elderly lady, bonneted and cloaked, opened the door and came to meet her.

"Are you ready, Mary? I've been looking for you. What were you doing?"

"Nothing. Just looking into one of Sheridans' windows," said Mary Vertrees. "I got caught at it."

"Mary!" cried her mother. "Just as we were going to call! Good heavens!"

"We'll go, just the same," the daughter returned. "I suppose those women would be glad to have us if we'd burned their house to the ground."