The Turmoil by Booth Tarkington (read aloud books .txt) 📕

drive up across the street and some men go into the house. It was too dark to make out much, and for a minute I got the idea they were moving out⁠—the house has been foreclosed on, Mrs. Kittersby says. It seemed funny, too, because I knew that girl was out riding with Bibbs. Well, I thought I’d see, so I slipped over⁠—and it was their piano! They’d sold it and were trying to sneak it out after dark, so nobody’d catch on!” Again she gave way to her enjoyment, but resumed, as her husband seemed about to interrupt the narrative. “Wait a minute, can’t you? The old lady was superintending, and she gave it all away. I sized her up for one of those old churchy people that tell all kinds of lies except when it comes to so many words, and then they can’t. She might just as well told me outright! Yes, they’d sold it; and I hope they’ll pay some of their debts. They owe everybody, and last week a coal-dealer made an awful fuss at the door with Mr. Vertrees. Their cook told our upstairs girl, and she said she didn’t know when she’d seen any money, herself! Did you ever hear of such a case as that girl in your life?”

“What girl? Their cook?”

“That Vertrees girl! Don’t you see they looked on our coming up into this neighborhood as their last chance? They were just going down and out, and here bobs up the green, rich Sheridan family! So they doll the girl up in her old things, made over, and send her out to get a Sheridan⁠—she’s got to get one! And she just goes in blind; and she tries it on first with you. You remember, she just plain told you she was going to mash you, and then she found out you were the married one, and turned right square around to Jim and carried him off his feet. Oh, Jim was landed⁠—there’s no doubt about that! But Jim was lucky; he didn’t live to stay landed, and it’s a good thing for him!” Sibyl’s mirth had vanished, and she spoke with virulent rapidity. “Well, she couldn’t get you, because you were married, and she couldn’t get Jim, because Jim died. And there they were, dead broke! Do you know what she did? Do you know what she’s doing?”

“No, I don’t,” said Roscoe, gruffly.

Sibyl’s voice rose and culminated in a scream of renewed hilarity. “Bibbs! She waited in the graveyard, and drove home with him from Jim’s funeral! Never spoke to him before! Jim wasn’t cold!”

She rocked herself back and forth upon the divan. “Bibbs!” she shrieked. “Bibbs! Roscoe, think of it! Bibbs!”

He stared unsympathetically, but her mirth was unabated for all that. “And yesterday,” she continued, between paroxysms⁠—“yesterday she came out of the house⁠—just as he was passing. She must have been looking out⁠—waiting for the chance; I saw the old lady watching at the window! And she got him there last night⁠—to ‘play’ to him; the old lady gave that away! And today she made him take her out in a machine! And the cream of it is that they didn’t even know whether he was insane or not⁠—they thought maybe he was, but she went after him just the same! The old lady set herself to pump me about it today. Bibbs! Oh, my Lord! Bibbs!”

But Roscoe looked grim. “So it’s funny to you, is it? It sounds kind of pitiful to me. I should think it would to a woman, too.”

“Oh, it might,” she returned, sobering. “It might, if those people weren’t such frozen-faced smart Alecks. If they’d had the decency to come down off the perch a little I probably wouldn’t think it was funny, but to see ’em sit up on their pedestal all the time they’re eating dirt⁠—well, I think it’s funny! That girl sits up as if she was Queen Elizabeth, and expects people to wallow on the ground before her until they get near enough for her to give ’em a good kick with her old patched shoes⁠—oh, she’d do that, all right!⁠—and then she powders up and goes out to mash⁠—Bibbs Sheridan!”

“Look here,” said Roscoe, heavily; “I don’t care about that one way or another. If you’re through, I got something I want to talk to you about. I was going to, that day just before we heard about Jim.”

At this Sibyl stiffened quickly; her eyes became intensely bright. “What is it?”

“Well,” he began, frowning, “what I was going to say then⁠—” He broke off, and, becoming conscious that he was still holding the wet napkin in his hand, threw it pettishly into a corner. “I never expected I’d have to say anything like this to anybody I married; but I was going to ask you what was the matter between you and Lamhorn.”

Sibyl uttered a sharp monosyllable. “Well?”

“I felt the time had come for me to know about it,” he went on. “You never told me anything⁠—”

“You never asked,” she interposed, curtly.

“Well, we’d got in a way of not talking much,” said Roscoe. “It looks to me now as if we’d pretty much lost the run of each other the way a good many people do. I don’t say it wasn’t my fault. I was up early and down to work all day, and I’d come home tired at night, and want to go to bed soon as I’d got the paper read⁠—unless there was some good musical show in town. Well, you seemed all right until here lately, the last month or so, I began to see something was wrong. I couldn’t help seeing it.”

“Wrong?” she said. “What like?”

“You changed; you didn’t look the same. You were all strung up and excited and fidgety; you got to looking peakid and run down. Now then, Lamhorn had been going with us a good while, but I noticed that not long ago you got to picking on him about every little thing he