The Turmoil Part 29

"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 listened 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 G.o.d!" Lamhorn said. "Hus.h.!.+"

"You knew she'd tell my husband, DIDN'T you?" she cried. "You knew that!"

"HUs.h.!.+" 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 bra.s.s-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...o...b..t 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 n.o.ble, 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, 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--"

But Edith screamed, clapping her hands over her ears to shut out the sound of his voice, and ran up-stairs, sobbing loudly, followed by her mother. However, Mrs. Sheridan descended a few minutes later and joined her husband in the library. Bibbs, still sitting in his gold chair, saw her pa.s.s, roused himself from reverie, and strolled in after her.

"She locked her door," said Mrs. Sheridan, shaking her head woefully.

"She wouldn't even answer me. They wasn't a sound from her room."

"Well," said her husband, "she can settle her mind to it. She never speaks to that fellow again, and if he tries to telephone her to-morrow--Here! You tell the help if he calls up to ring off and say it's my orders. No, you needn't. I'll tell 'em myself."

"Better not," said Bibbs, gently.

His father glared at him.

"It's no good," said Bibbs. "Mother, when you were in love with father--"

"My goodness!" she cried. "You ain't a-goin' to compare your father to that--"

"Edith feels about him just what you did about father," said Bibbs. "And if YOUR father had told you--"

"I won't LISTEN to such silly talk!" she declared, angrily.

"So you're handin' out your advice, are you, Bibbs?" said Sheridan.

"What is it?"

"Let her see him all she wants."