The Turmoil Booth Tarkington (best reads .txt) 📖

adopted: he had so thoroughly formed the oversensitive habit of hiding his feelings that no doubt he had forgotten⁠—by this time⁠—where he had put some of them, especially those which concerned himself. But he had not hidden his feelings about his father where they could not be found. He was strange to his father, but his father was not strange to him. He knew that Sheridan’s plans were conceived in the stubborn belief that they would bring about a good thing for Bibbs himself; and whatever the result was to be, the son had no bitterness. Far otherwise, for as he looked at the big, woeful figure, shaking and tortured, an almost unbearable pity laid hands upon Bibbs’s throat. Roscoe stood blinking, his lip quivering; Edith wept audibly; Mrs. Sheridan leaned in half collapse against her husband; but Bibbs knew that his father was the one who cared.

It was over. Men in overalls stepped forward with their shovels, and Bibbs nodded quickly to Roscoe, making a slight gesture toward the line of waiting carriages. Roscoe understood⁠—Bibbs would stay and see the grave filled; the rest were to go. The groups began to move away over the turf; wheels creaked on the graveled drive; and one by one the carriages filled and departed, the horses setting off at a walk. Bibbs gazed steadfastly at the workmen; he knew that his father kept looking back as he went toward the carriage, and that was a thing he did not want to see. But after a little while there were no sounds of wheels or hoofs on the gravel, and Bibbs, glancing up, saw that everyone had gone. A coupé had been left for him, the driver dozing patiently.

The workmen placed the flowers and wreaths upon the mound and about it, and Bibbs altered the position of one or two of these, then stood looking thoughtfully at the grotesque brilliancy of that festal-seeming hillock beneath the darkening November sky. “It’s too bad!” he half whispered, his lips forming the words⁠—and his meaning was that it was too bad that the strong brother had been the one to go. For this was his last thought before he walked to the coupé and saw Mary Vertrees standing, all alone, on the other side of the drive.

She had just emerged from a grove of leafless trees that grew on a slope where the tombs were many; and behind her rose a multitude of the barbaric and classic shapes we so strangely strew about our graveyards: urn-crowned columns and stone-draped obelisks, shop-carved angels and shop-carved children poising on pillars and shafts, all lifting⁠—in unthought pathos⁠—their blind stoniness toward the sky. Against such a background, Bibbs was not incongruous, with his figure, in black, so long and slender, and his face so long and thin and white; nor was the undertaker’s coupé out of keeping, with the shabby driver dozing on the box and the shaggy horses standing patiently in attitudes without hope and without regret. But for Mary Vertrees, here was a grotesque setting⁠—she was a vivid, living creature of a beautiful world. And a graveyard is not the place for people to look charming.

She also looked startled and confused, but not more startled and confused than Bibbs. In “Edith’s” poem he had declared his intention of hiding his heart “among the stars”; and in his boyhood one day he had successfully hidden his body in the coal-pile. He had been no comrade of other boys or of girls, and his acquaintances of a recent period were only a few fellow-invalids and the nurses at the Hood Sanitarium. All his life Bibbs had kept himself to himself⁠—he was but a shy onlooker in the world. Nevertheless, the startled gaze he bent upon the unexpected lady before him had causes other than his shyness and her unexpectedness. For Mary Vertrees had been a shining figure in the little world of late given to the view of this humble and elusive outsider, and spectators sometimes find their hearts beating faster than those of the actors in the spectacle. Thus with Bibbs now. He started and stared; he lifted his hat with incredible awkwardness, his fingers fumbling at his forehead before they found the brim.

“Mr. Sheridan,” said Mary, “I’m afraid you’ll have to take me home with you. I⁠—” She stopped, not lacking a momentary awkwardness of her own.

“Why⁠—why⁠—yes,” Bibbs stammered. “I’ll⁠—I’ll be de⁠—Won’t you get in?”

In that manner and in that place they exchanged their first words. Then Mary without more ado got into the coupé, and Bibbs followed, closing the door.

“You’re very kind,” she said, somewhat breathlessly. “I should have had to walk, and it’s beginning to get dark. It’s three miles, I think.”

“Yes,” said Bibbs. “It⁠—it is beginning to get dark. I⁠—I noticed that.”

“I ought to tell you⁠—I⁠—” Mary began, confusedly. She bit her lip, sat silent a moment, then spoke with composure. “It must seem odd, my⁠—”

“No, no!” Bibbs protested, earnestly. “Not in the⁠—in the least.”

“It does, though,” said Mary. “I had not intended to come to the cemetery, Mr. Sheridan, but one of the men in charge at the house came and whispered to me that ‘the family wished me to’⁠—I think your sister sent him. So I came. But when we reached here I⁠—oh, I felt that perhaps I⁠—”

Bibbs nodded gravely. “Yes, yes,” he murmured.

“I got out on the opposite side of the carriage,” she continued. “I mean opposite from⁠—from where all of you were. And I wandered off over in the other direction; and I didn’t realize how little time it takes. From where I was I couldn’t see the carriages leaving⁠—at least I didn’t notice them. So when I got back, just now, you were the only one here. I didn’t know the other people in the carriage I came in, and of course they didn’t think to wait for me. That’s why⁠—”

“Yes,” said Bibbs, “I⁠—” And that seemed all he had to say just then.

Mary looked out through the dusty window. “I think we’d