The Turmoil Booth Tarkington (best reads .txt) 📖

did; you got to quarreling with him when I was there and when I wasn’t. I could see you’d been quarreling whenever I came in and he was here.”

“Do you object to that?” asked Sibyl, breathing quickly.

“Yes⁠—when it injures my wife’s health!” he returned, with a quick lift of his eyes to hers. “You began to run down just about the time you began falling out with him.” He stepped close to her. “See here, Sibyl, I’m going to know what it means.”

“Oh, you are?” she snapped.

“You’re trembling,” he said, gravely.

“Yes. I’m angry enough to do more than tremble, you’ll find. Go on!”

“That was all I was going to say the other day,” he said. “I was going to ask you⁠—”

“Yes, that was all you were going to say the other day. Yes. What else have you to say tonight?”

“Tonight,” he replied, with grim swiftness, “I want to know why you keep telephoning him you want to see him since he stopped coming here.”

She made a long, low sound of comprehension before she said, “And what else did Edith want you to ask me?”

“I want to know what you say over the telephone to Lamhorn,” he said, fiercely.

“Is that all Edith told you to ask me? You saw her when you stopped in there on your way home this evening, didn’t you? Didn’t she tell you then what I said over the telephone to Mr. Lamhorn?”

“No, she didn’t!” he vociferated, his voice growing louder. “She said, ‘You tell your wife to stop telephoning Robert Lamhorn to come and see her, because he isn’t going to do it!’ That’s what she said! And I want to know what it means. I intend⁠—”

A maid appeared at the lower end of the hall. “Dinner is ready,” she said, and, giving the troubled pair one glance, went demurely into the dining-room. Roscoe disregarded the interruption.

“I intend to know exactly what has been going on,” he declared. “I mean to know just what⁠—”

Sibyl jumped up, almost touching him, standing face to face with him.

“Oh, you do!” she cried, shrilly. “You mean to know just what’s what, do you? You listen to your sister insinuating ugly things about your wife, and then you come home making a scene before the servants and humiliating me in their presence! Do you suppose that Irish girl didn’t hear every word you said? You go in there and eat your dinner alone! Go on! Go and eat your dinner alone⁠—because I won’t eat with you!”

And she broke away from the detaining grasp he sought to fasten upon her, and dashed up the stairway, panting. He heard the door of her room slam overhead, and the sharp click of the key in the lock.

XVIII

At seven o’clock on the last morning of that month, Sheridan, passing through the upper hall on his way to descend the stairs for breakfast, found a couple of scribbled sheets of notepaper lying on the floor. A window had been open in Bibbs’s room the evening before; he had left his notebook on the sill⁠—and the sheets were loose. The door was open, and when Bibbs came in and closed it, he did not notice that the two sheets had blown out into the hall. Sheridan recognized the handwriting and put the sheets in his coat pocket, intending to give them to George or Jackson for return to the owner, but he forgot and carried them downtown with him. At noon he found himself alone in his office, and, having a little leisure, remembered the bits of manuscript, took them out, and glanced at them. A glance was enough to reveal that they were not epistolary. Sheridan would not have read a private letter that came into his possession in that way, though in a matter of business he might have felt it his duty to take advantage of an opportunity afforded in any manner whatsoever. Having satisfied himself that Bibbs’s scribblings were only a sample of the kind of writing his son preferred to the machine-shop, he decided, innocently enough, that he would be justified in reading them.

It appears that a lady will nod pleasantly upon some windy generalization of a companion, and will wear the most agreeable expression of accepting it as the law, and then⁠—days afterward, when the thing is a mummy to its promulgator⁠—she will inquire out of a clear sky: “Why did you say that the people downtown have nothing in life that a chicken hasn’t? What did you mean?” And she may say it in a manner that makes a sensible reply very difficult⁠—you will be so full of wonder that she remembered so seriously.

Yet, what does the rooster lack? He has food and shelter; he is warm in winter; his wives raise not one fine family for him, but dozens. He has a clear sky over him; he breathes sweet air; he walks in his April orchard under a roof of flowers. He must die, violently perhaps, but quickly. Is Midas’s cancer a better way? The rooster’s wives and children must die. Are those of Midas immortal? His life is shorter than the life of Midas, but Midas’s life is only a sixth as long as that of the Galapagos tortoise.

The worthy money-worker takes his vacation so that he may refresh himself anew for the hard work of getting nothing that the rooster doesn’t get. The office-building has an elevator, the rooster flies up to the bough. Midas has a machine to take him to his work; the rooster finds his worm underfoot. The business man feels a pressure sometimes, without knowing why, and sits late at wine after the day’s labor; next morning he curses his head because it interferes with the work⁠—he swears never to relieve that pressure again. The rooster has no pressure and no wine; this difference is in his favor.

The rooster is a dependent; he depends upon the farmer and the weather. Midas is a dependent; he depends upon the