The Turmoil: A Novel

CHAPTER VI

It was a brave and lustrous banquet; and a noisy one, too, because there was an orchestra among some plants at one end of the long dining-room, and after a preliminary stiffness the guests were impelled to converse—necessarily at the tops of their voices. The whole company of fifty sat at a great oblong table, improvised for the occasion by carpenters; but, not betraying itself as an improvisation, it seemed a permanent continent of damask and lace, with shores of crystal and silver running up to spreading groves of orchids and lilies and white roses—an inhabited continent, evidently, for there were three marvelous, gleaming buildings: one in the center and one at each end, white miracles wrought by some inspired craftsman in sculptural icing. They were models in miniature, and they represented the Sheridan Building, the Sheridan Apartments, and the Pump Works. Nearly all the guests recognized them without having to be told what they were, and pronounced the likenesses superb.

The arrangement of the table was visibly baronial. At the head sat the great Thane, with the flower of his family and of the guests about him; then on each side came the neighbors of the “old” house, grading down to vassals and retainers—superintendents, cashiers, heads of departments, and the like—at the foot, where the Thane's lady took her place as a consolation for the less important. Here, too, among the thralls and bondmen, sat Bibbs Sheridan, a meek Banquo, wondering how anybody could look at him and eat.

Nevertheless, there was a vast, continuous eating, for these were wholesome folk who understood that dinner meant something intended for introduction into the system by means of an aperture in the face, devised by nature for that express purpose. And besides, nobody looked at Bibbs.

He was better content to be left to himself; his voice was not strong enough to make itself heard over the hubbub without an exhausting effort, and the talk that went on about him was too fast and too fragmentary for his drawl to keep pace with it. So he felt relieved when each of his neighbors in turn, after a polite inquiry about his health, turned to seek livelier responses in other directions. For the talk went on with the eating, incessantly. It rose over the throbbing of the orchestra and the clatter and clinking of silver and china and glass, and there was a mighty babble.

“Yes, sir! Started without a dollar.”... “Yellow flounces on the overskirt—“... “I says, 'Wilkie, your department's got to go bigger this year,' I says.”... “Fifteen per cent. turnover in thirty-one weeks.”... “One of the biggest men in the biggest—“... “The wife says she'll have to let out my pants if my appetite—“... “Say, did you see that statue of a Turk in the hall? One of the finest things I ever—“... “Not a dollar, not a nickel, not one red cent do you get out o' me,' I says, and so he ups and—“... “Yes, the baby makes four, they've lost now.”... “Well, they got their raise, and they went in big.”... “Yes, sir! Not a dollar to his name, and look at what—“... “You wait! The population of this town's goin' to hit the million mark before she stops.”... “Well, if you can show me a bigger deal than—”

And through the interstices of this clamoring Bibbs could hear the continual booming of his father's heavy voice, and once he caught the sentence, “Yes, young lady, that's just what did it for me, and that's just what'll do it for my boys—they got to make two blades o' grass grow where one grew before!” It was his familiar flourish, an old story to Bibbs, and now jovially declaimed for the edification of Mary Vertrees.

It was a great night for Sheridan—the very crest of his wave. He sat there knowing himself Thane and master by his own endeavor; and his big, smooth, red face grew more and more radiant with good will and with the simplest, happiest, most boy-like vanity. He was the picture of health, of good cheer, and of power on a holiday. He had thirty teeth, none bought, and showed most of them when he laughed; his grizzled hair was thick, and as unruly as a farm laborer's; his chest was deep and big beneath its vast facade of starched white linen, where little diamonds twinkled, circling three large pearls; his hands were stubby and strong, and he used them freely in gestures of marked picturesqueness; and, though he had grown fat at chin and waist and wrist, he had not lost the look of readiness and activity.

He dominated the table, shouting jocular questions and railleries at every one. His idea was that when people were having a good time they were noisy; and his own additions to the hubbub increased his pleasure, and, of course, met the warmest encouragement from his guests. Edith had discovered that he had very foggy notions of the difference between a band and an orchestra, and when it was made clear to him he had held out for a band until Edith threatened tears; but the size of the orchestra they hired consoled him, and he had now no regrets in the matter.

He kept time to the music continually—with his feet, or pounding on the table with his fist, and sometimes with spoon or knife upon his plate or a glass, without permitting these side-products to interfere with the real business of eating and shouting.

“Tell 'em to play 'Nancy Lee'!” he would bellow down the length of the table to his wife, while the musicians were in the midst of the “Toreador” song, perhaps. “Ask that fellow if they don't know 'Nancy Lee'!” And when the leader would shake his head apologetically in answer to an obedient shriek from Mrs. Sheridan, the “Toreador” continuing vehemently, Sheridan would roar half-remembered fragments of “Nancy Lee,” naturally mingling some Bizet with the air of that uxorious tribute.

“Oh, there she stands and waves her hands while I'm away! A sail-er's wife a sail-er's star should be! Yo ho, oh, oh! Oh, Nancy, Nancy, Nancy Lee! Oh, Na-hancy Lee!”

“HAY, there, old lady!” he would bellow. “Tell 'em to play 'In the Gloaming.' In the gloaming, oh, my darling, la-la-lum-tee—Well, if they don't know that, what's the matter with 'Larboard Watch, Ahoy'? THAT'S good music! That's the kind o' music I like! Come on, now! Mrs. Callin, get 'em singin' down in your part o' the table. What's the matter you folks down there, anyway? Larboard watch, ahoy!”

“What joy he feels, as—ta-tum-dum-tee-dee-dum steals. La-a-r-board watch, ahoy!”

No external bubbling contributed to this effervescence; the Sheridans' table had never borne wine, and, more because of timidity about it than conviction, it bore none now; though “mineral waters” were copiously poured from bottles wrapped, for some reason, in napkins, and proved wholly satisfactory to almost all of the guests. And certainly no wine could have inspired more turbulent good spirits in the host. Not even Bibbs was an alloy in this night's happiness, for, as Mrs. Sheridan had said, he had “plans for Bibbs”—plans which were going to straighten out some things that had gone wrong.

So he pounded the table and boomed his echoes of old songs, and then, forgetting these, would renew his friendly railleries, or perhaps, turning to Mary Vertrees, who sat near him, round the corner of the table at his right, he would become autobiographical. Gentlemen less naive than he had paid her that tribute, for she was a girl who inspired the autobiographical impulse in every man who met her—it needed but the sight of her.

The dinner seemed, somehow, to center about Mary Vertrees and the jocund host as a play centers about its hero and heroine; they were the rubicund king and the starry princess of this spectacle—they paid court to each other, and everybody paid court to them. Down near the sugar Pump Works, where Bibbs sat, there was audible speculation and admiration. “Wonder who that lady is—makin' such a hit with the old man.” “Must be some heiress.” “Heiress? Golly, I guess I could stand it to marry rich, then!”

Edith and Sibyl were radiant: at first they had watched Miss Vertrees with an almost haggard anxiety, wondering what disasterous effect Sheridan's pastoral gaieties—and other things—would have upon her, but she seemed delighted with everything, and with him most of all. She treated him as if he were some delicious, foolish old joke that she understood perfectly, laughing at him almost violently when he bragged—probably his first experience of that kind in his life. It enchanted him.

As he proclaimed to the table, she had “a way with her.” She had, indeed, as Roscoe Sheridan, upon her right, discovered just after the feast began. Since his marriage three years before, no lady had bestowed upon him so protracted a full view of brilliant eyes; and, with the look, his lovely neighbor said—and it was her first speech to him—

“I hope you're very susceptible, Mr. Sheridan!”

Honest Roscoe was taken aback, and “Why?” was all he managed to say.

She repeated the look deliberately, which was noted, with a mystification equal to his own, by his sister across the table. No one, reflected Edith, could image Mary Vertrees the sort of girl who would “really flirt” with married men—she was obviously the “opposite of all that.” Edith defined her as a “thoroughbred,” a “nice girl”; and the look given to Roscoe was astounding. Roscoe's wife saw it, too, and she was another whom it puzzled—though not because its recipient was married.

“Because!” said Mary Vertrees, replying to Roscoe's monosyllable. “And also because we're next-door neighbors at table, and it's dull times ahead for both of us if we don't get along.”

Roscoe was a literal young man, all stocks and bonds, and he had been brought up to believe that when a man married he “married and settled down.” It was “all right,” he felt, for a man as old as his father to pay florid compliments to as pretty a girl as this Miss Vertrees, but for himself—“a young married man”—it wouldn't do; and it wouldn't even be quite moral. He knew that young married people might have friendships, like his wife's for Lamhorn; but Sibyl and Lamhorn never “flirted”—they were always very matter-of-fact with each other. Roscoe would have been troubled if Sibyl had ever told Lamhorn she hoped he was susceptible.

“Yes—we're neighbors,” he said, awkwardly.

“Next-door neighbors in houses, too,” she added.

“No, not exactly. I live across the street.”

“Why, no!” she exclaimed, and seemed startled. “Your mother told me this afternoon that you lived at home.”

“Yes, of course I live at home. I built that new house across the street.”

“But you—” she paused, confused, and then slowly a deep color came into her cheek. “But I understood—”

“No,” he said; “my wife and I lived with the old folks the first year, but that's all. Edith and Jim live with them, of course.”

“I—I see,” she said, the deep color still deepening as she turned from him and saw, written upon a card before the gentleman at her left the name, “Mr. James Sheridan, Jr.” And from that moment Roscoe had little enough cause for wondering what he ought to reply to her disturbing coquetries.

Mr. James Sheridan had been anxiously waiting for the dazzling visitor to “get through with old Roscoe,” as he thought of it, and give a bachelor a chance. “Old Roscoe” was the younger, but he had always been the steady wheel-horse of the family. Jim was “steady” enough, but was considered livelier than Roscoe, which in truth is not saying much for Jim's liveliness. As their father habitually boasted, both brothers were “capable, hard-working young business men,” and the principal difference between them was merely that which resulted from Jim's being still a bachelor. Physically they were of the same type: dark of eyes and of hair, fresh-colored and thick-set, and though Roscoe was several inches taller than Jim, neither was of the height, breadth, or depth of the father. Both wore young business men's mustaches, and either could have sat for the tailor-shop lithographs of young business men wearing “rich suitings in dark mixtures.”

Jim, approving warmly of his neighbor's profile, perceived her access of color, which increased his approbation. “What's that old Roscoe saying to you, Miss Vertrees?” he asked. “These young married men are mighty forward nowadays, but you mustn't let 'em make you blush.”

“Am I blushing?” she said. “Are you sure?” And with that she gave him ample opportunity to make sure, repeating with interest the look wasted upon Roscoe. “I think you must be mistaken,” she continued. “I think it's your brother who is blushing. I've thrown him into confusion.”

“How?”

She laughed, and then, leaning to him a little, said in a tone as confidential as she could make it, under cover of the uproar. “By trying to begin with him a courtship I meant for YOU!”

This might well be a style new to Jim; and it was. He supposed it a nonsensical form of badinage, and yet it took his breath. He realized that he wished what she said to be the literal truth, and he was instantly snared by that realization.

“By George!” he said. “I guess you're the kind of girl that can say anything—yes, and get away with it, too!”

She laughed again—in her way, so that he could not tell whether she was laughing at him or at herself or at the nonsense she was talking; and she said: “But you see I don't care whether I get away with it or not. I wish you'd tell me frankly if you think I've got a chance to get away with YOU?”

“More like if you've got a chance to get away FROM me!” Jim was inspired to reply. “Not one in the world, especially after beginning by making fun of me like that.”

“I mightn't be so much in fun as you think,” she said, regarding him with sudden gravity.

“Well,” said Jim, in simple honesty, “you're a funny girl!”

Her gravity continued an instant longer. “I may not turn out to be funny for YOU.”

“So long as you turn out to be anything at all for me, I expect I can manage to be satisfied.” And with that, to his own surprise, it was his turn to blush, whereupon she laughed again.

“Yes,” he said, plaintively, not wholly lacking intuition, “I can see you're the sort of girl that would laugh the minute you see a man really means anything!”

“'Laugh'!” she cried, gaily. “Why, it might be a matter of life and death! But if you want tragedy, I'd better put the question at once, considering the mistake I made with your brother.”

Jim was dazed. She seemed to be playing a little game of mockery and nonsense with him, but he had glimpses of a flashing danger in it; he was but too sensible of being outclassed, and had somewhere a consciousness that he could never quite know this giddy and alluring lady, no matter how long it pleased her to play with him. But he mightily wanted her to keep on playing with him.

“Put what question?” he said, breathlessly.

“As you are a new neighbor of mine and of my family,” she returned, speaking slowly and with a cross-examiner's severity, “I think it would be well for me to know at once whether you are already walking out with any young lady or not. Mr. Sheridan, think well! Are you spoken for?”

“Not yet,” he gasped. “Are you?”

“NO!” she cried, and with that they both laughed again; and the pastime proceeded, increasing both in its gaiety and in its gravity.

Observing its continuance, Mr. Robert Lamhorn, opposite, turned from a lively conversation with Edith and remarked covertly to Sibyl that Miss Vertrees was “starting rather picturesquely with Jim.” And he added, languidly, “Do you suppose she WOULD?”

For the moment Sibyl gave no sign of having heard him, but seemed interested in the clasp of a long “rope” of pearls, a loop of which she was allowing to swing from her fingers, resting her elbow upon the table and following with her eyes the twinkle of diamonds and platinum in the clasp at the end of the loop. She wore many jewels. She was pretty, but hers was not the kind of prettiness to be loaded with too sumptuous accessories, and jeweled head-dresses are dangerous—they may emphasize the wrongness of the wearer.

“I said Miss Vertrees seems to be starting pretty strong with Jim,” repeated Mr. Lamhorn.

“I heard you.” There was a latent discontent always somewhere in her eyes, no matter what she threw upon the surface of cover it, and just now she did not care to cover it; she looked sullen. “Starting any stronger than you did with Edith?” she inquired.

“Oh, keep the peace!” he said, crossly. “That's off, of course.”

“You haven't been making her see it this evening—precisely,” said Sibyl, looking at him steadily. “You've talked to her for—”

“For Heaven's sake,” he begged, “keep the peace!”

“Well, what have you just been doing?”

“SH!” he said. “Listen to your father-in-law.”

Sheridan was booming and braying louder than ever, the orchestra having begun to play “The Rosary,” to his vast content.

“I COUNT THEM OVER, LA-LA-TUM-TEE-DUM,” he roared, beating the measures with his fork. “EACH HOUR A PEARL, EACH PEARL TEE-DUM-TUM-DUM—What's the matter with all you folks? Why'n't you SING? Miss Vertrees, I bet a thousand dollars YOU sing! Why'n't—”

“Mr. Sheridan,” she said, turning cheerfully from the ardent Jim, “you don't know what you interrupted! Your son isn't used to my rough ways, and my soldier's wooing frightens him, but I think he was about to say something important.”

“I'll say something important to him if he doesn't!” the father threatened, more delighted with her than ever. “By gosh! if I was his age—or a widower right NOW—”

“Oh, wait!” cried Mary. “If they'd only make less noise! I want Mrs. Sheridan to hear.”

“She'd say the same,” he shouted. “She'd tell me I was mighty slow if I couldn't get ahead o' Jim. Why, when I was his age—”

“You must listen to your father,” Mary interrupted, turning to Jim, who had grown red again. “He's going to tell us how, when he was your age, he made those two blades of grass grow out of a teacup—and you could see for yourself he didn't get them out of his sleeve!”

At that Sheridan pounded the table till it jumped. “Look here, young lady!” he roared. “Some o' these days I'm either goin' to slap you—or I'm goin' to kiss you!”

Edith looked aghast; she was afraid this was indeed “too awful,” but Mary Vertrees burst into ringing laughter.

“Both!” she cried. “Both! The one to make me forget the other!”

“But which—” he began, and then suddenly gave forth such stentorian trumpetings of mirth that for once the whole table stopped to listen. “Jim,” he roared, “if you don't propose to that girl to-night I'll send you back to the machine-shop with Bibbs!”

And Bibbs—down among the retainers by the sugar Pump Works, and watching Mary Vertrees as a ragged boy in the street might watch a rich little girl in a garden—Bibbs heard. He heard—and he knew what his father's plans were now.