The Turmoil. Booth Tarkington
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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