_ Beginning at the beginning and learning from the ground up was a long
course for Bibbs at the sanitarium, with milk and "zwieback" as the
basis of instruction; and the months were many and tiresome before
he was considered near enough graduation to go for a walk leaning on
a nurse and a cane. These and subsequent months saw the planning,
the building, and the completion of the New House; and it was to that
abode of Bigness that Bibbs was brought when the cane, without the
nurse, was found sufficient to his support.
Edith met him at the station. "Well, well, Bibbs!" she said, as he
came slowly through the gates, the last of all the travelers from
that train. She gave his hand a brisk little shake, averting her eyes
after a quick glance at him, and turning at once toward the passage
to the street. "Do you think they ought to've let you come? You
certainly don't look well!"
"But I certainly do look better," he returned, in a voice as slow as
his gait; a drawl that was a necessity, for when Bibbs tried to speak
quickly he stammered. "Up to about a month ago it took two people to
see me. They had to get me in a line between 'em!"
Edith did not turn her eyes directly toward him again, after her
first quick glance; and her expression, in spite of her, showed a
faint, troubled distaste, the look of a healthy person pressed by
some obligation of business to visit a "bad" ward in a hospital.
She was nineteen, fair and slim, with small, unequal features, but
a prettiness of color and a brilliancy of eyes that created a total
impression close upon beauty. Her movements were eager and restless:
there was something about her, as kind old ladies say, that was very
sweet; and there was something that was hurried and breathless. This
was new to Bibbs; it was a perceptible change since he had last seen
her, and he bent upon her a steady, whimsical scrutiny as they stood
at the curb, waiting for an automobile across the street to disengage
itself from the traffic.
"That's the new car," she said. "Everything's new. We've got four
now, besides Jim's. Roscoe's got two."
"Edith, you look--" he began, and paused.
"Oh, WE're all well," she said, briskly; and then, as if something in
his tone had caught her as significant, "Well, HOW do I look, Bibbs?"
"You look--" He paused again, taking in the full length of her--her
trim brown shoes, her scant, tapering, rough skirt, and her coat of
brown and green, her long green tippet and her mad little rough hat
in the mad mode--all suited to the October day.
"How do I look?" she insisted.
"You look," he answered, as his examination ended upon an incrusted
watch of platinum and enamel at her wrist, "you look--expensive!"
That was a substitute for what he intended to say, for her constraint
and preoccupation, manifested particularly in her keeping her direct
glance away from him, did not seem to grant the privilege of impulsive
intimacies.
"I expect I am!" she laughed, and sidelong caught the direction of
his glance. "Of course I oughtn't to wear it in the daytime--it's an
evening thing, for the theater--by my day wrist-watch is out of gear.
Bobby Lamhorn broke it yesterday; he's a regular rowdy sometimes.
Do you want Claus to help you in?"
"Oh no," said Bibbs. "I'm alive." And after a fit of panting
subsequent to his climbing into the car unaided, he added, "Of course,
I have to TELL people!"
"We only got your telegram this morning," she said, as they began to
move rapidly through the "wholesale district" neighboring the station.
"Mother said she'd hardly expected you this month."
"They seemed to be through with me up there in the country," he
explained, gently. "At least they said they were, and they wouldn't
keep me any longer, because so many really sick people wanted to get
in. They told me to go home --and I didn't have any place else to go.
It'll be all right, Edith; I'll sit in the woodshed until after dark
every day."
"Pshaw!" She laughed nervously. "Of course we're all of us glad to
have you back."
"Yes?" he said. "Father?"
"Of course! Didn't he write and tell you to come home?" She did not
turn to him with the question. All the while she rode with her face
directly forward.
"No," he said; "father hasn't written."
She flushed a little. "I expect I ought to've written sometime, or
one of the boys--"
"Oh no; that was all right."
"You can't think how busy we've all been this year, Bibbs. I often
planned to write--and then, just as I was going to, something would
turn up. And I'm sure it's been just the same way with Jim and
Roscoe. Of course we knew mamma was writing often and--"
"Of course!" he said, readily. "There's a chunk of coal fallen on
your glove, Edith. Better flick it off before it smears. My word!
I'd almost forgotten how sooty it is here."
"We've been having very bright weather this month--for us." She
blew the flake of soot into the air, seeming relieved.
He looked up at the dingy sky, wherein hung the disconsolate sun
like a cold tin pan nailed up in a smoke-house by some lunatic, for
a decoration. "Yes," said Bibbs. "It's very gay." A few moments
later, as they passed a corner, "Aren't we going home?" he asked.
"Why, yes!" Did you want to go somewhere else first?"
"No. Your new driver's taking us out of the way, isn't he?"
"No. This is right. We're going straight home."
"But we've passed the corner. We always turned--"
"Good gracious!" she cried. "Didn't you know we'd moved? Didn't
you know we were in the New House?"
"Why, no!" said Bibbs. "Are you?"
"We've been there a month! Good gracious! Didn't you know--" She
broke off, flushing again, and then went on hastily: "Of course,
mamma's never been so busy in her life; we ALL haven't had time to do
anything but keep on the hop. Mamma couldn't even come to the station
to-day. Papa's got some of his business friends and people from
around the OLD-house neighborhood coming to-night for a big dinner
and 'house-warming'--dreadful kind of people--but mamma's got it all
on her hands. She's never sat down a MINUTE; and if she did, papa
would have her up again before--"
"Of course," said Bibbs. "Do you like the new place, Edith?"
"I don't like some of the things father WOULD have in it, but it's
the finest house in town, and that ought to be good enough for me!
Papa bought one thing I like--a view of the Bay of Naples in oil
that's perfectly beautiful; it's the first thing you see as you come
in the front hall, and it's eleven feet long. But he would have that
old fruit picture we had in the Murphy Street house hung up in the
new dining-room. You remember it--a table and a watermelon sliced
open, and a lot of rouged-looking apples and some shiny lemons, with
two dead prairie-chickens on a chair? He bought it at a furniture-
store years and years ago, and he claims it's a finer picture than any
they saw in the museums, that time he took mamma to Europe. But it's
horribly out of date to have those things in dining-rooms, and I
caught Bobby Lamhorn giggling at it; and Sibyl made fun of it, too,
with Bobby, and then told papa she agreed with him about its being
such a fine thing, and said he did just right to insist on having it
where he wanted it. She makes me tired! Sibyl!"
Edith's first constraint with her brother, amounting almost to
awkwardness, vanished with this theme, though she still kept her
full gaze always to the front, even in the extreme ardor of her
denunciation of her sister-in-law.
"SIBYL!" she repeated, with such heat and vigor that the name seemed
to strike fire on her lips. "I'd like to know why Roscoe couldn't
have married somebody from HERE that would have done us some good!
He could have got in with Bobby Lamhorn years ago just as well as now,
and Bobby'd have introduced him to the nicest girls in town, but
instead of that he had to go and pick up this Sibyl Rink! I met some
awfully nice people from her town when mamma and I were at Atlantic
City, last spring, and not one had ever heard of the Rinks! Not even
HEARD of 'em!"
"I thought you were great friends with Sibyl," Bibbs said.
"Up to the time I found her out!" the sister returned, with continuing
vehemence. "I've found out some things about Mrs. Roscoe Sheridan
lately--"
"It's only lately?"
"Well--" Edith hesitated, her lips setting primly. "Of course, I
always did see that she never cared the snap of her little finger
about ROSCOE!"
"It seems," said Bibbs, in laconic protest, "that she married him."
The sister emitted a shrill cry, to be interpreted as contemptuous
laughter, and, in her emotion, spoke too impulsively: "Why, she'd
have married YOU!"
"No, no," he said; "she couldn't be that bad!"
"I didn't mean--" she began, distressed. "I only meant--I didn't
mean--"
"Never mind, Edith," he consoled her. "You see, she couldn't have
married me, because I didn't know her; and besides, if she's as
mercenary as all that she'd have been too clever. The head doctor
even had to lend me the money for my ticket home."
"I didn't mean anything unpleasant about YOU," Edith babbled. "I only
meant I thought she was the kind of girl who was so simply crazy to
marry somebody she'd have married anybody that asked her."
"Yes, yes," said Bibbs, "it's all straight." And, perceiving that
his sister's expression was that of a person whose adroitness has set
matters prefectly to rights, he chuckled silently.
"Roscoe's perfectly lovely to her," she continued, a moment later.
"Too lovely! If he'd wake up a little and lay down the law, some day,
like a MAN, I guess she'd respect him more and learn to behave
herself!"
"'Behave'?"
"Oh, well, I mean she's so insincere," said Edith, characteristically
evasive when it came to stating the very point to which she had led,
and in this not unique of her sex.
Bibbs contented himself with a non-committal gesture. "Business
is crawling up the old streets," he said, his long, tremulous hand
indicating a vasty structure in course of erection. "The boarding-
houses come first and then the--"
"That isn't for shops," she informed him. "That's a new investment
of papa's --the 'Sheridan Apartments.'"
"Well, well," he murmured. "I supposed 'Sheridan' was almost well
enough known here already."
"Oh, we're well enough known ABOUT!" she said, impatiently. "I guess
there isn't a man, woman, child, or nigger baby in town that doesn't
know who we are. But we aren't in with the right people."
"No!" he exclaimed. "Who's all that?"
"Who's all what?"
"The 'right people.'"
"You know what I mean: the best people, the old families--the people
that have the real social position in this town and that know they've
got it." _