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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 8867 ***

[Illustration]




THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS

By Booth Tarkington




CONTENTS


Chapter I

Chapter II

Chapter III

Chapter IV

Chapter V

Chapter VI

Chapter VII

Chapter VIII

Chapter IX

Chapter X

Chapter XI

Chapter XII

Chapter XIII

Chapter XIV

Chapter XV

Chapter XVI

Chapter XVII

Chapter XVIII

Chapter XIX

Chapter XX

Chapter XXI

Chapter XXII

Chapter XXIII

Chapter XXIV

Chapter XXV

Chapter XXVI

Chapter XXVII

Chapter XXVIII

Chapter XXIX

Chapter XXX

Chapter XXXI

Chapter XXXII

Chapter XXXIII

Chapter XXXIV

Chapter XXXV




Chapter I


Major Amberson had “made a fortune” in 1873, when other people were
losing fortunes, and the magnificence of the Ambersons began then.
Magnificence, like the size of a fortune, is always comparative, as
even Magnificent Lorenzo may now perceive, if he has happened to haunt
New York in 1916; and the Ambersons were magnificent in their day and
place. Their splendour lasted throughout all the years that saw their
Midland town spread and darken into a city, but reached its topmost
during the period when every prosperous family with children kept a
Newfoundland dog.

In that town, in those days, all the women who wore silk or velvet
knew all the other women who wore silk or velvet, and when there was
a new purchase of sealskin, sick people were got to windows to see
it go by. Trotters were out, in the winter afternoons, racing light
sleighs on National Avenue and Tennessee Street; everybody recognized
both the trotters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on
summer evenings, when slim buggies whizzed by in renewals of the
snow-time rivalry. For that matter, everybody knew everybody else’s
family horse-and-carriage, could identify such a silhouette half a
mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was going to market, or
to a reception, or coming home from office or store to noon dinner or
evening supper.

During the earlier years of this period, elegance of personal
appearance was believed to rest more upon the texture of garments than
upon their shaping. A silk dress needed no remodelling when it was a
year or so old; it remained distinguished by merely remaining silk.
Old men and governors wore broadcloth; “full dress” was broadcloth
with “doeskin” trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom
a hat meant only that rigid, tall silk thing known to impudence as a
“stove-pipe.” In town and country these men would wear no other hat,
and, without self-consciousness, they went rowing in such hats.

Shifting fashions of shape replaced aristocracy of texture:
dressmakers, shoemakers, hatmakers, and tailors, increasing in cunning
and in power, found means to make new clothes old. The long contagion
of the “Derby” hat arrived: one season the crown of this hat would
be a bucket; the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept
its bootjack, but high-topped boots gave way to shoes and “congress
gaiters”; and these were played through fashions that shaped them now
with toes like box-ends and now with toes like the prows of racing
shells.

Trousers with a crease were considered plebeian; the crease proved
that the garment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was “ready-made”;
these betraying trousers were called “hand-me-downs,” in allusion to
the shelf. In the early ’eighties, while bangs and bustles were having
their way with women, that variation of dandy known as the “dude”
was invented: he wore trousers as tight as stockings, dagger-pointed
shoes, a spoon “Derby,” a single-breasted coat called a “Chesterfield,”
with short flaring skirts, a torturing cylindrical collar, laundered
to a polish and three inches high, while his other neckgear might be
a heavy, puffed cravat or a tiny bow fit for a doll’s braids. With
evening dress he wore a tan overcoat so short that his black coat-tails
hung visible, five inches below the over-coat; but after a season
or two he lengthened his overcoat till it touched his heels, and he
passed out of his tight trousers into trousers like great bags. Then,
presently, he was seen no more, though the word that had been coined
for him remained in the vocabularies of the impertinent.

It was a hairier day than this. Beards were to the wearers’ fancy,
and things as strange as the Kaiserliche boar-tusk moustache were
commonplace. “Side-burns” found nourishment upon childlike profiles;
great Dundreary whiskers blew like tippets over young shoulders;
moustaches were trained as lambrequins over forgotten mouths; and it
was possible for a Senator of the United States to wear a mist of white
whisker upon his throat only, not a newspaper in the land finding the
ornament distinguished enough to warrant a lampoon. Surely no more is
needed to prove that so short a time ago we were living in another age!

At the beginning of the Ambersons’ great period most of the houses of
the Midland town were of a pleasant architecture. They lacked style,
but also lacked pretentiousness, and whatever does not pretend at
all has style enough. They stood in commodious yards, well shaded by
leftover forest trees, elm and walnut and beech, with here and there a
line of tall sycamores where the land had been made by filling bayous
from the creek. The house of a “prominent resident,” facing Military
Square, or National Avenue, or Tennessee Street, was built of brick
upon a stone foundation, or of wood upon a brick foundation. Usually
it had a “front porch” and a “back porch”; often a “side porch,” too.
There was a “front hall”; there was a “side hall”; and sometimes a
“back hall.” From the “front hall” opened three rooms, the “parlour,”
the “sitting room,” and the “library”; and the library could show
warrant to its title—for some reason these people bought books.
Commonly, the family sat more in the library than in the “sitting
room,” while callers, when they came formally, were kept to the
“parlour,” a place of formidable polish and discomfort. The upholstery
of the library furniture was a little shabby; but the hostile chairs
and sofa of the “parlour” always looked new. For all the wear and tear
they got they should have lasted a thousand years.

Upstairs were the bedrooms; “mother-and-father’s room” the largest; a
smaller room for one or two sons, another for one or two daughters;
each of these rooms containing a double bed, a “washstand,” a “bureau,”
a wardrobe, a little table, a rocking-chair, and often a chair or two
that had been slightly damaged downstairs, but not enough to justify
either the expense of repair or decisive abandonment in the attic. And
there was always a “spare-room,” for visitors (where the sewing-machine
usually was kept), and during the ‘seventies there developed an
appreciation of the necessity for a bathroom. Therefore the architects
placed bathrooms in the new houses, and the older houses tore out a
cupboard or two, set up a boiler beside the kitchen stove, and sought a
new godliness, each with its own bathroom. The great American plumber
joke, that many-branched evergreen, was planted at this time.

At the rear of the house, upstairs was a bleak little chamber, called
“the girl’s room,” and in the stable there was another bedroom,
adjoining the hayloft, and called “the hired man’s room.” House and
stable cost seven or eight thousand dollars to build, and people with
that much money to invest in such comforts were classified as the Rich.
They paid the inhabitant of “the girl’s room” two dollars a week, and,
in the latter part of this period, two dollars and a half, and finally
three dollars a week. She was Irish, ordinarily, or German or it might
be Scandinavian, but never native to the land unless she happened to be
a person of colour. The man or youth who lived in the stable had like
wages, and sometimes he, too, was lately a steerage voyager, but much
oftener he was coloured.

After sunrise, on pleasant mornings, the alleys behind the stables were
gay; laughter and shouting went up and down their dusty lengths, with
a lively accompaniment of curry-combs knocking against back fences and
stable walls, for the darkies loved to curry their horses in the alley.
Darkies always prefer to gossip in shouts instead of whispers; and they
feel that profanity, unless it be vociferous, is almost worthless.
Horrible phrases were caught by early rising children and carried to
older people for definition, sometimes at inopportune moments; while
less investigative children would often merely repeat the phrases in
some subsequent flurry of agitation, and yet bring about consequences
so emphatic as to be recalled with ease in middle life.

They have passed, those darky hired-men of the Midland town; and the
introspective horses they curried and brushed and whacked and amiably
cursed—those good old horses switch their tails at flies no more. For
all their seeming permanence they might as well have been buffaloes—or
the buffalo laprobes that grew bald in patches and used to slide from
the careless drivers’ knees and hang unconcerned, half way to the
ground. The stables have been transformed into other likenesses, or
swept away, like the woodsheds where were kept the stove-wood and
kindling that the “girl” and the “hired-man” always quarrelled over:
who should fetch it. Horse and stable and woodshed, and the whole tribe
of the “hired-man,” all are gone. They went quickly, yet so silently
that we whom they served have not yet really noticed that they are
vanished.

So with other vanishings. There were the little bunty street-cars
on the long, single track that went its troubled way among the
cobblestones. At the rear door of the car there was no platform, but a
step where passengers clung in wet clumps when the weather was bad and
the car crowded. The patrons—if not too absent-minded—put their fares
into a slot; and no conductor paced the heaving floor, but the driver
would rap remindingly with his elbow upon the glass of the door to his
little open platform if the nickels and the passengers did not appear
to coincide in number. A lone mule drew the car, and sometimes drew it
off the track, when the passengers would get out and push it on again.
They really owed it courtesies like this, for the car was genially
accommodating: a lady could whistle to it from an upstairs window, and
the car would halt at once and wait for her while she shut the window,
put on her hat and cloak, went downstairs, found an umbrella, told the
“girl” what to have for dinner, and came forth from the house.

The previous passengers made little objection to such gallantry on
the part of the car: they were wont to expect as much for themselves
on like occasion. In good weather the mule pulled the car a mile in a
little less than twenty minutes, unless the stops were too long; but
when the trolley-car came, doing its mile in five minutes and better,
it would wait for nobody. Nor could its passengers have endured such
a thing, because the faster they were carried the less time they had
to spare! In the days before deathly contrivances hustled them through
their lives, and when they had no telephones—another ancient vacancy
profoundly responsible for leisure—they had time for everything: time
to think, to talk, time to read, time to wait for a lady!

They even had time to dance “square dances,” quadrilles, and “lancers”;
they also danced the “racquette,” and schottisches and polkas, and
such whims as the “Portland Fancy.” They pushed back the sliding doors
between the “parlour” and the “sitting room,” tacked down crash over
the carpets, hired a few palms in green tubs, stationed three or four
Italian musicians under the stairway in the “front hall”—and had great
nights!

But these people were gayest on New Year’s Day; they made it a true
festival—something no longer known. The women gathered to “assist” the
hostesses who kept “Open House”; and the carefree men, dandified and
perfumed, went about in sleighs, or in carriages and ponderous “hacks,”
going from Open House to Open House, leaving fantastic cards in fancy
baskets as they entered each doorway, and emerging a little later, more
carefree than ever, if the punch had been to their liking. It always
was, and, as the afternoon wore on, pedestrians saw great gesturing and
waving of skin-tight lemon gloves, while ruinous fragments of song were
dropped behind as the carriages rolled up and down the streets.

“Keeping Open House” was a merry custom; it has gone, like the all-day
picnic in the woods, and like that prettiest of all vanished customs,
the serenade. When a lively girl visited the town she did not long
go unserenaded, though a visitor was not indeed needed to excuse a
serenade. Of a summer night, young men would bring an orchestra under
a pretty girl’s window—or, it might be, her father’s, or that of an
ailing maiden aunt—and flute, harp, fiddle, cello, cornet, and bass
viol would presently release to the dulcet stars such melodies as
sing through “You’ll Remember Me,” “I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble
Halls,” “Silver Threads Among the Gold,” “Kathleen Mavourneen,” or “The
Soldier’s Farewell.”

They had other music to offer, too, for these were the happy days
of “Olivette” and “The Macotte” and “The Chimes of Normandy” and
“Girofle-Girofla” and “Fra Diavola.” Better than that, these were the
days of “Pinafore” and “The Pirates of Penzance” and of “Patience.”
This last was needed in the Midland town, as elsewhere, for the
“aesthetic movement” had reached thus far from London, and terrible
things were being done to honest old furniture. Maidens sawed
what-nots in two, and gilded the remains. They took the rockers from
rocking-chairs and gilded the inadequate legs; they gilded the easels
that supported the crayon portraits of their deceased uncles. In the
new spirit of art they sold old clocks for new, and threw wax flowers
and wax fruit, and the protecting glass domes, out upon the trash-heap.
They filled vases with peacock feathers, or cattails, or sumac, or
sunflowers, and set the vases upon mantelpieces and marble-topped
tables. They embroidered daisies (which they called “marguerites”) and
sunflowers and sumac and cat-tails and owls and peacock feathers upon
plush screens and upon heavy cushions, then strewed these cushions upon
floors where fathers fell over them in the dark. In the teeth of sinful
oratory, the daughters went on embroidering: they embroidered daisies
and sunflowers and sumac and cat-tails and owls and peacock feathers
upon “throws” which they had the courage to drape upon horsehair sofas;
they painted owls and daisies and sunflowers and sumac and cat-tails
and peacock feathers upon tambourines. They hung Chinese umbrellas of
paper to the chandeliers; they nailed paper fans to the walls. They
“studied” painting on china, these girls; they sang Tosti’s new songs;
they sometimes still practiced the old, genteel habit of lady-fainting,
and were most charming of all when they drove forth, three or four in a
basket phaeton, on a spring morning.

Croquet and the mildest archery ever known were the sports of people
still young and active enough for so much exertion; middle-age played
euchre. There was a theatre, next door to the Amberson Hotel, and when
Edwin Booth came for a night, everybody who could afford to buy a
ticket was there, and all the “hacks” in town were hired. “The Black
Crook” also filled the theatre, but the audience then was almost
entirely of men who looked uneasy as they left for home when the final
curtain fell upon the shocking girls dressed as fairies. But the
theatre did not often do so well; the people of the town were still too
thrifty.

They were thrifty because they were the sons or grandsons of the “early
settlers,” who had opened the wilderness and had reached it from the
East and the South with wagons and axes and guns, but with no money at
all. The pioneers were thrifty or they would have perished: they had to
store away food for the winter, or goods to trade for food, and they
often feared they had not stored enough—they left traces of that fear
in their sons and grandsons. In the minds of most of these, indeed,
their thrift was next to their religion: to save, even for the sake
of saving, was their earliest lesson and discipline. No matter how
prosperous they were, they could not spend money either upon “art,” or
upon mere luxury and entertainment, without a sense of sin.

Against so homespun a background the magnificence of the Ambersons was
as conspicuous as a brass band at a funeral. Major Amberson bought
two hundred acres of land at the end of National Avenue; and through
this tract he built broad streets and cross-streets; paved them with
cedar block, and curbed them with stone. He set up fountains, here and
there, where the streets intersected, and at symmetrical intervals
placed cast-iron statues, painted white, with their titles clear upon
the pedestals: Minerva, Mercury, Hercules, Venus, Gladiator, Emperor
Augustus, Fisher Boy, Stag-hound, Mastiff, Greyhound, Fawn, Antelope,
Wounded Doe, and Wounded Lion. Most of the forest trees had been left
to flourish still, and, at some distance, or by moonlight, the place
was in truth beautiful; but the ardent citizen, loving to see his
city grow, wanted neither distance nor moonlight. He had not seen
Versailles, but, standing before the Fountain of Neptune in Amberson
Addition, at bright noon, and quoting the favourite comparison of the
local newspapers, he declared Versailles outdone. All this Art showed a
profit from the start, for the lots sold well and there was something
like a rush to build in the new Addition. Its main thoroughfare, an
oblique continuation of National Avenue, was called Amberson Boulevard,
and here, at the juncture of the new Boulevard and the Avenue, Major
Amberson reserved four acres for himself, and built his new house—the
Amberson Mansion, of course.

This house was the pride of the town. Faced with stone as far back
as the dining-room windows, it was a house of arches and turrets and
girdling stone porches: it had the first porte-cochere seen in that
town. There was a central “front hall” with a great black walnut
stairway, and open to a green glass skylight called the “dome,” three
stories above the ground floor. A ballroom occupied most of the third
story; and at one end of it was a carved walnut gallery for the
musicians. Citizens told strangers that the cost of all this black
walnut and wood-carving was sixty thousand dollars. “Sixty thousand
dollars for the wood-work _alone!_ Yes, sir, and hardwood floors all
over the house! Turkish rugs and no carpets at all, except a Brussels
carpet in the front parlour—I hear they call it the ‘reception-room.’
Hot and cold water upstairs and down, and stationary washstands in
every last bedroom in the place! Their sideboard’s built right into the
house and goes all the way across one end of the dining room. It isn’t
walnut, it’s solid mahogany! Not veneering—solid mahogany! Well, sir, I
presume the President of the United States would be tickled to swap the
White House for the new Amberson Mansion, if the Major’d give him the
chance—but by the Almighty Dollar, you bet your sweet life the Major
wouldn’t!”

The visitor to the town was certain to receive further enlightenment,
for there was one form of entertainment never omitted: he was always
patriotically taken for “a little drive around our city,” even if
his host had to hire a hack, and the climax of the display was the
Amberson Mansion. “Look at that greenhouse they’ve put up there in
the side yard,” the escort would continue. “And look at that brick
stable! Most folks would think that stable plenty big enough and good
enough to live in; it’s got running water and four rooms upstairs for
two hired men and one of ’em’s family to live in. They keep one hired
man loafin’ in the house, and they got a married hired man out in the
stable, and his wife does the washing. They got box-stalls for four
horses, and they keep a coupay, and some new kinds of fancy rigs you
never saw the beat of! ‘Carts’ they call two of ’em—‘way up in the air
they are—too high for me! I guess they got every new kind of fancy rig
in there that’s been invented. And harness—well, everybody in town can
tell when Ambersons are out driving after dark, by the jingle. This
town never did see so much style as Ambersons are putting on, these
days; and I guess it’s going to be expensive, because a lot of other
folks’ll try to keep up with ’em. The Major’s wife and the daughter’s
been to Europe, and my wife tells me since they got back they make tea
there every afternoon about five o’clock, and drink it. Seems to me it
would go against a person’s stomach, just before supper like that, and
anyway tea isn’t fit for much—not unless you’re sick or something. My
wife says Ambersons don’t make lettuce salad the way other people do;
they don’t chop it up with sugar and vinegar at all. They pour olive
oil on it with their vinegar, and they have it separate—not along with
the rest of the meal. And they _eat_ these olives, too: green things
they are, something like a hard plum, but a friend of mine told me they
tasted a good deal like a bad hickory-nut. My wife says she’s going to
buy some; you got to eat nine and then you get to like ’em, she says.
Well, I wouldn’t eat nine bad hickory-nuts to get to like _them_, and
I’m going to let these olives alone. Kind of a woman’s dish, anyway,
I suspect, but most everybody’ll be makin’ a stagger to worm through
nine of ’em, now Ambersons brought ’em to town. Yes, sir, the rest’ll
eat ’em, whether they get sick or not! Looks to me like some people
in this city’d be willing to go crazy if they thought that would help
’em to be as high-toned as Ambersons. Old Aleck Minafer—he’s about the
closest old codger we got—he come in my office the other day, and he
pretty near had a stroke tellin’ me about his daughter Fanny. Seems
Miss Isabel Amberson’s got some kind of a dog—they call it a Saint
Bernard—and Fanny was bound to have one, too. Well, old Aleck told her
he didn’t like dogs except rat-terriers, because a rat-terrier cleans
up the mice, but she kept on at him, and finally he said all right she
could have one. Then, by George! she says Ambersons _bought_ their
dog, and you can’t get one without paying for it: they cost from fifty
to a hundred dollars up! Old Aleck wanted to know if I ever heard of
anybody buyin’ a dog before, because, of course, even a Newfoundland or
a setter you can usually get somebody to give you one. He says he saw
some sense in payin’ a nigger a dime, or even a quarter, to _drown_ a
dog for you, but to pay out fifty dollars and maybe more—well, sir, he
like to choked himself to death, right there in my office! Of course
everybody realizes that Major Amberson is a fine business man, but what
with throwin’ money around for dogs, and every which and what, some
think all this style’s bound to break him up, if his family don’t quit!”

One citizen, having thus discoursed to a visitor, came to a thoughtful
pause, and then added, “Does seem pretty much like squandering, yet
when you see that dog out walking with this Miss Isabel, he seems worth
the money.”

“What’s she look like?”

“Well, sir,” said the citizen, “she’s not more than just about eighteen
or maybe nineteen years old, and I don’t know as I know just how to put
it—but she’s kind of a _delightful_ lookin’ young lady!”




Chapter II


Another citizen said an eloquent thing about Miss Isabel Amberson’s
looks. This was Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster, the foremost literary
authority and intellectual leader of the community—-for both the daily
newspapers thus described Mrs. Foster when she founded the Women’s
Tennyson Club; and her word upon art, letters, and the drama was
accepted more as law than as opinion. Naturally, when “Hazel Kirke”
finally reached the town, after its long triumph in larger places,
many people waited to hear what Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster thought of
it before they felt warranted in expressing any estimate of the play.
In fact, some of them waited in the lobby of the theatre, as they came
out, and formed an inquiring group about her.

“I didn’t see the play,” she informed them.

“What! Why, we saw you, right in the middle of the fourth row!”

“Yes,” she said, smiling, “but I was sitting just behind Isabel
Amberson. I couldn’t look at anything except her wavy brown hair and
the wonderful back of her neck.”

The ineligible young men of the town (they were all ineligible) were
unable to content themselves with the view that had so charmed Mrs.
Henry Franklin Foster: they spent their time struggling to keep Miss
Amberson’s face turned toward them. She turned it most often, observers
said, toward two: one excelling in the general struggle by his sparkle,
and the other by that winning if not winsome old trait, persistence.
The sparkling gentleman “led germans” with her, and sent sonnets to
her with his bouquets—sonnets lacking neither music nor wit. He was
generous, poor, well-dressed, and his amazing persuasiveness was one
reason why he was always in debt. No one doubted that he would be able
to persuade Isabel, but he unfortunately joined too merry a party
one night, and, during a moonlight serenade upon the lawn before the
Amberson Mansion, was easily identified from the windows as the person
who stepped through the bass viol and had to be assisted to a waiting
carriage. One of Miss Amberson’s brothers was among the serenaders,
and, when the party had dispersed, remained propped against the front
door in a state of helpless liveliness; the Major going down in a
dressing-gown and slippers to bring him in, and scolding mildly, while
imperfectly concealing strong impulses to laughter. Miss Amberson also
laughed at this brother, the next day, but for the suitor it was a
different matter: she refused to see him when he called to apologize.
“You seem to care a great deal about bass viols!” he wrote her. “I
promise never to break another.” She made no response to the note,
unless it was an answer, two weeks later, when her engagement was
announced. She took the persistent one, Wilbur Minafer, no breaker of
bass viols or of hearts, no serenader at all.

A few people, who always foresaw everything, claimed that they were not
surprised, because though Wilbur Minafer “might not be an Apollo, as it
were,” he was “a steady young business man, and a good church-goer,”
and Isabel Amberson was “pretty sensible—for such a showy girl.” But
the engagement astounded the young people, and most of their fathers
and mothers, too; and as a topic it supplanted literature at the next
meeting of the “Women’s Tennyson Club.”

“Wilbur _Minafer!_” a member cried, her inflection seeming to imply
that Wilbur’s crime was explained by his surname. “Wilbur _Minafer!_
It’s the queerest thing I ever heard! To think of her taking Wilbur
Minafer, just because a man _any_ woman would like a thousand times
better was a little wild one night at a serenade!”

“No,” said Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster. “It isn’t that. It isn’t even
because she’s afraid he’d be a dissipated husband and she wants to be
safe. It isn’t because she’s religious or hates wildness; it isn’t even
because she hates wildness in _him_.”

“Well, but look how she’s thrown him over for it.”

“No, that wasn’t her reason,” said the wise Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster.
“If men only knew it—and it’s a good thing they don’t—a woman doesn’t
really care much about whether a man’s wild or not, if it doesn’t
affect herself, and Isabel Amberson doesn’t care a thing!”

“Mrs. _Foster!_”

“No, she doesn’t. What she minds is his making a clown of himself in
her front yard! It made her think he didn’t care much about _her_.
She’s probably mistaken, but that’s what she thinks, and it’s too late
for her to think anything else now, because she’s going to be married
right away—the invitations will be out next week. It’ll be a big
Amberson-style thing, raw oysters floating in scooped-out blocks of
ice and a band from out-of-town—champagne, showy presents; a colossal
present from the Major. Then Wilbur will take Isabel on the carefulest
little wedding trip he can manage, and she’ll be a good wife to him,
but they’ll have the worst spoiled lot of children this town will ever
see.”

“How on earth do you make _that_ out, Mrs. Foster?”

“She couldn’t love Wilbur, could she?” Mrs. Foster demanded, with no
challengers. “Well, it will all go to her children, and she’ll ruin
’em!”

The prophetess proved to be mistaken in a single detail merely: except
for that, her foresight was accurate. The wedding was of Ambersonian
magnificence, even to the floating oysters; and the Major’s colossal
present was a set of architect’s designs for a house almost as
elaborate and impressive as the Mansion, the house to be built in
Amberson Addition by the Major. The orchestra was certainly not that
local one which had suffered the loss of a bass viol; the musicians
came, according to the prophecy and next morning’s paper, from afar;
and at midnight the bride was still being toasted in champagne, though
she had departed upon her wedding journey at ten. Four days later
the pair had returned to town, which promptness seemed fairly to
demonstrate that Wilbur had indeed taken Isabel upon the carefulest
little trip he could manage. According to every report, she was from
the start “a good wife to him,” but here in a final detail the prophecy
proved inaccurate. Wilbur and Isabel did not have children; they had
only one.

“Only one,” Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster admitted. “But I’d like to know
if he isn’t spoiled enough for a whole carload!”

Again she found none to challenge her.

At the age of nine, George Amberson Minafer, the Major’s one
grandchild, was a princely terror, dreaded not only in Amberson
Addition but in many other quarters through which he galloped on
his white pony. “By golly, I guess you think you own this town!” an
embittered labourer complained, one day, as Georgie rode the pony
straight through a pile of sand the man was sieving. “I will when I
grow up,” the undisturbed child replied. “I guess my grandpa owns it
now, you bet!” And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert
what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter “Oh,
pull down your vest!”

“Don’t haf to! Doctor says it ain’t healthy!” the boy returned
promptly. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll pull down my vest if
you’ll wipe off your chin!”

This was stock and stencil: the accustomed argot of street badinage of
the period; and in such matters Georgie was an expert. He had no vest
to pull down; the incongruous fact was that a fringed sash girdled the
juncture of his velvet blouse and breeches, for the Fauntleroy period
had set in, and Georgie’s mother had so poor an eye for appropriate
things, where Georgie was concerned, that she dressed him according to
the doctrine of that school in boy decoration. Not only did he wear a
silk sash, and silk stockings, and a broad lace collar, with his little
black velvet suit: he had long brown curls, and often came home with
burrs in them.

Except upon the surface (which was not his own work, but his mother’s)
Georgie bore no vivid resemblance to the fabulous little Cedric. The
storied boy’s famous “Lean on _me_, grandfather,” would have been
difficult to imagine upon the lips of Georgie. A month after his ninth
birthday anniversary, when the Major gave him his pony, he had already
become acquainted with the toughest boys in various distant parts of
the town, and had convinced them that the toughness of a rich little
boy with long curls might be considered in many respects superior to
their own. He fought them, learning how to go berserk at a certain
point in a fight, bursting into tears of anger, reaching for rocks,
uttering wailed threats of murder and attempting to fulfil them. Fights
often led to intimacies, and he acquired the art of saying things more
exciting than “Don’t haf to!” and “Doctor says it ain’t healthy!” Thus,
on a summer afternoon, a strange boy, sitting bored upon the gate-post
of the Reverend Malloch Smith, beheld George Amberson Minafer rapidly
approaching on his white pony, and was impelled by bitterness to shout:
“Shoot the ole jackass! Look at the girly curls! Say, bub, where’d you
steal your mother’s ole sash!”

“Your sister stole it for me!” Georgie instantly replied, checking the
pony. “She stole it off our clo’es-line an’ gave it to me.”

“You go get your hair cut!” said the stranger hotly. “Yah! I haven’t
got any sister!”

“I know you haven’t at home,” Georgie responded. “I mean the one that’s
in jail.”

“I dare you to get down off that pony!”

Georgie jumped to the ground, and the other boy descended from the
Reverend Mr. Smith’s gatepost—but he descended inside the gate. “I dare
you outside that gate,” said Georgie.

“Yah! I dare you half way here. I dare you—”

But these were luckless challenges, for Georgie immediately vaulted
the fence—and four minutes later Mrs. Malloch Smith, hearing strange
noises, looked forth from a window; then screamed, and dashed for the
pastor’s study. Mr. Malloch Smith, that grim-bearded Methodist, came to
the front yard and found his visiting nephew being rapidly prepared by
Master Minafer to serve as a principal figure in a pageant of massacre.
It was with great physical difficulty that Mr. Smith managed to give
his nephew a chance to escape into the house, for Georgie was hard and
quick, and, in such matters, remarkably intense; but the minister,
after a grotesque tussle, got him separated from his opponent, and
shook him.

“You stop that, you!” Georgie cried fiercely; and wrenched himself
away. “I guess you don’t know who I am!”

“Yes, I do know!” the angered Mr. Smith retorted. “I know who you are,
and you’re a disgrace to your mother! Your mother ought to be ashamed
of herself to allow—”

“Shut up about my mother bein’ ashamed of herself!”

Mr. Smith, exasperated, was unable to close the dialogue with dignity.
“She ought to be ashamed,” he repeated. “A woman that lets a bad boy
like you—”

But Georgie had reached his pony and mounted. Before setting off at his
accustomed gallop, he paused to interrupt the Reverend Malloch Smith
again. “You pull down your vest, you ole Billygoat, you!” he shouted,
distinctly. “Pull down your vest, wipe off your chin—an’ go to hell!”

Such precocity is less unusual, even in children of the Rich, than most
grown people imagine. However, it was a new experience for the Reverend
Malloch Smith, and left him in a state of excitement. He at once wrote
a note to Georgie’s mother, describing the crime according to his
nephew’s testimony; and the note reached Mrs. Minafer before Georgie
did. When he got home she read it to him sorrowfully.

  Dear Madam:

  Your son has caused a painful distress in my household. He made
  an unprovoked attack upon a little nephew of mine who is visiting
  in my household, insulted him by calling him vicious names and
  falsehoods, stating that ladies of his family were in jail. He
  then tried to make his pony kick him, and when the child, who is
  only eleven years old, while your son is much older and stronger,
  endeavoured to avoid his indignities and withdraw quietly, he
  pursued him into the enclosure of my property and brutally
  assaulted him. When I appeared upon this scene he deliberately
  called insulting words to me, concluding with profanity, such as
  “go to hell,” which was heard not only by myself but by my wife and
  the lady who lives next door. I trust such a state of undisciplined
  behaviour may be remedied for the sake of the reputation for
  propriety, if nothing higher, of the family to which this unruly
  child belongs.

Georgie had muttered various interruptions, and as she concluded the
reading he said: “He’s an ole liar!”

“Georgie, you mustn’t say ‘liar.’ Isn’t this letter the truth?”

“Well,” said Georgie, “how old am I?”

“Ten.”

“Well, look how he says I’m older than a boy eleven years old.”

“That’s true,” said Isabel. “He does. But isn’t some of it true,
Georgie?”

Georgie felt himself to be in a difficulty here, and he was silent.

“Georgie, did you say what he says you did?”

“Which one?”

“Did you tell him to—to—Did you say, ‘Go to hell?’”

Georgie looked worried for a moment longer; then he brightened. “Listen
here, mamma; grandpa wouldn’t wipe his shoe on that ole story-teller,
would he?”

“Georgie, you mustn’t—”

“I mean: none of the Ambersons wouldn’t have anything to do with him,
would they? He doesn’t even know _you_, does he, mamma?”

“That hasn’t anything to do with it.”

“Yes, it has! I mean: none of the Amberson family go to see him, and
they never have him come in their house; they wouldn’t ask him to, and
they prob’ly wouldn’t even let him.”

“That isn’t what we’re talking about.”

“I bet,” said Georgie emphatically, “I bet if he wanted to see any of
’em, he’d haf to go around to the side door!”

“No, dear, they—”

“Yes, they would, mamma! So what does it matter if I did say somep’m’
to him he didn’t like? That kind o’ people, I don’t see why you can’t
say anything you want to, to ’em!”

“No, Georgie. And you haven’t answered me whether you said that
dreadful thing he says you did.”

“Well—” said Georgie. “Anyway, he said somep’m’ to me that made me
mad.” And upon this point he offered no further details; he would not
explain to his mother that what had made him “mad” was Mr. Smith’s
hasty condemnation of herself: “Your mother ought to be ashamed,” and,
“A woman that lets a bad boy like you—” Georgie did not even consider
excusing himself by quoting these insolences.

Isabel stroked his head. “They were terrible words for you to use,
dear. From his letter he doesn’t seem a very tactful person, but—”

“He’s just riffraff,” said Georgie.

“You mustn’t say so,” his mother gently agreed “Where did you learn
those bad words he speaks of? Where did you hear any one use them?”

“Well, I’ve heard ’em several places. I guess Uncle George Amberson was
the _first_ I ever heard say ’em. Uncle George Amberson said ’em to
papa once. Papa didn’t like it, but Uncle George was just laughin’ at
papa, an’ then he said ’em while he was laughin’.”

“That was wrong of him,” she said, but almost instinctively he detected
the lack of conviction in her tone. It was Isabel’s great failing
that whatever an Amberson did seemed right to her, especially if the
Amberson was either her brother George, or her son George. She knew
that she should be more severe with the latter now, but severity with
him was beyond her power; and the Reverend Malloch Smith had succeeded
only in rousing her resentment against himself. Georgie’s symmetrical
face—altogether an Amberson face—had looked never more beautiful to
her. It always looked unusually beautiful when she tried to be severe
with him. “You must promise me,” she said feebly, “never to use those
bad words again.”

“I promise not to,” he said promptly—and he whispered an immediate
codicil under his breath: “Unless I get mad at somebody!” This
satisfied a code according to which, in his own sincere belief, he
never told lies.

“That’s a good boy,” she said, and he ran out to the yard, his
punishment over. Some admiring friends were gathered there; they had
heard of his adventure, knew of the note, and were waiting to see what
was going to “happen” to him. They hoped for an account of things, and
also that he would allow them to “take turns” riding his pony to the
end of the alley and back.

They were really his henchmen: Georgie was a lord among boys. In fact,
he was a personage among certain sorts of grown people, and was often
fawned upon; the alley negroes delighted in him, chuckled over him,
flattered him slavishly. For that matter, he often heard well-dressed
people speaking of him admiringly: a group of ladies once gathered
about him on the pavement where he was spinning a top. “I _know_
this is Georgie!” one exclaimed, and turned to the others with the
impressiveness of a showman. “Major Amberson’s only grandchild!” The
others said, “It is?” and made clicking sounds with their mouths; two
of them loudly whispering, “So handsome!”

Georgie, annoyed because they kept standing upon the circle he had
chalked for his top, looked at them coldly and offered a suggestion:

“Oh, go hire a hall!”

As an Amberson, he was already a public character, and the story of
his adventure in the Reverend Malloch Smith’s front yard became a town
topic. Many people glanced at him with great distaste, thereafter,
when they chanced to encounter him, which meant nothing to Georgie,
because he innocently believed most grown people to be necessarily
cross-looking as a normal phenomenon resulting from the adult state;
and he failed to comprehend that the distasteful glances had any
personal bearing upon himself. If he had perceived such a bearing,
he would have been affected only so far, probably, as to mutter,
“Riffraff!” Possibly he would have shouted it; and, certainly, most
people believed a story that went round the town just after Mrs.
Amberson’s funeral, when Georgie was eleven. Georgie was reported to
have differed with the undertaker about the seating of the family; his
indignant voice had become audible: “Well, who is the most important
person at my own grandmother’s funeral?” And later he had projected
his head from the window of the foremost mourners’ carriage, as the
undertaker happened to pass.

“_Riffraff!_”

There were people—grown people they were—who expressed themselves
longingly: they _did_ hope to live to see the day, they said, when
that boy would get his come-upance! (They used that honest word, so
much better than “deserts,” and not until many years later to be more
clumsily rendered as “what is coming to him.”) _Something_ was bound
to take him down, some day, and they only wanted to be there! But
Georgie heard nothing of this, and the yearners for his taking down
went unsatisfied, while their yearning grew the greater as the happy
day of fulfilment was longer and longer postponed. His grandeur was not
diminished by the Malloch Smith story; the rather it was increased, and
among other children (especially among little girls) there was added to
the prestige of his gilded position that diabolical glamour which must
inevitably attend a boy who has told a minister to go to hell.




Chapter III


Until he reached the age of twelve, Georgie’s education was a domestic
process; tutors came to the house; and those citizens who yearned
for his taking down often said: “Just wait till he has to go to
public school; _then_ he’ll get it!” But at twelve Georgie was sent
to a private school in the town, and there came from this small and
dependent institution no report, or even rumour, of Georgie’s getting
anything that he was thought to deserve; therefore the yearning still
persisted, though growing gaunt with feeding upon itself. For, although
Georgie’s pomposities and impudence in the little school were often
almost unbearable, the teachers were fascinated by him. They did
not like him—he was too arrogant for that—but he kept them in such
a state of emotion that they thought more about him than they did
about all of the other ten pupils. The emotion he kept them in was
usually one resulting from injured self-respect, but sometimes it was
dazzled admiration. So far as their conscientious observation went, he
“studied” his lessons sparingly; but sometimes, in class, he flashed an
admirable answer, with a comprehension not often shown by the pupils
they taught; and he passed his examinations easily. In all, without
discernible effort, he acquired at this school some rudiments of a
liberal education and learned nothing whatever about himself.

The yearners were still yearning when Georgie, at sixteen, was sent
away to a great “Prep School.” “Now,” they said brightly, “he’ll get
it! He’ll find himself among boys just as important in their home towns
as he is, and they’ll knock the stuffing out of him when he puts on
his airs with them! Oh, but that _would_ be worth something to see!”
They were mistaken, it appeared, for when Georgie returned, a few
months later, he still seemed to have the same stuffing. He had been
deported by the authorities, the offense being stated as “insolence
and profanity”; in fact, he had given the principal of the school
instructions almost identical with those formerly objected to by the
Reverend Malloch Smith.

But he had not got his come-upance, and those who counted upon it
were embittered by his appearance upon the down-town streets driving
a dog-cart at criminal speed, making pedestrians retreat from the
crossings, and behaving generally as if he “owned the earth.” A
disgusted hardware dealer of middle age, one of those who hungered for
Georgie’s downfall, was thus driven back upon the sidewalk to avoid
being run over, and so far forgot himself as to make use of the pet
street insult of the year: “Got ’ny _sense!_ See here, bub, does your
mother know you’re out?”

Georgie, without even seeming to look at him, flicked the long lash of
his whip dexterously, and a little spurt of dust came from the hardware
man’s trousers, not far below the waist. He was not made of hardware:
he raved, looking for a missile; then, finding none, commanded himself
sufficiently to shout after the rapid dog-cart: “Turn down your pants,
you would-be dude! Raining in dear ole Lunnon! Git off the earth!”

Georgie gave him no encouragement to think that he was heard. The
dog-cart turned the next corner, causing indignation there, likewise,
and, having proceeded some distance farther, halted in front of the
“Amberson Block”—an old-fashioned four-story brick warren of lawyers’
offices, insurance and realestate offices, with a “drygoods store”
occupying the ground floor. Georgie tied his lathered trotter to
a telegraph pole, and stood for a moment looking at the building
critically: it seemed shabby, and he thought his grandfather ought to
replace it with a fourteen-story skyscraper, or even a higher one,
such as he had lately seen in New York—when he stopped there for a few
days of recreation and rest on his way home from the bereaved school.
About the entryway to the stairs were various tin signs, announcing the
occupation and location of upper-floor tenants, and Georgie decided to
take some of these with him if he should ever go to college. However,
he did not stop to collect them at this time, but climbed the worn
stairs—there was no elevator—to the fourth floor, went down a dark
corridor, and rapped three times upon a door. It was a mysterious door,
its upper half, of opaque glass, bearing no sign to state the business
or profession of the occupants within; but overhead, upon the lintel,
four letters had been smearingly inscribed, partly with purple ink and
partly with a soft lead pencil, “F. O. T. A.” and upon the plaster
wall, above the lintel, there was a drawing dear to male adolescence: a
skull and crossbones.

Three raps, similar to Georgie’s, sounded from within the room. Georgie
then rapped four times the rapper within the room rapped twice, and
Georgie rapped seven times. This ended precautionary measures; and
a well-dressed boy of sixteen opened the door; whereupon Georgie
entered quickly, and the door was closed behind him. Seven boys of
congenial age were seated in a semicircular row of damaged office
chairs, facing a platform whereon stood a solemn, red-haired young
personage with a table before him. At one end of the room there was
a battered sideboard, and upon it were some empty beer bottles, a
tobacco can about two-thirds full, with a web of mold over the surface
of the tobacco, a dusty cabinet photograph (not inscribed) of Miss
Lillian Russell, several withered old pickles, a caseknife, and a
half-petrified section of icing-cake on a sooty plate. At the other end
of the room were two rickety card-tables and a stand of bookshelves
where were displayed under dust four or five small volumes of M. Guy
de Maupassant’s stories, “Robinson Crusoe,” “Sappho,” “Mr. Barnes
of New York,” a work by Giovanni Boccaccio, a Bible, “The Arabian
Nights’ Entertainment,” “Studies of the Human Form Divine,” “The Little
Minister,” and a clutter of monthly magazines and illustrated weeklies
of about that crispness one finds in such articles upon a doctor’s
ante-room table. Upon the wall, above the sideboard, was an old framed
lithograph of Miss Della Fox in “Wang”; over the bookshelves there was
another lithograph purporting to represent Mr. John L. Sullivan in a
boxing costume, and beside it a halftone reproduction of “A Reading
From Horner.” The final decoration consisted of damaged papiermache—a
round shield with two battle-axes and two cross-hilted swords, upon
the wall over the little platform where stood the red-haired presiding
officer. He addressed Georgie in a serious voice:

“Welcome, Friend of the Ace.”

“Welcome, Friend of the Ace,” Georgie responded, and all of the other
boys repeated the words, “Welcome, Friend of the Ace.”

“Take your seat in the secret semicircle,” said the presiding officer.
“We will now proceed to—”

But Georgie was disposed to be informal. He interrupted, turning to
the boy who had admitted him: “Look here, Charlie Johnson, what’s Fred
Kinney doing in the president’s chair? That’s my place, isn’t it? What
you men been up to here, anyhow? Didn’t you all agree I was to be
president just the same, even if I was away at school?”

“Well—” said Charlie Johnson uneasily. “Listen! I didn’t have much to
do with it. Some of the other members thought that long as you weren’t
in town or anything, and Fred gave the sideboard, why—”

Mr. Kinney, presiding, held in his hand, in lieu of a gavel, and
considered much more impressive, a Civil War relic known as a
“horse-pistol.” He rapped loudly for order. “All Friends of the Ace
will take their seats!” he said sharply. “I’m president of the F. O.
T. A. now, George Minafer, and don’t you forget it! You and Charlie
Johnson sit down, because I was elected perfectly fair, and we’re goin’
to hold a meeting here.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” said George skeptically.

Charlie Johnson thought to mollify him. “Well, didn’t we call this
meeting just especially because you told us to? You said yourself we
ought to have a kind of celebration because you’ve got back to town,
George, and that’s what we’re here for now, and everything. What do you
care about being president? All it amounts to is just calling the roll
and—”

The president _de facto_ hammered the table. “This meeting will now
proceed to—”

“No, it won’t,” said George, and he advanced to the desk, laughing
contemptuously. “Get off that platform.”

“This meeting will come to order!” Mr. Kinney commanded fiercely.

“You put down that gavel,” said George. “Whose is it, I’d like to know?
It belongs to my grandfather, and you quit hammering it that way or
you’ll break it, and I’ll have to knock your head off.”

“This meeting will come to order! I was legally elected here, and I’m
not going to be bulldozed!”

“All right,” said Georgie. “You’re president. Now we’ll hold another
election.”

“We will not!” Fred Kinney shouted. “We’ll have our reg’lar meeting,
and then we’ll play euchre & nickel a corner, what we’re here for. This
meeting will now come to ord—”

Georgie addressed the members. “I’d like to know who got up this thing
in the first place,” he said. “Who’s the founder of the F.O.T.A., if
you please? Who got this room rent free? Who got the janitor to let us
have most of this furniture? You suppose you could keep this clubroom
a minute if I told my grandfather I didn’t want it for a literary club
any more? I’d like to say a word on how you members been acting, too!
When I went away I said I didn’t care if you had a _vice_-president or
something while I was gone, but here I hardly turned my back and you
had to go and elect Fred Kinney president! Well, if that’s what you
want, you can have it. I was going to have a little celebration down
here some night pretty soon, and bring some port wine, like we drink
at school in our crowd there, and I was going to get my grandfather to
give the club an extra room across the hall, and prob’ly I could get my
Uncle George to give us his old billiard table, because he’s got a new
one, and the club could put it in the other room. Well, you got a new
president now!” Here Georgie moved toward the door and his tone became
plaintive, though undeniably there was disdain beneath his sorrow. “I
guess all I better do is—resign!”

And he opened the door, apparently intending to withdraw.

“All in favour of having a new election,” Charlie Johnson shouted
hastily, “say, ‘Aye’!”

“Aye” was said by everyone present except Mr. Kinney, who began a hot
protest, but it was immediately smothered.

“All in favour of me being president instead of Fred Kinney,” shouted
Georgie, “say ‘Aye.’ The ‘Ayes’ have it!” “I resign,” said the
red-headed boy, gulping as he descended from the platform. “I resign
from the club!”

Hot-eyed, he found his hat and departed, jeers echoing after him as he
plunged down the corridor. Georgie stepped upon the platform, and took
up the emblem of office.

“Ole red-head Fred’ll be around next week,” said the new chairman.
“He’ll be around boot-lickin’ to get us to take him back in again, but
I guess we don’t want him: that fellow always was a trouble-maker. We
will now proceed with our meeting. Well, fellows, I suppose you want
to hear from your president. I don’t know that I have much to say, as
I have already seen most of you a few times since I got back. I had a
good time at the old school, back East, but had a little trouble with
the faculty and came on home. My family stood by me as well as I could
ask, and I expect to stay right here in the old town until whenever I
decide to enter college. Now, I don’t suppose there’s any more business
before the meeting. I guess we might as well play cards. Anybody that’s
game for a little quarter-limit poker or any limit they say, why I’d
like to have ’em sit at the president’s card-table.”

When the diversions of the Friends of the Ace were concluded for that
afternoon, Georgie invited his chief supporter, Mr. Charlie Johnson, to
drive home with him to dinner, and as they jingled up National Avenue
in the dog-cart, Charlie asked:

“What sort of men did you run up against at that school, George?”

“Best crowd there: finest set of men I ever met.”

“How’d you get in with ’em?”

Georgie laughed. “I let them get in with me, Charlie,” he said in a
tone of gentle explanation. “It’s vulgar to do any other way. Did I
tell you the nickname they gave me—‘King’? That was what they called me
at that school, ‘King Minafer.”

“How’d they happen to do that?” his friend asked innocently.

“Oh, different things,” George answered lightly. “Of course, any of ’em
that came from anywhere out in this part the country knew about the
family and all that, and so I suppose it was a good deal on account
of—oh, on account of the family and the way I do things, most likely.”




Chapter IV


When Mr. George Amberson Minafer came home for the holidays at
Christmastide, in his sophomore year, probably no great change had
taken place inside him, but his exterior was visibly altered. Nothing
about him encouraged any hope that he had received his come-upance; on
the contrary, the yearners for that stroke of justice must yearn even
more itchingly: the gilded youth’s manner had become polite, but his
politeness was of a kind which democratic people found hard to bear.
In a word, M. le Due had returned from the gay life of the capital
to show himself for a week among the loyal peasants belonging to the
old chateau, and their quaint habits and costumes afforded him a mild
amusement.

Cards were out for a ball in his honour, and this pageant of the
tenantry was held in the ballroom of the Amberson Mansion the night
after his arrival. It was, as Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster said of
Isabel’s wedding, “a big Amberson-style thing,” though that wise Mrs.
Henry Franklin Foster had long ago gone the way of all wisdom, having
stepped out of the Midland town, unquestionably into heaven—a long
step, but not beyond her powers. She had successors, but no successor;
the town having grown too large to confess that it was intellectually
led and literarily authoritated by one person; and some of these
successors were not invited to the ball, for dimensions were now so
metropolitan that intellectual leaders and literary authorities loomed
in outlying regions unfamiliar to the Ambersons. However, all “old
citizens” recognizable as gentry received cards, and of course so did
their dancing descendants.

The orchestra and the caterer were brought from away, in the Amberson
manner, though this was really a gesture—perhaps one more of habit
than of ostentation—for servitors of gaiety as proficient as these
importations were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and
plants and roped vines were brought from afar—not, however, until
the stock of the local florists proved insufficient to obliterate
the interior structure of the big house, in the Amberson way. It was
the last of the great, long remembered dances that “everybody talked
about”—there were getting to be so many people in town that no later
than the next year there were too many for “everybody” to hear of even
such a ball as the Ambersons’.

George, white-gloved, with a gardenia in his buttonhole, stood with his
mother and the Major, embowered in the big red and gold drawing room
downstairs, to “receive” the guests; and, standing thus together, the
trio offered a picturesque example of good looks persistent through
three generations. The Major, his daughter, and his grandson were of
a type all Amberson: tall, straight, and regular, with dark eyes,
short noses, good chins; and the grandfather’s expression, no less
than the grandson’s, was one of faintly amused condescension. There
was a difference, however. The grandson’s unlined young face had
nothing to offer except this condescension; the grandfather’s had other
things to say. It was a handsome, worldly old face, conscious of its
importance, but persuasive rather than arrogant, and not without tokens
of sufferings withstood. The Major’s short white hair was parted in the
middle, like his grandson’s, and in all he stood as briskly equipped to
the fashion as exquisite young George.

Isabel, standing between her father and her son caused a vague
amazement in the mind of the latter. Her age, just under forty, was
for George a thought of something as remote as the moons of Jupiter:
he could not possibly have conceived such an age ever coming to be
his own: five years was the limit of his thinking in time. Five years
ago he had been a child not yet fourteen; and those five years were
an abyss. Five years hence he would be almost twenty-four; what the
girls he knew called “one of the older men.” He could imagine himself
at twenty-four, but beyond that, his powers staggered and refused
the task. He saw little essential difference between thirty-eight
and eighty-eight, and his mother was to him not a woman but wholly
a mother. He had no perception of her other than as an adjunct to
himself, his mother; nor could he imagine her thinking or doing
anything—falling in love, walking with a friend, or reading a book—as
a woman, and not as his mother. The woman, Isabel, was a stranger to
her son; as completely a stranger as if he had never in his life seen
her or heard her voice. And it was to-night, while he stood with her,
“receiving,” that he caught a disquieting glimpse of this stranger whom
he thus fleetingly encountered for the first time.

Youth cannot imagine romance apart from youth. That is why the rôles of
the heroes and heroines of plays are given by the managers to the most
youthful actors they can find among the competent. Both middle-aged
people and young people enjoy a play about young lovers; but only
middle-aged people will tolerate a play about middle-aged lovers; young
people will not come to see such a play, because, for them, middle-aged
lovers are a joke—not a very funny one. Therefore, to bring both the
middle-aged people and the young people into his house, the manager
makes his romance as young as he can. Youth will indeed be served, and
its profound instinct is to be not only scornfully amused but vaguely
angered by middle-age romance. So, standing beside his mother, George
was disturbed by a sudden impression, coming upon him out of nowhere,
so far as he could detect, that her eyes were brilliant, that she was
graceful and youthful—in a word, that she was romantically lovely.

He had one of those curious moments that seem to have neither a
cause nor any connection with actual things. While it lasted, he was
disquieted not by thoughts—for he had no definite thoughts—but by a
slight emotion like that caused in a dream by the presence of something
invisible, soundless, and yet fantastic. There was nothing different
or new about his mother, except her new black and silver dress: she
was standing there beside him, bending her head a little in her
greetings, smiling the same smile she had worn for the half-hour that
people had been passing the “receiving” group. Her face was flushed,
but the room was warm; and shaking hands with so many people easily
accounted for the pretty glow that was upon her. At any time she could
have “passed” for twenty-five or twenty-six—a man of fifty would have
honestly guessed her to be about thirty but possibly two or three years
younger—and though extraordinary in this, she had been extraordinary in
it for years. There was nothing in either her looks or her manner to
explain George’s uncomfortable feeling; and yet it increased, becoming
suddenly a vague resentment, as if she had done something unmotherly to
him.

The fantastic moment passed; and even while it lasted, he was doing
his duty, greeting two pretty girls with whom he had grown up, as
people say, and warmly assuring them that he remembered them very
well—an assurance which might have surprised them “in anybody but
Georgie Minafer!” It seemed unnecessary, since he had spent many hours
with them no longer ago than the preceding August. They had with them
their parents and an uncle from out of town; and George negligently
gave the parents the same assurance he had given the daughters, but
murmured another form of greeting to the out-of-town uncle, whom he
had never seen before. This person George absently took note of as
a “queer-looking duck.” Undergraduates had not yet adopted “bird.”
It was a period previous to that in which a sophomore would have
thought of the Sharon girls’ uncle as a “queer-looking bird,” or,
perhaps a “funny-face bird.” In George’s time, every human male was
to be defined, at pleasure, as a “duck”; but “duck” was not spoken
with admiring affection, as in its former feminine use to signify
a “dear”—on the contrary, “duck” implied the speaker’s personal
detachment and humorous superiority. An indifferent amusement was
what George felt when his mother, with a gentle emphasis, interrupted
his interchange of courtesies with the nieces to present him to
the queer-looking duck, their uncle. This emphasis of Isabel’s,
though slight, enabled George to perceive that she considered the
queer-looking duck a person of some importance; but it was far from
enabling him to understand why. The duck parted his thick and longish
black hair on the side; his tie was a forgetful looking thing, and his
coat, though it fitted a good enough middle-aged figure, no product of
this year, or of last year either. One of his eyebrows was noticeably
higher than the other; and there were whimsical lines between them,
which gave him an apprehensive expression; but his apprehensions were
evidently more humorous than profound, for his prevailing look was
that of a genial man of affairs, not much afraid of anything whatever.
Nevertheless, observing only his unfashionable hair, his eyebrows, his
preoccupied tie and his old coat, the olympic George set him down as
a queer-looking duck, and having thus completed his portrait, took no
interest in him.

The Sharon girls passed on, taking the queer-looking duck with them,
and George became pink with mortification as his mother called his
attention to a white-bearded guest waiting to shake his hand. This was
George’s great-uncle, old John Minafer: it was old John’s boast that in
spite of his connection by marriage with the Ambersons, he never had
worn and never would wear a swaller-tail coat. Members of his family
had exerted their influence uselessly—at eighty-nine conservative
people seldom form radical new habits, and old John wore his “Sunday
suit” of black broadcloth to the Amberson ball. The coat was square,
with skirts to the knees; old John called it a “Prince Albert” and was
well enough pleased with it, but his great-nephew considered it the
next thing to an insult. George’s purpose had been to ignore the man,
but he had to take his hand for a moment; whereupon old John began to
tell George that he was looking well, though there had been a time,
during his fourth month, when he was so puny that nobody thought he
would live. The great-nephew, in a fury of blushes, dropped old John’s
hand with some vigour, and seized that of the next person in the line.
“Member you v’ry well ’ndeed!” he said fiercely.

The large room had filled, and so had the broad hall and the rooms
on the other side of the hall, where there were tables for whist.
The imported orchestra waited in the ballroom on the third floor,
but a local harp, ’cello, violin, and flute were playing airs from
“The Fencing Master” in the hall, and people were shouting over the
music. Old John Minafer’s voice was louder and more penetrating than
any other, because he had been troubled with deafness for twenty-five
years, heard his own voice but faintly, and liked to hear it. “Smell o’
flowers like this always puts me in mind o’ funerals,” he kept telling
his niece, Fanny Minafer, who was with him; and he seemed to get a
great deal of satisfaction out of this reminder. His tremulous yet
strident voice cut through the voluminous sound that filled the room,
and he was heard everywhere: “Always got to think o’ funerals when I
smell so many flowers!” And, as the pressure of people forced Fanny and
himself against the white marble mantelpiece, he pursued this train
of cheery thought, shouting, “Right here’s where the Major’s wife was
laid out at her funeral. They had her in a good light from that big
bow window.” He paused to chuckle mournfully. “I s’pose that’s where
they’ll put the Major when his time comes.”

Presently George’s mortification was increased to hear this sawmill
droning harshly from the midst of the thickening crowd: “Ain’t the
dancin’ broke out yet, Fanny? Hoopla! Le’s push through and go see the
young women-folks crack their heels! Start the circus! Hoopse-daisy!”
Miss Fanny Minafer, in charge of the lively veteran, was almost as
distressed as her nephew George, but she did her duty and managed to
get old John through the press and out to the broad stairway, which
numbers of young people were now ascending to the ballroom. And here
the sawmill voice still rose over all others: “Solid black walnut
every inch of it, balustrades and all. Sixty thousand dollars’ worth
o’ carved woodwork in the house! Like water! Spent money like water!
Always did! Still do! Like water! God knows where it all comes from!”

He continued the ascent, barking and coughing among the gleaming young
heads, white shoulders, jewels, and chiffon, like an old dog slowly
swimming up the rapids of a sparkling river; while down below, in the
drawing room, George began to recover from the degradation into which
this relic of early settler days had dragged him. What restored him
completely was a dark-eyed little beauty of nineteen, very knowing in
lustrous blue and jet; at sight of this dashing advent in the line of
guests before him, George was fully an Amberson again.

“Remember you very well _indeed!_” he said, his graciousness more
earnest than any he had heretofore displayed. Isabel heard him and
laughed.

“But you don’t, George!” she said. “You don’t remember her yet, though
of course you _will!_ Miss Morgan is from out of town, and I’m afraid
this is the first time you’ve ever seen her. You might take her up to
the dancing; I think you’ve pretty well done your duty here.”

“Be d’lighted,” George responded formally, and offered his arm, not
with a flourish, certainly, but with an impressiveness inspired partly
by the appearance of the person to whom he offered it, partly by
his being the hero of this fête, and partly by his youthfulness—for
when manners are new they are apt to be elaborate. The little beauty
entrusted her gloved fingers to his coat-sleeve, and they moved away
together.

Their progress was necessarily slow, and to George’s mind it did not
lack stateliness. How could it? Musicians, hired especially for him,
were sitting in a grove of palms in the hall and now tenderly playing
“Oh, Promise Me” for his pleasuring; dozens and scores of flowers had
been brought to life and tended to this hour that they might sweeten
the air for him while they died; and the evanescent power that music
and floral scents hold over youth stirred his appreciation of strange,
beautiful qualities within his own bosom: he seemed to himself to be
mysteriously angelic, and about to do something which would overwhelm
the beautiful young stranger upon his arm.

Elderly people and middle-aged people moved away to let him pass with
his honoured fair beside him. Worthy middle-class creatures, they
seemed, leading dull lives but appreciative of better things when they
saw them—and George’s bosom was fleetingly touched with a pitying
kindness. And since the primordial day when caste or heritage first
set one person, in his own esteem, above his fellow-beings, it is to
be doubted if anybody ever felt more illustrious, or more negligently
grand, than George Amberson Minafer felt at this party.

As he conducted Miss Morgan through the hall, toward the stairway, they
passed the open double doors of a card room, where some squadrons of
older people were preparing for action, and, leaning gracefully upon
the mantelpiece of this room, a tall man, handsome, high-mannered,
and sparklingly point-device, held laughing converse with that
queer-looking duck, the Sharon girls’ uncle. The tall gentleman waved a
gracious salutation to George, and Miss Morgan’s curiosity was stirred.
“Who is that?”

“I didn’t catch his name when my mother presented him to me,” said
George. “You mean the queer-looking duck.”

“I mean the aristocratic duck.”

“That’s my Uncle George. Honourable George Amberson. I thought
everybody knew him.”

“He looks as though everybody ought to know him,” she said. “It seems
to run in your family.”

If she had any sly intention, it skipped over George harmlessly. “Well,
of course, I suppose most everybody does,” he admitted—“out in this
part of the country especially. Besides, Uncle George is in Congress;
the family like to have someone there.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s sort of a good thing in one way. For instance, my Uncle
Sydney Amberson and his wife, Aunt Amelia, they haven’t got much of
anything to do with themselves—get bored to death around here, of
course. Well, probably Uncle George’ll have Uncle Sydney appointed
minister or ambassador, or something like that, to Russia or Italy or
somewhere, and that’ll make it pleasant when any of the rest of the
family go travelling, or things like that. I expect to do a good deal
of travelling myself when I get out of college.”

On the stairway he pointed out this prospective ambassadorial couple,
Sydney and Amelia. They were coming down, fronting the ascending tide,
and as conspicuous over it as a king and queen in a play. Moreover,
as the clear-eyed Miss Morgan remarked, the very least they looked
was ambassadorial. Sydney was an Amberson exaggerated, more pompous
than gracious; too portly, flushed, starched to a shine, his stately
jowl furnished with an Edward the Seventh beard. Amelia, likewise
full-bodied, showed glittering blond hair exuberantly dressed; a pink,
fat face cold under a white-hot tiara; a solid, cold bosom under a
white-hot necklace; great, cold, gloved arms, and the rest of her
beautifully upholstered. Amelia was an Amberson born, herself, Sydney’s
second-cousin: they had no children, and Sydney was without a business
or a profession; thus both found a great deal of time to think about
the appropriateness of their becoming Excellencies. And as George
ascended the broad stairway, they were precisely the aunt and uncle
he was most pleased to point out, to a girl from out of town, as his
appurtenances in the way of relatives. At sight of them the grandeur of
the Amberson family was instantly conspicuous as a permanent thing: it
was impossible to doubt that the Ambersons were entrenched, in their
nobility and riches, behind polished and glittering barriers which were
as solid as they were brilliant, and would last.




Chapter V


The hero of the fête, with the dark-eyed little beauty upon his arm,
reached the top of the second flight of stairs; and here, beyond a
spacious landing, where two proud-like darkies tended a crystalline
punch bowl, four wide archways in a rose-vine lattice framed gliding
silhouettes of waltzers, already smoothly at it to the castanets of
“_La Paloma_.” Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act
of leaving these delights. “D’want ’ny more o’ that!” he barked.
“Just slidin’ around! Call that dancin’? Rather see a jig any day in
the world! They ain’t very modest, some of ’em. I don’t mind _that_,
though. Not me!”

Miss Fanny Minafer was no longer in charge of him: he emerged from
the ballroom escorted by a middle-aged man of commonplace appearance.
The escort had a dry, lined face upon which, not ornamentally but as
a matter of course, there grew a business man’s short moustache; and
his thin neck showed an Adam’s apple, but not conspicuously, for there
was nothing conspicuous about him. Baldish, dim, quiet, he was an
unnoticeable part of this festival, and although there were a dozen or
more middle-aged men present, not casually to be distinguished from him
in general aspect, he was probably the last person in the big house at
whom a stranger would have glanced twice. It did not enter George’s
mind to mention to Miss Morgan that this was his father, or to say
anything whatever about him.

Mr. Minafer shook his son’s hand unobtrusively in passing.

“I’ll take Uncle John home,” he said, in a low voice. “Then I guess
I’ll go on home myself—I’m not a great hand at parties, you know.
Good-night, George.”

George murmured a friendly enough good-night without pausing.
Ordinarily he was not ashamed of the Minafers; he seldom thought about
them at all, for he belonged, as most American children do, to the
mother’s family—but he was anxious not to linger with Miss Morgan in
the vicinity of old John, whom he felt to be a disgrace.

He pushed brusquely through the fringe of calculating youths who were
gathered in the arches, watching for chances to dance only with girls
who would soon be taken off their hands, and led his stranger lady out
upon the floor. They caught the time instantly, and were away in the
waltz.

George danced well, and Miss Morgan seemed to float as part of the
music, the very dove itself of “_La Paloma_.” They said nothing as they
danced; her eyes were cast down all the while—the prettiest gesture
for a dancer—and there was left in the universe, for each, of them,
only their companionship in this waltz; while the faces of the other
dancers, swimming by, denoted not people but merely blurs of colour.
George became conscious of strange feelings within him: an exaltation
of soul, tender, but indefinite, and seemingly located in the upper
part of his diaphragm.

The stopping of the music came upon him like the waking to an alarm
clock; for instantly six or seven of the calculating persons about the
entry-ways bore down upon Miss Morgan to secure dances. George had to
do with one already established as a belle, it seemed.

“Give me the next and the one after that,” he said hurriedly,
recovering some presence of mind, just as the nearest applicant reached
them. “And give me every third one the rest of the evening.”

She laughed. “Are you asking?”

“What do you mean, ‘asking’?”

“It sounded as though you were just telling me to give you all those
dances.”

“Well, I want ’em!” George insisted.

“What about all the other girls it’s your duty to dance with?”

“They’ll have to go without,” he said heartlessly; and then, with
surprising vehemence: “Here! I want to know: Are you going to give me
those—”

“Good gracious!” she laughed. “Yes!”

The applicants flocked round her, urging contracts for what remained,
but they did not dislodge George from her side, though he made
it evident that they succeeded in annoying him; and presently he
extricated her from an accumulating siege—she must have connived in the
extrication—and bore her off to sit beside him upon the stairway that
led to the musicians’ gallery, where they were sufficiently retired,
yet had a view of the room.

“How’d all those ducks get to know you so quick?” George inquired, with
little enthusiasm.

“Oh, I’ve been here a week.”

“Looks as if you’d been pretty busy!” he said. “Most of those ducks, I
don’t know what my mother wanted to invite ’em here for.”

“Don’t you like them?”

“Oh, I used to see something of a few of ’em. I was president of a club
we had here, and some of ’em belonged to it, but I don’t care much for
that sort of thing any more. I really don’t see why my mother invited
’em.”

“Perhaps it was on account of their parents,” Miss Morgan suggested
mildly. “Maybe she didn’t want to offend their fathers and mothers.”

“Oh, hardly! I don’t think my mother need worry much about offending
anybody in this old town.”

“It must be wonderful,” said Miss Morgan. “It must be wonderful, Mr.
Amberson—Mr. Minafer, I mean.”

“What must be wonderful?”

“To be so important as that!”

“_That_ isn’t ‘important,’” George assured her. “Anybody that really is
anybody ought to be able to do about as they like in their own town, I
should think!”

She looked at him critically from under her shading lashes—but her eyes
grew gentler almost at once. In truth, they became more appreciative
than critical. George’s imperious good looks were altogether manly,
yet approached actual beauty as closely as a boy’s good looks
should dare; and dance-music and flowers have some effect upon
nineteen-year-old girls as well as upon eighteen-year-old boys. Miss
Morgan turned her eyes slowly from George, and pressed her face among
the lilies-of-the-valley and violets of the pretty bouquet she carried,
while, from the gallery above, the music of the next dance carolled
out merrily in a new two-step. The musicians made the melody gay for
the Christmastime with chimes of sleighbells, and the entrance to the
shadowed stairway framed the passing flushed and lively dancers, but
neither George nor Miss Morgan suggested moving to join the dance.

The stairway was draughty: the steps were narrow and uncomfortable; no
older person would have remained in such a place. Moreover, these two
young people were strangers to each other; neither had said anything in
which the other had discovered the slightest intrinsic interest; there
had not arisen between them the beginnings of congeniality, or even of
friendliness—but stairways near ballrooms have more to answer for than
have moonlit lakes and mountain sunsets. Some day the laws of glamour
must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would
be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an
apple, but by a young lady.

Age, confused by its own long accumulation of follies, is everlastingly
inquiring, “What does _she_ see in _him?_” as if young love came about
through thinking—or through conduct. Age wants to know: “What on earth
can they _talk_ about?” as if talking had anything to do with April
rains! At seventy, one gets up in the morning, finds the air sweet
under a bright sun, feels lively; thinks, “I am hearty, today,” and
plans to go for a drive. At eighteen, one goes to a dance, sits with
a stranger on a stairway, feels peculiar, thinks nothing, and becomes
incapable of any plan whatever. Miss Morgan and George stayed where
they were.

They had agreed to this in silence and without knowing it; certainly
without exchanging glances of intelligence—they had exchanged no
glances at all. Both sat staring vaguely out into the ballroom, and,
for a time, they did not speak. Over their heads the music reached a
climax of vivacity: drums, cymbals, triangle, and sleighbells, beating,
clashing, tinkling. Here and there were to be seen couples so carried
away that, ceasing to move at the decorous, even glide, considered
most knowing, they pranced and whirled through the throng, from wall
to wall, galloping bounteously in abandon. George suffered a shock of
vague surprise when he perceived that his aunt, Fanny Minafer, was the
lady-half of one of these wild couples.

Fanny Minafer, who rouged a little, was like fruit which in some
climates dries with the bloom on. Her features had remained prettily
childlike; so had her figure, and there were times when strangers,
seeing her across the street, took her to be about twenty; they were
other times when at the same distance they took her to be about sixty,
instead of forty, as she was. She had old days and young days; old
hours and young hours; old minutes and young minutes; for the change
might be that quick. An alteration in her expression, or a difference
in the attitude of her head, would cause astonishing indentations
to appear—and behold, Fanny was an old lady! But she had been never
more childlike than she was tonight as she flew over the floor in the
capable arms of the queer-looking duck; for this person was her partner.

The queer-looking duck had been a real dancer in his day, it appeared;
and evidently his day was not yet over. In spite of the headlong, gay
rapidity with which he bore Miss Fanny about the big room, he danced
authoritatively, avoiding without effort the lightest collision with
other couples, maintaining sufficient grace throughout his wildest
moments, and all the while laughing and talking with his partner. What
was most remarkable to George, and a little irritating, this stranger
in the Amberson Mansion had no vestige of the air of deference proper
to a stranger in such a place: he seemed thoroughly at home. He seemed
offensively so, indeed, when, passing the entrance to the gallery
stairway, he disengaged his hand from Miss Fanny’s for an instant,
and not pausing in the dance, waved a laughing salutation more than
cordial, then capered lightly out of sight.

George gazed stonily at this manifestation, responding neither by word
nor sign. “How’s that for a bit of freshness?” he murmured.

“What was?” Miss Morgan asked.

“That queer-looking duck waving his hand at me like that. Except he’s
the Sharon girls’ uncle I don’t know him from Adam.”

“You don’t need to,” she said. “He wasn’t waving his hand to you: he
meant me.”

“Oh, he did?” George was not mollified by the explanation. “Everybody
seems to mean you! You certainly do seem to’ve been pretty busy this
week you’ve been here!”

She pressed her bouquet to her face again, and laughed into it, not
displeased. She made no other comment, and for another period neither
spoke. Meanwhile the music stopped; loud applause insisted upon its
renewal; an encore was danced; there was an interlude of voices; and
the changing of partners began.

“Well,” said George finally, “I must say you don’t seem to be much of a
prattler. They say it’s a great way to get a reputation for being wise,
never saying much. Don’t you ever talk _any?_”

“When people can understand,” she answered.

He had been looking moodily out at the ballroom but he turned to her
quickly, at this, saw that her eyes were sunny and content, over the
top of her bouquet; and he consented to smile.

“Girls are usually pretty fresh!” he said. “They ought to go to a man’s
college about a year: they’d get taught a few things about freshness!
What you got to do after two o’clock to-morrow afternoon?”

“A whole lot of things. Every minute filled up.”

“All right,” said George. “The snow’s fine for sleighing: I’ll come for
you in a cutter at ten minutes after two.”

“I can’t possibly go.”

“If you don’t,” he said, “I’m going to sit in the cutter in front of
the gate, wherever you’re visiting, all afternoon, and if you try to go
out with anybody else he’s got to whip me before he gets you.” And as
she laughed—though she blushed a little, too—he continued, seriously:
“If you think I’m not in earnest you’re at liberty to make quite a big
experiment!”

She laughed again. “I don’t think I’ve often had so large a compliment
as that,” she said, “especially on such short notice—and yet, I don’t
think I’ll go with you.

“You be ready at ten minutes after two.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will!”

“Yes,” she said, “I will!” And her partner for the next dance arrived,
breathless with searching.

“Don’t forget I’ve got the third from now,” George called after her.

“I won’t.”

“And every third one after that.”

“I know!” she called, over her partner’s shoulder, and her voice was
amused—but meek.

When “the third from now” came, George presented himself before her
without any greeting, like a brother, or a mannerless old friend.
Neither did she greet him, but moved away with him, concluding, as
she went, an exchange of badinage with the preceding partner: she had
been talkative enough with him, it appeared. In fact, both George
and Miss Morgan talked much more to every one else that evening,
than to each other; and they said nothing at all at this time. Both
looked preoccupied, as they began to dance, and preserved a gravity
of expression to the end of the number. And when “the third one
after that” came, they did not dance, but went back to the gallery
stairway, seeming to have reached an understanding without any verbal
consultation, that this suburb was again the place for them.

“Well,” said George, coolly, when they were seated, “what did you say
your name was?”

“Morgan.”

“Funny name!”

“Everybody else’s name always is.”

“I didn’t mean it was really funny,” George explained. “That’s just one
of my crowd’s bits of horsing at college. We always say ‘funny name’
no matter what it is. I guess we’re pretty fresh sometimes; but I knew
your name was Morgan because my mother said so downstairs. I meant:
what’s the rest of it?”

“Lucy.”

He was silent.

“Is ‘Lucy’ a funny name, too?” she inquired.

“No. Lucy’s very much all right!” he said, and he went so far as to
smile. Even his Aunt Fanny admitted that when George smiled “in a
certain way” he was charming.

“Thanks about letting my name be Lucy,” she said.

“How old are you?” George asked.

“I don’t really know, myself.”

“What do you mean: you don’t really know yourself?”

“I mean I only know what they tell me. I believe them, of course, but
believing isn’t really knowing. You believe some certain day is your
birthday—at least, I suppose you do—but you don’t really know it is
because you can’t remember.”

“Look here!” said George. “Do you always talk like this?”

Miss Lucy Morgan laughed forgivingly, put her young head on one side,
like a bird, and responded cheerfully: “I’m willing to learn wisdom.
What are you studying in school?”

“College!”

“At the university! Yes. What are you studying there?”

George laughed. “Lot o’ useless guff!”

“Then why don’t you study some useful guff?”

“What do you mean: ‘useful’?”

“Something you’d use later, in your business or profession?”

George waved his hand impatiently. “I don’t expect to go into any
‘business or profession’.”

“No?”

“Certainly not!” George was emphatic, being sincerely annoyed by a
suggestion which showed how utterly she failed to comprehend the kind
of person he was.

“Why not?” she asked mildly.

“Just look at ’em!” he said, almost with bitterness, and he made a
gesture presumably intended to indicate the business and professional
men now dancing within range of vision. “That’s a fine career for a
man, isn’t it! Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of
life, I’d like to know! What do they ever know about _real_ things?
Where do they ever _get?_”

He was so earnest that she was surprised and impressed. Evidently he
had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion
of these despised things which were so far beneath his planning for the
future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime
minister of England; and she spoke, involuntarily in a lowered voice,
with deference:

“What do you want to be?” she asked.

George answered promptly.

“A yachtsman,” he said.




Chapter VI


Having thus, in a word, revealed his ambition for a career above
courts, marts, and polling booths, George breathed more deeply than
usual, and, turning his face from the lovely companion whom he had
just made his confidant, gazed out at the dancers with an expression
in which there was both sternness and a contempt for the squalid lives
of the unyachted Midlanders before him. However, among them, he marked
his mother; and his sombre grandeur relaxed momentarily; a more genial
light came into his eyes.

Isabel was dancing with the queer-looking duck; and it was to be noted
that the lively gentleman’s gait was more sedate than it had been with
Miss Fanny Minafer, but not less dexterous and authoritative. He was
talking to Isabel as gaily as he had talked to Miss Fanny, though with
less laughter, and Isabel listened and answered eagerly: her colour
was high and her eyes had a look of delight. She saw George and the
beautiful Lucy on the stairway, and nodded to them. George waved his
hand vaguely: he had a momentary return of that inexplicable uneasiness
and resentment which had troubled him downstairs.

“How lovely your mother is!” Lucy said

“I think she is,” he agreed gently.

“She’s the gracefulest woman in that ballroom. She dances like a girl
of sixteen.”

“Most girls of sixteen,” said George, “are bum dancers. Anyhow, I
wouldn’t dance with one unless I had to.”

“Well, you’d better dance with your mother! I never saw anybody
lovelier. How wonderfully they dance together!”

“Who?”

“Your mother and—and the queer-looking duck,” said Lucy. “I’m going to
dance with him pretty soon.”

“I don’t care—so long as you don’t give him one of the numbers that
belong to me.”

“I’ll try to remember,” she said, and thoughtfully lifted to her face
the bouquet of violets and lilies, a gesture which George noted without
approval.

“Look here! Who sent you those flowers you keep makin’ such a fuss
over?”

“He did.”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“The queer-looking duck.”

George feared no such rival; he laughed loudly. “I s’pose he’s some old
widower!” he said, the object thus described seeming ignominious enough
to a person of eighteen, without additional characterization. “Some old
widower!”

Lucy became serious at once. “Yes, he is a widower,” she said. “I ought
to have told you before; he’s my father.”

George stopped laughing abruptly. “Well, that’s a horse on me. If I’d
known he was your father, of course I wouldn’t have made fun of him.
I’m sorry.”

“Nobody could make fun of him,” she said quietly.

“Why couldn’t they?”

“It wouldn’t make him funny: it would only make themselves silly.”

Upon this, George had a gleam of intelligence. “Well, I’m not going to
make myself silly any more, then; I don’t want to take chances like
that with _you_. But I thought he was the Sharon girls’ uncle. He came
with them—”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m always late to everything: I wouldn’t let them
wait for me. We’re visiting the Sharons.”

“About time I knew that! You forget my being so fresh about your
father, will you? Of course he’s a distinguished looking man, in a way.”

Lucy was still serious. “‘In a way?’” she repeated. “You mean, not in
your way, don’t you?”

George was perplexed. “How do you mean: not in my way?”

“People pretty often say ‘in a way’ and ‘rather distinguished looking,’
or ‘rather’ so-and-so, or ‘rather’ anything, to show that _they’re_
superior, don’t they? In New York last month I overheard a climber sort
of woman speaking of me as ‘little Miss Morgan,’ but she didn’t mean
my height; she meant that she was important. Her husband spoke of a
friend of mine as ‘little Mr. Pembroke’ and ‘little Mr. Pembroke’
is six-feet-three. This husband and wife were really so terribly
unimportant that the only way they knew to pretend to be important was
calling people ‘little’ Miss or Mister so-and-so. It’s a kind of snob
slang, I think. Of course people don’t always say ‘rather’ or ‘in a
way’ to be superior.”

“I should say not! I use both of ’em a great deal myself,” said
George. “One thing I don’t see though: What’s the use of a man being
six-feet-three? Men that size can’t handle themselves as well as a
man about five-feet-eleven and a half can. Those long, gangling men,
they’re nearly always too kind of wormy to be any good in athletics,
and they’re so awkward they keep falling over chairs or—”

“Mr. Pembroke is in the army,” said Lucy primly. “He’s extraordinarily
graceful.”

“In the army? Oh, I suppose he’s some old friend of your father’s.”

“They got on very well,” she said, “after I introduced them.”

George was a straightforward soul, at least. “See here!” he said. “Are
you engaged to anybody?”

“No.”

Not wholly mollified, he shrugged his shoulders. “You seem to know a
good many people! Do you live in New York?”

“No. We don’t live anywhere.”

“What you mean: you don’t live anywhere?”

“We’ve lived all over,” she answered. “Papa used to live here in this
town, but that was before I was born.”

“What do you keep moving around so for? Is he a promoter?”

“No. He’s an inventor.”

“What’s he invented?”

“Just lately,” said Lucy, “he’s been working on a new kind of horseless
carriage.”

“Well, I’m sorry for him,” George said, in no unkindly spirit. “Those
things are never going to amount to anything. People aren’t going to
spend their lives lying on their backs in the road and letting grease
drip in their faces. Horseless carriages are pretty much a failure, and
your father better not waste his time on ’em.”

“Papa’d be so grateful,” she returned, “if he could have your advice.”

Instantly George’s face became flushed. “I don’t know that I’ve done
anything to be insulted for!” he said. “I don’t see that what I said
was particularly fresh.”

“No, indeed!”

“Then what do you—”

She laughed gaily. “I don’t! And I don’t mind your being such a lofty
person at all. I think it’s ever so interesting—but papa’s a great man!”

“Is he?” George decided to be good-natured. “Well, let us hope so. I
hope so, I’m sure.”

Looking at him keenly, she saw that the magnificent youth was
incredibly sincere in this bit of graciousness. He spoke as a tolerant,
elderly statesman might speak of a promising young politician; and with
her eyes still upon him, Lucy shook her head in gentle wonder. “I’m
just beginning to understand,” she said.

“Understand what?”

“What it means to be a real Amberson in this town. Papa told me
something about it before we came, but I see he didn’t say half enough!”

George superbly took this all for tribute. “Did your father say he knew
the family before he left here?”

“Yes. I believe he was particularly a friend of your Uncle George; and
he didn’t say so, but I imagine he must have known your mother very
well, too. He wasn’t an inventor then; he was a young lawyer. The town
was smaller in those days, and I believe he was quite well known.”

“I dare say. I’ve no doubt the family are all very glad to see him
back, especially if they used to have him at the house a good deal, as
he told you.”

“I don’t think he meant to boast of it,” she said: “He spoke of it
quite calmly.”

George stared at her for a moment in perplexity, then perceiving that
her intention was satirical, “Girls really ought to go to a man’s
college,” he said—“just a month or two, anyhow. It’d take _some_ of the
freshness out of ’em!”

“I can’t believe it,” she retorted, as her partner for the next
dance arrived. “It would only make them a little politer on the
surface—they’d be really just as awful as ever, after you got to know
them a few minutes.”

“What do you mean: ‘after you got to know them a—’”

She was departing to the dance. “Janie and Mary Sharon told me all
about what sort of a _little_ boy you were,” she said, over her
shoulder. “You must think it out!” She took wing away on the breeze
of the waltz, and George, having stared gloomily after her for a few
moments, postponed filling an engagement, and strolled round the
fluctuating outskirts of the dance to where his uncle, George Amberson,
stood smilingly watching, under one of the rose-vine arches at the
entrance to the room.

“Hello, young namesake,” said the uncle. “Why lingers the laggard heel
of the dancer? Haven’t you got a partner?”

“She’s sitting around waiting for me somewhere,” said George. “See
here: Who is this fellow Morgan that Aunt Fanny Minafer was dancing
with a while?”

Amberson laughed. “He’s a man with a pretty daughter, Georgie. Meseemed
you’ve been spending the evening noticing something of that sort—or do
I err?”

“Never mind! What sort is he?”

“I think we’ll have to give him a character, Georgie. He’s an old
friend; used to practice law here—perhaps he had more debts than cases,
but he paid ’em all up before he left town. Your question is purely
mercenary, I take it: you want to know his true worth before proceeding
further with the daughter. I cannot inform you, though I notice signs
of considerable prosperity in that becoming dress of hers. However,
you never can tell, it is an age when every sacrifice is made for the
young, and how your own poor mother managed to provide those genuine
pearl studs for you out of her allowance from father, I can’t—”

“Oh, dry up!” said the nephew. “I understand this Morgan—”

“Mr. Eugene Morgan,” his uncle suggested. “Politeness requires that the
young should—”

“I guess the ‘young’ didn’t know much about politeness in your day,”
George interrupted. “I understand that Mr. Eugene Morgan used to be a
great friend of the family.”

“Oh, the Minafers?” the uncle inquired, with apparent innocence. “No, I
seem to recall that he and your father were not—”

“I mean the Ambersons,” George said impatiently. “I understand he was a
good deal around the house here.”

“What is your objection to that, George?”

“What do you mean: my objection?”

“You seemed to speak with a certain crossness.”

“Well,” said George, “I meant he seems to feel awfully at home here.
The way he was dancing with Aunt Fanny—”

Amberson laughed. “I’m afraid your Aunt Fanny’s heart was stirred by
ancient recollections, Georgie.”

“You mean she used to be silly about him?”

“She wasn’t considered singular,” said the uncle “He was—he was
popular. Could you bear a question?”

“What do you mean: could I bear—”

“I only wanted to ask: Do you take this same passionate interest in the
parents of every girl you dance with? Perhaps it’s a new fashion we old
bachelors ought to take up. Is it the thing this year to—”

“Oh, go on!” said George, moving away. “I only wanted to know—” He
left the sentence unfinished, and crossed the room to where a girl sat
waiting for his nobility to find time to fulfil his contract with her
for this dance.

“Pardon f’ keep’ wait,” he muttered, as she rose brightly to meet him;
and she seemed pleased that he came at all—but George was used to
girls’ looking radiant when he danced with them, and she had little
effect upon him. He danced with her perfunctorily, thinking the while
of Mr. Eugene Morgan and his daughter. Strangely enough, his thoughts
dwelt more upon the father than the daughter, though George could
not possibly have given a reason—even to himself—for this disturbing
preponderance.

By a coincidence, though not an odd one, the thoughts and conversation
of Mr. Eugene Morgan at this very time were concerned with George
Amberson Minafer, rather casually, it is true. Mr. Morgan had retired
to a room set apart for smoking, on the second floor, and had found a
grizzled gentleman lounging in solitary possession.

“‘Gene Morgan!” this person exclaimed, rising with great heartiness.
“I’d heard you were in town—I don’t believe you know me!”

“Yes, I do, Fred Kinney!” Mr. Morgan returned with equal friendliness.
“Your real face—the one I used to know—it’s just underneath the one
you’re masquerading in to-night. You ought to have changed it more if
you wanted a disguise.”

“Twenty years!” said Mr. Kinney. “It makes some difference in faces,
but more in behaviour!”

“It does so!” his friend agreed with explosive emphasis. “My own
behaviour began to be different about that long ago—quite suddenly.”

“I remember,” said Mr. Kinney sympathetically. “Well, life’s odd enough
as we look back.”

“Probably it’s going to be odder still—if we could look forward.”

“Probably.”

They sat and smoked.

“However,” Mr. Morgan remarked presently, “I still dance like an
Indian. Don’t you?”

“No. I leave that to my boy Fred. He does the dancing for the family.”

“I suppose he’s upstairs hard at it?”

“No, he’s not here.” Mr. Kinney glanced toward the open door and
lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t come. It seems that a couple of years
or so ago he had a row with young Georgie Minafer. Fred was president
of a literary club they had, and he said this young Georgie got himself
elected instead, in an overbearing sort of way. Fred’s red-headed, you
know—I suppose you remember his mother? You were at the wedding—”

“I remember the wedding,” said Mr. Morgan. “And I remember your
bachelor dinner—most of it, that is.”

“Well, my boy Fred’s as red-headed now,” Mr. Kinney went on, “as his
mother was then, and he’s very bitter about his row with Georgie
Minafer. He says he’d rather burn his foot off than set it inside any
Amberson house or any place else where young Georgie is. Fact is, the
boy seemed to have so much feeling over it I had my doubts about coming
myself, but my wife said it was all nonsense; we mustn’t humour Fred in
a grudge over such a little thing, and while she despised that Georgie
Minafer, herself, as much as any one else did, she wasn’t going to miss
a big Amberson show just on account of a boys’ rumpus, and so on and so
on; and so we came.”

“Do people dislike young Minafer generally?”

“I don’t know about ‘generally.’ I guess he gets plenty of toadying;
but there’s certainly a lot of people that are glad to express their
opinions about him.”

“What’s the matter with him?”

“Too much Amberson, I suppose, for one thing. And for another, his
mother just fell down and worshipped him from the day he was born.
That’s what beats me! I don’t have to tell you what Isabel Amberson is,
Eugene Morgan. She’s got a touch of the Amberson high stuff about her,
but you can’t get anybody that ever knew her to deny that she’s just
about the finest woman in the world.”

“No,” said Eugene Morgan. “You can’t get anybody to deny that.”

“Then I can’t see how she doesn’t see the truth about that boy. He
thinks he’s a little tin god on wheels—and honestly, it makes some
people weak and sick just to think about him! Yet that high-spirited,
intelligent woman, Isabel Amberson, actually sits and worships him! You
can hear it in her voice when she speaks to him or speaks of him. You
can see it in her eyes when she looks at him. My Lord! What _does_ she
see when she looks at him?”

Morgan’s odd expression of genial apprehension deepened whimsically,
though it denoted no actual apprehension whatever, and cleared away
from his face altogether when he smiled; he became surprisingly winning
and persuasive when he smiled. He smiled now, after a moment, at this
question of his old friend. “She sees something that we don’t see,” he
said.

“What does she see?”

“An angel.”

Kinney laughed aloud. “Well, if she sees an angel when she looks at
Georgie Minafer, she’s a funnier woman than I thought she was!”

“Perhaps she is,” said Morgan. “But that’s what she sees.”

“My Lord! It’s easy to see you’ve only known him an hour or so. In that
time have you looked at Georgie and seen an angel?”

“No. All I saw was a remarkably good-looking fool-boy with the pride
of Satan and a set of nice new drawing-room manners that he probably
couldn’t use more than half an hour at a time without busting.”

“Then what—”

“Mothers are right,” said Morgan. “Do you think this young George is
the same sort of creature when he’s with his mother that he is when
he’s bulldozing your boy Fred? Mothers see the angel in us because the
angel is there. If it’s shown to the mother, the son has got an angel
to show, hasn’t he? When a son cuts somebody’s throat the mother only
sees it’s possible for a misguided angel to act like a devil—and she’s
entirely right about that!”

Kinney laughed, and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I remember
what a fellow you always were to argue,” he said. “You mean Georgie
Minafer is as much of an angel as any murderer is, and that Georgie’s
mother is always right.”

“I’m afraid she always has been,” Morgan said lightly.

The friendly hand remained upon his shoulder. “She was wrong once, old
fellow. At least, so it seemed to me.”

“No,” said Morgan, a little awkwardly. “No—”

Kinney relieved the slight embarrassment that had come upon both of
them: he laughed again. “Wait till you know young Georgie a little
better,” he said. “Something tells me you’re going to change your mind
about his having an angel to show, if you see anything of him!”

“You mean beauty’s in the eye of the beholder, and the angel is all in
the eye of the mother. If you were a painter, Fred, you’d paint mothers
with angels’ eyes holding imps in their laps. Me, I’ll stick to the Old
Masters and the cherubs.”

Mr. Kinney looked at him musingly. “Somebody’s eyes must have been
pretty angelic,” he said, “if they’ve been persuading you that Georgie
Minafer is a cherub!”

“They are,” said Morgan heartily. “They’re more angelic than ever.”
And as a new flourish of music sounded overhead he threw away his
cigarette, and jumped up briskly. “Good-bye, I’ve got this dance with
her.”

“With whom?”

“With Isabel!”

The grizzled Mr. Kinney affected to rub his eyes. “It startles me, your
jumping up like that to go and dance with Isabel Amberson! Twenty years
seem to have passed—but have they? Tell me, have you danced with poor
old Fanny, too, this evening?”

“Twice!”

“My Lord!” Kinney groaned, half in earnest. “Old times starting all
over again! My Lord!”

“Old times?” Morgan laughed gaily from the doorway. “Not a bit! There
aren’t any old times. When times are gone they’re not old, they’re
dead! There aren’t any times but new times!”

And he vanished in such a manner that he seemed already to have begun
dancing.




Chapter VII


The appearance of Miss Lucy Morgan the next day, as she sat in George’s
fast cutter, proved so charming that her escort was stricken to soft
words instantly, and failed to control a poetic impulse. Her rich
little hat was trimmed with black fur; her hair was almost as dark as
the fur; a great boa of black fur was about her shoulders; her hands
were vanished into a black muff; and George’s laprobe was black. “You
look like—” he said. “Your face looks like—it looks like a snowflake on
a lump of coal. I mean a—a snowflake that would be a rose-leaf, too!”

“Perhaps you’d better look at the reins,” she returned. “We almost
upset just then.”

George declined to heed this advice. “Because there’s too much pink in
your cheeks for a snowflake,” he continued. “What’s that fairy story
about snow-white and rose-red—”

“We’re going pretty fast, Mr. Minafer!”

“Well, you see, I’m only here for two weeks.”

“I mean the sleigh!” she explained. “We’re not the only people on the
street, you know.”

“Oh, _they’ll_ keep out of the way.”

“That’s very patrician charioteering, but it seems to me a horse like
this needs guidance. I’m sure he’s going almost twenty miles an hour.”

“That’s nothing,” said George; but he consented to look forward again.
“He can trot under three minutes, all right.” He laughed. “I suppose
your father thinks he can build a horseless carriage to go that fast!”

“They go that fast already, sometimes.”

“Yes,” said George; “they do—for about a hundred feet! Then they give a
yell and burn up.”

Evidently she decided not to defend her father’s faith in horseless
carriages, for she laughed, and said nothing. The cold air was
polka-dotted with snowflakes, and trembled to the loud, continuous
jingling of sleighbells. Boys and girls, all aglow and panting jets of
vapour, darted at the passing sleighs to ride on the runners, or sought
to rope their sleds to any vehicle whatever, but the fleetest no more
than just touched the flying cutter, though a hundred soggy mittens
grasped for it, then reeled and whirled till sometimes the wearers
of those daring mittens plunged flat in the snow and lay a-sprawl,
reflecting. For this was the holiday time, and all the boys and girls
in town were out, most of them on National Avenue.

But there came panting and chugging up that flat thoroughfare a thing
which some day was to spoil all their sleigh-time merriment—save
for the rashest and most disobedient. It was vaguely like a topless
surry, but cumbrous with unwholesome excrescences fore and aft, while
underneath were spinning leather belts and something that whirred and
howled and seemed to stagger. The ride-stealers made no attempt to
fasten their sleds to a contrivance so nonsensical and yet so fearsome.
Instead, they gave over their sport and concentrated all their energies
in their lungs, so that up and down the street the one cry shrilled
increasingly: “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Mister, why don’t
you git a hoss?” But the mahout in charge, sitting solitary on the
front seat, was unconcerned—he laughed, and now and then ducked a
snowball without losing any of his good-nature. It was Mr. Eugene
Morgan who exhibited so cheerful a countenance between the forward
visor of a deer-stalker cap and the collar of a fuzzy gray ulster. “Git
a hoss!” the children shrieked, and gruffer voices joined them. “Git a
hoss! Git a hoss! Git a _hoss!_”

George Minafer was correct thus far: the twelve miles an hour of such
a machine would never over-take George’s trotter. The cutter was
already scurrying between the stone pillars at the entrance to Amberson
Addition.

“That’s my grandfather’s,” said George, nodding toward the Amberson
Mansion.

“I ought to know that!” Lucy exclaimed. “We stayed there late enough
last night: papa and I were almost the last to go. He and your mother
and Miss Fanny Minafer got the musicians to play another waltz when
everybody else had gone downstairs and the fiddles were being put away
in their cases. Papa danced part of it with Miss Minafer and the rest
with your mother. Miss Minafer’s your aunt, isn’t she?”

“Yes; she lives with us. I tease her a good deal.”

“What about?”

“Oh, anything handy—whatever’s easy to tease an old maid about.”

“Doesn’t she mind?”

“She usually has sort of a grouch on me,” laughed George. “Nothing
much. That’s our house just beyond grandfather’s.” He waved a sealskin
gauntlet to indicate the house Major Amberson had built for Isabel as
a wedding gift. “It’s almost the same as grandfather’s, only not as
large and hasn’t got a regular ballroom. We gave the dance, last night,
at grandfather’s on account of the ballroom, and because I’m the only
grandchild, you know. Of course, some day that’ll be my house, though I
expect my mother will most likely go on living where she does now, with
father and Aunt Fanny. I suppose I’ll probably build a country house,
too—somewhere East, I guess.” He stopped speaking, and frowned as they
passed a closed carriage and pair. The body of this comfortable vehicle
sagged slightly to one side; the paint was old and seamed with hundreds
of minute cracks like little rivers on a black map; the coachman, a fat
and elderly darky, seemed to drowse upon the box; but the open window
afforded the occupants of the cutter a glimpse of a tired, fine old
face, a silk hat, a pearl tie, and an astrachan collar, evidently out
to take the air.

“There’s your grandfather now,” said Lucy. “Isn’t it?”

George’s frown was not relaxed. “Yes, it is; and he ought to give
that rat-trap away and sell those old horses. They’re a disgrace, all
shaggy—not even clipped. I suppose he doesn’t notice it—people get
awful funny when they get old; they seem to lose their self-respect,
sort of.”

“He seemed a real Brummell to me,” she said.

“Oh, he keeps up about what he wears, well enough, but—well, look
at that!” He pointed to a statue of Minerva, one of the cast-iron
sculptures Major Amberson had set up in opening the Addition
years before. Minerva was intact, but a blackish streak descended
unpleasantly from her forehead to the point of her straight nose, and a
few other streaks were sketched in a repellent dinge upon the folds of
her drapery.

“That must be from soot,” said Lucy. “There are so many houses around
here.”

“Anyhow, somebody ought to see that these statues are kept clean. My
grandfather owns a good many of these houses, I guess, for renting.
Of course, he sold most of the lots—there aren’t any vacant ones, and
there used to be heaps of ’em when I was a boy. Another thing I don’t
think he ought to allow: a good many of these people bought big lots
and they built houses on ’em; then the price of the land kept getting
higher, and they’d sell part of their yards and let the people that
bought it build houses on it to live in, till they haven’t hardly any
of ’em got big, open yards any more, and it’s getting all too much
built up. The way it used to be, it was like a gentleman’s country
estate, and that’s the way my grandfather ought to keep it. He lets
these people take too many liberties: they do anything they want to.”

“But how could he stop them?” Lucy asked, surely with reason. “If he
sold them the land, it’s theirs, isn’t it?”

George remained serene in the face of this apparently difficult
question. “He ought to have all the trades-people boycott the families
that sell part of their yards that way. All he’d have to do would be
to tell the trades-people they wouldn’t get any more orders from the
family if they didn’t do it.”

“From ‘the family’? What family?”

“Our family,” said George, unperturbed. “The Ambersons.”

“I see!” she murmured, and evidently she did see something that he did
not, for, as she lifted her muff to her face, he asked:

“What are you laughing at now?”

“Why?”

“You always seem to have some little secret of your own to get happy
over!”

“Always!” she exclaimed. “What a big word when we only met last night!”

“That’s another case of it,” he said, with obvious sincerity. “One of
the reasons I don’t like you—much!—is you’ve got that way of seeming
quietly superior to everybody else.”

“I!” she cried. “I have?”

“Oh, you think you keep it sort of confidential to yourself, but it’s
plain enough! I don’t believe in that kind of thing.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” said George emphatically. “Not with me! I think the world’s like
this: there’s a few people that their birth and position, and so on,
puts them at the top, and they ought to treat each other entirely as
equals.” His voice betrayed a little emotion as he added, “I wouldn’t
speak like this to everybody.”

“You mean you’re confiding your deepest creed—or code, whatever it
is—to me?”

“Go on, make fun of it, then!” George said bitterly. “You do think
you’re terribly clever! It makes me tired!”

“Well, as you don’t like my seeming ‘quietly superior,’ after this I’ll
be noisily superior,” she returned cheerfully. “We aim to please!”

“I had a notion before I came for you today that we were going to
quarrel,” he said.

“No, we won’t; it takes two!” She laughed and waved her muff toward a
new house, not quite completed, standing in a field upon their right.
They had passed beyond Amberson Addition, and were leaving the northern
fringes of the town for the open country. “Isn’t that a beautiful
house!” she exclaimed. “Papa and I call it our Beautiful House.”

George was not pleased. “Does it belong to you?”

“Of course not! Papa brought me out here the other day, driving in
his machine, and we both loved it. It’s so spacious and dignified and
plain.”

“Yes, it’s plain enough!” George grunted.

“Yet it’s lovely; the gray-green roof and shutters give just enough
colour, with the trees, for the long white walls. It seems to me the
finest house I’ve seen in this part of the country.”

George was outraged by an enthusiasm so ignorant—not ten minutes ago
they had passed the Amberson Mansion. “Is that a sample of your taste
in architecture?” he asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“Because it strikes me you better go somewhere and study the subject a
little!”

Lucy looked puzzled. “What makes you have so much feeling about it?
Have I offended you?”

“‘Offended’ nothing!” George returned brusquely. “Girls usually
think they know it all as soon as they’ve learned to dance and dress
and flirt a little. They never know anything about things like
architecture, for instance. That house is about as bum a house as any
house I ever saw!”

“Why?”

“Why?” George repeated. “Did you ask me why?”

“Yes.”

“Well, for one thing—” he paused—“for one thing—well, just look at it!
I shouldn’t think you’d have to do any more than look at it if you’d
ever given any attention to architecture.”

“What is the matter with its architecture, Mr. Minafer?”

“Well, it’s this way,” said George. “It’s like this. Well, for
instance, that house—well, it was built like a town house.” He spoke of
it in the past tense, because they had now left it far behind them—a
human habit of curious significance. “It was like a house meant for a
street in the city. What kind of a house was that for people of any
taste to build out here in the country?”

“But papa says it’s built that way on purpose. There are a lot of other
houses being built in this direction, and papa says the city’s coming
out this way; and in a year or two that house will be right in town.”

“It was a bum house, anyhow,” said George crossly. “I don’t even know
the people that are building it. They say a lot of riffraff come to
town every year nowadays and there’s other riffraff that have always
lived here, and have made a little money, and act as if they owned the
place. Uncle Sydney was talking about it yesterday: he says he and some
of his friends are organizing a country club, and already some of these
riffraff are worming into it—people he never heard of at all! Anyhow, I
guess it’s pretty clear you don’t know a great deal about architecture.”

She demonstrated the completeness of her amiability by laughing. “I’ll
know something about the North Pole before long,” she said, “if we keep
going much farther in this direction!”

At this he was remorseful. “All right, we’ll turn, and drive south
awhile till you get warmed up again. I expect we have been going
against the wind about long enough. Indeed, I’m sorry!”

He said, “Indeed, I’m sorry,” in a nice way, and looked very strikingly
handsome when he said it, she thought. No doubt it is true that
there is more rejoicing in heaven over one sinner repented than over
all the saints who consistently remain holy, and the rare, sudden
gentlenesses of arrogant people have infinitely more effect than the
continual gentleness of gentle people. Arrogance turned gentle melts
the heart; and Lucy gave her companion a little sidelong, sunny nod of
acknowledgment. George was dazzled by the quick glow of her eyes, and
found himself at a loss for something to say.

Having turned about, he kept his horse to a walk, and at this gait the
sleighbells tinkled but intermittently. Gleaming wanly through the
whitish vapour that kept rising from the trotter’s body and flanks,
they were like tiny fog-bells, and made the only sounds in a great
winter silence. The white road ran between lonesome rail fences; and
frozen barnyards beyond the fences showed sometimes a harrow left to
rust, with its iron seat half filled with stiffened snow, and sometimes
an old dead buggy, its wheels forever set, it seemed, in the solid ice
of deep ruts. Chickens scratched the metallic earth with an air of
protest, and a masterless ragged colt looked up in sudden horror at the
mild tinkle of the passing bells, then blew fierce clouds of steam at
the sleigh. The snow no longer fell, and far ahead, in a grayish cloud
that lay upon the land, was the town.

Lucy looked at this distant thickening reflection. “When we get this
far out we can see there must be quite a little smoke hanging over the
town,” she said. “I suppose that’s because it’s growing. As it grows
bigger it seems to get ashamed of itself, so it makes this cloud and
hides in it. Papa says it used to be a bit nicer when he lived here:
he always speaks of it differently—he always has a gentle look, a
particular tone of voice, I’ve noticed. He must have been very fond
of it. It must have been a lovely place: everybody must have been so
jolly. From the way he talks, you’d think life here then was just one
long midsummer serenade. He declares it was always sunshine, that
the air wasn’t like the air anywhere else—that, as he remembers it,
there always seemed to be gold-dust in the air. I doubt it! I think it
doesn’t seem to be duller air to him now just on account of having a
little soot in it sometimes, but probably because he was twenty years
younger then. It seems to me the gold-dust he thinks was here is just
his being young that he remembers. I think it was just youth. It is
pretty pleasant to be young, isn’t it?” She laughed absently, then
appeared to become wistful. “I wonder if we really do enjoy it as much
as we’ll look back and think we did! I don’t suppose so. Anyhow, for
my part I feel as if I must be missing something about it, somehow,
because I don’t ever seem to be thinking about what’s happening at the
present moment; I’m always looking forward to something—thinking about
things that will happen when I’m older.”

“You’re a funny girl,” George said gently. “But your voice sounds
pretty nice when you think and talk along together like that!”

The horse shook himself all over, and the impatient sleighbells made
his wish audible. Accordingly, George tightened the reins, and the
cutter was off again at a three-minute trot, no despicable rate of
speed. It was not long before they were again passing Lucy’s Beautiful
House, and here George thought fit to put an appendix to his remark.
“You’re a funny girl, and you know a lot—but I don’t believe you know
much about architecture!”

Coming toward them, black against the snowy road, was a strange
silhouette. It approached moderately and without visible means of
progression, so the matter seemed from a distance; but as the cutter
shortened the distance, the silhouette was revealed to be Mr. Morgan’s
horseless carriage, conveying four people atop: Mr. Morgan with
George’s mother beside him, and, in the rear seat, Miss Fanny Minafer
and the Honourable George Amberson. All four seemed to be in the
liveliest humour, like high-spirited people upon a new adventure; and
Isabel waved her handkerchief dashingly as the cutter flashed by them.

“For the Lord’s sake!” George gasped.

“Your mother’s a dear,” said Lucy. “And she does wear the most
bewitching _things!_ She looked like a Russian princess, though I doubt
if they’re that handsome.”

George said nothing; he drove on till they had crossed Amberson
Addition and reached the stone pillars at the head of National Avenue.
There he turned.

“Let’s go back and take another look at that old sewing-machine,” he
said. “It certainly is the weirdest, craziest—”

He left the sentence unfinished, and presently they were again in sight
of the old sewing-machine. George shouted mockingly.

Alas! three figures stood in the road, and a pair of legs, with the
toes turned up, indicated that a fourth figure lay upon its back in the
snow, beneath a horseless carriage that had decided to need a horse.

George became vociferous with laughter, and coming up at his trotter’s
best gait, snow spraying from runners and every hoof, swerved to the
side of the road and shot by, shouting, “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a
hoss!”

Three hundred yards away he turned and came back, racing; leaning
out as he passed, to wave jeeringly at the group about the disabled
machine: “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a—”

The trotter had broken into a gallop, and Lucy cried a warning: “Be
careful!” she said. “Look where you’re driving! There’s a ditch on that
side. _Look_—”

George turned too late; the cutter’s right runner went into the ditch
and snapped off; the little sleigh upset, and, after dragging its
occupants some fifteen yards, left them lying together in a bank
of snow. Then the vigorous young horse kicked himself free of all
annoyances, and disappeared down the road, galloping cheerfully.




Chapter VIII


When George regained some measure of his presence of mind, Miss Lucy
Morgan’s cheek, snowy and cold, was pressing his nose slightly to one
side; his right arm was firmly about her neck; and a monstrous amount
of her fur boa seemed to mingle with an equally unplausible quantity of
snow in his mouth. He was confused, but conscious of no objection to
any of these juxtapositions. She was apparently uninjured, for she sat
up, hatless, her hair down, and said mildly:

“Good heavens!”

Though her father had been under his machine when they passed, he was
the first to reach them. He threw himself on his knees beside his
daughter, but found her already laughing, and was reassured. “They’re
all right,” he called to Isabel, who was running toward them, ahead of
her brother and Fanny Minafer. “This snowbank’s a feather bed—nothing
the matter with them at all. Don’t look so pale!”

“Georgie!” she gasped. “_Georgie!_”

Georgie was on his feet, snow all over him.

“Don’t make a fuss, mother! Nothing’s the matter. That darned silly
horse—”

Sudden tears stood in Isabel’s eyes. “To see you down
underneath—dragging—oh—” Then with shaking hands she began to brush the
snow from him.

“Let me alone,” he protested. “You’ll ruin your gloves. You’re getting
snow all over you, and—”

“No, no!” she cried. “You’ll catch cold; you mustn’t catch cold!” And
she continued to brush him.

Amberson had brought Lucy’s hat; Miss Fanny acted as lady’s-maid; and
both victims of the accident were presently restored to about their
usual appearance and condition of apparel. In fact, encouraged by the
two older gentlemen, the entire party, with one exception, decided that
the episode was after all a merry one, and began to laugh about it. But
George was glummer than the December twilight now swiftly closing in.

“That darned horse!” he said.

“I wouldn’t bother about Pendennis, Georgie,” said his uncle. “You can
send a man out for what’s left of the cutter tomorrow, and Pendennis
will gallop straight home to his stable: he’ll be there a long while
before we will, because all we’ve got to depend on to get us home is
Gene Morgan’s broken-down chafing-dish yonder.”

They were approaching the machine as he spoke, and his friend, again
underneath it, heard him. He emerged, smiling. “She’ll go,” he said.

“What!”

“All aboard!”

He offered his hand to Isabel. She was smiling but still pale, and her
eyes, in spite of the smile, kept upon George in a shocked anxiety.
Miss Fanny had already mounted to the rear seat, and George, after
helping Lucy Morgan to climb up beside his aunt, was following. Isabel
saw that his shoes were light things of patent leather, and that snow
was clinging to them. She made a little rush toward him, and, as one
of his feet rested on the iron step of the machine, in mounting, she
began to clean the snow from his shoe with her almost aerial lace
handkerchief. “You mustn’t catch cold!” she cried.

“Stop that!” George shouted, and furiously withdrew his foot.

“Then stamp the snow off,” she begged. “You mustn’t ride with wet feet.”

“They’re not!” George roared, thoroughly outraged. “For heaven’s sake
get in! You’re standing in the snow yourself. Get in!”

Isabel consented, turning to Morgan, whose habitual expression of
apprehensiveness was somewhat accentuated. He climbed up after her,
George Amberson having gone to the other side. “You’re the same Isabel
I used to know!” he said in a low voice. “You’re a divinely ridiculous
woman.”

“Am I, Eugene?” she said, not displeased. “‘Divinely’ and ‘ridiculous’
just counterbalance each other, don’t they? Plus one and minus one
equal nothing; so you mean I’m nothing in particular?”

“No,” he answered, tugging at a lever. “That doesn’t seem to be
precisely what I meant. There!” This exclamation referred to the
subterranean machinery, for dismaying sounds came from beneath the
floor, and the vehicle plunged, then rolled noisily forward.

“Behold!” George Amberson exclaimed. “She does move! It must be another
accident.”

“Accident?” Morgan shouted over the din. “No! She breathes, she stirs;
she seems to feel a thrill of life along her keel!” And he began to
sing “The Star Spangled Banner.”

Amberson joined him lustily, and sang on when Morgan stopped. The
twilight sky cleared, discovering a round moon already risen; and the
musical congressman hailed this bright presence with the complete text
and melody of “The Danube River.”

His nephew, behind, was gloomy. He had overheard his mother’s
conversation with the inventor: it seemed curious to him that this
Morgan, of whom he had never heard until last night, should be using
the name “Isabel” so easily; and George felt that it was not just the
thing for his mother to call Morgan “Eugene;” the resentment of the
previous night came upon George again. Meanwhile, his mother and Morgan
continued their talk; but he could no longer hear what they said; the
noise of the car and his uncle’s songful mood prevented. He marked how
animated Isabel seemed; it was not strange to see his mother so gay,
but it was strange that a man not of the family should be the cause of
her gaiety. And George sat frowning.

Fanny Minafer had begun to talk to Lucy. “Your father wanted to prove
that his horseless carriage would run, even in the snow,” she said. “It
really does, too.”

“Of course!”

“It’s so interesting! He’s been telling us how he’s going to change it.
He says he’s going to have wheels all made of rubber and blown up with
air. I don’t understand what he means at all; I should think they’d
explode—but Eugene seems to be very confident. He always was confident,
though. It seems so like old times to hear him talk!”

She became thoughtful, and Lucy turned to George. “You tried to swing
underneath me and break the fall for me when we went over,” she said.
“I knew you were doing that, and—it was nice of you.”

“Wasn’t any fall to speak of,” he returned brusquely. “Couldn’t have
hurt either of us.”

“Still it was friendly of you—and awfully quick, too. I’ll not—I’ll not
forget it!”

Her voice had a sound of genuineness, very pleasant; and George
began to forget his annoyance with her father. This annoyance of
his had not been alleviated by the circumstance that neither of the
seats of the old sewing-machine was designed for three people, but
when his neighbour spoke thus gratefully, he no longer minded the
crowding—in fact, it pleased him so much that he began to wish the old
sewing-machine would go even slower. And she had spoken no word of
blame for his letting that darned horse get the cutter into the ditch.
George presently addressed her hurriedly, almost tremulously, speaking
close to her ear:

“I forgot to tell you something: you’re pretty nice! I thought so the
first second I saw you last night. I’ll come for you tonight and take
you to the Assembly at the Amberson Hotel. You’re going, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m going with papa and the Sharons. I’ll see you there.”

“Looks to me as if you were awfully conventional,” George grumbled; and
his disappointment was deeper than he was willing to let her see—though
she probably did see. “Well, we’ll dance the cotillion together,
anyhow.”

“I’m afraid not. I promised Mr. Kinney.”

“What!” George’s tone was shocked, as at incredible news. “Well, you
could break _that_ engagement, I guess, if you wanted to! Girls always
can get out of things when they want to. Won’t you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Because I promised him. Several days ago.”

George gulped, and lowered his pride, “I don’t—oh, look here! I only
want to go to that thing tonight to get to see something of you; and if
you don’t dance the cotillion with me, how can I? I’ll only be here two
weeks, and the others have got all the rest of your visit to see you.
_Won’t_ you do it, please?”

“I couldn’t.”

“See here!” said the stricken George. “If you’re going to decline to
dance that cotillion with me simply because you’ve promised a—a—a
miserable red-headed outsider like Fred Kinney, why we might as well
quit!”

“Quit what?”

“You know perfectly well what I mean,” he said huskily.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you ought to!”

“But I don’t at all!”

George, thoroughly hurt, and not a little embittered, expressed himself
in a short outburst of laughter: “Well, I ought to have seen it!”

“Seen what?”

“That you might turn out to be a girl who’d like a fellow of the
red-headed Kinney sort. I ought to have seen it from the first!”

Lucy bore her disgrace lightly. “Oh, dancing a cotillion with a person
doesn’t mean that you like him—but I don’t see anything in particular
the matter with Mr. Kinney. What is?”

“If you don’t see anything the matter with him for yourself,” George
responded, icily, “I don’t think pointing it out would help you. You
probably wouldn’t understand.”

“You might try,” she suggested. “Of course I’m a stranger here, and
if people have done anything wrong or have something unpleasant about
them, I wouldn’t have any way of knowing it, just at first. If poor Mr.
Kinney—”

“I prefer not to discuss it,” said George curtly. “He’s an enemy of
mine.”

“Why?”

“I prefer not to discuss it.”

“Well, but—”

“I prefer not to discuss it!”

“Very well.” She began to hum the air of the song which Mr. George
Amberson was now discoursing, “O moon of my delight that knows no
wane”—and there was no further conversation on the back seat.

They had entered Amberson Addition, and the moon of Mr. Amberson’s
delight was overlaid by a slender Gothic filagree; the branches that
sprang from the shade trees lining the street. Through the windows of
many of the houses rosy lights were flickering; and silver tinsel and
evergreen wreaths and brilliant little glass globes of silver and wine
colour could be seen, and glimpses were caught of Christmas trees, with
people decking them by firelight—reminders that this was Christmas Eve.
The ride-stealers had disappeared from the highway, though now and
then, over the gasping and howling of the horseless carriage, there
came a shrill jeer from some young passer-by upon the sidewalk:

“Mister, fer heaven’s sake go an’ git a hoss! Git a hoss! _Git_ a hoss!”

The contrivance stopped with a heart-shaking jerk before Isabel’s
house. The gentlemen jumped down, helping Isabel and Fanny to descend;
there were friendly leavetakings—and one that was not precisely
friendly.

“It’s ‘au revoir,’ till to-night, isn’t it?” Lucy asked, laughing.

“Good afternoon!” said George, and he did not wait, as his relatives
did, to see the old sewing machine start briskly down the street,
toward the Sharons’; its lighter load consisting now of only Mr. Morgan
and his daughter. George went into the house at once.

He found his father reading the evening paper in the library. “Where
are your mother and your Aunt Fanny?” Mr. Minafer inquired, not looking
up.

“They’re coming,” said his son; and, casting himself heavily into a
chair, stared at the fire.

His prediction was verified a few moments later; the two ladies came in
cheerfully, unfastening their fur cloaks. “It’s all right, Georgie,”
said Isabel. “Your Uncle George called to us that Pendennis got home
safely. Put your shoes close to the fire, dear, or else go and change
them.” She went to her husband and patted him lightly on the shoulder,
an action which George watched with sombre moodiness. “You might dress
before long,” she suggested. “We’re all going to the Assembly, after
dinner, aren’t we? Brother George said he’d go with us.”

“Look here,” said George abruptly. “How about this man Morgan and his
old sewing-machine? Doesn’t he want to get grandfather to put money
into it? Isn’t he trying to work Uncle George for that? Isn’t that what
he’s up to?”

It was Miss Fanny who responded. “You little silly!” she cried, with
surprising sharpness. “What on earth are you talking about? Eugene
Morgan’s perfectly able to finance his own inventions these days.”

“I’ll bet he borrows money of Uncle George,” the nephew insisted.

Isabel looked at him in grave perplexity. “Why do you say such a thing,
George?” she asked.

“He strikes me as that sort of man,” he answered doggedly. “Isn’t he,
father?”

Minafer set down his paper for the moment. “He was a fairly wild young
fellow twenty years ago,” he said, glancing at his wife absently. “He
was like you in one thing, Georgie; he spent too much money—only he
didn’t have any mother to get money out of a grandfather for him, so he
was usually in debt. But I believe I’ve heard he’s done fairly well of
late years. No, I can’t say I think he’s a swindler, and I doubt if he
needs anybody else’s money to back his horseless carriage.”

“Well, what’s he brought the old thing here for, then? People that
own elephants don’t take them elephants around with ’em when they go
visiting. What’s he got it here for?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mr. Minafer, resuming his paper. “You
might ask him.”

Isabel laughed, and patted her husband’s shoulder again. “Aren’t you
going to dress? Aren’t we all going to the dance?”

He groaned faintly. “Aren’t your brother and Georgie escorts enough for
you and Fanny?”

“Wouldn’t you enjoy it at all?”

“You know I don’t.”

Isabel let her hand remain upon his shoulder a moment longer; she stood
behind him, looking into the fire, and George, watching her broodingly,
thought there was more colour in her face than the reflection of the
flames accounted for. “Well, then,” she said indulgently, “stay at home
and be happy. We won’t urge you if you’d really rather not.”

“I really wouldn’t,” he said contentedly.

Half an hour later, George was passing through the upper hall, in a
bath-robe stage of preparation for the evening’s gaieties, when he
encountered his Aunt Fanny. He stopped her. “Look here!” he said.

“What in the world is the matter with you?” she demanded, regarding
him with little amiability. “You look as if you were rehearsing for a
villain in a play. Do change your expression!”

His expression gave no sign of yielding to the request; on the
contrary, its somberness deepened. “I suppose you don’t know why father
doesn’t want to go tonight,” he said solemnly. “You’re his only sister,
and yet you don’t know!”

“He never wants to go anywhere that I ever heard of,” said Fanny. “What
is the matter with you?”

“He doesn’t want to go because he doesn’t like this man Morgan.”

“Good gracious!” Fanny cried impatiently. “Eugene Morgan isn’t in your
father’s thoughts at all, one way or the other. Why should he be?”

George hesitated. “Well—it strikes me—Look here, what makes you and—and
everybody—so excited over him?”

“Excited!” she jeered. “Can’t people be glad to see an old friend
without silly children like you having to make a to-do about it? I’ve
just been in your mother’s room suggesting that she might give a little
dinner for them—”

“For who?”

“For _whom_, Georgie! For Mr. Morgan and his daughter.”

“Look here!” George said quickly. “Don’t do that! Mother mustn’t do
that. It wouldn’t look well.”

“Wouldn’t look well!” Fanny mocked him; and her suppressed vehemence
betrayed a surprising acerbity. “See here, Georgie Minafer, I suggest
that you just march straight on into your room and finish your
dressing! Sometimes you say things that show you have a pretty mean
little mind!”

George was so astounded by this outburst that his indignation was
delayed by his curiosity. “Why, what upsets you this way?” he inquired.

“I know what you mean,” she said, her voice still lowered, but not
decreasing in sharpness. “You’re trying to insinuate that I’d get
your mother to invite Eugene Morgan here on my account because he’s a
widower!”

“I am?” George gasped, nonplussed. “I’m trying to insinuate that you’re
setting your cap at him and getting mother to help you? Is that what
you mean?”

Beyond a doubt that was what Miss Fanny meant. She gave him a white-hot
look. “You attend to your own affairs!” she whispered fiercely, and
swept away.

George, dumfounded, returned to his room for meditation.

He had lived for years in the same house with his Aunt Fanny, and it
now appeared that during all those years he had been thus intimately
associating with a total stranger. Never before had he met the
passionate lady with whom he had just held a conversation in the hall.
So she wanted to get married! And wanted George’s mother to help her
with this horseless-carriage widower!

“Well, I _will_ be shot!” he muttered aloud. “I will—I certainly will
be shot!” And he began to laugh. “Lord ’lmighty!”

But presently, at the thought of the horseless-carriage widower’s
daughter, his grimness returned, and he resolved upon a line of conduct
for the evening. He would nod to her carelessly when he first saw her;
and, after that, he would notice her no more: he would not dance with
her; he would not favour her in the cotillion—he would not go near her!

He descended to dinner upon the third urgent summons of a coloured
butler, having spent two hours dressing—and rehearsing.




Chapter IX


The Honourable George Amberson was a congressman who led cotillions—the
sort of congressman an Amberson would be. He did it negligently,
tonight, yet with infallible dexterity, now and then glancing
humorously at the spectators, people of his own age. They were seated
in a tropical grove at one end of the room whither they had retired at
the beginning of the cotillion, which they surrendered entirely to the
twenties and the late ’teens. And here, grouped with that stately pair,
Sydney and Amelia Amberson, sat Isabel with Fanny, while Eugene Morgan
appeared to bestow an amiable devotion impartially upon the three
sisters-in-law. Fanny watched his face eagerly, laughing at everything
he said; Amelia smiled blandly, but rather because of graciousness
than because of interest; while Isabel, looking out at the dancers,
rhythmically moved a great fan of blue ostrich feathers, listened to
Eugene thoughtfully, yet all the while kept her shining eyes on Georgie.

Georgie had carried out his rehearsed projects with precision, he had
given Miss Morgan a nod studied into perfection during his lengthy
toilet before dinner. “Oh, yes, I do seem to remember that curious
little outsider!” this nod seemed to say. Thereafter, all cognizance of
her evaporated: the curious little outsider was permitted no further
existence worth the struggle. Nevertheless, she flashed in the corner
of his eye too often. He was aware of her dancing demurely, and of
her viciously flirtatious habit of never looking up at her partner,
but keeping her eyes concealed beneath downcast lashes; and he had
over-sufficient consciousness of her between the dances, though it
was not possible to see her at these times, even if he had cared to
look frankly in her direction—she was invisible in a thicket of young
dresscoats. The black thicket moved as she moved and her location was
hatefully apparent, even if he had not heard her voice laughing from
the thicket. It was annoying how her voice, though never loud, pursued
him. No matter how vociferous were other voices, all about, he seemed
unable to prevent himself from constantly recognizing hers. It had a
quaver in it, not pathetic—rather humorous than pathetic—a quality
which annoyed him to the point of rage, because it was so difficult to
get away from. She seemed to be having a “wonderful time!”

An unbearable soreness accumulated in his chest: his dislike of the
girl and her conduct increased until he thought of leaving this
sickening Assembly and going home to bed. _That_ would show her! But
just then he heard her laughing, and decided that it wouldn’t show her.
So he remained.

When the young couples seated themselves in chairs against the walls,
round three sides of the room, for the cotillion, George joined
a brazen-faced group clustering about the doorway—youths with no
partners, yet eligible to be “called out” and favoured. He marked that
his uncle placed the infernal Kinney and Miss Morgan, as the leading
couple, in the first chairs at the head of the line upon the leader’s
right; and this disloyalty on the part of Uncle George was inexcusable,
for in the family circle the nephew had often expressed his opinion
of Fred Kinney. In his bitterness, George uttered a significant
monosyllable.

The music flourished; whereupon Mr. Kinney, Miss Morgan, and six of
their neighbours rose and waltzed knowingly. Mr. Amberson’s whistle
blew; then the eight young people went to the favour-table and were
given toys and trinkets wherewith to delight the new partners it
was now their privilege to select. Around the walls, the seated
non-participants in this ceremony looked rather conscious; some
chattered, endeavouring not to appear expectant; some tried not to
look wistful; and others were frankly solemn. It was a trying moment;
and whoever secured a favour, this very first shot, might consider the
portents happy for a successful evening.

Holding their twinkling gewgaws in their hands, those about to
bestow honour came toward the seated lines, where expressions became
feverish. Two of the approaching girls seemed to wander, not finding a
predetermined object in sight; and these two were Janie Sharon, and her
cousin, Lucy. At this, George Amberson Minafer, conceiving that he had
little to anticipate from either, turned a proud back upon the room and
affected to converse with his friend, Mr. Charlie Johnson.

The next moment a quick little figure intervened between the two. It
was Lucy, gaily offering a silver sleighbell decked with white ribbon.

“I almost couldn’t find you!” she cried.

George stared, took her hand, led her forth in silence, danced
with her. She seemed content not to talk; but as the whistle blew,
signalling that this episode was concluded, and he conducted her to her
seat, she lifted the little bell toward him. “You haven’t taken your
favour. You’re supposed to pin it on your coat,” she said. “Don’t you
want it?”

“If you insist!” said George stiffly. And he bowed her into her chair;
then turned and walked away, dropping the sleighbell haughtily into his
trousers’ pocket.

The figure proceeded to its conclusion, and George was given other
sleighbells, which he easily consented to wear upon his lapel; but, as
the next figure began, he strolled with a bored air to the tropical
grove, where sat his elders, and seated himself beside his Uncle
Sydney. His mother leaned across Miss Fanny, raising her voice over the
music to speak to him.

“Georgie, nobody will be able to see you here. You’ll not be favoured.
You ought to be where you can dance.”

“Don’t care to,” he returned. “Bore!”

“But you ought—” She stopped and laughed, waving her fan to direct his
attention behind him. “Look! Over your shoulder!”

He turned, and discovered Miss Lucy Morgan in the act of offering him a
purple toy balloon.

“I found you!” she laughed.

George was startled. “Well—” he said.

“Would you rather ‘sit it out?’” Lucy asked quickly, as he did not
move. “I don’t care to dance if you—”

“No,” he said, rising. “It would be better to dance.” His tone was
solemn, and solemnly he departed with her from the grove. Solemnly he
danced with her.

Four times, with not the slightest encouragement, she brought him a
favour: four times in succession. When the fourth came, “Look here!”
said George huskily. “You going to keep this up all night? What do you
mean by it?”

For an instant she seemed confused. “That’s what cotillions are for,
aren’t they?” she murmured.

“What do you mean: what they’re for?”

“So that a girl can dance with a person she wants to?”

George’s huskiness increased. “Well, do you mean you—you want to dance
with me all the time—all evening?”

“Well, this much of it—evidently!” she laughed.

“Is it because you thought I tried to keep you from getting hurt this
afternoon when we upset?”

She shook her head.

“Was it because you want to even things up for making me angry—I mean,
for hurting my feelings on the way home?”

With her eyes averted—for girls of nineteen can be as shy as boys,
sometimes—she said, “Well—you only got angry because I couldn’t dance
the cotillion with you. I—I didn’t feel terribly hurt with you for
getting angry about _that!_”

“Was there any other reason? Did my telling you I liked you have
anything to do with it?”

She looked up gently, and, as George met her eyes, something
exquisitely touching, yet queerly delightful, gave him a catch in the
throat. She looked instantly away, and, turning, ran out from the palm
grove, where they stood, to the dancing-floor.

“Come on!” she cried. “Let’s dance!”

He followed her.

“See here—I—I—” he stammered. “You mean—Do you—”

“No, no!” she laughed. “Let’s dance!”

He put his arm about her almost tremulously, and they began to waltz.
It was a happy dance for both of them.

Christmas day is the children’s, but the holidays are youth’s
dancing-time. The holidays belong to the early twenties and the ’teens,
home from school and college. These years possess the holidays for
a little while, then possess them only in smiling, wistful memories
of holly and twinkling lights and dance-music, and charming faces
all aglow. It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the
irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness—nothing is like
a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a
son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it
is a visible thing; and they run like girls, walk like athletes, laugh
like sycophants. Yet they give up their sons to the daughters of other
mothers, and find it proud rapture enough to be allowed to sit and
watch.

Thus Isabel watched George and Lucy dancing, as together they danced
away the holidays of that year into the past.

“They seem to get along better than they did at first, those two
children,” Fanny Minafer said sitting beside her at the Sharons’ dance,
a week after the Assembly. “They seemed to be always having little
quarrels of some sort, at first. At least George did: he seemed to be
continually pecking at that lovely, dainty, little Lucy, and being
cross with her over nothing.”

“_Pecking?_” Isabel laughed. “What a word to use about Georgie! I think
I never knew a more angelically amiable disposition in my life!”

Miss Fanny echoed her sister-in-law’s laugh, but it was a rueful echo,
and not sweet. “He’s amiable to you!” she said. “That’s all the side of
him you ever happen to see. And why wouldn’t he be amiable to anybody
that simply fell down and worshipped him every minute of her life? Most
of us would!”

“Isn’t he worth worshipping? Just look at him! Isn’t he _charming_ with
Lucy! See how hard he ran to get it when she dropped her handkerchief
back there.”

“Oh, I’m not going to argue with you about George!” said Miss Fanny.
“I’m fond enough of him, for that matter. He can be charming, and he’s
certainly stunning _looking_, if only—”

“Let the ‘if only’ go, dear,” Isabel suggested good-naturedly. “Let’s
talk about that dinner you thought I should—”

“I?” Miss Fanny interrupted quickly. “Didn’t you want to give it
yourself?”

“Indeed, I did, my dear!” said Isabel heartily. “I only meant that
unless you had proposed it, perhaps I wouldn’t—”

But here Eugene came for her to dance, and she left the sentence
uncompleted. Holiday dances can be happy for youth renewed as well as
for youth in bud—and yet it was not with the air of a rival that Miss
Fanny watched her brother’s wife dancing with the widower. Miss Fanny’s
eyes narrowed a little, but only as if her mind engaged in a hopeful
calculation. She looked pleased.




Chapter X


A few days after George’s return to the university it became evident
that not quite everybody had gazed with complete benevolence upon the
various young collegians at their holiday sports. The Sunday edition of
the principal morning paper even expressed some bitterness under the
heading, “Gilded Youths of the Fin-de-Siècle”—this was considered the
knowing phrase of the time, especially for Sunday supplements—and there
is no doubt that from certain references in this bit of writing some
people drew the conclusion that Mr. George Amberson Minafer had not yet
got his comeuppance, a postponement still irritating. Undeniably, Fanny
Minafer was one of the people who drew this conclusion, for she cut the
article out and enclosed it in a letter to her nephew, having written
on the border of the clipping, “I wonder whom it can mean!”

George read part of it.

  We debate sometimes what is to be the future of this nation when
  we think that in a few years public affairs may be in the hands
  of the _fin-de-siècle_ gilded youths we see about us during the
  Christmas holidays. Such foppery, such luxury, such insolence, was
  surely never practised by the scented, overbearing patricians of
  the Palatine, even in Rome’s most decadent epoch. In all the wild
  orgy of wastefulness and luxury with which the nineteenth century
  reaches its close, the gilded youth has been surely the worst
  symptom. With his airs of young milord, his fast horses, his gold
  and silver cigarette-cases, his clothes from a New York tailor, his
  recklessness of money showered upon him by indulgent mothers or
  doting grandfathers, he respects nothing and nobody. He is blase if
  you please. Watch him at a social function, how condescendingly he
  deigns to select a partner for the popular waltz or two step, how
  carelessly he shoulders older people out of his way, with what a
  blank stare he returns the salutation of some old acquaintance whom
  he may choose in his royal whim to forget! The unpleasant part of
  all this is that the young women he so condescendingly selects as
  partners for the dance greet him with seeming rapture, though in
  their hearts they must feel humiliated by his languid hauteur, and
  many older people beam upon him almost fawningly if he unbends so
  far as to throw them a careless, disdainful word! One wonders what
  has come over the new generation. Of such as these the Republic was
  not made. Let us pray that the future of our country is not in the
  hands of these _fin-de-siècle_ gilded youths, but rather in the
  calloused palms of young men yet unknown, labouring upon the farms
  of the land. When we compare the young manhood of Abraham Lincoln
  with the specimens we are now producing, we see too well that it
  bodes ill for the twentieth century—

George yawned, and tossed the clipping into his waste-basket, wondering
why his aunt thought such dull nonsense worth the sending. As for
her insinuation, pencilled upon the border, he supposed she meant to
joke—a supposition which neither surprised him nor altered his lifelong
opinion of her wit.

He read her letter with more interest:

  ... The dinner your mother gave for the Morgans was a lovely
  affair. It was last Monday evening, just ten days after you left.
  It was peculiarly appropriate that your mother should give this
  dinner, because her brother George, your uncle, was Mr. Morgan’s
  most intimate friend before he left here a number of years ago, and
  it was a pleasant occasion for the formal announcement of some news
  which you heard from Lucy Morgan before you returned to college. At
  least she told me she had told you the night before you left that
  her father had decided to return here to live. It was appropriate
  that your mother, herself an old friend, should assemble a
  representative selection of Mr. Morgan’s old friends around him
  at such a time. He was in great spirits and most entertaining. As
  your time was so charmingly taken up during your visit home with a
  younger member of his family, you probably overlooked opportunities
  of hearing him talk, and do not know what an interesting man he
  can be. He will soon begin to build his factory here for the
  manufacture of _automobiles_, which he says is a term he prefers
  to “horseless carriages.” Your Uncle George told me he would like
  to invest in this factory, as George thinks there is a future for
  automobiles; perhaps not for general use, but as an interesting
  novelty, which people with sufficient means would like to own for
  their amusement and the sake of variety. However, he said Mr.
  Morgan laughingly declined his offer, as Mr. M. was fully able to
  finance this venture, though not starting in a very large way. Your
  uncle said other people are manufacturing automobiles in different
  parts of the country with success. Your father is not very well,
  though he is not actually ill, and the doctor tells him he ought
  not to be so much at his office, as the long years of application
  indoors with no exercise are beginning to affect him unfavourably,
  but I believe your father would die if he had to give up his work,
  which is all that has ever interested him outside of his family. I
  never could understand it. Mr. Morgan took your mother and me with
  Lucy to see Modjeska in “Twelfth Night” yesterday evening, and Lucy
  said she thought the Duke looked rather like you, only much more
  democratic in his manner. I suppose you will think I have written a
  great deal about the Morgans in this letter, but thought you would
  be interested because of your interest in a _younger member_ of his
  family. Hoping that you are finding college still as attractive as
  ever,

                                              Affectionately,
                                                          Aunt Fanny.

George read one sentence in this letter several times. Then he dropped
the missive in his wastebasket to join the clipping, and strolled
down the corridor of his dormitory to borrow a copy of “Twelfth
Night.” Having secured one, he returned to his study and refreshed his
memory of the play—but received no enlightenment that enabled him to
comprehend Lucy’s strange remark. However, he found himself impelled
in the direction of correspondence, and presently wrote a letter—not a
reply to his Aunt Fanny.

  Dear Lucy:

  No doubt you will be surprised at hearing from me so soon again,
  especially as this makes two in answer to the one received from
  you since getting back to the old place. I hear you have been
  making comments about me at the theatre, that some actor was more
  democratic in his manners than I am, which I do not understand. You
  know my theory of life because I explained it to you on our first
  drive together, when I told you I would not talk to everybody about
  things I feel like the way I spoke to you of my theory of life. I
  believe those who are able should have a true theory of life, and I
  developed my theory of life long, long ago.

  Well, here I sit smoking my faithful briar pipe, indulging in
  the fragrance of my tobacco as I look out on the campus from my
  many-paned window, and things are different with me from the way
  they were way back in Freshman year. I can see now how boyish in
  many ways I was then. I believe what has changed me as much as
  anything was my visit home at the time I met you. So I sit here
  with my faithful briar and dream the old dreams over as it were,
  dreaming of the waltzes we waltzed together and of that last night
  before we parted, and you told me the good news you were going to
  live there, and I would find my friend waiting for me, when I get
  home next summer.

  I will be glad my friend will be waiting for me. I am not capable
  of friendship except for the very few, and, looking back over my
  life, I remember there were times when I doubted if I could feel
  a great friendship for anybody—especially girls. I do not take a
  great interest in many people, as you know, for I find most of
  them shallow. Here in the old place I do not believe in being
  hail-fellow-well-met with every Tom, Dick, and Harry just because
  he happens to be a classmate, any more than I do at home, where I
  have always been careful who I was seen with, largely on account of
  the family, but also because my disposition ever since my boyhood
  has been to encourage real intimacy from but the few.

  What are you reading now? I have finished both “Henry Esmond”
  and “The Virginians.” I like Thackeray because he is not trashy,
  and because he writes principally of nice people. My theory of
  literature is an author who does not indulge in trashiness—writes
  about people you could introduce into your own home. I agree with
  my Uncle Sydney, as I once heard him say he did not care to read a
  book or go to a play about people he would not care to meet at his
  own dinner table. I believe we should live by certain standards and
  ideals, as you know from my telling you my theory of life.

  Well, a letter is no place for deep discussions, so I will not go
  into the subject. From several letters from my mother, and one from
  Aunt Fanny, I hear you are seeing a good deal of the family since I
  left. I hope sometimes you think of the member who is absent. I got
  a silver frame for your photograph in New York, and I keep it on my
  desk. It is the only girl’s photograph I ever took the trouble to
  have framed, though, as I told you frankly, I have had any number
  of other girls’ photographs, yet all were only passing fancies, and
  oftentimes I have questioned in years past if I was capable of much
  friendship toward the feminine sex, which I usually found shallow
  until our own friendship began. When I look at your photograph, I
  say to myself, “At last, at last here is one that will not prove
  shallow.”

  My faithful briar has gone out. I will have to rise and fill it,
  then once more in the fragrance of My Lady Nicotine, I will sit and
  dream the old dreams over, and think, too, of the true friend at
  home awaiting my return in June for the summer vacation.

  Friend, this is from your friend,
                                                               G.A.M.

George’s anticipations were not disappointed. When he came home in
June his friend was awaiting him; at least, she was so pleased to see
him again that for a few minutes after their first encounter she was a
little breathless, and a great deal glowing, and quiet withal. Their
sentimental friendship continued, though sometimes he was irritated by
her making it less sentimental than he did, and sometimes by what he
called her “air of superiority.” Her air was usually, in truth, that
of a fond but amused older sister; and George did not believe such an
attitude was warranted by her eight months of seniority.

Lucy and her father were living at the Amberson Hotel, while Morgan
got his small machine-shops built in a western outskirt of the town;
and George grumbled about the shabbiness and the old-fashioned look of
the hotel, though it was “still the best in the place, of course.” He
remonstrated with his grandfather, declaring that the whole Amberson
Estate would be getting “run-down and out-at-heel, if things weren’t
taken in hand pretty soon.” He urged the general need of rebuilding,
renovating, varnishing, and lawsuits. But the Major, declining to hear
him out, interrupted querulously, saying that he had enough to bother
him without any advice from George; and retired to his library, going
so far as to lock the door audibly.

“Second childhood!” George muttered, shaking his head; and he thought
sadly that the Major had not long to live. However, this surmise
depressed him for only a moment or so. Of course, people couldn’t be
expected to live forever, and it would be a good thing to have someone
in charge of the Estate who wouldn’t let it get to looking so rusty
that riffraff dared to make fun of it. For George had lately undergone
the annoyance of calling upon the Morgans, in the rather stuffy red
velours and gilt parlour of their apartment at the hotel, one evening
when Mr. Frederick Kinney also was a caller, and Mr. Kinney had not
been tactful. In fact, though he adopted a humorous tone of voice, in
expressing his sympathy for people who, through the city’s poverty in
hotels, were obliged to stay at the Amberson, Mr. Kinney’s intention
was interpreted by the other visitor as not at all humorous, but, on
the contrary, personal and offensive.

George rose abruptly, his face the colour of wrath. “Good-night, Miss
Morgan. Good-night, Mr. Morgan,” he said. “I shall take pleasure in
calling at some other time when a more courteous sort of people may be
present.”

“Look here!” the hot-headed Fred burst out. “Don’t you try to make me
out a boor, George Minafer! I wasn’t hinting anything at you; I simply
forgot all about your grandfather owning this old building. Don’t you
try to put me in the light of a boor! I won’t—”

But George walked out in the very course of this vehement protest, and
it was necessarily left unfinished.

Mr. Kinney remained only a few moments after George’s departure; and
as the door closed upon him, the distressed Lucy turned to her father.
She was plaintively surprised to find him in a condition of immoderate
laughter.

“I didn’t—I didn’t think I could hold out!” he gasped, and, after
choking until tears came to his eyes, felt blindly for the chair from
which he had risen to wish Mr. Kinney an indistinct good-night. His
hand found the arm of the chair; he collapsed feebly, and sat uttering
incoherent sounds.

“Papa!”

“It brings things back so!” he managed to explain, “This very Fred
Kinney’s father and young George’s father, Wilbur Minafer, used to do
just such things when they were at that age—and, for that matter, so
did George Amberson and I, and all the rest of us!” And, in spite of
his exhaustion, he began to imitate: “Don’t you try to put me in the
light of a boor!” “I shall take pleasure in calling at some time when a
more courteous sort of people—” He was unable to go on.

There is a mirth for every age, and Lucy failed to comprehend her
father’s, but tolerated it a little ruefully.

“Papa, I think they were shocking. Weren’t they _awful!_”

“Just—just boys!” he moaned, wiping his eyes. But Lucy could not smile
at all; she was beginning to look indignant. “I can forgive that poor
Fred Kinney,” she said. “He’s just blundering—but George—oh, George
behaved outrageously!”

“It’s a difficult age,” her father observed, his calmness somewhat
restored. “Girls don’t seem to have to pass through it quite as boys
do, or their _savoir faire_ is instinctive—or something!” And he gave
away to a return of his convulsion.

She came and sat upon the arm of his chair. “Papa, _why_ should George
behave like that?”

“He’s sensitive.”

“Rather! But why is he? He does anything he likes to, without any
regard for what people think. Then why should he mind so furiously when
the least little thing reflects upon him, or on anything or anybody
connected with him?”

Eugene patted her hand. “That’s one of the greatest puzzles of human
vanity, dear; and I don’t pretend to know the answer. In all my life,
the most arrogant people that I’ve known have been the most sensitive.
The people who have done the most in contempt of other people’s
opinion, and who consider themselves the highest above it, have been
the most furious if it went against them. Arrogant and domineering
people can’t stand the least, lightest, faintest breath of criticism.
It just kills them.”

“Papa, do you think George is _terribly_ arrogant and domineering?”

“Oh, he’s still only a boy,” said Eugene consolingly. “There’s plenty
of fine stuff in him—can’t help but be, because he’s Isabel Amberson’s
son.”

Lucy stroked his hair, which was still almost as dark as her own. “You
liked her pretty well once, I guess, papa.”

“I do still,” he said quietly.

“She’s lovely—lovely! Papa—” she paused, then continued—“I wonder
sometimes—”

“What?”

“I wonder just how she happened to marry Mr. Minafer.”

“Oh, Minafer’s all right,” said Eugene. “He’s a quiet sort of man, but
he’s a good man and a kind man. He always was, and those things count.”

“But in a way—well, I’ve heard people say there wasn’t anything to him
at all except business and saving money. Miss Fanny Minafer herself
told me that everything George and his mother have of their own—that
is, just to spend as they like—she says it has always come from Major
Amberson.”

“Thrift, Horatio!” said Eugene lightly. “Thrift’s an inheritance, and
a common enough one here. The people who settled the country _had_ to
save, so making and saving were taught as virtues, and the people, to
the third generation, haven’t found out that making and saving are
only means to an end. Minafer doesn’t believe in money being spent. He
believes God made it to be invested and saved.”

“But George isn’t saving. He’s reckless, and even if he is arrogant and
conceited and bad-tempered, he’s awfully generous.”

“Oh, he’s an Amberson,” said her father. “The Ambersons aren’t saving.
They’re too much the other way, most of them.”

“I don’t think I should have called George bad-tempered,” Lucy said
thoughtfully. “No. I don’t think he is.”

“Only when he’s cross about something?” Morgan suggested, with a
semblance of sympathetic gravity.

“Yes,” she said brightly, not perceiving that his intention was
humorous. “All the rest of the time he’s really very amiable. Of
course, he’s much more a perfect _child_, the whole time, than he
realizes! He certainly behaved awfully to-night.” She jumped up, her
indignation returning. “He did, indeed, and it won’t do to encourage
him in it. I think he’ll find me pretty cool—for a week or so!”

Whereupon her father suffered a renewal of his attack of uproarious
laughter.




Chapter XI


In the matter of coolness, George met Lucy upon her own predetermined
ground; in fact, he was there first, and, at their next encounter,
proved loftier and more formal than she did. Their estrangement lasted
three weeks, and then disappeared without any preliminary treaty: it
had worn itself out, and they forgot it.

At times, however, George found other disturbances to the friendship.
Lucy was “too much the village belle,” he complained; and took a
satiric attitude toward his competitors, referring to them as her
“local swains and bumpkins,” sulking for an afternoon when she reminded
him that he, too, was at least “local.” She was a belle with older
people as well; Isabel and Fanny were continually taking her driving,
bringing her home with them to lunch or dinner, and making a hundred
little engagements with her, and the Major had taken a great fancy
to her, insisting upon her presence and her father’s at the Amberson
family dinner at the Mansion every Sunday evening. She knew how to
flirt with old people, he said, as she sat next him at the table on
one of these Sunday occasions; and he had always liked her father,
even when Eugene was a “terror” long ago. “Oh, yes, he was!” the Major
laughed, when she remonstrated. “He came up here with my son George and
some others for a serenade one night, and Eugene stepped into a bass
fiddle, and the poor musicians just gave up! I had a pretty half-hour
getting my son George upstairs. I remember! It was the last time
Eugene ever touched a drop—but he’d touched plenty before that, young
lady, and he daren’t deny it! Well, well; there’s another thing that’s
changed: hardly anybody drinks nowadays. Perhaps it’s just as well, but
things used to be livelier. That serenade was just before Isabel was
married—and don’t you fret, Miss Lucy: your father remembers it well
enough!” The old gentleman burst into laughter, and shook his finger at
Eugene across the table. “The fact is,” the Major went on hilariously,
“I believe if Eugene hadn’t broken that bass fiddle and given himself
away, Isabel would never have taken Wilbur! I shouldn’t be surprised if
that was about all the reason that Wilbur got her! What do you think,
Wilbur?”

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Wilbur placidly. “If your notion is
right, I’m glad ’Gene broke the fiddle. He was giving me a hard run!”

The Major always drank three glasses of champagne at his Sunday dinner,
and he was finishing the third. “What do you say about it, Isabel? By
Jove!” he cried, pounding the table. “She’s blushing!”

Isabel did blush, but she laughed. “Who wouldn’t blush!” she cried, and
her sister-in-law came to her assistance.

“The important thing,” said Fanny jovially, “is that Wilbur did get
her, and not only got her, but kept her!”

Eugene was as pink as Isabel, but he laughed without any sign of
embarrassment other than his heightened colour. “There’s another
important thing—that is, for me,” he said. “It’s the only thing that
makes me forgive that bass viol for getting in my way.”

“What is it?” the Major asked.

“Lucy,” said Morgan gently.

Isabel gave him a quick glance, all warm approval, and there was a
murmur of friendliness round the table.

George was not one of those who joined in this applause. He considered
his grandfather’s nonsense indelicate, even for second childhood, and
he thought that the sooner the subject was dropped the better. However,
he had only a slight recurrence of the resentment which had assailed
him during the winter at every sign of his mother’s interest in Morgan;
though he was still ashamed of his aunt sometimes, when it seemed to
him that Fanny was almost publicly throwing herself at the widower’s
head. Fanny and he had one or two arguments in which her fierceness
again astonished and amused him.

“You drop your criticisms of your relatives,” she bade him, hotly, one
day, “and begin thinking a little about your own behaviour! You say
people will ‘talk’ about my—about my merely being pleasant to an old
friend! What do I care how they talk? I guess if people are talking
about anybody in this family they’re talking about the impertinent
little snippet that hasn’t any respect for anything, and doesn’t even
know enough to attend to his own affairs!”

“‘Snippet,’ Aunt Fanny!” George laughed. “How elegant! And ‘little
snippet’—when I’m over five-feet-eleven?”

“I said it!” she snapped, departing. “I don’t see how Lucy can stand
you!”

“You’d make an amiable stepmother-in-law!” he called after her. “I’ll
be careful about proposing to Lucy!”

These were but roughish spots in a summer that glided by evenly and
quickly enough, for the most part, and, at the end, seemed to fly. On
the last night before George went back to be a Junior, his mother asked
him confidently if it had not been a happy summer.

He hadn’t thought about it, he answered. “Oh, I suppose so. Why?”

“I just thought it would be nice to hear you say so,” she said,
smiling. “I mean, it’s pleasant for people of my age to know that
people of your age realize that they’re happy.”

“People of your age!” he repeated. “You know you don’t look precisely
like an old woman, mother. Not precisely!”

“No,” she said. “And I suppose I feel about as young as you do, inside,
but it won’t be many years before I must begin to look old. It does
come!” She sighed, still smiling. “It’s seemed to me that, it must have
been a happy summer for you—a real ‘summer of roses and wine’—without
the wine, perhaps. ‘Gather ye roses while ye may’—or was it primroses?
Time does really fly, or perhaps it’s more like the sky—and smoke—”

George was puzzled. “What do you mean: time being like the sky and
smoke?”

“I mean the things that we have and that we think are so solid—they’re
like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into.
You know how a wreath of smoke goes up from a chimney, and seems all
thick and black and busy against the sky, as if it were going to do
such important things and last forever, and you see it getting thinner
and thinner—and then, in such a little while, it isn’t there at all;
nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same
forever.”

“It strikes me you’re getting mixed up,” said George cheerfully. “I
don’t see much resemblance between time and the sky, or between things
and smoke-wreaths; but I do see one reason you like Lucy Morgan so
much. She talks that same kind of wistful, moony way sometimes—I don’t
mean to say I mind it in either of you, because I rather like to listen
to it, and you’ve got a very good voice, mother. It’s nice to listen
to, no matter how much smoke and sky, and so on, you talk. So’s Lucy’s
for that matter; and I see why you’re congenial. She talks that way to
her father, too; and he’s right there with the same kind of guff. Well,
it’s all right with me!” He laughed, teasingly, and allowed her to
retain his hand, which she had fondly seized. “I’ve got plenty to think
about when people drool along!”

She pressed his hand to her cheek, and a tear made a tiny warm streak
across one of his knuckles.

“For heaven’s sake!” he said. “What’s the matter? Isn’t everything all
right?”

“You’re going away!”

“Well, I’m coming back, don’t you suppose? Is that all that worries
you?”

She cheered up, and smiled again, but shook her head. “I never can bear
to see you go—that’s the most of it. I’m a little bothered about your
father, too.”

“Why?”

“It seems to me he looks so badly. Everybody thinks so.”

“What nonsense!” George laughed. “He’s been looking that way all
summer. He isn’t much different from the way he’s looked all his life,
that I can see. What’s the matter with him?”

“He never talks much about his business to me but I think he’s been
worrying about some investments he made last year. I think his worry
has affected his health.”

“What investments?” George demanded. “He hasn’t gone into Mr. Morgan’s
automobile concern, has he?”

“No,” Isabel smiled. “The ‘automobile concern’ is all Eugene’s, and
it’s so small I understand it’s taken hardly anything. No; your father
has always prided himself on making only the most absolutely safe
investments, but two or three years ago he and your Uncle George both
put a great deal—pretty much everything they could get together, I
think—into the stock of rolling-mills some friends of theirs owned, and
I’m afraid the mills haven’t been doing well.”

“What of that? Father needn’t worry. You and I could take care of him
the rest of his life on what grandfather—”

“Of course,” she agreed. “But your father’s always lived so for his
business and taken such pride in his sound investments; it’s a passion
with him. I—”

“Pshaw! He needn’t worry! You tell him we’ll look after him: we’ll
build him a little stone bank in the backyard, if he busts up, and he
can go and put his pennies in it every morning. That’ll keep him just
as happy as he ever was!” He kissed her. “Good-night, I’m going to tell
Lucy good-bye. Don’t sit up for me.”

She walked to the front gate with him, still holding his hand, and he
told her again not to “sit up” for him.

“Yes, I will,” she laughed. “You won’t be very late.”

“Well—it’s my last night.”

“But I know Lucy, and she knows I want to see you, too, your last
night. You’ll see: she’ll send you home promptly at eleven!”

But she was mistaken: Lucy sent him home promptly at ten.




Chapter XII


Isabel’s uneasiness about her husband’s health—sometimes reflected in
her letters to George during the winter that followed—had not been
alleviated when the accredited Senior returned for his next summer
vacation, and she confided to him in his room, soon after his arrival,
that “something” the doctor had said to her lately had made her more
uneasy than ever.

“Still worrying over his rolling-mills investments?” George asked, not
seriously impressed.

“I’m afraid it’s past that stage from what Dr. Rainey says. His worries
only aggravate his condition now. Dr. Rainey says we ought to get him
away.”

“Well, let’s do it, then.”

“He won’t go.”

“He’s a man awfully set in his ways; that’s true,” said George. “I
don’t think there’s anything much the matter with him, though, and he
looks just the same to me. Have you seen Lucy lately? How is she?”

“Hasn’t she written you?”

“Oh, about once a month,” he answered carelessly. “Never says much
about herself. How’s she look?”

“She looks—pretty!” said Isabel. “I suppose she wrote you they’ve
moved?”

“Yes; I’ve got her address. She said they were building.”

“They did. It’s all finished, and they’ve been in it a month. Lucy is
so capable; she keeps house exquisitely. It’s small, but oh, such a
pretty little house!”

“Well, that’s fortunate,” George said. “One thing I’ve always felt they
didn’t know a great deal about is architecture.”

“Don’t they?” asked Isabel, surprised. “Anyhow, their house is
charming. It’s way out beyond the end of Amberson Boulevard; it’s quite
near that big white house with a gray-green roof somebody built out
there a year or so ago. There are any number of houses going up, out
that way; and the trolley-line runs within a block of them now, on the
next street, and the traction people are laying tracks more than three
miles beyond. I suppose you’ll be driving out to see Lucy to-morrow.”

“I thought—” George hesitated. “I thought perhaps I’d go after dinner
this evening.”

At this his mother laughed, not astonished. “It was only my feeble joke
about ‘to-morrow,’ Georgie! I was pretty sure you couldn’t wait that
long. Did Lucy write you about the factory?”

“No. What factory?”

“The automobile shops. They had rather a dubious time at first, I’m
afraid, and some of Eugene’s experiments turned out badly, but this
spring they’ve finished eight automobiles and sold them all, and
they’ve got twelve more almost finished, and they’re sold already!
Eugene’s so gay over it!”

“What do his old sewing-machines look like? Like that first one he had
when they came here?”

“No, indeed! These have rubber tires blown up with air—pneumatic! And
they aren’t so high; they’re very easy to get into, and the engine’s
in front—Eugene thinks that’s a great improvement. They’re very
interesting to look at; behind the driver’s seat there’s a sort of box
where four people can sit, with a step and a little door in the rear,
and—”

“I know all about it,” said George. “I’ve seen any number like that,
East. You can see all you want of ’em, if you stand on Fifth Avenue
half an hour, any afternoon. I’ve seen half-a-dozen go by almost at the
same time—within a few minutes, anyhow; and of course electric hansoms
are a common sight there any day. I hired one, myself, the last time I
was there. How fast do Mr. Morgan’s machines go?”

“Much too fast! It’s very exhilarating—but rather frightening; and they
do make a fearful uproar. He says, though, he thinks he sees a way to
get around the noisiness in time.”

“I don’t mind the noise,” said George. “Give me a horse, for mine,
though, any day. I must get up a race with one of these things:
Pendennis’ll leave it one mile behind in a two-mile run. How’s
grandfather?”

“He looks well, but he complains sometimes of his heart: I suppose
that’s natural at his age—and it’s an Amberson trouble.” Having
mentioned this, she looked anxious instantly. “Did you ever feel any
weakness there, Georgie?”

“No!” he laughed.

“Are you sure, dear?”

“No!” And he laughed again. “Did you?”

“Oh, I think not—at least, the doctor told me he thought my heart was
about all right. He said I needn’t be alarmed.”

“I should think not! Women do seem to be always talking about health: I
suppose they haven’t got enough else to think of!”

“That must be it,” she said gayly. “We’re an idle lot!”

George had taken off his coat. “I don’t like to hint to a lady,” he
said, “but I do want to dress before dinner.”

“Don’t be long; I’ve got to do a lot of looking at you, dear!” She
kissed him and ran away singing.

But his Aunt Fanny was not so fond; and at the dinner-table there came
a spark of liveliness into her eye when George patronizingly asked her
what was the news in her own “particular line of sport.”

“What do you mean, Georgie?” she asked quietly.

“Oh I mean: What’s the news in the fast set generally? You been causing
any divorces lately?”

“No,” said Fanny, the spark in her eye getting brighter. “I haven’t
been causing anything.”

“Well, what’s the gossip? You usually hear pretty much everything that
goes on around the nooks and crannies in this town, I hear. What’s the
last from the gossips’ corner, auntie?”

Fanny dropped her eyes, and the spark was concealed, but a movement of
her lower lip betokened a tendency to laugh, as she replied, “There
hasn’t been much gossip lately, except the report that Lucy Morgan and
Fred Kinney are engaged—and that’s quite old, by this time.”

Undeniably, this bit of mischief was entirely successful, for there was
a clatter upon George’s plate. “What—what do you think you’re talking
about?” he gasped.

Miss Fanny looked up innocently. “About the report of Lucy Morgan’s
engagement to Fred Kinney.”

George turned dumbly to his mother, and Isabel shook her head
reassuringly. “People are always starting rumours,” she said. “I
haven’t paid any attention to this one.”

“But you—you’ve heard it?” he stammered.

“Oh, one hears all sorts of nonsense, dear. I haven’t the slightest
idea that it’s true.”

“Then you have heard it!”

“I wouldn’t let it take my appetite,” his father suggested drily.
“There are plenty of girls in the world!”

George turned pale.

“Eat your dinner, Georgie,” his aunt said sweetly. “Food will do you
good. I didn’t say I knew this rumour was true. I only said I’d heard
it.”

“When? When did you hear it!”

“Oh, months ago!” And Fanny found any further postponement of laughter
impossible.

“Fanny, you’re a hard-hearted creature,” Isabel said gently. “You
really are. Don’t pay any attention to her, George. Fred Kinney’s only
a clerk in his uncle’s hardware place: he couldn’t marry for ages—even
if anybody would accept him!”

George breathed tumultuously. “I don’t care anything about ‘ages’!
What’s that got to do with it?” he said, his thoughts appearing to be
somewhat disconnected. “‘Ages,’ don’t mean anything! I only want to
know—I want to know—I want—” He stopped.

“What do you want?” his father asked crossly. “Why don’t you say it?
Don’t make such a fuss.”

“I’m not—not at all,” George declared, pushing his chair back from the
table.

“You must finish your dinner, dear,” his mother urged. “Don’t—”

“I have finished. I’ve eaten all I want. I don’t want any more than
I wanted. I don’t want—I—” He rose, still incoherent. “I prefer—I
want—Please excuse me!”

He left the room, and a moment later the screens outside the open front
door were heard to slam.

“Fanny! You shouldn’t—”

“Isabel, don’t reproach me. He did have plenty of dinner, and I only
told the truth: everybody has been saying—”

“But there isn’t any truth in it.”

“We don’t actually know there isn’t,” Miss Fanny insisted, giggling.
“We’ve never asked Lucy.”

“I wouldn’t ask her anything so absurd!”

“George would,” George’s father remarked. “That’s what he’s gone to do.”

Mr. Minafer was not mistaken: that was what his son had gone to do.
Lucy and her father were just rising from their dinner table when the
stirred youth arrived at the front door of the new house. It was a
cottage, however, rather than a house; and Lucy had taken a free hand
with the architect, achieving results in white and green, outside, and
white and blue, inside, to such effect of youth and daintiness that her
father complained of “too much spring-time!” The whole place, including
his own bedroom, was a young damsel’s boudoir, he said, so that nowhere
could he smoke a cigar without feeling like a ruffian. However, he was
smoking when George arrived, and he encouraged George to join him in
the pastime, but the caller, whose air was both tense and preoccupied,
declined with something like agitation.

“I never smoke—that is, I’m seldom—I mean, no thanks,” he said. “I mean
not at all. I’d rather not.”

“Aren’t you well, George?” Eugene asked, looking at him in perplexity.
“Have you been overworking at college? You do look rather pa—”

“I don’t work,” said George. “I mean I don’t work. I think, but I don’t
work. I only work at the end of the term. There isn’t much to do.”

Eugene’s perplexity was little decreased, and a tinkle of the door-bell
afforded him obvious relief. “It’s my foreman,” he said, looking at
his watch. “I’ll take him out in the yard to talk. This is no place
for a foreman.” And he departed, leaving the “living room” to Lucy and
George. It was a pretty room, white panelled and blue curtained—and no
place for a foreman, as Eugene said. There was a grand piano, and Lucy
stood leaning back against it, looking intently at George, while her
fingers, behind her, absently struck a chord or two. And her dress was
the dress for that room, being of blue and white, too; and the high
colour in her cheeks was far from interfering with the general harmony
of things—George saw with dismay that she was prettier than ever, and
naturally he missed the reassurance he might have felt had he been
able to guess that Lucy, on her part, was finding him better looking
than ever. For, however unusual the scope of George’s pride, vanity of
beauty was not included; he did not think about his looks.

“What’s wrong, George?” she asked softly.

“What do you mean: ‘What’s wrong?’”

“You’re awfully upset about something. Didn’t you get though your
examination all right?”

“Certainly I did. What makes you think anything’s ‘wrong’ with me?”

“You do look pale, as papa said, and it seemed to me that the way you
talked sounded—well, a little confused.”

“‘Confused’! I said I didn’t care to smoke. What in the world is
confused about that?”

“Nothing. But—”

“See here!” George stepped close to her. “Are you glad to see me?”

“You needn’t be so fierce about it!” Lucy protested, laughing at his
dramatic intensity. “Of course I am! How long have I been looking
forward to it?”

“I don’t know,” he said sharply, abating nothing of his fierceness.
“How long have you?”

“Why—ever since you went away!”

“Is that true? Lucy, is that true?”

“You are funny!” she said. “Of course it’s true. Do tell me what’s the
matter with you, George!”

“I will!” he exclaimed. “I was a boy when I saw you last. I see that
now, though I didn’t then. Well, I’m not a boy any longer. I’m a man,
and a man has a right to demand a totally different treatment.”

“Why has he?”

“What?”

“I don’t seem to be able to understand you at all, George. Why
shouldn’t a boy be treated just as well as a man?”

George seemed to find himself at a loss. “Why shouldn’t—Well, he
shouldn’t, because a man has a right to certain explanations.”

“What explanations?”

“Whether he’s been made a toy of!” George almost shouted. “That’s what
I want to know!”

Lucy shook her head despairingly. “You are the queerest person! You say
you’re a man now, but you talk more like a boy than ever. What does
make you so excited?”

“‘Excited!’” he stormed. “Do you dare to stand there and call me
‘excited’? I tell you, I never have been more calm or calmer in my
life! I don’t know that a person needs to be called ‘excited’ because
he demands explanations that are his simple due!”

“What in the world do you want me to explain?”

“Your conduct with Fred Kinney!” George shouted.

Lucy uttered a sudden cry of laughter; she was delighted. “It’s
been awful!” she said. “I don’t know that I ever heard of worse
misbehaviour! Papa and I have been twice to dinner with his family, and
I’ve been three times to church with Fred—and once to the circus! I
don’t know when they’ll be here to arrest me!”

“Stop that!” George commanded fiercely. “I want to know just one thing,
and I mean to know it, too!”

“Whether I enjoyed the circus?”

“I want to know if you’re engaged to him!”

“No!” she cried and lifting her face close to his for the shortest
instant possible, she gave him a look half merry, half defiant, but all
fond. It was an adorable look.

“Lucy!” he said huskily.

But she turned quickly from him, and ran to the other end of the room.
He followed awkwardly, stammering:

“Lucy, I want—I want to ask you. Will you—will you—will you be engaged
to me?”

She stood at a window, seeming to look out into the summer darkness,
her back to him.

“Will you, Lucy?”

“No,” she murmured, just audibly.

“Why not?”

“I’m older than you.”

“Eight months!”

“You’re too young.”

“Is that—” he said, gulping—“is that the only reason you won’t?”

She did not answer.

As she stood, persistently staring out of the window, with her back to
him, she did not see how humble his attitude had become; but his voice
was low, and it shook so that she could have no doubt of his emotion.
“Lucy, please forgive me for making such a row,” he said, thus gently.
“I’ve been—I’ve been terribly upset—terribly! You know how I feel about
you, and always have felt about you. I’ve shown it in every single
thing I’ve done since the first time I met you, and I know you know it.
Don’t you?”

Still she did not move or speak.

“Is the only reason you won’t be engaged to me you think I’m too young,
Lucy?”

“It’s—it’s reason enough,” she said faintly.

At that he caught one of her hands, and she turned to him: there were
tears in her eyes, tears which he did not understand at all.

“Lucy, you little dear!” he cried. “I knew you—”

“No, no!” she said, and she pushed him away, withdrawing her hand.
“George, let’s not talk of solemn things.”

“‘Solemn things!’ Like what?”

“Like—being engaged.”

But George had become altogether jubilant, and he laughed triumphantly.
“Good gracious, that isn’t solemn!”

“It is, too!” she said, wiping her eyes. “It’s too solemn for us.”

“No, it isn’t! I—”

“Let’s sit down and be sensible, dear,” she said. “You sit over there—”

“I will if you’ll call me, ‘dear’ again.”

“No,” she said. “I’ll only call you that once again this summer—the
night before you go away.”

“That will have to do, then,” he laughed, “so long as I know we’re
engaged.”

“But we’re not!” she protested. “And we never will be, if you don’t
promise not to speak of it again until—until I tell you to!”

“I won’t promise that,” said the happy George. “I’ll only promise
not to speak of it till the next time you call me ‘dear’; and you’ve
promised to call me that the night before I leave for my senior year.”

“Oh, but I didn’t!” she said earnestly, then hesitated. “Did I?”

“Didn’t you?”

“I don’t think I meant it,” she murmured, her wet lashes flickering
above troubled eyes.

“I know one thing about you,” he said gayly, his triumph increasing.
“You never went back on anything you said, yet, and I’m not afraid of
this being the first time!”

“But we mustn’t let—” she faltered; then went on tremulously, “George,
we’ve got on so well together, we won’t let this make a difference
between us, will we?” And she joined in his laughter.

“It will all depend on what you tell me the night before I go away. You
agree we’re going to settle things then, don’t you, Lucy?”

“I don’t promise.”

“Yes, you do! Don’t you?”

“Well—”




Chapter XIII


Tonight George began a jubilant warfare upon his Aunt Fanny, opening
the campaign upon his return home at about eleven o’clock. Fanny had
retired, and was presumably asleep, but George, on the way to his own
room, paused before her door, and serenaded her in a full baritone:

    “As I walk along the Boy de Balong
       With my independent air,
      The people all declare,
      ‘He must be a millionaire!’
    Oh, you hear them sigh, and wish to die,
      And see them wink the other eye
    At the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo!”

Isabel came from George’s room, where she had been reading, waiting for
him. “I’m afraid you’ll disturb your father, dear. I wish you’d sing
more, though—in the daytime! You have a splendid voice.”

“Good-night, old lady!”

“I thought perhaps I—Didn’t you want me to come in with you and talk a
little?”

“Not to-night. You go to bed. Good-night, old lady!”

He kissed her hilariously, entered his room with a skip, closed his
door noisily; and then he could be heard tossing things about, loudly
humming “The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”

Smiling, his mother knelt outside his door to pray; then, with her
“Amen,” pressed her lips to the bronze door-knob; and went silently to
her own apartment.

After breakfasting in bed, George spent the next morning at his
grandfather’s and did not encounter his Aunt Fanny until lunch, when
she seemed to be ready for him.

“Thank you so much for the serenade, George!” she said. “Your poor
father tells me he’d just got to sleep for the first time in two
nights, but after your kind attentions he lay awake the rest of last
night.”

“Perfectly true,” Mr. Minafer said grimly.

“Of course, I didn’t know, sir,” George hastened to assure him. “I’m
awfully sorry. But Aunt Fanny was so gloomy and excited before I went
out, last evening, I thought she needed cheering up.”

“I!” Fanny jeered. “I was gloomy? I was excited? You mean about that
engagement?”

“Yes. Weren’t you? I thought I heard you worrying over somebody’s
being engaged. Didn’t I hear you say you’d heard Mr. Eugene Morgan was
engaged to marry some pretty little seventeen-year-old girl?”

Fanny was stung, but she made a brave effort. “Did you ask Lucy?” she
said, her voice almost refusing the teasing laugh she tried to make it
utter. “Did you ask her when Fred Kinney and she—”

“Yes. That story wasn’t true. But the other one—” Here he stared at
Fanny, and then affected dismay. “Why, what’s the matter with your
face, Aunt Fanny? It seems agitated!”

“Agitated!” Fanny said disdainfully, but her voice undeniably lacked
steadiness. “Agitated!”

“Oh, come!” Mr. Minafer interposed. “Let’s have a little peace!”

“I’m willing,” said George. “I don’t want to see poor Aunt Fanny all
stirred up over a rumour I just this minute invented myself. She’s so
excitable—about certain subjects—it’s hard to control her.” He turned
to his mother. “What’s the matter with grandfather?”

“Didn’t you see him this morning?” Isabel asked.

“Yes. He was glad to see me, and all that, but he seemed pretty
fidgety. Has he been having trouble with his heart again?”

“Not lately. No.”

“Well, he’s not himself. I tried to talk to him about the estate;
it’s disgraceful—it really is—the way things are looking. He wouldn’t
listen, and he seemed upset. What’s he upset over?”

Isabel looked serious; however, it was her husband who suggested
gloomily, “I suppose the Major’s bothered about this Sydney and Amelia
business, most likely.”

“What Sydney and Amelia business?” George asked.

“Your mother can tell you, if she wants to,” Minafer said. “It’s not my
side of the family, so I keep off.”

“It’s rather disagreeable for all of us, Georgie,” Isabel began. “You
see, your Uncle Sydney wanted a diplomatic position, and he thought
brother George, being in Congress, could arrange it. George did get him
the offer of a South American ministry, but Sydney wanted a European
ambassadorship, and he got quite indignant with poor George for
thinking he’d take anything smaller—and he believes George didn’t work
hard enough for him. George had done his best, of course, and now he’s
out of Congress, and won’t run again—so there’s Sydney’s idea of a big
diplomatic position gone for good. Well, Sydney and your Aunt Amelia
are terribly disappointed, and they say they’ve been thinking for years
that this town isn’t really fit to live in—‘for a gentleman,’ Sydney
says—and it is getting rather big and dirty. So they’ve sold their
house and decided to go abroad to live permanently; there’s a villa
near Florence they’ve often talked of buying. And they want father to
let them have their share of the estate now, instead of waiting for him
to leave it to them in his will.”

“Well, I suppose that’s fair enough,” George said. “That is, in case he
intended to leave them a certain amount in his will.”

“Of course that’s understood, Georgie. Father explained his will to us
long ago; a third to them, and a third to brother George, and a third
to us.”

Her son made a simple calculation in his mind. Uncle George was a
bachelor, and probably would never marry; Sydney and Amelia were
childless. The Major’s only grandchild appeared to remain the eventual
heir of the entire property, no matter if the Major did turn over
to Sydney a third of it now. And George had a fragmentary vision
of himself, in mourning, arriving to take possession of a historic
Florentine villa—he saw himself walking up a cypress-bordered path,
with ancient carven stone balustrades in the distance, and servants
in mourning livery greeting the new signore. “Well, I suppose it’s
grandfather’s own affair. He can do it or not, just as he likes. I
don’t see why he’d mind much.”

“He seemed rather confused and pained about it,” Isabel said. “I think
they oughtn’t to urge it. George says that the estate won’t stand
taking out the third that Sydney wants, and that Sydney and Amelia are
behaving like a couple of pigs.” She laughed, continuing, “Of course I
don’t know whether they are or not: I never have understood any more
about business myself than a little pig would! But I’m on George’s
side, whether he’s right or wrong; I always was from the time we were
children: and Sydney and Amelia are hurt with me about it, I’m afraid.
They’ve stopped speaking to George entirely. Poor father. Family rows
at his time of life.”

George became thoughtful. If Sydney and Amelia were behaving like pigs,
things might not be so simple as at first they seemed to be. Uncle
Sydney and Aunt Amelia might live an awful long while, he thought; and
besides, people didn’t always leave their fortunes to relatives. Sydney
might die first, leaving everything to his widow, and some curly-haired
Italian adventurer might get round her, over there in Florence; she
might be fool enough to marry again—or even adopt somebody!

He became more and more thoughtful, forgetting entirely a plan he had
formed for the continued teasing of his Aunt Fanny; and, an hour after
lunch, he strolled over to his grandfather’s, intending to apply for
further information, as a party rightfully interested.

He did not carry out this intention, however. Going into the big house
by a side entrance, he was informed that the Major was upstairs in his
bedroom, that his sons Sydney and George were both with him, and that
a serious argument was in progress. “You kin stan’ right in de middle
dat big, sta’y-way,” said Old Sam, the ancient negro, who was his
informant, “an’ you kin heah all you a-mind to wivout goin’ on up no
fudda. Mist’ Sydney an’ Mist’ Jawge talkin’ louduh’n I evuh heah nobody
ca’y on in nish heah house! Quollin’, honey, big quollin’!”

“All right,” said George shortly. “You go on back to your own part of
the house, and don’t make any talk. Hear me?”

“Yessuh, yessuh,” Sam chuckled, as he shuffled away. “Plenty talkin’
wivout Sam! Yessuh!”

George went to the foot of the great stairway. He could hear angry
voices overhead—those of his two uncles—and a plaintive murmur, as
if the Major tried to keep the peace. Such sounds were far from
encouraging to callers, and George decided not to go upstairs
until this interview was over. His decision was the result of no
timidity, nor of a too sensitive delicacy. What he felt was, that
if he interrupted the scene in his grandfather’s room, just at this
time, one of the three gentlemen engaging in it might speak to him
in a peremptory manner (in the heat of the moment) and George saw
no reason for exposing his dignity to such mischances. Therefore he
turned from the stairway, and going quietly into the library, picked
up a magazine—but he did not open it, for his attention was instantly
arrested by his Aunt Amelia’s voice, speaking in the next room. The
door was open and George heard her distinctly.

“Isabel does? Isabel!” she exclaimed, her tone high and shrewish. “You
needn’t tell me anything about Isabel Minafer, I guess, my dear old
Frank Bronson! I know her a little better than you do, don’t you think?”

George heard the voice of Mr. Bronson replying—a voice familiar to him
as that of his grandfather’s attorney-in-chief and chief intimate as
well. He was a contemporary of the Major’s, being over seventy, and
they had been through three years of the War in the same regiment.
Amelia addressed him now, with an effect of angry mockery, as “my dear
old Frank Bronson”; but that (without the mockery) was how the Amberson
family almost always spoke of him: “dear old Frank Bronson.” He was a
hale, thin old man, six feet three inches tall, and without a stoop.

“I doubt your knowing Isabel,” he said stiffly. “You speak of her as
you do because she sides with her brother George, instead of with you
and Sydney.”

“Pooh!” Aunt Amelia was evidently in a passion. “You know what’s been
going on over there, well enough, Frank Bronson!”

“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh, you don’t? You don’t know that Isabel takes George’s side simply
because he’s Eugene Morgan’s best friend?”

“It seems to me you’re talking pure nonsense,” said Bronson sharply.
“Not impure nonsense, I hope!”

Amelia became shrill. “I thought you were a man of the world: don’t
tell me you’re blind! For nearly two years Isabel’s been pretending
to chaperone Fanny Minafer with Eugene, and all the time she’s been
dragging that poor fool Fanny around to chaperone her and Eugene!
Under the circumstances, she knows people will get to thinking Fanny’s
a pretty slim kind of chaperone, and Isabel wants to please George
because she thinks there’ll be less talk if she can keep her own
brother around, seeming to approve. ‘Talk!’ She’d better look out! The
whole town will be talking, the first thing she knows! She—”

Amelia stopped, and stared at the doorway in a panic, for her nephew
stood there.

She kept her eyes upon his white face for a few strained moments, then,
regaining her nerve, looked away and shrugged her shoulders.

“You weren’t intended to hear what I’ve been saying, George,” she said
quietly. “But since you seem to—”

“Yes, I did.”

“So!” She shrugged her shoulders again. “After all, I don’t know but
it’s just as well, in the long run.”

He walked up to where she sat. “You—you—” he said thickly. “It seems—it
seems to me you’re—you’re pretty common!”

Amelia tried to give the impression of an unconcerned person laughing
with complete indifference, but the sounds she produced were disjointed
and uneasy. She fanned herself, looking out of the open window near
her. “Of course, if you want to make more trouble in the family than
we’ve already got, George, with your eavesdropping, you can go and
repeat—”

Old Bronson had risen from his chair in great distress. “Your aunt was
talking nonsense because she’s piqued over a business matter, George,”
he said. “She doesn’t mean what she said, and neither she nor any one
else gives the slightest credit to such foolishness—no one in the
world!”

George gulped, and wet lines shone suddenly along his lower eyelids.
“They—they’d better not!” he said, then stalked out of the room, and
out of the house. He stamped fiercely across the stone slabs of the
front porch, descended the steps, and halted abruptly, blinking in the
strong sunshine.

In front of his own gate, beyond the Major’s broad lawn, his mother
was just getting into her victoria, where sat already his Aunt Fanny
and Lucy Morgan. It was a summer fashion-picture: the three ladies
charmingly dressed, delicate parasols aloft; the lines of the victoria
graceful as those of a violin; the trim pair of bays in glistening
harness picked out with silver, and the serious black driver whom
Isabel, being an Amberson, dared even in that town to put into a black
livery coat, boots, white breeches, and cockaded hat. They jingled
smartly away, and, seeing George standing on the Major’s lawn, Lucy
waved, and Isabel threw him a kiss.

But George shuddered, pretending not to see them, and stooped as if
searching for something lost in the grass, protracting that posture
until the victoria was out of hearing. And ten minutes later, George
Amberson, somewhat in the semblance of an angry person plunging out of
the Mansion, found a pale nephew waiting to accost him.

“I haven’t time to talk, Georgie.”

“Yes, you have. You’d better!”

“What’s the matter, then?”

His namesake drew him away from the vicinity of the house. “I want to
tell you something I just heard Aunt Amelia say, in there.”

“I don’t want to hear it,” said Amberson. “I’ve been hearing entirely
too much of what ‘Aunt Amelia’ says, lately.”

“She says my mother’s on your side about this division of the property
because you’re Eugene Morgan’s best friend.”

“What in the name of heaven has that got to do with your mother’s being
on my side?”

“She said—” George paused to swallow. “She said—” He faltered.

“You look sick,” said his uncle; and laughed shortly. “If it’s because
of anything Amelia’s been saying, I don’t blame you! What else did she
say?”

George swallowed again, as with nausea, but under his uncle’s
encouragement he was able to be explicit. “She said my mother wanted
you to be friendly to her about Eugene Morgan. She said my mother had
been using Aunt Fanny as a chaperone.”

Amberson emitted a laugh of disgust. “It’s wonderful what tommy-rot a
woman in a state of spite can think of! I suppose you don’t doubt that
Amelia Amberson created this specimen of tommy-rot herself?”

“I know she did.”

“Then what’s the matter?”

“She said—” George faltered again. “She said—she implied people
were—were talking about it.”

“Of all the damn nonsense!” his uncle exclaimed.

George looked at him haggardly. “You’re sure they’re not?”

“Rubbish! Your mother’s on my side about this division because she
knows Sydney’s a pig and always has been a pig, and so has his spiteful
wife. I’m trying to keep them from getting the better of your mother as
well as from getting the better of me, don’t you suppose? Well, they’re
in a rage because Sydney always could do what he liked with father
unless your mother interfered, and they know I got Isabel to ask him
not to do what they wanted. They’re keeping up the fight and they’re
sore—and Amelia’s a woman who always says any damn thing that comes
into her head! That’s all there is to it.”

“But she said,” George persisted wretchedly; “she said there was talk.
She said—”

“Look here, young fellow!” Amberson laughed good-naturedly. “There
probably is some harmless talk about the way your Aunt Fanny goes after
poor Eugene, and I’ve no doubt I’ve abetted it myself. People can’t
help being amused by a thing like that. Fanny was always languishing at
him, twenty-odd years ago, before he left here. Well, we can’t blame
the poor thing if she’s got her hopes up again, and I don’t know that I
blame her, myself, for using your mother the way she does.”

“How do you mean?”

Amberson put his hand on George’s shoulder. “You like to tease Fanny,”
he said, “but I wouldn’t tease her about this, if I were you. Fanny
hasn’t got much in her life. You know, Georgie, just being an aunt
isn’t really the great career it may sometimes appear to you! In fact,
I don’t know of anything much that Fanny has got, except her feeling
about Eugene. She’s always had it—and what’s funny to us is pretty much
life-and-death to her, I suspect. Now, I’ll not deny that Eugene Morgan
is attracted to your mother. He is; and that’s another case of ‘always
was’; but I know him, and he’s a knight, George—a crazy one, perhaps,
if you’ve read ‘Don Quixote.’ And I think your mother likes him better
than she likes any man outside her own family, and that he interests
her more than anybody else—and ‘always has.’ And that’s all there is to
it, except—”

“Except what?” George asked quickly, as he paused.

“Except that I suspect—” Amberson chuckled, and began over: “I’ll tell
you in confidence. I think Fanny’s a fairly tricky customer, for such
an innocent old girl! There isn’t any real harm in her, but she’s a
great diplomatist—lots of cards up her lace sleeves, Georgie! By the
way, did you ever notice how proud she is of her arms? Always flashing
’em at poor Eugene!” And he stopped to laugh again.

“I don’t see anything confidential about that,” George complained. “I
thought—”

“Wait a minute! My idea is—don’t forget it’s a confidential one, but
I’m devilish right about it, young Georgie!—it’s this: Fanny uses your
mother for a decoy duck. She does everything in the world she can to
keep your mother’s friendship with Eugene going, because she thinks
that’s what keeps Eugene about the place, so to speak. Fanny’s always
with your mother, you see; and whenever he sees Isabel he sees Fanny.
Fanny thinks he’ll get used to the idea of her being around, and some
day her chance may come! You see, she’s probably afraid—perhaps she
even knows, poor thing!—that she wouldn’t get to see much of Eugene if
it weren’t for Isabel’s being such a friend of his. There! D’you see?”

“Well—I suppose so.” George’s brow was still dark, however. “If you’re
sure whatever talk there is, is about Aunt Fanny. If that’s so—”

“Don’t be an ass,” his uncle advised him lightly, moving away. “I’m off
for a week’s fishing to forget that woman in there, and her pig of a
husband.” (His gesture toward the Mansion indicated Mr. and Mrs. Sydney
Amberson.) “I recommend a like course to you, if you’re silly enough to
pay any attention to such rubbishings! Good-bye!”

George was partially reassured, but still troubled: a word haunted him
like the recollection of a nightmare. “Talk!”

He stood looking at the houses across the street from the Mansion; and
though the sunshine was bright upon them, they seemed mysteriously
threatening. He had always despised them, except the largest of them,
which was the home of his henchman, Charlie Johnson. The Johnsons had
originally owned a lot three hundred feet wide, but they had sold all
of it except the meager frontage before the house itself, and five
houses were now crowded into the space where one used to squire it so
spaciously. Up and down the street, the same transformation had taken
place: every big, comfortable old brick house now had two or three
smaller frame neighbours crowding up to it on each side, cheap-looking
neighbours, most of them needing paint and not clean—and yet, though
they were cheap looking, they had cost as much to build as the big
brick houses, whose former ample yards they occupied. Only where George
stood was there left a sward as of yore; the great, level, green lawn
that served for both the Major’s house and his daughter’s. This serene
domain—unbroken, except for the two gravelled carriage-drives—alone
remained as it had been during the early glories of the Amberson
Addition.

George stared at the ugly houses opposite, and hated them more than
ever; but he shivered. Perhaps the riffraff living in those houses sat
at the windows to watch their betters; perhaps they dared to gossip—

He uttered an exclamation, and walked rapidly toward his own front
gate. The victoria had returned with Miss Fanny alone; she jumped out
briskly and the victoria waited.

“Where’s mother?” George asked sharply, as he met her.

“At Lucy’s. I only came back to get some embroidery, because we found
the sun too hot for driving. I’m in a hurry.”

But, going into the house with her, he detained her when she would have
hastened upstairs.

“I haven’t time to talk now, Georgie; I’m going right back. I promised
your mother—”

“You listen!” said George.

“What on earth—”

He repeated what Amelia had said. This time, however, he spoke coldly,
and without the emotion he had exhibited during the recital to his
uncle: Fanny was the one who showed agitation during this interview,
for she grew fiery red, and her eyes dilated. “What on earth do you
want to bring such trash to me for?” she demanded, breathing fast.

“I merely wished to know two things: whether it is your duty or mine to
speak to father of what Aunt Amelia—”

Fanny stamped her foot. “You little fool!” she cried. “You awful little
fool!”

“I decline—”

“Decline, my hat! Your father’s a sick man, and you—”

“He doesn’t seem so to me.”

“Well, he does to me! And you want to go troubling him with an Amberson
family row! It’s just what that cat would love you to do!”

“Well, I—”

“Tell your father if you like! It will only make him a little sicker to
think he’s got a son silly enough to listen to such craziness!”

“Then you’re sure there isn’t any talk?” Fanny disdained a reply in
words. She made a hissing sound of utter contempt and snapped her
fingers. Then she asked scornfully: “What’s the other thing you wanted
to know?”

George’s pallor increased. “Whether it mightn’t be better, under the
circumstances,” he said, “if this family were not so intimate with the
Morgan family—at least for a time. It might be better—”

Fanny stared at him incredulously. “You mean you’d quit seeing Lucy?”

“I hadn’t thought of that side of it, but if such a thing were
necessary on account of talk about my mother, I—I—” He hesitated
unhappily. “I suggested that if all of us—for a time—perhaps only for a
time—it might be better if—”

“See here,” she interrupted. “We’ll settle this nonsense right now. If
Eugene Morgan comes to this house, for instance, to see me, your mother
can’t get up and leave the place the minute he gets here, can she? What
do you want her to do: insult him? Or perhaps you’d prefer she’d insult
Lucy? That would do just as well. What is it you’re up to, anyhow? Do
you really love your Aunt Amelia so much that you want to please her?
Or do you really hate your Aunt Fanny so much that you want to—that you
want to—”

She choked and sought for her handkerchief; suddenly she began to cry.

“Oh, see here,” George said. “I don’t hate you,” Aunt Fanny. “That’s
silly. I don’t—”

“You do! You do! You want to—you want to destroy the only thing—that
I—that I ever—” And, unable to continue, she became inaudible in her
handkerchief.

George felt remorseful, and his own troubles were lightened: all at
once it became clear to him that he had been worrying about nothing.
He perceived that his Aunt Amelia was indeed an old cat, and that to
give her scandalous meanderings another thought would be the height of
folly. By no means unsusceptible to such pathos as that now exposed
before him, he did not lack pity for Fanny, whose almost spoken
confession was lamentable; and he was granted the vision to understand
that his mother also pitied Fanny infinitely more than he did. This
seemed to explain everything.

He patted the unhappy lady awkwardly upon her shoulder. “There, there!”
he said. “I didn’t mean anything. Of course the only thing to do about
Aunt Amelia is to pay no attention to her. It’s all right, Aunt Fanny.
Don’t cry. I feel a lot better now, myself. Come on; I’ll drive back
there with you. It’s all over, and nothing’s the matter. Can’t you
cheer up?”

Fanny cheered up; and presently the customarily hostile aunt and
nephew were driving out Amberson Boulevard amiably together in the hot
sunshine.




Chapter XIV


“Almost” was Lucy’s last word on the last night of George’s
vacation—that vital evening which she had half consented to agree
upon for “settling things” between them. “Almost engaged,” she meant.
And George, discontented with the “almost,” but contented that she
seemed glad to wear a sapphire locket with a tiny photograph of George
Amberson Minafer inside it, found himself wonderful in a new world at
the final instant of their parting. For, after declining to let him
kiss her “good-bye,” as if his desire for such a ceremony were the most
preposterous absurdity in the world, she had leaned suddenly close to
him and left upon his cheek the veriest feather from a fairy’s wing.

She wrote him a month later:

  No. It must keep on being almost.

  Isn’t almost pretty pleasant? You know well enough that I care
  for you. I did from the first minute I saw you, and I’m pretty
  sure you knew it—I’m afraid you did. I’m afraid you always knew
  it. I’m not conventional and cautious about being engaged, as you
  say I am, dear. (I always read over the “dears” in your letters
  a time or two, as you say you do in mine—only I read all of your
  letters a time or two!) But it’s such a solemn thing it scares
  me. It means a good deal to a lot of people besides you and me,
  and that scares me, too. You write that I take your feeling for
  me “too lightly” and that I “take the whole affair too lightly.”
  Isn’t that odd! Because to myself I seem to take it as something
  so much more solemn than you do. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised
  to find myself an old lady, some day, still thinking of you—while
  you’d be away and away with somebody else perhaps, and me forgotten
  ages ago! “Lucy Morgan,” you’d say, when you saw my obituary. “Lucy
  Morgan? Let me see: I seem to remember the name. Didn’t I know some
  Lucy Morgan or other, once upon a time?” Then you’d shake your
  big white head and stroke your long white beard—you’d have such a
  distinguished long white beard! and you’d say, ‘No. I don’t seem to
  remember any Lucy Morgan; I wonder what made me think I did?’ And
  poor me! I’d be deep in the ground, wondering if you’d heard about
  it and what you were saying! Good-bye for to-day. Don’t work too
  hard—dear!

George immediately seized pen and paper, plaintively but vigorously
requesting Lucy not to imagine him with a beard, distinguished or
otherwise, even in the extremities of age. Then, after inscribing his
protest in the matter of this visioned beard, he concluded his missive
in a tone mollified to tenderness, and proceeded to read a letter from
his mother which had reached him simultaneously with Lucy’s. Isabel
wrote from Asheville, where she had just arrived with her husband.

  I think your father looks better already, darling, though we’ve
  been here only a few hours. It may be we’ve found just the place
  to build him up. The doctors said they hoped it would prove to be,
  and if it is, it would be worth the long struggle we had with him
  to get him to give up and come. Poor dear man, he was so blue,
  not about his health but about giving up the worries down at his
  office and forgetting them for a time—if he only will forget them!
  It took the pressure of the family and all his best friends, to
  get him to come—but father and brother George and Fanny and Eugene
  Morgan all kept at him so constantly that he just had to give in.
  I’m afraid that in my anxiety to get him to do what the doctors
  wanted him to, I wasn’t able to back up brother George as I should
  in his difficulty with Sydney and Amelia. I’m so sorry! George is
  more upset than I’ve ever seen him—they’ve got what they wanted,
  and they’re sailing before long, I hear, to live in Florence.
  Father said he couldn’t stand the constant persuading—I’m afraid
  the word he used was “nagging.” I can’t understand people behaving
  like that. George says they may be Ambersons, but they’re vulgar!
  I’m afraid I almost agree with him. At least, I think they were
  inconsiderate. But I don’t see why I’m unburdening myself of all
  this to you, poor darling! We’ll have forgotten all about it long
  before you come home for the holidays, and it should mean little or
  nothing to you, anyway. Forget that I’ve been so foolish!

  Your father is waiting for me to take a walk with him—that’s a
  splendid sign, because he hasn’t felt he could walk much, at
  home, lately. I mustn’t keep him waiting. Be careful to wear your
  mackintosh and rubbers in rainy weather, and, as soon as it begins
  to get colder, your ulster. Wish you could see your father now.
  Looks so much better! We plan to stay six weeks if the place agrees
  with him. It does really seem to already! He’s just called in the
  door to say he’s waiting. Don’t smoke too much, darling boy.

                                     Devotedly, your mother
                                                              Isabel.

But she did not keep her husband there for the six weeks she
anticipated. She did not keep him anywhere that long. Three weeks after
writing this letter, she telegraphed suddenly to George that they were
leaving for home at once; and four days later, when he and a friend
came whistling into his study, from lunch at the club, he found another
telegram upon his desk.

He read it twice before he comprehended its import.

  Papa left us at ten this morning, dearest.
                                                              Mother.

The friend saw the change in his face. “Not bad news?”

George lifted utterly dumfounded eyes from the yellow paper.

“My father,” he said weakly. “She says—she says he’s dead. I’ve got to
go home.”

His Uncle George and the Major met him at the station when he
arrived—the first time the Major had ever come to meet his grandson.
The old gentleman sat in his closed carriage (which still needed paint)
at the entrance to the station, but he got out and advanced to grasp
George’s hand tremulously, when the latter appeared. “Poor fellow!” he
said, and patted him repeatedly upon the shoulder. “Poor fellow! Poor
Georgie!”

George had not yet come to a full realization of his loss: so far, his
condition was merely dazed; and as the Major continued to pat him,
murmuring “Poor fellow!” over and over, George was seized by an almost
irresistible impulse to tell his grandfather that he was not a poodle.
But he said “Thanks,” in a low voice, and got into the carriage, his
two relatives following with deferential sympathy. He noticed that the
Major’s tremulousness did not disappear, as they drove up the street,
and that he seemed much feebler than during the summer. Principally,
however, George was concerned with his own emotion, or rather, with
his lack of emotion; and the anxious sympathy of his grandfather and
his uncle made him feel hypocritical. He was not grief-stricken; but
he felt that he ought to be, and, with a secret shame, concealed his
callousness beneath an affectation of solemnity.

But when he was taken into the room where lay what was left of Wilbur
Minafer, George had no longer to pretend; his grief was sufficient.
It needed only the sight of that forever inert semblance of the quiet
man who had been always so quiet a part of his son’s life—so quiet a
part that George had seldom been consciously aware that his father was
indeed a part of his life. As the figure lay there, its very quietness
was what was most lifelike; and suddenly it struck George hard. And in
that unexpected, racking grief of his son, Wilbur Minafer became more
vividly George’s father than he had ever been in life.

When George left the room, his arm was about his black-robed mother,
his shoulders were still shaken with sobs. He leaned upon his mother;
she gently comforted him; and presently he recovered his composure
and became self-conscious enough to wonder if he had not been making
an unmanly display of himself. “I’m all right again, mother,” he
said awkwardly. “Don’t worry about me: you’d better go lie down, or
something; you look pretty pale.”

Isabel did look pretty pale, but not ghastly pale, as Fanny did.
Fanny’s grief was overwhelming; she stayed in her room, and George
did not see her until the next day, a few minutes before the funeral,
when her haggard face appalled him. But by this time he was quite
himself again, and during the short service in the cemetery his
thoughts even wandered so far as to permit him a feeling of regret
not directly connected with his father. Beyond the open flower-walled
grave was a mound where new grass grew; and here lay his great-uncle,
old John Minafer, who had died the previous autumn; and beyond this
were the graves of George’s grandfather and grandmother Minafer, and
of his grandfather Minafer’s second wife, and her three sons, George’s
half-uncles, who had been drowned together in a canoe accident when
George was a child—Fanny was the last of the family. Next beyond was
the Amberson family lot, where lay the Major’s wife and their sons
Henry and Milton, uncles whom George dimly remembered; and beside
them lay Isabel’s older sister, his Aunt Estelle, who had died, in
her girlhood, long before George was born. The Minafer monument was a
granite block, with the name chiseled upon its one polished side, and
the Amberson monument was a white marble shaft taller than any other
in that neighbourhood. But farther on there was a newer section of the
cemetery, an addition which had been thrown open to occupancy only
a few years before, after dexterous modern treatment by a landscape
specialist. There were some large new mausoleums here, and shafts
taller than the Ambersons’, as well as a number of monuments of some
sculptural pretentiousness; and altogether the new section appeared to
be a more fashionable and important quarter than that older one which
contained the Amberson and Minafer lots. This was what caused George’s
regret, during the moment or two when his mind strayed from his father
and the reading of the service.

On the train, going back to college, ten days later, this regret
(though it was as much an annoyance as a regret) recurred to his mind,
and a feeling developed within him that the new quarter of the cemetery
was in bad taste—not architecturally or sculpturally perhaps, but in
presumption: it seemed to flaunt a kind of parvenu ignorance, as if
it were actually pleased to be unaware that all the aristocratic and
really important families were buried in the old section.

The annoyance gave way before a recollection of the sweet mournfulness
of his mother’s face, as she had said good-bye to him at the station,
and of how lovely she looked in her mourning. He thought of Lucy, whom
he had seen only twice, and he could not help feeling that in these
quiet interviews he had appeared to her as tinged with heroism—she had
shown, rather than said, how brave she thought him in his sorrow. But
what came most vividly to George’s mind, during these retrospections,
was the despairing face of his Aunt Fanny. Again and again he thought
of it; he could not avoid its haunting. And for days, after he got
back to college, the stricken likeness of Fanny would appear before
him unexpectedly, and without a cause that he could trace in his
immediately previous thoughts. Her grief had been so silent, yet it had
so amazed him.

George felt more and more compassion for this ancient antagonist of
his, and he wrote to his mother about her:

  I’m afraid poor Aunt Fanny might think now father’s gone we won’t
  want her to live with us any longer and because I always teased
  her so much she might think I’d be for turning her out. I don’t
  know where on earth she’d go or what she could live on if we did do
  something like this, and of course we never would do such a thing,
  but I’m pretty sure she had something of the kind on her mind. She
  didn’t say anything, but the way she looked is what makes me think
  so. Honestly, to me she looked just scared sick. You tell her there
  isn’t any danger in the world of my treating her like that. Tell
  her everything is to go on just as it always has. Tell her to cheer
  up!




Chapter XV


Isabel did more for Fanny than telling her to cheer up. Everything that
Fanny inherited from her father, old Aleck Minafer, had been invested
in Wilbur’s business; and Wilbur’s business, after a period of illness
corresponding in dates to the illness of Wilbur’s body, had died just
before Wilbur did. George Amberson and Fanny were both “wiped out to a
miracle of precision,” as Amberson said. They “owned not a penny and
owed not a penny,” he continued, explaining his phrase. “It’s like the
moment just before drowning: you’re not under water and you’re not out
of it. All you know is that you’re not dead yet.”

He spoke philosophically, having his “prospects” from his father to
fall back upon; but Fanny had neither “prospects” nor philosophy.
However, a legal survey of Wilbur’s estate revealed the fact that
his life insurance was left clear of the wreck; and Isabel, with the
cheerful consent of her son, promptly turned this salvage over to her
sister-in-law. Invested, it would yield something better than nine
hundred dollars a year, and thus she was assured of becoming neither
a pauper nor a dependent, but proved to be, as Amberson said, adding
his efforts to the cheering up of Fanny, “an heiress, after all, in
spite of rolling mills and the devil.” She was unable to smile, and he
continued his humane gayeties. “See what a wonderfully desirable income
nine hundred dollars is, Fanny: a bachelor, to be in your class, must
have exactly forty-nine thousand one hundred a year. Then, you see,
all you need to do, in order to have fifty thousand a year, is to be a
little encouraging when some bachelor in your class begins to show by
his haberdashery what he wants you to think about him!”

She looked at him wanly, murmured a desolate response—she had “sewing
to do”—and left the room; while Amberson shook his head ruefully at his
sister. “I’ve often thought that humor was not my forte,” he sighed.
“Lord! She doesn’t ‘cheer up’ much!”

The collegian did not return to his home for the holidays. Instead,
Isabel joined him, and they went South for the two weeks. She was proud
of her stalwart, good-looking son at the hotel where they stayed, and
it was meat and drink to her when she saw how people stared at him
in the lobby and on the big verandas—indeed, her vanity in him was
so dominant that she was unaware of their staring at her with more
interest and an admiration friendlier than George evoked. Happy to have
him to herself for this fortnight, she loved to walk with him, leaning
upon his arm, to read with him, to watch the sea with him—perhaps most
of all she liked to enter the big dining room with him.

Yet both of them felt constantly the difference between this
Christmastime and other Christmas-times of theirs—in all, it was a
sorrowful holiday. But when Isabel came East for George’s commencement,
in June, she brought Lucy with her—and things began to seem different,
especially when George Amberson arrived with Lucy’s father on Class
Day. Eugene had been in New York, on business; Amberson easily
persuaded him to this outing; and they made a cheerful party of it,
with the new graduate of course the hero and center of it all.

His uncle was a fellow alumnus. “Yonder was where I roomed when I was
here,” he said, pointing out one of the university buildings to Eugene.
“I don’t know whether George would let my admirers place a tablet to
mark the spot, or not. He owns all these buildings now, you know.”

“Didn’t you, when you were here? Like uncle, like nephew.”

“Don’t tell George you think he’s like me. Just at this time we should
be careful of the young gentleman’s feelings.”

“Yes,” said Eugene. “If we weren’t he mightn’t let us exist at all.”

“I’m sure I didn’t have it so badly at his age,” Amberson said
reflectively, as they strolled on through the commencement crowd. “For
one thing, I had brothers and sisters, and my mother didn’t just sit
at my feet as George’s does; and I wasn’t an only grandchild, either.
Father’s always spoiled Georgie a lot more than he did any of his own
children.”

Eugene laughed. “You need only three things to explain all that’s good
and bad about Georgie.”

“Three?”

“He’s Isabel’s only child. He’s an Amberson. He’s a boy.”

“Well, Mister Bones, of these three things which are the good ones and
which are the bad ones?”

“All of them,” said Eugene.

It happened that just then they came in sight of the subject of their
discourse. George was walking under the elms with Lucy, swinging a
stick and pointing out to her various objects and localities which had
attained historical value during the last four years. The two older men
marked his gestures, careless and graceful; they observed his attitude,
unconsciously noble, his easy proprietorship of the ground beneath his
feet and round about, of the branches overhead, of the old buildings
beyond, and of Lucy.

“I don’t know,” Eugene said, smiling whimsically. “I don’t know. When I
spoke of his being a human being—I don’t know. Perhaps it’s more like
deity.”

“I wonder if I was like that!” Amberson groaned. “You don’t suppose
every Amberson has had to go through it, do you?”

“Don’t worry! At least half of it is a combination of youth, good
looks, and college; and even the noblest Ambersons get over their
nobility and come to be people in time. It takes more than time,
though.”

“I should say it did take more than time!” his friend agreed, shaking a
rueful head.

Then they walked over to join the loveliest Amberson, whom neither time
nor trouble seemed to have touched. She stood alone, thoughtful under
the great trees, chaperoning George and Lucy at a distance; but, seeing
the two friends approaching, she came to meet them.

“It’s charming, isn’t it!” she said, moving her black-gloved hand to
indicate the summery dressed crowd strolling about them, or clustering
in groups, each with its own hero. “They seem so eager and so
confident, all these boys—it’s touching. But of course youth doesn’t
know it’s touching.”

Amberson coughed. “No, it doesn’t seem to take itself as pathetic,
precisely! Eugene and I were just speaking of something like that. Do
you know what I think whenever I see these smooth, triumphal young
faces? I always think: ‘Oh, how you’re going to catch it’!”

“George!”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “Life’s most ingenious: it’s got a special
walloping for every mother’s son of ’em!”

“Maybe,” said Isabel, troubled—“maybe some of the mothers can take the
walloping for them.”

“Not one!” her brother assured her, with emphasis. “Not any more than
she can take on her own face the lines that are bound to come on her
son’s. I suppose you know that all these young faces have got to get
lines on ’em?”

“Maybe they won’t,” she said, smiling wistfully. “Maybe times will
change, and nobody will have to wear lines.”

“Times have changed like that for only one person that I know,” Eugene
said. And as Isabel looked inquiring, he laughed, and she saw that she
was the “only one person.” His implication was justified, moreover, and
she knew it. She blushed charmingly.

“Which is it puts the lines on the faces?” Amberson asked. “Is it age
or trouble? Of course we can’t decide that wisdom does it—we must be
polite to Isabel.”

“I’ll tell you what puts the lines there,” Eugene said. “Age puts some,
and trouble puts some, and work puts some, but the deepest are carved
by lack of faith. The serenest brow is the one that believes the most.”

“In what?” Isabel asked gently.

“In everything!”

She looked at him inquiringly, and he laughed as he had a moment
before, when she looked at him that way. “Oh, yes, you do!” he said.

She continued to look at him inquiringly a moment or two longer, and
there was an unconscious earnestness in her glance, something trustful
as well as inquiring, as if she knew that whatever he meant it was all
right. Then her eyes drooped thoughtfully, and she seemed to address
some inquiries to herself. She looked up suddenly. “Why, I believe,”
she said, in a tone of surprise, “I believe I do!”

And at that both men laughed. “Isabel!” her brother exclaimed. “You’re
a foolish person! There are times when you look exactly fourteen years
old!”

But this reminded her of her real affair in that part of the world.
“Good gracious!” she said. “Where have the children got to? We must
take Lucy pretty soon, so that George can go and sit with the Class. We
must catch up with them.”

She took her brother’s arm, and the three moved on, looking about them
in the crowd.

“Curious,” Amberson remarked, as they did not immediately discover the
young people they sought. “Even in such a concourse one would think we
couldn’t fail to see the proprietor.”

“Several hundred proprietors today,” Eugene suggested.

“No; they’re only proprietors of the university,” said George’s uncle.
“We’re looking for the proprietor of the universe.”

“There he is!” cried Isabel fondly, not minding this satire at all.
“And doesn’t he look it!”

Her escorts were still laughing at her when they joined the proprietor
of the universe and his pretty friend, and though both Amberson and
Eugene declined to explain the cause of their mirth, even upon Lucy’s
urgent request, the portents of the day were amiable, and the five made
a happy party—that is to say, four of them made a happy audience for
the fifth, and the mood of this fifth was gracious and cheerful.

George took no conspicuous part in either the academic or the social
celebrations of his class; he seemed to regard both sets of exercises
with a tolerant amusement, his own “crowd” “not going in much for
either of those sorts of things,” as he explained to Lucy. What his
crowd had gone in for remained ambiguous; some negligent testimony
indicating that, except for an astonishing reliability which they all
seemed to have attained in matters relating to musical comedy, they had
not gone in for anything. Certainly the question one of them put to
Lucy, in response to investigations of hers, seemed to point that way:
“Don’t you think,” he said, “really, don’t you think that being things
is rather better than doing things?”

He said “rahthuh bettuh” for “rather better,” and seemed to do it
deliberately, with perfect knowledge of what he was doing. Later, Lucy
mocked him to George, and George refused to smile: he somewhat inclined
to such pronunciations, himself. This inclination was one of the things
that he had acquired in the four years.

What else he had acquired, it might have puzzled him to state, had
anybody asked him and required a direct reply within a reasonable
space of time. He had learned how to pass examinations by “cramming”;
that is, in three or four days and nights he could get into his head
enough of a selected fragment of some scientific or philosophical or
literary or linguistic subject to reply plausibly to six questions out
of ten. He could retain the information necessary for such a feat just
long enough to give a successful performance; then it would evaporate
utterly from his brain, and leave him undisturbed. George, like his
“crowd,” not only preferred “being things” to “doing things,” but had
contented himself with four years of “being things” as a preparation
for going on “being things.” And when Lucy rather shyly pressed him for
his friend’s probable definition of the “things” it seemed so superior
and beautiful to be, George raised his eyebrows slightly, meaning that
she should have understood without explanation; but he did explain:
“Oh, family and all that—being a gentleman, I suppose.”

Lucy gave the horizon a long look, but offered no comment.




Chapter XVI


“Aunt Fanny doesn’t look much better,” George said to his mother, a few
minutes after their arrival, on the night they got home. He stood with
a towel in her doorway, concluding some sketchy ablutions before going
downstairs to a supper which Fanny was hastily preparing for them.
Isabel had not telegraphed; Fanny was taken by surprise when they drove
up in a station cab at eleven o’clock; and George instantly demanded “a
little decent food.” (Some criticisms of his had publicly disturbed the
composure of the dining-car steward four hours previously.) “I never
saw anybody take things so hard as she seems to,” he observed, his
voice muffled by the towel. “Doesn’t she get over it at all? I thought
she’d feel better when we turned over the insurance to her—gave it to
her absolutely, without any strings to it. She looks about a thousand
years old!”

“She looks quite girlish, sometimes, though,” his mother said.

“Has she looked that way much since father—”

“Not so much,” Isabel said thoughtfully. “But she will, as times goes
on.”

“Time’ll have to hurry, then, it seems to me,” George observed,
returning to his own room.

When they went down to the dining room, he pronounced acceptable the
salmon salad, cold beef, cheese, and cake which Fanny made ready
for them without disturbing the servants. The journey had fatigued
Isabel, she ate nothing, but sat to observe with tired pleasure
the manifestations of her son’s appetite, meanwhile giving her
sister-in-law a brief summary of the events of commencement. But
presently she kissed them both good-night—taking care to kiss George
lightly upon the side of his head, so as not to disturb his eating—and
left aunt and nephew alone together.

“It never was becoming to her to look pale,” Fanny said absently, a few
moments after Isabel’s departure.

“Wha’d you say, Aunt Fanny?”

“Nothing. I suppose your mother’s been being pretty gay? Going a lot?”

“How could she?” George asked cheerfully. “In mourning, of course all
she could do was just sit around and look on. That’s all Lucy could do
either, for the matter of that.”

“I suppose so,” his aunt assented. “How did Lucy get home?”

George regarded her with astonishment. “Why, on the train with the rest
of us, of course.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Fanny explained. “I meant from the station. Did
you drive out to their house with her before you came here?”

“No. She drove home with her father, of course.”

“Oh, I see. So Eugene came to the station to meet you.”

“To meet us?” George echoed, renewing his attack upon the salmon salad.
“How could he?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Fanny said drearily, in the desolate
voice that had become her habit. “I haven’t seen him while your
mother’s been away.”

“Naturally,” said George. “He’s been East himself.”

At this Fanny’s drooping eyelids opened wide.

“Did you see him?”

“Well, naturally, since he made the trip home with us!”

“He did?” she said sharply. “He’s been with you all the time?”

“No; only on the train and the last three days before we left. Uncle
George got him to come.”

Fanny’s eyelids drooped again, and she sat silent until George pushed
back his chair and lit a cigarette, declaring his satisfaction
with what she had provided. “You’re a fine housekeeper,” he said
benevolently. “You know how to make things look dainty as well as taste
the right way. I don’t believe you’d stay single very long if some of
the bachelors and widowers around town could just once see—”

She did not hear him. “It’s a little odd,” she said.

“What’s odd?”

“Your mother’s not mentioning that Mr. Morgan had been with you.”

“Didn’t think of it, I suppose,” said George carelessly; and, his
benevolent mood increasing, he conceived the idea that a little
harmless rallying might serve to elevate his aunt’s drooping spirits.
“I’ll tell you something, in confidence,” he said solemnly.

She looked up, startled. “What?”

“Well, it struck me that Mr. Morgan was looking pretty absent-minded,
most of the time; and he certainly is dressing better than he used to.
Uncle George told me he heard that the automobile factory had been
doing quite well—won a race, too! I shouldn’t be a bit surprised if all
the young fellow had been waiting for was to know he had an assured
income before he proposed.”

“What ‘young fellow’?”

“This young fellow Morgan,” laughed George; “Honestly, Aunt Fanny, I
shouldn’t be a bit surprised to have him request an interview with me
any day, and declare that his intentions are honourable, and ask my
permission to pay his addresses to you. What had I better tell him?”

Fanny burst into tears.

“Good heavens!” George cried. “I was only teasing. I didn’t mean—”

“Let me alone,” she said lifelessly; and, continuing to weep, rose and
began to clear away the dishes.

“Please, Aunt Fanny—”

“Just let me alone.”

George was distressed. “I didn’t mean anything, Aunt Fanny! I didn’t
know you’d got so sensitive as all that.”

“You’d better go up to bed,” she said desolately, going on with her
work and her weeping.

“Anyhow,” he insisted, “do let these things wait. Let the servants
’tend to the table in the morning.”

“No.”

“But, why not?”

“Just let me alone.”

“Oh, Lord!” George groaned, going to the door. There he turned. “See
here, Aunt Fanny, there’s not a bit of use your bothering about those
dishes tonight. What’s the use of a butler and three maids if—”

“Just let me alone.”

He obeyed, and could still hear a pathetic sniffing from the dining
room as he went up the stairs.

“By George!” he grunted, as he reached his own room; and his thought
was that living with a person so sensitive to kindly raillery might
prove lugubrious. He whistled, long and low, then went to the window
and looked through the darkness to the great silhouette of his
grandfather’s house. Lights were burning over there, upstairs; probably
his newly arrived uncle was engaged in talk with the Major.

George’s glance lowered, resting casually upon the indistinct ground,
and he beheld some vague shapes, unfamiliar to him. Formless heaps,
they seemed; but, without much curiosity, he supposed that sewer
connections or water pipes might be out of order, making necessary some
excavations. He hoped the work would not take long; he hated to see
that sweep of lawn made unsightly by trenches and lines of dirt, even
temporarily. Not greatly disturbed, however, he pulled down the shade,
yawned, and began to undress, leaving further investigation for the
morning.

But in the morning he had forgotten all about it, and raised his shade,
to let in the light, without even glancing toward the ground. Not until
he had finished dressing did he look forth from his window, and then
his glance was casual. The next instant his attitude became electric,
and he gave utterance to a bellow of dismay. He ran from his room,
plunged down the stairs, out of the front door, and, upon a nearer view
of the destroyed lawn, began to release profanity upon the breezeless
summer air, which remained unaffected. Between his mother’s house and
his grandfather’s, excavations for the cellars of five new houses
were in process, each within a few feet of its neighbour. Foundations
of brick were being laid; everywhere were piles of brick and stacked
lumber, and sand heaps and mortar beds.

It was Sunday, and so the workmen implicated in these defacings
were denied what unquestionably they would have considered a treat;
but as the fanatic orator continued the monologue, a gentleman in
flannels emerged upward from one of the excavations, and regarded him
contemplatively.

“Obtaining any relief, nephew?” he inquired with some interest. “You
must have learned quite a number of those expressions in childhood—it’s
so long since I’d heard them I fancied they were obsolete.”

“Who wouldn’t swear?” George demanded hotly. “In the name of God, what
does grandfather mean, doing such things?”

“My private opinion is,” said Amberson gravely, “he desires to increase
his income by building these houses to rent.”

“Well, in the name of God, can’t he increase his income any other way
but this?”

“In the name of God, it would appear he couldn’t.”

“It’s beastly! It’s a damn degradation! It’s a crime!”

“I don’t know about its being a crime,” said his uncle, stepping over
some planks to join him. “It might be a mistake, though. Your mother
said not to tell you until we got home, so as not to spoil commencement
for you. She rather feared you’d be upset.”

“Upset! Oh, my Lord, I should think I would be upset! He’s in his
second childhood. What did you let him do it for, in the name of—”

“Make it in the name of heaven this time, George; it’s Sunday. Well, I
thought, myself, it was a mistake.”

“I should say so!”

“Yes,” said Amberson. “I wanted him to put up an apartment building
instead of these houses.”

“An apartment building! Here?”

“Yes; that was my idea.”

George struck his hands together despairingly. “An apartment house! Oh,
my Lord!”

“Don’t worry! Your grandfather wouldn’t listen to me, but he’ll wish he
had, some day. He says that people aren’t going to live in miserable
little flats when they can get a whole house with some grass in front
and plenty of backyard behind. He sticks it out that apartment houses
will never do in a town of this type, and when I pointed out to him
that a dozen or so of ’em already are doing, he claimed it was just the
novelty, and that they’d all be empty as soon as people got used to
’em. So he’s putting up these houses.”

“Is he getting miserly in his old age?”

“Hardly! Look what he gave Sydney and Amelia!”

“I don’t mean he’s a miser, of course,” said George. “Heaven knows he’s
liberal enough with mother and me; but why on earth didn’t he sell
something or other rather than do a thing like this?”

“As a matter of fact,” Amberson returned coolly, “I believe he has sold
something or other, from time to time.”

“Well, in heaven’s name,” George cried, “what did he do it for?”

“To get money,” his uncle mildly replied. “That’s my deduction.”

“I suppose you’re joking—or trying to!”

“That’s the best way to look at it,” Amberson said amiably. “Take the
whole thing as a joke—and in the meantime, if you haven’t had your
breakfast—”

“I haven’t!”

“Then if I were you I’d go in and get some. And”—he paused, becoming
serious—“and if I were you I wouldn’t say anything to your grandfather
about this.”

“I don’t think I could trust myself to speak to him about it,”
said George. “I want to treat him respectfully, because he is my
grandfather, but I don’t believe I could if I talked to him about such
a thing as this!”

And with a gesture of despair, plainly signifying that all too soon
after leaving bright college years behind him he had entered into the
full tragedy of life, George turned bitterly upon his heel and went
into the house for his breakfast.

His uncle, with his head whimsically upon one side, gazed after him not
altogether unsympathetically, then descended again into the excavation
whence he had lately emerged. Being a philosopher he was not surprised,
that afternoon, in the course of a drive he took in the old carriage
with the Major, when George was encountered upon the highway, flashing
along in his runabout with Lucy beside him and Pendennis doing better
than three minutes.

“He seems to have recovered,” Amberson remarked: “Looks in the highest
good spirits.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“Your grandson,” Amberson explained. “He was inclined to melancholy
this morning, but seemed jolly enough just now when they passed us.”

“What was he melancholy about? Not getting remorseful about all the
money he’s spent at college, was he?” The Major chuckled feebly, but
with sufficient grimness. “I wonder what he thinks I’m made of,” he
concluded querulously.

“Gold,” his son suggested, adding gently, “And he’s right about part of
you, father.”

“What part?”

“Your heart.”

The Major laughed ruefully. “I suppose that may account for how heavy
it feels, sometimes, nowadays. This town seems to be rolling right
over that old heart you mentioned, George—rolling over it and burying
it under! When I think of those devilish workmen digging up my lawn,
yelling around my house—”

“Never mind, father. Don’t think of it. When things are a nuisance it’s
a good idea not to keep remembering ’em.”

“I try not to,” the old gentleman murmured. “I try to keep remembering
that I won’t be remembering anything very long.” And, somehow convinced
that this thought was a mirthful one, he laughed loudly, and slapped
his knee. “Not so very long now, my boy!” he chuckled, continuing to
echo his own amusement. “Not so very long. Not so very long!”




Chapter XVII


Young George paid his respects to his grandfather the following
morning, having been occupied with various affairs and engagements
on Sunday until after the Major’s bedtime; and topics concerned with
building or excavations were not introduced into the conversation,
which was a cheerful one until George lightly mentioned some new
plans of his. He was a skillful driver, as the Major knew, and he
spoke of his desire to extend his proficiency in this art: in fact,
he entertained the ambition to drive a four-in-hand. However, as the
Major said nothing, and merely sat still, looking surprised, George
went on to say that he did not propose to “go in for coaching just
at the start”; he thought it would be better to begin with a tandem.
He was sure Pendennis could be trained to work as a leader; and all
that one needed to buy at present, he said, would be “comparatively
inexpensive—a new trap, and the harness, of course, and a good bay
to match Pendennis.” He did not care for a special groom; one of the
stablemen would do.

At this point the Major decided to speak. “You say one of the stablemen
would do?” he inquired, his widened eyes remaining fixed upon his
grandson. “That’s lucky, because one’s all there is, just at present,
George. Old fat Tom does it all. Didn’t you notice, when you took
Pendennis out, yesterday?”

“Oh, that will be all right, sir. My mother can lend me her man.”

“Can she?” The old gentleman smiled faintly. “I wonder—” He paused.

“What, sir?”

“Whether you mightn’t care to go to law-school somewhere perhaps. I’d
be glad to set aside a sum that would see you through.”

This senile divergence from the topic in hand surprised George
painfully. “I have no interest whatever in the law,” he said. “I
don’t care for it, and the idea of being a professional man has never
appealed to me. None of the family has ever gone in for that sort
of thing, to my knowledge, and I don’t care to be the first. I was
speaking of driving a tandem—”

“I know you were,” the Major said quietly.

George looked hurt. “I beg your pardon. Of course if the idea doesn’t
appeal to you—” And he rose to go.

The Major ran a tremulous hand through his hair, sighing deeply. “I—I
don’t like to refuse you anything, Georgie,” he said. “I don’t know
that I often have refused you whatever you wanted—in reason—”

“You’ve always been more than generous, sir,” George interrupted
quickly. “And if the idea of a tandem doesn’t appeal to you, why—of
course—” And he waved his hand, heroically dismissing the tandem.

The Major’s distress became obvious. “Georgie, I’d like to, but—but
I’ve an idea tandems are dangerous to drive, and your mother might be
anxious. She—”

“No, sir; I think not. She felt it would be rather a good thing—help to
keep me out in the open air. But if perhaps your finances—”

“Oh, it isn’t that so much,” the old gentleman said hurriedly. “I
wasn’t thinking of that altogether.” He laughed uncomfortably. “I guess
we could still afford a new horse or two, if need be—”

“I thought you said—”

The Major waved his hand airily. “Oh, a few retrenchments where
things were useless; nothing gained by a raft of idle darkies in the
stable—nor by a lot of extra land that might as well be put to work for
us in rentals. And if you want this thing so very much—”

“It’s not important enough to bother about, really, of course.”

“Well, let’s wait till autumn then,” said the Major in a tone of
relief. “We’ll see about it in the autumn, if you’re still in the mind
for it then. That will be a great deal better. You remind me of it,
along in September—or October. We’ll see what can be done.” He rubbed
his hands cheerfully. “We’ll see what can be done about it then,
Georgie. We’ll see.”

And George, in reporting this conversation to his mother, was ruefully
humorous. “In fact, the old boy cheered up so much,” he told her,
“you’d have thought he’d got a real load off his mind. He seemed to
think he’d fixed me up perfectly, and that I was just as good as
driving a tandem around his library right that minute! Of course I
know he’s anything but miserly; still I can’t help thinking he must
be salting a lot of money away. I know prices are higher than they
used to be, but he doesn’t spend within thousands of what he used to,
and we certainly can’t be spending more than we always have spent.
Where does it all go to? Uncle George told me grandfather had sold
some pieces of property, and it looks a little queer. If he’s really
‘property poor,’ of course we ought to be more saving than we are, and
help him out. I don’t mind giving up a tandem if it seems a little too
expensive just now. I’m perfectly willing to live quietly till he gets
his bank balance where he wants it. But I have a faint suspicion, not
that he’s getting miserly—not that at all—but that old age has begun
to make him timid about money. There’s no doubt about it, he’s getting
a little queer: he can’t keep his mind on a subject long. Right in the
middle of talking about one thing he’ll wander off to something else;
and I shouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be a lot better off
than any of us guess. It’s entirely possible that whatever he’s sold
just went into government bonds, or even his safety deposit box. There
was a friend of mine in college had an old uncle like that: made the
whole family think he was poor as dirt—and then left seven millions.
People get terribly queer as they get old, sometimes, and grandfather
certainly doesn’t act the way he used to. He seems to be a totally
different man. For instance, he said he thought tandem driving might be
dangerous—”

“Did he?” Isabel asked quickly. “Then I’m glad he doesn’t want you to
have one. I didn’t dream—”

“But it’s not. There isn’t the slightest—”

Isabel had a bright idea. “Georgie! Instead of a tandem wouldn’t it
interest you to get one of Eugene’s automobiles?”

“I don’t think so. They’re fast enough, of course. In fact, running
one of those things is getting to be quite on the cards for sport, and
people go all over the country in ’em. But they’re dirty things, and
they keep getting out of order, so that you’re always lying down on
your back in the mud, and—”

“Oh, no,” she interrupted eagerly. “Haven’t you noticed? You don’t
see nearly so many people doing that nowadays as you did two or three
years ago, and, when you do, Eugene says it’s apt to be one of the
older patterns. The way they make them now, you can get at most of the
machinery from the top. I do think you’d be interested, dear.”

George remained indifferent. “Possibly—but I hardly think so. I know a
lot of good people are really taking them up, but still—”

“‘But still’ what?” she said as he paused.

“But still—well, I suppose I’m a little old-fashioned and fastidious,
but I’m afraid being a sort of engine driver never will appeal to me,
mother. It’s exciting, and I’d like that part of it, but still it
doesn’t seem to me precisely the thing a gentleman ought to do. Too
much overalls and monkey-wrenches and grease!”

“But Eugene says people are hiring mechanics to do all that sort of
thing for them. They’re beginning to have them just the way they have
coachmen; and he says it’s developing into quite a profession.”

“I know that, mother, of course; but I’ve seen some of these mechanics,
and they’re not very satisfactory. For one thing, most of them only
pretend to understand the machinery and they let people break down a
hundred miles from nowhere, so that about all these fellows are good
for is to hunt up a farmer and hire a horse to pull the automobile. And
friends of mine at college that’ve had a good deal of experience tell
me the mechanics who do understand the engines have no training at all
as servants. They’re awful! They say anything they like, and usually
speak to members of the family as ‘Say!’ No, I believe I’d rather wait
for September and a tandem, mother.”

Nevertheless, George sometimes consented to sit in an automobile,
while waiting for September, and he frequently went driving in one of
Eugene’s cars with Lucy and her father. He even allowed himself to
be escorted with his mother and Fanny through the growing factory,
which was now, as the foreman of the paint shop informed the visitors,
“turning out a car and a quarter a day.” George had seldom been
more excessively bored, but his mother showed a lively interest in
everything, wishing to have all the machinery explained to her. It was
Lucy who did most of the explaining, while her father looked on and
laughed at the mistakes she made, and Fanny remained in the background
with George, exhibiting a bleakness that overmatched his boredom.

From the factory Eugene took them to lunch at a new restaurant,
just opened in the town, a place which surprised Isabel with its
metropolitan air, and, though George made fun of it to her, in a
whisper, she offered everything the tribute of pleased exclamations;
and her gayety helped Eugene’s to make the little occasion almost a
festive one.

George’s ennui disappeared in spite of himself, and he laughed to see
his mother in such spirits. “I didn’t know mineral waters could go to a
person’s head,” he said. “Or perhaps it’s this place. It might pay to
have a new restaurant opened somewhere in town every time you get the
blues.”

Fanny turned to him with a wan smile. “Oh, she doesn’t ‘get the
blues,’ George!” Then she added, as if fearing her remark might be
thought unpleasantly significant, “I never knew a person of a more
even disposition. I wish I could be like that!” And though the tone of
this afterthought was not so enthusiastic as she tried to make it, she
succeeded in producing a fairly amiable effect.

“No,” Isabel said, reverting to George’s remark, and overlooking
Fanny’s. “What makes me laugh so much at nothing is Eugene’s factory.
Wouldn’t anybody be delighted to see an old friend take an idea out of
the air like that—an idea that most people laughed at him for—wouldn’t
any old friend of his be happy to see how he’d made his idea into such
a splendid, humming thing as that factory—all shiny steel, clicking and
buzzing away, and with all those workmen, such muscled looking men and
yet so intelligent looking?”

“Hear! Hear!” George applauded. “We seem to have a lady orator among
us. I hope the waiters won’t mind.”

Isabel laughed, not discouraged. “It’s beautiful to see such a thing,”
she said. “It makes us all happy, dear old Eugene!”

And with a brave gesture she stretched out her hand to him across
the small table. He took it quickly, giving her a look in which his
laughter tried to remain, but vanished before a gratitude threatening
to become emotional in spite of him. Isabel, however, turned instantly
to Fanny. “Give him your hand, Fanny,” she said gayly; and, as Fanny
mechanically obeyed, “There!” Isabel cried. “If brother George
were here, Eugene would have his three oldest and best friends
congratulating him all at once. We know what brother George thinks
about it, though. It’s just beautiful, Eugene!”

Probably if her brother George had been with them at the little table,
he would have made known what he thought about herself, for it must
inevitably have struck him that she was in the midst of one of those
“times” when she looked “exactly fourteen years old.” Lucy served
as a proxy for Amberson, perhaps, when she leaned toward George and
whispered: “Did you ever see anything so lovely?”

“As what?” George inquired, not because he misunderstood, but because
he wished to prolong the pleasant neighbourliness of whispering.

“As your mother! Think of her doing that! She’s a darling! And
papa”—here she imperfectly repressed a tendency to laugh—“papa looks as
if he were either going to explode or utter loud sobs!”

Eugene commanded his features, however, and they resumed their
customary apprehensiveness. “I used to write verse,” he said—“if you
remember—”

“Yes,” Isabel interrupted gently. “I remember.”

“I don’t recall that I’ve written any for twenty years or so,” he
continued. “But I’m almost thinking I could do it again, to thank you
for making a factory visit into such a kind celebration.”

“Gracious!” Lucy whispered, giggling. “Aren’t they sentimental”

“People that age always are,” George returned. “They get sentimental
over anything at all. Factories or restaurants, it doesn’t matter what!”

And both of them were seized with fits of laughter which they managed
to cover under the general movement of departure, as Isabel had risen
to go.

Outside, upon the crowded street, George helped Lucy into his runabout,
and drove off, waving triumphantly, and laughing at Eugene who was
struggling with the engine of his car, in the tonneau of which Isabel
and Fanny had established themselves. “Looks like a hand-organ man
grinding away for pennies,” said George, as the runabout turned the
corner and into National Avenue. “I’ll still take a horse, any day.”

He was not so cocksure, half an hour later, on an open road, when a
siren whistle wailed behind him, and before the sound had died away,
Eugene’s car, coming from behind with what seemed fairly like one long
leap, went by the runabout and dwindled almost instantaneously in
perspective, with a lace handkerchief in a black-gloved hand fluttering
sweet derision as it was swept onward into minuteness—a mere white
speck—and then out of sight.

George was undoubtedly impressed. “Your Father does know how to drive
some,” the dashing exhibition forced him to admit. “Of course Pendennis
isn’t as young as he was, and I don’t care to push him too hard. I
wouldn’t mind handling one of those machines on the road like that,
myself, if that was all there was to it—no cranking to do, or fooling
with the engine. Well, I enjoyed part of that lunch quite a lot, Lucy.”

“The salad?”

“No. Your whispering to me.”

“Blarney!”

George made no response, but checked Pendennis to a walk. Whereupon
Lucy protested quickly: “Oh, don’t!”

“Why? Do you want him to trot his legs off?”

“No, but—”

“‘No, but’—what?”

She spoke with apparent gravity: “I know when you make him walk it’s so
you can give all your attention to—to proposing to me again!”

And as she turned a face of exaggerated color to him, “By the Lord, but
you’re a little witch!” George cried.

“George, do let Pendennis trot again!”

“I won’t!”

She clucked to the horse. “Get up, Pendennis! Trot! Go on! Commence!”

Pendennis paid no attention; she meant nothing to him, and George
laughed at her fondly. “You are the prettiest thing in this world,
Lucy!” he exclaimed. “When I see you in winter, in furs, with your
cheeks red, I think you’re prettiest then, but when I see you in
summer, in a straw hat and a shirtwaist and a duck skirt and white
gloves and those little silver buckled slippers, and your rose-coloured
parasol, and your cheeks not red but with a kind of pinky glow about
them, then I see I must have been wrong about the winter! When are you
going to drop the ‘almost’ and say we’re really engaged?”

“Oh, not for years! So there’s the answer, and let’s trot again.”

But George was persistent; moreover, he had become serious during the
last minute or two. “I want to know,” he said. “I really mean it.”

“Let’s don’t be serious, George,” she begged him hopefully. “Let’s talk
of something pleasant.”

He was a little offended. “Then it isn’t pleasant for you to know that
I want to marry you?”

At this she became as serious as he could have asked; she looked down,
and her lip quivered like that of a child about to cry. Suddenly she
put her hand upon one of his for just an instant, and then withdrew it.

“Lucy!” he said huskily. “Dear, what’s the matter? You look as if
you were going to cry. You always do that,” he went on plaintively,
“whenever I can get you to talk about marrying me.”

“I know it,” she murmured.

“Well, why do you?”

Her eyelids flickered, and then she looked up at him with a sad
gravity, tears seeming just at the poise. “One reason’s because I have
a feeling that it’s never going to be.”

“Why?”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“You haven’t any reason or—”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“Well, if that’s all,” George said, reassured, and laughing
confidently, “I guess I won’t be very much troubled!” But at once he
became serious again, adopting the tone of argument. “Lucy, how is
anything ever going to get a chance to come of it, so long as you keep
sticking to ‘almost’? Doesn’t it strike you as unreasonable to have a
‘feeling’ that we’ll never be married, when what principally stands
between us is the fact that you won’t be really engaged to me? That
does seem pretty absurd! Don’t you care enough about me to marry me?”

She looked down again, pathetically troubled. “Yes.”

“Won’t you always care that much about me?”

“I’m—yes—I’m afraid so, George. I never do change much about anything.”

“Well, then, why in the world won’t you drop the ‘almost’?”

Her distress increased. “Everything is—everything—”

“What about ‘everything’?”

“Everything is so—so unsettled.”

And at that he uttered an exclamation of impatience. “If you aren’t the
queerest girl! What is ‘unsettled’?”

“Well, for one thing,” she said, able to smile at his vehemence, “you
haven’t settled on anything to do. At least, if you have you’ve never
spoken of it.”

As she spoke, she gave him the quickest possible side glance of hopeful
scrutiny; then looked away, not happily. Surprise and displeasure were
intentionally visible upon the countenance of her companion; and he
permitted a significant period of silence to elapse before making any
response. “Lucy,” he said, finally, with cold dignity, “I should like
to ask you a few questions.”

“Yes?”

“The first is: Haven’t you perfectly well understood that I don’t mean
to go into business or adopt a profession?”

“I wasn’t quite sure,” she said gently. “I really didn’t know—quite.”

“Then of course it’s time I did tell you. I never have been able to
see any occasion for a man’s going into trade, or being a lawyer,
or any of those things if his position and family were such that he
didn’t need to. You know, yourself, there are a lot of people in the
East—in the South, too, for that matter—that don’t think we’ve got any
particular family or position or culture in this part of the country.
I’ve met plenty of that kind of provincial snobs myself, and they’re
pretty galling. There were one or two men in my crowd at college,
their families had lived on their income for three generations, and
they never dreamed there was anybody in their class out here. I had to
show them a thing or two, right at the start, and I guess they won’t
forget it! Well, I think it’s time all their sort found out that three
generations can mean just as much out here as anywhere else. That’s the
way I feel about it, and let me tell you I feel it pretty deeply!”

“But what are you going to do, George?” she cried.

George’s earnestness surpassed hers; he had become flushed and his
breathing was emotional. As he confessed, with simple genuineness, he
did feel what he was saying “pretty deeply”; and in truth his state
approached the tremulous. “I expect to live an honourable life,” he
said. “I expect to contribute my share to charities, and to take part
in—in movements.”

“What kind?”

“Whatever appeals to me,” he said.

Lucy looked at him with grieved wonder. “But you really don’t mean to
have any regular business or profession at all?”

“I certainly do not!” George returned promptly and emphatically.

“I was afraid so,” she said in a low voice.

George continued to breathe deeply throughout another protracted
interval of silence. Then he said, “I should like to revert to the
questions I was asking you, if you don’t mind.”

“No, George. I think we’d better—”

“Your father is a business man—”

“He’s a mechanical genius,” Lucy interrupted quickly. “Of course he’s
both. And he was a lawyer once—he’s done all sorts of things.”

“Very well. I merely wished to ask if it’s his influence that makes you
think I ought to ‘do’ something?”

Lucy frowned slightly. “Why, I suppose almost everything I think or say
must be owing to his influence in one way or another. We haven’t had
anybody but each other for so many years, and we always think about
alike, so of course—”

“I see!” And George’s brow darkened with resentment. “So that’s it, is
it? It’s your father’s idea that I ought to go into business and that
you oughtn’t to be engaged to me until I do.”

Lucy gave a start, her denial was so quick. “No! I’ve never once spoken
to him about it. Never!”

George looked at her keenly, and he jumped to a conclusion not far from
the truth. “But you know without talking to him that it’s the way he
does feel about it? I see.”

She nodded gravely. “Yes.”

George’s brow grew darker still. “Do you think I’d be much of a man,”
he said, slowly, “if I let any other man dictate to me my own way of
life?”

“George! Who’s ‘dictating’ your—”

“It seems to me it amounts to that!” he returned.

“Oh, no! I only know how papa thinks about things. He’s never, never
spoken unkindly, or ‘dictatingly’ of you.” She lifted her hand in
protest, and her face was so touching in its distress that for the
moment George forgot his anger. He seized that small, troubled hand.

“Lucy,” he said huskily. “Don’t you know that I love you?”

“Yes—I do.”

“Don’t you love me?”

“Yes—I do.”

“Then what does it matter what your father thinks about my doing
something or not doing anything? He has his way, and I have mine. I
don’t believe in the whole world scrubbing dishes and selling potatoes
and trying law cases. Why, look at your father’s best friend, my Uncle
George Amberson—he’s never done anything in his life, and—”

“Oh, yes, he has,” she interrupted. “He was in politics.”

“Well, I’m glad he’s out,” George said. “Politics is a dirty business
for a gentleman, and Uncle George would tell you that himself. Lucy,
let’s not talk any more about it. Let me tell mother when I get home
that we’re engaged. Won’t you, dear?”

She shook her head.

“Is it because—”

For a fleeting instant she touched to her cheek the hand that held
hers. “No,” she said, and gave him a sudden little look of renewed
gayety. “Let’s let it stay ‘almost’.”

“Because your father—”

“Oh, because it’s better!”

George’s voice shook. “Isn’t it your father?”

“It’s his ideals I’m thinking of—yes.”

George dropped her hand abruptly and anger narrowed his eyes. “I know
what you mean,” he said. “I dare say I don’t care for your father’s
ideals any more than he does for mine!”

He tightened the reins, Pendennis quickening eagerly to the trot; and
when George jumped out of the runabout before Lucy’s gate, and assisted
her to descend, the silence in which they parted was the same that had
begun when Pendennis began to trot.




Chapter XVIII


That evening, after dinner, George sat with his mother and his Aunt
Fanny upon the veranda. In former summers, when they sat outdoors in
the evening, they had customarily used an open terrace at the side of
the house, looking toward the Major’s, but that more private retreat
now afforded too blank and abrupt a view of the nearest of the new
houses; so, without consultation, they had abandoned it for the
Romanesque stone structure in front, an oppressive place.

Its oppression seemed congenial to George; he sat upon the copestone of
the stone parapet, his back against a stone pilaster; his attitude not
comfortable, but rigid, and his silence not comfortable, either, but
heavy. However, to the eyes of his mother and his aunt, who occupied
wicker chairs at a little distance, he was almost indistinguishable
except for the stiff white shield of his evening frontage.

“It’s so nice of you always to dress in the evening, Georgie,” his
mother said, her glance resting upon this surface. “Your Uncle George
always used to, and so did father, for years; but they both stopped
quite a long time ago. Unless there’s some special occasion, it seems
to me we don’t see it done any more, except on the stage and in the
magazines.”

He made no response, and Isabel, after waiting a little while, as if
she expected one, appeared to acquiesce in his mood for silence, and
turned her head to gaze thoughtfully out at the street.

There, in the highway, the evening life of the Midland city had begun.
A rising moon was bright upon the tops of the shade trees, where their
branches met overhead, arching across the street, but only filtered
splashings of moonlight reached the block pavement below; and through
this darkness flashed the firefly lights of silent bicycles gliding by
in pairs and trios—or sometimes a dozen at a time might come, and not
so silent, striking their little bells; the riders’ voices calling and
laughing; while now and then a pair of invisible experts would pass,
playing mandolin and guitar as if handle-bars were of no account in the
world—their music would come swiftly, and then too swiftly die away.
Surreys rumbled lightly by, with the plod-plod of honest old horses,
and frequently there was the glitter of whizzing spokes from a runabout
or a sporting buggy, and the sharp, decisive hoof-beats of a trotter.
Then, like a cowboy shooting up a peaceful camp, a frantic devil would
hurtle out of the distance, bellowing, exhaust racketing like a machine
gun gone amuck—and at these horrid sounds the surreys and buggies would
hug the curbstone, and the bicycles scatter to cover, cursing; while
children rushed from the sidewalks to drag pet dogs from the street.
The thing would roar by, leaving a long wake of turbulence; then the
indignant street would quiet down for a few minutes—till another came.

“There are a great many more than there used to be,” Miss Fanny
observed, in her lifeless voice, as the lull fell after one of these
visitations. “Eugene is right about that; there seem to be at least
three or four times as many as there were last summer, and you never
hear the ragamuffins shouting ‘Get a horse!’ nowadays; but I think he
may be mistaken about their going on increasing after this. I don’t
believe we’ll see so many next summer as we do now.”

“Why?” asked Isabel.

“Because I’ve begun to agree with George about their being more a fad
than anything else, and I think it must be the height of the fad just
now. You know how roller-skating came in—everybody in the world seemed
to be crowding to the rinks—and now only a few children use rollers for
getting to school. Besides, people won’t permit the automobiles to be
used. Really, I think they’ll make laws against them. You see how they
spoil the bicycling and the driving; people just seem to hate them!
They’ll never stand it—never in the world! Of course I’d be sorry to
see such a thing happen to Eugene, but I shouldn’t be really surprised
to see a law passed forbidding the sale of automobiles, just the way
there is with concealed weapons.”

“Fanny!” exclaimed her sister-in-law. “You’re not in earnest?”

“I am, though!”

Isabel’s sweet-toned laugh came out of the dusk where she sat. “Then
you didn’t mean it when you told Eugene you’d enjoyed the drive this
afternoon?”

“I didn’t say it so very enthusiastically, did I?”

“Perhaps not, but he certainly thought he’d pleased you.”

“I don’t think I gave him any right to think he’d pleased me” Fanny
said slowly.

“Why not? Why shouldn’t you, Fanny?”

Fanny did not reply at once, and when she did, her voice was almost
inaudible, but much more reproachful than plaintive. “I hardly think
I’d want any one to get the notion he’d pleased me just now. It hardly
seems time, yet—to me.”

Isabel made no response, and for a time the only sound upon the dark
veranda was the creaking of the wicker rocking-chair in which Fanny
sat—a creaking which seemed to denote content and placidity on the part
of the chair’s occupant, though at this juncture a series of human
shrieks could have been little more eloquent of emotional disturbance.
However, the creaking gave its hearer one great advantage: it could be
ignored.

“Have you given up smoking, George?” Isabel asked presently.

“No.”

“I hoped perhaps you had, because you’ve not smoked since dinner. We
shan’t mind if you care to.”

“No, thanks.”

There was silence again, except for the creaking of the rocking-chair;
then a low, clear whistle, singularly musical, was heard softly
rendering an old air from “Fra Diavolo.” The creaking stopped.

“Is that you, George?” Fanny asked abruptly.

“Is that me what?”

“Whistling ‘On Yonder Rock Reclining’?”

“It’s I,” said Isabel.

“Oh,” Fanny said dryly.

“Does it disturb you?”

“Not at all. I had an idea George was depressed about something, and
merely wondered if he could be making such a cheerful sound.” And Fanny
resumed her creaking.

“Is she right, George?” his mother asked quickly, leaning forward in
her chair to peer at him through the dusk. “You didn’t eat a very
hearty dinner, but I thought it was probably because of the warm
weather. Are you troubled about anything?”

“No!” he said angrily.

“That’s good. I thought we had such a nice day, didn’t you?”

“I suppose so,” he muttered, and, satisfied, she leaned back in her
chair; but “Fra Diavolo” was not revived. After a time she rose, went
to the steps, and stood for several minutes looking across the street.
Then her laughter was faintly heard.

“Are you laughing about something?” Fanny inquired.

“Pardon?” Isabel did not turn, but continued her observation of what
had interested her upon the opposite side of the street.

“I asked: Were you laughing at something?”

“Yes, I was!” And she laughed again. “It’s that funny, fat old Mrs.
Johnson. She has a habit of sitting at her bedroom window with a pair
of opera-glasses.”

“Really!”

“Really. You can see the window through the place that was left when we
had the dead walnut tree cut down. She looks up and down the street,
but mostly at father’s and over here. Sometimes she forgets to put out
the light in her room, and there she is, spying away for all the world
to see!”

However, Fanny made no effort to observe this spectacle, but continued
her creaking. “I’ve always thought her a very good woman,” she said
primly.

“So she is,” Isabel agreed. “She’s a good, friendly old thing, a
little too intimate in her manner, sometimes, and if her poor old
opera-glasses afford her the quiet happiness of knowing what sort of
young man our new cook is walking out with, I’m the last to begrudge it
to her! Don’t you want to come and look at her, George?”

“What? I beg your pardon. I hadn’t noticed what you were talking about.”

“It’s nothing,” she laughed. “Only a funny old lady—and she’s gone
now. I’m going, too—at least, I’m going indoors to read. It’s cooler
in the house, but the heat’s really not bad anywhere, since nightfall.
Summer’s dying. How quickly it goes, once it begins to die.”

When she had gone into the house, Fanny stopped rocking, and, leaning
forward, drew her black gauze wrap about her shoulders and shivered.
“Isn’t it queer,” she said drearily, “how your mother can use such
words?”

“What words are you talking about?” George asked.

“Words like ‘die’ and ‘dying.’ I don’t see how she can bear to use them
so soon after your poor father—” She shivered again.

“It’s almost a year,” George said absently, and he added: “It seems to
me you’re using them yourself.”

“I? Never!”

“Yes, you did.”

“When?”

“Just this minute.”

“Oh!” said Fanny. “You mean when I repeated what she said? That’s
hardly the same thing, George.”

He was not enough interested to argue the point. “I don’t think you’ll
convince anybody that mother’s unfeeling,” he said indifferently.

“I’m not trying to convince anybody. I mean merely that in my
opinion—well, perhaps it may be just as wise for me to keep my opinions
to myself.”

She paused expectantly, but her possible anticipation that George would
urge her to discard wisdom and reveal her opinion was not fulfilled.
His back was toward her, and he occupied himself with opinions of his
own about other matters. Fanny may have felt some disappointment as she
rose to withdraw.

However, at the last moment she halted with her hand upon the latch of
the screen door.

“There’s one thing I hope,” she said. “I hope at least she won’t leave
off her full mourning on the very anniversary of Wilbur’s death!”

The light door clanged behind her, and the sound annoyed her nephew. He
had no idea why she thus used inoffensive wood and wire to dramatize
her departure from the veranda, the impression remaining with him
being that she was critical of his mother upon some point of funeral
millinery. Throughout the desultory conversation he had been profoundly
concerned with his own disturbing affairs, and now was preoccupied
with a dialogue taking place (in his mind) between himself and Miss
Lucy Morgan. As he beheld the vision, Lucy had just thrown herself at
his feet. “George, you must forgive me!” she cried. “Papa was utterly
wrong! I have told him so, and the truth is that I have come to rather
dislike him as you do, and as you always have, in your heart of hearts.
George, I understand you: thy people shall be my people and thy gods my
gods. George, won’t you take me back?”

“Lucy, are you sure you understand me?” And in the darkness George’s
bodily lips moved in unison with those which uttered the words in his
imaginary rendering of this scene. An eavesdropper, concealed behind
the column, could have heard the whispered word “sure,” the emphasis
put upon it in the vision was so poignant. “You say you understand me,
but are you sure?”

Weeping, her head bowed almost to her waist, the ethereal Lucy made
reply: “Oh, so sure! I will never listen to father’s opinions again. I
do not even care if I never see him again!”

“Then I pardon you,” he said gently.

This softened mood lasted for several moments—until he realized that it
had been brought about by processes strikingly lacking in substance.
Abruptly he swung his feet down from the copestone to the floor of the
veranda. “Pardon nothing!” No meek Lucy had thrown herself in remorse
at his feet; and now he pictured her as she probably really was at
this moment: sitting on the white steps of her own front porch in the
moonlight, with red-headed Fred Kinney and silly Charlie Johnson and
four or five others—all of them laughing, most likely, and some idiot
playing the guitar!

George spoke aloud: “Riffraff!”

And because of an impish but all too natural reaction of the mind, he
could see Lucy with much greater distinctness in this vision than in
his former pleasing one. For a moment she was miraculously real before
him, every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight shimmering
in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the
tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow
behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery
twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she
moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair—and not one
alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing profile was
spared him as she seemed to turn to the infernal Kinney—

“Riffraff!” And George began furiously to pace the stone floor.
“Riffraff!” By this hard term—a favourite with him since childhood’s
scornful hour—he meant to indicate, not Lucy, but the young gentlemen
who, in his vision, surrounded her. “Riffraff!” he said again, aloud,
and again:

“Riffraff!”

At that moment, as it happened, Lucy was playing chess with her father;
and her heart, though not remorseful, was as heavy as George could have
wished. But she did not let Eugene see that she was troubled, and he
was pleased when he won three games of her. Usually she beat him.




Chapter XIX


George went driving the next afternoon alone, and, encountering
Lucy and her father on the road, in one of Morgan’s cars, lifted
his hat, but nowise relaxed his formal countenance as they passed.
Eugene waved a cordial hand quickly returned to the steering-wheel;
but Lucy only nodded gravely and smiled no more than George did. Nor
did she accompany Eugene to the Major’s for dinner, the following
Sunday evening, though both were bidden to attend that feast, which
was already reduced in numbers and gayety by the absence of George
Amberson. Eugene explained to his host that Lucy had gone away to visit
a school-friend.

The information, delivered in the library, just before old Sam’s
appearance to announce dinner, set Miss Minafer in quite a flutter.
“Why, George!” she said, turning to her nephew. “How does it happen
you didn’t tell us?” And with both hands opening, as if to express her
innocence of some conspiracy, she exclaimed to the others, “He’s never
said one word to us about Lucy’s planning to go away!”

“Probably afraid to,” the Major suggested. “Didn’t know but he might
break down and cry if he tried to speak of it!” He clapped his grandson
on the shoulder, inquiring jocularly, “That it, Georgie?”

Georgie made no reply, but he was red enough to justify the Major’s
developing a chuckle into laughter; though Miss Fanny, observing her
nephew keenly, got an impression that this fiery blush was in truth
more fiery than tender. She caught a glint in his eye less like
confusion than resentment, and saw a dilation of his nostrils which
might have indicated not so much a sweet agitation as an inaudible
snort. Fanny had never been lacking in curiosity, and, since her
brother’s death, this quality was more than ever alert. The fact that
George had spent all the evenings of the past week at home had not
been lost upon her, nor had she failed to ascertain, by diplomatic
inquiries, that since the day of the visit to Eugene’s shops George had
gone driving alone.

At the dinner-table she continued to observe him, sidelong; and toward
the conclusion of the meal she was not startled by an episode which
brought discomfort to the others. After the arrival of coffee the Major
was rallying Eugene upon some rival automobile shops lately built in a
suburb, and already promising to flourish.

“I suppose they’ll either drive you out of the business,” said the old
gentleman, “or else the two of you’ll drive all the rest of us off the
streets.”

“If we do, we’ll even things up by making the streets five or ten times
as long as they are now,” Eugene returned.

“How do you propose to do that?”

“It isn’t the distance from the center of a town that counts,” said
Eugene; “it’s the time it takes to get there. This town’s already
spreading; bicycles and trolleys have been doing their share, but the
automobile is going to carry city streets clear out to the county line.”

The Major was skeptical. “Dream on, fair son!” he said. “It’s lucky for
us that you’re only dreaming; because if people go to moving that far,
real estate values in the old residence part of town are going to be
stretched pretty thin.”

“I’m afraid so,” Eugene assented. “Unless you keep things so bright and
clean that the old section will stay more attractive than the new ones.”

“Not very likely! How are things going to be kept ‘bright and clean’
with soft coal, and our kind of city government?”

“They aren’t,” Eugene replied quickly. “There’s no hope of it, and
already the boarding-house is marching up National Avenue. There
are two in the next block below here, and there are a dozen in the
half-mile below that. My relatives, the Sharons, have sold their house
and are building in the country—at least, they call it ‘the country.’
It will be city in two or three years.”

“Good gracious!” the Major exclaimed, affecting dismay. “So your little
shops are going to ruin all your old friends, Eugene!”

“Unless my old friends take warning in time, or abolish smoke and get
a new kind of city government. I should say the best chance is to take
warning.”

“Well, well!” the Major laughed. “You have enough faith in miracles,
Eugene—granting that trolleys and bicycles and automobiles are
miracles. So you think they’re to change the face of the land, do you?”

“They’re already doing it, Major; and it can’t be stopped. Automobiles—”

At this point he was interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had
said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud
and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks
idle prattle and settles a matter forever.

“Automobiles are a useless nuisance,” he said.

There fell a moment’s silence.

Isabel gazed incredulously at George, colour slowly heightening upon
her cheeks and temples, while Fanny watched him with a quick eagerness,
her eyes alert and bright. But Eugene seemed merely quizzical, as
if not taking this brusquerie to himself. The Major was seriously
disturbed.

“What did you say, George?” he asked, though George had spoken but too
distinctly.

“I said all automobiles were a nuisance,” George answered, repeating
not only the words but the tone in which he had uttered them. And he
added, “They’ll never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no
business to be invented.”

The Major frowned. “Of course you forget that Mr. Morgan makes them,
and also did his share in inventing them. If you weren’t so thoughtless
he might think you rather offensive.”

“That would be too bad,” said George coolly. “I don’t think I could
survive it.”

Again there was a silence, while the Major stared at his grandson,
aghast. But Eugene began to laugh cheerfully.

“I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles,” he said. “With all their
speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization—that is,
in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the
beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls. I am not sure.
But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life
than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things
are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to
alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are
going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how,
though, I could hardly guess. But you can’t have the immense outward
changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be
that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for
us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward
change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline
engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles ‘had no
business to be invented.’” He laughed good-naturedly, and looking at
his watch, apologized for having an engagement which made his departure
necessary when he would so much prefer to linger. Then he shook
hands with the Major, and bade Isabel, George, and Fanny a cheerful
good-night—a collective farewell cordially addressed to all three of
them together—and left them at the table.

Isabel turned wondering, hurt eyes upon her son. “George, dear!” she
said. “What did you mean?”

“Just what I said,” he returned, lighting one of the Major’s cigars,
and his manner was imperturbable enough to warrant the definition
(sometimes merited by imperturbability) of stubbornness.

Isabel’s hand, pale and slender, upon the tablecloth, touched one
of the fine silver candlesticks aimlessly: the fingers were seen to
tremble. “Oh, he was hurt!” she murmured.

“I don’t see why he should be,” George said. “I didn’t say anything
about him. He didn’t seem to me to be hurt—seemed perfectly cheerful.
What made you think he was hurt?”

“I know him!” was all of her reply, half whispered.

The Major stared hard at George from under his white eyebrows. “You
didn’t mean ‘him,’ you say, George? I suppose if we had a clergyman as
a guest here you’d expect him not to be offended, and to understand
that your remarks were neither personal nor untactful, if you said the
church was a nuisance and ought never to have been invented. By Jove,
but you’re a puzzle!”

“In what way, may I ask, sir?”

“We seem to have a new kind of young people these days,” the old
gentleman returned, shaking his head. “It’s a new style of courting
a pretty girl, certainly, for a young fellow to go deliberately out
of his way to try and make an enemy of her father by attacking his
business! By Jove! That’s a new way to win a woman!”

George flushed angrily and seemed about to offer a retort, but held
his breath for a moment; and then held his peace. It was Isabel who
responded to the Major. “Oh, no!” she said. “Eugene would never be
anybody’s enemy—he couldn’t!—and last of all Georgie’s. I’m afraid he
was hurt, but I don’t fear his not having understood that George spoke
without thinking of what he was saying—I mean, with-out realizing its
bearing on Eugene.”

Again George seemed upon the point of speech, and again controlled the
impulse. He thrust his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair,
and smoked, staring inflexibly at the ceiling.

“Well, well,” said his grandfather, rising. “It wasn’t a very
successful little dinner!”

Thereupon he offered his arm to his daughter, who took it fondly, and
they left the room, Isabel assuring him that all his little dinners
were pleasant, and that this one was no exception.

George did not move, and Fanny, following the other two, came round the
table, and paused close beside his chair; but George remained posed in
his great imperturbability, cigar between teeth, eyes upon ceiling, and
paid no attention to her. Fanny waited until the sound of Isabel’s and
the Major’s voices became inaudible in the hall. Then she said quickly,
and in a low voice so eager that it was unsteady:

“George, you’ve struck just the treatment to adopt: you’re doing the
right thing!”

She hurried out, scurrying after the others with a faint rustling
of her black skirts, leaving George mystified but incurious. He did
not understand why she should bestow her approbation upon him in the
matter, and cared so little whether she did or not that he spared
himself even the trouble of being puzzled about it.

In truth, however, he was neither so comfortable nor so imperturbable
as he appeared. He felt some gratification: he had done a little to
put the man in his place—that man whose influence upon his daughter
was precisely the same thing as a contemptuous criticism of George
Amberson Minafer, and of George Amberson Minafer’s “ideals of life.”
Lucy’s going away without a word was intended, he supposed, as a bit of
punishment. Well, he wasn’t the sort of man that people were allowed to
punish: he could demonstrate that to them—since they started it!

It appeared to him as almost a kind of insolence, this abrupt
departure—not even telephoning! Probably she wondered how he would take
it; she even might have supposed he would show some betraying chagrin
when he heard of it.

He had no idea that this was just what he had shown; and he was
satisfied with his evening’s performance. Nevertheless, he was not
comfortable in his mind; though he could not have explained his inward
perturbations, for he was convinced, without any confirmation from his
Aunt Fanny, that he had done “just the right thing.”




Chapter XX


Isabel came to George’s door that night, and when she had kissed him
good-night she remained in the open doorway with her hand upon his
shoulder and her eyes thoughtfully lowered, so that her wish to say
something more than good-night was evident. Not less obvious was her
perplexity about the manner of saying it; and George, divining her
thought, amiably made an opening for her.

“Well, old lady,” he said indulgently, “you needn’t look so worried. I
won’t be tactless with Morgan again. After this I’ll just keep out of
his way.”

Isabel looked up, searching his face with the fond puzzlement which her
eyes sometimes showed when they rested upon him; then she glanced down
the hall toward Fanny’s room, and, after another moment of hesitation,
came quickly in, and closed the door.

“Dear,” she said, “I wish you’d tell me something: Why don’t you like
Eugene?”

“Oh, I like him well enough,” George returned, with a short laugh, as
he sat down and began to unlace his shoes. “I like him well enough—in
his place.”

“No, dear,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve had a feeling from the very
first that you didn’t really like him—that you really never liked him.
Sometimes you’ve seemed to be friendly with him, and you’d laugh with
him over something in a jolly, companionable way, and I’d think I was
wrong, and that you really did like him, after all; but to-night I’m
sure my other feeling was the right one: you don’t like him. I can’t
understand it, dear; I don’t see what can be the matter.”

“Nothing’s the matter.”

This easy declaration naturally failed to carry great weight, and
Isabel went on, in her troubled voice, “It seems so queer, especially
when you feel as you do about his daughter.”

At this, George stopped unlacing his shoes abruptly, and sat up. “How
do I feel about his daughter?” he demanded.

“Well, it’s seemed—as if—as if—” Isabel began timidly. “It did seem—At
least, you haven’t looked at any other girl, ever since they came here
and—and certainly you’ve seemed very much interested in her. Certainly
you’ve been very great friends?”

“Well, what of that?”

“It’s only that I’m like your grandfather: I can’t see how you could be
so much interested in a girl and—and not feel very pleasantly toward
her father.”

“Well, I’ll tell you something,” George said slowly; and a frown of
concentration could be seen upon his brow, as from a profound effort
at self-examination. “I haven’t ever thought much on that particular
point, but I admit there may be a little something in what you say.
The truth is, I don’t believe I’ve ever thought of the two together,
exactly—at least, not until lately. I’ve always thought of Lucy just
as Lucy, and of Morgan just as Morgan. I’ve always thought of her as
a person herself, not as anybody’s daughter. I don’t see what’s very
extraordinary about that. You’ve probably got plenty of friends, for
instance, that don’t care much about your son—”

“No, indeed!” she protested quickly. “And if I knew anybody who felt
like that, I wouldn’t—”

“Never mind,” he interrupted. “I’ll try to explain a little more. If
I have a friend, I don’t see that it’s incumbent upon me to like that
friend’s relatives. If I didn’t like them, and pretended to, I’d be a
hypocrite. If that friend likes me and wants to stay my friend he’ll
have to stand my not liking his relatives, or else he can quit. I
decline to be a hypocrite about it; that’s all. Now, suppose I have
certain ideas or ideals which I have chosen for the regulation of my
own conduct in life. Suppose some friend of mine has a relative with
ideals directly the opposite of mine, and my friend believes more in
the relative’s ideals than in mine: Do you think I ought to give up
my own just to please a person who’s taken up ideals that I really
despise?”

“No, dear; of course people can’t give up their ideals; but I don’t see
what this has to do with dear little Lucy and—”

“I didn’t say it had anything to do with them,” he interrupted. “I
was merely putting a case to show how a person would be justified in
being a friend of one member of a family, and feeling anything but
friendly toward another. I don’t say, though, that I feel unfriendly to
Mr. Morgan. I don’t say that I feel friendly to him, and I don’t say
that I feel unfriendly; but if you really think that I was rude to him
to-night—”

“Just thoughtless, dear. You didn’t see that what you said to-night—”

“Well, I’ll not say anything of that sort again where he can hear it.
There, isn’t that enough?”

This question, delivered with large indulgence, met with no response;
for Isabel, still searching his face with her troubled and perplexed
gaze, seemed not to have heard it. On that account, George repeated it,
and rising, went to her and patted her reassuringly upon the shoulder.
“There, old lady, you needn’t fear my tactlessness will worry you
again. I can’t quite promise to like people I don’t care about one way
or another, but you can be sure I’ll be careful, after this, not to
let them see it. It’s all right, and you’d better toddle along to bed,
because I want to undress.”

“But, George,” she said earnestly, “you would like him, if you’d just
let yourself. You say you don’t dislike him. Why don’t you like him? I
can’t understand at all. What is it that you don’t—”

“There, there!” he said. “It’s all right, and you toddle along.”

“But, George, dear—”

“Now, now! I really do want to get into bed. Good-night, old lady.”

“Good-night, dear. But—”

“Let’s not talk of it any more,” he said. “It’s all right, and nothing
in the world to worry about. So good-night, old lady. I’ll be polite
enough to him, never fear—if we happen to be thrown together. So
good-night!”

“But, George, dear—”

“I’m going to bed, old lady; so good-night.”

Thus the interview closed perforce. She kissed him again before going
slowly to her own room, her perplexity evidently not dispersed; but the
subject was not renewed between them the next day or subsequently. Nor
did Fanny make any allusion to the cryptic approbation she had bestowed
upon her nephew after the Major’s “not very successful little dinner”;
though she annoyed George by looking at him oftener and longer than
he cared to be looked at by an aunt. He could not glance her way, it
seemed, without finding her red-rimmed eyes fixed upon him eagerly,
with an alert and hopeful calculation in them which he declared would
send a nervous man into fits. For thus, one day, he broke out, in
protest:

“It would!” he repeated vehemently. “Given time it would—straight into
fits! What do you find the matter with me? Is my tie always slipping up
behind? Can’t you look at something else? My Lord! We’d better buy a
cat for you to stare at, Aunt Fanny! A cat could stand it, maybe. What
in the name of goodness do you expect to see?”

But Fanny laughed good-naturedly, and was not offended. “It’s more as
if I expected you to see something, isn’t it?” she said quietly, still
laughing.

“Now, what do you mean by that?”

“Never mind!”

“All right, I don’t. But for heaven’s sake stare at somebody else
awhile. Try it on the house-maid!”

“Well, well,” Fanny said indulgently, and then chose to be more obscure
in her meaning than ever, for she adopted a tone of deep sympathy for
her final remark, as she left him: “I don’t wonder you’re nervous these
days, poor boy!”

And George indignantly supposed that she referred to the ordeal of
Lucy’s continued absence. During this period he successfully avoided
contact with Lucy’s father, though Eugene came frequently to the
house, and spent several evenings with Isabel and Fanny; and sometimes
persuaded them and the Major to go for an afternoon’s motoring. He
did not, however, come again to the Major’s Sunday evening dinner,
even when George Amberson returned. Sunday evening was the time, he
explained, for going over the week’s work with his factory managers.

When Lucy came home the autumn was far enough advanced to smell of
burning leaves, and for the annual editorials, in the papers, on the
purple haze, the golden branches, the ruddy fruit, and the pleasure
of long tramps in the brown forest. George had not heard of her
arrival, and he met her, on the afternoon following that event, at
the Sharons’, where he had gone in the secret hope that he might hear
something about her. Janie Sharon had just begun to tell him that
she heard Lucy was expected home soon, after having “a perfectly
gorgeous time”—information which George received with no responsive
enthusiasm—when Lucy came demurely in, a proper little autumn figure in
green and brown.

Her cheeks were flushed, and her dark eyes were bright indeed;
evidences, as George supposed, of the excitement incidental to the
perfectly gorgeous time just concluded; though Janie and Mary Sharon
both thought they were the effect of Lucy’s having seen George’s
runabout in front of the house as she came in. George took on colour,
himself, as, he rose and nodded indifferently; and the hot suffusion to
which he became subject extended its area to include his neck and ears.
Nothing could have made him much more indignant than his consciousness
of these symptoms of the icy indifference which it was his purpose not
only to show but to feel.

She kissed her cousins, gave George her hand, said “How d’you do,” and
took a chair beside Janie with a composure which augmented George’s
indignation.

“How d’you do,” he said. “I trust that ah—I trust—I do trust—”

He stopped, for it seemed to him that the word “trust” sounded idiotic.
Then, to cover his awkwardness, he coughed, and even to his own rosy
ears his cough was ostentatiously a false one. Whereupon, seeking to be
plausible, he coughed again, and instantly hated himself: the sound he
made was an atrocity. Meanwhile, Lucy sat silent, and the two Sharon
girls leaned forward, staring at him with strained eyes, their lips
tightly compressed; and both were but too easily diagnosed as subject
to an agitation which threatened their self-control. He began again.

“I er—I hope you have had a—a pleasant time. I er—I hope you are well.
I hope you are extremely—I hope extremely—extremely—” And again he
stopped in the midst of his floundering, not knowing how to progress
beyond “extremely,” and unable to understand why the infernal word kept
getting into his mouth.

“I beg your pardon?” Lucy said.

George was never more furious; he felt that he was “making a spectacle
of himself”; and no young gentleman in the world was more loath than
George Amberson Minafer to look a figure of fun. And while he stood
there, undeniably such a figure, with Janie and Mary Sharon threatening
to burst at any moment, if laughter were longer denied them, Lucy sat
looking at him with her eyebrows delicately lifted in casual, polite
inquiry. Her own complete composure was what most galled him.

“Nothing of the slightest importance!” he managed to say. “I was just
leaving. Good afternoon!” And with long strides he reached the door and
hastened through the hall; but before he closed the front door he heard
from Janie and Mary Sharon the outburst of wild, irrepressible emotion
which his performance had inspired.

He drove home in a tumultuous mood, and almost ran down two ladies
who were engaged in absorbing conversation at a crossing. They were
his Aunt Fanny and the stout Mrs. Johnson; a jerk of the reins at the
last instant saved them by a few inches; but their conversation was so
interesting that they were unaware of their danger, and did not notice
the runabout, nor how close it came to them. George was so furious with
himself and with the girl whose unexpected coming into a room could
make him look such a fool, that it might have soothed him a little if
he had actually run over the two absorbed ladies without injuring them
beyond repair. At least, he said to himself that he wished he had; it
might have taken his mind off of himself for a few minutes. For, in
truth, to be ridiculous (and know it) was one of several things that
George was unable to endure. He was savage.

He drove into the Major’s stable too fast, the sagacious Pendennis
saving himself from going through a partition by a swerve which
splintered a shaft of the runabout and almost threw the driver to the
floor. George swore, and then swore again at the fat old darkey, Tom,
for giggling at his swearing.

“Hoopee!” said old Tom. “Mus’ been some white lady use Mist’ Jawge
mighty bad! White lady say, ‘No, suh, I ain’ go’n out ridin’ ’ith Mist’
Jawge no mo’!’ Mist’ Jawge drive in. ‘Dam de dam worl’! Dam de dam
hoss! Dam de dam nigga’! Dam de dam dam!’ Hoopee!”

“That’ll do!” George said sternly.

“Yessuh!”

George strode from the stable, crossed the Major’s back yard, then
passed behind the new houses, on his way home. These structures were
now approaching completion, but still in a state of rawness hideous to
George—though, for that matter, they were never to be anything except
hideous to him. Behind them, stray planks, bricks, refuse of plaster
and lath, shingles, straw, empty barrels, strips of twisted tin and
broken tiles were strewn everywhere over the dried and pitted gray
mud where once the suave lawn had lain like a green lake around those
stately islands, the two Amberson houses. And George’s state of mind
was not improved by his present view of this repulsive area, nor by his
sensations when he kicked an uptilted shingle only to discover that
what uptilted it was a brickbat on the other side of it. After that,
the whole world seemed to be one solid conspiracy of malevolence.

In this temper he emerged from behind the house nearest to his own,
and, glancing toward the street, saw his mother standing with Eugene
Morgan upon the cement path that led to the front gate. She was
bareheaded, and Eugene held his hat and stick in his hand; evidently he
had been calling upon her, and she had come from the house with him,
continuing their conversation and delaying their parting.

They had paused in their slow walk from the front door to the gate, yet
still stood side by side, their shoulders almost touching, as though
neither Isabel nor Eugene quite realized that their feet had ceased
to bear them forward; and they were not looking at each other, but at
some indefinite point before them, as people do who consider together
thoughtfully and in harmony. The conversation was evidently serious;
his head was bent, and Isabel’s lifted left hand rested against her
cheek; but all the significances of their thoughtful attitude denoted
companionableness and a shared understanding. Yet, a stranger, passing,
would not have thought them married: somewhere about Eugene, not
quite to be located, there was a romantic gravity; and Isabel, tall
and graceful, with high colour and absorbed eyes, was visibly no wife
walking down to the gate with her husband.

George stared at them. A hot dislike struck him at the sight of Eugene;
and a vague revulsion, like a strange, unpleasant taste in his mouth,
came over him as he looked at his mother: her manner was eloquent of
so much thought about her companion and of such reliance upon him.
And the picture the two thus made was a vivid one indeed, to George,
whose angry eyes, for some reason, fixed themselves most intently upon
Isabel’s lifted hand, upon the white ruffle at her wrist, bordering the
graceful black sleeve, and upon the little indentations in her cheek
where the tips of her fingers rested. She should not have worn white at
her wrist, or at the throat either, George felt; and then, strangely,
his resentment concentrated upon those tiny indentations at the tips
of her fingers—actual changes, however slight and fleeting, in his
mother’s face, made because of Mr. Eugene Morgan. For the moment, it
seemed to George that Morgan might have claimed the ownership of a face
that changed for him. It was as if he owned Isabel.

The two began to walk on toward the gate, where they stopped again,
turning to face each other, and Isabel’s glance, passing Eugene, fell
upon George. Instantly she smiled and waved her hand to him; while
Eugene turned and nodded; but George, standing as in some rigid trance,
and staring straight at them, gave these signals of greeting no sign of
recognition whatever. Upon this, Isabel called to him, waving her hand
again.

“Georgie!” she called, laughing. “Wake up, dear! Georgie, hello!”

George turned away as if he had neither seen nor heard, and stalked
into the house by the side door.




Chapter XXI


He went to his room, threw off his coat, waistcoat, collar, and tie,
letting them lie where they chanced to fall, and then, having violently
enveloped himself in a black velvet dressing-gown, continued this
action by lying down with a vehemence that brought a wheeze of protest
from his bed. His repose was only a momentary semblance, however, for
it lasted no longer than the time it took him to groan “Riffraff!”
between his teeth. Then he sat up, swung his feet to the floor, rose,
and began to pace up and down the large room.

He had just been consciously rude to his mother for the first time in
his life; for, with all his riding down of populace and riffraff, he
had never before been either deliberately or impulsively disregardful
of her. When he had hurt her it had been accidental; and his remorse
for such an accident was always adequate compensation—and more—to
Isabel. But now he had done a rough thing to her; and he did not
repent; rather he was the more irritated with her. And when he heard
her presently go by his door with a light step, singing cheerfully to
herself as she went to her room, he perceived that she had mistaken his
intention altogether, or, indeed, had failed to perceive that he had
any intention at all. Evidently she had concluded that he refused to
speak to her and Morgan out of sheer absent-mindedness, supposing him
so immersed in some preoccupation that he had not seen them or heard
her calling to him. Therefore there was nothing of which to repent,
even if he had been so minded; and probably Eugene himself was unaware
that any disapproval had recently been expressed. George snorted. What
sort of a dreamy loon did they take him to be?

There came a delicate, eager tapping at his door, not done with a
knuckle but with the tip of a fingernail, which was instantly clarified
to George’s mind’s eye as plainly as if he saw it: the long and
polished white-mooned pink shield on the end of his Aunt Fanny’s right
forefinger. But George was in no mood for human communications, and
even when things went well he had little pleasure in Fanny’s society.
Therefore it is not surprising that at the sound of her tapping,
instead of bidding her enter, he immediately crossed the room with the
intention of locking the door to keep her out.

Fanny was too eager, and, opening the door before he reached it, came
quickly in, and closed it behind her. She was in a street dress and a
black hat, with a black umbrella in her black-gloved hand—for Fanny’s
heavy mourning, at least, was nowhere tempered with a glimpse of white,
though the anniversary of Wilbur’s death had passed. An infinitesimal
perspiration gleamed upon her pale skin; she breathed fast, as if she
had run up the stairs; and excitement was sharp in her widened eyes.
Her look was that of a person who had just seen something extraordinary
or heard thrilling news.

“Now, what on earth do you want?” her chilling nephew demanded.

“George,” she said hurriedly, “I saw what you did when you wouldn’t
speak to them. I was sitting with Mrs. Johnson at her front window,
across the street, and I saw it all.”

“Well, what of it?”

“You did right!” Fanny said with a vehemence not the less spirited
because she suppressed her voice almost to a whisper. “You did exactly
right! You’re behaving splendidly about the whole thing, and I want to
tell you I know your father would thank you if he could see what you’re
doing.”

“My Lord!” George broke out at her. “You make me dizzy! For heaven’s
sake quit the mysterious detective business—at least do quit it around
me! Go and try it on somebody else, if you like; but I don’t want to
hear it!”

She began to tremble, regarding him with a fixed gaze. “You don’t care
to hear then,” she said huskily, “that I approve of what you’re doing?”

“Certainly not! Since I haven’t the faintest idea what you think I’m
‘doing,’ naturally I don’t care whether you approve of it or not. All
I’d like, if you please, is to be alone. I’m not giving a tea here,
this afternoon, if you’ll permit me to mention it!”

Fanny’s gaze wavered; she began to blink; then suddenly she sank into a
chair and wept silently, but with a terrible desolation.

“Oh, for the Lord’s sake!” he moaned. “What in the world is wrong with
you?”

“You’re always picking on me,” she quavered wretchedly, her voice
indistinct with the wetness that bubbled into it from her tears. “You
do—you always pick on me! You’ve always done it—always—ever since you
were a little boy! Whenever anything goes wrong with you, you take it
out on me! You do! You always—”

George flung to heaven a gesture of despair; it seemed to him the last
straw that Fanny should have chosen this particular time to come and
sob in his room over his mistreatment of her!

“Oh, my Lord!” he whispered; then, with a great effort, addressed her
in a reasonable tone: “Look here, Aunt Fanny; I don’t see what you’re
making all this fuss about. Of course I know I’ve teased you sometimes,
but—”

“‘Teased’ me?” she wailed. “‘Teased’ me! Oh, it does seem too hard,
sometimes—this mean old life of mine does seem too hard! I don’t think
I can stand it! Honestly, I don’t think I can! I came in here just
to show you I sympathized with you—just to say something pleasant
to you, and you treat me as if I were—oh, no, you wouldn’t treat
a servant the way you treat me! You wouldn’t treat anybody in the
world like this except old Fanny! ‘Old Fanny’ you say. ‘It’s nobody
but old Fanny, so I’ll kick her—nobody will resent it. I’ll kick her
all I want to!’ You do! That’s how you think of me—I know it! And
you’re right: I haven’t got anything in the world, since my brother
died—nobody—nothing—nothing!”

“Oh my Lord!” George groaned.

Fanny spread out her small, soaked handkerchief, and shook it in the
air to dry it a little, crying as damply and as wretchedly during this
operation as before—a sight which gave George a curious shock to add
to his other agitations, it seemed so strange. “I ought not to have
come,” she went on, “because I might have known it would only give you
an excuse to pick on me again! I’m sorry enough I came, I can tell
you! I didn’t mean to speak of it again to you, at all; and I wouldn’t
have, but I saw how you treated them, and I guess I got excited about
it, and couldn’t help following the impulse—but I’ll know better next
time, I can tell you! I’ll keep my mouth shut as I meant to, and as I
would have, if I hadn’t got excited and if I hadn’t felt sorry for you.
But what does it matter to anybody if I’m sorry for them? I’m only old
Fanny!”

“Oh, good gracious! How can it matter to me who’s sorry for me when I
don’t know what they’re sorry about!”

“You’re so proud,” she quavered, “and so hard! I tell you I didn’t mean
to speak of it to you, and I never, never in the world would have told
you about it, nor have made the faintest reference to it, if I hadn’t
seen that somebody else had told you, or you’d found out for yourself
some way. I—”

In despair of her intelligence, and in some doubt of his own, George
struck the palms of his hands together. “Somebody else had told me
what? I’d found what out for myself?”

“How people are talking about your mother.”

Except for the incidental teariness of her voice, her tone was casual,
as though she mentioned a subject previously discussed and understood;
for Fanny had no doubt that George had only pretended to be mystified
because, in his pride, he would not in words admit that he knew what he
knew.

“What did you say?” he asked incredulously.

“Of course I understood what you were doing,” Fanny went on, drying her
handkerchief again. “It puzzled other people when you began to be rude
to Eugene, because they couldn’t see how you could treat him as you
did when you were so interested in Lucy. But I remembered how you came
to me, that other time when there was so much talk about Isabel; and I
knew you’d give Lucy up in a minute, if it came to a question of your
mother’s reputation, because you said then that—”

“Look here,” George interrupted in a shaking voice. “Look here, I’d
like—” He stopped, unable to go on, his agitation was so great. His
chest heaved as from hard running, and his complexion, pallid at
first, had become mottled; fiery splotches appearing at his temples
and cheeks. “What do you mean by telling me—telling me there’s talk
about—about—” He gulped, and began again: “What do you mean by using
such words as ‘reputation’? What do you mean, speaking of a ‘question’
of my—my mother’s reputation?”

Fanny looked up at him woefully over the handkerchief which she now
applied to her reddened nose. “God knows I’m sorry for you, George,”
she murmured. “I wanted to say so, but it’s only old Fanny, so whatever
she says—even when it’s sympathy—pick on her for it! Hammer her!” She
sobbed. “Hammer her! It’s only poor old lonely Fanny!”

“You look here!” George said harshly. “When I spoke to my Uncle George
after that rotten thing I heard Aunt Amelia say about my mother, he
said if there was any gossip it was about you! He said people might be
laughing about the way you ran after Morgan, but that was all.”

Fanny lifted her hands, clenched them, and struck them upon her knees.
“Yes; it’s always Fanny!” she sobbed. “Ridiculous old Fanny—always,
always!”

“You listen!” George said. “After I’d talked to Uncle George I saw
you; and you said I had a mean little mind for thinking there might be
truth in what Aunt Amelia said about people talking. You denied it.
And that wasn’t the only time; you’d attacked me before then, because
I intimated that Morgan might be coming here too often. You made me
believe that mother let him come entirely on your account, and now you
say—”

“I think he did,” Fanny interrupted desolately. “I think he did come
as much to see me as anything—for a while it looked like it. Anyhow,
he liked to dance with me. He danced with me as much as he danced with
her, and he acted as if he came on my account at least as much as he
did on hers. He did act a good deal that way—and if Wilbur hadn’t died—”

“You told me there wasn’t any talk.”

“I didn’t think there was much, then,” Fanny protested. “I didn’t know
how much there was.”

“What!”

“People don’t come and tell such things to a person’s family, you know.
You don’t suppose anybody was going to say to George Amberson that his
sister was getting herself talked about, do you? Or that they were
going to say much to me?”

“You told me,” said George, fiercely, “that mother never saw him except
when she was chaperoning you.”

“They weren’t much alone together, then,” Fanny returned. “Hardly
ever, before Wilbur died. But you don’t suppose that stops people from
talking, do you? Your father never went anywhere, and people saw Eugene
with her everywhere she went—and though I was with them people just
thought”—she choked—“they just thought I didn’t count! ‘Only old Fanny
Minafer,’ I suppose they’d say! Besides, everybody knew that he’d been
engaged to her—”

“What’s that?” George cried.

“Everybody knows it. Don’t you remember your grandfather speaking of it
at the Sunday dinner one night?”

“He didn’t say they were engaged or—”

“Well, they were! Everybody knows it; and she broke it off on account
of that serenade when Eugene didn’t know what he was doing. He drank
when he was a young man, and she wouldn’t stand it, but everybody in
this town knows that Isabel has never really cared for any other man in
her life! Poor Wilbur! He was the only soul alive that didn’t know it!”

Nightmare had descended upon the unfortunate George; he leaned back
against the foot-board of his bed, gazing wildly at his aunt. “I
believe I’m going crazy,” he said. “You mean when you told me there
wasn’t any talk, you told me a falsehood?”

“No!” Fanny gasped.

“You did!”

“I tell you I didn’t know how much talk there was, and it wouldn’t have
amounted to much if Wilbur had lived.” And Fanny completed this with a
fatal admission: “I didn’t want you to interfere.”

George overlooked the admission; his mind was not now occupied with
analysis. “What do you mean,” he asked, “when you say that if father
had lived, the talk wouldn’t have amounted to anything?”

“Things might have been—they might have been different.”

“You mean Morgan might have married you?”

Fanny gulped. “No. Because I don’t know that I’d have accepted him.”
She had ceased to weep, and now she sat up stiffly. “I certainly didn’t
care enough about him to marry him; I wouldn’t have let myself care
that much until he showed that he wished to marry me. I’m not that sort
of person!” The poor lady paid her vanity this piteous little tribute.
“What I mean is, if Wilbur hadn’t died, people wouldn’t have had it
proved before their very eyes that what they’d been talking about was
true!”

“You say—you say that people believe—” George shuddered, then forced
himself to continue, in a sick voice: “They believe my mother is—is in
love with that man?”

“Of course!”

“And because he comes here—and they see her with him driving—and all
that—they think they were right when they said she was in—in love with
him before—before my father died?”

She looked at him gravely with her eyes now dry between their reddened
lids. “Why, George,” she said, gently, “don’t you know that’s what they
say? You must know that everybody in town thinks they’re going to be
married very soon.”

George uttered an incoherent cry; and sections of him appeared to
writhe. He was upon the verge of actual nausea.

“You know it!” Fanny cried, getting up. “You don’t think I’d have
spoken of it to you unless I was sure you knew it?” Her voice was
wholly genuine, as it had been throughout the wretched interview:
Fanny’s sincerity was unquestionable. “George, I wouldn’t have told
you, if you didn’t know. What other reason could you have for treating
Eugene as you did, or for refusing to speak to them like that a while
ago in the yard? Somebody must have told you?”

“Who told you?” he said.

“What?”

“Who told you there was talk? Where is this talk? Where does it come
from? Who does it?”

“Why, I suppose pretty much everybody,” she said. “I know it must be
pretty general.”

“Who said so?”

“What?”

George stepped close to her. “You say people don’t speak to a person of
gossip about that person’s family. Well, how did you hear it, then? How
did you get hold of it? Answer me!”

Fanny looked thoughtful. “Well, of course nobody not one’s most
intimate friends would speak to them about such things, and then only
in the kindest, most considerate way.”

“Who’s spoken of it to you in any way at all?” George demanded.

“Why—” Fanny hesitated.

“You answer me!”

“I hardly think it would be fair to give names.”

“Look here,” said George. “One of your most intimate friends is that
mother of Charlie Johnson’s, for instance. Has she ever mentioned this
to you? You say everybody is talking. Is she one?”

“Oh, she may have intimated—”

“I’m asking you: Has she ever spoken of it to you?”

“She’s a very kind, discreet woman, George; but she may have intimated—”

George had a sudden intuition, as there flickered into his mind the
picture of a street-crossing and two absorbed ladies almost run down
by a fast horse. “You and she have been talking about it to-day!” he
cried. “You were talking about it with her not two hours ago. Do you
deny it?”

“I—”

“Do you deny it?”

“No!”

“All right,” said George. “That’s enough!”

She caught at his arm as he turned away. “What are you going to do,
George?”

“I’ll not talk about it, now,” he said heavily. “I think you’ve done a
good deal for one day, Aunt Fanny!”

And Fanny, seeing the passion in his face, began to be alarmed. She
tried to retain possession of the black velvet sleeve which her fingers
had clutched, and he suffered her to do so, but used this leverage to
urge her to the door. “George, you know I’m sorry for you, whether you
care or not,” she whimpered. “I never in the world would have spoken of
it, if I hadn’t thought you knew all about it. I wouldn’t have—”

But he had opened the door with his free hand. “Never mind!” he said,
and she was obliged to pass out into the hall, the door closing quickly
behind her.




Chapter XXII


George took off his dressing-gown and put on a collar and a tie, his
fingers shaking so that the tie was not his usual success; then he
picked up his coat and waistcoat, and left the room while still in
process of donning them, fastening the buttons, as he ran down the
front stairs to the door. It was not until he reached the middle of the
street that he realized that he had forgotten his hat; and he paused
for an irresolute moment, during which his eye wandered, for no reason,
to the Fountain of Neptune. This castiron replica of too elaborate
sculpture stood at the next corner, where the Major had placed it when
the Addition was laid out so long ago. The street corners had been
shaped to conform with the great octagonal basin, which was no great
inconvenience for horse-drawn vehicles, but a nuisance to speeding
automobiles; and, even as George looked, one of the latter, coming
too fast, saved itself only by a dangerous skid as it rounded the
fountain. This skid was to George’s liking, though he would have been
more pleased to see the car go over, for he was wishing grief and
destruction, just then, upon all the automobiles in the world.

His eyes rested a second or two longer upon the Fountain of Neptune,
not an enlivening sight even in the shielding haze of autumn twilight.
For more than a year no water had run in the fountain: the connections
had been broken, and the Major was evasive about restorations, even
when reminded by his grandson that a dry fountain is as gay as a dry
fish. Soot streaks and a thousand pits gave Neptune the distinction,
at least, of leprosy, which the mermaids associated with him had been
consistent in catching; and his trident had been so deeply affected as
to drop its prongs. Altogether, this heavy work of heavy art, smoked
dry, hugely scabbed, cracked, and crumbling, was a dismal sight to the
distracted eye of George Amberson Minafer, and its present condition
of craziness may have added a mite to his own. His own was sufficient,
with no additions, however, as he stood looking at the Johnsons’ house
and those houses on both sides of it—that row of riffraff dwellings he
had thought so damnable, the day when he stood in his grandfather’s
yard, staring at them, after hearing what his Aunt Amelia said of the
“talk” about his mother.

He decided that he needed no hat for the sort of call he intended to
make, and went forward hurriedly. Mrs. Johnson was at home, the Irish
girl who came to the door informed him, and he was left to await the
lady, in a room like an elegant well—the Johnsons’ “reception room”:
floor space, nothing to mention; walls, blue calcimined; ceiling,
twelve feet from the floor; inside shutters and gray lace curtains;
five gilt chairs, a brocaded sofa, soiled, and an inlaid walnut table,
supporting two tall alabaster vases; a palm, with two leaves, dying in
a corner.

Mrs. Johnson came in, breathing noticeably; and her round head,
smoothly but economically decorated with the hair of an honest woman,
seemed to be lingering far in the background of the Alpine bosom which
took precedence of the rest of her everywhere; but when she was all
in the room, it was to be seen that her breathing was the result of
hospitable haste to greet the visitor, and her hand, not so dry as
Neptune’s Fountain, suggested that she had paused for only the briefest
ablutions. George accepted this cold, damp lump mechanically.

“Mr. Amberson—I mean Mr. Minafer!” she exclaimed. “I’m really
delighted: I understood you asked for me. Mr. Johnson’s out of the
city, but Charlie’s downtown and I’m looking for him at any minute,
now, and he’ll be so pleased that you—”

“I didn’t want to see Charlie,” George said. “I want—”

“Do sit down,” the hospitable lady urged him, seating herself upon the
sofa. “Do sit down.”

“No, I thank you. I wish—”

“Surely you’re not going to run away again, when you’ve just come. Do
sit down, Mr. Minafer. I hope you’re all well at your house and at the
dear old Major’s, too. He’s looking—”

“Mrs. Johnson” George said, in a strained loud voice which arrested her
attention immediately, so that she was abruptly silent, leaving her
surprised mouth open. She had already been concealing some astonishment
at this unexampled visit, however, and the condition of George’s
ordinarily smooth hair (for he had overlooked more than his hat) had
not alleviated her perplexity. “Mrs. Johnson,” he said, “I have come
to ask you a few questions which I would like you to answer, if you
please.”

She became grave at once. “Certainly, Mr. Minafer. Anything I can—”

He interrupted sternly, yet his voice shook in spite of its sternness.
“You were talking with my Aunt Fanny about my mother this afternoon.”

At this Mrs. Johnson uttered an involuntary gasp, but she recovered
herself. “Then I’m sure our conversation was a very pleasant one, if we
were talking of your mother, because—”

Again he interrupted. “My aunt has told me what the conversation
virtually was, and I don’t mean to waste any time, Mrs. Johnson.
You were talking about a—” George’s shoulders suddenly heaved
uncontrollably; but he went fiercely on: “You were discussing a scandal
that involved my mother’s name.”

“Mr. Minafer!”

“Isn’t that the truth?”

“I don’t feel called upon to answer, Mr. Minafer,” she said with
visible agitation. “I do not consider that you have any right—”

“My aunt told me you repeated this scandal to her.”

“I don’t think your aunt can have said that,” Mrs. Johnson returned
sharply. “I did not repeat a scandal of any kind to your aunt and I
think you are mistaken in saying she told you I did. We may have
discussed some matters that have been a topic of comment about town—”

“Yes!” George cried. “I think you may have! That’s what I’m here about,
and what I intend to—”

“Don’t tell me what you intend, please,” Mrs. Johnson interrupted
crisply. “And I should prefer that you would not make your voice quite
so loud in this house, which I happen to own. Your aunt may have told
you—though I think it would have been very unwise in her if she did,
and not very considerate of me—she may have told you that we discussed
some such topic as I have mentioned, and possibly that would have been
true. If I talked it over with her, you may be sure I spoke in the most
charitable spirit, and without sharing in other people’s disposition to
put an evil interpretation on what may be nothing more than unfortunate
appearances and—”

“My God!” said George. “I can’t stand this!”

“You have the option of dropping the subject,” Mrs. Johnson suggested
tartly, and she added: “Or of leaving the house.”

“I’ll do that soon enough, but first I mean to know—”

“I am perfectly willing to tell you anything you wish if you will
remember to ask it quietly. I’ll also take the liberty of reminding
you that I had a perfect right to discuss the subject with your aunt.
Other people may be less considerate in not confining their discussion
of it, as I have, to charitable views expressed only to a member of the
family. Other people—”

“Other people!” the unhappy George repeated viciously. “That’s what I
want to know about—these other people!”

“I beg your pardon.”

“I want to ask you about them. You say you know of other people who
talk about this.”

“I presume they do.”

“How many?”

“What?”

“I want to know how many other people talk about it?”

“Dear, dear!” she protested. “How should I know that?”

“Haven’t you heard anybody mention it?”

“I presume so.”

“Well, how many have you heard?”

Mrs. Johnson was becoming more annoyed than apprehensive, and she
showed it. “Really, this isn’t a court-room,” she said. “And I’m not a
defendant in a libel-suit, either!”

The unfortunate young man lost what remained of his balance. “You may
be!” he cried. “I intend to know just who’s dared to say these things,
if I have to force my way into every house in town, and I’m going to
make them take every word of it back! I mean to know the name of every
slanderer that’s spoken of this matter to you and of every tattler
you’ve passed it on to yourself. I mean to know—”

“You’ll know something pretty quick!” she said, rising with difficulty;
and her voice was thick with the sense of insult. “You’ll know that
you’re out in the street. Please to leave my house!”

George stiffened sharply. Then he bowed, and strode out of the door.

Three minutes later, disheveled and perspiring, but cold all over, he
burst into his Uncle George’s room at the Major’s without knocking.
Amberson was dressing.

“Good gracious, Georgie!” he exclaimed. “What’s up?”

“I’ve just come from Mrs. Johnson’s—across the street,” George panted.

“You have your own tastes!” was Amberson’s comment. “But curious as
they are, you ought to do something better with your hair, and button
your waistcoat to the right buttons—even for Mrs. Johnson! What were
you doing over there?”

“She told me to leave the house,” George said desperately. “I went
there because Aunt Fanny told me the whole town was talking about my
mother and that man Morgan—that they say my mother is going to marry
him and that proves she was too fond of him before my father died—she
said this Mrs. Johnson was one that talked about it, and I went to her
to ask who were the others.”

Amberson’s jaw fell in dismay. “Don’t tell me you did that!” he said,
in a low voice; and then, seeing that it was true, “Oh, now you have
done it!”




Chapter XXIII


“I’ve ‘done it’?” George cried. “What do you mean: I’ve done it? And
what have I done?”

Amberson had collapsed into an easy chair beside his dressing-table,
the white evening tie he had been about to put on dangling from his
hand, which had fallen limply on the arm of the chair. The tie dropped
to the floor before he replied; and the hand that had held it was
lifted to stroke his graying hair reflectively. “By Jove!” he muttered.
“That is too bad!”

George folded his arms bitterly. “Will you kindly answer my question?
What have I done that wasn’t honourable and right? Do you think these
riffraff can go about bandying my mother’s name—”

“They can now,” said Amberson. “I don’t know if they could before, but
they certainly can now!”

“What do you mean by that?”

His uncle sighed profoundly, picked up his tie and, preoccupied with
despondency, twisted the strip of white lawn till it became unwearable.
Meanwhile, he tried to enlighten his nephew. “Gossip is never fatal,
Georgie,” he said, “until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every
human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be
remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender
makes a controversy. Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if
people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die,
ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

“See here,” George said: “I didn’t come to listen to any generalizing
dose of philosophy! I ask you—”

“You asked me what you’ve done, and I’m telling you.” Amberson gave
him a melancholy smile, continuing: “Suffer me to do it in my own way.
Fanny says there’s been talk about your mother, and that Mrs. Johnson
does some of it. I don’t know, because naturally nobody would come to
me with such stuff or mention it before me; but it’s presumably true—I
suppose it is. I’ve seen Fanny with Mrs. Johnson quite a lot; and
that old lady is a notorious gossip, and that’s why she ordered you
out of her house when you pinned her down that she’d been gossiping.
I have a suspicion Mrs. Johnson has been quite a comfort to Fanny
in their long talks; but she’ll probably quit speaking to her over
this, because Fanny told you. I suppose it’s true that the ‘whole
town,’ a lot of others, that is, do share in the gossip. In this town,
naturally, anything about any Amberson has always been a stone dropped
into the centre of a pond, and a lie would send the ripples as far as
a truth would. I’ve been on a steamer when the story went all over
the boat, the second day out, that the prettiest girl on board didn’t
have any ears; and you can take it as a rule that when a woman’s past
thirty-five the prettier her hair is, the more certain you are to meet
somebody with reliable information that it’s a wig. You can be sure
that for many years there’s been more gossip in this place about the
Ambersons than about any other family. I dare say it isn’t so much so
now as it used to be, because the town got too big long ago, but it’s
the truth that the more prominent you are the more gossip there is
about you, and the more people would like to pull you down. Well, they
can’t do it as long as you refuse to know what gossip there is about
you. But the minute you notice it, it’s got you! I’m not speaking of
certain kinds of slander that sometimes people have got to take to the
courts; I’m talking of the wretched buzzing the Mrs. Johnsons do—the
thing you seem to have such a horror of—people ‘talking’—the kind of
thing that has assailed your mother. People who have repeated a slander
either get ashamed or forget it, if they’re let alone. Challenge them,
and in self-defense they believe everything they’ve said: they’d rather
believe you a sinner than believe themselves liars, naturally. Submit
to gossip and you kill it; fight it and you make it strong. People will
forget almost any slander except one that’s been fought.”

“Is that all?” George asked.

“I suppose so,” his uncle murmured sadly.

“Well, then, may I ask what you’d have done, in my place?”

“I’m not sure, Georgie. When I was your age I was like you in many
ways, especially in not being very cool-headed, so I can’t say. Youth
can’t be trusted for much, except asserting itself and fighting and
making love.”

“Indeed!” George snorted. “May I ask what you think I ought to have
done?”

“Nothing.”

“‘Nothing?’” George echoed, mocking bitterly “I suppose you think I
mean to let my mother’s good name—”

“Your mother’s good name!” Amberson cut him off impatiently. “Nobody
has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly
mouth, either. Well, your mother’s name was in some silly mouths, and
all you’ve done was to go and have a scene with the worst old woman
gossip in the town—a scene that’s going to make her into a partisan
against your mother, whereas she was a mere prattler before. Don’t you
suppose she’ll be all over town with this to-morrow? To-morrow? Why,
she’ll have her telephone going to-night as long as any of her friends
are up! People that never heard anything about this are going to hear
it all now, with embellishments. And she’ll see to it that everybody
who’s hinted anything about poor Isabel will know that you’re on the
warpath; and that will put them on the defensive and make them vicious.
The story will grow as it spreads and—”

George unfolded his arms to strike his right fist into his left palm.
“But do you suppose I’m going to tolerate such things?” he shouted.
“What do you suppose I’ll be doing?”

“Nothing helpful.”

“Oh, you think so, do you?”

“You can do absolutely nothing,” said Amberson. “Nothing of any use.
The more you do the more harm you’ll do.”

“You’ll see! I’m going to stop this thing if I have to force my way
into every house on National Avenue and Amberson Boulevard!”

His uncle laughed rather sourly, but made no other comment.

“Well, what do you propose to do?” George demanded. “Do you propose to
sit there—”

“Yes.”

“—and let this riffraff bandy my mother’s good name back and forth
among them? Is that what you propose to do?”

“It’s all I can do,” Amberson returned. “It’s all any of us can do now:
just sit still and hope that the thing may die down in time, in spite
of your stirring up that awful old woman.”

George drew a long breath, then advanced and stood close before his
uncle. “Didn’t you understand me when I told you that people are saying
my mother means to marry this man?”

“Yes, I understood you.”

“You say that my going over there has made matters worse,” George went
on. “How about it if such a—such an unspeakable marriage did take
place? Do you think that would make people believe they’d been wrong in
saying—you know what they say.”

“No,” said Amberson deliberately; “I don’t believe it would. There’d be
more badness in the bad mouths and more silliness in the silly mouths,
I dare say. But it wouldn’t hurt Isabel and Eugene, if they never heard
of it; and if they did hear of it, then they could take their choice
between placating gossip or living for their own happiness. If they
have decided to marry—”

George almost staggered. “Good God!” he gasped. “You speak of it
calmly!”

Amberson looked up at him inquiringly. “Why shouldn’t they marry if
they want to?” he asked. “It’s their own affair.”

“Why shouldn’t they?” George echoed. “Why shouldn’t they?”

“Yes. Why shouldn’t they? I don’t see anything precisely monstrous
about two people getting married when they’re both free and care about
each other. What’s the matter with their marrying?”

“It would be monstrous!” George shouted. “Monstrous even if this
horrible thing hadn’t happened, but now in the face of this—oh, that
you can sit there and even speak of it! Your own sister! O God! Oh—” He
became incoherent, swinging away from Amberson and making for the door,
wildly gesturing.

“For heaven’s sake, don’t be so theatrical!” said his uncle, and then,
seeing that George was leaving the room: “Come back here. You mustn’t
speak to your mother of this!”

“Don’t ’tend to,” George said indistinctly; and he plunged out into
the big dimly lit hall. He passed his grandfather’s room on the way to
the stairs; and the Major was visible within, his white head brightly
illumined by a lamp, as he bent low over a ledger upon his roll-top
desk. He did not look up, and his grandson strode by the door, not
really conscious of the old figure stooping at its tremulous work with
long additions and subtractions that refused to balance as they used
to. George went home and got a hat and overcoat without seeing either
his mother or Fanny. Then he left word that he would be out for dinner,
and hurried away from the house.

He walked the dark streets of Amberson Addition for an hour, then went
downtown and got coffee at a restaurant. After that he walked through
the lighted parts of the town until ten o’clock, when he turned north
and came back to the purlieus of the Addition. He strode through the
length and breadth of it again, his hat pulled down over his forehead,
his overcoat collar turned up behind. He walked fiercely, though his
feet ached, but by and by he turned homeward, and, when he reached the
Major’s, went in and sat upon the steps of the huge stone veranda in
front—an obscure figure in that lonely and repellent place. All lights
were out at the Major’s, and finally, after twelve, he saw his mother’s
window darken at home.

He waited half an hour longer, then crossed the front yards of the
new houses and let himself noiselessly in the front door. The light
in the hall had been left burning, and another in his own room, as he
discovered when he got there. He locked the door quickly and without
noise, but his fingers were still upon the key when there was a quick
footfall in the hall outside.

“Georgie, dear?”

He went to the other end of the room before replying.

“Yes?”

“I’d been wondering where you were, dear.”

“Had you?”

There was a pause; then she said timidly: “Wherever it was, I hope you
had a pleasant evening.”

After a silence, “Thank you,” he said, without expression.

Another silence followed before she spoke again.

“You wouldn’t care to be kissed good-night, I suppose?” And with a
little flurry of placative laughter, she added: “At your age, of
course!”

“I’m going to bed, now,” he said. “Goodnight.”

Another silence seemed blanker than those which had preceded it, and
finally her voice came—it was blank, too.

“Good-night.”

After he was in bed his thoughts became more tumultuous than ever;
while among all the inchoate and fragmentary sketches of this dreadful
day, now rising before him, the clearest was of his uncle collapsed
in a big chair with a white tie dangling from his hand; and one
conviction, following upon that picture, became definite in George’s
mind: that his Uncle George Amberson was a hopeless dreamer from
whom no help need be expected, an amiable imbecile lacking in normal
impulses, and wholly useless in a struggle which required honour to be
defended by a man of action.

Then would return a vision of Mrs. Johnson’s furious round head, set
behind her great bosom like the sun far sunk on the horizon of a
mountain plateau—and her crackling, asthmatic voice... “Without sharing
in other people’s disposition to put an evil interpretation on what may
be nothing more than unfortunate appearances.”... “Other people may be
less considerate in not confining their discussion of it, as I have, to
charitable views.”... “you’ll know something pretty quick! You’ll know
you’re out in the street.”... And then George would get up again—and
again—and pace the floor in his bare feet.

That was what the tormented young man was doing when daylight came
gauntly in at his window—pacing the floor, rubbing his head in his
hands, and muttering:

“It can’t be true: this can’t be happening to me!”




Chapter XXIV


Breakfast was brought to him in his room, as usual; but he did not
make his normal healthy raid upon the dainty tray: the food remained
untouched, and he sustained himself upon coffee—four cups of it, which
left nothing of value inside the glistening little percolator. During
this process he heard his mother being summoned to the telephone in
the hall, not far from his door, and then her voice responding: “Yes?
Oh, it’s you! Indeed I should!... Of course... Then I’ll expect you
about three... Yes. Good-bye till then.” A few minutes later he heard
her speaking to someone beneath his window and, looking out, saw her
directing the removal of plants from a small garden bed to the Major’s
conservatory for the winter. There was an air of briskness about
her; as she turned away to go into the house, she laughed gaily with
the Major’s gardener over something he said, and this unconcerned
cheerfulness of her was terrible to her son.

He went to his desk, and, searching the jumbled contents of a drawer,
brought forth a large, unframed photograph of his father, upon which he
gazed long and piteously, till at last hot tears stood in his eyes. It
was strange how the inconsequent face of Wilbur seemed to increase in
high significance during this belated interview between father and son;
and how it seemed to take on a reproachful nobility—and yet, under the
circumstances, nothing could have been more natural than that George,
having paid but the slightest attention to his father in life, should
begin to deify him, now that he was dead. “Poor, poor father!” the son
whispered brokenly. “Poor man, I’m glad you didn’t know!”

He wrapped the picture in a sheet of newspaper, put it under his arm,
and, leaving the house hurriedly and stealthily, went downtown to the
shop of a silversmith, where he spent sixty dollars on a resplendently
festooned silver frame for the picture. Having lunched upon more
coffee, he returned to the house at two o’clock, carrying the framed
photograph with him, and placed it upon the centre-table in the
library, the room most used by Isabel and Fanny and himself. Then he
went to a front window of the long “reception room,” and sat looking
out through the lace curtains.

The house was quiet, though once or twice he heard his mother and Fanny
moving about upstairs, and a ripple of song in the voice of Isabel—a
fragment from the romantic ballad of Lord Bateman.

    “Lord Bateman was a noble lord,
      A noble lord of high degree;
    And he sailed West and he sailed East,
      Far countries for to see....”

The words became indistinct; the air was hummed absently; the humming
shifted to a whistle, then drifted out of hearing, and the place was
still again.

George looked often at his watch, but his vigil did not last an hour.
At ten minutes of three, peering through the curtain, he saw an
automobile stop in front of the house and Eugene Morgan jump lightly
down from it. The car was of a new pattern, low and long, with an ample
seat in the tonneau, facing forward; and a professional driver sat at
the wheel, a strange figure in leather, goggled out of all personality
and seemingly part of the mechanism.

Eugene himself, as he came up the cement path to the house, was a
figure of the new era which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff
hats and skirted coats; and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast
to that of the queer-looking duck capering at the Amberson Ball in an
old dress coat, and chugging up National Avenue through the snow in
his nightmare of a sewing-machine. Eugene, this afternoon, was richly
in the new outdoor mode: motoring coat was soft gray fur; his cap and
gloves were of gray suede; and though Lucy’s hand may have shown itself
in the selection of these garnitures, he wore them easily, even with
becoming hint of jauntiness. Some change might be seen in his face,
too, for a successful man is seldom to be mistaken, especially if his
temper be genial. Eugene had begun to look like a millionaire.

But above everything else, what was most evident about him, as he came
up the path, was confidence in the happiness promised by his errand;
the anticipation in his eyes could have been read by a stranger. His
look at the door of Isabel’s house was the look of a man who is quite
certain that the next moment will reveal something ineffably charming,
inexpressibly dear.

When the bell rang, George waited at the entrance of the “reception
room” until a housemaid came through the hall on her way to answer the
summons.

“You needn’t mind, Mary,” he told her. “I’ll see who it is and what
they want. Probably it’s only a pedlar.”

“Thank you, sir, Mister George,” said Mary; and returned to the rear of
the house.

George went slowly to the front door, and halted, regarding the misty
silhouette of the caller upon the ornamental frosted glass. After a
minute of waiting, this silhouette changed outline so that an arm
could be distinguished—an arm outstretched toward the bell, as if the
gentleman outside doubted whether or not it had sounded, and were
minded to try again. But before the gesture was completed George
abruptly threw open the door, and stepped squarely upon the middle of
the threshold.

A slight change shadowed the face of Eugene; his look of happy
anticipation gave way to something formal and polite. “How do you
do, George,” he said. “Mrs. Minafer expects to go driving with me, I
believe—if you’ll be so kind as to send her word that I’m here.”

George made not the slightest movement.

“No,” he said.

Eugene was incredulous, even when his second glance revealed how hot of
eye was the haggard young man before him. “I beg your pardon. I said—”

“I heard you,” said George. “You said you had an engagement with my
mother, and I told you, No!”

Eugene gave him a steady look, and then he asked quietly: “What is
the—the difficulty?”

George kept his own voice quiet enough, but that did not mitigate the
vibrant fury of it. “My mother will have no interest in knowing that
you came for her to-day,” he said. “Or any other day!”

Eugene continued to look at him with a scrutiny in which began to gleam
a profound anger, none the less powerful because it was so quiet. “I am
afraid I do not understand you.”

“I doubt if I could make it much plainer,” George said, raising his
voice slightly, “but I’ll try. You’re not wanted in this house, Mr.
Morgan, now or at any other time. Perhaps you’ll understand—this!”

And with the last word he closed the door in Eugene’s face.

Then, not moving away, he stood just inside door, and noted that the
misty silhouette remained upon the frosted glass for several moments,
as if the forbidden gentleman debated in his mind what course to
pursue. “Let him ring again!” George thought grimly. “Or try the side
door—or the kitchen!”

But Eugene made no further attempt; the silhouette disappeared;
footsteps could be heard withdrawing across the floor of the veranda;
and George, returning to the window in the “reception room,” was
rewarded by the sight of an automobile manufacturer in baffled retreat,
with all his wooing furs and fineries mocking him. Eugene got into his
car slowly, not looking back at the house which had just taught him
such a lesson; and it was easily visible—even from a window seventy
feet distant—that he was not the same light suitor who had jumped
so gallantly from the car only a few minutes earlier. Observing the
heaviness of his movements as he climbed into the tonneau, George
indulged in a sickish throat rumble which bore a distant cousinship to
mirth.

The car was quicker than its owner; it shot away as soon as he had sunk
into his seat; and George, having watched its impetuous disappearance
from his field of vision, ceased to haunt the window. He went to the
library, and, seating himself beside the table whereon he had placed
the photograph of his father, picked up a book, and pretended to be
engaged in reading it.

Presently Isabel’s buoyant step was heard descending the stairs, and
her low, sweet whistling, renewing the air of “Lord Bateman.” She
came into the library, still whistling thoughtfully, a fur coat over
her arm, ready to put on, and two veils round her small black hat,
her right hand engaged in buttoning the glove upon her left; and, as
the large room contained too many pieces of heavy furniture, and the
inside shutters excluded most of the light of day, she did not at once
perceive George’s presence. Instead, she went to the bay window at the
end of the room, which afforded a view of the street, and glanced out
expectantly; then bent her attention upon her glove; after that, looked
out toward the street again, ceased to whistle, and turned toward the
interior of the room.

“Why, Georgie!”

She came, leaned over from behind him, and there was a faint, exquisite
odour as from distant apple blossoms as she kissed his cheek. “Dear, I
waited lunch almost an hour for you, but you didn’t come! Did you lunch
out somewhere?”

“Yes.” He did not look up from the book.

“Did you have plenty to eat?”

“Yes.”

“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you like to have Maggie get you something now
in the dining room? Or they could bring it to you here, if you think it
would be cozier. Shan’t I—”

A tinkling bell was audible, and she moved to the doorway into the
hall. “I’m going out driving, dear. I—” She interrupted herself to
address the housemaid, who was passing through the hall: “I think it’s
Mr. Morgan, Mary. Tell him I’ll be there at once.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Mary returned. “’Twas a pedlar, ma’am.”

“Another one?” Isabel said, surprised. “I thought you said it was a
pedlar when the bell rang a little while ago.”

“Mister George said it was, ma’am; he went to the door,” Mary informed
her, disappearing.

“There seem to be a great many of them,” Isabel mused. “What did yours
want to sell, George?”

“He didn’t say.”

“You must have cut him off short!” she laughed; and then, still
standing in the doorway, she noticed the big silver frame upon the
table beside him. “Gracious, Georgie!” she exclaimed. “You have
been investing!” and as she came across the room for a closer view,
“Is it—is it Lucy?” she asked half timidly, half archly. But the
next instant she saw whose likeness was thus set forth in elegiac
splendour—and she was silent, except for a long, just-audible “Oh!”

He neither looked up nor moved.

“That was nice of you, Georgie,” she said, in a low voice presently. “I
ought to have had it framed, myself, when I gave it to you.”

He said nothing, and, standing beside him, she put her hand gently upon
his shoulder, then as gently withdrew it, and went out of the room.
But she did not go upstairs; he heard the faint rustle of her dress
in the hall, and then the sound of her footsteps in the “reception
room.” After a time, silence succeeded even these slight tokens of her
presence; whereupon George rose and went warily into the hall, taking
care to make no noise, and he obtained an oblique view of her through
the open double doors of the “reception room.” She was sitting in the
chair which he had occupied so long; and she was looking out of the
window expectantly—a little troubled.

He went back to the library, waited an interminable half hour, then
returned noiselessly to the same position in the hall, where he could
see her. She was still sitting patiently by the window.

Waiting for that man, was she? Well, it might be quite a long wait! And
the grim George silently ascended the stairs to his own room, and began
to pace his suffering floor.




Chapter XXV


He left his door open, however, and when he heard the front door-bell
ring, by and by, he went half way down the stairs and stood to listen.
He was not much afraid that Morgan would return, but he wished to make
sure.

Mary appeared in the hall below him, but, after a glance toward the
front of the house, turned back, and withdrew. Evidently Isabel had
gone to the door. Then a murmur was heard, and George Amberson’s voice,
quick and serious: “I want to talk to you, Isabel”... and another
murmur; then Isabel and her brother passed the foot of the broad, dark
stairway, but did not look up, and remained unconscious of the watchful
presence above them. Isabel still carried her cloak upon her arm,
but Amberson had taken her hand, and retained it; and as he led her
silently into the library there was something about her attitude, and
the pose of her slightly bent head, that was both startled and meek.
Thus they quickly disappeared from George’s sight, hand in hand; and
Amberson at once closed the massive double doors of the library.

For a time all that George could hear was the indistinct sound of
his uncle’s voice: what he was saying could not be surmised, though
the troubled brotherliness of his tone was evident. He seemed to be
explaining something at considerable length, and there were moments
when he paused, and George guessed that his mother was speaking, but
her voice must have been very low, for it was entirely inaudible to him.

Suddenly he did hear her. Through the heavy doors her outcry came,
clear and loud:

“Oh, no!”

It was a cry of protest, as if something her brother told her must be
untrue, or, if it were true, the fact he stated must be undone; and it
was a sound of sheer pain.

Another sound of pain, close to George, followed it; this was a
vehement sniffling which broke out just above him, and, looking up,
he saw Fanny Minafer on the landing, leaning over the banisters and
applying her handkerchief to her eyes and nose.

“I can guess what that was about,” she whispered huskily. “He’s just
told her what you did to Eugene!”

George gave her a dark look over his shoulder. “You go on back to your
room!” he said; and he began to descend the stairs; but Fanny, guessing
his purpose, rushed down and caught his arm, detaining him.

“You’re not going in there?”, she whispered huskily. “You don’t—”

“Let go of me!”

But she clung to him savagely. “No, you don’t, Georgie Minafer! You’ll
keep away from there! You will!”

“You let go of—”

“I won’t! You come back here! You’ll come upstairs and let them alone;
that’s what you’ll do!” And with such passionate determination did she
clutch and tug, never losing a grip of him somewhere, though George
tried as much as he could, without hurting her, to wrench away—with
such utter forgetfulness of her maiden dignity did she assault him,
that she forced him, stumbling upward, to the landing.

“Of all the ridiculous—” he began furiously; but she spared one hand
from its grasp of his sleeve and clapped it over his mouth.

“Hush up!” Never for an instant in this grotesque struggle did Fanny
raise her voice above a husky whisper. “Hush up! It’s indecent—like
squabbling outside the door of an operating-room! Go on to the top of
the stairs—go on!”

And when George had most unwillingly obeyed, she planted herself in
his way, on the top step. “There!” she said. “The idea of your going
in there now! I never heard of such a thing!” And with the sudden
departure of the nervous vigour she had shown so amazingly, she began
to cry again. “I was an awful fool! I thought you knew what was going
on or I never, never would have done it. Do you suppose I dreamed you’d
go making everything into such a tragedy? Do you?”

“I don’t care what you dreamed,” George muttered.

But Fanny went on, always taking care to keep her voice from getting
too loud, in spite of her most grievous agitation. “Do you dream I
thought you’d go making such a fool of yourself at Mrs. Johnson’s?
Oh, I saw her this morning! She wouldn’t talk to me, but I met George
Amberson on my way back, and he told me what you’d done over there! And
do you dream I thought you’d do what you’ve done here this afternoon to
Eugene? Oh, I knew that, too! I was looking out of the front bedroom
window, and I saw him drive up, and then go away again, and I knew
you’d been to the door. Of course he went to George Amberson about it,
and that’s why George is here. He’s got to tell Isabel the whole thing
now, and you wanted to go in there interfering—God knows what! You stay
here and let her brother tell her; he’s got some consideration for her!”

“I suppose you think I haven’t!” George said, challenging her, and at
that Fanny laughed witheringly.

“You! Considerate of anybody!”

“I’m considerate of her good name!” he said hotly. “It seems to me
that’s about the first thing to be considerate of, in being considerate
of a person! And look here: it strikes me you’re taking a pretty
different tack from what you did yesterday afternoon!”

Fanny wrung her hands. “I did a terrible thing!” she lamented. “Now
that it’s done and too late I know what it was! I didn’t have sense
enough just to let things go on. I didn’t have any business to
interfere, and I didn’t mean to interfere—I only wanted to talk, and
let out a little! I did think you already knew everything I told you.
I did! And I’d rather have cut my hand off than stir you up to doing
what you have done! I was just suffering so that I wanted to let out a
little—I didn’t mean any real harm. But now I see what’s happened—oh, I
was a fool! I hadn’t any business interfering. Eugene never would have
looked at me, anyhow, and, oh, why couldn’t I have seen that before!
He never came here a single time in his life except on her account,
never! and I might have let them alone, because he wouldn’t have looked
at me even if he’d never seen Isabel. And they haven’t done any harm:
she made Wilbur happy, and she was a true wife to him as long as he
lived. It wasn’t a crime for her to care for Eugene all the time; she
certainly never told him she did—and she gave me every chance in the
world! She left us alone together every time she could—even since
Wilbur died—but what was the use? And here I go, not doing myself a
bit of good by it, and just”—Fanny wrung her hands again—“just ruining
them!”

“I suppose you mean I’m doing that,” George said bitterly.

“Yes, I do!” she sobbed, and drooped upon the stairway railing,
exhausted.

“On the contrary, I mean to save my mother from a calamity.”

Fanny looked at him wanly, in a tired despair; then she stepped by him
and went slowly to her own door, where she paused and beckoned to him.

“What do you want?”

“Just come here a minute.”

“What for?” he asked impatiently.

“I just wanted to say something to you.”

“Well, for heaven’s sake, say it! There’s nobody to hear.”
Nevertheless, after a moment, as she beckoned him again, he went to
her, profoundly annoyed. “Well, what is it?”

“George,” she said in a low voice, “I think you ought to be told
something. If I were you, I’d let my mother alone.”

“Oh, my Lord!” he groaned. “I’m doing these things for her, not against
her!”

A mildness had come upon Fanny, and she had controlled her weeping. She
shook her head gently. “No, I’d let her alone if I were you. I don’t
think she’s very well, George.”

“She! I never saw a healthier person in my life.”

“No. She doesn’t let anybody know, but she goes to the doctor
regularly.”

“Women are always going to doctors regularly.”

“No. He told her to.”

George was not impressed. “It’s nothing at all; she spoke of it to me
years ago—some kind of family failing. She said grandfather had it,
too; and look at him! Hasn’t proved very serious with him! You act as
if I’d done something wrong in sending that man about his business, and
as if I were going to persecute my mother, instead of protecting her.
By Jove, it’s sickening! You told me how all the riffraff in town were
busy with her name, and then the minute I lift my hand to protect her,
you begin to attack me and—”

“Sh!” Fanny checked him, laying her hand on his arm. “Your uncle is
going.”

The library doors were heard opening, and a moment later there came the
sound of the front door closing.

George moved toward the head of the stairs, then stood listening; but
the house was silent.

Fanny made a slight noise with her lips to attract his attention, and,
when he glanced toward her, shook her head at him urgently. “Let her
alone,” she whispered. “She’s down there by herself. Don’t go down. Let
her alone.”

She moved a few steps toward him and halted, her face pallid and
awestruck, and then both stood listening for anything that might
break the silence downstairs. No sound came to them; that poignant
silence was continued throughout long, long minutes, while the two
listeners stood there under its mysterious spell; and in its plaintive
eloquence—speaking, as it did, of the figure alone in the big,
dark library, where dead Wilbur’s new silver frame gleamed in the
dimness—there was something that checked even George.

Above the aunt and nephew, as they kept this strange vigil, there was
a triple window of stained glass, to illumine the landing and upper
reaches of the stairway. Figures in blue and amber garments posed
gracefully in panels, conceived by some craftsman of the Eighties to
represent Love and Purity and Beauty, and these figures, leaded to
unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human
beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The
colours were growing dull; evening was coming on.

Fanny Minafer broke the long silence with a sound from her throat, a
stilled gasp; and with that great companion of hers, her handkerchief,
retired softly to the loneliness of her own chamber. After she had
gone George looked about him bleakly, then on tiptoe crossed the hall
and went into his own room, which was filled with twilight. Still
tiptoeing, though he could not have said why, he went across the room
and sat down heavily in a chair facing the window. Outside there was
nothing but the darkening air and the wall of the nearest of the
new houses. He had not slept at all, the night before, and he had
eaten nothing since the preceding day at lunch, but he felt neither
drowsiness nor hunger. His set determination filled him, kept him but
too wide awake, and his gaze at the grayness beyond the window was
wide-eyed and bitter.

Darkness had closed in when there was a step in the room behind him.
Then someone knelt beside the chair, two arms went round him with
infinite compassion, a gentle head rested against his shoulder, and
there came the faint scent as of apple-blossoms far away.

“You mustn’t be troubled, darling,” his mother whispered.




Chapter XXVI


George choked. For an instant he was on the point of breaking down, but
he commanded himself, bravely dismissing the self-pity roused by her
compassion. “How can I help but be?” he said.

“No, no.” She soothed him. “You mustn’t. You mustn’t be troubled, no
matter what happens.”

“That’s easy enough to say!” he protested; and he moved as if to rise.

“Just let’s stay like this a little while, dear. Just a minute or
two. I want to tell you: brother George has been here, and he told
me everything about—about how unhappy you’d been—and how you went so
gallantly to that old woman with the operaglasses.” Isabel gave a sad
little laugh. “What a terrible old woman she is! What a really terrible
thing a vulgar old woman can be!”

“Mother, I—” And again he moved to rise.

“Must you? It seemed to me such a comfortable way to talk. Well—” She
yielded; he rose, helped her to her feet, and pressed the light into
being.

As the room took life from the sudden lines of fire within the
bulbs Isabel made a deprecatory gesture, and, with a faint laugh of
apologetic protest, turned quickly away from George. What she meant
was: “You mustn’t see my face until I’ve made it nicer for you.” Then
she turned again to him, her eyes downcast, but no sign of tears in
them, and she contrived to show him that there was the semblance of
a smile upon her lips. She still wore her hat, and in her unsteady
fingers she held a white envelope, somewhat crumpled.

“Now, mother—”

“Wait, dearest,” she said; and though he stood stone cold, she lifted
her arms, put them round him again, and pressed her cheek lightly to
his. “Oh, you do look so troubled, poor dear! One thing you couldn’t
doubt, beloved boy: you know I could never care for anything in the
world as I care for you—never, never!”

“Now, mother—”

She released him, and stepped back. “Just a moment more, dearest. I
want you to read this first. We can get at things better.” She pressed
into his hand the envelope she had brought with her, and as he opened
it, and began to read the long enclosure, she walked slowly to the
other end of the room; then stood there, with her back to him, and her
head drooping a little, until he had finished.

The sheets of paper were covered with Eugene’s handwriting.

  George Amberson will bring you this, dear Isabel. He is waiting
  while I write. He and I have talked things over, and before he
  gives this to you he will tell you what has happened. Of course I’m
  rather confused, and haven’t had time to think matters out very
  definitely, and yet I believe I should have been better prepared
  for what took place to-day—I ought to have known it was coming,
  because I have understood for quite a long time that young George
  was getting to dislike me more and more. Somehow, I’ve never been
  able to get his friendship; he’s always had a latent distrust of
  me—or something like distrust—and perhaps that’s made me sometimes
  a little awkward and diffident with him. I think it may be he
  felt from the first that I cared a great deal about you, and he
  naturally resented it. I think perhaps he felt this even during
  all the time when I was so careful—at least I thought I was—not to
  show, even to you, how immensely I did care. And he may have feared
  that you were thinking too much about me—even when you weren’t
  and only liked me as an old friend. It’s perfectly comprehensible
  to me, also, that at his age one gets excited about gossip. Dear
  Isabel, what I’m trying to get at, in my confused way, is that you
  and I don’t care about this nonsensical gossip, ourselves, at all.
  Yesterday I thought the time had come when I could ask you to marry
  me, and you were dear enough to tell me “sometime it might come to
  that.” Well, you and I, left to ourselves, and knowing what we have
  been and what we are, we’d pay as much attention to “talk” as we
  would to any other kind of old cats’ mewing! We’d not be very apt
  to let such things keep us from the plenty of life we have left to
  us for making up to ourselves for old unhappinesses and mistakes.
  But now we’re faced with—not the slander and not our own fear of
  it, because we haven’t any, but someone else’s fear of it—your
  son’s. And, oh, dearest woman in the world, I know what your son is
  to you, and it frightens me! Let me explain a little: I don’t think
  he’ll change—at twenty-one or twenty-two so many things appear
  solid and permanent and terrible which forty sees are nothing but
  disappearing miasma. Forty can’t tell twenty about this; that’s the
  pity of it! Twenty can find out only by getting to be forty. And
  so we come to this, dear: Will you live your own life your way,
  or George’s way? I’m going a little further, because it would be
  fatal not to be wholly frank now. George will act toward you only
  as your long worship of him, your sacrifices—all the unseen little
  ones every day since he was born—will make him act. Dear, it breaks
  my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is the history
  of your own selfless and perfect motherhood. I remember saying
  once that what you worshipped in your son was the angel you saw
  in him—and I still believe that is true of every mother. But in a
  mother’s worship she may not see that the Will in her son should
  not always be offered incense along with the angel. I grow sick
  with fear for you—for both you and me—when I think how the Will
  against us two has grown strong through the love you have given the
  angel—and how long your own sweet Will has served that other. Are
  you strong enough, Isabel? Can you make the fight? I promise you
  that if you will take heart for it, you will find so quickly that
  it has all amounted to nothing. You shall have happiness, and, in
  a little while, only happiness. You need only to write me a line—I
  can’t come to your house—and tell me where you will meet me. We
  will come back in a month, and the angel in your son will bring him
  to you; I promise it. What is good in him will grow so fine, once
  you have beaten the turbulent Will—but it must be beaten!

  Your brother, that good friend, is waiting with such patience; I
  should not keep him longer—and I am saying too much for wisdom, I
  fear. But, oh, my dear, won’t you be strong—such a little short
  strength it would need! Don’t strike my life down twice, dear—this
  time I’ve not deserved it.
                                                              Eugene.

Concluding this missive, George tossed it abruptly from him so that one
sheet fell upon his bed and the others upon the floor; and at the faint
noise of their falling Isabel came, and, kneeling, began to gather them
up.

“Did you read it, dear?”

George’s face was pale no longer, but pink with fury. “Yes, I did.”

“All of it?” she asked gently, as she rose.

“Certainly!”

She did not look at him, but kept her eyes downcast upon the letter in
her hands, tremulously rearranging the sheets in order as she spoke—and
though she smiled, her smile was as tremulous as her hands. Nervousness
and an irresistible timidity possessed her. “I—I wanted to say,
George,” she faltered. “I felt that if—if some day it should happen—I
mean, if you came to feel differently about it, and Eugene and I—that
is if we found that it seemed the most sensible thing to do—I was
afraid you might think it would be a little queer about—Lucy, I mean
if—if she were your step-sister. Of course, she’d not be even legally
related to you, and if you—if you cared for her—”

Thus far she got stumblingly with what she wanted to say, while
George watched her with a gaze that grew harder and hotter; but here
he cut her off. “I have already given up all idea of Lucy,” he said.
“Naturally, I couldn’t have treated her father as I deliberately did
treat him—I could hardly have done that and expected his daughter ever
to speak to me again.”

Isabel gave a quick cry of compassion, but he allowed her no
opportunity to speak. “You needn’t think I’m making any particular
sacrifice,” he said sharply, “though I would, quickly enough, if I
thought it necessary in a matter of honour like this. I was interested
in her, and I could even say I did care for her; but she proved pretty
satisfactorily that she cared little enough about me! She went away
right in the midst of a—of a difference of opinion we were having; she
didn’t even let me know she was going, and never wrote a line to me,
and then came back telling everybody she’d had ‘a perfectly gorgeous
time!’ That’s quite enough for me. I’m not precisely the sort to
arrange for that kind of thing to be done to me more than once! The
truth is, we’re not congenial and we’d found that much out, at least,
before she left. We should never have been happy; she was ‘superior’
all the time, and critical of me—not very pleasant, that! I was
disappointed in her, and I might as well say it. I don’t think she has
the very deepest nature in the world, and—”

But Isabel put her hand timidly on his arm. “Georgie, dear, this is
only a quarrel: all young people have them before they get adjusted,
and you mustn’t let—”

“If you please!” he said emphatically, moving back from her. “This
isn’t that kind. It’s all over, and I don’t care to speak of it again.
It’s settled. Don’t you understand?”

“But, dear—”

“No. I want to talk to you about this letter of her father’s.”

“Yes, dear, that’s why—”

“It’s simply the most offensive piece of writing that I’ve ever held in
my hands!”

She stepped back from him, startled. “But, dear, I thought—”

“I can’t understand your even showing me such a thing!” he cried. “How
did you happen to bring it to me?”

“Your uncle thought I’d better. He thought it was the simplest thing
to do, and he said that he’d suggested it to Eugene, and Eugene had
agreed. They thought—”

“Yes!” George said bitterly. “I should like to hear what they thought!”

“They thought it would be the most straightforward thing.”

George drew a long breath. “Well, what do you think, mother?”

“I thought it would be the simplest and most straightforward thing; I
thought they were right.”

“Very well! We’ll agree it was simple and straightforward. Now, what do
you think of that letter itself?”

She hesitated, looking away. “I—of course I don’t agree with him in
the way he speaks of you, dear—except about the angel! I don’t agree
with some of the things he implies. You’ve always been unselfish—nobody
knows that better than your mother. When Fanny was left with nothing,
you were so quick and generous to give up what really should have come
to you, and—”

“And yet,” George broke in, “you see what he implies about me. Don’t
you think, really, that this was a pretty insulting letter for that man
to be asking you to hand your son?”

“Oh, no!” she cried. “You can see how fair he means to be, and he
didn’t ask for me to give it to you. It was brother George who—”

“Never mind that, now! You say he tries to be fair, and yet do you
suppose it ever occurs to him that I’m doing my simple duty? That I’m
doing what my father would do if he were alive? That I’m doing what
my father would ask me to do if he could speak from his grave out
yonder? Do you suppose it ever occurs to that man for one minute that
I’m protecting my mother?” George raised his voice, advancing upon the
helpless lady fiercely; and she could only bend her head before him.
“He talks about my ‘Will’—how it must be beaten down; yes, and he asks
my mother to do that little thing to please him! What for? Why does he
want me ‘beaten’ by my mother? Because I’m trying to protect her name!
He’s got my mother’s name bandied up and down the streets of this town
till I can’t step in those streets without wondering what every soul I
meet is thinking of me and of my family, and now he wants you to marry
him so that every gossip in town will say ‘There! What did I tell you?
I guess that proves it’s true!’ You can’t get away from it; that’s
exactly what they’d say, and this man pretends he cares for you, and
yet asks you to marry him and give them the right to say it. He says
he and you don’t care what they say, but I know better! He may not
care—probably he’s that kind—but you do. There never was an Amberson
yet that would let the Amberson name go trailing in the dust like
that! It’s the proudest name in this town and it’s going to stay the
proudest; and I tell you that’s the deepest thing in my nature—not that
I’d expect Eugene Morgan to understand—the very deepest thing in my
nature is to protect that name, and to fight for it to the last breath
when danger threatens it, as it does now—through my mother!” He turned
from her, striding up and down and tossing his arms about, in a tumult
of gesture. “I can’t believe it of you, that you’d think of such a
sacrilege! That’s what it would be—sacrilege! When he talks about your
unselfishness toward me, he’s right—you have been unselfish and you
have been a perfect mother. But what about him? Is it unselfish of him
to want you to throw away your good name just to please him? That’s all
he asks of you—and to quit being my mother! Do you think I can believe
you really care for him? I don’t! You are my mother and you’re an
Amberson—and I believe you’re too proud! You’re too proud to care for a
man who could write such a letter as that!” He stopped, faced her, and
spoke with more self-control: “Well, what are you going to do about it,
mother?”

George was right about his mother’s being proud. And even when she
laughed with a negro gardener, or even those few times in her life
when people saw her weep, Isabel had a proud look—something that was
independent and graceful and strong. But she did not have it now: she
leaned against the wall, beside his dressing-table, and seemed beset
with humility and with weakness. Her head drooped.

“What answer are you going to make to such a letter?” George demanded,
like a judge on the bench.

“I—I don’t quite know, dear,” she murmured.

“You don’t?” he cried. “You—”

“Wait,” she begged him. “I’m so—confused.”

“I want to know what you’re going to write him. Do you think if you did
what he wants you to I could bear to stay another day in this town,
mother? Do you think I could ever bear even to see you again if you
married him? I’d want to, but you surely know I just—couldn’t!”

She made a futile gesture, and seemed to breathe with difficulty. “I—I
wasn’t—quite sure,” she faltered, “about—about it’s being wise for us
to be married—even before knowing how you feel about it. I wasn’t even
sure it was quite fair to—to Eugene. I have—I seem to have that family
trouble—like father’s—that I spoke to you about once.” She managed
a deprecatory little dry laugh. “Not that it amounts to much, but I
wasn’t at all sure that it would be fair to him. Marrying doesn’t mean
so much, after all—not at my age. It’s enough to know that—that people
think of you—and to see them. I thought we were all—oh, pretty happy
the way things were, and I don’t think it would mean giving up a great
deal for him or me, either, if we just went on as we have been. I—I see
him almost every day, and—”

“Mother!” George’s voice was loud and stern. “Do you think you could go
on seeing him after this!”

She had been talking helplessly enough before; her tone was little more
broken now. “Not—not even—see him?”

“How could you?” George cried. “Mother, it seems to me that if he ever
set foot in this house again—oh! I can’t speak of it! Could you see
him, knowing what talk it makes every time he turns into this street,
and knowing what that means to me? Oh, I don’t understand all this—I
don’t! If you’d told me, a year ago, that such things were going to
happen, I’d have thought you were insane—and now I believe I am!”

Then, after a preliminary gesture of despair, as though he meant harm
to the ceiling, he flung himself heavily, face downward, upon the bed.
His anguish was none the less real for its vehemence; and the stricken
lady came to him instantly and bent over him, once more enfolding him
in her arms. She said nothing, but suddenly her tears fell upon his
head; she saw them, and seemed to be startled.

“Oh, this won’t do!” she said. “I’ve never let you see me cry before,
except when your father died. I mustn’t!”

And she ran from the room.

...A little while after she had gone, George rose and began solemnly
to dress for dinner. At one stage of these conscientious proceedings
he put on, temporarily, his long black velvet dressing-gown, and,
happening to catch sight in his pier glass of the picturesque and
medieval figure thus presented, he paused to regard it; and something
profoundly theatrical in his nature came to the surface.

His lips moved; he whispered, half-aloud, some famous fragments:

    “’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,
      Nor customary suits of solemn black...”

For, in truth, the mirrored princely image, with hair dishevelled on
the white brow, and the long tragic fall of black velvet from the
shoulders, had brought about (in his thought at least) some comparisons
of his own times, so out of joint, with those of that other gentle
prince and heir whose widowed mother was minded to marry again.

    “But I have that within which passeth show;
     These but the trappings and the suits of Woe.”

Not less like Hamlet did he feel and look as he sat gauntly at the
dinner table with Fanny to partake of a meal throughout which neither
spoke. Isabel had sent word “not to wait” for her, an injunction it was
as well they obeyed, for she did not come at all. But with the renewal
of sustenance furnished to his system, some relaxation must have
occurred within the high-strung George. Dinner was not quite finished
when, without warning, sleep hit him hard. His burning eyes could no
longer restrain the lids above them; his head sagged beyond control;
and he got to his feet, and went lurching upstairs, yawning with
exhaustion. From the door of his room, which he closed mechanically,
with his eyes shut, he went blindly to his bed, fell upon it soddenly,
and slept—with his face full upturned to the light.

It was after midnight when he woke, and the room was dark. He had not
dreamed, but he woke with the sense that somebody or something had been
with him while he slept—somebody or something infinitely compassionate;
somebody or something infinitely protective, that would let him come to
no harm and to no grief.

He got up, and pressed the light on. Pinned to the cover of his
dressing-table was a square envelope, with the words, “For you, dear,”
written in pencil upon it. But the message inside was in ink, a little
smudged here and there.

  I have been out to the mail-box, darling, with a letter I’ve
  written to Eugene, and he’ll have it in the morning. It would be
  unfair not to let him know at once, and my decision could not
  change if I waited. It would always be the same. I think it is a
  little better for me to write to you, like this, instead of waiting
  till you wake up and then telling you, because I’m foolish and
  might cry again, and I took a vow once, long ago, that you should
  never see me cry. Not that I’ll feel like crying when we talk
  things over tomorrow. I’ll be “all right and fine” (as you say so
  often) by that time—don’t fear. I think what makes me most ready to
  cry now is the thought of the terrible suffering in your poor face,
  and the unhappy knowledge that it is I, your mother, who put it
  there. It shall never come again! I love you better than anything
  and everything else on earth. God gave you to me—and oh! how
  thankful I have been every day of my life for that sacred gift—and
  nothing can ever come between me and God’s gift. I cannot hurt
  you, and I cannot let you stay hurt as you have been—not another
  instant after you wake up, my darling boy! It is beyond my power.
  And Eugene was right—I know you couldn’t change about this. Your
  suffering shows how deep-seated the feeling is within you. So I’ve
  written him just about what I think you would like me to—though I
  told him I would always be fond of him and always his best friend,
  and I hoped his dearest friend. He’ll understand about not seeing
  him. He’ll understand that, though I didn’t say it in so many
  words. You mustn’t trouble about that—he’ll understand. Good-night,
  my darling, my beloved, my beloved! You mustn’t be troubled. I
  think I shouldn’t mind anything very much so long as I have you
  “all to myself”—as people say—to make up for your long years away
  from me at college. We’ll talk of what’s best to do in the morning,
  shan’t we? And for all this pain you’ll forgive your loving and
  devoted mother.
                                                              Isabel.




Chapter XXVII


Having finished some errands downtown, the next afternoon, George
Amberson Minafer was walking up National Avenue on his homeward way
when he saw in the distance, coming toward him, upon the same side
of the street, the figure of a young lady—a figure just under the
middle height, comely indeed, and to be mistaken for none other in the
world—even at two hundred yards. To his sharp discomfiture his heart
immediately forced upon him the consciousness of its acceleration; a
sudden warmth about his neck made him aware that he had turned red,
and then, departing, left him pale. For a panicky moment he thought
of facing about in actual flight; he had little doubt that Lucy would
meet him with no token of recognition, and all at once this probability
struck him as unendurable. And if she did not speak, was it the
proper part of chivalry to lift his hat and take the cut bareheaded?
Or should the finer gentleman acquiesce in the lady’s desire for no
further acquaintance, and pass her with stony mien and eyes constrained
forward? George was a young man badly flustered.

But the girl approaching him was unaware of his trepidation, being
perhaps somewhat preoccupied with her own. She saw only that he was
pale, and that his eyes were darkly circled. But here he was advantaged
with her, for the finest touch to his good looks was given by this
toning down; neither pallor nor dark circles detracting from them, but
rather adding to them a melancholy favour of distinction. George had
retained his mourning, a tribute completed down to the final details of
black gloves and a polished ebony cane (which he would have been pained
to name otherwise than as a “walking-stick”) and in the aura of this
sombre elegance his straight figure and drawn face were not without a
tristful and appealing dignity.

In everything outward he was cause enough for a girl’s cheek to flush,
her heart to beat faster, and her eyes to warm with the soft light that
came into Lucy’s now, whether she would or no. If his spirit had been
what his looks proclaimed it, she would have rejoiced to let the light
glow forth which now shone in spite of her. For a long time, thinking
of that spirit of his, and what she felt it should be, she had a
persistent sense: “It must be there!” but she had determined to believe
this folly no longer. Nevertheless, when she met him at the Sharons’,
she had been far less calm than she seemed.

People speaking casually of Lucy were apt to define her as “a little
beauty,” a definition short of the mark. She was “a little beauty,”
but an independent, masterful, sell-reliant little American, of whom
her father’s earlier gipsyings and her own sturdiness had made a woman
ever since she was fifteen. But though she was the mistress of her own
ways and no slave to any lamp save that of her own conscience, she
had a weakness: she had fallen in love with George Amberson Minafer
at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had
never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was
all. George had looked just the way she had always wanted someone to
look—the riskiest of all the moonshine ambushes wherein tricky romance
snares credulous young love. But what was fatal to Lucy was that this
thing having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what
she discovered in George’s nature she was unable to take away what she
had given him; and though she could think differently about him, she
could not feel differently about him, for she was one of those too
faithful victims of glamour. When she managed to keep the picture of
George away from her mind’s eye, she did well enough; but when she let
him become visible, she could not choose but love what she disdained.
She was a little angel who had fallen in love with high-handed Lucifer;
quite an experience, and not apt to be soon succeeded by any falling in
love with a tamer party—and the unhappy truth was that George did make
better men seem tame. But though she was a victim, she was a heroic
one, anything but helpless.

As they drew nearer, George tried to prepare himself to meet her with
some remnants of aplomb. He decided that he would keep on looking
straight ahead, and lift his hand toward his hat at the very last
moment when it would be possible for her to see him out of the corner
of her eye: then when she thought it over later, she would not be sure
whether he had saluted her or merely rubbed his forehead. And there
was the added benefit that any third person who might chance to look
from a window, or from a passing carriage, would not think that he
was receiving a snub, because he did not intend to lift his hat, but,
timing the gesture properly, would in fact actually rub his forehead.
These were the hasty plans which occupied his thoughts until he was
within about fifty feet of her—when he ceased to have either plans or
thoughts. He had kept his eyes from looking full at her until then, and
as he saw her, thus close at hand, and coming nearer, a regret that was
dumfounding took possession of him. For the first time he had the sense
of having lost something of overwhelming importance.

Lucy did not keep to the right, but came straight to meet him, smiling,
and with her hand offered to him.

“Why—you—” he stammered, as he took it. “Haven’t you—” What he meant to
say was, “Haven’t you heard?”

“Haven’t I what?” she asked; and he saw that Eugene had not yet told
her.

“Nothing!” he gasped. “May I—may I turn and walk with you a little way?”

“Yes, indeed!” she said cordially.

He would not have altered what had been done: he was satisfied with all
that—satisfied that it was right, and that his own course was right.
But he began to perceive a striking inaccuracy in some remarks he had
made to his mother. Now when he had put matters in such shape that
even by the relinquishment of his “ideals of life” he could not have
Lucy, knew that he could never have her, and knew that when Eugene
told her the history of yesterday he could not have a glance or word
even friendly from her—now when he must in good truth “give up all
idea of Lucy,” he was amazed that he could have used such words as “no
particular sacrifice,” and believed them when he said them! She had
looked never in his life so bewitchingly pretty as she did today; and
as he walked beside her he was sure that she was the most exquisite
thing in the world.

“Lucy,” he said huskily, “I want to tell you something. Something that
matters.”

“I hope it’s a lively something then,” she said; and laughed. “Papa’s
been so glum to-day he’s scarcely spoken to me. Your Uncle George
Amberson came to see him an hour ago and they shut themselves up in the
library, and your uncle looked as glum as papa. I’d be glad if you’ll
tell me a funny story, George.”

“Well, it may seem one to you,” he said bitterly. “Just to begin with:
when you went away you didn’t let me know; not even a word—not a line—”

Her manner persisted in being inconsequent. “Why, no,” she said. “I
just trotted off for some visits.”

“Well, at least you might have—”

“Why, no,” she said again briskly. “Don’t you remember, George? We’d
had a grand quarrel, and didn’t speak to each other all the way home
from a long, long drive! So, as we couldn’t play together like good
children, of course it was plain that we oughtn’t to play at all.”

“Play!” he cried.

“Yes. What I mean is that we’d come to the point where it was time to
quit playing—well, what we were playing.”

“At being lovers, you mean, don’t you?”

“Something like that,” she said lightly. “For us two, playing at being
lovers was just the same as playing at cross-purposes. I had all the
purposes, and that gave you all the crossness: things weren’t getting
along at all. It was absurd!”

“Well, have it your own way,” he said. “It needn’t have been absurd.”

“No, it couldn’t help but be!” she informed him cheerfully. “The way I
am and the way you are, it couldn’t ever be anything else. So what was
the use?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. “But what I wanted
to tell you is this: when you went away, you didn’t let me know and
didn’t care how or when I heard it, but I’m not like that with you.
This time, I’m going away. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m going
away tomorrow night—indefinitely.”

She nodded sunnily. “That’s nice for you. I hope you’ll have ever so
jolly a time, George.”

“I don’t expect to have a particularly jolly time.”

“Well, then,” she laughed, “if I were you I don’t think I’d go.”

It seemed impossible to impress this distracting creature, to make her
serious. “Lucy,” he said desperately, “this is our last walk together.”

“Evidently!” she said. “If you’re going away tomorrow night.”

“Lucy—this may be the last time I’ll see you—ever—ever in my life.”

At that she looked at him quickly, across her shoulder, but she smiled
as brightly as before, and with the same cordial inconsequence: “Oh, I
can hardly think that!” she said. “And of course I’d be awfully sorry
to think it. You’re not moving away, are you, to live?”

“No.”

“And even if you were, of course you’d be coming back to visit your
relatives every now and then.”

“I don’t know when I’m coming back. Mother and I are starting to-morrow
night for a trip around the world.”

At this she did look thoughtful. “Your mother is going with you?”

“Good heavens!” he groaned. “Lucy, doesn’t it make any difference to
you that I am going?”

At this her cordial smile instantly appeared again. “Yes, of course,”
she said. “I’m sure I’ll miss you ever so much. Are you to be gone
long?”

He stared at her wanly. “I told you indefinitely,” he said. “We’ve made
no plans—at all—for coming back.”

“That does sound like a long trip!” she exclaimed admiringly. “Do you
plan to be travelling all the time, or will you stay in some one place
the greater part of it? I think it would be lovely to—”

“Lucy!”

He halted; and she stopped with him. They had come to a corner at the
edge of the “business section” of the city, and people were everywhere
about them, brushing against them, sometimes, in passing.

“I can’t stand this,” George said, in a low voice. “I’m just about
ready to go in this drug-store here, and ask the clerk for something to
keep me from dying in my tracks! It’s quite a shock, you see, Lucy!”

“What is?”

“To find out certainly, at last, how deeply you’ve cared for me! To see
how much difference this makes to you! By Jove, I have mattered to you!”

Her cordial smile was tempered now with good-nature. “George!” She
laughed indulgently. “Surely you don’t want me to do pathos on a
downtown corner!”

“You wouldn’t ‘do pathos’ anywhere!”

“Well—don’t you think pathos is generally rather fooling?”

“I can’t stand this any longer,” he said. “I can’t! Good-bye, Lucy!” He
took her hand. “It’s good-bye—I think it’s good-bye for good, Lucy!”

“Good-bye! I do hope you’ll have the most splendid trip.” She gave his
hand a cordial little grip, then released it lightly. “Give my love to
your mother. Good-bye!”

He turned heavily away, and a moment later glanced back over his
shoulder. She had not gone on, but stood watching him, that same
casual, cordial smile on her face to the very last; and now, as he
looked back, she emphasized her friendly unconcern by waving her
small hand to him cheerily, though perhaps with the slightest hint of
preoccupation, as if she had begun to think of the errand that brought
her downtown.

In his mind, George had already explained her to his own poignant
dissatisfaction—some blond pup, probably, whom she had met during that
“perfectly gorgeous time!” And he strode savagely onward, not looking
back again.

But Lucy remained where she was until he was out of sight. Then she
went slowly into the drugstore which had struck George as a possible
source of stimulant for himself.

“Please let me have a few drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a
glass of water,” she said, with the utmost composure.

“Yes, ma’am!” said the impressionable clerk, who had been looking at
her through the display window as she stood on the corner.

But a moment later, as he turned from the shelves of glass jars
against the wall, with the potion she had asked for in his hand, he
uttered an exclamation: “For goshes’ sake, Miss!” And, describing this
adventure to his fellow-boarders, that evening, “Sagged pretty near
to the counter, she was,” he said. “’F I hadn’t been a bright, quick,
ready-for-anything young fella she’d ‘a’ flummixed plum! I was watchin’
her out the window—talkin’ to some young s’iety fella, and she was all
right then. She was all right when she come in the store, too. Yes,
sir; the prettiest girl that ever walked in our place and took one good
look at me. I reckon it must be the truth what some you town wags say
about my face!”




Chapter XXVIII


At that hour the heroine of the susceptible clerk’s romance was
engaged in brightening the rosy little coal fire under the white
mantelpiece in her pretty white-and-blue boudoir. Four photographs
all framed in decorous plain silver went to the anthracite’s fierce
destruction—frames and all—and three packets of letters and notes in
a charming Florentine treasure-box of painted wood; nor was the box,
any more than the silver frames, spared this rousing finish. Thrown
heartily upon live coal, the fine wood sparkled forth in stars, then
burst into an alarming blaze which scorched the white mantelpiece, but
Lucy stood and looked on without moving.

It was not Eugene who told her what had happened at Isabel’s door.
When she got home, she found Fanny Minafer waiting for her—a secret
excursion of Fanny’s for the purpose, presumably, of “letting out”
again; because that was what she did. She told Lucy everything (except
her own lamentable part in the production of the recent miseries) and
concluded with a tribute to George: “The worst of it is, he thinks he’s
been such a hero, and Isabel does, too, and that makes him more than
twice as awful. It’s been the same all his life: everything he did was
noble and perfect. He had a domineering nature to begin with, and she
let it go on, and fostered it till it absolutely ruled her. I never saw
a plainer case of a person’s fault making them pay for having it! She
goes about, overseeing the packing and praising George and pretending
to be perfectly cheerful about what he’s making her do and about the
dreadful things he’s done. She pretends he did such a fine thing—so
manly and protective—going to Mrs. Johnson. And so heroic—doing what
his ‘principles’ made him—even though he knew what it would cost him
with you! And all the while it’s almost killing her—what he said to
your father! She’s always been lofty enough, so to speak, and had
the greatest idea of the Ambersons being superior to the rest of the
world, and all that, but rudeness, or anything like a ‘scene,’ or any
bad manners—they always just made her sick! But she could never see
what George’s manners were—oh, it’s been a terrible adulation!... It’s
going to be a task for me, living in that big house, all alone: you
must come and see me—I mean after they’ve gone, of course. I’ll go
crazy if I don’t see something of people. I’m sure you’ll come as often
as you can. I know you too well to think you’ll be sensitive about
coming there, or being reminded of George. Thank heaven you’re too
well-balanced,” Miss Fanny concluded, with a profound fervour, “you’re
too well-balanced to let anything affect you deeply about that—that
monkey!”

The four photographs and the painted Florentine box went to their
cremation within the same hour that Miss Fanny spoke; and a little
later Lucy called her father in, as he passed her door, and pointed
to the blackened area on the underside of the mantelpiece, and to the
burnt heap upon the coal, where some metallic shapes still retained
outline. She flung her arms about his neck in passionate sympathy,
telling him that she knew what had happened to him; and presently he
began to comfort her and managed an embarrassed laugh.

“Well, well—” he said. “I was too old for such foolishness to be
getting into my head, anyhow.”

“No, no!” she sobbed. “And if you knew how I despise myself for—for
ever having thought one instant about—oh, Miss Fanny called him the
right name: that monkey! He is!”

“There, I think I agree with you,” Eugene said grimly, and in his eyes
there was a steady light of anger that was to last. “Yes, I think I
agree with you about that!”

“There’s only one thing to do with such a person,” she said vehemently.
“That’s to put him out of our thoughts forever—forever!”

And yet, the next day, at six o’clock, which was the hour, Fanny
had told her, when George and his mother were to leave upon their
long journey, Lucy touched that scorched place on her mantel with
her hand just as the little clock above it struck. Then, after this
odd, unconscious gesture, she went to a window and stood between the
curtains, looking out into the cold November dusk; and in spite of
every reasoning and reasonable power within her, a pain of loneliness
struck through her heart. The dim street below her window, the dark
houses across the way, the vague air itself—all looked empty, and cold
and (most of all) uninteresting. Something more sombre than November
dusk took the colour from them and gave them that air of desertion.

The light of her fire, flickering up behind her, showed suddenly a
flying group of tiny snowflakes nearing the window-pane; and for an
instant she felt the sensation of being dragged through a snowdrift
under a broken cutter, with a boy’s arms about her—an arrogant,
handsome, too-conquering boy, who nevertheless did his best to get hurt
himself, keeping her from any possible harm.

She shook the picture out of her eyes indignantly, then came and sat
before her fire, and looked long and long at the blackened mantelpiece.
She did not have the mantelpiece repainted—and, since she did not,
might as well have kept his photographs. One forgets what made the scar
upon his hand but not what made the scar upon his wall.

She played no marche funebre upon her piano, even though Chopin’s
romantic lamentation was then at the top of nine-tenths of the
music-racks in the country, American youth having recently discovered
the distinguished congeniality between itself and this deathless bit
of deathly gloom. She did not even play “Robin Adair”; she played
“Bedelia” and all the new cake-walks, for she was her father’s
housekeeper, and rightly looked upon the office as being the same as
that of his heart-keeper. Therefore it was her affair to keep both
house and heart in what state of cheerfulness might be contrived. She
made him “go out” more than ever; made him take her to all the gayeties
of that winter, declining to go herself unless he took her, and, though
Eugene danced no more, and quoted Shakespeare to prove all lightfoot
caperings beneath the dignity of his age, she broke his resolution for
him at the New Year’s Eve “Assembly” and half coaxed, half dragged him
forth upon the floor, and made him dance the New Year in with her.

New faces appeared at the dances of the winter; new faces had been
appearing everywhere, for that matter, and familiar ones were
disappearing, merged in the increasing crowd, or gone forever and
missed a little and not long; for the town was growing and changing as
it never had grown and changed before.

It was heaving up in the middle incredibly; it was spreading
incredibly; and as it heaved and spread, it befouled itself and
darkened its sky. Its boundary was mere shapelessness on the run; a
raw, new house would appear on a country road; four or five others
would presently be built at intervals between it and the outskirts of
the town; the country road would turn into an asphalt street with a
brick-faced drugstore and a frame grocery at a corner; then bungalows
and six-room cottages would swiftly speckle the open green spaces—and
a farm had become a suburb which would immediately shoot out other
suburbs into the country, on one side, and, on the other, join itself
solidly to the city. You drove between pleasant fields and woodland
groves one spring day; and in the autumn, passing over the same ground,
you were warned off the tracks by an interurban trolley-car’s gonging,
and beheld, beyond cement sidewalks just dry, new house-owners busy
“moving in.” Gasoline and electricity were performing the miracles
Eugene had predicted.

But the great change was in the citizenry itself. What was left of
the patriotic old-stock generation that had fought the Civil War, and
subsequently controlled politics, had become venerable and was little
heeded. The descendants of the pioneers and early settlers were merging
into the new crowd, becoming part of it, little to be distinguished
from it. What happened to Boston and to Broadway happened in degree to
the Midland city; the old stock became less and less typical, and of
the grown people who called the place home, less than a third had been
born in it. There was a German quarter; there was a Jewish quarter;
there was a negro quarter—square miles of it—called “Bucktown”; there
were many Irish neighbourhoods; and there were large settlements
of Italians, and of Hungarians, and of Rumanians, and of Serbians
and other Balkan peoples. But not the emigrants, themselves, were
the almost dominant type on the streets downtown. That type was the
emigrant’s prosperous offspring: descendant of the emigrations of the
Seventies and Eighties and Nineties, those great folk-journeyings in
search not so directly of freedom and democracy as of more money for
the same labour. A new Midlander—in fact, a new American—was beginning
dimly to emerge.

A new spirit of citizenship had already sharply defined itself. It was
idealistic, and its ideals were expressed in the new kind of young
men in business downtown. They were optimists—optimists to the point
of belligerence—their motto being “Boost! Don’t Knock!” And they were
hustlers, believing in hustling and in honesty because both paid. They
loved their city and worked for it with a plutonic energy which was
always ardently vocal. They were viciously governed, but they sometimes
went so far to struggle for better government on account of the helpful
effect of good government on the price of real estate and “betterment”
generally; the politicians could not go too far with them, and knew it.
The idealists planned and strove and shouted that their city should
become a better, better, and better city—and what they meant, when
they used the word “better,” was “more prosperous,” and the core of
their idealism was this: “The more prosperous my beloved city, the more
prosperous beloved I!” They had one supreme theory: that the perfect
beauty and happiness of cities and of human life was to be brought
about by more factories; they had a mania for factories; there was
nothing they would not do to cajole a factory away from another city;
and they were never more piteously embittered than when another city
cajoled one away from them.

What they meant by Prosperity was credit at the bank; but in exchange
for this credit they got nothing that was not dirty, and, therefore,
to a sane mind, valueless; since whatever was cleaned was dirty again
before the cleaning was half done. For, as the town grew, it grew dirty
with an incredible completeness. The idealists put up magnificent
business buildings and boasted of them, but the buildings were begrimed
before they were finished. They boasted of their libraries, of their
monuments and statues; and poured soot on them. They boasted of their
schools, but the schools were dirty, like the children within them.
This was not the fault of the children or their mothers. It was the
fault of the idealists, who said: “The more dirt, the more prosperity.”
They drew patriotic, optimistic breaths of the flying powdered filth
of the streets, and took the foul and heavy smoke with gusto into the
profundities of their lungs. “Boost! Don’t knock!” they said. And
every year or so they boomed a great Clean-up Week, when everybody was
supposed to get rid of the tin cans in his backyard.

They were happiest when the tearing down and building up were most
riotous, and when new factory districts were thundering into life.
In truth, the city came to be like the body of a great dirty man,
skinned, to show his busy works, yet wearing a few barbaric ornaments;
and such a figure carved, coloured, and discoloured, and set up in
the market-place, would have done well enough as the god of the new
people. Such a god they had indeed made in their own image, as all
peoples make the god they truly serve; though of course certain of
the idealists went to church on Sunday, and there knelt to Another,
considered to be impractical in business. But while the Growing went
on, this god of their market-place was their true god, their familiar
and spirit-control. They did not know that they were his helplessly
obedient slaves, nor could they ever hope to realize their serfdom (as
the first step toward becoming free men) until they should make the
strange and hard discovery that matter should serve man’s spirit.

“Prosperity” meant good credit at the bank, black lungs, and
housewives’ Purgatory. The women fought the dirt all they could; but if
they let the air into their houses they let in the dirt. It shortened
their lives, and kept them from the happiness of ever seeing anything
white. And thus, as the city grew, the time came when Lucy, after a
hard struggle, had to give up her blue-and-white curtains and her
white walls. Indoors, she put everything into dull gray and brown, and
outside had the little house painted the dark green nearest to black.
Then she knew, of course, that everything was as dirty as ever, but was
a little less distressed because it no longer looked so dirty as it was.

These were bad times for Amberson Addition. This quarter, already
old, lay within a mile of the centre of the town, but business moved
in other directions; and the Addition’s share of Prosperity was only
the smoke and dirt, with the bank credit left out. The owners of
the original big houses sold them, or rented them to boarding-house
keepers, and the tenants of the multitude of small houses moved
“farther out” (where the smoke was thinner) or into apartment houses,
which were built by dozens now. Cheaper tenants took their places,
and the rents were lower and lower, and the houses shabbier and
shabbier—for all these shabby houses, burning soft coal, did their best
to help in the destruction of their own value. They helped to make
the quarter so dingy and the air so foul to breathe that no one would
live there who had money enough to get “farther out” where there were
glimpses of ungrayed sky and breaths of cleaner winds. And with the
coming of the new speed, “farther out” was now as close to business
as the Addition had been in the days of its prosperity. Distances had
ceased to matter.

The five new houses, built so closely where had been the fine lawn of
the Amberson Mansion, did not look new. When they were a year old they
looked as old as they would ever look; and two of them were vacant,
having never been rented, for the Major’s mistake about apartment
houses had been a disastrous one. “He guessed wrong,” George Amberson
said. “He guessed wrong at just the wrong time! Housekeeping in a house
is harder than in an apartment; and where the smoke and dirt are as
thick as they are in the Addition, women can’t stand it. People were
crazy for apartments—too bad he couldn’t have seen it in time. Poor
man! he digs away at his ledgers by his old gas drop-light lamp almost
every night—he still refuses to let the Mansion be torn up for wiring,
you know. But he had one painful satisfaction this spring: he got his
taxes lowered!”

Amberson laughed ruefully, and Fanny Minafer asked how the Major could
have managed such an economy. They were sitting upon the veranda at
Isabel’s one evening during the third summer of the absence of their
nephew and his mother; and the conversation had turned toward Amberson
finances.

“I said it was a ‘painful satisfaction,’ Fanny,” he explained. “The
property has gone down in value, and they assessed it lower than they
did fifteen years ago.”

“But farther out—”

“Oh, yes, ‘farther out!’ Prices are magnificent ‘farther out,’ and
farther in, too! We just happen to be the wrong spot, that’s all. Not
that I don’t think something could be done if father would let me have
a hand; but he won’t. He can’t, I suppose I ought to say. He’s ‘always
done his own figuring,’ he says; and it’s his lifelong habit to keep
his affairs: and even his books, to himself, and just hand us out the
money. Heaven knows he’s done enough of that!”

He sighed; and both were silent, looking out at the long flares of the
constantly passing automobile headlights, shifting in vast geometric
demonstrations against the darkness. Now and then a bicycle wound its
nervous way among these portents, or, at long intervals, a surrey or
buggy plodded forlornly by.

“There seem to be so many ways of making money nowadays,” Fanny said
thoughtfully. “Every day I hear of a new fortune some person has got
hold of, one way or another—nearly always it’s somebody you never heard
of. It doesn’t seem all to be in just making motor cars; I hear there’s
a great deal in manufacturing these things that motor cars use—new
inventions particularly. I met dear old Frank Bronson the other day,
and he told me—”

“Oh, yes, even dear old Frank’s got the fever,” Amberson laughed. “He’s
as wild as any of them. He told me about this invention he’s gone into,
too. ‘Millions in it!’ Some new electric headlight better than anything
yet—‘every car in America can’t help but have ’em,’ and all that. He’s
putting half he’s laid by into it, and the fact is, he almost talked me
into getting father to ‘finance me’ enough for me to go into it. Poor
father! he’s financed me before! I suppose he would again if I had the
heart to ask him; and this seems to be a good thing, though probably
old Frank is a little too sanguine. At any rate, I’ve been thinking it
over.”

“So have I,” Fanny admitted. “He seemed to be certain it would pay
twenty-five per cent. the first year, and enormously more after that;
and I’m only getting four on my little principal. People are making
such enormous fortunes out of everything to do with motor cars, it does
seem as if—” She paused. “Well, I told him I’d think it over seriously.”

“We may turn out to be partners and millionaires then,” Amberson
laughed. “I thought I’d ask Eugene’s advice.”

“I wish you would,” said Fanny. “He probably knows exactly how much
profit there would be in this.”

Eugene’s advice was to “go slow”: he thought electric lights for
automobiles were “coming—someday but probably not until certain
difficulties could be overcome.” Altogether, he was discouraging, but
by this time his two friends “had the fever” as thoroughly as old Frank
Bronson himself had it; for they had been with Bronson to see the light
working beautifully in a machine shop. They were already enthusiastic,
and after asking Eugene’s opinion they argued with him, telling him how
they had seen with their own eyes that the difficulties he mentioned
had been overcome. “Perfectly!” Fanny cried. “And if it worked in the
shop it’s bound to work any place else, isn’t it?”

He would not agree that it was “bound to”—yet, being pressed, was
driven to admit that “it might,” and, retiring from what was developing
into an oratorical contest, repeated a warning about not “putting too
much into it.”

George Amberson also laid stress on this caution later, though the
Major had “financed him” again, and he was “going in.” “You must be
careful to leave yourself a ‘margin of safety,’ Fanny,” he said. “I’m
confident that is a pretty conservative investment of its kind, and
all the chances are with us, but you must be careful to leave yourself
enough to fall back on, in case anything should go wrong.”

Fanny deceived him. In the impossible event of “anything going wrong”
she would have enough left to “live on,” she declared, and laughed
excitedly, for she was having the best time that had come to her since
Wilbur’s death. Like so many women for whom money has always been
provided without their understanding how, she was prepared to be a
thorough and irresponsible plunger.

Amberson, in his wearier way, shared her excitement, and in the winter,
when the exploiting company had been formed, and he brought Fanny her
importantly engraved shares of stock, he reverted to his prediction of
possibilities, made when they first spoke of the new light.

“We seem to be partners, all right,” he laughed. “Now let’s go ahead
and be millionaires before Isabel and young George come home.”

“When they come home!” she echoed sorrowfully—and it was a phrase which
found an evasive echo in Isabel’s letters. In these letters Isabel was
always planning pleasant things that she and Fanny and the Major and
George and “brother George” would do—when she and her son came home.
“They’ll find things pretty changed, I’m afraid,” Fanny said. “If they
ever do come home!”

Amberson went over, the next summer, and joined his sister and nephew
in Paris, where they were living. “Isabel does want to come home,”
he told Fanny gravely, on the day of his return, in October. “She’s
wanted to for a long while—and she ought to come while she can stand
the journey—” And he amplified this statement, leaving Fanny looking
startled and solemn when Lucy came by to drive him out to dinner at the
new house Eugene had just completed.

This was no white-and-blue cottage, but a great Georgian picture in
brick, five miles north of Amberson Addition, with four acres of its
own hedged land between it and its next neighbour; and Amberson laughed
wistfully as they turned in between the stone and brick gate pillars,
and rolled up the crushed stone driveway. “I wonder, Lucy, if history’s
going on forever repeating itself,” he said. “I wonder if this town’s
going on building up things and rolling over them, as poor father once
said it was rolling over his poor old heart. It looks like it: here’s
the Amberson Mansion again, only it’s Georgian instead of nondescript
Romanesque; but it’s just the same Amberson Mansion that my father
built long before you were born. The only difference is that it’s your
father who’s built this one now. It’s all the same, in the long run.”

Lucy did not quite understand, but she laughed as a friend should, and,
taking his arm, showed him through vast rooms where ivory-panelled
walls and trim window hangings were reflected dimly in dark, rugless
floors, and the sparse furniture showed that Lucy had been “collecting”
with a long purse. “By Jove!” he said. “You have been going it! Fanny
tells me you had a great ‘house-warming’ dance, and you keep right on
being the belle of the ball, not any softer-hearted than you used to
be. Fred Kinney’s father says you’ve refused Fred so often that he got
engaged to Janie Sharon just to prove that someone would have him in
spite of his hair. Well, the material world do move, and you’ve got the
new kind of house it moves into nowadays—if it has the new price! And
even the grand old expanses of plate glass we used to be so proud of at
the other Amberson Mansion—they’ve gone, too, with the crowded heavy
gold and red stuff. Curious! We’ve still got the plate glass windows,
though all we can see out of ’em is the smoke and the old Johnson
house, which is a counter-jumper’s boardinghouse now, while you’ve got
a view, and you cut it all up into little panes. Well, you’re pretty
refreshingly out of the smoke up here.”

“Yes, for a while,” Lucy laughed. “Until it comes and we have to move
out farther.”

“No, you’ll stay here,” he assured her. “It will be somebody else
who’ll move out farther.”

He continued to talk of the house after Eugene arrived, and gave them
no account of his journey until they had retired from the dinner table
to Eugene’s library, a gray and shadowy room, where their coffee was
brought. Then, equipped with a cigar, which seemed to occupy his
attention, Amberson spoke in a casual tone of his sister and her son.

“I found Isabel as well as usual,” he said, “only I’m afraid ‘as usual’
isn’t particularly well. Sydney and Amelia had been up to Paris in the
spring, but she hadn’t seen them. Somebody told her they were there, it
seems. They’d left Florence and were living in Rome; Amelia’s become
a Catholic and is said to give great sums to charity and to go about
with the gentry in consequence, but Sydney’s ailing and lives in a
wheel-chair most of the time. It struck me Isabel ought to be doing the
same thing.”

He paused, bestowing minute care upon the removal of the little band
from his cigar; and as he seemed to have concluded his narrative,
Eugene spoke out of the shadow beyond a heavily shaded lamp: “What do
you mean by that?” he asked quietly.

“Oh, she’s cheerful enough,” said Amberson, still not looking at either
his young hostess or her father. “At least,” he added, “she manages to
seem so. I’m afraid she hasn’t been really well for several years. She
isn’t stout you know—she hasn’t changed in looks much—and she seems
rather alarmingly short of breath for a slender person. Father’s been
that way for years, of course; but never nearly so much as Isabel is
now. Of course she makes nothing of it, but it seemed rather serious
to me when I noticed she had to stop and rest twice to get up the one
short flight of stairs in their two-floor apartment. I told her I
thought she ought to make George let her come home.”

“Let her?” Eugene repeated, in a low voice. “Does she want to?”

“She doesn’t urge it. George seems to like the life there—in his grand,
gloomy, and peculiar way; and of course she’ll never change about
being proud of him and all that—he’s quite a swell. But in spite of
anything she said, rather than because, I know she does indeed want to
come. She’d like to be with father, of course; and I think she’s—well,
she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she
wouldn’t get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to
his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the
little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said
it, and it struck me all at once that I’d been mistaken: I saw she was
really thinking of her own state of health.”

“I see,” Eugene said, his voice even lower than it had been before.
“And you say he won’t ‘let’ her come home?”

Amberson laughed, but still continued to be interested in his cigar.
“Oh, I don’t think he uses force! He’s very gentle with her. I doubt
if the subject is mentioned between them, and yet—and yet, knowing my
interesting nephew as you do, wouldn’t you think that was about the way
to put it?”

“Knowing him as I do—yes,” said Eugene slowly. “Yes, I should think
that was about the way to put it.”

A murmur out of the shadows beyond him—a faint sound, musical and
feminine, yet expressive of a notable intensity—seemed to indicate that
Lucy was of the same opinion.




Chapter XXIX


“Let her” was correct; but the time came—and it came in the spring of
the next year when it was no longer a question of George’s letting his
mother come home. He had to bring her, and to bring her quickly if she
was to see her father again; and Amberson had been right: her danger of
never seeing him again lay not in the Major’s feebleness of heart but
in her own. As it was, George telegraphed his uncle to have a wheeled
chair at the station, for the journey had been disastrous, and to this
hybrid vehicle, placed close to the platform, her son carried her in
his arms when she arrived. She was unable to speak, but patted her
brother’s and Fanny’s hands and looked “very sweet,” Fanny found the
desperate courage to tell her. She was lifted from the chair into a
carriage, and seemed a little stronger as they drove home; for once she
took her hand from George’s, and waved it feebly toward the carriage
window.

“Changed,” she whispered. “So changed.”

“You mean the town,” Amberson said. “You mean the old place is changed,
don’t you, dear?”

She smiled and moved her lips: “Yes.”

“It’ll change to a happier place, old dear,” he said, “now that you’re
back in it, and going to get well again.”

But she only looked at him wistfully, her eyes a little frightened.

When the carriage stopped, her son carried her into the house, and up
the stairs to her own room, where a nurse was waiting; and he came
out a moment later, as the doctor went in. At the end of the hall a
stricken group was clustered: Amberson, and Fanny, and the Major.
George, deathly pale and speechless, took his grandfather’s hand, but
the old gentleman did not seem to notice his action.

“When are they going to let me see my daughter?” he asked querulously.
“They told me to keep out of the way while they carried her in,
because it might upset her. I wish they’d let me go in and speak to my
daughter. I think she wants to see me.”

He was right—presently the doctor came out and beckoned to him; and
the Major shuffled forward, leaning on a shaking cane; his figure,
after all its years of proud soldierliness, had grown stooping at last,
and his untrimmed white hair straggled over the back of his collar.
He looked old—old and divested of the world—as he crept toward his
daughter’s room. Her voice was stronger, for the waiting group heard
a low cry of tenderness and welcome as the old man reached the open
doorway. Then the door was closed.

Fanny touched her nephew’s arm. “George, you must need something to
eat—I know she’d want you to. I’ve had things ready: I knew she’d want
me to. You’d better go down to the dining room: there’s plenty on the
table, waiting for you. She’d want you to eat something.”

He turned a ghastly face to her, it was so panic-stricken. “I don’t
want anything to eat!” he said savagely. And he began to pace the
floor, taking care not to go near Isabel’s door, and that his footsteps
were muffled by the long, thick hall rug. After a while he went to
where Amberson, with folded arms and bowed head, had seated himself
near the front window. “Uncle George,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t—”

“Well?”

“Oh, my God, I didn’t think this thing the matter with her could ever
be serious! I—” He gasped. “When that doctor I had meet us at the
boat—” He could not go on.

Amberson only nodded his head, and did not otherwise change his
attitude.

Isabel lived through the night. At eleven o’clock Fanny came timidly to
George in his room. “Eugene is here,” she whispered. “He’s downstairs.
He wants—” She gulped. “He wants to know if he can’t see her. I didn’t
know what to say. I said I’d see. I didn’t know—the doctor said—”

“The doctor said we ‘must keep her peaceful,’” George said sharply.
“Do you think that man’s coming would be very soothing? My God! if it
hadn’t been for him this mightn’t have happened: we could have gone on
living here quietly, and—why, it would be like taking a stranger into
her room! She hasn’t even spoken of him more than twice in all the time
we’ve been away. Doesn’t he know how sick she is? You tell him the
doctor said she had to be quiet and peaceful. That’s what he did say,
isn’t it?”

Fanny acquiesced tearfully. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him the doctor
said she was to be kept very quiet. I—I didn’t know—” And she pottered
out.

An hour later the nurse appeared in George’s doorway; she came
noiselessly, and his back was toward her; but he jumped as if he had
been shot, and his jaw fell, he so feared what she was going to say.

“She wants to see you.”

The terrified mouth shut with a click; and he nodded and followed her;
but she remained outside his mother’s room while he went in.

Isabel’s eyes were closed, and she did not open them or move her head,
but she smiled and edged her hand toward him as he sat on a stool
beside the bed. He took that slender, cold hand, and put it to his
cheek.

“Darling, did you—get something to eat?” She could only whisper, slowly
and with difficulty. It was as if Isabel herself were far away, and
only able to signal what she wanted to say.

“Yes, mother.”

“All you—needed?”

“Yes, mother.”

She did not speak again for a time; then, “Are you sure you
didn’t—didn’t catch cold coming home?”

“I’m all right, mother.”

“That’s good. It’s sweet—it’s sweet—”

“What is, mother darling?”

“To feel—my hand on your cheek. I—I can feel it.”

But this frightened him horribly—that she seemed so glad she could feel
it, like a child proud of some miraculous seeming thing accomplished.
It frightened him so that he could not speak, and he feared that she
would know how he trembled; but she was unaware, and again was silent.
Finally she spoke again:

“I wonder if—if Eugene and Lucy know that we’ve come—home.”

“I’m sure they do.”

“Has he—asked about me?”

“Yes, he was here.”

“Has he—gone?”

“Yes, mother.”

She sighed faintly. “I’d like—”

“What, mother?”

“I’d like to have—seen him.” It was just audible, this little regretful
murmur. Several minutes passed before there was another. “Just—just
once,” she whispered, and then was still.

She seemed to have fallen asleep, and George moved to go, but a faint
pressure upon his fingers detained him, and he remained, with her hand
still pressed against his cheek. After a while he made sure she was
asleep, and moved again, to let the nurse come in, and this time there
was no pressure of the fingers to keep him. She was not asleep, but
thinking that if he went he might get some rest, and be better prepared
for what she knew was coming, she commanded those longing fingers of
hers—and let him go.

He found the doctor standing with the nurse in the hall; and, telling
them that his mother was drowsing now, George went back to his own
room, where he was startled to find his grandfather lying on the bed,
and his uncle leaning against the wall. They had gone home two hours
before, and he did not know they had returned.

“The doctor thought we’d better come over,” Amberson said, then was
silent, and George, shaking violently, sat down on the edge of the bed.
His shaking continued, and from time to time he wiped heavy sweat from
his forehead.

The hours passed, and sometimes the old man upon the bed would snore
a little, stop suddenly, and move as if to rise, but George Amberson
would set a hand upon his shoulder, and murmur a reassuring word or
two. Now and then, either uncle or nephew would tiptoe into the hall
and look toward Isabel’s room, then come tiptoeing back, the other
watching him haggardly.

Once George gasped defiantly: “That doctor in New York said she might
get better! Don’t you know he did? Don’t you know he said she might?”

Amberson made no answer.

Dawn had been murking through the smoky windows, growing stronger for
half an hour, when both men started violently at a sound in the hall;
and the Major sat up on the bed, unchecked. It was the voice of the
nurse speaking to Fanny Minafer, and the next moment, Fanny appeared in
the doorway, making contorted efforts to speak.

Amberson said weakly: “Does she want us—to come in?”

But Fanny found her voice, and uttered a long, loud cry. She threw her
arms about George, and sobbed in an agony of loss and compassion:

“She loved you!” she wailed. “She loved you! She loved you! Oh, how she
did love you!”

Isabel had just left them.




Chapter XXX


Major Amberson remained dry-eyed through the time that followed: he
knew that this separation from his daughter would be short, that
the separation which had preceded it was the long one. He worked
at his ledgers no more under his old gas drop-light, but would sit
all evening staring into the fire, in his bedroom, and not speaking
unless someone asked him a question. He seemed almost unaware of what
went on around him, and those who were with him thought him dazed by
Isabel’s death, guessing that he was lost in reminiscences and vague
dreams. “Probably his mind is full of pictures of his youth, or the
Civil War, and the days when he and mother were young married people
and all of us children were jolly little things—and the city was a
small town with one cobbled street and the others just dirt roads
with board sidewalks.” This was George Amberson’s conjecture, and
the others agreed; but they were mistaken. The Major was engaged in
the profoundest thinking of his life. No business plans which had
ever absorbed him could compare in momentousness with the plans that
absorbed him now, for he had to plan how to enter the unknown country
where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson—not
sure of anything, except that Isabel would help him if she could. His
absorption produced the outward effect of reverie, but of course it
was not. The Major was occupied with the first really important matter
that had taken his attention since he came home invalided, after the
Gettysburg campaign, and went into business; and he realized that
everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime
between then and to-day—all his buying and building and trading and
banking—that it all was trifling and waste beside what concerned him
now.

He seldom went out of his room, and often left untouched the meals they
brought to him there; and this neglect caused them to shake their heads
mournfully, again mistaking for dazedness the profound concentration
of his mind. Meanwhile, the life of the little bereft group still
forlornly centering upon him began to pick up again, as life will, and
to emerge from its own period of dazedness. It was not Isabel’s father
but her son who was really dazed.

A month after her death he walked abruptly into Fanny’s room, one
night, and found her at her desk, eagerly adding columns of figures
with which she had covered several sheets of paper. This mathematical
computation was concerned with her future income to be produced by
the electric headlight, now just placed on the general market; but
Fanny was ashamed to be discovered doing anything except mourning, and
hastily pushed the sheets aside, even as she looked over her shoulder
to greet her hollow-eyed visitor.

“George! You startled me.”

“I beg your pardon for not knocking,” he said huskily. “I didn’t think.”

She turned in her chair and looked at him solicitously. “Sit down,
George, won’t you?”

“No. I just wanted—”

“I could hear you walking up and down in your room,” said Fanny. “You
were doing it ever since dinner, and it seems to me you’re at it almost
every evening. I don’t believe it’s good for you—and I know it would
worry your mother terribly if she—” Fanny hesitated.

“See here,” George said, breathing fast, “I want to tell you once more
that what I did was right. How could I have done anything else but what
I did do?”

“About what, George?”

“About everything!” he exclaimed; and he became vehement. “I did the
right thing, I tell you! In heaven’s name, I’d like to know what else
there was for anybody in my position to do! It would have been a
dreadful thing for me to just let matters go on and not interfere—it
would have been terrible! What else on earth was there for me to do?
I had to stop that talk, didn’t I? Could a son do less than I did?
Didn’t it cost me something to do it? Lucy and I’d had a quarrel, but
that would have come round in time—and it meant the end forever when I
turned her father back from our door. I knew what it meant, yet I went
ahead and did it because I knew it had to be done if the talk was to be
stopped. I took mother away for the same reason. I knew that would help
to stop it. And she was happy over there—she was perfectly happy. I
tell you, I think she had a happy life, and that’s my only consolation.
She didn’t live to be old; she was still beautiful and young looking,
and I feel she’d rather have gone before she got old. She’d had a good
husband, and all the comfort and luxury that anybody could have—and how
could it be called anything but a happy life? She was always cheerful,
and when I think of her I can always see her laughing—I can always hear
that pretty laugh of hers. When I can keep my mind off of the trip
home, and that last night, I always think of her gay and laughing.
So how on earth could she have had anything but a happy life? People
that aren’t happy don’t look cheerful all the time, do they? They look
unhappy if they are unhappy; that’s how they look! See here”—he faced
her challengingly—“do you deny that I did the right thing?”

“Oh, I don’t pretend to judge,” Fanny said soothingly, for his voice
and gesture both partook of wildness. “I know you think you did,
George.”

“Think I did!” he echoed violently. “My God in heaven!” And he began to
walk up and down the floor. “What else was there to do? What choice
did I have? Was there any other way of stopping the talk?” He stopped,
close in front of her, gesticulating, his voice harsh and loud: “Don’t
you hear me? I’m asking you: Was there any other way on earth of
protecting her from the talk?”

Miss Fanny looked away. “It died down before long, I think,” she said
nervously.

“That shows I was right, doesn’t it?” he cried. “If I hadn’t acted as
I did, that slanderous old Johnson woman would have kept on with her
slanders—she’d still be—”

“No,” Fanny interrupted. “She’s dead. She dropped dead with apoplexy
one day about six weeks after you left. I didn’t mention it in my
letters because I didn’t want—I thought—”

“Well, the other people would have kept on, then. They’d have—”

“I don’t know,” said Fanny, still averting her troubled eyes. “Things
are so changed here, George. The other people you speak of—one hardly
knows what’s become of them. Of course not a great many were doing the
talking, and they—well, some of them are dead, and some might as well
be—you never see them any more—and the rest, whoever they were, are
probably so mixed in with the crowds of new people that seem never even
to have heard of us—and I’m sure we certainly never heard of them—and
people seem to forget things so soon—they seem to forget anything. You
can’t imagine how things have changed here!”

George gulped painfully before he could speak. “You—you mean to sit
there and tell me that if I’d just let things go on—Oh!” He swung away,
walking the floor again. “I tell you I did the only right thing! If
you don’t think so, why in the name of heaven can’t you say what else
I should have done? It’s easy enough to criticize, but the person who
criticizes a man ought at least to tell him what else he should have
done! You think I was wrong!”

“I’m not saying so,” she said.

“You did at the time!” he cried. “You said enough then, I think! Well,
what have you to say now, if you’re so sure I was wrong?”

“Nothing, George.”

“It’s only because you’re afraid to!” he said, and he went on with a
sudden bitter divination: “You’re reproaching yourself with what you
had to do with all that; and you’re trying to make up for it by doing
and saying what you think mother would want you to, and you think I
couldn’t stand it if I got to thinking I might have done differently.
Oh, I know! That’s exactly what’s in your mind: you do think I was
wrong! So does Uncle George. I challenged him about it the other
day, and he answered just as you’re answering—evaded, and tried to
be gentler. I don’t care to be handled with gloves! I tell you I was
right, and I don’t need any coddling by people that think I wasn’t! And
I suppose you believe I was wrong not to let Morgan see her that last
night when he came here, and she—she was dying. If you do, why in the
name of God did you come and ask me? You could have taken him in! She
did want to see him. She—”

Miss Fanny looked startled. “You think—”

“She told me so!” And the tortured young man choked. “She said—‘just
once.’ She said ‘I’d like to have seen him—just once!’ She meant—to
tell him good-bye! That’s what she meant! And you put this on me, too;
you put this responsibility on me! But I tell you, and I told Uncle
George, that the responsibility isn’t all mine! If you were so sure I
was wrong all the time—when I took her away, and when I turned Morgan
out—if you were so sure, what did you let me do it for? You and Uncle
George were grown people, both of you, weren’t you? You were older than
I, and if you were so sure you were wiser than I, why did you just
stand around with your hands hanging down, and let me go ahead? You
could have stopped it if it was wrong, couldn’t you?”

Fanny shook her head. “No, George,” she said slowly. “Nobody could have
stopped you. You were too strong, and—”

“And what?” he demanded loudly.

“And she loved you—too well.”

George stared at her hard, then his lower lip began to move
convulsively, and he set his teeth upon it but could not check its
frantic twitching.

He ran out of the room.

She sat still, listening. He had plunged into his mother’s room, but
no sound came to Fanny’s ears after the sharp closing of the door;
and presently she rose and stepped out into the hall—but could hear
nothing. The heavy black walnut door of Isabel’s room, as Fanny’s
troubled eyes remained fixed upon it, seemed to become darker and
vaguer; the polished wood took the distant ceiling light, at the
end of the hall, in dim reflections which became mysterious; and to
Fanny’s disturbed mind the single sharp point of light on the bronze
door-knob was like a continuous sharp cry in the stillness of night.
What interview was sealed away from human eye and ear within the lonely
darkness on the other side of that door—in that darkness where Isabel’s
own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great
walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic
argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? “In
God’s name, what else could I have done?” For his mother’s immutable
silence was surely answering him as Isabel in life would never have
answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead
can be. They cannot stop their eloquence, no matter how they have loved
the living: they cannot choose. And so, no matter in what agony George
should cry out, “What else could I have done?” and to the end of his
life no matter how often he made that wild appeal, Isabel was doomed to
answer him with the wistful, faint murmur:

“I’d like to have—seen him. Just—just once.”

A cheerful darkey went by the house, loudly and tunelessly whistling
some broken thoughts upon women, fried food and gin; then a group of
high school boys, returning homeward after important initiations, were
heard skylarking along the sidewalk, rattling sticks on the fences,
squawking hoarsely, and even attempting to sing in the shocking new
voices of uncompleted adolescence. For no reason, and just as a poultry
yard falls into causeless agitation, they stopped in front of the
house, and for half an hour produced the effect of a noisy multitude in
full riot.

To the woman standing upstairs in the hall, this was almost unbearable;
and she felt that she would have to go down and call to them to stop;
but she was too timid, and after a time went back to her room, and sat
at her desk again. She left the door open, and frequently glanced out
into the hall, but gradually became once more absorbed in the figures
which represented her prospective income from her great plunge in
electric lights for automobiles. She did not hear George return to his
own room.

A superstitious person might have thought it unfortunate that her
partner in this speculative industry (as in Wilbur’s disastrous
rolling-mills) was that charming but too haphazardous man of the world,
George Amberson. He was one of those optimists who believe that if you
put money into a great many enterprises one of them is sure to turn out
a fortune, and therefore, in order to find the lucky one, it is only
necessary to go into a large enough number of them. Altogether gallant
in spirit, and beautifully game under catastrophe, he had gone into a
great many, and the unanimity of their “bad luck,” as he called it,
gave him one claim to be a distinguished person, if he had no other. In
business he was ill fated with a consistency which made him, in that
alone, a remarkable man; and he declared, with some earnestness, that
there was no accounting for it except by the fact that there had been
so much good luck in his family before he was born that something had
to balance it.

“You ought to have thought of my record and stayed out,” he told Fanny,
one day the next spring, when the affairs of the headlight company had
begun to look discouraging. “I feel the old familiar sinking that’s
attended all my previous efforts to prove myself a business genius.
I think it must be something like the feeling an aeronaut has when
his balloon bursts, and, looking down, he sees below him the old home
farm where he used to live—I mean the feeling he’d have just before he
flattened out in that same old clay barnyard. Things do look bleak, and
I’m only glad you didn’t go into this confounded thing to the extent I
did.”

Miss Fanny grew pink. “But it must go right!” she protested. “We saw
with our own eyes how perfectly it worked in the shop. The light was so
bright no one could face it, and so there can’t be any reason for it
not to work. It simply—”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” Amberson said. “It certainly was a
perfect thing—in the shop! The only thing we didn’t know was how fast
an automobile had to go to keep the light going. It appears that this
was a matter of some importance.”

“Well, how fast does one have to—”

“To keep the light from going entirely out,” he informed her with
elaborate deliberation, “it is computed by those enthusiasts who have
bought our product—and subsequently returned it to us and got their
money back—they compute that a motor car must maintain a speed of
twenty-five miles an hour, or else there won’t be any light at all. To
make the illumination bright enough to be noticed by an approaching
automobile, they state the speed must be more than thirty miles an
hour. At thirty-five, objects in the path of the light begin to become
visible; at forty they are revealed distinctly; and at fifty and above
we have a real headlight. Unfortunately many people don’t care to drive
that fast at all times after dusk, especially in the traffic, or where
policemen are likely to become objectionable.”

“But think of that test on the road when we—”

“That test was lovely,” he admitted. “The inventor made us happy with
his oratory, and you and Frank Bronson and I went whirling through the
night at a speed that thrilled us. It was an intoxicating sensation: we
were intoxicated by the lights, the lights and the music. We must never
forget that drive, with the cool wind kissing our cheeks and the road
lit up for miles ahead. We must never forget it and we never shall. It
cost—”

“But something’s got to be done.”

“It has, indeed! My something would seem to be leaving my watch at my
uncle’s. Luckily, you—”

The pink of Fanny’s cheeks became deeper. “But isn’t that man going to
do anything to remedy it? can’t he try to—”

“He can try,” said Amberson. “He is trying, in fact. I’ve sat in the
shop watching him try for several beautiful afternoons, while outside
the windows all Nature was fragrant with spring and smoke. He hums
ragtime to himself as he tries, and I think his mind is wandering to
something else less tedious—to some new invention in which he’d take
more interest.”

“But you mustn’t let him,” she cried. “You must make him keep on
trying!”

“Oh, yes. He understands that’s what I sit there for. I’ll keep
sitting!”

However, in spite of the time he spent sitting in the shop, worrying
the inventor of the fractious light, Amberson found opportunity to
worry himself about another matter of business. This was the settlement
of Isabel’s estate.

“It’s curious about the deed to her house,” he said to his nephew.
“You’re absolutely sure it wasn’t among her papers?”

“Mother didn’t have any papers,” George told him. “None at all. All she
ever had to do with business was to deposit the cheques grandfather
gave her and then write her own cheques against them.”

“The deed to the house was never recorded,” Amberson said thoughtfully.
“I’ve been over to the courthouse to see. I asked father if he never
gave her one, and he didn’t seem able to understand me at first. Then
he finally said he thought he must have given her a deed long ago; but
he wasn’t sure. I rather think he never did. I think it would be just
as well to get him to execute one now in your favour. I’ll speak to him
about it.”

George sighed. “I don’t think I’d bother him about it: the house is
mine, and you and I understand that it is. That’s enough for me, and
there isn’t likely to be much trouble between you and me when we come
to settling poor grandfather’s estate. I’ve just been with him, and I
think it would only confuse him for you to speak to him about it again.
I notice he seems distressed if anybody tries to get his attention—he’s
a long way off, somewhere, and he likes to stay that way. I think—I
think mother wouldn’t want us to bother him about it; I’m sure she’d
tell us to let him alone. He looks so white and queer.”

Amberson shook his head. “Not much whiter and queerer than you do,
young fellow! You’d better begin to get some air and exercise and quit
hanging about in the house all day. I won’t bother him any more than I
can help; but I’ll have the deed made out ready for his signature.”

“I wouldn’t bother him at all. I don’t see—”

“You might see,” said his uncle uneasily. “The estate is just about
as involved and mixed-up as an estate can well get, to the best of my
knowledge; and I haven’t helped it any by what he let me have for this
infernal headlight scheme which has finally gone trolloping forever to
where the woodbine twineth. Leaves me flat, and poor old Frank Bronson
just half flat, and Fanny—well, thank heaven! I kept her from going in
so deep that it would leave her flat. It’s rough on her as it is, I
suspect. You ought to have that deed.”

“No. Don’t bother him.”

“I’ll bother him as little as possible. I’ll wait till some day when he
seems to brighten up a little.”

But Amberson waited too long. The Major had already taken eleven months
since his daughter’s death to think important things out. He had got as
far with them as he could, and there was nothing to detain him longer
in the world. One evening his grandson sat with him—the Major seemed
to like best to have young George with him, so far as they were able
to guess his preferences—and the old gentleman made a queer gesture:
he slapped his knee as if he had made a sudden discovery, or else
remembered that he had forgotten something.

George looked at him with an air of inquiry, but said nothing. He had
grown to be almost as silent as his grandfather. However, the Major
spoke without being questioned.

“It must be in the sun,” he said. “There wasn’t anything here but the
sun in the first place, and the earth came out of the sun, and we came
out of the earth. So, whatever we are, we must have been in the sun. We
go back to the earth we came out of, so the earth will go back to the
sun that it came out of. And time means nothing—nothing at all—so in a
little while we’ll all be back in the sun together. I wish—”

He moved his hand uncertainly as if reaching for something, and George
jumped up. “Did you want anything, grandfather?”

“What?”

“Would you like a glass of water?”

“No—no. No; I don’t want anything.” The reaching hand dropped back upon
the arm of his chair, and he relapsed into silence; but a few minutes
later he finished the sentence he had begun:

“I wish—somebody could tell me!”

The next day he had a slight cold, but he seemed annoyed when his son
suggested calling the doctor, and Amberson let him have his own way
so far, in fact, that after he had got up and dressed, the following
morning, he was all alone when he went away to find out what he hadn’t
been able to think out—all those things he had wished “somebody” would
tell him.

Old Sam, shuffling in with the breakfast tray, found the Major in his
accustomed easy-chair by the fireplace—and yet even the old darkey
could see instantly that the Major was not there.




Chapter XXXI


When the great Amberson Estate went into court for settlement, “there
wasn’t any,” George Amberson said—that is, when the settlement was
concluded there was no estate. “I guessed it,” Amberson went on. “As
an expert on prosperity, my career is disreputable, but as a prophet
of calamity I deserve a testimonial banquet.” He reproached himself
bitterly for not having long ago discovered that his father had never
given Isabel a deed to her house. “And those pigs, Sydney and Amelia!”
he added, for this was another thing he was bitter about. “They won’t
do anything. I’m sorry I gave them the opportunity of making a polished
refusal. Amelia’s letter was about half in Italian; she couldn’t
remember enough ways of saying no in English. One has to live quite a
long while to realize there are people like that! The estate was badly
crippled, even before they took out their ‘third,’ and the ‘third’ they
took was the only good part of the rotten apple. Well, I didn’t ask
them for restitution on my own account, and at least it will save you
some trouble, young George. Never waste any time writing to them; you
mustn’t count on them.”

“I don’t,” George said quietly. “I don’t count on anything.”

“Oh, we’ll not feel that things are quite desperate,” Amberson laughed,
but not with great cheerfulness. “We’ll survive, Georgie—you will,
especially. For my part I’m a little too old and too accustomed to
fall back on somebody else for supplies to start a big fight with
life: I’ll be content with just surviving, and I can do it on an
eighteen-hundred-dollar-a-year consulship. An ex-congressman can always
be pretty sure of getting some such job, and I hear from Washington the
matter’s about settled. I’ll live pleasantly enough with a pitcher of
ice under a palm tree, and black folks to wait on me—that part of it
will be like home—and I’ll manage to send you fifty dollars every now
and then, after I once get settled. So much for me! But you—of course
you’ve had a poor training for making your own way, but you’re only a
boy after all, and the stuff of the old stock is in you. It’ll come
out and do something. I’ll never forgive myself about that deed: it
would have given you something substantial to start with. Still, you
have a little tiny bit, and you’ll have a little tiny salary, too; and
of course your Aunt Fanny’s here, and she’s got something you can fall
back on if you get too pinched, until I can begin to send you a dribble
now and then.”

George’s “little tiny bit” was six hundred dollars which had come to
him from the sale of his mother’s furniture; and the “little tiny
salary” was eight dollars a week which old Frank Bronson was to pay
him for services as a clerk and student-at-law. Old Frank would have
offered more to the Major’s grandson, but since the death of that best
of clients and his own experience with automobile headlights, he was
not certain of being able to pay more and at the same time settle his
own small bills for board and lodging. George had accepted haughtily,
and thereby removed a burden from his uncle’s mind.

Amberson himself, however, had not even a “tiny bit”; though he got his
consular appointment; and to take him to his post he found it necessary
to borrow two hundred of his nephew’s six hundred dollars. “It makes me
sick, George,” he said. “But I’d better get there and get that salary
started. Of course Eugene would do anything in the world, and the fact
is he wanted to, but I felt that—ah—under the circumstances—”

“Never!” George exclaimed, growing red. “I can’t imagine one of the
family—” He paused, not finding it necessary to explain that “the
family” shouldn’t turn a man from the door and then accept favours from
him. “I wish you’d take more.”

Amberson declined. “One thing I’ll say for you, young George; you
haven’t a stingy bone in your body. That’s the Amberson stock in
you—and I like it!”

He added something to this praise of his nephew on the day he left for
Washington. He was not to return, but to set forth from the capital on
the long journey to his post. George went with him to the station, and
their farewell was lengthened by the train’s being several minutes late.

“I may not see you again, Georgie,” Amberson said; and his voice was a
little husky as he set a kind hand on the young man’s shoulder. “It’s
quite probable that from this time on we’ll only know each other by
letter—until you’re notified as my next of kin that there’s an old
valise to be forwarded to you, and perhaps some dusty curios from
the consulate mantelpiece. Well, it’s an odd way for us to be saying
good-bye: one wouldn’t have thought it, even a few years ago, but here
we are, two gentlemen of elegant appearance in a state of bustitude.
We can’t ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood where
we’re standing now, to say good-bye to a pretty girl—only it was in
the old station before this was built, and we called it the ‘depot.’
She’d been visiting your mother, before Isabel was married, and I was
wild about her, and she admitted she didn’t mind that. In fact, we
decided we couldn’t live without each other, and we were to be married.
But she had to go abroad first with her father, and when we came to
say good-bye we knew we wouldn’t see each other again for almost a
year. I thought I couldn’t live through it—and she stood here crying.
Well, I don’t even know where she lives now, or if she is living—and
I only happen to think of her sometimes when I’m here at the station
waiting for a train. If she ever thinks of me she probably imagines
I’m still dancing in the ballroom at the Amberson Mansion, and she
probably thinks of the Mansion as still beautiful—still the finest
house in town. Life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a
nest of cracks. And when they’re gone we can’t tell where—or what the
devil we did with ’em! But I believe I’ll say now—while there isn’t
much time left for either of us to get embarrassed about it—I believe
I’ll say that I’ve always been fond of you, Georgie, but I can’t say
that I always liked you. Sometimes I’ve felt you were distinctly
not an acquired taste. Until lately, one had to be fond of you just
naturally—this isn’t very ‘tactful,’ of course—for if he didn’t, well,
he wouldn’t! We all spoiled you terribly when you were a little boy and
let you grow up en prince—and I must say you took to it! But you’ve
received a pretty heavy jolt, and I had enough of your disposition,
myself, at your age, to understand a little of what cocksure youth has
to go through inside when it finds that it can make terrible mistakes.
Poor old fellow! You get both kinds of jolts together, spiritual and
material—and you’ve taken them pretty quietly and—well, with my train
coming into the shed, you’ll forgive me for saying that there have been
times when I thought you ought to be hanged—but I’ve always been fond
of you, and now I like you! And just for a last word: there may be
somebody else in this town who’s always felt about you like that—fond
of you, I mean, no matter how much it seemed you ought to be hanged.
You might try—Hello, I must run. I’ll send back the money as fast as
they pay me—so, good-bye and God bless you, Georgie!”

He passed through the gates, waved his hat cheerily from the other side
of the iron screen, and was lost from sight in the hurrying crowd. And
as he disappeared, an unexpected poignant loneliness fell upon his
nephew so heavily and so suddenly that he had no energy to recoil from
the shock. It seemed to him that the last fragment of his familiar
world had disappeared, leaving him all alone forever.

He walked homeward slowly through what appeared to be the strange
streets of a strange city; and, as a matter of fact, the city was
strange to him. He had seen little of it during his years in college,
and then had followed the long absence and his tragic return. Since
that he had been “scarcely outdoors at all,” as Fanny complained,
warning him that his health would suffer, and he had been downtown only
in a closed carriage. He had not realized the great change.

The streets were thunderous; a vast energy heaved under the universal
coating of dinginess. George walked through the begrimed crowds of
hurrying strangers and saw no face that he remembered. Great numbers of
the faces were even of a kind he did not remember ever to have seen;
they were partly like the old type that his boyhood knew, and partly
like types he knew abroad. He saw German eyes with American wrinkles
at their corners; he saw Irish eyes and Neapolitan eyes, Roman eyes,
Tuscan eyes, eyes of Lombardy, of Savoy, Hungarian eyes, Balkan eyes,
Scandinavian eyes—all with a queer American look in them. He saw Jews
who had been German Jews, Jews who had been Russian Jews, Jews who
had been Polish Jews but were no longer German or Russian or Polish
Jews. All the people were soiled by the smoke-mist through which they
hurried, under the heavy sky that hung close upon the new skyscrapers;
and nearly all seemed harried by something impending, though here and
there a woman with bundles would be laughing to a companion about
some adventure of the department stores, or perhaps an escape from
the charging traffic of the streets—and not infrequently a girl, or a
free-and-easy young matron, found time to throw an encouraging look to
George.

He took no note of these, and, leaving the crowded sidewalks, turned
north into National Avenue, and presently reached the quieter but no
less begrimed region of smaller shops and old-fashioned houses. Those
latter had been the homes of his boyhood playmates; old friends of his
grandfather had lived here;—in this alley he had fought with two boys
at the same time, and whipped them; in that front yard he had been
successfully teased into temporary insanity by a Sunday-school class
of pinky little girls. On that sagging porch a laughing woman had fed
him and other boys with doughnuts and gingerbread; yonder he saw the
staggered relics of the iron picket fence he had made his white pony
jump, on a dare, and in the shabby, stone-faced house behind the fence
he had gone to children’s parties, and, when he was a little older
he had danced there often, and fallen in love with Mary Sharon, and
kissed her, apparently by force, under the stairs in the hall. The
double front doors, of meaninglessly carved walnut, once so glossily
varnished, had been painted smoke gray, but the smoke grime showed
repulsively, even on the smoke gray; and over the doors a smoked sign
proclaimed the place to be a “Stag Hotel.”

Other houses had become boarding-houses too genteel for signs, but
many were franker, some offering “board by the day, week or meal,” and
some, more laconic, contenting themselves with the label: “Rooms.”
One, having torn out part of an old stone-trimmed bay window for
purposes of commercial display, showed forth two suspended petticoats
and a pair of oyster-coloured flannel trousers to prove the claims of
its black-and-gilt sign: “French Cleaning and Dye House.” Its next
neighbour also sported a remodelled front and permitted no doubt that
its mission in life was to attend cosily upon death: “J. M. Rolsener.
Caskets. The Funeral Home.” And beyond that, a plain old honest
four-square gray-painted brick house was flamboyantly decorated with a
great gilt scroll on the railing of the old-fashioned veranda: “Mutual
Benev’t Order Cavaliers and Dames of Purity.” This was the old Minafer
house.

George passed it without perceptibly wincing; in fact, he held his head
up, and except for his gravity of countenance and the prison pallor he
had acquired by too constantly remaining indoors, there was little to
warn an acquaintance that he was not precisely the same George Amberson
Minafer known aforetime. He was still so magnificent, indeed, that
there came to his ears a waft of comment from a passing automobile.
This was a fearsome red car, glittering in brass, with half-a-dozen
young people in it whose motorism had reached an extreme manifestation
in dress. The ladies of this party were favourably affected at sight
of the pedestrian upon the sidewalk, and, as the machine was moving
slowly, and close to the curb, they had time to observe him in detail,
which they did with a frankness not pleasing to the object of their
attentions. “One sees so many nice-looking people one doesn’t know
nowadays,” said the youngest of the young ladies. “This old town of
ours is really getting enormous. I shouldn’t mind knowing who he is.”

“I don’t know,” the youth beside her said, loudly enough to be heard at
a considerable distance. “I don’t know who he is, but from his looks
I know who he thinks he is: he thinks he’s the Grand Duke Cuthbert!”
There was a burst of tittering as the car gathered speed and rolled
away, with the girl continuing to look back until her scandalized
companions forced her to turn by pulling her hood over her face.
She made an impression upon George, so deep a one, in fact, that he
unconsciously put his emotion into a muttered word:

Riffraff!

This was the last “walk home” he was ever to take by the route he was
now following: up National Avenue to Amberson Addition and the two big
old houses at the foot of Amberson Boulevard; for tonight would be
the last night that he and Fanny were to spend in the house which the
Major had forgotten to deed to Isabel. To-morrow they were to “move
out,” and George was to begin his work in Bronson’s office. He had not
come to this collapse without a fierce struggle—but the struggle was
inward, and the rolling world was not agitated by it, and rolled calmly
on. For of all the “ideals of life” which the world, in its rolling,
inconsiderately flattens out to nothingness, the least likely to retain
a profile is that ideal which depends upon inheriting money. George
Amberson, in spite of his record of failures in business, had spoken
shrewdly when he realized at last that money, like life, was “like
quicksilver in a nest of cracks.” And his nephew had the awakening
experience of seeing the great Amberson Estate vanishing into such
a nest—in a twinkling, it seemed, now that it was indeed so utterly
vanished.

His uncle had suggested that he might write to college friends; perhaps
they could help him to something better than the prospect offered
by Bronson’s office; but George flushed and shook his head, without
explaining. In that small and quietly superior “crowd” of his he had
too emphatically supported the ideal of being rather than doing. He
could not appeal to one of its members now to help him to a job.
Besides, they were not precisely the warmest-hearted crew in the world,
and he had long ago dropped the last affectation of a correspondence
with any of them. He was as aloof from any survival of intimacy with
his boyhood friends in the city, and, in truth, had lost track of
most of them. “The Friends of the Ace,” once bound by oath to succour
one another in peril or poverty, were long ago dispersed; one or two
had died; one or two had gone to live elsewhere; the others were
disappeared into the smoky bigness of the heavy city. Of the brethren,
there remained within his present cognizance only his old enemy, the
red-haired Kinney, now married to Janie Sharon, and Charlie Johnson,
who, out of deference to his mother’s memory, had passed the Amberson
Mansion one day, when George stood upon the front steps, and, looking
in fiercely, had looked away with continued fierceness—his only token
of recognition.

On this last homeward walk of his, when George reached the entrance
to Amberson Addition—that is, when he came to where the entrance had
formerly been—he gave a little start, and halted for a moment to
stare. This was the first time he had noticed that the stone pillars,
marking the entrance, had been removed. Then he realized that for
a long time he had been conscious of a queerness about this corner
without being aware of what made the difference. National Avenue met
Amberson Boulevard here at an obtuse angle, and the removal of the
pillars made the Boulevard seem a cross-street of no overpowering
importance—certainly it did not seem to be a boulevard!

At the next corner Neptune’s Fountain remained, and one could still
determine with accuracy what its designer’s intentions had been. It
stood in sore need of just one last kindness; and if the thing had
possessed any friends they would have done that doleful shovelling
after dark.

George did not let his eyes linger upon the relic; nor did he look
steadfastly at the Amberson Mansion. Massive as the old house was, it
managed to look gaunt: its windows stared with the skull emptiness of
all windows in empty houses that are to be lived in no more. Of course
the rowdy boys of the neighbourhood had been at work: many of these
haggard windows were broken; the front door stood ajar, forced open;
and idiot salacity, in white chalk, was smeared everywhere upon the
pillars and stonework of the verandas.

George walked by the Mansion hurriedly, and came home to his mother’s
house for the last time.

Emptiness was there, too, and the closing of the door resounded through
bare rooms; for downstairs there was no furniture in the house except
a kitchen table in the dining room, which Fanny had kept “for dinner,”
she said, though as she was to cook and serve that meal herself George
had his doubts about her name for it. Upstairs, she had retained her
own furniture, and George had been living in his mother’s room, having
sent everything from his own to the auction. Isabel’s room was still
as it had been, but the furniture would be moved with Fanny’s to new
quarters in the morning. Fanny had made plans for her nephew as well
as herself; she had found a three-room “kitchenette apartment” in an
apartment house where several old friends of hers had established
themselves—elderly widows of citizens once “prominent” and other
retired gentry. People used their own “kitchenettes” for breakfast
and lunch, but there was a table-d’hote arrangement for dinner on
the ground floor; and after dinner bridge was played all evening, an
attraction powerful with Fanny. She had “made all the arrangements,”
she reported, and nervously appealed for approval, asking if she hadn’t
shown herself “pretty practical” in such matters. George acquiesced
absent-mindedly, not thinking of what she said and not realizing to
what it committed him.

He began to realize it now, as he wandered about the dismantled
house; he was far from sure that he was willing to go and live in a
“three-room apartment” with Fanny and eat breakfast and lunch with her
(prepared by herself in the “kitchenette”) and dinner at the table
d’hote in “such a pretty Colonial dining room” (so Fanny described it)
at a little round table they would have all to themselves in the midst
of a dozen little round tables which other relics of disrupted families
would have all to themselves. For the first time, now that the change
was imminent, George began to develop before his mind’s eye pictures
of what he was in for; and they appalled him. He decided that such a
life verged upon the sheerly unbearable, and that after all there were
some things left that he just couldn’t stand. So he made up his mind to
speak to his aunt about it at “dinner,” and tell her that he preferred
to ask Bronson to let him put a sofa-bed, a trunk, and a folding rubber
bathtub behind a screen in the dark rear room of the office. George
felt that this would be infinitely more tolerable; and he could eat at
restaurants, especially as about all he ever wanted nowadays was coffee.

But at “dinner” he decided to put off telling Fanny of his plan until
later: she was so nervous, and so distressed about the failure of her
efforts with sweetbreads and macaroni; and she was so eager in her talk
of how comfortable they would be “by this time to-morrow night.” She
fluttered on, her nervousness increasing, saying how “nice” it would
be for him, when he came from work in the evenings, to be among “nice
people—people who know who we are,” and to have a pleasant game of
bridge with “people who are really old friends of the family?”

When they stopped probing among the scorched fragments she had set
forth, George lingered downstairs, waiting for a better opportunity
to introduce his own subject, but when he heard dismaying sounds from
the kitchen he gave up. There was a crash, then a shower of crashes;
falling tin clamoured to be heard above the shattering of porcelain;
and over all rose Fanny’s wail of lamentation for the treasures saved
from the sale, but now lost forever to the “kitchenette.” Fanny was
nervous indeed; so nervous that she could not trust her hands.

For a moment George thought she might have been injured, but, before he
reached the kitchen, he heard her sweeping at the fragments, and turned
back. He put off speaking to Fanny until morning.

Things more insistent than his vague plans for a sofa-bed in Bronson’s
office had possession of his mind as he went upstairs, moving his hand
slowly along the smooth walnut railing of the balustrade. Half way to
the landing he stopped, turned, and stood looking down at the heavy
doors masking the black emptiness that had been the library. Here he
had stood on what he now knew was the worst day of his life; here he
had stood when his mother passed through that doorway, hand-in-hand
with her brother, to learn what her son had done.

He went on more heavily, more slowly; and, more heavily and slowly
still, entered Isabel’s room and shut the door. He did not come forth
again, and bade Fanny good-night through the closed door when she
stopped outside it later.

“I’ve put all the lights out, George,” she said. “Everything’s all
right.”

“Very well,” he called. “Good-night.”

She did not go. “I’m sure we’re going to enjoy the new little home,
George,” she said timidly. “I’ll try hard to make things nice for you,
and the people really are lovely. You mustn’t feel as if things are
altogether gloomy, George. I know everything’s going to turn out all
right. You’re young and strong and you have a good mind and I’m sure—”
she hesitated—“I’m sure your mother’s watching over you, Georgie.
Good-night, dear.”

“Good-night, Aunt Fanny.”

His voice had a strangled sound in spite of him; but she seemed not to
notice it, and he heard her go to her own room and lock herself in with
bolt and key against burglars. She had said the one thing she should
not have said just then: “I’m sure your mother’s watching over you,
Georgie.” She had meant to be kind, but it destroyed his last chance
for sleep that night. He would have slept little if she had not said
it, but since she had said it, he could not sleep at all. For he knew
that it was true—if it could be true—and that his mother, if she still
lived in spirit, would be weeping on the other side of the wall of
silence, weeping and seeking for some gate to let her through so that
she could come and “watch over him.”

He felt that if there were such gates they were surely barred: they
were like those awful library doors downstairs, which had shut her in
to begin the suffering to which he had consigned her.

The room was still Isabel’s. Nothing had been changed: even the
photographs of George, of the Major, and of “brother George” still
stood on her dressing-table, and in a drawer of her desk was an old
picture of Eugene and Lucy, taken together, which George had found, but
had slowly closed away again from sight, not touching it. To-morrow
everything would be gone; and he had heard there was not long to wait
before the house itself would be demolished. The very space which
tonight was still Isabel’s room would be cut into new shapes by new
walls and floors and ceilings; yet the room would always live, for it
could not die out of George’s memory. It would live as long as he did,
and it would always be murmurous with a tragic, wistful whispering.

And if space itself can be haunted, as memory is haunted, then some
time, when the space that was Isabel’s room came to be made into the
small bedrooms and “kitchenettes” already designed as its destiny,
that space might well be haunted and the new occupants come to feel
that some seemingly causeless depression hung about it—a wraith of the
passion that filled it throughout the last night that George Minafer
spent there.

Whatever remnants of the old high-handed arrogance were still within
him, he did penance for his deepest sin that night—and it may be that
to this day some impressionable, overworked woman in a “kitchenette,”
after turning out the light will seem to see a young man kneeling in
the darkness, shaking convulsively, and, with arms outstretched through
the wall, clutching at the covers of a shadowy bed. It may seem to her
that she hears the faint cry, over and over:

“Mother, forgive me! God, forgive me!”




Chapter XXXII


At least, it may be claimed for George that his last night in the house
where he had been born was not occupied with his own disheartening
future, but with sorrow for what sacrifices his pride and youth had
demanded of others. And early in the morning he came downstairs and
tried to help Fanny make coffee on the kitchen range.

“There was something I wanted to say to you last night, Aunt Fanny,” he
said, as she finally discovered that an amber fluid, more like tea than
coffee, was as near ready to be taken into the human system as it would
ever be. “I think I’d better do it now.”

She set the coffee-pot back upon the stove with a little crash, and,
looking at him in a desperate anxiety, began to twist her dainty apron
between her fingers without any consciousness of what she was doing.

“Why—why—” she stammered; but she knew what he was going to
say, and that was why she had been more and more nervous.
“Hadn’t—perhaps—perhaps we’d better get the—the things moved to the
little new home first, George. Let’s—”

He interrupted quietly, though at her phrase, “the little new home,”
his pungent impulse was to utter one loud shout and run. “It was about
this new place that I wanted to speak. I’ve been thinking it over, and
I’ve decided. I want you to take all the things from mother’s room and
use them and keep them for me, and I’m sure the little apartment will
be just what you like; and with the extra bedroom probably you could
find some woman friend to come and live there, and share the expense
with you. But I’ve decided on another arrangement for myself, and so
I’m not going with you. I don’t suppose you’ll mind much, and I don’t
see why you should mind—particularly, that is. I’m not very lively
company these days, or any days, for that matter. I can’t imagine you,
or any one else, being much attached to me, so—”

He stopped in amazement: no chair had been left in the kitchen, but
Fanny gave a despairing glance around her, in search of one, then sank
abruptly, and sat flat upon the floor.

“You’re going to leave me in the lurch!” she gasped.

“What on earth—” George sprang to her. “Get up, Aunt Fanny!”

“I can’t. I’m too weak. Let me alone, George!” And as he released the
wrist he had seized to help her, she repeated the dismal prophecy which
for days she had been matching against her hopes: “You’re going to
leave me—in the lurch!”

“Why no, Aunt Fanny!” he protested. “At first I’d have been something
of a burden on you. I’m to get eight dollars a week; about thirty-two
a month. The rent’s thirty-six dollars a month, and the table-d’hote
dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half
of the rent—eighteen dollars—I’d have less than nothing left out of
my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts
and luncheons. You see you’d not only be doing all the housework and
cooking, but you’d be paying more of the expenses than I would.”

She stared at him with such a forlorn blankness as he had never seen.
“I’d be paying—” she said feebly. “I’d be paying—”

“Certainly you would. You’d be using more of your money than—”

“My money!” Fanny’s chin drooped upon her thin chest, and she laughed
miserably. “I’ve got twenty-eight dollars. That’s all.”

“You mean until the interest is due again?”

“I mean that’s all,” Fanny said. “I mean that’s all there is. There
won’t be any more interest because there isn’t any principal.”

“Why, you told—”

She shook her head. “No, I haven’t told you anything.”

“Then it was Uncle George. He told me you had enough to fall back on.
That’s just what he said: ‘to fall back on.’ He said you’d lost more
than you should, in the headlight company, but he’d insisted that you
should hold out enough to live on, and you’d very wisely followed his
advice.”

“I know,” she said weakly. “I told him so. He didn’t know, or else he’d
forgotten, how much Wilbur’s insurance amounted to, and I—oh, it seemed
such a sure way to make a real fortune out of a little—and I thought I
could do something for you, George, if you ever came to need it—and it
all looked so bright I just thought I’d put it all in. I did—every cent
except my last interest payment—and it’s gone.”

“Good Lord!” George began to pace up and down on the worn planks of the
bare floor. “Why on earth did you wait till now to tell such a thing as
this?”

“I couldn’t tell till I had to,” she said piteously. “I couldn’t till
George Amberson went away. He couldn’t do anything to help, anyhow,
and I just didn’t want him to talk to me about it—he’s been at me so
much about not putting more in than I could afford to lose, and said
he considered he had my—my word I wasn’t putting more than that in it.
So I thought: What was the use? What was the use of going over it all
with him and having him reproach me, and probably reproach himself?
It wouldn’t do any good—not any good on earth.” She got out her lace
handkerchief and began to cry. “Nothing does any good, I guess, in this
old world. Oh, how tired of this old world I am! I didn’t know what
to do. I just tried to go ahead and be as practical as I could, and
arrange some way for us to live. Oh, I knew you didn’t want me, George!
You always teased me and berated me whenever you had a chance from the
time you were a little boy—you did so! Later, you’ve tried to be kinder
to me, but you don’t want me around—oh, I can see that much! You don’t
suppose I want to thrust myself on you, do you? It isn’t very pleasant
to be thrusting yourself on a person you know doesn’t want you—but I
knew you oughtn’t to be left all alone in the world; it isn’t good. I
knew your mother’d want me to watch over you and try to have something
like a home for you—I know she’d want me to do what I tried to do!”
Fanny’s tears were bitter now, and her voice, hoarse and wet, was
tragically sincere. “I tried—I tried to be practical—to look after your
interests—to make things as nice for you as I could—I walked my heels
down looking for a place for us to live—I walked and walked over this
town—I didn’t ride one block on a street-car—I wouldn’t use five cents
no matter how tired I—Oh!” She sobbed uncontrollably. “Oh! and now—you
don’t want—you want—you want to leave me in the lurch! You—”

George stopped walking. “In God’s name, Aunt Fanny,” he said, “quit
spreading out your handkerchief and drying it and then getting it all
wet again! I mean stop crying! Do! And for heaven’s sake, get up. Don’t
sit there with your back against the boiler and—”

“It’s not hot,” Fanny sniffled. “It’s cold; the plumbers disconnected
it. I wouldn’t mind if they hadn’t. I wouldn’t mind if it burned me,
George.”

“Oh, my Lord!” He went to her, and lifted her. “For God’s sake, get up!
Come, let’s take the coffee into the other room, and see what’s to be
done.”

He got her to her feet; she leaned upon him, already somewhat
comforted, and, with his arm about her, he conducted her to the dining
room and seated her in one of the two kitchen chairs which had been
placed at the rough table. “There!” he said, “get over it!” Then
he brought the coffee-pot, some lumps of sugar in a tin pan, and,
finding that all the coffee-cups were broken, set water glasses upon
the table, and poured some of the pale coffee into them. By this time
Fanny’s spirits had revived appreciably: she looked up with a plaintive
eagerness. “I had bought all my fall clothes, George,” she said; “and I
paid every bill I owed. I don’t owe a cent for clothes, George.”

“That’s good,” he said wanly, and he had a moment of physical dizziness
that decided him to sit down quickly. For an instant it seemed to him
that he was not Fanny’s nephew, but married to her. He passed his pale
hand over his paler forehead. “Well, let’s see where we stand,” he said
feebly. “Let’s see if we can afford this place you’ve selected.”

Fanny continued to brighten. “I’m sure it’s the most practical plan we
could possibly have worked out, George—and it is a comfort to be among
nice people. I think we’ll both enjoy it, because the truth is we’ve
been keeping too much to ourselves for a long while. It isn’t good for
people.”

“I was thinking about the money, Aunt Fanny. You see—”

“I’m sure we can manage it,” she interrupted quickly. “There really
isn’t a cheaper place in town that we could actually live in and be—”
Here she interrupted herself. “Oh! There’s one great economy I forgot
to tell you, and it’s especially an economy for you, because you’re
always too generous about such things: they don’t allow any tipping.
They have signs that prohibit it.”

“That’s good,” he said grimly. “But the rent is thirty-six dollars a
month; the dinner is twenty-two and a half for each of us, and we’ve
got to have some provision for other food. We won’t need any clothes
for a year, perhaps—”

“Oh, longer!” she exclaimed. “So you see—”

“I see that forty-five and thirty-six make eighty-one,” he said. “At
the lowest, we need a hundred dollars a month—and I’m going to make
thirty-two.”

“I thought of that, George,” she said confidently, “and I’m sure it
will be all right. You’ll be earning a great deal more than that very
soon.”

“I don’t see any prospect of it—not till I’m admitted to the bar, and
that will be two years at the earliest.”

Fanny’s confidence was not shaken. “I know you’ll be getting on faster
than—”

“Faster?” George echoed gravely. “We’ve got to have more than that to
start with.”

“Well, there’s the six hundred dollars from the sale. Six hundred and
twelve dollars it was.”

“It isn’t six hundred and twelve now,” said George. “It’s about one
hundred and sixty.”

Fanny showed a momentary dismay. “Why, how—”

“I lent Uncle George two hundred; I gave fifty apiece to old Sam and
those two other old darkies that worked for grandfather so long, and
ten to each of the servants here—”

“And you gave me thirty-six,” she said thoughtfully, “for the first
month’s rent, in advance.”

“Did I? I’d forgotten. Well, with about a hundred and sixty in bank and
our expenses a hundred a month, it doesn’t seem as if this new place—”

“Still,” she interrupted, “we have paid the first month’s rent in
advance, and it does seem to be the most practical—”

George rose. “See here, Aunt Fanny,” he said decisively. “You stay here
and look after the moving. Old Frank doesn’t expect me until afternoon,
this first day, but I’ll go and see him now.”

It was early, and old Frank, just established at his big, flat-topped
desk, was surprised when his prospective assistant and pupil walked
in. He was pleased, as well as surprised, however, and rose, offering
a cordial old hand. “The real flare!” he said. “The real flare for the
law. That’s right! Couldn’t wait till afternoon to begin! I’m delighted
that you—”

“I wanted to say—” George began, but his patron cut him off.

“Wait just a minute, my boy. I’ve prepared a little speech of welcome,
and even though you’re five hours ahead of time, I mean to deliver
it. First of all, your grandfather was my old war-comrade and my best
client; for years I prospered through my connection with his business,
and his grandson is welcome in my office and to my best efforts in
his behalf. But I want to confess, Georgie, that during your earlier
youth I may have had some slight feeling of—well, prejudice, not
altogether in your favour; but whatever slight feeling it was, it
began to vanish on that afternoon, a good while ago, when you stood up
to your Aunt Amelia Amberson as you did in the Major’s library, and
talked to her as a man and a gentleman should. I saw then what good
stuff was in you—and I always wanted to mention it. If my prejudice
hadn’t altogether vanished after that, the last vestiges disappeared
during these trying times that have come upon you this past year, when
I have been a witness to the depth of feeling you’ve shown and your
quiet consideration for your grandfather and for everyone else around
you. I just want to add that I think you’ll find an honest pleasure
now in industry and frugality that wouldn’t have come to you in a more
frivolous career. The law is a jealous mistress and a stern mistress,
but a—”

George had stood before him in great and increasing embarrassment; and
he was unable to allow the address to proceed to its conclusion.

“I can’t do it!” he burst out. “I can’t take her for my mistress.”

“What?”

“I’ve come to tell you, I’ve got to find something that’s quicker. I
can’t—”

Old Frank got a little red. “Let’s sit down,” he said. “What’s the
trouble?”

George told him.

The old gentleman listened sympathetically, only murmuring: “Well,
well!” from time to time, and nodding acquiescence.

“You see she’s set her mind on this apartment,” George explained.
“She’s got some old cronies there, and I guess she’s been looking
forward to the games of bridge and the kind of harmless gossip that
goes on in such places. Really, it’s a life she’d like better than
anything else—better than that she’s lived at home, I really believe.
It struck me she’s just about got to have it, and after all she could
hardly have anything less.”

“This comes pretty heavily upon me, you know,” said old Frank. “I got
her into that headlight company, and she fooled me about her resources
as much as she did your Uncle George. I was never your father’s
adviser, if you remember, and when the insurance was turned over to
her some other lawyer arranged it—probably your father’s. But it comes
pretty heavily on me, and I feel a certain responsibility.”

“Not at all. I’m taking the responsibility.” And George smiled with one
corner of his mouth. “She’s not your aunt, you know, sir.”

“Well, I’m unable to see, even if she’s yours, that a young man is
morally called upon to give up a career at the law to provide his aunt
with a favourable opportunity to play bridge whist!”

“No,” George agreed. “But I haven’t begun my ‘career at the law’ so it
can’t be said I’m making any considerable sacrifice. I’ll tell you how
it is, sir.” He flushed, and, looking out of the streaked and smoky
window beside which he was sitting, spoke with difficulty. “I feel
as if—as if perhaps I had one or two pretty important things in my
life to make up for. Well, I can’t. I can’t make them up to—to whom I
would. It’s struck me that, as I couldn’t, I might be a little decent
to somebody else, perhaps—if I could manage it! I never have been
particularly decent to poor old Aunt Fanny.”

“Oh, I don’t know: I shouldn’t say that. A little youthful teasing—I
doubt if she’s minded so much. She felt your father’s death
terrifically, of course, but it seems to me she’s had a fairly
comfortable life—up to now—if she was disposed to take it that way.”

“But ‘up to now’ is the important thing,” George said. “Now is now—and
you see I can’t wait two years to be admitted to the bar and begin to
practice. I’ve got to start in at something else that pays from the
start, and that’s what I’ve come to you about. I have an idea, you see.”

“Well, I’m glad of that!” said old Frank, smiling. “I can’t think of
anything just at this minute that pays from the start.”

“I only know of one thing, myself.”

“What is it?”

George flushed again, but managed to laugh at his own embarrassment. “I
suppose I’m about as ignorant of business as anybody in the world,” he
said. “But I’ve heard they pay very high wages to people in dangerous
trades; I’ve always heard they did, and I’m sure it must be true. I
mean people that handle touchy chemicals or high explosives—men in
dynamite factories, or who take things of that sort about the country
in wagons, and shoot oil wells. I thought I’d see if you couldn’t tell
me something more about it, or else introduce me to someone who could,
and then I thought I’d see if I couldn’t get something of the kind to
do as soon as possible. My nerves are good; I’m muscular, and I’ve got
a steady hand; it seemed to me that this was about the only line of
work in the world that I’m fitted for. I wanted to get started to-day
if I could.”

Old Frank gave him a long stare. At first this scrutiny was sharply
incredulous; then it was grave; finally it developed into a threat
of overwhelming laughter; a forked vein in his forehead became more
visible and his eyes seemed about to protrude.

But he controlled his impulse; and, rising, took up his hat and
overcoat. “All right,” he said. “If you’ll promise not to get blown up,
I’ll go with you to see if we can find the job.” Then, meaning what he
said, but amazed that he did mean it, he added: “You certainly are the
most practical young man I ever met!”




Chapter XXXIII


They found the job. It needed an apprenticeship of only six weeks,
during which period George was to receive fifteen dollars a week; after
that he would get twenty-eight. This settled the apartment question,
and Fanny was presently established in a greater contentment than she
had known for a long time. Early every morning she made something she
called (and believed to be) coffee for George, and he was gallant
enough not to undeceive her. She lunched alone in her “kitchenette,”
for George’s place of employment was ten miles out of town on an
interurban trolley-line, and he seldom returned before seven. Fanny
found partners for bridge by two o’clock almost every afternoon, and
she played until about six. Then she got George’s “dinner clothes” out
for him—he maintained this habit—and she changed her own dress. When he
arrived he usually denied that he was tired, though he sometimes looked
tired, particularly during the first few months; and he explained to
her frequently—looking bored enough with her insistence—that his work
was “fairly light, and fairly congenial, too.” Fanny had the foggiest
idea of what it was, though she noticed that it roughened his hands and
stained them. “Something in those new chemical works,” she explained to
casual inquirers. It was not more definite in her own mind.

Respect for George undoubtedly increased within her, however, and
she told him she’d always had a feeling he might “turn out to be a
mechanical genius, or something.” George assented with a nod, as the
easiest course open to him. He did not take a hand at bridge after
dinner: his provisions for Fanny’s happiness refused to extend that
far, and at the table d’hote he was a rather discouraging boarder. He
was considered “affected” and absurdly “up-stage” by the one or two
young men, and the three or four young women, who enlivened the elderly
retreat; and was possibly less popular there than he had been elsewhere
during his life, though he was now nothing worse than a coldly polite
young man who kept to himself. After dinner he would escort his aunt
from the table in some state (not wholly unaccompanied by a leerish
wink or two from the wags of the place) and he would leave her at the
door of the communal parlours and card rooms, with a formality in his
bow of farewell which afforded an amusing contrast to Fanny’s always
voluble protests. (She never failed to urge loudly that he really must
come and play, just this once, and not go hiding from everybody in his
room every evening like this!) At least some of the other inhabitants
found the contrast amusing, for sometimes, as he departed stiffly
toward the elevator, leaving her still entreating in the doorway
(though with one eye already on her table, to see that it was not
seized) a titter would follow him which he was no doubt meant to hear.
He did not care whether they laughed or not.

And once, as he passed the one or two young men of the place
entertaining the three or four young women, who were elbowing and
jerking on a settee in the lobby, he heard a voice inquiring quickly,
as he passed:

“What makes people tired?”

“Work?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s the answer?”

Then, with an intentional outbreak of mirth, the answer was given by
two loudly whispering voices together:

“A stuck-up boarder!”

George didn’t care.

On Sunday mornings Fanny went to church and George took long walks. He
explored the new city, and found it hideous, especially in the early
spring, before the leaves of the shade trees were out. Then the town
was fagged with the long winter and blacked with the heavier smoke that
had been held close to the earth by the smoke-fog it bred. Every-thing
was damply streaked with the soot: the walls of the houses, inside and
out, the gray curtains at the windows, the windows themselves, the
dirty cement and unswept asphalt underfoot, the very sky overhead.
Throughout this murky season he continued his explorations, never
seeing a face he knew—for, on Sunday, those whom he remembered, or who
might remember him, were not apt to be found within the limits of the
town, but were congenially occupied with the new outdoor life which
had come to be the mode since his boyhood. He and Fanny were pretty
thoroughly buried away within the bigness of the city.

One of his Sunday walks, that spring, he made into a sour pilgrimage.
It was a misty morning of belated snow slush, and suited him to a
perfection of miserableness, as he stood before the great dripping
department store which now occupied the big plot of ground where once
had stood both the Amberson Hotel and the Amberson Opera House. From
there he drifted to the old “Amberson Block,” but this was fallen into
a back-water; business had stagnated here. The old structure had not
been replaced, but a cavernous entryway for trucks had been torn in
its front, and upon the cornice, where the old separate metal letters
had spelt “Amberson Block,” there was a long billboard sign: “Doogan
Storage.”

To spare himself nothing, he went out National Avenue and saw the piles
of slush-covered wreckage where the Mansion and his mother’s house had
been, and where the Major’s ill-fated five “new” houses had stood;
for these were down, too, to make room for the great tenement already
shaped in unending lines of foundation. But the Fountain of Neptune was
gone at last—and George was glad that it was!

He turned away from the devastated site, thinking bitterly that the
only Amberson mark still left upon the town was the name of the
boulevard—Amberson Boulevard. But he had reckoned without the city
council of the new order, and by an unpleasant coincidence, while the
thought was still in his mind, his eye fell upon a metal oblong sign
upon the lamppost at the corner. There were two of these little signs
upon the lamp-post, at an obtuse angle to each other, one to give
passers-by the name of National Avenue, the other to acquaint them with
Amberson Boulevard. But the one upon which should have been stenciled
“Amberson Boulevard” exhibited the words “Tenth Street.”

George stared at it hard. Then he walked quickly along the boulevard to
the next corner and looked at the little sign there. “Tenth Street.”

It had begun to rain, but George stood unheeding, staring at the little
sign. “Damn them!” he said finally, and, turning up his coat-collar,
plodded back through the soggy streets toward “home.”

The utilitarian impudence of the city authorities put a thought into
his mind. A week earlier he had happened to stroll into the large
parlour of the apartment house, finding it empty, and on the center
table he noticed a large, red-bound, gilt-edged book, newly printed,
bearing the title: “A Civic History,” and beneath the title, the
rubric, “Biographies of the 500 Most Prominent Citizens and Families
in the History of the City.” He had glanced at it absently, merely
noticing the title and sub-title, and wandered out of the room,
thinking of other things and feeling no curiosity about the book.
But he had thought of it several times since with a faint, vague
uneasiness; and now when he entered the lobby he walked directly into
the parlour where he had seen the book. The room was empty, as it
always was on Sunday mornings, and the flamboyant volume was still upon
the table—evidently a fixture as a sort of local Almanach de Gotha, or
Burke, for the enlightenment of tenants and boarders.

He opened it, finding a few painful steel engravings of placid,
chin-bearded faces, some of which he remembered dimly; but much
more numerous, and also more unfamiliar to him, were the pictures
of neat, aggressive men, with clipped short hair and clipped short
moustaches—almost all of them strangers to him. He delayed not long
with these, but turned to the index where the names of the five hundred
Most Prominent Citizens and Families in the History of the City were
arranged in alphabetical order, and ran his finger down the column of
A’s:

    Abbett          Adams
    Abbott          Adams
    Abrams          Adler
    Akers           Andrews
    Albertsmeyer    Appenbasch
    Alexander       Archer
    Allen           Arszman
    Ambrose         Ashcraft
    Ambuhl          Austin
    Anderson        Avey

George’s eyes remained for some time fixed on the thin space between
the names “Allen” and “Ambrose.” Then he closed the book quietly, and
went up to his own room, agreeing with the elevator boy, on the way,
that it was getting to be a mighty nasty wet and windy day outside.

The elevator boy noticed nothing unusual about him and neither did
Fanny, when she came in from church with her hat ruined, an hour later.
And yet something had happened—a thing which, years ago, had been the
eagerest hope of many, many good citizens of the town. They had thought
of it, longed for it, hoping acutely that they might live to see the
day when it would come to pass. And now it had happened at last:
Georgie Minafer had got his come-upance.

He had got it three times filled and running over. The city had rolled
over his heart, burying it under, as it rolled over the Major’s and
buried it under. The city had rolled over the Ambersons and buried them
under to the last vestige; and it mattered little that George guessed
easily enough that most of the five hundred Most Prominent had paid
something substantial “to defray the cost of steel engraving, etc.”—the
Five Hundred had heaved the final shovelful of soot upon that heap
of obscurity wherein the Ambersons were lost forever from sight and
history. “Quicksilver in a nest of cracks!”

Georgie Minafer had got his come-upance, but the people who had so
longed for it were not there to see it, and they never knew it. Those
who were still living had forgotten all about it and all about him.




Chapter XXXIV


There was one border section of the city which George never explored
in his Sunday morning excursions. This was far out to the north where
lay the new Elysian Fields of the millionaires, though he once went
as far in that direction as the white house which Lucy had so admired
long ago—her “Beautiful House.” George looked at it briefly and turned
back, rumbling with an interior laugh of some grimness. The house was
white no longer; nothing could be white which the town had reached, and
the town reached far beyond the beautiful white house now. The owners
had given up and painted it a despairing chocolate, suitable to the
freight-yard life it was called upon to endure.

George did not again risk going even so far as that, in the direction
of the millionaires, although their settlement began at least two miles
farther out. His thought of Lucy and her father was more a sensation
than a thought, and may be compared to that of a convicted cashier
beset by recollections of the bank he had pillaged—there are some
thoughts to which one closes the mind. George had seen Eugene only once
since their calamitous encounter. They had passed on opposite sides
of the street, downtown; each had been aware of the other, and each
had been aware that the other was aware of him, and yet each kept his
eyes straight forward, and neither had shown a perceptible alteration
of countenance. It seemed to George that he felt emanating from the
outwardly imperturbable person of his mother’s old friend a hate that
was like a hot wind.

At his mother’s funeral and at the Major’s he had been conscious that
Eugene was there: though he had afterward no recollection of seeing
him, and, while certain of his presence, was uncertain how he knew
of it. Fanny had not told him, for she understood George well enough
not to speak to him of Eugene or Lucy. Nowadays Fanny almost never
saw either of them and seldom thought of them—so sly is the way of
time with life. She was passing middle age, when old intensities and
longings grow thin and flatten out, as Fanny herself was thinning and
flattening out; and she was settling down contentedly to her apartment
house intimacies. She was precisely suited by the table-d’hote life,
with its bridge, its variable alliances and shifting feuds, and the
long whisperings of elderly ladies at corridor corners—those eager but
suppressed conversations, all sibilance, of which the elevator boy
declared he heard the words “she said” a million times and the word
“she,” five million. The apartment house suited Fanny and swallowed her.

The city was so big, now, that people disappeared into it unnoticed,
and the disappearance of Fanny and her nephew was not exceptional.
People no longer knew their neighbours as a matter of course; one lived
for years next door to strangers—that sharpest of all the changes since
the old days—and a friend would lose sight of a friend for a year, and
not know it.

One May day George thought he had a glimpse of Lucy. He was not
certain, but he was sufficiently disturbed, in spite of his
uncertainty. A promotion in his work now frequently took him out of
town for a week, or longer, and it was upon his return from one of
these absences that he had the strange experience. He had walked
home from the station, and as he turned the corner which brought him
in sight of the apartment house entrance, though two blocks distant
from it, he saw a charming little figure come out, get into a shiny
landaulet automobile, and drive away. Even at that distance no one
could have any doubt that the little figure was charming; and the
height, the quickness and decision of motion, even the swift gesture
of a white glove toward the chauffeur—all were characteristic of Lucy.
George was instantly subjected to a shock of indefinable nature,
yet definitely a shock: he did not know what he felt—but he knew
that he felt. Heat surged over him: probably he would not have come
face to face with her if the restoration of all the ancient Amberson
magnificence could have been his reward. He went on slowly, his knees
shaky.

But he found Fanny not at home; she had been out all afternoon; and
there was no record of any caller—and he began to wonder, then to doubt
if the small lady he had seen in the distance was Lucy. It might as
well have been, he said to himself—since any one who looked like her
could give him “a jolt like that!”

Lucy had not left a card. She never left one when she called on Fanny;
though she did not give her reasons a quite definite form in her own
mind. She came seldom; this was but the third time that year, and,
when she did come, George was not mentioned either by her hostess or
by herself—an oddity contrived between the two ladies without either
of them realizing how odd it was. For, naturally, while Fanny was
with Lucy, Fanny thought of George, and what time Lucy had George’s
aunt before her eyes she could not well avoid the thought of him.
Consequently, both looked absent-minded as they talked, and each often
gave a wrong answer which the other consistently failed to notice.

At other times Lucy’s thoughts of George were anything but continuous,
and weeks went by when he was not consciously in her mind at all. Her
life was a busy one: she had the big house “to keep up”; she had a
garden to keep up, too, a large and beautiful garden; she represented
her father as a director for half a dozen public charity organizations,
and did private charity work of her own, being a proxy mother of
several large families; and she had “danced down,” as she said,
groups from eight or nine classes of new graduates returned from the
universities, without marrying any of them, but she still danced—and
still did not marry.

Her father, observing this circumstance happily, yet with some
hypocritical concern, spoke of it to her one day as they stood in her
garden. “I suppose I’d want to shoot him,” he said, with attempted
lightness. “But I mustn’t be an old pig. I’d build you a beautiful
house close by—just over yonder.”

“No, no! That would be like—” she began impulsively; then checked
herself. George Amberson’s comparison of the Georgian house to the
Amberson Mansion had come into her mind, and she thought that another
new house, built close by for her, would be like the house the Major
built for Isabel.

“Like what?”

“Nothing.” She looked serious, and when he reverted to his idea of
“some day” grudgingly surrendering her up to a suitor, she invented a
legend. “Did you ever hear the Indian name for that little grove of
beech trees on the other side of the house?” she asked him.

“No—and you never did either!” he laughed.

“Don’t be so sure! I read a great deal more than I used to—getting
ready for my bookish days when I’ll have to do something solid in
the evenings and won’t be asked to dance any more, even by the very
youngest boys who think it’s a sporting event to dance with the oldest
of the ‘older girls’. The name of the grove was ‘Loma-Nashah’ and it
means ‘They-Couldn’t-Help-It’.”

“Doesn’t sound like it.”

“Indian names don’t. There was a bad Indian chief lived in the
grove before the white settlers came. He was the worst Indian
that ever lived, and his name was—it was ‘Vendonah.’ That means
‘Rides-Down-Everything’.”

“What?”

“His name was Vendonah, the same thing as Rides-Down-Everything.”

“I see,” said Eugene thoughtfully. He gave her a quick look and then
fixed his eyes upon the end of the garden path. “Go on.”

“Vendonah was an unspeakable case,” Lucy continued. “He was so proud
that he wore iron shoes and he walked over people’s faces with them. He
was always killing people that way, and so at last the tribe decided
that it wasn’t a good enough excuse for him that he was young and
inexperienced—he’d have to go. They took him down to the river, and put
him in a canoe, and pushed him out from shore; and then they ran along
the bank and wouldn’t let him land, until at last the current carried
the canoe out into the middle, and then on down to the ocean, and he
never got back. They didn’t want him back, of course, and if he’d been
able to manage it, they’d have put him in another canoe and shoved him
out into the river again. But still, they didn’t elect another chief in
his place. Other tribes thought that was curious, and wondered about
it a lot, but finally they came to the conclusion that the beech grove
people were afraid a new chief might turn out to be a bad Indian, too,
and wear iron shoes like Vendonah. But they were wrong, because the
real reason was that the tribe had led such an exciting life under
Vendonah that they couldn’t settle down to anything tamer. He was
awful, but he always kept things happening—terrible things, of course.
They hated him, but they weren’t able to discover any other warrior
that they wanted to make chief in his place. I suppose it was a little
like drinking a glass of too strong wine and then trying to take the
taste out of your mouth with barley water. They couldn’t help feeling
that way.”

“I see,” said Eugene. “So that’s why they named the place
‘They-Couldn’t-Help-It’!”

“It must have been.”

“And so you’re going to stay here in your garden,” he said musingly.
“You think it’s better to keep on walking these sunshiny gravel paths
between your flower-beds, and growing to look like a pensive garden
lady in a Victorian engraving.”

“I suppose I’m like the tribe that lived here, papa. I had too much
unpleasant excitement. It was unpleasant—but it was excitement. I don’t
want any more; in fact, I don’t want anything but you.”

“You don’t?” He looked at her keenly, and she laughed and shook her
head; but he seemed perplexed, rather doubtful. “What was the name of
the grove?” he asked. “The Indian name, I mean.”

“Mola-Haha.”

“No, it wasn’t; that wasn’t the name you said.”

“I’ve forgotten.”

“I see you have,” he said, his look of perplexity remaining. “Perhaps
you remember the chief’s name better.”

She shook her head again. “I don’t!”

At this he laughed, but not very heartily, and walked slowly to the
house, leaving her bending over a rose-bush, and a shade more pensive
than the most pensive garden lady in any Victorian engraving.

... Next day, it happened that this same “Vendonah” or
“Rides-Down-Everything” became the subject of a chance conversation
between Eugene and his old friend Kinney, father of the fire-topped
Fred. The two gentlemen found themselves smoking in neighbouring
leather chairs beside a broad window at the club, after lunch.

Mr. Kinney had remarked that he expected to get his family established
at the seashore by the Fourth of July, and, following a train of
thought, he paused and chuckled. “Fourth of July reminds me,” he said.
“Have you heard what that Georgie Minafer is doing?”

“No, I haven’t,” said Eugene, and his friend failed to notice the
crispness of the utterance.

“Well, sir,” Kinney chuckled again, “it beats the devil! My boy Fred
told me about it yesterday. He’s a friend of this young Henry Akers,
son of F. P. Akers of the Akers Chemical Company. It seems this
young Akers asked Fred if he knew a fellow named Minafer, because
he knew Fred had always lived here, and young Akers had heard some
way that Minafer used to be an old family name here, and was sort of
curious about it. Well, sir, you remember this young Georgie sort of
disappeared, after his grandfather’s death, and nobody seemed to know
much what had become of him—though I did hear, once or twice, that
he was still around somewhere. Well, sir, he’s working for the Akers
Chemical Company, out at their plant on the Thomasvile Road.”

He paused, seeming to reserve something to be delivered only upon
inquiry, and Eugene offered him the expected question, but only after a
cold glance through the nose-glasses he had lately found it necessary
to adopt. “What does he do?”

Kinney laughed and slapped the arm of his chair.

“He’s a nitroglycerin expert!”

He was gratified to see that Eugene was surprised, if not, indeed, a
little startled.

“He’s what?”

“He’s an expert on nitroglycerin. Doesn’t that beat the devil! Yes,
sir! Young Akers told Fred that this George Minafer had worked like
a houn’-dog ever since he got started out at the works. They have
a special plant for nitroglycerin, way off from the main plant, o’
course—in the woods somewhere—and George Minafer’s been working
there, and lately they put him in charge of it. He oversees shooting
oil-wells, too, and shoots ’em himself, sometimes. They aren’t allowed
to carry it on the railroads, you know—have to team it. Young Akers
says George rides around over the bumpy roads, sitting on as much as
three hundred quarts of nitroglycerin! My Lord! Talk about romantic
tumbles! If he gets blown sky-high some day he won’t have a bigger
drop, when he comes down, than he’s already had! Don’t it beat the
devil! Young Akers said he’s got all the nerve there is in the world.
Well, he always did have plenty of that—from the time he used to ride
around here on his white pony and fight all the Irish boys in Can-Town,
with his long curls all handy to be pulled out. Akers says he gets a
fair salary, and I should think he ought to! Seems to me I’ve heard
the average life in that sort of work is somewhere around four years,
and agents don’t write any insurance at all for nitroglycerin experts.
Hardly!”

“No,” said Eugene. “I suppose not.”

Kinney rose to go. “Well, it’s a pretty funny thing—pretty odd, I
mean—and I suppose it would be pass-around-the-hat for old Fanny
Minafer if he blew up. Fred told me that they’re living in some
apartment house, and said Georgie supports her. He was going to study
law, but couldn’t earn enough that way to take care of Fanny, so he
gave it up. Fred’s wife told him all this. Says Fanny doesn’t do
anything but play bridge these days. Got to playing too high for awhile
and lost more than she wanted to tell Georgie about, and borrowed a
little from old Frank Bronson. Paid him back, though. Don’t know how
Fred’s wife heard it. Women do hear the darndest things!”

“They do,” Eugene agreed.

“I thought you’d probably heard about it—thought most likely Fred’s
wife might have said something to your daughter, especially as they’re
cousins.”

“I think not.”

“Well, I’m off to the store,” said Mr. Kinney briskly; yet he lingered.
“I suppose we’ll all have to club in and keep old Fanny out of the
poorhouse if he does blow up. From all I hear it’s usually only a
question of time. They say she hasn’t got anything else to depend on.”

“I suppose not.”

“Well—I wondered—” Kinney hesitated. “I was wondering why you hadn’t
thought of finding something around your works for him. They say he’s
an all-fired worker and he certainly does seem to have hid some decent
stuff in him under all his damfoolishness. And you used to be such a
tremendous friend of the family—I thought perhaps you—of course I know
he’s a queer lot—I know—”

“Yes, I think he is,” said Eugene. “No. I haven’t anything to offer
him.”

“I suppose not,” Kinney returned thoughtfully, as he went out. “I don’t
know that I would myself. Well, we’ll probably see his name in the
papers some day if he stays with that job!”

However, the nitroglycerin expert of whom they spoke did not get into
the papers as a consequence of being blown up, although his daily
life was certainly a continuous exposure to that risk. Destiny has
a constant passion for the incongruous, and it was George’s lot to
manipulate wholesale quantities of terrific and volatile explosives
in safety, and to be laid low by an accident so commonplace and
inconsequent that it was a comedy. Fate had reserved for him the final
insult of riding him down under the wheels of one of those juggernauts
at which he had once shouted “Git a hoss!” Nevertheless, Fate’s ironic
choice for Georgie’s undoing was not a big and swift and momentous car,
such as Eugene manufactured; it was a specimen of the hustling little
type that was flooding the country, the cheapest, commonest, hardiest
little car ever made.

The accident took place upon a Sunday morning, on a downtown crossing,
with the streets almost empty, and no reason in the world for such a
thing to happen. He had gone out for his Sunday morning walk, and he
was thinking of an automobile at the very moment when the little car
struck him; he was thinking of a shiny landaulet and a charming figure
stepping into it, and of the quick gesture of a white glove toward the
chauffeur, motioning him to go on. George heard a shout but did not
look up, for he could not imagine anybody’s shouting at him, and he was
too engrossed in the question “Was it Lucy?” He could not decide, and
his lack of decision in this matter probably superinduced a lack of
decision in another, more pressingly vital. At the second and louder
shout he did look up; and the car was almost on him; but he could not
make up his mind if the charming little figure he had seen was Lucy’s
and he could not make up his mind whether to go backward or forward:
these questions became entangled in his mind. Then, still not being
able to decide which of two ways to go, he tried to go both—and the
little car ran him down. It was not moving very rapidly, but it went
all the way over George.

He was conscious of gigantic violence; of roaring and jolting and
concussion; of choking clouds of dust, shot with lightning, about his
head; he heard snapping sounds as loud as shots from a small pistol,
and was stabbed by excruciating pains in his legs. Then he became aware
that the machine was being lifted off of him. People were gathering in
a circle round him, gabbling.

His forehead was bedewed with the sweat of anguish, and he tried to
wipe off this dampness, but failed. He could not get his arm that far.

“Nev’ mind,” a policeman said; and George could see above his eyes the
skirts of the blue coat, covered with dust and sunshine. “Amb’lance be
here in a minute. Nev’ mind tryin’ to move any. You want ’em to send
for some special doctor?”

“No.” George’s lips formed the word.

“Or to take you to some private hospital?”

“Tell them to take me,” he said faintly, “to the City Hospital.”

“A’ right.”

A smallish young man in a duster fidgeted among the crowd, explaining
and protesting, and a strident voiced girl, his companion, supported
his argument, declaring to everyone her willingness to offer testimony
in any court of law that every blessed word he said was the God’s truth.

“It’s the fella that hit you,” the policeman said, looking down on
George. “I guess he’s right; you must of been thinkin’ about somep’m’
or other. It’s wunnerful the damage them little machines can do—you’d
never think it—but I guess they ain’t much case ag’in this fella that
was drivin’ it.”

“You bet your life they ain’t no case on me!” the young man in the
duster agreed, with great bitterness. He came and stood at George’s
feet, addressing him heatedly: “I’m sorry fer you all right, and I
don’t say I ain’t. I hold nothin’ against you, but it wasn’t any more
my fault than the statehouse! You run into me, much as I run into you,
and if you get well you ain’t goin’ to get not one single cent out
o’ me! This lady here was settin’ with me and we both yelled at you.
Wasn’t goin’ a step over eight mile an hour! I’m perfectly willing to
say I’m sorry for you though, and so’s the lady with me. We’re both
willing to say that much, but that’s all, understand!”

George’s drawn eyelids twitched; his misted glance rested fleetingly
upon the two protesting motorists, and the old imperious spirit within
him flickered up in a single word. Lying on his back in the middle
of the street, where he was regarded by an increasing public as an
unpleasant curiosity, he spoke this word clearly from a mouth filled
with dust, and from lips smeared with blood.

It was a word which interested the policeman. When the ambulance
clanged away, he turned to a fellow patrolman who had joined him.
“Funny what he says to the little cuss that done the damage. That’s all
he did call him—nothin’ else at all—and the cuss had broke both his
legs fer him and God-knows-what-all!”

“I wasn’t here then. What was it?”

“Riffraff!”




Chapter XXXV


Eugene’s feeling about George had not been altered by his talk with
Kinney in the club window, though he was somewhat disturbed. He was
not disturbed by Kinney’s hint that Fanny Minafer might be left on
the hands of her friends through her nephew’s present dealings with
nitroglycerin, but he was surprised that Kinney had “led up” with
intentional tact to the suggestion that a position might be made
for George in the Morgan factory. Eugene did not care to have any
suggestions about Georgie Minafer made to him. Kinney had represented
Georgie as a new Georgie—at least in spots—a Georgie who was proving
that decent stuff had been hid in him; in fact, a Georgie who was doing
rather a handsome thing in taking a risky job for the sake of his aunt,
poor old silly Fanny Minafer! Eugene didn’t care what risks Georgie
took, or how much decent stuff he had in him: nothing that Georgie
would ever do in this world or the next could change Eugene Morgan’s
feeling toward him.

If Eugene could possibly have brought himself to offer Georgie a
position in the automobile business, he knew full well the proud devil
wouldn’t have taken it from him; though Georgie’s proud reason would
not have been the one attributed to him by Eugene. George would never
reach the point where he could accept anything material from Eugene and
preserve the self-respect he had begun to regain.

But if Eugene had wished, he could easily have taken George out of
the nitroglycerin branch of the chemical works. Always interested in
apparent impossibilities of invention, Eugene had encouraged many
experiments in such gropings as those for the discovery of substitutes
for gasoline and rubber; and, though his mood had withheld the
information from Kinney, he had recently bought from the elder Akers
a substantial quantity of stock on the condition that the chemical
company should establish an experimental laboratory. He intended to buy
more; Akers was anxious to please him; and a word from Eugene would
have placed George almost anywhere in the chemical works. George need
never have known it, for Eugene’s purchases of stock were always quiet
ones: the transaction remained, so far, between him and Akers, and
could be kept between them.

The possibility just edged itself into Eugene’s mind; that is, he let
it become part of his perceptions long enough for it to prove to him
that it was actually a possibility. Then he half started with disgust
that he should be even idly considering such a thing over his last
cigar for the night, in his library. “No!” And he threw the cigar into
the empty fireplace and went to bed.

His bitterness for himself might have worn away, but never his
bitterness for Isabel. He took that thought to bed with him—and it was
true that nothing George could do would ever change this bitterness of
Eugene. Only George’s mother could have changed it.

And as Eugene fell asleep that night, thinking thus bitterly of
Georgie, Georgie in the hospital was thinking of Eugene. He had come
“out of ether” with no great nausea, and had fallen into a reverie,
though now and then a white sailboat staggered foolishly into the small
ward where he lay. After a time he discovered that this happened only
when he tried to open his eyes and look about him; so he kept his eyes
shut, and his thoughts were clearer.

He thought of Eugene Morgan and of the Major; they seemed to be the
same person for awhile, but he managed to disentangle them and even
to understand why he had confused them. Long ago his grandfather had
been the most striking figure of success in the town: “As rich as
Major Amberson!” they used to say. Now it was Eugene. “If I had Eugene
Morgan’s money,” he would hear the workmen day-dreaming at the chemical
works; or, “If Eugene Morgan had hold of this place you’d see things
hum!” And the boarders at the table d’hôte spoke of “the Morgan Place”
as an eighteenth-century Frenchman spoke of Versailles. Like his uncle,
George had perceived that the “Morgan Place” was the new Amberson
Mansion. His reverie went back to the palatial days of the Mansion, in
his boyhood, when he would gallop his pony up the driveway and order
the darkey stable-men about, while they whooped and obeyed, and his
grandfather, observing from a window, would laugh and call out to him,
“That’s right, Georgie. Make those lazy rascals jump!” He remembered
his gay young uncles, and how the town was eager concerning everything
about them, and about himself. What a clean, pretty town it had been!
And in his reverie he saw like a pageant before him the magnificence of
the Ambersons—its passing, and the passing of the Ambersons themselves.
They had been slowly engulfed without knowing how to prevent it, and
almost without knowing what was happening to them. The family lot,
in the shabby older quarter, out at the cemetery, held most of them
now; and the name was swept altogether from the new city. But the new
great people who had taken their places—the Morgans and Akerses and
Sheridans—they would go, too. George saw that. They would pass, as the
Ambersons had passed, and though some of them might do better than the
Major and leave the letters that spelled a name on a hospital or a
street, it would be only a word and it would not stay forever. Nothing
stays or holds or keeps where there is growth, he somehow perceived
vaguely but truly. Great Caesar dead and turned to clay stopped no hole
to keep the wind away. Dead Caesar was nothing but a tiresome bit of
print in a book that schoolboys study for awhile and then forget. The
Ambersons had passed, and the new people would pass, and the new people
that came after them, and then the next new ones, and the next—and the
next—

He had begun to murmur, and the man on duty as night nurse for the ward
came and bent over him.

“Did you want something?”

“There’s nothing in this family business,” George told him
confidentially. “Even George Washington is only something in a book.”

Eugene read a report of the accident in the next morning’s paper. He
was on the train, having just left for New York, on business, and with
less leisure would probably have overlooked the obscure item:

                              LEGS BROKEN

  G. A. Minafer, an employee of the Akers Chemical Co., was run
  down by an automobile yesterday at the corner of Tennessee and
  Main and had both legs broken. Minafer was to blame for the
  accident according to patrolman F. A. Kax, who witnessed the
  affair. The automobile was a small one driven by Herbert Cottleman
  of 9173 Noble Avenue who stated that he was making less than 4
  miles an hour. Minafer is said to belong to a family formerly of
  considerable prominence in the city. He was taken to the City
  Hospital where physicians stated later that he was suffering from
  internal injuries besides the fracture of his legs but might
  recover.

Eugene read the item twice, then tossed the paper upon the opposite
seat of his compartment, and sat looking out of the window. His feeling
toward Georgie was changed not a jot by his human pity for Georgie’s
human pain and injury. He thought of Georgie’s tall and graceful
figure, and he shivered, but his bitterness was untouched. He had never
blamed Isabel for the weakness which had cost them the few years of
happiness they might have had together; he had put the blame all on the
son, and it stayed there.

He began to think poignantly of Isabel: he had seldom been able to
“see” her more clearly than as he sat looking out of his compartment
window, after reading the account of this accident. She might have been
just on the other side of the glass, looking in at him—and then he
thought of her as the pale figure of a woman, seen yet unseen, flying
through the air, beside the train, over the fields of springtime green
and through the woods that were just sprouting out their little leaves.
He closed his eyes and saw her as she had been long ago. He saw the
brown-eyed, brown-haired, proud, gentle, laughing girl he had known
when first he came to town, a boy just out of the State College. He
remembered—as he had remembered ten thousand times before—the look she
gave him when her brother George introduced him to her at a picnic; it
was “like hazel starlight” he had written her, in a poem, afterward.
He remembered his first call at the Amberson Mansion, and what a great
personage she seemed, at home in that magnificence; and yet so gay and
friendly. He remembered the first time he had danced with her—and the
old waltz song began to beat in his ears and in his heart. They laughed
and sang it together as they danced to it:

    “Oh, love for a year, a week, a day,
     But alas for the love that lasts always—”

Most plainly of all he could see her dancing; and he became articulate
in the mourning whisper: “So graceful—oh, so graceful—”

All the way to New York it seemed to him that Isabel was near him, and
he wrote of her to Lucy from his hotel the next night:

  I saw an account of the accident to George Minafer. I’m sorry,
  though the paper states that it was plainly his own fault. I
  suppose it may have been as a result of my attention falling upon
  the item that I thought of his mother a great deal on the way
  here. It seemed to me that I had never seen her more distinctly
  or so constantly, but, as you know, thinking of his mother is not
  very apt to make me admire him! Of course, however, he has my best
  wishes for his recovery.

He posted the letter, and by the morning’s mail he received one from
Lucy written a few hours after his departure from home. She enclosed
the item he had read on the train.

I thought you might not see it.

I have seen Miss Fanny and she has got him put into a room by himself.
Oh, poor Rides-Down-Everything I have been thinking so constantly
of his mother and it seemed to me that I have never seen her more
distinctly. How lovely she was—and how she loved him!

If Lucy had not written this letter Eugene might not have done the odd
thing he did that day. Nothing could have been more natural than that
both he and Lucy should have thought intently of Isabel after reading
the account of George’s accident, but the fact that Lucy’s letter
had crossed his own made Eugene begin to wonder if a phenomenon of
telepathy might not be in question, rather than a chance coincidence.
The reference to Isabel in the two letters was almost identical: he and
Lucy, it appeared, had been thinking of Isabel at the same time—both
said “constantly” thinking of her—and neither had ever “seen her more
distinctly.” He remembered these phrases in his own letter accurately.

Reflection upon the circumstance stirred a queer spot in Eugene’s
brain—he had one. He was an adventurer; if he had lived in the
sixteenth century he would have sailed the unknown new seas, but having
been born in the latter part of the nineteenth, when geography was a
fairly well-settled matter, he had become an explorer in mechanics.
But the fact that he was a “hard-headed business man” as well as an
adventurer did not keep him from having a queer spot in his brain,
because hard-headed business men are as susceptible to such spots as
adventurers are. Some of them are secretly troubled when they do not
see the new moon over the lucky shoulder; some of them have strange,
secret incredulities—they do not believe in geology, for instance; and
some of them think they have had supernatural experiences. “Of course
there was nothing in it—still it was queer!” they say.

Two weeks after Isabel’s death, Eugene had come to New York on urgent
business and found that the delayed arrival of a steamer gave him a
day with nothing to do. His room at the hotel had become intolerable;
outdoors was intolerable; everything was intolerable. It seemed to him
that he must see Isabel once more, hear her voice once more; that he
must find some way to her, or lose his mind. Under this pressure he
had gone, with complete scepticism, to a “trance-medium” of whom he
had heard wild accounts from the wife of a business acquaintance. He
thought despairingly that at least such an excursion would be “trying
to do something!” He remembered the woman’s name; found it in the
telephone book, and made an appointment.

The experience had been grotesque, and he came away with an encouraging
message from his father, who had failed to identify himself
satisfactorily, but declared that everything was “on a higher plane”
in his present state of being, and that all life was “continuous
and progressive.” Mrs. Horner spoke of herself as a “psychic”; but
otherwise she seemed oddly unpretentious and matter-of-fact; and Eugene
had no doubt at all of her sincerity. He was sure that she was not an
intentional fraud, and though he departed in a state of annoyance with
himself, he came to the conclusion that if any credulity were played
upon by Mrs. Horner’s exhibitions, it was her own.

Nevertheless, his queer spot having been stimulated to action by
the coincidence of the letters, he went to Mrs. Horner’s after his
directors’ meeting today. He used the telephone booth in the directors’
room to make the appointment; and he laughed feebly at himself, and
wondered what the group of men in that mahogany apartment would think
if they knew what he was doing. Mrs. Horner had changed her address,
but he found the new one, and somebody purporting to be a niece of hers
talked to him and made an appointment for a “sitting” at five o’clock.
He was prompt, and the niece, a dull-faced fat girl with a magazine
under her arm, admitted him to Mrs. Horner’s apartment, which smelt of
camphor; and showed him into a room with gray painted walls, no rug on
the floor and no furniture except a table (with nothing on it) and two
chairs: one a leather easy-chair and the other a stiff little brute
with a wooden seat. There was one window with the shade pulled down to
the sill, but the sun was bright outside, and the room had light enough.

Mrs. Horner appeared in the doorway, a wan and unenterprising looking
woman in brown, with thin hair artificially waved—but not recently—and
parted in the middle over a bluish forehead. Her eyes were small and
seemed weak, but she recognized the visitor.

“Oh, you been here before,” she said, in a thin voice, not unmusical.
“I recollect you. Quite a time ago, wa’n’t it?”

“Yes, quite a long time.”

“I recollect because I recollect you was disappointed. Anyway, you was
kind of cross.” She laughed faintly.

“I’m sorry if I seemed so,” Eugene said. “Do you happen to have found
out my name?”

She looked surprised and a little reproachful. “Why, no. I never try
to find out people’s name. Why should I? I don’t claim anything for
the power; I only know I have it—and some ways it ain’t always such a
blessing, neither, I can tell you!”

Eugene did not press an investigation of her meaning, but said vaguely,
“I suppose not. Shall we—”

“All right,” she assented, dropping into the leather chair, with her
back to the shaded window. “You better set down, too, I reckon. I hope
you’ll get something this time so you won’t feel cross, but I dunno. I
can’t never tell what they’ll do. Well—”

She sighed, closed her eyes, and was silent, while Eugene, seated in
the stiff chair across the table from her, watched her profile, thought
himself an idiot, and called himself that and other names. And as the
silence continued, and the impassive woman in the easy-chair remained
impassive, he began to wonder what had led him to be such a fool. It
became clear to him that the similarity of his letter and Lucy’s needed
no explanation involving telepathy, and was not even an extraordinary
coincidence. What, then, had brought him back to this absurd place
and caused him to be watching this absurd woman taking a nap in a
chair? In brief: What the devil did he mean by it? He had not the
slightest interest in Mrs. Horner’s naps—or in her teeth, which were
being slightly revealed by the unconscious parting of her lips, as her
breathing became heavier. If the vagaries of his own mind had brought
him into such a grotesquerie as this, into what did the vagaries of
other men’s minds take them? Confident that he was ordinarily saner
than most people, he perceived that since he was capable of doing a
thing like this, other men did even more idiotic things, in secret. And
he had a fleeting vision of sober-looking bankers and manufacturers and
lawyers, well-dressed church-going men, sound citizens—and all as queer
as the deuce inside!

How long was he going to sit here presiding over this unknown woman’s
slumbers? It struck him that to make the picture complete he ought to
be shooing flies away from her with a palm-leaf fan.

Mrs. Horner’s parted lips closed again abruptly, and became compressed;
her shoulders moved a little, then jerked repeatedly; her small
chest heaved; she gasped, and the compressed lips relaxed to a
slight contortion, then began to move, whispering and bringing forth
indistinguishable mutterings.

Suddenly she spoke in a loud, husky voice:

“Lopa is here!”

“Yes,” Eugene said dryly. “That’s what you said last time. I remember
‘Lopa.’ She’s your ‘control’ I think you said.”

“I’m Lopa,” said the husky voice. “I’m Lopa herself.”

“You mean I’m to suppose you’re not Mrs. Horner now?”

“Never was Mrs. Horner!” the voice declared, speaking undeniably from
Mrs. Horner’s lips—but with such conviction that Eugene, in spite of
everything, began to feel himself in the presence of a third party,
who was none the less an individual, even though she might be another
edition of the apparently somnambulistic Mrs. Horner. “Never was Mrs.
Horner or anybody but just Lopa. Guide.”

“You mean you’re Mrs. Horner’s guide?” he asked.

“Your guide now,” said the voice with emphasis, to which was
incongruously added a low laugh. “You came here once before. Lopa
remembers.”

“Yes—so did Mrs. Horner.”

Lopa overlooked his implication, and continued, quickly: “You build.
Build things that go. You came here once and old gentleman on this
side, he spoke to you. Same old gentleman here now. He tell Lopa he’s
your grandfather—no, he says ‘father.’ He’s your father.”

“What’s his appearance?”

“How?”

“What does he look like?”

“Very fine! White beard, but not long beard. He says someone else wants
to speak to you. See here. Lady. Not his wife, though. No. Very fine
lady! Fine lady, fine lady!”

“Is it my sister?” Eugene asked.

“Sister? No. She is shaking her head. She has pretty brown hair. She is
fond of you. She is someone who knows you very well but she is not your
sister. She is very anxious to say something to you—very anxious. Very
fond of you; very anxious to talk to you. Very glad you came here—oh,
very, glad!”

“What is her name?”

“Name,” the voice repeated, and seemed to ruminate. “Name hard to
get—always very hard for Lopa. Name. She wants to tell me her name to
tell you. She wants you to understand names are hard to make. She says
you must think of something that makes a sound.” Here the voice seemed
to put a question to an invisible presence and to receive an answer. “A
little sound or a big sound? She says it might be a little sound or a
big sound. She says a ring—oh, Lopa knows! She means a bell! That’s it,
a bell.”

Eugene looked grave. “Does she mean her name is Belle?”

“Not quite. Her name is longer.”

“Perhaps,” he suggested, “she means that she was a belle.”

“No. She says she thinks you know what she means. She says you must
think of a colour. What colour?” Again Lopa addressed the unknown, but
this time seemed to wait for an answer.

“Perhaps she means the colour of her eyes,” said Eugene.

“No. She says her colour is light—it’s a light colour and you can see
through it.”

“Amber?” he said, and was startled, for Mrs. Horner, with her eyes
still closed, clapped her hands, and the voice cried out in delight:

“Yes! She says you know who she is from amber. Amber! Amber! That’s it!
She says you understand what her name is from a bell and from amber.
She is laughing and waving a lace handkerchief at me because she is
pleased. She says I have made you know who it is.”

This was the strangest moment of Eugene’s life, because, while it
lasted, he believed that Isabel Amberson, who was dead, had found means
to speak to him. Though within ten minutes he doubted it, he believed
it then.

His elbows pressed hard upon the table, and, his head between his
hands, he leaned forward, staring at the commonplace figure in the
easy-chair. “What does she wish to say to me?”

“She is happy because you know her. No—she is troubled. Oh—a great
trouble! Something she wants to tell you. She wants so much to tell
you. She wants Lopa to tell you. This is a great trouble. She says—oh,
yes, she wants you to be—to be kind! That’s what she says. That’s it.
To be kind.”

“Does she—”

“She wants you to be kind,” said the voice. “She nods when I tell you
this. Yes; it must be right. She is a very fine lady. Very pretty. She
is so anxious for you to understand. She hopes and hopes you will.
Someone else wants to speak to you. This is a man. He says—”

“I don’t want to speak to any one else,” said Eugene quickly. “I want—”

“This man who has come says that he is a friend of yours. He says—”

Eugene struck the table with his fist. “I don’t want to speak to any
one else, I tell you!” he cried passionately. “If she is there I—” He
caught his breath sharply, checked himself, and sat in amazement. Could
his mind so easily accept so stupendous a thing as true? Evidently it
could!

Mrs. Horner spoke languidly in her own voice: “Did you get anything
satisfactory?” she asked. “I certainly hope it wasn’t like that other
time when you was cross because they couldn’t get anything for you.”

“No, no,” he said hastily. “This was different It was very interesting.”

He paid her, went to his hotel, and thence to his train for home. Never
did he so seem to move through a world of dream-stuff: for he knew that
he was not more credulous than other men, and, if he could believe what
he had believed, though he had believed it for no longer than a moment
or two, what hold had he or any other human being on reality?

His credulity vanished (or so he thought) with his recollection that it
was he, and not the alleged “Lopa,” who had suggested the word “amber.”
Going over the mortifying, plain facts of his experience, he found that
Mrs. Horner, or the subdivision of Mrs. Horner known as “Lopa,” had
told him to think of a bell and of a colour, and that being furnished
with these scientific data, he had leaped to the conclusion that he
spoke with Isabel Amberson!

For a moment he had believed that Isabel was there, believed that she
was close to him, entreating him—entreating him “to be kind.” But with
this recollection a strange agitation came upon him. After all, had
she not spoken to him? If his own unknown consciousness had told the
“psychic’s” unknown consciousness how to make the picture of the pretty
brown-haired, brown-eyed lady, hadn’t the picture been a true one? And
hadn’t the true Isabel—oh, indeed her very soul!—called to him out of
his own true memory of her?

And as the train roared through the darkened evening he looked out
beyond his window, and saw her as he had seen her on his journey, a
few days ago—an ethereal figure flying beside the train, but now it
seemed to him that she kept her face toward his window with an infinite
wistfulness.

“To be kind!” If it had been Isabel, was that what she would have said?
If she were anywhere, and could come to him through the invisible wall,
what would be the first thing she would say to him?

Ah, well enough, and perhaps bitterly enough, he knew the answer to
that question! “To be kind”—to Georgie!

A red-cap at the station, when he arrived, leaped for his bag,
abandoning another which the Pullman porter had handed him. “Yessuh,
Mist’ Morgan. Yessuh. You’ car waitin’ front the station fer you, Mist’
Morgan, suh!”

And people in the crowd about the gates turned to stare, as he passed
through, whispering, “That’s Morgan.”

Outside, the neat chauffeur stood at the door of the touring-car like a
soldier in whip-cord.

“I’ll not go home now, Harry,” said Eugene, when he had got in. “Drive
to the City Hospital.”

“Yes, sir,” the man returned. “Miss Lucy’s there. She said she expected
you’d come there before you went home.”

“She did?”

“Yes, sir.”

Eugene stared. “I suppose Mr. Minafer must be pretty bad,” he said.

“Yes, sir. I understand he’s liable to get well, though, sir.” He moved
his lever into high speed, and the car went through the heavy traffic
like some fast, faithful beast that knew its way about, and knew its
master’s need of haste. Eugene did not speak again until they reached
the hospital.

Fanny met him in the upper corridor, and took him to an open door.

He stopped on the threshold, startled; for, from the waxen face on the
pillow, almost it seemed the eyes of Isabel herself were looking at
him: never before had the resemblance between mother and son been so
strong—and Eugene knew that now he had once seen it thus startlingly,
he need divest himself of no bitterness “to be kind” to Georgie.

George was startled, too. He lifted a white hand in a queer gesture,
half forbidding, half imploring, and then let his arm fall back upon
the coverlet. “You must have thought my mother wanted you to come,” he
said, “so that I could ask you to—to forgive me.”

But Lucy, who sat beside him, lifted ineffable eyes from him to her
father, and shook her head. “No, just to take his hand—gently!”

She was radiant.

But for Eugene another radiance filled the room. He knew that he had
been true at last to his true love, and that through him she had
brought her boy under shelter again. Her eyes would look wistful no
more.


                                The End


*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 8867 ***