The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington (page 3)

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 bad 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 re turned 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 gets 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, be 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 b, 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.”