The Magnificent Ambersons

by Booth Tarkington

“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 gaunt let 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, it’s 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 Honorable 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!”