The Magnificent Ambersons

by Booth Tarkington

“What words are you talking about?” George asked.

  “Words like ‘die’ and ‘dying.’ I don’t see how she can bear to use them so soon after your poor father—” She shivered again.

  “It’s almost a year,” George said absently, and he added: “It seems to me you’re using them yourself.”

  “I? Never!”

  “Yes, you did.”

  “When?”

  “Just this minute.”

  “Oh!” said Fanny. “You mean when I repeated what she said? That’s hardly the same thing, George.”

  He was not enough interested to argue the point. “I don’t think you’ll convince anybody that mother’s unfeeling,” he said indifferently.

  “I’m not trying to convince anybody. I mean merely that in my opinion —well, perhaps it may be just as wise for me to keep my opinions to myself.”

  She paused expectantly, but her possible anticipation that George would urge her to discard wisdom and reveal her opinion was not fulfilled. His back was toward her, and he occupied himself with opinions of his own about other matters. Fanny may have felt some disappointment as she rose to withdraw.

  However, at the last moment she halted with her hand upon the latch of the screen door.

  “There’s one thing I hope,” she said. “I hope at least she won’t leave off her full mourning on the very anniversary of Wilbur’s death!”

  The light door clanged behind her, and the sound annoyed her nephew. He had no idea why she thus used inoffensive wood and wire to dramatize her departure from the veranda, the impression remaining with him being that she was critical of his mother upon some point of funeral millinery. Throughout the desultory conversation he had been profoundly concerned with his own disturbing affairs, and now was preoccupied with a dialogue taking place (in his mind) between himself and Miss Lucy Morgan. As he beheld the vision, Lucy had just thrown herself at his feet. “George, you must forgive me!” she cried. “Papa was utterly wrong! I have told him so, and the truth is that I have come to rather dislike him as you do, and as you always have, in your heart of hearts. George, I understand you: thy people shall be my people and thy gods my gods. George, won’t you take me back?”

  “Lucy, are you sure you understand me?” And in the darkness George’s bodily lips moved in unison with those which uttered the words in his imaginary rendering of this scene. An eavesdropper, concealed behind the column, could have heard the whispered word “sure,” the emphasis put upon it in the vision was so poignant. “You say you understand me, but are you sure?”

  Weeping, her head bowed almost to her waist, the ethereal Lucy made reply: “Oh, so sure! I will never listen to father’s opinions again. I do not even care if I never see him again!”

  “Then I pardon you,” he said gently.

  This softened mood lasted for several moments—until he realized that it had been brought about by processes strikingly lacking in substance. Abruptly he swung his feet down from the copestone to the floor of the veranda. “Pardon nothing!” No meek Lucy had thrown herself in remorse at his feet; and now he pictured her as she probably really was at this moment: sitting on the white steps of her own front porch in the moonlight, with red-headed Fred Kinney and silly Charlie Johnson and four or five others—all of them laughing, most likely, and some idiot playing the guitar!

  George spoke aloud: “Riffraff!”

  And because of an impish but all too natural reaction of the mind, he could see Lucy with much greater distinctness in this vision than in his former pleasing one. For a moment she was miraculously real before him, every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight shimmering in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair—and not one alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing profile was spared him as she seemed to turn to the infernal Kinney—

  “Riffraff!” And George began furiously to pace the stone floor. “Riffraff!” By this hard term—a favourite with him since childhood’s scornful hour—he meant to indicate, not Lucy, but the young gentlemen who, in his vision, surrounded her. “Riffraff!” he said again, aloud, and again:

  “Riffraff!”

  At that moment, as it happened, Lucy was playing chess with her father; and her heart, though not remorseful, was as heavy as George could have wished. But she did not let Eugene see that she was troubled, and he was pleased when he won three games of her. Usually she beat him.

  Chapter XIX

  George went driving the next afternoon alone, and, encountering Lucy and her father on the road, in one of Morgan’s cars, lifted his hat, but nowise relaxed his formal countenance as they passed. Eugene waved a cordial hand quickly returned to the steering-wheel; but Lucy only nodded gravely and smiled no more than George did. Nor did she accompany Eugene to the Major’s for dinner, the following Sunday evening, though both were bidden to attend that feast, which was already reduced in numbers and gayety by the absence of George Amberson. Eugene explained to his host that Lucy had gone away to visit a school-friend.

  The information, delivered in the library, just before old Sam’s appearance to announce dinner, set Miss Minafer in quite a flutter. “Why, George!” she said, turning to her nephew. “How does it happen you didn’t tell us?” And with both hands opening, as if to express her innocence of some conspiracy, she exclaimed to the others, “He’s never said one word to us about Lucy’s planning to go away!”

  “Probably afraid to,” the Major suggested. “Didn’t know but he might break down and cry if he tried to speak of it!” He clapped his grandson on the shoulder, inquiring jocularly, “That it, Georgie?”

  Georgie made no reply, but he was red enough to justify the Major’s developing a chuckle into laughter; though Miss Fanny, observing her nephew keenly, got an impression that this fiery blush was in truth more fiery than tender. She caught a glint in his eye less like confusion than resentment, and saw a dilation of his nostrils which might have indicated not so much a sweet agitation as an inaudible snort. Fanny had never been lacking in curiosity, and, since her brother’s death, this quality was more than ever alert. The fact that George had spent all the evenings of the past week at home had not been lost upon her, nor had she failed to ascertain, by diplomatic inquiries, that since the day of the visit to Eugene’s shops George had gone driving alone.

  At the dinner-table she continued to observe him, sidelong; and toward the conclusion of the meal she was not startled by an episode which brought discomfort to the others. After the arrival of coffee the Major was rallying Eugene upon some rival automobile shops lately built in a suburb, and already promising to flourish.

  “I suppose they’ll either drive you out of the business,” said the old gentleman, “or else the two of you’ll drive all the rest of us off the streets.”

  “If we do, we’ll even things up by making the streets five or ten times as long as they are now,” Eugene returned.

  “How do you propose to do that?”

  “It isn’t the distance from the center of a town that counts,” said Eugene; “it’s the time it takes to get there. This town’s already spreading; bicycles and trolleys have been doing their share, but the automobile is going to carry city streets clear out to the county line.”

  The Major was skeptical. “Dream on, fair son!” he said. “It’s lucky for us that you’re only dreaming; because if people go to moving that far, real estate values in the old residence part of town are going to be stretched pretty thin.”

  “I’m afraid so,” Eugene assented. “Unless you keep things so bright and clean that the old section will stay more attractive than the new ones.”

  “Not very likely! How are things going to be kept ‘bright and clean’ with soft coal, and our kind of city government?”

  �
��They aren’t,” Eugene replied quickly. “There’s no hope of it, and already the boarding-house is marching up National Avenue. There are two in the next block below here, and there are a dozen in the half- mile below that. My relatives, the Sharons, have sold their house and are building in the country—at least, they call it ‘the country.’ It will be city in two or three years.”

  “Good gracious!” the Major exclaimed, affecting ‘dismay. “So your little shops are going to ruin all your old friends, Eugene!”

  “Unless my old friends take warning in time, or abolish smoke and get a new kind of city government. I should say the best chance is to take Warning.”

  “Well, well!” the Major laughed. “You have enough faith in miracles, Eugene—granting that trolleys and bicycles and automobiles are miracles. So you think they’re to change the face of the land, do you?”

  “They’re already doing it, Major; and it can’t be stopped. Automobiles—”

  At this point he was interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks idle prattle and settles a matter forever.

  “Automobiles are a useless nuisance,” he said.

  There fell a moment’s silence.

  Isabel gazed incredulously at George, colour slowly heightening upon her cheeks and temples, while Fanny watched him with a quick eagerness, her eyes alert and bright. But Eugene seemed merely quizzical, as if not taking this brusquerie to himself. The Major was seriously disturbed.

  “What did you say, George?” he asked, though George had spoken but too distinctly.

  “I said all automobiles were a nuisance,” George answered, repeating not only the words but the tone in which he had uttered them. And he added, “They’ll never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no business to be invented.”

  The Major frowned. “Of course you forget that Mr. Morgan makes them, and also did his share in inventing them. If you weren’t so thoughtless he might think you rather offensive.”

  “That would be too bad,” said George coolly. “I don’t think I could survive it.”

  Again there was a silence, while the Major stared at his grandson, aghast. But Eugene began to laugh cheerfully.

  “I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles,” he said. “With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization—that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls. I am not sure. But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess. But you can’t have the immense outward changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles ‘had no business to be invented.’” He laughed good-naturedly, and looking at his watch, apologized for having an engagement which made his departure necessary when he would so much prefer to linger. Then he shook hands with the Major, and bade Isabel, George, and Fanny a cheerful good-night—a collective farewell cordially addressed to all three of them together—and left them at the table.

  Isabel turned wondering, hurt eyes upon her son. “George, dear!” she said. “What did you mean?”

  “Just what I said,” he returned, lighting one of the Major’s cigars, and his manner was imperturbable enough to warrant the definition (sometimes merited by imperturbability) of stubbornness.

  Isabel’s hand, pale and slender, upon the tablecloth, touched one of the fine silver candlesticks aimlessly: the fingers were seen to tremble. “Oh, he was hurt!” she murmured.

  “I don’t see why he should be,” George said. “I didn’t say anything about him. He didn’t seem to me to be hurt—seemed perfectly cheerful. What made you think he was hurt?”

  “I know him!” was all of her reply, half whispered.

  The Major stared hard at George from under his white eyebrows. “You didn’t mean ‘him,’ you say, George? I suppose if we had a clergyman as a guest here you’d expect him not to be offended, and to understand that your remarks were neither personal nor untactful, if you said the church was a nuisance and ought never to have been invented. By Jove, but you’re a puzzle!”

  “In what way, may I ask, sir?”

  “We seem to have a new kind of young people these days,” the old gentleman returned, shaking his head. “It’s a new style of courting a pretty girl, certainly, for a young fellow to go deliberately out of his way to try and make an enemy of her father by attacking his business! By Jove! That’s a new way to win a woman!”

  George flushed angrily and seemed about to offer a retort, but held his breath for a moment; and then held his peace. It was Isabel who responded to the Major. “Oh, no!” she said. “Eugene would never be anybody’s enemy—he couldn’t!—and last of all Georgie’s. I’m afraid he was hurt, but I don’t fear his not having understood that George spoke without thinking of what he was saying—I mean, with-out realizing its bearing on Eugene.”

  Again George seemed upon the point of speech, and again controlled the impulse. He thrust his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair, and smoked, staring inflexibly at the ceiling.

  “Well, well,” said his grandfather, rising. “It wasn’t a very successful little dinner!”

  Thereupon he offered his arm to his daughter, who took it fondly, and they left the room, Isabel assuring him that all his little dinners were pleasant, and that this one was no exception.

  George did not move, and Fanny, following the other two, came round the table, and paused close beside his chair; but George remained posed in his great imperturbability, cigar between teeth, eyes upon ceiling, and paid no attention to her. Fanny waited until the sound of Isabel’s and the Major’s voices became inaudible in the hall. Then she said quickly, and in a low voice so eager that it was unsteady:

  “George, you’ve struck just the treatment to adopt: you’re doing the right thing!”

  She hurried out, scurrying after the others with a faint rustling of her black skirts, leaving George mystified but incurious. He did not understand why she should bestow her approbation upon him in the matter, and cared so little whether she did or not that he spared himself even the trouble of being puzzled about it.

  In truth, however, he was neither so comfortable nor so imperturbable as he appeared. He felt some gratification: he had done a little to put the man in his place—that man whose influence upon his daughter was precisely the same thing as a contemptuous criticism of George Amberson Minafer, and of George Amberson Minafer’s “ideals of life.” Lucy’s going away without a word was intended, he supposed, as a bit of punishment. Well, he wasn’t the sort of man that people were allowed to punish: he could demonstrate that to them—since they started it!

  It appeared to him as almost a kind of insolence, this abrupt departure—not even telephoning! Probably she wondered how he would take it; she even might have supposed he would show some betraying chagrin when he heard of it.

  He had no idea that this was just what he had shown; and he was satisfied with his evening’s performance. Nevertheless, he was not comfortable in his mind; though he could not have explained his inward perturbations, for he was convinced, without any confirmation from his Aunt Fanny, that he had done “just the right thing.”

  Chapter XX

  * * *

  Isabel came to George’s door that night, and when she had kissed him good-night she remained in the open doorway with her hand upon his shoulder and her eyes thoughtfully
lowered, so that her wish to say something more than good-night was evident. Not less obvious was her perplexity about the manner of saying it; and George, divining her thought, amiably made an opening for her.

  “Well, old lady,” he said indulgently, “you needn’t look so worried. I won’t be tactless with Morgan again. After this I’ll just keep out of his way.”

  Isabel looked up, searching his face with the fond puzzlement which her eyes sometimes showed when they rested upon him; then she glanced down the hall toward Fanny’s room, and, after another moment of hesitation, came quickly in, and closed the door.

  “Dear,” she said, “I wish you’d tell me something: Why don’t you like Eugene?”

  “Oh, I like him well enough,” George returned, with a short laugh, as he sat down and began to unlace his shoes. “I like him well enough— in his place.”

  “No, dear,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve had a feeling from the very first that you didn’t really like him—that you really never liked him. Sometimes you’ve seemed to be friendly with him, and you’d laugh with him over something in a jolly, companionable way, and I’d think I was wrong, and that you really did like him, after all; but to-night I’m sure my other feeling was the right one: you don’t like him. I can’t understand it, dear; I don’t see what can be the matter.”

  “Nothing’s the matter.”

  This easy declaration naturally failed to carry great weight, and Isabel went on, in her troubled voice, “It seems so queer, especially when you feel as you do about his daughter.”

  At this, George stopped unlacing his shoes abruptly, and sat up. “How do I feel about his daughter?” he demanded.

  “Well, it’s seemed—as if—as if—” Isabel began timidly. “It did seem—At least, you haven’t looked at any other girl, ever since they came here and—and certainly you’ve seemed very much interested in her. Certainly you’ve been very great friends?”

  “Well, what of that?”