The Magnificent Ambersons

by Booth Tarkington

  The words became indistinct; the air was hummed absently; the humming shifted to a whistle, then drifted out of hearing, and the place was still again.

  George looked often at his watch, but his vigil did not last an hour. At ten minutes of three, peering through the curtain, he saw an automobile stop in front of the house and Eugene Morgan jump lightly down from it. The car was of a new pattern, low and long, with an ample seat in the tonneau, facing forward; and a professional driver sat at the wheel, a strange figure in leather, goggled out of all personality and seemingly part of the mechanism.

  Eugene himself, as he came up the cement path to the house, was a figure of the new era which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff hats and skirted coats; and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast to that of the queer-looking duck capering: at the Amberson Ball in an old dress coat, and chugging up National Avenue through the snow in his nightmare of a sewing-machine. Eugene, this afternoon, was richly in the new outdoor mode: motoring coat was soft gray fur; his cap and gloves were of gray suede; and though Lucy’s hand may have shown itself in the selection of these garnitures, he wore them easily, even with becoming hint of jauntiness. Some change might be his face, too, for a successful man is seldom to be mistaken, especially if his temper be genial. Eugene had begun to look like a millionaire.

  But above everything else, what was most evident about him, as he came up the path, was confidence in the happiness promised by his errand; the anticipation in his eyes could have been read by a stranger. His look at the door of Isabel’s house was the look of a man who is quite certain that the next moment will reveal something ineffably charming, inexpressibly dear.

  When the bell rang, George waited at the entrance of the “reception room” until a housemaid came through the hall on her way to answer the summons.

  “You needn’t mind, Mary,” he told her. “I’ll see who it is and what they want. Probably it’s only a pedlar.”

  “Thank you, sir, Mister George,” said Mary; and returned to the rear of the house.

  George went slowly to the front door, and halted, regarding the misty silhouette of the caller upon the ornamental frosted glass. After a minute of waiting, this silhouette changed outline so that an arm could be distinguished—an arm outstretched toward the bell, as if the gentleman outside doubted whether or not it had sounded, and were minded to try again. But before the gesture was completed George abruptly threw open the door, and stepped squarely upon the middle of the threshold.

  A slight change shadowed the face of Eugene; his look of happy anticipation gave way to something formal and polite. “How do you do, George,” he said. “Mrs. Minafer expects to go driving with me, I believe—if you’ll be so kind as to send her word that I’m here.”

  George made not the slightest movement.

  “No,” he said.

  Eugene was incredulous, even when his second glance revealed how hot of eye was the haggard young man before him. “I beg your pardon. I said—”

  “I heard you,” said George. “You said you had an engagement with my mother, and I told you, No!”

  Eugene gave him a steady look, and then he quietly: “What is the—the difficulty?”

  George kept his own voice quiet enough, but that, did not mitigate the vibrant fury of it. “My—mother will have no interest in knowing that you came her to-day,” he said. “Or any other day!”

  Eugene continued to look at him with a scrutiny in which began to gleam a profound anger, none less powerful because it was so quiet. “I am afraid I do not understand you.”

  “I doubt if I could make it much plainer,” George said, raising his voice slightly, “but I’ll try. You’re not wanted in this house, Mr. Morgan, now or at any other time. Perhaps you’ll understand—this!”

  And with the last word he closed the door in Eugene’s face.

  Then, not moving away, he stood just inside door, and noted that the misty silhouette remained upon the frosted glass for several moments, as if the forbidden gentleman debated in his mind what course to pursue. “Let him ring again!” George thought grimly. “Or try the side door—or the kitchen!”

  But Eugene made no further attempt; the silhouette disappeared; footsteps could be heard withdrawing across the floor of the veranda; and George, returning to the window in the “reception room,” was rewarded by the sight of an automobile manufacturer in baffled retreat, with all his wooing furs and fineries mocking him. Eugene got into his car slowly, not looking back at the house which had just taught him such a lesson; and it was easily visible—even from a window seventy feet distant—that he was not the same light suitor who had jumped so gallantly from the car only a few minutes earlier. Observing the heaviness of his movements as he climbed into the tonneau, George indulged in a sickish throat rumble which bore a distant cousinship to mirth.

  The car was quicker than its owner; it shot away as soon as he had sunk into his seat; and George, having watched its impetuous disappearance from his field of vision, ceased to haunt the window. He went to the library, and, seating himself beside the table whereon he had placed the photograph of his father, picked up a book, and pretended to been engaged in reading it.

  Presently Isabel’s buoyant step was heard descending the stairs, and her low, sweet whistling, renewing the air of “Lord Bateman.” She came into the library, still whistling thoughtfully, a fur coat over her arm, ready to put on, and two veils round her small black hat, her right hand engaged in buttoning the glove upon her left; and, as the large room contained too many pieces of heavy furniture, and the inside shutters excluded most of the light of day, she did not at once perceive George’s presence. Instead, she went to the bay window at the end of the room, which afforded a view of the street, and glanced out expectantly; then bent her attention upon her glove; after that, looked out toward the street again, ceased to whistle, and turned toward the interior of the room.

  “Why, Georgie!”

  She came, leaned over from behind him, and there was a faint, exquisite odour as from distant apple blossoms as she kissed his cheek. “Dear, I waited lunch almost an hour for you, but you didn’t come! Did you lunch out somewhere?”

  “Yes.” He did not look up from the book.

  “Did you have plenty to eat?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are you sure? Wouldn’t you like to have Maggie get you something now in the dining room? Or they could bring it to you here, if you think it would be cozier. Shan’t I—”

  A tinkling bell was audible, and she moved to the doorway into the hall. “I’m going out driving, dear. I—” She interrupted herself to address the housemaid, who was passing through the hall: “I think it’s Mr. Morgan, Mary. Tell him I’ll be there at once.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  Mary returned. “Twas a pedlar, ma’am.”

  “Another one?” Isabel said, surprised. “I thought you said it was a pedlar when the bell rang a little while ago.”

  “Mister George said it was, ma’am; he went to the door,” Mary informed her, disappearing.

  “There seem to be a great many of them,” Isabel mused. “What did yours want to sell, George?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “You must have cut him off short!” she laughed; and then, still standing in the doorway, she noticed the big silver frame upon the table beside him. “Gracious, Georgie!” she exclaimed. “You have been investing!” and as she came across the room for a closer view, “Is it —is it Lucy?” she asked half timidly, half archly. But the next instant she saw whose likeness was thus set forth in elegiac splendour—and she was silent, except for a long, just-audible “Oh!”

  He neither looked up nor moved.

  “That was nice of you, Georgie,” she said, in a low voice presently. “I ought to have had it framed, myself, when I gave it to you.”

  He said nothing, and, standing beside him, she put her hand gently upon his shoulder, then as gently withdrew it, and went out of the room. But she did not go upsta
irs; he heard the faint rustle of her dress in the hall, and then the sound of her footsteps in the “reception room.” After a time, silence succeeded even these slight tokens of her presence; whereupon George rose and went warily into the hall, taking care to make no noise, and he obtained an oblique view of her through the open double doors of the “reception room.” She was sitting in the chair which he had occupied so long; and she was looking out of the window expectantly—a little troubled.

  He went back to the library, waited an interminable half hour, then returned noiselessly to the same position in the hall, where he could see her. She was still sitting patiently by the window.

  Waiting for that man, was she? Well, it might be quite a long wait! And the grim George silently ascended the stairs to his own room, and began to pace his suffering floor.

  Chapter XXV

  * * *

  He left his door open, however, and when he heard the front door-bell ring, by and by, he went half way down the stairs and stood to listen. He was not much afraid that Morgan would return, but he wished to make sure.

  Mary appeared in the hall below him, but, after a glance toward the front of the house, turned back, and withdrew. Evidently Isabel had gone to the door. Then a murmur was heard, and George Amberson’s voice, quick and serious: “I want to talk to you, Isabel” … and another murmur; then Isabel and her brother passed the foot of the broad, dark stairway, but did not look up, and remained unconscious of the watchful presence above them. Isabel still carried her cloak upon her arm, but Amberson had taken her hand, and retained it; and as he led her silently into the library there was something about her attitude, and the pose of her slightly bent head, that was both startled and meek. Thus they quickly disappeared from George’s sight, hand in hand; and Amberson at once closed the massive double doors of the library.

  For a time all that George could hear was the indistinct sound of his uncle’s voice: what he was saying could not be surmised, though the troubled brotherliness of his tone was evident. He seemed to be explaining something at considerable length, and there were moments when he paused, and George guessed that his mother was speaking, but her voice must have been very low, for it was entirely inaudible to him.

  Suddenly he did hear her. Through the heavy doors her outcry came, clear and loud:

  “Oh, no!”

  It was a cry of protest, as if something her brother told her must be untrue, or, if it were true, the fact he stated must be undone; and it was a sound of sheer pain.

  Another sound of pain, close to George, followed it; this was a vehement sniffling which broke out just above him, and, looking up, he saw Fanny Minafer on the landing, leaning over the banisters and applying her handkerchief to her eyes and nose.

  “I can guess what that was about,” she whispered huskily. “He’s just told her what you did to Eugene!”

  George gave her a dark look over his shoulder. “You go on back to your room!” he said; and he began to descend the stairs; but Fanny, guessing his purpose, rushed down and caught his arm, detaining him.

  “You’re not going in there?”, she whispered huskily. “You don’t—”

  “Let go of me!”

  But she clung to him savagely. “No, you don’t, Georgie Minafer! You’ll keep away from there! You will!”

  “You let go of—”

  “I won’t! You come back here! You’ll come upstairs and let them alone; that’s what you’ll do!” And with such passionate determination did she clutch and tug, never losing a grip of him somewhere, though George tried as much as he could, without hurting her, to wrench away —with such utter forgetfulness of her maiden dignity did she assault him, that she forced him, stumbling upward, to the landing.

  “Of all the ridiculous—” he began furiously; but she spared one hand from its grasp of his sleeve and clapped it over his mouth.

  “Hush up!” Never for an instant in this grotesque struggle did Fanny raise her voice above a husky whisper. “Hush up! It’s indecent—like squabbling outside the door of an operating-room! Go on to the top of the stairs—go on!”

  And when George had most unwillingly obeyed, she planted herself in his way, on the top step. “There!” she said. “The idea of your going in there now! I never heard of such a thing!” And with the sudden departure of the nervous vigour she had shown so amazingly, she began to cry again. “I was an awful fool! I thought you knew what was going on or I never, never would have done it. Do you suppose I dreamed you’d go making everything into such a tragedy? Do you?”

  “I don’t care what you dreamed,” George muttered.

  But Fanny went on, always taking care to keep her voice from getting too loud, in spite of her most grievous agitation. “Do you dream I thought you’d go making such a fool of yourself at Mrs. Johnson’s? Oh, I saw her this morning! She wouldn’t talk to me, but I met George Amberson on my way back, and he told me what you’d done over there! And do you dream I thought you’d do what you’ve done here this afternoon to Eugene? Oh, I knew that, too! I was looking out of the front bedroom window, and I saw him drive up, and then go away again, and I knew you’d been to the door. Of course he went to George Amberson about it, and that’s why George is here. He’s got to tell Isabel the whole thing now, and you wanted to go in there interfering —God knows what! You stay here and let her brother tell her; he’s got some consideration for her!”

  “I suppose you think I haven’t!” George said, challenging her, and at that Fanny laughed witheringly.

  “You! Considerate of anybody!”

  “I’m considerate of her good name!” he said hotly. “It seems to me that’s about the first thing to be considerate of, in being considerate of a person! And look here: it strikes me you’re taking a pretty different tack from what you did yesterday afternoon!”

  Fanny wrung her hands. “I did a terrible thing!” she lamented. “Now that it’s done and too late I know what it was! I didn’t have sense enough just to let things go on. I didn’t have any business to interfere, and I didn’t mean to interfere—I only wanted to talk, and let out a little! I did think you already knew everything I told you. I did! And I’d rather have cut my hand off than stir you up to doing what you have done! I was just suffering so that I wanted to let out a little—I didn’t mean any real harm. But now I see what’s happened —oh, I was a fool! I hadn’t any business interfering. Eugene never would have looked at me, anyhow, and, oh, why couldn’t I have seen that before! He never came here a single time in his life except on her account, never! and I might have let them alone, because he wouldn’t have looked at me even if he’d never seen Isabel. And they haven’t done any harm: she made Wilbur happy, and she was a true wife to him as long as he lived. It wasn’t a crime for her to care for Eugene all the time; she certainly never told him she did—and she gave me every chance in the world! She left us alone together every time she could—even since Wilbur died—but what was the use? And here I go, not doing myself a bit of good by it, and just”—Fanny wrung her hands again—”just ruining them!”

  “I suppose you mean I’m doing that,” George said bitterly.

  “Yes, I do!” she sobbed, and drooped upon the stairway railing, exhausted.

  “On the contrary, I mean to save my mother from a calamity.”

  Fanny looked at him wanly, in a tired despair; then she stepped by him and went slowly to her own door, where she paused and beckoned to him.

  “What do you want?”

  “Just come here a minute.”

  “What for?” he asked impatiently.

  “I just wanted to say something to you.”

  “Well, for heaven’s sake, say it! There’s nobody to hear.” Nevertheless, after a moment, as she beckoned him again, he went to her, profoundly annoyed. “Well, what is it?”

  “George,” she said in a low voice, “I think you ought to be told something. If I were you, I’d let my mother alone.”

  “Oh, my Lord!” he groaned. “I’m doing these things for her,
not against her!”

  A mildness had come upon Fanny, and she had controlled her weeping. She shook her head gently. “No, I’d let her alone if I were you. I don’t think she’s very well, George.”

  “She! I never saw a healthier person in my life.”

  “No. She doesn’t let anybody know, but she goes to the doctor regularly.”

  “Women are always going to doctors regularly.”

  “No. He told her to.”

  George was not impressed. “It’s nothing at all; she spoke of it to me years ago—some kind of family failing. She said grandfather had it, too; and look at him! Hasn’t proved very serious with him! You act as if I’d done something wrong in sending that man about his business, and as if I were going to persecute my mother, instead of protecting her. By Jove, it’s sickening! You told me how all the riffraff in town were busy with her name, and then the minute I lift my hand to protect her, you begin to attack me and—”

  “Sh!” Fanny checked him, laying her hand on his arm. “Your uncle is going.”

  The library doors were heard opening, and a moment later there came the sound of the front door closing.

  George moved toward the head of the stairs, then stood listening; but the house was silent.

  Fanny made a slight noise with her lips to attract his attention, and, when he glanced toward her, shook her head at him urgently. “Let her alone,” she whispered. “She’s down there by herself. Don’t go down. Let her alone.”

  She moved a few steps toward him and halted, her face pallid and awestruck, and then both stood listening for anything that might break the silence downstairs. No sound came to them; that poignant silence was continued throughout long, long minutes, while the two listeners stood there under its mysterious spell; and in its plaintive eloquence—speaking, as it did, of the figure alone in the big, dark library, where dead Wilbur’s new silver frame gleamed in the dimness— there was something that checked even George.

  Above the aunt and nephew, as they kept this strange vigil, there was a triple window of stained glass, to illumine the landing and upper reaches of the stairway. Figures in blue and amber garments posed gracefully in panels, conceived by some craftsman of the Eighties to represent Love and Purity and Beauty, and these figures, leaded to unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The colours were growing dull; evening was coming on.