Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  “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 — t
he 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 indiffe
rence, 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.”