“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.
Fanny Minafer broke the long silence with a sound from her throat, a stilled gasp; and with that great companion of hers, her handkerchief, retired softly to the loneliness of her own chamber. After she had gone George looked about him bleakly, then on tiptoe crossed the hall and went into his own room, which was filled with twilight. Still tiptoeing, though he could not have said why, he went across the room and sat down heavily in a chair facing the window. Outside there was nothing but the darkening air and the wall of the nearest of the new houses. He had not slept at all, the night before, and he had eaten nothing since the preceding day at lunch, but he felt neither drowsiness nor hunger. His set determination filled him, kept him but too wide awake, and his gaze at the grayness beyond the window was wide-eyed and bitter.
Darkness had closed in when there was a step in the room behind him. Then someone knelt beside the chair, two arms went round him with infinite compassion, a gentle head rested against his shoulder, and there came the faint scent as of apple-blossoms far away.
“You mustn’t be troubled, darling,” his mother whispered.
Chapter XXVI
GEORGE CHOKED. FOR an instant he was on the point of breaking down, but he commanded himself, bravely dismissing the self-pity roused by her
compassion. “How can I help but be?” he said.
“No, no.” She soothed him. “You mustn’t. You mustn’t be troubled, no matter what happens.”
“That’s easy enough to say!” he protested; and he moved as if to rise.
“Just let’s stay like this a little while, dear. Just a minute or two. I want to tell you: brother George has been here, and he told me everything about — about how unhappy you’d been — and how you went so gallantly to that old woman with the operaglasses.” Isabel gave a sad little laugh. “What a terrible old woman she is! What a really terrible thing a vulgar old woman can be!”
“Mother, I—” And again he moved to rise.
“Must you? It seemed to me such a comfortable way to talk. Well—” She yielded; he rose, helped her to her feet, and pressed the light into being.
As the room took life from the sudden lines of fire within the bulbs Isabel made a deprecatory gesture, and, with a faint laugh of apologetic protest, turned quickly away from George. What she meant was: “You mustn’t see my face until I’ve made it nicer for you.” Then she turned again to him, her eyes downcast, but no sign of tears in them, and she contrived to show him that there was the semblance of a smile upon her lips. She still wore her hat, and in her unsteady fingers she held a white envelope, somewhat crumpled.
“Now, mother—”
“Wait, dearest,” she said; and though he stood stone cold, she lifted her arms, put them round him again, and pressed her cheek lightly to his. “Oh, you do look so troubled, poor dear! One thing you couldn’t doubt, beloved boy: you know I could never care for anything in the world as I care for you — never, never!”
“Now, mother—”
She released him, and stepped back. “Just a moment more, dearest. I want you to read this first. We can get at things better.” She pressed into his hand the envelope she had brought with her, and as he opened it, and began to read the long enclosure, she walked slowly to the other end of the room; then stood there, with her back to him, and her head drooping a little, until he had finished.
The sheets of paper were covered with Eugene’s handwriting.
George Amberson will bring you this, dear Isabel. He is waiting while I write. He and I have talked things over, and before he gives this to you he will tell you what has happened. Of course I’m rather confused, and haven’t had time to think matters out very definitely, and yet I believe I should have been better prepared for what took place to-day — I ought to have known it was coming, because I have understood for quite a long time that young George was getting to dislike me more and more. Somehow, I’ve never been able to get his friendship; he’s always had a latent distrust of me — or something like distrust — and perhaps that’s made me sometimes a little awkward and diffident with him. I think it may be he felt from the first that I cared a great deal about you, and he naturally resented it. I think perhaps he felt this even during all the time when I was so careful — at least I thought I was — not to show, even to you, how immensely I did care. And he may have feared that you were thinking too much about me — even when you weren’t and only liked me as an old friend. It’s perfectly comprehensible to me, also, that at his age one gets excited about gossip. Dear Isabel, what I’m trying to get at, in my confused way, is that you and I don’t care about this nonsensical gossip, ourselves, at all. Yesterday I thought the time had come when I could ask you to marry me, and you were dear enough to tell me “sometime it might come to that.” Well, you and I, left to ourselves, and knowing what we have been and what we are, we’d pay as much attention to “talk” as we would to any other kind of old cats’ mewing! We’d not be very apt to let such things keep us from the plenty of life we have left to us for making up to ourselves for old unhappinesses and mistakes. But now we’re faced with — not the slander and not our own fear of it, because we haven’t any, but someone else’s fear of it — your son’s. And, oh, dearest woman in the world, I know what your son is to you, and it frightens me! Let me explain a little: I don’t think he’ll change — at twenty-one or twenty-two so many things appear solid and permanent and terrible which forty sees are nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can’t tell twenty about this; that’s the pity of it! Twenty can find out only by getting to be forty. And so we come to this, dear: Will you live your own life your way, or George’s way? I’m going a little further, because it would be fatal not to be wholly frank now. George will act toward you only as your long worship of him, your sacrifices — all the unseen little ones every day since he was born — will make him act. Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is the history of your own selfless and perfect motherhood. I remember saying once that what you worshipped in your son was the angel you saw in him — and I still believe that is true of every mother. But in a mother’s worship she may not see that the Will in her son should not always be offered incense along with the angel. I grow sick with fear for you — for both you and me — when I think how the Will against us two has grown strong through the love you have given the angel — and how long your own sweet Will has served that other. Are you strong enough, Isabel? Can you make the fight? I promise you that if you will take heart for it, you will find so quickly that it has all amounted to nothing. You shall have happiness, and, in a little while, only happiness. You need only to write me a line — I can’t come to your house — and tell me where you will meet me. We will come back in a month, and the angel in your son will bring him to you; I promise it. What is good in him will grow so fine, once you have beaten the turbulent Will — but it must be beaten!
Your brother, that good friend, is waiting with such patience; I should not keep him longer — and I am saying too much for wisdom, I fear. But, oh, my dear, won’t you be strong — such a little short strength it would need! Don’t strike my life down twice, dear — this time I’ve not deserved it. Eugene.
Concluding this missive, George tossed it abruptly from him so that one sheet fell upon his bed and the others upon the floor; and at the faint noise of their falling Isabel came, and, kneeling, began to gather them up.
“Did you read it, dear?”
George’s face was pale no longer, but pink with fury. “Yes, I did.”
“All of it?” she asked gently, as she rose.
“Certainly!”
She did not look at him, but kept her eyes downcast upon the letter in her hands, tremulously rearranging the sheets in order as she spoke — and though she smiled, her smile was as tremulous as her hands. Nervousness and an irresistible timidity possessed her. “I — I wanted to say, George,” she faltered. “I felt that if — if some day it should happen — I mean, if you came to feel differently about it, and Eugene and I — that is if we found that it seemed the most sensible thing to do — I was afraid you might think it would be a little queer about — Lucy, I mean if — if she were your step-sister. Of course, she’d not be even legally related to you, and if you — if you cared for her—”
Thus far she got stumblingly with what she wanted to say, while George watched her with a gaze that grew harder and hotter; but here he cut her off. “I have already given up all idea of Lucy,” he said. “Naturally, I couldn’t have treated her father as I deliberately did treat him — I could hardly have done that and expected his daughter ever to speak to me again.”
Isabel gave a quick cry of compassion, but he allowed her no opportunity to speak. “You needn’t think I’m making any particular sacrifice,” he said sharply, “though I would, quickly enough, if I thought it necessary in a matter of honour like this. I was interested in her, and I could even say I did care for her; but she proved pretty satisfactorily that she cared little enough about me! She went away right in the midst of a — of a difference of opinion we were having; she didn’t even let me know she was going, and never wrote a line to me, and then came back telling everybody she’d had ‘a perfectly gorgeous time!’ That’s quite enough for me. I’m not precisely the sort to arrange for that kind of thing to be d
one to me more than once! The truth is, we’re not congenial and we’d found that much out, at least, before she left. We should never have been happy; she was ‘superior’ all the time, and critical of me — not very pleasant, that! I was disappointed in her, and I might as well say it. I don’t think she has the very deepest nature in the world, and—”
But Isabel put her hand timidly on his arm. “Georgie, dear, this is only a quarrel: all young people have them before they get adjusted, and you mustn’t let—”
“If you please!” he said emphatically, moving back from her. “This isn’t that kind. It’s all over, and I don’t care to speak of it again. It’s settled. Don’t you understand?”
“But, dear—”
“No. I want to talk to you about this letter of her father’s.”
“Yes, dear, that’s why—”
“It’s simply the most offensive piece of writing that I’ve ever held in my hands!”
She stepped back from him, startled. “But, dear, I thought—”
“I can’t understand your even showing me such a thing!” he cried. “How did you happen to bring it to me?”
“Your uncle thought I’d better. He thought it was the simplest thing to do, and he said that he’d suggested it to Eugene, and Eugene had agreed. They thought—”
“Yes!” George said bitterly. “I should like to hear what they thought!”
“They thought it would be the most straightforward thing.”
George drew a long breath. “Well, what do you think, mother?”
“I thought it would be the simplest and most straightforward thing; I thought they were right.”
“Very well! We’ll agree it was simple and straightforward. Now, what do you think of that letter itself?”
She hesitated, looking away. “I — of course I don’t agree with him in the way he speaks of you, dear — except about the angel! I don’t agree with some of the things he implies. You’ve always been unselfish — nobody knows that better than your mother. When Fanny was left with nothing, you were so quick and generous to give up what really should have come to you, and—”
Collected Works of Booth Tarkington Page 250
