Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  Suddenly she spoke in a loud, husky voice:

  “Lopa is here!”

  “Yes,” Eugene said dryly. “That’s what you said last time. I remember ‘Lopa.’ She’s your ‘control’ I think you said.”

  “I’m Lopa,” said the husky voice. “I’m Lopa herself.”

  “You mean I’m to suppose you’re not Mrs. Horner now?”

  “Never was Mrs. Horner!” the voice declared, speaking undeniably from Mrs. Horner’s lips — but with such conviction that Eugene, in spite of everything, began to feel himself in the presence of a third party, who was none the less an individual, even though she might be another edition of the apparently somnambulistic Mrs. Horner. “Never was Mrs. Horner or anybody but just Lopa. Guide.”

  “You mean you’re Mrs. Horner’s guide?” he asked.

  “Your guide now,” said the voice with emphasis, to which was incongruously added a low laugh. “You came here once before. Lopa remembers.”

  “Yes — so did Mrs. Horner.”

  Lopa overlooked his implication, and continued, quickly: “You build. Build things that go. You came here once and old gentleman on this side, he spoke to you. Same old gentleman here now. He tell Lopa he’s your grandfather — no, he says ‘father.’ He’s your father.”

  “What’s his appearance?”

  “How?”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Very fine! White beard, but not long beard. He says someone else wants to speak to you. See here. Lady. Not his wife, though. No. Very fine lady! Fine lady, fine lady!”

  “Is it my sister?” Eugene asked.

  “Sister? No. She is shaking her head. She has pretty brown hair. She is fond of you. She is someone who knows you very well but she is not your sister. She is very anxious to say something to you — very anxious. Very fond of you; very anxious to talk to you. Very glad you came here — oh, very, glad!”

  “What is her name?”

  “Name,” the voice repeated, and seemed to ruminate. “Name hard to get — always very hard for Lopa. Name. She wants to tell me her name to tell you. She wants you to understand names are hard to make. She says you must think of something that makes a sound.” Here the voice seemed to put a question to an invisible presence and to receive an answer. “A little sound or a big sound? She says it might be a little sound or a big sound. She says a ring — oh, Lopa knows! She means a bell! That’s it, a bell.”

  Eugene looked grave. “Does she mean her name is Belle?”

  “Not quite. Her name is longer.”

  “Perhaps,” he suggested, “she means that she was a belle.”

  “No. She says she thinks you know what she means. She says you must think of a colour. What colour?” Again Lopa addressed the unknown, but this time seemed to wait for an answer.

  “Perhaps she means the colour of her eyes,” said Eugene.

  “No. She says her colour is light — it’s a light colour and you can see through it.”

  “Amber?” he said, and was startled, for Mrs. Horner, with her eyes still closed, clapped her hands, and the voice cried out in delight:

  “Yes! She says you know who she is from amber. Amber! Amber! That’s it! She says you understand what her name is from a bell and from amber. She is laughing and waving a lace handkerchief at me because she is pleased. She says I have made you know who it is.”

  This was the strangest moment of Eugene’s life, because, while it lasted, he believed that Isabel Amberson, who was dead, had found means to speak to him. Though within ten minutes he doubted it, he believed it then.

  His elbows pressed hard upon the table, and, his head between his hands, he leaned forward, staring at the commonplace figure in the easy-chair. “What does she wish to say to me?”

  “She is happy because you know her. No — she is troubled. Oh — a great trouble! Something she wants to tell you. She wants so much to tell you. She wants Lopa to tell you. This is a great trouble. She says — oh, yes, she wants you to be — to be kind! That’s what she says. That’s it. To be kind.”

  “Does she—”

  “She wants you to be kind,” said the voice. “She nods when I tell you this. Yes; it must be right. She is a very fine lady. Very pretty. She is so anxious for you to understand. She hopes and hopes you will. Someone else wants to speak to you. This is a man. He says—”

  “I don’t want to speak to any one else,” said Eugene quickly. “I want—”

  “This man who has come says that he is a friend of yours. He says—”

  Eugene struck the table with his fist. “I don’t want to speak to any one else, I tell you!” he cried passionately. “If she is there I—” He caught his breath sharply, checked himself, and sat in amazement. Could his mind so easily accept so stupendous a thing as true? Evidently it could!

  Mrs. Horner spoke languidly in her own voice: “Did you get anything satisfactory?” she asked. “I certainly hope it wasn’t like that other time when you was cross because they couldn’t get anything for you.”

  “No, no,” he said hastily. “This was different It was very interesting.”

  He paid her, went to his hotel, and thence to his train for home. Never did he so seem to move through a world of dream-stuff: for he knew that he was not more credulous than other men, and, if he could believe what he had believed, though he had believed it for no longer than a moment or two, what hold had he or any other human being on reality?

  His credulity vanished (or so he thought) with his recollection that it was he, and not the alleged “Lopa,” who had suggested the word “amber.” Going over the mortifying, plain facts of his experience, he found that Mrs. Horner, or the subdivision of Mrs. Horner known as “Lopa,” had told him to think of a bell and of a colour, and that being furnished with these scientific data, he had leaped to the conclusion that he spoke with Isabel Amberson!

  For a moment he had believed that Isabel was there, believed that she was close to him, entreating him — entreating him “to be kind.” But with this recollection a strange agitation came upon him. After all, had she not spoken to him? If his own unknown consciousness had told the “psychic’s” unknown consciousness how to make the picture of the pretty brown-haired, brown-eyed lady, hadn’t the picture been a true one? And hadn’t the true Isabel — oh, indeed her very soul! — called to him out of his own true memory of her?

  And as the train roared through the darkened evening he looked out beyond his window, and saw her as he had seen her on his journey, a few days ago — an ethereal figure flying beside the train, but now it seemed to him that she kept her face toward his window with an infinite wistfulness.

  “To be kind!” If it had been Isabel, was that what she would have said? If she were anywhere, and could come to him through the invisible wall, what would be the first thing she would say to him?

  Ah, well enough, and perhaps bitterly enough, he knew the answer to that question! “To be kind” — to Georgie!

  A red-cap at the station, when he arrived, leaped for his bag, abandoning another which the Pullman porter had handed him. “Yessuh, Mist’ Morgan. Yessuh. You’ car waitin’ front the station fer you, Mist’ Morgan, suh!”

  And people in the crowd about the gates turned to stare, as he passed through, whispering, “That’s Morgan.”

  Outside, the neat chauffeur stood at the door of the touring-car like a soldier in whip-cord.

  “I’ll not go home now, Harry,” said Eugene, when he had got in. “Drive to the City Hospital.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man returned. “Miss Lucy’s there. She said she expected you’d come there before you went home.”

  “She did?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Eugene stared. “I suppose Mr. Minafer must be pretty bad,” he said.

  “Yes, sir. I understand he’s liable to get well, though, sir.” He moved his lever into high speed, and the car went through the heavy traffic like some fast, faithful beast that knew its way about, and knew its master’s ne
ed of haste. Eugene did not speak again until they reached the hospital.

  Fanny met him in the upper corridor, and took him to an open door.

  He stopped on the threshold, startled; for, from the waxen face on the pillow, almost it seemed the eyes of Isabel herself were looking at him: never before had the resemblance between mother and son been so strong — and Eugene knew that now he had once seen it thus startlingly, he need divest himself of no bitterness “to be kind” to Georgie.

  George was startled, too. He lifted a white hand in a queer gesture, half forbidding, half imploring, and then let his arm fall back upon the coverlet. “You must have thought my mother wanted you to come,” he said, “so that I could ask you to — to forgive me.”

  But Lucy, who sat beside him, lifted ineffable eyes from him to her father, and shook her head. “No, just to take his hand — gently!”

  She was radiant.

  But for Eugene another radiance filled the room. He knew that he had been true at last to his true love, and that through him she had brought her boy under shelter again. Her eyes would look wistful no more.

  THE END

  Ramsey Milholland

  CONTENTS

  Chapter I

  Chapter II

  Chapter III

  Chapter IV

  Chapter V

  Chapter VI

  Chapter VII

  Chapter VIII

  Chapter IX

  Chapter X

  Chapter XI

  Chapter XII

  Chapter XIII

  Chapter XIV

  Chapter XV

  Chapter XVI

  Chapter XVII

  Chapter XVIII

  Chapter XIX

  Chapter XX

  Chapter XXI

  The first edition

  The first edition’s title page

  The original frontispiece

  To the Memory of

  Billy Miller (William Henry Harrison Miller II)

  1908 - 1918

  Little Patriot,

  Good Citizen,

  Friend of Mankind

  Chapter I

  When Johnnie comes marching home again,

  Hurrah! Hurrah!

  We’ll give him a hearty welcome then,

  Hurrah! Hurrah!

  The men with the cheers, the boys with shouts,

  The ladies they will all turn out,

  And we’ll all feel gay, when Johnnie comes marching home again!

  The old man and the little boy, his grandson, sat together in the shade of the big walnut tree in the front yard, watching the “Decoration Day Parade,” as it passed up the long street; and when the last of the veterans was out of sight the grandfather murmured the words of the tune that came drifting back from the now distant band at the head of the procession.

  “Yes, we’ll all feel gay when Johnnie comes marching home again,” he finished, with a musing chuckle.

  “Did you, Grandpa?” the boy asked.

  “Did I what?”

  “Did you all feel gay when the army got home?”

  “It didn’t get home all at once, precisely,” the grandfather explained. “When the war was over I suppose we felt relieved, more than anything else.”

  “You didn’t feel so gay when the war was, though, I guess!” the boy ventured.

  “I guess we didn’t.”

  “Were you scared, Grandpa? Were you ever scared the Rebels would win?”

  “No. We weren’t ever afraid of that.”

  “Not any at all?”

  “No. Not any at all.”

  “Well, weren’t you ever scared yourself, Grandpa? I mean when you were in a battle.”

  “Oh, yes; then I was.” The old man laughed. “Scared plenty!”

  “I don’t see why,” the boy said promptly. “I wouldn’t be scared in a battle.”

  “Wouldn’t you?”

  “‘Course not! Grandpa, why don’t you march in the Decoration Day Parade? Wouldn’t they let you?”

  “I’m not able to march any more. Too short of breath and too shaky in the legs and too blind.”

  “I wouldn’t care,” said the boy. “I’d be in the parade anyway, if I was you. They had some sittin’ in carriages, ‘way at the tail end; but I wouldn’t like that. If I’d been in your place, Grandpa, and they’d let me be in that parade, I’d been right up by the band. Look, Grandpa! Watch me, Grandpa! This is the way I’d be, Grandpa.”

  He rose from the garden bench where they sat, and gave a complex imitation of what had most appealed to him as the grandeurs of the procession, his prancing legs simulating those of the horse of the grand marshal, while his upper parts rendered the drums and bugles of the band, as well as the officers and privates of the militia company which had been a feature of the parade. The only thing he left out was the detachment of veterans.

  “Putty-boom! Putty-boom! Putty-boom-boom-boom!” he vociferated, as the drums — and then as the bugles: “Ta, ta, ra, tara!” He addressed his restive legs: “Whoa, there, you Whitey! Gee! Haw! Git up!” Then, waving an imaginary sword: “Col-lumn right! Farwud March! Halt! Carry harms!” He “carried arms.” “Show-dler harms!” He “shouldered arms,” and returned to his seat.

  “That’d be me, Grandpa. That’s the way I’d do.” And as the grandfather nodded, seeming to agree, a thought recently dismissed returned to the mind of the composite procession and he asked:

  “Well, why weren’t you ever afraid the Rebels would whip the Unions, Grandpa?”

  “Oh, we knew they couldn’t.”

  “I guess so.” The little boy laughed disdainfully, thinking his question satisfactorily answered. “I guess those ole Rebels couldn’t whipped a flea! They didn’t know how to fight any at all, did they, Grandpa?”

  “Oh, yes, they did!”

  “What?” The boy was astounded. “Weren’t they all just reg’lar ole cowards, Grandpa?”

  “No,” said the grandfather. “They were pretty fine soldiers.”

  “They were? Well, they ran away whenever you began shootin’ at ’em, didn’t they?”

  “Sometimes they did, but most times they didn’t. Sometimes they fought like wildcats — and sometimes we were the ones that ran away.”

  “What for?”

  “To keep from getting killed, or maybe to keep from getting captured.”

  “But the Rebels were bad men, weren’t they, Grandpa?”

  “No.”

  The boy’s forehead, customarily vacant, showed some little vertical shadows, produced by a struggle to think. “Well, but—” he began, slowly. “Listen, Grandpa, listen here!”

  “Well?”

  “Listen! Well, you said — you said you never got scared the ole Rebels were goin’ to win.”

  “They did win pretty often,” said the grandfather. “They won a good many battles.”

  “I mean, you said you never got scared they’d win the war.”

  “No, we were never afraid of that.”

  “Well, but if they were good men and fought like wildcats, Grandpa, and kep’ winning battles and everything, how could that be? How could you help bein’ scared they’d win the war?”

  The grandfather’s feeble eyes twinkled brightly. “Why, we knew they couldn’t, Ramsey.”

  At this, the little vertical shadows on Ramsey’s forehead became more pronounced, for he had succeeded in thinking. “Well, they didn’t know they couldn’t, did they?” he argued. “They thought they were goin’ to win, didn’t they?”

  “Yes, I guess they did. Up till toward the last, I suppose they probably did. But you see they were wrong.”

  “Well, but—” Ramsey struggled. “Listen! Listen here, Grandpa! Well, anyway, if they never got scared we’d win, and nobody got scared they’d win — well, I don’t see—”

  “You don’t see what?”

  But Ramsey found himself unable to continue his concentration; he slumped down upon the small of his back, and his brow relaxed to its more comfortable placid
ity, while his eyes wandered with a new butterfly fluttering over the irises that bordered the iron picket fence at the south side of the yard. “Oh, nothin’ much,” he murmured.

  “I see.” And his grandfather laughed again. “You mean: If the Rebels felt just as sure of winning the war as we did, and kept winning battles why shouldn’t we ever have had any doubts that we were going to win? That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I guess so, Grandpa.”

  “Well, I think it was mostly because we were certain that we were right.”

  “I see,” said Ramsey. “The Rebels knew they were on the side of the Devil.” But at this, the grandfather’s laugh was louder than it had been before, and Ramsey looked hurt. “Well, you can laugh if you want to!” he objected in an aggrieved voice. “Anyway, the Sunday-school sup’intendent told us when people knew they were on the Devil’s side they always—”

  “I dare say, I dare say,” the old man interrupted, a little impatiently. “But in this world mighty few people think they’re on the Devil’s side, Ramsey. There was a Frenchman once, in olden times; he said people were crazy because, though they couldn’t even make worms, they believed they could make gods. And so whenever countries or parts of a country get into a war, each side makes a god and a devil, and says: ‘God’s on our side and the Devil’s on the other.’ The South thought the Devil was on our side, you see.”

  “Well, that kind o’ mixes it all up more’n ever.”

  “Yes, it seems so; but Abraham Lincoln wasn’t mixed up about it. When some people told him that God was on our side, he said the important thing was to find out if we were on God’s side. That was the whole question, you see; because either side could make up a god, the kind of a god they liked and wanted; and then they’d believe in him, too, and fight for him — but if he was only a made-up god they’d lose. President Lincoln didn’t want to have a made-up god on his side; he wanted to find God Himself and find out what he wanted, and then do it. And that’s what Lincoln did.”

  “Well, I don’t understand much of all that!”