The Magnificent Ambersons

by Booth Tarkington

  George’s anticipations were not disappointed. When he came home in June his friend was awaiting him; at least, she was so pleased to see him again that for a few minutes after their first encounter she was a little breathless, and a great deal glowing, and quiet withal. Their sentimental friendship continued, though sometimes he was irritated by her making it less sentimental than he did, and sometimes by what he called her “air of superiority.” Her air was usually, in truth, that of a fond but amused older sister; and George did not believe such an attitude was warranted by her eight months of seniority.

  Lucy and her father were living at the Amberson Hotel, while Morgan got his small machine-shops built in a western outskirt of the town; and George grumbled about the shabbiness and the old-fashioned look of the hotel, though it was “still the best in the place, of course.” He remonstrated with his grandfather, declaring that the whole Amberson Estate would be getting “run-down and out-at-heel, if things weren’t taken in hand pretty soon.” He urged the general need of rebuilding, renovating, varnishing, and lawsuits. But the Major, declining to hear him out, interrupted querulously, saying that he had enough to bother him without any advice from George; and retired to his library, going so far as to lock the door audibly.

  “Second childhood!” George muttered, shaking his head; and he thought sadly that the Major had not long to live. However, this surmise depressed him for only a moment or so. Of course, people couldn’t be expected to live forever, and it would be a good thing to have someone in charge of the Estate who wouldn’t let it get to looking so rusty that riffraff dared to make fun of it. For George had lately undergone the annoyance of calling upon the Morgans, in the rather stuffy red velours and gilt parlour of their apartment at the hotel, one evening when Mr. Frederick Kinney also was a caller, and Mr. Kinney had not been tactful. In fact, though he adopted a humorous tone of voice, in expressing his, sympathy for people who, through the city’s poverty in hotels, were obliged to stay at the Amberson, Mr. Kinney’s intention was interpreted by the other visitor as not at all humorous, but, on the contrary, personal and offensive.

  George rose abruptly, his face the colour of wrath. “Good-night, Miss Morgan. Good-night, Mr. Morgan,” he said. “I shall take pleasure in calling at some other time when a more courteous sort of people may be present.”

  “Look here!” the hot-headed Fred burst out. “Don’t you try to make me out a boor, George Minafer! I wasn’t hinting anything at you; I simply forgot all about your grandfather owning this old building. Don’t you try to put me in the light of a boor! I won’t—”

  But George walked out in the very course of this vehement protest, and it was necessarily left unfinished.

  Mr. Kinney remained only a few moments after George’s departure; and as the door closed upon him, the distressed Lucy turned to her father. She was plaintively surprised to find him in a condition of immoderate laughter.

  “I didn’t—I didn’t think I could hold out!” he gasped, and, after choking until tears came to his eyes, felt blindly for the chair from which he had risen to wish Mr. Kinney an indistinct good-night. His hand found the arm of the chair; he collapsed feebly, and sat uttering incoherent sounds.

  “Papa!”

  “It brings things back so!” he managed to explain, “This very Fred Kinney’s father and young George’s father, Wilbur Minafer, used to do just such things when they were at that age—and, for that matter, so did George Amberson and I, and all the rest of us!” And, in spite of his exhaustion, he began to imitate: “Don’t you try to put me in the light of a boor!” “I shall take pleasure in calling at some time when a more courteous sort of people—” He was unable to go on.

  There is a mirth for every age, and Lucy failed to comprehend her father’s, but tolerated it a little ruefully.

  “Papa, I think they were shocking. Weren’t they awful!”

  “Just—just boys!” he moaned, wiping his eyes. But Lucy could not smile at all; she was beginning to look indignant. “I can forgive that poor Fred Kinney,” she said. “He’s just blundering—but George— oh, George behaved outrageously!”

  “It’s a difficult age,” her father observed, his calmness somewhat restored. “Girls don’t seem to have to pass through it quite as boys do, or their savoir faire is instinctive—or something!” And he gave away to a return of his convulsion.

  She came and sat upon the arm of his chair. “Papa, why should George behave like that?”

  “He’s sensitive.”

  “Rather! But why is he? He does anything he likes to, without any regard for what people think. Then why should he mind so furiously when the least little thing reflects upon him, or on anything or anybody connected with him?”

  Eugene patted her hand. “That’s one of the greatest puzzles of human vanity, dear; and I don’t pretend to know the answer. In all my life, the most arrogant people that I’ve known have been the most sensitive. The people who have done the most in contempt of other people’s opinion, and who consider themselves the highest above it, have been the most furious if it went against them. Arrogant and domineering people can’t stand the least, lightest, faintest breath of criticism. It just kills them.”

  “Papa, do you think George is arrogant and domineering?”

  “Oh, he’s still only a boy,” said Eugene consolingly. “There’s plenty of fine stuff in him—can’t help but be, because he’s Isabel Amberson’s son.”

  Lucy stroked his hair, which was still almost as dark as her own. “You liked her pretty well once, I guess, papa.”

  “I do still,” he said quietly.

  “She’s lovely—lovely! Papa—” she paused, then continued—”I wonder sometimes—”

  “What?”

  “I wonder just how she happened to marry Mr. Minafer.”

  “Oh, Minafer’s all right,” said Eugene. “He’s a quiet sort of man, but he’s a good man and a kind man. He always was, and those things count.”

  “But in a way—well, I’ve heard people say there wasn’t anything to him at all except business and saving money. Miss Fanny Minafer herself told me that everything George and his mother have of their own—that is, just to spend as they like—she says it has always come from Major Amberson.”

  “Thrift, Horatio!” said Eugene lightly. “Thrift’s an inheritance, and a common enough one here. The people who settled the country had to save, so making and saving were taught as virtues, and the people, to the third generation, haven’t found out that making and saving are only means to an end. Minafer doesn’t believe in money being spent. He believes God made it to be invested and saved.”

  “But George isn’t saving. He’s reckless, and even if he is arrogant and conceited and bad-tempered, he’s awfully generous.”

  “Oh, he’s an Amberson,” said her father. “The Ambersons aren’t saving. They’re too much the other way, most of them.”

  “I don’t think I should have called George bad-tempered,” Lucy said thoughtfully. “No. I don’t think he is.”

  “Only when he’s cross about something?” Morgan suggested, with a semblance of sympathetic gravity.

  “Yes,” she said brightly, not perceiving that his intention was humorous. “All the rest of the time he’s really very amiable. Of course, he’s much more a perfect child, the whole time, than he realizes! He certainly behaved awfully to-night.” She jumped up, her indignation returning. “He did, indeed, and it won’t do to encourage him in it. I think he’ll find me pretty cool—for a week or so!”

  Whereupon her father suffered a renewal of his attack of uproarious laughter.

  Chapter XI

  * * *

  In the matter of coolness, George met Lucy upon her own predetermined ground; in fact, he was there first, and, at their next encounter, proved loftier and more formal than she did. Their estrangement lasted three weeks, and then disappeared without any preliminary treaty: it had worn itself out, and they forgot it.

  At times, however, George found oth
er disturbances to the friendship. Lucy was “too much the village belle,” he complained; and took a satiric attitude toward his competitors, referring to them as her “local swains and bumpkins,” sulking for an afternoon when she reminded him that he, too, was at least “local.” She was a belle with older people as well; Isabel and Fanny were continually taking her driving, bringing her home with them to lunch or dinner, and making a hundred little engagements with her, and the Major had taken a great fancy to her, insisting upon her presence and her father’s at the Amberson family dinner at the Mansion every Sunday evening. She knew how to flirt with old people, he said, as she sat next him at the table on one of these Sunday occasions; and he had always liked her father, even when Eugene was a “terror” long ago. “Oh, yes, he was!” the Major laughed, when she remonstrated. “He came up here with my son George and some others for a serenade one night, and Eugene stepped into a bass fiddle, and the poor musicians just gave up! I had a pretty half-hour getting my son George upstairs. I remember! It was the last time Eugene ever touched a drop—but he’d touched plenty before that, young lady, and he daren’t deny it! Well, well; there’s another thing that’s changed: hardly anybody drinks nowadays. Perhaps it’s just as well, but things used to be livelier. That serenade was just before Isabel was married—and don’t you fret, Miss Lucy: your father remembers it well enough!” The old gentleman burst into laughter, and shook his finger at Eugene across the table. “The fact is,” the Major went on hilariously, “I believe if Eugene hadn’t broken that bass fiddle and given himself away, Isabel would never have taken Wilbur! I shouldn’t be surprised if that was about all the reason that Wilbur got her! What do you think. Wilbur?”

  “I shouldn’t be surprised,” said Wilbur placidly. “If your notion is right, I’m glad ‘Gene broke the fiddle. He was giving me a hard run!”

  The Major always drank three glasses of champagne at his Sunday dinner, and he was finishing the third. “What do you say about it, Isabel? By Jove!” he cried, pounding the table. “She’s blushing!”

  Isabel did blush, but she laughed. “Who wouldn’t blush!” she cried, and her sister-in-law came to her assistance.

  “The important thing,” said Fanny jovially, “is that Wilbur did get her, and not only got her, but kept her!”

  Eugene was as pink as Isabel, but he laughed without any sign of embarrassment other than his heightened colour. “There’s another important thing—that is, for me,” he said. “It’s the only thing that makes me forgive that bass viol for getting in my way.”

  “What is it?” the Major asked.

  “Lucy,” said Morgan gently.

  Isabel gave him a quick glance, all warm approval, and there was a murmur of friendliness round the table.

  George was not one of those who joined in this applause. He considered his grandfather’s nonsense indelicate, even for second childhood, and he thought that the sooner the subject was dropped the better. However, he had only a slight recurrence of the resentment which had assailed him during the winter at every sign of his mother’s interest in Morgan; though he was still ashamed of his aunt sometimes, when it seemed to him that Fanny was almost publicly throwing herself at the widower’s head. Fanny and he had one or two arguments in which her fierceness again astonished and amused him.

  “You drop your criticisms of your relatives,” she bade him, hotly, one day, “and begin thinking a little about your own behaviour! You say people will ‘talk’ about my—about my merely being pleasant to an old friend! What do I care how they talk? I guess if people are talking about anybody in this family they’re talking about the impertinent little snippet that hasn’t any respect for anything, and doesn’t even know enough to attend to his own affairs!”

  “Snippet,’ Aunt Fanny!” George laughed. “How elegant! And ‘little snippet’—when I’m over five-feet-eleven?”

  “I said it!” she snapped, departing. “I don’t see how Lucy can stand you!”

  “You’d make an amiable stepmother-in-law!” he called after her. “I’ll be careful about proposing to Lucy!”

  These were but roughish spots in a summer that glided by evenly and quickly enough, for the most part, and, at the end, seemed to fly. On the last night before George went back to be a Junior, his mother asked him confidently if it had not been a happy summer.

  He hadn’t thought about it, he answered. “Oh,’ I suppose so. Why?”

  “I just thought it would be: nice to hear you say so,” she said, smiling. “I mean, it’s pleasant for people of my age to know that people of your age realize that they’re happy.”

  “People of your age!” he repeated. “You know you don’t look precisely like an old woman, mother. Not precisely!”

  “No,” she said. “And I suppose I feel about as young as you do, inside, but it won’t be many years before I must begin to look old. It does come!” She sighed, still smiling. “It’s seemed to me that, it must have been a happy summer for you—a real ‘summer of roses and wine’—without the wine, perhaps. ‘Gather ye roses while ye may’—or was it primroses? Time does really fly, or perhaps it’s more like the sky—and smoke—”

  George was puzzled. “What do you mean: time being like the sky and smoke?”

  “I mean the things that we have and that we think are so solid— they’re like smoke, and time is like the sky that the smoke disappears into. You know how wreath of smoke goes up from a chimney, and seems all thick and black and busy against the sky, as if it were going to do such important things and last forever, and you see it getting thinner and thinner—and then, in such a little while, it isn’t there at all; nothing is left but the sky, and the sky keeps on being just the same forever.”

  “It strikes me you’re getting mixed up,” said George cheerfully. “I don’t see much resemblance between time and the sky, or between things and smoke-wreaths; but I do see one reason you like ‘Lucy Morgan so much. She talks that same kind of wistful, moony way sometimes—I don’t mean to say I mind it in either of you, because I rather like to listen to it, and you’ve got a very good voice, mother. It’s nice to listen to, no matter how much smoke and sky, and so on, you talk. So’s Lucy’s for that matter; and I see why you’re congenial. She talks that way to her father, too; and he’s right there with the same kind of guff. Well, it’s all right with me!” He laughed, teasingly, and allowed her to retain his hand, which she had fondly seized. “I’ve got plenty to think about when people drool along!”

  She pressed his hand to her cheek, and a tear made a tiny warm streak across one of his knuckles.

  “For heaven’s sake!” he said. “What’s the matter? Isn’t everything all right?”

  “You’re going away!”

  “Well, I’m coming back, don’t you suppose? Is that all that worries you?”

  She cheered up, and smiled again, but shook her head. “I never can bear to see you go—that’s the most of it. I’m a little bothered about your father, too.”

  “Why?”

  “It seems to me he looks so badly. Everybody thinks so.”

  “What nonsense!” George laughed. “He’s been looking that way all summer. He isn’t much different from the way he’s looked all his life, that I can see. What’s the matter with him?”

  “He never talks much about his business to me but I think he’s been worrying about some investments he made last year. I think his worry has affected his health.”

  “What investments?” George demanded. “He hasn’t gone into Mr. Morgan’s automobile concern, has he?”

  “No,” Isabel smiled. “The ‘automobile concern’ is all Eugene’s, and it’s so small I understand it’s taken hardly anything. No; your father has always prided himself on making only the most absolutely safe investments, but two or three years ago he and your Uncle George both put a great deal—pretty much everything they could get together, I think—into the stock of rolling-mills some friends of theirs owned, and I’m afraid the mills haven’t been doing well.”

/>   “What of that? Father needn’t worry. You and I could take care of him the rest of his life on what grandfather—”

  “Of course,” she agreed. “But your father’s always lived so for his business and taken such pride in his sound investments; it’s a passion with him. I—”

  “Pshaw! He needn’t worry! You tell him we’ll look after him: we’ll build him a little stone bank in the backyard, if he busts up, and he can go and put his pennies in it every morning. That’ll keep him just as happy as he ever was!” He kissed her. “Good-night, I’m going to tell Lucy good-bye. Don’t sit up for me.”

  She walked to the front gate with him, still holding his hand, and he told her again not to “sit up” for him.

  “Yes, I will,” she laughed. “You won’t be very late.”

  “Well—it’s my last night.”

  “But I know Lucy, and she knows I want to see you, too, your last night. You’ll see: she’ll send you home promptly at eleven!”

  But she was mistaken: Lucy sent him home promptly at ten.

  Chapter XII

  * * *

  Isabel’s uneasiness about her husbands health—sometimes reflected in her letters to George during the winter that followed—had not been alleviated when the accredited Senior returned for his next summer vacation, and she confided to him in his room, soon after his arrival, that “something” the doctor had said to her lately had made her more uneasy than ever.

  “Still worrying over his rolling-mills investments?” George asked, not seriously impressed.

  “I’m afraid it’s past that stage from what Dr Rainey says. His worries only aggravate his condition now. Dr. Rainey says we ought to get him away.”