The Magnificent Ambersons

by Booth Tarkington

  “The salad?”

  “No. Your whispering to me.”

  “Blarney!”

  George made no response, but checked Pendennis to a walk. Whereupon Lucy protested quickly: “Oh, don’t!”

  “Why? Do you want him to trot his legs off?”

  “No, but—”

  “No, but’—what?”

  She spoke with apparent gravity: “I know when you make him walk it’s so you can give all your attention to—to proposing to me again!”

  And as she turned a face of exaggerated color to him, “By the Lord, but you’re a little witch!” George cried.

  “George, do let Pendennis trot again!”

  “I won’t!”

  She clucked to the horse. “Get up, Pendennis! Trot! Go on! Commence!”

  Pendennis paid no attention; she meant nothing to him, and George laughed at her fondly. “You are the prettiest thing in this world, Lucy!” he exclaimed. “When I see you in winter, in furs, with your cheeks red, I think you’re prettiest then, but when I see you in summer, in a straw hat and a shirtwaist and a duck skirt and white gloves and those little silver buckled slippers, and your rose- coloured parasol, and your cheeks not red but with a kind of pinky glow about them, then I see I must have been wrong about the winter! When are you going to drop the ‘almost’ and say we’re really engaged?”

  “Oh, not for years! So there’s the answer, and Let’s trot again.”

  But George was persistent; moreover, he had become serious during the last minute or two. “I want to know,” he said. “I really mean it.”

  “Let’s don’t be serious, George,” she begged him hopefully. “Let’s talk of something pleasant.”

  He was a little offended. “Then it isn’t pleasant for you to know that I want to marry you?”

  At this she became as serious as he could have asked; she looked down, and her lip quivered like that of a child about to cry. Suddenly she put her hand upon one of his for just an instant, and then withdrew it.

  “Lucy!” he said huskily. “Dear, what’s the matter? You look as if you were going to cry. You always do that,” he went on plaintively, “whenever I can get you to talk about marrying me.”

  “I know it,” she murmured.

  “Well, why do you?”

  Her eyelids flickered, and then she looked up at him with a sad gravity, tears seeming just at the poise. “One reason’s because I have a feeling that it’s never going to be.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s just a feeling.”

  “You haven’t any reason or—”

  “It’s just a feeling.”

  “Well, if that’s all,” George said, reassured, and laughing confidently, “I guess I won’t be very much troubled!” But at once he became serious again, adopting the tone of argument. “Lucy, how is anything ever going to get a chance to come of it, so long as you keep sticking to ‘almost’? Doesn’t it strike you as unreasonable to have a ‘feeling’ that we’ll never be married, when what principally stands between us is the fact that you won’t be really engaged to me? That does seem pretty absurd! Don’t you care enough about me to marry me?”

  She looked down again, pathetically troubled. “Yes.”

  “Won’t you always care that much about me?”

  “I’m—yes—I’m afraid so, George. I never do change much about anything.”

  “Well, then, why in the world won’t you drop the ‘almost’?”

  Her distress increased. “Everything is—everything—”

  “What about ‘everything’?”

  “Everything is so—so unsettled.”

  And at that he uttered an exclamation of impatience. “If you aren’t the queerest girl! What is ‘unsettled’?”

  “Well, for one thing,” she said, able to smile at his vehemence, “you haven’t settled on anything to do. At least, if you have you’ve never spoken of it.”

  As she spoke, she gave him the quickest possible side glance of hopeful scrutiny; then looked away, not happily. Surprise and displeasure were intentionally visible upon the countenance of her companion; and he permitted a significant period of silence to elapse before making any response. “Lucy,” he said, finally, with cold dignity, “I should like to ask you a few questions.”

  “Yes?”

  “The first is: Haven’t you perfectly well understood that I don’t mean to go into business or adopt a profession?”

  “I wasn’t quite sure,” she said gently. “I really didn’t know— quite.”

  “Then of course it’s time I did tell you. I never have been able to see any occasion for a man’s going into trade, or being a lawyer, or any of those things if his position and family were such that he didn’t need to. You know, yourself, there are a lot of people in the East—in the South, too, for that matter—that don’t think we’ve got any particular family or position or culture in this part of the country. I’ve met plenty of that kind of provincial snobs myself, and they’re pretty galling. There were one or two men in my crowd at college, their families had lived on their income for three generations, and they never dreamed there was anybody in their class out here. I had to show them a thing or two, right at the start, and I guess they won’t forget it! Well, I think it’s time all their sort found out that three generations can mean just as much out here as anywhere else. That’s the way I feel about it, and let me tell you I feel it pretty deeply!”

  “But what are you going to do, George?” she cried.

  George’s earnestness surpassed hers; he had become flushed and his breathing was emotional. As he confessed, with simple genuineness, he did feel what he was saying “pretty deeply”; and in truth his state approached the tremulous. “I expect to live an honourable life,” he said. “I expect to contribute my share to charities, and to take part in—in movements.”

  “What kind?”

  “Whatever appeals to me,” he said.

  Lucy looked at him with grieved wonder. “But you really don’t mean to have any regular business or profession at all?”

  “I certainly do not!” George returned promptly and emphatically.

  “I was afraid so,” she said in a low voice.

  George continued to breathe deeply throughout another protracted interval of silence. Then he said, “I should like to revert to the questions I was asking you, if you don’t mind.”

  “No, George. I think we’d better—”

  “Your father is a business man—”

  “He’s a mechanical genius,” Lucy interrupted quickly. “Of course he’s both. And he was a lawyer once—he’s done all sorts of things.”

  “Very well. I merely wished to ask if it’s his influence that makes you think I ought to ‘do’ something?”

  Lucy frowned slightly. “Why, I suppose almost everything I think or say must be owing to his influence in one way or another. We haven’t had anybody but each other for so many years, and we always think about alike, so of course—”

  “I see!” And George’s brow darkened with resentment. “So that’s it, is it? It’s your father’s idea that I ought to go into business and that you oughtn’t to be engaged to me until I do.”

  Lucy gave a start, her denial was so quick. “No! I’ve never once spoken to him about it. Never!”

  George looked at her keenly, and he jumped to a conclusion not far from the truth. “But you know without talking to him that it’s the way he does feel about it? I see.”

  She nodded gravely. “Yes.”

  George’s brow grew darker still. “Do you think I’d be much of a man,” he said, slowly, “if I let any other man dictate to me my own way of life?”

  “George! Who’s ‘dictating’ your—”

  “It seems to me it amounts to that!” he returned.

  “Oh, no! I only know how papa thinks about things. He’s never, never spoken unkindly, or ‘dictatingly’ of you.” She lifted her hand in protest, and her face was so touching in its distress that for the moment George for
got his anger. He seized that small, troubled hand.

  “Lucy,” he said huskily. “Don’t you know that I love you?”

  “Yes—I do.”

  “Don’t you love me?”

  “Yes—I do.”

  “Then what does it matter what your father thinks about my doing something or not doing anything? He has his way, and I have mine. I don’t believe in the whole world scrubbing dishes and selling potatoes and trying law cases. Why, look at your father’s best friend, my Uncle George Amberson—he’s never done anything in his life, and—”

  “Oh, yes, he has,” she interrupted. “He was in politics.”

  “Well, I’m glad he’s out,” George said. “Politics is a dirty business for a gentleman, and Uncle George would tell you that himself. Lucy, let’s not talk any more about it. Let me tell mother when I get home that we’re engaged. Won’t you, dear?”

  She shook her head.

  “Is it because—”

  For a fleeting instant she touched to her cheek the hand that held hers. “No,” she said, and gave him a sudden little look of renewed gayety. “Let’s let it stay ‘almost’.”

  “Because your father—”

  “Oh, because it’s better!”

  George’s voice shook. “Isn’t it your father?”

  “It’s his ideals I’m thinking of—yes.”

  George dropped her hand abruptly and anger narrowed his eyes. “I know what you mean,” he said. “I dare say I don’t care for your father’s ideals any more than he does for mine!”

  He tightened the reins, Pendennis quickening eagerly to the trot; and when George jumped out of the runabout before Lucy’s gate, and assisted her to descend, the silence in which they parted was the same that had begun when Fendennis began to trot.

  Chapter XVIII

  * * *

  That evening, after dinner, George sat with his mother and his Aunt Fanny upon the veranda. In former summers, when they sat outdoors in the evening, they had customarily used an open terrace at the side of the house, looking toward the Major’s, but that more private retreat now afforded too blank and abrupt a view of the nearest of the new houses; so, without consultation, they had abandoned it for the Romanesque stone structure in front, an oppressive place.

  Its oppression seemed congenial to George; he sat upon the copestone of the stone parapet, his back against a stone pilaster; his attitude not comfortable, but rigid, and his silence not comfortable, either, but heavy. However, to the eyes of his mother and his aunt, who occupied wicker chairs at a little distance, he was almost indistinguishable except for the stiff white shield of his evening frontage.

  “It’s so nice of you always to dress in the evening, Georgie,” his mother said, her glance resting upon this surface. “Your Uncle George always used to, and so did father, for years; but they both stopped quite a long time ago. Unless there’s some special occasion, it seems to me we don’t see it done any more, except on the stage and in the magazines.”

  He made no response, and Isabel, after waiting a little while, as if she expected one, appeared to acquiesce in his mood for silence, and turned her head to gaze thoughtfully out at the street.

  There, in the highway, the evening life of the Midland city had begun. A rising moon was bright upon the tops of the shade trees, where their branches met overhead, arching across the street, but only filtered splashings of moonlight reached the block pavement below; and through this darkness flashed the firefly lights of silent bicycles gliding by in pairs and trios—or sometimes a dozen at a time might come, and not so silent, striking their little bells; the riders’ voices calling and laughing; while now and then a pair of invisible experts would pass, playing mandolin and guitar as if handle-bars were of no account in the world—their music would come swiftly, and then too swiftly die away. Surreys rumbled lightly by, with the plod-plod of honest old horses, and frequently there was the glitter of whizzing spokes from a runabout or a sporting buggy, and the sharp, decisive hoof-beats of a trotter. Then, like a cowboy shooting up a peaceful camp, a frantic devil would hurtle out of the distance, bellowing, exhaust racketing like a machine gun gone amuck—and at these horrid sounds the surreys and buggies would hug the curbstone, and the bicycles scatter to cover, cursing; while children rushed from the sidewalks to drag pet dogs from the street. The thing would roar by, leaving a long wake of turbulence; then the indignant street would quiet down for a few minutes—till another came.

  “There are a great many more than there used to be,” Miss Fanny observed, in her lifeless voice, as the lull fell after one of these visitations. “Eugene is right about that; there seem to be at least three or four times as many as there were last summer, and you never hear the ragamuffins shouting ‘Get a horse!’ nowadays; but I think he may be mistaken about their going on increasing after this. I don’t believe we’ll see so many next summer as we do now.”

  “Why?” asked Isabel.

  “Because I’ve begun to agree with George about their being more a fad than anything else, and I think it must be the height of the fad just now. You know how roller-skating came in—everybody in the world seemed to be crowding to the rinks—and now only a few children use rollers for getting to school. Besides, people won’t permit the automobiles to be used. Really, I think they’ll make laws against them. You see how they spoil the bicycling and the driving; people just seem to hate them! They’ll never stand it—never in the world! Of course I’d be sorry to see such a thing happen to Eugene, but I shouldn’t be really surprised to see a law passed forbidding the sale of automobiles, just the way there is with concealed weapons.”

  “Fanny!” exclaimed her sister-in-law. “You’re not in earnest?”

  “I am, though!”

  Isabel’s sweet-toned laugh came out of the dusk where she sat. “Then you didn’t mean it when you told Eugene you’d enjoyed the drive this afternoon?”

  “I didn’t say it so very enthusiastically, did I?”

  “Perhaps not, but he certainly thought he’d pleased you.”

  “I don’t think I gave him any right to think he’d pleased me” Fanny said slowly.

  “Why not? Why shouldn’t you, Fanny?”

  Fanny did not reply at once, and when she did, her voice was almost inaudible, but much more reproachful than plaintive. “I hardly think I’d want any one to get the notion he’d pleased me just now. It hardly seems time, yet—to me.”

  Isabel made no response, and for a time the only sound upon the dark veranda was the creaking of the wicker rocking-chair in which Fanny sat—a creaking which seemed to denote content and placidity on the part of the chair’s occupant, though at this juncture a series of human shrieks could have been little more eloquent of emotional disturbance. However, the creaking gave its hearer one great advantage: it could be ignored.

  “Have you given up smoking, George?” Isabel asked presently.

  “No.”

  “I hoped perhaps you had, because you’ve not smoked since dinner. We shan’t mind if you care to.”

  “No, thanks.”

  There was silence again, except for the creaking of the rocking-chair; then a low, clear whistle, singularly musical, was heard softly rendering an old air from “Fra Diavolo.” The creaking stopped.

  “Is that you, George?” Fanny asked abruptly.

  “Is that me what?”

  “Whistling ‘On Yonder Rock Reclining’?”

  “It’s I,” said Isabel.

  “Oh,” Fanny said dryly.

  “Does it disturb you?”

  “Not at all. I had an idea George was depressed about something, and merely wondered if he could be making such a cheerful sound.” And Fanny resumed her creaking.

  “Is she right, George?” his mother asked quickly, leaning forward in her chair to peer at him through the dusk. “You didn’t eat a very hearty dinner, but I thought it was probably because of the warm weather. Are you troubled about anything?”

  “No!” he said angrily.
r />   “That’s good. I thought we had such a nice day, didn’t you?”

  “I suppose so,” he muttered, and, satisfied, she leaned back in her chair; but “Fra Diavolo” was not revived. After a time she rose, went to the steps, and stood for several minutes looking across the street. Then her laughter was faintly heard.

  “Are you laughing about something?” Fanny inquired.

  “Pardon?” Isabel did not turn, but continued her observation of what had interested her upon the opposite side of the street.

  “I asked: Were you laughing at something?”

  “Yes, I was!” And she laughed again. “It’s that funny, fat old Mrs. Johnson. She has a habit of sitting at her bedroom window with a pair of opera-glasses.”

  “Really!”

  “Really. You can see the window through the place that was left when we had the dead walnut tree cut down. She looks up and down the street, but mostly at father’s and over here. Sometimes she forgets to put out the light in her room, and there she is, spying away for all the world to see!”

  However, Fanny made no effort to observe this spectacle, but continued her creaking. “I’ve always thought her a very good woman,” she said primly.

  “So she is,” Isabel agreed. “She’s a good, friendly old thing, a little too intimate in her manner, sometimes, and if her poor old opera-glasses afford her the quiet happiness of knowing what sort of young man our new cook is walking out with, I’m the last to begrudge it to her! Don’t you want to come and look at her, George?”

  “What? I beg your pardon. I hadn’t noticed what you were talking about.”

  “It’s nothing,” she laughed. “Only a funny old lady—and she’s gone now. I’m going, too—at least, I’m going indoors to read. It’s cooler in the house, but the heat’s really not bad anywhere, since nightfall. Summer’s dying. How quickly it goes, once it begins to die.”

  When she had gone into the house, Fanny stopped rocking, and, leaning forward, drew her black gauze wrap about her shoulders and shivered. “Isn’t it queer,” she said drearily, “how your mother can use such words?”