The Magnificent Ambersons Page 13

  George stared at the ugly houses opposite, and hated them more than ever; but he shivered. Perhaps the riffraff living in those houses sat at the windows to watch their betters; perhaps they dared to gossip—

  He uttered an exclamation, and walked rapidly toward his own front gate. The victoria had returned with Miss Fanny alone; she jumped out briskly and the victoria waited.

  “Where’s mother?” George asked sharply, as he met her.

  “At Lucy’s. I only came back to get some embroidery, because we found the sun too hot for driving. I’m in a hurry.”

  But, going into the house with her, he detained her when she would have hastened upstairs.

  “I haven’t time to talk now, Georgie; I’m going right back. I promised your mother—”

  “You listen!” said George.

  “What on earth—”

  He repeated what Amelia had said. This time, however, he spoke coldly, and without the emotion he had exhibited during the recital to his uncle: Fanny was the one who showed agitation during this interview, for she grew fiery red, and her eyes dilated. “What on earth do you want to bring such trash to me for?” she demanded, breathing fast.

  “I merely wished to know two things: whether it is your duty or mine to speak to father of what Aunt Amelia—”

  Fanny stamped her foot. “You little fool!” she cried. “You awful little fool!”

  “I decline—”

  “Decline, my hat! Your father’s a sick man, and you—”

  “He doesn’t seem so to me.”

  “Well, he does to me! And you want to go troubling him with an Amberson family row! It’s just what that cat would love you to do!”

  “Well, I—”

  “Tell your father if you like! It will only make him a little sicker to think he’s got a son silly enough to listen to such craziness!”

  “Then you’re sure there isn’t any talk?” Fanny disdained a reply in words. She made a hissing sound of utter contempt and snapped her fingers. Then she asked scornfully: “What’s the other thing you wanted to know?”

  George’s pallor increased. “Whether it mightn’t be better, under the circumstances,” he said, “if this family were not so intimate with the Morgan family—at least for a time. It might be better—”

  Fanny stared at him incredulously. “You mean you’d quit seeing Lucy?”

  “I hadn’t thought of that side of it, but if such a thing were necessary on account of talk about my mother, I—I—” He hesitated unhappily. “I suggested that if all of us—for a time—perhaps only for a time—it might be better if—”

  “See here,” she interrupted. “We’ll settle this nonsense right now. If Eugene Morgan comes to this house, for instance, to see me, your mother can’t get up and leave the place the minute he gets here, can she? What do you want her to do: insult him? Or perhaps you’d prefer she’d insult Lucy? That would do just as well. What is it you’re up to, anyhow? Do you really love your Aunt Amelia so much that you want to please her? Or do you really hate your Aunt Fanny so much that you want to—that you want to—”

  She choked and sought for her handkerchief; suddenly she began to cry.

  “Oh, see here,” George said. “I don’t hate you,” Aunt Fanny. “That’s silly. I don’t—”

  “You do! You do! You want to—you want to destroy the only thing— that I—that I ever—” And, unable to continue, she became inaudible in her handkerchief.

  George felt remorseful, and his own troubles were lightened: all at once it became clear to him that he had been worrying about nothing. He perceived that his Aunt Amelia was indeed an old cat, and that to give her scandalous meanderings another thought would be the height of folly. By no means unsusceptible to such pathos as that now exposed before him, he did not lack pity for Fanny, whose almost spoken confession was lamentable; and he was granted the vision to understand that his mother also pitied Fanny infinitely more than he did. This seemed to explain everything.

  He patted the unhappy lady awkwardly upon her shoulder. “There, there!” he said. “I didn’t mean anything. Of course the only thing to do about Aunt Amelia is to pay no attention to her. It’s all right, Aunt Fanny. Don’t cry. I feel a lot better now, myself. Come on; I’ll drive back there with you. It’s all over, and nothing’s the matter. Can’t you cheer up?”

  Fanny cheered up; and presently the customarily hostile aunt and nephew were driving out Amberson Boulevard amiably together in the hot sunshine.

  Chapter XIV

  * * *

  “Almost” was Lucy’s last word on the last night of George’s vacation— that vital evening which she had half consented to agree upon for “settling things” between them. “Almost engaged,” she meant. And George, discontented with the “almost,” but contented that she seemed glad to wear a sapphire locket with a tiny photograph of George Amberson Minafer inside it, found himself wonderful in a new world at the final instant of their parting. For, after declining to let him kiss her “good-bye,” as if his desire for such a ceremony were the most preposterous absurdity in the world, she had leaned suddenly close to him and left upon his cheek the veriest feather from a fairy’s wing.

  She wrote him a month later:

  No. It must keep on being almost.

  Isn’t almost pretty pleasant? You know well enough that I care for you. I did from the first minute I saw you, and I’m pretty sure you knew it—I’m afraid you did. I’m afraid you always knew it. I’m not conventional and cautious about being engaged, as you say I am, dear. (I always read over the “dears” in your letters a time or two, as you say you do in mine—only I read all of your letters a time or two!) But it’s such a solemn thing it scares me. It means a good deal to a lot of people besides you and me, and that scares me, too. You write that I take your feeling for me “too lightly” and that I “take the whole affair too lightly.” Isn’t that odd! Because to myself I seem to take it as something so much more solemn than you do. I shouldn’t be a bit surprised to find myself an old lady, some day, still thinking of you—while you’d be away and away with somebody else perhaps, and me forgotten ages ago! “Lucy Morgan,” you’d say, when you saw my obituary. “Lucy Morgan? Let me see: I seem to remember the name. Didn’t I know some Lucy Morgan or other, once upon a time?” Then you’d shake your big white head and stroke your long white beard —you’d have such a distinguished long white beard! and you’d say, ‘No. I don’t seem to remember any Lucy Morgan; I wonder what made me think I did?’ And poor me! I’d be deep in the ground, wondering if you’d heard about it and what you were saying! Good-bye for to-day. Don’t work too hard—dear!

  George immediately seized pen and paper, plaintively but vigorously requesting Lucy not to imagine him with a beard, distinguished or otherwise, even in the extremities of age. Then, after inscribing his protest in the matter of this visioned beard, he concluded his missive in a tone mollified to tenderness, and proceeded to read a letter from his mother which had reached him simultaneously with Lucy’s. Isabel wrote from Asheville, where she had just arrived with her husband.

  I think your father looks better already, darling, though we’ve been here only a few hours It may be we’ve found just the place to build him up. The doctors said they hoped it would prove to be, and if it is, it would be worth the long struggle we had with him to get him to give up and come. Poor dear man, he was so blue, not about his health but about giving up the worries down at his office and forgetting them for a time—if he only will forget them! It took the pressure of the family and all his best friends, to get him to come—but father and brother George and Fanny and Eugene Morgan all kept at him so constantly that he just had to give in. I’m afraid that in my anxiety to get him to do what the doctors wanted him to, I wasn’t able to back up brother George as I should in his difficulty with Sydney and Amelia. I’m so sorry! George is more upset than I’ve ever seen him— they’ve got what they wanted, and they’re sailing before long, I hear, to live in Florence. Father sa
id he couldn’t stand the constant persuading—I’m afraid the word he used was “nagging.” I can’t understand people behaving like that. George says they may be Ambersons, but they’re vulgar! I’m afraid I almost agree with him. At least, I think they were inconsiderate. But I don’t see why I’m unburdening myself of all this to you, poor darling! We’ll have forgotten all about it long before you come home for the holidays, and it should mean little or nothing to you, anyway. Forget that I’ve been so foolish!

  Your father is waiting for me to take a walk with him—that’s a splendid sign, because he hasn’t felt he could walk much, at home, lately. I mustn’t keep him waiting. Be careful to wear your mackintosh and rubbers in rainy weather, and, as soon as it begins to get colder, your ulster. Wish you could see your father now. Looks so much better! We plan to stay six weeks if the place agrees with him. It does really seem to already! He’s just called in the door to say he’s waiting. Don’t smoke too much, darling boy.

  Devotedly, your mother Isabel.

  But she did not keep her husband there for the six weeks she anticipated. She did not keep him anywhere that long. Three weeks after writing this letter, she telegraphed suddenly to George that they were leaving for home at once; and four days later, when he and a friend came whistling into his study, from lunch at the club, he found another telegram upon his desk.

  He read it twice before he comprehended its import.

  Papa left us at ten this morning, dearest. Mother.

  The friend saw the change in his face. “Not bad news?”

  George lifted utterly dumfounded eyes from the yellow paper.

  “My father,” he said weakly. “She says—she says he’s dead. I’ve got to go home.”

  His Uncle George and the Major met him at the station when he arrived —the first time the Major had ever come to meet his grandson. The old gentleman sat in his closed carriage (which still needed paint) at the entrance to the station, but he got out and advanced to grasp George’s hand tremulously, when the latter appeared. “Poor fellow!” he said, and patted him repeatedly upon the shoulder. “Poor fellow! Poor Georgie!”

  George had not yet come to a full realization of his loss: so far, his condition was merely dazed; and as the Major continued to pat him, murmuring “Poor fellow!” over and over, George was seized by an almost irresistible impulse to tell his grandfather that he was not a poodle. But he said “Thanks,” in a low voice, and got into the carriage, his two relatives following with deferential sympathy. He noticed that the Major’s tremulousness did not disappear, as they drove up the street, and that he seemed much feebler than during the summer. Principally, however, George was concerned with his own emotion, or rather, with his lack of emotion; and the anxious sympathy of his grandfather and his uncle made him feel hypocritical. He was not grief-stricken; but he felt that he ought to be, and, with a secret shame, concealed his callousness beneath an affectation of solemnity.

  But when he was taken into the room where lay what was left of Wilbur Minafer, George had no longer to pretend; his grief was sufficient. It needed only the sight of that forever inert semblance of the quiet man who had been always so quiet a part of his son’s life—so quiet a part that George had seldom been consciously aware that his father was indeed a. part of his life. As the figure lay there, its very quietness was what was most lifelike; and suddenly it struck George hard. And in that unexpected, racking grief of his son, Wilbur Minafer became more vividly George’s father than he had ever been in life.

  When George left the room, his arm was about his black-robed mother, his shoulders were still shaken with sobs. He leaned upon his mother; she gently comforted him; and presently he recovered his composure and became self-conscious enough to wonder if he had not been making an unmanly display of himself. “I’m all right again, mother,” he said awkwardly. “Don’t worry about me: you’d better go lie down, or something; you look pretty pale.”

  Isabel did look pretty pale, but not ghastly pale, as Fanny did. Fanny’s grief was overwhelming; she stayed in her room, and George did not see her until the next day, a few minutes before the funeral, when her haggard face appalled him. But by this time he was quite himself again, and during the short service in the cemetery his thoughts even wandered so far as to permit him a feeling of regret not directly connected with his father. Beyond the open flower-walled grave was a mound where new grass grew; and here lay his great-uncle, old John Minafer, who had died the previous autumn; and beyond this were the graves of George’s grandfather and grandmother Minafer, and of his grandfather Minafer’s second wife, and her three sons, George’s half- uncles, who had been drowned together in a canoe accident when George was a child—Fanny was the last of the family. Next beyond was the Amberson family lot, where lay the Major’s wife and their sons Henry and Milton, uncles whom George dimly remembered; and beside them lay Isabel’s older sister, his Aunt Estelle, who had died, in her girlhood, long before George was born. The Minafer monument was a granite block, with the name chiseled upon its one polished side, and the Amberson monument was a white marble shaft taller than any other in that neighbourhood. But farther on there was a newer section of the cemetery, an addition which had been thrown open to occupancy only a few years before, after dexterous modern treatment by a landscape specialist. There were some large new mausoleums here, and shafts taller than the Ambersons’, as well as a number of monuments of some sculptural pretentiousness; and altogether the new section appeared to be a more fashionable and important quarter than that older one which contained the Amberson and Minafer lots. This was what caused George’s regret, during the moment or two when his mind strayed from his father and the reading of the service.

  On the train, going back to college, ten days later, this regret (though it was as much an annoyance as a regret) recurred to his mind, and a feeling developed within him that the new quarter of the cemetery was in bad taste—not architecturally or sculpturally perhaps, but in presumption: it seemed to flaunt a kind of parvenu ignorance, as if it were actually pleased to be unaware that all the aristocratic and really important families were buried in the old section.

  The annoyance gave way before a recollection of the sweet mournfulness of his mother’s face, as she had said good-bye to him at the station, and of how lovely she looked in her mourning. He thought of Lucy, whom he had seen only twice, and he could not help feeling that in these quiet interviews he had appeared to her as tinged with heroism— she had shown, rather than said, how brave she thought him in his sorrow. But what came most vividly to George’s mind, during these retrospections, was the despairing face of his Aunt Fanny. Again and again he thought of it; he could not avoid its haunting. And for days, after he got back to college, the stricken likeness of Fanny would appear before him unexpectedly, and without a cause that he could trace in his immediately previous thoughts. Her grief had been so silent, yet it had so amazed him.

  George felt more and more compassion for this ancient antagonist of his, and he wrote to his mother about her:

  I’m afraid poor Aunt Fanny might think now father’s gone we won’t want her to live with us any longer and because I always teased her so much she might think I’d be for turning her out. I don’t know where on earth she’d go or what she could live on if we did do something like this, and of course we never would do such a thing, but I’m pretty sure she had something of the kind on her mind. She didn’t say anything, but the way she looked is what makes me think so. Honestly, to me she looked just scared sick. You tell her there isn’t any danger in the world of my treating her like that. Tell her everything is to go on just as it always has. Tell her to cheer up!

  Chapter XV

  * * *

  Isabel did more for Fanny than telling her to cheer up. Everything that Fanny inherited from her father, old Aleck Minafer, had been invested in Wilbur’s business; and Wilbur’s business, after a period of illness corresponding in dates to the illness of Wilbur’s body, had died just before Wilbur did. George Ambers
on and Fanny were both “wiped out to a miracle of precision,” as Amberson said. They “owned not a penny and owed not a penny,” he continued, explaining his phrase. “It’s like the moment just before drowning: you’re not under water and you’re not out of it. All you know is that you’re not dead yet.”

  He spoke philosophically, having his “prospects” from his father to fall back upon; but Fanny had neither “prospects” nor philosophy. However, a legal survey of Wilbur’s estate revealed the fact that his life insurance was left clear of the wreck; and Isabel, with the cheerful consent of her son, promptly turned this salvage over to her sister-in-law. Invested, it would yield something better than nine hundred dollars a year, and thus she was assured of becoming neither a pauper nor a dependent, but proved to be, as Amberson said, adding his efforts to the cheering up of Fanny, “an heiress, after all, in spite of rolling mills and the devil.” She was unable to smile, and he continued his humane gayeties. “See what a wonderfully desirable income nine hundred dollars is, Fanny: a bachelor, to be in your class, must have exactly forty-nine thousand one hundred a year. Then, you see, all you need to do, in order to have fifty thousand a year, is to be a little encouraging when some bachelor in your class begins to show by his haberdashery what he wants you to think about him!”

  She looked at him wanly, murmured a desolate response—she had “sewing to do”—and left the room; while Amberson shook his head ruefully at his sister. “I’ve often thought that humor was not my forte,” he sighed. “Lord! She doesn’t ‘cheer up’ much!”

  The collegian did not return to his home for the holidays. Instead, Isabel joined him, and they went South for the two weeks. She was proud of her stalwart, good-looking son at the hotel where they stayed, and it was meat and drink to her when she saw how people stared at him in the lobby and on the big verandas—indeed, her vanity in him was so dominant that she was unaware of their staring at her with more interest and an admiration friendlier than George evoked. Happy to have him to herself for this fortnight, she loved to walk with him, leaning upon his arm, to read with him, to watch the sea with him—perhaps most of all she liked to enter the big dining room with him.