Booth Tarkington Read online

  His eyes rested a second or two longer upon the Fountain of Neptune, not an enlivening sight even in the shielding haze of autumn twilight. For more than a year no water had run in the fountain: the connections had been broken, and the Major was evasive about restorations, even when reminded by his grandson that a dry fountain is as gay as a dry fish. Soot streaks and a thousand pits gave Neptune the distinction, at least, of leprosy, which the mermaids associated with him had been consistent in catching; and his trident had been so deeply affected as to drop its prongs. Altogether, this heavy work of heavy art, smoked dry, hugely scabbed, cracked, and crumbling, was a dismal sight to the distracted eye of George Amberson Minafer, and its present condition of craziness may have added a mite to his own. His own was sufficient, with no additions, however, as he stood looking at the Johnsons’ house and those houses on both sides of it—that row of riffraff dwellings he had thought so damnable, the day when he stood in his grandfather’s yard, staring at them, after hearing what his Aunt Amelia said of the “talk” about his mother.

  He decided that he needed no hat for the sort of call he intended to make, and went forward hurriedly. Mrs. Johnson was at home, the Irish girl who came to the door informed him, and he was left to await the lady, in a room like an elegant well—the Johnsons’ “reception room”: floor space, nothing to mention; walls, blue calcimined; ceiling, twelve feet from the floor; inside shutters and gray lace curtains; five gilt chairs, a brocaded sofa, soiled, and an inlaid walnut table, supporting two tall alabaster vases; a palm, with two leaves, dying in a corner.

  Mrs. Johnson came in, breathing noticeably; and her round head, smoothly but economically decorated with the hair of an honest woman, seemed to be lingering far in the background of the Alpine bosom which took precedence of the rest of her everywhere; but when she was all in the room, it was to be seen that her breathing was the result of hospitable haste to greet the visitor, and her hand, not so dry as Neptune’s Fountain, suggested that she had paused for only the briefest ablutions. George accepted this cold, damp lump mechanically.

  “Mr. Amberson—I mean Mr. Minafer!” she exclaimed. “I’m really delighted: I understood you asked for me. Mr. Johnson’s out of the city, but Charlie’s downtown and I’m looking for him at any minute, now, and he’ll be so pleased that you——”

  “I didn’t want to see Charlie,” George said. “I want——”

  “Do sit down,” the hospitable lady urged him, seating herself upon the sofa. “Do sit down.”

  “No, I thank you. I wish——”

  “Surely you’re not going to run away again, when you’ve just come. Do sit down, Mr. Minafer. I hope you’re all well at your house and at the dear old Major’s, too. He’s looking——”

  “Mrs. Johnson” George said, in a strained loud voice which arrested her attention immediately, so that she was abruptly silent, leaving her surprised mouth open. She had already been concealing some astonishment at this unexampled visit, however, and the condition of George’s ordinarily smooth hair (for he had overlooked more than his hat) had not alleviated her perplexity. “Mrs. Johnson,” he said, “I have come to ask you a few questions which I would like you to answer, if you please.”

  She became grave at once. “Certainly, Mr. Minafer. Anything I can——”

  He interrupted sternly, yet his voice shook in spite of its sternness. “You were talking with my Aunt Fanny about my mother this afternoon.”

  At this Mrs. Johnson uttered an involuntary gasp, but she recovered herself. “Then I’m sure our conversation was a very pleasant one, if we were talking of your mother, because——”

  Again he interrupted. “My aunt has told me what the conver­sation virtually was, and I don’t mean to waste any time, Mrs. Johnson. You were talking about a——” George’s shoulders suddenly heaved uncontrollably; but he went fiercely on: “You were discussing a scandal that involved my mother’s name.”

  “Mr. Minafer!”

  “Isn’t that the truth?”

  “I don’t feel called upon to answer, Mr. Minafer,” she said with visible agitation. “I do not consider that you have any right——”

  “My aunt told me you repeated this scandal to her.”

  “I don’t think your aunt can have said that,” Mrs. Johnson returned sharply. “I did not repeat a scandal of any kind to your aunt and I think you are mistaken in saying she told you I did. We may have discussed some matters that have been a topic of comment about town——”

  “Yes!” George cried. “I think you may have! That’s what I’m here about, and what I intend to——”

  “Don’t tell me what you intend, please,” Mrs. Johnson interrupted crisply. “And I should prefer that you would not make your voice quite so loud in this house, which I happen to own. Your aunt may have told you—though I think it would have been very unwise in her if she did, and not very considerate of me—she may have told you that we discussed some such topic as I have mentioned, and possibly that would have been true. If I talked it over with her, you may be sure I spoke in the most charitable spirit, and without sharing in other people’s disposition to put an evil interpretation on what may be nothing more than unfortunate appearances and——”

  “My God!” said George. “I can’t stand this!”

  “You have the option of dropping the subject,” Mrs. Johnson suggested tartly, and she added: “Or of leaving the house.”

  “I’ll do that soon enough, but first I mean to know——”

  “I am perfectly willing to tell you anything you wish if you will remember to ask it quietly. I’ll also take the liberty of reminding you that I had a perfect right to discuss the subject with your aunt. Other people may be less considerate in not confining their discussion of it, as I have, to charitable views expressed only to a member of the family. Other people——”

  “Other people!” the unhappy George repeated viciously. “That’s what I want to know about—these other people!”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I want to ask you about them. You say you know of other people who talk about this.”

  “I presume they do.”

  “How many?”

  “What?”

  “I want to know how many other people talk about it?”

  “Dear, dear!” she protested. “How should I know that?”

  “Haven’t you heard anybody mention it?”

  “I presume so.”

  “Well, how many have you heard?”

  Mrs. Johnson was becoming more annoyed than apprehensive, and she showed it. “Really, this isn’t a court-room,” she said. “And I’m not a defendant in a libel-suit, either!”

  The unfortunate young man lost what remained of his balance. “You may be!” he cried. “I intend to know just who’s dared to say these things, if I have to force my way into every house in town, and I’m going to make them take every word of it back! I mean to know the name of every slanderer that’s spoken of this matter to you and of every tattler you’ve passed it on to yourself. I mean to know——”

  “You’ll know something pretty quick!” she said, rising with difficulty; and her voice was thick with the sense of insult. “You’ll know that you’re out in the street. Please to leave my house!”

  George stiffened sharply. Then he bowed, and strode out of the door.

  Three minutes later, dishevelled and perspiring, but cold all over, he burst into his Uncle George’s room at the Major’s without knocking. Amberson was dressing.

  “Good gracious, Georgie!” he exclaimed. “What’s up?”

  “I’ve just come from Mrs. Johnson’s—across the street,” George panted.

  “You have your own tastes!” was Amberson’s comment. “But curious as they are, you ought to do something better with your hair, and button your waistcoat to the right buttons—even for Mrs. Johnson! What were you doing ove
r there?”

  “She told me to leave the house,” George said desperately. “I went there because Aunt Fanny told me the whole town was talking about my mother and that man Morgan—that they say my mother is going to marry him and that proves she was too fond of him before my father died—she said this Mrs. Johnson was one that talked about it, and I went to her to ask who were the others.”

  Amberson’s jaw fell in dismay. “Don’t tell me you did that!” he said, in a low voice; and then, seeing that it was true, “Oh, now you have done it!”

  Chapter XXIII

  * * *

  “I’VE ‘DONE it’?” George cried. “What do you mean: I’ve done it? And what have I done?”

  Amberson had collapsed into an easy chair beside his dressing-table, the white evening tie he had been about to put on dangling from his hand, which had fallen limply on the arm of the chair. The tie dropped to the floor before he replied; and the hand that had held it was lifted to stroke his graying hair reflectively. “By Jove!” he muttered. “That is too bad!”

  George folded his arms bitterly. “Will you kindly answer my question? What have I done that wasn’t honourable and right? Do you think these riffraff can go about bandying my mother’s name——”

  “They can now,” said Amberson. “I don’t know if they could before, but they certainly can now!”

  “What do you mean by that?”

  His uncle sighed profoundly, picked up his tie, and, pre­occupied with despondency, twisted the strip of white lawn till it became unwearable. Meanwhile, he tried to enlighten his nephew. “Gossip is never fatal, Georgie,” he said, “until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”

  “See here,” George said: “I didn’t come to listen to any generalizing dose of philosophy! I ask you——”

  “You asked me what you’ve done, and I’m telling you.” Amberson gave him a melancholy smile, continuing: “Suffer me to do it in my own way. Fanny says there’s been talk about your mother, and that Mrs. Johnson does some of it. I don’t know, because naturally nobody would come to me with such stuff or mention it before me; but it’s presumably true—I suppose it is. I’ve seen Fanny with Mrs. Johnson quite a lot; and that old lady is a notorious gossip, and that’s why she ordered you out of her house when you pinned her down that she’d been gossiping. I have a suspicion Mrs. Johnson has been quite a comfort to Fanny in their long talks; but she’ll probably quit speaking to her over this, because Fanny told you. I suppose it’s true that the ‘whole town,’ a lot of others, that is, do share in the gossip. In this town, naturally, anything about any Amberson has always been a stone dropped into the centre of a pond, and a lie would send the ripples as far as a truth would. I’ve been on a steamer when the story went all over the boat, the second day out, that the prettiest girl on board didn’t have any ears; and you can take it as a rule that when a woman’s past thirty-five the prettier her hair is, the more certain you are to meet somebody with reliable information that it’s a wig. You can be sure that for many years there’s been more gossip in this place about the Ambersons than about any other family. I dare say it isn’t so much so now as it used to be, because the town got too big long ago, but it’s the truth that the more prominent you are the more gossip there is about you, and the more people would like to pull you down. Well, they can’t do it as long as you refuse to know what gossip there is about you. But the minute you notice it, it’s got you! I’m not speaking of certain kinds of slander that sometimes people have got to take to the courts; I’m talking of the wretched buzzing the Mrs. Johnsons do—the thing you seem to have such a horror of—people ‘talking’—the kind of thing that has assailed your mother. People who have repeated slander either get ashamed or forget it, if they’re let alone. Challenge them, and in self-defense they believe everything they’ve said: they’d rather believe you a sinner than believe themselves liars, naturally. Submit to gossip and you kill it; fight it and you make it strong. People will forget almost any slander except one that’s been fought.”

  “Is that all?” George asked.

  “I suppose so,” his uncle murmured sadly.

  “Well, then, may I ask what you’d have done, in my place?”

  “I’m not sure, Georgie. When I was your age I was like you in many ways, especially in not being very cool-headed, so I can’t say. Youth can’t be trusted for much, except asserting itself and fighting and making love.”

  “Indeed!” George snorted. “May I ask what you think I ought to have done?”

  “Nothing.”

  “‘Nothing?’” George echoed, mocking bitterly. “I suppose you think I mean to let my mother’s good name——”

  “Your mother’s good name!” Amberson cut him off impatiently. “Nobody has a good name in a bad mouth. Nobody has a good name in a silly mouth, either. Well, your mother’s name was in some silly mouths, and all you’ve done was to go and have a scene with the worst old woman gossip in the town—a scene that’s going to make her into a partisan against your mother, whereas she was a mere prattler before. Don’t you suppose she’ll be all over town with this to-morrow? To-morrow? Why, she’ll have her telephone going to-night as long as any of her friends are up! People that never heard anything about this are going to hear it all now, with embellishments. And she’ll see to it that everybody who’s hinted anything about poor Isabel will know that you’re on the warpath; and that will put them on the defensive and make them vicious. The story will grow as it spreads and——”

  George unfolded his arms to strike his right fist into his left palm. “But do you suppose I’m going to tolerate such things?” he shouted. “What do you suppose I’ll be doing?”

  “Nothing helpful.”

  “Oh, you think so, do you?”

  “You can do absolutely nothing,” said Amberson. “Nothing of any use. The more you do the more harm you’ll do.”

  “You’ll see! I’m going to stop this thing if I have to force my way into every house on National Avenue and Amberson Boulevard!”

  His uncle laughed rather sourly, but made no other comment.

  “Well, what do you propose to do?” George demanded. “Do you propose to sit there——”

  “Yes.”

  “—and let this riffraff bandy my mother’s good name back and forth among them? Is that what you propose to do?”

  “It’s all I can do,” Amberson returned. “It’s all any of us can do now: just sit still and hope that the thing may die down in time, in spite of your stirring up that awful old woman.”

  George drew a long breath, then advanced and stood close before his uncle. “Didn’t you understand me when I told you that people are saying my mother means to marry this man?”

  “Yes, I understood you.”

  “You say that my going over there has made matters worse,” George went on. “How about it if such a—such an unspeakable marriage did take place? Do you think that would make people believe they’d been wrong in saying—you know what they say.”

  “No,” said Amberson deliberately; “I don’t believe it would. There’d be more badness in the bad mouths and more silliness in the silly mouths, I dare say. But it wouldn’t hurt Isabel and Eugene, if they never heard of it; and if they did hear of it, then they could take their choice between placating gossip or living for their own happiness. If they have decided to marry——”

  George almost staggered. “Good God!” he gasped. “You speak of it calmly!”

  Amberson looked up at him inquiringly. “Why shouldn’t they marry if they want to?” he asked. “It’s their own affair.”

  “Why shouldn’t they?�
� George echoed. “Why shouldn’t they?”

  “Yes. Why shouldn’t they? I don’t see anything precisely monstrous about two people getting married when they’re both free and care about each other. What’s the matter with their marrying?”

  “It would be monstrous!” George shouted. “Monstrous even if this horrible thing hadn’t happened, but now in the face of this—oh, that you can sit there and even speak of it! Your own sister! O God! Oh——” He became incoherent, swinging away from Amberson and making for the door, wildly gesturing.

  “For heaven’s sake, don’t be so theatrical!” said his uncle, and then, seeing that George was leaving the room: “Come back here. You mustn’t speak to your mother of this!”

  “Don’t ’tend to,” George said indistinctly; and he plunged out into the big dimly lit hall. He passed his grandfather’s room on the way to the stairs; and the Major was visible within, his white head brightly illumined by a lamp, as he bent low over a ledger upon his roll-top desk. He did not look up, and his grandson strode by the door, not really conscious of the old figure stooping at its tremulous work with long additions and subtractions that refused to balance as they used to. George went home and got a hat and overcoat without seeing either his mother or Fanny. Then he left word that he would be out for dinner, and hurried away from the house.