Booth Tarkington Page 23

  “And yet,” George broke in, “you see what he implies about me. Don’t you think, really, that this was a pretty insulting letter for that man to be asking you to hand your son?”

  “Oh, no!” she cried. “You can see how fair he means to be, and he didn’t ask for me to give it to you. It was brother George who——”

  “Never mind that, now! You say he tries to be fair, and yet do you suppose it ever occurs to him that I’m doing my simple duty? That I’m doing what my father would do if he were alive? That I’m doing what my father would ask me to do if he could speak from his grave out yonder? Do you suppose it ever occurs to that man for one minute that I’m protecting my mother?” George raised his voice, advancing upon the helpless lady fiercely; and she could only bend her head before him. “He talks about my ‘Will’—how it must be beaten down; yes, and he asks my mother to do that little thing to please him! What for? Why does he want me ‘beaten’ by my mother? Because I’m trying to protect her name! He’s got my mother’s name bandied up and down the streets of this town till I can’t step in those streets without wondering what every soul I meet is thinking of me and of my family, and now he wants you to marry him so that every gossip in town will say ‘There! What did I tell you? I guess that proves it’s true!’ You can’t get away from it; that’s exactly what they’d say, and this man pretends he cares for you, and yet asks you to marry him and give them the right to say it. He says he and you don’t care what they say, but I know better! He may not care—probably he’s that kind—but you do. There never was an Amberson yet that would let the Amberson name go trailing in the dust like that! It’s the proudest name in this town and it’s going to stay the proudest; and I tell you that’s the deepest thing in my nature—not that I’d expect Eugene Morgan to understand—the very deepest thing in my nature is to protect that name, and to fight for it to the last breath when danger threatens it, as it does now—through my mother!” He turned from her, striding up and down and tossing his arms about, in a tumult of gesture. “I can’t believe it of you, that you’d think of such a sacrilege! That’s what it would be—sacrilege! When he talks about your unselfishness toward me, he’s right—you have been unselfish and you have been a perfect mother. But what about him? Is it unselfish of him to want you to throw away your good name just to please him? That’s all he asks of you—and to quit being my mother! Do you think I can believe you really care for him? I don’t! You are my mother and you’re an Amberson—and I believe you’re too proud! You’re too proud to care for a man who could write such a letter as that!” He stopped, faced her, and spoke with more self-control: “Well, what are you going to do about it, mother?”

  George was right about his mother’s being proud. And even when she laughed with a negro gardener, or even those few times in her life when people saw her weep, Isabel had a proud look—something that was independent and graceful and strong. But she did not have it now: she leaned against the wall, beside his dressing-table, and seemed beset with humility and with weakness. Her head drooped.

  “What answer are you going to make to such a letter?” George demanded, like a judge on the bench.

  “I—I don’t quite know, dear,” she murmured.

  “You don’t?” he cried. “You——”

  “Wait,” she begged him. “I’m so—confused.”

  “I want to know what you’re going to write him. Do you think if you did what he wants you to I could bear to stay another day in this town, mother? Do you think I could ever bear even to see you again if you married him? I’d want to, but you surely know I just—couldn’t!”

  She made a futile gesture, and seemed to breathe with difficulty. “I—I wasn’t—quite sure,” she faltered, “about—about it’s being wise for us to be married—even before knowing how you feel about it. I wasn’t even sure it was quite fair to—to Eugene. I have—I seem to have that family trouble—like father’s—that I spoke to you about once.” She managed a deprecatory little dry laugh. “Not that it amounts to much, but I wasn’t at all sure that it would be fair to him. Marrying doesn’t mean so much, after all—not at my age. It’s enough to know that—that people think of you—and to see them. I thought we were all—oh, pretty happy the way things were, and I don’t think it would mean giving up a great deal for him or me, either, if we just went on as we have been. I—I see him almost every day, and——”

  “Mother!” George’s voice was loud and stern. “Do you think you could go on seeing him after this!”

  She had been talking helplessly enough before; her tone was little more broken now. “Not—not even—see him?”

  “How could you?” George cried. “Mother, it seems to me that if he ever set foot in this house again—oh! I can’t speak of it! Could you see him, knowing what talk it makes every time he turns into this street, and knowing what that means to me! Oh, I don’t understand all this—I don’t! If you’d told me, a year ago, that such things were going to happen, I’d have thought you were insane—and now I believe I am!”

  Then, after a preliminary gesture of despair, as though he meant harm to the ceiling, he flung himself heavily, face downward, upon the bed. His anguish was none the less real for its vehemence; and the stricken lady came to him instantly and bent over him, once more enfolding him in her arms. She said nothing, but suddenly her tears fell upon his head; she saw them, and seemed to be startled.

  “Oh, this won’t do!” she said. “I’ve never let you see me cry before, except when your father died. I mustn’t!”

  And she ran from the room.

  . . . A little while after she had gone, George rose and began solemnly to dress for dinner. At one stage of these conscientious proceedings he put on, temporarily, his long black velvet dressing-gown, and, happening to catch sight in his pier glass of the picturesque and mediæval figure thus presented, he paused to regard it; and something profoundly theatrical in his nature came to the surface.

  His lips moved; he whispered, half-aloud, some famous fragments:

  “’Tis not alone my inky cloak, good mother,

  Nor customary suits of solemn black . . .”

  For, in truth, the mirrored princely image, with hair dishevelled on the white brow, and the long tragic fall of black velvet from the shoulders, had brought about (in his thought, at least) some comparisons of his own times, so out of joint, with those of that other gentle prince and heir whose widowed mother was minded to marry again.

  “But I have that within which passeth show;

  These but the trappings and the suits of Woe.”

  Not less like Hamlet did he feel and look as he sat gauntly at the dinner table with Fanny to partake of a meal throughout which neither spoke. Isabel had sent word “not to wait” for her, an injunction it was as well they obeyed, for she did not come at all. But with the renewal of sustenance furnished to his system, some relaxation must have occurred within the high-strung George. Dinner was not quite finished when, without warning, sleep hit him hard. His burning eyes could no longer restrain the lids above them; his head sagged beyond control; and he got to his feet, and went lurching upstairs, yawning with exhaustion. From the door of his room, which he closed mechanically, with his eyes shut, he went blindly to his bed, fell upon it soddenly, and slept—with his face full upturned to the light.

  . . . It was after midnight when he woke, and the room was dark. He had not dreamed, but he woke with the sense that somebody or something had been with him while he slept—somebody or something infinitely compassionate; somebody or something infinitely protective, that would let him come to no harm and to no grief.

  He got up, and pressed the light on. Pinned to the cover of his dressing-table was a square envelope, with the words, “For you, dear,” written in pencil upon it. But the message inside was in ink, a little smudged here and there.

  I have bee
n out to the mail-box, darling, with a letter I’ve written to Eugene, and he’ll have it in the morning. It would be unfair not to let him know at once, and my decision could not change if I waited. It would always be the same. I think it is a little better for me to write to you, like this, instead of waiting till you wake up and then telling you, because I’m foolish and might cry again, and I took a vow once, long ago, that you should never see me cry. Not that I’ll feel like crying when we talk things over to-morrow. I’ll be “all right and fine” (as you say so often) by that time—don’t fear. I think what makes me most ready to cry now is the thought of the terrible suffering in your poor face, and the unhappy knowledge that it is I, your mother, who put it there. It shall never come again! I love you better than anything and everything else on earth. God gave you to me—and oh! how thankful I have been every day of my life for that sacred gift—and nothing can ever come between me and God’s gift. I cannot hurt you, and I cannot let you stay hurt as you have been—not another instant after you wake up, my darling boy! It is beyond my power. And Eugene was right—I know you couldn’t change about this. Your suffering shows how deep-seated the feeling is within you. So I’ve written him just about what I think you would like me to—though I told him I would always be fond of him and always his best friend, and I hoped his dearest friend. He’ll understand about not seeing him. He’ll understand that, though I didn’t say it in so many words. You mustn’t trouble about that—he’ll understand. Good-night, my darling, my beloved, my beloved! You mustn’t be troubled. I think I shouldn’t mind anything very much so long as I have you “all to myself”—as people say—to make up for your long years away from me at college. We’ll talk of what’s best to do in the morning, shan’t we? And for all this pain you’ll forgive your loving and devoted mother.

  ISABEL.

  Chapter XXVII

  * * *

  HAVING FINISHED some errands downtown, the next afternoon, George Amberson Minafer was walking up National Avenue on his homeward way when he saw in the distance, coming toward him, upon the same side of the street, the figure of a young lady—a figure just under the middle height, comely indeed, and to be mistaken for none other in the world—even at two hundred yards. To his sharp discomfiture his heart immediately forced upon him the consciousness of its acceleration; a sudden warmth about his neck made him aware that he had turned red, and then, departing, left him pale. For a panicky moment he thought of facing about in actual flight; he had little doubt that Lucy would meet him with no token of recognition, and all at once this probability struck him as unendurable. And if she did not speak, was it the proper part of chivalry to lift his hat and take the cut bareheaded? Or should the finer gentleman acquiesce in the lady’s desire for no further acquaintance, and pass her with stony mien and eyes constrained forward? George was a young man badly flustered.

  But the girl approaching him was unaware of his trepidation, being perhaps somewhat preoccupied with her own. She saw only that he was pale, and that his eyes were darkly circled. But here he was advantaged with her, for the finest touch to his good looks was given by this toning down; neither pallor nor dark circles detracting from them, but rather adding to them a melancholy favour of distinction. George had retained his mourning, a tribute completed down to the final details of black gloves and a polished ebony cane (which he would have been pained to name otherwise than as a “walking-stick”) and in the aura of this sombre elegance his straight figure and drawn face were not without a tristful and appealing dignity.

  In everything outward he was cause enough for a girl’s cheek to flush, her heart to beat faster, and her eyes to warm with the soft light that came into Lucy’s now, whether she would or no. If his spirit had been what his looks proclaimed it, she would have rejoiced to let the light glow forth which now shone in spite of her. For a long time, thinking of that spirit of his, and what she felt it should be, she had a persistent sense: “It must be there!” but she had determined to believe this folly no longer. Nevertheless, when she met him at the Sharons’, she had been far less calm than she seemed.

  People speaking casually of Lucy were apt to define her as “a little beauty,” a definition short of the mark. She was “a little beauty,” but an independent, masterful, self-reliant little American, of whom her father’s earlier gipsyings and her own sturdiness had made a woman ever since she was fifteen. But though she was the mistress of her own ways and no slave to any lamp save that of her own conscience, she had a weakness: she had fallen in love with George Amberson Minafer at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was all. George had looked just the way she had always wanted someone to look—the riskiest of all the moonshine ambushes wherein tricky romance snares credulous young love. But what was fatal to Lucy was that this thing having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what she discovered in George’s nature she was unable to take away what she had given him; and though she could think differently about him, she could not feel differently about him, for she was one of those too faithful victims of glamour. When she managed to keep the picture of George away from her mind’s eye, she did well enough; but when she let him become visible, she could not choose but love what she disdained. She was a little angel who had fallen in love with high-handed Lucifer; quite an experience, and not apt to be soon succeeded by any falling in love with a tamer party—and the unhappy truth was that George did make better men seem tame. But though she was a victim, she was a heroic one, anything but helpless.

  As they drew nearer, George tried to prepare himself to meet her with some remnants of aplomb. He decided that he would keep on looking straight ahead, and lift his hand toward his hat at the very last moment when it would be possible for her to see him out of the corner of her eye: then when she thought it over later, she would not be sure whether he had saluted her or merely rubbed his forehead. And there was the added benefit that any third person who might chance to look from a window, or from a passing carriage, would not think that he was receiving a snub, because he did not intend to lift his hat, but, timing the gesture properly, would in fact actually rub his forehead. These were the hasty plans which occupied his thoughts until he was within about fifty feet of her—when he ceased to have either plans or thoughts. He had kept his eyes from looking full at her until then, and as he saw her, thus close at hand, and coming nearer, a regret that was dumfounding took possession of him. For the first time he had the sense of having lost something of overwhelming importance.

  Lucy did not keep to the right, but came straight to meet him, smiling, and with her hand offered to him.

  “Why—you——” he stammered, as he took it. “Haven’t you——” What he meant to say was, “Haven’t you heard?”

  “Haven’t I what?” she asked; and he saw that Eugene had not yet told her.

  “Nothing!” he gasped. “May I—may I turn and walk with you a little way?”

  “Yes, indeed!” she said cordially.

  He would not have altered what had been done: he was satisfied with all that—satisfied that it was right, and that his own course was right. But he began to perceive a striking inaccuracy in some remarks he had made to his mother. Now when he had put matters in such shape that even by the relinquishment of his “ideals of life” he could not have Lucy, knew that he could never have her, and knew that when Eugene told her the history of yesterday he could not have a glance or word even friendly from her—now when he must in good truth “give up all idea of Lucy,” he was amazed that he could have used such words as “no particular sacrifice,” and believed them when he said them! She had looked never in his life so bewitchingly pretty as she did to-day; and as he walked beside her he was sure that she was the most exquisite thing in the world.

  “Lucy,” he said huskily, “I want to tell you something. Something that matters.”

  “I hope it’s a lively something th
en,” she said; and laughed. “Papa’s been so glum to-day he’s scarcely spoken to me. Your Uncle George Amberson came to see him an hour ago and they shut themselves up in the library, and your uncle looked as glum as papa. I’d be glad if you’ll tell me a funny story, George.”

  “Well, it may seem one to you,” he said bitterly. “Just to begin with: when you went away you didn’t let me know; not even a word—not a line——”

  Her manner persisted in being inconsequent. “Why, no,” she said. “I just trotted off for some visits.”

  “Well, at least you might have——”

  “Why, no,” she said again briskly. “Don’t you remember, George? We’d had a grand quarrel, and didn’t speak to each other all the way home from a long, long drive! So, as we couldn’t play together like good children, of course it was plain that we oughtn’t to play at all.”

  “‘Play!’” he cried.

  “Yes. What I mean is that we’d come to the point where it was time to quit playing—well, what we were playing.”

  “At being lovers, you mean, don’t you?”

  “Something like that,” she said lightly. “For us two, playing at being lovers was just the same as playing at cross-purposes. I had all the purposes, and that gave you all the crossness: things weren’t getting along at all. It was absurd!”

  “Well, have it your own way,” he said. “It needn’t have been absurd.”

  “No, it couldn’t help but be!” she informed him cheerfully. “The way I am and the way you are, it couldn’t ever be anything else. So what was the use?”