The Magnificent Ambersons Read online

  “Doesn’t sound like it.”

  “Indian names don’t. There was a bad Indian chief lived in the grove before the white settlers came. He was the worst Indian that ever lived, and his name was—it was ‘Vendonah.’ That means ‘Rides-Down- Everything’.”

  “What?”

  “His name was Vendonah, the same thing as Rides-Down-Everything.”

  “I see,” said Eugene thoughtfully. He gave her a quick look and then fixed his eyes upon the end of the garden path. “Go on.”

  “Vendonah was an unspeakable case,” Lucy continued. “He was so proud that he wore iron shoes and he walked over people’s faces with them. he was always killing people that way, and so at last the tribe decided that it wasn’t a good enough excuse for him that he was young and inexperienced—he’d have to go. They took him down to the river, and put him in a canoe, and pushed him out from shore; and then they ran along the bank and wouldn’t let him land, until at last the current carried the canoe out into the middle, and then on down to the ocean, and he never got back. They didn’t want him back, of course, and if he’d been able to manage it, they’d have put him in another canoe and shoved him out into the river again. But still, they didn’t elect another chief in his place. Other tribes thought that was curious, and wondered about it a lot, but finally they came to the conclusion that the beech grove people were afraid a new chief might turn out to be a bad Indian, too, and wear iron shoes like Vendonah. But they were wrong, because the real reason was that the tribe had led such an exciting life under Vendonah that they couldn’t settle down to anything tamer. He was awful, but he always kept things happening—terrible things, of course. They bated him, but they weren’t able to discover any other warrior that they wanted to make chief in his place. I suppose it was a little like drinking a glass of too strong wine and then trying to take the taste out of your mouth with barley water. They couldn’t help feeling that way.”

  “I see,” said Eugene. “So that’s why they named the place ‘They- Couldn’t-Help-It’!”

  “It must have been.”

  “And so you’re going to stay here in your garden,” he said musingly. “You think it’s better to keep on walking these sunshiny gravel paths between your flower-beds, and growing to look like a pensive garden lady in a Victorian engraving.”

  “I suppose I’m like the tribe that lived here, papa. I had too much unpleasant excitement. It was unpleasant—but it was excitement. I don’t want any more; in fact, I don’t want anything but you.”

  “You don’t?” He looked at her keenly, and she laughed and shook her head; but he seemed perplexed, rather doubtful. “What was the name of the grove?” he asked. “The Indian name, I mean.”

  “Mola-Haha.”

  “No, it wasn’t; that wasn’t the name you said.”

  “I’ve forgotten.”

  “I see you have,” he said, his look of perplexity remaining. “Perhaps you remember the chief’s name better.”

  She shook her head again. “I don’t!”

  At this he laughed, but not very heartily, and walked slowly to the house, leaving her bending over a rose-bush, and a shade more pensive than the most pensive garden lady in any Victorian engraving.

  … Next day, it happened that this same “Vendonah” or “Rides-Down- Everything” became the subject of a chance conversation between Eugene and his old friend Kinney, father of the fire-topped Fred. The two gentlemen found themselves smoking in neighbouring leather chairs beside a broad window at the club, after lunch.

  Mr. Kinney had remarked that he expected to get his family established at the seashore by the Fourth of July, and, following a train of thought, he paused and chuckled. “Fourth of July reminds me,” he said. “Have you heard what that Georgie Minafer is doing?”

  “No, I haven’t,” said Eugene, and his friend failed to notice the crispness of the utterance.

  “Well, sir,” Kinney chuckled again, “it beats the devil! My boy Fred told me about it yesterday. He’s a friend of this young Henry Akers, son of F. P. Akers of the Akers Chemical Company. It seems this young Akers asked Fred if he knew a fellow named Minafer, because he knew Fred had always lived here, and young Akers had heard some way that Minafer used to be an old family name here, and was sort of curious about it. Well, sir, you remember this young Georgie sort of disappeared, after his grandfather’s death, and nobody seemed to know much what had become of him—though I did hear, once or twice, that he was still around somewhere. Well, sir, he’s working for the Akers Chemical Company, out at their plant on the Thomasvile Road.”

  He paused, seeming to reserve something to be delivered only upon inquiry, and Eugene offered him the expected question, but only after a cold glance through the nose-glasses he had lately found it necessary to adopt. “What does he do?”

  Kinney laughed and slapped the arm of his chair.

  “He’s a nitroglycerin expert!”

  He was gratified to see that Eugene was surprised, if not, indeed, a little startled.

  “He’s what?”

  “He’s an expert on nitroglycerin. Doesn’t that beat the devil! Yes, sir! Young Akers told Fred that this George Minafer had worked like a houn’-dog ever since he got started out at the works. They have a special plant for nitroglycerin, way off from the main plant, o’ course—in the woods somewhere—and George Minafer’s been working there, and lately they put him in charge of it. He oversees shooting oil-wells, too, and shoots ‘em himself, sometimes. They aren’t allowed to carry it on the railroads, you know—have to team it. Young Akers says George rides around over the bumpy roads, sitting on as much as three hundred quarts of nitroglycerin! My Lord! Talk about romantic tumbles! If he gets blown sky-high some day he won’t have a bigger drop, when he comes down, than he’s already had! Don’t it beat the devil! Young Akers said he’s got all the nerve there is in the world. Well, he always did have plenty of that—from the time he used to ride around here on his white pony and fight all the Irish boys in Can-Town, with his long curls all handy to be pulled out. Akers says he gets a fair salary, and I should think he ought to! Seems to me I’ve heard the average life in that sort of work is somewhere around four years, and agents don’t write any insurance at all for nitroglycerin experts. Hardly!”

  “No,” said Eugene. “I suppose not.”

  Kinney rose to go. “Well, it’s a pretty funny thing—pretty odd, I mean—and I suppose it would be pass-around-the-hat for old Fanny Minafer if he blew up. Fred told me that they’re living in some apartment house, and said Georgie supports her. He was going to study law, but couldn’t earn enough that way to take care of Fanny, so he gave it up. Fred’s wife told him all this. Says Fanny doesn’t do anything but play bridge these days. Got to playing too high for awhile and lost more than she wanted to tell Georgie about, and borrowed a little from old Frank Bronson. Paid him back, though. Don’t know how Fred’s wife heard it. Women do’ hear the darndest things!”

  “They do,” Eugene agreed.

  “I thought you’d probably heard about it—thought most likely Fred’s wife might have said something to your daughter, especially as they’re cousins.”

  “I think not.”

  “Well, I’m off to the store,” said Mr. Kinney briskly; yet he lingered. “I suppose we’ll all have to club in and keep old Fanny out of the poorhouse if he does blow up. From all I hear it’s usually only a question of time. They say she hasn’t got anything else to depend on.”

  “I suppose not.”

  “Well—I wondered—” Kinney hesitated. “I was wondering why you hadn’t thought of finding something around your works for him. They say he’s an all-fired worker and he certainly does seem to have hid some decent stuff in him under all his damfoolishness. And you used to be such a tremendous friend of the family—I thought perhaps you— of course I know he’s a queer lot—I know—”

  “Yes, I think he is,” said Eugene. “No. I haven’t anything to offer him.”

  “I suppose not
,” Kinney returned thoughtfully, as he went out. “I don’t know that I would myself. Well, we’ll probably see his name in the papers some day if he stays with that job!”

  However, the nitroglycerin expert of whom they spoke did not get into the papers as a consequence of being blown up, although his daily life was certainly a continuous exposure to that risk. Destiny has a constant passion for the incongruous, and it was George’s lot to manipulate wholesale quantities of terrific and volatile explosives in safety, and to be laid low by an accident so commonplace and inconsequent that it was a comedy. Fate had reserved for him the final insult of riding him down under the wheels of one of those juggernauts at which he had once shouted “Git a hoss!” Nevertheless, Fate’s ironic choice for Georgie’s undoing was not a big and swift and momentous car, such as Eugene manufactured; it was a specimen of the hustling little type that was flooding the country, the cheapest, commonest, hardiest little car ever made.

  The accident took place upon a Sunday morning, on a downtown crossing, with the streets almost empty, and no reason in the world for such a thing to happen. He had gone out for his Sunday morning walk, and he was thinking of an automobile at the very moment when the little car struck him; he was thinking of a shiny landaulet and a charming figure stepping into it, and of the quick gesture of a white glove toward the chauffeur, motioning him to go on. George heard a shout but did not look up, for he could not imagine anybody’s shouting at him, and he was too engrossed in the question “Was it Lucy?” He could not decide, and his lack of decision in this matter probably superinduced a lack of decision in another, more pressingly vital. At the second and louder shout he did look up; and the car was almost on him; but he could not make up his mind if the charming little figure he had seen was Lucy’s and he could not make up his mind whether to go backward or forward: these questions became entangled in his mind. Then, still not being able to decide which of two ways to go, he tried to go both —and the little car ran him down. It was not moving very rapidly, but it went all the way over George.

  He was conscious of gigantic violence; of roaring and jolting and concussion; of choking clouds of dust, shot with lightning, about his head; he heard snapping sounds as loud as shots from a small pistol, and was stabbed by excruciating pains in his legs. Then he became aware that the machine was being lifted off of him. People were gathering in a circle round him, gabbling.

  His forehead was bedewed with the sweat of anguish, and he tried to wipe off this dampness, but failed. He could not get his arm that far.

  “Nev’ mind,” a policeman said; and George could see above his eyes the skirts of the blue coat, covered with dust and sunshine. “Amb’lance be here in a minute. Nev’ mind tryin’ to move any. You want ‘em to send for some special doctor?”

  “No.” George’s lips formed the word.

  “Or to take you to some private hospital?”

  “Tell them to take me,” he said faintly, “to the City Hospital.”

  “A’ right.”

  A smallish young man in a duster fidgeted among the crowd, explaining and protesting, and a strident voiced girl, his companion, supported his argument, declaring to everyone her willingness to offer testimony in any court of law that every blessed word he said was the God’s truth.

  “It’s the fella that hit you,” the policeman said, looking down on George. “I guess he’s right; you must of been thinkin’ about somep’m’ or other. It’s wunnerful the damage them little machines can do— you’d never think it—but I guess they ain’t much case ag’in this fella that was drivin’ it.”

  “You bet your life they ain’t no case on me!” the young man in the duster agreed, with great bitterness. He came and stood at George’s feet, addressing him heatedly: “I’m sorry fer you all right, and I don’t say I ain’t. I hold nothin’ against you, but it wasn’t any more my fault than the statehouse! You run into me, much as I run into you, and if you get well you ain’t goin’ to get not one single cent out o’ me! This lady here was settin’ with me and we both yelled at you. Wasn’t goin’ a step over eight mile an hour! I’m perfectly willing to say I’m sorry for you though, and so’s the lady with me. We’re both willing to say that much, but that’s all, understand!”

  George’s drawn eyelids twitched; his misted glance rested fleetingly upon the two protesting motorists, and the old imperious spirit within him flickered up in a single word. Lying on his back in the middle of the street, where he was regarded an increasing public as an unpleasant curiosity, he spoke this word clearly from a mouth filled with dust, and from lips smeared with blood.

  It was a word which interested the policeman. When the ambulance clanged away, he turned to a fellow patrolman who had joined him. “Funny what he says to the little cuss that done the damage. That’s all he did call him—’nothin’ else at all—and the cuss had broke both his legs fer him and God-knows-what-all!”

  “I wasn’t here then. What was it?”

  “Riffraff!”

  Chapter XXXV

  * * *

  Eugene’s feeling about George had not been altered by his talk with Kinney in the club window, though he was somewhat disturbed. He was not disturbed by Kinney’s hint that Fanny Minafer might be left on the hands of her friends through her nephew’s present dealings with nitroglycerin, but he was surprised that Kinney had “led up” with intentional tact to the suggestion that a position might be made for George in the Morgan factory. Eugene did not care to have any suggestions about Georgie Minafer made to him. Kinney had represented Georgie as a new Georgie—at least in spots—a Georgie who was proving that decent stuff had been hid in him; in fact, a Georgie who was doing rather a handsome thing in taking a risky job for the sake of his aunt, poor old silly Fanny Minafer! Eugene didn’t care what risks Georgie took, or how much decent stuff he had in him: nothing that Georgie would ever do in this world or the next could change Eugene Morgan’s feeling toward him.

  If Eugene could possibly have brought himself to offer Georgie a position in the automobile business, he knew full well the proud devil wouldn’t have taken it from him; though Georgie’s proud reason would not have been the one attributed to him by Eugene. George would never reach the point where he could accept anything material from Eugene and preserve the self-respect he had begun to regain.

  But if Eugene had wished, he could easily have taken George out of the nitroglycerin branch of the chemical works. Always interested in apparent impossibilities of invention, Eugene had encouraged many experiments in such gropings as those for the discovery of substitutes for gasoline and rubber; and, though his mood had withheld the information from Kinney, he had recently bought from the elder Akers a substantial quantity of stock on the condition that the chemical company should establish an experimental laboratory. He intended to buy more; Akers was anxious to please him; and a word from Eugene would have placed George almost anywhere in the chemical works. George need never have known it, for Eugene’s purchases of stock were always quiet ones: the transaction remained, so far, between him and Akers, and could be kept between them.

  The possibility just edged itself into Eugene’s mind; that is, he let it become part of his perceptions long enough for it to prove to him that it was actually a possibility. Then he half started with disgust that he should be even idly considering such a thing over his last cigar for the night, in his library. “No!” And he threw the cigar into the empty fireplace and went to bed.

  His bitterness for himself might have worn away, but never his bitterness for Isabel. He took that thought to bed with him—and it was true that nothing George could do would ever change this bitterness of Eugene. Only George’s mother could have changed it.

  And as Eugene fell asleep that night, thinking thus bitterly of Georgie, Georgie in the hospital was thinking of Eugene. He had come “out of ether” with no great nausea, and had fallen into a reverie, though now and then a white sailboat staggered foolishly into the small ward where he lay. After a time he discovered tha
t this happened only when he tried to open his eyes and look about him; so he kept his eyes shut, and his thoughts were clearer.

  He thought of Eugene Morgan and of the Major; they seemed to be the same person for awhile, but he managed to disentangle them and even to understand why he had confused them. Long ago his grandfather had been the most striking figure of success in the town: “As rich as Major Amberson!” they used to say. Now it was Eugene. “If I had Eugene Morgan’s money,” he would hear the workmen day-dreaming at the chemical works; or, “If Eugene Morgan had hold of this place you’d see things hum!” And the boarders at the table d’hôte spoke of “the Morgan Place” as an eighteenth-century Frenchman spoke of Versailles. Like his uncle, George had perceived that the “Morgan Place” was the new Amberson Mansion. His reverie went back to the palatial days of the Mansion, in his boyhood, when he would gallop his pony up the driveway and order the darkey stable-men about, while they whooped and obeyed, and his grandfather, observing from a window, would laugh and call out to him, “That’s right, Georgie. Make those lazy rascals jump!” He remembered his gay young uncles, and how the town was eager concerning everything about them, and about himself. What a clean, pretty town it had been! And in his reverie be saw like a pageant before him the magnificence of the Ambersons—its passing, and the passing of the Ambersons themselves. They had been slowly engulfed without knowing how to prevent it, and almost without knowing what was happening to them. The family lot, in the shabby older quarter, out at the cemetery, held most of them now; and the name was swept altogether from the new city. But the new great people who had taken their places—the Morgans and Akerses and Sheridans—they would go, too. George saw that. They would pass, as the Ambersons had passed, and though some of them might do better than the Major and leave the letters that spelled a name on a hospital or a street, it would be only a word and it would not stay forever. Nothing stays or holds or keeps where there is growth, he somehow perceived vaguely but truly. Great Caesar dead and turned to clay stopped no hole to keep the wind away dead Caesar was nothing but a tiresome bit of print in a book that schoolboys study for awhile and then forget. The Ambersons had passed, and the new people would pass, and the new people that came after them, and then the next new ones, and the next—and the next—