 24 Breakfast was brought to him in his room as usual, but he did not make his normal healthy raid upon the dainty tray. The food remained untouched, and he sustained himself upon coffee—four cups of it, which left nothing of value inside the glistening little percolator. During this process he heard his mother being summoned to the telephone in the hall not far from his door, and then her voice responding, Yes? Oh, it's you! Indeed I should! Of course. Then I'll expect you about three. Yes, good-bye till then. A few minutes later he heard her speaking to someone beneath his window, and, looking out, saw her directing the removal of plants from a small garden-bed to the Major's conservatory for the winter. There was an air of briskness about her, as she turned away to go into the house, she laughed gaily with the Major's gardener over something he said, and this unconcerned cheerfulness of her was terrible to her son. He went to his desk, and, searching the jumbled contents of a drawer, brought forth a large unframed photograph of his father upon which he gazed long and piteously, till at last hot tears stood in his eyes. It was strange how the inconsequent fate of Wilbur seemed to increase in high significance during this belated interview between father and son, and how it seemed to take on a reproachful nobility. And yet, under the circumstances, nothing could have been more natural than that George, having paid but the slightest attention to his father in life, should begin to deify him now that he was dead. Poor, poor father! the son whispered brokenly. Poor man! I'm glad you didn't know. He wrapped the picture in a sheet of newspaper, put it under his arm, and, leaving the house hurriedly and stealthily, went downtown to the shop of a silversmith, where he spent sixty dollars on a resplendently festooned silver frame for the picture. Having lunched upon more coffee, he returned to the house at two o'clock, carrying the framed photograph with him, and placing it upon the centre-table in the library, the room most used by Isabelle and Fanny and himself. Then he went to a front window of the long reception room, and sat, looking out through the lace curtains. The house was quiet, though once or twice he heard his mother and Fanny moving about upstairs, and a ripple of song in the voice of Isabelle, a fragment from the romantic ballad of Lord Bateman. Lord Bateman was a noble lord, a noble lord of high degree, and he sailed west, and he sailed east, far countries for to see. The words became indistinct, the air was hummed absently, the humming shifted to a whistle, then drifted out of hearing, and the place was still again. Which looked often at his watch, but his vigil did not last an hour. At ten minutes of three, peering through the curtain, he saw an automobile stop in front of the house, and Eugene Morgan jumped lightly down from it. The car was of a new pattern, low and long, with an ample seat in the tunnel, facing forward, and a professional driver sat at the wheel, a strange figure in leather, goggled out of all personality and seemingly part of the mechanism. Eugene himself, as he came up the cement path to the house, was a figure of the new era, which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff hats and skirted coats, and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast to that of the queer-looking duck capering at the Amberson ball in an old dress coat, and next day chugging up National Avenue through the snow in his nightmare of a sewing machine. Eugene this afternoon was richly in the new outdoor mode. His motoring coat was soft gray fur, his cap and gloves were of gray suede, and though Lucy's hand may have shown itself in the selection of these high garnatures, he wore them easily, even with a becoming hint of jauntiness. Some change might be seen in his face, too, for a successful man is seldom to be mistaken, especially if his temper be genial. Eugene had begun to look like a millionaire. But above everything else, what was most evident about him as he came up the path was his confidence in the happiness promised by his present errand. The anticipation in his eyes could have been read by a stranger. His look at the door of Isabel's house was the look of a man who was quite certain that the next moment will reveal something ineffably charming—inexpressibly dear. When the bell rang, George waited at the entrance of the reception room until a housemaid came through the hall on her way to answer the summons. You needn't mind, Mary, he told her. I'll see who it is and what they want. Probably it's only a peddler. Thank you, sir, Mr. George, said Mary, and returned to the rear of the house. George went slowly to the front door and halted, regarding the misty silhouette of the collar upon the ornamental frosted glass. After a minute of waiting, this silhouette changed outline so that an arm could be distinguished—an arm outstretched toward the bell as if the gentleman outside doubted whether or not it had sounded and were minded to try again. But before the gesture was completed, George abruptly threw open the door and stepped squarely upon the middle of the threshold. A slight change shadowed the face of Eugene. His look of happy anticipation gave way to something formal and polite. How do you do, George, he said. Mrs. Minifer expects to go driving with me, I believe, if you'll be so kind as to send her word that I'm here. George made not the slightest movement. No, he said. Eugene was incredulous, even when his second glance revealed how hot of eye was the haggard young man before him. I beg your pardon. I said, I heard you, said George. You said you had an engagement with my mother, and I told you, no. Eugene gave him a steady look, and then he asked quietly, What is the—the difficulty? George kept his own voice quiet enough, but that did not mitigate the vibrant fury of it. My mother will have no interest in knowing that you came for her today, he said, or any other day. Eugene continued to look at him with a scrutiny in which began to gleam a profound anger, none the less powerful because it was so quiet. I'm afraid I do not understand you. I doubt if I could make it much plainer, George said, raising his voice slightly. But I'll try. You're not wanted in this house, Mr. Morgan, now or at any other time. Perhaps you'll understand this. And with the last word he closed the door in Eugene's face. Then, not moving away, he stood just inside the door and noted that the misty silhouette remained upon the frosted glass for several moments as if the forbidden gentleman debated in his mind what course to pursue. Let him ring again, George thought grimly, or try the side door or the kitchen. But Eugene made no further attempt. The silhouette disappeared. Footsteps could be heard withdrawing across the floor of the veranda. And George, returning to the window in the reception room, was rewarded by the sight of an automobile manufacturer in baffled retreat with all his wooing furs and fineries mocking him. Eugene got into his car slowly, not looking back at the house which had just taught him such a lesson, and it was easily visible, even from a window seventy feet distant, that he was not the same light suitor who had jumped so gallantly from the car a few minutes earlier. During the heaviness of his movements as he climbed into the tunnel, George indulged in a sickish throat rumble which bore a distant cousinship to Myrth. The car was quicker than its owner. It shot away as soon as he had sunk into his seat, and George, having watched its impetuous disappearance from his field of vision, ceased to haunt the window. He went to the library, and seating himself beside the table whereon he had placed the photograph of his father, picked up a book, and pretended to be engaged in reading it. Presently Isabel's buoyant step was heard descending the stair, and her low, sweet whistling, renewing the air of Lord Bateman. She came into the library still whistling thoughtfully, a fur coat over her arm ready to put on, and two veils round her small black hat, her right hand engaged in buttoning the glove upon her left, and as the large room contained too many pieces of heavy furniture, and the inside shutters excluded most of the light of day, she did not at once perceive George's presence. Instead she went to the bay window at the end of the room, which afforded a view of the street, and glanced out, expectantly. Then bent her attention upon her glove. After that looked out toward the street again, ceased to whistle, and turned toward the interior of the room. Why, Georgie! She came, leaned over from behind him, and there was a faint, exquisite odor as from distant apple blossoms as she kissed his cheek. Dear, I waited lunch almost an hour for you, but you didn't come. Did you lunch out somewhere? Yes. He did not look up from the book. Did you have plenty to eat? Yes. Are you sure? Wouldn't you like to have Maggie get you something now in the dining-room? Or they could bring it to you here, if you think it would be cosier. Shant I? No. A tinkling bell was audible, and she moved to the doorway into the hall. I'm going out driving, dear. She interrupted herself to address the housemaid who was passing through the hall. I think it's Mr. Morgan, Mary. Tell him I'll be there at once. Yes, ma'am. Mary returned. It was a peddler, ma'am. Another one, Isabel said, surprised. I thought you said it was a peddler when the bell rang a little while ago. Mr. George said it was, ma'am. He went to the door. Mary informed her, disappearing. There seemed to be a great many of them, Isabel mused. What did George want to sell, George? He didn't say. You must have cut him off short, she laughed. And then, still standing in the doorway, she noticed the big silver frame upon the table beside him. Couracious, Georgie, she exclaimed, you have been investing. And as she came across the room for a closer view, is it Lucy? She asked, half timidly, half archly. But the next instant she saw whose likeness was thus set forth in elegiac splendor, and she was silent except for a long, just audible, oh! He neither looked up nor moved. That was nice of you, Georgie, she said, in a low voice, presently. I ought to have had it framed myself when I gave it to you. He said nothing, and, standing beside him, she put her hand gently upon his shoulder, then as gently withdrew it, and went out of the room. But she did not go upstairs. She heard the faint rustle of her dress in the hall, and then the sound of her footsteps in the reception room. After a time, silence succeeded, even those slight tokens of her presence, whereupon Georg rose and went warily into the hall, taking care to make no noise, and he obtained an oblique view of her through the open double doors of the reception room. She was sitting in the chair which he had occupied so long, and she was looking out of the window expectantly, a little troubled. He went back to the library, waited an interminable half-hour, then returned noiselessly to the same position in the hall where he could see her. She was still sitting patiently by the window. Waiting for that man, was she? Well, it might be a long wait. And the grim George silently ascended the stairs to his own room, and began to pace his suffering floor. CHAPTER XXV He left his door open, however, and when he heard the front doorbell ring by and by, he went half-way down the stairs and stood to listen. He was not much afraid that Morgan would return, but he wished to make sure. Mary appeared in the hall below him, but after a glance toward the front of the house turned back and withdrew. Evidently Isabel had gone to the door. Then a murmur was heard, and George Amberson's voice quick and serious. I want to talk to you, Isabel. And another murmur. Then Isabel and her brother passed to the foot of the broad, dark stairway, but did not look up, and remained unconscious of the watchful presence above them. Isabel still carried her cloak upon her arm, but Amberson had taken her hand and retained it. And as he led her silently into the library, there was something about her attitude and the pose of her slightly bent head that was both startled and meek. Thus they quickly disappeared from George's sight hand in hand, and Amberson at once closed the massive double doors of the library. For a time all that George could hear was the indistinct sound of his uncle's voice. What he was saying could not be surmised, though the troubled brotherliness of his tone was evident. He seemed to be explaining something at considerable length, and there were moments when he paused, and George guessed that his mother was speaking, but her voice must have been very low, for it was entirely inaudible to him. Suddenly he did hear her. Through the heavy doors her outcry came, clear and loud. Oh, no! It was a cry of protest, as if something her brother told her must be untrue, or if it were true, the fact he stated must be undone, and it was a sound of sheer pain. Another sound of pain, close to George, followed it. This was a vehement sniffling which broke out just above him, and looking up he saw Fanny Minifer on the landing, leaning over the banisters and applying her handkerchief to her eyes and nose. I can guess what that was about, she whispered huskily. He's just told her what you did to Eugene. George gave her a dark look over his shoulder. You go on back to your room, he said, and he began to descend the stairs, but Fanny, guessing his purpose, rushed down and caught his arm, detaining him. You're not going in there, she whispered huskily. You don't. Let go of me." But she clung to him savagely. No, you don't, Georgey Minifer. You'll keep away from there. You will. You let go of—I won't. You come back here. You will come upstairs and let them alone. That's what you'll do. And with such passionate determination did she clutch and tug, never losing a grip of him somewhere, though George tried as much as he could without hurting her to wrench away. With such utter forgetfulness of her maiden dignity did she assault him that she forced him, stumbling upward to the landing. Of all the ridiculous he began furiously, but she spared one hand from its grasp of his sleeve and clapped it over his mouth. Hush up! Never for an instant in this grotesque struggle did Fanny raise her voice above a husky whisper. Hush up! It's indecent, like squabbling outside the door of an operating room. Go on to the top of the stairs. Go on! And when George had most unwillingly obeyed, she planted herself in his way on the top step. There, she said, the idea of your going in there now, I never heard of such a thing. And with the sudden departure of the nervous vigor she had shown so amazingly, she began to cry again. I was an awful fool. I thought you knew what was going on, or I never, never would have done it. Do you suppose I dreamed you would go making everything into such a tragedy? Do you? I don't care what you dreamed, George muttered. But Fanny went on, always taking care to keep her voice from getting too loud, in spite of her most grievous agitation. Do you dream I thought you'd go on making such a fool of yourself at Mrs. Johnson's? Oh, I saw her this morning. She wouldn't talk to me, but I met George Amberson on my way back, and he told me what you'd done over there. And do you dream I thought that you would do what you've done here this afternoon to Eugene? Oh, I knew that, too. I was looking out of the front bedroom window when I saw him drive up and then go away again, and I knew you'd been to the door. Of course he went to George Amberson about it, and that's why George is here. He's got to tell Isabelle the whole thing now, and you wanted to go in there for interfering. God knows what. You stay here and let her brother tell her. He's got some consideration for her. I suppose you think I haven't, George said, challenging her, and that that Fanny laughed witheringly. Phew! Considerate of anybody. I'm considerate of her good name, he said, hotly. It seems to me that's about the first thing to be considerate of, being considerate of a person. And look here, it strikes me you're taking a pretty different tack from what you did yesterday afternoon. Fanny wrung her hands. I did a terrible thing, she lamented. Now that it's done and too late, I know what it was. I didn't have sense enough just to let things go on. I didn't have any business to interfere, and I didn't mean to interfere. I only wanted to talk and let out a little. I did think you already knew everything I told you. I did. And I'd rather have cut my hand off than stir you up to doing what you have done. I was just suffering, so that I wanted to let it out a little. I didn't mean any real harm. But now I see what's happened. Oh! I was a fool. I hadn't any business interfering. Eugene never would have looked at me anyhow, and oh! Why couldn't I have seen that before? He never came here a single time in his life except on her account. Never. And I might have let them alone, because he wouldn't have looked at me even if he'd never seen Isabelle. And they haven't done any harm. She made Wilbur happy, and she was a true wife to him as long as he lived. It wasn't a crime for her to care for Eugene all the time. She certainly never told him she did. And she gave me every chance in the world. She left us alone together every time she could, ever since Wilbur died. But what was the use? And here I go, not doing myself a bit of good by it, and just—Fanny wrung her hands again, just ruining them. I suppose you mean I'm doing that, George said bitterly. Yes, I do, she sobbed, and drooped upon the stairway railing, exhausted. On the contrary, I mean to save my mother from a calamity. Then he looked at him wanly, and a tired despair. Then she stepped by him, and went slowly to her own door, where she paused and beckoned to him. What do you want? Just come here a minute. What for? he asked impatiently. I just wanted to say something to you. Well, for heaven's sake, say it, there's nobody to hear. Nevertheless, after a moment, as she beckoned him again, he went to her, profoundly annoyed. Well, what is it? George, she said, in a low voice. I think you ought to be told something. If I were you, I'd let my mother alone. Oh, my lord, he groaned. I'm doing these things for her, not against her. A mildness had come upon Fanny, and she had controlled her weeping. She shook her head gently. No, I'd let her alone, if I were you. I don't think she's very well, George. She? I never saw a healthier person in my life. No, she doesn't let anyone know, but she goes to the doctor regularly. Women are always going to doctors regularly. No, he told her to. George was not impressed. It's nothing at all. She spoke of it to me years ago. Some kind of family failing. She said grandfather had it too, and look at him. Hasn't proved very serious with him. You act as if I'd done something wrong in sending that man about its business, and as if I were going to persecute my mother instead of protecting her. That drove it sickening. You told me how all the riff-raff in town were busy with her name, and then the minute I left my hand to protect her you began to attack me, and shh! Fanny checked him, laying her hand upon his arm. Your uncle is going. The library doors were heard closing, and a moment later there came the sound of the front door closing. George moved toward the head of the stairs, then stood, listening, but the house was silent. Fanny made a slight noise with her lips to attract his attention, and when he glanced toward her she shook her head at him urgently. Let her alone! She whispered. She's down there by herself. Don't go down! Let her alone! She moved a few steps toward him and halted, her face pallid and awestruck, and then both stood listening for anything that might break the silence downstairs. No sound came to them. That poignant silence was continued through long, long minutes, while the two listeners stood there under its mysterious spell, and in its plaintive eloquence, speaking as it did of the figure alone in the big dark library where dead Wilbur's new silver frame gleamed in its dimness. There was something that checked even George. Above the aunt and nephew, as they kept this strange vigil, there was a triple window of stained glass to illumine the landing and upper reaches of the stairway. Figures in blue and amber garments posed gracefully in panels conceived by some craftsmen of the eighties to represent love and purity and beauty. And these figures, ledded to unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The colours were growing dull. Evening was coming on. Fanny Minifer broke the long silence with a sound from her throat, a stifled gasp. And with that great companion of hers, her handkerchief, retired softly to the loneliness of her own chamber. After she had gone, George looked around him bleakly. Then on tiptoe crossed the hall and went into his own room which was filled with twilight. Still tiptoeing, though he could not have said why, he went across the room and sat down heavily in a chair facing the window. Outside there was nothing but the darkening air and the wall of the nearest of the new houses. He had not slept at all the night before, and he had eaten nothing since the preceding day at lunch, but he felt neither drowsiness nor hunger. His set determination filled him, kept him but too wide awake, and his gaze at the greyness beyond the window was wide-eyed and bitter. Darkness had closed in when there was a step in the room behind him. Then someone knelt beside the chair. Two arms went round him with infinite compassion. A gentle head rested against his shoulder, and there came the faint scent as if apple blossoms far away. You mustn't be troubled, darling," his mother whispered. End of Chapter 25 Chapter 26 George choked. For an instant he was on the point of breaking down, but he commanded himself, bravely dismissing the self-pity roused by her compassion. How can I help but be? he said. No, no, she soothed him. You mustn't, you mustn't be troubled no matter what happens. That's easy enough to say, he protested, and he moved as if to rise. Let's just stay like this for a little while, dear, just a minute or two. I want to tell you. Brother George has been here, and he told me everything about how unhappy you'd been, and how you went so gallantly to that old woman with the opera-glasses. Isabel gave a sad little laugh. What a terrible old woman she is! What a really terrible thing a vulgar old woman can be! Mother, I—and again he moved to rise. Must you! It seemed to me such a comfortable way to talk. Well—she yielded. He rose, helped her to her feet, and pressed the light into being. As the room took life from the sudden lines of fire within the bulbs, Isabel made a deprecatory gesture, and with a faint laugh of apologetic protest turned quickly away from George. What she meant was, you mustn't see my face until I've made it nicer for you. Then she turned again to him, her eyes downcast, but no sign of tears in them, and she contrived to show him that there was the semblance of a smile upon her lips. She still wore her hat, and in her unsteady fingers she held a white envelope somewhat crumpled. Now, Mother—wait, dearest, she said—and though he stood, stone cold, she lifted her arms, put them around him again, and pressed her cheek lightly to his. Oh, you do look so troubled, poor dear! One thing you couldn't doubt, beloved boy. You know I could never care for anything in the world as I care for you. Never and never. Now, Mother—she released him and stepped back. Just a moment more, dearest. I want you to read this first. We can get at things better. She pressed into his hand the envelope she had brought with her, and as he opened it and began to read the long enclosure, she walked slowly to the other end of the room, then stood there, with her back to him, and her head drooping a little, until he had finished. The sheets of paper were covered with Eugene's handwriting. George Amberson will bring you this, dear Isabelle. He is waiting while I write. He and I have talked things over, and before he gives this to you he will tell you what has happened. Of course I am rather confused, and haven't had time to think matters out very definitely, and yet I believe I should have been better prepared for what took place today. I ought to have known it was coming, because I have understood for quite a long time that young George was getting to dislike me more and more. Somehow I've never been able to get his friendship. He's always had a latent distrust of me, or something like distrust, and perhaps that's made me a little awkward and diffident with him. I think it may be he felt from the first that I cared a great deal about you, and he naturally resented it. I think perhaps he felt this, even during all the time when I was so careful—at least I thought I was—not to show even to you how immensely I did care. And he may have feared that you were thinking too much about me, even when you weren't, and only liked me as an old friend. It's perfectly comprehensible to me also that at his age one gets excited about gossip. Dear Isabel, what I'm trying to get at in my confused way is that you and I don't care about this nonsensical gossip ourselves at all. Yesterday I thought the time had come when I could ask you to marry me, and you were dear enough to tell me some time it might come to that. Well, you and I, left to ourselves, and knowing what we have been and what we are, we would pay as much attention to talk as we would to any other kind of old cats meowing. We'd not be very apt to let such things keep us from the plenty of life we have left to us for making up to ourselves for old unhappinesses and mistakes. But now we're faced with not the slander and not our own fear of it because we haven't any, but someone else's fear of it, your sons. And oh, dearest woman in the world, I know what your son is to you, and it frightens me. Let me explain a little. I don't think he'll change. At twenty-one or at twenty-two so many things appear solid and permanent and terrible, which forty sees are nothing but disappearing miasma. Forty can't tell twenty about this, that's the pity of it. Twenty can only find out by getting to be forty. And some we come to this, dear. Will you live your own life your way, or George's way? I'm going a little further because it would be fatal not to be holy frank now. George will act toward you only as your long worship of him, your sacrifices, all the unseen little ones every day since he was born, will make him act. Dear, it breaks my heart for you, but what you have to oppose now is the history of your own selfless and perfect motherhood. I remember saying once that what you worshipped in your son was the angel you saw in him, and I still believe that is true of every mother. But in a mother's worship she may not see that the will in her son should not always be offered incense along with the angel. I grow sick with fear for you, for both you and me, when I think how the will against us two has grown strong through the love you have given the angel, and how long your own sweet will has served that other. Are you strong enough, Isabelle? Can you make the fight? I promise you that if you will take heart for it, you will find so quickly that it is all amounted to nothing. You shall have happiness, and in a little while only happiness. You need only to write me a line. I can't come to your house, and tell me where you will meet me. We will come back in a month, and the angel in your son will bring him to you. I promise it. What is good in him will grow so fine once you have beaten the turbulent will, but it must be beaten. Your brother, that good friend, is waiting with such patience. I should not keep him longer, and I am saying too much for wisdom, I fear. But oh my dear, won't you be strong? Such a little short strength that would need. Won't strike my life down twice, dear. This time I have not deserved it. Eugene. Concluding this missive, George tossed it abruptly from him, so that one sheet fell upon his bed, and the others upon the floor, and at the faint noise of their falling Isabelle came, and, kneeling, began to gather them up. Did you read it, dear? George's face was pale no longer, but pink with fury. Yes, I did. All of it, she asked gently as she rose. Certainly. She did not look at him, but kept her eyes downcast upon the letter in her hands, tremulously rearranging the sheets in order as she spoke, and though she smiled, her smile was as tremulous as her hands. Nervousness and an irresistible timidity possessed her. I—I wanted to say, George, she faltered. I felt that if—if some day it should happen—I mean, if you came to feel differently about it, and Eugene and I, that is, if we found that it seemed the most sensible thing to do, I was afraid you might think it would be a little queer about Lucy, I mean, if—if she were your stepsister. Of course, she'd not be even legally related to you, and if you—if you cared for her. Thus far she got stumblingly with what she had to say, while George watched her with a gaze that grew harder and hotter. But here he cut her off. I have already given up all idea of Lucy, he said. Naturally I couldn't have treated her father as I deliberately did treat him. I could hardly have done that, and expected his daughter ever to speak to me again. Isabel gave a quick cry of compassion, but he allowed her no opportunity to speak. You didn't think I'm making any particular sacrifice, he said, sharply, though I would quickly enough if I thought it necessary in a matter of honour like this. I was interested in her, and I could even say I did care for her, but she proved pretty satisfactorily that she cared little enough about me. She went away right in the midst of a—a difference of opinion we were having. She didn't even let me know she was going and never wrote a line to me, and then came back telling everybody she'd had a perfectly gorgeous time. That's quite enough for me. I'm not precisely the sort to arrange for that kind of thing to be done to me more than once. The truth is, we're not congenial, and we had found that much out, at least, before she left. We should never have been happy. She was superior all the time and critical of me. Not very pleasant that. I was disappointed in her, and I might as well say it. I don't think she has the very deepest nature in the world, and— But Isabelle put her hand timidly on his arm. Georgie, dear, this is only a quarrel. All young people have them before they get adjusted, and you mustn't let— If you please, he said emphatically, moving back from her. This isn't that kind. It's all over, and I don't care to speak of it again. It's settled. Don't you understand? But dear, no, I want to talk to you about this letter of her father's. Yes, dear, that's why it is simply the most offensive piece of writing I have ever held in my hands. She stepped back from him, startled. But dear, I thought—I can't understand you even showing me such a thing, he cried. How did you happen to bring it to me? Your uncle thought I had better. He thought it was the simplest thing to do, and he said that he had suggested it to Eugene, and Eugene had agreed. They thought— Yes, George said bitterly, I should like to hear what they thought. They thought it would be the most straightforward thing. George drew a long breath. Well, what do you think, mother? I thought it would be the simplest and most straightforward thing. I thought they were right. Very well, we'll agree it was simple and straightforward. Now what do you think of the letter itself? She hesitated, looking away. I—of course I don't agree with him in the way he speaks of you, dear, except about the angel. I don't agree with some of the things he implies. You've always been unselfish. Nobody knows that better than your mother. When Fanny was left with nothing you were so quick and generous to give up what really should have come to you. 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 to 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 would say, and this man pretends he cares for you, and yet he 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 hands 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 are 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 a bench? 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 would 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 its being wise for us to be married, even before knowing how you felt about it. I wasn't even sure it was quite fair to—to you, Jean. I have—I seem to have that family trouble, like fathers 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 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 a 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 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 unfolding 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 peer-glass of the picturesque and medieval 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. It is not alone my inky cloak, good mother, nor customary suits of solemn black. For in truth the mirrored princely image with the hair to shovel 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. Still had sent word not to wait for her, and in junction it was as well they obeyed, for she did not come at all. But with the renewal of sustenance furnished to his system, summer taxation must have occurred within the high-strong 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 suddenly 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. And 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 an ink, a little smudged, here and there. I have been out to the mailbox, 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 I 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 tomorrow. 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've told him I would always be fond of him and always his best friend, and I hoped his dearest friend. He will 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 will 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, shall we? And for all this pain you'll forgive your loving and devoted mother. Isabel. CHAPTER 27 Having finished some errands downtown the next afternoon, George Amberson Minnifer was walking up National Avenue on his homeward way when he saw in the distance, coming toward him, on 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 discomforture, his heart immediately forced upon him the consciousness of his 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 an 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 bare-headed? Or should the finer gentleman acquiesce in the lady's desire for no further acquaintance and pass her with stony mane 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 Sharon's 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 gypsies 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 saved that of her own conscience she had a weakness. She had fallen in love with George Amberson Minifer 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 were in 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. And 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 two 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 dumbfounding 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 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 not 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 today, 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, then,' she said, and laughed. "'Papa's been so glum today, 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 would be glad if you'd 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 even 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 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, whatever we were playing.' "'At being lovers, you mean, don't you?' "'Something like that,' she said, lightly. "'For us to, 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?' "'I don't know,' he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. "'But what I wanted to tell you was this. When you went away, you didn't let me know, and didn't care how or when I heard it, but I'm not like that with you. This time I'm going away. That's what I wanted to tell you. I'm going away to-morrow night, indefinitely.' "'She nodded, sonnally. That's nice for you. I hope you'll have ever so jolly a time, George. I don't expect to have a particularly jolly time.' "'Well, then,' she laughed, if I were you, I don't think I'd go. It seemed impossible to impress this distracting creature, to make her serious. "'Lucy,' he said desperately, this is our last walk together. Evidently,' she said, if you're going away to-morrow night, "'Lucy, this may be the last time I see you, ever, ever in my life.' At that she looked at him quickly across her shoulder, but she smiled as brightly as before, and with the same cordial inconsequence. "'Oh, I can hardly think that,' she said, and of course I'd be awfully sorry to think it. You're not moving away, are you, to live?' "'No.' "'And even if you were, of course, you'd be coming back to visit your relatives every now and then.' "'I don't know when I'm coming back. Mother and I are starting to-morrow night for a trip around the world.' "'At this she did look thoughtful. Your mother is going with you?' "'Good heavens,' he groaned. "'Lucy, doesn't it make any difference to you that I am going?' At this her cordial smile instantly appeared again. "'Yes, of course,' she said. "'I'm sure I'll miss you ever so much. Are you going to be gone long?' He stared at her, wandily. "'I told you indefinitely,' he said. "'We've made no plans at all for coming back.' "'That does sound like a long trip,' she exclaimed admiringly. "'Do you plan to be travelling all the time, or will you stay in some one place the greater part of it? I think it would be lovely to—Lucy!' He halted, and she stopped with him. They had come to a corner at the edge of the business section of the city, and people were everywhere around them, brushing against them sometimes and passing. "'I can't stand this,' George said, in a low voice. "'I'm just about ready to go in the drug-store here and ask the clerk for something to keep me from dying in my tracks. It's quite a shock, you see, Lucy. What is?' To find out, certainly, at last, how deeply you've cared for me. To see how much difference this makes to you. By Jove, I have mattered to you.' Her cordial smile was tempered now with good nature. "'George!' she laughed, indulgently. "'Surely you don't want me to do Pethos on a downtown corner. You wouldn't do Pethos anywhere. Well, don't you think Pethos is generally rather foozling?' "'I can't stand this any longer,' he said. "'I can't. Good-bye, Lucy.' He took her hand. "'It's good-bye. I think it's good-bye for good, Lucy. Good-bye. I do hope you'll have the most splendid trip.' She gave his hand a cordial little grip, then released it lightly. Give my love to your mother. Good-bye!' He turned heavily away, and a moment later glanced back over his shoulder. She had not gone on, but stood watching him, that same casual cordial smile on her face to the very last. And now, as he looked back, she emphasized her friendly unconcern by waving her small hand to him cheerily, though perhaps with the slightest hint of preoccupation, as if she had begun to think of the errand that brought her downtown. In his mind, George had already explained her to his own poignant dissatisfaction—some blonde pup, probably, whom she had met during that perfectly gorgeous time. And he strode savagely onward, not looking back again. So Lucy remained where she was until he was out of sight. Then she went slowly into the drug-store which had struck George as a possible source of stimulant for himself. "'Please let me have a few drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass of water,' she said, with the utmost composure. "'Yes, ma'am,' said the impressionable clerk, who had been looking at her through the display window as she stood on the corner. But a moment later, as he turned from the shells of glass jars against the wall with the potion she had asked for in his hand, he uttered an exclamation, "'For gosh's sake, miss!' And, describing this adventure to his fellow-borders that evening, sagged pretty near to the counter she was, he said, if I hadn't been a bright, quick, ready-for-anything young fellow, she'd a flummoxed plum. I was watching her out the window, talking to some young society fellow, and she was all right then. She was all right when she came into the store, too. Yes, sir, the prettiest girl that ever walked in our place, and took one look at me. I reckon it must be the truth what some of you townwags say about my face. CHAPTER XXVIII. At that hour the heroine of the susceptible clerk's romance was engaged in brightening the rosy little coal-fire under the white mantelpiece and her pretty white and blue boudoir. Four photographs, all framed in decorous plain silver, went to the anthracite's fierce destruction, frames and all, and three packets of letters and notes in a charming Florentine treasure-box of painted wood. Nor was the box any more than the silver frames spared this rousing finish. Thrown heartily upon live coal the fine wood sparked forth in stars, then burst into an alarming blaze which scorched the white mantelpiece. But Lucy stood and looked on without moving. It was not Eugene who told her what had happened at Isabel's door. When she got home she found Fanny Minifer waiting for her, a secret excursion of Fanny's for the purpose, presumably, of letting out again because that was what she did. She told Lucy everything except her own lamentable part in the production of the recent miseries, and concluded with a tribute to George. The worst of it is he thinks he's been such a hero and Isabel does too, and that makes him more than twice as awful. It's been the same all his life. Everything he did was noble and perfect. He had a domineering nature to begin with, and she let it go on and fostered it till it absolutely ruled her. I never saw her plainer case of a person's fault making them pay for having it. She goes about overseeing the packing and praising George and pretending to be perfectly cheerful about what he's making her do and about the dreadful things he's done. She pretends he did such a fine thing so manly and protective, going to Mrs. Johnson. And so heroic, doing what his principles made him, even though he knew what it would cost him with you. In all the while it's almost killing her what he said to your father. She's always been lofty enough, so to speak, and had the greatest idea of the Ambersons being superior to the rest of the world and all that, but rudeness or anything like making a scene or any bad manners, they always just made her sick. But she could never see what George's manners were. Oh, it's been a terrible adulation. It's going to be a task for me living in that big house all alone. You must come and see me. I mean, after they've gone, of course. I'll go crazy if I don't see something of people. I'm sure you'll come as often as you can. I know you too well to think you'll be sensitive about coming there or being reminded of George. Think heaven, you're too well balanced. Miss Fanny concluded with a profound fervor. You're too well balanced to let anything affect you deeply about that monkey. The four photographs and the painted Florentine bogs went to their cremation within the same hour that Miss Fanny spoke, and a little later Lucy called her father in as he passed her door and pointed to the blackened area on the underside of the mantelpiece and to the burnt heap upon the coal where some metallic shapes still retained outline. She flung her arms about his neck in passionate sympathy, telling him that she knew what had happened to him, and presently he began to comfort her and managed an embarrassed life. Well, well, he said, I was too old for such foolishness to be getting into my head anyhow. No, no, she sobbed, and if you knew how I despised myself for ever having thought one instant about—oh, Miss Fanny called him the right name, that monkey, he is. There, there, I think I agree with you, Eugene said, grimly, and in his eyes there was a steady light of anger that was to last. Yes, I think I agree with you about that. There's only one thing to do with such a person, she said vehemently, that's to put him out of our thoughts forever—forever. And yet the next day at six o'clock, which was the hour, Fanny had told her when George and his mother were to leave upon their long journey, Lucy touched that scorched place on her mantel with her hand, just as the little clock above it struck. Then after this odd unconscious gesture she went to a window and stood between the curtains looking out into the cold November dusk, and in spite of every reasoning and reasonable power within her, a pain of loneliness struck through her heart. The dim street below her window, the dark houses across the way, the vague air itself, all looked empty and cold, and most of all uninteresting. Something more somber than November dusk took the color from them and gave them that air of desertion. The light of her fire flickering up behind her showed suddenly a flying group of tiny snowflakes nearing the window-pane, and for an instant she felt the sensation of being dragged through a snow-drift under a broken cutter with a boy's arms around her—an arrogant, handsome, too conquering boy, who nevertheless did his best to get hurt himself, keeping her from any possible harm. She shook the picture out of her eyes indignantly, then came and sat before her fire, and looked long and long at the blackened mantelpiece. She did not have the mantelpiece repainted, and, since she did not, might as well have kept his photographs. One forgets what made the scar upon his hand, but not what made the scar upon his wall. She played no funeral march upon her piano, even though Chopin's romantic lamentation was then at the top of nine-tenths of the music racks in the country, American youth having recently discovered this distinguished congeniality between itself and this deathless bit of deathly gloom. She did not even play Robin Adair. She played Bedelia, and all the new cake-walks, for she was her father's housekeeper, and rightly looked upon the office as being the same as that of his heart-keeper. Therefore it was her affair to keep both house and heart in what state of cheerfulness might be contrived. She made him go out more than ever, made him take her to all the gayities of that winter, declining to go herself unless he took her. And though Eugene danced no more and quoted Shakespeare to prove all light-foot caperings beneath the dignity of his age, she broke his resolution for him at the New Year's Eve Assembly, and half coaxed, half dragged him forth upon the floor, and made him dance the new year in with her. New faces appeared at the dances of the winter. New faces had been appearing everywhere for that matter, and familiar ones were disappearing, merging into the increasing crowd, or gone forever, and missed a little and not long, for the town was growing and changing as it never had grown and changed before. It was heaving up in the middle incredibly. It was spreading incredibly, and as it heaved and spread it befouled itself and darkened its sky. Its boundary was mere shapelessness on the run. A raw new house would appear on a country road, four or five others would presently be built at intervals between it and the outskirts of the town. The country road would turn into an asphalt street with a brick-faced drugstore and a framed grocery at a corner. Then bungalows and six-room cottages would swiftly speckle the open green spaces, and a farm had become a suburb, which would immediately shoot out other suburbs into the country, on one side, and on the other join itself solidly to the city. You drove between pleasant fields and woodland groves one spring day, and in the autumn, passing over the same ground, you were warned off the tracks by an inter-urban trolley-carve's and beheld beyond cement sidewalks just dry, new house-owners busily moving in. Gasoline and electricity were performing the miracles that Eugene had predicted. But the great change was in the citizenry itself. What was left of the patriotic old-stock generation that had fought the Civil War and subsequently controlled politics had become venerable and was little heated. The descendants of the pioneers and early settlers were merging into the new crowd, becoming part of it, little to be distinguished from it. What happened to Boston and to Broadway happened in degree to the Midland City. The old stock became less and less typical, and of the grown people who called the place home less than a third had been born in it. There was a German quarter, there was a Jewish quarter, there was a Negro quarter, square miles of it called Bucktown. There were many Irish neighborhoods, and there were large settlements of Italians and of Hungarians and of Romanians and of Serbians and other Balkan peoples. But not the immigrants themselves were the almost dominant type on the streets downtown. That type was the immigrant's prosperous offspring, descendant of the emigrations of the 70s and 80s and 90s, those great folk journeys in search not so directly of freedom and democracy as of more money for the same labor. A new Midlander, in fact, a new American, was beginning dimly to emerge. A new spirit of citizenship had already sharply defined itself. It was idealistic, and its ideals were expressed in this new kind of young men in business downtown. They were optimists, optimists to the point of belligerence, their motto being, boost, don't knock. And they were hustlers believing in hustling and in honesty because both paid. They loved their city and worked for it with a plutonic energy which was always ardently vocal. They were viciously governed, but they sometimes went so far as to struggle for the better government on account of the helpful effect of good government on the price of real estate and betterment generally. The politicians could not go too far with them and knew it. The idealists planned and strove and shouted that their city should become a better, better, and better city. And what they meant when they used the word better was more prosperous, and the core of their idealism was this. The more prosperous my beloved city, the more prosperous beloved I. They had one supreme theory, that the perfect beauty and happiness of cities and of human life was to be brought about by more factories. They had a mania for factories. There was nothing they would not do to cajole a factory away from another city. And they were never more piteously embittered than when another city cajoleed one away from them. What they meant by prosperity was credit at the bank, but in exchange for this credit they got nothing that was not dirty, and therefore to a sane mind valueless, since whatever was cleaned was dirty again before the cleaning was half done. For as the town grew it grew dirty with an incredible completeness. The idealists put up magnificent buildings and boasted of them, but the buildings were begrind before they were finished. They boasted of their libraries, of their monuments and statues, and poured soot on them. They boasted of their schools, but the schools were dirty like the children within them. This was not the fault of the children or their mothers, it was the fault of the idealists, who said, the more dirt, the more prosperity. They drew patriotic, optimistic breaths of the flying, powdered filth of the streets, and took the foul and heavy smoke with gusto in the profundities of their lungs. Boost, don't knock, they said, and every year or so they boomed a great cleanup week, when everybody was supposed to get rid of the tin cans in his backyard. They were happiest when the tearing down and building up were most riotous, and when new factory districts were thundering into life. In truth the city came to be like the body of a great dirty man, skinned to show his busy works, yet wearing a few barbaric ornaments, and such a figure, carved, colored, and discolored, and set up in the marketplace would have done well enough as the god of the new people. Such a god they had indeed made in their own image, as all peoples make the god they truly serve, though of course certain of the idealists went to church on Sunday, and there knelt to another, considered to be impractical in business. But while the growing went on, this god of their marketplace was their true god, their familiar and spirit control. They did not know that they were his helplessly obedient slaves, nor could they ever hope to realize their serfdom as the first step toward becoming free men, until they should make the strange and hard discovery that matter should serve man's spirit. Prosperity meant good credit at the bank, black lungs, and housewives' purgatory. The women fought the dirt all they could, but if they let the air into their houses they let in the dirt. It shortened their lives and kept them from the happiness of ever seeing anything white. And thus as the city grew the time came when Lucy, after a hard struggle, had to give up her blue and white curtains and her white walls. Indoors she put everything into dull grey and brown, and outside had the little house painted the dark green nearest to black. Then she knew, of course, that everything was as dirty as ever, but was a little less distressed, because it no longer looked as dirty as it was. These were bad times for Ambrus in addition. This quarter, already old, lay within a mile of the centre of the town, but business moved in other directions, and the addition's share of prosperity was only the smoke and dirt with the bank credit left out. The owners of the original big houses sold them or rented them to boarding housekeepers, and the tenants of the multitude of small houses moved farther out where the smoke was thinner, or into apartment houses which were built by dozens now. Cheaper tenants took their places and the rents were lower and lower and the houses shabbier and shabbier, for all these shabby houses, burning soft coal, did their best to help in the destruction of their own value. They helped to make the quarter so dingy and the air so foul to breathe that no one would live there who had money enough to get farther out, where there were glimpses of ungrade sky and breaths of cleaner winds. And with the coming of the new speed farther out was now as close to business as the addition had been in the days of its prosperity. Distances had ceased to matter. The five new houses, built so closely where had been the fine old lawn of the Amberson mansion, did not look new. When they were a year old they looked as old as they would ever look, and two of them were vacant, having never been rented, for the major's mistake about apartment houses had been a disastrous one. He guessed wrong, George Amberson said. He guessed wrong at just the wrong time. Housekeeping in a house is harder than in an apartment, and where the smoke and dirt are as thick as they are in the addition women can't stand it. People were crazy for apartments. Too bad he couldn't have seen it in time. Poor man, he digs away at his ledgers by his old gas-drop light lamp almost every night. He still refuses to let the mansion be torn up for wiring, you know. But he had one painful satisfaction this spring. He got his taxes lowered. Amberson laughed ruefully, and Fanny Minifer asked how the major could have managed such an economy. They were sitting upon the veranda at Isabel's one evening, during the third summer of the absence of their nephew and his mother, and the conversation had turned toward Amberson finances. I said it was a painful satisfaction, Fanny, he explained. The property has gone down in value, and they assisted lower than they did fifteen years ago. But farther out! Oh yes, farther out! Prices are magnificent farther out, and farther in, too. We just happen to be in the wrong spot, that's all. Not that I don't think something could be done if father would let me have a hand, but he won't. He can't, I suppose, I ought to say. He's always done his own figuring, he says, and it's his life-long habit to keep his affairs, and even his books to himself, and just hand out the money. Heaven knows he's done enough of that. He sighed, and both were silent, looking out at the long flares of the constantly passing automobile headlights, shifting in vast geometric demonstrations against the darkness. Now and then a bicycle wound its nervous way among these portents, or at long intervals a surrey or buggy plotted forlornly by. There seem to be so many ways of making money nowadays, Fanny said, thoughtfully. Every day I hear of a new fortune some person has got hold of one way or another. Nearly always it's somebody you never heard of. It doesn't seem all to be in just making motor-cars. I hear there's a great deal in manufacturing these things that motor-cars use, new inventions particularly. I met dear old Frank Bronson the other day, and he told me, Oh yes, even dear old Frank's got the fever, Amberson laughed. He's as wild as any of them. He told me about this invention he's gone into. Millions in it. Some new electric headlight better than anything yet. Every car in America can't help but have him, and all that. He's putting half he's laid by into it. And the fact is he almost talked me into getting father to finance me enough for me to go into it. Poor father, he's financed me before. I suppose he would again if I had the heart to ask him. And this seems to be a good thing, though probably old Frank is a little too sanguine. At any rate I've been thinking it over. So have I, Fanny admitted. He seemed to be certain it would pay twenty-five percent the first year, and enormously more after that. And I'm only getting four on my little principle. People are making such enormous fortunes out of everything to do with motor-cars. It does seem as if—she paused. Well, I told him I'd think it over, seriously. We may turn out to be partners and millionaires then, Amberson laughed. I thought I would ask Eugene's advice. I wish you would, said Fanny. He probably knows exactly how much profit there would be in this. Eugene's advice was to go slow. He thought electric lights for automobiles were coming some day, but probably not until certain difficulties could be overcome. All together he was discouraging, but by this time his two friends had the fever as thoroughly as old Frank Bronson himself had it, for they had been with Bronson to see the light working beautifully in a machine shop. They were already enthusiastic, and after asking Eugene's opinion they argued with him, telling him how they had seen with their own eyes that the difficulties he mentioned had been overcome. Perfectly Fanny cried, and if it worked in the shop it's bound to work any place, isn't it? He would not agree that it was bound to, yet being pressed was driven to admit that it might, and retiring from what was developing into an oratorical contest repeated a warning about not putting too much into it. George Amberson also laid stress on this caution later, though the major had financed him again, and he was going in. You must be careful to leave yourself a margin of safety, Fanny, he said. I'm confident that this is a pretty conservative investment of its kind, and all the chances are with us, but you must be careful to leave yourself enough to fall back on in case anything should go wrong. Fanny deceived him. In the impossible event of anything going wrong she would have enough left to live on, she declared, and laughed excitedly, for she was having the best time that had come to her since Wilbur's death. Like so many women, for whom money has always been provided without their understanding how, she was prepared to be a thorough and irresponsible plunger. Amberson, in his wearier way, shared her excitement, and in the winter, when the exploiting company had been formed and he brought Fanny her importantly engraved shares of stock, he reverted to his prediction of possibilities, made when they first spoke of the new light. We seemed to be partners all right, he laughed. Now let's go ahead and be millionaires before Isabelle and young George come home. When they come home she echoed sorrowfully, and it was a phrase which found an evasive echo in Isabelle's letters. In these letters Isabelle was always planning pleasant things that she and Fanny and Major and George and her brother George would do when she and her son came home. They will find things pretty changed, I'm afraid, Fanny said, if they ever do come home. Fanny went over the next summer and joined his sister and nephew in Paris where they were living. Isabelle does want to come home, he told Fanny gravely, on the day of his return in October. She's wanted to for a long while, and she ought to come while she can stand the journey. And he amplified this statement, leaving Fanny looking startled and solemn when Lucy came by to drive him out to dinner at the new house that Eugene had just completed. This was no white and blue cottage, but a great Georgian picture and brick, five miles north of Amberson addition, with four acres of its own hedged land between it and its next neighbor. And Amberson laughed wistfully as they turned in between the stone and brick gate-pillars and rolled up the crushed stone driveway. I wonder, Lucy, if history's going on forever repeating itself, he said. I wonder if this town is going on building up things and rolling over them, as poor father once said it was rolling over his poor old heart. It looks it. Here's the Amberson mansion again, only it's Georgian instead of nondescript Romanesque. But it's just the same Amberson mansion that my father built long before you were born. The only difference is that it's your father who's built this one now. It's all the same in the long run. Lucy did not quite understand, but she laughed as a friend should, and taking his arm showed him through vasty rooms where ivory paneled walls and trim window hangings were reflected dimly in dark, rug-less floors, and the sparse furniture showed that Lucy had been collecting with a long purse. By Jove, he said, you have been going at it. Fanny tells me you had a great housewarming dance, and you kept right on being the bell of the ball, not any softer harder than you used to be. Fred Kinney's father says you've refused Fred so often he's gotten engaged to Janie Sharon just to prove that somebody would have him in spite of his hair. Well, the material world do move, and you've got the new kind of house that it moves into nowadays, if it has the new price. And even the grand old expanses of plate glass we used to be so proud of at the other Amberson mansion. They've gone too, with the crowded heavy gold and red stuff. Curious, we've still got the plate glass windows, though all we can see out of them is the smoke in the old Johnson House, which is a counter-jumper's boarding-house now, while you've got a view and you cut it all up into little panes. Well, you're pretty refreshingly out of the smoke up here. Yes, for a while, Lucy laughed, until it comes and we have to move out farther. No, you'll stay here, he assured her. It will be somebody else who will move out farther. He continued to talk of the house after Eugene arrived, and gave them no account of his journey, until they had retired from the dinner-table to Eugene's library, a grey and shadowy room where their coffee was brought. Then, equipped with a cigar, which seemed to occupy his attention, Amberson spoke in a casual tone of his sister and her son. I found Isabelle as well as usual, he said, only I'm afraid as usual isn't particularly well. Sydney and Amelia have been up to Paris in the spring, but she hadn't seen them. Somebody told her that they were there, it seems. They had left Florence and were living in Rome. Amelia's becoming a Catholic and is said to give great sums to charity and to go about with the gentry in consequence. But Sydney is ailing and lives in a wheelchair most of the time. It struck me that Isabelle ought to be doing the same thing. He paused, bestowing minute care upon the removal of the little band from his cigar. And as he seemed to have concluded his narrative, Eugene spoke out of the shadow, beyond a heavily shaded lamp. What do you mean by that? He asked quietly. Oh, she's cheerful enough, Sir Amberson, still not looking at either his young hostess or her father. At least, he added, she manages to seem so. I'm afraid she hasn't really been well for several years. She isn't stout, you know. She hasn't changed and looks much, and she seems rather alarmingly short of breath for a slender person. Father's been that way for years, of course, but never nearly so much as Isabelle is now. Of course, she makes nothing of it, but it seemed rather serious to me when I noticed that she had to stop and rest, twice, to get up the one short flight of steps in their two-floor apartment. I told her I thought she ought to make George let her come home. Let her? Eugene repeated in a low voice. Does she want to? She doesn't urge it. George seems to like the life there in his grand, gloomy, peculiar way, and, of course, she will never change about being proud of him and all that. He's quite a swell. But in spite of anything she said, rather than because, I know she does indeed want to come home. She would like to be with Father, of course, and I think she's—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn't get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat coming home I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet resignation with which she said it. And it struck me all at once that I'd been mistaken. I saw she was really thinking of her own state of health. I see, said Eugene, his voice even lower than it had been before. And you say he won't let her come home? Amerson laughed, but still continued to be interested in his cigar. Oh, I don't think he uses force. He's very gentle with her. I doubt if the subject is mentioned between them, and yet—and yet, knowing my interesting nephew as you do, wouldn't you think that that was about the way to put it? Knowing him as I do, yes, said Eugene slowly. Yes, I should think that was about the way to put it. A murmur out of the shadows beyond him—a faint sound, musical and feminine, yet expressive of a notable intensity—seemed to indicate that Lucy was of the same opinion. CHAPTER XXIX Let her was correct, but the time came—and it came in the spring of the next year—when it was no longer a question of George's letting his mother come home, he had to bring her—and to bring her quickly if she was to see her father again. When Amberson had been right, her danger of never seeing him again lay not in the major's feebleness of heart, but in her own. As it was, George telegraphed his uncle to have a wheeled chair at the station for the journey had been disastrous, and to this hybrid vehicle placed close to the car-platform, her son carried her in his arms when she arrived. She was unable to speak, but padded her brothers and Fanny's hands, and looked very sweet, Fanny found the desperate courage to tell her. She was lifted from the chair into a carriage, and seemed a little stronger as they drove home. For once she took her hand from George's, and waved it feebly toward the carriage-window. Changed, she whispered. So changed. You mean the town, Amberson said. You mean the old place has changed, don't you, dear? She smiled and moved her lips. Yes. It'll change to a happier place, old dear, he said, now that you're back in it, and going to get well again. But she only looked up at him wistfully, her eyes a little frightened. When the carriage stopped, her son carried her into the house, and up the stairs to her own room, where a nurse was waiting, and he came out a moment later as the doctor went in. At the end of the hall a stricken group was clustered, Amberson and Fanny and the Major. George, deathly pale and speechless, took his grandfather's hand, but the old gentleman did not seem to notice his action. When are they going to let me see my daughter? he asked, quarrelously. They told me to keep out of the way while they carried her in, because it might upset her. I wish they'd let me go in and speak to my daughter. I think she wants to see me. He was right. Presently the doctor came out and beckoned to him, and the Major shuffled forward, leaning on a shaking cane. His figure, after all its years of proud soldierliness, had grown stooping at last, and his untrimmed white hair straggled over the back of his collar. He looked old, old and divested of the world, as he crept toward his daughter's room. His voice was stronger, for the waiting group heard a low cry of tenderness and welcome as the old man reached the open doorway, and then the door was closed. Fanny touched her nephew's arm. George, you must need something to eat. I know she'd want you to. I've had things ready. I knew she would want me to. You'd better go down to the dining-room. There's plenty on the table waiting for you. She would want you to eat something. He turned a ghastly face to her. It was so panic-stricken. I don't want anything to eat, he said savagely, and he began to pace the floor, taking care not to go near Isabelle's door, and that his footsteps were muffled by the long thick haul rug. After a while he went to where Amberson, with folded arms and bowed head, had seated himself near the front window. Uncle George, he said hoarsely. I didn't—well? Oh, my God! I didn't think this thing the matter with her could ever be serious. I—he gasped. When that doctor I had meet us at the boat, he could not go on. Amberson only nodded his head and did not otherwise change his attitude. Isabelle lived through the night. At eleven o'clock Fanny came timidly to George in his room. Eugene is here, she whispered. He's downstairs. He wants—she gulped. He wants to know if he can't see her. I don't know what to say. I said I would see. I didn't know. The doctor said— The doctor said we must keep her peaceful, George said, sharply. Do you think that man's coming would be very soothing? My God! If it hadn't been for him, this mightn't have happened. We could have gone on living here quietly. Why, it would be like taking a stranger into her room. She hasn't even spoken to him more than twice in all the time we've been away. Doesn't he know how sick she is? You tell him, the doctor said she had to be quiet and peaceful. That's what he did say, isn't it? Fanny acquiesced tearfully. I'll tell him—I'll tell him the doctor said she was to be kept very quiet. I—I don't know. And then she potted out. An hour later the nurse appeared in George's doorway. She came noiselessly and his back was toward her. But he jumped as if he had been shot, and his jaw fell. He so feared what she was going to say. She wants to see you. The terrified mouth shut with a click, and he nodded and followed her. But she remained outside his mother's room while he went in. Isabel's eyes were closed, and she did not open them or move her head. But she smiled and edged her hand toward him as he sat on a stool beside the bed. He took that slender cold hand and put it to his cheek. Darling, did you—did you get something to eat? She could only whisper slowly and with difficulty. It was as if Isabel herself were far away and only able to signal what she wanted to say. Yes, mother, all that you needed—yes, mother. She did not speak again for a time, and then—are you sure that you didn't—you didn't catch cold—coming home? I'm all right, mother. It's good. It's sweet. It's sweet. What is, mother, darling, to feel my hand on your cheek? I—I can feel it. But this frightened him horribly that she seemed so glad she could feel it, like a child proud of some miraculous-seeming thing accomplished. It frightened him so that he could not speak, and he feared that she would know how he trembled, but she was unaware and again was silent. Finally she spoke again. I wonder if—if Eugene and Lucy know that we've come home. I'm sure they do. Has he—has he asked about me? Yes, he was here. Has he gone? Yes, mother. She sighed faintly. I would like—what, mother? I would like to have seen him. It was just audible, this little regretful murmur. Several minutes passed before there was another. Just—just once, she whispered, and then was still. She seemed to have fallen asleep, and George moved to go, but a faint pressure upon his fingers detained him, and he remained, with her hand still pressed against his cheek. After a while he made sure she was asleep and moved again to let the nurse come in, and this time there was no pressure of the fingers to keep him. She was not asleep, but thinking that if he went he might get some rest and be better prepared for what she knew was coming. She commanded those longing fingers of hers, and let him go. He found the doctor standing with the nurse in the hall, and telling them that his mother was drowsing now. George went back to his own room, where he was startled to find his grandfather lying on the bed and his uncle leaning against the wall. They had gone home two hours before, and he did not know they had returned. The doctor thought we'd better come over, Amberson said, and then was silent, and George, shaking violently, sat down on the edge of the bed. His shaking continued, and from time to time he wiped heavy sweat from his forehead. The hours passed, and sometimes the old man upon the bed would snore a little, stop suddenly, and move as if to rise, but George Amberson would set a hand upon his shoulder and murmur a reassuring word or two. Now and then either uncle or nephew would tiptoe into the hall and look toward Isabelle's room, then come tiptoeing back, the other watching him haggardly. Once George gasped defiantly. The doctor in New York said she might get better. Don't you know he did? Don't you know he said she might? Amberson made no answer. Dawn had been murking through the smoky windows, growing stronger for half an hour, when both men started violently at a sound in the hall, and the major sat up on the bed, unchecked. It was the voice of the nurse speaking to Fanny Minifer, and the next moment Fanny appeared in the doorway, making contorted efforts to speak. Amberson said weakly, Does she want us to come in? But Fanny found her voice, and uttered a long, loud cry. She threw her arms around George, and sobbed in an agony of loss and compassion. She loved you. She wailed. She loved you. She loved you. Oh! How she did love you! Isabelle had just left them. End of Chapter 29 CHAPTER XXX Major Amberson remained dry-eyed through the time that followed. He knew that this separation from his daughter would be short, that the separation which had preceded it was the long one. He worked at his ledgers no more under his old gas-droplight, but would sit all evening staring into the fire in his bedroom, and not speaking unless someone asked him a question. He seemed almost unaware of what went on around him, and those who were with him thought him dazed by Isabelle's death, guessing that he was lost in reminiscences and vague dreams. Only his mind is full of pictures of his youth, or the civil war, and the days when he and his mother were young married people, and all of us children were jolly little things, and the city was a small town with one cobbled street, and the others just dirt roads with bored sidewalks. This was George Amberson's conjecture, and the others agreed, but they were mistaken. The Major was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. No business plans which had ever absorbed him could compare in the momentousness with the plans that absorbed him now, for he had to plan how to enter the unknown country where he was not even sure of being recognized as an Amberson, not sure of anything except that Isabelle would help him if she could. His absorption produced the outward effect of reverie, but of course it was not. The Major was occupied with the first really important matter that had taken his attention since he came home invalidated after the Gettysburg campaign, and went into business, and he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime between then and today, all his buying and building and trading and baking, that it was all trifling and waste beside what concerned him now. He seldom went out of his room, and often left untouched the meals they brought to him there, and this neglect caused them to shake their heads mournfully, again mistaking for dazedness the profound concentration of his mind. Meanwhile the life of the little bereft group still forlornly centering upon him began to pick up again, as life will, and to emerge from its own period of dazedness. It was not Isabelle's father but her son who was really dazed. A month after her death he walked abruptly into Fanny's room one night, and found her at her desk eagerly adding columns of figures with which she had covered several sheets of paper. This mathematical computation was concerned with her future income to be produced by the electric headlight, now just placed on the general market. But Fanny was ashamed to be discovered doing anything except mourning, and hastily pushed the sheets aside, even as she looked over her shoulder to greet her hollow-eyed visitor. "'George, you startled me. I beg your pardon for not knocking,' he said, huskily. I didn't think. She turned in her chair and looked at him solicitously. "'Sit down, George, won't you?' "'No, I just wanted. I could hear you walking up and down in your room,' said Fanny. You were doing it ever since dinner, and it seems to me you're doing it almost every evening. I don't believe it's good for you, and I know it would worry your mother terribly if she—' Fanny hesitated. "'See here,' said George, breathing fast. I want to tell you once more that what I did was right. How could I have done anything else but what I did do?' "'About what, George? About everything,' he exclaimed, and he became vehement. "'I did the right thing, I tell you. In Heaven's name I would like to know what else there was for anybody in my position to do. It would have been a dreadful thing for me to just let matters go on and not interfere. It would have been terrible. What else on earth was there for me to do? I had to stop that talk, didn't I? Could a son do less than I did? Didn't it cost me something to do it?' Lucy and I had had a quarrel, but that would have come round in time, and it meant the end for ever when I turned her father back from our door. I knew what it meant, yet I went ahead and did it because I knew it had to be done if the talk was to be stopped. I took mother away for the same reason. I knew that would help to stop it. And she was happy over there. She was perfectly happy, I tell you. I think she had a happy life, and that's my only consolation. She didn't live to be old. She was still beautiful and young-looking, and I feel she'd rather have gone before she got old. She'd had a good husband and all the comforts and luxury that anybody could have. And how could it be called anything but a happy life? She was always cheerful, and when I think of her I can always see her laughing. I can always hear that pretty laugh of hers. When I can keep my mind off the trip home and that last night I always think of her gay and laughing. So how on earth could she have had anything but a happy life? People that aren't happy don't look cheerful all the time, do they? They look unhappy if they are unhappy. That's how they look. See here. He faced her, challengingly. Do you deny that I did the right thing? Oh, I don't pretend to judge, Fenny said, soothingly, for his voice and gesture both partook of wildness. I know you think you did, George. Think I did, he echoed violently. My God in heaven! And he began to walk up and down the floor. What else was there to do? What choice did I have? Was there any other way of stopping the talk? He stopped, close in front of her, gesticulating, his voice harsh and loud. Don't you hear me? I'm asking you. Was there any other way on earth of protecting her from the talk? Miss Fenny looked away. It died down before long, I think, she said nervously. That shows I was right, doesn't it? He cried. If I hadn't acted as I did, that slanderous old Johnson woman would have kept on with her slanders. She would still be— No, Fenny interrupted. She's dead. She dropped dead with apoplexy, one day about six weeks after you left. I didn't mention it in my letters, because I didn't want— Well, I thought— Well, other people would have kept on, then. They'd have— I don't know, said Fenny, still averting her troubled eyes. Things are so changed here, George. The other people you speak of, one hardly knows what's become of them. Of course not a great many were doing the talking, and they—well, some of them are dead, and some might as well be. You never see them any more. And the rest, whoever they were, are probably so mixed in with the crowds of new people that seem never even to have heard of us. And I'm sure we certainly never heard of them. And people seem to forget things so soon. They seem to forget anything. You can't imagine how things have changed here. George gulped painfully before he could speak. You—you mean to sit there and tell me that if I had just let things go on— Oh! You swung away, walking the floor again. I tell you I did the only right thing. If you don't think so, why in the name of heaven can't you say what else I should have done? It's easy enough to criticise, but the person who criticises a man ought at least to tell him what else he should have done. You think I was wrong. I'm not saying so, she said. You did at the time, he cried. You said enough then, I think. Well, what have you to say now, if you're so sure I was wrong? Nothing, George. It's only because you're afraid to, he said. And he went on with a sudden, bitter divination. You are reproaching yourself with what you had to do with all that, and you're trying to make up for it by doing and saying what you think Mother would want you to, and you think I couldn't stand it if I got to thinking I might have done differently. Oh! I know. That's exactly what's in your mind. You do think I was wrong. So does Uncle George. I challenged him about it the other day, and he answered just as you were answering. Evaded, tried to be gentle. I don't care to be handled with gloves. I tell you I was right, and I don't need any coddling by people that think I wasn't. And I suppose you believe I was wrong not to let Morgan see her that last night when he came here, and she was dying. If you do, why in the name of God did you come and ask me? You could have taken him in. She did want to see him. She—Miss Fanny looked startled. You think? She told me so. And the tortured young man choked. She said just once. She said I'd like to have seen him just once. She meant to tell him good-bye. That's what she meant. And you put this on me, too. You put this responsibility on me. But I tell you, and I told Uncle George, that the responsibility isn't all mine. If you were so sure I was wrong at the time when I took her away and when I turned Morgan out, if you were so sure, why did you let me do it? You and Uncle George were grown people, both of you, weren't you? You were older than I. And if you were so sure that you were wiser than I, why did you just stand around with your hands hanging down and let me go ahead? You could have stopped it if it was wrong, couldn't you? Fanny shook her head. No, George, she said, slowly. Nobody could have stopped you. You were too strong and— And what? he demanded loudly. And she loved you. Too well. George stared at her hard, then his lower lip began to move convulsively, and he set his teeth upon it, but could not check its frantic twitching. He ran out of the room. She sat still, listening. He had plunged into his mother's room, but no sound came to Fanny's ears after the sharp closing of the door, and presently she rose and stepped out into the hall, but could hear nothing. The heavy black walnut door of Isabel's room, as Fanny's troubled eyes remained fixed upon it, seemed to become darker and vaguer. The polished wood took the distant ceiling-light at the end of the hall in dim reflections which became mysterious. And to Fanny's disturbed mind the single sharp point of light on the bronze doorknob was like a continuous sharp cry in the stillness of night. What interview was sealed away from human eye and ear within the lonely darkness on the other side of that door? In that darkness where Isabel's own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? In God's name what else could I have done? For his mother's immutable silence was surely answering him, as Isabel in life would never have answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead can be. They cannot stop their eloquence, no matter how much they have loved the living. They cannot choose. And so, no matter in what agony George should cry out, what else could I have done? And to the end of his life, no matter how often he made that wild appeal, Isabel was doomed to answer him with the wistful, faint murmur. I'd like to have seen him. Just. Just once. A cheerful darky went by the house, loudly and tunelessly whistling some broken thoughts upon women, fried food, and gin. Then a group of high school boys, returning homeward after important initiations, were heard skylocking along the sidewalk, rattling sticks on the fences, squawking hoarsely, even attempting to sing in the shocking new voices of uncompleted adolescents. For no reason, and just as a poultry-yard falls into causeless agitation, they stopped in front of the house, and for half an hour produced the effect of a noisy multitude and full riot. To the woman standing upstairs in the hall this was almost unbearable, and she felt that she would have to go down and call to them to stop, but she was too timid, and after a time went back to her room and sat at her desk again. She left the door open and frequently glanced out into the hall, but gradually became once more absorbed in the figures which represented her prospective income from her great plunge into electric lights for automobiles. She did not hear George return to his own room. A superstitious person might have thought it unfortunate that her partner in this speculative industry, as in Wilbur's disastrous rolling mills, was that charming but too haphazard man of the world, George Amberson. He was one of those optimists who believed that if you put money into a great many enterprises one of them is sure to turn out of fortune, and therefore in order to find the lucky one it is only necessary to go into a large enough number of them. Altogether gallant in spirit and beautifully game under catastrophe he had gone into a great many, and the unanimity of their bad luck, as he had called it, gave him one claim to be a distinguished person if he had no other. In business he was ill-fated with a consistency which made him in that alone a remarkable man, and he declared with some earnestness that there was no accounting for it except by the fact that there had been so much good luck in his family before he was born that something had to balance it. You ought to have thought of my record and stayed out, he told Fanny, one day the next spring, when the affairs of the headlight company had begun to look discouraging. I feel the old familiar sinking that's attended all my previous efforts to prove myself a business genius. I think it must be something like the feeling an aeronaut has when his balloon bursts, and looking down he sees below him the old home farm where he used to live. I mean the feeling he had had just before he flattened out in the same old clay barnyard. Things do look bleak, and I'm only glad you didn't go into this confounded thing to the extent that I did. Miss Fanny grew pink. But it must go right, she protested. We saw with our own eyes how perfectly it worked in the shop. The light was so bright no one could face it, so there can't be any reason for it not to work. It's simply— Oh, you're right about that, Amberson said. It certainly was a perfect thing in the shop. The only thing we didn't know was how fast an automobile had to go to keep the light going. It appears that this was a matter of some importance. Well, how fast does one have to? To keep the light from going entirely out, he informed her with elaborate deliberation. It is computed by those enthusiasts who have bought our product and subsequently returned it to us and got their money back. They compute that a motor car must maintain a speed of twenty-five miles an hour or else there won't be any light at all. To make the illumination bright enough to be noticed by an approaching automobile, the state of speed must be more than thirty miles an hour. At thirty-five, objects in the path of the light begin to become visible. At forty, they are revealed distinctly, and at fifty and above we have a real headlight. Unfortunately many people don't care to drive that fast at all times after dusk, especially in the traffic or where policemen are likely to become objectionable. But think of that test on the road when we— The test was lovely, he admitted. The inventor made us happy with his oratory, and you and Frank Bronson and I went whirling through the night at a speed that thrilled us. It was an intoxicating sensation. We were intoxicated by the lights, the lights and the music. We must never forget that drive, with the cool wind kissing our cheeks and the road lit up for miles ahead. We must never forget it, and we never shall. It cost. But something's got to be done. It has indeed. My something would seem to be leaving my watch at my uncle's. Only you—the pink of Fanny's cheeks became deeper. But isn't that man going to do anything to remedy it? Can't he try to? He can try, said Amberson. He is trying, in fact. I sat in the shop watching him try for several beautiful afternoons, while outside the windows all nature was fragrant with spring and smoke. He hums ragtime to himself as he tries, and I think his mind is wandering to something else less tedious, to some new invention in which he would take more interest. But you mustn't let him, she cried. You must make him keep on trying. Oh, yes, he understands that's what I sit there for. I'll keep sitting. However, in spite of the time he spent sitting in the shop worrying the inventor of the fractious light, Amberson found opportunity to worry himself about another matter of business. This was the settlement of Isabelle's estate. It's curious about the deed to her house, he said to his nephew. You are absolutely sure it wasn't among her papers? Mother didn't have any papers, George told him, none at all. All she ever had to do with business was to deposit the checks that grandfather gave her and then write her own checks against them. The deed to the house was never recorded, Amberson said thoughtfully. I've been over to the courthouse to see. I asked Father if he never gave her one, and he didn't seem to be able to understand me at first. Then finally he said he thought he must have given her a deed long ago, but he wasn't sure. I rather think he never did. I think it would be just as well to get him to execute now one in your favour. I'll speak to him about it. George sighed. I don't think I'd bother him about it. The house is mine, and you and I understand that it is. That's enough for me, and there isn't likely to be much trouble between you and me when we come to settling poor grandfather's estate. I've just been with him, and I think it would only confuse him for you to speak to him about it again. I notice he seems distressed if anybody tries to get his attention. He's a long way off somewhere, and he likes to stay that way. I think—I think Mother wouldn't want us to bother him about it. I'm sure she would tell us to let him alone. He looks so white and queer. Amerson shook his head. Not much whiter and queerer than you do, young fellow. You'd better begin to get some air and exercise and quit hanging around in the house all day. I won't bother him any more about it than I can help, but I will have the deed made out ready for his signature. I wouldn't bother him at all. I don't see. You might see, said his uncle, uneasily. The estate is just about as involved and mixed up as an estate can well get to the best of my knowledge, and I haven't helped it any by what he let me have for this infernal headlight scheme, which has finally gone trawl-upping forever to where the wood-bind twineth. Leaves me flat, and poor old Frank Bronson just half flat, and fanny, while thank heaven I kept her from going in so deep it would leave her flat. It's rough on her, as it is, I suspect. You ought to have that deed. No, don't bother him. I will bother him as little as possible. I will wait till some day when he seems to brighten up a little. Anderson waited too long. The Major had already taken eleven months since his daughter's death to think important things out. He had got as far with them as he could, and there was nothing to detain him longer in this world. One evening his grandfather sat with him. The Major seemed to like best to have young George with him, as far as they were able to guess his preferences. And the old gentleman made a queer gesture. He slapped his knee as if he had made a sudden discovery, or else remembered that he had forgotten something. George looked at him with the air of inquiry but said nothing. He had grown to be almost as silent as his grandfather. However, the Major spoke without being questioned. It must be in the sun, he said. There wasn't anything here but the sun in the first place, and the earth came out of the sun, and we came out of the earth. So whatever we are, we must have been in the sun. We got back to the earth we came out of, so the earth will go back to the sun that it came out of. And time means nothing, nothing at all. So in a little while we'll all be back in the sun together. I wish." He moved his hand uncertainly as if reaching for something, and George jumped up. Do you want anything, grandfather? What? Would you like a glass of water? No. No. No, I don't want anything. The reaching hand dropped back upon the arm of his chair, and he relapsed into silence, but a few minutes later he finished the sentence he had begun. I wish somebody could tell me. The next day he had a slight cold, but he seemed annoyed when his son suggested calling the doctor, and Amberson let him have his own way, so far in fact that after he had got up and dressed the following morning he was all alone when he went away to find out what he hadn't been able to think out. All those things that he wished somebody would tell him. Old Sam, shuffling in with the breakfast tray, found the major in his accustomed easy-chair by the fireplace, and yet even the old darky could see instantly that the major was not there. End of chapter thirty