 29 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 bring her quickly if she was to see her father again. And 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 platform, her son carried her in his arms when she arrived. She was unable to speak, but patted her brother's 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 is 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 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. Where are they going to let me see my daughter? He asked, quirelessly. They told me to keep out of the way while they carried her in, because it might upset her. I wished they 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. Her voice was stronger, for the waiting group heard a low cry of tenderness and welcome, as the old man reached the open doorway. 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'd want me to. You better go down to the dining-room. There's plenty on the table waiting for you. She'd 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 Isabel'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. Isabel 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—I didn't know what to say. I said I'd 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. And why it would be like taking a stranger into her room? She hasn't even spoken of him more than twice, and 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 didn't know. And she pottered 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. Isabelle'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 get something to eat? She could only whisper slowly and with difficulty. It was as if Isabelle herself were far away and only able to signal what she wanted to say. Yes, Mother. All you needed? Yes, Mother. She did not speak again for a time, then. Are you sure you didn't—didn't catch cold coming home? I'm all right, Mother. That'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 asked about me? Yes, he was here. Has he gone? Yes, Mother. She sighed faintly. She sighed faintly. I'd like— What, Mother? I'd 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. 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 Isabel's room, then come tiptoeing back, the other watching him haggardly. Once George gasped defiantly. That 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. Don 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 about 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! Isabel had just left them. End of Chapter Chapter 30 OF THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, and is read by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS BY BOOTH TARKINGTON Chapter 30 Major Amberson remained dry-eyed through the time that followed. He knew that the 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 on around him, and those who were with him thought him dazed by Isabel's death, guessing that he was lost in reminiscences and vague dreams. Probably his mind is full of pictures of his youth, or the civil war, and the days when he and 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 board 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 a 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 Isabel 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 banking—that it all was trifling in 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 Isabel'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 at 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, George said, 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'd 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'd had a quarrel, but that would have come round in time, and it meant the end forever 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 comfort 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 always see her laughing. I can always hear that pretty laugh of hers. When I can keep my mind off of 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, Fanny said soothingly, for his voice and gesture both partook of wildness. I know you thought 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? 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 way on earth of protecting her from the talk? Miss Fanny 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'd still be— No, Fanny 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— I thought— Well, the other people would have kept on then. They'd have— I don't know, said Fanny, 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 just let things go on? Oh. He 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 criticize, but the person who criticizes 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 of 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're 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, and tried to be gentler. 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—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 looks 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 all the time, when I took her away, and when I turned Morgan out, if you were so sure what did you let me do it for? You and Uncle George were grown people, both of you, weren't you? You were older than I, and if you were so sure 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 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 dark he 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 skylarking along the sidewalk, rattling sticks on the fences, squawking hoarsely, and 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 in 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 in 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 haphazardous 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 a 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 called it, gave him one claim to be a distinguished person if he had no other. In business he was ill-fated with the 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'd have just before he flattened out in that same old clay barnyard. Things do look bleak, and I'm only glad you didn't go into this confounded thing to the extent I did. Miss Fanny grew pink. But it must go right, she protested. We saw with her own eyes how perfectly it worked in the shop. The light was so bright no one could face it. And 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, they state the 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— That 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 uncles—luckily you. The pink of Fanny's cheeks became deeper. But isn't that Ben going to do anything to remedy it? Can't he try to? He can try, said Aberson. He is trying, in fact. I've 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 rag time to himself as he tries, and I think his mind is wandering to something else less tedious, to some new invention in which he'd 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 Isabel's estate. It's curious about the deed to her house, he said to his nephew. You're 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 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 able to understand me at first. Then he finally 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 one now 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. 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'd tell us to let him alone. He looks so white and queer. Amberson 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 about in the house all day. I won't bother him any more than I can help. But I'll 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 is finally contralopping forever to where the wood-bind twineth. Leaves me flat, and poor old Frank Bronson just half flat, and fanny. Well, thank heaven. I kept her from going in so deep that 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'll bother him as little as possible. I'll wait till some day when he seems to brighten up a little. But Amberson 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 the world. One evening his grandson sat with him. The Major seemed to like best to have young George with him, so 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 an 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 go 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. Did 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 he had wished somebody would tell him. Old Sam, shuffling in with the breakfast tray, found the major in his accustomed easy chair by the fireplace, yet even the old darkie could see instantly that the major was not there. End of chapter. Chapter 31 OF THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS This LibriVox recording is in the public domain, and is read by Mark Smith of Simpsonville, South Carolina. THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS By Booth Tarkington Chapter 31 When the great Amberson estate went into court for settlement, there wasn't any, George Amberson said, that is, when the settlement was concluded there was no estate. I guessed it, Amberson went on. As an expert on prosperity, my career is disreputable, but as a prophet of calamity I deserve a testimonial banquet. He reproached himself bitterly for not having long ago discovered that his father had never given Isabella Deed to her house. And those pigs, Sidney and Amelia, he added, for this was another thing he was bitter about. They won't do anything. I'm sorry I gave them the opportunity of making a polished refusal. Amelia's letter was about half an Italian, she couldn't remember enough ways of saying no in English. One has to live quite a long while to realize there are people like that. The estate was badly crippled, even before they took out their third, and the third they took was the only good part of the rotten apple. Well, I didn't ask them for restitution on my own account, and at least it will save you some trouble, young George. Never waste any time writing to them. You mustn't count on them. I don't, George said quietly. I don't count on anything. Oh, will not feel that things are quite desperate. Emerson laughed, but not with great cheerfulness. We'll survive, Georgie, you will especially. For my part I'm a little too old and too accustomed to fall back on somebody else for supplies to start a big fight with life. I'll be content with just surviving, and I can do it on an $1,800 a year consulship. An ex-congressman can always be pretty sure of getting some such job, and I hear from Washington the matters about settled. I'll live pleasantly enough with a pitcher of ice under a palm tree, and black folks to wait on me. That part of it will be like home, and I'll manage to send you $50 every now and then, after I once get settled. So much for me. But you. Of course you had a poor training for making your own way, but you're only a boy, after all, and the stuff of the old stock is in you. It'll come out and do something. I'll never forgive myself about that deed. It would have given you something substantial to start with. Still, you have a little tiny bit, and you'll have a little tiny salary, too. And, of course, you're Aunt Fanny's here, and she's got something you can fall back on if you get too pinched, until I can begin to send you a dribble now and then. George's little tiny bit was $600 which had come to him from the sale of his mother's furniture, and the little tiny salary was $8 a week which old Frank Bronson was to pay him for services as a clerk and student at law. Old Frank would have offered more to the Major's grandson, but since the death of that best of clients, and his own experience with automobile headlights, he was not certain of being able to pay more and at the same time settle his own small bills for board and lodging. George had accepted haughtily, and thereby removed a burden from his uncle's mind. Amberson himself, however, had not even a tiny bit, though he got his consular appointment, and to take him to his post he found it necessary to borrow $200 of his nephew's $600. It makes me sick, George, he said. But I'd better get there and get that salary started. Of course Eugene would do anything in the world, and the fact is he wanted to, but I felt that—ah, under the circumstances. Never, George exclaimed, growing red. I can't imagine one of the family. He paused, not finding it necessary to explain that the family shouldn't turn a man from the door and then accept favors from him. I wish you'd take more. Amberson declined. One thing I'll say for you, young George, you haven't a stingy bone in your body. That's the Amberson stock in you, and I like it. He added something to this praise of his nephew on the day he left for Washington. He was not to return, but to set forth from the capital on the long journey to his post. George went with him to the station, and their farewell was lengthened by the trains being several minutes late. I may not see you again, Georgie. Amberson said, and his voice was a little husky as he set a kind hand on the young man's shoulder. It's quite probable that from this time on we'll only know each other by letter, until you're notified, as by next of kin, that there's an old valise to be forwarded to you, and perhaps some dusty curios from the consulate mantelpiece. Well, it's an odd way for us to be saying goodbye. One wouldn't have thought it even a few years ago, but here we are, two gentlemen of elegant appearance in a state of bustitude. We can't ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Once I stood where we're standing now to say goodbye to a pretty girl. Only it was in the old station before this was built, and we called it the depot. She'd been visiting your mother before Isabelle was married, and I was wild about her, and she admitted she didn't mind that. In fact, we decided we couldn't live without each other, and we were to be married. But she had to go abroad first with her father, and when we came to say goodbye we knew we wouldn't see each other again for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it, and she stood here crying. Well, I don't even know where she lives now, or if she is living, and I only happen to think of her sometimes when I'm here at the station waiting for a train. If she ever thinks of me she probably imagines I'm still dancing in the ballroom at the Amberson mansion, and she probably thinks of the mansion as still beautiful, still the finest house in town. Life and money both behave like loose Quicksilver and a nest of cracks. And when they're gone we can't tell where or what the devil we did with them. But I believe I'll say now, while there isn't much time left for either of us to get embarrassed about it, I believe I'll say that I've always been fond of you, Georgie, but I can't say that I've always liked you. Sometimes I've felt you were distinctly not an acquired taste. Until lately one had to be fond of you just naturally. This isn't very tactful, of course, for if he didn't, well, he wouldn't. We all spoiled you terribly when you were a little boy and let you grow up en France, and I must say you took to it. But you've received a pretty heavy jolt, and I had enough of your disposition myself, at your age, to understand a little of what cocksure youth has to go through inside when it finds that it can make terrible mistakes. Poor old fellow. You get both kinds of jolts together, spiritual and material, and you've taken them pretty quietly and, well, with my train coming into the shed, you'll forgive me for saying that there have been times when I thought you ought to be hanged. But I've always been fond of you, and now I like you. And just for a last word, there may be somebody else in this town who's always felt about you like that. Fond of you, I mean, no matter how much it seemed you ought to be hanged. You might try. Hello, I must run. I'll send back the money as fast as they pay me. So, good-bye, and God bless you, Georgie. He passed through the gates, waved his hat cheerily from the other side of the iron screen, and was lost from sight in the hurrying crowd. And as he disappeared, an unexpected poignant loneliness fell upon his nephew so heavily and so suddenly that he had no energy to recoil from the shock. It seemed to him that the last fragment of his familiar world had disappeared, leaving him all alone forever. He walked homeward slowly through what appeared to be the strange streets of a strange city, and as a matter of fact the city was strange to him. He had seen little of it during his years in college, and then had followed the long absence and his tragic return, since that he had been scarcely outdoors at all, as Fanny complained, warning him that his health would suffer, and he had been downtown only in a closed carriage. He had not realized the great change. The streets were thunderous, a vast energy heaved under the universal coating of dinginess. George walked through the begrimed crowds of hurrying strangers, and saw no face that he remembered. Great numbers of the faces were even of a kind he did not remember ever to have seen. They were partly like the old type that his boyhood knew, and partly like types he knew abroad, he saw German eyes with American wrinkles at their corners, he saw Irish eyes and Neapolitan eyes, Roman eyes, Tuscan eyes, eyes of Lombardy, of Savoy, Hungarian eyes, Balkan eyes, Scandinavian eyes, all with a queer American look in them. He saw Jews who had been German Jews, Jews who had been Russian Jews, Jews who had been Polish Jews but were no longer German or Russian or Polish Jews. All the people were soiled by the smoke mist through which they hurried, under the heavy sky that hung close upon the new skyscrapers, and nearly all seemed harried by something impending, though here and there a woman with bundles would be laughing to a companion about some adventure of the department stores, or perhaps an escape from the charging traffic of the streets, and not infrequently a girl, or a free and easy young matron, found time to throw an encouraging look to George. He took no note of these, and leaving the crowded sidewalks, turned north into National Avenue, and presently reached the quieter but no less begrimed region of smaller shops and old-fashioned houses. Those latter had been the homes of his boyhood playmates, old friends of his grandfather had lived here. In this alley he had fought with two boys at the same time and whipped them. In that front yard he had been successfully teased into temporary insanity by a Sunday school class of pinky little girls. On that sagging porch a laughing woman had fed him and other boys with donuts and gingerbread. Yonder he saw the staggered relics of the iron picket fence he had made his white pony jump on a dare, and in the shabby, stone-faced house behind the fence, he had gone to children's parties, and when he was a little older he had danced there often, and fallen in love with Mary Sharon, and kissed her, apparently by force, under the stairs in the hall. The double front doors of meaninglessly carved walnut, once so glossily varnished, had been painted smoke-gray, but the smoke-grime showed repulsively even on the smoke-gray, and over the doors a smoked sign proclaimed the place to be a stag-hotel. Other houses had become boarding-houses too genteel for signs, but many were franker, some offering, bored by the day, week, or meal, and some more laconic, contending themselves with the label, rooms. One, having torn out part of an old stone-trimmed bay window for purposes of commercial display, showed forth two suspended petticoats in a pair of oyster-colored flannel trousers to prove the claims of its black and gilt sign, French cleaning and dye-house. Its next neighbor also sported a remodeled front, and permitted no doubt that its mission in life was to attend causally upon death, J. M. Rolsoner, Cascots, the Funeral Home. And beyond that a plain old, honest, four-square, gray-painted brick-house was flamboyantly decorated with a great gilt scroll on the railing of the old-fashioned veranda, mutual benevolent-order cavaliers and dames of purity. This was the old Minifer House. George passed it without perceptibly wincing. In fact he held his head up, and except for his gravity of countenance and the prison pallor he had acquired by two constantly remaining indoors, there was little to warn in acquaintance that he was not precisely the same George Amberson Minifer known a foretime. He was still so magnificent, indeed, that there came to his ears a waft of comment from a passing automobile. This was a fearsome red car, glittering in brass, with half a dozen young people in it, whose motorism had reached an extreme manifestation in dress. The ladies of this party were favorably affected at sight of the pedestrian upon the sidewalk, and as the machine was moving slowly and close to the curb, they had time to observe him in detail, which they did with a frankness not pleasing to the object of their attentions. One sees so many nice-looking people one doesn't know nowadays. Said the youngest of the young ladies, this old town of ours is really getting enormous. I shouldn't mind knowing who he is. I don't know, the youth beside her said, loudly enough to be heard at a considerable distance. I don't know who he is, but from his looks I know who he thinks he is. He thinks he's the Grand Duke Cuthbert. There was a burst of tittering as the car gathered speed and rolled away, with the girl continuing to look back until her scandalized companions forced to detern by pulling her hood over her face. She made an impression upon George, so deep a one, in fact, that he unconsciously put his emotion into a muttered word, riff-raff. This was the last walk home he was ever to take by the route he was now following, up National Avenue to Amberson Addition and the two big old houses at the foot of Amberson Boulevard. For tonight would be the last night that he and Fanny were to spend in the house which the Major had forgotten to deed to Isabelle. Tomorrow they were to move out, and George was to begin his work in Bronson's office. He had not come to this collapse without a fierce struggle, but the struggle was inward, and the rolling world was not agitated by it, and rolled calmly on. For of all the ideals of life which the world, in its rolling, inconsiderately flattens out to nothingness, the least likely to retain a profile is that ideal which depends upon inheriting money. George Amberson, in spite of his record of failures in business, had spoken shrewdly when he realized at last that money, like life, was like quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And his nephew had the awakening experience of seeing the great Amberson estate vanishing into such a nest. In a twinkling it seemed, now that it was indeed so utterly vanished. His uncle had suggested that he might write to college friends. Perhaps they could help him to something better than the prospect offered by Bronson's office. But George flushed and shook his head without explaining. In that small and quietly superior crowd of his he had too emphatically supported the ideal of being rather than doing. He could not appeal to one of its members now to help him to a job. Besides, they were not precisely the warmest hearted crew in the world, and he had long ago dropped the last affectation of a correspondence with any of them. He was as aloof from any survival of intimacy with his boyhood friends in the city, and in truth had lost track of most of them. The friends of the ace, once bound by oath to sucker one another in peril or poverty, were long ago dispersed. One or two had died. One or two had gone to live elsewhere. The others were disappeared into the smoky bigness of the heavy city. Of the brethren there remained within his present cognizance only his old enemy, the red-haired Kinney, now married to Janie Sharon, and Charlie Johnson, who, out of deference to his mother's memory, had passed the Amberson mansion one day when George stood upon the front steps and, looking in fiercely, had looked away with continued fierceness, his only token of recognition. On this last homeward walk of his, when George reached the entrance to Amberson Addition, that is, when he came to where the entrance had formally been, he gave a little start and halted for a moment to stare. This was the first time he had noticed that the stone pillars marking the entrance had been removed. Then he realized that for a long time he had been conscious of a queerness about this corner without being aware of what made the difference. National Avenue met Amberson Boulevard here at an obtuse angle, and the removal of the pillars made the Boulevard seem a cross-street of no overpowering importance. Certainly it did not seem to be a Boulevard. At the next corner Neptune's fountain remained, and one could still determine with accuracy what its designer's intentions had been. It stood in sore need of just one last kindness, and if the thing had possessed any friends they would have done that doleful shoveling after dark. George did not let his eyes linger upon the relic, nor did he look steadfastly at the Amberson mansion. Massive as the old house was, it managed to look gaunt. Its windows stared with the skull emptiness of all windows and empty houses that are lived in no more. Of course the rowdy boys of the neighborhood had been at work. Many of these haggard windows were broken, the front door stood a jar forced open, and idiot salacity in white chalk was smeared everywhere upon the pillars and stonework of the verandas. George walked by the mansion hurriedly and came home to his mother's house for the last time. This was there, too, and the closing of the door resounded through bare rooms. For downstairs there was no furniture in the house except a kitchen table in the dining room, which Fanny had kept for dinner, she said. Though as she was to cook and serve that meal herself, George had his doubts about her name for it. Upstairs she had retained her own furniture, and George had been living in his mother's room, having sent everything from his own to the auction. Isabelle's room was still as it had been, but the furniture would be moved with Fanny's to new quarters in the morning. Fanny had made plans for her nephew as well as herself. She had found a three-room, kitchenette apartment, in an apartment house where several old friends of hers had established themselves, elderly widows of citizens once prominent and other retired gentry. People used their own kitchenettes for breakfast and lunch, but there was a table dote arrangement for dinner on the ground floor. And after dinner, Bridge was played all evening, an attraction powerful with Fanny. She had made all the arrangements, she reported, and nervously appealed for approval, asking if she hadn't shown herself pretty practical in such matters. George acquiesced absentmindedly, not thinking of what she said and not realizing to what it committed him. He began to realize it now, as he wandered about the dismantled house. He was far from sure that he was willing to go and live in a three-room apartment with Fanny and eat breakfast and lunch with her, prepared by herself and the kitchenette, and dinner at the table dote in such a pretty colonial dining-room, as Fanny described it. At a little round table they would have all to themselves in the midst of a dozen little round tables which other relics of disrupted families would have all to themselves. For the first time, now that the change was imminent, George began to develop before his mind's eye pictures of what he was in for, and they appalled him. He decided that such a life verged upon the sheerly unbearable, and that after all there were some things left that he just couldn't stand. So he made up his mind to speak to his aunt about it at dinner, and tell her that he preferred to ask Bronson to let him put a sofa-bed, a trunk, and a folding rubber bathtub behind a screen in the dark rear-room of the office. George felt that this would be infinitely more tolerable, and he could eat at restaurants, especially as about all he ever wanted nowadays was coffee. But at dinner he decided to put off telling Fanny of his plan until later. She was so nervous, and so distressed about the failure of her efforts with sweet-breads and macaroni, and she was so eager in her talk of how comfortable they would be by this time tomorrow night. She fluttered on, her nervousness increasing, saying how nice it would be for him when he came from work in the evenings to be among nice people, people who know who we are, and to have a pleasant game of bridge with people who are really old friends of the family. When they stopped probing among the scorched fragments she had set forth, George lingered downstairs waiting for a better opportunity to introduce his own subject, but when he heard dismaying sounds from the kitchen he gave up. There was a crash, then a shower of crashes, falling tin clambered to be heard above the shattering of porcelain, and overall rose Fanny's wail of lamentation for the treasures saved from the sale, but now lost forever to the kitchenette. Fanny was nervous indeed, so nervous that she could not trust her hands. For a moment George thought she might have been injured, but before he reached the kitchen he heard her sweeping at the fragments and turned back. He put off speaking to Fanny until morning. Things more insistent than his vague plans for a sofa-bed in Bronson's office had possession of his mind as he went upstairs, moving his hands slowly along the smooth walnut railing of the balustrade. Halfway to the landing he stopped, turned, and stood looking down at the heavy doors masking the black emptiness that had been the library. Here he had stood on what he now knew was the worst day of his life. Here he had stood when his mother passed through that doorway hand in hand with her brother to learn what her son had done. He went on more heavily, more slowly, and, more heavily and slowly still, entered Isabel's room and shut the door. He did not come forth again, and bade Fanny good night through the closed door when she stopped outside at later. I've put all the lights out, George, she said. Everything's all right. Very well, he called. Good night. She did not go. I'm sure we're going to enjoy the new little home, George, she said timidly. I'll try hard to make things nice for you, and the people really are lovely. You mustn't feel as if things are altogether gloomy, George. I know everything's going to turn out all right. You're young and strong, and you have a good mind, and I'm sure— She hesitated. I'm sure your mother's watching over you, Georgie. Good night, dear. Good night, Aunt Fanny. His voice had a strangled sound in spite of him, but she seemed not to notice it, and he heard her go to her own room and lock herself in with bolt and key against burglars. She had said the one thing she should not have said just then. I'm sure your mother's watching over you, Georgie. She had meant to be kind, but it destroyed his last chance for sleep that night. He would have slept little if she had not said it, but since she had said it he could not sleep at all. For he knew that it was true, if it could be true, and that his mother, if she still lived in spirit, would be weeping on the other side of the wall of silence, weeping and seeking for some gate to let her through, so that she could come and watch over him. He felt that if there were such gates they were surely barred, they were like those awful library doors downstairs, which had shut her in to begin the suffering to which he had consigned her. The room was still Isabelle's. Nothing had been changed. Even the photographs of George, of the Major, and of Brother George, still stood on her dressing-table, and in a drawer of her desk was an old picture of Eugene and Lucy, taken together, which George had found, but it slowly closed away again from sight, not touching it. Tomorrow everything would be gone, and he had heard there was not long to wait before the house itself would be demolished. The very space which tonight was still Isabelle's room, would be cut into new shapes by new walls and floors and ceilings, yet the room would always live, for it could not die out of George's memory. It would live as long as he did, and it would always be murmurous with a tragic, wistful whispering. And if space itself can be haunted, as memory is haunted, then some time, when the space that was Isabelle's room came to be made into the small bedrooms and kitchenettes already designed as its destiny, that space might well be haunted and the new occupants come to feel that some, seemingly less-causeless depression hung about it, a wraith of the passion that filled it, throughout the last night that George Minnifer spent there. Whatever remnants of the old high-handed arrogance were still within him, he did penance for his deepest sin that night. And it may be that to this day some impressionable, overworked woman in a kitchenette, after turning out the light will seem to see a young man kneeling in the darkness, shaking convulsively, and with arms outstretched through the wall, clutching at the covers of a shadowy bed. It may seem to her that she hears the faint cry, over and over, Mother, forgive me. God, forgive me." CHAPTER XXXII At least it may be claimed for George that his last night in the house where he had been born was not occupied with his own disheartening future, but with sorrow for what sacrifices his pride and youth had demanded of others. And early in the morning he came downstairs and tried to help Fanny make coffee on the kitchen range. There was something I wanted to say to you last night, Aunt Fanny. He said, as she finally discovered that an amber fluid, more like tea than coffee, was as near ready to be taken into the human system as it would ever be. I think I'd better do it now. She set the coffee-pot back upon the stove with a little crash, and, looking at him in a desperate anxiety, began to twist her dainty apron between her fingers without any consciousness of what she was doing. Why, why? she stammered, but she knew what he was going to say, and that was why she had been more and more nervous. Hadn't—perhaps—perhaps we better get the things moved to the little new home first, George. Let's— He interrupted quietly, though at her phrase, the little new home, his pungent impulse was to utter one loud shout and run. It was about this new place that I wanted to speak. I've been thinking it over, and I've decided. I want you to take all the things from mother's room and use them and keep them for me, and I'm sure the little apartment will be just what you like, and with the extra bedroom, probably you could find some woman friend to come and live there and share the expense with you. But I've decided on another arrangement for myself, and so I'm not going with you. I don't suppose you'll mind much, and I don't see why you should mind, particularly, that is. I'm not very lively company these days, or any days, for that matter. I can't imagine you, or anyone else being much attached to me, so— He stopped in amazement. No chair had been left in the kitchen, but Fanny gave a despairing glance around her in search of one, then sank abruptly and sat flat upon the floor. You're going to leave me in the lurch, she gasped. What on earth? George sprang to her. Get up, Aunt Fanny. I can't. I'm too weak. Let me alone, George. And as he released the wrist he had seized to help her, she repeated the dismal prophecy which, for days, she had been matching against her hopes. You're going to leave me in the lurch. Why, no, Aunt Fanny, he protested. At first I've been something of a burden on you. I'm to get eight dollars a week, about thirty-two a month. The rent's thirty-six dollars a month, and the tabla dote dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars a piece, so with my half of the rent, eighteen dollars, I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but you'd be paying more of the expenses than I would. She stared at him with such a forlorn blankness as he had never seen. I'd be paying, she said feebly. I'd be paying. Certainly you would. You'd be using more of your money than my money. Fanny's chin drooped upon her thin chest and she laughed miserably. I've got twenty-eight dollars. That's all. You mean until the interest is due again? I mean that's all, Fanny said. I mean that's all there is. There won't be any more interest because there isn't any principle. Why, you told—she shook her head. No, I haven't told you anything. Then it was Uncle George. He told me you had enough to fall back on. That's just what he said, to fall back on. He said you'd lost more than you should in the headlight company, but he'd insisted that you should hold out enough to live on, and you'd very wisely followed his advice. I know, she said weakly. I told him so. He didn't know, or else he'd forgotten, how much Wilbur's insurance amounted to, and I—oh, it seems such a sure way to make a real fortune out of a little. And I thought I could do something for you, George, if you ever came to need it. And it all looked so bright I just thought I'd put it all in. I did, every cent except my last interest payment, and it's gone. Good Lord! George began to pace up and down on the worn planks of the bare floor. Why on earth did you wait till now to tell such a thing as this? I couldn't tell till I had to, she said piteously. I couldn't till George Amberson went away. He couldn't do anything to help anyhow, and I just didn't want him to talk to me about it. He's been at me so much about not putting in more than I could afford to lose, and said he considered he had my—my word. I wasn't putting more than that in it. So I thought, what was the use? What was the use of going over it all with him and having him reproach me, and probably reproach himself? It wouldn't do any good, not any good on earth. She got out her lace-hankerchief and began to cry. Nothing does any good, I guess, in this old world. Oh, how tired of this old world I am! I didn't know what to do. I just tried to go ahead and be as practical as I could, and arrange some way for us to live. Oh, I knew you didn't want me, George. You always teased me and berated me whenever you had a chance from the time you were little boy. You did so. Later you've tried to be kinder to me, but you don't want me around. Oh, I can see that much. You don't suppose I want to thrust myself on you, do you? It isn't very pleasant to be thrusting yourself on a person you know doesn't want you. But I knew you oughtn't to be left all alone in the world. It isn't good. I knew your mother'd want me to watch over you and try to have something like a home for you. I knew she'd want me to do what I tried to do. Fanny's tears were bitter now, and her voice, hoarse and wet, was tragically sincere. I tried. I tried to be practical, to look after your interests, to make things as nice for you as I could. I walked my heels down, looking for a place for us to live. I walked and walked over this town. I didn't ride one block on a streetcar. I couldn't use five cents no matter how tired I. Oh! She sobbed uncontrollably. Oh! And now you don't want. You want. You want to leave me in the lurch. You— George stopped walking. In God's name, Aunt Fanny, he said, quit spreading out your handkerchief and drying it and then getting it all wet again. I mean stop crying. Do. And for heaven's sake, get up. Don't sit there with your back against the boiler and— It's not hot. Fanny sniffled. It's cold. The plumber's disconnected it. I wouldn't mind if they hadn't. I wouldn't mind if it burned with me, George. Oh, my Lord! He went to her and lifted her. For God's sake, get up. Come. Let's take the coffee into the other room and see what's to be done. He got her to her feet. She leaned upon him, already somewhat comforted, and with his arm about her he conducted her to the dining-room and seated her in one of the two kitchen-chairs which had been placed at the rough table. There, he said, get over it. Then he brought the coffee-pot, some lumps of sugar in a tin pan, and finding that all the coffee-cups were broken, set water-glasses upon the table, and poured some of the pale coffee into them. By this time Fanny's spirits had revived depreciably. She looked up with a plaintive eagerness. I had bought all my fall clothes, George, she said, and I paid every bill I owed. I don't owe a cent for clothes, George. That's good. He said wanly, and he had a moment of physical dizziness that decided him to sit down quickly. For an instant it seemed to him that he was not Fanny's nephew, but married to her. He passed his pale hand over his paler forehead. Well, let's see where we stand, he said feebly. Let's see if we can afford this place you've selected. Fanny continued to brighten. I'm sure it's the most practical plan we could possibly have worked out, George, and it is a comfort to be among nice people. I think we'll both enjoy it, because the truth is we've been keeping too much to ourselves for a long while. It isn't good for people. I was thinking about the money, Aunt Fanny. You see, I'm sure we can manage it. She interrupted quickly. There really isn't a cheaper place in town that we could actually live in and be— Here she interrupted herself. Oh, there's one great economy I forgot to tell you, and it's especially an economy for you, because you're always too generous about such things. They don't allow any tipping. They have signs that prohibit it. That's good, he said grimly, but the rent is thirty-six dollars a month. The dinner is twenty-two and a half for each of us, and we've got to have some provision for other food. We won't need any clothes for a year, perhaps. Oh, longer, she exclaimed. So you see— I see that forty-five and thirty-six make eighty-one, he said. At the lowest we need a hundred dollars a month, and I'm going to make thirty-two. I thought of that, George, she said confidently, and I'm sure it will be all right. You'll be earning a great deal more than that very soon. I don't see any prospect of it, not till I'm admitted to the bar, and that will be two years at the earliest. Fanny's confidence was not shaken. I know you'll be getting on faster than— Faster? George echoed gravely. We've got to have more than that to start with. Well, there's the six hundred dollars from the sale—six hundred and twelve dollars it was. It isn't six hundred and twelve now, said George. It's about one hundred and sixty. Fanny showed a momentary dismay. Why, how? I lent Uncle George two hundred. I gave fifty a piece to old Sam and those other two old darkies that worked for Grandfather so long, and ten to each of the servants here. And you gave me thirty-six, she said thoughtfully, for the first month's rent in advance. Did I? I'd forgotten. Well, with about a hundred and sixty in bank, and our expense is a hundred a month, it doesn't seem as if there's new place. Still, she interrupted. We have paid the first month's rent in advance, and it does seem to be the most practical. George rose. See here, Aunt Fanny, he said decisively. You stay here and look after the moving. Old Frank doesn't expect me until afternoon this first day, but I'll go and see him now. It was early, and Old Frank, just established at his big flat-top desk, was surprised when his prospective assistant and pupil walked in. He was pleased as well as surprised, however, and rose offering a cordial old hand. The real flair, he said. The real flair for the law, that's right. Couldn't wait till afternoon to begin. I'm delighted that you— I wanted to say, George began, but his patron cut him off. Wait just a minute, my boy. I've prepared a little speech of welcome at, even though you're five hours ahead of time, I mean to deliver it. First of all, your grandfather was my old war-comrade and my best client. For years I prospered through my connection with his business, and his grandson is welcome in my office and to my best efforts in his behalf. But I want to confess, Georgie, that during your earlier youth I may have had some slight feeling of—well, prejudice, not altogether in your favour. But whatever slight feeling it was, it began to vanish on that afternoon, a good while ago, when you stood up to your Aunt Amelia Amberson, as you did in the Major's Library, and talked to her as a man and a gentleman should. I saw then what good stuff was in you. And I always wanted to mention it. If my prejudice hadn't altogether vanished after that, the last vestiges disappeared during these trying times that have come upon you this past year, when I have been a witness to a depth of feeling you've shown, and your quiet consideration for your grandfather and for everyone else around you. I just want to add that I think you'll find an honest pleasure now in industry and frugality that wouldn't have come to you in a more frivolous career. The law is a jealous mistress and a stern mistress, but a— Georg had stood before him in great and increasing embarrassment, and he was unable to allow the address to proceed to its conclusion. I can't do it, he burst out. I can't take her for my mistress. What? I've come to tell you. I've got to find something that's quicker. I can't—old Frank got a little red. Let's sit down, he said. What's the trouble? George told him. The old gentleman listened sympathetically, only murmuring, Well, well, from time to time, and nodding acquiescence. You see, she's set her mind on this apartment, George explained. She's got some old cronies there, and I guess she's been looking forward to the games of bridge and the kind of harmless gossip that goes on in such places. Really, it's a life she'd like better than anything else—better than that she's lived at home, I really believe. It struck me she's just about got the habit, and after all, she could hardly have anything less. This comes pretty heavily upon me, you know, said old Frank. I got her into that headlight company, and she fooled me about her resources as much as she did your Uncle George. I was never your father's adviser, if you remember, and when the insurance was turned over to hers, some other lawyer arranged it—probably your father's. But it comes pretty heavily on me, and I feel a certain responsibility. Not at all. I'm taking the responsibility. And George smiled with one corner of his mouth. She's not your aunt, you know, sir. Well, I am unable to see, even if she's yours, that a young man is morally called upon to give up a career at the law to provide his aunt with a favourable opportunity to play bridge-wist. No, George agreed. But I haven't begun my career at the law, so it can't be said I'm making any considerable sacrifice. I'll tell you how it is, sir. He flushed, and looking out of the streaked and smoky window beside which he was sitting, spoke with difficulty. I feel as if—as if perhaps I had one or two pretty important things in my life to make up for. Well, I can't. I can't make them up to—to whom I would. It struck me that, as I couldn't, I might be a little decent to somebody else, perhaps, if I could manage it. I never have been particularly decent to poor old Aunt Fanny. Oh, I don't know. I shouldn't say that. A little youthful teasing. I doubt if she's minded so much. She felt your father's death terrifically, of course, but it seems to me she's had a fairly comfortable life up to now, if she was disposed to take it that way. But up to now is the important thing, George said. Now is now, and you see I can't wait two years to be admitted to the bar and begin to practice. I've got to start in at something else that pays from the start, and that's what I've come to you about. I have an idea, you see. Well, I'm glad of that, said old Frank, smiling. I can't think of anything just at this moment that pays from the start. I only know of one thing myself. What is it? George flushed again, but managed to laugh at his own embarrassment. I suppose I'm about as ignorant of business as anybody in the world, he said. But I've heard they pay very high wages to people in dangerous trades. I've always heard they did, and I'm sure it must be true. I mean people that handle touchy chemicals or high explosives, men in dynamite factories, or who take things of that sort about the country in wagons and chute oil wells. I thought I'd see if you couldn't tell me something more about it, or else introduce me to someone who could, and then I thought I'd see if I couldn't get something of the kind to do, as soon as possible. My nerves are good, I'm muscular, and I've got a steady hand. It seemed to me that this was about the only line of work in the world that I'm fitted for. I wanted to get started today if I could. Old Frank gave him a long stare. At first this scrutiny was sharply incredulous. Then it was grave. Finally it developed into a thread of overwhelming laughter. A forked vein in his forehead became more visible, and his eyes seemed about to protrude. But he controlled his impulse, and, rising, took up his hat and overcoat. All right, he said, if you'll promise not to get blown up, I'll go with you to see if we can find the job. Then, meaning what he said, but amazed that he did mean it, he added, you certainly are the most practical young man I ever met. It needed an apprenticeship of only six weeks, during which period George was to receive fifteen dollars a week. After that he would get twenty-eight. This settled the apartment question, and Fanny was presently established in a greater contentment than she had known for a long time. Early every morning she made something she called, and believed to be, coffee for George. And he was gallant enough not to undeceive her. She lunched alone in her kitchenette, for George's place of employment was ten miles out of town on an interurban trolley-line, and he seldom returned before seven. Fanny found partners for bridge by two o'clock almost every afternoon, and she played until about six. Then she got George's dinner-clothes out for him, he maintained this habit, and she changed her own dress. When he arrived he usually denied that he was tired, though he sometimes looked tired, particularly during the first few months, and he explained to her frequently, looking bored enough with her insistence, that his work was fairly light and fairly congenial too. Fanny had the foggiest idea of what it was, though she noticed that it roughened his hands and stained them. Something in those new chemical works, she explained to casual inquirers. It was not more definite in her own mind. Respect for George undoubtedly increased within her, however, and she told him she'd always had a feeling he might, turn out to be a mechanical genius or something. George assented with a nod, as the easiest course opened to him. He did not take a hand at bridge after dinner. His provisions for Fanny's happiness refused to extend that far, and at the table dote he was a rather discouraging border. He was considered affected and absurdly upstage by the one or two young men, and the three or four young women who enlivened the elderly retreat, and was possibly less popular there than he had been elsewhere during his life, though he was now nothing worse than a coley, polite young man who kept to himself. After dinner he would escort his aunt from the table in some state, not wholly unaccompanied by a learish wink or two from the wags of the place, and he would leave her at the door of the communal parlours and card- rooms, with a formality in his bow of farewell which afforded an amusing contrast to Fanny's always-valuable protests. She never failed to urge loudly that he really must come and play, just this once, and not go hiding from everybody in his room every evening like this. At least some of the other inhabitants found the contrast amusing for some times, as he departed stiffly toward the elevator, leaving her still in treating in the doorway, though with one eye already on her table to see that it was not seized, a titter would follow him which he was no doubt meant to hear. He did not care whether they laughed or not. And once, as he passed the one or two young men of the place, entertaining the three or four young women, who were elbowing and jerking on a settee in the lobby, he heard a voice inquiring quickly as he passed, �What makes people tired? Work? No. Well, what's the answer?� Then with an intentional outbreak of mirth the answer was given by two loudly whispering voices together. �I�m stuck up border!� George didn�t care. On Sunday mornings Fanny went to church and George took long walks. He explored the new city and found it hideous, especially in the early spring, before the leaves of the shade-trees were out. Then the town was fagged with the long winter and blacked with the heavier smoke that had been held close to the earth by the smoke-fog-it bread. Everything was damply streaked with the soot, the walls of the houses, inside and out, the gray curtains at the windows, the windows themselves, the dirty cement and unswept asphalt underfoot, the very sky overhead. Throughout this murky season he continued his explorations, never seeing a face he knew, for on Sunday, those whom he remembered or who might remember him, were not apt to be found within the limits of the town, but were congenially occupied with the new outdoor life which had come to be the mode since his boyhood. He and Fanny were pretty thoroughly buried away within the bigness of the city. One of his Sunday walks that spring he made into a sour pilgrimage. It was a misty morning of belated snow slush, and suited him to a perfection of miserableness, as he stood before the great dripping department store, which now occupied the big plot of ground where once had stood both the Amberson Hotel and the Amberson Opera House. From there he drifted to the old Amberson Block. But this was fallen into a backwater. Business had stagnated here. The old structure had not been replaced, but a cavernous entryway for trucks had been torn in its front, and upon the cornice where the old separate metal letters had spelt, Amberson Block, there was a long billboard sign, Dugan Storage. To spare himself nothing he went out National Avenue and saw the piles of slush-covered wreckage where the mansion and his mother's house had been, and where the major's ill-fated five new houses had stood. For these were down, too, to make room for the great tenement already shaped in unending lines of foundation. But the fountain of Neptune was gone at last, and George was glad that it was. He turned away from the devastated sight, thinking bitterly that the only Amberson Mark still left upon the town was the name of the Boulevard, Amberson Boulevard. But he had reckoned without the city council of the new order, and by an unpleasant coincidence, while the thought was still in his mind, his eye fell upon a metal oblong sign upon the lamppost at the corner. There were two of these little signs upon the lamppost, at an obtuse angle to each other, one to give passers-by the name of National Avenue, the other to acquaint them with Amberson Boulevard. But the one upon which should have been stenciled Amberson Boulevard exhibited the words Tenth Street. George stared at it hard. Then he walked quickly along the Boulevard to the next corner and looked at the little sign there, Tenth Street. It had begun to rain, but George stood unheating, staring at the little sign. Damn them! he said finally, and, turning up his coat collar, plotted back through the soggy streets toward home. The utilitarian impudence of the city authorities put a thought into his mind. A week earlier he had happened to stroll into the large parlor of the apartment house, finding it empty, and on the center table he noticed a large, red-bound, gilt-edged book, newly printed, bearing the title, A Civic History, and beneath the title, The Rubric, Biographies of the Five Hundred Most Prominent Citizens and Families in the History of the City. He glanced at it absently, merely noticing the title and subtitle, and wandered out of the room, thinking of other things and feeling no curiosity about the book. But he had thought of it several times since with a faint, vague uneasiness, and now when he entered the lobby he walked directly into the parlor where he had seen the book. The room was empty, as it always was on Sunday mornings, and the flamboyant volume was still upon the table, evidently a fixture as a sort of local Amanochtagatha, or Burke, for the enlightenment of tenants and boarders. He opened it, finding a few painful steel engravings of placid, chin-bearded faces, some of which he remembered dimly, but much more numerous, and also more unfamiliar to him, were the pictures of neat, aggressive men with clipped short hair and clipped short mustaches, almost all of them strangers to him. He delayed not long with these but turned to the index where the names of the five hundred most prominent Citizens and Families in the History of the City were arranged in alphabetical order, and ran his finger down the column of A's. Abbott, Abbott, Abrams, Adam, Adams, Adler, Acres, Albert's Meier, Alexander, Allen, Ambrose, Ambule, Anderson, Andrews, Appenbosch, Archer, Artsman, Ashcraft, Austin, Avi. George's eyes remained for some time fixed on the thin space between the names Allen and Ambrose. Then he closed the book quietly and went up to his own room, agreeing with the elevator boy on the way that it was getting to be a mighty nasty wet and windy day outside. The elevator boy noticed nothing unusual about him and neither did Fanny when she came in from church with her hat ruined an hour later, and yet something had happened, a thing which, years ago, had been the egressed hope of many, many good Citizens of the town. They had thought of it, longed for it, hoping acutely that they might live to see the day when it would come to pass, and now, it had happened at last, Georgie Minnifer had got his comeuppance. He had got it three times filled and running over. The city had rolled over his heart, burying it under, as it rolled over the majors and buried it under. The city had rolled over the Ambersons and buried them under to the last vestige, and it mattered little that George guessed easily enough that most of the five hundred most prominent had paid something substantial to defray the cost of steel engraving, etc. The five hundred had heaved the final shovelful of soot upon that heap of obscurity wherein the Ambersons were lost forever from sight and history. Quick Silver in a Nest of Cracks Georgie Minnifer had got his comeuppance, but the people who had so longed for it were not there to see it, and they never knew it. Those who were still living had forgotten all about it, and all about him. CHAPTER XIV There was one border section of the city which George never explored in his Sunday morning excursions. This was far out to the north where lay the new Elysian fields of the millionaires, though he once went as far in that direction as the White House which Lucy had so admired long ago, her beautiful house. George looked at it briefly and turned back, rumbling with an interior laugh of some grimness. The house was white no longer. Nothing could be white which the town had reached, and the town reached far beyond the beautiful White House now. The owners had given up and painted it a despairing chocolate, suitable to the freight-yard life it was called upon to endure. George did not again risk going even so far as that, in the direction of the millionaires, although their settlement began at least two miles farther out. His thought of Lucy and her father was more a sensation than a thought, and may be compared to that of a convicted cashier beset by recollections of the bank he had pillaged. There are some thoughts to which one closes the mind. George had seen Eugene only once since their calamitous encounter. They had passed on opposite sides of the street downtown. Each had been aware of the other, and each had been aware that the other was aware of him, and yet each kept his eyes straight forward, and neither had shown a perceptible alteration of countenance. It seemed to George that he felt emanating from the outwardly impaterpable person of his mother's old friend, a hate that was like a hot wind. At his mother's funeral and at the majors he had been conscious that Eugene was there, though he had afterward no recollection of seeing him, and, while certain of his presence, was uncertain how he knew of it. Fanny had not told him, for she understood George well enough not to speak to him of Eugene or Lucy. Nowadays Fanny almost never saw either of them and seldom thought of them. So sly as the way of time with life. She was passing middle age, when old intensities and longings grow thin and flatten out, as Fanny herself was thinning and flattening out, and she was settling down contentedly to her apartment house intimacies. She was precisely suited by the tabledoat life, with its bridge, its variable alliances and shifting feuds, and the long whisperings of elderly ladies at corridor corners, whose eager but suppressed conversations, all sibilance, of which the elevator boy declared he heard the words she said, a million times, and the word she, five million. The apartment house suited Fanny and swallowed her. The city was so big now that people disappeared into it unnoticed, and the disappearance of Fanny and her nephew was not exceptional. People no longer knew their neighbours as a matter of course. One lived for years next door to strangers, that sharpest of all the changes since the old days, and a friend would lose sight of a friend for a year and not know it. One May day George thought he had a glimpse of Lucy. He was not certain, but he was sufficiently disturbed, in spite of his uncertainty. A promotion in his work now frequently took him out of town for a week, or longer, and it was upon his return from one of these absences that he had the strange experience. He had walked home from the station, and as he turned the corner which brought him inside of the apartment house entrance, though two blocks distant from it, he saw a charming little figure come out, get into a shiny laudalette automobile, and drive away. Even at that distance no one could have any doubt that the little figure was charming, and the height, the quickness and decision of motion, even the swift gesture of a white glove toward the chauffeur, all were characteristic of Lucy. George was instantly subjected to a shock of indefinable nature, yet definitely a shock. He did not know what he felt, but he knew that he felt. Heat surged over him. Probably he would not have come face to face with her if the restoration of all the ancient Amberson magnificence could have been his reward. He went on slowly, his knees shaky. But he found Fanny not at home. She had been out all afternoon, and there was no record of any caller, and he began to wonder, then to doubt, if the small lady he had seen in the distance was Lucy. It might as well have been, he said to himself, since any one who looked like her could give him a jolt like that. Lucy had not left a card. She never left one when she called on Fanny, though she did not give her reasons a quite definite form in her own mind. She came seldom. This was but the third time that year, and when she did come, George was not mentioned either by her hostess or by herself. An oddity contrived between the two ladies without either of them realizing how odd it was. For naturally, while Fanny was with Lucy, Fanny thought of George, and what time Lucy had George's aunt before her eyes she could not well avoid the thought of him. Consequently, both looked absent-minded as they talked, and each often gave a wrong answer which the other consistently failed to notice. At other times Lucy's thoughts of George were anything but continuous, and weeks went by when he was not consciously in her mind at all. Her life was a busy one. She had the big house to keep up. She had a garden to keep up, too, a large and beautiful garden. She represented her father as a director for half a dozen public charity organizations, and did private charity work of her own, being a proxy mother of several large families, and she had danced down, as she said, groups from eight or nine classes of new graduates returned from the universities, without marrying any of them, but she still danced and still did not marry. Her father, observing this circumstance happily, yet with some hypocritical concern, spoke of it to her one day as they stood in her garden. "'I suppose I'd want to shoot him,' he said, with attempted lightness. But I mustn't be an old pig. I'd build you a beautiful house close by, just over Yonder.' "'No, no. That would be like,' she began impulsively, then checked herself. George Amberson's comparison of the Georgian house to the Amberson mansion had come into her mind, and she thought that another new house, built close by for her, would be like the house the major built for Isabelle. "'Like what?' "'Nothing.' She looked serious, and when he reverted to his idea of some day grudgingly surrendering her up to a suitor, she invented a legend. "'Did you ever hear the Indian name for that little grove of beech trees on the other side of the house?' she asked him. "'No, and you never did either,' he laughed. "'Don't be so sure. I read a great deal more than I used to. Getting ready for my bookish days when I'll have to do something solid in the evenings, and won't be asked to dance any more, even by the very youngest boys who think it's a sporting event to dance with the oldest of the older girls. The name of the grove was Loma Nesha, and it means they couldn't help it.' "'Doesn't sound like it.' "'Indian names don't. There was a bad Indian chief lived in the grove before the white settlers came. He was the worst Indian that ever lived, and his name was—it was Vendona. That means, Rides Down Everything.' "'What?' "'His name was Vendona, the same thing as Rides Down Everything.' "'I see,' said Eugene thoughtfully. He gave her a quick look, and then fixed his eyes upon the end of the garden path. Go on.' "'Vendona was an unspeakable case,' Lucy continued. He was so proud that he wore iron shoes, and he walked over people's faces with him. He was always killing people that way, and so at last the tribe decided that it wasn't a good enough excuse for him that he was young and inexperienced, he'd have to go. They took him down to the river and put him in a canoe, and pushed him out from shore, and then they ran along the bank and wouldn't let him land until at last the current carried the canoe out into the middle, and then on down to the ocean, and he never got back. They didn't want him back, of course, and if he'd been able to manage it they'd have put him in another canoe and shoved him out into the river again. But still they didn't delect another chief in his place. Other tribes thought that was curious and wondered about it a lot, but finally they came to the conclusion that the beach-grove people were afraid a new chief might turn out to be a bad Indian too, and wear iron shoes like Vendona. But they were wrong, because the real reason was that the tribe had led such an exciting life under Vendona that they couldn't settle down to anything tamer. He was awful, but he always kept things happening. Terrible things, of course. They baited him, but they weren't able to discover any other warrior that they wanted to make chief in his place. I suppose it was a little like drinking a glass of too strong wine and then trying to take the taste out of your mouth with barley water. They couldn't help feeling that way. I see, said Eugene, so that's why they named a place they couldn't help it. It must have been. And so you're going to stay here in your garden, he said musingly. You think it's better to keep on walking these sunshiny gravel paths between your flower beds and growing to look like a pence of garden-lady in a Victorian engraving. I suppose I'm like the tribe that lived here, Papa. I've had too much unpleasant excitement. It was unpleasant. But it was excitement. I don't want any more. In fact, I don't want anything but you. You don't. He looked at her keenly, and she laughed and shook her head. But he seemed perplexed, rather doubtful. What was the name of the grove? He asked. The Indian name, I mean. Mola-ha-ha. No, it wasn't. That wasn't the name you said. I've forgotten. I see you have. He said, his look of perplexity remaining. Perhaps you remember the chief's name better? She shook her head and said, I don't. At this he laughed, but not very heartily, and walked slowly to the house, leaving her bending over a rose-bush and a shade more pensive than the most pensive garden-lady in any Victorian engraving. Next day it happened that this same vendona, or rides down everything, became the subject of a chance conversation between Eugene and his old friend Kinney, father of the fire-topped Fred. The two gentlemen found themselves smoking in neighboring leather chairs beside a broad window at the club, after lunch. Mr. Kinney had remarked that he expected to get his family established at the seashore by the Fourth of July, and, following a train of thought, he paused and chuckled. Fourth of July it reminds me, he said. Have you heard what that Georgie Minifer is doing? No, I haven't, said Eugene, and his friend failed to notice the crispness of the utterance. Well, sir, Kinney chuckled again. It beats the devil! My boy Fred told me about it yesterday. He's a friend of this young Henry Akers, son of F. P. Akers of Akers Chemical Company. It seems as young Akers asked Fred if he knew a fellow named Minifer, because he knew Fred had always lived here and young Akers had heard some way that Minifer used to be an old family name here, and was sort of curious about it. Well, sir, you remember this young Georgie sort of disappeared, after his grandfather's death, and nobody seemed to know much what had become of him, though I did hear once or twice. He was still around somewhere. Well, sir, he's working for the Akers Chemical Company, out at their plant on the Thomasville Road. He paused, seeming to reserve something to be delivered only upon inquiry, and Eugene offered him the expected question, but only after a cold glance through the nose-glasses he had lately found it necessary to adopt. What does he do? Kinney laughed and slapped the arm of his chair. He is a nitroglycerin expert! He was gratified to see that Eugene was surprised, if not indeed a little startled. He's what? He is an expert on nitroglycerin. Doesn't that beat the devil? Yes, sir! Young Akers told Fred that this George Minifer had worked like a hound-dog ever since he got started out at the works. They have a special plant for nitroglycerin, way off from the main plant, of course, in the woods somewhere, and George Minifer's been working there, and lately they put him in charge of it. He oversees shootin' oil wells, too, and shoots him himself sometimes. They aren't allowed to carry it on the railroads, you know. Half to team it. Young Akers says George rides around over the bumpy roads, sitting on as much as three hundred quarts of nitroglycerin. My Lord! Talk about romantic tumbles! If he gets blown sky-high someday he won't have a bigger drop when he comes down than he's already had. Don't it beat the devil? Young Akers said he's got all the nerve there is in the world. Well, he always did have plenty of that, but the time he used to ride around here on his white pony and fight all the Irish boys in Ken Town, with his long curls all handy to be pulled out. Akers says he gets a fair salary and I should think he ought to. It seems to me I've heard the average life in that sort of work is somewhere about four years, and agents don't write any insurance at all on nitroglycerin experts. Hardly. No, said Eugene. I suppose not. Kenny rose to go. Well, it's a pretty funny thing. Pretty odd, I mean, and I suppose it would be pass-around-the-hat for old Fanny Minnifer if he blew up. Fred told me that they're living in some apartment house and said Georgie supports her. He was going to study law but couldn't earn enough that way to take care of Fanny, so he gave it up. Fred's wife told him all this. Says Fanny doesn't do anything but play bridge these days. Got to play in too high for a while and lost more than she wanted to tell Georgie about, and borrowed a little from old Frank Bronson. Paid him back, though. Don't know how Fred's wife heard it. Women do hear the darndest things. They do, Eugene agreed. I thought you'd probably heard about it. Thought most likely Fred's wife might have said something to your daughter, especially as their cousins. I think not. Well, I'm off to the store, said Mr. Kenny briskly, yet he lingered. I suppose we'll all have to club in and keep old Fanny out of the poor house if he does blow up. From all I hear it's usually only a question of time. They say she hasn't got anything else to depend on. I suppose not. Well, I wandered. Kenny hesitated. I was wondering why you hadn't thought of finding something around your works for him. They say he's an all fired worker, and he certainly does seem to have hid some decent stuff in him under all his damn foolishness. I knew you used to be such a tremendous friend of the family. I thought perhaps you—of course I know he's a queer lot. I know. Yes, I think he is, said Eugene. No, I haven't anything to offer him. I suppose not. Kenny returned thoughtfully as he went out. I don't know that I would myself. Well, we'll probably see his name in the paper some day if he stays with that job. However, the nitroglycerin expert of whom they spoke did not get into the papers as a consequence of being blown up, although his daily life was certainly a continuous exposure to that risk. Destiny has a constant passion for the incongruous, and it was George's lot to manipulate wholesale quantities of terrific and volatile explosives in safety, and to be laid low by an accident so commonplace and inconsequent that it was a comedy. Fate had reserved for him the final insult of riding him down under the wheels of one of those juggernauts at which he had once shouted, Get a Hoss! Nevertheless, Fate's ironic choice for George's undoing was not a big and swift and momentous car, such as Eugene manufactured. It was a specimen of the hustling little type that was flooding the country, the cheapest, commonest, heartiest little car ever made. The accident took place upon a Sunday morning, on a downtown crossing, where the streets almost empty, and no reason in the world for such a thing to happen. He had gone out for his Sunday morning walk, and he was thinking of an automobile at the very moment when the little car struck him. He was thinking of a shiny, laudalette and a charming figure stepping into it, and of the quick gesture of a white glove toward the chauffeur, motioning him to go on. George heard a shout but did not look up, for he could not imagine anybodies shouting at him, and he was too engrossed in the question, Was it Lucy? He could not decide, and his lack of decision in this matter probably super-induced the lack of decision in another more pressingly vital. At the second and louder shout he did look up, and the car was almost on him, but he could not make up his mind if the charming little figure he had seen was Lucy's, and he could not make up his mind whether to go backward or forward. These questions became entangled in his mind. Then, still not being able to decide which of two ways to go, he tried to go both, and the little car ran him down. It was not moving very rapidly, but it went all the way over George. He was conscious of gigantic violence, of roaring and jolting and concussion, of choking clouds of dust shot with lightning about his head. He heard snapping sounds as loud as shots from a small pistol, and was stabbed by excruciating pains in his legs. Then he became aware that the machine was being lifted off of him. People were gathering in a circle round him, gabbling. His forehead was bedewed with a sweat of anguish, and he tried to wipe off this dampness, but failed. He could not get his arm that far. "'Nev mind,' policemen said, and George could see above his eyes the skirts of the blue coat covered with dust and sunshine. "'Ambulance be here in a minute. Nev mind trying to move any. You want him to send for some special doctor?' "'No,' George's lips formed the word. "'Or to take you some private hospital.' "'Tell them to take me,' he said faintly, to the city hospital.' "'All right.'" A smallish young man and a duster fidgeted among the crowd, explaining and protesting, and a strident voice girl, his companion, supported his argument, declaring to everyone her willingness to offer testimony in any court of law that every blessed word he said was the God's truth. "'It's the fella they hit you,' the policemen said, looking down on George. "'I guess he's right. You must have been thinking about something or other. It's wonderful the damage them little machines can do. You'd never think it. But I guess there ain't much case again this fella that was driving it.' "'You bet your life there ain't no case on me,' the young man and the duster agreed, with great bitterness. He came and stood at George's feet, addressing him heatedly. "'I'm sorry for you all right, and I don't say I ain't. I hold nothing against you, but it wasn't any more my fault than the State House.' "'You run into me much as I run into you, and if you get well, you ain't going to get not one single cent out of me.' This lady here was sitting with me, and we both yelled at you, wasn't going a step over eight mile an hour. I'm perfectly willing to say I'm sorry for you, though. So is the lady with me. We're both willing to say that much, but that's all, understand?' George's drawn eyelids twitched, his misty glance rested fleetingly upon the two protesting motorists, and the old imperious spirit within him flickered up in a single word. Lying on his back in the middle of the street, where he was regarded by an increasing public as an unpleasant curiosity, he spoke this word clearly from a mouth filled with dust and from lips smeared with blood. It was a word which interested the policeman. When the ambulance clanged away, he turned to a fellow patrolman who had joined him. Funny what he says to the little cuss that done the damage. That's all he did call him, not the Nelson doll, and the cuss that broke both his legs for him, and God knows what all. I wasn't here then, what was it? Riff Raff. End of chapter.