 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 a 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 out was the only good part of the rotten apple. While 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. I will not feel that things are quite desperate, Amberson laughed, but not with great cheerfulness. We'll survive, George, 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 eighteen hundred dollar 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 will 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 will manage to send you fifty dollars every now and then, after I once get settled. So much for me. But you. Of course you've 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 your 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 six hundred dollars, which had come to him from the sale of his mother's furniture, and the little tiny salary was eight dollars 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 heartily, 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 two hundred of his nephew's six hundred dollars. 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, under the circumstances—never, George exclaimed, growing red. I can't imagine what other 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 stalking 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, Georgey, 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 will only know each other by letters, until you're notified as my next of kin that there's an old valise to be forwarded to you, and perhaps some dusty curios for the consulate mantelpiece. Well, it's an odd way for us to be saying good-bye. 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? Since I stood where we're standing now to say good-bye 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 good-bye, we knew we wouldn't see each other again for almost a year. I thought I couldn't live through it, and she stood there crying. Well, I don't even know where she lives now, or as 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 that 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 on Prince, 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 the last word, there may be somebody else in this town who has 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 were the 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 hurried 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 there. 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 that 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 board by the day, week, or meal, and some more laconic, contending themselves with the label, rooms. John, having torn out part of an old stone-trimmed bay window for purposes of commercial display, showed forth two suspended petticoats and a pair of oyster-colored flannel trousers to prove the claims of its black-and-guilt sign, French cleaning and dye-house. Its neighbour also sported a remodeled front, and permitted no doubt that its mission in life was to attend cosily upon death. J. M. Rolzener, Caskets, the funeral-home. And beyond that a plain old honest four-square gray-painted brick-house, was flamboyantly decorated with a great guilt-scroll on the railing of the old-fashioned veranda, mutual benevolent orders, 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-paller 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 four-time. He was 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 favourably 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 scandalised companions forced her to turn 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 Isabel. 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 conely on. For all the ideals of life which the world in its rolling inconsiderably 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 shudly 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 succour 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 Janey 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 formerly 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 to be 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 ajar, 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. Emptiness 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. However she had retained her own furniture, and George had been living in his mother's room, having sent everything from his own room 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 tabla-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 had 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 her in the kitchenette, and dinner at the table in such a pretty colonial dining-room, so 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 to-morrow 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 had 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 clamoured to be heard above the shattering of porcelain, and over all 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 that 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 that 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 had 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, to-night, 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 causeless depression hung about it, a wraith of the passion that filled it throughout the last night that George Minifer spent there. After 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. 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'd better get the—the things moved into 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'd have been something of a burden on you. I'm to get eight dollars a week, about thirty-two a month. The rent is thirty-six dollars a month, and the 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. Aunt 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 had insisted that you should hold out enough to live on, and you had very wisely followed his advice. I know, she said weekly. I told him so. He didn't know, or else he'd forgotten, how much Wilbur's insurance amounted to, and I—oh, it seemed 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. We sent, except for 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 until 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 hear me talk about it. He'd been at me so much about not putting in more than I could afford to lose, and he said he considered he had my—my word that I wasn't putting in more than that. 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 myself? It wouldn't do any good, not any good on earth. She got out her lace handkerchief 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 I arranged 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 a 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 would want me to watch over you and try to have something like a home for you. I know she would want me to do what I've tried to do. Fanny's tears were bitter now, and her voice, horse 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 wouldn'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 wet again. I mean stop crying, do. And for heaven's sake, get up. Don't sit there with your back against the boiler. 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 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 and 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 appreciably. She looked up with a plaint of 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 will 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 said. 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've 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 two other 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 the bank, and our expenses a hundred a month, it doesn't seem as if this 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-topped 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 prepared a little speech of welcome, and 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 the 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 will 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— George 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 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 has struck me that she's just about got to have it, 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 old Uncle George. I was never your father's advisor, if you remember, and when the insurance was turned over to her 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'm 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 up 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 was 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 minute that pays from the start. I know of only 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 who take things of that sort about the country in wagons and shoot oil wells. I thought I would see if you couldn't tell me something more about it, or else introduce me to someone who could, and then I thought I would 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 seems 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 threat 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 that 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. End of Chapter 32. Chapter 33 of the Magnificent Ambersons. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. The Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington. Chapter 33. They found the job. 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 deceive 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 that she had 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 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 coldly 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 voluble 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 sometimes as he departed stiffly toward the elevator, leaving her still and 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. A 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 blackened with the heavy smoke that had been held close to the earth by the smoke-fog at 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, after 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 this 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 in 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 it 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 lamp-post at the corner. There were two of these little signs upon the lamp-post, at an obtuse angle to each other, one to give passes 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 upon the centre 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 had 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 Almanac de Gota, or Burke, for the Enlightenment of Tenants and Borders. 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 strangest 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. Abet, Abet, Abrams, Ackers, Albotsmeyer, Alexander, Allen, Ambrose, Amble, Anderson, Adams, Adams, Adler, Andrews, Appenbach, Archer, Arsman, Ashcraft, Austin, Avey. 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 noted 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 eagerness 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 Miniver had gotten his comeuppance. He had gotten 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 Ambrosens 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 Ambrosens were lost forever from sight and history. Quick silver in a nest of cracks. Georgie Miniver 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 34 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. Yet each kept his eyes straightforward, and neither had shown a perceptible alteration of countenance. It seemed to George that he felt emanating from the outwardly imperturbable person of his mother's old friend, a hate that was like a hot wind. At his mother's funeral and at the major's 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. She was settling down contentedly to her apartment-house intimacies. She was precisely suited to the life, with its bridge, its variable alliances and shifting feuds, and the long whisperings of elderly ladies at corridor corners. Those eager but suppressed conversations, all sibilants, 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. On 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 in sight of the apartment-house entrance, though two blocks distant from it, he saw a charming little figure come out, get into a shiny land-delay 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 the 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. Heats 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, knees shaking. 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 well have been, he said to himself, since any one who looked like her could have given 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 hypercritical concern, spoke of it to her one day as they stood in her garden. I suppose I'll want to shoot him, he said, with attempted lightness. But I mustn't be an old pig. I would build you a beautiful house close by, just over yonder. No, no, that would be just 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 Isabel. 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 beach trees on the other side of the house? She asked him. No, and you never did either, he laughed. Don't be too 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 Nashar, 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 that 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 them. He was always killing people that way, and so at last the tribe decided it wasn't a good enough excuse for him that he was young and inexperienced. He would have to go. They took him down to the river, and put him in a canoe, and pushed him out from shore. And then they ran along the bank and wouldn't let him land, until at last the current carried the canoe out into the middle, and then on down to the ocean, and he never got back. They didn't want him back, of course, and if he'd been able to manage it they'd have put him in another canoe and shoved him out into the river again. But still they didn't elect another chief in his place. Other tribes thought that was curious and wondered about it a lot, but finally they came to the conclusion that the Beech Grove people were afraid that 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 hated him, but they weren't able to discover any other warrior that they wanted to make chief in his place. I suppose it was a little like drinking a glass of too strong wine, and then trying to take the taste out of your mouth with barley water. They couldn't help feeling that way. I see, said Eugene. So that's why they named the place they couldn't help it? It must have been. And so you're going to stay here in your garden, he said, musingly. You think it's better to keep on walking these sunshiny gravel paths between your flower beds and growing to look like a pensive garden lady in a Victorian engraving. I suppose I'm like the tribe that lived here, Papa. I had too much unpleasant excitement. It was unpleasant, but it was excitement. I don't want any more. In fact, I don't want anything but you. You don't? He looked at her keenly, and she laughed and shook her head. But he seemed perplexed, rather doubtful. What was the name of the grove, he said? The Indian name, I mean. Mula-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 again. I don't. At this he laughed, but not very heartily, and walked slowly to the house, leaving her bending over a rose-bush, and a shade more pensive than the most pensive garden lady in any Victorian engraving. The 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 neighbouring leather chairs beside a broad window at the club, after lunch. Mr. Kinney had remarked that he expected to get his family established at the seashore by the Fourth of July, and, following a train of thought, he paused and chuckled. Fourth of July reminds me, he said, have you heard what that Georgie Minnifer is doing? No, I haven't, said Eugene, and his friend failed to notice the crispness of the utterance. Well, sir, Kinney chuckled again, it beats the devil. My boy Fred told me about it yesterday. He's a friend of this young Henry Akers, son of F.P. Akers of the Akers Chemical Company. It seems this young Akers asked Fred if he knew a fellow named Minnifer, because he knew Fred had always lived here, and young Akers had heard some way that Minnifer used to be an old family name here, and was sort of curious about it. Well, sir, you remember this young Georgie sort of disappeared after his grandfather's death, and nobody seemed to know much what had become of him, though I did hear once or twice that he was still around somewhere. Well, sir, he's working for the Akers Chemical Company, with their plant out at 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 that he had lately found it necessary to adopt. What does he do? Kinney laughed, and slapped the arm of his chair. He's a nitroglycerine expert. He was gratified to see that Eugene was surprised, if not indeed a little startled. He's what? He's an expert on nitroglycerine. Doesn't that beat the devil? Yes, sir. Young Akers told Fred that this George Minnifer had worked like a hound dog ever since he got started out of the works. They have a special plant for nitroglycerine, way off from the main plant, of course, in the woods somewhere, and George Minnifer has been working there, and lately they put him in charge of it. He oversees shooting oil wells, too, and shoots him himself sometimes. They aren't allowed to carry it on the railroads, you know. They have to team it. Young Akers says George rides around on the bumpy roads, sitting on as much as three hundred quarts of nitroglycerine. My lord, talk about romantic tumbles. If he gets blown sky high some day, he won't have a bigger drop when he comes down than he's already had. Don't beat the devil. Young Akers said he's got all the nerve there is in the world. Well, he always did have plenty of that, from the time he used to ride around here on his white pony and fight all the Irish boys in Cantown, with his long curls all handy to be pulled out. Akers says he gets a fair salary, and I should think he ought to. Seems to me I've heard the average life in that sort of work is something around four years, and agents don't write any insurance at all for nitroglycerine experts, hardly. No, said Eugene, I suppose not. Kinney rose to go. Well, it's a pretty funny thing, pretty odd, I mean, and I suppose it would be pass-around-the-hat for old Fanny Minnifer if he blew up. Fred told me they're living in some apartment house and said Georgie supports her. He was going to study law, but couldn't earn enough that way to take care of Fanny, so he gave it up. Fred's wife told him all this, says Fanny doesn't do anything but play bridge these days, got to playing too high for 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. Kinney 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 wondered. Kinney hesitated. I was wondering why you hadn't thought of finding something around your works for him. They say he's an all-fire worker, and he certainly does seem to have hid some decent stuff in him under all his damn foolishness. And you used to be such a tremendous friend of the family. I thought perhaps you— Of course, I know he's a queer lot. I know he's— Yes, I think he is, said Eugene. No, I haven't anything to offer him. I suppose not, Kinney returned, thoughtfully, as he went out. I don't know that I would myself. Well, we'll probably see his name in the papers some day if he stays with that job. However, the nitroglycerin expert of whom they spoke did not get into the papers as a consequence of being blown up, although his daily life was certainly a continuous exposure to that risk. Destiny has a constant passion for the incongruous, and it was George's lot to manipulate wholesale quantities of terrific and volatile explosives in safety, and to be laid low by an accident so commonplace and inconsequent that it was a comedy. Fate had reserved for him the final insult of riding him down under the wheels of one of those juggernauts at which he had once shouted, Get a horse. 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, with the streets almost empty, and no reason in the world for such a thing to happen. He had gone out for his Sunday morning walk, and he was thinking of an automobile at the very moment when the little car struck him. He was thinking of a shiny londelay 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 anyone 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 a lack of decision in another, more pressingly vital. At the second and louder shout he did look up, and the car was almost on him, but he could not make up his mind if the charming little figure he had seen was Lucy's, and he could not make up his mind whether to go backward or forward. These questions became entangled in his mind. Then, still not being able to decide which of two ways to go, he tried to go both, and the little car ran him down. It was not moving very rapidly, but it went all the way over, George. He was conscious of gigantic violence, of roaring and jolting and concussion, of choking clouds of dust shot with lightning about his head. He heard snapping sounds as louder 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 around him, gabbling. His forehead was bedewed with the sweat of anguish, and he tried to wipe off this dampness, but failed. He could not get his arm that far. Never mind, a policeman 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. Never mind trying to move any. You want him to send for some special doctor? No. George's lips formed the word. Would it take you to some private hospital? Tell them to take me, he said, faintly, to the city hospital. All right. A smallish young man in a duster fidgeted among the crowd, explaining and protesting, and a strident-voiced girl, his companion, supported his argument, declaring to everyone her willingness to offer testimony in any court of law that every blessed word he said was the God's truth. It's the fellow that hit you, the policeman 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. They'd never think it. But I guess there ain't much case again this fellow that was driving it. You bet your life there ain't no case on me. The young man in the duster agreed, with great bitterness. He came and stood at George's feet, addressing him heatedly. I'm sorry for you all right, and I don't say I ain't. I'm holding nothing against you, but it wasn't any more my fault than the Statehouse. You run into me, much as I run into you, and if you get well, you ain't going to get not one single cent out of me. This lady here was setting with me, and we both yelled at you. You went a step over eight miles an hour. I'm perfectly willing to say I'm sorry for you, though, and so's the lady with me. We're both willing to say that much, but that's all, understand?" George's drawn eyelids twitched. His misted glance rested fleetingly upon the two protesting motorists, and the old, imperious spirit within him flickered up in a single word. Lying on his back in the middle of the street, where he was regarded 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. It's all he did call him, nothing else at all, and the cuss had broke both his legs for him, and God knows what all. I wasn't here, then. What was it? CHAPTER XXXV Eugene's feeling about George had not been altered by his talk with Kinney in the club window, though he was somewhat disturbed. He was not disturbed by Kinney's hint that Fannie Minifer might be left on the hands of her friends through her nephew's present dealings with nitroglycerin. But he was surprised that Kinney had led up with intentional tact to the suggestion that a position might be made for George in the Morgan factory. Eugene did not care to have any suggestions about Georgey Minifer made to him. Kinney had represented Georgey as a new Georgey, at least in spots, or Georgey who was proving that decent stuff had been hidden him. In fact, or Georgey who was doing rather a handsome thing in taking a risky job for the sake of his aunt, her old, silly Fannie Minifer. Eugene didn't care what risks Georgey took, or how much decent stuff he had in him. Nothing that Georgey would ever do in this world or the next could change Eugene Morgan's feeling toward him. If Eugene could possibly have brought himself to offer Georgey a position in the automobile business, he knew full well that the proud devil wouldn't have taken it from him, though Georgey's proud reason would not have been the one attributed to him by Eugene. George would never reach the point where he could accept anything material from Eugene and preserve the self-respect he had begun to regain. But if Eugene had wished, he could easily have taken George out of the nitroglycerin branch of the chemical works. Always interested in apparent impossibilities of invention, Eugene had encouraged many experiments in such gropings as those for the discovery of substitutes for gasoline and rubber, and though his mood had withheld the information from Kinney, he had recently bought from the elder Acres a substantial quantity of stock on the condition that the chemical company should establish an experimental laboratory. He intended to buy more. Acres was anxious to please him, and a word from Eugene would have placed George almost anywhere in the chemical works. George need never have known it, for Eugene's purchases of stock were always quiet ones. The transaction remained so far between him and Acres, and could be kept between them. The possibility just edged itself into Eugene's mind, that is, he let it become part of his perceptions long enough for it to prove to him that it was actually a possibility. Then he half started with disgust that he should be even idly considering such a thing over his last cigar for the night in his library. No. And he threw the cigar into the empty fireplace and went to bed. His bitterness for himself might have worn away, but never his bitterness for Isabel. He took that thought to bed with him, and it was true that nothing George could do would ever change this bitterness of Eugene. Only George's mother could have changed it. And as Eugene fell asleep that night, thinking thus bitterly of Georgie, Georgie in the hospital was thinking of Eugene. He had come out of Ether with no great nausea, and had fallen into a reverie, though now and then a white sailboat staggered foolishly into the small ward where he lay. After a time he discovered that this happened only when he tried to open his eyes and look about him, so he kept his eyes shut and his thoughts were clearer. He thought of Eugene Morgan and of the Major. They seemed to be the same person for a while, but he managed to disentangle them and even to understand why he had confused them. Long ago his grandfather had been the most striking figure of success in the town, as rich as Major Amberson they used to say. Now it was Eugene. If I had Eugene Morgan's money he would hear the workman daydreaming at the chemical works, or if Eugene Morgan had hold of this place you'd see things hum. And the borders at the tabla dote spoke of the Morgan place as an eighteenth-century Frenchman spoke of Versailles. Like his uncle, George had perceived that the Morgan place was the new Amberson mansion. His reverie went back to the palatial days of the mansion, in his boyhood, when he would gallop his pony up the driveway and order the darky stablemen about, while they whooped and obeyed, and his grandfather, observing from a window, would laugh and call out to him, That's right, Georgie, make those lazy rascals jump. He remembered his gay young uncles and how the town was eager concerning everything about them, and about him. What a clean, pretty town it had been! And in his reverie he saw, like a pageant before him, the magnificence of the Ambersons, its passing, and the passing of the Ambersons themselves. They had been slowly engulfed without knowing how to prevent it, and almost without knowing what was happening to them. The family lot, in the shabby, older quarter, out at the cemetery, held most of them now, and the name was swept altogether from the new city. But the new great people who had taken their places, the Morgans and the Acreses and the Sheridan's, they would go too. George saw that. They would pass as the Ambersons had passed, and though some of them might do better than the Major and leave the letters that spelled a name on a hospital or a street, it would be only a word, and it would not stay forever. Nothing stays or holds or keeps where there is growth, he somehow perceived vaguely but truly. Great Caesar dead and turned to clay stopped no hold to keep the wind away. Dead Caesar was nothing but a tiresome bit of print in a book that schoolboys study for a while, and then forget. The Ambersons had passed, and the new people would pass, and the new people that came after them, and then the next new ones, and the next, and the next. He had begun to murmur, and the man on duty as night-nurse for the ward came and bent over him. Did you want something? There's nothing in this family business, George told him confidently. Even George Washington is only something in a book. Eugene read a report of the accident to the next morning's paper. He was on the train, having just left for New York on business, and with less leisure would probably have overlooked the obscure item. Legs Broken GA Minnifer, an employee of the Acres Chemical Company, was run down by an automobile yesterday at the corner of Tennessee and Maine, and had both legs broken. Minnifer was to blame for the accident according to patrolman F. A. Cax, who witnessed the affair. The automobile was a small one driven by Herbert Cottleman of 2173 Noble Avenue, who stated that he was making less than four miles per hour. Minnifer is said to belong to a family formerly of considerable prominence in the city. He was taken to the city hospital, where physicians stated later that he was suffering from internal injuries besides the fracture of his legs, but might recover. Eugene read the item twice, then tossed the paper upon the opposite seat of his compartment, and sat, looking out the window. His feeling toward Georgie was changed not a jot by his human pity for Georgie's human pain and injury. He thought of Georgie's tall and graceful figure, and he shivered, but his bitterness was untouched. He had never blamed Isabel for the weakness which had cost them the few years of happiness they might have had together. He had put the blame all on the sun, and it stayed there. He began to think poignantly of Isabel. He had seldom been able to see her more clearly than as he sat looking out of his compartment window after reading the account of this accident. She might have been just on the other side of the glass looking in at him, and then he thought of her as the pale figure of a woman, seen yet unseen, flying through the air beside the train, over the fields of springtime green, and through the woods that were just sprouting out their little leaves. He closed his eyes and saw her as she had been long ago. He saw the brown-eyed, brown-haired, proud, gentle, laughing girl that he had known when first he came to town, a boy just out of the State College. He remembered, as he had remembered ten thousand times before, the look she gave him when her brother George introduced him to her at a picnic. It was like Hazel Starlight he had written her in a poem afterward. He remembered his first call at the Amberson mansion, and what a great personage she seemed, at home in that magnificence, and yet so gay and friendly. He remembered the first time he had danced with her, and the old Walt's song began to beat in his ears and in his heart. They laughed and sang it together as they danced to it. Old love for a year, a week, a day, but a last for the love that lasts always. Most plainly of all he could see her dancing, and he became articulate in the morning whisper, so graceful, oh, so graceful. All the way to New York it seemed to him that Isabelle was near him, and he wrote of her to Lucy from his hotel that night. I saw an account of the accident to George Minifer. I'm sorry, though the paper states that it was plainly his own fault. I suppose it may have been as a result of my attention falling upon the item that I thought of his mother a great deal on the way here. It seems to me that I had never seen her more distinctly or so constantly, but as you know, thinking of his mother is not very apt to make me admire him. Of course, however, he has my best wishes for his recovery. He posted the letter, and by the morning's mail he received one from Lucy, written a few hours after his departure from home. She enclosed the item he had read on the train. I thought you might not see it. I have seen Miss Fanny, and she has got him put into a room by himself. Oh, poor rides down everything. I have been thinking so constantly of his mother, and it seemed to me that I have never seen her more distinctly, how lovely she was, and how she loved him. If Lucy had not written this letter, Eugene might not have done the odd thing he did that day. Nothing could have been more natural than that both he and Lucy should have thought intently of Isabelle after reading the account of George's accident. But the fact that Lucy's letter had crossed his own made Eugene begin to wonder if a phenomenon of telepathy might not be in question rather than a chance coincidence. The reference to Isabelle in the two letters was almost identical. He and Lucy, it appeared, had been thinking of Isabelle at the same time. Both said constantly thinking of her, and neither had ever seen her more distinctly. He remembered these phrases in his own letter accurately. Everyone upon the circumstance stirred a queer spot in Eugene's brain. He had one. He was an adventurer. If he had lived in the sixteenth century he would have sailed the unknown new seas. But having been born in the latter part of the nineteenth, when geography was a fairly well settled matter, he had become an explorer in mechanics. But the fact that he was a hard-headed businessman, as well as an adventurer, did not keep him from having a queer spot in his brain, because hard-headed businessmen are as susceptible to such spots as adventurers are. Some of them are secretly troubled when they do not see the new moon over the lucky shoulder. Some of them have strange, secret incredulities. They do not believe in geology, for instance, and some of them think that they have supernatural experiences. Of course there was nothing in it. Still it was queer, they say. Two weeks after Isabelle's death, Eugene had come to New York on urgent business, and found that the delayed arrival of a steamer gave him a day with nothing to do. His room at the hotel had become intolerable. Outdoors was intolerable. Everything was intolerable. It seemed to him that he must see Isabelle once more, hear her voice once more, that he must find some way to her, or lose his mind. Under this pressure he had gone, with complete skepticism, to a trance medium, of whom he had heard wild accounts from the wife of a business acquaintance. He thought, despairingly, that at least such an excursion would be trying to do something. He remembered the woman's name, found it in the telephone book, and made an appointment. The experience had been grotesque, and he came away with an encouraging message from his father, who had failed to identify himself satisfactorily, but declared that everything was on a higher plane in his present state of being, and that all life was continuous and progressive. Mrs. Horner spoke of herself as a psychic, but otherwise she seemed oddly unpretentious in matter of fact, and Eugene had no doubt at all of her sincerity. He was sure that she was not an intentional fraud, and though he departed in a state of annoyance with himself, he came to the conclusion that if any credulity were played upon by Mrs. Horner's exhibitions it was her own. Nevertheless, his queer spot having been stimulated to action by the coincidence of the letters, he went to Mrs. Horner's after his director's meeting to-day. He used the telephone booth in the director's room to make the appointment, and he laughed feebly at himself, and wondered what the group of men in that mahogany apartment would think if they knew what he was doing. Mrs. Horner had changed her address, but he found the new one, and somebody purporting to be a niece of hers talked to him and made an appointment for a sitting at five o'clock. He was prompt, and the niece, a dull-faced fat girl with a magazine under her arm, admitted him to Mrs. Horner's apartment, which smelled of camphor, and showed him to a room with grey painted walls, no rug on the floor, and no furniture except a table with nothing on it, and two chairs, one a leather easy chair, and the other a stiff little brute with a wooden seat. There was one window with the shade pulled down to the sill, but the sun was bright outside, and the room had light enough. Mrs. Horner appeared in the doorway, a wan and un-enterprising looking woman in brown, with thin hair artificially waved, but not recently, and parted in the middle over a bluish forehead. Her eyes were small and seemed weak, but she recognized the visitor. "'Oh, you've been here before,' she said, in a thin voice, not un-musical. I recollect you. Quite a time ago, wasn't it?' "'Yes, quite a long time. I recollect because I recollect you was disappointed. Anyway, it was kind of cross.' She laughed faintly. "'I'm sorry if I seemed so,' Eugene said. "'Do you happen to have found out my name?' She looked surprised, and a little reproachful. "'Why, no, I'd never try to figure out people's names. Why should I? I don't claim anything for the power. I only know I have it. And some ways it ain't always such a blessing, neither, I can tell you.' Eugene did not press an investigation of her meaning, but said vaguely, "'I suppose not. Shall we?' "'All right,' she assented, dropping into the leather chair, with her back to the shaded window. "'You'd better set down, too, I reckon. I hope you'll get something this time, so you won't feel cross, but I don't know. I can't never tell what they'll do.' Well.' She sighed, closed her eyes, and with silent, while Eugene, seated in the stiff chair across the table from her, watched her profile, thought himself an idiot, and called himself that, and other names. And as the silence continued, and the impassive woman in the easy chair remained impassive, he began to wonder what had led him to be such a fool. It became clear to him that the similarity of his letter and Lucy's needed no explanation involving telepathy, and was not even an extraordinary coincidence. What then had brought him back to this absurd place, and caused him to be watching this absurd woman taking a nap in a chair? In brief, what the devil did he mean by it? He had not the slightest interest in Mrs. Horner's naps, or in her teeth which were being slightly revealed by the unconscious parting of her lips as her breathing became heavier. If the vagaries of his own mind had brought him into such a grotesquery as this, into what did the vagaries of other men's minds take them? Confident that he was ordinarily saner than most people, he perceived that since he was capable of doing a thing like this, other men did even more idiotic things in secret. And he had a fleeting vision of sober-looking bankers and manufacturers and lawyers, well-dressed church-going men, sound citizens, and all as queer as the deuce inside. How long was he going to sit here presiding over this unknown woman's slumbers? It struck him that to make the picture complete he ought to be shooing flies away from her with a palm-leaf fan. Mrs. Horner's parted lips opened again abruptly, and became compressed. Her shoulders moved a little, then jerked repeatedly. Her small chest heaved. She gasped, and the compressed lips relaxed to a slight contortion, then began to move, whispering and bringing forth indistinguishable mutterings. Suddenly she spoke in a loud, husky voice. Lopa is here. Yes, Eugene said dryly. That's what you said last time. I remember Lopa. She's your control, I think you said. I'm Lopa, said the husky voice. I'm Lopa herself. You mean I'm to suppose that you're not Mrs. Horner now? Never was Mrs. Horner, the voice declared, speaking undeniably from Mrs. Horner's lips. But with such conviction that Eugene, in spite of everything, began to feel himself in the presence of a third party, who was nonetheless an individual, even though she might be another edition of the apparently some nambulistic Mrs. Horner. Never was Mrs. Horner, or anybody, but just Lopa. Guide. You mean your Mrs. Horner's guide, he asked. Your guide now, said the voice, with emphasis, to which was incongruously added a low laugh. You came here once before. Lopa remembers. Yes, so did Mrs. Horner. Lopa overlooked his implication and continued quickly. You build, build things that go. You came here once, an old gentleman on this side. He spoke to you. Same old gentleman here now. He tell Lopa he's your grandfather. No, he says father. He's your father. What's his appearance? How? What does he look like? Very fine, white beard, but not long beard. He says someone else want to speak to you. See here. Lady. Not his wife, though. No. Very fine lady. Fine lady. Fine lady. Is it my sister, Eugene asked? Sister? No. She is shaking her head. She has pretty brown hair. She is fond of you. She is someone who knows you very well, but she is not your sister. She is very anxious to say something to you. Very anxious. Very fond of you. Very anxious to talk to you. Very glad you came here. Oh, very glad. What's her name? Name, the voice repeated, and seemed to ruminate. Name hard to get. Always very hard for Lopa. She wants to tell me her name to tell you. She wants you to understand names are hard to make. She says you must think of something that makes a sound. Here the voice seemed to put a question to an invisible presence, and to receive an answer. A little sound or a big sound? She says it might be a little sound or a big sound. She says a ring. Oh! Lopa knows. She means a bell. That's it. A bell. Eugene looked grave. Does she mean her name is Bell? Not quite. Her name is Longer. Perhaps he suggested she means that she was a bell. No. She says she thinks you know what she means. She says you must think of a color. What color? Again, Lopa addressed the unknown, but this time seemed to wait for an answer. Perhaps she means the color of her eyes, said Eugene. No. She says her color is light. It's a light color, and you can see through it. Amber, he said, and was startled, for Mrs. Horner, with her eyes still closed, clapped her hands, and the voice cried out in delight. Yes. She says you know who she is from Amber. Amber. Amber. That's it. She says you understand what her name is from a bell and from Amber. She is laughing and waving a lace handkerchief at me because she is pleased. She says I have made you know who it is. This was the strangest moment of Eugene's life because, while it lasted, he believed that Isabelle Amberson, who was dead, had found means to speak to him. Though within ten minutes he doubted it, he believed it then. His elbows pressed hard on the table, and his head between his hands. He leaned forward, staring at the commonplace figure in the easy chair. What does she wish to say to me? She is happy because you know her. No. She is troubled. Oh! A great trouble. Something she wants to tell you. She wants so much to tell you. She wants Loper to tell you. This is a great trouble. She says, oh yes. She wants you to be, to be kind. That's what she says. That's it. To be kind. Does she? She wants you to be kind, said the voice. She nods when I tell you this. Yes. It must be right. She is a very fine lady, very pretty. She is so anxious for you to understand. She hopes and hopes you will. Someone else wants to speak to you. This is a man. He says, I don't want to speak to anyone else, said Eugene quickly. I want—this man, who has come, says that he is a friend of yours. He says, Eugene struck the table with his fist. I don't want to speak to anyone else, I tell you. He cried passionately. If she's there, I—he caught his breath sharply, checked himself, and sat in amazement. Could his mind so easily accept so stupendous a thing as true? Evidently it could. Mrs. Horner spoke languidly in her own voice. Did you get anything satisfactory? She asked. I certainly hope it wasn't like the other time when you was cross because they couldn't get anything for you. No, no, he said hastily. This was different. It was very interesting. He paid her, went to his hotel, and thenced to his train for home. Never did he so seem to move through a world of dream stuff, for he knew that he was not more credulous than other men, and if he could believe what he had believed, though he had believed it for no longer than a moment or two, what hold could he or any other human being have on reality? His credulity vanished, or so he thought, with his recollection that it was he and not the alleged Lopa who had suggested the word Amber. Going over the mortifying, plain facts of his experience, he found that Mrs. Horner, or the subdivision of Mrs. Horner known as Lopa, had told him to think of a bell and a color, and that being furnished with these scientific data he had leaped to the conclusion that he spoke with Isabelle Amberson. For a moment he had believed that Isabelle was there, believed that she was close to him, and treating him, and treating him to be kind. But with this recollection a strange agitation came upon him. After all, had she not spoken to him? If his own unknown consciousness had told the psychics' unknown consciousness how to make the picture of the pretty, brown-haired, brown-eyed lady, hadn't the picture been a true one? And hadn't the true Isabelle, oh, indeed her very soul, called out to him of his own true memory of her? And as the train roared through the darkened evening he looked out beyond his windows, and saw her as he had seen her on his journey, a few days ago, an ethereal figure flying beside the train. But now it seemed to him that she kept her face toward his window with an infinite wistfulness. To be kind! If it had been Isabelle, was that what she would have said? If she were anywhere, and could come to him through the invisible wall, what would be the first thing she would say to him? Ah! Well enough, and perhaps bitterly enough, he knew the answer to that question. To be kind! To Georgie. A red cap at the station, when he arrived, leaped for his bag, abandoning another which the Pullman porter had handed him. Yes, sir, Mr. Morgan, yes, sir, you car wait in front of the station for you, Mr. Morgan, sir. And people, and the crowd about the gates, turned to stare as he passed through, whispering, that's Morgan. Outside, the neat chauffeur stood at the door of the touring car like a soldier in whip-court. I'll not go home now, Harry, said Eugene, when he had got in. Drive to the city hospital. Yes, sir, the man returned. Miss Lucy's there. She said she expected you would come there before you went home. She did. Yes, sir. Eugene stared. I suppose Mr. Minifer must be pretty bad, he said. Yes, sir, I understand he's liable to get well, though, sir. He moved his lever into high speed, and the car went through the heavy traffic like some fast, faithful beast that knew its way about, and knew its master's need of haste. Eugene did not speak again until they reached the hospital. Fanny met him in the upper corridor, and took him to an open door. He stopped on the threshold, startled, for from the waxen face on the pillow, almost it seemed, the eyes of Isabel herself were looking at him. Before had the resemblance between mother and son been so strong. And Eugene knew that now he had once seen it, thus startlingly. He need divest himself of no bitterness to be kind to Georgie. George was startled, too. He lifted a white hand in a queer gesture, half-forbidding, half-imploring, and then let his arm fall back upon the coverlet. He must have thought my mother wanted you to come, he said, so that I could ask you to—to forgive me. But Lucy, who sat beside him, lifted ineffable eyes from him to her father, and shook her head, no, just to take his hand, gently. She was radiant. But for Eugene another radiance filled the room. He knew that he had been true at last to his true love, and that through him she had brought her boy under shelter again. Her eyes would look wistful no more. End of CHAPTER XXXV And End of the Magnificent Ambersons by Booth Tarkington