The hero of the fête, with the dark-eyed little beauty upon his arm,
reached the top of the second flight of stairs; and here, beyond a
spacious landing, where two proud-like darkies tended a crystalline
punch bowl, four wide archways in a rose-vine lattice framed gliding
silhouettes of waltzers, already smoothly at it to the castanets of
“_La Paloma_.” Old John Minafer, evidently surfeited, was in the act
of leaving these delights. “D’want ’ny more o’ that!” he barked.
“Just slidin’ around! Call that dancin’? Rather see a jig any day in
the world! They ain’t very modest, some of ’em. I don’t mind _that_,
though. Not me!”
Miss Fanny Minafer was no longer in charge of him: he emerged from
the ballroom escorted by a middle-aged man of commonplace appearance.
The escort had a dry, lined face upon which, not ornamentally but as
a matter of course, there grew a business man’s short moustache; and
his thin neck showed an Adam’s apple, but not conspicuously, for there
was nothing conspicuous about him. Baldish, dim, quiet, he was an
unnoticeable part of this festival, and although there were a dozen or
more middle-aged men present, not casually to be distinguished from him
in general aspect, he was probably the last person in the big house at
whom a stranger would have glanced twice. It did not enter George’s
mind to mention to Miss Morgan that this was his father, or to say
anything whatever about him.
Mr. Minafer shook his son’s hand unobtrusively in passing.
“I’ll take Uncle John home,” he said, in a low voice. “Then I guess
I’ll go on home myself—I’m not a great hand at parties, you know.
Good-night, George.”
George murmured a friendly enough good-night without pausing.
Ordinarily he was not ashamed of the Minafers; he seldom thought about
them at all, for he belonged, as most American children do, to the
mother’s family—but he was anxious not to linger with Miss Morgan in
the vicinity of old John, whom he felt to be a disgrace.
He pushed brusquely through the fringe of calculating youths who were
gathered in the arches, watching for chances to dance only with girls
who would soon be taken off their hands, and led his stranger lady out
upon the floor. They caught the time instantly, and were away in the
waltz.
George danced well, and Miss Morgan seemed to float as part of the
music, the very dove itself of “_La Paloma_.” They said nothing as they
danced; her eyes were cast down all the while—the prettiest gesture
for a dancer—and there was left in the universe, for each, of them,
only their companionship in this waltz; while the faces of the other
dancers, swimming by, denoted not people but merely blurs of colour.
George became conscious of strange feelings within him: an exaltation
of soul, tender, but indefinite, and seemingly located in the upper
part of his diaphragm.
The stopping of the music came upon him like the waking to an alarm
clock; for instantly six or seven of the calculating persons about the
entry-ways bore down upon Miss Morgan to secure dances. George had to
do with one already established as a belle, it seemed.
“Give me the next and the one after that,” he said hurriedly,
recovering some presence of mind, just as the nearest applicant reached
them. “And give me every third one the rest of the evening.”
She laughed. “Are you asking?”
“What do you mean, ‘asking’?”
“It sounded as though you were just telling me to give you all those
dances.”
“Well, I want ’em!” George insisted.
“What about all the other girls it’s your duty to dance with?”
“They’ll have to go without,” he said heartlessly; and then, with
surprising vehemence: “Here! I want to know: Are you going to give me
those—”
“Good gracious!” she laughed. “Yes!”
The applicants flocked round her, urging contracts for what remained,
but they did not dislodge George from her side, though he made
it evident that they succeeded in annoying him; and presently he
extricated her from an accumulating siege—she must have connived in the
extrication—and bore her off to sit beside him upon the stairway that
led to the musicians’ gallery, where they were sufficiently retired,
yet had a view of the room.
“How’d all those ducks get to know you so quick?” George inquired, with
little enthusiasm.
“Oh, I’ve been here a week.”
“Looks as if you’d been pretty busy!” he said. “Most of those ducks, I
don’t know what my mother wanted to invite ’em here for.”
“Don’t you like them?”
“Oh, I used to see something of a few of ’em. I was president of a club
we had here, and some of ’em belonged to it, but I don’t care much for
that sort of thing any more. I really don’t see why my mother invited
’em.”
“Perhaps it was on account of their parents,” Miss Morgan suggested
mildly. “Maybe she didn’t want to offend their fathers and mothers.”
“Oh, hardly! I don’t think my mother need worry much about offending
anybody in this old town.”
“It must be wonderful,” said Miss Morgan. “It must be wonderful, Mr.
Amberson—Mr. Minafer, I mean.”
“What must be wonderful?”
“To be so important as that!”
“_That_ isn’t ‘important,’” George assured her. “Anybody that really is
anybody ought to be able to do about as they like in their own town, I
should think!”
She looked at him critically from under her shading lashes—but her eyes
grew gentler almost at once. In truth, they became more appreciative
than critical. George’s imperious good looks were altogether manly,
yet approached actual beauty as closely as a boy’s good looks
should dare; and dance-music and flowers have some effect upon
nineteen-year-old girls as well as upon eighteen-year-old boys. Miss
Morgan turned her eyes slowly from George, and pressed her face among
the lilies-of-the-valley and violets of the pretty bouquet she carried,
while, from the gallery above, the music of the next dance carolled
out merrily in a new two-step. The musicians made the melody gay for
the Christmastime with chimes of sleighbells, and the entrance to the
shadowed stairway framed the passing flushed and lively dancers, but
neither George nor Miss Morgan suggested moving to join the dance.
The stairway was draughty: the steps were narrow and uncomfortable; no
older person would have remained in such a place. Moreover, these two
young people were strangers to each other; neither had said anything in
which the other had discovered the slightest intrinsic interest; there
had not arisen between them the beginnings of congeniality, or even of
friendliness—but stairways near ballrooms have more to answer for than
have moonlit lakes and mountain sunsets. Some day the laws of glamour
must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would
be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an
apple, but by a young lady.
Age, confused by its own long accumulation of follies, is everlastingly
inquiring, “What does _she_ see in _him?_” as if young love came about
through thinking—or through conduct. Age wants to know: “What on earth
can they _talk_ about?” as if talking had anything to do with April
rains! At seventy, one gets up in the morning, finds the air sweet
under a bright sun, feels lively; thinks, “I am hearty, today,” and
plans to go for a drive. At eighteen, one goes to a dance, sits with
a stranger on a stairway, feels peculiar, thinks nothing, and becomes
incapable of any plan whatever. Miss Morgan and George stayed where
they were.
They had agreed to this in silence and without knowing it; certainly
without exchanging glances of intelligence—they had exchanged no
glances at all. Both sat staring vaguely out into the ballroom, and,
for a time, they did not speak. Over their heads the music reached a
climax of vivacity: drums, cymbals, triangle, and sleighbells, beating,
clashing, tinkling. Here and there were to be seen couples so carried
away that, ceasing to move at the decorous, even glide, considered
most knowing, they pranced and whirled through the throng, from wall
to wall, galloping bounteously in abandon. George suffered a shock of
vague surprise when he perceived that his aunt, Fanny Minafer, was the
lady-half of one of these wild couples.
Fanny Minafer, who rouged a little, was like fruit which in some
climates dries with the bloom on. Her features had remained prettily
childlike; so had her figure, and there were times when strangers,
seeing her across the street, took her to be about twenty; they were
other times when at the same distance they took her to be about sixty,
instead of forty, as she was. She had old days and young days; old
hours and young hours; old minutes and young minutes; for the change
might be that quick. An alteration in her expression, or a difference
in the attitude of her head, would cause astonishing indentations
to appear—and behold, Fanny was an old lady! But she had been never
more childlike than she was tonight as she flew over the floor in the
capable arms of the queer-looking duck; for this person was her partner.
The queer-looking duck had been a real dancer in his day, it appeared;
and evidently his day was not yet over. In spite of the headlong, gay
rapidity with which he bore Miss Fanny about the big room, he danced
authoritatively, avoiding without effort the lightest collision with
other couples, maintaining sufficient grace throughout his wildest
moments, and all the while laughing and talking with his partner. What
was most remarkable to George, and a little irritating, this stranger
in the Amberson Mansion had no vestige of the air of deference proper
to a stranger in such a place: he seemed thoroughly at home. He seemed
offensively so, indeed, when, passing the entrance to the gallery
stairway, he disengaged his hand from Miss Fanny’s for an instant,
and not pausing in the dance, waved a laughing salutation more than
cordial, then capered lightly out of sight.
George gazed stonily at this manifestation, responding neither by word
nor sign. “How’s that for a bit of freshness?” he murmured.
“What was?” Miss Morgan asked.
“That queer-looking duck waving his hand at me like that. Except he’s
the Sharon girls’ uncle I don’t know him from Adam.”
“You don’t need to,” she said. “He wasn’t waving his hand to you: he
meant me.”
“Oh, he did?” George was not mollified by the explanation. “Everybody
seems to mean you! You certainly do seem to’ve been pretty busy this
week you’ve been here!”
She pressed her bouquet to her face again, and laughed into it, not
displeased. She made no other comment, and for another period neither
spoke. Meanwhile the music stopped; loud applause insisted upon its
renewal; an encore was danced; there was an interlude of voices; and
the changing of partners began.
“Well,” said George finally, “I must say you don’t seem to be much of a
prattler. They say it’s a great way to get a reputation for being wise,
never saying much. Don’t you ever talk _any?_”
“When people can understand,” she answered.
He had been looking moodily out at the ballroom but he turned to her
quickly, at this, saw that her eyes were sunny and content, over the
top of her bouquet; and he consented to smile.
“Girls are usually pretty fresh!” he said. “They ought to go to a man’s
college about a year: they’d get taught a few things about freshness!
What you got to do after two o’clock to-morrow afternoon?”
“A whole lot of things. Every minute filled up.”
“All right,” said George. “The snow’s fine for sleighing: I’ll come for
you in a cutter at ten minutes after two.”
“I can’t possibly go.”
“If you don’t,” he said, “I’m going to sit in the cutter in front of
the gate, wherever you’re visiting, all afternoon, and if you try to go
out with anybody else he’s got to whip me before he gets you.” And as
she laughed—though she blushed a little, too—he continued, seriously:
“If you think I’m not in earnest you’re at liberty to make quite a big
experiment!”
She laughed again. “I don’t think I’ve often had so large a compliment
as that,” she said, “especially on such short notice—and yet, I don’t
think I’ll go with you.
“You be ready at ten minutes after two.”
“No, I won’t.”
“Yes, you will!”
“Yes,” she said, “I will!” And her partner for the next dance arrived,
breathless with searching.
“Don’t forget I’ve got the third from now,” George called after her.
“I won’t.”
“And every third one after that.”
“I know!” she called, over her partner’s shoulder, and her voice was
amused—but meek.
When “the third from now” came, George presented himself before her
without any greeting, like a brother, or a mannerless old friend.
Neither did she greet him, but moved away with him, concluding, as
she went, an exchange of badinage with the preceding partner: she had
been talkative enough with him, it appeared. In fact, both George
and Miss Morgan talked much more to every one else that evening,
than to each other; and they said nothing at all at this time. Both
looked preoccupied, as they began to dance, and preserved a gravity
of expression to the end of the number. And when “the third one
after that” came, they did not dance, but went back to the gallery
stairway, seeming to have reached an understanding without any verbal
consultation, that this suburb was again the place for them.
“Well,” said George, coolly, when they were seated, “what did you say
your name was?”
“Morgan.”
“Funny name!”
“Everybody else’s name always is.”
“I didn’t mean it was really funny,” George explained. “That’s just one
of my crowd’s bits of horsing at college. We always say ‘funny name’
no matter what it is. I guess we’re pretty fresh sometimes; but I knew
your name was Morgan because my mother said so downstairs. I meant:
what’s the rest of it?”
“Lucy.”
He was silent.
“Is ‘Lucy’ a funny name, too?” she inquired.
“No. Lucy’s very much all right!” he said, and he went so far as to
smile. Even his Aunt Fanny admitted that when George smiled “in a
certain way” he was charming.
“Thanks about letting my name be Lucy,” she said.
“How old are you?” George asked.
“I don’t really know, myself.”
“What do you mean: you don’t really know yourself?”
“I mean I only know what they tell me. I believe them, of course, but
believing isn’t really knowing. You believe some certain day is your
birthday—at least, I suppose you do—but you don’t really know it is
because you can’t remember.”
“Look here!” said George. “Do you always talk like this?”
Miss Lucy Morgan laughed forgivingly, put her young head on one side,
like a bird, and responded cheerfully: “I’m willing to learn wisdom.
What are you studying in school?”
“College!”
“At the university! Yes. What are you studying there?”
George laughed. “Lot o’ useless guff!”
“Then why don’t you study some useful guff?”
“What do you mean: ‘useful’?”
“Something you’d use later, in your business or profession?”
George waved his hand impatiently. “I don’t expect to go into any
‘business or profession’.”
“No?”
“Certainly not!” George was emphatic, being sincerely annoyed by a
suggestion which showed how utterly she failed to comprehend the kind
of person he was.
“Why not?” she asked mildly.
“Just look at ’em!” he said, almost with bitterness, and he made a
gesture presumably intended to indicate the business and professional
men now dancing within range of vision. “That’s a fine career for a
man, isn’t it! Lawyers, bankers, politicians! What do they get out of
life, I’d like to know! What do they ever know about _real_ things?
Where do they ever _get?_”
He was so earnest that she was surprised and impressed. Evidently he
had deep-seated ambitions, for he seemed to speak with actual emotion
of these despised things which were so far beneath his planning for the
future. She had a vague, momentary vision of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime
minister of England; and she spoke, involuntarily in a lowered voice,
with deference:
“What do you want to be?” she asked.
George answered promptly.
“A yachtsman,” he said.