Tonight George began a jubilant warfare upon his Aunt Fanny, opening
the campaign upon his return home at about eleven o’clock. Fanny had
retired, and was presumably asleep, but George, on the way to his own
room, paused before her door, and serenaded her in a full baritone:
“As I walk along the Boy de Balong
With my independent air,
The people all declare,
‘He must be a millionaire!’
Oh, you hear them sigh, and wish to die,
And see them wink the other eye
At the man that broke the bank at Monte Carlo!”
Isabel came from George’s room, where she had been reading, waiting for
him. “I’m afraid you’ll disturb your father, dear. I wish you’d sing
more, though—in the daytime! You have a splendid voice.”
“Good-night, old lady!”
“I thought perhaps I—Didn’t you want me to come in with you and talk a
little?”
“Not to-night. You go to bed. Good-night, old lady!”
He kissed her hilariously, entered his room with a skip, closed his
door noisily; and then he could be heard tossing things about, loudly
humming “The Man that Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo.”
Smiling, his mother knelt outside his door to pray; then, with her
“Amen,” pressed her lips to the bronze door-knob; and went silently to
her own apartment.
After breakfasting in bed, George spent the next morning at his
grandfather’s and did not encounter his Aunt Fanny until lunch, when
she seemed to be ready for him.
“Thank you so much for the serenade, George!” she said. “Your poor
father tells me he’d just got to sleep for the first time in two
nights, but after your kind attentions he lay awake the rest of last
night.”
“Perfectly true,” Mr. Minafer said grimly.
“Of course, I didn’t know, sir,” George hastened to assure him. “I’m
awfully sorry. But Aunt Fanny was so gloomy and excited before I went
out, last evening, I thought she needed cheering up.”
“I!” Fanny jeered. “I was gloomy? I was excited? You mean about that
engagement?”
“Yes. Weren’t you? I thought I heard you worrying over somebody’s
being engaged. Didn’t I hear you say you’d heard Mr. Eugene Morgan was
engaged to marry some pretty little seventeen-year-old girl?”
Fanny was stung, but she made a brave effort. “Did you ask Lucy?” she
said, her voice almost refusing the teasing laugh she tried to make it
utter. “Did you ask her when Fred Kinney and she—”
“Yes. That story wasn’t true. But the other one—” Here he stared at
Fanny, and then affected dismay. “Why, what’s the matter with your
face, Aunt Fanny? It seems agitated!”
“Agitated!” Fanny said disdainfully, but her voice undeniably lacked
steadiness. “Agitated!”
“Oh, come!” Mr. Minafer interposed. “Let’s have a little peace!”
“I’m willing,” said George. “I don’t want to see poor Aunt Fanny all
stirred up over a rumour I just this minute invented myself. She’s so
excitable—about certain subjects—it’s hard to control her.” He turned
to his mother. “What’s the matter with grandfather?”
“Didn’t you see him this morning?” Isabel asked.
“Yes. He was glad to see me, and all that, but he seemed pretty
fidgety. Has he been having trouble with his heart again?”
“Not lately. No.”
“Well, he’s not himself. I tried to talk to him about the estate;
it’s disgraceful—it really is—the way things are looking. He wouldn’t
listen, and he seemed upset. What’s he upset over?”
Isabel looked serious; however, it was her husband who suggested
gloomily, “I suppose the Major’s bothered about this Sydney and Amelia
business, most likely.”
“What Sydney and Amelia business?” George asked.
“Your mother can tell you, if she wants to,” Minafer said. “It’s not my
side of the family, so I keep off.”
“It’s rather disagreeable for all of us, Georgie,” Isabel began. “You
see, your Uncle Sydney wanted a diplomatic position, and he thought
brother George, being in Congress, could arrange it. George did get him
the offer of a South American ministry, but Sydney wanted a European
ambassadorship, and he got quite indignant with poor George for
thinking he’d take anything smaller—and he believes George didn’t work
hard enough for him. George had done his best, of course, and now he’s
out of Congress, and won’t run again—so there’s Sydney’s idea of a big
diplomatic position gone for good. Well, Sydney and your Aunt Amelia
are terribly disappointed, and they say they’ve been thinking for years
that this town isn’t really fit to live in—‘for a gentleman,’ Sydney
says—and it is getting rather big and dirty. So they’ve sold their
house and decided to go abroad to live permanently; there’s a villa
near Florence they’ve often talked of buying. And they want father to
let them have their share of the estate now, instead of waiting for him
to leave it to them in his will.”
“Well, I suppose that’s fair enough,” George said. “That is, in case he
intended to leave them a certain amount in his will.”
“Of course that’s understood, Georgie. Father explained his will to us
long ago; a third to them, and a third to brother George, and a third
to us.”
Her son made a simple calculation in his mind. Uncle George was a
bachelor, and probably would never marry; Sydney and Amelia were
childless. The Major’s only grandchild appeared to remain the eventual
heir of the entire property, no matter if the Major did turn over
to Sydney a third of it now. And George had a fragmentary vision
of himself, in mourning, arriving to take possession of a historic
Florentine villa—he saw himself walking up a cypress-bordered path,
with ancient carven stone balustrades in the distance, and servants
in mourning livery greeting the new signore. “Well, I suppose it’s
grandfather’s own affair. He can do it or not, just as he likes. I
don’t see why he’d mind much.”
“He seemed rather confused and pained about it,” Isabel said. “I think
they oughtn’t to urge it. George says that the estate won’t stand
taking out the third that Sydney wants, and that Sydney and Amelia are
behaving like a couple of pigs.” She laughed, continuing, “Of course I
don’t know whether they are or not: I never have understood any more
about business myself than a little pig would! But I’m on George’s
side, whether he’s right or wrong; I always was from the time we were
children: and Sydney and Amelia are hurt with me about it, I’m afraid.
They’ve stopped speaking to George entirely. Poor father. Family rows
at his time of life.”
George became thoughtful. If Sydney and Amelia were behaving like pigs,
things might not be so simple as at first they seemed to be. Uncle
Sydney and Aunt Amelia might live an awful long while, he thought; and
besides, people didn’t always leave their fortunes to relatives. Sydney
might die first, leaving everything to his widow, and some curly-haired
Italian adventurer might get round her, over there in Florence; she
might be fool enough to marry again—or even adopt somebody!
He became more and more thoughtful, forgetting entirely a plan he had
formed for the continued teasing of his Aunt Fanny; and, an hour after
lunch, he strolled over to his grandfather’s, intending to apply for
further information, as a party rightfully interested.
He did not carry out this intention, however. Going into the big house
by a side entrance, he was informed that the Major was upstairs in his
bedroom, that his sons Sydney and George were both with him, and that
a serious argument was in progress. “You kin stan’ right in de middle
dat big, sta’y-way,” said Old Sam, the ancient negro, who was his
informant, “an’ you kin heah all you a-mind to wivout goin’ on up no
fudda. Mist’ Sydney an’ Mist’ Jawge talkin’ louduh’n I evuh heah nobody
ca’y on in nish heah house! Quollin’, honey, big quollin’!”
“All right,” said George shortly. “You go on back to your own part of
the house, and don’t make any talk. Hear me?”
“Yessuh, yessuh,” Sam chuckled, as he shuffled away. “Plenty talkin’
wivout Sam! Yessuh!”
George went to the foot of the great stairway. He could hear angry
voices overhead—those of his two uncles—and a plaintive murmur, as
if the Major tried to keep the peace. Such sounds were far from
encouraging to callers, and George decided not to go upstairs
until this interview was over. His decision was the result of no
timidity, nor of a too sensitive delicacy. What he felt was, that
if he interrupted the scene in his grandfather’s room, just at this
time, one of the three gentlemen engaging in it might speak to him
in a peremptory manner (in the heat of the moment) and George saw
no reason for exposing his dignity to such mischances. Therefore he
turned from the stairway, and going quietly into the library, picked
up a magazine—but he did not open it, for his attention was instantly
arrested by his Aunt Amelia’s voice, speaking in the next room. The
door was open and George heard her distinctly.
“Isabel does? Isabel!” she exclaimed, her tone high and shrewish. “You
needn’t tell me anything about Isabel Minafer, I guess, my dear old
Frank Bronson! I know her a little better than you do, don’t you think?”
George heard the voice of Mr. Bronson replying—a voice familiar to him
as that of his grandfather’s attorney-in-chief and chief intimate as
well. He was a contemporary of the Major’s, being over seventy, and
they had been through three years of the War in the same regiment.
Amelia addressed him now, with an effect of angry mockery, as “my dear
old Frank Bronson”; but that (without the mockery) was how the Amberson
family almost always spoke of him: “dear old Frank Bronson.” He was a
hale, thin old man, six feet three inches tall, and without a stoop.
“I doubt your knowing Isabel,” he said stiffly. “You speak of her as
you do because she sides with her brother George, instead of with you
and Sydney.”
“Pooh!” Aunt Amelia was evidently in a passion. “You know what’s been
going on over there, well enough, Frank Bronson!”
“I don’t even know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, you don’t? You don’t know that Isabel takes George’s side simply
because he’s Eugene Morgan’s best friend?”
“It seems to me you’re talking pure nonsense,” said Bronson sharply.
“Not impure nonsense, I hope!”
Amelia became shrill. “I thought you were a man of the world: don’t
tell me you’re blind! For nearly two years Isabel’s been pretending
to chaperone Fanny Minafer with Eugene, and all the time she’s been
dragging that poor fool Fanny around to chaperone her and Eugene!
Under the circumstances, she knows people will get to thinking Fanny’s
a pretty slim kind of chaperone, and Isabel wants to please George
because she thinks there’ll be less talk if she can keep her own
brother around, seeming to approve. ‘Talk!’ She’d better look out! The
whole town will be talking, the first thing she knows! She—”
Amelia stopped, and stared at the doorway in a panic, for her nephew
stood there.
She kept her eyes upon his white face for a few strained moments, then,
regaining her nerve, looked away and shrugged her shoulders.
“You weren’t intended to hear what I’ve been saying, George,” she said
quietly. “But since you seem to—”
“Yes, I did.”
“So!” She shrugged her shoulders again. “After all, I don’t know but
it’s just as well, in the long run.”
He walked up to where she sat. “You—you—” he said thickly. “It seems—it
seems to me you’re—you’re pretty common!”
Amelia tried to give the impression of an unconcerned person laughing
with complete indifference, but the sounds she produced were disjointed
and uneasy. She fanned herself, looking out of the open window near
her. “Of course, if you want to make more trouble in the family than
we’ve already got, George, with your eavesdropping, you can go and
repeat—”
Old Bronson had risen from his chair in great distress. “Your aunt was
talking nonsense because she’s piqued over a business matter, George,”
he said. “She doesn’t mean what she said, and neither she nor any one
else gives the slightest credit to such foolishness—no one in the
world!”
George gulped, and wet lines shone suddenly along his lower eyelids.
“They—they’d better not!” he said, then stalked out of the room, and
out of the house. He stamped fiercely across the stone slabs of the
front porch, descended the steps, and halted abruptly, blinking in the
strong sunshine.
In front of his own gate, beyond the Major’s broad lawn, his mother
was just getting into her victoria, where sat already his Aunt Fanny
and Lucy Morgan. It was a summer fashion-picture: the three ladies
charmingly dressed, delicate parasols aloft; the lines of the victoria
graceful as those of a violin; the trim pair of bays in glistening
harness picked out with silver, and the serious black driver whom
Isabel, being an Amberson, dared even in that town to put into a black
livery coat, boots, white breeches, and cockaded hat. They jingled
smartly away, and, seeing George standing on the Major’s lawn, Lucy
waved, and Isabel threw him a kiss.
But George shuddered, pretending not to see them, and stooped as if
searching for something lost in the grass, protracting that posture
until the victoria was out of hearing. And ten minutes later, George
Amberson, somewhat in the semblance of an angry person plunging out of
the Mansion, found a pale nephew waiting to accost him.
“I haven’t time to talk, Georgie.”
“Yes, you have. You’d better!”
“What’s the matter, then?”
His namesake drew him away from the vicinity of the house. “I want to
tell you something I just heard Aunt Amelia say, in there.”
“I don’t want to hear it,” said Amberson. “I’ve been hearing entirely
too much of what ‘Aunt Amelia’ says, lately.”
“She says my mother’s on your side about this division of the property
because you’re Eugene Morgan’s best friend.”
“What in the name of heaven has that got to do with your mother’s being
on my side?”
“She said—” George paused to swallow. “She said—” He faltered.
“You look sick,” said his uncle; and laughed shortly. “If it’s because
of anything Amelia’s been saying, I don’t blame you! What else did she
say?”
George swallowed again, as with nausea, but under his uncle’s
encouragement he was able to be explicit. “She said my mother wanted
you to be friendly to her about Eugene Morgan. She said my mother had
been using Aunt Fanny as a chaperone.”
Amberson emitted a laugh of disgust. “It’s wonderful what tommy-rot a
woman in a state of spite can think of! I suppose you don’t doubt that
Amelia Amberson created this specimen of tommy-rot herself?”
“I know she did.”
“Then what’s the matter?”
“She said—” George faltered again. “She said—she implied people
were—were talking about it.”
“Of all the damn nonsense!” his uncle exclaimed.
George looked at him haggardly. “You’re sure they’re not?”
“Rubbish! Your mother’s on my side about this division because she
knows Sydney’s a pig and always has been a pig, and so has his spiteful
wife. I’m trying to keep them from getting the better of your mother as
well as from getting the better of me, don’t you suppose? Well, they’re
in a rage because Sydney always could do what he liked with father
unless your mother interfered, and they know I got Isabel to ask him
not to do what they wanted. They’re keeping up the fight and they’re
sore—and Amelia’s a woman who always says any damn thing that comes
into her head! That’s all there is to it.”
“But she said,” George persisted wretchedly; “she said there was talk.
She said—”
“Look here, young fellow!” Amberson laughed good-naturedly. “There
probably is some harmless talk about the way your Aunt Fanny goes after
poor Eugene, and I’ve no doubt I’ve abetted it myself. People can’t
help being amused by a thing like that. Fanny was always languishing at
him, twenty-odd years ago, before he left here. Well, we can’t blame
the poor thing if she’s got her hopes up again, and I don’t know that I
blame her, myself, for using your mother the way she does.”
“How do you mean?”
Amberson put his hand on George’s shoulder. “You like to tease Fanny,”
he said, “but I wouldn’t tease her about this, if I were you. Fanny
hasn’t got much in her life. You know, Georgie, just being an aunt
isn’t really the great career it may sometimes appear to you! In fact,
I don’t know of anything much that Fanny has got, except her feeling
about Eugene. She’s always had it—and what’s funny to us is pretty much
life-and-death to her, I suspect. Now, I’ll not deny that Eugene Morgan
is attracted to your mother. He is; and that’s another case of ‘always
was’; but I know him, and he’s a knight, George—a crazy one, perhaps,
if you’ve read ‘Don Quixote.’ And I think your mother likes him better
than she likes any man outside her own family, and that he interests
her more than anybody else—and ‘always has.’ And that’s all there is to
it, except—”
“Except what?” George asked quickly, as he paused.
“Except that I suspect—” Amberson chuckled, and began over: “I’ll tell
you in confidence. I think Fanny’s a fairly tricky customer, for such
an innocent old girl! There isn’t any real harm in her, but she’s a
great diplomatist—lots of cards up her lace sleeves, Georgie! By the
way, did you ever notice how proud she is of her arms? Always flashing
’em at poor Eugene!” And he stopped to laugh again.
“I don’t see anything confidential about that,” George complained. “I
thought—”
“Wait a minute! My idea is—don’t forget it’s a confidential one, but
I’m devilish right about it, young Georgie!—it’s this: Fanny uses your
mother for a decoy duck. She does everything in the world she can to
keep your mother’s friendship with Eugene going, because she thinks
that’s what keeps Eugene about the place, so to speak. Fanny’s always
with your mother, you see; and whenever he sees Isabel he sees Fanny.
Fanny thinks he’ll get used to the idea of her being around, and some
day her chance may come! You see, she’s probably afraid—perhaps she
even knows, poor thing!—that she wouldn’t get to see much of Eugene if
it weren’t for Isabel’s being such a friend of his. There! D’you see?”
“Well—I suppose so.” George’s brow was still dark, however. “If you’re
sure whatever talk there is, is about Aunt Fanny. If that’s so—”
“Don’t be an ass,” his uncle advised him lightly, moving away. “I’m off
for a week’s fishing to forget that woman in there, and her pig of a
husband.” (His gesture toward the Mansion indicated Mr. and Mrs. Sydney
Amberson.) “I recommend a like course to you, if you’re silly enough to
pay any attention to such rubbishings! Good-bye!”
George was partially reassured, but still troubled: a word haunted him
like the recollection of a nightmare. “Talk!”
He stood looking at the houses across the street from the Mansion; and
though the sunshine was bright upon them, they seemed mysteriously
threatening. He had always despised them, except the largest of them,
which was the home of his henchman, Charlie Johnson. The Johnsons had
originally owned a lot three hundred feet wide, but they had sold all
of it except the meager frontage before the house itself, and five
houses were now crowded into the space where one used to squire it so
spaciously. Up and down the street, the same transformation had taken
place: every big, comfortable old brick house now had two or three
smaller frame neighbours crowding up to it on each side, cheap-looking
neighbours, most of them needing paint and not clean—and yet, though
they were cheap looking, they had cost as much to build as the big
brick houses, whose former ample yards they occupied. Only where George
stood was there left a sward as of yore; the great, level, green lawn
that served for both the Major’s house and his daughter’s. This serene
domain—unbroken, except for the two gravelled carriage-drives—alone
remained as it had been during the early glories of the Amberson
Addition.
George stared at the ugly houses opposite, and hated them more than
ever; but he shivered. Perhaps the riffraff living in those houses sat
at the windows to watch their betters; perhaps they dared to gossip—
He uttered an exclamation, and walked rapidly toward his own front
gate. The victoria had returned with Miss Fanny alone; she jumped out
briskly and the victoria waited.
“Where’s mother?” George asked sharply, as he met her.
“At Lucy’s. I only came back to get some embroidery, because we found
the sun too hot for driving. I’m in a hurry.”
But, going into the house with her, he detained her when she would have
hastened upstairs.
“I haven’t time to talk now, Georgie; I’m going right back. I promised
your mother—”
“You listen!” said George.
“What on earth—”
He repeated what Amelia had said. This time, however, he spoke coldly,
and without the emotion he had exhibited during the recital to his
uncle: Fanny was the one who showed agitation during this interview,
for she grew fiery red, and her eyes dilated. “What on earth do you
want to bring such trash to me for?” she demanded, breathing fast.
“I merely wished to know two things: whether it is your duty or mine to
speak to father of what Aunt Amelia—”
Fanny stamped her foot. “You little fool!” she cried. “You awful little
fool!”
“I decline—”
“Decline, my hat! Your father’s a sick man, and you—”
“He doesn’t seem so to me.”
“Well, he does to me! And you want to go troubling him with an Amberson
family row! It’s just what that cat would love you to do!”
“Well, I—”
“Tell your father if you like! It will only make him a little sicker to
think he’s got a son silly enough to listen to such craziness!”
“Then you’re sure there isn’t any talk?” Fanny disdained a reply in
words. She made a hissing sound of utter contempt and snapped her
fingers. Then she asked scornfully: “What’s the other thing you wanted
to know?”
George’s pallor increased. “Whether it mightn’t be better, under the
circumstances,” he said, “if this family were not so intimate with the
Morgan family—at least for a time. It might be better—”
Fanny stared at him incredulously. “You mean you’d quit seeing Lucy?”
“I hadn’t thought of that side of it, but if such a thing were
necessary on account of talk about my mother, I—I—” He hesitated
unhappily. “I suggested that if all of us—for a time—perhaps only for a
time—it might be better if—”
“See here,” she interrupted. “We’ll settle this nonsense right now. If
Eugene Morgan comes to this house, for instance, to see me, your mother
can’t get up and leave the place the minute he gets here, can she? What
do you want her to do: insult him? Or perhaps you’d prefer she’d insult
Lucy? That would do just as well. What is it you’re up to, anyhow? Do
you really love your Aunt Amelia so much that you want to please her?
Or do you really hate your Aunt Fanny so much that you want to—that you
want to—”
She choked and sought for her handkerchief; suddenly she began to cry.
“Oh, see here,” George said. “I don’t hate you,” Aunt Fanny. “That’s
silly. I don’t—”
“You do! You do! You want to—you want to destroy the only thing—that
I—that I ever—” And, unable to continue, she became inaudible in her
handkerchief.
George felt remorseful, and his own troubles were lightened: all at
once it became clear to him that he had been worrying about nothing.
He perceived that his Aunt Amelia was indeed an old cat, and that to
give her scandalous meanderings another thought would be the height of
folly. By no means unsusceptible to such pathos as that now exposed
before him, he did not lack pity for Fanny, whose almost spoken
confession was lamentable; and he was granted the vision to understand
that his mother also pitied Fanny infinitely more than he did. This
seemed to explain everything.
He patted the unhappy lady awkwardly upon her shoulder. “There, there!”
he said. “I didn’t mean anything. Of course the only thing to do about
Aunt Amelia is to pay no attention to her. It’s all right, Aunt Fanny.
Don’t cry. I feel a lot better now, myself. Come on; I’ll drive back
there with you. It’s all over, and nothing’s the matter. Can’t you
cheer up?”
Fanny cheered up; and presently the customarily hostile aunt and
nephew were driving out Amberson Boulevard amiably together in the hot
sunshine.