George went driving the next afternoon alone, and, encountering
Lucy and her father on the road, in one of Morgan’s cars, lifted
his hat, but nowise relaxed his formal countenance as they passed.
Eugene waved a cordial hand quickly returned to the steering-wheel;
but Lucy only nodded gravely and smiled no more than George did. Nor
did she accompany Eugene to the Major’s for dinner, the following
Sunday evening, though both were bidden to attend that feast, which
was already reduced in numbers and gayety by the absence of George
Amberson. Eugene explained to his host that Lucy had gone away to visit
a school-friend.
The information, delivered in the library, just before old Sam’s
appearance to announce dinner, set Miss Minafer in quite a flutter.
“Why, George!” she said, turning to her nephew. “How does it happen
you didn’t tell us?” And with both hands opening, as if to express her
innocence of some conspiracy, she exclaimed to the others, “He’s never
said one word to us about Lucy’s planning to go away!”
“Probably afraid to,” the Major suggested. “Didn’t know but he might
break down and cry if he tried to speak of it!” He clapped his grandson
on the shoulder, inquiring jocularly, “That it, Georgie?”
Georgie made no reply, but he was red enough to justify the Major’s
developing a chuckle into laughter; though Miss Fanny, observing her
nephew keenly, got an impression that this fiery blush was in truth
more fiery than tender. She caught a glint in his eye less like
confusion than resentment, and saw a dilation of his nostrils which
might have indicated not so much a sweet agitation as an inaudible
snort. Fanny had never been lacking in curiosity, and, since her
brother’s death, this quality was more than ever alert. The fact that
George had spent all the evenings of the past week at home had not
been lost upon her, nor had she failed to ascertain, by diplomatic
inquiries, that since the day of the visit to Eugene’s shops George had
gone driving alone.
At the dinner-table she continued to observe him, sidelong; and toward
the conclusion of the meal she was not startled by an episode which
brought discomfort to the others. After the arrival of coffee the Major
was rallying Eugene upon some rival automobile shops lately built in a
suburb, and already promising to flourish.
“I suppose they’ll either drive you out of the business,” said the old
gentleman, “or else the two of you’ll drive all the rest of us off the
streets.”
“If we do, we’ll even things up by making the streets five or ten times
as long as they are now,” Eugene returned.
“How do you propose to do that?”
“It isn’t the distance from the center of a town that counts,” said
Eugene; “it’s the time it takes to get there. This town’s already
spreading; bicycles and trolleys have been doing their share, but the
automobile is going to carry city streets clear out to the county line.”
The Major was skeptical. “Dream on, fair son!” he said. “It’s lucky for
us that you’re only dreaming; because if people go to moving that far,
real estate values in the old residence part of town are going to be
stretched pretty thin.”
“I’m afraid so,” Eugene assented. “Unless you keep things so bright and
clean that the old section will stay more attractive than the new ones.”
“Not very likely! How are things going to be kept ‘bright and clean’
with soft coal, and our kind of city government?”
“They aren’t,” Eugene replied quickly. “There’s no hope of it, and
already the boarding-house is marching up National Avenue. There
are two in the next block below here, and there are a dozen in the
half-mile below that. My relatives, the Sharons, have sold their house
and are building in the country—at least, they call it ‘the country.’
It will be city in two or three years.”
“Good gracious!” the Major exclaimed, affecting dismay. “So your little
shops are going to ruin all your old friends, Eugene!”
“Unless my old friends take warning in time, or abolish smoke and get
a new kind of city government. I should say the best chance is to take
warning.”
“Well, well!” the Major laughed. “You have enough faith in miracles,
Eugene—granting that trolleys and bicycles and automobiles are
miracles. So you think they’re to change the face of the land, do you?”
“They’re already doing it, Major; and it can’t be stopped. Automobiles—”
At this point he was interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had
said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud
and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks
idle prattle and settles a matter forever.
“Automobiles are a useless nuisance,” he said.
There fell a moment’s silence.
Isabel gazed incredulously at George, colour slowly heightening upon
her cheeks and temples, while Fanny watched him with a quick eagerness,
her eyes alert and bright. But Eugene seemed merely quizzical, as
if not taking this brusquerie to himself. The Major was seriously
disturbed.
“What did you say, George?” he asked, though George had spoken but too
distinctly.
“I said all automobiles were a nuisance,” George answered, repeating
not only the words but the tone in which he had uttered them. And he
added, “They’ll never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no
business to be invented.”
The Major frowned. “Of course you forget that Mr. Morgan makes them,
and also did his share in inventing them. If you weren’t so thoughtless
he might think you rather offensive.”
“That would be too bad,” said George coolly. “I don’t think I could
survive it.”
Again there was a silence, while the Major stared at his grandson,
aghast. But Eugene began to laugh cheerfully.
“I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles,” he said. “With all their
speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization—that is,
in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the
beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls. I am not sure.
But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life
than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things
are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to
alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are
going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how,
though, I could hardly guess. But you can’t have the immense outward
changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be
that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for
us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward
change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline
engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles ‘had no
business to be invented.’” He laughed good-naturedly, and looking at
his watch, apologized for having an engagement which made his departure
necessary when he would so much prefer to linger. Then he shook
hands with the Major, and bade Isabel, George, and Fanny a cheerful
good-night—a collective farewell cordially addressed to all three of
them together—and left them at the table.
Isabel turned wondering, hurt eyes upon her son. “George, dear!” she
said. “What did you mean?”
“Just what I said,” he returned, lighting one of the Major’s cigars,
and his manner was imperturbable enough to warrant the definition
(sometimes merited by imperturbability) of stubbornness.
Isabel’s hand, pale and slender, upon the tablecloth, touched one
of the fine silver candlesticks aimlessly: the fingers were seen to
tremble. “Oh, he was hurt!” she murmured.
“I don’t see why he should be,” George said. “I didn’t say anything
about him. He didn’t seem to me to be hurt—seemed perfectly cheerful.
What made you think he was hurt?”
“I know him!” was all of her reply, half whispered.
The Major stared hard at George from under his white eyebrows. “You
didn’t mean ‘him,’ you say, George? I suppose if we had a clergyman as
a guest here you’d expect him not to be offended, and to understand
that your remarks were neither personal nor untactful, if you said the
church was a nuisance and ought never to have been invented. By Jove,
but you’re a puzzle!”
“In what way, may I ask, sir?”
“We seem to have a new kind of young people these days,” the old
gentleman returned, shaking his head. “It’s a new style of courting
a pretty girl, certainly, for a young fellow to go deliberately out
of his way to try and make an enemy of her father by attacking his
business! By Jove! That’s a new way to win a woman!”
George flushed angrily and seemed about to offer a retort, but held
his breath for a moment; and then held his peace. It was Isabel who
responded to the Major. “Oh, no!” she said. “Eugene would never be
anybody’s enemy—he couldn’t!—and last of all Georgie’s. I’m afraid he
was hurt, but I don’t fear his not having understood that George spoke
without thinking of what he was saying—I mean, with-out realizing its
bearing on Eugene.”
Again George seemed upon the point of speech, and again controlled the
impulse. He thrust his hands in his pockets, leaned back in his chair,
and smoked, staring inflexibly at the ceiling.
“Well, well,” said his grandfather, rising. “It wasn’t a very
successful little dinner!”
Thereupon he offered his arm to his daughter, who took it fondly, and
they left the room, Isabel assuring him that all his little dinners
were pleasant, and that this one was no exception.
George did not move, and Fanny, following the other two, came round the
table, and paused close beside his chair; but George remained posed in
his great imperturbability, cigar between teeth, eyes upon ceiling, and
paid no attention to her. Fanny waited until the sound of Isabel’s and
the Major’s voices became inaudible in the hall. Then she said quickly,
and in a low voice so eager that it was unsteady:
“George, you’ve struck just the treatment to adopt: you’re doing the
right thing!”
She hurried out, scurrying after the others with a faint rustling
of her black skirts, leaving George mystified but incurious. He did
not understand why she should bestow her approbation upon him in the
matter, and cared so little whether she did or not that he spared
himself even the trouble of being puzzled about it.
In truth, however, he was neither so comfortable nor so imperturbable
as he appeared. He felt some gratification: he had done a little to
put the man in his place—that man whose influence upon his daughter
was precisely the same thing as a contemptuous criticism of George
Amberson Minafer, and of George Amberson Minafer’s “ideals of life.”
Lucy’s going away without a word was intended, he supposed, as a bit of
punishment. Well, he wasn’t the sort of man that people were allowed to
punish: he could demonstrate that to them—since they started it!
It appeared to him as almost a kind of insolence, this abrupt
departure—not even telephoning! Probably she wondered how he would take
it; she even might have supposed he would show some betraying chagrin
when he heard of it.
He had no idea that this was just what he had shown; and he was
satisfied with his evening’s performance. Nevertheless, he was not
comfortable in his mind; though he could not have explained his inward
perturbations, for he was convinced, without any confirmation from his
Aunt Fanny, that he had done “just the right thing.”