Isabel came to George’s door that night, and when she had kissed him
good-night she remained in the open doorway with her hand upon his
shoulder and her eyes thoughtfully lowered, so that her wish to say
something more than good-night was evident. Not less obvious was her
perplexity about the manner of saying it; and George, divining her
thought, amiably made an opening for her.
“Well, old lady,” he said indulgently, “you needn’t look so worried. I
won’t be tactless with Morgan again. After this I’ll just keep out of
his way.”
Isabel looked up, searching his face with the fond puzzlement which her
eyes sometimes showed when they rested upon him; then she glanced down
the hall toward Fanny’s room, and, after another moment of hesitation,
came quickly in, and closed the door.
“Dear,” she said, “I wish you’d tell me something: Why don’t you like
Eugene?”
“Oh, I like him well enough,” George returned, with a short laugh, as
he sat down and began to unlace his shoes. “I like him well enough—in
his place.”
“No, dear,” she said hurriedly. “I’ve had a feeling from the very
first that you didn’t really like him—that you really never liked him.
Sometimes you’ve seemed to be friendly with him, and you’d laugh with
him over something in a jolly, companionable way, and I’d think I was
wrong, and that you really did like him, after all; but to-night I’m
sure my other feeling was the right one: you don’t like him. I can’t
understand it, dear; I don’t see what can be the matter.”
“Nothing’s the matter.”
This easy declaration naturally failed to carry great weight, and
Isabel went on, in her troubled voice, “It seems so queer, especially
when you feel as you do about his daughter.”
At this, George stopped unlacing his shoes abruptly, and sat up. “How
do I feel about his daughter?” he demanded.
“Well, it’s seemed—as if—as if—” Isabel began timidly. “It did seem—At
least, you haven’t looked at any other girl, ever since they came here
and—and certainly you’ve seemed very much interested in her. Certainly
you’ve been very great friends?”
“Well, what of that?”
“It’s only that I’m like your grandfather: I can’t see how you could be
so much interested in a girl and—and not feel very pleasantly toward
her father.”
“Well, I’ll tell you something,” George said slowly; and a frown of
concentration could be seen upon his brow, as from a profound effort
at self-examination. “I haven’t ever thought much on that particular
point, but I admit there may be a little something in what you say.
The truth is, I don’t believe I’ve ever thought of the two together,
exactly—at least, not until lately. I’ve always thought of Lucy just
as Lucy, and of Morgan just as Morgan. I’ve always thought of her as
a person herself, not as anybody’s daughter. I don’t see what’s very
extraordinary about that. You’ve probably got plenty of friends, for
instance, that don’t care much about your son—”
“No, indeed!” she protested quickly. “And if I knew anybody who felt
like that, I wouldn’t—”
“Never mind,” he interrupted. “I’ll try to explain a little more. If
I have a friend, I don’t see that it’s incumbent upon me to like that
friend’s relatives. If I didn’t like them, and pretended to, I’d be a
hypocrite. If that friend likes me and wants to stay my friend he’ll
have to stand my not liking his relatives, or else he can quit. I
decline to be a hypocrite about it; that’s all. Now, suppose I have
certain ideas or ideals which I have chosen for the regulation of my
own conduct in life. Suppose some friend of mine has a relative with
ideals directly the opposite of mine, and my friend believes more in
the relative’s ideals than in mine: Do you think I ought to give up
my own just to please a person who’s taken up ideals that I really
despise?”
“No, dear; of course people can’t give up their ideals; but I don’t see
what this has to do with dear little Lucy and—”
“I didn’t say it had anything to do with them,” he interrupted. “I
was merely putting a case to show how a person would be justified in
being a friend of one member of a family, and feeling anything but
friendly toward another. I don’t say, though, that I feel unfriendly to
Mr. Morgan. I don’t say that I feel friendly to him, and I don’t say
that I feel unfriendly; but if you really think that I was rude to him
to-night—”
“Just thoughtless, dear. You didn’t see that what you said to-night—”
“Well, I’ll not say anything of that sort again where he can hear it.
There, isn’t that enough?”
This question, delivered with large indulgence, met with no response;
for Isabel, still searching his face with her troubled and perplexed
gaze, seemed not to have heard it. On that account, George repeated it,
and rising, went to her and patted her reassuringly upon the shoulder.
“There, old lady, you needn’t fear my tactlessness will worry you
again. I can’t quite promise to like people I don’t care about one way
or another, but you can be sure I’ll be careful, after this, not to
let them see it. It’s all right, and you’d better toddle along to bed,
because I want to undress.”
“But, George,” she said earnestly, “you would like him, if you’d just
let yourself. You say you don’t dislike him. Why don’t you like him? I
can’t understand at all. What is it that you don’t—”
“There, there!” he said. “It’s all right, and you toddle along.”
“But, George, dear—”
“Now, now! I really do want to get into bed. Good-night, old lady.”
“Good-night, dear. But—”
“Let’s not talk of it any more,” he said. “It’s all right, and nothing
in the world to worry about. So good-night, old lady. I’ll be polite
enough to him, never fear—if we happen to be thrown together. So
good-night!”
“But, George, dear—”
“I’m going to bed, old lady; so good-night.”
Thus the interview closed perforce. She kissed him again before going
slowly to her own room, her perplexity evidently not dispersed; but the
subject was not renewed between them the next day or subsequently. Nor
did Fanny make any allusion to the cryptic approbation she had bestowed
upon her nephew after the Major’s “not very successful little dinner”;
though she annoyed George by looking at him oftener and longer than
he cared to be looked at by an aunt. He could not glance her way, it
seemed, without finding her red-rimmed eyes fixed upon him eagerly,
with an alert and hopeful calculation in them which he declared would
send a nervous man into fits. For thus, one day, he broke out, in
protest:
“It would!” he repeated vehemently. “Given time it would—straight into
fits! What do you find the matter with me? Is my tie always slipping up
behind? Can’t you look at something else? My Lord! We’d better buy a
cat for you to stare at, Aunt Fanny! A cat could stand it, maybe. What
in the name of goodness do you expect to see?”
But Fanny laughed good-naturedly, and was not offended. “It’s more as
if I expected you to see something, isn’t it?” she said quietly, still
laughing.
“Now, what do you mean by that?”
“Never mind!”
“All right, I don’t. But for heaven’s sake stare at somebody else
awhile. Try it on the house-maid!”
“Well, well,” Fanny said indulgently, and then chose to be more obscure
in her meaning than ever, for she adopted a tone of deep sympathy for
her final remark, as she left him: “I don’t wonder you’re nervous these
days, poor boy!”
And George indignantly supposed that she referred to the ordeal of
Lucy’s continued absence. During this period he successfully avoided
contact with Lucy’s father, though Eugene came frequently to the
house, and spent several evenings with Isabel and Fanny; and sometimes
persuaded them and the Major to go for an afternoon’s motoring. He
did not, however, come again to the Major’s Sunday evening dinner,
even when George Amberson returned. Sunday evening was the time, he
explained, for going over the week’s work with his factory managers.
When Lucy came home the autumn was far enough advanced to smell of
burning leaves, and for the annual editorials, in the papers, on the
purple haze, the golden branches, the ruddy fruit, and the pleasure
of long tramps in the brown forest. George had not heard of her
arrival, and he met her, on the afternoon following that event, at
the Sharons’, where he had gone in the secret hope that he might hear
something about her. Janie Sharon had just begun to tell him that
she heard Lucy was expected home soon, after having “a perfectly
gorgeous time”—information which George received with no responsive
enthusiasm—when Lucy came demurely in, a proper little autumn figure in
green and brown.
Her cheeks were flushed, and her dark eyes were bright indeed;
evidences, as George supposed, of the excitement incidental to the
perfectly gorgeous time just concluded; though Janie and Mary Sharon
both thought they were the effect of Lucy’s having seen George’s
runabout in front of the house as she came in. George took on colour,
himself, as, he rose and nodded indifferently; and the hot suffusion to
which he became subject extended its area to include his neck and ears.
Nothing could have made him much more indignant than his consciousness
of these symptoms of the icy indifference which it was his purpose not
only to show but to feel.
She kissed her cousins, gave George her hand, said “How d’you do,” and
took a chair beside Janie with a composure which augmented George’s
indignation.
“How d’you do,” he said. “I trust that ah—I trust—I do trust—”
He stopped, for it seemed to him that the word “trust” sounded idiotic.
Then, to cover his awkwardness, he coughed, and even to his own rosy
ears his cough was ostentatiously a false one. Whereupon, seeking to be
plausible, he coughed again, and instantly hated himself: the sound he
made was an atrocity. Meanwhile, Lucy sat silent, and the two Sharon
girls leaned forward, staring at him with strained eyes, their lips
tightly compressed; and both were but too easily diagnosed as subject
to an agitation which threatened their self-control. He began again.
“I er—I hope you have had a—a pleasant time. I er—I hope you are well.
I hope you are extremely—I hope extremely—extremely—” And again he
stopped in the midst of his floundering, not knowing how to progress
beyond “extremely,” and unable to understand why the infernal word kept
getting into his mouth.
“I beg your pardon?” Lucy said.
George was never more furious; he felt that he was “making a spectacle
of himself”; and no young gentleman in the world was more loath than
George Amberson Minafer to look a figure of fun. And while he stood
there, undeniably such a figure, with Janie and Mary Sharon threatening
to burst at any moment, if laughter were longer denied them, Lucy sat
looking at him with her eyebrows delicately lifted in casual, polite
inquiry. Her own complete composure was what most galled him.
“Nothing of the slightest importance!” he managed to say. “I was just
leaving. Good afternoon!” And with long strides he reached the door and
hastened through the hall; but before he closed the front door he heard
from Janie and Mary Sharon the outburst of wild, irrepressible emotion
which his performance had inspired.
He drove home in a tumultuous mood, and almost ran down two ladies
who were engaged in absorbing conversation at a crossing. They were
his Aunt Fanny and the stout Mrs. Johnson; a jerk of the reins at the
last instant saved them by a few inches; but their conversation was so
interesting that they were unaware of their danger, and did not notice
the runabout, nor how close it came to them. George was so furious with
himself and with the girl whose unexpected coming into a room could
make him look such a fool, that it might have soothed him a little if
he had actually run over the two absorbed ladies without injuring them
beyond repair. At least, he said to himself that he wished he had; it
might have taken his mind off of himself for a few minutes. For, in
truth, to be ridiculous (and know it) was one of several things that
George was unable to endure. He was savage.
He drove into the Major’s stable too fast, the sagacious Pendennis
saving himself from going through a partition by a swerve which
splintered a shaft of the runabout and almost threw the driver to the
floor. George swore, and then swore again at the fat old darkey, Tom,
for giggling at his swearing.
“Hoopee!” said old Tom. “Mus’ been some white lady use Mist’ Jawge
mighty bad! White lady say, ‘No, suh, I ain’ go’n out ridin’ ’ith Mist’
Jawge no mo’!’ Mist’ Jawge drive in. ‘Dam de dam worl’! Dam de dam
hoss! Dam de dam nigga’! Dam de dam dam!’ Hoopee!”
“That’ll do!” George said sternly.
“Yessuh!”
George strode from the stable, crossed the Major’s back yard, then
passed behind the new houses, on his way home. These structures were
now approaching completion, but still in a state of rawness hideous to
George—though, for that matter, they were never to be anything except
hideous to him. Behind them, stray planks, bricks, refuse of plaster
and lath, shingles, straw, empty barrels, strips of twisted tin and
broken tiles were strewn everywhere over the dried and pitted gray
mud where once the suave lawn had lain like a green lake around those
stately islands, the two Amberson houses. And George’s state of mind
was not improved by his present view of this repulsive area, nor by his
sensations when he kicked an uptilted shingle only to discover that
what uptilted it was a brickbat on the other side of it. After that,
the whole world seemed to be one solid conspiracy of malevolence.
In this temper he emerged from behind the house nearest to his own,
and, glancing toward the street, saw his mother standing with Eugene
Morgan upon the cement path that led to the front gate. She was
bareheaded, and Eugene held his hat and stick in his hand; evidently he
had been calling upon her, and she had come from the house with him,
continuing their conversation and delaying their parting.
They had paused in their slow walk from the front door to the gate, yet
still stood side by side, their shoulders almost touching, as though
neither Isabel nor Eugene quite realized that their feet had ceased
to bear them forward; and they were not looking at each other, but at
some indefinite point before them, as people do who consider together
thoughtfully and in harmony. The conversation was evidently serious;
his head was bent, and Isabel’s lifted left hand rested against her
cheek; but all the significances of their thoughtful attitude denoted
companionableness and a shared understanding. Yet, a stranger, passing,
would not have thought them married: somewhere about Eugene, not
quite to be located, there was a romantic gravity; and Isabel, tall
and graceful, with high colour and absorbed eyes, was visibly no wife
walking down to the gate with her husband.
George stared at them. A hot dislike struck him at the sight of Eugene;
and a vague revulsion, like a strange, unpleasant taste in his mouth,
came over him as he looked at his mother: her manner was eloquent of
so much thought about her companion and of such reliance upon him.
And the picture the two thus made was a vivid one indeed, to George,
whose angry eyes, for some reason, fixed themselves most intently upon
Isabel’s lifted hand, upon the white ruffle at her wrist, bordering the
graceful black sleeve, and upon the little indentations in her cheek
where the tips of her fingers rested. She should not have worn white at
her wrist, or at the throat either, George felt; and then, strangely,
his resentment concentrated upon those tiny indentations at the tips
of her fingers—actual changes, however slight and fleeting, in his
mother’s face, made because of Mr. Eugene Morgan. For the moment, it
seemed to George that Morgan might have claimed the ownership of a face
that changed for him. It was as if he owned Isabel.
The two began to walk on toward the gate, where they stopped again,
turning to face each other, and Isabel’s glance, passing Eugene, fell
upon George. Instantly she smiled and waved her hand to him; while
Eugene turned and nodded; but George, standing as in some rigid trance,
and staring straight at them, gave these signals of greeting no sign of
recognition whatever. Upon this, Isabel called to him, waving her hand
again.
“Georgie!” she called, laughing. “Wake up, dear! Georgie, hello!”
George turned away as if he had neither seen nor heard, and stalked
into the house by the side door.