Breakfast was brought to him in his room, as usual; but he did not
make his normal healthy raid upon the dainty tray: the food remained
untouched, and he sustained himself upon coffee—four cups of it, which
left nothing of value inside the glistening little percolator. During
this process he heard his mother being summoned to the telephone in
the hall, not far from his door, and then her voice responding: “Yes?
Oh, it’s you! Indeed I should!... Of course... Then I’ll expect you
about three... Yes. Good-bye till then.” A few minutes later he heard
her speaking to someone beneath his window and, looking out, saw her
directing the removal of plants from a small garden bed to the Major’s
conservatory for the winter. There was an air of briskness about
her; as she turned away to go into the house, she laughed gaily with
the Major’s gardener over something he said, and this unconcerned
cheerfulness of her was terrible to her son.
He went to his desk, and, searching the jumbled contents of a drawer,
brought forth a large, unframed photograph of his father, upon which he
gazed long and piteously, till at last hot tears stood in his eyes. It
was strange how the inconsequent face of Wilbur seemed to increase in
high significance during this belated interview between father and son;
and how it seemed to take on a reproachful nobility—and yet, under the
circumstances, nothing could have been more natural than that George,
having paid but the slightest attention to his father in life, should
begin to deify him, now that he was dead. “Poor, poor father!” the son
whispered brokenly. “Poor man, I’m glad you didn’t know!”
He wrapped the picture in a sheet of newspaper, put it under his arm,
and, leaving the house hurriedly and stealthily, went downtown to the
shop of a silversmith, where he spent sixty dollars on a resplendently
festooned silver frame for the picture. Having lunched upon more
coffee, he returned to the house at two o’clock, carrying the framed
photograph with him, and placed it upon the centre-table in the
library, the room most used by Isabel and Fanny and himself. Then he
went to a front window of the long “reception room,” and sat looking
out through the lace curtains.
The house was quiet, though once or twice he heard his mother and Fanny
moving about upstairs, and a ripple of song in the voice of Isabel—a
fragment from the romantic ballad of Lord Bateman.
“Lord Bateman was a noble lord,
A noble lord of high degree;
And he sailed West and he sailed East,
Far countries for to see....”
The words became indistinct; the air was hummed absently; the humming
shifted to a whistle, then drifted out of hearing, and the place was
still again.
George looked often at his watch, but his vigil did not last an hour.
At ten minutes of three, peering through the curtain, he saw an
automobile stop in front of the house and Eugene Morgan jump lightly
down from it. The car was of a new pattern, low and long, with an ample
seat in the tonneau, facing forward; and a professional driver sat at
the wheel, a strange figure in leather, goggled out of all personality
and seemingly part of the mechanism.
Eugene himself, as he came up the cement path to the house, was a
figure of the new era which was in time to be so disastrous to stiff
hats and skirted coats; and his appearance afforded a debonair contrast
to that of the queer-looking duck capering at the Amberson Ball in an
old dress coat, and chugging up National Avenue through the snow in
his nightmare of a sewing-machine. Eugene, this afternoon, was richly
in the new outdoor mode: motoring coat was soft gray fur; his cap and
gloves were of gray suede; and though Lucy’s hand may have shown itself
in the selection of these garnitures, he wore them easily, even with
becoming hint of jauntiness. Some change might be seen in his face,
too, for a successful man is seldom to be mistaken, especially if his
temper be genial. Eugene had begun to look like a millionaire.
But above everything else, what was most evident about him, as he came
up the path, was confidence in the happiness promised by his errand;
the anticipation in his eyes could have been read by a stranger. His
look at the door of Isabel’s house was the look of a man who is quite
certain that the next moment will reveal something ineffably charming,
inexpressibly dear.
When the bell rang, George waited at the entrance of the “reception
room” until a housemaid came through the hall on her way to answer the
summons.
“You needn’t mind, Mary,” he told her. “I’ll see who it is and what
they want. Probably it’s only a pedlar.”
“Thank you, sir, Mister George,” said Mary; and returned to the rear of
the house.
George went slowly to the front door, and halted, regarding the misty
silhouette of the caller upon the ornamental frosted glass. After a
minute of waiting, this silhouette changed outline so that an arm
could be distinguished—an arm outstretched toward the bell, as if the
gentleman outside doubted whether or not it had sounded, and were
minded to try again. But before the gesture was completed George
abruptly threw open the door, and stepped squarely upon the middle of
the threshold.
A slight change shadowed the face of Eugene; his look of happy
anticipation gave way to something formal and polite. “How do you
do, George,” he said. “Mrs. Minafer expects to go driving with me, I
believe—if you’ll be so kind as to send her word that I’m here.”
George made not the slightest movement.
“No,” he said.
Eugene was incredulous, even when his second glance revealed how hot of
eye was the haggard young man before him. “I beg your pardon. I said—”
“I heard you,” said George. “You said you had an engagement with my
mother, and I told you, No!”
Eugene gave him a steady look, and then he asked quietly: “What is
the—the difficulty?”
George kept his own voice quiet enough, but that did not mitigate the
vibrant fury of it. “My mother will have no interest in knowing that
you came for her to-day,” he said. “Or any other day!”
Eugene continued to look at him with a scrutiny in which began to gleam
a profound anger, none the less powerful because it was so quiet. “I am
afraid I do not understand you.”
“I doubt if I could make it much plainer,” George said, raising his
voice slightly, “but I’ll try. You’re not wanted in this house, Mr.
Morgan, now or at any other time. Perhaps you’ll understand—this!”
And with the last word he closed the door in Eugene’s face.
Then, not moving away, he stood just inside door, and noted that the
misty silhouette remained upon the frosted glass for several moments,
as if the forbidden gentleman debated in his mind what course to
pursue. “Let him ring again!” George thought grimly. “Or try the side
door—or the kitchen!”
But Eugene made no further attempt; the silhouette disappeared;
footsteps could be heard withdrawing across the floor of the veranda;
and George, returning to the window in the “reception room,” was
rewarded by the sight of an automobile manufacturer in baffled retreat,
with all his wooing furs and fineries mocking him. Eugene got into his
car slowly, not looking back at the house which had just taught him
such a lesson; and it was easily visible—even from a window seventy
feet distant—that he was not the same light suitor who had jumped
so gallantly from the car only a few minutes earlier. Observing the
heaviness of his movements as he climbed into the tonneau, George
indulged in a sickish throat rumble which bore a distant cousinship to
mirth.
The car was quicker than its owner; it shot away as soon as he had sunk
into his seat; and George, having watched its impetuous disappearance
from his field of vision, ceased to haunt the window. He went to the
library, and, seating himself beside the table whereon he had placed
the photograph of his father, picked up a book, and pretended to be
engaged in reading it.
Presently Isabel’s buoyant step was heard descending the stairs, and
her low, sweet whistling, renewing the air of “Lord Bateman.” She
came into the library, still whistling thoughtfully, a fur coat over
her arm, ready to put on, and two veils round her small black hat,
her right hand engaged in buttoning the glove upon her left; and, as
the large room contained too many pieces of heavy furniture, and the
inside shutters excluded most of the light of day, she did not at once
perceive George’s presence. Instead, she went to the bay window at the
end of the room, which afforded a view of the street, and glanced out
expectantly; then bent her attention upon her glove; after that, looked
out toward the street again, ceased to whistle, and turned toward the
interior of the room.
“Why, Georgie!”
She came, leaned over from behind him, and there was a faint, exquisite
odour as from distant apple blossoms as she kissed his cheek. “Dear, I
waited lunch almost an hour for you, but you didn’t come! Did you lunch
out somewhere?”
“Yes.” He did not look up from the book.
“Did you have plenty to eat?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure? Wouldn’t you like to have Maggie get you something now
in the dining room? Or they could bring it to you here, if you think it
would be cozier. Shan’t I—”
A tinkling bell was audible, and she moved to the doorway into the
hall. “I’m going out driving, dear. I—” She interrupted herself to
address the housemaid, who was passing through the hall: “I think it’s
Mr. Morgan, Mary. Tell him I’ll be there at once.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Mary returned. “’Twas a pedlar, ma’am.”
“Another one?” Isabel said, surprised. “I thought you said it was a
pedlar when the bell rang a little while ago.”
“Mister George said it was, ma’am; he went to the door,” Mary informed
her, disappearing.
“There seem to be a great many of them,” Isabel mused. “What did yours
want to sell, George?”
“He didn’t say.”
“You must have cut him off short!” she laughed; and then, still
standing in the doorway, she noticed the big silver frame upon the
table beside him. “Gracious, Georgie!” she exclaimed. “You have
been investing!” and as she came across the room for a closer view,
“Is it—is it Lucy?” she asked half timidly, half archly. But the
next instant she saw whose likeness was thus set forth in elegiac
splendour—and she was silent, except for a long, just-audible “Oh!”
He neither looked up nor moved.
“That was nice of you, Georgie,” she said, in a low voice presently. “I
ought to have had it framed, myself, when I gave it to you.”
He said nothing, and, standing beside him, she put her hand gently upon
his shoulder, then as gently withdrew it, and went out of the room.
But she did not go upstairs; he heard the faint rustle of her dress
in the hall, and then the sound of her footsteps in the “reception
room.” After a time, silence succeeded even these slight tokens of her
presence; whereupon George rose and went warily into the hall, taking
care to make no noise, and he obtained an oblique view of her through
the open double doors of the “reception room.” She was sitting in the
chair which he had occupied so long; and she was looking out of the
window expectantly—a little troubled.
He went back to the library, waited an interminable half hour, then
returned noiselessly to the same position in the hall, where he could
see her. She was still sitting patiently by the window.
Waiting for that man, was she? Well, it might be quite a long wait! And
the grim George silently ascended the stairs to his own room, and began
to pace his suffering floor.