Having finished some errands downtown, the next afternoon, George
Amberson Minafer was walking up National Avenue on his homeward way
when he saw in the distance, coming toward him, upon the same side
of the street, the figure of a young lady—a figure just under the
middle height, comely indeed, and to be mistaken for none other in the
world—even at two hundred yards. To his sharp discomfiture his heart
immediately forced upon him the consciousness of its acceleration; a
sudden warmth about his neck made him aware that he had turned red,
and then, departing, left him pale. For a panicky moment he thought
of facing about in actual flight; he had little doubt that Lucy would
meet him with no token of recognition, and all at once this probability
struck him as unendurable. And if she did not speak, was it the
proper part of chivalry to lift his hat and take the cut bareheaded?
Or should the finer gentleman acquiesce in the lady’s desire for no
further acquaintance, and pass her with stony mien and eyes constrained
forward? George was a young man badly flustered.
But the girl approaching him was unaware of his trepidation, being
perhaps somewhat preoccupied with her own. She saw only that he was
pale, and that his eyes were darkly circled. But here he was advantaged
with her, for the finest touch to his good looks was given by this
toning down; neither pallor nor dark circles detracting from them, but
rather adding to them a melancholy favour of distinction. George had
retained his mourning, a tribute completed down to the final details of
black gloves and a polished ebony cane (which he would have been pained
to name otherwise than as a “walking-stick”) and in the aura of this
sombre elegance his straight figure and drawn face were not without a
tristful and appealing dignity.
In everything outward he was cause enough for a girl’s cheek to flush,
her heart to beat faster, and her eyes to warm with the soft light that
came into Lucy’s now, whether she would or no. If his spirit had been
what his looks proclaimed it, she would have rejoiced to let the light
glow forth which now shone in spite of her. For a long time, thinking
of that spirit of his, and what she felt it should be, she had a
persistent sense: “It must be there!” but she had determined to believe
this folly no longer. Nevertheless, when she met him at the Sharons’,
she had been far less calm than she seemed.
People speaking casually of Lucy were apt to define her as “a little
beauty,” a definition short of the mark. She was “a little beauty,”
but an independent, masterful, sell-reliant little American, of whom
her father’s earlier gipsyings and her own sturdiness had made a woman
ever since she was fifteen. But though she was the mistress of her own
ways and no slave to any lamp save that of her own conscience, she
had a weakness: she had fallen in love with George Amberson Minafer
at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had
never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was
all. George had looked just the way she had always wanted someone to
look—the riskiest of all the moonshine ambushes wherein tricky romance
snares credulous young love. But what was fatal to Lucy was that this
thing having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what
she discovered in George’s nature she was unable to take away what she
had given him; and though she could think differently about him, she
could not feel differently about him, for she was one of those too
faithful victims of glamour. When she managed to keep the picture of
George away from her mind’s eye, she did well enough; but when she let
him become visible, she could not choose but love what she disdained.
She was a little angel who had fallen in love with high-handed Lucifer;
quite an experience, and not apt to be soon succeeded by any falling in
love with a tamer party—and the unhappy truth was that George did make
better men seem tame. But though she was a victim, she was a heroic
one, anything but helpless.
As they drew nearer, George tried to prepare himself to meet her with
some remnants of aplomb. He decided that he would keep on looking
straight ahead, and lift his hand toward his hat at the very last
moment when it would be possible for her to see him out of the corner
of her eye: then when she thought it over later, she would not be sure
whether he had saluted her or merely rubbed his forehead. And there
was the added benefit that any third person who might chance to look
from a window, or from a passing carriage, would not think that he
was receiving a snub, because he did not intend to lift his hat, but,
timing the gesture properly, would in fact actually rub his forehead.
These were the hasty plans which occupied his thoughts until he was
within about fifty feet of her—when he ceased to have either plans or
thoughts. He had kept his eyes from looking full at her until then, and
as he saw her, thus close at hand, and coming nearer, a regret that was
dumfounding took possession of him. For the first time he had the sense
of having lost something of overwhelming importance.
Lucy did not keep to the right, but came straight to meet him, smiling,
and with her hand offered to him.
“Why—you—” he stammered, as he took it. “Haven’t you—” What he meant to
say was, “Haven’t you heard?”
“Haven’t I what?” she asked; and he saw that Eugene had not yet told
her.
“Nothing!” he gasped. “May I—may I turn and walk with you a little way?”
“Yes, indeed!” she said cordially.
He would not have altered what had been done: he was satisfied with all
that—satisfied that it was right, and that his own course was right.
But he began to perceive a striking inaccuracy in some remarks he had
made to his mother. Now when he had put matters in such shape that
even by the relinquishment of his “ideals of life” he could not have
Lucy, knew that he could never have her, and knew that when Eugene
told her the history of yesterday he could not have a glance or word
even friendly from her—now when he must in good truth “give up all
idea of Lucy,” he was amazed that he could have used such words as “no
particular sacrifice,” and believed them when he said them! She had
looked never in his life so bewitchingly pretty as she did today; and
as he walked beside her he was sure that she was the most exquisite
thing in the world.
“Lucy,” he said huskily, “I want to tell you something. Something that
matters.”
“I hope it’s a lively something then,” she said; and laughed. “Papa’s
been so glum to-day he’s scarcely spoken to me. Your Uncle George
Amberson came to see him an hour ago and they shut themselves up in the
library, and your uncle looked as glum as papa. I’d be glad if you’ll
tell me a funny story, George.”
“Well, it may seem one to you,” he said bitterly. “Just to begin with:
when you went away you didn’t let me know; not even a word—not a line—”
Her manner persisted in being inconsequent. “Why, no,” she said. “I
just trotted off for some visits.”
“Well, at least you might have—”
“Why, no,” she said again briskly. “Don’t you remember, George? We’d
had a grand quarrel, and didn’t speak to each other all the way home
from a long, long drive! So, as we couldn’t play together like good
children, of course it was plain that we oughtn’t to play at all.”
“Play!” he cried.
“Yes. What I mean is that we’d come to the point where it was time to
quit playing—well, what we were playing.”
“At being lovers, you mean, don’t you?”
“Something like that,” she said lightly. “For us two, playing at being
lovers was just the same as playing at cross-purposes. I had all the
purposes, and that gave you all the crossness: things weren’t getting
along at all. It was absurd!”
“Well, have it your own way,” he said. “It needn’t have been absurd.”
“No, it couldn’t help but be!” she informed him cheerfully. “The way I
am and the way you are, it couldn’t ever be anything else. So what was
the use?”
“I don’t know,” he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. “But what I wanted
to tell you is this: when you went away, you didn’t let me know and
didn’t care how or when I heard it, but I’m not like that with you.
This time, I’m going away. That’s what I wanted to tell you. I’m going
away tomorrow night—indefinitely.”
She nodded sunnily. “That’s nice for you. I hope you’ll have ever so
jolly a time, George.”
“I don’t expect to have a particularly jolly time.”
“Well, then,” she laughed, “if I were you I don’t think I’d go.”
It seemed impossible to impress this distracting creature, to make her
serious. “Lucy,” he said desperately, “this is our last walk together.”
“Evidently!” she said. “If you’re going away tomorrow night.”
“Lucy—this may be the last time I’ll see you—ever—ever in my life.”
At that she looked at him quickly, across her shoulder, but she smiled
as brightly as before, and with the same cordial inconsequence: “Oh, I
can hardly think that!” she said. “And of course I’d be awfully sorry
to think it. You’re not moving away, are you, to live?”
“No.”
“And even if you were, of course you’d be coming back to visit your
relatives every now and then.”
“I don’t know when I’m coming back. Mother and I are starting to-morrow
night for a trip around the world.”
At this she did look thoughtful. “Your mother is going with you?”
“Good heavens!” he groaned. “Lucy, doesn’t it make any difference to
you that I am going?”
At this her cordial smile instantly appeared again. “Yes, of course,”
she said. “I’m sure I’ll miss you ever so much. Are you to be gone
long?”
He stared at her wanly. “I told you indefinitely,” he said. “We’ve made
no plans—at all—for coming back.”
“That does sound like a long trip!” she exclaimed admiringly. “Do you
plan to be travelling all the time, or will you stay in some one place
the greater part of it? I think it would be lovely to—”
“Lucy!”
He halted; and she stopped with him. They had come to a corner at the
edge of the “business section” of the city, and people were everywhere
about them, brushing against them, sometimes, in passing.
“I can’t stand this,” George said, in a low voice. “I’m just about
ready to go in this drug-store here, and ask the clerk for something to
keep me from dying in my tracks! It’s quite a shock, you see, Lucy!”
“What is?”
“To find out certainly, at last, how deeply you’ve cared for me! To see
how much difference this makes to you! By Jove, I have mattered to you!”
Her cordial smile was tempered now with good-nature. “George!” She
laughed indulgently. “Surely you don’t want me to do pathos on a
downtown corner!”
“You wouldn’t ‘do pathos’ anywhere!”
“Well—don’t you think pathos is generally rather fooling?”
“I can’t stand this any longer,” he said. “I can’t! Good-bye, Lucy!” He
took her hand. “It’s good-bye—I think it’s good-bye for good, Lucy!”
“Good-bye! I do hope you’ll have the most splendid trip.” She gave his
hand a cordial little grip, then released it lightly. “Give my love to
your mother. Good-bye!”
He turned heavily away, and a moment later glanced back over his
shoulder. She had not gone on, but stood watching him, that same
casual, cordial smile on her face to the very last; and now, as he
looked back, she emphasized her friendly unconcern by waving her
small hand to him cheerily, though perhaps with the slightest hint of
preoccupation, as if she had begun to think of the errand that brought
her downtown.
In his mind, George had already explained her to his own poignant
dissatisfaction—some blond pup, probably, whom she had met during that
“perfectly gorgeous time!” And he strode savagely onward, not looking
back again.
But Lucy remained where she was until he was out of sight. Then she
went slowly into the drugstore which had struck George as a possible
source of stimulant for himself.
“Please let me have a few drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a
glass of water,” she said, with the utmost composure.
“Yes, ma’am!” said the impressionable clerk, who had been looking at
her through the display window as she stood on the corner.
But a moment later, as he turned from the shelves of glass jars
against the wall, with the potion she had asked for in his hand, he
uttered an exclamation: “For goshes’ sake, Miss!” And, describing this
adventure to his fellow-boarders, that evening, “Sagged pretty near
to the counter, she was,” he said. “’F I hadn’t been a bright, quick,
ready-for-anything young fella she’d ‘a’ flummixed plum! I was watchin’
her out the window—talkin’ to some young s’iety fella, and she was all
right then. She was all right when she come in the store, too. Yes,
sir; the prettiest girl that ever walked in our place and took one good
look at me. I reckon it must be the truth what some you town wags say
about my face!”