“Let her” was correct; but the time came—and it came in the spring of
the next year when it was no longer a question of George’s letting his
mother come home. He had to bring her, and to bring her quickly if she
was to see her father again; and Amberson had been right: her danger of
never seeing him again lay not in the Major’s feebleness of heart but
in her own. As it was, George telegraphed his uncle to have a wheeled
chair at the station, for the journey had been disastrous, and to this
hybrid vehicle, placed close to the platform, her son carried her in
his arms when she arrived. She was unable to speak, but patted her
brother’s and Fanny’s hands and looked “very sweet,” Fanny found the
desperate courage to tell her. She was lifted from the chair into a
carriage, and seemed a little stronger as they drove home; for once she
took her hand from George’s, and waved it feebly toward the carriage
window.
“Changed,” she whispered. “So changed.”
“You mean the town,” Amberson said. “You mean the old place is changed,
don’t you, dear?”
She smiled and moved her lips: “Yes.”
“It’ll change to a happier place, old dear,” he said, “now that you’re
back in it, and going to get well again.”
But she only looked at him wistfully, her eyes a little frightened.
When the carriage stopped, her son carried her into the house, and up
the stairs to her own room, where a nurse was waiting; and he came
out a moment later, as the doctor went in. At the end of the hall a
stricken group was clustered: Amberson, and Fanny, and the Major.
George, deathly pale and speechless, took his grandfather’s hand, but
the old gentleman did not seem to notice his action.
“When are they going to let me see my daughter?” he asked querulously.
“They told me to keep out of the way while they carried her in,
because it might upset her. I wish they’d let me go in and speak to my
daughter. I think she wants to see me.”
He was right—presently the doctor came out and beckoned to him; and
the Major shuffled forward, leaning on a shaking cane; his figure,
after all its years of proud soldierliness, had grown stooping at last,
and his untrimmed white hair straggled over the back of his collar.
He looked old—old and divested of the world—as he crept toward his
daughter’s room. Her voice was stronger, for the waiting group heard
a low cry of tenderness and welcome as the old man reached the open
doorway. Then the door was closed.
Fanny touched her nephew’s arm. “George, you must need something to
eat—I know she’d want you to. I’ve had things ready: I knew she’d want
me to. You’d better go down to the dining room: there’s plenty on the
table, waiting for you. She’d want you to eat something.”
He turned a ghastly face to her, it was so panic-stricken. “I don’t
want anything to eat!” he said savagely. And he began to pace the
floor, taking care not to go near Isabel’s door, and that his footsteps
were muffled by the long, thick hall rug. After a while he went to
where Amberson, with folded arms and bowed head, had seated himself
near the front window. “Uncle George,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t—”
“Well?”
“Oh, my God, I didn’t think this thing the matter with her could ever
be serious! I—” He gasped. “When that doctor I had meet us at the
boat—” He could not go on.
Amberson only nodded his head, and did not otherwise change his
attitude.
Isabel lived through the night. At eleven o’clock Fanny came timidly to
George in his room. “Eugene is here,” she whispered. “He’s downstairs.
He wants—” She gulped. “He wants to know if he can’t see her. I didn’t
know what to say. I said I’d see. I didn’t know—the doctor said—”
“The doctor said we ‘must keep her peaceful,’” George said sharply.
“Do you think that man’s coming would be very soothing? My God! if it
hadn’t been for him this mightn’t have happened: we could have gone on
living here quietly, and—why, it would be like taking a stranger into
her room! She hasn’t even spoken of him more than twice in all the time
we’ve been away. Doesn’t he know how sick she is? You tell him the
doctor said she had to be quiet and peaceful. That’s what he did say,
isn’t it?”
Fanny acquiesced tearfully. “I’ll tell him. I’ll tell him the doctor
said she was to be kept very quiet. I—I didn’t know—” And she pottered
out.
An hour later the nurse appeared in George’s doorway; she came
noiselessly, and his back was toward her; but he jumped as if he had
been shot, and his jaw fell, he so feared what she was going to say.
“She wants to see you.”
The terrified mouth shut with a click; and he nodded and followed her;
but she remained outside his mother’s room while he went in.
Isabel’s eyes were closed, and she did not open them or move her head,
but she smiled and edged her hand toward him as he sat on a stool
beside the bed. He took that slender, cold hand, and put it to his
cheek.
“Darling, did you—get something to eat?” She could only whisper, slowly
and with difficulty. It was as if Isabel herself were far away, and
only able to signal what she wanted to say.
“Yes, mother.”
“All you—needed?”
“Yes, mother.”
She did not speak again for a time; then, “Are you sure you
didn’t—didn’t catch cold coming home?”
“I’m all right, mother.”
“That’s good. It’s sweet—it’s sweet—”
“What is, mother darling?”
“To feel—my hand on your cheek. I—I can feel it.”
But this frightened him horribly—that she seemed so glad she could feel
it, like a child proud of some miraculous seeming thing accomplished.
It frightened him so that he could not speak, and he feared that she
would know how he trembled; but she was unaware, and again was silent.
Finally she spoke again:
“I wonder if—if Eugene and Lucy know that we’ve come—home.”
“I’m sure they do.”
“Has he—asked about me?”
“Yes, he was here.”
“Has he—gone?”
“Yes, mother.”
She sighed faintly. “I’d like—”
“What, mother?”
“I’d like to have—seen him.” It was just audible, this little regretful
murmur. Several minutes passed before there was another. “Just—just
once,” she whispered, and then was still.
She seemed to have fallen asleep, and George moved to go, but a faint
pressure upon his fingers detained him, and he remained, with her hand
still pressed against his cheek. After a while he made sure she was
asleep, and moved again, to let the nurse come in, and this time there
was no pressure of the fingers to keep him. She was not asleep, but
thinking that if he went he might get some rest, and be better prepared
for what she knew was coming, she commanded those longing fingers of
hers—and let him go.
He found the doctor standing with the nurse in the hall; and, telling
them that his mother was drowsing now, George went back to his own
room, where he was startled to find his grandfather lying on the bed,
and his uncle leaning against the wall. They had gone home two hours
before, and he did not know they had returned.
“The doctor thought we’d better come over,” Amberson said, then was
silent, and George, shaking violently, sat down on the edge of the bed.
His shaking continued, and from time to time he wiped heavy sweat from
his forehead.
The hours passed, and sometimes the old man upon the bed would snore
a little, stop suddenly, and move as if to rise, but George Amberson
would set a hand upon his shoulder, and murmur a reassuring word or
two. Now and then, either uncle or nephew would tiptoe into the hall
and look toward Isabel’s room, then come tiptoeing back, the other
watching him haggardly.
Once George gasped defiantly: “That doctor in New York said she might
get better! Don’t you know he did? Don’t you know he said she might?”
Amberson made no answer.
Dawn had been murking through the smoky windows, growing stronger for
half an hour, when both men started violently at a sound in the hall;
and the Major sat up on the bed, unchecked. It was the voice of the
nurse speaking to Fanny Minafer, and the next moment, Fanny appeared in
the doorway, making contorted efforts to speak.
Amberson said weakly: “Does she want us—to come in?”
But Fanny found her voice, and uttered a long, loud cry. She threw her
arms about George, and sobbed in an agony of loss and compassion:
“She loved you!” she wailed. “She loved you! She loved you! Oh, how she
did love you!”
Isabel had just left them.