Booth Tarkington (1838–1918). The Magnificent Ambersons. 1918.
Chapter XXV
H
Mary appeared in the hall below him, but, after a glance toward the front of the house, turned back, and withdrew. Evidently Isabel had gone to the door. Then a murmur was heard, and George Amberson’s voice, quick and serious: “I want to talk to you, Isabel” … and another murmur; then Isabel and her brother passed the foot of the broad, dark stairway, but did not look up, and remained unconscious of the watchful presence above them. Isabel still carried her cloak upon her arm, but Amberson had taken her hand, and retained it; and as he led her silently into the library there was something about her attitude, and the pose of her slightly bend head, that was both startled and meek. Thus they quickly disappeared from George’s sight, hand in hand; and Amberson at once closed the massive double doors of the library.
For a time all that George could hear was the indistinct sound of his uncle’s voice; what he was saying could not be surmised, though the troubled brotherliness of his tone was evident. He seemed to be explaining something at considerable length, and there were moments when he paused, and George guessed that his mother was speaking, but her voice must have been very low, for it was entirely inaudible to him.
Suddenly he did hear her. Through the heavy doors her outcry came, clear and loud:
“Oh, no!”
It was a cry of protest, as if something her brother told her must be untrue, or, if it were true, the fact he stated must be undone; and it was a sound of sheer pain.
Another sound of pain, close to George, followed it! this was a vehement sniffling which broke out just above him, and, looking up, he saw Fanny Minafer on the landing, leaning over the banisters and applying her handkerchief to her eyes and nose.
“I can guess what that was about,” she whispered huskily. “He’s just told her what you did to Eugene!”
George gave her a dark look over his shoulder. “You go on back to your room!” he said; and he began to descend the stairs; but Fanny, guessing his purpose, rushed down and caught his arm, detaining him.
“You’re not going in there?” she whispered huskily. “You don’t——”
“Let go of me!”
But she clung to him savagely. “No, you don’t, Georgie Minafer! You’ll keep away from there! You will!”
“You let go of——”
“I won’t! You come back here! You’ll come upstairs and let them alone; that’s what you’ll do!” And with such passionate determination did she clutch and tug, never losing a grip of him somewhere, though George tried as much as he could, without hurting her, to wrench away—with such utter forgetfulness of her maiden dignity did she assault him, that she forced him, stumbling upward, to the landing.
“Of all the ridiculous——” he began furiously; but she spared one hand from its grasp of his sleeve and clapped it over his mouth.
“Hush up!” Never for an instant in this grotesque struggle did Fanny raise her voice above a husky whisper. “Hush up! It’s indecent—like squabbling outside the door of an operating-room! Go on to the top of the stairs—go on!”
And when George had most unwillingly obeyed, she planted herself in his way, on the top step. “There!” she said. “The idea of your going in there now! I never heard of such a thing!” And with the sudden departure of the nervous vigour she had shown so amazingly, she began to cry again. “I was an awful fool! I thought you knew what was going on or I never, never would have done it. Do you suppose I dreamed you’d go making everything into such a tragedy? Do you?”
“I don’t care what you dreamed,” George muttered.
But Fanny went on, always taking care to keep her voice from getting too loud, in spite of her most grievous agitation. “Do you dream I thought you’d go making such a fool of yourself at Mrs. Johnson’s? Oh, I saw her this morning! She wouldn’t talk to me, but I met George Amberson on my way back, and he told me what you’d done over there! And do you dream I thought you’d do what you’ve done here this afternoon to Eugene? Oh, I knew that, too! I was looking out of the front bedroom window, and I saw him drive up, and then go away again, and I knew you’d been to the door. Of course he went to George Amberson about it, and that’s why George is here. He’s got to tell Isabel the whole thing now, and you wanted to go in there interfering—God knows what! You stay here and let her brother tell her; he’s got some consideration for her!”
“I suppose you think I haven’t!” George said, challenging her, and at that Fanny laughed witheringly.
“You! Considerate of anybody!”
“I’m considerate of her good name!” he said hotly. “It seems to me that’s about the first thing to be considerate of, in being considerate of a person! And look here: it strikes me you’re taking a pretty different tack from what you did yesterday afternoon!”
Fanny wrung her hands. “I did a terrible thing!” she lamented. “Now that it’s done and too late. I know what it was! I didn’t have sense enough just to let things go on. I didn’t have any business to interfere, and I didn’t mean to interfere—I only wanted to talk, and let out a little! I did think you already knew everything I told you. I did! And I’d rather have cut my hand off than stir you up to doing what you have done! I was just suffering so that I wanted to let out a little—I didn’t mean any real harm. But now I see what’s happened—oh, I was a fool! I hadn’t any business interfering. Eugene never would have looked at me, anyhow, and, oh, why couldn’t I have seen that before! He never came here a single time in his life except on her account, never! and I might have let them alone, because he wouldn’t have looked at me even if he’d never seen Isabel. And they haven’t done any harm: she made Wilbur happy, and she was a true wife to him as long as he lived. It wasn’t a crime for her to care for Eugene all the time; she certainly never told him she did—and she gave me every chance in the world! She left us alone together every time she could—even since Wilbur died—but what was the use? And here I go, not doing myself a bit of good by it, and just”—Fanny wrung her hands again—“just ruining them!”
“I suppose you mean I’m doing that,” George said bitterly.
“Yes, I do!” she sobbed, and drooped upon the stairway railing, exhausted.
“On the contrary, I mean to save my mother from a calamity.”
Fanny looked at him wanly, in a tired despair; then she stepped by him and went slowly to her own door, where she paused and beckoned to him.
“What do you want?”
“Just come here a minute.”
“What for?” he asked impatiently.
“I just wanted to say something to you.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake, say it! There’s nobody to hear.” Nevertheless, after a moment, as she beckoned him again, he went to her, profoundly annoyed. “Well, what is it?”
“George,” she said in a low voice, “I think you ought to be told something. If I were you, I’d let my mother alone.”
“Oh, my Lord!” he groaned. “I’m doing these things for her, not against her!”
A mildness had come upon Fanny, and she had controlled her weeping. She shook her head gently. “No, I’d let her alone if I were you. I don’t think she’s very well, George.”
“She! I never saw a healthier person in my life.”
“No. She doesn’t let anybody know, but she goes to the doctor regularly.”
“Women are always going to doctors regularly.”
“No. He told her to.”
George was not impressed. “It’s nothing at all; she spoke of it to me years ago—some kind of family failing. She said grandfather had it, too; and look at him! Hasn’t proved very serious with him! You act as if I’d done something wrong in sending that man about his business, and as if I were going to persecute my mother, instead of protecting her. By Jove, it’s sickening! You told me how all the riffraff in town were busy with her name, and then the minute I lift my hand to protect her, you begin to attack me and——”
“Sh!” Fanny checked him, laying her hand on his arm. “Your uncle is going.”
The library doors were heard opening, and a moment later there came the sound of the front door closing.
George moved toward the head of the stairs, then stood listening; but the house was silent.
Fanny made a slight noise with her lips to attract his attention, and, when he glanced toward her, shook her head at him urgently. “Let her alone,” she whispered. “She’s down there by herself. Don’t go down. Let her alone.”
She moved a few steps toward him and halted, her face pallid and awestruck, and then both stood listening for anything that might break the silence downstairs. No sound came to them; that poignant silence was continued throughout long, long minutes, while the two listeners stood there under its mysterious spell; and in its plaintive eloquence—speaking, as it did, of the figure alone in the big, dark library, where dead Wilbur’s new silver frame gleamed in the dimness—there was something that checked even George.
Above the aunt and nephew, as they kept this strange vigil, there was a triple window of stained glass, to illumine the landing and upper reaches of the stairway. Figures in blue and amber garments posed gracefully in panels, conceived by some craftsman of the Eighties to represent Love and Purity and Beauty, and these figures, leaded to unalterable attitudes, were little more motionless than the two human beings upon whom fell the mottled faint light of the window. The colours were growing dull; evening was coming on.
Fanny Minafer broke the long silence with a sound from her throat, a stifled gasp; and with that great companion of hers, her handkerchief, retired softly to the loneliness of her own chamber. After she had gone George looked about him bleakly, then on tiptoe crossed the hall and went into his own room, which was filled with twilight. Still tiptoeing, though he could not have said why, he went across the room and sat down heavily in a chair facing the window. Outside there was nothing but the darkening air and the wall of the nearest of the new houses. He had not slept at all, the night before, and he had eaten nothing since the preceding day at lunch, but he felt neither drowsiness nor hunger. His set determination filled him, kept him but too wide awake, and his gaze at the grayness beyond the window was wide-eyed and bitter.
Darkness had closed in when there was a step in the room behind him. Then someone knelt beside the chair, two arms went round him with infinite compassion, a gentle head rested against his shoulder, and there came the faint scent as of apple-blossoms far away.
“You mustn’t be troubled, darling,” his mother whispered.