Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 238, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 2 October 1919 — The Magnificent Ambersons [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

The Magnificent Ambersons

By Booth Tarkington

Copyrtrht by-ConbUday. Tar* A Company.

CHAPTER XVlll—Continued. Bat 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 eXelamatlon: “For goshes’ sake. Miss!” And, describing this adventure to his pretty near to the counter, she was.” he said "’FI hadn’t been a bright, quick, reatjy-for-anything young felia she'd ’a’ ftammlxed plnm! 1 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 came 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!” At that hour the heroine of the susceptible clerk’s romance was engaged ia brightening the rosy little, coal fire under the white mantelpiece in her pretty white and blue boudoir. Four photographs all framed in decorous plain silver went to the anthracite’s fierce destruction —frames and <Bo—and three packets of letters and notes in a charming Florentine treasure box of painted wood ; Dor was the box, any more than the silver frames, spared this rousing flnlsh. Throwxi heartily upon live coal, the fine wood sparkled forth in stars, then burst into an alarming biaxe which scorched whlte mantelpiece, but Lucy stood and lookedonwitbout moving. ........... It was not Eugene who told her what had happened .at Isabel’s door. When she got home, she found Fanny Minafer wait Ingforhex—asecretexcursion of Fanny's for the purpose, presumably, of “letting out” again; because that" was whatshe dirt. She told Lucy everything (except her own lamentable part in the production of the recent miseries) and concluded with

a tribute to George; “The worst of dr is, he thinks he's been such a hero, and Isabel does, too. and that makes him mvfc than twice as awfuL ItSbeen the same all his life; everything he did was noble and perfect. He had a domineering nature to begin with, and she let it go on, and fostered it till it absolutely ruled her. I never saw a plainer case of a person’s fault making them pay for having it ! She goes about, overseeing the packing and praising George and pretending to be perfectly cheerful about what he’s done. She pretends he- did such a fine ..thing—so manly and protective —going to Mrs. Johnson. And so heroic — doing what hls ‘principles’ made hint —even though he knew what it would cost him with you ! And all the while it’s almost killing her —what he said to your father! She’s always been intty enough, so to speak, a»d had-the. greatest idea of the Ambersons being superior to the rest of the world, and all that, but rudeness, or anything like a ‘scene,’ or any bad manners —they always just made her sick! But she

could never see what George’s manners "Were —oh, it’s been a terrible adulation ! . . Ji’s going to be a task alone; you must come and see mg— I mean after they’ve gone, of course. Hl go crazy if I don’t see something' of people. I’m sure you’ll come as often as you can. I know you too well to you’ll be sensitive about coming there, or being reminded of George. Thank heaven you’re too wellbalanced,” Miss Fanny concluded, with a profound fervor, “you’re too well-balanced to let'"anything affect yon deeply about that—that monkey!” The four photographs aqd the painted Florentine box went to their cremation within the same hour that Miss Fanny spoke; and a little later Lucy called her father in, as he passed her door, and pointed to rhehlacktuedarea. on the underside of the mantelpiece, and to the burnt heap upon the coal, where some metallic shapes still retained outline. She flung her arms about his neck in passionate sympathy, telling him that she knew what had happened to him; and presently he began to comfort her and managed an embarrassed laugh. “Well, well—” he said. “I was too old Jor such foolishness to be getting into my head, anyhow.” “No, no!” she sobbed. “And if jjou knew how I despise myself so ever having thought one instant about —oh, Bliss Fanny called him the right name: that monkey! He 4s!” ♦‘There, I think I agree with you.” Eugene said grimly, and in his eyes there was a steady light of anger that was to last. “Yes I think I agree with you about that!” "There’s only one thing to do with such a person,” she said vehemently. "That’s to put him out of our thoughts forever—forever 1” And yet, the next day. at six o’clock, which was the hour, Fanny had told her, when George and his mother were to leave upon their long journey, Lucy touched that scorched place on her mantel with her hand just as the Httle clock above it struck. Then, after this odd, unconscious gesture, she went to a window and stood between the curtains, looking out into the cold No-

vernber dusk; and in spite of every reasoning and reasonable power within ■her, a pain of loneliness struck through her heart. The dim street below her window, the dark houses across the way, the vague air itself —all looked empty, and cold and (most of all) uninterestlng. - Something more sombre than Novemberdusk took the color from thorn and ga v e them that air of desertion. - - - / The light of her fire, flickering up behind her, showed suddenly a flying group of tiny snowflakes nearing the window-pane; and for an instant she felt the sensation of being dragged through a snow-drift under a broken cutter, with a boy’s arms about her—an arrogant, handsome, too-conquering boy, who nevertheless did his best to -get hurt- hi msel f, keeping her from any possible harm. She shook the picture out of her eyes indignantly, then came and sat before-her fire, and looked long—and long at the blackened mantelpiece. She did not have the mantelpiece repainted—and, since she did not, might as well have kept his photographs. One forgets what made the scar upon his hand bqt not what made the sear upon his wall. dances of the winter; hew laces had ■been appearing everywhere,-for—that-■matter, and familiar ones were disappearing, merged In the increasing crowd, or gone forever and missed A. little and not long; for the town was growing and- changing as- 4t never had grown and changed before. It was heaving up in the middle incredibly; it was spreading incredibly ; arid as ft. heaved and spread, it befouled itself and darkened its sky. You drove between pleasant "fields and “woodland groves one spring day; and in the autumn, passing over the same ground, you welre warned off the tracks by an interurban trolley-car’s gonging, and beheld, beyond cement sidewalks just dry. new house-owners busy "moving in.” Gasoline and electricity had predicted. But the great change was in the citizenry itself. What was left of the patriotic old-stock generation that had fought the Civil war, and subsequently controlled politics, had become venerable and was little heeded. What happened to Boston anti to Broadway happened in degree to the city; the old stock became less and less typJeal— and of__ the grown people who called the place home, less than a third had been born in it.

' A new spl rit of citlzenship had already sharply defined itself. It was idealistic, and its ideals were expressed in the new kind of young men in business downtown. They were optimists—optimists to the point of belligerence —their motto being “Boost! Don’t Knock!” And they were hustlers, believing in hurtling and in honesty because both paid. They loved their city and worked for it with a plutonic energy which was always ardently vocal. They were viciously governed.bui_£he,v.snmetiine.swentsofar. ss to struggle for better government on helpful effect of good government on the price of real estate and “betterment” generally; the politicians could not go too far with them, and knew it. The idealists planned and strove and shouted that their city should become a better, better, and better city—and what they. meant, when they used the word “better,” was “more prosperous,” and the core of their idealism was this:' “The more prosperous my beloved city, the more prosperous beloved I!” - s ‘ These were bad times for Amberson addition. This quarter, already-old, lay within a mile of the center of the town, but business moved in other directions; and the Addition’s share of Prosperity was only the smoker and; dirt, with the bank credit left out. The owners of the original big houses sold them, or rented them to boarding-house keepers, and the tenants of the multitude of small houses moved “farther out” (where the smoke was thinner) or into apartment houses, which were built by dozens now. Cheaper tenants took their places, and the rents were Tower and lower, and the houses shabbier and shabbier —for all these shabby houses, burning soft coal, did their best to help in the destruction of their own value. Distances had ceased to matter.

The five new houses, built so closely where had been The fine lawn of the Amberson mansion, did not look new. When they were a year old they looked as old as they would ever look • and two of them were vacant, having never been rented, for the Major’s mistake gbout apartment houses had been a disastrous one. “He guessed wrong,” George Amberson said. “He guessed wrong at just the wrong timet People were crazy for apartments—too bad he couldn’t have seen it in time. Poor man! he digs away at his ledgers by his old gas drop-light lamp almost every night 4 —he still refuses to let the Mansion be tom up for wiring, you know. But he had one painful satisfaction this spring: he got his taxes lowered. ’ ........ T..- .

Amberetm laughed ruefully, and Fanny Mihaferaskwlfimv the Major could have managed such an economy. They were sitting upon the veranda at Isabel's one evening during the third summer of the absence of their nephew -and his mother; and the conversation had Turned tixwarA-Amberson-finances. „ “I said it was a ‘painful satisfaction,’ Fanny”he explained. “Theproperty has gone dawn in value, ami they assessed it lower than they did fifteen years ago.” “But farther out —” "Oh, yes, ‘farther out!’ Prices are magnificent ‘farther out,’ and farther in,too! We just happen to be the wrong spot, that’s all. Not that I don’t think something could be done if father would let me have a hand,; but he won’t. He can ! t, I suppose I ought to say. He’s ‘always done his own figuring,’ he says; and It’s his lifejong habit to keep his affairs, and even his books, to himself, and just hand us but the money. Heaven knows he’s done enough of that!” “There seem to be so many ways of making money nowadays,” Fanny said thoughtfully. “Every day I hear of a new fortune some person has got hold of, one way or another —nearly always It’s somebody you never have heard of. It doesn’t seem all to be in just making motor cars: I hear there's a

great deal in manufacturing these things that motor cars use —new inventions particularly. I met dear old Frank Bronson the other day, and he told .me —” “Oh,, yes, even dear old Frank’s got the fever,” Amberson laughed. “He’s ns wild as any of them. He told me ahoutthh^mveTith7n'he i s~gr>TrF~~iTito;’ too. ‘Millions In it!‘ new electric headlight better than anything yet—‘every car in America can’t help but have ’em,’ and all that. He’s putting half he’s laid by into it, and the fact is he almost talked me into getting father to ‘finance me’ enough for me to go into it. Poor father! he’s financed me before! I suppose he would again if I had the heart to ask him. At any rate I’ve been thinking & over.” , -> “So have I,” Fanny admitted. “He seemed to be certain it ■would pay twenty-five per cent the first year, and enormously more after that; and I’m only getting four on my little principal. People are making such enorraous fortunes otit of everything to do with motorcars, it does seem as if —” She paused. “Well, I told him rd think it. over seriously.” “We may turn out to be partners and millionaires then,” Amberson laughed. “I thought I’d ask Eugene’s advice.”

“I wish you would.” said Fanny. “He probably knows exactly how much profit there •would be in this.” Eugene’s advice was to “go slow:” he thought electric lights for automo“coming—some day.” but probably not until certain difficulties could be overcome. Altogether he vkas discouraging, but by this time his two friends “had the fever” as thoroughly as old Frank Bronson himself had it; for they had been with Bronson to see the light working beautifully in a machine shop. “Perfect!” Fanny cried. “And if it worked in. the shop it’s bobnd to work any place else, isn’t it?” Eugene would not agree it was “bound to” —yet, being pressed, was driven to admit that “it might,” and retiring from what was developing into an oratorical contest, repeated .a warning about not "putting too much into it” \ \ George Amberson also laid stress on caution later, though the Major had “financed him” again, and he was “going in.” “You must be careful to leave yourself a ‘margin of safety,’ Fanny,”

he said. You must be careful to leave yourself enough to fall back on, in case anything should go wrong." Fanny deceived him. In the impossible event of “anything going wrong” she would have enough left -to ”live on,’’ siie declared, and laughedexcitedly, for she was-having the best time that had come to her since Wilbur’s death. Like smj many women for whom money has always been provided without their understanding how, she was prepared to be a thorough and Irresponsible plunger. Amberson, in his wearier way, shared her excitement, and in the winter, when the exploiting company had been formed, and he brought Fanny her Importantly engraved shares of stoqk. Ije reverted to his pre;, diction of possibilities, made when they first spoke of the new light. “We seem to be partners, all right,” he laughed. “Now let’s go ahead and be millionaires before Isabel and young George come home.” “When they come home!” she echoed sorrowfully—and it was a phrase which found an evasive echo in Isabel’s letters. In these letters Isabel was always planning pleasant things that she and Fanny and the Major and George and “brother - Gnorge!=-wauld-do - - son came home. “They’ll find things pretty changed. I’m afraid,” Fanny said. “If they ever do come home!” “ Amberson went over the next summer and joined his sister and nepbow. in Paris, where they were living. “Isabel does want to come home,” he told Fanny gravely on the day of his re-turn-tu October. “She’s wanted to for a long while —and §he ought to come while she can stand the journey—” And he amplified this statement, leaving Fanny looking startled and solemn when Lucy came by to drive him out to dinner at the new house Eugene had just completed.

He was loud in praise of the house after Eugene arrived, and gave them had retired from thd dinner table to Eugene’s library, a gray and shadowy room, where their coffee was brought. Then, equipped with a cigar, which seemed to occupy liis attention, Amberson spoke in a casual tone of his sister and her son. “I found Isabel as well as usual,” he said, “only I’m afraid ‘as usual’ isn’t particularly well. Sydney and Amelia had been up to Paris in the spring, but she hadn’t seen them. Somebody told her they were there, it seems. They’d left Florence and were living in Rome; Amelia’s become a Catholic and is said to give great sums to charity and to go about with the gentry in consequence, but Sydney's ailing and lives in a wheel ehair most of the time. It struck me Isabel ought to be doing the same thing.” He paused, bestowing minute care upon the remqval of the little band from his Cigar; and as he seemed to have concluded his narrative Eugene spoke out of the shadow beyond a np O v44y >«vr>Tp^ “What do you mMh hv thnf?’’ hp GUictlV Amberson. still not looking at either his young hostess or, her father. “At least,” he said, “she manages to seem so. I’m afraid she hasn’t been really well for several years. Of course she makes nothing of it, but it seemed rather serious to me w’hen I noticed she had to stop and rest twice to get up one short flight of stairs in their two-floor apartment. I told her I thought she ought to make George let her come home.”

“ ‘Let her?’ ” Eugene repeated in a low voice. “Does she want to?” “She doesn’t urge it. George seems to like the life there —in his grand, -gloomy and peculiar—way; and of course she’ll never change about being proud of him and all that he s quite a swell. But in spite of anything she said, rather than because, I know she does indeed want to come. She'd like to be with’father, of course; and I think she’s—well, she intimated one day that she feared*it might eKe happen that she wouldn’t get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat coming home I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which, she said it, and it struck me all at once that I’d been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her own state of health.” “I see,” Eugene said, his voice even lower than it had. been before. “And you say he won’t ‘let’ her come home?” Amberson laughed, but still continued to be interested in his cigar. ( “Oh, I don’t think die uses force! He’s very gentle with her. I doubt if the subject is mentioned between them, and yet—and yet, knowing ray interesting nephew as you do, wouldn’t you think that was about the way to put it?” “Knowing him as I do—yes,” Said Eugene slowly. “Yes, I should think that was about the way to put it.” , A murmur out of the shadows beyond him —a faint sound, musical and feminine, yet expressive of a notable intensity seethed ’to indicate , that Lucy was of thq same opinion.

CHAPTER XIX.

“Let her” was correct; but the time came —and it came in the spring of the next year—w’hen it was nor longer a question of George’s letting his mother -come home; —He had to bring her, and io bring her quickly if she was: to see her father again; and'Am* ■1 I'l.izT • finest* T* Hi 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 ear platform, her son carried her in his arms when she arrived. She was unable to speak, but patted her brother’s and Fanny’s 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 tobk 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?” “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.” Butsim-OBly-loolted--at him wistfully, her eyes a little fatigued.

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 caffied her Tri,' because it might upset her. I wish they’d let me go in and speak to my daughter. I think she w’ants to see me.” He was right—presently the doctor came out and beckoned to him, and t* je 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 oldold and divested of the world—-as he crept tow’ard 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. George 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?” '

thing the matter, wllA.._her „ be serious! I—” He gasped. “When the 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. . . . Jsabel 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. ‘Til tell him. I’ll tell him the doctor said she was to be kept very qfiiet. I —l 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 whs going to say. “She wants to see you.” The terrified mouth shut with a click anu 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 aty&to 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 —rnj hand on your cheek. I —l 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, Final-, ly she spoke again; “I wonder if —if Eugene and Lucy Jknow that we’ve come —home.” -—“l'm sure they do.” “Has he—asked about me?” “Yes, he was here.” “Has he —gone?” “Yes, mother.” She sighed faintly. “Fd like—” “What, mother?’’ “I’d like to have —seen him.” It was 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 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 logging 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. 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. 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!” Tnnhnl hnri jnwt left thPlTl. w - » Major Amberson remained dry-eyed through the time that followed; he knew that this separation from his daughter would be short; that the separation which had preceded it was the long ‘one. He worked at his ledgers no more under his old gas drop-light, but would Sit all evening staring into the fire, in his bedroom, and not speaking unless someone asked him a question. He seemed almost unaware of on around him, and those who were with him thought him dazed by Isabel’s death, guessing that he was lost in reminiscences and vague dreams. “Probably his mind is full of pictures of his youth, or the Civil war, and the days when he and mother were young married people and all of us children were jolly little things—and the city was a small town with one cobbled street and the others just dirt roads with board sidewalks.” This was George Amberson’s conjecture, and the others agreed; but they were mistaken. The Major was engaged in the profoundest thinking of his life. No business plans which had ever absorbed him could compare in momentousness with the plans ■ that absorbed him now,, for he had to plan how to enter the unknown country where he was not even sure df being recognized as an Amberson —not sure of anything, except that Isabel would help him if she could, The Major was occupied with the first really important matter that had taken his attention since he came home Invalided, after the Gettysburg campaign, and went into business, and he realized that everything which had worried him or delighted him during this lifetime between then and today—all his buying and building and trading and banking—that it all was trifling and waste beside what concerned him now. Meanwhile, the life of the little bereft group still forlornly centering upon him began to pick up again, as .life will, and to emerge from its own period of dazedness. It was not Isabel*® father but her son who was really dazed. / (TO BE CONTINUED.) ’

"The Property Has Gone Down in Value."