автордың кітабын онлайн тегін оқу  The Magnificent Ambersons

Booth Tarkington

I

Ma­jor Am­ber­son had “made a for­tune” in 1873, when other people were los­ing for­tunes, and the mag­ni­fi­cence of the Am­ber­sons began then. Mag­ni­fi­cence, like the size of a for­tune, is al­ways com­par­at­ive, as even Mag­ni­fi­cent Lorenzo may now per­ceive, if he has happened to haunt New York in 1916; and the Am­ber­sons were mag­ni­fi­cent in their day and place. Their splend­our las­ted through­out all the years that saw their Mid­land town spread and darken into a city, but reached its top­most dur­ing the period when every pros­per­ous fam­ily with chil­dren kept a New­found­land dog.

In that town, in those days, all the wo­men who wore silk or vel­vet knew all the other wo­men who wore silk or vel­vet, and when there was a new pur­chase of seal­skin, sick people were got to win­dows to see it go by. Trot­ters were out, in the winter af­ter­noons, ra­cing light sleighs on Na­tional Av­enue and Ten­nessee Street; every­body re­cog­nized both the trot­ters and the drivers; and again knew them as well on sum­mer even­ings, when slim bug­gies whizzed by in re­new­als of the snow-time rivalry. For that mat­ter, every­body knew every­body else’s fam­ily horse-and-car­riage, could identify such a sil­hou­ette half a mile down the street, and thereby was sure who was go­ing to mar­ket, or to a re­cep­tion, or com­ing home from of­fice or store to noon din­ner or even­ing sup­per.

Dur­ing the earlier years of this period, el­eg­ance of per­sonal ap­pear­ance was be­lieved to rest more upon the tex­ture of gar­ments than upon their shap­ing. A silk dress needed no re­mod­el­ling when it was a year or so old; it re­mained dis­tin­guished by merely re­main­ing silk. Old men and gov­ernors wore broad­cloth; “full dress” was broad­cloth with “doe­skin” trousers; and there were seen men of all ages to whom a hat meant only that ri­gid, tall silk thing known to im­pudence as a “stovepipe.” In town and coun­try these men would wear no other hat, and, without self-con­scious­ness, they went row­ing in such hats.

Shift­ing fash­ions of shape re­placed ar­is­to­cracy of tex­ture: dress­makers, shoe­makers, hat­makers, and tail­ors, in­creas­ing in cun­ning and in power, found means to make new clothes old. The long con­ta­gion of the “Derby” hat ar­rived: one sea­son the crown of this hat would be a bucket; the next it would be a spoon. Every house still kept its boot­jack, but high-topped boots gave way to shoes and “con­gress gaiters”; and these were played through fash­ions that shaped them now with toes like box-ends and now with toes like the prows of ra­cing shells.

Trousers with a crease were con­sidered ple­beian; the crease proved that the gar­ment had lain upon a shelf, and hence was “ready-made”; these be­tray­ing trousers were called “hand-me-downs,” in al­lu­sion to the shelf. In the early eighties, while bangs and bustles were hav­ing their way with wo­men, that vari­ation of dandy known as the “dude” was in­ven­ted: he wore trousers as tight as stock­ings, dag­ger-poin­ted shoes, a spoon “Derby,” a single-breasted coat called a “Chester­field,” with short flar­ing skirts, a tor­tur­ing cyl­indrical col­lar, laundered to a pol­ish and three inches high, while his other neck­gear might be a heavy, puffed cravat or a tiny bow fit for a doll’s braids. With even­ing dress he wore a tan over­coat so short that his black coat­tails hung vis­ible, five inches be­low the over­coat; but after a sea­son or two he lengthened his over­coat till it touched his heels, and he passed out of his tight trousers into trousers like great bags. Then, presently, he was seen no more, though the word that had been coined for him re­mained in the vocab­u­lar­ies of the im­per­tin­ent.

It was a hair­ier day than this. Beards were to the wear­ers’ fancy, and things as strange as the Kaiser­liche boar-tusk mous­tache were com­mon­place. “Side­burns” found nour­ish­ment upon child­like pro­files; great Dun­dreary whiskers blew like tip­pets over young shoulders; mous­taches were trained as lam­bre­quins over for­got­ten mouths; and it was pos­sible for a Sen­ator of the Un­ited States to wear a mist of white whisker upon his throat only, not a news­pa­per in the land find­ing the or­na­ment dis­tin­guished enough to war­rant a lam­poon. Surely no more is needed to prove that so short a time ago we were liv­ing in an­other age!

… At the be­gin­ning of the Am­ber­sons’ great period most of the houses of the Mid­land town were of a pleas­ant ar­chi­tec­ture. They lacked style, but also lacked pre­ten­tious­ness, and whatever does not pre­tend at all has style enough. They stood in com­mo­di­ous yards, well shaded by leftover forest trees, elm and wal­nut and beech, with here and there a line of tall sy­ca­mores where the land had been made by filling bay­ous from the creek. The house of a “prom­in­ent res­id­ent,” fa­cing Mil­it­ary Square, or Na­tional Av­enue, or Ten­nessee Street, was built of brick upon a stone found­a­tion, or of wood upon a brick found­a­tion. Usu­ally it had a “front porch” and a “back porch”; of­ten a “side porch,” too. There was a “front hall”; there was a “side hall”; and some­times a “back hall.” From the “front hall” opened three rooms, the “par­lour,” the “sit­ting room,” and the “lib­rary”; and the lib­rary could show war­rant to its title—for some reason these people bought books. Com­monly, the fam­ily sat more in the lib­rary than in the “sit­ting room,” while callers, when they came form­ally, were kept to the “par­lour,” a place of for­mid­able pol­ish and dis­com­fort. The up­hol­stery of the lib­rary fur­niture was a little shabby; but the hos­tile chairs and sofa of the “par­lour” al­ways looked new. For all the wear and tear they got they should have las­ted a thou­sand years.

Up­stairs were the bed­rooms; “mother-and-father’s room” the largest; a smal­ler room for one or two sons an­other for one or two daugh­ters; each of these rooms con­tain­ing a double bed, a “wash­stand,” a “bur­eau,” a ward­robe, a little table, a rock­ing-chair, and of­ten a chair or two that had been slightly dam­aged down­stairs, but not enough to jus­tify either the ex­pense of re­pair or de­cis­ive aban­don­ment in the at­tic. And there was al­ways a “spare-room,” for vis­it­ors (where the sew­ing-ma­chine usu­ally was kept), and dur­ing the sev­en­ties there de­veloped an ap­pre­ci­ation of the ne­ces­sity for a bath­room. There­fore the ar­chi­tects placed bath­rooms in the new houses, and the older houses tore out a cup­board or two, set up a boiler be­side the kit­chen stove, and sought a new god­li­ness, each with its own bath­room. The great Amer­ican plumber joke, that many-branched ever­green, was planted at this time.

At the rear of the house, up­stairs was a bleak little cham­ber, called “the girl’s room,” and in the stable there was an­other bed­room, ad­join­ing the hayloft, and called “the hired man’s room.” House and stable cost seven or eight thou­sand dol­lars to build, and people with that much money to in­vest in such com­forts were clas­si­fied as the Rich. They paid the in­hab­it­ant of “the girl’s room” two dol­lars a week, and, in the lat­ter part of this period, two dol­lars and a half, and fi­nally three dol­lars a week. She was Irish, or­din­ar­ily, or Ger­man or it might be Scand­inavian, but never nat­ive to the land un­less she happened to be a per­son of col­our. The man or youth who lived in the stable had like wages, and some­times he, too, was lately a steer­age voy­ager, but much of­tener he was col­oured.

After sun­rise, on pleas­ant morn­ings, the al­leys be­hind the stables were gay; laughter and shout­ing went up and down their dusty lengths, with a lively ac­com­pani­ment of curry­combs knock­ing against back fences and stable walls, for the darkies loved to curry their horses in the al­ley. Darkies al­ways prefer to gos­sip in shouts in­stead of whis­pers; and they feel that pro­fan­ity, un­less it be vo­ci­fer­ous, is al­most worth­less. Hor­rible phrases were caught by early rising chil­dren and car­ried to older people for defin­i­tion, some­times at in­op­por­tune mo­ments; while less in­vest­ig­at­ive chil­dren would of­ten merely re­peat the phrases in some sub­sequent flurry of agit­a­tion, and yet bring about con­sequences so em­phatic as to be re­called with ease in middle life.

… They have passed, those darky hired-men of the Mid­land town; and the in­tro­spect­ive horses they cur­ried and brushed and whacked and ami­ably cursed—those good old horses switch their tails at flies no more. For all their seem­ing per­man­ence they might as well have been buf­fa­loes—or the buf­falo lap robes that grew bald in patches and used to slide from the care­less drivers’ knees and hang un­con­cerned, half way to the ground. The stables have been trans­formed into other like­nesses, or swept away, like the wood­sheds where were kept the stove-wood and kind­ling that the “girl” and the “hired-man” al­ways quar­relled over: who should fetch it. Horse and stable and wood­shed, and the whole tribe of the “hired-man,” all are gone. They went quickly, yet so si­lently that we whom they served have not yet really no­ticed that they are van­ished.

So with other van­ish­ings. There were the little bunty street­cars on the long, single track that went its troubled way among the cobble­stones. At the rear door of the car there was no plat­form, but a step where pas­sen­gers clung in wet clumps when the weather was bad and the car crowded. The pat­rons—if not too ab­sent­minded—put their fares into a slot; and no con­ductor paced the heav­ing floor, but the driver would rap re­mind­ingly with his el­bow upon the glass of the door to his little open plat­form if the nick­els and the pas­sen­gers did not ap­pear to co­in­cide in num­ber. A lone mule drew the car, and some­times drew it off the track, when the pas­sen­gers would get out and push it on again. They really owed it cour­tes­ies like this, for the car was gen­i­ally ac­com­mod­at­ing: a lady could whistle to it from an up­stairs win­dow, and the car would halt at once and wait for her while she shut the win­dow, put on her hat and cloak, went down­stairs, found an um­brella, told the “girl” what to have for din­ner, and came forth from the house.

The pre­vi­ous pas­sen­gers made little ob­jec­tion to such gal­lantry on the part of the car: they were wont to ex­pect as much for them­selves on like oc­ca­sion. In good weather the mule pulled the car a mile in a little less than twenty minutes, un­less the stops were too long; but when the trol­ley-car came, do­ing its mile in five minutes and bet­ter, it would wait for nobody. Nor could its pas­sen­gers have en­dured such a thing, be­cause the faster they were car­ried the less time they had to spare! In the days be­fore deathly con­triv­ances hustled them through their lives, and when they had no tele­phones—an­other an­cient va­cancy pro­foundly re­spons­ible for leis­ure—they had time for everything: time to think, to talk, time to read, time to wait for a lady!

They even had time to dance “square dances,” quad­rilles, and “lan­cers”; they also danced the “rac­quette,” and schot­tisches and pol­kas, and such whims as the “Port­land Fancy.” They pushed back the slid­ing doors between the “par­lour” and the “sit­ting room,” tacked down crash over the car­pets, hired a few palms in green tubs, sta­tioned three or four Italian mu­si­cians un­der the stair­way in the “front hall”—and had great nights!

But these people were gay­est on New Year’s Day; they made it a true fest­ival—some­thing no longer known. The wo­men gathered to “as­sist” the host­esses who kept “Open House”; and the care­free men, dan­di­fied and per­fumed, went about in sleighs, or in car­riages and pon­der­ous “hacks,” go­ing from Open House to Open House, leav­ing fant­astic cards in fancy bas­kets as they entered each door­way, and emer­ging a little later, more care­free than ever, if the punch had been to their lik­ing. It al­ways was, and, as the af­ter­noon wore on, ped­es­tri­ans saw great ges­tur­ing and wav­ing of skin­tight lemon gloves, while ru­in­ous frag­ments of song were dropped be­hind as the car­riages rolled up and down the streets.

“Keep­ing Open House” was a merry cus­tom; it has gone, like the all-day pic­nic in the woods, and like that pret­ti­est of all van­ished cus­toms, the ser­en­ade. When a lively girl vis­ited the town she did not long go un­ser­en­aded, though a vis­itor was not in­deed needed to ex­cuse a ser­en­ade. Of a sum­mer night, young men would bring an or­ches­tra un­der a pretty girl’s win­dow—or, it might be, her father’s, or that of an ail­ing maiden aunt—and flute, harp, fiddle, cello, cor­net, and bass viol would presently re­lease to the dul­cet stars such melod­ies as sing through “You’ll Re­mem­ber Me,” “I Dreamt That I Dwelt in Marble Halls,” “Sil­ver Threads Among the Gold,” “Kath­leen Ma­vourneen,” or “The Sol­dier’s Farewell.”

They had other mu­sic to of­fer, too, for these were the happy days of Oliv­ette and The Ma­cotte and The Chimes of Nor­mandy and Giroflé-Giro­fla and Fra Diavola. Bet­ter than that, these were the days of Pin­a­fore and The Pir­ates of Pen­zance and of Pa­tience. This last was needed in the Mid­land town, as else­where, for the “aes­thetic move­ment” had reached thus far from Lon­don, and ter­rible things were be­ing done to hon­est old fur­niture. Maidens sawed what-nots in two, and gil­ded the re­mains. They took the rock­ers from rock­ing-chairs and gil­ded the in­ad­equate legs; they gil­ded the easels that sup­por­ted the crayon por­traits of their de­ceased uncles. In the new spirit of art they sold old clocks for new, and threw wax flowers and wax fruit, and the pro­tect­ing glass domes, out upon the trash-heap. They filled vases with pea­cock feath­ers, or cat­tails, or sumac, or sun­flowers, and set the vases upon man­tel­pieces and marble-topped tables. They em­broidered dais­ies (which they called “mar­guer­ites”) and sun­flowers and sumac and cat­tails and owls and pea­cock feath­ers upon plush screens and upon heavy cush­ions, then strewed these cush­ions upon floors where fath­ers fell over them in the dark. In the teeth of sin­ful oratory, the daugh­ters went on em­broid­er­ing: they em­broidered dais­ies and sun­flowers and sumac and cat­tails and owls and pea­cock feath­ers upon “throws” which they had the cour­age to drape upon horse­hair so­fas; they painted owls and dais­ies and sun­flowers and sumac and cat­tails and pea­cock feath­ers upon tam­bour­ines. They hung Chinese um­brel­las of pa­per to the chan­deliers; they nailed pa­per fans to the walls. They “stud­ied” paint­ing on china, these girls; they sang Tosti’s new songs; they some­times still prac­ticed the old, gen­teel habit of lady-faint­ing, and were most charm­ing of all when they drove forth, three or four in a bas­ket phaeton, on a spring morn­ing.

Cro­quet and the mild­est arch­ery ever known were the sports of people still young and act­ive enough for so much ex­er­tion; middle-age played eu­chre. There was a theatre, next door to the Am­ber­son Hotel, and when Ed­win Booth came for a night, every­body who could af­ford to buy a ticket was there, and all the “hacks” in town were hired. The Black Crook also filled the theatre, but the audi­ence then was al­most en­tirely of men who looked un­easy as they left for home when the fi­nal cur­tain fell upon the shock­ing girls dressed as fair­ies. But the theatre did not of­ten do so well; the people of the town were still too thrifty.

They were thrifty be­cause they were the sons or grand­sons of the “early set­tlers,” who had opened the wil­der­ness and had reached it from the East and the South with wag­ons and axes and guns, but with no money at all. The pi­on­eers were thrifty or they would have per­ished: they had to store away food for the winter, or goods to trade for food, and they of­ten feared they had not stored enough—they left traces of that fear in their sons and grand­sons. In the minds of most of these, in­deed, their thrift was next to their re­li­gion: to save, even for the sake of sav­ing, was their earli­est les­son and dis­cip­line. No mat­ter how pros­per­ous they were, they could not spend money either upon “art,” or upon mere lux­ury and en­ter­tain­ment, without a sense of sin.

Against so homespun a back­ground the mag­ni­fi­cence of the Am­ber­sons was as con­spicu­ous as a brass band at a fu­neral. Ma­jor Am­ber­son bought two hun­dred acres of land at the end of Na­tional Av­enue; and through this tract he built broad streets and cross-streets; paved them with ce­dar block, and curbed them with stone. He set up foun­tains, here and there, where the streets in­ter­sec­ted, and at sym­met­rical in­ter­vals placed cast-iron statues, painted white, with their titles clear upon the ped­es­tals: Min­erva, Mer­cury, Her­cules, Venus, Gla­di­ator, Em­peror Augus­tus, Fisher Boy, Stag­hound, Mastiff, Grey­hound, Fawn, Ante­lope, Woun­ded Doe, and Woun­ded Lion. Most of the forest trees had been left to flour­ish still, and, at some dis­tance, or by moon­light, the place was in truth beau­ti­ful; but the ar­dent cit­izen, lov­ing to see his city grow, wanted neither dis­tance nor moon­light. He had not seen Ver­sailles, but, stand­ing be­fore the Foun­tain of Nep­tune in Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion, at bright noon, and quot­ing the fa­vour­ite com­par­ison of the local news­pa­pers, he de­clared Ver­sailles out­done. All this Art showed a profit from the start, for the lots sold well and there was some­thing like a rush to build in the new Ad­di­tion. Its main thor­ough­fare, an ob­lique con­tinu­ation of Na­tional Av­enue, was called Am­ber­son Boulevard, and here, at the junc­ture of the new Boulevard and the Av­enue, Ma­jor Am­ber­son re­served four acres for him­self, and built his new house—the Am­ber­son Man­sion, of course.

This house was the pride of the town. Faced with stone as far back as the din­ing-room win­dows, it was a house of arches and tur­rets and gird­ling stone porches: it had the first porte-cochère seen in that town. There was a cent­ral “front hall” with a great black wal­nut stair­way, and open to a green glass sky­light called the “dome,” three stor­ies above the ground floor. A ball­room oc­cu­pied most of the third story; and at one end of it was a carved wal­nut gal­lery for the mu­si­cians. Cit­izens told strangers that the cost of all this black wal­nut and wood­carving was sixty thou­sand dol­lars. “Sixty thou­sand dol­lars for the wood­work alone! Yes, sir, and hard­wood floors all over the house! Turk­ish rugs and no car­pets at all, ex­cept a Brus­sels car­pet in the front par­lour—I hear they call it the ‘re­cep­tion-room.’ Hot and cold wa­ter up­stairs and down, and sta­tion­ary wash­stands in every last bed­room in the place! Their side­board’s built right into the house and goes all the way across one end of the din­ing room. It isn’t wal­nut, it’s solid ma­hogany! Not ven­eer­ing—solid ma­hogany! Well, sir, I pre­sume the Pres­id­ent of the Un­ited States would be tickled to swap the White House for the new Am­ber­son Man­sion, if the Ma­jor’d give him the chance—but by the Almighty Dol­lar, you bet your sweet life the Ma­jor wouldn’t!”

The vis­itor to the town was cer­tain to re­ceive fur­ther en­light­en­ment, for there was one form of en­ter­tain­ment never omit­ted: he was al­ways pat­ri­ot­ic­ally taken for “a little drive around our city,” even if his host had to hire a hack, and the cli­max of the dis­play was the Am­ber­son Man­sion. “Look at that green­house they’ve put up there in the side yard,” the es­cort would con­tinue. “And look at that brick stable! Most folks would think that stable plenty big enough and good enough to live in; it’s got run­ning wa­ter and four rooms up­stairs for two hired men and one of ’em’s fam­ily to live in. They keep one hired man loafin’ in the house, and they got a mar­ried hired man out in the stable, and his wife does the wash­ing. They got box-stalls for four horses, and they keep a coupay, and some new kinds of fancy rigs you never saw the beat of! ‘Carts’ they call two of ’em—way up in the air they are—too high for me! I guess they got every new kind of fancy rig in there that’s been in­ven­ted. And har­ness—well, every­body in town can tell when Am­ber­sons are out driv­ing after dark, by the jingle. This town never did see so much style as Am­ber­sons are put­ting on, these days; and I guess it’s go­ing to be ex­pens­ive, be­cause a lot of other folks’ll try to keep up with ’em. The Ma­jor’s wife and the daugh­ter’s been to Europe, and my wife tells me since they got back they make tea there every af­ter­noon about five o’clock, and drink it. Seems to me it would go against a per­son’s stom­ach, just be­fore sup­per like that, and any­way tea isn’t fit for much—not un­less you’re sick or some­thing. My wife says Am­ber­sons don’t make lettuce salad the way other people do; they don’t chop it up with sugar and vin­egar at all. They pour olive oil on it with their vin­egar, and they have it sep­ar­ate—not along with the rest of the meal. And they eat these olives, too: green things they are, some­thing like a hard plum, but a friend of mine told me they tasted a good deal like a bad hick­ory-nut. My wife says she’s go­ing to buy some; you got to eat nine and then you get to like ’em, she says. Well, I wouldn’t eat nine bad hick­ory-nuts to get to like them, and I’m go­ing to let these olives alone. Kind of a wo­man’s dish, any­way, I sus­pect, but most every­body’ll be makin’ a stag­ger to worm through nine of ’em, now Am­ber­sons brought ’em to town. Yes, sir, the rest’ll eat ’em, whether they get sick or not! Looks to me like some people in this city’d be will­ing to go crazy if they thought that would help ’em to be as high-toned as Am­ber­sons. Old Aleck Minafer—he’s about the closest old codger we got—he come in my of­fice the other day, and he pretty near had a stroke tel­lin’ me about his daugh­ter Fanny. Seems Miss Isa­bel Am­ber­son’s got some kind of a dog—they call it a Saint Bern­ard—and Fanny was bound to have one, too. Well, old Aleck told her he didn’t like dogs ex­cept rat-ter­ri­ers, be­cause a rat-ter­rier cleans up the mice, but she kept on at him, and fi­nally he said all right she could have one. Then, by Ge­orge! she says Am­ber­sons bought their dog, and you can’t get one without pay­ing for it: they cost from fifty to a hun­dred dol­lars up! Old Aleck wanted to know if I ever heard of any­body buyin’ a dog be­fore, be­cause, of course, even a New­found­land or a set­ter you can usu­ally get some­body to give you one. He says he saw some sense in payin’ a nig­ger a dime, or even a quarter, to drown a dog for you, but to pay out fifty dol­lars and maybe more—well, sir, he like to choked him­self to death, right there in my of­fice! Of course every­body real­izes that Ma­jor Am­ber­son is a fine busi­ness man, but what with throwin’ money around for dogs, and every which and what, some think all this style’s bound to break him up, if his fam­ily don’t quit!”

One cit­izen, hav­ing thus dis­coursed to a vis­itor, came to a thought­ful pause, and then ad­ded, “Does seem pretty much like squan­der­ing, yet when you see that dog out walk­ing with this Miss Isa­bel, he seems worth the money.”

“What’s she look like?”

“Well, sir,” said the cit­izen, “she’s not more than just about eight­een or maybe nine­teen years old, and I don’t know as I know just how to put it—but she’s kind of a de­light­ful lookin’ young lady!”

II

Another cit­izen said an elo­quent thing about Miss Isa­bel Am­ber­son’s looks. This was Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster, the fore­most lit­er­ary au­thor­ity and in­tel­lec­tual leader of the com­munity—for both the daily news­pa­pers thus de­scribed Mrs. Foster when she foun­ded the Wo­men’s Tennyson Club; and her word upon art, let­ters, and the drama was ac­cep­ted more as law than as opin­ion. Nat­ur­ally, when Hazel Kirke fi­nally reached the town, after its long tri­umph in lar­ger places, many people waited to hear what Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster thought of it be­fore they felt war­ran­ted in ex­press­ing any es­tim­ate of the play. In fact, some of them waited in the lobby of the theatre, as they came out, and formed an in­quir­ing group about her.

“I didn’t see the play,” she in­formed them.

“What! Why, we saw you, right in the middle of the fourth row!”

“Yes,” she said, smil­ing, “but I was sit­ting just be­hind Isa­belle Am­ber­son. I couldn’t look at any­thing ex­cept her wavy brown hair and the won­der­ful back of her neck.”

The in­eligible young men of the town (they were all in­eligible) were un­able to con­tent them­selves with the view that had so charmed Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster: they spent their time strug­gling to keep Miss Am­ber­son’s face turned to­ward them. She turned it most of­ten, ob­serv­ers said, to­ward two: one ex­cel­ling in the gen­eral struggle by his sparkle, and the other by that win­ning if not win­some old trait, per­sist­ence. The spark­ling gen­tle­man “led ger­mans” with her, and sent son­nets to her with his bou­quets—son­nets lack­ing neither mu­sic nor wit. He was gen­er­ous, poor, well-dressed, and his amaz­ing per­suas­ive­ness was one reason why he was al­ways in debt. No one doubted that he would be able to per­suade Isa­bel, but he un­for­tu­nately joined too merry a party one night, and, dur­ing a moon­light ser­en­ade upon the lawn be­fore the Am­ber­son Man­sion, was eas­ily iden­ti­fied from the win­dows as the per­son who stepped through the bass viol and had to be as­sisted to a wait­ing car­riage. One of Miss Am­ber­son’s broth­ers was among the ser­en­aders, and, when the party had dis­persed, re­mained propped against the front door in a state of help­less live­li­ness; the Ma­jor go­ing down in a dress­ing-gown and slip­pers to bring him in, and scold­ing mildly, while im­per­fectly con­ceal­ing strong im­pulses to laughter. Miss Am­ber­son also laughed at this brother, the next day, but for the suitor it was a dif­fer­ent mat­ter: she re­fused to see him when he called to apo­lo­gize. “You seem to care a great deal about bass vi­ols!” he wrote her. “I prom­ise never to break an­other.” She made no re­sponse to the note, un­less it was an an­swer, two weeks later, when her en­gage­ment was an­nounced. She took the per­sist­ent one, Wil­bur Minafer, no breaker of bass vi­ols or of hearts, no ser­en­ader at all.

A few people, who al­ways foresaw everything, claimed that they were not sur­prised, be­cause though Wil­bur Minafer “might not be an Apollo, as it were,” he was “a steady young busi­ness man, and a good church­goer,” and Isa­bel Am­ber­son was “pretty sens­ible—for such a showy girl.” But the en­gage­ment astoun­ded the young people, and most of their fath­ers and moth­ers, too; and as a topic it sup­planted lit­er­at­ure at the next meet­ing of the Wo­men’s Tennyson Club.

“Wil­bur Minafer!” a mem­ber cried, her in­flec­tion seem­ing to im­ply that Wil­bur’s crime was ex­plained by his sur­name. “Wil­bur Minafer! It’s the queerest thing I ever heard! To think of her tak­ing Wil­bur Minafer, just be­cause a man any wo­man would like a thou­sand times bet­ter was a little wild one night at a ser­en­ade!”

“No,” said Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster. “It isn’t that. It isn’t even be­cause she’s afraid he’d be a dis­sip­ated hus­band and she wants to be safe. It isn’t be­cause she’s re­li­gious or hates wild­ness; it isn’t even be­cause she hates wild­ness in him.”

“Well, but look how she’s thrown him over for it.”

“No, that wasn’t her reason,” said the wise Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster. “If men only knew it—and it’s a good thing they don’t—a wo­man doesn’t really care much about whether a man’s wild or not, if it doesn’t af­fect her­self, and Isa­bel Am­ber­son doesn’t care a thing!”

“Mrs. Foster!”

“No, she doesn’t. What she minds is his mak­ing a clown of him­self in her front yard! It made her think he didn’t care much about her. She’s prob­ably mis­taken, but that’s what she thinks, and it’s too late for her to think any­thing else now, be­cause she’s go­ing to be mar­ried right away—the in­vit­a­tions will be out next week. It’ll be a big Am­ber­son-style thing, raw oysters float­ing in scooped-out blocks of ice and a band from out-of-town—cham­pagne, showy presents; a co­lossal present from the Ma­jor. Then Wil­bur will take Isa­bel on the care­fulest little wed­ding trip he can man­age, and she’ll be a good wife to him, but they’ll have the worst spoiled lot of chil­dren this town will ever see.”

“How on earth do you make that out, Mrs. Foster?”

“She couldn’t love Wil­bur, could she?” Mrs. Foster de­man­ded, with no chal­lengers. “Well, it will all go to her chil­dren, and she’ll ruin ’em!”

The proph­et­ess proved to be mis­taken in a single de­tail merely: ex­cept for that, her foresight was ac­cur­ate. The wed­ding was of Am­ber­so­nian mag­ni­fi­cence, even to the float­ing oysters; and the Ma­jor’s co­lossal present was a set of ar­chi­tect’s designs for a house al­most as elab­or­ate and im­press­ive as the Man­sion, the house to be built in Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion by the Ma­jor. The or­ches­tra was cer­tainly not that local one which had suffered the loss of a bass viol; the mu­si­cians came, ac­cord­ing to the proph­ecy and next morn­ing’s pa­per, from afar; and at mid­night the bride was still be­ing toasted in cham­pagne, though she had de­par­ted upon her wed­ding jour­ney at ten. Four days later the pair had re­turned to town, which prompt­ness seemed fairly to demon­strate that Wil­bur had in­deed taken Isa­bel upon the care­fulest little trip he could man­age. Ac­cord­ing to every re­port, she was from the start “a good wife to him,” but here in a fi­nal de­tail the proph­ecy proved in­ac­cur­ate. Wil­bur and Isa­bel did not have chil­dren; they had only one.

“Only one,” Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster ad­mit­ted. “But I’d like to know if he isn’t spoiled enough for a whole car­load!”

Again she found none to chal­lenge her.

At the age of nine, Ge­orge Am­ber­son Minafer, the Ma­jor’s one grand­child, was a princely ter­ror, dreaded not only in Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion but in many other quar­ters through which he gal­loped on his white pony. “By golly, I guess you think you own this town!” an em­bittered la­bourer com­plained, one day, as Ge­or­gie rode the pony straight through a pile of sand the man was siev­ing. “I will when I grow up,” the un­dis­turbed child replied. “I guess my grandpa owns it now, you bet!” And the baffled work­man, hav­ing no means to con­tro­vert what seemed a mere ex­ag­ger­a­tion of the facts, could only mut­ter, “Oh, pull down your vest!”

“Don’t haf to! Doc­tor says it ain’t healthy!” the boy re­turned promptly. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll pull down my vest if you’ll wipe off your chin!”

This was stock and sten­cil: the ac­cus­tomed ar­got of street bad­in­age of the period; and in such mat­ters Ge­or­gie was an ex­pert. He had no vest to pull down; the in­con­gru­ous fact was that a fringed sash girdled the junc­ture of his vel­vet blouse and breeches, for the Fauntleroy period had set in, and Ge­or­gie’s mother had so poor an eye for ap­pro­pri­ate things, where Ge­or­gie was con­cerned, that she dressed him ac­cord­ing to the doc­trine of that school in boy dec­or­a­tion. Not only did he wear a silk sash, and silk stock­ings, and a broad lace col­lar, with his little black vel­vet suit: he had long brown curls, and of­ten came home with burrs in them.

Ex­cept upon the sur­face (which was not his own work, but his mother’s) Ge­or­gie bore no vivid re­semb­lance to the fab­ulous little Cedric. The stor­ied boy’s fam­ous “Lean on me, grand­father,” would have been dif­fi­cult to ima­gine upon the lips of Ge­or­gie. A month after his ninth birth­day an­niversary, when the Ma­jor gave him his pony, he had already be­come ac­quain­ted with the toughest boys in vari­ous dis­tant parts of the town, and had con­vinced them that the tough­ness of a rich little boy with long curls might be con­sidered in many re­spects su­per­ior to their own. He fought them, learn­ing how to go ber­serk at a cer­tain point in a fight, burst­ing into tears of an­ger, reach­ing for rocks, ut­ter­ing wailed threats of murder and at­tempt­ing to ful­fil them. Fights of­ten led to in­timacies, and he ac­quired the art of say­ing things more ex­cit­ing than “Don’t haf to!” and “Doc­tor says it ain’t healthy!” Thus, on a sum­mer af­ter­noon, a strange boy, sit­ting bored upon the gate­post of the Rev­er­end Mal­loch Smith, be­held Ge­orge Am­ber­son Minafer rap­idly ap­proach­ing on his white pony, and was im­pelled by bit­ter­ness to shout: “Shoot the ole jack­ass! Look at the girly curls! Say, bub, where’d you steal your mother’s ole sash!”

“Your sis­ter stole it for me!” Ge­or­gie in­stantly replied, check­ing the pony. “She stole it off our clo’es-line an’ gave it to me.”

“You go get your hair cut!” said the stranger hotly. “Yah! I haven’t got any sis­ter!”

“I know you haven’t at home,” Ge­or­gie re­spon­ded. “I mean the one that’s in jail.”

“I dare you to get down off that pony!”

Ge­or­gie jumped to the ground, and the other boy des­cen­ded from the Rev­er­end Mr. Smith’s gate­post—but he des­cen­ded in­side the gate. “I dare you out­side that gate,” said Ge­or­gie.

“Yah! I dare you half way here. I dare you—”

But these were luck­less chal­lenges, for Ge­or­gie im­me­di­ately vaul­ted the fence—and four minutes later Mrs. Mal­loch Smith, hear­ing strange noises, looked forth from a win­dow; then screamed, and dashed for the pas­tor’s study. Mr. Mal­loch Smith, that grim-bearded Meth­od­ist, came to the front yard and found his vis­it­ing nephew be­ing rap­idly pre­pared by Master Minafer to serve as a prin­cipal fig­ure in a pa­geant of mas­sacre. It was with great phys­ical dif­fi­culty that Mr. Smith man­aged to give his nephew a chance to es­cape into the house, for Ge­or­gie was hard and quick, and, in such mat­ters, re­mark­ably in­tense; but the min­is­ter, after a grot­esque tussle, got him sep­ar­ated from his op­pon­ent, and shook him.

“You stop that, you!” Ge­or­gie cried fiercely; and wrenched him­self away. “I guess you don’t know who I am!”

“Yes, I do know!” the angered Mr. Smith re­tor­ted. “I know who you are, and you’re a dis­grace to your mother! Your mother ought to be ashamed of her­self to al­low—”

“Shut up about my mother bein’ ashamed of her­self!”

Mr. Smith, ex­as­per­ated, was un­able to close the dia­logue with dig­nity. “She ought to be ashamed,” he re­peated. “A wo­man that lets a bad boy like you—”

But Ge­or­gie had reached his pony and moun­ted. Be­fore set­ting off at his ac­cus­tomed gal­lop, he paused to in­ter­rupt the Rev­er­end Mal­loch Smith again. “You pull down your vest, you ole Bil­ly­goat, you!” he shouted, dis­tinctly. “Pull down your vest, wipe off your chin—an’ go to hell!”

Such pre­co­city is less un­usual, even in chil­dren of the Rich, than most grown people ima­gine. However, it was a new ex­per­i­ence for the Rev­er­end Mal­loch Smith, and left him in a state of ex­cite­ment. He at once wrote a note to Ge­or­gie’s mother, de­scrib­ing the crime ac­cord­ing to his nephew’s testi­mony; and the note reached Mrs. Minafer be­fore Ge­or­gie did. When he got home she read it to him sor­row­fully.

Dear Madam:

Your son has caused a pain­ful dis­tress in my house­hold. He made an un­pro­voked at­tack upon a little nephew of mine who is vis­it­ing in my house­hold, in­sul­ted him by call­ing him vi­cious names and false­hoods, stat­ing that ladies of his fam­ily were in jail. He then tried to make his pony kick him, and when the child, who is only el­even years old, while your son is much older and stronger, en­deav­oured to avoid his in­dig­nit­ies and with­draw quietly, he pur­sued him into the en­clos­ure of my prop­erty and bru­tally as­saul­ted him. When I ap­peared upon this scene he de­lib­er­ately called in­sult­ing words to me, con­clud­ing with pro­fan­ity, such as “go to hell,” which was heard not only by my­self but by my wife and the lady who lives next door. I trust such a state of un­dis­cip­lined be­ha­viour may be remedied for the sake of the repu­ta­tion for pro­pri­ety, if noth­ing higher, of the fam­ily to which this un­ruly child be­longs.

Ge­or­gie had muttered vari­ous in­ter­rup­tions, and as she con­cluded the read­ing he said: “He’s an ole liar!”

“Ge­or­gie, you mustn’t say ‘liar.’ Isn’t this let­ter the truth?”

“Well,” said Ge­or­gie, “how old am I?”

“Ten.”

“Well, look how he says I’m older than a boy el­even years old.”

“That’s true,” said Isa­bel. “He does. But isn’t some of it true, Ge­or­gie?”

Ge­or­gie felt him­self to be in a dif­fi­culty here, and he was si­lent.

“Ge­or­gie, did you say what he says you did?”

“Which one?”

“Did you tell him to—to—Did you say, ‘Go to hell’?”

Ge­or­gie looked wor­ried for a mo­ment longer; then he brightened. “Listen here, mamma; grandpa wouldn’t wipe his shoe on that ole storyteller, would he?”

“Ge­or­gie, you mustn’t—”

“I mean: none of the Am­ber­sons wouldn’t have any­thing to do with him, would they? He doesn’t even know you, does he, mamma?”

“That hasn’t any­thing to do with it.”

“Yes, it has! I mean: none of the Am­ber­son fam­ily go to see him, and they never have him come in their house; they wouldn’t ask him to, and they prob’ly wouldn’t even let him.”

“That isn’t what we’re talk­ing about.”

“I bet,” said Ge­or­gie em­phat­ic­ally, “I bet if he wanted to see any of ’em, he’d haf to go around to the side door!”

“No, dear, they—”

“Yes, they would, mamma! So what does it mat­ter if I did say somep’m’ to him he didn’t like? That kind o’ people, I don’t see why you can’t say any­thing you want to, to ’em!”

“No, Ge­or­gie. And you haven’t answered me whether you said that dread­ful thing he says you did.”

“Well—” said Ge­or­gie. “Any­way, he said somep’m’ to me that made me mad.” And upon this point he offered no fur­ther de­tails; he would not ex­plain to his mother that what had made him “mad” was Mr. Smith’s hasty con­dem­na­tion of her­self: “Your mother ought to be ashamed,” and, “A wo­man that lets a bad boy like you—” Ge­or­gie did not even con­sider ex­cus­ing him­self by quot­ing these in­solences.

Isa­bel stroked his head. “They were ter­rible words for you to use, dear. From his let­ter he doesn’t seem a very tact­ful per­son, but—”

“He’s just rif­fraff,” said Ge­or­gie.

“You mustn’t say so,” his mother gently agreed. “Where did you learn those bad words he speaks of? Where did you hear any­one use them?”

“Well, I’ve heard ’em sev­eral places. I guess Uncle Ge­orge Am­ber­son was the first I ever heard say ’em. Uncle Ge­orge Am­ber­son said ’em to papa once. Papa didn’t like it, but Uncle Ge­orge was just laughin’ at papa, an’ then he said ’em while he was laughin’.”

“That was wrong of him,” she said, but al­most in­stinct­ively he de­tec­ted the lack of con­vic­tion in her tone. It was Isa­bel’s great fail­ing that whatever an Am­ber­son did seemed right to her, es­pe­cially if the Am­ber­son was either her brother Ge­orge, or her son Ge­orge. She knew that she should be more severe with the lat­ter now, but sever­ity with him was bey­ond her power; and the Rev­er­end Mal­loch Smith had suc­ceeded only in rous­ing her re­sent­ment against him­self. Ge­or­gie’s sym­met­rical face—al­to­gether an Am­ber­son face—had looked never more beau­ti­ful to her. It al­ways looked un­usu­ally beau­ti­ful when she tried to be severe with him. “You must prom­ise me,” she said feebly, “never to use those bad words again.”

“I prom­ise not to,” he said promptly—and he whispered an im­me­di­ate co­di­cil un­der his breath: “Un­less I get mad at some­body!” This sat­is­fied a code ac­cord­ing to which, in his own sin­cere be­lief, he never told lies.

“That’s a good boy,” she said, and he ran out to the yard, his pun­ish­ment over. Some ad­mir­ing friends were gathered there; they had heard of his ad­ven­ture, knew of the note, and were wait­ing to see what was go­ing to “hap­pen” to him. They hoped for an ac­count of things, and also that he would al­low them to “take turns” rid­ing his pony to the end of the al­ley and back.

They were really his hench­men: Ge­or­gie was a lord among boys. In fact, he was a per­son­age among cer­tain sorts of grown people, and was of­ten fawned upon; the al­ley negroes de­lighted in him, chuckled over him, flattered him slav­ishly. For that mat­ter, he of­ten heard well-dressed people speak­ing of him ad­mir­ingly: a group of ladies once gathered about him on the pave­ment where he was spin­ning a top. “I know this is Ge­or­gie!” one ex­claimed, and turned to the oth­ers with the im­press­ive­ness of a show­man. “Ma­jor Am­ber­son’s only grand­child!” The oth­ers said, “It is?” and made click­ing sounds with their mouths; two of them loudly whis­per­ing, “So hand­some!”

Ge­or­gie, an­noyed be­cause they kept stand­ing upon the circle he had chalked for his top, looked at them coldly and offered a sug­ges­tion:

“Oh, go hire a hall!”

As an Am­ber­son, he was already a pub­lic char­ac­ter, and the story of his ad­ven­ture in the Rev­er­end Mal­loch Smith’s front yard be­came a town topic. Many people glanced at him with great dis­taste, there­after, when they chanced to en­counter him, which meant noth­ing to Ge­or­gie, be­cause he in­no­cently be­lieved most grown people to be ne­ces­sar­ily cross-look­ing as a nor­mal phe­nomenon res­ult­ing from the adult state; and he failed to com­pre­hend that the dis­taste­ful glances had any per­sonal bear­ing upon him­self. If he had per­ceived such a bear­ing, he would have been af­fected only so far, prob­ably, as to mut­ter, “Rif­fraff!” Poss­ibly he would have shouted it; and, cer­tainly, most people be­lieved a story that went round the town just after Mrs. Am­ber­son’s fu­neral, when Ge­or­gie was el­even. Ge­or­gie was re­por­ted to have differed with the un­der­taker about the seat­ing of the fam­ily; his in­dig­nant voice had be­come aud­ible: “Well, who is the most im­port­ant per­son at my own grand­mother’s fu­neral?” And later he had pro­jec­ted his head from the win­dow of the fore­most mourn­ers’ car­riage, as the un­der­taker happened to pass.

“Rif­fraff!”

There were people—grown people they were—who ex­pressed them­selves long­ingly: they did hope to live to see the day, they said, when that boy would get his comeup­pance! (They used that hon­est word, so much bet­ter than “deserts,” and not un­til many years later to be more clum­sily rendered as “what is com­ing to him.”) So­mething was bound to take him down, some day, and they only wanted to be there! But Ge­or­gie heard noth­ing of this, and the yearners for his tak­ing down went un­sat­is­fied, while their yearn­ing grew the greater as the happy day of ful­fil­ment was longer and longer post­poned. His grandeur was not di­min­ished by the Mal­loch Smith story; the rather it was in­creased, and among other chil­dren (es­pe­cially among little girls) there was ad­ded to the prestige of his gil­ded po­s­i­tion that diabol­ical glam­our which must in­ev­it­ably at­tend a boy who has told a min­is­ter to go to hell.

III

Until he reached the age of twelve, Ge­or­gie’s edu­ca­tion was a do­mestic pro­cess; tu­tors came to the house; and those cit­izens who yearned for his tak­ing down of­ten said: “Just wait till he has to go to pub­lic school; then he’ll get it!” But at twelve Ge­or­gie was sent to a private school in the town, and there came from this small and de­pend­ent in­sti­tu­tion no re­port, or even ru­mour, of Ge­or­gie’s get­ting any­thing that he was thought to de­serve; there­fore the yearn­ing still per­sisted, though grow­ing gaunt with feed­ing upon it­self. For, al­though Ge­or­gie’s pom­pos­it­ies and im­pudence in the little school were of­ten al­most un­bear­able, the teach­ers were fas­cin­ated by him. They did not like him—he was too ar­rog­ant for that—but he kept them in such a state of emo­tion that they thought more about him than they did about all of the other ten pu­pils. The emo­tion he kept them in was usu­ally one res­ult­ing from in­jured self-re­spect, but some­times it was dazzled ad­mir­a­tion. So far as their con­scien­tious ob­ser­va­tion went, he “stud­ied” his les­sons spar­ingly; but some­times, in class, he flashed an ad­mir­able an­swer, with a com­pre­hen­sion not of­ten shown by the pu­pils they taught; and he passed his ex­am­in­a­tions eas­ily. In all, without dis­cern­ible ef­fort, he ac­quired at this school some rudi­ments of a lib­eral edu­ca­tion and learned noth­ing whatever about him­self.

The yearners were still yearn­ing when Ge­or­gie, at six­teen, was sent away to a great “Prep School.” “Now,” they said brightly, “he’ll get it! He’ll find him­self among boys just as im­port­ant in their home towns as he is, and they’ll knock the stuff­ing out of him when he puts on his airs with them! Oh, but that would be worth some­thing to see!” They were mis­taken, it ap­peared, for when Ge­or­gie re­turned, a few months later, he still seemed to have the same stuff­ing. He had been de­por­ted by the au­thor­it­ies, the of­fense be­ing stated as “in­solence and pro­fan­ity”; in fact, he had given the prin­cipal of the school in­struc­tions al­most identical with those formerly ob­jec­ted to by the Rev­er­end Mal­loch Smith.

But he had not got his comeup­pance, and those who coun­ted upon it were em­bittered by his ap­pear­ance upon the down­town streets driv­ing a dog­cart at crim­inal speed, mak­ing ped­es­tri­ans re­treat from the cross­ings, and be­hav­ing gen­er­ally as if he “owned the earth.” A dis­gus­ted hard­ware dealer of middle age, one of those who hungered for Ge­or­gie’s down­fall, was thus driven back upon the side­walk to avoid be­ing run over, and so far for­got him­self as to make use of the pet street in­sult of the year: “Got ’ny sense! See here, bub, does your mother know you’re out?”

Ge­or­gie, without even seem­ing to look at him, flicked the long lash of his whip dex­ter­ously, and a little spurt of dust came from the hard­ware man’s trousers, not far be­low the waist. He was not made of hard­ware: he raved, look­ing for a mis­sile; then, find­ing none, com­manded him­self suf­fi­ciently to shout after the rapid dog­cart: “Turn down your pants, you would-be dude! Rain­ing in dear ole Lun­non! Git off the earth!”

Ge­or­gie gave him no en­cour­age­ment to think that he was heard. The dog­cart turned the next corner, caus­ing in­dig­na­tion there, like­wise, and, hav­ing pro­ceeded some dis­tance farther, hal­ted in front of the “Am­ber­son Block”—an old-fash­ioned four-story brick war­ren of law­yers of­fices, in­sur­ance and real es­tate of­fices, with a “drygoods store” oc­cupy­ing the ground floor. Ge­or­gie tied his lathered trot­ter to a tele­graph pole, and stood for a mo­ment look­ing at the build­ing crit­ic­ally: it seemed shabby, and he thought his grand­father ought to re­place it with a four­teen-story sky­scraper, or even a higher one, such as he had lately seen in New York—when he stopped there for a few days of re­cre­ation and rest on his way home from the be­reaved school. About the entry­way to the stairs were vari­ous tin signs, an­noun­cing the oc­cu­pa­tion and loc­a­tion of up­per-floor ten­ants, and Ge­or­gie de­cided to take some of these with him if he should ever go to col­lege. However, he did not stop to col­lect them at this time, but climbed the worn stairs—there was no el­ev­ator—to the fourth floor, went down a dark cor­ridor, and rapped three times upon a door. It was a mys­ter­i­ous door, its up­per half, of opaque glass, bear­ing no sign to state the busi­ness or pro­fes­sion of the oc­cu­pants within; but over­head, upon the lin­tel, four let­ters had been smear­ingly in­scribed, partly with purple ink and partly with a soft lead pen­cil, “FOTA” and upon the plaster wall, above the lin­tel, there was a draw­ing dear to male ad­oles­cence: a skull and cross­bones.

Three raps, sim­ilar to Ge­or­gie’s, soun­ded from within the room. Ge­or­gie then rapped four times; the rap­per within the room rapped twice, and Ge­or­gie rapped seven times. This ended pre­cau­tion­ary meas­ures; and a well-dressed boy of six­teen opened the door; whereupon Ge­or­gie entered quickly, and the door was closed be­hind him. Seven boys of con­genial age were seated in a semi­cir­cu­lar row of dam­aged of­fice chairs, fa­cing a plat­form whereon stood a sol­emn, red-haired young per­son­age with a table be­fore him. At one end of the room there was a battered side­board, and upon it were some empty beer bottles, a to­bacco can about two-thirds full, with a web of mold over the sur­face of the to­bacco, a dusty cab­inet pho­to­graph (not in­scribed) of Miss Lil­lian Rus­sell, sev­eral withered old pickles, a case­knife, and a half-pet­ri­fied sec­tion of icing-cake on a sooty plate. At the other end of the room were two rick­ety card-tables and a stand of book­shelves where were dis­played un­der dust four or five small volumes of M. Guy de Maupassant’s stor­ies, Robin­son Cru­soe, Sap­pho, Mr. Barnes of New York, a work by Gio­vanni Boc­cac­cio, a Bible, The Ar­a­bian Nights’ En­ter­tain­ment, Stud­ies of the Hu­man Form Div­ine, The Little Min­is­ter, and a clut­ter of monthly magazines and il­lus­trated weeklies of about that crisp­ness one finds in such art­icles upon a doc­tor’s ante­room table. Upon the wall, above the side­board, was an old framed litho­graph of Miss Della Fox in Wang; over the book­shelves there was an­other litho­graph pur­port­ing to rep­res­ent Mr. John L. Sul­li­van in a box­ing cos­tume, and be­side it a halftone re­pro­duc­tion of A Read­ing From Horner. The fi­nal dec­or­a­tion con­sisted of dam­aged papi­er­mache—a round shield with two battle-axes and two cross-hil­ted swords, upon the wall over the little plat­form where stood the red-haired presid­ing of­ficer. He ad­dressed Ge­or­gie in a ser­i­ous voice:

“Wel­come, Friend of the Ace.”

“Wel­come, Friend of the Ace,” Ge­or­gie re­spon­ded, and all of the other boys re­peated the words, “Wel­come, Friend of the Ace.”

“Take your seat in the secret semi­circle,” said the presid­ing of­ficer. “We will now pro­ceed to—”

But Ge­or­gie was dis­posed to be in­formal. He in­ter­rup­ted, turn­ing to the boy who had ad­mit­ted him: “Look here, Charlie John­son, what’s Fred Kin­ney do­ing in the pres­id­ent’s chair? That’s my place, isn’t it? What you men been up to here, any­how? Didn’t you all agree I was to be pres­id­ent just the same, even if I was away at school?”

“Well—” said Charlie John­son un­eas­ily. “Listen! I didn’t have much to do with it. Some of the other mem­bers thought that long as you weren’t in town or any­thing, and Fred gave the side­board, why—”

Mr. Kin­ney, presid­ing, held in his hand, in lieu of a gavel, and con­sidered much more im­press­ive, a Civil War relic known as a “horse-pis­tol.” He rapped loudly for or­der. “All Friends of the Ace will take their seats!” he said sharply. “I’m pres­id­ent of the FOTA now, Ge­orge Minafer, and don’t you for­get it! You and Charlie John­son sit down, be­cause I was elec­ted per­fectly fair, and we’re goin’ to hold a meet­ing here.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” said Ge­orge skep­tic­ally.

Charlie John­son thought to mol­lify him. “Well, didn’t we call this meet­ing just es­pe­cially be­cause you told us to? You said your­self we ought to have a kind of cel­eb­ra­tion be­cause you’ve got back to town, Ge­orge, and that’s what we’re here for now, and everything. What do you care about be­ing pres­id­ent? All it amounts to is just call­ing the roll and—”

The pres­id­ent de facto hammered the table. “This meet­ing will now pro­ceed to—”

“No, it won’t,” said Ge­orge, and he ad­vanced to the desk, laugh­ing con­temp­tu­ously. “Get off that plat­form.”

“This meet­ing will come to or­der!” Mr. Kin­ney com­manded fiercely.

“You put down that gavel,” said Ge­orge. “Whose is it, I’d like to know? It be­longs to my grand­father, and you quit ham­mer­ing it that way or you’ll break it, and I’ll have to knock your head off.”

“This meet­ing will come to or­der! I was leg­ally elec­ted here, and I’m not go­ing to be bull­dozed!”

“All right,” said Ge­or­gie. “You’re pres­id­ent. Now we’ll hold an­other elec­tion.”

“We will not!” Fred Kin­ney shouted. “We’ll have our reg’lar meet­ing, and then we’ll play eu­chre a nickel a corner, what we’re here for. This meet­ing will now come to ord—”

Ge­or­gie ad­dressed the mem­bers. “I’d like to know who got up this thing in the first place,” he said. “Who’s the founder of the FOTA, if you please? Who got this room rent free? Who got the jan­itor to let us have most of this fur­niture? You sup­pose you could keep this club­room a minute if I told my grand­father I didn’t want it for a lit­er­ary club any more? I’d like to say a word on how you mem­bers been act­ing, too! When I went away I said I didn’t care if you had a vice-pres­id­ent or some­thing while I was gone, but here I hardly turned my back and you had to go and elect Fred Kin­ney pres­id­ent! Well, if that’s what you want, you can have it. I was go­ing to have a little cel­eb­ra­tion down here some night pretty soon, and bring some port wine, like we drink at school in our crowd there, and I was go­ing to get my grand­father to give the club an ex­tra room across the hall, and prob’ly I could get my Uncle Ge­orge to give us his old bil­liard table, be­cause he’s got a new one, and the club could put it in the other room. Well, you got a new pres­id­ent now!” Here Ge­or­gie moved to­ward the door and his tone be­came plaint­ive, though un­deni­ably there was dis­dain be­neath his sor­row. “I guess all I bet­ter do is—resign!”

And he opened the door, ap­par­ently in­tend­ing to with­draw.

“All in fa­vour of hav­ing a new elec­tion,” Charlie John­son shouted hast­ily, “say, ‘Aye’!”

“Aye” was said by every­one present ex­cept Mr. Kin­ney, who began a hot protest, but it was im­me­di­ately smothered.

“All in fa­vour of me be­ing pres­id­ent in­stead of Fred Kin­ney,” shouted Ge­or­gie, “say ‘Aye.’ The ‘Ayes’ have it!”

“I resign,” said the red­headed boy, gulp­ing as he des­cen­ded from the plat­form. “I resign from the club!”

Hot-eyed, he found his hat and de­par­ted, jeers echo­ing after him as he plunged down the cor­ridor. Ge­or­gie stepped upon the plat­form, and took up the em­blem of of­fice.

“Ole red­head Fred’ll be around next week,” said the new chair­man. “He’ll be around boot-lickin’ to get us to take him back in again, but I guess we don’t want him: that fel­low al­ways was a trouble­maker. We will now pro­ceed with our meet­ing. Well, fel­lows, I sup­pose you want to hear from your pres­id­ent. I don’t know that I have much to say, as I have already seen most of you a few times since I got back. I had a good time at the old school, back East, but had a little trouble with the fac­ulty and came on home. My fam­ily stood by me as well as I could ask, and I ex­pect to stay right here in the old town un­til whenever I de­cide to enter col­lege. Now, I don’t sup­pose there’s any more busi­ness be­fore the meet­ing. I guess we might as well play cards. Anybody that’s game for a little quarter-limit poker or any limit they say, why I’d like to have ’em sit at the pres­id­ent’s card-table.”

When the di­ver­sions of the Friends of the Ace were con­cluded for that af­ter­noon, Ge­or­gie in­vited his chief sup­porter, Mr. Charlie John­son, to drive home with him to din­ner, and as they jingled up Na­tional Av­enue in the dog­cart, Charlie asked:

“What sort of men did you run up against at that school, Ge­orge?”

“Best crowd there: finest set of men I ever met.”

“How’d you get in with ’em?”

Ge­or­gie laughed. “I let them get in with me, Charlie,” he said in a tone of gentle ex­plan­a­tion. “It’s vul­gar to do any other way. Did I tell you the nick­name they gave me—‘King’? That was what they called me at that school, ‘King Minafer.’ ”

“How’d they hap­pen to do that?” his friend asked in­no­cently.

“Oh, dif­fer­ent things,” Ge­orge answered lightly. “Of course, any of ’em that came from any­where out in this part the coun­try knew about the fam­ily and all that, and so I sup­pose it was a good deal on ac­count of—oh, on ac­count of the fam­ily and the way I do things, most likely.”

IV

When Mr. Ge­orge Am­ber­son Minafer came home for the hol­i­days at Christ­mas­tide, in his sopho­more year, prob­ably no great change had taken place in­side him, but his ex­ter­ior was vis­ibly altered. Noth­ing about him en­cour­aged any hope that he had re­ceived his comeup­pance; on the con­trary, the yearners for that stroke of justice must yearn even more itch­ingly: the gil­ded youth’s man­ner had be­come po­lite, but his po­lite­ness was of a kind which demo­cratic people found hard to bear. In a word, M. le Due had re­turned from the gay life of the cap­ital to show him­self for a week among the loyal peas­ants be­long­ing to the old château, and their quaint habits and cos­tumes af­forded him a mild amuse­ment.

Cards were out for a ball in his hon­our, and this pa­geant of the ten­antry was held in the ball­room of the Am­ber­son Man­sion the night after his ar­rival. It was, as Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster said of Isa­bel’s wed­ding, “a big Am­ber­son-style thing,” though that wise Mrs. Henry Frank­lin Foster had long ago gone the way of all wis­dom, hav­ing stepped out of the Mid­land town, un­ques­tion­ably into heaven—a long step, but not bey­ond her powers. She had suc­cessors, but no suc­cessor; the town hav­ing grown too large to con­fess that it was in­tel­lec­tu­ally led and lit­er­ar­ily au­thor­it­ated by one per­son; and some of these suc­cessors were not in­vited to the ball, for di­men­sions were now so met­ro­pol­itan that in­tel­lec­tual lead­ers and lit­er­ary au­thor­it­ies loomed in outly­ing re­gions un­fa­mil­iar to the Am­ber­sons. However, all “old cit­izens” re­cog­niz­able as gentry re­ceived cards, and of course so did their dan­cing des­cend­ants.

The or­ches­tra and the caterer were brought from away, in the Am­ber­son man­ner, though this was really a ges­ture—per­haps one more of habit than of os­ten­ta­tion—for ser­vit­ors of gaiety as pro­fi­cient as these im­port­a­tions were nowadays to be found in the town. Even flowers and plants and roped vines were brought from afar—not, how­ever, un­til the stock of the local flor­ists proved in­suf­fi­cient to ob­lit­er­ate the in­terior struc­ture of the big house, in the Am­ber­son way. It was the last of the great, long re­membered dances that “every­body talked about”—there were get­ting to be so many people in town that no later than the next year there were too many for “every­body” to hear of even such a ball as the Am­ber­sons’.

Ge­orge, white-gloved, with a gardenia in his but­ton­hole, stood with his mother and the Ma­jor, em­bowered in the big red and gold draw­ing room down­stairs, to “re­ceive” the guests; and, stand­ing thus to­gether, the trio offered a pic­tur­esque ex­ample of good looks per­sist­ent through three gen­er­a­tions. The Ma­jor, his daugh­ter, and his grand­son were of a type all Am­ber­son: tall, straight, and reg­u­lar, with dark eyes, short noses, good chins; and the grand­father’s ex­pres­sion, no less than the grand­son’s, was one of faintly amused con­des­cen­sion. There was a dif­fer­ence, how­ever. The grand­son’s un­lined young face had noth­ing to of­fer ex­cept this con­des­cen­sion; the grand­father’s had other things to say. It was a hand­some, worldly old face, con­scious of its im­port­ance, but per­suas­ive rather than ar­rog­ant, and not without tokens of suf­fer­ings with­stood. The Ma­jor’s short white hair was par­ted in the middle, like his grand­son’s, and in all he stood as briskly equipped to the fash­ion as ex­quis­ite young Ge­orge.

Isa­bel, stand­ing between her father and her son, caused a vague amazement in the mind of the lat­ter. Her age, just un­der forty, was for Ge­orge a thought of some­thing as re­mote as the moons of Jupiter: he could not pos­sibly have con­ceived such an age ever com­ing to be his own: five years was the limit of his think­ing in time. Five years ago he had been a child not yet four­teen; and those five years were an abyss. Five years hence he would be al­most twenty-four; what the girls he knew called “one of the older men.” He could ima­gine him­self at twenty-four, but bey­ond that, his powers staggered and re­fused the task. He saw little es­sen­tial dif­fer­ence between thirty-eight and eighty-eight, and his mother was to him not a wo­man but wholly a mother. He had no per­cep­tion of her other than as an ad­junct to him­self, his mother; nor could he ima­gine her think­ing or do­ing any­thing—fall­ing in love, walk­ing with a friend, or read­ing a book—as a wo­man, and not as his mother. The wo­man, Isa­bel, was a stranger to her son; as com­pletely a stranger as if he had never in his life seen her or heard her voice. And it was to­night, while he stood with her, “re­ceiv­ing,” that he caught a dis­quiet­ing glimpse of this stranger whom he thus fleet­ingly en­countered for the first time.

Youth can­not ima­gine ro­mance apart from youth. That is why the roles of the her­oes and heroines of plays are given by the man­agers to the most youth­ful act­ors they can find among the com­pet­ent. Both middle-aged people and young people en­joy a play about young lov­ers; but only middle-aged people will tol­er­ate a play about middle-aged lov­ers; young people will not come to see such a play, be­cause, for them, middle-aged lov­ers are a joke—not a very funny one. There­fore, to bring both the middle-aged people and the young people into his house, the man­ager makes his ro­mance as young as he can. Youth will in­deed be served, and its pro­found in­stinct is to be not only scorn­fully amused but vaguely angered by middle-age ro­mance. So, stand­ing be­side his mother, Ge­orge was dis­turbed by a sud­den im­pres­sion, com­ing upon him out of nowhere, so far as he could de­tect, that her eyes were bril­liant, that she was grace­ful and youth­ful—in a word, that she was ro­mantic­ally lovely.

He had one of those curi­ous mo­ments that seem to have neither a cause nor any con­nec­tion with ac­tual things. While it las­ted, he was dis­quieted not by thoughts—for he had no def­in­ite thoughts—but by a slight emo­tion like that caused in a dream by the pres­ence of some­thing in­vis­ible sound­less, and yet fant­astic. There was noth­ing dif­fer­ent or new about his mother, ex­cept her new black and sil­ver dress: she was stand­ing there be­side him, bend­ing her head a little in her greet­ings, smil­ing the same smile she had worn for the half-hour that people had been passing the “re­ceiv­ing” group. Her face was flushed, but the room was warm; and shak­ing hands with so many people eas­ily ac­coun­ted for the pretty glow that was upon her. At any time she could have “passed” for twenty-five or twenty-six—a man of fifty would have hon­estly guessed her to be about thirty but pos­sibly two or three years younger—and though ex­traordin­ary in this, she had been ex­traordin­ary in it for years. There was noth­ing in either her looks or her man­ner to ex­plain Ge­orge’s un­com­fort­able feel­ing; and yet it in­creased, be­com­ing sud­denly a vague re­sent­ment, as if she had done some­thing un­moth­erly to him.

The fant­astic mo­ment passed; and even while it las­ted, he was do­ing his duty, greet­ing two pretty girls with whom he had grown up, as people say, and warmly as­sur­ing them that he re­membered them very well—an as­sur­ance which might have sur­prised them “in any­body but Ge­or­gie Minafer!” It seemed un­ne­ces­sary, since he had spent many hours with them no longer ago than the pre­ced­ing August. They had with them their par­ents and an uncle from out of town; and Ge­orge neg­li­gently gave the par­ents the same as­sur­ance he had given the daugh­ters, but mur­mured an­other form of greet­ing to the out-of-town uncle, whom he had never seen be­fore. This per­son Ge­orge ab­sently took note of as a “queer-look­ing duck.” Under­gradu­ates had not yet ad­op­ted “bird.” It was a period pre­vi­ous to that in which a sopho­more would have thought of the Sharon girls’ uncle as a “queer-look­ing bird,” or, per­haps a “funny-face bird.” In Ge­orge’s time, every hu­man male was to be defined, at pleas­ure, as a “duck”; but “duck” was not spoken with ad­mir­ing af­fec­tion, as in its former fem­in­ine use to sig­nify a “dear”—on the con­trary, “duck” im­plied the speaker’s per­sonal de­tach­ment and hu­mor­ous su­peri­or­ity. An in­dif­fer­ent amuse­ment was what Ge­orge felt when his mother, with a gentle em­phasis, in­ter­rup­ted his in­ter­change of cour­tes­ies with the nieces to present him to the queer-look­ing duck their uncle. This em­phasis of Isa­bel’s, though slight, en­abled Ge­orge to per­ceive that she con­sidered the queer-look­ing duck a per­son of some im­port­ance; but it was far from en­abling him to un­der­stand why. The duck par­ted his thick and longish black hair on the side; his tie was a for­get­ful look­ing thing, and his coat, though it fit­ted a good enough middle-aged fig­ure, no product of this year, or of last year either. One of his eye­brows was no­tice­ably higher than the other; and there were whim­sical lines between them, which gave him an ap­pre­hens­ive ex­pres­sion; but his ap­pre­hen­sions were evid­ently more hu­mor­ous than pro­found, for his pre­vail­ing look was that of a gen­ial man of af­fairs, not much afraid of any­thing whatever. Never­the­less, ob­serving only his un­fash­ion­able hair, his eye­brows, his pre­oc­cu­pied tie and his old coat, the olympic Ge­orge set him down as a queer-look­ing duck, and hav­ing thus com­pleted his por­trait, took no in­terest in him.

The Sharon girls passed on, tak­ing the queer-look­ing duck with them, and Ge­orge be­came pink with mor­ti­fic­a­tion as his mother called his at­ten­tion to a white-bearded guest wait­ing to shake his hand. This was Ge­orge’s great-uncle, old John Minafer: it was old John’s boast that in spite of his con­nec­tion by mar­riage with the Am­ber­sons, he never had worn and never would wear a swaller-tail coat. Mem­bers of his fam­ily had ex­er­ted their in­flu­ence use­lessly—at eighty-nine con­ser­vat­ive people sel­dom form rad­ical new habits, and old John wore his “Sunday suit” of black broad­cloth to the Am­ber­son ball. The coat was square, with skirts to the knees; old John called it a “Prince Al­bert” and was well enough pleased with it, but his great-nephew con­sidered it the next thing to an in­sult. Ge­orge’s pur­pose had been to ig­nore the man, but he had to take his hand for a mo­ment; whereupon old John began to tell Ge­orge that he was look­ing well, though there had been a time, dur­ing his fourth month, when he was so puny that nobody thought he would live. The great-nephew, in a fury of blushes, dropped old John’s hand with some vigour, and seized that of the next per­son in the line. “ ’Mem­ber you v’ry well ’ndeed!” he said fiercely.

The large room had filled, and so had the broad hall and the rooms on the other side of the hall, where there were tables for whist. The im­por­ted or­ches­tra waited in the ball­room on the third floor, but a local harp, cello, vi­olin, and flute were play­ing airs from “The Fen­cing Master” in the hall, and people were shout­ing over the mu­sic. Old John Minafer’s voice was louder and more pen­et­rat­ing than any other, be­cause he had been troubled with deaf­ness for twenty-five years, heard his own voice but faintly, and liked to hear it. “Smell o’ flowers like this al­ways puts me in mind o’ fu­ner­als,” he kept telling his niece, Fanny Minafer, who was with him; and he seemed to get a great deal of sat­is­fac­tion out of this re­minder. His trem­u­lous yet strident voice cut through the vo­lu­min­ous sound that filled the room, and he was heard every­where: “Al­ways got to think o’ fu­ner­als when I smell so many flowers!” And, as the pres­sure of people forced Fanny and him­self against the white marble man­tel­piece, he pur­sued this train of cheery thought, shout­ing, “Right here’s where the Ma­jor’s wife was laid out at her fu­neral. They had her in a good light from that big bow win­dow.” He paused to chuckle mourn­fully. “I s’pose that’s where they’ll put the Ma­jor when his time comes.”

Presently Ge­orge’s mor­ti­fic­a­tion was in­creased to hear this saw­mill dron­ing harshly from the midst of the thick­en­ing crowd: “Ain’t the dan­cin’ broke out yet, Fanny? Hoopla! Le’s push through and go see the young wo­men-folks crack their heels! Start the cir­cus! Hoopse-daisy!” Miss Fanny Minafer, in charge of the lively vet­eran, was al­most as dis­tressed as her nephew Ge­orge, but she did her duty and man­aged to get old John through the press and out to the broad stair­way, which num­bers of young people were now as­cend­ing to the ball­room. And here the saw­mill voice still rose over all oth­ers: “Solid black wal­nut every inch of it, bal­us­trades and all. Sixty thou­sand dol­lars’ worth o’ carved wood­work in the house! Like wa­ter! Spent money like wa­ter! Al­ways did! Still do! Like wa­ter! God knows where it all comes from!”

He con­tin­ued the as­cent, bark­ing and cough­ing among the gleam­ing young heads, white shoulders, jew­els, and chif­fon, like an old dog slowly swim­ming up the rap­ids of a spark­ling river; while down be­low, in the draw­ing room, Ge­orge began to re­cover from the de­grad­a­tion into which this relic of early set­tler days had dragged him. What re­stored him com­pletely was a dark-eyed little beauty of nine­teen, very know­ing in lus­trous blue and jet; at sight of this dash­ing ad­vent in the line of guests be­fore him, Ge­orge was fully an Am­ber­son again.

“Re­mem­ber you very well in­deed!” he said, his gra­cious­ness more earn­est than any he had here­to­fore dis­played. Isa­bel heard him and laughed.

“But you don’t, Ge­orge!” she said. “You don’t re­mem­ber her yet, though of course you will! Miss Mor­gan is from out of town, and I’m afraid this is the first time you’ve ever seen her. You might take her up to the dan­cing; I think you’ve pretty well done your duty here.”

“Be d’lighted,” Ge­orge re­spon­ded form­ally, and offered his arm, not with a flour­ish, cer­tainly, but with an im­press­ive­ness in­spired partly by the ap­pear­ance of the per­son to whom he offered it, partly by his be­ing the hero of this fête, and partly by his youth­ful­ness—for when man­ners are new they are apt to be elab­or­ate. The little beauty en­trus­ted her gloved fin­gers to his coat-sleeve, and they moved away to­gether.

Their pro­gress was ne­ces­sar­ily slow, and to Ge­orge’s mind it did not lack stateli­ness. How could it? Musi­cians, hired es­pe­cially for him, were sit­ting in a grove of palms in the hall and now ten­derly play­ing “Oh, Prom­ise Me” for his pleas­ur­ing; dozens and scores of flowers had been brought to life and ten­ded to this hour that they might sweeten the air for him while they died; and the evan­es­cent power that mu­sic and floral scents hold over youth stirred his ap­pre­ci­ation of strange, beau­ti­ful qual­it­ies within his own bosom: he seemed to him­self to be mys­ter­i­ously an­gelic, and about to do some­thing which would over­whelm the beau­ti­ful young stranger upon his arm.

Elderly people and middle-aged people moved away to let him pass with his hon­oured fair be­side him. Worthy middle-class creatures, they seemed, lead­ing dull lives but ap­pre­ci­at­ive of bet­ter things when they saw them—and Ge­orge’s bosom was fleet­ingly touched with a pity­ing kind­ness. And since the prim­or­dial day when caste or her­it­age first set one per­son, in his own es­teem, above his fel­low-be­ings, it is to be doubted if any­body ever felt more il­lus­tri­ous, or more neg­li­gently grand, than Ge­orge Am­ber­son Minafer felt at this party.

As he con­duc­ted Miss Mor­gan through the hall, to­ward the stair­way, they passed the open double doors of a card room, where some squad­rons of older people were pre­par­ing for ac­tion, and, lean­ing grace­fully upon the man­tel­piece of this room, a tall man, hand­some, high-mannered, and spark­lingly point-device, held laugh­ing con­verse with that queer-look­ing duck, the Sharon girls’ uncle. The tall gen­tle­man waved a gra­cious sa­luta­tion to Ge­orge, and Miss Mor­gan’s curi­os­ity was stirred. “Who is that?”

“I didn’t catch his name when my mother presen­ted him to me,” said Ge­orge. “You mean the queer-look­ing duck.”

“I mean the ar­is­to­cratic duck.”

“That’s my Uncle Ge­orge Hon­our­able Ge­orge Am­ber­son. I thought every­body knew him.”

“He looks as though every­body ought to know him,” she said. “It seems to run in your fam­ily.”

If she had any sly in­ten­tion, it skipped over Ge­orge harm­lessly. “Well, of course, I sup­pose most every­body does,” he ad­mit­ted—“out in this part of the coun­try es­pe­cially. Besides, Uncle Ge­orge is in Con­gress; the fam­ily like to have someone there.”

“Why?”

“Well, it’s sort of a good thing in one way. For in­stance, my Uncle Sydney Am­ber­son and his wife, Aunt Amelia, they haven’t got much of any­thing to do with them­selves—get bored to death around here, of course. Well, prob­ably Uncle Ge­orge’ll have Uncle Sydney ap­poin­ted min­is­ter or am­bas­sador, or some­thing like that, to Rus­sia or Italy or some­where, and that’ll make it pleas­ant when any of the rest of the fam­ily go trav­el­ling, or things like that. I ex­pect to do a good deal of trav­el­ling my­self when I get out of col­lege.”

On the stair­way he poin­ted out this pro­spect­ive am­bas­sad­orial couple, Sydney and Amelia. They were com­ing down, front­ing the as­cend­ing tide, and as con­spicu­ous over it as a king and queen in a play. Moreover, as the clear-eyed Miss Mor­gan re­marked, the very least they looked was am­bas­sad­orial. Sydney was an Am­ber­son ex­ag­ger­ated, more pom­pous than gra­cious; too portly, flushed, starched to a shine, his stately jowl fur­nished with an Ed­ward the Seventh beard. Amelia, like­wise full-bod­ied, showed glit­ter­ing blond hair ex­uber­antly dressed; a pink, fat face cold un­der a white-hot tiara; a solid, cold bosom un­der a white-hot neck­lace; great, cold, gloved arms, and the rest of her beau­ti­fully up­holstered. Amelia was an Am­ber­son born, her­self, Sydney’s second-cousin: they had no chil­dren, and Sydney was without a busi­ness or a pro­fes­sion; thus both found a great deal of time to think about the ap­pro­pri­ate­ness of their be­com­ing Ex­cel­len­cies. And as Ge­orge as­cen­ded the broad stair­way, they were pre­cisely the aunt and uncle he was most pleased to point out, to a girl from out of town, as his ap­pur­ten­ances in the way of re­l­at­ives. At sight of them the grandeur of the Am­ber­son fam­ily was in­stantly con­spicu­ous as a per­man­ent thing: it was im­possible to doubt that the Am­ber­sons were en­trenched, in their no­bil­ity and riches, be­hind pol­ished and glit­ter­ing bar­ri­ers which were as solid as they were bril­liant, and would last.

V

The hero of the fête, with the dark-eyed little beauty upon his arm, reached the top of the second flight of stairs; and here, bey­ond a spa­cious land­ing, where two proud-like darkies ten­ded a crys­tal­line punch bowl, four wide arch­ways in a rose-vine lat­tice framed glid­ing sil­hou­ettes of waltzers, already smoothly at it to the castanets of “La Pa­loma.” Old John Minafer, evid­ently sur­feited, was in the act of leav­ing these de­lights. “D’want ’ny more o’ that!” he barked. “Just slidin’ around! Call that dan­cin’? Rather see a jig any day in the world! They ain’t very mod­est, some of ’em. I don’t mind that, though. Not me!”

Miss Fanny Minafer was no longer in charge of him: he emerged from the ball­room es­cor­ted by a middle-aged man of com­mon­place ap­pear­ance. The es­cort had a dry, lined face upon which, not or­na­ment­ally but as a mat­ter of course, there grew a busi­ness man’s short mous­tache; and his thin neck showed an Adam’s apple, but not con­spicu­ously, for there was noth­ing con­spicu­ous about him. Bald­ish, dim, quiet, he was an un­notice­able part of this fest­ival, and al­though there were a dozen or more middle-aged men present, not cas­u­ally to be dis­tin­guished from him in gen­eral as­pect, he was prob­ably the last per­son in the big house at whom a stranger would have glanced twice. It did not enter Ge­orge’s mind to men­tion to Miss Mor­gan that this was his father, or to say any­thing whatever about him.

Mr. Minafer shook his son’s hand un­ob­trus­ively in passing.

“I’ll take Uncle John home,” he said, in a low voice. “Then I guess I’ll go on home my­self—I’m not a great hand at parties, you know. Good night, Ge­orge.”

Ge­orge mur­mured a friendly enough good night without paus­ing. Ordin­ar­ily he was not ashamed of the Minafers; he sel­dom thought about them at all, for he be­longed, as most Amer­ican chil­dren do, to the mother’s fam­ily—but he was anxious not to linger with Miss Mor­gan in the vi­cin­ity of old John, whom he felt to be a dis­grace.

He pushed brusquely through the fringe of cal­cu­lat­ing youths who were gathered in the arches, watch­ing for chances to dance only with girls who would soon be taken off their hands, and led his stranger lady out upon the floor. They caught the time in­stantly, and were away in the waltz.

Ge­orge danced well, and Miss Mor­gan seemed to float as part of the mu­sic, the very dove it­self of “La Pa­loma.” They said noth­ing as they danced; her eyes were cast down all the while—the pret­ti­est ges­ture for a dan­cer—and there was left in the uni­verse, for each of them, only their com­pan­ion­ship in this waltz; while the faces of the other dan­cers, swim­ming by, de­noted not people but merely blurs of col­our. Ge­orge be­came con­scious of strange feel­ings within him: an ex­al­ta­tion of soul, tender, but in­def­in­ite, and seem­ingly loc­ated in the up­per part of his dia­phragm.

The stop­ping of the mu­sic came upon him like the wak­ing to an alarm clock; for in­stantly six or seven of the cal­cu­lat­ing per­sons about the entry­ways bore down upon Miss Mor­gan to se­cure dances. Ge­orge had to do with one already es­tab­lished as a belle, it seemed.

“Give me the next and the one after that,” he said hur­riedly, re­cov­er­ing some pres­ence of mind, just as the nearest ap­plic­ant reached them. “And give me every third one the rest of the even­ing.”

She laughed. “Are you ask­ing?”

“What do you mean, ‘ask­ing’?”

“It soun­ded as though you were just telling me to give you all those dances.”

“Well, I want ’em!” Ge­orge in­sisted.

“What about all the other girls it’s your duty to dance with?”

“They’ll have to go without,” he said heart­lessly; and then, with sur­pris­ing vehe­mence: “Here! I want to know: Are you go­ing to give me those—”

“Good gra­cious!” she laughed. “Yes!”

The ap­plic­ants flocked round her, ur­ging con­tracts for what re­mained, but they did not dis­lodge Ge­orge from her side, though he made it evid­ent that they suc­ceeded in an­noy­ing him; and presently he ex­tric­ated her from an ac­cu­mu­lat­ing siege—she must have con­nived in the ex­tric­a­tion—and bore her off to sit be­side him upon the stair­way that led to the mu­si­cians’ gal­lery, where they were suf­fi­ciently re­tired, yet had a view of the room.

“How’d all those ducks get to know you so quick?” Ge­orge in­quired, with little en­thu­si­asm.

“Oh, I’ve been here a week.”

“Looks as if you’d been pretty busy!” he said. “Most of those ducks, I don’t know what my mother wanted to in­vite ’em here for.”

“Oh, I used to see some­thing of a few of ’em. I was pres­id­ent of a club we had here, and some of ’em be­longed to it, but I don’t care much for that sort of thing any more. I really don’t see why my mother in­vited ’em.”

“Per­haps it was on ac­count of their par­ents,” Miss Mor­gan sug­ges­ted mildly. “Maybe she didn’t want to of­fend their fath­ers and moth­ers.”

“Oh, hardly! I don’t think my mother need worry much about of­fend­ing any­body in this old town.”

“It must be won­der­ful,” said Miss Mor­gan. “It must be won­der­ful, Mr. Am­ber­son—Mr. Minafer, I mean.”

“What must be won­der­ful?”

“To be so im­port­ant as that!”

“That isn’t ‘im­port­ant,’ ” Ge­orge as­sured her. “Anybody that really is any­body ought to be able to do about as they like in their own town, I should think!”

She looked at him crit­ic­ally from un­der her shad­ing lashes—but her eyes grew gentler al­most at once. In truth, they be­came more ap­pre­ci­at­ive than crit­ical. Ge­orge’s im­per­i­ous good looks were al­to­gether manly, yet ap­proached ac­tual beauty as closely as a boy’s good looks should dare; and dance-mu­sic and flowers have some ef­fect upon nine­teen-year-old girls as well as upon eight­een-year-old boys. Miss Mor­gan turned her eyes slowly from Ge­orge, and pressed her face among the lilies-of-the-val­ley and vi­ol­ets of the pretty bou­quet she car­ried, while, from the gal­lery above, the mu­sic of the next dance car­olled out mer­rily in a new two-step. The mu­si­cians made the melody gay for the Christ­mas­time with chimes of sleigh­bells, and the en­trance to the shad­owed stair­way framed the passing flushed and lively dan­cers, but neither Ge­orge nor Miss Mor­gan sug­ges­ted mov­ing to join the dance.

The stair­way was draughty: the steps were nar­row and un­com­fort­able; no older per­son would have re­mained in such a place. Moreover, these two young people were strangers to each other; neither had said any­thing in which the other had dis­covered the slight­est in­trinsic in­terest; there had not arisen between them the be­gin­nings of con­geni­al­ity, or even of friend­li­ness—but stair­ways near ball­rooms have more to an­swer for than have moon­lit lakes and moun­tain sun­sets. Some day the laws of glam­our must be dis­covered, be­cause they are so im­port­ant that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac New­ton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, but by a young lady.

Age, con­fused by its own long ac­cu­mu­la­tion of fol­lies, is ever­last­ingly in­quir­ing, “What does she see in him?” as if young love came about through think­ing—or through con­duct. Age wants to know: “What on earth can they talk about?” as if talk­ing had any­thing to do with April rains! At sev­enty, one gets up in the morn­ing, finds the air sweet un­der a bright sun, feels lively; thinks, “I am hearty, today,” and plans to go for a drive. At eight­een, one goes to a dance, sits with a stranger on a stair­way, feels pe­cu­liar, thinks noth­ing, and be­comes in­cap­able of any plan whatever. Miss Mor­gan and Ge­orge stayed where they were.

They had agreed to this in si­lence and without know­ing it; cer­tainly without ex­chan­ging glances of in­tel­li­gence—they had ex­changed no glances at all. Both sat star­ing vaguely out into the ball­room, and, for a time, they did not speak. Over their heads the mu­sic reached a cli­max of vi­va­city: drums, cym­bals, tri­angle, and sleigh­bells, beat­ing, clash­ing, tink­ling. Here and there were to be seen couples so car­ried away that, ceas­ing to move at the dec­or­ous, even glide, con­sidered most know­ing, they pranced and whirled through the throng, from wall to wall, gal­lop­ing bounteously in aban­don. Ge­orge suffered a shock of vague sur­prise when he per­ceived that his aunt, Fanny Minafer, was the lady-half of one of these wild couples.

Fanny Minafer, who rouged a little, was like fruit which in some cli­mates dries with the bloom on. Her fea­tures had re­mained pret­tily child­like; so had her fig­ure, and there were times when strangers, see­ing her across the street, took her to be about twenty; they were other times when at the same dis­tance they took her to be about sixty, in­stead of forty, as she was. She had old days and young days; old hours and young hours; old minutes and young minutes; for the change might be that quick. An al­ter­a­tion in her ex­pres­sion, or a dif­fer­ence in the at­ti­tude of her head, would cause as­ton­ish­ing in­dent­a­tions to ap­pear—and be­hold, Fanny was an old lady! But she had been never more child­like than she was to­night as she flew over the floor in the cap­able arms of the queer-look­ing duck; for this per­son was her part­ner.

The queer-look­ing duck had been a real dan­cer in his day, it ap­peared; and evid­ently his day was not yet over. In spite of the head­long, gay rapid­ity with which he bore Miss Fanny about the big room, he danced au­thor­it­at­ively, avoid­ing without ef­fort the light­est col­li­sion with other couples, main­tain­ing suf­fi­cient grace through­out his wild­est mo­ments, and all the while laugh­ing and talk­ing with his part­ner. What was most re­mark­able to Ge­orge, and a little ir­rit­at­ing, this stranger in the Am­ber­son Man­sion had no vestige of the air of de­fer­ence proper to a stranger in such a place: he seemed thor­oughly at home. He seemed of­fens­ively so, in­deed, when, passing the en­trance to the gal­lery stair­way, he dis­en­gaged his hand from Miss Fanny’s for an in­stant, and not paus­ing in the dance, waved a laugh­ing sa­luta­tion more than cor­dial, then capered lightly out of sight.

Ge­orge gazed stonily at this mani­fest­a­tion, re­spond­ing neither by word nor sign. “How’s that for a bit of fresh­ness?” he mur­mured.

“What was?” Miss Mor­gan asked.

“That queer-look­ing duck wav­ing his hand at me like that. Ex­cept he’s the Sharon girls’ uncle I don’t know him from Adam.”

“You don’t need to,” she said. “He wasn’t wav­ing his hand to you: he meant me.”

“Oh, he did?” Ge­orge was not mol­li­fied by the ex­plan­a­tion. “Every­body seems to mean you! You cer­tainly do seem to’ve been pretty busy this week you’ve been here!”

She pressed her bou­quet to her face again, and laughed into it, not dis­pleased. She made no other com­ment, and for an­other period neither spoke. Mean­while the mu­sic stopped; loud ap­plause in­sisted upon its re­newal; an en­core was danced; there was an in­ter­lude of voices; and the chan­ging of part­ners began.

“Well,” said Ge­orge fi­nally, “I must say you don’t seem to be much of a prat­tler. They say it’s a great way to get a repu­ta­tion for be­ing wise, never say­ing much. Don’t you ever talk any?”

“When people can un­der­stand,” she answered.

He had been look­ing moodily out at the ball­room but he turned to her quickly, at this, saw that her eyes were sunny and con­tent, over the top of her bou­quet; and he con­sen­ted to smile.

“Girls are usu­ally pretty fresh!” he said. “They ought to go to a man’s col­lege about a year: they’d get taught a few things about fresh­ness! What you got to do after two o’clock to­mor­row af­ter­noon?”

“A whole lot of things. Every minute filled up.”

“All right,” said Ge­orge. “The snow’s fine for sleigh­ing: I’ll come for you in a cut­ter at ten minutes after two.”

“I can’t pos­sibly go.”

“If you don’t,” he said, “I’m go­ing to sit in the cut­ter in front of the gate, wherever you’re vis­it­ing, all af­ter­noon, and if you try to go out with any­body else he’s got to whip me be­fore he gets you.” And as she laughed—though she blushed a little, too—he con­tin­ued, ser­i­ously: “If you think I’m not in earn­est you’re at liberty to make quite a big ex­per­i­ment!”

She laughed again. “I don’t think I’ve of­ten had so large a com­pli­ment as that,” she said, “es­pe­cially on such short no­tice—and yet, I don’t think I’ll go with you.”

“You be ready at ten minutes after two.”

“No, I won’t.”

“Yes, you will!”

“Yes,” she said, “I will!” And her part­ner for the next dance ar­rived, breath­less with search­ing.

“Don’t for­get I’ve got the third from now,” Ge­orge called after her.

“I won’t.”

“And every third one after that.”

“I know!” she called, over her part­ner’s shoulder, and her voice was amused—but meek.

When “the third from now” came, Ge­orge presen­ted him­self be­fore her without any greet­ing, like a brother, or a man­ner­less old friend. Neither did she greet him, but moved away with him, con­clud­ing, as she went, an ex­change of bad­in­age with the pre­ced­ing part­ner: she had been talk­at­ive enough with him, it ap­peared. In fact, both Ge­orge and Miss Mor­gan talked much more to every­one else that even­ing, than to each other; and they said noth­ing at all at this time. Both looked pre­oc­cu­pied, as they began to dance, and pre­served a grav­ity, of ex­pres­sion to the end of the num­ber. And when “the third one after that” came, they did not dance, but went back to the gal­lery stair­way, seem­ing to have reached an un­der­stand­ing without any verbal con­sulta­tion, that this sub­urb was again the place for them.

“Well,” said Ge­orge, coolly, when they were seated, “what did you say your name was?”

“Mor­gan.”

“Funny name!”

“Every­body else’s name al­ways is.”

“I didn’t mean it was really funny,” Ge­orge ex­plained. “That’s just one of my crowd’s bits of hors­ing at col­lege. We al­ways say ‘funny name’ no mat­ter what it is. I guess we’re pretty fresh some­times; but I knew your name was Mor­gan be­cause my mother said so down­stairs. I meant: what’s the rest of it?”

“Lucy.”

He was si­lent.

“Is ‘Lucy’ a funny name, too?” she in­quired.

“No. Lucy’s very much all right!” he said, and he went so far as to smile. Even his Aunt Fanny ad­mit­ted that when Ge­orge smiled “in a cer­tain way” he was charm­ing.

“Thanks about let­ting my name be Lucy,” she said.

“How old are you?” Ge­orge asked.

“I don’t really know, my­self.”

“What do you mean: you don’t really know your­self?”

“I mean I only know what they tell me. I be­lieve them, of course, but be­liev­ing isn’t really know­ing. You be­lieve some cer­tain day is your birth­day—at least, I sup­pose you do—but you don’t really know it is be­cause you can’t re­mem­ber.”

“Look here!” said Ge­orge. “Do you al­ways talk like this?”

Miss Lucy Mor­gan laughed for­giv­ingly, put her young head on one side, like a bird, and re­spon­ded cheer­fully: “I’m will­ing to learn wis­dom. What are you study­ing in school?”

“Col­lege!”

“At the uni­ver­sity! Yes. What are you study­ing there?”

Ge­orge laughed. “Lot o’ use­less guff!”

“Then why don’t you study some use­ful guff?”

“What do you mean: ‘use­ful’?”

“So­mething you’d use later, in your busi­ness or pro­fes­sion?”

Ge­orge waved his hand im­pa­tiently. “I don’t ex­pect to go into any ‘busi­ness or pro­fes­sion.’ ”

“No?”

“Cer­tainly not!” Ge­orge was em­phatic, be­ing sin­cerely an­noyed by a sug­ges­tion which showed how ut­terly she failed to com­pre­hend the kind of per­son he was.

“Why not?” she asked mildly.

“Just look at ’em!” he said, al­most with bit­ter­ness, and he made a ges­ture pre­sum­ably in­ten­ded to in­dic­ate the busi­ness and pro­fes­sional men now dan­cing within range of vis­ion. “That’s a fine ca­reer for a man, isn’t it! Law­yers, bankers, politi­cians! What do they get out of life, I’d like to know! What do they ever know about real things? Where do they ever get?”

He was so earn­est that she was sur­prised and im­pressed. Evidently he had deep-seated am­bi­tions, for he seemed to speak with ac­tual emo­tion of these des­pised things which were so far be­neath his plan­ning for the fu­ture. She had a vague, mo­ment­ary vis­ion of Pitt, at twenty-one, prime min­is­ter of Eng­land; and she spoke, in­vol­un­tar­ily in a lowered voice, with de­fer­ence:

“What do you want to be?” she asked.

Ge­orge answered promptly.

“A yachts­man,” he said.

VI

Hav­ing thus, in a word, re­vealed his am­bi­tion for a ca­reer above courts, marts, and polling booths, Ge­orge breathed more deeply than usual, and, turn­ing his face from the lovely com­pan­ion whom he had just made his con­fid­ant, gazed out at the dan­cers with an ex­pres­sion in which there was both stern­ness and a con­tempt for the squalid lives of the un­y­achted Mid­landers be­fore him. However, among them, he marked his mother; and his sombre grandeur re­laxed mo­ment­ar­ily; a more gen­ial light came into his eyes.

Isa­bel was dan­cing with the queer-look­ing duck; and it was to be noted that the lively gen­tle­man’s gait was more sed­ate than it had been with Miss Fanny Minafer, but not less dex­ter­ous and au­thor­it­at­ive. He was talk­ing to Isa­bel as gaily as he had talked to Miss Fanny, though with less laughter, and Isa­bel listened and answered eagerly: her col­our was high and her eyes had a look of de­light. She saw Ge­orge and the beau­ti­ful Lucy on the stair­way, and nod­ded to them. Ge­orge waved his hand vaguely: he had a mo­ment­ary re­turn of that in­ex­plic­able un­eas­i­ness and re­sent­ment which had troubled him down­stairs.

“How lovely your mother is!” Lucy said.

“I think she is,” he agreed gently.

“She’s the grace­fulest wo­man in that ball­room. She dances like a girl of six­teen.”

“Most girls of six­teen,” said Ge­orge, “are bum dan­cers. Anyhow, I wouldn’t dance with one un­less I had to.”

“Well, you’d bet­ter dance with your mother! I never saw any­body love­lier. How won­der­fully they dance to­gether!”

“Who?”

“Your mother and—and the queer-look­ing duck,” said Lucy. “I’m go­ing to dance with him pretty soon.”

“I don’t care—so long as you don’t give him one of the num­bers that be­long to me.”

“I’ll try to re­mem­ber,” she said, and thought­fully lif­ted to her face the bou­quet of vi­ol­ets and lilies, a ges­ture which Ge­orge noted without ap­proval.

“Look here! Who sent you those flowers you keep makin’ such a fuss over?”

“He did.”

“Who’s ‘he’?”

“The queer-look­ing duck.”

Ge­orge feared no such rival; he laughed loudly. “I s’pose he’s some old wid­ower!” he said, the ob­ject thus de­scribed seem­ing ig­no­mini­ous enough to a per­son of eight­een, without ad­di­tional char­ac­ter­iz­a­tion. “Some old wid­ower!”

Lucy be­came ser­i­ous at once. “Yes, he is a wid­ower,” she said. “I ought to have told you be­fore; he’s my father.”

Ge­orge stopped laugh­ing ab­ruptly. “Well, that’s a horse on me. If I’d known he was your father, of course I wouldn’t have made fun of him. I’m sorry.”

“Nobody could make fun of him,” she said quietly.

“Why couldn’t they?”

“It wouldn’t make him funny: it would only make them­selves silly.”

Upon this, Ge­orge had a gleam of in­tel­li­gence. “Well, I’m not go­ing to make my­self silly any more, then; I don’t want to take chances like that with you. But I thought he was the Sharon girls’ uncle. He came with them—”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m al­ways late to everything: I wouldn’t let them wait for me. We’re vis­it­ing the Shar­ons.”

“About time I knew that! You for­get my be­ing so fresh about your father, will you? Of course he’s a dis­tin­guished look­ing man, in a way.”

Lucy was still ser­i­ous. “In a way’?” she re­peated. “You mean, not in your way, don’t you?”

Ge­orge was per­plexed. “How do you mean: not in my way?”

“People pretty of­ten say ‘in a way’ and ‘rather dis­tin­guished look­ing,’ or ‘rather’ so-and-so, or ‘rather’ any­thing, to show that they’re su­per­ior don’t they? In New York last month I over­heard a climber sort of wo­man speak­ing of me as ‘little Miss Mor­gan,’ but she didn’t mean my height; she meant that she was im­port­ant. Her hus­band spoke of a friend of mine as ‘little Mr. Pem­broke’ and ‘little Mr. Pem­broke’ is six-feet-three. This hus­band and wife were really so ter­ribly un­im­port­ant that the only way they knew to pre­tend to be im­port­ant was call­ing people ‘little’ Miss or Mister so-and-so. It’s a kind of snob slang, I think. Of course people don’t al­ways say ‘rather’ or ‘in a way’ to be su­per­ior.”

“I should say not! I use both of ’em a great deal my­self,” said Ge­orge. “One thing I don’t see though: What’s the use of a man be­ing six-feet-three? Men that size can’t handle them­selves as well as a man about five-feet-el­even and a half can. Those long, gangling men, they’re nearly al­ways too kind of wormy to be any good in ath­let­ics, and they’re so awk­ward they keep fall­ing over chairs or—”

“Mr. Pem­broke is in the army,” said Lucy primly. “He’s ex­traordin­ar­ily grace­ful.”

“In the army? Oh, I sup­pose he’s some old friend of your father’s.”

“They got on very well,” she said, “after I in­tro­duced them.”

Ge­orge was a straight­for­ward soul, at least. “See here!” he said. “Are you en­gaged to any­body?”

“No.”

Not wholly mol­li­fied, he shrugged his shoulders. “You seem to know a good many people! Do you live in New York?”

“No. We don’t live any­where.”

“What you mean: you don’t live any­where?”

“We’ve lived all over,” she answered. “Papa used to live here in this town, but that was be­fore I was born.”

“What do you keep mov­ing around so for? Is he a pro­moter?”

“No. He’s an in­ventor.”

“What’s he in­ven­ted?”

“Just lately,” said Lucy, “he’s been work­ing on a new kind of horse­less car­riage.”

“Well, I’m sorry for him,” Ge­orge said, in no un­kindly spirit. “Those things are never go­ing to amount to any­thing. People aren’t go­ing to spend their lives ly­ing on their backs in the road and let­ting grease drip in their faces. Horse­less car­riages are pretty much a fail­ure, and your father bet­ter not waste his time on ’em.”

“Papa’d be so grate­ful,” she re­turned, “if he could have your ad­vice.”

In­stantly Ge­orge’s face be­came flushed. “I don’t know that I’ve done any­thing to be in­sul­ted for!” he said. “I don’t see that what I said was par­tic­u­larly fresh.”

“No, in­deed!”

“Then what do you—”

She laughed gaily. “I don’t! And I don’t mind your be­ing such a lofty per­son at all. I think it’s ever so in­ter­est­ing—but papa’s a great man!”

“Is he?” Ge­orge de­cided to be good-natured “Well, let us hope so. I hope so, I’m sure.”

Look­ing at him keenly, she saw that the mag­ni­fi­cent youth was in­cred­ibly sin­cere in this bit of gra­cious­ness. He spoke as a tol­er­ant, eld­erly states­man might speak of a prom­ising young politi­cian; and with her eyes still upon him, Lucy shook her head in gentle won­der. “I’m just be­gin­ning to un­der­stand,” she said.

“Under­stand what?”

“What it means to be a real Am­ber­son in this town. Papa told me some­thing about it be­fore we came, but I see he didn’t say half enough!”

Ge­orge su­perbly took this all for trib­ute. “Did your father say he knew the fam­ily be­fore he left here?”

“Yes. I be­lieve he was par­tic­u­larly a friend of your Uncle Ge­orge; and he didn’t say so, but I ima­gine he must have known your mother very well, too. He wasn’t an in­ventor then; he was a young law­yer. The town was smal­ler in those days, and I be­lieve he was quite well known.”

“I dare say. I’ve no doubt the fam­ily are all very glad to see him back, es­pe­cially if they used to have him at the house a good deal, as he told you.”

“I don’t think he meant to boast of it,” she said: “He spoke of it quite calmly.”

Ge­orge stared at her for a mo­ment in per­plex­ity, then per­ceiv­ing that her in­ten­tion was satir­ical, “Girls really ought to go to a man’s col­lege,” he said—“just a month or two, any­how; It’d take some of the fresh­ness out of ’em!”

“I can’t be­lieve it,” she re­tor­ted, as her part­ner for the next dance ar­rived. “It would only make them a little po­liter on the sur­face—they’d be really just as aw­ful as ever, after you got to know them a few minutes.”

“What do you mean: ‘after you got to know them a—’ ”

She was de­part­ing to the dance. “Janie and Mary Sharon told me all about what sort of a little boy you were,” she said, over her shoulder. “You must think it out!” She took wing away on the breeze of the waltz, and Ge­orge, hav­ing stared gloomily after her for a few mo­ments, post­poned filling an en­gage­ment, and strolled round the fluc­tu­at­ing out­skirts of the dance to where his uncle, Ge­orge Am­ber­son, stood smil­ingly watch­ing, un­der one of the rose-vine arches at the en­trance to the room.

“Hello, young name­sake,” said the uncle. “Why lingers the lag­gard heel of the dan­cer? Haven’t you got a part­ner?”

“She’s sit­ting around wait­ing for me some­where,” said Ge­orge. “See here: Who is this fel­low Mor­gan that Aunt Fanny Minafer was dan­cing with a while?”

Am­ber­son laughed. “He’s a man with a pretty daugh­ter, Ge­or­gie. Me­seemed you’ve been spend­ing the even­ing no­ti­cing some­thing of that sort—or do I err?”

“Never mind! What sort is he?”

“I think we’ll have to give him a char­ac­ter, Ge­or­gie. He’s an old friend; used to prac­tice law here—per­haps he had more debts than cases, but he paid ’em all up be­fore he left town. Your ques­tion is purely mer­cen­ary, I take it: you want to know his true worth be­fore pro­ceed­ing fur­ther with the daugh­ter. I can­not in­form you, though I no­tice signs of con­sid­er­able prosper­ity in that be­com­ing dress of hers. However, you never can tell, it is an age when every sac­ri­fice is made for the young, and how your own poor mother man­aged to provide those genu­ine pearl studs for you out of her al­low­ance from father, I can’t—”

“Oh, dry up!” said the nephew. “I un­der­stand this Mor­gan—”

“Mr. Eu­gene Mor­gan,” his uncle sug­ges­ted. “Polite­ness re­quires that the young should—”

“I guess the ‘young’ didn’t know much about po­lite­ness in your day,” Ge­orge in­ter­rup­ted. “I un­der­stand that Mr. Eu­gene Mor­gan used to be a great friend of the fam­ily.”

“Oh, the Minafers?” the uncle in­quired, with ap­par­ent in­no­cence. “No, I seem to re­call that he and your father were not—”

“I mean the Am­ber­sons,” Ge­orge said im­pa­tiently. “I un­der­stand he was a good deal around the house here.”

“What is your ob­jec­tion to that, Ge­orge?”

“What do you mean: my ob­jec­tion?”

“You seemed to speak with a cer­tain cross­ness.”

“Well,” said Ge­orge, “I meant he seems to feel aw­fully at home here. The way he was dan­cing with Aunt Fanny—”

Am­ber­son laughed. “I’m afraid your Aunt Fanny’s heart was stirred by an­cient re­col­lec­tions, Ge­or­gie.”

“You mean she used to be silly about him?”

“She wasn’t con­sidered sin­gu­lar,” said the uncle. “He was—he was pop­u­lar. Could you bear a ques­tion?”

“What do you mean: could I bear—”

“I only wanted to ask: Do you take this same pas­sion­ate in­terest in the par­ents of every girl you dance with? Per­haps it’s a new fash­ion we old bach­el­ors ought to take up. Is it the thing this year to—”

“Oh, go on!” said Ge­orge, mov­ing away. “I only wanted to know—” He left the sen­tence un­fin­ished, and crossed the room to where a girl sat wait­ing for his no­bil­ity to find time to ful­fil his con­tract with her for this dance.

“Par­don f’ keep’ wait,” he muttered, as she rose brightly to meet him; and she seemed pleased that he came at all—but Ge­orge was used to girls’ look­ing ra­di­ant when he danced with them, and she had little ef­fect upon him. He danced with her per­func­tor­ily, think­ing the while of Mr. Eu­gene Mor­gan and his daugh­ter. Strangely enough, his thoughts dwelt more upon the father than the daugh­ter, though Ge­orge could not pos­sibly have given a reason—even to him­self—for this dis­turb­ing pre­pon­der­ance.

By a co­in­cid­ence, though not an odd one, the thoughts and con­ver­sa­tion of Mr. Eu­gene Mor­gan at this very time were con­cerned with Ge­orge Am­ber­son Minafer, rather cas­u­ally, it is true. Mr. Mor­gan had re­tired to a room set apart for smoking, on the second floor, and had found a grizzled gen­tle­man loun­ging in sol­it­ary pos­ses­sion.

“Gene Mor­gan!” this per­son ex­claimed, rising with great hearti­ness. “I’d heard you were in town—I don’t be­lieve you know me!”

“Yes, I do, Fred Kin­ney!” Mr. Mor­gan re­turned with equal friend­li­ness. “Your real face—the one I used to know—it’s just un­der­neath the one you’re mas­quer­ad­ing in to­night. You ought to have changed it more if you wanted a dis­guise.”

“Twenty years!” said Mr. Kin­ney. “It makes some dif­fer­ence in faces, but more in be­ha­viour!”

“It does so!” his friend agreed with ex­plos­ive em­phasis. “My own be­ha­viour began to be dif­fer­ent about that long ago—quite sud­denly.”

“I re­mem­ber,” said Mr. Kin­ney sym­path­et­ic­ally. “Well, life’s odd enough as we look back.”

“Prob­ably it’s go­ing to be odder still—if we could look for­ward.”

“Prob­ably.”

They sat and smoked.

“However,” Mr. Mor­gan re­marked presently, “I still dance like an In­dian. Don’t you?”

“No. I leave that to my boy Fred. He does the dan­cing for the fam­ily.”

“I sup­pose he’s up­stairs hard at it?”

“No, he’s not here.” Mr. Kin­ney glanced to­ward the open door and lowered his voice. “He wouldn’t come. It seems that a couple of years or so ago he had a row with young Ge­or­gie Minafer. Fred was pres­id­ent of a lit­er­ary club they had, and he said this young Ge­or­gie got him­self elec­ted in­stead, in an over­bear­ing sort of way. Fred’s red­headed, you know—I sup­pose you re­mem­ber his mother? You were at the wed­ding—”

“I re­mem­ber the wed­ding,” said Mr. Mor­gan. “And I re­mem­ber your bach­elor din­ner—most of it, that is.”

“Well, my boy Fred’s as red­headed now,” Mr. Kin­ney went on, “as his mother was then, and he’s very bit­ter about his row with Ge­or­gie Minafer. He says he’d rather burn his foot off than set it in­side any Am­ber­son house or any place else where young Ge­or­gie is. Fact is, the boy seemed to have so much feel­ing over it I had my doubts about com­ing my­self, but my wife said it was all non­sense; we mustn’t hu­mour Fred in a grudge over such a little thing, and while she des­pised that Ge­or­gie Minafer, her­self, as much as any­one else did, she wasn’t go­ing to miss a big Am­ber­son show just on ac­count of a boys’ rum­pus, and so on and so on; and so we came.”

“Do people dis­like young Minafer gen­er­ally?”

“I don’t know about ‘gen­er­ally.’ I guess he gets plenty of toady­ing; but there’s cer­tainly a lot of people that are glad to ex­press their opin­ions about him.”

“What’s the mat­ter with him?”

“Too much Am­ber­son, I sup­pose, for one thing. And for an­other, his mother just fell down and wor­shipped him from the day he was born. That’s what beats me! I don’t have to tell you what Isa­bel Am­ber­son is, Eu­gene Mor­gan. She’s got a touch of the Am­ber­son high stuff about her, but you can’t get any­body that ever knew her to deny that she’s just about the finest wo­man in the world.”

“No,” said Eu­gene Mor­gan. “You can’t get any­body to deny that.”

“Then I can’t see how she doesn’t see the truth about that boy. He thinks he’s a little tin god on wheels—and hon­estly, it makes some people weak and sick just to think about him! Yet that high-spir­ited, in­tel­li­gent wo­man, Isa­bel Am­ber­son, ac­tu­ally sits and wor­ships him! You can hear it in her voice when she speaks to him or speaks of him. You can see it in her eyes when she looks at him. My Lord! What does she see when she looks at him?”

Mor­gan’s odd ex­pres­sion of gen­ial ap­pre­hen­sion deepened whim­sic­ally, though it de­noted no ac­tual ap­pre­hen­sion whatever, and cleared away from his face al­to­gether when he smiled; he be­came sur­pris­ingly win­ning and per­suas­ive when he smiled. He smiled now, after a mo­ment, at this ques­tion of his old friend. “She sees some­thing that we don’t see,” he said.

“What does she see?”

“An an­gel.”

Kin­ney laughed aloud. “Well, if she sees an an­gel when she looks at Ge­or­gie Minafer, she’s a fun­nier wo­man than I thought she was!”

“Per­haps she is,” said Mor­gan. “But that’s what she sees.”

“My Lord! It’s easy to see you’ve only known him an hour or so. In that time have you looked at Ge­or­gie and seen an an­gel?”

“No. All I saw was a re­mark­ably good-look­ing fool-boy with the pride of Satan and a set of nice new draw­ing-room man­ners that he prob­ably couldn’t use more than half an hour at a time without bust­ing.”

“Then what—”

“Moth­ers are right,” said Mor­gan. “Do you think this young Ge­orge is the same sort of creature when he’s with his mother that he is when he’s bull­doz­ing your boy Fred? Moth­ers see the an­gel in us be­cause the an­gel is there. If it’s shown to the mother, the son has got an an­gel to show, hasn’t he? When a son cuts some­body’s throat the mother only sees it’s pos­sible for a mis­guided an­gel to act like a devil—and she’s en­tirely right about that!”

Kin­ney laughed, and put his hand on his friend’s shoulder. “I re­mem­ber what a fel­low you al­ways were to ar­gue,” he said. “You mean Ge­or­gie Minafer is as much of an an­gel as any mur­derer is, and that Ge­or­gie’s mother is al­ways right.”

“I’m afraid she al­ways has been,” Mor­gan said lightly.

The friendly hand re­mained upon his shoulder. “She was wrong once, old fel­low. At least, so it seemed to me.”

“No,” said Mor­gan, a little awk­wardly. “No—”

Kin­ney re­lieved the slight em­bar­rass­ment that had come upon both of them: he laughed again. “Wait till you know young Ge­or­gie a little bet­ter,” he said. “So­mething tells me you’re go­ing to change your mind about his hav­ing an an­gel to show, if you see any­thing of him!”

“You mean beauty’s in the eye of the be­holder, and the an­gel is all in the eye of the mother. If you were a painter, Fred, you’d paint moth­ers with an­gels’ eyes hold­ing imps in their laps. Me, I’ll stick to the Old Masters and the cher­ubs.”

Mr. Kin­ney looked at him mus­ingly. “Some­body’s eyes must have been pretty an­gelic,” he said, “if they’ve been per­suad­ing you that Ge­or­gie Min­nafer is a cherub!”

“They are,” said Mor­gan heart­ily. “They’re more an­gelic than ever.” And as a new flour­ish of mu­sic soun­ded over­head he threw away his ci­gar­ette, and jumped up briskly. “Good­bye, I’ve got this dance with her.”

“With whom?”

“With Isa­bel!”

The grizzled Mr. Kin­ney af­fected to rub his eyes. “It startles me, your jump­ing up like that to go and dance with Isa­bel Am­ber­son! Twenty years seem to have passed—but have they? Tell me, have you danced with poor old Fanny, too, this even­ing?”

“Twice!”

“My Lord!” Kin­ney groaned, half in earn­est. “Old times start­ing all over again! My Lord!”

“Old times?” Mor­gan laughed gaily from the door­way. “Not a bit! There aren’t any old times. When times are gone they’re not old, they’re dead! There aren’t any times but new times!”

And he van­ished in such a man­ner that he seemed already to have be­gun dan­cing.

VII

The ap­pear­ance of Miss Lucy Mor­gan the next day, as she sat in Ge­orge’s fast cut­ter, proved so charm­ing that her es­cort was stricken to soft words in­stantly, and failed to con­trol a po­etic im­pulse. Her rich little hat was trimmed with black fur; her hair was al­most as dark as the fur; a great boa of black fur was about her shoulders; her hands were van­ished into a black muff; and Ge­orge’s lap robe was black. “You look like—” he said. “Your face looks like—it looks like a snow­flake on a lump of coal. I mean a—a snow­flake that would be a rose-leaf, too!”

“Per­haps you’d bet­ter look at the reins,” she re­turned. “We al­most up­set just then.”

Ge­orge de­clined to heed this ad­vice. “Be­cause there’s too much pink in your cheeks for a snow­flake,” he con­tin­ued. “What’s that fairy story about snow-white and rose-red—”

“We’re go­ing pretty fast, Mr. Minafer!”

“Well, you see, I’m only here for two weeks.”

“I mean the sleigh!” she ex­plained. “We’re not the only people on the street, you know.”

“Oh, they’ll keep out of the way.”

“That’s very pa­tri­cian chari­oteer­ing, but it seems to me a horse like this needs guid­ance. I’m sure he’s go­ing al­most twenty miles an hour.”

“That’s noth­ing,” said Ge­orge; but he con­sen­ted to look for­ward again. “He can trot un­der three minutes, all right.” He laughed. “I sup­pose your father thinks he can build a horse­less car­riage to go that fast!”

“They go that fast already, some­times.”

“Yes,” said Ge­orge; “they do—for about a hun­dred feet! Then they give a yell and burn up.”

Evidently she de­cided not to de­fend her father’s faith in horse­less car­riages, for she laughed, and said noth­ing. The cold air was polka-dot­ted with snow­flakes, and trembled to the loud, con­tinu­ous jingling of sleigh­bells. Boys and girls, all aglow and pant­ing jets of va­pour, dar­ted at the passing sleighs to ride on the run­ners, or sought to rope their sleds to any vehicle whatever, but the fleetest no more than just touched the fly­ing cut­ter, though a hun­dred soggy mit­tens grasped for it, then reeled and whirled till some­times the wear­ers of those dar­ing mit­tens plunged flat in the snow and lay a-sprawl, re­flect­ing. For this was the hol­i­day time, and all the boys and girls in town were out, most of them on Na­tional Av­enue.

But there came pant­ing and chug­ging up that flat thor­ough­fare a thing which some day was to spoil all their sleigh-time mer­ri­ment—save for the rashest and most dis­obedi­ent. It was vaguely like a top­less surry, but cum­brous with un­whole­some ex­cres­cences fore and aft, while un­der­neath were spin­ning leather belts and some­thing that whirred and howled and seemed to stag­ger. The ride-steal­ers made no at­tempt to fasten their sleds to a con­triv­ance so non­sensical and yet so fear­some. In­stead, they gave over their sport and con­cen­trated all their en­er­gies in their lungs, so that up and down the street the one cry shrilled in­creas­ingly: “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Mister, why don’t you git a hoss?” But the ma­hout in charge, sit­ting sol­it­ary on the front seat, was un­con­cerned—he laughed, and now and then ducked a snow­ball without los­ing any of his good-nature. It was Mr. Eu­gene Mor­gan who ex­hib­ited so cheer­ful a coun­ten­ance between the for­ward vi­sor of a deer­stalker cap and the col­lar of a fuzzy gray ul­ster. “Git a hoss!” the chil­dren shrieked, and gruffer voices joined them. “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss!”

Ge­orge Minafer was cor­rect thus far: the twelve miles an hour of such a ma­chine would never over­take Ge­orge’s trot­ter. The cut­ter was already scur­ry­ing between the stone pil­lars at the en­trance to Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion.

“That’s my grand­father’s,” said Ge­orge, nod­ding to­ward the Am­ber­son Man­sion.

“I ought to know that!” Lucy ex­claimed. “We stayed there late enough last night: papa and I were al­most the last to go. He and your mother and Miss Fanny Minafer got the mu­si­cians to play an­other waltz when every­body else had gone down­stairs and the fiddles were be­ing put away in their cases. Papa danced part of it with Miss Minafer and the rest with your mother. Miss Minafer’s your aunt, isn’t she?”

“Yes; she lives with us. I tease her a good deal.”

“What about?”

“Oh, any­thing handy—whatever’s easy to tease an old maid about.”

“Doesn’t she mind?”

“She usu­ally has sort of a grouch on me,” laughed Ge­orge. “Noth­ing much. That’s our house just bey­ond grand­father’s.” He waved a seal­skin gaunt­let to in­dic­ate the house Ma­jor Am­ber­son had built for Isa­bel as a wed­ding gift. “It’s al­most the same as grand­father’s, only not as large and hasn’t got a reg­u­lar ball­room. We gave the dance, last night, at grand­father’s on ac­count of the ball­room, and be­cause I’m the only grand­child, you know. Of course, some day that’ll be my house, though I ex­pect my mother will most likely go on liv­ing where she does now, with father and Aunt Fanny. I sup­pose I’ll prob­ably build a coun­try house, too—some­where East, I guess.” He stopped speak­ing, and frowned as they passed a closed car­riage and pair. The body of this com­fort­able vehicle sagged slightly to one side; the paint was old and seamed with hun­dreds of minute cracks like little rivers on a black map; the coach­man, a fat and eld­erly darky, seemed to drowse upon the box; but the open win­dow af­forded the oc­cu­pants of the cut­ter a glimpse of a tired, fine old face, a silk hat, a pearl tie, and an as­trachan col­lar, evid­ently out to take the air.

“There’s your grand­father now,” said Lucy. “Isn’t it?”

Ge­orge’s frown was not re­laxed. “Yes, it is; and he ought to give that rat­trap away and sell those old horses. They’re a dis­grace, all shaggy—not even clipped. I sup­pose he doesn’t no­tice it—people get aw­ful funny when they get old; they seem to lose their self-re­spect, sort of.”

“He seemed a real Brum­mell to me,” she said.

“Oh, he keeps up about what he wears, well enough, but—well, look at that!” He poin­ted to a statue of Min­erva, one of the cast-iron sculp­tures Ma­jor Am­ber­son had set up in open­ing the Ad­di­tion years be­fore. Min­erva was in­tact, but a black­ish streak des­cen­ded un­pleas­antly from her fore­head to the point of her straight nose, and a few other streaks were sketched in a re­pel­lent dinge upon the folds of her drapery.

“That must be from soot,” said Lucy. “There are so many houses around here.”

“Anyhow, some­body ought to see that these statues are kept clean. My grand­father owns a good many of these houses, I guess, for rent­ing. Of course, he sold most of the lots—there aren’t any va­cant ones, and there used to be heaps of ’em when I was a boy. Another thing I don’t think he ought to al­low a good many of these people bought big lots and they built houses on ’em; then the price of the land kept get­ting higher, and they’d sell part of their yards and let the people that bought it build houses on it to live in, till they haven’t hardly any of ’em got big, open yards any more, and it’s get­ting all too much built up. The way it used to be, it was like a gen­tle­man’s coun­try es­tate, and that’s the way my grand­father ought to keep it. He lets these people take too many liber­ties: they do any­thing they want to.”

“But how could he stop them?” Lucy asked, surely with reason. “If he sold them the land, it’s theirs, isn’t it?”

Ge­orge re­mained se­rene in the face of this ap­par­ently dif­fi­cult ques­tion. “He ought to have all the trades­people boy­cott the fam­il­ies that sell part of their yards that way. All he’d have to do would be to tell the trades­people they wouldn’t get any more or­ders from the fam­ily if they didn’t do it.”

“From ‘the fam­ily’? What fam­ily?”

“Our fam­ily,” said Ge­orge, un­per­turbed. “The Am­ber­sons.”

“I see!” she mur­mured, and evid­ently she did see some­thing that he did not, for, as she lif­ted her muff to her face, he asked:

“What are you laugh­ing at now?”

“Why?”

“You al­ways seem to have some little secret of your own to get happy over!”

“Al­ways!” she ex­claimed. “What a big word when we only met last night!”

“That’s an­other case of it,” he said, with ob­vi­ous sin­cer­ity. “One of the reas­ons I don’t like you—much!—is you’ve got that way of seem­ing quietly su­per­ior to every­body else.”

“I!” she cried. “I have?”

“Oh, you think you keep it sort of con­fid­en­tial to your­self, but it’s plain enough! I don’t be­lieve in that kind of thing.”

“You don’t?”

“No,” said Ge­orge em­phat­ic­ally. “Not with me! I think the world’s like this: there’s a few people that their birth and po­s­i­tion, and so on, puts them at the top, and they ought to treat each other en­tirely as equals.” His voice be­trayed a little emo­tion as he ad­ded, “I wouldn’t speak like this to every­body.”

“You mean you’re con­fid­ing your deep­est creed—or code, whatever it is—to me?”

“Go on, make fun of it, then!” Ge­orge said bit­terly. “You do think you’re ter­ribly clever! It makes me tired!”

“Well, as you don’t like my seem­ing ‘quietly su­per­ior,’ after this I’ll be nois­ily su­per­ior,” she re­turned cheer­fully. “We aim to please!”

“I had a no­tion be­fore I came for you today that we were go­ing to quar­rel,” he said.

“No, we won’t; it takes two!” She laughed and waved her muff to­ward a new house, not quite com­pleted, stand­ing in a field upon their right. They had passed bey­ond Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion, and were leav­ing the north­ern fringes of the town for the open coun­try. “Isn’t that a beau­ti­ful house!” she ex­claimed. “Papa and I call it our Beau­ti­ful House.”

Ge­orge was not pleased. “Does it be­long to you?”

“Of course not! Papa brought me out here the other day, driv­ing in his ma­chine, and we both loved it. It’s so spa­cious and dig­ni­fied and plain.”

“Yes, it’s plain enough!” Ge­orge grunted.

“Yet it’s lovely; the gray-green roof and shut­ters give just enough col­our, with the trees, for the long white walls. It seems to me the finest house I’ve seen in this part of the coun­try.”

Ge­orge was out­raged by an en­thu­si­asm so ig­nor­ant—not ten minutes ago they had passed the Am­ber­son Man­sion. “Is that a sample of your taste in ar­chi­tec­ture?” he asked.

“Yes. Why?”

“Be­cause it strikes me you bet­ter go some­where and study the sub­ject a little!”

Lucy looked puzzled. “What makes you have so much feel­ing about it? Have I of­fen­ded you?”

“ ‘Of­fen­ded’ noth­ing!” Ge­orge re­turned brusquely. “Girls usu­ally think they know it all as soon as they’ve learned to dance and dress and flirt a little. They never know any­thing about things like ar­chi­tec­ture, for in­stance. That house is about as bum a house as any house I ever saw!”

“Why?”

“Why?” Ge­orge re­peated. “Did you ask me why?”

“Yes.”

“Well, for one thing—” he paused—“for one thing—well, just look at it! I shouldn’t think you’d have to do any more than look at it if you’d ever given any at­ten­tion to ar­chi­tec­ture.”

“What is the mat­ter with its ar­chi­tec­ture, Mr. Minafer?”

“Well, it’s this way,” said Ge­orge. “It’s like this. Well, for in­stance, that house—well, it was built like a town house.” He spoke of it in the past tense, be­cause they had now left it far be­hind them—a hu­man habit of curi­ous sig­ni­fic­ance. “It was like a house meant for a street in the city. What kind of a house was that for people of any taste to build out here in the coun­try?”

“But papa says it’s built that way on pur­pose. There are a lot of other houses be­ing built in this dir­ec­tion, and papa says the city’s com­ing out this way; and in a year or two that house will be right in town.”

“It was a bum house, any­how,” said Ge­orge crossly. “I don’t even know the people that are build­ing it. They say a lot of rif­fraff come to town every year nowadays and there’s other rif­fraff that have al­ways lived here, and have made a little money, and act as if they owned the place. Uncle Sydney was talk­ing about it yes­ter­day: he says he and some of his friends are or­gan­iz­ing a coun­try club, and already some of these rif­fraff are worm­ing into it—people he never heard of at all! Anyhow, I guess it’s pretty clear you don’t know a great deal about ar­chi­tec­ture.”

She demon­strated the com­plete­ness of her ami­ab­il­ity by laugh­ing. “I’ll know some­thing about the North Pole be­fore long,” she said, “if we keep go­ing much farther in this dir­ec­tion!”

At this he was re­morse­ful. “All right, we’ll turn, and drive south awhile till you get warmed up again. I ex­pect we have been go­ing against the wind about long enough. Indeed, I’m sorry!”

He said, “Indeed, I’m sorry,” in a nice way, and looked very strik­ingly hand­some when he said it, she thought. No doubt it is true that there is more re­joicing in heaven over one sin­ner re­pen­ted than over all the saints who con­sist­ently re­main holy, and the rare, sud­den gen­tle­nesses of ar­rog­ant people have in­fin­itely more ef­fect than the con­tinual gen­tle­ness of gentle people. Ar­rog­ance turned gentle melts the heart; and Lucy gave her com­pan­ion a little side­long, sunny nod of ac­know­ledg­ment. Ge­orge was dazzled by the quick glow of her eyes, and found him­self at a loss for some­thing to say.

Hav­ing turned about, he kept his horse to a walk, and at this gait the sleigh­bells tinkled but in­ter­mit­tently. Gleam­ing wanly through the whit­ish va­pour that kept rising from the trot­ter’s body and flanks, they were like tiny fog-bells, and made the only sounds in a great winter si­lence. The white road ran between lone­some rail fences; and frozen barn­yards bey­ond the fences showed some­times a har­row left to rust, with its iron seat half filled with stiffened snow, and some­times an old dead buggy, its wheels forever set, it seemed, in the solid ice of deep ruts. Chick­ens scratched the metal­lic earth with an air of protest, and a mas­ter­less ragged colt looked up in sud­den hor­ror at the mild tinkle of the passing bells, then blew fierce clouds of steam at the sleigh. The snow no longer fell, and far ahead, in a gray­ish cloud that lay upon the land, was the town.

Lucy looked at this dis­tant thick­en­ing re­flec­tion. “When we get this far out we can see there must be quite a little smoke hanging over the town,” she said. “I sup­pose that’s be­cause it’s grow­ing. As it grows big­ger it seems to get ashamed of it­self, so it makes this cloud and hides in it. Papa says it used to be a bit nicer when he lived here: he al­ways speaks of it dif­fer­ently—he al­ways has a gentle look, a par­tic­u­lar tone of voice, I’ve no­ticed. He must have been very fond of it. It must have been a lovely place: every­body must have been so jolly. From the way he talks, you’d think life here then was just one long mid­sum­mer ser­en­ade. He de­clares it was al­ways sun­shine, that the air wasn’t like the air any­where else—that, as he re­mem­bers it, there al­ways seemed to be gold-dust in the air. I doubt it! I think it doesn’t seem to be duller air to him now just on ac­count of hav­ing a little soot in it some­times, but prob­ably be­cause he was twenty years younger then. It seems to me the gold-dust he thinks was here is just his be­ing young that he re­mem­bers. I think it was just youth. It is pretty pleas­ant to be young, isn’t it?” She laughed ab­sently, then ap­peared to be­come wist­ful. “I won­der if we really do en­joy it as much as we’ll look back and think we did! I don’t sup­pose so. Anyhow, for my part I feel as if I must be miss­ing some­thing about it, some­how, be­cause I don’t ever seem to be think­ing about what’s hap­pen­ing at the present mo­ment; I’m al­ways look­ing for­ward to some­thing—think­ing about things that will hap­pen when I’m older.”

“You’re a funny girl,” Ge­orge said gently. “But your voice sounds pretty nice when you think and talk along to­gether like that!”

The horse shook him­self all over, and the im­pa­tient sleigh­bells made his wish aud­ible. Ac­cord­ingly, Ge­orge tightened the reins, and the cut­ter was off again at a three-minute trot, no despic­able rate of speed. It was not long be­fore they were again passing Lucy’s Beau­ti­ful House, and here Ge­orge thought fit to put an ap­pendix to his re­mark. “You’re a funny girl, and you know a lot—but I don’t be­lieve you know much about ar­chi­tec­ture!”

Com­ing to­ward them, black against the snowy road, was a strange sil­hou­ette. It ap­proached mod­er­ately and without vis­ible means of pro­gres­sion, so the mat­ter seemed from a dis­tance; but as the cut­ter shortened the dis­tance, the sil­hou­ette was re­vealed to be Mr. Mor­gan’s horse­less car­riage, con­vey­ing four people atop: Mr. Mor­gan with Ge­orge’s mother be­side him, and, in the rear seat, Miss Fanny Minafer and the Honor­able Ge­orge Am­ber­son. All four seemed to be in the live­li­est hu­mour, like high-spir­ited people upon a new ad­ven­ture; and Isa­bel waved her handker­chief dash­ingly as the cut­ter flashed by them.

“For the Lord’s sake!” Ge­orge gasped.

“Your mother’s a dear,” said Lucy. “And she does wear the most be­witch­ing things! She looked like a Rus­sian prin­cess, though I doubt if they’re that hand­some.”

Ge­orge said noth­ing; he drove on till they had crossed Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion and reached the stone pil­lars at the head of Na­tional Av­enue. There he turned.

“Let’s go back and take an­other look at that old sew­ing-ma­chine,” he said. “It cer­tainly is the weird­est, cra­zi­est—”

He left the sen­tence un­fin­ished, and presently they were again in sight of the old sew­ing-ma­chine. Ge­orge shouted mock­ingly.

Alas! three fig­ures stood in the road, and a pair of legs, with the toes turned up, in­dic­ated that a fourth fig­ure lay upon its back in the snow, be­neath a horse­less car­riage that had de­cided to need a horse.

Ge­orge be­came vo­ci­fer­ous with laughter, and com­ing up at his trot­ter’s best gait, snow spray­ing from run­ners and every hoof, swerved to the side of the road and shot by, shout­ing, “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss!”

Three hun­dred yards away he turned and came back, ra­cing; lean­ing out as he passed, to wave jeer­ingly at the group about the dis­abled ma­chine: “Git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a—”

The trot­ter had broken into a gal­lop, and Lucy cried a warn­ing: “Be care­ful!” she said. “Look where you’re driv­ing! There’s a ditch on that side. Look—”

Ge­orge turned too late; the cut­ter’s right run­ner went into the ditch and snapped off; the little sleigh up­set, and, after drag­ging its oc­cu­pants some fif­teen yards, left them ly­ing to­gether in a bank of snow. Then the vig­or­ous young horse kicked him­self free of all an­noy­ances, and dis­ap­peared down the road, gal­lop­ing cheer­fully.

VIII

When Ge­orge re­gained some meas­ure of his pres­ence of mind, Miss Lucy Mor­gan’s cheek, snowy and cold, was press­ing his nose slightly to one side; his right arm was firmly about her neck; and a mon­strous amount of her fur boa seemed to mingle with an equally un­plaus­ible quant­ity of snow in his mouth. He was con­fused, but con­scious of no ob­jec­tion to any of these jux­ta­pos­i­tions. She was ap­par­ently un­injured, for she sat up, hat­less, her hair down, and said mildly:

“Good heav­ens!”

Though her father had been un­der his ma­chine when they passed, he was the first to reach them. He threw him­self on his knees be­side his daugh­ter, but found her already laugh­ing, and was re­as­sured. “They’re all right,” he called to Isa­bel, who was run­ning to­ward them, ahead of her brother and Fanny Minafer. “This snow­bank’s a feather bed—noth­ing the mat­ter with them at all. Don’t look so pale!”

“Ge­or­gie!” she gasped. “Ge­or­gie!”

Ge­or­gie was on his feet, snow all over him.

“Don’t make a fuss, mother! Noth­ing’s the mat­ter. That darned silly horse—”

Sud­den tears stood in Isa­bel’s eyes. “To see you down un­der­neath—drag­ging—oh—” Then with shak­ing hands she began to brush the snow from him.

“Let me alone,” he pro­tested. “You’ll ruin your gloves. You’re get­ting snow all over you, and—”

“No, no!” she cried. “You’ll catch cold; you mustn’t catch cold!” And she con­tin­ued to brush him.

Am­ber­son had brought Lucy’s hat; Miss Fanny ac­ted as lady’s-maid; and both vic­tims of the ac­ci­dent were presently re­stored to about their usual ap­pear­ance and con­di­tion of ap­parel. In fact, en­cour­aged by the two older gen­tle­men, the en­tire party, with one ex­cep­tion, de­cided that the epis­ode was after all a merry one, and began to laugh about it. But Ge­orge was glum­mer than the Decem­ber twi­light now swiftly clos­ing in.

“That darned horse!” he said.

“I wouldn’t bother about Penden­nis, Ge­or­gie,” said his uncle. “You can send a man out for what’s left of the cut­ter to­mor­row, and Penden­nis will gal­lop straight home to his stable: he’ll be there a long while be­fore we will, be­cause all we’ve got to de­pend on to get us home is Gene Mor­gan’s broken-down chaf­ing-dish yon­der.”

They were ap­proach­ing the ma­chine as he spoke, and his friend, again un­der­neath it, heard him. He emerged, smil­ing. “She’ll go,” he said.

“What!”

“All aboard!”

He offered his hand to Isa­bel. She was smil­ing but still pale, and her eyes, in spite of the smile, kept upon Ge­orge in a shocked anxi­ety. Miss Fanny had already moun­ted to the rear seat, and Ge­orge, after help­ing Lucy Mor­gan to climb up be­side his aunt, was fol­low­ing. Isa­bel saw that his shoes were light things of pat­ent leather, and that snow was cling­ing to them. She made a little rush to­ward him, and, as one of his feet res­ted on the iron step of the ma­chine, in mount­ing, she began to clean the snow from his shoe with her al­most aer­ial lace handker­chief. “You mustn’t catch cold!” she cried.

“Stop that!” Ge­orge shouted, and furi­ously with­drew his foot.

“Then stamp the snow off,” she begged. “You mustn’t ride with wet feet.”

“They’re not!” Ge­orge roared, thor­oughly out­raged. “For heaven’s sake get in! You’re stand­ing in the snow your­self. Get in!”

Isa­bel con­sen­ted, turn­ing to Mor­gan, whose ha­bitual ex­pres­sion of ap­pre­hens­ive­ness was some­what ac­cen­tu­ated. He climbed up after her, Ge­orge Am­ber­son hav­ing gone to the other side. “You’re the same Isa­bel I used to know!” he said in a low voice. “You’re a di­vinely ri­dicu­lous wo­man.”

“Am I, Eu­gene?” she said, not dis­pleased. “ ‘Div­inely’ and ‘ri­dicu­lous’ just coun­ter­bal­ance each other, don’t they? Plus one and minus one equal noth­ing; so you mean I’m noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar?”

“No,” he answered, tug­ging at a lever. “That doesn’t seem to be pre­cisely what I meant. There!” This ex­clam­a­tion re­ferred to the sub­ter­ranean ma­chinery, for dis­may­ing sounds came from be­neath the floor, and the vehicle plunged, then rolled nois­ily for­ward.

“Be­hold!” Ge­orge Am­ber­son ex­claimed. “She does move! It must be an­other ac­ci­dent.”

“Ac­ci­dent?” Mor­gan shouted over the din. “No! She breathes, she stirs; she seems to feel a thrill of life along her keel!” And he began to sing “The Star Spangled Ban­ner.”

Am­ber­son joined him lust­ily, and sang on when Mor­gan stopped. The twi­light sky cleared, dis­cov­er­ing a round moon already risen; and the mu­sical con­gress­man hailed this bright pres­ence with the com­plete text and melody of “The Danube River.”

His nephew, be­hind, was gloomy. He had over­heard his mother’s con­ver­sa­tion with the in­ventor: it seemed curi­ous to him that this Mor­gan, of whom he had never heard un­til last night, should be us­ing the name “Isa­bel” so eas­ily; and Ge­orge felt that it was not just the thing for his mother to call Mor­gan “Eu­gene;” the re­sent­ment of the pre­vi­ous night came upon Ge­orge again. Mean­while, his mother and Mor­gan con­tin­ued their talk; but he could no longer hear what they said; the noise of the car and his uncle’s song­ful mood pre­ven­ted. He marked how an­im­ated Isa­bel seemed; it was not strange to see his mother so gay, but it was strange that a man not of the fam­ily should be the cause of her gaiety. And Ge­orge sat frown­ing.

Fanny Minafer had be­gun to talk to Lucy. “Your father wanted to prove that his horse­less car­riage would run, even in the snow,” she said. “It really does, too.”

“Of course!”

“It’s so in­ter­est­ing! He’s been telling us how he’s go­ing to change it. He says he’s go­ing to have wheels all made of rub­ber and blown up with air. I don’t un­der­stand what he means at all; I should think they’d ex­plode—but Eu­gene seems to be very con­fid­ent. He al­ways was con­fid­ent, though. It seems so like old times to hear him talk!”

She be­came thought­ful, and Lucy turned to Ge­orge. “You tried to swing un­der­neath me and break the fall for me when we went over,” she said. “I knew you were do­ing that, and—it was nice of you.”

“Wasn’t any fall to speak of,” he re­turned brusquely. “Couldn’t have hurt either of us.”

“Still it was friendly of you—and aw­fully quick, too. I’ll not—I’ll not for­get it!”

Her voice had a sound of genu­ine­ness, very pleas­ant; and Ge­orge began to for­get his an­noy­ance with her father. This an­noy­ance of his had not been al­le­vi­ated by the cir­cum­stance that neither of the seats of the old sew­ing-ma­chine was de­signed for three people, but when his neigh­bour spoke thus grate­fully, he no longer minded the crowding—in fact, it pleased him so much that he began to wish the old sew­ing-ma­chine would go even slower. And she had spoken no word of blame for his let­ting that darned horse get the cut­ter into the ditch. Ge­orge presently ad­dressed her hur­riedly, al­most trem­u­lously, speak­ing close to her ear:

“I for­got to tell you some­thing: you’re pretty nice! I thought so the first second I saw you last night. I’ll come for you to­night and take you to the Assembly at the Am­ber­son Hotel. You’re go­ing, aren’t you?”

“Yes, but I’m go­ing with papa and the Shar­ons I’ll see you there.”

“Looks to me as if you were aw­fully con­ven­tional,” Ge­orge grumbled; and his dis­ap­point­ment was deeper than he was will­ing to let her see—though she prob­ably did see. “Well, we’ll dance the co­til­lion to­gether, any­how.”

“I’m afraid not. I prom­ised Mr. Kin­ney.”

“What!” Ge­orge’s tone was shocked, as at in­cred­ible news. “Well, you could break that en­gage­ment, I guess, if you wanted to! Girls al­ways can get out of things when they want to. Won’t you?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Why not?”

“Be­cause I prom­ised him. Several days ago.”

Ge­orge gulped, and lowered his pride, “I don’t—oh, look here! I only want to go to that thing to­night to get to see some­thing of you; and if you don’t dance the co­til­lion with me, how can I? I’ll only be here two weeks, and the oth­ers have got all the rest of your visit to see you. Won’t you do it, please?”

“I couldn’t.”

“See here!” said the stricken Ge­orge. “If you’re go­ing to de­cline to dance that co­til­lion with me simply be­cause you’ve prom­ised a—a—a miser­able red­headed out­sider like Fred Kin­ney, why we might as well quit!”

“Quit what?”

“You know per­fectly well what I mean,” he said husk­ily.

“I don’t.”

“Well, you ought to!”

“But I don’t at all!”

Ge­orge, thor­oughly hurt, and not a little em­bittered, ex­pressed him­self in a short out­burst of laughter: “Well, I ought to have seen it!”

“Seen what?”

“That you might turn out to be a girl who’d like a fel­low of the red­headed Kin­ney sort. I ought to have seen it from the first!”

Lucy bore her dis­grace lightly. “Oh, dan­cing a co­til­lion with a per­son doesn’t mean that you like him—but I don’t see any­thing in par­tic­u­lar the mat­ter with Mr. Kin­ney. What is?”

“If you don’t see any­thing the mat­ter with him for your­self,” Ge­orge re­spon­ded, icily, “I don’t think point­ing it out would help you. You prob­ably wouldn’t un­der­stand.”

“You might try,” she sug­ges­ted. “Of course I’m a stranger here, and if people have done any­thing wrong or have some­thing un­pleas­ant about them, I wouldn’t have any way of know­ing it, just at first. If poor Mr. Kin­ney—”

“I prefer not to dis­cuss it,” said Ge­orge curtly. “He’s an en­emy of mine.”

“Why?”

“I prefer not to dis­cuss it.”

“Well, but—”

“I prefer not to dis­cuss it!”

“Very well.” She began to hum the air of the song which Mr. Ge­orge Am­ber­son was now dis­cours­ing, “O moon of my de­light that knows no wane”—and there was no fur­ther con­ver­sa­tion on the back seat.

They had entered Am­ber­son Ad­di­tion, and the moon of Mr. Am­ber­son’s de­light was over­laid by a slender Gothic fil­agree; the branches that sprang from the shade trees lin­ing the street. Through the win­dows of many of the houses rosy lights were flick­er­ing; and sil­ver tin­sel and ever­green wreaths and bril­liant little glass globes of sil­ver and wine col­our could be seen, and glimpses were caught of Christ­mas trees, with people deck­ing them by fire­light—re­mind­ers that this was Christ­mas Eve. The ride-steal­ers had dis­ap­peared from the high­way, though now and then, over the gasp­ing and howl­ing of the horse­less car­riage, there came a shrill jeer from some young passerby upon the side­walk:

“Mister, fer heaven’s sake go an’ git a hoss! Git a hoss! Git a hoss!”

The con­triv­ance stopped with a heart-shak­ing jerk be­fore Isa­bel’s house. The gen­tle­men jumped down, help­ing Isa­bel and Fanny to des­cend; there were friendly leave­tak­ings—and one that was not pre­cisely friendly.

“It’s au re­voir, till to­night, isn’t it?” Lucy asked, laugh­ing.

“Good af­ter­noon!” said Ge­orge, and he did not wait, as his re­l­at­ives did, to see the old sew­ing ma­chine start briskly down the street, to­ward the Shar­ons’; its lighter load con­sist­ing now of only Mr. Mor­gan and his daugh­ter. Ge­orge went into the house at once.

He found his father read­ing the even­ing pa­per in the lib­rary. “Where are your mother and your Aunt Fanny?” Mr. Minafer in­quired, not look­ing up.

“They’re com­ing,” said his son; and, cast­ing him­self heav­ily into a chair, stared at the fire.

His pre­dic­tion was veri­fied a few mo­ments later; the two ladies came in cheer­fully, un­fasten­ing their fur cloaks. “It’s all right, Ge­or­gie,” said Isa­bel. “Your Uncle Ge­orge called to us that Penden­nis got home safely. Put your shoes close to the fire, dear, or else go and change them.” She went to her hus­band and pat­ted him lightly on the shoulder, an ac­tion which Ge­orge watched with sombre mood­i­ness. “You might dress be­fore long,” she sug­ges­ted. “We’re all go­ing to the Assembly, after din­ner, aren’t we? Brother Ge­orge said he’d go with us.”

“Look here,” said Ge­orge ab­ruptly. “How about this man Mor­gan and his old sew­ing-ma­chine? Doesn’t he want to get grand­father to put money into it? Isn’t he try­ing to work Uncle Ge­orge for that? Isn’t that what he’s up to?”

It was Miss Fanny who re­spon­ded. “You little silly!” she cried, with sur­pris­ing sharp­ness. “What on earth are you talk­ing about? Eu­gene Mor­gan’s per­fectly able to fin­ance his own in­ven­tions these days.”

“I’ll bet he bor­rows money of Uncle Ge­orge,” the nephew in­sisted.

Isa­bel looked at him in grave per­plex­ity. “Why do you say such a thing, Ge­orge?” she asked.

“He strikes me as that sort of man,” he answered dog­gedly. “Isn’t he, father?”

Minafer set down his pa­per for the mo­ment. “He was a fairly wild young fel­low twenty years ago,” he said, glan­cing at his wife ab­sently. “He was like you in one thing, Ge­or­gie; he spent too much money—only he didn’t have any mother to get money out of a grand­father for him, so he was usu­ally in debt. But I be­lieve I’ve heard he’s done fairly well of late years. No, I can’t say I think he’s a swind­ler, and I doubt if he needs any­body else’s money to back his horse­less car­riage.”

“Well, what’s he brought the old thing here for, then? People that own ele­phants don’t take them ele­phants around with ’em when they go vis­it­ing. What’s he got it here for?”

“I’m sure I don’t know,” said Mr. Minafer, re­sum­ing his pa­per. “You might ask him.”

Isa­bel laughed, and pat­ted her hus­band’s shoulder again. “Aren’t you go­ing to dress? Aren’t we all go­ing to the dance?”

He groaned faintly. “Aren’t your brother and Ge­or­gie es­corts enough for you and Fanny?”

“Wouldn’t you en­joy it at all?”

“You know I don’t.”

Isa­bel let her hand re­main upon his shoulder a mo­ment longer; she stood be­hind him, look­ing into the fire, and Ge­orge, watch­ing her brood­ingly, thought there was more col­our in her face than the re­flec­tion of the flames ac­coun­ted for. “Well, then,” she said in­dul­gently, “stay at home and be happy. We won’t urge you if you’d really rather not.”

“I really wouldn’t,” he said con­ten­tedly.

Half an hour later, Ge­orge was passing through the up­per hall, in a bath­robe stage of pre­par­a­tion for the even­ing’s’ gaiet­ies, when he en­countered his Aunt Fanny. He stopped her. “Look here!” he said.

“What in the world is the mat­ter with you?” she de­man­ded, re­gard­ing him with little ami­ab­il­ity. “You look as if you were re­hears­ing for a vil­lain in a play. Do change your ex­pres­sion!”

His ex­pres­sion gave no sign of yield­ing to the re­quest; on the con­trary, its somber­ness deepened. “I sup­pose you don’t know why father doesn’t want to go to­night,” he said sol­emnly. “You’re his only sis­ter, and yet you don’t know!”

“He never wants to go any­where that I ever heard of,” said Fanny. “What is the mat­ter with you?”

“He doesn’t want to go be­cause he doesn’t like this man Mor­gan.”

“Good gra­cious!” Fanny cried im­pa­tiently. “Eu­gene Mor­gan isn’t in your father’s thoughts at all, one way or the other. Why should he be?”

Ge­orge hes­it­ated. “Well—it strikes me—Look here, what makes you and—and every­body—so ex­cited over him?”

“Ex­cited!” she jeered. “Can’t people be glad to see an old friend without silly chil­dren like you hav­ing to make a to-do about it? I’ve just been in your mother’s room sug­gest­ing that she might give a little din­ner for them—”

“For who?”

“For whom, Ge­or­gie! For Mr. Mor­gan and his daugh­ter.”

“Look here!” Ge­orge said quickly. “Don’t do that! Mother mustn’t do that. It wouldn’t look well.”

“Wouldn’t look well!” Fanny mocked him; and her sup­pressed vehe­mence be­trayed a sur­pris­ing acerbity. “See here, Ge­or­gie Minafer, I sug­gest that you just march straight on into your room and fin­ish your dress­ing! So­me­times you say things that show you have a pretty mean little mind!”

Ge­orge was so astoun­ded by this out­burst that his in­dig­na­tion was delayed by his curi­os­ity. “Why, what up­sets you this way?” he in­quired.

“I know what you mean,” she said, her voice still lowered, but not de­creas­ing in sharp­ness. “You’re try­ing to in­sinu­ate that I’d get your mother to in­vite Eu­gene Mor­gan here on my ac­count be­cause he’s a wid­ower!”

“I am?” Ge­orge gasped, non­plussed. “I’m try­ing to in­sinu­ate that you’re set­ting your cap at him and get­ting mother to help you? Is that what you mean?”

Bey­ond a doubt that was what Miss Fanny meant. She gave him a white-hot look. “You at­tend to your own af­fairs!” she whispered fiercely, and swept away.

Ge­orge, dum­foun­ded, re­turned to his room for med­it­a­tion.

He had lived for years in the same house with his Aunt Fanny, and it now ap­peared that dur­ing all those years he had been thus in­tim­ately as­so­ci­at­ing with a total stranger. Never be­fore had he met the pas­sion­ate lady with whom he had just held a con­ver­sa­tion in the hall. So she wanted to get mar­ried! And wanted Ge­orge’s mother to help her with this horse­less-car­riage wid­ower!

“Well, I will be shot!” he muttered aloud. “I will—I cer­tainly will be shot!” And he began to laugh. “Lord ’lmighty!”

But presently, at the thought of the horse­less-car­riage wid­ower’s daugh­ter, his grim­ness re­turned, and he re­solved upon a line of con­duct for the even­ing. He would nod to her care­lessly when he first saw her; and, after that, he would no­tice her no more: he would not dance with her; he would not fa­vour her in the co­til­lion—he would not go near her!

… He des­cen­ded to din­ner upon the third ur­gent sum­mons of a col­oured but­ler, hav­ing spent two hours dress­ing—and re­hears­ing.

IX

The Hon­our­able Ge­orge Am­ber­son was a con­gress­man who led co­til­lions—the sort of con­gress­man an Am­ber­son would be. He did it neg­li­gently, to­night, yet with in­fal­lible dex­ter­ity, now and then glan­cing hu­mor­ously at the spec­tat­ors, people of his own age. They were seated in a trop­ical grove at one end of the room whither they had re­tired at the be­gin­ning of the co­til­lion, which they sur­rendered en­tirely to the twen­ties and the late teens. And here, grouped with that stately pair, Sydney and Amelia Am­ber­son, sat Isa­bel with Fanny, while Eu­gene Mor­gan ap­peared to be­stow an ami­able de­vo­tion im­par­tially upon the three sis­ters-in-law. Fanny watched his face eagerly, laugh­ing at everything he said; Amelia smiled blandly, but rather be­cause of gra­cious­ness than be­cause of in­terest; while Isa­bel, look­ing out at the dan­cers, rhyth­mic­ally moved a great fan of blue os­trich feath­ers, listened to Eu­gene thought­fully, yet all the while kept her shin­ing eyes on Ge­or­gie.

Ge­or­gie had car­ried out his re­hearsed pro­jects with pre­ci­sion, he had given Miss Mor­gan a nod stud­ied into per­fec­tion dur­ing his lengthy toi­let be­fore din­ner. “Oh, yes, I do seem to re­mem­ber that curi­ous little out­sider!” this nod seemed to say. There­after, all cog­niz­ance of her evap­or­ated: the curi­ous little out­sider was per­mit­ted no fur­ther ex­ist­ence worth the struggle. Never­the­less, she flashed in the corner of his eye too of­ten. He was aware of her dan­cing de­murely, and of her vi­ciously flir­ta­tious habit of never look­ing up at her part­ner, but keep­ing her eyes con­cealed be­neath down­cast lashes; and he had over-suf­fi­cient con­scious­ness of her between the dances, though it was not pos­sible to see her at these times, even if he had cared to look frankly in her dir­ec­tion—she was in­vis­ible in a thicket of young dress­coats. The black thicket moved as she moved and her loc­a­tion was hate­fully ap­par­ent, even if he had not heard her voice laugh­ing from the thicket. It was an­noy­ing how her voice, though never loud, pur­sued him. No mat­ter how vo­ci­fer­ous were other voices, all about, he seemed un­able to pre­vent him­self from con­stantly re­cog­niz­ing hers. It had a quaver in it, not pathetic—rather hu­mor­ous than pathetic—a qual­ity which an­noyed him to the point of rage, be­cause it was so dif­fi­cult to get away from. She seemed to be hav­ing a “won­der­ful time!”

An un­bear­able sore­ness ac­cu­mu­lated in his chest: his dis­like of the girl and her con­duct in­creased un­til he thought of leav­ing this sick­en­ing Assembly and go­ing home to bed. That would show her! But just then he heard her laugh­ing, and de­cided that it wouldn’t show her. So he re­mained.

When the young couples seated them­selves in chairs against the walls, round three sides of the room, for the co­til­lion, Ge­orge joined a brazen-faced group clus­ter­ing about the door­way—youths with no part­ners, yet eli­gible to be “called out” and fa­voured. He marked that his uncle placed the in­fernal Kin­ney and Miss Mor­gan, as the lead­ing couple, in the first chairs at the head of the line upon the leader’s right; and this dis­loy­alty on the part of Uncle Ge­orge was in­ex­cus­able, for in the fam­ily circle the nephew had of­ten ex­pressed his opin­ion of Fred Kin­ney. In his bit­ter­ness, Ge­orge uttered a sig­ni­fic­ant mono­syl­lable.

The mu­sic flour­ished; whereupon Mr. Kin­ney, Miss Mor­gan, and six of their neigh­bours rose and waltzed know­ingly. Mr. Am­ber­son’s whistle blew; then the eight young people went to the fa­vour-table and were given toys and trinkets where­with to de­light the new part­ners it was now their priv­ilege to se­lect. Around the walls, the seated non­par­ti­cipants in this ce­re­mony looked rather con­scious; some chattered, en­deav­our­ing not to ap­pear ex­pect­ant; some tried not to look wist­ful; and oth­ers were frankly sol­emn. It was a try­ing mo­ment; and who­ever se­cured a fa­vour, this very first shot, might con­sider the portents happy for a suc­cess­ful even­ing.

Hold­ing their twink­ling gewgaws in their hands, those about to be­stow hon­our came to­ward the seated lines, where ex­pres­sions be­came fe­ver­ish. Two of the ap­proach­ing girls seemed to wander, not find­ing a pre­de­ter­mined ob­ject in sight; and these two were Janie Sharon, and her cousin, Lucy. At this, Ge­orge Am­ber­son Minafer, con­ceiv­ing that he had little to an­ti­cip­ate from either, turned a proud back upon the room and af­fected to con­verse with his friend, Mr. Charlie John­son.

The next mo­ment a quick little fig­ure in­ter­vened between the two. It was Lucy, gaily of­fer­ing a sil­ver sleigh­bell decked with white rib­bon.

“I al­most couldn’t find you!” she cried.

Ge­orge stared, took her hand, led her forth in si­lence, danced with her. She seemed con­tent not to talk; but as the whistle blew, sig­nalling that this epis­ode was con­cluded, and he con­duc­ted her to her seat, she lif­ted the little bell to­ward him. “You haven’t taken your fa­vour. You’re sup­posed to pin it on your coat,” she said. “Don’t you want it?”

“If you in­sist!” said Ge­orge stiffly. And he bowed her into her chair; then turned and walked away, drop­ping the sleigh­bell haught­ily into his trousers’ pocket.

The fig­ure pro­ceeded to its con­clu­sion, and Ge­orge was given other sleigh­bells, which he eas­ily con­sen­ted to wear upon his lapel; but, as the next fig­ure began, he strolled with a bored air to the trop­ical grove, where sat his eld­ers, and seated him­self be­side his Uncle Sydney. His mother leaned across Miss Fanny, rais­ing her voice over the mu­sic to speak to him.

“Ge­or­gie, nobody will be able to see you here. You’ll not be fa­voured. You ought to be where you can dance.”

“Don’t care to,” he re­turned. “Bore!”

“But you ought—” She stopped and laughed, wav­ing her fan to dir­ect his at­ten­tion be­hind him. “Look! Over your shoulder!”

He turned, and dis­covered Miss Lucy Mor­gan in the act of of­fer­ing him a purple toy bal­loon.

“I found you!” she laughed.

Ge­orge was startled. “Well—” he said.

“Would you rather ‘sit it out’?” Lucy asked quickly, as he did not move. “I don’t care to dance if you—”

“No,” he said, rising. “It would be bet­ter to dance.” His tone was sol­emn, and sol­emnly he de­par­ted with her from the grove. Sol­emnly he danced with her.

Four times, with not the slight­est en­cour­age­ment, she brought him a fa­vour: four times in suc­ces­sion. When the fourth came, “Look here!” said Ge­orge husk­ily. “You go­ing to keep this up all night? What do you mean by it?”

For an in­stant she seemed con­fused. “That’s what co­til­lions are for, aren’t they?” she mur­mured.

“What do you mean: what they’re for?”

“So that a girl can dance with a per­son she wants to?”

Ge­orge’s husk­i­ness in­creased. “Well, do you mean you—you want to dance with me all the time—all even­ing?”

“Well, this much of it—evid­ently!” she laughed.

“Is it be­cause you thought I tried to keep you from get­ting hurt this af­ter­noon when we up­set?”

She shook her head.

“Was it be­cause you want to even things up for mak­ing me angry—I mean, for hurt­ing my feel­ings on the way home?”

With her eyes aver­ted—for girls of nine­teen can be as shy as boys, some­times—she said, “Well—you only got angry be­cause I couldn’t dance the co­til­lion with you. I—I didn’t feel ter­ribly hurt with you for get­ting angry about that!”

“Was there any other reason? Did my telling you I liked you have any­thing to do with it?”

She looked up gently, and, as Ge­orge met her eyes, some­thing ex­quis­itely touch­ing, yet queerly de­light­ful, gave him a catch in the throat. She looked in­stantly away, and, turn­ing, ran out from the palm grove, where they stood, to the dan­cing-floor.

“Come on!” she cried. “Let’s dance!”

He fol­lowed her.

“See here—I—I—” he stammered. “You mean—Do you—”

“No, no!” she laughed. “Let’s dance!”

He put his arm about her al­most trem­u­lously, and they began to waltz. It was a happy dance for both of them.

Christ­mas day is the chil­dren’s, but the hol­i­days are youth’s dan­cing-time. The hol­i­days be­long to the early twen­ties and the teens, home from school and col­lege. These years pos­sess the hol­i­days for a little while, then pos­sess them only in smil­ing, wist­ful memor­ies of holly and twink­ling lights and dance-mu­sic, and charm­ing faces all aglow. It is the live­li­est time in life, the hap­pi­est of the ir­re­spons­ible times in life. Moth­ers echo its hap­pi­ness—noth­ing is like a mother who has a son home from col­lege, ex­cept an­other mother with a son home from col­lege. Bloom does ac­tu­ally come upon these moth­ers; it is a vis­ible thing; and they run like girls, walk like ath­letes, laugh like sy­co­phants. Yet they give up their sons to the daugh­ters of other moth­ers, and find it proud rap­ture enough to be al­lowed to sit and watch.

Thus Isa­bel watched Ge­orge and Lucy dan­cing, as to­gether they danced away the hol­i­days of that year into the past.

“They seem to get along bet­ter than they did at first, those two chil­dren,” Fanny Minafer said sit­ting be­side her at the Shar­ons’ dance, a week after the Assembly. “They seemed to be al­ways hav­ing little quar­rels of some sort, at first. At least Ge­orge did: he seemed to be con­tinu­ally peck­ing at that lovely, dainty, little Lucy, and be­ing cross with her over noth­ing.”

“Peck­ing?” Isa­bel laughed. “What a word to use about Ge­or­gie! I think I never knew a more an­gel­ic­ally ami­able dis­pos­i­tion in my life!”

Miss Fanny echoed her sis­ter-in-law’s laugh, but it was a rue­ful echo, and not sweet. “He’s ami­able to you!” she said. “That’s all the side of him you ever hap­pen to see. And why wouldn’t he be ami­able to any­body that simply fell down and wor­shipped him every minute of her life? Most of us would!”

“Isn’t he worth wor­ship­ping? Just look at him! Isn’t he charm­ing with Lucy! See how hard he ran to get it when she dropped her handker­chief back there.”

“Oh, I’m not go­ing to ar­gue with you about Ge­orge!” said Miss Fanny. “I’m fond enough of him, for that mat­ter. He can be charm­ing, and he’s cer­tainly stun­ning look­ing, if only—”

“Let the ‘if only’ go, dear,” Isa­bel sug­ges­ted good-naturedly. “Let’s talk about that din­ner you thought I should—”

“I?” Miss Fanny in­ter­rup­ted quickly. “Didn’t you want to give it your­self?”

“Indeed, I did, my dear!” said Isa­bel heart­ily. “I only meant that un­less you had pro­posed it, per­haps I wouldn’t—”

But here Eu­gene came for her to dance, and she left the sen­tence un­com­pleted. Hol­i­day dances can be happy for youth re­newed as well as for youth in bud—and yet it was not with the air of a rival that Miss Fanny watched her brother’s wife dan­cing with the wid­ower. Miss Fanny’s eyes nar­rowed a little, but only as if her mind en­gaged in a hope­ful cal­cu­la­tion. She looked pleased.