The Magnificent Ambersons - Booth Tarkington (top novels of all time TXT) 📗

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,