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

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