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

of exaggerated color to him, “By the Lord, but you’re a little witch!” George cried.

“George, do let Pendennis trot again!”

“I won’t!”

She clucked to the horse. “Get up, Pendennis! Trot! Go on! Commence!”

Pendennis paid no attention; she meant nothing to him, and George laughed at her fondly. “You are the prettiest thing in this world, Lucy!” he exclaimed. “When I see you in winter, in furs, with your cheeks red, I think you’re prettiest then, but when I see you in summer, in a straw hat and a shirtwaist and a duck skirt and white gloves and those little silver buckled slippers, and your rose-coloured parasol, and your cheeks not red but with a kind of pinky glow about them, then I see I must have been wrong about the winter! When are you going to drop the ‘almost’ and say we’re really engaged?”

“Oh, not for years! So there’s the answer, and let’s trot again.”

But George was persistent; moreover, he had become serious during the last minute or two. “I want to know,” he said. “I really mean it.”

“Let’s don’t be serious, George,” she begged him hopefully. “Let’s talk of something pleasant.”

He was a little offended. “Then it isn’t pleasant for you to know that I want to marry you?”

At this she became as serious as he could have asked; she looked down, and her lip quivered like that of a child about to cry. Suddenly she put her hand upon one of his for just an instant, and then withdrew it.

“Lucy!” he said huskily. “Dear, what’s the matter? You look as if you were going to cry. You always do that,” he went on plaintively, “whenever I can get you to talk about marrying me.”

“I know it,” she murmured.

“Well, why do you?”

Her eyelids flickered, and then she looked up at him with a sad gravity, tears seeming just at the poise. “One reason’s because I have a feeling that it’s never going to be.”

“Why?”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“You haven’t any reason or⁠—”

“It’s just a feeling.”

“Well, if that’s all,” George said, reassured, and laughing confidently, “I guess I won’t be very much troubled!” But at once he became serious again, adopting the tone of argument. “Lucy, how is anything ever going to get a chance to come of it, so long as you keep sticking to ‘almost’? Doesn’t it strike you as unreasonable to have a ‘feeling’ that we’ll never be married, when what principally stands between us is the fact that you won’t be really engaged to me? That does seem pretty absurd! Don’t you care enough about me to marry me?”

She looked down again, pathetically troubled. “Yes.”

“Won’t you always care that much about me?”

“I’m⁠—yes⁠—I’m afraid so, George. I never do change much about anything.”

“Well, then, why in the world won’t you drop the ‘almost’?”

Her distress increased. “Everything is⁠—everything⁠—”

“What about ‘everything’?”

“Everything is so⁠—so unsettled.”

And at that he uttered an exclamation of impatience. “If you aren’t the queerest girl! What is ‘unsettled’?”

“Well, for one thing,” she said, able to smile at his vehemence, “you haven’t settled on anything to do. At least, if you have you’ve never spoken of it.”

As she spoke, she gave him the quickest possible side glance of hopeful scrutiny; then looked away, not happily. Surprise and displeasure were intentionally visible upon the countenance of her companion; and he permitted a significant period of silence to elapse before making any response. “Lucy,” he said, finally, with cold dignity, “I should like to ask you a few questions.”

“Yes?”

“The first is: Haven’t you perfectly well understood that I don’t mean to go into business or adopt a profession?”

“I wasn’t quite sure,” she said gently. “I really didn’t know⁠—quite.”

“Then of course it’s time I did tell you. I never have been able to see any occasion for a man’s going into trade, or being a lawyer, or any of those things if his position and family were such that he didn’t need to. You know, yourself, there are a lot of people in the East⁠—in the South, too, for that matter⁠—that don’t think we’ve got any particular family or position or culture in this part of the country. I’ve met plenty of that kind of provincial snobs myself, and they’re pretty galling. There were one or two men in my crowd at college, their families had lived on their income for three generations, and they never dreamed there was anybody in their class out here. I had to show them a thing or two, right at the start, and I guess they won’t forget it! Well, I think it’s time all their sort found out that three generations can mean just as much out here as anywhere else. That’s the way I feel about it, and let me tell you I feel it pretty deeply!”

“But what are you going to do, George?” she cried.

George’s earnestness surpassed hers; he had become flushed and his breathing was emotional. As he confessed, with simple genuineness, he did feel what he was saying “pretty deeply”; and in truth his state approached the tremulous. “I expect to live an honourable life,” he said. “I expect to contribute my share to charities, and to take part in⁠—in movements.”

“What kind?”

“Whatever appeals to me,” he said.

Lucy looked at him with grieved wonder. “But you really don’t mean to have any regular business or profession at all?”

“I certainly do not!” George returned promptly and emphatically.

“I was afraid so,” she said in a low voice.

George continued to breathe deeply throughout another protracted interval of silence. Then he said, “I should like to revert to the questions I was asking you, if you don’t mind.”

“No, George. I think we’d better⁠—”

“Your father is a business man⁠—”

“He’s a mechanical genius,” Lucy interrupted quickly. “Of course he’s both. And he was a lawyer once⁠—he’s done all sorts of things.”

“Very well. I merely wished to ask if it’s his influence that makes you think I ought to ‘do’ something?”

Lucy frowned slightly. “Why, I suppose almost everything I think or say must be owing to his influence in