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

though she was the mistress of her own ways and no slave to any lamp save that of her own conscience, she had a weakness: she had fallen in love with George Amberson Minafer at first sight, and no matter how she disciplined herself, she had never been able to climb out. The thing had happened to her; that was all. George had looked just the way she had always wanted someone to look⁠—the riskiest of all the moonshine ambushes wherein tricky romance snares credulous young love. But what was fatal to Lucy was that this thing having happened to her, she could not change it. No matter what she discovered in George’s nature she was unable to take away what she had given him; and though she could think differently about him, she could not feel differently about him, for she was one of those too faithful victims of glamour. When she managed to keep the picture of George away from her mind’s eye, she did well enough; but when she let him become visible, she could not choose but love what she disdained. She was a little angel who had fallen in love with high-handed Lucifer; quite an experience, and not apt to be soon succeeded by any falling in love with a tamer party⁠—and the unhappy truth was that George did make better men seem tame. But though she was a victim, she was a heroic one, anything but helpless.

As they drew nearer, George tried to prepare himself to meet her with some remnants of aplomb. He decided that he would keep on looking straight ahead, and lift his hand toward his hat at the very last moment when it would be possible for her to see him out of the corner of her eye: then when she thought it over later, she would not be sure whether he had saluted her or merely rubbed his forehead. And there was the added benefit that any third person who might chance to look from a window, or from a passing carriage, would not think that he was receiving a snub, because he did not intend to lift his hat, but, timing the gesture properly, would in fact actually rub his forehead. These were the hasty plans which occupied his thoughts until he was within about fifty feet of her⁠—when he ceased to have either plans or thoughts, he had kept his eyes from looking full at her until then, and as he saw her, thus close at hand, and coming nearer, a regret that was dumbfounding took possession of him. For the first time he had the sense of having lost something of overwhelming importance.

Lucy did not keep to the right, but came straight to meet him, smiling, and with her hand offered to him.

“Why⁠—you⁠—” he stammered, as he took it. “Haven’t you⁠—” What he meant to say was, “Haven’t you heard?”

“Haven’t I what?” she asked; and he saw that Eugene had not yet told her.

“Nothing!” he gasped. “May I⁠—may I turn and walk with you a little way?”

“Yes, indeed!” she said cordially.

He would not have altered what had been done: he was satisfied with all that⁠—satisfied that it was right, and that his own course was right. But he began to perceive a striking inaccuracy in some remarks he had made to his mother. Now when he had put matters in such shape that even by the relinquishment of his “ideals of life” he could not have Lucy, knew that he could never have her, and knew that when Eugene told her the history of yesterday he could not have a glance or word even friendly from her⁠—now when he must in good truth “give up all idea of Lucy,” he was amazed that he could have used such words as “no particular sacrifice,” and believed them when he said them! She had looked never in his life so bewitchingly pretty as she did today; and as he walked beside her he was sure that she was the most exquisite thing in the world.

“Lucy,” he said huskily, “I want to tell you something. Something that matters.”

“I hope it’s a lively something then,” she said; and laughed. “Papa’s been so glum today he’s scarcely spoken to me. Your Uncle George Amberson came to see him an hour ago and they shut themselves up in the library, and your uncle looked as glum as papa. I’d be glad if you’ll tell me a funny story, George.”

“Well, it may seem one to you,” he said bitterly, “Just to begin with: when you went away you didn’t let me know; not even a word⁠—not a line⁠—”

Her manner persisted in being inconsequent. “Why, no,” she said. “I just trotted off for some visits.”

“Well, at least you might have⁠—”

“Why, no,” she said again briskly. “Don’t you remember, George? We’d had a grand quarrel, and didn’t speak to each other all the way home from a long, long drive! So, as we couldn’t play together like good children, of course it was plain that we oughtn’t to play at all.”

“Play!” he cried.

“Yes. What I mean is that we’d come to the point where it was time to quit playing⁠—well, what we were playing.”

“At being lovers, you mean, don’t you?”

“Something like that,” she said lightly. “For us two, playing at being lovers was just the same as playing at cross-purposes. I had all the purposes, and that gave you all the crossness: things weren’t getting along at all. It was absurd!”

“Well, have it your own way,” he said. “It needn’t have been absurd.”

“No, it couldn’t help but be!” she informed him cheerfully. “The way I am and the way you are, it couldn’t ever be anything else. So what was the use?”

“I don’t know,” he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. “But what I wanted to tell you is this: when you went away, you didn’t let me know and didn’t care how or when I heard it, but I’m not like that with you.