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

you know⁠—she hasn’t changed in looks much⁠—and she seems rather alarmingly short of breath for a slender person. Father’s been that way for years, of course; but never nearly so much as Isabel is now. Of course she makes nothing of it, but it seemed rather serious to me when I noticed she had to stop and rest twice to get up the one short flight of stairs in their two-floor apartment. I told her I thought she ought to make George let her come home.”

“Let her?” Eugene repeated, in a low voice. “Does she want to?”

“She doesn’t urge it. George seems to like the life there⁠—in his grand, gloomy, and peculiar way; and of course she’ll never change about being proud of him and all that⁠—he’s quite a swell. But in spite of anything she said, rather than because, I know she does indeed want to come. She’d like to be with father, of course; and I think she’s⁠—well, she intimated one day that she feared it might even happen that she wouldn’t get to see him again. At the time I thought she referred to his age and feebleness, but on the boat, coming home, I remembered the little look of wistfulness, yet of resignation, with which she said it, and it struck me all at once that I’d been mistaken: I saw she was really thinking of her own state of health.”

“I see,” Eugene said, his voice even lower than it had been before. “And you say he won’t ‘let’ her come home?”

Amberson laughed, but still continued to be interested in his cigar. “Oh, I don’t think he uses force! He’s very gentle with her. I doubt if the subject is mentioned between them, and yet⁠—and yet, knowing my interesting nephew as you do, wouldn’t you think that was about the way to put it?”

“Knowing him as I do⁠—yes,” said Eugene slowly. “Yes, I should think that was about the way to put it.”

A murmur out of the shadows beyond him⁠—a faint sound, musical and feminine, yet expressive of a notable intensity⁠—seemed to indicate that Lucy was of the same opinion.

XXIX

“Let her” was correct; but the time came⁠—and it came in the spring of the next year when it was no longer a question of George’s letting his mother come home. He had to bring her, and to bring her quickly if she was to see her father again; and Amberson had been right: her danger of never seeing him again lay not in the Major’s feebleness of heart but in her own. As it was, George telegraphed his uncle to have a wheeled chair at the station, for the journey had been disastrous, and to this hybrid vehicle, placed close to the platform, her son carried her in his arms when she arrived. She was unable to speak, but patted her brother’s and Fanny’s hands and looked “very sweet,” Fanny found the desperate courage to tell her. She was lifted from the chair into a carriage, and seemed a little stronger as they drove home; for once she took her hand from George’s, and waved it feebly toward the carriage window.

“Changed,” she whispered. “So changed.”

“You mean the town,” Amberson said. “You mean the old place is changed, don’t you, dear?”

She smiled and moved her lips: “Yes.”

“It’ll change to a happier place, old dear,” he said, “now that you’re back in it, and going to get well again.”

But she only looked at him wistfully, her eyes a little frightened.

When the carriage stopped, her son carried her into the house, and up the stairs to her own room, where a nurse was waiting; and he came out a moment later, as the doctor went in. At the end of the hall a stricken group was clustered: Amberson, and Fanny, and the Major. George, deathly pale and speechless, took his grandfather’s hand, but the old gentleman did not seem to notice his action.

“When are they going to let me see my daughter?” he asked querulously. “They told me to keep out of the way while they carried her in, because it might upset her. I wish they’d let me go in and speak to my daughter. I think she wants to see me.”

He was right⁠—presently the doctor came out and beckoned to him; and the Major shuffled forward, leaning on a shaking cane; his figure, after all its years of proud soldierliness, had grown stooping at last, and his untrimmed white hair straggled over the back of his collar. He looked old⁠—old and divested of the world⁠—as he crept toward his daughter’s room. Her voice was stronger, for the waiting group heard a low cry of tenderness and welcome as the old man reached the open doorway. Then the door was closed.

Fanny touched her nephew’s arm. “George, you must need something to eat⁠—I know she’d want you to. I’ve had things ready: I knew she’d want me to. You’d better go down to the dining room: there’s plenty on the table, waiting for you. She’d want you to eat something.”

He turned a ghastly face to her, it was so panic-stricken. “I don’t want anything to eat!” he said savagely. And he began to pace the floor, taking care not to go near Isabel’s door, and that his footsteps were muffled by the long, thick hall rug. After a while he went to where Amberson, with folded arms and bowed head, had seated himself near the front window. “Uncle George,” he said hoarsely. “I didn’t⁠—”

“Well?”

“Oh, my God, I didn’t think this thing the matter with her could ever be serious! I⁠—” He gasped. “When that doctor I had meet us at the boat⁠—” He could not go on.

Amberson only nodded his head, and did not otherwise change his attitude.

… Isabel lived through the night. At eleven O’clock Fanny came timidly to George in his room. “Eugene is here,” she whispered. “He’s downstairs. He wants⁠—” She gulped. “He wants to know if he can’t see