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

seem to forget things so soon⁠—they seem to forget anything. You can’t imagine how things have changed here!”

George gulped painfully before he could speak. “You⁠—you mean to sit there and tell me that if I’d just let things go on⁠—Oh!” He swung away, walking the floor again. “I tell you I did the only right thing! If you don’t think so, why in the name of heaven can’t you say what else I should have done? It’s easy enough to criticize, but the person who criticizes a man ought at least to tell him what else he should have done! You think I was wrong!”

“I’m not saying so,” she said.

“You did at the time!” he cried. “You said enough then, I think! Well, what have you to say now, if you’re so sure I was wrong?”

“Nothing, George.”

“It’s only because you’re afraid to!” he said, and he went on with a sudden bitter divination: “You’re reproaching yourself with what you had to do with all that; and you’re trying to make up for it by doing and saying what you think mother would want you to, and you think I couldn’t stand it if I got to thinking I might have done differently. Oh, I know! That’s exactly what’s in your mind: you do think I was wrong! So does Uncle George. I challenged him about it the other day, and he answered just as you’re answering⁠—evaded, and tried to be gentler. I don’t care to be handled with gloves! I tell you I was right, and I don’t need any coddling by people that think I wasn’t! And I suppose you believe I was wrong not to let Morgan see her that last night when he came here, and she⁠—she was dying. If you do, why in the name of God did you come and ask me? You could have taken him in! She did want to see him. She⁠—”

Miss Fanny looked startled. “You think⁠—”

“She told me so!” And the tortured young man choked. “She said⁠—‘just once.’ She said ‘I’d like to have seen him⁠—just once!’ She meant⁠—to tell him goodbye! That’s what she meant! And you put this on me, too; you put this responsibility on me! But I tell you, and I told Uncle George, that the responsibility isn’t all mine! If you were so sure I was wrong all the time⁠—when I took her away, and when I turned Morgan out⁠—if you were so sure, what did you let me do it for? You and Uncle George were grown people, both of you, weren’t you? You were older than I, and if you were so sure you were wiser than I, why did you just stand around with your hands hanging down, and let me go ahead? You could have stopped it if it was wrong, couldn’t you?”

Fanny shook her head. “No, George,” she said slowly. “Nobody could have stopped you. You were too strong, and⁠—”

“And what?” he demanded loudly.

“And she loved you⁠—too well.”

George stared at her hard, then his lower lip began to move convulsively, and he set his teeth upon it but could not check its frantic twitching.

He ran out of the room.

She sat still, listening. He had plunged into his mother’s room, but no sound came to Fanny’s ears after the sharp closing of the door; and presently she rose and stepped out into the hall⁠—but could hear nothing. The heavy black walnut door of Isabel’s room, as Fanny’s troubled eyes remained fixed upon it, seemed to become darker and vaguer; the polished wood took the distant ceiling light, at the end of the hall, in dim reflections which became mysterious; and to Fanny’s disturbed mind the single sharp point of light on the bronze doorknob was like a continuous sharp cry in the stillness of night. What interview was sealed away from human eye and ear within the lonely darkness on the other side of that door⁠—in that darkness where Isabel’s own special chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great walnut wardrobes filled with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument might be there vainly striving to confute the gentle dead? “In God’s name, what else could I have done?” For his mother’s immutable silence was surely answering him as Isabel in life would never have answered him, and he was beginning to understand how eloquent the dead can be. They cannot stop their eloquence, no matter how they have loved the living: they cannot choose. And so, no matter in what agony George should cry out, “What else could I have done?” and to the end of his life no matter how often he made that wild appeal, Isabel was doomed to answer him with the wistful, faint murmur:

“I’d like to have seen him. Just⁠—just once.”

A cheerful darkey went by the house, loudly and tunelessly whistling some broken thoughts upon women, fried food and gin; then a group of high school boys, returning homeward after important initiations, were heard skylarking along the sidewalk, rattling sticks on the fences, squawking hoarsely, and even attempting to sing in the shocking new voices of uncompleted adolescence. For no reason, and just as a poultry yard falls into causeless agitation, they stopped in front of the house, and for half an hour produced the effect of a noisy multitude in full riot.

To the woman standing upstairs in the hall, this was almost unbearable; and she felt that she would have to go down and call to them to stop; but she was too timid, and after a time went back to her room, and sat at her desk again. She left the door open, and frequently glanced out into the hall, but gradually became once more absorbed in the figures which represented her prospective income from her great plunge in electric lights for automobiles. She did not hear George return to his own room.

… A superstitious person might have thought it unfortunate that her partner in this speculative industry (as in Wilbur’s