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

She lunched alone in her “kitchenette,” for George’s place of employment was ten miles out of town on an interurban trolley-line, and he seldom returned before seven. Fanny found partners for bridge by two o’clock almost every afternoon, and she played until about six. Then she got George’s “dinner clothes” out for him⁠—he maintained this habit⁠—and she changed her own dress. When he arrived he usually denied that he was tired, though he sometimes looked tired, particularly during the first few months; and he explained to her frequently⁠—looking bored enough with her insistence⁠—that his work was “fairly light, and fairly congenial, too.” Fanny had the foggiest idea of what it was, though she noticed that it roughened his hands and stained them. “Something in those new chemical works,” she explained to casual inquirers. It was not more definite in her own mind.

Respect for George undoubtedly increased within her, however, and she told him she’d always had a feeling he might “turn out to be a mechanical genius, or something.” George assented with a nod, as the easiest course open to him. He did not take a hand at bridge after dinner: his provisions’ for Fanny’s happiness refused to extend that far, and at the table-d’hôte he was a rather discouraging boarder. He was considered “affected” and absurdly “up-stage” by the one or two young men, and the three or four young women, who enlivened the elderly retreat; and was possibly less popular there than he had been elsewhere during his life, though he was now nothing worse than a coldly polite young man who kept to himself. After dinner he would escort his aunt from the table in some state (not wholly unaccompanied by a leerish wink or two from the wags of the place) and he would leave her at the door of the communal parlours and card rooms, with a formality in his bow of farewell which afforded an amusing contrast to Fanny’s always voluble protests. (She never failed to urge loudly that he really must come and play, just this once, and not go hiding from everybody in his room every evening like this!) At least some of the other inhabitants found the contrast amusing, for sometimes, as he departed stiffly toward the elevator, leaving her still entreating in the doorway (though with one eye already on her table, to see that it was not seized) a titter would follow him which he was no doubt meant to hear. He did not care whether they laughed or not.

And once, as he passed the one or two young men of the place entertaining the three or four young women, who were elbowing and jerking on a settee in the lobby, he heard a voice inquiring quickly, as he passed:

“What makes people tired?”

“Work?”

“No.”

“Well, what’s the answer?”

Then, with an intentional outbreak of mirth, the answer was given by two loudly whispering voices together:

“A stuck-up boarder!”

George didn’t care.

On Sunday mornings Fanny went to church and George took long walks. He explored the new city, and found it hideous, especially in the early spring, before the leaves of the shade trees were out. Then the town was fagged with the long winter and blacked with the heavier smoke that had been held close to the earth by the smoke-fog it bred. Everything was damply streaked with the soot: the walls of the houses, inside and out, the gray curtains at the windows, the windows themselves, the dirty cement and unswept asphalt underfoot, the very sky overhead. Throughout this murky season he continued his explorations, never seeing a face he knew⁠—for, on Sunday, those whom he remembered, or who might remember him, were not apt to be found within the limits of the town, but were congenially occupied with the new outdoor life which had come to be the mode since his boyhood. He and Fanny were pretty thoroughly buried away within the bigness of the city.

One of his Sunday walks, that spring, he made into a sour pilgrimage. It was a misty morning of belated snow slush, and suited him to a perfection of miserableness, as he stood before the great dripping department store which now occupied the big plot of ground where once had stood both the Amberson Hotel and the Amberson Opera House. From there he drifted to the old “Amberson Block,” but this was fallen into a backwater; business had stagnated here. The old structure had not been replaced, but a cavernous entryway for trucks had been torn in its front, and upon the cornice, where the old separate metal letters had spelt “Amberson Block,” there was a long billboard sign: “Doogan Storage.”

To spare himself nothing, he went out National Avenue and saw the piles of slush-covered wreckage where the Mansion and his mother’s house had been, and where the Major’s ill-fated five “new” houses had stood; for these were down, too, to make room for the great tenement already shaped in unending lines of foundation. But the Fountain of Neptune was gone at last⁠—and George was glad that it was!

He turned away from the devastated site, thinking bitterly that the only Amberson mark still left upon the town was the name of the boulevard⁠—Amberson Boulevard. But he had reckoned without the city council of the new order, and by an unpleasant coincidence, while the thought was still in his mind, his eye fell upon a metal oblong sign upon the lamppost at the corner. There were two of these little signs upon the lamppost, at an obtuse angle to each other, one to give passersby the name of National Avenue, the other to acquaint them with Amberson Boulevard. But the one upon which should have been stenciled “Amberson Boulevard” exhibited the words “Tenth Street.”

George stared at it hard. Then he walked quickly along the boulevard to the next corner and looked at the little sign there. “Tenth Street.”

It had begun to rain, but George stood unheeding, staring at the little sign. “Damn them!” he said finally, and, turning