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

way home from the bereaved school. About the entryway to the stairs were various tin signs, announcing the occupation and location of upper-floor tenants, and Georgie decided to take some of these with him if he should ever go to college. However, he did not stop to collect them at this time, but climbed the worn stairs⁠—there was no elevator⁠—to the fourth floor, went down a dark corridor, and rapped three times upon a door. It was a mysterious door, its upper half, of opaque glass, bearing no sign to state the business or profession of the occupants within; but overhead, upon the lintel, four letters had been smearingly inscribed, partly with purple ink and partly with a soft lead pencil, “F.O.T.A.” and upon the plaster wall, above the lintel, there was a drawing dear to male adolescence: a skull and crossbones.

Three raps, similar to Georgie’s, sounded from within the room. Georgie then rapped four times; the rapper within the room rapped twice, and Georgie rapped seven times. This ended precautionary measures; and a well-dressed boy of sixteen opened the door; whereupon Georgie entered quickly, and the door was closed behind him. Seven boys of congenial age were seated in a semicircular row of damaged office chairs, facing a platform whereon stood a solemn, red-haired young personage with a table before him. At one end of the room there was a battered sideboard, and upon it were some empty beer bottles, a tobacco can about two-thirds full, with a web of mold over the surface of the tobacco, a dusty cabinet photograph (not inscribed) of Miss Lillian Russell, several withered old pickles, a caseknife, and a half-petrified section of icing-cake on a sooty plate. At the other end of the room were two rickety card-tables and a stand of bookshelves where were displayed under dust four or five small volumes of M. Guy de Maupassant’s stories, Robinson Crusoe, Sappho, Mr. Barnes of New York, a work by Giovanni Boccaccio, a Bible, The Arabian Nights’ Entertainment, Studies of the Human Form Divine, The Little Minister, and a clutter of monthly magazines and illustrated weeklies of about that crispness one finds in such articles upon a doctor’s anteroom table. Upon the wall, above the sideboard, was an old framed lithograph of Miss Della Fox in Wang; over the bookshelves there was another lithograph purporting to represent Mr. John L. Sullivan in a boxing costume, and beside it a halftone reproduction of A Reading from Homer. The final decoration consisted of damaged papiermache⁠—a round shield with two battle-axes and two cross-hilted swords, upon the wall over the little platform where stood the red-haired presiding officer. He addressed Georgie in a serious voice:

“Welcome, Friend of the Ace.”

“Welcome, Friend of the Ace,” Georgie responded, and all of the other boys repeated the words, “Welcome, Friend of the Ace.”

“Take your seat in the secret semicircle,” said the presiding officer. “We will now proceed to⁠—”

But Georgie was disposed to be informal. He interrupted, turning to the boy who had admitted him: “Look here, Charlie Johnson, what’s Fred Kinney doing in the president’s chair? That’s my place, isn’t it? What you men been up to here, anyhow? Didn’t you all agree I was to be president just the same, even if I was away at school?”

“Well⁠—” said Charlie Johnson uneasily. “Listen! I didn’t have much to do with it. Some of the other members thought that long as you weren’t in town or anything, and Fred gave the sideboard, why⁠—”

Mr. Kinney, presiding, held in his hand, in lieu of a gavel, and considered much more impressive, a Civil War relic known as a “horse-pistol.” He rapped loudly for order. “All Friends of the Ace will take their seats!” he said sharply. “I’m president of the F.O.T.A. now, George Minafer, and don’t you forget it! You and Charlie Johnson sit down, because I was elected perfectly fair, and we’re goin’ to hold a meeting here.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” said George skeptically.

Charlie Johnson thought to mollify him. “Well, didn’t we call this meeting just especially because you told us to? You said yourself we ought to have a kind of celebration because you’ve got back to town, George, and that’s what we’re here for now, and everything. What do you care about being president? All it amounts to is just calling the roll and⁠—”

The president de facto hammered the table. “This meeting will now proceed to⁠—”

“No, it won’t,” said George, and he advanced to the desk, laughing contemptuously. “Get off that platform.”

“This meeting will come to order!” Mr. Kinney commanded fiercely.

“You put down that gavel,” said George. “Whose is it, I’d like to know? It belongs to my grandfather, and you quit hammering it that way or you’ll break it, and I’ll have to knock your head off.”

“This meeting will come to order! I was legally elected here, and I’m not going to be bulldozed!”

“All right,” said Georgie. “You’re president. Now we’ll hold another election.”

“We will not!” Fred Kinney shouted. “We’ll have our reg’lar meeting, and then we’ll play euchre a nickel a corner, what we’re here for. This meeting will now come to ord⁠—”

Georgie addressed the members. “I’d like to know who got up this thing in the first place,” he said. “Who’s the founder of the F.O.T.A., if you please? Who got this room rent free? Who got the janitor to let us have most of this furniture? You suppose you could keep this clubroom a minute if I told my grandfather I didn’t want it for a literary club any more? I’d like to say a word on how you members been acting, too! When I went away I said I didn’t care if you had a vice-president or something while I was gone, but here I hardly turned my back and you had to go and elect Fred Kinney president! Well, if that’s what you want, you can have it. I was going to have a little celebration