The Magnificent Ambersons/Chapter II

Another citizen said an eloquent thing about Miss Isabel Amberson’s looks. This was Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster, the foremost literary authority and intellectual leader of the community—for both the daily newspapers thus described Mrs. Foster when she founded the Women’s Tennyson Club; and her word upon art, letters, and the drama was accepted more as law than as opinion. Naturally, when “Hazel Kirke” finally reached the town, after its long triumph in larger places, many people waited to hear what Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster thought of it before they felt warranted in expressing any estimate of the play. In fact, some of them waited in the lobby of the theatre, as they came out, and formed an inquiring group about her.

“I didn’t see the play,” she informed them.

“What! Why, we saw you, right in the middle of the fourth row!”

“Yes,” she said, smiling, “but I was sitting just behind Isabelle Amberson. I couldn’t look at anything except her wavy brown hair and the wonderful back of her neck.”

The ineligible young men of the town (they were all ineligible) were unable to content themselves with the view that had so charmed Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster: they spent their time struggling to keep Miss Amberson’s face turned toward them. She turned it most often, observers said, toward two: one excelling in the general struggle by his sparkle, and the other by that winning if not winsome old trait, persistence. The sparkling gentleman “led germans” with her, and sent sonnets to her with his bouquets—sonnets lacking neither music nor wit. He was generous, poor, well-dressed, and his amazing persuasiveness was one reason why he was always in debt. No one doubted that he would be able to persuade Isabel, but he unfortunately joined too merry a party one night, and, during a moonlight serenade upon the lawn before the Amberson Mansion, was easily identified from the windows as the person who stepped through the bass viol and had to be assisted to a waiting carriage. One of Miss Amberson’s brothers was among the serenaders, and, when the party had dispersed, remained propped against the front door in a state of helpless liveliness; the Major going down in a dressing-gown and slippers to bring him in, and scolding mildly, while imperfectly concealing strong impulses to laughter. Miss Amberson also laughed at this brother, the next day, but for the suitor it was a different matter: she refused to see him when he called to apologize. “You seem to care a great deal about bass viols!” he wrote her. “I promise never to break another.” She made no response to the note, unless it was an answer, two weeks later, when her engagement was announced. She took the persistent one, Wilbur Minafer, no breaker of bass viols or of hearts, no serenader at all.

A few people, who always foresaw everything, claimed that they were not surprised, because though Wilbur Minafer “might not be an Apollo, as it were,” he was “a steady young business man, and a good church-goer,” and Isabel Amberson was “pretty sensible—for such a showy girl.” But the engagement astounded the young people, and most of their fathers and mothers, too; and as a topic it supplanted literature at the next meeting of the “Women’s Tennyson Club.”

“Wilbur Minafer!” a member cried, her inflection seeming to imply that Wilbur’s crime was explained by his surname. “Wilbur Minafer! It’s the queerest thing I ever heard! To think of her taking Wilbur Minafer, just because a man any woman would like a thousand times better was a little wild one night at a serenade!”

“No,” said Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster. “It isn’t that. It isn’t even because she’s afraid he’d be a dissipated husband and she wants to be safe. It isn’t because she’s religious or hates wildness; it isn’t even because she hates wildness in him.”

“Well, but look how she’s thrown him over for it.”

“No, that wasn’t her reason,” said the wise Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster. “If men only knew it—and it’s a good thing they don’t—a woman doesn’t really care much about whether a man’s wild or not, if it doesn’t affect herself, and Isabel Amberson doesn’t care a thing!”

“Mrs. Foster!”

“No, she doesn’t. What she minds is his making a clown of himself in her front yard! It made her think he didn’t care much about her. She’s probably mistaken, but that’s what she thinks, and it’s too late for her to think anything else now, because she’s going to be married right away—the invitations will be out next week. It’ll be a big Amberson-style thing, raw oysters floating in scooped-out blocks of ice and a band from out-of-town—champagne, showy presents; a colossal present from the Major. Then Wilbur will take Isabel on the carefulest little wedding trip he can manage, and she’ll be a good wife to him, but they’ll have the worst spoiled lot of children this town will ever see.”

“How on earth do you make that out, Mrs. Foster?”

“She couldn’t love Wilbur, could she?” Mrs. Foster demanded, with no challengers. “Well, it will all go to her children, and she’ll ruin ’em!”

The prophetess proved to be mistaken in a single detail merely: except for that, her foresight was accurate. The wedding was of Ambersonian magnificence, even to the floating oysters; and the Major’s colossal present was a set of architect’s designs for a house almost as elaborate and impressive as the Mansion, the house to be built in Amberson Addition by the Major. The orchestra was certainly not that local one which had suffered the loss of a bass viol; the musicians came, according to the prophecy and next morning’s paper, from afar; and at midnight the bride was still being toasted in champagne, though she had departed upon her wedding journey at ten. Four days later the pair had returned to town, which promptness seemed fairly to demonstrate that Wilbur had indeed taken Isabel upon the carefulest little trip he could manage. According to every report, she was from the start “a good wife to him,” but here in a final detail the prophecy proved inaccurate. Wilbur and Isabel did not have children; they had only one.

“Only one,” Mrs. Henry Franklin Foster admitted. “But I’d like to know if he isn’t spoiled enough for a whole carload!”

Again she found none to challenge her.

At the age of nine, George Amberson Minafer, the Major’s one grandchild, was a princely terror, dreaded not only in Amberson Addition but in many other quarters through which he galloped on his white pony. “By golly, I guess you think you own this town!” an embittered labourer complained, one day, as Georgie rode the pony straight through a pile of sand the man was sieving. “I will when I grow up,” the undisturbed child replied. “I guess my grandpa owns it now, you bet!” And the baffled workman, having no means to controvert what seemed a mere exaggeration of the facts could only mutter “Oh, pull down your vest!”

“Don’t haf to! Doctor says it ain’t healthy!” the boy returned promptly. “But I’ll tell you what I’ll do: I’ll pull down my vest if you’ll wipe off your chin!”

This was stock and stencil: the accustomed argot of street badinage of the period; and in such matters Georgie was an expert. He had no vest to pull down; the incongruous fact was that a fringed sash girdled the juncture of his velvet blouse and breeches, for the Fauntleroy period had set in, and Georgie’s mother had so poor an eye for appropriate things, where Georgie was concerned, that she dressed him according to the doctrine of that school in boy decoration. Not only did he wear a silk sash, and silk stockings, and a broad lace collar, with his little black velvet suit: he had long brown curls, and often came home with burrs in them.

Except upon the surface (which was not his own work, but his mother’s) Georgie bore no vivid resemblance to the fabulous little Cedric. The storied boy’s famous “Lean on me, grandfather,” would have been difficult to imagine upon the lips of Georgie. A month after his ninth birthday anniversary, when the Major gave him his pony, he had already become acquainted with the toughest boys in various distant parts of the town, and had convinced them that the toughness of a rich little boy with long curls might be considered in many respects superior to their own. He fought them, learning how to go berserk at a certain point in a fight, bursting into tears of anger, reaching for rocks, uttering wailed threats of murder and attempting to fulfil them. Fights often led to intimacies, and he acquired the art of saying things more exciting than “Don’t haf to!” and “Doctor says it ain’t healthy!” Thus, on a summer afternoon, a strange boy, sitting bored upon the gate-post of the Reverend Malloch Smith, beheld George Amberson Minafer rapidly approaching on his white pony, and was impelled by bitterness to shout: “Shoot the ole jackass! Look at the girly curls! Say, bub, where’d you steal your mother’s ole sash!”

“Your sister stole it for me!” Georgie instantly replied, checking the pony. “She stole it off our clo’es-line an’ gave it to me.”

“You go get your hair cut!” said the stranger hotly. “Yah! I haven’t got any sister!”

“I know you haven’t at home,” Georgie responded. “I mean the one that’s in jail.”

“I dare you to get down off that pony!”

Georgie jumped to the ground, and the other boy descended from the Reverend Mr. Smith’s gatepost—but he descended inside the gate. “I dare you outside that gate,” said Georgie.

“Yah! I dare you half way here. I dare you”

But these were luckless challenges, for Georgie immediately vaulted the fence—and four minutes later Mrs. Malloch Smith, hearing strange noises, looked forth from a window; then screamed, and dashed for the pastor’s study. Mr. Malloch Smith, that grim-bearded Methodist, came to the front yard and found his visiting nephew being rapidly prepared by Master Minafer to serve as a principal figure in a pageant of massacre. It was with great physical difficulty that Mr. Smith managed to give his nephew a chance to escape into the house, for Georgie was hard and quick, and, in such matters, remarkably intense; but the minister, after a grotesque tussle, got him separated from his opponent, and shook him.

“You stop that, you!” Georgie cried fiercely; and wrenched himself away. “I guess you don’t know who I am!”

“Yes, I do know!” the angered Mr. Smith retorted. “I know who you are, and you’re a disgrace to your mother! Your mother ought to be ashamed of herself to allow”

“Shut up about my mother bein’ ashamed of herself!”

Mr. Smith, exasperated, was unable to close the dialogue with dignity. “She ought to be ashamed,” he repeated. “A woman that lets a bad boy like you”

But Georgie had reached his pony and mounted. Before setting off at his accustomed gallop, he paused to interrupt the Reverend Malloch Smith again. “You pull down your vest, you ole Billygoat, you!” he shouted, distinctly. “Pull down your vest, wipe off your chin—an’ go to hell!”

Such precocity is less unusual, even in children of the Rich, than most grown people imagine. However, it was a new experience for the Reverend Malloch Smith, and left him in a state of excitement. He at once wrote a note to Georgie’s mother, describing the crime according to his nephew’s testimony; and the note reached Mrs. Minafer before Georgie did. When he got home she read it to him sorrowfully.

Georgie had muttered various interruptions, and as she concluded the reading he said:

“He’s an ole liar!”

“Georgie, you mustn’t say ‘liar.’ Isn’t this letter the truth?”

“Well,” said Georgie, “how old am I?”

“Ten.”

“Well, look how he says I’m older than a boy eleven years old.”

“That’s true,” said Isabel. “He does. But isn’t some of it true, Georgie?”

Georgie felt himself to be in a difficulty here, and he was silent.

“Georgie, did you say what he says you did?”

“Which one?”

“Did you tell him to—to Did you say, ‘Go to hell?’”

Georgie looked worried for a moment longer; then he brightened. “Listen here, mamma; grandpa wouldn’t wipe his shoe on that ole story-teller, would he?”

“Georgie, you mustn’t”

“I mean: none of the Ambersons wouldn’t have anything to do with him, would they? He doesn’t even know you, does he, mamma?”

“That hasn’t anything to do with it.”

“Yes, it has! I mean: none of the Amberson family go to see him, and they never have him come in their house; they wouldn’t ask him to, and they prob’ly wouldn’t even let him.”

“That isn’t what we’re talking about.”

“I bet,” said Georgie emphatically, “I bet if he wanted to see any of ’em, he’d haf to go around to the side door!”

“No, dear, they”

“Yes, they would, mamma! So what does it matter if I did say somep’m’ to him he didn’t like? That kind o’ people, I don’t see why you can’t say anything you want to, to ’em!”

“No, Georgie. And you haven’t answered me whether you said that dreadful thing he says you did.”

“Well” said Georgie. “Anyway, he said somep’m’ to me that made me mad.” And upon this point he offered no further details; he would not explain to his mother that what had made him “mad” was Mr. Smith’s hasty condemnation of herself: “Your mother ought to be ashamed,” and, “A woman that lets a bad boy like you” Georgie did not even consider excusing himself by quoting these insolences.

Isabel stroked his head. “They were terrible words for you to use, dear. From his letter he doesn’t seem a very tactful person, but”

“He’s just riffraff,” said Georgie.

“You mustn’t say so,” his mother gently agreed “Where did you learn those bad words he speaks of? Where did you hear any one use them?”

“Well, I’ve heard ’em several places. I guess Uncle George Amberson was the first I ever heard say ’em. Uncle George Amberson said ’em to papa once. Papa didn’t like it, but Uncle George was just laughin’ at papa, an’ then he said ’em while he was laughin’.”

“That was wrong of him,” she said, but almost instinctively he detected the lack of conviction in her tone. It was Isabel’s great failing that whatever an Amberson did seemed right to her, especially if the Amberson was either her brother George, or her son George. She knew that she should be more severe with the latter now, but severity with him was beyond her power; and the Reverend Malloch Smith had succeeded only in rousing her resentment against himself. Georgie’s symmetrical face—altogether an Amberson face—had looked never more beautiful to her. It always looked unusually beautiful when she tried to be severe with him. “You must promise me,” she said feebly, “never to use those bad words again.”

“I promise not to,” he said promptly—and he whispered an immediate codicil under his breath: “Unless I get mad at somebody!” This satisfied a code according to which, in his own sincere belief, he never told lies.

“That’s a good boy,” she said, and he ran out to the yard, his punishment over. Some admiring friends were gathered there; they had heard of his adventure, knew of the note, and were waiting to see what was going to “happen” to him. They hoped for an account of things, and also that he would allow them to “take turns” riding his pony to the end of the alley and back.

They were really his henchmen: Georgie was a lord among boys. In fact, he was a personage among certain sorts of grown people, and was often fawned upon; the alley negroes delighted in him, chuckled over him, flattered him slavishly. For that matter, he often heard well-dressed people speaking of him admiringly: a group of ladies once gathered about him on the pavement where he was spinning a top. “I know this is Georgie!” one exclaimed, and turned to the others with the impressiveness of a showman. “Major Amberson’s only grandchild!” The others said, “It is?” and made clicking sounds with their mouths; two of them loudly whispering, “So handsome!”

Georgie, annoyed because they kept standing upon the circle he had chalked for his top, looked at them coldly and offered a suggestion:

“Oh, go hire a hall!”

As an Amberson, he was already a public character, and the story of his adventure in the Reverend Malloch Smith’s front yard became a town topic. Many people glanced at him with great distaste, thereafter, when they chanced to encounter him, which meant nothing to Georgie, because he innocently believed most grown people to be necessarily cross-looking as a normal phenomenon resulting from the adult state; and he failed to comprehend that the distasteful glances had any personal bearing upon himself. If he had perceived such a bearing, he would have been affected only so far, probably, as to mutter, “Riffraff!” Possibly he would have shouted it; and, certainly, most people believed a story that went round the town just after Mrs. Amberson’s funeral, when Georgie was eleven. Georgie was reported to have differed with the undertaker about the seating of the family; his indignant voice had become audible: “Well, who is the most important person at my own grandmother’s funeral?” And later he had projected his head from the window of the foremost mourners’ carriage, as the undertaker happened to pass.

“Riffraff!”

There were people—grown people they were—who expressed themselves longingly: they did hope to live to see the day, they said, when that boy would get his come-upance! (They used that honest word, so much better than “deserts,” and not until many years later to be more clumsily rendered as “what is coming to him.”) Something was bound to take him down, some day, and they only wanted to be there! But Georgie heard nothing of this, and the yearners for his taking down went unsatisfied, while their yearning grew the greater as the happy day of fulfilment was longer and longer postponed. His grandeur was not diminished by the Malloch Smith story; the rather it was increased, and among other children (especially among little girls) there was added to the prestige of his gilded position that diabolical glamour which must inevitably attend a boy who has told a minister to go to hell.