North Carolina Newspapers

POLK COUNTY NEWS, TRYON, 1TORTH CAROLINA I h bv Poableday. Paite tt Company. ' I p-- - - -..7. J. V w -.S' v-' -C-1 AJ.'--, I By BOOTH TARKINGTON V PTER XIX Continued. ' after Her death he walked r,tf Fanny s ruum, yue mgui, .e i.Tit-oc with nrhloh f vered several sheets of pa- r Ton settled me." C , r a i vour ranion xor nui jtnocK- Inid huskily.! "I dian't think." fcicitously. "Sit aown, ueorge, just vamea; hear you uj nun ' ... ...r cinrp dinner, nnrl hiT u t 1 1 ' " ' to mo you're at it almost ns you re answering pvnriort aA tried to be gentle! 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 sheshe 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 aid Td like to have seen him just once!' She meant to tell him good-bye ! That's what she i . V-v ir 1 4"-i vss1 1 Try 4 f A n 1 ... j i -in i aou t ucucvc i o feuuu i iucom Aim you put tnis on me, too: Lnd I knmv 11 would worry I you put this responsibility on me ! He: terribly it sne- ran- j am l tell you, and I told Uncle ':ei ! George, that the responsibility isn't l;re, iir,'t'r : ... juu nuc u urt; i was ant to tell you once more tnat j wrong an the time when I took her M was ripht. How could I Jse anything eise duc wnai l don't pretend to judge," Fan- cnfhinsly. for his voice and Jboth partook of wildness. "I a think you did, George.4' 1 1 did !' " he echoed violent God in heaven!" And he , walk up and down the floor. ,Se was thee to do? What id I have? Was there any v of stopping the talk?" He close in front of her, gestic his voice harsh and loud: here any other way on earth Icting her from the talk?" Fannv looked away. "It died fore long. y. shows I was right, doesn't it?' 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 "'It's curious about the deed to her house," he said to his nephew.' "You're absolutely sure it wasn't among her pa pers?" y . 'Mother didn't have any papers," George told him. "None at all. All she ever had to do with business Avas to deposit the checks grandfather gave her, and then write her own checks against them." . -"The deed to the house was never recorded," Amberson said thoughtful ly, "I've been over to the courthouse to see. I think it would be just as well to get him to execute one now in your favor. I'll speak to him about it." George sighed. "I don't think I'd bother him about it ; the house is mine, and I you and I understand that It is. That's enough for me, and there isn't likely to be much trouble between you and me when we come to settling poor grandfather's estate. I've just been with him, and I think it would only confuse;him for. you to speak to him about it again. I notice he seems dis tressed if anybody tries to get his at tention he's a long .way off, some where, and he likes to stay that way. than I, and if you were so sure youI think I think mother Wouldn't want were wiser than I, vwhy 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." us to bother him about it ; I'm sure she'd tell us to let him . alone. He looks so white and queer." Amberson shook his head. "I won't bother him any more than I can help; but I'll have the deed made out ready foi his signature." "I wouldn't bother him at all. I don't see " "You might see," said his" uncle un easily. "The estate is just about as involved and. mixed up as an estate can well get, to the best of my knowl- George stared at her hard, then his I think," she said : lower lip began to move convulsively, and he set his teeth upon it but could ; edge. You ought to have that deed." "If I hadn't acted as I did, - He ran out of the room. "I'll bother him as little as possible. bderous old Johnson woman I ohe sat still, listening. He had j 1 11 wait till some day when he seems lave kept on with her slanders still be" Fanny interrupted. "She's he dropped dead with apoplexy y about six weeks after you plunged into his mother's room, but no sound came to Fanny's ears after the sharp closing of the door; and pres ently she rose and stepped out Into the hall but could hear nothing. didn't mention it in my let- 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 sjpecial chairs were, and her own special books, and the two great wal nut wardrobes filled . with her dresses and wraps? What tragic argument ; might be there vainly striving to con fute the gentle dead? "In God's name, what else could I have done?" For because I didn't want I llr-the other people would have V then. They'd have" Wt know," said Fanny, . still Jig ber troubled eyes. "Things changed here, George. The oth ple you speak of one hardly what's become of them. Of not a great many were doing to brighten up a little." But Amberson waited too long. The Major had already taken eleven months since his daughter's death to think important things out. One evening his grandson sat with him the Major seemed to like best to have young George with him, so far as they were able to guess his preferences and the old gentleman made a queer gesture; he slapped his knee as if he had made a sudden discovery, or else remember ed that he had forgotten something. George looked at him with an air of Inquiry, but said nothing. He had grown to be almost as silent as his grandfather. However, the Major W on twTOn bis mother's immutable silence was are dpnd and' qottip mle-ht ni s"reiy answering mm as lsaoei in me wiwvui uwug ucauuucu. f you never see them any more never uuve nuswrr mm, uu i " u. the rest, whoever they were are ne was Beginning to unaersiana now i x.icrc wasui uujruuug mure uui eloquent me aeaa can oe. xney cau- j uu i"e mat piut-e, auu uie f people that seem never even to ol ST p ineir eloquence, no raauer . cau umc uui ui me uu, aim we inrA ftf-iionii T-m er0 i bowthey have loved the living; they i came out of the earth. Sc. whatever r - v MIj WUU A til OUkV . W And so, no matter in sure we (!y never heard of them and seem to forget things so soon rM?era to forget anything. You engine how things have changed p gulped painfully before he speak. "You you mean to sit and tell me that if I'd just let goon- Oh!" He swung away. ionce' U n 1 f 5 me noor again. "I tell you cannot choose. what agoay George should cry. out. MWhat 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 i i . n the RI0ht Thing, Tell You." OIllv rliK. . .... u6 I the not ton saying so." she said. tlf .V . .... usai,i"k l"e nraer he cried. t K:;.caouSh then. I think. Wrfi. re i J:Q t0 6ay now, if you're "thin n"tuu' a!inH uase-you're afraid to!" r rti,., " went on with a sudden -'iunr(Ar . . 7 pi""' You're reproach- . With . - ail rt.;: u wnai you had to do in. ii . J t Vm, .. . 1 hyj doinff and snvlncr to,anrt.nk.mother would want yours OU tMni, t ...... . 2m 4.. .. u,v i couian t stana reis-l might hATe ml ""ars In n, i know ! That's your mindT: you do A superstitious person might have thought it unfortunate that anny's partner in speculative indus try as in Wilbur's disastrous rolling mills, was that charming but too hap- hazardous man of the world, George ; Amberson. He war one of those op- imlsts who believe that if you put money into a great many enterprises one of them is sure to turn out a for tune, and therefore, liv order to find he lucky one, it Is only necessary to go Into a large enough number of them. You ought to have thought of my record and stayed out," he told Fanny, one day the next spring, when the af fairs of the headlight company had begun to look discouraging. Things do look bleak, and I'm only glad you didn't go into this confounded thing to the extent I did." Miss Fanny grew pink. "But it must go right!" she protested. "We saw with our own eyes how perfectly it worked out in the shop. It simply "Oh, you're right about that, Am berson said. "It certainly was a per fect thing in the shop!" v : "But think of that test on the roaa when we "That test was lovely," he admitted. "The inventor made us happy with his oratory, and you and Frank 'Bronson and I went whirling through tne nigm at n sneed that thrilled us. We must never forsret It and we never shalL It cost" "Rnt something must be done. - ' Tf Tntiat Indeed! My something would seem to be leaving my watch at mv uncle's.- Luckily, you fh nink of Fanny's cheeks became deeper. "But isn't that man going to do anything to remedy it? Can't he try to" , "He can try," said Amberson. He Is trying, in fact. I've sat in the shop witching him try for several beautiful, afternoons." I . "But. you must make him keep on trying!" "Oh, yes. Til keep sitting!" However, in epite of the time he spent sitting in the shop, worrying the Jr..f, nf thP fractious light. Amber- son found opportunity ' to worry him- we are, we must have been in the sun. We go back to the earth we came out of o the earth will go back to the sun that it came out of. And time mean3 j nothing nothing at all so in a little I while we'll all be back In the sun to gether. I wish ' He moved his hand uncertainly as If reaching for -something, and George jumped up. "Did you want anything, grandfather?" - "What?" "Would you like a glass of water?" "No no. No ; I don't want anything." The reaching hand dropped back up on the arm of his chair, and he re lapsed into silence ; but a few min utes later he finished the sentence ho had begun: "I wish somebody could tell me !" The next day he had a slight cold, but he seemed annoyed when his son suggested calling the doctor, and Am berson let him have his own way so far, in fact, that after he had got up and dressed, the following morning, he was all alone when he went away to rind out what he hadn't been able to think out all those, things he had wished "somebody" would tell him. Old Sam, shuffling in with the break fast tray, found the Major In his ac customed easy-chair by the fireplace and yet even the old darkey could see Instantly that the Major was not there. CHAPTER XX. When the great Amberson estate went into court for settlement, "there wasn't any," George Amberson said that is, when the settlement was con cluded there was no estate. He re t.ronched himself bitterly for not hav ing long ago discovered that his Georgiel" ok h n tip ver eiven Isabel a deed ton n BS5 her house. "And those pigs, -Sydney and Amelia!" he added, for this was ntmthpr thine he was bitter about. but not with great, cheerfulness. "We'll survive, Georgie you will, es pecially. For my part I'm a little too old and too .accustomed -to fall back on somebody else for supplies to start a big fight with life; I'll be content with just surviving, and I can.do it on an eighteen-hundred-dollar-a-year con sulship. An ex-congressman can al ways be pretty sure of getting some such job, and I hear from Washing ton the matter's about settled. So much for me! But you of course you've had a poor training for making your own . way, but you're only a boy after all, and the stuff of the old stock Is in you. It'll come out and do some thing. I'll never forgive myself about that deed; it would have given you somethlpg substantial to start with. Still, you have a little tiny bit, and you'll have a little tiny salary, too; and of course your Aunt Fanny's here, and she's got jsomething you can fall back on if you get too pinched, until. I can begin to send you a dribble now and then." George's "little, tiny bit" was six hundred dollars which had come to him from the sale of his mother's fur niture ; and the "little tiny salary" was eight dollars a week which old Frank Bronson was to pay him for services as a clerk and student-at- law. George had accepted haughtily, and thereby removed a burden from his uncle's mind. , " Amberson himself, however, had hot ' even a "tiny bit ;" though he got his consular appointment, and to take him to his post he found it -necessary to borrow two hundred of his nephew's six hundred dollars. "It makes me sick, George," he said. "But I'd bet-: rpr fot thprA nnrt cmt that snlnnr rnrr- 1 ed. Of course Eugene would do any thing in the world, and the fact is he wanted to, but I felt that ah under the circumstances " "Never !" George exclaimed, growing red. "I can't Imagine one of the fam ily " He paused, not finding it necessary to explain that "the fam ily" 1 shouldn't turn a man from the door and then accept favors from him. "I wish you'd take more." Amberson declined. "One thing I'll say for you, young George; you have n't a stingy bone in your body. That's the Amberson stock in you and I like it!" He added something to this praise of his nephew on the day he left for Washington. He was not to return, but to set forth from the capital on the long journey to his post. George went with him to the station, and their farewell was lengthened by the train's being several minutes late. "I may not see you again, Georgie," Amberson said, and his voice ' was a little husky as he set a kind hand on the young man's shoulder. "It's quite probable that from this time on we'll only know each other by letter until you're notified as my next of kin that there's an old valise to be forwarded to you, and perhaps some dusty curios from the consulate mantelpiece. Well, it's an odd way for us to be saying good bye; one wouldn't have thought it, even a few years ago, but here we are, two gentlemen of elegant appear ance In a state of bustitude. We can't ever tell what will happen at all, can we? Life and money both behave like loose quicksilver in a nest of cracks. And when they're gone we can't tell where or what the devil we did with 'em! But 'I believe I'll say now while there isn't much time left for either of us to get embarrassed about it I believe I'll say that I've always been ;.fond of you. We all spoiled you ter ribly when you were a little boy aad let you grow up en prince and I must say you took to it! But you've received a pretty heavy jolt, and 1 had enough of your disposition, myself, at your age, to understand a-little of what cocksure youth has to go through inside when it finds that It can make terrible mistakes. Well, with my train coming into the shed, you'll forgive me for saying that ,there have been times when I thought you ought to be hanged but I've always been fond of you, and now I like you! And just for a last word; there may be some body else in this town who's always felt about you like that fond of you, I mean, no matter bow much It seem ed you ought to be hanged. You might try Hello, I must run. I'll send back the money as fast as they pa mej so, good bye and God bless you. that his health would suffer, and he avenue met Amhrnt. kt had been downtown only in a ' closed at an obtuse angle, and the removal of carriage. He had .not realized , the the pillars made the boulevard seem a great change. cross street of no overpowering im- The streets were thunderous, a vast Portance-rcertainly it did not seem to energy heaved . under the universal be a boulevard 1 ' , coating of dinginess. George walked George walked by the Mansion hur through the begrimed crowds of hur- riedly, and came home to his mother's rying strangers and saw no face that house for the last time. - . i he remembered. Great numbefs.ol! Emptiness was there, too, and the faces were even of a kind he did not closing of the door resounded through remember ever to have seen; they bare rooms; for downstairs there was were partly like the old type that no furniture In the house except a his boyhood knew, and partly like kitchen table in the dining room, which types he knew abroad. He saw Ger- Fanny had kept "for dinner." she said man eyes with American wrinkles at though as she was to cook and. serve their corners; he saw Irish eyes and that meal herself Teorge had his Neapolitan eyes, Roman eyes, Tuscan doubts about her name for it. Upstairs, eyes, eyes 'of.- Lombardy, of Savoy, she had retained her o vn furniture, Hungarian eyes, Balkan eyes, Scandl- and George had been V'vlng In his nai'fin eyes all with a queer Ameri-; mother's room, having snt everything can look In them. He saw Jews who from his own to the auction. Isabel's were no longer German or Russian or room was still as it had beeu, but 'the Polish Jews. All the people wen soil- furniture would be moved with ed by the smoke-mist through which Fanny's to new quarters in the raoru- they hurried, under the heavy sky that mg- Fanny had made plans for her hung close upon the new skyscrapers, nepbT .as; well as herself; she had and nearly all seemed harried by foun V a "threeroom kitchenette apart- something impending, though hers and h161 in an . apartment house where there a woman with bundles woultf be evetV old friends of hers had estab- laughing to a companion about some llshe themselves elderly widows of adventure of the department store, or citlze.- once "prominent" and other perhaps an escape from the charging traffic of the streets and not infre quently a girl, or a free-and-easy young matron, found time to throw an encouraging look to George. I He took no note of these, and, leav ing the crowded sidewalks, turned Rljf f (A W AM W IU. i d mYA : HK9L Vfc9 H J LP 'There Have Ben Tfmes When I Thought You Ought to Be Hanged." retired gentry. People used tlielr own -"kitchenettes" for breakfast and lunch, but thTe was a table-d'hote arrange menf I ir dinner on the ground floor; and after -dinner bridge was played all evening, an attraction powerful with Fanny. She had "made all the arrangements," she reported, and ner vously appealed for approval, asking if she hadn't shown herself pretty prac tical". In such matters. George acqui esced absent-mindedly, not thinking of what she said and not realizing to what it committed him. He began to realize it now, as he j wandered about the dismantled house; he was far from sure that he was willing to live in a "three-room, apart ment" with Fanny and eat breakfast and lunch with her (prepared by her self In the "kitchenette") 1 and dinner at the table d'hote .n "such a pretty Colonial dining room" (so Fanny de scribed it) at a'little round table they would have all to themselves in the midst of a dozen little round tables ; which other relics of disrupted fam ilies would have al to themselves. For . the first time, now that the change was Imminent, George began to devel op before his mind's eye pictures of vhat lie was in for; and they appalled tlm. He decided that such a life verged upon the sheerly unbearable, and that after all there were some things left that he just couldn't stand. So lie made up his mind to speak to his aunt about It at "dinner," and tell her that -he preferred to ask Bronson to let him put a sofa-bed, a trunk and a folding rubber bathtub behind n screen in the dark rear room of the of fice. But at "dinner" Fanny was nerv ous, and so distressed about the fail ure of her efforts with.' sweetbreads ond macaroni; and she was so eager In her talk of how comfortable they would be "by this time tomorrow night After "dinner" he went upstairs, moving his hand slowly along the north into National avenue, and pres ently reached the quieter but no less begrimed region of smaller shops and old-fashioned houses. Those latter had been the homes of his boyhood play mates, old friends of his grandfather j f-rnooth walnut railing of the balus had lived here in this alley he had,j trade. Half way to the landing he fought with two boys at the same . stopped, turned, and stood looking time, and whipped them ; in that front -t down at the heavy doors masking th yard he had been successfully teased ! black emptiness that had been the Into temporary insanity by a Sunday j library. Here he had stood on what school rlflss of ninkv little, irlrls. On he now knew was the worst day of his that sagging porch a laughing woman had fed him and other boys with doughnuts and gingerbread ; yonder he saw the staggered relics of the iron picket fence he had made his white pony jump, on a dare, and in the shabby, stone-faced house behind the fence he had gone to children's par lies, and, when he was a little older he had danced there often, arid fallen in- love with Mary Sharon, and kissed her, apparently by force, under the stairs in the hall. The double front doors, of meaninglessly carved walnut, once so glosslly varnished, had been painted smoke gray, but the smoke grime showed repulsively, even on the smoke gray; and over the doors a life ; here he had stood when his moth er passed through that doorway, hand-in-hand with her brother, to learn what ber son had done. He went on more heavily, more slow ly; and, more heavily and slowly still, entered Isabel's room and shut the dcor. He did not come forth again, and bade Fanny good-night through the closed door when she stopped out side it later. "I've put all the lights out, George," she said. "Everything's all right." "Very well," he called. "Good night. Aunt Fanny His voice had a" strangled sound in spite of him; but she seemed not to notice it, and he heard her go to her smoked sign proclaimed the place tojown room and lock herself In with be a "Stag hotel." bolt and key against burglars. She This was the last "walk home" he i had said the one thing she should not was ever to take by the route he was J have said just then : "I'm sure your now following: up National avenue to Amberson addition and the two big old houses at the foot of Amberson boulevard; for tonight would be the last night that he and Fanny were to mother's watching over you, Georgie." She had meant to be kind, but it de stroyed his last chance for sleep that night. He would have slept little if she had not said it. but since she had spend In the house which the Major ; sad it he did not sleep at all. For he had foreotten to deed to Isabel, to- S rjS' !Si bo another matter chaiun . ... mu. Ho apttlement of Isabel a him about It a profile Is that ideal which depends upon inheriting money. George Am berson, In spite of. his record of fail ures In business, had spoken shrewdly when he realised at last that money, like life,' was "like quicksilver In a nest of cracks." And his nephew had the awakening experience of seeing the great Amberson estate vanishing Into such a ne: t la a twinkling ; It seemed, now that It was Indeed so ut terly vanished. On this last homeward walk of his, when George reached the entrance to was the only good part of the rotten of his familiar world had disappeared, I Amberson addition that is, when he He passed through the gates, wavetf his hat cheerily from the other side of the iron screen, and was lost from ; sight In the hurrying crowd. And as "Thev won't do anything. I'm sorry ( ne disanneared. an unexpected poign- I gave them the opportunity of making i ant ioneliness fell upon his nephew so a polished ref usaL The estate was bad-! heavily and so suddenly that he had ly crippled, even before they took out . n0 energy to recoil from the shock. Ir their 'third, and the third' they took . seemed to him that the last fragment morrow they were to "move out," land George was to begin his work in Bron son's office. He had not come to this col!apse without a fierce struggle but the struggle was Inward, and the roll ing world was not agitated by It, and rolled calmly on. For of all the "Ideals of life" which the world, in its knew that It was true If It could h true that his mother. If she still lived In spirit, would be weeping on the other side of the wall of silence, weep ing and seeking for some gate to let her through so that she could come and "watch over him." He felt that If there were such gates rolling, inconsiderately flattens out to e d(K)rs dowD nothingness, the least likely to retain ' nnnle. Well. I CUun I &SK.umhu iui tltution on my own account, and at 4 least It will save you some irouDie, young George. Never waste any time writing to them ; you mustn't count on them." - "I don't," George said quietly. "I don't count on anything." "Oh we'll not feel that things -are quite desperated Amberson laughed. leaving him all alone forever. the suffering to which he had con signed ber. The room was still Isabel's. Noth ing had been changed: even the pho tographs of George, of the Major and of ''brother George" still stood on her dressing table, and in a drawer of her desk was an old picture of Eugene and Lucy, taken together, which George had found but had slowly closed away again from sight, not touching it To morrow everything would be gone; and he had heard there was not Ions to wait before the house Itself would be demolished. The very space which tonight was still Isabel's room would be cut into new shapes by new walls and floors and ceilings; yet the room came to where the entrance had for- u .oiiro imma.i'nNi cirturiv thmnch merlv been ne gave a mue pi&ri, nrfco . onnpnrwi tft ho th st ran ire and halted for a moment to stare. oa o ma. 4 fan tho nit This was the first time he had no- waV strange to MmH He hT,eeo t- tlced that the stone pillars, martin Would always lire, for It coold not dl. rfTtortohta yeara id wUege. le--htrance. had been removed. Then out of George's memory. It would 11t. 1V. hfonoVe? tte lonl at he realized that fora long tlfce he had rZtTZZ' r and his trag,c returnee d i aaswered Just i tat