The Magnificent Ambersons, Booth Tarkington [best android ereader .TXT] 📗

the little bell toward him. “You haven’t taken your favour. You’re supposed to pin it on your coat,” she said. “Don’t you want it?”

“If you insist!” said George stiffly. And he bowed her into her chair; then turned and walked away, dropping the sleighbell haughtily into his trousers’ pocket.

The figure proceeded to its conclusion, and George was given other sleighbells, which he easily consented to wear upon his lapel; but, as the next figure began, he strolled with a bored air to the tropical grove, where sat his elders, and seated himself beside his Uncle Sydney. His mother leaned across Miss Fanny, raising her voice over the music to speak to him.

“Georgie, nobody will be able to see you here. You’ll not be favoured. You ought to be where you can dance.”

“Don’t care to,” he returned. “Bore!”

“But you ought⁠—” She stopped and laughed, waving her fan to direct his attention behind him. “Look! Over your shoulder!”

He turned, and discovered Miss Lucy Morgan in the act of offering him a purple toy balloon.

“I found you!” she laughed.

George was startled. “Well⁠—” he said.

“Would you rather ‘sit it out’?” Lucy asked quickly, as he did not move. “I don’t care to dance if you⁠—”

“No,” he said, rising. “It would be better to dance.” His tone was solemn, and solemnly he departed with her from the grove. Solemnly he danced with her.

Four times, with not the slightest encouragement, she brought him a favour: four times in succession. When the fourth came, “Look here!” said George huskily. “You going to keep this up all night? What do you mean by it?”

For an instant she seemed confused. “That’s what cotillions are for, aren’t they?” she murmured.

“What do you mean: what they’re for?”

“So that a girl can dance with a person she wants to?”

George’s huskiness increased. “Well, do you mean you⁠—you want to dance with me all the time⁠—all evening?”

“Well, this much of it⁠—evidently!” she laughed.

“Is it because you thought I tried to keep you from getting hurt this afternoon when we upset?”

She shook her head.

“Was it because you want to even things up for making me angry⁠—I mean, for hurting my feelings on the way home?”

With her eyes averted⁠—for girls of nineteen can be as shy as boys, sometimes⁠—she said, “Well⁠—you only got angry because I couldn’t dance the cotillion with you. I⁠—I didn’t feel terribly hurt with you for getting angry about that!”

“Was there any other reason? Did my telling you I liked you have anything to do with it?”

She looked up gently, and, as George met her eyes, something exquisitely touching, yet queerly delightful, gave him a catch in the throat. She looked instantly away, and, turning, ran out from the palm grove, where they stood, to the dancing-floor.

“Come on!” she cried. “Let’s dance!”

He followed her.

“See here⁠—I⁠—I⁠—” he stammered. “You mean⁠—Do you⁠—”

“No, no!” she laughed. “Let’s dance!”

He put his arm about her almost tremulously, and they began to waltz. It was a happy dance for both of them.

Christmas day is the children’s, but the holidays are youth’s dancing-time. The holidays belong to the early twenties and the teens, home from school and college. These years possess the holidays for a little while, then possess them only in smiling, wistful memories of holly and twinkling lights and dance-music, and charming faces all aglow. It is the liveliest time in life, the happiest of the irresponsible times in life. Mothers echo its happiness⁠—nothing is like a mother who has a son home from college, except another mother with a son home from college. Bloom does actually come upon these mothers; it is a visible thing; and they run like girls, walk like athletes, laugh like sycophants. Yet they give up their sons to the daughters of other mothers, and find it proud rapture enough to be allowed to sit and watch.

Thus Isabel watched George and Lucy dancing, as together they danced away the holidays of that year into the past.

“They seem to get along better than they did at first, those two children,” Fanny Minafer said sitting beside her at the Sharons’ dance, a week after the Assembly. “They seemed to be always having little quarrels of some sort, at first. At least George did: he seemed to be continually pecking at that lovely, dainty, little Lucy, and being cross with her over nothing.”

“Pecking?” Isabel laughed. “What a word to use about Georgie! I think I never knew a more angelically amiable disposition in my life!”

Miss Fanny echoed her sister-in-law’s laugh, but it was a rueful echo, and not sweet. “He’s amiable to you!” she said. “That’s all the side of him you ever happen to see. And why wouldn’t he be amiable to anybody that simply fell down and worshipped him every minute of her life? Most of us would!”

“Isn’t he worth worshipping? Just look at him! Isn’t he charming with Lucy! See how hard he ran to get it when she dropped her handkerchief back there.”

“Oh, I’m not going to argue with you about George!” said Miss Fanny. “I’m fond enough of him, for that matter. He can be charming, and he’s certainly stunning looking, if only⁠—”

“Let the ‘if only’ go, dear,” Isabel suggested good-naturedly. “Let’s talk about that dinner you thought I should⁠—”

“I?” Miss Fanny interrupted quickly. “Didn’t you want to give it yourself?”

“Indeed, I did, my dear!” said Isabel heartily. “I only meant that unless you had proposed it, perhaps I wouldn’t⁠—”

But here Eugene came for her to dance, and she left the sentence uncompleted. Holiday dances can be happy for youth renewed as well as for youth in bud⁠—and yet it was not with the air of a rival that Miss Fanny watched her brother’s wife dancing with the widower. Miss Fanny’s eyes narrowed a little, but only as if her mind engaged in a hopeful calculation. She looked pleased.

X

A few days after George’s return to the university it became evident that not quite everybody had gazed with complete benevolence upon the various young collegians