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

discomfort to the others. After the arrival of coffee the Major was rallying Eugene upon some rival automobile shops lately built in a suburb, and already promising to flourish.

“I suppose they’ll either drive you out of the business,” said the old gentleman, “or else the two of you’ll drive all the rest of us off the streets.”

“If we do, we’ll even things up by making the streets five or ten times as long as they are now,” Eugene returned.

“How do you propose to do that?”

“It isn’t the distance from the center of a town that counts,” said Eugene; “it’s the time it takes to get there. This town’s already spreading; bicycles and trolleys have been doing their share, but the automobile is going to carry city streets clear out to the county line.”

The Major was skeptical. “Dream on, fair son!” he said. “It’s lucky for us that you’re only dreaming; because if people go to moving that far, real estate values in the old residence part of town are going to be stretched pretty thin.”

“I’m afraid so,” Eugene assented. “Unless you keep things so bright and clean that the old section will stay more attractive than the new ones.”

“Not very likely! How are things going to be kept ‘bright and clean’ with soft coal, and our kind of city government?”

“They aren’t,” Eugene replied quickly. “There’s no hope of it, and already the boardinghouse is marching up National Avenue. There are two in the next block below here, and there are a dozen in the half-mile below that. My relatives, the Sharons, have sold their house and are building in the country⁠—at least, they call it ‘the country.’ It will be city in two or three years.”

“Good gracious!” the Major exclaimed, affecting dismay. “So your little shops are going to ruin all your old friends, Eugene!”

“Unless my old friends take warning in time, or abolish smoke and get a new kind of city government. I should say the best chance is to take warning.”

“Well, well!” the Major laughed. “You have enough faith in miracles, Eugene⁠—granting that trolleys and bicycles and automobiles are miracles. So you think they’re to change the face of the land, do you?”

“They’re already doing it, Major; and it can’t be stopped. Automobiles⁠—”

At this point he was interrupted. George was the interrupter. He had said nothing since entering the dining room, but now he spoke in a loud and peremptory voice, using the tone of one in authority who checks idle prattle and settles a matter forever.

“Automobiles are a useless nuisance,” he said.

There fell a moment’s silence.

Isabel gazed incredulously at George, colour slowly heightening upon her cheeks and temples, while Fanny watched him with a quick eagerness, her eyes alert and bright. But Eugene seemed merely quizzical, as if not taking this brusquerie to himself. The Major was seriously disturbed.

“What did you say, George?” he asked, though George had spoken but too distinctly.

“I said all automobiles were a nuisance,” George answered, repeating not only the words but the tone in which he had uttered them. And he added, “They’ll never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no business to be invented.”

The Major frowned. “Of course you forget that Mr. Morgan makes them, and also did his share in inventing them. If you weren’t so thoughtless he might think you rather offensive.”

“That would be too bad,” said George coolly. “I don’t think I could survive it.”

Again there was a silence, while the Major stared at his grandson, aghast. But Eugene began to laugh cheerfully.

“I’m not sure he’s wrong about automobiles,” he said. “With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization⁠—that is, in spiritual civilization. It may be that they will not add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls. I am not sure. But automobiles have come, and they bring a greater change in our life than most of us suspect. They are here, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles; just how, though, I could hardly guess. But you can’t have the immense outward changes that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps, ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles ‘had no business to be invented.’ ” He laughed good-naturedly, and looking at his watch, apologized for having an engagement which made his departure necessary when he would so much prefer to linger. Then he shook hands with the Major, and bade Isabel, George, and Fanny a cheerful good night⁠—a collective farewell cordially addressed to all three of them together⁠—and left them at the table.

Isabel turned wondering, hurt eyes upon her son. “George, dear!” she said. “What did you mean?”

“Just what I said,” he returned, lighting one of the Major’s cigars, and his manner was imperturbable enough to warrant the definition (sometimes merited by imperturbability) of stubbornness.

Isabel’s hand, pale and slender, upon the tablecloth, touched one of the fine silver candlesticks aimlessly: the fingers were seen to tremble. “Oh, he was hurt!” she murmured.

“I don’t see why he should be,” George said. “I didn’t say anything about him. He didn’t seem to me to be hurt⁠—seemed perfectly cheerful. What made you think he was hurt?”

“I know him!” was all of her reply, half whispered.

The Major stared hard at George from under his white eyebrows. “You didn’t mean ‘him,’ you say, George? I suppose if we had a clergyman as a guest here you’d expect him not to be offended, and to understand that your remarks were neither personal nor untactful, if you said