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

disastrous rolling-mills) was that charming but too haphazardous man of the world, George Amberson. He was one of those optimists who believe that if you put money into a great many enterprises one of them is sure to turn out a fortune, and therefore, in order to find the lucky one, it is only necessary to go into a large enough number of them. Altogether gallant in spirit, and beautifully game under catastrophe, he had gone into a great many, and the unanimity of their “bad luck,” as he called it, gave him one claim to be a distinguished person, if he had no other. In business he was ill fated with a consistency which made him, in that alone, a remarkable man; and he declared, with some earnestness, that there was no accounting for it except by the fact that there had been so much good luck in his family before he was born that something had to balance it.

“You ought to have thought of my record and stayed out,” he told Fanny, one day the next spring, when the affairs of the headlight company had begun to look discouraging. “I feel the old familiar sinking that’s attended all my previous efforts to prove myself a business genius. I think it must be something like the feeling an aeronaut has when his balloon bursts, and, looking down, he sees below him the old home farm where he used to live⁠—I mean the feeling he’d have just before he flattened out in that same old clay barnyard. 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 in the shop. The light was so bright no one could face it, and so there can’t be any reason for it not to work. It simply⁠—”

“Oh, you’re right about that,” Amberson said. “It certainly was a perfect thing⁠—in the shop! The only thing we didn’t know was how fast an automobile had to go to keep the light going. It appears that this was a matter of some importance.”

“Well, how fast does one have to⁠—”

“To keep the light from going entirely out,” he informed her with elaborate deliberation, “it is computed by those enthusiasts who have bought our product⁠—and subsequently returned it to us and got their money back⁠—they compute that a motor car must maintain a speed of twenty-five miles an hour, or else there won’t be any light at all. To make the illumination bright enough to be noticed by an approaching automobile, they state the speed must be more than thirty miles an hour. At thirty-five, objects in the path of the light begin to become visible; at forty they are revealed distinctly; and at fifty and above we have a real headlight. Unfortunately many people don’t care to drive that fast at all times after dusk, especially in the traffic, or where policemen are likely to become objectionable.”

“But think of that test on the road 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 the night at a speed that thrilled us. It was an intoxicating sensation: we were intoxicated by the lights, the lights and the music. We must never forget that drive, with the cool wind kissing our cheeks and the road lit up for miles ahead. We must never forget it and we never shall. It cost⁠—”

“But something’s got to be done.”

“It has, indeed! My something would seem to be leaving my watch at my uncle’s. Luckily, you⁠—”

The pink 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 watching him try for several beautiful afternoons, while outside the windows all Nature was fragrant with spring and smoke. He hums ragtime to himself as he tries, and I think his mind is wandering to something else less tedious⁠—to some new invention in which he’d take more interest.”

“But you mustn’t let him,” she cried. “You must make him keep on trying!”

“Oh, yes. He understands that’s what I sit there for. I’ll keep sitting!”

However, in spite of the time he spent sitting in the shop, worrying the inventor of the fractious light, Amberson found opportunity to worry himself about another matter of business. This was the settlement of Isabel’s estate.

“It’s curious about the deed to her house,” he said to his nephew. “You’re absolutely sure it wasn’t among her papers?”

“Mother didn’t have any papers,” George told him. “None at all. All she ever had to do with business was to deposit the cheques grandfather gave her and then write her own cheques against them.”

“The deed to the house was never recorded,” Amberson said thoughtfully. “I’ve been over to the courthouse to see. I asked father if he never gave her one, and he didn’t seem able to understand me at first. Then he finally said he thought he must have given her a deed long ago; but he wasn’t sure. I rather think he never did. I think it would be just as well to get him to execute one now in your favour. I’ll speak to him about it.”

George sighed. “I don’t think I’d bother him about it: the house is mine, and 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 distressed if anybody tries to get his attention⁠—he’s a long way off, somewhere, and he likes to stay that way. I think⁠—I think mother wouldn’t want