3 Books To Know Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Edith Wharton

don't even know what you're talking about.”

      “Oh, you don't? You don't know that Isabel takes George's side simply because he's Eugene Morgan's best friend?”

      “It seems to me you're talking pure nonsense,” said Bronson sharply. “Not impure nonsense, I hope!”

      Amelia became shrill. “I thought you were a man of the world: don't tell me you're blind! For nearly two years Isabel's been pretending to chaperone Fanny Minafer with Eugene, and all the time she's been dragging that poor fool Fanny around to chaperone her and Eugene! Under the circumstances, she knows people will get to thinking Fanny's a pretty slim kind of chaperone, and Isabel wants to please George because she thinks there'll be less talk if she can keep her own brother around, seeming to approve. 'Talk!' She'd better look out! The whole town will be talking, the first thing she knows! She—”

      Amelia stopped, and stared at the doorway in a panic, for her nephew stood there.

      She kept her eyes upon his white face for a few strained moments, then, regaining her nerve, looked away and shrugged her shoulders.

      “You weren't intended to hear what I've been saying, George,” she said quietly. “But since you seem to—”

      “Yes, I did.”

      “So!” She shrugged her shoulders again. “After all, I don't know but it's just as well, in the long run.”

      He walked up to where she sat. “You—you—” he said thickly. “It seems—it seems to me you're—you're pretty common!”

      Amelia tried to give the impression of an unconcerned person laughing with complete indifference, but the sounds she produced were disjointed and uneasy. She fanned herself, looking out of the open window near her. “Of course, if you want to make more trouble in the family than we've already got, George, with your eavesdropping, you can go and repeat—”

      Old Bronson had risen from his chair in great distress. “Your aunt was talking nonsense because she's piqued over a business matter, George,” he said. “She doesn't mean what she said, and neither she nor any one else gives the slightest credit to such foolishness—no one in the world!”

      George gulped, and wet lines shone suddenly along his lower eyelids. “They—they'd better not!” he said, then stalked out of the room, and out of the house. He stamped fiercely across the stone slabs of the front porch, descended the steps, and halted abruptly, blinking in the strong sunshine.

      In front of his own gate, beyond the Major's broad lawn, his mother was just getting into her victoria, where sat already his Aunt Fanny and Lucy Morgan. It was a summer fashion-picture: the three ladies charmingly dressed, delicate parasols aloft; the lines of the victoria graceful as those of a violin; the trim pair of bays in glistening harness picked out with silver, and the serious black driver whom Isabel, being an Amberson, dared even in that town to put into a black livery coat, boots, white breeches, and cockaded hat. They jingled smartly away, and, seeing George standing on the Major's lawn, Lucy waved, and Isabel threw him a kiss.

      But George shuddered, pretending not to see them, and stooped as if searching for something lost in the grass, protracting that posture until the victoria was out of hearing. And ten minutes later, George Amberson, somewhat in the semblance of an angry person plunging out of the Mansion, found a pale nephew waiting to accost him.

      “I haven't time to talk, Georgie.”

      “Yes, you have. You'd better!”

      “What's the matter, then?”

      His namesake drew him away from the vicinity of the house. “I want to tell you something I just heard Aunt Amelia say, in there.”

      “I don't want to hear it,” said Amberson. “I've been hearing entirely too much of what 'Aunt Amelia says, lately.”

      “She says my mother's on your side about this division of the property because you're Eugene Morgan's best friend.”

      “What in the name of heaven has that got to do with your mother's being on my side?”

      “She said—” George paused to swallow. “She said—” He faltered.

      “You look sick,” said his uncle; and laughed shortly. “If it's because of anything Amelia's been saying, I don't blame you! What else did she say?”

      George swallowed again, as with nausea, but under his uncle's encouragement he was able to be explicit. “She said my mother wanted you to be friendly to her about Eugene Morgan. She said my mother had been using Aunt Fanny as a chaperone.”

      Amberson emitted a laugh of disgust. “It's wonderful what tommy-rot a woman in a state of spite can think of! I suppose you don't doubt that Amelia Amberson created this specimen of tommy-rot herself?”

      “I know she did.”

      “Then what's the matter?”

      “She said—” George faltered again. “She said—she implied people were—were talking about it.”

      “Of all the damn nonsense!” his uncle exclaimed. George looked at him haggardly. “You're sure they're not?”

      “Rubbish! Your mother's on my side about this division because she knows Sydney's a pig and always has been a pig, and so has his spiteful wife. I'm trying to keep them from getting the better of your mother as well as from getting the better of me, don't you suppose? Well, they're in a rage because Sydney always could do what he liked with father unless your mother interfered, and they know I got Isabel to ask him not to do what they wanted. They're keeping up the fight and they're sore—and Amelia's a woman who always says any damn thing that comes into her head! That's all there is to it.”

      “But she said,” George persisted wretchedly; “she said there was talk. She said—”

      “Look here, young fellow!” Amberson laughed good-naturedly. “There probably is some harmless talk about the way your Aunt Fanny goes after poor Eugene, and I've no doubt I've abetted it myself. People can't help being amused by a thing like that. Fanny was always languishing at him, twenty-odd years ago, before he left here. Well, we can't blame the poor thing if she's got her hopes up again, and I don't know that I blame her, myself, for using your mother the way she does.”

      “How do you mean?”

      Amberson put his hand on George's shoulder. “You like to tease Fanny,” he said, “but I wouldn't tease her about this, if I were you. Fanny hasn't got much in her life. You know, Georgie, just being an aunt isn't really the great career it may sometimes appear to you! In fact, I don't know of anything much that Fanny has got, except her feeling about Eugene. She's always had it—and what's funny to us is pretty much life-and-death to her, I suspect. Now, I'll not deny that Eugene Morgan is attracted to your mother. He is; and that's another case of 'always was'; but I know him, and he's a knight, George—a crazy one, perhaps, if you've read 'Don Quixote.' And I think your mother likes him better than she likes any man outside her own family, and that he interests her more than anybody else—and 'always has.' And that's all there is to it, except—”

      “Except what?” George asked quickly, as he paused.

      “Except that I suspect—” Amberson chuckled, and began over: “I'll tell you in confidence. I think Fanny's a fairly tricky customer, for such an innocent old girl! There isn't any real harm in her, but she's a great diplomatist—lots of cards up her lace sleeves, Georgie! By the way, did you ever notice how proud she is of her arms? Always flashing 'em at poor Eugene!” And he stopped to laugh again.

      “I don't see anything confidential about that,” George complained. “I thought—”

      “Wait a minute! My idea is—don't forget it's a confidential one, but I'm devilish right about it, young Georgie!—it's this: Fanny uses your mother for a decoy duck. She does everything in the world she can to keep your mother's friendship with Eugene going, because she