Part 19 (2/2)

”Isabel does? Isabel!” she exclaimed, her tone high and shrewish. ”You needn't tell me anything about Isabel Minafer, I guess, my dear old Frank Bronson! I know her a little better than you do, don't you think?”

George heard the voice of Mr. Bronson replying--a voice familiar to him as that of his grandfather's attorney-in-chief and chief intimate as well. He was a contemporary of the Major's, being over seventy, and they had been through three years of the War in the same regiment. Amelia addressed him now, with an effect of angry mockery, as ”my dear old Frank Bronson”; but that (without the mockery) was how the Amberson family almost always spoke of him: ”dear old Frank Bronson.” He was a hale, thin old man, six feet three inches tall, and without a stoop.

”I doubt your knowing Isabel,” he said stiffly. ”You speak of her as you do because she sides with her brother George, instead of with you and Sydney.”

”Pooh!” Aunt Amelia was evidently in a pa.s.sion. ”You know what's been going on over there, well enough, Frank Bronson!”

”I 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 f.a.n.n.y Minafer with Eugene, and all the time she's been dragging that poor fool f.a.n.n.y around to chaperone her and Eugene! Under the circ.u.mstances, she knows people will get to thinking f.a.n.n.y'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 suns.h.i.+ne.

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 f.a.n.n.y and Lucy Morgan. It was a summer fas.h.i.+on-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 c.o.c.kaded 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 gra.s.s, 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?”

<script>