The Magnificent Ambersons - Booth Tarkington [85]
“Other people!” the unhappy George repeated viciously. “That’s what I want to know about—these other people!”
“I beg your pardon.”
“I want to ask you about them. You say you know of other people who talk about this.”
“I presume they do.”
“How many?”
“What?”
“I want to know how many other people talk about it?”
“Dear, dear!” she protested. “How should I know that?”
“Haven’t you heard anybody mention it?”
“I presume so.”
“Well, how many have you heard?”
Mrs. Johnson was becoming more annoyed than apprehensive, and she showed it. “Really, this isn’t a court-room,” she said. “And I’m not a defendant in a libel-suit, either!”
The unfortunate young man lost what remained of his balance. “You may be!” he cried. “I intend to know just who’s dared to say these things, if I have to force my way into every house in town, and I’m going to make them take every word of it back! I mean to know the name of every slanderer that’s spoken of this matter to you and of every tattler you’ve passed it on to yourself. I mean to know—”
“You’ll know something pretty quick!” she said, rising with difficulty; and her voice was thick with the sense of insult. “You’ll know that you’re out in the street. Please to leave my house!”
George stiffened sharply. Then he bowed, and strode out of the door.
Three minutes later, dishevelled and perspiring, but cold all over, he burst into his Uncle George’s room at the Major’s without knocking. Amberson was dressing.
“Good gracious, Georgie!” he exclaimed. “What’s up?”
“I’ve just come from Mrs. Johnson’s—across the street,” George panted.
“You have your own tastes!” was Amberson’s comment. “But curious as they are, you ought to do something better with your hair, and button your waistcoat to the right buttons—even for Mrs. Johnson! What were you doing over there?”
“She told me to leave the house,” George said desperately. “I went there because Aunt Fanny told me the whole town was talking about my mother and that man Morgan—that they say my mother is going to marry him and that proves she was too fond of him before my father died—she said this Mrs. Johnson was one that talked about it, and I went to her to ask who were the others.”
Amberson’s jaw fell in dismay. “Don’t tell me you did that!” he said, in a low voice; and then, seeing that it was true, “Oh, now you have done it!”
CHAPTER XXIII
I’ve ‘done it’?” George cried. “What do you mean: I’ve done it? And what have I done?”
Amberson had collapsed into an easy chair beside his dressing-table, the white evening tie he had been about to put on dangling from his hand, which had fallen limply on the arm of the chair. The tie dropped to the floor before he replied; and the hand that had held it was lifted to stroke his graying hair reflectively. “By Jove!” he muttered. “That is too bad!”
George folded his arms bitterly. “Will you kindly answer my question? What have I done that wasn’t honourable and right? Do you think these riffraff can go about bandying my mother’s name—”
“They can now,” said Amberson. “I don’t know if they could before, but they certainly can now!”
“What do you mean by that?”
His uncle sighed profoundly, picked up his tie, and, preoccupied with despondency, twisted the strip of white lawn till it became unwearable. Meanwhile, he tried to enlighten his nephew. “Gossip is never fatal, Georgie,” he said, “until it is denied. Gossip goes on about every human being alive and about all the dead that are alive enough to be remembered, and yet almost never does any harm until some defender makes a controversy. Gossip’s a nasty thing, but it’s sickly, and if people of good intentions will let it entirely alone, it will die, ninety-nine times out of a hundred.”