3 Books To Know Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. Edith Wharton

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СКАЧАТЬ distinctness in this vision than in his former pleasing one. For a moment she was miraculously real before him, every line and colour of her. He saw the moonlight shimmering in the chiffon of her skirts brightest on her crossed knee and the tip of her slipper; saw the blue curve of the characteristic shadow behind her, as she leaned back against the white step; saw the watery twinkling of sequins in the gauze wrap over her white shoulders as she moved, and the faint, symmetrical lights in her black hair—and not one alluring, exasperating twentieth-of-an-inch of her laughing profile was spared him as she seemed to turn to the infernal Kinney—

      “Riffraff!” And George began furiously to pace the stone floor. “Riffraff!” By this hard term—a favourite with him since childhood's scornful hour—he meant to indicate, not Lucy, but the young gentlemen who, in his vision, surrounded her. “Riffraff!” he said again, aloud, and again:

      “Riffraff!”

      At that moment, as it happened, Lucy was playing chess with her father; and her heart, though not remorseful, was as heavy as George could have wished. But she did not let Eugene see that she was troubled, and he was pleased when he won three games of her. Usually she beat him.

      Chapter XIX

      George went driving the next afternoon alone, and, encountering Lucy and her father on the road, in one of Morgan's cars, lifted his hat, but nowise relaxed his formal countenance as they passed. Eugene waved a cordial hand quickly returned to the steering-wheel; but Lucy only nodded gravely and smiled no more than George did. Nor did she accompany Eugene to the Major's for dinner, the following Sunday evening, though both were bidden to attend that feast, which was already reduced in numbers and gayety by the absence of George Amberson. Eugene explained to his host that Lucy had gone away to visit a school-friend.

      The information, delivered in the library, just before old Sam's appearance to announce dinner, set Miss Minafer in quite a flutter. “Why, George!” she said, turning to her nephew. “How does it happen you didn't tell us?” And with both hands opening, as if to express her innocence of some conspiracy, she exclaimed to the others, “He's never said one word to us about Lucy's planning to go away!”

      “Probably afraid to,” the Major suggested. “Didn't know but he might break down and cry if he tried to speak of it!” He clapped his grandson on the shoulder, inquiring jocularly, “That it, Georgie?”

      Georgie made no reply, but he was red enough to justify the Major's developing a chuckle into laughter; though Miss Fanny, observing her nephew keenly, got an impression that this fiery blush was in truth more fiery than tender. She caught a glint in his eye less like confusion than resentment, and saw a dilation of his nostrils which might have indicated not so much a sweet agitation as an inaudible snort. Fanny had never been lacking in curiosity, and, since her brother's death, this quality was more than ever alert. The fact that George had spent all the evenings of the past week at home had not been lost upon her, nor had she failed to ascertain, by diplomatic inquiries, that since the day of the visit to Eugene's shops George had gone driving alone.

      At the dinner-table she continued to observe him, sidelong; and toward the conclusion of the meal she was not startled by an episode which brought 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 boarding-house 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 СКАЧАТЬ