“Something like that,” she said lightly. “For us two, playing at being lovers was just the same as playing at cross-purposes. I had all the purposes, and that gave you all the crossness: things weren't getting along at all. It was absurd!”
“Well, have it your own way,” he said. “It needn't have been absurd.”
“No, it couldn't help but be!” she informed him cheerfully. “The way I am and the way you are, it couldn't ever be anything else. So what was the use?”
“I don't know,” he sighed, and his sigh was abysmal. “But what I wanted to tell you is this: when you went away, you didn't let me know and didn't care how or when I heard it, but I'm not like that with you. This time, I'm going away. That's what I wanted to tell you. I'm going away tomorrow night—indefinitely.”
She nodded sunnily. “That's nice for you. I hope you'll have ever so jolly a time, George.”
“I don't expect to have a particularly jolly time.”
“Well, then,” she laughed, “if I were you I don't think I'd go.”
It seemed impossible to impress this distracting creature, to make her serious. “Lucy,” he said desperately, “this is our last walk together.”
“Evidently!” she said, “if you're going away tomorrow night.”
“Lucy—this may be the last time I'll see you—ever—ever in my life.”
At that she looked at him quickly, across her shoulder, but she smiled as brightly as before, and with the same cordial inconsequence: “Oh, I can hardly think that!” she said. “And of course I'd be awfully sorry to think it. You're not moving away, are you, to live?”
“No.”
“And even if you were, of course you'd be coming back to visit your relatives every now and then.”
“I don't know when I'm coming back. Mother and I are starting to-morrow night for a trip around the world.”
At this she did look thoughtful. “Your mother is going with you?”
“Good heavens!” he groaned. “Lucy, doesn't it make any difference to you that I am going?”
At this her cordial smile instantly appeared again. “Yes, of course,” she said. “I'm sure I'll miss you ever so much. Are you to be gone long?”
He stared at her wanly. “I told you indefinitely,” he said. “We've made no plans—at all—for coming back.”
“That does sound like a long trip!” she exclaimed admiringly. “Do you plan to be travelling all the time, or will you stay in some one place the greater part of it? I think it would be lovely to—”
“Lucy!”
He halted; and she stopped with him. They had come to a corner at the edge of the “business section” of the city, and people were everywhere about them, brushing against them, sometimes, in passing.
“I can't stand this,” George said, in a low voice. “I'm just about ready to go in this drug-store here, and ask the clerk for something to keep me from dying in my tracks! It's quite a shock, you see, Lucy!”
“What is?”
“To find out certainly, at last, how deeply you've cared for me! To see how much difference this makes to you! By Jove, I have mattered to you!”
Her cordial smile was tempered now with good-nature. “George!” She laughed indulgently. “Surely you don't want me to do pathos on a downtown corner!”
“You wouldn't 'do pathos' anywhere!”
“Well—don't you think pathos is generally rather fooling?”
“I can't stand this any longer,” he said. “I can't! Good-bye, Lucy!” He took her hand. “It's good-bye—I think it's good-bye for good, Lucy!”
“Good-bye! I do hope you'll have the most splendid trip.” She gave his hand a cordial little grip, then released it lightly. “Give my love to your mother. Good-bye!”
He turned heavily away, and a moment later glanced back over his shoulder. She had not gone on, but stood watching him, that same casual, cordial smile on her face to the very last; and now, as he looked back, she emphasized her friendly unconcern by waving her small hand to him cheerily, though perhaps with the slightest hint of preoccupation, as if she had begun to think of the errand that brought her downtown.
In his mind, George had already explained her to his own poignant dissatisfaction—some blond pup, probably, whom she had met during that “perfectly gorgeous time!” And he strode savagely onward, not looking back again.
But Lucy remained where she was until he was out of sight. Then she went slowly into the drugstore which had struck George as a possible source of stimulant for himself.
“Please let me have a few drops of aromatic spirits of ammonia in a glass of water,” she said, with the utmost composure.
“Yes, ma'am!” said the impressionable clerk, who had been looking at her through the display window as she stood on the corner.
But a moment later, as he turned from the shelves of glass jars against the wall, with the potion she had asked for in his hand, he uttered an exclamation: “For goshes' sake, Miss!” And, describing this adventure to his fellow-boarders, that evening, “Sagged pretty near to the counter, she was,” he said. “If I hadn't been a bright, quick, ready-for-anything young fella she'd 'a' flummixed plum! I was watchin' her out the window—talkin' to some young s'iety fella, and she was all right then. She was all right when she come in the store, too. Yes, sir; the prettiest girl that ever walked in our place and took one good look at me. I reckon it must be the truth what some you town wags say about my face!”
Chapter XXVIII
At that hour the heroine of the susceptible clerk's romance was engaged in brightening the rosy little coal fire under the white mantelpiece in her pretty white-and-blue boudoir. Four photographs all framed in decorous plain silver went to the anthracite's fierce destruction—frames and all—and three packets of letters and notes in a charming Florentine treasure-box of painted wood; nor was the box, any more than the silver frames, spared this rousing finish. Thrown heartily upon live coal, the fine wood sparkled forth in stars, then burst into an alarming blaze which scorched the white mantelpiece, but Lucy stood and looked on without moving.
It was not Eugene who told her what had happened at Isabel's door. When she got home, she found Fanny Minafer waiting for her—a secret excursion of Fanny's for the purpose, presumably, of “letting out” again; because that was what she did. She told Lucy everything (except her own lamentable part in the production of the recent miseries) and concluded with a tribute to George: “The worst of it is, he thinks he's been such a hero, and Isabel does, too, and that makes him more than twice as awful. It's been the same all his life: everything he did was noble and perfect. He had a domineering nature to begin with, and she let it go on, and fostered it till it absolutely ruled her. I never saw a plainer case of a person's fault making them pay for having it! She goes about, overseeing the packing and praising George and pretending to be perfectly cheerful about what he's making her do and about the dreadful things he's done. She pretends he did such a fine thing—so manly and protective—going to Mrs. Johnson. And so heroic—doing what his 'principles' made him—even though he knew what it would cost him with you! And all the while it's almost killing her—what he said to your father! She's always been lofty enough, so to speak, and had the greatest idea of the Ambersons being superior to the rest of the world, and all that, but rudeness, or anything like a 'scene,' or any bad manners—they always just made her sick! But she could never see what George's manners were—oh, it's been a terrible adulation!... It's going to be a task for me, living in that big house, all alone: you must