The Magnificient Ambersons - Booth Tarkington [41]
She pressed his hand to her cheek, and a tear made a tiny warm streak across one of his knuckles.
"For heaven's sake!" he said. "What's the matter? Isn't everything all right?"
"You're going away!"
"Well, I'm coming back, don't you suppose? Is that all that worries you?"
She cheered up, and smiled again, but shook her head. "I never can bear to see you go—that's the most of it. I'm a little bothered about your father, too."
"Why?"
"It seems to me he looks so badly. Everybody thinks so."
"What nonsense!" George laughed. "He's been looking that way all summer. He isn't much different from the way he's looked all his life, that I can see. What's the matter with him?"
"He never talks much about his business to me but I think he's been worrying about some investments he made last year. I think his worry has affected his health."
"What investments?" George demanded. "He hasn't gone into Mr. Morgan's automobile concern, has he?"
"No," Isabel smiled. "The 'automobile concern' is all Eugene's, and it's so small I understand it's taken hardly anything. No; your father has always prided himself on making only the most absolutely safe investments, but two or three years ago he and your Uncle George both put a great deal—pretty much everything they could get together, I think—into the stock of rolling-mills some friends of theirs owned, and I'm afraid the mills haven't been doing well."
"What of that? Father needn't worry. You and I could take care of him the rest of his life on what grandfather—"
"Of course," she agreed. "But your father's always lived so for his business and taken such pride in his sound investments; it's a passion with him. I—"
"Pshaw! He needn't worry! You tell him we'll look after him: we'll build him a little stone bank in the backyard, if he busts up, and he can go and put his pennies in it every morning. That'll keep him just as happy as he ever was!" He kissed her. "Good-night, I'm going to tell Lucy good-bye. Don't sit up for me."
She walked to the front gate with him, still holding his hand, and he told her again not to "sit up" for him.
"Yes, I will," she laughed. "You won't be very late."
"Well—it's my last night."
"But I know Lucy, and she knows I want to see you, too, your last night. You'll see: she'll send you home promptly at eleven!"
But she was mistaken: Lucy sent him home promptly at ten.
Chapter XII
Isabel's uneasiness about her husbands health—sometimes reflected in her letters to George during the winter that followed—had not been alleviated when the accredited Senior returned for his next summer vacation, and she confided to him in his room, soon after his arrival, that "something" the doctor had said to her lately had made her more uneasy than ever.
"Still worrying over his rolling-mills investments?" George asked, not seriously impressed.
"I'm afraid it's past that stage from what Dr Rainey says. His worries only aggravate his condition now. Dr. Rainey says we ought to get him away."
"Well, let's do it, then."
"He won't go."
"He's a man awfully set in his ways; that's true," said George. "I don't think there's anything much the matter with him, though, and he looks just the same to me. Have you seen Lucy lately? How is she?"
"Hasn't she written you?"
"Oh, about once a month," he answered carelessly. "Never says much about herself. How's she look?"
"She looks—pretty!" said Isabel. "I suppose she wrote you they've moved?"
"Yes; I've got her address. She said they were building."