AT LEAST, it may be claimed for George that his last night in the house where he had been born was not occupied with his own disheartening future, but with sorrow for what sacrifices his pride and youth had demanded of others. And early in the morning he came downstairs and tried to help Fanny make coffee on the kitchen range.
"There was something I wanted to say to you last night, Aunt Fanny," he said, as she finally discovered that an amber fluid, more like tea than coffee, was as near ready to be taken into the human system as it would ever be. "I think I'd better do it now."
She set the coffee-pot back upon the stove with a little crash, and, looking at him in a desperate anxiety, began to twist her dainty apron between her fingers without any consciousness of what she was doing.
"Why--why--" she stammered; but she knew what he was going to say, and that was why she had been more and more nervous. "Hadn't--perhaps--perhaps we'd better get the--the things moved to the little new home first, George. Let's -"
He interrupted quietly, though at her phrase, "the little new home," his pungent impulse was to utter one loud shout and run. "It was about this new place that I wanted to speak. I've been thinking it over, and I've decided. I want you to take all the things from mother's room and use them and keep them for me, and I'm sure the little apartment will be just what you like; and with the extra bedroom probably you could find some woman friend to come and live there, and share the expense with you. But I've decided on another arrangement for myself, and so I'm not going with you. I don't suppose you'll mind much, and I don't see why you should mind--particularly, that is. I'm not very lively company these days, or any days, for that matter. I can't imagine you, or any one else, being much attached to me, so--"
He stopped in amazement: no chair had been left in the kitchen, but Fanny gave a despairing glance around her, in search of one, then sank abruptly, and sat flat upon the floor.
"You're going to leave me in the lurch!" she gasped.
"What on earth--" George sprang to her. "Get up, Aunt Fanny!"
"I can't. I'm too weak. Let me alone, George!" And as he released the wrist he had seized to help her, she repeated the dismal prophecy which for days she had been matching against her hopes: "You're going to leave me--in the lurch!"
"Why no, Aunt Fanny!" he protested. "At first I'd have been something of a burden on you. I'm to get eight dollars a week; about thirty-two a month. The rent's thirty-six dollars a month, and the table-d'hôte dinner runs up to over twenty-two dollars apiece, so with my half of the rent--eighteen dollars--I'd have less than nothing left out of my salary to pay my share of the groceries for all the breakfasts and luncheons. You see you'd not only be doing all the housework and cooking, but, you'd be paying more of the expenses than I would."
She stared at him with such a forlorn blankness as he had never seen. "I'd be paying--" she said feebly. "I'd be paying--"
"Certainly you would. You'd be using more of your money than--"
"My money!" Fanny's chin drooped upon her thin chest, and she laughed miserably. "I've got twenty-eight dollars. That's all."
"You mean until the interest is due again?"
"I mean that's all," Fanny said. "I mean that's all there is. There won't be any more interest because there isn't any principal."
"Why, you told--"
She shook her head. "No. I haven't told you anything."
"Then it was Uncle George. He told me you had enough to fall back on. That's just what he said: 'to fall back on.' He said you'd lost more than you should, in the headlight company, but he'd insisted that you should hold out enough to live on, and you'd very wisely followed his advice."
"I know," she said weakly. "I told him so. He didn't know, or else he'd forgotten, how much Wilbur's insurance amounted to, and I--oh, it seemed such a sure way to make a real fortune out of a little--and I thought I could do something for you, George, if you ever came to need it--and it all looked so bright I just thought I'd put it all in. I did--every cent except my last interest payment--and it's gone."
"Good Lord!" George began to pace up and down the worn planks of the bare floor. "Why on earth did you wait till now to tell such a thing as this?"
"I couldn't tell till I had to," she said piteously. "I couldn't till George Amberson went away. He couldn't do anything to help, anyhow, and I just didn't want him to talk to me about it--he's been at me so much about not putting more in than I could afford to lose, and said he considered he had my--my word I wasn't putting more than that in it. So I thought: What was the use? What was the use of going over it all with him and having him reproach me, and probably reproach himself? It wouldn't do any good--not any good on earth." She got out her lace handkerchief and began to cry. "Nothing does any good, I guess, in this old world! Oh, how tired of this old world I am! I didn't know what to do. I just tried to go ahead and be as practical as I could, and arrange some way for us to live. Oh, I knew you didn't want me, George! You always teased me and berated me whenever you had a chance from the time you were a little boy--you did so! Later, you've tried to be kinder to me, but you don't want me around--oh, I can see that much! You don't suppose I want to thrust myself on you, do you? It isn't very pleasant to be thrusting yourself on a person you know doesn't want you--but I knew you oughtn't to be left all alone in the world; it isn't good. I knew your mother's want me to watch over you and try to have something like a home for you--I know she'd want me to do what I tried to do!" Fanny's tears were bitter now, and her voice, hoarse and wet, was tragically sincere. "I tried--I tried to be practical--to look after your interests--to make things as nice for you as I could--I walked my heels down looking for a place for us to live--I walked and walked over this town--I didn't ride one block on a street-car--I wouldn't use five cents no matter how tired I--Oh!" She sobbed uncontrollably. "Oh! and now--you don't want--you want--you want to leave me in the lurch! You--"
George stopped walking. "In God's name, Aunt Fanny," he said, "quit spreading out your handkerchief and drying it and then getting it all wet again! I mean stop crying! Do! And for heaven's sake, get up. Don't sit there with your back against the boiler and--"
"It's not hot," Fanny sniffled. "It's cold; the plumbers disconnected it. I wouldn't mind if they hadn't. I wouldn't mind if it burned me, George."
"Oh, my Lord!" He went to her, and lifted her. "For God's sake, get up! Come, let's take the coffee into the other room, and see what's to be done."
He got her to her feet; she leaned upon him, already somewhat comforted, and, with his arm about her, he conducted her to the dining room and seated her in one of the two kitchen chairs which had been placed at the rough table. "There!" he said, "get over it!" Then he brought the coffee-pot, some lumps of sugar in a tin pan, and, finding that all the coffee-cups were broken, set water glasses upon the table, and poured some of the pale coffee into them. By this time Fanny's spirits had revived appreciably: she looked up with a plaintive eagerness. "I had bought all my fall clothes, George," she said; "and I paid every bill I owed. I don't owe a cent for clothes, George."
"That's good," he said wanly, and he had a moment of physical dizziness that decided him to sit down quickly. For an instant it seemed to him that he was not Fanny's nephew, but married to her. He passed his pale hand over his paler forehead. "Well, let's see where we stand," he said feebly. "Let's see if we can afford this place you've selected."
Fanny continued to brighten. "I'm sure it's the most practical plan we could possibly have worked out, George--and it is a comfort to be among nice people. I think we'll both enjoy it, because the truth is we've been keeping too much to ourselves for a long while. It isn't good for people."
"I was thinking about the money, Aunt Fanny. You see--"
"I'm sure we can manage it," she interrupted quickly. "There really isn't a cheaper place in town that we could actually live in and be--" Here she interrupted herself. "Oh! There's one great economy I forgot to tell you, and it's especially an economy for you, because you're always too generous about such things: they don't allow any tipping. They have signs that prohibit it."
"That's good," he said grimly. "But the rent is thirty-six dollars a month; the dinner is twenty-two and a half for each of us, and we've got to have some provision for other food. We won't need any clothes for a year, perhaps--"
"Oh, longer!" she exclaimed. "So you see--"
"I see that forty-five and thirty-six make eighty-one," he said. "At the lowest, we need a hundred dollars a month--and I'm going to make thirty-two."
"I thought of that, George," she said confidently, "and I'm sure it will be all right. You'll be earning a great deal more than that very soon."
"I don't see any prospect of it--not till I'm admitted to the bar, and that will be two years at the earliest."
Fanny's confidence was not shaken. "I know you'll be getting on faster than--"
"'Faster?'" George echoed gravely. "We've got to have more than that to start with."
"Well, there's the six hundred dollars from the sale. Six hundred and twelve dollars it was."
"It isn't six hundred and twelve now," said George. "It's about one hundred and sixty."
Fanny showed a momentary dismay. "Why, how--"
