He sighed; and both were silent, looking out at the long flares of the constantly passing automobile headlights, shifting in vast geometric demonstrations against the darkness. Now and then a bicycle wound its nervous way among these portents, or, at long intervals, a surrey or buggy plodded forlornly by.
“There seem to be so many ways of making money nowadays,” Fanny said thoughtfully. “Every day I hear of a new fortune some person has got hold of, one way or another—nearly always it’s somebody you never heard of. It doesn’t seem all to be in just making motor cars; I hear there’s a great deal in manufacturing these things that motor cars use—new inventions particularly. I met dear old Frank Bronson the other day, and he told me—”
“Oh, yes, even dear old Frank’s got the fever,” Amberson laughed. “He’s as wild as any of them. He told me about this invention he’s gone into, too. ‘Millions in it!’ Some new electric headlight better than anything yet—‘every car in America can’t help but have ’em,’ and all that. He’s putting half he’s laid by into it, and the fact is, he almost talked me into getting father to ‘finance me’ enough for me to go into it. Poor father! he’s financed me before! I suppose he would again if I had the heart to ask him; and this seems to be a good thing, though probably old Frank is a little too sanguine. At any rate, I’ve been thinking it over.”
“So have I,” Fanny admitted. “He seemed to be certain it would pay twenty-five per cent. the first year, and enormously more after that; and I’m only getting four on my little principal. People are making such enormous fortunes out of everything to do with motor cars, it does seem as if—” She paused. “Well, I told him I’d think it over seriously.”
“We may turn out to be partners and millionaires then,” Amberson laughed. “I thought I’d ask Eugene’s advice.”
“I wish you would,” said Fanny. “He probably knows exactly how much profit there would be in this.”
Eugene’s advice was to “go slow”: he thought electric lights for automobiles were “coming—someday but probably not until certain difficulties could be overcome.” Altogether, he was discouraging, but by this time his two friends “had the fever” as thoroughly as old Frank Bronson himself had it; for they had been with Bronson to see the light working beautifully in a machine shop. They were already enthusiastic, and after asking Eugene’s opinion they argued with him, telling him how they had seen with their own eyes that the difficulties he mentioned had been overcome. “Perfectly!” Fanny cried. “And if it worked in the shop it’s bound to work any place else, isn’t it?”
He would not agree that it was “bound to”—yet, being pressed, was driven to admit that “it might,” and, retiring from what was developing into an oratorical contest, repeated a warning about not “putting too much into it.”
George Amberson also laid stress on this caution later, though the Major had “financed him” again, and he was “going in.” “You must be careful to leave yourself a ‘margin of safety,’ Fanny,” he said. “I’m confident that is a pretty conservative investment of its kind, and all the chances are with us, but you must be careful to leave yourself enough to fall back on, in case anything should go wrong.”
Fanny deceived him. In the impossible event of “anything going wrong” she would have enough left to “live on,” she declared, and laughed excitedly, for she was having the best time that had come to her since Wilbur’s death. Like so many women for whom money has always been provided without their understanding how, she was prepared to be a thorough and irresponsible plunger.