“I’ll bother him as little as possible. I’ll wait till some day when he seems to brighten up a little.”
But Amberson waited too long. The Major had already taken eleven months since his daughter’s death to think important things out. He had got as far with them as he could, and there was nothing to detain him longer in the world. One evening his grandson sat with him—the Major seemed to like best to have young George with him, so far as they were able to guess his preferences—and the old gentleman made a queer gesture: he slapped his knee as if he had made a sudden discovery, or else remembered that he had forgotten something.
George looked at him with an air of inquiry, but said nothing. He had grown to be almost as silent as his grandfather. However, the Major spoke without being questioned.
“It must be in the sun,” he said. “There wasn’t anything here but the sun in the first place, and the earth came out of the sun, and we came out of the earth. So, whatever we are, we must have been in the sun. We go back to the earth we came out of, so the earth will go back to the sun that it came out of. And time means nothing—nothing at all—so in a little while we’ll all be back in the sun together. I wish—”
He moved his hand uncertainly as if reaching for something, and George jumped up. “Did you want anything, grandfather?”
“What?”
“Would you like a glass of water?”
“No—no. No; I don’t want anything.” The reaching hand dropped back upon the arm of his chair, and he relapsed into silence; but a few minutes later he finished the sentence he had begun:
“I wish—somebody could tell me!”
The next day he had a slight cold, but he seemed annoyed when his son suggested calling the doctor, and Amberson let him have his own way so far, in fact, that after he had got up and dressed, the following morning, he was all alone when he went away to find out what he hadn’t been able to think out—all those things he had wished “somebody” would tell him.