The Guarded Heights
Edition opening
Contents and reading sections
THE GUARDED HEIGHTS
BY WADSWORTH CAMP
FRONTISPIECE
BY C. D. MITCHELL
GARDEN CITY, N. Y., AND TORONTO
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY
1921
COPYRIGHT, 1921, BY
DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & CO.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, INCLUDING THAT OF TRANSLATION
INTO FOREIGN LANGUAGES, INCLUDING THE SCANDINAVIAN
COPYRIGHT 1920, BY P. F. COLLIER & SON COMPANY
CONTENTS
PART I OAKMONT
PART II PRINCETON
PART III THE MARKET-PLACE
PART IV THE FOREST
PART V THE NEW WORLD
THE GUARDED HEIGHTS
PART I
OAKMONT
I
George Morton never could be certain when he first conceived the
preposterous idea that Sylvia Planter ought to belong to him. The full
realization, at any rate, came all at once, unexpectedly, destroying his
dreary outlook, urging him to fantastic heights, and, for that matter,
to rather curious depths.
It was, altogether, a year of violent change. After a precarious
survival of a rural education he had done his best to save his father's
livery business which cheap automobiles had persistently undermined. He
liked that, for he had spent his vacations, all his spare hours, indeed,
at the stable or on the road, so that by the time the crash came he knew
more of horses and rode better than any hunting, polo-playing gentleman
he had ever seen about that rich countryside. Nor was there any one near
his own age who could stand up to him in a rough-and-tumble argument.
Yet he wondered why he was restless, not appreciating that he craved
broader worlds to conquer. Then the failure came, and his close relation
with the vast Planter estate of Oakmont, and the arrival of Sylvia, who
disclosed such worlds and heralded the revolution.
That spring of his twentieth year the stable and all its stock went to
the creditors, and old Planter bought the small frame house just outside
the village, on the edge of his estate, and drew his boundary around it.
He was willing that the Mortons should remain for the present in their
old home at a nominal rent, and after a fashion they might struggle
along, for George's mother was exceptionally clever at cleansing fine
laces and linens; the estate would have work for his father from time to
time; as for himself, Planter's superintendent suggested, there were new
and difficult horses at Oakmont and a scarcity of trustworthy grooms.
George shook his head.
"Sure, I want a job," he admitted, "but not as old Planter's servant, or
anybody else's. I want to be my own boss."
George hadn't guessed that his reputation as a horseman had travelled as
far as the big house. The superintendent explained that it had, and
that, living at home, merely helping out for the summer, he would be
quite apart from the ordinary men around the stables. His parents sensed
a threat. They begged him to accept.
"We've got to do as Old Planter wants at the start or he'll put us out,
and we're too old to make another home."
So George went with his head up, telling himself he was doing Planter a
favour; but he didn't like it, and almost at once commenced to plan to
get away, if he could, without hurting his parents. Then Sylvia, just
home from her last year at school, came into the stable toward the end
of his day's work. Her overpowering father was with her, and her
brother, Lambert, who was about George's age. She examined interestedly
the horse reserved for her, and one or two others of which she was
envious.
George wanted to stare at her. He had only glimpsed her casually and at
a distance in summers gone by. Now she was close, and he knew he had
never seen anything to match her slender, adolescent figure, or her
finely balanced face with its intolerant eyes and its frame of black
hair.
"But," he heard her say to her father in a flexible contralto voice, "I
don't care to bother you or Lambert every time I want to ride."
An argument, unintelligible to George, flowed for a moment. Then Old
Planter's tones, bass and authoritative, filled the stable.
"Come here, young Morton!"
George advanced, not touching his cap, to remind the big man that there
was a difference between him and the other stable men, and that he
didn't like that tone.
"You are a very dependable horseman," the great millionaire said. "I can
trust you. When Miss Sylvia wants to ride alone you will go with her and
see that she has no accidents. During your hours here you will be
entirely at her disposal."
Instead of arousing George's anger that command slightly thrilled him.
"So you're Morton," Sylvia said, indifferently. "I shall expect you
always to be convenient."
He ventured to look at last, pulling off his cap.
"You can depend on it," he said, a trifle dazed by her beauty.
She went out. Her father and her brother followed, like servitors of a
sort themselves. George had no sense of having allowed his position
there to be compromised. He only realized that he was going to see that
lovely creature every day, would be responsible for her safety, would
have a chance to know her.
"A peach!" a groom whispered. "You're lucky, Georgie boy."
George shrugged his shoulders.
"Maybe so."
Yet he agreed. She was a peach, and he took no pains to conceal his
appraisal from his parents that evening.
"Seen Old Planter's daughter yet?"
His father, a drooping, tired figure in the dusk of the little porch,
nodded.
"I haven't," his mother called from the kitchen. "Is she as pretty as
she was last summer?"
"Pretty!" he scoffed. "Who was the prettiest woman in the world?"
"I don't know," came the interested voice from the house. "Maybe the
Queen of Sheba."
"Then," George said, "she'd have cried her eyes out if she had seen Old
Planter's girl."
The elder Morton took his pipe from his mouth.
"Young men like you," he said, slowly, "haven't any business looking at
girls like Old Planter's daughter."
George laughed carelessly.
"Even a cat can look at a queen."
And during the weeks that followed he did look, too persistently, never
dreaming where his enthusiasm was leading him. Occasionally he would
bring her brother's horse around with hers or her father's. At such
times he would watch them ride away with a keen disappointment, as if he
had been excluded from a pleasure that had become his right. Lambert,
however, was away a good deal, and Old Planter that summer fought
rheumatic attacks, which he called gout, so that Sylvia, for the most
part, rode alone through remote bridle-paths with George at her heels
like a well-trained animal.
He knew he could not alter that all at once; she would have it no other
way. She only spoke to him, really, about the condition of the horses,
or the weather--never a word conceivably personal; and every day he
looked at her more personally, let his imagination, without knowing it,
stray too far. At first he merely enjoyed being with her; then he
appreciated that a sense of intimacy had grown upon him, and he was
troubled that she did not reciprocate, that their extended companionship
had not diminished at all the appalling distance dividing them. There
was something, moreover, beyond her beauty to stimulate his interest.
She appeared not to know fear, and once or twice he ventured to reprove
her, enjoying her angry reactions. She even came to the stables, urging
him to let her ride horses that he knew were not safe.
"But you ride them," she would persist.
"When I find a horse I can't ride, Miss Sylvia, I guess I'll have to
take up a new line. If your father would come and say it's all
right----"
Even then he failed to grasp the fact that he guarded her for his own
sake rather more than for her father's.
He nearly interfered when he heard her cry to her brother as they
started off one morning:
"I'm going to ride harder from now on, Lambert. I've got to get fit for
next winter. Coming out will take a lot of doing."
"If she rides any harder," he muttered, "she'll break her silly neck."
It angered him that she never spoke to him in that voice, with that easy
manner. Perhaps his eagerness to be near her had led her to undervalue
him. Somehow he would change all that, and he wanted her to stop calling
him "Morton," as if he had been an ordinary groom, or an animal, but he
would have to go slowly. Although he didn't realize the great fact then,
he did know that he shrank from attempting anything that would take her
away from him.
It was her harder riding, indeed, that opened his eyes, that ushered in
the revolution.
It happened toward the close of a mid-July afternoon. Mud whirled from
her horse's hoofs, plentifully sprinkling her humble guardian.
"Now what the devil's she up to?" he thought with a sharp fear.
She turned and rode at a gallop for a hedge, an uneven, thorny barrier
that separated two low meadows. He put spurs to his horse, shouting:
"Hold up, Miss Sylvia! That's a rotten take-off."
Flushed and laughing, she glanced over her shoulder.
"Got to try it to prove it, Morton."
He realized afterward that it was as near intimacy as she had ever come.
He saw her horse refuse, straightening his knees and sliding in the
marshy ground. He watched Sylvia, with an ease and grace nearly
unbelievable, somersault across the hedge and out of sight in the meadow
beyond.
"Miss Sylvia! Are you hurt?"
No answer. He sprang from his horse, leaving it free to graze with hers.
He stormed through the hedge, his heart choking him. She lay on her
side, quite motionless, the high colour fled from her cheeks, her hair
half down. Although the soft ground should have reassured him he was
obsessed by the thought that she might never get up again.
In the warmth of his fear barriers were consumed. Within his horizon
survived just two people, himself and this silent object of an extended,
if unconscious, adoration.
He shrank from learning the truth, yet it was impossible to hesitate. He
had to do what he could.
He approached on tip-toe, knelt, and lifted her until she rested against
him. The contact was galvanic. He became aware of his trembling hands.
Some man, it occurred to him, would touch those curved, slightly parted
lips. Not if he knew it, unless it were himself! He wanted to hear those
lips speak to him as if he were a human being, and not just--Morton. How
could he dream of such things now? He fumbled for her pulse, failed at
first to find it, and became panic-stricken. He shook her, more than
ever alone, facing an irretrievable loss.
"Open your eyes," he begged wildly. "What's the matter with you? Oh, my
God, Miss Sylvia, I can't ever get along without you now."
He glanced haggardly around for water, any means to snatch her back;
then she stirred in his arms, and with his relief came a sickening
return to a peopled and ordered world. He understood he had sprung
headlong with his eyes shut; that his anxiety had dictated phrases he
had had no business to form, that he would not have uttered if she had
been able to hear. Or, good Lord! Had she heard? For she drew herself
convulsively away, the colour rushing back, her eyes opening, and they
held a sort of horror.
"Are you hurt?" he said, trying to read her eyes.
She got to her knees, swaying a trifle.
"I remember. A bit of a fall. Stunned me. That's all. But you said
something, Morton! Will you please repeat that?"
Her eyes, and her voice, which had a new, frightening quality, stung his
quick temper. What he had suffered a moment ago was a little sacred. He
couldn't afford to let her cheapen it one cent's worth.
"I guess I don't need to repeat it," he said. "It was scared out of me,
Miss Sylvia, because I thought--I know it was silly--but I thought you