The Guarded Heights
George relinquished his partner to a man who cut in. From a harbour
close to the wall he watched Sylvia, willing himself to the point of
action.
"I will make her know me before I leave this dance," he said to himself.
Dalrymple had her now. His weak face was too flushed. He was more than
ever in people's way. George caught the distress in Sylvia's manner. He
remembered Wandel's advice, what Betty had asked him to do for her. He
dodged, without further reflection, across the floor, and held out his
hand.
"If I may----"
Without looking at him she accepted his hand, and they glided off, while
Dalrymple stared angrily. George scarcely noticed. There was room in his
mind for no more than this amazing and intoxicating experience. She was
so close that he could have bent his head and placed his lips on her
dark hair--closer than she had been that unforgettable day. The
experience was worthless unless she knew who he was.
"She must know," he thought.
If she did, why did she hide her knowledge behind an unfathomable
masquerade?
"That was kind of you," he heard her say. "Poor Dolly!"
She glanced up. Interrogation entered her eyes.
"I can't seem to remember----"
"I came from Princeton with Dick Goodhue," he explained. "It seemed such
a simple thing. Shouldn't I have cut in?"
He looked straight at her now. His heart seemed to stop. She had to be
made to remember.
"My name is George Morton."
She smiled.
"I've heard Betty talk of you. You're a great football player. It was
very kind. Of course it's all right."
But it wasn't. The touch of her hand became unbearable to George because
she didn't remember. He had to make her remember.
They were near the entrance. He paused and drew her apart from the
circling dancers.
"Would you mind losing a little of this?" he asked, trying to keep his
voice steady. "It may seem queer, but I have something to tell you that
you ought to know."
She studied him, surprised and curious.
"I can't imagine----" she began. "What is it?"
It was only a step through the door and to an alcove with a red plush
bench. The light was soft there. No one was close enough to hear. She
sat down, laughing.
"Don't keep me in suspense."
He, too, sat down. He spoke deliberately.
"The last two times I've seen you you wouldn't remember me. Even now,
when I've told you my name, you won't."
Her surprise increased.
"It's about you! But I said Betty had----Who are you?"
He bent closer.
"If I didn't tell you you might remember later. Anyway, I wouldn't want
to fight a person whose eyes were closed."
Her lips half parted. She appeared a trifle frightened. She made a
movement as if to rise.
"Just a minute," he said, harshly.
He called on the hatred that had increased during the hours of his
mental and physical slavery, a hatred to be appeased only through his
complete mastery of her.
"It won't take much to remind you," he hurried on. "Although you talk to
me as if I were a man now, last summer I was a beast because I had the
nerve to touch you when you were thrown from your horse."
She stood up quickly, reaching out for the alcove curtain. Her contralto
voice was uneven.
"Stop! You shouldn't have said that. You shouldn't have told me."
All at once she straightened, her cheeks flaming. She started for the
ballroom. He sprang after her, whispering over her shoulder:
"Now we can start fair."
She turned and faced him.
"I don't know how you got here, but you ask for a fight, Mr. Morton----"
He smiled.
"I am Mr. Morton now. I'm getting on."
Then he knew again that sickening sensation of treacherous ground eager
to swallow him.
"Are you going to run and tell them," he asked, softly, "as you did your
father last summer?"
She crossed the threshold of the ballroom. He watched her while she
hesitated for a moment, seeking feverishly someone in the brilliant,
complacent crowd.
XVI
George watched Sylvia, fighting his instinct to call out a command that
she should keep secret forever what he had told her. It was intolerable
to stand helpless, to realize that on her sudden decision his future
depended. Did she seek her mother, or Lambert, who would understand
everything at the first word? Nevertheless, he preferred she should go
to Lambert, because he could forecast too easily the alternative--Mrs.
Planter's emotionless summoning of Betty and her mother; perhaps of
Goodhue or Wandel or Dalrymple; the brutal advertisement of just what he
was to all the people he knew, to all the people he wanted to know. That
might mean the close of Betty's friendliness, the destruction of the
fine confidence that had developed between him and Goodhue, a violent
reorganization of all his plans. He gathered strength from a warm
realization that with Squibs and Mrs. Squibs Sylvia couldn't possibly
hurt him.
He became ashamed of his misgivings, aware that for nothing in the
world, even if he had the power, would he rearrange the last five
minutes.
He saw her brilliant figure start forward and take an uneven course
around the edge of the room until a man caught her and swung her out
among the dancers. George turned away. He was sorry it was Wandel who
had interfered, but that would give her time to reflect; and even if she
blurted it out to Wandel, the little man might be decent enough to
advise her to keep quiet.
George wandered restlessly across the hall to the smoking-room. How long
would the music lilt on, imprisoning Sylvia in the grasp of Wandel or
another man?
He asked for a glass of water, and took it to a lounge in front of the
fire. Here he sat, listening to the rollicking music, to the softer
harmonies of feminine voices that seemed to define for him compelling
and pleasurable vistas down which he might no longer glance. When the
silence came Sylvia would go to her mother or Lambert.
"My very dear--George."
Lambert himself bent over the back of the lounge. George guessed the
other had seen him enter and had followed. All the better, even if he
had come to attack. George had things to say to Lambert, too; so he
glanced about the room and was grateful that, except for the servants,
it held only some elderly men he had never seen before, who sat at a
distance, gossiping and laughing.
"Where," Lambert asked, "will I run into you next?"
"Anywhere," George said. "Whenever we're both invited to the same place.
I didn't come without being asked, so my being here isn't funny."
Lambert walked around and sat down. All the irony had left his face. He
had an air of doubtful disapproval.
"Maybe not funny," he said, "but--odd."
George stirred. How long would the music and the laughter continue to
drift in?
"Why?"
"You've travelled a long way," Lambert mused. "I wonder if in football
clothes men don't look too much of a pattern. I wonder if you haven't
let yourself be carried a little too far."
"Why?" George asked again.
"Princeton and football," Lambert went on, "are well enough in their
way; but when you come to a place like this and dance with those girls
who don't know, it seems scarcely fair. Of course, if they knew, and
wanted you still--that's the whole point."
"They wouldn't," George admitted, "but why should they matter if the
people that count know?"
Lambert glanced at him. Was the music's quicker measure prophetic of the
end?
"What do you mean?" Lambert asked.
"What you said last fall has worried me," George answered. "That's the
reason I came here--so that your sister would know me from Adam. She
does, and she can do what she pleases about it. It's in her hands now."
Lambert reddened.
"You've the nerve of the devil," he said, angrily. "You had no business
to speak to my sister. The whole thing had been forgotten."
George shook his head.
"You hadn't forgotten it. She told me that day that I shouldn't forget.
I hadn't forgotten it. I never will."
"I can't talk about it," Lambert said.
He looked squarely at George.
"Here's what puts your being here out of shape: You're ashamed of what
you were. Aren't you?"
"I've always thought," George said, "you were man enough to realize it's
only what I am and may become that counts. I wouldn't say ashamed. I'm
sorry, because it makes what I'm doing just that much harder; because
you, for instance, know about it, and might cause trouble."
Lambert made no difficulty about the implied question.
"I don't want to risk causing trouble for any one unjustly. It's up to
you not to make me. But don't bother my sister again."
"Let me get far enough," George said, "and you won't be able to make
trouble--you, or your sister, or your father."
Lambert grinned, the doubt leaving his face as if he had reached a
decision.
"I wouldn't bank on father. I'd keep out of his sight."
The advice placed him, for the present, on the safe side. Sylvia's
decision remained, and just then the music crashed into a silence,
broken by exigent applause. George got up, thrusting his hands in his
pockets. The orchestra surrendered to the applause, but was Sylvia
dancing now?
Voices drifted in from the hall, one high and obdurate; others better
controlled, but persistent in argument. Lambert grimaced. George
sneered.
"But that's all right, because he didn't have to work for his living."
"If you don't come a cropper," Lambert said, "you'll get fed up with
that sort of thinking. Dolly's young."
Dalrymple was the first in the room, flushed, a trifle uneven in his
movements. Goodhue and Wandel followed. Goodhue smiled in a pained,
surprised way. Wandel's precise features expressed nothing.
"Why not dancing, Lambert, old Eli?" Dalrymple called jovially. "Haul
these gospel sharks off----Waiter! I say, waiter! Something bubbly, dry,
and nineteen hundred, if they're doing us that well."
The others didn't protest. They seemed to arrange themselves as a
friendly screen between Dalrymple and the elderly men. George didn't
care to talk to Dalrymple in that condition--there was too much that
Dalrymple had always wanted to say and hadn't. He started for the door,
but Wandel caught his arm.
"Wait around, very strong person," he whispered. "Dolly doesn't know it,
but he's leaving in a minute."
George shook his head, and started on. Dalrymple glanced up.
"Morton!" he said.
Goodhue took the glass from the waiter, but Dalrymple, grinning a shamed
sort of triumph and comprehension, reached out for it and sipped.
"Not bad. Great dancer, Morton. Around the end, and through the centre,
and all that----"
"Keep quiet," Goodhue warned him.
George knew that the other wouldn't. He shrank from the breaking of the
sullen truce between them. Dalrymple glanced at his cuffs, spilling a
little of the wine.
"Damned sight more useful to stick to your laundry--it's none too good."
Quite distinctly George caught Lambert's startled change of countenance
and his quick movement forward, Goodhue's angry flush, Wandel's apparent
unconcern. In that moment he measured his advance, understood all he had
got from Squibs and books, from Betty, from Goodhue, from Princeton;
but, although he easily conquered his first impulse to strike, his rage
glowed the hotter because it was confined. As he passed close he heard
Lambert whisper:
"Good man!"
But even then Wandel wouldn't let him go, and the music had stopped
again, and only the undefinable shadows of women's voices reached him.
He tried to shake off Wandel who had followed him to the hall. He
couldn't wait. He had to enter that moving, chattering crowd to find out
what Sylvia had decided.
"Go downstairs, great man," Wandel was whispering, "get a cab, and wait
in it at the door, so that you will be handy when I bring the infant
Bacchus out."
"I'd rather not," George said, impatiently. "Someone else will do."