The Guarded Heights
communistic propaganda was talked with an increasing freedom, that now
and then a bomb burst, destroying more often than not the people it was
designed to help. He saw that Squibs sought to interest him, and he gave
a close attention while the tutor elaborated his slight knowledge of the
growing unrest.
"But it's all so far away, sir," he said. "I've so much of more
importance to me to bother about right here."
Bailly relighted his pipe.
"The happy, limited vision of youth!" he sighed. "You'll be through your
a, b, c's before you know it. Are you going to face such big issues
without any forethought?"
He smoked for a few moments, then commenced to speak doubtfully.
"And in another sense it isn't as far away as you think. It all goes on
_in petto_, right here in undergraduate Princeton. The views a man takes
away from college should be applicable to the conditions he meets
outside."
"I don't quite see what you mean, sir."
Why was Bailly going at it so carefully?
"I mean," Bailly said, "that here you have your poor men, your earnest
men, and your lords of the land. I mean there is no real community of
interest here. I mean you've made friends because you're bigger and
better looking than most, and play football like a demon. You haven't
made any friends simply because you are poor and earnest. And the poor
students suffer from the cost of things, and the rich men don't know and
don't care. And the poor men, and the men without family or a good
school behind them, who haven't football or some outstanding
usefulness, are as submerged as the workers in a mine. Prospect Street
is Fifth Avenue or Park Lane, and the men who can't get in the clubs,
because of poverty or lack of prominence, remind me of the ragged ones
who cling to the railings, peering through at plenty with evil in their
hearts."
"You're advocating communism, sir?"
Bailly shook his head.
"I'm advocating nothing. I'm trying to find out what you advocate."
"I can't help feeling," George said, stubbornly, "that a man has to look
after himself."
And as he walked home he confessed freely enough in his own mind:
"I'm advocating George Morton. How can Squibs expect me to bother with
any one else when I have so far to go?"
XIX
He thrust Squibs' uncomfortable prods from his brain. He applied himself
to his books--useful books. Education and culture were more important to
him than the physical reactions of overworked labour or the mental
processes of men who advocated violence. Such distracting questions,
however, were uncomfortably in the air. Allen, one of the poor men
against whom the careful Rogers had warned him long ago, called on him
one cold night. The manner of his address made George wonder if Squibs
had been talking to him, too.
"Would like a few minutes' chat, Morton. No one worth while's in
Princeton. It won't queer you to have me in your room."
No, George decided. That was an opening one might expect from Allen. The
man projected an appreciable power from his big, bony figure; his
angular face. George had heard vaguely that he had worked in a factory,
preparing himself for college. He knew from his own observation that
Allen wasn't above waiting at commons, and he had seen the lesser men
turn to him as a leader.
"Sit down," George said, "and don't talk like an ass. You can't queer
me. What do you want me to do--offer to walk to classes with my arm over
your shoulder? There's too much of that sensitive talk going around."
"You're a plain speaker," Allen said. "So am I. You'll admit you've seen
a lot more of the pretty crowd than you have of me and my friends. I
thought it might be useful to ask you why."
"Because," George answered, "I'm in college to get everything I can. You
and your crowd don't happen to have the stuff I want."
Allen fingered a book nervously.
"I came," he said, "to see if I couldn't persuade you that we have."
"I'm listening," George said, indifferently.
"Right on the table!" Allen answered, quickly. "You're the biggest poor
man in the class. You're logically the poor men's Moses. They admire
you. You've always been talked of in terms of the varsity. Everybody
knows you're Princeton's best football player. The poor men would do
anything for you. What will you do for them?"
"I won't have you split the class that way," George cried.
"Every class," Allen said, "is split along that line, only this class is
going to let the split be seen. You work your way through college, but
you run with a rich crowd, led by the hand of Driggs Wandel."
So even Allen had noticed that and had become curious.
"Wandel," Allen went on, "will use you to hurt us--the poor men; and
when he's had what he wants of you he'll send you back to the muck
heap."
George shook his head, smiling.
"No, because you've said yourself that whatever power I have comes from
football and not from an empty pocket-book."
"Use all the power you have," Allen urged. "Come in with us. Help the
poor men, and we'll know how to reward you."
"You're already thinking of Sophomore elections?" George asked. "I don't
care particularly for office."
Allen's face reddened with anger.
"I'm thinking of the clubs first. What I said when I came in is true.
The selfish men intriguing for Prospect Street don't dare be friendly
with the poor men; afraid it might hurt their chances to be seen with a
poler. By God, that's vicious! It denies us the companionship we've come
to college to find. We want all the help we can get here. The clubs are
a hideous hindrance. Promise me you'll keep away from the clubs."
George laughed.
"I haven't made up my mind about the clubs," he said. "They have bad
features, but there's good in them. The club Goodhue joins will be the
best club of our time in college. Suppose you knew you could get an
election to that; would you turn it down?"
The angular face became momentarily distorted.
"I won't consider an impossible situation. Anyway, I couldn't afford it.
That's another bad feature. If you want, I'll say no, a thousand times
no."
"I wouldn't trust you," George laughed, "but you know you haven't a
chance. So you want to smash the thing you can't get in. I call _that_
vicious. And let me tell you, Allen. You may reform things out of
existence, but you can't destroy them with a bomb. Squibs Bailly will
tell you that."
"You think you'll make a good club," Allen said.
"I'll tell you what I think," George answered, quite unruffled, "when I
make up my mind to stand for or against the clubs. Squibs says half the
evils in the world come from precipitancy. You're precipitate. Thrash it
out carefully, as I'm doing."
He wondered if he had convinced Allen, knowing very well that his own
attitude would be determined by the outcome of the chance he had to
enter Goodhue's club.
"We've got to make up our minds now," Allen said. "Promise me that
you'll keep out of the clubs and I'll make you the leader of the class.
You're in a position to bring the poor men to the top for once."
George didn't want to break with Allen. The man did control a large
section of the class, so he sent him away amicably enough, merely
repeating that he hadn't made up his mind; and ending with:
"But I won't be controlled by any faction."
Allen left, threatening to talk with him again.
George didn't sleep well that night. Squibs and Allen had made him
uncomfortable. Finally he cleared his mind with the reflection that his
private attitude was determined. No matter whom it hurt he was going to
be one of the fortunates with a whip in his hand; but he, above most
people, could understand the impulses of men like Allen, and the
restless ones in the world, who didn't hold a whip, and so desired
feverishly to spring.
XX
The cold weather placed a smooth black floor on Lake Carnegie. George
went down one evening with the Baillys. They brought Betty Alston, who
was just home from New York and had dined with them. A round moon smiled
above the row of solemn and vigilant poplars along the canal bank. The
shadows of the trees made you catch your breath as if on the edge of
perilous pitfalls.
Going down through the woods they passed Allen. Even in that
yellow-splashed darkness George recognized the bony figure.
"Been skating?" he called.
"Hello, Morton! No, I don't skate."
"Then," George laughed, "why don't you smash the ice?"
Allen laughed back mirthlessly, but didn't answer; and, as they went on,
Betty wanted to know what it was all about. George told her of Allen's
visit.
"But congenial people," she said, "will always gather together. It would
be dreadful to have one's friends arbitrarily chosen. You'll go to a
club with your friends."
"But Allen says the poor men can't afford it," he answered. "I'm one of
the poor men."
"You'll always find a way to do what you want," she said, confidently.
But when they were on the lake the question of affording the things one
wanted slipped between them again.
George had a fancy that Mrs. Bailly guided her awkward husband away from
Betty and him. Why? At least it was pleasant to be alone with Betty,
gliding along near the bank, sometimes clasping hands at a half-seen,
doubtful stretch. Betty spoke of it.
"Where are my guardians?"
"Let's go a little farther," he urged. "We'll find them easily enough."
It didn't worry her much.
"Why did you come back so soon?" she asked.
He hesitated. He had hoped to avoid such questions.
"I haven't been away."
She glanced up, surprised.
"You mean you've been in Princeton through the holiday?"
"Yes, I feel I ought to go easy with what little I have."
"I knew you were working your way through," she said, "but I never
guessed it meant as much denial as that."
"Don't worry," he laughed, "I'll make money next summer."
"I wish I'd known. And none of your friends thought!"
"Why should they? They're mostly too rich."
"That's wrong."
"Are you driving me into Allen's camp?" he asked. "You can't; for I
expect to be rich myself, some day. Any man can, if he goes about it in
the right way. Maybe Allen doubts his power, and that's the reason he's
against money and the pleasant things it buys. Does it make any
difference to you, my being poor for a time?"
"Why should it?" she asked, warmly.
"Allen," he said, "couldn't understand your skating with me."
Why not tell Betty the rest in this frozen and romantic solitude they
shared? He decided not. He had risked enough for the present. When she
turned around he didn't try to hold her, skating swiftly back at her
side, aware of a danger in such solitude; charging himself with a
scarcely definable disloyalty to his conception of Sylvia.
XXI
He fancied Betty desired to make up for her thoughtlessness during the
holidays when she asked him for dinner on a Saturday night. With that
dinner, no matter what others might think of his lack of money and
background, she had put herself on record, for it was a large, formal
party sprinkled with people from New York, and drawing from the
University only the kind of men Allen was out to fight. Wandel, George
thought, rather disapproved of his being there, but as a result, he made
two trips to parties in New York during the winter. Both were failures,
for he didn't meet Sylvia, yet he heard of her always as a dazzling
success.
He answered Dalrymple's cold politeness with an irritating indifference.
In the spring, however, he detected a radical alteration in Dalrymple's
manner.
By that time, the scheme discussed carelessly at the Alstons' in the
fall had been worked out. On good afternoons, when their work allowed, a
few men, all friends of the Alstons, drove out, and, with passable
ponies, played practice matches at polo on the field Mr. Alston had had