The Guarded Heights
arranged. The neighbours fell into a habit of concentrating there, and
George was thrown into intimate contact with them, seeing other gates
open rather eagerly before him, for he hadn't miscalculated his ability
to impress with horses. When Mr. Alston had first asked him he had
accepted gladly. Because of his long habit in the saddle and his
accuracy of eye he played better from the start than these other
novices. As in football, he teamed well with Goodhue.
"Goodhue to Morton," Wandel complained, "or Morton to Goodhue. What
chance has a mere duffer like me against such a very distinguished
combination?"
It was during these games that Goodhue fell into the practice of
shouting George's first name across the field, and when George became
convinced that such familiarity was not chance, but an expression of a
deepening friendship, he responded unaffectedly. It was inevitable the
others should adopt Goodhue's example. Even Dalrymple did, and George
asked himself why the man was trying to appear friendly, for he knew
that in his heart Dalrymple had not altered.
It filled George with a warm and formless pleasure to hear Betty using
his Christian name, to realize that a precedent had this time been
established; yet it required an effort, filled him with a great
confusion, to call her familiarly "Betty" for the first time.
He chatted with her at the edge of the field while grooms led the ponies
up and down.
"What are your plans for the summer?" she asked.
"I don't quite know what will happen."
"We," she said, "will be in Maine. Can't you run up in August? Dicky
Goodhue's coming then."
He looked at her. He tried to hide his hunger for the companionship, the
relaxation such a visit would give. He glanced away.
"I wish I could. Have you forgotten I'm to make money? I've got to try
to do that this summer, Betty."
There, it was out. Colour stole into her white cheeks.
"I'm sorry," she said.
He had another reason for refusing. He was growing afraid of Betty. He
was conscious of an increasing effort to drive her memory from the
little room where Sylvia's portrait watched. It was, he told himself,
because he didn't see Sylvia oftener, couldn't feel his heart respond to
the exciting enmity in her brilliant eyes.
Goodhue and Dalrymple, it developed, were parting, amicably enough as
far as any one knew.
"Dolly thinks he'll room alone next year," was Goodhue's explanation.
Dalrymple explained nothing.
Driving back to town one afternoon Goodhue proposed to George that he
replace Dalrymple.
"Campus rooms," he said, "aren't as expensive as most in town."
He mentioned a figure. George thought rapidly. What an opportunity! And
aside from what Goodhue could do for him, he was genuinely fond of the
man. George craved absolute independence, and he knew Goodhue would give
him all of that he asked for.
"I'd like to," he said.
Goodhue smiled.
"That's splendid. I think we'll manage together."
Wandel frowned at the news. So did Allen. Allen came frequently now to
talk his college socialism. George listened patiently, always answering:
"I've made up my mind to nothing, except that I'll take my friends where
I find them, high or low. But I'm not against you, Allen."
Yet George was uneasy, knowing the moment for making up his mind
wouldn't be long delayed. He understood very well that already some men
knew to what club they'd go more than a year later. Secretly, perhaps
illegally, the sections for the clubs were forming in his class. Small
groups were quietly organizing under the guidance of the upper classes.
During Sophomore year these small groups would elect other men to the
limit of full membership. It was perfectly clear that unless he went in
ahead of Dalrymple his chances of making the club he wanted were
worthless. As a result of his talks with Allen, moreover, he felt that
Wandel didn't want him. If Wandel could persuade Goodhue that George
could serve the interests of the fortunates best from the outside the
issue would be settled.
"But I won't be used that way," George decided. "I'm out for myself."
Along that straight line he had made his plans for the summer. Somehow
he was going to study the methods of the greatest financial market in
the country, so that later he could apply them serviceably to his own
fortune. Bailly had other ideas. One night while they lounged on the
front campus listening to senior singing the long tutor suggested that
he take up some form of manual labour.
"It would keep you in good condition," he said, "and it might broaden
your vision by disclosing the aims and the dissatisfactions of those who
live by the sweat of their brows."
George frowned.
"I know enough of that already. I've been a labourer myself. I haven't
the time, sir."
Bailly probably knew that he was dealing with a point of view far more
determined and mature than that of the average undergraduate. He didn't
argue, but George felt the need of an apology.
"I've got to learn how to make money," he said.
"Money isn't everything," Bailly sighed.
"I've started after certain things," George justified himself. "Money's
one of them. I'll work for next to nothing this summer if I have to.
I'll be a runner, the man who sweeps out the office, anything that will
give me a chance to watch and study Wall Street. I'm sorry if you don't
approve, sir."
"I didn't say that," Bailly answered, "but the fact was sufficiently
clear."
Yet George knew perfectly well a few days later that it was Bailly who
had spoken about his ambition to Mr. Alston.
"Blodgett, I fancy," Mr. Alston said, "will offer you some small start."
He handed George a letter addressed to one Josiah Blodgett, of the firm
of Blodgett and Sinclair.
"Good luck, and good-bye until next fall."
"If you do change your mind----If you can manage it----" Betty said.
So George, two or three days before commencement, left Princeton for
Wall Street, and presented his letter.
The offices of Blodgett and Sinclair were gorgeous and extensive, raw
with marble, and shining with mahogany. They suggested a hotel in bad
taste rather than a factory that turned out money in spectacular
quantities.
"Mr. Blodgett will see you," a young man announced in an awed voice, as
if such condescension were infrequent.
In the remote room where Blodgett lurked the scheme of furnishing
appeared to culminate. The man himself shared its ornamental grossness.
He glanced up, his bald head puckering half its height. George saw that
although he was scarcely middle-aged Blodgett was altogether too fat,
with puffy, unhealthily coloured cheeks. In such a face the tiny eyes
had an appearance nearly porcine. The man's clothing would have put an
habitue of the betting ring at ease--gray-and-white checks,
dove-coloured spats, a scarlet necktie. Pudgy fingers twisted Mr.
Alston's letter. The little eyes opened wider. The frown relaxed. A bass
voice issued from the broad mouth:
"If you've come here to learn, you can't expect a million dollars a
week. Say fifteen to start."
George didn't realize how extraordinarily generous that was. He only
decided he could scrape along on it.
"Mr. Alston," the deep voice went on, "tells me you're a great football
player. That's a handicap. All you can tackle here is trouble, and the
only kicking we have is when Mundy boots somebody out of a job. He's my
office manager. Report to him. Wait a minute. I'd give a ping-pong
player a job if Mr. Alston asked me to. He's a fine man. But then I'm
through. It's up to the man and Mundy. If the man's no good Mundy
doesn't even bother to tell me, and it's twenty stories to the street."
George started to thank him, but already the rotund figure was pressed
against the desk, and the tiny eyes absorbed in important-looking
papers.
Mundy, George decided, wasn't such an ogre after all. He wore glasses.
He was bald, thin, and stoop-shouldered. He had the benign expression of
a parson; but behind that bald forehead, George soon learned, was stored
all the knowledge he craved, without, however, the imagination to make
it personally very valuable.
If he didn't sweep the office at first, George approximated such labour,
straightening the desks of the mighty, checking up on the contents of
waste-paper baskets, seeing that the proper people got mail and
newspapers, running errands; and always, in the office or outside, he
kept his ears open and his eyes wide. He absorbed the patter of the
Street. He learned to separate men into classes, the wise ones, who
always made money, and the foolish, who now and then had good luck, but
most of the time were settling their losses. And at every opportunity he
was after what Mundy concealed behind his appearance of a parson.
At night he dissected the financial journals, watching the alterations
in the market, and probing for the causes; applying to this novitiate
the same grim determination he had brought to Squibs Bailly's lessons a
year before. Never once was he tempted to seek a simple path to fortune.
"When I speculate," he told himself, "there'll be mighty little risk
about it."
Even in those days his fifteen dollars a week condemned him to a cheap
lodging house near Lexington Avenue, the simplest of meals, and
practically no relaxation. He exercised each morning, and walked each
evening home from the office, for he hadn't forgotten what Princeton
expected from him in the fall.
Sylvia's photograph and the broken riding crop supervised his labours,
but he knew he couldn't hope, except by chance, to see her this summer.
One Saturday morning Goodhue came unexpectedly into the office and
carried him off to Long Island. George saw the tiny eyes of Blodgett
narrow.
Blodgett, perhaps because of Mr. Alston's letter, had condescended to
chat with George a number of times in the outer office. On the Monday
following he strolled up and jerked out:
"Wasn't that young Richard Goodhue I saw you going off with Saturday?"
"Yes sir."
"Know him well?"
"Very. We're in the same class. We're rooming together next year."
Blodgett grunted and walked on, mopping his puffy face with a shiny blue
handkerchief. George wondered if he had displeased Blodgett by going
with Goodhue. He decided he hadn't, for the picturesquely dressed man
stopped oftener after that, chatting quite familiarly.
Whatever one thought of Blodgett's appearance and manner, one admired
him. George hadn't been in the Street a week before he realized that the
house of Blodgett and Sinclair was one of the most powerful in America,
with numerous ramifications to foreign countries. There was no phase of
finance it didn't touch; and, as far as George could see, it was all
Josiah Blodgett, who had come to New York from the West, by way of
Chicago. In those offices Sinclair was scarcely more than a name in gold
on various doors. Once or twice, during the summer, indeed, George saw
the partner chatting in a bored way with Blodgett. His voice was high
and affected, like Wandel's, and he had a house in Newport. According to
office gossip he had little money interest in the firm, lending the
prestige of his name for what Blodgett thought it was worth. As he
watched the fat, hard worker chatting with the butterfly man, George
suddenly realized that Blodgett might want a house in Newport, too. Was
it because he was Richard Goodhue's room-mate that Blodgett stopped him
in the hall one day, grinning with good nature?
"If I were a cub," he puffed, "I'd buy this very morning all the Katydid
I could, and sell at eighty-nine."
George whistled.
"I knew something was due to happen to Katydid, but I didn't expect
anything like that."
"How did you know?" Blodgett demanded.
He shot questions until he had got the story of George's close
observation and night drudgery.