The Guarded Heights
didn't like it. It filled him with a growing fear. Since it made no
particular difference now how long he was ill, they let him see too many
callers. He distrusted hero worship. Most of all was he afraid when such
devotion came from Betty.
"Being a vicarious hero," Mrs. Bailly said, "has made my husband the
happiest man in Princeton."
After that she didn't enter the conversation much, and again George
sensed, with a reluctant thrill, a maternal caring in her heart for him.
"You never ought to have gone back in the second half," Betty said.
"If I hadn't," he laughed, "who would have taken care of Lambert Planter
for you?"
"Squibs says you might have been killed."
"He's a great romancer," George exploded.
"Just the same, it was splendid of you to play at all."
She touched the white bandage about his head.
"Does it hurt a great deal?"
"No," he said, nearly honestly. "I only let them keep me here to cut
some dull lectures."
He glanced at Betty wistfully.
"Did I take care of Lambert Planter as you wanted?"
She glanced away.
"Are you punishing me? Haven't you read the papers? You outplayed him
and every man on the field."
"That was what you wished?"
She turned back with an assumption of impatience.
"What do you mean?"
He couldn't tell her. He couldn't probe further into her feelings for
Lambert, her attitude toward himself. He had to get his mind in hand
again.
Betty brought her mother one day. Mrs. Alston was full of praise, but
she exuded an imperial distaste for his sick-room. Both times he had to
overcome an impulse to beg Betty not to go so soon. That more than
anything else made him afraid of himself. It was, he felt, an excellent
change to escape to an active life.
Blodgett's place gave him a massive, tasteless welcome. It was one of
those houses with high, sloping roofs, numerous chimneys, and much
sculptured stone, slightly reminiscent of Mansart, and enormously
suggestive of that greatest architect of all, the big round dollar. In
its grounds it fitted like a huge diamond on a flowered shirt-front.
There were terraces; and a sunken garden, a little self-conscious with
coy replicas of regency sculpture; and formal walks between carefully
barbered trees and hedges. It convinced George that his original choice
of three necessities had been wise. Blodgett had the money, but he
didn't have Squibs Bailly and Goodhue or the things they personified.
And how Blodgett coveted The Goodhue Quality! George told himself that
was why he had been asked, because he was so close to Goodhue. But
Blodgett let him see that there was another motive. After those games
George was temporarily one of the nation's famous men.
It wasn't until he had arrived that George understood how near
Blodgett's place was to Oakmont--not more than fifteen miles. He was
interested, but he had no idea, even if the Planters were there for
Thanksgiving, that he would see any of them.
At Blodgett's bachelor enormity people came and went. At times the huge,
over-decorated rooms were filled, yet to George they seemed depressingly
empty because he knew they didn't enclose the men and the women Blodgett
wanted. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair, indeed, motored out for Thanksgiving
dinner--a reluctant concession, George gathered, to a profitable
partnership. Blodgett brought him forth as a specimen, and the specimen
impressed, for it isn't given to everyone to sit down at the close of
the season with the year's most famous football player. It puzzled
George that in the precious qualities he craved he knew himself superior
to everyone in the house except these two who made him feel depressingly
inferior. Would he some day reach the point where he would react
unconsciously, as they did, to every social emergency?
When the dinner party had scattered, Blodgett and he walked alone on the
terrace in an ashen twilight. There the surprise was sprung. It was
clearly no surprise to his host, who beamed at George, pointing to the
drive.
"I 'phoned him he would find an old football friend here if he'd take
the trouble to drive over."
"But you didn't tell him my name?" George gasped.
"No, but why----"
Blodgett broke off and hurried his heavy body to the terrace edge to
greet these important arrivals.
Lambert sprang from the runabout he had driven up and helped Sylvia
down. She was bundled in becoming furs. The sharp air had heightened her
rich colouring. How beautiful she was--lovelier than George had
remembered! Here was the tonic to kill the distracting doubts raised by
Betty. Here was the very spring of his wilful ambition. Glancing at
Sylvia, Betty's tranquil influence lost its power.
At her first recognition of him she stopped abruptly, but Lambert ran
across and grasped his hand.
"How do, Morton. Never guessed Blodgett's message referred to you."
George disapproved of Blodgett's methods. Why had the man made him a
mystery at the very moment he used him as a bait to attract Lambert and
Sylvia? Wasn't he important enough, or was it only because he was a
Princeton man and Blodgett had feared some enmity might linger?
Lambert's manner, at least, was proof that he had, indeed, meant to give
George a message that night in the dressing-room at New Haven. George
appreciated that "How do, Morton"--greeting at last of a man for a man
instead of a man for a servant or a former servant; nor was Lambert's
call to his sister without a significance nearly sharp enough to hurt.
"Sylvia! Didn't you meet this strong-armed Princetonian at Betty's dance
a year ago?"
George understood that she had no such motives as Lambert's for altering
her attitude, so much more uncompromising from the beginning than his.
There had been no contact or shared pain. Only what she might have
observed from a remote stand that Saturday could have affected her. How
would she respond now?
She advanced slowly, at first bewildered, then angry. But Blodgett had
nothing but his money to recommend him to her. She wouldn't, George was
certain, bare any intimacies of emotion before him.
"I rather think I did."
In her eyes George recognized the challenge he had last seen there.
"Thanks for remembering me," he said rather in Wandel's manner.
"A week ago Saturday----" she began, uncertainly, as though her
remembering needed an apology.
"Who could forget the great Morton?" Lambert laughed. "With a broken
head he beat Yale. That was a hard game to lose."
"I'd heard," she said, indifferently, "that you had been hurt."
George would have preferred words as ugly and unforgettable as those she
had attacked him with the day of her accident. She turned to Blodgett.
George had an instinct to shake her as she chatted easily and casually,
glancing at him from time to time. He could have borne it better if she
hadn't included him at all.
He was glad her brother occupied him. Lambert was for dissecting each
play of the game, and he made no attempt to hide the admiration for
George it had aroused. He gave the impression that he knew very well men
didn't do such things--particularly that little trick with
Goodhue--unless they were the right sort.
Blodgett said something about tea. They strolled into the house. A fire
burned in the great hall. That was the only light. George came last,
directly after Sylvia.
"So you're a friend of Mr. Blodgett's!" she said with an intonation
intended to hurt.
"I wouldn't have expected," he answered, easily, "to find you a caller
here."
She paused and faced him. Lights from the distant fire got as far as her
face, disclosing her contempt. He wouldn't let her speak.
"I won't have you think I had anything to do with bringing you. I never
guessed until I saw your brother drive up."
She didn't believe him, or she tried to impress him with that affront.
Blodgett and Lambert had gone on into the library. They remained quite
alone in the huge, dusky hall, whose shadow masses shifted as the fire
blazed and fell. For the first time since their ancient rides he could
talk to her undisturbed. He wouldn't let that fact tie his tongue. She
couldn't call him "stable boy" now, although she did try to say "beast"
in another way. This solitude in the dusk, shared with her, stripped
every distracting thought from his mind. He was as hard as steel and
happy in his inflexibility.
"You believe me," he said.
She shook her head and turned for the door.
"Let me say one thing," he urged. "It's rather important."
She came back through the shadows, her attitude reminiscent of the one
she had assumed long ago when she had sought to hurt him. He caught his
breath, waiting.
"There is nothing," she said, shivering a little in spite of the hall's
warmth and the furs she still wore, "that you would think of saying to
me if you had changed at all from the impertinent groom I had to have
discharged."
He laughed.
"Oh! Call me anything you please, only I've always wanted to thank you
for not making a scene at Miss Alston's dance a year ago."
He would be disappointed if that failed to hurt back. The thought of
Sylvia Planter making a scene! At least it fanned her temper.
"What is there," she threatened, defensively, "to prevent my telling Mr.
Blodgett, any one I please, now?"
"Nothing, except that I'm a trifle more on my feet," he answered. "I'm
not sure your scandal would blow me over. We're going to meet again
frequently. It can't he helped."
"I never want," she said, as if speaking of something unclean and
revolting, "to see you again."
His chance had come.
"You're unfair, because it was you yourself, Miss Planter, who warned me
I shouldn't forget. I haven't. I won't. Will you? Can't we shake hands
on that understanding?"
With a hurried movement she hid her hands.
"I couldn't touch you----"
"You will when we dance."
He thought her lips trembled a little, but the light was uncertain.
"I will never dance with you again."
"I'm afraid you'll have to," he said with a confident smile, "unless you
care to make a scene."
She drew away, unfastening her cloak, her eyes full of that old
challenge.
"You're impossible," she whispered. "Can't you understand that I dislike
you?"
His heart leapt, for didn't he hate her?
XXIX
Lambert appeared in the doorway.
"Blodgett's rung for tea----"
He glanced curiously from one to the other. The broken shadows disclosed
little, but the fact that she had lingered at all was arresting.
"What's up, Sylvia?"
She went close to her brother.
"This--this old servant has been impertinent again."
Lambert smiled.
"He's rather more than that now, sis. That's over--forgotten. Still if
the Princeton fellow Morton's been impertinent----"
He spread his arms, smiling.
"Have I got to submit myself to a trouncing more than once a year?"
Sylvia shrugged her shoulders.
"No," she said, impatiently. "You say it's forgotten. All right."
George knew it would never be forgotten now by either of them. Lambert's
unruffled attitude made him uneasy. Her brother's scoffing response to
her accusation suggested that Lambert saw, since they would be more or
less thrown together, a beneficial side to such encounters as the one
just ended. For George didn't dream that Lambert had forgotten, either,
those old boasts.
Another depressing thought made him bad company for Blodgett after the
callers had driven away. It came from a survey, following his glimpse of
Sylvia's beauty, of all the blatant magnificence with which Blodgett had
surrounded himself. Blodgett after dinner, a little flushed with wine,
and the triumph of having had in his house on the same day two Sinclairs
and two Planters, attempted an explanation.
"I didn't build this, Morton, or my place in town, just for Josiah
Blodgett."