The Guarded Heights
"They laugh. They'll stop listening for the price of a glass of beer."
"Maybe," George said, kindly, "they realize it's no good trying to help
them."
"They've got to be helped," Allen muttered.
"Then," George suggested, "put them in institutions, but don't expect me
nor any one else to approve when you urge them to grab the leadership of
the world. You must have enough sense to see it would mean ruin. I know
they're not all like this lot, but they're all a little wrong or they
wouldn't need help."
"It's because they've never had a chance," Allen protested.
It came to George that Allen had never had a chance either, and he
wondered if he, too, could be led aside by the price of a glass of beer.
"You all want what the other fellow's got," he said. "From that one
motive these social movements draw the bulk of their force. A lot for
nothing is a perfect poor man's creed."
"You're a heathen, Morton."
"That is, a human being," George said, good naturedly. "You're another,
Allen, but you won't acknowledge it."
Because he believed that, George took the other's address. Allen was
loyal, aggressive, and extraordinarily bright, as he had proved at
Princeton. It might be convenient to help him. Besides, he hated to see
a man he knew so well waste his time and look like a fool.
IV
By late July the off chance had pretty thoroughly defined itself except
to the blind. Blodgett, however, was still skeptical. He thought
George's plans were sound, provided a war should come. But there
wouldn't be any war. His correspondents were optimistic.
"Have I your permission to use Mundy in his off time?" George asked.
"As far as I'm concerned," Blodgett said, "Mundy can play parchesi in
his off time."
George telephoned Lambert Planter and sent a telegram to Goodhue. He
took them to luncheon and had Mundy there, too. He outlined his plans
for the formation of the firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue.
"He's called the turn of the cards," Mundy offered.
Such cards as he possessed George placed on the table. He furnished the
idea, and the preliminary organization, and what money he had. He took,
therefore, the major share of the profits. The others would give what
time to the business they could, but it was their money he wanted, and
the credit their names would give the firm. Mundy and he had made lists
of buyers and sellers. No man in the Street was better equipped than
Mundy to pick such a force. If Lambert and Goodhue agreed, these men
could be collected within a week. Some would go to Europe. Others would
scatter over the United States. It would cost a lot, but it meant an
immeasurable amount in return, for the war was inevitable.
Goodhue and Lambert were as skeptical as Blodgett, but they agreed to
give him what he needed to get his organization started. By that time,
he promised them, they would see how right he was, and then he could use
more of their money.
"It's the nearest I've ever come to gambling," he thought as he left
them. "Gambling on a war!"
Because of his confidence, before a frontier had been crossed he had
bought or contracted for large quantities of shoes and cloths and
waterproofing. He had taken options on stock in small and wavering
automobile concerns, and outlying machine shops and foundries, some of
them already closed down, some struggling along without hope.
"If the war lasts a month," he told his partners, "those stocks will
come from the bottom of nothing to the sky."
Goodhue became thoroughly interested at last. He cancelled his vacation
and installed himself in the offices George had rented in Blodgett's
building. With the men Mundy had picked, and under Mundy's tutelage, he
took charge of the routine. George went to Blodgett the first of August.
"I want to quit," he said. "I've got a big thing. I want to give it all
my time."
Blodgett mopped his face. His grin was a little sheepish.
"I want to invest some money in your firm," he jerked out.
"I can use it," George said.
"You've got Goodhue there," Blodgett went on in a complaining way, "and
Mundy's working nights for you. Don't desert an old man without notice.
I'll give you plenty of time upstairs. Other things may come off here. I
can use you."
"If you want to pay me when you know my chief interest is somewhere
else," George said, "it's up to you."
"When I think I'm getting stung I'll let you know," Blodgett roared.
George sent for Allen, and urged him to go to London to open an office
with an expert Lambert had got from his father's marble temple. Allen
would be a check on the more experienced men whose scruples might not
stand the temptations of this vast opportunity. Allen said he couldn't
do it; couldn't abandon the work he had already commenced.
"There'll be precious little talk of socialism," George said, "until
this thing is over. It's a great chance for a man to study close up the
biggest change the world has ever undergone. Those fellows will want
everything, and I'll give them everything I can lay my hands on. I'm
ahead of a lot of jobbers here. I'll pay you well to see I don't get
robbed on that side. Come on. Take a shot at hard facts for a change."
Allen gasped at the salary George mentioned. He hesitated. He went.
George was glad to have helped him. He experienced also an ugly sense of
triumph. He felt that he wanted to tell Squibs Bailly right away.
Sylvia and her mother, he heard later, had come home out of the turmoil,
unacquainted with the discomforts of people who had travelled without
the Planter prestige. Whether the war was to blame or not, she had
returned without a single rumour touching fact. He didn't see her right
away, because she clung to Oakmont. More and more, as his success
multiplied, keeping pace with the agony in Europe, he longed to see her.
All at once a return to Oakmont was, in a sense, forced upon him, but he
went without any thought of encountering Sylvia, hoping, indeed, to
avoid her.
It was like his mother to express her letter with telegraphic bluntness
without, however, going to the expense of actually wiring. Where he had
expected her customary stiff gratitude for money sent he found a
scrawled announcement of his father's death, and her plans for the
funeral the following afternoon.
"Of course you won't come," she ended.
Yet it seemed to him that he should go, to arrange her future. This was
the moment to snap the last enslaving tie between the Mortons and
Oakmont. There was, of course, the chance of running into Sylvia, or
some visitor who might connect him with the little house. Suppose
Dalrymple, for example, should be staying with the Planters as he often
did? George shrugged his shoulders. Things were coming rather rapidly to
him. Besides, it was extremely unlikely that any one from the great
house would see the Morton ceremony. The instincts of those people
would be to avoid such sights.
V
About his return there was a compelling thrill. He drove from the
station in one of the cheap automobiles that had made his father
practically a pensioner of the Planters. With an incredulous
appreciation that he had once accepted its horizon as the boundary of
his life, he examined the familiar landscape and the scar made upon it
by the village. Curtly he refused to satisfy the driver's curiosity. He
had some business at the little house on the Planter estate.
There, through the nearly stripped trees, it showed, almost audibly
confessing its debt to the Planter carpenters, painters, and gardeners.
In a clouded light late fall flowers waved from masses of dead leaves.
Their gay colours gave them an appearance melancholy and apprehensive.
Here he was back at last, and he wasn't going in at the great gate.
He walked around the shuttered house and crossed the porch where his
father had liked to sit on warm evenings. He rapped at the door. Feet
shuffled inside. The door swayed open, and his mother stood on the
threshold. Most of the changes had come to him, but in her red eyes
sparkled a momentary and mournful importance. At first she didn't
recognize her son.
"What is it?"
George stooped and kissed her cheek.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
Instead of holding out her arms she drew away, staring with fascination,
a species of terror, at his straight figure, at his clothing, at his
face that wouldn't coarsen now. When she spoke her voice suggested a
placating of this stranger who was her son.
"I didn't think you'd come. I can't believe you're George--my Georgie."
Over her shoulders in the shadowed house he saw the inquisitive faces of
women. It was clear that for them such an arrival was more divertive
than the sharing of a sorrow that scarcely touched their hearts.
George went in. He remembered most of the faces that disclosed
excitement while fawning upon his prosperity. He received an unpleasant
impression that these poor and ignorant people concealed a dangerous
envy, that they would be glad to grasp in one moment, even of violence,
all that it had taken him years of difficult struggle to acquire.
Whether that was so or not they ought not to stand before him as if his
success were a crown. He tried to keep contempt from his voice.
"Please sit down. I want to talk to my mother. Where----"
With slow steps she crossed the kitchen and opened the door of the
parlour, beckoning. He followed, knowing what he would find in that
uncomfortable, gala room of the poor.
He closed the door. In the half light he saw standing on trestles an
oblong box altogether too large for the walls that seemed to crowd it.
He had no feeling that anything of his father was there. He realized
with a sense of helpless regret that all that remained to him of that
unhappy man were the ghosts of such emotions as avarice, fear, and the
instinct to sacrifice one's own flesh and blood for a competence.
"Why don't you look at him, George?"
"I don't think he'd care to have me looking at him now."
She wiped her eyes.
"You are too bitter against your father. After all, he was a good man."
"Why should death," he asked her, musingly, "make people seem better
than they were in life? It isn't so."
"That's wicked. If your father could rise----"
His attention was caught by an air of pointing the oblong box had, as if
to something infinitely farther than ambition and success, yet so close
it angered him he couldn't see or touch it. His father had gone there,
beyond the farthest horizon of all. Old Planter couldn't make trouble
for him now. He was quite safe.
Over in Europe, he reflected, they didn't have enough coffins.
The oblong box for the first time made him think of that war, that was
making him rich, in terms of life instead of dollars and cents. He felt
dissatisfied.
"There should be more light here," he said, defensively.
But his mother shook her head.
He arranged a chair for her and sat near by while they discussed the
details of her departure. She let him see that she shrank from leaving
the house, against which, nevertheless, she had bitterly complained ever
since Old Planter had got it. Evidently she wanted to linger in her
familiar rut, awaiting with the attitude of a martyr whatever fate might
offer. That was the reason people had to be helped, because they
preferred vicious inertia to the efforts and risks of change. Then why
did they want the prizes of those who had had the courage to go forth
and fight? Why couldn't Squibs see that?
Patiently George told her she needn't worry about money again. She had a
sister who years ago had married and moved West to a farm that was not
particularly flourishing. Undoubtedly her sister would be glad to have
her and her generous allowance. So his will overcame his mother's
reluctance to help herself. She glanced up.
"Who is that?"