The Guarded Heights
He listened. The women in the kitchen were standing again. Light feet
crossed the floor.
"Maybe somebody from the big house," his mother whispered. "They sent
Simpson last night."
For a moment the entire building was as silent as the oblong box. Then
the door opened.
Sylvia Planter slipped in and closed the door.
George caught his breath, studying her as she hesitated, accustoming
herself to the insufficient light. She wore a broad-brimmed hat that
gave her the charm and the grace of a portrait by Gainsborough. When she
recognized him, indeed, she seemed as permanently caught as a portrait.
"Miss Sylvia!" his mother worshipped.
"They told me I would find you here," Sylvia said, uncertainly. "I
didn't know----"
She broke off, biting her lip. George strolled around the oblong box to
the window, turning there with a slow bow. Even across that desolate,
dead shell, the obstinate distaste and the challenge were lively in her
glance.
"It was very kind of you to come," he said.
But he was sorry she had come. To see him in such surroundings was a
stimulation of the ugly memories he had struggled to destroy. He read
her instinct to hurt him now as she had hurt the impertinent man,
Morton, who had lived in this house.
"When one of our people is in trouble----" she began, deliberately. "I
thought I might be of some help to your mother."
Even over the feeling of security George had just tried to give her the
old menace reached the uneasy woman.
"You--you remember him, Miss Sylvia?"
"Very well," Sylvia answered. "He used to be my groom."
"The title comes from you," George said, dryly.
His mother's glance fluttered from one to the other. What did she
expect--Old Planter stalking in to carry out his threats?
"After all these years I scarcely knew him myself."
Sylvia's colour heightened. He appraised her rising temper.
"Bad servants," he said, "linger in good employers' memories."
"I know, Miss Sylvia," his mother burst out, "that he wasn't to come
back here, but----"
She unclasped her nervous hands. One indicated the silent cause of his
disobedience. George moved toward the door. Sylvia stepped quickly
aside. He felt, like a physical wave, her desire to hurt.
"At such a time," she said, "it's natural he should come back to his
home. I think my father would be glad to have him with his mother."
George shrugged his shoulders, slipped out, navigated the shoals of
whispering women, and reached the clean air. He buttoned his overcoat
and shuffled through the dead leaves beneath the trees until he found
himself at the spot where Lambert and he had fought. He recalled his
hot boasts of that day. Fulfilment had seemed simple enough then. The
scene just submitted reminded him how short a distance he had actually
travelled.
He knew she would pass that way on her return to the big house, so he
waited, and when he heard her feet disturbing the dead leaves he didn't
turn. She came closer than he had expected, and he heard her contralto
voice, quick and defiant:
"I hadn't expected to see you. I didn't quite realize what I was saying.
I should have had more respect for any one's grief."
Having said that, she was going on, but he turned and stopped her. As he
looked at her he reflected that everything had altered since that
day--she most of all. Then the woman had been a little visible in the
child. Now, he fancied, the child survived in the woman only through the
persistence of this old quarrel. He stared at her lips, recalling his
boast that no man should touch them unless it were George Morton. He was
no nearer them than he had been that day. Unless he got nearer some man
would. It was incredible that she hadn't married. She would marry.
"In the sense you mean, I have no grief," he said.
"Then I needn't have bothered. I once said you were a--a----"
"Something melodramatic. A beast, I think it was," he answered. "If you
don't mind I'll walk on with you for a little way."
"No," she said.
"If you please."
"You've no perception," she cried, angrily.
"Don't you think it time," he suggested, "that you ceased treating me
like a groom? It isn't very convincing to me. I doubt if it is to you. I
fancy it's really only your pride. I don't see why you should have so
much where I am concerned."
Her hand made a quick gesture of repulsion.
"You've not changed. You may walk on with me while I tell you this: If
you were like the men I know and can be friends with you'd leave me
alone. Will you stop this persecution? It comes down to that. Will you
stop forcing me to dance with you, to listen to you?"
He smiled, shaking his head.
"I'll make you dance with me more than ever. I've seen very little of
you lately. I hope this winter----"
She stopped, facing him, her cheeks flaming.
"You see! You remind me every time I meet you of just what you are, just
what you came from, just what you said and did that day."
"That is my aim," he smiled.
He moved his hand in the direction of the little house.
"When we're all like that will it make much difference who our fathers
and mothers were?"
She shivered. She started swiftly away.
"Miss Planter!"
The unexpectedness of the naked command may have brought her around. He
walked to her.
"When will you realize," he asked, "that it is unforgivable to turn your
back on life?"
Had he really meant to suggest that she could possess life only through
him? Doubtless the sublime effrontery of that interpretation reached
her. She commenced to laugh, her colour rising. She glanced away, and
her laughter died.
"You may as well understand," he said, "that I am never going to leave
you alone."
She started across the leaf-strewn grass. He kept pace with her.
"Are you going to force me to make a scene?" she asked.
"Except with your father," he said, "I don't think it would make much
difference."
He felt that if she had had anything in her hands then she would have
struck at him.
"It's not because I'm a beast," he said, quietly, "that I have no grief
for my father. He was through. Life had nothing to offer him. He had
nothing to offer life. Don't think I'm incapable of grief. I experienced
it the day I thought you might be dead. That was because you had so
much to offer life--rather more than life had to offer you."
He saw her shrink from him but she walked on, repressing her pain and
her anger.
"Since I've known intimately girls of your class," he said, "I've
realized that not all of them would have turned and tried to wound as
you did that day. Some would have laughed. Some would have been sorry
and sympathetic. I don't think many would have made such a scene."
He smiled down at her.
"I want you to realize it is your own fault. You started this. I'm not
scolding. I'm glad you were such a little fury. Otherwise, I might have
gone on working for your father or for somebody else's father. But
you're to blame for my persistence, so learn to put up with it. As long
as I keep the riding crop with which you tried to cut my face I'll
remember what I said I'd do, and I'll do it."
She didn't answer, but if she tried to give him the impression she
wasn't listening she failed utterly.
Around a curve in the path came a bent, white old man, bundled in a
heavy muffler and coat. In one hand he carried a thick cane. The other
rested on the arm of a young fellow of the private secretary stamp.
There, George acknowledged, advanced the single person with whom a scene
might make a serious difference, yet a more compelling thought crept in
and overcame his sense of danger. That was the type of man who made
wars. That man, indeed, was helping to finance this war. George was
obsessed by the dun day: by the leaves, fallen and rotten; by the memory
of the oblong box. Everything reminded him that not far away Death
marched with a bland, black triumph, greeting science as an ally instead
of an enemy.
"Suppose," he mused, "America should get in this thing."
At last she spoke.
"What did you say? Do you see my father?"
He nodded.
"Wouldn't it be wiser," she asked, "to leave me alone?"
"Your father," he said, "looks a good deal older."
Old Planter had, in fact, gone down hill since George's last glimpse of
him in New York, or else he didn't attempt here to assume a strength he
no longer possessed. He was quite close before he gave any sign of
seeing the pair, and then he muttered to his secretary who answered with
a whisper. He limped up and took Sylvia's hand.
"Where has my little girl been?"
She laughed harshly.
"To a rendezvous in the forest. You shouldn't let me go out alone."
Planter glanced from clouded eyes at George. His lips between the white
hair smiled amiably.
"I don't believe I remember----"
"It's one of Lambert's business friends," Sylvia said, hastily. "Mr.
Morton."
The old man shifted his cane and held out his hand.
"Lambert," he joked, "says he's going to make more money through you
than I can hope to leave him. You seem to have got the jump on a lot of
shrewd men. I'll see you at dinner? Lambert isn't coming to-night?"
George briefly clasped the hand of the big man.
"I must go back to town this afternoon."
"Then another time."
Planter shifted his cane and leant again on his secretary.
"Let's get on, Straker. Doctor's orders."
"Why," George asked when Sylvia and he were alone, "didn't you spring at
the chance?"
"I prefer to fight my own battles," she said, shortly.
"Don't you mean," he asked, quizzically, "that you're a little ashamed
of what you did that day?"
She shook her head.
"I was a frightened child. I have changed."
"Isn't it," he laughed, "a little because I, too, have changed? It never
occurred to your father to connect me with the Mortons living on his
place."
Again she shook her head, turning away. He held out his hand.
"I must go back. Let's admit we've both changed. Let us be friends."
She didn't answer. She made no motion to take his hand.
"One of the promises I made that day," he reminded her, "was to teach
you not to be afraid of my touch."
"Does it amuse you to threaten me?" she asked.
Suddenly he reached out, caught her right hand before she could avoid
him, and gave it a quick pressure.
"Of course you're right," he laughed. "Actions are more useful than
threats."
While she stared, flushed and incredulous, at the hand he had pressed,
George walked swiftly away, tingling with life, back to the house of
death.
VI
At the funeral he submitted to the amazed scrutiny of the country
people. They couldn't hurt him, because they impinged not at all on his
world; but he was relieved when the oblong box had been consigned to the
place reserved for it, and he could, after arranging the last details of
his mother's departure, take the train back to New York.
Blodgett didn't even bother to ask where he had been. He was content
these days to let George go his own way. He hadn't forgotten that the
younger man had seen farther off than he the greatest opportunity for
money making the world had ever offered the greedy. He personally was
more interested in the syndicating of foreign external loans. The
Planters weren't far from the head of that movement, and George rather
resented his stout employer's working hand in hand with the Planters.
George longed to ask him how often he was trying to appear graceful at
Oakmont these days.
The firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue had grown so rapidly that it
took practically all of George's and Lambert's time. Mundy, to whom
George had given a small interest, asked Blodgett if he couldn't leave
to devote himself entirely to the offices upstairs.
"Go to it," Blodgett agreed, good naturedly. "Draw your profits and your
salary from Morton after this."