The Guarded Heights
huge and ugly extravagance. They rode slowly up the drive.
"Will you ever stop following me? Will you ever leave me alone?"
He stared at her, answering softly:
"It is impossible I should ever leave you alone."
At the terrace he sprang down, tossed his reins to a groom, and went to
her, raising his hands. For a moment she looked at him, hesitating.
There were two grooms. So she took his hands and leapt down. It was a
quick, uncertain touch her fingers gave him.
"Thanks," she said, and crossed the terrace at his side.
That moment, he reflected, was in itself culminating, yet he couldn't
dismiss the feeling that their relations approached a larger climax. All
the better, since things couldn't very well go on as they were. Was it
that fleeting contact that had altered him, or her companionship in the
gray night? He only knew as he walked close to her that the bitterness
in his heart had diminished. He was willing to relinquish the return
blow if she would ease the hurt she had given him. He told himself that
she had never been nearer. An odd fancy!
The others rode up as they reached the door, and the hall was noisy with
people just returned from the pond, so that their solitude was
destroyed. While he bathed and dressed he tried to understand just what
had happened. The alteration in his own heart could only be accounted
for by a change in hers. Perhaps his mood was determined by her
unexpected wonder that he should always try to hurt. He couldn't drive
from his mind the definite impression of her having come nearer.
"Winter sentiment!" he sneered, and hurried, for it was late.
VII
Lambert dropped in and lounged in a satin-covered chair while George
wrestled with his tie. He gave Lambert the freshest news from the
office, but his mind wasn't on business, nor, he guessed, was Lambert's.
"Blodgett does one rather well," Lambert said, glancing around the room.
George agreed.
"Only a marquise might feel more at ease in this room than a mere male."
He turned, smiling.
"I'm always afraid the furniture won't hold. Why should he have raised
such a monster?"
"Maybe," Lambert offered, "to have it ready for a wife."
"Who would marry him?" George flashed.
"Nearly any girl," Lambert said. "So much money irons out a lot of fat.
Then, when all's said and done, he's amusing and generous. He always
tries to please. Why? What's made you scornful of Josiah?"
"There are some things," George said, "that one oughtn't to be able to
buy with money."
Lambert arose, walked over to George, put his hands on his shoulders,
and stared at him quizzically.
"You're a curious brute."
"I know what you mean," George said, "but let me remind you that money
was just one of three things I started for."
Lambert's grasp tightened.
"And in a way you've got them all."
George shook off Lambert's grasp.
In a way!
"Let's go down."
In a way! It was rather cooling. It reminded him, too, that Squibs
Bailly remained unpaid; and there was Sylvia, only a trifle nearer, and
that, perhaps, in an eager imagination. Certainly he had forced some
success, but would he actually ever complete anything? Would he ever be
able to say I have acquired an exterior exactly as genuine as that one
inherits, or I am a great millionaire, or I have proved myself worthy of
all Squibs has given me, or I am Sylvia Planter's husband? Of course he
had succeeded, but only in a way. Where was his will that he couldn't
conquer altogether?
As he came down the stairs he saw Sylvia in a dazzling gown standing in
front of the great fireplace surrounded by a group which included
Dalrymple and Rogers who had managed an invitation and had just arrived
with Wandel. Wandel brought excuses from Goodhue. It was like Goodhue,
George thought, to avoid such a party.
Dalrymple smirked and chatted. George left Lambert and went straight to
them. Sylvia could always be depended upon to be gracious to Dalrymple.
She glanced at George and nodded. Although she continued to talk to
Dalrymple she didn't turn away. George thought, indeed, that he detected
a slight movement as if to make room for him. It was as if he had been
any man of her acquaintance coming up. Then he had been right?
"Josiah said we'd have you," Dalrymple drawled. "Why didn't you skate?
Anything to get on a horse, what? Freezing pleasure this weather."
George smiled at Sylvia.
"Not with the right horse and companionship."
Any one could see that Dalrymple had already swallowed an antidote for
whatever benefit the day's fresh air and exercise had given him. Still
in the weak face, across which the firelight played, George read other
traits, settled, in a sense admirable; more precious than any
inheritance a son could expect from a washerwoman mother and a labouring
father. Then what was it Dalrymple had always coveted? What had made him
rude to the poor men at Princeton? Something he hadn't had. Money.
America, George reflected, could breed people like that. There was more
than one way of being a snob. He wondered if Dalrymple would ever
submerge his pride enough to come to him for money. He might go to
Blodgett first, but George wasn't at all sure Blodgett would find it
worth his while to buy up the young man.
Blodgett just then joined them. The white waistcoat encircling his
rotund middle was like an advance agent, crying aloud: "The great Josiah
is arriving just behind me."
"Everybody having a good time?" he bellowed.
Mrs. Sinclair, sitting near by, looked up, but her husband smiled
indulgently. George watched Sylvia. Blodgett put the question to her.
"That was a fine ride, wasn't it? I'm always a little afraid for the
horse I ride, though; might bend him in the middle."
George couldn't understand why she gave that friendly smile he coveted
to Blodgett.
"I'd give a lot to ride like this young man," Blodgett went on, patting
George's back. He preened himself. "Still we can't all be born in the
saddle."
The thing was so obvious George laughed outright. Even Sylvia conceded
its ugly, unintentional humour. A smile drew at the corners of her
mouth. If she could enjoy that she was, indeed, for the moment nearer.
Two servants glided around with trays.
Blodgett gulped the contents of his glass and smacked his lips.
"That fellow of mine," he boasted, "has his own blend. Not bad."
Sylvia drank hers with Dalrymple, while Betty over there shook her head.
Probably it was his ungraceful inheritance that made George dislike a
glass in Sylvia's fingers. Dalrymple slipped away.
"Dividends in the smoking-room!" Blodgett roared.
"Dalrymple's drawing dividends," George thought.
The procession for the dining-room formed and disbanded. Blodgett had
Mrs. Sinclair and Sylvia at either hand. It was natural enough, but
George resented the arrangement, particularly with Dalrymple next to
Sylvia on the other side. Betty sat between Dalrymple and Lambert.
George was nearly opposite, flanked by fluffy clothes and hair; and
straightway each ear was choked with fluffy chatter--the theatre; the
opera, from the side of sartorial criticism; the east coast of
Florida--"but why should I go so far to see exciting bathing suits out
of season and tea tables wabbling under palm trees?"--a scandal or
two--that is such details as were permissible in his presence. He
divided his ears sufficiently to catch snatches from neighbouring
sections of the table.
"Of course, we'll keep out of it."
It was Wandel, speaking encouragingly to a pretty girl. Out of what?
Confound this chatter! Oh! The war, of course. It was the one remark of
serious import that reached him throughout the dinner, and the country
faced that possibility, and an increasing unrest of labour, and grave
financial questions. The diners might have been people who had fled to a
high mountain to escape an invasion, or happy ones who lived on a peak
from which the menace was invisible. But it wasn't that. At other social
levels, he knew, there was the same closing of the shutters, the same
effort to create an enjoyable sunlight in a cloistered room. On the
summit, he honestly believed, men did more and thought more. Perhaps
where sensible men gathered together the curtains weren't drawn against
grave fires in an abnormal night. Then it was the women. Did all men,
like Wandel, choose to keep such things from the women? Did the women
want them kept? Hang it! Then let them have the vote. Make them talk.
"You're really not going to Palm Beach, Mr. Morton?"
"I've too much to do."
"Men amuse me," the young lady fluffed. "They always talk about things
to do. If one has a good time the things get done just the same."
God! What a point of view! Yet he wasn't one to pass judgment since he
was more interested in the winning of Sylvia than he was in the winning
of the war.
He watched her as he could, talking first to Blodgett then to Dalrymple.
The brilliant Sylvia Planter had no business sitting between two such
men. The fact that Blodgett had got the right people stared him in the
face, but even so the man wasn't good enough to be Sylvia Planter's
host. Nor did George like the way she sipped her wine. She seemed
forcing herself to a travesty of enjoyment. Betty, on the other hand,
drank nothing. He questioned if she was sorry Sylvia had brought her.
She seemed glad enough, at least, to be with Lambert. He appeared to
absorb her, and, in order to listen to him, she left Dalrymple nearly
wholly to Sylvia. Once or twice she glanced across and smiled at George,
but her kindliness had an air of coming from a widening distance. George
was trapped--a restless giant tangled in a snarl of fluff.
He sighed his relief when the women had gone. He didn't remain long
behind, wandering into the deserted hall where he stood frowning at the
fire. He heard a reluctant step on the stairs and swung around. Sylvia
walked slowly down, a cloak about her shoulders. In a sort of
desperation he raised his hand.
"This party has got on my nerves."
He couldn't read the expression in her eyes.
"It's stifling in here," she said.
She walked the length of the hall, opened the door, and went through to
the terrace.
George's heart quickened. She was out there alone. What had her eyes
meant? He had never seen them just like that. They had seemed without
challenge.
There was a coat closet at the rear of the hall. He ran to it, got a cap
and somebody's overcoat, and followed her out.
She sat on the railing, far from the house. The only light upon her was
the nebulous reflection from the white earth. He hurried to her, his
heart beating to the rhythm of nearer--nearer--nearer----
She stirred.
"As usual with you," she said, "I am unfortunate. I didn't think you
would follow me. I came here because I wanted to be alone. I wanted to
think. Can you appreciate that?"
He sat on the railing close to her.
"You never want me. I have to grasp what opportunities I can."
He waited for her to rise and wander away. He was prepared to urge her
to remain. She didn't move.
"I can't always be running away from you," she said.
She stared straight ahead over the garden, nearly phosphorescent with
its snow.
"Nearer, nearer, nearer," went through his head.
"It has been a long time since I've seen you," he said, "but even so I
wish you hadn't come here."
"Why did you come?" she asked.
"Because I thought I should find you."
"Why did you think that?"
"I'd heard Blodgett had been a good deal at Oakmont. I guessed if
Lambert came you would, too."
"It is impertinent you should interest yourself in my movements.
Why--why do you do it?"
"Because everything you do absorbs me. Why else do you suppose I took
the trouble at Betty's dance years ago to tell you who I was?"