The Guarded Heights
She drew back without answering. Her movement caught his attention. The
change in her manner, the white night, made him bold.
"I've often wondered," he said, "why you didn't remember me that day in
Princeton, or that night. It hadn't been long. Don't you see it was an
acknowledgment that I wasn't the old George Morton even then?"
"Oh, no," she answered with a little laugh, "because I remembered you
perfectly well."
"Remembered me!" he cried. "And you danced with me, and said you didn't
remember, and let me take you aside, and----"
He moved swiftly nearer until his face was close to hers, until he
stared into her eyes that he could barely see.
"Why did you do that?"
She didn't answer.
"Why do you tell me now?" he urged with an increasing excitement.
Such a confession from her had the quality of a caress! He felt himself
reaching up to touch the summit.
"Why? You've got to answer me."
She arose with easy grace and stood looking down at him.
"Because," she said, "I want you to stop being ridiculous and
troublesome; and, really, the whole thing seems so unimportant now that
I am going to be married."
He cried out. He sprang to his feet. He caught her hands, and crushed
them as if he would make them a part of his own flesh so that she could
never escape to accomplish that unbearable act.
"Sylvia! Sylvia!"
She fought, gasping:
"You hurt! I tell you you hurt! Let me go you--you----Let me go----"
VIII
George stared at Sylvia as if she had been a child expressing some
unreasonable and incredible intention. "What are you talking about? How
can I let you go?"
Even in that light he became aware of the distortion of her face, of an
unexpected moisture in her eyes; and he realized quite distinctly where
he was, what had been said, just how completely her announcement for the
moment had swept his mind clean of the restraints with which he had so
painstakingly crowded it. Now he appreciated the power of his grasp, but
he watched a little longer the struggles of her graceful body; for,
after all, he had been right. How could he let her go to some man whose
arms would furnish an inviolable sanctuary? He shook his head. No such
thing existed. Hadn't he, indeed, foreseen exactly this situation, and
hadn't he told himself it couldn't close the approach to his pursuit?
But he had never reconnoitred that road. Now he must find it no matter
how forbidding the places it might thread. So he released her. She
raised her hands to her face.
"You hurt!" she whispered. "Oh, how you hurt!"
"Please tell me who it is."
She turned, and, her hands still raised, started across the terrace. He
followed.
"Tell me!"
She went on without answering. He watched her go, suppressing his angry
instinct to grasp her again that he might force the name from her. He
shrugged his shoulders. Since she had probably timed her attack on him
with a general announcement, he would know soon enough. He could fancy
those in the house already buzzing excitedly.
"I always said she'd marry so and so;" or, "She might have done
better--or worse;" perhaps an acrid, "It's high time, I should
think"--all the banal remarks people make at such crises. But what
lingered in George's brain was his own determination.
"She shan't do it. Somehow I'll stop her."
He glanced over the garden, dully surprised that it should retain its
former aspect while his own outlook had altered as chaotically as it had
done that day long ago when he had blundered into telling her he loved
her.
He turned and approached the house to seek this knowledge absolutely
vital to him but from which, nevertheless, he shrank. Two names slipped
into his mind, two disagreeable figures of men she had recently chosen
to be a good deal with.
George acknowledged freely enough now that he had taken his later view
of his employer from an altitude of jealousy. Blodgett offered a
possibility in some ways quite logical. With war finance he worked
closer and closer to Old Planter. He had become a familiar figure at
Oakmont. George had seen Sylvia choose his companionship that afternoon,
had watched her a little while ago make him happy with her smiles; yet
if she could tolerate Blodgett why had she never forgiven George his
beginnings?
Dalrymple was a more likely and infinitely less palatable choice. He was
good-looking, entirely of her kind, had been, after a fashion, raised at
her side; and Sylvia's wealth would be agreeable to the Dalrymple bank
account. George had had sufficient evidence that he wanted her--and her
money. A large portion of the enmity between them, in fact, could be
traced to the day he had found her portrait displayed on Dalrymple's
desk. The only argument against Dalrymple was his weakness, and people
smiled at that indulgently, ascribing it to youth--even Sylvia who
couldn't possibly know how far it went.
Suspense was intolerable. He walked into the house and replaced the coat
and cap in the closet. He commenced to look for Sylvia. No matter whose
toes it affected he was going to have another talk with her if either of
his hazards touched fact.
IX
He caught the rising and falling of a perpetual mixed conversation only
partially smothered by a reckless assault on a piano. He traced the
racket to the large drawing-room where groups had gathered in the
corners as if in a hopeless attempt to escape the concert. Sylvia sat
with none. One of the fluffy young ladies was proving the strength of
the piano. Rogers was amorously attentive to her music. Lambert and
Betty sat as far as possible from everyone else, heads rather close.
Blodgett hopped heavily from group to group.
Over the frantic attempts of the young performer the human voice
triumphed, but the impulse to this conversation was multiple. From no
group did Sylvia's name slip, and George experienced a sharp wonder; so
far, evidently, she had chosen to tell only him.
The young lady at the piano crashed to a brief vacation. The chatter,
following a perfunctory applause, rose gratefully.
"Fine! Fine!" Blodgett roared. "Your next stop ought to be Carnegie
Hall."
"She ought to play in a hall," someone murmured unkindly.
George retreated, relieved that Blodgett wasn't with Sylvia; and a
little later he found Dalrymple in the smoking-room sipping
whiskey-and-soda between erratic shots at billiards. Wandel was at the
table most of the time, counting long strings with easy precision.
"What's up, great man?" he wanted to know.
Dalrymple, too, glanced curiously at George over his glass. "Nothing
exceptional that I know of," George snapped and left the room.
It added to his anger that his mind should let through its discontent.
At least Sylvia wasn't with Blodgett or Dalrymple, and he tried to tell
himself his jealousy was too hasty. All the eligible men weren't
gathered in this house. He wandered from room to room, always seeking
Sylvia. Where could she have gone?
He met guests fleeing from drawing-room to library, as if driven by the
tangled furies of a Hungarian dance.
"Will that girl never stop playing?" he thought.
Betty came up to him.
"Talk to me, George."
He found himself reluctant, but two tables of bridge were forming, and
Betty didn't care to play. Lambert did, and sat down. George followed
Betty to a window seat, telling himself she wanted him only because
Lambert was for the time, lost to her.
"Now," she said, directly, "what is it, George?"
"What's what?" he asked with an attempt at good-humour.
Her question had made him uneasy, since it suggested that she had
observed the trouble he was endeavouring to bury. Would he never learn
to repress as Goodhue did? But even Goodhue, he recalled, had failed to
hide an acute suffering at a football game; and this game was infinitely
bigger, and the point he had just lost vastly more important than a
fumbled ball.
"You've changed," Betty was saying. "I'm a good judge, because I haven't
really seen you for nearly a year. You've seemed--I scarcely know how to
say it--unhappy?"
"Why not tired?" he suggested, listlessly. "You may not know it, but
I've been pretty hard at work."
She nodded quickly.
"I've heard a good deal from Lambert what you are doing, and something
from Squibs and Mrs. Squibs. You haven't seen much of them, either. Do
you mind if I say I think it makes them uneasy?"
"Scold. I deserve it," he said. "But I've written."
"I don't mean to scold," she smiled. "I only want to find out what makes
you discontented, maybe ask if it's worth while wearing yourself out to
get rich."
"I don't know," he answered. "I think so."
It was his first doubt. He looked at her moodily.
"You're not one to draw the long bow, Betty. Honestly, aren't you a
little cross with me on account of the Baillys?"
"Not even on my own account."
Her allusion was clear enough. George was glad Blodgett created a
diversion just then, lumbering in and bellowing to Lambert for news of
his sister. George listened breathlessly.
"Haven't seen her," Lambert said, and doubled a bid.
"Miss Alston?" Blodgett applied to Betty.
"Where should she be?" Betty answered.
"Got me puzzled," Blodgett muttered. "Responsibility. If anything
happened!"
Betty laughed.
"What could happen to her here?"
George guessed then where Sylvia had gone, and he experienced a strong
but temporal exaltation. Only a mental or a bodily hurt could have
driven Sylvia to her room. He didn't believe in the first, but he could
still feel the shape of her slender fingers crushed against his. The
greater her pain, the greater her knowledge of his determination and
desire.
"Guess I'll send Mrs. Sinclair upstairs," Blodgett said, gropingly.
He hurried out of the room. Betty rose.
"I suppose I ought to go."
"Nonsense," George objected. "She isn't the sort to come down ill all at
once."
He followed Betty to the hall, however. Mrs. Sinclair was halfway up the
stairs. Blodgett had gone on, always pandering, George reflected, to his
guests.
"I'll wait here," Betty said to Mrs. Sinclair. "I mean, if anything
should be wrong, if Sylvia should want me."
Mrs. Sinclair nodded, disappearing in the upper hall.
Finally George faced the moment he had avoided with a persistent
longing. For the first time since the night of his confession he was
quite alone with Betty. He tried not to picture her swaying away from
him in a moonlight scented with flowers; but he couldn't help hearing
her frightened voice: "Don't say anything more now," and he experienced
again her hand's delightful and bewitching fragility. Why had his
confession startled? What had it portended for her?
He sighed. There was no point asking such questions, no reason for
avoiding such dangerous moments now; too many factors had assumed new
shapes. The long separation had certainly not been without its effect on
Betty, and hadn't he recently seen her absorbed by Lambert? Hadn't she
just now scolded him with a clear appreciation of his shortcomings? In
the old days she had unconsciously offered him a pleasurable temptation,
and he had been afraid of yielding to it because of its effect on his
aim. Sylvia just now had tried to convince him that his aim was
permanently turned aside. He knew with a hard strength of will that it
wasn't. Nothing could tempt him from his path now--even Betty's
kindness.
"Betty--have you heard anything of her getting married?"
She glanced at him, surprised.
"Who? Sylvia?"
He nodded.
"Only," she answered, "the rumours one always hears about a very popular
girl. Why, George?"
"The rumours make one wonder. Nothing comes of them," he said, sorry he
had spoken, seeking a safe withdrawal. "You know there's principally one
about you. It persists."