The Guarded Heights
it, and couldn't be made to understand why it should embarrass any one.
Dalrymple really helped matters. His mind worked clearly, and he could,
George had to acknowledge, exert a certain charm when he tried.
Moreover, he didn't drink, even refusing the cocktail a waiter offered
him just before they went inside.
As always George disliked speaking to Sylvia in casual tones of
indifferent topics. She met him at first pleasantly enough on that
ground--too pleasantly, so that he found himself waiting for some
acknowledgment that she had not forgotten; that she still believed in
their quarrel. It came at last rather sharply through the topic that was
universal just then of General Wood's civilian training camps at
Plattsburgh. Lambert had gone. Goodhue would follow the next month,
having agreed to that arrangement for the sake of the office. Even
Blodgett was there. Sylvia took a great pride in the fact, pointed it at
George.
"Although," she laughed, "I'm told he's not popular with his tent mates.
I hear he has a telephone fastened to his tent pole. I don't know
whether that's true. He's never mentioned it. But I do know he has three
secretaries in a house just off the reservation. Of course it's a
sacrifice for him to be at Plattsburgh at all."
George stared at her. There was no question. Her voice, her face,
expressed a tolerant liking for the man. The engagement had lasted
considerably more than a year, and now she had an air of giving a public
reminder of its ultimate outcome. Or was it for him alone, as her
original announcement had been?
"I'm off next month," Goodhue said. "Lambert writes it's good fun and
not at all uncomfortable."
"I'll be with you, Dicky," Dalrymple put in. "Beneficial affair, besides
duty, and all that."
George experienced relief at the very moment he resented her attack
most. It was still worth while trying to hurt him.
"Practically everyone has gone or is going. It's splendid. When are you
booked for, Mr. Morton?"
Even the Sinclairs had silently asked that question. They looked at him
expectantly.
"I'm not going at all," he answered, bluntly.
"I remember," she said. "You didn't believe in war or something, wasn't
it? But this isn't exactly war."
George smiled.
"Scarcely," he said. "It's hiking, singing, playing cards, rattling off
stories, largely done by some old men who couldn't get a job in the army
of Methuselah. Why should I waste my time at that?"
"It's a start," Mr. Sinclair said, seriously. "We have to do something."
George hid his sneer. Everywhere the spirit was growing to make any kind
of a drum that would bang.
"If you don't think Wilson will keep us out of it," he asked, earnestly,
"why not get after Wilson and make him start something general,
efficient, fundamental? I've never heard of a President who wasn't
sensitive to the pressure of the country."
There was no use talking that way. These people were satisfied with the
noise at Plattsburgh. He was glad when the meal ended, when he could get
away.
At the automobile he managed to help Sylvia into her cloak, and he took
the opportunity to whisper:
"When is the great event coming off?"
She turned, looked at him, and didn't answer. She mounted to the back
seat beside Dalrymple.
XX
George didn't see her again until winter. He heard through the desolate
Blodgett that she had gone with her parents to the Canadian Rockies.
Nearly everyone seemed to flee north that summer as if in a final effort
to cajole play. The Alstons moved to Maine unusually early, and didn't
return until late fall. Betty put it plainly enough to him then.
"I'm sorry to be back. Don't you feel the desire to get as far away as
possible from things, to escape?"
"To escape what, Betty?"
"That's just it. One doesn't know. Something one doesn't want to know."
It was queer that Betty never asked why he hadn't been to Plattsburgh,
never urged a definite decision as to what he would do if----
The "if" lost a little of its power with him. At times he was even
inclined to share Mrs. Alston's optimism. It was easy to drift with
Washington. Besides, he was too busy to worry about much except his
growing accumulation of profits from bloodshed. He was brought back
momentarily when Lambert and Goodhue received commissions as captains in
the reserve corps. The Plattsburgh noise still echoed. He couldn't help
a feeling of relief when people flocked back and the town became normal
again, encouraging him to believe that nothing could happen to tear him
away from this fascinating pursuit of getting rich for Sylvia while he
waited for her next move.
That came with a stark brutality a few weeks after the holidays. He had
seen her only the evening before, sitting next to Blodgett at dinner
with a remote expression in her eyes that had made him hopeful. The
article in the morning newspaper, consequently, took him more by
surprise than the original announcement of the engagement had done.
Sylvia and Blodgett would be married on the fifteenth of the following
August.
On top of that shock events combined to rebuke his recent confidence.
His desires had taken too much for granted. The folly of the Mrs.
Alstons and the wisdom of the Baillys and Sinclairs were forced upon
him. Wilson wasn't going to keep them out of it. George stood face to
face with the decision he had shirked when the _Lusitania_ had taken her
fatal dive.
It couldn't be shirked again, for the declaration of war appeared to be
a matter of days, weeks at the most. The drum was beginning to sound
with a rising resonance. Lambert and Goodhue would be among the first to
leave. Already they made their plans. They didn't seem to care what
became of the business.
"What are you up to, George?" they asked.
He put them off. He wanted to think it out. He didn't care to have his
decision blurred by the rattling of a drum. Yet it was patent to him if
he should go at all it would be with his partners, among the first. The
thought of such a triple desertion appalled him. Mundy was incomparable
for system and routine, but if he had possessed the rare selective
foresight demanded for the steering of a big business he would long
since have been at the helm of his own house. It would be far better, if
George had to go, to sell the stock and the mass of soaring securities
the firm had acquired; in short, to close out before competitors could
squeeze the abandoned ship from the channel.
Why dwell on so wasteful an alternative? Why not turn sanely from so
sentimental a choice? It was clear enough to him that it would not long
survive the war, all this singing and shouting, this driving forth by
older people on the winds of a safe enthusiasm of countless young men
to grotesque places of death.
He paced his room. That was just it. It was the present he had to
consider, and the present thoughts of people who hadn't yet returned to
their inevitable practicality, forgetfulness, and ingratitude; most of
all to the present thoughts of Sylvia. To him she had made those
thoughts sufficiently plain. Among non-combatant enthusiasts she would
be the most exigent. Why swing from choice to choice any longer? To be
as he had fancied she would wish, he had struggled, denied, kept himself
clean, sought minutely for the proper veneer; and so far he had kept his
record straight. With her it was his one weapon. He couldn't throw that
away.
He stopped his pacing. He sat before his desk, his head in his hands,
listening to the cacophanous beating of drums by the majority for the
anxious marching of a few.
It was settled. He had always known it would be, in just that way.
XXI
George took his physical examination at Governor's Island with the
earliest of the candidates for the First Officers' Training Camp. As
soon as he had returned to his office he wrote to Bailly:
"I'm going to your cheerful war, after all. I'll drop in the end of the
week."
He summoned Lambert and Goodhue. Until then he had told them nothing
definite.
"Of course," he said, "we'll have a few months, but before we leave
America everything will have to be settled. We'll have to know just
where we stand."
Into the midst of their sombre discussion slipped the tinkling of the
telephone. George answered. He glanced at the others.
"It's Blodgett. Wants me right away. Something important."
He hurried down, wondering what was up. Blodgett's voice had vibrated
with an unaccustomed passion that had left with George an impression of
whole-hearted revolt; and when he got in the massive, over-decorated
office his curiosity grew, for Blodgett looked as if he had dressed
against time and without valet or mirror. The straggly pale hair about
the ears was rumpled. His necktie was awry. The pudgy hands shook a
trifle. George's heart quickened. Blodgett had had bad news. What was
the worst news Blodgett could have?
"I know," Blodgett began, "that you and your partners have passed and
are going to Plattsburgh to become officers."
All at once George caught the meaning of Blodgett's disarray, and his
hope was replaced by a mirth he had difficulty hiding.
"You don't mean you've been over to Governor's Island----"
Blodgett stood up.
"Yes," he confessed, solemnly. "Just got back from my physical
examination. Would you believe it, George, the darned fools wouldn't
have me, because I'm too fat? Called it obese, as if it was some kind of
a disease, instead of just my natural inclination to fleshiness."
One of his pudgy hands struck his chest.
"Never stopped to see that my heart's all right, and that's what we
want, people whose hearts are all right."
Momentarily the enmity aroused by circumstances fled from George. The
man was genuine, suffering from a devastating disappointment; but surely
he hadn't called him downstairs only to witness this outbreak.
Blodgett lowered himself to his chair. He wiped his face with one of his
gay handkerchiefs. He spoke reasonably.
"My place is at home. All right. I'll make it easier then for the thin
people that can go. I'm going to look after you boys. Mundy's not big
enough. I've got a man in view I can keep tabs on, and Blodgett'll
always be sitting down here seeing you don't get stung."
He sighed profoundly.
"Guess that'll have to be my share."
George would rather have had the man curse him. It struck directly at
his pride to submit to this unmasking of his jealous opinion. He
strangled his quick impulse to reach forward, to grasp Blodgett's hand,
to beg his pardon. Instead he tried to find ways of avoiding the
generous gift.
"We can't settle anything yet. A dozen circumstances may arise. The war
may end----"
"When you go, George," Blodgett said, wistfully.
And George knew that in the end he couldn't refuse without disclosing
everything; that his partners wouldn't let him. It added strangely
enough to his discomfort that he should leave the disappointed man with
a confident feeling that he need make no move to see Sylvia before going
to Plattsburgh. In any case, the camp ought to be over before the
fifteenth of August.
His partners were pleased enough by his recital, and determined to
accept Blodgett's offer.
"He's the most generous soul that ever lived," Goodhue said, warmly.
Lambert agreed, but George thought he detected a troubled light in his
eyes.
Blodgett's generosity continued to worry George, to accuse him. After
all, Blodgett had accomplished a great deal more than he. With only one
of the necessities he had made friends, had become engaged to Sylvia
Planter. No. There was something besides that. He had had an unaffected
personality to offer, and--he had said it himself--a heart that was all
right.
George asked himself now if Blodgett had helped him in the first place,