The Guarded Heights
"And you," she said with a little laugh, "didn't follow."
"Maybe I was afraid of the dragons in the castle. If I'd followed----?"
"We'd have made the dragons angels."
Beneath their jesting he was aware of pain in his heart, in her eyes; a
perception of lost chances, chances that never could have been captured.
One couldn't have everything. She had Lambert. He had nothing. But he
might have had Betty.
He stooped and pressed his lips to her forehead.
"That's as near as I shall ever come," he thought, sorrowfully,
wondering, against his will, if it were true.
"It's to wish you and Lambert happiness," he said aloud.
She raised her fingers to her forehead and let them linger there
thoughtfully. She sighed, straightened, spoke.
"I'm no longer a sentimental girl, but the admiration has survived,
grown, George. Never forget that."
"And the kindness?" he asked.
"Of course," she said. "Why should that ever go?"
But he shook his head.
"All the kindness must be for Lambert. You wouldn't give by halves.
When, Betty?"
"Let us walk back. I've left him an extraordinarily long time."
"When?" he repeated.
"I don't know," she answered. "After the war, if he comes home. Of
course, he wants it before. Lambert hurries one so."
"It's the war," he said, gravely, "that hurries one."
III
"I've wormed it out of Betty," he said to Lambert on the way back to
barracks.
He added congratulations, heartfelt, accompanied by a firm clasp of the
hand; but Lambert seemed scarcely to hear, couldn't wait for George to
finish before breaking in.
"You and Betty have always been like brother and sister. She says so.
I've seen it myself."
George was a trifle uncomfortable.
"What of it?"
"If you get a chance point out to her in your brotherly way that the
sooner she marries me the more time we'll have together outside of
heaven. I can't very well go at her on that tack. Sounds slushy, but you
know there's a good chance of my not coming home, and she insists on
waiting."
With all his soul George shrank from such a task. He glanced at the
other's long, athletic limbs.
"There are worse fates than widowhood for war brides," he said,
brutally.
Lambert made a wry face.
"All the more reason for grabbing what happiness I can."
"Pure selfishness!" George charged him.
"You talk like a fond parent," Lambert answered. "I believe Betty is the
only one who doesn't think in those terms. She has other reasons;
ridiculous ones. When she tells them to you you'll come on my side."
"Perhaps," George said, vaguely.
Betty's obstinacy wasn't Lambert's only worry. Several times he opened
his mouth as if to speak, and apparently thought better of it. George
could guess the sense of those unexpressed phrases, and could understand
why Lambert should find it difficult to voice them to him. It wasn't
until they were in the sand of the company street, indeed, that Lambert
managed to state his difficulty, in whispers, so that the sleeping
barracks shouldn't be made restless. George noticed that the other
didn't mention Sylvia's name, but it was there in every word, with a
sort of apology for her, and a relief that she wasn't after all going to
marry one so much older and less graceful than herself.
"I wish you'd suggest a way for me to pull out. I've thought it over. I
can't think of any pretty one, but I don't want to be under obligations
any longer to a man who has been treated so shabbily."
It amused George to find himself in the position of a Sinclair, fighting
with Lambert to spare Blodgett's feelings. For Blodgett, Lambert's
proposed action would be the final humiliation.
A day or two later, in fact, Lambert showed George a note he had had
from Blodgett.
"Never let this come up again," a paragraph ran. "If it made
any difference between me and the rest of the family I'd feel
I'd got more than I deserve. I know I'm not good enough for
her. Let it go at that----"
"You're right," Lambert said. "He's entitled to be met just there. I've
decided it shall make no difference to the business."
George was relieved, but Lambert, it was clear, resented the situation,
blamed it on Sylvia, and couldn't wholly refrain from expressing his
disapproval.
"No necessity for it in the first place. Can't see why she picked him,
why she does a lot of things."
"Spoiled!" George offered with a happy grin.
"Prefer to say that myself," Lambert grunted, "although God knows I'm
beginning to think it's true enough."
IV
George doubted if he would see Sylvia at Plattsburgh at all, so
frequently was her visit postponed. Perhaps she preferred to cloister
herself really now, experiencing a sense of shame for the blow
circumstances had made her strike at one who had never quite earned it;
yet when she came, just before the end of camp, he detected no
self-consciousness that he could trace to Blodgett. Lambert and he
arrived at the hotel late one Saturday afternoon and saw her on the
terrace with her mother and the Alstons. For weeks George had forecasted
this moment, their first meeting since she had bought back her freedom
at the expense of Blodgett's heart; and it disappointed him, startled
him; for she was--he had never fancied that would hurt--too friendly.
For the first time in their acquaintance she offered her hand willingly
and smiled at him; but she had an air of paying a debt. What debt? He
caught the words "Red Cross," "recreation."
"Rather faddish business, isn't it?" he asked, indifferently.
He was still intrigued by Sylvia's manner. A chorus attacked him. Sylvia
and Betty, it appeared, were extreme faddists. Only Mrs. Planter smiled
at him understandingly from her eminent superiority. As he glanced at
his coarse uniform he wanted to laugh, then his temper caught him. The
debt she desired to pay was undoubtedly the one owed by a people. He
wanted to grasp her and shout in her ear:
"You patriotic idiot! I won't let you insult me that way."
"We have to do what we can," she was saying vehemently. "I wish I were a
man. How I wish I were a man!"
If she were a man, he was thinking, he'd pound some sensible judgments
into her excited brain. Or was all this simply a nervous reaction from
her mental struggles of the past months, from her final escape--a
necessary play-acting?
He couldn't manage a word with her alone before dinner. The party
wandered through grass-floored forest paths whose shy peace fled from
the approach of uniforms and the heavy tramp of army boots. He resented
her flood of public questions about his work, his prospects, his mental
attitude toward the whole business. Her voice was too kind, her manner
too sweet, with just the proper touch of sadness. She wasn't going to
spare him anything of the soldier's due. Since he was being fattened,
presumably for the butcher, she would turn his thoughts from the
knife----
He longed for the riding crop in her fingers; he would have preferred
its blows.
If he got her alone he would put a stop to such intolerable abuse, but
the chance escaped him until long after dinner, when the moon swung high
above the lake, when the men in uniform and their women were paired in
the ballroom, or on the terrace and balconies. He asked her to dance at
last and she made no difficulty, giving him that unreal and provoking
smile.
"You dance well," she said when the music stopped.
They were near a door. He suggested that they go outside.
"While I tell you that if you offer me any more of that gruel I'll
publicly accuse you of treason."
She looked at him puzzled, hesitating.
"What do you mean?"
"When it comes to being killed," he answered, "I prefer the Huns to
empty kindness. It's rather more useful for the country, too. Please
come out."
She shook her head. Her eyes were a little uncertain.
"Yes, you will," he said. "You've let yourself in for it. I'm the victim
of one of your war charities. Let me tell you that sort of thing leads
from the dance floor to less public places. After all, the balcony isn't
very secluded. If you called for help it would come promiscuously,
immediately."
She laughed. She tried to edge toward her mother. He stopped her.
"Be consistent. Don't refuse a dying man," he sneered.
"Dying man!" she echoed.
"You've impressed me with it all evening. For the first time in your
life you've tried to treat me like a human being, and you've succeeded
in making me feel a perfect fool. Where's the pamphlet you've been
reciting from? I'll guarantee it says the next move is to go to the
balcony and be very nice and a little sentimental to the poor devil."
Her head went up. She walked out at his side. He arranged chairs close
together at the railing where they seemed to sit suspended in limitless
emptiness above the lake and the mountains flattened by the moonlight.
Later, under very different circumstances, he was to recall that idea of
helpless suspension. She caught it, too, evidently, and gave it a
different interpretation. It was as if, engrossed by her own problems,
she had for the moment forgotten him.
"This place is so high! It gives you a feeling of freedom."
He knew very well what was in her mind.
"I'm glad you can feel free. I'm glad with all my heart you are free
again."
Caught by her sensations she didn't answer at once. He studied her
during that brief period when she was, in a fashion, helpless before his
eager eyes. Abruptly she faced him, as if the sense of his words had
been delayed in reaching her, or, as if, perhaps, his frank regard had
drawn her around, a little startled.
"I shall not quarrel with you to-night," she said.
"Good! Then you must let me tell you that while I'm sorry as I can be
for poor old Blodgett, I'm inexpressibly glad for you and for this
particular object of your charity."
"It does not concern you," she said.
"Enormously. I wonder if you would answer one or two questions quite
truthfully."
She stirred uneasily, seemed about to rise, then evidently thought
better of it. The orchestra resumed its labours. Many figures near by
gravitated toward the ballroom, leaving them, indeed, in something very
near seclusion. And she stayed to hear his questions, but she begged him
not to ask them.
"You and Lambert are friends. What you are both doing makes me want to
think of that, makes me want to make concessions, but don't
misunderstand, don't force me to quarrel with you until after this is
over."
He paid no attention to her.
"I suppose the war made you realize I was right about Blodgett?"
"You cannot talk about that."
"Has the war shown you I was right about myself?" he went on.
"Are you going to make my good resolutions impossible?" she asked.
Over his shoulder George saw the men in khaki guiding pretty girls about
the dance floor. The place was full of a heady concentration of pleasure
that had a beautiful as well as a pitiful side. About him the atmosphere
was frankly amorous, compounded of multiple desires of heart and mind
which strained for fulfilment before it should be too late. For him
Sylvia was a part of it--the greater part. It entered his senses as the
delightful and faint perfume which reached him from her. It became
ponderable in her dark hair; in her lips half parted; in her graceful
pose as she bent toward him attentively; in her sudden movement of
withdrawal, as if she had suddenly realized he would never give her her
way.
"Isn't it time," he asked, "that you forgot some of your childish pride
and bad temper? Sylvia! When are you going to marry me?"
Her laughter wasn't even, but she arose unhurriedly. She paused, indeed,
and sank back on the arm of the chair.
"So even now," she said, "it's to be quarrels or nothing."
"Or everything," he corrected her. "I shall make you realize it somehow,