The Guarded Heights
some day. What's the use putting it off? Let's forget the ugly part of
the past. Marry me before I go to France."
He was asking her what he had accused Lambert of unjustifiably wanting
Betty to do. All at once he understood Lambert's haste. He stretched out
his hand to Sylvia. He meant it--with all his heart he meant it, but she
answered him scornfully:
"Is that your way of saying you love me?"
The bitterness of many years revived in his mind, focusing on that
question. If he should answer it impulsively she would be in a position
to hurt him more than she had ever done. George Morton didn't dare take
chances with his impulses, and the bitterness was in his voice when he
answered:
"You've never let me fancy myself at your feet in a sentimental fit."
But it was difficult for him not to assume such an attitude: not to take
her hand, both of her hands; not to draw her close.
"If you'd only answer me----" he began.
She stood up.
"Just as when I first saw you!" she cried, angrily.
She controlled herself.
"You shan't force me to quarrel. Come in. Let us dance once."
In a sense he put himself at her feet then.
"I'm afraid to dance with you to-night," he whispered.
She looked at him, her eyes full of curiosity. Her eyes wavered. She
turned and started across the gallery. In a panic he sprang after her.
"All right. Let us dance," he said.
He led her to the floor and took her in his arms, but he had an
impression of guiding an automaton about the room. Almost at once she
asked him to stop by the door leading to the gallery. He looked at her
questioningly. Her distaste for the civilian Morton was undisguised at
last from the soldier Morton. But there was more than that to be read in
her colourful face--self-distaste, perhaps; and a sort of fright,
comparable with the panic George had just now experienced on the
verandah. Her voice was tired.
"I've done my best. I can't keep it up."
"No more war kindness!" he said. "Good!"
He watched her, her draperies arranging themselves in perplexingly
graceful folds, as she hurried with an air of flight away from him along
the gallery.
V
The evening the commissions were awarded George appreciated the
ingratitudes and cruelties of service rather more keenly than he had
done even as a youngster at Oakmont.
"It's like tap day at New Haven," Lambert said, nervously.
He had paused for a moment to compare notes with George. He hurried now
to his own organization for fear something might have happened during
his absence. The suspense increased, reaching even George, who all along
had been confident of success.
In the dusk the entire company crowded the narrow space between the
barracks--scores of men who had been urged by passionate politicians to
abandon family, money, everything, for the discomforts, sometimes the
degradations, of this place, for the possible privilege of dying for a
cause. It had had to be done, but in the hearts of many that night was
the fancy that it might have been done rather differently. It was clear,
for instance, that the passionate and patriotic politicians hadn't
troubled to tear from a reluctant general staff enough commissions for
the size and quality of these first camps. Many of the men, therefore,
who with a sort of terror shuffled their feet in the sand, would be sent
home, to the draft, or to the questioning scorn of their friends, under
suspicion of a form of treason, of not having banged the drum quite hard
enough. And it wasn't that at all.
George, like everyone else, had known for a long time there wouldn't be
enough commissions to go around. Why, he wondered now, had the fellows
chosen for dismissal been held for this public announcement of failure.
And in many cases, he reflected, there was no failure here beyond the
insolvency of a system. Among those who would go back to the world with
averted faces were numbers who hadn't really come at all within the
vision of their instructors, beyond whom they could not appeal. And
within a year this same reluctant army would be reaching out eagerly for
inferior officer material. And these men would not forget. You could
never expect them to forget.
Two messengers emerged from the orderly room and commenced to thread the
restless, apprehensive groups, seeking, with a torturing slowness
finding candidates to whom they whispered. The chosen ran to the orderly
room, entered there, according to instructions, or else formed a long
line outside the window where sat the supreme arbiter, the giver, in a
way of life and death, the young fellow from West Point.
Men patted George on the back.
"You'll go among the first, George."
But he didn't. He paced up and down, watching the many who waited for
the whisper which was withheld, waited until they knew it wouldn't
come, expressed then in their faces thoughts blacker than the closing
night, entered at last into the gloomy barracks where they sat on their
bunks silently and with bowed heads.
Was that fate, through some miracle of mismanagement, reserved for him?
It couldn't be. The fellow had seen him at the start. George had forced
himself to get along with him, to impress him. Somebody touched George
on the arm. A curiously intense whisper filled his ear.
"You're wanted in the orderly room, Morton."
In leaving the defeated he had an impression of a difficult and
sorrowful severance.
In the orderly room too many men rubbed shoulders restlessly. A relieved
sigh went up. It was as if everyone had known nothing vital could occur
before his arrival. The young West Pointer was making the most of his
moment. The war wasn't likely to bring him another half so great.
Washington, he announced, had cut down the number of higher commissions
he had asked for.
George's name was read among the first.
"To be captain of infantry, United States Reserve--George Morton."
There was something very like affection in the West Pointer's voice.
"I recommended you for a majority, Mr. Morton. Stick to the job as you
have here, and it will come along."
Lambert and Goodhue found him as he crowded with the rest through the
little door. They had kept their captaincies. Even Goodhue released a
little of his relief at the outcome.
"Any number busted--no time to find out whether they were good or bad."
The dark, hot, sandy street was full of shadowy figures, calling,
shouting, laughing neurotically.
"Good fellow, but I had you on my list." "My Lord! I never expected more
than a private in the rear rank." "What do you think of Blank? Lost out
entirely." "Rotten deal." "Not the only one by several dozens." "Hear
about Doe? Wouldn't have picked him for a shave tail. Got a captaincy.
Teacher's pet."
Brutally someone had turned on the barrack lights. Through the windows
the successful ones could see among the bunks the bowed and silent
figures, must have known how sacrilegious it was to project their
happiness into this place which had all at once become a sepulchre of
dead sacrifices.
"I hope," George muttered to his friends, "I'll never have to see quite
so much suffering on a battlefield."
VI
It wasn't pleasant to face Blodgett, but it had to be done, for all
three of the partners had determined out of necessity to spend the
greater portion of their leaves at the office. George slipped in alone
the morning he got back to New York. Blodgett looked up as if he had
been struck, taking in each detail of the uniform and its insignia,
symbols of success. The face seemed a little less round, infinitely less
contented. Sitting back there in his office he had an air of having
sought a corner. If Sylvia didn't, he clearly appreciated the shame of
the situation. George took the pudgy hand and pressed it, but he
couldn't say anything and Blodgett seemed to understand and be grateful.
He failed, however, to hide his envy of the uniform.
"I'd give my money and something besides," he said, "to be able to climb
into that."
"You're lucky you can't," George answered, half meaning it.
As a substitute Blodgett spoke of some dollar-a-year work in Washington.
"But don't worry, George. I'll see everything here is looked after."
George was glad Blodgett had so much to take care of, for it was clear
that the more work he had the better off he would be. In Blodgett's
presence he tried not to think of Sylvia and his own intentions. He
wrote her, for the first time, boldly asking, since he couldn't suggest
such a visit to Lambert, if he might see her at Oakmont. She didn't keep
him in suspense. He smiled as he read her brief reply, it had been so
obviously dictated by the Sylvia who was going to be good to soldiers no
matter how dreadful the cost.
"I thought I made you understand that what you proposed at
Plattsburgh can never become less preposterous; my response
less determined. So of course it wouldn't do for you to come.
When we see each other, as we're bound to do, before you sail,
I shall try to forget the absolute lack of any even merely
friendly ground between us. It would hurt Lambert----"
"Damn Lambert!" he muttered.
But he didn't tear her letter up. He put it in the pocket of his blouse.
He continued to carry it there.
Instead of going to Oakmont, consequently, he spent a Sunday at
Princeton, vastly amused at the pacifist Bailly. Minute by minute the
attenuated tutor cursed his inability to take up a gun and pop at
Germans, interspersing his regrets with:
"But of course war is dreadful. It is inconceivable in a healthy
brain----" and so forth.
He had found a substitute for his chief ambition. He was throwing
himself heart and soul into the efforts of the Y.M.C.A. to keep soldiers
amused and fed.
"For Princeton," he explained, "has become an armed camp, a mill to
manufacture officers; nothing more. The classics are as defunct as
Homer. I had almost made a bad pun by suggesting that of them all
Martial alone survives."
Before he left, George was sorry he had come, for Lambert took pains to
leave Betty alone with him as they walked Sunday evening by the lake.
More powerful than Lambert's wishes in his mind was the memory of how
Betty and he had skated here, or come to boat races, or walked like this
in his undergraduate days; and she didn't take kindly to his
interference, letting him see that to her mind a marriage with Lambert
now would be too eager a jump into the house of Planter; too
inconsiderate a request for the key to the Planter coffers.
"For Lambert may not come back," she said.
"That's just it," he urged, unwillingly. "Why not take what you can be
sure of?"
"What difference would it make?" she asked. "Would I love Lambert any
more? Would he love me any more?"
"I think so," he said.
She shook her head.
"But the thought of a wife might make a difference at the front; might
make him hesitate, or give a little less. We all have to give
everything. So I give Lambert--entirely--if I have to."
George didn't try to say any more, for he knew she was right; yet with
the opening of Camp Upton and the birth of the division the rather
abrupt marriages of soldiers multiplied. During the winter Officers'
House sheltered excited conferences that led to Riverhead where
licenses, clergymen, and justices of the peace could be found; and there
was scarcely a week-end that didn't see the culmination in town of a
romance among George's own friends and acquaintances.
The week-ends he got were chiefly valuable to him because they offered
chances of seeing Sylvia. Few actually developed, however, for there
were not many general parties, since men preferred to cling, not
publicly, during such brief respites to those they loved and were on the
point of quitting.
The Alstons had taken a house for the winter, and George caught her