The Guarded Heights
to-night to find out. Some day, if the occasion should arise, I hope I
may. I do sincerely."
He drew the door wide open, and stepped aside with a bow that held no
mockery. A white-haired, stately woman entered the hall, and, as she
passed, cast at George a glance curiously lacking in vitality. In her
George saw the spring of Sylvia's delicacy and beauty. Whatever Old
Planter might be this woman had something from the past, not to be
acquired, with which to endow her children. George resented it. It made
the future for him appear more difficult. Her voice was in keeping,
cultured and unaffected.
"Mr. Planter is alone, Morton. He would like to see you."
She disappeared in a room opposite. George took a deep breath.
"On that threshold," Lambert said, kindly, "I've often felt the same
way, though I've never deserved it as you do."
George plunged through and closed the door.
The room was vaster than the hall, and darker, impressing him confusedly
with endless, filled book-shelves; with sculpture; with a difficult maze
of furniture. The only light issued from a lamp on a huge and littered
table at the opposite end.
At first George glanced vainly about, seeking the famous man.
"Step over here, Morton."
There was no denying that voice. It came from a deep chair whose back
was turned to the light. It sent to George's heart his first touch of
fear. He walked carefully across the rugs and around the table until he
faced the figure in the chair. He wanted to get rid of his cap. He
couldn't resist the temptation to pull at it; and only grooms and stable
boys tortured caps.
The portly figure in evening clothes was not calculated to put a culprit
at ease. Old Planter sat very straight. The carefully trimmed white side
whiskers, the white hair, the bushy brows above inflamed eyes, composed
a portrait suggestive of a power relentless and not to be trifled with.
George had boasted he was as good as any one. He knew he wasn't as good
as Old Planter; their disparity of attainment was too easily palpable.
No matter whether Old Planter's success was worthy, he had gone out
into the world and done things. He had manipulated railroads. He had
piled up millions whose number he couldn't be sure of himself. He had
built this house and all it stood for. What one man had done another
could. George stopped pulling at his cap. He threw it on the table as
into a ring. His momentary fear died.
"You sent for me, sir."
The mark of respect flowed naturally. This old fellow was entitled to
it, from him or any one else.
The bass voice had a dynamic quality.
"I did. This afternoon you grossly and inexcusably insulted my daughter.
It will be necessary to speak of her to you just once more. That's why I
told your father to send you. If I were younger it would give me
pleasure to break every bone in your body."
The red lips opened and shut with the precision of a steel trap. They
softened now in a species of smile.
"I see, Morton, you had a little argument with a horse this afternoon."
George managed to smile back.
"Nothing to speak of, sir."
"I wish it had been. I take a pleasure in punishing you. It isn't
biblical, but it's human. I'm only sorry I can't devise a punishment to
fit the crime."
"It was no crime," George said bravely, "no insult."
"Keep your mouth shut. Unfortunately I can't do much more than run you
away from here, for I don't care to evict your parents from their home
for your folly; and they do not support you. Mr. Evans will pay you off
in the morning with a month's extra wages."
"I won't take a cent I haven't earned," George said.
Old Planter studied him with more curiosity.
"You're a queer livery stable boy."
"I'm banking on that," George said, willing the other should make what
he would of it.
"It's there if you wish it," Old Planter went on. "I sent for you so
that I could tell you myself that you will be away from Oakmont and
from the neighbourhood by noon to-morrow. And remember your home is now
a portion of Oakmont. You will never come near us again. You will forget
what happened this afternoon."
He stood up, his face reddening. George wanted to tell him that Sylvia
herself had said he shouldn't forget.
"If, Morton," the old man went on with a biting earnestness, "once
you're away from Oakmont, you ever bother Miss Sylvia again, or make any
attempt to see her, I'll dispossess your parents, and I'll drive you out
of any job you get. I'll keep after you until you'll understand what
you're defying. This isn't an idle threat. I have the power."
The father completely conquered him. He clenched his knotted fists.
"I'd destroy a regiment of creatures like you to spare my little girl
one of the tears you caused her this afternoon."
"After all," George said, defensively, "I'm a human being."
Old Planter shook his head.
"If your father hadn't failed you'd have spent your life in a livery
stable. It takes education, money, breeding to make a human being."
George nodded. He wouldn't need to plan much for himself, after all.
Sylvia's father was doing it for him.
"I've heard some pretty hard words to-day, sir," he said. "It's waked me
up. Can't a man get those things for himself?"
He fancied reminiscence in Old Planter's eyes.
"The right kind can. Get out of here now, Morton, and don't let me see
you or hear of you again."
George stepped between him and the table to pick up his cap. His nerves
tightened. Close to his cap lay an unmounted photograph, not very large,
of Sylvia. What a companion piece for the broken crop! What an ornament
for an altar dedicated to ambition, to anger, and to love! He would take
it under her father's nose, following her father's threats.
He slipped his cap over the photograph, and picked up both, the precious
likeness hidden by the cheap cloth.
"Good-night, sir."
He thought Old Planter started at the ring in his voice. He walked
swiftly from the room. Let Old Planter look out for himself. What did
all those threats amount to? Perhaps he could steal Sylvia as easily
from under her terrible parent's nose.
VI
Lambert, hands in pockets, stopped him in the hall.
"Packed off, as you deserve, but you'll need money."
"Thanks," George said. "I don't want any I don't earn."
"If father should kick me out," Lambert drawled, "I'd be inclined to
take what I could get."
"I'd rather steal," George said.
Lambert smiled whimsically.
"A word of advice. Stealing's dangerous unless you take enough."
George indicated the library door. He tried to imitate Lambert's manner.
"Then I suppose it's genius."
"What are you getting at?"
"I mean," George said, "you people may drive me to stealing, but it'll
be the kind you get patted on the back for."
"Sounds like Wall Street," Lambert smiled.
George wanted to put himself on record in this house.
"I'm going to make money, and don't you forget it."
Lambert's smile widened.
"Then good luck, and a good job--George."
George crushed his helpless irritation, turned, and walked out the front
door; more disappointed than he would have thought possible, because he
had failed to see Sylvia.
Reluctantly he returned to the nearly silent discomfort of his parents.
He tried to satisfy their curiosity.
"Nothing but threats. I'm to be driven to crime if I'm ever heard of
after I leave Oakmont in the morning."
"He might have made it worse," his father grunted.
The conversation died for lack of an interpreter.
His father made a pretence of reading a newspaper. His mother examined
her swollen hands. Her eyes suggested the nearness of tears. George got
up.
"I suppose I'd better be getting ready."
As he stooped to kiss her his mother slipped an arm around his neck.
"Mother's little boy."
George steadied his voice.
"Good-night, Dad."
His father filled his pipe reflectively.
"Good-night, George."
No word of sympathy; no sympathy at all, beyond a fugitive,
half-frightened hint from his mother, because he had run boldly against
a fashion of thinking; little more, really.
He softly closed the door of his room, the last time he would ever do
that! He sat on the edge of the bed. He took Sylvia's photograph from
his pocket and studied it with a deliberate lack of sentiment. He
fancied her desirable lips framing epithets of angry contempt and those
other words to which he had given his own significance.
"You'll not forget."
He looked so long, repeating it in his mind so often, that at last his
eyes blurred, and the pictured lips seemed, indeed, to curve and
straighten.
"You'll not forget."
He tapped the photograph with his forefinger.
"You're going to help me remember," he muttered. "I'll not forget."
VII
He placed the photograph and the broken crop at the bottom of his
oilcloth suitcase. The rest of his packing was simple; he had so little
that was actually his own. There were a few books on a shelf, relics of
his erratic attendance at the neighbouring high school--he regretted now
that his ambition there had been physical rather that mental. Even in
the development of his muscles, however, his brain had grown a good
deal, for he was bright enough. If he made himself work, drawing on
what money he had, he might get ready for college by fall. He had
always envied the boys, who had drifted annually from the high school to
the remote and exhilarating grandeur of a university.
What had Old Planter's sequence been? Education, money, breeding. Of
course. And he guessed that the three necessities might, to an extent,
walk hand in hand. The acquisition of an education would mean personal
contacts, helpful financially, projecting, perhaps, that culture that he
felt was as essential as the rest. Certainly the starting place for him
was a big university where a man, once in, could work his way through.
Lambert went to Yale. Harvard sprang into his mind, but there was the
question of railroad fare and lost time. He'd better try his luck at
Princeton which wasn't far and which had, he'd heard, a welcome for boys
working their way through college.
He examined his bank book. Fortunately, since he had lived with his
parents, he had had little opportunity or need for spending. The balance
showed nearly five hundred dollars, and he would receive fifty more in
the morning. If he could find someone to bolster up his insufficient
schooling for a part of that amount he'd make a go of it; he'd be fairly
on his course.
He went to bed, but he slept restlessly. He wanted to be away from
Oakmont and at work. Through his clouded mind persisted his desire for a
parting glimpse of Sylvia. If he slept at all it was to the discordant
memory of her anger.
The sun smiled into his room, summoning him to get up and go forth.
His father was not there. As if to emphasize the occasion, his mother
deserted her washtub, served his breakfast herself, stood about in
helpless attitudes.
"George," she whispered, toward the close of the desolate meal, "try to
get a job near here. Of course you could never come home, but we could
go to see you."
"Father," he said, "is kicking me out as much as Old Planter is, and you
back him up."
She clasped her hands.
"I've got to. And you can't blame your father. He has to look after
himself and me."
"It makes no difference. I'm not going to take a job near by," he said.
"Where are you going?" she asked, sharply.
He stared at her for a moment, profoundly sorry for her and for himself.
"I'm going to get away from everything that would remind me I've ever
been treated like something less than human."
She gave a little cry.
"Then say good-bye, my son, before your father comes back."
VIII
His father returned and stood impatiently waiting. There was nothing to