The Guarded Heights
his task, but he was afraid to examine the still form he saw at last at
the base of the tree, and he knew very well that that was only because
Lambert was his friend. He designated a man to guide the stretcher
bearers, and bent, his mind full of swift running and vicious tackles,
abrupt and brutal haltings of this figure that seemed to be asleep, that
would never run again.
Lambert stirred.
"Been expecting you, George," he said, sleepily.
"Anything besides your leg?" George asked.
"Guess not," Lambert answered. "What more do you want? Thanks for
coming."
George left him to the stretcher bearers and hurried on full of envy;
for Lambert was going home, and George hadn't dared stop to urge him to
forget that dangerous nonsense he had talked the other night. Nonsense!
You had only to look at these brown figures trying to flank the spouting
guns. Why did they have to glance continually at him? Why had they
paused when he had paused to speak to Lambert? Same side of the window!
But a few of them stumbled and slept as they fell.
He had just begun to worry about the blood in his right boot when
something snapped at the bone of his good leg, and he pitched forward
helplessly.
"Some tackle!" he thought.
Then through his brain, suddenly confused, flashed an overwhelming
gratitude. He couldn't walk. He couldn't go forward. He wouldn't have to
take any more risks beyond those shared with the stretcher bearers who
would carry him back. Like Lambert, he was through. He was going
home--home to Sylvia, to success, to the coveted knowledge of why he had
fought this war.
The lieutenant, frightened, solicitous, crawled to him, summoning up the
stretcher bearers, for the advance had gone a little ahead, the German
range had shortened to meet it.
"How bad, sir?"
George indicated his legs.
"Never learned how to walk on my hands."
The lieutenant straightened, calling out cursing commands. George
managed to achieve a sitting posture. By gad! This leg hurt! It made him
a little giddy. Only once before, he thought vaguely, had he experienced
such pain. What was the trouble here? The advance had halted, probably
because the word had spread that he was down.
What was it Lambert had said about putting the rank and file on the same
side of the window? The rank and file wanted an officer, and the higher
the officer the farther it would go. That was answer enough for Lambert,
Squibs, Allen----And he would point it out to them all, for the
stretcher bearers had come up, had lifted him to the stretcher, were
ready to start him back to decency, to safety----
Thank God there wasn't any multitude or an insane trainer here to order
him about.
"They've stopped again," the lieutenant sobbed. "Some of them are coming
back."
That sort of thing did spread like a pestilence, but there was nothing
George could do about it. He had done his job. Good job, too. Soft
billet now. Decency. Sylvia. No Green. No multitude----
"You make a touchdown!"
And he became aware at last of the multitude--raving higher officers in
comfortable places; countless victims of invasion, waiting patiently to
go home; myriads in the cities, intoxicated with enthusiasm and wine,
tumbling happily from military play to patriotic bazaar; but most
eloquent of all in that innumerable company were the silent and cold
brown figures lying about him in the underbrush.
His brain, a little delirious, was filled with the roaring from the
stands. The crowd was commanding him to get ahead somehow, to wipe out
those deadly nests, to let the regiment, the army, tired nations, sweep
on to peace and the end of an unbelievable madness.
Once more he glanced through blurred eyes at his clothing and saw
livery, and this time he had put it on of his own free will. He seemed
to hear Squibs:
"World lives by service."
"I'm in the service," he thought. "Got to serve."
It impressed him as quite pitiful that now he would never know just why.
"Where you going?" he demanded of the stretcher bearers who had begun to
carry him back.
They tried to explain, hurrying a little. He threatened them with his
revolver.
"Turn around. Let's go--with the battalion."
The lieutenant saw, the men saw, these frightened figures running with
loping steps, carrying a stretcher which they jerked and twitched so
that the figure lying on it with arm raised, holding a revolver,
suffered agonies and struggled not to be flung to the ground. And the
lieutenant and the men sprang to their feet, ran forward, shouted:
"Follow the Major!"
The German gunners, caught by surprise, hesitated, had trouble,
therefore, shortening their ranges; and as panic spreads so does the
sudden spirit of victory.
"Same side of the window!" George grumbled as the bearers set him down
behind the captured guns.
"Just the same," he rambled, "fine fellows. Who said they weren't fine
fellows?"
He wanted to argue it angrily with a wounded German propped against a
shattered tree, but the lieutenant interrupted him, bringing up a
medical orderly, asking him if he had any instructions. George answered
very pleasantly:
"Not past me, Mr. Planter! Rank and file myself!"
The lieutenant glanced significantly at the medical orderly. He looked
sharply at George's hair and suddenly pointed.
"They nicked him in the head, too."
The orderly knelt and examined the place the lieutenant had indicated.
"Oh, no, sir. That's quite an old scar."
XII
"Lost a leg or two?" Allen asked.
"Not yet. Don't think I shall. Planter's not so lucky, but he'll get
home sooner."
Allen brought George his one relief from the deadly monotony of the base
hospital. He had sent for him because he wanted his opinion as to the
possibility of an armistice. Blodgett, however, hadn't waited for the
result of the conference. The day Allen arrived a letter came from him,
telling George not to worry.
"King Ferdy along about the last of September whispered I'd better begin
to unload. It's a killing, George."
With his mind clear of that George could be amused by Allen. The friend
of the people wore some striking clothes from London tailors and
haberdashers. He carried a cunning little cane. He had managed something
extremely neat in moustaches. He spoke with a perceptible West End
accent. But in reply to George's sneering humour he made this
astonishing remark:
"It isn't nearly as much fun being a top-hole person as I thought it was
going to be."
"You're lucky to have found it out," George said, "for your job's about
over. Of course I could get you something in Wall Street."
"Doubt if I should want it," Allen said. "I've always got my old job."
George whistled.
"You mean you'd go back to long hair, cheap clothes, and violent words?"
"Why not? I only took your offer, Morton, because I was inclined to
agree with you that in the outside world's anxiety to look at what was
going on over the fence people'd stop thinking. Russia didn't stop
thinking, and after the armistice you watch America begin to use its
brain."
"You mean the downtrodden," George sneered.
"That's the greater part of any country," Allen said, his acquired
accent forgotten, his perfectly clean hands commencing to gesture.
But George wouldn't listen to him, got rid of him, turned to the wall
with an ugly feeling that he had gone out of his way to nurture one of
the makers of the hell after war.
PART V
THE NEW WORLD
I
George crushed his uneasy thoughts, trying to dwell instead on the idea
that he was going back to the normal, but all at once he experienced a
dread of the normal, perhaps, because he was no longer normal himself.
Could he limp before Sylvia with his old assurance? Would people pity
him, or would he irritate them because he had a disability? And snatches
of his talks at the front with Wandel etched themselves sharply against
his chaotic recollections of those days. Was Wandel fair? Was it,
indeed, the original George Morton people had always liked? Here, apart
from the turmoil, he didn't believe it, didn't dare believe it. Those
people wouldn't have cared for him except for his assumption of
qualities which he had chosen as from a counter display. Yet was it the
real George Morton that made him in superlative moments break the traces
of his acquired judgments, as he had done at New Haven, in the Argonne,
to dash selflessly into the service of others? Rotten inside, indeed!
Even in the hospital he set out to crush that impulsive, dangerous part
of him.
But the nearer he drew to home the more he suffered from a depression
that he could only define as homesickness--homesickness for the old
ways, the old habits, the old thoughts; and the memory of his temerity
with Sylvia at the moment of their parting was like a great cloud
threatening the future with destructive storm.
Lambert, wearing a contrivance the doctors had given him in place of
what the country had taken away, accompanied by Betty and the Baillys,
met the transport. Betty and Mrs. Bailly cried, and George shook his
heavy stick at them.
"See here! I'm not going to limp like this always."
Bailly encircled him with his thin arms.
"You're too old to play football, anyway, George."
George found himself wanting Betty's arms, their forgetfulness, their
understanding, their tenderness.
"When are you two going to be married?" he forced himself to ask.
Betty looked away, her white cheeks flushing, but Lambert hurried an
answer.
"As soon as you're able to get to Princeton. You're to be best man."
"Honoured."
So Lambert's crippling hadn't made any difference to Betty, but how did
Sylvia take it? He wanted to ask Lambert where she was, if anything had
happened to her, any other mad affair, now that the war was over, like
the one with Blodgett; but he couldn't ask, and no one volunteered to
tell him, and it wasn't until his visit to Oakmont, on his first leave
from the hospital, that he learned anything whatever about her, and that
was only what his eyes in a moment told him.
Lambert drove over and got George, explaining that his mother wanted to
see him.
"She'd have come to the dock," he said, "but Father these days is rather
hard to leave."
George went reluctantly, belligerently, for since his landing his
feeling of homesickness had increased with the realization that his
victorious country was more radically altered than he had fancied. The
ride, however, had the advantage of an uninterrupted talk with Lambert
which developed gossip that Blodgett, stuffed with business, hadn't yet
given him.
Goodhue and Wandel, for instance, were still abroad, holding down showy
jobs at the peace conference. Dalrymple, on the other hand, had been
home for months.
"Most successful war," Lambert told George. "Scarcely smelled fire, but
got a couple foreign decorations, and a promotion--my poor old leg
wasn't worth it, or yours, George, but what odds now? And as soon as the
show stopped at Sedan he was trotting back. Can't help admiring him,
for that sort of thing spells success, and he's steady as a church. Try
to realize that, and take a new start with him, for he's really likeable
when he keeps to the straight and narrow. Prohibition's going to fit in
very well, although I believe he's got himself in hand."
George stared at the ugly, familiar landscape, trying not to listen,
particularly to the rest. Why should the Planters have taken Dalrymple
into the marble temple?
"A small start," Lambert was saying, "but if he makes the grade there's
a big future for him there. I fancy he's anxious to meet you halfway.
How about you, George?"
"I'll make no promises," George said. "It depends entirely on
Dalrymple."
Lambert didn't warn him, so he didn't expect to find Dalrymple enjoying