The Guarded Heights
the early spring graces of Oakmont. He managed the moment of meeting,
however, without disclosing anything. Dalrymple, for the time, was quite
unimportant. It was Sylvia he was anxious about, Sylvia who undoubtedly
nursed a sort of horror of what he had ventured to do and say at Upton.
Everyone else was outside, as if making a special effort to welcome him.
Where was she?
He resented the worshipful attentions of the servants.
"I'm quite capable of managing myself," he said, as he motioned them
aside and lowered himself from the automobile.
He disliked old Planter's heartiness, although he could see the physical
effort it cost, for the once-threatening eyes were nearly dark; and the
big shoulders stooped forward as if in a constant effort to escape a
pursuing pain; and the voice, which talked about heroes and the
country's debt and the Planters' debt, quavered and once or twice broke
altogether, then groped doubtfully ahead in an effort to recover the
propelling thought.
Mrs. Planter, at least, spared him any sentimental gratitude. She was
rather grayer and had in her face some unremembered lines, but those
were the only changes George could detect. As far as her manner went
this greeting might have followed the farewell at Upton after only a day
or so.
"I hope your wound isn't very painful."
"My limping," he answered, "is simply bad habit. I'm overcoming it."
"That's nice. Then you'll be able to play polo again!"
"I should hope so, as long as ponies have four good legs."
He wished other people could be like her, so unobtrusively, unannoyingly
primeval.
As he entered the hall he saw Sylvia without warning, and he caught his
breath and watched her as she came slowly down the stairs. He tried to
realize that this was that coveted moment he had so frequently fancied
the war would deny him--the moment that brought him face to face with
Sylvia again, to witness her enmity, to desire to break it down, to want
her more than he had ever done.
She came straight to him, but even in the presence of the others she
didn't offer her hand, and all she said was:
"I was quite sure you would come back."
"You knew I had to," he laughed.
Then he sharpened his ears, for she was telling her brother something
about Betty's having telephoned she was driving over to take Lambert,
Dalrymple, and herself to Princeton.
No. The war had changed her less than any one George had seen. She was
as beautiful, as unforgiving, as intolerant; and he guessed that it was
she and not Betty who had made the arrangement which would take her away
from him.
"George will come, too," Lambert began.
"Afraid I'm not up to it," George refused, dryly.
At Betty's wedding, however, she would have to be with him, for it
developed during this nervous chatter that they would share the honours
of the bridal party.
So, helplessly, he had to watch her go, and for a moment he felt as if
he had had a strong tonic, for she alone had been able to give him an
impression that the world hadn't altered much, after all.
The reaction came in the quiet hours following. He was at first
resentful that Mrs. Planter should accompany him on the painful walk the
doctors had ordered him, like Old Planter, to take daily. He had wanted
to go back to the little house, highest barrier of all which Sylvia
would never let him climb. Then, glancing at the quiet woman, he squared
his shoulders. Suppose Wandel had been right! Here was a test. At any
rate, the war was a pretty large and black background for so tiny a high
light. Purposefully, therefore, he carried out his original purpose. By
the side of Mrs. Planter he limped toward the little house. They didn't
say much. It wasn't easy for him to talk while he exercised, and perhaps
she understood that.
Even before the clean white building shone in the sun through the trees
he heard a sound that made him wince. It was like a distant drum, badly
played. Then he understood what it was, and his boyhood, and the day of
awakening and revolt, submerged him in a hot wave of shame. He could see
his mother rising and bending rhythmically over fine linen which emerged
from dirty water, making her arms look too red and swollen. He glanced
quickly at Mrs. Planter to whose serenity had gone the upward effort of
many generations. Just how appalling, now that war had mocked life so
dreadfully, now that a pitiless hand had a moment ago stripped all
pretence from the world, was the difference between them?
It was the woman at the tub, curiously enough, who seemed trying to tell
him, trying to warn him to keep his mouth shut. Then the house was
visible through the trees. He raised his stick.
"I wanted to see it again," he said, defiantly, "because I was born
there. I lived there."
She paused and stared with him, without saying anything, without any
change of expression. After a time she turned.
"Have you looked enough? Shall we go back, George?"
He nodded, glancing at her wonderingly. After all, he had had very
little love in his life. Mrs. Bailly, Betty----
He had never dreamed of such gratitude as this. Lambert, home with his
war madness fresh upon him, must have told her, as an example of what a
man might do. But was her action all gratitude? Rather wasn't it a
signpost at the parting of two ages?
If that were so, he told himself, the world had left Sylvia hopelessly
behind.
II
The memory of that unguarded moment remained in his mind uncomfortably.
He carried it finally from the hospital to his musty apartment, where he
stripped off his uniform and looked in the glass, for the first time in
nearly two years his own master, no man's servant.
Was he his own master as long as he could commit such sentimental
follies, as long as he could suspect that he had told Wandel the truth
on the Vesle? This nostalgia must be the rebound from the war, of which
he had heard so much, which made men weak, or lazy, or indifferent.
He continued to stare in the glass, angry, amazed. He had to overcome
this homesick feeling. He had to prepare himself for harder battles than
he had ever fought. He had had plenty of warning of the selfishness that
was creeping over the world like a black pestilence. Where was his own
self-will that had carried him so far?
He locked himself, as it were, in his apartment. He sat down and called
on his will. With a systematic brutality he got himself in hand. He
reviewed his aims: to make more money, to get Sylvia. He emerged at
last, hard and uncompromising, ready for the selfish ones, and went down
town. Blodgett greeted him with a cheer.
"Miracles! For the first time since you got back you look yourself
again."
"I am," George answered, "all but the limp. That will go some day
maybe."
He wanted it to go. He desired enormously to rid himself of the last
reminder of his service.
Lambert was definitely caught by the marble temple, but Goodhue and he
would stay together, more or less tied to Blodgett, to accept the
opportunities George foresaw for dragging money by sharp reasoning from
the reconstruction period. He applied himself to exchange. From their
position they could run wild in the stock market at little risk, but
there were big things to be made out of exchange, about which the
cleverest men didn't seem to know anything worth a penny in any
currency.
Everyone noticed his recovery, and everyone congratulated him except
Bailly. When George went down to Betty's wedding the long tutor met him
at the station, crying out querulously:
"What's happened to you?"
George laughed.
"Got over the war reaction, I guess."
"What the deuce did you go to war for at all then?" Bailly asked.
"Haven't found that out myself yet," George answered, "but I know I
wouldn't go to another, even if they'd have me."
He grimaced at his injured foot.
"And they're going to give you some kind of a medal!" Bailly cried.
"I didn't ask for it," George said, "but I daresay a lot of people, you
among them, went down to Washington and did."
Bailly was a trifle uncomfortable.
"See here," George said. "I don't want your old medal, and I don't
intend to be scolded about it. I suppose I've got to rush right out to
the Alstons."
"Let's stop at the club," Bailly proposed. "People want to see you.
We'll fight the war over with the veterans."
"Damn the war!" George said.
Mrs. Bailly, when he paused for a moment at the house in Dickinson
Street, attacked him, and quite innocently, from a different direction.
"It was the wish of my life, George, that you should have Betty, and you
might have had. I can't help feeling that."
"You're prejudiced," George laughed.
He went to the Alstons, nevertheless, almost unwillingly, and he delayed
his arrival until the last minute. The intimate party had gathered for a
dinner and a rehearsal that night. The wedding was set for the next
evening.
The Tudor house had an unfamiliar air, as though Betty already had taken
from it every feature that had given it distinction in George's mind.
And Betty herself was caught by all those detailed considerations that
surround a girl, at this vital moment of her life, with an atmosphere
regal, mysterious, a little sacred. So George didn't see her until just
before dinner, or Sylvia, who was upstairs with her. Lambert and
Blodgett were about, however, and so was Dalrymple. George was glad
Lambert had asked Blodgett to usher; he owed it to him, but he was
annoyed that Dalrymple should have been included in the party, for it
was another mark, on top of his presence in the marble temple, of a
tightening bond of intimacy between him and the Planters. George
examined the man, therefore, with an eager curiosity. He looked well
enough, but George remained unconvinced by his apparent reformation,
suspecting its real purpose was to impress a willing public, for he had
studied Dalrymple during many years without uncovering any real
strength, or any disposition not to answer gladly to every appeal of the
senses. At least he was restless, rising from his chair too often to
wander about the room, but George conceded with a smile that his own
arrival might be responsible for that. The matter of the notes hadn't
been mentioned, but they existed undoubtedly even in Dalrymple's
careless mind, which must have forecasted an uncomfortable day of
payment.
Lambert seemed sure enough of his friend.
"Dolly's sticking to the job like a leech," he said to George when they
went upstairs to dress.
"I've no faith in him," George answered, shortly.
"You're an unforgiving brute," Lambert said.
George hastened away from the subject.
"I'm not chameleon, at least," he admitted with a smile, "which reminds
me. I don't see any of your dearly beloved brothers of the ranks in your
bridal party. Have you put private Oscar Liporowski up for any of your
clubs yet?"
"Unforgiving and unforgetting!" Lambert laughed.
"Then you acknowledge that talk in the Argonne was war madness?"
"By no means," Lambert answered, suddenly serious. "Let me get married,
will you? I can't bother with anything else now. Sylvia, whose mind
isn't filled with romance, threatens to become the socialist of the
family."
George stared at him.
"What are you talking about?"
"About what Sylvia's talking about," Lambert answered.
"Now I know you're mad," George said.
Lambert shook his head.
"But I don't take her very seriously. It's a nice game to seek beauties
in Bolshevism. It's played in some of the best houses. You must have
observed it--how wonderfully it helps get through a tea or a dinner."
III
George went to his own room, amused and curious. Could Sylvia talk
communism, even parrot-like, and deny him the rights of a brother? He
became more anxious than before to see her. He shrank, on the other