The Guarded Heights
hand, from facing Betty who was about to take this enormous step
permanently away from him. Out of his window he could see the tree
beneath which he had made his confession in an effort to kill Betty's
kindness. If he had followed her to the castle then Lambert wouldn't be
limping about exposing a happiness that made George envious and
discontented. It was a reminder with a vengeance that his friends were
mating. Was he, like Blodgett, doomed to a revolting celibacy?
Blodgett, as far as that went, seemed quite to have recovered from the
blow Sylvia had given his pride and heart. With his increasing fortune
his girth had increased, his cheeks grown fuller, his eyes smaller.
He was chatting, when George came down, with Old Planter, who sat
slouched in an easy chair in the library, and Mr. Alston. It was evident
that the occasion was not a joyous one for Betty's father.
"I've half a mind to sell out here," George heard him say, "and take a
share in a cooperative apartment in town. Without Betty the house will
be like a world without a sun."
Blodgett, George guessed, was tottering on the threshold of expansive
sympathy. He drew back, beckoning George.
"Here's your purchaser, Alston. I never knew a half back stay single so
long. And now he's a hero. He's bound to need a nest soon."
Mr. Alston smiled at him.
"Is there anything in that, George?"
George wanted to tell Blodgett to mind his own business. How could the
man, after his recent experience, make cumbersome jokes of that colour?
"There was a time," Mr. Alston went on, "when I fancied you were going
to ask me for Betty. The thought of refusing used to worry me."
George laughed uncomfortably.
"So you would have refused?"
"Naturally. I don't think I could have said yes to Lambert if it hadn't
been for the war. If you ever have a daughter--just one--you'll know
what I mean."
From the three men George received an impression of imminence, shared it
himself. They talked merely to cover their suspense. They were like
people in a throne room, attentive for the entrance of a figure,
exalted, powerful, nearly legendary. Betty, he reflected, had become
that because she was about to marry. He found himself fascinated, too,
looking at the door, waiting with a choked feeling for that girl who had
unconsciously tempted him from their first meeting. Her arrival, indeed,
had about it something of the processional. Mrs. Planter entered the
doorway first, nodding absent-mindedly to the men. Betty's mother
followed, as imperial as ever, more so, if anything, George thought, and
quite unaffected by the deeper elements that gave to this quiet wedding
in a country house a breath of tragedy. Betty Alston Planter! That
evolution clearly meant happiness for her. She tried to express it
through vivacious gestures and cheerful, uncompleted sentences. Betty
next--after a tiny interval, entering not without hesitation exposed in
her walk, in her tall and graceful figure, in her face which was
unaccustomedly colourful, in her eyes which turned from one to another,
doubtful, apprehensive, groping. George didn't want to look at her; her
appearance placed him too much in concord with her reluctant father; too
much in the position of a man making a hurtful and unasked oblation.
Momentarily Betty, the portion of his past shared with her, its
undeveloped possibilities, were swept from his brain. Last of all,
fitting and brilliant close for the procession, came Sylvia between two
bridesmaids. George scarcely saw the others. Sylvia filled his eyes, his
heart, slowly crowded the dissatisfaction from his mind, centred again
his thoughts and his ambitions. Nearly automatically he took Betty's
hands, spoke to her a few formalities, yielded her to her father, and
went on to Sylvia. For nearly two years he hadn't seen her in an evening
gown. What secret did she possess that kept her constant? Already she
was past the age at which most girls of her station marry, yet to him
her beauty had only increased without quite maturing. And why had she
calmly avoided during all these years the nets thrown perpetually by
men? Only Blodgett had threatened to entangle her, and one day had found
her fled. And she wasn't such a fool she didn't know the years were
slipping by. More poignantly than ever he responded to a feeling of
danger, imminent, unavoidable, fatal.
"My companion in the ceremonies," he said.
"I understood that was the arrangement," she answered, without looking
at him.
"I'm glad," he said, "to draw even a reflection from the happiness of
others."
"I often wonder," she remarked, "why people are so selfish."
"Do you mean me," he laughed, "or the leading man and lady?"
She spoke softly to avoid the possibility of anyone else hearing.
"I'm not sure, but I fancy you are the most selfish person I have ever
met."
"That's a stupendous indictment these days," he said with a smile, but
he didn't take her seriously at all, didn't apply her charge to his
soul.
"I'm so glad you're here," he went on, "that we're to be together. I've
wanted it for a long time. You must know that."
She gave him an uncomfortable sense of being captive, of seeking blindly
any course to freedom.
"I no longer know anything about you. I don't care to know."
Lambert and Dalrymple strolled in. Dalrymple opened the cage. George
moved away, aching to prevent such interference by any means he could.
His emotion made him uneasy. To what resolution were his relations with
Dalrymple drifting? How far was he capable of going to keep the other in
his place?
He stood by the mantel, speaking only when it was necessary and then
without consciousness, his whole interest caught by the picture
Dalrymple and Sylvia made, close together by the centre table in the
soft light of a reading lamp.
A servant entered with cocktails. George's interest sharpened. Betty
took hers with the others. Only Sylvia and Dalrymple shook their heads.
Clearly it was an understanding between them--a little denial of hers to
make his infinitely greater one less difficult. She smiled up at him,
indeed, comprehendingly; but George's glance didn't waver from
Dalrymple, and it caught an increase in the other's restlessness, a
following nearly hypnotic, by thoughtful eyes, of the tray with the
little glasses as it passed around the room. George relaxed. He was
conscious enough of Blodgett's bellow:
"Here's to the blushing bride!"
What lack of taste! But how much greater the lack of taste that restless
inheritor exposed! Couldn't even join a formal toast, didn't dare
probably, or was it that he only dared not risk it in public, in front
of Sylvia? And she pandered to his weakness, smiled upon it as if it
were an epic strength. He was sufficiently glad now that Dalrymple had
got into him for so much money.
IV
For George dinner was chiefly a sea of meaningless chatter continually
ruffled by the storm of Blodgett's voice.
"Your brother tells me," he said to Sylvia, "that you're irritating
yourself with socialism."
She looked at him with a little interest then.
"I've been reading. It's quite extraordinary. Odd I should have lived so
long without really knowing anything about such things."
"Not odd at all," George contradicted her. "I should call it odd that
you find any interest in them now. Why do you?"
"One has to occupy one's mind," she answered.
He glanced at her. Why did she have to occupy herself with matter she
couldn't possibly understand, that she would interpret always in a wrong
or unsafe manner? She, too, was restless.
That was the only possible explanation. From Blodgett she had sprung to
war-time fads. From those she had leaped at this convenient one which
tempted people to make sparkling and meaningless phrases.
"It doesn't strike you as at all amusing," he asked, "that you should be
red, that I should be conservative?"
She didn't answer. Blodgett swept them out to sea again.
Later in the evening, however, George repeated his question, and
demanded an answer. They had accomplished the farce of a rehearsal,
source of cumbersome jokes for Blodgett and the clergyman; of doubts and
dreary prospects for Mr. Alston, who had done his share as if submitting
to an undreamed-of punishment.
There was the key-ring joke. It must be a part of the curriculum of all
the theological seminaries. George acted up to it, promising to tie a
string around his finger, or to pin the circlet to his waistcoat.
"Or," Blodgett roared, "at a pinch you might use the ring of the wedding
bells."
George stared at him. How could the man, Sylvia within handgrasp, grin
and feed such a mood? It suddenly occurred to him that once more he was
reading Blodgett wrong, that the man was admirable, far more so than he
could be under an equal trial. Would he, a little later, be asked to
face such an ordeal?
With the departure of the clergyman a cloud of reaction descended upon
the party. Some yawns were scarcely stifled. Sporadic attempts to dance
to a victrola faded into dialogues carried on indifferently, lazily,
where the dancers had chanced to stop with the music. Mr. Alston had
relinquished Sylvia to George at the moment the record had stuttered
out. They were left at a distance from any other couple. George pointed
out a convenient chair, and she sat down and glanced about the room
indifferently.
"At dinner," George said, "I asked you if it didn't impress you as
strange that our social views should be what they are, and opposite."
She didn't answer.
"I mean," he went on, "that I should benefit by your alteration."
"How?" she asked, idly fingering a flower, not looking at him.
"I fancy," he said, "that you'll admit your chief objection to me has
always been my origin, my ridiculous position trotting watchfully behind
the most unsocial Miss Planter. Am I not right?"
"You are entirely wrong," she said, wearily. "That has never had
anything to do with my--my dislike. I think I shall go----"
"Wait," he said. "You are not telling me the truth. If you are
consistent you will turn your enmity to friendship at least. You will
decide there was nothing unusual in my asking you to marry me. You will
even find in that a reason for my anxiety at Upton. You will understand
that it is quite inevitable I should ask you to marry me again."
She sprang up and hurried away from him.
"Put on another record, Dolly----"
And almost before he had realized it Betty had taken her away, and the
evening's opportunities had closed.
V
For him the house became like a room at night out of which the only lamp
has been carried.
The others drifted away. George tried to read in the library. His
uneasiness, his anger, held him from bed. When at last he went upstairs
he fancied everyone was asleep, but moving in the hall outside his room
he saw a figure in a dressing gown. It paused as if it didn't care to be
detected going in the direction of the stairs. George caught the
figure's embarrassed hesitation, fancied a movement of retreat.
"Dalrymple!" he called, softly.
The other waited sullenly.
"What you up to?" George asked.
"Thought I'd explore downstairs for a book. Couldn't sleep. Nothing in
my room worth bothering with."
George smiled, the memory of Blodgett's admirable behaviour crowding his
mind. What better time than now to let his anger dictate to him, as it
had done that day in his office?
"Come in for a minute," he proposed to Dalrymple, and opened his door.
Dalrymple shook his head, but George took his arm and led him, guessing
that Dalrymple feared the subject of the notes.
"Bad humour!" George said. "You seem to be the only one up. I don't mind
chatting with you before turning in. Fact is, these wedding parties are
stupid, don't you think?"