The Guarded Heights
thoroughly he must realize George had him. From the first George had
manoeuvred to avoid the necessity of shocking habits of thought and
action that were inborn in the Planters, so he gladly agreed.
"Meantime, you'll keep away from her?"
"Just as far as possible," Dalrymple answered. "You'll be able to see
that for yourself."
"Then," George said, "you arrange to get yourself out of the way as soon
as Lambert and Betty return. Meantime, if you go back on your word, I'll
get hold of Lambert."
Dalrymple leant against the wall, morosely angry, restless, discouraged.
"I'll admit you could make some unpleasantness all around," he said,
moistening his lips. "I wish I'd never touched your dirty money----"
George stepped into his room and closed the door.
VII
The awakening of the house to its most momentous day aroused George
early, hurried him from his bed, sent him downstairs in a depressed,
self-censorious mood, as if he and not Dalrymple had finished the
caraffe. That necessary battle behind a locked door continued to fill
his mind like the memory of a vivid and revolting nightmare. He fled
from the increasing turmoil of an exceptional agitation, but he could
not escape his own evil temper. Even the flowering lanes where Goodhue
and he had run so frequently during their undergraduate days mocked his
limping steps, his heavy cane; seemed asking him what there was in
common between that eager youth and the man who had come back to share a
definite farewell with Betty; to stand, stripped of his veneer, against
a wall to avoid a more difficult parting from Sylvia. There was one
thing: the determination of the boy lived in the man, become greater,
more headstrong, more relentless.
He paused and, chin in hand, rested against a gate. What about Wandel,
who had admired the original George Morton? Would he approve of his
threats to Dalrymple, of his probable course with the Planters? If he
were consistent he would have to; yet people were so seldom consistent.
It was even likely that George's repetition of Dalrymple's shocking
insults would be frowned upon more blackly than the original,
unforgiveable wrong. George straightened and walked back toward the
house. It made no difference what people thought. He was George Morton.
Even at the cost of his own future he would keep Sylvia from joining her
life to Dalrymple's, and certainly Lambert could be made to understand
why that had to be.
The warm sun cheered him a little. Dalrymple was scared. He wouldn't
make George take any further steps. It was going to be all right. But
why didn't women see through Dalrymple, or rather why didn't he more
thoroughly give himself away to them? Because, George decided, guarded
women from their little windows failed to see the real world.
Dalrymple obsessed him even when, after luncheon, he sat with Lambert
upstairs, discussing business chiefly. He wanted to burst out with:
"Why don't you wake up? How can you approve of this intimacy between
your sister and a man like that?"
He didn't believe the other knew that intimacy had progressed; and when
Lambert spoke of Dalrymple, calling attention again to his apparent
reformation, George cleansed his mind a trifle, placing, as it were, the
foundation for a possible announcement of a more active enmity.
"Don't see why you admire anything he does, Lambert. It isn't
particularly pleasant for me to have you, for I've been watching him,
and I've quite made up my mind. You asked me when I first got home if I
wouldn't meet him halfway. I don't fancy he'd ever start in my
direction, but if he did I wouldn't meet him. Sorry. That's definite. I
must use my own judgment even where it clashes with your admirations."
Lambert stared at him.
"You'll never cease being headstrong," he said. "It's rather safer to
have any man for a friend."
George had an uncomfortable sense of having received a warning, but
Blodgett blundered in just then with news from the feminine side of the
house.
"Some people downstairs already, and I've just had word--from one of
those little angels that talk like the devil--that Betty's got all her
war-paint on."
"You have the ring?" Lambert asked George.
George laughed.
"Yes, I have the ring, and I shan't lose it, or drop it; and I'll keep
you out of people's way, and tell you what to answer, and see generally
you don't make an idiot of yourself. Josiah, if he faints, help me pick
him up."
Blodgett's gardenia bobbed.
"Weddings make Josiah feel old. Say, George, you're no spring chicken
yourself. I know lots of little girls who cry their eyes out for you."
"Shut up," George said. "How about a reconnaissance, Lambert?"
But they were summoned then, and crept down a side staircase, and heard
music, and found themselves involved in Betty's great moment.
At first George could only think of Betty as she had stood long ago in
the doorway of Bailly's study, and it was difficult to find in this
white-clothed, veiled, and stately woman the girl he had seen first of
all that night. This, after a fashion, was his last glimpse of her. She
appeared to share that conception, for she carried to the improvised
altar in the drawing-room an air of facing far places, divided by
boundaries she couldn't possibly define from all that she had ever
known. After the ceremony she smiled wonderingly at George while she
absorbed the vapid and pattered remarks of, perhaps, a hundred old
friends of the family. George, who knew most of them, resented their
sympathy and curiosity.
"If they don't stop asking me about the war," he whispered to Blodgett
during a lull, "I'm going to call for help."
Some, however, managed to interest him with remarks about the rebirth of
football. Green had been at Princeton all along, Stringham was coming
back in the fall, and there were brilliant team prospects. Would George
be able to help with the coaching? He indicated his injured leg. He
hadn't the time, anyway. He was going to stick closer than ever to Wall
Street. He fancied that Sylvia, who stood near him, resented the lively
interest of these people. She spoke to him only when she couldn't
possibly avoid it, glancing, George noticed, at Dalrymple who rather
pointedly kept away from her. So far so good. Then Dalrymple did realize
George would have his way. George looked at Sylvia, thinking
whimsically:
"I shan't let anybody put you where you wouldn't bother to hate me any
more."
He spoke to her aloud.
"I believe we're to have a bite to eat."
She followed him reluctantly, and during the supper yielded of herself
nothing whatever to him, chatting by preference with any one convenient,
even with Blodgett whom she had treated so shabbily. Very early she left
the room with Betty and Mrs. Alston, and George experienced a strong
desire to escape also, to flee anywhere away from this house and the
bitter dissatisfactions he had found within its familiar walls. He saw
Mrs. Bailly and took her hand.
"I want to go home with you and Squibs to-night."
Mrs. Bailly smiled her gratitude, but as he was about to move away she
stopped him with a curiosity he had not expected from her.
"Isn't Sylvia Planter beautiful? Why do you suppose she doesn't marry?"
George laughed shortly, shook his head, and hurried upstairs to
Lambert's room; yet Mrs. Bailly had increased his uneasiness. Perhaps it
was the too-frequent repetition of that question that had made Sylvia
turn temporarily to Blodgett; that was, possibly, focussing her eyes on
Dalrymple now; yet why, from such a field, did she choose these men?
What was one to make of her mind and its unexpected reactions? The
matter of marriage was, not unnaturally, in the air here. Lambert faced
him with it.
"Josiah's right. When are you going to make a home, Apollo Morton?"
George turned on him angrily, not bothering to choose his words.
"Such a question from you is ridiculous. You've not forgotten the dark
ages either."
Lambert looked at him for a moment affectionately, not without sympathy.
"Don't be an ass, George."
George's laughter was impatient.
"Don't forget, Lambert, your old friends, Corporal Sol Roseberg, and
Bugler Ignatius Chronos. No men better! Chairs at the club! Legs under
the table at Oakmont----"
Lambert put his hands on George's shoulders.
"It isn't that at all. You know it very well."
"What is it then?" George asked, sharply.
"Don't pretend ignorance," Lambert answered, "and it must be your own
fault. Whose else could it possibly be? And I'm sorry, have been for
years."
"It isn't my fault," George said. "The situation exists. I'm glad you
recognize it. You'll understand it's a subject I can't let you joke
about."
"All right," Lambert said, "but I wonder why you're always asking for
trouble."
VIII
Betty had plenty of colour to-night. As she passed George, her head bent
against the confetti, he managed to touch her hand, felt a quick
responsive pressure, heard her say:
"Good-bye, George."
The whispered farewell was like a curtain, too heavy ever to be lifted
again, abruptly let down between two fond people.
IX
Unexpectedly the companionships of the little house in Dickinson Street
failed to lighten George's discontented humour. Mrs. Bailly's question
lingered in his mind, coupling itself there with her disappointment that
he, instead of Lambert, hadn't married Betty; and, when she retired, the
tutor went back to his unwelcome demands of the day before. Hadn't
George made anything of his great experience? Was it possible it had
left him quite unchanged? What were his immediate plans, anyway?
"You may as well understand, sir," George broke in, impatiently, "that I
am going to stay right in Wall Street and make as much money and get as
much power as I can."
"Why? In the name of heaven, why?" Bailly asked, irritably. "You are
already a very rich man. You've dug for treasure and found it, but can
you tell me you've kept your hands clean? Money is merely a
conception--a false one. Capitalism will pass from the world."
George grunted.
"With the last two surviving human beings."
"Mockery won't keep you blind always," Bailly said, "to the strivings of
men in the mines and the factories----"
"And in the Senate and the House," George jeered, "and in Russia and
Germany, and in little, ambitious corners. If you're against the League
of Nations it's because, like all those people, you're willing Rome
should burn as long as personal causes can be fostered and selfish
schemes forwarded. No agitator, naturally, wants the suffering world
given a sedative----"
Bailly smiled.
"Even if you're wrong-headed, I'm glad to hear you talk that way. At
last you're thinking of humanity."
"I'm thinking of myself," George snapped.
Bailly shook his head.
"I believe you're talking from your heart."
"I'm talking from a smashed leg," George cried, "and I'm sleepy and
tired and cross, and I guess I'd better go to bed."
"It all runs back to the beginning," Bailly said in a discouraged voice.
"I'm afraid you'll never learn the meaning of service."
George sprang up, wincing. Bailly's wrinkled face softened; his young
eyes filled with sympathy.
"Does that wound still bother you, George?"
"Yes, sir," George answered, softly. "I guess it bothers as much as it
ever did."
X
One virtue of the restlessness of which Bailly had reminded him was its
power to swing George's mind for a time from his unpleasant
understanding with Dalrymple. It had got even into Blodgett's blood.
"About the honestest man I can think of these days," he complained to
George one morning, "is the operator of a crooked racing stable. All the
cards are marked. All the dice are loaded. If they didn't have to let us
in on some of the tricks, we'd go bust, George, my boy."