The Guarded Heights
beyond saying, "Betty'll probably let you hear from her in the morning.
That's the reason I wanted you to know how things stand. I'm hurrying
back now to our confused house."
George followed him to the door.
"Dalrymple--where is he?" he asked.
"Gone to his parents. He'll try to play the game for the present."
"At a price," George said.
Lambert nodded.
"Rather well-earned, too, on the whole," he answered, ironically.
XIX
George slept little that night. The fact that Lambert believed him
responsible for the transformation in Sylvia was sufficiently exciting.
In Sylvia's manner her brother must have read something he had not quite
expressed to George. And why wouldn't she mention him? Why couldn't she
bear to have the others mention him? With his head bowed on his hands he
sat before the desk, staring at the diminishing fire, and in this
posture he fell at last asleep to be startled by Wandel who had not
troubled to have himself announced. The fire was quite dead. In the
bright daylight streaming into the room George saw that the little man
held a newspaper in his hand.
"Is it a habit of great men not to go to bed?"
George stood up and stretched. He indicated the newspaper.
"You've come with the evil tidings?"
"About Sylvia and Dolly," Wandel began.
George yawned.
"I must bathe and become presentable, for this is another day."
"You've already seen it?" Wandel asked, a trifle puzzled.
"No, but what else should there be in the paper?"
Wandel stared for a moment, then carefully folded the paper and tossed
it in the fireplace.
"Nothing much," he answered, lighting a cigarette, "except hold-ups,
murders, new strikes, fresh battles among our brethren of the Near
East--nothing of the slightest consequence. By by. Make yourself, great
man, fresh and beautiful for the new day."
XX
George wondered why Wandel should have come at all, or, having come, why
he should have left in that manner; and he was sorry he had answered as
he had, for Wandel invariably knew a great deal, more than most people.
In this case he had probably come only to help, but in George's brain
nothing could survive for long beyond hazards as to what the morning
might develop. Betty was going to communicate with him, and she would
naturally expect to find him at his office, so he hurried down town and
waited, forcing himself to the necessary details of his work. For the
first time the mechanics of making money seemed dreary and unprofitable.
Goodhue came in with a clearly designed lack of curiosity. Had his
partner all along suspected the truth, or had Wandel been talking? For
that matter, did Goodhue himself experience a sense of loss?
"Not so surprising, George. Dolly's always been after her--even back in
the Princeton days, and she's played around with him since they were
children; yet I was a little shocked. I never thought it would quite
come off."
It was torture for George to listen, and he couldn't possibly talk about
it, so he led Goodhue quite easily to the day's demands; but Blodgett
appeared not long after with a drooping countenance. Why did they all
have to come to him to discuss the unannounced wedding of Sylvia
Planter?
"She ought to have done better," Blodgett disapproved funereally.
He fingered a gaudy handkerchief. He thrust it in his pocket, drew it
forth again, folded it carefully with his pudgy hands.
"Don't think I've ever ceased to regret----" he started rather
pitifully.
After a moment's absorbed scrutiny of George he went on.
"If she had picked somebody like you I wouldn't have minded. Papa
Blodgett would have given you both his blessing."
So they had all guessed something! George questioned uneasily if
Blodgett's suspicions had lived during the course of his own unfortunate
romance, and he was sorrier than ever he had had to help destroy that.
He got rid of Blodgett and refused to see any one else, but he had to
answer the telephone, for that would almost certainly be Betty's means
of communication. Each time the pleasant bell tinkled he seized the
receiver, and each time cut short whatever masculine worries reached
him. The uneven pounding of the ticker punctuated his suspense. It was a
feverish morning in the market, but not once did he rise to glance at
the tape which streamed neglected into the basket.
It was after one o'clock when he snatched the receiver from the hook
again with a hopeless premonition of another disappointment. Then he
heard Betty's voice, scarcely more than an anxious whisper "George!"
"Yes, yes, Betty."
"My car will be somewhere between Altman's and Tiffany's at two o'clock,
as near the corner of Thirty-fifth Street as they'll let me get. Lambert
knows. It's all right."
"But, Betty----"
"Just be there," she said, and must have hung up.
He glanced at his watch. He could start now. He hurried from the
building, but there was no point in haste. He had plenty of time, too
much time; and Betty hadn't said he would see Sylvia; hadn't given him
time to ask; but she must have arranged an interview, else why should
she care to see him at all, why her manner of a conspirator?
He reached the rendezvous well ahead of time, but he recognized Betty's
car just beyond the corner, and saw her wave to him anxiously. He
stepped in and sat at her side. She laughed nervously.
"I guessed you would be a little ahead," she said as the car commenced
to crawl north.
"Am I to see Sylvia?"
Betty nodded.
"Just once. This noon, before I telephoned, she acknowledged that she
wanted to see you--to talk to you for the last time. That's the way she
put it."
Betty smiled sceptically.
"You know I don't believe anything of the sort."
"What do you think can be done?" George asked.
She didn't suggest anything, merely repeating her faith, going on while
she looked at George curiously.
"So all the time, George--and I didn't really guess, but I might have
known you would. I can remember now that day at Princeton when I asked
you about her dog, and your anxiety one night at Josiah's when you
wanted to know if she was going to be married--oh, plenty of hints now.
George! Why did you let it go so far?"
"Couldn't help myself, Betty."
She looked at him helplessly.
"And what have you done to her?"
"If you can't guess----" George said.
Betty smiled reminiscently.
"Perhaps I can guess. You would do just that, George, when there was
nothing else."
"You don't blame me?" he asked. "You don't ask, as Lambert did, why I
waited so long?"
She shook her head.
"I'm sure," she said, "when you came last night you saw a Sylvia none of
us had ever met before. Don't you think it had come upon her all at once
that she was no longer Sylvia Planter, that in defeating you she had
destroyed herself? If that is so, she has every bit of sympathy I'm
capable of, and we must think first of all of her. The pride's still
there, but quite a different thing. She's never known fear before,
George, and now she's afraid, terribly afraid, most of all, I think, of
herself."
George counted the corners, was relieved when beyond Fiftieth Street the
traffic thinned and they went faster. He took Betty's hand, and found
that the touch steadied and encouraged, because at last her fingers
seemed to reach his mind again.
"Betty! Do you think she cares at all?"
"I'm prejudiced," Betty laughed, "but I think the harder she'd been the
more she's cared; but she wouldn't talk about you except to say she
would see you for a minute this once. Lambert's lunching with Dolly."
"We are conspirators," George said, "and I don't like it, but I must see
her once."
They drew up at the curb, got out, and entered the hall. The house was
peculiarly without sound. George glanced at the entrance to the room
where he had found Sylvia last night.
"I think she's in Mr. Planter's study," Betty said. "He hasn't come
downstairs yet."
She led him through the library to a small, square room--a quiet and
comfortable book-lined retreat where Old Planter had been accustomed to
supplement his work down town. George looked eagerly around, but the
light wasn't very good, and he didn't at first see Sylvia.
"Sylvia!" Betty called softly. "I've brought George."
XXI
Almost before George realized it Betty was gone and the door was closed.
"Sylvia!"
Her low voice reached him from a large chair opposite the single,
leaded, opaque window.
"I'm over here----"
Yes, there was fear in her enunciation, as if she groped through shadowy
and hazardous places. It cautioned him. With a choked feeling, a racking
effort after repression, he walked quietly around and stared down at
her.
She looked up once quickly, then glanced away. He was grateful for her
colour, but the fear was in her face, too, and the pride, as Betty had
said, but a transformed pride that he couldn't quite understand. She lay
back in the large chair, her head to one side resting against the
protruding arm. Her eyes were bright with tears she had shed or wanted
to shed.
"Please sit down."
The ring of exasperated contempt and challenge had gone from her voice.
He hadn't known it could stir him so. He drew up a chair and sat close
to her.
"You are not angry about what I did last night?" he whispered.
She shook her head.
"I am grateful. I wanted to see you to tell you that, and how sorry I
am--so beastly sorry, George."
Her voice drifted away. It made him want his arms about her, made him
want her lips again. The room became a black and restless background for
this shadowy, desired, and forbidden figure.
Impulsively he slipped to his knees and placed his head against the side
of her chair. Across his hair he fancied a fugitive brushing of fingers.
She burst out with something of her former impetuous manner.
"I used to want that! Now you shan't!"
He arose, and she stooped swiftly forward, as if propelled objectively,
and, before he realized what she was doing, touched the back of his hand
with her lips.
She sprang upright and faced him from the mantel, more afraid than ever,
staring at him, her cheeks wet with tears.
"That's all," she whispered. "It's what I wanted to tell you. Please go.
We mustn't see each other again."
In the room he was aware only of her, but he knew, in spite of his own
blind instinct, that between them was a wall as of transparent and heavy
glass against which he would only break his strength.
"Sylvia," he whispered in spite of that knowledge, "I want to touch your
lips."
"They've never been anybody else's," she cried in a sudden outburst.
"Never could have been. I see that now. That's why I've hated you----"
"Yet you love me now. You do love me, Sylvia?"
"I love you, George," she said, wearily. "I think I always have."
"Then why--why----"
She turned on him, nearly angry.
"How can you ask that? You haven't forgotten that first day, either,
have you? You took something of me then, and I couldn't forget it. That
was what hurt and humiliated; I couldn't forget, couldn't get out of my
mind what you--one of the--the stablemen--had taken of me, Sylvia
Planter. And I thought you could never give it back, but last night you
did, and I----Everything went to pieces----And it had to be last night,
after I'd lost my temper. I see that. That's the tragedy of it."
"I don't quite understand, Sylvia."
She smiled a little through her tears.
"Betty would. Any woman would. You must go now--please."
"When will I see you again?" he asked.
"This way? Never."
"What nonsense! You'll get a divorce. You must."
She straightened. Her head went back.
"I won't lie that way."
"I'll hit on some means," he boasted. "You belong to me."
"And I've found it out too late," she said, "and I don't believe I could