The Guarded Heights
That night George and he sat in a corner of the lounge of the Nassau
Club, waiting for Lambert and Wandel to drive in from the Alstons.
George grew a trifle uncomfortable, because he suspected Squibs was
staring at him with yesterday's curious scrutiny. Abruptly the tutor
asked:
"What did you say to Allen after the game?"
"Offered him another job," George answered, shortly.
Bailly frowned.
"See here, George. What are you up to? Is that fair and decent? Allen is
struggling--for the right."
"Allen," George answered, "has put some of his views to the test, and
the results have made him discouraged and uneasy. He's been tainted by
the very men he's tried to help. I've no idea of debauching him. Quite
the reverse. Please listen."
And he entered upon a sort of penitence, speaking, while the tutor's
wrinkled face flushed with pleasure, of his recent efforts to understand
the industrial situation and its probable effects on society.
"I have to acknowledge," he said, softly, "that pure material success
has completely altered its meaning for me. I'd like to use my share of
it, and what small brains I have, to help set things straight; but I'm
not so sure this generation won't have too sticky feet to drag itself
out of the swamp of its own making."
Lambert and Wandel arrived just then, talking cheerfully about football.
"What do you mean to do?" Bailly asked George as the others sat down.
George smiled at Wandel.
"I'm not sure, Driggs, that the hour hasn't struck for you."
Wandel raised his hands.
"You mean politics!"
"I used to fancy," George said, "that I'd need you for my selfish
interests. Now my idea is quite different."
He turned to Squibs.
"See here, sir. You've got to admit that the soul of the whole thing is
education. I don't mean education in the narrow sense that we know it
here or in any other university. I mean the opening of eyes to real
communal efficiency; the comprehension of the necessity of building
instead of tearing down; the birth of the desire to climb one's self
rather than to try to make stronger men descend."
Bailly's eyes sparkled.
"I don't say you're not right, George. You may be right."
A fire blazed comfortably in front of them. The chairs were deep.
Through a window the Holder tower, for all its evening lack of
definition, seemed an indestructible pointer of George's thoughts. For a
long time he talked earnestly.
"I climbed," he ended. "So others can, and less selfishly and more
usefully, if they're only told how; if they'll only really try."
"You're always right, great man," Wandel drawled, "but we mustn't forget
you climbed from fundamentals. That's education--the teaching of the
fundamentals."
"It means an equal chance for everybody," George said, "and then, by
gad, we won't have the world held back by those who refuse to take their
chance. We won't permit the congenitally unsound to set the pace for the
healthy. We'll take care of the congenitally unsound."
He turned to Bailly.
"And you and your excitable socialists have got to realize that you
can't make the world sane through makeshifts, or all at once, but with
foresight it can be done. You've raised the devil with me ever since I
was a sub-Freshman about service and the unsound and the virtue of
soiled clothing. Now raise the devil with somebody else about the virtue
of sound service and clean clothes. This education must start in the
schools. We may be able to force it into public schools through the
legislatures; but in Princeton and the other great universities it has
to come from within, and that's hard; that, in a way, is up to you and
other gentle sectarians like you. And your clubs have got to stand in
some form--everywhere, if only as objectives of physical and
intellectual content. Nothing good torn from the world! Only the
evil----"
He tapped Wandel's arm.
"Driggs! If you want to go among the time-servers, to stand alone for
the people; perhaps for people yet unborn----"
"For a long time," Wandel said, "I've been looking for something I could
really want to do. I rather fancy you've found it for me, George. I want
to climb, too, always have--not to the heights we once talked about at
your unhealthy picnic, but to the furtherest heights of all, which are
guarded by selfishness, servility, sin--past which people have to be
led."
Squibs cried out enthusiastically.
"And from which you can look down with a clear conscience on the
climbers to whom you will have pointed out the path."
"I see now," Lambert put in, "that that is the only way in which one
with self-respect can look down on lesser men."
George laughed aloud.
"An ally that can't escape! Driggs is a witness. We'll hold that fine
democracy of the Argonne over your head forever."
"You see," Wandel drawled, "that was bound to fail, because it was based
on the ridiculous assumption that every man that fought was good and
great."
"I fancy," George said, "we're commencing to find out why we went to
war--To appreciate the world's and our own astigmatism."
As they walked back to the little house in Dickinson Street, Bailly
tried to express something.
"I guess," he managed, "that I'll have to call it square, George."
"I'm glad," George said, quickly, "but you must give some of the credit
to Lambert Planter's sister."
He smiled happily, wistfully.
"You know she's the most useful socialist of you all."
After a time he said under his breath:
"There are some things I never dreamed of being able to repay you, sir.
For instance this--this feeling that one is walking home."
"That debt," Bailly said, brightly, "cancels itself."
His mood changed. He spoke with a stern personal regret.
"You young men! You young men! How much farther you see! How much more
you can do!"
XXVIII
George returned to New York happy in his memory of his intimate hour on
a crowded stand with Sylvia. Dalrymple had given him that, too. It
amazed him that so much beauty could spring from so ugly a source.
He heard that Dalrymple was back from Canada, then that he had wandered
away, pockets full, on another journey, pandering to his twisted
conception of pleasure. One day George took his notes from the
safe-deposit box and gave them to Lambert.
"Get them back to him," he said.
And Lambert must have understood that George would never let the
Planters' money redeem them.
"It's pretty decent, George."
"It's nothing of the kind. They make my hands feel dirty, and I've lots
of money, and I'm making more every day; yet I wonder if it's going to
be enough, even with Driggs' and Blodgett's and yours, old Argonne
democrat."
For he had spoken of his plans to Blodgett, and had been a little
surprised to learn how much thought Blodgett had given the puzzle
himself, although most of his searching had been for makeshifts, for
anything to tide over immediate emergencies.
"I don't know," Blodgett roared, "whether this cleaning out the sore and
getting to the bottom of it will work or not; but I'm inclined to look
to the future with you for a permanent cure. Anyway, I'd help you
finance a scheme to make the ocean dry, because you usually get what
you're after. So we'll send Wandel and Allen and some more as a little
leaven to Albany and to that quilting party in Washington. I don't envy
them, though."
George realized that his content could be traced to this new interest,
as that went back to Sylvia. He had at last consciously set out to
explore the road of service. For the first time in his life, with his
eyes open, he was working for others, yet he never got rid of the sense
of a great personal need unfulfilled; always in his heart vibrated the
cry for Sylvia, but he knew he mustn't try to see her, for Betty would
have let him know, and Betty hadn't sent for him again.
After the holidays, at the urging of Wandel and Lambert, he showed
himself here and there, received at first curious glances, fancied some
people slightly self-conscious, then all at once found himself welcomed
on the old frank and pleasant basis. Yes, the talk had pretty well died,
and men and women were inclined to like Sylvia Planter and George Morton
better than they did Dalrymple.
He saw Dalrymple in the club one stormy January evening. He hadn't heard
he was in town, and examined him curiously as he sat alone in a corner,
making a pretence of reading a newspaper, but really looking across the
room at the fire with restless eyes. George, prepared as he had been,
was surprised by the haggard, flushed countenance, and the neurotic
symptoms, nearly uncontrollable.
Beyond question Dalrymple saw him, and pretended that he didn't.
Heartily glad of that, George joined a group about the fireplace, and
after a few minutes saw Dalrymple rise and wander unevenly from the
room.
George met him several times afterward under similar circumstances, and
always Dalrymple shortly disappeared, because, George thought, of his
arrival; but other people tactfully put him straight. Dalrymple, it
seemed, remained in no public place for long, as if there was something
evilly secretive to call him perpetually away.
Wandel told him toward the end of the month that Dalrymple was about to
make a trip to Havana for the remainder of the winter.
"Where there's horse-racing, gambling, and unlimited alcohol--where one
may sin in public. Why talk about it? Although he doesn't mean to,
George, he's in a fair way of doing you a favour."
But George didn't dream how close Dalrymple's offering was. His first
thought, indeed, was for Sylvia when the influenza epidemic of January
and February promised for a time to equal its previous ugly record.
Lambert tried to laugh his worry away.
"She's going south with father and mother very soon. Anyway, she hasn't
the habit of catching things."
And it was Lambert a day or two later who brought him the first
indication of the only way out, and he tried to tell himself he mustn't
want it. Even though he had always despised Dalrymple and his weakness,
even though Dalrymple stood between him and his only possible happiness,
he experienced a disagreeable and reluctant sense of danger in such a
solution.
"All his life," Lambert was saying, "Dolly's done everything he could to
make himself a victim."
"Where is he?" George asked.
"At his home. It's fortunate he hadn't started south."
"Or," George said, "he should have started sooner."
"I've an uncomfortable feeling," Lambert mused, "that he was planning to
run away from this very chance. Put it off a little too long. Seems he
went to bed four days ago. I didn't know until to-day because you see
he's been a little outcast since that scene in the club. He sent for me
this afternoon, and, curiously enough, asked for you. Will you go up? I
really think you'd better."
But George shrank from the thought.
"I don't want to be scolded by a man who is possibly dying."
"Let's hope not," Lambert said. "You'll go. Around five o'clock."
George hesitated.
"Did he ask for Sylvia?"
"He didn't ask me, but I telephoned her."
"Why?" George asked, sharply.
"Every card on the table now, George!" Lambert warned. "We have to think
of the future, in case----"
"Of course, you're right," George answered. "I'm sorry, and I'll go."
When he entered the Dalrymple house at five o'clock he came face to face
with Sylvia in the hall. He had never seen her so controlled, and her
quiet tensity frightened him.
"Lambert told me," she whispered, "you were coming now. Dolly hasn't
asked for me, but I'd feel so much better--if things should turn out
badly, for I'm thinking with all my heart of the boy I used to be so
fond of, and it's, perhaps, my fault----"
"It is not your fault," George cried. "He's always asked for it. Lambert
will tell you that."