The Guarded Heights
George relaxed. Dalrymple's mother came down the stairs with the doctor,
and George experienced a quick sympathy for the retiring, elderly woman
he had scarcely seen before. She gave Sylvia her hand, while George
stepped out with the physician. In reply to George's questions the quiet
man shook his head and frowned.
"If it were any one else of the same age--I've attended in this house
many years, Mr. Morton, and I've watched him since he was a child. I've
marvelled how he's got so far."
He added brutally:
"Scarcely a chance with the turn its taking."
"If there's anything," George muttered, "any great specialist
anywhere----Understand money doesn't figure----"
"Everything possible is being done, Mr. Morton. I'm truly sorry, but I
can tell you it's quite his own fault."
So even this cold-blooded practitioner had heard the talk, and
sympathized, and not with Dalrymple. A trifle dazed George reentered the
house.
"It's good of you to come, Mr. Morton," Mrs. Dalrymple said. "Shall we
go upstairs now?"
There was no bitterness in her voice, and she had taken Sylvia's hand,
yet undoubtedly she knew everything. Abruptly George felt sorrier for
Dalrymple than he had ever done.
"Please wait, Sylvia," she said.
He followed Mrs. Dalrymple upstairs and into the sick-room.
"It's Mr. Morton, dear."
She beckoned to the nurse, and George remained in the room alone with
the feverish man in the bed. He walked over and took the hot hand.
"Morton!" came Dalrymple's hoarse voice, "I believe you're sorry for
me!"
"I am sorry," George said, quietly, "and you must get well."
Dalrymple shook his head.
"I know all the dope, and I guess I'm off in a few days. Not so bad now
I can't talk a little and sorta clean one or two things up. No silly
deathbed repentance. I'm jealous of you, Morton; always have been,
because you were getting things I couldn't, and I figured from the first
you were an outsider."
The dry lips smiled a little.
"When you get like this it makes a lot of difference, doesn't it, how
you came into the world? I'll be the real outsider in a few days----"
"Don't talk that way."
A quick temper distorted Dalrymple's face.
"They oughtn't to bring a man into the world as I was brought, without
money."
George couldn't think of anything to say, but Dalrymple hurried on:
"I wanted to thank you for the notes. Don't have to leave those to my
family, anyway. And I'm not sure hadn't better apologize all 'round. I
don't forget I've had raw deal--lots of ways; but no point not saying
Sylvia had pretty raw one from Dolly. Lucky escape for her--mean Dolly's
not domestic animal, and all that."
George was aware of a slight shiver as Dalrymple's hoarse voice slipped
into its old, not quite controlled mannerisms.
"Mean," Dalrymple rambled on, "Dolly won't haunt anybody. Blessings 'n'
sort of thing. Best thing, too. Sorry all 'round. That's all. Thanks
coming, George."
And all George could say was:
"You have to get well, Dolly."
But Dalrymple turned his head away. After a moment George proposed
tentatively:
"Sylvia's downstairs. She wants very much to see you."
Dalrymple shook his head.
"Catching."
"For her sake," George urged.
Dalrymple thought.
"All right," he said at last. "Long enough for me to tell her all right.
But not near. Nurse in the room. Catching, and all that."
George clasped the hot hand.
"Thanks, Dolly. You've done a decent thing, and you're going to get
well."
But as he left the room George felt that the physician had been right.
He spoke to the nurse, who sat in the upper hall, then he told Sylvia.
She went up, and he waited for her. He felt he had to wait. He hoped
Mrs. Dalrymple wouldn't appear again.
Sylvia wasn't long. She came down dry-eyed. She didn't speak even when
George followed her to her automobile, even when he climbed in beside
her; nor did he try to break a silence that he felt was curative. In the
light and surrounded by a crowd they could clasp hands; in this obscure
solitude there was nothing they could do or say. Only on the steps of
her home she spoke.
"Good-night, George, and thank you."
"Good-night, dear Sylvia," he said, and returned to the automobile, and
told the man to drive him to his apartment.
XXIX
George didn't hear from Dalrymple again, nor did he expect to, but he
was quite aware five days later of Goodhue's absence from the office and
of his black clothing when he came in during the late afternoon. He
didn't need Goodhue's few words.
"It's hard not to feel sorry, to believe, on the whole, it's rather
better. Still, when any familiar object is unexpectedly snatched away
from one----"
"We had a talk the other evening," George began.
Goodhue's face lighted.
"I'm glad, George."
He sighed.
"I've got to try to catch up. Mundy says rails have taken a queer turn."
"When you think for a minute not so queer," George commenced to explain.
A few days later Lambert told him that Sylvia had gone to Florida.
"They'll probably stay until late in the spring. It agrees with Father."
"How did Sylvia seem?" George asked, anxiously.
"Wait awhile," Lambert advised, "but I don't think there are going to be
any spectres."
He smiled engagingly.
"If there shouldn't be," he went on, "a few matters will have to be
arranged, because Sylvia and I share alike. Josiah and I had a long,
careful talk with Father last night about what we'd do with Sylvia's
husband if she married. He left it to my judgment, advising that we
might take him in if he were worth his salt. Josiah wanted to know with
his bull voice what Father would think if it should turn out to be you.
Very seriously, George, Father was pleased. He pointed out that you were
a man who made things go, but that you would end by running us all, and
he added that if we wanted that we would be lucky to get you as long as
it made Sylvia happy. You know we want you, George."
George felt as he had that day on the Vesle when Wandel had praised him.
No longer could Lambert charge him with having fulfilled his boasts, in
a way; yet he hadn't consciously wanted this, nor was he quite sure that
he did now.
"At least," George said, "you know what my policy would be to make
Planter and Company something more than a money making machine."
Lambert imitated Blodgett's voice and manner.
"George, if you wanted to grow hair on a bald man's head I'd say go to
it."
"And there must be room for Dicky," George went on.
"We've played together too long to break apart now; but why talk about
it? It depends on Sylvia."
That was entirely true. For the present there was nothing whatever to be
done. Constantly George conquered the impulse to write to Sylvia, but
she didn't write or give any sign, unless Lambert's frequent quotations
from her letters could be accepted as thoughtful messages.
He visited the Baillys frequently now, for it was stimulating to talk
with Squibs, and he liked to sit quietly with Mrs. Bailly. She had an
unstudied habit, nevertheless, of turning his thoughts to his mother.
Sylvia had seen her. She knew all about her. After all, his mother had
given him the life with which he had accomplished something. He couldn't
bear that their continued separation should prove him inconsistent; so
early in the spring he went west.
His mother was more than ever ill at ease before his success; more than
ever appreciative of the comforts he had given her; even more than at
Oakmont appalled at the prospect of change. She wouldn't go east. She
couldn't very well, she explained; and, looking at her tired figure in
the great chair before the fire which she seldom left, he had an impulse
to shower upon her extravagant and fantastic gifts, because before long
it would be too late to give her anything at all. The picture made him
realize how quickly the generations pass away, drifting one into the
other with the rapidity of our brief and colourful seasons. He nodded,
satisfied, reflecting that the cure for everything lies in the future,
although one must seek it in the diseased present.
He left her, promising to come back, but he carried away a sensation
that he had intruded on a secluded content that couldn't possibly
survive the presence of the one who had created it.
Lambert had no news for him on his return. It was late spring, in fact,
before he told George the family had come north, pausing at a number of
resorts on the way up.
"When am I to see Sylvia, Lambert?"
"How should I know?"
It was apparent that he really didn't, and George waited, with a growing
doubt and fear, but on the following Friday he received a note from
Betty, dated from Princeton. All it said was:
"Spring's at its best here. You'd better come to-morrow--Friday."
He hurried over to the marble temple.
"You didn't tell me Betty was in Princeton," he accused Lambert.
"Must I account to you for the movements of my wife?"
"Then Sylvia----" George began.
Lambert smiled.
"Maybe you'd better run down to Princeton with me this afternoon."
George glanced at his watch.
"First train's at four o'clock. Let Wall Street crash. I shan't wait
another minute."
XXX
Betty had been right. Spring was fairly vibrant in Princeton, and for
George, through its warm and languid power, it rolled back the years;
choked him with a sensation of youth he had scarcely experienced since
he had walked defiantly out of the gate of Sylvia's home to commence his
journey.
Sylvia wasn't at the station. Neither was Betty. Abruptly uneasy, he
drove with Lambert swiftly to the Alstons through riotous, youthful
foliage out of which white towers rose with that reassuring illusion of
a serene and unchangeable gesture. Undergraduates, surrendered to the
new economic eccentricity of overalls, loafed past them, calling to each
other contented and lazy greetings; but George glanced at them
indifferently; he only wanted to hurry to his journey's end.
At the Tudor house Betty ran out to meet them, and Lambert grinned at
George and kissed her, but evidently it was George that Betty thought of
now, for she pointed, as if she had heard the question that repeated
itself in his mind, to the house; and he entered, and breathlessly
crossed the hall to the library, and saw Sylvia--the old Sylvia, it
occurred to him--colourful, imperious, and without patience.
She stood in the centre of the room in an eager, arrested attitude,
having, perhaps, restrained herself from impetuously following Betty.
George paused, staring at her, suddenly hesitant before the culmination
of his great desire.
"It's been so long," she whispered. "George, I'm not afraid to have you
touch me----You mean I must come to you----"
He shook off his lassitude, but the wonder grew.
As in a dream he went to her, and her curved lips moved beneath his, but
he pressed them closer so that she couldn't speak; for he felt
encircling them in a breathless embrace, as his arms held her, something
thrilling and rudimentary that neither of them had experienced before;
something quite beyond the comprehension of Sylvia Planter and George
Morton, that belonged wholly to the perplexing and abundant future.
THE END
BOOKS BY WADSWORTH CAMP
THE ABANDONED ROOM
THE GRAY MASK
THE GUARDED HEIGHTS
THE HOUSE OF FEAR
SINISTER ISLAND
WAR'S DARK FRAME