The Guarded Heights
tonic. Bailly at the close of an evening's session spoke, George
fancied, with a little embarrassment.
"My wife wants to speak to you before you go."
He raised his voice.
"Martha! The battle's over for to-night."
She came quietly in and perched herself on the arm of a chair.
"I'm having a few people for dinner to-morrow," she explained. "There's
one young girl, so I want a young man. Won't you help me out?"
George's elation was shot with doubt of an unexplored territory. This
promised an advance if he could find the way. He glanced inquiringly at
Bailly.
"Women," the tutor said, "lack a sense of values. I shall be chained
anyway to my wife's ill-conceived hospitality, so you might as well
come. But we'll dine early so we won't destroy an entire evening."
"Then at seven-thirty, Mr. Morton," Mrs. Bailly said.
"Thank you," George answered. "I shall be very happy to come."
As a matter of fact, he was there before seven-thirty, over-anxious to
be socially adequate. He had worried a good deal about the invitation.
Could it be traced to his confession to Bailly? Was it, in any sense, a
test? At least it bristled with perplexities. His ordinary suit of
clothing, even after an extended pressing and brushing, was, he felt,
out of place. It warned him that of the ritual of a mixed dinner he was
blankly ignorant. He established two cardinal principles. He would watch
and imitate the others. He wouldn't open his mouth unless he had to.
Bailly, with tact, wore the disgraceful tweeds, but there were two other
men, a professor and a resident, George gathered in the rapidity of the
introduction which slurred names. These wore evening clothes. Of the two
elderly women who accompanied them one was quite dazzling, displaying
much jewellery, and projecting an air truly imperial. Side by side with
her Mrs. Bailly appeared more than ever a priestess of service; yet to
George her serene self-satisfaction seemed ornament enough.
Where, George wondered, was the girl for whom he had been asked?
Mrs. Bailly drew him from these multiple introductions. He turned and
saw the girl standing in the doorway, a dazzling portrait in a dingy
frame. As he faced her George was aware of a tightening of all his
defences. Her clothing, her attitude, proclaimed her as of Sylvia's
sort. He ventured to raise his eyes to her face. It was there, too, the
habit of the beautiful, the obvious unfamiliarity with life's grayer
tones. Yet she did not resemble Sylvia. Her skin was nearly white. Her
hair glinted with gold; but she, too, was lovely. George asked himself
if she would have lifted the crop, if all these fortunates reacted to a
precise and depressing formula. Somehow he couldn't imagine this girl
striking to hurt.
Mrs. Bailly presented him. Her name was Alston, Betty
Alston, it developed during the succeeding general conversation. He
fixed the stouter of the men in evening clothes as her father and the
imperial woman as her mother. He understood then that they were, indeed,
of Sylvia's sort, for during his cross-country work he had frequently
passed their home, an immense Tudor house in the midst of pleasant
acres.
It was because of the girl that the pitfalls of dinner were bridged. In
the technique of accepting Mrs. Bailly's excellent courses he was always
a trifle behind her. She made conversation, moreover, surprisingly easy.
After the first few moments, during which no one troubled to probe his
past, the older people left them to themselves. She didn't ask what his
prep was, or where he lived, or any other thing to make him stammer.
"You look like a football player," she said, frankly.
They talked of his work. He said he had admired her home during his
runs. She responded naturally:
"When we are really back you must come and see it more intimately."
The invitation to enter the gates!
He fell silent. Would it be fair to go without giving her an opportunity
to treat him as Sylvia had done? Why should she inspire such a question?
Hadn't he willed his past to oblivion? Hadn't he determined to take
every short cut? Of course he would go, as George Morton, undergraduate,
football player, magician with horses. The rest was none of her
business.
They were in Princeton, she explained, only for a few days from time to
time, but would be definitely back when college opened. She, too, was
going to be introduced to society that winter. He wanted to ask her how
it was done. He pictured a vast apartment, dense with unpleasant people,
and a man who cried out with a brazen voice: "Ladies and gentlemen! This
is Miss Sylvia Planter. This is Miss Betty Alston." Quite like an
auction.
"It must be wonderful to play football," she was saying. "I should have
preferred to be a man. What can a girl do? Bad tennis, rotten golf,
something with horses."
He smiled. He could impress Betty Alston, but there was no point in
that, because she was a girl, and he could think of only one girl.
Yet he carried home an impression of unexpected interest and kindness.
Her proximity, the rustling of her gown, the barely detectable perfume
from her tawny hair, furnished souvenirs intangible but very warm in his
memory. They made the portrait and the broken crop seem lifeless and
unimpressive.
He forced himself to stare at Sylvia's likeness until the old hypnotic
sense returned.
V
He saw Betty Alston once more before college opened, unexpectedly,
briefly, and disturbingly; but with all that he carried again to his
lodging an impression of a distracting contact.
He was out for a morning run, wearing some ancient flannels Bailly had
loaned him, and a sweater, for autumn's first exhilaration sharpened the
air. Sylvia's bulldog barked joyously about him as he trotted through a
lane not far from the Alston place. He often went that way, perhaps
because its gates were already half open. As he turned the corner of a
hedge he came face to face with Betty. In a short skirt and knitted
jacket she was even more striking than she had been at the Bailly's. The
unexpected encounter had brought colour to her rather pale face. The
bulldog sprang for her. George halted him with a sharp command.
"I am not afraid of him," she laughed. "Come here, savage beast."
The dog crawled to her and licked her fingers. George saw her examining
the animal curiously.
"I hope he didn't frighten you," he said, his cap in his hand.
She glanced up, and at her voice George straightened, and turned quickly
away so that she couldn't see the response to her amazing question. Was
it, he asked himself, traceable to Old Planter's threats. Were they
going to try to smash him at the start and keep him out of Princeton?
"Do you happen," Betty had said, frowning, "to know Sylvia Planter, or,
perhaps, her brother, Lambert?"
George didn't care to lie; nor was it, his instinct told him, safe to
lie to Betty. She knew the Planters, then. But how could Old Planter
drive him out except through his parents? He wasn't going to be driven
out. He turned back slowly. In Betty's face he read only a slight
bewilderment.
"That's a queer thing to ask," he managed.
"The dog," she said, caressing the ugly snout, "is the image of one
Sylvia Planter was very fond of. Sylvia and I were at school together
last year. I've just been visiting her the last few days. She said she
had given her dog away."
She drew the dog closer and read the name on the collar.
"Roland! What was the name of her dog?"
George relaxed.
"That dog," he said, harshly, "belongs to me."
She glanced at him, surprised, releasing the dog and standing up. It
wasn't Old Planter then, and his parents were probably safe enough; but
had Sylvia, he asked himself angrily, made a story for her guest out of
his unwary declaration and his abrupt vanishing from Oakmont? Did this
friendly creature know anything? If she did she would cease to be
amiable. His anger diminished as he saw the curiosity leave her face.
"An odd resemblance! Do you know, Mr. Morton, I rather think you're
bound to meet Lambert Planter anyway. I believe he's a very important
young man at Yale. You'll have to play football a little better than he
does. His sister and he are going to visit me for a few days before he
goes back to New Haven. Perhaps you'll see him then."
George resented the prospect. He got himself away.
"Squibs," he told her, "sees everything. If I loiter he finds out and
scolds."
He had an impression that she looked after him until he was out of
sight. Or was it the dog that still puzzled her? Something of her, at
least, accompanied him longer than that--her kindness, her tact in the
matter of the Planters. He would take very good care that he didn't meet
Lambert; the prospect of Sylvia's adjacence, however, filled him with a
disturbing excitement. He wanted to see her, but he felt it wouldn't be
safe to have her see him yet.
Her picture increased his excitement, filled him with a craving for her
physical presence. He desired to look at her, as he had looked at the
photograph, to see if he could tell himself under those conditions that
he hated her. Whether that was true or not, he was more determined than
ever to make his boasts good.
VI
The day of the immediate test approached and he found himself no longer
afraid of it. Even Bailly one early September evening abandoned
cynicism.
"You've every chance, Morton," he said, puffing at his pipe, "to enter
creditably. You may have a condition in French, but what of that? We'll
have it off by the divisionals. I'll admit you're far from a dunce.
During the next ten days we'll concentrate on the examination
idiosyncrasies of my revered colleagues."
The scholarship had, in fact, been won for George, but the necessary
work, removed from any suspicion of the servatorial, had not yet been
found. Bailly, although he plainly worried himself, told George not to
be impatient; then, just before the entrance examinations, the head
coach arrived and settled himself in Princeton. Self-assured young men
drifted to the field now every afternoon--"varsity men," the Rogers clan
whispered with awe. And there were last year's substitutes, and faithful
slaves of the scrub, over-anxious, pouring out to early practice,
grasping at one more chance. So far no Freshmen candidates had been
called, but the head coach was heard to whisper to Green:
"We'd better work this fellow Morton with the squad until the cubs
start. He'll stand a lot of practice. Give him all the football he'll
hold. He's outkicking his ends now. Jack him up without cutting down his
distance. I'd like to see him make a tackle. He looks good at the dummy,
but you never can tell. He may be an ear-puller."
The magic words slipped through the town. George caught arriving
Freshmen pointing him out. He overheard glowing prophecies.
"Green says he'll outkick Dewitt."
It didn't turn his head. To be the greatest player the game had ever
known wouldn't have turned his head, for that would have been only one
small step toward the summit from which Sylvia looked down on him with
contemptuous, inimical eyes.
The head coach one afternoon gave the ball to a young man of no
pronounced value, and instructed him to elude George if he could.
"You, Morton," the head coach instructed, "see that he doesn't get past
you. Remember what you've done to the dummy."
George nodded, realizing that this was a real test to be passed with a
hundred per cent. That man with the ball had the power and the desire
to make a miserable failure of him. For the moment he seemed more than a
man, deadly, to be conquered at any cost. Schooled by his
rough-and-tumble combats at school and in the stables, George kept his
glance on the other's eyes; knew, therefore, when he was going to