Kitabı oku: «The Guarded Heights», sayfa 26
XXVI
Lambert stood in front of them, glancing down doubtfully. Evidently the game was over, for people were leaving, talking universally and discontentedly.
"Betty and I," Lambert said, dryly, "fancied we'd invented and patented that rug trick."
Sylvia stood up.
"Don't scold, Lambert."
She turned to George, trying to smile.
"I shall be happy as long as my hand hurts. Good-bye, George."
"You'd better go," Betty whispered as he lingered helplessly.
So he drifted aimlessly through the crowd, hearing only a confused murmur, seeing nothing beyond the backs directly in front of him, until he found the Baillys waiting at the ramp opening.
"If you'd only been there, George! Although this morning we'd have been glad enough to think of a tie score."
He submitted then to Bailly's wonder at each miracle; to his grief for each mistake; and little by little, as the complaining voice hurried on, the world assumed its familiar proportions and movements. He caught a glimpse of Allen walking slowly ahead. The angular man was alone, and projected even to George an air of profound dissatisfaction. Bailly caught his arm and shook hands with him.
"Whither away?" George asked.
"To the specials."
He fell in beside George, and for a time kept pace with him.
"What's bothering you, Allen?"
With a haggard air Allen turned his head from side to side, gazing at the hastening people.
"Lords of the land!" he muttered. "Lords of the land!"
"Why?" George asked. "Because they have an education? Well, so have you."
Allen nodded toward the emptying stadium.
"Lords of the land!" he repeated. "I've been sitting up there with them, but all alone. I wish I hadn't liked being with them. I wish I hadn't been sorry for myself because I was alone."
Allen's words, his manner of expressing them, defined a good deal for George, urged him to form a quick resolution.
"Catch your special," he said, "but come to my office Tuesday morning. I may have work for you that you can do with a clear conscience. If you must get, get something worth while."
Allen glanced at him quickly.
"Morton, you've changed," he said. "I'll come."
XXVII
Very slowly the excitement of the game cleared from Squibs' brain. That night he could talk of nothing else, begging George for an opinion of each player and his probable value against Yale the following Saturday. George, to cover his confusion, generalized.
"We'll beat Yale," he said, "as we ought to have beaten Harvard, because this team isn't afraid of colours and symbols. Most of these youngsters have been in the bigger game, so final football matches no longer appeal to them as matters of life and death and even of one's chances in the hereafter."
Bailly looked slightly sheepish.
"I'm afraid, George, I'm going to New Haven to look at a struggle of life and death, but then I was only in the Y. M. C. A. I'd feel many times better if you were sound and available."
"You might speak to the dean about me," George laughed.
By the next evening, however, the crowd had departed, and with Princeton's return to normal Squibs for the time overcame his anxieties. 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."
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 reëntered 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."
