Kitabı oku: «The Guarded Heights», sayfa 9
Nevertheless, he agreed to send George a weekly letter, giving his wise views as to what was going on among the money makers. They all made him feel that even in that rushing place his exit had caused a perceptible ripple.
XXII
The smallness, the untidiness, the pure joy of Squibs Bailly's study!
The tutor ran his hands over George's muscles.
"You're looking older and a good deal worn," he said, "but thank God you're still hard."
Mrs. Bailly sat there, too. They were both anxious for his experiences, yet when he had told them everything he sensed a reservation in their praise.
"I think I should turn my share of the laundry back," he said, defiantly. "I've something like three thousand dollars of my own now."
"Does it make you feel very rich?" Mrs. Bailly asked.
He laughed.
"It's a tiny start, but I won't need half of it to get through the winter."
Bailly lighted his pipe, stretched his legs, and pondered.
"You're giving the laundry up," he said, finally, "because – because it savours of service?"
George didn't get angry. He couldn't with Squibs in the first place; and, in the second, hadn't that thought been at the bottom of his mind ever since Dalrymple's remark about dirty hands?
"I don't need it any more," he said, "and I'd like to have you dispose of it where it will do the most good."
His voice hardened.
"But to somebody who wants to climb, not to any wild-eyed fellow who thinks he sees salvation in pulling down."
"You've just returned from the world," Bailly said, "and all you've brought is three thousand dollars and a bad complexion. I wish you'd directed your steps to a coal mine. You'd have come back richer."
XXIII
Goodhue got in a few hours after George. There was a deep satisfaction in their greetings. They were glad to be together, facing varsity football, looking ahead to the pleasures and excitements of another year, but George would have been happier if he could have shared his room-mate's unconcern about the clubs. Of course, Goodhue was settled. Did he know about George? George was glad the other couldn't guess how carefully he had calculated the situation – to take the best, or a dignified stand against all clubs with Allen getting behind him with all the poor and unknown men. But wasn't that exactly Wandel's game?
Stringham and Green were glad enough to see him, but Green thought he had been thoughtless not to have kept a football in the office for kicking goals through transoms.
It was good to feel the vapours of the market-place leaving his lungs and brain. Goodhue and he, during the easy preliminary work, resumed their runs. He felt he hadn't really gone back. If he didn't get hurt he would do things that fall that would drive the perplexed frown from Bailly's forehead, that would win Betty's applause and Sylvia's admiration. Whatever happened he was going to take care of her brother in the Yale game.
Betty was rather too insistent about that. She had fallen into the habit again of stopping George and Goodhue on their runs for a moment's gossip.
"See here, Betty," Goodhue laughed once, "you're rather too interested in this Eli Planter."
George had reached the same conclusion – but why should it bother him? It was logical that Betty and Lambert should be drawn together. He blamed himself for a habit of impatience that had grown upon him. Had it come out of the strain of the Street, or was it an expression of his knowledge that now, at the commencement of his second year, he approached the culmination of his entire college course? With the club matter settled there would remain little for him save a deepening of useful friendships and a squeezing of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and a proper manner. For the same cause, the approaching election of officers for Sophomore year was of vital importance. It was generally conceded that the ticket put through now, barring accident, would be elected senior year to go out into the world at the head of the class. The presidency would graduate a man with a patent of nobility, as one might say. George guessed that all of Wandel's intrigues led to the re-election of Goodhue. He wanted that influential office in his own crowd. Even now George couldn't wholly sound Wandel's desires with him. He yielded to the general interest and uneasiness. Squibs had been right. Princeton did hold a fair sample of it all. He understood that very much as this affair was arranged he would see the political destinies of the country juggled later.
Allen got him alone, begging for his decision.
"Have you been asked for a club yet?"
"None of your business," George said, promptly.
"You've got to make up your mind in a hurry," Allen urged. "Promise me now that you'll leave the clubs alone, then I can handle Mr. Wandel."
"You're dickering with him?" George asked, quickly.
"No. Mr. Wandel is trying to dicker with me."
But George couldn't make up his mind. There were other problems as critical as the clubs. Could he afford to fight Dick Goodhue for that high office? If only he could find out what the Goodhue crowd thought of him!
He had an opportunity to learn one evening, and conquered a passionate desire to eavesdrop. As he ran lightly up the stairs to his room he heard through the open study door Wandel and Goodhue talking with an unaccustomed heat.
"You can't take such an attitude," Wandel was saying.
"I've taken it."
"Change your mind," Wandel urged. "I've nursed him along as the only possible tie between two otherwise irreconcilable elements of the class. I tell you I can't put you over unless you come to your senses."
George hurried in and nodded. From their faces he gathered there had been a fair row. Wandel grasped his arm. George stiffened. Something was coming now. It wasn't quite what he had expected.
"How would you like," Wandel said, "to be the very distinguished secretary of your class?"
George gazed from the window at the tree-bordered lawns where lesser men contentedly kicked footballs to each other.
"It ought to be what the class likes," he muttered. "I'm really only interested in seeing Dicky re-elected."
"If," Wandel said, "I told you it couldn't be done without your distinguished and untrammelled name on the ticket?"
George flushed.
"What do you mean by untrammelled?"
"You stop that, Spike," Goodhue said, more disturbed than George had ever seen him. "It's indecent. I won't have it."
George relaxed. Untrammelled had certainly meant free from the taint of the clubs. He was grateful Goodhue had interfered.
"Why don't you run for something yourself, Mr. Wandel?" he asked, dryly.
Goodhue laughed.
"Carry your filthy politics somewhere else."
He and George, with an affectation of good nature, pushed Wandel out of the room. They looked at each other. Neither said anything.
George had to call upon his will to keep his attention on his books that night. In return for Allen's support for Goodhue Wandel wanted to give Allen for a minor place on the ticket a poor man untrammelled by the clubs. The realization angered George. Aside from any other consideration he couldn't permit himself to be bartered about to save any one – even Goodhue. But was Goodhue trying to spare him at a sacrifice? George, with a vast relief, decided that that was so when Goodhue mentioned casually one day that he was a certainty for the club.
"Don't say anything about it," he advised. "The upper classmen have been getting a few of us together. I'm glad you're among us. We'll elect the full section later."
"Of course I came here a stranger," George began, trying to hide his pleasure.
"Quite a lot of us have learned to know you pretty well," Goodhue smiled.
George wouldn't accept this coveted gift without putting himself on record.
"I needn't ask you," he said, "if Dalrymple's already in."
Goodhue shook his head.
"Maybe later."
"I think," George said, distinctly, "that the men who are responsible for my election should know I'll hold out against Dalrymple."
"You're a conscientious beggar," Goodhue laughed. "It's your own business now, but there'll be a nice little rumpus just the same."
George was conscientious with Allen, too.
"I feel I ought to tell you," he said, "that I've made up my mind, if I'm asked, to join a club. Anything that has so much to offer can't be as bad as you think."
Without answering Allen flushed and walked off angrily.
It was the next day that the parties gathered on the top floor of Dickinson Hall for the election. George went as an amused spectator. He had played the game on the level and had destroyed his own chances, but he was afraid he had destroyed Goodhue's, too, or Goodhue had destroyed his own by insisting on taking George into the club. That was a sacrifice George wanted to repay.
Wandel, as usual, was undisturbed. Allen's angular figure wandered restlessly among the groups. George had no idea what the line-up was.
George sensed weakness in the fact that, when the nominations were opened, Wandel was the first on his feet. He recited Goodhue's virtues as an athlete and a scholar. Like a real political orator at a convention he examined his record as president the previous year. He placed him in nomination amid a satisfactory applause. Now what was coming? Who did Allen have?
When he arose Allen wore an air of getting through with a formality. He insisted on the fact that his candidate was working his way through college, and would always be near the top scholastically. He represented a section of the class that the more fortunate of the students were prone to forget. And so on – a condensation of his complaints to George. The room filled with suspense, which broke into loud laughter when Allen named a man of absolutely no importance or colour, who couldn't poll more than the votes of his personal friends. A trick, George guessed it, and everyone else. But Wandel was quickly moving that the nominations be closed. Allen glanced around with a worried, expectant air. Then George saw that Rogers was up – a flushed, nervous figure – and had got the floor. He spoke rapidly, nearly unintelligibly.
"My candidate doesn't need any introduction," he recited. "All factions can unite on him – the man that smashed the Yale and Harvard Freshmen. The man who is going to smash the Yale and Harvard varsities this year – George Morton!"
A cheer burst out, loud, from the heart. George saw that it came from both sides. The poor men had been stampeded, too.
Goodhue was on his feet, his arms upraised, demanding recognition. Suddenly George realized what this meant to Goodhue, and temper replaced his amazement. He sprang up, shouting:
"I won't have it – "
A dozen pairs of hands dragged him down. A dozen voices cried in his ears:
"Shut up, you damned fool!"
XXIV
Goodhue got the floor and withdrew his name, but the chairman wouldn't see or hear George. He declared the nominations closed. It was as if he and all the lesser men, who weren't leading factions, had seen in George the one force that could pull the class together. The vote was perfunctory, and Allen lazily moved to make it unanimous. George took the chair, frowning, altogether unhappy in his unforeseen victory. He had a feeling of having shabbily repaid Goodhue's loyalty and sacrifice, yet it hadn't been his fault; but would Goodhue know that?
"Speech! Shoot something, George! Talk up there, Mr. President!"
He'd give them a speech to chew over.
"Back-door politicians have done their best to split the class. The class has taken matters into its own hands. There isn't going to be a split. It won't be long before you'll have Prospect Street off your minds. That seems to be two thirds of the trouble. Let's forget it, and pull together, and leave Princeton a little better than we found it. If you think anything needs reform let's talk about it openly and sensibly, clubs and all. I appreciate the honour, but Dick Goodhue ought to have had it, would have had it, if he hadn't been born with a silver spoon. Ought a man's wealth or poverty stand against him here? Think it over. That's all."
There was no opposition to Goodhue's election as Secretary.
Allen slipped to George at the close of the meeting.
"About what I'd have expected of you, anyway."
But George was looking for Goodhue, found him, and walked home with him.
"Best thing that could have happened," Goodhue said. "They're all marvelling at your nerve for talking about Prospect Street as you did."
George spied Rogers, and beckoned the freshly prominent youth.
"See here, young man, please come to my room after practice."
Rogers, with a frightened air, promised. Wandel appeared before, quite as if nothing had happened. He wouldn't even talk about the election.
"Just the same, Warwick," George said, "I'm not at all sure a poler named Allen couldn't tell you something about juggling crowns."
"A penetrating as well as a great president," Wandel smiled. "I haven't thanked you yet for joining our club."
George looked straight at him.
"But I've thanked Dicky for it," he said.
Rogers, when he arrived after Wandel's departure, didn't want to confess, but George knew how to get it out of him.
"You've put your finger in my pie without my consent," he said. "I'll hold that against you unless you talk up. Besides, it won't go beyond Goodhue and me. It's just for our information."
"All right," Rogers agreed, nervously, "provided it doesn't go out of this room. And there's no point mentioning names. A man we all know came to me this morning and talked about the split in the class. He couldn't get Goodhue elected because he didn't have any way of buying the support of the poor men. Allen, he figured, was going to nominate a lame duck, and then have somebody not too rich and not too poor spring his own name, figuring he would get the votes of the bulk of the class which just can't help being jealous of Goodhue and his little crowd. This chap thought he could beat Allen at that game by stampeding the class for you before Allen could get himself up, and he wanted somebody representative of the bulk of the class, that holds the balance of power, to put you in nomination. He figured even the poor men would flock to you in spite of Allen's opposition."
"And what did he offer you?" George sneered.
Rogers turned away without answering.
"Like Driggs," Goodhue said, when Rogers had gone. "He couldn't have what he wanted, but he got about as good. Politically, what's the difference? Both offices are in his crowd, but he's avoided making you look like his president."
George grinned.
"I don't wonder you call him Spike."
XXV
George, filled with a cold triumph, stared for a long time at Sylvia's portrait that night. If she thought of him at all she would have to admit he had come closer. At Princeton he was as big a man as her rich brother was at Yale. He belonged to a club where her own kind gathered. Give him money – and he was going to have that – and her attitude must alter. He bent the broken crop between his fingers, his triumph fading. He had come closer, but not close enough to hurt.
The Baillys and Betty congratulated him at practice the next day.
"You were the logical man," Betty said, "but the politicians didn't seem to want you."
Bailly drew him aside.
"It was scandal in the forum," he said, "that money and the clubs were an issue in this election."
George fingered his headgear, laughing unpleasantly.
"Yes, and they elected a poor man; a low sort of a fellow with a shadowed past."
"Forget your past," Bailly pled, "and remember in the present that the poor men, who helped elect you, are looking for your guidance. They need help."
"Then," George said, "why didn't they get themselves elected so they could help themselves?"
"Into the world there are born many cripples," Bailly said, softly. "Would you condemn them for not running as fast as the congenitally sound?"
"Trouble is, they don't try to run," George answered.
He looked at the other defiantly. Bailly had to know. It was his right.
"I can guess what house I'm going to on Prospect Street."
"Which?" Bailly sighed.
"To the very home of reaction," George laughed. "But it's easier to reform from the inside."
"No," Bailly said, gravely. "The chairs are too comfortable."
He pressed George's arm.
"It isn't the clubs here that worry me in relation to you. It's the principle of the lights behind the railing in the restless world. Try not to surrender to the habit of the guarded light."
George was glad when Stringham called from the field.
"Jump in here, Morton!"
He took his turn at the dummy scrimmage. Such exercise failed to offer its old zest, nor was it the first day he had appreciated that. The intrusion of these unquiet struggles might be responsible, yet, with them determined in his favour, his anxiety did not diminish. Was Bailly to blame with his perpetual nagging about the outside world where grave decisions waited? George frankly didn't want to face them. They seemed half-decipherable signposts which tempted him perplexingly and precariously from his path. What had just happened, added to the passage of a year and his summer in Wall Street, had brought that headlong world very close, had outlined too clearly the barriers which made it dangerous; so even here he spent some time each night studying the changing lines in the battle for money.
Yet Goodhue, with a settled outlook, shared George's misgivings at the field.
"It isn't the fun it was Freshman year," he grumbled one night. "We used to complain then that they worked us too hard. Now I don't believe they work us hard enough."
That was a serious doubt for two men who realized they alone might save inferior if eager material from defeat; and it grew until they resumed surreptitiously the extra work they had attempted hitherto only outside of the season or just at its commencement. Then it had not interfered with Green's minutely studied scheme of physical development. Now it did. The growth of their worry, moreover, measured the decline of their condition. These apprehensions had a sharper meaning for George than for his room-mate. Almost daily he saw his picture on the sporting pages of newspapers. "Morton of Princeton, the longest kicker in the game." "The keystone of the Princeton attack." "The man picked to lead Stringham's hopes to victory over Harvard and Yale." And so on. Exaggeration, George told himself, that would induce the university, the alumni, the Baillys, Betty, and Sylvia – most of all Sylvia – to expect more than he could reasonably give at his best.
"Don't forget you've promised to take care of Lambert Planter – "
In some form Betty repeated it every time George saw her. It irritated him – not that it really made any difference – that Lambert Planter should occupy her mind to that extent. No emotion as impersonal as college spirit would account for it; and somehow it did make a difference.
George suspected the truth a few days before the Harvard game, and persuaded Goodhue to abandon all exercise away from Green's watchful eye; but he went on the field still listless, irritable, and stale.
That game, as so frequently happens, was the best played and the prettiest to watch of the season. George wondered if Sylvia was in the crowd. There was no question about her being at New Haven next week. He wanted to save his best for that afternoon when she would be sure to see him, when he would take her brother on for another thrashing. But it wasn't in him to hold back anything, and the cheering section, where Squibs sat, demanded all he had. To win this game, it became clear after the first few plays, would take an exceptional effort. Only George's long and well-calculated kicking held down the Harvard attack. Toward the close of the first half a fumble gave Princeton the ball on Harvard's thirty-yard line, and Goodhue for the first time seriously called on George to smash the Harvard defence. With his effort some of the old zest returned. Twice he made it first down by inches.
"Stick to your interference," Goodhue was begging him between each play.
Then, with his interference blocked and tumbling, George yielded to his old habit, and slipped off to one side at a hazard. The enemy secondary defence had been drawing in, and there was no one near enough to stop him within those ten yards, and he went over for a touchdown, and casually kicked the goal.
When, a few minutes later, he walked off the field, he experienced no elation. He realized all at once how tired he was. Like a child he wanted to go to Stringham and say:
"Stringham, I don't want to play any more games to-day. I want to lie down and rest."
He smiled as he dreamed of Stringham's reply.
It was Stringham, really, who came to him as he sat silently and with drooping shoulders in the dressing-room.
"What's wrong here? When you're hurt I want to know it."
George got up.
"I'm not hurt. I'm all right."
Green arrived and helped Stringham poke while George submitted, wishing they'd leave him alone so he could sit down and rest.
"We've got to have him next week," Stringham said, "but this game isn't won by a long shot."
"What's the matter with me?" George asked. "I'll play."
He heard a man near by remark:
"He's got the colour of a Latin Salutatorian."
They let him go back, nevertheless, and at the start he suffered his first serious injury. He knew when he made the tackle that the strap of his headgear snapped. He felt the leather slide from his head, experienced the crushing of many bodies, had a brief conviction that the sun had been smothered. His next impression was of bare, white walls in a shaded room. His brain held no record of the hushing of the multitude when he had remained stretched in his darkness on the trampled grass; of the increasing general fear while substitutes had carried him from the field on a stretcher; or of the desertion of the game by the Baillys, by Betty and her father, by Wandel, the inscrutable, even by the revolutionary Allen, by a score of others, who had crowded the entrance of the dressing room asking hushed questions, and a few moments later had formed behind him a silent and frightened procession as he had been carried to the infirmary. Mrs. Bailly told him about it.
"I saw tears in Betty's eyes," she said, softly, "through my own. It was so like a funeral march."
"And you missed the end of the game?" George asked.
She nodded.
"When my husband knew Harvard had scored he said, 'That wouldn't have happened if George had been there.' And it wouldn't have."
But all George could think of was:
"Squibs missed half a game for me, and there were tears in Betty's eyes."
Tears, because he had suggested the dreadful protagonist of a funeral march.
His period of consciousness was brief. He drifted into the darkness once more, accompanied by that extraordinary and seductive vision of Betty in tears. It came with him late the next morning back into the light. Sylvia's portrait was locked in a drawer far across the campus. What superb luxury to lie here with such a recollection, forecasting no near physical effort, quite relaxed, dreaming of Betty, who had always meant rest as Sylvia had always meant unquiet and absorbing struggle.
He judged it wise to pretend to be asleep, but hunger at last made him stir and threw him into an anxious agitation of examinations by specialists, of conferences with coaches, and of doubts and prayers and exhortations from everyone admitted to the room; for even the specialists were Princeton men. They were non-committal. It had been a nasty blow. There had been some concussion. They would guarantee him in two weeks, but of course he didn't have that long. One old fellow turned suspiciously on Green.
"He was overworked when he got hurt."
"I'll be all right," George kept saying, "if you'll fix a headgear to cover my new soft spot."
And finally:
"I'll be all right if you'll only leave me alone."
Yet, when they had, Squibs came, totally forgetful of his grave problems of the classes, foreseeing no disaster nearly as serious as a defeat by Yale – "now that we've done so well against Harvard, and would have done better if you hadn't got hurt" – limping the length of the sick-room until the nurse lost her temper and drove him out. Then Goodhue arrived as the herald of Josiah Blodgett, of all people.
"This does me good," George pled with the nurse.
And it did. For the first time in a number of weeks he felt amused as Blodgett with a pinkish silk handkerchief massaged his round, unhealthy face.
"Thought you didn't like football," George said.
"Less reason to like it now," Blodgett jerked out. "Only sensible place to play it is the front yard of a hospital. Thought I'd come down and watch you and maybe look up what was left afterward."
George fancied a wavering of the little eyes in Goodhue's direction, and became even more amused, for he believed a more calculating man than Blodgett didn't live; yet there seemed a real concern in the man's insistence that George, with football out of the way, should spend a recuperative Thanksgiving at his country place. George thought he would. He was going to work again for Blodgett next summer.
Betty and Mrs. Bailly were the last callers the nurse would give in to, although she must have seen how they helped, one in a chair on either side of the bed; and it was difficult not to look at only one. In her eyes he sought for a souvenir of those tears, and wanted to tell her how sorry he was; but he wasn't really sorry, and anyway she mustn't guess that he knew. Why had Mrs. Bailly bothered to tell him at all? Could her motherly instinct hope for a coming together so far beyond belief? His memory of the remote portrait reminded him that it was incredible in every way. He sighed. Betty beckoned Mrs. Bailly and rose.
"Don't go," George begged, aware that he ought to urge her to go.
"Betty was having tea with me," Mrs. Bailly offered.
"I would have asked to be brought anyway," Betty said, openly. "You frightened us yesterday. We've all wanted to find out the truth."
There was in her eyes now at least a reminiscent pain.
"Don't worry," he said, "I'll take care of Lambert Planter for you after all."
She stooped swiftly and offered her hand.
"You'll take care of yourself. It would be beastly if they let you play at the slightest risk."
He grasped her hand. The touch of her flesh, combined with such a memory, made him momentarily forgetful. He held her hand too long, too firmly. He saw the colour waver in her pale cheeks. He let her hand go, but he continued to watch her eyes until they turned uncertainly to Mrs. Bailly.
When they had left he slept again. He slept away his listlessness of the past few weeks. As he confided to his callers, who were confined to an hour in the afternoon, he did nothing but sleep and eat. He was more content than he had been since his indifferent days, long past, at Oakmont. All these people had deserted the game for him when he was no longer of any use to the game. Then he had acquired, even for such clashing types as Wandel and Allen, a value that survived his football. He had advanced on a road where he had not consciously set his feet. He treasured that thought. Next Saturday he would reward these friends, for he was confident he could do it now. By Wednesday he was up and dressed, feeling better than he had since the commencement of the season. If only they didn't hurt his head again! The newspapers helped there, too. If he played, they said, it would be under a severe handicap. He smiled, knowing he was far fitter, except for his head, than he had been the week before.
Until the squad left for New Haven he continued to live in the infirmary, watching the light practice of the last days without even putting on his football clothes.
"The lay-off won't hurt me," he promised.
Stringham and Green were content to accept his judgment.
As soon as he was able he went to his room and got Sylvia's portrait. He disciplined himself for his temporary weakness following the accident. He tried to force from his memory the sentiment aroused by Betty's tears through the thought that he approached his first real chance to impress Sylvia. He could do it. He was like an animal insufficiently exercised, straining to be away.
