The Guarded Heights

"He's Mr. Planter's son," George reminded him.

"And ain't you like a good son to me," the other leered, "making money for papa Blodgett?"

"Why did you let Mundy go so peacefully?" George asked, suspiciously.

"Because," Blodgett said, "he's been here a good many years, and he can make more money this way. Didn't want to stand in his light, and I had somebody in view."

But George wouldn't credit Blodgett with such altruism. Why was the man so infernally good natured, exuding an oily content? Goodhue hinted at a reason one day when they were talking of Sinclair and his lack of interest in the office.

"I've heard rather privately," Goodhue said, "that Sinclair got pretty badly involved a few months ago. If it hadn't been for Blodgett he'd have gone on the rocks a total wreck. Josiah puffed up and towed him away whole. Naturally Sinclair and his lady are grateful. I daresay this winter Blodgett's receiving invitations he's coveted, and if he gives any parties himself he'll have some of the people he's always wanted."

George hid his disapproval. Blodgett didn't even have a veneer. Money was all he could offer. And was Sinclair a great fool, or Blodgett the cleverest man in Wall Street, that Sinclair didn't know who had involved him and why?

As a matter of fact, Blodgett did appear at several dances, wobbling about the room to the discomfort of slender young things, getting generally in everyone's way. George hated to see him attempting to dance with Sylvia Planter. Sylvia seemed rather less successful in avoiding him than she did in keeping out of George's way. Until Blodgett's extraordinary week-end in February, indeed, George didn't have another chance to speak to her alone.

"Of course you'll come, George," Blodgett said. "If this weather holds there'll be skating and sleighing – horses always, if you want 'em; and a lot of first-class people."

"Who?" George asked.

"How about another financial chick – one of your partners?"

"Lambert Planter?"

The puffy face expanded.

"And the Sinclairs, because I'm a bachelor, and – "

But, since he could guess Sylvia would be there, George didn't care for any more names. He wondered why Lambert or his sister should go. Had her attitude toward the fat, coarse man conceivably altered because of his gambolling at Oakmont? While he talked business with Mundy, Lambert, and Goodhue, George's mind was distracted by a sense of imponderable loss. Was it the shadow of what Sylvia had lost by accepting such an invitation?

He didn't go until Saturday afternoon – there was too much to occupy him at the office. This making money out of Europe's need had a good deal constricted his social wanderings. It was why he hadn't frequently seen Dalrymple close enough for annoyance; why he had met Betty only briefly a very few times. He hadn't expected to run into either of them at Blodgett's, but both were there. Betty was probably Lambert's excuse for rushing out the night before.

George felt sorry for Mrs. Sinclair. Still against the corpulent crudities of her host she could weigh the graces of his guests. It pleased George that her greeting for him should be so warm.

The weather, too, had been considerate of Blodgett, refraining from injuring his snow or ice. A musical and brassy sleigh met George at the station. Patches of frosty white softened the lines of the house and draped the self-conscious nudity of the sculpture in the sunken garden.

"And it'll snow again to-night, sir," the driver promised, as if even the stables pulled for the master's success.

Everyone was out, but it was still early, so George asked for a horse and hurried into his riding clothes. He had been working rather too hard recently. The horse a groom brought around was a good one, and by no means overworked. George was as eager as the animal to limber up and go. Off they dashed at last along a winding bridle-path, broken just enough to give good footing. The war, and his share of helping the allies – at a price; his uncomfortable fear that the Baillys didn't like him to draw success from such a disaster; his disapproval of Sylvia's coming here – all cleared from his head as he galloped or trotted through the sharp air.

One thing: Blodgett hadn't spoiled these woodland bridle-paths; yet George had a sensation of always looking ahead for a nude marble figure at a corner, or an urn elaborately designed for simple flowers, or some iron animals to remind a hunter that Blodgett knew what a well-bred forest was for. Instead he saw through the trees ice swept clear of snow across which figures glided with joyful sounds.

"Some of his flashy guests," George thought.

He rode slowly to the margin of the pond, which shared the colour of the sky. Several of the skaters cried greetings. He recognized Dalrymple then, skating with a girl. Dalrymple veered away, waving a careless hand, Lambert came on, fingers locked with Betty's, and scraped to a halt at the pond's edge.

"So the war's stopped for the week-end at last?" Lambert called.

"I wondered if you'd come at all," Betty cried.

George dismounted, smothering his surprise.

"A men and youths' general furnisher," he said, "has to stick pretty much to the store. I never dreamed of seeing you here, Betty."

Perhaps Lambert caught George's real meaning.

"She's staying with Sylvia," he explained, "so, of course, she came."

George mounted and rode on, his mood suddenly as sunless as the declining afternoon. Those two still got along well enough. Certainly it was time for a rumour to take shape there. He had a sharp appreciation of having once been younger. Suppose, because of his ambition, he should see all his friends mate, leaving him as rich as Blodgett, and, like him, unpaired? He quickened the pace of his horse. It was inconceivable. No matter what Sylvia did he would never slacken his pursuit. In every other direction he had forged ahead. Eventually he would in that one. Then why did it hurt him to picture Betty gone beyond his reach?

He crossed the Blodgett boundaries, and entered a country road as undisturbed and enticing as the private bridle-paths had been. He took crossroads at random, keeping only a sense of direction, trying to understand why he was sorry he had to be with Betty when he had come only to be near Sylvia.

The thickening dusk warned him, and he chose a road leading toward Blodgett's. First he received the horseman's sense of something ahead of him. Then he heard the muffled tread of horses in the snow, and occasionally a laugh.

"More of Josiah's notables," he hazarded.

He put spurs to his horse, and in a few minutes saw against the snow three dark figures ambling along at an easy trot. When he had come closer he knew that two of the riders were men, the other a woman. It was easy enough to identify Blodgett. A barrel might have ridden so if it had had legs with which to balance itself; and that slender figure was probably the trapped Sinclair. George hurried on, his premonition assuming ugly lines of reality. Even at that distance and from the rear he guessed that the graceful woman riding between the two men was Sylvia. Why had she chosen an outing with the ridiculous Blodgett? Sinclair, no man possessed sufficient charm to offset the disadvantages of such a companionship.

George, when he was sure, reined in, surprised at his reflections. Blodgett, heaven knew, had been good to him, and he had once liked the man. Why, then, had he turned so viciously against him? Adjectives his mind had recently applied to Blodgett flashed back: "Coarse," "fat," "ridiculous." Was it just? Why did he do it in spite of himself?

Sinclair turned and saw him. The party reined in, Sylvia, as one would have expected, impatiently in advance of the others. Her nod and something she said were lost in the men's cheery greetings. Since she was in advance, and edging on, as if to get farther away from him, George's opportunity was plain. The road wasn't wide enough for four abreast. If he could move forward with her Blodgett and Sinclair would have to ride together.

"Since I'm the last," he interrupted them, "mayn't I have first place?"

Quite as a matter of course he put his horse through and reined in at her side. They started forward.

"You ride as well as ever," he commented.

She shot a glance at him. Calmly he studied the striking details of her face. Each time he saw her she seemed more desirable. How was he to touch those lips that had filled his boy's heart with bursting thoughts? For the first time since that day they rode together, only now he was at her side, instead of heeling like a trained dog. In his man's fashion he was as well clothed as she. When they got back he would enter the great house with her instead of going to the stables. Whether she cared to acknowledge it or not he was of her kind – more so than the millionaire Blodgett ever could be. So he absorbed her beauty which fired his imagination. Such a repetition seemed ominous of a second climax in their relations.

Her quick glance, however, disclosed only resentment for his intrusion. He excused it.

"You see, I couldn't very well ride behind you."

She turned away.

"Hurry a little," Blodgett called.

It was what George wished, as she wished to crawl, never far in advance of the others.

"Come," he said, and flecked her horse with his crop.

"Don't do that again!"

He had gathered his own horse, and was galloping. Hers insisted on following. When George pulled in to keep at her side they were well in advance of the others. Now that he was alone with her he found it difficult to speak, and evidently she would limit his opportunity, for as he drew in she spurred her horse. He caught her, laughing.

"You may as well understand that I'll never ride behind you again."

She pressed her provocative lips together. So in silence, except for the crunching and scattering of the snow, they tore on through the dusk, rounding curves between hedges, rising to heights above bare, white stretches of landscape, dipping into hollows already won by the night. And each moment they came nearer the house.

In the night of the hollows he battled his desire to reach over and touch her, and cry out:

"Sylvia! You've got to understand!"

And in one such place her horse stumbled, and she pulled in and bent low over her saddle, and said, as if he had really spoken:

"I can't understand – "

Her outline was blurred, but her face was like a light in that shadowed valley. He didn't speak until they were up the hill and the wind had caught them.

"What?" he asked then.

Was it the glow, offered by the white earth rather than the sky, that made him fancy her lips quivered?

"Why you always try to hurt me."

He thought of her broken riding crop, of her attempts to hurt him every time he had seen her since the day she had tried to cut him with it. A single exception clung to his memory – the night of Betty's dance, years ago, when she had failed to remember him. Her words, therefore, carried a thrill, a colour of surrender, since from the very first she had made him attack for his own defence.

"That's an odd thing for you to say."

There were lights ahead, accents in the closing night for Blodgett's huge and ugly extravagance. They rode slowly up the drive.

"Will you ever stop following me? Will you ever leave me alone?"

He stared at her, answering softly:

"It is impossible I should ever leave you alone."

At the terrace he sprang down, tossed his reins to a groom, and went to her, raising his hands. For a moment she looked at him, hesitating. There were two grooms. So she took his hands and leapt down. It was a quick, uncertain touch her fingers gave him.

"Thanks," she said, and crossed the terrace at his side.

That moment, he reflected, was in itself culminating, yet he couldn't dismiss the feeling that their relations approached a larger climax. All the better, since things couldn't very well go on as they were. Was it that fleeting contact that had altered him, or her companionship in the gray night? He only knew as he walked close to her that the bitterness in his heart had diminished. He was willing to relinquish the return blow if she would ease the hurt she had given him. He told himself that she had never been nearer. An odd fancy!

The others rode up as they reached the door, and the hall was noisy with people just returned from the pond, so that their solitude was destroyed. While he bathed and dressed he tried to understand just what had happened. The alteration in his own heart could only be accounted for by a change in hers. Perhaps his mood was determined by her unexpected wonder that he should always try to hurt. He couldn't drive from his mind the definite impression of her having come nearer.

"Winter sentiment!" he sneered, and hurried, for it was late.

VII

Lambert dropped in and lounged in a satin-covered chair while George wrestled with his tie. He gave Lambert the freshest news from the office, but his mind wasn't on business, nor, he guessed, was Lambert's.

"Blodgett does one rather well," Lambert said, glancing around the room.

George agreed.

"Only a marquise might feel more at ease in this room than a mere male."

He turned, smiling.

"I'm always afraid the furniture won't hold. Why should he have raised such a monster?"

"Maybe," Lambert offered, "to have it ready for a wife."

"Who would marry him?" George flashed.

"Nearly any girl," Lambert said. "So much money irons out a lot of fat. Then, when all's said and done, he's amusing and generous. He always tries to please. Why? What's made you scornful of Josiah?"

"There are some things," George said, "that one oughtn't to be able to buy with money."

Lambert arose, walked over to George, put his hands on his shoulders, and stared at him quizzically.

"You're a curious brute."

"I know what you mean," George said, "but let me remind you that money was just one of three things I started for."

Lambert's grasp tightened.

"And in a way you've got them all."

George shook off Lambert's grasp.

In a way!

"Let's go down."

In a way! It was rather cooling. It reminded him, too, that Squibs Bailly remained unpaid; and there was Sylvia, only a trifle nearer, and that, perhaps, in an eager imagination. Certainly he had forced some success, but would he actually ever complete anything? Would he ever be able to say I have acquired an exterior exactly as genuine as that one inherits, or I am a great millionaire, or I have proved myself worthy of all Squibs has given me, or I am Sylvia Planter's husband? Of course he had succeeded, but only in a way. Where was his will that he couldn't conquer altogether?

As he came down the stairs he saw Sylvia in a dazzling gown standing in front of the great fireplace surrounded by a group which included Dalrymple and Rogers who had managed an invitation and had just arrived with Wandel. Wandel brought excuses from Goodhue. It was like Goodhue, George thought, to avoid such a party.

Dalrymple smirked and chatted. George left Lambert and went straight to them. Sylvia could always be depended upon to be gracious to Dalrymple. She glanced at George and nodded. Although she continued to talk to Dalrymple she didn't turn away. George thought, indeed, that he detected a slight movement as if to make room for him. It was as if he had been any man of her acquaintance coming up. Then he had been right?

"Josiah said we'd have you," Dalrymple drawled. "Why didn't you skate? Anything to get on a horse, what? Freezing pleasure this weather."

George smiled at Sylvia.

"Not with the right horse and companionship."

Any one could see that Dalrymple had already swallowed an antidote for whatever benefit the day's fresh air and exercise had given him. Still in the weak face, across which the firelight played, George read other traits, settled, in a sense admirable; more precious than any inheritance a son could expect from a washerwoman mother and a labouring father. Then what was it Dalrymple had always coveted? What had made him rude to the poor men at Princeton? Something he hadn't had. Money. America, George reflected, could breed people like that. There was more than one way of being a snob. He wondered if Dalrymple would ever submerge his pride enough to come to him for money. He might go to Blodgett first, but George wasn't at all sure Blodgett would find it worth his while to buy up the young man.

Blodgett just then joined them. The white waistcoat encircling his rotund middle was like an advance agent, crying aloud: "The great Josiah is arriving just behind me."

"Everybody having a good time?" he bellowed.

Mrs. Sinclair, sitting near by, looked up, but her husband smiled indulgently. George watched Sylvia. Blodgett put the question to her.

"That was a fine ride, wasn't it? I'm always a little afraid for the horse I ride, though; might bend him in the middle."

George couldn't understand why she gave that friendly smile he coveted to Blodgett.

"I'd give a lot to ride like this young man," Blodgett went on, patting George's back. He preened himself. "Still we can't all be born in the saddle."

The thing was so obvious George laughed outright. Even Sylvia conceded its ugly, unintentional humour. A smile drew at the corners of her mouth. If she could enjoy that she was, indeed, for the moment nearer.

Two servants glided around with trays.

Blodgett gulped the contents of his glass and smacked his lips.

"That fellow of mine," he boasted, "has his own blend. Not bad."

Sylvia drank hers with Dalrymple, while Betty over there shook her head. Probably it was his ungraceful inheritance that made George dislike a glass in Sylvia's fingers. Dalrymple slipped away.

"Dividends in the smoking-room!" Blodgett roared.

"Dalrymple's drawing dividends," George thought.

The procession for the dining-room formed and disbanded. Blodgett had Mrs. Sinclair and Sylvia at either hand. It was natural enough, but George resented the arrangement, particularly with Dalrymple next to Sylvia on the other side. Betty sat between Dalrymple and Lambert. George was nearly opposite, flanked by fluffy clothes and hair; and straightway each ear was choked with fluffy chatter – the theatre; the opera, from the side of sartorial criticism; the east coast of Florida – "but why should I go so far to see exciting bathing suits out of season and tea tables wabbling under palm trees?" – a scandal or two – that is such details as were permissible in his presence. He divided his ears sufficiently to catch snatches from neighbouring sections of the table.

"Of course, we'll keep out of it."

It was Wandel, speaking encouragingly to a pretty girl. Out of what? Confound this chatter! Oh! The war, of course. It was the one remark of serious import that reached him throughout the dinner, and the country faced that possibility, and an increasing unrest of labour, and grave financial questions. The diners might have been people who had fled to a high mountain to escape an invasion, or happy ones who lived on a peak from which the menace was invisible. But it wasn't that. At other social levels, he knew, there was the same closing of the shutters, the same effort to create an enjoyable sunlight in a cloistered room. On the summit, he honestly believed, men did more and thought more. Perhaps where sensible men gathered together the curtains weren't drawn against grave fires in an abnormal night. Then it was the women. Did all men, like Wandel, choose to keep such things from the women? Did the women want them kept? Hang it! Then let them have the vote. Make them talk.

"You're really not going to Palm Beach, Mr. Morton?"

"I've too much to do."

"Men amuse me," the young lady fluffed. "They always talk about things to do. If one has a good time the things get done just the same."

God! What a point of view! Yet he wasn't one to pass judgment since he was more interested in the winning of Sylvia than he was in the winning of the war.

He watched her as he could, talking first to Blodgett then to Dalrymple. The brilliant Sylvia Planter had no business sitting between two such men. The fact that Blodgett had got the right people stared him in the face, but even so the man wasn't good enough to be Sylvia Planter's host. Nor did George like the way she sipped her wine. She seemed forcing herself to a travesty of enjoyment. Betty, on the other hand, drank nothing. He questioned if she was sorry Sylvia had brought her. She seemed glad enough, at least, to be with Lambert. He appeared to absorb her, and, in order to listen to him, she left Dalrymple nearly wholly to Sylvia. Once or twice she glanced across and smiled at George, but her kindliness had an air of coming from a widening distance. George was trapped – a restless giant tangled in a snarl of fluff.

He sighed his relief when the women had gone. He didn't remain long behind, wandering into the deserted hall where he stood frowning at the fire. He heard a reluctant step on the stairs and swung around. Sylvia walked slowly down, a cloak about her shoulders. In a sort of desperation he raised his hand.

"This party has got on my nerves."

He couldn't read the expression in her eyes.

"It's stifling in here," she said.

She walked the length of the hall, opened the door, and went through to the terrace.

George's heart quickened. She was out there alone. What had her eyes meant? He had never seen them just like that. They had seemed without challenge.

There was a coat closet at the rear of the hall. He ran to it, got a cap and somebody's overcoat, and followed her out.

She sat on the railing, far from the house. The only light upon her was the nebulous reflection from the white earth. He hurried to her, his heart beating to the rhythm of nearer – nearer – nearer —

She stirred.

"As usual with you," she said, "I am unfortunate. I didn't think you would follow me. I came here because I wanted to be alone. I wanted to think. Can you appreciate that?"

He sat on the railing close to her.

"You never want me. I have to grasp what opportunities I can."

He waited for her to rise and wander away. He was prepared to urge her to remain. She didn't move.

"I can't always be running away from you," she said.

She stared straight ahead over the garden, nearly phosphorescent with its snow.

"Nearer, nearer, nearer," went through his head.

"It has been a long time since I've seen you," he said, "but even so I wish you hadn't come here."

"Why did you come?" she asked.

"Because I thought I should find you."

"Why did you think that?"

"I'd heard Blodgett had been a good deal at Oakmont. I guessed if Lambert came you would, too."

"It is impertinent you should interest yourself in my movements. Why – why do you do it?"

"Because everything you do absorbs me. Why else do you suppose I took the trouble at Betty's dance years ago to tell you who I was?"

She drew back without answering. Her movement caught his attention. The change in her manner, the white night, made him bold.

"I've often wondered," he said, "why you didn't remember me that day in Princeton, or that night. It hadn't been long. Don't you see it was an acknowledgment that I wasn't the old George Morton even then?"

"Oh, no," she answered with a little laugh, "because I remembered you perfectly well."

"Remembered me!" he cried. "And you danced with me, and said you didn't remember, and let me take you aside, and – "

He moved swiftly nearer until his face was close to hers, until he stared into her eyes that he could barely see.

"Why did you do that?"

She didn't answer.

"Why do you tell me now?" he urged with an increasing excitement.

Such a confession from her had the quality of a caress! He felt himself reaching up to touch the summit.

"Why? You've got to answer me."

She arose with easy grace and stood looking down at him.

"Because," she said, "I want you to stop being ridiculous and troublesome; and, really, the whole thing seems so unimportant now that I am going to be married."

He cried out. He sprang to his feet. He caught her hands, and crushed them as if he would make them a part of his own flesh so that she could never escape to accomplish that unbearable act.

"Sylvia! Sylvia!"