The Guarded Heights

IV

George doubted if he would see Sylvia at Plattsburgh at all, so frequently was her visit postponed. Perhaps she preferred to cloister herself really now, experiencing a sense of shame for the blow circumstances had made her strike at one who had never quite earned it; yet when she came, just before the end of camp, he detected no self-consciousness that he could trace to Blodgett. Lambert and he arrived at the hotel late one Saturday afternoon and saw her on the terrace with her mother and the Alstons. For weeks George had forecasted this moment, their first meeting since she had bought back her freedom at the expense of Blodgett's heart; and it disappointed him, startled him; for she was – he had never fancied that would hurt – too friendly. For the first time in their acquaintance she offered her hand willingly and smiled at him; but she had an air of paying a debt. What debt? He caught the words "Red Cross," "recreation."

"Rather faddish business, isn't it?" he asked, indifferently.

He was still intrigued by Sylvia's manner. A chorus attacked him. Sylvia and Betty, it appeared, were extreme faddists. Only Mrs. Planter smiled at him understandingly from her eminent superiority. As he glanced at his coarse uniform he wanted to laugh, then his temper caught him. The debt she desired to pay was undoubtedly the one owed by a people. He wanted to grasp her and shout in her ear:

"You patriotic idiot! I won't let you insult me that way."

"We have to do what we can," she was saying vehemently. "I wish I were a man. How I wish I were a man!"

If she were a man, he was thinking, he'd pound some sensible judgments into her excited brain. Or was all this simply a nervous reaction from her mental struggles of the past months, from her final escape – a necessary play-acting?

He couldn't manage a word with her alone before dinner. The party wandered through grass-floored forest paths whose shy peace fled from the approach of uniforms and the heavy tramp of army boots. He resented her flood of public questions about his work, his prospects, his mental attitude toward the whole business. Her voice was too kind, her manner too sweet, with just the proper touch of sadness. She wasn't going to spare him anything of the soldier's due. Since he was being fattened, presumably for the butcher, she would turn his thoughts from the knife —

He longed for the riding crop in her fingers; he would have preferred its blows.

If he got her alone he would put a stop to such intolerable abuse, but the chance escaped him until long after dinner, when the moon swung high above the lake, when the men in uniform and their women were paired in the ballroom, or on the terrace and balconies. He asked her to dance at last and she made no difficulty, giving him that unreal and provoking smile.

"You dance well," she said when the music stopped.

They were near a door. He suggested that they go outside.

"While I tell you that if you offer me any more of that gruel I'll publicly accuse you of treason."

She looked at him puzzled, hesitating.

"What do you mean?"

"When it comes to being killed," he answered, "I prefer the Huns to empty kindness. It's rather more useful for the country, too. Please come out."

She shook her head. Her eyes were a little uncertain.

"Yes, you will," he said. "You've let yourself in for it. I'm the victim of one of your war charities. Let me tell you that sort of thing leads from the dance floor to less public places. After all, the balcony isn't very secluded. If you called for help it would come promiscuously, immediately."

She laughed. She tried to edge toward her mother. He stopped her.

"Be consistent. Don't refuse a dying man," he sneered.

"Dying man!" she echoed.

"You've impressed me with it all evening. For the first time in your life you've tried to treat me like a human being, and you've succeeded in making me feel a perfect fool. Where's the pamphlet you've been reciting from? I'll guarantee it says the next move is to go to the balcony and be very nice and a little sentimental to the poor devil."

Her head went up. She walked out at his side. He arranged chairs close together at the railing where they seemed to sit suspended in limitless emptiness above the lake and the mountains flattened by the moonlight. Later, under very different circumstances, he was to recall that idea of helpless suspension. She caught it, too, evidently, and gave it a different interpretation. It was as if, engrossed by her own problems, she had for the moment forgotten him.

"This place is so high! It gives you a feeling of freedom."

He knew very well what was in her mind.

"I'm glad you can feel free. I'm glad with all my heart you are free again."

Caught by her sensations she didn't answer at once. He studied her during that brief period when she was, in a fashion, helpless before his eager eyes. Abruptly she faced him, as if the sense of his words had been delayed in reaching her, or, as if, perhaps, his frank regard had drawn her around, a little startled.

"I shall not quarrel with you to-night," she said.

"Good! Then you must let me tell you that while I'm sorry as I can be for poor old Blodgett, I'm inexpressibly glad for you and for this particular object of your charity."

"It does not concern you," she said.

"Enormously. I wonder if you would answer one or two questions quite truthfully."

She stirred uneasily, seemed about to rise, then evidently thought better of it. The orchestra resumed its labours. Many figures near by gravitated toward the ballroom, leaving them, indeed, in something very near seclusion. And she stayed to hear his questions, but she begged him not to ask them.

"You and Lambert are friends. What you are both doing makes me want to think of that, makes me want to make concessions, but don't misunderstand, don't force me to quarrel with you until after this is over."

He paid no attention to her.

"I suppose the war made you realize I was right about Blodgett?"

"You cannot talk about that."

"Has the war shown you I was right about myself?" he went on.

"Are you going to make my good resolutions impossible?" she asked.

Over his shoulder George saw the men in khaki guiding pretty girls about the dance floor. The place was full of a heady concentration of pleasure that had a beautiful as well as a pitiful side. About him the atmosphere was frankly amorous, compounded of multiple desires of heart and mind which strained for fulfilment before it should be too late. For him Sylvia was a part of it – the greater part. It entered his senses as the delightful and faint perfume which reached him from her. It became ponderable in her dark hair; in her lips half parted; in her graceful pose as she bent toward him attentively; in her sudden movement of withdrawal, as if she had suddenly realized he would never give her her way.

"Isn't it time," he asked, "that you forgot some of your childish pride and bad temper? Sylvia! When are you going to marry me?"

Her laughter wasn't even, but she arose unhurriedly. She paused, indeed, and sank back on the arm of the chair.

"So even now," she said, "it's to be quarrels or nothing."

"Or everything," he corrected her. "I shall make you realize it somehow, some day. What's the use putting it off? Let's forget the ugly part of the past. Marry me before I go to France."

He was asking her what he had accused Lambert of unjustifiably wanting Betty to do. All at once he understood Lambert's haste. He stretched out his hand to Sylvia. He meant it – with all his heart he meant it, but she answered him scornfully:

"Is that your way of saying you love me?"

The bitterness of many years revived in his mind, focusing on that question. If he should answer it impulsively she would be in a position to hurt him more than she had ever done. George Morton didn't dare take chances with his impulses, and the bitterness was in his voice when he answered:

"You've never let me fancy myself at your feet in a sentimental fit."

But it was difficult for him not to assume such an attitude: not to take her hand, both of her hands; not to draw her close.

"If you'd only answer me – " he began.

She stood up.

"Just as when I first saw you!" she cried, angrily.

She controlled herself.

"You shan't force me to quarrel. Come in. Let us dance once."

In a sense he put himself at her feet then.

"I'm afraid to dance with you to-night," he whispered.

She looked at him, her eyes full of curiosity. Her eyes wavered. She turned and started across the gallery. In a panic he sprang after her.

"All right. Let us dance," he said.

He led her to the floor and took her in his arms, but he had an impression of guiding an automaton about the room. Almost at once she asked him to stop by the door leading to the gallery. He looked at her questioningly. Her distaste for the civilian Morton was undisguised at last from the soldier Morton. But there was more than that to be read in her colourful face – self-distaste, perhaps; and a sort of fright, comparable with the panic George had just now experienced on the verandah. Her voice was tired.

"I've done my best. I can't keep it up."

"No more war kindness!" he said. "Good!"

He watched her, her draperies arranging themselves in perplexingly graceful folds, as she hurried with an air of flight away from him along the gallery.

V

The evening the commissions were awarded George appreciated the ingratitudes and cruelties of service rather more keenly than he had done even as a youngster at Oakmont.

"It's like tap day at New Haven," Lambert said, nervously.

He had paused for a moment to compare notes with George. He hurried now to his own organization for fear something might have happened during his absence. The suspense increased, reaching even George, who all along had been confident of success.

In the dusk the entire company crowded the narrow space between the barracks – scores of men who had been urged by passionate politicians to abandon family, money, everything, for the discomforts, sometimes the degradations, of this place, for the possible privilege of dying for a cause. It had had to be done, but in the hearts of many that night was the fancy that it might have been done rather differently. It was clear, for instance, that the passionate and patriotic politicians hadn't troubled to tear from a reluctant general staff enough commissions for the size and quality of these first camps. Many of the men, therefore, who with a sort of terror shuffled their feet in the sand, would be sent home, to the draft, or to the questioning scorn of their friends, under suspicion of a form of treason, of not having banged the drum quite hard enough. And it wasn't that at all.

George, like everyone else, had known for a long time there wouldn't be enough commissions to go around. Why, he wondered now, had the fellows chosen for dismissal been held for this public announcement of failure. And in many cases, he reflected, there was no failure here beyond the insolvency of a system. Among those who would go back to the world with averted faces were numbers who hadn't really come at all within the vision of their instructors, beyond whom they could not appeal. And within a year this same reluctant army would be reaching out eagerly for inferior officer material. And these men would not forget. You could never expect them to forget.

Two messengers emerged from the orderly room and commenced to thread the restless, apprehensive groups, seeking, with a torturing slowness finding candidates to whom they whispered. The chosen ran to the orderly room, entered there, according to instructions, or else formed a long line outside the window where sat the supreme arbiter, the giver, in a way of life and death, the young fellow from West Point.

Men patted George on the back.

"You'll go among the first, George."

But he didn't. He paced up and down, watching the many who waited for the whisper which was withheld, waited until they knew it wouldn't come, expressed then in their faces thoughts blacker than the closing night, entered at last into the gloomy barracks where they sat on their bunks silently and with bowed heads.

Was that fate, through some miracle of mismanagement, reserved for him? It couldn't be. The fellow had seen him at the start. George had forced himself to get along with him, to impress him. Somebody touched George on the arm. A curiously intense whisper filled his ear.

"You're wanted in the orderly room, Morton."

In leaving the defeated he had an impression of a difficult and sorrowful severance.

In the orderly room too many men rubbed shoulders restlessly. A relieved sigh went up. It was as if everyone had known nothing vital could occur before his arrival. The young West Pointer was making the most of his moment. The war wasn't likely to bring him another half so great.

Washington, he announced, had cut down the number of higher commissions he had asked for.

George's name was read among the first.

"To be captain of infantry, United States Reserve – George Morton."

There was something very like affection in the West Pointer's voice.

"I recommended you for a majority, Mr. Morton. Stick to the job as you have here, and it will come along."

Lambert and Goodhue found him as he crowded with the rest through the little door. They had kept their captaincies. Even Goodhue released a little of his relief at the outcome.

"Any number busted – no time to find out whether they were good or bad."

The dark, hot, sandy street was full of shadowy figures, calling, shouting, laughing neurotically.

"Good fellow, but I had you on my list." "My Lord! I never expected more than a private in the rear rank." "What do you think of Blank? Lost out entirely." "Rotten deal." "Not the only one by several dozens." "Hear about Doe? Wouldn't have picked him for a shave tail. Got a captaincy. Teacher's pet."

Brutally someone had turned on the barrack lights. Through the windows the successful ones could see among the bunks the bowed and silent figures, must have known how sacrilegious it was to project their happiness into this place which had all at once become a sepulchre of dead sacrifices.

"I hope," George muttered to his friends, "I'll never have to see quite so much suffering on a battlefield."

VI

It wasn't pleasant to face Blodgett, but it had to be done, for all three of the partners had determined out of necessity to spend the greater portion of their leaves at the office. George slipped in alone the morning he got back to New York. Blodgett looked up as if he had been struck, taking in each detail of the uniform and its insignia, symbols of success. The face seemed a little less round, infinitely less contented. Sitting back there in his office he had an air of having sought a corner. If Sylvia didn't, he clearly appreciated the shame of the situation. George took the pudgy hand and pressed it, but he couldn't say anything and Blodgett seemed to understand and be grateful. He failed, however, to hide his envy of the uniform.

"I'd give my money and something besides," he said, "to be able to climb into that."

"You're lucky you can't," George answered, half meaning it.

As a substitute Blodgett spoke of some dollar-a-year work in Washington.

"But don't worry, George. I'll see everything here is looked after."

George was glad Blodgett had so much to take care of, for it was clear that the more work he had the better off he would be. In Blodgett's presence he tried not to think of Sylvia and his own intentions. He wrote her, for the first time, boldly asking, since he couldn't suggest such a visit to Lambert, if he might see her at Oakmont. She didn't keep him in suspense. He smiled as he read her brief reply, it had been so obviously dictated by the Sylvia who was going to be good to soldiers no matter how dreadful the cost.

"I thought I made you understand that what you proposed at Plattsburgh can never become less preposterous; my response less determined. So of course it wouldn't do for you to come. When we see each other, as we're bound to do, before you sail, I shall try to forget the absolute lack of any even merely friendly ground between us. It would hurt Lambert – "

"Damn Lambert!" he muttered.

But he didn't tear her letter up. He put it in the pocket of his blouse. He continued to carry it there.

Instead of going to Oakmont, consequently, he spent a Sunday at Princeton, vastly amused at the pacifist Bailly. Minute by minute the attenuated tutor cursed his inability to take up a gun and pop at Germans, interspersing his regrets with:

"But of course war is dreadful. It is inconceivable in a healthy brain – " and so forth.

He had found a substitute for his chief ambition. He was throwing himself heart and soul into the efforts of the Y.M.C.A. to keep soldiers amused and fed.

"For Princeton," he explained, "has become an armed camp, a mill to manufacture officers; nothing more. The classics are as defunct as Homer. I had almost made a bad pun by suggesting that of them all Martial alone survives."

Before he left, George was sorry he had come, for Lambert took pains to leave Betty alone with him as they walked Sunday evening by the lake. More powerful than Lambert's wishes in his mind was the memory of how Betty and he had skated here, or come to boat races, or walked like this in his undergraduate days; and she didn't take kindly to his interference, letting him see that to her mind a marriage with Lambert now would be too eager a jump into the house of Planter; too inconsiderate a request for the key to the Planter coffers.

"For Lambert may not come back," she said.

"That's just it," he urged, unwillingly. "Why not take what you can be sure of?"

"What difference would it make?" she asked. "Would I love Lambert any more? Would he love me any more?"

"I think so," he said.

She shook her head.

"But the thought of a wife might make a difference at the front; might make him hesitate, or give a little less. We all have to give everything. So I give Lambert – entirely – if I have to."

George didn't try to say any more, for he knew she was right; yet with the opening of Camp Upton and the birth of the division the rather abrupt marriages of soldiers multiplied. During the winter Officers' House sheltered excited conferences that led to Riverhead where licenses, clergymen, and justices of the peace could be found; and there was scarcely a week-end that didn't see the culmination in town of a romance among George's own friends and acquaintances.

The week-ends he got were chiefly valuable to him because they offered chances of seeing Sylvia. Few actually developed, however, for there were not many general parties, since men preferred to cling, not publicly, during such brief respites to those they loved and were on the point of quitting.

The Alstons had taken a house for the winter, and George caught her there once or twice, and would rather not have seen her at all, she was so painfully cordial, so bound up in her war work of which he felt himself the chief victim. He began to fear that he would not see her alone again before he sailed; that he might never be with her alone again.

He didn't care either for the pride she took in Dalrymple's presence at the second camp.

"He's sure to do well," she would say. "He's always had all sorts of possibilities. Watch the war bring them out."

Why did women like the man? There was no question that they did. They talked now, in ancient terms, of his permanent exit from the field of wild oats. He could be so fascinating, so thoughtful – of women. But men didn't like him. Dalrymple's fascinating ways had caught them too frequently, too expensively. And George didn't believe in his reform, saw symptoms, as others did, of its true value when, at the close of the second camp, Dalrymple got himself assigned to the trains of the division. It was rumoured he had left Plattsburgh a second lieutenant. It was fact that he appeared at Upton a captain. Secret intrigues in Washington by fond parents, men whispered; but the women didn't seem to care, for Dalrymple hadn't shown himself before any of them carrying less than the double silver bars of a captain.

George received his prophesied majority at the moment of this disagreeable arrival. That did impress Sylvia to the point of making her more cordial in public, more careful than before not to give him a word in private. As the day of departure approached he grew increasingly restless. He had never experienced a sensation of such complete helplessness. He was bound by Upton. She could stand aside and mock him with her studied politenesses.

Blodgett ran down a number of times, to sit in George's quarters, working with the three partners over figures. They made tentative lists of what should be sold at the first real whisper of peace.

"But there'll be no peace for a long time," Blodgett promised. "There's a lot of money for you boys in this war yet."

They laughed at him, and he looked a little hurt, apparently unable to see anything humorous in his cheerful promise.

Dalrymple was aware of these conferences, for he was frequently about the regimental area. George wasn't surprised, when he sat alone one night, to hear a tap on his window pane, to see Dalrymple's face at the window.

"Hesitate to disturb a major, and all that," Dalrymple said as he entered. "Two rooms. You're lucky."

"Not luck; work," George said, shortly. "What is it? Didn't come here to envy my rank, did you?"

Although he was in far better shape nervously and physically than he had been that day in George's office, Dalrymple bore himself with much the same confused and hesitant manner. It recalled to George the existence of the note which the other had made no effort to redeem.

"You know," Dalrymple began, vaguely, "there's a lot of – what do you call it – bunk – about this hurrah for the dear old soldier business. Fact is, the more chance there is of a man's getting blown up the nastier some people become."

George laughed shortly.

"You mean when you owe them money."

"As Driggs used to say," Dalrymple answered, "'you're a very penetrating person.'"

He hesitated, then went on with an increasing difficulty:

"You're one of the people I owe money to."

Wandel had taken George's hint, evidently. George was sorry he had ever let it drop. But was he? Mightn't it be as well in the end? In spite of all this talk of people's leaving their bones in France, there was a fair chance that both Dalrymple and he would bring theirs, unaltered, back to America.

"Don't worry," George said. "I shan't press you."

"Handsome enough," Dalrymple thanked him in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "But everybody isn't that decent. It's this talk of the division sailing that's turned them nasty."

George fingered a pamphlet about poison gases. He didn't much blame debtors for turning nasty.

"You want to borrow some more money from me," he said.

Dalrymple's face lightened.

"If you'd be that good; but it's a lot."

"Why," George asked, quietly, "don't you go to someone you're closer to?"

Dalrymple flushed. He wouldn't meet George's eyes.

"Dicky would give it me," he said, "but I can't ask him; I've made him too many promises. So would Lambert, but it would be absurd for me to go to him."

"Why absurd?" George asked, quietly.

"Wholly impossible," was all Dalrymple would say. "Quite absurd."

There came back to George his ugly sensations at Blodgett's, and he knew he would give Dalrymple a lot of money now, as he had given him a little then, and for precisely the same reason.

"I'm afraid I've been a bit hard on my friends," Dalrymple admitted. "As a rule they've dried up."

"So you come to one who isn't a friend?" George asked.

"Now see here, Morton, that's scarcely fair."

"You haven't forgotten that day in my office," George accused him, "when you made a brutal ass of yourself."

"Said I was sorry. Don't you ever forget anything?"

Dalrymple was angry enough himself now, but his worry apparently forced him on.

"I wouldn't have come to you at all, only Driggs said – and you said yourself once, and you can spare it. I know that. See here. Unless somebody helps me these people will go to Division Headquarters or Washington. They'll stop my sailing. They'll – "