The Guarded Heights

"Don't cry," George interrupted. "You want money, and you don't give a hang where it comes from. That's it, isn't it?"

"I have to have money," Dalrymple acknowledged.

"Then you ought to have sense enough to know the only reason I'd give it to you. Do you think I'd care if they held you in this country for your silly debts? What you borrow you have to pay back in one way or another. Don't make any mistake. If I give you money it's to be able to make you pay as I please. You've always had a knife out for me. I don't mind putting one in my own hands. If you want money on those terms come to my office with your accounts Saturday afternoon. We'll see what can be done."

Dalrymple was quite white. He moistened his lips. As he left he muttered:

"I can't answer back. I have to have money. You've got me where you want."

VII

Dalrymple's necessities turned out to be greater than George had imagined. They measured pretty accurately the extent of his reformation. George got several notes to run a year in return for approximately twenty thousand dollars.

"Remember," he said at the close of the transaction, "you pay those back when and how I say."

"I wouldn't have come to you if I could have helped it," Dalrymple whined. "But don't forget, Morton, somebody will pull me out at a pinch. I'm going to work to pay you if I live. I'm through with nonsense. Give me a chance."

George nodded him out, and sent for his lawyer. In case of his death Dalrymple's notes would go back to the man. Everything else he had divided between his mother and the Baillys. He wrote his mother a long letter, telling her just what to do. Quite honestly he regretted his inability to get West to say good-bye. The thought of bringing her to New York or Upton had not occurred to him.

For during these days of farewells everyone flocked to Upton, sitting about the hostess houses all day and evening for an occasional chat with their hurried men. Then they let such moments slip by because of a feeling of strangeness, of dumb despair.

The Alstons and the Baillys were there, and so, of course, was Sylvia, with her mother, more minutely guarded than she had ever been. His few glimpses of her at luncheon or supper at Officers' House increased the evil humour into which Dalrymple had thrown him. Consequently he looked at her, impressing upon his morose mind each detail of her beauty that he knew very well he might never study again. The old depression of complete failure held him. She was going to let him go without a word. Even this exceptional crisis was without effect upon her intolerant memory. He would leave her behind to complete a destiny which he, perhaps, after all, had affected only a very little.

With the whispered word that there would be no more meetings at Officers' House, that before dawn the regiment would have slipped from Upton, George turned to his packing with the emotions of a violently constricted animal. He wouldn't even see her again. When Lambert came to confer with him about some final dispositions he watched him like such an animal, but Lambert let him see that he, too, was at a loss. He had sent word by an orderly that he couldn't get to Officers' House that evening.

"I couldn't make it any plainer. If they've any sense they'll know and hunt me up."

They were wise, and a little of George's strain relaxed, for they found Lambert in his quarters, and they made it clear that they had come to say good-bye to George, too. After many halting efforts they gave up trying to express themselves.

"The Spartans were better at this sort of thing," Bailly said at the last as he clasped George's hand.

"Every Hun I kill or capture, sir, I'll think of as your Hun."

Without words, without tears, Mrs. Bailly kissed his lips. George tried to laugh.

Betty wouldn't say good-bye, wouldn't even shake hands.

"I shan't think of killing," she said. "Just take care of yourselves, and come back."

George stared at her, alarmed. He had never seen her so white. Lambert followed her from the room. The Baillys went out after them. Why did Mrs. Planter linger? There she stood near the door, looking at George without the slightest betrayal of feeling. He had an impression she was going to say:

"We've really quite enjoyed Upton."

At least she held Sylvia a moment longer, Sylvia who had said nothing, who had not met his eyes, who had seemed from the first anxious to escape from this plank room littered with the paraphernalia of battle. Mrs. Planter held out her hand, smiling.

"Good-bye, Major. One doesn't need to wish you success. You inspire confidence."

He was surprised at the strength of her white hand, felt it draw him closer, watched her bend her head, heard her speak in his ear so low that Sylvia couldn't hear – a whisper intense, agonized, of a quality that seemed like a white-hot iron in his brain:

"Take care of my son. Bring him back to me."

She straightened, releasing his hand.

"Come, Sylvia," she said, pleasantly.

Without looking back she went out.

"Good luck, Major," Sylvia said, and prepared to follow.

Quickly George reached out, caught her arm, and drew her away from the door.

"You're not going to say good-bye like this."

In her effort to escape, in her flushed face, in her angry eyes, he read her understanding that no other man she knew could have done just this, that it was George Morton's way. Why not? He had no time for veneer now. It was his moment, probably his last with her.

With her free hand she reached behind her to steady herself against the table. Her fingers touched the gas mask that lay there, then stiffened and moved away. Some of the colour left her face. Her arm became passive in his grasp.

"Let me go. How do you want me to say good-bye?"

He caught her other arm.

"Give me something to take. Oh, God, Sylvia! Let me have my kiss."

VIII

Never since he had walked out of the great gate with Sylvia's dog at his heels to a wilful tutoring of his body and brain had George yielded to such untrammelled emotion, to so unbounded a desire. This moment of parting, in which he had felt himself helpless, had swept it all away – the carefully applied manner, the solicitous schooling of an impulsive brain, the minute effort to resemble the class of which he had imagined himself a part. Temporarily he was back at the starting point, the George Morton who had lifted Sylvia in his arms, blurting out impossible words, staring at her lips with an abrupt and narrow realization that sooner or later he would have to touch them.

Sylvia's quick action brought some of it back, but he had no remorse, no feeling of reversion, for the moment itself was naked, inimical to masquerade.

"Lambert!" she called.

Her voice didn't suggest fright or too sharp a hurry. Looking at her face he could understand how much her control had cost, for her expression was that of the girl Sylvia, filled with antipathy, abhorrence, an inability to believe. It appeared to tell him that if he had ever advanced toward her at all, he had just now forced himself back to his own side of the vast space dividing them.

"Don't be a fool," he whispered. "I could take it, but you have to give."

Her lips were pressed tight as if in a defence against the possible approach of his. They both heard a quick step outside. He let her arms go, and turned to the door where Dalrymple stood, unquestionably good to look upon in his uniform. He frowned at this picture which might have suggested to him a real intimacy between George Morton and Sylvia Planter.

"Lambert's gone on with Betty and the others. What's up?"

Sylvia's voice wasn't quite steady.

"The Major can't leave the area. I want somebody to take me to Officers' House."

George nodded. He had quite recovered his control, and he knew he had failed, that there was nothing more to be done. The thought of the doubtful days ahead was like a great burden on his soul.

"I've one more word for the Major," she said at the door, motioning Dalrymple on.

George went close to her.

"It's only this," she said. "I'm sorry it had to come at the last minute."

He laughed shortly.

"It was the last minute that made it. I'm not sorry."

Her face twisted passionately, as if she were on the point of angry tears.

"I hope I shall never see you again. Do you understand that?"

"Quite," he said, dryly. "To George on going to the wars!"

"I didn't mean just that," she cried, angrily.

"It's your only chance," he said, "and I can understand how you can wish I shouldn't come back."

"I didn't mean it," she repeated.

"Don't count too heavily on it," he went on. "I can't imagine dying before having had what I have always wanted, have always sooner or later intended to get. If I come back I shall have it."

Without another word she turned and left him. He watched her walk side by side with Dalrymple out of the area.

IX

There were moments on the voyage, in the training area in Flanders, even at the front, when he was sorry he had tried to take something of Sylvia with him to battle; for, as it was, he had of her nothing whatever except a wish that she should never see him again. There was a deep irony, consequently, in his official relations with her brother, for it was Lambert who saluted him, who addressed him perpetually as "sir," who wanted to know if the major would approve of this, that, or the other. It was grotesque. He wanted to cry aloud against this necessary servility of a man whose sister couldn't abide the inferiority of its object.

And he hated war, its waste, its bad management, its discomforts, its dangers. Was it really true he had involved himself in this filth because of Sylvia? Then that was funny. By gad, he would see her again! But he watched his chances dwindle.

While the battalion was in reserve in Lorraine Lambert and he ran into Dalrymple at the officers' club beneath division headquarters in Baccarat. George saw him first.

"The intrepid warrior takes his ease," he muttered.

Dalrymple left three staff men he was with and hurried across the room.

"New York must be a lonesome place," he said. "Everybody here. Had a letter from Sylvia, Lambert."

Why should she write to him? Far from women's eyes he was back at it. One of the staff men, in fact, wandered over and whispered to George.

"Either you chaps from the trains? Somebody ought to take him to his billet. General or chief-of-staff might drift through. Believe he'd slap 'em on the shoulder."

"Not a bad idea," George said, contemptuously.

Dalrymple didn't even try to be cordial to him, knowing George wasn't likely to make trouble as long as they were in France. Lambert took care of him, steered him home, and a few days later told George with surprised laughter that the man had been transferred to a showy and perfectly safe job at G.H.Q.

"Papa, and mama, and Washington!" Lambert laughed.

"Splendid thing for the war," George sneered.

But he raved with Lambert when Goodhue was snatched away by a general who chose his aides for their names and social attainments.

"Spirit's all through the army," Goodhue complained, bitterly. "Why doesn't it occur to them to get the right men for the right places?"

He sighed.

"Suppose we'll get through somehow, but there'll be too much mourning sold at home."

All along that had been in George's mind, and, in his small way, he did what he could, studying minutely methods of accomplishing his missions at the minimum cost to his battalion; but on the Vesle he grew discouraged, seeing his men fall not to rise; or to be lifted to a stretcher; or to scramble up and stagger back swathed with first-aid rolls, dodging shells and machine-gun spirts; or, and in some ways that was hardest of all to watch, to be led by some bandaged ones, blinded and vomiting from gas.

He had no consecutive sleep. He never got his clothes off. He snatched food from a tin can. He suffered from the universal dysentery. He was under constant fire. He lay in shallow funk holes, conferring with his company and platoon commanders. At best he sat in the cellar of a smashed house, poring, by the light of a candle, over maps and complicated orders. Most of the time he wore a gas mask which had the advantage, however, of shutting out the stifling odour of decay. He never had time to find out if he was afraid. He reached a blessed state of indifference where getting hit appeared an inevitable and restful prospect.

Driggs Wandel arrived surprisingly on the day the Germans were falling back to the Aisne, at a moment when most of the artillery fire was coming from the American side, when it was possible to sit on a sunny bank outside the battalion dugout breathing only stale souvenirs of last night's gas shells.

"Bon jour, most powerful and disreputable of majors!"

George held out his hand.

"Bring any chocolate, Driggs? Sit down, you idiot. Jerry's never seen such a nice new uniform."

Suddenly he lost his temper. Why the devil couldn't he get some pleasure out of this extraordinary reunion? Why did he have to greet Wandel as if he had seen him daily since their parting more than three years ago on a dusky pier in New York? He had heard that Wandel, with the declaration of war, had left the ambulance for a commission in the field artillery. He saw him now wearing the insignia of a general staff major.

"Just attached to your corps headquarters," Wandel said. "Didn't want the job, would rather have been a fighting man with my pretty guns. Suppose some fool of a friend of the family brought the usual influence without consulting me."

"Glad to see you, Driggs," George muttered, "although I don't seem able to tell you so. How did you get here?"

"Guide from regimental headquarters. Wanted to see how the submerged heroes live. Nasty, noisy, smelly spot to be heroic in."

"A picnic to-day."

"I've always suspected," Wandel said, "that picnics were unhealthy."

"Better have come," George grinned, "any other day we've been here the past few weeks."

Wandel laughed.

"Don't think I didn't pick my day. The general staff takes no unnecessary risks. Tell me, my George, when did you shave last? When did you wash your pretty face last? When did you take your swank clothes off last?"

"I think when I was a very little boy," George sighed.

Wandel became abruptly serious, turned so, perhaps, by a large shell fragment, still warm, which he had picked up. As he fingered it he stared at George.

"I know," George said, "that I point a moral, but even little boys would be glad to be made clean if they got like this. Don't rub it in."

"To the contrary," Wandel said, thoughtfully, "I'm going back over a lot of years. I'm remembering how that most extraordinary man, Freshman George Morton, looked. I'm thinking that I've always been right about you."

The warm sun, the diminution of racket, this sudden companionship, had drawn George a little from his indifferent, half-dazed condition. He, too, could look back, and without discomfort. On the Vesle it was only death that counted. Birth didn't amount to a hill of beans, or money, or education, except in that it made a man an officer. So George answered frankly:

"All along you've guessed a lot about me, Driggs."

"Known, George."

"Would you mind telling me how?"

"It would be a pleasure to point out to you," Wandel drawled, "that a lot of people aren't half as big fools as you've credited them with being. You looked a little what you were at first. You've probably forgotten that when you matriculated you put down a place of residence, a record easily available for one who saw, as I did, means of using you. Even a fool could have guessed something was up the night Betty was good enough to make herself a part of the beau monde. I gathered a lot from Lambert then."

"Yet," George said, almost indifferently, "you went on being a friend."

"Your political manager, George," Wandel corrected. "I'm not sure it would have gone much further if it hadn't been for Dicky."

George was thoroughly aroused at last.

"Did Dicky know?"

"Not mere facts," Wandel answered. "What difference did they make? But he could see what you had started from, how great the climb you were taking. That's why he liked and admired you, because of what you were, not because of what you wanted people to think you were. That's really what first attracted me to you, and it amused me to see you fancying you were getting away with so much more than you really were."

"Extraordinary!" George managed. "Then the heights are not so well guarded?"

"Ah, yes – guarded," Wandel said, "but not against great men."

George kicked at the ground with his heel.

"Funny how unimportant it all seems here," he muttered.

It wasn't only the surroundings that made it seem unimportant; it was his remembrance of Sylvia who had known more than Wandel, more than anybody, yet had never opened the gate.

"You've taken all my conceit away," he went on. "Once it might have made me want to put myself out. Now I'm quite content to let Jerry do it."

Wandel's voice warmed, was less affected than George had ever heard it.

"What are you talking about? You've won a great victory. You should carry laurels on your brow. You've climbed to the top. You've defined for us all a possible socialism."

George smiled.

"A hell of a thing to talk about here! But tell that to Squibs, will you, little man, when you get back? We've had some rare battles over it."

Wandel hurried on.

"You've made yourself one of us, if it's any satisfaction. You're as good as the best of us – of the inheritors."

George folded his arms on his knees and bowed his head. Wandel's voice was startled.

"What's up?"

"Maybe I'm crying," George mumbled. "Ought to be, because I'm so filthy tired, and I know you're wrong, Driggs. I'm rotten inside. I haven't even started to climb."

But when he looked up there were no tears in his eyes, and his dirty face had altered with its old whimsical smile.

"Besides, it's enough to make me cry to know you wouldn't say all this unless you were certain I'm going to be killed."

"Hope not," Wandel laughed, "but picnics are full of germs. What's this?"

A grimy figure approached like a man fantastically imitating some animal. His route was devious as if he were perpetually dodging something that miraculously failed to materialize. He stopped, straightened reluctantly, and saluted George.

"Captain sent me on, sir. I've located Jerry opposite at – "

He rattled off some coordinates. George looked him over.

"How did you find that out?" he snapped.

"Ran across Jerry – "

The dirty young man recited jerkily and selflessly a story of fear and risks overcome, of cunning stealth, of passionate and promiscuous murder —

"Report back," George said.

When he had gone George called for his adjutant and turned to Wandel.

"Before anything happens to me," he said, "I'll recommend that dirty young assassin for a citation."

Wandel laughed in a satisfied way.

"I'm always right about you, great man. Don't you see that? Never think about your own citation – "

George stared at him, uncomprehending.

"Citation! A thousand citations for a bed!"

He watched Wandel uneasily when, at the heels of a guide, he dodged down the slope in search of Lambert, calling back:

"Don't swallow any germs."

"That's very fine, Driggs," he thought, "but why all that and not the rest? I'd give a good deal to guess what you know about me and Sylvia Planter."

X

George hoped Wandel would find Lambert. Day by day he had dreaded bad news. Other officers and men got hit every hour; why not himself or Lambert? For he had never forgotten Mrs. Planter's unexpected and revealing whisper. It had shown him that even beneath such exteriors emotion lurks as raw, as desirous, as violent as a savage's. The rest, then, was habit which people inherited, or acquired, or imitated with varying success. It had made him admire her all the more, had forced on him a wish to obey her, but what could he do? It was not in him to play favourites. One man's life was as good as another's; but he watched Lambert as he could, while in his tired brain lingered a feeling of fear for that woman's son.

During the peaceful days dividing the Aisne and the Argonne he looked at Lambert and fingered his own clothing, stained and torn where death had nearly reached, with a wondering doubt that they could both be whole, that Mrs. Planter in her unemotional way could still welcome guests to Oakmont. And he recalled that impression he had shared with Sylvia on the bluff above Lake Champlain of being suspended, but he no longer felt free. He seemed to hang, indeed, helplessly, in a resounding silence which at any moment would commence giving forth unbearable, Gargantuan noises; for, bathed and comfortable, eating in leisure from a mess-kit, he never forgot that this was a respite, that to-morrow or the next day or the day after the sounding board would reverberate again, holding him a deafened victim.

Wandel caught up with them one evening in the sylvan peace that preceded the fatal forest uproar. The Argonne still slumbered; was nearly silent; offered untouched trees under which to loaf after a palatable cold supper. The brown figures of enlisted men also lounged near by, reminiscing, wondering, doubtless, as these officers did, about New York which had assumed the attributes of an unattainable paradise.

George hadn't been particularly pleased to see Wandel. What Wandel knew made more difference in this quiet place, and George had a vague, shamed recollection of having accused himself of being rotten inside, of not having even started to climb.

"Must have had a touch of shell shock without knowing it," he mused as he stared through the dusk at the precise, clean little man.

Indifferently he listened to Lambert's good-natured raillery at the general staff, then he focussed his attention, for Lambert's voice had suddenly turned serious, his hand had indicated the lounging figures of the enlisted men.

"With all your ridiculous fuss and feathers at nice headquarters châteaux, I don't suppose you ever get to know those fellows, Driggs."

"I don't see why not," Wandel drawled.

"Do you love them, everyone?"

"Can't say that I do, but then my heart is only a small organ."

"I do," Lambert said, warmly. "And you'll find George does. You can't help it when you see them pulling through this thing. They're real men, aren't they, George?"

George yawned.

"Are they any more so," he asked, dryly, "than they were when they lived in the same little town with you? I mean, if all you say about them is true why did you have to wait for war to introduce you to unveil their admirable qualities?"

Lambert straightened.

"It's wrong," he said, defiantly, "that I should have waited. It's wrong that I couldn't help myself."

"And you once tried to take a horse whip to me," George whispered in his ear.

It was Lambert's absurd earnestness that worried him. Did Lambert, too, have a touch of shell shock? Wandel was trying to smooth out his doubts.

"I think what you mean to say is that war, aside from military rank, is a great leveller. We can leave that out altogether. You know the professional officer's creed: 'Good Colonel, deliver us.' 'We beseech ye to hear us, good General,' and so on up to the top man, who begs the Secretary of War, who prays to the President, who, one ventures to hope, gets a word to God. You mean, Lambert, that out here it never occurs to you to ask these men who their fathers were, or what preps they went to, or what clubs they're members of. It's the war spirit – aside from military rank – this sham equality. Titled ladies dine with embarrassed Tommies. Your own sister dances with doughboys who'd be a lot happier if she'd leave them alone. It's in the air, beautiful, gorgeous, hysterical war democracy which declares that all men are equal until they're wounded; then they're superior; or until they're dead; then they're forgotten."

George grunted.

"You're right, Driggs. It won't survive the war."

"Paper work!" Wandel sneered.

"It ought to last!" Lambert cried. "I hope it does."