The Guarded Heights

"I've always disliked him," George said, frankly. "He's given me reasons enough. You know some of them."

"I know," Wandel drawled, "that he isn't what even Sylvia would call a little man, and he has the faculty of making himself exceptionally pleasant to the ladies."

"Yet he couldn't marry any one of mine," George said under his breath. "If I had a sister, I mean, I'd somehow stop him."

Wandel laughed on a sharp note, caught himself, went on with an amused tone:

"Forgive me, George. Somewhere in your pockets you carry the Pilgrim Fathers. Most men are shaggy birds of evil habit, while most young women are delicately feathered nestlings, and quite helpless; yet the two must mate. Dolly, by the way, drains a pitcher of water every time he sees a violation of prohibition."

"He drinks in sly places," George said.

"After all," Wandel said, slowly, "why do we cling to the suggestion of Dolly? Although I fancy he does figure – somewhere in the odds."

For a time George said nothing. He was quite convinced that Wandel had meant to warn him, and he had received that warning, straight and hard and painfully. During several weeks he hadn't seen Dalrymple, had been lulled into a sense of security, perhaps through the turmoil down town; and Lambert and Betty had lingered beyond their announced month. Clearly Wandel had sounded George's chief aim, as he had once satisfied himself of his origin; and just now had meant to say that since his return he had witnessed enough to be convinced that Dalrymple was still after Sylvia, and with a chance of success. To George that meant that Dalrymple had broken the bargain. He felt himself drawn irresistibly back to his narrow, absorbing pursuit.

"You're becoming a hermit," Wandel was saying.

"You've become a butterfly," George countered.

"Ah," Wandel answered, "but the butterfly can touch with its wings the beautiful Sylvia Planter, and out of its eyes can watch her débutante frivolities. Why not come away with me Friday?"

"Whither?"

"To the Sinclairs."

George got up and wandered to the door.

"By by, Driggs. I think I might slip off Friday. I've a mind to renounce the veil."

XIII

George fulfilled his resolution thoroughly. With the migratory bachelors he ran from house to house, found Sylvia or not, and so thought the effort worth while or not. The first time he saw her, indeed, he appreciated Wandel's wisdom, for she stood with Dalrymple at the edge of a high lawn that looked out over the sea. Her hair in the breeze was a little astray, her cheeks were flushed, and she bent if anything toward her companion who talked earnestly and with nervous gestures. George crushed his quick impulse to go down, to step between them, to have it out with Dalrymple then and there, even in Sylvia's presence; but they strolled back to the house almost immediately, and Sylvia lost her apparent good humour, and Dalrymple descended from satisfaction to a fidgety apprehension. Sylvia met George's hand briefly.

"You'll be here long?"

The question expressed a wish.

"Only until Monday. I wish it might be longer, for I'm glad to find you – and you, Dalrymple."

"Nobody said you were expected," Dalrymple grumbled. "Everybody said you were working like a horse."

George glanced at Sylvia, smiling blandly.

"Every horse goes to grass occasionally."

He turned back to Dalrymple.

"I daresay you know Lambert and Betty are due back the first of the week?"

Sylvia nodded carelessly, and started along the verandah. Dalrymple, reddening, prepared to heel, but George beckoned him back.

"I'd like a word with you."

Sylvia glanced around, probably surprised at the sharp, authoritative tone.

"Just a minute, Sylvia," Dalrymple apologized uneasily. "Little business. Hard to catch Morton. Must grasp opportunity, and all that."

And when they were alone he went close to George eagerly.

"No need to wait for Betty and Lambert, Morton. It's done. Dolly's got himself thrown over – "

"I don't believe you," George said.

"Why not?"

"What are you doing here?" George asked. "It was understood you should avoid her."

Dalrymple's grin was sickly.

"Way she's tearing around now I'd have exactly no place to go."

"You seemed rather too friendly," George pointed out, "for parties to a broken engagement."

George fancied there was something of anger in the other's face.

"Must say I'm not flattered by that. Guess you were right. One heart's not smashed, anyway."

George turned on his heel. Dalrymple caught him.

"What about those notes?"

"I don't trust you, Dalrymple. I'll keep my eye on you yet awhile."

"Ask Sylvia if you want," Dalrymple cried.

George smiled.

"I wonder if I could."

He went to his room, trying to believe Dalrymple. Was that romance really in the same class as the one with Blodgett? If so, why did she involve herself in restive affairs with less obvious men? As best he could he tried to find out that night when she was a little off guard because of some unquiet statements she had just made of Russian rumours.

"You don't mean those things," he said, "or else you've no idea what they mean."

Through her quick resentment she let herself be caught in a corner, as it were. Everyone was preparing to leave the house for a dance in benefit of some local charity. Momentarily they were left alone. He indicated the over-luxurious and rather tasteless room.

"You're asking for the confiscation of all this, and your own Oakmont, and every delightful setting to which you've been accustomed all your life. You're asking for rationed food; for a shakedown, maybe, in a garret. You're asking for a task in a kitchen or a field. Why not a negro's kitchen; a Chinaman's field?"

He looked at her, asking gravely:

"Do you quite understand the principles of communism as they affect women?"

He fancied a heightening of her colour.

"You of all men," she said, "ought to understand the strivings of the people."

He shook his head vehemently.

"I'm for the palace," he laughed, "and I fancy it means more to me than it could to a man who's never used his brain. Let those stay in the hovel who haven't the courage to climb out."

"And you're one of the people!" she murmured. "One of the people!"

"You don't say that," he answered, quickly, "to tell me it makes me admirable in your eyes. You say it to hurt, as you used to call me, 'groom'. It doesn't inflict the least pain."

There was no question about her flush now.

"Tell me," he urged, "why you permit your brain such inconsistencies, why you accept such a patent fad, why you need fads at all?"

"Why won't you leave me alone?" she asked, harshly.

"You're always asking that," he smiled, "and you see I never do. Why are you unlike these other women? Why did you turn to Blodgett? Why have you made a fool of Dalrymple?"

She stared at him.

"What are you saying?"

"I'm saying, why don't you come to me?"

He watched the angry challenge in her eyes, the deliberate stiffening of her entire body as if to a defensive attitude. He held out his hand to her.

"Sylvia! We are growing old."

Yet in her radiant presence it was preposterous to speak of age. She drew away with a sort of shudder.

"You wouldn't dare touch me again – "

He captured her glance. He felt that from his own eyes he failed to keep the unsatisfied desire of years.

"I haven't forgotten Upton, either. When will you give me what I want, Sylvia?"

Her glance eluded him. Swiftly she receded. Through the open door drifted a growing medley of voices. She hurried to the door, but he followed her, and purposefully climbed into the automobile she had entered, but they were no longer alone. Only once, when he made her dance with him in a huge, over-decorated tent, did he manage a whisper.

"No more nonsense with Dalrymple or anybody. Please stop making unhappiness."

XIV

George returned to New York with an uneasy spirit, filled with doubt as to Dalrymple's statement of renunciation, and of his own course in saying what he had of Dalrymple to Sylvia. Mightn't that very expression of disapproval, indeed, tend to swing her back to the man? When Lambert walked in a day or two later George looked at the happy, bronzed face, recalling his assurance that Betty wasn't one to give by halves. Through eyes clouded by such happiness Lambert couldn't be expected to see very far into the dangerous and avaricious discontent of the majority. How much less time, then, would he have for George's personal worries? George, nevertheless, guided the conversation to Dalrymple.

"He's running down to Oakmont with me to-night," Lambert said, carelessly. "You know Betty's there with the family for a few days."

George hid his temper. There was no possible chance about this. Would Dalrymple go to Oakmont after the breaking off of even a secret engagement; or, defeated in his main purpose, was he hanging about for what crumbs might yet fall from the Planters' table. Nearly without reflection he burst out with:

"It's inconceivable you should permit that man about your sister."

Probably Lambert's great content forbade an answer equally angry.

"Still at it! See here. Sylvia doesn't care for you."

"I'm not talking of myself," George said. "I'm talking of Dalrymple."

With an air of kindness, undoubtedly borrowed from Betty, Lambert said easily:

"Stop worrying about him, then. Giving a friend encouragement doesn't mean asking him into the family. That idea seems to obsess you. What difference does it make to you, anyway, what man Sylvia marries? I'll say this, if you wish: Since I've had Betty I see things a bit clearer. I really shouldn't care to have Dolly the man. I don't think there's a chance of it."

"You mean," George asked, eagerly, "if there were you'd stop it?"

"I shouldn't like it," Lambert answered. "Naturally, I'd express myself."

"See here. Dalrymple isn't to be trusted. You've been too occupied. You haven't watched your sister. How can you tell what's in her mind? You didn't forecast the affair with Josiah, eh? There's only one way I can play my game – the thorough way. If it came to a real engagement I should have to say things, Lambert – things I'd hate myself for; things that would hurt me, perhaps, more than any one else. If necessary I shall say them. Will you tell me, if – if – "

Lambert smiled uneasily.

"You're shying at phantoms, but you've always played every game to that point, and perhaps you're justified. I'll come to you if circumstances ever promise to prove you right."

"Thanks," George said, infinitely relieved; yet he had an unpleasant feeling that Lambert had held his temper and had agreed because he was aware of the existence of a great debt, one that he could never quite pay.

XV

This creation of a check on Dalrymple and the assurance that Lambert would warn him of danger came at a useful time for George, since the market-place more and more demanded an undisturbed mind. He conceded that Blodgett's earlier pessimism bade fair to be justified. He watched a succession of industrial upheavals, seeking a safe course among innumerable and perilous shoals that seemed to defy charting; conquering whatever instinct he might have had to sympathize with the men, since he judged their methods as hysterical, grabbing, and wasteful.

"But I don't believe," he told Blodgett, "these strikes have been ordered from the Kremlin; still, other colours may quite easily combine to form red."

"God help the employers. God help the employees," Blodgett grumbled.

"And most of all, may God help the great public," George suggested.

But Blodgett was preoccupied these days with an Oakmont stripped of passion. George knew that Old Planter had sent for him, and he found something quite pitiful in that final surrender of the great man who was now worse off than the youngest, grimiest groveller in the furnaces; so he was not surprised when it was announced that Blodgett would shortly move over to the marble temple, a partner at last with individuality and initiative, one, in fact, who would control everything for Old Planter and his heirs until Lambert should be older. Lambert was sufficiently unhappy over the change, because it painted so clearly the inevitable end. The Fifth Avenue house was opened early that fall as if the old man desired to get as close as possible to the centre of turbulent events, hoping that so his waning sight might serve.

Consequently George had more opportunities of meeting Sylvia; did meet her from time to time in the evenings, and watched her gaiety which frequently impressed him as a too noticeably moulded posture. It served, nevertheless, admirably with the men of all ages who flocked about her as if, indeed, she were a débutante once more.

In these groups George was glad not to see Dalrymple often, but he noticed that Goodhue was near rather more than he had been formerly, and he experienced a sharp uneasiness, an instinct to go to Goodhue and say:

"Don't. Keep away. She's caused enough unhappiness."

Still you couldn't tell about Goodhue. The very fact that he fluttered near Sylvia might indicate that his real interest lay carefully concealed, some distance away. He had, moreover, always stood singularly aside from the pursuit of the feminine.

George's first meeting with Betty since her return was coloured by a frank acceptance on her part of new conditions that revived his sense of a sombre and helpless nostalgia. All was well with Betty. If there had ever been any doubt in her Lambert had swept it away. Whatever emotion she experienced for George was, in fact, that of a fond sister for a brother; and George, studying her and Lambert, longed as he had never done to find some such eager and confident content. The propulsion of pure ambition slipped from his desire for Sylvia. With a growing wonder he found himself craving through her just the satisfied simplicity so clearly experienced by Lambert and Betty. Could anything make her brilliancy less hard, less headstrong, less cruel?

George cast about for the means. Lambert was on watch. There was still time – plenty of time.

He hadn't spoken again to Lambert about Dalrymple. There hadn't seemed any point, for Lambert was entirely trustworthy, and, since Betty and he lived for the present in the Fifth Avenue house, he saw Sylvia constantly. Their conversation instead when they met for luncheon, as they did frequently, revolved about threats which a few years back they hadn't dreamed would ever face them. Blodgett, George noticed, didn't point the finger of scorn at him for holding on to the mill stocks. George wouldn't have minded if he had. They had originally cost him little, their total loss would not materially affect his fortune, and he was glad through them to have a personal share in the irritating and absorbing evolution in the mills. He heard of Allen frequently as a fiery and fairly successful organizer of trouble, and he sent for him when he thought the situation warranted it. Allen came readily enough, walking into the office, shorn of his London frills, but evidently retentive of the habit of keeping neat and clean. The eyes, too, had altered, but not obviously, letting through, perhaps, a certain disillusionment.

"What are you doing to my mills?" George wanted to know.

Allen, surprisingly, didn't once lose his temper, listening to George's complaints without change of expression while he wandered about, his eyes taking in each detail of the richly furnished office.

"The directors report that the men have refused to enter into a fair and above-board coöperative arrangement, and we've figured all along it was turning the business over to them; taking money out of our own pockets. It's a form of communism, and they throw it down. Why, Allen? I want this straight."

Allen paused in his walk, and looked closely at George. There was no change in his face even when he commenced to speak.

"A share in a business," he said, softly, "carries uncomfortable responsibilities. You can't go to yourself, for instance, and say: 'Give me more wages – more than the traffic will bear; then you sweat about it in your office, but don't bother me in my cottage.'"

"You acknowledge it!" George cried.

Allen's face at last became a trifle animated.

"Why not – to you? Everybody's out to get it – the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker. The capitalist most of all. Why not the man that turns the wheels?"

George whistled.

"You'd crush essential industries off the face of the earth! You'd go back to the stone age!"

"Not," Allen answered, slowly, "as long as the profits of the past can be got out of somebody's pockets."

"You'd grab capital!"

"Like a flash; and what are you going to do about it?"

"I'll tell you what I am going to do," George answered, "and I fancy a lot of others will follow my example. I am going to get rid of those stocks if I have to throw them out of the window, then you'll have no gun to hold at my head."

"Throw too much away," Allen warned, "and you'll throw it all."

"The beautiful, pure social revolution!" George sneered. "You're less honest than you were when you dropped everything to go to London for me. What's the matter with you, Allen?"

Allen appraised again the comfortable room. Even now his expression didn't alter materially.

"Nothing. I don't know. Unless the universal spirit of grab has got in my own veins."

"Then, my friend," George said, pleasantly, "there's the door."

XVI

George found himself thinking and talking of Allen's views quite enough to please even Bailly. Blodgett, on the other hand, perhaps because of the heavy, settled atmosphere of the marble temple, had changed his tune.

"Things are bound to come right in the end."

As far as George was concerned he might as well have said:

"This marble surrounding me is so many feet thick. Who do you think is going to interfere with that?"

Something of quite a different nature bothered Lambert, and for a few days George thought it a not unnatural resentment at seeing Blodgett in his father's office, but Lambert took pains to awaken him to the truth, walking in one afternoon a few weeks after the Planters' move to town. He had an uncertain and discontented appearance.

"By the way, George," he said not without difficulty, "Dolly's about a good deal."

It was quite certain Lambert hadn't come to announce only that, so George shrank from his next words, confident that something definite must have happened. He controlled his anxiety with the thought that Lambert had, indeed, come to him, and that Dalrymple couldn't permit the announcement of an engagement without meeting the fulfilment of George's penalties.

"It's been on my mind for the past week," Lambert went on. "I mean, he hasn't been seeing her much in public, but he's been hanging around the house, and last night I spoke to Sylvia about it, told her I didn't think father would want him any more than I did, pointed out his financial record, and said I had gathered he owed you no small sum – "

"You blind idiot!" George cried. "Why did you have to say that? How did you even guess it? I've never opened my mouth."

"He'd milked everybody else dry," Lambert answered, "and Driggs mentioned a long time ago you'd had a curiously generous notion you'd like to help Dolly if he ever needed it."

"It wasn't generosity," George said, dryly. "Go ahead. Did you make any more blunders?"

"You're scarcely one to accuse," Lambert answered. "You put me up to it in the first place, although I'll admit now, I'd have spoken anyway. I don't want Sylvia marrying him. I don't want him down town as more than a salaried man, unless he changes more than he has. I didn't feel even last night that Sylvia really loved him, but I made her furious, and you're right. I shouldn't have said that. I daresay she guessed, too, it wasn't all generosity that had led you to pay Dolly's debts. Anyway, she wouldn't talk reasonably, said she'd marry any one she pleased – oh, quite the young lady who sent me after you with a horse whip, and I daresay she'd have been glad to do it again last night. I spoke to Mother. She said Sylvia hadn't said anything to her, but she added, if Sylvia wanted him, she wouldn't oppose her. Naturally she wouldn't, seeing only Dolly's good points, which are regularly displayed for the benefit of the ladies. Anyway, I agreed to tell you, and you promised, if it came to the point, you'd have some things to say to me – "

George nodded shortly.

"Yes, but I blame you for forcing me to say them. You've thrown them together – "

"I've always wanted to help Dolly as you would any old friend who had wandered a little to the side, and was anxious to get back on the path. I can't figure every man that comes about the place as a suitor for Sylvia. Let's forget all that. What are these important and unpleasant things you have to tell me? I daresay you know where the money you loaned Dolly went."

George pressed his lips tight. He frowned. Even now he hesitated to soil his hands, to divide himself, perhaps, permanently from Sylvia at the very moment of saving her; and he wasn't quite sure, in view of her pride and her quick temper, that his very effort wouldn't defeat its own purpose. If only Lambert hadn't made that worst of all possible blunders. He wondered how a man felt on the rack. He bent swiftly and picked up the telephone.

"I shall talk with Dalrymple first," he said. "I'm going to ask him to come over here at once. I think he'll come."

But Lambert shook his head, stopped him before he could take the receiver from the hook.

"Isn't in the office. Hasn't been back since luncheon. Left no word then."

"Perhaps since you've come away – " George hazarded.

He telephoned, while Lambert wandered about the room, or paused to slip through his fingers the tape that emerged like a long and listless serpent from the now silent ticker. After a question or two George replaced the receiver and glanced at Lambert.

"You're right. Sticks to the job, doesn't he?"

"He isn't exactly an ordinary clerk," Lambert offered.

George walked to a window. For a long time he gazed over the lower city, turned singularly unreal by the early dusk, while it outlined itself little by little in yellow points of light which gave to the clouds and the circling columns of steam a mauve quality as if the world, instead of night, faced the birth of a dawn, new, abnormal, frightening.

He had to make one more effort with Dalrymple before sending Lambert to Sylvia with his reasons why she shouldn't marry the man. In the singular, unreal light he glanced at his hands. He had to see Dalrymple once more first —

He turned and snapped on the lights.

"What are you going to do?" Lambert asked. "There's no likely way to catch him down town."

A clerk tip-toed in. George swung sharply.

"What is it, Carson?"

"Mr. Dalrymple's outside, sir. It's so late I hesitated to bother you, but he said it was very important he should see you, sir."

George sighed.

"Wait outside, Carson. I'll call you in a moment."

And when the door was closed he turned to Lambert.

"I'm going to see him here – alone."

"Why?" Lambert asked, uneasily. "I don't quite see what you're up to. No more battles of the ink pots!"

"Please get out, Lambert; but maybe you'd better hang about the office. I think Dicky's gone for the night. Wait in his room."

"All right," Lambert agreed.

George opened the door, and, as Lambert went through reluctantly, beckoned the clerk.

"Send Mr. Dalrymple in, Carson."

He stood behind his desk, facing the open door. Almost immediately the doorway was blocked by Dalrymple. George stared, trying to value the alteration in the man. The weak, rather handsome face was bold and contemptuous. Clearly he had come here for blows of his own choosing, and had just now borrowed courage from some illicit bar, but he had taken only enough, George gathered, to make him assured and not too calculating. He was clothed as if he had returned from an affair, with a flower in his buttonhole, and a top hat held in the hand with his stick and gloves.

"Come in!"

Dalrymple closed the door and advanced, smiling.