The Guarded Heights

Mundy, George decided, wasn't such an ogre after all. He wore glasses. He was bald, thin, and stoop-shouldered. He had the benign expression of a parson; but behind that bald forehead, George soon learned, was stored all the knowledge he craved, without, however, the imagination to make it personally very valuable.

If he didn't sweep the office at first, George approximated such labour, straightening the desks of the mighty, checking up on the contents of waste-paper baskets, seeing that the proper people got mail and newspapers, running errands; and always, in the office or outside, he kept his ears open and his eyes wide. He absorbed the patter of the Street. He learned to separate men into classes, the wise ones, who always made money, and the foolish, who now and then had good luck, but most of the time were settling their losses. And at every opportunity he was after what Mundy concealed behind his appearance of a parson.

At night he dissected the financial journals, watching the alterations in the market, and probing for the causes; applying to this novitiate the same grim determination he had brought to Squibs Bailly's lessons a year before. Never once was he tempted to seek a simple path to fortune.

"When I speculate," he told himself, "there'll be mighty little risk about it."

Even in those days his fifteen dollars a week condemned him to a cheap lodging house near Lexington Avenue, the simplest of meals, and practically no relaxation. He exercised each morning, and walked each evening home from the office, for he hadn't forgotten what Princeton expected from him in the fall.

Sylvia's photograph and the broken riding crop supervised his labours, but he knew he couldn't hope, except by chance, to see her this summer.

One Saturday morning Goodhue came unexpectedly into the office and carried him off to Long Island. George saw the tiny eyes of Blodgett narrow.

Blodgett, perhaps because of Mr. Alston's letter, had condescended to chat with George a number of times in the outer office. On the Monday following he strolled up and jerked out:

"Wasn't that young Richard Goodhue I saw you going off with Saturday?"

"Yes sir."

"Know him well?"

"Very. We're in the same class. We're rooming together next year."

Blodgett grunted and walked on, mopping his puffy face with a shiny blue handkerchief. George wondered if he had displeased Blodgett by going with Goodhue. He decided he hadn't, for the picturesquely dressed man stopped oftener after that, chatting quite familiarly.

Whatever one thought of Blodgett's appearance and manner, one admired him. George hadn't been in the Street a week before he realized that the house of Blodgett and Sinclair was one of the most powerful in America, with numerous ramifications to foreign countries. There was no phase of finance it didn't touch; and, as far as George could see, it was all Josiah Blodgett, who had come to New York from the West, by way of Chicago. In those offices Sinclair was scarcely more than a name in gold on various doors. Once or twice, during the summer, indeed, George saw the partner chatting in a bored way with Blodgett. His voice was high and affected, like Wandel's, and he had a house in Newport. According to office gossip he had little money interest in the firm, lending the prestige of his name for what Blodgett thought it was worth. As he watched the fat, hard worker chatting with the butterfly man, George suddenly realized that Blodgett might want a house in Newport, too. Was it because he was Richard Goodhue's room-mate that Blodgett stopped him in the hall one day, grinning with good nature?

"If I were a cub," he puffed, "I'd buy this very morning all the Katydid I could, and sell at eighty-nine."

George whistled.

"I knew something was due to happen to Katydid, but I didn't expect anything like that."

"How did you know?" Blodgett demanded.

He shot questions until he had got the story of George's close observation and night drudgery.

"Glad to see Mundy hasn't dropped you out the window yet," he grinned. "Maybe you'll get along. Glad for Mr. Alston's sake. See here, if I were a cub, and knew as much about Katydid as you do, I wouldn't hesitate to borrow a few cents from the boss."

"No," George said. "I've a very little of my own. I'll use that."

He had, perhaps, two hundred dollars in the bank at Princeton. He drew a check without hesitation and followed Blodgett's advice. He had commenced to speculate without risk. Several times after that Blodgett jerked out similar advice, usually commencing with: "What does young Pierpont Morgan think of so and so?" And usually George would give his employer a reasonable forecast. Because of these discreet hints his balance grew, and Mundy one day announced that his salary had been raised ten dollars.

All that, however, was the brighter side. Often during those hot, heavy nights, while he pieced together the day's complicated pattern, George envied the fortunates who could play away from pavements and baking walls. He found himself counting the days until he would go back to Princeton and football, and Betty's charm; but even that prospect was shadowed by his doubt as to how he would emerge from the club tangle.

He didn't meet Sylvia, but one day he saw Old Planter step from an automobile and enter the marble temple where he was accustomed to sacrifice corporations and people to the gods of his pocket-book. The great man used a heavy stick and climbed the steps rather slowly, flanked by obsequious underlings, gaped at by a crowd, buzzing and over-impressed. Somehow George couldn't fancy Blodgett with the gout – it was too delightfully bred.

He peered in the automobile, but of course Sylvia wasn't there, nor, he gathered from his mother's occasional notes to thank him for the little money he could send her, was she much at Oakmont.

"I'll see her this fall," he told himself, "and next winter. I've started to do what I said I would."

As far as Wall Street was concerned, Blodgett evidently agreed with him.

"I can put up with you next summer," he said at parting. "I'll write Mr. Alston you're fit for something besides football."

Mundy displayed a pastoral sadness.

"You ought to stay right here," he said. "College is all right if you don't want to amount to a hill of beans. It's rotten for making money."

Nevertheless, he agreed to send George a weekly letter, giving his wise views as to what was going on among the money makers. They all made him feel that even in that rushing place his exit had caused a perceptible ripple.

XXII

The smallness, the untidiness, the pure joy of Squibs Bailly's study!

The tutor ran his hands over George's muscles.

"You're looking older and a good deal worn," he said, "but thank God you're still hard."

Mrs. Bailly sat there, too. They were both anxious for his experiences, yet when he had told them everything he sensed a reservation in their praise.

"I think I should turn my share of the laundry back," he said, defiantly. "I've something like three thousand dollars of my own now."

"Does it make you feel very rich?" Mrs. Bailly asked.

He laughed.

"It's a tiny start, but I won't need half of it to get through the winter."

Bailly lighted his pipe, stretched his legs, and pondered.

"You're giving the laundry up," he said, finally, "because – because it savours of service?"

George didn't get angry. He couldn't with Squibs in the first place; and, in the second, hadn't that thought been at the bottom of his mind ever since Dalrymple's remark about dirty hands?

"I don't need it any more," he said, "and I'd like to have you dispose of it where it will do the most good."

His voice hardened.

"But to somebody who wants to climb, not to any wild-eyed fellow who thinks he sees salvation in pulling down."

"You've just returned from the world," Bailly said, "and all you've brought is three thousand dollars and a bad complexion. I wish you'd directed your steps to a coal mine. You'd have come back richer."

XXIII

Goodhue got in a few hours after George. There was a deep satisfaction in their greetings. They were glad to be together, facing varsity football, looking ahead to the pleasures and excitements of another year, but George would have been happier if he could have shared his room-mate's unconcern about the clubs. Of course, Goodhue was settled. Did he know about George? George was glad the other couldn't guess how carefully he had calculated the situation – to take the best, or a dignified stand against all clubs with Allen getting behind him with all the poor and unknown men. But wasn't that exactly Wandel's game?

Stringham and Green were glad enough to see him, but Green thought he had been thoughtless not to have kept a football in the office for kicking goals through transoms.

It was good to feel the vapours of the market-place leaving his lungs and brain. Goodhue and he, during the easy preliminary work, resumed their runs. He felt he hadn't really gone back. If he didn't get hurt he would do things that fall that would drive the perplexed frown from Bailly's forehead, that would win Betty's applause and Sylvia's admiration. Whatever happened he was going to take care of her brother in the Yale game.

Betty was rather too insistent about that. She had fallen into the habit again of stopping George and Goodhue on their runs for a moment's gossip.

"See here, Betty," Goodhue laughed once, "you're rather too interested in this Eli Planter."

George had reached the same conclusion – but why should it bother him? It was logical that Betty and Lambert should be drawn together. He blamed himself for a habit of impatience that had grown upon him. Had it come out of the strain of the Street, or was it an expression of his knowledge that now, at the commencement of his second year, he approached the culmination of his entire college course? With the club matter settled there would remain little for him save a deepening of useful friendships and a squeezing of the opportunity to acquire knowledge and a proper manner. For the same cause, the approaching election of officers for Sophomore year was of vital importance. It was generally conceded that the ticket put through now, barring accident, would be elected senior year to go out into the world at the head of the class. The presidency would graduate a man with a patent of nobility, as one might say. George guessed that all of Wandel's intrigues led to the re-election of Goodhue. He wanted that influential office in his own crowd. Even now George couldn't wholly sound Wandel's desires with him. He yielded to the general interest and uneasiness. Squibs had been right. Princeton did hold a fair sample of it all. He understood that very much as this affair was arranged he would see the political destinies of the country juggled later.

Allen got him alone, begging for his decision.

"Have you been asked for a club yet?"

"None of your business," George said, promptly.

"You've got to make up your mind in a hurry," Allen urged. "Promise me now that you'll leave the clubs alone, then I can handle Mr. Wandel."

"You're dickering with him?" George asked, quickly.

"No. Mr. Wandel is trying to dicker with me."

But George couldn't make up his mind. There were other problems as critical as the clubs. Could he afford to fight Dick Goodhue for that high office? If only he could find out what the Goodhue crowd thought of him!

He had an opportunity to learn one evening, and conquered a passionate desire to eavesdrop. As he ran lightly up the stairs to his room he heard through the open study door Wandel and Goodhue talking with an unaccustomed heat.

"You can't take such an attitude," Wandel was saying.

"I've taken it."

"Change your mind," Wandel urged. "I've nursed him along as the only possible tie between two otherwise irreconcilable elements of the class. I tell you I can't put you over unless you come to your senses."

George hurried in and nodded. From their faces he gathered there had been a fair row. Wandel grasped his arm. George stiffened. Something was coming now. It wasn't quite what he had expected.

"How would you like," Wandel said, "to be the very distinguished secretary of your class?"

George gazed from the window at the tree-bordered lawns where lesser men contentedly kicked footballs to each other.

"It ought to be what the class likes," he muttered. "I'm really only interested in seeing Dicky re-elected."

"If," Wandel said, "I told you it couldn't be done without your distinguished and untrammelled name on the ticket?"

George flushed.

"What do you mean by untrammelled?"

"You stop that, Spike," Goodhue said, more disturbed than George had ever seen him. "It's indecent. I won't have it."

George relaxed. Untrammelled had certainly meant free from the taint of the clubs. He was grateful Goodhue had interfered.

"Why don't you run for something yourself, Mr. Wandel?" he asked, dryly.

Goodhue laughed.

"Carry your filthy politics somewhere else."

He and George, with an affectation of good nature, pushed Wandel out of the room. They looked at each other. Neither said anything.

George had to call upon his will to keep his attention on his books that night. In return for Allen's support for Goodhue Wandel wanted to give Allen for a minor place on the ticket a poor man untrammelled by the clubs. The realization angered George. Aside from any other consideration he couldn't permit himself to be bartered about to save any one – even Goodhue. But was Goodhue trying to spare him at a sacrifice? George, with a vast relief, decided that that was so when Goodhue mentioned casually one day that he was a certainty for the club.

"Don't say anything about it," he advised. "The upper classmen have been getting a few of us together. I'm glad you're among us. We'll elect the full section later."

"Of course I came here a stranger," George began, trying to hide his pleasure.

"Quite a lot of us have learned to know you pretty well," Goodhue smiled.

George wouldn't accept this coveted gift without putting himself on record.

"I needn't ask you," he said, "if Dalrymple's already in."

Goodhue shook his head.

"Maybe later."

"I think," George said, distinctly, "that the men who are responsible for my election should know I'll hold out against Dalrymple."

"You're a conscientious beggar," Goodhue laughed. "It's your own business now, but there'll be a nice little rumpus just the same."

George was conscientious with Allen, too.

"I feel I ought to tell you," he said, "that I've made up my mind, if I'm asked, to join a club. Anything that has so much to offer can't be as bad as you think."

Without answering Allen flushed and walked off angrily.

It was the next day that the parties gathered on the top floor of Dickinson Hall for the election. George went as an amused spectator. He had played the game on the level and had destroyed his own chances, but he was afraid he had destroyed Goodhue's, too, or Goodhue had destroyed his own by insisting on taking George into the club. That was a sacrifice George wanted to repay.

Wandel, as usual, was undisturbed. Allen's angular figure wandered restlessly among the groups. George had no idea what the line-up was.

George sensed weakness in the fact that, when the nominations were opened, Wandel was the first on his feet. He recited Goodhue's virtues as an athlete and a scholar. Like a real political orator at a convention he examined his record as president the previous year. He placed him in nomination amid a satisfactory applause. Now what was coming? Who did Allen have?

When he arose Allen wore an air of getting through with a formality. He insisted on the fact that his candidate was working his way through college, and would always be near the top scholastically. He represented a section of the class that the more fortunate of the students were prone to forget. And so on – a condensation of his complaints to George. The room filled with suspense, which broke into loud laughter when Allen named a man of absolutely no importance or colour, who couldn't poll more than the votes of his personal friends. A trick, George guessed it, and everyone else. But Wandel was quickly moving that the nominations be closed. Allen glanced around with a worried, expectant air. Then George saw that Rogers was up – a flushed, nervous figure – and had got the floor. He spoke rapidly, nearly unintelligibly.

"My candidate doesn't need any introduction," he recited. "All factions can unite on him – the man that smashed the Yale and Harvard Freshmen. The man who is going to smash the Yale and Harvard varsities this year – George Morton!"

A cheer burst out, loud, from the heart. George saw that it came from both sides. The poor men had been stampeded, too.

Goodhue was on his feet, his arms upraised, demanding recognition. Suddenly George realized what this meant to Goodhue, and temper replaced his amazement. He sprang up, shouting:

"I won't have it – "

A dozen pairs of hands dragged him down. A dozen voices cried in his ears:

"Shut up, you damned fool!"

XXIV

Goodhue got the floor and withdrew his name, but the chairman wouldn't see or hear George. He declared the nominations closed. It was as if he and all the lesser men, who weren't leading factions, had seen in George the one force that could pull the class together. The vote was perfunctory, and Allen lazily moved to make it unanimous. George took the chair, frowning, altogether unhappy in his unforeseen victory. He had a feeling of having shabbily repaid Goodhue's loyalty and sacrifice, yet it hadn't been his fault; but would Goodhue know that?

"Speech! Shoot something, George! Talk up there, Mr. President!"

He'd give them a speech to chew over.

"Back-door politicians have done their best to split the class. The class has taken matters into its own hands. There isn't going to be a split. It won't be long before you'll have Prospect Street off your minds. That seems to be two thirds of the trouble. Let's forget it, and pull together, and leave Princeton a little better than we found it. If you think anything needs reform let's talk about it openly and sensibly, clubs and all. I appreciate the honour, but Dick Goodhue ought to have had it, would have had it, if he hadn't been born with a silver spoon. Ought a man's wealth or poverty stand against him here? Think it over. That's all."

There was no opposition to Goodhue's election as Secretary.

Allen slipped to George at the close of the meeting.

"About what I'd have expected of you, anyway."

But George was looking for Goodhue, found him, and walked home with him.

"Best thing that could have happened," Goodhue said. "They're all marvelling at your nerve for talking about Prospect Street as you did."

George spied Rogers, and beckoned the freshly prominent youth.

"See here, young man, please come to my room after practice."

Rogers, with a frightened air, promised. Wandel appeared before, quite as if nothing had happened. He wouldn't even talk about the election.

"Just the same, Warwick," George said, "I'm not at all sure a poler named Allen couldn't tell you something about juggling crowns."

"A penetrating as well as a great president," Wandel smiled. "I haven't thanked you yet for joining our club."

George looked straight at him.

"But I've thanked Dicky for it," he said.

Rogers, when he arrived after Wandel's departure, didn't want to confess, but George knew how to get it out of him.

"You've put your finger in my pie without my consent," he said. "I'll hold that against you unless you talk up. Besides, it won't go beyond Goodhue and me. It's just for our information."

"All right," Rogers agreed, nervously, "provided it doesn't go out of this room. And there's no point mentioning names. A man we all know came to me this morning and talked about the split in the class. He couldn't get Goodhue elected because he didn't have any way of buying the support of the poor men. Allen, he figured, was going to nominate a lame duck, and then have somebody not too rich and not too poor spring his own name, figuring he would get the votes of the bulk of the class which just can't help being jealous of Goodhue and his little crowd. This chap thought he could beat Allen at that game by stampeding the class for you before Allen could get himself up, and he wanted somebody representative of the bulk of the class, that holds the balance of power, to put you in nomination. He figured even the poor men would flock to you in spite of Allen's opposition."

"And what did he offer you?" George sneered.

Rogers turned away without answering.

"Like Driggs," Goodhue said, when Rogers had gone. "He couldn't have what he wanted, but he got about as good. Politically, what's the difference? Both offices are in his crowd, but he's avoided making you look like his president."

George grinned.

"I don't wonder you call him Spike."

XXV

George, filled with a cold triumph, stared for a long time at Sylvia's portrait that night. If she thought of him at all she would have to admit he had come closer. At Princeton he was as big a man as her rich brother was at Yale. He belonged to a club where her own kind gathered. Give him money – and he was going to have that – and her attitude must alter. He bent the broken crop between his fingers, his triumph fading. He had come closer, but not close enough to hurt.

The Baillys and Betty congratulated him at practice the next day.

"You were the logical man," Betty said, "but the politicians didn't seem to want you."

Bailly drew him aside.

"It was scandal in the forum," he said, "that money and the clubs were an issue in this election."

George fingered his headgear, laughing unpleasantly.

"Yes, and they elected a poor man; a low sort of a fellow with a shadowed past."

"Forget your past," Bailly pled, "and remember in the present that the poor men, who helped elect you, are looking for your guidance. They need help."

"Then," George said, "why didn't they get themselves elected so they could help themselves?"

"Into the world there are born many cripples," Bailly said, softly. "Would you condemn them for not running as fast as the congenitally sound?"

"Trouble is, they don't try to run," George answered.

He looked at the other defiantly. Bailly had to know. It was his right.

"I can guess what house I'm going to on Prospect Street."

"Which?" Bailly sighed.

"To the very home of reaction," George laughed. "But it's easier to reform from the inside."

"No," Bailly said, gravely. "The chairs are too comfortable."

He pressed George's arm.

"It isn't the clubs here that worry me in relation to you. It's the principle of the lights behind the railing in the restless world. Try not to surrender to the habit of the guarded light."

George was glad when Stringham called from the field.

"Jump in here, Morton!"

He took his turn at the dummy scrimmage. Such exercise failed to offer its old zest, nor was it the first day he had appreciated that. The intrusion of these unquiet struggles might be responsible, yet, with them determined in his favour, his anxiety did not diminish. Was Bailly to blame with his perpetual nagging about the outside world where grave decisions waited? George frankly didn't want to face them. They seemed half-decipherable signposts which tempted him perplexingly and precariously from his path. What had just happened, added to the passage of a year and his summer in Wall Street, had brought that headlong world very close, had outlined too clearly the barriers which made it dangerous; so even here he spent some time each night studying the changing lines in the battle for money.

Yet Goodhue, with a settled outlook, shared George's misgivings at the field.

"It isn't the fun it was Freshman year," he grumbled one night. "We used to complain then that they worked us too hard. Now I don't believe they work us hard enough."

That was a serious doubt for two men who realized they alone might save inferior if eager material from defeat; and it grew until they resumed surreptitiously the extra work they had attempted hitherto only outside of the season or just at its commencement. Then it had not interfered with Green's minutely studied scheme of physical development. Now it did. The growth of their worry, moreover, measured the decline of their condition. These apprehensions had a sharper meaning for George than for his room-mate. Almost daily he saw his picture on the sporting pages of newspapers. "Morton of Princeton, the longest kicker in the game." "The keystone of the Princeton attack." "The man picked to lead Stringham's hopes to victory over Harvard and Yale." And so on. Exaggeration, George told himself, that would induce the university, the alumni, the Baillys, Betty, and Sylvia – most of all Sylvia – to expect more than he could reasonably give at his best.