"I've seen the primeval for the first time," Lambert answered.
"I'll admit it has qualities," Wandel yawned. "Anyway, I'm off."
Mrs. Planter came back to George's mind, momentarily as primeval as a man surrendered to the battle lust. What one saw, except in self-destructive emergencies, he told himself, was all veneer. Ages, epochs, generations, merely determined its depth. The hell after war! Did Wandel mean there was danger then of an attempt to thin the veneer? Was Lambert, of all people, going to assist the Allens to plane it away?
"It would mean another dark ages," he mused.
His own little self-imposed coat he saw now had gone on top of a far thicker one without which he would have been as helpless as a bushman or some anthropoidal creature escaped from an unexplored country.
He laughed, but uncomfortably. Those two had made him uneasy, and Squibs, naturally, was at Lambert's folly. There had been a letter a day or two ago which he had scarcely had time to read because of the demands of an extended movement and the confusion of receiving replacements and re-equipping the men he had. He read it over now. "Understanding," "Brotherhood."
"You are helping to bring it about, because you are helping to win this war."
In a fit of irritation he tore the letter up. What the devil was he fighting the war for?
The question wouldn't let him asleep. Lambert, Wandel, and Squibs between them had made him for the first time in his life thoroughly, uncomfortably, abominably afraid—physically afraid—afraid of being killed. For all at once there was more than Sylvia to make him want to live. He didn't see how he could die without knowing what the deuce he was fighting this man's war for, anyway.
He hadn't learned any more about it when Lambert and he were caught on the same afternoon a week later.
In the interminable, haggard thicket the attack had abruptly halted. Word reached George that Lambert's company was falling back. To him that was beyond belief if Lambert was still with his men. He hurried forward before regimental headquarters had had a chance to open its distant mouth. There were machine-gun nests ahead, foolish stragglers told him. Of course. Those were what he had ordered Lambert to take. The company was disorganized. Little groups slunk back, dragging their rifles as if they were too heavy. Others squatted in the underbrush, waiting apparently for some valuable advice.
George found the senior lieutenant, crouched behind a fallen log, getting the company in hand again through runners.
"Where's Captain Planter?"
The lieutenant nodded carelessly ahead.
"Hundred yards or so out there. He ran the show too much himself," he complained. "Bunch of Jerries jumped out of the thicket and threw potato mashers, then crawled back to the guns. When the captain went down the men near him broke. Sort of thing spreads like a pestilence."
"Dead?" George asked.
"Don't know. Potato mashers!"
"Why haven't you found out?" George asked, irritably.
The complaining note increased in the other's voice.
"He's at the foot of that tree. Hear those guns? They're just zipping a few while they wait for someone to get to him."
"Pull your company together," George said with an absurd feeling that he spoke to Mrs. Planter. "I'll go along and see that we get him and those nests. They're spoiling the entire afternoon."
The lieutenant glanced at him, startled.
"I can do it——"
"You haven't," George reminded him.
He despatched runners to the flank companies and to regimental headquarters announcing that he was moving ahead. When the battalion advanced, like a lot of fairly clever Indians, he was in the van, making straight for the tree. He had a queer idea that Mrs. Planter quietly searched in the underbrush ahead of him. The machine guns, which had been trickling, gushed.
"You're hit, sir," the lieutenant said.
George glanced at his right boot. There was a hole in the leather, but he didn't feel any pain. He dismissed the lieutenant's suggestion of stretcher bearers. He limped ahead. Why should he assume this risk for Lambert? Sylvia wouldn't thank him for it. She wouldn't thank him for anything, but her mother would. He had to get Lambert back and complete his task, but he was afraid to examine the still form he saw at last at the base of the tree, and he knew very well that that was only because Lambert was his friend. He designated a man to guide the stretcher bearers, and bent, his mind full of swift running and vicious tackles, abrupt and brutal haltings of this figure that seemed to be asleep, that would never run again.
Lambert stirred.
"Been expecting you, George," he said, sleepily.
"Anything besides your leg?" George asked.
"Guess not," Lambert answered. "What more do you want? Thanks for coming."
George left him to the stretcher bearers and hurried on full of envy; for Lambert was going home, and George hadn't dared stop to urge him to forget that dangerous nonsense he had talked the other night. Nonsense! You had only to look at these brown figures trying to flank the spouting guns. Why did they have to glance continually at him? Why had they paused when he had paused to speak to Lambert? Same side of the window! But a few of them stumbled and slept as they fell.
He had just begun to worry about the blood in his right boot when something snapped at the bone of his good leg, and he pitched forward helplessly.
"Some tackle!" he thought.
Then through his brain, suddenly confused, flashed an overwhelming gratitude. He couldn't walk. He couldn't go forward. He wouldn't have to take any more risks beyond those shared with the stretcher bearers who would carry him back. Like Lambert, he was through. He was going home—home to Sylvia, to success, to the coveted knowledge of why he had fought this war.
The lieutenant, frightened, solicitous, crawled to him, summoning up the stretcher bearers, for the advance had gone a little ahead, the German range had shortened to meet it.
"How bad, sir?"
George indicated his legs.
"Never learned how to walk on my hands."
The lieutenant straightened, calling out cursing commands. George managed to achieve a sitting posture. By gad! This leg hurt! It made him a little giddy. Only once before, he thought vaguely, had he experienced such pain. What was the trouble here? The advance had halted, probably because the word had spread that he was down.
What was it Lambert had said about putting the rank and file on the same side of the window? The rank and file wanted an officer, and the higher the officer the farther it would go. That was answer enough for Lambert, Squibs, Allen——And he would point it out to them all, for the stretcher bearers had come up, had lifted him to the stretcher, were ready to start him back to decency, to safety——
Thank God there wasn't any multitude or an insane trainer here to order him about.
"They've stopped again," the lieutenant sobbed. "Some of them are coming back."
That sort of thing did spread like a pestilence, but there was nothing George could do about it. He had done his job. Good job, too. Soft billet now. Decency. Sylvia. No Green. No multitude——
"You make a touchdown!"
And he became aware at last of the multitude—raving higher officers in comfortable places; countless victims of invasion, waiting patiently to go home; myriads in the cities, intoxicated with enthusiasm and wine, tumbling happily from military play to patriotic bazaar; but most eloquent of all in that innumerable company were the silent and cold brown figures lying about him in the underbrush.
His brain, a little delirious, was filled with the roaring from the stands. The crowd was commanding him to get ahead somehow, to wipe out those deadly nests, to let the regiment, the army, tired nations, sweep on to peace and the end of an unbelievable madness.
Once more he glanced through blurred eyes at his clothing and saw livery, and this time he had put it on of his own free will. He seemed to hear Squibs:
"World lives by service."
"I'm in the service," he thought. "Got to serve."
It impressed him as quite pitiful that now he would never know just why.
"Where you going?" he demanded of the stretcher bearers who had begun to carry him back.
They tried to explain, hurrying a little. He threatened them with his revolver.
"Turn around. Let's go—with the battalion."
The lieutenant saw, the men saw, these frightened figures running with loping steps, carrying a stretcher which they jerked and twitched so that the figure lying on it with arm raised, holding a revolver, suffered agonies and struggled not to be flung to the ground. And the lieutenant and the men sprang to their feet, ran forward, shouted:
"Follow the Major!"
The German gunners, caught by surprise, hesitated, had trouble, therefore, shortening their ranges; and as panic spreads so does the sudden spirit of victory.
"Same side of the window!" George grumbled as the bearers set him down behind the captured guns.
"Just the same," he rambled, "fine fellows. Who said they weren't fine fellows?"
He wanted to argue it angrily with a wounded German propped against a shattered tree, but the lieutenant interrupted him, bringing up a medical orderly, asking him if he had any instructions. George answered very pleasantly:
"Not past me, Mr. Planter! Rank and file myself!"
The lieutenant glanced significantly at the medical orderly. He looked sharply at George's hair and suddenly pointed.
"They nicked him in the head, too."
The orderly knelt and examined the place the lieutenant had indicated.
"Oh, no, sir. That's quite an old scar."
"Lost a leg or two?" Allen asked.
"Not yet. Don't think I shall. Planter's not so lucky, but he'll get home sooner."
Allen brought George his one relief from the deadly monotony of the base hospital. He had sent for him because he wanted his opinion as to the possibility of an armistice. Blodgett, however, hadn't waited for the result of the conference. The day Allen arrived a letter came from him, telling George not to worry.
"King Ferdy along about the last of September whispered I'd better begin to unload. It's a killing, George."
With his mind clear of that George could be amused by Allen. The friend of the people wore some striking clothes from London tailors and haberdashers. He carried a cunning little cane. He had managed something extremely neat in moustaches. He spoke with a perceptible West End accent. But in reply to George's sneering humour he made this astonishing remark:
"It isn't nearly as much fun being a top-hole person as I thought it was going to be."
"You're lucky to have found it out," George said, "for your job's about over. Of course I could get you something in Wall Street."
"Doubt if I should want it," Allen said. "I've always got my old job."
George whistled.
"You mean you'd go back to long hair, cheap clothes, and violent words?"
"Why not? I only took your offer, Morton, because I was inclined to agree with you that in the outside world's anxiety to look at what was going on over the fence people'd stop thinking. Russia didn't stop thinking, and after the armistice you watch America begin to use its brain."
"You mean the downtrodden," George sneered.
"That's the greater part of any country," Allen said, his acquired accent forgotten, his perfectly clean hands commencing to gesture.
But George wouldn't listen to him, got rid of him, turned to the wall with an ugly feeling that he had gone out of his way to nurture one of the makers of the hell after war.
George crushed his uneasy thoughts, trying to dwell instead on the idea that he was going back to the normal, but all at once he experienced a dread of the normal, perhaps, because he was no longer normal himself. Could he limp before Sylvia with his old assurance? Would people pity him, or would he irritate them because he had a disability? And snatches of his talks at the front with Wandel etched themselves sharply against his chaotic recollections of those days. Was Wandel fair? Was it, indeed, the original George Morton people had always liked? Here, apart from the turmoil, he didn't believe it, didn't dare believe it. Those people wouldn't have cared for him except for his assumption of qualities which he had chosen as from a counter display. Yet was it the real George Morton that made him in superlative moments break the traces of his acquired judgments, as he had done at New Haven, in the Argonne, to dash selflessly into the service of others? Rotten inside, indeed! Even in the hospital he set out to crush that impulsive, dangerous part of him.
But the nearer he drew to home the more he suffered from a depression that he could only define as homesickness—homesickness for the old ways, the old habits, the old thoughts; and the memory of his temerity with Sylvia at the moment of their parting was like a great cloud threatening the future with destructive storm.
Lambert, wearing a contrivance the doctors had given him in place of what the country had taken away, accompanied by Betty and the Baillys, met the transport. Betty and Mrs. Bailly cried, and George shook his heavy stick at them.
"See here! I'm not going to limp like this always."
Bailly encircled him with his thin arms.
"You're too old to play football, anyway, George."
George found himself wanting Betty's arms, their forgetfulness, their understanding, their tenderness.
"When are you two going to be married?" he forced himself to ask.
Betty looked away, her white cheeks flushing, but Lambert hurried an answer.
"As soon as you're able to get to Princeton. You're to be best man."
"Honoured."
So Lambert's crippling hadn't made any difference to Betty, but how did Sylvia take it? He wanted to ask Lambert where she was, if anything had happened to her, any other mad affair, now that the war was over, like the one with Blodgett; but he couldn't ask, and no one volunteered to tell him, and it wasn't until his visit to Oakmont, on his first leave from the hospital, that he learned anything whatever about her, and that was only what his eyes in a moment told him.
Lambert drove over and got George, explaining that his mother wanted to see him.
"She'd have come to the dock," he said, "but Father these days is rather hard to leave."
George went reluctantly, belligerently, for since his landing his feeling of homesickness had increased with the realization that his victorious country was more radically altered than he had fancied. The ride, however, had the advantage of an uninterrupted talk with Lambert which developed gossip that Blodgett, stuffed with business, hadn't yet given him.
Goodhue and Wandel, for instance, were still abroad, holding down showy jobs at the peace conference. Dalrymple, on the other hand, had been home for months.
"Most successful war," Lambert told George. "Scarcely smelled fire, but got a couple foreign decorations, and a promotion—my poor old leg wasn't worth it, or yours, George, but what odds now? And as soon as the show stopped at Sedan he was trotting back. Can't help admiring him, for that sort of thing spells success, and he's steady as a church. Try to realize that, and take a new start with him, for he's really likeable when he keeps to the straight and narrow. Prohibition's going to fit in very well, although I believe he's got himself in hand."
George stared at the ugly, familiar landscape, trying not to listen, particularly to the rest. Why should the Planters have taken Dalrymple into the marble temple?
"A small start," Lambert was saying, "but if he makes the grade there's a big future for him there. I fancy he's anxious to meet you halfway. How about you, George?"
"I'll make no promises," George said. "It depends entirely on Dalrymple."
Lambert didn't warn him, so he didn't expect to find Dalrymple enjoying the early spring graces of Oakmont. He managed the moment of meeting, however, without disclosing anything. Dalrymple, for the time, was quite unimportant. It was Sylvia he was anxious about, Sylvia who undoubtedly nursed a sort of horror of what he had ventured to do and say at Upton. Everyone else was outside, as if making a special effort to welcome him. Where was she?
He resented the worshipful attentions of the servants.
"I'm quite capable of managing myself," he said, as he motioned them aside and lowered himself from the automobile.
He disliked old Planter's heartiness, although he could see the physical effort it cost, for the once-threatening eyes were nearly dark; and the big shoulders stooped forward as if in a constant effort to escape a pursuing pain; and the voice, which talked about heroes and the country's debt and the Planters' debt, quavered and once or twice broke altogether, then groped doubtfully ahead in an effort to recover the propelling thought.
Mrs. Planter, at least, spared him any sentimental gratitude. She was rather grayer and had in her face some unremembered lines, but those were the only changes George could detect. As far as her manner went this greeting might have followed the farewell at Upton after only a day or so.
"I hope your wound isn't very painful."
"My limping," he answered, "is simply bad habit. I'm overcoming it."
"That's nice. Then you'll be able to play polo again!"
"I should hope so, as long as ponies have four good legs."
He wished other people could be like her, so unobtrusively, unannoyingly primeval.
As he entered the hall he saw Sylvia without warning, and he caught his breath and watched her as she came slowly down the stairs. He tried to realize that this was that coveted moment he had so frequently fancied the war would deny him—the moment that brought him face to face with Sylvia again, to witness her enmity, to desire to break it down, to want her more than he had ever done.
She came straight to him, but even in the presence of the others she didn't offer her hand, and all she said was:
"I was quite sure you would come back."
"You knew I had to," he laughed.
Then he sharpened his ears, for she was telling her brother something about Betty's having telephoned she was driving over to take Lambert, Dalrymple, and herself to Princeton.
No. The war had changed her less than any one George had seen. She was as beautiful, as unforgiving, as intolerant; and he guessed that it was she and not Betty who had made the arrangement which would take her away from him.
"George will come, too," Lambert began.
"Afraid I'm not up to it," George refused, dryly.
At Betty's wedding, however, she would have to be with him, for it developed during this nervous chatter that they would share the honours of the bridal party.
So, helplessly, he had to watch her go, and for a moment he felt as if he had had a strong tonic, for she alone had been able to give him an impression that the world hadn't altered much, after all.
The reaction came in the quiet hours following. He was at first resentful that Mrs. Planter should accompany him on the painful walk the doctors had ordered him, like Old Planter, to take daily. He had wanted to go back to the little house, highest barrier of all which Sylvia would never let him climb. Then, glancing at the quiet woman, he squared his shoulders. Suppose Wandel had been right! Here was a test. At any rate, the war was a pretty large and black background for so tiny a high light. Purposefully, therefore, he carried out his original purpose. By the side of Mrs. Planter he limped toward the little house. They didn't say much. It wasn't easy for him to talk while he exercised, and perhaps she understood that.
Even before the clean white building shone in the sun through the trees he heard a sound that made him wince. It was like a distant drum, badly played. Then he understood what it was, and his boyhood, and the day of awakening and revolt, submerged him in a hot wave of shame. He could see his mother rising and bending rhythmically over fine linen which emerged from dirty water, making her arms look too red and swollen. He glanced quickly at Mrs. Planter to whose serenity had gone the upward effort of many generations. Just how appalling, now that war had mocked life so dreadfully, now that a pitiless hand had a moment ago stripped all pretence from the world, was the difference between them?
It was the woman at the tub, curiously enough, who seemed trying to tell him, trying to warn him to keep his mouth shut. Then the house was visible through the trees. He raised his stick.
"I wanted to see it again," he said, defiantly, "because I was born there. I lived there."
She paused and stared with him, without saying anything, without any change of expression. After a time she turned.
"Have you looked enough? Shall we go back, George?"
He nodded, glancing at her wonderingly. After all, he had had very little love in his life. Mrs. Bailly, Betty——
He had never dreamed of such gratitude as this. Lambert, home with his war madness fresh upon him, must have told her, as an example of what a man might do. But was her action all gratitude? Rather wasn't it a signpost at the parting of two ages?
If that were so, he told himself, the world had left Sylvia hopelessly behind.
The memory of that unguarded moment remained in his mind uncomfortably. He carried it finally from the hospital to his musty apartment, where he stripped off his uniform and looked in the glass, for the first time in nearly two years his own master, no man's servant.
Was he his own master as long as he could commit such sentimental follies, as long as he could suspect that he had told Wandel the truth on the Vesle? This nostalgia must be the rebound from the war, of which he had heard so much, which made men weak, or lazy, or indifferent.
He continued to stare in the glass, angry, amazed. He had to overcome this homesick feeling. He had to prepare himself for harder battles than he had ever fought. He had had plenty of warning of the selfishness that was creeping over the world like a black pestilence. Where was his own self-will that had carried him so far?
He locked himself, as it were, in his apartment. He sat down and called on his will. With a systematic brutality he got himself in hand. He reviewed his aims: to make more money, to get Sylvia. He emerged at last, hard and uncompromising, ready for the selfish ones, and went down town. Blodgett greeted him with a cheer.
"Miracles! For the first time since you got back you look yourself again."
"I am," George answered, "all but the limp. That will go some day maybe."
He wanted it to go. He desired enormously to rid himself of the last reminder of his service.
Lambert was definitely caught by the marble temple, but Goodhue and he would stay together, more or less tied to Blodgett, to accept the opportunities George foresaw for dragging money by sharp reasoning from the reconstruction period. He applied himself to exchange. From their position they could run wild in the stock market at little risk, but there were big things to be made out of exchange, about which the cleverest men didn't seem to know anything worth a penny in any currency.
Everyone noticed his recovery, and everyone congratulated him except Bailly. When George went down to Betty's wedding the long tutor met him at the station, crying out querulously:
"What's happened to you?"
George laughed.
"Got over the war reaction, I guess."
"What the deuce did you go to war for at all then?" Bailly asked.
"Haven't found that out myself yet," George answered, "but I know I wouldn't go to another, even if they'd have me."
He grimaced at his injured foot.
"And they're going to give you some kind of a medal!" Bailly cried.
"I didn't ask for it," George said, "but I daresay a lot of people, you among them, went down to Washington and did."
Bailly was a trifle uncomfortable.
"See here," George said. "I don't want your old medal, and I don't intend to be scolded about it. I suppose I've got to rush right out to the Alstons."
"Let's stop at the club," Bailly proposed. "People want to see you. We'll fight the war over with the veterans."
"Damn the war!" George said.
Mrs. Bailly, when he paused for a moment at the house in Dickinson Street, attacked him, and quite innocently, from a different direction.
"It was the wish of my life, George, that you should have Betty, and you might have had. I can't help feeling that."
"You're prejudiced," George laughed.
He went to the Alstons, nevertheless, almost unwillingly, and he delayed his arrival until the last minute. The intimate party had gathered for a dinner and a rehearsal that night. The wedding was set for the next evening.
The Tudor house had an unfamiliar air, as though Betty already had taken from it every feature that had given it distinction in George's mind. And Betty herself was caught by all those detailed considerations that surround a girl, at this vital moment of her life, with an atmosphere regal, mysterious, a little sacred. So George didn't see her until just before dinner, or Sylvia, who was upstairs with her. Lambert and Blodgett were about, however, and so was Dalrymple. George was glad Lambert had asked Blodgett to usher; he owed it to him, but he was annoyed that Dalrymple should have been included in the party, for it was another mark, on top of his presence in the marble temple, of a tightening bond of intimacy between him and the Planters. George examined the man, therefore, with an eager curiosity. He looked well enough, but George remained unconvinced by his apparent reformation, suspecting its real purpose was to impress a willing public, for he had studied Dalrymple during many years without uncovering any real strength, or any disposition not to answer gladly to every appeal of the senses. At least he was restless, rising from his chair too often to wander about the room, but George conceded with a smile that his own arrival might be responsible for that. The matter of the notes hadn't been mentioned, but they existed undoubtedly even in Dalrymple's careless mind, which must have forecasted an uncomfortable day of payment.
Lambert seemed sure enough of his friend.
"Dolly's sticking to the job like a leech," he said to George when they went upstairs to dress.
"I've no faith in him," George answered, shortly.
"You're an unforgiving brute," Lambert said.
George hastened away from the subject.
"I'm not chameleon, at least," he admitted with a smile, "which reminds me. I don't see any of your dearly beloved brothers of the ranks in your bridal party. Have you put private Oscar Liporowski up for any of your clubs yet?"
"Unforgiving and unforgetting!" Lambert laughed.
"Then you acknowledge that talk in the Argonne was war madness?"
"By no means," Lambert answered, suddenly serious. "Let me get married, will you? I can't bother with anything else now. Sylvia, whose mind isn't filled with romance, threatens to become the socialist of the family."
George stared at him.
"What are you talking about?"
"About what Sylvia's talking about," Lambert answered.
"Now I know you're mad," George said.
Lambert shook his head.
"But I don't take her very seriously. It's a nice game to seek beauties in Bolshevism. It's played in some of the best houses. You must have observed it—how wonderfully it helps get through a tea or a dinner."
George went to his own room, amused and curious. Could Sylvia talk communism, even parrot-like, and deny him the rights of a brother? He became more anxious than before to see her. He shrank, on the other hand, from facing Betty who was about to take this enormous step permanently away from him. Out of his window he could see the tree beneath which he had made his confession in an effort to kill Betty's kindness. If he had followed her to the castle then Lambert wouldn't be limping about exposing a happiness that made George envious and discontented. It was a reminder with a vengeance that his friends were mating. Was he, like Blodgett, doomed to a revolting celibacy?
Blodgett, as far as that went, seemed quite to have recovered from the blow Sylvia had given his pride and heart. With his increasing fortune his girth had increased, his cheeks grown fuller, his eyes smaller.
He was chatting, when George came down, with Old Planter, who sat slouched in an easy chair in the library, and Mr. Alston. It was evident that the occasion was not a joyous one for Betty's father.
"I've half a mind to sell out here," George heard him say, "and take a share in a coöperative apartment in town. Without Betty the house will be like a world without a sun."
Blodgett, George guessed, was tottering on the threshold of expansive sympathy. He drew back, beckoning George.
"Here's your purchaser, Alston. I never knew a half back stay single so long. And now he's a hero. He's bound to need a nest soon."
Mr. Alston smiled at him.
"Is there anything in that, George?"
George wanted to tell Blodgett to mind his own business. How could the man, after his recent experience, make cumbersome jokes of that colour?
"There was a time," Mr. Alston went on, "when I fancied you were going to ask me for Betty. The thought of refusing used to worry me."
George laughed uncomfortably.
"So you would have refused?"
"Naturally. I don't think I could have said yes to Lambert if it hadn't been for the war. If you ever have a daughter—just one—you'll know what I mean."
From the three men George received an impression of imminence, shared it himself. They talked merely to cover their suspense. They were like people in a throne room, attentive for the entrance of a figure, exalted, powerful, nearly legendary. Betty, he reflected, had become that because she was about to marry. He found himself fascinated, too, looking at the door, waiting with a choked feeling for that girl who had unconsciously tempted him from their first meeting. Her arrival, indeed, had about it something of the processional. Mrs. Planter entered the doorway first, nodding absent-mindedly to the men. Betty's mother followed, as imperial as ever, more so, if anything, George thought, and quite unaffected by the deeper elements that gave to this quiet wedding in a country house a breath of tragedy. Betty Alston Planter! That evolution clearly meant happiness for her. She tried to express it through vivacious gestures and cheerful, uncompleted sentences. Betty next—after a tiny interval, entering not without hesitation exposed in her walk, in her tall and graceful figure, in her face which was unaccustomedly colourful, in her eyes which turned from one to another, doubtful, apprehensive, groping. George didn't want to look at her; her appearance placed him too much in concord with her reluctant father; too much in the position of a man making a hurtful and unasked oblation.
Momentarily Betty, the portion of his past shared with her, its undeveloped possibilities, were swept from his brain. Last of all, fitting and brilliant close for the procession, came Sylvia between two bridesmaids. George scarcely saw the others. Sylvia filled his eyes, his heart, slowly crowded the dissatisfaction from his mind, centred again his thoughts and his ambitions. Nearly automatically he took Betty's hands, spoke to her a few formalities, yielded her to her father, and went on to Sylvia. For nearly two years he hadn't seen her in an evening gown. What secret did she possess that kept her constant? Already she was past the age at which most girls of her station marry, yet to him her beauty had only increased without quite maturing. And why had she calmly avoided during all these years the nets thrown perpetually by men? Only Blodgett had threatened to entangle her, and one day had found her fled. And she wasn't such a fool she didn't know the years were slipping by. More poignantly than ever he responded to a feeling of danger, imminent, unavoidable, fatal.
"My companion in the ceremonies," he said.
"I understood that was the arrangement," she answered, without looking at him.
"I'm glad," he said, "to draw even a reflection from the happiness of others."
"I often wonder," she remarked, "why people are so selfish."
"Do you mean me," he laughed, "or the leading man and lady?"
She spoke softly to avoid the possibility of anyone else hearing.
"I'm not sure, but I fancy you are the most selfish person I have ever met."
"That's a stupendous indictment these days," he said with a smile, but he didn't take her seriously at all, didn't apply her charge to his soul.
"I'm so glad you're here," he went on, "that we're to be together. I've wanted it for a long time. You must know that."
She gave him an uncomfortable sense of being captive, of seeking blindly any course to freedom.
"I no longer know anything about you. I don't care to know."
Lambert and Dalrymple strolled in. Dalrymple opened the cage. George moved away, aching to prevent such interference by any means he could. His emotion made him uneasy. To what resolution were his relations with Dalrymple drifting? How far was he capable of going to keep the other in his place?
He stood by the mantel, speaking only when it was necessary and then without consciousness, his whole interest caught by the picture Dalrymple and Sylvia made, close together by the centre table in the soft light of a reading lamp.
A servant entered with cocktails. George's interest sharpened. Betty took hers with the others. Only Sylvia and Dalrymple shook their heads. Clearly it was an understanding between them—a little denial of hers to make his infinitely greater one less difficult. She smiled up at him, indeed, comprehendingly; but George's glance didn't waver from Dalrymple, and it caught an increase in the other's restlessness, a following nearly hypnotic, by thoughtful eyes, of the tray with the little glasses as it passed around the room. George relaxed. He was conscious enough of Blodgett's bellow:
"Here's to the blushing bride!"
What lack of taste! But how much greater the lack of taste that restless inheritor exposed! Couldn't even join a formal toast, didn't dare probably, or was it that he only dared not risk it in public, in front of Sylvia? And she pandered to his weakness, smiled upon it as if it were an epic strength. He was sufficiently glad now that Dalrymple had got into him for so much money.
For George dinner was chiefly a sea of meaningless chatter continually ruffled by the storm of Blodgett's voice.
"Your brother tells me," he said to Sylvia, "that you're irritating yourself with socialism."
She looked at him with a little interest then.
"I've been reading. It's quite extraordinary. Odd I should have lived so long without really knowing anything about such things."
"Not odd at all," George contradicted her. "I should call it odd that you find any interest in them now. Why do you?"
"One has to occupy one's mind," she answered.
He glanced at her. Why did she have to occupy herself with matter she couldn't possibly understand, that she would interpret always in a wrong or unsafe manner? She, too, was restless.
That was the only possible explanation. From Blodgett she had sprung to war-time fads. From those she had leaped at this convenient one which tempted people to make sparkling and meaningless phrases.
"It doesn't strike you as at all amusing," he asked, "that you should be red, that I should be conservative?"
She didn't answer. Blodgett swept them out to sea again.
Later in the evening, however, George repeated his question, and demanded an answer. They had accomplished the farce of a rehearsal, source of cumbersome jokes for Blodgett and the clergyman; of doubts and dreary prospects for Mr. Alston, who had done his share as if submitting to an undreamed-of punishment.
There was the key-ring joke. It must be a part of the curriculum of all the theological seminaries. George acted up to it, promising to tie a string around his finger, or to pin the circlet to his waistcoat.
"Or," Blodgett roared, "at a pinch you might use the ring of the wedding bells."
George stared at him. How could the man, Sylvia within handgrasp, grin and feed such a mood? It suddenly occurred to him that once more he was reading Blodgett wrong, that the man was admirable, far more so than he could be under an equal trial. Would he, a little later, be asked to face such an ordeal?
With the departure of the clergyman a cloud of reaction descended upon the party. Some yawns were scarcely stifled. Sporadic attempts to dance to a victrola faded into dialogues carried on indifferently, lazily, where the dancers had chanced to stop with the music. Mr. Alston had relinquished Sylvia to George at the moment the record had stuttered out. They were left at a distance from any other couple. George pointed out a convenient chair, and she sat down and glanced about the room indifferently.
"At dinner," George said, "I asked you if it didn't impress you as strange that our social views should be what they are, and opposite."
She didn't answer.
"I mean," he went on, "that I should benefit by your alteration."
"How?" she asked, idly fingering a flower, not looking at him.
"I fancy," he said, "that you'll admit your chief objection to me has always been my origin, my ridiculous position trotting watchfully behind the most unsocial Miss Planter. Am I not right?"
"You are entirely wrong," she said, wearily. "That has never had anything to do with my—my dislike. I think I shall go——"
"Wait," he said. "You are not telling me the truth. If you are consistent you will turn your enmity to friendship at least. You will decide there was nothing unusual in my asking you to marry me. You will even find in that a reason for my anxiety at Upton. You will understand that it is quite inevitable I should ask you to marry me again."
She sprang up and hurried away from him.
"Put on another record, Dolly——"
And almost before he had realized it Betty had taken her away, and the evening's opportunities had closed.
For him the house became like a room at night out of which the only lamp has been carried.
The others drifted away. George tried to read in the library. His uneasiness, his anger, held him from bed. When at last he went upstairs he fancied everyone was asleep, but moving in the hall outside his room he saw a figure in a dressing gown. It paused as if it didn't care to be detected going in the direction of the stairs. George caught the figure's embarrassed hesitation, fancied a movement of retreat.
"Dalrymple!" he called, softly.
The other waited sullenly.
"What you up to?" George asked.
"Thought I'd explore downstairs for a book. Couldn't sleep. Nothing in my room worth bothering with."
George smiled, the memory of Blodgett's admirable behaviour crowding his mind. What better time than now to let his anger dictate to him, as it had done that day in his office?
"Come in for a minute," he proposed to Dalrymple, and opened his door.
Dalrymple shook his head, but George took his arm and led him, guessing that Dalrymple feared the subject of the notes.
"Bad humour!" George said. "You seem to be the only one up. I don't mind chatting with you before turning in. Fact is, these wedding parties are stupid, don't you think?"
Possibly George's manner was reassuring to Dalrymple. At any rate, he yielded. George took off his coat, sat in an easy chair, and pressed the call button.
"What's that for?" Dalrymple asked, uneasily.
"Sit down," George said. "Stupid and dry, these things! I'm going to try to raise a servant. I want to gossip over a drink before I go to bed. You'll join me?"
Dalrymple sat down. He moistened his lips.
"On the wagon," he muttered. "A long time on the wagon. Place to be, too, and all that."
George didn't believe the other. If Dalrymple cared to prove him right that was his own business.
"Before prohibition offers the steps?" he laughed.
"Nothing to do with it," Dalrymple muttered. "Got my reasons—good enough ones, too."
"Right!" George said. "Only don't leave me to myself until I've wet my whistle."
And when the sleepy servant had come George asked him for some whiskey and soda water. He talked of the Alstons, of the war, of anything to tide the wait for the caraffe and the bottles and glasses; and during that period Dalrymple's restlessness increased. Just what had he been sneaking downstairs for in the middle of the night? George watched the other's eyes drawn by the tray when the servant had set it down.
"Why did he bring two glasses?" Dalrymple asked, irritably.
"Oh," George said, carelessly, "I suppose he thought—naturally——Have a biscuit, anyway."
George poured a drink and supped contentedly.
"Dry rations—biscuits," Dalrymple complained.
He fingered the caraffe.
"I've an idea—wedding—special occasion, and all that. Change my mind—up here—one friendly drop——"
George watched the friendly drop expand to half a tumbler full, and he observed that the hand that poured was not quite steady. It wouldn't be long now before he would know whether or not Dalrymple's reformation was merely a pose in public, a pose for Sylvia.
Dalrymple sighed, sat down, and talked quite pleasantly about the horrors of Chaumont. After a time he refilled his glass, and repeated the performance a number of times with diminishing intervals. George smiled. A child could tell the other was breaking no extended abstinence. He drifted from war to New York and his apparent success with the house of Planter.
"Slavery, this office stuff!" he rattled on, "but good fun to get things done, to climb up on shoulders of men—oh, no idea how many, Morton—who're only good to push a pen or pound a typewriter. Of course, you know, though. Done plenty of climbing yourself."
His enunciation suffered and his assurance strengthened as the caraffe emptied. No extended abstinence, George reflected, but almost certainly a very painful one of a few days.
"Am making money, Morton—a little, not much," he said, confidentially, and with condescension. "Not enough by long shot to pay those beastly notes I owe you. Know they're over due. Don't think I'd ever forget that. Want to do right thing, Morton. You used hard words when I borrowed that money, but forget, and all that. White of you to let me have it, and I'll do right thing."
A sickly look of content overspread his face. He expanded. His assurance seemed to crowd the room.
"Wouldn't worry for a minute 'bout those notes if I were you."
He suddenly switched, shaking his finger at the caraffe.
"Very pleasant, little drop like this—night cap on the quiet. But not often."
His content sought expression in a smile.
"Dolly's off the hootch."
George lighted a cigarette. He noticed that his fingers were quite steady, yet he was perfectly conscious of each beat of his heart.
"May I ask," he said, "what possible connection there can be between my not worrying about your notes and your keeping off the hootch, as you call it?"
Dalrymple arose, finished the caraffe, and tapped George's shoulder.
"Every connection," he answered. "Expect you have a right to know. Don't you worry, old Shylock Morton. You're goin' to get your pound ah flesh."
"I fancy I am," George laughed. "What's your idea of it?"
Dalrymple waved his glass.
"Lady of my heart—surrender after long siege, but only brave deserve fair. Good thing college education. Congratulate me, Morton. But secret for you, 'cause you old Shylock. Wouldn't say anything to Sylvia till she lets it loose."
As George walked quietly to the door, which the servant a long time ago had left a trifle open, he heard Dalrymple mouthing disconnected words: "Model husband." "Can't be too soon for Dolly."
Then, as he closed the door, locked it, and put the key in his pocket, he heard Dalrymple say aloud, sharply:
"What the devil you doing, Morton?"
George turned. Ammunition against Dalrymple! He had been collecting it. Now, clearly, was the time to use it. In his mind the locked room held precariously all of Sylvia's happiness and his.
He didn't hesitate. He walked straight to the table. Dalrymple had slumped down in his chair, the content and triumph of his inflamed eyes replaced by a sullen fear.
"What's the idea?" Dalrymple asked, uncertainly, watching George, grasping the arms of his chair preparatory to rising.
"Sit still, and I'll tell you," George answered.
"Why you lock the door?"
From Dalrymple's palpable fear George watched escape a reluctant and fascinated curiosity.
"No more of that strong-arm stuff with me——"
"I locked the door," George answered, "so that I could point out to you, quite undisturbed, just why you are going to leave Sylvia Planter alone."
Dalrymple relaxed. He commenced incredulously and nervously to laugh, but in his eyes, which followed George, the fear and the curiosity increased.
"What the devil are you talking about? Have you gone out of your head?"
George smiled confidently.
"It's an invariable rule, unless you have the strength to handle them, to give insane people their way. So you'll be nice and quiet; and I might remind you if you started a rumpus, the first questions the aroused house would ask would be, 'Why did Dolly fall off the wagon, and where did he get the edge?'"
He drew a chair close to Dalrymple and sat down. The other lay back, continuing to stare at him, quite unable to project the impression he undoubtedly sought of contemptuous amusement.
"We've waited a long time for this little chat," George said, quietly. "Sometimes I've hoped it wouldn't be necessary. Of course, sooner or later, it had to be."
His manner disclosed little of his anxiety, nothing whatever of his determination, through Dalrymple's weakness, to save Sylvia and himself, but his will had never been stronger.
"You may as well understand," he said, "that you shan't leave this room until you've agreed to give up any idea of this preposterous marriage you pretend to have arranged. Perhaps you have. That makes no difference. I'm quite satisfied its disarranging will break no hearts."
Dalrymple had a little controlled himself. George's brusque campaign had steadied him, had hastened a reaction that gave to his eyes an unhealthy and furtive look. He tried to grin.
"You must think you're God Almighty——"
"Let's get to business," George interrupted. "I once told you that what you borrow you have to pay back in one way or another. This is where we settle, and I've outlined the terms."
Dalrymple whistled.
"You complete rotter! You mean to blackmail—because you know I haven't got your filthy money, and can't raise it in a minute."
"Never mind that," George snapped. "Your opinion of what I'm doing doesn't interest me. I've thought it out. I know quite thoroughly what I'm about."
He did, and he was not without distaste for his methods, nor without realization that they might hurt him most of all with the very person they were designed to serve; yet he couldn't hesitate, because no other way offered.
"You're going to pay my notes, but not with money."
Dalrymple's grin exploded into a harsh sound resembling laughter.
"Are you—jealous? Do you fancy Sylvia would be affected by anything you'd do or say? See here! Good God! Are you mad enough to look at her? That's funny! That's a scream!"
There was, however, no conviction behind the pretended amazement and contempt; and George suspected that Dalrymple had all along sounded his chief ambition; had, in fact, made his secretive announcement just now, because, his judgment drugged, he had desired to call a rival's attention to his triumphant posture on the steps of attainment.
"I've no intention of discussing causes," George answered, evenly, "but I do imagine the entire family would be noticeably affected by my story."
"Which you couldn't tell," Dalrymple cried. "Which you couldn't possibly tell."
"Which I don't think I shall have to tell," George said with a smile. "Look at your position, Dalrymple. If you borrow money on the strength of this approaching marriage you announce its chief purpose quite distinctly. I fancy Old Planter, ill as he is, would want to take a club to you. You've always wished, haven't you, to keep your borrowings from Lambert? You can't do it if you persist in involving the Planters in your extravagances. And remember you gave me a pretty thorough list of your debtors—not reading for women, but Lambert would understand, and make its meaning clear. Then let us go back to that afternoon in my office, when you tried to say unspeakable things——"
Impulsively Dalrymple bared his teeth.
"Got you there, Morton! I told Lambert it was you who had been impertinent——"
All at once George felt better and cleaner. He whistled.
"When I let you off then I never dreamed you'd try to back that lie up."
"Will they believe me," the other asked, "or you, who come from God knows what; God knows where?"
"Fortunately," George said, "Lambert and his sister share that supernal knowledge. They'll believe me."
He stood up.
"That's all. You know what to expect. Just one thing more."
He spoke softly, without any apparent passion, but he displayed before the man in the chair his two hands.
"If necessary I'd stop you marrying Sylvia Planter with those."
Dalrymple got to his feet, struggled to assume a cloak of bravado.
"Won't put up with such threats. Actionable——"
"Give me your decision," George said, harshly. "Will you keep away from her? If there is really an understanding, will you so arrange things that she can destroy it immediately? Come. Yes or no?"
"Give me that key."
George shrugged his shoulders.
"I needn't trouble you."
He walked swiftly to the door, unlocked it, and drew it invitingly wide; but now that the way was clear Dalrymple hesitated. Again George shrugged his shoulders and stepped to the hall. Dalrymple, abruptly active, ran after him, grasping at his arm.
"Where you going?" he whispered.
"To Lambert's room."
"Not to-night," the other begged. "I don't admit you could make any real trouble, but I want to spare Sylvia any possible unpleasantness. Well! Don't you, too? You lost your temper. Maybe I did mine. Give us both a chance to think it over. Now see here, Morton, I won't ask you another favour, and I'll do nothing in the meantime. I couldn't very well. I mean, status quo, and all that——"
"Lambert, to-morrow," George said, "is going away for more than a month."
"But you could always get hold of him, at a pinch," Dalrymple urged. "Heaven knows I'm not likely to talk to Sylvia about what you've said. Let us both think it over until Lambert comes back."
George sighed, experiencing a glow of victory. The other's eagerness confessed at last an accurate measure of the power of his ammunition; and George didn't want to go to the Planters on such an errand as long as any other means existed. The more Dalrymple thought, the more thoroughly he must realize George had him. From the first George had manœuvred to avoid the necessity of shocking habits of thought and action that were inborn in the Planters, so he gladly agreed.
"Meantime, you'll keep away from her?"
"Just as far as possible," Dalrymple answered. "You'll be able to see that for yourself."
"Then," George said, "you arrange to get yourself out of the way as soon as Lambert and Betty return. Meantime, if you go back on your word, I'll get hold of Lambert."
Dalrymple leant against the wall, morosely angry, restless, discouraged.
"I'll admit you could make some unpleasantness all around," he said, moistening his lips. "I wish I'd never touched your dirty money——"
George stepped into his room and closed the door.
The awakening of the house to its most momentous day aroused George early, hurried him from his bed, sent him downstairs in a depressed, self-censorious mood, as if he and not Dalrymple had finished the caraffe. That necessary battle behind a locked door continued to fill his mind like the memory of a vivid and revolting nightmare. He fled from the increasing turmoil of an exceptional agitation, but he could not escape his own evil temper. Even the flowering lanes where Goodhue and he had run so frequently during their undergraduate days mocked his limping steps, his heavy cane; seemed asking him what there was in common between that eager youth and the man who had come back to share a definite farewell with Betty; to stand, stripped of his veneer, against a wall to avoid a more difficult parting from Sylvia. There was one thing: the determination of the boy lived in the man, become greater, more headstrong, more relentless.
He paused and, chin in hand, rested against a gate. What about Wandel, who had admired the original George Morton? Would he approve of his threats to Dalrymple, of his probable course with the Planters? If he were consistent he would have to; yet people were so seldom consistent. It was even likely that George's repetition of Dalrymple's shocking insults would be frowned upon more blackly than the original, unforgiveable wrong. George straightened and walked back toward the house. It made no difference what people thought. He was George Morton. Even at the cost of his own future he would keep Sylvia from joining her life to Dalrymple's, and certainly Lambert could be made to understand why that had to be.
The warm sun cheered him a little. Dalrymple was scared. He wouldn't make George take any further steps. It was going to be all right. But why didn't women see through Dalrymple, or rather why didn't he more thoroughly give himself away to them? Because, George decided, guarded women from their little windows failed to see the real world.
Dalrymple obsessed him even when, after luncheon, he sat with Lambert upstairs, discussing business chiefly. He wanted to burst out with:
"Why don't you wake up? How can you approve of this intimacy between your sister and a man like that?"
He didn't believe the other knew that intimacy had progressed; and when Lambert spoke of Dalrymple, calling attention again to his apparent reformation, George cleansed his mind a trifle, placing, as it were, the foundation for a possible announcement of a more active enmity.
"Don't see why you admire anything he does, Lambert. It isn't particularly pleasant for me to have you, for I've been watching him, and I've quite made up my mind. You asked me when I first got home if I wouldn't meet him halfway. I don't fancy he'd ever start in my direction, but if he did I wouldn't meet him. Sorry. That's definite. I must use my own judgment even where it clashes with your admirations."
Lambert stared at him.
"You'll never cease being headstrong," he said. "It's rather safer to have any man for a friend."
George had an uncomfortable sense of having received a warning, but Blodgett blundered in just then with news from the feminine side of the house.
"Some people downstairs already, and I've just had word—from one of those little angels that talk like the devil—that Betty's got all her war-paint on."
"You have the ring?" Lambert asked George.
George laughed.
"Yes, I have the ring, and I shan't lose it, or drop it; and I'll keep you out of people's way, and tell you what to answer, and see generally you don't make an idiot of yourself. Josiah, if he faints, help me pick him up."
Blodgett's gardenia bobbed.
"Weddings make Josiah feel old. Say, George, you're no spring chicken yourself. I know lots of little girls who cry their eyes out for you."
"Shut up," George said. "How about a reconnaissance, Lambert?"
But they were summoned then, and crept down a side staircase, and heard music, and found themselves involved in Betty's great moment.
At first George could only think of Betty as she had stood long ago in the doorway of Bailly's study, and it was difficult to find in this white-clothed, veiled, and stately woman the girl he had seen first of all that night. This, after a fashion, was his last glimpse of her. She appeared to share that conception, for she carried to the improvised altar in the drawing-room an air of facing far places, divided by boundaries she couldn't possibly define from all that she had ever known. After the ceremony she smiled wonderingly at George while she absorbed the vapid and pattered remarks of, perhaps, a hundred old friends of the family. George, who knew most of them, resented their sympathy and curiosity.
"If they don't stop asking me about the war," he whispered to Blodgett during a lull, "I'm going to call for help."
Some, however, managed to interest him with remarks about the rebirth of football. Green had been at Princeton all along, Stringham was coming back in the fall, and there were brilliant team prospects. Would George be able to help with the coaching? He indicated his injured leg. He hadn't the time, anyway. He was going to stick closer than ever to Wall Street. He fancied that Sylvia, who stood near him, resented the lively interest of these people. She spoke to him only when she couldn't possibly avoid it, glancing, George noticed, at Dalrymple who rather pointedly kept away from her. So far so good. Then Dalrymple did realize George would have his way. George looked at Sylvia, thinking whimsically:
"I shan't let anybody put you where you wouldn't bother to hate me any more."
He spoke to her aloud.
"I believe we're to have a bite to eat."
She followed him reluctantly, and during the supper yielded of herself nothing whatever to him, chatting by preference with any one convenient, even with Blodgett whom she had treated so shabbily. Very early she left the room with Betty and Mrs. Alston, and George experienced a strong desire to escape also, to flee anywhere away from this house and the bitter dissatisfactions he had found within its familiar walls. He saw Mrs. Bailly and took her hand.
"I want to go home with you and Squibs to-night."
Mrs. Bailly smiled her gratitude, but as he was about to move away she stopped him with a curiosity he had not expected from her.
"Isn't Sylvia Planter beautiful? Why do you suppose she doesn't marry?"
George laughed shortly, shook his head, and hurried upstairs to Lambert's room; yet Mrs. Bailly had increased his uneasiness. Perhaps it was the too-frequent repetition of that question that had made Sylvia turn temporarily to Blodgett; that was, possibly, focussing her eyes on Dalrymple now; yet why, from such a field, did she choose these men? What was one to make of her mind and its unexpected reactions? The matter of marriage was, not unnaturally, in the air here. Lambert faced him with it.
"Josiah's right. When are you going to make a home, Apollo Morton?"
George turned on him angrily, not bothering to choose his words.
"Such a question from you is ridiculous. You've not forgotten the dark ages either."
Lambert looked at him for a moment affectionately, not without sympathy.
"Don't be an ass, George."
George's laughter was impatient.
"Don't forget, Lambert, your old friends, Corporal Sol Roseberg, and Bugler Ignatius Chronos. No men better! Chairs at the club! Legs under the table at Oakmont——"
Lambert put his hands on George's shoulders.
"It isn't that at all. You know it very well."
"What is it then?" George asked, sharply.
"Don't pretend ignorance," Lambert answered, "and it must be your own fault. Whose else could it possibly be? And I'm sorry, have been for years."
"It isn't my fault," George said. "The situation exists. I'm glad you recognize it. You'll understand it's a subject I can't let you joke about."
"All right," Lambert said, "but I wonder why you're always asking for trouble."
Betty had plenty of colour to-night. As she passed George, her head bent against the confetti, he managed to touch her hand, felt a quick responsive pressure, heard her say:
"Good-bye, George."
The whispered farewell was like a curtain, too heavy ever to be lifted again, abruptly let down between two fond people.