George slept little that night. The fact that Lambert believed him responsible for the transformation in Sylvia was sufficiently exciting. In Sylvia's manner her brother must have read something he had not quite expressed to George. And why wouldn't she mention him? Why couldn't she bear to have the others mention him? With his head bowed on his hands he sat before the desk, staring at the diminishing fire, and in this posture he fell at last asleep to be startled by Wandel who had not troubled to have himself announced. The fire was quite dead. In the bright daylight streaming into the room George saw that the little man held a newspaper in his hand.
"Is it a habit of great men not to go to bed?"
George stood up and stretched. He indicated the newspaper.
"You've come with the evil tidings?"
"About Sylvia and Dolly," Wandel began.
George yawned.
"I must bathe and become presentable, for this is another day."
"You've already seen it?" Wandel asked, a trifle puzzled.
"No, but what else should there be in the paper?"
Wandel stared for a moment, then carefully folded the paper and tossed it in the fireplace.
"Nothing much," he answered, lighting a cigarette, "except hold-ups, murders, new strikes, fresh battles among our brethren of the Near East—nothing of the slightest consequence. By by. Make yourself, great man, fresh and beautiful for the new day."
George wondered why Wandel should have come at all, or, having come, why he should have left in that manner; and he was sorry he had answered as he had, for Wandel invariably knew a great deal, more than most people. In this case he had probably come only to help, but in George's brain nothing could survive for long beyond hazards as to what the morning might develop. Betty was going to communicate with him, and she would naturally expect to find him at his office, so he hurried down town and waited, forcing himself to the necessary details of his work. For the first time the mechanics of making money seemed dreary and unprofitable.
Goodhue came in with a clearly designed lack of curiosity. Had his partner all along suspected the truth, or had Wandel been talking? For that matter, did Goodhue himself experience a sense of loss?
"Not so surprising, George. Dolly's always been after her—even back in the Princeton days, and she's played around with him since they were children; yet I was a little shocked. I never thought it would quite come off."
It was torture for George to listen, and he couldn't possibly talk about it, so he led Goodhue quite easily to the day's demands; but Blodgett appeared not long after with a drooping countenance. Why did they all have to come to him to discuss the unannounced wedding of Sylvia Planter?
"She ought to have done better," Blodgett disapproved funereally.
He fingered a gaudy handkerchief. He thrust it in his pocket, drew it forth again, folded it carefully with his pudgy hands.
"Don't think I've ever ceased to regret——" he started rather pitifully.
After a moment's absorbed scrutiny of George he went on.
"If she had picked somebody like you I wouldn't have minded. Papa Blodgett would have given you both his blessing."
So they had all guessed something! George questioned uneasily if Blodgett's suspicions had lived during the course of his own unfortunate romance, and he was sorrier than ever he had had to help destroy that. He got rid of Blodgett and refused to see any one else, but he had to answer the telephone, for that would almost certainly be Betty's means of communication. Each time the pleasant bell tinkled he seized the receiver, and each time cut short whatever masculine worries reached him. The uneven pounding of the ticker punctuated his suspense. It was a feverish morning in the market, but not once did he rise to glance at the tape which streamed neglected into the basket.
It was after one o'clock when he snatched the receiver from the hook again with a hopeless premonition of another disappointment. Then he heard Betty's voice, scarcely more than an anxious whisper "George!"
"Yes, yes, Betty."
"My car will be somewhere between Altman's and Tiffany's at two o'clock, as near the corner of Thirty-fifth Street as they'll let me get. Lambert knows. It's all right."
"But, Betty——"
"Just be there," she said, and must have hung up.
He glanced at his watch. He could start now. He hurried from the building, but there was no point in haste. He had plenty of time, too much time; and Betty hadn't said he would see Sylvia; hadn't given him time to ask; but she must have arranged an interview, else why should she care to see him at all, why her manner of a conspirator?
He reached the rendezvous well ahead of time, but he recognized Betty's car just beyond the corner, and saw her wave to him anxiously. He stepped in and sat at her side. She laughed nervously.
"I guessed you would be a little ahead," she said as the car commenced to crawl north.
"Am I to see Sylvia?"
Betty nodded.
"Just once. This noon, before I telephoned, she acknowledged that she wanted to see you—to talk to you for the last time. That's the way she put it."
Betty smiled sceptically.
"You know I don't believe anything of the sort."
"What do you think can be done?" George asked.
She didn't suggest anything, merely repeating her faith, going on while she looked at George curiously.
"So all the time, George—and I didn't really guess, but I might have known you would. I can remember now that day at Princeton when I asked you about her dog, and your anxiety one night at Josiah's when you wanted to know if she was going to be married—oh, plenty of hints now. George! Why did you let it go so far?"
"Couldn't help myself, Betty."
She looked at him helplessly.
"And what have you done to her?"
"If you can't guess——" George said.
Betty smiled reminiscently.
"Perhaps I can guess. You would do just that, George, when there was nothing else."
"You don't blame me?" he asked. "You don't ask, as Lambert did, why I waited so long?"
She shook her head.
"I'm sure," she said, "when you came last night you saw a Sylvia none of us had ever met before. Don't you think it had come upon her all at once that she was no longer Sylvia Planter, that in defeating you she had destroyed herself? If that is so, she has every bit of sympathy I'm capable of, and we must think first of all of her. The pride's still there, but quite a different thing. She's never known fear before, George, and now she's afraid, terribly afraid, most of all, I think, of herself."
George counted the corners, was relieved when beyond Fiftieth Street the traffic thinned and they went faster. He took Betty's hand, and found that the touch steadied and encouraged, because at last her fingers seemed to reach his mind again.
"Betty! Do you think she cares at all?"
"I'm prejudiced," Betty laughed, "but I think the harder she'd been the more she's cared; but she wouldn't talk about you except to say she would see you for a minute this once. Lambert's lunching with Dolly."
"We are conspirators," George said, "and I don't like it, but I must see her once."
They drew up at the curb, got out, and entered the hall. The house was peculiarly without sound. George glanced at the entrance to the room where he had found Sylvia last night.
"I think she's in Mr. Planter's study," Betty said. "He hasn't come downstairs yet."
She led him through the library to a small, square room—a quiet and comfortable book-lined retreat where Old Planter had been accustomed to supplement his work down town. George looked eagerly around, but the light wasn't very good, and he didn't at first see Sylvia.
"Sylvia!" Betty called softly. "I've brought George."
Almost before George realized it Betty was gone and the door was closed.
"Sylvia!"
Her low voice reached him from a large chair opposite the single, leaded, opaque window.
"I'm over here——"
Yes, there was fear in her enunciation, as if she groped through shadowy and hazardous places. It cautioned him. With a choked feeling, a racking effort after repression, he walked quietly around and stared down at her.
She looked up once quickly, then glanced away. He was grateful for her colour, but the fear was in her face, too, and the pride, as Betty had said, but a transformed pride that he couldn't quite understand. She lay back in the large chair, her head to one side resting against the protruding arm. Her eyes were bright with tears she had shed or wanted to shed.
"Please sit down."
The ring of exasperated contempt and challenge had gone from her voice. He hadn't known it could stir him so. He drew up a chair and sat close to her.
"You are not angry about what I did last night?" he whispered.
She shook her head.
"I am grateful. I wanted to see you to tell you that, and how sorry I am—so beastly sorry, George."
Her voice drifted away. It made him want his arms about her, made him want her lips again. The room became a black and restless background for this shadowy, desired, and forbidden figure.
Impulsively he slipped to his knees and placed his head against the side of her chair. Across his hair he fancied a fugitive brushing of fingers. She burst out with something of her former impetuous manner.
"I used to want that! Now you shan't!"
He arose, and she stooped swiftly forward, as if propelled objectively, and, before he realized what she was doing, touched the back of his hand with her lips.
She sprang upright and faced him from the mantel, more afraid than ever, staring at him, her cheeks wet with tears.
"That's all," she whispered. "It's what I wanted to tell you. Please go. We mustn't see each other again."
In the room he was aware only of her, but he knew, in spite of his own blind instinct, that between them was a wall as of transparent and heavy glass against which he would only break his strength.
"Sylvia," he whispered in spite of that knowledge, "I want to touch your lips."
"They've never been anybody else's," she cried in a sudden outburst. "Never could have been. I see that now. That's why I've hated you——"
"Yet you love me now. You do love me, Sylvia?"
"I love you, George," she said, wearily. "I think I always have."
"Then why—why——"
She turned on him, nearly angry.
"How can you ask that? You haven't forgotten that first day, either, have you? You took something of me then, and I couldn't forget it. That was what hurt and humiliated; I couldn't forget, couldn't get out of my mind what you—one of the—the stablemen—had taken of me, Sylvia Planter. And I thought you could never give it back, but last night you did, and I——Everything went to pieces——And it had to be last night, after I'd lost my temper. I see that. That's the tragedy of it."
"I don't quite understand, Sylvia."
She smiled a little through her tears.
"Betty would. Any woman would. You must go now—please."
"When will I see you again?" he asked.
"This way? Never."
"What nonsense! You'll get a divorce. You must."
She straightened. Her head went back.
"I won't lie that way."
"I'll hit on some means," he boasted. "You belong to me."
"And I've found it out too late," she said, "and I don't believe I could have found it out before. Think of that, George, when it seems too hard. I had to be caught by my own rotten temper before I'd let you wake me up."
She drew a little away, and when he started forward motioned him back. Her face flooded with colour, but she met his eyes bravely.
"That was something. I will never forget that, either, but it doesn't make me feel—unclean, as I did that day at Oakmont and afterward. I don't want to forget it ever. Now you understand."
She ran swiftly to the door and opened it. He followed her and saw Betty at the farther end of the room talking to Mr. Planter.
"Why do you do that?" he asked, desperately.
"I want to tell you why I'll never forget," she answered in a half whisper. "Because I love you. I love you. I want to say it. I think it every minute, so don't you see you have to help me keep it straight and beautiful always, George?"
"Who has made my little girl cry?"
The quavering tones reminded George. He walked from the little room toward the others, and he saw that Old Planter had caught Sylvia's hand, had drawn her to him, had felt the tears on her cheeks.
There rushed back to George that ancient interview in the library at Oakmont, and here he was back at it, even in Old Planter's presence, making her cry again. He wondered what Old Planter had said when Lambert had told him who George Morton really was.
"You see, sir," he said, moodily, "I haven't changed so much from the stable boy, Morton, you once threatened to send to smash if——"
Sylvia broke in sharply.
"He's never been told——"
"What are you talking about?" the old man quavered. "Was there ever a Morton on my place, Sylvia? An old man, yes. He's dead. A young one——"
Slowly he shook his head from side to side. He peered suspiciously at George out of his dim eyes.
"I don't remember."
Suddenly he cried out with a flash of the old authority:
"I'm growing sensitive, Morton. No jokes! What's he talking about?"
Sylvia took his hand. Her lips trembled.
"Never mind, Father. Come."
And as he let her guide him he drifted on.
"Sylvia! Have you got everything you want? I'll give you anything you want if only you won't cry."
Outside rain had commenced to drizzle. From a tree in the little yard yellow leaves fluttered down. Old Planter hobbled into his study, Sylvia at his side. Betty followed George to the hall.
"Tell Sylvia I am very happy," he said.
She pressed his hand, whispering:
"The great George Morton!"
Again George walked to his apartment and sat brooding over the fire, trying to find a way; but Sylvia must have searched, too, and failed. There was no way, or none that she would take. He crushed his heady revolt at the realization, for he believed she had been right. Without her great mistake she couldn't have given him that obliterative moment last evening, or his glimpse this afternoon of happiness through heavy, transparent glass. So he could smile a little, nearly cheerfully. There was really a quality of happiness in his knowledge that she had never forgotten his tight clasping at Oakmont, his blurted love, his threat that he would teach her not to be afraid of his touch. How she must have despised herself in the great house, among her own kind, when she found she couldn't forget Morton, when she tried, perhaps, to escape the shame of wanting Morton! No wonder she had attempted through Blodgett and Dalrymple, men for whom she could have had no such urgent feeling, to divide herself from him, to prevent the fulfilment of his boasts of which he had perpetually reminded her. She must have looked at him a good deal more than he had guessed in those far days. And now his touch had taught her to be more afraid than ever, but not of him. With a growing wonder he recalled her surrender. Of course, Sylvia, like her placid mother, like everyone, was, beneath the veneer even of endless generations, necessarily primitive. For that discovery he could thank Dalrymple. He continued to dream.
What, indeed, lay ahead for him? In a sense he had already reached the summit which he had set out to find, and every thrilling mood of hers that afternoon flamed in his mind. He had a desolate feeling that there was no longer anything for him down town, or anywhere else beyond a wait, possibly endless, for Sylvia; and as he brooded there he longed for a mother to whom he could have gone with his happiness that was more than half pain. His mother had said that there were lots of girls too good for him. His father had added, "Sylvia Planter most of all." His father was dead. His mother might as well have been. All at once her swollen hands seemed to rest passively between him and the fire.
He was glad when Wandel came in, even though he found him without lights, for the second time that day in an unaccustomed and reflective posture.
"Snap the lamps on, will you, Driggs?"
Wandel obeyed, and George blinked, laughing uncomfortably.
"You'll fancy I've caught the poet's mood."
"Not at all, my dear George," Wandel answered. "Why not say, thinking about the war? Nobody will let you talk about it, and I'm told if you write stories or books that mention it the editors turn their thumbs down. So much, says a grateful country, for the poor soldier. What more natural then than this really pitiful picture of the dejected veteran recalling his battles in a dusky solitude?"
"Oh, shut up, Driggs. Maybe you'll tell me why they ever called you 'Spike.'"
Wandel yawned.
"Certainly. Because, being small, I got hit on the head a great deal. I sometimes think it's why I'm too dull to make you understand what I mean to say."
George looked at him.
"I think I do, Driggs; and thanks."
"Then," Wandel said, brightly, "you'll come and dine with me."
"I will. I will. Where shall we go? Not to the club."
"I fancy one club wouldn't be pleasant for you this evening," Wandel said, quietly.
George caught his breath.
"Why not?"
But Wandel wouldn't satisfy him until they were in a small restaurant and seated at a wall table sufficiently far from people to make quiet tones safe.
"It's too bad," he said then, "that great men won't take warnings."
"I caught your warning," George answered, "and I acted on it as far as I could. I couldn't dream, knowing her, of a runaway marriage, and I'll guarantee you didn't, either."
"I once pointed out to you," Wandel objected, "that she was the impulsive sort who would fly to some man—only I fancied then it would ultimately be you."
"Why, Driggs?"
Wandel put his hand on George's knee.
"You don't mind my saying this? A long time ago I guessed she loved you. Even as far back as Betty's début, when I danced with her right after you two had had some kind of a rumpus, I saw she was a bundle of emotion and despised herself for it. Of course I hadn't observed then all that I have since."
"Why did you never warn me of that?" George asked.
Wandel laughed lightly.
"What absurd questions you ask! Because, being well acquainted with Sylvia, I couldn't see how she was to be made to realize she cared for you."
George crumbled a piece of bread.
"I daresay," he muttered, "you know everything that's happened. It's extraordinary the way you find out things—things you're not supposed to know at all."
Wandel laughed again, this time on a note of embarrassed disapproval.
"Not extraordinary in this case."
George glanced up.
"You said something about the club not being pleasant for me to-night——"
"Because," Wandel answered with brutal directness, "Dolly's been there."
George clenched his hands. Wandel looked at them amusedly.
"Very glad you weren't about, Hercules."
"It was that bad?" George asked.
"Why not," Wandel drawled, "say rather worse?"
"Drunk?" George whispered.
"A conservative diagnosis," Wandel answered. "His language sounded quite foreign, but with effort its sense could be had; and the rooms were fairly full. You know, just before dinner—the usual crowd."
"Somebody should have shut him up," George cried.
"We did, with difficulty, and not all at once," Wandel protested. "Dicky's taken him home with the aid of a pair of grinning hyenas. They did make one think of that."
"It's not to be borne," George muttered. "He ought to be killed."
"By all means, my dear George," Wandel agreed, "but we're back in New York. I mean, with the armistice murder ceased to be praiseworthy. They're punishing it in the usual fashion. You quite understand that, George?"
George tried to laugh.
"Quite. Go ahead."
"He really had some excuse," Wandel went on, "because when he first came in no one realized how bad he was—and they jumped him with congratulations and humour, and he went right out of his head—became stark, raving mad; or drunk, as you choose."
"What did he say?" George asked, softly.
Wandel half closed his eyes.
"Don't expect me to repeat any such crazy, disconnected stuff. It's enough that he let everybody guess Sylvia had sold him at the very moment he had fancied he had bought her. I've been thinking it over, and I'm not sure it isn't just as well he did. Everybody will talk his head off for a few days and drop it. Otherwise, curious things would have been noticed and suspected from time to time, and the talk, with fresh impetus, would have gone on forever. Besides, nobody's looking for much trouble with the Planters."
George had difficulty with his next question.
"He—he didn't mention me?"
"Why, yes," Wandel answered, gravely, "but rather incoherently."
"Rotten of him!"
"No direct accusations," Wandel hurried on, "just vile temper; and while it makes it temporarily more unpleasant that's just as well, too. The fact that people know what to expect kills more talk later. I suppose she'll manage a fairly quiet divorce."
"Won't listen to it," George snapped.
"How stupid of me!" Wandel drawled. "Of course she wouldn't."
He sighed.
"I mean to sympathize with you, my George, but all the time I envy you, and have to restrain myself from offering congratulations. Behold the oysters! They're really very good here."
George tried to smile.
"Then shall we talk about shell fish?"
"Bivalves, George. Or we might discuss the great strike. Which one? Take your choice. Or, by the way, have you received your shock yet? They're raising rents in our house more than a hundred per cent."
"The hell after war!" George grinned.
Wandel smiled back.
"Let us hope not a milestone on the road."
Through pure will George resumed his routine, but it no longer had the power to capture him, becoming a drudgery without a clear purpose. Always he was conscious of the effort to force himself from recollection and imagination, to drive Sylvia from his mind; and, even so, he never quite succeeded. Were there then no heights beyond?
Lambert was painstakingly considerate, catching him for luncheon from time to time, or calling at unexpected moments at his office, and always he said something about Sylvia. She was well. Naturally she was keeping to herself. Betty and she were at Princeton, and Sylvia was going to stay on with the Alstons for a time. Once he let slip a sincere admiration, a real regret.
"It's extraordinary, George. You've very nearly made every word good."
George took the opening to ask a question that had been in his mind for many days.
"Where is he? What's he up to? I haven't seen him, but, naturally, I keep to myself, too, and Dicky, bless him, mentions nothing."
Lambert frowned.
"He hasn't been around the office much since. He's taking his own sweet will with himself now. He's gone away—to Canada. It's cold there, but it's also fairly wet."
"If one could only be sure he had the virtue of loving her!" George mused.
"He hasn't," Lambert said, impatiently. "Since I talked with him that hectic night I've admitted that Dolly's never had the capacity to love any one except himself. So he's probably happy in his own unpleasant way."
A thought came to George. He smiled a little.
"I've been wondering if Sylvia is going in harder than ever on the side of the downtrodden."
Lambert laughed.
"As far as I know, hasn't mentioned a cossack since that night; and I have to confess, hard-headed reactionary, the ranks are making me see too many bad qualities among the good."
"Perhaps," George suggested, "the ranks are saying something of the sort about us. Besides, I don't see why you call me reactionary."
"Would you have minded it a while back?" Lambert asked.
"Just the same," George answered, "I'd like to get their point of view."
What would Squibs say to that from him? Squibs, undoubtedly, would be pleased. After Lambert had gone he sat for a long time thinking. He was glad Lambert had come, for the other had suggested that in endeavouring to capture such a point of view, in pleasing Squibs, he might at last find a real interest, and one of use to somebody besides himself. If the men on the heights didn't get at it pretty soon, a different kind of climber would appear, with black hands, inflamed eyes, and a mind stripped, by passion, of all logic. Gladly he found it possible to bring to this new task the energy with which he had attacked the narrower puzzles of the university and Wall Street.
Sylvia had called him the most selfish person she had ever met, and, as he tried to strip from the facts of the world's disease the perpetual, clinging propaganda, he applied her charge to his soul. From the first he had been infected, yet his selfishness had been neither inefficient nor dangerous. This increasing pestilence was. Lambert guessed what he was at, and George jeered at him for his war madness, but Lambert had found again an absorbing interest. Because of his missing leg it was rather pitiful to watch his enthusiasm for a reawakened activity.
"You've got to see Harvard swallow your old Tiger, George," he said one Friday. "After all, why not? You don't need to come out to the Alstons, although I'm not sure there would be any harm in that. Talk's about done, I fancy."
George flushed.
"Do you know I'd love to spill you again, Lambert? I'd like to bring you down so hard the seismographs would make a record."
"Too bad we can't try to kill each other," Lambert said, regretfully. "Why not watch younger brutes?"
"I've wanted it for days," George acknowledged. "I'll wire Squibs."
George was perfectly sure that Squibs knew nothing, for he wasn't socially curious, and Betty would have hesitated to talk about what had happened even to Mrs. Squibs, yet he was conscious, after the first moment of meeting, of a continued scrutiny from Squibs, of a hesitancy of manner, of an unusually careful choice of words.
He had small opportunity to test this impression, for it was noon when he reached the house in Dickinson Street, and there were many of the tutor's products in the dining-room, snatching a cold bite while they roared confused pessimism about the game.
"You're going to the side-lines," Squibs said when they had climbed the ramp to their section of the stadium.
"I'd be in the way," George objected.
Bailly stared at him.
"George Morton on a football field could only be in the way of Harvard and Yale."
George experienced a quick, ardent wish for thick turf underfoot, for a seat on the bench among players exhaling a thick atmosphere of eager and absorbed excitement. So he let the tutor lead him down the steps. Squibs called to Green, who was distrait.
"What is it, Mr. Bailly?"
"I've got Morton."
Green sprang to life.
"Mr. Stringham! An omen! An omen!"
He met George at the gate and threw his arms around him. Stringham hurried up. Green crowed.
"I believe we'll lick these fellows or come mighty close to it."
"Of course you'll lick them, Green. Hello, Stringham! May I sit down?"
"The stadium's yours," Stringham said, simply.
As he walked along the line of eager players, smothered in blankets or sweaters, George caught snatches of the curiosity of youth, because of nervousness, too audibly expressed.
"Who's the big fellow?"
"That? Longest kicker, fastest man for his weight ever played the game. George Morton—the great Morton."
"He never played with that leg! What's the matter with his leg? Football?"
George caught no answer. He sat down among the respectful youths, thinking whimsically:
"The war's so soon over, but thank God they can't forget football!"
At the very end of the first half, when the Princeton sections experienced the unforeseen glow of a possible victory, George caught a glimpse of Lambert and Wandel close to the barrier, as if they had left their places to catch someone with the calling of time. Just then the horn scrunched its anxious message. George called.
"Lambert Planter!"
Stringham paused, grinning.
"Come over here, you biting bulldog."
Lambert made his way through the barrier and grasped Stringham's hand.
"Come along to the dressing-room," Stringham suggested, cordially. "Nice bulldog, although once I loved to see Morton chew you up."
Lambert glanced down.
"Thanks. I'd better stay here. One of my runners is off, Stringham."
"Then sit with the boys next half," Stringham said. "Coming, Morton?"
George shook his head, and urged the anxious coach away, for Wandel had caught his eye.
"Tell them to keep their heads," George called after Stringham. "If they keep their heads they've got Harvard beaten."
He glanced inquiringly at Wandel.
"Why not cease," Wandel said, "imagining yourself a giddy, heroic cub? Come up and sit with mature people the last half."
The invitation startled George. Then Sylvia wasn't there?
"Is Sylvia all right?" he asked Lambert under his breath.
Lambert was a trifle ill at ease.
"Oh, quite. Betty asked us to get you. Wants to see you. Have my place. I'm going to accept Stringham's fine invitation, and sit here with the young—a possible Yale scout on the Princeton side-lines."
"Stringham's no fool," George laughed. "Anyway, he has you fellows beaten right now."
Lambert thrust his hand in his pocket.
"How much you got?"
Wandel grasped George's arm.
"Come with me before you get in a college brawl."
"Plenty when we're not chaperoned, Lambert," George called, and followed Wandel through the restless crowd and up the concrete steps.
Was Sylvia really there? Was he going to see her? The idea of finding him had sprung from Betty, and Lambert had been ill at ease.
He saw Betty and her father and mother, then beyond them, a vacant place between, Sylvia to whom the open air and its chill had given back all her dark, flushed brilliancy. Wandel slid through first, and made himself comfortable at Sylvia's farther side. George followed, stopping to speak to the Alstons, to accept Betty's approving glance.
"Conspirator!" he whispered, and went on, and sat down close to Sylvia, and yielded himself to the delight of her proximity. She glanced at him, her colour deepening.
"Betty said it was all right, and I must. So many people——"
The air was sharp enough to make rugs comfortable. He couldn't see her hands because they were beneath the rug across her knees, a covering she shared with Wandel and him.
As he drew the rug up one of his hands touched hers, and his fingers, beyond his control, groped for her fingers. He detected a quick, nervous movement away; then it was stopped, and their hands met, clasped, and clung together.
For a moment they looked at each other, and knew they mustn't, since there were so many people; but the content of their clasped hands continued because it couldn't be observed.
The supreme football player sat there staring at a blur of autumn colour between the lake and the generous mouth of the stadium; and, when the second half commenced, saw, as if from an immeasurable distance, pygmy figures booting a football, or carrying it here and there, or throwing each other about; and he didn't know which were Harvard's men or which were Princeton's, and he didn't seem to care——
Vaguely he heard people suffering. A voice cut through a throaty and grieving murmur.
"Somebody's lost his head!"
"What's the matter?" he asked Sylvia.
"George! You're destroying my hand."
Momentarily he remembered, and relaxed his grasp, while she added quickly:
"But I don't mind at all, dear."
Lambert stood in front of them, glancing down doubtfully. Evidently the game was over, for people were leaving, talking universally and discontentedly.
"Betty and I," Lambert said, dryly, "fancied we'd invented and patented that rug trick."
Sylvia stood up.
"Don't scold, Lambert."
She turned to George, trying to smile.
"I shall be happy as long as my hand hurts. Good-bye, George."
"You'd better go," Betty whispered as he lingered helplessly.
So he drifted aimlessly through the crowd, hearing only a confused murmur, seeing nothing beyond the backs directly in front of him, until he found the Baillys waiting at the ramp opening.
"If you'd only been there, George! Although this morning we'd have been glad enough to think of a tie score."
He submitted then to Bailly's wonder at each miracle; to his grief for each mistake; and little by little, as the complaining voice hurried on, the world assumed its familiar proportions and movements. He caught a glimpse of Allen walking slowly ahead. The angular man was alone, and projected even to George an air of profound dissatisfaction. Bailly caught his arm and shook hands with him.
"Whither away?" George asked.
"To the specials."
He fell in beside George, and for a time kept pace with him.
"What's bothering you, Allen?"
With a haggard air Allen turned his head from side to side, gazing at the hastening people.
"Lords of the land!" he muttered. "Lords of the land!"
"Why?" George asked. "Because they have an education? Well, so have you."
Allen nodded toward the emptying stadium.
"Lords of the land!" he repeated. "I've been sitting up there with them, but all alone. I wish I hadn't liked being with them. I wish I hadn't been sorry for myself because I was alone."
Allen's words, his manner of expressing them, defined a good deal for George, urged him to form a quick resolution.
"Catch your special," he said, "but come to my office Tuesday morning. I may have work for you that you can do with a clear conscience. If you must get, get something worth while."
Allen glanced at him quickly.
"Morton, you've changed," he said. "I'll come."
Very slowly the excitement of the game cleared from Squibs' brain. That night he could talk of nothing else, begging George for an opinion of each player and his probable value against Yale the following Saturday. George, to cover his confusion, generalized.
"We'll beat Yale," he said, "as we ought to have beaten Harvard, because this team isn't afraid of colours and symbols. Most of these youngsters have been in the bigger game, so final football matches no longer appeal to them as matters of life and death and even of one's chances in the hereafter."
Bailly looked slightly sheepish.
"I'm afraid, George, I'm going to New Haven to look at a struggle of life and death, but then I was only in the Y. M. C. A. I'd feel many times better if you were sound and available."
"You might speak to the dean about me," George laughed.
By the next evening, however, the crowd had departed, and with Princeton's return to normal Squibs for the time overcame his anxieties. That night George and he sat in a corner of the lounge of the Nassau Club, waiting for Lambert and Wandel to drive in from the Alstons. George grew a trifle uncomfortable, because he suspected Squibs was staring at him with yesterday's curious scrutiny. Abruptly the tutor asked:
"What did you say to Allen after the game?"
"Offered him another job," George answered, shortly.
Bailly frowned.
"See here, George. What are you up to? Is that fair and decent? Allen is struggling—for the right."
"Allen," George answered, "has put some of his views to the test, and the results have made him discouraged and uneasy. He's been tainted by the very men he's tried to help. I've no idea of debauching him. Quite the reverse. Please listen."
And he entered upon a sort of penitence, speaking, while the tutor's wrinkled face flushed with pleasure, of his recent efforts to understand the industrial situation and its probable effects on society.
"I have to acknowledge," he said, softly, "that pure material success has completely altered its meaning for me. I'd like to use my share of it, and what small brains I have, to help set things straight; but I'm not so sure this generation won't have too sticky feet to drag itself out of the swamp of its own making."
Lambert and Wandel arrived just then, talking cheerfully about football.
"What do you mean to do?" Bailly asked George as the others sat down.
George smiled at Wandel.
"I'm not sure, Driggs, that the hour hasn't struck for you."
Wandel raised his hands.
"You mean politics!"
"I used to fancy," George said, "that I'd need you for my selfish interests. Now my idea is quite different."
He turned to Squibs.
"See here, sir. You've got to admit that the soul of the whole thing is education. I don't mean education in the narrow sense that we know it here or in any other university. I mean the opening of eyes to real communal efficiency; the comprehension of the necessity of building instead of tearing down; the birth of the desire to climb one's self rather than to try to make stronger men descend."
Bailly's eyes sparkled.
"I don't say you're not right, George. You may be right."
A fire blazed comfortably in front of them. The chairs were deep. Through a window the Holder tower, for all its evening lack of definition, seemed an indestructible pointer of George's thoughts. For a long time he talked earnestly.
"I climbed," he ended. "So others can, and less selfishly and more usefully, if they're only told how; if they'll only really try."
"You're always right, great man," Wandel drawled, "but we mustn't forget you climbed from fundamentals. That's education—the teaching of the fundamentals."
"It means an equal chance for everybody," George said, "and then, by gad, we won't have the world held back by those who refuse to take their chance. We won't permit the congenitally unsound to set the pace for the healthy. We'll take care of the congenitally unsound."
He turned to Bailly.
"And you and your excitable socialists have got to realize that you can't make the world sane through makeshifts, or all at once, but with foresight it can be done. You've raised the devil with me ever since I was a sub-Freshman about service and the unsound and the virtue of soiled clothing. Now raise the devil with somebody else about the virtue of sound service and clean clothes. This education must start in the schools. We may be able to force it into public schools through the legislatures; but in Princeton and the other great universities it has to come from within, and that's hard; that, in a way, is up to you and other gentle sectarians like you. And your clubs have got to stand in some form—everywhere, if only as objectives of physical and intellectual content. Nothing good torn from the world! Only the evil——"
He tapped Wandel's arm.
"Driggs! If you want to go among the time-servers, to stand alone for the people; perhaps for people yet unborn——"
"For a long time," Wandel said, "I've been looking for something I could really want to do. I rather fancy you've found it for me, George. I want to climb, too, always have—not to the heights we once talked about at your unhealthy picnic, but to the furtherest heights of all, which are guarded by selfishness, servility, sin—past which people have to be led."
Squibs cried out enthusiastically.
"And from which you can look down with a clear conscience on the climbers to whom you will have pointed out the path."
"I see now," Lambert put in, "that that is the only way in which one with self-respect can look down on lesser men."
George laughed aloud.
"An ally that can't escape! Driggs is a witness. We'll hold that fine democracy of the Argonne over your head forever."
"You see," Wandel drawled, "that was bound to fail, because it was based on the ridiculous assumption that every man that fought was good and great."
"I fancy," George said, "we're commencing to find out why we went to war—To appreciate the world's and our own astigmatism."
As they walked back to the little house in Dickinson Street, Bailly tried to express something.
"I guess," he managed, "that I'll have to call it square, George."
"I'm glad," George said, quickly, "but you must give some of the credit to Lambert Planter's sister."
He smiled happily, wistfully.
"You know she's the most useful socialist of you all."
After a time he said under his breath:
"There are some things I never dreamed of being able to repay you, sir. For instance this—this feeling that one is walking home."
"That debt," Bailly said, brightly, "cancels itself."
His mood changed. He spoke with a stern personal regret.
"You young men! You young men! How much farther you see! How much more you can do!"
George returned to New York happy in his memory of his intimate hour on a crowded stand with Sylvia. Dalrymple had given him that, too. It amazed him that so much beauty could spring from so ugly a source.
He heard that Dalrymple was back from Canada, then that he had wandered away, pockets full, on another journey, pandering to his twisted conception of pleasure. One day George took his notes from the safe-deposit box and gave them to Lambert.
"Get them back to him," he said.
And Lambert must have understood that George would never let the Planters' money redeem them.
"It's pretty decent, George."
"It's nothing of the kind. They make my hands feel dirty, and I've lots of money, and I'm making more every day; yet I wonder if it's going to be enough, even with Driggs' and Blodgett's and yours, old Argonne democrat."
For he had spoken of his plans to Blodgett, and had been a little surprised to learn how much thought Blodgett had given the puzzle himself, although most of his searching had been for makeshifts, for anything to tide over immediate emergencies.
"I don't know," Blodgett roared, "whether this cleaning out the sore and getting to the bottom of it will work or not; but I'm inclined to look to the future with you for a permanent cure. Anyway, I'd help you finance a scheme to make the ocean dry, because you usually get what you're after. So we'll send Wandel and Allen and some more as a little leaven to Albany and to that quilting party in Washington. I don't envy them, though."
George realized that his content could be traced to this new interest, as that went back to Sylvia. He had at last consciously set out to explore the road of service. For the first time in his life, with his eyes open, he was working for others, yet he never got rid of the sense of a great personal need unfulfilled; always in his heart vibrated the cry for Sylvia, but he knew he mustn't try to see her, for Betty would have let him know, and Betty hadn't sent for him again.
After the holidays, at the urging of Wandel and Lambert, he showed himself here and there, received at first curious glances, fancied some people slightly self-conscious, then all at once found himself welcomed on the old frank and pleasant basis. Yes, the talk had pretty well died, and men and women were inclined to like Sylvia Planter and George Morton better than they did Dalrymple.
He saw Dalrymple in the club one stormy January evening. He hadn't heard he was in town, and examined him curiously as he sat alone in a corner, making a pretence of reading a newspaper, but really looking across the room at the fire with restless eyes. George, prepared as he had been, was surprised by the haggard, flushed countenance, and the neurotic symptoms, nearly uncontrollable.
Beyond question Dalrymple saw him, and pretended that he didn't. Heartily glad of that, George joined a group about the fireplace, and after a few minutes saw Dalrymple rise and wander unevenly from the room.
George met him several times afterward under similar circumstances, and always Dalrymple shortly disappeared, because, George thought, of his arrival; but other people tactfully put him straight. Dalrymple, it seemed, remained in no public place for long, as if there was something evilly secretive to call him perpetually away.
Wandel told him toward the end of the month that Dalrymple was about to make a trip to Havana for the remainder of the winter.
"Where there's horse-racing, gambling, and unlimited alcohol—where one may sin in public. Why talk about it? Although he doesn't mean to, George, he's in a fair way of doing you a favour."
But George didn't dream how close Dalrymple's offering was. His first thought, indeed, was for Sylvia when the influenza epidemic of January and February promised for a time to equal its previous ugly record. Lambert tried to laugh his worry away.
"She's going south with father and mother very soon. Anyway, she hasn't the habit of catching things."
And it was Lambert a day or two later who brought him the first indication of the only way out, and he tried to tell himself he mustn't want it. Even though he had always despised Dalrymple and his weakness, even though Dalrymple stood between him and his only possible happiness, he experienced a disagreeable and reluctant sense of danger in such a solution.
"All his life," Lambert was saying, "Dolly's done everything he could to make himself a victim."
"Where is he?" George asked.
"At his home. It's fortunate he hadn't started south."
"Or," George said, "he should have started sooner."
"I've an uncomfortable feeling," Lambert mused, "that he was planning to run away from this very chance. Put it off a little too long. Seems he went to bed four days ago. I didn't know until to-day because you see he's been a little outcast since that scene in the club. He sent for me this afternoon, and, curiously enough, asked for you. Will you go up? I really think you'd better."
But George shrank from the thought.
"I don't want to be scolded by a man who is possibly dying."
"Let's hope not," Lambert said. "You'll go. Around five o'clock."
George hesitated.
"Did he ask for Sylvia?"
"He didn't ask me, but I telephoned her."
"Why?" George asked, sharply.
"Every card on the table now, George!" Lambert warned. "We have to think of the future, in case——"
"Of course, you're right," George answered. "I'm sorry, and I'll go."
When he entered the Dalrymple house at five o'clock he came face to face with Sylvia in the hall. He had never seen her so controlled, and her quiet tensity frightened him.
"Lambert told me," she whispered, "you were coming now. Dolly hasn't asked for me, but I'd feel so much better—if things should turn out badly, for I'm thinking with all my heart of the boy I used to be so fond of, and it's, perhaps, my fault——"
"It is not your fault," George cried. "He's always asked for it. Lambert will tell you that."
George relaxed. Dalrymple's mother came down the stairs with the doctor, and George experienced a quick sympathy for the retiring, elderly woman he had scarcely seen before. She gave Sylvia her hand, while George stepped out with the physician. In reply to George's questions the quiet man shook his head and frowned.
"If it were any one else of the same age—I've attended in this house many years, Mr. Morton, and I've watched him since he was a child. I've marvelled how he's got so far."
He added brutally:
"Scarcely a chance with the turn its taking."
"If there's anything," George muttered, "any great specialist anywhere——Understand money doesn't figure——"
"Everything possible is being done, Mr. Morton. I'm truly sorry, but I can tell you it's quite his own fault."
So even this cold-blooded practitioner had heard the talk, and sympathized, and not with Dalrymple. A trifle dazed George reëntered the house.
"It's good of you to come, Mr. Morton," Mrs. Dalrymple said. "Shall we go upstairs now?"
There was no bitterness in her voice, and she had taken Sylvia's hand, yet undoubtedly she knew everything. Abruptly George felt sorrier for Dalrymple than he had ever done.
"Please wait, Sylvia," she said.
He followed Mrs. Dalrymple upstairs and into the sick-room.
"It's Mr. Morton, dear."
She beckoned to the nurse, and George remained in the room alone with the feverish man in the bed. He walked over and took the hot hand.
"Morton!" came Dalrymple's hoarse voice, "I believe you're sorry for me!"
"I am sorry," George said, quietly, "and you must get well."
Dalrymple shook his head.
"I know all the dope, and I guess I'm off in a few days. Not so bad now I can't talk a little and sorta clean one or two things up. No silly deathbed repentance. I'm jealous of you, Morton; always have been, because you were getting things I couldn't, and I figured from the first you were an outsider."
The dry lips smiled a little.
"When you get like this it makes a lot of difference, doesn't it, how you came into the world? I'll be the real outsider in a few days——"
"Don't talk that way."
A quick temper distorted Dalrymple's face.
"They oughtn't to bring a man into the world as I was brought, without money."
George couldn't think of anything to say, but Dalrymple hurried on:
"I wanted to thank you for the notes. Don't have to leave those to my family, anyway. And I'm not sure hadn't better apologize all 'round. I don't forget I've had raw deal—lots of ways; but no point not saying Sylvia had pretty raw one from Dolly. Lucky escape for her—mean Dolly's not domestic animal, and all that."
George was aware of a slight shiver as Dalrymple's hoarse voice slipped into its old, not quite controlled mannerisms.
"Mean," Dalrymple rambled on, "Dolly won't haunt anybody. Blessings 'n' sort of thing. Best thing, too. Sorry all 'round. That's all. Thanks coming, George."
And all George could say was:
"You have to get well, Dolly."
But Dalrymple turned his head away. After a moment George proposed tentatively:
"Sylvia's downstairs. She wants very much to see you."
Dalrymple shook his head.
"Catching."
"For her sake," George urged.
Dalrymple thought.
"All right," he said at last. "Long enough for me to tell her all right. But not near. Nurse in the room. Catching, and all that."
George clasped the hot hand.
"Thanks, Dolly. You've done a decent thing, and you're going to get well."
But as he left the room George felt that the physician had been right.
He spoke to the nurse, who sat in the upper hall, then he told Sylvia. She went up, and he waited for her. He felt he had to wait. He hoped Mrs. Dalrymple wouldn't appear again.
Sylvia wasn't long. She came down dry-eyed. She didn't speak even when George followed her to her automobile, even when he climbed in beside her; nor did he try to break a silence that he felt was curative. In the light and surrounded by a crowd they could clasp hands; in this obscure solitude there was nothing they could do or say. Only on the steps of her home she spoke.
"Good-night, George, and thank you."
"Good-night, dear Sylvia," he said, and returned to the automobile, and told the man to drive him to his apartment.
George didn't hear from Dalrymple again, nor did he expect to, but he was quite aware five days later of Goodhue's absence from the office and of his black clothing when he came in during the late afternoon. He didn't need Goodhue's few words.
"It's hard not to feel sorry, to believe, on the whole, it's rather better. Still, when any familiar object is unexpectedly snatched away from one——"
"We had a talk the other evening," George began.
Goodhue's face lighted.
"I'm glad, George."
He sighed.
"I've got to try to catch up. Mundy says rails have taken a queer turn."
"When you think for a minute not so queer," George commenced to explain.
A few days later Lambert told him that Sylvia had gone to Florida.
"They'll probably stay until late in the spring. It agrees with Father."
"How did Sylvia seem?" George asked, anxiously.
"Wait awhile," Lambert advised, "but I don't think there are going to be any spectres."
He smiled engagingly.
"If there shouldn't be," he went on, "a few matters will have to be arranged, because Sylvia and I share alike. Josiah and I had a long, careful talk with Father last night about what we'd do with Sylvia's husband if she married. He left it to my judgment, advising that we might take him in if he were worth his salt. Josiah wanted to know with his bull voice what Father would think if it should turn out to be you. Very seriously, George, Father was pleased. He pointed out that you were a man who made things go, but that you would end by running us all, and he added that if we wanted that we would be lucky to get you as long as it made Sylvia happy. You know we want you, George."
George felt as he had that day on the Vesle when Wandel had praised him. No longer could Lambert charge him with having fulfilled his boasts, in a way; yet he hadn't consciously wanted this, nor was he quite sure that he did now.
"At least," George said, "you know what my policy would be to make Planter and Company something more than a money making machine."
Lambert imitated Blodgett's voice and manner.
"George, if you wanted to grow hair on a bald man's head I'd say go to it."
"And there must be room for Dicky," George went on.
"We've played together too long to break apart now; but why talk about it? It depends on Sylvia."
That was entirely true. For the present there was nothing whatever to be done. Constantly George conquered the impulse to write to Sylvia, but she didn't write or give any sign, unless Lambert's frequent quotations from her letters could be accepted as thoughtful messages.
He visited the Baillys frequently now, for it was stimulating to talk with Squibs, and he liked to sit quietly with Mrs. Bailly. She had an unstudied habit, nevertheless, of turning his thoughts to his mother. Sylvia had seen her. She knew all about her. After all, his mother had given him the life with which he had accomplished something. He couldn't bear that their continued separation should prove him inconsistent; so early in the spring he went west.
His mother was more than ever ill at ease before his success; more than ever appreciative of the comforts he had given her; even more than at Oakmont appalled at the prospect of change. She wouldn't go east. She couldn't very well, she explained; and, looking at her tired figure in the great chair before the fire which she seldom left, he had an impulse to shower upon her extravagant and fantastic gifts, because before long it would be too late to give her anything at all. The picture made him realize how quickly the generations pass away, drifting one into the other with the rapidity of our brief and colourful seasons. He nodded, satisfied, reflecting that the cure for everything lies in the future, although one must seek it in the diseased present.
He left her, promising to come back, but he carried away a sensation that he had intruded on a secluded content that couldn't possibly survive the presence of the one who had created it.
Lambert had no news for him on his return. It was late spring, in fact, before he told George the family had come north, pausing at a number of resorts on the way up.
"When am I to see Sylvia, Lambert?"
"How should I know?"
It was apparent that he really didn't, and George waited, with a growing doubt and fear, but on the following Friday he received a note from Betty, dated from Princeton. All it said was:
"Spring's at its best here. You'd better come to-morrow—Friday."
He hurried over to the marble temple.
"You didn't tell me Betty was in Princeton," he accused Lambert.
"Must I account to you for the movements of my wife?"
"Then Sylvia——" George began.
Lambert smiled.
"Maybe you'd better run down to Princeton with me this afternoon."
George glanced at his watch.
"First train's at four o'clock. Let Wall Street crash. I shan't wait another minute."
Betty had been right. Spring was fairly vibrant in Princeton, and for George, through its warm and languid power, it rolled back the years; choked him with a sensation of youth he had scarcely experienced since he had walked defiantly out of the gate of Sylvia's home to commence his journey.
Sylvia wasn't at the station. Neither was Betty. Abruptly uneasy, he drove with Lambert swiftly to the Alstons through riotous, youthful foliage out of which white towers rose with that reassuring illusion of a serene and unchangeable gesture. Undergraduates, surrendered to the new economic eccentricity of overalls, loafed past them, calling to each other contented and lazy greetings; but George glanced at them indifferently; he only wanted to hurry to his journey's end.
At the Tudor house Betty ran out to meet them, and Lambert grinned at George and kissed her, but evidently it was George that Betty thought of now, for she pointed, as if she had heard the question that repeated itself in his mind, to the house; and he entered, and breathlessly crossed the hall to the library, and saw Sylvia—the old Sylvia, it occurred to him—colourful, imperious, and without patience.
She stood in the centre of the room in an eager, arrested attitude, having, perhaps, restrained herself from impetuously following Betty. George paused, staring at her, suddenly hesitant before the culmination of his great desire.
"It's been so long," she whispered. "George, I'm not afraid to have you touch me——You mean I must come to you——"
He shook off his lassitude, but the wonder grew.
As in a dream he went to her, and her curved lips moved beneath his, but he pressed them closer so that she couldn't speak; for he felt encircling them in a breathless embrace, as his arms held her, something thrilling and rudimentary that neither of them had experienced before; something quite beyond the comprehension of Sylvia Planter and George Morton, that belonged wholly to the perplexing and abundant future.