The Guarded Heights Part 45

Sinclair, no man possessed sufficient charm to offset the disadvantages of such a companionship.

George, when he was sure, reined in, surprised at his reflections.

Blodgett, heaven knew, had been good to him, and he had once liked the man. Why, then, had he turned so viciously against him? Adjectives his mind had recently applied to Blodgett flashed back: "Coa.r.s.e," "fat,"

"ridiculous." Was it just? Why did he do it in spite of himself?

Sinclair turned and saw him. The party reined in, Sylvia, as one would have expected, impatiently in advance of the others. Her nod and something she said were lost in the men's cheery greetings. Since she was in advance, and edging on, as if to get farther away from him, George's opportunity was plain. The road wasn't wide enough for four abreast. If he could move forward with her Blodgett and Sinclair would have to ride together.

"Since I'm the last," he interrupted them, "mayn't I have first place?"

Quite as a matter of course he put his horse through and reined in at her side. They started forward.

"You ride as well as ever," he commented.

She shot a glance at him. Calmly he studied the striking details of her face. Each time he saw her she seemed more desirable. How was he to touch those lips that had filled his boy's heart with bursting thoughts?

For the first time since that day they rode together, only now he was at her side, instead of heeling like a trained dog. In his man's fashion he was as well clothed as she. When they got back he would enter the great house with her instead of going to the stables. Whether she cared to acknowledge it or not he was of her kind--more so than the millionaire Blodgett ever could be. So he absorbed her beauty which fired his imagination. Such a repet.i.tion seemed ominous of a second climax in their relations.

Her quick glance, however, disclosed only resentment for his intrusion.

He excused it.

"You see, I couldn't very well ride behind you."

She turned away.

"Hurry a little," Blodgett called.

It was what George wished, as she wished to crawl, never far in advance of the others.

"Come," he said, and flecked her horse with his crop.

"Don't do that again!"

He had gathered his own horse, and was galloping. Hers insisted on following. When George pulled in to keep at her side they were well in advance of the others. Now that he was alone with her he found it difficult to speak, and evidently she would limit his opportunity, for as he drew in she spurred her horse. He caught her, laughing.

"You may as well understand that I'll never ride behind you again."

She pressed her provocative lips together. So in silence, except for the crunching and scattering of the snow, they tore on through the dusk, rounding curves between hedges, rising to heights above bare, white stretches of landscape, dipping into hollows already won by the night.

And each moment they came nearer the house.

In the night of the hollows he battled his desire to reach over and touch her, and cry out:

"Sylvia! You've got to understand!"

And in one such place her horse stumbled, and she pulled in and bent low over her saddle, and said, as if he had really spoken:

"I can't understand----"

Her outline was blurred, but her face was like a light in that shadowed valley. He didn't speak until they were up the hill and the wind had caught them.

"What?" he asked then.

Was it the glow, offered by the white earth rather than the sky, that made him fancy her lips quivered?

"Why you always try to hurt me."

He thought of her broken riding crop, of her attempts to hurt him every time he had seen her since the day she had tried to cut him with it. A single exception clung to his memory--the night of Betty's dance, years ago, when she had failed to remember him. Her words, therefore, carried a thrill, a colour of surrender, since from the very first she had made him attack for his own defence.

"That's an odd thing for you to say."

There were lights ahead, accents in the closing night for Blodgett's huge and ugly extravagance. They rode slowly up the drive.

"Will you ever stop following me? Will you ever leave me alone?"

He stared at her, answering softly:

"It is impossible I should ever leave you alone."

At the terrace he sprang down, tossed his reins to a groom, and went to her, raising his hands. For a moment she looked at him, hesitating.

There were two grooms. So she took his hands and leapt down. It was a quick, uncertain touch her fingers gave him.

"Thanks," she said, and crossed the terrace at his side.

That moment, he reflected, was in itself culminating, yet he couldn't dismiss the feeling that their relations approached a larger climax. All the better, since things couldn't very well go on as they were. Was it that fleeting contact that had altered him, or her companionship in the gray night? He only knew as he walked close to her that the bitterness in his heart had diminished. He was willing to relinquish the return blow if she would ease the hurt she had given him. He told himself that she had never been nearer. An odd fancy!

The others rode up as they reached the door, and the hall was noisy with people just returned from the pond, so that their solitude was destroyed. While he bathed and dressed he tried to understand just what had happened. The alteration in his own heart could only be accounted for by a change in hers. Perhaps his mood was determined by her unexpected wonder that he should always try to hurt. He couldn't drive from his mind the definite impression of her having come nearer.

"Winter sentiment!" he sneered, and hurried, for it was late.

VII

Lambert dropped in and lounged in a satin-covered chair while George wrestled with his tie. He gave Lambert the freshest news from the office, but his mind wasn't on business, nor, he guessed, was Lambert's.

"Blodgett does one rather well," Lambert said, glancing around the room.

George agreed.

"Only a marquise might feel more at ease in this room than a mere male."

He turned, smiling.

"I'm always afraid the furniture won't hold. Why should he have raised such a monster?"

"Maybe," Lambert offered, "to have it ready for a wife."

"Who would marry him?" George flashed.

"Nearly any girl," Lambert said. "So much money irons out a lot of fat.

Then, when all's said and done, he's amusing and generous. He always tries to please. Why? What's made you scornful of Josiah?"