The Guarded Heights Part 55

George fancied Wandel's real motive wasn't so easily expressed. He longed to know it, but you couldn't pump Wandel.

"You're an a.s.s," was all he said.

"Naturally," Wandel agreed. "Only a.s.ses go to war."

"Do you think it will help for you to get a piece of sh.e.l.l through your head?"

"Quite as much as for any other a.s.s."

"Why don't you say what you mean?" George asked, irritably.

"Perhaps you ask that," Wandel drawled, "because you don't understand what I mean to say."

"I won't take care of your apartment," George snapped. "I won't have any hand in such a piece of foolishness."

With Goodhue, however, he went to the pier to see Wandel off; absorbed with the little man the sorrowful and apprehensive atmosphere of the odorous shed; listened to choked farewells; saw br.i.m.m.i.n.g eyes; shared the pallid antic.i.p.ations of those about to venture forth upon an unnatural sea; touched at last the very fringe of war.

"Why is he doing it?" George asked as Goodhue and he drove across town to the subway. "I've never counted Driggs a sentimentalist."

"I'm not sure," Goodhue answered, "this doesn't prove he isn't. He's always had an acute appreciation of values. Don't you remember? We used to call him 'Spike'."

George let himself drift with events, but Wandel's departure increased his uneasiness. Suppose he should be forced by circ.u.mstances to abandon everything; against his better judgment to go? Automatically his thoughts turned to Squibs. He recalled his advice.

"Don't let your ideas smoulder in your head. Come home and talk them over."

He sent a telegram and followed it the next day. The Baillys met him at the station, affectionately, without any reproaches for his long absence. The menace was in the air here, too, for Mrs. Bailly's first question, sharply expressed, was:

"You're not going, if----"

"I don't want to go," he answered.

Bailly studied him, but he didn't say anything.

That afternoon there was a boat race on Lake Carnegie. The Alstons drove the Baillys and George down some hospitable resident's lane to an advantageous bank near the finish line. They spread rugs and made themselves comfortable there, but the party was subdued. Squibs and Mr.

Alston didn't seem to care to talk. Betty asked Mrs. Bailly's question, received an identical answer, and fell silent, too. Only Mrs. Alston appeared to detect no change in the world, remaining cheerfully imperial as if alarms couldn't possibly approach her abruptly.

Even to George such a scene, sharing one planet with the violences of Europe, appeared contradictory. The fancifully garbed undergraduates, who ran along the bank; the string of automobiles on the towpath opposite; the white and gleaming pleasure boats in the ca.n.a.l; the sh.e.l.ls themselves, with coloured oar-blades that flashed in the sunlight; most of all the green frame for this pleasantly exciting contest had an air of telling him that everything unseen was rumour, dream stuff; either that, or else that the seen was visionary, while in those remote places existed the only material world, the revolting and essential realities.

Bailly at last interrupted his revery, with his long, thin arm making a gesture that included the athletes; the running, youthful partisans.

"How many are we going to lose or get back with twisted minds?"

"Keep quiet," his wife said in a panic.

Mrs. Alston laughed pleasantly.

"Don't worry. Woodrow will keep us out of it."

XV

Back in the little study Bailly expressed his doubt.

"He may do it now, but later----"

"Remember you're not going, George," Mrs. Bailly cried.

"I think not."

She patted his hand, while Bailly looked on with his old expression of doubt and disapproval. When Mrs. Bailly had left them, George told the tutor of Wandel's surprising venture, asking his opinion.

"It's hard to form one," Bailly admitted. "He's always puzzled me. Would it surprise you if I said I think he at least has grafted on his brain some of Allen's generous views?"

"Oh, come, sir. You can't make war an ideal expression of the brotherhood of man. Far better that all men should be suspicious strangers."

Bailly drew noisily at his pipe.

"It often pleases you to misunderstand," he said. "Wandel, I fancy, would take Allen's theories and make something more practical of them.

Understand I am a pacifist--thorough-paced. War is folly. War is dreadful. It cannot be conceived in a healthy brain. But when a fact rises up before you you'd better face it. Wandel probably does. The Allens probably don't--don't realize that we must win this war as the only alternative to the world pacing of an autocratic foot that would crush social progress like a serpent, that would boot back the brotherhood of man, since you seem to enjoy the phrase, unthinkable years."

"After admitting that," George asked, quickly, "you can still tell me that I ought to accept the point of view of your rotten, illogical Socialists?"

"Even in this war," Bailly confessed, "most socialists are pacifists.

No, they're not an elastic crowd. It amuses me that a lot of the lords of the land, leading an unthinking portion of the proletariat, will permit them to carry on their work in spite of themselves."

"I despise such theorists," George burst out. "They are unsound. They are dangerous."

Bailly smiled.

"Just the same, the very ones they want to reform are going to give them the opportunity to do it."

"They're all like Allen," George sneered, "purchasable."

Bailly shook his head, waved his pipe vehemently.

"Virtue's flaws don't alter its really fundamental quality."

"Then you agree all Socialists are knaves or fools," George stormed.

"Perhaps, George," Bailly said, patiently, "you'll define a conservative for me. There. Never mind. Somewhere in between we may find an honest generosity, a wise sympathy. It may come from this war--a huge and wise balance of power of the right, an honest recognition of men as individuals rather than as members of cla.s.ses. Perhaps your friend Wandel is on the track of something of the sort. I like to think it is really what the war is being fought for."

"The war," George said, "is being fought for men with fat paunches and pocket-books."

"Then you're quite sure you don't want to go?"

"Why should I as long as my stomach and my pocket-book are comfortable?