The Guarded Heights Part 6

"If, Morton," the old man went on with a biting earnestness, "once you're away from Oakmont, you ever bother Miss Sylvia again, or make any attempt to see her, I'll dispossess your parents, and I'll drive you out of any job you get. I'll keep after you until you'll understand what you're defying. This isn't an idle threat. I have the power."

The father completely conquered him. He clenched his knotted fists.

"I'd destroy a regiment of creatures like you to spare my little girl one of the tears you caused her this afternoon."

"After all," George said, defensively, "I'm a human being."

Old Planter shook his head.

"If your father hadn't failed you'd have spent your life in a livery stable. It takes education, money, breeding to make a human being."

George nodded. He wouldn't need to plan much for himself, after all.

Sylvia's father was doing it for him.

"I've heard some pretty hard words to-day, sir," he said. "It's waked me up. Can't a man get those things for himself?"

He fancied reminiscence in Old Planter's eyes.

"The right kind can. Get out of here now, Morton, and don't let me see you or hear of you again."

George stepped between him and the table to pick up his cap. His nerves tightened. Close to his cap lay an unmounted photograph, not very large, of Sylvia. What a companion piece for the broken crop! What an ornament for an altar dedicated to ambition, to anger, and to love! He would take it under her father's nose, following her father's threats.

He slipped his cap over the photograph, and picked up both, the precious likeness hidden by the cheap cloth.

"Good-night, sir."

He thought Old Planter started at the ring in his voice. He walked swiftly from the room. Let Old Planter look out for himself. What did all those threats amount to? Perhaps he could steal Sylvia as easily from under her terrible parent's nose.

VI

Lambert, hands in pockets, stopped him in the hall.

"Packed off, as you deserve, but you'll need money."

"Thanks," George said. "I don't want any I don't earn."

"If father should kick me out," Lambert drawled, "I'd be inclined to take what I could get."

"I'd rather steal," George said.

Lambert smiled whimsically.

"A word of advice. Stealing's dangerous unless you take enough."

George indicated the library door. He tried to imitate Lambert's manner.

"Then I suppose it's genius."

"What are you getting at?"

"I mean," George said, "you people may drive me to stealing, but it'll be the kind you get patted on the back for."

"Sounds like Wall Street," Lambert smiled.

George wanted to put himself on record in this house.

"I'm going to make money, and don't you forget it."

Lambert's smile widened.

"Then good luck, and a good job--George."

George crushed his helpless irritation, turned, and walked out the front door; more disappointed than he would have thought possible, because he had failed to see Sylvia.

Reluctantly he returned to the nearly silent discomfort of his parents.

He tried to satisfy their curiosity.

"Nothing but threats. I'm to be driven to crime if I'm ever heard of after I leave Oakmont in the morning."

"He might have made it worse," his father grunted.

The conversation died for lack of an interpreter.

His father made a pretence of reading a newspaper. His mother examined her swollen hands. Her eyes suggested the nearness of tears. George got up.

"I suppose I'd better be getting ready."

As he stooped to kiss her his mother slipped an arm around his neck.

"Mother's little boy."

George steadied his voice.

"Good-night, Dad."

His father filled his pipe reflectively.

"Good-night, George."

No word of sympathy; no sympathy at all, beyond a fugitive, half-frightened hint from his mother, because he had run boldly against a fashion of thinking; little more, really.

He softly closed the door of his room, the last time he would ever do that! He sat on the edge of the bed. He took Sylvia's photograph from his pocket and studied it with a deliberate lack of sentiment. He fancied her desirable lips framing epithets of angry contempt and those other words to which he had given his own significance.

"You'll not forget."

He looked so long, repeating it in his mind so often, that at last his eyes blurred, and the pictured lips seemed, indeed, to curve and straighten.

"You'll not forget."