The Guarded Heights Part 63

He paid no attention to her.

"I suppose the war made you realize I was right about Blodgett?"

"You cannot talk about that."

"Has the war shown you I was right about myself?" he went on.

"Are you going to make my good resolutions impossible?" she asked.

Over his shoulder George saw the men in khaki guiding pretty girls about the dance floor. The place was full of a heady concentration of pleasure that had a beautiful as well as a pitiful side. About him the atmosphere was frankly amorous, compounded of multiple desires of heart and mind which strained for fulfilment before it should be too late. For him Sylvia was a part of it--the greater part. It entered his senses as the delightful and faint perfume which reached him from her. It became ponderable in her dark hair; in her lips half parted; in her graceful pose as she bent toward him attentively; in her sudden movement of withdrawal, as if she had suddenly realized he would never give her her way.

"Isn't it time," he asked, "that you forgot some of your childish pride and bad temper? Sylvia! When are you going to marry me?"

Her laughter wasn't even, but she arose unhurriedly. She paused, indeed, and sank back on the arm of the chair.

"So even now," she said, "it's to be quarrels or nothing."

"Or everything," he corrected her. "I shall make you realize it somehow, some day. What's the use putting it off? Let's forget the ugly part of the past. Marry me before I go to France."

He was asking her what he had accused Lambert of unjustifiably wanting Betty to do. All at once he understood Lambert's haste. He stretched out his hand to Sylvia. He meant it--with all his heart he meant it, but she answered him scornfully:

"Is that your way of saying you love me?"

The bitterness of many years revived in his mind, focusing on that question. If he should answer it impulsively she would be in a position to hurt him more than she had ever done. George Morton didn't dare take chances with his impulses, and the bitterness was in his voice when he answered:

"You've never let me fancy myself at your feet in a sentimental fit."

But it was difficult for him not to a.s.sume such an att.i.tude: not to take her hand, both of her hands; not to draw her close.

"If you'd only answer me----" he began.

She stood up.

"Just as when I first saw you!" she cried, angrily.

She controlled herself.

"You shan't force me to quarrel. Come in. Let us dance once."

In a sense he put himself at her feet then.

"I'm afraid to dance with you to-night," he whispered.

She looked at him, her eyes full of curiosity. Her eyes wavered. She turned and started across the gallery. In a panic he sprang after her.

"All right. Let us dance," he said.

He led her to the floor and took her in his arms, but he had an impression of guiding an automaton about the room. Almost at once she asked him to stop by the door leading to the gallery. He looked at her questioningly. Her distaste for the civilian Morton was undisguised at last from the soldier Morton. But there was more than that to be read in her colourful face--self-distaste, perhaps; and a sort of fright, comparable with the panic George had just now experienced on the verandah. Her voice was tired.

"I've done my best. I can't keep it up."

"No more war kindness!" he said. "Good!"

He watched her, her draperies arranging themselves in perplexingly graceful folds, as she hurried with an air of flight away from him along the gallery.

V

The evening the commissions were awarded George appreciated the ingrat.i.tudes and cruelties of service rather more keenly than he had done even as a youngster at Oakmont.

"It's like tap day at New Haven," Lambert said, nervously.

He had paused for a moment to compare notes with George. He hurried now to his own organization for fear something might have happened during his absence. The suspense increased, reaching even George, who all along had been confident of success.

In the dusk the entire company crowded the narrow s.p.a.ce between the barracks--scores of men who had been urged by pa.s.sionate politicians to abandon family, money, everything, for the discomforts, sometimes the degradations, of this place, for the possible privilege of dying for a cause. It had had to be done, but in the hearts of many that night was the fancy that it might have been done rather differently. It was clear, for instance, that the pa.s.sionate and patriotic politicians hadn't troubled to tear from a reluctant general staff enough commissions for the size and quality of these first camps. Many of the men, therefore, who with a sort of terror shuffled their feet in the sand, would be sent home, to the draft, or to the questioning scorn of their friends, under suspicion of a form of treason, of not having banged the drum quite hard enough. And it wasn't that at all.

George, like everyone else, had known for a long time there wouldn't be enough commissions to go around. Why, he wondered now, had the fellows chosen for dismissal been held for this public announcement of failure.

And in many cases, he reflected, there was no failure here beyond the insolvency of a system. Among those who would go back to the world with averted faces were numbers who hadn't really come at all within the vision of their instructors, beyond whom they could not appeal. And within a year this same reluctant army would be reaching out eagerly for inferior officer material. And these men would not forget. You could never expect them to forget.

Two messengers emerged from the orderly room and commenced to thread the restless, apprehensive groups, seeking, with a torturing slowness finding candidates to whom they whispered. The chosen ran to the orderly room, entered there, according to instructions, or else formed a long line outside the window where sat the supreme arbiter, the giver, in a way of life and death, the young fellow from West Point.

Men patted George on the back.

"You'll go among the first, George."

But he didn't. He paced up and down, watching the many who waited for the whisper which was withheld, waited until they knew it wouldn't come, expressed then in their faces thoughts blacker than the closing night, entered at last into the gloomy barracks where they sat on their bunks silently and with bowed heads.

Was that fate, through some miracle of mismanagement, reserved for him?

It couldn't be. The fellow had seen him at the start. George had forced himself to get along with him, to impress him. Somebody touched George on the arm. A curiously intense whisper filled his ear.

"You're wanted in the orderly room, Morton."

In leaving the defeated he had an impression of a difficult and sorrowful severance.

In the orderly room too many men rubbed shoulders restlessly. A relieved sigh went up. It was as if everyone had known nothing vital could occur before his arrival. The young West Pointer was making the most of his moment. The war wasn't likely to bring him another half so great.

Washington, he announced, had cut down the number of higher commissions he had asked for.

George's name was read among the first.

"To be captain of infantry, United States Reserve--George Morton."

There was something very like affection in the West Pointer's voice.

"I recommended you for a majority, Mr. Morton. Stick to the job as you have here, and it will come along."

Lambert and Goodhue found him as he crowded with the rest through the little door. They had kept their captaincies. Even Goodhue released a little of his relief at the outcome.

"Any number busted--no time to find out whether they were good or bad."