The Guarded Heights Part 64

The dark, hot, sandy street was full of shadowy figures, calling, shouting, laughing neurotically.

"Good fellow, but I had you on my list." "My Lord! I never expected more than a private in the rear rank." "What do you think of Blank? Lost out entirely." "Rotten deal." "Not the only one by several dozens." "Hear about Doe? Wouldn't have picked him for a shave tail. Got a captaincy.

Teacher's pet."

Brutally someone had turned on the barrack lights. Through the windows the successful ones could see among the bunks the bowed and silent figures, must have known how sacrilegious it was to project their happiness into this place which had all at once become a sepulchre of dead sacrifices.

"I hope," George muttered to his friends, "I'll never have to see quite so much suffering on a battlefield."

VI

It wasn't pleasant to face Blodgett, but it had to be done, for all three of the partners had determined out of necessity to spend the greater portion of their leaves at the office. George slipped in alone the morning he got back to New York. Blodgett looked up as if he had been struck, taking in each detail of the uniform and its insignia, symbols of success. The face seemed a little less round, infinitely less contented. Sitting back there in his office he had an air of having sought a corner. If Sylvia didn't, he clearly appreciated the shame of the situation. George took the pudgy hand and pressed it, but he couldn't say anything and Blodgett seemed to understand and be grateful.

He failed, however, to hide his envy of the uniform.

"I'd give my money and something besides," he said, "to be able to climb into that."

"You're lucky you can't," George answered, half meaning it.

As a subst.i.tute Blodgett spoke of some dollar-a-year work in Washington.

"But don't worry, George. I'll see everything here is looked after."

George was glad Blodgett had so much to take care of, for it was clear that the more work he had the better off he would be. In Blodgett's presence he tried not to think of Sylvia and his own intentions. He wrote her, for the first time, boldly asking, since he couldn't suggest such a visit to Lambert, if he might see her at Oakmont. She didn't keep him in suspense. He smiled as he read her brief reply, it had been so obviously dictated by the Sylvia who was going to be good to soldiers no matter how dreadful the cost.

"I thought I made you understand that what you proposed at Plattsburgh can never become less preposterous; my response less determined. So of course it wouldn't do for you to come.

When we see each other, as we're bound to do, before you sail, I shall try to forget the absolute lack of any even merely friendly ground between us. It would hurt Lambert----"

"d.a.m.n Lambert!" he muttered.

But he didn't tear her letter up. He put it in the pocket of his blouse.

He continued to carry it there.

Instead of going to Oakmont, consequently, he spent a Sunday at Princeton, vastly amused at the pacifist Bailly. Minute by minute the attenuated tutor cursed his inability to take up a gun and pop at Germans, interspersing his regrets with:

"But of course war is dreadful. It is inconceivable in a healthy brain----" and so forth.

He had found a subst.i.tute for his chief ambition. He was throwing himself heart and soul into the efforts of the Y.M.C.A. to keep soldiers amused and fed.

"For Princeton," he explained, "has become an armed camp, a mill to manufacture officers; nothing more. The cla.s.sics are as defunct as Homer. I had almost made a bad pun by suggesting that of them all Martial alone survives."

Before he left, George was sorry he had come, for Lambert took pains to leave Betty alone with him as they walked Sunday evening by the lake.

More powerful than Lambert's wishes in his mind was the memory of how Betty and he had skated here, or come to boat races, or walked like this in his undergraduate days; and she didn't take kindly to his interference, letting him see that to her mind a marriage with Lambert now would be too eager a jump into the house of Planter; too inconsiderate a request for the key to the Planter coffers.

"For Lambert may not come back," she said.

"That's just it," he urged, unwillingly. "Why not take what you can be sure of?"

"What difference would it make?" she asked. "Would I love Lambert any more? Would he love me any more?"

"I think so," he said.

She shook her head.

"But the thought of a wife might make a difference at the front; might make him hesitate, or give a little less. We all have to give everything. So I give Lambert--entirely--if I have to."

George didn't try to say any more, for he knew she was right; yet with the opening of Camp Upton and the birth of the division the rather abrupt marriages of soldiers multiplied. During the winter Officers'

House sheltered excited conferences that led to Riverhead where licenses, clergymen, and justices of the peace could be found; and there was scarcely a week-end that didn't see the culmination in town of a romance among George's own friends and acquaintances.

The week-ends he got were chiefly valuable to him because they offered chances of seeing Sylvia. Few actually developed, however, for there were not many general parties, since men preferred to cling, not publicly, during such brief respites to those they loved and were on the point of quitting.

The Alstons had taken a house for the winter, and George caught her there once or twice, and would rather not have seen her at all, she was so painfully cordial, so bound up in her war work of which he felt himself the chief victim. He began to fear that he would not see her alone again before he sailed; that he might never be with her alone again.

He didn't care either for the pride she took in Dalrymple's presence at the second camp.

"He's sure to do well," she would say. "He's always had all sorts of possibilities. Watch the war bring them out."

Why did women like the man? There was no question that they did. They talked now, in ancient terms, of his permanent exit from the field of wild oats. He could be so fascinating, so thoughtful--of women. But men didn't like him. Dalrymple's fascinating ways had caught them too frequently, too expensively. And George didn't believe in his reform, saw symptoms, as others did, of its true value when, at the close of the second camp, Dalrymple got himself a.s.signed to the trains of the division. It was rumoured he had left Plattsburgh a second lieutenant.

It was fact that he appeared at Upton a captain. Secret intrigues in Washington by fond parents, men whispered; but the women didn't seem to care, for Dalrymple hadn't shown himself before any of them carrying less than the double silver bars of a captain.

George received his prophesied majority at the moment of this disagreeable arrival. That did impress Sylvia to the point of making her more cordial in public, more careful than before not to give him a word in private. As the day of departure approached he grew increasingly restless. He had never experienced a sensation of such complete helplessness. He was bound by Upton. She could stand aside and mock him with her studied politenesses.

Blodgett ran down a number of times, to sit in George's quarters, working with the three partners over figures. They made tentative lists of what should be sold at the first real whisper of peace.

"But there'll be no peace for a long time," Blodgett promised. "There's a lot of money for you boys in this war yet."

They laughed at him, and he looked a little hurt, apparently unable to see anything humorous in his cheerful promise.

Dalrymple was aware of these conferences, for he was frequently about the regimental area. George wasn't surprised, when he sat alone one night, to hear a tap on his window pane, to see Dalrymple's face at the window.

"Hesitate to disturb a major, and all that," Dalrymple said as he entered. "Two rooms. You're lucky."

"Not luck; work," George said, shortly. "What is it? Didn't come here to envy my rank, did you?"

Although he was in far better shape nervously and physically than he had been that day in George's office, Dalrymple bore himself with much the same confused and hesitant manner. It recalled to George the existence of the note which the other had made no effort to redeem.

"You know," Dalrymple began, vaguely, "there's a lot of--what do you call it--bunk--about this hurrah for the dear old soldier business. Fact is, the more chance there is of a man's getting blown up the nastier some people become."

George laughed shortly.

"You mean when you owe them money."

"As Driggs used to say," Dalrymple answered, "'you're a very penetrating person.'"

He hesitated, then went on with an increasing difficulty:

"You're one of the people I owe money to."

Wandel had taken George's hint, evidently. George was sorry he had ever let it drop. But was he? Mightn't it be as well in the end? In spite of all this talk of people's leaving their bones in France, there was a fair chance that both Dalrymple and he would bring theirs, unaltered, back to America.