The Guarded Heights Part 65

"Don't worry," George said. "I shan't press you."

"Handsome enough," Dalrymple thanked him in a voice scarcely above a whisper. "But everybody isn't that decent. It's this talk of the division sailing that's turned them nasty."

George fingered a pamphlet about poison gases. He didn't much blame debtors for turning nasty.

"You want to borrow some more money from me," he said.

Dalrymple's face lightened.

"If you'd be that good; but it's a lot."

"Why," George asked, quietly, "don't you go to someone you're closer to?"

Dalrymple flushed. He wouldn't meet George's eyes.

"d.i.c.ky would give it me," he said, "but I can't ask him; I've made him too many promises. So would Lambert, but it would be absurd for me to go to him."

"Why absurd?" George asked, quietly.

"Wholly impossible," was all Dalrymple would say. "Quite absurd."

There came back to George his ugly sensations at Blodgett's, and he knew he would give Dalrymple a lot of money now, as he had given him a little then, and for precisely the same reason.

"I'm afraid I've been a bit hard on my friends," Dalrymple admitted. "As a rule they've dried up."

"So you come to one who isn't a friend?" George asked.

"Now see here, Morton, that's scarcely fair."

"You haven't forgotten that day in my office," George accused him, "when you made a brutal a.s.s of yourself."

"Said I was sorry. Don't you ever forget anything?"

Dalrymple was angry enough himself now, but his worry apparently forced him on.

"I wouldn't have come to you at all, only Driggs said--and you said yourself once, and you can spare it. I know that. See here. Unless somebody helps me these people will go to Division Headquarters or Washington. They'll stop my sailing. They'll----"

"Don't cry," George interrupted. "You want money, and you don't give a hang where it comes from. That's it, isn't it?"

"I have to have money," Dalrymple acknowledged.

"Then you ought to have sense enough to know the only reason I'd give it to you. Do you think I'd care if they held you in this country for your silly debts? What you borrow you have to pay back in one way or another.

Don't make any mistake. If I give you money it's to be able to make you pay as I please. You've always had a knife out for me. I don't mind putting one in my own hands. If you want money on those terms come to my office with your accounts Sat.u.r.day afternoon. We'll see what can be done."

Dalrymple was quite white. He moistened his lips. As he left he muttered:

"I can't answer back. I have to have money. You've got me where you want."

VII

Dalrymple's necessities turned out to be greater than George had imagined. They measured pretty accurately the extent of his reformation. George got several notes to run a year in return for approximately twenty thousand dollars.

"Remember," he said at the close of the transaction, "you pay those back when and how I say."

"I wouldn't have come to you if I could have helped it," Dalrymple whined. "But don't forget, Morton, somebody will pull me out at a pinch.

I'm going to work to pay you if I live. I'm through with nonsense. Give me a chance."

George nodded him out, and sent for his lawyer. In case of his death Dalrymple's notes would go back to the man. Everything else he had divided between his mother and the Baillys. He wrote his mother a long letter, telling her just what to do. Quite honestly he regretted his inability to get West to say good-bye. The thought of bringing her to New York or Upton had not occurred to him.

For during these days of farewells everyone flocked to Upton, sitting about the hostess houses all day and evening for an occasional chat with their hurried men. Then they let such moments slip by because of a feeling of strangeness, of dumb despair.

The Alstons and the Baillys were there, and so, of course, was Sylvia, with her mother, more minutely guarded than she had ever been. His few glimpses of her at luncheon or supper at Officers' House increased the evil humour into which Dalrymple had thrown him. Consequently he looked at her, impressing upon his morose mind each detail of her beauty that he knew very well he might never study again. The old depression of complete failure held him. She was going to let him go without a word.

Even this exceptional crisis was without effect upon her intolerant memory. He would leave her behind to complete a destiny which he, perhaps, after all, had affected only a very little.

With the whispered word that there would be no more meetings at Officers' House, that before dawn the regiment would have slipped from Upton, George turned to his packing with the emotions of a violently constricted animal. He wouldn't even see her again. When Lambert came to confer with him about some final dispositions he watched him like such an animal, but Lambert let him see that he, too, was at a loss. He had sent word by an orderly that he couldn't get to Officers' House that evening.

"I couldn't make it any plainer. If they've any sense they'll know and hunt me up."

They were wise, and a little of George's strain relaxed, for they found Lambert in his quarters, and they made it clear that they had come to say good-bye to George, too. After many halting efforts they gave up trying to express themselves.

"The Spartans were better at this sort of thing," Bailly said at the last as he clasped George's hand.

"Every Hun I kill or capture, sir, I'll think of as your Hun."

Without words, without tears, Mrs. Bailly kissed his lips. George tried to laugh.

Betty wouldn't say good-bye, wouldn't even shake hands.

"I shan't think of killing," she said. "Just take care of yourselves, and come back."

George stared at her, alarmed. He had never seen her so white. Lambert followed her from the room. The Baillys went out after them. Why did Mrs. Planter linger? There she stood near the door, looking at George without the slightest betrayal of feeling. He had an impression she was going to say:

"We've really quite enjoyed Upton."

At least she held Sylvia a moment longer, Sylvia who had said nothing, who had not met his eyes, who had seemed from the first anxious to escape from this plank room littered with the paraphernalia of battle.

Mrs. Planter held out her hand, smiling.

"Good-bye, Major. One doesn't need to wish you success. You inspire confidence."

He was surprised at the strength of her white hand, felt it draw him closer, watched her bend her head, heard her speak in his ear so low that Sylvia couldn't hear--a whisper intense, agonized, of a quality that seemed like a white-hot iron in his brain:

"Take care of my son. Bring him back to me."

She straightened, releasing his hand.

"Come, Sylvia," she said, pleasantly.