The Guarded Heights Part 95

"Mean," Dalrymple rambled on, "Dolly won't haunt anybody. Blessings 'n'

sort of thing. Best thing, too. Sorry all 'round. That's all. Thanks coming, George."

And all George could say was:

"You have to get well, Dolly."

But Dalrymple turned his head away. After a moment George proposed tentatively:

"Sylvia's downstairs. She wants very much to see you."

Dalrymple shook his head.

"Catching."

"For her sake," George urged.

Dalrymple thought.

"All right," he said at last. "Long enough for me to tell her all right.

But not near. Nurse in the room. Catching, and all that."

George clasped the hot hand.

"Thanks, Dolly. You've done a decent thing, and you're going to get well."

But as he left the room George felt that the physician had been right.

He spoke to the nurse, who sat in the upper hall, then he told Sylvia.

She went up, and he waited for her. He felt he had to wait. He hoped Mrs. Dalrymple wouldn't appear again.

Sylvia wasn't long. She came down dry-eyed. She didn't speak even when George followed her to her automobile, even when he climbed in beside her; nor did he try to break a silence that he felt was curative. In the light and surrounded by a crowd they could clasp hands; in this obscure solitude there was nothing they could do or say. Only on the steps of her home she spoke.

"Good-night, George, and thank you."

"Good-night, dear Sylvia," he said, and returned to the automobile, and told the man to drive him to his apartment.

XXIX

George didn't hear from Dalrymple again, nor did he expect to, but he was quite aware five days later of Goodhue's absence from the office and of his black clothing when he came in during the late afternoon. He didn't need Goodhue's few words.

"It's hard not to feel sorry, to believe, on the whole, it's rather better. Still, when any familiar object is unexpectedly s.n.a.t.c.hed away from one----"

"We had a talk the other evening," George began.

Goodhue's face lighted.

"I'm glad, George."

He sighed.

"I've got to try to catch up. Mundy says rails have taken a queer turn."

"When you think for a minute not so queer," George commenced to explain.

A few days later Lambert told him that Sylvia had gone to Florida.

"They'll probably stay until late in the spring. It agrees with Father."

"How did Sylvia seem?" George asked, anxiously.

"Wait awhile," Lambert advised, "but I don't think there are going to be any spectres."

He smiled engagingly.

"If there shouldn't be," he went on, "a few matters will have to be arranged, because Sylvia and I share alike. Josiah and I had a long, careful talk with Father last night about what we'd do with Sylvia's husband if she married. He left it to my judgment, advising that we might take him in if he were worth his salt. Josiah wanted to know with his bull voice what Father would think if it should turn out to be you.

Very seriously, George, Father was pleased. He pointed out that you were a man who made things go, but that you would end by running us all, and he added that if we wanted that we would be lucky to get you as long as it made Sylvia happy. You know we want you, George."

George felt as he had that day on the Vesle when Wandel had praised him.

No longer could Lambert charge him with having fulfilled his boasts, in a way; yet he hadn't consciously wanted this, nor was he quite sure that he did now.

"At least," George said, "you know what my policy would be to make Planter and Company something more than a money making machine."

Lambert imitated Blodgett's voice and manner.

"George, if you wanted to grow hair on a bald man's head I'd say go to it."

"And there must be room for d.i.c.ky," George went on.

"We've played together too long to break apart now; but why talk about it? It depends on Sylvia."

That was entirely true. For the present there was nothing whatever to be done. Constantly George conquered the impulse to write to Sylvia, but she didn't write or give any sign, unless Lambert's frequent quotations from her letters could be accepted as thoughtful messages.

He visited the Baillys frequently now, for it was stimulating to talk with Squibs, and he liked to sit quietly with Mrs. Bailly. She had an unstudied habit, nevertheless, of turning his thoughts to his mother.

Sylvia had seen her. She knew all about her. After all, his mother had given him the life with which he had accomplished something. He couldn't bear that their continued separation should prove him inconsistent; so early in the spring he went west.

His mother was more than ever ill at ease before his success; more than ever appreciative of the comforts he had given her; even more than at Oakmont appalled at the prospect of change. She wouldn't go east. She couldn't very well, she explained; and, looking at her tired figure in the great chair before the fire which she seldom left, he had an impulse to shower upon her extravagant and fantastic gifts, because before long it would be too late to give her anything at all. The picture made him realize how quickly the generations pa.s.s away, drifting one into the other with the rapidity of our brief and colourful seasons. He nodded, satisfied, reflecting that the cure for everything lies in the future, although one must seek it in the diseased present.

He left her, promising to come back, but he carried away a sensation that he had intruded on a secluded content that couldn't possibly survive the presence of the one who had created it.

Lambert had no news for him on his return. It was late spring, in fact, before he told George the family had come north, pausing at a number of resorts on the way up.

"When am I to see Sylvia, Lambert?"

"How should I know?"

It was apparent that he really didn't, and George waited, with a growing doubt and fear, but on the following Friday he received a note from Betty, dated from Princeton. All it said was: