Chapter VII: Part III: The Market-Place (1)

I

George left Princeton with a sense of flight. The reception of a diploma didn't interest him, nor did the cheers he received class day or on the afternoon of the Yale baseball game when, beneath a Japanese parasol, he led the seniors in front of admiring thousands who audibly identified him for each other.

The man that had done most for Princeton! He admitted he had done a good deal for himself. Of course, Squibs was right and he was abnormally selfish; only it was too bad Betty couldn't have thought so. He had tried to make her and had failed, he told himself, because Betty couldn't understand selfishness.

He avoided during those last days every chance of seeing her alone; but even in the presence of others he was aware of an alteration in her manner, to be traced, doubtless, to the night of his difficult confession. She was kinder, but her eyes were often puzzled, as if she couldn't understand why he didn't want to see her alone.

He counted the moments, anxious for Blodgett and the enveloping atmosphere of his marble-and-mahogany office. That would break the last permanent tie. He would return to Princeton, naturally, but for only a day or two now and then, too short a time to permit its influences appreciably to swerve him.

Without meaning to, he let himself soften on the very edge of his departure when the class sang on the steps of Nassau Hall for the last time, then burned the benches about the cannon, and in lock step, hands on shoulders, shuffled slowly away like men who have accomplished the interment of their youth.

A lot of these mourning fellows he would never meet again; but he would see plenty of Goodhue and Wandel and other useful people. Why, then, did he abruptly and sharply regret his separation from all the others, even the submerged ones who had got from Princeton only an education taken like medicine and of about as much value? In the sway of this mood, induced by permanent farewells, he came upon Dalrymple.

"There's no point saying good-bye to you," George offered, kindly.

Of course not. They would meet each other in town too frequently, secreting a private enmity behind publicly worn masks of friendship. George was wandering on, but Dalrymple halted him. The man was a trifle drunk, and the sentiment of the moment had penetrated his narrow mind.

"Not been very good friends, George, you and I."

Even then George shrank from his apologies, since he appreciated their precise value.

"Why don't you forget it?" he asked, gruffly.

Dalrymple nodded, but George knew in the morning the other would regret having said as much as he had.

Immediately after that sombre dissolution of the class George said good-bye to the Baillys. Although it was quite late they sat waiting for him in the study, neat and serene as it had been on that first day a hundred years ago. The room was quite the same except that Bill Gregory's picture had lost prominence while George's stood in the place of honour--an incentive for new men, although George was confident Squibs didn't urge certain of his qualities on his youngsters.

Squibs looked older to-night, nearly as old, George thought, as the disgraceful tweeds which he still wore. Mrs. Bailly sat in the shadows. George kissed her and sank on the sofa at her side. She put her hand out and groped for his, clinging to his fingers with a sort of despair. For a long time they sat without speaking. George put his arm around her and waited for one or the other to break this silence which became unbearable. He couldn't, because as he dreamed among the shadows there slipped into his mind the appearance and the atmosphere of another room where three had sat without words on the eve of a vital parting. Tawdry details came back of stove and littered table and ungainly chairs, and of swollen hands and swollen eyes. He had suffered an unbearable silence then because he had found himself suddenly incapable of speaking his companions' language. With these two the silence was more difficult, because there was too much to say--more than ever could be said.

He started. Suppose Squibs at the very last should use his father's parting words:

"It's a bad start, but maybe you'll turn out all right after all."

His lips tightened. Would it be any truer now than it had been then? For that matter, would Squibs have cared for him or done as much for him, if he had been less ambitious, if he had compromised at all?

One thing was definite: No matter what he did these two would never demand his exile; and the old pain caught him, and he knew it was real, and not a specious cover for his relief at not having to see his parents again. It hurt--most of all his mother's acceptance of a judgment she should have fought with all her soul.

He stroked the soft hand that clung to his. From that parting he had come to the tender and eager maternal affection of this childless woman, and he knew she would always believe he was right.

But she wanted him to have Betty----

He stood up. He was going away from home. She expressed that at the door.

"This is your home, George."

Bailly nodded.

"Never forget that. Don't let your ideas smoulder in your own brain. Come home, and talk them over."

George kissed Mrs. Bailly. He put his hands on Bailly's narrow shoulders. He looked at the young eyes in a wrinkled face.

"The thing that hurts me most," he muttered, "is that I haven't paid you back."

"Perhaps not altogether," Bailly answered, gravely, "but someday you may."

II

The last thing George did before leaving his dismantled room, which for so long had sheltered Sylvia's riding crop and her photograph, was to write this little note to Betty:

DEAR BETTY:

It's simpler to go without saying good-bye.

G. M.

Then he was hustled through the window of the railroad train, out of Princeton, and definitely into the market-place.

After the sentiment of the final days the crowding, unyielding buildings, and the men that shared astonishingly their qualities, offered him a useful restorative. He found he could approximate their essential hardness again.

The Street at times resembled the campus--it held so many of the men he had learned to know at Princeton. Lambert was installed in his father's marble temple. He caught George one day on the sidewalk and hustled him to a luncheon club.

"I suppose I really ought to put you up here."

"Why?" George asked.

"Because I'm always sure of a good scrap with you. I missed not playing against you in the Princeton game last fall. Now there's no more football for either of us. I like scraps."

Blodgett, he chanced to mention later, had spent the previous week-end at Oakmont. Blodgett had already bragged of that in George's presence. He forgot the excellent dishes Lambert had had placed before him.

"Have you put Blodgett up here, too?" he asked in his bluntest manner.

Lambert shook his head.

"That's different."

"Not very honestly different," George said, attempting a smile.

"You mean," Lambert laughed, "because I've never asked you to Oakmont? Under the circumstances----"

"I don't mean that," George said. "I mean Blodgett."

"I can only arrange my own likes and dislikes," Lambert answered, still amused.

Then who at Oakmont liked the fat financier?

Rogers was in the street, too, selling bonds with his old attitude toward the serious side of life, striving earnestly only to spy out the right crowd and to run with it.

"Buy my bonds! Buy my bonds!" he would cry, coming into George's office. "They're each and every one a bargain. Remember, what's a bargain to-day may be a dead loss to-morrow, so buy before it's too late."

Goodhue planned to enter a stock exchange firm in the fall, and a lot of other men from the class would come down then after a long rest between college and tackling the world on twenty dollars a month. Wandel alone of George's intimates rested irresolute. George, since he had taken two rooms and a bath in the apartment house in which Wandel lived, saw him frequently. He could easily afford that luxury, for each summer his balance had grown, and Blodgett, now that he had George for as long as he could keep him, was paying him handsomely, and flattering him by drawing on the store of special knowledge his extended and difficult application had hoarded.

To live in such a house, moreover, was necessary to his campaign, which, he admitted, had lagged alarmingly. Sylvia had continued to avoid him. She seemed to possess a special sense for the houses and the parties where he would be, and when, in spite of this, they did meet, she tried to impress him with a thorough indifference; or, if she couldn't avoid a dance, with a rigid repulsion that failed to harmonize with her warm colouring and her exquisite femininity.

Through some means he had to get on. His restless apprehension had grown. Her departure for Europe with her mother fed the rumours that from time to time had connected her name with eligible men. It was even hinted now that her mother's eyesight, which reached to social greatness across the Atlantic, was responsible for her celibacy.

"There'll be an announcement before she comes back," the gossip ran. "They'll land a museum piece of a title."

George didn't know about that, but he did realize that unless he could progress, one day a rumour would take body. He resented bitterly her absence this summer, but if things would carry on until the fall he would manage, he promised himself, to get ahead with Sylvia.

Wandel seemed to enjoy having George near, for, irresolute as he was, he spent practically the entire summer in town. George, one night when they had returned from two hours' suffering of a summer show, asked him the reason. They smoked in Wandel's library.

"I can look around better here," was all Wandel would say.

"But Driggs! Those precious talents!"

Wandel stretched himself in an easy chair.

"What would you suggest, great man?"

George laughed.

"Do you write poetry in secret--the big, wicked, and suffering city, seen from a tenth-story window overlooking a pretty park?"

Vehemently Wandel shook his head.

"You know what most of our modern American jinglers are up to--talking socialism or anarchy to get themselves talked about. If only they wouldn't apply such insincere and half-digested theories to their art! It's a little like modern popular music--criminal intervals and measures against all the rules. But crime, you see, is invariably arresting. My apologies to the fox-trot geniuses. They pretend to be nothing more than clever mutilators; but the jinglers! They are great reformers. Bah! They remind me of a naughty child who proudly displays the picture he has torn into grotesque pieces, saying: 'Come quick, mother, and see what smart little Aleck has done.' You'll have to try again, George."

George glanced up. His face was serious.

"Don't laugh at me. I mean it. Politics."

"At Princeton I wasn't bad at that," Wandel admitted, smiling reminiscently. "But politics mixes a man with an unlovely crowd--uncouth provincials, a lot of them, and some who are to all purposes foreigners. Do you know, my dear George, that ability to read and write is essential to occupying a seat in the United States Senate? I was amazed the other day to hear it was so. You see how simple it is to misjudge."

"Then there's room," George laughed, "for more honest, well-educated, well-bred Americans."

"Seems to me," Wandel drawled, "that a little broad-minded practicality in our politics would be more useful than bovine honesty. I could furnish that. How should I begin?"

"You might get a start in the State Department," George suggested, "diplomacy, a secretaryship----"

"For once you're wrong," Wandel objected. "In this country diplomacy is a destination rather than a route. The good jobs are frequently given for services rendered, or men pay enormous sums for the privilege of being taken for waiters at their own functions. To start at the bottom----Oh, no. I don't possess the cerebral vacuity, and you can only climb out of the service."

"Just the same," George laughed, "you'd make a tricky politician."

Wandel puffed thoughtfully.

"You're a far-seeing, a far-going person," he said. "You are bound to be a very rich man. You'll want a few practical politicians. Isn't it so? Never mind, but it's understood if I ever run for President or coroner you'll back me with your money bags."

George glanced about the room, as striking and costly in its French fashion as the green study had been.

"You have all the money you need," he said.

"But I'd be a rotten politician," Wandel answered, "if I spent any of my own money on my own campaigns. So we have an understanding if the occasion should arise----"

With a movement exceptionally quick for him, suggesting, indeed, an uncontrollable nervous reaction, Wandel sprang to his feet and went to the window where he leant out. George followed him, staring over the park's far-spread velvet, studded with the small but abundant yellow jewels of the lamps.

"What is it, little man? It's insufferable in town. Why don't you go play by the sea or in the hills?"

"Because," Wandel answered, softly, "I can't help the feeling that any occasion may arise. I don't mean our little politics, George. Time enough for them. I don't want to go. I am waiting."

George understood.

"You mean the murders at Sarajevo," he said. "You're over-sensitive. Run along and play. Nothing will come of that."

"Tell me," Wandel said, turning slowly, "that you mean what you say. Tell me you haven't figured on it already."

George shrugged his shoulders.

"You're discreet. All right. I have figured, because, if anything should come of it, it offers the chance of a lifetime for making money. Mundy's put me in touch with some useful people in London and Paris. I want to be ready if things should break. I hope they won't. Honestly, I very much doubt if they will. Even Germany will think twice before forcing a general war."

"But you're making ready," Wandel whispered, "on the off-chance."

George pressed a switch and got more light. It was as if a heavy shadow had filled the delightful room.

"We're growing fanciful," he said, "seeing things in the dark. By the way, you run into Dalrymple occasionally? I'm told he comes often to town."

Wandel left the window, nodding.

"How long can he keep it up?" George asked.

"I'm not a physician."

"No, no. I mean financially. I gather his family live up to what they have."

"I daresay it would pain them to settle Dolly's debts frequently," Wandel smiled.

"Then," George said, slowly, "he is fairly sure to come to you--that is, if this keeps up."

"Why," Wandel asked, "should I encourage Dolly to be charitable to rich wine agents and under-dressed females?"

George shook his head.

"If he asks you for help don't send him to the money lenders. Send him discreetly to me. If I didn't have what he'd want, I daresay I could get it."

Wandel stared, lighting another cigarette.

"I'd like to keep him from the money lenders," George said, easily.

He didn't care whether Wandel thought him a forgiving fool or a calculating scoundrel. Goodhue and Wandel had long since seen that he had been put up at a number of clubs. The two had fancied they could control Dalrymple's resentments. George, following his system, preferred a whip in his own hand. He harboured no thought of revenge, but he did want to be able to protect himself. He would use every possible means. This was one.

"We'll see," Wandel said. "It's too bad great men don't get along with little wasters."

III

More than once George was tempted to follow Sylvia, trusting to luck to find means of being near her. Such a trip might, indeed, lead to profit if the off chance should develop. Still that could be handled better from this side, and it was, after all, a chance. He must trust to her coming back as she had gone. His place for the present was with Blodgett and Mundy.

The chance, however, was at the back of his head when he encountered Allen late one hot night in a characteristic pose in Times Square. Allen still talked, but his audience of interested or tolerant college men had been replaced by hungry, ragged loafers and a few flushed, well-dressed males of the type that prefers any diversion to a sane return home. Allen stood in the centre of this group. His arms gestured broadly. His angular face was passionate. From the few words George caught his sympathy for these failures was beyond measure. He suggested to them the beauties of violence, the brilliancies of the social revolution. The loafers commented. The triflers laughed. Policemen edged near.

"Free liquor!" a voice shrilled.

Allen shook his fist, and continued. The proletariat would have to take matters into its own hands.

"Fine!" a hoarse and beery listener shouted, "but what'll the cops say about it?"

The edging policemen didn't bother to say anything at first. They quietly scattered the scarecrows and the laggards. They indicated the advisability of retreat for the orator. Then one burst out at Allen.

"God help the proletariat if I have to take it before McGloyne at the station house."

And George heard another sneer:

"Social revolution! They've been trying to throw Tammany out ever since I can remember."

George got Allen away. The angular man was glad to see him.

"You look overworked," George said. "Come have a modest supper with me."

Allen was hungry, but he managed to grumble discouragement over his food.

"They laugh. They'll stop listening for the price of a glass of beer."

"Maybe," George said, kindly, "they realize it's no good trying to help them."

"They've got to be helped," Allen muttered.

"Then," George suggested, "put them in institutions, but don't expect me nor any one else to approve when you urge them to grab the leadership of the world. You must have enough sense to see it would mean ruin. I know they're not all like this lot, but they're all a little wrong or they wouldn't need help."

"It's because they've never had a chance," Allen protested.

It came to George that Allen had never had a chance either, and he wondered if he, too, could be led aside by the price of a glass of beer.

"You all want what the other fellow's got," he said. "From that one motive these social movements draw the bulk of their force. A lot for nothing is a perfect poor man's creed."

"You're a heathen, Morton."

"That is, a human being," George said, good naturedly. "You're another, Allen, but you won't acknowledge it."

Because he believed that, George took the other's address. Allen was loyal, aggressive, and extraordinarily bright, as he had proved at Princeton. It might be convenient to help him. Besides, he hated to see a man he knew so well waste his time and look like a fool.

IV

By late July the off chance had pretty thoroughly defined itself except to the blind. Blodgett, however, was still skeptical. He thought George's plans were sound, provided a war should come. But there wouldn't be any war. His correspondents were optimistic.

"Have I your permission to use Mundy in his off time?" George asked.

"As far as I'm concerned," Blodgett said, "Mundy can play parchesi in his off time."

George telephoned Lambert Planter and sent a telegram to Goodhue. He took them to luncheon and had Mundy there, too. He outlined his plans for the formation of the firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue.

"He's called the turn of the cards," Mundy offered.

Such cards as he possessed George placed on the table. He furnished the idea, and the preliminary organization, and what money he had. He took, therefore, the major share of the profits. The others would give what time to the business they could, but it was their money he wanted, and the credit their names would give the firm. Mundy and he had made lists of buyers and sellers. No man in the Street was better equipped than Mundy to pick such a force. If Lambert and Goodhue agreed, these men could be collected within a week. Some would go to Europe. Others would scatter over the United States. It would cost a lot, but it meant an immeasurable amount in return, for the war was inevitable.

Goodhue and Lambert were as skeptical as Blodgett, but they agreed to give him what he needed to get his organization started. By that time, he promised them, they would see how right he was, and then he could use more of their money.

"It's the nearest I've ever come to gambling," he thought as he left them. "Gambling on a war!"

Because of his confidence, before a frontier had been crossed he had bought or contracted for large quantities of shoes and cloths and waterproofing. He had taken options on stock in small and wavering automobile concerns, and outlying machine shops and foundries, some of them already closed down, some struggling along without hope.

"If the war lasts a month," he told his partners, "those stocks will come from the bottom of nothing to the sky."

Goodhue became thoroughly interested at last. He cancelled his vacation and installed himself in the offices George had rented in Blodgett's building. With the men Mundy had picked, and under Mundy's tutelage, he took charge of the routine. George went to Blodgett the first of August.

"I want to quit," he said. "I've got a big thing. I want to give it all my time."

Blodgett mopped his face. His grin was a little sheepish.

"I want to invest some money in your firm," he jerked out.

"I can use it," George said.

"You've got Goodhue there," Blodgett went on in a complaining way, "and Mundy's working nights for you. Don't desert an old man without notice. I'll give you plenty of time upstairs. Other things may come off here. I can use you."

"If you want to pay me when you know my chief interest is somewhere else," George said, "it's up to you."

"When I think I'm getting stung I'll let you know," Blodgett roared.

George sent for Allen, and urged him to go to London to open an office with an expert Lambert had got from his father's marble temple. Allen would be a check on the more experienced men whose scruples might not stand the temptations of this vast opportunity. Allen said he couldn't do it; couldn't abandon the work he had already commenced.

"There'll be precious little talk of socialism," George said, "until this thing is over. It's a great chance for a man to study close up the biggest change the world has ever undergone. Those fellows will want everything, and I'll give them everything I can lay my hands on. I'm ahead of a lot of jobbers here. I'll pay you well to see I don't get robbed on that side. Come on. Take a shot at hard facts for a change."

Allen gasped at the salary George mentioned. He hesitated. He went. George was glad to have helped him. He experienced also an ugly sense of triumph. He felt that he wanted to tell Squibs Bailly right away.

Sylvia and her mother, he heard later, had come home out of the turmoil, unacquainted with the discomforts of people who had travelled without the Planter prestige. Whether the war was to blame or not, she had returned without a single rumour touching fact. He didn't see her right away, because she clung to Oakmont. More and more, as his success multiplied, keeping pace with the agony in Europe, he longed to see her. All at once a return to Oakmont was, in a sense, forced upon him, but he went without any thought of encountering Sylvia, hoping, indeed, to avoid her.

It was like his mother to express her letter with telegraphic bluntness without, however, going to the expense of actually wiring. Where he had expected her customary stiff gratitude for money sent he found a scrawled announcement of his father's death, and her plans for the funeral the following afternoon.

"Of course you won't come," she ended.

Yet it seemed to him that he should go, to arrange her future. This was the moment to snap the last enslaving tie between the Mortons and Oakmont. There was, of course, the chance of running into Sylvia, or some visitor who might connect him with the little house. Suppose Dalrymple, for example, should be staying with the Planters as he often did? George shrugged his shoulders. Things were coming rather rapidly to him. Besides, it was extremely unlikely that any one from the great house would see the Morton ceremony. The instincts of those people would be to avoid such sights.

V

About his return there was a compelling thrill. He drove from the station in one of the cheap automobiles that had made his father practically a pensioner of the Planters. With an incredulous appreciation that he had once accepted its horizon as the boundary of his life, he examined the familiar landscape and the scar made upon it by the village. Curtly he refused to satisfy the driver's curiosity. He had some business at the little house on the Planter estate.

There, through the nearly stripped trees, it showed, almost audibly confessing its debt to the Planter carpenters, painters, and gardeners. In a clouded light late fall flowers waved from masses of dead leaves. Their gay colours gave them an appearance melancholy and apprehensive.

Here he was back at last, and he wasn't going in at the great gate.

He walked around the shuttered house and crossed the porch where his father had liked to sit on warm evenings. He rapped at the door. Feet shuffled inside. The door swayed open, and his mother stood on the threshold. Most of the changes had come to him, but in her red eyes sparkled a momentary and mournful importance. At first she didn't recognize her son.

"What is it?"

George stooped and kissed her cheek.

"I'm sorry, Mother."

Instead of holding out her arms she drew away, staring with fascination, a species of terror, at his straight figure, at his clothing, at his face that wouldn't coarsen now. When she spoke her voice suggested a placating of this stranger who was her son.

"I didn't think you'd come. I can't believe you're George--my Georgie."

Over her shoulders in the shadowed house he saw the inquisitive faces of women. It was clear that for them such an arrival was more divertive than the sharing of a sorrow that scarcely touched their hearts.

George went in. He remembered most of the faces that disclosed excitement while fawning upon his prosperity. He received an unpleasant impression that these poor and ignorant people concealed a dangerous envy, that they would be glad to grasp in one moment, even of violence, all that it had taken him years of difficult struggle to acquire. Whether that was so or not they ought not to stand before him as if his success were a crown. He tried to keep contempt from his voice.

"Please sit down. I want to talk to my mother. Where----"

With slow steps she crossed the kitchen and opened the door of the parlour, beckoning. He followed, knowing what he would find in that uncomfortable, gala room of the poor.

He closed the door. In the half light he saw standing on trestles an oblong box altogether too large for the walls that seemed to crowd it. He had no feeling that anything of his father was there. He realized with a sense of helpless regret that all that remained to him of that unhappy man were the ghosts of such emotions as avarice, fear, and the instinct to sacrifice one's own flesh and blood for a competence.

"Why don't you look at him, George?"

"I don't think he'd care to have me looking at him now."

She wiped her eyes.

"You are too bitter against your father. After all, he was a good man."

"Why should death," he asked her, musingly, "make people seem better than they were in life? It isn't so."

"That's wicked. If your father could rise----"

His attention was caught by an air of pointing the oblong box had, as if to something infinitely farther than ambition and success, yet so close it angered him he couldn't see or touch it. His father had gone there, beyond the farthest horizon of all. Old Planter couldn't make trouble for him now. He was quite safe.

Over in Europe, he reflected, they didn't have enough coffins.

The oblong box for the first time made him think of that war, that was making him rich, in terms of life instead of dollars and cents. He felt dissatisfied.

"There should be more light here," he said, defensively.

But his mother shook her head.

He arranged a chair for her and sat near by while they discussed the details of her departure. She let him see that she shrank from leaving the house, against which, nevertheless, she had bitterly complained ever since Old Planter had got it. Evidently she wanted to linger in her familiar rut, awaiting with the attitude of a martyr whatever fate might offer. That was the reason people had to be helped, because they preferred vicious inertia to the efforts and risks of change. Then why did they want the prizes of those who had had the courage to go forth and fight? Why couldn't Squibs see that?

Patiently George told her she needn't worry about money again. She had a sister who years ago had married and moved West to a farm that was not particularly flourishing. Undoubtedly her sister would be glad to have her and her generous allowance. So his will overcame his mother's reluctance to help herself. She glanced up.

"Who is that?"

He listened. The women in the kitchen were standing again. Light feet crossed the floor.

"Maybe somebody from the big house," his mother whispered. "They sent Simpson last night."

For a moment the entire building was as silent as the oblong box. Then the door opened.

Sylvia Planter slipped in and closed the door.

George caught his breath, studying her as she hesitated, accustoming herself to the insufficient light. She wore a broad-brimmed hat that gave her the charm and the grace of a portrait by Gainsborough. When she recognized him, indeed, she seemed as permanently caught as a portrait.

"Miss Sylvia!" his mother worshipped.

"They told me I would find you here," Sylvia said, uncertainly. "I didn't know----"

She broke off, biting her lip. George strolled around the oblong box to the window, turning there with a slow bow. Even across that desolate, dead shell, the obstinate distaste and the challenge were lively in her glance.

"It was very kind of you to come," he said.

But he was sorry she had come. To see him in such surroundings was a stimulation of the ugly memories he had struggled to destroy. He read her instinct to hurt him now as she had hurt the impertinent man, Morton, who had lived in this house.

"When one of our people is in trouble----" she began, deliberately. "I thought I might be of some help to your mother."

Even over the feeling of security George had just tried to give her the old menace reached the uneasy woman.

"You--you remember him, Miss Sylvia?"

"Very well," Sylvia answered. "He used to be my groom."

"The title comes from you," George said, dryly.

His mother's glance fluttered from one to the other. What did she expect--Old Planter stalking in to carry out his threats?

"After all these years I scarcely knew him myself."

Sylvia's colour heightened. He appraised her rising temper.

"Bad servants," he said, "linger in good employers' memories."

"I know, Miss Sylvia," his mother burst out, "that he wasn't to come back here, but----"

She unclasped her nervous hands. One indicated the silent cause of his disobedience. George moved toward the door. Sylvia stepped quickly aside. He felt, like a physical wave, her desire to hurt.

"At such a time," she said, "it's natural he should come back to his home. I think my father would be glad to have him with his mother."

George shrugged his shoulders, slipped out, navigated the shoals of whispering women, and reached the clean air. He buttoned his overcoat and shuffled through the dead leaves beneath the trees until he found himself at the spot where Lambert and he had fought. He recalled his hot boasts of that day. Fulfilment had seemed simple enough then. The scene just submitted reminded him how short a distance he had actually travelled.

He knew she would pass that way on her return to the big house, so he waited, and when he heard her feet disturbing the dead leaves he didn't turn. She came closer than he had expected, and he heard her contralto voice, quick and defiant:

"I hadn't expected to see you. I didn't quite realize what I was saying. I should have had more respect for any one's grief."

Having said that, she was going on, but he turned and stopped her. As he looked at her he reflected that everything had altered since that day--she most of all. Then the woman had been a little visible in the child. Now, he fancied, the child survived in the woman only through the persistence of this old quarrel. He stared at her lips, recalling his boast that no man should touch them unless it were George Morton. He was no nearer them than he had been that day. Unless he got nearer some man would. It was incredible that she hadn't married. She would marry.

"In the sense you mean, I have no grief," he said.

"Then I needn't have bothered. I once said you were a--a----"

"Something melodramatic. A beast, I think it was," he answered. "If you don't mind I'll walk on with you for a little way."

"No," she said.

"If you please."

"You've no perception," she cried, angrily.

"Don't you think it time," he suggested, "that you ceased treating me like a groom? It isn't very convincing to me. I doubt if it is to you. I fancy it's really only your pride. I don't see why you should have so much where I am concerned."

Her hand made a quick gesture of repulsion.

"You've not changed. You may walk on with me while I tell you this: If you were like the men I know and can be friends with you'd leave me alone. Will you stop this persecution? It comes down to that. Will you stop forcing me to dance with you, to listen to you?"

He smiled, shaking his head.

"I'll make you dance with me more than ever. I've seen very little of you lately. I hope this winter----"

She stopped, facing him, her cheeks flaming.

"You see! You remind me every time I meet you of just what you are, just what you came from, just what you said and did that day."

"That is my aim," he smiled.

He moved his hand in the direction of the little house.

"When we're all like that will it make much difference who our fathers and mothers were?"

She shivered. She started swiftly away.

"Miss Planter!"

The unexpectedness of the naked command may have brought her around. He walked to her.

"When will you realize," he asked, "that it is unforgivable to turn your back on life?"

Had he really meant to suggest that she could possess life only through him? Doubtless the sublime effrontery of that interpretation reached her. She commenced to laugh, her colour rising. She glanced away, and her laughter died.

"You may as well understand," he said, "that I am never going to leave you alone."

She started across the leaf-strewn grass. He kept pace with her.

"Are you going to force me to make a scene?" she asked.

"Except with your father," he said, "I don't think it would make much difference."

He felt that if she had had anything in her hands then she would have struck at him.

"It's not because I'm a beast," he said, quietly, "that I have no grief for my father. He was through. Life had nothing to offer him. He had nothing to offer life. Don't think I'm incapable of grief. I experienced it the day I thought you might be dead. That was because you had so much to offer life--rather more than life had to offer you."

He saw her shrink from him but she walked on, repressing her pain and her anger.

"Since I've known intimately girls of your class," he said, "I've realized that not all of them would have turned and tried to wound as you did that day. Some would have laughed. Some would have been sorry and sympathetic. I don't think many would have made such a scene."

He smiled down at her.

"I want you to realize it is your own fault. You started this. I'm not scolding. I'm glad you were such a little fury. Otherwise, I might have gone on working for your father or for somebody else's father. But you're to blame for my persistence, so learn to put up with it. As long as I keep the riding crop with which you tried to cut my face I'll remember what I said I'd do, and I'll do it."

She didn't answer, but if she tried to give him the impression she wasn't listening she failed utterly.

Around a curve in the path came a bent, white old man, bundled in a heavy muffler and coat. In one hand he carried a thick cane. The other rested on the arm of a young fellow of the private secretary stamp. There, George acknowledged, advanced the single person with whom a scene might make a serious difference, yet a more compelling thought crept in and overcame his sense of danger. That was the type of man who made wars. That man, indeed, was helping to finance this war. George was obsessed by the dun day: by the leaves, fallen and rotten; by the memory of the oblong box. Everything reminded him that not far away Death marched with a bland, black triumph, greeting science as an ally instead of an enemy.

"Suppose," he mused, "America should get in this thing."

At last she spoke.

"What did you say? Do you see my father?"

He nodded.

"Wouldn't it be wiser," she asked, "to leave me alone?"

"Your father," he said, "looks a good deal older."

Old Planter had, in fact, gone down hill since George's last glimpse of him in New York, or else he didn't attempt here to assume a strength he no longer possessed. He was quite close before he gave any sign of seeing the pair, and then he muttered to his secretary who answered with a whisper. He limped up and took Sylvia's hand.

"Where has my little girl been?"

She laughed harshly.

"To a rendezvous in the forest. You shouldn't let me go out alone."

Planter glanced from clouded eyes at George. His lips between the white hair smiled amiably.

"I don't believe I remember----"

"It's one of Lambert's business friends," Sylvia said, hastily. "Mr. Morton."

The old man shifted his cane and held out his hand.

"Lambert," he joked, "says he's going to make more money through you than I can hope to leave him. You seem to have got the jump on a lot of shrewd men. I'll see you at dinner? Lambert isn't coming to-night?"

George briefly clasped the hand of the big man.

"I must go back to town this afternoon."

"Then another time."

Planter shifted his cane and leant again on his secretary.

"Let's get on, Straker. Doctor's orders."

"Why," George asked when Sylvia and he were alone, "didn't you spring at the chance?"

"I prefer to fight my own battles," she said, shortly.

"Don't you mean," he asked, quizzically, "that you're a little ashamed of what you did that day?"

She shook her head.

"I was a frightened child. I have changed."

"Isn't it," he laughed, "a little because I, too, have changed? It never occurred to your father to connect me with the Mortons living on his place."

Again she shook her head, turning away. He held out his hand.

"I must go back. Let's admit we've both changed. Let us be friends."

She didn't answer. She made no motion to take his hand.

"One of the promises I made that day," he reminded her, "was to teach you not to be afraid of my touch."

"Does it amuse you to threaten me?" she asked.

Suddenly he reached out, caught her right hand before she could avoid him, and gave it a quick pressure.

"Of course you're right," he laughed. "Actions are more useful than threats."

While she stared, flushed and incredulous, at the hand he had pressed, George walked swiftly away, tingling with life, back to the house of death.

VI

At the funeral he submitted to the amazed scrutiny of the country people. They couldn't hurt him, because they impinged not at all on his world; but he was relieved when the oblong box had been consigned to the place reserved for it, and he could, after arranging the last details of his mother's departure, take the train back to New York.

Blodgett didn't even bother to ask where he had been. He was content these days to let George go his own way. He hadn't forgotten that the younger man had seen farther off than he the greatest opportunity for money making the world had ever offered the greedy. He personally was more interested in the syndicating of foreign external loans. The Planters weren't far from the head of that movement, and George rather resented his stout employer's working hand in hand with the Planters. George longed to ask him how often he was trying to appear graceful at Oakmont these days.

The firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue had grown so rapidly that it took practically all of George's and Lambert's time. Mundy, to whom George had given a small interest, asked Blodgett if he couldn't leave to devote himself entirely to the offices upstairs.

"Go to it," Blodgett agreed, good naturedly. "Draw your profits and your salary from Morton after this."

George mulled over the sacrifice. Did it mean that Blodgett was so close to the Planters that a merger was possible?

"There's no use," he told Blodgett. "I'm earning practically nothing in your office, because I'm never here. I want to resign."

"Run along, sonny," Blodgett said. "Your salary is a small portion of the profits your infant firm is bringing me. I like you around the office once a day. Old Planter hasn't fired his boy, has he, and he's upstairs all the time, and he's taken over some of the old man's best clerks."

"He's Mr. Planter's son," George reminded him.

"And ain't you like a good son to me," the other leered, "making money for papa Blodgett?"

"Why did you let Mundy go so peacefully?" George asked, suspiciously.

"Because," Blodgett said, "he's been here a good many years, and he can make more money this way. Didn't want to stand in his light, and I had somebody in view."

But George wouldn't credit Blodgett with such altruism. Why was the man so infernally good natured, exuding an oily content? Goodhue hinted at a reason one day when they were talking of Sinclair and his lack of interest in the office.

"I've heard rather privately," Goodhue said, "that Sinclair got pretty badly involved a few months ago. If it hadn't been for Blodgett he'd have gone on the rocks a total wreck. Josiah puffed up and towed him away whole. Naturally Sinclair and his lady are grateful. I daresay this winter Blodgett's receiving invitations he's coveted, and if he gives any parties himself he'll have some of the people he's always wanted."

George hid his disapproval. Blodgett didn't even have a veneer. Money was all he could offer. And was Sinclair a great fool, or Blodgett the cleverest man in Wall Street, that Sinclair didn't know who had involved him and why?

As a matter of fact, Blodgett did appear at several dances, wobbling about the room to the discomfort of slender young things, getting generally in everyone's way. George hated to see him attempting to dance with Sylvia Planter. Sylvia seemed rather less successful in avoiding him than she did in keeping out of George's way. Until Blodgett's extraordinary week-end in February, indeed, George didn't have another chance to speak to her alone.

"Of course you'll come, George," Blodgett said. "If this weather holds there'll be skating and sleighing--horses always, if you want 'em; and a lot of first-class people."

"Who?" George asked.

"How about another financial chick--one of your partners?"

"Lambert Planter?"

The puffy face expanded.

"And the Sinclairs, because I'm a bachelor, and----"

But, since he could guess Sylvia would be there, George didn't care for any more names. He wondered why Lambert or his sister should go. Had her attitude toward the fat, coarse man conceivably altered because of his gambolling at Oakmont? While he talked business with Mundy, Lambert, and Goodhue, George's mind was distracted by a sense of imponderable loss. Was it the shadow of what Sylvia had lost by accepting such an invitation?

He didn't go until Saturday afternoon--there was too much to occupy him at the office. This making money out of Europe's need had a good deal constricted his social wanderings. It was why he hadn't frequently seen Dalrymple close enough for annoyance; why he had met Betty only briefly a very few times. He hadn't expected to run into either of them at Blodgett's, but both were there. Betty was probably Lambert's excuse for rushing out the night before.

George felt sorry for Mrs. Sinclair. Still against the corpulent crudities of her host she could weigh the graces of his guests. It pleased George that her greeting for him should be so warm.

The weather, too, had been considerate of Blodgett, refraining from injuring his snow or ice. A musical and brassy sleigh met George at the station. Patches of frosty white softened the lines of the house and draped the self-conscious nudity of the sculpture in the sunken garden.

"And it'll snow again to-night, sir," the driver promised, as if even the stables pulled for the master's success.

Everyone was out, but it was still early, so George asked for a horse and hurried into his riding clothes. He had been working rather too hard recently. The horse a groom brought around was a good one, and by no means overworked. George was as eager as the animal to limber up and go. Off they dashed at last along a winding bridle-path, broken just enough to give good footing. The war, and his share of helping the allies--at a price; his uncomfortable fear that the Baillys didn't like him to draw success from such a disaster; his disapproval of Sylvia's coming here--all cleared from his head as he galloped or trotted through the sharp air.

One thing: Blodgett hadn't spoiled these woodland bridle-paths; yet George had a sensation of always looking ahead for a nude marble figure at a corner, or an urn elaborately designed for simple flowers, or some iron animals to remind a hunter that Blodgett knew what a well-bred forest was for. Instead he saw through the trees ice swept clear of snow across which figures glided with joyful sounds.

"Some of his flashy guests," George thought.

He rode slowly to the margin of the pond, which shared the colour of the sky. Several of the skaters cried greetings. He recognized Dalrymple then, skating with a girl. Dalrymple veered away, waving a careless hand, Lambert came on, fingers locked with Betty's, and scraped to a halt at the pond's edge.

"So the war's stopped for the week-end at last?" Lambert called.

"I wondered if you'd come at all," Betty cried.

George dismounted, smothering his surprise.

"A men and youths' general furnisher," he said, "has to stick pretty much to the store. I never dreamed of seeing you here, Betty."

Perhaps Lambert caught George's real meaning.

"She's staying with Sylvia," he explained, "so, of course, she came."

George mounted and rode on, his mood suddenly as sunless as the declining afternoon. Those two still got along well enough. Certainly it was time for a rumour to take shape there. He had a sharp appreciation of having once been younger. Suppose, because of his ambition, he should see all his friends mate, leaving him as rich as Blodgett, and, like him, unpaired? He quickened the pace of his horse. It was inconceivable. No matter what Sylvia did he would never slacken his pursuit. In every other direction he had forged ahead. Eventually he would in that one. Then why did it hurt him to picture Betty gone beyond his reach?

He crossed the Blodgett boundaries, and entered a country road as undisturbed and enticing as the private bridle-paths had been. He took crossroads at random, keeping only a sense of direction, trying to understand why he was sorry he had to be with Betty when he had come only to be near Sylvia.

The thickening dusk warned him, and he chose a road leading toward Blodgett's. First he received the horseman's sense of something ahead of him. Then he heard the muffled tread of horses in the snow, and occasionally a laugh.

"More of Josiah's notables," he hazarded.

He put spurs to his horse, and in a few minutes saw against the snow three dark figures ambling along at an easy trot. When he had come closer he knew that two of the riders were men, the other a woman. It was easy enough to identify Blodgett. A barrel might have ridden so if it had had legs with which to balance itself; and that slender figure was probably the trapped Sinclair. George hurried on, his premonition assuming ugly lines of reality. Even at that distance and from the rear he guessed that the graceful woman riding between the two men was Sylvia. Why had she chosen an outing with the ridiculous Blodgett? Sinclair, no man possessed sufficient charm to offset the disadvantages of such a companionship.

George, when he was sure, reined in, surprised at his reflections. Blodgett, heaven knew, had been good to him, and he had once liked the man. Why, then, had he turned so viciously against him? Adjectives his mind had recently applied to Blodgett flashed back: "Coarse," "fat," "ridiculous." Was it just? Why did he do it in spite of himself?

Sinclair turned and saw him. The party reined in, Sylvia, as one would have expected, impatiently in advance of the others. Her nod and something she said were lost in the men's cheery greetings. Since she was in advance, and edging on, as if to get farther away from him, George's opportunity was plain. The road wasn't wide enough for four abreast. If he could move forward with her Blodgett and Sinclair would have to ride together.

"Since I'm the last," he interrupted them, "mayn't I have first place?"

Quite as a matter of course he put his horse through and reined in at her side. They started forward.

"You ride as well as ever," he commented.

She shot a glance at him. Calmly he studied the striking details of her face. Each time he saw her she seemed more desirable. How was he to touch those lips that had filled his boy's heart with bursting thoughts? For the first time since that day they rode together, only now he was at her side, instead of heeling like a trained dog. In his man's fashion he was as well clothed as she. When they got back he would enter the great house with her instead of going to the stables. Whether she cared to acknowledge it or not he was of her kind--more so than the millionaire Blodgett ever could be. So he absorbed her beauty which fired his imagination. Such a repetition seemed ominous of a second climax in their relations.

Her quick glance, however, disclosed only resentment for his intrusion. He excused it.

"You see, I couldn't very well ride behind you."

She turned away.

"Hurry a little," Blodgett called.

It was what George wished, as she wished to crawl, never far in advance of the others.

"Come," he said, and flecked her horse with his crop.

"Don't do that again!"

He had gathered his own horse, and was galloping. Hers insisted on following. When George pulled in to keep at her side they were well in advance of the others. Now that he was alone with her he found it difficult to speak, and evidently she would limit his opportunity, for as he drew in she spurred her horse. He caught her, laughing.

"You may as well understand that I'll never ride behind you again."