The Guarded Heights Part 43

"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 s.h.i.+vered. 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 gra.s.s. 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 cla.s.s," 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 m.u.f.fler 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 a.s.sume 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 s.h.i.+fted 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 s.h.i.+fted 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.