The Guarded Heights Part 54

They crowded into the hall, all except Sylvia and George who had risen last. He had measured his movements by hers. They entered the library together while the others hurried through to Mr. Planter's study where the telephone stood, anxious to speak with Brown's voice. She wanted to follow, but he stopped her by the table where his cap had rested that night, from which he had taken her photograph.

"You might give me a minute," he said.

She faced him.

"What do you want? Why did you come here, Mr. Morton?"

"For this minute."

"You've heard what's happened," she said, scornfully, "and you can persist in such nonsense."

"Call it anything you please," he said. "To me such nonsense happens to be vital. It's your fault that I have to take every chance, even make one out of a tragedy like that."

He nodded toward the study door through which strained voices vibrated.

"Children, too!--Vanderbilt!--More than a thousand!--Good G.o.d, Brown!"

And Blodgett's roar, throaty with a new ferocity:

"We'll fight the swine now."

George experienced a fresh ill-feeling toward the man, who impressed him as possessing something of the attributes of such animals. He glanced at Sylvia's hands.

"You're not going to marry him."

She smiled at him pityingly, but her colour was fuller. He wondered why she should remain at all when it would be so easy to slip through the doorway to the protection of Blodgett and the others. Of course to hurt him again.

"I don't believe you love him. I'm sure you don't. You shan't throw yourself away."

Her foot tapped the rug. He watched her try to make her smile amused.

Her failure, he told himself, offered proof that he was right.

"One can no longer even be angry with you," she said. "Who gave you a voice in my destiny?"

"You," he answered, quickly, "and I don't surrender my rights. If I can help it you're not going to throw away your youth. Why did you tell me first of all you were going to be married?"

She braced herself against the table, staring at him. In her eyes he caught a fleeting expression of fright. He believed she was held at last by a curiosity more absorbing than her temper.

"What do you mean?"

Old Planter's ba.s.s tones throbbed to them.

"Nothing can keep us out of the war now."

The words came to George as from a great distance, carrying no tremendous message. In the whole world there existed for him at that moment nothing half so important as the lively beauty of this woman whose intolerance he had just vanquished.

"Your youth belongs to youth," he hurried on, knowing she wouldn't answer his question. "I've told you this before. I won't see you turn your back on life. Fair warning! I'll fight any way I can to prevent it."

She straightened, showing him her hands.

"You're very brave. You fight by attacking a woman, by trying behind his back to injure a very dear man. And you've no excuse whatever for fighting, as you call it."

"Yes, I have," he said, quickly, "and you know perfectly well that I'm justified in attacking any man you threaten to marry."

"You're mad, or laughable," she said. "Why have you? Why?"

"Because long ago I told you I loved you. Whether it was really so then, or whether it is now, makes no difference. You said I shouldn't forget."

He stepped closer to her.

"You said other things that gave me, through pride if nothing else, a pretty big share in your life. You may as well understand that."

Her anger quite controlled her now. She raised her right hand in the old impulsive gesture to punish his presumption with the maximum of humiliation; and this time, also, he caught her wrist, but he didn't hold it away. He brought it closer, bent his head, and pressed his lips against her fingers.

He was startled by the retreat of colour from her face. He had never seen it so white. He let her wrist go. She grasped the table's edge. She commenced to laugh, but there was no laughter in her blank, colourless expression. A feminine voice without accent came to them:

"Sylvia! How can you laugh?"

He glanced up. Mrs. Planter stood in the study doorway. Sylvia straightened; apparently controlled herself. Her colour returned.

"It was Mr. Morton," she explained, unevenly. "He said something so absurdly funny. Perhaps he hasn't grasped this tragedy."

The others came in, a voluble, horrified group.

"What's the matter with you, George?" Blodgett bellowed. "Don't you understand what's happened?"

"Not quite," George said, looking at Sylvia, "but I intend to find out."

XIV

To find out, George appreciated at once, would be no simple task.

Immediately Sylvia raised new defences. She seemed abetted by this incredible happening on a gray sea.

"I shall go," Lambert said. "How about you, George?"

"Why should I go?" George asked. "I haven't thought about it yet."

The scorn in Sylvia's eyes made him uneasy. Why did people have to be so impulsive? That was the way wars were made.

During the days that followed he did think about it too absorbingly for comfort, weighing to the penny the sacrifice his unlikely going would involve. An inherent instinct for a fight could scarcely be satisfied at such a cost. Patriotism didn't enter his calculations at all. He believed it had resounding qualities only because it was hollow, being manufactured exactly as a drum is made. Surely there were enough impulsive and fairly useless people to do such a job.

Then without warning Wandel confused his apparently flawless logic.

Certainly Wandel was the least impulsive of men and he was also capable of uncommon usefulness, yet within a week of the sinking he asked George if he didn't want to move to his apartment to keep things straight during a long absence.

"Where are you going, Driggs?"

"I've been drifting too long," Wandel answered. "Unless I go somewheres, do something, I'll become as mellow as Dolly. I've not been myself since the business started. I suppose it's because I happen to be fond of the French and the British and a few ideas of theirs. So I'm going to drive an ambulance for them."