The Guarded Heights Part 72

Everyone noticed his recovery, and everyone congratulated him except Bailly. When George went down to Betty's wedding the long tutor met him at the station, crying out querulously:

"What's happened to you?"

George laughed.

"Got over the war reaction, I guess."

"What the deuce did you go to war for at all then?" Bailly asked.

"Haven't found that out myself yet," George answered, "but I know I wouldn't go to another, even if they'd have me."

He grimaced at his injured foot.

"And they're going to give you some kind of a medal!" Bailly cried.

"I didn't ask for it," George said, "but I daresay a lot of people, you among them, went down to Was.h.i.+ngton and did."

Bailly was a trifle uncomfortable.

"See here," George said. "I don't want your old medal, and I don't intend to be scolded about it. I suppose I've got to rush right out to the Alstons."

"Let's stop at the club," Bailly proposed. "People want to see you.

We'll fight the war over with the veterans."

"d.a.m.n the war!" George said.

Mrs. Bailly, when he paused for a moment at the house in d.i.c.kinson Street, attacked him, and quite innocently, from a different direction.

"It was the wish of my life, George, that you should have Betty, and you might have had. I can't help feeling that."

"You're prejudiced," George laughed.

He went to the Alstons, nevertheless, almost unwillingly, and he delayed his arrival until the last minute. The intimate party had gathered for a dinner and a rehearsal that night. The wedding was set for the next evening.

The Tudor house had an unfamiliar air, as though Betty already had taken from it every feature that had given it distinction in George's mind.

And Betty herself was caught by all those detailed considerations that surround a girl, at this vital moment of her life, with an atmosphere regal, mysterious, a little sacred. So George didn't see her until just before dinner, or Sylvia, who was upstairs with her. Lambert and Blodgett were about, however, and so was Dalrymple. George was glad Lambert had asked Blodgett to usher; he owed it to him, but he was annoyed that Dalrymple should have been included in the party, for it was another mark, on top of his presence in the marble temple, of a tightening bond of intimacy between him and the Planters. George examined the man, therefore, with an eager curiosity. He looked well enough, but George remained unconvinced by his apparent reformation, suspecting its real purpose was to impress a willing public, for he had studied Dalrymple during many years without uncovering any real strength, or any disposition not to answer gladly to every appeal of the senses. At least he was restless, rising from his chair too often to wander about the room, but George conceded with a smile that his own arrival might be responsible for that. The matter of the notes hadn't been mentioned, but they existed undoubtedly even in Dalrymple's careless mind, which must have forecasted an uncomfortable day of payment.

Lambert seemed sure enough of his friend.

"Dolly's sticking to the job like a leech," he said to George when they went upstairs to dress.

"I've no faith in him," George answered, shortly.

"You're an unforgiving brute," Lambert said.

George hastened away from the subject.

"I'm not chameleon, at least," he admitted with a smile, "which reminds me. I don't see any of your dearly beloved brothers of the ranks in your bridal party. Have you put private Oscar Liporowski up for any of your clubs yet?"

"Unforgiving and unforgetting!" Lambert laughed.

"Then you acknowledge that talk in the Argonne was war madness?"

"By no means," Lambert answered, suddenly serious. "Let me get married, will you? I can't bother with anything else now. Sylvia, whose mind isn't filled with romance, threatens to become the socialist of the family."

George stared at him.

"What are you talking about?"

"About what Sylvia's talking about," Lambert answered.

"Now I know you're mad," George said.

Lambert shook his head.

"But I don't take her very seriously. It's a nice game to seek beauties in Bolshevism. It's played in some of the best houses. You must have observed it--how wonderfully it helps get through a tea or a dinner."

III

George went to his own room, amused and curious. Could Sylvia talk communism, even parrot-like, and deny him the rights of a brother? He became more anxious than before to see her. He shrank, on the other hand, from facing Betty who was about to take this enormous step permanently away from him. Out of his window he could see the tree beneath which he had made his confession in an effort to kill Betty's kindness. If he had followed her to the castle then Lambert wouldn't be limping about exposing a happiness that made George envious and discontented. It was a reminder with a vengeance that his friends were mating. Was he, like Blodgett, doomed to a revolting celibacy?

Blodgett, as far as that went, seemed quite to have recovered from the blow Sylvia had given his pride and heart. With his increasing fortune his girth had increased, his cheeks grown fuller, his eyes smaller.

He was chatting, when George came down, with Old Planter, who sat slouched in an easy chair in the library, and Mr. Alston. It was evident that the occasion was not a joyous one for Betty's father.

"I've half a mind to sell out here," George heard him say, "and take a share in a cooperative apartment in town. Without Betty the house will be like a world without a sun."

Blodgett, George guessed, was tottering on the threshold of expansive sympathy. He drew back, beckoning George.

"Here's your purchaser, Alston. I never knew a half back stay single so long. And now he's a hero. He's bound to need a nest soon."

Mr. Alston smiled at him.

"Is there anything in that, George?"

George wanted to tell Blodgett to mind his own business. How could the man, after his recent experience, make c.u.mbersome jokes of that colour?

"There was a time," Mr. Alston went on, "when I fancied you were going to ask me for Betty. The thought of refusing used to worry me."

George laughed uncomfortably.

"So you would have refused?"

"Naturally. I don't think I could have said yes to Lambert if it hadn't been for the war. If you ever have a daughter--just one--you'll know what I mean."

From the three men George received an impression of imminence, shared it himself. They talked merely to cover their suspense. They were like people in a throne room, attentive for the entrance of a figure, exalted, powerful, nearly legendary. Betty, he reflected, had become that because she was about to marry. He found himself fascinated, too, looking at the door, waiting with a choked feeling for that girl who had unconsciously tempted him from their first meeting. Her arrival, indeed, had about it something of the processional. Mrs. Planter entered the doorway first, nodding absent-mindedly to the men. Betty's mother followed, as imperial as ever, more so, if anything, George thought, and quite unaffected by the deeper elements that gave to this quiet wedding in a country house a breath of tragedy. Betty Alston Planter! That evolution clearly meant happiness for her. She tried to express it through vivacious gestures and cheerful, uncompleted sentences. Betty next--after a tiny interval, entering not without hesitation exposed in her walk, in her tall and graceful figure, in her face which was unaccustomedly colourful, in her eyes which turned from one to another, doubtful, apprehensive, groping. George didn't want to look at her; her appearance placed him too much in concord with her reluctant father; too much in the position of a man making a hurtful and unasked oblation.