Wadsworth Camp - The Guarded Heights

"Thought you hated to touch me."

"You fight like a tiger, anyway," Lambert gasped.

"Had enough?"

Lambert nodded.

"I know when I'm through."

George didn't release him at once. His soul expanded with a sense of power and authority earned by his own effort. It seemed an omen. It urged him too far.

"Then," he mused, "I guess I'd better let you run home and tell your father what I've done to you."

"That," Lambert said, "proves I was right, and I'm sorry I fought you."

George tried to think. He felt hot and angry. Was the other, after all, the better man?

"I take it back," he muttered. "Ought to have had enough sense to know that a fellow that fights like you's no tattle-tale."

"Thanks, Morton."

George's sense of power grew. He couldn't commence too soon to use it.

"See here, Mr. Planter, I came up here to help with some horses your people didn't know how to handle, and let myself get shifted to this other job; but I'm not your father's slave, and anyway I'm getting out."

He increased the pressure on Lambert's arms.

"Just to remind you what we've been fighting about, and that I'm not your slave, you call me Mr. Morton, or George, just as if I was about as good as you."

Lambert smiled broadly.

"Will you kindly let me go – George?"

George sprang up, grinning.

"How you feel, Mr. Lam – " He caught himself – "Mr. Planter?"

Lambert struggled to his feet.

"Quite unwell, thanks. I'm sorry you made such a damned fool of yourself this afternoon. We might have had some pretty useful times boxing together."

"I'd just as leave tell you," George said, glancing away, "that I never intended to say it. I didn't realize it myself until it was scared out of me."

Lambert put on his coat.

"It won't bear talking about."

"It never hit me," George said, huskily, "that even a cat couldn't look at a queen."

"Perfectly possible," Lambert said as he walked off, feeling his bruises, "only the queen mustn't see the cat."

George went, obliterating as best he could the souvenirs of battle. Water, unfortunately, was a requisite, and the nearest was to be found at his own home. His mother gasped.

"You did! After what I said!"

At the pump he splashed cold water over his face and arms.

"I thrashed him," he spluttered.

"I guess that settles it for your father and me."

"Young Planter won't tell anybody," George assured her. "Although I don't see how he's going to get away with it unless he says he was run over by an automobile and kicked by a mule."

"What's come over you?" she demanded. "You've gone out of your head."

He dodged her desire for details. As Lambert had said, the thing wouldn't bear talking about. For the first time in his life he stood alone, and whatever he accomplished from now on would have to be done alone.

He saw his father striding toward them, the anxious light gone from his eyes. George experienced a vast relief.

"Father looks a little more cheerful," he commented, drying his face.

"Get supper, Ma," the man said as he came up.

She hesitated, held by her curiosity, while he turned on George.

"I don't wonder you couldn't open your mouth to me. You're to be out of here to-morrow."

"I'd made up my mind to that."

"And Old Planter wants to see you at nine o'clock to-night."

"Since you and Ma," George said, "seem on such good terms with him I suppose I'll have to go."

"Thank the Lord we are," his father grumbled. "I wouldn't have blamed him if he had packed us all off. He was more than fair. I've looked after you so far, but you'll have to shift for yourself now."

"And the only thing I didn't like about it," George mused, "was leaving you and Ma."

"What did he say to Miss Sylvia?" his mother whispered.

"Said he couldn't get along without her, and was going to have her."

He might have been speaking of one who had ventured to impersonate the deity.

"And he touched her! Put his arms around her!"

The horror in his mother's face grew.

"Georgie! Georgie! What could you have been thinking of?"

He leaned against the pump.

"I'm thinking now," he said, softly, "it's sort of queer a man's father and mother believe there's any girl in the world too good for their son."

"Lots of them," his father snapped. "Sylvia Planter most of all."

"Oh, yes," his mother agreed.

He straightened.

"Then listen," he said, peremptorily. "I don't think so. I told her I was going to have her, and I will. Just put that down in your books. I'll show the lot of you that I'm as good as she is, as good as anybody."

The late sun illuminated the purpose in his striking face.

"Impertinent servant!" he cried. "Stable boy! Beast! It's pretty rough to make her marry all that. It's my only business from now on."

He went to his room, leaving his parents aghast. With a nervous hurry he rid himself of his riding breeches, his puttees, his stock.

"That," he told himself, "is the last time I shall ever wear anything like livery."

When he had dressed in one of his two suits of ordinary clothing he took the broken riding crop and for a long time stared at it as though the venomous souvenir could fix his resolution more firmly. Once his hand slipped to the stock where Sylvia's fingers had so frequently tightened. He snatched his hand away. It was too much like an unfair advantage, a stolen caress.

"Georgie! Georgie!"

His mother's voice drifted to him tentatively.

"Come and get your supper."

He hid the broken crop and went out. His father glanced disapproval.

"You'd do better to wear Old Planter's clothes while you can. It's doubtful when you'll buy any more of your own."

George sat down without answering. Since his return from the ride that afternoon his parents and he had scarcely spoken the same language, and by this time he understood there was no possible interpreter. It made him choke a little over his food.

The others were content to share his silence. His father seemed only anxious to have him away; but his mother, he fancied, looked at him with something like sorrow.

Afterward he fled from that nearly voiceless scrutiny and paced one of the park paths, counting the minutes until he could answer Old Planter's summons. He desired to have the interview over so that he could snap every chain binding him to Oakmont, every chain save the single one Sylvia's contempt had unwittingly forged. He could not, moreover, plan his immediate future with any assurance until he knew what the great man wanted.

"Only to make me feel a little worse," he decided. "What else could he do?"

What, indeed, could a man of Planter's wealth and authority not do? It was a disturbing question.

Through the shrubbery the lights of the house gleamed. The moonlight outlined the immense, luxurious mass. Never once had he entered the great house. He was eager to study the surrounding in which women like Sylvia lived, which she, to an extent, must reflect.

In that serene moonlight he realized that his departure, agreeable and essential as it was, would make it impossible for him during an indefinite period to see that slender, adolescent figure, or the features, lovely and intolerant, that had brought about this revolution in his life. He acknowledged now that he had looked forward each day to those hours of proximity and contemplation; and there had been from the first, he guessed, adoration in his regard.

It was no time to dwell on the sentimental phase of his situation. He despised himself for still loving her. His approaching departure he must accept gladly, since he designed it as a means of coming closer – close enough to hurt.

He wondered if he would have one more glimpse of her, perhaps in the house. He glanced at his watch. He could go at last. He started for the lights. Would he see her?