I
"Profession?"
"Member of the firm of Morton, Planter, and Goodhue."
Slightly startled, a fairly youthful product of West Point twisted on the uncomfortable orderly room chair, and glanced from the name on George's card to the tall, well-built figure in a private's uniform facing him. George knew he looked like a soldier, because some confiding idiot had blankly told him so coming up on the train; but he hadn't the first knowledge to support appearances, didn't even know how to stand at attention, was making an effort at it now since it was clearly expected of him, because he had sense enough to guess that the pompous, slightly ungrammatical young man would insist during the next three months on many such tributes.
"I see. You're the Morton."
George was pleased the young man was impressed. He experienced again the feelings with which he had gone to Princeton. He was being weighed, not as skilfully as Bailly had done it, but in much the same fashion. He had a quick thought that it was going to be nice to be at school again.
"Any special qualifications of leadership?"
The question took George by surprise. He hesitated. A reserve officer, sitting by to help, asked:
"Weren't you captain of the Princeton football team a few years ago?"
"Yes, but we were beaten."
"You must learn to say, 'sir,' Mr. Morton, when you address an officer."
George flushed. That was etching his past rather too sharply. Then he smiled, and amused at the silly business, mimicked Simpson's servility.
"Very well, sir. I'll remember, sir."
The West Point man was pleased, he was even more impressed, because he knew football. He made marks on the card. When George essayed a salute and stepped aside for the next candidate he knew he wasn't submerged in this mass of splendid individualities which were veiled by the similarity of their uniforms.
Lambert, Goodhue, and he were scattered among different companies. That was as well, he reflected, since his partners already wore officers' hat cords. The spare moments they had, nevertheless, they spent together, mulling over Blodgett's frequent reports which they never found time thoroughly to digest. Even George didn't worry about that, for his confidence in Blodgett was complete at last.
He hadn't time to worry about much, for that matter, beyond the demands of each day, for Plattsburgh was like Princeton only in that it aroused all his will power to find the right path and to stick to it. At times he wished for the nearly smooth brain with which he had entered college. He had acquired too many wrinkles of logic, of organization, of efficiency, of common-sense, to survive these months without frequent mad desires to talk out in meeting, without too much humorous appreciation of some of the arbiters of his destiny. Regular army officers gave him the impression of having been forced through a long, perpetually contracting corridor until they had come out at the end as narrow as one of the sheets of paper work they loved so well. But he got along with them. That was his business. He was pointed out enviously as one of the football captains. It was a football captains' camp. All such giants were slated for company or battery commander's commissions at least.
If he got it, George wondered if he would hate a captain's uniform as much as the private's one he wore.
With the warm weather the week-ends offered sometimes a relief. Men's wives or mothers had taken little houses in the town or among the hills, and the big hotel on the bluff opened its doors and welcomed other wives and mothers, and many, many girls who would become both a little sooner than they had fancied because of this.
Betty arrived among the first, chaperoned for the time by the Sinclairs. George dined with them, asked Betty about Sylvia, and received evasive responses. Sylvia was surely coming up later. Betty was absorbed, anyway, in her own affairs, he reflected unhappily. He felt lost in this huge place where nearly everyone seemed to be paired.
After dinner Lambert remained with Betty and Mrs. Sinclair, but George and Mr. Sinclair wandered, smoking, through the grove above the lake. George had had no idea that the news, for so long half expected, would affect him as it did.
"I suppose," Sinclair muttered, "you've heard about poor Blodgett."
"What?" George asked, breathlessly. "We've little time for newspapers here."
"I'm not sure," Sinclair answered, "that it's in the papers, but in town everybody's talking about it. Sylvia's thrown him over."