II
The last thing George did before leaving his dismantled room, which for so long had sheltered Sylvia's riding crop and her photograph, was to write this little note to Betty:
Dear Betty:
It's simpler to go without saying good-bye.
G. M.
Then he was hustled through the window of the railroad train, out of Princeton, and definitely into the market-place.
After the sentiment of the final days the crowding, unyielding buildings, and the men that shared astonishingly their qualities, offered him a useful restorative. He found he could approximate their essential hardness again.
The Street at times resembled the campus—it held so many of the men he had learned to know at Princeton. Lambert was installed in his father's marble temple. He caught George one day on the sidewalk and hustled him to a luncheon club.
"I suppose I really ought to put you up here."
"Why?" George asked.
"Because I'm always sure of a good scrap with you. I missed not playing against you in the Princeton game last fall. Now there's no more football for either of us. I like scraps."
Blodgett, he chanced to mention later, had spent the previous week-end at Oakmont. Blodgett had already bragged of that in George's presence. He forgot the excellent dishes Lambert had had placed before him.
"Have you put Blodgett up here, too?" he asked in his bluntest manner.
Lambert shook his head.
"That's different."
"Not very honestly different," George said, attempting a smile.
"You mean," Lambert laughed, "because I've never asked you to Oakmont? Under the circumstances——"
"I don't mean that," George said. "I mean Blodgett."
"I can only arrange my own likes and dislikes," Lambert answered, still amused.
Then who at Oakmont liked the fat financier?
Rogers was in the street, too, selling bonds with his old attitude toward the serious side of life, striving earnestly only to spy out the right crowd and to run with it.
"Buy my bonds! Buy my bonds!" he would cry, coming into George's office. "They're each and every one a bargain. Remember, what's a bargain to-day may be a dead loss to-morrow, so buy before it's too late."
Goodhue planned to enter a stock exchange firm in the fall, and a lot of other men from the class would come down then after a long rest between college and tackling the world on twenty dollars a month. Wandel alone of George's intimates rested irresolute. George, since he had taken two rooms and a bath in the apartment house in which Wandel lived, saw him frequently. He could easily afford that luxury, for each summer his balance had grown, and Blodgett, now that he had George for as long as he could keep him, was paying him handsomely, and flattering him by drawing on the store of special knowledge his extended and difficult application had hoarded.
To live in such a house, moreover, was necessary to his campaign, which, he admitted, had lagged alarmingly. Sylvia had continued to avoid him. She seemed to possess a special sense for the houses and the parties where he would be, and when, in spite of this, they did meet, she tried to impress him with a thorough indifference; or, if she couldn't avoid a dance, with a rigid repulsion that failed to harmonize with her warm colouring and her exquisite femininity.
Through some means he had to get on. His restless apprehension had grown. Her departure for Europe with her mother fed the rumours that from time to time had connected her name with eligible men. It was even hinted now that her mother's eyesight, which reached to social greatness across the Atlantic, was responsible for her celibacy.
"There'll be an announcement before she comes back," the gossip ran. "They'll land a museum piece of a title."
George didn't know about that, but he did realize that unless he could progress, one day a rumour would take body. He resented bitterly her absence this summer, but if things would carry on until the fall he would manage, he promised himself, to get ahead with Sylvia.
Wandel seemed to enjoy having George near, for, irresolute as he was, he spent practically the entire summer in town. George, one night when they had returned from two hours' suffering of a summer show, asked him the reason. They smoked in Wandel's library.
"I can look around better here," was all Wandel would say.
"But Driggs! Those precious talents!"
Wandel stretched himself in an easy chair.
"What would you suggest, great man?"
George laughed.
"Do you write poetry in secret—the big, wicked, and suffering city, seen from a tenth-story window overlooking a pretty park?"
Vehemently Wandel shook his head.
"You know what most of our modern American jinglers are up to—talking socialism or anarchy to get themselves talked about. If only they wouldn't apply such insincere and half-digested theories to their art! It's a little like modern popular music—criminal intervals and measures against all the rules. But crime, you see, is invariably arresting. My apologies to the fox-trot geniuses. They pretend to be nothing more than clever mutilators; but the jinglers! They are great reformers. Bah! They remind me of a naughty child who proudly displays the picture he has torn into grotesque pieces, saying: 'Come quick, mother, and see what smart little Aleck has done.' You'll have to try again, George."
George glanced up. His face was serious.
"Don't laugh at me. I mean it. Politics."
"At Princeton I wasn't bad at that," Wandel admitted, smiling reminiscently. "But politics mixes a man with an unlovely crowd—uncouth provincials, a lot of them, and some who are to all purposes foreigners. Do you know, my dear George, that ability to read and write is essential to occupying a seat in the United States Senate? I was amazed the other day to hear it was so. You see how simple it is to misjudge."
"Then there's room," George laughed, "for more honest, well-educated, well-bred Americans."
"Seems to me," Wandel drawled, "that a little broad-minded practicality in our politics would be more useful than bovine honesty. I could furnish that. How should I begin?"
"You might get a start in the State Department," George suggested, "diplomacy, a secretaryship——"
"For once you're wrong," Wandel objected. "In this country diplomacy is a destination rather than a route. The good jobs are frequently given for services rendered, or men pay enormous sums for the privilege of being taken for waiters at their own functions. To start at the bottom——Oh, no. I don't possess the cerebral vacuity, and you can only climb out of the service."
"Just the same," George laughed, "you'd make a tricky politician."
Wandel puffed thoughtfully.
"You're a far-seeing, a far-going person," he said. "You are bound to be a very rich man. You'll want a few practical politicians. Isn't it so? Never mind, but it's understood if I ever run for President or coroner you'll back me with your money bags."
George glanced about the room, as striking and costly in its French fashion as the green study had been.
"You have all the money you need," he said.
"But I'd be a rotten politician," Wandel answered, "if I spent any of my own money on my own campaigns. So we have an understanding if the occasion should arise——"
With a movement exceptionally quick for him, suggesting, indeed, an uncontrollable nervous reaction, Wandel sprang to his feet and went to the window where he leant out. George followed him, staring over the park's far-spread velvet, studded with the small but abundant yellow jewels of the lamps.
"What is it, little man? It's insufferable in town. Why don't you go play by the sea or in the hills?"
"Because," Wandel answered, softly, "I can't help the feeling that any occasion may arise. I don't mean our little politics, George. Time enough for them. I don't want to go. I am waiting."
George understood.
"You mean the murders at Sarajevo," he said. "You're over-sensitive. Run along and play. Nothing will come of that."
"Tell me," Wandel said, turning slowly, "that you mean what you say. Tell me you haven't figured on it already."
George shrugged his shoulders.
"You're discreet. All right. I have figured, because, if anything should come of it, it offers the chance of a lifetime for making money. Mundy's put me in touch with some useful people in London and Paris. I want to be ready if things should break. I hope they won't. Honestly, I very much doubt if they will. Even Germany will think twice before forcing a general war."
"But you're making ready," Wandel whispered, "on the off-chance."
George pressed a switch and got more light. It was as if a heavy shadow had filled the delightful room.
"We're growing fanciful," he said, "seeing things in the dark. By the way, you run into Dalrymple occasionally? I'm told he comes often to town."
Wandel left the window, nodding.
"How long can he keep it up?" George asked.
"I'm not a physician."
"No, no. I mean financially. I gather his family live up to what they have."
"I daresay it would pain them to settle Dolly's debts frequently," Wandel smiled.
"Then," George said, slowly, "he is fairly sure to come to you—that is, if this keeps up."
"Why," Wandel asked, "should I encourage Dolly to be charitable to rich wine agents and under-dressed females?"
George shook his head.
"If he asks you for help don't send him to the money lenders. Send him discreetly to me. If I didn't have what he'd want, I daresay I could get it."
Wandel stared, lighting another cigarette.
"I'd like to keep him from the money lenders," George said, easily.
He didn't care whether Wandel thought him a forgiving fool or a calculating scoundrel. Goodhue and Wandel had long since seen that he had been put up at a number of clubs. The two had fancied they could control Dalrymple's resentments. George, following his system, preferred a whip in his own hand. He harboured no thought of revenge, but he did want to be able to protect himself. He would use every possible means. This was one.
"We'll see," Wandel said. "It's too bad great men don't get along with little wasters."