II
The memory of that unguarded moment remained in his mind uncomfortably. He carried it finally from the hospital to his musty apartment, where he stripped off his uniform and looked in the glass, for the first time in nearly two years his own master, no man's servant.
Was he his own master as long as he could commit such sentimental follies, as long as he could suspect that he had told Wandel the truth on the Vesle? This nostalgia must be the rebound from the war, of which he had heard so much, which made men weak, or lazy, or indifferent.
He continued to stare in the glass, angry, amazed. He had to overcome this homesick feeling. He had to prepare himself for harder battles than he had ever fought. He had had plenty of warning of the selfishness that was creeping over the world like a black pestilence. Where was his own self-will that had carried him so far?
He locked himself, as it were, in his apartment. He sat down and called on his will. With a systematic brutality he got himself in hand. He reviewed his aims: to make more money, to get Sylvia. He emerged at last, hard and uncompromising, ready for the selfish ones, and went down town. Blodgett greeted him with a cheer.
"Miracles! For the first time since you got back you look yourself again."
"I am," George answered, "all but the limp. That will go some day maybe."
He wanted it to go. He desired enormously to rid himself of the last reminder of his service.
Lambert was definitely caught by the marble temple, but Goodhue and he would stay together, more or less tied to Blodgett, to accept the opportunities George foresaw for dragging money by sharp reasoning from the reconstruction period. He applied himself to exchange. From their position they could run wild in the stock market at little risk, but there were big things to be made out of exchange, about which the cleverest men didn't seem to know anything worth a penny in any currency.
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 Washington 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."
"Damn the war!" George said.
Mrs. Bailly, when he paused for a moment at the house in Dickinson 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."