V
About his return there was a compelling thrill. He drove from the station in one of the cheap automobiles that had made his father practically a pensioner of the Planters. With an incredulous appreciation that he had once accepted its horizon as the boundary of his life, he examined the familiar landscape and the scar made upon it by the village. Curtly he refused to satisfy the driver's curiosity. He had some business at the little house on the Planter estate.
There, through the nearly stripped trees, it showed, almost audibly confessing its debt to the Planter carpenters, painters, and gardeners. In a clouded light late fall flowers waved from masses of dead leaves. Their gay colours gave them an appearance melancholy and apprehensive.
Here he was back at last, and he wasn't going in at the great gate.
He walked around the shuttered house and crossed the porch where his father had liked to sit on warm evenings. He rapped at the door. Feet shuffled inside. The door swayed open, and his mother stood on the threshold. Most of the changes had come to him, but in her red eyes sparkled a momentary and mournful importance. At first she didn't recognize her son.
"What is it?"
George stooped and kissed her cheek.
"I'm sorry, Mother."
Instead of holding out her arms she drew away, staring with fascination, a species of terror, at his straight figure, at his clothing, at his face that wouldn't coarsen now. When she spoke her voice suggested a placating of this stranger who was her son.
"I didn't think you'd come. I can't believe you're George—my Georgie."
Over her shoulders in the shadowed house he saw the inquisitive faces of women. It was clear that for them such an arrival was more divertive than the sharing of a sorrow that scarcely touched their hearts.
George went in. He remembered most of the faces that disclosed excitement while fawning upon his prosperity. He received an unpleasant impression that these poor and ignorant people concealed a dangerous envy, that they would be glad to grasp in one moment, even of violence, all that it had taken him years of difficult struggle to acquire. Whether that was so or not they ought not to stand before him as if his success were a crown. He tried to keep contempt from his voice.
"Please sit down. I want to talk to my mother. Where——"
With slow steps she crossed the kitchen and opened the door of the parlour, beckoning. He followed, knowing what he would find in that uncomfortable, gala room of the poor.
He closed the door. In the half light he saw standing on trestles an oblong box altogether too large for the walls that seemed to crowd it. He had no feeling that anything of his father was there. He realized with a sense of helpless regret that all that remained to him of that unhappy man were the ghosts of such emotions as avarice, fear, and the instinct to sacrifice one's own flesh and blood for a competence.
"Why don't you look at him, George?"
"I don't think he'd care to have me looking at him now."
She wiped her eyes.
"You are too bitter against your father. After all, he was a good man."
"Why should death," he asked her, musingly, "make people seem better than they were in life? It isn't so."
"That's wicked. If your father could rise——"
His attention was caught by an air of pointing the oblong box had, as if to something infinitely farther than ambition and success, yet so close it angered him he couldn't see or touch it. His father had gone there, beyond the farthest horizon of all. Old Planter couldn't make trouble for him now. He was quite safe.
Over in Europe, he reflected, they didn't have enough coffins.
The oblong box for the first time made him think of that war, that was making him rich, in terms of life instead of dollars and cents. He felt dissatisfied.
"There should be more light here," he said, defensively.
But his mother shook her head.
He arranged a chair for her and sat near by while they discussed the details of her departure. She let him see that she shrank from leaving the house, against which, nevertheless, she had bitterly complained ever since Old Planter had got it. Evidently she wanted to linger in her familiar rut, awaiting with the attitude of a martyr whatever fate might offer. That was the reason people had to be helped, because they preferred vicious inertia to the efforts and risks of change. Then why did they want the prizes of those who had had the courage to go forth and fight? Why couldn't Squibs see that?
Patiently George told her she needn't worry about money again. She had a sister who years ago had married and moved West to a farm that was not particularly flourishing. Undoubtedly her sister would be glad to have her and her generous allowance. So his will overcame his mother's reluctance to help herself. She glanced up.
"Who is that?"
He listened. The women in the kitchen were standing again. Light feet crossed the floor.
"Maybe somebody from the big house," his mother whispered. "They sent Simpson last night."
For a moment the entire building was as silent as the oblong box. Then the door opened.
Sylvia Planter slipped in and closed the door.
George caught his breath, studying her as she hesitated, accustoming herself to the insufficient light. She wore a broad-brimmed hat that gave her the charm and the grace of a portrait by Gainsborough. When she recognized him, indeed, she seemed as permanently caught as a portrait.
"Miss Sylvia!" his mother worshipped.
"They told me I would find you here," Sylvia said, uncertainly. "I didn't know——"
She broke off, biting her lip. George strolled around the oblong box to the window, turning there with a slow bow. Even across that desolate, dead shell, the obstinate distaste and the challenge were lively in her glance.
"It was very kind of you to come," he said.
But he was sorry she had come. To see him in such surroundings was a stimulation of the ugly memories he had struggled to destroy. He read her instinct to hurt him now as she had hurt the impertinent man, Morton, who had lived in this house.
"When one of our people is in trouble——" she began, deliberately. "I thought I might be of some help to your mother."
Even over the feeling of security George had just tried to give her the old menace reached the uneasy woman.
"You—you remember him, Miss Sylvia?"
"Very well," Sylvia answered. "He used to be my groom."
"The title comes from you," George said, dryly.
His mother's glance fluttered from one to the other. What did she expect—Old Planter stalking in to carry out his threats?
"After all these years I scarcely knew him myself."
Sylvia's colour heightened. He appraised her rising temper.
"Bad servants," he said, "linger in good employers' memories."
"I know, Miss Sylvia," his mother burst out, "that he wasn't to come back here, but——"
She unclasped her nervous hands. One indicated the silent cause of his disobedience. George moved toward the door. Sylvia stepped quickly aside. He felt, like a physical wave, her desire to hurt.
"At such a time," she said, "it's natural he should come back to his home. I think my father would be glad to have him with his mother."
George shrugged his shoulders, slipped out, navigated the shoals of whispering women, and reached the clean air. He buttoned his overcoat and shuffled through the dead leaves beneath the trees until he found himself at the spot where Lambert and he had fought. He recalled his hot boasts of that day. Fulfilment had seemed simple enough then. The scene just submitted reminded him how short a distance he had actually travelled.
He knew she would pass that way on her return to the big house, so he waited, and when he heard her feet disturbing the dead leaves he didn't turn. She came closer than he had expected, and he heard her contralto voice, quick and defiant:
"I hadn't expected to see you. I didn't quite realize what I was saying. I should have had more respect for any one's grief."
Having said that, she was going on, but he turned and stopped her. As he looked at her he reflected that everything had altered since that day—she most of all. Then the woman had been a little visible in the child. Now, he fancied, the child survived in the woman only through the persistence of this old quarrel. He stared at her lips, recalling his boast that no man should touch them unless it were George Morton. He was no nearer them than he had been that day. Unless he got nearer some man would. It was incredible that she hadn't married. She would marry.
"In the sense you mean, I have no grief," he said.
"Then I needn't have bothered. I once said you were a—a——"
"Something melodramatic. A beast, I think it was," he answered. "If you don't mind I'll walk on with you for a little way."
"No," she said.
"If you please."
"You've no perception," she cried, angrily.
"Don't you think it time," he suggested, "that you ceased treating me like a groom? It isn't very convincing to me. I doubt if it is to you. I fancy it's really only your pride. I don't see why you should have so much where I am concerned."
Her hand made a quick gesture of repulsion.
"You've not changed. You may walk on with me while I tell you this: If you were like the men I know and can be friends with you'd leave me alone. Will you stop this persecution? It comes down to that. Will you stop forcing me to dance with you, to listen to you?"
He smiled, shaking his head.
"I'll make you dance with me more than ever. I've seen very little of you lately. I hope this winter——"
She stopped, facing him, her cheeks flaming.
"You see! You remind me every time I meet you of just what you are, just what you came from, just what you said and did that day."
"That is my aim," he smiled.
He moved his hand in the direction of the little house.
"When we're all like that will it make much difference who our fathers and mothers were?"
She shivered. She started swiftly away.
"Miss Planter!"
The unexpectedness of the naked command may have brought her around. He walked to her.
"When will you realize," he asked, "that it is unforgivable to turn your back on life?"
Had he really meant to suggest that she could possess life only through him? Doubtless the sublime effrontery of that interpretation reached her. She commenced to laugh, her colour rising. She glanced away, and her laughter died.
"You may as well understand," he said, "that I am never going to leave you alone."
She started across the leaf-strewn grass. He kept pace with her.
"Are you going to force me to make a scene?" she asked.
"Except with your father," he said, "I don't think it would make much difference."
He felt that if she had had anything in her hands then she would have struck at him.
"It's not because I'm a beast," he said, quietly, "that I have no grief for my father. He was through. Life had nothing to offer him. He had nothing to offer life. Don't think I'm incapable of grief. I experienced it the day I thought you might be dead. That was because you had so much to offer life—rather more than life had to offer you."
He saw her shrink from him but she walked on, repressing her pain and her anger.
"Since I've known intimately girls of your class," he said, "I've realized that not all of them would have turned and tried to wound as you did that day. Some would have laughed. Some would have been sorry and sympathetic. I don't think many would have made such a scene."
He smiled down at her.
"I want you to realize it is your own fault. You started this. I'm not scolding. I'm glad you were such a little fury. Otherwise, I might have gone on working for your father or for somebody else's father. But you're to blame for my persistence, so learn to put up with it. As long as I keep the riding crop with which you tried to cut my face I'll remember what I said I'd do, and I'll do it."
She didn't answer, but if she tried to give him the impression she wasn't listening she failed utterly.
Around a curve in the path came a bent, white old man, bundled in a heavy muffler and coat. In one hand he carried a thick cane. The other rested on the arm of a young fellow of the private secretary stamp. There, George acknowledged, advanced the single person with whom a scene might make a serious difference, yet a more compelling thought crept in and overcame his sense of danger. That was the type of man who made wars. That man, indeed, was helping to finance this war. George was obsessed by the dun day: by the leaves, fallen and rotten; by the memory of the oblong box. Everything reminded him that not far away Death marched with a bland, black triumph, greeting science as an ally instead of an enemy.
"Suppose," he mused, "America should get in this thing."
At last she spoke.
"What did you say? Do you see my father?"
He nodded.
"Wouldn't it be wiser," she asked, "to leave me alone?"
"Your father," he said, "looks a good deal older."
Old Planter had, in fact, gone down hill since George's last glimpse of him in New York, or else he didn't attempt here to assume a strength he no longer possessed. He was quite close before he gave any sign of seeing the pair, and then he muttered to his secretary who answered with a whisper. He limped up and took Sylvia's hand.
"Where has my little girl been?"
She laughed harshly.
"To a rendezvous in the forest. You shouldn't let me go out alone."
Planter glanced from clouded eyes at George. His lips between the white hair smiled amiably.
"I don't believe I remember——"
"It's one of Lambert's business friends," Sylvia said, hastily. "Mr. Morton."
The old man shifted his cane and held out his hand.
"Lambert," he joked, "says he's going to make more money through you than I can hope to leave him. You seem to have got the jump on a lot of shrewd men. I'll see you at dinner? Lambert isn't coming to-night?"
George briefly clasped the hand of the big man.
"I must go back to town this afternoon."
"Then another time."
Planter shifted his cane and leant again on his secretary.
"Let's get on, Straker. Doctor's orders."
"Why," George asked when Sylvia and he were alone, "didn't you spring at the chance?"
"I prefer to fight my own battles," she said, shortly.
"Don't you mean," he asked, quizzically, "that you're a little ashamed of what you did that day?"
She shook her head.
"I was a frightened child. I have changed."
"Isn't it," he laughed, "a little because I, too, have changed? It never occurred to your father to connect me with the Mortons living on his place."
Again she shook her head, turning away. He held out his hand.
"I must go back. Let's admit we've both changed. Let us be friends."
She didn't answer. She made no motion to take his hand.
"One of the promises I made that day," he reminded her, "was to teach you not to be afraid of my touch."
"Does it amuse you to threaten me?" she asked.
Suddenly he reached out, caught her right hand before she could avoid him, and gave it a quick pressure.
"Of course you're right," he laughed. "Actions are more useful than threats."
While she stared, flushed and incredulous, at the hand he had pressed, George walked swiftly away, tingling with life, back to the house of death.