XXVIII
At Princeton they kept him in the infirmary for a few days, but he didn't like it. It filled him with a growing fear. Since it made no particular difference now how long he was ill, they let him see too many callers. He distrusted hero worship. Most of all was he afraid when such devotion came from Betty.
"Being a vicarious hero," Mrs. Bailly said, "has made my husband the happiest man in Princeton."
After that she didn't enter the conversation much, and again George sensed, with a reluctant thrill, a maternal caring in her heart for him.
"You never ought to have gone back in the second half," Betty said.
"If I hadn't," he laughed, "who would have taken care of Lambert Planter for you?"
"Squibs says you might have been killed."
"He's a great romancer," George exploded.
"Just the same, it was splendid of you to play at all."
She touched the white bandage about his head.
"Does it hurt a great deal?"
"No," he said, nearly honestly. "I only let them keep me here to cut some dull lectures."
He glanced at Betty wistfully.
"Did I take care of Lambert Planter as you wanted?"
She glanced away.
"Are you punishing me? Haven't you read the papers? You outplayed him and every man on the field."
"That was what you wished?"
She turned back with an assumption of impatience.
"What do you mean?"
He couldn't tell her. He couldn't probe further into her feelings for Lambert, her attitude toward himself. He had to get his mind in hand again.
Betty brought her mother one day. Mrs. Alston was full of praise, but she exuded an imperial distaste for his sick-room. Both times he had to overcome an impulse to beg Betty not to go so soon. That more than anything else made him afraid of himself. It was, he felt, an excellent change to escape to an active life.
Blodgett's place gave him a massive, tasteless welcome. It was one of those houses with high, sloping roofs, numerous chimneys, and much sculptured stone, slightly reminiscent of Mansart, and enormously suggestive of that greatest architect of all, the big round dollar. In its grounds it fitted like a huge diamond on a flowered shirt-front. There were terraces; and a sunken garden, a little self-conscious with coy replicas of regency sculpture; and formal walks between carefully barbered trees and hedges. It convinced George that his original choice of three necessities had been wise. Blodgett had the money, but he didn't have Squibs Bailly and Goodhue or the things they personified. And how Blodgett coveted The Goodhue Quality! George told himself that was why he had been asked, because he was so close to Goodhue. But Blodgett let him see that there was another motive. After those games George was temporarily one of the nation's famous men.
It wasn't until he had arrived that George understood how near Blodgett's place was to Oakmont—not more than fifteen miles. He was interested, but he had no idea, even if the Planters were there for Thanksgiving, that he would see any of them.
At Blodgett's bachelor enormity people came and went. At times the huge, over-decorated rooms were filled, yet to George they seemed depressingly empty because he knew they didn't enclose the men and the women Blodgett wanted. Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair, indeed, motored out for Thanksgiving dinner—a reluctant concession, George gathered, to a profitable partnership. Blodgett brought him forth as a specimen, and the specimen impressed, for it isn't given to everyone to sit down at the close of the season with the year's most famous football player. It puzzled George that in the precious qualities he craved he knew himself superior to everyone in the house except these two who made him feel depressingly inferior. Would he some day reach the point where he would react unconsciously, as they did, to every social emergency?
When the dinner party had scattered, Blodgett and he walked alone on the terrace in an ashen twilight. There the surprise was sprung. It was clearly no surprise to his host, who beamed at George, pointing to the drive.
"I 'phoned him he would find an old football friend here if he'd take the trouble to drive over."
"But you didn't tell him my name?" George gasped.
"No, but why——"
Blodgett broke off and hurried his heavy body to the terrace edge to greet these important arrivals.
Lambert sprang from the runabout he had driven up and helped Sylvia down. She was bundled in becoming furs. The sharp air had heightened her rich colouring. How beautiful she was—lovelier than George had remembered! Here was the tonic to kill the distracting doubts raised by Betty. Here was the very spring of his wilful ambition. Glancing at Sylvia, Betty's tranquil influence lost its power.
At her first recognition of him she stopped abruptly, but Lambert ran across and grasped his hand.
"How do, Morton. Never guessed Blodgett's message referred to you."
George disapproved of Blodgett's methods. Why had the man made him a mystery at the very moment he used him as a bait to attract Lambert and Sylvia? Wasn't he important enough, or was it only because he was a Princeton man and Blodgett had feared some enmity might linger?
Lambert's manner, at least, was proof that he had, indeed, meant to give George a message that night in the dressing-room at New Haven. George appreciated that "How do, Morton"—greeting at last of a man for a man instead of a man for a servant or a former servant; nor was Lambert's call to his sister without a significance nearly sharp enough to hurt.
"Sylvia! Didn't you meet this strong-armed Princetonian at Betty's dance a year ago?"
George understood that she had no such motives as Lambert's for altering her attitude, so much more uncompromising from the beginning than his. There had been no contact or shared pain. Only what she might have observed from a remote stand that Saturday could have affected her. How would she respond now?
She advanced slowly, at first bewildered, then angry. But Blodgett had nothing but his money to recommend him to her. She wouldn't, George was certain, bare any intimacies of emotion before him.
"I rather think I did."
In her eyes George recognized the challenge he had last seen there.
"Thanks for remembering me," he said rather in Wandel's manner.
"A week ago Saturday——" she began, uncertainly, as though her remembering needed an apology.
"Who could forget the great Morton?" Lambert laughed. "With a broken head he beat Yale. That was a hard game to lose."
"I'd heard," she said, indifferently, "that you had been hurt."
George would have preferred words as ugly and unforgettable as those she had attacked him with the day of her accident. She turned to Blodgett. George had an instinct to shake her as she chatted easily and casually, glancing at him from time to time. He could have borne it better if she hadn't included him at all.
He was glad her brother occupied him. Lambert was for dissecting each play of the game, and he made no attempt to hide the admiration for George it had aroused. He gave the impression that he knew very well men didn't do such things—particularly that little trick with Goodhue—unless they were the right sort.
Blodgett said something about tea. They strolled into the house. A fire burned in the great hall. That was the only light. George came last, directly after Sylvia.
"So you're a friend of Mr. Blodgett's!" she said with an intonation intended to hurt.
"I wouldn't have expected," he answered, easily, "to find you a caller here."
She paused and faced him. Lights from the distant fire got as far as her face, disclosing her contempt. He wouldn't let her speak.
"I won't have you think I had anything to do with bringing you. I never guessed until I saw your brother drive up."
She didn't believe him, or she tried to impress him with that affront. Blodgett and Lambert had gone on into the library. They remained quite alone in the huge, dusky hall, whose shadow masses shifted as the fire blazed and fell. For the first time since their ancient rides he could talk to her undisturbed. He wouldn't let that fact tie his tongue. She couldn't call him "stable boy" now, although she did try to say "beast" in another way. This solitude in the dusk, shared with her, stripped every distracting thought from his mind. He was as hard as steel and happy in his inflexibility.
"You believe me," he said.
She shook her head and turned for the door.
"Let me say one thing," he urged. "It's rather important."
She came back through the shadows, her attitude reminiscent of the one she had assumed long ago when she had sought to hurt him. He caught his breath, waiting.
"There is nothing," she said, shivering a little in spite of the hall's warmth and the furs she still wore, "that you would think of saying to me if you had changed at all from the impertinent groom I had to have discharged."
He laughed.
"Oh! Call me anything you please, only I've always wanted to thank you for not making a scene at Miss Alston's dance a year ago."
He would be disappointed if that failed to hurt back. The thought of Sylvia Planter making a scene! At least it fanned her temper.
"What is there," she threatened, defensively, "to prevent my telling Mr. Blodgett, any one I please, now?"
"Nothing, except that I'm a trifle more on my feet," he answered. "I'm not sure your scandal would blow me over. We're going to meet again frequently. It can't he helped."
"I never want," she said, as if speaking of something unclean and revolting, "to see you again."
His chance had come.
"You're unfair, because it was you yourself, Miss Planter, who warned me I shouldn't forget. I haven't. I won't. Will you? Can't we shake hands on that understanding?"
With a hurried movement she hid her hands.
"I couldn't touch you——"
"You will when we dance."
He thought her lips trembled a little, but the light was uncertain.
"I will never dance with you again."
"I'm afraid you'll have to," he said with a confident smile, "unless you care to make a scene."
She drew away, unfastening her cloak, her eyes full of that old challenge.
"You're impossible," she whispered. "Can't you understand that I dislike you?"
His heart leapt, for didn't he hate her?