Читать книгу The Guarded Heights - Camp Wadsworth - Страница 2

He mounted and pressed his horse, but he had only one or two glimpses of Sylvia, far ahead, using her spurs, from time to time raising her hand as if she had forgotten that her crop had been torn from her, broken, and thrown aside.

Such frantic haste was urged by more than the necessity of escape. What then, if not to hasten his punishment, to tell her father, her mother, and Lambert? She had threatened that someone else would have the strength to give him a thrashing. Probably Lambert. Aside from that how could they punish a man who had only committed the crime of letting a girl know that he loved her? All at once he guessed, and he laughed aloud. They could kick him out. He wanted, above everything else, to be kicked out of a job where he was treated like a lackey, although he was told he was nothing of the kind. Expert with horses, doing Old Planter a favour for the summer! Hadn't she just called him a servant, a stable boy? He wanted to put himself forever beyond the possibility of being humiliated in just that way again.

In the stable he found a groom leading Sylvia's horse to a stall.

"Take mine, too, and rub him down, will you?"

The groom turned, staring.

"The nerve! What's up, George?"

"Only," George said, deliberately, "that I've touched my last horse for money."

"Say! What goes on here? The young missus rides in like a cyclone, and looking as if she'd been crying. I always said you'd get in trouble with the boss's daughter. You're too good looking for the ladies, Georgie – "

"That's enough of that," George snapped. "Scrape him down, and I'll be much obliged."

He went out, knowing that the other would obey, for as a rule people did what George wanted. He took a path through the park toward home, walking slowly, commencing to appreciate the difficulties he had brought upon himself. His predicament might easily involve his parents. The afternoon was about done, they would both be there, unsuspecting. It was his duty to prepare them. He experienced a bitter regret as he crossed the line that a few months ago had divided their property, their castle, from Oakmont. Now Old Planter could cross that line and drive them out.

Before George came in sight of the house he heard a rubbing, slapping noise, and with a new distaste pictured his mother bending over a washtub, suggesting a different barrier to be leaped. As he entered the open space back of the house he wanted to kick the tub over, wanted to see sprawling in the dirt the delicate, intimate linen sent down weekly from the great house because his mother was exceptionally clever with such things. To the uncouth music of her labour her broad back rose and bent rhythmically. His father, wearing soiled clothing, sat on the porch steps, an old briar pipe in his mouth.

Abruptly his mother's drudgery ceased. She stared. His father rose stiffly.

"You've got yourself in trouble," he said.

George had not fancied the revolution had unfurled banners so easily discernible. He became self-conscious. His parents' apprehension made matters more difficult for him. They, at least, were too old to revolt.

"I suppose I have," he acknowledged shortly.

His father used the tone of one announcing an unspeakable catastrophe.

"You mean you've had trouble with Miss Sylvia."

"George!" his mother cried, aghast. "You've never been impertinent with Miss Sylvia!"

"She thinks I have," George said, "so it amounts to the same thing."

His father's face twitched.

"And you know Old Planter can put us out of here without a minute's notice, and where do you think we'd go? How do you think we'd get bread and butter? You talk up, young man. You tell us what happened."

"I can't," George said, sullenly. "I can't talk about it. You'll hear soon enough."

"I always said," his mother lamented, "that Georgie wasn't one to know his place up there."

"Depends," George muttered, "on what my place is. I've got to find that out. Look! You'll hear now."

A bald-headed figure in livery, one of the house servants, glided toward them through the shrubbery, over that vanished boundary line, with nervous haste. George squared his shoulders. The messenger, however, went straight to the older man.

"Mr. Planter's on his ear, and wants to see you right off in the library. What you been up to, young Morton?"

George resented the curiosity in the pallid, unintelligent eyes, the fellow's obvious pleasure in the presence of disaster. It would have appeased him to grasp those sloping shoulders, to force the grinning face from his sight. A queer question disturbed him. Had Sylvia felt something of the sort about him?

"Come on," the elder Morton said. "It's pretty hard at my age. You'll pay for this, George."

"Old Planter would never be that unfair," George encouraged him.

"Georgie! Georgie!" his mother said when the others were out of sight, "what have you been up to?"

He walked closer and placed his arm around her shoulders.

"I've been getting my eyes opened," he answered. "I never ought to have listened to them. I never ought to have gone up there. I did say something to Miss Sylvia I had no business to. If I'd been one of her own kind, instead of the son of a livery stable keeper, I'd have got polite regrets or something. It's made me realize how low I am."

"No," she said with quick maternal passion. "You're not low. Maybe some day those people'll be no better than we are."

He shook his head.

"I'd rather I was no worse than they are. And I will be. I won't put up with it. If some people have to be treated like dirt, I'm going to help do the treating."

"That's no right way of thinking," she warned. "It's money makes the mare go."

But in Sylvia's case, George admitted, there was other propulsion than that; something more fragile, and harder to understand or capture for one's self.

"Don't you worry, I'll make money," he said.

She glanced up quickly.

"Who's that?"

A brisk masculine voice volleyed through the shrubbery:

"Young Morton! I say, young Morton!"

"It's Mr. Lambert," she breathed. "Go quick."

George remembered what Sylvia had said about someone else having the strength.

"Can't you guess, Ma, what the young lady's brother wants of me?"

The bitterness left his face. His smile was engaging.

"To give me the devil."

"Young Morton! Young Morton!"

"Coming!" he called.

"George," she begged, "don't have any trouble with Mr. Lambert."