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Dangerous Days

by Mary Roberts Rinehart · English · Gutenberg #1693 · 677,665 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Dangerous Days

Author: Mary Roberts Rinehart


        
Release date: April 1, 1999 [eBook #1693]
                Most recently updated: March 9, 2018

Language: English

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DANGEROUS DAYS

by Mary Roberts Rinehart




CHAPTER I

Natalie Spencer was giving a dinner. She was not an easy hostess. Like
most women of futile lives she lacked a sense of proportion, and
the small and unimportant details of the service absorbed her. Such
conversation as she threw at random, to right and left, was trivial and
distracted.

Yet the dinner was an unimportant one. It had been given with an eye
more to the menu than to the guest list, which was characteristic of
Natalie's mental processes. It was also characteristic that when the
final course had been served without mishap, and she gave a sigh of
relief before the gesture of withdrawal which was a signal to the other
women, that she had realized no lack in it. The food had been good, the
service satisfactory. She stood up, slim and beautifully dressed, and
gathered up the women with a smile.

The movement found Doctor Haverford, at her left, unprepared and with
his coffee cup in his hand. He put it down hastily and rose, and the
small cup overturned in its saucer, sending a smudge of brown into the
cloth.

“Dreadfully awkward of me!” he said. The clergyman's smile of apology
was boyish, but he was suddenly aware that his hostess was annoyed. He
caught his wife's amiable eyes on him, too, and they said quite plainly
that one might spill coffee at home--one quite frequently did, to
confess a good man's weakness--but one did not do it at Natalie
Spencer's table. The rector's smile died into a sheepish grin.

For the first time since dinner began Natalie Spencer had a clear view
of her husband's face. Not that that had mattered particularly, but the
flowers had been too high. For a small dinner, low flowers, always. She
would speak to the florist. But, having glanced at Clayton, standing
tall and handsome at the head of the table, she looked again. His eyes
were fixed on her with a curious intentness. He seemed to be surveying
her, from the top of her burnished hair to the very gown she wore.
His gaze made her vaguely uncomfortable. It was unsmiling, appraising,
almost--only that was incredible in Clay--almost hostile.

Through the open door the half dozen women trailed out, Natalie in
white, softly rustling as she moved, Mrs. Haverford in black velvet,
a trifle tight over her ample figure, Marion Hayden, in a very brief
garment she would have called a frock, perennial debutante that she was,
rather negligible Mrs. Terry Mackenzie, and trailing behind the others,
frankly loath to leave the men, Audrey Valentine. Clayton Spencer's eyes
rested on Audrey with a smile of amused toleration, on her outrageously
low green gown, that was somehow casually elegant, on her long green
ear-rings and jade chain, on the cigaret between her slim fingers.

Audrey's audacity always amused him. In the doorway she turned and
nonchalantly surveyed the room.

“For heaven's sake, hurry!” she apostrophized the table. “We are going
to knit--I feel it. And don't give Chris anything more to drink, Clay.
He's had enough.”

She went on, a slim green figure, moving slowly and reluctantly toward
the drawing-room, her head held high, a little smile still on her lips.
But, alone for a moment, away from curious eyes, her expression changed,
her smile faded, her lovely, irregular face took on a curious intensity.
What a devilish evening! Chris drinking too much, talking wildly, and
always with furtive eyes on her. Chris! Oh, well, that was life, she
supposed.

She stopped before a long mirror and gave a bit of careless attention to
her hair. With more care she tinted her lips again with a cosmetic stick
from the tiny, diamond-studded bag she carried. Then she turned and
surveyed the hall and the library beyond. A new portrait of Natalie was
there, hanging on the wall under a shaded light, and she wandered in,
still with her cigaret, and surveyed it. Natalie had everything. The
portrait showed it. It was beautiful, smug, complacent.

Mrs. Valentine's eyes narrowed slightly. She stood there, thinking about
Natalie. She had not everything, after all. There was something she
lacked. Charm, perhaps. She was a cold woman. But, then, Clay was cold,
too. He was even a bit hard. Men said that; hard and ambitious, although
he was popular. Men liked strong men. It was only the weak they deplored
and loved. Poor Chris!

She lounged into the drawing-room, smiling her slow, cool smile. In
the big, uncarpeted alcove, where stood Natalie's great painted piano,
Marion Hayden was playing softly, carefully posed for the entrance of
the men. Natalie was sitting with her hands folded, in the exact center
of a peacock-blue divan. The others were knitting.

“Very pretty effect, Toots!” Audrey called. And Miss Hayden gave her the
unashamed smile of one woman of the world to another.

Audrey had a malicious impulse. She sat down beside Natalie, and against
the blue divan her green gown shrieked a discord. She was vastly
amused when Natalie found an excuse and moved away, to dispose herself
carefully in a tall, old-gold chair, which framed her like a picture.

“We were talking of men, my dear,” said Mrs. Haverford, placidly
knitting.

“Of course,” said Audrey, flippantly.

“Of what it is that they want more than anything else in the world.”

“Children-sons,” put in Mrs. Mackenzie. She was a robust, big woman with
kindly eyes, and she was childless.

“Women!” called Toots Hayden. She was still posed, but she had stopped
playing. Mrs. Haverford's eyes rested on her a moment, disapprovingly.

“What do you say, Natalie?” Audrey asked.

“I hadn't thought about it. Money, probably.”

“You are all wrong,” said Audrey, and lighted a fresh cigaret. “They
want different things at different ages. That's why marriage is such
a rotten failure. First they want women; any woman will do, really. So
they marry--any woman. Then they want money. After that they want power
and place. And when they've got that they begin to want--love.”

“Good gracious, Audrey, what a cynical speech!” said Mrs. Mackenzie. “If
they've been married all that time--”

“Oh, tut!” said Audrey, rudely.

She had the impulse of the unhappy woman to hurt, but she was rather
ashamed of herself, too. These women were her friends. Let them go on
believing that life was a thing of lasting loves, that men were true
to the end, and that the relationships of life were fixed and permanent
things.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I was just being clever! Let's talk about the
war. It's the only thing worth talking about, anyhow.”

In the dining-room Clayton Spencer, standing tall and erect, had
watched the women go out. How typical the party was of Natalie, of her
meticulous care in small things and her indifference or real ignorance
as to what counted. Was it indifference, really, or was it supreme
craftiness, the stupidity of her dinners, the general unattractiveness
of the women she gathered around her, the ill-assortment of people who
had little in themselves and nothing whatever in common?

Of all the party, only Audrey and the rector had interested him
even remotely. Audrey amused him. Audrey was a curious mixture of
intelligence and frivolity. She was a good fellow. Sometimes he thought
she was a nice woman posing as not quite nice. He didn't know. He was
not particularly analytical, but at least she had been one bit of cheer
during the endless succession of courses.

The rector was the other, and he was relieved to find Doctor Haverford
moving up to the vacant place at his right.

“I've been wanting to see you, Clay,” he said in an undertone. “It's
rather stupid to ask you how you found things over there. But I'm going
to do it.”

“You mean the war?”

“There's nothing else in the world, is there?”

“One wouldn't have thought so from the conversation here to-night.”

Clayton Spencer glanced about the table. Rodney Page, the architect, was
telling a story clearly not for the ears of the clergy, and his own
son, Graham, forced in at the last moment to fill a vacancy, was sitting
alone, bored and rather sulky, and sipping his third cognac.

“If you want my opinion, things are bad.”

“For the Allies? Or for us?”

“Good heavens, man, it's the same thing. It is only the Allies who are
standing between us and trouble now. The French are just holding their
own. The British are fighting hard, but they're fighting at home too. We
can't sit by for long. We're bound to be involved.”

The rector lighted an excellent cigar.

“Even if we are,” he said, hopefully, “I understand our part of it will
be purely naval. And I believe our navy will give an excellent account
of itself.”

“Probably,” Clay retorted. “If it had anything to fight! But with the
German fleet bottled up, and the inadvisability of attempting to bombard
Berlin from the sea--”

The rector made no immediate reply, and Clayton seemed to expect none.
He sat back, tapping the table with long, nervous fingers, and his eyes
wandered from the table around the room. He surveyed it all with
much the look he had given Natalie, a few moments before, searching,
appraising, vaguely hostile. Yet it was a lovely room, simple and
stately. Rodney Page, who was by way of being decorator for the few,
as he was architect for the many, had done the room, with its plainly
paneled walls, the over-mantel with an old painting inset, its lion
chairs, its two console tables with each its pair of porcelain jars.
Clayton liked the dignity of the room, but there were times when he and
Natalie sat at the great table alone, with only the candles for light
and the rest of the room in a darkness from which the butler emerged at
stated intervals and retreated again, when he felt the oppression of it.
For a dinner party, with the brilliant colors of the women's gowns, it
was ideal. For Natalie and himself alone, with the long silences
between them that seemed to grow longer as the years went on, it was
inexpressibly dreary.

He was frequently aware that both Natalie and himself were talking for
the butler's benefit.

From the room his eyes traveled to Graham, sitting alone, uninterested,
dull and somewhat flushed. And on Graham, too, he fixed that clear
appraising gaze that had vaguely disconcerted Natalie. The boy had had
too much to drink, and unlike the group across the table, it had made
him sullen and quiet. He sat there, staring moodily at the cloth and
turning his glass around in fingers that trembled somewhat.

Then he found himself involved in the conversation.

“London as dark as they say?” inquired Christopher Valentine. He was a
thin young man, with a small, affectedly curled mustache. Clayton did
not care for him, but Natalie found him amusing. “I haven't been over--”
 he really said 'ovah'--“for ages. Eight months or so.”

“Very dark. Hard to get about.”

“Most of the fellows I know over there are doing something. I'd like to
run over, but what's the use? Nobody around, street's dark, no gayety,
nothing.”

“No. You'd better stay at home. They--don't particularly want visitors,
anyhow.”

“Unless they go for war contracts, eh?” said Valentine pleasantly, a way
he had of taking the edge off the frequent impertinence of his speech.
“No, I'm not going over. We're not popular over there, I understand.
Keep on thinking we ought to take a hand in the dirty mess.”

Graham spoke, unexpectedly.

“Well, don't you think we ought?”

“If you want my candid opinion, no. We've been waving a red flag called
the Monroe Doctrine for some little time, as a signal that we won't
stand for Europe coming over here and grabbing anything. If we're going
to be consistent, we can't do any grabbing in Europe, can we?”

Clayton eyed him rather contemptuously.

“We might want to 'grab' as you term it, a share in putting the madmen
of Europe into chains,” he said. “I thought you were pro-British,
Chris.”

“Only as to clothes, women and filet of sole,” Chris returned
flippantly. Then, seeing Graham glowering at him across the table, he
dropped his affectation of frivolity. “What's the use of our going in
now?” he argued. “This Somme push is the biggest thing yet. They're
going through the Germans like a hay cutter through a field. German
losses half a million already.”

“And what about the Allies? Have they lost nothing?” This was Clayton's
attorney, an Irishman named Denis Nolan. There had been two n's in
the Denis, originally, but although he had disposed of a part of his
birthright, he was still belligerently Irish. “What about Rumania? What
about the Russians at Lemberg? What about Saloniki?”

“You Irish!” said the rector, genially. “Always fighting the world and
each other. Tell me, Nolan, why is it that you always have individual
humor and collective ill-humor?”

He felt that that was rather neat. But Nolan was regarding him
acrimoniously, and Clayton apparently had not heard at all.

The dispute went on, Chris Valentine alternately flippant and earnest,
the rector conciliatory, Graham glowering and silent. Nolan had started
on the Irish question, and Rodney baited him with the prospect of
conscription there. Nolan's voice, full and mellow and strangely sweet,
dominated the room.

But Clayton was not listening. He had heard Nolan air his views before.
He was a trifle acid, was Nolan. He needed mellowing, a woman in his
life. But Nolan had loved once, and the girl had died. With the curious
constancy of the Irish, he had remained determinedly celibate.

“Strange race,” Clayton reflected idly, as Nolan's voice sang on. “Don't
know what they want, but want it like the devil. One-woman men, too.
Curious!”

It occurred to him then that his own reflection was as odd as the
fidelity of the Irish. He had been faithful to his wife. He had never
thought of being anything else.

He did not pursue that line of thought. He sat back and resumed his
nervous tapping of the cloth, not listening, hardly thinking, but
conscious of a discontent that was beyond analysis.

Clayton had been aware, since his return from the continent and England
days before, of a change in himself. He had not recognized it until he
reached home. And he was angry with himself for feeling it. He had gone
abroad for certain Italian contracts and had obtained them. A year or
two, if the war lasted so long, and he would be on his feet at last,
after years of struggle to keep his organization together through the
hard times that preceded the war. He would be much more than on his
feet. Given three more years of war, and he would be a very rich man.

And now that the goal was within sight, he was finding that it was not
money he wanted. There were some things money could not buy. He had
always spent money. His anxieties had not influenced his scale of
living. Money, for instance, could not buy peace for the world; or
peace for a man, either. It had only one value for a man; it gave him
independence of other men, made him free.

“Three things,” said the rector, apropos of something or other, and
rather oratorically, “are required by the normal man. Work, play, and
love. Assure the crippled soldier that he has lost none of these, and--”

Work and play and love. Well, God knows he had worked. Play? He would
have to take up golf again more regularly. He ought to play three times
a week. Perhaps he could take a motor-tour now and then, too. Natalie
would like that.

Love? He had not thought about love very much. A married man of
forty-five certainly had no business thinking about love. No, he
certainly did not want love. He felt rather absurd, even thinking about
it. And yet, in the same flash, came a thought of the violent passions
of his early twenties. There had been a time when he had suffered
horribly because Natalie had not wanted to marry him. He was glad all
that was over. No, he certainly did not want love.

He drew a long breath and straightened up.

“How about those plans, Rodney?” he inquired genially. “Natalie says you
have them ready to look over.”

“I'll bring them round, any time you say.”

“To-morrow, then. Better not lose any time. Building is going to be a
slow matter, at the best.”

“Slow and expensive,” Page added. He smiled at his host, but Clayton
Spencer remained grave.

“I've been away,” he said, “and I don't know what Natalie and you have
cooked up between you. But just remember this: I want a comfortable
country house. I don't want a public library.”

Page looked uncomfortable. The move into the drawing-room covered his
uneasiness, but he found a moment later on to revert to the subject.

“I have tried to carry out Natalie's ideas, Clay,” he said. “She wanted
a sizeable place, you know. A wing for house-parties, and--that sort of
thing.”

Clayton's eyes roamed about the room, where portly Mrs. Haverford was
still knitting placidly, where the Chris Valentines were quarreling
under pretense of raillery, where Toots Hayden was smoking a cigaret
in a corner and smiling up at Graham, and where Natalie, exquisite and
precise, was supervising the laying out of a bridge table.

“She would, of course,” he observed, rather curtly, and, moving through
a French window, went out onto a small balcony into the night.

He was irritated with himself. What had come over him? He shook himself,
and drew a long breath of the sweet night air. His tall, boyishly
straight figure dominated the little place. In the half-light he looked,
indeed, like an overgrown boy. He always looked like Graham's brother,
anyhow; it was one of Natalie's complaints against him. But he put the
thought of Natalie away, along with his new discontent. By George, it
was something to feel that, if a man could not fight in this war, at
least he could make shells to help end it. Oblivious to the laughter in
the room behind him, the clink of glass as whiskey-and-soda was
brought in, he planned there in the darkness, new organization, new
expansions--and found in it a great content.

He was proud of his mills. They were his, of his making. The small
iron foundry of his father's building had developed into the colossal
furnaces that night after night lighted the down-town district like a
great conflagration. He was proud of his mills and of his men. He liked
to take men and see them work out his judgment of them. He was not often
wrong. Take that room behind him: Rodney Page, dilettante, liked by
women, who called him “Roddie,” a trifle unscrupulous but not entirely
a knave, the sort of man one trusted with everything but one's wife;
Chris, too--only he let married women alone, and forgot to pay back the
money he borrowed. There was only one man in the room about whom he was
beginning to mistrust his judgment, and that was his own son.

Perhaps it was because he had so recently come from lands where millions
of boys like Graham were pouring out their young lives like wine, that
Clayton Spencer was seeing Graham with a new vision. He turned and
glanced back into the drawing-room, where Graham, in the center of that
misfit group and not quite himself, was stooping over Marion Hayden.
They would have to face that, of course, the woman urge in the boy.
Until now his escapades had been boyish ones, a few debts frankly
revealed and as frankly regretted, some college mischiefs, a rather
serious gambling fever, quickly curbed. But never women, thank God.

But now the boy was through with college, and already he noticed
something new in their relationship. Natalie had always spoiled him, and
now there were, with increasing frequency, small consultations in her
room when he was shut out, and he was beginning to notice a restraint in
his relations with the boy, as though mother and son had united against
him.

He was confident that Natalie was augmenting Graham's allowance from her
own. His salary, rather, for he had taken the boy into the business, not
as a partner--that would come later--but as the manager of a department.
He never spoke to Natalie of money. Her house bills were paid at the
office without question. But only that day Miss Potter, his secretary,
had reported that Mrs. Spencer's bank had called up and he had made good
a considerable overdraft.

He laid the cause of his discontent to Graham, finally. The boy had
good stuff in him. He was not going to allow Natalie to spoil him, or
to withdraw him into that little realm of detachment in which she lived.
Natalie did not need him, and had not, either as a lover or a husband,
for years. But the boy did.

There was a little stir in the room behind. The Haverfords were leaving,
and the Hayden girl, who was plainly finding the party dull. Graham was
looking down at her, a tall, handsome boy, with Natalie's blonde hair
but his father's height and almost insolent good looks.

“Come around to-morrow,” she was saying. “About four. There's always a
crowd about five, you know.”

Clayton knew, and felt a misgiving. The Hayden house was a late
afternoon loafing and meeting place for the idle sons and daughters of
the rich. Not the conservative old families, who had developed a sense
of the responsibility of wealth, but of the second generation of easily
acquired money. As she went out, with Graham at her elbow, he heard
Chris, at the bridge table.

“Terrible house, the Haydens. Just one step from the Saturday night
carouse in Clay's mill district.”

When Graham came back, Mrs. Haverford put her hand on his arm.

“I wish you would come to see us, Graham. Delight so often speaks of
you.”

Graham stiffened almost imperceptibly.

“Thanks, I will.” But his tone was distant.

“You know she comes out this winter.”

“Really?”

“And--you were great friends. I think she misses you a little.”

“I wish I thought so!”

Gentle Mrs. Haverford glanced up at him quickly.

“You know she doesn't approve of me.”

“Why, Graham!”

“Well, ask her,” he said. And there was a real bitterness under the
lightness of his tone. “I'll come, of course, Mrs. Haverford. Thank you
for asking me. I haven't a lot of time. I'm a sort of clerk down at the
mill, you know.”

Natalie overheard, and her eyes met Clayton's, with a glance of
malicious triumph. She had been deeply resentful that he had not made
Graham a partner at once. He remembered a conversation they had had a
few months before.

“Why should he have to start at the bottom?” she had protested. “You
have never been quite fair to him, Clay.” His boyish diminutive had
stuck to him. “You expect him to know as much about the mill now as you
do, after all these years.”

“Not at all. I want him to learn. That's precisely the reason why I'm
not taking him in at once.”

“How much salary is he to have?”

“Three thousand a year.”

“Three thousand! Why, it will take all of that to buy him a car.”

“There are three cars here now; I should think he could manage.”

“Every boy wants his own car.”

“I pay my other managers three thousand,” he had said, still patient.
“He will live here. His car can be kept here, without expense.
Personally, I think it too much money for the service he will be able to
give for the first year or two.”

And, although she had let it go at that, he had felt in her a keen
resentment. Graham had got a car of his own, was using it hard, if
the bills the chauffeur presented were an indication, and Natalie had
overdrawn her account two thousand five hundred dollars.

The evening wore on. Two tables of bridge were going, with Denis Nolan
sitting in at one. Money in large amounts was being written in on the
bridge scores. The air of the room was heavy with smoke, and all the
men and some of the women were drinking rather too much. There were
splotches of color under the tan in Graham's cheeks, and even Natalie's
laughter had taken on a higher note.

Chris's words rankled in Clayton Spencer's mind. A step from the
Saturday night carouse. How much better was this sort of thing? A dull
party, driven to cards and drink to get through the evening. And what
sort of home life were he and Natalie giving the boy? Either this, or
the dreary evenings when they were alone, with Natalie sifting with
folded hands, or withdrawing to her boudoir upstairs, where invariably
she summoned Graham to talk to him behind closed doors.

He went into the library and shut the door. The room rested him, after
the babble across. He lighted a cigar, and stood for a moment before
Natalie's portrait. It had been painted while he was abroad at, he
suspected, Rodney's instigation. It left him quite cold, as did Natalie
herself.

He could look at it dispassionately, as he had never quite cared to
regard Natalie. Between them, personally, there was always the element
she never allowed him to forget, that she had given him a son. This
was Natalie herself, Natalie at forty-one, girlish, beautiful, fretful
and--selfish. Natalie with whom he was to live the rest of his life, who
was to share his wealth and his future, and with whom he shared not a
single thought in common.

He had a curious sense of disloyalty as he sat down at his desk and
picked up a pad and pencil. But a moment later he had forgotten her, as
he had forgotten the party across the hall. He had work to do. Thank God
for work.




CHAPTER II

Natalie was in bed when he went up-stairs. Through the door of his
dressing-room he could see her lying, surrounded by papers. Natalie's
handsome bed was always covered with things, her handkerchief, a novel,
her silk dressing-gown flung over the footboard, sometimes bits of dress
materials and lace. Natalie did most of her planning in bed.

He went in and, clearing a space, sat down on the foot of the bed,
facing her. Her hair was arranged in a loose knot on top of her head,
and there was a tiny space, perhaps a quarter of an inch, slightly
darker than the rest. He realized with a little start that she had had
her hair touched up during his absence. Still, she looked very pretty,
her skin slightly glistening with its night's bath of cold cream, her
slim arms lying out on the blue silk eiderdown coverlet.

“I told Doctor Haverford to-night that we would like to give him a car,
Natalie,” he began directly. It was typical of him, the “we.”

“A car? What for?”

“To ride about in, my dear. It's rather a large parish, you know. And
I don't feel exactly comfortable seeing him tramping along when most
people are awheel. He's not very young.”

“He'll kill himself, that's all.”

“Well, that's rather up to Providence, of course.”

“You are throwing a sop to Providence, aren't you?” she asked shrewdly.
“Throwing bread on the waters! I daresay he angled for it. You're easy,
Clay. Give you a good dinner--it was a nice dinner, wasn't it?”

“A very nice dinner,” he assented. But at the tone she looked up.

“Well, what was wrong?” she demanded. “I saw when I went out that you
were angry about something. Your face was awful.”

“Oh, come now, Natalie,” he protested. “It wasn't anything of the
sort. The dinner was all right. The guests were--all right. I may have
unconsciously resented your attitude about Doctor Haverford. Certainly
he didn't angle for it, and I had no idea of throwing a sop to
Providence.”

“That isn't what was wrong at dinner.”

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Not if it's too disagreeable.”

“Good heavens, Natalie. One would think I bullied you!”

“Oh, no, you don't bully. It's worse. It's the way you look. Your face
sets. Well?”

“I didn't feel unpleasant. It's rather my misfortune that my face--”

“Didn't you like my gown?”

“Very much. It seemed a trifle low, but you know I always like your
clothes.” He was almost pathetically anxious to make up to her for that
moment's disloyalty in the library.

“There!” she said, brushing the papers aside. “Now we're getting at
it. Was I anything like as low as Audrey Valentine? Of course not! Her
back--You just drive me to despair, Clay. Nothing I do pleases you. The
very tone of that secretary of yours to-day, when I told her about that
over-draft--it was positively insulting!”

“I don't like overdrafts,” he said, without any irritation. “When you
want extra amounts you have only to let me know.”

“You are always finding fault with me,” she complained. “It's either
money, or my clothes, or Graham, or something.” Her eyes filled. She
looked young and absurdly childish. But a talk he had had with the
rector was still in his mind. It was while they were still at the table,
and Nolan had been attacking the British government.

“We get out of this world largely what we put into it,” he had said.
“You give largely, Clay, and you receive largely. I rejoice in your
prosperity, because you have earned it.”

“You think, then,” he had asked, “that we only receive as we give? I
don't mean material things, of course.”

The rector had fixed him with kindly, rather faded old eyes. “That has
been my experience,” he said. “Happiness for instance only comes when
we forget our eternal search for it, and try to make others happy. Even
religion is changing. The old selfish idea of saving our own souls has
given way largely to the saving of others, by giving them a chance to
redeem themselves. Decent living conditions--”

He had gone on, but Clayton had not listened very intently. He had been
wondering if happiness was not the thing he had somehow missed. It was
then that he had decided to give the car. If, after all, that would make
for the rector's happiness--

“I don't want to find fault with you, Natalie,” he said gravely. “I
would like to see you happy. Sometimes I think you are not. I have my
business, but you have nothing to do, and--I suppose you wouldn't be
interested in war-work, would you? There are a lot of committees, and
since I've been in England I realize what a vast amount is needed.
Clothes, you know, and bandages, and--well, everything.”

“Nothing to do,” she looked up, her eyes wide and indignant. “But of
course you would think that. This house runs itself, I suppose.”

“Let's be honest, Natalie,” he said, with a touch of impatience.
“Actually how much time each day do you give this house? You have plenty
of trained servants. An hour? Two hours?”

“I'll not discuss it with you.” She took up a typewritten sheet
and pretended to read it carefully. Clayton had a half-humorous,
half-irritated conviction that if he was actually hunting happiness he
had begun his search for it rather badly. He took the paper from her,
gently.

“What's this?” he inquired. “Anything I should not see?”

“Decorator's estimates for the new house.” Her voice was resentful.
“You'll have to see them some time.”

“Library curtains, gray Chippendale velvet, gold gimp, faced with
colonial yellow,” he read an item picked at random, “two thousand
dollars! That's going some for curtains, isn't it?”

“It's not too much for that sort of thing.”

“But, look here, Natalie,” he expostulated. “This is to be a country
house, isn't it? I thought you wanted chintzed and homey things. This
looks like a city house in the country.”

He glanced down at the total. The hangings alone, with a tapestry or
two, were to be thirty-five thousand dollars. He whistled.

“Hangings alone! And--what sort of a house has Rodney planned, anyhow?”

“Italian, with a sunken garden. The landscape estimates are there, too.”

He did not look at them.

“It seems to me you and Rodney have been pretty busy while I've been
away,” he remarked. “Well, I want you to be happy, my dear. Only--I
don't want to tie up a fortune just now. We may get into this war, and
if we do--” He rose, and yawned, his arms above his head. “I'm off to
bed,” he said. “Big day to-morrow. I'll want Graham at the office at
8:30.”

She had sat up in bed, and was staring at him. Her face was pale.

“Do you mean that we are going to get into this war?”

“I think it very likely, my dear.”

“But if we do, Graham--”

“We might as well face it. Graham will probably want to go.”

“He'll do nothing of the sort,” she said sharply. “He's all I have. All.
Do you think I'm going to send him over there to be cannon-fodder? I
won't let him go.”

She was trembling violently.

“I won't want him to go, of course. But if the thing comes--he's of age,
you know.”

She eyed him with thinly veiled hostility.

“You're hard, Clay,” she accused him. “You're hard all the way through.
You're proud, too. Proud and hard. You'd want to be able to say your
son was in the army. It's not because you care anything about the war,
except to make money out of it. What is the war to you, anyhow? You
don't like the English, and as for French--you don't even let me have a
French butler.”

He was not the less angry because he realized the essential truth of
part of what she said. He felt no great impulse of sympathy with any
of the combatants. He knew the gravity of the situation rather than its
tragedy. He did not like war, any war. He saw no reason why men should
kill. But this war was a fact. He had had no hand in its making, but it
was made.

His first impulse was to leave her in dignified silence. But she was
crying, and I he disliked leaving her in tears. Dead as was his love for
her, and that night, somehow, he knew that it was dead, she was still
his wife. They had had some fairly happy years together, long ago. And
he felt the need, too, of justification.

“Perhaps you are right, Natalie,” he said, after a moment. “I haven't
cared about this war as much as I should. Not the human side of it,
anyhow. But you ought to understand that by making shells for the
Allies, I am not only making money for myself; they need the shells.
And I'll give them the best. I don't intend only to profit by their
misfortunes.”

She had hardly listened.

“Then, if we get into it, as you say, you'll encourage Graham to go?”

“I shall allow him to go, if he feels it his duty.”

“Oh, duty, duty! I'm sick of the word.” She bent forward and suddenly
caught one of his hands. “You won't make him go, Clay?” she begged.
“You--you'll let him make his own decision?”

“If you will.”

“What do you mean?”

“If you'll keep your hands off, too. We're not in it, yet. God knows I
hope we won't be. But if I promise not to influence him, you must do the
same thing.”

“I haven't any more influence over Graham than that,” she said, and
snapped her finger. But she did not look at him.

“Promise,” he said, steadily.

“Oh, all right.” Her voice and face were sulky. She looked much as
Graham had that evening at the table.

“Is that a promise?”

“Good heavens, do you want me to swear to it?”

“I want you to play fair. That's all.”

She leaned back again among her pillows and gathered her papers.

“All right,” she said, indifferently. “Have you any preference as to
color for your rooms in the new house?”

He was sorry for his anger, and after all, these things which seemed so
unimportant to him were the things that made up her life. He smiled.

“You might match my eyes. I'm not sure what color they are. Perhaps you
know.”

But she had not forgiven him.

“I've never noticed,” she replied. And, small bundle of samples in her
hand, resumed her reading and her inspection of textiles.

“Good night, Natalie.”

“Good night.” She did not look up.

Outside his wife's door he hesitated. Then he crossed and without
knocking entered Graham's bedroom. The boy was lounging in a long chair
by an open fire. He was in his dressing gown and slippers, and an empty
whiskey-and-soda glass stood beside him on a small stand. Graham was
sound asleep. Clayton touched him on the shoulder, but he slept on, his
head to one side, his breathing slow and heavy. It required some little
effort to waken him.

“Graham!” said Clayton sharply.

“Yes.” He stirred, but did not open his eyes.

“Graham! Wake up, boy.”

Graham sat up suddenly and looked at him. The whites of his eyes were
red, but he had slept off the dinner wine. He was quite himself.

“Better get to bed,” his father suggested. “I'll want you early
to-morrow.”

“What time, sir?”

He leaned forward and pressed a button beside the mantel-piece.

“What are you doing that for?”

“Ice water. Awfully thirsty.”

“The servants have gone to bed. Go down and get it yourself.”

Graham looked up at the tone. At his father's eyes, he looked away.

“Sorry, sir,” he said. “Must have had too much champagne. Wasn't much
else to do, was there? Mother's parties--my God, what a dreary lot!”

Clayton inspected the ice water carafe on the stand and found it empty.

“I'll bring you some water from my room,” he said. “And--I don't want to
see you this way again, Graham. When a man cannot take a little wine
at his own table without taking too much he fails to be entirely a
gentleman.”

He went out. When he came back, Graham was standing by the fire in his
pajamas, looking young and rather ashamed. Clayton had a flash of those
earlier days when he had come in to bid the boy good night, and there
had always been that last request for water which was to postpone the
final switching off of the light.

“I'm sorry, father.”

Clayton put his hand on the boy's shoulder and patted him.

“We'll have to do better next time. That's all.”

For a moment the veil of constraint of Natalie's weaving lifted between
them.

“I'm a pretty bad egg, I guess. You'd better shove me off the dock and
let me swim--or drown.”

“I'd hardly like to do that, you know. You are all I have.”

“I'm no good at the mill.”

“You haven't had very much time. I've been a good many years learning
the business.”'

“I'll never be any good. Not there. If there was something to build up
it would be different, but it's all done. You've done it. I'm only a
sort of sublimated clerk. I don't mean,” he added hastily, “that I think
I ought to have anything more. It's only that--well, the struggle's
over, if you know what I mean.”

“I'll talk to you about that to-morrow. Get to bed now. It's one
o'clock.”

He moved to the doorway. Graham, carafe in hand, stood staring ahead
of him. He had the courage of the last whiskey-and-soda, and a sort of
desperate contrition.

“Father.”

“Yes, Graham.”

“I wish you'd let me go to France and fly.”

Something like a cold hand seemed to close round Clayton's heart.

“Fly! Why?”

“Because I'm not doing any good here. And--because I'd like to see if I
have any good stuff in me. All the fellows are going,” he added, rather
weakly.

“That's not a particularly worthy reason, is it?”

“It's about as worthy as making money out of shells, when we haven't any
reason for selling them to the Allies more than the Germans, except that
we can't ship to the Germans.”

He looked rather frightened then. But Clayton was not angry. He saw
Natalie's fine hand there, and the boy's impressionable nature.

“Think that over, Graham,” he said gravely. “I don't believe you quite
mean it. Good-night.”

He went across to his own bedroom, where his silk pajamas, neatly
folded, lay on his painted Louis XVI bed. Under his reading lamp there
was a book. It was a part of Natalie's decorative scheme for the room;
it's binding was mauve, to match the hangings. For the first time since
the room had been done over during his absence he picked up the book.

“Rodney's idea, for a cent!” he reflected, looking rather grimly at the
cover.

He undressed slowly, his mind full of Graham and the problem he
presented. Then he thought of Natalie, and of the little things that
made up her life and filled her days. He glanced about the room,
beautiful, formal, exquisitely appointed. His father's portrait was gone
from over the mantel, and an old French water-color hung there instead.
That was too bad of Natalie. Or had it been Rodney? He would bring it
back. And he gave a fleeting thought to Graham and his request to go
abroad. He had not meant it. It was sheer reaction. But he would talk to
Graham.

He lighted a cigaret, and getting into bed turned on his reading lamp.
Queer how a man could build, and then find that after all he did not
care for the achievement. It was the building alone that was worth
while.

He picked up the book from the table, and opened it casually.

   “When first I loved I gave my very soul
    Utterly unreserved to Love's control,
    But Love deceived me, wrenched my youth away,
    And made the gold of life forever gray.
    Long I lived lonely, yet I tried in vain
    With any other joy to stifle pain;
    There is no other joy, I learned to know,
    And so returned to love, as long ago,
    Yet I, this little while ere I go hence,
    Love very lightly now, in self defense.”

“Twaddle,” said Clayton Spencer, and put the book away. That was the
sort of stuff men like Rodney lived on. In a mauve binding, too.

After he had put out the light he lay for a long time, staring into the
darkness. It was not love he wanted: he was through with all that.
Power was the thing, integrity and power. To yield to no man, to achieve
independence for one's soul--not that he put it that way. He formulated
it, drowsily: 'Not to give a damn for any one, so long as you're right.'
Of course, it was not always possible to know if one was right. He
yawned. His conscious mind was drowsing, and from the depths below,
released of the sentry of his waking hours, came the call of his starved
imagination.




CHAPTER III

There was no moral to be adduced from Graham's waking the next morning.
He roused, reluctantly enough, but blithe and hungry. He sang as he
splashed in his shower, chose his tie whistling, and went down the
staircase two steps at a time to a ravenous breakfast.

Clayton was already at the table in the breakfast room, sitting back
with the newspaper, his coffee at his elbow, the first cigarette of the
morning half smoked. He looked rather older in the morning light. Small
fine threads had begun to show themselves at the corners of his eyes.
The lines of repression from the nostrils to the corners of the mouth
seemed deeper. But his invincible look of boyishness persisted, at that.

There was no awkwardness in Graham's “Morning, dad.” He had not
forgotten the night before, but he had already forgiven himself. He
ignored the newspaper at his plate, and dug into his grapefruit.

“Anything new?” he inquired casually.

“You might look and see,” Clayton suggested, good-naturedly.

“I'll read going down in the car. Can't stand war news on an empty
stomach. Mother all right this morning?”

“I think she is still sleeping.”

“Well, I should say she needs it, after last night. How in the world we
manage, with all the interesting people in the world, to get together
such a dreary lot as that--Lord, it was awful.”

Clayton rose and folded his paper.

“The car's waiting,” he said. “I'll be ready in five minutes.”

He went slowly up the stairs. In her pink bedroom Natalie had just
wakened. Madeleine, her elderly French maid, had brought her breakfast,
and she was lying back among the pillows, the litter of the early mail
about her and a morning paper on her knee. He bent over and kissed
her, perfunctorily, and he was quick to see that her resentment of the
evening before had survived the night.

“Sleep well?” he inquired, looking down at her. She evaded his eyes.

“Not particularly.”

“Any plans for to-day?”

“I'll just play around. I'm lunching out, and I may run out with Rodney
to Linndale. The landscape men are there today.”

She picked up the newspaper as though to end the discussion. He saw then
that she was reading the society news, and he rather more than surmised
that she had not even glanced at the black headings which on the first
page announced the hideous casualties of the Somme.

“Then you've given the planting contract?”

“Some things have to go in in the fall, Clay. For heaven's sake, don't
look like a thunder cloud.”

“Have you given the landscape contract?”

“Yes. And please go out. You make my head ache.”

“How much is it to be?”

“I don't know. Ask Rodney.”

“I'll do nothing of the sort, my dear. This is not Rodney's investment.”

“Nor mine, I suppose!”

“All I want you to do, Natalie, is to consult me. I want you to have a
free hand, but some one with a sense of responsibility ought to check up
these expenditures. But it isn't only that. I'd like to have a hand in
the thing myself. I've rather looked forward to the time when we could
have the sort of country place we wanted.”

“You don't like any of the strings to get out of your fingers, do you?”

“I didn't come up to quarrel, Natalie. I wish you wouldn't force it on
me.”

“I force it on you,” she cried, and laughed in a forced and high-pitched
note. “Just because I won't be over-ridden without a protest! I'm
through, that's all. I shan't go near the place again.”

“You don't understand,” he persisted patiently. “I happen to like
gardens. I had an idea--I told you about it--of trying to duplicate
the old garden at home. You remember it. When we went there on our
honeymoon--”

“You don't call that a garden?”

“Of course I didn't want to copy it exactly. It was old and out of
condition. But there were a lot of old-fashioned flowers---However, if
you intend to build an Italian villa, naturally--”

“I don't intend to build anything, or to plant anything.” Her voice
was frozen. “You go ahead. Do it in your own way. And then you can live
there, if you like. I won't.”

Which was what he carried away with him that morning to the mill. He was
not greatly disturbed by her threat to keep her hands off. He knew
quite well, indeed, that the afternoon would find her, with Rodney Page,
picking her way in her high-heeled shoes over the waste that was some
day to bloom, not like the rose of his desire but according to the
formal and rigid blueprint which Rodney would be carrying. But in five
minutes he had put the incident out of his mind. After all, if it gave
her happiness and occupation, certainly she needed both. And his powers
of inhibition were strong. For many years he had walled up the small
frictions of his married life and its disappointments, and outside that
wall had built up an existence of his own, which was the mill.

When he went down-stairs he found that Graham had ordered his own car
and was already in it, drawing on his gloves.

“Have to come back up-town early, dad,” he called in explanation, and
drove off, going at the reckless speed he affected.

Clayton rode down alone in the limousine. He had meant to outline his
plans of expansion to Graham, but he had had no intention of consulting
him. In his own department the boy did neither better nor worse than any
other of the dozens of young men in the organization. If he had shown
neither special aptitude for nor interest in the business, he had at
least not signally failed to show either. Now, paper and pencil in
hand, Clayton jotted down the various details of the new system in their
sequence; the building of a forging plant to make the rough casts
for the new Italian shells out of the steel from the furnaces, the
construction of a new spur to the little railway which bound the old
plant together with its shining steel rails. There were questions of
supplies and shipping and bank credits to face, the vast and complex
problems of the complete new munition works, to be built out of town and
involving such matters as the housing of enormous numbers of employees.
He scrawled figures and added them. Even with the size of the foreign
contract their magnitude startled him. He leaned back, his mouth
compressed, the lines from the nostrils to the corners deeper than ever.

He had completely forgotten Natalie and the country house.

Outside the gates to the mill enclosure he heard an early extra being
called, and bought it. The Austrian premier had been assassinated. The
successful French counter-attack against Verdun was corroborated,
also. On the center of the front page was the first photograph to reach
America of a tank. He inspected it with interest. So the Allies had at
last shown same inventive genius of their own! Perhaps this was but the
beginning. Even at that, enough of these fighting mammoths, and the
war might end quickly. With the tanks, and the Allied offensive and the
evidence of discontent in Austria, the thing might after all be over
before America was involved.

He reflected, however, that an early peace would not be an unmixed
blessing for him. He wanted the war to end: he hated killing. He felt
inarticulately that something horrible was happening to the world. But
personally his plans were premised on a war to last at least two years
more, until the fall of 1918. That would let him out, cover the cost of
the new plant, bring renewals of his foreign contracts, justify those
stupendous figures on the paper in his hand.

He wondered, rather uncomfortably, what he would do, under the
circumstances, if it were in his power to declare peace to-morrow.

In his office in the mill administration building, he found the general
manager waiting. Through the door into the conference room beyond he
could see the superintendents of the various departments, with Graham
rather aloof and detached, and a sprinkling of the most important
foremen. On his desk, neatly machined, was the first tentative
shell-case made in the mill machine-shop, an experiment rather than a
realization.

Hutchinson, the general manager, was not alone. Opposite him, very
neatly dressed in his best clothes, his hat in his hand and a set
expression on his face, was one of the boss rollers of the steel mill,
Herman Klein. At Clayton's entrance he made a motion to depart, but
Hutchinson stopped him.

“Tell Mr. Spencer what you've been telling me, Klein,” he said curtly.

Klein fingered his hat, but his face remained set.

“I've just been saying, Mr. Spencer,” he said, in good English, but with
the guttural accent which thirty years in America had not eliminated,
“that I'll be leaving you now.”

“Leaving! Why?”

“Because of that!” He pointed, without intentional drama, at the
shell-case. “I can't make those shells for you, Mr. Spencer, and me a
German.”

“You're an American, aren't you?”

“I am, sir. It is not that. It iss that I--” His face worked. He had
dropped back to the old idiom, after years of painful struggle to
abandon it. “It iss that I am a German, also. I have people there, in
the war. To make shells to kill them--no.”

“He is determined, Mr. Spencer,” said Hutchinson. “I have been arguing
with him, but--you can't argue with a German.”

Clayton was uneasily aware of something like sympathy for the man.

“I understand how you feel, Klein,” he observed. “But of course you
know, whether you go or stay, the shells will be made, anyhow.”

“I know that.”

“You are throwing up a good position.”

“I'll try to get another.”

The prospective loss of Klein was a rather serious one. Clayton, seated
behind his great desk, eyed him keenly, and then stooped to bribery. He
mentioned a change in the wage scale, with bonuses to all foremen and
rollers. He knew Klein's pride in the mill, and he outlined briefly
the growth that was about to be developed. But the boss roller remained
obdurate. He understood that such things were to be, but it was not
necessary that he assist Germany's enemies against her. Against the
determination in his heavy square figure Clayton argued in vain. When,
ten minutes later, he went into the conference room, followed by a
secretary with a sheaf of papers, the mill was minus a boss roller, and
there was rankling in his mind Klein's last words.

“I haf no objection, Mr. Spencer, to your making money out of this war,
but I will not.”

There had been no insolence in his tone. He had gone out, with his heavy
German stolidity of mien unchanged, and had closed the door behind him
with quiet finality.




CHAPTER IV

Graham left the conference that morning in a rather exalted mood. The
old mill was coming into its own at last. He had a sense of boyish
triumph in the new developments, a feeling of being a part of big
activities that would bring rich rewards. And he felt a new pride in his
father. He had sat, a little way from the long table, and had watched
the faces of the men gathered about it as clearly and forcibly the
outlines of the new departure were given out. Hitherto “Spencer's” had
made steel only. Now, they were not only to make the steel, but they
were to forge the ingots into rough casts; these casts were then to
be carried to the new munition works, there to be machined, drilled,
polished, provided with fuses, which “Spencer's” were also to make, and
shipped abroad.

The question of speeding production had been faced and met. The various
problems had been discussed and the bonus system tentatively taken up.
Then the men had dispersed, each infected with the drive of his father's
contagious force. “Pretty fine old boy,” Graham had considered. And he
wondered vaguely if, when his time came, he would be able to take hold.
For a few minutes Natalie's closetings lost their effect. He saw his
father, not as one from whom to hide extravagance and unpaid bills,
but as the head of a great concern that was now to be a part of the war
itself. He wandered into his father's office, and picked up the shell.
Clayton was already at his letters, but looked up.

“Think we rather had them, eh, Graham?”

“Think you did, sir. Carried them off their feet. Pretty, isn't it?” He
held up the shell-case. “If a fellow could only forget what the damned
things are for!”

“They are to help to end the war,” said Clayton, crisply. “Don't forget
that, boy.” And went back to his steady dictation.

Graham went out of the building into the mill yard. The noise always
irritated him. He had none of Clayton's joy and understanding of it.
To Clayton each sound had its corresponding activity. To Graham it was
merely din, an annoyance to his ears, as the mill yard outraged his
fastidiousness. But that morning he found it rather more bearable. He
stooped where, in front of the store, the storekeeper had planted a tiny
garden. Some small late-blossoming chrysanthemums were still there and
he picked one and put it in his buttonhole.

His own office was across the yard. He dodged in front of a yard
locomotive, picked his way about masses of lumber and the general litter
of all mill yards, and opened the door of his own building. Just inside
his office a girl was sitting on a straight chair, her hat a trifle
crooked, and her eyes red from crying. He paused in amazement.

“Why, Miss Klein!” he said. “What's the matter?”

She was rather a pretty girl, even now. She stood up at his voice and
made an effort to straighten her hat.

“Haven't you heard?” she asked.

“I haven't heard anything that ought to make Miss Anna Klein weep of a
nice, frosty morning in October. Unless--” he sobered, for her grief was
evident. “Tell me about it.”

“Father has given up his job.”

“No!”!

“I'm telling you, Mr. Spencer. He won't help to make those shells. He's
been acting queer for three or four days and this morning he told your
father.”

Graham whistled.

“As if it made any difference,” she went on irritably. “Some one else
will get his job. That's all. What does he care about the Germans? He
left them and came to America as soon as he could walk.”

Graham sat down.

“Now let's get this,” he said. “He won't make shells for the Allies and
so he's given up his position. All right. That's bad, but he's a good
workman. He'll not have any trouble getting another job. Now, why are
you crying?”

“I didn't think you'd want me to stay on.”

Putting her fear into words brought back her long hours of terror. She
collapsed into the chair again and fell to unquiet sobbing. Graham was
disturbed.

“You're a queer girl,” he said. “Why should that lose me my most valued
assistant?”

When she made no reply he got up and going over to her put a hand on her
shoulder. “Tell me that,” he said.

He looked down at her. The hair grew very soft and blonde at the nape of
her neck, and he ran a finger lightly across it. “Tell me that.”

“I was afraid it would.”

“And, even if it had, which you are a goose for thinking, you're just as
good in your line as your father is in his. I've been expecting any time
to hear of your leaving me for a handsomer man!”

He had been what he would have termed jollying her back to normality
again. But to his intense surprise she suddenly leaned back and looked
up into his face. There was no doubting what he saw there. Just for a
moment the situation threatened to get out of hand. Then he patted her
shoulders and put the safety of his desk between them.

“Run away and bathe your eyes,” he said, “and then come back here
looking like the best secretary in the state, and not like a winter
thaw. We have the deuce of a lot of work to do.”

But after she had gone he sat for some little time idly rapping a pencil
on the top of his desk. By Jove! Anna Klein! Of all girls in the world!
It was rather a pity, too. She was a nice little thing, and in the
last few months she had changed a lot. She had been timid at first, and
hideously dressed. Lately she had been almost smart. Those ear-rings
now--they changed her a lot. Queer--how things went on in a girl's mind,
and a fellow didn't know until something happened. He settled his tie
and smoothed back his heavy hair.

During the remainder of the day he began to wonder if he had not been
a fatuous idiot. Anna did her work with the thoroughness of her German
blood plus her American training. She came back minus her hat, and with
her eyes carefully powdered, and not once during the morning was he able
to meet her eyes fully. By the middle of the afternoon sex vanity
and curiosity began to get the better of his judgment, and he made an
excuse, when she stood beside him over some papers, her hand on the
desk, to lay his fingers over hers. She drew her hand away quickly, and
when he glanced up, boyishly smiling, her face was flushed.

“Please,” she said. And he felt hurt and rebuffed. He had no sentiment
for her whatever, but the devil of mischief of twenty-two was behind
him, urging him on to the eternal experiment. He was very formal with
her for the rest of the day, and had the satisfaction of leaving her, at
four o'clock, white-faced and miserable over her machine in the little
office next to his.

He forgot her immediately, in the attempt to leave the mill without
encountering his father. Clayton, he knew, would be staying late, and
would be exacting similar tribute to the emergency from the entire
force. Also, he had been going about the yard with contractors most of
the afternoon. But Graham made his escape safely. It was two hours later
when his father, getting into the limousine, noticed the absence of the
boy's red car, and asked the gateman how long it had been gone.

“Since about four o'clock, Mr. Spencer.”

Suddenly Clayton felt a reaction from the activities of the day. He
sank back in the deeply padded seat, and felt tired and--in some odd
fashion--lonely. He would have liked to talk to Graham on the way
up-town, if only to crystallize his own thoughts. He would have liked to
be going home to review with Natalie the day's events, the fine spirit
of his men, the small difficulties. But Natalie hated the mention of the
mill.

He thought it probable, too, that they were dining out. Yes, he
remembered. They were dining at the Chris Valentines. Well, that was
better than it might have been. They were not dull, anyhow. His mind
wandered to the Valentine house, small, not too well-ordered, frequently
noisy, but always gay and extremely smart.

He thought of Audrey, and her curious friendship with Natalie. Audrey
the careless, with her dark lazy charm, her deep and rather husky
contralto, her astonishing little French songs, which she sang with
nonchalant grace, and her crowds of boyish admirers whom she alternately
petted and bullied--surely she and Natalie had little enough in common.

Yet, in the last year or so, he had been continually coming across them
together--at the club, at luncheon in the women's dining room, at his
own house, Natalie always perfectly and expensively dressed, Audrey in
the casual garments which somehow her wearing made effective.

He smiled a little. Certain of Audrey's impertinences came to his mind.
She was an amusing young woman. He had an idea that she was always in
debt, and that the fact concerned her very little. He fancied that few
things concerned her very deeply, including Chris. But she knew about
food. Her dinners were as casual as her house, as to service, but
they were worth eating. She claimed to pay for them out of her bridge
winnings, and, indeed, her invitation for to-night had been frankness
itself.

“I'm going to have a party, Clay,” she had said. “I've made two killings
at bridge, and somebody has shipped Chris some ducks. If you'll send me
some cigarets like the last, I'll make it Tuesday.”

He had sent the cigarets, and this was Tuesday.

The pleasant rolling of the car soothed him. The street flashed by,
brilliant with lights that in far perspective seemed to meet. The shop
windows gleamed with color. From curb to curb were other cars like the
one in which he rode, carrying home other men like himself to whatever
the evening held in store. He remembered London at this hour, already
dark and quiet, its few motors making their cautious way in the dusk,
its throngs of clerks, nearly all women now, hurrying home to whatever
dread the night might hold. And it made him slightly more complacent.
These things that he had taken for granted before had since his return
assumed the quality of luxury.

“Pray God we won't get into it,” he said to himself.

He reviewed his unrest of the night before, and smiled at it. Happiness.
Happiness came from a sense of achievement. Integrity and power, that
was the combination. The respect of one's fellow men, the day's
work well done. Romance was done, at his age, but there remained the
adventure of success. A few years more, and he would leave the mill to
Graham and play awhile. After that--he had always liked politics. They
needed business men in politics. If men of training and leisure
would only go in for it there would be some chance of cleaning up the
situation. Yes, he might do that. He was an easy speaker, and--

The car drew up at the curb and the chauffeur got out. Natalie's car
had drawn up just ahead, and the footman was already opening the door.
Rodney Page got out, and assisted Natalie to alight. Clayton smiled. So
she had changed her mind. He saw Rodney bend over her hand and kiss it
after his usual ceremonious manner. Natalie seemed a trifle breathless
when she turned and saw him.

“You're early, aren't you?” she said.

“I fancy it is you who are late.”

Then he realized that the chauffeur was waiting to speak to him.

“Yes, Jackson?”

“I'm sorry, sir. I guess I'll be leaving at the end of my month, Mr.
Spencer.”

“Come into the library and I'll talk to you. What's wrong?”

“There's nothing wrong, sir. I have been very well suited. It's only--I
used to be in the regular army, sir, and I guess I'm going to be needed
again.”

“You mean--we are going to be involved?”

“Yes, sir. I think we are.”

“There's no answer to that, Jackson,” he said. But a sense of irritation
stirred him as he went up the steps to the house door. Jackson was a
good man. Jackson and Klein, and who knew who would be next?

“Oh, damn the war,” he reflected rather wearily.




CHAPTER V

The winter which preceded the entrance of the United States into the war
was socially an extraordinary one. It was marked by an almost feverish
gayety, as though, having apparently determined to pursue a policy
dictated purely by self interest, the people wished to forget their
anomalous position. Like a woman who covers her shame with a smile. The
vast number of war orders from abroad had brought prosperity into homes
where it had long been absent. Mills and factories took on new life.
Labor was scarce and high.

It was a period of extravagance rather than pleasure. People played
that they might not think. Washington, convinced that the nation would
ultimately be involved, kept its secret well and continued to preach a
neutrality it could not enforce. War was to most of the nation a great
dramatic spectacle, presented to them at breakfast and in the afternoon
editions. It furnished unlimited conversation at dinner-parties, led
to endless wrangles, gave zest and point to the peace that made those
dinner parties possible, furnished an excuse for retrenchment here and
there, and brought into vogue great bazaars and balls for the Red Cross
and kindred activities.

But although the war was in the nation's mind, it was not yet in its
soul.

Life went on much as before. An abiding faith in the Allies was the
foundation stone of its complacency. The great six-months battle of the
Somme, with its million casualties, was resulting favorably. On the east
the Russians had made some gains. There were wagers that the Germans
would be done in the Spring.

But again Washington knew that the British and French losses at the
Somme had been frightful; that the amount of lost territory regained was
negligible as against the territory still held; that the food problem
in the British Islands was acute; that the submarine sinkings were
colossal. Our peace was at a fearful cost.

And on the edge of this volcano America played.

When Graham Spencer left the mill that Tuesday afternoon, it was to
visit Marion Hayden. He was rather bored now at the prospect. He would
have preferred going to the Club to play billiards, which was his custom
of a late afternoon. He drove rather more slowly than was his custom,
and so missed Marion's invitation to get there before the crowd.

Three cars before the house showed that she already had callers, and
indeed when the parlor-maid opened the door a burst of laughter greeted
him. The Hayden house was a general rendezvous. There were usually,
by seven o'clock, whiskey-and-soda glasses and tea-cups on most of the
furniture, and half-smoked cigarets on everything that would hold them,
including the piano.

Marion herself met him in the hall, and led him past the drawing-room
door.

“There are people in every room who want to be left alone,” she
volunteered. “I kept the library as long as I could. We can sit on the
stairs, if you like.”

Which they proceeded to do, quite amiably. From various open doors came
subdued voices. The air was pungent with tobacco smoke permeated with a
faint scent of late afternoon highballs.

“Tommy!” Marion called, when she had settled herself.

“Yes,” from a distance.

“Did you leave your cigaret on the piano?”

“No, Toots dear. But I can, easily.”

“Mother,” Marion explained, “is getting awfully touchy about the piano.
Well, do you remember half the pretty things you told me last night?”

“Not exactly. But I meant them.”

He looked up at her admiringly. He was only a year from college, and
he had been rather arbitrarily limited to the debutantes. He found,
therefore, something rather flattering in the attention he was receiving
from a girl who had been out five years, and who was easily the most
popular young woman in the gayer set. It gave him a sense of maturity
Since the night before he had been rankling under a sense of youth.

“Was I pretty awful last night?” he asked.

“You were very interesting. And--I imagine--rather indiscreet.”

“Fine! What did I say?”

“You boasted, my dear young friend.”

“Great Scott! I must have been awful.”

“About the new war contracts.”

“Oh, business!”

“But I found it very interesting. You know, I like business. And I like
big figures. Poor people always do. Has it really gone through? I mean,
those things do slip up sometimes, don't they.

“It's gone through, all right. Signed, sealed, and delivered.”

Encouraged by her interest, he elaborated on the new work. He even
developed an enthusiasm for it, to his own surprise. And the girl
listened intently, leaning forward so that her arm brushed his shoulder.
Her eyes, slightly narrowed, watched him closely. She knew every move of
the game she was determining to play.

Marion Hayden, at twenty-five, knew already what her little world had
not yet realized, that such beauty as she had had was the beauty of
youth only, and that that was going. Late hours, golf, perhaps a little
more champagne than was necessary at dinners, and the mornings found her
almost plain. And, too, she had the far vision of the calculating mind.
She knew that if the country entered the war, every eligible man she
knew would immediately volunteer.

At twenty-five she already noticed a change in the personnel of her
followers. The unmarried men who had danced with her during her first
two winters were now sending flowers to the debutantes, and cutting in
on the younger men at balls. Her house was still a rendezvous, but it
was for couples like the ones who had preempted the drawing-room, the
library and the music room that afternoon. They met there, smoked her
cigarets, made love in a corner, occasionally became engaged. But she
was of the game, no longer in it.

Men still came to see her, a growing percentage of them married. They
brought or sent her tribute, flowers, candy, and cigarets. She was
enormously popular at dances. But more and more her dinner invitations
were from the older crowd. Like Natalie Spencer's stupid party the night
before.

So she watched Graham and listened. He was a nice boy and a handsome
one. Also he promised to be sole heir to a great business. If the war
only lasted long enough--

“Imagine your knowing all those things,” she said admiringly. “You're a
partner, aren't you?”

He flushed slightly.

“Not yet. But of course I shall be.”

“When you really get going, I wonder if you will take me round and show
me how shells are made. I'm the most ignorant person you ever knew.”

“I'll be awfully glad to.”

“Very well. For that promise you shall have a highball. You're an awful
dear, you know.”

She placed a slim hand on his shoulder and patted it. Then, leaning
rather heavily on him for support, she got to her feet.

“We'll go in and stir up some of the lovers,” she suggested. “And if
Tommy Hale hasn't burned up the piano we can dance a bit. You dance
divinely, you know.”

It was after seven when he reached home. He felt every inch a man. He
held himself very straight as he entered the house, and the boyish
grin with which he customarily greeted the butler had given place to a
dignified nod.

Natalie was in her dressing-room. At his knock she told the maid to
admit him, and threw a dressing-gown over her bare shoulders. Then she
sent the maid away and herself cautiously closed the door into Clayton's
room.

“I've got the money for you, darling,” she said. From her jewel case she
took a roll of bills and held them out to him. “Five hundred.”

“I hate to take it, mother.”

“Never mind about taking it. Pay those bills before your father learns
about them. That's all.”

He was divided between gratitude and indignation. His new-found maturity
seemed to be slipping from him. Somehow here at home they always managed
to make him feel like a small boy.

“Honestly, mother, I'd rather go to father and tell him about it. He'd
make a row, probably, but at least you'd be out of it.”

She ignored his protest, as she always ignored protests against her own
methods of handling matters.

“I'm accustomed to it,” was her sole reply. But her resigned voice
brought her, as it always had, the ready tribute of the boy's sympathy.
“Sit down, Graham, I want to talk to you.”

He sat down, still uneasily fingering the roll of bills. Just how far
Natalie's methods threatened to undermine his character was revealed
when, at a sound in Clayton's room, he stuck the money hastily into his
pocket.

“Have you noticed a change in your father since he came back?”

Her tone was so ominous that he started.

“He's not sick, is he?”

“Not that. But--he's different. Graham, your father thinks we may be
forced into the war.”

“Good for us. It's time, that's sure.”

“Graham!”

“Why, good heavens, mother,” he began, “we should have been in it last
May. We should--”

She was holding out both hands to him, piteously.

“You wouldn't go, would you?”

“I might have to go,” he evaded.

“You wouldn't, Graham. You're all I have. All I have left to live for.
You wouldn't need to go. It's ridiculous. You're needed here. Your
father needs you.”

“He needs me the hell of a lot,” the boy muttered. But he went over and,
stooping down, kissed her trembling face.

“Don't worry about me,” he said lightly. “I don't think we've got spine
enough to get into the mix-up, anyhow. And if we have--”

“You won't go. Promise me you won't go.”

When he hesitated she resorted to her old methods with both Clayton and
the boy. She was doing all she could to make them happy. She made no
demands, none. But when she asked for something that meant more than
life to her, it was refused, of course. She had gone through all sorts
of humiliation to get him that money, and this was the gratitude she
received.

Graham listened. She was a really pathetic figure, crouched in her low
chair, and shaken with terror. She must have rather a bad time; there
were so many things she dared not take to his father. She brought them
to him instead, her small grievances, her elaborate extravagances, her
disappointments. It did not occur to him that she transferred to his
young shoulders many of her own burdens. He was only grateful for her
confidence, and a trifle bewildered by it. And she had helped him out of
a hole just now.

“All right. I promise,” he said at last. “But you're worrying yourself
for nothing, mother.”

She was quite content then, cheered at once, consulted the jewelled
watch on her dressing table and rang for the maid.

“Heavens, how late it is!” she exclaimed. “Run out now, dear. And,
Graham, tell Buckham to do up a dozen dinner-napkins in paper. Audrey
Valentine has telephoned that she has just got in, and finds she hasn't
enough. If that isn't like her!”




CHAPTER VI

Months afterward, Clayton Spencer, looking back, realized that the night
of the dinner at the Chris Valentines marked the beginning of a new
epoch for him. Yet he never quite understood what it was that had
caused the change. All that was clear was that in retrospect he always
commenced with that evening, when he was trying to trace his own course
through the months that followed, with their various changes, to the
momentous ones of the following Summer.

Everything pertaining to the dinner, save the food, stood out with odd
distinctness. Natalie's silence during the drive, broken only by his few
questions and her brief replies. Had the place looked well? Very. And
was the planting going on all right? She supposed so. He had hesitated,
rather discouraged. Then:

“I don't want to spoil your pleasure in the place, Natalie--” he had
said, rather awkwardly. “After all, you will be there more than I shall.
You'd better have it the way you like it.”

She had appeared mollified at that and had relaxed somewhat. He fancied
that the silence that followed was no longer resentful, that she was
busily planning. But when they had almost reached the house she turned
to him.

“Please don't talk war all evening, Clay,” she said. “I'm so ghastly
sick of it.”

“All right,” he agreed amiably. “Of course I can't prevent the others
doing it.”

“It's generally you who lead up to it. Ever since you came back you've
bored everybody to death with it.”

“Sorry,” he said, rather stiffly. “I'll be careful.”

He had a wretched feeling that she was probably right. He had come back
so full of new impressions that he had probably overflowed with them.
It was a very formal, extremely tall and reticent Clayton Spencer who
greeted Audrey that night.

Afterward he remembered that Audrey was not quite her usual frivolous
self that evening. But perhaps that was only in retrospect, in view of
what he learned later. She was very daringly dressed, as usual, wearing
a very low gown and a long chain and ear-rings of black opals, and as
usual all the men in the room were grouped around her.

“Thank heaven for one dignified man,” she exclaimed, looking up at him.
“Clayton, you do give tone to my parties.”

It was not until they went in to dinner that he missed Chris. He heard
Audrey giving his excuses.

“He's been called out of town,” she said. “Clay, you're to have his
place. And the flowers are low, so I can look across and admire you.”

There were a dozen guests, and things moved rapidly. Audrey's dinners
were always hilarious. And Audrey herself, Clayton perceived from his
place of vantage, was flirting almost riotously with the man on her
left. She had two high spots of color in her cheeks, and Clayton
fancied--or was that in retrospect, too?--that her gayety was rather
forced. Once he caught her eyes and it seemed to him that she was trying
to convey something to him.

And then, of course, the talk turned to the war, and he caught a flash
of irritation on Natalie's face.

“Ask the oracle,” said Audrey's clear voice, “Ask Clay. He knows all
there is to know.”

“I didn't hear it, but I suppose it is when the war will end?”

“Amazing perspicacity,” some one said.

“I can only give you my own opinion. Ten years if we don't go in.
Possibly four if we do.”

There were clamors of dissent.

“None of them can hold out so long.”

“If we go in it will end in six months.”

“Nonsense! The Allies are victorious now:”

“I only gave an opinion,” he protested. “One man's guess is just as
good as another's. All I contend is that it is going on to a finish. The
French and English are not going to stop until they have made the Hun
pay in blood for what he has cost them.”

“I wish I were a man,” Audrey said' suddenly. “I don't see how any man
with red blood in his veins can sit still, and not take a gun and try
to stop it. Sometimes I think I'll cut off my hair, and go over anyhow.
I've only got one accomplishment. I can shoot. I'd like to sit in a tree
somewhere and pick them off. The butchers!”

There was a roar of laughter, not so much at the words as at the
fierceness with which she delivered them. Clayton, however, felt that
she was in earnest and liked her the better for it. He surmised, indeed,
that under Audrey's affectations there might be something rather fine
if one could get at it. She looked around the table, coolly appraising
every man there.

“Look at us,” she said. “Here we sit, over-fed, over-dressed. Only
not over-wined because I can't afford it. And probably--yes, I think
actually--every man at this table is more or less making money out of it
all. There's Clay making a fortune. There's Roddie, making money out of
Clay. Here am I, serving Clayton's cigarets--I don't know why I pick on
you, Clay. The rest are just as bad. You're the most conspicuous, that's
all.”

Natalie evidently felt that the situation required saving.

“I'm sure we all send money over,” she protested. “To the Belgians and
all that. And if they want things we have to sell--”

“Oh, yes, I know all that,” Audrey broke in, rather wearily. “I know.
We're the saviors of the Belgians, and we've given a lot of money and
shiploads of clothes. But we're not stopping the war. And it's got to be
stopped!”

Clayton watched her. Somehow what she had just said seemed to
crystallize much that he had been feeling. The damnable butchery ought
to be stopped.

“Right, Audrey,” he supported her. “I'd give up every prospect I have if
the thing could be ended now.”

He meant it then. He might not have meant it, entirely, to-morrow or
the day after. But he meant it then. He glanced down the table, to find
Natalie looking at him with cynical amusement.

The talk veered then, but still focused on the war. It became abstract
as was so much of the war talk in America in 1916. Were we, after this
war was over, to continue to use the inventions of science to destroy
mankind, or for its welfare? Would we ever again, in wars to come, go
back to the comparative humanity of the Hague convention? Were such
wickednesses as the use of poison gas, the spreading of disease germs
and the killing of non-combatants, all German precedents, to inaugurate
a new era of cruelty in warfare.

Was this the last war? Would there ever be a last war? Would there not
always be outlaw nations, as there are outlaw individuals? Would there
ever be a league of nations to enforce peace?

From that to Christianity. It had failed. On the contrary, there was a
great revival of religious faith. Creeds, no. Belief, yes. Too many men
were dying to permit the growth of any skepticism as to a future life.
We must have it or go mad.

In the midst of that discussion Audrey rose. Her color had faded, and
her smile was gone.

“I won't listen any longer,” she said. “I'm ready to talk about
fighting, but not about dying.”

Clayton was conscious that he had had, in spite of Audrey's speech about
the wine, rather more to drink than he should have. He was not at all
drunk, but a certain excitement had taken the curb off his tongue. After
the departure of the women he found himself, rather to his own surprise,
delivering a harangue on the Germans.

“Liars and cheats,” he said. And was conscious of the undivided
attention of the men. “They lied when they signed the Hague Convention;
they lie when they claim that they wanted peace, not war; they lie when
they claim the mis-use by the Allies of the Red Cross; they lie to the
world and they lie to themselves. And their peace offers will be lies.
Always lies.”

Then, conscious that the table was eying him curiously, he subsided into
silence.

“You're a dangerous person, Clay,” somebody said. “You're the kind who
develops a sort of general hate, and will force the President's hand
if he can. You're too old to go yourself, but you're willing to send a
million or two boys over there to fight a war that is still none of our
business.”

“I've got a son,” Clayton said sharply. And suddenly remembered Natalie.
He would want to boast, she had said, that he had a son in the army.
Good God, was he doing it already? He subsided into the watchful silence
of a man not entirely sure of himself.

He took no liquor, and with his coffee he was entirely himself again.
But he was having a reaction. He felt a sort of contemptuous scorn
for the talk at the table. The guard down, they were either mouthing
flamboyant patriotism or attacking the Government. It had done too much.
It had done too little. Voices raised, faces flushed, they wrangled,
protested, accused.

And the nation, he reflected, was like that, divided apparently
hopelessly. Was there anything that would unite it, as for instance
France was united? Would even war do it? Our problem was much greater,
more complicated. We were of every race. And the country was founded and
had grown by men who had fled from the quarrels of Europe. They had come
to find peace. Was there any humanitarian principle in the world strong
enough to force them to relinquish that peace?

Clayton found Audrey in the hall as they moved at last toward the
drawing-room. He was the last of the line of men, and as he paused
before her she touched him lightly on the arm.

“I want to talk to you, Clay. Unless you're going to play.”

“I'd rather not, unless you need me.”

“I don't. I'm not playing either. And I must talk to some one.”

There was something wrong with Audrey. Her usual insouciance was gone,
and her hands nervously fingered the opal beads of her long necklace.

“What I really want to do,” she added, “is to scream. But don't look
like that. I shan't do it. Suppose we go up to Chris's study.”

She was always a casual hostess. Having got her parties together, and
having fed them well, she consistently declined further responsibility.
She kept open house, her side board and her servants at the call of
her friends, but she was quite capable of withdrawing herself, without
explanation, once things were moving well, to be found later by some
one who was leaving, writing letters, fussing with her endless bills, or
sending a check she could not possibly afford to some one in want
whom she happened to have heard about. Her popularity was founded on
something more substantial than her dinners.

Clayton was liking Audrey better that night than he had ever liked her,
though even now he did not entirely approve of her. And to the call of
any woman in trouble he always responded. It occurred to him, following
her up the stairs, that not only was something wrong with Audrey, but
that it was the first time he had ever known her to show weakness.

Chris's study was dark. She groped her way in and turned on the lamp,
and then turned and faced him.

“I'm in an awful mess, Clay,” she said. “And the worst of it is, I don't
know just what sort of a mess it is.”

“Are you going to tell me about it?”

“Some of it. And if I don't start to yelling like a tom-cat.”

“You're not going to do that. Let me get you something.”

He was terrified by her eyes. “Some aromatic ammonia.” That was
Natalie's cure for everything.

“I'm not going to faint. I never do. Close the door and sit down. And
then--give me a hundred dollars, if you have it. Will you?”

“Is that enough?” he asked. And drew out his black silk evening wallet,
with its monogram in seed pearls. He laid the money on her knee, for she
made no move to take it. She sat back, her face colorless, and surveyed
him intently.

“What a comfort you are, Clay,” she said. “Not a word in question. Just
like that! Yet you know I don't borrow money, usually.”

“The only thing that is important is that I have the money with me. Are
you sure it's enough?”

“Plenty. I'll send it back in a week or so. I'm selling this house. It's
practically sold. I don't know why anybody wants it. It's a poky little
place. But--well, it doesn't matter about the house. I called up some
people to-day who have been wanting one in this neighborhood and I'm
practically sure they'll take it.”

“But--you and Chris--”

“We have separated, Clay. At least, Chris has gone. There's a long story
behind it. I'm not up to telling it to-night. And this money will end
part of it. That's all I'm going to tell about the money. It's a small
sum, isn't it, to break up a family!”

“Why, it's absurd! It's--it's horrible, Audrey.”

“Oh, it isn't the money. That's a trifle. I just had to have it quickly.
And when I learned I needed it of course the banks were closed. Besides,
I fancy Chris had to have all there was.”

Clayton was puzzled and distressed. He had not liked Chris. He had hated
his cynicism, his pose of indifference. His very fastidiousness had
never seemed entirely genuine. And this going away and taking all
Audrey's small reserve of money--

“Where is he?”

“I don't know. I believe on his way to Canada.”

“Do you mean--”

“Oh, no, he didn't steal anything. He's going to enlist in the Canadian
army. Or he said so when he left.”

“Look here, Audrey, you can't tell me only part of the story. Do you
mean to say that Chris has had a magnificent impulse and gone to fight?
Or that he's running away from something?”

“Both,” said Audrey. “I'll tell you this much, Clay. Chris has got
himself into a scrape. I won't tell you about that, because after all
that's his story. And I'm not asking for sympathy. If you dare to pity
me I'll cry, and I'll never forgive you.”

“Why didn't he stay and face it like a man? Not leave you to face it.”

“Because the only person it greatly concerned was myself. He didn't want
to face me. The thing that is driving me almost mad is that he may be
killed over there. Not because I love him so much. I think you know how
things have been. But because he went to--well, I think to reinstate
himself in my esteem, to show me he's a man, after all.”

“Good heavens, Audrey. And you went through dinner with all this to
bear!”

“I've got to carry it right along, haven't I? You know how I've been
about this war, Clay. I've talked and talked about wondering how our men
could stay out of it. So when the smash came, he just said he was going.
He would show me there was some good stuff in him still. You see, I've
really driven him to it, and if he's killed--”

A surge of resentment against the absent man rose in Clayton Spencer's
mind. How like the cynicism of Chris's whole attitude that he should
thrust the responsibility for his going onto Audrey. He had made her
unhappy while he was with her, and now his death, if it occurred, would
be a horror to her.

“I don't know why I burden you with all this,” she said, rather
impatiently. “I daresay it is because I knew you'd have the money. No,
I don't mean that. I'd rather go to you in trouble than to any one else;
that's why.”

“I hope you always will.”

“Oh, I shall! Don't worry.” But her attempt at gayety fell flat. She
lighted a cigaret from the stand beside her and fell to studying his
face.

“What's happened to you?” she asked. “There's a change in you, somehow.
I've noticed it ever since you came home. You ought to be smug and
contented, if any man should. But you're not, are you?”

“I'm working hard. That's all. I don't want to talk about myself,” he
added impatiently. “What about you? What are you going to do?”

“Sell my house, pay my debts and live on my own little bit of an
income.”

“But, good heavens, Audrey! Chris has no right to cut off like this, and
leave you. I don't know the story, but at least he must support you. A
man can't just run away and evade every obligation. I think I'll have to
go after him and give him a talking to.”

“No!” she said, bending forward. “Don't do that. He has had a bad scare.
But he's had one decent impulse, too. Let him alone, Clay.”

She placed the money on the stand, and rose. As she faced him, she
impulsively placed her hands on his shoulders.

“I wish I could tell you, Clay,” she said, in her low, slightly husky
voice, “how very, very much I admire you. You're pretty much of a man,
you know. And--there aren't such a lot of them.”

For an uneasy moment he thought she was going to kiss him. But she let
her hands fall, and smiling faintly, led the way downstairs. Once down,
however, she voiced the under lying thought in her mind.

“If he comes out, Clay, he'll never forgive me, probably. And if he
is--if he doesn't, I'll never forgive myself. So I'm damned either way.”

But ten minutes later, with a man on either side of her, she was sitting
at the piano with a cigaret tucked behind her ear, looking distractingly
pretty and very gay and singing a slightly indecorous but very witty
little French song.

Clayton Spencer, cutting in on the second rubber, wondered which of the
many he knew was the real Audrey. He wondered if Chris had not married,
for instance, the girl at the piano, only to find she was the woman
upstairs. And he wondered, too, if that were true, why he should have
had to clear out. So many men married the sort Audrey had been, in
Chris's little study, only to find that after all the thing they had
thought they were getting was a pose, and it was the girl at the piano
after all.

He missed her, somewhat later. She was gone a full half hour, and he
fancied her absence had something to do with the money she had borrowed.




CHAPTER VII

Two things helped greatly to restore Clayton to a more normal state of
mind during the next few days. One of them undoubtedly was the Valentine
situation. Beside Audrey's predicament and Chris's wretched endeavor to
get away and yet prove himself a man, his own position seemed, if not
comfortable, at least tenable. He would have described it, had he been
a man to put such a thing into words, as that “he and Natalie didn't
exactly hit it off.”

There were times, too, during those next few days, when he wondered
if he had not exaggerated their incompatibility. Natalie was unusually
pleasant. She spent some evening hours on the arm of his big chair,
talking endlessly about the Linndale house, and he would lean back,
smiling, and pretend to a mad interest in black and white tiles and
loggias.

He made no further protest as to the expense.

“Tell me,” he said once, “what does a fellow wear in this--er--Italian
palace? If you have any intention of draping me in a toga and putting
vine leaves in my hair, or whatever those wreaths were made of--!”

Natalie had no sense of humor, however. She saw that he meant to be
amusing, and she gave the little fleeting smile one gives to a child who
is being rather silly.

“Of course,” he went on, “we'll have Roman baths, and be anointed with
oil afterwards by lady Greek slaves. Perfumed oil.”

“Don't be vulgar, Clay.” And he saw she was really offended.

While there was actually no change in their relationship, which remained
as it had been for a dozen years, their surface life was pleasanter.
And even that small improvement cheered him greatly. He was thankful for
such a peace, even when he knew that he had bought it at a heavy price.

The other was his work. The directorate for the new munition plant had
been selected, and on Thursday of that week he gave a dinner at his club
to the directors. It had been gratifying to him to find how easily
his past reputation carried the matter of the vast credits needed, how
absolutely his new board deferred to his judgment. The dinner became, in
a way, an ovation. He was vastly pleased and a little humbled. He wanted
terribly to make good, to justify their faith in him. They were the big
financial men of his time, and they were agreeing to back his judgment
to the fullest extent.

When the dinner was over, a few of the younger men were in no mood to
go home. They had dined and wined, and the night was young. Denis Nolan,
who had been present as the attorney for the new concern, leaned back in
his chair and listened to them with a sort of tolerant cynicism.

“Oh, go home, you fellows,” he said at last. “You make me sick. Enough's
enough. Why the devil does every dinner like this have to end in a
debauch?”

In the end, however, both he and Clayton went along, Clayton at least
frankly anxious to keep an eye on one or two of them until they started
home. He had the usual standards, of course, except for himself. A man's
private life, so long as he was not a bounder, concerned him not at all.
But this had been his dinner. He meant to see it through. Once or twice
he had seen real tragedy come to men as a result of the recklessness of
long dinners, many toasts and the instinct to go on and make a night of
it.

Afterward they went to a midnight roof-garden, and at first it was
rather dreary. Their youth was only comparative after all, and the eyes
of the girls who danced and sang passed over them, to rest on boys in
their twenties.

Nolan chuckled.

“Pathetic!” he said. “The saddest sight in the world! Every one of
you here would at this moment give up everything he's got to be under
thirty.”

“Oh, shut up!” some one said, almost savagely.

“Of course, there are compensations,” he drawled. “At twenty you want to
take the entire bunch home and keep 'em. At thirty you know you can't,
but you still want to. At forty and over you don't want them at all, but
you think it's damned curious they don't want you.”

Clayton had watched the scene with a rather weary interest. He was,
indeed, trying to put himself in Graham's place, at Graham's age. He
remembered once, at twenty, having slipped off to see “The Black Crook,”
 then the epitome of wickedness, and the disillusionment of seeing women
in tights with their accentuated curves and hideous lack of appeal to
the imagination. The caterers of such wares had learned since then. Here
were soft draperies instead, laces and chiffons. The suggestion was not
to the eyes but to the mind. How devilishly clever it all was.

Perhaps there were some things he ought to discuss with Graham. He
wondered how a man led up to such a thing.

Nolan bent toward him.

“I've been watching for a girl,” he said, “but I don't see her. Last
time I was here I came with Chris. She was his girl.”

“Chris!”

“Yes. It stumped me, at first. She came and sat with us, not a bad
little thing, but--Good Lord, Clay, ignorant and not even pretty! And
Chris was fastidious, in a way. I don't understand it.”

The ancient perplexity of a man over the sex selections of his friends
puckered his forehead.

“Damned if I understand it,” he repeated.

A great wave of pity for Audrey Valentine surged in Clayton Spencer's
heart. She had known it, of course; that was why Chris had gone away.
How long had she known it? She was protecting Chris's name, even now.
For all her frivolity, there was something rather big in Audrey. The way
she had held up at her dinner, for instance--and he rather fancied
that the idea of his going into the army had come from her, directly or
indirectly. So Chris, from being a fugitive, was already by way of being
a hero to his friends.

Poor Audrey!

He made a mental note to send her some flowers in the morning.

He ordered them on his way down-town, and for some curious reason she
was in his mind most of the day. Chris had been a fool to throw away a
thing so worth having. Not every man had behind him a woman of Audrey's
sort.




CHAPTER VIII

That afternoon, accompanied by a rather boyishly excited elderly
clergyman, he took two hours off from the mill and purchased a new car
for Doctor Haverford.

The rector was divided between pleasure at the gift and apprehension at
its cost, but Clayton, having determined to do a thing, always did it
well.

“Nonsense,” he said. “My dear man, the church has owed you this car for
at least ten years. If you get half the pleasure out of using it that
I'm having in presenting it to you, it will be well worth while. I
only wish you'd let me endow the thing. It's likely to cost you a small
fortune.”

Doctor Haverford insisted that he could manage that. He stood off,
surveying with pride not unmixed with fear its bright enamel, its
leather linings, the complicated system of dials and bright levers which
filled him with apprehension.

“Delight says I must not drive it,” he said. “She is sure I would go too
fast, and run into things. She is going to drive for me.”

“How is Delight?”

“I wish you could see her, Clayton. She--well, all young girls are
lovely, but sometimes I think Delight is lovelier than most. She is much
older than I am, in many ways. She looks after me like a mother. But she
has humor, too. She has been drawing the most outrageous pictures of
me arrested for speeding, and she has warned me most gravely against
visiting road houses!”

“But Delight will have to be taught, if she is to run the car.”

“The salesman says they will send some one.”

“They give one lesson, I believe. That's not enough. I think Graham
could show her some things. He drives well.”

Flying uptown a little later in Clayton's handsome car, the rector
dreamed certain dreams. First his mind went to his parish visiting list,
so endless, so never cleaned up, and now about to be made a pleasure
instead of a penance. And into his mind, so strangely compounded of
worldliness and spirituality, came a further dream--of Delight and
Graham Spencer--of ease at last for the girl after the struggle to keep
up appearances of a clergyman's family in a wealthy parish.

Money had gradually assumed an undue importance in his mind. Every
Sunday, every service, he dealt in money. He reminded his people of the
church debt. He begged for various charities. He tried hard to believe
that the money that came in was given to the Lord, but he knew perfectly
well that it went to the janitor and the plumber and the organist. He
watched the offertory after the sermon, and only too often as he stood
waiting, before raising it before the altar, he wondered if the people
felt that they had received their money's worth.

He had started life with a dream of service, but although his own sturdy
faith persisted, he had learned the cost of religion in dollars and
cents. So, going up town, he wondered if Clayton would increase his
church subscription, now that things were well with him.

“After all,” he reflected, “war is not an unmixed evil,” and outlined
a sermon, to be called the Gains of War, and subsequently reprinted
in pamphlet form and sold for the benefit of the new altar fund. He
instructed Jackson to drive to the parish house instead of to the
rectory, so that he might jot down the headings while they were in his
mind. They ran like this: Spiritual growth; the nobility of sacrifice;
the pursuit of an ideal; the doctrine of thy brother's keeper.

He stopped to speak to Jackson from the pavement.

“I daresay we shall be in frequent difficulties with that new car of
ours, Jackson,” he said genially. “I may have to ask you to come round
and explain some of its mysterious interior to me.”

Jackson touched his cap.

“Thank you, sir, I'll be glad to come. But I am leaving Mr. Spencer
soon.”

“Leaving!”

“Going back to the army, sir.”

In the back of his mind the rector had been depending on Jackson, and he
felt vaguely irritated.

“I'm sorry to hear it. I'd been counting on you.”

“Very sorry, sir. I'm not leaving immediately.”

“I sometimes think,” observed the rector, still ruffled, “that a
man's duty is not always what it appears on the surface. To keep Mr.
Spencer--er--comfortable, while he is doing his magnificent work for the
Allies, may be less spectacular, but it is most important.”

Jackson smiled, a restrained and slightly cynical smile.

“That's a matter for a man's conscience, isn't it, sir?” he asked. And
touching his cap again, moved off. Doctor Haverford felt reproved. Worse
than that, he felt justly reproved. He did not touch the Gains of War
that afternoon.

In the gymnasium he found Delight, captaining a basket-ball team. In her
knickers and middy blouse she looked like a little girl, and he stood
watching her as, flushed and excited, she ran round the long room. At
last she came over and dropped onto the steps at his feet.

“Well?” she inquired, looking up. “Did you get it?”

“I did, indeed. A beauty, Delight.”

“A flivver?”

“Not at all. A very handsome car.” He told her the make, and she flushed
again with pleasure.

“Joy and rapture!” she said. “Did you warn him I am to drive it?”

“I did. He suggests that Graham give you some lessons.”

“Graham!”

“Why not?”

“He'll be bored to insanity. That's all. You--you didn't suggest it, did
you, daddy?”

With all her adoration of her father, Delight had long recognized under
his real spirituality a certain quality of worldly calculation. That,
where it concerned her, it was prompted only by love did not make her
acceptance of it easier.

“Certainly not,” said the rector, stiffly.

“Graham's changed, you know. He used to be a nice little kid. But
he's--I don't know what it is. Spoiled, I suppose.”

“He'll steady down, Delight.”

She looked up at him with clear, slightly humorous eyes.

“Don't get any queer ideas about Graham Spencer and me, Daddy,” she
said. “In the first place, I intend to choose my own husband. He's to
look as much as possible like you, but a trifle less nose. And in the
second place, after I've backed the car into a telegraph pole; and
turned it over in a ditch, Graham Spencer is just naturally going to
know I am no woman to tie to.”

She got up and smiled at him.

“Anyhow, I wouldn't trust him with the communion service,” she added,
and walking out onto the floor, blew shrilly on her whistle. The rector
watched her with growing indignation. These snap judgments of youth!
The easy damning of the young! They left no room for argument. They
condemned and walked away, leaving careful plans in ruin behind them.

And Delight, having gone so far, went further. She announced that
evening at dinner that she would under no circumstances be instructed by
Graham Spencer. Her mother ventured good-humored remonstrance.

“The way to learn to drive a car,” said Delight, “is to get into it and
press a few things, and when it starts, keep on going. You've got to
work it out for yourself.”

And when Clayton, calling up with his usual thoughtfulness that evening,
offered Graham as instructor, she refused gratefully but firmly.

“You're a dear to think of it,” she said, “and you're a dear to have
given Daddy the car. But I'm just naturally going to fight it out in my
own way if it takes all winter.”

Natalie, gathering her refusal from Clayton's protest, had heaved a sigh
of relief. Not that she objected to Delight Haverford. She liked her as
much as she liked and understood any young girl, which was very little.
But she did not want Graham to marry. To marry would be to lose him.
And again, watching Clayton's handsome head above his newspaper, she
reflected that Graham was all she had.

Nevertheless, Delight received a lesson in driving from Graham, and that
within two days.

On Saturday afternoon, finding the mill getting on his nerves, Clayton
suggested to Graham what might be the last golf of the autumn and Graham
consented cheerfully enough. For one thing, the offices closed at noon,
and Anna Klein had gone. He was playing a little game with Anna--a
light-hearted matter of a glance now and then caught and held, a touched
hand, very casually done, and an admiring comment now and then on her
work. And Anna was blossoming like a flower. She sat up late to make
fresh white blouses for the office, and rose early to have abundance of
time to dress. She had taken to using a touch of rouge, too, although
she put it on after she reached the mill, and took it off before she
started for home.

Her father, sullen and irritable these days, would have probably beaten
her for using it.

But Anna had gone, and a telephone call to Marion Hayden had told him
she was not at home. He thought it possible she had gone to the country
club, and accepted his father's suggestion of golf willingly.

From the moment he left the mill Anna had left his mind. He was at that
period when always in the back of his mind there was a girl. During the
mill hours the girl was Anna, because she was there. In the afternoon it
was Marion, just then, but even at that there were entire evenings when,
at the theater, a pretty girl in the chorus held and absorbed his entire
attention--or at a dance a debutante, cloudy and mysterious in white
chiffon, bounded his universe for a few hours.

On this foundation of girl he built the superstructure of his days. Not
evil, but wholly irresponsible. The urge of vital youth had caught him
and held him. And Clayton, sitting that day beside him in the car,
while Graham drove and the golf clubs rattled in their bags at his feet,
remembered again the impulses of his own adolescence, and wondered.
There had been a time when he would have gone to the boy frankly, with
the anxieties he was beginning to feel. There were so many things he
wanted to tell the boy. So many warnings he should have.

But Natalie had stolen him. That was what it amounted to. She had stolen
his confidence, as only a selfish woman could. And against that cabal of
mother and son he felt helpless. It was even more than that. As against
Natalie's indulgence he did not wish to pose as a mentor pointing out
always the way of duty.

“How old are you, Graham?” he said suddenly.

“Twenty-two.” Graham glanced at him curiously. His father knew his age,
of course.

“I was married at your age.”

“Tough luck,” said Graham. And then: “I'm sorry, father, I didn't mean
that. But it's pretty early, isn't it? No time for a good time, or
anything.”

“I fancy Nature meant men to marry young, don't you? It saves a lot
of--complications.”

“The girl a fellow marries at that age isn't often the one he'd marry
at thirty,” said Graham. And feeling that he had said the wrong thing,
changed the subject quickly. Clayton did not try to turn it back into
its former channel. The boy was uncomfortable, unresponsive. There was a
barrier between them, of self-consciousness on his part, of evasion and
discomfort on Graham's.

On the way over they had sighted Delight in the new car. She had
tried to turn, had backed into a ditch and was at that moment ruefully
surveying a machine which had apparently sat down on its rear wheels
with its engine pointed pathetically skyward.

Delight's face fell when she recognized them.

“Of course it would have to be you,” she said. “Of all the people who
might have seen my shame--I'm going on with you. I never want to see the
old thing again.”

“Anything smashed?” Graham inquired.

“It looks smashed. I can't tell.”

It was not until the car was out of the ditch, and Clayton had driven
off in Graham's car toward the club that Delight remembered her father's
voice the day he had told her Graham would teach her to drive. She
stiffened and he was quick to see the change in her manner. The total
damage was one flat tire, and while the engine was inflating it, he
looked at her. She had grown to be quite pretty. His eyes approved her.

“Better let me come round and give you a few lessons, Delight.”

“I'd rather learn by myself, if you don't mind.”

“You'll have a real smash unless you learn properly.”

But she remained rather obstinately silent.

“What's the matter with me, Delight? You're not exactly crazy about me,
are you?”

“That's silly. I don't know anything about you any more.”

“That's your fault. You know I've been away for four years, and since
I came back I haven't seen much of you. But, if you'll let me come
round--”

“You can come if you like. You'll be bored, probably.”

“You're being awfully nasty, you know. Here I come to pull you out of
a ditch and generally rescue you, and--Come, now, Delight, what is it?
There's something. We used to be pals.”

“I don't know, Graham,” she said truthfully. “I only know--well, I hear
things, of course. Nothing very bad. Just little things. I wish you
wouldn't insist. It's idiotic. What does it matter what I think?”

Graham flushed. He knew well enough one thing she had heard. Her father
and mother had been at dinner the other night, and he had had too much
to drink.

“Sorry.”

He stopped the pump and put away the tools, all in silence. Good
heavens, was all the world divided into two sorts of people: the
knockers--and under that heading he placed his father, Delight, and all
those who occasionally disapproved of him--and the decent sort who liked
a fellow and understood him?

But his training had been too good to permit him to show his angry
scorn. He made an effort and summoned a smile.

“All ready,” he said. “And since you won't let me teach you, perhaps I'd
better take you home.”

“You were going to the club.”

“Oh, that's all right. Father's probably found some one.”

But she insisted that he drive them both to the club, and turn the car
round there. Then, with a grinding of gear levers that made him groan,
she was off toward home, leaving Graham staring after her.

“Well, can you beat it?” he inquired of the empty air. “Can you beat
it?”

And wounded in all the pride of new manhood, he joined Marion and her
rather riotous crowd around the fire inside the clubhouse. Clayton had
given him up and was going around alone, followed by a small caddie.
The links were empty, and the caddie lonely. He ventured small bits of
conversation now and then, looking up with admiration at Clayton's tall
figure. And, after a little, Clayton took the bag from him and used him
only for retrieving balls. The boy played round, whistling.

“Kinda quiet to-day, ain't it?” he offered, trudging a foot or two
behind.

“It is, rather, young man.”

“Mostly on Saturdays I caddie for Mr. Valentine. But he's gone to the
war.”

“Oh, he has, has he?” Clayton built a small tee, and placed his ball on
it. “Well, maybe we'll all be going some day.”

He drove off and started after the ball. It was not until he was on the
green that he was conscious of the boy beside him again.

“How old d'you have to be to get into the army, Mr. Spencer?” inquired
the caddie, anxiously.

Clayton looked at him quizzically.

“Want to try for it, do you? Well, I'm afraid you'll have to wait a
bit.”

“I'm older than I look, Mr. Spencer.”

“How old are you?”

“Sixteen.”

“Afraid you'll have to wait a while,” said Clayton and achieved a
well-nigh perfect long putt.

“I'd just like to get a whack at them Germans,” offered the boy, and
getting no response, trudged along again at his heels.

Suddenly it struck Clayton as rather strange that, in all the time since
his return from Europe, only four people had shown any but a sort of
academic interest in the war, and that, ironically enough, a German had
been the first to make a sacrifice for principle. Chris had gone, to get
out of trouble. The little caddie wanted to go, to get a “whack” at the
madmen of Europe. And Jackson, the chauffeur, was going, giving up his
excellent wages to accept the thirty-odd dollars a month of a non-com,
from a pure sense of responsibility.

But, among the men he knew best, in business and in the clubs, the war
still remained a magnificent spectacle. A daily newspaper drama.

Suddenly Clayton saw Audrey Valentine. She was swinging toward him, her
bag with its clubs slung over her shoulder, her hands in the pockets of
an orange-colored sweater. In her black velvet tam and short skirt she
had looked like a little girl, and at first he did not recognize her.
She had seen him, however, and swung toward him.

“Hello, Clay,” she called, when they were within hailing distance.
“Bully shot, that last.”

“Where's your caddie?”

“I didn't want one. I had a feeling that, if I took one, and he lost a
ball in these impecunious times of mine, I'd murder him. Saw you at the
fifth hole. I'd know your silhouette anywhere.”

Under her rakish cap her eyes were rather defiant. She did not want
pity; she almost dared him to pity her.

“Come round again with me, Audrey, won't you?”

“I'm off my game to-day. I'll wander along, if you don't mind. I'll
probably sneeze or something when you're driving, of course.”

“Nothing,” he said, gravely approaching his ball, “so adds distance to
my drive as a good explosive sneeze just behind it.”

They talked very little. Audrey whistled as she walked along with the
free swinging step that was characteristic of her, and Clayton was
satisfied merely to have her companionship. She was not like some women;
a man didn't have to be paying her compliments or making love to her.
She even made no comments on his shots, and after a time that rather
annoyed him.

“Well?” he demanded, after an excellent putt. “Was that good or wasn't
it?”

“Very good,” she said gravely. “I am only surprised when you do a thing
badly. Not when you do it well.”

He thought that over.

“Have you anything in mind that I do badly? I mean, particularly in
mind.”

“Not very much.” But after a moment: “Why don't you make Natalie play
golf?”

“She hates it.”

He rather wondered if she thought Natalie was one of the things he
managed badly.

The sense of companionship warmed him. Although neither of them realized
it, their mutual loneliness and dissatisfaction had brought them
together, and mentally at least they were clinging, each desperately to
the other. But their talk was disjointed:

“I'll return that hundred soon. I've sold the house.”

“I wish you wouldn't worry about it. It's ridiculous, Audrey.”

And, a hundred yards or so further on, “They wouldn't have Chris in
Canada. His heart. He's going into the French Ambulance service.”

“Good for Chris.”

But she came out very frankly, when they started back to the clubhouse.

“It's done me a lot of good, meeting you, Clay. There's something so big
and solid and dependable about you. I wonder--I suppose you don't mind
my using you as a sort of anchor to windward?”

“Good heavens, Audrey! If I could only do something.”

“You don't have to do a thing.” She smiled up at him, and her old
audacity was quite gone. “You've just got to be. And--you don't have to
send me flowers, you know. I mean, I understand that you're sorry for
me, without that. You're the only person in the world I'd allow to be
sorry for me.”

He was touched. There was no coquetry in her manner. She paid her little
tribute quite sincerely and frankly.

“I've been taking stock to-day,” she went on, “and I put you among my
assets. One reliable gentleman, six feet tall, weight about a hundred
and seventy, in good condition. Heavens, what a lot of liabilities you
had to off-set!”

He stopped and looked down at her.

“Audrey dear,” he said, “what am I to say to all that? What can I do?
How can I help?”

“You might tell me--No, that's silly.”

“What is silly?”

But she did not answer. She called “Joey!” and gave him her clubs.

“Joey wants to be a soldier,” she observed.

“So he says.”

“I want to be a soldier, too, Clay. A good soldier.”

He suspected that she was rather close to unusual tears.

As they approached the clubhouse they saw Graham and Marion Hayden
standing outside. Graham was absently dropping balls and swinging at
them. It was too late when Clayton saw the danger and shouted sharply.

A ball caught the caddie on the side of the head and he dropped like a
shot.

All through that night Clayton and Audrey Valentine sat by the boy's
white bed in the hospital. Clayton knew Graham was waiting outside, but
he did not go out to speak to him. He was afraid of himself, afraid in
his anger that he would widen the breach between them.

Early in the evening Natalie had come, in a great evening-coat that
looked queerly out of place, but she had come, he knew, not through
sympathy for the thin little figure on the bed, but as he had known she
would come, to plead for Graham. And her cry of joy when the surgeons
had said the boy would live was again for Graham.

She had been too engrossed to comment on Audrey's presence there, and
Audrey had gone out immediately and left them together. Clayton was
forced, that night, to an unwilling comparison of Natalie with another
woman. On the surface of their lives, where only they met, Natalie had
always borne comparison well. But here was a new standard to measure by,
and another woman, a woman with hands to serve and watchful, intelligent
eyes, outmeasured her.

Not that Clayton knew all this. He felt, in a vague way, that Natalie
was out of place there, and he felt, even more strongly, that she had
not the faintest interest in the still figure on its white bed--save as
it touched Graham and herself.

He was resentful, too, that she felt it necessary to plead with him
for his own boy. Good God, if she felt that way about him, no wonder
Graham--

She had placed a hand on Clayton's arm, as he sat in that endless vigil,
and bent down to whisper, although no sound would have penetrated that
death-like stupor.

“It was an accident, Clay,” she pled. “You know Graham's the kindest
soul in the world. You know that, Clay.”

“He had been drinking.” His voice sounded cold and strained to his own
ears.

“Not much. Almost nothing, Toots says positively.”

“Then I'd rather he had been, Natalie. If he drove that ball out of
wanton indifference--”

“He didn't see the boy.”

“He should have looked.”

In her anger she ceased her sibilant whispering, and stood erect.

“I told him you'd be hard,” she said. “He's outside, half-sick with
fright, because he is afraid. Afraid of you,” she added, and went out,
her silks rustling in the quiet corridor.

She had gone away soon after that, the nurse informed him. And toward
dawn Clayton left Audrey in the sick room and found Graham. He was
asleep in a chair in the waiting-room, and looked boyish and very tired.
Clayton's heart contracted.

He went back to his vigil, and let Graham sleep on.

Some time later he roused from a doze in his chair. Graham was across
the bed from him, looking down. Audrey was gone. And the injured boy
stirred and opened his eyes.

“H-hello, Joey,” said Graham, with a catch in his voice.

Joey lay still, his eyes taking in his new surroundings. Then he put out
a hand and touched the bandage on his head.

“What I got on?” he demanded, faintly.

Graham caught his father's eyes across the bed, and smiled a shaky,
tremulous smile.

“I guess he's all right, Father,” he said. And suddenly crumpled up
beside the bed, and fell into a paroxysm of silent sobbing. With his arm
around the boy's shoulders, Clayton felt in that gray dawn the greatest
thankfulness of his life. Joey would live. That cup was taken from his
boy's lips. And he and Graham were together again, close together.
The boy's grip on his hand was tight. Please God, they would always be
together from now on.




CHAPTER IX

Clayton did not care to tell Natalie of Chris's flight. She would learn
it soon enough, he knew, and he felt unwilling to discuss the affair as
Natalie would want to discuss it. Not that he cared about Chris, but he
had begun to feel a protective interest in Audrey Valentine, an interest
that had in it a curious aversion to hearing her name in connection with
Chris's sordid story.

He and Natalie met rarely in the next few days. He dined frequently at
his club with men connected in various ways with the new enterprise, and
transacted an enormous amount of business over the dinner or luncheon
table. Natalie's door was always closed on those occasions when he
returned, and he felt that with the stubbornness characteristic of her
she was still harboring resentment against him for what he had said at
the hospital.

He knew she was spending most of her days at Linndale, and he had a
vague idea that she and Rodney together had been elaborating still
further on the plans for the house. It was the furtiveness of it rather
than the fact itself that troubled him. He was open and straightforward
himself. Why couldn't Natalie be frank with him?

It was Mrs. Haverford, punctually paying her dinner-call in an age which
exacts dinner-calls no longer--even from its bachelors--who brought
Natalie the news of Chris's going. Natalie, who went down to see her
with a mental protest, found her at a drawing-room window, making
violent signals at somebody without, and was unable to conceal her
amazement.

“It's Delight,” explained Mrs. Haverford. “She's driving me round. She
won't come in, and she's forgotten her fur coat. And it's simply bitter
outside. Well, my dear, how are you?”

Natalie was well, and said so. She was conscious that Mrs. Haverford
was listening with only half an ear, and indeed, a moment later she had
risen again and hurried to the window.

“Natalie!” she cried. “Do come and watch. She's turning the car. We do
think she drives wonderfully. Only a few days, too.”

“Why won't she come in?”

“I'm sure I don't know. Unless she is afraid Graham may be here.”

“What in the world has Graham got to do with it?” Natalie's voice was
faintly scornful.

“I was going to ask you that, Natalie. Have they quarreled, or
anything?”

“I don't think they meet at all, do they?”

“They met once since Clayton gave Doctor Haverford the car. Graham
helped her when she had got into a ditch, I believe. And I thought
perhaps they had quarreled about something.”

“That would imply a degree of intimacy that hardly exists, does it?”
 Natalie said, sharply.

But Mrs. Haverford had not fought the verbal battles of the parish for
twenty years in vain.

“It was the day of that unfortunate incident at the country club,
Natalie.”

Natalie colored.

“Accident, rather than incident.”

“How is the poor child?”

“He is quite well again,” Natalie said impatiently “I can not understand
the amount of fuss every one makes over the boy. He ran in front of
where Graham was driving and got what he probably deserved.”

“I understand Clayton has given him a position.”

“He has made him an office boy.”

“How like dear Clayton!” breathed Mrs. Haverford, and counted the honors
as hers. But she had not come to quarrel. She had had, indeed, a frankly
benevolent purpose in coming, and she proceeded to carry it out at once.

“I do think, my dear,” she said, “that some one ought to tell Audrey
Valentine the stories that are going about.”

“What has she been doing?” Natalie asked, with her cool smile. “There is
always some story about Audrey, isn't there?”

“Do you mean to say you haven't heard?”

“I don't hear much gossip.”

Mrs. Haverford let that pass.

“You know how rabid she has been about the war. Well, the story is,” she
went on, with a certain unction, “that she has driven Chris to enlisting
in the Foreign Legion, or something. Anyhow, he sailed from Halifax last
week.”

Natalie straightened in her chair.

“Are you certain?”

“It's town talk, my dear. Doctor Haverford spoke to Clayton about it
some days ago. He rather gathered Clayton already knew.”

That, too, was like dear Clayton, Natalie reflected bitterly. He had
told her nothing. In her heart she added secretiveness to the long list
of Clayton's deficiencies toward her.

“Personally, I imagine they were heavily in debt,” Mrs. Haverford went
on. “They had been living beyond their means, of course. I like Mrs.
Valentine, but I do think, to drive a man to his death, or what may be
his death--”

“I don't believe it. I don't believe he went to fight, anyway. He was
probably in some sort of a scrape.”

“She has sold her house.”

Natalie's impulse of sympathy toward Audrey was drowned in her rising
indignation. That all this could happen and Audrey not let her know was
incredible.

“I haven't seen her recently,” she said coldly.

“Nobody has. I do think she might have seen her clergyman. There is a
time when only the church can give us the comfort we need, my dear.”

And whatever Mrs. Haverford's faults, she meant that quite simply.

“And you say Clay knew?”

“It's rather likely he would. They were golfing together, weren't they,
when that caddie was hurt?”

Natalie was not a jealous woman. She had, for years, taken Clay's
faithfulness for granted, and her own complacency admitted no chance of
such a possibility. But she was quick to realize that she had him at a
disadvantage.

“How long have you known it?” she asked him that night, when, after the
long dinner was over, she sat with her elbows on the table and faced him
across the candles.

He was tired and depressed, and his fine face looked drawn. But he
roused and smiled across at her. He had begun to have a feeling that he
must make up to Natalie for something--he hardly knew for what.

“Known what, dear?”

“About Chris and Audrey?”

He was fundamentally honest, so he answered her directly.

“Since the day Chris left.”

“When was that?”

“The day we dined there.”

“And Audrey told you?”

“She had to, in a way. I'm sure she'll tell you herself. She's been
rather hiding away, I imagine.”

“Why did she have to tell you?”

“If you want the exact truth, she borrowed a small sum from me, as the
banks were closed, naturally. There was some emergency--I don't know
what.”

“She borrowed from you!”

“A very small amount, my dear. Don't look like that, Natalie. She knew I
generally carried money with me.”

“Oh, I'm not jealous! Audrey probably thinks of you as a sort of
grandfather, anyhow. It's not that. It is your keeping the thing from
me.”

“It was not my secret.”

But Natalie was jealous. She had that curious jealousy of her friends
which some women are cursed with, of being first in their regard and
their confidence. A slow and smoldering anger against Audrey, which had
nothing whatever to do with Clayton, darkened her eyes.

“I'm through with Audrey. That's all,” she said.

And the man across regarded her with a sort of puzzled wonder.

Her indignation against Clayton took the form of calculation; and she
was quick to pursue her advantage. In the library she produced the new
and enlarged plans for the house.

“Roddie says he has tried to call you at the mill, but you are always
out of your office. So he sent these around to-day.”

True to the resolution he had made that night in the hospital, he went
over them carefully. And even their magnitude, while it alarmed him,
brought no protest from him. After all the mill and the new plant were
his toys to play with. He found there something to fill up the emptiness
of his life. If a great house was Natalie's ambition, if it gave her
pleasure and something to live for, she ought to have it.

She had prepared herself for a protest, but he made none, even when the
rather startling estimate was placed before him.

“I just want you to be happy, my dear,” he said. “But I hope you'll
arrange not to run over the estimate. It is being pretty expensive as it
is. But after all, success doesn't mean anything, unless we are going to
get something out of it.”

They were closer together that evening than they had been for months.
And at last he fell to talking about the mill. Natalie, curled up on
the chaise longue in her boudoir, listened attentively, but with small
comprehension as he poured out his dream, for himself now, for Graham
later. A few years more and he would retire. Graham could take hold
then. He might even go into politics. He would be fifty then, and a
man of fifty should be in his prime. And to retire and do nothing was
impossible. A fellow went to seed.

Eyes on the wood fire, he talked on until at last, roused by Natalie's
silence, he glanced up. She was sound asleep.

Some time later, in his dressing-gown and slippers, he came and roused
her. She smiled up at him like a drowsy child.

“Awfully tired,” she said. “Is Graham in?”

“Not yet.”

She held up her hands, and he drew her to her feet.

“You've been awfully dear about the house,” she said. And standing on
tiptoe, she kissed him on the cheek. Still holding both her hands, he
looked down at her gravely.

“Do you really think that, Natalie?”

“Of course.”

“Then--will you do something in return?”

Her eyes became shrewd, watchful.

“Anything in reason.”

“Don't, don't, dear, make Graham afraid of me.”

“As if I did! If he is afraid of you, it is your own fault”

“Perhaps it is. But I try--good God, Natalie, I do try. He needs a curb
now and then. All boys do. But if we could only agree on it--don't you
see how it is now?” he asked, trying to reason gently with her. “All the
discipline comes from me, all the indulgence from you. And--I don't want
to lose my boy, my dear.”

She freed her hands.

“So we couldn't even have one happy evening!” she said. “I won't quarrel
with you, Clay. And I won't be tragic over Graham. If you'll just be
human to him, he'll come out all right.”

She went into her bedroom, the heavy lace of her negligee trailing
behind her, and closed the door.

Clayton had a visitor the next morning at the mill, a man named Dunbar,
who marked on his visitors' slip, under the heading of his business with
the head of the concern, the words, “Private and confidential.”

Clayton, looking up, saw a small man, in a suit too large for him,
and with ears that projected wide on either side of a shrewd, rather
humorous face.

“Mr. Spencer?”

“Yes. Sit down, please.”

Even through the closed window the noise of the mill penetrated. The
yard-engine whistled shrilly. The clatter of motor-trucks, the far away
roar of the furnaces, the immediate vicinity of many typewriters, made a
very bedlam of sound. Mr. Dunbar drew his chair closer, and laid a card
on the desk.

“My credentials,” he explained.

Clayton read the card.

“Very well, Mr. Dunbar. What can I do for you?”

Dunbar fixed him with shrewd, light eyes, and bent forward.

“Have you had any trouble in your mill, Mr. Spencer?”

“None whatever.”

“Are you taking any measures to prevent trouble?”

“I had expected to. Not that I fear anything, but of course no one can
tell. We have barely commenced to get lined up for our new work.”

“May I ask the nature of the precautions?”

Clayton told him, with an uneasy feeling that Mr. Dunbar was finding
them childish and inefficient.

“Exactly,” said his visitor. “And well enough as far as they go. They
don't go far enough. The trouble with you manufacturers is that you only
recognize one sort of trouble, and that's a strike. I suppose you know
that the Kaiser has said, if we enter the war, that he need not send an
army here at all. That his army is here already, armed and equipped.”

“Bravado,” said Clayton.

“I wonder!”

Mr. Dunbar reached into his breast pocket, and produced a long typed
memorandum.

“You might just glance at that.”

Clayton read it carefully. It was a list of fires, mostly in granaries
and warehouses, and the total loss was appalling.

“All German work,” said his visitor. “Arson, for the Fatherland. All
supplies for the Allies, you see. I've got other similar lists, here,
all German deviltry. And they're only commencing. If we go into the
war--”

The immediate result of the visit was that Clayton became a member of a
protective league which undertook, with his cooperation, to police
and guard the mill. But Mr. Dunbar's last words left him thinking
profoundly.

“We're going to be in it, that's sure. And soon. And Germany's army
is here. It's not only Germans either. It's the I.W.W., for one thing.
We've got a list through the British post-office censor, of a lot
of those fellows who are taking German money to-day. They're against
everything. Not only work. They're against law and order. And they're
likely to raise hell.”

He rose to leave.

“How do your Germans like making shells for the Allies?” he asked.

“We haven't a great many. We've had no trouble. One man resigned--a boss
roller. That's all.”

“Watch him. He's got a grievance.”

“He's been here a long time. I haven't an idea he'd do us any harm. It
was a matter of principle with him.”

“Oh, it's a matter of principle with all of them. They can justify
themselves seven ways to the ace. Keep an eye on him, or let us do it
for you.”

Clayton sat for some time after Dunbar had gone. Was it possible that
Klein, or men like Klein, old employees and faithful for years, could be
reached by the insidious wickedness of Germany? It was incredible. But
then the whole situation was incredible; that a peaceful and home-loving
people, to all appearances, should suddenly shed the sheep skin of years
of dissimulation, and appear as the wolves of the world.

One of his men had died on the Lusitania, a quiet little chap, with a
family in the suburbs and a mania for raising dahlias. He had been in
the habit of bringing in his best specimens, and putting them in water
on Clayton's desk. His pressed glass vase was still there, empty.

Then his mind went back to Herman Klein. He had a daughter in the mill.
She was earning the livelihood for the family now, temporarily. And the
Germans were thrifty. If for no other reason he thought Klein would not
imperil either his daughter's safety or her salary.

There was a good bit of talk about German hate, but surely there was no
hate in Klein.

Something else Dunbar had said stuck in his mind.

“We've got to get wise, and soon. It's too big a job for the regular
departments to handle. Every city in the country and every town ought
to have a civilian organization to watch and to fight it if it has to.
They're hiding among us everywhere, and every citizen has got to be a
sleuth, if we're to counter their moves. Every man his own detective!”

He had smiled as he said it, but Clayton had surmised a great
earnestness and considerable knowledge behind the smile.




CHAPTER X

Delight Haverford was to come out in December, but there were times when
the Doctor wondered if she was really as keen about it as she pretended
to be. He found her once or twice, her usually active hands idle in her
lap, and a pensive droop to her humorous young mouth.

“Tired, honey?” he asked, on one of those occasions.

“No. Just talking to myself.”

“Say a few nice things for me, while you're about it, then.”

“Nice things! I don't deserve them.”

“What awful crime have you been committing? Break it to me gently. You
know my weak heart.”

“Your tobacco heart!” she said, severely. “Well, I've been committing a
mental murder, if you want to know the facts. Don't protest. It's done.
She's quite dead already.”

“Good gracious! And I have reared this young viper! Who is she?”

“I don't intend to make you an accessory, daddy.”

But' behind her smile he felt a real hurt. He would have given a great
deal to have taken her in his arms and tried to coax out her trouble
so he might comfort her. But that essential fineness in him which
his worldliness only covered like a veneer told him not to force her
confidence. Only, he wandered off rather disconsolately to hunt his pipe
and to try to realize that Delight was now a woman grown, and liable to
woman's heart-aches.

“What do you think it is?” he asked that night, when after her nightly
custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with
a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his
reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain
uneasiness.

“Who do you think it is, you mean.”

“Very well, only the word is 'whom.'”

Mrs. Haverford ignored this.

“It's that Hayden girl,” she said. “Toots. And Graham Spencer.”

“Do you think that Delight--”

“She always has. For years.”

Which was apparently quite clear to them both.

“If it had only been a nice girl,” Mrs. Haverford protested,
plaintively. “But Toots! She's fast, I'm sure of it.”

“My dear!”

“And that boy needs a decent girl, if anybody ever did. A shallow
mother, and a money-making father--all Toots Hay den wants is his money.
She's ages older than he is. I hear he is there every day and all of
Sundays.”

The rector had precisely as much guile as a turtle dove, and long, after
Mrs. Haverford gave unmistakable evidences of slumber, he lay with his
arms above his head, and plotted. He had no conscience whatever about
it. He threw his scruples to the wind, and if it is possible to follow
the twists of a theological mind turned from the straight and narrow way
into the maze of conspiracy, his thoughts ran something like this:

“She is Delight. Therefore to see her is to love her. To see her
with any other girl is to see her infinite superiority and charm.
Therefore--”

Therefore, on the following Sunday afternoon, the totally unsuspecting
daughter of a good man gone wrong took a note from the rector to
the Hayden house, about something or other of no importance, and was
instructed to wait for an answer. And the rector, vastly uneasy and
rather pleased with himself, took refuge in the parish house and waited
ten eternities, or one hour by the clock.

Delight herself was totally unsuspicious. The rectory on a Sunday
afternoon was very quiet, and she was glad to get away. She drove over,
and being in no hurry she went by the Spencer house. She did that
now and then, making various excuses to herself, such as liking the
policeman at the corner or wanting to see the river from the end of the
street. But all she saw that day was Rodney Page going in, in a top hat
and very bright gloves.

“Precious!” said Delight to herself. Her bump of reverence was very
small.

But she felt a little thrill, as she always did, when she passed the
house. Since she could remember she had cared for Graham. She did not
actually know that she loved him. She told herself bravely that she
was awfully fond of him, and that it was silly, because he never would
amount to anything. But she had a little argument of her own, for such
occasions, which said that being really fond of any one meant knowing
all about them and liking them anyhow.

She stopped the car at the Hayden house, and carried her note to the
door. When she went in, however, she was instantly uncomfortable. The
place reeked with smoke, and undeniably there was dancing going on
somewhere. A phonograph was scraping noisily. Delight's small nose
lifted a little. What a deadly place! Coming in from the fresh outdoors,
the noise and smoke and bar-room reek stifled her.

Then a door opened, and Marion Hayden was drawing her into a room.

“How providential, Delight!” she said. “You'll take my hand, won't you?
It's Graham's dummy, and we want to dance.”

The two connecting rooms were full of people, and the air was heavy.
Through the haze she saw Graham, and nodded to him, but with a little
sinking of the heart. She was aware, however, that he was looking at her
with a curious intentness and a certain expectancy. Maybe he only hoped
she would let him dance with Toots.

“No, thanks,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Why not, Delight? Just a hand, anyhow.”

“Three good reasons: I don't play cards on Sunday; I don't ever play for
money; and I'm stifling for breath already in this air.”

She was, indeed, a little breathless.

There was, had she only seen it, relief in Graham's face. She did not
belong there, he felt. Delight was--well, she was different. He had
not been thinking of her before she came in; he forgot her promptly the
moment she went out. But she had given him, for an instant, a breath
of the fresh out-doors, and quietness and--perhaps something clean and
fine.

There was an insistent clamor that she stay, and Tommy Hale even got
down on his knees and made a quite impassioned appeal. But Delight's
chin was very high, although she smiled.

“You are all very nice,” she said. “But I'm sure I'd bore you in a
minute, and I'm certain you'd bore me. Besides, I think you're quite
likely to be raided.”

Which met with great applause.

But there was nothing of Delight of the high head when she got out of
her car and crept up the rectory steps. How could she even have cared?
How could she? That was his life, those were the people he chose to play
with. She had a sense of loss, rather than injury.

The rector, tapping at her door a little later, received the answer to
his note through a very narrow crack, and went away feeling that the way
of the wicked is indeed hard.

Clayton had been watching with growing concern Graham's intimacy
with the gay crowd that revolved around Marion Hayden. It was more
thoughtless than vicious; more pleasure-seeking than wicked; but its
influence was bad, and he knew it.

But he was very busy. At night he was too tired to confront the
inevitable wrangle with Natalie that any protest about Graham always
evoked, and he was anxious not to disturb the new rapprochement with the
boy by direct criticism.

The middle of December, which found the construction work at the new
plant well advanced, saw the social season definitely on, also, and he
found himself night after night going to dinners and then on to balls.
There were fewer private dances than in previous Winters, but society
had taken up various war activities and made them fashionable. The
result was great charity balls.

On these occasions he found himself watching for Audrey, always. She
had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself.
Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let
him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had
derived an odd sort of comfort from the thought. It had warmed him
to think that, out of all the people he knew, to one woman he meant
something more than success.

But although he searched the gayest crowds with his eyes, those
hilarious groups of which she had been so frequently the center, he did
not find her. And there had been no letter save a brief one without an
address, enclosing her check for the money she had borrowed. She had
apparently gone, not only out of her old life, but out of his as well.

At one of the great charity balls he met Nolan, and they stood together
watching the crowd.

“Pretty expensive, I take it,” Nolan said, indicating the scene.
“Orchestra, florist, supper--I wonder how much the Belgians will get.”

“Personally, I'd rather send the money and get some sleep.”

“Precisely. But would you send the money? We've got to have a quid
pro quo, you know-most of us.” He surveyed the crowd with cynical,
dissatisfied eyes. “At the end of two years of the war,” he observed,
apropos of nothing, “five million men are dead, and eleven million have
been wounded. A lot of them were doing this sort of thing two years
ago.”

“I would like to know where we will be two years from now.”

“Some of us won't be here. Have you seen Lloyd George's speech on the
German peace terms? That means going on to the end. A speedy peace might
have left us out, but there will be no peace. Not yet, or soon.”

“And still we don't prepare!”

“The English tradition persists,” said the Irishman, bitterly. “We want
to wait, and play to the last moment, and then upset our business and
overthrow the whole country, trying to get ready in a hurry.

“I wonder what they will do, when the time comes, with men like you and
myself?”

“Take our money,” said Nolan viciously. “Tax our heads off. Thank God I
haven't a son.”

Clayton eyed him with the comprehension of long acquaintance.

“Exactly,” he said. “But you'll go yourself, if you can.”

“And fight for England? I will not.”

He pursued the subject further, going into an excited account of
Ireland's grievances. He was flushed and loquacious. He quoted Lloyd
George's “quagmire of distrust” in tones raised over the noise of the
band. And Clayton was conscious of a growing uneasiness. How much of
it was real, how much a pose? Was Nolan representative of the cultured
Irishman in America? And if he was, what would be the effect of their
anti-English mania? Would we find ourselves, like the British, split
into factions? Or would the country be drawn together by trouble until
it changed from a federation of states to a great nation, united and
unbeatable?

Were we really the melting pot of the world, and was war the fiery
furnace which was to fuse us together, or were there elements, like
Nolan, like the German-Americans, that would never fuse?

He left Nolan still irritable and explosive, and danced once with
Natalie, his only dance of the evening. Then, finding that Rodney Page
would see her to her car later, he went home.

He had a vague sense of disappointment, a return of the critical mood of
the early days of his return from France. He went to his room and tried
to read, but he gave it up, and lay, cigaret in hand, thinking!

There ought to have come to a man, when he reached the middle span,
certain compensations for the things that had gone with his youth, the
call of adventure, the violent impulses of his early love life. There
should come, to take their place, friends, a new zest in the romance of
achievement, since other romance had gone, and--peace. But the peace
of the middle span of life should be the peace of fulfillment, and of a
home and a woman.

Natalie was not happy, but she seemed contented enough. Her life
satisfied her. The new house in the day-time, bridge, the theater in the
evening or the opera, dinners, dances, clothes--they seemed to be enough
for her. But his life was not enough for him. What did he want anyhow?
In God's name, what did he want?

One night, impatient with himself, he picked up the book of love lyrics
in its mauve cover, from his bedside table. He read one, then another.
He read them slowly, engrossingly. It was as though something starved in
him was feeding eagerly on this poor food. Their passion stirred him as
in his earlier years he had never been stirred. For just a little time,
while Natalie danced that night, Clayton Spencer faced the tragedy of
the man in his prime, still strong and lusty with life, with the deeper
passions of the deepening years, who has outgrown and outloved the woman
he married.

A man's house must be built on love. Without love it can not stand.

Natalie, coming in much later and seeing his light still on, found him
sleeping, with one arm under his head, and a small black hole burned in
the monogrammed linen sheet. The book of poems had slipped to the floor.

The next day she missed it from its place, and Clayton's man,
interrogated, said he had asked to have it put away somewhere. He did
not care for it. Natalie raised her eyebrows. She had thought the poems
rather pretty.

One resolution Clayton made, as a result of that night. He would not see
Audrey again if he could help it. He was not in love with her and he did
not intend to be. He was determinedly honest with himself. Men in
his discontented state were only too apt to build up a dream-woman,
compounded of their own starved fancy, and translate her into terms of
the first attractive woman who happened to cross the path. He was not
going to be a driveling idiot, like Chris and some of the other men he
knew. Things were bad, but they could be much worse.

It happened then that when Audrey called him at the mill a day or so
later it was a very formal voice that came back to her over the wire.
She was quick to catch his tone.

“I suppose you hate being called in business hours, Clay!”

“Not at all.”

“That means yes, you know. But I'm going even further. I'm coming down
to see you.”

“Why, is anything wrong?”

He could hear her laughter, a warm little chuckle.

“Don't be so urgent,” she said gayly. “I want to consult you. That's
all. May I come?”

There was a second's pause. Then,

“Don't you think I'd better come to see you?”

“I've only a little flat. I don't think you'll like it.”

“That's nonsense. Where is it?”

She gave him the address.

“When shall I come?”

“Whenever it suits you. I have nothing to do. Say this afternoon about
four.”

That “nothing to do” was an odd change, in itself, for Audrey had been
in the habit of doling out her time like sweetmeats.

“Where in the world have you been all this time?” he demanded, almost
angrily. To his own surprise he was suddenly conscious of a sense of
indignation and affront. She had said she depended on him, and then she
had gone away and hidden herself. It was ridiculous.

“Just getting acquainted with myself,” she replied, with something of
her old airy manner. “Good-by.”

His irritation passed as quickly as it came. He felt calm and very sure
of himself, and rather light-hearted. Joey, who was by now installed
as an office adjunct, and who commonly referred to the mill as “ours,”
 heard him whistling blithely and cocked an ear in the direction of the
inner room.

“Guess we've made another million dollars,” he observed to the
pencil-sharpener.

Clayton was not in the habit of paying afternoon calls on women. The
number of such calls that he had paid without Natalie during his married
life could have been numbered on the fingers of his two hands. Most of
the men he knew paid such visits, dropping in somewhere for tea or a
highball on the way uptown. He had preferred his club, when he had a
little time, the society of other men.

He wondered if he should call Natalie and tell her. But he decided
against it. It was possible, for one thing, that Audrey still did not
wish her presence in town known. If she did, she would tell Natalie
herself. And it was possible, too, that she wanted to discuss Chris, and
the reason for his going.

He felt a real sense of relief, when at last he saw her, to find her
looking much the same as ever. He hardly knew what he had expected.
Audrey, having warned him as to the apartment, did not mention its
poverty again. It was a tiny little place, but it had an open fire in
the living-room, and plain, pale-yellow walls, and she had given it that
curious air of distinction with which she managed, in her casual way, to
invest everything about her.

“I hope you observe how neat I am,” she said, as she gave him her hand.
“My rooms, of course.”

“Frightfully so.”

He towered in the low room. Audrey sat down and surveyed him as he stood
by the fire.

“It is nice to have a man about again.”

“Do you mean to say you have been living here, without even visitors,
for two months?”

“You'll laugh. Clay, I'm studying!”

“Studying! What?”

“Stenography. Oh, it's not as bad as that. I don't have to earn my
living. I've just got to do something for my soul's sake. I went all
over the ground, and I saw I was just a cumberer of the earth, and then
I thought--”

She hesitated.

“What did you think?”

“If, some time or other, I could release a man to go and fight, it would
be the next best thing to giving myself. Not here, necessarily; I don't
believe we will ever go in. But in England, anywhere.”

“You've released Chris.”

“He released himself. And he's not fighting. He's driving an ambulance.”

He waited, hoping she would go on. He was not curious, but he thought it
might be good for her to talk Chris and the trouble over with some
one. But she sat silent, and suddenly asked him if he cared for tea. He
refused.

“How's Natalie?”

“Very well.”

“And the house?”

“Held up by cold weather now. It should be finished by the end of
April.”

“Clay,” she said, after a moment, “are you going to employ women in the
new munition works?”

“In certain departments, yes.”

“I have a girl I want work for. She's not trained, of course.”

“None of them are. We have to teach them. I can give you a card to the
employment department if you want it.”

“Thanks.”

There was a short silence. She sat looking at the fire, and he had a
chance to notice the change in her. She had visualized it herself. Her
long ear-rings were gone, and with them some of the insolence they had
seemed to accentuate. She was not rouged, and he had thought at first,
for that reason, that she looked ill. She was even differently dressed,
in something dark and girlish with a boyish white Eton collar.

“I wonder if you think I'm hiding, Clay,” she said, finally.

“Well, what are you doing?” He smiled down at her from the hearth-rug.

“Paying my bills! That's not all the truth, either. I'll tell you, Clay.
I just got sick of it all. When Chris left I had a chance to burn my
bridges and I burned them. The same people, the same talk, the same
food, the same days filled with the same silly things that took all my
time and gave me nothing.”

“How long had you been feeling like that?”

“I don't know. Ever since the war, I suppose. I just got to thinking--”

Her voice trailed off.

“I have some of Chris's Scotch, if you want a high-ball.”

“Thanks, no. Audrey, do you hear from Chris?”

“Yes. He's in a dangerous place now, and sometimes at night--I suppose
I did force him, in a way. He was doing no good here, and I thought he
would find himself over there. But I didn't send him. He---Tell me about
making shells.”

He was a little bit disappointed. Evidently she did not depend on him
enough to tell him Chris's story. But again, she was being loyal to
Chris.

He told her about the mill, phrasing his explanation in the simplest
language; the presses drilling on white-hot metal; the great anvils; the
forge; the machine-shop, with its lathes, where the rough surfaces of
the shells were first rough-turned and then machined to the most exact
measurements. And finding her interested, he told her of England's
women workers, in their khaki-colored overalls and caps, and of the
convent-like silence and lack of movement in the filling-sheds, where
one entered with rubber-shod feet, and the women, silent and intent, sat
all day and all night, with queer veils over their faces, filling shells
with the death load.

Audrey listened, her hands clasped behind her head.

“If other women can do that sort of thing, why can't I, Clay?”

“Nonsense.”

“But why? I'm intelligent.”

“It's not work for a lady.”

“Lady! How old-fashioned you are! There are no ladies any more. Just
women. And if we aren't measured by our usefulness instead of our
general not-worth-a-damn-ness, well, we ought to be. Oh, I've had time
to think, lately.”

He was hardly listening. Seeing her, after all those weeks, had brought
him a wonderful feeling of peace. The little room, with its fire, was
cozy and inviting. But he was quite sure, looking down at her, that he
was not in danger of falling in love with her. There was no riot in him,
no faint stirring of the emotions of that hour with the mauve book.

There was no suspicion in him that the ways of love change with the
years, that the passions of the forties, when they come, are to those of
the early years as the deep sea to a shallow lake, less easily roused,
infinitely more terrible.

“This girl you spoke about, that was the business you mentioned?”

“Yes.” She hesitated. “I could have asked you that over the telephone,
couldn't I? The plain truth is that I've had two bad months--never mind
why, and Christmas was coming, and--I just wanted to see your perfectly
sane and normal face again.”

“I wish you'd let me know sooner where you were.”

She evaded his eyes.

“I was getting settled, and studying, and learning to knit, and--oh, I'm
the most wretched knitter, Clay! I just stick at it doggedly. I say
to myself that hands that can play golf, and use a pen, and shoot, and
drive a car, have got to learn to knit. But look here!”

She held up a forlorn looking sock to his amused gaze. “And I think I'm
a clever woman.”

“You're a very brave woman, Audrey,” he said. “You'll let me come back,
won't you?”

“Heavens, yes. Whenever you like. And I'm going to stop being a recluse.
I just wanted to think over some things.”

On the way home he stopped at his florist's, and ordered a mass of
American beauties for her on Christmas morning. She had sent her love to
Natalie, so that night he told Natalie he had seen her, and such details
of her life as he knew.

“I'm glad she's coming to her senses,” Natalie said. “Everything's been
deadly dull without her. She always made things go--I don't know just
how,” she added, as if she had been turning her over in her mind. “What
sort of business did she want to see you about?”

“She has a girl she wants to get into the mill.”

“Good gracious, she must be changed,” said Natalie. And proceeded--she
was ready to go out to dinner--to one of her long and critical surveys
of herself in the cheval mirror. Recently those surveys had been rather
getting on Clayton's nerves. She customarily talked, not to him, but to
his reflection over her shoulder, when, indeed, she took her eyes from
herself.

“I wonder,” she said, fussing with a shoulder-strap, “who Audrey will
marry if anything happens to Chris?”

She saw his face and raised her eyebrows.

“You needn't scowl like that. He's quite as likely as not never to come
back, isn't he? And Audrey didn't care a pin for him.”

“We're talking rather lightly of a very terrible thing, aren't we?”

“Oh, you're not,” she retorted. “You think just the same things as I do,
but you're not so open about them. That's all.”




CHAPTER XI

Graham was engaged. He hardly knew himself how it had come about. His
affair with Marion had been, up to the very moment of his blurted--out
“I want you,” as light-hearted as that of any of the assorted young
couples who flirted and kissed behind the closed doors of that popular
house.

The crowd which frequented the Hayden home was gay, tolerant and
occasionally nasty. It made ardent love semi-promiscuously, it drank
rather more than it should, and its desire for a good time often brought
it rather close to the danger line. It did not actually step over, but
it hovered gayly on the brink.

And Toots remained high-priestess of her little cult. The men liked
her. The girls imitated her. And Graham, young as he was, seeing her
popularity, was vastly gratified to find himself standing high in her
favor.

Marion was playing for the stake of the Spencer money. In her intimate
circle every one knew it but Graham.

“How's every little millionaire?” was Tommy Hale's usual greeting.

She knew only one way to handle men, and with the stake of the Spencer
money she tried every lure of her experience on Graham. It was always
Marion who on cold nights sat huddled against him in the back seat of
the Hayden's rather shabby car, her warm ungloved hand in his. It was
Marion who taught him to mix the newest of cocktails, and who later
praised his skill. It was Marion who insisted on his having a third,
too, when the second had already set his ears drumming.

The effect on the boy of her steady propinquity, of her constant
caressing touches, of the general letting-down of the bars of restraint,
was to rouse in him impulses of which he was only vaguely conscious,
and his proposal of marriage, when it finally came, was by nature of a
confession. He had kissed her, not for the first time, but this time she
had let him hold her, and he had rained kisses on her face.

“I want you,” he had said, huskily.

And even afterward, when the thing was done, and she had said she would
marry him, she had to ask him if he loved her.

“I--of course I do,” he had said. And had drawn her back into his arms.

He wanted to marry her at once. It was the strongest urge of his life,
and put into his pleading an almost pathetic earnestness. But she was
firm enough now.

“I don't think your family will be crazy about this, you know.”

“What do we care for the family? They're not marrying you, are they?”

“They will have to help to support me, won't they?”

And he had felt a trifle chilled.

It was not a part of Marion's program to enter the Spencer family
unwelcomed. She had a furtive fear of Clayton Spencer, the fear of the
indirect for the direct, of the designing woman for the essentially
simple and open male. It was not on her cards to marry Graham and to try
to live on his salary.

So for a few weeks the engagement was concealed even from Mrs.
Hayden, and Graham, who had received some stock from his father on
his twenty-first birthday, secretly sold a few shares and bought the
engagement ring. With that Marion breather easier. It was absolute
evidence.

Her methods were the methods of her kind and her time. To allure a man
by every wile she knew, and having won him to keep him uncertain and
uneasy, was her perfectly simple creed. So she reduced love to its
cheapest terms, passion and jealousy, played on them both, and made
Graham alternately happy and wretched.

Once he found Rodney Page there, lounging about with the manner of a
habitue. It seemed to Graham that he was always stumbling over Rodney
those days, either at home, with drawings and color sketches spread out
before him, or at the Hayden house.

“What's he hanging around here for?” he demanded when Rodney, having
bent over Marion's hand and kissed it, had gone away. “If he could see
that bare spot on the top of his head he'd stop all that kow-towing.”

“You're being rather vulgar, aren't you?” Marion had said. “He's a very
old friend and a very dear one.”

“Probably in love with you once, like all the rest?”

He had expected denial from her, but she had held her cigaret up in the
air, and reflectively regarded its small gilt tip.

“I'm afraid he's rather unhappy. Poor Rod!”

“About me?”

“About me.”

“Look here, Toots,” he burst out. “I'm playing square with you. I never
go anywhere but here. I--I'm perfectly straight with you. But every time
here I find some of your old guard hanging round. It makes me wild.”

“They've always come here, and as long as our engagement isn't known, I
can't very well stop them.”

“Then let me go to father.”

“He'll turn you out, you know. I know men, dear old thing, and father is
going to raise a merry little hell about us. He's the sort who wants
to choose his son's wife for him. He'd like to play Providence.” She
watched him, smiling, but with slightly narrowed eyes. “I rather think
he has somebody in mind for you now.”

“I don't believe it.”

“Of course you don't. But he has.”

“Who?”

“Delight. She's exactly the sort he thinks you'll need. He still thinks
you are a little boy, Graham, so he picks out a nice little girl for
you. Such a nice little girl.”

The amused contempt in her voice made him angry--for Delight rather
than himself. He was extremely grown-up and dignified the rest of the
afternoon; he stood very tall and straight, and spoke in his deepest
voice.

It became rather an obsession in him to prove his manhood, and added
to that was the effect of Marion's constant, insidious appeal to the
surging blood of his youth. And, day after day, he was shut in his
office with Anna Klein.

He thought he was madly in love with Marion. He knew that he was not
at all in love with Anna Klein. But she helped to relieve the office
tedium.

He was often aware, sitting at his desk, with Anna before him, notebook
in hand, that while he read his letters her eyes were on him. More
than once he met them, and there was something in them that healed his
wounded vanity. He was a man to her. He was indeed almost a god, but
that he did not know. In his present frame of mind, he would have
accepted even that, however.

Then, one day he kissed her. She was standing very close, and the
impulse was quick and irresistible. She made no effort to leave his
arms, and he kissed her again.

“Like me a little, do you?” he had asked, smiling into her eyes.

“Oh, I do, I do!” she had replied, hoarsely.

It was almost an exact reversal of his relationship with Marion. There
the huskiness was his, the triumphant smile was Marion's. And the
feeling of being adored without stint or reservation warmed him.

He released her then, but their relationship had taken on a new phase.
He would stand against the outer door, to prevent its sudden opening.
And she would walk toward him, frightened and helpless until his arms
closed about her. It was entirely a game to him. There were days, when
Marion was trying, or the work of his department was nagging him, when
he scarcely noticed her at all. But again the mischief in him, the
idler, the newly awakened hunting male, took him to her with arms
outheld and the look of triumph in his eyes that she mistook for love.

On one such occasion Joey came near to surprising a situation, so near
that his sophisticated young mind guessed rather more than the truth. He
went out, whistling.

He waited until Graham had joined the office force in the mill
lunchroom, and invented an errand back to Graham's office. Anna was
there, powdering her nose with the aid of a mirror fastened inside her
purse.

Joey had adopted Clayton with a sort of fierce passion, hidden behind a
pose of patronage.

“He's all right,” he would say to the boys gathered at noon in the mill
yard. “He's kinda short-tempered sometimes, but me, I understand him.
And there ain't many of these here money kings that would sit up in a
hospital the way he did with me.”

The mill yard had had quite enough of that night in the hospital. It
would fall on him in one of those half-playful, half-vicious attacks
that are the humor of the street, and sometimes it was rather a battered
Joey who returned to Clayton's handsome office, to assist him in running
the mill.

But it was a very cool and slightly scornful Joey who confronted Anna
that noon hour. He lost no time in preliminaries.

“What do you think you're doing, anyhow?” he demanded.

“Powdering my nose, if you insist on knowing.”

They spoke the same language. Anna knew what was coming, and was on
guard instantly.

“You cut it out, that's all.”

“You cut out of this office. And that's all.”

Joey sat down on Graham's desk and folded his arms.

“What are you going to get out of it, anyhow?” he said with a shift from
bullying to argument.

“Out of what?”

“You know, all right.”

She whirled on him.

“Now see here, Joey,” she said. “You run out and play. I'll not have any
little boys meddling in my affairs.”

Joey slid off the desk and surveyed her with an impish smile. “Your
affairs!” he repeated. “What the hell do I care about your affairs? I'm
thinking of the boss. It's up to him if he wants to keep German spies on
the place. But it's up to some of us here to keep our eyes open, so that
they don't do any harm.”

Sheer outrage made Anna's face pale. She had known for some time that
the other girls kept away from her, and she had accepted it with the
stolidity of her blood. She had no German sympathies; her sympathies in
the war lay nowhere.

But--she a spy!

“You get out of here,” she said furiously, “or I'll go to Mr. Spencer
and complain about you. I'm no more a spy than you are. Not as
much!--the way you come sneaking around listening and watching! Now you
get out.”

And Joey had gone, slowly to show that the going was of his own free
will, and whistling. He went out and closed the door. Then he opened it
and stuck his head in.

“You be good,” he volunteered, “and when the little old U.S. gets to
mixing up with the swine over there, I'll bring you a nice fat Hun as a
present.”




CHAPTER XII

Two days before Christmas Delight came out. There was an afternoon
reception at the rectory, and the plain old house blossomed with the
debutante's bouquets and baskets of flowers.

For weeks before the house had been getting ready. The rector,
looking about for his accustomed chair, had been told it was at the
upholsterer's, or had found his beloved and ragged old books relegated
to dark corners of the bookcases. There were always stepladders on the
landings, and paper-hangers waiting until a man got out of bed in the
morning. And once he put his ecclesiastical heel in a pail of varnish,
and slid down an entire staircase, to the great imperilment of his
kindly old soul.

But he had consented without demur to the coming-out party, and he had
taken, during all the morning of the great day, a most mundane interest
in the boxes of flowers that came in every few minutes. He stood inside
a window, under pretense of having no place to sit down, and called out
regularly,

“Six more coming, mother! And a boy with three ringing across the
street. I think he's made a mistake. Yes, he has. He's coming over!”

When all the stands and tables were overflowing, the bouquets were hung
to the curtains in the windows. And Delight, taking a last survey, from
the doorway, expressed her satisfaction.

“It's heavenly,” she said. “Imagine all those flowers for me. It
looks”--she squinted up her eyes critically--“it looks precisely like a
highly successful funeral.”

But a part of her satisfaction was pure pose, for the benefit of
that kindly pair who loved her so. Alone in her room, dressed to go
down-stairs, Delight drew a long breath and picked up her flowers which
Clayton Spencer had sent. It had been his kindly custom for years to
send to each little debutante, as she made her bow, a great armful of
white lilacs and trailing tiny white rosebuds.

“Fifty dollars, probably,” Delight reflected. “And the Belgians needing
flannels. It's dreadful.”

Her resentment against Graham was dying. After all, he was only a
child in Toots Hayden's hands. And she made one of those curious
“He-loves-me-he-loves-me-not” arrangements in her own mind. If Graham
came that afternoon, she would take it as a sign that there was still
some good in him, and she would try to save him from himself. She had
been rather nasty to him. If he did not come--

A great many came, mostly women, with a sprinkling of men. The rector,
who loved people, was in his element. He was proud of Delight, proud
of his home; he had never ceased being proud of his wife. He knew who
exactly had sent each basket of flowers, each hanging bunch. “Your
exquisite orchids,” he would say; or, “that perfectly charming basket.
It is there, just beside Mrs. Haverford.”

But when Natalie Spencer came in alone, splendid in Russian sables, he
happened to be looking at Delight, and he saw the light die out of her
eyes.

Natalie had tried to bring Graham with her. She had gone into his room
that morning while he was dressing and asked him. To tell the truth, she
was uneasy about Marion Hayden and his growing intimacy there.

“You will, won't you, Graham, dear?”

“Sorry, mother. I just can't. I'm taking a girl out.”

“I suppose it's Marion.”

Her tone caused him to turn and look at her.

“Yes, it's Marion. What's wrong with that?”

“It's so silly, Graham. She's older than you are. And she's not really
nice, Graham. I don't mean anything horrid, but she's designing. She
knows you are young and--well, she's just playing with you. I know
girls, Graham. I--”

She stopped, before his angry gaze.

“She is nice enough for you to ask here,” he said hastily.

“She wants your money. That's all.”

He had laughed then, an ugly laugh.

“There's a lot of it for her to want.”

And Natalie had gone away to shed tears of fury and resentment in her
own room.

She was really frightened. Bills for flowers sent to Marion were coming
in, to lie unpaid on Graham's writing table. She had over-drawn once
again to pay them, and other bills, for theater tickets, checks signed
at restaurants, over-due club accounts.

So she went to the Haverfords alone, and managed very effectually to
snub Mrs. Hayden before the rector's very eyes.

Mrs. Hayden thereupon followed an impulse.

“If it were not for Natalie Spencer,” she said, following that lady's
sables with malevolent eyes, “I should be very happy in something I want
to tell you. Can we find a corner somewhere?”

And Doctor Haverford had followed her uneasily, behind some palms. She
was a thin little woman with a maddening habit of drawing her tight veil
down even closer by a contortion of her lower jaw, so that the rector
found himself watching her chin rather than her eyes.

“I want you to know right away, as Marion's clergyman, and ours,” she
had said, and had given her jaw a particularly vicious wag and twist.
“Of course it is not announced--I don't believe even the Spencers know
it yet. I am only telling you now because I know how dearly”--she did
it again--“how dearly interested you are in all your spiritual children.
Marion is engaged to Graham Spencer.”

The rector had not been a shining light for years without learning how
to control his expression. He had a second, too, while she contorted her
face again, to recover himself.

“Thank you,” he said gravely. “I much appreciate your telling me.”

Mrs. Hayden had lowered her voice still more. The revelation took on the
appearance of conspiracy.

“In the early spring, probably,” she said, “we shall need your services,
and your blessing.”

So that was the end of one dream. He had dreamed so many--in his youth,
of spiritualizing his worldly flock; in middle life, of a bishopric; he
had dreamed of sons, to carry on the name he had meant to make famous.
But the failures of those dreams had been at once his own failure and
his own disappointment. This was different.

He was profoundly depressed. He wandered out of the crowd and, after
colliding with a man from the caterer's in a dark rear hall, found his
way up the servant's staircase to the small back room where he kept
the lares and penates of his quiet life, his pipe, his fishing rods, a
shabby old smoking coat, and back files of magazines which he intended
some day to read, when he got round to it.

The little room was jammed with old furniture, stripped from the lower
floor to make room for the crowd. He had to get down on his knees and
crawl under a table to reach his pipe. But he achieved it finally, still
with an air of abstraction, and lighted it. Then, as there was no place
to sit down, he stood in the center of the little room and thought.

He did not go down again. He heard the noise of the arriving and
departing motors subside, its replacement by the sound of clattering
china, being washed below in the pantry. He went down finally, to
be served with a meal largely supplemented by the left-overs of the
afternoon refreshments, ornate salads, fancy ices, and an overwhelming
table decoration that shut him off from his wife and Delight, and left
him in magnificent solitude behind a pyramid of flowers.

Bits of the afternoon's gossip reached him; the comments on Delight's
dress and her flowers; the reasons certain people had not come. But
nothing of the subject nearest his heart. At the end of the meal Delight
got up.

“I'm going to call up Mr. Spencer,” she said. “He has about fifty
dollars' worth of thanks coming to him.”

“I didn't see Graham,” said Mrs. Haverford. “Was he here?”

Delight stood poised for flight.

“He couldn't come because he had enough to do being two places at once.
His mother said he was working, and Mrs. Hayden said he had taken Marion
to the Country Club. I don't know why they take the trouble to lie to
me.”




CHAPTER XIII

Christmas day of the year of our Lord, 1916, dawned on a world which
seemed to have forgotten the Man of Peace. In Asia Minor the Allies
celebrated it by the capture of a strong Turkish position at Maghdadah.
The Germans spent it concentrating at Dead Man's Hill; the British were
ejected from enemy positions near Arras. There was no Christmas truce.
The death-grip had come.

Germany, conscious of her superiority in men, and her hypocritical peace
offers unanimously rejected, was preparing to free herself from the last
restraint of civilization and to begin unrestricted submarine warfare.

On Christmas morning Clayton received a letter from Chris. Evidently it
had come by hand, for it was mailed in America.

“Dear Clay: I am not at all sure that you will care to hear from me. In
fact, I have tried two or three times to write to you, and have given
it up. But I am lonelier than Billy-be-damned, and if it were not for
Audrey's letters I wouldn't care which shell got me and my little cart.

“I don't know whether you know why I got out, or not. Perhaps you don't.
I'd been a fool and a scoundrel, and I've had time, between fusses, to
know just how rotten I've been. But I'm not going to whine to you. What
I am trying to get over is that I'm through with the old stuff for good.

“God only knows why I am writing to you, anyhow--unless it is because
I've always thought you were pretty near right. And I'd like to feel
that now and then you are seeing Audrey, and bucking her up a bit. I
think she's rather down.

“Do you know, Clay, I think this is a darned critical time. The press,
hasn't got it yet, but both the British and the French are hard up
against it. They'll fight until there is no one left to fight, but
these damned Germans seem to have no breaking-point. They haven't any
temperament, I daresay, or maybe it is soul they lack. But they'll fight
to the last man also, and the plain truth is that there are too many of
them.

“It looks mighty bad, unless we come in. And I don't mind saying that
there are a good many eyes over here straining across the old Atlantic.
Are we doing anything, I wonder? Getting ready? The officers here say we
can't expand an army to get enough men without a draft law. Can you see
the administration endangering the next election with a draft law? Not
on your life.

“I'm on the wagon, Clay. Honestly, it's funny. I don't mind telling you
I'm darned miserable sometimes. But then I get busy, and I'm so blooming
glad in a rush to get water that doesn't smell to heaven that I don't
want anything else.

“I suppose they'll give us a good hate on Christmas. Well, think of me
sometimes when you sit down to dinner, and you might drink to our coming
in. If we have a principle to divide among us we shall have to.”

Clayton read the letter twice.

He and Natalie lunched alone, Natalie in radiant good humor. His gift
to her had been a high collar of small diamonds magnificently set,
and Natalie, whose throat commenced to worry her, had welcomed it
rapturously. Also, he had that morning notified Graham that his salary
had been raised to five thousand dollars.

Graham had shown relief rather than pleasure.

“I daresay I won't earn it, Father,” he had said. “But I'll at east try
to keep out of debt on it.”

“If you can't, better let me be your banker, Graham.”

The boy had flushed. Then he had disappeared, as usual, and Clayton and
Natalie sat across from each other, in their high-armed lion chairs,
and made a pretense of Christmas gayety. True to Natalie's sense of the
fitness of things, a small Nuremberg Christmas tree, hung with tiny toys
and lighted with small candles, stood in the center of the table.

“We are dining out,” she explained. “So I thought we'd use it now.”

“It's very pretty,” Clayton acknowledged. And he wondered if Natalie
felt at all as he did, the vast room and the two men serving, with
Graham no one knew where, and that travesty of Christmas joy between
them. His mind wandered to long ago Christmases.

“It's not so very long since we had a real tree,” he observed. “Do you
remember the one that fell and smashed all the things on it? And how
Graham heard it and came down?”

“Horribly messy things,” said Natalie, and watched the second man
critically. He was new, and she decided he was awkward.

She chattered through the meal, however, with that light gayety of hers
which was not gayety at all, and always of the country house.

“The dining-room floor is to be oak, with a marble border,” she said.
“You remember the ones we saw in Italy? And the ceiling is blue and
gold. You'll love the ceiling, Clay.”

There was claret with the luncheon, and Clayton, raising his glass,
thought of Chris and the water that smelled to heaven.

Natalie's mind was on loggias by that time.

“An upstairs loggia, too,” she said. “Bordered with red geraniums. I
loathe geraniums, but the color is good. Rodney wants Japanese screens
and things, but I'm not sure. What do you think?”

“I think you're a better judge than I am,” he replied, smiling. He had
had to come back a long way, but he made the effort.

“It's hardly worth while struggling to have things attractive for you,”
 she observed petulantly. “You never notice, anyhow. Clay, do you know
that you sit hours and hours, and never talk to me?”

“No! Do I? I'm sorry.”

“You're a perfectly dreary person to have around.”

“I'll talk to you, my dear. But I'm not much good at houses. Give me
something I understand.”

“The mill, I suppose! Or the war!”

“Do I really talk of the war?”

“When you talk at all. What in the world do you think about, Clay, when
you sit with your eyes on nothing? It's a vicious habit.”

“Oh, ships and sails and sealing wax and cabbages and kings,” he said,
lightly.

That afternoon Natalie slept, and the house took on the tomb-like quiet
of an establishment where the first word in service is silence. Clay
wandered about, feeling an inexpressible loneliness of spirit. On those
days which work did not fill he was always discontented. He thought
of the club, but the vision of those disconsolate groups of homeless
bachelors who gathered there on all festivals that centered about a
family focus was unattractive.

All at once, he realized that, since he had wakened that morning, he
had been wanting to see Audrey. He wanted to talk to her, real talk, not
gossip. Not country houses. Not personalities. Not recrimination. Such
talk as Audrey herself had always led at dinner parties: of men and
affairs, of big issues, of the war.

He felt suddenly that he must talk about the war to some one.

Natalie was still sleeping when he went down-stairs. It had been
raining, but a cold wind was covering the pavement with a glaze of ice.
Here and there men in top hats, like himself, were making their way to
Christmas calls. Children clinging to the arms of governesses, their
feet in high arctics, slid laughing on the ice. A belated florist's
wagon was still delivering Christmas plants tied with bright red bows.
The street held more of festivity to Clayton than had his house.
Even the shop windows, as he walked toward Audrey's unfashionable new
neighborhood, cried out their message of peace. Peace--when there was no
peace.

Audrey was alone, but her little room was crowded with gifts and
flowers.

“I was hoping you would come, Clay,” she said. “I've had some visitors,
but they're gone. I'll tell them down-stairs that I'm not at home, and
we can really talk.”

“That's what I came for.”

And when she had telephoned; “I've had a letter from Chris, Audrey.”

She read it slowly, and he was surprised, when she finally looked up, to
find tears in her eyes.

“Poor old Chris!” she said. “I've never told you the story, have I,
Clay? Of course I know perfectly well I haven't. There was another
woman. I think I could have understood it, perhaps, if she had been a
different sort of a woman. But--I suppose it hurt my pride. I didn't
love him. She was such a vulgar little thing. Not even pretty.
Just--woman.”

He nodded.

“He was fastidious, too. I don't understand it. And he swears he never
cared for her. I don't believe he did, either. I suppose there's no
explanation for these things. They just happen. It's the life we live, I
dare say. When I look back--She's the girl I sent into the mill.”

He was distinctly shocked.

“But, Audrey,” he protested, “you are not seeing her, are you?”

“Now and then. She has fastened herself on me, in a way. Don't scowl
like that. She says she is straight now and that she only wants a chance
to work. She's off the stage for good. She--danced. That money I got
from you was for her. She was waiting, up-stairs. Chris was behind with
her rent, and she was going to lose her furniture.”

“That you should have to do such a thing!” he protested. “It's--well,
it's infamous.”

But she only smiled.

“Well, I've never been particularly shielded. It hasn't hurt me. I don't
even hate her. But I'm puzzled sometimes. Where there's love it might be
understandable. Most of us would hate to have to stand the test of real
love, I daresay. There's a time in every one's life, I suppose, when
love seems to be the only thing that matters.”

That was what the poet in that idiotic book had said: “There is no other
joy.”

“Even you, Clay,” she reflected, smilingly. “You big, grave men go all
to pieces, sometimes.”

“I never have,” he retorted.

She returned Chris's letter to him.

“There,” she said. “I've had my little whimper, and I feel better. Now
talk to me.”

The little clock was striking six when at last he rose to go. The room
was dark, with only the glow of the wood fire on Audrey's face. He found
her very lovely, rather chastened and subdued, but much more appealing
than in her old days of sparkle and high spirits.

“You are looking very sweet, Audrey.”

“Am I? How nice of you!”

She got up and stood on the hearth-rug beside him, looking up at him.
Then, “Don't be startled, Clay,” she announced, smilingly. “I am going
to kiss you--for Christmas.”

And kiss him she did, putting both hands on his shoulders, and rising on
her toes to do it. It was a very small kiss, and Clayton took it calmly,
and as she intended him to take it. But it was, at that, rather a
flushed Audrey who bade him good-night and God bless you.

Clayton took away with him from that visit a great peace and a great
relief. He had talked out to her for more than an hour of the many
things that puzzled and bewildered him. He had talked war, and the mill,
and even Graham and his problems. And by talking of them some of them
had clarified. A little of his unrest had gone. He felt encouraged, he
had a new strength to go on. It was wonderful, he reflected, what the
friendship of a woman could mean to a man. He was quite convinced that
it was only friendship.

He turned toward home reluctantly. Behind him was the glow of Audrey's
fire, and the glow that had been in her eyes when he entered. If a man
had such a woman behind him...

He went into his great, silent house, and the door closed behind him
like a prison gate.

For a long time after he had gone, Audrey, doors closed to visitors, sat
alone by her fire, with one of his roses held close to her cheek.

In her small upper room, in a white frame cottage on the hill
overlooking the Spencer furnaces, Anna Klein, locked away from prying
eyes, sat that same Christmas evening and closely inspected a tiny gold
wrist-watch. And now and then, like Audrey, she pressed it to her face.

Not the gift, but the giver.




CHAPTER XIV

Having turned Dunbar and his protective league over to Hutchinson, the
general manager, Clayton had put him out of his mind. But during the
week after Christmas he reached the office early one morning to find
that keen and rather shabby gentleman already there, waiting.

Not precisely waiting, for he was standing by one of the windows, well
back from it, and inspecting the mill yard with sharp, darting glances.

“Hello, Dunbar,” said Clayton, and proceeded to shed his fur-lined
coat. Dunbar turned and surveyed him with the grudging admiration of the
undersized man for the tall one.

“Cold morning,” he said, coming forward. “Not that I suppose you know
it.” He glanced at the coat.

“I thought Hutchinson said that you'd gone away.”

“Been to Washington. I brought something back that will interest you.”

From inside his coat he produced a small leather case, and took from it
a number of photographs.

“I rather gathered, Mr. Spencer,” he said dryly, “when I was here last
that you thought me an alarmist. I don't know that I blame you. We
always think the other fellow may get it, but that we are safe. You
might glance at those photographs.”

He spread them out on the desk. Beyond the windows the mill roared
on; men shouted, the locomotive whistled, a long file of laborers
with wheelbarrows went by. And from a new building going up came the
hammering of the riveting-machines, so like the rapid explosions of
machine guns.

“Interesting, aren't they?” queried Dunbar. “This is a clock-bomb with
a strap for carrying it under a coat. That's a lump of coal--only it
isn't. It's got enough explosive inside to blow up a battleship.
It's meant for that, primarily. That's fire-confetti--damnable
stuff--understand it's what burned up most of Belgium. And that's a
fountain-pen. What do you think of that? Use one yourself, don't you?
Don't leave it lying around. That's all.”

“What on earth can they do with a fountain-pen?”

“One of their best little tricks,” said Mr. Dunbar, with a note of
grudging admiration in his voice. “Here's a cut of the mechanism. You
sit down, dip your pen, and commence to write. There's the striking pin,
or whatever they call it. It hits here, and--good night!”

“Do you mean to say they're using things like that here?”

“I mean to say they're planning to, if they haven't already. That coal
now, you'd see that go into your furnaces, or under your boilers, or
wherever you use it, and wouldn't worry, would you?”

“Are these actual photographs?”

“Made from articles taken from a German officer's trunk, in a neutral
country. He was on his way somewhere, I imagine.”

Clayton sat silent. Then he took out his fountain-pen and surveyed it
with a smile.

“Rather off fountain-pens for a time, I take it!” observed Dunbar.
“Well, I've something else for you. You've got one of the best little
I.W.W. workers in the country right here in your mill. Some of them
aren't so bad--hot air and nothing else. But this fellow's a fanatic.
Which is the same as saying he's crazy.”

“Who is he?”

“Name's Rudolph Klein. He's a sort of relation to the chap that got out.
Old man's been sore on him, but I understand he's hanging around the
Klein place again.”

Clayton considered.

“I don't remember him. Of course, I can't keep track of the men. We'll
get rid of him.”

Mr. Dunbar eyed him.

“That's the best thing you can think of?”

“I don't want him round, do I?”

“Nine of you men out of ten say that. You'd turn him loose and so warn
him. Not only that, but he'll be off on his devil's work somewhere.
Perhaps here. Perhaps elsewhere. And we want him where we can find him.
See here, Mr. Spencer, d'you ever hear of counter-espionage?”

Clayton never had, but the term explained itself.

“Set a spy to watch a spy,” said Dunbar. “Let him think he's going on
fine. Find his confederates. Let them get ready to spring something. And
then--get them. Remember,” he added with sarcasm, “we're still neutral.
You can't lock a man up because he goes around yelling 'Down with
capital!' The whole country is ready to yell it with him. And, even if
you find him with a bomb under his coat, labeled 'made in Germany,' it's
hard to link Germans up with the thing. He can say that he always buys
his bombs in Germany. That they make the best bombs in the world. That
he likes the way they pack 'em, and their polite trade methods.”

Clayton listened, thinking hard.

“We have a daughter of Klein's here. She is my son's secretary.”

Dunbar glanced at him quickly, but his eyes were on the window.

“I know that.”

“Think I should get rid of her?”

Dunbar hesitated. He liked Clayton Spencer, and it was his business just
then to know something about the Kleins. It would be a good thing for
Clayton Spencer's boy if they got rid of the girl.

On the other hand, to keep her there and watch her was certainly a
bigger thing. If she stayed there might be trouble, but it would concern
the boy only. If she left, and if she was one link in the chain to
snare Rudolph, there might be a disaster costing many lives. He made his
decision quickly.

“Keep her, by all means,” he said. “And don't tell Mr. Graham anything.
He's young, and he'd be likely to show something. I suppose she gets
considerable data where she is?”

“Only of the one department. But that's a fair indication of the rest.”

Dunbar rose.

“I'm inclined to think there's nothing to that end of it,” he said. “The
old chap is sulky, but he's not dangerous. It's Rudolph I'm afraid of.”

At the luncheon hour that day Clayton, having finished his mail, went to
Graham's office. He seldom did that, but he was uneasy. He wanted to see
the girl. He wanted to look her over with this new idea in his mind.
She had been a quiet little thing, he remembered; thorough, but not
brilliant. He had sent her to Graham from his own office. He disliked
even the idea of suspecting her; his natural chivalry revolted from
suspecting any woman.

Joey, who customarily ate his luncheon on Clayton's desk in his absence,
followed by one of Clayton's cigarets, watched him across the yard, and
whistled as he saw him enter Graham's small building.

“Well, what do you think of that?” he reflected. “I hope he coughs
before he goes in.”

But Clayton did not happen to cough. Graham's office was empty, but
there was a sound of voices from Anna Klein's small room beyond. He
crossed to the door and opened it, to stand astonished, his hand on the
door-knob.

Anna Klein was seated at her desk, with her luncheon spread before her
on a newspaper, and seated on the desk, a sandwich in one hand, the
other resting on Anna's shoulder, was Graham. He was laughing when
Clayton opened the door, but the smile froze on his face. He slid off
her desk.

“Want me, father?”

“Yes,” said Clayton, curtly. And went out, leaving the door open. A sort
of stricken silence followed his exit, then Graham put down the sandwich
and went out, closing the door behind him. He stood just inside it in
the outer room, rather pale, but looking his father in the eyes.

“Sorry, father,” he said. “I didn't hear you. I--”

“What has that to do with it?”

The boy was silent. To Clayton he looked furtive, guilty. His very
expression condemned him far more than the incident itself. And Clayton,
along with his anger, was puzzled as to his best course. Dunbar had
said to leave the girl where she was. But--was it feasible under these
circumstances? He was rather irritated than angry. He considered a
flirtation with one's stenographer rotten bad taste, at any time. The
business world, to his mind, was divided into two kinds of men, those
who did that sort of thing, and those who did not. It was a code, rather
than a creed, that the boy had violated.

Besides, he had bad a surprise. The girl who sat laughing into Graham's
face was not the Anna Klein he remembered, a shy, drab little thing,
badly dressed, rather sallow and unsmiling. Here was a young woman
undeniably attractive; slightly rouged, trim in her white blouse, and
with an air of piquancy that was added, had he known it, by the large
imitation pearl earrings she wore.

“Get your hat and go to lunch, Graham,” he said. “And you might try to
remember that a slightly different standard of conduct is expected from
my son, here, than may be the standard of some of the other men.”

“It doesn't mean anything, that sort of fooling.”

“You and I may know that. The girl may not.”

Then he went out, and Graham returned unhappily to the inner room.
Anna was not crying; she was too frightened to cry. She had sat without
moving, her hand still clutching her untouched sandwich. Graham looked
at her and tried to smile.

“I'm gone, I suppose?”

“Don't you worry about that,” he said, with boyish bravado. “Don't you
worry about that, little girl.”

“Father will kill me,” she whispered. “He's queer these days, and if I
go home and have to tell him--” She shuddered.

“I'll see you get something else, if the worst comes, you know.”

She glanced up at him with that look of dog-like fidelity that always
touched him.

“I'll find you something good,” he promised.

“Something good,” she repeated, with sudden bitterness. “And you'll get
another girl here, and flirt with her, and make her crazy about you,
and--”

“Honestly, do you like me like that?”

“I'm just mad about you,” she said miserably.

Frightened though he was, her wretchedness appealed to him. The thought
that she cared for him, too, was a salve to his outraged pride. A
moment ago, in the other room, he had felt like a bad small boy. As
with Marion, Anna made him feel every inch a man. But she gave him what
Marion did not, the feeling of her complete surrender. Marion would
take; this girl would give.

He bent down and put his arms around her.

“Poor little girl!” he said. “Poor little girl!”




CHAPTER XV

The gay and fashionable crowd of which Audrey had been the center played
madly that winter. The short six weeks of the season were already close
to an end. By mid-January the south and California would have claimed
most of the women and some of the men. There were a few, of course,
who saw the inevitable catastrophe: the Mackenzies had laid up their
house-boat on the west coast of Florida. Denis Nolan had let his little
place at Pinehurst. The advance wave of the war tide, the increased cost
of living, had sobered and made thoughtful the middle class, but above
in the great businesses, and below among the laboring people, money was
plentiful and extravagance ran riot.

And Audrey Valentine's world missed her. It refused to accept her
poverty as an excuse, and clamored for her. It wanted her to sit
again at a piano, somewhere, anywhere, with a lighted cigaret on the
music-rack, and sing her husky, naive little songs. It wanted her cool
audacity. It wanted her for week-end parties and bridge, and to canter
on frosty mornings on its best horses and make slaves of the park
policemen, so that she might jump forbidden fences. It wanted to see
her oust its grinning chauffeurs, and drive its best cars at their best
speed.

Audrey Valentine leading a cloistered life! Impossible! Selfish!

And Audrey was not cut out for solitude. She did not mind poverty. She
found it rather a relief to acknowledge what had always been the fact.
But she did mind loneliness. And her idea of making herself over into
something useful was not working out particularly well. She spent two
hours a day, at a down-town school, struggling with shorthand, and her
writing-table was always littered with papers covered with queer hooks
and curves, or with typed sheets beginning:

    “Messrs Smith and Co.,: Dear Sirs.”

Clayton Spencer met her late in December, walking feverishly along with
a book under her arm, and a half-desperate look in her eyes. He felt a
little thrill when he saw her, which should have warned him but did not.

She did not even greet him. She stopped and held out her book to him.

“Take it!” she said. “I've thrown it away twice, and two wretched men
have run after me and brought it back.”

He took it and glanced at it.

“

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