Left alone in her untidy room after Graham's abrupt departure, Anna Klein was dazed. She stood where he left her, staring ahead. What had happened meant only one thing to her, that Graham no longer cared about her, and, if that was true, she did not care to live.
It never occurred to her that he had done rather a fine thing, or that he had protected her against herself. She felt no particular shame, save the shame of rejection. In her small world of the hill, if a man gave a girl valuable gifts or money there was generally a quid pro quo. If the girl was unwilling, she did not accept such gifts. If the man wanted nothing, he did not make them. And men who made love to girls either wanted to marry them or desired some other relationship with them.
She listened to his retreating footsteps, and then began, automatically to unbutton her thin white blouse. But with the sound of the engine of his car below she ran to the window. She leaned out, elbows on the sill, and watched him go, without a look up at her window.
So that was the end of that!
Then, all at once, she was fiercely angry. He had got her into this scrape, and now he had left her. He had pretended to love her, and all the time he had meant to do just this, to let her offer herself so he might reject her. He had been playing with her. She had lost her home because of him, had been beaten almost insensible, had been ill for weeks, and now he had driven away, without even looking back.
She jerked her blouse off, still standing by the window, and when the sleeve caught on her watch, she jerked that off, too. She stood for a moment with it in her hand, her face twisted with shame and anger. Then recklessly and furiously she flung it through the open window.
In the stillness of the street far below she heard it strike and rebound.
“That for him!” she muttered.
Almost immediately she wanted it again. He had given it to her. It was all she had left now, and in a curious way it had, through long wearing, come to mean Graham to her. She leaned out of the window. She thought she saw it gleaming in the gutter, and already, attracted by the crash, a man was crossing the street to where it lay.
“You let that alone,” she called down desperately. The figure was already stooping over it. Entirely reckless now, she ran, bare-armed and bare-bosomed, down the stairs and out into the street. She had thought to see its finder escaping, but he was still standing where he had picked it up.
“It's mine,” she began. “I dropped it out of the window. I—”
“You threw it out of the window. I saw you.”
It was Rudolph.
“You—” He snarled, and stood with menacing eyes fixed on her bare neck.
“Rudolph!”
“Get into the house,” he said roughly. “You're half-naked.”
“Give me my watch.”
“I'll give it to you, all right. What's left of it. When we get in.”
He followed her into the hail, but when she turned there and held out her hand, he only snarled again.
“We'll talk up-stairs.”
“I can't take you up. The landlady don't allow it.”
“She don't, eh? You had that Spencer skunk up there.”
His face frightened her, and she lied vehemently.
“That's not so, and you know it, Rudolph Klein. He came inside, just like this, and we stood and talked. Then he went away. He wasn't inside ten minutes.” Her voice rose hysterically, but Rudolph caught her by the arm, and pushing her ahead of him, forced her up the stairs.
“We're going to have this out,” he muttered, viciously.
Half way up she stopped.
“You're hurting my arm.”
“You be glad I'm not breaking it for you.”
He climbed in a mounting fury. He almost threw her into her room, and closing the door, he turned the key in it. His face reminded her of her father's the night he had beaten her, and her instinct of self-preservation made her put the little table between them.
“You lay a hand on me,” she panted, “and I'll yell out the window. The police would be glad enough to have something on you, Rudolph Klein, and you know it.”
“They arrest women like you, too.”
“Don't you dare say that.” And as he took a step or two toward her she retreated to the window. “You stay there, or I'll jump out of the window.”
She looked desperate enough to do it, and Rudolph hesitated.
“He was up here. I saw him at the window. I've been trailing you all evening. Keep off that window-sill, you little fool! I'm not going to kill you. But I'm going to get him, all right, and don't you forget it.”
His milder tone and the threat frightened her more than ever. He would get Graham; he was like that. Get him in some cruel, helpless way; that was the German blood in him. She began to play for time, with instinctive cunning.
“Listen, Rudolph,” she said. “I'll tell you all about it. He did come up, but he left right away. We quarreled. He threw me over, Rudolph. That's what he did.”
Her own words reminded her of her humiliation, and tears came into her eyes.
“He threw me over! Honest he did. That's why I threw his watch out of the window. That's straight, Rudolph. That's straight goods. I'm not lying now.”
“God!” said Rudolph. “The dirty pup. Then—then you're through with him, eh?”
“I'm through, all right.”
Her tone carried conviction. Rudolph's face relaxed, and seeing that, she remembered her half-dressed condition.
“Throw me that waist,” she said.
“Come around and get it.”
“Aw, Rudolph, throw it. Please!”
“Getting modest, all at once,” he jeered. But he picked it up and advanced to the table with it. As she held out her hand for it he caught her and drew her forward toward him, across the table.
“You little devil!” he said, and kissed her.
She submitted, because she must, but she shivered. If she was to save Graham she must play the game. And so far she was winning. She was feminine enough to know that already the thing he thought she had done was to be forgiven her. More than that, she saw a half-reluctant admiration in Rudolph's eyes, as though she had gained value, if she had lost virtue, by the fact that young Spencer had fancied her. And Rudolph's morals were the morals of many of his kind. He admired chastity in a girl, but he did not expect it.
But she was watchful for the next move he might make. That it was not what she expected did not make it the less terrifying.
“You get your hat and coat on.”
“I'll not do anything of the kind.”
“D'you think I'm going to leave you here, where he can come back whenever he wants to? You think again!”
“Where are you going to take me?”
“I'm going to take you home.”
When pleading made no impression on him, and when he refused to move without her, she threw her small wardrobe into the suitcase, and put her hat and coat on. She was past thinking, quite hopeless. She would go back, and her father would kill her, which would be the best thing anyhow; she didn't care to live.
Rudolph had relapsed into moody silence. Down the stairs, and on the street he preceded her, contemptuously letting her trail behind. He carried her suitcase, however, and once, being insecurely fastened, it opened and bits of untidy apparel littered the pavement. He dropped the suitcase and stood by while she filled it again. The softness of that moment, when, lured by her bare arms he had kissed her, was gone.
The night car jolted and swayed. After a time he dozed, and Anna, watching him, made an attempt at flight. He caught her on the rear platform, however, with a clutch that sickened her. The conductor eyed them with the scant curiosity of two o'clock in the morning, when all the waking world is awry.
At last they were climbing the hill to the cottage, while behind and below them the Spencer furnaces sent out their orange and violet flames, and the roar of the blast sounded like the coming of a mighty wind.
The cottage was dark. Rudolph put down the suitcase, and called Herman softly through his hands. Above they could hear him moving, and his angry voice came through the open window.
“What you want?”
“Come down. It's Rudolph.”
But when he turned Anna was lying in a dead faint on the garden path, a crumpled little heap of blissful forgetfulness. When Herman came down, it was to find Rudolph standing over her, the suitcase still in his hand, and an ugly scowl on his face.
“Well, I got her,” he said. “She's scared, that's all.” He prodded her with his foot, but she did not move, and Herman bent down with his candle.
He straightened.
“Bring her in,” he said, and led the way into the house. When Rudolph staggered in, with Anna in his arms, he found Herman waiting and fingering the leather strap.
Audrey had found something to do at last. It was Captain Sloane who had given her the idea.
“You would make a great hit, Audrey,” he had said. “It's your voice, you know. There's something about it—well, you know the effect it always has on me. No? All right, I'll be good.”
But she had carried the idea home with her, and had proceeded, with her customary decision, to act on it.
Then, one day in May, she was surprised by a visit from Delight Haverford. She had come home, tired and rather depressed, to find the Haverford car at the door, and Delight waiting for her in her sitting-room.
Audrey's acquaintance with Delight had been rather fragmentary, but it had covered a long stretch of time. So, if she was surprised, it was not greatly when Delight suddenly kissed her. She saw then that the girl had brought her some spring flowers, and the little tribute touched her.
“What a nice child you are!” she said, and standing before the mirror proceeded to take off her hat. Before her she could see the reflection of Delight's face, and her own tired, slightly haggard eyes.
“And how unutterably old you make me look!” she added, smiling.
“You are too lovely for words, Mrs. Valentine.”
Audrey patted her hair into order, and continued her smiling inspection of the girl's face.
“And now we have exchanged compliments,” she said, “we will have some tea, and then you shall tell me what you are so excited about.”
“I am excited; I—”
“Let's have the tea first.”
Audrey's housekeeping was still rather casual. Tidiness of Natalie's meticulous order would always be beyond her, but after certain frantic searches for what was needed, she made some delicious tea.
“Order was left out of me, somehow,” she complained. “Or else things move about when I'm away. I'm sure it is that, because I certainly never put the sugar behind my best hat. Now—let's have it.”
Delight was only playing with her tea. She flushed delicately, and put the cup down.
“I was in the crowd this morning,” she said.
“In the crowd? Oh, my crowd!”
“Yes.”
“I see,” said Audrey, thoughtfully. “I make a dreadful speech, you know.”
“I thought you were wonderful. And, when those men promised to enlist, I cried. I was horribly ashamed. But you were splendid.”
“I wonder!” said Audrey, growing grave. Delight was astonished to see that there were tears in her eyes. “I do it because it is all I can do, and of course they must go. But some times at night—you see, my dear, some of them are going to be killed. I am urging them to go, but the better the day I have had, the less I sleep at night.”
There was a little pause. Delight was thinking desperately of something to say.
“But you didn't come to talk about me, did you?”
“Partly. And partly about myself. I want to do something, Mrs. Valentine. I can drive a car, but not very well. I don't know a thing about the engine. And I can nurse a little. I like nursing.”
Audrey studied her face. It seemed to her sad beyond words that this young girl, who should have had only happiness, was facing the horrors of what would probably be a long war. It was the young who paid the price of war, in death, in empty years. Already the careless gayety of their lives was gone. For the dream futures they had planned they had now to substitute long waiting; for happiness, service.
“The Red Cross is going to send canteen workers to France. You might do that.”
“If I only could! But I can't leave mother. Not entirely. Father is going. He wants to go and fight, but I'm afraid they won't take him. He'll go as a chaplain, anyhow. But he's perfectly helpless, you know. Mother says she is going to tie his overshoes around his neck.”
“I'll see if I can think of something for you, Delight. There's one thing in my mind. There are to be little houses built in all the new training-camps for officers, and they are to be managed by women. They are to serve food—sandwiches and coffee, I think. They may be even more pretentious. I don't know, but I'll find out.”
“I'll do anything,” said Delight, and got up. It was then that Audrey realized that there was something more to the visit than had appeared, for Delight, ready to go, hesitated.
“There is something else, Mrs. Valentine,” she said, rather slowly. “What would you do if a young man wanted to go into the service, and somebody held him back?”
“His own people?”
“His mother. And—a girl.”
“I would think the army is well off without him.”
Delight flushed painfully.
“Perhaps,” she admitted. “But is it right just to let it go at that? If you like people, it seems wrong just to stand by and let others ruin their lives for them.”
“Only very weak men let women ruin their lives.”
But already she began to understand the situation.
“There's a weakness that is only a sort of habit. It may come from not wanting to hurt somebody.” Delight was pulling nervously at her gloves. “And there is this to be said, too. If there is what you call weakness, wouldn't the army be good for it? It makes men, some times, doesn't it?”
For a sickening moment, Audrey thought of Chris. War had made Chris, but it had killed him, too.
“Have you thought of one thing?” she asked. “That in trying to make this young man, whoever it is, he may be hurt, or even worse?”
“He would have to take his chance, like the rest.”
She went a little pale, however. Audrey impulsively put an arm around her.
“And this—woman is the little long-legged girl who used to give signals to her father when the sermon was too long! Now—what can I do about this youth who can't make up his own mind?”
“You can talk to his mother.”
“If I know his mother—? and I think I do—it won't do the slightest good.”
“Then his father. You are great friends, aren't you?”
Even this indirect mention of Clayton made Audrey's hands tremble. She put them behind her.
“We are very good friends,” she said. But Delight was too engrossed to notice the deeper note in her voice. “I'll see what I can do. But don't count on me too much. You spoke of a girl. I suppose I know who it is.”
“Probably. It is Marion Hayden. He is engaged to her.”
And again Audrey marveled at her poise, for Delight's little tragedy was clear by that time. Clear, and very sad.
“I can't imagine his really being in love with her.”
“But he must be. They are engaged.”
Audrey smiled at the simple philosophy of nineteen, smiled and was extremely touched. How brave the child was! Audrey's own courageous heart rather swelled in admiration.
But after Delight had gone, she felt depressed again, and very tired. How badly these things were handled! How strange it was that love so often brought suffering! Great loves were almost always great tragedies. Perhaps it was because love was never truly great until the element of sacrifice entered into it.
Her own high courage failed her somewhat. During these recent days when, struggling against very real stage fright, she made her husky, wholly earnest but rather nervous little appeals to the crowds before the enlisting stations, she got along bravely enough during the day. But the night found her sad, unutterably depressed.
At these times she was haunted by a fear that persisted against all her arguments. In Washington Clayton had not looked well. He had been very tired and white, and some of his natural buoyancy seemed to have deserted him. He needed caring for, she would reflect bitterly. There should be some one to look after him. He was tired and anxious, but it took the eyes of love to see it. Natalie would never notice, and would consider it a grievance if she did. The fiercely, maternal tenderness of the childless woman for the man she loves kept her awake at night staring into the darkness and visualizing terrible things. Clayton ill, and she unable to go to him. Ill, and wanting her, and unable to ask for her.
She was, she knew, not quite normal, but the fear gripped and held her. These big strong men, no one ever looked after them. They spent their lives caring for others, and were never cared for.
There were times when a sort of exaltation of sacrifice kept her head high, when the thing she was forced to give up seemed trifling compared with the men and boys who, some determinedly, some sheepishly, left the crowd around the borrowed car from which she spoke, and went into the recruiting station. There was sacrifice and sacrifice, and there was some comfort in the thought that both she and Clayton were putting the happiness of others above their own.
They had both, somehow, somewhere, missed the path. But they must never go back and try to find it.
Delight's visit left her thoughtful. There must be some way to save Graham. She wondered how much of Clayton's weariness was due to Graham. And she wondered, too, if he knew of the talk about Natalie and Rodney Page. There was a great deal of talk. Somehow such talk cheapened his sacrifice and hers.
Not that she believed it, or much of it. She knew how little such gossip actually meant. Practically every woman she knew, herself included, had at one time or another laid herself open to such invidious comment. They had all been idle, and they sought amusement in such spurious affairs as this, harmless in the main, but taking on the appearance of evil. That was part of the game, to appear worse than one really was. The older the woman, the more eager she was often in her clutch at the vanishing romance of youth.
Only—it was part of the game, too, to avoid scandal. A fierce pride for Clayton's name sent the color to her face.
On the evening after Delight's visit, she had promised to speak at a recruiting station far down-town in a crowded tenement district, and tired as she was, she took a bus and went down at seven o'clock. She was uneasy and nervous. She had not spoken in the evening before, and in all her sheltered life she had never seen the milling of a night crowd in a slum district.
There was a wagon drawn up at the curb, and an earnest-eyed young clergyman was speaking. The crowd was attentive, mildly curious. The clergyman was emphatic without being convincing. Audrey watched the faces about her, standing in the crowd herself, and a sense of the futility of it all gripped her. All these men, and only a feeble cheer as a boy still in his teens agreed to volunteer. All this effort for such scant result, and over on the other side such dire need! But one thing cheered her. Beside her, in the crowd, a portly elderly Jew was standing with his hat in his hand, and when a man near him made some jeering comment, the Jew brought his hand down on his shoulder.
“Be still and listen,” he said. “Or else go away and allow others to listen. This is our country which calls.”
“It's amusing, isn't it?” Audrey heard a woman's voice near her, carefully inflected, slightly affected.
“It's rather stunning, in a way. It's decorative; the white faces, and that chap in the wagon, and the gasoline torch.”
“I'd enjoy it more if I'd had my dinner.”
The man laughed.
“You are a most brazen combination of the mundane and the spiritual, Natalie. You are all soul—after you are fed. Come on. It's near here.”
Audrey's hands were very cold. By the movement of the crowd behind her, she knew that Natalie and Rodney were making their escape, toward food and a quiet talk in some obscure restaurant in the neighborhood. Fierce anger shook her. For this she and Clayton were giving up the only hope they had of happiness—that Natalie might carry on a cheap and stealthy flirtation.
She made a magnificent appeal that night, and a very successful one. The lethargic crowd waked up and pressed forward. There were occasional cheers, and now and then the greater tribute of convinced silence. And on a box in the wagon the young clergyman eyed her almost wistfully. What a woman she was! With such a woman a man could live up to the best in him. Then he remembered his salary in a mission church of twelve hundred a year, and sighed.
He gained courage, later on, and asked Audrey if she would have some coffee with him, or something to eat. She looked tired.
“Tired!” said Audrey. “I am only tired these days when I am not working.”
“You must not use yourself up. You are too valuable to the country.”
She was very grateful. After all, what else really mattered? In a little glow she accepted his invitation.
“Only coffee,” she said. “I have had dinner. Is there any place near?”
He piloted her through the crowd, now rapidly dispersing. Here and there some man, often in halting English, thanked her for what she had said. A woman, slightly the worse for drink, but with friendly, rather humorous eyes, put a hand on her arm.
“You're all right, m'dear,” she said. “You're the stuff. Give it to them. I wish to God I could talk. I'd tell 'em something.”
The clergyman drew her on hastily.
In a small Italian restaurant, almost deserted, they found a table, and the clergyman ordered eggs and coffee. He was a trifle uneasy. In the wagon Audrey's plain dark clothes had deceived him. But the single pearl on her finger was very valuable. He fell to apologizing for the place.
“I often come here,” he explained. “The food is good, if you like Italian cooking. And it is near my work. I—”
But Audrey was not listening. At a corner, far back, Natalie and Rodney were sitting, engrossed in each other. Natalie's back was carefully turned to the room, but there was no mistaking her. Audrey wanted madly to get away, but the coffee had come and the young clergyman was talking gentle platitudes in a rather sweet but monotonous voice. Then Rodney saw her, and bowed.
Almost immediately afterward she heard the soft rustle that was Natalie, and found them both beside her.
“Can we run you up-town?” Natalie asked. “That is, unless—”
She glanced at the clergyman.
“Thank you, no, Natalie. I'm going to have some supper first.”
Natalie was uneasy. Audrey made no move to present the clergyman, whose name she did not know. Rodney was looking slightly bored.
“Odd little place, isn't it?” Natalie offered after a second's silence.
“Rather quaint, I think.”
Natalie made a desperate effort to smooth over an awkward situation. She turned to the clergyman.
“We heard you speaking. It was quite thrilling.”
He smiled a little.
“Not so thrilling as this lady. She carried the crowd, absolutely.”
Natalie turned and stared at Audrey, who was flushed with annoyance.
“You!” she said. “Do you mean to say you have been talking from that wagon?”
“I haven't said it. But I have.”
“For heaven's sake!” Then she laughed and glanced at Rodney. “Well, if you won't tell on me, I'll not tell on you.” And then seeing Audrey straighten, “I don't mean that, of course. Clay's at a meeting to-night, so I am having a holiday.”
She moved on, always with the soft rustle, leaving behind her a delicate whiff of violets and a wide-eyed clergyman, who stared after her admiringly.
“What a beautiful woman!” he said. There was a faint regret in his voice that Audrey had not presented him, and he did not see that her coffee-cup trembled as she lifted it to her lips.
At ten o'clock the next morning Natalie called her on the 'phone. Natalie's morning voice was always languid, but there was a trace of pleading in it now.
“It's a lovely day,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“I've been darning.”
“You! Darning!”
“I rather like it.”
“Heavens, how you've changed! I suppose you wouldn't do anything so frivolous as to go out with me to the new house.”
Audrey hesitated. Evidently Natalie wanted to talk, to try to justify herself. But the feeling that she was the last woman in the world to be Natalie's father-confessor was strong in her. On the other hand, there was the question of Graham. On that, before long, she and Natalie would have, in one of her own occasional lapses into slang, to go to the mat.
“I'll come, of course, if that's an invitation.”
“I'll be around in an hour, then.”
Natalie was unusually prompt. She was nervous and excited, and was even more carefully dressed than usual. Over her dark blue velvet dress she wore a loose motor-coat, with a great chinchilla collar, but above it Audrey, who would have given a great deal to be able to hate her, found her rather pathetic, a little droop to her mouth, dark circles which no veil could hide under her eyes.
The car was in its customary resplendent condition. There were orchids in the flower-holder, and the footman, light rug over his arm, stood rigidly waiting at the door.
“What a tone you and your outfit do give my little street,” Audrey said, as they started. “We have more milk-wagons than limousines, you know.”
“I don't see how you can bear it.”
Audrey smiled. “It's really rather nice,” she said. “For one thing, I haven't any bills. I never lived on a cash basis before. It's a sort of emancipation.”
“Oh, bills!” said Natalie, and waved her hands despairingly. “If you could see my desk! And the way I watch the mail so Clay won't see them first. They really ought to send bills in blank envelopes.”
“But you have to give them to him eventually, don't you?”
“I can choose my moment. And it is never in the morning. He's rather awful in the morning.”
“Awful?”
“Oh, not ugly. Just quiet. I hate a man who doesn't talk in the mornings. But then, for months, he hasn't really talked at all. That's why”—she was rather breathless—“that's why I went out with Rodney last night.”
“I don't think Clayton would mind, if you told him first. It's your own affair, of course, but it doesn't seem quite fair to him.”
“Oh, of course you'd side with him. Women always side with the husband.”
“I don't 'side' with any one,” Audrey protested. “But I am sure, if he realized that you are lonely—”
Suddenly she realized that Natalie was crying. Not much, but enough to force her, to dab her eyes carefully through her veil.
“I'm awfully unhappy, Audrey,” she said. “Everything's wrong, and I don't know why. What have I done? I try and try and things just get worse.”
Audrey was very uncomfortable. She had a guilty feeling that the whole situation, with Natalie pouring out her woes beside her, was indelicate, unbearable.
“But if Clay—” she began.
“Clay! He's absolutely ungrateful. He takes me for granted, and the house for granted. Everything. And if he knows I want a thing, he disapproves at once. I think sometimes he takes a vicious pleasure in thwarting me.”
But as she did not go on, Audrey said nothing. Natalie had raised her veil, and from a gold vanity-case was repairing the damages around her eyes.
“Why don't you find something to do, something to interest you?” Audrey suggested finally.
But Natalie poured out a list of duties that lasted for the last three miles of the trip, ending with the new house.
“Even that has ceased to be a satisfaction,” she finished. “Clayton wants to stop work on it, and cut down all the estimates. It's too awful. First he told me to get anything I liked, and now he says to cut down to nothing. I could just shriek about it.”
“Perhaps that's because we are in the war, now.”
“War or no war, we have to live, don't we? And he thinks I ought to do without the extra man for the car, and the second man in the house, and heaven alone knows what. I'm at the end of my patience.”
Audrey made a resolution. After all, what mattered was that things should be more tolerable for Clayton. She turned to Natalie.
“Why don't you try to do what he wants, Natalie? He must have a reason for asking you. And it would please him a lot.”
“If I start making concession, I can just keep it up. He's like that.”
“He's so awfully fine, Natalie. He's—well, he's rather big. And sometimes I think, if you just tried, he wouldn't be so hard to please. He probably wants peace and happiness?”
“Happiness!” Natalie's voice was high. “That sounds like Clay. Happiness! Don't you suppose I want to be happy?”
“Not enough to work for it,” said Audrey, evenly.
Natalie turned and stared at her.
“I believe you're half in love with Clay yourself!”
“Perhaps I am.”
But she smiled frankly into Natalie's eyes.
“I know if I were married to him, I'd try to do what he wanted.”
“You'd try it for a year. Then you'd give it up. It's one thing to admire a man. It's quite different being married to him, and having to put up with all sorts of things?”
Her voice trailed off before the dark vision of her domestic, unhappiness. And again, as with Graham and his father, it was what she did not say that counted. Audrey came close to hating her just then.
So far the conversation had not touched on Graham, and now they were turning in the new drive. Already the lawns Were showing green, and extensive plantings of shrubbery were putting out their pale new buds. Audrey, bending forward in the car, found it very lovely, and because it belonged to Clay, was to be his home, it thrilled her, just as the towering furnaces of his mill thrilled her, the lines of men leaving at nightfall. It was his, therefore it was significant.
The house amazed her. Even Natalie's enthusiasm had not promised anything so stately or so vast. Moving behind her through great empty rooms, to the sound of incessant hammering, over which Natalie's voice was raised shrilly, she was forced to confess that, between them, Natalie and Rodney had made a lovely thing. She felt no jealousy when she contrasted it with her own small apartment. She even felt that it was the sort of house Clayton should have.
For, although it had been designed as a setting for Natalie, although every color-scheme, almost every chair, had been bought with a view to forming a background for her, it was too big, too massive. It dwarfed her. Out-of-doors, Audrey lost that feeling. In the formal garden Natalie was charmingly framed. It was like her, beautifully exact, carefully planned, already with its spring borders faintly glowing.
Natalie cheered in her approval.
“You're so comforting,” she said. “Clay thinks it isn't homelike. He says it's a show place—which it ought to be. It cost enough—and he hates show places. He really ought to have a cottage. Now let's see the swimming-pool.”
But at the pool she lost her gayety. The cement basin, still empty, gleamed white in the sun, and Natalie, suddenly brooding, stood beside it staring absently into it.
“It was for Graham,” she said at last. “We were going to have week-end parties, and all sorts of young people. But now!”
“What about now?”
Natalie raised tragic eyes to hers.
“He's probably going into the army. He'd have never thought of it, but Clayton shows in every possible way that he thinks he ought to go. What is the boy to do? His father driving him to what may be his death!”
“I don't think he'd do that, Natalie.”
Natalie laughed, her little mirthless laugh.
“Much you know what his father would do! I'll tell you this, Audrey. If Graham goes, and anything—happens to him, I'll never forgive Clay. Never.”
Audrey had not suspected such depths of feeling as Natalie's eyes showed under their penciled brows. They were desperate, vindictive eyes. Suddenly Natalie was pleading with her.
“You'll talk to Clay, won't you? He'll listen to you. He has a lot of respect for your opinion. I want you to go to him, Audrey. I brought you here to ask you. I'm almost out of my mind. Why do you suppose I play around with Rodney? I've got to forget, that's all. And I've tried everything I know, and failed. He'll go, and I'll lose him, and if I do it will kill me.”
“It doesn't follow that because he goes he won't come back.”
“He'll be in danger. I shall be worrying about him every moment.” She threw out her hands in what was as unrestrained a gesture as she ever made. “Look at me!” she cried. “I'm getting old under it. I have lines about my eyes already. I hate to look at myself in the morning. And I'm not old. I ought to be at my best now.”
Natalie's anxiety was for Graham, but her pity was for herself. Audrey's heart hardened.
“I'm sorry,” she said. “I can't go to Clay. I feel as I think he does. If Graham wants to go, he should be free to do it. You're only hurting him, and your influence on him, by holding him back.”
“You've never had a child.”
“If I had, and he wanted to go, I should be terrified, but I should be proud.”
“You and Clay! You even talk alike. It's all a pose, this exalted attitude. Even this war is a pose. It's a national attitude we've struck, a great nation going to rescue humanity, while the rest of the world looks on and applauds! It makes me ill.”
She turned and went back to the house, leaving Audrey by the swimming-pool. She sat on the edge of one of the stone benches, feeling utterly dreary and sad. To make a sacrifice for a worthy object was one thing. To throw away a life's happiness for a spoiled, petulant woman was another. It was too high a price to pay. Mingled with her depression was pity for Clayton; for all the years that he had lived with this woman: and pride in him, that he had never betrayed his disillusion.
After a time she saw the car waiting, and she went slowly back to the house. Natalie was already inside, and she made no apologies whatever. The drive back was difficult. Natalie openly sulked, replied in monosyllables, made no effort herself until they were in the city again. Then she said, “I'm sorry I asked you to speak to Clay. Of course you needn't do it.”
“Not if it is to do what you said. But I wish you wouldn't misunderstand me, Natalie. I'm awfully sorry. We just think differently.”
“We certainly do,” said Natalie briefly. And that was her good-by.
When Clayton had returned from Washington, one of the first problems put up to him had been Herman Klein's application to be taken on again. He found Hutchinson in favor of it.
“He doesn't say much,” he said. “Never did. But I gather things are changed, now we are in the war ourselves.”
“I suppose we need him.”
“You bet we need him.”
For the problem of skilled labor was already a grave one.
Clayton was doubtful. If he could have conferred with Dunbar he would have felt more comfortable, but Dunbar was away on some mysterious errand connected with the Military Intelligence Department. He sat considering, tapping on his desk with the handle of his pen. Of course things were different now. A good many Germans whose sympathies had, as between the Fatherland and the Allies, been with Germany, were now driven to a decision between the land they had left and the land they had adopted. And behind Herman there were thirty years of good record.
“Where is the daughter?”
“I don't know. She left some weeks ago. It's talk around the plant that he beat her up, and she got out. Those Germans don't know the first thing about how to treat women.”
“Then she is not in Weaver's office?”
There was more talk in the offices than Hutchinson repeated. Graham's fondness for Anna, her slavish devotion to him, had been pretty well recognized. He wondered if Clayton knew anything about it, or the further gossip that Graham knew where Anna Klein had been hiding.
“What about Rudolph Klein? He was a nephew, wasn't he?”
“Fired,” said Hutchinson laconically. “Got to spreading the brotherhood of the world idea—sweat brothers, he calls them. But he was mighty careful never to get in a perspiration himself.”
“We might try Herman again. But I'd keep an eye on him.”
So Herman was taken on at the new munition plant. He was a citizen, he owned property, he had a record of long service behind him. And, at first, he was minded to preserve that record intact. While he had by now added to his rage against the Fatherland's enemies a vast and sullen fury against invested capital, his German caution still remained.
He would sit through fiery denunciations of wealth, nodding his head slowly in agreement. He was perfectly aware that in Gus's little back room dark plots were hatched. Indeed, on a certain April night Rudolph had come up and called him onto the porch.
“In about fifteen minutes,” he said, consulting his watch in the doorway, “I'm going to show you something pretty.”
And in fifteen minutes to the dot the great railroad warehouses near the city wharf had burst into flames. Herman had watched without comment, while Rudolph talked incessantly, boasting of his share in the enterprise.
“About a million dollars' worth of fireworks there,” he said, as the glare dyed their faces red. “All stuff for the Allies.” And he boasted, “When the cat sits on the pickhandle, brass buttons must go.”
By that time Herman knew that the “cat” meant sabotage. He had nodded slowly.
“But it is dangerous,” was his later comment. “Sometimes they will learn, and then?”
His caution had exasperated Rudolph almost to frenzy. And as time went on, and one man after another of the organization was ferreted out at the new plant and dismissed, the sole remaining hope of the organization was Herman. With his reinstatement their hopes had risen again, but to every suggestion so far he had been deaf. He would listen approvingly, but at the end, when he found the talk veering his way, and a circle of intent faces watching him, he would say:
“It is too dangerous. And it is a young man's work. I am not young.”
Then he would pay his score, but never by any chance Rudolph's or the others, and go home to his empty house. But recently the plant had gone on double turn, and Herman was soon to go on at night. Here was the gang's opportunity. Everything was ready but Herman himself. He continued interested, but impersonal. For the sake of the Fatherland he was willing to have the plant go, and to lose his work. He was not at all daunted by the thought of the deaths that would follow. That was war. Anything that killed and destroyed was fair in war. But he did not care to place himself in danger. Let those young hot-heads do the work.
Rudolph, watching him, bided his time. The ground was plowed and harrowed, ready for the seed, and Rudolph had only to find the seed.
The night he had carried Anna into the cottage on the hill, he had found it.
Herman had not beaten Anna. Rudolph had carried her up to her bed, and Herman, following slowly, strap in hand, had been confronted by the younger man in the doorway of the room where Anna lay, conscious but unmoving, on the bed.
“You can use that thing later,” Rudolph said. “She's sick now. Better let her alone.”
“I will teach her to run away,” Herman muttered thickly. “She left me, her father, and threw away a good job—I—”
“You come down-stairs. I've something to say to you.”
And, after a time, Herman had followed him down, but he still clung doggedly to the strap.
Rudolph led the way outside, and here in the darkness he told Anna's story, twisted and distorted through his own warped mind, but convincing and partially true. Herman's silence began to alarm him, however, and when at last he rose and made for the door, Rudolph was before him.
“What are you going to do?”
Herman said nothing, but he raised the strap and held it menacingly.
“Get out of my way.”
“Don't be a fool,” Rudolph entreated. “You can beat her to death, and what do you get out of it? She'll run away again if you touch her. Put that strap down. I'm not afraid of you.”
Their voices, raised and angry, penetrated through Anna's haze of fright and faintness. She sat up in the bed, ready to spring to the window if she heard steps on the stairs. When none came, but the voices, lowered now, went on endlessly below, she slipped out of her bed and crept to the doorway.
Sounds traveled clearly up the narrow enclosed stairway. She stood there, swaying slightly, until at last her legs would no longer support her. She crouched on the floor, a hand clutching her throat, lest she scream. And listened.
She did not sleep at all. The night had been too full of horrors. And she was too ill to attempt a second flight. Besides, where could she go? Katie was not there. She could see her empty little room across, with its cot bed and tawdry dresser. Before, too, she had had Grahams protection to count on. Now she had nothing.
And the voices went on.
When she went back to bed it was almost dawn. She heard Herman come up, heard the heavy thump of his shoes on the floor, and the creak immediately following that showed he had lain down without undressing. By the absence of his resonant snoring she knew he was not sleeping, either. She pictured him lying there, his eyes on the door, in almost unwinking espionage.
At half past six she got up and went down-stairs. Almost immediately she heard his stockinged feet behind her. She turned and looked up at him.
“What are you going to do?”
“Going to make myself some coffee.”
He came down, and sat down in the sitting-room. From where he sat he could survey the kitchen, and she knew his eyes were on her. His very quiet terrified her, but although the strap lay on the table he made no move toward it. She built a fire and put on the kettle, and after a time she brought him some coffee and some bread. He took it without a word. Sick as she was, she fell to cleaning up the dirty kitchen. She went outside for a pail, to find him behind her in the doorway. Then she knew what he intended to do. He was afraid, for some reason, to beat her again, but he was going to watch her lest again she make her escape. The silence, under his heavy gaze, was intolerable.
All day she worked, and only once did Herman lose sight of her. That was when he took a ladder, and outside the house nailed all the upper windows shut. He did it with German thoroughness, hammering deliberately, placing his nails carefully. After that he went to the corner grocery, but before he went he spoke the first words of the day.
“You will go to your room.”
She went, and he locked her in. She knew then that she was a prisoner. When he was at the mill at night, while he slept during the day, she was to be locked up in her stuffy, airless room. When he was about she would do the housework, always under his silent, contemptuous gaze.
She made one appeal to him, and only one, and that was to his cupidity.
“I've been sick, but I'm able to work now, father.”
He paid no attention to her.
“If you lock me up and don't let me work,” she persisted, “you'll only be cutting off your nose to spite your face. I make good money, and you know it.”
She thought he was going to speak then, but he did not. She put his food on the table and he ate gluttonously, as he always did. She did not sit down. She drank a little coffee, standing at the stove, and watched the back of his head with hate in her eyes. He could eat like that, when he stood committed to a terrible thing!
It was not until late in the day that it began to dawn on her how she was responsible. She was getting stronger then and more able to think. She followed as best she could the events of the last months, and she saw that, as surely as though a malevolent power had arranged it, the thing was the result of her infatuation for Graham.
She was in despair, and she began to plan how to get word to Graham of what was impending. She scrawled a note to Graham, telling him where she was and to try to get in touch with her somehow. If he would come around four o'clock Herman was generally up and off to the grocer's, or to Gus's saloon for his afternoon beer.
“I'll break a window and talk to you,” she wrote. “I'm locked in when he's out. My window is on the north side. Don't lose any time. There's something terrible going to happen.”
But several days went by and the postman did not appear. Herman had put a padlock on the outside of her bedroom door, and her hope of finding a second key to fit the door-lock died then.
It had become a silent, bitter contest between the two of them, with two advantages in favor of the girl. She was more intelligent than Herman, and she knew the thing he was planning to do. She made a careful survey of her room, and she saw that with a screw-driver she could unfasten the hinge of her bedroom door. Herman, however, always kept his tools locked up. She managed, apparently by accident, to break the point off a knife, and when she went up to her room one afternoon to be locked in while Herman went to Gus's saloon, she carried the knife in her stocking.
It was a sorry tool, however. Driven by her shaking hand, there was a time when she almost despaired. And time was flying. The postman, when he came, came at five, and she heard the kitchen clock strike five before the first screw fell out into her hand. She got them all out finally, and the door hung crazily, held only by the padlock. She ran to the window. The postman was coming along the street, and she hammered madly at the glass. When he saw her he turned in at the gate, and she got her letter and ran down the stairs.
She heard his step on the porch outside, and called to him.
“Is that you, Briggs?”
The postman was “Briggs” to the hill.
“Yes.”
“If I slide a letter out under the door, will you take it to the post-office for me? It's important.”
“All right. Slide.”
She had put it partially under the door when a doubt crept into her mind. That was not Briggs's voice. She made a frantic effort to draw the letter back, but stronger fingers than hers had it beyond the door. She clutched, held tight. Then she heard a chuckle, and found herself with a corner of the envelope in her hand.
There were voices outside, Briggs's and Rudolph's.
“Guess that's for me.”
“Like hell it is.”
She ran madly up the stairs again, and tried with shaking fingers to screw the door-hinges into place again. She fully expected that they would kill her. She heard Briggs go out, and after a time she heard Rudolph trying to kick in the house door. Then, when the last screw was back in place, she heard Herman's heavy step outside, and Rudolph's voice, high, furious, and insistent.
Had Herman not been obsessed with the thing he was to do, he might have beaten her to death that night. But he did not. She remained in her room, without food or water. She had made up her mind to kill herself with the knife if they came up after her, but the only sounds she heard were of high voices, growing lower and more sinister.
After that, for days she was a prisoner. Herman moved his bed down-stairs and slept in the sitting-room, the five or six hours of day-light sleep which were all he required. And at night, while he was at the mill, Rudolph sat and dozed and kept watch below. Twice a day some meager provisions were left at the top of the stairs and her door was unlocked. She would creep out and get them, not because she was hungry, but because she meant to keep up her strength. Let their vigilance slip but once, and she meant to be ready.
She learned to interpret every sound below. There were times when the fumes from burning food came up the staircase and almost smothered her. And there were times, she fancied, when Herman weakened and Rudolph talked for hours, inciting and inflaming him again. She gathered, too, that Gus's place was under surveillance, and more than once in the middle of the night stealthy figures came in by the garden gate and conferred with Rudolph down-stairs. Then, one evening, in the dusk of the May twilight, she saw three of them come, one rather tall and military of figure, and one of them carried, very carefully, a cheap suitcase.
She knew what was in that suitcase.