One morning, in his mail, Clayton Spencer received a clipping. It had been cut from a so-called society journal, and it was clamped to the prospectus of a firm of private detectives who gave information for divorce cases as their specialty.
First curiously, then with mounting anger, Clayton read that the wife of a prominent munition manufacturer was being seen constantly in out of the way places with the young architect who was building a palace for her out of the profiteer's new wealth. “It is quite probable,” ended the notice, “that the episode will end in an explosion louder than the best shell the husband in the case ever turned out.”
Clayton did not believe the thing for a moment. He was infuriated, but mostly with the journal, and with the insulting inference of the prospectus. He had a momentary clear vision, however, of Natalie, of her idle days, of perhaps a futile last clutch at youth. He had no more doubt of her essential integrity than of his own. But he had a very distinct feeling that she had exposed his name to cheap scandal, and that for nothing.
Had there been anything real behind it, he might have understood, in his new humility, in his new knowledge of impulses stronger than any restraints of society, he would quite certainly have made every allowance. But for a whim, an indulgence of her incorrigible vanity! To get along, to save Natalie herself, he was stifling the best that was in him, while Natalie—
That was one view of it. The other was that Natalie was as starved as he was. If he got nothing from her, he gave her nothing. How was he to blame her? She was straying along dangerous paths, but he himself had stood at the edge of the precipice, and looked down.
Suddenly it occurred to him that perhaps, for once, Natalie was in earnest. Perhaps Rodney was, too. Perhaps each of them had at last found something that loomed larger than themselves. In that case? But everything he knew of Natalie contradicted that. She was not a woman to count anything well lost for love. She was playing with his honor, with Rodney, with her own vanity.
Going up-town that night he pondered the question of how to take up the matter with her. It would be absurd, under the circumstances, to take any virtuous attitude. He was still undetermined when he reached the house.
He found Marion Hayden there for dinner, and Graham, and a spirited three-corner discussion going on which ceased when he stood in the doorway. Natalie looked irritated, Graham determined, and Marion was slightly insolent and unusually handsome.
“Hurry and change, Clay,” Natalie said. “Dinner is waiting.”
As he went away he had again the feeling of being shut out of something which concerned Graham.
Dinner was difficult. Natalie was obviously sulking, and Graham was rather taciturn. It was Marion who kept the conversation going, and he surmised in her a repressed excitement, a certain triumph.
At last Natalie roused herself. The meal was almost over, and the servants had withdrawn.
“I wish you would talk sense to Graham, Clay,” she said, fretfully. “I think he has gone mad.”
“I don't call it going mad to want to enlist, father.”
“I do. With your father needing you, and with all the men there are who can go.”
“I don't understand. If he wants to enter the army, that's up to him, isn't it?”
There was a brief silence. Clayton found Natalie's eyes on him, uneasy, resentful.
“That's just it. I've promised mother not to, unless she gives her consent. And she won't give it.”
“I certainly will not.”
Clayton saw her appealing glance at Marion, but that young lady was lighting a cigaret, her eyelids lowered. He felt as though he were watching a play, in which he was the audience.
“It's rather a family affair, isn't it?” he asked. “Suppose we wait until we are alone. After all, there is no hurry.”
Marion looked at him, and he caught a resentment in her glance. The two glances struck fire.
“Say something, Marion,” Natalie implored her.
“I don't think my opinion is of any particular importance. As Mr. Spencer says, it's really a family matter.”
Her insolence was gone. Marion was easy. She knew Natalie's game; it was like her own. But this big square-jawed man at the head of the table frightened her. And he hated her. He hardly troubled to hide it, for all his civility. Even that civility was contemptuous.
In the drawing-room things were little better. Natalie had counted on Marion's cooperation, and she had failed her. She pleaded a headache and went up-stairs, leaving Clayton to play the host as best he could.
Marion wandered into the music-room, with its bare polished floor, its lovely painted piano, and played a little—gay, charming little things, clever and artful. Except when visitors came, the piano was never touched, but now and then Clayton had visualized Audrey there, singing in her husky sweet voice her little French songs.
Graham moved restlessly about the room, and Clayton felt that he had altered lately. He looked older, and not happy. He knew the boy wanted to talk about Natalie's opposition, but was hoping that he would broach the subject. And Clayton rather grimly refused to do it. Those next weeks would show how much of the man there was in Graham, but the struggle must be between his mother and himself.
He paused, finally.
Marion was singing.
“Give me your love for a day;A night; an hour.If the wages of sin are DeathI'm willing to pay.”
She sang it in her clear passionless voice. Brave words, Clayton thought, but there were few who would pay such wages. This girl at the piano, what did she know of the thing she sang about? What did any of the young know?
They always construed love in terms of passion. But passion was ephemeral. Love lived on. Passion took, but love gave.
He roused himself.
“Have you told Marion about the new arrangement?”
“I didn't know whether you cared to have it told.”
“Don't you think she ought to know? If she intends to enter the family, she has a right to know that she is not marrying into great wealth. I don't suggest,” he added, as Graham colored hotly, “that it will make any difference. I merely feel she ought to know your circumstances.”
He was called to the telephone, and when he came back he found them in earnest conversation. The girl turned toward him smiling.
“Graham has just told me. You are splendid, Mr. Spencer.”
And afterward Clayton was forced to admit an element of sincerity in her voice. She had had a disappointment, but she was very game. Her admiration surprised him. He was nearer to liking her than he had ever been.
Even her succeeding words did not quite kill his admiration for her.
“And I have told Graham that he must not let you make all the sacrifices. Of course he is going to enlist.”
She had turned her defeat into a triumph against Natalie. Clayton knew then that she would never marry Graham. As she went out he followed her with a faint smile of tribute.
The smile died as he turned to go up the stairs.
Natalie was in her dressing-room. She had not undressed, but was standing by a window. She made no sign that she heard him enter, and he hesitated. Why try to talk things out with her? Why hurt her? Why not let things drift along? There was no hope of bettering them. One of two things he must do, either tear open the situation between them, or ignore it.
“Can I get anything for your head, my dear?”
“I haven't any headache.”
“Then I think I'll go to bed. I didn't sleep much last night.”
He was going out when she spoke again.
“I came up-stairs because I saw how things were going.”
“Do you really want to go into that, to-night?”
“Why not to-night? We'll have to go into it soon enough.”
Yet when she turned to him he saw the real distress in her face, and his anger died.
“I didn't want to hurt you, Natalie. I honestly tried. But you know how I feel about that girl.”
“Even the servants know it. It is quite evident.”
“We parted quite amiably.”
“I dare say! You were relieved that she was going. If you would only be ordinarily civil to her—oh, don't you see? She could keep Graham from going into this idiotic war. You can't. I can't. I've tried everything I know. And she knows she can. She's—hateful about it.”
“And you would marry him to that sort of a girl?”
“I'd keep him from being blinded, or mutilated, or being killed.”
“You can kill his soul.”
“His soul!” She burst into hysterical laughter. “You to talk about souls! That's—that's funny.”
“Natalie, dear.” He was very grave, very gentle. “Has it occurred to you that we are hitting it off rather badly lately?”
She looked at him quickly.
“How? Because I don't think as you do? We got on well enough before this war came along.”
“Do you think it is only that?”
“If it's the house, just remember you gave me carte blanche there.”
He made a little gesture of despair.
“I just thought perhaps you are not as happy as you might be.”
“Happiness again! Did you come up-stairs to-night, with this thing hanging over us, to talk about happiness? That's funny, too.” But her eyes were suddenly suspicious. There was something strange in his voice.
“Let's forget that for a moment. Graham will make his own decision. But, before we leave that, let me tell you that I love him as much as you do. His going means exactly as much. It's only—”
“Another point we differ on,” she finished for him. “Go on. You are suddenly concerned about my happiness. I'm touched, Clay. You have left me all winter to go out alone, or with anybody who might be sorry enough for me to pick me up, and now?” Suddenly her eyes sharpened, and she drew her breath quickly. “You've seen that scandalous thing in the paper!”
“It was sent to me.”
“Who sent it?”
“A firm of private detectives.”
She was frightened, and the terror in her face brought him to her quickly.
“Natalie! Don't look like that! I don't believe it, of course. It's stupid. I wasn't going to tell you. You don't think I believe it, do you?”
She let him put an arm around her and hold her, as he would a scared child. There was no love for her in it, but a great pity, and acute remorse that he could hold her so and care for her so little.
“Oh, Clay!” she gasped. “I've been perfectly sick about it!”
His conviction of his own failure to her made him very tender. He talked to her, as she stood with her face buried in the shoulder of his coat, of the absurdity of her fear, of his own understanding, and when she was calmer he made a futile effort to make his position clear.
“I am not angry,” he said. “And I'm not fudging you in any way. But you know how things are between us. We have been drifting apart for rather a long time. It's not your fault. Perhaps it is mine. Probably it is. I know I don't make you happy. And sometimes I think things have either got to be better or worse.”
“If I'm willing to go along as we are, I think you should be.”
“Then let's try to get a little happiness out of it all, Natalie.”
“Oh, happiness! You are always raving about happiness. There isn't any such thing.”
“Peace, then. Let's have peace, Natalie.”
She drew back, regarding him.
“What did you mean by things having to be better or worse?”
When he found no immediate answer, she was uneasy. The prospect of any change in their relationship frightened her. Like all weak women, she was afraid of change. Her life suited her. Even her misery she loved and fed on. She had pitied herself always. Not love, but fear of change, lay behind her shallow, anxious eyes. Yet he could not hurt her. She had been foolish, but she had not been wicked. In his new humility he found her infinitely better than himself.
“I spoke without thinking.”
“Then it must have been in your mind. Let me see the clipping, Clay. I've tried to forget what it said.”
She took it, still pinned to the prospectus, and bent over them both. When she had examined them, she continued to stand with lowered eyelids, turning and crumpling them. Then she looked up.
“So that is what you meant! It was a—well, a sort of a threat.”
“I had no intention of threatening you, my dear. You ought to know me better. That clipping was sent me attached to the slip. The only reason I let you see it was because I think you ought to know how the most innocent things are misconstrued.”
“You couldn't divorce me if you wanted to.” Then her defiance faded in a weak terror. She began to cry, shameless frightened tears that rolled down her cheeks. She reminded him that she was the mother of his child, that she had sacrificed her life to both of them, and that now they would both leave her and turn her adrift. She had served her purpose, now let her go.
Utter hopelessness kept him dumb. He knew of old that she would cry until she was ready to stop, or until she had gained her point. And he knew, too, that she expected him to put his arms around her again, in token of his complete surrender. The very fact hardened him. He did not want to put his arms around her. He wanted, indeed, to get out into the open air and walk off his exasperation. The scent in the room stifled him.
When he made no move toward her she gradually stopped crying, and gave way to the rage that was often behind her tears.
“Just try to divorce me, and see!”
“Good God, I haven't even mentioned divorce. I only said we must try to get along better. To agree.”
“Which means, I dare say, that I am to agree with you!” But she had one weapon still. Suddenly she smiled a little wistfully, and made the apparently complete surrender that always disarmed him.
“I'll be good from now on, Clay. I'll be very, very good. Only—don't be always criticizing me.”
She held up her lips, and after a second's hesitation he kissed her. He knew he was precisely where he had been when he started, and he had a hopeless sense of the futility of the effort he had made. Natalie had got by with a bad half-hour, and would proceed to forget it as quickly as she always forgot anything disagreeable. Still, she was in a more receptive mood than usual, and he wondered if that would not be as good a time as any to speak about his new plan as to the mill. He took an uneasy turn or two about the room, feeling her eyes on him.
“There is something else, Natalie.”
She had relaxed like a kitten in her big chair, and was lighting one of the small, gilt-tipped cigarets she affected.
“About Graham?”
“It affects Graham. It affects us all.”
“Yes?”
He hesitated. To talk to Natalie about business meant reducing it to its most elemental form.
“Have you ever thought that this war of ours means more than merely raising armies?”
“I haven't thought about this war at all. It's too absurd. A lot of politicians?” She shrugged her shoulders.
“It means a great deal of money.”
“'Well, the country is rich, isn't it?”
“The country? That means the people.”
“I knew we'd get to money sooner or later,” she observed, resignedly. “All right. We'll be taxed, so we'll cut down on the country house—go on. I can say it before you do. But don't say we'll have to do without the greenhouses, because we can't.”
“We may have to go without more than greenhouses.”
His tone made her sit bolt upright. Then she laughed a little.
“Poor old Clay,” she said, with the caressing tone she used when she meant to make no concession. “I do spend money, don't I? But I do make you comfortable, you know. And what is what I spend, compared with what you are making?”
“It's just that. I don't think I can consistently go on making a profit on this war, now that we are in it.”
He explained then what he meant, and watched her face set into the hard lines he knew so well. But she listened to the end and when he had finished she said nothing.
“Well?” he said.
“I don't think you have the remotest idea of doing it. You like to play at the heroic. You can see yourself doing it, and every one pointing to you as the man who threw away a fortune. But you are humbugging yourself. You'll never do it. I give you credit for too much sense.”
He went rather white. She knew the weakness in his armor, his hatred of anything theatrical, and with unfailing accuracy she always pierced it.
“Suppose I tell you I have already offered the plant to the government, at a nominal profit.”
Suddenly she got up, and every vestige of softness was gone.
“I don't think you would be such a fool.”
“I have done it.”
“Then you are insane. There is no other possible explanation.”
She passed him, moving swiftly, and went into her bedroom. He heard her lock the door behind her.
Audrey had made a resolution, and with characteristic energy had proceeded to carry it out. She was no longer needed at the recruiting stations. After a month's debate the conscription law was about to be passed, made certain by the frank statement of the British Commission under Balfour as to the urgency of the need of a vast new army in France.
For the first time the Allies laid their cards face up on the table, and America realized to what she was committed. Almost overnight a potential army of hundreds of thousands was changing to one of millions. The situation was desperate. Germany had more men than the Allies, and had vast eastern resources to draw on for still more. To the Allies only the untapped resources of America remained.
In private conference with the President Mr. Balfour had urged haste, and yet more haste.
Audrey, reading her newspapers faithfully, felt with her exaltation a little stirring of regret. Her occupation, such as it was, was gone. For the thin stream of men flowing toward the recruiting stations there was now to be a vast movement of the young manhood of the nation. And she could have no place in it.
Almost immediately she set to work to find herself a new place. At first there seemed to be none. She went to a hospital, and offered her strong body and her two willing hands for training.
“I could learn quickly,” she pleaded, “and surely there will not be enough nurses for such an army as we are to have.”
“Our regular course is three years.”
“But a special course. Surely I may have that. There are so many things one won't need in France.”
The head of the training school smiled rather wistfully. They came to her so often now, these intelligent, untrained women, all eagerness to help, to forget and unlive, if they could, their wasted lives.
“You want to go to France, of course?”
“If I can. My husband was killed over there.”
But she did not intend to make capital of Chris's death. “Of course, that has nothing to do with my going. I simply want to work.”
“It's hard work. Not romantic.”
“I am not looking for romance.”
In the end, however, she had to give it up. In some hospitals they were already training nurses helpers, but they were to relieve trained women for France. She went home to think it over. She had felt that by leaving the country she would solve Clayton's problem and her own. To stay on, seeing him now and then, was torture for them both.
But there was something else. She had begun, that afternoon, to doubt whether she was fitted for nursing after all. The quiet of the hospital, the all-pervading odor of drugs, the subdued voice and quiet eyes of the head of the training school, as of one who had looked on life and found it infinitely sad, depressed her. She had walked home, impatient with herself, disappointed in her own failure. She thought dismally:
“I am of no earthly use. I've played all my life, and now I'm paying for it. I ought to.” And she ran over her pitiful accomplishments: “golf, bridge, ride, shoot, swim, sing (a little), dance, tennis, some French—what a sickening list!”
She was glad that day to find Clare Gould waiting for her. As usual, the girl had brought her tribute, this time some early strawberries. Audrey found her in the pantry arranging their leaves in a shallow dish.
“Clare!” she said. “Aren't you working?”
“I've gone on night-turn now.”
The girl's admiration salved her wounded pride in herself. Then she saw, on a table, an envelope with her name on it. Clare's eyes followed hers.
“That's the rest of the money, Mrs. Valentine.”
She colored, but Audrey only smiled at her.
“Fine!” she said. “Are you sure you can spare it?”
“I couldn't rest until it was all paid up. And I'm getting along fine. I make a lot, really.”
“Tell me about the night work.”
“We've gone on double turn. I rather like it at night. It's—well, it's like something on the stage. The sparks fly from the lathes, and they look like fireworks. And when they hammer on hot metal it's lovely.”
She talked on, incoherent but glowing. She liked her big turret lathe. It gave her a sense of power. She liked to see the rough metal growing smooth and shining like silver under her hands. She was naively pleased that she was doing a man's work, and doing it well.
Audrey leaned back in her chair and listened. All this that Clare was talking about was Clayton's doing. He at least had dreamed true. He was doing a man's part, too, in the war. Even this girl, whose hand Natalie Spencer would not have touched, this girl was dreaming true.
Clare was still talking. The draft would be hard on the plant. They were short-handed now. There was talk of taking in more girls to replace the men who would be called.
“Do you think I could operate a lathe, Clare?”
“You! Why, Mrs. Valentine, it's not work for a lady! Look at my hands.”
But Audrey made an impatient gesture.
“I don't care about my hands. The question is, could I do it? I don't seem able to do anything else.”
“Why, yes.” Clare was reluctant. “I can, and you're a lot cleverer than I am. But it's hard. It's rough, and some of the talk—oh, I hope you don't mean it, Mrs. Valentine.”
Audrey, however, was meaning it. It seemed to her, all at once, the way out. Here was work, needed work. Work that she could do. For the first time in months she blessed the golf and riding that had kept her fit.
“Mr. Spencer is a friend of yours. He'll never let you do it.”
“He is not to know, Clare,” Audrey said briskly. “You are quite right. He would probably be very—mannish about it. So we won't tell him. And now, how shall I go about getting in? Will they teach me, or shall I have to lust learn? And whatever shall I wear?”
Clare explained while, for she was determined not to lose a minute, Audrey changed into her plainest clothes. They would be in time, if they hurried, before the employment department closed. There were women in charge there. They card-indexed you, and then you were investigated by the secret service and if you were all right, well, that was all.
“Mercy! It's enough,” said Audrey, impatiently. “Do you mean to say they'll come here?”
She glanced around her rooms, littered with photographs of people well known to the public through the society journals, with its high bright silver vases, its odd gifts of porcelain, its grand piano taking up more than its share of room.
“If they come here,” she deliberated, “they won't take me, Clare. They'll be thinking I'm living on German money!”
So, in the end, she did not go to the munition works. She went room-hunting instead, with Clare beside her, very uncomfortable on the street for fear Audrey would be compromised by walking with her. And at six o'clock that evening a young woman with a softly inflected voice and an air of almost humorous enjoyment of something the landlady failed to grasp, was the tenant, for one month's rent in advance, of a room on South Perry Street.
Clare was almost in tears.
“I can't bear to think of your sleeping in that bed, Mrs. Valentine,” she protested. “It dips down so.”
“I shan't have much time to sleep, anyhow. And when I do so I shall be so tired!—-What was the name I gave her, Clare?”
“Thompson. Mary Thompson.”
“She surprised me, or I'd have thought of a prettier one.” She was absurdly high-spirited, although the next day's ordeal rather worried her when she thought about it. She had, oddly enough, no trepidation about the work itself. It was passing the detectives in the employment department that worried her. As a matter of fact, however, there was no ordeal. Her card was carried to the desk in the corner, where the two men sat on whose decisions might so easily rest the safety of the entire plant, and they surveyed her carefully. Audrey looked ahead, and waited. They would come over and question her, and the whole fabric she had built would be destroyed. But nothing happened. She was told she would be notified in a day or two if she would be taken on, and with that she was forced to be content.
She had a bad moment, however, for Graham came through the office on his way out, and stopped for a moment directly in front of her. Her heart almost stopped beating, and she dropped her glove and stooped to pick it up. When she sat erect again he was moving on. But even her brief glance had showed her that the boy looked tired and depressed.
She went to her rented room at once, for she must be prepared for inquiries about her. During the interval she arranged for the closing of her apartment and the storing of her furniture. With their going would depart the last reminders of the old life, and she felt a curious sense of relief. They had little happiness to remind her of, and much suffering. The world had changed since she had gathered them together, and she had changed with it. She was older and sadder. But she would not have gone back. Not for anything would she have gone back.
She had one thing to do, however, before she disappeared. She had promised to try to find something for Delight, and she did it with her usual thoroughness and dispatch. She sent for her that last day in the apartment, when in the morning she had found at the Perry Street room a card telling her to report the following night. When Delight came in she found the little apartment rather bare and rather dreary, but Audrey was cheerful, almost gay.
“Going away for a little while,” she explained. “I've stored a lot of stuff. And now, my dear, do you really want to work?”
“I just must do something.”
“All right. That's settled. I've got the thing I spoke about, in one of the officers' training-camps. But remember, Delight, this is not going to be a romantic adventure. It's to be work.”
“I don't want a romantic adventure, Mrs. Valentine.”
“Poor little thing,” Audrey reflected to herself. And aloud: “Good! Of course I know you're sincere about working. I—I understand, awfully well.”
Delight was pleased, but Audrey saw that she was not happy. Even when the details had been arranged she still sat in her straight chair and made no move to go. And Audrey felt that the next move was up to her.
“What's the news about Graham Spencer?” she inquired. “He'll be drafted, I suppose.”
“Not if they claim exemption. He's making shells, you know.”
She lifted rather heavy eyes to Audrey's.
“His mother is trying that now,” she said. “Ever since his engagement was broken?”
“Oh, it was broken, was it?”
“Yes. I don't know why. But it's off. Anyhow Mrs. Spencer is telling everybody he can't be spared.”
“And his father?”
“I don't know. He doesn't talk about it, I think.”
“Perhaps he wants him to make his own decision.”
Delight rose and drew down her veil with hands that Audrey saw were trembling a little.
“How can he make his own decision?” she asked. “He may think it's his own, but it's hers, Mrs. Spencer's. She's always talking, always. And she's plausible. She can make him think black is white, if she wants to.”
“Why don't you talk to him?”
“I? He'd think I'd lost my mind! Besides, that isn't it. If you—like a man, you want him to do the right thing because he wants to, not because a girl asks him to.”
“I wonder,” Audrey said, slowly, “if he's worth it, Delight?”
“Worth what?” She was startled.
“Worth your—worth our worrying about him.”
But she did not need Delight's hasty and flushed championship of Graham to tell her what she already knew.
After she had gone, Audrey sat alone in her empty rooms and faced a great temptation. She was taking herself out of Clayton's life. She knew that she would be as lost to him among the thousands of workers in the munition plant as she would have been in Russia. According to Clare, he rarely went into the shops themselves, and never at night.
Of course “out of his life” was a phrase. They would meet again. But not now, not until they had had time to become resigned to what they had already accepted. The war would not last forever. And then she thought of their love, which had been born and had grown, always with war at its background. They had gone along well enough until this winter, and then everything had changed. Chris, Natalie, Clayton, herself—none of them were quite what they had been. Was that one of the gains of war, that sham fell away, and people revealed either the best or the worst in them?
War destroyed, but it also revealed.
The temptation was to hear Clayton's voice again. She went to the telephone, and stood with the instrument in her hands, thinking. Would it comfort him? Or would it only bring her close for a moment, to emphasize her coming silence?
She put it down, and turned away. When, some time later, the taxicab came to take her to Perry Street, she was lying on her bed in the dusk, face-down and arms outstretched, a lonely and pathetic figure, all her courage dead for the moment, dead but for the desire to hear Clayton's voice again before the silence closed down.
She got up and pinned on her hat for the last time, before the mirror of the little inlaid dressing-table. And she smiled rather forlornly at her reflection in the glass.
“Well, I've got the present, anyhow,” she considered. “I'm not going either to wallow in the past or peer into the future. I'm going to work.”
The prospect cheered her. After all, work was the great solution. It was the great healer, too. That was why men bore their griefs better than women. They could work.
She took a final glance around her stripped and cheerless rooms. How really little things mattered! All her life she had been burdened with things. Now at last she was free of them.
The shabby room on Perry Street called her. Work called, beckoned to her with calloused, useful hands. She closed and locked the door and went quietly down the stairs.
One day late in May, Clayton, walking up-town in lieu of the golf he had been forced to abandon, met Doctor Haverford on the street, and found his way barred by that rather worried-looking gentleman.
“I was just going to see you, Clayton,” he said. “About two things. I'll walk back a few blocks with you.”
He was excited, rather exalted.
“I'm going in,” he announced. “Regimental chaplain. I've got a year's leave of absence. I'm rather vague about what a chaplain does, but I rather fancy he can be useful.”
“You'll get over, of course. You're lucky. And you'll find plenty to do.”
“I've been rather anxious,” Doctor Haverford confided. “I've been a clergyman so long that I don't know just how I'll measure up as a man. You know what I mean. I am making no reflection on the church. But I've been sheltered and—well, I've been looked after. I don't think I am physically brave. It would be a fine thing,” he said wryly, “if the chaplain were to turn and run under fire!”
“I shouldn't worry about that.”
“My salary is to go on. But I don't like that, either. If I hadn't a family I wouldn't accept it. Delight thinks I shouldn't, anyhow. As a matter of fact, there ought to be no half-way measures about our giving ourselves. If I had a son to give it would be different.”
Clayton looked straight ahead. He knew that the rector had, for the moment, forgotten that he had a son to give and that he had not yet given.
“Why don't you accept a small allowance?” he inquired quietly. “Or, better still, why don't you let me know how much it will take and let me do it? I'd like to feel that I was represented in France—by you,” he added.
And suddenly the rector remembered. He was most uncomfortable, and very flushed.
“Thanks. I can't let you do that, of course.”
“Why not?”
“Because, hang it all, Clayton, I'm not a parasite. I took the car, because it enabled me to do my parish work better. But I'm not going to run off to war and let you keep my family.”
Clayton glanced at him, at his fine erect old figure, his warmly flushed face. War did strange things. There was a new light in the rector's once worldly if kindly eyes. He had the strained look of a man who sees great things, as yet far away, and who would hasten toward them. Insensibly he quickened his pace.
“But I can't go myself, so why can't I send a proxy?”
Clayton asked, smiling. “I've an idea I'd be well represented.”
“That's a fine way to look at it, but I can't do it. I've saved something, not much, but it will do for a year or two. I'm glad you made the offer, though. It was like you, and—it showed me the way. I can't let any man, or any group of men, finance my going.”
And he stuck to it. Clayton, having in mind those careful canvasses of the congregation of Saint Luke's which had every few years resulted in raising the rector's salary, was surprised and touched. After all, war was like any other grief. It brought out the best or the worst in us. It roused or it crushed us.
The rector had been thinking.
“I'm a very fortunate man,” he said, suddenly. “They're standing squarely behind me, at home. It's the women behind the army that will make it count, Clayton.”
Clayton said nothing.
“Which reminds me,” went on the rector, “that I find Mrs. Valentine has gone away. I called on her to-day, and she has given up her apartment. Do you happen to know where she is? She has left no address.”
“Gone away?” Clayton repeated. “Why, no. I hadn't heard of it.”
There in the busy street he felt a strange sense of loneliness. Always, although he did not see her, he felt her presence. She walked the same streets. For the calling, if his extremity became too great, he could hear her voice over the telephone. There was always the hope, too, of meeting her. Not by design. She had forbidden that. But some times perhaps God would be good to them both, if they earned it, and they could touch hands for a moment.
But—gone!
“You are certain she left no address?”
“Quite certain. She has stored her furniture, I believe.”
There was a sense of hurt, then, too. She had made this decision without telling him. It seemed incredible. A dozen decisions a day he made, and when they were vital there was always in his mind the question as to whether she would approve or not. He could not go to her with them, but mentally he was always consulting with her, earning her approbation. And she had gone without a word.
“Do you think she has gone to France?” He knew his voice sounded stiff and constrained.
“I hope not. She was being so useful here. Of course, the draft law—amazing thing, the draft law! Never thought we'd come to it. But it threw her out, in a way, of course.”
“What has the draft law to do with Mrs. Valentine?”
“Why, you know what she was doing, don't you?”
“I haven't seen her recently.”
The rector half-stopped.
“Well!” he said. “Let me tell you, Clayton, that that girl has been recruiting men, night after night and day after day. She's done wonders. Standing in a wagon, mind you, in the slums, or anywhere; I heard her one night. By George, I went home and tore up a sermon I had been working on for days.”
Why hadn't he known? Why hadn't he realized that that was exactly the sort of thing she would do? There was bitterness in his heart, too. He might easily have stood unseen in the crowd, and have watched and listened and been proud of her. Then, these last weeks, when he had been working, or dining out, or sitting dreary and bored in a theater, she had been out in the streets. Ah, she lived, did Audrey. Others worked and played, but she lived. Audrey! Audrey!
“—in the rain,” the rector was saying. “But she didn't mind it. I remember her saying to the crowd, 'It's raining over here, and maybe it's raining on the fellows in the trenches. But I tell you, I'd rather be over there, up to my waist in mud and water, than scurrying for a doorway here.' They had started to run out of the shower, but at that they grinned and stopped. She was wonderful, Clayton.”
In the rain! And after it was over she would go home, in some crowded bus or car, to her lonely rooms, while he rolled about the city in a limousine! It was cruel of her not to have told him, not to have allowed him at least to see that she was warm and dry.
“I've been very busy. I hadn't heard,” he said, slowly. “Is it—was it generally known?”
Had Natalie known, and kept it from him?
“I think not. Delight saw her and spoke to her, I believe.”
“And you have no idea where she is now.”
“None whatever.”
He learned that night that Natalie had known, and he surprised a little uneasiness in her face.
“I—heard about it,” she said. “I can't imagine her making a speech. She's not a bit oratorical.”
“We might have sent out one of the cars for her, if I'd known.”
“Oh, she was looked after well enough.”
“Looked after?”
Natalie had made an error, and knew it.
“I heard that a young clergyman was taking her round,” she said, and changed the subject. But he knew that she was either lying or keeping something from him. In those days of tension he found her half-truths more irritating than her rather childish falsehoods. In spite of himself, however, the thought of the young clergyman rankled.
That night, stretched in the low chair in his dressing-room, under the reading light, he thought over things carefully. If he loved her as he thought he did, he ought to want her to be happy. Things between them were hopeless and wretched. If this clergyman, or Sloane, or any other man loved her, and he groaned as he thought how lovable she was, then why not want for her such happiness as she could find?
He slept badly that night, and for some reason Audrey wove herself into his dreams of the new plant. The roar of the machinery took on the soft huskiness of her voice, the deeper note he watched for and loved.