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.