Dangerous Days: (3 page)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Graham stiffened almost imperceptibly.

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

“You know she comes out this winter.”

“Really?”

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

“I wish I thought so!”

Gentle Mrs. Haverford glanced up at him quickly.

“You know she doesn’t approve of me.”

“Why, Graham!”

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

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

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

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

“How much salary is he to have?”

“Three thousand a year.”

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

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

“Every boy wants his own car.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“A car? What for?”

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

“He’ll kill himself, that’s all.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Do you really want me to tell you?”

“Not if it’s too disagreeable.”

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

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

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

“Didn’t you like my gown?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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