Dangerous Days: (33 page)

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.”