"If Herman Klein had not done it, there were others who would, probably.
It looks as though you had provided them with a tool, but I suppose we were vulnerable in a dozen ways."
He rose, and they stood, eyes level, father and son, in the early morning sunlight. And suddenly Graham"s arms were around his shoulders, and something tight around Clayton"s heart relaxed. Once again, and now for good, he had found his boy, the little boy who had not so long ago stood on a chair for this very embrace. Only now the boy was a man.
"I"m going to France, father," he said. "I"m going to pay them back for this. And out of every two shots I fire one will be for you."
Perhaps he had found his boy only to lose him, but that would have to be as G.o.d willed.
At ten o"clock he went up to the house, to change his wet and draggled clothing. The ruins were being guarded by soldiers, and the work of rescue was still going on, more slowly now, since there was little or no hope of finding any still living thing in that flame-swept wreckage. He found Natalie in bed, with Madeleine in attendance, and he learned that her physician had just gone.
He felt that he could not talk to her just then. She had a morbid interest in horrors, and with the sights of that night fresh in his mind he could not discuss them. He stopped, however, in her doorway.
"I"m glad you are resting," he said, "Better stay in bed to-day. It"s been a shock."
"Resting! I"ve been frightfully ill."
"I"m sorry, my dear. I"ll come in again on my way out."
"Clay!"
He turned in the doorway.
"Is it all gone? Everything?"
"Practically. Yes."
"But you were insured?"
"I"ll tell you about that later. I haven"t given it much thought yet. I don"t know just how we stand."
"I shall never let Graham go back to it again. I warn you. I"ve been lying here for hours, thinking that it might have happened as easily as not while he was there."
He hardly listened. He had just remembered Anna.
"I left a girl here last night, Natalie," he said. "Do you happen to know what became of her?"
Natalie stirred on her pillows.
"I should think I do. She fainted, or pretended to faint. The servants looked after her."
"Has she gone?"
"I hope so. It is almost noon. Oh, by the way," she called, as he moved off, "there is a message for you. A woman named Gould, from the Central Hospital. She wants to see you at once. They have kept the telephone ringing all the morning."
Clare Gould! That was odd. He had seen her taken out, a bruised and moaning creature, her ma.s.ses of fair hair over her shoulders, her eyes shut. The surgeons had said she was not badly hurt. She might be worse than they thought. The mention of her name brought Audrey before him. He hoped, wherever she was, she would know that he was all right.
As soon as he had changed he called the hospital. The message came back promptly and clearly.
"We have a woman named Gould here. She is not badly hurt, but she is hysterical. She wants to see you, but if you can"t come at once I am to give you a message. Wait a moment. She has written it, but it"s hardly legible."
Clayton waited.
"It"s about somebody you know, who had gone on night turn recently at your plant. I can"t read the name. It looks like Ballantine."
"It isn"t Valentine, is it?"
"Perhaps it is. It"s just a scrawl. But the first name is clear enough--Audrey."
Afterward he did not remember hanging up the receiver, or getting out of the house. He seemed to come to himself somewhat at the hospital, and at the door to Clare"s ward his brain suddenly cleared. He did not need Clare"s story. It seemed that he knew it all, had known it long ages before. Her very words sounded like infinite repet.i.tions of something he had heard, over and over.
"She was right beside me, and I was showing her about the lathe. They"d told me I could teach her. She was picking it up fast, too. And she liked it. She liked it--"
The fact that Audrey had liked it broke down his scanty reserve of restraint. Clayton found himself looking down at her from a great distance. She was very remote. Clare pulled herself together.
"When the first explosion came it didn"t touch us. But I guess she knew it meant more. She said something about the telephone and getting help and there"d be more, and she started to run. I just stood there, watching her run, and waiting. And then the second one came, and--"
Suddenly Clare seemed to disappear altogether. He felt something catch his arm, and the nurse"s voice, very calm and quiet:
"Sit down. I"ll get you something."
Then he was swallowing a fluid that burned his throat, and Clare was crying with the sheet drawn to her mouth, and somewhere Audrey--
He got up, and the nurse followed him out.
"You might look for the person here," she suggested. "We have had several brought in."
He was still dazed, but he followed her docilely. Audrey was not there.
He seemed to have known that, too. That there would be a long search, and hours of agony, and at the end--the one thing he did not know was what was to be at the end.
All that afternoon he searched, going from hospital to hospital. And at each one, as he stopped, that curious feeling of inner knowledge told him she was not there. But the same instinct told him she was not dead.
He would have known it if she was dead. There was no reasoning in it. He could not reason. But he knew, somehow.
Then, late in the afternoon, he found her. He knew that he had found her. It was as though, at the entrance of the hospital, some sixth sense had told him this was right at last. He was quite steady, all at once.
She was here, waiting for him to come. And now he had come, and it would be all right.
Yet, for a time, it seemed all wrong. She was not conscious, had not roused since she was brought it. There were white screens around her bed, and behind them she lay alone. They had braided her hair in two long dark braids, and there was a bandage on one of her arms. She looked very young and very tired, but quite peaceful.
His arrival had caused a small stir of excitement, his own prominence, the disaster with which the country was ringing. But for a few minutes, before the doctors arrived, he was alone with her behind the screen. It was like being alone with his dead. Bent over her, his face pressed to one of her quiet hands, he whispered to her all the little tendernesses, the aching want of her, that so long he had buried in his heart. Things he could not have told her, waking, he told her then. It seemed, too, that she must rouse to them, that she must feel him there beside her, calling her back. But she did not move.
It was then, for the first time, that he wondered what he would do if she should die.
The doctors, coming behind the screen, found him sitting erect and still, staring ahead of him, with a strange expression on his face. He had just decided that he could not, under any circ.u.mstances, live if she died.
It was rather a good thing for Clayton"s sanity that they gave him hope.
He was completely unnerved, tired and desperate. Indeed, when they came in he had been picturing Audrey and himself, wandering hand in hand, very quietly and contentedly, in some strange world which was his rather hazy idea of the Beyond. It seemed to him quite sane and extraordinarily happy.
The effort of meeting the staff roused him, and, with hope came a return to normality. There was much to be done, special nurses, a private room, and--rather reluctantly---friends and relatives to be notified. Only for a few minutes, out of all of life, had she been his. He must give her up now. Life had become one long renunciation.
He did not go home at all that night. He divided his time between the plant and the hospital, going back and forward. Each time he found the report good. She was still strong; no internal injuries had manifested themselves, and the concussion would probably wear off before long. He wanted to be there when she first opened her eyes. He was afraid she might be frightened, and there would be a bad minute when she remembered--if she did remember.