He found Natalie in the drawing-room, pacing the floor. She was still in her morning dress, and her eyes were red and swollen. She gave him both her hands, and he was surprised to find them cold as ice.
"I knew you would come," she said. "I am so alone, so terrified."
He could hardly articulate.
"What is it?"
"Graham has been ordered abroad."
He stood still, staring at her, and then he dropped her hands.
"Is that all?" he asked, dully.
"No."
"Good heavens, Natalie! Tell me. I"ve been frantic with anxiety about you."
"He was married to-night to Delight Haverford."
And still he stared at her.
"Then he"s not hurt, or ill?"
"I didn"t say he was. Good gracious, Rodney, isn"t that bad enough?"
"But--what did you expect? He would have to go abroad some time. You knew that. I"m sorry, but--why in G.o.d"s name didn"t you say in your wire what the trouble was?"
"You sound exactly like Clay."
She was entirely incapable of understanding. She stood before him, straight and resentful, and yet strangely wistful and appealing.
"I send you word that my only son is going to France, that he has married without so much as consulting me, that he is going to war and may never come back. I needed you, and you said once that when I needed you, wherever you were, you would come. So I sent for you, and now you act like--like Clay."
"Have you any one here?"
"The servants. Good gracious, Rodney, are you worrying about that?"
"Only for you, Natalie."
"We resent anything that reflects on a name we respect rather highly."
That was what Nolan had said.
"I"m sorry about Graham, dearest. I am sorry about any trouble that comes to you. You know that, Natalie. I"m only regretful that you have let me place you in an uncomfortable position. If my being here is known--Look here, Natalie, dear, I hate to bother you, but I"ll have to take one of the cars and go back to the city to-night."
"Aren"t you being rather absurd?"
He hesitated. He could not tell her of that awkward talk with Nolan.
There were many things he would not tell her; his own desire to rehabilitate himself among the men he knew, his own new-born feeling that to take advantage of Clayton"s absence on business connected with the war was peculiarly indefensible.
"I shall order the car at once," she said, and touched a bell. When she turned he was just behind her, but altho he held out his arms she evaded them, her eyes hard and angry.
"I wish you would try to understand," he said.
"I do, very thoroughly. Too thoroughly. You are afraid for yourself, not for me. I am in trouble, but that is a secondary consideration. Don"t bother about me, Rodney. I have borne a great deal alone in my life, and I can bear this."
She turned, and went with considerable dignity out of the door.
"Natalie!" he called. But he heard her with a gentle rustle of silks going up the staircase. It did not add to his comfort that she had left him to order the car.
All through the night Rodney rode and thought. He was angry at Natalie, but he was angrier at himself. He felt that he had been brutal, unnecessarily callous. After all, her only son was on his way to war.
It was on the cards that he might not come back. And he had let his uneasiness dominate his sympathy. He had lost her, but then he had never had her. He never could have her.
Half way to town, on a back road, the car broke down, and after vainly endeavoring to start it the chauffeur set off on foot to secure help.
Rodney slept, uncomfortably, and wakened with the movement of the machine to find it broad day. That was awkward, for Natalie"s car was conspicuous, marked too with her initials. He asked to be set down at a suburban railway station, and was dismayed to find it crowded with early commuters, who stared at the big car with interest. On the platform, eyeing him with unfriendly eyes, was Nolan. Rodney made a movement toward him. The situation was intolerable, absurd. But Nolan turned his back and proceeded to read his newspaper.
Perhaps not in years had Rodney Page faced the truth about himself so clearly as he did that morning, riding into the city on the train which carried, somewhere ahead, that quietly contemptuous figure that was Denis Nolan. Faced the truth, saw himself for what he was, and loathed the thing he saw. For a little time, too, it was given him to see Natalie for what she was, for what she would always be, her sole contribution to life the web of her selfishness, carefully woven, floating apparently aimlessly, and yet snaring and holding relentlessly whatever it touched. Killing freedom. He saw Clayton and Graham and himself, feeders for her monstrous complacency and vanity, and he made a definite determination to free himself.
"I"m through," he reflected savagely. "I"ll show them something, too.
I"ll--"
He hesitated. How lovely she was! And she cared for him. She was small and selfish and unspeakably vain, but she cared for him.
The war had done something for Rodney Page. He no longer dreamed the old dream, of turning her ice to fire. But he dreamed, for a moment, something finer. He saw Natalie his, and growing big and fine through love. He saw himself and Natalie, like cards in the game of life, re-dealt. A new combination; a winning hand--
CHAPTER XLVII
Very quietly Audrey had taken herself out of Clayton"s life. She sent him a little note of farewell:
"We have had ten very wonderful months, Clay," she wrote. "We ought to be very happy. So few have as much. And we both know that this can"t go on. I am going abroad. I have an opportunity to go over and see what Englishwomen are doing in the way of standing behind their men at war.
Then I am to tell our women at home. Not that they need it now, bless them!
"I believe you will be glad to know that I am to be on the same side of the ocean with Graham. I could get to him, I think, if anything should go wrong. Will you send him the enclosed address?
"But, my dear, the address is for him, not for you. You must not write to me. I have used up every particle of moral courage I possess, as it is. And I am holding this in my mind, as you must. Time is a great healer of all wounds. We could have been happy together; oh, my dear, so very happy together! Now that I am going, let me be frank for once. I have given you the finest thing I am capable of. I am better for caring for you as I have, as I do.
"But those days in the hospital told me we couldn"t go on. Things like that don"t stand still. Maybe--we are only human, Clay--maybe if the old days were still here we might have compromised with life. I don"t know.
But I do know that we never will, now.
"After all, we have had a great deal, and we still have. It is a wonderful thing to know that somewhere in the world is some one person who loves you. To waken up in the morning to it. To go to sleep remembering it. And to have kept that love fine and clean is a wonderful thing, too.
"I am not always on a pinnacle. There have been plenty of times when the mere human want of you has sent me to the dust. Is it wrong to tell you that? But of course not. You know it. But you and I know this; Clay, dear. Love that is hopeless, that can not end in marriage, does one of two things. Either it degrades or it exalts. It leaves its mark, always, but that mark does not need to be a stain."
Clayton lived, for a time after that, in a world very empty and very full. The new plant was well under way. Not only was he about to make sh.e.l.ls for the government at a nominal profit, but Washington was asking him to a.s.sume new and wide responsibilities. He accepted. He wanted so to fill the hours that there would be no time to remember. But, more than that, he was actuated by a fine and glowing desire to serve.
Perhaps, underlying it all was the determination to be, in every way, the man Audrey thought him to be. And there was, too, a square-jawed resolution to put behind Graham, and other boys like Graham, all the sh.e.l.ls and ammunition they needed.