"Do you mean to say you have been living here, without even visitors, for two months?"
"You"ll laugh. Clay, I"m studying!"
"Studying! What?"
"Stenography. Oh, it"s not as bad as that. I don"t have to earn my living. I"ve just got to do something for my soul"s sake. I went all over the ground, and I saw I was just a c.u.mberer of the earth, and then I thought--"
She hesitated.
"What did you think?"
"If, some time or other, I could release a man to go and fight, it would be the next best thing to giving myself. Not here, necessarily; I don"t believe we will ever go in. But in England, anywhere."
"You"ve released Chris."
"He released himself. And he"s not fighting. He"s driving an ambulance."
He waited, hoping she would go on. He was not curious, but he thought it might be good for her to talk Chris and the trouble over with some one. But she sat silent, and suddenly asked him if he cared for tea. He refused.
"How"s Natalie?"
"Very well."
"And the house?"
"Held up by cold weather now. It should be finished by the end of April."
"Clay," she said, after a moment, "are you going to employ women in the new munition works?"
"In certain departments, yes."
"I have a girl I want work for. She"s not trained, of course."
"None of them are. We have to teach them. I can give you a card to the employment department if you want it."
"Thanks."
There was a short silence. She sat looking at the fire, and he had a chance to notice the change in her. She had visualized it herself. Her long ear-rings were gone, and with them some of the insolence they had seemed to accentuate. She was not rouged, and he had thought at first, for that reason, that she looked ill. She was even differently dressed, in something dark and girlish with a boyish white Eton collar.
"I wonder if you think I"m hiding, Clay," she said, finally.
"Well, what are you doing?" He smiled down at her from the hearth-rug.
"Paying my bills! That"s not all the truth, either. I"ll tell you, Clay.
I just got sick of it all. When Chris left I had a chance to burn my bridges and I burned them. The same people, the same talk, the same food, the same days filled with the same silly things that took all my time and gave me nothing."
"How long had you been feeling like that?"
"I don"t know. Ever since the war, I suppose. I just got to thinking--"
Her voice trailed off.
"I have some of Chris"s Scotch, if you want a high-ball."
"Thanks, no. Audrey, do you hear from Chris?"
"Yes. He"s in a dangerous place now, and sometimes at night--I suppose I did force him, in a way. He was doing no good here, and I thought he would find himself over there. But I didn"t send him. He---Tell me about making sh.e.l.ls."
He was a little bit disappointed. Evidently she did not depend on him enough to tell him Chris"s story. But again, she was being loyal to Chris.
He told her about the mill, phrasing his explanation in the simplest language; the presses drilling on white-hot metal; the great anvils; the forge; the machine-shop, with its lathes, where the rough surfaces of the sh.e.l.ls were first rough-turned and then machined to the most exact measurements. And finding her interested, he told her of England"s women workers, in their khaki-colored overalls and caps, and of the convent-like silence and lack of movement in the filling-sheds, where one entered with rubber-shod feet, and the women, silent and intent, sat all day and all night, with queer veils over their faces, filling sh.e.l.ls with the death load.
Audrey listened, her hands clasped behind her head.
"If other women can do that sort of thing, why can"t I, Clay?"
"Nonsense."
"But why? I"m intelligent."
"It"s not work for a lady."
"Lady! How old-fashioned you are! There are no ladies any more. Just women. And if we aren"t measured by our usefulness instead of our general not-worth-a-d.a.m.n-ness, well, we ought to be. Oh, I"ve had time to think, lately."
He was hardly listening. Seeing her, after all those weeks, had brought him a wonderful feeling of peace. The little room, with its fire, was cozy and inviting. But he was quite sure, looking down at her, that he was not in danger of falling in love with her. There was no riot in him, no faint stirring of the emotions of that hour with the mauve book.
There was no suspicion in him that the ways of love change with the years, that the pa.s.sions of the forties, when they come, are to those of the early years as the deep sea to a shallow lake, less easily roused, infinitely more terrible.
"This girl you spoke about, that was the business you mentioned?"
"Yes." She hesitated. "I could have asked you that over the telephone, couldn"t I? The plain truth is that I"ve had two bad months--never mind why, and Christmas was coming, and--I just wanted to see your perfectly sane and normal face again."
"I wish you"d let me know sooner where you were."
She evaded his eyes.
"I was getting settled, and studying, and learning to knit, and--oh, I"m the most wretched knitter, Clay! I just stick at it doggedly. I say to myself that hands that can play golf, and use a pen, and shoot, and drive a car, have got to learn to knit. But look here!"
She held up a forlorn looking sock to his amused gaze. "And I think I"m a clever woman."
"You"re a very brave woman, Audrey," he said. "You"ll let me come back, won"t you?"
"Heavens, yes. Whenever you like. And I"m going to stop being a recluse.
I just wanted to think over some things."
On the way home he stopped at his florist"s, and ordered a ma.s.s of American beauties for her on Christmas morning. She had sent her love to Natalie, so that night he told Natalie he had seen her, and such details of her life as he knew.
"I"m glad she"s coming to her senses," Natalie said. "Everything"s been deadly dull without her. She always made things go--I don"t know just how," she added, as if she had been turning her over in her mind. "What sort of business did she want to see you about?"