"Oh, happiness! You are always raving about happiness. There isn"t any such thing."
"Peace, then. Let"s have peace, Natalie."
She drew back, regarding him.
"What did you mean by things having to be better or worse?"
When he found no immediate answer, she was uneasy. The prospect of any change in their relationship frightened her. Like all weak women, she was afraid of change. Her life suited her. Even her misery she loved and fed on. She had pitied herself always. Not love, but fear of change, lay behind her shallow, anxious eyes. Yet he could not hurt her. She had been foolish, but she had not been wicked. In his new humility he found her infinitely better than himself.
"I spoke without thinking."
"Then it must have been in your mind. Let me see the clipping, Clay.
I"ve tried to forget what it said."
She took it, still pinned to the prospectus, and bent over them both.
When she had examined them, she continued to stand with lowered eyelids, turning and crumpling them. Then she looked up.
"So that is what you meant! It was a--well, a sort of a threat."
"I had no intention of threatening you, my dear. You ought to know me better. That clipping was sent me attached to the slip. The only reason I let you see it was because I think you ought to know how the most innocent things are misconstrued."
"You couldn"t divorce me if you wanted to." Then her defiance faded in a weak terror. She began to cry, shameless frightened tears that rolled down her cheeks. She reminded him that she was the mother of his child, that she had sacrificed her life to both of them, and that now they would both leave her and turn her adrift. She had served her purpose, now let her go.
Utter hopelessness kept him dumb. He knew of old that she would cry until she was ready to stop, or until she had gained her point. And he knew, too, that she expected him to put his arms around her again, in token of his complete surrender. The very fact hardened him. He did not want to put his arms around her. He wanted, indeed, to get out into the open air and walk off his exasperation. The scent in the room stifled him.
When he made no move toward her she gradually stopped crying, and gave way to the rage that was often behind her tears.
"Just try to divorce me, and see!"
"Good G.o.d, I haven"t even mentioned divorce. I only said we must try to get along better. To agree."
"Which means, I dare say, that I am to agree with you!" But she had one weapon still. Suddenly she smiled a little wistfully, and made the apparently complete surrender that always disarmed him.
"I"ll be good from now on, Clay. I"ll be very, very good. Only--don"t be always criticizing me."
She held up her lips, and after a second"s hesitation he kissed her. He knew he was precisely where he had been when he started, and he had a hopeless sense of the futility of the effort he had made. Natalie had got by with a bad half-hour, and would proceed to forget it as quickly as she always forgot anything disagreeable. Still, she was in a more receptive mood than usual, and he wondered if that would not be as good a time as any to speak about his new plan as to the mill. He took an uneasy turn or two about the room, feeling her eyes on him.
"There is something else, Natalie."
She had relaxed like a kitten in her big chair, and was lighting one of the small, gilt-tipped cigarets she affected.
"About Graham?"
"It affects Graham. It affects us all."
"Yes?"
He hesitated. To talk to Natalie about business meant reducing it to its most elemental form.
"Have you ever thought that this war of ours means more than merely raising armies?"
"I haven"t thought about this war at all. It"s too absurd. A lot of politicians?" She shrugged her shoulders.
"It means a great deal of money."
""Well, the country is rich, isn"t it?"
"The country? That means the people."
"I knew we"d get to money sooner or later," she observed, resignedly.
"All right. We"ll be taxed, so we"ll cut down on the country house--go on. I can say it before you do. But don"t say we"ll have to do without the greenhouses, because we can"t."
"We may have to go without more than greenhouses."
His tone made her sit bolt upright. Then she laughed a little.
"Poor old Clay," she said, with the caressing tone she used when she meant to make no concession. "I do spend money, don"t I? But I do make you comfortable, you know. And what is what I spend, compared with what you are making?"
"It"s just that. I don"t think I can consistently go on making a profit on this war, now that we are in it."
He explained then what he meant, and watched her face set into the hard lines he knew so well. But she listened to the end and when he had finished she said nothing.
"Well?" he said.
"I don"t think you have the remotest idea of doing it. You like to play at the heroic. You can see yourself doing it, and every one pointing to you as the man who threw away a fortune. But you are humbugging yourself. You"ll never do it. I give you credit for too much sense."
He went rather white. She knew the weakness in his armor, his hatred of anything theatrical, and with unfailing accuracy she always pierced it.
"Suppose I tell you I have already offered the plant to the government, at a nominal profit."
Suddenly she got up, and every vestige of softness was gone.
"I don"t think you would be such a fool."
"I have done it."
"Then you are insane. There is no other possible explanation."
She pa.s.sed him, moving swiftly, and went into her bedroom. He heard her lock the door behind her.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
Audrey had made a resolution, and with characteristic energy had proceeded to carry it out. She was no longer needed at the recruiting stations. After a month"s debate the conscription law was about to be pa.s.sed, made certain by the frank statement of the British Commission under Balfour as to the urgency of the need of a vast new army in France.
For the first time the Allies laid their cards face up on the table, and America realized to what she was committed. Almost overnight a potential army of hundreds of thousands was changing to one of millions. The situation was desperate. Germany had more men than the Allies, and had vast eastern resources to draw on for still more. To the Allies only the untapped resources of America remained.