She went to her rented room at once, for she must be prepared for inquiries about her. During the interval she arranged for the closing of her apartment and the storing of her furniture. With their going would depart the last reminders of the old life, and she felt a curious sense of relief. They had little happiness to remind her of, and much suffering. The world had changed since she had gathered them together, and she had changed with it. She was older and sadder. But she would not have gone back. Not for anything would she have gone back.
She had one thing to do, however, before she disappeared. She had promised to try to find something for Delight, and she did it with her usual thoroughness and dispatch. She sent for her that last day in the apartment, when in the morning she had found at the Perry Street room a card telling her to report the following night. When Delight came in she found the little apartment rather bare and rather dreary, but Audrey was cheerful, almost gay.
"Going away for a little while," she explained. "I"ve stored a lot of stuff. And now, my dear, do you really want to work?"
"I just must do something."
"All right. That"s settled. I"ve got the thing I spoke about, in one of the officers" training-camps. But remember, Delight, this is not going to be a romantic adventure. It"s to be work."
"I don"t want a romantic adventure, Mrs. Valentine."
"Poor little thing," Audrey reflected to herself. And aloud: "Good! Of course I know you"re sincere about working. I--I understand, awfully well."
Delight was pleased, but Audrey saw that she was not happy. Even when the details had been arranged she still sat in her straight chair and made no move to go. And Audrey felt that the next move was up to her.
"What"s the news about Graham Spencer?" she inquired. "He"ll be drafted, I suppose."
"Not if they claim exemption. He"s making sh.e.l.ls, you know."
She lifted rather heavy eyes to Audrey"s.
"His mother is trying that now," she said. "Ever since his engagement was broken?"
"Oh, it was broken, was it?"
"Yes. I don"t know why. But it"s off. Anyhow Mrs. Spencer is telling everybody he can"t be spared."
"And his father?"
"I don"t know. He doesn"t talk about it, I think."
"Perhaps he wants him to make his own decision."
Delight rose and drew down her veil with hands that Audrey saw were trembling a little.
"How can he make his own decision?" she asked. "He may think it"s his own, but it"s hers, Mrs. Spencer"s. She"s always talking, always. And she"s plausible. She can make him think black is white, if she wants to."
"Why don"t you talk to him?"
"I? He"d think I"d lost my mind! Besides, that isn"t it. If you--like a man, you want him to do the right thing because he wants to, not because a girl asks him to."
"I wonder," Audrey said, slowly, "if he"s worth it, Delight?"
"Worth what?" She was startled.
"Worth your--worth our worrying about him."
But she did not need Delight"s hasty and flushed championship of Graham to tell her what she already knew.
After she had gone, Audrey sat alone in her empty rooms and faced a great temptation. She was taking herself out of Clayton"s life. She knew that she would be as lost to him among the thousands of workers in the munition plant as she would have been in Russia. According to Clare, he rarely went into the shops themselves, and never at night.
Of course "out of his life" was a phrase. They would meet again. But not now, not until they had had time to become resigned to what they had already accepted. The war would not last forever. And then she thought of their love, which had been born and had grown, always with war at its background. They had gone along well enough until this winter, and then everything had changed. Chris, Natalie, Clayton, herself--none of them were quite what they had been. Was that one of the gains of war, that sham fell away, and people revealed either the best or the worst in them?
War destroyed, but it also revealed.
The temptation was to hear Clayton"s voice again. She went to the telephone, and stood with the instrument in her hands, thinking. Would it comfort him? Or would it only bring her close for a moment, to emphasize her coming silence?
She put it down, and turned away. When, some time later, the taxicab came to take her to Perry Street, she was lying on her bed in the dusk, face-down and arms outstretched, a lonely and pathetic figure, all her courage dead for the moment, dead but for the desire to hear Clayton"s voice again before the silence closed down.
She got up and pinned on her hat for the last time, before the mirror of the little inlaid dressing-table. And she smiled rather forlornly at her reflection in the gla.s.s.
"Well, I"ve got the present, anyhow," she considered. "I"m not going either to wallow in the past or peer into the future. I"m going to work."
The prospect cheered her. After all, work was the great solution. It was the great healer, too. That was why men bore their griefs better than women. They could work.
She took a final glance around her stripped and cheerless rooms. How really little things mattered! All her life she had been burdened with things. Now at last she was free of them.
The shabby room on Perry Street called her. Work called, beckoned to her with calloused, useful hands. She closed and locked the door and went quietly down the stairs.
CHAPTER XL
One day late in May, Clayton, walking up-town in lieu of the golf he had been forced to abandon, met Doctor Haverford on the street, and found his way barred by that rather worried-looking gentleman.
"I was just going to see you, Clayton," he said. "About two things. I"ll walk back a few blocks with you."
He was excited, rather exalted.
"I"m going in," he announced. "Regimental chaplain. I"ve got a year"s leave of absence. I"m rather vague about what a chaplain does, but I rather fancy he can be useful."
"You"ll get over, of course. You"re lucky. And you"ll find plenty to do."
"I"ve been rather anxious," Doctor Haverford confided. "I"ve been a clergyman so long that I don"t know just how I"ll measure up as a man.
You know what I mean. I am making no reflection on the church. But I"ve been sheltered and--well, I"ve been looked after. I don"t think I am physically brave. It would be a fine thing," he said wryly, "if the chaplain were to turn and run under fire!"
"I shouldn"t worry about that."
"My salary is to go on. But I don"t like that, either. If I hadn"t a family I wouldn"t accept it. Delight thinks I shouldn"t, anyhow. As a matter of fact, there ought to be no half-way measures about our giving ourselves. If I had a son to give it would be different."
Clayton looked straight ahead. He knew that the rector had, for the moment, forgotten that he had a son to give and that he had not yet given.
"Why don"t you accept a small allowance?" he inquired quietly. "Or, better still, why don"t you let me know how much it will take and let me do it? I"d like to feel that I was represented in France--by you," he added.
And suddenly the rector remembered. He was most uncomfortable, and very flushed.
"Thanks. I can"t let you do that, of course."