Dangerous Days Part 80

"I don't see why war needs to deprive me of my friends. I've lost everything else."

His morals were matters of his private life, and they had been neither better nor worse than the average. But he had breeding and a sure sense of the fitness of things, and this present week-end visit, with the ostentatious care the younger crowd took to allow him time to see Natalie alone, was galling to him. It put him in a false position; what hurt more, perhaps, in an unfavorable light. The war had changed standards, too. Men were being measured, especially by women, and those who failed to measure up were being eliminated with cruel swiftness, especially the men who stayed at home.

With all this, too, there was a growing admiration for Clayton Spencer in their small circle. His name had been mentioned in connection with an important position in Washington. In the clubs there was considerable praise and some envy. And Rodney knew that his affair with Natalie was the subject of much invidious comment.

"Do you love him?" he asked, suddenly.

"I--why, of course I do."

"Do you mean that?"

"I don't see what that has to do with our friendship."

"Oh--friendship! You know how I feel, and yet you go on, bringing up that silly word. If you love him, you don't--love me, and yet you've let me hang around all these months, knowing I am mad about you. You don't play the game, Natalie."

"What do you want to say?"

"If you don't love Clayton, why don't you tell him so? He's honest enough. And I miss my guess if he wants a wife who--cares for somebody else."

She sat in the dusk, thinking, and he watched her. She looked very lovely in the setting which he himself had designed for her. She hated change; she loathed trouble, of any sort. And she was, those days, just a little afraid of that strange, quiet Clayton who seemed eternally engrossed in war and the things of war. She glanced about, at the white trellises that gleamed in the garden, at the silvery fleur de lis which was the fountain, at all the lovely things with which Clayton's wealth had allowed her to surround herself. And suddenly she knew she could not give them up.

"I don't see why you have to spoil everything," she said fretfully. "It had been so perfect. Of course I'm not going to say anything to Clay. He has enough to worry him now," she added, virtuously.

Suddenly Rodney stooped and kissed her, almost savagely.

"Then I'm going," he said. And to her great surprise he went.

Alone in his room up-stairs Rodney had, in his anger, a glimpse of insight. He saw her, her life filled with small emotions, lacking the courage for big ones. He saw her, like a child, clutching one piece of cake and holding out a hand for another. He saw her, taking always, giving never.

"She's not worth it," he muttered.

On the way to the station he reflected bitterly over the past year. He did not blame her so much as he blamed himself. He had been playing a game, an attractive game. During the first months of it his interest in Natalie had been subordinate to his interest in her house. He had been creating a beautiful thing, and he had had a very real joy in it. But lately he knew that his work on the house had been that he might build a background for Natalie. He had put into it the best of his ability, and she was not worth it.

For some days he neither wrote nor called her up. He was not happy, but he had a sense of relief. He held his head a trifle higher, was his own man again, and he began to make tentative inquiries as to whether he could be useful in the national emergency or not. He was half-hearted at first, but he found out something. The mere fact that he wanted to work in some capacity brought back some of his old friends. They had seemed to drop away, before, but they came back heartily and with hands out.

"Work?" said Terry Mackenzie, at the club one day, looking up from the billiard table, where he was knocking b.a.l.l.s about, rather at haphazard.

"Why, of course you can work. What about these new cantonments we're building all over the country? You ought to be useful there. They don't want 'em pretty, tho." And Terry had laughed. But he put down his cue and took Rodney by the arm.

"Let's ask Nolan about it," he said. "He's in the reading-room, tearing the British strategy to pieces. He knows everything these days, from the draft law to the month's shipping losses. Come along."

It was from Nolan, however, that Rodney first realized how seriously Clayton's friends were taking his affair with Natalie, and that not at first from anything he said. It was an indefinable aloofness of manner, a hostility of tone. Nolan never troubled himself to be agreeable unless it suited his inclination, and apparently Terry found nothing unusual in his att.i.tude. But Rodney did.

"Something he could build?" said Nolan, repeating Terry's question.

"How do I know? There's a lot of building going on, Page, but it's not exactly your sort." And there was a faint note of contempt in his voice.

"Who would be the man to see in Washington?" Rodney inquired.

"I'll look it up and let you know. You might call me up to-morrow."

Old Terry, having got them together, went back to his billiards and left them. Nolan sat down and picked up his paper, with an air of ending the interview. But he put it down again as Rodney turned to leave the room.

"Page!"

"Yes?"

"D'you mind having a few minutes talk?"

Rodney braced himself.

"Not at all."

But Nolan was slow to begin. He sat, newspaper on his knee, his deep-set eyes thoughtful. When he began it was slowly.

"I am one of Clay Spencer's oldest friends," he said. "He's a white man, the whitest man I know. Naturally, anything that touches him touches me, in a way."

"Well?"

"The name stands for a good bit, too. His father and his grandfather were the same sort. It's not often in this town that we have three generations without a breath of scandal against them."

Rodney flushed angrily.

"What has that got to do with me?" he demanded.

"I don't know. I don't want to know. I simply wanted to tell you that there are a good many of us who take a peculiar pride in Clayton Spencer, and who resent anything that reflects on a name we respect rather highly."

"That sounds like a threat."

"Not at all. I was merely calling your attention to something I thought perhaps you had forgotten." Then he got up' and his tone changed, became brisk, almost friendly. "Now, about this building thing. If you're in earnest I think it can be managed. You won't get any money to speak of, you know."

"I don't want any money," sullenly.

"Fine. You'll probably have to go west somewhere, and you'll be set down in the center of a hundred corn-fields and told to make them overnight into a temporary town. I suppose you've thought of all that?"

"I'll go wherever I'm sent."

"Come along to the telephone, then."

Rodney hesitated. He felt cheap and despicable, and his anger was still hot. They wanted to get him out of town. He saw that. They took little enough trouble to hide it. Well, he would go. He wanted to go anyhow, and he would show them something, too, if he got a chance. He would show them that he was as much a man as Clayton Spencer. He eyed Nolan's insolently slouching figure with furious eyes. But he followed him.

Had he secured an immediate appointment things might have been different for him. Like Chris Valentine, he had had one decent impulse, and like Chris too, there was a woman behind it. But Chris had been able to act on his impulse at once, and Rodney was compelled to wait while the mills of the government ground slowly.

Then, on the fourteenth of August, Natalie telegraphed him:

"Have had bad news about Graham. Can you come?"

He thought of Graham ill, possibly dead, and he took the next train, late in the evening. It was mid-week and Natalie was alone. He had thought of that possibility in the train and he was miserably uncomfortable, with all his joy at the prospect of seeing her again.

He felt that the emergency must be his justification. Clayton was still abroad, and even his most captious critics would admit that Natalie should have a friend by if she were in trouble. Visions of Graham wounded filled his mind. He was anxious, restless and in a state of the highest nervous tension.

And there was no real emergency.