Dangerous Days: (11 page)

She freed her hands.

“So we couldn’t even have one happy evening!” she said. “I won’t quarrel with you, Clay. And I won’t be tragic over Graham. If you’ll just be human to him, he’ll come out all right.”

She went into her bedroom, the heavy lace of her negligee trailing behind her, and closed the door.

Clayton had a visitor the next morning at the mill, a man named Dunbar, who marked on his visitors’ slip, under the heading of his business with the head of the concern, the words, “Private and confidential.”

Clayton, looking up, saw a small man, in a suit too large for him, and with ears that projected wide on either side of a shrewd, rather humorous face.

“Mr. Spencer?”

“Yes. Sit down, please.”

Even through the closed window the noise of the mill penetrated. The yard-engine whistled shrilly. The clatter of motor-trucks, the far away roar of the furnaces, the immediate vicinity of many typewriters, made a very bedlam of sound. Mr. Dunbar drew his chair closer, and laid a card on the desk.

“My credentials,” he explained.

Clayton read the card.

“Very well, Mr. Dunbar. What can I do for you?”

Dunbar fixed him with shrewd, light eyes, and bent forward.

“Have you had any trouble in your mill, Mr. Spencer?”

“None whatever.”

“Are you taking any measures to prevent trouble?”

“I had expected to. Not that I fear anything, but of course no one can tell. We have barely commenced to get lined up for our new work.”

“May I ask the nature of the precautions?”

Clayton told him, with an uneasy feeling that Mr. Dunbar was finding them childish and inefficient.

“Exactly,” said his visitor. “And well enough as far as they go. They don’t go far enough. The trouble with you manufacturers is that you only recognize one sort of trouble, and that’s a strike. I suppose you know that the Kaiser has said, if we enter the war, that he need not send an army here at all. That his army is here already, armed and equipped.”

“Bravado,” said Clayton.

“I wonder!”

Mr. Dunbar reached into his breast pocket, and produced a long typed memorandum.

“You might just glance at that.”

Clayton read it carefully. It was a list of fires, mostly in granaries and warehouses, and the total loss was appalling.

“All German work,” said his visitor. “Arson, for the Fatherland. All supplies for the Allies, you see. I’ve got other similar lists, here, all German deviltry. And they’re only commencing. If we go into the war - “

The immediate result of the visit was that Clayton became a member of a protective league which undertook, with his cooperation, to police and guard the mill. But Mr. Dunbar’s last words left him thinking profoundly.

“We’re going to be in it, that’s sure. And soon. And Germany’s army is here. It’s not only Germans either. It’s the I.W.W., for one thing. We’ve got a list through the British post-office censor, of a lot of those fellows who are taking German money to-day. They’re against everything. Not only work. They’re against law and order. And they’re likely to raise hell.”

He rose to leave.

“How do your Germans like making shells for the Allies?” he asked.

“We haven’t a great many. We’ve had no trouble. One man resigned - a boss roller. That’s all.”

“Watch him. He’s got a grievance.”

“He’s been here a long time. I haven’t an idea he’d do us any harm. It was a matter of principle with him.”

“Oh, it’s a matter of principle with all of them. They can justify themselves seven ways to the ace. Keep an eye on him, or let us do it for you.”

Clayton sat for some time after Dunbar had gone. Was it possible that Klein, or men like Klein, old employees and faithful for years, could be reached by the insidious wickedness of Germany? It was incredible. But then the whole situation was incredible; that a peaceful and home-loving people, to all appearances, should suddenly shed the sheep skin of years of dissimulation, and appear as the wolves of the world.

One of his men had died on the Lusitania, a quiet little chap, with a family in the suburbs and a mania for raising dahlias. He had been in the habit of bringing in his best specimens, and putting them in water on Clayton’s desk. His pressed glass vase was still there, empty.

Then his mind went back to Herman Klein. He had a daughter in the mill. She was earning the livelihood for the family now, temporarily. And the Germans were thrifty. If for no other reason he thought Klein would not imperil either his daughter’s safety or her salary.

There was a good bit of talk about German hate, but surely there was no hate in Klein.

Something else Dunbar had said stuck in his mind.

“We’ve got to get wise, and soon. It’s too big a job for the regular departments to handle. Every city in the country and every town ought to have a civilian organization to watch and to fight it if it has to. They’re hiding among us everywhere, and every citizen has got to be a sleuth, if we’re to counter their moves. Every man his own detective!”

He had smiled as he said it, but Clayton had surmised a great earnestness and considerable knowledge behind the smile.

Delight Haverford was to come out in December, but there were times when the Doctor wondered if she was really as keen about it as she pretended to be. He found her once or twice, her usually active hands idle in her lap, and a pensive droop to her humorous young mouth.

“Tired, honey?” he asked, on one of those occasions.

“No. Just talking to myself.”

“Say a few nice things for me, while you’re about it, then.”

“Nice things! I don’t deserve them.”

“What awful crime have you been committing? Break it to me gently. You know my weak heart.”

“Your tobacco heart!” she said, severely. “Well, I’ve been committing a mental murder, if you want to know the facts. Don’t protest. It’s done. She’s quite dead already.”

“Good gracious! And I have reared this young viper! Who is she?”

“I don’t intend to make you an accessory, daddy.”

But’ behind her smile he felt a real hurt. He would have given a great deal to have taken her in his arms and tried to coax out her trouble so he might comfort her. But that essential fineness in him which his worldliness only covered like a veneer told him not to force her confidence. Only, he wandered off rather disconsolately to hunt his pipe and to try to realize that Delight was now a woman grown, and liable to woman’s heart-aches.

“What do you think it is?” he asked that night, when after her nightly custom Mrs. Haverford had reached over from the bed beside his and with a single competent gesture had taken away his book and switched off his reading lamp, and he had, with the courage of darkness, voiced a certain uneasiness.

“Who do you think it is, you mean.”

“Very well, only the word is ‘whom.’”

Mrs. Haverford ignored this.

“It’s that Hayden girl,” she said. “Toots. And Graham Spencer.”

“Do you think that Delight - “

“She always has. For years.”

Which was apparently quite clear to them both.

“If it had only been a nice girl,” Mrs. Haverford protested, plaintively. “But Toots! She’s fast, I’m sure of it.”

“My dear!”

“And that boy needs a decent girl, if anybody ever did. A shallow mother, and a money-making father - all Toots Hay den wants is his money. She’s ages older than he is. I hear he is there every day and all of Sundays.”

The rector had precisely as much guile as a turtle dove, and long, after Mrs. Haverford gave unmistakable evidences of slumber, he lay with his arms above his head, and plotted. He had no conscience whatever about it. He threw his scruples to the wind, and if it is possible to follow the twists of a theological mind turned from the straight and narrow way into the maze of conspiracy, his thoughts ran something like this:

“She is Delight. Therefore to see her is to love her. To see her with any other girl is to see her infinite superiority and charm. Therefore - “

Therefore, on the following Sunday afternoon, the totally unsuspecting daughter of a good man gone wrong took a note from the rector to the Hayden house, about something or other of no importance, and was instructed to wait for an answer. And the rector, vastly uneasy and rather pleased with himself, took refuge in the parish house and waited ten eternities, or one hour by the clock.

Delight herself was totally unsuspicious. The rectory on a Sunday afternoon was very quiet, and she was glad to get away. She drove over, and being in no hurry she went by the Spencer house. She did that now and then, making various excuses to herself, such as liking the policeman at the corner or wanting to see the river from the end of the street. But all she saw that day was Rodney Page going in, in a top hat and very bright gloves.

“Precious!” said Delight to herself. Her bump of reverence was very small.

But she felt a little thrill, as she always did, when she passed the house. Since she could remember she had cared for Graham. She did not actually know that she loved him. She told herself bravely that she was awfully fond of him, and that it was silly, because he never would amount to anything. But she had a little argument of her own, for such occasions, which said that being really fond of any one meant knowing all about them and liking them anyhow.

She stopped the car at the Hayden house, and carried her note to the door. When she went in, however, she was instantly uncomfortable. The place reeked with smoke, and undeniably there was dancing going on somewhere. A phonograph was scraping noisily. Delight’s small nose lifted a little. What a deadly place! Coming in from the fresh outdoors, the noise and smoke and barroom reek stifled her.

Then a door opened, and Marion Hayden was drawing her into a room.

“How providential, Delight!” she said. “You’ll take my hand, won’t you? It’s Graham’s dummy, and we want to dance.”

The two connecting rooms were full of people, and the air was heavy. Through the haze she saw Graham, and nodded to him, but with a little sinking of the heart. She was aware, however, that he was looking at her with a curious intentness and a certain expectancy. Maybe he only hoped she would let him dance with Toots.

“No, thanks,” she said. “Sorry.”

“Why not, Delight? Just a hand, anyhow.”

“Three good reasons: I don’t play cards on Sunday; I don’t ever play for money; and I’m stifling for breath already in this air.”

She was, indeed, a little breathless.

There was, had she only seen it, relief in Graham’s face. She did not belong there, he felt. Delight was - well, she was different. He had not been thinking of her before she came in; he forgot her promptly the moment she went out. But she had given him, for an instant, a breath of the fresh outdoors, and quietness and - perhaps something clean and fine.

There was an insistent clamor that she stay, and Tommy Hale even got down on his knees and made a quite impassioned appeal. But Delight’s chin was very high, although she smiled.

“You are all very nice,” she said. “But I’m sure I’d bore you in a minute, and I’m certain you’d bore me. Besides, I think you’re quite likely to be raided.”

Which met with great applause.

But there was nothing of Delight of the high head when she got out of her car and crept up the rectory steps. How could she even have cared? How could she? That was his life, those were the people he chose to play with. She had a sense of loss, rather than injury.

The rector, tapping at her door a little later, received the answer to his note through a very narrow crack, and went away feeling that the way of the wicked is indeed hard.

Clayton had been watching with growing concern Graham’s intimacy with the gay crowd that revolved around Marion Hayden. It was more thoughtless than vicious; more pleasure-seeking than wicked; but its influence was bad, and he knew it.

But he was very busy. At night he was too tired to confront the inevitable wrangle with Natalie that any protest about Graham always evoked, and he was anxious not to disturb the new rapprochement with the boy by direct criticism.

The middle of December, which found the construction work at the new plant well advanced, saw the social season definitely on, also, and he found himself night after night going to dinners and then on to balls. There were fewer private dances than in previous Winters, but society had taken up various war activities and made them fashionable. The result was great charity balls.

On these occasions he found himself watching for Audrey, always. She had, with a sort of diabolical cleverness, succeeded in losing herself. Her house was sold, he knew, and he had expected that she would let him know where to find her. She had said she counted on him, and he had derived an odd sort of comfort from the thought. It had warmed him to think that, out of all the people he knew, to one woman he meant something more than success.

But although he searched the gayest crowds with his eyes, those hilarious groups of which she had been so frequently the center, he did not find her. And there had been no letter save a brief one without an address, enclosing her check for the money she had borrowed. She had apparently gone, not only out of her old life, but out of his as well.

At one of the great charity balls he met Nolan, and they stood together watching the crowd.

“Pretty expensive, I take it,” Nolan said, indicating the scene. “Orchestra, florist, supper - I wonder how much the Belgians will get.”

“Personally, I’d rather send the money and get some sleep.”

“Precisely. But would you send the money? We’ve got to have a quid pro quo, you know-most of us.” He surveyed the crowd with cynical, dissatisfied eyes. “At the end of two years of the war,” he observed, apropos of nothing, “five million men are dead, and eleven million have been wounded. A lot of them were doing this sort of thing two years ago.”

“I would like to know where we will be two years from now.”

“Some of us won’t be here. Have you seen Lloyd George’s speech on the German peace terms? That means going on to the end. A speedy peace might have left us out, but there will be no peace. Not yet, or soon.”