Chapter 22
In the evening of the thirty-first of January Clayton and Graham were waiting for Natalie to come down to dinner when the bell rang, and Dunbar was announced. Graham welcomed the interruption. He had been vaguely uneasy with his father since that day in his office when Clayton had found him on Anna Klein's desk. Clayton had tried to restore the old friendliness of their relation, but the boy had only half-heartedly met his advances. Now and then he himself made an overture, but it was the almost timid advance of a puppy that has been beaten. It left Clayton discouraged and alarmed, set him to going back over the past for any severity on his part to justify it. Now and then he wondered if, in Graham's frequent closetings with Natalie, she did not covertly undermine his influence with the boy, to increase her own.
But if she did, why? What was going on behind the impassive, lovely mask that was her face.
Dunbar was abrupt, as usual.
"I've brought you some news, Mr. Spencer," he said. He looked oddly vital and alive in the subdued and quiet room. "They've shown their hand at last. But maybe you've heard it."
"I've heard nothing new."
"Then listen," said Dunbar, bending forward over a table, much as it was his habit to bend over Clayton's desk. "We're in it at last. Or as good as in it. Unrestricted submarine warfare! All merchant-ships bound to and from Allied ports to be sunk without warning! We're to be allowed - mark this, it's funny! - we're to be allowed to send one ship a week to England, nicely marked and carrying passengers only."
There was a little pause. Clayton drew a long breath. "That means war," he said finally.
"Hell turned over and stirred up with a pitch-fork, if we have any backbone at all," agreed Dunbar. He turned to Graham. "You young fellows'll be crazy about this."
"You bet we will," said Graham.
Clayton slipped an arm about the boy's shoulders. He could not speak for a moment. All at once he saw what the news meant. He saw Graham going into the horror across the sea. He saw vast lines of marching men, boys like Graham, boys who had frolicked through their careless days, whistled and played and slept sound of nights, now laden like pack~animals and carrying the implements of death in their hands, going forward to something too terrible to contemplate. And a certain sure percentage of them would never come back.
His arm tightened about the boy. When he withdrew it Graham straightened. "If it's war, it's my war, father."
And Clayton replied, quietly: "It is your war, old man."
Dunbar turned his back and inspected Natalie's portrait. When he faced about again Graham was lighting a cigaret, and Natalie herself was entering the room. In her rose-colored satin she looked exotic, beautiful, and Dunbar gave her a fleeting glance of admiration as he bowed. She looked too young to have a boy going to war. Behind her he suddenly saw other women, thousands of other women, living luxurious lives, sheltered and pampered, and suddenly called on to face sacrifice without any training for it.
"Didn't know you were going out," he said. "Sorry. I'll run along now."
"We are dining at home," said Natalie, coldly. She remained standing near the door, as a hint to the shabby gentleman with the alert eyes who stood by the table. But Dunbar had forgotten her already.
"I came here right away," he explained, "because you may be having trouble now. In fact, I'm pretty sure you will. If we declare war to-morrow, as we may?"
"War!" said Natalie, and took a step forward.
Dunbar remembered her.
"We will probably declare war in a day or two. The Germans...
But Natalie was looking at Clayton with a hostility in her eyes she took no trouble to conceal.
"I hope you'll be happy, now. You've been talking war, wanting war - and now you've got it."
She turned and went out of the room. The three men in the library below heard her go up the stairs and the slam of her door behind her. Later on she sent word that she did not care for any dinner, and Clayton asked Dunbar to remain. Practical questions as to the mill were discussed, Graham entering into them with a new interest. He was flushed and excited. But Clayton was rather white and very quiet.
Once Graham took advantage of Dunbar's preoccupation with his asparagus to say:
"You don't object to the aviation service, father?"
"Wherever you think you can be useful."
After coffee Graham rose.
"I'll go and speak to mother," he said. And Clayton felt in him a new manliness. It was as though his glance said, "She is a woman, you know. War is men's work, work for you and me. But it's hard on them."
Afterward Clayton was to remember with surprise how his friends gathered that night at the house. Nolan came in early, his twisted grin rather accentuated, his tall frame more than usually stooped. He stood in the doorway of the library, one hand in his pocket, a familiar attitude which made him look oddly boyish.
"Well!" he drawled, without greeting. "They've done it. The English have got us. We hadn't a chance. The little Welshman - "
"Come in," Clayton said, "and talk like an American and not an Irishman. I don't want to know what you think about Lloyd George. What are you going to do?"
"I was thinking," Nolan observed, advancing, "of blowing up Washington. We'd have a fresh start, you see. With Washington gone root and branch we would have some sort of chance, a clear sweep, with the capital here or in Boston. Or London."
Clayton laughed. Behind Nolan's cynicism he felt a real disturbance. But Dunbar eyed him uncertainly. He didn't know about some of these Irish. They'd fight like hell, of course, if only they'd forget England.
"Don't worry about Washington," Clayton said. "Let it work out its own problems. We will have our own. What do you suppose men like you and myself are going to do? We can't fight."
Nolan settled himself in a long chair.
"Why can't we fight?" he asked. "I heard something the other day. Roosevelt is going to take a division abroad - older men. I rather like the idea. Wherever he goes there'11 be fighting. I'm no Rough Rider, God knows; But I haven't spent a half hour every noon in a gymnasium for the last ten years for nothing. And I can shoot."
"And you are free," Clayton observed, quietly. Nolan looked up.
"it's going to be hard on the women," he said. "You're all right. They won't let you go. You're too useful where you are. But of course there's the boy."
When Clayton made no reply Nolan glanced at him again. "I suppose he'll want to go," he suggested.
Clayton's face was set. For more than an hour now Graham had been closeted with his mother, and as the time went on, and no slam of a door up-stairs told of his customary method of leaving a room, he had been conscious of a growing uneasiness. The boy was soft; the fiber in him had not been hardened yet, not enough to be proof against tears. He wanted desperately to leave Nolan, to go up and learn what arguments, what coaxing and selfish whimperings Natalie was using with the boy. But he wanted, also desperately, to have the boy fight his own fight and win.
"He will want to go, I think. Of course, his mother will be shaken just now. It'll all new to her. She wouldn't believe it was coming."
"He'll go," Nolan said reflectively. "They'll all go, the best of them first. After all, we've been making a lot of noise about wanting to get into the thing. Now we're in, and that's the first price we pay - the boys."
A door slammed up-stairs, and Clayton heard Graham coming down. He passed the library door, however, and Clayton suddenly realized that he was going out. "Graham!" he called.
Graham stopped, and came back slowly. "Yes, father," he said, from the doorway. "Aren't you coming in?"
"I thought I'd go out for a hit of a spin, if you don't mind. Evening, Mr. Nolan."
The boy was shaken. Clayton knew it from his tone. All the fine vigor of the early evening was gone. And an overwhelming rage filled him, against Natalie, against himself, even against the boy. Trouble, which should have united his house, had divided it. The first threat of trouble, indeed.
"You can go out later," he said rather sharply. "We ought to talk things over, Graham. This is a mighty serious time."
"What's the use of talking things over, father? We don't know anything but that we may declare war."
"That's enough, isn't it?"
But he was startled when he saw Graham's face. He was very pale and his eyes already looked furtive. They were terribly like Natalie's eyes sometimes. The frankness was gone out of them. He came into the room, and stood there, rigid.
"I promised mother to get her some sleeping-powders."
"Sleeping-powders!"
"She's nervous."
"Bad things, sleeping-powders," said Nolan. "Get her to take some setting-up exercises by an open window and she'll sleep like a top."
"Do you mind, if I go, father?"
Clayton saw that it was of no use to urge the boy. Graham wanted to avoid him, wanted to avoid an interview. The early glow of the evening faded. Once again the sense of having lost his son almost overwhelmed him.
"Very well," he said stiffly. And Graham went out.
However, he did not leave the house. At the door he met Doctor Haverford. And Delight, and Clayton heard the clergyman's big bass booming through the hall. " - like a lamb to the slaughter!" he was saying. "And I a man of peace!"
When he came into the library he was still holding forth