Chapter 6
Months afterward, Clayton Spencer, looking back, realized that the night of the dinner at the Chris Valentines marked the beginning of a new epoch for him. Yet he never quite understood what it was that had caused the change. All that was clear was that in retrospect he always commenced with that evening, when he was trying to trace his own course through the months that followed, with their various changes, to the momentous ones of the following Summer.
Everything pertaining to the dinner, save the food, stood out with odd distinctness. Natalie's silence during the drive, broken only by his few questions and her brief replies. Had the place looked well? Very. And was the planting going on all right? She supposed so. He had hesitated, rather discouraged. Then:
"I don't want to spoil your pleasure in the place, Natalie - " he had said, rather awkwardly. "After all, you will be there more than I shall. You'd better have it the way you like it."
She had appeared mollified at that and had relaxed somewhat. He fancied that the silence that followed was no longer resentful, that she was busily planning. But when they had almost reached the house she turned to him.
"Please don't talk war all evening, Clay," she said. "I'm so ghastly sick of it."
"All right," he agreed amiably. "Of course I can't prevent the others doing it."
"It's generally you who lead up to it. Ever since you came back you've bored everybody to death with it."
"Sorry," he said, rather stiffly. "I'll be careful."
He had a wretched feeling that she was probably right. He had come back so full of new impressions that he had probably overflowed with them. It was a very formal, extremely tall and reticent Clayton Spencer who greeted Audrey that night.
Afterward he remembered that Audrey was not quite hernusual frivolous self that evening. But perhaps that was only in retrospect, in view of what he learned later. She was very daringly dressed, as usual, wearing a very low gown and a long chain and ear-rings of black opals, and as usual all the men in the room were grouped around her.
"Thank heaven for one dignified man," she exclaimed, looking up at him. "Clayton, you do give tone to my parties."
It was not until they went in to dinner that he missed Chris. He heard Audrey giving his excuses.
"He's been called out of town," she said. "Clay, you're to have his place. And the flowers are low, so I can look across and admire you."
There were a dozen guests, and things moved rapidly. Audrey's dinners were always hilarious. And Audrey herself, Clayton perceived from his place of vantage, was flirting almost riotously with the man on her left. She had two high spots of color in her cheeks, and Clayton fancied - or was that in retrospect, too?
- that her gayety was rather forced. Once he caught her eyes and it seemed to him that she was trying to convey something to him.
And then, of course, the talk turned to the war, and he caught a flash of irritation on Natalie's face.
"Ask the oracle," said Audrey's clear voice, "Ask Clay. He knows all there is to know.”
"I didn't hear it, but I suppose it is when the war will end?"
"Amazing perspicacity," some one said.
"I can only give you my own opinion. Ten years if we don't go in. Possibly four if we do."
There were clamors of dissent. "None of them can hold out so long."
"If we go in it will end in six months."
"Nonsense! The Allies are victorious now:"
"I only gave an opinion," he protested. "One man's guess is just as good as another's. All I contend is that it is going on to a finish. The French and English are not going to stop until they have made the Hun pay in blood for what he has cost them."
"I wish I were a man," Audrey said' suddenly. "I don't see how any man with red blood in his veins can sit still, and not take a gun and try to stop it. Sometimes I think I'll cut off my hair, and go over anyhow. I've only got one accomplishment. I can shoot. I'd like to sit in a tree somewhere and pick them off. The butchers!" There was a roar of laughter, not so much at the words as at the fierceness with which she delivered them. Clayton, however, felt that she was in earnest and liked her the better for it. He surmised, indeed, that under Audrey's affectations there might be something rather fine if one could get at it. She looked around the table, coolly appraising every man there.
"Look at us," she said. "Here we sit, over-fed, over-dressed. Only not over-wined because I can't afford it. And probably - yes, I think actually - every man at this table is more or less making money out of it all. There's Clay making a fortune. There's Roddie, making money out of Clay. Here am I, serving Clayton's cigarets - I don't know why I pick on you, Clay. The rest are just as bad. You're the most conspicuous, that's all."
Natalie evidently felt that the situation required saving.
"I'm sure we all send money over," she protested. "To the Belgians and all that. And if they want things we have to sell - "
"Oh, yes, I know all that," Audrey broke in, rather wearily. "I know. We're the saviors of the Belgians, and we've given a lot of money and shiploads of clothes. But we're not stopping the war. And it's got to be stopped!"
Clayton watched her. Somehow what she had just said seemed to crystallize much that he had been feeling. The damnable butchery ought to be stopped. "Right, Audrey," he supported her. "I'd give up every prospect I have if the thing could be ended now."
He meant it then. He might not have meant it, entirely, to-morrow or the day after. But he meant it then. He glanced down the table, to find Natalie looking at him with cynical amusement.
The talk veered then, but still focused on the war. It became abstract as was so much of the war talk in America in 1916. Were we, after this war was over, to continue to use the inventions of science to destroy mankind, or for its welfare? Would we ever again, in wars to come, go back to the comparative humanity of the Hague convention? Were such wickednesses as the use of poison gas, the spreading of disease germs and the killing of non-combatants, all German precedents, to inaugurate a new era of cruelty in warfare.
Was this the last war? Would there ever be a last war? Would there not always be outlaw nations, as there are outlaw individuals? Would there ever be a league of nations to enforce peace?
>From that to Christianity. It had failed. On the contrary, there was a great revival of religious faith. Creeds, no. Belief, yes. Too many men were dying to permit the growth of any skepticism as to a future life. We must have it or go mad.
In the midst of that discussion Audrey rose. Her color had faded, and her smile was gone.
"I won't listen any longer," she said. "I'm ready to talk about fighting, but not about dying."
Clayton was conscious that he had had, in spite of Audrey's speech about the wine, rather more to drink than he should have. He was not at all drunk, but a certain excitement had taken the curb off his tongue. After the departure of the women he found himself, rather to his own surprise, delivering a harangue on the Germans.
"Liars and cheats," he said. And was conscious of the undivided attention of the men. "They lied when they sigued the Hague Convention; they lie when they claim that they wanted peace, not war; they lie when they claim the mis-use by the Allies of the Red Cross; they lie to the world and they lie to themselves. And their peace offers will be lies. Always lies."
Then, conscious that the table was eying him curiously, he subsided into silence. "You're a dangerous person, Clay," somebody said. "You're the kind who develops a sort of general hate, and will force the President's hand if he can. You're too old to go yourself, but you're willing to send a million or two boys over there to fight a war that is still none of our business."
"I've got a son," Clayton said sharply. And suddenly remembered Natalie. He would want to boast, she had said, that he had a son in the army. Good God, was he doing it already? He subsided into the watchful silence of a man not entirely sure of himself.
He took no liquor, and with his coffee he was entirely himself again. But he was having a reaction. He felt a sort of contemptuous scorn for the talk at the table. The guard down, they were either mouthing flamboyant patriotism or attacking the Government. It had done too much. It had done too little. Voices raised, faces flushed, they wrangled, protested, accused.
And the nation, he reflected, was like that, divided apparently hopelessly. Was there anything that would unite it, as for instance France was united? Would even war do it? Our problem was much greater, more complicated. We were of every race. And the country was founded and had grown by men who had fled from the quarrels of Europe. They had come to find pea