"I'm afraid, Audrey."
"I'm not," she said proudly. "I sometimes think - oh, I think such a lot these days - that if we talked these things over, I'd recover my - friend. I've lost him now, you see. And I'm so horribly lonely, Clay."
"Lost him!"
"Lost him," she repeated. "I've lost my friend, and I haven't gained anything. It didn't hurt anybody for us to meet now and then, Clay. You know that. I wish you would understand," she added impatiently. "I only want to go back to things as they were. I want you to come in now and then. We used to talk about all sorts of things, and I miss that. Plenty of people come, but that's different. It's only your occasional companionship I want. I don't want you to come and make love to me."
"You say you have missed the companionship," he said rather unsteadily. "I wonder if you think I haven't?"
"I know you have, my dear. And that is why I want you to come. To come without being afraid that I expect or want anything else. Surely we can manage that."
He smiled down at her, rather wryly, at her straight courageous figure, her brave eyes, meeting his so directly. How like her it all was, the straightforwardness of it, the absence of coquetry. And once again he knew, not only that he loved her with all the depths of him, of his strong body and his vigorous mind, but that she was his woman. The one woman in the world for him. It was as though all his life he had been searching for her, and he had found her, and it was too late. She knew it, too. It was in her very eyes.
"I have wanted to come, terribly," he said finally. And when she held out her hand to him, he bent down and kissed it.
"Then that's settled," she said, in a matter-of-fact tone. "And now I'll tell you about Clare. I'm rather proud of her."
"Clare?"
The tension had been so great that he had forgotten the blonde girl entirely.
"Do you remember the night I got a hundred dollars from you? And later on, that I asked you for work in your mill for the girl I got it for?"
"Do you mean?" He looked at her in surprise.
"That was the girl. You see, she rather holds onto me. It's awful in a way, too. It looks as though I am posing as magnanimous. I'm not, Clay. If I had cared awfully it would have been different. But then, if I had cared awfully, perhaps it would never have happened."
"You have nothing to blame yourself for, Audrey."
"Well, I do, rather. But that's not the point. Sometimes when I am alone I have wicked thoughts, you know, Clay. I'm reckless, and sometimes I think maybe there is only one life, and why not get happiness out of it. I realize that, but for some little kink in my brain, I might be in Clare's position. So I don't turn her out. She's a poor, cheap thing, but - well, she is fond of me. If I had children - it's funny, but I rather mother her! And she's straight now, straight as a string!"
She was sensitive to his every thought, and she knew by the very change in the angle of his head that he was thinking that over and not entirely approving. But he said finally:
"You're a big woman, Audrey."
"But you don't like it!"
"I don't like her troubling you."
"Troubling me! She doesn't borrow money, you know. Why, she makes more money from your plant than I have to live on! And she brings me presents of flowers and the most awful embroidery, that she does herself."
"You ought not to know that side of life."
She laughed a little bitterly.
"Not know it!" she said. "I've had to know it. I learned it pretty well, too. And don't make any mistake, Clay." She looked up at him with her clear, understanding gaze. "Being good, decent, with a lot of people is only the lack of temptation. Only, thank God, there are some who have the strength to withstand it when it comes."
And he read in her clear eyes her promise and her understanding; that they loved each other, that it was the one big thing in both their lives, but that between them there would be only the secret inner knowledge of that love. There would be no shipwreck. And for what she gave, she demanded his strength and his promise. It was to what he read in her face, not to her words, that he replied:
"I'll do my very best, Audrey dear."
He went back to her rooms with her, and she made him tea, while he built the fire in the open fireplace and nursed it tenderly to a healthy strength. Overnursed it, she insisted. They were rather gay, indeed, and the danger-point passed by safely. There was so much to discuss, she pretended. The President's unfortunate phrase of "peace without victory"; the deportation of the Belgians, the recent leak in Washington to certain stock-brokers, and more and more imminent, the possibility of a state of war being recognized by the government.
"If it comes," she said, gayly, "I shall go, of course. I shall go to France and sing them into battle. My shorthand looks like a music score, as it is. What will you do?"
"I can't let you outshine me," he said. "And I don't want to think of your going over there without me. My dear! My dear!"
She ignored that, and gave him his tea, gravely.
CHAPTER XXVIII
When Natalie roused from her nap that Sunday afternoon, it was to find Marion gone, and Graham waiting for her in her boudoir. Through the open door she could see him pacing back and forward and something in his face made her vaguely uneasy. She assumed the child-like smile which so often preserved her from the disagreeable.
"What a sleep I've had," she said, and yawned prettily. "I'll have one of your cigarets, darling, and then let's take a walk."
Graham knew Natalie's idea of a walk, which was three or four blocks along one of the fashionable avenues, with the car within hailing distance. At the end of the fourth block she always declared that her shoes pinched, and called the machine.
"You don't really want to walk, mother."
"Of course I do, with you. Ring for Madeleine, dear."
She was uncomfortable. Graham had been very queer lately. He would have long, quiet spells, and then break out in an uncontrollable irritation, generally at the servants. But Graham did not ring for Madeleine. He lighted a cigaret for Natalie, and standing off, surveyed her. She was very pretty. She was prettier than Toots. That pale blue wrapper, or whatever it was, made her rather exquisite. And Natalie, curled up on her pale rose chaise longue, set to work as deliberately to make a conquest of her son as she had ever done to conquer Rodney Page, or the long list of Rodney's predecessors.
"You're growing very handsome, you know, boy," she said. "Almost too handsome. A man doesn't need good looks. They're almost a handicap. Look at your father."
"They haven't hurt him any, I should say."
"I don't know." She reflected, eyeing her cigaret. "He presumes on them, rather. And a good many men never think a handsome man has any brains."
"Well, he fools them there, too."
She raised her eyebrows slightly.
"Tell me about the new plant, Graham."
"I don't know anything about it yet," he said bluntly. "And you wouldn't be really interested if I did."
"That's rather disagreeable of you."
"No; I'm just trying to talk straight, for once. We - you and I - we always talk around things. I don't know why."
"You look terribly like your father just now. You are quite savage."
"That's exactly what I mean, mother. You don't say father is savage. God knows he isn't that. You just say I act like father, and that I am savage."
Natalie blew a tiny cloud of cigaret smoke, and watched it for a moment.
"You sound fearfully involved. But never mind about that. I daresay I've done something; I don't know what, but of course I am guilty."
"Why did you bring Marion here to-day, mother?"
"Well, if you want to know exactly, I met her coming out of church, and it occurred to me that we were having rather a nice luncheon, and that it would be a pity not to ask some one to come in. It was a nice luncheon, wasn't it?"
"That's why you asked her? For food?"
"Brutally put, but correct."
"You have been asking
her here a lot lately. And yet the last time we discussed her you said she was fast. That she wanted to marry me for my money. That people would laugh if I fell for it."
"I hardly used those words, did I?"
"For heaven's sake, mother," he cried, exasperated. "Don't quibble. Let's get down to facts. Does your bringing her here mean that you've changed your mind?"
Natalie considered. She was afraid of too quick a surrender lest he grow suspicious. She decided to temporize, with the affectation of frankness that had once deceived Clayton, and that still, she knew, affected Graham.
"I'll tell you exactly," she said, slowly. "At first I thought it was just an infatuation. And - you really are young, Graham, although you look and act like such a man. But I feel, now that time has gone on and you still care about her, that after all, your happiness is all that matters."
"Mother!"
But she held up her hand.
"Remember, I am only speaking for myself. My dearest wish is to make you happy. You are all I have. But I cannot help you very much. Your father looks at those things differently. He doesn't quite realize that you are grown up, and have a right to decide some things for yourself."
"He has moved me up, raised my salary."
"That's different. You're valuable to him, naturally. I don't mean he doesn't love you," she added hastily, as Graham wheeled and stared at her. "Of course he does, in his own way. It's not my way, but then - I'm only a woman and a mother."
"You think he'll object?"
"I think he must be handled. If you rush at him, and demand the right to live your own life - "
"It is my life."
"Precisely. Only he may not see it that way."
He took a step toward her.
"Mother, do you really want me to marry Marion?"
"I think you ought to be married."
"To Marion?"
"To some one you love."
"Circles again," he muttered. "You've changed your mind, for some reason. What is it, mother?"
He had an uneasy thought that she might have learned of Anna. There was that day, for instance, when his father had walked into the back room.
Natalie was following a train of thought suggested by her own anxiety.
"You might be married quietly," she suggested. "Once it was done, I am sure your father would come around. You are both of age, you know."
He eyed her then with open-eyed amazement.
"Tm darned if I understand you," he burst out. And then, in one of his quick remorses, "I'm sorry, mother. I'm just puzzled, that's all. But that plan's no good, anyhow. Marion won't do it. She will have to be welcome in the family, or she won't come."
"She ought to be glad to come any way she can," Natalie said sharply. And found Graham's eyes on her, studying her.
"You don't want her. That's plain. But you do want her. That's not so plain. What's the answer, mother?"
And Natalie, with an irritable feeing that she had bungled somehow, got up and flung away the cigaret.
"I am trying to give you what you want," she said pettishly. "That's clear enough, I should think."
"There's no other reason?"
"What other reason could there be?"
Dressing to dine at the Hayden's that night, Graham heard Clayton come in and go into his dressing-room. He had an impulse to go over, tie in hand as he was, and put the matter squarely before his father. The marriage-urge - surely a man would understand that. Even Anna, and his predicament there. Anything was better than this constant indirectness of gaining his father's views through his mother.
Had he done so, things would have been different later. But by continual suggestion a vision of his father as hard, detached, immovable, had been built up in his mind. He got as far as the door, hesitated, turned back.
It was Marion herself who solved the mystery of Natalie's changed attitude, when Graham told of it that night. She sat listening, her eyes slightly narrowed, restlessly turning her engagement ring.
"Well, at least that's something," she said, noncommittally. But in her heart she knew, as one designing woman may know another. She knew that Natalie had made Graham promise not to enlist at once, if war was declared, and now she knew that she was desperately preparing to carry her fear for Graham a step further, even at the cost of having her in the family.
She smiled wryly. But there was triumph in the smile, too. She had them now. The time would come when they would crawl to her to marry Graham, to keep him from going to war. Then she would make her own terms.
In the meantime the thing was to hold him by every art she knew.
There was another girl, somewhere. She had been more frightened about that than she cared to admit, even to herself. She must hold him close.
She used every art she knew. She deliberately inflamed him. And the vicious circle closed in about him, Natalie and Marion and Anna Klein. And to offset them, only Delight Haverford, at evening prayer in Saint Luke's, and voicing a tiny petition for him, that he might walk straight, that he might find peace, even if that peace should be war.
CHAPTER XXIX
Herman Klein, watch between forefinger and thumb, climbed heavily to Anna's room. She heard him pause outside the door, and her heart almost stopped beating. She had been asleep, and rousing at his step, she had felt under the pillow for her watch to see the time. It was not there.
She remembered then; she had left it below, on the table. And he was standing outside her door. She heard him scratching a match, striking it against the panel of her door. For so long as it would take the match to burn out, she heard him there, breathing heavily. Then the knob turned.
She leaped out of the bed in a panic of fear. The hall, like the room, was dark, and she felt his ponderous body in the doorway, rather than saw it.
"You will put on something and come down-stairs," he said harshly.
"I will not." She tried to keep her voice steady. "I've got to work, if you haven't. I've got to have my sleep." Her tone rose, hysterically. "If you think you can stay out half the night, and guzzle beer, and then come here to get me up, you can think again."
"You are already up," he said, in a voice slowed and thickened by rage. "You will come down-stairs."
He turned away and descended the creaking stairs again. She listened for the next move, but he made none. She knew then that he was waiting at the foot of the stairs.
She was half-maddened with terror by that time, and she ran to the window. But it was high. Even if she could have dropped out, and before she could put on enough clothing to escape in, he would be back again, his rage the greater for the delay. She slipped into a kimono, and her knees giving way under her she went down the stairs. Herman was waiting. He moved under the lamp, and she saw that he held the watch, dangling.
"Now!" he said. "Where you got this? Tell me."
"I've told you how I got it."
"That was a lie."
So - Rudolph had told him!
"I like that!" she blustered, trying to gain time. "I guess it's time they gave me something - I've worked hard enough. They gave them to all the girls."
"That is a lie also."
"I like that. Telling me I'm lying. You ask Mr. Graham Spencer. He'll tell you."
"If that is true, why do you shake so?"
"You scare me, father." She burst into frightened tears. "I don't know what's got into you. I do my best. I give you all I make. I've kept this house going, and" - she gained a little courage - "I've had darned little thanks for it."
"You think I believe the mill gave five thousand dollars in watches last Christmas? To-morrow I go, with this to Mr. Clayton Spencer, not to that degenerate son of his, and I ask him. Then I shall know."
He turned, as if about to leave her, but the alternative he offered her was too terrible.
"Father!" she said. "I'll tell you the truth. I bought it myself."
"With what money?"
"I had a raise. I didn't tell you. I had a raise of five dollars a week. I'm
paying for it myself. Honest to heaven, that's right, father."
"So - you have had a raise, and you have not told me?"
"I give all the rest to you. What do I get out of all my hard work? Just a place to live. No clothes. No fun. No anything. All the other girls have a good time now and then, but I'm just like a prisoner. You take all I earn, and I get - the devil."
Her voice rose to a terrified squeal. Behind her she heard the slovenly servant creaking down the stairs. As Herman moved toward her she screamed.
"Katie!" she called. "Quick. Help!"
But Herman had caught her by the shoulder and was dragging her toward a corner, where there hung a leather strap.
Katie, peering round the door of the enclosed staircase, saw him raise the strap, and Anna's white face upraised piteously.
"For God's sake, father."
The strap descended. Even after Katie had rushed up the stairs and locked herself in the room, she could hear, above Anna's cries, the thud of the strap, relentless, terrible, lusty with cruelty.
Herman went to church the next morning. Lying in her bed, too sore and bruised to move, Anna heard him carefully polishing his boots on the side porch, heard him throw away the water after he had shaved, heard at last the slam of the gate as he started, upright in his Sunday clothes, for church.
Only when he had reached the end of the street, and Katie could see him picking his way down the blackened hill, did she venture up with a cup of coffee. Anna had to unlock her door to admit her, to remove a further barricade of chairs. When Katie saw her she almost dropped the cup.
"You poor little rat," she said compassionately. "Gee! He was crazy. I never saw such a face. Gee!"
Anna said nothing. She dropped on the side of the bed and took the coffee, drinking gingerly through a lip swollen and cut.
"I'm going to leave," Katie went on. "It'll be my time next. If he tries any tricks on me I'll have the law on him. He's a beast; that's what he is."
"Katie," Anna said, "if I leave can you get my clothes to me? I'll carry all I can."
"He'd take the strap to me."
"Well, if you're leaving anyhow, you can put some of my things in your trunk."
"Good and right you are to get out," Katie agreed. "Sure I'll do it. Where do you think you'll go?"
The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart Page 248