Dangerous Days Part 38

"What would you suggest?" inquired the rector, rather crestfallen.

"I'd suggest training men as officers. And then--a draft."

"Never come to it in the world." Hutchinson spoke up. "I've heard men in the mill talking. They'll go, some of them, but they won't be driven. It would be civil war."

Clayton glanced at Graham as he replied. The boy was leaning forward, listening.

"There's this to be said for the draft," he said. "Under the volunteer system the best of our boys will go first. That's what happened in England. And they were wiped out. It's every man's war now. There is no reason why the few should be sacrificed for the many."

"And there's this, too," Graham broke in. He was flushed and nervous.

"A fellow would have to go. He wouldn't be having to think whether his going would hurt anybody or not. He wouldn't have to decide. He'd--just go."

There was a little hush in the room. Then Nolan spoke.

"Right-o!" he said. "The only trouble about it is that it's likely to leave out some of us old chaps, who'd like to have a fist in it."

Hutchinson remained after the others had gone. He wanted to discuss the change in status of the plant.

"We'll be taken over by the government, probably," Clayton told him.

"They have all the figures, capacity and so on. The Ordnance Department has that in hand."

Hutchinson nodded. He had himself made the report.

"We'll have to look out more than ever, I suppose," he said, as he rose to go. "The government is guarding all bridges and railways already. Met a lot of National Guard boys on the way."

Graham left when he did, offering to take him to his home, and Clayton sat for some time alone, smoking and thinking. So the thing had come at last. A year from now, and where would they all be? The men who had been there to-night, himself, Graham? Would they all be even living? Would Graham--?

He looked back over the years. Graham a baby, splas.h.i.+ng water in his bath and shrieking aloud with joy; Graham in his first little-boy clothes, riding a velocipede in the park and bringing in bruises of an amazing size and blackness; Graham going away to school, and manfully fixing his mind on his first long trousers, so he would not cry; Graham at college, coming in with the winning crew, and stumbling, half collapsed, into the arms of a waiting, cheering crowd. And the Graham who had followed his mother up the stairs that night, to come down baffled, thwarted, miserable.

He rose and threw away his cigar. He must have the thing out with Natalie. The boy's soul was more important than his body. He wanted him safe. G.o.d, how he wanted him safe! But he wanted him to be a man.

Natalie's room was dark when he went in. He hesitated. Then he heard her in bed, sobbing quietly. He was angry at himself for his impatience at the sound. He stood beside the bed, and forced a gentleness he did not feel.

"Can I get you anything?" he asked.

"No, thank you." And he moved toward the lamp. "Don't turn the light on.

I look dreadful."

"Shall I ring for Madeleine?"

"No. Graham is bringing me a sleeping-powder."

"If you are not sleepy, may I talk to you about some things?"

"I'm sick, Clay. My head is bursting."

"Sometimes it helps to talk out our worries, dear." He was still determinedly gentle.

He heard her turning her pillow, and settling herself more comfortably.

"Not to you. You've made up your mind. What's the use?"

"Made up my mind to what?"

"To sending Graham to be killed."

"That's hardly worthy of you, Natalie," he said gravely. "He is my son, too. I love him at least as much as you do. I don't think this is really up to us, anyhow. It is up to him. If he wants to go?"

She sat up, suddenly, her voice thin and high.

"How does he know what he wants?" she demanded. "He's too young. He doesn't know what war is; you say so yourself. You say he is too young to have a position worth while at the plant, but of course he's old enough to go to war and have a leg shot off, or to be blinded, or something." Her voice broke.

He sat down on the bed and felt around until he found her hand. But she jerked it from him.

"You promised me once to let him make his own decision if the time came."

"When did I promise that?"

"In the fall, when I came home from England."

"I never made such a promise."

"Will you make it now?"

"No!"

He rose, more nearly despairing than he had ever been. He could not argue with a hysterical woman. He hated cowardice, but far deeper than that was his conviction that she had already exacted some sort of promise. And the boy was not like her in that respect. He regarded a promise as almost in the nature of an oath. He himself had taught him that in the creed of a gentleman a promise was a thing of his honor, to be kept at any cost.

"You are compelling me to do a strange and hateful thing," he said. "If you intend to use your influence to keep him out, I shall have to offset it by urging him to go. That is putting a very terrible responsibility on me."

He heard her draw her breath sharply.

"If you do that I shall leave you," she said, in a frozen voice.

Suddenly he felt sorry for her. She was so weak, so childish, so cowardly. And this was the nearest they had come to a complete break.

"You're tired and nervous," he said. "We have come a long way from what I started out to say. And a long way from--the way things used to be between us. If this thing, to-night, does not bring two people together--"

"Together!" she cried shrilly. "When have we been together? Not in years. You have been married to your business. I am only your housekeeper, and Graham's mother. And even Graham you are trying to take away from me. Oh, go away and let me alone."

Down-stairs, thoughts that were almost great had formulated themselves in his mind; that to die that others might live might be better than to live oneself; that he loved his country, although he had been shamefaced about it; that America was really the melting-pot of the world, and that, perhaps, only the white flame of war would fuse it into a great nation.

But Natalie made all these thoughts tawdry. She cheapened them. She found in him nothing fine; therefore there was probably nothing fine in him. He went away, to lie awake most of the night.

CHAPTER XXIII