Dangerous Days Part 14

"I'd just like to get a whack at them Germans," offered the boy, and getting no response, trudged along again at his heels.

Suddenly it struck Clayton as rather strange that, in all the time since his return from Europe, only four people had shown any but a sort of academic interest in the war, and that, ironically enough, a German had been the first to make a sacrifice for principle. Chris had gone, to get out of trouble. The little caddie wanted to go, to get a "whack" at the madmen of Europe. And Jackson, the chauffeur, was going, giving up his excellent wages to accept the thirty-odd dollars a month of a non-com, from a pure sense of responsibility.

But, among the men he knew best, in business and in the clubs, the war still remained a magnificent spectacle. A daily newspaper drama.

Suddenly Clayton saw Audrey Valentine. She was swinging toward him, her bag with its clubs slung over her shoulder, her hands in the pockets of an orange-colored sweater. In her black velvet tam and short skirt she had looked like a little girl, and at first he did not recognize her.

She had seen him, however, and swung toward him.

"h.e.l.lo, Clay," she called, when they were within hailing distance.

"Bully shot, that last."

"Where's your caddie?"

"I didn't want one. I had a feeling that, if I took one, and he lost a ball in these impecunious times of mine, I'd murder him. Saw you at the fifth hole. I'd know your silhouette anywhere."

Under her rakish cap her eyes were rather defiant. She did not want pity; she almost dared him to pity her.

"Come round again with me, Audrey, won't you?"

"I'm off my game to-day. I'll wander along, if you don't mind. I'll probably sneeze or something when you're driving, of course."

"Nothing," he said, gravely approaching his ball, "so adds distance to my drive as a good explosive sneeze just behind it."

They talked very little. Audrey whistled as she walked along with the free swinging step that was characteristic of her, and Clayton was satisfied merely to have her companions.h.i.+p. She was not like some women; a man didn't have to be paying her compliments or making love to her.

She even made no comments on his shots, and after a time that rather annoyed him.

"Well?" he demanded, after an excellent putt. "Was that good or wasn't it?"

"Very good," she said gravely. "I am only surprised when you do a thing badly. Not when you do it well."

He thought that over.

"Have you anything in mind that I do badly? I mean, particularly in mind."

"Not very much." But after a moment: "Why don't you make Natalie play golf?"

"She hates it."

He rather wondered if she thought Natalie was one of the things he managed badly.

The sense of companions.h.i.+p warmed him. Although neither of them realized it, their mutual loneliness and dissatisfaction had brought them together, and mentally at least they were clinging, each desperately to the other. But their talk was disjointed:

"I'll return that hundred soon. I've sold the house."

"I wish you wouldn't worry about it. It's ridiculous, Audrey."

And, a hundred yards or so further on, "They wouldn't have Chris in Canada. His heart. He's going into the French Ambulance service."

"Good for Chris."

But she came out very frankly, when they started back to the clubhouse.

"It's done me a lot of good, meeting you, Clay. There's something so big and solid and dependable about you. I wonder--I suppose you don't mind my using you as a sort of anchor to windward?"

"Good heavens, Audrey! If I could only do something."

"You don't have to do a thing." She smiled up at him, and her old audacity was quite gone. "You've just got to be. And--you don't have to send me flowers, you know. I mean, I understand that you're sorry for me, without that. You're the only person in the world I'd allow to be sorry for me."

He was touched. There was no coquetry in her manner. She paid her little tribute quite sincerely and frankly.

"I've been taking stock to-day," she went on, "and I put you among my a.s.sets. One reliable gentleman, six feet tall, weight about a hundred and seventy, in good condition. Heavens, what a lot of liabilities you had to off-set!"

He stopped and looked down at her.

"Audrey dear," he said, "what am I to say to all that? What can I do?

How can I help?"

"You might tell me--No, that's silly."

"What is silly?"

But she did not answer. She called "Joey!" and gave him her clubs.

"Joey wants to be a soldier," she observed.

"So he says."

"I want to be a soldier, too, Clay. A good soldier."

He suspected that she was rather close to unusual tears.

As they approached the clubhouse they saw Graham and Marion Hayden standing outside. Graham was absently dropping b.a.l.l.s and swinging at them. It was too late when Clayton saw the danger and shouted sharply.

A ball caught the caddie on the side of the head and he dropped like a shot.

All through that night Clayton and Audrey Valentine sat by the boy's white bed in the hospital. Clayton knew Graham was waiting outside, but he did not go out to speak to him. He was afraid of himself, afraid in his anger that he would widen the breach between them.

Early in the evening Natalie had come, in a great evening-coat that looked queerly out of place, but she had come, he knew, not through sympathy for the thin little figure on the bed, but as he had known she would come, to plead for Graham. And her cry of joy when the surgeons had said the boy would live was again for Graham.

She had been too engrossed to comment on Audrey's presence there, and Audrey had gone out immediately and left them together. Clayton was forced, that night, to an unwilling comparison of Natalie with another woman. On the surface of their lives, where only they met, Natalie had always borne comparison well. But here was a new standard to measure by, and another woman, a woman with hands to serve and watchful, intelligent eyes, outmeasured her.

Not that Clayton knew all this. He felt, in a vague way, that Natalie was out of place there, and he felt, even more strongly, that she had not the faintest interest in the still figure on its white bed--save as it touched Graham and herself.

He was resentful, too, that she felt it necessary to plead with him for his own boy. Good G.o.d, if she felt that way about him, no wonder Graham--

She had placed a hand on Clayton's arm, as he sat in that endless vigil, and bent down to whisper, although no sound would have penetrated that death-like stupor.

"It was an accident, Clay," she pled. "You know Graham's the kindest soul in the world. You know that, Clay."