Dangerous Days Part 33

"Not at all," Terry had said. And chuckled. "This war, if it comes, is every man's burden, rich and poor. Only the rich will give most, because they have most to give."

"I think that's ridiculous," Natalie had said.

It was after that that Clayton began to wonder what she was planning.

He came home late one afternoon to find that they were spending the evening in, and to find a very serious Natalie waiting, when he came down-stairs dressed for dinner. She made an effort to be conversational, but it was a failure. He was uneasily aware that she was watching him, inspecting, calculating, choosing her moment. But it was not until they were having coffee that she spoke.

"I'm uneasy about Graham, Clay."

He looked up quickly.

"Yes?"

"I think he ought to go away somewhere."

"He ought to stay here, and make a man of himself," he came out, almost in spite of himself. He knew well enough that such a note always roused Natalie's antagonism, and he waited for the storm. But none came.

"He's not doing very well, is he?"

"He's not failing entirely. But he gives the best of himself outside the mill. That's all."

She puzzled him. Had she heard of Marion?

"Don't you think, if he was away from this silly crowd he plays with, as he calls it, that he would be better off?"

"Where, for instance?"

"You keep an agent in England. He could go there. Or to Russia, if the Russian contract goes through."

He was still puzzled.

"But why England or Russia?"

"Anywhere out of this country."

"He doesn't have to leave this country to get away from a designing woman."

From her astonished expression, he knew that he had been wrong. She was not trying to get him away from Marion. From what?

She bent forward, her face set hard.

"What woman?"

Well, it was out. She might as well know it. "Don't you think it possible, Natalie, that he may intend to marry Marion Hayden?"

There was a very unpleasant half-hour after that. Marion was a parasite of the rich. She had abused Natalie's hospitality. She was designing.

She played bridge for her dress money. She had ensnared the boy.

And then:

"That settles it, I should think. He ought to leave America. If you have a single thought for his welfare you'll send him to England."

"Then you hadn't known about Marion when you proposed that before?"

"No. I knew he was not doing well. And I'm anxious. After all, he's my boy. He is--"

"I know," he supplemented gravely. "He is all you have. But I still don't understand why he must leave America."

It was not until she had gone up-stairs to her room, leaving him uneasily pacing the library floor, that he found the solution. Old Terry Mackenzie and his statement about conscription. Natalie wanted Graham sent out of the country, so he would be safe. She would purchase for hint a shameful immunity, if war came. She would stultify the boy to keep him safe. In that hour of clear vision he saw how she had always stultified the boy, to keep him safe. He saw her life a series of small subterfuges, of petty indulgences, of little plots against himself, all directed toward securing Graham immunity--from trouble at school, from debt, from his own authority.

A wave of unreasoning anger surged over him, but with it there was pity, too; pity for the narrowness of her life and her mind, pity for her very selfishness. And for the first time in his life he felt a shamefaced pity for himself. He shook himself violently. When a man got sorry for himself--

CHAPTER XX

Rudolph Klein had not for a moment believed Anna's story about the watch, and on the day after he discovered it on her wrist he verified his suspicions. During his noon hour he went up-town and, with the confident swagger of a certain type of man who feels himself out of place, entered the jeweler's shop in question.

He had to wait for some little time, and he spent it in surveying contemptuously the contents of the show-cases. That even his wildest estimate fell far short of their value he did not suspect, but his lips curled. This was where the money earned by honest workmen was spent, that women might gleam with such gewgaws. Wall Street bought them, Wall Street which was forcing this country into the war to protect its loans to the Allies. America was to pull England's chestnuts out of the fire that women, and yet more women, might wear those strings of pearls, those glittering diamond baubles.

Into his crooked mind there flashed a line from a speech at the Third Street hall the night before: "War is h.e.l.l. Let those who want to, go to h.e.l.l."

So--Wall Street bought pearls for its women, and the dissolute sons of the rich bought gold wrist-watches for girls they wanted to seduce.

The expression on his face was so terrible that the clerk behind the counter, waiting to find what he wanted, was startled.

"I want to look at gold wrist-watches," he said. And eyed the clerk for a trace of patronage.

"Ladies?"

"Yes."

He finally found one that was a duplicate of Anna's, and examined it carefully. Yes, it was the same, the maker's name on the dial, the s.p.a.ce for the monogram on the back, everything.

"How much is this one?"

"One hundred dollars."

He almost dropped it. A hundred dollars! Then he remembered Anna's story.

"Have you any gold-filled ones that look like this?"

"We do not handle gold-filled cases."

He put it down, and turned to go. Then he stopped.

"Don't sell on the installment plan, either, I suppose?" The sneer in his voice was clearer than his anxiety. In his mind, he already knew the answer.

"Sorry. No."