Dangerous Days

Suddenly he was gone, and Clayton, following uneasily to the doorway,

heard a slam below. When, some hours later, Graham had not come back,

he fell into the heavy sleep that follows anxiety and brings no rest. In

the morning he found that Graham had gone back to the garage and taken

his car, and that he had not returned.

Afterward Clayton was to look back and to remember with surprise how

completely the war crisis had found him absorbed in his own small group.

But perhaps in the back of every man's mind war was always, first of

all, a thing of his own human contacts. It was only when those were

cleared up that he saw the bigger problem. The smaller questions loomed

so close as to obscure the larger vision.

He went out into the country the next day, a cold Sunday, going afoot,

his head down against the wind, and walked for miles. He looked haggard

and tired when he came back, but his quiet face held a new resolve.

War had come at last. He would put behind him the selfish craving for

happiness, forget himself. He would not make money out of the nation's

necessity. He would put Audrey out of his mind, if not out of his heart.

He would try to rebuild his house of life along new and better lines.

Perhaps he could bring Natalie to see things as he saw them, as they

were, not as she wanted them to be.

Some times it took great crises to bring out women. Child-bearing did

it, often. Urgent need did it, too. But after all the real test was war.

The big woman met it squarely, took her part of the burden; the small

woman weakened, went down under it, found it a grievance rather than a

grief.

He did not notice Graham's car when it passed him, outside the city

limits, or see Anna Klein's startled eyes as it flashed by.

Graham did not come in until evening. At ten o'clock Clayton found the

second man carrying up-stairs a tray containing whisky and soda, and

before he slept he heard a tap at Graham's door across the hall, and

surmised that he had rung for another. Later still he heard Natalie

cross the hall, and rather loud and angry voices. He considered,

ironically, that a day which had found a part of the nation on its knees

found in his own house only dissension and bitterness.

In the morning, at the office, Joey announced a soldier to see him, and

added, with his customary nonchalance: "We'll be having a lot of them around now, I expect."