The immediate outstanding result of the holocaust at the munitions works
was the end of Natalie's dominion aver Graham. She never quite forgave
him the violence with which he threw off her shackles.
"If I'd been half a man I'd have been over there long ago," he said,
standing before her, tall and young and flushed. "I'd have learned my
job by now, and I'd be worth something, now I'm needed."
"And broken my heart."
"Hearts don't break that way, mother."
"Well, you say you are going now. I should think you'd be satisfied.
There's plenty of time for you to get the glory you want."
"Glory! I don't want any glory. And as for plenty of time--that's
exactly what there isn't."
During the next few days she preserved an obstinate silence on
the subject. She knew he had been admitted to one of the officers'
training-camps, and that he was making rather helpless and puzzled
purchases. Going into his room she would find a dressing-case of khaki
leather, perhaps, or flannel shirts of the same indeterminate hue. She
would shed futile tears over them, and order them put out of sight. But
she never offered to assist him.
Graham was older, in many ways. He no longer ran up and down the stairs
whistling, and he sought every opportunity to be with his father. They
spent long hours together in the library, when, after a crowded day,
filled with the thousand, problems of reconstructions, Clayton smoked
a great deal, talked a little, rather shame-facedly after the manner of
men, of personal responsibility in the war, and quietly watched the man
who was Graham.
Out of those quiet hours, with Natalie at the theater or reading
up-stairs in bed, Clayton got the greatest comfort of his life. He would
neither look back nor peer anxiously ahead.
The past, with its tragedy, was gone. The future might hold even worse
things. But just now he would live each day as it came, working to the
utmost, and giving his evenings to his boy. The nights were the worst.
He was not sleeping well, and in those long hours of quiet he tried to
rebuild his life along stronger, sterner lines. Love could have no place
in it, but there was work left. He was strong and he was still young.
The country should have every ounce of energy in him. He would re-build
the plant, on bigger lines than before, and when that was done, he would
build again. The best he could do was not enough.
He scarcely noticed Natalie's withdrawal from Graham and himself. When
she was around he was his old punctilious self, gravely kind, more than
ever considerate. Beside his failure to her, her own failure to him
faded into insignificance. She was as she was, and through no fault of
hers. But he was what he had made himself.