On parade days, when the long lines of boys in khaki went by, they were
silent, heavy, inutile. They were too old to fight. The biggest thing in
their lives was passing them by, as passed the lines of marching boys,
and they had no part in it. They were feeding their hungry spirits on
the dregs of war, on committee meetings and public gatherings, and they
were being useful. But the great exaltation of offering their best was
not for them.
He was living a tragedy, but a greater tragedy was that of the
childless. And back of that again was the woman who had not wanted
children. There were many men to-day who were feeling the selfishness of
a woman at home, men who had lost, somehow, their pride, their
feeling of being a part of great things. Men who went home at night to
comfortable dwellings, with no vacant chair at the table, and dined in a
peace they had not earned.
Natalie had at least given him a son.
He took that thought home with him in the evening. He stopped at a
florist's and bought a great box of flowers for her, and sent them into
her room with a little note, "Won't you let me come in and try to comfort you?"
But Madeleine brought the box out again, and there was pity in her eyes.
"Mrs. Spencer can not have them in the room, sir. She says the odor of
flowers makes her ill."
He knew Madeleine had invented the excuse, that Natalie had simply
rejected his offering. He went down-stairs, and made a pretense of
dining alone in the great room.
It was there that Audrey's daily cable found him. Buckham brought it in
in shaking fingers, and stood by, white and still, while he opened it.
Clayton stood up. He was very white, but his voice was full and strong.
"He is better, Buckham! Better!"
Suddenly Buckham was crying. His austere face was distorted, his lean
body trembling. Clayton put his arm around the bowed old shoulders.
And in that moment, as they stood there, master and man, Clayton Spencer
had a flash of revelation. There was love and love. The love of a man
for a woman, and of a woman for a man, of a mother for the child at her
knee, of that child for its mother. But that the great actuating motive
of a man's maturity, of the middle span, was vested along with his
dreams, his pride and his love, in his son, his man-child.
Buckham, carrying his coffee into the library somewhat later, found
him with his head down on his desk, and the cablegram clutched in his
outstretched hands. He tip-toed out, very quietly.