Clayton's first impulse was to take the cable to Natalie, to brush
aside the absurd defenses she had erected, and behind which she cowered,
terrified but obstinate. To say to her, "He is living. He is going to live. But this war is not over yet. If
we want him to come through, we must stand together. We must deserve to
have him come back to us."
But by the time he reached the top of the stairs he knew he could not
do it. She would not understand. She would think he was using Graham
to further a reconciliation; and, after her first joy was over, he knew
that he would see again that cynical smile that always implied that he
was dramatizing himself.
Nothing could dim his strong inner joy, but something of its outer glow
faded. He would go to her, later. Not now. Nothing must spoil this great
thankfulness of his.
He gave Madeleine the cable, and went down again to the library.
After a time he began to go over the events of the past eighteen months.
His return from the continent, and that curious sense of unrest that had
followed it, the opening of his eyes to the futility of his life. His
failure to Natalie and her failure to him. Graham, made a man by war and
by the love of a good woman. Chris, ending his sordid life in a blaze of
glory, and forever forgiven his tawdry sins because of his one big hour.
War took, but it gave also. It had taken Joey, for instance, but Joey
had had his great moment. It was better to have one great moment and die
than to drag on through useless years. And it was the same way with a
nation. A nation needed its hour. It was only in a crisis that it could
know its own strength. How many of them, who had been at that dinner
of Natalie's months before, had met their crisis bravely! Nolan was
in France now. Doctor Haverford was at the front. Audrey was nursing
Graham. Marion Hayden was in a hospital training-School. Rodney Page
was still building wooden barracks in a cantonment in Indiana, and was
making good. He himself-They could never go back, none of them, to the old smug, complacent,
luxurious days. They could no more go back than Joey could return to
life again. War was the irrevocable step, as final as death itself. And
he remembered something Nolan had said, just before he sailed.
"We have had one advantage, Clay. Or maybe it is not an advantage, after
all. Do you realize that you and I have lived through the Golden Age? We
have seen it come and seen it go. The greatest height of civilization,
since the world began, the greatest achievements, the most opulent
living. And we saw it all crash. It will be a thousand years before the
world will be ready for another."