The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "I often come here," he explained. "The food is good, if you like Italian cooking. And it is near my work. I - "

  But Audrey was not listening. At a corner, far back, Natalie and Rodney were sitting, engrossed in each other. Natalie's back was carefully turned to the room, but there was no mistaking her. Audrey wanted madly to get away, but the coffee had come and the young clergyman was talking gentle platitudes in a rather sweet but monotonous voice. Then Rodney saw her, and bowed.

  Almost immediately afterward she heard the soft rustle that was Natalie, and found them both beside her.

  "Can we run you up-town?" Natalie asked. "That is, unless - "

  She glanced at the clergyman.

  "Thank you, no, Natalie. I'm going to have some supper first."

  Natalie was uneasy. Audrey made no move to present the clergyman, whose name she did not know. Rodney was looking slightly bored.

  "Odd little place, isn't it?" Natalie offered after a second's silence.

  "Rather quaint, I think."

  Natalie made a desperate effort to smooth over an awkward situation. She turned to the clergyman.

  "We heard you speaking. It was quite thrilling."

  He smiled a little.

  "Not so thrilling as this lady. She carried the crowd, absolutely."

  Natalie turned and stared at Audrey, who was flushed with annoyance.

  "You!" she said. "Do you mean to say you have been talking from that wagon?"

  "I haven't said it. But I have."

  "For heaven's sake!" Then she laughed and glanced at Rodney. "Well, if you won't tell on me, I'll not tell on you." And then seeing Audrey straighten, "I don't mean that, of course. Clay's at a meeting to-night, so I am having a holiday."

  She moved on, always with the soft rustle, leaving behind her a delicate whiff of violets and a wide-eyed clergyman, who stared after her admiringly.

  "What a beautiful woman!" he said. There was a faint regret in his voice that Audrey had not presented him, and he did not see that her coffee-cup trembled as she lifted it to her lips.

  At ten o'clock the next morning Natalie called her on the 'phone. Natalie's morning voice was always languid, but there was a trace of pleading in it now.

  "It's a lovely day," she said. "What are you doing?"

  "I've been darning."

  "You! Darning!"

  "I rather like it."

  "Heavens, how you've changed! I suppose you wouldn't do anything so frivolous as to go out with me to the new house."

  Audrey hesitated. Evidently Natalie wanted to talk, to try to justify herself. But the feeling that she was the last woman in the world to be Natalie's father-confessor was strong in her. On the other hand, there was the question of Graham. On that, before long, she and Natalie would have, in one of her own occasional lapses into slang, to go to the mat.

  "I'll come, of course, if that's an invitation."

  "I'll be around in an hour, then."

  Natalie was unusually prompt. She was nervous and excited, and was even more carefully dressed than usual. Over her dark blue velvet dress she wore a loose motor-coat, with a great chinchilla collar, but above it Audrey, who would have given a great deal to be able to hate her, found her rather pathetic, a little droop to her mouth, dark circles which no veil could hide under her eyes.

  The car was in its customary resplendent condition. There were orchids in the flower-holder, and the footman, light rug over his arm, stood rigidly waiting at the door.

  "What a tone you and your outfit do give my little street," Audrey said, as they started. "We have more milk-wagons than limousines, you know."

  "I don't see how you can bear it."

  Audrey smiled. "It's really rather nice," she said. "For one thing, I haven't any bills. I never lived on a cash basis before. It's a sort of emancipation."

  "Oh, bills!" said Natalie, and waved her hands despairingly. "If you could see my desk! And the way I watch the mail so Clay won't see them first. They really ought to send bills in blank envelopes."

  "But you have to give them to him eventually, don't you?"

  "I can choose my moment. And it is never in the morning. He's rather awful in the morning."

  "Awful?"

  "Oh, not ugly. Just quiet. I hate a man who doesn't talk in the mornings. But then, for months, he hasn't really talked at all. That's why" - she was rather breathless - "that's why I went out with Rodney last night."

  "I don't think Clayton would mind, if you told him first. It's your own affair, of course, but it doesn't seem quite fair to him."

  "Oh, of course you'd side with him. Women always side with the husband."

  "I don't 'side' with any one," Audrey protested. "But I am sure, if he realized that you are lonely - "

  Suddenly she realized that Natalie was crying. Not much, but enough to force her, to dab her eyes carefully through her veil.

  "I'm awfully unhappy, Audrey," she said. "Everything's wrong, and I don't know why. What have I done? I try and try and things just get worse."

  Audrey was very uncomfortable. She had a guilty feeling that the whole situation, with Natalie pouring out her woes beside her, was indelicate, unbearable.

  "But if Clay - " she began.

  "Clay! He's absolutely ungrateful. He takes me for granted, and the house for granted. Everything. And if he knows I want a thing, he disapproves at once. I think sometimes he takes a vicious pleasure in thwarting me."

  But as she did not go on, Audrey said nothing. Natalie had raised her veil, and from a gold vanity-case was repairing the damages around her eyes.

  "Why don't you find something to do, something to interest you?" Audrey suggested finally.

  But Natalie poured out a list of duties that lasted for the last three miles of the trip, ending with the new house.

  "Even that has ceased to be a satisfaction," she finished. "Clayton wants to stop work on it, and cut down all the estimates. It's too awful. First he told me to get anything I liked, and now he says to cut down to nothing. I could just shriek about it."

  "Perhaps that's because we are in the war, now."

  "War or no war, we have to live, don't we? And he thinks I ought to do without the extra man for the car, and the second man in the house, and heaven alone knows what. I'm at the end of my patience."

  Audrey made a resolution. After all, what mattered was that things should be more tolerable for Clayton. She turned to Natalie.

  "Why don't you try to do what he wants, Natalie? He must have a reason for asking you. And it would please him a lot."

  "If I start making concession, I can just keep it up. He's like that."

  "He's so awfully fine, Natalie. He's - well, he's rather big. And sometimes I think, if you just tried, he wouldn't be so hard to please. He probably wants peace and happiness?"

  "Happiness!" Natalie's voice was high. "That sounds like Clay. Happiness! Don't you suppose I want to be happy?"

  "Not enough to work for it," said Audrey, evenly.

  Natalie turned and stared at her.

  "I believe you're half in love with Clay yourself!"

  "Perhaps I am."

  But she smiled frankly into Natalie's eyes.

  "I know if I were married to him, I'd try to do what he wanted."

  "You'd try it for a year. Then you'd give it up. It's one thing to admire a man. It's quite different being married to him, and having to put up with all sorts of things?"

  Her voice trailed off before the dark vision of her domestic, unhappiness. And again, as with Graham and his father, it was what she did not say that counted. Audrey came close to hating her just then.

  So far the conversation had not touched on Graham, and now they were turning in the new drive. Already the lawns Were showing green, and extensive plantings of shrubbery were putting out their pale new buds. Audrey, bending forward in the car, found it very lovely, and because it belonged to Clay, was to be his home, it thrilled her, just as the towering furnaces of his mill thrilled her, the lines
of men leaving at nightfall. It was his, therefore it was significant.

  The house amazed her. Even Natalie's enthusiasm had not promised anything so stately or so vast. Moving behind her through great empty rooms, to the sound of incessant hammering, over which Natalie's voice was raised shrilly, she was forced to confess that, between them, Natalie and Rodney had made a lovely thing. She felt no jealousy when she contrasted it with her own small apartment. She even felt that it was the sort of house Clayton should have.

  For, although it had been designed as a setting for Natalie, although every color-scheme, almost every chair, had been bought with a view to forming a background for her, it was too big, too massive. It dwarfed her. Out-of-doors, Audrey lost that feeling. In the formal garden Natalie was charmingly framed. It was like her, beautifully exact, carefully planned, already with its spring borders faintly glowing.

  Natalie cheered in her approval.

  "You're so comforting," she said. "Clay thinks it isn't homelike. He says it's a show place - which it ought to be. It cost enough - and he hates show places. He really ought to have a cottage. Now let's see the swimming-pool."

  But at the pool she lost her gayety. The cement basin, still empty, gleamed white in the sun, and Natalie, suddenly brooding, stood beside it staring absently into it.

  "It was for Graham," she said at last. "We were going to have week-end parties, and all sorts of young people. But now!"

  "What about now?"

  Natalie raised tragic eyes to hers.

  "He's probably going into the army. He'd have never thought of it, but Clayton shows in every possible way that he thinks he ought to go. What is the boy to do? His father driving him to what may be his death!"

  "I don't think he'd do that, Natalie."

  Natalie laughed, her little mirthless laugh.

  "Much you know what his father would do! I'll tell you this, Audrey. If Graham goes, and anything - happens to him, I'll never forgive Clay. Never."

  Audrey had not suspected such depths of feeling as Natalie's eyes showed under their penciled brows. They were desperate, vindictive eyes. Suddenly Natalie was pleading with her.

  "You'll talk to Clay, won't you? He'll listen to you. He has a lot of respect for your opinion. I want you to go to him, Audrey. I brought you here to ask you. I'm almost out of my mind. Why do you suppose I play around with Rodney? I've got to forget, that's all. And I've tried everything I know, and failed. He'll go, and I'll lose him, and if I do it will kill me."

  "It doesn't follow that because he goes he won't come back."

  "He'll be in danger. I shall be worrying about him every moment." She threw out her hands in what was as unrestrained a gesture as she ever made. "Look at me!" she cried. "I'm getting old under it. I have lines about my eyes already. I hate to look at myself in the morning. And I'm not old. I ought to be at my best now."

  Natalie's anxiety was for Graham, but her pity was for herself. Audrey's heart hardened.

  "I'm sorry," she said. "I can't go to Clay. I feel as I think he does. If Graham wants to go, he should be free to do it. You're only hurting him, and your influence on him, by holding him back."

  "You've never had a child."

  "If I had, and he wanted to go, I should be terrified, but I should be proud."

  "You and Clay! You even talk alike. It's all a pose, this exalted attitude. Even this war is a pose. It's a national attitude we've struck, a great nation going to rescue humanity, while the rest of the world looks on and applauds! It makes me ill."

  She turned and went back to the house, leaving Audrey by the swimming-pool. She sat on the edge of one of the stone benches, feeling utterly dreary and sad. To make a sacrifice for a worthy object was one thing. To throw away a life's happiness for a spoiled, petulant woman was another. It was too high a price to pay. Mingled with her depression was pity for Clayton; for all the years that he had lived with this woman: and pride in him, that he had never betrayed his disillusion.

  After a time she saw the car waiting, and she went slowly back to the house. Natalie was already inside, and she made no apologies whatever. The drive back was difficult. Natalie openly sulked, replied in monosyllables, made no effort herself until they were in the city again. Then she said, "I'm sorry I asked you to speak to Clay. Of course you needn't do it."

  "Not if it is to do what you said. But I wish you wouldn't misunderstand me, Natalie. I'm awfully sorry. We just think differently."

  "We certainly do," said Natalie briefly. And that was her good-by.

  CHAPTER XXXVII

  When Clayton had returned from Washington, one of the first problems put up to him had been Herman Klein's application to be taken on again. He found Hutchinson in favor of it.

  "He doesn't say much," he said. "Never did. But I gather things are changed, now we are in the war ourselves."

  "I suppose we need him."

  "You bet we need him."

  For the problem of skilled labor was already a grave one.

  Clayton was doubtful. If he could have conferred with Dunbar he would have felt more comfortable, but Dunbar was away on some mysterious errand connected with the Military Intelligence Department. He sat considering, tapping on his desk with the handle of his pen. Of course things were different now. A good many Germans whose sympathies had, as between the Fatherland and the Allies, been with Germany, were now driven to a decision between the land they had left and the land they had adopted. And behind Herman there were thirty years of good record.

  "Where is the daughter?"

  "I don't know. She left some weeks ago. It's talk around the plant that he beat her up, and she got out. Those Germans don't know the first thing about how to treat women."

  "Then she is not in Weaver's office?"

  There was more talk in the offices than Hutchinson repeated. Graham's fondness for Anna, her slavish devotion to him, had been pretty well recognized. He wondered if Clayton knew anything about it, or the further gossip that Graham knew where Anna Klein had been hiding.

  "What about Rudolph Klein? He was a nephew, wasn't he?"

  "Fired," said Hutchinson laconically. "Got to spreading the brotherhood of the world idea - sweat brothers, he calls them. But he was mighty careful never to get in a perspiration himself."

  "We might try Herman again. But I'd keep an eye on him."

  So Herman was taken on at the new munition plant. He was a citizen, he owned property, he had a record of long service behind him. And, at first, he was minded to preserve that record intact. While he had by now added to his rage against the Fatherland's enemies a vast and sullen fury against invested capital, his German caution still remained.

  He would sit through fiery denunciations of wealth, nodding his head slowly in agreement. He was perfectly aware that in Gus's little back room dark plots were hatched. Indeed, on a certain April night Rudolph had come up and called him onto the porch.

  "In about fifteen minutes," he said, consulting his watch in the doorway, "I'm going to show you something pretty."

  And in fifteen minutes to the dot the great railroad warehouses near the city wharf had burst into flames. Herman had watched without comment, while Rudolph talked incessantly, boasting of his share in the enterprise.

  "About a million dollars' worth of fireworks there," he said, as the glare dyed their faces red. "All stuff for the Allies." And he boasted, "When the cat sits on the pickhandle, brass buttons must go."

  By that time Herman knew that the "cat" meant sabotage. He had nodded slowly.

  "But it is dangerous," was his later comment. "Sometimes they will learn, and then?"

  His caution had exasperated Rudolph almost to frenzy. And as time went on, and one man after another of the organization was ferreted out at the new plant and dismissed, the sole remaining hope of the organization was Herman. With his reinstatement their hopes had risen again, but to every suggestion so far he had been deaf. He would listen approvingly, but at the end, when he found the talk veering his way, and a circ
le of intent faces watching him, he would say:

  "It is too dangerous. And it is a young man's work. I am not young."

  Then he would pay his score, but never by any chance Rudolph's or the others, and go home to his empty house. But recently the plant had gone on double turn, and Herman was soon to go on at night. Here was the gang's opportunity. Everything was ready but Herman himself. He continued interested, but impersonal. For the sake of the Fatherland he was willing to have the plant go, and to lose his work. He was not at all daunted by the thought of the deaths that would follow. That was war. Anything that killed and destroyed was fair in war. But he did not care to place himself in danger. Let those young hot-heads do the work.

  Rudolph, watching him, bided his time. The ground was plowed and harrowed, ready for the seed, and Rudolph had only to find the seed.

  The night he had carried Anna into the cottage on the hill, he had found it.

  Herman had not beaten Anna. Rudolph had carried her up to her bed, and Herman, following slowly, strap in hand, had been confronted by the younger man in the doorway of the room where Anna lay, conscious but unmoving, on the bed.

  "You can use that thing later," Rudolph said. "She's sick now. Better let her alone."

  "I will teach her to run away," Herman muttered thickly. "She left me, her father, and threw away a good job - I - "

  "You come down-stairs. I've something to say to you."

  And, after a time, Herman had followed him down, but he still clung doggedly to the strap.

  Rudolph led the way outside, and here in the darkness he told Anna's story, twisted and distorted through his own warped mind, but convincing and partially true. Herman's silence began to alarm him, however, and when at last he rose and made for the door, Rudolph was before him.

  "What are you going to do?"

  Herman said nothing, but he raised the strap and held it menacingly.

  "Get out of my way."

  "Don't be a fool," Rudolph entreated. "You can beat her to death, and what do you get out of it? She'll run away again if you touch her. Put that strap down. I'm not afraid of you."

  Their voices, raised and angry, penetrated through Anna's haze of fright and faintness. She sat up in the bed, ready to spring to the window if she heard steps on the stairs. When none came, but the voices, lowered now, went on endlessly below, she slipped out of her bed and crept to the doorway.