Dangerous Days: (5 page)

“I didn’t come up to quarrel, Natalie. I wish you wouldn’t force it on me.”

“I force it on you,” she cried, and laughed in a forced and high-pitched note. “Just because I won’t be over-ridden without a protest! I’m through, that’s all. I shan’t go near the place again.”

“You don’t understand,” he persisted patiently. “I happen to like gardens. I had an idea - I told you about it - of trying to duplicate the old garden at home. You remember it. When we went there on our honeymoon - “

“You don’t call that a garden?”

“Of course I didn’t want to copy it exactly. It was old and out of condition. But there were a lot of old-fashioned flowers - However, if you intend to build an Italian villa, naturally - “

“I don’t intend to build anything, or to plant anything.” Her voice was frozen. “You go ahead. Do it in your own way. And then you can live there, if you like. I won’t.”

Which was what he carried away with him that morning to the mill. He was not greatly disturbed by her threat to keep her hands off. He knew quite well, indeed, that the afternoon would find her, with Rodney Page, picking her way in her high-heeled shoes over the waste that was some day to bloom, not like the rose of his desire but according to the formal and rigid blueprint which Rodney would be carrying. But in five minutes he had put the incident out of his mind. After all, if it gave her happiness and occupation, certainly she needed both. And his powers of inhibition were strong. For many years he had walled up the small frictions of his married life and its disappointments, and outside that wall had built up an existence of his own, which was the mill.

When he went downstairs he found that Graham had ordered his own car and was already in it, drawing on his gloves.

“Have to come back up-town early, dad,” he called in explanation, and drove off, going at the reckless speed he affected.

Clayton rode down alone in the limousine. He had meant to outline his plans of expansion to Graham, but he had had no intention of consulting him. In his own department the boy did neither better nor worse than any other of the dozens of young men in the organization. If he had shown neither special aptitude for nor interest in the business, he had at least not signally failed to show either. Now, paper and pencil in hand, Clayton jotted down the various details of the new system in their sequence; the building of a forging plant to make the rough casts for the new Italian shells out of the steel from the furnaces, the construction of a new spur to the little railway which bound the old plant together with its shining steel rails. There were questions of supplies and shipping and bank credits to face, the vast and complex problems of the complete new munition works, to be built out of town and involving such matters as the housing of enormous numbers of employees. He scrawled figures and added them. Even with the size of the foreign contract their magnitude startled him. He leaned back, his mouth compressed, the lines from the nostrils to the corners deeper than ever.

He had completely forgotten Natalie and the country house.

Outside the gates to the mill enclosure he heard an early extra being called, and bought it. The Austrian premier had been assassinated. The successful French counter-attack against Verdun was corroborated, also. On the center of the front page was the first photograph to reach America of a tank. He inspected it with interest. So the Allies had at last shown same inventive genius of their own! Perhaps this was but the beginning. Even at that, enough of these fighting mammoths, and the war might end quickly. With the tanks, and the Allied offensive and the evidence of discontent in Austria, the thing might after all be over before America was involved.

He reflected, however, that an early peace would not be an unmixed blessing for him. He wanted the war to end: he hated killing. He felt inarticulately that something horrible was happening to the world. But personally his plans were premised on a war to last at least two years more, until the fall of 1918. That would let him out, cover the cost of the new plant, bring renewals of his foreign contracts, justify those stupendous figures on the paper in his hand.

He wondered, rather uncomfortably, what he would do, under the circumstances, if it were in his power to declare peace to-morrow.

In his office in the mill administration building, he found the general manager waiting. Through the door into the conference room beyond he could see the superintendents of the various departments, with Graham rather aloof and detached, and a sprinkling of the most important foremen. On his desk, neatly machined, was the first tentative shell-case made in the mill machine-shop, an experiment rather than a realization.

Hutchinson, the general manager, was not alone. Opposite him, very neatly dressed in his best clothes, his hat in his hand and a set expression on his face, was one of the boss rollers of the steel mill, Herman Klein. At Clayton’s entrance he made a motion to depart, but Hutchinson stopped him.

“Tell Mr. Spencer what you’ve been telling me, Klein,” he said curtly.

Klein fingered his hat, but his face remained set.

“I’ve just been saying, Mr. Spencer,” he said, in good English, but with the guttural accent which thirty years in America had not eliminated, “that I’ll be leaving you now.”

“Leaving! Why?”

“Because of that l” He pointed, without intentional drama, at the shell-case. “I can’t make those shells for you, Mr. Spencer, and me a German.”

“You’re an American, aren’t you?”

“I am, sir. It is not that. It iss that I - ” His face worked. He had dropped back to the old idiom, after years of painful struggle to abandon it. “It iss that I am a German, also. I have people there, in the war. To make shells to kill them - no.”

“He is determined, Mr. Spencer,” said Hutchinson. “I have been arguing with him, but - you can’t argue with a German.”

Clayton was uneasily aware of something like sympathy for the man.

“I understand how you feel, Klein,” he observed. “But of course you know, whether you go or stay, the shells will be made, anyhow.”

“I know that.”

“You are throwing up a good position.”

“I’ll try to get another.”

The prospective loss of Klein was a rather serious one. Clayton, seated behind his great desk, eyed him keenly, and then stooped to bribery. He mentioned a change in the wage scale, with bonuses to all foremen and rollers. He knew Klein’s pride in the mill, and he outlined briefly the growth that was about to be developed. But the boss roller remained obdurate. He understood that such things were to be, but it was not necessary that he assist Germany’s enemies against her. Against the determination in his heavy square figure Clayton argued in vain. When, ten minutes later, he went into the conference room, followed by a secretary with a sheaf of papers, the mill was minus a boss roller, and there was rankling in his mind Klein’s last words.

“I haf no objection, Mr. Spencer, to your making money out of this war, but I will not.”

There had been no insolence in his tone. He had gone out, with his heavy German stolidity of mien unchanged, and had closed the door behind him with quiet finality.

Graham left the conference that morning in a rather exalted mood. The old mill was coming into its own at last. He had a sense of boyish triumph in the new developments, a feeling of being a part of big activities that would bring rich rewards. And he felt a new pride in his father. He had sat, a little way from the long table, and had watched the faces of the men gathered about it as clearly and forcibly the outlines of the new departure were given out. Hitherto “Spencer’s” had made steel only. Now, they were not only to make the steel, but they were to forge the ingots into rough casts; these casts were then to be carried to the new munition works, there to be machined, drilled, polished, provided with fuses, which “Spencer’s” were also to make, and shipped abroad.

The question of speeding production had been faced and met. The various problems had been discussed and the bonus system tentatively taken up. Then the men had dispersed, each infected with the drive of his father’s contagious force. “Pretty fine old boy,” Graham had considered. And he wondered vaguely if, when his time came, he would be able to take hold. For a few minutes Natalie’s closetings lost their effect. He saw his father, not as one from whom to hide extravagance and unpaid bills, but as the head of a great concern that was now to be a part of the war itself. He wandered into his father’s office, and picked up the shell. Clayton was already at his letters, but looked up.

“Think we rather had them, eh, Graham?”

“Think you did, sir. Carried them off their feet. Pretty, isn’t it?” He held up the shell-case. “If a fellow could only forget what the damned things are for!”

“They are to help to end the war,” said Clayton, crisply. “Don’t forget that, boy.” And went back to his steady dictation.

Graham went out of the building into the mill yard. The noise always irritated him. He had none of Clayton’s joy and understanding of it. To Clayton each sound had its corresponding activity. To Graham it was merely din, an annoyance to his ears, as the mill yard outraged his fastidiousness. But that morning he found it rather more bearable. He stooped where, in front of the store, the storekeeper had planted a tiny garden. Some small late-blossoming chrysanthemums were still there and he picked one and put it in his buttonhole.

His own office was across the yard. He dodged in front of a yard locomotive, picked his way about masses of lumber and the general litter of all mill yards, and opened the door of his own building. Just inside his office a girl was sitting on a straight chair, her hat a trifle crooked, and her eyes red from crying. He paused in amazement.

“Why, Miss Klein!” he said. “What’s the matter?”

She was rather a pretty girl, even now. She stood up at his voice and made an effort to straighten her hat.

“Haven’t you heard?” she asked.

“I haven’t heard anything that ought to make Miss Anna Klein weep of a nice, frosty morning in October. Unless - ” he sobered, for her grief was evident. “Tell me about it.”

“Father has given up his job.”

“No!”!

“I’m telling you, Mr. Spencer. He won’t help to make those shells. He’s been acting queer for three or four days and this morning he told your father.”

Graham whistled.

“As if it made any difference,” she went on irritably. “Some one else will get his job. That’s all. What does he care about the Germans? He left them and came to America as soon as he could walk.”

Graham sat down.

“Now let’s get this,” he said. “He won’t make shells for the Allies and so he’s given up his position. All right. That’s bad, but he’s a good workman. He’ll not have any trouble getting another job. Now, why are you crying?”

“I didn’t think you’d want me to stay on.”

Putting her fear into words brought back her long hours of terror. She collapsed into the chair again and fell to unquiet sobbing. Graham was disturbed.

“You’re a queer girl,” he said. “Why should that lose me my most valued assistant?”

When she made no reply he got up and going over to her put a hand on her shoulder. “Tell me that,” he said.

He looked down at her. The hair grew very soft and blonde at the nape of her neck, and he ran a finger lightly across it. “Tell me that.”

“I was afraid it would.”

“And, even if it had, which you are a goose for thinking, you’re just as good in your line as your father is in his. I’ve been expecting any time to hear of your leaving me for a handsomer man!”

He had been what he would have termed jollying her back to normality again. But to his intense surprise she suddenly leaned back and looked up into his face. There was no doubting what he saw there. Just for a moment the situation threatened to get out of hand. Then he patted her shoulders and put the safety of his desk between them.

“Run away and bathe your eyes,” he said, “and then come back here looking like the best secretary in the state, and not like a winter thaw. We have the deuce of a lot of work to do.”

But after she had gone he sat for some little time idly rapping a pencil on the top of his desk. By Jove! Anna Klein! Of all girls in the world! It was rather a pity, too. She was a nice little thing, and in the last few months she had changed a lot. She had been timid at first, and hideously dressed. Lately she had been almost smart. Those earrings now - they changed her a lot. Queer - how things went on in a girl’s mind, and a fellow didn’t know until something happened. He settled his tie and smoothed back his heavy hair.

During the remainder of the day he began to wonder if he had not been a fatuous idiot. Anna did her work with the thoroughness of her German blood plus her American training. She came back minus her hat, and with her eyes carefully powdered, and not once during the morning was he able to meet her eyes fully. By the middle of the afternoon sex vanity and curiosity began to get the better of his judgment, and he made an excuse, when she stood beside him over some papers, her hand on the desk, to lay his fingers over hers. She drew her hand away quickly, and when he glanced up, boyishly smiling, her face was flushed.

“Please,” she said. And he felt hurt and rebuffed. He had no sentiment for her whatever, but the devil of mischief of twenty-two was behind him, urging him on to the eternal experiment. He was very formal with her for the rest of the day, and had the satisfaction of leaving her, at four o’clock, white-faced and miserable over her machine in the little office next to his.

He forgot her immediately, in the attempt to leave the mill without encountering his father. Clayton, he knew, would be staying late, and would be exacting similar tribute to the emergency from the entire force. Also, he had been going about the yard with contractors most of the afternoon. But Graham made his escape safely. It was two hours later when his father, getting into the limousine, noticed the absence of the boy’s red car, and asked the gateman how long it had been gone.

“Since about four o’clock, Mr. Spencer.”

Suddenly Clayton felt a reaction from the activities of the day. He sank back in the deeply padded seat, and felt tired and - in some odd fashion - lonely. He would have liked to talk to Graham on the way up-town, if only to crystallize his own thoughts. He would have liked to be going home to review with Natalie the day’s events, the fine spirit of his men, the small difficulties. But Natalie hated the mention of the mill.