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Henry Wadsworth Longfellow - "Dante's Inferno"

Oscar Wilde - "Selected Poems of Oscar Wilde"

Robert Graves - "Country Sentiment"

Edgar Lee Masters - "Spoon River Anthology"

DANGEROUS DAYS

M >> Mary Roberts Rinehart >> DANGEROUS DAYS




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 terrifled, 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
wouid 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 circle 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 deorway 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.

Sounds traveled clearly up the narrow enclosed stairway. She stood
there, swaying slightly, until at last her legs would no longer
support her. She crouched on the floor, a hand clutching her throat,
lest she scream. And listened.

She did not sleep at all. The night had been too full of horrors.
And she was too ill to attempt a second flight. Besides, where
could she go? Katie was not there. She could see ber empty little
room across, with its cot bed and tawdry dresser. Before, too,
she had had Grahams protection to count on. Now she had nothing.

And the voices went on.

When she went back to bed it was almost dawn. She heard Herman
come up, heard the heavy thump of his shoes on the floor, and the
creak immediately following that showed he had lain down without
undressing. By the absence of his resonant snoring she knew he
was not sleeping, either. She pictured him lying there, his eyes
on the door, in almost unwinking espionage.

At half past six she got up and went down-stairs. Almost immediately
she heard his stockinged feet behind her. She turned and looked up
at him.

"What are you going to do?"

"Going to make myself some coffee."

He came down, and sat down in the sitting-room. From where he sat
he could survey the kitchen, and she knew his eyes were on her.
His very quiet terrified her, but although the strap lay on the
table he made no move toward it. She built a fire and put on the
kettle, and after a time she brought him some coffee and some
bread. He took it without a word, Sick as she was, she fell to
cleaning up the dirty kitchen. She went outside for a pail, to
find him behind her in the doorway. Then she knew what he intended
to do. He was afraid, for some reason, to beat her again, but he
was going to watch her lest again she make her escape. The silence,
under his heavy gaze, was intolerable.

All day she worked, and only once did Herman lose sight of her.
That was when he took a ladder, and outside the house nailed all
the upper windows shut. He did it with German thoroughness,
hammering deliberately, placing his nails carefully. After that
he went to the corner grocery, but before he went he spoke the
first words of the day.

"You will go to your room."

She went, and he locked her in. She knew then that she was a
prisoner. When he was at the mill at night, while he slept during
the day, she was to be locked up in her stuffy, airless room. When
he was about she would do the housework, always under his silent,
contemptuous gaze.

She made one appeal to him, and only one, and that was to his
cupidity.

"I've been sick, but I'm able to work now, father."

He paid no attention to her.

"If you lock me up and don't let me work," she persisted, "you'll
only be cutting off your nose to spite your face. I make good money,
and you know it."

She thought he was going to speak then, but he did not. She put
his food on the table and he ate gluttonously, as he always did.
She did not sit down. She drank a little coffee, standing at the
stove, and watched the back of his head with hate in her eyes.
He could eat like that, when he stood committed to a terrible thing!

It was not until late in the day that it began to dawn on her how
she was responsible. She was getting stronger then and more able
to think. She followed as best she could the events of the last
months, and she saw that, as surely as though a malevolent power
had arranged it, the thing was the result of her infatuation for
raham.

She was in despair, and she began to plan how to get word to Graham
of what was impending. She scrawled a note to Graham, telling him
where she was and to try to get in touch with her somehow. If he
would come around four o'clock Herman was generally up and off to
the grocer's, or to Gus's saloon for his afternoon beer.

"I'll break a window and talk to you," she wrote. "I'm locked in
when he's out. My window is on the north side. Don't lose any time.
There's something terrible going to happen."

But several days went by and the postman did not appear. Herman
had put a padlock on the outside of her bedroom door, and her hope
of finding a second key to fit the door-lock died then.

It had become a silent, bitter contest between the two of them, with
two advantages in favor of the girl. She was more intelligent than
Herman, and she knew the thing he was planning to do. She made a
careful survey of her room, and she saw that with a screw-driver
she could unfasten the hinge of her bedroom door. Herman, however,
always kept his tools locked up. She managed, apparently by
accident, to break the point off a knife, and when she went up to
her room one afternoon to be locked in while Herman went to Gus's
saloon, she carried the knife in her stocking.

It was a sorry tool, however. Driven by her shaking hand, there
was a time when she almost despaired. And time was flying. The
postman, when he came, came at five, and she heard the kitchen
clock strike five before the first screw fell out into her hand.
She got them all out finally, and the door hung crazily, held
only by the padlock. She ran to the window. The postman was
coming along the street, and she hammered madly at the glass. When
he saw her he turned in at the gate, and she got her letter and
ran down the stairs.

She heard his step on the porch outside, and called to him.

"Is that you, Briggs?"

The postman was "Briggs" to the hill.

"Yes."

"If I slide a letter out under the door, will you take it to the
post-office for me? It's important."

"All right. Slide."

She had put it partially under the door when a doubt crept into her
mind. That was not Bniggs's voice. She made a frantic effort to
draw the letter back, but stronger fingers than hers had it beyond
the door. She clutched, held tight. Then she heard a chuckle, and
found herself with a corner of tbe envelope in her hand.

There were voices outside, Briggs's and Rudolph's.

"Guess that's for me."

"Like hell it is."

She ran madly up the stairs again, and tried with shaking fingers
to screw the door-hinges into place again. She fully expected that
they would kill her. She heard Briggs go out, and after a time she
heard Rudolph trying to kick in the house door. Then, when the
last screw was back in place, she heard Herman's heavy step outside,
and Rudolph's voice, high, furious, and insistent.

Had Herman not been obsessed with the thing he was to do, he might
have beaten her to death that night. But he did not. She remained
in her room, without food or water. She had made up her mind to
kill herself with the knife if they came up after her, but the only
sounds she heard were of high voices, growing lower and more sinister.

After that, for days she was a prisoner. Herman moved his bed
down-stairs and slept in the sitting-room, the five or six hours of
day-light sleep which were all he required. And at night, while he
was at the mill, Rudolph sat and dozed and kept watch below. Twice
a day some meager provisions were left at the top of the stairs and
her door was unlocked. She would creep out and get them, not
because she was hungry, but because she meant to keep up her strength.
Let their vigilance slip but once, and she meant to be ready.

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