"I'll stay, sir. I--" His face worked nervously. "I feel toward the
Captain as I would to my own son, sir. I have already thought that
perhaps--the old nursery has been cleaned and aired for weeks, Mr.
Spencer."
Clayton felt a thrill of understanding for the old man through all the
years he had watched and served them. He had reflected their joys and
their sorrows. He had suffered the family destiny without having shaped
it. He had lived, vicariously, their good hours and their bad. And now,
in his old age, he was waiting again for the vicarious joy of Graham's
child.
"But you'll not be leaving the house, sir?"
"I don't know. I shall keep my rooms. But I shall probably live at
the club. The young people ought to be alone, for a while. There are
readjustments--You never married, Buckham?"
"No, Mr. Spencer. I intended to, at one time. I came to this country to
make a home, and as I was rather a long time about it, she married some
one else."
Clayton caught the echo of an old pain in Buckham's repressed voice.
Buckham, too! Was there in the life of every man some woman tragedy?
Buckham, sitting alone in his west window and looking toward the sunset,
Buckham had his memories.
"She lost her only son at Neuve Chapelle," Buckham was saying quietly.
"In a way, it was as tho I had lost a boy. She never cared for the man
she married. He was a fine boy, sir. I--you may remember the night I was
taken ill in the pantry."
"Is her husband still living?"
"No, Mr. Spencer."
"Do you ever think of going back and finding her?"
"I have, sir. But I don't know. I like to remember her as she used to
be. I have some beautiful memories. And I think sometimes it is better
to live on memories. They are more real than--well, than reality, sir."
Long after Buckham had withdrawn, Clayton paced the floor of the
library. Was Buckham right? Was the real life of a man his mental life?
Was any love so great as a man's dream of love? Peace was on the way.
Soon this nightmare of war would be over, and in the great awakening
love would again take the place of hate. Love of man for man, of nation
for nation. Peace and the things of peace. Time to live. Time to hope,
with the death-cloud gone. Time to work and time to play. Time to love a
woman and cherish her for the rest of life, if only-His failure with Natalie had lost him something. She had cost him his
belief in himself. Her last words had crystallized his own sense of
failure.