The dispute went on, Chris Valentine alternately flippant and earnest,
the rector conciliatory, Graham glowering and silent. Nolan had started
on the Irish question, and Rodney baited him with the prospect of
conscription there. Nolan's voice, full and mellow and strangely sweet,
dominated the room.
But Clayton was not listening. He had heard Nolan air his views before.
He was a trifle acid, was Nolan. He needed mellowing, a woman in his
life. But Nolan had loved once, and the girl had died. With the curious
constancy of the Irish, he had remained determinedly celibate.
"Strange race," Clayton reflected idly, as Nolan's voice sang on. "Don't
know what they want, but want it like the devil. One-woman men, too.
Curious!"
It occurred to him then that his own reflection was as odd as the
fidelity of the Irish. He had been faithful to his wife. He had never
thought of being anything else.
He did not pursue that line of thought. He sat back and resumed his
nervous tapping of the cloth, not listening, hardly thinking, but
conscious of a discontent that was beyond analysis.
Clayton had been aware, since his return from the continent and England
days before, of a change in himself. He had not recognized it until he
reached home. And he was angry with himself for feeling it. He had gone
abroad for certain Italian contracts and had obtained them. A year or
two, if the war lasted so long, and he would be on his feet at last,
after years of struggle to keep his organization together through the
hard times that preceded the war. He would be much more than on his
feet. Given three more years of war, and he would be a very rich man.
And now that the goal was within sight, he was finding that it was not
money he wanted. There were some things money could not buy. He had
always spent money. His anxieties had not influenced his scale of
living. Money, for instance, could not buy peace for the world; or
peace for a man, either. It had only one value for a man; it gave him
independence of other men, made him free.
"Three things," said the rector, apropos of something or other, and
rather oratorically, "are required by the normal man. Work, play, and
love. Assure the crippled soldier that he has lost none of these, and--"
Work and play and love. Well, God knows he had worked. Play? He would
have to take up golf again more regularly. He ought to play three times
a week. Perhaps he could take a motor-tour now and then, too. Natalie
would like that.