"And fight for England? I will not."
He pursued the subject further, going into an excited account of
Ireland's grievances. He was flushed and loquacious. He quoted Lloyd
George's "quagmire of distrust" in tones raised over the noise of the
band. And Clayton was conscious of a growing uneasiness. How much of
it was real, how much a pose? Was Nolan representative of the cultured
Irishman in America? And if he was, what would be the effect of their
anti-English mania? Would we find ourselves, like the British, split
into factions? Or would the country be drawn together by trouble until
it changed from a federation of states to a great nation, united and
unbeatable?
Were we really the melting pot of the world, and was war the fiery
furnace which was to fuse us together, or were there elements, like
Nolan, like the German-Americans, that would never fuse?
He left Nolan still irritable and explosive, and danced once with
Natalie, his only dance of the evening. Then, finding that Rodney Page
would see her to her car later, he went home.
He had a vague sense of disappointment, a return of the critical mood of
the early days of his return from France. He went to his room and tried
to read, but he gave it up, and lay, cigaret in hand, thinking!
There ought to have come to a man, when he reached the middle span,
certain compensations for the things that had gone with his youth, the
call of adventure, the violent impulses of his early love life. There
should come, to take their place, friends, a new zest in the romance of
achievement, since other romance had gone, and--peace. But the peace
of the middle span of life should be the peace of fulfillment, and of a
home and a woman.
Natalie was not happy, but she seemed contented enough. Her life
satisfied her. The new house in the day-time, bridge, the theater in the
evening or the opera, dinners, dances, clothes--they seemed to be enough
for her. But his life was not enough for him. What did he want anyhow?
In God's name, what did he want?
One night, impatient with himself, he picked up the book of love lyrics
in its mauve cover, from his bedside table. He read one, then another.
He read them slowly, engrossingly. It was as though something starved in
him was feeding eagerly on this poor food. Their passion stirred him as
in his earlier years he had never been stirred. For just a little time,
while Natalie danced that night, Clayton Spencer faced the tragedy of
the man in his prime, still strong and lusty with life, with the deeper
passions of the deepening years, who has outgrown and outloved the woman
he married.