The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [5004]
War took, but it gave also. It had taken Joey, for instance, but Joey had had his great moment. It was better to have one great moment and die than to drag on through useless years. And it was the same way with a nation. A nation needed its hour. It was only in a crisis that it could know its own strength. How many of them, who had been at that dinner of Natalie's months before, had met their crisis bravely! Nolan was in France now. Doctor Haverford was at the front. Audrey was nursing Graham. Marion Hayden was in a hospital training-School. Rodney Page was still building wooden barracks in a cantonment in Indiana, and was making good. He himself -
They could never go back, none of them, to the old smug, complacent, luxurious days. They could no more go back than Joey could return to life again. War was the irrevocable step, as final as death itself. And he remembered something Nolan had said, just before he sailed.
"We have had one advantage, Clay. Or maybe it is not an advantage, after all. Do you realize that you and I have lived through the Golden Age? We have seen it come and seen it go. The greatest height of civilization, since the world began, the greatest achievements, the most opulent living. And we saw it all crash. It will be a thousand years before the world will be ready for another."
And later,
"I suppose every life has its Golden Age. Generally we think it is youth. I'm not so sure. Youth is looking ahead. It has its hopes and its disappointments. The Golden Age in a man's life ought to be the age of fulfillment. It's nearer the forties than the twenties."
"Have you reached it?"
"I'm going to, on the other side."
And Clayton had smiled.
"You are going to reach it," he said. "We are always going to find it, Nolan. It is always just ahead."
And Nolan had given him one of his quick understanding glances.
There could be no Golden Age for him. For the Golden Age for a man meant fulfillment. The time came to every man when he must sit at the west window of his house of life and look toward the sunset. If he faced that sunset alone -
He heard Madeleine carrying down Natalie's dinner-tray, and when she left the pantry she came to the door of the library.
"Mrs. Spencer would like to see you, sir."
"Thank you, Madeleine. I'll go up very soon."
Suddenly he knew that he did not want to go up to Natalie's scented room. She had shut him out when she was in trouble. She had not cared that he, too, was in distress. She had done her best to invalidate that compact he had made. She had always invalidated him.
To go back to the old way, to the tribute she enforced to feed her inordinate vanity, to the old hypocricy of their relationship, to live again the old lie, was impossible.
He got up. He would not try to buy himself happiness at the cost of turning her adrift. But he must, some way, buy his self-respect.
He heard her then, on the staircase, that soft rustle which, it seemed to him, had rasped the silk of his nerves all their years together with its insistence on her dainty helplessness, her femininity, her right to protection. The tap of her high heels came closer. He drew a long breath and turned, determinedly smiling, to face the door.
Almost at once he saw that she was frightened. She had taken pains to look her best - but then she always did that. She was rouged to the eyes, and the floating white chiffon of her negligee gave to her slim body the illusion of youth, that last illusion to which she so desperately clung. But - she was frightened.
She stood in the doorway, one hand holding aside the heavy velvet curtain, and looked at him with wide, penciled eyes.
"Clay?"
"Yes. Come in. Shall I have Buckham light a fire?"
She came in, slowly.
"Do you suppose that cable is reliable?"
"I should think so."
"He may have a relapse."
"We mustn't worry about what may come. He is better now. The chances are that he'll stay better."
"Probably. I suppose, because