“And there's this, too,” Graham broke in. He was flushed and nervous. “A fellow would have to go. He wouldn't be having to think whether his going would hurt anybody or not. He wouldn't have to decide. He'd—just go.”
There was a little hush in the room. Then Nolan spoke.
“Right-o!” he said. “The only trouble about it is that it's likely to leave out some of us old chaps, who'd like to have a fist in it.”
Hutchinson remained after the others had gone. He wanted to discuss the change in status of the plant.
“We'll be taken over by the government, probably,” Clayton told him. “They have all the figures, capacity and so on. The Ordnance Department has that in hand.”
Hutchinson nodded. He had himself made the report.
“We'll have to look out more than ever, I suppose,” he said, as he rose to go. “The government is guarding all bridges and railways already. Met a lot of National Guard boys on the way.”
Graham left when he did, offering to take him to his home, and Clayton sat for some time alone, smoking and thinking. So the thing had come at last. A year from now, and where would they all be? The men who had been there to-night, himself, Graham? Would they all be even living? Would Graham—?
He looked back over the years. Graham a baby, splashing water in his bath and shrieking aloud with joy; Graham in his first little-boy clothes, riding a velocipede in the park and bringing in bruises of an amazing size and blackness; Graham going away to school, and manfully fixing his mind on his first long trousers, so he would not cry; Graham at college, coming in with the winning crew, and stumbling, half collapsed, into the arms of a waiting, cheering crowd. And the Graham who had followed his mother up the stairs that night, to come down baffled, thwarted, miserable.
He rose and threw away his cigar. He must have the thing out with Natalie. The boy's soul was more important than his body. He wanted him safe. God, how he wanted him safe! But he wanted him to be a man.