The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4912]
"But," he argued patiently, "if you only sent them twenty-five dollars, did without some little thing to do it, you'd feel rather more as though you were giving, wouldn't you?"
"Twenty-five dollars! And be laughed at!"
He had given in then.
"If I put an extra thousand dollars to your account to-morrow, will you check it out to this fund?"
"It's too much."
"Will you?'
"Yes, of course," she had agreed, indifferently. And he had notified her that the money was in the bank. But two months later the list of contributors was published, and neither his name nor Natalie's was among them.
Toward personal service she had no inclination whatever. She would promise anything, but the hour of fulfilling always found her with something else to do. Yet she had kindly impulses, at times, when something occurred to take her mind from herself. She gave liberally to street mendicants. She sent her car to be used by those of her friends who had none. She was lavish with flowers to the sick - although Clayton paid her florist bills.
She was lavish with money - but never with herself.
In the weeks after the opening of the new year Clayton found himself watching her. He wondered sometimes just what went on in her mind during the hours when she sat, her hands folded, gazing into space. He could not tell. He surmised her planning, always planning; the new house, a gown, a hat, a party.
But late in January he began to think that she was planning something else. Old Terry Mackenzie had been there one night, and he had asserted not only that war was coming, but that we would be driven to conscription to raise an army.
"They've all had to come to it," he insisted. "And we will, as sure as God made little fishes. You can't raise a million volunteers for a war that's three thousand miles away."
"You mean, conscription among the laboring class?" Natalie had asked naively, and there had been a roar of laughter.
"Not at all," Terry had said. And chuckled. "This war, if it comes, is every man's burden, rich and poor. Only the rich will give most, because they have most to give."
"I think that's ridiculous," Natalie had said.
It was after that that Clayton began to wonder what she was planning.
He came home late one afternoon to find that they were spending the evening in, and to find a very serious Natalie waiting, when he came down-stairs dressed for dinner. She made an effort to be conversational, but it was a failure. He was uneasily aware that she was watching him, inspecting, calculating, choosing her moment. But it was not until they were having coffee that she spoke.
"I'm uneasy about Graham, Clay."
He looked up quickly.
"Yes?"
"I think he ought to go away somewhere."
"He ought to stay here, and make a man of himself," he came out, almost in spite of himself. He knew well enough that such a note always roused Natalie's antagonism, and he waited for the storm. But none came.
"He's not doing very well, is he?"
"He's not failing entirely. But he gives the best of himself outside the mill. That's all."
She puzzled him. Had she heard of Marion?
"Don't you think, if he was away from this silly crowd he plays with, as he calls it, that he would be better off?"
"Where, for instance?"
"You keep an agent in England. He could go there. Or to Russia, if the Russian contract goes through."
He was still puzzled.
"But why England or Russia?"
"Anywhere out of this country."
"He doesn't have to leave this country to get away from a designing woman."
From her astonished expression, he knew that he had been wrong. She was not trying to get him away from Marion. From what?
She bent forward, her face set hard.
"What woman?"
Well, it was out. She might as well know it. "Don't you think it possible, Natalie, that he may intend to marry Marion Hayden?"
There was a very unpleasant half-hour after that. Marion was a parasite of the rich. She had abused Natalie's hospitality. She was designing. She played bridge for her dress money. She had ensnared the boy.
And then:
"That settles it, I should think. He