The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4922]
"Can I get you anything?" he asked.
"No, thank you." And he moved toward the lamp. "Don't turn the light on. I look dreadful."
"Shall I ring for Madeleine?"
"No. Graham is bringing me a sleeping-powder."
"If you are not sleepy, may I talk to you about some things?"
"I'm sick, Clay. My head is bursting."
"Sometimes it helps to talk out our worries, dear." He was still determinedly gentle.
He heard her turning her pillow, and settling herself more comfortably.
"Not to you. You've made up your mind. What's the use?"
"Made up my mind to what?"
"To sending Graham to be killed."
"That's hardly worthy of you, Natalie," he said gravely. "He is my son, too. I love him at least as much as you do. I don't think this is really up to us, anyhow. It is up to him. If he wants to go?"
She sat up, suddenly, her voice thin and high.
"How does he know what he wants?" she demanded. "He's too young. He doesn't know what war is; you say so yourself. You say he is too young to have a position worth while at the plant, but of course he's old enough to go to war and have a leg shot off, or to be blinded, or something." Her voice broke.
He sat down on the bed and felt around until he found her hand. But she jerked it from him.
"You promised me once to let him make his own decision if the time came."
"When did I promise that?"
"In the fall, when I came home from England."
"I never made such a promise."
"Will you make it now?"
"No!"
He rose, more nearly despairing than he had ever been. He could not argue with a hysterical woman. He hated cowardice, but far deeper than that was his conviction that she had already exacted some sort of promise. And the boy was not like her in that respect. He regarded a promise as almost in the nature of an oath. He himself had taught him that in the creed of a gentleman a promise was a thing of his honor, to be kept at any cost.
"You are compelling me to do a strange and hateful thing," he said. "If you intend to use your influence to keep him out, I shall have to offset it by urging him to go. That is putting a very terrible responsibility on me."
He heard her draw her breath sharply.
"If you do that I shall leave you," she said, in a frozen voice.
Suddenly he felt sorry for her. She was so weak, so childish, so cowardly. And this was the nearest they had come to a complete break.
"You're tired and nervous," he said. "We have come a long way from what I started out to say. And a long way from - the way things used to be between us. If this thing, to-night, does not bring two people together - "
"Together!" she cried shrilly. "When have we been together? Not in years. You have been married to your business. I am only your housekeeper, and Graham's mother. And even Graham you are trying to take away from me. Oh, go away and let me alone."
Down-stairs, thoughts that were almost great had formulated themselves in his mind; that to die that others might live might be better than to live oneself; that he loved his country, although he had been shamefaced about it; that America was really the melting-pot of the world, and that, perhaps, only the white flame of war would fuse it into a great nation.
But Natalie made all these thoughts tawdry. She cheapened them. She found in him nothing fine; therefore there was probably nothing fine in him. He went away, to lie awake most of the night.
CHAPTER XXIII
But, with the breaking off of diplomatic relations, matters remained for a time at a standstill. Natalie dried her eyes and ordered some new clothes, and saw rather more of Rodney Page than was good for her.
With the beginning of February the country house was far enough under way for it to be promised for June, and Natalie, the fundamentals of its decoration arranged for, began to haunt old-furniture shops, accompanied always by Rodney.
"Not that your taste is not right, Natalie," he explained. "It is exquisite. But these fellows are