The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4924]
He released her hand.
"So you like me because I'm sensible! Thanks."
"That's a good reason, isn't it?"
"Good God, Natalie, I'm only sensible because I have to be. Not about the war. I'm not talking about that. About you."
"What have I got to do with your being sensible and sane?"
"Just think about things, and you'll know."
She was greatly thrilled and quite untouched. It was a pleasant little game, and she held all the winning cards. So she said, very softly:
"We mustn't go on like this, you know. We mustn't spoil things."
And by her very "we" let him understand that the plight was not his but theirs. They were to suffer on, she implied, in a mutual, unacknowledged passion. He flushed deeply.
But although he was profoundly affected, his infatuation was as spurious as her pretense of one. He was a dilettante in love, as he was in art. His aesthetic sense, which would have died of an honest passion, fattened on the very hopelessness of his beginning an affair with Natalie. Confronted just then with the privilege of marrying her, he would have drawn back in dismay.
Since no such privilege was to be his, however, he found a deep satisfaction in considering himself hopelessly in love with her. He was profoundly sorry for himself. He saw himself a tragic figure, hopeless and wretched. He longed for the unattainable; he held up empty hands to the stars, and by so mimicking the gesture of youth, he regained youth.
"You won't cut me out of your life, Natalie?" he asked wistfully.
And Natalie, who would not have sacrificed this new thrill for anything real in the world, replied:
"It would be better, wouldn't it?"
There was real earnestness in his voice when he spoke. He had dramatized himself by that time.
"Don't take away the only thing that makes life worth living, dear!"
Which Natalie, after a proper hesitation, duly promised not to do.
There were other conversations after that. About marriage, for instance, which Rodney broadly characterized as the failure of the world; he liked treading on dangerous ground.
"When a man has married, and had children, he has fulfilled his duty to the State. That's all marriage is - duty to the State. After that he follows his normal instincts, of course."
"If you are defending unfaithfulness?"
"Not at all. I admire faithfulness. It's rare enough for admiration. No. I'm recognizing facts. Don't you suppose even dear old Clay likes a pretty woman? Of course he does. It's a total difference of view-point, Natalie. What is an incident to a man is a crime to a woman."
Or:
"All this economic freedom of women is going to lead to other freedoms, you know."
"What freedoms?"
"The right to live wherever they please. One liberty brings another, you know. Women used to marry for a home, for some one to keep them. Now they needn't, but - they have to live just the same."
"I wish you wouldn't, Rodney. It's so - cheap."
It was cheap. It was the old game of talking around conversational corners, of whispering behind mental doors. It was insidious, dangerous, and tantalizing. It made between them a bond of lowered voices, of being on the edge of things. Their danger was as spurious as their passion, but Natalie, without humor and without imagination, found the sense of insecurity vaguely attractive.
Fundamentally cold, she liked the idea of playing with fire;
CHAPTER XXIV
When war was not immediately declared the rector, who on the Sunday following that eventful Saturday of the President's speech to Congress had preached a rousing call to arms, began to feel a bit sheepish about it.
"War or no war, my dear," he said to Delight, "it made them think for as much as an hour. And I can change it somewhat, and use it again, if the time really comes."
"Second-hand stuff!" she scoffed. "You with your old sermons, and Mother with my old dresses!