The Classic Mystery Collection - Arthur Conan Doyle [4969]
Going up-town that night he pondered the question of how to take up the matter with her. It would be absurd, under the circumstances, to take any virtuous attitude. He was still undetermined when he reached the house.
He found Marion Hayden there for dinner, and Graham, and a spirited three-corner discussion going on which ceased when he stood in the doorway. Natalie looked irritated, Graham determined, and Marion was slightly insolent and unusually handsome.
"Hurry and change, Clay," Natalie said. "Dinner is waiting."
As he went away he had again the feeling of being shut out of something which concerned Graham.
Dinner was difficult. Natalie was obviously sulking, and Graham was rather taciturn. It was Marion who kept the conversation going, and he surmised in her a repressed excitement, a certain triumph.
At last Natalie roused herself. The meal was almost over, and the servants had withdrawn.
"I wish you would talk sense to Graham, Clay," she said, fretfully. "I think he has gone mad."
"I don't call it going mad to want to enlist, father."
"I do. With your father needing you, and with all the men there are who can go."
"I don't understand. If he wants to enter the army, that's up to him, isn't it?"
There was a brief silence. Clayton found Natalie's eyes on him, uneasy, resentful.
"That's just it. I've promised mother not to, unless she gives her consent. And she won't give it."
"I certainly will not."
Clayton saw her appealing glance at Marion, but that young lady was lighting a cigaret, her eyelids lowered. He felt as though he were watching a play, in which he was the audience.
"It's rather a family affair, isn't it?" he asked. "Suppose we wait until we are alone. After all, there is no hurry."
Marion looked at him, and he caught a resentment in her glance. The two glances struck fire.
"Say something, Marion," Natalie implored her.
"I don't think my opinion is of any particular importance. As Mr. Spencer says, it's really a family matter."
Her insolence was gone. Marion was easy. She knew Natalie's game; it was like her own. But this big square-jawed man at the head of the table frightened her. And he hated her. He hardly troubled to hide it, for all his civility. Even that civility was contemptuous.
In the drawing-room things were little better. Natalie had counted on Marion's cooperation, and she had failed her. She pleaded a headache and went up-stairs, leaving Clayton to play the host as best he could.
Marion wandered into the music-room, with its bare polished floor, its lovely painted piano, and played a little - gay, charming little things, clever and artful. Except when visitors came, the piano was never touched, but now and then Clayton had visualized Audrey there, singing in her husky sweet voice her little French songs.
Graham moved restlessly about the room, and Clayton felt that he had altered lately. He looked older, and not happy. He knew the boy wanted to talk about Natalie's opposition, but was hoping that he would broach the subject. And Clayton rather grimly refused to do it. Those next weeks would show how much of the man there was in Graham, but the struggle must be between his mother and himself.
He paused, finally. Marion was singing.
"Give me your love for a day; A night; an hour. If the wages of sin are Death I'm willing to pay."
She sang it in her clear passionless voice. Brave words, Clayton thought, but there were few who would pay such wages. This girl at the piano, what did she know of the thing she sang about? What did any of the young know?
They always construed love in terms of passion. But passion was ephemeral. Love lived on. Passion took, but love gave.
He roused himself.
"Have you told Marion about the new arrangement?"
"I didn't know whether you cared to have it told."
"Don't you think