Claire Ambler (1928, Doubleday)/Part 3/Chapter 3
YOU'VE decided," he said immediately. "Which is it, Claire?"
She shook her head, looking at him sadly. "Thoughtful of you, Walter, to ask me that—here!"
"Isn't it?" The young man's face, not hopeful before she spoke, became gloomier; for correctly he assumed that what she said was an unfavourable portent. "I suppose you think I might have been more tactful to inquire by telephone?"
"No," she returned, and she laughed ruefully. "My idea of tactful is that you'd have made no inquiry at all."
"I see. I should just have let it run on, remaining your undemanding servant forever. Well, I'm afraid tact will have to go by the board."
"I dare say. And you with it, Walter?"
"If you send me by the board with it, yes."
She shrugged her shoulders. "Oh, no! I'd never send you. That's in your own hands: if you go it's because you want to."
"Claire," he said quietly, "I think you've told other men just that same thing. Probably some of them have been weak enough to keep on hanging around rather than incur the kind of reproach you imply."
"What 'reproach'?"
"That they didn't care enough for you to be content with your liking them. That's a pretty old story, it seems to me, and so far as I'm concerned it's not helpful. I think you're the cruellest person I've ever known, Claire."
"Do you?" she said; and her expression, as she looked wearily away from him, caused his own to become one of desperation.
"Yes, I do—banal as you think me for saying so." He was not altogether successful in stifling an actual groan; it became audible, and that there might be no doubt of his suffering, a dew, not of the heat, appeared upon his forehead. "You've been genuinely brutal to me almost from the first," he said. "You're the most adorable thing in this world, and you know perfectly well that any man in his senses must see that you are. You knew at the very start that I thought so; you didn't care at all for me and yet you deliberately made yourself as enrapturing to me as you could. You've always done that: you're doing it even now at the very moment when you intend to tell me I've got to give up my last hope of you."
"Now?" she asked scornfully. "What am I doing now?"
"You're looking your most beautiful!" He laughed painfully. "You couldn't even bring yourself to the decency of dressing unbecomingly or in any way looking less charming—and I couldn't possibly find a more damning thing to say of you."
"Oh, dear!" she murmured. "I think you've said this to me several times before, Walter."
He caught his breath; then he said quietly, "Yes, the only novelty about this is that it's the last time. Don't think I'm unaware of the answer you're going to give me. It's 'no.'"
She continued to look away from him, and did not speak.
"Isn't it?" he said, in a voice a little tremulous, after a silence. "Isn't it 'no'?"
She turned and looked at him with a sorrowful gravity. "I told you more than a year ago that I could never be in love with you, Walter. You've been pretty nice to me and you know well enough how much I like you. I like to be with you—when you're sensible enough to be just friendly—and I like to hear music with you: I even like spending several hours at a time with you—again when you're just friendly. Well, that's all, and I can't help it. You say it's not enough, and I can't help that, either. You say I've got to promise to marry you or you'll take yourself permanently out of my orbit. Very well, I'm not going to be married merely for the sake of being married."
"And if you married me," he said gently, "that's all it would be?"
She was sorry for him; he was miserable, and she knew that he had cared for her, truly and well, a long time. Moisture appeared in her eyes. "Yes, it would," she said. "I'm sorry I ever let you get started, Walter. That was my fault, it's true; because I could have stopped you; but I hadn't learned enough to do such things then. I confess to you that I wanted to charm all the men I could. There—I'm letting you see what I've really been like; it ought to be useful to you."
"Useful!" he groaned. "It only makes me see that you're lovelier than ever—for owning up to it." He took a step away, as if to leave her; then turned back. "Well—nothing's likely to make any difference for me? It's all over, is it?"
"Unless you'd like it to stay as it is."
"I can't," he said. "I've tried; but I've either got to win you or leave you—and I can't win you. Well" He contrived to form the semblance of a smile. "Good-bye—dear."
"Good-bye," she said, in a low voice; and to her sudden surprise she found this parting sharply painful: she had expected to be relieved, not hurt, by it. She put out her hand impulsively. "Good-bye—dear!" she said in little more than a whisper.
At that, he started and looked at her intently; but she released her hand from his, said hastily, "No! Just good-bye!" and, crestfallen, he turned away.
He did not go far. Their hostess was already upon them, convoying a middle-aged gentleman and a girl of eighteen; and before Walter could evade this anti-climax, Mrs. Allyngton had seized him by the arm. "I was just coming over to break up the tête-à-tête," she said. "Miss Ambler, this is Mr. Sherman Peale. Walter, this is Miss Peale. There's some music coming and you can dance with her pretty soon, and in the meanwhile be witty for her. You can, sometimes, you know! Claire, I'm going to leave Mr. Peale with you; that's what he wants."