Part 16 (2/2)
”Well, then I think - usually - there is an awful moment when I have to tell her I can't afford both a motor and a wife; and to be motorless would kill me.”
A sudden little twitching at the corners made Lorraine's mouth dangerously fascinating.
”Evidently you have never fallen in love with me,” she said, ”for you have not been driven to either way of escape.”
He looked into her face with an answering humour, and a twinkle in his eyes as alluring as her smilling lips.
”Because when I fell in love with you I did it sensibly, and not foolishly,” was his answer; ”instinct told me I couldn't have you for my wife however much I wished it, so I said myself: 'Flip, old boy, she'll make a thundering good pal, you close with it,' and I did.”
She made no comment, and he went on more seriously:
”You see, even if you became marriageable and I cut out the motor, you wouldn't be attracted to an ordinary sort of cove like me. I suit you down to the ground as a pal, but it wouldn't go any farther.”
”I wonder why you think that?”
”I don't exactly _think_ it - thinking is too much bother - but it's just there, like a commonplace fact. You are all temperament, and high-strung nerves, and soul, and enthusiasm, and that sort of thing, which makes you a great actress. I'm just a two-legged, superior sort of animal, who hasn't much brain, but knows what he likes, and usually does it without wasting time on pros and cons. Consequently, I'm just as likely to end in prison as anywhere else, and take it without much concern as all in the day's work. You are more likely to end in a nunnery, as the most devout of all the nuns.”
”What an odd idea! Why a nunnery?”
”Oh, because it's an extreme of one sort or another, and you are made for extremes. You'll perhaps be very wicked first” - he smiled delightfully - ”after which, of course, you'd have to be very good.
It's the way you're made. I'm cut out on quite a different plan. I can't be 'very' anything, unless it's very drunk after the Oxford and Cambridge at Lord's.”
”Do you think I could be very wicked?” She asked the question with a thoughtfulness that amused him greatly, and he answered at once:
”I haven't a doubt of it. You are probably plotting the particular form of wickedness at this very moment.”
She laughed, and he went on in the same serio-comic mood:
”I quite envy you. It mus be very thrilling to think to oneself, 'I've dared to be desperately wicked.' You cease to be a nonent.i.ty at once and become a force. You get right to hand-grips with the big elemental things. Of course that is interesting, but it usually means a confounded lot of bother.”
”You are as bad as Hal Pritchard. She announced the other day she would rather have a dishonest purpose than no purpose at all.”
”It's the same idea, only Miss Pritchard lives up to her creed by being full of energy and purpose; whereas I can't be anything but a mediocre waster. I've neither the pluck to be wicked, not the energy to be good, nor enough purpose to regret it. I believe I'm best described as an aristocratic 'stiff', a 'stiff' being a person who spends his life trying to avoid having to do things.
”I fill a niche all the same,” he finished, ”because I make such an excellent foil for the other chaps, who like to pride themselves on their superiority and hard work. It's nice for them to be able to say contemptuously, 'Look at Denton,' and it's nice for me to be able to feel I'm of some use, without the bother of making an effort.”
”You are certainly quite incorrigible as an idler, if that can be called a purpose, and, Flip, don't change; I love you for it; you are one of the most restful things I have ever known.”
He glanced into her face with a keenness that somewhat belied his professed incapacity to be in earnest, and remarked with seeming lightness:
”Feeling a bit down on your luck, eh? Are you thinking of falling in love foolishly?”
”I'm thinking of trying to guard against doing so.”
”You ought not to find it difficult. Crowd him out with other admirers.”
”It seems as if he were going to do the crowding out.”
<script>