Part 57 (1/2)
”It's the way you've taught us. I should like to know what other way you ever want us to love you?”
”The way Veronica loves Nicky, and Dorothy loved Drayton and Frances loves Anthony.”
”Dorothy? She ruined Drayton's life.”
”Men's lives aren't ruined that way. And not all women's.”
”Well, anyhow, if she'd loved him she'd have married him. And Frances loves her children better than Anthony, and Anthony knows it.”
”Veronica, then.”
”Veronica doesn't know what pa.s.sion is. The poor child's anaemic.”
”Another mistake. Veronica, and 'children' like Veronica have more pa.s.sion in one eyelash than you have in your whole body.”
”It's a pity,” she said, ”you can't have Veronica and her eyelashes instead of me. She's young and she's pretty.”
He sighed with pain as her nerves lashed into his.
”That's what it all amounts to--your wanting to get out to the Front.
It's what's the matter with half the men who go there and pose as heroes. They want to get rid of the wives--and mistresses--they're tired of because the poor things aren't young or pretty any longer.”
She dropped into the mourning voice that made him mad with her. ”I'm old--old--old. And the War's making me older every day, and uglier. And I'm not married to you. Talk of keeping you! How _can_ I keep you when I'm old and ugly?”
He looked at her and smiled with a hard pity. Compunction always worked in him at the sight of her haggard face, glazed and stained with crying.
”That's how--by getting older.
”I've never tired of you. You're more to me now than you were when I first knew you. It's when I see you looking old that I'm sure I love you.”
She smiled, too, in her sad s.e.xual wisdom.
”There may be women who'd believe you, Larry, or who'd say they believe you; but not me.”
”It's the truth,” he said. ”If you were young and if you were married to me I should have enlisted months ago.
”Can't you see it's not you, it's this life we lead that I'm sick and tired of? I tell you I'd rather be hanged than go on with it. I'd rather be a prisoner in Germany than shut up in this house of yours.”
”Poor little house. You used to like it. What's wrong with it now?”
”Everything. Those d.a.m.ned lime-trees all round it. And that d.a.m.ned white wall round the lime-trees. Shutting me in.
”And those curtains in your bed-room. Shutting me in.
”And your mind, trying to shut mine in.