"I am confusing and confused. I shouldn"t be--I shouldn"t care if there weren"t something in you, in me, in our--friendship, something I can"t explain, something that shines still through the fog and the smoke in which we have lived our lives--something which, I think, we saw clearer as children. We have lost it in our hasty groping. Oh, Hugh, I couldn"t bear to think that we should never find it! that it doesn"t really exist! Because I seem to feel it. But can we find it this way, my dear?"
Her hand tightened on mine.
"But if the force drawing us together, that has always drawn us together, is G.o.d?" I objected.
"I asked you," she said. "The time must come when you must answer, Hugh.
It may be too late, but you must answer."
"I believe in taking life in my own hands," I said.
"It ought to be life," said Nancy. "It--it might have been life.... It is only when a moment, a moment like this comes that the quality of what we have lived seems so tarnished, that the atmosphere which we ourselves have helped to make is so sordid. When I think of the intrigues, and divorces, the self-indulgences,--when I think of my own marriage--" her voice caught. "How are we going to better it, Hugh, this way? Am I to get that part of you I love, and are you to get what you crave in me?
Can we just seize happiness? Will it not elude us just as much as though we believed firmly in the ten commandments?"
"No," I declared obstinately.
She shook her head.
"What I"m afraid of is that the world isn"t made that way--for you--for me. We"re permitted to seize those other things because they"re just baubles, we"ve both found out how worthless they are. And the worst of it is they"ve made me a coward, Hugh. It isn"t that I couldn"t do without them, I"ve come to depend on them in another way. It"s because they give me a certain protection,--do you see? they"ve come to stand in the place of the real convictions we"ve lost. And--well, we"ve taken the baubles, can we reach out our hands and take--this? Won"t we be punished for it, frightfully punished?"
"I don"t care if we are," I said, and surprised myself.
"But I care. It"s weak, it"s cowardly, but it"s so. And yet I want to face the situation--I"m trying to get you to face it, to realize how terrible it is."
"I only know that I want you above everything else in the world--I"ll take care of you--"
I seized her arms, I drew her down to me.
"Don"t!" she cried. "Oh, don"t!" and struggled to her feet and stood before me panting. "You must go away now--please, Hugh. I can"t bear any more--I want to think."
I released her. She sank into the chair and hid her face in her hands....
As may be imagined, the incident I have just related threw my life into a tangle that would have floored a less persistent optimist and romanticist than myself, yet I became fairly accustomed to treading what the old moralists called the devious paths of sin. In my pa.s.sion I had not hesitated to lay down the doctrine that the courageous and the strong took what they wanted,--a doctrine of which I had been a consistent disciple in the professional and business realm. A logical buccaneer, superman, "master of life" would promptly have extended this doctrine to the realm of s.e.x. Nancy was the mate for me, and Nancy and I, our development, was all that mattered, especially my development.
Let every man and woman look out for his or her development, and in the end the majority of people would be happy. This was going Adam Smith one better. When it came to putting that theory into practice, however, one needed convictions: Nancy had been right when she had implied that convictions were precisely what we lacked; what our world in general lacked. We had desires, yes convictions, no. What we wanted we got not by defying the world, but by conforming to it: we were ready to defy only when our desires overcame the resistance of our synapses, and even then not until we should have exhausted every legal and conventional means.
A superman with a wife and family he had acquired before a great pa.s.sion has made him a superman is in rather a predicament, especially if he be one who has achieved such superhumanity as he possesses not by challenging laws and conventions, but by getting around them. My wife and family loved me; and paradoxically I still had affection for them, or thought I had. But the superman creed is, "be yourself, realize yourself, no matter how cruel you may have to be in order to do so." One trouble with me was that remnants of the Christian element of pity still clung to me. I would be cruel if I had to, but I hoped I shouldn"t have to: something would turn up, something in the nature of an intervening miracle that would make it easy for me. Perhaps Maude would take the initiative and relieve me.... Nancy had appealed for a justifying doctrine, and it was just what I didn"t have and couldn"t evolve. In the meanwhile it was quite in character that I should accommodate myself to a situation that might well be called anomalous.
This "accommodation" was not unaccompanied by fever. My longing to realize my love for Nancy kept me in a constant state of tension--of "nerves"; for our relationship had merely gone one step farther, we had reached a point where we acknowledged that we loved each other, and paradoxically halted there; Nancy clung to her demand for new sanctions with a tenacity that amazed and puzzled and often irritated me. And yet, when I look back upon it all, I can see that some of the difficulty lay with me: if she had her weakness--which she acknowledged--I had mine--and kept it to myself. It was part of my romantic nature not to want to break her down. Perhaps I loved the ideal better than the woman herself, though that scarcely seems possible.
We saw each other constantly. And though we had instinctively begun to be careful, I imagine there was some talk among our acquaintances. It is to be noted that the gossip never became riotous, for we had always been friends, and Nancy had a saving reputation for coldness. It seemed incredible that Maude had not discovered my secret, but if she knew of it, she gave no sign of her knowledge. Often, as I looked at her, I wished she would. I can think of no more expressive sentence in regard to her than the trite one that she pursued the even tenor of her way; and I found the very perfection of her wifehood exasperating. Our relationship would, I thought, have been more endurable if we had quarrelled. And yet we had grown as far apart, in that big house, as though we had been separated by a continent; I lived in my apartments, she in hers; she consulted me about dinner parties and invitations; for, since we had moved to Grant Avenue, we entertained and went out more than before. It seemed as though she were making every effort consistent with her integrity and self-respect to please me. Outwardly she conformed to the mould; but I had long been aware that inwardly a person had developed. It had not been a spontaneous development, but one in resistance to pressure; and was probably all the stronger for that reason. At times her will revealed itself in astonishing and unexpected flashes, as when once she announced that she was going to change Matthew"s school.
"He"s old enough to go to boarding-school," I said. "I"ll look up a place for him."
"I don"t wish him to go to boarding-school yet, Hugh," she said quietly.
"But that"s just what he needs," I objected. "He ought to have the rubbing-up against other boys that boarding-school will give him.
Matthew is timid, he should have learned to take care of himself. And he will make friendships that will help him in a larger school."
"I don"t intend to send him," Maude said.
"But if I think it wise?"
"You ought to have begun to consider such things many years ago. You have always been too--busy to think of the children. You have left them to me. I am doing the best I can with them."
"But a man should have something to say about boys. He understands them."
"You should have thought of that before."
"They haven"t been old enough."
"If you had taken your share of responsibility for them, I would listen to you."
"Maude!" I exclaimed reproachfully.
"No, Hugh," she went on, "you have been too busy making money. You have left them to me. It is my task to see that the money they are to inherit doesn"t ruin them."
"You talk as though it were a great fortune," I said.
But I did not press the matter. I had a presentiment that to press it might lead to unpleasant results.
It was this sense of not being free, of having gained everything but freedom that was at times galling in the extreme: this sense of living with a woman for whom I had long ceased to care, a woman with a baffling will concealed beneath an unruffled and serene exterior. At moments I looked at her across the table; she did not seem to have aged much: her complexion was as fresh, apparently, as the day when I had first walked with her in the garden at Elkington; her hair the same wonderful colour; perhaps she had grown a little stouter. There could be no doubt about the fact that her chin was firmer, that certain lines had come into her face indicative of what is called character. Beneath her pliability she was now all firmness; the pliability had become a mockery. It cannot be said that I went so far as to hate her for this,--when it was in my mind,--but my feelings were of a strong antipathy. And then again there were rare moments when I was inexplicably drawn to her, not by love and pa.s.sion; I melted a little in pity, perhaps, when my eyes were opened and I saw the tragedy, yet I am not referring now to such feelings as these. I am speaking of the times when I beheld her as the blameless companion of the years, the mother of my children, the woman I was used to and should--by all canons I had known--have loved....
And there were the children. Days and weeks pa.s.sed when I scarcely saw them, and then some little incident would happen to give me an unexpected wrench and plunge me into unhappiness. One evening I came home from a long talk with Nancy that had left us both wrought up, and I had entered the library before I heard voices. Maude was seated under the lamp at the end of the big room reading from "Don Quixote"; Matthew and Biddy were at her feet, and Moreton, less attentive, at a little distance was taking apart a mechanical toy. I would have tiptoed out, but Biddy caught sight of me.
"It"s father!" she cried, getting up and flying to me.
"Oh, father, do come and listen! The story"s so exciting, isn"t it, Matthew?"
I looked down into the boy"s eyes shining with an expression that suddenly pierced my heart with a poignant memory of myself. Matthew was far away among the mountains and castles of Spain.
"Matthew," demanded his sister, "why did he want to go fighting with all those people?"
"Because he was dotty," supplied Moreton, who had an interesting habit of picking up slang.
"It wasn"t at all," cried Matthew, indignantly, interrupting Maude"s rebuke of his brother.
"What was it, then?" Moreton demanded.
"You wouldn"t understand if I told you," Matthew was retorting, when Maude put her hand on his lips.
"I think that"s enough for to-night," she said, as she closed the book.
"There are lessons to do--and father wants to read his newspaper in quiet."
This brought a protest from Biddy.
"Just a little more, mother! Can"t we go into the schoolroom? We shan"t disturb father there."
"I"ll read to them--a few minutes," I said.
As I took the volume from her and sat down Maude shot at me a swift look of surprise. Even Matthew glanced at me curiously; and in his glance I had, as it were, a sudden revelation of the boy"s perplexity concerning me. He was twelve, rather tall for his age, and the delicate modelling of his face resembled my father"s. He had begun to think.. What did he think of me?