"I"ve been thinking it all over--what we"re doing. It doesn"t seem right, it seems terribly wrong."
"But I thought we"d gone over all that," I replied, as patiently as I could. "You"re putting it on an old-fashioned, moral basis."
"But there must be same basis," she urged. "There are responsibilities, obligations--there must be!--that we can"t get away from. I can"t help feeling that we ought to stand by our mistakes, and by our bargains; we made a choice--it"s cheating, somehow, and if we take this--what we want--we shall be punished for it."
"But I"m willing to be punished, to suffer, as I told you. If you loved me--"
"Hugh!" she exclaimed, and I was silent. "You don"t understand,"
she went on, a little breathlessly, "what I mean by punishment is deterioration. Do you remember once, long ago, when you came to me before I was married, I said we"d both run after false G.o.ds, and that we couldn"t do without them? Well, and now this has come; it seems so wonderful to me, coming again like that after we had pa.s.sed it by, after we thought it had gone forever; it"s opened up visions for me that I never hoped to see again. It ought to restore us, dear--that"s what I"m trying to say--to redeem us, to make us capable of being what we were meant to be. If it doesn"t do that, if it isn"t doing so, it"s the most horrible of travesties, of mockeries. If we gain life only to have it turn into death--slow death; if we go to pieces again, utterly. For now there"s hope. The more I think, the more clearly I see that we can"t take any step without responsibilities. If we take this, you"ll have me, and I"ll have you. And if we don"t save each other--"
"But we will," I said.
"Ah," she exclaimed, "if we could start new, without any past. I married Ham with my eyes open."
"You couldn"t know that he would become--well, as flagrant as he is. You didn"t really know what he was then."
"There"s no reason why I shouldn"t have antic.i.p.ated it. I can"t claim that I was deceived, that I thought my marriage was made in heaven. I entered into a contract, and Ham has kept his part of it fairly well.
He hasn"t interfered with my freedom. That isn"t putting it on a high plane, but there is an obligation involved. You yourself, in your law practice, are always insisting upon the sacredness of contract as the very basis of our civilization."
Here indeed would have been a home thrust, had I been vulnerable at the time. So intent was I on overcoming her objections, that I resorted unwittingly to the modern argument I had more than once declared in court to be anathema-the argument of the new reform in reference to the common law and the const.i.tution.
"A contract, no matter how seriously entered into at the time it was made, that later is seen to violate the principles of humanity should be void. And not only this, but you didn"t consent that he should disgrace you."
Nancy winced.
"I never told you that he paid my father"s debts, I never told anyone,"
she said, in a low voice.
"Even then," I answered after a moment, "you ought to see that it"s too terrible a price to pay for your happiness. And Ham hasn"t ever pretended to consider you in any way. It"s certain you didn"t agree that he should do--what he is doing."
"Suppose I admitted it," she said, "there remain Maude and your children. Their happiness, their future becomes my responsibility as well as yours."
"But I don"t love Maude, and Maude doesn"t love me. I grant it"s my fault, that I did her a wrong in marrying her, but she is right in leaving me. I should be doing her a double wrong. And the children will be happy with her, they will be well brought up. I, too, have thought this out, Nancy," I insisted, "and the fact is that in our respective marriages we have been, each of us, victims of our time, of our education. We were born in a period of transition, we inherited views of life that do not fit conditions to-day. It takes courage to achieve happiness, initiative to emanc.i.p.ate one"s self from a morality that begins to hamper and bind. To stay as we are, to refuse to take what is offered us, is to remain between wind and water. I don"t mean that we should do anything--hastily. We can afford to take a reasonable time, to be dignified about it. But I have come to the conclusion that the only thing that matters in the world is a love like ours, and its fulfilment.
Achievement, success, are empty and meaningless without it. And you do love me--you"ve admitted it."
"Oh, I don"t want to talk about it," she exclaimed, desperately.
"But we have to talk about it," I persisted. "We have to thrash it out, to see it straight, as you yourself have said."
"You speak of convictions, Hugh,--new convictions, in place of the old we have discarded. But what are they? And is there no such thing as conscience--even though it be only an intuition of happiness or unhappiness? I do care for you, I do love you--"
"Then why not let that suffice?" I exclaimed, leaning towards her.
She drew back.
"But I want to respect you, too," she said.
I was shocked, too shocked to answer.
"I want to respect you," she repeated, more gently. "I don"t want to think that--that what we feel for each other is--unconsecrated."
"It consecrates itself," I declared.
She shook her head.
"Surely it has its roots in everything that is fine in both of us."
"We both went wrong," said Nancy. "We both sought to wrest power and happiness from the world, to make our own laws. How can we a.s.sert that--this is not merely a continuation of it?"
"But can"t we work out our beliefs together?" I demanded. "Won"t you trust me, trust our love for one another?"
Her breath came and went quickly.
"Oh, you know that I want you, Hugh, as much as you want me, and more.
The time may come when I can"t resist you."
"Why do you resist me?" I cried, seizing her hands convulsively, and swept by a gust of pa.s.sion at her confession.
"Try to understand that I am fighting for both of us!" she pleaded--an appeal that wrung me in spite of the pitch to which my feelings had been raised. "Hugh, dear, we must think it out. Don"t now."
I let her hands drop....
Beyond the range of hills rising from the far side of the Ashuela was the wide valley in which was situated the Cloverdale Country Club, with its polo field, golf course and tennis courts; and in this same valley some of our wealthy citizens, such as Howard Ogilvy and Leonard d.i.c.kinson, had bought "farms," week-end playthings for spring and autumn. Hambleton Durrett had started the fashion. Capriciously, as he did everything else, he had become the owner of several hundred acres of pasture, woodland and orchard, acquired some seventy-five head of blooded stock, and proceeded to house them in model barns and milk by machinery; for several months he had bored everyone in the Boyne Club whom he could entice into conversation on the subject of the records of pedigreed cows, and spent many bibulous nights on the farm in company with those parasites who surrounded him when he was in town. Then another interest had intervened; a feminine one, of course, and his energies were transferred (so we understood) to the reconstruction and furnishing of a little residence in New York, not far from Fifth Avenue.
The farm continued under the expert direction of a superintendent who was a graduate of the State Agricultural College, and a select clientele, which could afford to pay the prices, consumed the milk and cream and b.u.t.ter. Quite consistent with their marital relations was the fact that Nancy should have taken a fancy to the place after Ham"s interest had waned. Not that she cared for the Guernseys, or Jerseys, or whatever they may have been; she evinced a sudden pa.s.sion for simplicity,--occasional simplicity, at least,--for a contrast to and escape from a complicated life of luxury. She built another house for the superintendent banished him from the little farmhouse (where Ham had kept two rooms); banished along with the superintendent the stiff plush furniture, the yellow-red carpets, the easels and the melodeon, and decked it out in bright chintzes, with wall-papers to match, dainty muslin curtains, and rag-carpet rugs on the hardwood floors. The pseudo-cla.s.sic porch over the doorway, which had suggested a cemetery, was removed, and a wide piazza added, furnished with wicker lounging chairs and tables, and shaded with gay awnings.
Here, to the farm, accompanied by a maid, she had been in the habit of retiring from time to time, and here she came in early July. Here, dressed in the simplest linen gowns of pink or blue or white, I found a Nancy magically restored to girlhood,--anew Nancy, betraying only traces of the old, a new Nancy in a new Eden. We had all the setting, all the illusion of that perfect ideal of domesticity, love in a cottage. Nancy and I, who all our lives had spurned simplicity, laughed over the joy we found in it: she made a high art of it, of course; we had our simple dinners, which Mrs. Olsen cooked and served in the open air; sometimes on the porch, sometimes under the great b.u.t.ternut tree spreading its shade over what in a more elaborate country-place, would have been called a lawn,--an uneven plot of gra.s.s of ridges and hollows that ran down to the orchard. Nancy"s eyes would meet mine across the little table, and often our gaze would wander over the pastures below, lucent green in the level evening light, to the darkening woods beyond, gilt-tipped in the setting sun. There were fields of ripening yellow grain, of l.u.s.ty young corn that grew almost as we watched it: the warm winds of evening were heavy with the acrid odours of fecundity.
Fecundity! In that lay the elusive yet insistent charm of that country; and Nancy"s, of course, was the transforming touch that made it paradise. It was thus, in the country, I suggested that we should spend the rest of our existence. What was the use of ama.s.sing money, when happiness was to be had so simply?
"How long do you think you could stand it?" she asked, as she handed me a plate of blackberries.
"Forever, with the right woman," I announced.
"How long could the woman stand it?".... She humoured, smilingly, my crystal-gazing into our future, as though she had not the heart to deprive me of the pleasure.
"I simply can"t believe in it, Hugh," she said when I pressed her for an answer.
"Why not?"
"I suppose it"s because I believe in continuity, I haven"t the romantic temperament,--I always see the angel with the flaming sword. It isn"t that I want to see him."
"But we shall redeem ourselves," I said. "It won"t be curiosity and idleness. We are not just taking this thing, and expecting to give nothing for it in return."
"What can we give that is worth it?" she exclaimed, with one of her revealing flashes.
"We won"t take it lightly, but seriously," I told her. "We shall find something to give, and that something will spring naturally out of our love. We"ll read together, and think and plan together."
"Oh, Hugh, you are incorrigible," was all she said.
The male tendency in me was forever strained to solve her, to deduce from her conversation and conduct a body of consistent law. The effort was useless. Here was a realm, that of Nancy"s soul, in which there was apparently no such thing as relevancy. In the twilight, after dinner, we often walked through the orchard to a gra.s.sy bank beside the little stream, where we would sit and watch the dying glow in the sky. After a rain its swollen waters were turbid, opaque yellow-red with the clay of the hills; at other times it ran smoothly, temperately, almost clear between the pasture gra.s.ses and wild flowers. Nancy declared that it reminded her of me. We sat there, into the lush, warm nights, and the moon shone down on us, or again through long silences we searched the bewildering, starry chart of the heavens, with the undertones of the night-chorus of the fields in our ears. Sometimes she let my head rest upon her knee; but when, throbbing at her touch, with the life-force pulsing around us, I tried to take her in my arms, to bring her lips to mine, she resisted me with an energy of will and body that I could not overcome, I dared not overcome. She acknowledged her love for me, she permitted me to come to her, she had the air of yielding but never yielded. Why, then, did she allow the words of love to pa.s.s? and how draw the line between caresses? I was maddened and disheartened by that elusive resistance in her--apparently so frail a thing!--that neither argument nor importunity could break down. Was there something lacking in me? or was it that I feared to mar or destroy the love she had. This, surely, had not been the fashion of other loves, called unlawful, the cla.s.sic instances celebrated by the poets of all ages rose to mock me.