第135章

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 assert 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 passion 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 Dickinson,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 butter.

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 passion 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-classic 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 butternut tree spreading its shade over what in a more elaborate country-place,would have been called a lawn,--an uneven plot of grass 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 lusty 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 amassing 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?"