"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 grassy 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 grasses 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 pass?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 Ifeared to mar or destroy the love she had.This,surely,had not been the fashion of other loves,called unlawful,the classic instances celebrated by the poets of all ages rose to mock me.
"Incurably romantic,"she had called me,in calmer moments,when I was able to discuss our affair objectively.And once she declared that I had no sense of tragedy.We read "Macbeth"together,I remember,one rainy Sunday.The modern world,which was our generation,would seem to be cut off from all that preceded it as with a descending knife.It was precisely from "the sense of tragedy"that we had been emancipated:from the "agonized conscience,"I should undoubtedly have said,had I been acquainted then with Mr.Santayana's later phrase.Conscience,--the old kind of conscience,--and nothing inherent in the deeds themselves,made the tragedy;conscience was superstition,the fear of the wrath of the gods:conscience was the wrath of the gods.Eliminate it,and behold!
there were no consequences.The gods themselves,that kind of gods,became as extinct as the deities of the Druids,the Greek fates,the terrible figures of German mythology.Yes,and as the God of Christian orthodoxy.
Had any dire calamities overtaken the modern Macbeths,of whose personal lives we happened to know something?Had not these great ones broken with impunity all the laws of traditional morality?They ground the faces of the poor,played golf and went to church with serene minds,untroubled by criticism;they appropriated,quite freely,other men's money,and some of them other men's wives,and yet they were not haggard with remorse.The gods remained silent.Christian ministers regarded these modern transgressors of ancient laws benignly and accepted their contributions.Here,indeed,were the supermen of the mad German prophet and philosopher come to life,refuting all classic tragedy.It is true that some of these supermen were occasionally swept away by disease,which in ancient days would have been regarded as a retributive scourge,but was in fact nothing but the logical working of the laws of hygiene,the result of overwork.Such,though stated more crudely,were my contentions when desire did not cloud my brain and make me incoherent.
And I did not fail to remind Nancy,constantly,that this was the path on which her feet had been set;that to waver now was to perish.She smiled,yet she showed concern.
"But suppose you don't get what you want?"she objected."What then?
Suppose one doesn't become a superman?or a superwoman?What's to happen to one?Is there no god but the superman's god,which is himself?Are there no gods for those who can't be supermen?or for those who may refuse to be supermen?"To refuse,I maintained,were a weakness of the will.
"But there are other wills,"she persisted,"wills over which the superman may conceivably have no control.Suppose,for example,that you don't get me,that my will intervenes,granting it to be conceivable that your future happiness and welfare,as you insist,depend upon your getting me--which I doubt.""You've no reason to doubt it.""Well,granting it,then.Suppose the orthodoxies and superstitions succeed in inhibiting me.I may not be a superwoman,but my will,or my conscience,if you choose,may be stronger than yours.If you don't get what you want,you aren't happy.In other words,you fail.Where are your gods then?The trouble with you,my dear Hugh,is that you have never failed,"she went on,"you've never had a good,hard fall,you've always been on the winning side,and you've never had the world against you.No wonder you don't understand the meaning and value of tragedy.""And you?"I asked.
