Hughie, take the nut-crackers, and crack me. It is idle to ask you to do it. You have tried often enough. You will have to get a stronger nut-cracker. Meantime I am a nut, just a nut, with its hard bright shell. Seymour is another nut. There we shall be."
Hugh caught her by the wrists.
"I can't stand it, Nadine," he said. "You feel nothing for him. He is nothing to you. How can you marry him? It's profane: it's blasphemous. You say you can give nothing to anybody. Well, make the best of yourself. I can give all I am to you. Isn't that better than absolute nil? You can't give, but let me give. It's worship, it's all there is—"
She stood there with her wrists in his hands, his strong fingers bruising and crushing them. She could have screamed for the pain of it.
"No, and a thousand times no," she said. "I won't cheat."
"I ask you to cheat."
"And I won't. Hughie dear, press harder, hurt me more, so that you may see I am serious. You may bite the flesh off me, you may strangle me, and I will stand quite still and let you do it. But I won't marry you. I won't cheat you. My will is stronger than your body, and I would die sooner."
"Then your marriage is a pure farce," said he.
"Come and laugh at it," she said.
Chapter VII
Hugh's intention had been to stay several days, at the least, with the Chesterfords, and he had brought down luggage that would last any reasonable person a fortnight. Unluckily he had not foreseen the very natural effect that the sight of Seymour would have on him, and as soon as lunch was over he took his hostess into a corner and presented the situation with his usual simplicity.
"It is like this, Aunt Dodo," he said. "I didn't realize exactly what it meant to me till I saw Seymour again. He drove me up from the station, and it got worse all the time. I thought perhaps since Nadine had chosen him, I might see him differently. I think perhaps I do, but it is worse. It is quite hopeless: the best thing I can do is to go away again at once."
Dodo had lit two cigarettes by mistake, and since, during their ride Jack had (wantonly, so she thought) accused her of wastefulness, she was smoking them both, holding one in each hand, in alternate whiffs. But she threw one of them away at this, and laid her hand on Hugh's knee.
"I know, my dear, and I am so dreadfully sorry," she said. "I was sure it would be so, and that's why I didn't want you to come here. I knew it was no good. I can see you feel really unwell whenever you catch sight of Seymour or hear anything he says. And about Nadine? Did you have a nice talk with her?"
Hugh considered.
"I don't think I should quite call it nice," he said. "I think I should call it necessary. Anyhow, we have had it and—and I quite understand her now. As that is so, I shall go away again this afternoon. It was a mistake to come at all."
"Yes, but probably it was a necessary mistake. In certain situations mistakes are necessary: I mean whatever one does seems to be wrong. If you had stopped away, you would have felt it wrong too."
"And will you answer two questions, Aunt Dodo?" he asked.
"Yes, I will certainly answer them. If they are very awkward ones I may not answer them quite truthfully."
"Well, I'll try. Do you approve of Nadine's marriage? Has it your blessing?"
"Yes, my dear: truthfully, it has. But it is right to tell you that I give my blessings rather easily, and when it is clearly no use attempting to interfere in a matter, it is better to bless it than curse it. But if you ask me whether I would have chosen Seymour as Nadine's husband, out of all the possible ones, why, I would not. I thought at one time that perhaps it was going to be Jack. But then Jack chose me, and, as we all know, a girl may not marry her stepfather, particularly if her mother is alive and well. But I should not have chosen you either, Hughie, if your question implies that. I used to think I would, but when Nadine explained to me the other day, I rather agreed with her. Of course she has explained to you."
Hugh looked at her with his honest, trustworthy, brown eyes.
"Several times," he said. "But if I agreed, I shouldn't be worrying. Now another question: Do you think she will be happy?"
"Yes, up to her present capacity. If I did not think she would be happy, I would not bless it. Dear Edith, for example, thinks it is a shocking and terrible marriage. For her I daresay it would be, but then it isn't she whom Seymour proposed to marry. They would be a most remarkable couple, would they not? I think Edith would kill him, with the intention of committing suicide after, and then determine that there had been enough killing for one day. And the next day suicide would appear quite out of the question. So she would write a funeral march."
Dodo held the admirable sensible view that if discussion on a particular topic is hopeless, it is much better to abandon it, and talk as cheerfully as may be about something different. But this entertaining diversion altogether failed to divert Hugh.
"You said she would be happy up to her present capacity?" he reminded her.
"Yes: that is simple, is it not? We develop our capacity for happiness; and misery, also, develops as well. Whether Nadine's capacity will develop much, I cannot tell. If it does, she may not be happy up to it. But who knows? We cannot spend our lives in arranging for contingencies that may never take place, and changes in ourselves that may never occur."
Dodo looked in silence for a moment at his grave reliable face, and felt a sudden wonder at Nadine for having chosen as she had done. And yet her reason for rejecting this extremely satisfactory youth was sound enough, their intellectual levels were such miles apart. But Dodo, though she did not express her further thought, had it very distinct in her mind. "If she does develop emotionally like a woman," she said to herself, "there will not be a superfluity of happiness about. And she will look at you and wonder how she could have refused you."
But necessarily she did not say this, and Hugh got up.
"Well, then, at the risk of appearing a worse prig than John Sturgis," he said, "I may tell you that as long as Nadine is happy, the main object is accomplished. My own happiness consists so largely in the fact of hers. Dear me, I wonder you are not sick at my sententiousness. I am quite too noble to live, but I don't really want to die. Would it make Nadine happier if I told Seymour I should be a brother to him?"
Dodo laughed.
"No, Hughie; it would make her afraid that your brain had gone, or that you were going to be ill. It would only make her anxious. Is the motor around? I am sorry you are going, but I think you are quite right to do so. Always propose yourself, whenever you feel like it."
"I don't feel like it at present," said he. "But thanks awfully, Aunt Dodo."
Dodo felt extremely warmly towards this young man, who was behaving so very well and simply.
"God bless you, dear Hugh," she said, "and give you your heart's desire."
"At present my heart's desire appears to be making other plans for itself," said Hugh.
Esther had said once in a more than usually enlightened
