_ BOOK I. THE SILENT PLACES
CHAPTER XXXVII. A DISQUISITION ON TRUE LOVE
"Love," said his lordship, laying down his fishing rod, "love, from the philosophically materialistic standpoint, is an unease, a disquiet of the mind, fostered in the male by hallucination, and in the female by determined self-delusion."
"Sir," said I, "your meaning is somewhat involved, I would beg you to be a little more explicit."
"Then pray observe me, Peregrine! An ordinary young man falls in love with an ordinary young woman because, for some inexplicable reason, she appears to him a mystery, bewitchingly incomprehensible. Suffering under this strange hallucination, he wooes, whereupon our ordinary young woman, shutting her eyes to the ordinariness of our very ordinary young man, now deliberately deludes herself into the firm belief that he is the virile presentment of her own impossible, oft-dreamed ideal. So they are wed (to the infinite wonder of their relations) and hence the perpetuation of the species."
"My lord, you grow a little cynical, I think," said I, "surely Love has dowered these apparently so ordinary people with a vision to behold in each other virtues and beauties undreamed of by the world in general. Surely Love possesses the only seeing eye?"
"The Greeks thought differently, Peregrine, or wherefore their blindfolded Eros?"
"Sir, the mind of man has soared since those far times, I venture to think?"
"Perhaps!" said his lordship, shaking his head. "But love between man and woman is much the same, a power to ennoble or debase, angel of light or demon of hell, a thing befouled and shamed by brutish selfishness or glorified by sacrifice. Yes, love is to-day as it was when mighty Babylon worshipped Bel. Yesterday, to-day and for ever, love was, is, and will be the same--the call of nature coming to each of us through the senses to the soul for evil or for good."
"But, my lord," said I, stirred beyond myself, "ah, sir, be love what it may--no two ever loved as Diana and I, so truly, so deeply--"
"O my lovely, loving lover--O sublime egoist!" exclaimed my companion. "How many other lovers through the ages have thought and said and written the very same?
'Others may have loved mayhap,
But never, oh, never as thou and I.'
"This is the song of all the amorists of all the ages. Man has been saying this since ever he was man. Here is love's universal, deathless song, written or sung to-day and by lovers long, long forgotten,
'Whoever loved like thou and I,
No lovers ever loved as we!'"
"Nor did they, sir!" I maintained doggedly. "My love for Diana is a thing wholly apart, an inspiration to all things good and great."
"Then prove this, my egoist, prove it!"
"But sir--sir," I stammered, nonplussed by his words and the piercing look that accompanied them, "how--in what manner would you have me do this?"
"By forgetting yourself in your love for her! By foregoing awhile your present joys for her future good. Give her into my care for two years."
"My lord!" I exclaimed aghast. "I--indeed I do not understand."
"Peregrine, God has bestowed on her a mind capable of great things--a wonderful voice. Place her in my charge for two years--I am solitary and very rich--she shall see the world and its wonders; I will have her educated, bestow on her all the refinements that great wealth can command. Nature has given her a glorious voice, Art shall make her a great singer. Forego your present happiness for her future good and your gipsy maid shall become a great lady and a peerless woman. Do this, Peregrine, and here, truly, shall be love indeed."
Now at this I was silent a long while, staring down blindly at the hurrying waters of the brook; glancing up at last, I found him regarding me with his keen, bright eyes and was struck anew by the strength of his personality, his resolute face with its indomitable mouth and chin, his serene air of dignity and assured power.
"She would be safe with me, Peregrine," said he gently, "secure from every evil--and from every chance of molestation."
"I know that, sir."
"She would be cherished and loved as sacredly as--my own daughter--might have been."
"I am sure of it, sir--and yet--"
"Well, Peregrine?"
"Two years, sir," I faltered. "It--it is an age--"
"You are both children, Peregrine, but in two years, as I understand, you will be of age, a man, master of your fortune--and she a woman, clever, accomplished and perhaps famous."
"And may have forgotten me!"
"Do you think so, Peregrine?"
"No!" said I. "No!"
"Nor do I, boy. Such as she, being deep and reverent of soul, do not love lightly, and never forget. On the contrary, with her growing knowledge and experience, surely her love for you will grow also; it must do. If she loves you to-day, child of nature as she is, how much greater will be her capacity for love as an educated woman, knowing that it is to your unselfishness, first and foremost, that she owes so very much?"
After this was silence again wherein I watched my companion disjoint his fishing rod.
"Sir," said I at last, "yours is a very noble and generous offer--"
"Tush!" he exclaimed a little sharply. "I am a solitary old man who yearns for a daughter."
"Sir, in less than a fortnight is--the day--our wedding day--"
"Then," said his lordship, rising, "God's blessing on that day, Peregrine, and on each of you."
"You ask of me a very great thing, sir!" I groaned.
"Indeed, yes, Peregrine, so very great that only the greatest love could possibly grant it."
Long after the Earl had limped away, I sat crouched beside the stream, my head bowed between clasping hands, blind and deaf and unconscious of all else but the tempest that raged within me, a wild confusion of doubt and fearful speculation with a passionate rebellion against circumstance, and a growing despair. Gradually these chaotic thoughts took form, marshalling themselves against each other, so that it seemed as two voices argued bitterly within me, thus:
THE FIRST VOICE. To give up Diana for two long, weary years--
THE SECOND VOICE. But for Diana's sake!
THE FIRST VOICE. To forego the joys of Diana's companionship for two, empty, desolate years.
THE SECOND VOICE. But for Diana's own future good!
THE FIRST VOICE. Why should Love demand such thing of any lover?
THE SECOND VOICE. Because he boasted his love beyond all other. Was it but an idle boast?
THE FIRST VOICE. No lover would ever do such thing!
THE SECOND VOICE. Except he be indeed greatly true and most unselfish.
THE FIRST VOICE. Diana would never leave me.
THE SECOND VOICE. Never, even though it were the passion of her life! For truly a woman's love is ever more unselfish than a man's.
THE FIRST VOICE. She loves me too much to endure such parting.
THE SECOND VOICE. She loves you so much she would endure even this to become your comrade as well as wife, to fit herself that she may take her place beside you in your world, serene and assured, to become the woman you can revere for her intellect and refinement.
THE FIRST VOICE. All this I can teach her, all this she shall acquire after marriage.
THE SECOND VOICE. Never! She will devote herself to you rather than to herself.
THE FIRST VOICE. Howbeit, I love her well enough as she is--
THE SECOND VOICE. O selfish lover! And what of the future? You cannot live out your life in her world of the Silent Places, and in your world your gipsy maid will find small welcome or none.
THE FIRST VOICE. Then her world shall be mine also--
THE SECOND VOICE. O foolish lover! Think you she shall not grieve that by her love you should lose caste--
THE FIRST VOICE. She need never know--
THE SECOND VOICE. The eyes of a loving woman are marvellous quick to see.
THE FIRST VOICE. Then Love shall comfort her.
THE SECOND VOICE. Yet still must be her dark hours. Is two years so long a time?
THE FIRST VOICE. Too long! In two years she may find a thousand new interests to come between us. In two years she may meet with dashing gallants richer, higher placed, more versed in knowledge of women and far more intellectual than myself, who am but what I am. So, having won her to my love, what folly to let her go--to be wooed perchance by others.
THE SECOND VOICE. O most despicable lover! Will you be content to win a maid through and because of her ignorance of all other wooers better placed than your poor self?
THE FIRST VOICE. Yes.
THE SECOND VOICE. Then is yours a pitiful love, base and most unworthy.
THE FIRST VOICE. No matter--she shall not go!
THE SECOND VOICE. In such a love can be no true happiness.
THE FIRST VOICE. However, she shall not leave me!
THE SECOND VOICE. How if at some future day, her eyes be opened to see your love for the petty, selfish thing it is?
THE FIRST VOICE. She will be my wife!
THE SECOND VOICE. So God pity her.
THE FIRST VOICE. Come what will, she shall not leave me! I cannot, will not part with her!
"Why, Peregrine!" exclaimed a sweet voice. "My dear--my dear, what is it? Why do you sit here sighing with your dear head between your hands--this head that I love so! Peregrine dear, what is it?"
She was beside me on her knees, had drawn my face upon her bosom, and I thrilled to the soft caress of her mouth and the touch of her gentle fingers in my hair. "Why are you so troubled, my Peregrine?"
"O Diana! Beloved, I imagined a foolish thing--that being far from me you forgot our love--these dear Silent Places, and learned--to love--some one more worthy--more generous--altogether better than I. For Diana--I am--"
"My Peregrine!" she whispered passionately. "My brave lover that is so fine a gentleman he don't know anything of evil and has treated me always as if I was a proud lady--as if I was a very holy thing instead of only a gipsy girl to be kissed and--and--oh, you are so different--and so it is I love you--love you, worship you, and--all'us shall, my Peregrine, and long and yearn to be a lady for your sake and worthy of you--"
"O child," I whispered, "my Diana--hush! You don't know how vilely, basely selfish I am really--"
"Never--ah, never say so, Peregrine, it hurts me. There now, smile! I wouldn't ha' left you all the afternoon--not even wi' our pal--no, not even to try on my wedding gown if I'd thought you'd ha' grieved. Come, dear, Jessamy's back an' ready for you with the muffles--there, he be calling!"
So I arose, but stood a while to look into her eyes that met mine with such sweet frankness.
"And you still wish to learn all those graces and refinements that make what is called a lady, my Diana?"
"Yes," she answered, a little breathlessly. "Yes--oh, more than ever--more than anything else in life--except you--"
"Then--God helping, you shall!" said I, between shut teeth. And so we went on together.
"But, Peregrine," she questioned a little wistfully, "dear Peregrine, why is your face so stern and why must you sigh still?"
"Because to be unselfish is sometimes--an agony, Diana."
"Dear heart--what do you mean?"
"Only I know now that I do most truly love you." _