Part 47 (1/2)
”Clear enough. Love is in the first place the instinct to love some one else, and only in the second place the desire to be loved in return. Ten to one, the woman puts the cart before the horse. She's thinking of the return before she's done anything to get it. She don't want to love half as much as to be _loved_--and so she finds herself left.”
Lois went on with her sewing again, but she was uneasy. She thought of her confession to Thor. Could it be that there was something wrong with her love as well as with his? It was to see what he had to say further that she asked, ”Finds herself left in what way?”
”Make 'emselves too sentimental,” he grumbled on. ”In love with love.
They like that expression, and it does 'em harm. Sets 'em to wool-gathering--with the heart. Makes 'em think love more important than it is.”
”It's generally supposed to be rather important.”
”Rather's the word. But it's not the only thing of which that can be said--and more. Women reason as if it was. Make their lives depend on it. Mistake. If you can get it, well and good; if not--there's compensation.”
She lifted her head not less in amazement than in indignation.
”Compensation for having to do without _love_?”
”Heaps.”
”And may I ask what?”
”No use telling you. Wouldn't believe me. Be like telling a man who's fond of his wine that he'd be just as well off with water.”
She said, musingly, ”Yes; love _is_ the wine of life, isn't it?”
”Wine that maketh glad the heart of man--and can also play the deuce with it.”
She sat for some time smiling to herself with faint amus.e.m.e.nt. ”Do you really disapprove of love, Uncle Sim?” she asked, at last.
He yawned loudly and stretched himself. ”What 'd be the good of that?
Don't disapprove of it any more than I disapprove of the circulation of the blood. Force in life--of course! Treasure to be valued and peril to be controlled. To play with it requires skill; to utilize it calls for wisdom.”
She had again been smiling gently to herself when she said, ”I doubt if _you_ can ever have been in love.”
”Got nothing to do with it. Not obliged to have been insane to understand insanity. As a matter of fact, best brain specialists have always kept their senses.”
”Oh, then, you rate love with insanity.”
”Depends on the kind. Some sorts not far from it. Obsession.
Brain-storm. Supernormal excitement. Pa.s.sing commotion of the senses.
Comes as suddenly as a summer tempest--thunder and lightning and rain--and goes the same way.”
”Oh, but would you call that love?”
”You bet I'd call it love. Love the poets write about. Grand pa.s.sion.
Whirls along like a tornado--makes a noise and kicks up dust--and all over in an afternoon. That's the real thing. If you can't love like that, you can't love at all--not in the grand manner. The going just as vital as the coming. Very essence of it that it shouldn't last. That's why Shakespeare kills his Romeo and his Juliet at the end of the play--and Wagner his Tristan and his Isolde. Nothing else to do with 'em. People of that kind go through just the same set of high jinks six or eight months later with some one else; and in poetry that wouldn't do. Romantic lovers love by crises, and never pa.s.s twice the same way.
People who don't do that--and lots of 'em don't--needn't think they can be romantic. They ain't.”
”But surely there _is_ a love--”
”Of the nice, tame, house-keeping variety. Of course! And it bears the same relation to the other kind as a gla.s.s of milk to a bottle of champagne. Mind you, I like milk. I approve of it. In the long run it 'll beat champagne any day--especially where you expect babies. I'm only saying that it doesn't come of the same vintage as Veuve Cliquot. Women often wish it did; and when it doesn't they make things uncomfortable.