登陆注册
19686700000057

第57章 CHAPTER X(4)

"Because I hope I shall never be idiot enough," she answered. "I see it all so clearly. I wish I didn't. Love! it's only an ugly thing with a pretty name. It will not be me that he will fall in love with. He will not know me until it is too late. How can he? It will be merely with the outside of me--my pink-and-white skin, my rounded arms. I feel it sometimes when I see men looking at me, and it makes me mad. And at other times the admiration in their eyes pleases me. And that makes me madder still."

The moon had slipped behind the wood. She had risen, and, leaning against the porch, was standing with her hands clasped. I fancy she had forgotten me. She seemed to be talking to the night.

"It's only a trick of Nature to make fools of us," she said. "He will tell me I am all the world to him; that his love will outlive the stars--will believe it himself at the time, poor fellow! He will call me a hundred pretty names, will kiss my feet and hands. And if I'm fool enough to listen to him, it may last"--she laughed; it was rather an ugly laugh--"six months; with luck perhaps a year, if I'm careful not to go out in the east wind and come home with a red nose, and never let him catch me in curl papers. It will not be me that he will want: only my youth, and the novelty of me, and the mystery.

And when that is gone--"

She turned to me. It was a strange face I saw then in the pale light, quite a fierce little face. She laid her hands upon my shoulders, and I felt them cold. "What comes when it is dead?" she said. "What follows? You must know. Tell me. I want the truth."

Her vehemence had arisen so suddenly. The little girl I had set out to talk with was no longer there. To my bewilderment, it was a woman that was questioning me.

I drew her down beside me. But the childish face was still stern.

"I want the truth," she said; so that I answered very gravely:

"When the passion is passed; when the glory and the wonder of Desire--Nature's eternal ritual of marriage, solemnising, sanctifying it to her commands--is ended; when, sooner or later, some grey dawn finds you wandering bewildered in once familiar places, seeking vainly the lost palace of youth's dreams; when Love's frenzy is faded, like the fragrance of the blossom, like the splendour of the dawn; there will remain to you, just what was there before--no more, no less. If passion was all you had to give to one another, God help you. You have had your hour of madness. It is finished. If greed of praise and worship was your price--well, you have had your payment. The bargain is complete. If mere hope to be made happy was your lure, one pities you. We do not make each other happy. Happiness is the gift of the gods, not of man. The secret lies within you, not without. What remains to you will depend not upon what you THOUGHT, but upon what you ARE. If behind the lover there was the man--behind the impossible goddess of his love-sick brain some honest, human woman, then life lies not behind you, but before you.

"Life is giving, not getting. That is the mistake we most of us set out with. It is the work that is the joy, not the wages; the game, not the score. The lover's delight is to yield, not to claim. The crown of motherhood is pain. To serve the State at cost of ease and leisure; to spend his thought and labour upon a hundred schemes, is the man's ambition. Life is doing, not having. It is to gain the peak the climber strives, not to possess it. Fools marry thinking what they are going to get out of it: good store of joys and pleasure, opportunities for self-indulgence, eternal soft caresses--the wages of the wanton. The rewards of marriage are toil, duty, responsibility--manhood, womanhood. Love's baby talk you will have outgrown. You will no longer be his 'Goddess,' 'Angel,' 'Popsy Wopsy,' 'Queen of his heart.' There are finer names than these: wife, mother, priestess in the temple of humanity. Marriage is renunciation, the sacrifice of Self upon the altar of the race. 'A trick of Nature' you call it. Perhaps. But a trick of Nature compelling you to surrender yourself to the purposes of God."

I fancy we must have sat in silence for quite a long while; for the moon, creeping upward past the wood, had flooded the fields again with light before Robina spoke.

"Then all love is needless," she said, "we could do better without it, choose with more discretion. If it is only something that worries us for a little while and then passes, what is the sense of it?"

"You could ask the same question of Life itself," I said; "'something that worries us for a little while, then passes.' Perhaps the 'worry,' as you call it, has its uses. Volcanic upheavals are necessary to the making of a world. Without them the ground would remain rock-bound, unfitted for its purposes. That explosion of Youth's pent-up forces that we term Love serves to the making of man and woman. It does not die, it takes new shape. The blossom fades as the fruit forms. The passion passes to give place to peace. The trembling lover has become the helper, the comforter, the husband."

"But the failures," Robina persisted; "I do not mean the silly or the wicked people; but the people who begin by really loving one another, only to end in disliking--almost hating one another. How do THEY get there?"

"Sit down," I said, "and I will tell you a story.

同类推荐
  • 归有光集

    归有光集

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 五辅

    五辅

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • THE IMITATION OF CHRIST

    THE IMITATION OF CHRIST

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • On the Study of Zoology

    On the Study of Zoology

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 旧典备征

    旧典备征

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 九州魔影

    九州魔影

    战争,永远不会停止。樊朝末年,山河破碎,国土已失去一半。六百年的王朝如今只能凭着高山险阻苟延残喘,偏安天南。帝都武安表面上歌舞升平,暗地里却人人自危,深恐被这乱世的洪流所吞噬。人力有时而穷,阵仪之术却有无限潜能。身世曲折的少年,第一次被秘道大师的术深深震撼。他能否找到传说中的绝世强者?请看九州魔影
  • 无尽碧落

    无尽碧落

    筑基,初元,凝丹,辟谷,涅槃,化元小三天,生死,半轮回,轮回,帝尊!远古蛮荒,盘古开天辟地,造就无数片分离的大陆,妖兽咆哮!伏羲女娲创人,教会武道,生活在这无数片大陆之上,与兽搏斗!千万年传承下来的武道,谁知竟是一场浩劫的酝酿……
  • 人族之心

    人族之心

    生命大地天空,三神受困虚空,扶持兽人、精灵、天人三族为其征战。昔日霸主人族,自死神陨落后,便沦为最弱一族面临灭顶之灾。这是战火纷飞的年代,也是英雄并起的时代。
  • 一纸婚契,宠妻到底

    一纸婚契,宠妻到底

    “嫁给我!”顾谨宸霸道的的看着某女。“嫁你有什么好处?”她傲娇的一撇嘴。不过就是一醉之下,嘲讽他,结果就被治得脱不了身!“国民老公的头条随你爆,渣男贱女我给你收。”“成交!”这样子的好事,姐就跟了!
  • 那年花开

    那年花开

    李依依,一个普通高中女生,喜欢上了优秀学长王不凡,并不断追赶他的脚步——高中,大学。她的每个选择和努力都为了追随他的身影。而有个男孩——张宁,在她身后默默的注视着她的这一切努力,默默守候着她。当这一切打破平衡后,他们将何去何从?青春就是一场梦,当梦醒后,梦境就只剩下回忆。
  • 强国

    强国

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。
  • 腹黑纨绔:霸宠煞星

    腹黑纨绔:霸宠煞星

    尽管白纱半遮面,也无法遮住她的倾城之姿。轻纱环绕,裙角曳地,袅娜聘婷,‘群芳阁’中她是头牌美姬。巧笑倩兮,亲生父亲却想纳之为妾。美目盼兮,妹妹却想与之共侍一夫。那个散发着危险气息,令她退避三舍的腹黑皇子,难道就是她的宿命吗?
  • 妖妃逆成长之叫我女王大人

    妖妃逆成长之叫我女王大人

    她,21世纪的天之骄女,穿越成了废材一枚。然,在最绝望的时候却碰见了他,桀骜不驯的下一任妖王继承人。正所谓人往高处爬,自此她开始收服妖界王子,玩宫斗,养萌宠,斗政治,闯妖界……废材们全部滚开,姐叫女王大人!本文纯属虚构,请勿模仿。
  • 杨力细说经络按摩

    杨力细说经络按摩

    本书共分为八章,包括经络按摩解密、经络按摩的必修课、十四条“决生死,除百病”经络、经络按摩要对症等内容。
  • 天传武帝

    天传武帝

    武帝宝座已经失落万年,正魔之乱纷争不断!消失在华山顶峰的剑神,一切都将未来掩盖。一个孤儿,一段奇遇,是否能带来修行界新的震动?孤帆远影碧空剑,持剑相望两不知的前辈。天生为圣,同境无敌的同辈,武帝之路不会寂寞!第六王朝,开始!本文里面有精彩的打斗,有热血,有感情,看下去,你不会失望!