 | WHAT IS LOVE? The Foolish Virgin |  |
28. WHAT IS LOVE?
Eighteen months swiftly passed with the little mother and her boy still in Dr. Mulford's sanitarium. She had allowed herself to be persuaded that he had the right to be her guide and helper in the first year's training of the child.
The boy had steadily grown in strength and beauty of body and mind. The Doctor persuaded her to spend one more winter basking in his sun-parlor and finishing the final chapters of his book. Her mind was singularly clever and helpful in the interpretation of the experiences and emotions of motherhood.
She had stubbornly resisted every suggestion to see her husband or allow him to see the child. The Doctor had managed twice to give Jim an hour with the baby while she had gone to Asheville on shopping trips. He was rewarded for his trouble in the devotion with which the young father worshiped his
Jim had completed the furnishing of the bungalow with the advice and guidance of his friend, and every room stood ready and waiting for its mistress. He had insisted on making every piece of furniture for Mary's room and the nursery adjoining. The Doctor was amazed at the mechanical genius he displayed in its construction. He had taken a month's instruction at a cabinet maker's in Asheville and the bed, bureau, tables and chairs which he had turned out were astonishingly beautiful. Their lines were copied from old models and each piece was a work of art. The iron work was even more tastefully and beautifully wrought. He had toiled day and night with an enthusiasm and patience that gave the physician a new revelation in the possibility of the development of human character.
His friend came at last with a cheering message. He began smilingly:
"I'm going to make the big fight today, boy, to get her to see you."
"You think she will?"
"There's a good chance. Her savings have all
Jim's hand was suddenly lifted.
"I got ye, Doc, I got ye! I'll be there — all day."
"Don't let her see you until I give the signal."
"Caution's my name."
"We'll see what happens."
Jim pressed close.
"Say, Doc, if you know how to pray, I wish you'd send up a little word for me while you're talkin' to her. Could ye now?"
"I'll do my best for you, boy — and I think you've got a chance. She's been watching the blue eyes of that baby lately with a rather curious look of unrest."
"They're just like mine, ain't they?" Jim broke in with pride.
"Time has softened the old hurt," the Doctor went on. "The boy may win for you — "
The square jaw came together with a smash.
"Gee — I hope so. I'll wait there all day for you and I'm goin' to try my own hand at a little prayer or two on the side while I'm waiting. Maybe God'll think He's hit me hard enough by this time to give me another trial."
With a friendly wave of his hand the Doctor hurried home.
He found Mary seated under the rose trellis beside the drive, watching for his coming. The day was still and warm for the end of April. Birds were singing and chattering in every branch and tree. A quail on the top fence-rail of the wheat field called loudly to his mate.
The boy was screaming his joy over a new wagon to which Aunt Abbie had hitched his goat. He drove by in style, lifted his chubby hand to his mother and shouted:
"Dood-by, Doc-ter!"
The Doctor waved a smiling answer, and lapsed into a long silence.
He waked at last from his absorption to notice that Mary was day-dreaming. The fair brow was drawn into deep lines of brooding.
"Why shadows in your eyes a day like this, little mother?" he asked softly.
"Just thinking — "
"About a past that you should forget?"
"Yes and no," she answered thoughtfully. "I was just thinking in this flood of spring sunlight of the mystery of my love for such a man as the one I married. How could it have been possible to really love him?"
"You are sure that you loved him?"
"Sure."
"How did you know?"
"By all the signs. I trembled at his footstep. The touch of his hand, the sound of his voice thrilled me. I was drawn by a power that was resistless. I was mad with happiness those wonderful days that preceded our marriage. I was madder still during our honeymoon — until the shadows began to fall that fatal Christmas Eve." She paused and her lips trembled. "Oh, Doctor, what is love?"
The drooping shoulders of the man bent lower. He picked up a pebble from the ground and flicked it carelessly across the drive, lifted his head at last and asked earnestly:
"Shall I tell you the truth?"
"Yes — your own particular brand, please — the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth."
"I'll try," he began soberly. "If I were a poet, naturally I would use different language. As I'm
"No matter," she interrupted. "They couldn't well get a harder jolt than they have had already."
He nodded and went on:
"There are two elemental human forces that maintain life — hunger and love. They are both utterly simple, otherwise they could not be universal. Hunger compels the race to live. Love compels it to reproduce itself. There has never been anything mysterious about either of these forces and there never will be — except in the imagination of sentimentalists.
"Nature begins with hunger. For about thirteen years she first applies this force to the development of the body before she begins to lay the foundation of the second. Until this second development is complete the passion known as love cannot be experienced.
"What is this second development? Very simple again. At the base of the brain of every child there is a vacant space during the first twelve or fifteen years. During the age of twelve to fourteen in girls, thirteen to fifteen in boys, this vacant space is slowly filled by a new lobe of the brain and with its growth
"This new nerve center becomes on maturity a powerful physical magnet. The moment this magnet comes into contact with an organization which answers its needs, as certain kinds of food answer the needs of hunger, violent desire is excited. If both these magnets should be equally powerful, the disturbance to both will be great. The longer the personal association is continued the more violent becomes this disturbance, until in highly sensitive natures it develops into an obsession which obscures reason and crushes the will.
"The meaning of this impulse is again very simple — the unconscious desire of the male to be a father, of the female to become a mother."
"And there is but one man on earth who could thus affect me?" Mary asked excitedly.
"Rubbish! There are thousands."
"Thousands?"
"Literally thousands. The reason you never happen to meet them is purely an accident of our poor social organization. Every woman has thousands of true physical mates if she could only meet them. Every man has thousands of true physical mates if he could only meet them. And in every such meeting,
"Marriage therefore is not based merely on the passion of love. It is a crime for any man or woman to marry without love. It is the sheerest insanity to believe that this passion within itself is sufficient to justify marriage. All who marry should love. Many love who should not marry.
"The institution of marriage is the great social ordinance of the race. Its sanctity and perpetuity are not based on the violence of the passion of love, but something else."
He paused and listened to the call of the quail again from the field.
"You hear that bob white calling his mate?"
"Yes — and she's answering him now very softly. I can hear them both."
"They have mated this spring to build a home and rear a brood of young. Within six months their babies will all be full grown and next spring a new alignment of lovers will be made. Their marriage lasts during the period of infancy of their offspring. This is Nature's law.
"It happens in the case of man that the period of infancy of a human being is about twenty-four years.
He paused again and looked over the sunlit valley.
"I wish our boys and girls could all know these simple truths of their being. It would save much unhappiness and many tragic blunders.
"You were swept completely off your feet by the rush of the first emotion caused by meeting a man who was your physical mate. You imagined this emotion to be a mysterious revelation which can come but once. Your imagination in its excited condition, of course, gave to your first-found mate all sorts of divine attributes which he did not possess. You were `in love' with a puppet of your own creation, and hypnotized yourself into the delusion that James Anthony was your one and only mate, your knight, your hero.
"In a very important sense this was true. Your
"On what?"
"The joy and peace that comes from oneness of spirit, tastes, culture and character. I know this from the deepest experiences of life and the widest observation."
"You have loved?" she asked softly.
"Twice — "
A silence fell between them.
"Shall I tell you, little mother?" he finally asked quietly.
"Please."
He seated himself and looked into the skies beyond the peaks across the valley.
"Ten years ago I met my first mate. The meeting was fortunate for both. She was a woman of gentle birth, of beautiful spirit. Our courtship was ideal. We thought alike, we felt alike, she loved my profession even — an unusual trait in a woman. She thought it so noble in its aims that the petty jealousy that sometimes wrecks a doctor's life was
"And then, little mother, by one of those inexplicable mysteries of nature she died when our baby was born. For a while the light of the world went out. I quit New York, gave up my profession and came here just to lie in the sun on this mountainside and try to pull myself together. I didn't think life could ever be worth living again. But it was. I found about me so much of human need — so much ignorance and helplessness — so much to pity and love, I forgot the ache in my own heart in bringing joy to others.
"I had money enough. I gave up the ambitions of greed and strife and set my soul to higher tasks. For nine years I've devoted my leisure hours to the study of Motherhood as the hope of a nobler humanity. But for the great personal sorrow that came to me in the death of my wife and baby I should never have realized the truths I now see so clearly.
"And then the other woman suddenly came into my life. I never expected to love again — not because I thought it impossible, but because I thought it improbable in my little world here that I could
He paused and took a deep breath.
"I recognized her instantly as my mate, gentle and pure and capable of infinite joy or infinite pain. She did not realize the secret of my interest in her. I didn't expect it. I knew that under the conditions she could not. But I waited."
He paused and searched for Mary's eyes.
"And you married her?" she asked in even tones.
"I have never allowed her to know that I love her."
"Why?"
"She was married."
Mary threw him a startled look and he went on evenly:
"I could have used my power over mind and body to separate her from her husband. I confess that I was tempted. But there was a child. Their union had been sealed with the strongest tie that can bind two human beings. I have never allowed her to realize that she might love me. Had I chosen to break the silence between us I could have revealed this to her, taken her and torn her from the man to whom she had borne a babe. I had no right to commit that crime, no matter how deep the love that
"And you gave her up?"
"I had to, little mother. On the recognition of this eternal law the whole structure of our civilization rests."
Mary bent her gaze steadily on his face for a moment in silence.
"And you are telling me that I should be reconciled to the man who choked me into insensibility?"
"I am telling you that he is the father of your son — that he has rights which you cannot deny; that when you gave yourself to him in the first impulse of love a deed was done which Almighty God can never undo. Your tragic blunder was the rush into marriage with a man about whose character you knew so little. It's the timid, shrinking, home-loving girl that makes this mistake. You must face it now. You are responsible as deeply and truly as the man who married you. That he happened at that moment to be a brute and a criminal is no more his fault than yours. It was your business to know before you made him the father of your child."
"I tried to appeal to his better nature that awful night," Mary interrupted, "but he only laughed at me!"
"You owe him another trial, little mother — you owe it to his boy, too."
Mary shook her head bitterly.
"I can't — I just can't!"
"You won't see him once?"
She sprang to her feet trembling.
"No — no!"
"I don't think it's fair."
"I'm afraid of him! You can't understand his power over my will."
"Come, come, this is sheer cowardice — give the devil his dues. Face him and fight it out. Tell him you're done forever with him and his life, if you will — but don't hedge and trim and run away like this. I'm ashamed of you."
"I won't see him — I've made up my mind."
The Doctor threw up both hands.
"All right. If you won't, you won't. We'll let it go at that."
He paused and changed his tones to friendly personal interest.
"And you're determined to leave me and take my kid away tomorrow?"
"We must go. I've no money to pay my board. I can't impose on you — "
"It's going to be awfully lonely."
He looked at her with a strange, deep gaze, lifted his stooping shoulders with sudden resolution and changed his manner to light banter.
"I suppose I couldn't persuade you to give me that boy?"
She smiled tenderly.
"You know his father did leave his mark on him after all! The eyes are all his. Of course, I will admit that those drooping lids have often been the mark of genius — perhaps a genius for evil in this case. If you don't want to take the risk — now's your chance. I will — "
Mary shook her head in reproachful protest.
"Don't tease me, dear doctor man. I've just this one day more with you. I'm counting each precious hour."
"Forgive me!" he cried gayly. "I won't tease you any more. Come, we'll run over now and see our neighbor's new bungalow before you go. You admire this one and threaten to duplicate it. He has built a better one."
"I don't believe it."
"You'll go?"
"If you wish it — "
"Good. We'll take the boy, too. He can drive his new wagon the whole way. It's only half a mile.
| WHAT IS LOVE? The Foolish Virgin | |