Loveman

“ I had an odd idea that no living thing had trodden that ground for many centuries till Loveman and I arrived. It was very late in the night - probably in the small hours, since a waning crescent moon had attained considerable height in the east. Loveman carried, slung over his shoulder, a portable telephone outfit ”

“ You know you don’t care for him. You know what you are planning to do isn’t square. Why don’t you be true to the best self that is in you and end it all yourself?—and end it now? There’s the telephone,” he urged—remembering that Loveman might any moment appear—“call Jack Morton up and tell him you’ve decided not to do it!” ”

“ Five minutes later the rocking machine turned into Loveman’s street. Save for his own car, the street was empty. Not waiting for the machine to slow down, Clifford called “Beat it!” to the chauffeur, leaped to the curb and walked rapidly into Loveman’s apartment house. At the end of the corridor a negro youth lay loosely a-sprawl and snoring on the telephone switchboard, and the elevator door stood open. The sight reassured Clifford on one point: he had beaten Loveman to his home—that is, if Loveman’s purpose had been to come home. ”

“ I found her so amiable in her passion for Saint Lambert, that I could scarcely imagine she would have been as much so had she loved me instead of him; and without wishing to disturb their union, all I really desired of her was to permit herself to be loved. Finally, however violent my passion may have been for this lady, I found it as agreeable to be the confidant, as the object of her amours, and I never for a moment considered her lover as a rival, but always as my friend. ”

“ I have seen thee trace the bower around,
And heard the forest echo Rosamund;
Have seen thy frantick looks, thy wildering eye,
Heard the deep groan and bosom-rending sigh;
Vain are the searching glance, the love-lorn groan,
I live—but live to penitence alone;
Depriv'd of every joy which life can give,
Most vile, most wretched, most despis'd, I live.
Too well thy deep regret, thy grief, are known,
Too true I judge thy sorrows by my own!
Oh! thou hast lost the dearest charm of life,
The fondest, tenderest, loveliest, more than wife ”

“ How can a coarse male animal like myself understand the feelings of a refined and sensitive young lady?’
‘Oh, Julian—unfair ... unkind!’
‘Well, damn you, don’t you see I love you myself?’ he{307} cried in a perfect fury. ‘Here am I, alone with you at last for a paltry ten days—after waiting years, mind you, years for my opportunity, and I find you moping and moaning over your lost schoolgirl illusions! Good God! Haven’t you the guts to snap your fingers at a fellow who can’t be bothered with you? Aren’t you attractive and intelligent? Can’t you laugh? Aren’t there plenty of others? ”

“ New distresses croud in upon me every day. The sollicitude of my mind sinks my spirits, preys upon my health, and destroys every comfort of my life. It shall be revealed, let what will be the consequence.
Enter Lovewell.
Lovew. My love!—How's this?—In tears?—Indeed this is too much. You promised me to support your spirits, and to wait the determination of our fortune with patience.—For my sake, for your own, be comforted! Why will you study to add to our uneasiness and perplexity?
Fanny. Oh, Mr. Lovewell! The indelicacy of a secret marriage grows every day more and more shocking to me. ”

“ Picture to yourself Lovelace, and Henri Quatre, and the Regent, and Werther, and Saint-Preux, and Rene, and the Marechal de Richelieu—think of all these in a single man, and you will have some idea of their way of love. What lovers! Eclectic of all things in love, they will serve up a passion to a woman's order; their hearts are like a bill of fare in a restaurant. ”

“ I remember hearing of an instance of this nature, when the lady gave her ci-devant lover an ingenious reproof, after they had been separated some time, when a marriage-bargain was broken off, because the lover could not obtain from the girl's father a certain brown filly as part of her dowry. The damsel, after the lapse of some weeks, met her swain at a neighbouring fair, and the flame of love still smouldering in his heart was re-illumined by the sight of his charmer, who, on the contrary, had become quite disgusted with him for his too obvious preference of profit to true affection. ”

“ If thou lovest thy Creator, love and serve Him in so far as He is highest and eternal good, worthy of being loved, and not for thine own profit, for that would be a mercenary love, like a miser who loves money because of his avarice. So let your love for your neighbour be clean. Love, love one another; you are neighbours one of the other. But be on your guard, for if your love were founded in your own profit or in the private affection which you might have for one another, it would not endure, but would fail, and your soul would find itself empty. ”

“ Valentine, I have always regarded our love in the light of something sacred; consequently, I have covered it with the veil of respect, and hid it in the inmost recesses of my soul; no human being, not even my sister, is aware of its existence. Valentine, will you permit me to make a confidant of a friend, and reveal to him the love I bear you? ”

“ A thousand Sir Rolands shall lay lance in rest, and Fear, Avarice, Pleasure, and Ambition shall go down in the dust before your colors.
What noble deeds were we not ripe for in the days when we loved? What noble lives could we not have lived for her sake? Our love was a religion we could have died for. It was no mere human creature like ourselves that we adored. ”

“ If only their marriage could be a perpetual sitting on a green bank by a stream, watching him tolerantly, almost tenderly, with quiet pleasure in his bodily magnificence, with a half-contemptuous smile for his happiness, and yet with comfort in the knowledge of it, and in the knowledge that her mere presence was sufficient for it, while her mind was off on its own, worlds removed from him!... ”

“ But as Lombard pointed out the various features of the scene to his companion, I fear that his chief motive was less an admiration of Nature that sought sympathy than a selfish delight in making her eyes flash, seeing the color come and go in her cheeks, and hearing her charming unstudied exclamations of pleasure,—a delight not unmingled with complacency in associating himself in her mind with emotions of delight and admiration. It is appalling, the extent to which spoony young people make the admiration of Nature in her grandest forms a mere sauce to their love-making. ”

“ The Roamer's gaze! The other, in quick turn,
As if antiphonal to that high strain,
Took up the Word: "Abandoned and deprived,
He is most rich who, vowed to poverty,
Hath nothing to receive and all to give;
And who beholds him learns the works of love.
Love is the bread that feeds the multitudes;
Love is the healing of the hospitals;
Love is the light that breaks through prison doors;
Love knows not rich nor poor, nor good nor bad,
But only the beloved, in every heart
One and the same, the incorruptible
Spirit divine, whose tabernacle is life. ”

“ Why being free should I fear a legitimate love? Strange mystery! wonderful instinct! With Roger, I sadly said to myself: "I love him, but it is not with love." ... With Edgar, I said in fright: "This is love, yet I do not love him." And then when Raymond appeared, my heart, my reason, my faith at the first glance recognised him, and without hesitation, almost without prudence, I cried out, "It is he.... I love him." ... Now this is what I call real love, ideal love, harmony of ideas and sympathy of hearts. ”

“ But is there such a thing as a perfect love? Is yours a perfect love, my dear Martin, with its insatiable jealousy, its ruthless criticism? Has the world ever seen a perfect lover yet? Isn’t it our imperfection that brings us together in a common need? Is Miss Grammont, after all, likely to get a more perfect love in all her life than this poor love of mine? ”

“ Lady Mandeville.—"On the contrary, I hold that vanity is to love what opium is to the constitution,—exciting, but destroying."
Edward Lorraine.—"I must own I allow to this 'religion of the heart' a more exalted creed than you seem inclined to do. Love is of all others the principle in our nature which calls forth 'its higher and its better part.' Look at the disinterestedness of love, the sacrifices it even delights in making! Think how lightly are all worldly advantages held when thrown into the balance with affection." ”

“ At length in an involuntary transport she exclaimed: "No, never was a man so amiable, nor ever was there one who loved like you! But your friend Saint Lambert hears us, and my heart is incapable of loving twice." I exhausted myself with sighs; I embraced her--what an embrace! But this was all. She had lived alone for the last six months, that is absent from her husband and lover; I had seen her almost every day during three months, and love seldom failed to make a third. ”

“ Surely we may fairly conclude with Lovelace, that well might she, who had been used to be courted and admired by every desiring Eye, and worshipped by every respectful Heart—Well might such a Woman be allowed to draw back, when she found herself kept in suspence, as to the great Question of all, by a designing and intriguing Spirit, pretending Awe and Distance, as Reasons for reining in a Fervour, which, if real, cannot be reined in. ”

“ Exit Latine.
Enter Penelope, Victoria, Simon, and Lettice.
Pen. A walk round would be too much for us; we'll keep the Mall.—But to our talk: I must confess I have terrors when I think of marrying Lovemore. He is, indeed, a man of an honest character. He has my good opinion, but love does not always follow that. He is so wise a fellow, always so precisely in the right, so observing and so jealous; he's blameless indeed, but not to be commended. What good he has, has no grace in it; he's one of those who's never highly moved, except to anger. ”

“ Thus we do not love at eighteen as we do at forty, nor in the city as we do in the country, nor in spring as we do in autumn, nor in the camp as we do in the court; nor does the ignorant man love like a learned one; the merchant does not love like the lawyer; nor does the latter love like the doctor. It is upon these different phases in the character of love that I have founded my system. Next week I shall endeavour to describe some of the traits which distinguish “The Lover.” ”

“ Once, I was dreaming only of manhood, and knew not what it was to love. Now, that I can love, there is not a being in the wide world whom I am privileged to love. Love! what is it but another name for jealousy, selfishness, and lust? Aye, this is the conclusion of the whole matter, if one woman that I know is a representative of her sex. But I rejoice in the conviction that here is a Love, which is as pure as the diamond, and lasting as the soul, which but 62 blossoms in this world, bearing its fruit throughout the untold years of the great hereafter. ”

“ And as for love—well, after all, there was the moratorium of love. My lot in this respect—if it was to be my lot—would be no harder than that of millions of other men the wide world over. Love was no longer the first of a man’s considerations, not any more than the earning of a living could be the first. It might be a higher thing for her—a higher thing for me—to give it up.
Turning these things over in my mind and wondering vaguely what might be awaiting me at the apartment, I said nothing to Lovey as we trundled homeward in a taxicab ”

“ Trueman. You talk very valiantly, Mr. Loveyet; very valiantly indeed; I dare say now you have temerity and enterprise enough, even at this time of day, to take a wife.
Loveyet. To be sure I have. Let me see,—I shou'd like a woman an inch or two less than six feet high now, and thick in proportion: By my body, such a woman wou'd look noble by the side of me when she was entient.
Trueman. Oh, monstrous! Entient! an entient woman by the side of an antient husband! ”

“ Do you love him, love him with all your heart and soul, with all the love your bosom can feel? For I can tell you that he loves you, adores you, worships you, thinks of you and nothing else, is now thinking of you as he attempts to write his sermon for next Sunday's preaching. What would I not give to be loved in such a way by such a man, that is, if I were an object fit for any man to love! ”

“ The feeling I have for you is love. God is love, and all his creation is ruled by the laws of love.”
“Cousin Edward, what is your definition of love?”
“Love,” said Edward, looking into the depths of her laughing blue eyes, “love is love.”
“Good!—that will do for you. So now, Frank, it is your turn Francis—brother.”
“What, Clara?”
“Where are you wandering?”
“To the vine-covered cottage you were telling me of.”
“Well, come back from there, and tell me what love is.”
“Love? Love is the devil! An angel of light—madness—gladness! ”

“ Thus, the pair of lovers could be jarred apart by misunderstood motives, by accident of fate, by jealous rivals, by irate parents, by crafty guardians, by scheming relatives, and so forth and so forth; they could be reunited by a brave deed of the man lover, by a similar deed of the woman lover, by change of heart in one lover or the other, by forced confession of crafty guardian, scheming relative, or jealous rival, by voluntary confession of same, by discovery of some unguessed secret, by lover storming girl’s heart, by lover making long and noble self-sacrifice, and so on, endlessly. ”

“ For whiles my true love is away we, such as the Eures and the Dacres and the Nevilles and the Widdringtons and the Swinburns and the commoner sort, and the Elliotts and Armstrongs, go a little in doubt. For, if my true love be dead, it is his sisters that are his heirs, and to set them out of that Castle would be to set down his heirs, which is a thing not to be done. But if the Young Lovell should come again I think you should see a different thing, for there is not one of these people but should rise upon you, aye, and the Prince Palatine. I think you could not stand against us all. ”