Gregory was not quite sure how to take these remarks. Being about a Kaffer, they appeared to be of the nature of a joke; but, being seriously spoken, they appeared earnest; so he half laughed and half not, to be on the safe side.
"I've often thought so myself. It's funny we should both think the same; I knew we should if once we talked. But there are other things--love, now," he added. "I wonder if we would think alike about that. I wrote an essay on love once; the master said it was the best I ever wrote, and I can remember the first sentence still--'Love is something that you feel in your heart.'"
"That was a trenchant remark. Can't you remember any more?"
"No," said Gregory, regretfully; "I've forgotten the rest. But tell me what do you think about love?"
A look, half of abstraction, half amusement, played on her lips.
"I don't know much about love," she said, "and I do not like to talk of things I do not understand; but I have heard two opinions. Some say the devil carried the seed from hell and planted it on the earth to plague men and make them sin; and some say, that when all the plants in the garden of Eden were pulled up by the roots, one bush that the angels planted was left growing, and it spread its seed over the whole earth, and its name is love.
I do not know which is right--perhaps both. There are different species that go under the same name. There is a love that begins in the head, and goes down to the heart, and grows slowly; but it lasts till death, and asks less than it gives. There is another love, that blots out wisdom, that is sweet with the sweetness of life and bitter with the bitterness of death, lasting for an hour; but it is worth having lived a whole life for that hour. I cannot tell, perhaps the old monks were right when they tried to root love out; perhaps the poets are right when they try to water it. It is a blood-red flower, with the colour of sin; but there is always the scent of a god about it."
Gregory would have made a remark; but she said, without noticing:
"There are as many kinds of loves as there are flowers; everlastings that never wither; speedwells that wait for the wind to fan them out of life; blood-red mountain-lilies that pour their voluptuous sweetness out for one day, and lie in the dust at night. There is no flower has the charm of all--the speedwell's purity, the everlasting's strength, the mountain- lily's warmth; but who knows whether there is no love that holds all-- friendship, passion, worship?
"Such a love," she said, in her sweetest voice, "will fall on the surface of strong, cold, selfish life as the sunlight falls on a torpid winter world; there, where the trees are bare, and the ground frozen, till it rings to the step like iron, and the water is solid, and the air is sharp as a two-edged knife that cuts the unwary.
"But when its sun shines on it, through its whole dead crust a throbbing yearning wakes: the trees feel him, and every knot and bud swell, aching to open to him. The brown seeds, who have slept deep under the ground, feel him, and he gives them strength, till they break through the frozen earth, and lift two tiny, trembling green hands in love to him. And he touches the water, till down to its depths it feels him and melts, and it flows, and the things, strange sweet things that were locked up in it, it sings as it runs, for love of him. Each plant tries to bear at least one fragrant little flower for him; and the world that was dead lives, and the heart that was dead and self-centred throbs, with an upward, outward yearning, and it has become that which it seemed impossible ever to become.
There, does that satisfy you?" she asked, looking down at Gregory. "Is that how you like me to talk?"
"Oh, yes," said Gregory, "that is what I have already thought. We have the same thoughts about everything. How strange!"
"Very," said Lyndall, working with her little toe at a stone in the ground before her.
Gregory felt he must sustain the conversation. The only thing he could think of was to recite a piece of poetry. He knew he had learnt many about love; but the only thing that would come into his mind now was the "Battle of Hohenlinden," and "Not a drum was heard," neither of which seemed to bear directly on the subject on hand.
But unexpected relief came to him from Doss, who, too deeply lost in contemplation of his crevice, was surprised by the sudden descent of the stone Lyndall's foot had loosened, which, rolling against his little front paw, carried away a piece of white-skin. Doss stood on three legs, holding up the paw with an expression of extreme self-commiseration; he then proceeded to hop slowly upward in search of sympathy.
"You have hurt that dog," said Gregory.
"Have I?" she replied indifferently, and re-opened the book, as though to resume her study of the play.
"He's a nasty, snappish little cur!" said Gregory, calculating from her manner that the remark would be endorsed. "He snapped at my horse's tail yesterday, and nearly made it throw me. I wonder his master didn't take him, instead of leaving him here to be a nuisance to all of us!"
Lyndall seemed absorbed in her play; but he ventured another remark.
"Do you think now, Miss Lyndall, that he'll ever have anything in the world--that German. I mean--money enough to support a wife on, and all that sort of thing? I don't. He's what I call soft."
She was spreading her skirt out softly with her left hand for the dog to lie down on it.
"I think I should be rather astonished if he ever became a respectable member of society," she said. I don't expect to see him the possessor of bank-shares, the chairman of a divisional council, and the father of a large family; wearing a black hat, and going to church twice on a Sunday.
He would rather astonish me if he came to such an end."
"Yes; I don't expect anything of him either," said Gregory, zealously.
