The Love That Prevailed

by Frank Frankfort Moore

“Ay, they will teach you, I would fain hope, how becoming is a sober shade of dress even to the young.”

“Do I need to be taught such a lesson, Mr. Wesley?” she cried, and now her face was in need of such a lesson. She spoke as if hurt by his suggestion.

“I have never seen you dressed except modestly and as is becoming to a young woman,” he replied. “Indeed I meant not what I said to be a reproach. I only said what came first to mind when I saw those dainty well-dressed creatures. My thought was: 'Her association with such companions will surely prevent her from yielding to the weakness of most young women. She will see that the dove conveys gentleness to the mind, whereas the peacock is the type of all that is to be despised.' Then, my dear child, the pair of turtle doves is an emblem of sacrifice.”

“Is that why they were chosen as the symbols of love?” said the girl, after a pause.

He looked at her curiously for some time. He wondered what was in her mind. Had she gone as far as her words suggested in her knowledge of what it meant to love?

“I think that there can be no true love without self-sacrifice,” said he. “'Tis the very essence—the spiritual part of love.”

“Is It so in verity, sir?” she cried. “Now I have ever thought that what is called love is of all things the most selfish. Were it not so why should it provoke men to quarrel—nay, the quarrelling is not only on the side of the men. I have seen sisters up in arms simply because the lover of one had given a kindly glance to the other.”

“To be ready to sacrifice one's self to save the loved one from disaster—from trouble in any shape or form—that is the love that is true, he assured of that, Nelly,” said he. “Love, if it be true, will help one to do one's duty—to our Maker as well as to our fellow-men, and to do that duty without a thought of whatever sacrifices it may demand. Love, if it be true, will not shrink from the greatest sacrifice that can be demanded of it—separation from the one who is beloved—a dividing asunder forever. That is why it is the noblest part of a man's nature, and that is why it should not be lightly spoken of as is done daily.”

“Ah, sir,” she said, “that may be the love that poets dream of; I have read out of poetry books to my ladies at the Court, when they were having their hair brushed. There was the poet Waller, whom they liked to have read to them, and Mr. Pope, in places. Mr. Marlowe they had a great regard for. They all put their dreams of love into beautiful words that would make the coldest of us in love with love. But for the real thing for daily life I think that simple folk must needs be content with the homelier variety.”

“There is only one sort of love, and that is love,” said he. “'Tis a flower that blooms as well in a cottage garden as in the parterres of a palace—nay, there are plants that thrive best in a poor soil, becoming stunted and losing their fragrance in rich ground, and it hath oft seemed to me that love is such a growth.”