“No!” interrupted Gervase, almost fiercely. “There are no words which truly describe this one emotion which rules the world. I know what you mean, of course; you mean evil words, licentious words, and yet it has nothing whatever to do with these. You cannot call such an exalted state of the nerves and sensations by an evil name.”
Dr. Dean pondered the question for a few moments.
“No, I am not sure that I can,” he said, meditatively. “If I did, I should have to give an evil name to the Creator who designed man and woman and ordained the law of attraction which draws, and often drags them together. I like to be fair to everybody, the Creator included; yet to be fair to everybody I shall appear to sanction immorality. For the fact is that our civilization has upset all the original intentions of nature. Nature evidently meant Love, or the emotion we call Love, to be the keynote of the universe. But apparently Nature did not intend marriage. The flowers, the birds, the lower animals, mate afresh every spring, and this is the creed that the disciples of Naturalism nowadays are anxious to force upon the attention of the world. It is only men and women, they say, that are so foolish as to take each other for better or worse till death do them part. Now, I should like, from the physical scientist’s point of view, to prove that the men and women are wrong, and that the lower animals are right; but spiritual science comes in and confutes me. For in spiritual science I find this truth, which will not be gainsaid—namely, that from time immemorial, certain immortal forms of Nature have been created solely for one another; like two halves of a circle, they are intended to meet and form the perfect round, and all the elements of creation, spiritual and material, will work their hardest to pull them together. Such natures, I consider, should absolutely and imperatively be joined in marriage. It then becomes a divine decree. Even grant, if you like, that the natures so joined are evil, and that the sympathy between them is of a more or less reprehensible character, it is quite as well that they should unite, and that the result of such an union should be seen. The evil might come out of them in a family of criminals which the law could exterminate with advantage to the world in general. Whereas on the other hand, given two fine and aspiring natures with perfect sympathy between them, as perfect as the two notes of a perfect chord, the children of such a marriage would probably be as near gods as humanity could bring them. I speak as a scientist merely. Such consequences are not foreseen by the majority, and marriages as a rule take place between persons who are by no means made for each other. Besides, a kind of devil comes into the business, and often prevents the two sympathetic natures conjoining. Love-matters alone are quite sufficient to convince me that there is a devil as well as a divinity that ‘shapes our ends.’”
“You speak as if you yourself had loved, Doctor,” said Gervase, with a half smile.
“And so I have,” replied the Doctor, calmly. “I have loved to the full as passionately and ardently as even you can love. I thank God the woman I loved died,—I could never have possessed her, for she was already wedded,—and I would not have disgraced her by robbing her from her lawful husband. So Death stepped in and gave her to me—forever!” and he raised his eyes to the solemn starlit sky. “Yes, nothing can ever come between us now; no demon tears her white soul from me; she died innocent of evil, and she is mine—mine in every pulse of her being, as we shall both know hereafter!”
His face, which was not remarkable for any beauty of feature, grew rapt and almost noble in its expression, and Gervase looked at him with a faint touch of ironical wonder.
“Upon my word, your morality almost outreaches your mysticism!” he said. “I see you are one of those old-fashioned men who think marriage a sacred sort of thing and the only self-respecting form of love.”
“Old-fashioned I may be,” replied Dr. Dean; “but I certainly believe in marriage for the woman’s sake. If the license of men were not restrained by some sort of barrier it would break all bounds. Now I, had I chosen, could have taken the woman I loved to myself; it needed but a little skilful persuasion on my part, for her husband was a drink-sodden ruffian …”
“And why, in the name of Heaven, did you not do so?” demanded Gervase impatiently.
“Because I know the end of all such liaisons,” said the Doctor sadly. “A month or two of delirious happiness, then years of remorse to follow. The man is lowered in his own secret estimation of himself, and the woman is hopelessly ruined, socially and morally. No, Death is far better; and in my case Death has proved a good friend, for it has given me the spotless soul of the woman I loved, which is far fairer than her body was.”