Earl Hubert's Daughter Part 35

"Then, if you cannot agree, you certainly do need it. I should rather like to hear the various opinions."

"Oh! Eva says--" began the child eagerly; but Bruno's hand, laid gently on her head, stopped her.

"Wait, my child. Let each speak for herself."

There was silence for a moment, for no one liked to begin--except Marie, whom decorum alone kept silent.

"What didst thou say, Eva?"

"I believe I said, good Father, that I cared not for the love of any that did not hold me first and best. Nor do I."

"'Love seeketh not her own,'" said Bruno. "That which seeks its own is not love."

"What is it, Father?" modestly asked Doucebelle.

"It is self-love, my daughter; the worst enemy that can be to the true love of G.o.d and man. Real love is unselfish, unexacting, and immortal."

"But love can die, surely!"

"Saint Paul says the contrary, my daughter."

"It can kill, I suppose," said Margaret, in a low tone.

"Yes, the weak," replied Bruno.

"But, Father, was the holy Apostle not speaking of religious love?"

suggested Eva, trying to find a loophole.

"What is the alternative,--irreligious love? I do not know of such a thing, my daughter."

"But there is a wicked sort of love."

"Certainly not. There are wicked pa.s.sions. But love can never be wicked, because G.o.d is love."

"But people can love wickedly?" asked Eva, looking puzzled.

"I fail to see how any one can _love_ wickedly. Self-love is always wicked."

"Then, Father, if it be wicked, you call it self-love?" said Eva, leaping (very cleverly, as she thought) to a conclusion.

"Scarcely," said Bruno, with a quiet smile. "Say rather, my daughter, that if it be self-love, I call it wicked."

The perplexed expression returned to Eva's face.

"My child, what is love?"

"Why, Father, that is just what we want to know," said Marie.

But Bruno waited for Eva's answer.

"I suppose," she said nervously, "it means liking a person, and wis.h.i.+ng for his company, and wanting him to love one."

"And I suppose that it is caring for him so much that thou wouldst count nothing too great a sacrifice, to attain his highest good. That is how G.o.d loved us, my children."

Eva thought this extremely poor and tame, beside her own lovely ideal.

"Then," said Marie, "if I love Margaret, I shall want _her_ to be happy.

I shall not want her to make me happy, unless it would make her so."

"Right, my child," said Bruno, with a smile of approbation. "To do otherwise would be loving Marie, not Margaret."

"But, Father!" exclaimed Eva. "Do you mean to say that if my betrothed prefers to go hawking rather than sit with me, if I love him I shall wish him to leave me?"

"Whom wouldst thou be loving, if not?"

"I could not wish him to go and leave me!"

"My child, there is a divine self-abnegation to which very few attain.

But those few come nearest to the imitation of Him who 'pleased not Himself,' and I think--G.o.d knoweth--often they are the happiest. Let us all ask G.o.d for grace to reach it. 'This is My commandment, that ye have love one to another.'"

And, as was generally the case when he had said all he thought necessary at the moment, Bruno rose, and with a benediction quitted the room.

"Call that loving!" said Eva, contemptuously, when he was gone. "Poor tame stuff! I should not thank you for it."

"Well, I should," said Doucebelle, quietly.

"Oh, thou!" was Eva's answer, in the same tone. "Why, thou hast no heart to begin with."

Doucebelle silently doubted that statement.

"O Eva, for shame!" said Marie. "Doucebelle always does what every body wants her, unless she thinks it is wrong."

"Thou dost not call that love, I hope?"

"I think it is quite as like it as wis.h.i.+ng people to do what they don't want, to please you," said Marie, st.u.r.dily.

"I don't believe one of you knows any thing about it," loftily returned Eva. "If I had been Margaret, now, I could not have sat quietly to that broidery. I could not have borne it!"

Margaret looked up quickly, changed colour, and with a slight compression of her lower lip, went back to her work in silence.

"But what wouldst thou have done, Eva?" demanded the practical little Marie. "Wouldst thou have stared out of the window all day long?"

"No!" returned Eva with fervent emphasis. "I should have wept my life away. But Margaret is not like me. She can get interested in work and other things, and forget a hapless love, and outlive it. It would kill me in a month."

Margaret rose very quietly, put her frame by in the corner, and left the room. Beatrice, who had been silent for some time, looked up then with expressive eyes.

"It is killing her, Eva. My father told me so a week since. He says he is quite sure that the Countess is mistaken in fancying that she is getting over it."