Aaron's Rod by D. H. Lawrence (best young adult book series txt) 📖

such thing. It is a profound desire and necessity: and what is more, a belief.”

“An obstinate persistency, you mean,” said Lilly.

“Well, call it so if it pleases you. It is by no means so to me.” There was a brief pause. The sun had left the cathedral dome and the tower, the sky was full of light, the square swimming in shadow.

“But can a man live,” said the Marchese, “without having something he lives for: something he wishes for, or longs for, and tries that he may get?”

“Impossible! Completely impossible!” said Argyle. “Man is a seeker, and except as such, he has no significance, no importance.”

“He bores me with his seeking,” said Lilly. “He should learn to possess himself—to be himself—and keep still.”

“Ay, perhaps so,” said Aaron. “Only—”

“But my dear boy, believe me, a man is never himself save in the supreme state of love: or perhaps hate, too, which amounts to the same thing. Never really himself.—Apart from this he is a tram-driver or a money-shoveller or an idea-machine. Only in the state of love is he really a man, and really himself. I say so, because I know,” said Argyle.

“Ah, yes. That is one side of the truth. It is quite true, also. But it is just as true to say, that a man is never less himself, than in the supreme state of love. Never less himself, than then.”

“Maybe! Maybe! But what could be better? What could be better than to lose oneself with someone you love, entirely, and so find yourself. Ah, my dear fellow, that is my creed, that is my creed, and you can’t shake me in it. Never in that. Never in that.”

“Yes, Argyle,” said Lilly. “I know you’re an obstinate love-apostle.”

“I am! I am! And I have certain standards, my boy, and certain ideals which I never transgress. Never transgress. And never abandon.”

“All right, then, you are an incurable love-maker.”

“Pray God I am,” said Argyle.

“Yes,” said the Marchese. “Perhaps we are all so. What else do you give? Would you have us make money? Or do you give the centre of your spirit to your work? How is it to be?”

“I don’t vitally care either about money or my work or—” Lilly faltered.

“Or what, then?”

“Or anything. I don’t really care about anything. Except that—”

“You don’t care about anything? But what is that for a life?” cried the Marchese, with a hollow mockery.

“What do YOU care for?” asked Lilly.

“Me? I care for several things. I care for my wife. I care for love. And I care to be loved. And I care for some pleasures. And I care for music. And I care for Italy.”

“You are well off for cares,” said Lilly.

“And you seem to me so very poor,” said Del Torre.

“I should say so—if he cares for nothing,” interjaculated Argyle. Then he clapped Lilly on the shoulder with a laugh. “Ha! Ha! Ha!— But he only says it to tease us,” he cried, shaking Lilly’s shoulder. “He cares more than we do for his own way of loving. Come along, don’t try and take us in. We are old birds, old birds,” said Argyle. But at that moment he seemed a bit doddering.

“A man can’t live,” said the Italian, “without an object.”

“Well—and that object?” said Lilly.

“Well—it may be many things. Mostly it is two things.—love, and money. But it may be many things: ambition, patriotism, science, art—many things. But it is some objective. Something outside the self. Perhaps many things outside the self.”

“I have had only one objective all my life,” said Argyle. “And that was love. For that I have spent my life.”

“And the lives of a number of other people, too,” said Lilly.

“Admitted. Oh, admitted. It takes two to make love: unless you’re a miserable—”

“Don’t you think,” said Aaron, turning to Lilly, “that however you try to get away from it, if you’re not after money, and can’t fit yourself into a job—you’ve got to, you’ve got to try and find something else— somebody else—somebody. You can’t really be alone.”

“No matter how many mistakes you’ve made—you can’t really be alone—?” asked Lilly.

“You can be alone for a minute. You can be alone just in that minute when you’ve broken free, and you feel heart thankful to be alone, because the other thing wasn’t to be borne. But you can’t keep on being alone. No matter how many tunes you’ve broken free, and feel, thank God to be alone (nothing on earth is so good as to breathe fresh air and be alone), no matter how many times you’ve felt this—it wears off every time, and you begin to look again—and you begin to roam round. And even if you won’t admit it to yourself, still you are seeking—seeking. Aren’t you? Aren’t you yourself seeking?”

“Oh, that’s another matter,” put in Argyle. “Lilly is happily married and on the shelf. With such a fine woman as Tanny I should think so— RATHER! But his is an exceptional nature, and an exceptional case. As for me, I made a hell of my marriage, and I swear it nearly sent me to hell. But I didn’t forswear love, when I forswore marriage and woman. Not by ANY means.”

“Are you not seeking any more, Lilly?” asked the Marchese. “Do you seek nothing?”

“We married men who haven’t left our wives, are we supposed to seek anything?” said Lilly. “Aren’t we perfectly satisfied and in bliss with the wonderful women who honour us as wives?”

“Ah, yes, yes!” said the Marchese. “But now we are not speaking to the world. Now we try to speak of that which we have in our centre of our hearts.”

“And what have we there?” said Lilly.

“Well—shall I say? We have unrest. We have another need. We have something that hurts and eats us, yes, eats us inside. Do I speak the truth?”

“Yes. But what is the something?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know. But it is something in love, I think. It is love itself which gnaws us inside, like a cancer,” said the Italian.

“But why should it? Is that the nature of love?” said Lilly.

“I don’t know. Truly. I don’t know.—But perhaps it is in the nature of love—I don’t know.—But I tell you, I love my, wife—she is very dear to me. I admire her, I trust her, I believe her. She is to me much more than any woman, more even than my mother.—And so, I am very happy. I am very happy, she is very happy, in our love and our marriage.—But wait. Nothing has changed—the love has not changed: it is the same.—And yet we are NOT happy. No, we are not happy. I know she is not happy, I know I am not—”

“Why should you be?” said Lilly.

“Yes—and it is not even happiness,” said the Marchese, screwing up his face in a painful effort of confession. “It is not even happiness. No, I do not ask to be happy. Why should I? It is childish—but there is for both of us, I know it, something which bites us, which eats us within, and drives us, drives us, somewhere, we don’t know where. But it drives us, and eats away the life—and yet we love each other, and we must not separate—Do you know what I mean? Do you understand me at all in what I say? I speak what is true.”

“Yes, I understand. I’m in the same dilemma myself.—But what I want to hear, is WHY you think it is so. Why is it?”

“Shall I say what I think? Yes? And you can tell me if it is foolish to you.—Shall I tell you? Well. Because a woman, she now first wants the man, and he must go to her because he is wanted. Do you understand?—You know—supposing I go to a woman—supposing she is my wife—and I go to her, yes, with my blood all ready, because it is I who want. Then she puts me off. Then she says, not now, not now, I am tired, I am not well. I do not feel like it. She puts me off— till I am angry or sorry or whatever I am—but till my blood has gone down again, you understand, and I don’t want her any more. And then she puts her arms round me, and caresses me, and makes love to me— till she rouses me once more. So, and so she rouses me—and so I come to her. And I love her, it is very good, very good. But it was she who began, it was her initiative, you know.—I do not think, in all my life, my wife has loved me from my initiative, you know. She will yield to me—because I insist, or because she wants to be a good submissive wife who loves me. So she will yield to me. But ah, what is it, you know? What is it a woman who allows me, and who has no answer? It is something worse than nothing—worse than nothing. And so it makes me very discontented and unbelieving.—If I say to her, she says it is not true—not at all true. Then she says, all she wants is that I should desire her, that I should love her and desire her. But even that is putting her will first. And if I come to her so, if I come to her of my own desire, then she puts me off. She puts me off, or she only allows me to come to her. Even now it is the same after ten years, as it was at first. But now I know, and for many years I did not know—”

The little man was intense. His face was strained, his blue eyes so stretched that they showed the whites all round. He gazed into Lilly’s face.

“But does it matter?” said Lilly slowly, “in which of you the desire initiates? Isn’t the result the same?”

“It matters. It matters—” cried the Marchese.

“Oh, my dear fellow, how MUCH it matters—” interrupted Argyle sagely.

“Ay!” said Aaron.

The Marchese looked from one to the other of them.

“It matters!” he cried. “It matters life or death. It used to be, that desire started in the man, and the woman answered. It used to be so for a long time in Italy. For this reason the women were kept away from the men. For this reason our Catholic religion tried to keep the young girls in convents, and innocent, before marriage. So that with their minds they should not know, and should not start this terrible thing, this woman’s desire over a man, beforehand. This desire which starts in a woman’s head, when she knows, and which takes a man for her use, for her service. This is Eve. Ah,