:: longer than always is a long time ::

bobby darin's "more" was going through my head today.

more than the greatest love the world has known

this is the love that I give to you alone

more than the simple words I try to say

I only live to love you more each day

more than you'll ever know

my arms long to hold you so

my life will be in your keeping

waking, sleeping, laughing, weeping

longer than always is a long, long time

but far beyond forever, you'll be mine

I know I never lived before

and my heart is very sure

no one else could love you more 

funny how love is one of those things that all humanity believes, deep down inside, should be eternal. constant love, faithful love, true love that death cannot stop (to paraphrase Our Favorite Movie of All Time) -- love in all cultures and countries and customs is to be sought after and striven for, and the best is eternal. and I mean in all cases of love, not just eros love, but philia love, too. brotherly, sisterly loyalty is hugely valued by all people; constancy in romantic relationships is likewise praised to the skies.

today I finished georgette heyer's black moth. (if any of you have read this, go read it again. if you haven't read it, read it now. warning: tracy will break your heart.) these themes of love really struck me in heyer's book, too: fashionable london doesn't put much of a stress on constancy and faithfulness, although friction in a marriage is scandalous. false honesty and base flattery are the highest virtues one can attain, and yet when true loyalty and true -- I mean true: selfless, mistake-covering -- love appear, you can't but admire the people who show it.

jack is heroic (sympathetic!) throughout, despite his felon status; why? (well, maybe because he's rich and titled and gorgeous, but other than that.) he lost his reputation for his brother: there's loyalty. he falls in love with a fantastic girl, but won't marry her because of his "smirched past": more loyalty, and furthermore, selfless love. 

   when tracy wants diana, and frank asks him "if it's really love he feels," tracy says he doesn't know; "I only know I have felt this passion for four months, and it is stronger now than ever. It sounds like love." but frank cautions him that love is putting the other before yourself -- not what tracy is doing.

"Belike I am [mad]; but I tell you, Tracy, that if your passion is love, 'tis a strange one that puts yourself first. I would not give the snap of a finger for it! You want this girl, not for her own happiness, but for your own pleasure. That is not the love I once told you would save you from yourself. When it comes, you will count yourself as nought; you will realise your own significance, and above all, be ready to make any sacrifice for her sake. Yes, even to the point of losing her!"

this is a slight echo of the scene between jack and diana -- jack basically tells her he loves her too much to ask her to marry him. he makes this sacrifice for her sake, "to the point of losing her." tracy's selfish lust and jack's selfless love are a huge contrast to one another, even more so in the light of tracy's high social status and jack's now lack of one.

there are similar themes going on in richard and lavinia's relationship. lavinia grudgingly admits richard's money was a big factor in her marriage -- selfishness. she tells herself, and truly believes, that she loves him also; but it's a selfish love. richard may love her, but he has to come to terms with the fact that he let jack take the blame for his own wrongdoing (utterly faithless) so that he could marry lavinia (whom his brother was in love with, as well). their selfishness blinds them to everything about the other: their needs, their guilts, even their virtues. 

   richard's idea that he can only have his brother or his wife is the turning point. his determination to be honest about his faults (though he is afraid it will dishonor his wife along with himself) gives him the strength to be honest to her about his feelings: and he gets both -- his brother back, and his wife's love. …and, like I was saying earlier, what can society do but fall in love with faithfulness and loyalty? my point really is, though, that all of them are only happy when they put others first.

what about tracy?

if you're going to read the book -- as if I haven't given too much away already -- stop here because there are going to be more spoilers and you may get kind of tired of my sobby gushing over the conflicted bad guy. because there is always a conflicted bad guy. and I always fall for him. 

tracy is completely selfish and hard and cold and cruel. his description is one of a dangerous, charming "roué and cad," who offers diana food and wine. totally unprepared was she to face a world of men; timid and shy and scared -- I'm drifting. shake me up, judy. 

   tracy's attitude throughout the en. ti. re. book is one of "I am the only person worth doing anything for" and that makes him repulsive. but he wants true love (and that makes him so sympathetic to me that I need to not go off on it *restrains self through masterful force of will*). he treats frank's assertion that 'selflessness is the only way to truly love someone' as a joke; he tries to kidnap diana and ends up endeavoring to kill jack; he kidnaps diana again, and essentially threatens to rape her as a way of forcing her to marry him. he's thoroughly evil. (and I can see that, all right?! sheez, don't judge.) 

   what makes me cry is the very last paragraph of interaction between tracy and frank -- the very last paragraph of the book. 

tracy owns his wrong. when frank told him he needed to be humble, "Humble myself! 'Fore Gad, you must be mad!" was tracy's response. having loved and lost, he realizes he was wrong. and he admits it. to the man who first told him he needed to. if that's not humility…

"I would have married her in all honour --"
"In your own arrogant fashion, Tracy."
"As you say -- in my own arrogant fashion, Frank. If I could go back a year -- but what's the use? I am not whining. Presently I shall return to England and make my bow to -- the Countess of Wyncham. Possibly, I shall not feel one jealous qualm. One never knows. At all events -- I'll make that bow."
"You will?" Frank looked sharply down on him. "Nothing more, Tracy! You do not purpose -- "
"Nothing more. You see, Frank -- I love her."

and that phrase -- "nothing more…. I love her" -- shows all the selflessness that tracy has learned in giving up the woman he wanted. 

how can you not fall in love, yourself? I mean, seriously. all the loyalty and love and fixed relationships: john and dick, dick and lavinia, john and diana. miles and molly, holy cow, how adorable are they?? it's all so wonderfully happy. 

even tracy. how sad and beautiful. 

...I know I never lived before

and my heart is very sure

no one else could love you more

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