"TO BE, OR NOT TO BE."
Ah, me! what matter? The world goes round.
And bliss and bale are but outside things;
I never can lose what in him I found,
Though love be sorrow with half-grown wings;
And if love flies when we are young,
Why life is still not long--not long.
--MISS MULOCH.
"It has been almost a month since I saw you," Conway says, drawing the
small hand of Lulu within his arm as they saunter down a shady path
where the crape myrtle boughs meet over their heads, showering pink
blossoms in prodigal sweetness beneath their feet.
No answer. She is looking ahead at a little bird hopping timidly about
the path, and only turns to him when he goes on pathetically:
"I have missed you so much."
"You know where I lived," she answers, dryly.
An amused smile outlines itself around the corners of his handsome
mouth.
"So you think it is solely my own fault that I have missed you--have
not seen you. Well, perhaps it is--yet----"
"Yet what?"
"Oh, nothing--it does not matter."
"No, I suppose not," she responds, a little scornfully. "Nothing seems
to matter much to you, Mr. Conway. I believe you have found the fabled
Lotos. It would suit you, and such as you,
"In the hollow Lotos land to live and lie reclined
On the hills like gods together, careless of mankind."
"Whew! since when has my little Brownie learned to be sarcastic?" he
queries, in genuine astonishment, trying to look into her face, but it
is turned away from him, and she is idly stripping the thorns from the
stem of a rose she has just broken. Ah! if she could only as easily
eradicate the thorns that rankle in her gentle heart!
"Why don't you talk to me?" he says, pettishly.
"And have I not been talking?" turning an innocent, unconscious face
toward him, a piquant smile on her lips.
"I know, but without taking any interest," he says, in an injured tone.
"Don't you care to talk? Are you weary of me?"
"Weary of you!" she laughs. "Ah! that gives me a pretext to quote
poetry to you," and she repeats, with a very faint tremor in her voice,
the delicious lines of Mrs. Osgood:
"Weary of you! I should weary as soon
Of a fountain playing its low lute tune,
With its mellow contralto lapsing in
Like a message of love through this worldly din."
He looks down into the faintly flushed face with a light, triumphant
smile she does not see. He knows as well, and better than herself, how
much she means the poetry that she has repeated in that light, jesting
tone.
"Thank you," he answers only. "I wish I could think you meant it."
She stoops suddenly and breaks off a half-dozen great purplish velvet
pansies from a bed on the side of the patch, and puts them into his
hands.
"'There's pansies--that's for thoughts,'" she says, gayly. "Think what
you will."
"May I think that you love me?" he queries, audaciously, as only Bruce
Conway can do.
"I have said think what you will," she answers, growing suddenly
crimson. "But why are you throwing my pansies away?"
A faint flush crimsons his fair forehead, too. Their eyes look at each
other as he answers:
"I--I do not like pansies; they are too sad. Sometimes when I stroll
down this path with my morning cigar, Lu, they look up at me bathed in
glittering dew, and--I am not romantic, child, but they always remind
me of blue eyes swimming in tears."
"They always remind me of the velvet darkness of Grace Winans' eyes,"
she says, meditatively.
"'There's _rue_!'" he says, and is suddenly silent. The little,
irresistible feminine shaft has struck home.
He looks down at the flickering sunshine lying in spots on the graveled
path, and reflects on the acute perceptions of woman--this little
woman--in particular. She sees his pain, and is sorry.
"I wonder"--stirring up a little drift of pink blossoms on the path
with the tip of her small slippered foot--"I wonder if all our
life-path is to be flower-strewn!"
A light flashes into his handsome dark eyes as he clasps in his the
small hand lying within his arm.
"Lulu dearest," he murmurs, "if you will promise to walk hand in hand
with me through life, your path shall be strewn with all the flowers
love's sunshine can warm into life."
A shiver thrills her from head to foot; the blue heavens darken above
her head; the warm and fragrant air that rushes down the myrtle avenue
sickens her almost to fainting. Passionate bliss is always closely
allied to passionate pain.
"'To be, or not to be!'" he questions softly, bending over the drooping
form, though he feels very sure in his heart what the answer will be.
She is silent, leaning more heavily on his arm, her face growing white
and mournful.
"Dear, am I to take silence for consent?" he persists, as though
talking to a petulant child who is going to yield, he knows. "I asked
you is it to be or not to be?"
"_Not._"
She outdoes his usual laconics in this specimen of brevity. It is fully
a minute before he recovers from his astonishment enough to laugh:
"Don't jest with me, Lulu, I am in earnest."
"So am I."
For answer he lifts her face and scrutinizes it closely. The soft gaze
meets his--half-happy, half-grieved--like a doubtful child's.
"You are not in earnest, Lulu. You do love me--you will be my wife?"
"I cannot."
He stops still under a tall myrtle and puts his arm around her slim,
girlish waist.
"Brownie, willful, teasing little fairy that you are--you cannot, you
will not deny that you love me--can you, honestly, now?"
"I have not denied it--have I?" her gaze falling before his.
"Not in so many words, perhaps; but you refuse to be my wife--if you
loved me, how could you?"
"If I loved you I would still refuse."
"Brownie, _why_?"
"Because----"
"That is a woman's reason. Give me a better one."
"How can I, a woman, give you a better one?" she answers, evasively,
tilting the brim of her hat a little further over her face. She does
not want him to see the white and red flushes hotly coming and going.
"Because a better one is due me," he persists, his earnestness
strengthened by her refusal. "Surely, a man, when he lays his heart,
and hand, and fortune at a lady's feet, deserves a better reason for
his refusal than '_because_.'"
Her cheek dimples archly a moment, but she brightens as she says,
almost inaudibly:
"Well, then, it is because you do not love me."
"Lulu, silly child, why should I ask you to be my wife then? I do love
you--as love goes nowadays--fondly and truly."
"Ah! that is it," she cries, bitterly, "as love goes nowadays--and I do
not want such love--my heart, where it loves, resigns its whole ardent
being, and it will not take less in return."
"And have I offered you less?"--reproachfully this.
She nods in silence.
"Lulu, dear, unreasonable child that you are--why do you think that I
do not love you? Be candid with me and let us understand one another. I
will not be offended at anything you say to me."
"Nothing?"
"Nothing! If you can show just cause why and wherefore such a thing as
my not loving you can be, I surely cannot be offended."
"I know you love me a little," she returns, trying hard to speak
lightly and calmly, "but I also know, dear Bruce, that your heart, it
may be unconsciously to yourself, still retains too much of its old
feeling for one I need not name, for you to love me as I should like to
be loved. Understand that I am not blaming you for this, but you know
in your heart, Bruce, that were she free, and would she listen to your
suit, you would not look twice at poor me."
Another home-thrust! He stands fire like a soldier, rallies, and meets
her with another shot.
"This from you, Lulu! I did not think it in you to twit me with loving
another man's wife!"
"I did not mean it that way," she answers, flushed and imploringly.
"I meant--only meant to show you, Bruce, that I could not--oh! that I
cared too much for you to be happy with you unless your love was strong
and deep as mine."
"I did not think you could be so jealous and exacting, child."
"I am not jealous nor exacting. I am only true to my woman's nature,"
she answers, sweetly and firmly.
"Nonsense!" he answers, brusquely, "let all that pass--I do love you,
Brownie, not as I loved her, I own it. But you are so sweet and lovable
that it will be easy for you to fill up my heart, to the exclusion of
all other past love. Try it and see, dear. Promise me that you will
give yourself to me."
"I cannot."
"Is that final?"
"Final!" she gasped, as white as her dress, and leaning unwillingly
against his shoulder.
"Why, Brownie, child, dearest, look up--heavens! she is fainting,"
cried Bruce, and taking her in his arms, he ran into a little pavilion
near by, and laying her down on the low, rustic bench within, opened
the gold-stoppered bottle of salts that swung by a golden chain to her
belt, and applied it to her nostrils.
She struggled up to a sitting posture and drew a long breath, while
tears rolled over her cheeks. Both lily white hands were uplifted to
prevent another application of the pungent salts.
"Don't please," she said, "you are taking away all the breath I have
left."
"You deserve some such punishment for your cruelty to me," he retorts,
in a very good humor with himself and her, for he feels he has done his
duty in his second love affair, and if she will not marry him, why that
is her own affair, and he cheerfully swallows his chagrin, and also a
spice of genuine regret as he smiles down at her.
"I am going back, if you please." She steps out of the pavilion while
speaking, and he attends her. As they walk silently on he gathers a
flower here and there, the rarest that blow in the garden, and putting
them together they grow into a graceful bouquet before they reach
the house. Then he presents it with the kindest of smiles and quite
ignoring the unkind cut she has given his vanity.
She takes it, thanks him, and notes with quick eyes that no roses, no
white ones at least, nor pansies are there--those flowers are sacred to
memory, or, perchance, remorse.
"We may be friends at least?" he queries, trying to look into the eyes
that meet his unwillingly. And "always, I hope," she answers, as they
reach the piazza steps.
Mrs. Winans is at the piano singing for her hostess. A dumb agony
settles down on Lulu's racked heart as the rich, sweetly trained voice
floats out to them as they ascend the steps, blending its music with
the deep melancholy notes of old ocean in the plaintive words of an old
song that is a favorite of Mrs. Conway's:
"Oh! never name departed days,
Nor vows you whispered then,
O'er which too sad a feeling plays
To trust their tones again.
Regard their shadows round you cast
As if we ne'er had met--
And thus, unmindful of the past,
We may be happy yet."
"Let us take that for an augury, little one," he says, cheerfully; "'we
may be happy yet.'"