THE SUMMER-HOUSE.
The moment the meal was over, he left the room, and in five minutes they
met at the place appointed--a building like a miniature Roman temple.
“Oh,” said Lufa, as she entered, “I forgot the book. How stupid of me!”
“Never mind,” returned Walter. “It was you, not the book I wanted.”
A broad bench went round the circular wall; Lufa seated herself on it,
and Walter placed himself beside her, as near as he dared. For some
moments he did not speak. She looked up at him inquiringly. He sunk at
her feet, bowed his head toward her, and but for lack of courage would
have laid it on her knees.
“Oh, Lufa!” he said, “you can not think how I love you!”
“Poor, dear boy!” she returned, in the tone of a careless mother to whom
a son has unburdened his sorrows, and laid her hand lightly on his
curls.
The words were not repellent, but neither was the tone encouraging.
“You do not mind my saying it?” he resumed, feeling his way timidly.
“What could you do but tell me?” she answered.
“What could I do for you if you did not let me know! I’m _so_ sorry,
Walter!”
“Why should you be sorry? You can do with me as you please!”
“I don’t know about such things. I don’t quite know what you mean, or
what you want. I will be as kind to you as I can--while you stay with
us.”
“But, Lufa--I may call you Lufa?”
“Yes, surely! if that is any comfort to you.”
“Nothing but your love, Lufa, can be a comfort to me. That would make me
one of the blessed!”
“I like you very much. If you were a girl, I should say I loved you.”
“Why not say it as it is?”
“Would you be content with the love I should give a girl? Some of you
want so much!”
“I will be glad of any love you can give me. But to say I should be
_content_ with _any_ love you could give me, would be false. My love for
you is such, I don’t know how to bear it! It aches so! My heart is full
of you, and longs for you till I can hardly endure the pain. You are so
beautiful that your beauty burns me. Night nor day can I forget you!”
“You try to forget me then?”
“Never. Your eyes have so dazzled my soul that I can see nothing but
your eyes. Do look at me--just for one moment, Lufa.”
She turned her face and looked him straight in the eyes--looked into
them as if they were windows through which she could peer into the
convolutions of his brain. She held her eyes steady until his dropped,
unable to sustain the nearness of her presence.
“You see,” she said, “I am ready to do anything I can to please you!”
He felt strangely defeated, rose, and sat down beside her again, with
the sickness of a hot summer noon in his soul.
But he must leave no room for mistake! He had been dreaming long enough!
What had not Sefton told him!
“Is it possible you do not understand, Lufa, what a man means when he
says, ‘I love you’?”
“I think I do! I don’t mind it!”
“That means you will love me again?”
“Yes; I will be good to you.”
“You will love me as a woman loves a man?”
“I will let you love me as much as you please.”
“To love you as much as I please, would be to call you my own; to marry
you; to say _wife_ to you; to have you altogether, with nobody to come
between, or try to stop my worshiping of you--not father, not
mother--nobody!”
“Now you are foolish, Walter! You know I never meant that! You must have
known that never _could_ be! I never imagined you could make such a
fantastic blunder! But then how should _you_ know how _we_ think about
things! I must remember that, and not be hard upon you!”
“You mean that your father and mother would not like it?”
“There it is! You do not understand! I thought so! I do not mean my
father and mother in particular; I mean our people--people of our
position--I would say _rank_, but that might hurt you! We are brought up
so differently from you, that you can not understand how we think of
such things. It grieves me to appear unkind, but really, Walter! There
is not a man I love more than you--but marriage! _Lady Lufa_ would be in
everybody’s mouth, the same as if I had run off with my groom! Our
people are so blind that, believe me, they would hardly see the
difference. The thing is simply impossible!”
“It would not be impossible if you loved me!”
“Then I don’t, never did, never could love you. Don’t imagine you can
persuade me to anything unbecoming, anything treacherous to my people!
You will find yourself awfully mistaken!”
“But I may make myself a name! If I were as famous as Lord Tennyson,
would it be just as impossible?”
“To say it would not, would be to confess myself worldly, and that I
never was! No, Walter; I admire you; if you could be trusted not to
misunderstand, I might even say I loved you! I shall always be glad to
see you, always enjoy hearing you read; but there is a line as
impassable as the Persian river of death. Talk about something else, or
I must go!”
Here Walter, who had been shivering with cold, began to grow warm again
as he answered:
“How could you write that poem, Lady Lufa--full of such grand things
about love, declaring love everything and rank nothing; and then, when
it came to yourself, treat me like this! I could not have believed it
possible! You can not know what love is, however much you write about
it!”
“I hope I never shall, if it means any confusion between friendship and
folly! It shall not make a fool of _me_! I will _not_ be talked about!
It is all very well and very right in poetry! The idea of letting all go
for love is so splendid, it is the greatest pity it should be
impossible. There may be some planet, whose social habits are different,
where it might work well enough; but here it is not to be thought
of--except in poetry, of course, or novels. Of all human relations, the
idea of such love is certainly the fittest for verse, therefore we have
no choice; we must use it. But because I think with pleasure of such
lovers, why must I consent to be looked at with pleasure myself? What
obligation does my heroine lay on me to do likewise? I don’t see the
thing. I don’t want to pose as a lover. Why should I fall in love with
you in real life, because I like you to read my poem about lovers? Can’t
you see the absurdity of the argument? Life and books are two different
spheres. The one is the sphere of thoughts, the other of things, and
they don’t touch.”
But for pride, Walter could have wept with shame: why should he care
that one with such principles should grant or refuse him anything! Yet
he did care!
“There is no reason at all,” she resumed, “why we should not be friends.
Mr. Colman, I am not a flirt. It is in my heart to be a sister to you! I
would have you the first to congratulate me when the man appears whom I
may choose to love as you mean! He need not be a poet to make you
jealous! If he were, I should yet always regard you as my poet.”
“And you would let me kiss your shoe, or perhaps your glove, if I was
very good!” said Walter.
She took no notice of the outburst: it was but a bit of childish temper!
“You must learn,” she went on, “to keep your life and your imaginations
apart. You are always letting them mix, and that confuses everything. A
poet of all men ought not to make the mistake. It is quite monstrous! as
monstrous as if a painter joined the halves of two different animals!
Poetry is so unlike life, that to carry the one into the other is to
make the poet a ridiculous parody of a man! The moment that, instead of
standing aloof and regarding, he plunges in, he becomes a traitor to his
art, and is no longer able to represent things as they ought to be, but
can not be. My mother and I will open to you the best doors in London
because we like you; but pray do not dream of more. Do, please, Walter,
leave it possible for me to say I like you--oh, so much!”
She had been staring out of the window as she spoke; now she turned her
eyes upon him where he sat, crushed and broken, beside her. A breath of
compassion seemed to ruffle the cold lake of her spirit, and she looked
at him in silence for a moment. He did not raise his eyes, but her tone
made her present to his whole being as she said,
“I _don’t_ want to break your heart, my poet! It was a lovely
thought--why did you spoil it?--that we two understood and loved each
other in a way nobody could have a right to interfere with!”
Walter lifted his head. The word _loved_ wrought on him like a spell: he
was sadly a creature of words! He looked at her with flushed face and
flashing eyes. Often had Lufa thought him handsome, but she had never
felt it as she did now.
“Let it be so!” he said. “Be my sister-friend, Lufa. Leave it only to me
to remember how foolish I once made myself in your beautiful eyes--how
miserable always in my own blind heart.”
So little of a man was our poet, that out of pure disappointment and
self-pity he burst into a passion of weeping. The world seemed lost to
him, as it seemed at such a time to many a better man. But to the true
the truth of things will sooner or later assert itself, and neither this
world nor the next prove lost to him. A man’s well-being does not depend
on any woman. The woman did not create, and could not have contented
him. No woman can ruin a man by refusing him, or even by accepting him,
though she may go far toward it. There is one who has upon him a perfect
claim, at the entrancing recognition of which he will one day cry out,
“This, then, is what it all meant!” The lamp of poetry may for a time go
out in the heart of the poet, and nature seem a blank; but where the
truth is, the poetry must be; and truth is, however the untrue may fail
to see it. Surely that man is a fool who, on the ground that there can
not be such a God as other fools assert, or such a God as alone he is
able to imagine, says there is no God!
Lufa’s bosom heaved, and she gave a little sob; her sentiment, the skin
of her heart, was touched, for the thing was pathetic! A mist came over
her eyes, and might, had she ever wept, have turned to tears.
Walter sat with his head in his hands and wept. She had never before
seen a man weep, yet never a tear left its heavenly spring to flow from
her eyes! She rose, took his face between her hands, raised it, and
kissed him on the forehead.
He rose also, suddenly calmed.
“Then it _was_ our last ride, Lufa!” he said, and left the summer-house.