A PERIOD.
If London was dreary when Lufa left it, it was worse than dreary to
Walter now that she was gone from his world; gone from the universe past
and future both--for the Lufa he had dreamed of was not, and had never
been! He had no longer any one to dream about, waking or asleep. The
space she had occupied was a blank spot, black and cold, charred with
the fire of passion, cracked with the frost of disappointment and scorn.
It had its intellectual trouble too--the impossibility of bringing
together the long-cherished idea of Lufa, and the reality of Lufa
revealed by herself; the two stared at each other in mortal
irreconcilement. Now also he had no book to occupy him with pleasant
labor. It had passed from him into the dark; the thought of it was
painful, almost loathesome to him. No one, however, he was glad to find,
referred to it. His friends pitied him, and his foes were silent. Three
copies of it were sold. The sneaking review had had influence enough
with the courted public to annihilate it.
But the expenses of printing it remained; he had yet to pay his share of
them; and, alas, he did not know how! The publisher would give him time,
no doubt, but, work his hardest, it would be a slow clearance! There was
the shame too of having undertaken what he was unable at once to
fulfill! He set himself to grind and starve.
At times the clouds would close in upon him, and there would seem
nothing in life worth living for; though in truth his life was so much
the more valuable that Lufa was out of it. Occasionally his heart would
grow very gentle toward her, and he would burrow for a possible way to
her excuse. But his conclusion was ever the same: how could he forget
that laugh of utter merriment and delight when she found it was indeed
himself under the castigation of such a mighty beadle of literature! In
his most melting mood, therefore, he could only pity her. But what would
have become of him had she not thus unmasked herself! He would now be
believing her the truest, best of women, with no fault but a coldness of
which he had no right to complain, a coldness comforted by the extent of
its freezing!
But there was far more to make London miserable to him: he was now at
last disgusted with his trade: this continuous feeding on the labor of
others was no work for a gentleman! he began to descry in it certain
analogies which grew more and more unpleasant as he regarded them. For
his poetizing he was sick of that also. True, the quality or value of
what he had written was nowise in itself affected by its failure to meet
acceptance. It had certainly not had fair play; it had been represented
as it was not; its character had been lied away! But now that the
blinding influence of their chief subject was removed, he saw the verses
themselves to be little worth. The soul of them was not the grand
all-informing love, but his own private self-seeking little passion for
a poor show of the lovable. No one could care for such verses, except
indeed it were some dumb soul in love with a woman like, or imaginably
like the woman of their thin worship! Not a few were pretty, he allowed,
and some were quaint--that is, had curious old-flavored phrases and
fantastic turns of thought; but throughout there was no revelation! They
sparkled too with the names of things in themselves beautiful, but
whether these things were in general wisely or fairly used in his
figures and tropes and comparisons, he was now more than doubtful. He
had put on his singing robes to whisper his secret love into the two
great red ears of the public!--desiring, not sympathy from love and
truth, but recognition from fame and report! That he had not received it
was better than he deserved! Then what a life was it thus to lie
wallowing among the mushrooms of the press! To spend gifts which,
whatever they were, were divine, in publishing the tidings that this man
had done ill, that other had done well, that he was amusing, and she was
dull! Was it worth calling work, only because it was hard and dreary?
His conscience, his taste, his impulses, all declined to back him in it
any longer. What was he doing for the world? they asked him. How many
books had he guided men to read, by whose help they might steer their
way through the shoals of life? He could count on the fingers of one
hand such as he had heartily recommended. If he had but pointed out what
was good in books otherwise poor, it would have been something! He had
not found it easy to be at once clever, honest, and serviceable to his
race: the press was but for the utterance of opinion, true or false, not
for the education of thought! And why should such as he write books, who
had nothing to tell men that could make them braver, stronger, purer,
more loving, less selfish!
What next was to be done? His calling had vanished! It was not work
worthy of a man! It was contemptible as that of the parson to whom the
church is a profession! He owed his landlady money: how was he to pay
her? He must eat, or how was he to work? There must be something honest
for him to do! Was a man to do the wrong in order to do the right?
The true Walter was waking--beginning to see things as they were, and
not as men regarded them. He was tormented with doubts and fears of all
kinds, high and low. But for the change in his father’s circumstances,
he would have asked his help, cleared off everything, and gone home at
once; and had he been truer to his father, he would have known that such
a decision would even now have rejoiced his heart.
He had no longer confidence enough to write on any social question. Of
the books sent him, he chose such as seemed worthiest of notice, but
could not do much. He felt not merely a growing disinclination, but a
growing incapacity for the work. How much the feeling may have been
increased by the fact that his health was giving way, I can not tell;
but certainly the root of it was moral.
His funds began to fail his immediate necessities, and he had just come
from pawning the watch which he would have sold but that it had been his
mother’s, and was the gift of his father, when he met Harold Sullivan,
who persuaded him to go with him to a certain theater in which the
stalls had not yet entirely usurped upon the enjoyable portion of the
pit. Between the first and second acts, he caught sight of Lady Lufa in
a box, with Sefton standing behind her. There was hardly a chance of
their seeing him, and he regarded them at his ease, glad to see Sefton,
and not sorry to see Lufa, for it was an opportunity of testing himself.
He soon perceived that they held almost no communication with each
other, but was not surprised, knowing in how peculiar a relation they
stood. Lufa was not looking unhappy--far from it; her countenance
expressed absolute self-contentment: in all parts of the house she was
attracting attention, especially from the young men. Sefton’s look was
certainly not one of content; but neither, as certainly, was it one of
discontent; it suggested power waiting opportunity, strength quietly
attendant upon, hardly expectant of the moment of activity. Walter
imagined one watching a beloved cataleptic: till she came alive, what
was to be done but wait! God has had more waiting than any one else!
Lufa was an iceberg that would not melt even in the warm southward sea,
watched by a still volcano, whose fires were of no avail, for they could
not reach her. Sparklingly pretty, not radiantly beautiful, she sat,
glancing, coruscating, glittering, anything except glowing: glow she
could not even put on! She did not know what it was. Now and then a soft
sadness would for a moment settle on Sefton’s face--like the gray of a
cloudy summer evening about to gather into a warm rain; but this was
never when he looked at her; it was only when, without seeing, he
thought about her. Hitherto Walter had not been capable of understanding
the devotion, the quiet strength, the persistent purpose of the man; now
he began to see into it and wonder. While a spark of hope lay alive in
those ashes of disappointment that had often seemed as if they would
make but a dust-heap of his bosom, there he must remain, by the clean,
cold hearth, swept and garnished, of the woman he loved--loved
strangely, mysteriously, inexplicably even to himself!
Walter sat gazing; and as he gazed, simultaneously the two became aware
of his presence. A friendly smile spread over Sefton’s face, but, with
quick perception, he abstained from any movement that might seem to
claim recognition. To Walter’s wonder, Lufa, so perfectly
self-contained, so unchangingly self-obedient, colored--faintly indeed,
but plainly enough to the eyes of one so well used to the white rose of
her countenance. She moved neither head nor person, only turned her eyes
away, and seemed, like the dove for its foot, to seek some resting-place
for her vision--and with the sight awoke in Walter the first unselfish
resolve of his life. Would he not do anything--could he not do something
to bring those two together? The thought seemed even to himself almost a
foolish one; but spiritual relations and potencies go far beyond
intellectual ones, and a man must become a fool to be wise. Many a
foolish thought, many a most improbable idea, has proved itself
seed-bearing fruit of the kingdom of heaven. A man may fail to effect,
or be unable to set hand to work he would fain do--and be judged, as
Browning says in his “Saul,” by what he would have done if he could.
Only the _would_ must be as true as a deed; then it is a deed. The
kingdom of heaven is for the dreamers of true dreams only!
Was there then anything Walter could do to help the man to gain the
woman he had so faithfully helped Walter to lose? It was no plain task.
The thing was not to enable him to marry her--that Sefton could have
done long ago--might do any day without help from him! As she then was,
she was no gain for any true man! But if he could help to open the eyes
of the cold-hearted, conceited, foolish girl, either to her own
valuelessness as she was, or her worth as she might be, or again to the
value, the eternal treasure of the heart she was turning from, she would
then be a gift that in the giving grew worthy even of such a man!
Here, however, came a different thought, bearing nevertheless in the
same direction. It was very well to think of Lufa’s behavior to Sefton,
but what had Walter’s been to Lufa? It may seem strange that the
reflection had not come to him before; but in nothing are we slower than
in discovering our own blame--and the slower that we are so quick to
perceive or imagine we perceive the blame of others. For, the very fact
that we see and heartily condemn the faults of others, we use,
unconsciously perhaps, as an argument that we must be right ourselves.
We must take heed not to judge with the idea that so we shall escape
judgment--that by condemning evil we clear ourselves. Walter’s eyes were
opened to see that he had done Lufa a great wrong; that he had helped
immensely to buttress and exalt her self-esteem. Had he not in his whole
behavior toward her, been far more anxious that he should please her
than that she should be worthy? Had he not known that she was far more
anxious to be accepted as a poet than to be admired as a woman?--more
anxious indeed to be accepted than, even in the matter of her art, to be
worthy of acceptance--to be the thing she wished to be thought? In that
review which, in spite of his own soul, he had persuaded himself to
publish, knowing it to be false, had he not actively, most
unconscientiously, and altogether selfishly, done her serious
intellectual wrong, and heavy moral injury? Was he not bound to make
what poor reparation might be possible? It mattered nothing that she did
not desire any such reparation; that she would look upon the attempt as
the first wrong in the affair--possibly as a pretense for the sake of
insult, and the revenge of giving her the deepest possible pain: having
told her the lies, he must confess they were lies! having given her the
poison of falsehood, he must at least follow it with the only antidote,
the truth! It was not his part to judge of consequences so long as a
duty remained to be done! and what could be more a duty than to
undeceive where he had deceived, especially where the deception was
aggravating that worst of diseases, self-conceit, self-satisfaction,
self-worship? It was doubtful whether she would read what he might
write; but the fact that she did not trust him, that, notwithstanding
his assurance, she would still be in fear of how he might depreciate her
work in the eyes of the public, would, he thought, secure for him a
reading. She might, when she got far enough to see his drift, destroy
the letter in disgust; that would be the loss of his labor; but he would
have done what he could! He had begun to turn a new leaf, and here was a
thing the new leaf required written upon it!
As to Sefton, what better thing could he do for him, than make her think
less of herself! or, if that were impossible, at least make her
understand that other people did not think so much of her as she had
been willingly led to believe! In wronging her he had wronged his friend
as well, throwing obstacles in the way of his reception! He had wronged
the truth itself!
When the play was over, and the crowd was dispersing, he found himself
close to them on the pavement as they waited for their carriage. So near
to Lufa was he that he could not help touching her dress. But what a
change had passed on him! Not once did he wish her to look round and
brighten when she saw him! Sefton, moved perhaps by that unknown power
of presence, operating in bodily proximity but savoring of the
spiritual, looked suddenly round and saw him. He smiled and did not
speak, but, stretching out a quiet hand, sought his. Walter grasped it
as if it was come to lift him from some evil doom. Neither spoke, and
Lufa did not know that hands had clasped in the swaying human flood. No
physical influence passed between Walter and her.
Having made up his mind on the way, he set to work as soon as he reached
home. He wrote and destroyed and rewrote, erased and substituted, until,
as near as he could, he had said what he intended, so at least as it
should not be mistaken for what he did not intend, which is the main
problem in writing. Then he copied all out fair and plain, so that she
could read it easily--and here is his letter, word for word:
“MY DEAR LADY LUFA,--In part by means of the severe lesson I received
through you, a great change has passed upon me. I am no longer able to
think of myself as the important person I used to take myself for. It is
startling to have one’s eyes opened to see one’s self as one is, but it
very soon begins to make one glad, and the gladness, I find, goes on
growing. One’s nature is so elevated by being delivered from the
honoring and valuing of that which is neither honorable nor valuable,
that the seeming loss is annihilated by the essential gain; the being
better makes up--infinitely makes up for showing to myself worse. I
would millions of times rather know myself a fool than imagine myself a
great poet. For to know one’s self a fool is to begin to be wise; and I
would be loyal among the sane, not royal among lunatics. Who would be
the highest, in virtue of the largest mistake, of the profoundest
self-idolatry!
“But it was not to tell you this I began to write; it was to confess a
great wrong which once I did you; for I can not rest, I can not make it
up with my conscience until I have told you the truth. It may be you
will dislike me more for confessing the wrong than for committing it--I
can not tell; but it is my part to let you know it--and none the less my
part that I must therein confess myself more weak and foolish than
already I appear.
“You will remember that you gave me a copy of your drama while I was at
your house: the review of it which appeared in the ‘Battery’ I wrote
that same night. I am ashamed to have to confess the fact, but I had
taken more champagne than, I hope, I ever shall again; and, irreverent
as it must seem to mention the fact in such a connection, I was
possessed almost to insanity with your beauty, and the graciousness of
your behavior to me. Everything around me was pervaded with rose-color
and rose-odor, when, my head and heart, my imagination and senses, my
memory and hope full of yourself, I sat down to read your poem. I was
like one in an opium-dream. I saw everything in the glory of an
everlasting sunset, for every word I read, I heard in the tones of your
voice; through the radiant consciousness of your present beauty,
received every thought that awoke. If ever one being was possessed by
another, I was that night possessed by you. In this mood, like that, I
say again, of an opium-dream, I wrote the criticism of your book.
“But on the morning after the writing of it, I found, when I began to
read it, I could so little enter into the feeling of it, that I could
hardly believe I had actually written what lay before me in my own hand.
I took the poem again, and scanned it most carefully, reading it with
deep, anxious desire to justify the things I had set down. But I failed
altogether. Even my love could not blind me enough to persuade me that
what I had said was true, or that I should be other than false to print
it. I had to put myself through a succession of special pleadings before
I could quiet my conscience enough to let the thing go, and tell its
lies in the ears of the disciples of the ‘Battery.’ I will show you how
falsely I dealt. I said to myself that, in the first place, one mood
had, in itself, as good a claim, with regard to the worth of what it
produced, as another; but that the opinion of the night, when the
imagination was awake, was more likely to be just with regard to a poem
than that of the cold, hard, unpoetic day. I was wrong in taking it for
granted that my moods had equal claims; and the worse wrong, that all
the time I knew I was not behaving honestly, for I persisted in leaving
out, as factor in one of the moods, the champagne I had drunk, not to
mention _the time_ of the night, and the glamour of your influence. The
latter was still present, but could no longer blind me to believe what I
would, most of all things, have gladly believed. With the mood the
judgment was altered, and a true judgment is the same in all moods,
inhabiting a region above mood.
“In confession, a man must use plain words: I was a coward, a false
friend, a false man. Having tried my hardest to keep myself from seeing
the fact as plainly as I might have seen it, had I looked it in the face
with the intent of meeting what the truth might render necessary, yet
knowing that I was acting falsely, I sent off, regardless of duty, and
in the sole desire of pleasing you, and had printed, as my opinion
concerning your book, what was not my opinion, had never been my
opinion, except during that one night of hallucination--a hallucination
recognized as such, for the oftener I read, the more I was convinced
that I had given such an opinion as must stamp me the most incompetent,
or the falsest of critics. Lady Lufa, there is nothing remarkable in
your poem. It is nicely, correctly written, and in parts skillfully
contrived; but had it been sent me among other books, and without
indication of the author, I should certainly have thrown it aside as the
attempt of a school-girl, who, having more pocket money than was good
for her, had been able to print it without asking her parents or
guardians. You may say this judgment is the outcome of my jealous
disappointment; I say the former was the outcome of my loving
fascination; and I can not but think something in yourself will speak
for me, and tell you that I am speaking honestly. Mr. Sefton considers
me worthy of belief; and I know myself worthier of belief than ever
before--how much worthier than when I wrote that review! Then I loved
you--selfishly; now I love the truth, and would serve you, though I do
not love you the same way as before. Through the disappointment you
caused me, my eyes have been opened to see the way in which I was going,
and to turn from it, for I was on the way of falsehood. Oh, Lady Lufa,
let me speak; forget my presumption; you bore with my folly--bear now
with what is true though it come from a foolish heart! What would it be
to us, if we gained the praises of the whole world, and found afterward
they were for what was counted of no value in the great universe into
which we had passed! Let us be true, whatever come of it, and look the
facts of things in the face! If I am a poor creature, let me be content
to know it! for have I not the joy that God can make me great! And is
not the first step toward greatness to refuse to call that great which
is not great, or to think myself great when I am small? Is it not an
essential and impassable bar to greatness for a man to imagine himself
great when there is not in him one single element of greatness? Let us
confess ourselves that which we can not consent to remain! The
confession of not being, is the sole foundation for becoming. Self is a
quicksand; God is the only rock. I have been learning a little.
“Having thus far dared, why should I not go further, and say one thing
more which is burning within me! There was a time when I might have said
it better in verse, but that time has gone by--to come again, I trust,
when I have that to say which is worth saying; when I shall be true
enough to help my fellows to be true. The calling of a poet, if it be a
calling, must come from heaven. To be bred to a thing is to have the
ears closed to any call.
“There is a man I know who forever sits watching, as one might watch at
evening for the first star to come creeping out of the infinite heaven;
but it is for a higher and lovelier star this man watches; he is waiting
for a woman, for the first dawn of her soul. He knows well the spot
where the star of his hope must appear, the spot where, out of the vast
unknown, she must open her shining eyes that he may love her. But alas,
she will not arise and shine. He believes or at least hopes his star is
on the way, and what can he do but wait, for he is laden with the burden
of a wealth given him to give--the love of a true heart--the rarest, as
the most precious thing on the face of his half-baked brick of a world.
It was easy for me to love you, Lady Lufa, while I took that for granted
in you which did not yet exist in myself! But he knows the truth of you,
and yet loves. Lady Lufa, you are not true! If you do not know it, it is
because you will not know it, lest the sight of what you are should
unendurably urge you toward that you will not choose to be. God is my
witness I speak in no poor anger, no mean jealousy! Not a word I say is
for myself. I am but begging you to be that which God, making you,
intended you to be. I would have the star shine through the cloud--shine
on the heart of the watcher! the real Lufa lies hidden under a dusky
garment of untruth; none but the eye of God can see through to the
lovely thing He made, out of which the false Lufa is smothering the
life. When the beautiful child, the real Lufa, the thing you now know
you are not, but ought to be, walks out like an angel from a sepulcher,
then will the heart of God, and the heart of George Sefton, rejoice with
a great joy. Think what the love of such a man is. It is your very self
he loves; he loves like God, even before the real self has begun to
exist. It is not the beauty you show, but the beauty showing you, that
he loves--the hidden self of your perfect idea. Outward beauty alone is
not for the divine lover; it is a mere show. Until the woman makes it
real, it is but a show; and until she makes it true, she is herself a
lie. With you, Lady Lufa, it rests to make your beauty a truth, that is,
a divine fact.
“For myself, I have been but a false poet--a mask among poets, a builder
with hay and stubble, babbling before I had words, singing before I had
a song, without a ray of revelation from the world unseen, carving at
clay instead of shaping it in the hope of marble. I am humbler now, and
trust the divine humility has begun to work out mine. Of all things I
would be true, and pretend nothing.
“Lady Lufa, if a woman’s shadow came out of her mirror, and went about
the world pretending to be herself and deceiving the eyes of men, that
figure thus walking the world and stealing hearts, would be you. Would
to God I were such an exorcist as could lay that ghost of you! as could
say, ‘Go back, forsake your seeming, false image of the true, the lovely
Lufa that God made! You are but her unmaking! Get back into the mirror;
live but in the land of shows; leave the true Lufa to wake from the
swoon into which you have cast her; she must live and grow, and become,
till she is perfect in loveliness.’
“I shall know nothing of the fate of my words. I shall see you no more
in this world--except it be as I saw you to-night, standing close to you
in a crowd. The touch of your garment sent no thrill through me; you
were to me as a walking shadow. But the man who loves you sees the
sleeping beauty within you! His lips are silent, but by the very silence
of his lips his love speaks. I shall soon--but what matters it! If we
are true, we shall meet, and have much to say. If we are not true, all
we know is that falsehood must perish. For me, I will arise and go to my
father, and lie no more. I will be a man, and live in the truth--try at
least so to live, in the hope of one day being true.
“WALTER COLMAN.”
Walter sent the letter--posted it the next morning as he went to the
office. It is many years since, and he has not heard of it yet. But
there is nothing hidden that shall not be revealed.
The writing of this letter was a great strain to him, but he felt much
relieved when it was gone. How differently did he feel after that other
lying, flattering utterance, with his half-sleeping conscience muttering
and grumbling as it lay. He walked then full of pride and hope, in the
mid-most of his dream of lore and ambition; now he was poor and sad, and
bowed down, but the earth was a place that might be lived in
notwithstanding! If only he could find some thoroughly honest work! He
would rather have his weakness and dejection with his humility, than ten
times the false pride with which he paced the street before. It was
better to be thus than so!
But as he came home that night, he found himself far from well, and
altogether incapable of work. He was indeed ill, for he could neither
eat nor sleep, nor take interest in anything. His friend Sullivan was
shocked to see him look so pale and wild, and insisted he must go home.
Walter said it might be but a passing attack, and it would be a pity to
alarm them; he would wait a day or two. At length he felt so ill that
one morning he did not get up. There was no one in the house who cared
to nurse him; his landlady did little or nothing for him beyond getting
him the cup of tea he occasionally wanted; Sullivan was himself ill, and
for some days neither saw nor heard of him; and Walter had such an
experience of loneliness and desertion as he had never had before. But
it was a purgatorial suffering. He began to learn how insufficient he
was for himself; how little self-sustaining power there was in him. Not
there was the fountain of life! Words that had been mere platitudes of
theological commonplace began to show a golden root through their
ancient mold. The time came back to him when father and mother bent
anxiously over their child. He remembered how their love took from him
all fear; how even the pain seemed to melt in their presence; all was
right when they knew all about it! they would see that the suffering
went at the proper time! All gentle ministrations to his comfort, the
moving of his pillows, the things cooked by his mother’s own hands, her
watch to play with--all came back, as if the tide of life had set in the
other direction, and he was fast drifting back into childhood. What
sleep he had was filled with alternate dreams of suffering and
home-deliverance. He recalled how different his aunt had been when he
was ill: in this isolation her face looking in at his door would have
been as that of an angel! And he knew that all the time his debts were
increasing, and when would he begin to pay them off! His mind wandered;
and when Sullivan came at length, he was talking wildly, imagining
himself the prodigal son in the parable.
Sullivan wrote at once to Mr. Colman.