CHAPTER XIII. “HOME IS WHERE THE HEART IS.”
London was very hot, very dusty, and as dreary as Walter had anticipated. When Lufa went, the moon went out of the heavens, the stars chose banishment with their mistress, and only the bright, labor-urging sun was left.
He might now take a holiday when he pleased, and he had money enough in hand. His father wanted him to pay them a visit; but what if an invitation to Comberidge should arrive! Home was a great way in the other direction! And then it would be so dull! He would of course be glad to see his father! He ought to go! He was owing there! What was he to do? He would not willingly even run the risk of losing his delight, for the sake of his first, best, truest earthly friend!
But he must take his holiday now, in the slack of the London year, and the heat was great! He need not be all day with his father, and the thought of Lufa would be entrancing in the wide solitudes of the moor! Molly he scarce thought of, and his aunt was to be forgotten. He would go for a few days, he said, thus keeping the door open for a speedy departure.
Just before he left, the invitation did arrive. He would have a week to dream about it under the old roof!
His heart warmed a little as he approached his home. Certain memories came to meet him. The thought of his mother was in the air. How long it was since she had spoken to him! He remembered her and his father watching by his bed while he tossed in a misery of which he could even now recall the prevailing delirious fancies. He remembered his mother’s last rebuke; for insolence to a servant; remembered her last embrace, her last words; and his heart turned tenderly to his father. Yet when he entered the house and faced the old surroundings, an unexpected gloom overclouded him. Had he been heart-free and humble, they would have been full of delight for him; but pride had been busy in his soul. Its home was in higher planes! How many essential refinements, as he foolishly and vulgarly counted them, were lacking here! What would Lady Lufa think of his entourage? Did it well become one of the second aristocracy? He had been gradually filling with a sense of importance—which had no being except in his own brain; and the notion took the meanest of mean forms—that of looking down on his own history. He was too much of a gentleman still not to repress the show of the feeling, but its mere presence caused a sense of alienation between him and his. When the first greetings were over, nothing came readily to follow. The wave had broken on the shore, and there was not another behind it. Things did not, however, go badly; for the father when disappointed always tried to account for everything to the advantage of the other; and on his part, Walter did his best to respond to his father’s love-courtesy. He was not of such as keep no rule over themselves; not willingly would he allow discomfort to wake temper; he did not brood over defect in those he loved; but it did comfort him that he was so soon to leave his uncongenial surroundings, and go where all would be as a gentleman desired to see it. No one needs find it hard to believe such snobbishness in a youth gifted like Walter Colman; for a sweet temper, fine sympathies, warmth of affection, can not be called a man’s own, so long as he has felt and acted without co-operation of the will; and Walter had never yet fought a battle within himself. He had never set his will against his inclination. He had, indeed, bravely fronted the necessity of the world, but we can not regard it as assurance of a noble nature that one is ready to labor for the things that are needful. A man is indeed contemptible who is not ready to work; but not to be contemptible is hardly to be honorable. Walter had never actively chosen the right way, or put out any energy to walk in it. There are usurers and sinners nearer the kingdom of heaven than many a respectable, socially successful youth of education and ambition. Walter was not simple. He judged things not in themselves, but after an artificial and altogether foolish standard, for his aim was a false one—social distinction.
The ways of his father’s house were nowise sordid, though so simple that his losses had made scarcely a difference in them; they were hardly even humble—only old-fashioned; but Walter was ashamed of them. He even thought it unlady-like of Molly to rise from the table to wait on her uncle or himself; and once, when she brought the tea-kettle in her own little brown hand, he actually reproved her.
The notion that success lies in reaching the modes of life in the next higher social stratum; the fancy that those ways are the standard of what is worthy, becoming, or proper; the idea that our standing is determined by our knowledge of what is or is not the thing, is one of the degrading influences of modern times. It is only the lack of dignity at once and courtesy that makes such points of any interest or consequence.
Fortunately for Walter’s temper, his aunt was discreetly silent, too busy taking the youth’s measure afresh to talk much; intent on material wherewith to make up her mind concerning him. She had had to alter her idea of him as incapable of providing his own bread and cheese; but as to what reflection of him was henceforth to inhabit the glass of her judgment, she had not yet determined, further than that it should be an unfavorable one.
It was a relief when bed-time came, and he was alone in what was always called his room, where he soon fell asleep, to dream of Lufa and the luxuries around her—facilities accumulated even to incumbrance, and grown antagonistic to comfort, as Helots to liberty. How different from his dreams were the things that stood around them! how different his thoughts from those of the father who knelt in the moonlight at the side of his bed, and said something to Him who never sleeps! When he woke, his first feeling was a pang: the things about him were as walls between him and Lufa!
From indifference, or preoccupation—from some cause—he avoided any tête-à-tête with Molly. He had no true idea of the girl, neither indeed was capable of one. She was a whole nature; he was of many parts, not yet begun to cohere. This unlikeness, probably, was at the root of his avoidance of her. Perhaps he had an undefined sense of rebuke, and feared her without being aware of it. Never going further than half-way into a thing, he had never relished Molly’s questions; they went deeper than he saw difficulty; he was not even conscious of the darkness upon which Molly desired light cast. And now when, either from instinct, or sense of presence, he became aware that Molly was looking at him, he did not like it; he felt as if she saw some lack of harmony, between his consciousness and his history. He was annoyed, even irritated, with the olive-cheeked, black-eyed girl, who had been for so many years like his sister: she was making remarks upon him in that questioning laboratory of her brain!
Molly was indeed trying to understand what had gone different between them. She had never felt Walter come very near her, for he was not one who had learned, or would easily learn, to give himself; and no man who does not give at least something of himself, gives anything; but now she knew that he had gone further away, and she saw his father look disappointed. To Molly it was a sad relief when his departure came. They had not once disputed; she had not once offered him a penny for his thoughts, or asked him a single question, yet he did not even want her to go to the station with him.
CHAPTER XIV. A MIDNIGHT REVIEW.
From Comberidge a dog-cart had been sent to meet him at the railway. He drove up the avenue as the sun was setting behind the house, and its long, low, terraced front received him into a cold shadow. The servant who opened the door said her ladyship was on the lawn; and following him across the hall, Walter came out into the glory of a red sunset. Like a lovely carpet, or rather, like a green, silent river, the lawn appeared to flow from the house as from its fountain, issuing by the open doors and windows, and descending like a gentle rapid, to lose itself far away among trees and shrubs. Over it were scattered groups and couples and individuals, looking like the creatures of a half-angelic paradise. A little way off, under the boughs of a huge beech-tree, sat Lufa, reading, with a pencil in her hand as if she made notes. As he stepped from the house, she looked up and saw him. She laid her book on the grass, rose, and came toward him. He went to meet her, but the light of the low sun was directly in his eyes, and he could not see her shadowed face. But her voice of welcome came athwart the luminous darkness, and their hands found each other. He thought hers trembled, but it was his own. She led him to her mother.
“I am glad to see you,” said Lady Tremaine. “You are just in time!”
“For what, may I ask?” returned Walter.
“It is out at last!”
“No, mamma,” interrupted Lufa; “the book is not out! It is almost ready, but I have only had one or two early copies. I am so glad Mr. Colman will be the first to see it! He will prepare me for the operation!”
“What do you mean?” asked Walter, bewildered. It was the first word he had heard of her new book.
“Of course I shall be cut up! The weekly papers especially would lose half their readers did they not go in for vivisection! But mamma shouldn’t have asked you now!”
“Why?”
“Well—you mightn’t—I shouldn’t like you to feel an atom less comfortable in speaking your mind.”
“There is no fear of that sort in my thoughts,” answered Walter, laughing.
But it troubled him a little that she had not let him know what she was doing.
“Besides,” he went on, “you need never know what I think. There are other reviewers on the ‘Battery!’”
“I should recognize your hand anywhere! And more than that, I should only have to pick out the most rigid and unbending criticism to know which must be yours. It is your way, and you know it! Are you not always showing me up to myself! That’s why I was in such mortal terror of your finding out what I was doing. If you had said anything to make me hate my work,” she went on, looking up at him with earnest eyes, “I should never have touched it again; and I did want to finish it! You have been my master now for—let me see—how many months? I do not know how I shall ever thank you!” Here she changed tone. “If I come off with a pound of flesh left, it will be owing entirely to the pains you have taken with me! I wonder whether you will like any of my triolets! But it is time to dress for dinner, so I will leave you in peace—but not all night, for when you go to bed you shall take your copy with you to help you asleep.”
While dressing he was full of the dread of not liking the book well enough to praise it as he wished. A first book was nothing, he said to himself; it might be what it would; but the second—that was another matter! He recalled what first books he knew. “Poems by Two Brothers” gave not a foretaste of what was to come so soon after them! Shelley’s prose attempts in his boyhood were below criticism! Byron’s “Hours of Idleness” were as idle as he called them! He knew what followed these and others, but what had followed Lady Lufa’s? That he was now to discover! What if it should be no better than what preceded! For his own part he did not, he would not much care. It was not for her poetry, it was for herself he loved her! What she wrote was not she, and could make no difference! It was not as if she had no genuine understanding of poetry, no admiration or feeling for it! A poet could do well enough with a wife who never wrote a verse, but hardly with one who had no natural relation to it, no perception what it was! A poet in love with one who laughed at his poetry!—that would want scanning! What or wherein could be their relation to each other?
He is a poor poet—and Walter was such a poet—who does not know there are better things than poetry. Keats began to discover it just ere he died.
Walter feared therefore the coming gift, as he might that of a doubted enchantress. It was not the less a delight, however, to remember that she said “your copy.” But he must leave thinking and put on his neck-tie! There are other things than time and tide that wait for no man!
Lady Tremaine gave him Lufa, and she took his arm with old familiarity. The talk at table was but such as it could hardly help being—only for Walter it was talk with Lufa! The pleasure of talk often owes not much to the sense of it. There is more than the intellect concerned in talk; there is more at its root than fact or logic or lying.
When the scene changed to the drawing-room, Lufa played tolerably and sung well, delighting Walter. She asked and received his permission to sing “my song,” as she called it, and pleased him with it more than ever. He managed to get her into the conservatory, which was large, and there he talked much, and she seemed to listen much. It was but the vague, twilight, allusive talk which, coming readily to all men in love, came the more readily to one always a poet, and not merely a poet by being in love. Every one in love sees a little further into things, but few see clearly, and hence love-talk has in general so little meaning. Ordinary men in love gain glimpses of truth more and other than they usually see, but from having so little dealing with the truth, they do not even try to get a hold of it, they do not know it for truth even when dallying with it. It is the true man’s dreams that come true.
He raised her hand to his lips as at length she turned toward the drawing-room, and he thought she more than yielded it, but could not be sure. Anyhow she was not offended, for she smiled with her usual sweetness as she bade him good-night.
“One instant, Mr. Colman!” she added: “I promised you a sedative! I will run and get it. No, I won’t keep you; I will send it to your room.”
He had scarce shut his door when it opened again, and there was Lufa.
“I beg your pardon!” she said; “I thought you would not be come up, and I wanted to make my little offering with my own hand: it owes so much to you!”
She slipped past him, laid her book on his table, and went.
He lighted his candles with eager anxiety, and took it up. It was a dramatic poem of some length, daintily bound in white vellum, with gilt edges. On the title-page was written “The Master’s Copy,” with the date and Lufa’s initials. He threw himself into a great soft chair that with open arms invited him, and began to read.
He had taken champagne pretty freely at dinner; his mind was yet in the commotion left by the summer-wind of their many words that might seem so much; he felt his kiss on her dainty hand, and her pressure of it to his lips; as he read, she seemed still and always in the door-way, entering with the book; its inscription was continually turning up with a shine: such was the mood in which he read the poem. Through he read it, every word, some of it many times; then rose and went to his writing-table, to set down his judgment of his lady’s poem. He wrote and wrote, almost without pause. The dawn began to glimmer, the red blood of the morning came back to chase the swoon of the night, ere at last, throwing down his pen, he gave a sigh of weary joy, tore off his clothes, plunged into his bed, and there lay afloat on the soft waves of sleep. And as he slept, the sun came slowly up to shake the falsehood out of the earth.
CHAPTER XV. REFLECTION.
Walter slept until nearly noon, then rose, very weary, but with a gladness at his heart. On his table were spread such pages as must please Lufa! His thoughts went back to the poem, but, to his uneasy surprise, he found he did not recall it with any special pleasure. He had had great delight in reading it, and in giving shape to his delight, but he could not now think what kind of thing it was that had given him such satisfaction. He had worked too long, he said to himself, and this was the reaction; he was too tired to enjoy the memory of what he had so heartily admired. Aesthetic judgment was so dependent on mood! He would glance over what he had done, correct it a little, and inclose it for the afternoon post, that it might appear in the next issue!
He drank the cup of cold tea by his bedside, sat down, and took up his hurriedly written sheets. He found in them much that seemed good work—of his own; and the passages quoted gave ostensible grounds for the remarks made upon them; but somehow the whole affair seemed quite different. The review would incline any lover of verse to read the book; and the passages cited were preceded and followed by rich and praiseful epithets; but neither quotations nor remarks moved in him any echo of response. He gave the manuscript what correction it required, which was not much, for Walter was an accurate as well as ready writer, laid it aside, and took up the poem.
What could be the matter? There was nothing but embers where had been glow and flame! Something must be amiss with him! He recalled an occasion on which, feeling similarly with regard to certain poems till then favorites, he was sorely troubled, but a serious attack of illness very soon relieved his perplexity: something like it most surely be at hand to account for the contradiction between Walter last night and Walter this morning! Closer and closer he scanned what he read, peering if he might to its very roots, in agonized endeavor to see what he had seen as he wrote. But his critical consciousness neither acknowledged what he had felt, nor would grant him in a condition of poetic collapse. He read on and on; read the poem through; turned back, and read passage after passage again; but without one individual approach to the revival of former impression. “Commonplace! commonplace!” echoed in his inner ear, as if whispered by some mocking spirit. He argued that he had often found himself too fastidious. His demand for finish ruined many of his verses, rubbing and melting and wearing them away, like frost and wind and rain, till they were worthless! The predominance and overkeenness of the critical had turned in him to disease! His eye was sharpened to see the point of a needle, but a tree only as a blotted mass! A man’s mind was meant to receive as a mirror, not to concentrate rays like a convex lens! Was it not then likely that the first reading gave the true impression of the ethereal, the vital, the flowing, the iridescent? Did not the solitary and silent night brood like a hen on the nest of the poet’s imaginings? Was it not the night that waked the soul? Did not the commonplace vanish along with the “garish” day? How then could its light afford the mood fit for judging a poem—the cold sick morning, when life is but half worth living! Walter did not think how much champagne he had taken, nor how much that might have to do with one judgment at night and another in the morning. “Set one mood against another,” he said, conscious all the time it was a piece of special pleading, “and the one weighs as much as the other!” For it was horrible to him to think that the morning was the clear-eyed, and that the praise he had lavished on the book was but a vapor of the night. How was he to carry himself to the lady of his love, who at most did not care half as much for him as for her book?
How poetry could be such a passion with her when her own was but mediocre, was a question Walter dared not shape—not, however, that he saw the same question might be put with regard to himself: his own poetry was neither strong nor fresh nor revealing. He had not noted that an unpoetic person will occasionally go into a mild ecstasy over phrase or passage or verse in which a poet may see little or nothing.
He came back to this:—his one hour had as good a claim to insight as his other; if he saw the thing so once, why not say what he had seen? Why should not the thing stand? His consciousness of the night before had certainly been nearer that of a complete, capable being, than that of to-day! He was in higher human condition then than now!
But there came another doubt: what was he to conclude concerning his other numerous judgments passed irrevocably? Was he called and appointed to influence the world’s opinion of the labor of hundreds according to the mood he happened to be in, or the hour at which he read their volumes? But if he must write another judgment of that poem in vellum and gold, he must first pack his portmanteau! To write in her home as he felt now, would be treachery!
Not confessing it, he was persuading himself to send on the review. Of course, had he the writing of it now, he would not write a paper like that! But the thing being written, it could claim as good a chance of being right as another! Had it not been written as honestly as another of to-day would be? Might it not be just as true? The laws of art are so undefined!
Thus on and on went the windmill of heart and brain, until at last the devil, or the devil’s shadow—that is, the bad part of the man himself—got the better, and Walter, not being true, did a lie—published the thing he would no longer have said. He thought he worshiped the truth, but he did not. He knew that the truth was everything, but a lie came that seemed better than the truth. In his soul he knew he was not acting truly; that had he honestly loved the truth, he would not have played hocus-pocus with metaphysics and logic, but would have made haste to a manly conclusion. He took the package, and on his way to the dining-room, dropped it into the post-box in the hall.
During lunch he was rather silent and abstracted; the package was not gone, and his conscience might yet command him to recall it! When the hour was passed, and the paper beyond recovery, he felt easier, saying to himself, what was done could not be undone; he would be more careful another time. One comfort was, that at least he had done no injustice to Lufa! He did not reflect that he had done her the greatest injustice in helping her to believe that worthy which was not worthy, herself worshipful who was not worshipful. He told her that he finished her drama before going to bed, and was perfectly charmed with it. That it as much exceeded his expectations then as it had fallen below them since, he did not say.
In the evening he was not so bright as before. Lufa saw it and was troubled. She feared he doubted the success of her poem. She led the way, and found he avoided talking about it. She feared he was not so well pleased with it as he had said. Walter asked if he might not read from it in the drawing-room. She would not consent.
“None there are of our sort!” she said. “They think literature foolishness. Even my mother, the best of mothers, doesn’t care about poetry, can not tell one measure from another. Come and read a page or two of it in the summer-house in the wilderness instead. I want to know how it will sound in people’s ears.”
Walter was ready enough. He was fond of reading aloud, and believed he could so read the poem that he need not say anything. And certainly, if justice meant making the words express more than was in them, he did it justice. But in truth the situation was sometimes touching; and the more so to Walter that the hero was the lady’s inferior in birth, means, and position—much more her inferior than Walter was Lufa’s. The lady alone was on the side of the lowly born; father, mother, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins to the remotest degree, against him even to hatred. The general pathos of the idea disabled the criticism of the audience, composed of the authoress and the reader, blinding perhaps both to not a little that was neither brilliant nor poetic. The lady wept at the sound of her own verses from the lips of one who was to her in the position of the hero toward the heroine; and the lover, critic as he was, could not but be touched when he saw her weep at passages suggesting his relation to her; so that, when they found the hand of the one resting in that of the other, it did not seem strange to either. When suddenly the lady snatched hers away, it was only because a mischievous little bird spying them, and hurrying away to tell, made a great fluttering in the foliage. Then was Walter’s conscience not a little consoled, for he was aware of a hearty love for the poem. Under such conditions he could have gone on reading it all the night!
CHAPTER XVI. THE RIDE TOGETHER.
Days passed, and things went on much the same, Walter not daring to tell the girl all he felt, but seizing every opportunity of a tête-à-tête, and missing none of the proximity she allowed him, and she never seeming other than pleased to be his companion. Her ways with him were always pretty, and sometimes playful. She was almost studious to please him; and if she never took a liberty with him, she never resented any he took with her, which certainly were neither numerous nor daring, for Walter was not presumptuous, least of all with women.
But Lufa was careful not to neglect their other guests. She was always ready to accompany any of the ladies riding out of a morning; and a Mr. Sefton, who was there when Walter arrived, generally rode with them. He was older than Walter, and had taken little notice of him, which Walter resented more than he would have cared to acknowledge. He was tall and lanky, with a look of not having been in the oven quite long enough, but handsome nevertheless. Without an atom of contempt, he cared nothing for what people might think; and when accused of anything, laughed, and never defended himself. Having no doubt he was in the right, he had no anxiety as to the impression he might make. In the hunting-field he was now reckless, now so cautious that the men would chaff him. But they knew well enough that whatever he did came either of pure whim or down-right good sense; no one ever questioned his pluck. I believe an intermittent laziness had something to do with his inconsistency.
It had been taken for granted by Lufa that Walter could not ride; whereas, not only had he had some experience, but he was one of the few possessed of an individual influence over the lower brotherhood of animals, and his was especially equine.
One morning, from an ailment in one of the horses, Lufa found that her mount required consideration. Sefton said the horse he had been riding would carry her perfectly.
“What will you do for a horse?”
“Go without.”
“What shall we do for a gentleman?”
“Go without.”
“I saw a groom this morning,” suggested Walter, “on a lovely little roan!”
“Ah, Red Racket!” answered Lady Lufa, “He is no horse; he is a little fiend. Goes as gently as a lamb with my father, though, or any one that he knows can ride him. Try Red Racket, George.”
They were cousins, though not in the next degree.
“I would if I could sit him. But I’m not a rough rider, and much disinclined to have my bones broken. It’s not as if there was anything to be got by it, even a brush!”
“Two hours of your sister, your cousin, and their friend!” said Lufa.
“Much of you I should have with Red Racket under me—or over me as likely! at best jumping about, and taking all the attention I had! No, thank you!”
“Come, George,” said his sister, “you will make them think you are no horseman!”
“Neither I am; I have not a good seat, and you know it! I am not going to make a fool of myself on compulsion! I know what I can do, and what I can’t do.”
“I wish I had the chance!” murmured Walter, as if to himself, but so that Lufa heard.
“You can ride?” said Lufa, with pleased surprise.
“Why not?” returned Walter. “Every Englishman should ride.”
“Yes; every Englishman should swim; but Englishmen are drowned every day!”
“That is as often because they can swim, but have not Mr. Sefton’s prudence.”
“You mustn’t think my cousin afraid of Red Racket!” she returned.
“I don’t. He doesn’t look like it!”
“Do you really wish to ride the roan?”
“Indeed I do!”
“I will order him round,” she said, rising.
Walter did not quite enjoy her consenting so easily; had she no fear for him of the risk Mr. Sefton would not run?
“She wants me to cut a good figure!” he said to himself, and went to get ready.
I have no deed of prowess on Walter’s part to record. The instant he was in the saddle, Red Racket recognized a master.
“You can’t have ridden him before?” questioned Lufa.
“I never saw him till this morning.”
“He likes you, I suppose!” she said.
As they returned, the other ladies being in front, and the groom some distance behind, Walter brought his roan side by side with Lufa’s horse, and said—
“You know Browning’s ‘Last Ride Together’?”
“Yes,” she answered, with a faint blush; “but this is not our last ride! It is our first! Why didn’t you tell me? We might have had many rides together!”
“Promise me a last one,” he said.
“How can I? How should I know it was the last?”
“Promise,” he persisted, “that if ever you see just one last ride possible, you will let me know.”
She hesitated a moment, then answered—
“I will.”
“Thank you!” said Walter with fervor.
As by consent, they rode after the others.
Walter had not yet the courage to say anything definite. But he had said many things that must have compelled her to imagine what he had not said; therefore the promise she had given him seemed encouraging. They rode in silence the rest of the way.
When Sefton saw Red Racket as quiet as a lamb, he went up to him, stroked his neck, and said to Walter:
“With me he would have capered like an idiot till he had thrown me. It is always my luck with horses of his color! You must have a light hand!”
He stroked his neck once more, turned aside, and was too late to help the ladies dismount.
It was the last ride for the present, because of a change in the weather. In a few days came “The Field Battery” with Walter’s review, bringing a revival of the self-reproach he had begun to forget. The paper felt in his hand like bad news or something nasty. He could not bear the thought of having to take his part in the talk it would occasion. It could not now be helped, however, and that was a great comfort! It was impossible, none the less, to keep it up! As he had foreseen, all this time came no revival of his first impression of the poem. He went to find his hostess, and told her he must go to London that same afternoon. As he took his leave, he put the paper In Lufa’s hand, saying,
“You will find there what I have said about the poem.”
CHAPTER XVII. HIS BOOK.
I need hardly say he found his first lonely evening dull. He was not yet capable of looking beneath the look of anything. He felt cabined, cribbed, confined. His world-clothing came too near him. From the flowing robes of a park, a great house, large rooms, wide staircases—with plenty of air and space, color, softness, fitness, completeness, he found himself in the worn, tight, shabby garment of a cheap London lodging! But Walter, far from being a wise man, was not therefore a fool; he was not one whom this world can not teach, and who has therefore to be sent to some idiot asylum in the next, before sense can be got into him, or, rather, out of him. No man is a fool, who, having work to do, sets himself to do it, and Walter did. He had begun a poem to lead the van of a volume, of which the rest was nearly ready: into it he now set himself to weave a sequel to her drama, from the point where she had left the story. Every hour he could spare from drudgery he devoted to it—urged by the delightful prospect of letting Lufa see what he could do. Gaining facility with his stanza as he went on, the pleasure of it grew, and more than comforted his loneliness. Sullivan could hardly get him from his room.
Finding a young publisher prepared to undertake half the risk, on the ground, unexpressed, of the author’s proximity to the judgment-seat, Walter, too experienced to look for any gain, yet hoped to clear his expenses, and became liable for much more than he possessed.
He had one little note from Lufa, concerning a point in rhythm which perplexed her. She had a good ear, and was conscientious in her mechanics. There was not a cockney-rhyme from beginning to end of her poem, which is more than the uninitiated will give its weight to. But she understood nothing of the broken music which a master of verse will turn to such high service. There are lines in Milton which Walter, who knew far more than she, could not read until long after, when Dante taught him how.
In the month of December came another note from Lady Lufa, inviting him to spend a week with them after Christmas.
“Perhaps then we may have yet a ride together,” added a postscript.
“What does she mean?” thought Walter, a pale fear at his heart. “She can not mean our last ride!”
One conclusion he came to—that he must tell her plainly he loved her. The thing was only right, though of course ridiculous in the eyes of worldly people, said the far from unworldly poet. True, she was the daughter of an earl, and he the son of a farmer; and those who called the land their own looked down upon those who tilled it! But a banker, or a brewer, or the son of a contractor who had wielded the spade, might marry an earl’s daughter: why should not the son of a farmer—not to say one who, according to the lady’s mother, himself belonged to an aristocracy? The farmer’s son indeed was poor, and who would look at a poor banker, or a poor brewer, more than a poor farmer! it was all money! But was he going to give in to that? Was he to grant that possession made a man honorable, and the want of it despicable! To act as if she could think after such a silly fashion, would be to insult her! He would lay bare his heart to her! There were things in it which she knew what value to set upon—things as far before birth as birth was before money! He would accept the invitation, and if possible get his volume out before the day mentioned, so as, he hoped, to be a little in the mouth of the public when he went.
Walter, like many another youth, imagined the way to make a woman love him, was to humble himself before her, tell her how beautiful she was, and how much he loved her. I do not see why any woman should therefore love a man. If she loves him already, anything will do to make her love him more; if she does not, no entreaty will wake what is not there to be waked. Even wrong and cruelty and carelessness may increase love already rooted; but neither love, nor kindness, nor worship, will prevail to plant it.
In his formal acceptance of the invitation, he inclosed some verses destined for his volume, in which he poured out his boyish passion over his lady’s hair, and eyes, and hands—a poem not without some of the merits made much of by the rising school of the day, and possessing qualities higher, perhaps, than those upon which that school chiefly prided itself. She made, and he expected, no acknowledgment, but she did not return the verses.
Lyric after lyric, with Lufa for its inspiration, he wrought, like damask flowers, into his poem. Every evening, and all the evening, sometimes late into the morning, he fashioned and filed, until at length it was finished.
When the toiling girl who waited on him appeared with the proof-sheets in her hand, she came like a winged ministrant laying a wondrous gift before him. And in truth, poor as he came to think it, was it not a gift greater than any angel could have brought him? Was not the seed of it sown in his being by Him that loved him before he was? These were the poor first flowers, come to make way for better—themselves a gift none but God could give.
The book was rapidly approaching its birth, as the day of Lufa’s summons drew near. He had inscribed the volume to her, not by name, but in a dedication she could not but understand and no other would; founded on her promise of a last ride: it was so delightful to have a secret with her! He hoped to the last to take a copy with him, but was disappointed by some contretemps connected with the binding—about which he was as particular as if it had been itself a poem: he had to pack his portmanteau without it.
Continuously almost, on his way to the station, he kept repeating to himself: “Is it to be the last ride, or only another?”
CHAPTER XVIII. A WINTER AFTERNOON.
When Walter arrived, he found the paradise under snow. But the summer had only run in-doors, and there was blooming. Lufa was kinder than ever, but, he fancied, a little embarrassed, which he interpreted to his advantage. He was shown to the room he had before occupied.
It did not take him long to learn the winter ways of the house. Mr. and Miss Sefton were there; and all seemed glad of his help against consciousness; for there could be no riding so long as the frost lasted and the snow kept falling, and the ladies did not care to go out; and in, some country-houses Time has as many lives as a cat, and wants a great deal of killing—a butchery to be one day bitterly repented, perhaps; but as a savage can not be a citizen, so can not people of fashion belong to the kingdom of heaven.
The third morning came a thaw, with a storm of wind and rain; and after lunch they gathered in the glooming library, and began to tell ghost stories. Walter happened to know a few of the rarer sort, and found himself in his element. His art came to help him, and the eyes of the ladies, and he rose to his best. As he was working one of his tales to its climax, Mr. Sefton entered the room, where Walter had been the only gentleman, and took a chair beside Lufa. She rose, saying,
“I beg your pardon, Mr. Colman, but would you mind stopping a minute while I get a little more red silk for my imperial dragon? Mr. Sefton has already taken the sting out of the snake!”
“What snake?” asked Sefton.
“The snake of terror,” she answered. “Did you not see him as you came in—erect on his coiled tail, drawing his head back for his darting spring?”
“I am very sorry,” said Sefton. “I have injured everybody, and I hope everybody will pardon me!”
When Lufa had found her silk, she took a seat nearer to Walter, who resumed and finished his narrative.
“I wonder she lived to tell it!” said one of the ladies.
“For my part,” rejoined their hostess, “I do not see why every one should be so terrified at the thought of meeting a ghost! It seems to me cowardly.”
“I don’t think it cowardly,” said Sefton, “to be frightened at a ghost, or at anything else.”
“Now don’t say you would run away!” remonstrated his sister.
“I couldn’t very well, don’t you know, if I was in bed! But I might—I don’t know—hide my head under the blankets!”
“I don’t believe it a bit!”
“To be sure,” continued Sefton, reflectively, “there does seem a difference! To hide is one thing, and to run is another—quite another thing! If you are frightened, you are frightened and you can’t help it; but if you run away, then you are a coward. Yes; quite true! And yet there are things some men, whom other men would be afraid to call cowards, would run from fast enough! Your story, Mr. Colman,” he went on, “reminds me of an adventure I had—if that be an adventure where was no danger—except, indeed, of losing my wits, which Lufa would say was no great loss. I don’t often tell the story, for I have an odd weakness for being believed; and nobody ever does believe that story, though it is as true as I live; and when a thing is true, the blame lies with those that don’t believe it. Ain’t you of my mind, Mr. Colman?”
“You had better not appeal to him!” said Lufa. “Mr. Colman does not believe a word of the stories he has been telling. He regards them entirely from the artistic point of view, and cares only for their effect. He is writing a novel, and wants to study people under a ghost story.”
“I don’t indorse your judgment of me, Lady Lufa,” said Walter, who did not quite like what she said. “I am ready to believe anything in which I can see reason. I should like much to hear Mr. Sefton’s story. I never saw the man that saw a ghost, except Mr. Sefton be that man.”
“You shall say what you will when you have heard. I shall offer no explanation, only tell you what I saw, or, if you prefer it, experienced; you must then fall back on your own metaphysics. I don’t care what anybody thinks about it.”
“You are not very polite!” said Lufa.
“Only truthful,” replied Sefton.
“Please go on?”
“We are dying to hear!”
“A real ghost story!”
“Is it your best, George?”
“It is my only one,” Sefton answered, and was silent a few moments, as if arranging his thoughts.
“Well, here goes!” he began. “I was staying at a country house—”
“Not here, I hope!” said Lufa.
“I have reasons for not saying where it was, or where it wasn’t. It may have been in Ireland, it may have been in Scotland, it may have been in England; it was in one of the three—an old house, parts very old. One morning I happened to be late, and found the breakfast-table deserted. I was not the last, however; for presently another man appeared, whom I had met at dinner the day before for the first time. We both happened to be in the army, and had drawn a little together. The moment I saw him, I knew he had passed an uncomfortable night. His face was like dough, with livid spots under the eyes. He sat down and poured himself out a cup of tea. ‘Game-pie?’ I said, but he did not heed me. There was nobody in the room but ourselves, and I thought it best to leave him alone. ‘Are you an old friend of the family?’ he said at length. ‘About the age of most friends,’ I answered. He was silent again, for a bit, then said, ‘I’m going to cut!’ ‘Ha, ha!’ thought I, and something more. ‘No, it’s not that!’ he said, reading my thought, which had been about a lady in the house with us. ‘Pray don’t imagine I want to know,’ I replied. ‘Neither do I want to tell,’ he rejoined. ‘I don’t care to have fellows laugh at me!’ ‘That’s just what I don’t care to do. Nothing hurts me less than being laughed at, so I take no pleasure in it,’ I said. ‘What I do want,’ said he, ‘is to have you tell Mrs. —-’ There! I was on the very edge of saying her name! and you would have known who she was, all of you! I am glad I caught myself in time!—‘tell Mrs. Blank,’ said he, ‘why I went.’ ‘Very well! I will. Why are you going?’ ‘Can’t you help a fellow to an excuse? I’m not going to give her the reason.’ ‘Tell me what you want me to say, and I will tell her you told me to say so.’ ‘I will tell you the truth.’ ‘Fire away, then.’ ‘I was in a beastly funk last night. I dare say you think as I did, that a man ought never to be a hair off the cool?’ ‘That depends,’ I replied; ‘there are some things, and there may be more, at which any but an idiot might well be scared; but some fools are such fools they can’t shiver! What’s the matter? I give you my word I’ll not make game of it.’ The fellow looked so seedy, don’t you know, I couldn’t but be brotherly, or, at least, cousinly to him!—that don’t go for much, does it, Lufa? ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I will tell you. Last night, I had been in bed about five minutes, and hadn’t even had time to grow sleepy, when I heard a curious shuffling in the passage outside my door, and an indescribable terror came over me. To be perfectly open with you, however, I had heard that was the sign she was coming!’ ‘Who coming?’ said I. ‘The ghost, of course!’ he answered. ‘The ghost!’ ‘You don’t mean to say you never heard of the ghost?’ ‘Never heard a word of it.’ ‘Well, they don’t like to speak of it, but everybody knows it!’ ‘Go on,’ said I; and he did, but plainly with a tearing effort. ‘The shuffling was like feet in slippers much too big. As if I had been five instead of five-and-thirty, I dived under the blankets, and lay so for minutes after the shuffling had ceased. But at length I persuaded myself it was but a foolish fancy, and I had never really heard anything. What with fear and heat I was much in want of breath too, I can tell you! So I came to the surface, and looked out.’ Here he paused a moment, and turned almost livid. ‘There stood a horrible old woman, staring at me, as if she had been seeing me all the time, and the blankets made no difference!’ ‘Was she really ugly?’ I asked. ‘Well, I don’t know what you call ugly,’ he answered, ‘but if you had seen her stare, you would have thought her ugly enough! Had she been as beautiful as a houri, though, I don’t imagine I should have been less frightened!’ ‘Well,’ said I, for he had come to a pause, ‘and what came next?’ ‘I can not tell. I came to myself all trembling, and as cold and as wet as if I had been dipped in a well’ ‘You are sure you were not dreaming?’ I said. ‘I was not. But I do not expect you believe me!’ ‘You must not be offended,’ I said, ‘if I find the thing stiff to stow! I believe you all the same.’ ‘What?’ he said, not quite understanding me. ‘An honest man and a gentleman,’ I answered. ‘And a coward to boot!’ ‘God forbid!’ I returned: ‘what man can answer for himself at every moment! If I remember, Hector turned at last and ran from Achilles!’ He said nothing, and I went on. ‘I once heard a preaching fellow say, “When a wise man is always wise, then is the kingdom of heaven!” and I thought he knew something!’ I talked, don’t you know, to quiet him. ‘I once saw,’ I said, ‘the best-tempered man I ever knew, in the worst rage I ever saw man in—though I must allow he had good reason!’ He drank his cup of tea, got up, and said, ‘I’m off. Good-bye—and thank you! A million of money wouldn’t make me stay in the house another hour! There is that in it I fear ten times worse than the ghost?’ ‘Gracious! what is that?’ I said. ‘This horrible cowardice oozing from her like a mist. The house is full of it!’ ‘But what shall I say to Mrs. Blank?’ ‘Anything you like.’ ‘I will say then, that you are very sorry, but were compelled to go.’ ‘Say what you please, only let me go! Tell them to send my traps after me. Good-bye! I’m in a sepulcher! I shall have to throw up my commission!’ So he went.”
“And what became of him?”
“I’ve neither seen nor heard of him to this day!”
He ceased with the cadence of an ended story.
“Is that all?”
“You spoke of an adventure of your own!”
“I was flattering myself,” said Lufa, “that in our house Mr. Colman was at last to hear a ghost story from the man’s own lips!”
“The sun is coming out!” said Sefton. “I will have a cigar at the stables.”
The company protested, but he turned a deaf ear to expostulation, and went.