Part 6 (1/2)
”You won't mind if I publish them with the music?”
”I shall feel more honored than I dare tell you. But how _am_ I to go to my work after this taste of paradise! It was too cruel of you, Lady Lufa, to make me come in the morning!”
”I am very sorry!”
”Will you grant me one favor to make up?”
”Yes.”
”Never to sing the song to any one when I am present. I could not bear it.”
”I promise,” she answered, looking up in his face with a glance of sympathetic consciousness.
There was an acknowledged secret between them, and Walter hugged it.
”I gave you a frozen bird,” he said, ”and you have warmed it, and made it soar and sing.”
”Thank you; a very pretty compliment!” she answered--and there was a moment's silence.
”I am so glad we know each other!” she resumed. ”You could help me so much if you would! Next time you come, you must tell me something about those old French rhymes that have come into fas.h.i.+on of late! They say a pretty thing so much more prettily for their quaint, antique, courtly liberty! The _triolet_ now--how deliriously impertinent it is! Is it not?”
Walter knew nothing about the old French modes of versifying; and, unwilling to place himself at a disadvantage, made an evasive reply, and went. But when at length he reached home, it was with several ancient volumes, among the rest ”Clement Marot,” in pockets and hands. Ere an hour was over, he was in delight with the variety of dainty modes in which, by shape and sound, a very pretty French something was carved out of nothing at all. Their fantastic surprises, the ring of their bell-like returns upon themselves, their music of triangle and cymbal, gave him quite a new pleasure. In some of them poetry seemed to approach the nearest possible to bird-song--to unconscious seeming through most conscious art, imitating the carelessness and impromptu of warblings as old as the existence of birds, and as new as every fresh individual joy; for each new generation grows its own feathers, and sings its own song, yet always the feathers of its kind, and the song of its kind.
The same night he sent her the following _triolet_
Oh, why is the moon Awake when thou sleepest?
To the nightingale's tune, Why is the moon Making a noon, When night is the deepest Why is the moon Awake when thou sleepest?
In the evening came a little note, with a coronet on the paper, but neither date nor signature:
”Perfectly delicious! How _can_ such a little gem hold so much color?
Thank you a thousand times!”
CHAPTER XII.
LOVE.
By this Walter was in love with Lady Lufa. He said as much to himself, at least; and in truth he was almost possessed with her. Every thought that rose in his mind began at once to drift toward her. Every hour of the day had a rose-tinge from the dress in which he first saw her.
One might write a long essay on this they call _love,_ and yet contribute little to the understanding of it in the individual case. Its kind is to be interpreted after the kind of person who loves. There are as many hues and shades, not to say forms and constructions of love, as there are human countenances, human hearts, human judgments and schemes of life. Walter had not been an impressionable youth, because he had an imagination which both made him fastidious, and stood him in stead of falling in love. When a man can give form to the things that move in him, he is less driven to fall in love. But now Walter saw everything through a window, and the window was the face of Lufa. His thinking was always done in the presence and light of that window. She seemed an intrinsic component of every one of his mental operations. In every beauty and attraction of life he saw her. He was possessed by her, almost as some are possessed by evil spirits. And to be possessed, even by a human being, may be to take refuge in the tombs, there to cry, and cut one's self with fierce thoughts.
But not yet was Walter troubled. He lived in love's eternal present, and did not look forward. Even jealousy had not yet begun to show itself in any shape. He was not in Lady Lufa's set, and therefore not much drawn to conjecture what might be going on. In the glamour of literary ambition, he took for granted that Lady Lufa allotted his world a higher orbit than that of her social life, and prized most the pleasures they had in common, which so few were capable of sharing.
She had indeed in her own circle never found one who knew more of the refinements of verse than a school-girl does of Beethoven; and it was a great satisfaction to her to know one who not merely recognized her proficiency, but could guide her further into the depths of an art which every one thinks he understands, and only one here and there does. It was therefore a real welcome she was able to give him when they met, as they did again and again during the season. How much she cared for him, how much she would have been glad to do for him, my reader shall judge for himself. I think she cared for him very nearly as much as for a dress made to her liking. An injustice from him would have brought the tears into her eyes. A poem he disapproved of she would have thrown, aside, _perhaps_ into the fire.
She did not, however, submit much of her work to his judgment. She was afraid of what might put her out of heart with it. Before making his acquaintance, she had a fresh volume, a more ambitious one, well on its way, but fearing lack of his praise, had said nothing to him about it.