Chapter 1

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_Title:_ The Story of a Love
_Date of first publication:_ 1911
_Author:_ L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
_Date first posted:_ Dec. 19, 2016
_Date last updated:_ Apr. 1, 2017
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The Story of a Love
L. M. Montgomery
First published in _Canadian Magazine_, March 1911.

THE JUNE NIGHT

Moonlight must have an intoxicating quality. It is a fine, airy, silver
wine, such as fairies may drink at their revels, unharmed of it. But
when a mere mortal sips it, it straightway mounts to his brain and
loosens all his old fair dreams and visions, to the undoing of his
daylight common sense. To-night I feel that I dwell in a world of beauty
and love, ruler by right of heirship and possession—a world shaped out
of the moonlight and my sweetest fancies, and therefore a world wherein
I may think of her, without doing violence to the sacredness of the
thought of her.

I walk in the alleys of this old garden. The moonlight is lying on the
grass, and a little invisible wind is tiptoeing all over it. All about
me are roses, like sweet old songs set to flowering—roses white enough
to lie in her bosom and red enough to star the soft dark cloud of her
hair. It was among the roses I first saw her, in that, other old garden
adjoining mine, just beyond the box hedge.

To-day two women asked me if I had ever really loved. One of them was a
woman of the world who should have known better, and to her I made
answer accordingly:

“Madam, a poet, such as you are good enough to term me, little as I
deserve the name, should not love one woman personally because he loves
all impersonally; your sex is to him a beautiful enigma, whose meaning
he must ever seek and never find; and until he does find it he should
not bind down his quest to the pursuit of one.”

She smiled as if she did not believe me, which was no more than I
deserved, since I did not believe myself; but she asked no more
questions.

The other woman was a mere child, tiptoeing wistfully on the brink of
her birthright, and her question was that of a child who has not learned
that it is unfitting to be curious. I honoured her just departing
childhood with its meed of sincerity:

“I have loved, and love still, and shall always love,” I said gravely.
And she, too, smiled as if she did not believe me. Yet I had told her
the simple truth.

Here, in this wondrous white moonlight, I realise how truly I spoke. I
love with a love too fine and untainted to be put into words; it should
be put only into the most reverent thoughts. It is my delight so to
think of Averil.

She is a woman now. She was a child when I saw her. Yet I do not think
of her as a child. My love has kept pace with her unseen growth, in that
land across the sea, walking into womanhood. It is as woman I think of
her; as woman I shall meet her when our meeting comes, as come it must
and will. Love must fulfil its own prophecy, and all that is my own
shall come to me in the ripeness of time. I would not hasten it or rush
impatiently to meet it.

Yet I have wooed her in my poems. I do not know if she has read them;
but if she has she must know that I love here. She must know that I
wrote them because of her and by inspiration of her; that I have crowned
her my queen of song. Some day I hope to hear her tell me that she has
understood. It is twelve years since I saw her. I was a boy of twenty
then, a shy, awkward youth, knowing nothing of the real world, but much
of the world of dream and fancy, with a heart virgin of any woman’s
image and lips virgin of any woman’s kiss.

I had been wandering one evening in this garden and I had come to the
box hedge that formed its boundary. There was a little gap in it where a
footpath ran into the garden of our neighbour, and, standing there, I
saw her wonderful face, turned upward to the sunset.

She was a child in everything save her eyes; only ten sweet years had
gone to the making of her. The slender little figure, the thick braid of
dark hair, the delicate brows, the parted, dimpled mouth—these were of
a child. But her eyes, her glorious eyes, were a woman’s eyes—the woman
who was mine, with all their prophecy of the one whom I was to love,
nay, whom I loved then, although knowing eyes, full of sweetness and
graciousness and dream, foretold of her.

I knew the child must be Averil Sidney, the daughter of our neighbour.
He was a man who preferred life abroad and lived there for the most
part, leaving his estate to the mercy of housekeepers and stewards. His
wife had died early in their married life, and her little daughter was
brought up by her sister. Cecil Sidney was home for a brief sojourn;
Averil had come to visit him; and I had met her thus in the rose garden.

She looked at me gravely, smilelessly, yet her whole expression was a
smile, and there was sweet, beguiling laughter in her eyes. I, who had
always loved children, and been at ease with them, found myself
shamefaced and shy in her presence. Perhaps she saw my confusion. Those
eyes must have read my very heart, for she broke a white, half-opened
rose from its bush and held it out to me. I took it as wordlessly as she
offered it; then someone in the house called to her, and she was gone.
But at the curve of the walk she paused for a moment and looked back,
with a little gesture of good-bye.

I have never seen her since; but tidings of her have drifted to me every
year. I knew when she went abroad to join her father. They have lived in
Europe for the past six years. All this time she must have been growing
into the promise of her eyes; and my love has grown with her. It has
consecrated every word I have written. My critics have tried to dissect
my poems and find therein that “strange, elusive soul of love,” which,
they declare, animates them. Then they cannot find it. It is in her
keeping, and can be made incarnate only in her loveliness.

I have heard that she is very beautiful; yet I have felt no jealousy, no
fear of other men. She is not for any other; she belongs to me. I have
the key of her heart, and it must remain a fair and tenantless chamber
until I may enter it as an inheritance.

THE JULY NIGHT