Chapter VII: Part 7

I followed up the stair upon her step.
She hurried upward, shot across a face,
A woman’s on the landing,—‘How now, now!
Is no one to have holidays but you?
You said an hour, and stay three hours, I think,
And Julie waiting for your betters here?
Why if he had waked, he might have waked, for me.’
—Just murmuring an excusing word she passed
And shut the rest out with the chamber-door,
Myself shut in beside her.
’Twas a room
Scarce larger than a grave, and near as bare;
Two stools, a pallet-bed; I saw the room:
A mouse could find no sort of shelter in’t,
Much less a greater secret; curtainless,—
The window fixed you with its torturing eye,
Defying you to take a step apart,
If peradventure you would hide a thing.
I saw the whole room, I and Marian there
Alone.
Alone? She threw her bonnet off,
Then sighing as ’twere sighing the last time,
Approached the bed, and drew a shawl away:
You could not peel a fruit you fear to bruise
More calmly and more carefully than so,—
Nor would you find within, a rosier flushed
Pomegranate—
There he lay, upon his back,
The yearling creature, warm and moist with life
To the bottom of his dimples,—to the ends
Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face;
For since he had been covered over-much
To keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks
Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose
The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into,
The faster for his love. And love was here
As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth,
Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked;
The little naked feet drawn up the way
Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft
And tender,—to the little holdfast hands,
Which, closing on a finger into sleep,
Had kept the mould of’t.
While we stood there dumb,—
For oh, that it should take such innocence
To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb;
The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide,
And, staring out at us with all their blue,
As half perplexed between the angelhood
He had been away to visit in his sleep,
And our most mortal presence,—gradually
He saw his mother’s face, accepting it
In change for heaven itself, with such a smile
As might have well been learnt there,—never moved,
But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy,
So happy (half with her and half with heaven)
He could not have the trouble to be stirred,
But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said:
As red and still indeed as any rose,
That blows in all the silence of its leaves,
Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.

She leaned above him (drinking him as wine)
In that extremity of love, ’twill pass
For agony or rapture, seeing that love
Includes the whole of nature, rounding it
To love ... no more,—since more can never be
Than just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self,
And drowning in the transport of the sight,
Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes,
One gaze, she stood! then, slowly as he smiled,
She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware,
And drawing from his countenance to hers
A fainter red, as if she watched a flame
And stood in it a-glow. ‘How beautiful,’
Said she.
I answered, trying to be cold.
(Must sin have compensations, was my thought,
As if it were a holy thing like grief?
And is a woman to be fooled aside
From putting vice down, with that woman’s toy,
A baby?)—— ‘Ay! the child is well enough,’
I answered. ‘If his mother’s palms are clean,
They need be glad, of course, in clasping such:
But if not,—I would rather lay my hand,
Were I she,—on God’s brazen altar-bars
Red-hot with burning sacrificial lambs,
Than touch the sacred curls of such a child.’

She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks,
As one who would not be afraid of fire;
And then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,—
‘My lamb, my lamb! although, through such as thou,
The most unclean got courage and approach
To God, once,—now they cannot, even with men,
Find grace enough for pity and gentle words.’

‘My Marian,’ I made answer, grave and sad,
‘The priest who stole a lamb to offer him,
Was still a thief. And if a woman steals
(Through God’s own barrier-hedges of true love,
Which fence out licence in securing love)
A child like this, that smiles so in her face,
She is no mother, but a kidnapper,
And he’s a dismal orphan ... not a son;
Whom all her kisses cannot feed so full
He will not miss hereafter a pure home
To live in, a pure heart to lean against,
A pure good mother’s name and memory
To hope by, when the world grows thick and bad,
And he feels out for virtue.’
‘Oh,’ she smiled
With bitter patience, ‘the child takes his chance,—
Not much worse off in being fatherless
Than I was, fathered. He will say, belike,
His mother was the saddest creature born;
He’ll say his mother lived so contrary
To joy, that even the kindest, seeing her,
Grew sometimes almost cruel: he’ll not say
She flew contrarious in the face of God
With bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child,—
My flower of earth, my only flower on earth,
My sweet, ray beauty!’ ... Up she snatched the child,
And, breaking on him in a storm of tears,
Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots,
Until he took it for a game, and stretched
His feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings,
And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh:
‘Mine, mine,’ she said; ‘I have as sure a right
As any glad proud mother in the world,
Who sets her darling down to cut his teeth
Upon her church-ring. If she talks of law,
I talk of law! I claim my mother-dues
By law,—the law which now is paramount;
The common law, by which the poor and weak
Are trodden underfoot by vicious men,
And loathed for ever after by the good.
Let pass! I did not filch ... I found the child.’

‘You found him, Marian?’
‘Ay, I found him where
I found my curse,—in the gutter, with my shame!
What have you, any of you, to say to that,
Who all are happy, and sit safe and high,
And never spoke before to arraign my right
To grief itself? What, what, ... being beaten down
By hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch,
Half-dead, whole mangled ... when a girl, at last,
Breathes, sees ... and finds there, bedded in her flesh,
Because of the overcoming shock perhaps,
Some coin of price!... and when a good man comes
(That’s God! the best men are not quite as good)
And says, ‘I dropped the coin there: take it, you,
And keep it,—it shall pay you for the loss,’—
You all put up your finger—‘See the thief!
Observe that precious thing she has come to filch!
How bad those girls are!’ Oh, my flower, my pet,
I dare forget I have you in my arms,
And fly off to be angry with the world,
And fright you, hurt you with my tempers, till
You double up your lip? Ah, that indeed
Is bad: a naughty mother!’
‘You mistake,’
I interrupted; ‘if I loved you not,
I should not, Marian, certainly be here.’

‘Alas,’ she said, ‘you are so very good;
And yet I wish, indeed, you had never come
To make me sob until I vex the child.
It is not wholesome for these pleasure-plats
To be so early watered by our brine.
And then, who knows? he may not like me now
As well, perhaps, as ere he saw me fret,—
One’s ugly fretting! he has eyes the same
As angels, but he cannot see as deep,
And so I’ve kept for ever in his sight
A sort of smile to please him,—as you place
A green thing from the garden in a cup,
To make believe it grows there. Look, my sweet,
My cowslip-ball! we’ve done with that cross face,
And here’s the face come back you used to like.
Ah, ah! he laughs! he likes me. Ah, Miss Leigh,
You’re great and pure; but were you purer still,—
As if you had walked, we’ll say, no otherwhere
Than up and down the new Jerusalem,
And held your trailing lutestring up yourself
From brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some
Small speck as little as a needle-prick,
White stitched on white,—the child would keep to _me_,
Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best,
And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling,
As we do, when God says it’s time to die
And bids us go up higher. Leave us, then;
We two are happy. Does _he_ push me off?
He’s satisfied with me, as I with him.’

‘So soft to one, so hard to others! Nay,’
I cried, more angry that she melted me,
‘We make henceforth a cushion of our faults
To sit and practise easy virtues on?
I thought a child was given to sanctify
A woman,—set her in the sight of all
The clear-eyed Heavens, a chosen minister
To do their business and lead spirits up
The difficult blue heights. A woman lives,
Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good
Through being a mother?... then she’s none! although
She damps her baby’s cheeks by kissing them,
As we kill roses.’
‘Kill! O Christ,’ she said,
And turned her wild sad face from side to side
With most despairing wonder in it—‘What,
What have you in your souls against me then,
All of you? am I wicked, do you think?
God knows me, trusts me with the child! but you,
You think me really wicked?’
‘Complaisant,’
I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done,
Because of certain profits,—which is wrong
Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left
The pure place and the noble heart, to take
The hand of a seducer’....
‘Whom? whose hand?
I took the hand of’....
Springing up erect,
And lifting up the child at full arm’s length,
As if to bear him like an oriflamme
Unconquerable to armies of reproach,—
‘By _him_’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls,
By those blue eyes no woman born could dare
A perjury on, I make my mother’s oath,
That if I left that Heart, to lighten it,
The blood of mine was still, except for grief!
No cleaner maid than I was, took a step
To a sadder end,—no matron-mother now
Looks backward to her early maidenhood
Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily:
And if I lie so, ... if, being fouled in will
And paltered with in soul by devil’s lust,
I dared to bid this angel take my part, ...
Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven,
Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak:
He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’’s your word?
Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France?
Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws,
Seduce it into carrion? So with me.
I was not ever, as you say, seduced,
But simply, murdered.’
There she paused, and sighed,
With such a sigh as drops from agony
To exhaustion,—sighing while she let the babe
Slide down upon her bosom from her arms,
And all her face’s light fell after him,
Like a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank,
And sate upon the bedside with the child.

But I, convicted, broken utterly,
With woman’s passion clung about her waist,
And kissed her hair and eyes,—‘I have been wrong,
Sweet Marian’ ... (weeping in a tender rage)
‘Sweet holy Marian! And now, Marian, now,
I’ll use your oath although my lips are hard,
And by the child, my Marian, by the child,
I’ll swear his mother shall be innocent
Before my conscience, as in the open Book
Of Him who reads for judgement. Innocent,
My sister! let the night be ne’er so dark,
The moon is surely somewhere in the sky;
So surely is your whiteness to be found
Through all dark facts. But pardon, pardon me,
And smile a little, Marian,—for the child,
If not for me, my sister.’
The poor lip
Just motioned for the smile and let it go:
And then, with scarce a stirring of the mouth,
As if a statue spoke that could not breathe,
But spoke on calm between its marble lips,—
‘I’m glad, I’m very glad you clear me so.
I should be sorry that you set me down
With harlots, or with even a better name
Which misbecomes his mother. For the rest,
I am not on a level with your love,
Nor ever was, you know,—but now am worse,
Because that world of yours has dealt with me
As when the hard sea bites and chews a stone
And changes the first form of it. I’ve marked
A shore of pebbles bitten to one shape
From all the various life of madrepores;
And so, that little stone, called Marian Erle,
Picked up and dropped by you and another friend,
Was ground and tortured by the incessant sea
And bruised from what she was,—changed! death’s a change,
And she, I said, was murdered; Marian’s dead.
What can you do with people when they are dead,
But, if you are pious, sing a hymn and go,
Or, if you are tender, heave a sigh and go,
But go by all means,—and permit the grass
To keep its green feud up ’twixt them and you?
Then leave me,—let me rest. I’m dead, I say.
And if, to save the child from death as well,
The mother in me has survived the rest,
Why, that’s God’s miracle you must not tax,—
I’m not less dead for that: I’m nothing more
But just a mother. Only for the child,
I’m warm, and cold, and hungry, and afraid,
And smell the flowers a little, and see the sun,
And speak still, and am silent,—just for him!
I pray you therefore to mistake me not,
And treat me, haply, as I were alive;
For though you ran a pin into my soul,
I think it would not hurt nor trouble me.
Here’s proof, dear lady,—in the market-place
But now, you promised me to say a word
About ... a friend, who once, long years ago,
Took God’s place toward me, when He draws and loves
And does not thunder, ... whom at last I left,
As all of us leave God. You thought perhaps,
I seemed to care for hearing of that friend?
Now, judge me! we have sate here half-an-hour
And talked together of the child and me,
And I not asked as much as, ‘What’s the thing
You had to tell me of the friend ... the friend?’
He’s sad, I think you said,—he’s sick perhaps?
It’s nought to Marian if he’s sad or sick.
Another would have crawled beside your foot
And prayed your words out. Why, a beast, a dog,
A starved cat, if he had fed it once with milk,
Would show less hardness. But I’m dead, you see,
And that explains it.’
Poor, poor thing, she spoke
And shook her head, as white and calm as frost
On days too cold for raining any more,
But still with such a face, so much alive,
I could not choose but take it on my arm
And stroke the placid patience of its cheeks,—
Then told my story out, of Romney Leigh,
How, having lost her, sought her, missed her still,
He, broken-hearted for himself and her,
Had drawn the curtains of the world awhile
As if he had done with morning. There I stopped,
For when she gasped, and pressed me with her eyes,
‘And now ... how is it with him? tell me now,’—
I felt the shame of compensated grief,
And chose my words with scruple—slowly stepped
Upon the slippery stones set here and there
Across the sliding water. ‘Certainly,
As evening empties morning into night,
Another morning takes the evening up
With healthful, providential interchange;
And, though he thought still of her,’—
‘Yes, she knew,
She understood: she had supposed, indeed,
That, as one stops a hole upon a flute,
At which a new note comes and shapes the tune,
Excluding her would bring a worthier in,
And, long ere this, that Lady Waldemar
He loved so’ ...
‘Loved,’ I started,—‘loved her so!
Now tell me’ ...
‘I will tell you,’ she replied:
‘But since we’re taking oaths, you’ll promise first
That he, in England, he, shall never learn
In what a dreadful trap his creature here,
Round whose unworthy neck he had meant to tie
The honourable ribbon of his name,
Fell unaware, and came to butchery:
Because,—I know him,—as he takes to heart
The grief of every stranger, he’s not like
To banish mine as far as I should choose
In wishing him most happy. Now he leaves
To think of me, perverse, who went my way,
Unkind, and left him,—but if once he knew ...
Ah, then, the sharp nail of my cruel wrong
Would fasten me for ever in his sight,
Like some poor curious bird, through each spread wing
Nailed high up over a fierce hunter’s fire,
To spoil the dinner of all tenderer folk
Come in by chance. Nay, since your Marian’s dead,
You shall not hang her up, but dig a hole
And bury her in silence! ring no bells.’

I answered gaily, though my whole voice wept;
‘We’ll ring the joy-bells, not the funeral-bells,
Because we have her back, dead or alive.’

She never answered that, but shook her head;
Then low and calm, as one who, safe in heaven,
Shall tell a story of his lower life,
Unmoved by shame or anger,—so she spoke.
She told me she had loved upon her knees,
As others pray, more perfectly absorbed
In the act and aspiration. She felt his,
For just his uses, not her own at all,
His stool, to sit on, or put up his foot,
His cup, to fill with wine or vinegar,
Whichever drink might please him at the chance,
For that should please her always: let him write
His name upon her ... it seemed natural;
It was most precious, standing on his shelf,
To wait until he chose to lift his hand.
Well, well,—I saw her then, and must have seen
How bright her life went, floating on her love,
Like wicks the housewives send afloat on oil,
Which feeds them to a flame that lasts the night.

To do good seemed so much his business,
That, having done it, she was fain to think,
Must fill up his capacity for joy.
At first she never mooted with herself
If _he_ was happy, since he made her so,
Or if _he_ loved her, being so much beloved:
Who thinks of asking if the sun is light,
Observing that it lightens? who’s so bold,
To question God of His felicity?
Still less. And thus she took for granted first,
What first of all she should have put to proof,
And sinned against him so, but only so.
‘What could you hope,’ she said, ‘of such as she?
You take a kid you like, and turn it out
In some fair garden; though the creature’s fond
And gentle, it will leap upon the beds
And break your tulips, bite your tender trees:
The wonder would be if such innocence
Spoiled less. A garden is no place for kids.’

And, by degrees, when he who had chosen her,
Brought in his courteous and benignant friends
To spend their goodness on her, which she took
So very gladly, as a part of his,—
By slow degrees, it broke on her slow sense,
That she, too, in that Eden of delight
Was out of place, and, like the silly kid,
Still did most mischief where she meant most love.
A thought enough to make a woman mad,
(No beast in this, but she may well go mad)
That, saying ‘I am thine to love and use,’
May blow the plague in her protesting breath
To the very man for whom she claims to die,—
That, clinging round his neck, she pulls him down
And drowns him,—and that, lavishing her soul,
She hales perdition on him. ‘So, being mad,’
Said Marian ...
‘Ah—who stirred such thoughts, you ask?
Whose fault it was, that she should have such thoughts?
None’s fault, none’s fault. The light comes, and we see:
But if it were not truly for our eyes,
There would be nothing seen, for all the light;
And so with Marian. If she saw at last,
The sense was in her,—Lady Waldemar
Had spoken all in vain else.’
‘O my heart,
O prophet in my heart,’ I cried aloud,
‘Then Lady Waldemar spoke!’
‘_Did_ she speak,’
Mused Marian softly—‘or did she only sign?
Or did she put a word into her face
And look, and so impress you with the word?
Or leave it in the foldings of her gown,
Like rosemary smells, a movement will shake out
When no one’s conscious? who shall say, or guess?
One thing alone was certain,—from the day
The gracious lady paid a visit first,
She, Marian, saw things different,—felt distrust
Of all that sheltering roof of circumstance
Her hopes were building into with clay nests:
Her heart was restless, pacing up and down
And fluttering, like dumb creatures before storms,
Not knowing wherefore she was ill at ease.’

‘And still the lady came,’ said Marian Erle,
‘Much oftener than _he_ knew it, Mister Leigh.
She bade me never tell him that she had come,
She liked to love me better than he knew,
So very kind was Lady Waldemar:
And every time she brought with her more light,
And every light made sorrow clearer ... Well,
Ah, well! we cannot give her blame for that;
’Twould be the same thing if an angel came,
Whose right should prove our wrong. And every time
The lady came, she looked more beautiful,
And spoke more like a flute among green trees,
Until at last, as one, whose heart being sad
On hearing lovely music, suddenly
Dissolves in weeping, I brake out in tears
Before her ... asked her counsel ... ‘had I erred
In being too happy? would she set me straight?
For she, being wise and good and born above
The flats I had never climbed from, could perceive
If such as I, might grow upon the hills;
And whether such poor herb sufficed to grow,
For Romney Leigh to break his fast upon ’t,—
Or would he pine on such, or haply starve?’
She wrapt me in her generous arms at once,
And let me dream a moment how it feels
To have a real mother, like some girls:
But when I looked, her face was younger ... ay,
Youth’s too bright not to be a little hard,
And beauty keeps itself still uppermost,
That’s true!—Though Lady Waldemar was kind,
She hurt me, hurt, as if the morning-sun
Should smite us on the eyelids when we sleep,
And wake us up with headache. Ay, and soon
Was light enough to make my heart ache too:
She told me truths I asked for ... ’twas my fault ...
‘That Romney could not love me, if he would,
As men call loving; there are bloods that flow
Together, like some rivers, and not mix,
Through contraries of nature. He indeed
Was set to wed me, to espouse my class,
Act out a rash opinion,—and, once wed,
So just a man and gentle, could not choose
But make my life as smooth as marriage-ring,
Bespeak me mildly, keep me a cheerful house,
With servants, broaches, all the flowers I liked,
And pretty dresses, silk the whole year round’ ...
At which I stopped her,—‘This for me. And now
‘For _him_.’—She murmured,—truth grew difficult;
She owned, ‘’Twas plain a man like Romney Leigh
Required a wife more level to himself.
If day by day he had to bend his height
To pick up sympathies, opinions, thoughts,
And interchange the common talk of life
Which helps a man to live as well as talk,
His days were heavily taxed. Who buys a staff
To fit the hand, that reaches but the knee?
He’d feel it bitter to be forced to miss
The perfect joy of married suited pairs,
Who, bursting through the separating hedge
Of personal dues with that sweet eglantine
Of equal love, keep saying, ‘So _we_ think,
It strikes _us_,—that’s _our_ fancy.’‘—When I asked
If earnest will, devoted love, employed
In youth like mine, would fail to raise me up,—
As two strong arms will always raise a child
To a fruit hung overhead? she sighed and sighed ...
‘That could not be,’ she feared. ‘You take a pink,
You dig about its roots and water it,
And so improve it to a garden-pink,
But will not change it to a heliotrope,
The kind remains. And then, the harder truth—
This Romney Leigh, so rash to leap a pale,
So bold for conscience, quick for martyrdom,
Would suffer steadily and never flinch,
But suffer surely and keenly, when his class
Turned shoulder on him for a shameful match,
And set him up as nine-pin in their talk,
To bowl him down with jestings.’—There, she paused;
And when I used the pause in doubting that
We wronged him after all in what we feared—
‘Suppose such things should never touch him, more
In his high conscience, (if the things should be,)
Than, when the queen sits in an upper room,
The horses in the street can spatter her!’—
A moment, hope came,—but the lady closed
That door and nicked the lock, and shut it out,
Observing wisely that, ‘the tender heart
Which made him over-soft to a lower class,
Could scarcely fail to make him sensitive
‘To a higher,—how they thought, and what they felt.’

‘Alas, alas,’ said Marian, rocking slow
The pretty baby who was near asleep,
The eyelids creeping over the blue balls,—
‘She made it clear, too clear—I saw the whole!
And yet who knows if I had seen my way
Straight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear,
Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this,
Had set her own house all a-fire for me,
To light me forwards? Leaning on my face
Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will,
She told me tenderly, (as when men come
To a bedside to tell people they must die)
‘She knew of knowledge,—ay, of knowledge, knew,
That Romney Leigh had loved _her_ formerly;
And _she_ loved _him_, she might say, now the chance
Was past ... but that, of course, he never guessed,—
For something came between them ... something thin
As a cobweb ... catching every fly of doubt
To hold it buzzing at the window-pane
And help to dim the daylight. Ah, man’s pride
Or woman’s—which is greatest? most averse
To brushing cobwebs? Well, but she and he
Remained fast friends; it seemed not more than so,
Because he had bound his hands and could not stir:
An honourable man, if somewhat rash;
And she, not even for Romney, would she spill
A blot ... as little even as a tear ...
Upon his marriage-contract,—not to gain
A better joy for two than came by that!
For, though I stood between her heart and heaven,
She loved me wholly.’
Did I laugh or curse?
I think I sate there silent, hearing all,
Ay, hearing double,—Marian’s tale, at once,
And Romney’s marriage-vow, ‘_I’ll keep to_ THEE,’
Which means that woman-serpent. Is it time
For church now?
‘Lady Waldemar spoke more,’
Continued Marian, ‘but, as when a soul
Will pass out through the sweetness of a song
Beyond it, voyaging the uphill road,—
Even so, mine wandered from the things I heard,
To those I suffered. It was afterward
I shaped the resolution to the act.
For many hours we talked. What need to talk?
The fate was clear and close; it touched my eyes;
But still the generous lady tried to keep
The case afloat, and would not let it go,
And argued, struggled upon Marian’s side,
Which was not Romney’s! though she little knew
What ugly monster would take up the end,—
What griping death within the drowning death
Was ready to complete my sum of death.’

I thought,—Perhaps he’s sliding now the ring
Upon that woman’s finger....
She went on:
‘The lady, failing to prevail her way,
Upgathered my torn wishes from the ground,
And pieced them with her strong benevolence;
And, as I thought I could breathe freer air
Away from England, going without pause,
Without farewell,—just breaking with a jerk
The blossomed offshoot from my thorny life,—
She promised kindly to provide the means,
With instant passage to the colonies
And full protection,—‘would commit me straight
‘To one who once had been her waiting-maid
And had the customs of the world, intent
On changing England for Australia
Herself, to carry out her fortune so.’
For which I thanked the Lady Waldemar,
As men upon their death-beds thank last friends
Who lay the pillow straight: it is not much,
And yet ’tis all of which they are capable,
This lying smoothly in a bed to die.
And so, ’twas fixed;—and so, from day to day,
The woman named, came in to visit me.’

Just then, the girl stopped speaking,—sate erect,
And stared at me as if I had been a ghost,
(Perhaps I looked as white as any ghost)
With large-eyed horror. ‘Does God make,’ she said,
‘All sorts of creatures, really, do you think?
Or is it that the Devil slavers them
So excellently, that we come to doubt
Who’s strongest, He who makes, or he who mars?
I never liked the woman’s face, or voice,
Or ways: it made me blush to look at her;
It made me tremble if she touched my hand;
And when she spoke a fondling word, I shrank,
As if one hated me, who had power to hurt;
And, every time she came, my veins ran cold,
As somebody were walking on my grave.
At last I spoke to Lady Waldemar:
‘Could such an one be good to trust?’ I asked.
Whereat the lady stroked my cheek and laughed
Her silver-laugh—(one must be born to laugh,
To put such music in it) ‘Foolish girl,
‘Your scattered wits are gathering wool beyond
The sheep-walk reaches!—leave the thing to me.’
And therefore, half in trust, and half in scorn
That I had heart still for another fear
In such a safe despair, I left the thing.

‘The rest is short. I was obedient:
I wrote my letter which delivered _him_
From Marian, to his own prosperities,
And followed that bad guide. The lady?—hush,—
I never blame the lady. Ladies who
Sit high, however willing to look down,
Will scarce see lower than their dainty feet:
And Lady Waldemar saw less than I,
With what a Devil’s daughter I went forth
The swine’s road, headlong over a precipice,
In such a curl of hell-foam caught and choked,
No shriek of soul in anguish could pierce through
To fetch some help. They say there’s help in heaven
For all such cries. But if one cries from hell ...
What then?—the heavens are deaf upon that side.

‘A woman ... hear me,—let me make it plain,—
A woman ... not a monster ... both her breasts
Made right to suckle babes ... she took me off,
A woman also, young and ignorant,
And heavy with my grief, my two poor eyes
Near washed away with weeping, till the trees,
The blessed unaccustomed trees and fields,
Ran either side the train, like stranger dogs
Unworthy of any notice,—took me off,
So dull, so blind, and only half alive,
Not seeing by what road, nor by what ship,
Nor toward what place, nor to what end of all.—
Men carry a corpse thus,—past the doorway, past
The garden-gate, the children’s playground, up
The green lane,—then they leave it in the pit,
To sleep and find corruption, cheek to cheek
With him who stinks since Friday.
‘But suppose;
To go down with one’s soul into the grave,—
To go down half dead, half alive, I say,
And wake up with corruption, ... cheek to cheek
With him who stinks since Friday! There it is,
And that’s the horror of ’t, Miss Leigh.
‘You feel?
You understand?—no, do not look at me,
But understand. The blank, blind, weary way
Which led ... where’er it led ... away, at least;
The shifted ship ... to Sydney or to France ...
Still bound, wherever else, to another land;
The swooning sickness on the dismal sea,
The foreign shore, the shameful house, the night,
The feeble blood, the heavy-headed grief, ...
No need to bring their damnable drugged cup,
And yet they brought it! Hell’s so prodigal
Of devil’s gifts ... hunts liberally in packs,
Will kill no poor small creature of the wilds
But fifty red wide throats must smoke at it,—
As HIS at me ... when waking up at last ...
I told you that I waked up in the grave.

‘Enough so!—it is plain enough so. True,
We wretches cannot tell out all our wrong,
Without offence to decent happy folk.
I know that we must scrupulously hint
With half-words, delicate reserves, the thing
Which no one scrupled we should feel in full.
Let pass the rest, then; only leave my oath
Upon this sleeping child,—man’s violence,
Not man’s seduction, made me what I am,
As lost as ... I told _him_ I should be lost;
When mothers fail us, can we help ourselves?
That’s fatal!—And you call it being lost,
That down came next day’s noon and caught me there
Half gibbering and half raving on the floor,
And wondering what had happened up in heaven,
That suns should dare to shine when God himself
Was certainly abolished.
‘I was mad,—
How many weeks, I know not,—many weeks.
I think they let me go, when I was mad,
They feared my eyes and loosed me, as boys might
A mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down
I went by road and village, over tracts
Of open foreign country, large and strange,
Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines
Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton Hand
Through sunlight and through moonlight evermore
Pushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,
And resolute to get me, slow and sure;
While every roadside Christ upon his cross
Hung reddening through his gory wounds at me,
And shook his nails in anger, and came down
To follow a mile after, wading up
The low vines and green wheat, crying ‘Take the girl!
‘She’s none of mine from henceforth,’ Then, I knew,
(But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest)
The charitable peasants gave me bread
And leave to sleep in straw: and twice they tied,
At parting, Mary’s image round my neck—
How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone;
A woman has been strangled with less weight:
I threw it in a ditch to keep it clean
And ease my breath a little, when none looked;
I did not need such safeguards:—brutal men
Stopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seen
My face,—I must have had an awful look.
And so I lived: the weeks passed on,—I lived.
’Twas living my old tramp-life o’er again,
But, this time, in a dream, and hunted round
By some prodigious Dream-fear at my back
Which ended, yet: my brain cleared presently,
And there I sate, one evening, by the road,
I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone,
Facing a sunset low upon the flats,
As if it were the finish of all time,—
The great red stone upon my sepulchre,
Which angels were too weak to roll away.

SEVENTH BOOK.

‘THE woman’s motive? shall we daub ourselves
With finding roots for nettles? ’tis soft clay
And easily explored. She had the means,
The monies, by the lady’s liberal grace,
In trust for that Australian scheme and me,
Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,
And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,
She served me (after all it was not strange;
’Twas only what my mother would have done)
A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.

‘Well, after. There are nettles everywhere,
But smooth green grasses are more common still;
The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;
A miller’s wife at Clichy took me in
And spent her pity on me,—made me calm
And merely very reasonably sad.
She found me a servant’s place in Paris where
I tried to take the cast-off life again,
And stood as quiet as a beaten ass
Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up
To let them charge him with another pack.

‘A few months, so. My mistress, young and light,
Was easy with me, less for kindness than
Because she led, herself, an easy time
Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,
Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.
She felt so pretty and so pleased all day
She could not take the trouble to be cross,
But, sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,
Would tap me softly with her slender foot,
Still restless with the last night’s dancing in’t,
And say, ‘Fie, pale-face! are you English girls
All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?
And first-communion colours on your cheeks,
Worn past the time for’t? little fool, be gay!’
At which she vanished, like a fairy, through
A gap of silver laughter.
‘Came an hour
When all went otherwise. She did not speak,
But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes
As if a viper with a pair of tongs,
Too far for any touch, yet near enough
To view the writhing creature,—then at last;
‘Stand still there, in the holy Virgin’s name,
Thou Marian; thou’rt no reputable girl,
Although sufficient dull for twenty saints!
I think thou mock’st me and my house,’ she said;
‘Confess, thou’lt be a mother in a month,
Thou mask of saintship.’
‘Could I answer her?
The light broke in so: it meant _that_ then, _that_?
I had not thought of that, in all my thoughts,—
Through all the cold, numb aching of my brow,
Through all the heaving of impatient life
Which threw me on death at intervals,—through all
The upbreak of the fountains of my heart
The rains had swelled too large: it could mean _that_?
Did God make mothers out of victims, then,
And set such pure amens to hideous deeds?
Why not? He overblows an ugly grave
With violets which blossom in the spring.
And _I_ could be a mother in a month!
I hope it was not wicked to be glad.
I lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed,
To heaven, not her, until it tore my throat.
‘Confess, confess!’ what was there to confess,
Except man’s cruelty, except my wrong?
Except this anguish, or this ecstasy?
This shame, or glory? The light woman there
Was small to take it in: an acorn-cup
Would take the sea in sooner.
‘Good,’ she cried;
Unmarried and a mother, and she laughs!
These unchaste girls are always impudent.
Get out, intriguer! leave my house, and trot:
I wonder you should look me in the face,
With such a filthy secret.’
‘Then I rolled
My scanty bundle up, and went my way,
Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot
With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth
Beyond those doors. ’Twas natural, of course,
She should not ask me where I meant to sleep;
I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,
Like others of my sort; the bed was laid
For us. But any woman, womanly,
Had thought of him who should be in a month,
The sinless babe that should be in a month,
And if by chance he might be warmer housed
Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.’

I broke on Marian there. ‘Yet she herself,
A wife, I think, had scandals of her own,
A lover, not her husband.’
‘Ay,’ she said,
‘But gold and meal are measured otherwise;
I learnt so much at school,’ said Marian Erle.

‘O crooked world,’ I cried, ‘ridiculous
If not so lamentable! It’s the way
With these light women of a thrifty vice,
My Marian,—always hard upon the rent
In any sister’s virtue! while they keep
Their chastity so darned with perfidy,
That, though a rag itself, it looks as well
Across a street, in balcony or coach,
As any stronger stuff might. For my part,
I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews
Than touch such women with my finger-end!
They top the poor street-walker by their lie,
And look the better for being so much worse:
The devil’s most devilish when respectable.
But you, dear, and your story.’
‘All the rest
Is here,’ she said, and signed upon the child.
‘I found a mistress-sempstress who was kind
And let me sew in peace among her girls;
And what was better than to draw the threads
All day and half the night, for him, and him?
And so I lived for him, and so he lives,
And so I know, by this time, God lives too.’

She smiled beyond the sun, and ended so,
And all my soul rose up to take her part
Against the world’s successes, virtues, fames.
‘Come with me, sweetest sister,’ I returned,
‘And sit within my house, and do me good
From henceforth, thou and thine! ye are my own
From henceforth. I am lonely in the world,
And thou art lonely, and the child is half
An orphan. Come,—and, henceforth, thou and I
Being still together, will not miss a friend,
Nor he a father, since two mothers shall
Make that up to him. I am journeying south,
And, in my Tuscan home I’ll find a niche,
And set thee there, my saint, the child and thee,
And burn the lights of love before thy face,
And ever at thy sweet look cross myself
From mixing with the world’s prosperities;
That so, in gravity and holy calm,
We two may live on toward the truer life.’

She looked me in the face and answered not,
Nor signed she was unworthy, nor gave thanks,
But took the sleeping child and held it out
To meet my kiss, as if requiting me
And trusting me at once. And thus, at once,
I carried him and her to where I lived;
She’s there now, in the little room, asleep,
I hear the soft child-breathing through the door;
And all three of us, at to-morrow’s break,
Pass onward, homeward, to our Italy.
Oh, Romney Leigh, I have your debts to pay,
And I’ll be just and pay them.
But yourself!
To pay your debts is scarcely difficult;
To buy your life is nearly impossible,
Being sold away to Lamia. My head aches;
I cannot see my road along this dark;
Nor can I creep and grope, as fits the dark,
For these foot-catching robes of womanhood:
A man might walk a little ... but I!—He loves
The Lamia-woman,—and I, write to him
What stops his marriage, and destroys his peace,—
Or what, perhaps, shall simply trouble him,
Until she only need to touch his sleeve
With just a finger’s tremulous white flame,
Saying, ‘Ah,—Aurora Leigh! a pretty tale,
A very pretty poet! I can guess
The motive’—then, to catch his eyes in hers,
And vow she does not wonder,—and they two
To break in laughter, as the sea along
A melancholy coast, and float up higher,
In such a laugh, their fatal weeds of love!
Ay, fatal, ay. And who shall answer me
Fate has not hurried tides; and if to-night
My letter would not be a night too late,—
An arrow shot into a man that’s dead,
To prove a vain intention? Would I show
The new wife vile, to make the husband mad?
No, Lamia! shut the shutters, bar the doors
From every glimmer on thy serpent-skin!
I will not let thy hideous secret out
To agonise the man I love—I mean
The friend I love ... as friends love.
It is strange,
To-day while Marian told her story, like
To absorb most listeners, how I listened chief
To a voice not hers, nor yet that enemy’s,
Nor God’s in wrath, ... but one that mixed with mine
Long years ago, among the garden-trees,
And said to _me_, to _me_ too, ‘Be my wife,
Aurora!’ It is strange, with what a swell
Of yearning passion, as snow of ghosts
Might beat against the impervious doors of heaven,
I thought, ‘Now, if I had been a woman, such
As God made women, to save men by love,—
By just my love I might have saved this man,
And made a nobler poem for the world
Than all I have failed in.’ But I failed besides
In this; and now he’s lost! through me alone!
And, by my only fault, his empty house
Sucks in, at this same hour, a wind from hell
To keep his hearth cold, make his casements creak
For ever to the tune of plague and sin—
O Romney, O my Romney, O my friend!
My cousin and friend! my helper, when I would,
My love, that might be! mine!
Why, how one weeps
When one’s too weary! Were a witness by,
He’d say some folly ... that I loved the man,
Who knows?... and make me laugh again for scorn.
At strongest, women are as weak in flesh,
As men, at weakest, vilest, are in soul:
So, hard for women to keep pace with men!
As well give up at once, sit down at once,
And weep as I do. Tears, tears! _why_, we weep?
’Tis worth enquiry?—That we’ve shamed a life,
Or lost a love, or missed a world, perhaps?
By no means. Simply, that we’ve walked too far,
Or talked too much, or felt the wind i’ the east,—
And so we weep, as if both body and soul
Broke up in water—this way.
Poor mixed rags
Forsooth we’re made of, like those other dolls
That lean with pretty faces into fairs.
It seems as if I had a man in me,
Despising such a woman.
Yet indeed,
To see a wrong or suffering moves us all
To undo it, though we should undo ourselves;
Ay, all the more, that we undo ourselves;
That’s womanly, past doubt, and not ill-moved.
A natural movement, therefore, on my part,
To fill the chair up of my cousin’s wife,
And save him from a devil’s company!
We’re all so,—made so—’tis our woman’s trade
To suffer torment for another’s ease.
The world’s male chivalry has perished out,
But women are knights-errant to the last;
And, if Cervantes had been greater still,
He had made his Don a Donna.
So it clears,
And so we rain our skies blue.
Put away
This weakness. If, as I have just now said,
A man’s within me,—let him act himself,
Ignoring the poor conscious trouble of blood
That’s called the woman merely. I will write
Plain words to England,—if too late, too late,—
If ill-accounted, then accounted ill;
We’ll trust the heavens with something.
‘Dear Lord Howe,
You’ll find a story on another leaf
That’s Marian Erle’s,—what noble friend of yours
She trusted once, through what flagitious means
To what disastrous ends;—the story’s true.
I found her wandering on the Paris quays,
A babe upon her breast,—unnatural
Unseasonable outcast on such snows
Unthawed to this time. I will tax in this
Your friendship, friend,—if that convicted She
Be not his wife yet, to denounce the facts
To himself,—but, otherwise, to let them pass
On tip-toe like escaping murderers,
And tell my cousin, merely—Marian lives,
Is found, and finds her home with such a friend,
Myself, Aurora. Which good news, ‘She’s found,’
Will help to make him merry in his love:
I send it, tell him, for my marriage gift,
As good as orange-water for the nerves,
Or perfumed gloves for headaches,—though aware
That he, except of love, is scarcely sick;
I mean the new love this time, ... since last year.
Such quick forgetting on the part of men!
Is any shrewder trick upon the cards
To enrich them? pray instruct me how it’s done.
First, clubs,—and while you look at clubs, it’s spades;
That’s prodigy. The lightning strikes a man,
And when we think to find him dead and charred ...
Why, there he is on a sudden, playing pipes
Beneath the splintered elm-tree! Crime and shame
And all their hoggery trample your smooth world,
Nor leave more foot-marks than Apollo’s kine,
Whose hoofs were muffled by the thieving god
In tamarisk-leaves and myrtle. I’m so sad,
So weary and sad to-night, I’m somewhat sour,—
Forgive me. To be blue and shrew at once,
Exceeds all toleration except yours;
But yours, I know, is infinite. Farewell.
To-morrow we take train for Italy.
Speak gently of me to your gracious wife,
As one, however far, shall yet be near
In loving wishes to your house.’
I sign.
And now I’ll loose my heart upon a page,
This—
‘Lady Waldemar, I’m very glad
I never liked you; which you knew so well,
You spared me, in your turn, to like me much.
Your liking surely had done worse for me
Than has your loathing, though the last appears
Sufficiently unscrupulous to hurt,
And not afraid of judgment. Now, there’s space
Between our faces,—I stand off, as if
I judged a stranger’s portrait and pronounced
Indifferently the type was good or bad:
What matter to me that the lines are false,
I ask you? Did I ever ink my lips
By drawing your name through them as a friend’s,
Or touch your hands as lovers do? thank God
I never did: and, since you’re proved so vile,
Ay, vile, I say,—we’ll show it presently,—
I’m not obliged to nurse my friend in you,
Or wash out my own blots, in counting yours,
Or even excuse myself to honest souls
Who seek to touch my lip or clasp my palm,—
‘Alas, but Lady Waldemar came first!’
‘’Tis true, by this time, you may near me so
That you’re my cousin’s wife. You’ve gambled deep
As Lucifer, and won the morning-star
In that case,—and the noble house of Leigh
Must henceforth with its good roof shelter you:
I cannot speak and burn you up between
Those rafters, I who am born a Leigh,—nor speak
And pierce your breast through Romney’s, I who live
His friend and cousin!—so, you are safe. You two
Must grow together like the tares and wheat
Till God’s great fire.—But make the best of time.

‘And hide this letter! let it speak no more
Than I shall, how you tricked poor Marian Erle,
And set her own love digging her own grave
Within her green hope’s pretty garden-ground;
Ay, sent her forth with some one of your sort
To a wicked house in France,—from which she fled
With curses in her eyes and ears and throat,
Her whole soul choked with curses,—mad, in short,
And madly scouring up and down for weeks
The foreign hedgeless country, lone and lost,—
So innocent, male-fiends might slink within
Remote hell-corners, seeing her so defiled!