Chapter XXXI

And I recall my calling out in prayer,
How long, how toilfully, how fruitlessly!
At last, my doubt had made me leave my beads,
And, moved as if to cool a feverish faith,
Pass out, the night air seeking. There I saw
The moon. It soothed me always with strange spells,
The moon. But now, as though all things would join
To rout my peace, I seem’d this moon to see
Caught up behind an angry horde of clouds,
Chased by the hot breath of a coming storm
That clang’d his thunder-bugle through the west.
When once the rude gust hit the moon, it tipt—
Or so it seem’d—and with a deafening peal
It spilt one blinding flash. Then, where this lit,
Just in the path before me gleam’d a knife!
Held o’er a form of white! To see the thing
I scream’d aloud. It seem’d a ghost!
My scream
Awoke no echo save Doretta’s voice:—
“Pauline?—and were you frighten’d?”
Then to this,
In part because the shock had stunn’d me much,
In part because I felt me much provoked,
But most because my ears were deaf to sport,
I answer’d naught. Whereat, as now I think,
Though then in that unnatural, nervous mood
My mind surmised more horrid inference,
Her voice, in still more mischievous caprice,
Went on to vex me more.
“What?—Fear you me!
And have you done so much against me, then!
And if you have, why fear you here a knife?—
You think the blade might draw some little blood;—
Would that much signify?—the body pain’d?
Suppose that one should wield some subtler blade
And draw some tears, mere watery tears, weak things;—
Would they much signify?—a soul in pain?
And did you never now do that?—draw tears?—
And think, is not the soul much worse to harm
Than is the body?—Fy! why fear a knife?
If I supposed that through a lifetime long
My soul should bleed its dear strength out in tears,
Why would it not be mercy to myself
For me to check the longer, stronger woe
By shedding here some drops of weaker blood,
Now, once for all?”
“O dear Doretta mine,”
I cried, and still more anxious, “do you mean”—

“This,” answer’d she; “I mean that I would cut
My body’s life in two parts, rather than
My soul’s life.”
“Sister,” I could only gasp,
“Cease—do;—put by that knife”—
“Why?” answer’d she;—
“For what?—Your wish? Do you so often yield
When I wish aught?—Say now what would you give?”

“Give?—Any thing!” I answer’d.
“Be not rash,”
Came then. “It scarcely seems your way; besides,
The light is dim. How know you? may not ears
Not far off overhear us here? Beware!—
But stay!” she added, “I will go my way,
And you go yours. Who cares what either does?”

XXXII.

“Doretta, nay; but stop,” I cried again,
“Put by the knife!—and if you will, then I—
Then I and Haydn will not”—
“You?” she laugh’d,
“And Haydn?—Humph!—Who cares what you may do?—
But ah—if planning thus to vent your thought,
Could I have chosen, eh, a shrewder way?—
Ha! ha!—to murder me, or you, or him!
It starts all madness, yes, to tap your moods.
But go in, simpleton,—the rain has come,—
And trust the knife to me. It meant no harm
Except to this beheaded cabbage here.”

And, shaking this aloft, she flitted off,
While I walk’d vaguely back, to find my room
Still sadder than before. I could not think
That my surmise was just; yet could not think
That all her strange demean was meaningless;
To this day yet, I pause and puzzle oft
That scene to ponder; then, to moods confused,
It seem’d the final blow, unsettling all.

XXXIII.

What comes as direful as the direful night
A spirit spends in trouble?—fill’d with fears
That sleep may bring distressful nightmares now;
And now, that morn may come before we sleep;
Until, betwixt the two, distracted quite,
Awake one dreams, and dreaming seems awake,
And evermore does weep at what he dreams,
And then does weep that he should dream no more.
In darkest fancies all that night I lay,
A murderess, guilty of Doretta’s death.

XXXIV.

Alas! and after those long hours of woe,
More woe awaited me when morning came.
Our Haydn’s bed-worn frame, so frail before,
New-rent by throes of passion yesterday,
Once more lay prostrate in the arms of death:
So thought we all: I, ere the fact I heard,
Could feel its cold shade creeping over me.
The shutters closed, the silence everywhere,
The very coffin of our lively home,
The sadden’d looks, the voices all suppress’d,
The kind physician’s face, that wore no smile,—
I did not need to ask the cause of all.
I sought and saw my Haydn. How his face
Gazed forth, a ghost’s, against my sense of guilt!
For I, perhaps, had made his last thought sin;
And I, perhaps, had lured him toward his doom.
I thought then of my father, of the priest,
What they of love had said, of genuine love,
Such love as Christ had had. I ask’d myself
If there was naught that I could sacrifice?

XXXV.

Ah, friend, do you recall that afternoon
When first we met? How sad yet sweet it seem’d!
So many kindly sisters with me spake,
And for me prayed, and when the dusk had come,
And hardly any eye but God’s could see,
We knelt before the altar; and I rose,
Content if like that light before the shrine
Within my heart one light alone could burn;
Though all the earth beside might loom as dark
As those chill, shadowy chapels down the aisle.

I felt another life when walking home.
Such conflicts come but seldom; storms of spring,
Uprooting much, and wracking much the soil,
They find it frost-bound, and they leave it green.
Alas, if grain or chaff grow then, depends
Upon the germs their rains have wrought upon.