Chapter XLIII

“O Haydn,” begg’d I, “say not this. Here speaks
The same rebellion that was once my own.
We must not judge for self, but reverence
The words of men ordain’d to teach the world;
The words of men so learnèd in the truth;
The words of councils fill’d with just such men.—
No reverence have you for authority?”

“Mere common courtesy would teach me that,”
He said. “And how could common piety,
If awed before the Power above the sky,
Deny a kindred awe to power on earth?
The Church has power—and more. I reverence it.
It may be God’s own storehouse of the truth.
But ah, some truths have never yet been stored!
Infinity is broad, and broad enough
For truth to grow within me and without,
In self as well as in the best about it.
And I believe that all things God makes grow,
Unfold in ways that work in harmony.
And, when I love a soul as you I love,
Did all the priests on earth assemble here,
In front of them the pope, in front of him
A shining form put forth by them as Christ,
And tell me this pure love could lie to me,
I would not”—
“Haydn stop!—dare not!” I cried;—
“And I have pray’d to God so much, so much,
To make you more submissive.”
“I submit
To God,” he said; “but with my love to God,
How can I yield the godliest thing I own?”

And there he sat, so firm and yet so kind,
I could not help but sigh, “You make me doubt.”

“Would God,” he said, “I could do that for you!
Then might you have true faith. Where springs from will
One wise effect that does not follow doubt?
One choice that does not weigh alternatives?
Doubt comes with waverings of the balances
Before the heavier motive settles down.
Let those who feel so sure their views are right,
Dissolve my doubt:—I dare to doubt if they
Walk not by knowledge rather than by faith.
I read that Jesus answer’d him who pray’d,
‘Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief’;
That on the cross itself even He could cry:
‘My God, O why hast thou forsaken me?’
And so I think, at times, these doubts of ours
May only rise like minor preludes here,
Ere that triumphant cadence, ‘It is finished.’
But come, Pauline,” he added then with warmth,
“And promise me that you will yield them up,
These dark, sad thoughts. Why, they could make of me
An infidel outright! Could faith destroy
Our love, what good then might it not destroy?”
A wonder is it, that to moods like this
I could not say the thing I would?

XLIV.

Months pass’d.
My time drew nigh. My vows must be fulfill’d.
I told my father of it, and he wept.
Poor man, he spent his hours alternately.
At times he urged; at times he chided me;
At times he kiss’d my cheek and look’d at me;
At times he took me by the hand, and said:
“My daughter, dear, we will defer the deed”;
At times he moaned: “My daughter will do right.”

XLV.

Then slowly dawn’d on Haydn’s mind the fact,
Though not, as yet, the reason of my vow.
And all the household grew so mild with me,
And all the neighbors gazed so piteously:
If they had clothed my body in a shroud,
And I had loiter’d round it there, a ghost,
Life scarce had seem’d more lonely or more chill.

But yet more sad than all it seem’d for me
To shun poor Haydn. To his attic driven,
Who knew his grief? Alas, who knew it not?
Did ever harpsichord so crave a voice
To utter forth a cry of full despair?
Did ever aught that human hands could touch
So tremble to reveal such agony
As wrung the frame of him whose fingers wrought,
Along the sympathetic key-board there,
The counterpoint still pointing out his woe?