Chapter XI: Act III (2)

Now, the old trunk was tough, was solid as stump of oak
Untouched at the core by a thousand years: much less had its
seventy broke
One whipcord nerve in the muscly mass from neck to shoulder-blade
Of the mountainous man, whereon his child's rash hand like a
feather weighed.

Nevertheless at once did the mammoth shut his eyes,
Drop chin to breast, drop hands to sides, stand stiffened--arms
and thighs
All of a piece--struck mute, much as a sentry stands,
Patient to take the enemy's fire: his captain so commands.

Whereat the son's wrath flew to fury at such sheer scorn
Of his puny strength by the giant eld thus acting the babe new-born:
And "Neither will this turn serve!" yelled he. "Out with you!
Trundle, log!
If you cannot tramp and trudge like a man, try all-fours like a dog!"

Still the old man stood mute. So, logwise,--down to floor
Pulled from his fireside place, dragged on from hearth to door,--
Was he pushed, a very log, staircase along, until
A certain turn in the steps was reached, a yard from the
house-door-sill.

Then the father opened eyes--each spark of their rage extinct,--
Temples, late black, dead-blanched,--right-hand with left-hand
linked,--
He faced his son submissive; when slow the accents came,
They were strangely mild though his son's rash hand on his neck
lay all the same.

"Hob, on just such a night of a Christmas long ago,
For such a cause, with such a gesture, did I drag--so--
My father down thus far: but, softening here, I heard
A voice in my heart, and stopped: you wait for an outer word.

"For your own sake, not mine, soften you too! Untrod
Leave this last step we reach, nor brave the finger of God!
I dared not pass its lifting: I did well. I nor blame
Nor praise you. I stopped here: and, Hob, do you the same!"

Straightway the son relaxed his hold of the father's throat.
They mounted, side by side, to the room again: no note
Took either of each, no sign made each to either: last
As first, in absolute silence, their Christmas-night they passed.

At dawn, the father sate on, dead, in the self-same place,
With an outburst blackening still the old bad fighting-face:
But the son crouched all a-tremble like any lamb new-yeaned.

When he went to the burial, someone's staff he borrowed--tottered
and leaned.
But his lips were loose, not locked,--kept muttering, mumbling.
"There!
At his cursing and swearing!" the youngsters cried: but the elders
thought "In prayer."
A boy threw stones: he picked them up and stored them in his vest.

So tottered, muttered, mumbled he, till he died, perhaps found rest.
"Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?" O Lear,
That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear!

In the "Inn Album," a degenerate type of Nineteenth-Century Englishman is dissected with the keen knife of a surgeon, which Browning knows so well how to wield. The villain of this poem was a real personage, a Lord de Ros, a friend of the Duke of Wellington. The story belongs to the annals of crime and is necessarily unpleasant, but in order to see how Browning has worked up the episode it is interesting to know the bare facts as Furnivall gives them in "Notes and Queries" March 25, 1876. He says "that the gambling lord showed the portrait of the lady he had seduced and abandoned and offered his dupe an introduction to her, as a bribe to induce him to wait for payment of the money he had won; that the young gambler eagerly accepted the offer; and that the lady committed suicide on hearing of the bargain between them." Dr. Furnivall heard the story from some one who well remembered the sensation it had made in London years ago. In his management of the story, Browning has intensified the villainy of the Lord at the same time that he has shown a possible streak of goodness in him. The young man, on the other hand, he has made to be of very good stuff, indeed, notwithstanding his year of tutelage from the older man. He makes one radical change in the story as well as several minor ones. In the poem the younger man had been in love with the girl whom the older man had dishonorably treated, and had never ceased to love her. Of course, the two men do not know this. By the advice of the elder man, the younger one has decided to settle down and marry his cousin, a charming young girl, who is also brought upon the scene. The other girl is represented as having married an old country parson, who sought a wife simply as a helpmeet in his work. By thus complicating the situations, room has been given for subtle psychic development. The action is all concentrated into one morning in the parlor of the old inn, reminding one much of the method of Ibsen in his plays of grouping his action about a final catastrophe. At the inn one is introduced first to the two gamblers in talk, the young man having won his ten thousand pounds from the older man, who had intended to fleece him. The inn album plays an important part in the action, innocent as its first appearance upon the scene seems to be. The description of this and the inn parlor opens the poem.

THE INN ALBUM

I

"That oblong book's the Album; hand it here!
Exactly! page on page of gratitude
For breakfast, dinner, supper, and the view!
I praise these poets: they leave margin-space;
Each stanza seems to gather skirts around,
And primly, trimly, keep the foot's confine,
Modest and maidlike; lubber prose o'er-sprawls
And straddling stops the path from left to right.
Since I want space to do my cipher-work,
Which poem spares a corner? What comes first?
'_Hail, calm acclivity, salubrious spot!_'
(Open the window, we burn daylight, boy!)
Or see--succincter beauty, brief and bold--
'_If a fellow can dine On rumpsteaks and port wine,
He needs not despair Of dining well here_--'
'_Here!_' I myself could find a better rhyme!
That bard's a Browning; he neglects the form:
But ah, the sense, ye gods, the weighty sense!
Still, I prefer this classic. Ay, throw wide!
I'll quench the bits of candle yet unburnt.
A minute's fresh air, then to cipher-work!
Three little columns hold the whole account:
_EcartÈ_, after which Blind Hookey, then
Cutting-the-Pack, five hundred pounds the cut.
'Tis easy reckoning: I have lost, I think."

Two personages occupy this room
Shabby-genteel, that's parlor to the inn
Perched on a view-commanding eminence;
--Inn which may be a veritable house
Where somebody once lived and pleased good taste
Till tourists found his coign of vantage out,
And fingered blunt the individual mark
And vulgarized things comfortably smooth.
On a sprig-pattern-papered wall there brays
Complaint to sky Sir Edwin's dripping stag;
His couchant coast-guard creature corresponds;
They face the Huguenot and Light o' the World.
Grim o'er the mirror on the mantlepiece,
Varnished and coffined, _Salmo ferox_ glares
--Possibly at the List of Wines which, framed
And glazed, hangs somewhat prominent on peg.

So much describes the stuffy little room--
Vulgar flat smooth respectability:
Not so the burst of landscape surging in,
Sunrise and all, as he who of the pair
Is, plain enough, the younger personage
Draws sharp the shrieking curtain, sends aloft
The sash, spreads wide and fastens back to wall
Shutter and shutter, shows you England's best.
He leans into a living glory-bath
Of air and light where seems to float and move
The wooded watered country, hill and dale
And steel-bright thread of stream, a-smoke with mist,
A-sparkle with May morning, diamond drift
O' the sun-touched dew. Except the red-roofed patch
Of half a dozen dwellings that, crept close
For hill-side shelter, make the village-clump
This inn is perched above to dominate--
Except such sign of human neighborhood,
(And this surmised rather than sensible)
There's nothing to disturb absolute peace,
The reign of English nature--which mean art
And civilized existence. Wildness' self
Is just the cultured triumph. Presently
Deep solitude, be sure, reveals a Place
That knows the right way to defend itself:
Silence hems round a burning spot of life.
Now, where a Place burns, must a village brood,
And where a village broods, an inn should boast--
Close and convenient: here you have them both.
This inn, the Something-arms--the family's--
(Don't trouble Guillim; heralds leave our half!)
Is dear to lovers of the picturesque,
And epics have been planned here; but who plan
Take holy orders and find work to do.
Painters are more productive, stop a week,
Declare the prospect quite a Corot,--ay,
For tender sentiment,--themselves incline
Rather to handsweep large and liberal;
Then go, but not without success achieved
--Haply some pencil-drawing, oak or beech,
Ferns at the base and ivies up the bole,
On this a slug, on that a butterfly.
Nay, he who hooked the _salmo_ pendent here,
Also exhibited, this same May-month,
'_Foxgloves: a study_'--so inspires the scene,
The air, which now the younger personage
Inflates him with till lungs o'erfraught are fain
Sigh forth a satisfaction might bestir
Even those tufts of tree-tops to the South
I' the distance where the green dies off to grey,
Which, easy of conjecture, front the Place;
He eyes them, elbows wide, each hand to cheek.
His fellow, the much older--either say
A youngish-old man or man oldish-young--
Sits at the table: wicks are noisome-deep
In wax, to detriment of plated ware;
Above--piled, strewn--is store of playing-cards,
Counters and all that's proper for a game.

Circumstantial as the description of this parlor and the situation of the inn is, it is impossible to say which out of the many English inns Browning had in mind. Inns date back to the days of the Romans, who had ale-houses along the roads, the most interesting feature of which was the ivy garland or wreath of vine-leaves in honor of Bacchus, wreathed around a hoop at the end of a long pole to point out the way where good drink could be had. A curious survival of this in early English times was the "ale-stake," a tavern so called because it had a long pole projecting from the house front wreathed like the old Roman poles with furze, a garland of flowers or an ivy wreath. This decoration was called the "bush," and in time the London taverners so vied with each other in their attempt to attract attention by very long poles and very prominent bushes that in 1375 a law was passed according to which all taverners in the city of London owning ale-stakes projecting or extending over the King's highway more than seven feet in length, at the utmost, should be fined forty pence, and compelled to remove the sign. Here is the origin, too, of the proverb, "good wine needs no bush." In the later development of the inn the signs lost their Bacchic character and became most elaborate, often being painted by artists.

The poet says this inn was the "Something-arms," and had perhaps once been a house. Many inns were the "Something (?) arms" and certainly many inns had been houses. One such is the Pounds Bridge Inn on a secluded road between Speldhurst and Penshurst in Kent. It was built by the rector of Penshurst, William Darkenoll, who lived in it only three years, when it became an inn. The inn of the poem might have been a combination in Browning's memory of this and the "White Horse" at Woolstone, which is described as a queerly pretty little inn with a front distantly resembling a Chippendale bureau-bookcase. "It is tucked away under the mighty sides of White Horse Hill, Berkshire, and additionally overhung with trees and encircled with shrubberies and under-woods, and is finally situated on a narrow road that presently leads, as it would seem, to the end of the known world." So writes the enthusiastic lover of inns, Charles Harper. Or, perhaps, since there is a river to be seen from the inn of the poem the "Swan" at Sandleford Water, where a foot bridge and a water splash on the river Enborne mark the boundaries of Hampshire and Berkshire. Here "You have the place wholly to yourself, or share it only with the squirrels and the birds of the overarching trees." The illustration given of the Black Bear Inn, Tewksbury, is a quite typical example of inn architecture, and may have helped the picture in Browning's mind, though its situation is not so rural as that described in the poem.

Inns have, from time immemorial, been the scenes of romances and tragedies and crimes. There have been inns like the "Castle" where the "quality" loved to congregate. The "inn album" of this establishment had inscribed in it almost every eighteenth-century name of any distinction. There have been inns which were noted as the resort of the wits of the day. Ben Jonson loved to take "mine ease in mine inn," and Dr. Johnson declared that a seat in a tavern chair was the height of human felicity. "He was thinking," as it has been pertinently put, "not only of a comfortable sanded parlor, a roaring fire, and plenty of good cheer and good company, but also of the circle of humbly appreciative auditors who gathered round an accepted wit, hung upon his words, offered themselves as butts for his ironic or satiric humor, and--stood treat." Or there was the inn of sinister aspect where highwaymen might congregate, or inns with hosts who let their guests down through trap-doors in the middle of the night to rob and murder them--or is this only a vague remembrance of a fanciful inn of Dickens? Then there was the pilgrim's inn in the days when Chaucerian folks loved to go on pilgrimages, and in the last century the cyclists inn, and to-day the inn of the automobilist. The particular inn in the poem belongs to the class, rural inn, and in spite of its pictures by noted masters was "stuffy" as to the atmosphere.

The "inn album" or visitors' book is a feature of inns. In this country we simply sign our names in the visitors' book, but the "album" feature of the visitors' book of an English inn is its glory and too often its shame, for as Mr. Harper says, "Bathos, ineptitude, and lines that refuse to scan are the stigmata of visitors' book verse. There is no worse poetry on earth than that which lurks between those covers, or in the pages of young ladies' albums." He declares that "The interesting pages of visitors' books are generally those that are not there, as an Irishman might say; for the world is populated very densely with those appreciative people who, whether from a love of literature, or with an instinct for collecting autographs that may have a realizable value, remove the signatures of distinguished men, and with them anything original they may have written."

Browning pokes fun at the poetry of his inn album, but at the same time uses it as an important part of the machinery in the action. His English "Iago" writes in it the final damnation of his own character--the threat by means of which he hopes to ruin his victims, but which, instead, causes the lady to take poison and the young man to murder "Iago."

The presence of the two men at this particular inn is explained in the following bit of conversation between them.

"You wrong your poor disciple. Oh, no airs!
Because you happen to be twice my age
And twenty times my master, must perforce
No blink of daylight struggle through the web
There's no unwinding? You entoil my legs,
And welcome, for I like it: blind me,--no!
A very pretty piece of shuttle-work
Was that--your mere chance question at the club--
'_Do you go anywhere this Whitsuntide?
I'm off for Paris, there's the Opera--there's
The Salon, there's a china-sale,--beside
Chantilly; and, for good companionship,
There's Such-and-such and So-and-so. Suppose
We start together?_' '_No such holiday!_'
I told you: '_Paris and the rest be hanged!
Why plague me who am pledged to home-delights?
I'm the engaged now; through whose fault but yours?
On duty. As you well know. Don't I drowse
The week away down with the Aunt and Niece?
No help: it's leisure, loneliness and love.
Wish I could take you; but fame travels fast,--
A man of much newspaper-paragraph,
You scare domestic circles; and beside
Would not you like your lot, that second taste
Of nature and approval of the grounds!
You might walk early or lie late, so shirk
Week-day devotions: but stay Sunday o'er,
And morning church is obligatory:
No mundane garb permissible, or dread
The butler's privileged monition! No!
Pack off to Paris, nor wipe tear away!_'
Whereon how artlessly the happy flash
Followed, by inspiration! '_Tell you what--
Let's turn their flank, try things on t'other side!
Inns for my money! Liberty's the life!
We'll lie in hiding: there's the crow-nest nook,
The tourist's joy, the Inn they rave about,
Inn that's out--out of sight and out of mind
And out of mischief to all four of us--
Aunt and niece, you and me. At night arrive;
At morn, find time for just a Pisgah-view
Of my friend's Land of Promise; then depart.
And while I'm whizzing onward by first train,
Bound for our own place (since my Brother sulks
And says I shun him like the plague) yourself--
Why, you have stepped thence, start from platform, gay
Despite the sleepless journey,--love lends wings,--
Hug aunt and niece who, none the wiser, wait
The faithful advent! Eh?_' '_With all my heart_,'
Said I to you; said I to mine own self:
'_Does he believe I fail to comprehend
He wants just one more final friendly snack
At friend's exchequer ere friend runs to earth,
Marries, renounces yielding friends such sport?_'
And did I spoil sport, pull face grim,--nay, grave?
Your pupil does you better credit! No!
I parleyed with my pass-book,--rubbed my pair
At the big balance in my banker's hands,--
Folded a cheque cigar-case-shape,--just wants
Filling and signing,--and took train, resolved
To execute myself with decency
And let you win--if not Ten thousand quite,
Something by way of wind-up-farewell burst
Of firework-nosegay! Where's your fortune fled?
Or is not fortune constant after all?
You lose ten thousand pounds: had I lost half
Or half that, I should bite my lips, I think.
You man of marble! Strut and stretch my best
On tiptoe, I shall never reach your height.
How does the loss feel! Just one lesson more!"

The more refined man smiles a frown away.

On the way to the station where the older man is to take the train they have another talk, in which each tells the other of his experience, but they do not find out yet that they have both loved the same woman.

"Stop, my boy!
Don't think I'm stingy of experience! Life
--It's like this wood we leave. Should you and I
Go wandering about there, though the gaps
We went in and came out by were opposed
As the two poles, still, somehow, all the same,
By nightfall we should probably have chanced
On much the same main points of interest--
Both of us measured girth of mossy trunk,
Stript ivy from its strangled prey, clapped hands
At squirrel, sent a fir-cone after crow,
And so forth,--never mind what time betwixt.
So in our lives; allow I entered mine
Another way than you: 't is possible
I ended just by knocking head against
That plaguy low-hung branch yourself began
By getting bump from; as at last you too
May stumble o'er that stump which first of all
Bade me walk circumspectly. Head and feet
Are vulnerable both, and I, foot-sure,
Forgot that ducking down saves brow from bruise.
I, early old, played young man four years since
And failed confoundedly: so, hate alike
Failure and who caused failure,--curse her cant!"

"Oh, I see! You, though somewhat past the prime,
Were taken with a rosebud beauty! Ah--
But how should chits distinguish? She admired
Your marvel of a mind, I'll undertake!
But as to body ... nay, I mean ... that is,
When years have told on face and figure...."

"Thanks,
Mister _Sufficiently-Instructed_! Such
No doubt was bound to be the consequence
To suit your self-complacency: she liked
My head enough, but loved some heart beneath
Some head with plenty of brown hair a-top
After my young friend's fashion! What becomes
Of that fine speech you made a minute since
About the man of middle age you found
A formidable peer at twenty-one?
So much for your mock-modesty! and yet
I back your first against this second sprout
Of observation, insight, what you please.
My middle age, Sir, had too much success!
It's odd: my case occurred four years ago--
I finished just while you commenced that turn
I' the wood of life that takes us to the wealth
Of honeysuckle, heaped for who can reach.
Now, I don't boast: it's bad style, and beside,
The feat proves easier than it looks: I plucked
Full many a flower unnamed in that bouquet
(Mostly of peonies and poppies, though!)
Good nature sticks into my button-hole.
Therefore it was with nose in want of snuff
Rather than Ess or Psidium, that I chanced
On what--so far from '_rosebud beauty_'.... Well--
She's dead: at least you never heard her name;
She was no courtly creature, had nor birth
Nor breeding--mere fine-lady-breeding; but
Oh, such a wonder of a woman! Grand
As a Greek statue! Stick fine clothes on that,
Style that a Duchess or a Queen,--you know,
Artists would make an outcry: all the more,
That she had just a statue's sleepy grace
Which broods o'er its own beauty. Nay, her fault
(Don't laugh!) was just perfection: for suppose
Only the little flaw, and I had peeped
Inside it, learned what soul inside was like.
At Rome some tourist raised the grit beneath
A Venus' forehead with his whittling-knife--
I wish,--now,--I had played that brute, brought blood
To surface from the depths I fancied chalk!
As it was, her mere face surprised so much
That I stopped short there, struck on heap, as stares
The cockney stranger at a certain bust
With drooped eyes,--she's the thing I have in mind,--
Down at my Brother's. All sufficient prize--
Such outside! Now,--confound me for a prig!--
Who cares? I'll make a clean breast once for all!
Beside, you've heard the gossip. My life long
I've been a woman-liker,--liking means
Loving and so on. There's a lengthy list
By this time I shall have to answer for--
So say the good folk: and they don't guess half--
For the worst is, let once collecting-itch
Possess you, and, with perspicacity,
Keeps growing such a greediness that theft
Follows at no long distance,--there's the fact!
I knew that on my Leporello-list
Might figure this, that, and the other name
Of feminine desirability,
But if I happened to desire inscribe,
Along with these, the only Beautiful--
Here was the unique specimen to snatch
Or now or never. 'Beautiful' I said--
'Beautiful' say in cold blood,--boiling then
To tune of '_Haste, secure whate'er the cost
This rarity, die in the act, be damned,
So you complete collection, crown your list!_'
It seemed as though the whole world, once aroused
By the first notice of such wonder's birth,
Would break bounds to contest my prize with me
The first discoverer, should she but emerge
From that safe den of darkness where she dozed
Till I stole in, that country-parsonage
Where, country-parson's daughter, motherless,
Brotherless, sisterless, for eighteen years
She had been vegetating lily-like.
Her father was my brother's tutor, got
The living that way: him I chanced to see--
Her I saw--her the world would grow one eye
To see, I felt no sort of doubt at all!
'_Secure her!_' cried the devil: '_afterward
Arrange for the disposal of the prize!_'
The devil's doing! yet I seem to think--
Now, when all's done,--think with '_a head reposed_'
In French phrase--hope I think I meant to do
All requisite for such a rarity
When I should be at leisure, have due time
To learn requirement. But in evil day--
Bless me, at week's end, long as any year,
The father must begin '_Young Somebody,
Much recommended--for I break a rule--
Comes here to read, next Long Vacation_.' '_Young!_'
That did it. Had the epithet been '_rich_,'
'_Noble_,' '_a genius_,' even '_handsome_,'--but
--'_Young!_'"

"I say--just a word! I want to know--
You are not married?"
"I?"

"Nor ever were?"
"Never! Why?"
"Oh, then--never mind! Go on!
I had a reason for the question."

"Come,--
You could not be the young man?"
"No, indeed!
Certainly--if you never married her!"

"That I did not: and there's the curse, you'll see!
Nay, all of it's one curse, my life's mistake
Which, nourished with manure that's warranted
To make the plant bear wisdom, blew out full
In folly beyond field-flower-foolishness!
The lies I used to tell my womankind,
Knowing they disbelieved me all the time
Though they required my lies, their decent due,
This woman--not so much believed, I'll say,
As just anticipated from my mouth:
Since being true, devoted, constant--she
Found constancy, devotion, truth, the plain
And easy commonplace of character.
No mock-heroics but seemed natural
To her who underneath the face, I knew
Was fairness' self, possessed a heart, I judged
Must correspond in folly just as far
Beyond the common,--and a mind to match,--
Not made to puzzle conjurers like me
Who, therein, proved the fool who fronts you, Sir,
And begs leave to cut short the ugly rest!
'_Trust me!_' I said: she trusted. '_Marry me!_'
Or rather, '_We are married: when, the rite?_'
That brought on the collector's next-day qualm
At counting acquisition's cost. There lay
My marvel, there my purse more light by much
Because of its late lie-expenditure:
Ill-judged such moment to make fresh demand--
To cage as well as catch my rarity!
So, I began explaining. At first word
Outbroke the horror. '_Then, my truths were lies!_'
I tell you, such an outbreak, such new strange
All-unsuspected revelation--soul
As supernaturally grand as face
Was fair beyond example--that at once
Either I lost--or, if it please you, found
My senses,--stammered somehow--'_Jest! and now,
Earnest! Forget all else but--heart has loved,
Does love, shall love you ever! take the hand!_'
Not she! no marriage for superb disdain,
Contempt incarnate!"

"Yes, it's different,--
It's only like in being four years since.
I see now!"

"Well, what did disdain do next,
Think you?"

"That's past me: did not marry you!--
That's the main thing I care for, I suppose.
Turned nun, or what?"

"Why, married in a month
Some parson, some smug crop-haired smooth-chinned sort
Of curate-creature, I suspect,--dived down,
Down, deeper still, and came up somewhere else--
I don't know where--I've not tried much to know,--
In short, she's happy: what the clodpoles call
'Countrified' with a vengeance! leads the life
Respectable and all that drives you mad:
Still--where, I don't know, and that's best for both."

"Well, that she did not like you, I conceive.
But why should you hate her, I want to know?"

"My good young friend,--because or her or else
Malicious Providence I have to hate.
For, what I tell you proved the turning-point
Of my whole life and fortune toward success
Or failure. If I drown, I lay the fault
Much on myself who caught at reed not rope,
But more on reed which, with a packthread's pith,
Had buoyed me till the minute's cramp could thaw
And I strike out afresh and so be saved.
It's easy saying--I had sunk before,
Disqualified myself by idle days
And busy nights, long since, from holding hard
On cable, even, had fate cast me such!
You boys don't know how many times men fail
Perforce o' the little to succeed i' the large,
Husband their strength, let slip the petty prey,
Collect the whole power for the final pounce.
My fault was the mistaking man's main prize
For intermediate boy's diversion; clap
Of boyish hands here frightened game away
Which, once gone, goes forever. Oh, at first
I took the anger easily, nor much
Minded the anguish--having learned that storms
Subside, and teapot-tempests are akin.
Time would arrange things, mend whate'er might be
Somewhat amiss; precipitation, eh?
Reason and rhyme prompt--reparation! Tiffs
End properly in marriage and a dance!
I said 'We'll marry, make the past a blank'--
And never was such damnable mistake!
That interview, that laying bare my soul,
As it was first, so was it last chance--one
And only. Did I write? Back letter came
Unopened as it went. Inexorable
She fled, I don't know where, consoled herself
With the smug curate-creature: chop and change!
Sure am I, when she told her shaveling all
His Magdalen's adventure, tears were shed,
Forgiveness evangelically shown,
'Loose hair and lifted eye,'--as some one says.
And now, he's worshipped for his pains, the sneak!"

"Well, but your turning-point of life,--what's here
To hinder you contesting Finsbury
With Orton, next election? I don't see...."

"Not you! But _I_ see. Slowly, surely, creeps
Day by day o'er me the conviction--here
Was life's prize grasped at, gained, and then let go!
--That with her--may be, for her--I had felt
Ice in me melt, grow steam, drive to effect
Any or all the fancies sluggish here
I' the head that needs the hand she would not take
And I shall never lift now. Lo, your wood--
Its turnings which I likened life to! Well,--
There she stands, ending every avenue,
Her visionary presence on each goal
I might have gained had we kept side by side!
Still string nerve and strike foot? Her frown forbids:
The steam congeals once more: I'm old again!
Therefore I hate myself--but how much worse
Do not I hate who would not understand,
Let me repair things--no, but sent a-slide
My folly falteringly, stumblingly
Down, down and deeper down until I drop
Upon--the need of your ten thousand pounds
And consequently loss of mine! I lose
Character, cash, nay, common-sense itself
Recounting such a lengthy cock-and-bull
Adventure--lose my temper in the act...."

"And lose beside,--if I may supplement
The list of losses,--train and ten-o'clock!
Hark, pant and puff, there travels the swart sign!
So much the better! You're my captive now!
I'm glad you trust a fellow: friends grow thick
This way--that's twice said; we were thickish, though,
Even last night, and, ere night comes again,
I prophesy good luck to both of us!
For see now!--back to '_balmy eminence_'
Or '_calm acclivity_,' or what's the word!
Bestow you there an hour, concoct at ease
A sonnet for the Album, while I put
Bold face on, best foot forward, make for house,
March in to aunt and niece, and tell the truth--
(Even white-lying goes against my taste
After your little story). Oh, the niece
Is rationality itself! The aunt--
If she's amenable to reason too--
Why, you stooped short to pay her due respect,
And let the Duke wait (I'll work well the Duke).
If she grows gracious, I return for you;
If thunder's in the air, why--bear your doom,
Dine on rump-steaks and port, and shake the dust
Of aunty from your shoes as off you go
By evening-train, nor give the thing a thought
How you shall pay me--that's as sure as fate,
Old fellow! Off with you, face left about!
Yonder's the path I have to pad. You see,
I'm in good spirits, God knows why! Perhaps
Because the woman did not marry you
--Who look so hard at me,--and have the right,
One must be fair and own."

The two stand still
Under an oak.

"Look here!" resumes the youth.
"I never quite knew how I came to like
You--so much--whom I ought not court at all;
Nor how you had a leaning just to me
Who am assuredly not worth your pains.
For there must needs be plenty such as you
Somewhere about,--although I can't say where,--
Able and willing to teach all you know;
While--how can you have missed a score like me
With money and no wit, precisely each
A pupil for your purpose, were it--ease
Fool's poke of tutor's _honorarium_-fee?
And yet, howe'er it came about, I felt
At once my master: you as prompt descried
Your man, I warrant, so was bargain struck.
Now, these same lines of liking, loving, run
Sometimes so close together they converge--
Life's great adventures--you know what I mean--
In people. Do you know, as you advanced,
It got to be uncommonly like fact
We two had fallen in with--liked and loved
Just the same woman in our different ways?
I began life--poor groundling as I prove--
Winged and ambitious to fly high: why not?
There's something in 'Don Quixote' to the point,
My shrewd old father used to quote and praise--
'_Am I born man?_' asks Sancho: '_being man,
By possibility I may be Pope!_'
So, Pope I meant to make myself, by step
And step, whereof the first should be to find
A perfect woman; and I tell you this--
If what I fixed on, in the order due
Of undertakings, as next step, had first
Of all disposed itself to suit my tread,
And I had been, the day I came of age,
Returned at head of poll for Westminster
--Nay, and moreover summoned by the Queen
At week's end, when my maiden-speech bore fruit,
To form and head a Tory ministry--
It would not have seemed stranger, no, nor been
More strange to me, as now I estimate,
Than what did happen--sober truth, no dream.
I saw my wonder of a woman,--laugh,
I'm past that!--in Commemoration-week.
A plenty have I seen since, fair and foul,--
With eyes, too, helped by your sagacious wink;
But one to match that marvel--no least trace,
Least touch of kinship and community!
The end was--I did somehow state the fact,
Did, with no matter what imperfect words,
One way or other give to understand
That woman, soul and body were her slave
Would she but take, but try them--any test
Of will, and some poor test of power beside:
So did the strings within my brain grow tense
And capable of ... hang similitudes!
She answered kindly but beyond appeal.
'_No sort of hope for me, who came too late.
She was another's. Love went--mine to her,
Hers just as loyally to some one else._'
Of course! I might expect it! Nature's law--
Given the peerless woman, certainly
Somewhere shall be the peerless man to match!
I acquiesced at once, submitted me
In something of a stupor, went my way.
I fancy there had been some talk before
Of somebody--her father or the like--
To coach me in the holidays,--that's how
I came to get the sight and speech of her,--
But I had sense enough to break off sharp,
Save both of us the pain."

"Quite right there!"
"Eh?
Quite wrong, it happens! Now comes worst of all!
Yes, I did sulk aloof and let alone
The lovers--_I_ disturb the angel-mates?"

"Seraph paired off with cherub!"

"Thank you! While
I never plucked up courage to inquire
Who he was, even,--certain-sure of this,
That nobody I knew of had blue wings
And wore a star-crown as he needs must do,--
Some little lady,--plainish, pock-marked girl,--
Finds out my secret in my woful face,
Comes up to me at the Apollo Ball,
And pityingly pours her wine and oil
This way into the wound: '_Dear f-f-friend,
Why waste affection thus on--must I say,
A somewhat worthless object? Who's her choice--
Irrevocable as deliberate--
Out of the wide world? I shall name no names--
But there's a person in society,
Who, blessed with rank and talent, has grown gray
In idleness and sin of every sort
Except hypocrisy: he's thrice her age,
A by-word for "successes with the sex"
As the French say--and, as we ought to say,
Consummately a liar and a rogue,
Since--show me where's the woman won without
The help of this one lie which she believes--
That--never mind how things have come to pass,
And let who loves have loved a thousand times--
All the same he now loves her only, loves
Her ever! if by "won" you just mean "sold,"
That's quite another compact. Well, this scamp,
Continuing descent from bad to worse,
Must leave his fine and fashionable prey
(Who--fathered, brothered, husbanded,--are hedged
About with thorny danger) and apply
His arts to this poor country ignorance
Who sees forthwith in the first rag of man
Her model hero! Why continue waste
On such a woman treasures of a heart
Would yet find solace,--yes, my f-f-friend--
In some congenial_--fiddle-diddle-dee?'"

"Pray, is the pleasant gentleman described
Exact the portrait which my '_f-f-friends_'
Recognize as so like? 'T is evident
You half surmised the sweet original
Could be no other than myself, just now!
Your stop and start were flattering!"

"Of course
Caricature's allowed for in a sketch!
The longish nose becomes a foot in length,
The swarthy cheek gets copper-colored,--still,
Prominent beak and dark-hued skin are facts:
And '_parson's daughter_'--'_young man coachable_'--
'_Elderly party_'--'_four years since_'--were facts
To fasten on, a moment! Marriage, though--
That made the difference, I hope."

"All right!
I never married; wish I had--and then
Unwish it: people kill their wives, sometimes!
I hate my mistress, but I'm murder-free.
In your case, where's the grievance? You came last,
The earlier bird picked up the worm. Suppose
You, in the glory of your twenty-one,
Had happened to precede myself! 't is odds
But this gigantic juvenility,
This offering of a big arm's bony hand--
I'd rather shake than feel shake me, I know--
Had moved _my_ dainty mistress to admire
An altogether new Ideal--deem
Idolatry less due to life's decline
Productive of experience, powers mature
By dint of usage, the made man--no boy
That's all to make! I was the earlier bird--
And what I found, I let fall: what you missed
Who is the fool that blames you for?"

They become so deeply interested in this talk that the train is missed, and, in the meantime, the lady who now lives in the neighborhood as the wife of the hard-working country parson meets the young girl at the inn. They are great friends and have come there, at the girl's invitation, to talk over her prospective husband. She desires her friend to come to her home and meet her fiancÈ, but the lady, who is in constant fear of meeting "Iago," never goes anywhere, and proposes a meeting with him at the inn. While she waits, "Iago" comes in upon her. There is a terrible scene of recrimination between these two, the man again daring to prefer his love. The lady scorns him. Horror is added to horror when the young man appears at the door, and recognizes the woman he really loves. His faith in her and his love are shaken for a moment, but return immediately and he stands her true friend and lover. The complete despicableness of "Iago's" nature finally reveals itself in the lines he writes in the album and gives to the lady to read. The poem is too long to quote in full. The closing scene, however, will give the reader a good idea of the poet's handling of this nineteenth-century tragedy.

The true nobility of soul of the younger man links him with Mertoun among Browning's heroes and represents the Englishman or the man of any country for that matter at his highest. Whether redemption for the older man would have been possible had the lady believed him in the inn parlor is doubtful. Such natures are like Ibsen's "Peer Gynt." They need to be put into a button mould and moulded over again.

"Here's the lady back!
So, Madam, you have conned the Album-page
And come to thank its last contributor?
How kind and condescending! I retire
A moment, lest I spoil the interview,
And mar my own endeavor to make friends--
You with him, him with you, and both with me!
If I succeed--permit me to inquire
Five minutes hence! Friends bid good-by, you know."
And out he goes.

VII

She, face, form, bearing, one
Superb composure--

"He has told you all?
Yes, he has told you all, your silence says--
What gives him, as he thinks the mastery
Over my body and my soul!--has told
That instance, even, of their servitude
He now exacts of me? A silent blush!
That's well, though better would white ignorance
Beseem your brow, undesecrate before--
Ay, when I left you! I too learn at last
--Hideously learned as I seemed so late--
What sin may swell to. Yes,--I needed learn
That, when my prophet's rod became the snake
I fled from, it would, one day, swallow up
--Incorporate whatever serpentine
Falsehood and treason and unmanliness
Beslime earth's pavement: such the power of Hell,
And so beginning, ends no otherwise
The Adversary! I was ignorant,
Blameworthy--if you will; but blame I take
Nowise upon me as I ask myself
--_You_--how can you, whose soul I seemed to read
The limpid eyes through, have declined so deep
Even with him for consort? I revolve
Much memory, pry into the looks and words
Of that day's walk beneath the College wall,
And nowhere can distinguish, in what gleams
Only pure marble through my dusky past,
A dubious cranny where such poison-seed
Might harbor, nourish what should yield to-day
This dread ingredient for the cup I drink.
Do not I recognize and honor truth
In seeming?--take your truth and for return,
Give you my truth, a no less precious gift?
You loved me: I believed you. I replied
--How could I other? '_I was not my own_,'
--No longer had the eyes to see, the ears
To hear, the mind to judge, since heart and soul
Now were another's. My own right in me,
For well or ill, consigned away--my face
Fronted the honest path, deflection whence
Had shamed me in the furtive backward look
At the late bargain--fit such chapman's phrase!--
As though--less hasty and more provident--
Waiting had brought advantage. Not for me
The chapman's chance! Yet while thus much was true,
I spared you--as I knew you then--one more
Concluding word which, truth no less, seemed best
Buried away forever. Take it now
Its power to pain is past! Four years--that day--
Those lines that make the College avenue!
I would that--friend and foe--by miracle,
I had, that moment, seen into the heart
Of either, as I now am taught to see!
I do believe I should have straight assumed
My proper function, and sustained a soul,
Nor aimed at being just sustained myself
By some man's soul--the weaker woman's-want!
So had I missed the momentary thrill
Of finding me in presence of a god,
But gained the god's own feeling when he gives
Such thrill to what turns life from death before.
'_Gods many and Lords many_,' says the Book:
You would have yielded up your soul to me
--Not to the false god who has burned its clay
In his own image. I had shed my love
Like Spring dew on the clod all flowery thence,
Not sent up a wild vapor to the sun
that drinks and then disperses. Both of us
Blameworthy,--I first meet my punishment--
And not so hard to bear. I breathe again!
Forth from those arms' enwinding leprosy
At last I struggle--uncontaminate:
Why must I leave _you_ pressing to the breast
That's all one plague-spot? Did you love me once?
Then take love's last and best return! I think,
Womanliness means only motherhood;
All love begins and ends there,--roams enough,
But, having run the circle, rests at home.
Why is your expiation yet to make?
Pull shame with your own hands from your own head
Now,--never wait the slow envelopment
Submitted to by unelastic age!
One fierce throe frees the sapling: flake on flake
Lull till they leave the oak snow-stupefied.
Your heart retains its vital warmth--or why
That blushing reassurance? Blush, young blood!
Break from beneath this icy premature
Captivity of wickedness--I warn
Back, in God's name! No fresh encroachment here!
This May breaks all to bud--No Winter now!
Friend, we are both forgiven! Sin no more!
I am past sin now, so shall you become!
Meanwhile I testify that, lying once,
My foe lied ever, most lied last of all.
He, waking, whispered to your sense asleep
The wicked counsel,--and assent might seem;
But, roused, your healthy indignation breaks
The idle dream-pact. You would die--not dare
Confirm your dream-resolve,--nay, find the word
That fits the deed to bear the light of day!
Say I have justly judged you! then farewell
To blushing--nay, it ends in smiles, not tears!
Why tears now? I have justly judged, thank God!"

He does blush boy-like, but the man speaks out,
--Makes the due effort to surmount himself.

"I don't know what he wrote--how should I? Nor
How he could read my purpose which, it seems,
He chose to somehow write--mistakenly
Or else for mischief's sake. I scarce believe
My purpose put before you fair and plain
Would need annoy so much; but there's my luck--
From first to last I blunder. Still, one more
Turn at the target, try to speak my thought!
Since he could guess my purpose, won't you read
Right what he set down wrong? He said--let's think!
Ay, so!--he did begin by telling heaps
Of tales about you. Now, you see--suppose
Any one told me--my own mother died
Before I knew her--told me--to his cost!--
Such tales about my own dead mother: why,
You would not wonder surely if I knew,
By nothing but my own heart's help, he lied,
Would you? No reason's wanted in the case.
So with you! In they burnt on me, his tales,
Much as when madhouse-inmates crowd around,
Make captive any visitor and scream
All sorts of stories of their keeper--he's
Both dwarf and giant, vulture, wolf, dog, cat,
Serpent and scorpion, yet man all the same;
Sane people soon see through the gibberish!
I just made out, you somehow lived somewhere
A life of shame--I can't distinguish more--
Married or single--how, don't matter much:
Shame which himself had caused--that point was clear,
That fact confessed--that thing to hold and keep.
Oh, and he added some absurdity
--That you were here to make me--ha, ha, ha!--
Still love you, still of mind to die for you,
Ha, ha--as if that needed mighty pains!
Now, foolish as ... but never mind myself
--What I am, what I am not, in the eye
Of the world, is what I never cared for much.
Fool then or no fool, not one single word
In the whole string of lies did I believe,
But this--this only--if I choke, who cares?--
I believe somehow in your purity
Perfect as ever! Else what use is God?
He is God, and work miracles He can!
Then, what shall I do? Quite as clear, my course!
They've got a thing they call their Labyrinth
I' the garden yonder: and my cousin played
A pretty trick once, led and lost me deep
Inside the briery maze of hedge round hedge;
And there might I be staying now, stock-still,
But that I laughing bade eyes follow nose
And so straight pushed my path through let and stop
And soon was out in the open, face all scratched,
But well behind my back the prison-bars
In sorry plight enough, I promise you!
So here: I won my way to truth through lies--
Said, as I saw light,--if her shame be shame
I'll rescue and redeem her,--shame's no shame?
Then, I'll avenge, protect--redeem myself
The stupidest of sinners! Here I stand!
Dear,--let me once dare call you so,--you said
Thus ought you to have done, four years ago,
Such things and such! Ay, dear, and what ought I?
You were revealed to me: where's gratitude,
Where's memory even, where the gain of you
Discernible in my low after-life
Of fancied consolation? why, no horse
Once fed on corn, will, missing corn, go munch
Mere thistles like a donkey! I missed you,
And in your place found--him, made him my love,
Ay, did I,--by this token, that he taught
So much beast-nature that I meant ... God knows
Whether I bow me to the dust enough!...
To marry--yes, my cousin here! I hope
That was a master-stroke! Take heart of hers,
And give her hand of mine with no more heart
Than now you see upon this brow I strike!
What atom of a heart do I retain
Not all yours? Dear, you know it! Easily
May she accord me pardon when I place
My brow beneath her foot, if foot so deign,
Since uttermost indignity is spared--
Mere marriage and no love! And all this time
Not one word to the purpose! Are you free?
Only wait! only let me serve--deserve
Where you appoint and how you see the good!
I have the will--perhaps the power--at least
Means that have power against the world. For time--
Take my whole life for your experiment!
If you are bound--in marriage, say--why, still,
Still, sure, there's something for a friend to do,
Outside? A mere well-wisher, understand!
I'll sit, my life long, at your gate, you know,
Swing it wide open to let you and him
Pass freely,--and you need not look, much less
Fling me a '_Thank you--are you there, old friend_?'
Don't say that even: I should drop like shot!
So I feel now at least: some day, who knows?
After no end of weeks and months and years
You might smile '_I believe you did your best_!'
And that shall make my heart leap--leap such leap
As lands the feet in Heaven to wait you there!
Ah, there's just one thing more! How pale you look!
Why? Are you angry? If there's, after all,
Worst come to worst--if still there somehow be
The shame--I said was no shame,--none! I swear!--
In that case, if my hand and what it holds,--
My name,--might be your safeguard now--at once--
Why, here's the hand--you have the heart! Of course--
No cheat, no binding you, because I'm bound,
To let me off probation by one day,
Week, month, year, lifetime! Prove as you propose!
Here's the hand with the name to take or leave!
That's all--and no great piece of news, I hope!"

"Give me the hand, then!" she cries hastily.
"Quick, now! I hear his footstep!"
Hand in hand
The couple face him as he enters, stops
Short, stands surprised a moment, laughs away
Surprise, resumes the much-experienced man.

"So, you accept him?"
"Till us death do part!"