Chapter II

Prattling on of these things, which I think cannot interest
deeply,
So I hold back in my heart its dear and wonderful secret
(Which I must tell you at last, however I falter to tell you),
Fain to keep it all my own for a little while longer,--
Doubting but it shall lose some part of its strangeness and
sweetness,
Shared with another, and fearful that even _you_ may not find it
Just the marvel that I do--and thus turn our friendship to hatred.

Sometimes it seems to me that this love, which I feel is eternal,
Must have begun with my life, and that only an absence was ended
When we met and knew in our souls that we loved one another.
For from the first was no doubt. The earliest hints of the passion,
Whispered to girlhood's tremulous dream, may be mixed with
misgiving,
But, when the very love comes, it bears no vagueness of meaning;
Touched by its truth (too fine to be felt by the ignorant senses,
Knowing but looks and utterance) soul unto soul makes confession,
Silence to silence speaks. And I think that this subtile assurance,
Yet unconfirmed from without, is even sweeter and dearer
Than the perfected bliss that comes when the words have been
spoken.
--Not that I'd have them unsaid, now! But 't was delicious to
ponder
All the miracle over, and clasp it, and keep it, and hide it,--
While I beheld him, you know, with looks of indifferent languor,
Talking of other things, and felt the divine contradiction
Trouble my heart below!

And yet, if no doubt touched our passion,
Do not believe for that, our love has been wholly unclouded.
All best things are ours when pain and patience have won them:
Peace itself would mean nothing but for the strife that preceded;
Triumph of love is greatest, when peril of love has been sorest.
(That's to say, I dare say. I'm only repeating what _he_ said.)
Well, then, of all wretched things in the world, a mystery, Clara,
Lurked in this life dear to mine, and hopelessly held us asunder
When we drew nearest together, and all but his speech said, "I love
you."
Fred had known him at college, and then had found him at Naples,
After several years,--and called him a capital fellow.
Thus far his knowledge went, and beyond this began to run shallow
Over troubled ways, and to break into brilliant conjecture,
Harder by far to endure than the other's reticent absence--
Absence wherein at times he seemed to walk like one troubled
By an uneasy dream, whose spell is not broken with waking,
But it returns all day with a vivid and sudden recurrence,
Like a remembered event. Of the past that was closest the present,
This we knew from himself: He went at the earliest summons,
When the Rebellion began, and falling, terribly wounded,
Into the enemy's hands, after ages of sickness and prison,
Made his escape at last; and, returning, found all his virtues
Grown out of recognition and shining in posthumous splendor,--
Found all changed and estranged, and, he fancied, more wonder than
welcome.
So, somewhat heavy of heart, and disabled for war, he had wandered
Hither to Europe for perfecter peace. Abruptly his silence,
Full of suggestion and sadness, made here a chasm between us;
But we spanned the chasm with conversational bridges,
Else talked all around it, and feigned an ignorance of it,
With that absurd pretence which is always so painful, or comic,
Just as you happen to make it or see it.

In spite of our fictions,
Severed from his by that silence, my heart grew ever more anxious,
Till last night when together we sat in Piazza San Marco
(Then, when the morrow must bring us parting--forever, it might
be),
Taking our ices al fresco. Some strolling minstrels were singing
Airs from the Trovatore. I noted with painful observance,
With the unwilling minuteness at such times absolute torture,
All that brilliant scene, for which I cared nothing, before me:
Dark-eyed Venetian leoni regarding the forestieri
With those compassionate looks of gentle and curious wonder
Home-keeping Italy's nations bend on the voyaging races,--
Taciturn, indolent, sad, as their beautiful city itself is;
Groups of remotest English--not just the traditional English
(Lavish Milor is no more, and your travelling Briton is frugal)--
English, though, after all, with the Channel always between them,
Islanded in themselves, and the Continent's sociable races;
Country-people of ours--the New World's confident children,
Proud of America always, and even vain of the Troubles
As of disaster laid out on a scale unequalled in Europe;
Polyglot Russians that spoke all languages better than natives;
White-coated Austrian officers, anglicized Austrian dandies;
Gorgeous Levantine figures of Greek, and Turk, and Albanian--
These, and the throngs that moved through the long arcades and
Piazza,
Shone on by numberless lamps that flamed round the perfect Piazza,
Jewel-like set in the splendid frame of this beautiful picture,
Full of such motley life, and so altogether Venetian.

Then we rose and walked where the lamps were blanched by the
moonlight
Flooding the Piazzetta with splendor, and throwing in shadow
All the façade of Saint Mark's, with its pillars, and horses, and
arches;
But the sculptured frondage, that blossoms over the arches
Into the forms of saints, was touched with tenderest lucence,
And the angel that stands on the crest of the vast campanile
Bathed his golden vans in the liquid light of the moonbeams.
Black rose the granite pillars that lift the Saint and the Lion;
Black sank the island campanili from distance to distance;
Over the charmèd scene there brooded a presence of music,
Subtler than sound, and felt, unheard, in the depth of the spirit.

How can I gather and show you the airy threads of enchantment
Woven that night round my life and forever wrought into my being,
As in our boat we glided away from the glittering city?
Dull at heart I felt, and I looked at the lights in the water,
Blurring their brilliance with tears, while the tresses of eddying
seaweed,
Whirled in the ebbing tide, like the tresses of sea-maidens
drifting
Seaward from palace-haunts, in the moonshine glistened and
darkened.

Sad and vague were my thoughts, and full of fear was the silence;
And, when he turned to speak at last, I trembled to hear him,
Feeling he now must speak of his love, and his life and its
secret,--
Now that the narrowing chances had left but that cruel conclusion,
Else the life-long ache of a love and a trouble unuttered.
Better, my feebleness pleaded, the dreariest doubt that had vexed
me,
Than my life left nothing, not even a doubt to console it;
But, while I trembled and listened, his broken words crumbled to
silence,
And, as though some touch of fate had thrilled him with warning,
Suddenly from me he turned. Our gondola slipped from the shadow
Under a ship lying near, and glided into the moonlight,
Where, in its brightest lustre, another gondola rested.
_I_ saw two lovers there, and he, in the face of the woman,
Saw what has made him mine, my own belovèd, forever!
Mine!--but through _what_ tribulation, and awful confusion of
spirit!
Tears that I think of with smiles, and sighs I remember with
laughter,
Agonies full of absurdity, keen, ridiculous anguish,
Ending in depths of blissful shame, and heavenly transports!