Part 12

I laboured on alone. The wind and dust And sun of the world beat blistering in my face; And hope, now for me, now against me, dragged My spirits onward,—as some fallen balloon, Which, whether caught by blossoming tree or bare, Is torn alike. I sometimes touched my aim, Or seemed,—and generous souls cried out, ‘Be strong, Take courage; now you’re on our level,—now! The next step saves you!’ I was flushed with praise, But, pausing just a moment to draw breath, I could not choose but murmur to myself ‘Is this all? all that’s done? and all that’s gained? If this then be success, ’tis dismaller Than any failure.’ O my God, my God, O supreme Artist, who as sole return For all the cosmic wonder of Thy work, Demandest of us just a word ... a name, ‘My Father!’—thou hast knowledge, only thou, How dreary ’tis for women to sit still On winter nights by solitary fires, And hear the nations praising them far off, Too far! ay, praising our quick sense of love, Our very heart of passionate womanhood, Which could not beat so in the verse without Being present also in the unkissed lips, And eyes undried because there’s none to ask The reason they grew moist. To sit alone, And think, for comfort, how, that very night, Affianced lovers, leaning face to face With sweet half-listenings for each other’s breath, Are reading haply from some page of ours, To pause with a thrill, as if their cheeks had touched, When such a stanza, level to their mood, Seems floating their own thought out—‘So I feel For thee,’—‘And I, for thee: this poet knows What everlasting love is!’—how, that night, A father, issuing from the misty roads Upon the luminous round of lamp and hearth And happy children, having caught up first The youngest there until it shrunk and shrieked To feel the cold chin prick its dimples through With winter from the hills, may throw i’ the lap Of the eldest, (who has learnt to drop her lids To hide some sweetness newer than last year’s) Our book and cry, ... ‘Ah you, you care for rhymes; So here be rhymes to pore on under trees, When April comes to let you! I’ve been told They are not idle as so many are, But set hearts beating pure as well as fast: It’s yours, the book; I’ll write your name in it,— That so you may not lose, however lost In poet’s lore and charming reverie, The thought of how your father thought of _you_ In riding from the town.’ To have our books Appraised by love, associated with love, While _we_ sit loveless! is it hard, you think? At least ’tis mournful. Fame, indeed, ’twas said, Means simply love. It was a man said that. And then, there’s love and love: the love of all (To risk, in turn, a woman’s paradox,) Is but a small thing to the love of one. You bid a hungry child be satisfied With a heritage of many corn-fields: nay, He says he’s hungry,—he would rather have That little barley-cake you keep from him While reckoning up his harvests. So with us; (Here, Romney, too, we fail to generalise!) We’re hungry. Hungry! but it’s pitiful To wail like unweaned babes and suck our thumbs Because we’re hungry. Who, in all this world, (Wherein we are haply set to pray and fast, And learn what good is by its opposite) Has never hungered? Woe to him who has found The meal enough! if Ugolino’s full, His teeth have crunched some foul unnatural thing: For here satiety proves penury More utterly irremediable. And since We needs must hunger,—better, for man’s love, Than God’s truth! better, for companions sweet, Than great convictions! let us bear our weights, Preferring dreary hearths to desert souls. Well, well! they say we’re envious, we who rhyme; But I, because I am a woman perhaps, And so rhyme ill, am ill at envying. I never envied Graham his breadth of style, Which gives you, with a random smutch or two, (Near-sighted critics analyse to smutch) Such delicate perspectives of full life; Nor Belmore, for the unity of aim To which he cuts his cedarn poems, fine As sketchers do their pencils; nor Mark Gage, For that caressing colour and trancing tone Whereby you’re swept away and melted in The sensual element, which, with a back wave, Restores you to the level of pure souls And leaves you with Plotinus. None of these, For native gifts or popular applause, I’ve envied; but for this,—that when, by chance, Says some one,—‘There goes Belmore, a great man! He leaves clean work behind him, and requires No sweeper up of the chips,’ ... a girl I know, Who answers nothing, save with her brown eyes, Smiles unaware, as if a guardian saint Smiled in her:—for this, too,—that Gage comes home And lays his last book’s prodigal review Upon his mother’s knees, where, years ago, He had laid his childish spelling-book and learned To chirp and peck the letters from her mouth, As young birds must. ‘Well done,’ she murmured then, She will not say it now more wonderingly; And yet the last ‘Well done’ will touch him more, As catching up to-day and yesterday In a perfect chord of love; and so, Mark Gage. I envy you your mother!—and you, Graham, Because you have a wife who loves you so, She half forgets, at moments, to be proud Of being Graham’s wife, until a friend observes, ‘The boy here, has his father’s massive brow, Done small in wax ... if we push back the curls.’

Who loves _me_? Dearest father,—mother sweet,— I speak the names out sometimes by myself, And make the silence shiver: they sound strange, As Hindostanee to an Ind-born man Accustomed many years to English speech; Or lovely poet-words grown obsolete, Which will not leave off singing. Up in heaven I have my father,—with my mother’s face Beside him in a blotch of heavenly light; No more for earth’s familiar, household use, No more! The best verse written by this hand, Can never reach them where they sit, to seem Well-done to _them_. Death quite unfellows us, Sets dreadful odds betwixt the live and dead, And makes us part as those at Babel did, Through sudden ignorance of a common tongue. A living Cæsar would not dare to play At bowls, with such as my dead father is.

And yet, this may be less so than appears, This change and separation. Sparrows five For just two farthings, and God cares for each. If God is not too great for little cares, Is any creature, because gone to God? I’ve seen some men, veracious, nowise mad, Who have thought or dreamed, declared and testified, They’ve heard the Dead a-ticking like a clock Which strikes the hours of the eternities, Beside them, with their natural ears,—and known That human spirits feel the human way, And hate the unreasoning awe which waves them off From possible communion. It may be.

At least, earth separates as well as heaven. For instance, I have not seen Romney Leigh Full eighteen months ... add six, you get two years. They say he’s very busy with good works,— Has parted Leigh Hall into almshouses. He made an almshouse of his heart one day, Which ever since is loose upon the latch For those who pull the string.—I never did.

It always makes me sad to go abroad; And now I’m sadder that I went to-night Among the lights and talkers at Lord Howe’s. His wife is gracious, with her glossy braids, And even voice, and gorgeous eyeballs, calm As her other jewels. If she’s somewhat cold, Who wonders, when her blood has stood so long In the ducal reservoir she calls her line By no means arrogantly? she’s not proud; Not prouder than the swan is of the lake He has always swum in;—’tis her element, And so she takes it with a natural grace, Ignoring tadpoles. She just knows, perhaps, There _are_ men, move on without outriders, Which isn’t her fault. Ah, to watch her face, When good Lord Howe expounds his theories Of social justice and equality— ’Tis curious, what a tender, tolerant bend Her neck takes: for she loves him, likes his talk, ‘Such clever talk—that dear, odd Algernon!’ She listens on, exactly as if he talked Some Scandinavian myth of Lemures, Too pretty to dispute, and too absurd.

She’s gracious to me as her husband’s friend, And would be gracious, were I not a Leigh, Being used to smile just so, without her eyes, On Joseph Strangways, the Leeds mesmerist, And Delia Dobbs, the lecturer from ‘the States’ Upon the ‘Woman’s question.’ Then, for him, I like him ... he’s my friend. And all the rooms Were full of crinkling silks that swept about The fine dust of most subtle courtesies. What then?—why then, we come home to be sad.

How lovely One I love not, looked to-night! She’s very pretty, Lady Waldemar. Her maid must use both hands to twist that coil Of tresses, then be careful lest the rich Bronze rounds should slip:—she missed, though, a grey hair, A single one,—I saw it; otherwise The woman looked immortal. How they told, Those alabaster shoulders and bare breasts, On which the pearls, drowned out of sight in milk, Were lost, excepting for the ruby-clasp! They split the amaranth velvet-boddice down To the waist, or nearly, with the audacious press Of full-breathed beauty. If the heart within Were half as white!—but, if it were, perhaps The breast were closer covered, and the sight Less aspectable, by half, too. I heard The young man with the German student’s look— A sharp face, like a knife in a cleft stick, Which shot up straight against the parting line So equally dividing the long hair,— Say softly to his neighbour, (thirty-five And mediæval) ‘Look that way, Sir Blaise. She’s Lady Waldemar—to the left,—in red— Whom Romney Leigh, our ablest man just now, Is soon about to marry.’ Then replied Sir Blaise Delorme, with quiet, priestlike voice, Too used to syllable damnations round To make a natural emphasis worth while: ‘Is Leigh your ablest man? the same, I think, Once jilted by a recreant pretty maid Adopted from the people? Now, in change, He seems to have plucked a flower from the other side Of the social hedge,’ ‘A flower, a flower,’ exclaimed My German student,—his own eyes full-blown Bent on her. He was twenty, certainly.

Sir Blaise resumed with gentle arrogance, As if he had dropped his alms into a hat, And had the right to counsel,—‘My young friend, I doubt your ablest man’s ability To get the least good or help meet for him, For pagan phalanstery or Christian home, From such a flowery creature,’ ‘Beautiful!’ My student murmured, rapt,—‘Mark how she stirs! Just waves her head, as if a flower indeed, Touched far off by the vain breath of our talk.’

At which that bilious Grimwald, (he who writes For the Renovator) who had seemed absorbed Upon the table-book of autographs, (I dare say mentally he crunched the bones Of all those writers, wishing them alive To feel his tooth in earnest) turned short round With low carnivorous laugh,—‘A flower, of course! She neither sews nor spins,—and takes no thought Of her garments ... falling off.’ The student flinched, Sir Blaise, the same; then both, drawing back their chairs As if they spied black-beetles on the floor, Pursued their talk, without a word being thrown To the critic. Good Sir Blaise’s brow is high And noticeably narrow: a strong wind, You fancy, might unroof him suddenly, And blow that great top attic off his head So piled with feudal relics. You admire His nose in profile, though you miss his chin; But, though you miss his chin, you seldom miss His golden cross worn innermostly, (carved For penance, by a saintly Styrian monk Whose flesh was too much with him,) slipping through Some unaware unbuttoned casualty Of the under-waistcoat. With an absent air Sir Blaise sate fingering it and speaking low, While I, upon the sofa, heard it all.

‘My dear young friend, if we could bear our eyes Like blessedest St. Lucy, on a plate, They would not trick us into choosing wives, As doublets, by the colour. Otherwise Our fathers chose,—and therefore, when they had hung Their household keys about a lady’s waist, The sense of duty gave her dignity: She kept her bosom holy to her babes; And, if a moralist reproved her dress, ’Twas, ‘Too much starch!’—and not, ‘Too little lawn!’'

‘Now, pshaw!’ returned the other in a heat, A little fretted by being called ‘young friend,’ Or so I took it,—‘for St. Lucy’s sake, If she’s the saint to curse by, let us leave Our fathers,—plagued enough about our sons!’ (He stroked his beardless chin) ‘yes, plagued, sir, plagued: The future generations lie on us As heavy as the nightmare of a seer; Our meat and drink grow painful prophecy: I ask you,—have we leisure, if we liked, To hollow out our weary hands to keep Your intermittent rushlight of the past From draughts in lobbies? Prejudice of sex, And marriage-laws ... the socket drops them through While we two speak,—however may protest Some over-delicate nostrils, like your own, ’Gainst odours thence arising.’ ‘You are young,’ Sir Blaise objected. ‘If I am,’ he said With fire,—‘though somewhat less so than I seem, The young run on before, and see the thing That’s coming. Reverence for the young, I cry. In that new church for which the world’s near ripe, You’ll have the younger in the Elder’s chair, Presiding with his ivory front of hope O’er foreheads clawed by cruel carrion-birds Of life’s experience.’ ‘Pray your blessing, sir,’ Sir Blaise replied good-humouredly,—‘I plucked A silver hair this morning from my beard, Which left me your inferior. Would I were Eighteen, and worthy to admonish you! If young men of your order run before To see such sights as sexual prejudice And marriage-law dissolved,—in plainer words, A general concubinage expressed In a universal pruriency,—the thing Is scarce worth running fast for, and you’d gain By loitering with your elders.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Who, getting to the top of Pisgah-hill, Can talk with one at bottom of the view, To make it comprehensible? Why, Leigh Himself, although our ablest man, I said, Is scarce advanced to see as far as this, Which some are: he takes up imperfectly The social question—by one handle—leaves The rest to trail. A Christian socialist, Is Romney Leigh, you understand.’ ‘Not I. I disbelieve in Christian-pagans, much As you in women-fishes. If we mix Two colours, we lose both, and make a third Distinct from either. Mark you! to mistake A colour is the sign of a sick brain, And mine, I thank the saints, is clear and cool: A neutral tint is here impossible. The church,—and by the church, I mean, of course, The catholic, apostolic, mother-church,— Draws lines as plain and straight as her own wall; Inside of which, are Christians, obviously, And outside ... dogs.’ ‘We thank you. Well I know The ancient mother-church would fain still bite, For all her toothless gums,—as Leigh himself Would fain be a Christian still, for all his wit; Pass that; you two may settle it, for me. You’re slow in England. In a month I learnt At Göttingen, enough philosophy To stock your English schools for fifty years; Pass that, too. Here, alone, I stop you short, —Supposing a true man like Leigh could stand Unequal in the stature of his life To the height of his opinions. Choose a wife Because of a smooth skin?—not he, not he! He’d rail at Venus’ self for creaking shoes, Unless she walked his way of righteousness: And if he takes a Venus Meretrix, (No imputation on the lady there) Be sure that, by some sleight of Christian art, He has metamorphosed and converted her To a Blessed Virgin.’ ‘Soft!’ Sir Blaise drew breath As if it hurt him,—‘Soft! no blasphemy, I pray you!’ ‘The first Christians did the thing; Why not the last?’ asked he of Göttingen, With just that shade of sneering on the lip, Compensates for the lagging of the beard,— ‘And so the case is. If that fairest fair Is talked of as the future wife of Leigh, She’s talked of, too, at least as certainly, As Leigh’s disciple. You may find her name On all his missions and commissions, schools, Asylums, hospitals,—he has had her down, With other ladies whom her starry lead Persuaded from their spheres, to his country-place In Shropshire, to the famed phalanstery At Leigh Hall, christianised from Fourier’s own, (In which he has planted out his sapling stocks Of knowledge into social nurseries) And there, they say, she has tarried half a week, And milked the cows, and churned, and pressed the curd, And said ‘my sister’ to the lowest drab Of all the assembled castaways; such girls! Ay, sided with them at the washing-tub— Conceive, Sir Blaise, those naked perfect arms, Round glittering arms, plunged elbow-deep in suds, Like wild swans hid in lilies all a-shake.’

Lord Howe came up. ‘What, talking poetry So near the image of the unfavouring Muse? That’s you, Miss Leigh: I’ve watched you half an hour, Precisely as I watched the statue called A Pallas in the Vatican;—you mind The face, Sir Blaise?—intensely calm and sad, As wisdom cut it off from fellowship,— But _that_ spoke louder. Not a word from _you_! And these two gentlemen were bold, I marked, And unabashed by even your silence.’ ‘Ah,’ Said I, ‘my dear Lord Howe, you shall not speak To a printing woman who has lost her place, (The sweet safe corner of the household fire Behind the heads of children) compliments, As if she were a woman. We who have clipt The curls before our eyes, may see at least As plain as men do: speak out, man to man; No compliments, beseech you.’ ‘Friend to friend, Let that be. We are sad to-night, I saw, (—Good night, Sir Blaise! Ah, Smith—he has slipped away) I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh, To keep a crowd of lion-hunters off, With faces toward your jungle. There were three; A spacious lady, five feet ten and fat, Who has the devil in her (and there’s room) For walking to and fro upon the earth, From Chipewa to China; she requires Your autograph upon a tinted leaf ’Twixt Queen Pomare’s and Emperor Soulouque’s; Pray give it; she has energies, though fat: For me, I’d rather see a rick on fire Than such a woman angry. Then a youth Fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs, Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe, And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts, Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,— All which I saved you, and absorb next week Both manuscript and man,—because a lord Is still more potent than a poetess, With any extreme republican. Ah, ah, You smile at last, then.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Leave the smile, I’ll lose the thanks for ’t,—ay, and throw you in My transatlantic girl, with golden eyes, That draw you to her splendid whiteness, as The pistil of a water-lily draws, Adust with gold. Those girls across the sea Are tyrannously pretty,—and I swore (She seemed to me an innocent, frank girl) To bring her to you for a woman’s kiss, Not now, but on some other day or week: —We’ll call it perjury; I give her up.’

‘No, bring her.’ ‘Now,’ said he, ‘you make it hard To touch such goodness with a grimy palm. I thought to tease you well, and fret you cross, And steel myself, when rightly vexed with you, For telling you a thing to tease you more.’

‘Of Romney?’ ‘No, no; nothing worse,’ he cried, ‘Of Romney Leigh, than what is buzzed about,— That _he_ is taken in an eye-trap too, Like many half as wise. The thing I mean Refers to you, not him.’ ‘Refers to me.’ He echoed,—‘Me! You sound it like a stone Dropped down a dry well very listlessly, By one who never thinks about the toad Alive at the bottom. Presently perhaps You’ll sound your ‘me’ more proudly—till I shrink.’

‘Lord Howe’s the toad, then, in this question?’ ‘Brief, We’ll take it graver. Give me sofa-room, And quiet hearing. You know Eglinton, John Eglinton, of Eglinton in Kent?’

‘Is _he_ the toad?—he’s rather like the snail; Known chiefly for the house upon his back: Divide the man and house—you kill the man; That’s Eglinton of Eglinton, Lord Howe.’

He answered grave. ‘A reputable man, An excellent landlord of the olden stamp, If somewhat slack in new philanthropies; Who keeps his birthdays with a tenants’ dance, Is hard upon them when they miss the church Or keep their children back from catechism, But not ungentle when the aged poor Pick sticks at hedge-sides; nay, I’ve heard him say, ‘The old dame has a twinge because she stoops: ‘That’s punishment enough for felony.’’

‘O tender-hearted landlord! May I take My long lease with him, when the time arrives For gathering winter-faggots!’ ‘He likes art, Buys books and pictures ... of a certain kind; Neglects no patent duty; a good son’....

‘To a most obedient mother. Born to wear His father’s shoes, he wears her husband’s too: Indeed, I’ve heard it’s touching. Dear Lord Howe, You shall not praise _me_ so against your heart, When I’m at worst for praise and faggots.’ ‘Be Less bitter with me, for ... in short,’ he said, ‘I have a letter, which he urged me so To bring you ... I could scarcely choose but yield; Insisting that a new love passing through The hand of an old friendship, caught from it Some reconciling perfume.’ ‘Love, you say? My lord, I cannot love. I only find The rhymes for love,—and that’s not love, my lord. Take back your letter.’ ‘Pause: you’ll read it first?’

‘I will not read it: it is stereotyped; The same he wrote to,—anybody’s name,— Anne Blythe, the actress, when she had died so true, A duchess fainted in a private box: Pauline, the dancer, after the great _pas_, In which her little feet winked overhead Like other fire-flies, and amazed the pit: Or Baldinacci, when her F in alt Had touched the silver tops of heaven itself With such a pungent soul-dart, even the Queen Laid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms, And sighed for joy: or else (I thank your friend) Aurora Leigh,—when some indifferent rhymes, Like those the boys sang round the holy ox On Memphis-road, have chanced, perhaps, to set Our Apis-public lowing. Oh, he wants, Instead of any worthy wife at home, A star upon his stage of Eglinton! Advise him that he is not overshrewd In being so little modest: a dropped star Makes bitter waters, says a Book I’ve read,— And there’s his unread letter.’ ‘My dear friend,’ Lord Howe began....

In haste I tore the phrase. ‘You mean your friend of Eglinton, or me?’