Part 16

‘Alas, alas,’ said Marian, rocking slow The pretty baby who was near asleep, The eyelids creeping over the blue balls,— ‘She made it clear, too clear—I saw the whole! And yet who knows if I had seen my way Straight out of it, by looking, though ’twas clear, Unless the generous lady, ’ware of this, Had set her own house all a-fire for me, To light me forwards? Leaning on my face Her heavy agate eyes which crushed my will, She told me tenderly, (as when men come To a bedside to tell people they must die) ‘She knew of knowledge,—ay, of knowledge, knew, That Romney Leigh had loved _her_ formerly; And _she_ loved _him_, she might say, now the chance Was past ... but that, of course, he never guessed,— For something came between them ... something thin As a cobweb ... catching every fly of doubt To hold it buzzing at the window-pane And help to dim the daylight. Ah, man’s pride Or woman’s—which is greatest? most averse To brushing cobwebs? Well, but she and he Remained fast friends; it seemed not more than so, Because he had bound his hands and could not stir: An honourable man, if somewhat rash; And she, not even for Romney, would she spill A blot ... as little even as a tear ... Upon his marriage-contract,—not to gain A better joy for two than came by that! For, though I stood between her heart and heaven, She loved me wholly.’ Did I laugh or curse? I think I sate there silent, hearing all, Ay, hearing double,—Marian’s tale, at once, And Romney’s marriage-vow, ‘_I’ll keep to_ THEE,’ Which means that woman-serpent. Is it time For church now? ‘Lady Waldemar spoke more,’ Continued Marian, ‘but, as when a soul Will pass out through the sweetness of a song Beyond it, voyaging the uphill road,— Even so, mine wandered from the things I heard, To those I suffered. It was afterward I shaped the resolution to the act. For many hours we talked. What need to talk? The fate was clear and close; it touched my eyes; But still the generous lady tried to keep The case afloat, and would not let it go, And argued, struggled upon Marian’s side, Which was not Romney’s! though she little knew What ugly monster would take up the end,— What griping death within the drowning death Was ready to complete my sum of death.’

I thought,—Perhaps he’s sliding now the ring Upon that woman’s finger.... She went on: ‘The lady, failing to prevail her way, Upgathered my torn wishes from the ground, And pieced them with her strong benevolence; And, as I thought I could breathe freer air Away from England, going without pause, Without farewell,—just breaking with a jerk The blossomed offshoot from my thorny life,— She promised kindly to provide the means, With instant passage to the colonies And full protection,—‘would commit me straight ‘To one who once had been her waiting-maid And had the customs of the world, intent On changing England for Australia Herself, to carry out her fortune so.’ For which I thanked the Lady Waldemar, As men upon their death-beds thank last friends Who lay the pillow straight: it is not much, And yet ’tis all of which they are capable, This lying smoothly in a bed to die. And so, ’twas fixed;—and so, from day to day, The woman named, came in to visit me.’

Just then, the girl stopped speaking,—sate erect, And stared at me as if I had been a ghost, (Perhaps I looked as white as any ghost) With large-eyed horror. ‘Does God make,’ she said, ‘All sorts of creatures, really, do you think? Or is it that the Devil slavers them So excellently, that we come to doubt Who’s strongest, He who makes, or he who mars? I never liked the woman’s face, or voice, Or ways: it made me blush to look at her; It made me tremble if she touched my hand; And when she spoke a fondling word, I shrank, As if one hated me, who had power to hurt; And, every time she came, my veins ran cold, As somebody were walking on my grave. At last I spoke to Lady Waldemar: ‘Could such an one be good to trust?’ I asked. Whereat the lady stroked my cheek and laughed Her silver-laugh—(one must be born to laugh, To put such music in it) ‘Foolish girl, ‘Your scattered wits are gathering wool beyond The sheep-walk reaches!—leave the thing to me.’ And therefore, half in trust, and half in scorn That I had heart still for another fear In such a safe despair, I left the thing.

‘The rest is short. I was obedient: I wrote my letter which delivered _him_ From Marian, to his own prosperities, And followed that bad guide. The lady?—hush,— I never blame the lady. Ladies who Sit high, however willing to look down, Will scarce see lower than their dainty feet: And Lady Waldemar saw less than I, With what a Devil’s daughter I went forth The swine’s road, headlong over a precipice, In such a curl of hell-foam caught and choked, No shriek of soul in anguish could pierce through To fetch some help. They say there’s help in heaven For all such cries. But if one cries from hell ... What then?—the heavens are deaf upon that side.

‘A woman ... hear me,—let me make it plain,— A woman ... not a monster ... both her breasts Made right to suckle babes ... she took me off, A woman also, young and ignorant, And heavy with my grief, my two poor eyes Near washed away with weeping, till the trees, The blessed unaccustomed trees and fields, Ran either side the train, like stranger dogs Unworthy of any notice,—took me off, So dull, so blind, and only half alive, Not seeing by what road, nor by what ship, Nor toward what place, nor to what end of all.— Men carry a corpse thus,—past the doorway, past The garden-gate, the children’s playground, up The green lane,—then they leave it in the pit, To sleep and find corruption, cheek to cheek With him who stinks since Friday. ‘But suppose; To go down with one’s soul into the grave,— To go down half dead, half alive, I say, And wake up with corruption, ... cheek to cheek With him who stinks since Friday! There it is, And that’s the horror of ’t, Miss Leigh. ‘You feel? You understand?—no, do not look at me, But understand. The blank, blind, weary way Which led ... where’er it led ... away, at least; The shifted ship ... to Sydney or to France ... Still bound, wherever else, to another land; The swooning sickness on the dismal sea, The foreign shore, the shameful house, the night, The feeble blood, the heavy-headed grief, ... No need to bring their damnable drugged cup, And yet they brought it! Hell’s so prodigal Of devil’s gifts ... hunts liberally in packs, Will kill no poor small creature of the wilds But fifty red wide throats must smoke at it,— As HIS at me ... when waking up at last ... I told you that I waked up in the grave.

‘Enough so!—it is plain enough so. True, We wretches cannot tell out all our wrong, Without offence to decent happy folk. I know that we must scrupulously hint With half-words, delicate reserves, the thing Which no one scrupled we should feel in full. Let pass the rest, then; only leave my oath Upon this sleeping child,—man’s violence, Not man’s seduction, made me what I am, As lost as ... I told _him_ I should be lost; When mothers fail us, can we help ourselves? That’s fatal!—And you call it being lost, That down came next day’s noon and caught me there Half gibbering and half raving on the floor, And wondering what had happened up in heaven, That suns should dare to shine when God himself Was certainly abolished. ‘I was mad,— How many weeks, I know not,—many weeks. I think they let me go, when I was mad, They feared my eyes and loosed me, as boys might A mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down I went by road and village, over tracts Of open foreign country, large and strange, Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton Hand Through sunlight and through moonlight evermore Pushed out from hell itself to pluck me back, And resolute to get me, slow and sure; While every roadside Christ upon his cross Hung reddening through his gory wounds at me, And shook his nails in anger, and came down To follow a mile after, wading up The low vines and green wheat, crying ‘Take the girl! ‘She’s none of mine from henceforth,’ Then, I knew, (But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest) The charitable peasants gave me bread And leave to sleep in straw: and twice they tied, At parting, Mary’s image round my neck— How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone; A woman has been strangled with less weight: I threw it in a ditch to keep it clean And ease my breath a little, when none looked; I did not need such safeguards:—brutal men Stopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had seen My face,—I must have had an awful look. And so I lived: the weeks passed on,—I lived. ’Twas living my old tramp-life o’er again, But, this time, in a dream, and hunted round By some prodigious Dream-fear at my back Which ended, yet: my brain cleared presently, And there I sate, one evening, by the road, I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone, Facing a sunset low upon the flats, As if it were the finish of all time,— The great red stone upon my sepulchre, Which angels were too weak to roll away.

SEVENTH BOOK.

‘THE woman’s motive? shall we daub ourselves With finding roots for nettles? ’tis soft clay And easily explored. She had the means, The monies, by the lady’s liberal grace, In trust for that Australian scheme and me, Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands, And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed, She served me (after all it was not strange; ’Twas only what my mother would have done) A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.

‘Well, after. There are nettles everywhere, But smooth green grasses are more common still; The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud; A miller’s wife at Clichy took me in And spent her pity on me,—made me calm And merely very reasonably sad. She found me a servant’s place in Paris where I tried to take the cast-off life again, And stood as quiet as a beaten ass Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up To let them charge him with another pack.

‘A few months, so. My mistress, young and light, Was easy with me, less for kindness than Because she led, herself, an easy time Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass, Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most. She felt so pretty and so pleased all day She could not take the trouble to be cross, But, sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe, Would tap me softly with her slender foot, Still restless with the last night’s dancing in’t, And say, ‘Fie, pale-face! are you English girls All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent? And first-communion colours on your cheeks, Worn past the time for’t? little fool, be gay!’ At which she vanished, like a fairy, through A gap of silver laughter. ‘Came an hour When all went otherwise. She did not speak, But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes As if a viper with a pair of tongs, Too far for any touch, yet near enough To view the writhing creature,—then at last; ‘Stand still there, in the holy Virgin’s name, Thou Marian; thou’rt no reputable girl, Although sufficient dull for twenty saints! I think thou mock’st me and my house,’ she said; ‘Confess, thou’lt be a mother in a month, Thou mask of saintship.’ ‘Could I answer her? The light broke in so: it meant _that_ then, _that_? I had not thought of that, in all my thoughts,— Through all the cold, numb aching of my brow, Through all the heaving of impatient life Which threw me on death at intervals,—through all The upbreak of the fountains of my heart The rains had swelled too large: it could mean _that_? Did God make mothers out of victims, then, And set such pure amens to hideous deeds? Why not? He overblows an ugly grave With violets which blossom in the spring. And _I_ could be a mother in a month! I hope it was not wicked to be glad. I lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed, To heaven, not her, until it tore my throat. ‘Confess, confess!’ what was there to confess, Except man’s cruelty, except my wrong? Except this anguish, or this ecstasy? This shame, or glory? The light woman there Was small to take it in: an acorn-cup Would take the sea in sooner. ‘Good,’ she cried; Unmarried and a mother, and she laughs! These unchaste girls are always impudent. Get out, intriguer! leave my house, and trot: I wonder you should look me in the face, With such a filthy secret.’ ‘Then I rolled My scanty bundle up, and went my way, Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and foot With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth Beyond those doors. ’Twas natural, of course, She should not ask me where I meant to sleep; I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine, Like others of my sort; the bed was laid For us. But any woman, womanly, Had thought of him who should be in a month, The sinless babe that should be in a month, And if by chance he might be warmer housed Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.’

I broke on Marian there. ‘Yet she herself, A wife, I think, had scandals of her own, A lover, not her husband.’ ‘Ay,’ she said, ‘But gold and meal are measured otherwise; I learnt so much at school,’ said Marian Erle.

‘O crooked world,’ I cried, ‘ridiculous If not so lamentable! It’s the way With these light women of a thrifty vice, My Marian,—always hard upon the rent In any sister’s virtue! while they keep Their chastity so darned with perfidy, That, though a rag itself, it looks as well Across a street, in balcony or coach, As any stronger stuff might. For my part, I’d rather take the wind-side of the stews Than touch such women with my finger-end! They top the poor street-walker by their lie, And look the better for being so much worse: The devil’s most devilish when respectable. But you, dear, and your story.’ ‘All the rest Is here,’ she said, and signed upon the child. ‘I found a mistress-sempstress who was kind And let me sew in peace among her girls; And what was better than to draw the threads All day and half the night, for him, and him? And so I lived for him, and so he lives, And so I know, by this time, God lives too.’

She smiled beyond the sun, and ended so, And all my soul rose up to take her part Against the world’s successes, virtues, fames. ‘Come with me, sweetest sister,’ I returned, ‘And sit within my house, and do me good From henceforth, thou and thine! ye are my own From henceforth. I am lonely in the world, And thou art lonely, and the child is half An orphan. Come,—and, henceforth, thou and I Being still together, will not miss a friend, Nor he a father, since two mothers shall Make that up to him. I am journeying south, And, in my Tuscan home I’ll find a niche, And set thee there, my saint, the child and thee, And burn the lights of love before thy face, And ever at thy sweet look cross myself From mixing with the world’s prosperities; That so, in gravity and holy calm, We two may live on toward the truer life.’