Browning's Heroines Part 22

". . . She had A heart--how shall I say?--too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate'er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere."

Even now it does not seem that the listener is in full possession and accord; more stooping, then, is necessary, for the hint must be clearly conveyed:

"Sir, 'twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the west, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace--all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. . . ."

We, like the envoy, sit in mute amazement and repulsion, listening to the Duke, looking at the d.u.c.h.ess. We can see the quivering, glad, tender creature as though we also were at gaze on Fra Pandolf's picture. . . .

I call _this_ piece a wonder, now! Scarce one of the monologues is so packed with significance; yet it is by far the most lucid, the most "simple"--even the rhymes are managed with such consummate art that they are, as Mr. Arthur Symons has said, "scarcely appreciable." Two lives are summed up in fifty-six lines. First, the ghastly Duke's; then, hers--but hers, indeed, is finally gathered into one. . . . Everything that came to her was trans.m.u.ted into her own dearness--even his favour at her breast. We can figure to ourselves the giving of that "favour"--the high proprietary air, the loftily antic.i.p.ated grat.i.tude: Sir Willoughby Patterne by intelligent antic.i.p.ation. But then, though the approving speech and blush were duly paid, would come the fool with his bough of cherries--and speech and blush were given again! Absurder still, the spot of joy would light for the sunset, the white mule . . .

"Who'd stoop to blame This sort of trifling?"

Even if he had been able to make clear to "such an one" the crime of ranking his gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name "with anybody's gift"--even if he had plainly said that this or that in her "disgusted"

him, and she had allowed herself to be thus lessoned (but she might not have allowed it; she might have set her wits to his, forsooth, and made excuse) . . . even so (this must be impressed upon the envoy), it would have meant some stooping, and the Duke "chooses never to stoop."

Still the envoy listens, with a thought of his own, perhaps, for the next d.u.c.h.ess! . . . More and more raptly he gazes; his eyes are glued upon that "pictured countenance"; and still the peevish voice is sounding in his ear--

". . . Oh, Sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene'er I pa.s.sed her; but who pa.s.sed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together."

There falls a curious, throbbing silence. The envoy still sits gazing.

There she stands, _looking as if she were alive_. . . . And almost he starts to hear the voice echo his thought, but with so different a meaning--

". . . There she stands As if alive"

--the picture is a wonder!

Still the visitor sits dumb. Was it from human lips that those words had just now sounded: "_Then all smiles stopped together_"?

She stands there--smiling . . . But the Duke grows weary of this pause before Fra Pandolf's piece. It is a wonder; but he has other wonders.

Moreover, the due hint has been given, and no doubt, though necessarily in silence, taken: the next d.u.c.h.ess will be instructed beforehand in the proper way to "thank men." He intimates his will to move away:

"Will't please you rise? We'll meet The company below, then."

The envoy rises, but not shakes off that horror of repulsion. Somewhere, as he stands up and steps aside, a voice seems prating of "the Count his master's known munificence," of "just pretence to dowry," of the "fair daughter's self" being nevertheless the object. . . . But in a hot resistless impulse, he turns off; one must remove one's self from such proximity. Same air shall not be breathed, nor same ground trod. . . .

Still the voice pursues him, sharply a little now for his lack of the due deference:

". . . Nay, we'll go Together down, sir,"

--and slowly (since a rupture must not be brought about by _him_) the envoy acquiesces. They begin to descend the staircase. But the visitor has no eyes for "wonders" now--he has seen the wonder, has heard the horror. . . . His host is all unwitting. Strange, that the guest can pa.s.s these glories, but everybody is not a connoisseur. One of them, however, must be pointed out:

". . . Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me."

. . . Something else getting "stopped"! The envoy looks.

But lo, she is alive again! This time she is in distant Northern lands, or _was_, for now (and, strangely, we thank Heaven for it) we know not where she is. Wherever it is, she is happy. She has been saved, as by flame; has been s.n.a.t.c.hed from _her_ Duke, and borne away to joy and love--by an old gipsy-woman! No lover came for her: it was Love that came, and because she knew Love at first sight and sound, she saved herself.

The old huntsman of her husband's Court tells the story to a traveller whom he calls his friend.

"What a thing friendship is, world without end!"

It happened thirty years ago; the huntsman and the Duke and the d.u.c.h.ess all were young--if the Duke was ever young! He had not been brought up at the Northern castle, for his father, the rough hardy warrior, had been summoned to the Kaiser's court as soon as his heir was born, and died there,

"At next year's end, in a velvet suit . . .

Petticoated like a herald, In a chamber next to an ante-room Where he breathed the breath of page and groom, What he called stink, and they perfume."

The "sick tall yellow d.u.c.h.ess" soon took the boy to Paris, where she belonged, being (says our huntsman) "the daughter of G.o.d knows who." So the hall was left empty, the fire was extinguished, and the people were railing and gibing. But in vain they railed and gibed until long years were past, "and back came our Duke and his mother again."

"And he came back the pertest little ape That ever affronted human shape; Full of his travel, struck at himself.

You'd say, he despised our bluff old ways?

--Not he!"

--for in Paris it happened that a cult of the Middle Ages was in vogue, and the Duke had been told there that the rough North land was the one good thing left in these evil days:

"So, all that the old Dukes had been, without knowing it, This Duke would fain know he was, without being it."

It was a renaissance in full blast! All the "thoroughly worn-out" usages were revived:

"The souls of them fumed-forth, the hearts of them torn-out."

The "chase" was inevitably one thing that must be reconstructed from its origins; and the Duke selected for his own mount a lathy horse, all legs and length, all speed, no strength:

"They should have set him on red Berold, Mad with pride, like fire to manage! . . .

With the red eye slow consuming in fire, And the thin stiff ear like an abbey spire!"

Thus he lost for ever any chance of esteem from our huntsman. He preferred "a slim four-year-old to the big-boned stock of mighty Berold"; he drank "weak French wine for strong Cotnar" . . . anything in the way of futility might be expected after these two manifestations.

"Well, such as he was, he must marry, we heard: And out of a convent, at the word, Came the lady in time of spring.

--Oh, old thoughts, they cling, they cling!"

Spring though it was, the retainers must cut a figure, so they were clad in thick hunting-clothes, fit for the chase of wild bulls or buffalo:

"And so we saw the lady arrive; My friend, I have seen a white crane bigger!

She was the smallest lady alive, Made in a piece of Nature's madness, Too small, almost, for the life and gladness That over-filled her."

She rode along, the retinue forming as it were a lane to the castle, where the Duke awaited her.

"Up she looked, down she looked, round at the mead, Straight at the castle, that's best indeed To look at from outside the walls"

--and her eager sweetness lavished itself already on the "serfs and thralls," as of course they were styled. She gave our huntsman a look of grat.i.tude because he patted her horse as he led it; she asked Max, who rode on her other hand, the name of every bird that flew past: "Was that an eagle? and was the green-and-grey bird on the field a plover?"

Thus happily hearing, happily looking (how like the Italian d.u.c.h.ess--but she _is_ the same!), the little lady rode forward:

"When suddenly appeared the Duke."

She sprang down, her small foot pointed on the huntsman's hand. But the Duke, stiffly and as though rebuking her impetuosity, "stepped rather aside than forward, and welcomed her with his grandest smile." The sick tall yellow d.u.c.h.ess, his mother, stood like a north wind in the background; the rusty portcullis went up with a shriek, and, like a sky sullied by a chill wind,