Browning's Heroines Part 24

The life had pa.s.sed into her very hair, which was thrown back, loose over each shoulder,

"And the very tresses shared in the pleasure, Moving to the mystic measure, Bounding as the bosom bounded."

He stopped short, perplexed, "as she listened and she listened." But all at once he felt himself struck by the self-same contagion:

"And I kept time to the wondrous chime, Making out words and prose and rhyme, Till it seemed that the music furled Its wings like a task fulfilled, and dropped From under the words it first had propped."

He could hear and understand, "word took word as hand takes hand"--and the Gipsy said:

"And so at last we find my tribe, And so I set thee in the midst . . .

I trace them the vein and the other vein That meet on thy brow and part again, Making our rapid mystic mark; And I bid my people prove and probe Each eye's profound and glorious globe Till they detect the kindred spark In those depths so dear and dark . . .

And on that round young cheek of thine I make them recognise the tinge . . .

For so I prove thee, to one and all, Fit, when my people ope their breast, To see the sign, and hear the call, And take the vow, and stand the test Which adds one more child to the rest-- When the breast is bare and the arms are wide, And the world is left outside."

There would be probation (said the Gipsy), and many trials for the lady if she joined the tribe; but, like the jewel-finder's "fierce a.s.say" of the stone he finds, like the "vindicating ray" that leaps from it:

"So, trial after trial past, Wilt thou fall at the very last Breathless, half in trance With the thrill of the great deliverance, Into our arms for evermore; And thou shalt know, those arms once curled About thee, what we knew before, _How love is the only good in the world_.

Henceforth be loved as heart can love, Or brain devise, or hand approve!

Stand up, look below, It is our life at thy feet we throw To step with into light and joy; Not a power of life but we employ To satisfy thy nature's want."

The Gipsy said much more; she showed what perfect mutual love and understanding can do, for "if any two creatures grow into one, they will do more than the world has done"--and the tribe will at least approach that end with this beloved woman. She says not _how_--whether by one man's loving her to utter devotion of himself, or by _her_ giving "her wondrous self away," and taking the stronger nature's sway. . . .

"I foresee and I could foretell Thy future portion, sure and well; But those pa.s.sionate eyes speak true, speak true, Let them say what thou shalt do!"

But whatever she does, the eyes of her tribe will be upon her, with their blame, their praise:

"Our shame to feel, our pride to show, Glad, angry--but indifferent, no!"

And so at last the girl who now sits gazing up at her will come to old age--will retire apart with the h.o.a.rded memories of her heart, and reconstruct the past until the whole "grandly fronts for once her soul"

. . . and then, the gleam of yet another morning shall break; it will be like the ending of a dream, when

"Death, with the might of his sunbeam, Touches the flesh, and the soul awakes."

With that great utterance her voice changed like a bird's. The music began again, the words grew indistinguishable . . . with a snap the charm broke, and the huntsman, "starting as if from a nap," realised afresh that the lady was being bewitched, sprang from the balcony to the ground, and hurried round to the portal. . . . In another minute he would have entered:

"When the door opened, and more than mortal Stood, with a face where to my mind centred All beauties I ever saw or shall see, The d.u.c.h.ess: I stopped as if struck by palsy.

She was so different, happy and beautiful, I felt at once that all was best" . . .

And he felt, too, that he must do whatever she commanded. But there was, in fact, no commanding. Looking on the beauty that had invested her, "the brow's height and the breast's expanding," he knew that he was hers to live and die, and so he needed not words to find what she wanted--like a wild creature, he knew by instinct what this freed wild creature's bidding was. . . . He went before her to the stable; she followed; the old woman, silent and alone, came last--sunk back into her former self,

"Like a blade sent home to its scabbard."

He saddled the very palfrey that had brought the little d.u.c.h.ess to the castle--the palfrey he had patted as he had led it, thus winning a smile from her. And he couldn't help thinking that she remembered it too, and knew that he would do anything in the world for her. But when he began to saddle his own nag ("of Berold's begetting")--not meaning to be obtrusive--she stopped him by a finger's lifting, and a small shake of the head. . . . Well, he lifted her on the palfrey and set the Gipsy behind her--and then, in a broken voice, he murmured that he was ready whenever G.o.d should please that she needed him. . . . And she looked down

"With a look, a look that placed a crown on me,"

and felt in her bosom and dropped into his hand . . . not a purse! If it had been a purse of silver ("or gold that's worse") he would have gone home, kissed Jacynth, and soberly drowned himself--but it was not a purse; it was a little plait of hair, such as friends make for each other in a convent:

"This, see, which at my breast I wear, Ever did (rather to Jacynth's grudgment) And ever shall, till the Day of Judgment.

And then--and then--to cut short--this is idle, These are feelings it is not good to foster.

I pushed the gate wide, she shook the bridle, And the palfrey bounded--and so we lost her."

There is the story of the Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess; and it seems to me to need no "explanation" at all. The Gipsy can be anyone or anything we like that _saves_ us; the Duke and his mother anyone or anything that crushes love.

"Love is the only good in the world."

And the love (though it _may_ be) _need_ not be the love of man for woman, and woman for man; but simply love. The quick warm impulse which made this girl look round so eagerly as she approached her future home, and thank the man who led her horse for patting it, and want to hear the name of every bird--the impulse from the heart "too soon made glad, too easily impressed"; the sweet, rich nature of her who "liked whate'er she looked on, and her looks went everywhere" . . . what was all this but love? The tiny lady was one great pulse of it; without love she must die; to give it, take it, was the meaning of her being. And love was neither given nor accepted from her. Worse, it was scorned; it was not "fitting." All she had to do was to be "on show"; nothing, nothing, nothing else--

"And die away the life between."

And then came the time when, like Pompilia, she had "something she must care about"; and the office asked of her was to "a.s.sist at the disemboweling" of a n.o.ble, harried stag! Not even when she pleaded the hour that awaited her was pity shown, was love shown, for herself or for the coming child. And then the long, spiteful lecture. . . . That night, even to Jacynth, not a word could she utter. Here was a world without love, a world that did not want her--and _she_ was here, and she must stay, until, until . . . Which would the coming child be--herself again, or _him_ again? Scarce she knew which would be the sadder happening.

And then Love walked in upon her. She was "of their tribe"--they wanted her; they wanted all she was. Just what she was; she would not have to change; they wanted her. They liked her eyes, and the colour on her cheek--they liked _her_. Her eyes might look at them, and "speak true,"

for they wanted just that truth from just those eyes.

It is any escape, any finding of our "tribe"! It is the self-realisation of a nature that can love. And this is but one way of telling the great tale. Browning told it thus, because for years a song had jingled in his ears of "Following the Queen of the Gipsies, O!"--and to all of us, the Gipsies stand for freedom, for knowledge of the great earth-secrets, for nourishment of heart and soul. But we need not follow only them to compa.s.s "the thrill of the great deliverance." We need but know, as the little d.u.c.h.ess knew, what it is that we want, and trust it. _She_ placed the old woman at once upon her own "seat of state": from the moment she beheld her, love leaped forth and crowned the messenger of love.

"And so at last we find my tribe, And so I set thee in the midst . . .

Henceforth be loved as heart can love. . . .

It is our life at thy feet we throw To step with into light and joy."

The d.u.c.h.ess heard, and knew, and was saved. It needed courage--needed swift decision--needed even some small abandonment of "duty." But she saw what she must do, and did it. Duty has two voices often; the d.u.c.h.ess heard the true voice. If she was bewitched, it was by the spell that was ordained to save her, could she hear it. . . . And that she heard aright, that, leaving the castle, she left the h.e.l.l where love lives not, we know from the old huntsman:

"For the wound in the Duke's pride rankled fiery; So they made no search and small inquiry";

and Gipsies thenceforth were hustled across the frontier.

Even the d.u.c.h.ess could not make love valid there. Reality was out of them. . . . True, the huntsman, after thirty years, is still her sworn adorer. He had stayed at the castle:

"I must see this fellow his sad life through-- He is our Duke, after all, And I, as he says, but a serf and thrall";

--but, as soon as the Duke is dead, our friend intends to "go journeying" to the land of the Gipsies, and there find his lady or hear the last news of her:

"And when that's told me, what's remaining?"

For Jacynth is dead and all their children, and the world is too hard for his explaining, and so he hopes to find a snug corner under some hedge, and turn himself round and bid the world good-night, and sleep soundly until he is waked to another world, where pearls will no longer be cast before swine that can't value them. "_Amen._"

But at any rate this talk with his friend has made him see his little lady again, and everything that they did since "seems such child's play," with her away! So her love did one thing even there--just as one likes to think that the unhappier d.u.c.h.ess, the Italian one, left precisely such a memory in the heart of that officious fool who broke the bough of cherries for her in the orchard.

And is it not good to think that almost immediately after _The Flight of the d.u.c.h.ess_ was published, Browning was to meet the pa.s.sionate-hearted woman whom _he_ s.n.a.t.c.hed almost from the actual death-bed that had been prepared for her with as much of pomp and circ.u.mstance as was the d.u.c.h.ess's life-in-death! With this in mind, it gives one a queer thrill to read those lines of silenced prophecy:

"I foresee and I could foretell Thy future portion, sure and well: But those pa.s.sionate eyes speak true, speak true, Let them say what thou shalt do!"

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