Browning's Heroines Part 28

--and at first, between jest and bitterness, has given him the sum of her musings on that moment when he decided to drop the nosegay.

For ten years he has had, tacitly, the last word: his decision has stood unchallenged. Nor shall it now be altered--he has begun to "tell" her, to meander sentimentally around that episode, but she will have nothing less than the truth; they will talk of it, yes, since he has so pleased, but they will talk of it in _her_ way. So she cuts him short, and draws this acid, witty little sketch for him. . . . Has she not matured? might it not have "done," after all? The nosegay was not so insipid! . . . But suddenly, while she mocks, the deeper "truth of that" invades her soul, and she must cease from cynic gibes, and yield the word to something greater in herself.

"Now I may speak: you fool, for all Your lore! Who made things plain in vain?

What was the sea for? What, the grey Sad church, that solitary day, Crosses and graves and swallows' call?

Was there nought better than to enjoy?

No feat which, done, would make time break, And let us pent-up creatures through Into eternity, our due?

No forcing earth teach heaven's employ?

No grasping at love, gaining a share O' the sole spark from G.o.d's life at strife With death . . . ?"

He calls his decision wisdom? It is one kind of wisdom only, and that the least--"worldly" wisdom. He was old, and she was raw and sentimental--true; each might have missed something in the other; but completeness is not for our existence here, we await heaven for that.

Only earthbound creatures--like the star-fish, for instance--become all they _can_ become in this sphere; man's soul must evolve. Have their souls evolved? And she cries that they have not:

"The devil laughed at you in his sleeve!"

Of course he "did not know" (as he now seems feebly to interpolate); she can well believe that, for if he had known, he would have saved two souls--nay, four. What of his Stephanie, who danced vilely last night, they say--will he not soon, like the public, abandon her now that "her vogue has had its day"? . . . And what of the speaker herself? It takes but half a dozen words to indicate _her_ lot:

"Here comes my husband from his whist."

What is "the truth of that"?

Again, I think, something of what I said in writing of _Youth and Art_: again not quite what Browning seems to wish us to accept. Love is the fulfilling of the law--with all my heart; but was love here? Does love weigh worth, as the poet did? does love marry the next comer, as the lady did? Mrs. Orr, devouter votary than I, explains that Browning meant "that everything which disturbs the equal balance of human life gives a vital impulse to the soul." Did one wish merely to be humorous, one might say that this was the most optimistic view of unsuccessful marriage which has yet found expression! But merely to be humorous is not what I wish: we must consider this belief, which Mrs. Orr further declares to be the expression of Browning's "poetic self." a.s.suredly it is true that stereotyped monotony, even if happy, does leave the soul unstirred to deepest depth. We may hesitate, nevertheless, to embrace the view that "only our mistakes are our experience"; and this is the view which seems to prevail in Mrs. Orr's interpretation of _Dis Aliter Visum_. Mr. Symons says that the woman points out to the man "his fatal mistake." . . . But was it really a mistake at all? I do not, in urging that question, commit myself to the cra.s.s commonplace of Berdoe, who argues that "a more unreasonable match could hardly be imagined than this one would have been"! The "match" standpoint is not here our standpoint. _That_ is, simply, that love is the fulfilling of the law, and that these two people did not love. They were in the sentimental state which frequently results from pleasant chance encounters--and the experienced, subtle man of the world was able to perceive that, and to act upon it. That he has pursued his wonted way of life, and that she has married lovelessly (for a husband who plays whist is, by the unwritten law of romance, a husband who can by no possibility be loved!), proves merely that each has fallen away in the pursuit of any ideal which may then have urged itself--not that both would certainly have "saved their souls" if they had married one another. Speaking elsewhere in this book of Browning's theory of love, I said: "Love can do all, and will do all, but we must for our part be doing something too"--but even love can do nothing if it is not there! Ideals need not be abandoned because they are not full-realised; and, were we in stern mood, it would be possible to declare that this lady had abandoned them more definitely than her poet had, since he at all times was frankly a worldling. Witty as she has become, there still remain in her, I fear, some traces of the poor pretty thoughtful thing. . . . To sum up, for this "tear" also we have but semi-sympathy; and Browning is again not at his best when he makes the Victim speak for herself.

III.--THE LABORATORY

Now let us see how he can make a woman speak when she suffers, but is not, and will not be, a victim.

At once she is a completely realised human creature, uttering herself in such abandonment of all pretence as never fails to compa.s.s majesty. Into the soul of this woman in _The Laboratory_, Browning has penetrated till he seems to breathe with her breath. I question if there is another fictive utterance to surpa.s.s this one in authenticity. It bears the Great Seal. Not Shakespeare has outdone it in power and concentration.

Every word counts, almost every comma--for, like Browning, we too seem to breathe with this woman's panting breath, our hearts to beat with the very pain and rage of hers, and every pause she comes to in her speech is _our_ pause, so intense is the evocation, so unerring the expression of an impulse which, whether or no it be atrophied in our more hesitant and civilised consciousness, is at any rate effectively inhibited.

She is a Court lady of the _ancien regime_, in the great Brinvilliers poisoning-period, and she is buying from an old alchemist in his laboratory the draught which is to kill her triumphant rival. Small, gorgeous, and intense, she sits in the strange den and watches the old wizard set about his work. She is due to dance at the King's, but there is no hurry: he may take as long as he chooses. . . . Now she must put on a gla.s.s mask like his, the old man tells her, for these "faint smokes that curl whitely" are themselves poisonous--and she submits, and with all her intensity at work, ties it on "tightly"; then sits again, to peer through the fumes of the devil's-smithy. But she cannot be silent; even to him--and after all, is such an one as he quite truly a man!--she must pour forth the anguish of her soul. Questions relieve her now and then:

"Which is the poison to poison her, prithee?"

--but not long can she be merely curious; every minute there breaks out a cry:

"He is with her, and they know that I know Where they are, what they do . . ."

--the pitiful self-consciousness of such torment, unable to believe in the oblivion (familiar as it has been in past good hours) which sweeps through lovers in their bliss. They could not forget _me_, she thinks, as all her sister-sufferers think. . . . Yet even in this h.e.l.l, there is some solace. They must be remembering her, and

". . . they believe my tears flow While they laugh, laugh at me, at me fled to the drear Empty church, to pray G.o.d in, for them!--I am here."

Yes, here--where the old man works for her: grinding, moistening, and mashing his paste, pounding at his powder. It is better to sit here and watch him than go dance at the King's; and she looks round in her restless, nervous anguish--the dagger in her heart, but this way, _this_ way, to stanch the wound it makes!

"That in the mortar--you call it a gum?

Ah, the brave tree whence such gold oozings come!

And yonder soft phial, the exquisite blue, Sure to taste sweetly--is that poison too?"

But, maddened by the deadlier drug of wretchedness, she loses for a moment the single vision of her rival: it were good to have _all_ the old man's treasures, for the joy of dealing death around her at that hateful Court where each knows of her misery.

"To carry pure death in an earring, a casket, A signet, a fan-mount, a filigree basket!"

She need but give a lozenge "at the King's," and Pauline should die in half an hour; or light a pastille, and Elise, "with her head and her breast and her arms and her hands, should drop dead." . . . But he is taking too long.

"Quick--is it finished? The colour's too grim!

Why not soft like the phial's, enticing and dim?"

For if it were, she could watch that other stir it into her drink, and dally with "the exquisite blue," and then, great glowing creature, lift the goblet to her lips, and taste. . . . But one must be content: the old man knows--this grim drug is the deadly drug; only, as she bends to the vessel again, a new doubt a.s.sails her.

"What a drop! She's not little, no minion like me-- That's why she ensnared him: this never will free The soul from those masculine eyes--say, 'No!'

To that pulse's magnificent come-and-go.

For only last night, as they whispered, I brought My own eyes to bear on her so, that I thought Could I keep them one half minute fixed, she would fall, Shrivelled; she fell not; yet this does it all!"

But it is not painless in its working? She does not desire that: she wants the other to _feel_ death; more--she wants the proof of death to remain,

"Brand, burn up, bite into its grace[236:1]-- He is sure to remember her dying face!"

Is it done? Then he must take off her mask; he must--nay, he need not look morose about it:

"It kills her, and this prevents seeing it close."

She is not afraid to dispense with the protecting vizor:

"_If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?_"

There it lies--there. . . .

"Now, take all my jewels, gorge gold to your fill, You may kiss me, old man, on the mouth if you will!"

--and, looking her last look round the den, she prepares to go; but what is that mark on her gorgeous gown? Brush it off! Brush off that dust! It might bring horror down on her in an instant, before she knows or thinks, and she is going straight from here to dance at the King's. . . . She is gone, with her jealousy and her anguish and her pa.s.sion, and, clutched to her heart, the phial that shall end but one of those torments.

She is gone, and she remains for ever. Her age is past, but not the hearts that ached in it. We curb those hearts to-day; we do not poison now; but have we forgotten the mood for poisoning?

"If it hurts her, beside, can it ever hurt me?"

Such fiercenesses are silenced now; but, silent, they have still their utterance, and it is here.

IV.--IN A YEAR