Browning's Heroines Part 31

We can picture him as he arrives and listens to her: is there already a faint annoyance? Need she so drearily depict the pa.s.sing of summer? It is bad enough that it _should_ pa.s.s--we need not talk about it! Such annoyance we all have felt with the relentless chroniclers of change.

Enough, enough; since summer is gone and we cannot bring it back, let us think of something else. . . . But she goes on, and now we shall not doubt that he is enervated, for this is what she says:

"Look in my eyes!

Wilt thou change too?

Should I fear surprise?

Shall I find aught new In the old and dear, In the good and true, With the changing year?"

The questions have come to her--come on what cold blast from heaven, or him? But in pity for herself, let her not ask them! We seem to see the man turn from her, not "looking in her eyes," and seem to catch the thought, so puerile yet so instinctive, that flashes through his mind.

"I never meant to 'change'; why does she put it into my head." . . . And then, doomed blunderer, she goes on:

"Thou art a man, But I am thy love.

For the lake, its swan; For the dell, its dove; And for thee (oh, haste!) Me, to bend above, Me, to hold embraced."

She does not _say_, "oh, haste!"--that is the silent comment (we must think) on her not instantly answered plea for his embrace. . . . And when the embrace does come--the claimed embrace--we can figure to ourselves the all it lacks.

II.--BY THE FIRESIDE

Summer now indeed is gone; they are sitting by their fire of wood. The blue and purple flames leap up and die and leap again, and she sits watching them. The wood that makes those coloured flames is shipwreck wood. . . .

"Oh, for the ills half-understood, The dim dead woe Long ago Befallen this bitter coast of France!"

And then, ever the morbid a.n.a.logy, the fixed idea:

"Well, poor sailors took their chance; I take mine."

Out there on the sea even now, some of those "poor sailors" may be eyeing the ruddy cas.e.m.e.nt and gnashing their teeth for envy and hate,

"O' the warm safe house and happy freight --Thee and me."

The irony of it seizes her. Those sailors need not curse them! Ships safe in port have their own perils of rot and rust and worms in the wood that gnaw the heart to dust. . . . "That is worse."

And how long the house has stood here, to anger the drenched, stark men on the sea! Who lived here before this couple came? Did another woman before herself watch the man "with whom began love's voyage full-sail"

. . . watch him and see the planks of love's ship start, and h.e.l.l open beneath?

_This_ mood she speaks not, only sits and broods upon. And he? Men too can watch, and struggle with themselves, and feel that little help is given them. Some sailors come safe home, and these would have been lighted by the ruddy cas.e.m.e.nt. But she thinks only of the sailors drowning, and gnashing their teeth for hate of the "warm safe house."

That melancholy brooding--and if she but looked lovely while she broods. . . .

III.--IN THE DOORWAY

She stands alone in the doorway, and looks out upon the dreary autumn landscape.[257:1] It is a grey October day; the sea is in "stripes like a snake"--olive-pale near the land, black and "spotted white with the wind" in the distance. How ominous it shows: good fortune is surely on the wing.

"Hark, the wind with its wants and its infinite wail!"

As she gazes, her heart dies within her. Their fig-tree has lost all the golden glint of summer; the vines "writhe in rows, each impaled on its stake"--and like the leaves of the tree, and like the vines, her heart "shrivels up and her spirit shrinks curled."

But courage, courage! Winter comes to all--not to them alone. And have they not love, and a house big enough to hold them, with its four rooms, and the field there, red and rough, not yielding now, but again to yield? Rabbits and magpies, though now they find no food there (the magpies already have well-nigh deserted it; when one _does_ alight, it seems an event), yet will again find food. But November--the chill month with its "rebuff"--will see both rabbits and magpies quite departed. . . . No! This shall not be her mood. Winter comes indeed to mere material nature; G.o.d means precisely that the spirit shall inherit His power to put life into the darkness and the cold. The spirit defies external change:

"Whom Summer made friends of, let Winter estrange!"

And she turns to go in, for the hour at rest and solaced. They have the house, and the field . . . and love.

IV.--ALONG THE BEACH

Rest and solace have departed: winter is come--to all. She walks alone on the beach; one may do that, "on the edge of the low rocks by the sea, for miles";[258:1] and broods once more. She figures him beside her; they are speaking frankly of her pain. She "will be quiet." . . .

Piteous phrase of all unquiet women! She will be quiet; she will "reason why he is wrong." Well for her that the talk is but a fancied one; she would not win far with such a preamble, were it real! It is thus that in almost every word we can trace the destined failure of this loving woman. . . . She begins her "reasoning."

"You wanted my love--is that much true?

And so I did love, so I do: What has come of it all along?

I took you--how could I otherwise?

For a world to me, and more; For all, love greatens and glorifies Till G.o.d's aglow, to the loving eyes, In what was mere earth before.

Yes, earth--yes, mere ign.o.ble earth!

Now do I mis-state, mistake?

Do I wrong your weakness and call it worth?

Expect all harvest, dread no dearth, Seal my sense up for your sake?

Oh, Love, Love, no, Love! Not so, indeed!

You were just weak earth, I knew":

--and then, pursuing, she sums him up as we saw at the beginning of our study.

Well for her, I say again, that this is but a fancied talk! And since it is, we can accord her a measure of wisdom. For she _has_ been wise in one thing: she has not "wronged his weakness and called it worth"--that memorable phrase, so Browningesque!

She has "seen through" him, yet she loves him. Thus far, then, kind and wise in her great pa.s.sion. . . . But she should _forget_ that she has seen through him--she should keep that vision in the background, not hold it ever in her sight. And now herself begins to see that this is where she has not been wise. She took him for hers, just as he was--and did not he, thus accepted, find her his? Has she not watched all that was as yet developed in him, and waited patiently, wonderingly, for the more to come?

"Well, and if none of these good things came, What did the failure prove?

The man was my whole world, all the same."

_That_ is the fault in her:

"That I do love, watch too long, And wait too well, and weary and wear; And 'tis all an old story, and my despair Fit subject for some new song."

She has shown him too much love and indulgence and hope implied in the indulgence: this was the wrong way. The "bond" has been felt--and such "light, light love" as his has wings to fly at the mere suspicion of a bond. He has grown weary of her "wisdom"; pleasure is his aim in life, and _that_ is always ready to "turn up next in a laughing eye." . . . So the songs have said and will say for all time--the new songs for the old despair.

But though she knows all this (we seem to see), she will not be able to act upon it. Always she will watch too long, and wait too well. Hers is a nature as simple as it is intense. No sort of subterfuge is within her means--neither the gay deception nor the grave. What she knows that he resents, she still must do immutably--bound upon the wheel of her true self. For only one "self" she has, and that the wrong one.

She turns back, she walks homeward along the beach--"on the edge of the low rocks by the sea, for miles."

V.--ON THE CLIFF

But still love is a power! Love can move mountains, for is not love the same as faith? And not a mountain is here, but a mere man's heart--already "moved," for he _has_ loved her.

It is summer again. She sits on the cliff, leaning back on the short dry gra.s.s--if one still can call it gra.s.s, so "deep was done the work of the summer sun." And there near by is the rock, baked dry as the gra.s.s, and flat as an anvil's face. "No iron like that!" Not a weed nor a sh.e.l.l: "death's altar by the lone sh.o.r.e." The drear a.n.a.logies succeed one another; she sees them everywhere, in everything. The dead gra.s.s, the dead rock. . . . But now, what is this on the turf? A gay blue cricket!

A cricket--only that? Nay, a war-horse, a magic little steed, a "real fairy, with wings all right." And there too on the rock, like a drop of fire, that gorgeous-coloured b.u.t.terfly.