Browning's Heroines Part 39

But so had she looked to _him_, and he had shown her "a moment's spite." . . . Yet he cannot believe that a hasty word can do all this against the other memories. Things like that are indeed for ever happening; trivialities thus can mar immensities. The eye can be blurred by a fly's foot; a straw can stop all the wondrous mechanism of the ear.

But that is only the external world; endurance is easy there. It is different with love.

"Wrong in the one thing rare-- Oh, it is hard to bear!"

And especially hard now, in this "dawn of day." Little brooks must be dancing down the dell,

"Each with a tale to tell, Could my Love but attend as well."

But as she cannot, he will not. . . . Only, things will get lovelier every day, for the spring is back, or at any rate close at hand--the spring, when the almond-blossom blows.

"We shall have the word In a minor third There is none but the cuckoo knows: Heaps of the guelder rose!

I must bear with it, I suppose."

For he would choose, if he could choose, that November should come back.

Then there would be nothing for her to love but love! In such a world as spring and summer make, heart can dispense with heart; the sun is there, and the "flowers unnipped"; but in winter, freezing in the crypt, the heart cries: "Why should I freeze? Another heart, as chill as mine is now, would quiver back to life at the touch of this one":

"Heart, shall we live or die?

The rest . . . settle by-and-bye!"

Three months ago they were so happy! They lived blocked up with snow, the wind edged in and in, as far as it could get:

"Not to our ingle, though, Where we loved each the other so!"

If it were but winter now again, instead of the terrible, lovely spring, when she will have the blue sky and the hawthorn-spray and the brooks to love--and the almond-blossom and the cuckoo, and that guelder-rose which he will have to bear with . . .

But, after all, it _is_ November for their hearts! Hers is chill as his; she cannot live without him, as he cannot without her. If it were winter, "she'd efface the score and forgive him _as before_" (thus we perceive that this is not the first quarrel, that he has offended her before with that word which was _not_ so many things!)--and what else is it but winter for their shivering hearts? So he begins to hope. In March, too, there are storms--here is one beginning now, at noon, which shows that it will last. . . . Not yet, then, the too lovely spring!

"It is twelve o'clock: I shall hear her knock In the worst of a storm's uproar: I shall pull her through the door, I shall have her for evermore!"

. . . I think she came back. She would want to see how well he understood the spring--he who could make that picture of the Pampas'

sheen and the wild horse. Why should spring's news unfold itself, and he not "say things" about it to her, like those he could say about the mere _Times_ news? And it _is_ impossible to bear with the guelder-rose--the guelder-rose must be adored. They will adore it together; she will efface the score, and forgive him as before. What fun it will be, in the worst of the storm, to feel him pull her through the door!

In _The Lost Mistress_ it is really finished: she has dismissed him. We are not told why. It cannot be because he has not loved her--he who so tenderly, if so whimsically, accepts her decree. He will not let her see how much he suffers--he still can say the "little things" she liked.

"All's over, then: does truth sound bitter As one at first believes?

Hark, 'tis the sparrows' good-night twitter About your cottage eaves!

And the leaf-buds on the vine are woolly, I noticed that, to-day; One day more breaks them open fully --You know the red turns grey."

That is what his life has turned, but he will not maunder about it.

"To-morrow we meet the same then, dearest?

May I take your hand in mine?

Mere friends are we--well, friends the merest Keep much that I resign."

He is no more "he" for her: he is a friend like the rest. _He_ resigns.

But the friends do not know what "he" knew.

"For each glance of the eye so bright and black Though I keep with heart's endeavour-- Your voice, when you wish the snowdrops back, Though it stay in my soul for ever--"

. . . Is this like a friend? But he accepts her bidding--very nearly.

There are some things, perhaps, that he may fail in, but she need not fear--he will try.

"Yet I will but say what mere friends say, Or only a thought stronger; I will hold your hand but as long as all may, Or so very little longer!"

Again we have the typical Browning lover, who will not reproach nor scorn nor whine. But I think that this one had perhaps a little excess of whimsical humour. She would herself have needed a good deal of such humour to take this farewell just as it was offered. "_Does truth sound bitter, as one at first believes?_" Somewhat puzzling to her, it may be, that very philosophical reflection! . . . This has been called a n.o.ble, tender, an heroic, song of loss. For me there lurks a smile in it. I do not say that the smile makes the dismissal explicable; rather I a little wonder how she could have sent him away. But is it certain that she will not call him back, as she called the snowdrops? He means to hold her hand a little longer than the others do!

_The Worst of It_ is the cry of a man whose young, beautiful wife has left him for a lover. He cares for nothing else in the world; his whole heart and soul, even now, are set on discovering how he may help her.

But there is no way, for him. And the "worst of it" is that all has happened _through_ him. She had given him herself, she had bound her soul by the "vows that d.a.m.n"--and then had found that she must break them. And he proclaims her right to break them: no angel set them down!

But _she_--the pride of the day, the swan with no fleck on her wonder of white; she, with "the brow that looked like marble and smelt like myrrh," with the eyes and the grace and the glory! Is there to be no heaven for her--no crown for that brow? Shall other women be sainted, and not she, graced here beyond all saints?

"Hardly! That must be understood!

The earth is your place of penance, then."

But even the earthly punishment will be heavy for her to bear. . . . If it had only been he that was false, not she! _He_ could have borne all easily; speckled as he is, a spot or two would have made little difference. And he is nothing, while she is all.

Too monstrously the magnanimity of this man weights the scale against the woman. Instinctively we seek a different "excuse" for her from that which he makes--though indeed there scarce is one at which he does not catch.

"And I to have tempted you"--

. . . that is, tempted her to snap her gold ring and break her promise:

"I to have tempted you! I, who tired Your soul, no doubt, till it sank! Unwise, I loved and was lowly, loved and aspired, Loved, grieving or glad, till I made you mad, And you meant to have hated and despised-- Whereas, you deceived me nor inquired!"

This is the too-much of magnanimity. Browning tends to exaggerate the beauty of that virtue, as already we have seen in Pompilia; and a.s.suredly this husband has, like her, the defect of his quality. Tender, generous, high-hearted he is, but without the "sinew of the soul," as some old writer called _anger_. All these wonderful and subtle reasons for the tragic issue, all this apprehensive forecasting of the blow that awaits the woman "at the end of life," and the magnanimity which even then she shall find dreadfully awaiting her . . . all this is n.o.ble enough to read of, but imagine its atmosphere in daily life! The truth is that such natures are but wasted if they do not suffer--almost they might be called responsible for others' misdoings. We read the ringing stanzas of _The Worst of It_, and feel that no one should be doomed to suffer such forgiveness. What chance had _her_ soul? At every turn it found itself forestalled, and shall so find itself, he tells her, to all eternity.

"I knew you once; but in Paradise, If we meet, I will pa.s.s nor turn my face."

No: this with me is not a favourite poem. The wife, beautiful and pa.s.sionate, was never given a chance, in this world, to be "placed" at all in virtue; and she felt, no doubt, with a woman's intuition, that even in the last of all encounters she should still be baffled. Already that faultless husband is planning to be crushingly right on the Day of Judgment. And he _is_ so crushingly right! He is not a prig, he is not a Pharisee; he is only perfectly magnanimous--perfectly right. . . . And sometimes, she must have thought vaguely, with a pucker on the glorious brow,--sometimes, to love lovably, we must yield a little of our virtue, we must be willing to be perfectly wrong.

But his suffering is genuine. She has twisted all his world out of shape. He believes no more in truth or beauty or life.

"We take our own method, the devil and I, With pleasant and fair and wise and rare: And the best we wish to what lives, is--death."

_She_ is better off; she has committed a fault and has done . . . now she can begin again. But most likely she does not repent at all, he goes on to reflect--most likely she is glad she deceived him. She had endured too long:--

"[You] have done no evil and want no aid, Will live the old life out and chance the new.

And your sentence is written all the same, And I can do nothing--pray, perhaps: But somehow the word pursues its game-- If I pray, if I curse--for better or worse: And my faith is torn to a thousand sc.r.a.ps, And my heart feels ice while my words breathe flame.

Dear, I look from my hiding-place.

Are you still so fair? Have you still the eyes?

Be happy! Add but the other grace, Be good! Why want what the angels vaunt?

I knew you once: but in Paradise, If we meet, I will pa.s.s nor turn my face."