The Princess Part 4

Yet I bore up in part from ancient love, And partly that I hoped to win you back, And partly conscious of my own deserts, And partly that you were my civil head, And chiefly you were born for something great, In which I might your fellow-worker be, When time should serve; and thus a n.o.ble scheme Grew up from seed we two long since had sown; In us true growth, in her a Jonah's gourd, Up in one night and due to sudden sun: We took this palace; but even from the first You stood in your own light and darkened mine.

What student came but that you planed her path To Lady Psyche, younger, not so wise, A foreigner, and I your countrywoman, I your old friend and tried, she new in all?

But still her lists were swelled and mine were lean; Yet I bore up in hope she would be known: Then came these wolves: _they_ knew her: _they_ endured, Long-closeted with her the yestermorn, To tell her what they were, and she to hear: And me none told: not less to an eye like mine A lidless watcher of the public weal, Last night, their mask was patent, and my foot Was to you: but I thought again: I feared To meet a cold "We thank you, we shall hear of it From Lady Psyche:" you had gone to her, She told, perforce; and winning easy grace No doubt, for slight delay, remained among us In our young nursery still unknown, the stem Less grain than touchwood, while my honest heat Were all miscounted as malignant haste To push my rival out of place and power.

But public use required she should be known; And since my oath was ta'en for public use, I broke the letter of it to keep the sense.

I spoke not then at first, but watched them well, Saw that they kept apart, no mischief done; And yet this day (though you should hate me for it) I came to tell you; found that you had gone, Ridden to the hills, she likewise: now, I thought, That surely she will speak; if not, then I: Did she? These monsters blazoned what they were, According to the coa.r.s.eness of their kind, For thus I hear; and known at last (my work) And full of cowardice and guilty shame, I grant in her some sense of shame, she flies; And I remain on whom to wreak your rage, I, that have lent my life to build up yours, I that have wasted here health, wealth, and time, And talent, I--you know it--I will not boast: Dismiss me, and I prophesy your plan, Divorced from my experience, will be chaff For every gust of chance, and men will say We did not know the real light, but chased The wisp that flickers where no foot can tread.'

She ceased: the Princess answered coldly, 'Good: Your oath is broken: we dismiss you: go.

For this lost lamb (she pointed to the child) Our mind is changed: we take it to ourself.'

Thereat the Lady stretched a vulture throat, And shot from crooked lips a haggard smile.

'The plan was mine. I built the nest' she said 'To hatch the cuckoo. Rise!' and stooped to updrag Melissa: she, half on her mother propt, Half-drooping from her, turned her face, and cast A liquid look on Ida, full of prayer, Which melted Florian's fancy as she hung, A Niobean daughter, one arm out, Appealing to the bolts of Heaven; and while We gazed upon her came a little stir About the doors, and on a sudden rushed Among us, out of breath as one pursued, A woman-post in flying raiment. Fear Stared in her eyes, and chalked her face, and winged Her transit to the throne, whereby she fell Delivering sealed dispatches which the Head Took half-amazed, and in her lion's mood Tore open, silent we with blind surmise Regarding, while she read, till over brow And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom As of some fire against a stormy cloud, When the wild peasant rights himself, the rick Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens; For anger most it seemed, while now her breast, Beaten with some great pa.s.sion at her heart, Palpitated, her hand shook, and we heard In the dead hush the papers that she held Rustle: at once the lost lamb at her feet Sent out a bitter bleating for its dam; The plaintive cry jarred on her ire; she crushed The scrolls together, made a sudden turn As if to speak, but, utterance failing her, She whirled them on to me, as who should say 'Read,' and I read--two letters--one her sire's.

'Fair daughter, when we sent the Prince your way, We knew not your ungracious laws, which learnt, We, conscious of what temper you are built, Came all in haste to hinder wrong, but fell Into his father's hands, who has this night, You lying close upon his territory, Slipt round and in the dark invested you, And here he keeps me hostage for his son.'

The second was my father's running thus: 'You have our son: touch not a hair of his head: Render him up unscathed: give him your hand: Cleave to your contract: though indeed we hear You hold the woman is the better man; A rampant heresy, such as if it spread Would make all women kick against their Lords Through all the world, and which might well deserve That we this night should pluck your palace down; And we will do it, unless you send us back Our son, on the instant, whole.'

So far I read; And then stood up and spoke impetuously.

'O not to pry and peer on your reserve, But led by golden wishes, and a hope The child of regal compact, did I break Your precinct; not a scorner of your s.e.x But venerator, zealous it should be All that it might be: hear me, for I bear, Though man, yet human, whatsoe'er your wrongs, From the flaxen curl to the gray lock a life Less mine than yours: my nurse would tell me of you; I babbled for you, as babies for the moon, Vague brightness; when a boy, you stooped to me From all high places, lived in all fair lights, Came in long breezes rapt from inmost south And blown to inmost north; at eve and dawn With Ida, Ida, Ida, rang the woods; The leader wildswan in among the stars Would clang it, and lapt in wreaths of glowworm light The mellow breaker murmured Ida. Now, Because I would have reached you, had you been Sphered up with Ca.s.siopeia, or the enthroned Persephone in Hades, now at length, Those winters of abeyance all worn out, A man I came to see you: but indeed, Not in this frequence can I lend full tongue, O n.o.ble Ida, to those thoughts that wait On you, their centre: let me say but this, That many a famous man and woman, town And landskip, have I heard of, after seen The dwarfs of presage: though when known, there grew Another kind of beauty in detail Made them worth knowing; but in your I found My boyish dream involved and dazzled down And mastered, while that after-beauty makes Such head from act to act, from hour to hour, Within me, that except you slay me here, According to your bitter statute-book, I cannot cease to follow you, as they say The seal does music; who desire you more Than growing boys their manhood; dying lips, With many thousand matters left to do, The breath of life; O more than poor men wealth, Than sick men health--yours, yours, not mine--but half Without you; with you, whole; and of those halves You worthiest; and howe'er you block and bar Your heart with system out from mine, I hold That it becomes no man to nurse despair, But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms To follow up the worthiest till he die: Yet that I came not all unauthorized Behold your father's letter.'

On one knee Kneeling, I gave it, which she caught, and dashed Unopened at her feet: a tide of fierce Invective seemed to wait behind her lips, As waits a river level with the dam Ready to burst and flood the world with foam: And so she would have spoken, but there rose A hubbub in the court of half the maids Gathered together: from the illumined hall Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes, And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes, And gold and golden heads; they to and fro Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, some pale, All open-mouthed, all gazing to the light, Some crying there was an army in the land, And some that men were in the very walls, And some they cared not; till a clamour grew As of a new-world Babel, woman-built, And worse-confounded: high above them stood The placid marble Muses, looking peace.

Not peace she looked, the Head: but rising up Robed in the long night of her deep hair, so To the open window moved, remaining there Fixt like a beacon-tower above the waves Of tempest, when the crimson-rolling eye Glares ruin, and the wild birds on the light Dash themselves dead. She stretched her arms and called Across the tumult and the tumult fell.

'What fear ye, brawlers? am not I your Head?

On me, me, me, the storm first breaks: _I_ dare All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?

Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come: If not,--myself were like enough, O girls, To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights, And clad in iron burst the ranks of war, Or, falling, promartyr of our cause, Die: yet I blame you not so much for fear: Six thousand years of fear have made you that From which I would redeem you: but for those That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know Your faces there in the crowd--tomorrow morn We hold a great convention: then shall they That love their voices more than duty, learn With whom they deal, dismissed in shame to live No wiser than their mothers, household stuff, Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame, Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown, The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time, Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum, To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour, For ever slaves at home and fools abroad.'

She, ending, waved her hands: thereat the crowd Muttering, dissolved: then with a smile, that looked A stroke of cruel sunshine on the cliff, When all the glens are drowned in azure gloom Of thunder-shower, she floated to us and said:

'You have done well and like a gentleman, And like a prince: you have our thanks for all: And you look well too in your woman's dress: Well have you done and like a gentleman.

You saved our life: we owe you bitter thanks: Better have died and spilt our bones in the flood-- Then men had said--but now--What hinders me To take such b.l.o.o.d.y vengeance on you both?-- Yet since our father--Wasps in our good hive, You would-be quenchers of the light to be, Barbarians, grosser than your native bears-- O would I had his sceptre for one hour!

You that have dared to break our bound, and gulled Our servants, wronged and lied and thwarted us-- _I_ wed with thee! _I_ bound by precontract Your bride, our bondslave! not though all the gold That veins the world were packed to make your crown, And every spoken tongue should lord you. Sir, Your falsehood and yourself are hateful to us: I trample on your offers and on you: Begone: we will not look upon you more.

Here, push them out at gates.'

In wrath she spake.

Then those eight mighty daughters of the plough Bent their broad faces toward us and addressed Their motion: twice I sought to plead my cause, But on my shoulder hung their heavy hands, The weight of destiny: so from her face They pushed us, down the steps, and through the court, And with grim laughter thrust us out at gates.

We crossed the street and gained a petty mound Beyond it, whence we saw the lights and heard the voices murmuring.

While I listened, came On a sudden the weird seizure and the doubt: I seemed to move among a world of ghosts; The Princess with her monstrous woman-guard, The jest and earnest working side by side, The cataract and the tumult and the kings Were shadows; and the long fantastic night With all its doings had and had not been, And all things were and were not.

This went by As strangely as it came, and on my spirits Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy; Not long; I shook it off; for spite of doubts And sudden ghostly shadowings I was one To whom the touch of all mischance but came As night to him that sitting on a hill Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun Set into sunrise; then we moved away.

Thy voice is heard through rolling drums, That beat to battle where he stands; Thy face across his fancy comes, And gives the battle to his hands: A moment, while the trumpets blow, He sees his brood about thy knee; The next, like fire he meets the foe, And strikes him dead for thine and thee.

So Lilia sang: we thought her half-possessed, She struck such warbling fury through the words; And, after, feigning pique at what she called The raillery, or grotesque, or false sublime-- Like one that wishes at a dance to change The music--clapt her hands and cried for war, Or some grand fight to kill and make an end: And he that next inherited the tale Half turning to the broken statue, said, 'Sir Ralph has got your colours: if I prove Your knight, and fight your battle, what for me?'

It chanced, her empty glove upon the tomb Lay by her like a model of her hand.

She took it and she flung it. 'Fight' she said, 'And make us all we would be, great and good.'

He knightlike in his cap instead of casque, A cap of Tyrol borrowed from the hall, Arranged the favour, and a.s.sumed the Prince.

V

Now, scarce three paces measured from the mound, We stumbled on a stationary voice, And 'Stand, who goes?' 'Two from the palace' I.

'The second two: they wait,' he said, 'pa.s.s on; His Highness wakes:' and one, that clashed in arms, By glimmering lanes and walls of canvas led Threading the soldier-city, till we heard The drowsy folds of our great ensign shake From blazoned lions o'er the imperial tent Whispers of war.

Entering, the sudden light Dazed me half-blind: I stood and seemed to hear, As in a poplar grove when a light wind wakes A lisping of the innumerous leaf and dies, Each hissing in his neighbour's ear; and then A strangled t.i.tter, out of which there brake On all sides, clamouring etiquette to death, Unmeasured mirth; while now the two old kings Began to wag their baldness up and down, The fresh young captains flashed their glittering teeth, The huge bush-bearded Barons heaved and blew, And slain with laughter rolled the gilded Squire.

At length my Sire, his rough cheek wet with tears, Panted from weary sides 'King, you are free!

We did but keep you surety for our son, If this be he,--or a dragged mawkin, thou, That tends to her bristled grunters in the sludge:'

For I was drenched with ooze, and torn with briers, More crumpled than a poppy from the sheath, And all one rag, disprinced from head to heel.

Then some one sent beneath his vaulted palm A whispered jest to some one near him, 'Look, He has been among his shadows.' 'Satan take The old women and their shadows! (thus the King Roared) make yourself a man to fight with men.

Go: Cyril told us all.'

As boys that slink From ferule and the trespa.s.s-chiding eye, Away we stole, and transient in a trice From what was left of faded woman-slough To sheathing splendours and the golden scale Of harness, issued in the sun, that now Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth, And hit the Northern hills. Here Cyril met us.

A little shy at first, but by and by We twain, with mutual pardon asked and given For stroke and song, resoldered peace, whereon Followed his tale. Amazed he fled away Through the dark land, and later in the night Had come on Psyche weeping: 'then we fell Into your father's hand, and there she lies, But will not speak, or stir.'

He showed a tent A stone-shot off: we entered in, and there Among piled arms and rough accoutrements, Pitiful sight, wrapped in a soldier's cloak, Like some sweet sculpture draped from head to foot, And pushed by rude hands from its pedestal, All her fair length upon the ground she lay: And at her head a follower of the camp, A charred and wrinkled piece of womanhood, Sat watching like the watcher by the dead.

Then Florian knelt, and 'Come' he whispered to her, 'Lift up your head, sweet sister: lie not thus.

What have you done but right? you could not slay Me, nor your prince: look up: be comforted: Sweet is it to have done the thing one ought, When fallen in darker ways.' And likewise I: 'Be comforted: have I not lost her too, In whose least act abides the nameless charm That none has else for me?' She heard, she moved, She moaned, a folded voice; and up she sat, And raised the cloak from brows as pale and smooth As those that mourn half-shrouded over death In deathless marble. 'Her,' she said, 'my friend-- Parted from her--betrayed her cause and mine-- Where shall I breathe? why kept ye not your faith?

O base and bad! what comfort? none for me!'

To whom remorseful Cyril, 'Yet I pray Take comfort: live, dear lady, for your child!'

At which she lifted up her voice and cried.

'Ah me, my babe, my blossom, ah, my child, My one sweet child, whom I shall see no more!

For now will cruel Ida keep her back; And either she will die from want of care, Or sicken with ill-usage, when they say The child is hers--for every little fault, The child is hers; and they will beat my girl Remembering her mother: O my flower!

Or they will take her, they will make her hard, And she will pa.s.s me by in after-life With some cold reverence worse than were she dead.

Ill mother that I was to leave her there, To lag behind, scared by the cry they made, The horror of the shame among them all: But I will go and sit beside the doors, And make a wild pet.i.tion night and day, Until they hate to hear me like a wind Wailing for ever, till they open to me, And lay my little blossom at my feet, My babe, my sweet Aglaa, my one child: And I will take her up and go my way, And satisfy my soul with kissing her: Ah! what might that man not deserve of me Who gave me back my child?' 'Be comforted,'

Said Cyril, 'you shall have it:' but again She veiled her brows, and p.r.o.ne she sank, and so Like tender things that being caught feign death, Spoke not, nor stirred.

By this a murmur ran Through all the camp and inward raced the scouts With rumour of Prince Arab hard at hand.

We left her by the woman, and without Found the gray kings at parle: and 'Look you' cried My father 'that our compact be fulfilled: You have spoilt this child; she laughs at you and man: She wrongs herself, her s.e.x, and me, and him: But red-faced war has rods of steel and fire; She yields, or war.'

Then Gama turned to me: 'We fear, indeed, you spent a stormy time With our strange girl: and yet they say that still You love her. Give us, then, your mind at large: How say you, war or not?'

'Not war, if possible, O king,' I said, 'lest from the abuse of war, The desecrated shrine, the trampled year, The smouldering homestead, and the household flower Torn from the lintel--all the common wrong-- A smoke go up through which I loom to her Three times a monster: now she lightens scorn At him that mars her plan, but then would hate (And every voice she talked with ratify it, And every face she looked on justify it) The general foe. More soluble is this knot, By gentleness than war. I want her love.

What were I nigher this although we dashed Your cities into shards with catapults, She would not love;--or brought her chained, a slave, The lifting of whose eyelash is my lord, Not ever would she love; but brooding turn The book of scorn, till all my flitting chance Were caught within the record of her wrongs, And crushed to death: and rather, Sire, than this I would the old G.o.d of war himself were dead, Forgotten, rusting on his iron hills, Rotting on some wild sh.o.r.e with ribs of wreck, Or like an old-world mammoth bulked in ice, Not to be molten out.'

And roughly spake My father, 'Tut, you know them not, the girls.

Boy, when I hear you prate I almost think That idiot legend credible. Look you, Sir!

Man is the hunter; woman is his game: The sleek and shining creatures of the chase, We hunt them for the beauty of their skins; They love us for it, and we ride them down.

Wheedling and siding with them! Out! for shame!

Boy, there's no rose that's half so dear to them As he that does the thing they dare not do, Breathing and sounding beauteous battle, comes With the air of the trumpet round him, and leaps in Among the women, snares them by the score Flattered and fl.u.s.tered, wins, though dashed with death He reddens what he kisses: thus I won You mother, a good mother, a good wife, Worth winning; but this firebrand--gentleness To such as her! if Cyril spake her true, To catch a dragon in a cherry net, To trip a tigress with a gossamer Were wisdom to it.'

'Yea but Sire,' I cried, 'Wild natures need wise curbs. The soldier? No: What dares not Ida do that she should prize The soldier? I beheld her, when she rose The yesternight, and storming in extremes, Stood for her cause, and flung defiance down Gagelike to man, and had not shunned the death, No, not the soldier's: yet I hold her, king, True woman: you clash them all in one, That have as many differences as we.

The violet varies from the lily as far As oak from elm: one loves the soldier, one The silken priest of peace, one this, one that, And some unworthily; their sinless faith, A maiden moon that sparkles on a sty, Glorifying clown and satyr; whence they need More breadth of culture: is not Ida right?

They worth it? truer to the law within?

Severer in the logic of a life?

Twice as magnetic to sweet influences Of earth and heaven? and she of whom you speak, My mother, looks as whole as some serene Creation minted in the golden moods Of sovereign artists; not a thought, a touch, But pure as lines of green that streak the white Of the first snowdrop's inner leaves; I say, Not like the piebald miscellany, man, Bursts of great heart and slips in sensual mire, But whole and one: and take them all-in-all, Were we ourselves but half as good, as kind, As truthful, much that Ida claims as right Had ne'er been mooted, but as frankly theirs As dues of Nature. To our point: not war: Lest I lose all.'

'Nay, nay, you spake but sense'

Said Gama. 'We remember love ourself In our sweet youth; we did not rate him then This red-hot iron to be shaped with blows.

You talk almost like Ida: _she_ can talk; And there is something in it as you say: But you talk kindlier: we esteem you for it.-- He seems a gracious and a gallant Prince, I would he had our daughter: for the rest, Our own detention, why, the causes weighed, Fatherly fears--you used us courteously-- We would do much to gratify your Prince-- We pardon it; and for your ingress here Upon the skirt and fringe of our fair land, you did but come as goblins in the night, Nor in the furrow broke the ploughman's head, Nor burnt the grange, nor bussed the milking-maid, Nor robbed the farmer of his bowl of cream: But let your Prince (our royal word upon it, He comes back safe) ride with us to our lines, And speak with Arac: Arac's word is thrice As ours with Ida: something may be done-- I know not what--and ours shall see us friends.

You, likewise, our late guests, if so you will, Follow us: who knows? we four may build some plan Foursquare to opposition.'

Here he reached White hands of farewell to my sire, who growled An answer which, half-m.u.f.fled in his beard, Let so much out as gave us leave to go.