Part 10

I mind me, when we parted at the door, How strange his good-night sounded,—like good-night Beside a deathbed, where the morrow’s sun Is sure to come too late for more good-days:— And all that night I thought.... ‘Good-night,’ said he.

And so, a month passed. Let me set it down At once,—I have been wrong, I have been wrong. We are wrong always, when we think too much Of what we think or are; albeit our thoughts Be verily bitter as self-sacrifice, We’re no less selfish. If we sleep on rocks Or roses, sleeping past the hour of noon We’re lazy. This I write against myself. I had done a duty in the visit paid To Marian, and was ready otherwise To give the witness of my presence and name Whenever she should marry.—Which, I thought, Sufficed. I even had cast into the scale An overweight of justice toward the match; The Lady Waldemar had missed her tool, Had broken it in the lock as being too straight For a crooked purpose, while poor Marian Erle Missed nothing in my accents or my acts: I had not been ungenerous on the whole, Nor yet untender; so, enough. I felt Tired, overworked: this marriage somewhat jarred; Or, if it did not, all the bridal noise ... The pricking of the map of life with pins, In schemes of ... ‘Here we’ll go,’ and ‘There we’ll stay,’ And ‘Everywhere we’ll prosper in our love,’ Was scarce my business. Let them order it; Who else should care? I threw myself aside, As one who had done her work and shuts her eyes To rest the better. I, who should have known, Forereckoned mischief! Where we disavow Being keeper to our brother, we’re his Cain.

I might have held that poor child to my heart A little longer! ’twould have hurt me much To have hastened by its beats the marriage-day, And kept her safe meantime from tampering hands, Or, peradventure, traps? What drew me back From telling Romney plainly, the designs Of Lady Waldemar, as spoken out To me ... me? had I any right, ay, right, With womanly compassion and reserve To break the fall of woman’s impudence?— To stand by calmly, knowing what I knew, And hear him call her _good_? Distrust that word. ‘There is none good save God,’ said Jesus Christ. If He once, in the first creation-week, Called creatures good,—for ever, afterward, The Devil only has done it, and his heirs, The knaves who win so, and the fools who lose; The word’s grown dangerous. In the middle age, I think they called malignant fays and imps Good people. A good neighbour, even in this, Is fatal sometimes,—cuts your morning up To mince-meat of the very smallest talk, Then helps to sugar her bohea at night With your reputation. I have known good wives, As chaste, or nearly so, as Potiphar’s; And good, good mothers, who would use a child To better an intrigue; good friends, beside, (Very good) who hung succinctly round your neck And sucked your breath, as cats are fabled to do By sleeping infants. And we all have known Good critics, who have stamped out poet’s hopes; Good statesmen, who pulled ruin on the state; Good patriots, who, for a theory, risked a cause; Good kings, who disembowelled for a tax; Good popes, who brought all good to jeopardy; Good Christians, who sate still in easy chairs, And damned the general world for standing up.— Now, may the good God pardon all good men!

How bitterly I speak,—how certainly The innocent white milk in us is turned, By much persistent shining of the sun!— Shake up the sweetest in us long enough With men, it drops to foolish curd, too sour To feed the most untender of Christ’s lambs.

I should have thought ... a woman of the world Like her I’m meaning,—centre to herself, Who has wheeled on her own pivot half a life In isolated self-love and self-will, As a windmill seen at distance radiating Its delicate white vans against the sky, So soft and soundless, simply beautiful,— Seen nearer ... what a roar and tear it makes, How it grinds and bruises!... if she loves at last, Her love’s a re-adjustment of self-love, No more; a need felt of another’s use To her one advantage,—as the mill wants grain, The fire wants fuel, the very wolf wants prey; And none of these is more unscrupulous Than such a charming woman when she loves. She’ll not be thwarted by an obstacle So trifling as ... her soul is, ... much less yours!— Is God a consideration?—she loves _you_, Not God; she will not flinch for Him indeed: She did not for the Marchioness of Perth, When wanting tickets for the birthnight-ball. She loves you, sir, with passion, to lunacy; She loves you like her diamonds ... almost. Well, A month passed so, and then the notice came; On such a day the marriage at the church. I was not backward. Half St. Giles in frieze Was bidden to meet St. James in cloth of gold, And, after contract at the altar, pass To eat a marriage-feast on Hampstead Heath. Of course the people came in uncompelled, Lame, blind, and worse—sick, sorrowful, and worse, The humours of the peccant social wound All pressed out, poured out upon Pimlico, Exasperating the unaccustomed air With hideous interfusion: you’d suppose A finished generation, dead of plague, Swept outward from their graves into the sun, The moil of death upon them. What a sight! A holiday of miserable men Is sadder than a burial-day of kings.

They clogged the streets, they oozed into the church In a dark slow stream, like blood. To see that sight, The noble ladies stood up in their pews, Some pale for fear, a few as red for hate, Some simply curious, some just insolent, And some in wondering scorn,—‘What next? what next?’ These crushed their delicate rose-lips from the smile That misbecame them in a holy place, With broidered hems of perfumed handkerchiefs; Those passed the salts with confidence of eyes And simultaneous shiver of moiré silk; While all the aisles, alive and black with heads, Crawled slowly toward the altar from the street, As bruised snakes crawl and hiss out of a hole With shuddering involutions, swaying slow From right to left, and then from left to right, In pants and pauses. What an ugly crest Of faces, rose upon you everywhere, From that crammed mass! you did not usually See faces like them in the open day: They hide in cellars, not to make you mad As Romney Leigh is.—Faces!—O my God, We call those, faces? men’s and women’s ... ay, And children’s;—babies, hanging like a rag Forgotten on their mother’s neck,—poor mouths, Wiped clean of mother’s milk by mother’s blow, Before they are taught her cursing. Faces!... phew, We’ll call them vices festering to despairs, Or sorrows petrifying to vices: not A finger-touch of God left whole on them; All ruined, lost—the countenance worn out As the garments, the will dissolute as the acts, The passions loose and draggling in the dirt To trip the foot up at the first free step!— Those, faces! ’twas as if you had stirred up hell To heave its lowest dreg-fiends uppermost In fiery swirls of slime,—such strangled fronts, Such obdurate jaws were thrown up constantly, To twit you with your race, corrupt your blood, And grind to devilish colours all your dreams Henceforth, ... though, haply, you should drop asleep By clink of silver waters, in a muse On Raffael’s mild Madonna of the Bird.

I’ve waked and slept through many nights and days Since then,—but still that day will catch my breath Like a nightmare. There are fatal days, indeed, In which the fibrous years have taken root So deeply, that they quiver to their tops Whene’er you stir the dust of such a day.

My cousin met me with his eyes and hand, And then, with just a word, ... that ‘Marian Erle Was coming with her bridesmaids presently,’ Made haste to place me by the altar-stair, Where he and other noble gentlemen And high-born ladies, waited for the bride.

We waited. It was early: there was time For greeting, and the morning’s compliment; And gradually a ripple of women’s talk Arose and fell, and tossed about a spray Of English _s_s, soft as a silent hush, And, notwithstanding, quite as audible As louder phrases thrown out by the men. —‘Yes, really, if we’ve need to wait in church, We’ve need to talk there.’—‘She? ’Tis Lady Ayr, In blue—not purple! that’s the dowager.’ —‘She looks as young.’—‘She flirts as young, you mean! Why if you had seen her upon Thursday night, You’d call Miss Norris modest.’—‘_You_ again! I waltzed with you three hours back. Up at six, Up still at ten: scarce time to change one’s shoes. I feel as white and sulky as a ghost, So pray don’t speak to me, Lord Belcher.’—‘No, I’ll look at you instead, and it’s enough While you have that face.’ ‘In church, my lord! fie, fie!’ —‘Adair, you stayed for the Division?’—‘Lost By one.’ ‘The devil it is! I’m sorry for’t. And if I had not promised Mistress Grove’ ... —‘You might have kept your word to Liverpool.’ ‘Constituents must remember, after all, We’re mortal.’—‘We remind them of it.’—‘Hark, The bride comes! Here she comes, in a stream of milk!’ —‘There? Dear, you are asleep still; don’t you know The five Miss Granvilles? always dressed in white To show they’re ready to be married.’—‘Lower! The aunt is at your elbow.’—‘Lady Maud, Did Lady Waldemar tell you she had seen This girl of Leigh’s?’ ‘No,—wait! ’twas Mrs. Brookes, Who told me Lady Waldemar told her— No, ’twasn’t Mrs. Brookes.’—‘She’s pretty?’—‘Who? Mrs. Brookes? Lady Waldemar?’—‘How hot! Pray is’t the law to-day we’re not to breathe? You’re treading on my shawl—I thank you, sir.’ —‘They say the bride’s a mere child, who can’t read, But knows the things she shouldn’t, with wide-awake Great eyes. I’d go through fire to look at her.’ —‘You do, I think.’—‘And Lady Waldemar (You see her; sitting close to Romney Leigh; How beautiful she looks, a little flushed!) Has taken up the girl, and organised Leigh’s folly. Should I have come here, you suppose, Except she’d asked me?’—‘She’d have served him more By marrying him herself.’ ‘Ah—there she comes, The bride, at last!’ ‘Indeed, no. Past eleven. She puts off her patched petticoat to-day And puts on May-fair manners, so begins By setting us to wait.’—‘Yes, yes, this Leigh Was always odd; it’s in the blood, I think; His father’s uncle’s cousin’s second son Was, was ... you understand me—and for him, He’s stark!—has turned quite lunatic upon This modern question of the poor—the poor: An excellent subject when you’re moderate; You’ve seen Prince Albert’s model lodging-house? Does honour to his Royal Highness. Good! But would he stop his carriage in Cheapside To shake a common fellow by the fist Whose name was ... Shakspeare? no. We draw a line, And if we stand not by our order, we In England, we fall headlong. Here’s a sight,— A hideous sight, a most indecent sight! My wife would come, sir, or I had kept her back. By heaven, sir, when poor Damiens’ trunk and limbs Were torn by horses, women of the court Stood by and stared, exactly as to-day On this dismembering of society, With pretty troubled faces.’ ‘Now, at last. She comes now.’ ‘Where? who sees? you push me, sir, Beyond the point of what is mannerly. You’re standing, madam, on my second flounce— I do beseech you.’ ‘No—it’s not the bride. Half-past eleven. How late. The bridegroom, mark, Gets anxious and goes out.’ ‘And as I said ... These Leighs! our best blood running in the rut! It’s something awful. We had pardoned him A simple misalliance, got up aside For a pair of sky-blue eyes; our House of Lords Has winked at such things, and we’ve all been young. But here’s an inter-marriage reasoned out, A contract (carried boldly to the light, To challenge observation, pioneer Good acts by a great example) ’twixt the extremes Of martyrised society,—on the left, The well-born,—on the right, the merest mob, To treat as equals!—’tis anarchical! It means more than it says—’tis damnable! Why, sir, we can’t have even our coffee good, Unless we strain it.’ ‘Here, Miss Leigh!’ ‘Lord Howe, You’re Romney’s friend. What’s all this waiting for?’

‘I cannot tell. The bride has lost her head (And way, perhaps!) to prove her sympathy With the bridegroom.’ ‘What,—you also, disapprove!’

‘Oh, _I_ approve of nothing in the world,’ He answered; ‘not of you, still less of me, Nor even of Romney—though he’s worth us both. We’re all gone wrong. The tune in us is lost: And whistling in back alleys to the moon, Will never catch it.’ Let me draw Lord Howe; A born aristocrat, bred radical, And educated socialist, who still Goes floating, on traditions of his kind, Across the theoretic flood from France,— Though, like a drenched Noah on a rotten deck, Scarce safer for his place there. He, at least, Will never land on Ararat, he knows, To recommence the world on the old plan: Indeed, he thinks, said world had better end; He sympathises rather with the fish Outside, than with the drowned paired beasts within Who cannot couple again or multiply: And that’s the sort of Noah he is, Lord Howe. He never could be anything complete, Except a loyal, upright gentleman, A liberal landlord, graceful diner-out, And entertainer more than hospitable, Whom authors dine with and forget the port. Whatever he believes, and it is much, But no-wise certain ... now here and now there, ... He still has sympathies beyond his creed, Diverting him from action. In the House, No party counts upon him, and all praise All like his books too, (he has written books) Which, good to lie beside a bishop’s chair, So oft outreach themselves with jets of fire At which the foremost of the progressists May warm audacious hands in passing by. —Of stature over-tall, lounging for ease; Light hair, that seems to carry a wind in it, And eyes that, when they look on you, will lean Their whole weight half in indolence, and half In wishing you unmitigated good, Until you know not if to flinch from him Or thank him.—’Tis Lord Howe. ‘We’re all gone wrong,’ Said he, ‘and Romney, that dear friend of ours, Is no-wise right. There’s one true thing on earth; That’s love! He takes it up, and dresses it, And acts a play with it, as Hamlet did, To show what cruel uncles we have been, And how we should be uneasy in our minds, While he, Prince Hamlet, weds a pretty maid (Who keeps us too long waiting, we’ll confess) By symbol, to instruct us formally To fill the ditches up ’twixt class and class, And live together in phalansteries. What then?—he’s mad, our Hamlet! clap his play, And bind him.’ ‘Ah Lord Howe, this spectacle Pulls stronger at us than the Dane’s. See there! The crammed aisles heave and strain and steam with life— Dear Heaven, what life!’ ‘Why, yes,—a poet sees; Which makes him different from a common man. _I_, too, see somewhat, though I cannot sing; I should have been a poet, only that My mother took fright at the ugly world, And bore me tongue-tied. If you’ll grant me now That Romney gives us a fine actor-piece To make us merry on his marriage-morn, The fable’s worse than Hamlet’s, I’ll concede. The terrible people, old and poor and blind, Their eyes eat out with plague and poverty From seeing beautiful and cheerful sights, We’ll liken to a brutalised King Lear, Led out,—by no means to clear scores with wrongs— His wrongs are so far back, ... he has forgot; All’s past like youth; but just to witness here A simple contract,—he, upon his side, And Regan with her sister Goneril And all the dappled courtiers and court-fools, On their side. Not that any of these would say They’re sorry, neither. What is done, is done, And violence is now turned privilege, As cream turns cheese, if buried long enough. What could such lovely ladies have to do With the old man there, in those ill-odorous rags, Except to keep the wind-side of him? Lear Is flat and quiet, as a decent grave; He does not curse his daughters in the least. _Be_ these his daughters? Lear is thinking of His porridge chiefly ... is it getting cold At Hampstead? will the ale be served in pots? Poor Lear, poor daughters! Bravo, Romney’s play!’

A murmur and a movement drew around; A naked whisper touched us. Something wrong! What’s wrong? The black crowd, as an overstrained Cord, quivered in vibrations, and I saw ... Was that _his_ face I saw?... his ... Romney Leigh’s ... Which tossed a sudden horror like a sponge Into all eyes,—while himself stood white upon The topmost altar-stair, and tried to speak, And failed, and lifted higher above his head A letter, ... as a man who drowns and gasps.

‘My brothers, bear with me! I am very weak. I meant but only good. Perhaps I meant Too proudly,—and God snatched the circumstance And changed it therefore. There’s no marriage—none. She leaves me,—she departs,—she disappears,— I lose her. Yet I never forced her ‘ay,’ To have her ‘no’ so cast into my teeth, In manner of an accusation, thus. My friends, you are all dismissed. Go, eat and drink According to the programme,—and farewell!’

He ended. There was silence in the church; We heard a baby sucking in its sleep At the farthest end of the aisle. Then spoke a man, ‘Now, look to it, coves, that all the beef and drink Be not filched from us like the other fun; For beer’s spilt easier than a woman is! This gentry is not honest with the poor; They bring us up, to trick us.’—‘Go it, Jim,’ A woman screamed back,—‘I’m a tender soul; I never banged a child at two years old And drew blood from him, but I sobbed for it Next moment,—and I’ve had a plague of seven. I’m tender; I’ve no stomach even for beef, Until I know about the girl that’s lost, That’s killed, mayhap. I did misdoubt, at first, The fine lord meant no good by her, or us. He, maybe, got the upper hand of her By holding up a wedding-ring, and then ... A choking finger on her throat, last night, And just a clever tale to keep us still, As she is, poor lost innocent. ‘Disappear!’ Who ever disappears except a ghost? And who believes a story of a ghost? I ask you,—would a girl go off, instead Of staying to be married? a fine tale! A wicked man, I say, a wicked man! For my part I would rather starve on gin Than make my dinner on his beef and beer.’— At which a cry rose up—‘We’ll have our rights. We’ll have the girl, the girl! Your ladies there Are married safely and smoothly every day, And _she_ shall not drop through into a trap Because she’s poor and of the people: shame! We’ll have no tricks played off by gentlefolks; We’ll see her righted.’ Through the rage and roar I heard the broken words which Romney flung Among the turbulent masses, from the ground He held still, with his masterful pale face— As huntsmen throw the ration to the pack, Who, falling on it headlong, dog on dog In heaps of fury, rend it, swallow it up With yelling hound-jaws,—his indignant words, His piteous words, his most pathetic words, Whereof I caught the meaning here and there By his gesture ... torn in morsels, yelled across, And so devoured. From end to end, the church Rocked round us like the sea in storm, and then Broke up like the earth in earthquake. Men cried out ‘Police’—and women stood and shrieked for God, Or dropt and swooned; or, like a herd of deer, (For whom the black woods suddenly grow alive, Unleashing their wild shadows down the wind To hunt the creatures into corners, back And forward) madly fled, or blindly fell, Trod screeching underneath the feet of those Who fled and screeched. The last sight left to me Was Romney’s terrible calm face above The tumult!—the last sound was ‘Pull him down! Strike—kill him!’ Stretching my unreasoning arms, As men in dreams, who vainly interpose ’Twixt gods and their undoing, with a cry I struggled to precipitate myself Head-foremost to the rescue of my soul In that white face, ... till some one caught me back, And so the world went out,—I felt no more.

What followed, was told after by Lord Howe, Who bore me senseless from the strangling crowd In church and street, and then returned alone To see the tumult quelled. The men of law Had fallen as thunder on a roaring fire, And made all silent,—while the people’s smoke Passed eddying slowly from the emptied aisles.