Part 13

How lovely One I love not, looked to-night! She’s very pretty, Lady Waldemar. Her maid must use both hands to twist that coil Of tresses, then be careful lest the rich Bronze rounds should slip:—she missed, though, a grey hair, A single one,—I saw it; otherwise The woman looked immortal. How they told, Those alabaster shoulders and bare breasts, On which the pearls, drowned out of sight in milk, Were lost, excepting for the ruby-clasp! They split the amaranth velvet-boddice down To the waist, or nearly, with the audacious press Of full-breathed beauty. If the heart within Were half as white!—but, if it were, perhaps The breast were closer covered, and the sight Less aspectable, by half, too. I heard The young man with the German student’s look— A sharp face, like a knife in a cleft stick, Which shot up straight against the parting line So equally dividing the long hair,— Say softly to his neighbour, (thirty-five And mediæval) ‘Look that way, Sir Blaise. She’s Lady Waldemar—to the left,—in red— Whom Romney Leigh, our ablest man just now, Is soon about to marry.’ Then replied Sir Blaise Delorme, with quiet, priestlike voice, Too used to syllable damnations round To make a natural emphasis worth while: ‘Is Leigh your ablest man? the same, I think, Once jilted by a recreant pretty maid Adopted from the people? Now, in change, He seems to have plucked a flower from the other side Of the social hedge,’ ‘A flower, a flower,’ exclaimed My German student,—his own eyes full-blown Bent on her. He was twenty, certainly.

Sir Blaise resumed with gentle arrogance, As if he had dropped his alms into a hat, And had the right to counsel,—‘My young friend, I doubt your ablest man’s ability To get the least good or help meet for him, For pagan phalanstery or Christian home, From such a flowery creature,’ ‘Beautiful!’ My student murmured, rapt,—‘Mark how she stirs! Just waves her head, as if a flower indeed, Touched far off by the vain breath of our talk.’

At which that bilious Grimwald, (he who writes For the Renovator) who had seemed absorbed Upon the table-book of autographs, (I dare say mentally he crunched the bones Of all those writers, wishing them alive To feel his tooth in earnest) turned short round With low carnivorous laugh,—‘A flower, of course! She neither sews nor spins,—and takes no thought Of her garments ... falling off.’ The student flinched, Sir Blaise, the same; then both, drawing back their chairs As if they spied black-beetles on the floor, Pursued their talk, without a word being thrown To the critic. Good Sir Blaise’s brow is high And noticeably narrow: a strong wind, You fancy, might unroof him suddenly, And blow that great top attic off his head So piled with feudal relics. You admire His nose in profile, though you miss his chin; But, though you miss his chin, you seldom miss His golden cross worn innermostly, (carved For penance, by a saintly Styrian monk Whose flesh was too much with him,) slipping through Some unaware unbuttoned casualty Of the under-waistcoat. With an absent air Sir Blaise sate fingering it and speaking low, While I, upon the sofa, heard it all.

‘My dear young friend, if we could bear our eyes Like blessedest St. Lucy, on a plate, They would not trick us into choosing wives, As doublets, by the colour. Otherwise Our fathers chose,—and therefore, when they had hung Their household keys about a lady’s waist, The sense of duty gave her dignity: She kept her bosom holy to her babes; And, if a moralist reproved her dress, ’Twas, ‘Too much starch!’—and not, ‘Too little lawn!’'

‘Now, pshaw!’ returned the other in a heat, A little fretted by being called ‘young friend,’ Or so I took it,—‘for St. Lucy’s sake, If she’s the saint to curse by, let us leave Our fathers,—plagued enough about our sons!’ (He stroked his beardless chin) ‘yes, plagued, sir, plagued: The future generations lie on us As heavy as the nightmare of a seer; Our meat and drink grow painful prophecy: I ask you,—have we leisure, if we liked, To hollow out our weary hands to keep Your intermittent rushlight of the past From draughts in lobbies? Prejudice of sex, And marriage-laws ... the socket drops them through While we two speak,—however may protest Some over-delicate nostrils, like your own, ’Gainst odours thence arising.’ ‘You are young,’ Sir Blaise objected. ‘If I am,’ he said With fire,—‘though somewhat less so than I seem, The young run on before, and see the thing That’s coming. Reverence for the young, I cry. In that new church for which the world’s near ripe, You’ll have the younger in the Elder’s chair, Presiding with his ivory front of hope O’er foreheads clawed by cruel carrion-birds Of life’s experience.’ ‘Pray your blessing, sir,’ Sir Blaise replied good-humouredly,—‘I plucked A silver hair this morning from my beard, Which left me your inferior. Would I were Eighteen, and worthy to admonish you! If young men of your order run before To see such sights as sexual prejudice And marriage-law dissolved,—in plainer words, A general concubinage expressed In a universal pruriency,—the thing Is scarce worth running fast for, and you’d gain By loitering with your elders.’ ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘Who, getting to the top of Pisgah-hill, Can talk with one at bottom of the view, To make it comprehensible? Why, Leigh Himself, although our ablest man, I said, Is scarce advanced to see as far as this, Which some are: he takes up imperfectly The social question—by one handle—leaves The rest to trail. A Christian socialist, Is Romney Leigh, you understand.’ ‘Not I. I disbelieve in Christian-pagans, much As you in women-fishes. If we mix Two colours, we lose both, and make a third Distinct from either. Mark you! to mistake A colour is the sign of a sick brain, And mine, I thank the saints, is clear and cool: A neutral tint is here impossible. The church,—and by the church, I mean, of course, The catholic, apostolic, mother-church,— Draws lines as plain and straight as her own wall; Inside of which, are Christians, obviously, And outside ... dogs.’ ‘We thank you. Well I know The ancient mother-church would fain still bite, For all her toothless gums,—as Leigh himself Would fain be a Christian still, for all his wit; Pass that; you two may settle it, for me. You’re slow in England. In a month I learnt At Göttingen, enough philosophy To stock your English schools for fifty years; Pass that, too. Here, alone, I stop you short, —Supposing a true man like Leigh could stand Unequal in the stature of his life To the height of his opinions. Choose a wife Because of a smooth skin?—not he, not he! He’d rail at Venus’ self for creaking shoes, Unless she walked his way of righteousness: And if he takes a Venus Meretrix, (No imputation on the lady there) Be sure that, by some sleight of Christian art, He has metamorphosed and converted her To a Blessed Virgin.’ ‘Soft!’ Sir Blaise drew breath As if it hurt him,—‘Soft! no blasphemy, I pray you!’ ‘The first Christians did the thing; Why not the last?’ asked he of Göttingen, With just that shade of sneering on the lip, Compensates for the lagging of the beard,— ‘And so the case is. If that fairest fair Is talked of as the future wife of Leigh, She’s talked of, too, at least as certainly, As Leigh’s disciple. You may find her name On all his missions and commissions, schools, Asylums, hospitals,—he has had her down, With other ladies whom her starry lead Persuaded from their spheres, to his country-place In Shropshire, to the famed phalanstery At Leigh Hall, christianised from Fourier’s own, (In which he has planted out his sapling stocks Of knowledge into social nurseries) And there, they say, she has tarried half a week, And milked the cows, and churned, and pressed the curd, And said ‘my sister’ to the lowest drab Of all the assembled castaways; such girls! Ay, sided with them at the washing-tub— Conceive, Sir Blaise, those naked perfect arms, Round glittering arms, plunged elbow-deep in suds, Like wild swans hid in lilies all a-shake.’

Lord Howe came up. ‘What, talking poetry So near the image of the unfavouring Muse? That’s you, Miss Leigh: I’ve watched you half an hour, Precisely as I watched the statue called A Pallas in the Vatican;—you mind The face, Sir Blaise?—intensely calm and sad, As wisdom cut it off from fellowship,— But _that_ spoke louder. Not a word from _you_! And these two gentlemen were bold, I marked, And unabashed by even your silence.’ ‘Ah,’ Said I, ‘my dear Lord Howe, you shall not speak To a printing woman who has lost her place, (The sweet safe corner of the household fire Behind the heads of children) compliments, As if she were a woman. We who have clipt The curls before our eyes, may see at least As plain as men do: speak out, man to man; No compliments, beseech you.’ ‘Friend to friend, Let that be. We are sad to-night, I saw, (—Good night, Sir Blaise! Ah, Smith—he has slipped away) I saw you across the room, and stayed, Miss Leigh, To keep a crowd of lion-hunters off, With faces toward your jungle. There were three; A spacious lady, five feet ten and fat, Who has the devil in her (and there’s room) For walking to and fro upon the earth, From Chipewa to China; she requires Your autograph upon a tinted leaf ’Twixt Queen Pomare’s and Emperor Soulouque’s; Pray give it; she has energies, though fat: For me, I’d rather see a rick on fire Than such a woman angry. Then a youth Fresh from the backwoods, green as the underboughs, Asks modestly, Miss Leigh, to kiss your shoe, And adds, he has an epic, in twelve parts, Which when you’ve read, you’ll do it for his boot,— All which I saved you, and absorb next week Both manuscript and man,—because a lord Is still more potent than a poetess, With any extreme republican. Ah, ah, You smile at last, then.’ ‘Thank you.’ ‘Leave the smile, I’ll lose the thanks for ’t,—ay, and throw you in My transatlantic girl, with golden eyes, That draw you to her splendid whiteness, as The pistil of a water-lily draws, Adust with gold. Those girls across the sea Are tyrannously pretty,—and I swore (She seemed to me an innocent, frank girl) To bring her to you for a woman’s kiss, Not now, but on some other day or week: —We’ll call it perjury; I give her up.’

‘No, bring her.’ ‘Now,’ said he, ‘you make it hard To touch such goodness with a grimy palm. I thought to tease you well, and fret you cross, And steel myself, when rightly vexed with you, For telling you a thing to tease you more.’

‘Of Romney?’ ‘No, no; nothing worse,’ he cried, ‘Of Romney Leigh, than what is buzzed about,— That _he_ is taken in an eye-trap too, Like many half as wise. The thing I mean Refers to you, not him.’ ‘Refers to me.’ He echoed,—‘Me! You sound it like a stone Dropped down a dry well very listlessly, By one who never thinks about the toad Alive at the bottom. Presently perhaps You’ll sound your ‘me’ more proudly—till I shrink.’

‘Lord Howe’s the toad, then, in this question?’ ‘Brief, We’ll take it graver. Give me sofa-room, And quiet hearing. You know Eglinton, John Eglinton, of Eglinton in Kent?’

‘Is _he_ the toad?—he’s rather like the snail; Known chiefly for the house upon his back: Divide the man and house—you kill the man; That’s Eglinton of Eglinton, Lord Howe.’

He answered grave. ‘A reputable man, An excellent landlord of the olden stamp, If somewhat slack in new philanthropies; Who keeps his birthdays with a tenants’ dance, Is hard upon them when they miss the church Or keep their children back from catechism, But not ungentle when the aged poor Pick sticks at hedge-sides; nay, I’ve heard him say, ‘The old dame has a twinge because she stoops: ‘That’s punishment enough for felony.’’

‘O tender-hearted landlord! May I take My long lease with him, when the time arrives For gathering winter-faggots!’ ‘He likes art, Buys books and pictures ... of a certain kind; Neglects no patent duty; a good son’....

‘To a most obedient mother. Born to wear His father’s shoes, he wears her husband’s too: Indeed, I’ve heard it’s touching. Dear Lord Howe, You shall not praise _me_ so against your heart, When I’m at worst for praise and faggots.’ ‘Be Less bitter with me, for ... in short,’ he said, ‘I have a letter, which he urged me so To bring you ... I could scarcely choose but yield; Insisting that a new love passing through The hand of an old friendship, caught from it Some reconciling perfume.’ ‘Love, you say? My lord, I cannot love. I only find The rhymes for love,—and that’s not love, my lord. Take back your letter.’ ‘Pause: you’ll read it first?’

‘I will not read it: it is stereotyped; The same he wrote to,—anybody’s name,— Anne Blythe, the actress, when she had died so true, A duchess fainted in a private box: Pauline, the dancer, after the great _pas_, In which her little feet winked overhead Like other fire-flies, and amazed the pit: Or Baldinacci, when her F in alt Had touched the silver tops of heaven itself With such a pungent soul-dart, even the Queen Laid softly, each to each, her white-gloved palms, And sighed for joy: or else (I thank your friend) Aurora Leigh,—when some indifferent rhymes, Like those the boys sang round the holy ox On Memphis-road, have chanced, perhaps, to set Our Apis-public lowing. Oh, he wants, Instead of any worthy wife at home, A star upon his stage of Eglinton! Advise him that he is not overshrewd In being so little modest: a dropped star Makes bitter waters, says a Book I’ve read,— And there’s his unread letter.’ ‘My dear friend,’ Lord Howe began....

In haste I tore the phrase. ‘You mean your friend of Eglinton, or me?’

‘I mean you, you,’ he answered with some fire. ‘A happy life means prudent compromise; The tare runs through the farmer’s garnered sheaves; But though the gleaner’s apron holds pure wheat, We count her poorer. Tare with wheat, we cry, And good with drawbacks. You, you love your art, And, certain of vocation, set your soul On utterance. Only, ... in this world we have made, (They say God made it first, but, if He did, ’Twas so long since, ... and, since, we have spoiled it so, He scarce would know it, if He looked this way, From hells we preach of, with the flames blown out,) In this bad, twisted, topsy-turvy world, Where all the heaviest wrongs get uppermost,— In this uneven, unfostering England here, Where ledger-strokes and sword-strokes count indeed, But soul-strokes merely tell upon the flesh They strike from,—it is hard to stand for art, Unless some golden tripod from the sea Be fished up, by Apollo’s divine chance, To throne such feet as yours, my prophetess, At Delphi. Think,—the god comes down as fierce As twenty bloodhounds! shakes you, strangles you, Until the oracular shriek shall ooze in froth! At best it’s not all ease,—at worst too hard: A place to stand on is a ’vantage gained, And here’s your tripod. To be plain, dear friend, You’re poor, except in what you richly give; You labour for your own bread painfully, Or ere you pour our wine. For art’s sake, pause.’

I answered slow,—as some wayfaring man, Who feels himself at night too far from home, Makes stedfast face against the bitter wind. ‘Is art so less a thing than virtue is, That artists first must cater for their ease Or ever they make issue past themselves To generous use? alas, and is it so, That we, who would be somewhat clean, must sweep Our ways as well as walk them, and no friend Confirm us nobly,—‘Leave results to God, But you, be clean?’ What! ‘prudent compromise Makes acceptable life,’ you say instead, You, you, Lord Howe?—in things indifferent, well. For instance, compromise the wheaten bread For rye, the meat for lentils, silk for serge, And sleep on down, if needs, for sleep on straw; But there, end compromise. I will not bate One artist-dream, on straw or down, my lord, Nor pinch my liberal soul, though I be poor, Nor cease to love high, though I live thus low.’

So speaking, with less anger in my voice Than sorrow, I rose quickly to depart; While he, thrown back upon the noble shame Of such high-stumbling natures, murmured words, The right words after wrong ones. Ah, the man Is worthy, but so given to entertain Impossible plans of superhuman life,— He sets his virtues on so raised a shelf, To keep them at the grand millennial height, He has to mount a stool to get at them; And, meantime, lives on quite the common way, With everybody’s morals. As we passed, Lord Howe insisting that his friendly arm Should oar me across the sparkling brawling stream Which swept from room to room,—we fell at once On Lady Waldemar. ‘Miss Leigh,’ she said, And gave me such a smile, so cold and bright, As if she tried it in a ‘tiring glass And liked it; ‘all to-night I’ve strained at you, As babes at baubles held up out of reach By spiteful nurses, (‘Never snatch,’ they say,) And there you sate, most perfectly shut in By good Sir Blaise and clever Mister Smith, And then our dear Lord Howe! at last, indeed, I almost snatched. I have a world to speak About your cousin’s place in Shropshire, where I’ve been to see his work ... our work,—you heard I went?... and of a letter, yesterday, In which, if I should read a page or two, You might feel interest, though you’re locked of course In literary toil.—You’ll like to hear Your last book lies at the phalanstery, As judged innocuous for the elder girls And younger women who still care for books. We all must read, you see, before we live: But slowly the ineffable light comes up, And, as it deepens, drowns the written word,— So said your cousin, while we stood and felt A sunset from his favourite beech-tree seat: He might have been a poet if he would, But then he saw the higher thing at once, And climbed to it. I think he looks well now, Has quite got over that unfortunate ... Ah, ah ... I know it moved you. Tender-heart! You took a liking to the wretched girl. Perhaps you thought the marriage suitable, Who knows? a poet hankers for romance, And so on. As for Romney Leigh, ’tis sure He never loved her,—never. By the way, You have not heard of _her_ ...? quite out of sight, And out of saving? lost in every sense?’

She might have gone on talking half-an-hour, And I stood still, and cold, and pale, I think, As a garden-statue a child pelts with snow For pretty pastime. Every now and then I put in ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ I scarce knew why; The blind man walks wherever the dog pulls, And so I answered. Till Lord Howe broke in; ‘What penance takes the wretch who interrupts The talk of charming women? I, at last, Must brave it. Pardon, Lady Waldemar! The lady on my arm is tired, unwell, And loyally I’ve promised she shall say No harder word this evening, than ... goodnight; The rest her face speaks for her.’—Then we went.

And I breathe large at home. I drop my cloak, Unclasp my girdle, loose the band that ties My hair ... now could I but unloose my soul! We are sepulchred alive in this close world, And want more room. The charming woman there— This reckoning up and writing down her talk Affects me singularly. How she talked To pain me! woman’s spite!—You wear steel-mail; A woman takes a housewife from her breast, And plucks the delicatest needle out As ’twere a rose, and pricks you carefully ’Neath nails, ’neath eyelids, in your nostrils,—say, A beast would roar so tortured,—but a man, A human creature, must not, shall not flinch, No, not for shame. What vexes, after all, Is just that such as she, with such as I, Knows how to vex. Sweet heaven, she takes me up As if she had fingered me and dog-eared me And spelled me by the fireside, half a life! She knows my turns, my feeble points.—What then? The knowledge of a thing implies the thing; Of course, she found _that_ in me, she saw _that_, Her pencil underscored _this_ for a fault, And I, still ignorant. Shut the book up! close! And crush that beetle in the leaves. O heart, At last we shall grow hard too, like the rest, And call it self-defence because we are soft.

And after all, now, ... why should I be pained, That Romney Leigh, my cousin, should espouse This Lady Waldemar? And, say, she held Her newly-blossomed gladness in my face, ... ’Twas natural surely, if not generous, Considering how, when winter held her fast, I helped the frost with mine, and pained her more Than she pains me. Pains me!—but wherefore pained? ’Tis clear my cousin Romney wants a wife,— So, good!—The man’s need of the woman, here, Is greater than the woman’s of the man, And easier served; for where the man discerns A sex, (ah, ah, the man can generalise, Said he) we see but one, ideally And really: where we yearn to lose ourselves And melt like white pearls in another’s wine, He seeks to double himself by what he loves, And make his drink more costly by our pearls. At board, at bed, at work, and holiday, It is not good for man to be alone,— And that’s his way of thinking, first and last; And thus my cousin Romney wants a wife.