Part 15

To change the water for my heliotropes And yellow roses. Paris has such flowers. But England, also. ’Twas a yellow rose, By that south window of the little house, My cousin Romney gathered with his hand On all my birthdays for me, save the last; And then I shook the tree too rough, too rough, For roses to stay after. Now, my maps. I must not linger here from Italy Till the last nightingale is tired of song, And the last fire-fly dies off in the maize. My soul’s in haste to leap into the sun And scorch and seethe itself to a finer mood, Which here, in this chill north, is apt to stand Too stiffly in former moulds. That-face persists. It floats up, it turns over in my mind, As like to Marian, as one dead is like The same alive. In very deed a face And not a fancy, though it vanished so; The small fair face between the darks of hair, I used to liken, when I saw her first, To a point of moonlit, water down a well: The low brow, the frank space between the eyes, Which always had the brown pathetic look Of a dumb creature who had been beaten once, And never since was easy with the world. Ah, ah—now I remember perfectly Those eyes, to-day,—how overlarge they seemed, As if some patient passionate despair (Like a coal dropt and forgot on tapestry, Which slowly burns a widening circle out) Had burnt them larger, larger. And those eyes To-day, I do remember, saw me too, As I saw them, with conscious lids astrain In recognition. Now, a fantasy, A simple shade or image of the brain, Is merely passive, does not retro-act, Is seen, but sees not. ’Twas a real face, Perhaps a real Marian. Which being so, I ought to write to Romney, ‘Marian’s here. Be comforted for Marian.’ My pen fell, My hands struck sharp together, as hands do Which hold at nothing. Can I write to _him_ A half truth? can I keep my own soul blind To the other half, ... the worse? What are our souls, If still, to run on straight a sober pace Nor start at every pebble or dead leaf, They must wear blinkers, ignore facts, suppress Six tenths of the road? Confront the truth, my soul! And oh, as truly as that was Marian’s face, The arms of that same Marian clasped a thing ... Not hid so well beneath the scanty shawl, I cannot name it now for what it was.

A child. Small business has a cast-away Like Marian, with that crown of prosperous wives, At which the gentlest she grows arrogant And says, ‘my child.’ Who’ll find an emerald ring On a beggar’s middle finger, and require More testimony to convict a thief? A child’s too costly for so mere a wretch; She filched it somewhere; and it means, with her, Instead of honour, blessing, ... merely shame. I cannot write to Romney, ‘Here she is, Here’s Marian found! I’ll set you on her track: I saw her here, in Paris, ... and her child. She put away your love two years ago, But, plainly, not to starve. You suffered then; And, now that you’ve forgot her utterly As any last year’s annual, in whose place You’ve planted a thick flowering evergreen, I choose, being kind, to write and tell you this To make you wholly easy—she’s not dead, But only ... damned.’ Stop there: I go too fast; I’m cruel like the rest,—in haste to take The first stir in the arras for a rat, And set my barking, biting thoughts upon’t. —A child! what then? Suppose a neighbour’s sick And asked her, ‘Marian, carry out my child In this Spring air,’—I punish her for that? Or say, the child should hold her round the neck For good child-reasons, that he liked it so And would not leave her—she had winning ways— I brand her therefore, that she took the child? Not so. I will not write to Romney Leigh. For now he’s happy,—and she may indeed Be guilty,—and the knowledge of her fault Would draggle his smooth time. But I, whose days Are not so fine they cannot bear the rain, And who, moreover, having seen her face, Must see it again, ... _will_ see it, by my hopes Of one day seeing heaven too. The police Shall track her, hound her, ferret their own soil; We’ll dig this Paris to its catacombs But certainly we’ll find her, have her out, And save her, if she will or will not—child Or no child,—if a child, then one to save!

The long weeks passed on without consequence. As easy find a footstep on the sand The morning after spring-tide, as the trace Of Marian’s feet between the incessant surfs Of this live flood. She may have moved this way,— But so the star-fish does, and crosses out The dent of her small shoe. The foiled police Renounced me; ‘Could they find a girl and child, No other signalment but girl and child? No data shown, but noticeable eyes And hair in masses, low upon the brow, As if it were an iron crown and pressed? Friends heighten, and suppose they specify: Why, girls with hair and eyes, are everywhere In Paris; they had turned me up in vain No Marian Erle indeed, but certainly Mathildes, Justines, Victoires, ... or, if I sought The English, Betsies, Saras, by the score. They might as well go out into the fields To find a speckled bean, that’s somehow specked, And somewhere in the pod.’—They left me so. Shall _I_ leave Marian? have I dreamed a dream? —I thank God I have found her! I must say ‘Thank God,’ for finding her, although ’tis true I find the world more sad and wicked for’t. But she— I’ll write about her, presently; My hand’s a-tremble as I had just caught up My heart to write with, in the place of it. At least you’d take these letters to be writ At sea, in storm!—wait now.... A simple chance Did all. I could not sleep last night, and, tired Of turning on my pillow and harder thoughts, Went out at early morning, when the air Is delicate with some last starry touch, To wander through the Market-place of Flowers (The prettiest haunt in Paris), and make sure At worst, that there were roses in the world. So, wandering, musing, with the artist’s eye, That keeps the shade-side of the thing it loves, Half-absent, whole-observing, while the crowd Of young vivacious and black-braided heads Dipped, quick as finches in a blossomed tree, Among the nosegays, cheapening this and that In such a cheerful twitter of rapid speech,— My heart leapt in me, startled by a voice That slowly, faintly, with long breaths that marked The interval between the wish and word, Inquired in stranger’s French, ‘Would _that_ be much, That branch of flowering mountain-gorse?’—‘So much? Too much for me, then!’ turning the face round So close upon me, that I felt the sigh It turned with. ‘Marian, Marian!’—face to face— ‘Marian! I find you. Shall I let you go?’ I held her two slight wrists with both my hands; ‘Ah Marian, Marian, can I let you go?’ —She fluttered from me like a cyclamen, As white, which, taken in a sudden wind, Beats on against the palisade.—‘Let pass,’ She said at last. ‘I will not,’ I replied; ‘I lost my sister Marian many days, And sought her ever in my walks and prayers, And, now I find her ... do we throw away The bread we worked and prayed for,—crumble it And drop it, ... to do even so by thee Whom still I’ve hungered after more than bread, My sister Marian?—can I hurt thee, dear? Then why distrust me? Never tremble so. Come with me rather, where we’ll talk and live, And none shall vex us. I’ve a home for you And me and no one else’.... She shook her head. ‘A home for you and me and no one else Ill-suits one of us: I prefer to such, A roof of grass on which a flower might spring, Less costly to me than the cheapest here; And yet I could not, at this hour, afford A like home, even. That you offer yours, I thank you. You are good as heaven itself— As good as one I knew before.... Farewell.’ I loosed her hands.—‘In _his_ name, no farewell!’ (She stood as if I held her.) ‘For his sake, For his sake, Romney’s! by the good he meant, Ay, always! by the love he pressed for once,— And by the grief, reproach, abandonment, He took in change’.... ‘He, Romney! who grieved _him_? Who had the heart for’t? what reproach touched _him_? Be merciful,—speak quickly.’ ‘Therefore come,’ I answered with authority,—‘I think We dare to speak such things, and name such names, In the open squares of Paris!’ Not a word She said, but, in a gentle humbled way, (As one who had forgot herself in grief) Turned round and followed closely where I went, As if I led her by a narrow plank, Across devouring waters, step by step,— And so in silence we walked on a mile.

And then she stopped: her face was white as wax. ‘We go much farther?’ ‘You are ill,’ I asked, ‘Or tired?’ She looked the whiter for her smile. ‘There’s one at home,’ she said, ‘has need of me By this time,—and I must not let him wait.’

‘Not even,’ I asked, ‘to hear of Romney Leigh?’ ‘Not even,’ she said, ‘to hear of Mister Leigh.’

‘In that case,’ I resumed, ‘I go with you, And we can talk the same thing there as here. None waits for me: I have my day to spend.’

Her lips moved in a spasm without a sound,— But then she spoke. ‘It shall be as you please; And better so—’tis shorter seen than told. And though you will not find me worth your pains, _That_ even, may be worth some pains to know, For one as good as you are.’ Then she led The way, and I, as by a narrow plank Across devouring waters, followed her, Stepping by her footsteps, breathing by her breath, And holding her with eyes that would not slip; And so, without a word, we walked a mile, And so, another mile, without a word.

Until the peopled streets being all dismissed, House-rows and groups all scattered like a flock, The market-gardens thickened, and the long White walls beyond, like spiders’ outside threads, Stretched, feeling blindly toward the country-fields Through half-built habitations and half-dug Foundations,—intervals of trenchant chalk, That bite betwixt the grassy uneven turfs Where goats (vine-tendrils trailing from their mouths) Stood perched on edges of the cellarage Which should be, staring as about to leap To find their coming Bacchus. All the place Seemed less a cultivation than a waste: Men work here, only,—scarce begin to live: All’s sad, the country struggling with the town, Like an untamed hawk upon a strong man’s fist, That beats its wings and tries to get away, And cannot choose be satisfied so soon To hop through court-yards with its right foot tied, The vintage plains and pastoral hills in sight!

We stopped beside a house too high and slim To stand there by itself, but waiting till Five others, two on this side, three on that, Should grow up from the sullen second floor They pause at now, to build it to a row. The upper windows partly were unglazed Meantime,—a meagre, unripe house: a line Of rigid poplars elbowed it behind, And, just in front, beyond the lime and bricks That wronged the grass between it and the road, A great acacia, with its slender trunk And overpoise of multitudinous leaves, (In which a hundred fields might spill their dew And intense verdure, yet find room enough) Stood, reconciling all the place with green.

I followed up the stair upon her step. She hurried upward, shot across a face, A woman’s on the landing,—‘How now, now! Is no one to have holidays but you? You said an hour, and stay three hours, I think, And Julie waiting for your betters here? Why if he had waked, he might have waked, for me.’ —Just murmuring an excusing word she passed And shut the rest out with the chamber-door, Myself shut in beside her. ’Twas a room Scarce larger than a grave, and near as bare; Two stools, a pallet-bed; I saw the room: A mouse could find no sort of shelter in’t, Much less a greater secret; curtainless,— The window fixed you with its torturing eye, Defying you to take a step apart, If peradventure you would hide a thing. I saw the whole room, I and Marian there Alone. Alone? She threw her bonnet off, Then sighing as ’twere sighing the last time, Approached the bed, and drew a shawl away: You could not peel a fruit you fear to bruise More calmly and more carefully than so,— Nor would you find within, a rosier flushed Pomegranate— There he lay, upon his back, The yearling creature, warm and moist with life To the bottom of his dimples,—to the ends Of the lovely tumbled curls about his face; For since he had been covered over-much To keep him from the light-glare, both his cheeks Were hot and scarlet as the first live rose The shepherd’s heart-blood ebbed away into, The faster for his love. And love was here As instant! in the pretty baby-mouth, Shut close as if for dreaming that it sucked; The little naked feet drawn up the way Of nestled birdlings; everything so soft And tender,—to the little holdfast hands, Which, closing on a finger into sleep, Had kept the mould of’t. While we stood there dumb,— For oh, that it should take such innocence To prove just guilt, I thought, and stood there dumb; The light upon his eyelids pricked them wide, And, staring out at us with all their blue, As half perplexed between the angelhood He had been away to visit in his sleep, And our most mortal presence,—gradually He saw his mother’s face, accepting it In change for heaven itself, with such a smile As might have well been learnt there,—never moved, But smiled on, in a drowse of ecstasy, So happy (half with her and half with heaven) He could not have the trouble to be stirred, But smiled and lay there. Like a rose, I said: As red and still indeed as any rose, That blows in all the silence of its leaves, Content, in blowing, to fulfil its life.

She leaned above him (drinking him as wine) In that extremity of love, ’twill pass For agony or rapture, seeing that love Includes the whole of nature, rounding it To love ... no more,—since more can never be Than just love. Self-forgot, cast out of self, And drowning in the transport of the sight, Her whole pale passionate face, mouth, forehead, eyes, One gaze, she stood! then, slowly as he smiled, She smiled too, slowly, smiling unaware, And drawing from his countenance to hers A fainter red, as if she watched a flame And stood in it a-glow. ‘How beautiful,’ Said she. I answered, trying to be cold. (Must sin have compensations, was my thought, As if it were a holy thing like grief? And is a woman to be fooled aside From putting vice down, with that woman’s toy, A baby?)—— ‘Ay! the child is well enough,’ I answered. ‘If his mother’s palms are clean, They need be glad, of course, in clasping such: But if not,—I would rather lay my hand, Were I she,—on God’s brazen altar-bars Red-hot with burning sacrificial lambs, Than touch the sacred curls of such a child.’

She plunged her fingers in his clustering locks, As one who would not be afraid of fire; And then, with indrawn steady utterance, said,— ‘My lamb, my lamb! although, through such as thou, The most unclean got courage and approach To God, once,—now they cannot, even with men, Find grace enough for pity and gentle words.’

‘My Marian,’ I made answer, grave and sad, ‘The priest who stole a lamb to offer him, Was still a thief. And if a woman steals (Through God’s own barrier-hedges of true love, Which fence out licence in securing love) A child like this, that smiles so in her face, She is no mother, but a kidnapper, And he’s a dismal orphan ... not a son; Whom all her kisses cannot feed so full He will not miss hereafter a pure home To live in, a pure heart to lean against, A pure good mother’s name and memory To hope by, when the world grows thick and bad, And he feels out for virtue.’ ‘Oh,’ she smiled With bitter patience, ‘the child takes his chance,— Not much worse off in being fatherless Than I was, fathered. He will say, belike, His mother was the saddest creature born; He’ll say his mother lived so contrary To joy, that even the kindest, seeing her, Grew sometimes almost cruel: he’ll not say She flew contrarious in the face of God With bat-wings of her vices. Stole my child,— My flower of earth, my only flower on earth, My sweet, ray beauty!’ ... Up she snatched the child, And, breaking on him in a storm of tears, Drew out her long sobs from their shivering roots, Until he took it for a game, and stretched His feet, and flapped his eager arms like wings, And crowed and gurgled through his infant laugh: ‘Mine, mine,’ she said; ‘I have as sure a right As any glad proud mother in the world, Who sets her darling down to cut his teeth Upon her church-ring. If she talks of law, I talk of law! I claim my mother-dues By law,—the law which now is paramount; The common law, by which the poor and weak Are trodden underfoot by vicious men, And loathed for ever after by the good. Let pass! I did not filch ... I found the child.’

‘You found him, Marian?’ ‘Ay, I found him where I found my curse,—in the gutter, with my shame! What have you, any of you, to say to that, Who all are happy, and sit safe and high, And never spoke before to arraign my right To grief itself? What, what, ... being beaten down By hoofs of maddened oxen into a ditch, Half-dead, whole mangled ... when a girl, at last, Breathes, sees ... and finds there, bedded in her flesh, Because of the overcoming shock perhaps, Some coin of price!... and when a good man comes (That’s God! the best men are not quite as good) And says, ‘I dropped the coin there: take it, you, And keep it,—it shall pay you for the loss,’— You all put up your finger—‘See the thief! Observe that precious thing she has come to filch! How bad those girls are!’ Oh, my flower, my pet, I dare forget I have you in my arms, And fly off to be angry with the world, And fright you, hurt you with my tempers, till You double up your lip? Ah, that indeed Is bad: a naughty mother!’ ‘You mistake,’ I interrupted; ‘if I loved you not, I should not, Marian, certainly be here.’

‘Alas,’ she said, ‘you are so very good; And yet I wish, indeed, you had never come To make me sob until I vex the child. It is not wholesome for these pleasure-plats To be so early watered by our brine. And then, who knows? he may not like me now As well, perhaps, as ere he saw me fret,— One’s ugly fretting! he has eyes the same As angels, but he cannot see as deep, And so I’ve kept for ever in his sight A sort of smile to please him,—as you place A green thing from the garden in a cup, To make believe it grows there. Look, my sweet, My cowslip-ball! we’ve done with that cross face, And here’s the face come back you used to like. Ah, ah! he laughs! he likes me. Ah, Miss Leigh, You’re great and pure; but were you purer still,— As if you had walked, we’ll say, no otherwhere Than up and down the new Jerusalem, And held your trailing lutestring up yourself From brushing the twelve stones, for fear of some Small speck as little as a needle-prick, White stitched on white,—the child would keep to _me_, Would choose his poor lost Marian, like me best, And, though you stretched your arms, cry back and cling, As we do, when God says it’s time to die And bids us go up higher. Leave us, then; We two are happy. Does _he_ push me off? He’s satisfied with me, as I with him.’

‘So soft to one, so hard to others! Nay,’ I cried, more angry that she melted me, ‘We make henceforth a cushion of our faults To sit and practise easy virtues on? I thought a child was given to sanctify A woman,—set her in the sight of all The clear-eyed Heavens, a chosen minister To do their business and lead spirits up The difficult blue heights. A woman lives, Not bettered, quickened toward the truth and good Through being a mother?... then she’s none! although She damps her baby’s cheeks by kissing them, As we kill roses.’ ‘Kill! O Christ,’ she said, And turned her wild sad face from side to side With most despairing wonder in it—‘What, What have you in your souls against me then, All of you? am I wicked, do you think? God knows me, trusts me with the child! but you, You think me really wicked?’ ‘Complaisant,’ I answered softly, ‘to a wrong you’ve done, Because of certain profits,—which is wrong Beyond the first wrong, Marian. When you left The pure place and the noble heart, to take The hand of a seducer’.... ‘Whom? whose hand? I took the hand of’.... Springing up erect, And lifting up the child at full arm’s length, As if to bear him like an oriflamme Unconquerable to armies of reproach,— ‘By _him_’ she said, ‘my child’s head and its curls, By those blue eyes no woman born could dare A perjury on, I make my mother’s oath, That if I left that Heart, to lighten it, The blood of mine was still, except for grief! No cleaner maid than I was, took a step To a sadder end,—no matron-mother now Looks backward to her early maidenhood Through chaster pulses. I speak steadily: And if I lie so, ... if, being fouled in will And paltered with in soul by devil’s lust, I dared to bid this angel take my part, ... Would God sit quiet, let us think, in heaven, Nor strike me dumb with thunder? Yet I speak: He clears me therefore. What, ‘seduced’’s your word? Do wolves seduce a wandering fawn in France? Do eagles, who have pinched a lamb with claws, Seduce it into carrion? So with me. I was not ever, as you say, seduced, But simply, murdered.’ There she paused, and sighed, With such a sigh as drops from agony To exhaustion,—sighing while she let the babe Slide down upon her bosom from her arms, And all her face’s light fell after him, Like a torch quenched in falling. Down she sank, And sate upon the bedside with the child.