Browning's Heroines Part 36

Experience is not whole without "some wonder linked with fear"--the colours! The shafts ray from her "midmost home"; she "dwells there, hearted." True, but this is not _experience_, and she shall not conceit herself into believing it to be. She shall not set up the "pert pretence to match the male achievement": she shall learn that men make women "easy victors," when their rough effaces itself to smooth for woman's sake. One or the other she must choose: knowledge and the right to judge, or ignorance and the duty to refrain from judgment. . . . And yet--he goes again; he obeys the silver smile! For the "crimson-quest may deepen to a sunrise"; he _may_ come back and find her waiting, "sunlight and salvation," because she understands at last; and both shall look for stains from those long shafts, and see none there. . . .

Maybe, maybe: he goes--will come again one day; and _that_ at last may prove itself the day when "men are pure, and women brave."

We pa.s.s from the unearthly atmosphere of _Numpholeptos_--well-nigh the most abstract of all Browning's poems--to the vivid, astonis.h.i.+ng realism of _Too Late_.

Edith is dead, and the man who loved her and failed to win her, is musing upon the trans.m.u.tation of all values in his picture of life which has been made by the tidings. Not till now had he fully realised his absorption in the thought of her: "the woman I loved so well, who married the other." He had been wont to "sit and look at his life." That life, until he met her, had rippled and run like a river. But he met her and loved her and lost her--and it was as if a great stone had been cast by a devil into his life's mid-current. The waves strove about it--the waves that had "come for their joy, and found this horrible stone full-tide."

The stone thwarted G.o.d. But the lover has had two ways of thinking about it. Though the waves, in all their strength and fullness, could not win past, a thread of water might escape and run through the "evening-country," safe, untormented, silent, until it reached the sea.

This would be his tender, acquiescent brooding on all she is to him, and the hope that still they may be united at the last, though time shall then have stilled his pa.s.sion.

The second way was better!

"Or else I would think, 'Perhaps some night When new things happen, a meteor-ball May slip through the sky in a line of light, And earth breathe hard, and landmarks fall, And my waves no longer champ nor chafe, Since a stone will have rolled from its place: let be!'"

For the husband might die, and he, still young and vigorous, might try again to win her. . . . That was how he had been wont to "sit and look at his life."

"But, Edith dead! No doubting more!"

All the dreams are over; all the brooding days have been lived in vain.

"But, dead! All's done with: wait who may, Watch and wear and wonder who will.

Oh, my whole life that ends to-day!

Oh, my soul's sentence, sounding still, 'The woman is dead that was none of his; And the man that was none of hers may go!'

There's only the past left: worry that!" . . .

All that he was or could have been, she should have had for a word, a "want put into a look." She had not given that look; now she can never give it--and perhaps she _does_ want him. He feels that she does--a "pulse in his cheek that stabs and stops" a.s.sures him that she "needs help in her grave, and finds none near"--that from his heart, precisely _his_, she now at last wants warmth. And he can only send it--so! . . .

His acquiescence then had been his error.

"I ought to have done more: once my speech, And once your answer, and there, the end, And Edith was henceforth out of reach!

Why, men do more to deserve a friend, Be rid of a foe, get rich, grow wise, Nor, folding their arms, stare fate in the face.

Why, better even have burst like a thief _And borne you away to a rock for us two, In a moment's horror, bright, b.l.o.o.d.y and brief_" . . .

Well, _he_ had not done this. But--

"What did the other do? You be judge!

Look at us, Edith! Here are we both!

Give him his six whole years: I grudge None of the life with you, nay, loathe Myself that I grudged his start in advance Of me who could overtake and pa.s.s.

But, as if he loved you! No, not he, Nor anyone else in the world, 'tis plain" . . .

--for he who speaks, though he so loved and loves her, knows that he is and was alone in his wors.h.i.+p. He knows even that such wors.h.i.+p of her was among unaccountable things. That _he_, young, prosperous, sane, and free, as he was and is, should have poured his life out, as it were, and held it forth to _her_, and said, "Half a glance, and I drop the gla.s.s!" . . . For--and now we come to those amazing stanzas which place this pa.s.sionate love-song by itself in the world--

"Handsome, were you? 'Tis more than they held, More than they said; I was 'ware and watched:

The others? No head that was turned, no heart Broken, my lady, a.s.sure yourself!"

Her admirers had quickly recovered: one married a dancer, others stole a friend's wife, or stagnated or maundered, or else, unmarried, strove to believe that the peace of singleness _was_ peace, and not--what they were finding it! But whatever these rejected suitors did, the truth about her was simply that

"On the whole, you were let alone, I think."

And laid so, on the shelf, she had "looked to the other, who acquiesced." He was a poet, was he not?

"He rhymed you his rubbish n.o.body read, Loved you and doved you--did not I laugh?"

Oh, what a prize! Had she appreciated adequately her pink of poets? . . . But, after all, she had chosen him, before _this_ lover: they had both been tried.

"Oh, heart of mine, marked broad with her mark, _Tekel_, found wanting, set aside, Scorned! See, I bleed these tears in the dark Till comfort come, and the last be bled: He? He is tagging your epitaph."

And now sounds that cry of the girl of _In a Year_.

"If it could only come over again!"

She _must_ have loved him best. If there had been time. . . . She would have probed his heart and found what blood is; then would have twitched the robe from her lay-figure of a poet, and p.r.i.c.ked that leathern heart, to find that only verses could spurt from it. . . .

"And late it was easy; late, you walked Where a friend might meet you; Edith's name Arose to one's lip if one laughed or talked; If I heard good news, you heard the same; When I woke, I knew that your breath escaped; I could bide my time, keep alive, alert."

Now she is dead: "no doubting more." . . . But somehow he will get his good of it! He will keep alive--and long, she shall see; but not like the others; there shall be no turning aside, and he will begin at once as he means to end. Those others may go on with the world--get gold, get women, betray their wives and their husbands and their friends.

"There are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here."[301:1]

And he recurs to her cherished, her dwelt-on, adored defects. Only _he_ could have loved her so, in despite of them. The most complex mood of lovers, this! Humility and pride are mingled; one knows not which is which--the pride of love, humility of self. Only so could the loved one have declined to our level; only so could our love acquire value in those eyes--and yet "the others" did not love so, the defects _were_ valid: there should be some recognition: "_I_ loved, _quand meme_!" Why, it was almost the defects that brought the thrill:

"I liked that way you had with your curls, Wound to a ball in a net behind: Your cheek was chaste as a quaker-girl's, And your mouth--there was never, to my mind, Such a funny mouth, for it would not shut; And the dented chin, too--what a chin!

There were certain ways when you spoke, some words That you know you never could p.r.o.nounce: You were thin, however; like a bird's Your hand seemed--some would say, the pounce Of a scaly-footed hawk--all but!

The world was right when it called you thin.

But I turn my back on the world: I take Your hand, and kneel, and lay to my lips.

Bid me live, Edith!"

--and she shall be queen indeed, shall have high observance, courts.h.i.+p made perfect. He seems to see her stand there--

"Warm too, and white too: would this wine Had washed all over that body of yours, Ere I drank it, and you down with it, thus!"

. . . The wine of his life, that she would not take--but she shall take it now! He will "slake thirst at her presence" by pouring it away, by drinking it down with her, as long ago he yearned to do. Edith needs help in her grave and finds none near--wants warmth from his heart? He sends it--so.

a.s.suredly this is the meaning; yet none of the commentators says so. She was the man's whole life, and she has died. Then he dies too, that he may live.

"There are two who decline, a woman and I, And enjoy our death in the darkness here."

Yet even in this we have no sense of failure, of "giving-in": it is for intenser life that he dies, and she shall be his queen "while his soul endures."

This is the last of my "women unwon." In none of all these poems does courage fail; love is ever G.o.d's secret. It comes and goes: the heart has had its moment. It does not come at all: the heart has known the loved one's loveliness. It has but hoped to come: the heart hoped with it. It has set a price upon itself, a cruel crus.h.i.+ng price: the heart will pay it, if it can be paid. It has waked too late--it calls from the grave: the heart will follow it there. No love is in vain:

"For G.o.d above creates the love to reward the love."