Browning's Heroines Part 38

"How say you? Let us, O my dove, Let us be unashamed of soul, As earth lies bare to heaven above!

How is it under our control To love or not to love?"

But always they stop short of one another. That is the dread mystery:

"I would that you were all to me, You that are just so much, no more.

Nor yours nor mine, nor slave nor free!

Where does the fault lie? What the core O' the wound, since wound must be?"

He longs to yield his will, his whole being--to see with her eyes, set his heart beating by hers, drink his fill from her soul; make her part his--_be_ her. . . .

"No. I yearn upward, touch you close, Then stand away. I kiss your cheek, Catch your soul's warmth--I pluck the rose And love it more than tongue can speak-- Then the good minute goes."

Goes--with such swiftness! Already he is "far out of it." And shall this never be different?

". . . Must I go Still like the thistle-ball, no bar, Onward, whenever light winds blow?"

He must indeed, for already he is "off again":

"Just when I seemed about to learn!"

Even the letting nature have her way is not the secret. The thread is lost again:

"The old trick! Only I discern-- Infinite pa.s.sion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

_No_ contact is close enough. The pa.s.sion is infinite, the hearts are finite. The deepest love must suffer this doom of isolation: plunged as they may be in one another, body and soul, in the very rapture is the sentence. The good minute goes. It shall be theirs again--again they shall trust it, again the thread be lost: "the old trick!"

For it is the very trick of life, as here we know it. The Campagna itself says that--

"Rome's ghost since her decease."

Mutability, mutability! Though the flowers are the primal, naked forms, they are not the same flowers; though love is ever new, it is ever old.

_New as to-day is new: old as to-day is old_; and all the lovers have discerned, like him,

"Infinite pa.s.sion, and the pain Of finite hearts that yearn."

For has she helped him to hold the thread? No; she too has been the sport of "the old trick." And even of that he cannot be wholly sure:

"I _wonder_ do you feel to-day As I have felt . . . ?"

In the enchanting _Lovers' Quarrel_ we find a less metaphysical pair than those whom we have followed in their quest. This man has not taken her for granted, but neither has he frightened her with the mystery of her own and his elusiveness. No; these two have just had, very humanly and gladly, the "time of their lives"! All through the winter they have frolicked: there never was a more enchanting love than she, and plainly he has charmed her just as much. The same sort of fun appealed to them both at the same moment--games out of straws of their own devising; drawing one another's faces in the ashes of the hearth:

"Free on each other's flaws, How we chattered like two church daws!"

And then the _Times_ would come in--and the Emperor has married his Mlle. de Montijo!

"There they sit ermine-stoled, And she powders her hair with gold."

Or a travel-book arrives from the library--and the two heads are close together over the pictures.

"Fancy the Pampas' sheen!

Miles and miles of gold and green Where the sunflowers blow In a solid glow, And to break now and then the screen-- Black neck and eyeb.a.l.l.s keen, Up a wild horse leaps between!"

. . . No picture in the book like that--what a genius he is! The book is pushed away; and there lies the table bare:

"Try, will our table turn?

Lay your hands there light, and yearn Till the yearning slips Thro' the finger-tips In a fire which a few discern, And a very few feel burn, And the rest, they may live and learn!

Then we would up and pace, For a change, about the place, Each with arm o'er neck: 'Tis our quarter-deck, We are seamen in woeful case.

Help in the ocean-s.p.a.ce!

Or, if no help, we'll embrace."

The next play must be "dressing-up"; for the sailor-game had ended in that nonsense of a kiss because they had not thought of dressing properly the parts:

"See how she looks now, dressed In a sledging-cap and vest!

'Tis a huge fur cloak-- Like a reindeer's zoke Falls the lappet along the breast: Sleeves for her arms to rest, Or to hang, as my Love likes best."

Now it is _his_ turn; he must learn to "flirt a fan as the Spanish ladies can"--but she must pretend too, so he makes her a burnt-cork moustache, and she "turns into such a man!" . . .

All this was three months ago, when the snow first mesmerised the earth and put it to sleep. Snow-time is love-time--for hearts can then show all:

"How is earth to know Neath the mute hand's to-and-fro?"

Three months ago--and now it is spring, and such a dawn of day! The March sun feels like May. He looks out upon it:

"All is blue again After last night's rain, And the South dries the hawthorn-spray.

Only, my Love's away!

I'd as lief that the blue were grey."

Yes--she is gone; they have quarrelled. Or rather, since it does not take two to do that wretched deed, _she_ has quarrelled. It was some little thing that he said--neither sneer nor vaunt, nor reproach nor taunt:

"And the friends were friend and foe!"

She went away, and she has not come back, and it is three months ago.

One cannot help suspecting that the little thing he said, which was _not_ so many things, must then have been something peculiarly tactless!

This girl was not, like some of us, devoid of humour--that much is clear: laughter lived in her as in its home. What _had_ he said?

Whatever it was, he "did not mean it." But that is frequently the sting of stings. Spontaneity which hurts us hurts far more than malice can--for it is more evidently sincere in what it has of the too-much, or the too-little. . . . Well, angry exceedingly, or wounded exceedingly, she had gone, and still is gone--and he sits marvelling. Three months!

Is she going to stay away for ever? Is she going to cast him off for a word, a "bubble born of breath"? Why, they had been _one_ person!

"Me, do you leave aghast With the memories We ama.s.sed?"

Just for "a moment's spite." . . . She ought to have understood.

"Love, if you knew the light That your soul casts in my sight, How I look to you For the pure and true, And the beauteous and the right--"