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Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Aurora Leigh: Book Fourth
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Because she`s poor and of the people: shame
We`ll have no tricks played off by gentlefolk;
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 suppliant 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 dropped 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.


Here`s Marian`s letter, which a ragged child
Brought running, just as Romney at the porch
Looked out expectant of the bride. He sent
The letter to me by his friend Lord Howe
Some two hours after, folded in a sheet
On which his well-known hand had left a word.
Here`s Marian`s letter.


                         "Noble friend, dear saint,
Be patient with me. Never think me vile
Who might to-morrow morning be your wife
But that I loved you more than such a name.
Farewell, my Romney. Let me write it once,—
My Romney.


           "`Tis so pretty a coupled word,
I have no heart to pluck it with a blot.
We say `my God` sometimes, upon our knees,
Who is not therefore vexed: so bear with it . . .
And me. I know I`m foolish, weak, and vain:
Yet most of all I`m angry with myself
For losing your last footstep on the stair
That last time of your coming,—yesterday!
The very first time I lost step of yours
(Its sweetness comes the next to what you speak),
But yesterday sobs took me by the throat
And cut me off from music.


                             "Mister Leigh,
You`ll set me down as wrong in many things.
You`ve praised me, sir, for truth,—and now you`ll learn
I had not courage to be rightly true.
I once began to tell you how she came,
The woman . . . and you stared upon the floor
In one of your fixed thoughts . . . which put me out
For that day. After, some one spoke of me,
So wisely, and of you, so tenderly,
Persuading me to silence for your sake . . .
Well, well! it seems this moment I was wrong
In keeping back from telling you the truth:
There might be truth betwixt us two, at least,
If nothing else. And yet `twas dangerous.
Suppose a real angel came from heaven
To live with men and women! he`d go mad,
If no considerate hand should tie a blind
Across his piercing eyes. `Tis thus with you:
You see us too much in your heavenly light;
I always thought so, angel,—and indeed
There`s danger that you beat yourself to death
Against the edges of this alien world,
In some divine and fluttering pity.


                                       "Yes,
It would be dreadful for a friend of yours,
To see all England thrust you out of doors
And mock you from the windows. You might say,
Or think (that`s worse) `There`s some one in the house
I miss and love still.` Dreadful!


                                    "Very kind,
I pray you mark, was Lady Waldemar.
She came to see me nine times, rather ten—
So beautiful, she hurts one like the day
Let suddenly on sick eyes.


                             "Most kind of all,
Your cousin!—ah, most like you! Ere you came
She kissed me mouth to mouth: I felt her soul
Dip through her serious lips in holy fire.
God help me, but it made me arrogant;
I almost told her that you would not lose
By taking me to wife: though ever since
I`ve pondered much a certain thing she asked . . .
`He loves you, Marian?` . . . in a sort of mild
Derisive sadness . . . as a mother asks
Her babe, `You`ll touch that star, you think?`


                                                   "Farewell!
I know I never touched it.


                             "This is worst:
Babes grow and lose the hope of things above;
A silver threepence sets them leaping high—
But no more stars! mark that.


                                "I`ve writ all night
Yet told you nothing. God, if I could die,
And let this letter break off innocent
Just here! But no—for your sake.


                                    "Here`s the last:
I never could be happy as your wife,
I never could be harmless as your friend,
I never will look more into your face
Till God says `Look!` I charge you, seek me not,
Nor vex yourself with lamentable thoughts
That peradventure I have come to grief;
Be sure I`m well, I`m merry, I`m at ease,
But such a long way, long way, long way off,
I think you`ll find me sooner in my grave,
And that`s my choice, observe. For what remains,
An over-generous friend will care for me
And keep me happy . . . happier . . .


                                         "There`s a blot!
This ink runs thick . . . we light girls lightly weep . . .
And keep me happier . . . was the thing to say,
Than as your wife I could be.—O, my star,
My saint, my soul! for surely you`re my soul,
Through whom God touched me! I am not so lost
I cannot thank you for the good you did,
The tears you stopped, which fell down bitterly,
Like these—the times you made me weep for joy
At hoping I should learn to write your notes
And save the tiring of your eyes, at night;
And most for that sweet thrice you kissed my lips
Saying `Dear Marian.`


                       "`Twould be hard to read,
This letter, for a reader half as learn`d;
But you`ll be sure to master it in spite
Of ups and downs. My hand shakes, I am blind;
I`m poor at writing at the best,—and yet
I tried to make my g`s the way you showed.
Farewell. Christ love you.—Say `poor Marian` now."


Poor Marian!—wanton Marian!—was it so,
Or so? For days, her touching, foolish lines
We mused on with conjectural fantasy,
As if some riddle of a summer-cloud
On which one tries unlike similitudes
Of now a spotted Hydra-skin cast off,
And now a screen of carven ivory
That shuts the heavens` conventual secrets up
From mortals overbold. We sought the sense:
She loved him so perhaps (such words mean love),
That, worked on by some shrewd perfidious tongue
(And then I thought of Lady Waldemar),
She left him, not to hurt him; or perhaps
She loved one in her class,—or did not love,
But mused upon her wild bad tramping life
Until the free blood fluttered at her heart,
And black bread eaten by the roadside hedge
Seemed sweeter than being put to Romney`s school
Of philanthropical self-sacrifice
Irrevocably.—Girls are girls, beside,
Thought I, and like a wedding by one rule.
You seldom catch these birds except with chaff:
They feel it almost an immoral thing
To go out and be married in broad day,
Unless some winning special flattery should
Excuse them to themselves for`t, . . . "No one parts
Her hair with such a silver line as you,
One moonbeam from the forehead to the crown!"
Or else . . . "You bite your lip in such a way
It spoils me for the smiling of the rest,"
And so on. Then a worthless gaud or two
To keep for love,—a ribbon for the neck,
Or some glass pin,—they have their weight with girls.
And Romney sought her many days and weeks:
He sifted all the refuse of the town,
Explored the trains, inquired among the ships,
And felt the country through from end to end;
No Marian!—Though I hinted what I knew,—
A friend of his had reasons of her own
For throwing back the match—he would not hear:
The lady had been ailing ever since,
The shock had harmed her. Something in his tone
Repressed me; something in me shamed my doubt
To a sigh repressed too. He went on to say
That, putting questions where his Marian lodged,
He found she had received for visitors,
Besides himself and Lady Waldemar
And, that once, me—a dubious woman dressed
Beyond us both: the rings upon her hands
Had dazed the children when she threw them pence;
"She wore her bonnet as the queen might hers,
To show the crown," they said,—"a scarlet crown
Of roses that had never been in bud."


When Romney told me that,—for now and then
He came to tell me how the search advanced,
His voice dropped: I bent forward for the rest:
The woman had been with her, it appeared,
At first from week to week, then day by day,
And last, `twas sure . . .


                             I looked upon the ground
To escape the anguish of his eyes, and asked
As low as when you speak to mourners new
Of those they cannot bear yet to call dead,
"If Marian had as much as named to him
A certain Rose, an early friend of hers,
A ruined creature."


                     "Never."—Starting up
He strode from side to side about the room,
Most like some prisoned lion sprung awake,
Who has felt the desert sting him through his dreams.
"What was I to her, that she should tell me aught?
A friend! was I a friend? I see all clear.
Such devils would pull angels out of heaven,
Provided they could reach them; `tis their pride;
And that`s the odds `twixt soul and body plague!
The veriest slave who drops in Cairo`s street
Cries `Stand off from me` to the passengers;
While these blotched souls are eager to infect,
And blow their bad breath in a sister`s face
As if they got some ease by it."


                                   I broke through.
"Some natures catch no plagues. I`ve read of babes
Found whole and sleeping by the spotted breast
Of one a full day dead. I hold it true,
As I`m a woman and know womanhood,
That Marian Erle, however lured from place,
Deceived in way, keeps pure in aim and heart
As snow that`s drifted from the garden-bank
To the open road."


                    `Twas hard to hear him laugh.
"The figure`s happy. Well—a dozen carts
And trampers will secure you presently
A fine white snow-drift. Leave it there, your snow:
`Twill pass for soot ere sunset. Pure in aim?
She`s pure in aim, I grant you,—like myself,
Who thought to take the world upon my back
To carry it o`er a chasm of social ill,
And end by letting slip through impotence
A single soul, a child`s weight in a soul,
Straight down the pit of hell! yes, I and she
Have reason to be proud of our pure aims."
Then softly, as the last repenting drops
Of a thunder-shower, he added, "The poor child,
Poor Marian! `twas a luckless day for her
When first she chanced on my philanthropy."


He drew a chair beside me, and sat down;
And I, instinctively, as women use
Before a sweet friend`s grief,—when, in his ear,
They hum the tune of comfort though themselves
Most ignorant of the special words of such,
And quiet so and fortify his brain
And give it time and strength for feeling out
To reach the availing sense beyond that sound,—
Went murmuring to him what, if written here,
Would seem not much, yet fetched him better help
Than peradventure if it had been more.


I`ve known the pregnant thinkers of our time,
And stood by breathless, hanging on their lips,
When some chromatic sequence of fine thought
In learned modulation phrased itself
To an unconjectured harmony of truth:
And yet I`ve been more moved, more raised, I say,
By a simple word . . . a broken easy thing
A three-years` infant might at need repeat,
A look, a sigh, a touch upon the palm,
Which meant less than "I love you," than by all
The full-voiced rhetoric of those master-mouths.


"Ah, dear Aurora," he began at last,
His pale lips fumbling for a sort of smile,
"Your printer`s devils have not spoilt your heart:
That`s well. And who knows but, long years ago
When you and I talked, you were somewhat right
In being so peevish with me? You, at least,
Have ruined no one through your dreams. Instead,
You`ve helped the facile youth to live youth`s day
With innocent distraction, still perhaps
Suggestive of things better than your rhymes.
The little shepherd-maiden, eight years old,
I`ve seen upon the mountains of Vaucluse,
Asleep i` the sun, her head upon her knees,
The flocks all scattered,—is more laudable
Than any sheep-dog, trained imperfectly,
Who bites the kids through too much zeal."


                                              "I look
As if I had slept, then?"


                            He was touched at once
By something in my face. Indeed `twas sure
That he and I,—despite a year or two
Of younger life on my side, and on his
The heaping of the years` work on the days,
The three-hour speeches from the member`s seat,
The hot committees in and out of doors,
The pamphlets, "Arguments," "Collective Views,"
Tossed out as straw before sick houses, just
To show one`s sick and so be trod to dirt
And no more use,—through this world`s underground,
The burrowing, groping effort, whence the arm
And heart come torn,—`twas sure that he and I
Were, after all, unequally fatigued;
That he, in his developed manhood, stood
A little sunburnt by the glare of life,
While I . . . it seemed no sun had shone on me,
So many seasons I had missed my Springs.
My cheeks had pined and perished from their orbs,
And all the youth-blood in them had grown white
As dew on autumn cyclamens: alone
My eyes and forehead answered for my face.


He said, "Aurora, you are changed—are ill!"


"Not so, my cousin,—only not asleep,"
I answered, smiling gently. "Let it be.
You scarcely found the poet of Vaucluse
As drowsy as the shepherds. What is art
But life upon the larger scale, the higher,
When, graduating up in a spiral line
Of still expanding and ascending gyres,
It pushes toward the intense significance
Of all things, hungry for the Infinite?
Art`s life,—and where we live, we suffer and toil."


He seemed to sift me with his painful eyes.
"You take it gravely, cousin; you refuse
Your dreamland`s right of common, and green rest.
You break the mythic turf where danced the nymphs,
With crooked ploughs of actual life,—let in
The axes to the legendary woods,
To pay the poll-tax. You are fallen indeed
On evil days, you poets, if yourselves
Can praise that art of yours no otherwise;
And, if you cannot, . . . better take a trade
And be of use: `twere cheaper for your youth."
"Of use!" I softly echoed, "there`s the point
We sweep about for ever in argument,
Like swallows which the exasperate, dying year
Sets spinning in black circles, round and round,
Preparing for far flights o`er unknown seas.
And we, where tend we?"


                         "Where?" he said, and sighed.
"The whole creation, from the hour we are born,
Perplexes us with questions. Not a stone
But cries behind us, every weary step,
`Where, where?` I leave stones to reply to stones.
Enough for me and for my fleshly heart
To hearken the invocations of my kind,
When men catch hold upon my shuddering nerves
And shriek `What help? what hope? what bread i` the house,
`What fire i` the frost?` There must be some response,
Though mine fail utterly. This social Sphinx
Who sits between the sepulchres and stews,
Makes mock and mow against the crystal heavens,
And bullies God,—exacts a word at least
From each man standing on the side of God,
However paying a sphinx-price for it.
We pay it also if we hold our peace,
In pangs and pity. Let me speak and die.
Alas, you`ll say I speak and kill instead."
I pressed in there. "The best men, doing their best,
Know peradventure least of what they do:
Men usefullest i` the world are simply used;
The nail that holds the wood must pierce it first,
And He alone who wields the hammer sees
The work advanced by the earliest blow. Take heart."


"Ah, if I could have taken yours!" he said,
"But that`s past now." Then rising,—"I will take
At least your kindness and encouragement.
I thank you. Dear, be happy. Sing your songs,
If that`s your way! but sometimes slumber too,
Nor tire too much with following, out of breath,
The rhymes upon your mountains of Delight.
Reflect, if Art be in truth the higher life,
You need the lower life to stand upon
In order to reach up unto that higher;
And none can stand a-tip toe in the place
He cannot stand in with two stable feet.
Remember then!—for Art`s sake, hold your life."


We parted so. I held him in respect.
I comprehended what he was in heart
And sacrificial greatness. Ay, but he
Supposed me a thing too small, to deign to know:
He blew me, plainly, from the crucible
As some intruding, interrupting fly,
Not worth the pains of his analysis
Absorbed on nobler subjects. Hurt a fly!
He would not for the world: he`s pitiful
To flies even. "Sing," says he, "and tease me still,
If that`s your way, poor insect." That`s your way!
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