The Story of Saville/Part 11
XI.
Came a season when Nature from smiling ceased and lay with a deathstruck stare
Drowned on the beach with oozy weeds and brown wet shells in her hair,
With her vesture drenched and her poor bruised feet lying all stark and bare,
And leviathan billows bemocked their prey, and mangled and mouthed her there.
And the wind demoniac howled around the house, scarce more than a hut,
Where Kyrle and Saville and their happiness were safe from the tempest shut,
And the cheery lamp shed a kindly glow over the humble place,
And the nets and the bits of coral and spar lent it a simple grace.
“If only this cottage were ours, Saville! if this our idyl might be
Played for a white half-year divine down by the ice fringed sea!
But alas! the sable curtain must drop, and the actors perforce must flee!”
Then the wife, who crouched on the rug, her head on her husband’s knee,
Murmured, “Fret not thyself, dear heart, but leave thou the matter to me!”
“No, no!” said Kyrle, “you have often read how shipwrecked men in a boat
Of their meagre provision of water and bread take painfullest reckoning note,—
Sweet captain, how many days shall elapse that we together may float?”
Then the woman broke out in a passion of sobs, grovelling down on the floor,
“Oh, I have tricked you and trapped you, Kyrle! I am vile to the innermost core!
I am not what I seem—what I swore that I was, to make your deception complete,
A destitute girl,—I am rich instead,—rich, and a liar and cheat!”
Then Kyrle sprang up in an agonized whirl of righteous horror and wrath,
Like one who beholds a malignant snake rear green and gold in his path,—
What! had he given his father’s name, his heart, and his honest clean hand
To a thing defiled by the pavement’s soil, out of society banned,
Destined to uses unlawful and stamped with a scarlet brand?
Not oft in this century’s languid end do the fingers itch to garrote
Like the Moor’s the blue-veined animate snow of a darling delicate throat,—
No, no! ’twas a virginal soul, Saville’s,—the eyes of his mind were not seared,
And his heart fell calm and he said “Speak on!” and she never wist what he had feared.
Then she told her story,—how she herself was the beautiful chatelaine
Of L’Estrange,—how her wealth and beauty were tawdriest baubles and vain,
For of all the suitors that asked her hand never a one could convince
The maid that he wooed for herself alone, a genuine Fairy Prince,
And then when he came in triumph at last, her hero, her king, her Kyrle,
And offered his tiny pittance as to a dowerless girl,
What could she do but accept it and dwell with him down by the sea
In a world where romance and passion and bygone miracles be?
How she had panted to tell him! her heart had ached that a lie,
However so harmless and tacit a one, should sully their intercourse high,
That a gossamer slight as a thistle’s down should cross the cerulean sky—
There were wives, she knew, who smiled and sang, some sepulchre-secret untold—
She herself was a verier woman than such, nor cast in an Amazon-mold,
And now that he knew her trespass a weight from her bosom rolled!
Kyrle silent sat, but he reached his hand to the living gold of her hair,
Thinking how pure must the nature be, how inwardly white and fair,
That cowered at such a venial sin in uttermost shame and despair,—
Their bond, though of steel, had unriveted been; most perfectly had she known
They must travel their weary and several ways, walking forever alone,
If but to his spirit startled and proud a hint of the truth were blown,—
She had had wisdom and daring for both—Ay, she had been overwise!
A serpentish feminine creature, compounded of lures and of lies,
Void of the commonest honesty even, false to his helpless eyes,—
Strange! that tonight, next week, next month, or when fifty years had gone by,
Whether she chid or caressed him or laughed, or mourned with a bitter sad cry,
He perforce must debate the thing in his heart, “But is this true now, or a lie?”—
Why, he had trusted her as his God, and lo! she had bought him and sold,
Made him a chattel, a page, a toy to deck with her chains of gold,
A Delilah’s dupe,—’twere better to be mould in the churchyard mould!
Ah, well! myself, I have pity alone for the women who fail of the right,—
I know not in faith how it is we are made so the black seemeth often the white,—
We aspire to a dew-drop’s clarity, to a resolute self-control,
To face the world—why, the woman lives not who even can face her own soul!
Ah, frail is our tenure of sanity, safety, serenity, calm,
At the mercy of any unlooked-for pang or merest material qualm,
And the astral truth that is grasped today in prayerful solitude
Seems but a trifle, a thing of naught, in tomorrow’s hysterical mood!
But Kyrle was a man and so heaven had blessed him with absolute masculine sense
Of the right and the wrong, with a grand disdain of subterfuge and pretense,—
He had harbored a foe in his household, and now he was stung with a doubt
How to punish the viperish evil and cast the intruder out.
Then Saville, still sobbing, writhed up to her knees, and he felt her poor heart beating wild
’Gainst his own, resentful and harsh as Lear’s, obdurate, unreconciled,
And for pity she plead, and pardon, and her plea was the plea of a child,
“There are many worse women than I am, dear,—truly, though you have forgot,—
I must read you the terrible papers and show you if there are not!”
And she seemed of an infantine weakness, and sudden he felt ashamed
To be wroth with so cyclamen-frail a thing, and never a word he blamed
His penitent love, but hushed her sobs, imploring her not to weep,—
And she strove with a broken smile to obey; but thrice in the midnight deep,
Kyrle, lying awake while the equinox raged, heard a moan break sharp through her sleep.
Ah! in that night that must come to us all, when a dear one low lies in the grave,
Pray God that we need not remember how once the lost darling did crave
In vain for our word of forgiveness and tenderest patience,—Nay, more!
Pray God we recall some moment we might justly have scarified o’er
With lava-reproaches a trembling offender, but sweetly forbore!
