The Story of Saville/Part 8
VIII.
And as ever, the kiss to the maiden’s lips came as a fleckless delight,
As a hummingbird glad in the amber noon recks never of tempest-torn night,
But the man thrilled solemnly to the thought that whether for good or for ill
He had mixed his life with another life and was bound as with steel to Saville,
And he raged at himself for an image of clay that senseless and selfish had snared
The love of a creature angelic, to whom he should never have dared
Lift even a worshiping thought, since his foiled adoration was but
As a rayless rare jewel, unmined, unprized, under a mountain shut.
Men take for granted the ferventest love; it seemeth them utterly meet
That woman should bow to them as to a god and lay at their deity’s feet
Frankincense, honeycomb, turquois, and pearl, and all things precious and sweet,—
But Kyrle, poor Kyrle, was humble enough, and he honestly questioned the maid
How she had formed so wretched a choice,—how had her fancy strayed
Past willowy wands and stalwart rods to the crookedest staff in the glade?
Her heart had bled for him, blind and banned, as any true woman’s had done,—
He flung back her pity,—a goodly gift, mayhap; but he would have none.
Pity? no,—she was orphaned and sad; she dwelt in the hall of L’Estrange,
A mere companion and hanger on, forbidden to roam and to range
Past the walls of the park, lest her mistress should call, for she was capricious and strange,
And bitter as aloes her bread to Saville, who joyed as a bird to exchange
Her gilded dull cage for a wider bourne, her chrysalis wings to unfurl
In the ether of freedom and float for an hour in blessed communion with Kyrle.
“Ah sweet! for a rainbow hour ’twere well; but now you have tangled your life
With a pariah’s, unto whom God denies the having of home or of wife.”
“But dearest! that is the blazing star in this galaxy-bond of ours,
The regnant rose in a garland twined of sweet yet commoner flowers!
Thank God that the thought of marriage is as far as the thought of death,—
Marriage! where poor little weary Love, drabbled and out of breath,
Bravely struggles ’gainst pitiful odds, ’till his cruel coarse-spirited foes
Break and batter the irised wings and sneer at his dying throes,
And the dance and jest go rioting on, and none of his murdering knows!”
“Ah, well, I would risk it! but whether Saville, for us it could happen so,—
Perish the thought! ’tis a sacrilege,—but never, dear love, shall we know.
I am as a bee untimely crushed ere he unloadeth his sweets,
Dead to accomplishment, effort, and joy, whose heart still cruelly beats,
Ardent, ambitious, and pulsing strong with fiery tropical heats,—
God! how I worship my art divine, my heavenly art, Saville,—
That I were rotting a grain a day, yet able to serve her still!”
Then Saville perceived what is common to all who are linked with disciples of art,
That she stood without the holy of holies, an alien, a stranger, apart,
But she passed the portal and coined a word to comfort the desolate heart.
“Hearken, my dearest! You murmur because you fancy you have not done
Your stent to the utmost, have painted but one great picture,—but one!
You should rather thank God from a grateful heart you were gifted to do so much,
For manifold millions of men go by, nor help the world by a touch;
They loiter like lizards half frozen and maimed over the face of the rock,
And they front their kind with no message more true than a moan or a gibbering mock,—
But you! you are like to God in this, that out of your innermost thought
You have created and called to life a thing with deep potencies fraught,
And the work shall endure, inspiring and grand, when the worker hath fallen to dust,
And my soul hath a loftier stature today for looking on ‘Rupert’s Trust!’”
And he laughed once more. “Ah sweet, my sweet! hath a nightingale lodged in thy breast,
That thou singest a strain more rapture-panged than ever a siren possessed?
Yes, I have achieved—but ah! what I meant—yet what are the claims of my art,
What joy had I won had I labored on like the emperor’s prize of thine heart,
That nest whence the doves fly gauzily forth and the air with sweet flutterings fill,—
My darling, my darling! Yes, God is above, and He loves me and sends me Saville!”
