Lucile Part 30

"Explain! explain, madam!" he cried, in surprise; And terror and anger enkindled his eyes.

"How blind are you men!" she replied. "Can you doubt That a woman, young, fair, and neglected--"

"Speak out!"

He gasp'd with emotion. "Lucile! you mean--what!

Do you doubt her fidelity?"

"Certainly not.

Listen to me, my friend. What I wish to explain Is so hard to shape forth. I could almost refrain From touching a subject so fragile. However, Bear with me awhile, if I frankly endeavor To invade for one moment your innermost life.

Your honor, Lord Alfred, and that of your wife, Are dear to me,--most dear! And I am convinced That you rashly are risking that honor."

He winced, And turn'd pale, as she spoke.

She had aim'd at his heart, And she saw, by his sudden and terrified start, That her aim had not miss'd.

"Stay, Lucile!" he exclaim'd, "What in truth do you mean by these words, vaguely framed To alarm me? Matilda?--my wife?--do you know?"--

"I know that your wife is as spotless as snow.

But I know not how far your continued neglect Her nature, as well as her heart, might affect.

Till at last, by degrees, that serene atmosphere Of her unconscious purity, faint and yet dear, Like the indistinct golden and vaporous fleece Which surrounded and hid the celestials in Greece From the glances of men, would disperse and depart At the sighs of a sick and delirious heart,-- For jealousy is to a woman, be sure, A disease heal'd too oft by a criminal cure; And the heart left too long to its ravage in time May find weakness in virtue, reprisal in crime."

V.

"Such thoughts could have never," he falter'd, "I know, Reach'd the heart of Matilda."

"Matilda? oh no!

But reflect! when such thoughts do not come of themselves To the heart of a woman neglected, like elves That seek lonely places,--there rarely is wanting Some voice at her side, with an evil enchanting To conjure them to her."

"O lady, beware!

At this moment, around me I search everywhere For a clew to your words"-- "You mistake them," she said, Half fearing, indeed, the effect they had made.

"I was putting a mere hypothetical case."

With a long look of trouble he gazed in her face.

"Woe to him,..." he exclaim'd... "woe to him that shall feel Such a hope! for I swear, if he did but reveal One glimpse,--it should be the last hope of his life!"

The clench'd hand and bent eyebrow betoken'd the strife She had roused in his heart.

"You forget," she began, "That you menace yourself. You yourself are the man That is guilty. Alas! must it ever be so?

Do we stand in our own light, wherever we go, And fight our own shadows forever? O think!

The trial from which you, the stronger ones, shrink, You ask woman, the weaker one, still to endure; You bid her be true to the laws you abjure; To abide by the ties you yourselves rend asunder, With the force that has fail'd you; and that too, when under The a.s.sumption of rights which to her you refuse, The immunity claim'd for yourselves you abuse!

Where the contract exists, it involves obligation To both husband and wife, in an equal relation.

You unloose, in a.s.serting your own liberty, A knot, which, unloosed, leaves another as free.

Then, O Alfred! be juster at heart: and thank Heaven That Heaven to your wife such a nature has given That you have not wherewith to reproach her, albeit You have cause to reproach your own self, could you see it!"

VI.

In the silence that follow'd the last word she said, In the heave of his chest, and the droop of his head, Poor Lucile mark'd her words had sufficed to impart A new germ of motion and life to that heart Of which he himself had so recently spoken As dead to emotion--exhausted, or broken!

New fears would awaken new hopes in his life.

In the husband indifferent no more to the wife She already, as she had foreseen, could discover That Matilda had gain'd at her hands, a new lover.

So after some moments of silence, whose spell They both felt, she extended her hand to him....

VII.

"Well?"

VIII.

"Lucile," he replied, as that soft quiet hand In his own he clasp'd warmly, "I both understand And obey you."

"Thank Heaven!" she murmur'd.

"O yet, One word, I beseech you! I cannot forget,"

He exclaim'd, "we are parting for life. You have shown My pathway to me: but say, what is your own?"

The calmness with which until then she had spoken In a moment seem'd strangely and suddenly broken.

She turn'd from him nervously, hurriedly.

"Nay, I know not," she murmur'd, "I follow the way Heaven leads me; I cannot foresee to what end.

I know only that far, far away it must tend From all places in which we have met, or might meet.

Far away!--onward upward!"

A smile strange and sweet As the incense that rises from some sacred cup And mixes with music, stole forth, and breathed up Her whole face, with those words.

"Wheresoever it be, May all gentlest angels attend you!" sighed he, "And bear my heart's blessing wherever you are!"

And her hand, with emotion, he kiss'd.

IX.

From afar That kiss was, alas! by Matilda beheld.

With far other emotions: her young bosom swell'd, And her young cheek with anger was crimson'd.

The Duke Adroitly attracted towards it her look By a faint but significant smile.

X.

Much ill-construed, Renown'd Bishop Berkeley has fully, for one, strew'd With arguments page upon page to teach folks That the world they inhabit is only a hoax.

But it surely is hard, since we can't do without them, That our senses should make us so oft wish to doubt them!

CANTO III.

I.

When first the red savage call'd Man strode, a king, Through the wilds of creation--the very first thing That his naked intelligence taught him to feel Was the shame of himself; and the wish to conceal Was the first step in art. From the ap.r.o.n which Eve In Eden sat down out of fig-leaves to weave, To the furbelow'd flounce and the broad crinoline Of my lady--you all know of course whom I mean-- This art of concealment has greatly increas'd.

A whole world lies cryptic in each human breast; And that drama of pa.s.sions as old as the hills, Which the moral of all men in each man fulfils, Is only reveal'd now and then to our eyes In the newspaper-files and the courts of a.s.size.

II.

In the group seen so lately in sunlight a.s.sembled, 'Mid those walks over which the laburnum-bough trembled, And the deep-bosom'd lilac, emparadising The haunts where the blackbird and thrush flit and sing, The keenest eye could but have seen, and seen only, A circle of friends, minded not to leave lonely The bird on the bough, or the bee on the blossom; Conversing at ease in the garden's green bosom, Like those who, when Florence was yet in her glories, Cheated death and kill'd time with Boccaccian stories.

But at length the long twilight more deeply grew shaded, And the fair night the rosy horizon invaded.