Men and Women (Browning)/Volume 2/In a Balcony/III
PART THIRD.
NORBERT. enters.
NORBERT.Well! we have but one minute and one word.———
CONSTANCE.I am yours, Norbert!
NORBERT.Yes, mine.
CONSTANCE.Not till now!You were mine. Now I give myself to you.
NORBERT.Constance!
CONSTANCE.Your own! I know the thriftier wayOf giving—haply, 'tis the wiser way.Meaning to give a treasure, I might doleCoin after coin out (each, as that were all,With a new largess still at each despair)And force you keep in sight the deed, reserveExhaustless till the end my part and yours,My giving and your taking, both our joysDying together. Is it the wiser way?I choose the simpler; I give all at once.Know what you have to trust to, trade upon.Use it, abuse it,—anything but sayHereafter, "Had I known she loved me so,And what my means, I might have thriven with it."This is your means. I give you all myself.
NORBERT..I take you and thank God.
CONSTANCE.Look on through years!We cannot kiss a second day like this,Else were this earth, no earth.
NORBERT..With this day's heatWe shall go on through years of cold.
CONSTANCE.So best.I try to see those years—I think I see.You walk quick and new warmth comes; you look backAnd lay all to the first glow—not sit downFor ever brooding on a day like thisWhile seeing the embers whiten and love die.Yes, love lives best in its effect; and mine,Full in its own life, yearns to live in yours.
NORBERT.Just so. I take and know you all at once.Your soul is disengaged so easily,Your face is there, I know you; give me time,Let me be proud and think you shall know me.My soul is slower: in a life I rollThe minute out in which you condense yours—The whole slow circle round you I must move,To be just you. I look to a long lifeTo decompose this minute, prove its worth.'Tis the sparks' long succession one by oneShall show you in the end what fire was crammedIn that mere stone you struck: you could not know,If it lay ever unproved in your sight,As now my heart lies? your own warmth would hideIts coldness, were it cold.
CONSTANCE.But how prove, how?
NORBERT.Prove in my life, you ask?
CONSTANCE.Quick, Norbert—how?
NORBERT.That's easy told. I count life just a stuffTo try the soul's strength on, educe the man.Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve.As with the body—he who hurls a lanceOr heaps up stone on stone, shews strength alike,So I will seize and use all means to proveAnd shew this soul of mine you crown as yours,And justify us both.
CONSTANCE.Could you write books,Paint pictures! one sits down in povertyAnd writes or paints, with pity for the rich.
NORBERT.And loves one's painting and one's writing too,And not one's mistress! All is best, believe,And we best as no other than we are.We live, and they experiment on lifeThose poets, painters, all who stand aloofTo overlook the farther. Let us beThe thing they look at! I might take that faceAnd write of it and paint it—to what end?For whom? what pale dictatress in the airFeeds, smiling sadly, her fine ghost-like formWith earth's real blood and breath, the beauteous lifeShe makes despised for ever? You are mine,Made for me, not for others in the world,Nor yet for that which I should call my art,That cold calm power to see how fair you look.I come to you—I leave you not, to writeOr paint. You are, I am. Let Rubens therePaint us.
CONSTANCE.So best!
NORBERT.I understand your soul.You live, and rightly sympathise with life,With action, power, success: this way is straight.And days were short beside, to let me changeThe craft my childhood learnt; my craft shall serve.Men set me here to subjugate, enclose,Manure their barren lives and force the fruitFirst for themselves, and afterward for meIn the due tithe; the task of some one man,By ways of work appointed by themselves.I am not bid create, they see no starTransfiguring my brow to warrant that—But bind in one and carry out their wills.So I began to-night sees how I end. What if it see, too, my first outbreak hereAmid the warmth, surprise and sympathy,The instincts of the heart that teach the head?What if the people have discerned in meThe dawn of the next nature, the new manWhose will they venture in the place of theirs,And whom they trust to find them out new waysTo the new heights which yet he only sees?I felt it when you kissed me. See this Queen,This people—in our phrase, this mass of men—See how the mass lies passive to my handAnd how my hand is plastic, and you byTo make the muscles iron! Oh, an endShall crown this issue as this crowns the first.My will be on this people! then, the strain,The grappling of the potter with his clay,The long uncertain struggle,—the successIn that uprising of the spirit-work,The vase shaped to the curl of the god's lip,While rounded fair for lower men to see The Graces in a dance they recogniseWith turbulent applause and laughs of heart!So triumph ever shall renew itself;Ever to end in efforts higher yet,Ever begun———
CONSTANCE.I ever helping?
NORBERT.Thus![As he embraces her, enter the Queen.
CONSTANCE.Hist, madam—so I have performed my part.You see your gratitude's true decency,Norbert ? a little slow in seeing it!Begun to end the sooner. What's a kiss?
NORBERT.Constance!
CONSTANCE.Why, must I teach it you again?You want a witness to your dullness, sir?What was I saying these ten minutes long?Then I repeat—when some young handsome manLike you has acted out a part like yours,Is pleased to fall in love with one beyond,So very far beyond him, as he says—So hopelessly in love, that but to speak—Would prove him mad, he thinks judiciously,And makes some insignificant good soulLike me, his friend, adviser, confidantAnd very stalking-horse to cover himIn following after what he dares not face—When his end's gained—(sir, do you understand?)When she, he dares not face, has loved him first,—May I not say so, madam?—tops his hope,And overpasses so his wildest dream,With glad consent of all, and most of her The confidant who brought the same about—Why, in the moment when such joy explodes,I do say that the merest gentlemanWill not start rudely from the stalking-horse,Dismiss it with a "There, enough of you!"Forget it, show his back unmannerly;But like a liberal heart will rather turnAnd say, "A tingling time of hope was ours—Betwixt the fears and faulterings—we two livedA chanceful time in waiting for the prize.The confidant, the Constance, served not ill;And though I shall forget her in due time,Her use being answered now, as reason bids,Nay as herself bids from her heart of hearts,Still, she has rights, the first thanks go to her,The first good praise goes to the prosperous tool,And the first—which is the last—thankful kiss."
NORBERT.—Constance? it is a dream—ah see you smile!
CONSTANCE.So, now his part being properly performed,Madam, I turn to you and finish mineAs duly—I do justice in my turn.Yes, madam, he has loved you—long and well—He could not hope to tell you so—'twas IWho served to prove your soul accessible.I led his thoughts on, drew them to their place,When oft they had wandered out into despair,And kept love constant toward its natural aim.Enough—my part is played; you stoop half-wayAnd meet us royally and spare our fears—'Tis like yourself—he thanks you, so do I.Take him—with my full heart! my work is praisedBy what comes of it. Be you happy, both!Yourself—the only one on earth who can—Do all for him, much more than a mere heartWhich though warm is not useful in its warmthAs the silk vesture of a queen! fold that Around him gently, tenderly. For him—For him,—he knows his own part.
NORBERT.Have you done?I take the jest at last. Should I speak now?Was yours the wager, Constance, foolish child,Or did you but accept it? Well—at least,You lose by it.
CONSTANCE.Now madam, 'tis your turn.Restrain him still from speech a little moreAnd make him happier and more confident!Pity him, madam, he is timid yet.Mark, Norbert! do not shrink now! Here I yieldMy whole right in you to the Queen, observe!With her go put in practice the great schemesYou teem with, follow the career else closed—Be all you cannot be except by her!Behold her.—Madam, say for pity's sake Anything—frankly say you love him. ElseHe'll not believe it: there's more earnest inHis fear than you conceive—I know the man.
NORBERT.I know the woman somewhat, and confessI thought she had jested better—she beginsTo overcharge her part. I gravely waitYour pleasure, madam: where is my reward?
QUEEN.Norbert, this wild girl (whom I recogniseScarce more than you do, in her fancy-fit,Eccentric speech and variable mirth,Not very wise perhaps and somewhat boldYet suitable, the whole night's work being strange)—May still be right: I may do well to speakAnd make authentic what appears a dreamTo even myself. For, what she says, is true—Yes, Norbert—what you spoke but now of love, Devotion, stirred no novel sense in me,But justified a warmth felt long before.Yes, from the first—I loved you, I shall say,—Strange! but I do grow stronger, now 'tis said,Your courage helps mine: you did well to speakTo-night, the night that crowns your twelvemonths' toil—But still I had not waited to discernYour heart so long, believe me! From the firstThe source of so much zeal was almost plain,In absence even of your own words just nowWhich opened out the truth. Tis very strange,But takes a happy ending—in your loveWhich mine meets: be it so—as you choose me,So I choose you.
NORBERT.And worthily you choose!I will not be unworthy your esteem,No, madam. I do love you; I will meet Your nature, now I know it; this was well,I see,—you dare and you are justified:But none had ventured such experiment,Less versed than you in nobleness of heart,Less confident of finding it in me.I like that thus you test me ere you grantThe dearest, richest, beauteousest and bestOf women to my arms! 'tis like yourself!So—back again into my part's set words—Devotion to the uttermost is yours,But no, you cannot, madam, even you,Create in me the love our Constance does.Or—something truer to the tragic phrase—Not yon magnolia-bell superb with scentInvites a certain insect—that's myself—But the small eye-flower nearer to the ground:I take this lady!
CONSTANCE.Stay—not her's, the trap— Stay, Norbert—that mistake were worst of all.(He is too cunning, madam!) it was I,I, Norbert, who . . .
NORBERT.You, was it, Constance? Then,But for the grace of this divinest hourWhich gives me you, I should not pardon here.I am the Queen's: she only knows my brain—She may experiment therefore on my heartAnd I instruct her too by the result;But you, sweet, you who know me, who so longHave told my heart-beats over, held my lifeIn those white hands of yours,—it is not well!
CONSTANCE.Tush! I have said it, did I not say it all?The life, for her—the heart-beats, for her sake!
NORBERT.Enough! my cheek grows red, I think. Your test! There's not the meanest woman in the world,Not she I least could love in all the world,Whom, did she love me, did love prove itself,I dared insult as you insult me now.Constance, I could say, if it must be said,"Take back the soul you offer—I keep mine"But—"Take the soul still quivering on your hand,The soul so offered, which I cannot use,And, please you, give it to some friend of mine,For—what's the trifle he requites me with?"I, tempt a woman, to amuse a man,That two may mock her heart if it succumb?No! fearing God and standing 'neath his heaven,I would not dare insult a woman so,Were she the meanest woman in the world,And he, I cared to please, ten emperors!
CONSTANCE.Norbert!
NORBERT.I love once as I live but once.What case is this to think or talk about?I love you. Would it mend the case at allShould such a step as this kill love in me?Your part were done: account to God for it.But mine—could murdered love get up again,And kneel to whom you pleased to designateAnd make you mirth? It is too horrible.You did not know this, Constance? now you knowThat body and soul have each one life, but one:And here's my love, here, living, at your feet.
CONSTANCE.See the Queen! Norbert—this one more last word—If thus you have taken jest for earnest—thusLoved me in earnest. . .
NORBERT.Ah, no jest holds here!Where is the laughter in which jests break up?And what this horror that grows palpable?Madam—why grasp you thus the balcony?Have I done ill? Have I not spoken the truth?How could I other? Was it not your test,To try me, and what my love for Constance meant?Madam, your royal soul itself approves,The first, that I should choose thus! so one takesA beggar—asks him what would buy his child,And then approves the expected laugh of scornReturned as something noble from the rags.Speak, Constance, I'm the beggar! Ha, what's this?You two glare each at each like panthers now.Constance—the world fades; only you stand there!You did not in to-night's wild whirl of thingsSell me—your soul of souls, for any price?No—no—'tis easy to believe in you. Was it your love's mad trial to o'ertopMine by this vain self-sacrifice? well, still—Though I should curse, I love you. I am loveAnd cannot change! love's self is at your feet.[Queen goes out.
CONSTANCE.Feel my heart; let it die against your own.
NORBERT.Against my own! explain not; let this be.This is life's height.
CONSTANCE.Yours! Yours! Yours!
NORBERT.You and I—Why care by what meanders we are hereIn the centre of the labyrinth? men have diedTrying to find this place out, which we have found.
CONSTANCE.Found, found!
NORBERT.Sweet, never fear what she can do—We are past harm now.
CONSTANCE.On the breast of God.I thought of men—as if you were a man.Tempting him with a crown!
NORBERT.This must end here—It is too perfect!
CONSTANCE.There's the music stopped.What measured heavy tread? it is one blazeAbout me and within me.
NORBERT.Oh, some deathWill run its sudden finger round this spark,And sever us from the rest—
CONSTANCE.And so do well.Now the doors open—
NORBERT.'Tis the guard comes.
CONSTANCE.Kiss!