The Story of Saville/Part 12
XII.
Our life is a triplicate twisted cord of gray of and of gold and of white,—
The gray is the strand of the body and sensuous subtle delight,
The gold is the intellectual force, Jovian in triumph and might,
And the essence astatic, ethereal, eternal, that is the filament white,—
And none on the low brown earth there be so wholly of white and gold,
So rapt in unperishing verities on heights of Siberian cold,
So saturate with conviction, so pierced with truth icicle-keen,
As to cast the servitude utterly off of pleasure in things terrene,—
And Kyrle, lapped soft in a luxury he never had known or had dreamed,
Grew half content for a little space with the things of this world and seemed
To drowse in uxorious slothful fields, lotosed, Lethean-streamed.
And Saville was the sweetest of ministrants; the scheme of her life was full plain
To her sight; she but lived for this man; her fathers had garnered the grain
Of their wealth for Ms use and behoof; her mother had travailed and died
That Kyrle in the fullness of time might have her to hold as a bride,—
She had studied the lore of the ages, had drawn from Pierian wells,
Her fingers and voice she had trained to blend as the pealing of silver bells,
She had learned to wile from the poet’s page a poetry more than his own,
Had won from the spinning earth its song and its axle’s undertone,
Merely that he in his barred black cell might feel himself less alone.
We can but smile at the modern cry for an equaler social plan,—
Man is the servant of God alone, but woman serves God and man,
And God is the greater, certainly, but man dwelleth here below,
Not at a vast vague altitude, too loftily far to know
If we lay at his altar the homage meek, the allegiance that we owe.
We may wrap in a napkin our talents and God will not thunder or smite,
But woe to the household drudge who keepeth the fire on the hearth not bright.
What are we in spite of our gifts and graces but merest Circassian slaves
Shallops fragile or stately ships lashed by the wind and the waves,—
And none dare impugn though the ocean be covered with rudder-less spume-sprent wrecks,—
’Tis nature’s immutable law, and endures through the ages while sex is sex.
I grant we might wander in wisdom’s ways and follow the windings thereof,
If we might but free our little white feet from the tangling briony, love,—
’Tis sad when a woman to whom the fates Antony’s powers allot
Will eloquent thrill a multitude, for freedom will plan and will plot,
Then weeps next morning a good two hours for a parting kiss forgot!
Yes, truly,—’tis said there are women who their earthly pilgrimage run
Unloved, unloving as is the Sphinx; speak not of it; me, I am one
With a horror of any monstrosity rank in the smile of the sun!
But to resume: This lesson, O friend, God grant thou hast long ago learned,—
No blossom that springs in our weedy path is small enough to be spurned,—
Is it a gold-graven chalice of wine, the cup of thy present delight,
Or only an oak-leaf filled from a spring, dripping with diamonds white?
Drink thou as if it were proffered of gods, e’en as the draught were thy last,—
To-morrow mayhap the water and wine and the sweet strong thirst will have passed!
Came a day when Saville saw ’twas over, saw it too cruelly plain,
The months that had been a restoring lull ’twixt gusts of repining and pain,
As an eglantine scent blown over a brook ’mid dashes of August rain,
As the noontide rest of two wayworn gipsies hid in a leafy lane,—
For seeking out Kyrle in his room one day she found him asleep in a chair,
The westering rays on his handsome face and bronzing the brown of his hair,
And he seemed as a carven statue, and the wife stopped stricken and gasped,
For close in his long unused right hand his palette and brushes were grasped.
And how he had found in the dark these things she could not imagine or know,
And she closed the door and stole away, leaving him sleeping so,
And in solitude knelt for a bitter hour and wrestled alone with her woe,
Yet loved him a hundred-fold better because he had broken the thrall
Of her arms for a vision of duty, nor made her his all in all.
Came another day,—outside ’twas wild, and the wind whistled scimetar shrill,
Whipping the terrified snowflakes sheeplike over the hill,
But in the library dense with thought where loitered Kyrle and Saville
Peaceful was all the atmosphere, solemnly, heavenly still,
Save as the woodbine tapped the pane with little coquettish starts,
Or an ash fell feathery on the hearth ’neath rosy and violet darts.
They were sitting the width of the room apart and she had been reading from “Maud,”
When sudden he spoke in a voice at once exultant and deeply awed,
“Saville,—dear heart! I have not dared to say what for days I have guessed—
That God in His infinite mercy and wisdom and love accounteth it best
To relume the lamps in their sockets, to summon the long-fled guest,
To roll the hideous weight away that years on my life hath pressed,—
There, as I point, is a grayness—a glimmer—a dark less Cimmerian profound,—
Am I right? Is it haply a glimpse through a curtainless casement of snow-covered ground?
Here on the left is a lurid lifting of shadow,—it almost is red,—
Is it only a sulphurous devil within, or the ruddy clear fire instead?
I scarcely dare hope,—yet I have remembered all of this year, Saville,
That the day we met you promised my sight—But what is it, love? Are you ill—
Are you gone from the room that I meet with alone this silence so strange and so chill?
Why, I looked for a tempest of laughter and doubts, and for floods of rejoicing tears,—
We shall never have cause for such joy again in all of our three score years!
Speak, I command you! ’Tis cruel as hell to mock at my helplessness so,—
’Tis unworthy, unwomanly, all unlike the tender Saville I know,—
Dear, I am frightened—a whimpering child—come to me or I go
Seeking you, sick to the soul with fear, staggering to and fro!”
And he rose and gropingly crossed the room, grasping the empty air,
And loud in his heart was a knocking dread and low on his lips was a prayer,
And at last by the door his foot struck dull in the coil of her soft sweet hair.
