XIII.
The pulse came back to the marble wrist and the faint sad lids unfurled,
And Saville perceived with a wild regret that ’twas not the end of the world,
And slowly she turned on her languid divan, dismissing them all from the room,
And shuddering flung her cerements off, like Lazarus in the tomb,
And dragged her rebellious feet across the velvety carpet, and flung
Herself odalisque- wise on a couch where a mirror magnificent hung.
For women, methinks that the text should read, “If haply ye have all things
And have not beauty, then have ye naught,” for beauty such benison brings
No woman would barter it for a crown or the wealth barbaric of kings!
Ah me! we are gambling our lives away, playing a desperate game
Where we suffer in winning or losing alike,—’tis law, and there's no one to blame,—
And the stake that we play for is only love, and beauty and love are the same,
Or if not the same, then so closely knit that none can dissever the two,—
Men swear that they love us for mind or soul, and haply they think they do,
But the veriest dairymaid milking her cow knows it is wholly untrue;
Surely, plain women are sometimes loved; but Love is a wizard so kind
That he glamours and gilds the thing beloved, and causeth his servant to find
In his choice the graces of Hebe, Minerva, and Venus combined!
O friend! think never to please a woman by praising her housewife’s thrift,
Her spiritual fervor and zeal for God, her rythmic or musical gift,—
Say rather you like the shape of the ear, or the eyelid’s languorous lift!
Saville was enwrapped in a silken robe, woven of delicate pink,
All branched with lilies of silver, petalling link into link,
Fair as the blush of the peach in May, and silver and pink were her feet,
And her body was framed of a lily’s curves, silverly white and sweet,
And her hair was a glimmering golden mist, the aureole of a saint,
A heavenly halo above a face—Nay hush! for I dare not paint
That face with its birthmark fatal and foul, its hideous carrion-taint!
But Saville had confronted it all her life, and to-day with a ghastly mirth
She twisted her lips to a livid smile, “’Tis well that she died at my birth,
My mother,” she mused, “for to-day her life she would deem but of slenderest worth!”
And she lay and mourned how strange it was, how passing all utterance sad
That naught in the heart or mind of a woman the love of a man forbade
So utterly as a surface blemish, a faulture gossamer thin,
Sprung from a tissue freighted too deep or a hindered current within,—
For a woman may have a petrified heart, icy, and rock to the core,
Scarred by tempests and seamed and gashed, lichened and rusted o’er,
Of pity incapable, never to beat with a pulse of kindliness more,—
She may have a mind, if you call it a mind, the sluggish dull animal sense
That biddeth her eat and cover her limbs and maketh a decent pretense
To veil with chatter or shroud with silence the shame of her ignorance dense,—
She may have a lupine and viperish soul, disintegrate with disease,
Fibrous and pulpy with poison, a pestilence spoiling the breeze,—
’Tis a pitiful comment on this our life that a woman may have all these,
And yet for her royal favor a man will sue on his knees,
Dazzled so blind by her beautiful face that never a fault he sees!
If ever a woman on earth might hope to be worshipped for mind alone,
Or heart or soul, ’twas Saville, who was worthy the love of a prince to have known,—
But ah! ’tis impossible—nature revolts—men may sin against God on high,
But not ’gainst the law of selection; however they truckle and lie
And successfully feign, they cannot love a thing from which love must fly,—
Poor girl! she had seen in pauper’s hovels where she was dispensing bread
Disgust in the eyes she had wiped of their tears, a sneer on the lips she had fed,
A beggar’s brat full patient and still through many a fevered dream
Yet start convulsive at sight of her face and turn with a ringing scream,—
She had come to believe that the dogs in the street howled as she passed them by,
And every glance at her face was a blow, and her every breath was a cry!
And now her body seemed but as a leaf that shrivels and curls in a flame,
And she shrank as a slave shrinks under the whip under her terrible shame,—
She had given herself as a wedded wife to a stainless knight and a true,
She whom never a churl on earth could knowingly, honestly woo,—
Oh! in a biting shame like this there’s only one thing to do!
Ah, why did he love her so passing well? For the very force of that love
Idealized, glorified, sanctified her, throned her all women above,
Made her a star in the firmanent, the marvel and wonder thereof,—
He thought to see if at last he awoke from his two years’ visionless trance
That she whom the fates had sent to him by a miracle’s happy chance
Was a goddess unparagoned, cinctured with cloud, divinely, immortally fair,
Sceptred and crowned with loveliness, a nimbus upon her hair,
Violets springing up under her feet—O God! O God! could she dare
Lift her Medusa-face to his own and harden it into despair?
A commoner, coarser-natured man might better have borne such blow,
But Kyrle to be gyved to this body of death,—Kyrle to be manacled so,—
Kyrle, with his artist’s vision for colors and contours trained,—
Kyrle, forsooth! And she laughed aloud, seeing what thing remained!
And ’twas not the physical stigma, the blot on the skin alone,—
That his spirit might soar above,—but Oh! he could never condone
Her wicked deceit of silence, her garbled superfluous lies,
That were as a snivelling hypocrite’s prayers, a whining coward’s, who tries
To slaver himself with pretense of virtue and whiten him in God’s eyes!
A sound behind her, and Kyrle came in, and with her low call for a guide
He crossed the room with his slow soft step and sank on the couch at her side,
And belted her body within his embrace and pressed his clear ivory cheek
’Gainst hers—no, not that word no, no!—but barred with its baleful streak,
And murmured, “Saville, my wife, my queen—pardon the haste that could speak
Such tidings so blunt—’twas a glowing breeze and thou but a hyacinth weak,—
And hast thou a womanish fancy, love, that mayhap we might drift apart,
I having once more the armor and steed to enter the tourney of art,—
That I might grow careless of home and thee? Perish the thought, sweetheart!
There’s one fair thing in the world, Saville, that ever I long to limn,
That first shall dawn on my long, long dark and rise through the shadows dim,
That is more than the emerald forests or azurine heavens to me,
For a mother ne’er longed for her babe unborn as I this treasure to see,
Which is mine and still not mine as yet,—thou knowest it? thou canst guess?”
And Saville, with her eyes on the mirror, steadily answered “Yes!”
