Once shorn as an offering to passionate love--
Now floated or rested redundant above Her airy pure forehead and throat; gather'd loose Under which, by one violet knot, the profuse Milk-white folds of a cool modest garment reposed, Rippled faint by the breast they half hid, half disclosed, And her simple attire thus in all things reveal'd The fine art which so artfully all things conceal'd.
X.
Lord Alfred, who never conceived that Lucile Could have look'd so enchanting, felt tempted to kneel At her feet, and her pardon with passion implore;
But the calm smile that met him sufficed to restore The pride and the bitterness needed to meet The occasion with dignity due and discreet.
XI.
"Madam,"--thus he began with a voice reassured,--
"You see that your latest command has secured My immediate obedience--presuming I may Consider my freedom restored from this day."--
"I had thought," said Lucile, with a smile gay yet sad, "That your freedom from me not a fetter has had.
Indeed! . . . in my chains have you rested till now?
I had not so flattered myself, I avow!"
"For Heaven's sake, Madam," Lord Alfred replied, "Do not jest! has the moment no sadness?" he sigh'd.
"'Tis an ancient tradition," she answer'd, "a tale Often told--a position too sure to prevail In the end of all legends of love. If we wrote, When we first love, foreseeing that hour yet remote, Wherein of necessity each would recall From the other the poor foolish records of all Those emotions, whose pain, when recorded, seem'd bliss, Should we write as we wrote? But one thinks not of this!
At Twenty (who does not at Twenty?) we write Believing eternal the frail vows we plight;
And we smile with a confident pity, above The vulgar results of all poor human love:
For we deem, with that vanity common to youth, Because what we feel in our bosoms, in truth, Is novel to us--that 'tis novel to earth, And will prove the exception, in durance and worth, To the great law to which all on earth must incline.
The error was noble, the vanity fine!
Shall we blame it because we survive it? ah, no;
'Twas the youth of our youth, my lord, is it not so?"
XII.
Lord Alfred was mute. He remember'd her yet A child--the weak sport of each moment's regret, Blindly yielding herself to the errors of life, The deceptions of youth, and borne down by the strife And the tumult of passion; the tremulous toy Of each transient emotion of grief or of joy.
But to watch her pronounce the death-warrant of all The illusions of life--lift, unflinching, the pall From the bier of the dead Past--that woman so fair, And so young, yet her own self-survivor; who there Traced her life's epitaph with a finger so cold!
'Twas a picture that pain'd his self-love to behold.
He himself knew--none better--the things to be said Upon subjects like this. Yet he bow'd down his head:
And as thus, with a trouble he could not command, He paused, crumpling the letters he held in his hand, "You know me enough," she continued, "or what I would say is, you yet recollect (do you not, Lord Alfred?) enough of my nature, to know That these pledges of what was perhaps long ago A foolish affection, I do not recall From those motives of prudence which actuate all Or most women when their love ceases. Indeed, If you have such a doubt, to dispel it I need But remind you that ten years these letters have rested Unreclaim'd in your hands." A reproach seem'd suggested By these words. To meet it, Lord Alfred look'd up (His gaze had been fix'd on a blue Sevres cup With a look of profound connoisseurship--a smile Of singular interest and care, all this while.)
He look'd up, and look'd long in the face of Lucile, To mark if that face by a sign would reveal At the thought of Miss Darcy the least jealous pain.
He look'd keenly and long, yet he look'd there in vain.
"You are generous, Madam," he murmur'd at last, And into his voice a light irony pass'd.
He had look'd for reproaches, and fully arranged His forces. But straightway the enemy changed The position.
XIII.
"Come!" gayly Lucile interposed, With a smile whose divinely deep sweetness disclosed Some depth in her nature he never had known, While she tenderly laid her light hand on his own, "Do not think I abuse the occasion. We gain Justice, judgment, with years, or else years are in vain.
From me not a single reproach can you hear.
I have sinn'd to myself--to the world--nay, I fear To you chiefly. The woman who loves should, indeed, Be the friend of the man that she loves. She should heed Not her selfish and often mistaken desires, But his interest whose fate her own interest inspires;
And rather than seek to allure, for her sake, His life down the turbulent, fanciful wake Of impossible destinies, use all her art That his place in the world find its place in her heart.
I, alas!--I perceived not this truth till too late;
I tormented your youth, I have darken'd your fate.
Forgive me the ill I have done for the sake Of its long expiation!"
XIV.
Lord Alfred, awake, Seem'd to wander from dream on to dream. In that seat Where he sat as a criminal, ready to meet His accuser, he found himself turn'd by some change, As surprising and all unexpected as strange, To the judge from whose mercy indulgence was sought.
All the world's foolish pride in that moment was naught;
He felt all his plausible theories posed;
And, thrill'd by the beauty of nature disclosed In the pathos of all he had witness'd, his head He bow'd, and faint words self-reproachfully said, As he lifted her hand to his lips. 'Twas a hand White, delicate, dimpled, warm, languid, and bland.
The hand of a woman is often, in youth, Somewhat rough, somewhat red, somewhat graceless, in truth;
Does its beauty refine, as its pulses grow calm, Or as Sorrow has cross'd the life-line in the palm?
XV.
The more that he look'd, that he listen'd, the more He discover'd perfections unnoticed before.
Less salient than once, less poetic, perchance, This woman who thus had survived the romance That had made him its hero, and breathed him its sighs, Seem'd more charming a thousand times o'er to his eyes.
