A Last Confession

Our Lombard country-girls along the coast

Wear daggers in their garters: for they know

That they might hate another girl to death

Or meet a German lover. Such a knife

I bought her, with a hilt of horn and pearl.

Father, you cannot know of all my thoughts

That day in going to meet her,—that last day

For the last time, she said;—of all the love

And all the hopeless hope that she might change

And go back with me. Ah! and everywhere,

At places we both knew along the road,

Some fresh shape of herself as once she was

Grew present at my side; until it seemed—

So close they gathered round me—they would all

Be with me when I reached the spot at last,

To plead my cause with her against herself

So changed. O Father, if you knew all this

You cannot know, then you would know too, Father,

And only then, if God can pardon me.

What can be told I'll tell, if you will hear.

I passed a village-fair upon my road,

And thought, being empty-handed, I would take

Some little present: such might prove, I said,

Either a pledge between us, or (God help me!)

A parting gift. And there it was I bought

The knife I spoke of, such as women wear.

That day, some three hours afterwards, I found

For certain, it must be a parting gift.

And, standing silent now at last, I looked

Into her scornful face; and heard the sea

Still trying hard to din into my ears

Some speech it knew which still might change her heart,

If only it could make me understand.

One moment thus. Another, and her face

Seemed further off than the last line of sea,

So that I thought, if now she were to speak

I could not hear her. Then again I knew

All, as we stood together on the sand

At Iglio, in the first thin shade o' the hills.

“Take it,” I said, and held it out to her,

While the hilt glanced within my trembling hold;

“Take it and keep it for my sake,” I said.

Her neck unbent not, neither did her eyes

Move, nor her foot left beating of the sand;

Only she put it by from her and laughed.

Father, you hear my speech and not her laugh;

But God heard that. Will God remember all?

It was another laugh than the sweet sound

Which rose from her sweet childish heart, that day

Eleven years before, when first I found her

Alone upon the hill-side; and her curls

Shook down in the warm grass as she looked up

Out of her curls in my eyes bent to hers.

She might have served a painter to pourtray

That heavenly child which in the latter days

Shall walk between the lion and the lamb.

I had been for nights in hiding, worn and sick

And hardly fed; and so her words at first

Seemed fiftul like the talking of the trees

And voices in the air that knew my name.

And I remember that I sat me down

Upon the slope with her, and thought the world

Must be all over or had never been,

We seemed there so alone. And soon she told me

Her parents both were gone away from her.

I thought perhaps she meant that they had died;

But when I asked her this, she looked again

Into my face and said that yestereve

They kissed her long, and wept and made her weep,

And gave her all the bread they had with them,

And then had gone together up the hill

Where we were sitting now, and had walked on

Into the great red light; “and so,” she said,

“I have come up here too; and when this evening

They step out of the light as they stepped in,

I shall be here to kiss them.” And she laughed.

Then I bethought me suddenly of the famine;

And how the church-steps throughout all the town,

When last I had been there a month ago,

Swarmed with starved folk; and how the bread was weighed

By Austrians armed; and women that I knew

For wives and mothers walked the public street,

Saying aloud that if their husbands feared

To snatch the children's food, themselves would stay

Till they had earned it there. So then this child

Was piteous to me; for all told me then

Her parents must have left her to God's chance,

To man's or to the Church's charity,

Because of the great famine, rather than

To watch her growing thin between their knees.

With that, God took my mother's voice and spoke,

And sights and sounds came back and things long since,

And all my childhood found me on the hills;

And so I took her with me.

I was young.

Scarce man then, Father: but the cause which gave

The wounds I die of now had brought me then

Some wounds already; and I lived alone,

As any hiding hunted man must live.

It was no easy thing to keep a child

In safety; for herself it was not safe,

And doubled my own danger: but I knew

That God would help me.

Yet a little while

Pardon me, Father, if I pause. I think

I have been speaking to you of some matters

There was no need to speak of, have I not?

You do not know how clearly those things stood

Within my mind, which I have spoken of,

Nor how they strove for utterance. Life all past

Is like the sky when the sun sets in it,

Clearest where furthest off.

I told you how

She scorned my parting gift and laughed. And yet

A woman's laugh's another thing sometimes:

I think they laugh in Heaven. I know last night

I dreamed I saw into the garden of God,

Where women walked whose painted images

I have seen with candles round them in the church.

They bent this way and that, one to another,

Playing: and over the long golden hair

Of each there floated like a ring of fire

Which when she stooped stooped with her, and when she rose

Rose with her. Then a breeze flew in among them,

As if a window had been opened in heaven

For God to give His blessing from, before

This world of ours should set; (for in my dream

I thought our world was setting, and the sun

Flared, a spent taper; ) and beneath that gust

The rings of light quivered like forest-leaves.

Then all the blessed maidens who were there

Stood up together, as it were a voice

That called them; and they threw their tresses back,

And smote their palms, and all laughed up at once,

For the strong heavenly joy they had in them

To hear God bless the world. Wherewith I woke:

And looking round, I saw as usual

That she was standing there with her long locks

Pressed to her side; and her laugh ended theirs.

For always when I see her now, she laughs.

And yet her childish laughter haunts me too,

The life of this dead terror; as in days

When she, a child, dwelt with me. I must tell

Something of those days yet before the end.

I brought her from the city—one such day

When she was still a merry loving child,—

The earliest gift I mind my giving her;

A little image of a flying Love

Made of our coloured glass-ware, in his hands

A dart of gilded metal and a torch.

And him she kissed and me, and fain would know

Why were his poor eyes blindfold, why the wings

And why the arrow. What I knew I told

Of Venus and of Cupid,—strange old tales.

And when she heard that he could rule the loves

Of men and women, still she shook her head

And wondered; and, “Nay, nay,” she murmured still,

“So strong, and he a younger child than I!”

And then she'd have me fix him on the wall

Fronting her little bed; and then again

She needs must fix him there herself, because

I gave him to her and she loved him so,

And he should make her love me better yet,

If women loved the more, the more they grew.

But the fit place upon the wall was high

For her, and so I held her in my arms:

And each time that the heavy pruning-hook

I gave her for a hammer slipped away

As it would often, still she laughed and laughed

And kissed and kissed me. But amid her mirth,

Just as she hung the image on the nail,

It slipped and all its fragments strewed the ground:

And as it fell she screamed, for in her hand

The dart had entered deeply and drawn blood.

And so her laughter turned to tears: and “Oh!”

I said, the while I bandaged the small hand,—

“That I should be the first to make you bleed,

Who love and love and love you!”—kissing still

The fingers till I got her safe to bed.

And still she sobbed,—“not for the pain at all,”

She said, “but for the Love, the poor good Love

You gave me.” So she cried herself to sleep.

Another later thing comes back to me.

'Twas in those hardest foulest days of all,

When still from his shut palace, sitting clean

Above the splash of blood, old Metternich

(May his soul die, and never-dying worms

Feast on its pain for ever! ) used to thin

His year's doomed hundreds daintily, each month

Thirties and fifties. This time, as I think,

Was when his thrift forbad the poor to take

That evil brackish salt which the dry rocks

Keep all through winter when the sea draws in.

The first I heard of it was a chance shot

In the street here and there, and on the stones

A stumbling clatter as of horse hemmed round.

Then, when she saw me hurry out of doors,

My gun slung at my shoulder and my knife

Stuck in my girdle, she smoothed down my hair

And laughed to see me look so brave, and leaped

Up to my neck and kissed me. She was still

A child; and yet that kiss was on my lips

So hot all day where the smoke shut us in.

For now, being always with her, the first love

I had—the father's, brother's love—was changed,

I think, in somewise; like a holy thought

Which is a prayer before one knows of it.

The first time I perceived this, I remember,

Was once when after hunting I came home

Weary, and she brought food and fruit for me,

And sat down at my feet upon the floor

Leaning against my side. But when I felt

Her sweet head reach from that low seat of hers

So high as to be laid upon my heart,

I turned and looked upon my darling there

And marked for the first time how tall she was;

And my heart beat with so much violence

Under her cheek, I thought she could not choose

But wonder at it soon and ask me why;

And so I bade her rise and eat with me.

And when, remembering all and counting back

The time, I made out fourteen years for her

And told her so, she gazed at me with eyes

As of the sky and sea on a grey day,

And drew her long hands through her hair, and asked me

If she was not a woman; and then laughed:

And as she stooped in laughing, I could see

Beneath the growing throat the breasts half-globed

Like folded lilies deepset in the stream.

Yes, let me think of her as then; for so

Her image, Father, is not like the sights

Which come when you are gone. She had a mouth

Made to bring death to life,—the underlip

Sucked in, as if it strove to kiss itself.

Her face was pearly pale, as when one stoops

Over wan water; and the dark crisped hair

And the hair's shadow made it paler still:—

Deep-serried locks, the dimness of the cloud

Where the moon's gaze is set in eddying gloom.

Her body bore her neck as the tree's stem

Bears the top branch; and as the branch sustains

The flower of the year's pride, her high neck bore

That face made wonderful with night and day.

Her voice was swift, yet ever the last words

Fell lingeringly; and rounded finger-tips

She had, that clung a little where they touched

And then were gone o' the instant. Her great eyes,

That sometimes turned half dizzily beneath

The passionate lids, as faint, when she would speak,

Had also in them hidden springs of mirth,

Which under the dark lashes evermore

Shook to her laugh, as when a bird flies low

Between the water and the willow-leaves,

And the shade quivers till he wins the light.

I was a moody comrade to her then,

For all the love I bore her. Italy,

The weeping desolate mother, long has claimed

Her sons' strong arms to lean on, and their hands

To lop the poisonous thicket from her path,

Cleaving her way to light. And from her need

Had grown the fashion of my whole poor life

Which I was proud to yield her, as my father

Had yielded his. And this had come to be

A game to play, a love to clasp, a hate

To wreak, all things together that a man

Needs for his blood to ripen; till at times

All else seemed shadows, and I wondered still

To see such life pass muster and be deemed

Time's bodily substance. In those hours, no doubt,

To the young girl my eyes were like my soul,—

Dark wells of death-in-life that yearned for day.

Sig.

And though she ruled me always, I remember

That once when I was thus and she still kept

Leaping about the place and laughing, I

Did almost chide her; whereupon she knelt

And putting her two hands into my breast

Sang me a song. Are these tears in my eyes?

'Tis long since I have wept for anything.

I thought that song forgotten out of mind;

And now, just as I spoke of it, it came

All back. It is but a rude thing, ill rhymed,

Such as a blind man chaunts and his dog hears

Holding the platter, when the children run

To merrier sport and leave him. Thus it goes:—

La bella donna*

Piangendo disse:

“Come son fisse

Le stelle in cielo!

Quel fiato anelo

Dello stanco sole,

Quanto m' assonna!

E la luna, macchiata

Come uno specchio

Logoro e vecchio,—

Faccia affannata,

Che cosa vuole?

“Chè stelle, luna, e sole,

Ciascun m' annoja

E m' annojano insieme;

Non me ne preme

Nè ci prendo gioja.

E veramente,

Che le spalle sien franche

E la braccia bianche

She wept, sweet lady,

And said in weeping:

“What spell is keeping

The stars so steady?

Why does the power

Of the sun's noon-hour

To sleep so move me?

And the moon in heaven,

Stained where she passes

As a worn-out glass is,—

Wearily driven,

Why walks she above me?

“Stars, moon, and sun too,

I'm tired of either

And all together!

Whom speak they unto

That I should listen?

For very surely,

Though my arms and shoulders

Dazzle beholders,

And my eyes glisten,

All's nothing purely!

What are words said for

At all about them,

If he they are made for

Can do without them?”

She laughed, sweet lady,

And said in laughing:

“His hand clings half in

My own already!

Oh! do you love me?

Oh! speak of passion

In no new fashion,

No loud inveighings,

But the old sayings

You once said of me.

“You said: ‘As summer,

Through boughs grown brittle,

Comes back a little

Ere frosts benumb her,—

So bring'st thou to me

All leaves and flowers,

Though autumn's gloomy

To-day in the bowers.’

“Oh! does he love me,

When my voice teaches

The very speeches

He then spoke of me?

Alas! what flavour

Still with me lingers?”

(But she laughed as my kisses

Glowed in her fingers

With love's old blisses.)

“Oh! what one favour

Remains to woo him,

Whose whole poor savour

Belongs not to him?”

E il seno caldo e tondo,

Non mi fa niente.

Che cosa al mondo

Posso più far di questi

Se non piacciono a te, come dicesti?”

La donna rise

E riprese ridendo:—

“Questa mano che prendo

È dunque mia?

Tu m' ami dunque?

Dimmelo ancora,

Non in modo qualunque,

Ma le parole

Belle e precise

Che dicesti pria.

‘Siccome suole

La state talora

(Dicesti) un qualche istante

Tornare innanzi inverno,

Così tu fai ch' io scerno

Le foglie tutte quante,

Ben ch' io certo tenessi

Per passato l' autunno.’

“Eccolo il mio alunno!

Io debbo insegnargli

Quei cari detti istessi

Ch' ei mi disse una volta!

Oimè! Che cosa dargli,”

(Ma ridea piano piano

Dei baci in sulla mano,)

“Ch' ei non m'abbia da lungo tempo tolta?”

That I should sing upon this bed!—with you

To listen, and such words still left to say!

Yet was it I that sang? The voice seemed hers,

As on the very day she sang to me;

When, having done, she took out of my hand

Something that I had played with all the while

And laid it down beyond my reach; and so

Turning my face round till it fronted hers,—

“Weeping or laughing, which was best?” she said.

But these are foolish tales. How should I show

The heart that glowed then with love's heat, each day

More and more brightly?—when for long years now

The very flame that flew about the heart,

And gave it fiery wings, has come to be

The lapping blaze of hell's environment

Whose tongues all bid the molten heart despair.

Yet one more thing comes back on me to-night

Which I may tell you: for it bore my soul

Dread firstlings of the brood that rend it now.

It chanced that in our last year's wanderings

We dwelt at Monza, far away from home,

If home we had: and in the Duomo there

I sometimes entered with her when she prayed.

An image of Our Lady stands there, wrought

In marble by some great Italian hand

In the great days when she and Italy

Sat on one throne together: and to her

And to none else my loved one told her heart.

She was a woman then; and as she knelt,—

Her sweet brow in the sweet brow's shadow there,—

They seemed two kindred forms whereby our land

(Whose work still serves the world for miracle)

Made manifest herself in womanhood.

Father, the day I speak of was the first

For weeks that I had borne her company

Into the Duomo; and those weeks had been

Much troubled, for then first the glimpses came

Of some impenetrable restlessness

Growing in her to make her changed and cold.

And as we entered there that day, I bent

My eyes on the fair Image, and I said

Within my heart, “Oh turn her heart to me!”

And so I left her to her prayers, and went

To gaze upon the pride of Monza's shrine,

Where in the sacristy the light still falls

Upon the Iron Crown of Italy,

On whose crowned heads the day has closed, nor yet

The daybreak gilds another head to crown.

But coming back, I wondered when I saw

That the sweet Lady of her prayers now stood

Alone without her; until further off,

Before some new Madonna gaily decked,

Tinselled and gewgawed, a slight German toy,

I saw her kneel, still praying. At my step

She rose, and side by side we left the church.

I was much moved, and sharply questioned her

Of her transferred devotion; but she seemed

Stubborn and heedless; till she lightly laughed

And said: “The old Madonna? Aye indeed,

She had my old thoughts,—this one has my new.”

Then silent to the soul I held my way:

And from the fountains of the public place

Unto the pigeon-haunted pinnacles,

Bright wings and water winnowed the bright air;

And stately with her laugh's subsiding smile

She went, with clear-swayed waist and towering neck

And hands held light before her; and the face

Which long had made a day in my life's night

Was night in day to me; as all men's eyes

Turned on her beauty, and she seemed to tread

Beyond my heart to the world made for her.

Ah there! my wounds will snatch my sense again:

The pain comes billowing on like a full cloud

Of thunder, and the flash that breaks from it

Leaves my brain burning. That's the wound he gave,

The Austrian whose white coat I still made match

With his white face, only the two grew red

As suits his trade. The devil makes them wear

White for a livery, that the blood may show

Braver that brings them to him. So he looks

Sheer o'er the field and knows his own at once.

Give me a draught of water in that cup;

My voice feels thick; perhaps you do not hear;

But you must hear. If you mistake my words

And so absolve me, I am sure the blessing

Will burn my soul. If you mistake my words

And so absolve me, Father, the great sin

Is yours, not mine: mark this: your soul shall burn

With mine for it. I have seen pictures where

Souls burned with Latin shriekings in their mouths:

Shall my end be as theirs? Nay, but I know

'Tis you shall shriek in Latin. Some bell rings,

Rings through my brain: it strikes the hour in hell.

You see I cannot, Father; I have tried,

But cannot, as you see. These twenty times

Beginning, I have come to the same point

And stopped. Beyond, there are but broken words

Which will not let you understand my tale.

It is that then we have her with us here,

As when she wrung her hair out in my dream

To-night, till all the darkness reeked of it.

Her hair is always wet, for she has kept

Its tresses wrapped about her side for years;

And when she wrung them round over the floor,

I heard the blood between her fingers hiss;

So that I sat up in my bed and screamed

Once and again; and once to once, she laughed.

Look that you turn not now,—she's at your back:

Gather your robe up, Father, and keep close,

Or she'll sit down on it and send you mad.

At Iglio in the first thin shade o' the hills

The sand is black and red. The black was black

When what was spilt that day sank into it,

And the red scarcely darkened. There I stood

This night with her, and saw the sand the same.

What would you have me tell you? Father, father,

How shall I make you know? You have not known

The dreadful soul of woman, who one day

Forgets the old and takes the new to heart,

Forgets what man remembers, and therewith

Forgets the man. Nor can I clearly tell

How the change happened between her and me.

Her eyes looked on me from an emptied heart

When most my heart was full of her; and still

In every corner of myself I sought

To find what service failed her; and no less

Than in the good time past, there all was hers.

What do you love? Your Heaven? Conceive it spread

For one first year of all eternity

All round you with all joys and gifts of God;

And then when most your soul is blent with it

And all yields song together,—then it stands

O' the sudden like a pool that once gave back

Your image, but now drowns it and is clear

Again,—or like a sun bewitched, that burns

Your shadow from you, and still shines in sight.

How could you bear it? Would you not cry out,

Among those eyes grown blind to you, those ears

That hear no more your voice you hear the same,—

“God! what is left but hell for company,

But hell, hell, hell?”—until the name so breathed

Whirled with hot wind and sucked you down in fire?

Even so I stood the day her empty heart

Left her place empty in our home, while yet

I knew not why she went nor where she went

Nor how to reach her: so I stood the day

When to my prayers at last one sight of her

Was granted, and I looked on heaven made pale

With scorn, and heard heaven mock me in that laugh.

O sweet, long sweet! Was that some ghost of you,

Even as your ghost that haunts me now,—twin shapes

Of fear and hatred? May I find you yet

Mine when death wakes? Ah! be it even in flame,

We may have sweetness yet, if you but say

As once in childish sorrow: “Not my pain,

My pain was nothing: oh your poor poor love,

Your broken love!”

My Father, have I not

Yet told you the last things of that last day

On which I went to meet her by the sea?

O God, O God! but I must tell you all.

Midway upon my journey, when I stopped

To buy the dagger at the village fair,

I saw two cursed rats about the place

I knew for spies—blood-sellers both. That day

Was not yet over; for three hours to come

I prized my life: and so I looked around

For safety. A poor painted mountebank

Was playing tricks and shouting in a crowd.

I knew he must have heard my name, so I

Pushed past and whispered to him who I was,

And of my danger. Straight he hustled me

Into his booth, as it were in the trick,

And brought me out next minute with my face

All smeared in patches and a zany's gown;

And there I handed him his cups and balls

And swung the sand-bags round to clear the ring

For half an hour. The spies came once and looked;

And while they stopped, and made all sights and sounds

Sharp to my startled senses, I remember

A woman laughed above me. I looked up

And saw where a brown-shouldered harlot leaned

Half through a tavern window thick with vine.

Some man had come behind her in the room

And caught her by her arms, and she had turned

With that coarse empty laugh on him, as now

He munched her neck with kisses, while the vine

Crawled in her back.

And three hours afterwards,

When she that I had run all risks to meet

Laughed as I told you, my life burned to death

Within me, for I thought it like the laugh

Heard at the fair. She had not left me long;

But all she might have changed to, or might change to,

(I know nought since—she never speaks a word—)

Seemed in that laugh. Have I not told you yet,

Not told you all this time what happened, Father,

When I had offered her the little knife,

And bade her keep it for my sake that loved her,

And she had laughed? Have I not told you yet?

“Take it,” I said to her the second time,

“Take it and keep it.” And then came a fire

That burnt my hand; and then the fire was blood,

And sea and sky were blood and fire, and all

The day was one red blindness; till it seemed,

Within the whirling brain's eclipse, that she

Or I or all things bled or burned to death.

And then I found her laid against my feet

And knew that I had stabbed her, and saw still

Her look in falling. For she took the knife

Deep in her heart, even as I bade her then,

And fell; and her stiff bodice scooped the sand

Into her bosom.

And she keeps it, see,

Do you not see she keeps it?—there, beneath

Wet fingers and wet tresses, in her heart.

For look you, when she stirs her hand, it shows

The little hilt of horn and pearl,—even such

A dagger as our women of the coast

Twist in their garters.

Father, I have done:

And from her side now she unwinds the thick

Dark hair; all round her side it is wet through,

But, like the sand at Iglio, does not change.

Now you may see the dagger clearly. Father,

I have told all: tell me at once what hope

Can reach me still. For now she draws it out

Slowly, and only smiles as yet: look, Father,

She scarcely smiles: but I shall hear her laugh

Soon, when she shows the crimson steel to God.