AN ERRING WOMAN'S LOVE

She was a light and wanton maid:

Not one whom fickle Love betrayed,

For indolence was her undoer.

Fair, frivolous, and very poor,

She scorned the thought of toil, in youth,

And chose the path that leads from truth.

More women fall from want of gold

Than love leads wrong, if truth were told;

More women sin for gay attire

Than sin through passion's blinding fire.

Her god was gold: and gold she saw

Prove mightier than the sternest law

With judge and jury, priest and king;

So, made herself an offering

At Mammon's shrine; and lived for power,

And ease, and pleasures of the hour.

Who looks beneath life's outer crust

Is satisfied that God is just;

Who looks not under, but about,

Finds much to make him sad with doubt.

For Virtue walks with feet worn bare,

While Sin rides by with coach and pair:

Men praise the modest heart and chaste,

And yet they let it go to waste,

And follow, fierce to have and hold,

Some creature, wanton, selfish, bold.

She saw but this, life's outer side,

No higher faith was hers to guide;

She worshipped gold, and hated toil,

And hence her youth with all its soil,

With all its sins too dark to name,

Of secret crimes and public shame,

With all its trail of broken lives,

Of ruined homes, neglected wives,

And weeping mothers. Proud and gay

She went her devastating way

With untouched brow and fadeless grace.

Not time, but feeling, marks the face.

Sin on the outer being tells

Not till the startled soul rebels:

And she felt nothing but content.

She was too light and indolent

To worry over days to come.

This little earth held all life's sum,

She thought, and to be young and fair,

Well clothed, well fed, was all her care.

With pitying eyes and lifted head

She gazed on those who toiled for bread,

And laughed to scorn the talk she heard

Of punishment for those who erred,

And virtue's certain recompense.

She seemed devoid of moral sense,

An ignorant thing whose appetites

Bound her horizon of delights.

Men were her puppets to control;

Unconscious of a heart or soul

She lived, and gloried in the ease

She purchased by her power to please

The eye and senses. Life's one woe

Which caused her pitying tears to flow

Was poverty. Though hearts might break

And homes be ruined for her sake,

She showed no mercy. But when need

Of gold she saw, her heart would bleed.

The lack of clothing, fire, and food

Was earth's one pain, she understood.

The suffering poor oft blest her name,

Nor questioned whence the ducats came,

She gave so freely. Once she found

A fainting woman on the ground,

A wailing child clasped to her breast.

With her own hands she bathed and dressed

The weary waifs! gave food and gold

And clothed them warmly from the cold,

Nor guessed that one she lured from home

Had caused that suffering pair to roam

Unhoused, neglected. Then one day,

Unheralded across her way,

The conqueror came. She knew not why,

But with the first glance of his eye

A feeling, new and unexplained,

Woke in her what she oft had feigned.

And when his arm stole near her waist,

As startled maidens blush with chaste

Sweet fear at love's advances, so

She blushed from brow to breast of snow.

Strange, new emotions, fraught with joy

And pain commingled, made her coy;

But when he would have clasped her neck

With gems that might a queen bedeck

And offered gold, her lips grew white

With sudden anger at the sight

Of what had been her god for years.

She flung them from her. Then such tears

As only spring from love's despair

Welled from her eyes. “So, lady fair,

My gifts are scorned?” quoth he, and laughed.

“Like Cleopatra, you have quaffed

Such lordly pearls in draughts of wine,

You spurn poor simple gems like mine.

Well, well, fair queen, I'll bring to you

A richer gift next time. Adieu.”

His light words stung like lash of whip;

With gasping breath and ashen lip

She strove to speak, but he was gone

She kneeled and pressed her mouth upon

The latch his hand had touched, the floor

His foot had trod, and o'er and o'er

She sobbed his name, as children moan

A mother's name when left alone.

Out from the dim and roseate gloom

And subtle odours of her room

Accusing memories rose. She felt

A loneliness that seemed to belt

The universe in its embrace.

It was as if from some high place

A giant hand had reached and hurled

To nothingness her petty world,

And left her staring, awed, alone,

Up into regions vast, unknown.

There is no other loneliness

That can so sadden and oppress

As when beside the burned-out fire

Of sated passion and desire

The wakening spirit, in a glance,

Beholds its lost inheritance.

She rose and turned the dim lights higher,

Brought forth rich gems and grand attire,

And robed herself in feverish haste;

Before the mirror posed and paced,

With jewels on her breast and wrists;

Then sudden clenched her little fists

And beat her face until it bled,

And tore her garments shred from shred,

Gazed in the mirror, spoke her name

And hissed a word that told her shame,

Then on her knees fell sobbing there.

There are sweet messengers of prayer

Who down through space on soft wings steal,

And offer aid to all who kneel.

Her lips, unused to pious phrase,

Recalled some words of bygone days,

And “Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep,”

She whispered timidly, and then,

“Lord, let me be a child again

And grow up good.” The strange prayer said,

Like some o'er-weary child, her head

She pillowed on her arm, and wept

Low, shuddering sobs, until she slept

And dreamed; and in that dream she thought

She sat within a vine-wreathed cot;

An infant slumbered on her breast,

She crooned a lullaby, and pressed

Its waxen hand against her cheek,

While one, too proud and fond to speak,

The happy father of the child,

Stood near, and gazing on them, smiled.

She woke while still the lullaby

Was on her lips — then such a cry,

As souls in fabled realms below

Might utter, voiced her awful woe.

The mighty moral labour-pain

Of new-born conscience wracked her brain

And tore her soul. She understood

The meaning now of womanhood,

And chastity, and o'er her came

The full, dark sense of all her shame.

As some poor drunken wretch, at night,

Wakes up to know his piteous plight,

And sees, while sinking in the mire,

Afar, his waiting hearth-light's fire;

So now she saw from depths of sin

The hearth-light of the might-have-been.

How beautiful, how like a star

That lost light shone, but ah, how far!

She reached her longing arms toward space,

And lifted up her tear-wet face.

“O God,” she wailed, “I have been bad!

I see it all, and I am sad,

And long to be a good girl now.

Lord, Lord, will some one show me how?

Why, men have trod the burning track

Of sin for years, and then gone back!

And cannot I for sin atone,

Or did Christ die for men alone?

I want to lead an honest life,

I want to be his own true wife

And hold upon my breast his child.”

Then suddenly her voice grew wild,

“No, no,” she cried, “it could not be -

Those infant eyes would torture me:

Though God condoned my sinful ways,

I could not meet my child's pure gaze.”

She hid her face upon her knees,

And swayed as reeds sway in a breeze.

“O Christ,” she moaned, “could I forget,

There might be something for me yet:

But though both God and man forgave,

And I should win the love I crave,

Why, memory would drive me mad.”

When woman drifts from good to bad,

To make her final fall complete,

She puts her soul beneath her feet.

Man's dual selves seem separate;

He leaves his soul outside sin's gate,

And finds it waiting when he tires

Of carnal pleasures and desires,

Depleted, sickened, and depressed,

As souls must be with such a test,

Yet strong enough to help him grope

Back into happiness and hope.

But woman, far more complicate,

Can take no chances with her fate;

A subtle creature, finely spun,

Her body and her soul are one.

And now this erring woman wept

The soul she murdered while it slept.

She felt too stunned with pain to think.

She seemed to stand upon a brink;

Behind her loomed the sinful past,

Below her, rocks, beyond her, vast

And awful darkness. Not one ray

Of sun or star to show the way!

She drew a long and shuddering breath;

“There is no other path but death

For me to tread,” she sighed, “and so

I will prepare my house and go.”

As housewives move with willing feet

And skilful hands to make things neat

And ready for some welcome one,

She toiled until her tasks were done.

Then, seated at her desk, she wrote,

With painful care, a tear-wet note.

The childish penmanship was rude,

Ill spelled the words, the phrasing crude;

Yet thought and feeling both were there,

And mighty love and great despair.

“Dear heart,” it ran, “you did not know

How, from the first, I loved you so,

That sin grew hateful in my sight;

And so I leave it all to-night.

The kiss I gave, dear heart, to you

Was love's first kiss, as pure and true

As ever lips of maiden gave.

I think‘ twill warm my lonely grave,

And light the pathway I must tread

Among the hapless, homeless dead.

“When God formed worlds, He failed to make

A path for erring feet to take

Back into light and peace again,

Unless they were the feet of men.

When woman errs, and then regrets,

Her sun of hope for ever sets,

And life is hung with deepest gloom.

In all the world there is no room

For such as she; and so I hold

That death itself is not so cold

As life has seemed, since by love's light

I saw there was a wrong and right,

And that my birthright had been sold,

By my own hands, for tarnished gold.

I hated labour, hence I fell;

But now I love you, dear, so well,

No greater boon my soul could crave

Than just to toil, a galley-slave,

Through burdened years and years of life,

If at the last you called me wife

For one supreme and honoured hour.

Alas! too late I learn love's power,

Too late I realise my loss,

And have no strength to bear my cross

Of loneliness and dark disgrace.

There cannot be another place

So desolate, so full of fear,

As earth to me, without you, dear.

“You will not understand, I know,

How one like me can love you so.

It was a strange, strange thing. Love came

So like a swift, devouring flame

And burned my frail, fair-weather boat

And left me on the waves afloat,

With nothing but a broken spar.

The distant shores seem very far;

I cannot reach them, so I sink.

God will forgive my sins, I think,

Because I die for love, like One

The good Book tells about, His Son.

“For erring woman death can bring

No pain so keen as memory's sting.

Good-night, good-bye. God bless you, dear,

And give you love, and joy, and cheer!

But sometimes, in the dark night, say

A prayer for one who went astray,

And found no pathway back, and died

For love of you — a suicide.”

When morn his glorious pinions spread,

They found the erring woman, dead.