CHAPTER II.

Thus then it was. Griselda's childhood ends

With this untoward night; and what portends

May only now be guessed by those who read

Signs on the earth and wonders overhead.

I dare not prophesy.

What next appears

In the vain record of Griselda's years

Is hardly yet a token, for her life

Showed little outward sign of change or strife,

Though she was changed and though perhaps at war.

Her face still shone untroubled as a star

In the world's firmament, and still she moved,

A creature to be wondered at and loved.

Her zeal, her wit, her talents, her good sense

Were all unchanged, though each seemed more intense

And lit up with new passion and inspired

To active purpose, valiant and untired.

She faced the world, talked much and well, made friends,

Promoted divers schemes for divers ends,

Artistic, social, philanthropical:

She had a store of zeal for each and all.

She pensioned poets, nobly took in hand

An emigration plan to Newfoundland,

Which ended in disaster and a ball.

She visited St. George's hospital,

The Home for Fallen Women, founded schools

Of music taught on transcendental rules.

L. House was dull though splendid. She had schemes

Of a vast London palace on the Thames,

Which should combine all orders new and old

Of architectural taste a house could hold,

And educate the masses. Then one day,

She fairly wearied and her soul gave way.

Again she sought Lord L., but not to ask

This time his counsel in the thankless task

She could no more make good, the task of living.

He was too mere a stranger to her grieving,

Her needs, her weakness. All her woman's heart

Was in rebellion at the idle part

He played in her sad life, and needed not

Mere pity for a pain to madness wrought.

She did not ask his sympathy. She said

Only that she was weary as the dead,

And needed change of air, and life, and scene:

She wished to go where all the world had been —

To Paris, Florence, Rome. She could not die

And not have seen the Alps and Italy.

Lord L. had tried all Europe, and knew best

Where she could flee her troubles and find rest.

Such was her will. Lord L., without more goad,

Prepared for travel — and they went abroad.

I will not follow here from day to day

Griselda's steps. Suffice it if I say

She found her wished-for Paris wearisome,

Another London and without her home,

And so went on, as still the fashion was,

Some years ago, e'er Pulman cars with gas

And quick night flittings had submerged mankind

In one mad dream of luggage left behind,

By the Rhone boat to Provence. This to her

Seemed a delicious land, strange, barren, fair,

An old-world wilderness of greys and browns,

Rocks, olive-gardens, grim dismantled towns,

Deep-streeted, desolate, yet dear to see,

Smelling of oil and of the Papacy.

Griselda first gave reins to her romance

In this forgotten corner of old France,

Feeding her soul on that ethereal food,

The manna of days spent in solitude.

Lord L. was silent. She, as far away

Saw other worlds which were not of to-day,

With cardinals, popes, Petrarch and the Muse.

She stopped to weep with Laura at Vaucluse,

Where waiting in the Mistral poor Lord L.,

Who did not weep, sat, slept and caught a chill;

This sent them southwards on through Christendom,

To Genoa, Florence, and at last to Rome,

Where they remained the winter.

Change had wrought

A cure already in Griselda's thought,

Or half a cure. The world in truth is wide,

If we but pace it out from side to side,

And our worst miseries thus the smaller come.

Griselda was ashamed to grieve in Rome,

Among the buried griefs of centuries,

Her own sweet soul's too pitiful disease.

She found amid that dust of human hopes

An incantation for all horoscopes,

A better patience in that wreck of Time:

Her secret woes seemed chastened and sublime

There in the amphitheatre of woe.

She suffered with the martyrs. These would know,

Who offered their chaste lives and virgin blood,

How mortal frailty best might be subdued.

She saw the incense of her sorrow rise

With theirs as an accepted sacrifice

Before the face of the Eternal God

Of that Eternal City, and she trod

The very stones which seemed their griefs to sound

Beneath her steps, as consecrated ground.

In face of such a suffering hers must be

A drop, a tear in the unbounded sea

Which girds our lives. Rome was the home of grief,

Where all might bring their pain and find relief,

The temple of all sorrows: surely yet,

Sorrow's self here seemed swallowed up in it.

‘ Twas thus she comforted her soul. And then,

She had found a friend, a phoenix among men,

Which made it easier to compound with life,

Easier to be a woman and a wife.

This was Prince Belgirate. He of all

The noble band to whose high fortune fall

The name and title proudest upon earth

While pride shall live by privilege of birth,

The name of Roman, shone conspicuous

The head and front of his illustrious house,

Which had produced two pontiffs and a saint

Before the world had heard of Charles le Quint;

A most accomplished nobleman in truth,

And wise beyond the manner of his youth,

With wit and art and learning, and that sense

Of policy which still is most intense

Among the fertile brains of Italy,

A craft inherited from days gone by.

As scholar he was known the pupil apt

Of Mezzofanti, in whose learning lapped

And prized and tutored as a wondrous child,

He had sucked the milk of knowledge undefiled

While yet a boy, and brilliantly anon

Had pushed his reputation thus begun

Through half a score of tongues. In art his place

Was as chief patron of the rising race,

Which dreamed new conquests on the glorious womb

Of ancient beauty laid asleep in Rome.

The glories of the past he fain would see

Wrought to new life in this new century,

By that continuous instinct of her sons,

Which had survived Goths, Vandals, Lombards, Huns,

To burst upon a wondering world again

With full effulgence in the Julian reign.

In politics, though prudently withdrawn

From the public service, which he held in scorn,

As being unworthy the deliberate zeal

Of one with head to think or heart to feel;

And being neither priest, nor soldier, nor

Versed in the practice of Canonic lore,

He made his counsels felt and privately

Lent his best influence to “the Powers that be,” —

Counsels the better valued that he stood

Alone among the youth of stirring blood,

And bowed not to that Baal his proud knee,

The national false goddess, Italy.

He was too stubborn in his Roman pride

To trick out this young strumpet as a bride,

And held in classic scorn who would become

Less than a Roman citizen in Rome.

A man of heart besides and that light wit

Which leavens all, even pedantry's conceit.

None better knew than he the art to shew

A little less in talk than all he knew.

His manner too, and voice, and countenance,

Imposed on all, and these he knew to enhance

By certain freedoms and simplicities

Of language, which set all his world at ease.

A very peer and prince and paragon,

Griselda thought, Rome's latest, worthiest son,

An intellectual phoenix.

On her night

A sudden dawn had broke, portentous, bright.

Her soul had found its fellow. From the day

Of their first meeting on the Appian Way,

Beside Metella's tomb, where they had discussed

The doubtful merit of a new found bust,

And had agreed to differ or agree,

I know not which, a hidden sympathy

Had taken root between them. Either mind

Found in the other tokens of its kind

Which spoke in more than words, and naturally

Leaned to its fellow-mind as tree to tree.

Lord L., who had known the prince in other days,

While riding home had spoken in his praise,

And won Griselda's heart and patient smile,

For divers threadbare tales of blameless guile

Among the virtuosi, where the prince

Had played his part with skill and influence,

His sworn ally. Lord L. grew eloquent,

Finding her ears such rapt attention lent,

And could have gone on talking all his life

About his friend's perfections to his wife.

Griselda listened. In her heart there stirred

A strange unconscious pleasure at each word,

Which made the sunshine brighter and the sky

More blue, more tender in its sympathy.

The hills of the Campagna crowned with snow

Moved her and touched, she knew not why nor how.

The solemn beauty of the world; the fate

Of all things living, vast and inchoate

Yet clothed with flowers; the soul's eternal dream

Of something still beyond; the passionate whim

Of every noble mind for something good,

Which should assuage its hunger with new food;

The thrill of hope, the pulse of happiness,

The vague half-conscious longing of the eyes —

All these appealed to her, and seemed to lie

In form and substance under the blue sky,

Filling the shadows of the Sabine Hills

As with a presence, till her natural ills,

Transfigured through a happy mist of tears,

Gave place to hopes yet hardly dreamed as hers.

And still Lord L. talked calmly on, and she

Listened as to the voice of prophecy,

Nursing the pressure which the Prince's hand

Had left in hers, nor cared to understand.

From this day forth, I say, a tender mood

Possessed them both scarce conscious and unwooed,

Even in the Prince, her elder and a man.

At least Griselda had no thought nor plan

Beyond the pleasure of a friendship dear

To all alike, Lord L., the Prince, and her:

No plan but that the day would be more sweet,

More full of meaning, if they chanced to meet;

And this chanced every day. The Prince was kind

Beyond all kindness, and Lord L. could find

No words to speak his thanks he thus should be

The cicerone of their company.

And where a better? Belgirate's lore

In all things Roman was in truth a store

From which to steal. At her Gamaliel's knees

Griselda sat and learned Rome's mysteries

With all the zeal of a disciple young

And strange to genius and a pleading tongue.

The Prince was eloquent. His theme was high,

One which had taught less vigorous wings to fly,

The world of other days, the Pagan Rome,

The scarce less Pagan Rome of Christendom.

On these the Prince spoke warmly much and well,

Holding Griselda's patient ears in spell,

Yet broke off smiling when he met her eye

Fixed on his face in its mute sympathy:

A smile which was a question, an appeal,

And seemed to ask the meaning of her zeal.

He did not understand her quite. He saw

Something beyond, unfixed by any law

Of woman's nature his experience knew:

He knew not what to hold or hope as true.

For she was young and sad and beautiful,

A very woman with a woman's soul.

She had so strange a pathos in her eyes,

A tone so deep, such echoes in her voice.

What was this Roman Hecuba to her?

This prate of consul, pontiff, emperor?

These broken symbols of forgotten pride?

These ashes of old fame by fame denied?

What were these stones to her that she should weep,

Or spend her passion on a cause less deep

Than her own joys and sorrows? Was it love,

Or what thing else had such a power to move?

If there was meaning in red lips! And yet

‘ Twere rank impiety to think of it.

An Italian woman — yes. But she? Who knew

What English virtue dared yet dared not do?

This was the thought which lent its mockery

To the more tender omen of his eye,

And checked the pride and chilled the vague desire

Her beauty half had kindled into fire.

Yet hope was born and struggled to more life,

A puny infant with its fears at strife,

An unacknowledged hidden bastard child,

Too fair to crush, too wise to be beguiled;

Even Griselda's prudery confessed

A star of Bethlehem risen in her East.

And thus the winter passed in happiness

If not in love. I leave to each to guess

What name‘ twere best to give it, for to some

Who judge such things by simple rule of thumb,

‘ Twill seem impossible they thus should meet

Day after day in palace, temple, street,

Beneath the sun of heaven or in the shade

Of those old gardens by the cypress made,

Or on their horses drinking in the wind

Of the Campagna, and with care behind,

Left to take vengeance upon poor Lord L.,

Some furlongs back a solemn sentinel,

Or in the twilight slowly stealing home

Towards the hundred cupolas of Rome,

To greet the new-born moon and so repeat

Old Tuscan ditties, tender, wise, and sweet,

To the light clatter of their horse-hoof's chime

In echoing answer of their terza-rhyme —

‘ Twill seem, I say, to some impossible

That all this was not love. Yet, sooth to tell,

Easter had come and gone, and yet‘ twas true

No word of love had passed between the two.

The fact is, after the first halcyon hour

When she had met the Prince and proved his power

To move her inmost soul, Griselda made

This compact with her heart no less than head,

Being a woman of much logic sense,

And knowing all, at least by inference:

She was resolved that, come what evil might

On her poor heart, the right should still be right,

And not a hair's-breadth would she swerve from this,

Though it should cost her soul its happiness.

She would not trifle longer, nor provide

The Prince with pretext for his further pride,

Or grant more favour than a friendship given

Once and for all, in this world as in heaven.

This she indeed could offer, but, if more

Were asked, why then, alas! her dream was o'er.

I think no actual covenant had passed

In words between them either first or last,

But that the Prince, though puzzled and perplexed,

Had drawn a just conclusion from his text,

And read her meaning, while the hazard made,

Of certain idle words at random said,

Had sapped his confidence, and served to show

If speech were wise,‘ twas wiser to forego.

Once too he wrote a sonnet. They had spent

An afternoon ( it was in early Lent )

At that fair angle of the city wall

Which is the English place of burial,

A poet's pilgrimage to Shelley's tomb,—

The holiest spot, Griselda thought, in Rome,—

A place to worship in, perhaps to pray,

At least to meditate and spend the day.

She had brought her friend with her. She had at heart

To win his homage for the unknown art

Of this dead alien priest of Italy,

This lover of the earth, and sea, and sky;

And, reading there and talking in that mood

Which comes of happiness and youthful blood

So near akin to sorrow, their discourse

Had touched on human change and pain's remorse

Amid the eternal greenness of the spring;

And, when they came to part, there had seemed to ring

A note of trouble in Griselda's voice,

A sigh as if in grief for human joys,

An echo of unspoken tenderness,

Which caused the Prince to hold her hand in his

One little moment longer than was right,

When they had shaken hands and bid good night.

And so he wrote that evening on the spur

Of the first tender impulse of the hour

A sonnet to Griselda, a farewell

It seemed to be, yet also an appeal —

Perhaps a declaration; who shall say

Whether the thought which lightened into day,

Between the sorrowing accents of each line,

Was more despair or hope which asked a sign?

“Farewell,” it said, “although nor seas divide

Nor kingdoms separate, but a single street,

The sole sad gap between us, scarce too wide

For hands to cross, and though we needs must meet

Not in a year, a month, but just to-morrow,

When the first happy instinct of our feet

Bears us together,— yet we part in sorrow,

Bidding good-bye, as though we would repeat

Good-byes for ever. There are gulfs that yawn

Between us wide with time and circumstance,

Deep as the gulf which lies‘ twixt dead and dead.

The day of promise finds no second dawn:

See, while I speak, the pressure of our hands

Fades slowly from remembrance, and is fled,

And our weak hearts accept their fate. Nay, nay,

We meet again, but never as to-day.”

To this Griselda answered nothing. She

Was pleased, yet disconcerted. Poetry

Is always pleasant to a woman's ear,

And to Griselda had been doubly dear,

If it had touched less nearly. But her heart

Had bounded with too violent a start

To leave her certain of her self-control,

In this new joy which seemed to probe her soul.

And feeling frightened she had tried to find

A reason for the tumult of her mind

In being angry. He should not have dared

To strike so near the truth. Or had she bared

Her soul so plain to his that he should speak

Of both as an eye-witness? She felt weak

And out of temper with herself and him,

And with the sudden waking from a dream

Too long indulged, and with her own sad fate,

Which made all dreams a crime against the State.

There yawned indeed a gulf between them. This

It needed no such word as had been his

To bring back to her memory or show

How wide it was, and deep, and far below;

And yet she shuddered, for already thought

Had led her to the brink where reason fought

With folly, and conjured it to look down

Into the vast and terrible unknown.

This was itself an omen.

All that day

Griselda had a headache, and said nay

To those who called, the Prince among the rest,

Who came distrusting and returned distressed.

Awhile this humour lasted. Then they met,

And Belgirate, venturing a regret

For having vexed her with so poor a rhyme,

Griselda had protested want of time

And want of talent as her sole excuse

For having made no answer to his Muse,

Yet cast withal a look so pitiful

Upon his face it moved his very soul.

This closed the incident. He might have spoken

Perhaps that instant, and received some token

Of more than a forgiveness. But his fate

Had willed it otherwise or willed too late.

For love forgives not, plead it as we may

To speak the unspoken “Yes” of yesterday.