Griselda's madness lasted forty days,Forty eternities! Men went their ways,And suns arose and set, and women smiled,And tongues wagged lightly in impeachment wildOf Lady L.'s adventure. She was gone,None knew by whom escorted or alone,Or why or whither, only that one morning,Without pretext or subterfuge or warning,She had disappeared in silence from L. House,Leaving her lord in multitudinousAnd agonised conjecture of her fate:So the tale went. And truly less sedateThan his wont was in intricate affairs,Such as his Garter or his lack of heirs,Lord L. was seen in this new tribulation.Griselda long had been his life's equation,The pivot of his dealings with the world,The mainstay of his comfort, all now hurledTo unforeseen confusion by her flight:There was need of action swift and definite.Where was she? Who could tell him? Divers visionsPassed through his fancy—thieves, and street collisions,And all the hundred accidents of towns,From broken axle trees to broken crowns.In vain he questioned; no response was madeMore than the fact that, as already said,My lady, unattended and on foot,(A sad imprudence here Lord L. took note),Had gone out dressed in a black morning gownAnd dark tweed waterproof, 'twixt twelve and one,Leaving no orders to her maid, or planAbout her carriage to or groom or man.Such was in sum the downstairs' evidence.The hall porter, a man of ponderous sense,Averred her ladyship had eastward turnedFrom the front door, and some small credit earnedFor the suggestion that her steps were bentTo Whitechapel on merciful intent,A visit of compassion to the poor,A clue which led to a commissionerBeing sent for in hot haste from Scotland Yard.And so the news was bruited abroad.It reached my ears among the earliest,And from Lord L. himself, whose long suppressedEmotion found its vent one afternoonOn me, the only listener left in town.His thoughts now ran on "a religious crazeOf his poor wife's," he said, "in these last daysIndulged beyond all reason." The policeWould listen to no talk of casualties,Still less of crime, since they had nothing foundIn evidence above or under ground,But held the case to be of simpler kind,Home left in a disordered state of mindLord L. had noticed, now they talked of it,Temper less equable and flightier wit,"A craving for religious servicesAnd sacred music." Something was amiss,Or why were they in London in September?Griselda latterly, he could remember,Had raved of a conventual retreatIn terms no Protestant would deem discreet,As the sole refuge in a world of sinFor human frailty, griefs best anodyne."TheTimeswas right. Rome threatened to absorb us:The convents must be searched byhabeas corpus."And so I came to help him. I had guessedFrom his first word the vainness of his quest,And half was moved to serve him in a straitWhere her fair fame I loved was in debate,Yet held my peace, nor hazarded a wordSave of surprise at the strange case I heard,Till, fortune aiding, I should find the clueMy heart desired to do what I would do.And not in vain. Night found me duly sped,Lord L.'s ambassador accredited,With fullest powers to find and fetch her home,If need should be, from the Pope's jaws in Rome.Gods! what a mission! First my round I wentThrough half the slums of Middlesex and Kent,Surrey and Essex—this to soothe Lord L.,Though witless all, as my heart told too well;The hospitals no less and casual wards,Each house as idly as his House of Lords,And only at the week's end dared to stopAt the one door I knew still housing hope,Young Manton's chambers. There, with reddened cheekI heard the answer given I came to seek:Manton was gone, his landlady half fearedHe too, in some mishap, anddisappeared,—Proof all too positive. His letters layA fortnight deep untouched upon the tray.She could not forward them or risk a guessAs to his last or likeliest address.He was in Scotland often at this season,"But not without his guns"—a cogent reason,And leaving, too, his valet here in town,Perplexed of what to do or leave undone.Abroad? Perhaps. If so, his friends might tryAs a best chance the Paris Embassy.He had been there last Spring, and might be now.Paris! It was enough, I made my bow,And took my leave. I seemed to touch the threadOf the blind labyrinth 'twas mine to tread.Where should they be, in truth, these too fond lovers,But in the land of all such lawless rovers:The land of Gautier, Bourget, Maupassant,Where still "you can" makes answer to "I can't:"The fair domain where all romance beginsIn a light borderland of venial sins,But deepening onwards, till the fatal dayVice swoops upon us, plead we as we may.Griselda's bonnet o'er the windmills thrown,Had surely crossed the Seine e'er it came down;And I, if I would find and win her back,Must earliest search the boulevards for her track:And so to Paris in my zeal I passed,Breaking my idol, mad Iconoclast.There is a little inn by Meudon woodDear to Parisians in their amorous mood,A place of rendezvous, where bourgeois meetTheir best beloved in congregation sweet:Clandestine, undisturbed, illicit loves,Made half romantic by the adjoining groves,So beautiful in spring, with the new greenClothing the birch stems scattered white between,Nor yet, in autumn, when the first frosts burn,And the wind rustles in the reddening fern,Quite robbed of sentiment for lovers' eyes,Who seek earth's blessing on a bliss unwise,And find the happy sanction for their stateIn nature's face, unshocked by their debate,As who should say "Let preachers frown their fill,Here one approves. 'Tis Eden with us still."Such fancy, may be, in her too fond heartHad led Griselda—with her friend—apart,Yet not apart, from the world's curious gaze,To this secluded, ill-frequented place:A compromise of wills and varying moods,His for gay crowds, her own for solitudes.Manton knew Paris well, and loved its noise,Its mirthful parody of serious joys,Its pomp and circumstance. His wish had beenTo flaunt the boulevards with his captured queen,And make parade of a last triumph wonIn the chaste field of prudish Albion,Outscandalising scandal. Love and heIn any sense but of male vanity,And the delirium of adventures newIn the world's eye—the thing he next shoulddo—Were terms diverse and incompatible.Griselda, to his eyes, was Lady L.,The fair, the chaste, the unapproached proud nameMen breathed in reverence, woman, all the same,And not as such, and when the truth was said,Worth more than others lightlier credited.It all had been a jest from the beginning,Atour de force, whose wit was in the winning,A stroke of fortune and of accident,The embrace he had told of for another meant,While she stood grieving for a first grey hair(A psychologic moment) on the stair,And, kneeling down, he had adored her foot,The one weak spot where her self-love had root,And laughed at her, and told her she was old,Yet growing tenderer as he grew more bold;And so from jest to jest, and chance to chance,To that last scene at the mad country danceWhere she had played the hoyden, he the swain,Pretending love till love was in their brain,And he had followed to her chamber door,And helped her to undo the dress she wore.Then the elopement. That had been her doing,Which he accepted to make good his wooing,And careless what to both the result might be,So it but served his end of vanity.It all had been to this vain boy a whim,Something grotesque, a play, a pantomime,Where nothing had been serious but her heart,And that was soon too tearful for its part.He wearied in a week of her matureOld maidish venturings in ways obscure,Her agony of conscience dimly guessed,The silences she stifled in her breast,Her awkwardness—it was his word—in allThat love could teach; her sighs funereal,And more the unnatural laughter she essayedTo meet the doubtful sense of things he said.She was at once too tender and too prim,Too prudish and too crazed with love and him.At a month's end his flame had leaped beyondAlready to friends frailer and less fond,The light Parisian world of venal charmsWhich welcomed him with wide and laughing arms:There he was happier, more at home, more gay,King of the "high life," hero of the day.Griselda, in her sad suburban nookWatched his departures with a mute rebuke,Yet daring not to speak. The choice was hersTo stay at home or run the theatresWith her young lover in such companyAs her soul loathed. She had tried despairinglyTo be one, even as these, for his loved sake,And would have followed spite of her heart's ache,But that he hardly further cared to press,After one failure, stamped with "dowdiness:"That too had been his word, a bitter word,Biting and true, which smote her like a sword,Or rather a whip's sting to her proud cheek,Leaving her humbled, agonised and weak.Poor beautiful Griselda! What was nowThe value of thy beauty, chaste as snowIn thy youth's morning, the unchallenged worthOf thy eyes' kindness, queenliest of the earth;The tradition of thy Fra-angelic face,Blessed as Mary's, and as full of grace;The fame which thou despisedst, yet which madeA glory for thee meet for thy dear head?What, if in this last crisis of thy fate,When all a heaven and hell was in debate,And thy archangel, with the feet of clay,Stood mocking there in doubt to go or stay,The unstable fabric of thy woman's dower,Thy beauty, failed and left thee intheirpowerWhose only law of beauty was the stingLent to man's lust by light bedizening?What use was in thy beauty, if, alas!Thou gavest them cause to mock—those tongues ofbrass—At thy too crude and insular attire,Thy naïvetés of colour, the false fireOf thy first dallyings with the red and white,Thy sweet pictorial robes, Pre-Raphaelite,Quaint in their tones andoutréesin design,Thy lack of unity and shape and line,Thy English angularity—who knows,The less than perfect fitting of thy shoes?Griselda, in her flight, had left behindAll but the dress she stood in, too refined,In her fair righteousness of thought and deed,To make provision for a future need,However dire. She was no IsraeliteTo go forth from her Pharaoh in the night,With spoils of the Egyptians in her hands,And had thrown herself on Manton and on FranceWith a full courage worth a nobler cause,Grandly oblivious of prudential laws.Her earliest trouble, marring even the blissOf love's first ecstasy, had come of this,Her want of clothes—a worse and weightier careAt the mere moment than her soul's despairFor its deep fall from virtuous estate.How should she dress herself, she asked of Fate,With neither maid, nor money, nor a name?It was her first experiment in shame.Now, after all her poor economies,This was the ending read in his vexed eyes,And spoken by his lips: her utmost artHad failed to please that idle thing, his heart,Or even to avert his petulant scornFor one so little to love's manner born.And thus I found them, at the angry noonOf their "red month," the next to honeymoon:Two silent revellers at a loveless feast,Scared by hate's morning breaking in theireast—A dawn which was of penance and despair,With pleasure's ghost to fill the vacant chair.I took it, and was welcomed rapturously,As a far sail by shipwrecked souls at sea,An opportune deliverer, timely sentTo break the autumn of their discontent,And give a pretext to their need grown soreOf issue from joys dead by any door.Manton, all confidential from the first,Told me the tale of his last sins and worst,As meriting a sympathy not lessThan the best actions virtuous men confess.He was overwhelmed with women and withdebt—Women who loved him, bills which must be met.What could he do? Her ladyship wasmad—It was her fault, not his, this escapade.He had warned her from the first, and as a friend,That all such frolics had a serious end,And that to leave her home was the worst wayA woman would who wanted to be gay."For look," said he, "we men, who note these things,And how the unthinking flutterers burn their wings,Know that a woman, be she what she will,The fairest, noblest, most adorable,Dowered in her home with all seraphic charms,Whom heaven itself might envy in your arms,A paragon of pleasure undeniedAt her own chaste respectable fireside,Becomes, what shall I say, when she steps downFrom the high world of her untouchedrenown—A something differing in no serious moodFrom the sad rest of the light sisterhood:Perhaps indeed more troublesome than these,Because she keenlier feels the agonies:A wounded soul, who has not even the witTo hide its hurt and make a jest of it;A maid of Astolat, launched in her barge,A corpse on all the world, afemme à charge.""'Tis not," he argued, "our poor human sinsThat make us what we are when shame begins,But the world pointing at our naked state:Then we are shocked and humbled at our fate,Silent and shamed in all we honourmost—For what is virtue but the right to boast?A married woman's love, three weeks from home,Is the absurdest thing in Christendom,Dull as aménagein the demi-mondeAnd dismaller far by reason of the bond.All this I told my lady ere we went,But warning wasted is on sentiment.You see the net result here in one word,A crying woman and a lover bored."So far young Manton. She for whom I came,Griselda's self, sweet soul, in her new shameEssayed awhile to hide from me the truthOf this last hap of her belated youth,Her disillusion with her graceless lover.She made sad cloaks for him which could not coverHis great unworthiness and her despair,All with a frightened half-maternal air,Most pitiful and touching. To my plea,Urging her home, she answered mournfully,That she was bound now to her way of life,And owed herself no less than as his wifeTo him she had chosen out of all mankind.'Twas better to be foolish, even blind,If he had faults, so she could serve himstill—And this had been her promise and her will.She would not hear of duties owed elsewhere:What was she to Lord L., or he to her?I need not speak of it. And yet she clungTo my protecting presence in her wrong;And once, when Manton's jibes made bitterer play,Implored me with appealing eyes to stay.And so I lingered on.Those autumn days,Spent with Griselda in the woodland waysOf Meudon with her lover, or alone,When his mad fancies carried him to town,Remain to me an unsubstantial actOf dreaming fancy, rather than the factOf any waking moment in my past,The sweetest, saddest, and with her thelast—For suddenly they ended.We had beenOne Sunday for a jaunt upon the Seine,We two—in Manton's absence, now prolongedTo a third night—and in a steamboat, throngedWith idle bourgeois folk, whom the last gloryOf a late autumn had sent forth in forayTo Passy and St. Cloud, from stage to stage,Had made with heavy souls our pilgrimage;And homeward turning and with little zest,The fair day done, to love's deserted nestHad come with lagging feet and weary eyes,Expectant still of some new dark surprise,When the blow fell unsparing on her head,Already by what fortunes buffeted.How did it happen, that last tragedy?—For tragedy it was, let none deny,Though all ignoble. Every soul of usTouches one moment in death's darkened houseThe plane of the heroic, and compelsMen's laughter into tears—ay, heaven's and hell's.How did it happen? There was that uponTheir faces at the door more than the toneOf their replies, that warned us of the thingWe had not looked for in our questioning;And our lips faltered, and our ears, afraid,Shrank from more hearing. What was it they saidIn their fool's jargon, that he lay upstairs?He? Manton? The dispenser of our cares?The mountebank young reveller? Suffering? Ill?And she, poor soul, that suffered at his will!A sinister case? Not dying? Pitiful God!Truly Thou smitest blindly with Thy rod.For Manton was not worthy to die young,Beloved by her with blessings on her tongue.And such a cause of death!She never heardThe whole truth told, for each one spared his word,And he lay mute for ever. But to meThe thing was storied void of mystery,And thus they told it. Hardly had we goneOn our sad river outing, when from townManton had come with a gay troop of friends,Such as thecoulisseof the opera lends,To breakfast at the inn and spend the dayIn mirthful noise, as was his vagrant way.A drunken frolic, and most insolentTo her whose honour with his own was blent,To end in this last tragedy. None knewQuite how it happened, or a cause could shewFurther than this, that, rising from the tableThe last to go, with steps perhapsunstable—For they had feasted freely, and the stairWas steep and iron-edged, and needed care;And singing, as he went, the selfsame song,Which I remembered, to the laughing throng,He had slipped his length, and fallen feet-first down.When they picked him up his power to move was gone,Though he could speak. They laid him on a bed,Her bed, Griselda's, and called in with speedSuch help of doctors and commissionersAs law prescribed, and medicine for their fears.'Twas his last night.There, in Griselda's hands,Young Jerry Manton lay with the last sandsOf his life's hour-glass trickling to its close,Griselda watching, with what thoughts, God knows.We did not speak. But her lips moved in prayer,And mine too, in the way of man's despair.I did not love him, yet a human pitySoftened my eyes. Afar, from the great city,The sound came to us of the eternal hum,Unceasing, changeless, pregnant with all doomOf insolent life that rises from its streets,The pulse of sin which ever beats and beats,Wearying the ears of God. O Paris, Paris!What doom is thine for every soul that tarriesToo long with thee, a stranger in thy arms.Thy smiles are incantations, thy brave charmsDeath to thy lovers. Each gay mother's son,Smitten with love for thee, is straight undone.And lo the chariot wheels upon thy ways!And a new garland hung inPère la Chaise!Poor soul! I turned and looked into the night,Through the uncurtained windows, and there brightSaw the mute twinkle of a thousand stars.One night! the least in all time's calendars,Yet fraught with what a meaning for this one!One star, the least of all that million!One room in that one city! Yet for himThe universe there was of space and time.What were his thoughts? In that chaotic soul,Home of sad jests, obscene, unbeautiful,Mired with the earthiest of brute desires,And lit to sentience only with lewd fires,Was there no secret, undisturbed, fair placeWatered with love and favoured with God's graceTo which the wounded consciousness had fledFor its last refuge from a world of dread?Was his soul touched to tenderness, to awe,To softer recollection? All we sawWas the maimed body gasping forth its breath,A rigid setting of the silent teeth,And the hands trembling. Death was with us there.But where was he—O Heaven of pity! where?We watched till morning by the dying man,She weeping silently, I grieved and wan,And still he moved not. But with the first breakOf day in the window panes we saw him makeA sign as if of speaking. Pressingnear—For his lips moved, Griselda deemed, inprayer—We heard him make profession of his faith,As a man of pleasure face to face with death,A kind of gambler's Athanasian Creed,Repeated at the hour of his last need."Five sovereigns," said he, steadying his will,As in defiance of death's power to kill,And with that smile of a superior mind,Which was his strength in dealing with mankind,The world of sporting jargon and gay livers."Five sovereigns is a fiver, and five fiversA pony, and five ponies are ahundred—No, four," he added, seeing he had blundered."Fourto the hundred andfivecenturiesMake up the monkey." From his dying eyesThe smile of triumph faded. "There, I've done it,"He said, "but there was no great odds upon it,You see with a broken back."He spoke no more,And in another hour had passed the doorWhich shuts the living from eternity.Where was he? God of pity, where was he?This was the end of Lady L.'s romance.When we had buried him, as they do in France,In a tomb inscribed "à perpétuité"(Formally rented till the Judgment Day),She put off black, and shed no further tears;Her face for the first time showed all its years,But not a trace beyond. Without demurShe gave adhesion to my plans for her,And we went home to London and Lord L.,Silent together, by the next night's mail.She had been six weeks away.The interviewBetween them was dramatic. I, who knewHer whole mad secret, and had seen her soulStripped of its covering, and without control,Bowed down by circumstance and galled with shame,Yielding to wounds and griefs without a name,Had feared for her a wild unhappy scene.I held Lord L. for the least stern of men,And yet I dared not hope even he would craveNo explanation e'er he quite forgave.I was with them when they met, unwilling third,In their mute bandying of the unspoken word.Lord L. essayed to speak. I saw his faceMade up for a high act of tragic graceAs he came forward. It was grave and mild,A father's welcoming a truant child,Forgiving, yet intent to mark the painWith hope "the thing should not occur again."His lips began to move as to some speechFramed in this sense, as one might gently preachA word in season to too gadding wivesOf duties owed, at least by those whose livesMoved in high places. But it died unsaid.There was that about Griselda that forbadeMarital questionings. Her queenly eyesMet his with a mute answer of surprise,Marking the unseemliness of all displayMore strongly than with words, as who should sayNoblesse oblige.She took his outstretched hand,And kissed his cheek, but would not understandA word of his reproaches. Even I,With my full knowledge and no more a boy,But versed by years in the world's wickedness,And open-eyed to her, alas! no lessThan to all womanhood, even I felt shame,And half absolved her in my mind from blame.And he, how could he less? He was but human,The fortunate husband of how fair a woman!He stammered his excuses.What she toldWhen I had left them (since all coin is goldTo those who would believe, and who the keyHold of their eyes, in blind faith's alchemy)I never learned.I did not linger on,Seeing her peril past and the day won,But took my leave. She led me to the doorWith her old kindness of the days of yore,And thanked me as one thanks for little things."You have been," she said, "an angel without wings,And I shall not forget,—nor will Lord L.;And yet," she said, with an imperceptibleChange in her voice, "there are things the world will sayWhich are neither just nor kind, and, if to-dayWe part awhile, remember we are friends,If not now later. Time will make amends,And we shall meet again." I pressed her handA moment to my lips. "I understand,"I said, and gazed a last time in her eyes;"Say all you will. I am your sacrifice."And so, in truth, it was. Henceforth there layA gulf between us, widening with delay,And which our souls were impotent to pass,The gulf of a dead secret; and, alas!Who knows what subtle treacheries within,For virtue rends its witnesses of sin,And hearts are strangely fashioned by their fears.We met no more in friendship through the years,Although I held her secret as my own,And fought her battles, her best champion,On many a stricken field in scandal's war,Till all was well forgotten. From afarI watched her fortunes still with tenderness,Yet sadly, as cast out of Paradise.For ever, spite her promise, from that day,When I met L., he looked another way;And she, Griselda, was reserved and chill.I had behaved, her women friends said, ill,And caused a needless scandal in her life,—They told not what. Enough, that as a wifeShe had been compelled to close her doors on me,And that her lord knew all the iniquity.And so I bore the burden of her sin.What more shall I relate? The cynic veinHas overwhelmed my tale, and I must stop.Its heroine lived to justify all hopeOf her long-suffering lord, that out of painBlessings would grow, and his house smile againWith the fulfilled expectance of an heir.Griselda sat no longer in despair,Nor wasted her full life on dreams of folly;She had little time for moods of melancholy,Or heart to venture further in love's ways;She was again the theme of all men's praise,And suffered no man's passion. Once a year,In the late autumn, when the leaves grew sereShe made retreat to a lay sisterhood,And lived awhile there for her soul's more good,In pious meditation, fasts and prayer.Some say she wore concealed a shirt of hairUnder her dresses, even at court balls,And certain 'tis that all Rome's ritualsWere followed daily at the private MassIn her new chauntry built behind Hans Place.Lord L. approved of all she did, even this,Strange as it seemed to his old fashionedness.He, gentle soul, grown garrulous with years,Prosed of her virtues to all listeners,And of their son's, the child of his old age,A prodigy of beauty and ways sage.It was a vow, he said, once made in Rome,Had brought them this chief treasure of their home.A vow! The light world laughed—for miraclesAre not believed in now, except as hell's.And yet the ways of God are passing strange.And this is certain (and therein the rangeOf my long tale is reached, and I am free),—There is at Ostia, close beside the sea,A convent church, the same where years agoGriselda kneeled in tears and made her vow;And in that shrine, beneath the crucifix,They show a votive offering, candlesticksOf more than common workmanship and size,And underneath inscribed the votary'sName in initials, and the date, all told,Hall-marked in England, and of massive gold.
Griselda's madness lasted forty days,Forty eternities! Men went their ways,And suns arose and set, and women smiled,And tongues wagged lightly in impeachment wildOf Lady L.'s adventure. She was gone,None knew by whom escorted or alone,Or why or whither, only that one morning,Without pretext or subterfuge or warning,She had disappeared in silence from L. House,Leaving her lord in multitudinousAnd agonised conjecture of her fate:So the tale went. And truly less sedateThan his wont was in intricate affairs,Such as his Garter or his lack of heirs,Lord L. was seen in this new tribulation.Griselda long had been his life's equation,The pivot of his dealings with the world,The mainstay of his comfort, all now hurledTo unforeseen confusion by her flight:There was need of action swift and definite.Where was she? Who could tell him? Divers visionsPassed through his fancy—thieves, and street collisions,And all the hundred accidents of towns,From broken axle trees to broken crowns.In vain he questioned; no response was madeMore than the fact that, as already said,My lady, unattended and on foot,(A sad imprudence here Lord L. took note),Had gone out dressed in a black morning gownAnd dark tweed waterproof, 'twixt twelve and one,Leaving no orders to her maid, or planAbout her carriage to or groom or man.Such was in sum the downstairs' evidence.The hall porter, a man of ponderous sense,Averred her ladyship had eastward turnedFrom the front door, and some small credit earnedFor the suggestion that her steps were bentTo Whitechapel on merciful intent,A visit of compassion to the poor,A clue which led to a commissionerBeing sent for in hot haste from Scotland Yard.And so the news was bruited abroad.
It reached my ears among the earliest,And from Lord L. himself, whose long suppressedEmotion found its vent one afternoonOn me, the only listener left in town.His thoughts now ran on "a religious crazeOf his poor wife's," he said, "in these last daysIndulged beyond all reason." The policeWould listen to no talk of casualties,Still less of crime, since they had nothing foundIn evidence above or under ground,But held the case to be of simpler kind,Home left in a disordered state of mindLord L. had noticed, now they talked of it,Temper less equable and flightier wit,"A craving for religious servicesAnd sacred music." Something was amiss,Or why were they in London in September?Griselda latterly, he could remember,Had raved of a conventual retreatIn terms no Protestant would deem discreet,As the sole refuge in a world of sinFor human frailty, griefs best anodyne."TheTimeswas right. Rome threatened to absorb us:The convents must be searched byhabeas corpus."
And so I came to help him. I had guessedFrom his first word the vainness of his quest,And half was moved to serve him in a straitWhere her fair fame I loved was in debate,Yet held my peace, nor hazarded a wordSave of surprise at the strange case I heard,Till, fortune aiding, I should find the clueMy heart desired to do what I would do.And not in vain. Night found me duly sped,Lord L.'s ambassador accredited,With fullest powers to find and fetch her home,If need should be, from the Pope's jaws in Rome.
Gods! what a mission! First my round I wentThrough half the slums of Middlesex and Kent,Surrey and Essex—this to soothe Lord L.,Though witless all, as my heart told too well;The hospitals no less and casual wards,Each house as idly as his House of Lords,And only at the week's end dared to stopAt the one door I knew still housing hope,Young Manton's chambers. There, with reddened cheekI heard the answer given I came to seek:Manton was gone, his landlady half fearedHe too, in some mishap, anddisappeared,—Proof all too positive. His letters layA fortnight deep untouched upon the tray.She could not forward them or risk a guessAs to his last or likeliest address.He was in Scotland often at this season,"But not without his guns"—a cogent reason,And leaving, too, his valet here in town,Perplexed of what to do or leave undone.Abroad? Perhaps. If so, his friends might tryAs a best chance the Paris Embassy.He had been there last Spring, and might be now.
Paris! It was enough, I made my bow,And took my leave. I seemed to touch the threadOf the blind labyrinth 'twas mine to tread.Where should they be, in truth, these too fond lovers,But in the land of all such lawless rovers:The land of Gautier, Bourget, Maupassant,Where still "you can" makes answer to "I can't:"The fair domain where all romance beginsIn a light borderland of venial sins,But deepening onwards, till the fatal dayVice swoops upon us, plead we as we may.Griselda's bonnet o'er the windmills thrown,Had surely crossed the Seine e'er it came down;And I, if I would find and win her back,Must earliest search the boulevards for her track:And so to Paris in my zeal I passed,Breaking my idol, mad Iconoclast.
There is a little inn by Meudon woodDear to Parisians in their amorous mood,A place of rendezvous, where bourgeois meetTheir best beloved in congregation sweet:Clandestine, undisturbed, illicit loves,Made half romantic by the adjoining groves,So beautiful in spring, with the new greenClothing the birch stems scattered white between,Nor yet, in autumn, when the first frosts burn,And the wind rustles in the reddening fern,Quite robbed of sentiment for lovers' eyes,Who seek earth's blessing on a bliss unwise,And find the happy sanction for their stateIn nature's face, unshocked by their debate,As who should say "Let preachers frown their fill,Here one approves. 'Tis Eden with us still."
Such fancy, may be, in her too fond heartHad led Griselda—with her friend—apart,Yet not apart, from the world's curious gaze,To this secluded, ill-frequented place:A compromise of wills and varying moods,His for gay crowds, her own for solitudes.Manton knew Paris well, and loved its noise,Its mirthful parody of serious joys,Its pomp and circumstance. His wish had beenTo flaunt the boulevards with his captured queen,And make parade of a last triumph wonIn the chaste field of prudish Albion,Outscandalising scandal. Love and heIn any sense but of male vanity,And the delirium of adventures newIn the world's eye—the thing he next shoulddo—Were terms diverse and incompatible.Griselda, to his eyes, was Lady L.,The fair, the chaste, the unapproached proud nameMen breathed in reverence, woman, all the same,And not as such, and when the truth was said,Worth more than others lightlier credited.It all had been a jest from the beginning,Atour de force, whose wit was in the winning,A stroke of fortune and of accident,The embrace he had told of for another meant,While she stood grieving for a first grey hair(A psychologic moment) on the stair,And, kneeling down, he had adored her foot,The one weak spot where her self-love had root,And laughed at her, and told her she was old,Yet growing tenderer as he grew more bold;And so from jest to jest, and chance to chance,To that last scene at the mad country danceWhere she had played the hoyden, he the swain,Pretending love till love was in their brain,And he had followed to her chamber door,And helped her to undo the dress she wore.
Then the elopement. That had been her doing,Which he accepted to make good his wooing,And careless what to both the result might be,So it but served his end of vanity.It all had been to this vain boy a whim,Something grotesque, a play, a pantomime,Where nothing had been serious but her heart,And that was soon too tearful for its part.He wearied in a week of her matureOld maidish venturings in ways obscure,Her agony of conscience dimly guessed,The silences she stifled in her breast,Her awkwardness—it was his word—in allThat love could teach; her sighs funereal,And more the unnatural laughter she essayedTo meet the doubtful sense of things he said.She was at once too tender and too prim,Too prudish and too crazed with love and him.At a month's end his flame had leaped beyondAlready to friends frailer and less fond,The light Parisian world of venal charmsWhich welcomed him with wide and laughing arms:There he was happier, more at home, more gay,King of the "high life," hero of the day.
Griselda, in her sad suburban nookWatched his departures with a mute rebuke,Yet daring not to speak. The choice was hersTo stay at home or run the theatresWith her young lover in such companyAs her soul loathed. She had tried despairinglyTo be one, even as these, for his loved sake,And would have followed spite of her heart's ache,But that he hardly further cared to press,After one failure, stamped with "dowdiness:"That too had been his word, a bitter word,Biting and true, which smote her like a sword,Or rather a whip's sting to her proud cheek,Leaving her humbled, agonised and weak.
Poor beautiful Griselda! What was nowThe value of thy beauty, chaste as snowIn thy youth's morning, the unchallenged worthOf thy eyes' kindness, queenliest of the earth;The tradition of thy Fra-angelic face,Blessed as Mary's, and as full of grace;The fame which thou despisedst, yet which madeA glory for thee meet for thy dear head?What, if in this last crisis of thy fate,When all a heaven and hell was in debate,And thy archangel, with the feet of clay,Stood mocking there in doubt to go or stay,The unstable fabric of thy woman's dower,Thy beauty, failed and left thee intheirpowerWhose only law of beauty was the stingLent to man's lust by light bedizening?What use was in thy beauty, if, alas!Thou gavest them cause to mock—those tongues ofbrass—At thy too crude and insular attire,Thy naïvetés of colour, the false fireOf thy first dallyings with the red and white,Thy sweet pictorial robes, Pre-Raphaelite,Quaint in their tones andoutréesin design,Thy lack of unity and shape and line,Thy English angularity—who knows,The less than perfect fitting of thy shoes?
Griselda, in her flight, had left behindAll but the dress she stood in, too refined,In her fair righteousness of thought and deed,To make provision for a future need,However dire. She was no IsraeliteTo go forth from her Pharaoh in the night,With spoils of the Egyptians in her hands,And had thrown herself on Manton and on FranceWith a full courage worth a nobler cause,Grandly oblivious of prudential laws.Her earliest trouble, marring even the blissOf love's first ecstasy, had come of this,Her want of clothes—a worse and weightier careAt the mere moment than her soul's despairFor its deep fall from virtuous estate.How should she dress herself, she asked of Fate,With neither maid, nor money, nor a name?It was her first experiment in shame.Now, after all her poor economies,This was the ending read in his vexed eyes,And spoken by his lips: her utmost artHad failed to please that idle thing, his heart,Or even to avert his petulant scornFor one so little to love's manner born.
And thus I found them, at the angry noonOf their "red month," the next to honeymoon:Two silent revellers at a loveless feast,Scared by hate's morning breaking in theireast—A dawn which was of penance and despair,With pleasure's ghost to fill the vacant chair.I took it, and was welcomed rapturously,As a far sail by shipwrecked souls at sea,An opportune deliverer, timely sentTo break the autumn of their discontent,And give a pretext to their need grown soreOf issue from joys dead by any door.
Manton, all confidential from the first,Told me the tale of his last sins and worst,As meriting a sympathy not lessThan the best actions virtuous men confess.He was overwhelmed with women and withdebt—Women who loved him, bills which must be met.What could he do? Her ladyship wasmad—It was her fault, not his, this escapade.He had warned her from the first, and as a friend,That all such frolics had a serious end,And that to leave her home was the worst wayA woman would who wanted to be gay.
"For look," said he, "we men, who note these things,And how the unthinking flutterers burn their wings,Know that a woman, be she what she will,The fairest, noblest, most adorable,Dowered in her home with all seraphic charms,Whom heaven itself might envy in your arms,A paragon of pleasure undeniedAt her own chaste respectable fireside,Becomes, what shall I say, when she steps downFrom the high world of her untouchedrenown—A something differing in no serious moodFrom the sad rest of the light sisterhood:Perhaps indeed more troublesome than these,Because she keenlier feels the agonies:A wounded soul, who has not even the witTo hide its hurt and make a jest of it;A maid of Astolat, launched in her barge,A corpse on all the world, afemme à charge."
"'Tis not," he argued, "our poor human sinsThat make us what we are when shame begins,But the world pointing at our naked state:Then we are shocked and humbled at our fate,Silent and shamed in all we honourmost—For what is virtue but the right to boast?A married woman's love, three weeks from home,Is the absurdest thing in Christendom,Dull as aménagein the demi-mondeAnd dismaller far by reason of the bond.All this I told my lady ere we went,But warning wasted is on sentiment.You see the net result here in one word,A crying woman and a lover bored."
So far young Manton. She for whom I came,Griselda's self, sweet soul, in her new shameEssayed awhile to hide from me the truthOf this last hap of her belated youth,Her disillusion with her graceless lover.She made sad cloaks for him which could not coverHis great unworthiness and her despair,All with a frightened half-maternal air,Most pitiful and touching. To my plea,Urging her home, she answered mournfully,That she was bound now to her way of life,And owed herself no less than as his wifeTo him she had chosen out of all mankind.'Twas better to be foolish, even blind,If he had faults, so she could serve himstill—And this had been her promise and her will.She would not hear of duties owed elsewhere:What was she to Lord L., or he to her?I need not speak of it. And yet she clungTo my protecting presence in her wrong;And once, when Manton's jibes made bitterer play,Implored me with appealing eyes to stay.And so I lingered on.
Those autumn days,Spent with Griselda in the woodland waysOf Meudon with her lover, or alone,When his mad fancies carried him to town,Remain to me an unsubstantial actOf dreaming fancy, rather than the factOf any waking moment in my past,The sweetest, saddest, and with her thelast—For suddenly they ended.
We had beenOne Sunday for a jaunt upon the Seine,We two—in Manton's absence, now prolongedTo a third night—and in a steamboat, throngedWith idle bourgeois folk, whom the last gloryOf a late autumn had sent forth in forayTo Passy and St. Cloud, from stage to stage,Had made with heavy souls our pilgrimage;And homeward turning and with little zest,The fair day done, to love's deserted nestHad come with lagging feet and weary eyes,Expectant still of some new dark surprise,When the blow fell unsparing on her head,Already by what fortunes buffeted.
How did it happen, that last tragedy?—For tragedy it was, let none deny,Though all ignoble. Every soul of usTouches one moment in death's darkened houseThe plane of the heroic, and compelsMen's laughter into tears—ay, heaven's and hell's.How did it happen? There was that uponTheir faces at the door more than the toneOf their replies, that warned us of the thingWe had not looked for in our questioning;And our lips faltered, and our ears, afraid,Shrank from more hearing. What was it they saidIn their fool's jargon, that he lay upstairs?He? Manton? The dispenser of our cares?The mountebank young reveller? Suffering? Ill?And she, poor soul, that suffered at his will!A sinister case? Not dying? Pitiful God!Truly Thou smitest blindly with Thy rod.For Manton was not worthy to die young,Beloved by her with blessings on her tongue.And such a cause of death!
She never heardThe whole truth told, for each one spared his word,And he lay mute for ever. But to meThe thing was storied void of mystery,And thus they told it. Hardly had we goneOn our sad river outing, when from townManton had come with a gay troop of friends,Such as thecoulisseof the opera lends,To breakfast at the inn and spend the dayIn mirthful noise, as was his vagrant way.A drunken frolic, and most insolentTo her whose honour with his own was blent,To end in this last tragedy. None knewQuite how it happened, or a cause could shewFurther than this, that, rising from the tableThe last to go, with steps perhapsunstable—For they had feasted freely, and the stairWas steep and iron-edged, and needed care;And singing, as he went, the selfsame song,Which I remembered, to the laughing throng,He had slipped his length, and fallen feet-first down.When they picked him up his power to move was gone,Though he could speak. They laid him on a bed,Her bed, Griselda's, and called in with speedSuch help of doctors and commissionersAs law prescribed, and medicine for their fears.'Twas his last night.
There, in Griselda's hands,Young Jerry Manton lay with the last sandsOf his life's hour-glass trickling to its close,Griselda watching, with what thoughts, God knows.We did not speak. But her lips moved in prayer,And mine too, in the way of man's despair.I did not love him, yet a human pitySoftened my eyes. Afar, from the great city,The sound came to us of the eternal hum,Unceasing, changeless, pregnant with all doomOf insolent life that rises from its streets,The pulse of sin which ever beats and beats,Wearying the ears of God. O Paris, Paris!What doom is thine for every soul that tarriesToo long with thee, a stranger in thy arms.Thy smiles are incantations, thy brave charmsDeath to thy lovers. Each gay mother's son,Smitten with love for thee, is straight undone.And lo the chariot wheels upon thy ways!And a new garland hung inPère la Chaise!
Poor soul! I turned and looked into the night,Through the uncurtained windows, and there brightSaw the mute twinkle of a thousand stars.One night! the least in all time's calendars,Yet fraught with what a meaning for this one!One star, the least of all that million!One room in that one city! Yet for himThe universe there was of space and time.What were his thoughts? In that chaotic soul,Home of sad jests, obscene, unbeautiful,Mired with the earthiest of brute desires,And lit to sentience only with lewd fires,Was there no secret, undisturbed, fair placeWatered with love and favoured with God's graceTo which the wounded consciousness had fledFor its last refuge from a world of dread?Was his soul touched to tenderness, to awe,To softer recollection? All we sawWas the maimed body gasping forth its breath,A rigid setting of the silent teeth,And the hands trembling. Death was with us there.But where was he—O Heaven of pity! where?
We watched till morning by the dying man,She weeping silently, I grieved and wan,And still he moved not. But with the first breakOf day in the window panes we saw him makeA sign as if of speaking. Pressingnear—For his lips moved, Griselda deemed, inprayer—We heard him make profession of his faith,As a man of pleasure face to face with death,A kind of gambler's Athanasian Creed,Repeated at the hour of his last need."Five sovereigns," said he, steadying his will,As in defiance of death's power to kill,And with that smile of a superior mind,Which was his strength in dealing with mankind,The world of sporting jargon and gay livers."Five sovereigns is a fiver, and five fiversA pony, and five ponies are ahundred—No, four," he added, seeing he had blundered."Fourto the hundred andfivecenturiesMake up the monkey." From his dying eyesThe smile of triumph faded. "There, I've done it,"He said, "but there was no great odds upon it,You see with a broken back."
He spoke no more,And in another hour had passed the doorWhich shuts the living from eternity.Where was he? God of pity, where was he?
This was the end of Lady L.'s romance.
When we had buried him, as they do in France,In a tomb inscribed "à perpétuité"(Formally rented till the Judgment Day),She put off black, and shed no further tears;Her face for the first time showed all its years,But not a trace beyond. Without demurShe gave adhesion to my plans for her,And we went home to London and Lord L.,Silent together, by the next night's mail.She had been six weeks away.
The interviewBetween them was dramatic. I, who knewHer whole mad secret, and had seen her soulStripped of its covering, and without control,Bowed down by circumstance and galled with shame,Yielding to wounds and griefs without a name,Had feared for her a wild unhappy scene.I held Lord L. for the least stern of men,And yet I dared not hope even he would craveNo explanation e'er he quite forgave.
I was with them when they met, unwilling third,In their mute bandying of the unspoken word.Lord L. essayed to speak. I saw his faceMade up for a high act of tragic graceAs he came forward. It was grave and mild,A father's welcoming a truant child,Forgiving, yet intent to mark the painWith hope "the thing should not occur again."His lips began to move as to some speechFramed in this sense, as one might gently preachA word in season to too gadding wivesOf duties owed, at least by those whose livesMoved in high places. But it died unsaid.There was that about Griselda that forbadeMarital questionings. Her queenly eyesMet his with a mute answer of surprise,Marking the unseemliness of all displayMore strongly than with words, as who should sayNoblesse oblige.She took his outstretched hand,And kissed his cheek, but would not understandA word of his reproaches. Even I,With my full knowledge and no more a boy,But versed by years in the world's wickedness,And open-eyed to her, alas! no lessThan to all womanhood, even I felt shame,And half absolved her in my mind from blame.And he, how could he less? He was but human,The fortunate husband of how fair a woman!He stammered his excuses.
What she toldWhen I had left them (since all coin is goldTo those who would believe, and who the keyHold of their eyes, in blind faith's alchemy)I never learned.
I did not linger on,Seeing her peril past and the day won,But took my leave. She led me to the doorWith her old kindness of the days of yore,And thanked me as one thanks for little things."You have been," she said, "an angel without wings,And I shall not forget,—nor will Lord L.;And yet," she said, with an imperceptibleChange in her voice, "there are things the world will sayWhich are neither just nor kind, and, if to-dayWe part awhile, remember we are friends,If not now later. Time will make amends,And we shall meet again." I pressed her handA moment to my lips. "I understand,"I said, and gazed a last time in her eyes;"Say all you will. I am your sacrifice."
And so, in truth, it was. Henceforth there layA gulf between us, widening with delay,And which our souls were impotent to pass,The gulf of a dead secret; and, alas!Who knows what subtle treacheries within,For virtue rends its witnesses of sin,And hearts are strangely fashioned by their fears.We met no more in friendship through the years,Although I held her secret as my own,And fought her battles, her best champion,On many a stricken field in scandal's war,Till all was well forgotten. From afarI watched her fortunes still with tenderness,Yet sadly, as cast out of Paradise.For ever, spite her promise, from that day,When I met L., he looked another way;And she, Griselda, was reserved and chill.I had behaved, her women friends said, ill,And caused a needless scandal in her life,—They told not what. Enough, that as a wifeShe had been compelled to close her doors on me,And that her lord knew all the iniquity.
And so I bore the burden of her sin.
What more shall I relate? The cynic veinHas overwhelmed my tale, and I must stop.Its heroine lived to justify all hopeOf her long-suffering lord, that out of painBlessings would grow, and his house smile againWith the fulfilled expectance of an heir.Griselda sat no longer in despair,Nor wasted her full life on dreams of folly;She had little time for moods of melancholy,Or heart to venture further in love's ways;She was again the theme of all men's praise,And suffered no man's passion. Once a year,In the late autumn, when the leaves grew sereShe made retreat to a lay sisterhood,And lived awhile there for her soul's more good,In pious meditation, fasts and prayer.Some say she wore concealed a shirt of hairUnder her dresses, even at court balls,And certain 'tis that all Rome's ritualsWere followed daily at the private MassIn her new chauntry built behind Hans Place.Lord L. approved of all she did, even this,Strange as it seemed to his old fashionedness.
He, gentle soul, grown garrulous with years,Prosed of her virtues to all listeners,And of their son's, the child of his old age,A prodigy of beauty and ways sage.It was a vow, he said, once made in Rome,Had brought them this chief treasure of their home.A vow! The light world laughed—for miraclesAre not believed in now, except as hell's.And yet the ways of God are passing strange.And this is certain (and therein the rangeOf my long tale is reached, and I am free),—There is at Ostia, close beside the sea,A convent church, the same where years agoGriselda kneeled in tears and made her vow;And in that shrine, beneath the crucifix,They show a votive offering, candlesticksOf more than common workmanship and size,And underneath inscribed the votary'sName in initials, and the date, all told,Hall-marked in England, and of massive gold.
THE END.
Printed byBallantyne, Hanson & Co.Edinburgh and London
Transcriber's NotesPunctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.Simple typographical errors were corrected.Page81: "spendthrifts" was printed as "spendthifts".
Punctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected.
Page81: "spendthrifts" was printed as "spendthifts".