Robert Browning - Delphi Poets Series
Page 93
“Why?” asked and echoed the fools. “Because, you fools, — ”
So did the dame’s self answer, she who could,
With that fine candour only forthcoming
When ‘tis no odds whether withheld or no —
“Because my husband was the saint you say,
“And, — with that childish goodness, absurd faith,
“Stupid self-satisfaction, you so praise, —
“Saint to you, insupportable to me.
“Had he, — instead of calling me fine names,
“Lucretia and Susanna and so forth,
“And curtaining Correggio carefully
“Lest I be taught that Leda had two legs, —
“ — But once never so little tweaked my nose
“For peeping through my fan at Carnival,
“Confessing thereby ‘I have no easy task —
“‘I need use all my powers to hold you mine,
“‘And then, — why ‘tis so doubtful if they serve,
“‘That — take this, as an earnest of despair!’
“Why, we were quits — I had wiped the harm away,
“Thought ‘The man fears me!’ and foregone revenge.”
We must not want all this elaborate work
To solve the problem why young fancy-and-flesh
Slips from the dull side of a spouse in years,
Betakes it to the breast of brisk-and-bold
Whose love-scrapes furnish talk for all the town!
Accordingly, one word on the other side
Tips over the piled-up fabric of a tale.
Guido says — that is, always, his friends say —
It is unlikely from the wickedness,
That any man treat any woman so.
The letter in question was her very own,
Unprompted and unaided: she could write —
As able to write as ready to sin, or free,
When there was danger, to deny both facts.
He bids you mark, herself from first to last
Attributes all the so-styled torture just
To jealousy, — jealousy of whom but just
This very Caponsacchi! How suits here
This with the other alleged motive, Prince?
Would Guido make a terror of the man
He meant should tempt the woman, as they charge?
Do you fright your hare that you may catch your hare?
Consider too the charge was made and met
At the proper time and place where proofs were plain —
Heard patiently and disposed of thoroughly
By the highest powers, possessors of most light,
The Governor, for the law, and the Archbishop
For the Gospel: which acknowledged primacies,
‘Tis impudently pleaded, he could warp
Into a tacit partnership with crime —
He being the while, believe their own account,
Impotent, penniless and miserable!
He further asks — Duke, note the knotty point! —
How he, — concede him skill to play such part
And drive his wife into a gallant’s arms, —
Could bring the gallant to play his part too
And stand with arms so opportunely wide?
How bring this Caponsacchi, — with whom, friends
And foes alike agree, throughout his life
He never interchanged a civil word
Nor lifted courteous cap to — how bend him,
To such observancy of beck and call,
— To undertake this strange and perilous feat
For the good of Guido, using, as the lure,
Pompilia whom, himself and she avouch,
He had nor spoken with nor seen, indeed,
Beyond sight in a public theatre,
When she wrote letters (she that could not write!)
The importunate shamelessly-protested love
Which brought him, though reluctant, to her feet,
And forced on him the plunge which, howsoe’er
She might swim up i’ the whirl, must bury him
Under abysmal black: a priest contrive
No mitigable amour to ‘e hushed up,
But open flight and noon-day infamy?
Try and concoct defence for such revolt!
Take the wife’s tale as true, say she was wronged, —
Pray, in what rubric of the breviary
Do you find it registered the part of a priest
That to right wrongs he skip from the church-door,
Go journeying with a woman that’s a wife,
And be pursued, o’ertaken, and captured . . . how?
In a lay-dress, playing the sentinel
Where the wife sleeps (says he who best should know)
And sleeping, sleepless, both have spent the night!
Could no one else be found to serve at need —
No woman — or if man, no safer sort
Than this not well-reputed turbulence?
Then, look into his own account o’ the case!
He, being the stranger and the astonished one,
Yet received protestations of her love
From lady neither known nor cared about:
Love, so protested, bred in him disgust
After the wonder, — or incredulity,
Such impudence seeming impossible.
But, soon assured such impudence might be,
When he had seen with his own eyes at last
Letters thrown down to him i’ the very street
From behind lattice where the lady lurked,
And read their passionate summons to her side —
Why then, a thousand thoughts swarmed up and in, —
How he had seen her once, a moment’s space,
Observed she was so young and beautiful,
Heard everywhere report she suffered much
From a jealous husband thrice her age, — in short
There flashed the propriety, expediency
Of treating, trying might they come to terms,
— At all events, granting the interview
Prayed for, and so adapted to assist
Decision as to whether he advance,
Stand or retire, in his benevolent mood.
Therefore the interview befell at length;
And at this one and only interview,
He saw the sole and single course to take —
Bade her dispose of him, head, heart, and hand,
Did her behest and braved the consequence,
Not for the natural end, the love of man
For woman whether love be virtue or vice,
But, please you, altogether for pity’s sake —
Pity of innocence and helplessness!
And how did he assure himself of both?
Had he been the house-inmate, visitor,
Eye-witness of the described martyrdom
So, competent to pronounce its remedy
Ere rush on such extreme and desperate course,
Involving such enormity of harm,
Moreover, to the husband judged thus, doomed
And damned without a word in his defence?
But no, — the truth was felt by instinct here!
— Process which saves a world of trouble and time,
And there’s his story: what do you say to it,
Trying its truth by your own instinct too,
Since that’s to be the expeditious mode?
“And now, do hear my version,” Guido cries:
“I accept argument and inference both.
“It would indeed have been miraculous
“Had such a confidency sprung to birth
“With no more fanning from acquaintanceship
“Than here avowed by my wife and this priest.
“Only, it did not: you must substitute
“The old stale unromantic way of fault,
“The commonplace adventure, mere intrigue
“In the prose form with the unpoetic tricks,
“Cheatings and lies: they used the hackney chair
“Satan jaunts forth with, shabby and serviceable,
“No gilded jimcrack-novelty from below,
“To bowl you along thither, swift and sure.
“That same officious go-between, the wench
“That gave and took the letters of the two,
“Now offers self and service back to me:
“Bears testimony to visits night by night
“When all was safe, the husband far and away, —
“To many a timely slipping out at large
“By light o’ the morning-star, ere he should wake,
“And when the fugitives were found at last,
“Why, with them were found also, to belie
“What protest they might make of innocence,
“All documents yet wanting, if need were,
“To establish guilt in them, disgrace in me —
“The chronicle o’ the converse from its rise
“To culmination in this outrage: read!
“Letters from wife to priest, from priest to wife, —
“Here they are, read and say where they chime in
“With the other tale, superlative purity
“O’ the pair of saints! I stand or fall by these.”
But then on the other side again, — how say
The pair of saints? That not one word is theirs —
No syllable o’ the batch or writ or sent
Or yet received by either of the two.
“Found,” says the priest, “because he needed them,
“Failing all other proofs, to prove our fault:
“So, here they are, just as is natural.
“Oh yes — we had our missives, each of us!
“Not these, but to the full as vile, no doubt:
“Hers as from me, — she could not read, so burnt, —
“Mine as from her, — I burnt because I read.
“Who forged and found them? Cui profuerint!”
(I take the phrase out of your Highness’ mouth)
“He who would gain by her fault and my fall,
“The trickster, schemer, and pretender — he
“Whose whole career was lie entailing lie
“Sought to be sealed truth by the worst lie last!”
Guido rejoins — ”Did the other end o’ the tale
“Match this beginning! ‘Tis alleged I prove
“A murderer at the end, a man of force
“Prompt, indiscriminate, effectual: good!
“Then what need all this trifling woman’s work,
“Letters and embassies and weak intrigue,
“When will and power were mine to end at once
“Safely and surely? Murder had come first
“Not last with such a man, assure yourselves!
“The silent acquetta, stilling at command —
“A drop a day i’ the wine or soup, the dose, —
“The shattering beam that breaks above the bed
“And beats out brains, with nobody to blame
“Except the wormy age which eats even oak, —
“Nay, the staunch steel or trusty cord, — who cares
“I’ the blind old palace, a pitfall at each step,
“With none to see, much more to interpose
“O’ the two, three creeping house-dog-servant-things
“Born mine and bred mine? — had I willed gross death,
“I had found nearer paths to thrust him prey
“Than this that goes meandering here and there
“Through half the world and calls down in its course
“Notice and noise, — hate, vengeance, should it fail,
“Derision and contempt though it succeed!
“Moreover, what o’ the future son and heir?
“The unborn babe about to be called mine, —
“What end in heaping all this shame on him,
“Were I indifferent to my own black share?
“Would I have tried these crookednesses, say,
“Willing and able to effect the straight?”
“Ay, would you!” — one may hear the priest retort,
“Being as you are, i’ the stock, a man of guile,
“And ruffianism but an added graft.
“You, a born coward, try a coward’s arms,
“Trick and chicane, — and only when these fail
“Does violence follow, and like fox you bite
“Caught out in stealing. Also, the disgrace
“You hardly shrunk at, wholly shrivelled her:
“You plunged her thin white delicate hand i’ the flame
“Along with your coarse horny brutish fist,
“Held them a second there, then drew out both
“ — Yours roughed a little, hers ruined through and through.
“Your hurt would heal forthwith at ointment’s touch —
“Namely, succession to the inheritance
“Which bolder crime had lost you: let things change,
“The birth o’ the boy warrant the bolder crime,
“Why, murder was determined, dared, and done.
“For me,” the priest proceeds with his reply,
“The look o’ the thing, the chances of mistake,
“All were against me, — that, I knew the first:
“But, knowing also what my duty was,
“I did it: I must look to men more skilled
“I’ the reading hearts than ever was the world.”
Highness, decide! Pronounce, Her Excellency!
Or . . . even leave this argument in doubt,
Account it a fit matter, taken up
With all its faces, manifold enough,
To put upon — what fronts us, the next stage.
Next legal process! — Guido, in pursuit,
Coming up with the fugitives at the inn,
Caused both to be arrested then and there
And sent to Rome for judgment on the case —
Thither, with all his armoury of proofs
Betook himself, and there we’ll meet him now,
Waiting the further issue.
Here some smile
“And never let him henceforth dare to plead, —
“Of all pleas and excuses in the world
“For any deed hereafter to be done, —
“His irrepressible wrath at honour’s wound!
“Passion and madness irrepressible?
“Why, Count and cavalier, the husband comes
“And catches foe i’ the very act of shame:
“There’s man to man, — nature must have her way, —
“We look he should have cleared things on the spot.
“Yes, then, indeed — even tho’ it prove he erred —
“Though the ambiguous first appearance, mount
“Of solid injury, melt soon to mist,
“Still, — had he slain the lover and the wife —
“Or, since she was a woman and his wife,
“Slain him, but stript her naked to the skin
“Or at best left no more of an attire
“Than patch sufficient to pin paper to,
“Some one love-letter, infamy and all,
“As passport to the Paphos fit for such,
“Safe-conduct to her natural home the stews, —
“Good! One had recognised the power o’ the pulse.
“But when he stands, the stock-fish, — sticks to law —
“Offers the hole in his heart, all fresh and warm,
“For scrivener’s pen to poke and play about —
“Can stand, can stare, can tell his beads perhaps,
“Oh, let us hear no syllable o’ the rage!
“Such rage were a convenient afterthought
“For one who would have shown his teeth belike,
“Exhibited unbridled rage enough,
“Had but the priest been found, as was to hope,
“In serge, not silk, with crucifix, not sword:
“Whereas the grey innocuous grub, of yore,
“Had hatched a hornet, tickle to the touch,
“The priest was metamorphosed into knight.
“And even the timid wife, whose cue was — shriek,
“Bury her brow beneath his trampling foot, —
“She too sprang at him like a pythoness:
“So, gulp down rage, passion must be postponed,
“Calm be the word! Well, our word is — we brand
“This part o’ the business, howsoever the rest
“Befall.”
”Nay,” interpose as prompt his friends —
“This is the world’s way! So you adjudge reward
“To the forbearance and legality
“Yourselves begin by inculcating — ay,
“Exacting from us all with knife at throat!
“This one wrong more you add to wrong’s amount, —
“You publish all, with the kind comment here,
“‘Its victim was too cowardly for revenge.”‘
Make it your own case, — you who stand apart!
The husband wakes one morn from heavy sleep,
With a taste of poppy in his mouth, — rubs eyes,
Finds his wife flown, his strong box ransacked too,
Follows as he best can, overtakes i’ the end.
You bid him use his privilege: well, it seems
He’s scarce cool-blooded enough for the right move —
Does not shoot when the game were sure, but stands
Bewildered at the critical minute, — since
He has the first flash of the fact alone
To judge from, act with, not the steady lights
Of after-knowledge, — yours who stand at ease
To try conclusions: he’s in smother and smoke,
You outside, with explosion at an end:
The sulphur may be lightning or a squib —
Back from what you know to what he knew not!
Hear the priest’s lofty “I am innocent,”
The wife’s as resolute “You are guilty!” Come!
Are you not staggered? — pause, and you lose the move!
Nought left you but a low appeal to law,
“Coward” tied to your tail for compliment!
Another consideration: have it your way!
Admit the worst: his courage failed the Count,
He’s cowardly like the best o’ the burgesses
He’s grown incorporate with, — a very cur,
Kick him from out your circle by all means!
Why, trundled down this reputable stair,
Still, the Church-door lies wide to take him in,
And the Court-porch also: in he sneaks to each, —
“Yes, I have lost my honour and my wife,
“And, being moreover an ignoble hound,