Aurora Leigh. Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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who came To take me into service as a wife— No more than that, indeed.’ ‘No more, no more? Pray Heaven,’ she answered, ‘that I was not mad. I could not mean to tell her to her face That Romney Leigh had asked me for a wife, And I refused him?’ ‘Did he ask?’ I said; ‘I think he rather stooped to take me up For certain uses which he found to do For something called a wife. He never asked.’
‘What stuff!’ she answered; ‘are they queens, these girls? They must have mantles, stitched with twenty silks, Spread out upon the ground, before they’ll step One footstep for the noblest lover born.’
‘But I am born,’ I said with firmness, ‘I, To walk another way than his, dear aunt.’
‘You walk, you walk! A babe at thirteen months Will walk as well as you,’ she cried in haste, ‘Without a steadying finger. Why, you child, God help you, you are groping in the dark, For all this sunlight. You suppose, perhaps, That you, sole offspring of an opulent man, Are rich and free to choose a way to walk? You think, and it’s a reasonable thought, That I besides, being well to do in life, Will leave my handful in my niece’s hand When death shall paralyse these fingers? Pray, Pray, child—albeit I know you love me not— As if you loved me, that I may not die! For when I die and leave you, out you go, (Unless I make room for you in my grave) Unhoused, unfed, my dear, poor brother’s lamb, (Ah heaven—that pains!)—without a right to crop A single blade of grass beneath these trees, Or cast a lamb’s small shadow on the lawn, Unfed, unfolded! Ah, my brother, here’s The fruit you planted in your foreign loves!— Ay, there’s the fruit he planted! never look Astonished at me with your mother’s eyes, For it was they, who set you where you are, An undowered orphan. Child, your father’s choice Of that said mother, disinherited His daughter, his and hers. Men do not think Of sons and daughters, when they fall in love, So much more than of sisters; otherwise, He would have paused to ponder what he did, And shrunk before that clause in the entail Excluding offspring by a foreign wife, (The clause set up a hundred years ago By a Leigh who wedded a French dancing-girl And had his heart danced over in return); But this man shrunk at nothing, never thought Of you, Aurora, any more than me— Your mother must have been a pretty thing, For all the coarse Italian blacks and browns, To make a good man, which my brother was, Unchary of the duties to his house; But so it fell indeed. Our cousin Vane, Vane Leigh, the father of this Romney, wrote Directly on your birth, to Italy, ‘I ask your baby daughter for my son In whom the entail now merges by the law. Betroth her to us out of love, instead Of colder reasons, and she shall not lose By love or law from henceforth’—so he wrote; A generous cousin, was my cousin Vane. Remember how he drew you to his knee The year you came here, just before he died, And hollowed out his hands to hold your cheeks, And wished them redder—you remember Vane? And now his son who represents our house And holds the fiefs and manors in his place, To whom reverts my pittance when I die, (Except a few books and a pair of shawls) The boy is generous like him, and prepared To carry out his kindest word and thought To you, Aurora. Yes, a fine young man Is Romney Leigh; although the sun of youth Has shone too straight upon his brain, I know, And fevered him with dreams of doing good To good-for-nothing people. But a wife Will put all right, and stroke his temples cool With healthy touches’. … I broke in at that. I could not lift my heavy heart to breathe Till then, but then I raised it, and it fell In broken words like these—‘No need to wait. The dream of doing good to … me, at least, Is ended, without waiting for a wife To cool the fever for him. We’ve escaped That danger … thank Heaven for it.’ ‘You,’ she cried, ‘Have got a fever. What, I talk and talk An hour long to you—I instruct you how You cannot eat or drink or stand or sit, Or even die, like any decent wretch In all this unroofed and unfurnished world, Without your cousin—and you still maintain There’s room ’twixt him and you, for flirting fans And running knots in eyebrows! You must have A pattern lover sighing on his knee: You do not count enough a noble heart, Above book-patterns, which this very morn Unclosed itself, in two dear fathers’ names, To embrace your orphaned life! fie, fie! But stay, I write a word, and counteract this sin.’
She would have turned to leave me, but I clung. ‘O sweet my father’s sister, hear my word Before you write yours. Cousin Vane did well, And cousin Romney well—and I well too, In casting back with all my strength and will The good they meant me. O my God, my God! God meant me good, too, when he hindered me From saying ‘yes’ this morning. If you write A word, it shall be ‘no.’ I say no, no! I tie up ‘no’ upon His altar-horns, Quite out of reach of perjury! At least My soul is not a pauper; I can live At least my soul’s life, without alms from men; And if it must be in heaven instead of earth, Let heaven look to it—I am not afraid,’
She seized my hands with both hers, strained them fast, And drew her probing and unscrupulous eyes Right through me, body and heart. ‘Yet, foolish Sweet, You love this man. I have watched you when he came, And when he went, and when we’ve talked of him: I am not old for nothing; I can tell The weather-signs of love—you love this man.’
Girls blush, sometimes, because they are alive, Half wishing they were dead to save the shame. The sudden blush devours them, neck and brow; They have drawn too near the fire of life, like gnats, And flare up bodily, wings and all. What then? Who’s sorry for a gnat … or girl? I blushed. I feel the brand upon my forehead now Strike hot, sear deep, as guiltless men may feel The felon’s iron, say, and scorn the mark Of what they are not. Most illogical Irrational nature of our womanhood, That blushes one way, feels another way, And prays, perhaps, another! After all, We cannot be the equal of the male, Who rules his blood a little. For although I blushed indeed, as if I loved the man, And her incisive smile, accrediting That treason of false witness in my blush, Did bow me downward like a swathe of grass Below its level that struck me—I attest The conscious skies and all their daily suns, I think I loved him not … nor then, nor since. … Nor ever. Do we love the schoolmaster, Being busy in the woods? much less, being poor, The overseer of the parish? Do we keep Our love, to pay our debts with? White and cold I grew next moment. As my blood recoiled From that imputed ignominy, I made My heart great with it. Then, at last, I spoke— Spoke veritable words, but passionate, Too passionate perhaps … ground up with sobs To shapeless endings. She let fall my hands, And took her smile off, in sedate disgust, As peradventure she had touched a snake— A dead snake, mind!—and, turning round, replied, ‘We’ll leave Italian manners, if you please. I think you had an English father, child, And ought to find it possible to speak A quiet ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ like English girls, Without convulsions. In another month We’ll take another answer … no, or yes.’ With that, she left me in the garden-walk.
I had a father! yes, but long ago— How long it seemed that moment. Oh, how far, How far and safe, God, dost thou keep thy saints When once gone from us! We may call against The lighted windows of thy fair June-heaven Where all the souls are happy—and not one, Not even my father, look from work or play To ask, ‘Who is it that cries after us, Below there, in the dusk?’ Yet formerly He turned his face upon me quick enough, If I said ‘father.’ Now I might cry loud; The little lark reached higher with his song Than I with crying. Oh, alone, alone— Not troubling any in heaven, nor any on earth, I stood there in the garden, and looked up The deaf blue sky that brings the roses out On such June mornings. You who keep account Of crisis and transition in this life, Set down the first time Nature says plain ‘no’ To some ‘yes’ in you, and walks over you In gorgeous sweeps of scorn. We all begin By singing with the birds, and running fast With June-days, hand in hand: but once, for all, The birds must sing against us, and the sun Strike down upon us like a friend’s sword caught By an enemy to slay us, while we read The dear name on the blade which bites at us!— That’s bitter and convincing: after that, We seldom doubt that something in the large Smooth order of creation, though no more Than haply a man’s footstep, has gone wrong.
Some tears fell down my cheeks, and then I smiled, As those smile who have no face in the world To smile back to them. I had lost a friend In Romney Leigh; the thing was sure—a friend, Who had looked at me most gently now and then, And spoken of my favourite books … ‘our books’ … With such a voice! Well, voice and look were now More utterly shut out from me, I felt, Than even my father’s. Romney now was turned To a benefactor, to a generous man, Who had tied himself to marry … me, instead Of such a woman, with low timorous lids He lifted with a sudden word one day, And left, perhaps, for my sake.—Ah,