University of Virginia Library

THE SEAMAN'S CHILDREN.

So ending called her children, for the shrubs
Were dewed, and night prevailed about the sky,
Save that one orange ember-cloud was moved
In cold and olive twilight. Mary kissed
Her children as they entered: and the three
Sat earnest in a parliament of love
On William and his fortunes half the night,
And all his large success that was to be.
And still they talked, until they came to plan
The ways and means of spending to the best
This wealth colossal but unrealised;
Half fearing the responsibilities
Of phantom wishes and of fairy gold.
Till their lean candle, lower than its ring,
Lay gasping out its melancholy life,
And sent them flushed with fancy to their rest;
Where still the gentle sister in her dream,
Mixing the Sunday lesson with their talk,
Dreamt that she saw her brother set on high,
Like one of old in Egypt, but he gave
The people from his sacks not corn but gold.
But with the spreading morrow chance secured
An answer and an omen to her dream;
For as they walked at noon-day in the close
Of that cathedral city near their home,
And trod the crisp turf of the minster square,
And loitered in the archway's dusty cool;
And watched the cloister restless with the swift,
And heard its little scream-note, as it flash'd
Among the weathered faces of grim saints,
And mythic flowers that only bloom in stone.
Here as they walked they came upon a friend,
And kinsman, second cousin or the like,
Whose brother was a man of mighty means,
Banker and merchant in the inmost smoke
Of London: but the poorer brother dwelt
Of choice among the fields in indolence,
And farmed a little homestead to pretend
An occupation; but his drowsy life
Was eaten to the core with slothful days;
He shuddered at the touch of energy,
As some bent sallow's limp and flaccid leaves
Shudder and trail about the current's edge.
And something came upon the widow's mind
To speak, and move this easy-natured drone
To make his wealthy brother take her son
As clerk, or what he would, into his house.
Were they not both her kinsmen and the lad's?
But he, annoyed at her still vehement voice
And earnest iteration, and the vast
Pathetic human passion of her eyes,
Shrunk back into his shell of apathy;
As the snail shrinks when its nice tentacles
Retractile light with hateful substances.
Yet still the mother voice importunate
Beat on his armour of reserve, until
He promised everything to be at rest
From her emotion, jarring on his mood;
And thought one letter penned a slender price
To be again as he had been, before
Her serious voice, among his easy dreams.
Thus the hard man: but long the widow's heart
Revolted at his insolent charity,
His heartless and didactic opulence;
But still her son was dearer than her pride.
So wrote the banker humble thanks, and told
Her children all was settled for the best,
And William in a week must face his toil.
So went the women drooping to their cares
Of preparation: otherwise the lad:
The word to go was music to his heart;
And the great voice of labour came to him
From some delicious land and city of dreams
The more delicious since it was unknown.
The instinct of the swallow hardly fledged
A month ago, that never flew beyond
The practice flights about its native eave,
To make the sea its pathway to the sun.
Then through the tenor of their household calm
Throbbed for a week the turmoil of farewell;
Familiar hands to touch, and haunts to tread
In greeting ere he go: neglected things
Prized in a sudden value at the end,
And last the bared room and the boxes closed,
And one more walk together in the fields.
When Mary held her son's hand all the way
And hardly spoke for fear that she should weep;
As all the land was waste before her eyes,
And the rich river-eases black with drought;
The corn-stem seemed all strengthless for its ear,
And weary with its wavings in the sun.
And still she found a sorrow where she went;
And a faint burden in the broken stirs
And eddies of an irritable wind:
In clouds that lay in ruinous heaps before
The disc of evening, cold with bosomed rain:
In faded masses of the summer green,
Like the grey hairs that come before their time.
But William went at day-break: one cold kiss
To Agnes, and his mother at the gate,
As, shivering with their sorrow and the air
Of morn, they came to watch him climb the mail;
Another moment and their boy was gone
Far in the dusty whirl that rose behind
The clattering team: and then the women wept
Without restraint, and all the house was still:
And all that day they crept from room to room
As if that some one in the house lay dead.
And William stinted not at first to write
Whole reams of wonders from the giant town,
‘This was the place for every one to thrive:
He could not think how any soul remained
To till the country, when the world's great mart
Lay wide for all; whose mighty river's side
Garner'd the wealth of empires on its wharves,
And reapt in gold the harvest of the earth.’
But after certain months more seldom came
His letters, and less hopeful. She, that kept
Them all, comparing with the first these last,
Became uneasy; and besought her son,
Writing from time to time without avail,
To tell her all his grief, if grief he knew.
But the boy fought it off in his replies,
Evading or ignoring all she said.
And to increase her evil days there grew
A trouble touching Agnes, her meek child,
Who never gave her troubled thought before.
For so it chanced a rustic flower-show near
Had drawn their steps; where, in a steamy booth
Of low hot canvas, ranged elaborate rows
Of painful dahlias blown by line and rule,
And petall'd to a hair's-breadth intricate:
Where pear and pippin, bean and cauliflower,
Turnip and melon, herb and artichoke,
As Mieris drew them, spread from door to door.
And all the place smelt hot of trodden grass,
And a band throbbed outside at intervals.
Here as they walked they came on Edward Mayne,
Son of a wealthy neighbour baronet:
Successful too at college lately, he,
All things to all men, smoothly affable,
Could turn his hand to anything he chose,
Scan a Greek chorus or break in a horse.
But evil tales were current in the shire
Against him: and the mother's instinct feared
Seeing his eyes on Agnes: and the girl
Flushed at his notice not displeased, as he
Found pretext in the pushing of the crowd
To do some service and to speak some words,
Trivial enough, if he meant nothing more.
But Agnes met him afterwards by chance,
By chance she thought it, in the maple lane
A furlong from her threshold: the low sun
Full in her face: a gloom of woods beyond,
And glistenings on the pasture and the cloud.
But he with an assumed and faltering mien,
Beginning in a snaky deference,
As he that in the new world tempted Eve,
So wrought upon her nature, tone by tone;
The man of subtle brain and selfish aim,
Of large experience, wealth, and intellect,
Acting the scholar to a country girl
To touch the woman instinct vanity;
Mysterious mainspring of that intricate heart
Divine in weakness, that indwelling flaw,
Fault-like, that moves in nobly-natured men
Forbearance, but is pastime to the fiends.
After a while he left her dazed and strange,
With the new purple breaking on her eyes
Of love's horizon, depths of crystal dawn,
Aurorean, limpid, purer than a dream:
Mistrust should never stain that amber sky,
Or stay the fuller morning yet to be.
But Agnes answered nothing save the old
Womanly answer of a flood of tears.
But Mary judged it kinder to speak out
In time and harshly: for she feared the man
Exceedingly, and fainted in her soul,
Remembering all the trouble she had known.
And Agnes passed in silence to her rest.
But could not sleep and set her casement wide.
The air was very slow, the clouds came not,
One leaned and faltered in the stagnant night.
Her mother's words were cruel and unjust;
She thought unjust to him, unjust to her
She knew them: mothers hardened with their years,
Believed in nothing save in commonplace:
And yet romance was current in the world,
Marring the calculations of the old;
And there were flowers and April, spite of prose
That only saw the winter of the earth.
How could her mother judge of Edward Mayne?
She heard the farmer tattle on the great,
And took it all for gospel: Was there one
As noble or as handsome that escaped
The housewives' gossip? Granting that he meant
The half he said, that little he had said
Was mended easily, no mischief done.
Her life was lonely with her brother gone:
And must she mope in-doors all day, from fear
Of meeting some one in the lanes, who talked
A pleasant twenty minutes at her side?
And thus the touching arrogance of youth
Believed its special dream divinely true
Thro' all exceptions of recorded wrong
And all the hackney'd falsehood, day by day,
Scored to the devil's credit in this world.
But on that night and at that very hour,
When Agnes leant into the fragrant dark
And thought upon him, Edward Mayne at home
Sat with a comrade late into the night
Beside their wine; talked freely, and forgot
The varnish and the smooth conventional mask
He wore before the steady-going world;
And the men talked their natures, friend to friend:
But Edward railed in heartless ironies
At all things, sparing nothing, crushing down
The sanctuaries of thought and ritual.
Cheapening man's soul, and carping at the scheme
Of nature, praising nothing save the power
To see the utter worthlessness of all.
Until his comrade, better of the twain,
Grew half impatient at his ironies,
And said in banter, “Tell me any thing
That you believe in, this perpetual blame
Is grown monotonous, try another key.”
And Edward answered with an evil smile,
“Believe in nothing? Oh, I believe in much.
I do believe it were an infinite sport,
To follow the first pretty girl we meet
In some quaint quiet village of the land,
That looks demure enough about the lips
To give a zest of trouble to the thing;
And fill her head with all the trash boys use,
Half pirated from novels, half believed,
About eternal passion, adding scraps
Of Byron, sound and words and common forms.
Flash on her with your money and fine clothes,
Make her despise the contrast of her home;
And charm her with elaborate display
Of surface manners, airy courtesies,
Which one, thank God, a gentleman can use
For his own purpose and put off at will:
And these poor girls dote on a gentleman:
They miss his polish in their kindred boors,
Brothers and shopmen suitors. She is yours
After a little trouble, if you add
The fear of compromise. Play out the dream
And leave it: there is nought on this poor earth
So worth the trouble: your philosopher,
Give him his chance, is childish as a child
Before the snare of passion. To the winds
His books and papers, if he thinks a girl,
A mere child waiting with an April face,
Would, if he came not, weep some shallow tears:
Can thinking on the fossil and the star
Suffice the man, or weed his nature out?
His best ambition is but as the clown's,
If his pride loses this, he loses all.”
And as they talked the sultry air began
To stir itself for sunrise: the large woods
Were crisp and cloudy, ere the crystal grew,
Upon the olive-shadow'd ridge beyond
In sacred dawn upon an evil world.
But Agnes slept, and in her peaceful rest
No angel whisper'd caution to her dream.
And days went on, and Agnes' walks became
A thing of custom now with Edward Mayne.
And, since the first, she had not dared to tell
Her mother: and one evening at their meal,
Had Mary with unreal carelessness,
But anxious for an answer at her heart,
Touched upon Edward, asked, had he been seen
Lately? whereon her daughter, unprepared
To break it then, and flustered, all confused,
Denied that she had seen him, hurriedly,
Of instinct more than forethought, and before
She well knew what she said, or what to say:
But in her lonely chamber afterwards
Wept somewhat at the falsehood told, but thought
The mother's asking chiefly blameable.
The vital airs of summer, her light gleams,
Were failing in the red October's gray:
The few last petals of the latest flowers
Were stain'd and stricken with a living doom.
The torn nest's ragged shreds in the bare thorn,
The iron look about the gusty fields,
Told that another summer of the world
Ended, had turned another hair to gray
Upon the forehead of Eternity.
And winter deepened, and the widow's woes
Deepened with winter. William silent long
Had written from the bank a hasty scrawl,
Unlike himself, and begged impetuously
For money to stave off some pressing needs:
Indeed she could not send him all he sought:
She sent him half, and added piteous prayers
That he should trust her: she had right besides,
A mother's, to be trusted: what was wrong?
Mere debt was evil curable with time:
He must come home, retrench with them, resign
His clerkship, if needs be, start fair again
With new experience in a year or more.
But neither thanks nor answer came to this:
She wrote again more urgently: again
A week of silence. Lastly, in despair
And terrified for William utterly,
With hasty preparation came herself
To London; and, because she doubted much
To take the girl or leave her, Agnes stayed
With one a neighbour chancing at the time
To have no children of her own at home.
And now the widow, after many years,
At night-fall, worn and jaded, stood again
Among the labyrinths of humanity,
A stranger to the mighty city's ways.
And the low restless never-ceasing flow,
The radiation of a myriad threads
Of purpose, toiling round her, made her pause
And falter in her journey, with a dazed
Sense of her utter insignificance;
As if her individual agony
Were nothing in this chaos of the world.
And the sleet fell, and the street gases flared,
Angry, tenacious of their life against
The gust surprisals: but she struggled on
And asked her way, in patience resolute,
Until she reached the street, and found the door,
And read the brasses with her kinsman's name,
But all was barr'd, and banking hours were done.
Strengthened she woke: the trouble still was there,
But she was stronger now to reason it
And do the best: there would be time to weep
Enough hereafter: something yet remained,
And still one child was worthy of her love.
First would she see the banker: she was bound
To see him, hear him, thank him; at the least
Bear his rich scorn with fortitude, and shew
That if her son has faltered, so not she,
“That one at least is honest of his kin:
The house is honest if the son is lost.
And I will see this kinsman, and endure
His scornful eyes to tell him to his face,
That last of all the poor man loses pride,
Much we have lost, still lords of honest pride;
And honour is not sealed in bags of gold;
That I, too proud to beg for honesty,
Will never beg for wrong, and scorn to screen
A felon, though that felon be my son.”
And so she faced the fog and oozy ways,
And found the man of money in his hold,
His Mammon citadel, and palace of dust—
For this god loves not gewgaw shows, prefers
Stained walls foursquare and cobwebs for his house
Of adoration.—Here the banker sate
Hedged in with mighty ledgers, and around
The iron boxes lettered with great names,
And parchment piles: and ever from beyond
The glass division came a clink and crash,
And battering down of bags and shovelled gold,
Or turn of crisping note-sides one by one.
So she replied, and left him at his desk,
Returning to her bare and vacant room;
And still her eyes were steady in the street
To all who met her, and it bore her up,
Not to have wept before his hard grey eyes
And calculating forehead: still she thought,
‘My duty I have spoken, not my heart:
And I am braver than the thing I knew.’
So gained her dwelling, where the woman broke
Her self-command and sobbed upon her hands;
Accusing all her harshness of the day,
And wailing that she had not cast her length
On the bank's dusty floors, and knelt to him,
And wrung a pardon from the stern old man.
But she had done her duty: still remained
A daughter to her love. Hereafter all
Her life should be her daughter's: she would leave
This town of all misfortune: she might feel
Her sorrow less in the sweet country airs,
And she was fevered for the sight of home,
And Agnes' voice about her in the room.
Therefore, her scanty preparations made,
She left the porter's kindly room, and set
Her face to leave the city: but, because
The crowded ways at noontide hinder'd her,
She stood upon the pavement waiting time
To cross a waggon-crowded thoroughfare;
A gaudy carriage grazing through the throng
Went by, all brass and lacquer, to the speed
Of lofty-going horses, as they sent
The mire to right and left among the crowd;
And then the widow raised her eyes, and saw
Within the carriage seated side by side
Agnes, her daughter once, and Edward Mayne.
“Merciful God, up with Thy saints in Heaven,
Who gavest me my children to my breast,
Beautiful baby faces, innocent:
Thine hours increased in strength their strengthless hands,
Which I have joined and made them hear me pray,
And take at least the attitude of prayer,
Till their young sense could for itself ask Heaven.
“Merciful God! is evil in the wind,
Is evil in the pure beam on the grass?
I cannot find contagion in my love,
That only thought to rear them good and pure:
They found not any falsehood in the fields:
I shewed them pictures from the sacred Book.
How is it they are gone the evil way?
How have they chosen darkness for the sun?
“Too young and bright for shame, too young for shame:
She gave me trouble too, a weakly child.
I nearly lost her twice in cradle days,
And prayed, and prayed, that she might live to me.
Fool, blind, to meddle with the ways of God:
O Lord, undo the past, and strike her dead
Here at my breast: so better, there, let be:
Straighten the limbs, and kiss the small dead face;
And I will put her in a little grave,
Deep in the mould, where this same horrible dream
Of shame shall never reach or find her out.
“Yes, children come to deathbeds; but for mine
I do not think to see them any more.
I know them they are hard and mercenary:
They will not even come to see me die.
They might have done this, and have done with me:
They lay in mine no comfortable hand,
Give me no lips—one touch for the old days:
I loved them then, they do not love me now.
They love not me, or God, or anything.
Who trained them up to this? O God, not I!
“Nay, this is not my son, his clothes are fine:
There is a new look grown about his eyes
Since he left home: he speaks not like my boy:
My son would never laugh so in his shame.
Although an angel told me this is he,
Should I believe that angel? Yet I know
That I am very weak and very near
My end, and cannot sunder false from true.
Nay, Lord, Thou knowest my burthen is not light.
Thou wilt not be extreme to mark, if I
Have faltered with immeasurable load.
I would bear up, but on my heart is spread
A numbness, and my limbs are weak as dust:
And, I believe, thou call'st me to Thy rest.
“There is a sickly thought which comes and goes:
I have forgot its meaning, but I know,
When I have seen it standing at my bed,
How greatly best it is that I should die;
For something has been lost upon the earth
Which, I suppose, I could breathe without.”
And, as she spake, the great concluding hand
Touched her sharp face: the voice fell, and the eyes
Looked strangely for a moment. In that pause
Of seconds time had ended in a heart
Of infinite emotion: infinite rest,
Sudden and vast, came; as the sudden day
Brake in the hospital; and her kind friend
Looked towards the bed and then knelt down by it,
Seeing an orient silence on the face,
To which all now was even in the world,
Sorrow and mirth, and blame and recompense.