The Princess Part 5

Then rode we with the old king across the lawns Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring In every bole, a song on every spray Of birds that piped their Valentines, and woke Desire in me to infuse my tale of love In the old king's ears, who promised help, and oozed All o'er with honeyed answer as we rode And blossom-fragrant slipt the heavy dews Gathered by night and peace, with each light air On our mailed heads: but other thoughts than Peace Burnt in us, when we saw the embattled squares, And squadrons of the Prince, trampling the flowers With clamour: for among them rose a cry As if to greet the king; they made a halt; The horses yelled; they clashed their arms; the drum Beat; merrily-blowing shrilled the martial fife; And in the blast and bray of the long horn And serpent-throated bugle, undulated The banner: anon to meet us lightly pranced Three captains out; nor ever had I seen Such thews of men: the midmost and the highest Was Arac: all about his motion clung The shadow of his sister, as the beam Of the East, that played upon them, made them glance Like those three stars of the airy Giant's zone, That glitter burnished by the frosty dark; And as the fiery Sirius alters hue, And bickers into red and emerald, shone Their morions, washed with morning, as they came.

And I that prated peace, when first I heard War-music, felt the blind wildbeast of force, Whose home is in the sinews of a man, Stir in me as to strike: then took the king His three broad sons; with now a wandering hand And now a pointed finger, told them all: A common light of smiles at our disguise Broke from their lips, and, ere the windy jest Had laboured down within his ample lungs, The genial giant, Arac, rolled himself Thrice in the saddle, then burst out in words.

'Our land invaded, 'sdeath! and he himself Your captive, yet my father wills not war: And, 'sdeath! myself, what care I, war or no?

but then this question of your troth remains: And there's a downright honest meaning in her; She flies too high, she flies too high! and yet She asked but s.p.a.ce and fairplay for her scheme; She prest and prest it on me--I myself, What know I of these things? but, life and soul!

I thought her half-right talking of her wrongs; I say she flies too high, 'sdeath! what of that?

I take her for the flower of womankind, And so I often told her, right or wrong, And, Prince, she can be sweet to those she loves, And, right or wrong, I care not: this is all, I stand upon her side: she made me swear it-- 'Sdeath--and with solemn rites by candle-light-- Swear by St something--I forget her name-- Her that talked down the fifty wisest men; _She_ was a princess too; and so I swore.

Come, this is all; she will not: waive your claim: If not, the foughten field, what else, at once Decides it, 'sdeath! against my father's will.'

I lagged in answer loth to render up My precontract, and loth by brainless war To cleave the rift of difference deeper yet; Till one of those two brothers, half aside And fingering at the hair about his lip, To p.r.i.c.k us on to combat 'Like to like!

The woman's garment hid the woman's heart.'

A taunt that clenched his purpose like a blow!

For fiery-short was Cyril's counter-scoff, And sharp I answered, touched upon the point Where idle boys are cowards to their shame, 'Decide it here: why not? we are three to three.'

Then spake the third 'But three to three? no more?

No more, and in our n.o.ble sister's cause?

More, more, for honour: every captain waits Hungry for honour, angry for his king.

More, more some fifty on a side, that each May breathe himself, and quick! by overthrow Of these or those, the question settled die.'

'Yea,' answered I, 'for this wreath of air, This flake of rainbow flying on the highest Foam of men's deeds--this honour, if ye will.

It needs must be for honour if at all: Since, what decision? if we fail, we fail, And if we win, we fail: she would not keep Her compact.' ''Sdeath! but we will send to her,'

Said Arac, 'worthy reasons why she should Bide by this issue: let our missive through, And you shall have her answer by the word.'

'Boys!' shrieked the old king, but vainlier than a hen To her false daughters in the pool; for none Regarded; neither seemed there more to say: Back rode we to my father's camp, and found He thrice had sent a herald to the gates, To learn if Ida yet would cede our claim, Or by denial flush her babbling wells With her own people's life: three times he went: The first, he blew and blew, but none appeared: He battered at the doors; none came: the next, An awful voice within had warned him thence: The third, and those eight daughters of the plough Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair, And so belaboured him on rib and cheek They made him wild: not less one glance he caught Through open doors of Ida stationed there Unshaken, clinging to her purpose, firm Though compa.s.sed by two armies and the noise Of arms; and standing like a stately Pine Set in a cataract on an island-crag, When storm is on the heights, and right and left Sucked from the dark heart of the long hills roll The torrents, dashed to the vale: and yet her will Bred will in me to overcome it or fall.

But when I told the king that I was pledged To fight in tourney for my bride, he clashed His iron palms together with a cry; Himself would tilt it out among the lads: But overborne by all his bearded lords With reasons drawn from age and state, perforce He yielded, wroth and red, with fierce demur: And many a bold knight started up in heat, And sware to combat for my claim till death.

All on this side the palace ran the field Flat to the garden-wall: and likewise here, Above the garden's glowing blossom-belts, A columned entry shone and marble stairs, And great bronze valves, embossed with Tomyris And what she did to Cyrus after fight, But now fast barred: so here upon the flat All that long morn the lists were hammered up, And all that morn the heralds to and fro, With message and defiance, went and came; Last, Ida's answer, in a royal hand, But shaken here and there, and rolling words Oration-like. I kissed it and I read.

'O brother, you have known the pangs we felt, What heats of indignation when we heard Of those that iron-cramped their women's feet; Of lands in which at the altar the poor bride Gives her harsh groom for bridal-gift a scourge; Of living hearts that crack within the fire Where smoulder their dead despots; and of those,-- Mothers,--that, with all prophetic pity, fling Their pretty maids in the running flood, and swoops The vulture, beak and talon, at the heart Made for all n.o.ble motion: and I saw That equal baseness lived in sleeker times With smoother men: the old leaven leavened all: Millions of throats would bawl for civil rights, No woman named: therefore I set my face Against all men, and lived but for mine own.

Far off from men I built a fold for them: I stored it full of rich memorial: I fenced it round with gallant inst.i.tutes, And biting laws to scare the beasts of prey And prospered; till a rout of saucy boys Brake on us at our books, and marred our peace, Masked like our maids, bl.u.s.tering I know not what Of insolence and love, some pretext held Of baby troth, invalid, since my will Sealed not the bond--the striplings! for their sport!-- I tamed my leopards: shall I not tame these?

Or you? or I? for since you think me touched In honour--what, I would not aught of false-- Is not our case pure? and whereas I know Your prowess, Arac, and what mother's blood You draw from, fight; you failing, I abide What end soever: fail you will not. Still Take not his life: he risked it for my own; His mother lives: yet whatsoe'er you do, Fight and fight well; strike and strike him. O dear Brothers, the woman's Angel guards you, you The sole men to be mingled with our cause, The sole men we shall prize in the after-time, Your very armour hallowed, and your statues Reared, sung to, when, this gad-fly brushed aside, We plant a solid foot into the Time, And mould a generation strong to move With claim on claim from right to right, till she Whose name is yoked with children's, know herself; And Knowledge in our own land make her free, And, ever following those two crowned twins, Commerce and conquest, shower the fiery grain Of freedom broadcast over all the orbs Between the Northern and the Southern morn.'

Then came a postscript dashed across the rest.

See that there be no traitors in your camp: We seem a nest of traitors--none to trust Since our arms failed--this Egypt-plague of men!

Almost our maids were better at their homes, Than thus man-girdled here: indeed I think Our chiefest comfort is the little child Of one unworthy mother; which she left: She shall not have it back: the child shall grow To prize the authentic mother of her mind.

I took it for an hour in mine own bed This morning: there the tender orphan hands Felt at my heart, and seemed to charm from thence The wrath I nursed against the world: farewell.'

I ceased; he said, 'Stubborn, but she may sit Upon a king's right hand in thunder-storms, And breed up warriors! See now, though yourself Be dazzled by the wildfire Love to sloughs That swallow common sense, the spindling king, This Gama swamped in lazy tolerance.

When the man wants weight, the woman takes it up, And topples down the scales; but this is fixt As are the roots of earth and base of all; Man for the field and woman for the hearth: Man for the sword and for the needle she: Man with the head and woman with the heart: Man to command and woman to obey; All else confusion. Look you! the gray mare Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills From tile to scullery, and her small goodman Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of h.e.l.l Mix with his hearth: but you--she's yet a colt-- Take, break her: strongly groomed and straitly curbed She might not rank with those detestable That let the bantling scald at home, and brawl Their rights and wrongs like potherbs in the street.

They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance: _I_ like her none the less for rating at her!

Besides, the woman wed is not as we, But suffers change of frame. A l.u.s.ty brace Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy, The bearing and the training of a child Is woman's wisdom.'

Thus the hard old king: I took my leave, for it was nearly noon: I pored upon her letter which I held, And on the little clause 'take not his life:'

I mused on that wild morning in the woods, And on the 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win:'

I thought on all the wrathful king had said, And how the strange betrothment was to end: Then I remembered that burnt sorcerer's curse That one should fight with shadows and should fall; And like a flash the weird affection came: King, camp and college turned to hollow shows; I seemed to move in old memorial tilts, And doing battle with forgotten ghosts, To dream myself the shadow of a dream: And ere I woke it was the point of noon, The lists were ready. Empanoplied and plumed We entered in, and waited, fifty there Opposed to fifty, till the trumpet blared At the barrier like a wild horn in a land Of echoes, and a moment, and once more The trumpet, and again: at which the storm Of galloping hoofs bare on the ridge of spears And riders front to front, until they closed In conflict with the crash of s.h.i.+vering points, And thunder. Yet it seemed a dream, I dreamed Of fighting. On his haunches rose the steed, And into fiery splinters leapt the lance, And out of stricken helmets sprang the fire.

Part sat like rocks: part reeled but kept their seats: Part rolled on the earth and rose again and drew: Part stumbled mixt with floundering horses. Down From those two bulks at Arac's side, and down From Arac's arm, as from a giant's flail, The large blows rained, as here and everywhere He rode the mellay, lord of the ringing lists, And all the plain,--brand, mace, and shaft, and s.h.i.+eld-- Shocked, like an iron-clanging anvil banged With hammers; till I thought, can this be he From Gama's dwarfish loins? if this be so, The mother makes us most--and in my dream I glanced aside, and saw the palace-front Alive with fluttering scarfs and ladies' eyes, And highest, among the statues, statuelike, Between a cymballed Miriam and a Jael, With Psyche's babe, was Ida watching us, A single band of gold about her hair, Like a Saint's glory up in heaven: but she No saint--inexorable--no tenderness-- Too hard, too cruel: yet she sees me fight, Yea, let her see me fall! and with that I drave Among the thickest and bore down a Prince, And Cyril, one. Yea, let me make my dream All that I would. But that large-moulded man, His visage all agrin as at a wake, Made at me through the press, and, staggering back With stroke on stroke the horse and horseman, came As comes a pillar of electric cloud, Flaying the roofs and sucking up the drains, And shadowing down the champaign till it strikes On a wood, and takes, and breaks, and cracks, and splits, And twists the grain with such a roar that Earth Reels, and the herdsmen cry; for everything Game way before him: only Florian, he That loved me closer than his own right eye, Thrust in between; but Arac rode him down: And Cyril seeing it, pushed against the Prince, With Psyche's colour round his helmet, tough, Strong, supple, sinew-corded, apt at arms; But tougher, heavier, stronger, he that smote And threw him: last I spurred; I felt my veins Stretch with fierce heat; a moment hand to hand, And sword to sword, and horse to horse we hung, Till I struck out and shouted; the blade glanced, I did but shear a feather, and dream and truth Flowed from me; darkness closed me; and I fell.

Home they brought her warrior dead: She nor swooned, nor uttered cry: All her maidens, watching, said, 'She must weep or she will die.'

Then they praised him, soft and low, Called him worthy to be loved, Truest friend and n.o.blest foe; Yet she neither spoke nor moved.

Stole a maiden from her place, Lightly to the warrior stept, Took the face-cloth from the face; Yet she neither moved nor wept.

Rose a nurse of ninety years, Set his child upon her knee-- Like summer tempest came her tears-- 'Sweet my child, I live for thee.'

VI

My dream had never died or lived again.

As in some mystic middle state I lay; Seeing I saw not, hearing not I heard: Though, if I saw not, yet they told me all So often that I speak as having seen.

For so it seemed, or so they said to me, That all things grew more tragic and more strange; That when our side was vanquished and my cause For ever lost, there went up a great cry, The Prince is slain. My father heard and ran In on the lists, and there unlaced my casque And grovelled on my body, and after him Came Psyche, sorrowing for Aglaa.

But high upon the palace Ida stood With Psyche's babe in arm: there on the roofs Like that great dame of Lapidoth she sang.

'Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: the seed, The little seed they laughed at in the dark, Has risen and cleft the soil, and grown a bulk Of spanless girth, that lays on every side A thousand arms and rushes to the Sun.

'Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came; The leaves were wet with women's tears: they heard A noise of songs they would not understand: They marked it with the red cross to the fall, And would have strown it, and are fallen themselves.

'Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they came, The woodmen with their axes: lo the tree!

But we will make it f.a.ggots for the hearth, And shape it plank and beam for roof and floor, And boats and bridges for the use of men.

'Our enemies have fallen, have fallen: they struck; With their own blows they hurt themselves, nor knew There dwelt an iron nature in the grain: The glittering axe was broken in their arms, Their arms were shattered to the shoulder blade.

'Our enemies have fallen, but this shall grow A night of Summer from the heat, a breadth Of Autumn, dropping fruits of power: and rolled With music in the growing breeze of Time, The tops shall strike from star to star, the fangs Shall move the stony bases of the world.

'And now, O maids, behold our sanctuary Is violate, our laws broken: fear we not To break them more in their behoof, whose arms Championed our cause and won it with a day Blanched in our annals, and perpetual feast, When dames and heroines of the golden year Shall strip a hundred hollows bare of Spring, To rain an April of ovation round Their statues, borne aloft, the three: but come, We will be liberal, since our rights are won.

Let them not lie in the tents with coa.r.s.e mankind, Ill nurses; but descend, and proffer these The brethren of our blood and cause, that there Lie bruised and maimed, the tender ministries Of female hands and hospitality.'

She spoke, and with the babe yet in her arms, Descending, burst the great bronze valves, and led A hundred maids in train across the Park.

Some cowled, and some bare-headed, on they came, Their feet in flowers, her loveliest: by them went The enamoured air sighing, and on their curls From the high tree the blossom wavering fell, And over them the tremulous isles of light Slided, they moving under shade: but Blanche At distance followed: so they came: anon Through open field into the lists they wound Timorously; and as the leader of the herd That holds a stately fretwork to the Sun, And followed up by a hundred airy does, Steps with a tender foot, light as on air, The lovely, lordly creature floated on To where her wounded brethren lay; there stayed; Knelt on one knee,--the child on one,--and prest Their hands, and called them dear deliverers, And happy warriors, and immortal names, And said 'You shall not lie in the tents but here, And nursed by those for whom you fought, and served With female hands and hospitality.'

Then, whether moved by this, or was it chance, She past my way. Up started from my side The old lion, glaring with his whelpless eye, Silent; but when she saw me lying stark, Dishelmed and mute, and motionlessly pale, Cold even to her, she sighed; and when she saw The haggard father's face and reverend beard Of grisly twine, all dabbled with the blood Of his own son, shuddered, a twitch of pain Tortured her mouth, and o'er her forehead past A shadow, and her hue changed, and she said: 'He saved my life: my brother slew him for it.'

No more: at which the king in bitter scorn Drew from my neck the painting and the tress, And held them up: she saw them, and a day Rose from the distance on her memory, When the good Queen, her mother, sh.o.r.e the tress With kisses, ere the days of Lady Blanche: And then once more she looked at my pale face: Till understanding all the foolish work Of Fancy, and the bitter close of all, Her iron will was broken in her mind; Her n.o.ble heart was molten in her breast; She bowed, she set the child on the earth; she laid A feeling finger on my brows, and presently 'O Sire,' she said, 'he lives: he is not dead: O let me have him with my brethren here In our own palace: we will tend on him Like one of these; if so, by any means, To lighten this great clog of thanks, that make Our progress falter to the woman's goal.'

She said: but at the happy word 'he lives'

My father stooped, re-fathered o'er my wounds.

So those two foes above my fallen life, With brow to brow like night and evening mixt Their dark and gray, while Psyche ever stole A little nearer, till the babe that by us, Half-lapt in glowing gauze and golden brede, Lay like a new-fallen meteor on the gra.s.s, Uncared for, spied its mother and began A blind and babbling laughter, and to dance Its body, and reach its fatling innocent arms And lazy lingering fingers. She the appeal Brooked not, but clamouring out 'Mine--mine--not yours, It is not yours, but mine: give me the child'

Ceased all on tremble: piteous was the cry: So stood the unhappy mother open-mouthed, And turned each face her way: wan was her cheek With hollow watch, her blooming mantle torn, Red grief and mother's hunger in her eye, And down dead-heavy sank her curls, and half The sacred mother's bosom, panting, burst The laces toward her babe; but she nor cared Nor knew it, clamouring on, till Ida heard, Looked up, and rising slowly from me, stood Erect and silent, striking with her glance The mother, me, the child; but he that lay Beside us, Cyril, battered as he was, Trailed himself up on one knee: then he drew Her robe to meet his lips, and down she looked At the armed man sideways, pitying as it seemed, Or self-involved; but when she learnt his face, Remembering his ill-omened song, arose Once more through all her height, and o'er him grew Tall as a figure lengthened on the sand When the tide ebbs in suns.h.i.+ne, and he said:

'O fair and strong and terrible! Lioness That with your long locks play the Lion's mane!

But Love and Nature, these are two more terrible And stronger. See, your foot is on our necks, We vanquished, you the Victor of your will.

What would you more? Give her the child! remain Orbed in your isolation: he is dead, Or all as dead: henceforth we let you be: Win you the hearts of women; and beware Lest, where you seek the common love of these, The common hate with the revolving wheel Should drag you down, and some great Nemesis Break from a darkened future, crowned with fire, And tread you out for ever: but howso'er Fixed in yourself, never in your own arms To hold your own, deny not hers to her, Give her the child! O if, I say, you keep One pulse that beats true woman, if you loved The breast that fed or arm that dandled you, Or own one port of sense not flint to prayer, Give her the child! or if you scorn to lay it, Yourself, in hands so lately claspt with yours, Or speak to her, your dearest, her one fault, The tenderness, not yours, that could not kill, Give _me_ it: _I_ will give it her.

He said: At first her eye with slow dilation rolled Dry flame, she listening; after sank and sank And, into mournful twilight mellowing, dwelt Full on the child; she took it: 'Pretty bud!