Lucile [92]
your look would imply . . . this sleek stranger forsooth! Because on his cheek was the red rose of youth The heart of my niece must break for it!" She cried, "Nay, but hear me yet further!" With slow heavy stride, Unheeding her words, he was pacing the tent, He was muttering low to himself as he went. Ay, these young things lie safe in our heart just so long As their wings are in growing; and when these are strong They break it, and farewell! the bird flies!" . . . The nun Laid her hand on the soldier, and murmur'd, "The sun Is descending, life fleets while we talk thus! oh, yet Let this day upon one final victory set, And complete a life's conquest!" He said, "Understand! If Constance wed the son of this man, by whose hand My heart hath been robb'd, she is lost to my life! Can her home be my home? Can I claim in the wife Of that man's son the child of my age? At her side Shall he stand on my hearth? Shall I sue to the bride Of . . . enough! "Ah, and you immemorial halls Of my Norman forefathers, whose shadow yet falls On my fancy, and fuses hope, memory, past, Present,--all, in one silence! old trees to the blast Of the North Sea repeating the tale of old days, Nevermore, nevermore in the wild bosky ways Shall I hear through your umbrage ancestral the wind Prophesy as of yore, when it shook the deep mind Of my boyhood, with whispers from out the far years Of love, fame, the raptures life cools down with tears! Henceforth shall the tread of a Vargrave alone Rouse your echoes?" "O think not," she said, "of the son Of the man whom unjustly you hate; only think Of this young human creature, that cries from the brink Of a grave to your mercy! "Recall your own words (Words my memory mournfully ever records!) How with love may be wreck'd a whole life! then, Eugene, Look with me (still those words in our ears!) once again At this young soldier sinking from life here--dragg'd down By the weight of the love in his heart: no renown, No fame comforts HIM! nations shout not above The lone grave down to which he is bearing the love Which life has rejected! Will YOU stand apart? You, with such a love's memory deep in your heart! You the hero, whose life hath perchance been led on Through the deeds it hath wrought to the fame it hath won, By recalling the visions and dreams of a youth, Such as lies at your door now: who have but, in truth, To stretch forth a hand, to speak only one word, And by that word you rescue a life!" He was stirr'd. Still he sought to put from him the cup, bow'd his face on his hand; and anon, as though wishing to chase With one angry gesture his own thoughts aside, He sprang up, brush'd past her, and bitterly cried, "No!--Constance wed a Vargrave!"--I cannot consent!" Then up rose the Soeur Seraphine. The low tent In her sudden uprising, seem'd dwarf'd by the height From which those imperial eyes pour'd the light Of their deep silent sadness upon him. No wonder He felt, as it were, his own stature shrink under The compulsion of that grave regard! For between The Duc de Luvois and the Soeur Seraphine At that moment there rose all the height of one soul O'er another; she look'd down on him from the whole Lonely length of a life. There were sad nights and days, There were long months and years in that heart-searching gaze; And her voice, when she spoke, with sharp pathos thrill'd through And transfix'd him. "Eugene de Luvois, but for you, I might have been now--not this wandering nun, But a mother, a wife--pleading, not for the son Of another, but blessing some child of my own, His,--the man's that I once loved! . . . Hush! that which is done I regret not. I breathe no reproaches. That's best Which God sends. 'Twas his will: it is mine. And the rest Of