Browning's Heroines

culptor, who to-day at noon brings home his bride-that second Happiest One, the pale and shro

amm, the flippancy of most of the rest, and the fiendish malice of the painter, Lutwyche, who has a grudge against Jules, because Jules (he has been told) had described him and his intimates as "dissolute, brutalised, heartless bunglers." Very soon after the bridal pair shall have alighted and

r alight at Asolo. She is a Greek girl from Malamocco,[52:2] fourteen years old at most, "white and quiet as an apparition," with "hair like sea-moss"; her name is Phene, which, as Lutwyche explains, means sea-eagle. . . . "How magnificently pale"-and how Jules gazes on her! To Gottlieb that gaze of the young, rapturous husband is torture. "Pity-pity!" he exclaims-but he alone of them all is moved to this

and we pass in with them-but not, like them, forget the gr

pale that the first words her husband speaks are

Phene! I am y

et fate reach m

ot die: so,

hless, lifts her white face slowly to him. He lays his own upon it for an instant, then draws back to gaze ag

. I

you, beloved

this is your

we sit: all's t

unbroken, and now

poken: sp

s drives him onward in eager speech. "O my life to com

ncies live near

, passing and

g besi

that silence, for she must see the hiding-place he had contrived for her letters-in the

wam down like a

my wo

looking. . . . But there is nothing strange in that-all the rest is new to her; n

in those e

oly survey, s

m holds; to r

ty, yet some w

t an angel from heaven? Yet he would bring her a

at? Those? Book

word to me re

imself: he has shown first a tiny Greek volum

e from the lips o

r search." Well, if the books were not its goal, the statues must be-and they will surely bring the word he increasingly longs for. That of the "

er bright Num

not done by her command? She had said he was to carve, against she came, this Greek, "feasting in Athens, as our fashion was," and she had given him many de

ay a 'well' to

to him his "very life's-stuff," but now he has found "the real flesh Phene . . ." and as he rhapsodises a while, hardly able to sever this breathing vision fr

ie-I knew that

, there falls

's coming"-that is what she s

s coming: to

ded som

dfully transferred from her to him, the t

lusions that mean nothing until semi-comprehension comes through the sighs of tortured soul and heart from her who still is, as it were, in a trance. A

in the mire: he would wait, and love only at the proper time, and meanwhile put up with statuary." So Lutwyche had resolved that precisely "on that matter" should his malice concentrate. He happened to hear of a young Greek girl at Malamocco, "white and quiet as an apparition, and fourteen years old at farthest." She was said to be a daughter of the "hag Natalia"-said, that is, by the hag herself to be so, but Natalia was, in plain words, a procuress. "We selected," said Lutwyche, "this girl

ibly taken from his mouth, and then had pronounced that "nothing worth keeping is ever lost in this world"; so, Gottlieb silenced, Lutwyche went on with the story. The letters had gone to Jules, and the answers had come from him, two, three times a

d Jules, for so Lutwyche would lose the delicious actual instant of the revelation. No; they should be taught her, line by line and word by word (since she could not read), and taught her by the hag Natalia, that not a subtle pang be spared the "strutting stone-squarer." Thus, listening beneath the window, Lutwyche could enjoy each word, each moan, and when Jules should bur

hat that foolish speech need not be spoken. She has forgotten half of it; she does not care now for Natalia or any of them; above all, she wants to stay where Jules' voice has lifted her, by just letting it go on. "But can it?" she asks piteously-for with that transferring of silenc

ll to-day has heard such words or seen such looks as

girls like me

men cannot stoo

esson she was to learn, the strangest thing of all had b

lia said they w

ed though they

ound me-that t

hair, seemed lea

ld a

r he read what Phen

f she could look up for ever to t

believe

wrong done, su

n, low and low

low comes, and t

vertake the

potted, reach

y those

she does is to clutch at his words to her, the music which had lifted her, and now perhaps will lift him too by its mere sound. "I love you, love" . . . but what does love mean? She knows not, and her "music" is but ignorant echo; if she did know, she could prevent this chan

stay! I

f that contents

mor

she is not the dream-lady from afar, Phene speaks the w

nter who ca

a devil rath

as poor a c

o all I

thing at

an or ha

hus my lore

ey must have been to learn! For, as Lutwyche had told his friends, it must be "something slow,

weetness' soul, h

erruptions from her audience of one. There was an allusion to "the peerless bride with her black eyes," and here Jules was al

o go on wit

comes directer in its address. If any one should ask this painter who can hate supremely, how his hate can "grin through Love's rose-braided mask," and how, h

ules, and be an

the painter Lut

*

. The name upon his lips is Lutwyche, not her own. He mutters of "Lutwyche" and "all of them," and "Venice"; yes, t

u I shall

saying this

ad not thought he would, but she has never understood, and if to give her money is his pleasure-why, she must take it, as she had taken that of the others. But he goes on. He speaks of selling all h

ewhere, since the

d to compass! But she stands silent, in her well-learnt patience; and he is ab

a least excu

n-w

arm establish

ixed her as

, to eternall

64:1] and the page who loved her, and pined "for the

d be wronged, be

to help he

lady was above all need of him; yet men are wont to love so. But why should they always choose the page's part? He had not, in his dre

man with utte

een here, it see

quiet child who stands awaiting her dis

man here with t

w soul

loud, he comes upo

his, my Phene-

world except ou

for her land, "some isle with the sea's silence on it"; but first he must break up

cted isle in

*

ever by me w

rms as now-a

cted isle in

ted isle in f

, under the window, h

' soul, no less, had needed Pippa's song to waken to its truest self: once more the man is the one moved by the direct intervention. Not that Phene, like Ottima, could have saved herself; there was no self to save-she had that awful, piercing selflessness of the used flesh and ignored soul. If Pippa had not passed, if Jules had gone, leaving money in her hand . .

n, men cannot

ever pity more profound, than in that line