Brownings Heroines | Page 8

be for modern
maids in some less heartening music! But, as the tale proceeds, we lose
our sense of sisterhood; we realise that this girl belongs to a different
age. When Gauthier's breast is torn open, when he is dragged to her feet
to die, she knows not any shrinking nor compassion--can apprehend
each word in the dialogue between slayer and slain--can, over the
bleeding body, receive the avowal of his love who but now has killed
his fellow-man like a dog--and, gathered to Gismond's breast, can,
unmoved by all repulsion, feel herself smeared by the dripping sword
that hangs beside him. . . . All this we women of a later day have
"resigned"--and I know not if that word be the right one or the wrong;
so many lessons have we conned since Gismond fought for a slandered
maiden. We have learned that lies refute themselves, that "things come
right in the end," that human life is sacred, that a woman's chastity may
be sacred too, but is not her most inestimable possession--and, if it

were, should be "able to take care of itself." Further doctrines, though
not yet fully accepted, are being passionately taught: such, for example,
as that Man--male Man--is the least protective of animals.
"Over my head his arm he flung
Against the world . . ."
I think we can see the princess, as she spoke those words, aglow and
tremulous like the throbbing fingers in the Northern skies. Well, the
"Northern Lights" recur, in our latitudes, at unexpected moments, at
long intervals; but they do recur.
One thing vexes, yet solaces, me in this tale of Count Gismond. The
Countess, telling Adela the story, has reached the crucial moment of
Gauthier's insult when, choked by tears as we saw, she stops speaking.
While still she struggles with her sob, she sees, at the gate, her husband
with his two boys, and at once is able to go on. She finishes the tale,
prays a perfunctory prayer for Gauthier; then speaks of her sons, in
both of whom, adoring wife that she is, she must declare a likeness to
the father--
"Our elder boy has got the clear
Great brow; tho' when his brother's
black
Full eye shows scorn, it . . ."
With that "it" she breaks off; for Gismond has come up to talk with her
and Adela. The first words we hear her speak to that loved husband
are--fibbing words! The broken line is finished thus--
". . . Gismond here?
And have you brought my tercel back?
I just
was telling Adela
How many birds it struck since May."
We, who have temporarily lost so many things, have at least gained this
one--that we should not think it necessary to tell that fib. We should say
nothing of what we had been "telling Adela." And some of us, perhaps,
would reject the false rhyme as well as the false words.
II
"PIPPA PASSES"

I. DAWN: PIPPA
The whole of Pippa is emotion. She "passes" alone through the drama,
except for one moment--only indirectly shown us--in which she speaks
with some girls by the way. She does nothing, is nothing, but exquisite
emotion uttering itself in song--quick lyrical outbursts from her joyous
child's heart. The happiness-in-herself which this poor silk-winder
possesses is something deeper than the gaiety of which I earlier spoke.
Gay she can be, and is, but the spell that all unwittingly she exercises,
derives from the profounder depth of which the Eastern poet thought
when he said that "We ourselves are Heaven and Hell." . . . Innocent
but not ignorant, patient, yet capable of a hearty little grumble at her lot,
Pippa is "human to the red-ripe of the heart." She can threaten fictively
her holiday, if it should ill-use her by bringing rain to spoil her
enjoyment; but even this intimidation is of the very spirit of confiding
love, for her threat is that if rain does fall, she will be sorrowful and
depressed, instead of joyous and exhilarated, for the rest of the year
during which she will be bound to her "wearisome silk-winding, coil on
coil." Such a possibility, thinks Pippa's trustful heart, must surely be
enough to cajole the weather into beauty and serenity.
It is New Year's Day, and sole holiday in all the twelve-month for
silk-winders in the mills of Asolo. An oddly chosen time, one
thinks--the short, cold festival! And it is notable that Browning, though
he acquiesces in the fictive date, yet conveys to us, so definitely that it
must be with intention, the effect of summer weather. We find
ourselves all through imagining mellow warmth and sunshine; nay, he
puts into Pippa's mouth, as she anticipates the treasured outing, this
lovely and assuredly not Janiverian forecast--
"Thy long blue solemn hours serenely flowing. . . ."