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THE STORY OF CLARICE by CONSTANCE CAROLINE WOODHILL NADEN

First Line: IN AN OLD HOUSE, WINT-HAUNTED, BARE, AND GRIM
Last Line: INTO THE DARK UNHAUNTED CAVES OF SLEEP.
I.

IN an old house, wind-haunted, bare, and grim,
Fair Clarice and her father lived alone
With books for comrades; books were slaves to him
But friends to her; among them she had grown
For well-nigh twenty summers; though the sage
Who gave her being, scarcely knew her age.

Like a wise pedlar, vending where he can
A ribbon, a gilt pin, a crystal bead,
That yellow, smoke-dried, literary man
Wrote books that all might quote, though none would read:
He raked the dust-heaps of the Court of France,
And left his daughter to herself -- and Chance.

But she, in virgin majesty serene,
Whom few had dared to love, and none to woo,
Wore learning as a long-descended queen
Her robes and crown doth royally endue;
As though what others con with aching head
This maiden knew by right inherited.

Stately, with clear grey eyes and flaxen hair,
She might have seemed Athene, wise and chaste,
Save that no lofty helmet she did wear,
Nor aegis buckled to her slender waist;
Nor could she teach what worldly snares to shun,
As the great Goddess taught Ulysses' son.

Grave was her mouth, and yet was formed for smiles;
Pale were her cheeks -- how lovely, had they blushed!
No sweet gay looks were hers, no girlish wiles:
Not that her woman's instincts had been crushed;
But, like azaleas in a darkened room,
They had not air and light enough to bloom.

I said the maid was left to Chance -- 'tis true --
But that Divinity has divers shapes;
Now, she appears an apple rich of hue,
Eve's fruit or Discord's -- now, the juice of grapes,
Promising mirth -- now, a fair human form,
With tender words, and sighs, and love-looks warm.

She came to Clarice as a scholar young,
The secretary of her pedant sire;
Gentle of mien and eloquent of tongue
He spoke with something of a poet's fire:
Well might accomplished Wilfred hope to gain
The maiden's guileless heart and book-learn'd brain.

His mind was all o'ergrown with metaphor,
With tropes that simulate and stifle thought;
Right glibly could he wage a wordy war,
Skilled in debate, not lightly tripped or caught:
Yet oft with her he faltered and grew hoarse,
And lost the gilded thread of his discourse.

His face -- in sooth, it was a handsome face,
Quick to express whate'er he dreamed or felt;
His dark eyes glowed with all-subduing grace,
Sure of their power to brighten, kindle, melt:
Yet Wilfred's practised heart poor Clarice stole,
And reigned unconscious tyrant of his soul.

For, spite of all her wisdom, she was still
So calm, so child-like, and so marble-cold,
She did not know he loved her, nor had skill
To read in looks what no sweet words had told:
Though tales of love her spirit oft could reach
Like distant warblings in a foreign speech.

She knew the woes of Dido; she could tell
How Helen set the towers of Troy ablaze:
She thought of Love as a forgotten spell,.
Potent in far-off lands, in ancient days;
Obsolete now, like Magic black and white,
Or the Emission Theory of Light.

But once she prayed the youth, his day's work done,
To read, and she would listen: with fresh hopes
He took the philosophic malison
Of Schopenhauer, king of misanthropes,
And chose the chapter where a sunny mist
Floats o'er the pages of the Pessimist.

For there, in mildest mood, he tells how Art
Reveals the pure Idea, soothes desire,
Sets free the mind, and heals the aching heart;
But chief he vaunts the magic of the lyre --
Sweet peace and tranquil ecstasy it gives,
And breathes the inmost life of all that lives.

So rapt was queenly Clarice, so intent
On Wilfred's voice, he could not meet her look;
Its very chillness fired him -- on he went,
Halting and stammering -- then flung down the book
And spoke and gazed as every man, not dunce
Or icicle, has gazed and spoken once.

"Too long have I stood blindfold on the brink
Of Heaven or Hell; and now I dare at length
To pray for sight -- I scarce can speak or think
Because with all my soul and all my strength
And all my life I love you -- Clarice, hear!"
And his voice quivered with a passionate fear.

Oh gentle heart that could not understand!
Oh cruel calm in wondering childlike eyes!
She let him clasp her unresponsive hand,
And froze him with her innocent surprise --
Then plucked her hand away, cut short his prayer,
Fled from the room, and left him planted there.

Blankly he stood; one miserable course
Alone remained -- to take his hat, and go --
Though still he kept the lover's sad resource,
To rail on the cold heart that made his woe,
And switch with savage cane the wayside flower,
And curse himself, and Fate, and Schopenhauer.

II.

CLARICE awoke next morning with the sense
That something she had found, and something lost;
A little pain she felt, but knew not whence,
A little loosening of her vestal frost:
And she was sad for him -- not knowing yet
How lightly men can love, how soon forget.

'Twas a grey, misty, miserable day,
And he would sit, she thought, alone and drear
In dingy lodgings; or perchance would stray
Out in the busy street, with none to cheer,
No one to sound his lonely heart's abysm,
And comfort him with German Pessimism.

A stirring as of springtide he had wrought
In that fair breast which yet he could not win;
She pitied, and she wondered, and she thought:
They say that Pity is to Love akin --
Agreed -- with one important reservation --
She is at best a very poor relation.

For Clarice neither loved the swain himself,
Nor dreamed of being some day some one's wife;
But he, like those great Germans on the shelf,
Suggested a new way of viewing life:
The first poor swallow does not make a summer,
Yet is he a thrice memorable comer.

Her father -- might she speak to him? In vain!
He would have scorned a modern love affair;
It never entered his most learned brain
That this unmothered daughter needed care;
And he was seeking, in that dust-heap dark,
Some mouldy scandal touching Joan of Arc.

She had no comrades; books were all her friends;
And even these had failed her utterly,
For none could teach her how to make amends,
None could restore her nature's harmony;
Nor found she any grief so vague as hers
Recorded by the ancient chroniclers.

The classic beauty either loves her wooer,
Or else she hates him in the same degree:
Daphne was glad to 'scape her bright pursuer
By branching out into a laurel-tree;
Queen Dido slew herself that luckless day
When the too pious Trojan sailed away.

These old companions have no kindly aid
For any heart in lore of love unlearned;
So, of her fluctuating thoughts afraid,
To Spenser and to Shakespeare Clarice turned,
And read of all sweet ladies wooed by men,
From Una chaste to wifely Imogen.

She read, and pondered, and read o'er again
The moonlight vows of glowing Juliet;
She read how scorning doubt, delay, and pain,
Sir Scudamour found white-robed Amoret,
And led her by the coy resisting hand
From sovran Cytherea's priestess-band.

And much she marvelled how such things might be;
"And such things are," she thought, "this very day,
But Heaven in grace has left me fancy-free,
And this is well; and he is gone away:
My father now must analyse alone
Those blotches on the shield of valiant Joan."

But, as the days and weeks and months went on,
Less calm she grew; more anxious to believe
That she was happier since the youth had gone,
That she was no fond simple girl, to grieve
For a mere fantasy; but ne'ertheless
She oft forgot her reasoned happiness.

And having no one else to think about,
She thought of Wilfred; seemed to see him, hear
Him speak: and his successor was a lout
Who made that inward vision doubly clear;
For slow he was of speech, and dull of eye,
And short, and round, and rubicund, and shy.

In study and in dreams, one long year passed:
The house seemed shadowed by some direful ban:
For every day was lonelier than the last,
Each book the dullest ever writ by man:
Clarice had half begun to doubt her boast,
When -- a three-volume novel came by post!

She knew the writing -- rapid, firm, and fine;
She looked within -- and there was Wilfred's name --
The letters rose and danced along the line,
Mocking her quivering lips and cheeks aflame;
This was his book, his voice, his heart; she sighed,
And turned the leaves with a sad thrill of pride.

'Twas the first novel she had ever read --
Think of it, Mudie's votaries and Smith's!
Ambrosially her sky-born soul was fed
On the sun's poetry in old-world myths,
But never knew what wealth of weed and flower
His tireless beams engender hour by hour.

And Wilfred's heroine was a maiden queen
Like Clarice, bred on such Olympian food:
Surely she saw her own transfigured mien --
"But no," she thought, "for I am not so good,
So fair -- some other's portrait this must be,
And her he loves, and has forgotten me."

She read with pain and pleasure; new she pored,
Jealously, o'er some page with passion fraught,
And wondered what fair Goddess he adored;
Now, her heart sprang to meet some bright-clad thought;
For thoughts there were, rich ears of harvest-gold,
Not choked with tares and poppies, as of old.

Not one day thus she pored, but many days;
She knew the volumes three almost by heart,
She lived in the book's life, thought in its phrase,
And so for weeks she conned and mused apart;
Till, as it chanced, one afternoon there came
A visitor of antiquarian fame.

A blear-eyed bookworm; yet he was a shade
More human than her father; he had penned
Stout vindications of the slandered Maid
Of Orleans, till he half estranged his friend:
He took the scutcheon of that virgin knight,
And either whitewashed, or else washed it white.

Now the pair sat and argued; but at last
The visitor, right glad to end the strife
When Clarice entered, left the angry past,
And stooped to safer themes of modern life;
Of dynamite he spoke, and what could ail
The Irish; then of books -- of Wilfred's tale.

"The book is good -- or rather, not so bad
As one might augur from its great success;
You know the young romancer -- it is sad
When budding brains are doomed to idleness;
For he is ill -- they say, in doubtful case,
Alone, in lodgings," -- and he named the place.

Poor Clarice stole away; the old man's words
Chilled her like death; she saw the sun grow dim,
And like the fluttering of imprisoned birds
She felt wild pulses throb in every limb:
To a dull corner of her room she crept,
And there, till night was black, she crouched and wept.

But in the midnight watches she began,
Thinking of his pain, to forget her own;
And all her strenuous soul was bent to plan
How she might aid him; for that word -- "Alone,"
Rang in her ears; she knew, as ne'er before,
The load of bitter meaning that it bore.

Pure innocence -- what counsellor is worse? --
Guided and guarded her in all she did;
She had no friend, not even an old nurse,
To tell her what was lawful, what forbid;
And so resolved -- lacking such nurse or friend --
That Wilfred she must seek, and watch, and tend.

Then Clarice slept, and dreamed that Wilfred's book
Became a world; its chapters palaces;
And she its Goddess: but an earthquake shook
The domes of light and rainbow terraces:
The miraged earth engulphed its phantom race,
And left its two Immortals face to face.

III.

"HOW lightly men can love, how soon forget!"
I said -- yet some there be not false or fickle:
For one, the blind god wings an arrowlet
No deadlier pointed than a sweetbriar prickle;
For one, a dart fledged with Tartarean flame,
Barbed, venomed, and thrice cursed in Hecate's name.

Neither the rose-thorn nor the poisoned arrow
Was sped for Wilfred -- but a keen-tipped shaft,
That rankled deep, yet pierced not bone and marrow,
And still he dined, debated, jested, laughed;
The while his heart was like a tooth, whose fang
Aches with dull woe, or with fierce throbbing pang.

For one bright image lived before his eyes;
Where'er he moved, the haunting shape was there:
And long he pondered what rich sacrifice
Could win its beauty; till the vision fair,
As saint from heaven instructs an eremite,
Taught her sad thrall to worship her aright.

She made herself the centre of a world
Peopled with gracious phantoms indistinct;
But, as he gazed, a golden mist upfurled,
And all was clearly shaped, and brightly tinct:
How could he choose but chronicle from far
The story of that new-created star?

And thus he dreamed and wrote, until his dream
Was all set forth in fine-writ manuscript;
He felt, at the last page of the last ream,
As though in some great argosy he shipped
His wealth; not with the trader's avarice keen,
But as the hard-won ransom of a queen.

And the book prospered wheresoe'er it went;
Much fame had Wilfred, and a little gold,
Yet thought of the one copy that he sent
To Clarice, more than of the hundreds sold;
And for her smile, had been content to lose
Even the most nectareous of reviews.

'Tis sweet, in truth, to feel oneself a god
Shaping with words a spirit-universe,
Touching to various life the formless clod,
Winning fresh glory e'en from Fate perverse,
That foe to plans divine and human toils,
Which like a snake in every Eden coils.

Such deities are mortal; and when these,
As once their sire Apollo, love in vain,
And grant the willing mind no hour of ease,
But still toward high achievement strive and strain,
What marvel if the genial visage pales,
And the pulse languishes, and the strength fails?

'Twas thus with Wilfred; though the bookworm old
Had somewhat overdrawn his piteous plight,
Most truly might that learned man have told
Of many a torpid day and tossing night,
Filled with sick hope of one approving line
From Clarice -- but there came no word or sign.

One cheerless afternoon, upon his couch
Brooding he lay; there came a tap -- the door
Soft-opened -- sure his dazzled eyes could vouch
That the fair image kept in his heart's core
They saw; come haply as a cruel wraith,
With cold ethereal gifts to mock his faith.

The maiden entered; the dim light aslant
On his pale face, constrained her like a charm;
She felt and seemed a spectral visitant
Of one in mortal straits; on languid arm
He raised himself, with an uncertain cry
Of "Clarice!" and sank backward wearily.

Then all the wifehood and the motherhood
That in her virgin heart close-hidden lay
Sprang forth; the voice of her quick-pulsing blood
Rebuked her coming, and yet murmured "Stay!"
She stood there an Olympian goddess mute
And blushing, with soft eyes irresolute.

At last she spoke -- "Forgive me! but I knew
That you were ill, alone -- and I am come
With fruit and medicines -- if I weary you,
Tell me, and bid me go" -- here she grew dumb,
And cold, and faint, and all her thoughts forgot,
Because so wild he gazed, yet answered not.

He lay and watched her timid attitudes,
The rosy colour mantling in her cheek,
Her faltering phrases, with brief interludes
Of sighs; he watched, and did not stir or speak:
But when, like one who in strange peril stands,
She tottered, grew death-pale, flung out her hands,

He rose with desperate hunger in his face,
Clasped her with arms that trembled as they strained,
Kissed the fair head that bent to his embrace,
The lily cheeks, the eyelids violet-veined;
And held her long, although she faintly strove
To free herself, in very fear of love.

She did not know the feeling of a kiss,
Except her father's -- which had not been warm --
And now she shrank and shuddered from her bliss
E'en as a thirsting wretch before the storm
Of wind and rain, that must renew his life,
Unless he die in the tumultuous strife.

At length he half-released her -- "Sweet," he said,
"This is my fruit, my medicine; were I blind
Now must I see -- must live, if I were dead;
You are my breath, my pulse, my inmost mind;
Music you are, whose mournfulness and mirth
Reveal the Will of this phantasmal Earth."

She blushed at his remembrance of that page
In Schopenhauer -- "Ah forgive!" she cried --
"I was a tame-bred goldfinch in its cage,
Not knowing that the world is all outside;
Yet such poor birds will beat the bars, and sing
Of hope, and build an idle nest in Spring."

"Yet nay," he smiled, "you are Olympian-born,
You are Egeria's self, the nymph who blest
Rome's king with laws from Heaven: that gloomy morn
When I arose from nightmare-laden rest
A banished man, you sent your sprite divine,
That pitying led me to the fountain-shrine."

What more fond vows they uttered -- how they planned
The future's wedded joy -- I need not tell,
For every love-taught soul will understand;
Nor how, when twilight came, they broke the spell
Reluctantly, that Clarice home might haste,
Yet once again, and still once more embraced.

That night she dreamed that over fertile ground
And blossomed herbage the two lovers trod;
The air was filled with an AEolian sound
That sang of secret life beneath the sod,
And all pure fragrances of flower and fruit
Lived in the music of that fitful lute.

Of couching flocks it chanted; of the bird
Nested in shade; of all things that have breath;
Of human fate; and still entranced they heard,
And knew the harmonies of Birth and Death:
Till downward flowed the dream, and bore her deep
Into the dark unhaunted caves of Sleep.





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