Browning's Heroines

It is like a fairy tale, for there are three beautiful princesses, and the youngest is the heroine. The setting is French-a castle in Aix-en-Provence; it is the fourteenth century, for tourneys and hawking-parties are the amusements, and a birthday is celebrated by an award of crowns to the victors in the lists, when there are ladies in brave attire, thrones, canopies, false knight and true knight. . . . Here is the story.

Once upon a time there were three beautiful princesses, and they lived in a splendid castle. The youngest had neither father nor mother, so she had come to dwell with her cousins, and they had all been quite happy together until one day in summer, when there was a great tourney and prize-giving to celebrate the birthday of the youngest princess. She was to award the crowns, and her cousins dressed her like a queen for the ceremony. She was very happy; she laughed and "sang her birthday-song quite through," while she looked at herself, garlanded with roses, in the glass before they all three went arm-in-arm down the castle stairs. The throne and canopy were ready; troops of merry friends had assembled. These kissed the cheek of the youngest princess, laughing and calling her queen, and then they helped her to stoop under the canopy, which was pierced by a long streak of golden sunshine. There, in the gleam and gloom, she took her seat on the throne. But for all her joy and pride, there came to her, as she sat there, a great ache of longing for her dead father and mother; and afterwards she remembered this, and thought that perhaps if her cousins had guessed that such sorrow was in her heart, even at her glad moment, they might not have allowed the thing to happen which did happen.

All eyes were on her, except those of her cousins, which were lowered, when the moment came for her to stand up and present the victor's crown.

Shy and proud and glad, she stood up, and as she did so, there stalked forth Count Gauthier-

". . . And he thundered 'Stay!'

And all stayed. 'Bring no crowns, I say!'

'Bring torches! Wind the penance-sheet

About her! Let her shun the chaste,

Or lay herself before their feet!

Shall she whose body I embraced

A night long, queen it in the day?

For Honour's sake no crowns, I say!'"

* * * * *

Some years afterwards she told the story of that birthday to a dear friend, and when she came to Count Gauthier's accusation, she had to stop speaking for an instant, because her voice was choked with tears.

Her friend asked her what she had answered, and she replied-

"I? What I answered? As I live

I never fancied such a thing

As answer possible to give;"

-for just as the body is struck dumb, as it were, when some monstrous engine of torture is directed upon it, so was her soul for one moment.

But only for one moment. For instantly another knight strode out-Count Gismond. She had never seen him face to face before, but now, so beholding him, she knew that she was saved. He walked up to Gauthier and gave him the lie in his throat, then struck him on the mouth with the back of a hand, so that the blood flowed from it-

". . . North, South,

East, West, I looked. The lie was dead

And damned, and truth stood up instead."

Recalling it now, with her friend Adela, she mused a moment; then said how her gladdest memory of that hour was that never for an instant had she felt any doubt of the event.

"God took that on him-I was bid

Watch Gismond for my part: I did.

Did I not watch him while he let

His armourer just brace his greaves,

Rivet his hauberk, on the fret

The while! His foot . . . my memory leaves

No least stamp out, nor how anon

He pulled his ringing gauntlets on."

Before the trumpet's peal had died, the false knight lay, "prone as his lie," upon the ground; and Gismond flew at him, and drove his sword into the breast-

"Cleaving till out the truth he clove.

Which done, he dragged him to my feet

And said 'Here die, but end thy breath

In full confession, lest thou fleet

From my first, to God's second death!

Say, hast thou lied?' And, 'I have lied

To God and her,' he said, and died."

Then Gismond knelt and said to her words which even to this dear friend she could not repeat. She sank on his breast-

"Over my head his arm he flung

Against the world . . ."

-and then and there the two walked forth, amid the shouting multitude, never more to return. "And so they were married, and lived happy ever after."

* * *

Gaiety, courage, trust: in this nameless Browning heroine we find the characteristic marks. On that birthday morning, almost her greatest joy was in the sense of her cousins' love-

"I thought they loved me, did me grace

To please themselves; 'twas all their deed"

-and never a thought of their jealousy had entered her mind. Both were beautiful-

". . . Each a queen

By virtue of her brow and breast;

Not needing to be crowned, I mean,

As I do. E'en when I was dressed,

Had either of them spoke, instead

Of glancing sideways with still head!

But no: they let me laugh and sing

My birthday-song quite through . . ."

and so, all trust and gaiety, she had gone down arm-in-arm with them, and taken her state on the "foolish throne," while everybody applauded her. Then had come the moment when Gauthier stalked forth; and from the older mind, now pondering on that infamy, a flash of bitter scorn darts forth-

"Count Gauthier, when he chose his post,

Chose time and place and company

To suit it . . ."

for with sad experience-"knowledge of the world"-to aid her, she can see that the whole must have been pre-concerted-

"And doubtlessly ere he could draw

All points to one, he must have schemed!"

* * * * *

Her trust in the swiftly emerging champion and lover is comprehensible to us of a later day-that, and the joy she feels in watching him impatiently submit to be armed. Even so might one of us watch and listen to and keep for ever in memory the stamp of the foot, the sound of the "ringing gauntlets"-reproduced as that must 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.

* * *