Never bent the sky
With a more cloudless depth of blue than then;
And, as they rose, I saw his faithless arm
Slide o'er her shoulder, and her dizzy head
Drop on his breast. Then I became insane.
I felt that I was struggling with a dream—
A horrid phantasm I could not shake off.
The hollow sky was swinging like a bell;
The silken monster swinging like its tongue;
And as it reeled from side to side, the roar
Of voices round me rang, and rang again,
Tolling the dreadful knell of my despair.
At the last moment I could trace his form,
Edward leaned over from his giddy seat,
And tossed out something on the air. I saw
The little missive fluttering slowly down,
And stretched my hand to catch it, for I knew,
Or thought I knew, that it would come to me.
And it did come to me—as if it slid
Upon the cord that bound my heart to his—
Strained to its utmost tension—snapped at last.
I marked it as it fell. It was a rose.
I grasped it madly as it struck my hand,
And buried all its thorns within my palm;
But the fierce pain released my prisoned voice,
And, with a shriek, I staggered, swooned, and fell.
That night was brushed from life. A passing friend
Directed those who bore me rudely off;
And I was carried to my home, and laid
Entranced upon my bed. The Sabbath morn
That followed all this din and devilry
Swung noiseless wide its doors of yellow light,
And in the hallowed stillness I awoke.
My heart was still; I could not stir a hand.
I thought that I was dying, or was dead.—
That I had slipped through smooth unconsciousness
Into the everlasting silences.
I could not speak; but winning strength, at last,
I turned my eyes to seek for Edward's face,
And saw an unpressed pillow. He was gone!
I was oppressed with awful sense of loss;
And, as a mother, by a turbid sea
That has engulfed her fairest child, sits down
And moans over the waters, and looks out
With curious despair upon the waves,
Until she marks a lock of floating hair,
And by its threads of gold draws slowly in,
And clasps and presses to her frenzied breast
The form it has no power to warm again,
So I, beside the sea of memory,
Lay feebly moaning, yearning for a clew
By which to reach my own extinguished life.
It came. A burning pain shot through my palm,
And thorns awoke what thorns had put to sleep.
It all came back to me—the roar, the rush,
The upturned faces, the insane hurrahs,
The skyward-shooting spectacle, the shame—
And then I swooned again.
Grace.
But was he killed?
Did his foolhardy venture end in wreck?
Or did it end in something worse than wreck?
Surely, he came again!
Mary.
To me, no more.
He had his reasons, and I knew them soon;
But, first, the fire enkindled in my brain
Burnt through long weeks of fever—burnt my frame
Until it lay upon the sheet as white
As the pale ashes of a wasted coal.
Then, when strength came to me, and I could sit,
Braced by the double pillows that were mine,
A kind friend took my hand, and told me all.
The day that Edward left me was the last
He could have been my husband; for the next
Disclosed his infamy and my disgrace.
He was a thief, and had been one, for years,—
Defrauding those whose gold he held in trust;
And he was ruined—ruined utterly.
The very bed I sat on was not his,
Nor mine, except by tender charity.
A guilty secret menacing behind,
A guilty passion burning in his heart,
And, by his side, a guilty paramour,
He seized upon this reckless whim, and fled
From those he knew would curse him ere he slept.
My cup was filled with wormwood; and it grew
Bitter and still more bitter, day by day,
Changing from shame and hate, to stern revenge.
Life had no more for me. My home was lost;
My heart unfitted to return to this;
And, reckless of the future, I went forth—
A woman stricken, maddened, desperate.
I sought the city with as sure a scent
As vultures track a carcass through the air.
I knew him there, delivered up to sin,
And longed to taunt him with his infamy,—
To haunt his haunts; to sting his perjured soul
With sharp reproaches; and to scare his eyes—
With visions of his work upon my face.