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A mad dog which they had tortured. Up and down
I went by road and village, over tracts

Of open foreign country, large and strange,
Crossed everywhere by long thin poplar-lines
Like fingers of some ghastly skeleton Hand
Through sunlight and through moonlight evermore
Pushed out from hell itself to pluck me back,
And resolute to get me, slow and sure:
While every roadside Christ upon his cross
Hung reddening through his gory wounds at me,
And shook his nails in anger, and came down
To follow a mile after, wading up

The low vines and green wheat, crying 'Take the girl!

'She's none of mine from henceforth.' Then, I knew,
(But this is somewhat dimmer than the rest)
The charitable peasants gave me bread

And leave to sleep in straw and twice they tied,
At parting, Mary's image round my neck-
How heavy it seemed! as heavy as a stone;
A woman has been strangled with less weight:
I threw it in a ditch to keep it clean

And ease my breath a little, when none looked;
I did not need such safeguards:--brutal men
Stopped short, Miss Leigh, in insult, when they had

seen

My face,-I must have had an awful look.
And so I lived: the weeks passed on,-I lived.
'Twas living my old tramp-life o'er again,
But, this time, in a dream, and hunted round

By some prodigious Dream-fear at my back
Which ended, yet: my brain cleared presently,
And there I sate, one evening, by the road,
I, Marian Erle, myself, alone, undone,

Facing a sunset low upon the flats,
As if it were the finish of all time,—
The great red stone upon my sepulchre,
Which angels were too weak to roll away.

SEVENTH BOOK.

'THE Woman's motive? shall we daub ourselves.
With finding roots for nettles? 'tis soft clay
And easily explored. She had the means,
The monies, by the lady's liberal grace,
In trust for that Australian scheme and me,
Which so, that she might clutch with both her hands,
And chink to her naughty uses undisturbed,
She served me (after all it was not strange;
'Twas only what my mother would have done)
A motherly, unmerciful, good turn.

'Well, after. There are nettles everywhere, But smooth green grasses are more common still; The blue of heaven is larger than the cloud;

A miller's wife at Clichy took me in

And spent her pity on me, -made me calm

And merely very reasonably sad.

She found me a servant's place in Paris where

I tried to take the cast-off life again,

And stood as quiet as a beaten ass

Who, having fallen through overloads, stands up To let them charge him with another pack.

A few months, so. My mistress, young and light, Was easy with me, less for kindness than.. Because she led, herself, an easy time:

Betwixt her lover and her looking-glass,
Scarce knowing which way she was praised the most.
She felt so pretty and so pleased all day
She could not take the trouble to be cross,
But sometimes, as I stooped to tie her shoe,
Would tap me softly with her slender foot,
Still restless with the last night's dancing in't,
And say, 'Fie, pale-face! are you English girls
All grave and silent? mass-book still, and Lent?
'And first-communion colours on your cheeks,
Worn past the time for't? little fool, be gay!'
At which she vanished, like a fairy, through
A gap of silver laughter.

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'Came an hour

When all went on otherwise.

She did not speak,

But clenched her brows, and clipped me with her eyes As if a viper with a pair of tongs,

Too far for any touch, yet near enough

To view the writhing creature,—then at last; 'Stand still there, in the holy Virgin's name, 'Thou Marian; thou'rt no reputable girl, 'Although sufficient dull for twenty saints! 'I think thou mock'st me and my house,' she said; "Confess, thou'lt be a mother in a month, "Thou mask of saintship.'

'Could I answer her?

The light broke in so: it meant that then, that?
I had not thought of that, in all my thoughts,-
Through all the cold, numb aching of my brow,
Through all the heaving of impatient life
Which threw me on death at intervals, through all
The upbreak of the fountains of my heart
The rains had swelled too large: it could mean that?
Did God make mothers out of victims, then,

And set such pure amens to hideous deeds?
Why not? Ile overblows an ugly grave
With violets which blossom in the spring.
And I could be a mother in a month!

I hope it was not wicked to be glad.
I lifted up my voice and wept, and laughed,
To heaven, not her, until I tore my throat.
Confess, confess!' what was there to confess,
Except man's cruelty, except my wrong?
Except this anguish, or this ecstasy?

This shame, or glory? The light woman there
Was small to take it in: an acorn-cup
Would take the sea in sooner.

'Good,' she cried;

'Unmarried and a mother, and she laughs!
'These unchaste girls are always impudent.
'Get out, intriguer! leave my house, and trot:
'I wonder you should look me in the face,
'With such a filthy secret.'

'Then I rolled

[foot

My scanty bundle up, and went my way,
Washed white with weeping, shuddering head and
With blind hysteric passion, staggering forth
Beyond those doors. 'Twas natural, of course,
She should not ask me where I meant to sleep;
I might sleep well beneath the heavy Seine,
Like others of my sort; the bed was laid

For us.

But any woman, womanly,

Had thought of him who should be in a month,
The sinless babe that should be in a month,
And if by chance he might be warmer housed
Than underneath such dreary, dripping eaves.'

I broke on Marian there. Yet she herself,
VOL. III-16

A wife, I think, had scandals of her own,
A lover, not her husband.'

'Ay,' she said

'But gold and meal are measured otherwise; I learnt so much at school,' said Marian Erle.

'O crooked world,' I cried, 'ridiculous
If not so lamentable! It's the way
With these light women of a thrifty vice,
My Marian, always hard upon the rent
In any sister's virtue! while they keep
Their chastity so darned with perfidy,
That, though a rag itself, it looks as well
Across a street, in balcony or coach,
As any stronger stuff might. For my part,
I'd rather take the wind-side of the stews
Than touch such women with my finger-end
They top the poor street-walker by their lie,
And look the better for being so much worse
The devil's most devilish when respectable.
But you, dear, and your story.'

'All the rest

Is here,' she said, and sighed upon the child.
'I found a mistress-sempstress who was kind
And let me sew in peace among her girls;
And what was better than to draw the threads
All day and half the night, for him, and him?
And so I lived for him, and so he lives,
And so I know, by this time, God lives too.'
She smiled beyond the sun, and ended so,
And all my soul rose up to take her part
Against the world's successes, virtues, fames.
Come with me, sweetest sister,' I returned,
'And sit within my house, and do me good

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