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Page 5
At last he grew too weary
of the squires,
Jokes, dinners, wives, and comely girls; perhaps
Of the reforms and works on his estate,
Which always somewhere crooked from his design.
Heed live awhile in town. And, half ashamed,
He thought of friends there: one he called his aunt,
His mother's distant cousin, had half made
A son of him by kindness. Sooth to say
He feared she planned a nearer motherhood:
She had daughters, and one of them, Evelyn,
Stately and simple, with deep quiet eyes
Like sky, blue sky seen through a thin grey cloud,
And a fairness which made beauty of itself,
Had seemed so loveable that still he mused
How strange he had not loved her, and in truth
Had found it hard to keep from telling her
He loved her though he did not. And his aunt
(I'll call her so as he did) had been prompt
To help him past his wish, and Evelyn
Had learned to drop her eyes so suddenly
When he looked at her that he could not help
A pleasure and a shame at once. No blame
That could be shaped lay with him; not a word
Nor sign of suitorship had perjured him;
But yet he felt that there had somewhere lurked
A touch of falseness in him to the girl,
And gladly would have heard that she was wed
And happy.
For she was to him more dear
Than any woman of the whole wide world:
Only he said "Now I could never love her:"
Since he had felt those pleasant woman wiles
Of which most Englishwomen fail, the charm
Of bright caprice, subtle simplicities,
Pert bird-like confidence, and kitten ease,
And changing fluent speech of word and look
And pretty sudden gestures, or the charm
Of southern languorous quiet waking up
Into a flash of fire. Then too, because
The foreign women's manners, trimmed to rules
Different from those which wearied him at home,
Had the sweet of strangeness for him, he, who loathed
Our social bugbear that makes wild birds tame
By clipping wings that were designed to fly,
Conventionality, took them to be
More frankly living, less conventional
Than the women drudging on at morning calls
And being civil placidly by rote
In England, where he had seen enough to know
What necessary clockwork fills the place
Of the pith of nature scooped out of their lives
By careful teachers. "I would liefer set"
He thought, "some rare white statue in my house
And talk my heart to it, than one of these
Our proper well-trained damsels, same and good,
Who would not even look as if sheed life
Enough to long to live. My statue would,
And would change her beauty with each changing light,
Instead of varying, as my wife would do,
Her ribbons and her roses to one face."
So he still thought "Not Evelyn, she is good,
And very fair, and very lofty souled,
But she is spoiled with training, as we spoil
All sweet frank natures of our English girls.
Let me have innocent wild carelessness,
And the fresh freedom of a natural growth."
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