Shall we save a whole forest in sparing one seed?
Save the man in the boy? in the thought save the deed?
Let the whirlwind uproot the grown tree, if it can!
Save the seed from the north wind. So let the grown man Face our fate. Spare the man-seed in youth.
He was dumb.
She went one step further.
XXV.
Lo! manhood is come.
And love, the wild song-bird, hath flown to the tree.
And the whirlwind comes after. Now prove we, and see:
What shade from the leaf? what support from the branch?
Spreads the leaf broad and fair? holds the bough strong and staunch?
There, he saw himself--dark, as he stood on that night, The last when they met and they parted: a sight For heaven to mourn o'er, for hell to rejoice!
An ineffable tenderness troubled her voice;
It grew weak, and a sigh broke it through.
Then he said (Never looking at her, never lifting his head, As though, at his feet, there lay visibly hurl'd Those fragments), "It was not a love, 'twas a world, 'Twas a life that lay ruin'd, Lucile!"
XXVI.
She went on.
"So be it! Perish Babel, arise Babylon!
From ruins like these rise the fanes that shall last, And to build up the future heaven shatters the past."
"Ay," he moodily murmur'd, "and who cares to scan The heart's perish'd world, if the world gains a man?
From the past to the present, though late, I appeal;
To the nun Seraphine, from the woman Lucile!"
XXVII.
Lucile! . . . the old name--the old self! silenced long:
Heard once more! felt once more!
As some soul to the throng Of invisible spirits admitted, baptized By death to a new name and nature--surprised 'Mid the songs of the seraphs, hears faintly, and far, Some voice from the earth, left below a dim star, Calling to her forlornly; and (sadd'ning the psalms Of the angels, and piercing the Paradise palms!)
The name borne 'mid earthly beloveds on earth Sigh'd above some lone grave in the land of her birth;--
So that one word . . . Lucile! . . . stirr'd the Soeur Seraphine, For a moment. Anon she resumed here serene And concentrated calm.
"Let the Nun, then, retrace The life of the soldier!" . . . she said, with a face That glow'd, gladdening her words.
"To the present I come:
Leave the Past!"
There her voice rose, and seem'd as when some Pale Priestess proclaims from her temple the praise Of her hero whose brows she is crowning with bays.
Step by step did she follow his path from the place Where their two paths diverged. Year by year did she trace (Familiar with all) his, the soldier's existence.
Her words were of trial, endurance, resistance;
Of the leaguer around this besieged world of ours:
And the same sentinels that ascend the same towers And report the same foes, the same fears, the same strife, Waged alike to the limits of each human life.
She went on to speak of the lone moody lord, Shut up in his lone moody halls: every word Held the weight of a tear: she recorded the good He had patiently wrought through a whole neighborhood;
And the blessing that lived on the lips of the poor, By the peasant's hearthstone, or the cottager's door.
There she paused: and her accents seem'd dipp'd in the hue Of his own sombre heart, as the picture she drew Of the poor, proud, sad spirit, rejecting love's wages, Yet working love's work; reading backwards life's pages For penance; and stubbornly, many a time, Both missing the moral, and marring the rhyme.
Then she spoke of the soldier! . . . the man's work and fame, The pride of a nation, a world's just acclaim!
Life's inward approval!
XXVIII.
Her voice reach'd his heart, And sank lower. She spoke of herself: how, apart And unseen,--far away,--she had watch'd, year by year, With how many a blessing, how many a tear, And how many a prayer, every stage in the strife:
Guess'd the thought in the deed: traced the love in the life:
Bless'd the man in the man's work!
"THY work . . . oh, not mine!
Thine, Lucile!" . . . he exclaim'd . . . "all the worth of it thine, If worth there be in it!"
Her answer convey'd His reward, and her own: joy that cannot be said Alone by the voice . . . eyes--face--spoke silently:
All the woman, one grateful emotion!
And she A poor Sister of Charity! hers a life spent In one silent effort for others! . . .
She bent Her divine face above him, and fill'd up his heart With the look that glow'd from it.
Then slow, with soft art, Fix'd her aim, and moved to it.
XXIX.
He, the soldier humane, He, the hero; whose heart hid in glory the pain Of a youth disappointed; whose life had made known The value of man's life! . . . that youth overthrown And retrieved, had it left him no pity for youth In another? his own life of strenuous truth Accomplish'd in act, had it taught him no care For the life of another? . . . oh no! everywhere In the camp which she moved through, she came face to face With some noble token, some generous trace Of his active humanity . . .
"Well," he replied, "If it be so?"
"I come from the solemn bedside Of a man that is dying," she said. "While we speak, A life is in jeopardy."
"Quick then! you seek Aid or medicine, or what?"
"'Tis not needed," she said.
"Medicine? yes, for the mind! 'Tis a heart that needs aid!
You, Eugene de Luvois, you (and you only) can Save the life of this man. Will you save it?"
"What man?
How? . . . where? . . . can you ask?"
She went rapidly on To her object in brief vivid words . . . The young son Of Matilda and Alfred--the boy lying there Half a mile from that tent door--the father's despair, The mother's deep anguish--the pride of the boy In the father--the father's one hope and one joy In the son:---the son now--wounded, dying! She told Of the father's stern struggle with life: the boy's bold, Pure, and beautiful nature: the fair life before him If that life were but spared . . . yet a word might restore him!
The boy's broken love for the niece of Eugene!
Its pathos: the girl's love for him; how, half slain In his tent, she had found him: won from him the tale;
Sought to nurse back his life; found her efforts still fail Beaten back by a love that was stronger than life;
