The Inn Album by Robert Browning — Read

It is the young man shatters silence first.

"Well, my lord -- for indeed my lord you are, / I little guessed how rightly -- this last proof / Of lordship-paramount confounds too much / My simple headpiece! Let's see how we stand / Each to the other! how we stood i' the game / Of life an hour ago, -- the magpies, stile, / And oak-tree witnessed. Truth exchanged for truth -- / My lord confessed his four-years-old affair -- / How he seduced and then forsook the girl / Who married somebody and left him sad. / My pitiful experience was -- I loved / A girl whose gown's hem had I dared to touch / My finger would have failed me, palsy-fixed. / She left me, sad enough, to marry -- whom? / A better man, -- then possibly not you! / How does the game stand? Who is who and what / Is what, o' the board now, since an hour went by? / My lord 's '_seduced_, _forsaken_, _sacrificed_,' / Starts up, my lord's familiar instrument, / Associate and accomplice, mistress-slave -- / Shares his adventure, follows on the sly! / -- Ay, and since 'bag and baggage' is a phrase -- / Baggage lay hid in carpet-bag belike, / Was but unpadlocked when occasion came / For holding council, since my back was turned, / On how invent ten thousand pounds which, paid, / Would lure the winner to lose twenty more, / Beside refunding these! Why else allow / The fool to gain them? So displays herself / The lady whom my heart believed -- oh, laugh! / Noble and pure: whom my heart loved at once, / And who at once did speak truth when she said / '_I am not mine now but another's_' -- thus / Being that other's! Devil's-marriage, eh? / '_My lie weds thine till lucre us do part? _' / But pity me the snobbish simpleton, / You two aristocratic tiptop swells / At swindling! Quits, I cry! Decamp content / With skin I 'm peeled of: do not strip bones bare -- / As that you could, I have no doubt at all! / O you two rare ones! Male and female, Sir! / The male there smirked, this morning, '_Come, my boy -- _ / _Out with it! You've been crossed in love, I think: _ / _I recognize the lover's hangdog look; _ / _Make a clean breast and match my confidence,_ / _For, I'll be frank, I too have had my fling,_ / _Am punished for my fault, and smart enough! _ / _Where now the victim hides her head, God knows! _' / Here loomed her head, life-large, the devil knew! / Look out, Salvini! Here 's your man, your match! / He and I sat applauding, stall by stall, / Last Monday -- '_Here 's Othello_' was our word, / '_But where 's Iago? _' Where? Why, there! And now / The fellow-artist, female specimen -- / Oh, lady, you must needs describe yourself! / He 's great in art, but you -- how greater still / -- (If I can rightly, out of all I learned, / Apply one bit of Latin that assures / '_Art means just art's concealment_') -- tower yourself! / For he stands plainly visible henceforth -- / Liar and scamp: while you, in artistry / Prove so consummate -- or I prove perhaps / So absolute an ass -- that -- either way -- / You still do seem to me who worshipped you / And see you take the homage of this man, / Your master, who played slave and knelt, no doubt, / Before a mistress in his very craft... / Well, take the fact, I nor believe my eyes, / Nor trust my understanding! Still you seem / Noble and pure as when we had the talk / Under the tower, beneath the trees, that day. / And there 's the key explains the secret: down / He knelt to ask your leave to rise a grade / I' the mystery of humbug: well he may! / For how you beat him! Half an hour ago, / I held your master for my best of friends; / And now I hate him! Four years since, you seemed / My heart's one love: well, and you so remain! / What 's he to you in craft?"