Thoughts from the Heart – A Story in Breaths – 3

"Her First Love"

Life for her was one outpouring of ardent hope
and captivating passion
and tender feeling.
She is neither reckless nor rash
for she is enchanted by what she sees and by what she does not see
bewitched by this generous ray
that fills her soul
and this vitality that dwells in her merciful heart
and this world, brimming with beauties of every kind —
she is enamored of it and carried away
for the sky of intense blue
and the sweep of the plains stretching in dazzling colors down to the shore
and the lofty mountains in their dark raiment
and the open air, which she loves to have toy with her curly hair and her dark face —
it too is beautiful in every hour of the hours of night and day.

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Beautiful when it rages, for in its raging is one of the meanings of her own proud soul
and gentle when it grows calm, for in it is much of the gentleness of her own feeling
and this city, which she visits only rarely —

she loves it with the full measure of its clamor and din
and likewise her village, lost in reverie to the tunes of the shepherds' pipes —
she loves it in every season of the year
for the calm that wraps its evenings, she feels flooding her being with a like calm that her soul longs for and yearns toward
As for the drowsy, moonlit nights, she passes them sleepless, without a trace of weariness
indeed with a pleasure to which she counts no other pleasure equal
And music, which takes hold of her soul to the point of obsession —
its gay strains and its wailing captivate her.
And stories, in all their varied kinds, she hears or reads breathless with wonder and ardor.
And painting likewise: across all its differing schools, she cannot keep herself from taking its imprint and answering to it
so she remains as one dazed and dreaming, whom nothing draws out of that world of hers but some new thing that sheds over her being the first glimmers of a captivating beauty.
As for poetry, her soul has a discourse of it, and her soul holds with it a conversation that may run long, and may run short, but it never settles into stillness
as if it were these short successive breaths that drive her red blood from the lungs to the heart, upon the lullings of its swift pulsations.

That is why, when she loved, she loved with all the ardor and purity of her being.
And when she hated, she hated with all the pride and splendor of her soul.
And she had a mother who was not like other mothers.
A mother from whom she took much — even this inward-turning gaiety
and even these values of the soul which she will not abandon, though it cost her life and all that is precious
And so it was one of the crimes of life, or of the fates, or of chance, that this mother should be taken from her early
whereupon she folded in upon herself with a stubborn withdrawal against which the loving father's devices availed nothing.
Nor the coddling of family and playmates
nor that passion she had bestowed upon life.
And all at once her soul turned away from everything she had loved, as though no bond of old devotion had ever joined her to it
and she gave herself over wholly to the love of her brother, whom she is older than by a few years, to make of herself a mother for him, tending him as far as tending could reach, and doting on him wherever she found a way,

and that this knot of the soul, whose grip had tightened without respite or truce, might be tamed.

But the fates, or chance, or life itself laughs mockingly a second time at her values

For here is the father she had so long admired, whose fine qualities she had sung —

here he deals her a blow in her good opinion of him, and takes another woman to wife, whom she strives with all her might to regard as a mother

to please the father she still loves
and please the conscience she carries
and please the pride that holds petty things at a distance
yet scarcely does she succeed... or find rest

and behold, she withdraws still further into herself
as though this soul had never known happiness for a day, nor exulted in the charms of life

And the generous heart, amid all this, throbs with a violent throbbing
and the soul enamored of ideals

takes blow upon blow, with a calm that fills her eyes with tears and her lips with a counterfeit smile.

And the beloved brother, of whose character she had tried to make a living model for the pure-hearted young — and did not succeed,
reaping from him nothing but obstinacy and vanity beyond all bounds —

behold, she despairs of him for the last time, and it is as though in this despair she had cut whatever firm ties there were between herself and life.

And it seemed to her that she no longer needed any creature

in whom to prove her existence
and it seemed to her likewise that there was no creature who needed her any more...

Well then, what is there to join her to life?!

And why should she live?!!
But the hidden powers of youth,

which labor always to embroider events in splendid colors holding much of the beauty of courage, or of the beauty of self-denial,
were casting over her life a bright hue from the legend of heroism.

Until she feels herself as if playing a part in some fanciful tale that bears no relation to her real life.

She is therefore intoxicated, exultant to the point of tears with this part, proud of it, answering to it
and so she returns to life as one athirst and yearning returns

but with the step of one who takes one pace forward and another back..
For the doubt crouching upon the small breast

was not easily lifted and cast, all at once, beyond her own inner bounds.
Could it be! Was all this prepared with wisdom to cast her, without thought or design, into loving him — him alone, apart from all mankind —

with a chaste, overwhelming devotion
holding the monk's worship and his austere world, and the suppliant's pleading and his contented realm —

him — that one who kept pace, step by step, with the dreams of her growing years

so that she never ceased soaring with him high, and very high

until she came to see nothing of the past of her innocent childhood but him.

And that past came to gather itself, all of it, into a single interval of her girlhood, and into a single place

there where she saw him for the first time — and it is as if she sees him through a thick fog — with his slender frame and his lively smile beneath that chinaberry tree tenting

with its gathered boughs over her western window looking out upon the garden of the house
where she used to stand for long hours

despite her nine boisterous years, to delight in the sight of the people of the house whom she loved

as they came and went about the deep well

and the neighing of her father's mare reaching her ears

with the trot of the dark colt's hooves like dancing melodies

and the horizon as the evening twilight began to tinge it.

All of that would appear to her as though it bore a translucent stamp of bliss

when he made his way to her, weary from the long journey, to say to her in his low voice,

brushing a fair lock from his brow: Is it you... cousin?!