The Orphans

A Baroque Novelette

The house, four-square upon its

ample ground, flowed from

the mansard roof whose

glimmering stippled the

Autumn bronze, or dripped the

deep night's tears upon

its silences. Here, brother

and sister, soon matured,

Prescribed the small-town's

judgment of the moral or

corrupt; and trod convention

through the church and

Politics as though noblesse

oblige were still traditional.

... till whispering began.

Lovers for long, each sat

Alone and read within their

ornate drawing-room. Outside

the twilit windows, evening

like a sound arose, not

Like traffic approaching, night-

time nor death approaching,

but strangely, only toward

themselves advancing. Faster

Than fact, their importunity became

their deft expedience. In the

formal dining-room the sooty

shadows of the candle-light

Connived their fall, and never

quavered when their lips

self-consciously approached.

Patient as time, the fatal

Incident encroached among the

silver and the dinner-plate,

not like a place in which a

casualty occurred, but like

A sound their chronic tragedy

could hardly amplify. Even

as children, they somehow

feared each other - as one

Fears a tunnel one must pass through -

till recognition, clear and

hard, illumined their anxious

diffidence. Odd as the

Unconscious pariah, they watched

their tenderness assume the

criminal. Yet the tense

luxury of the forbidden

Increased their ardor, and multiplied

their joy's antiphony with

pain. Satisfaction was a

tongue they never learned

To speak, but clearly remarked the

foreign syllables, and thrived

upon their doubt. Even their

angers had remorse in common,

The fears they shared recoiling in

a guilt. As drunkenness becomes

the final luxury, they were

drunk with secrecy as much as

With desire. But the servants

knew and told, and hardly had

to listen for the furtive

midnight step come down the

Stair. Illicit, the menial could

sense the illicit, could

interpret the scraping key,

the recent stain, the careless

And the trivial detail. Their

rat-awareness nibbled at decay,

grew fat and insolent and smug

upon convention's cadaver.

Gossip was survived, but only as

the injured survive an injury;

and scandal was lived down

simply by living, till habit,

Like a lamp, suffused its homely

glow. The orphans merely faced

a rumor, and never had to face

another's infidelity. Last

Of the romantics, they became their

valued artifice. Now the one

is dead; the other leans without

regret upon the amplitude of time.

Byron VazaxKas