Part 6

Young George, however, did not yield himself To nourish the false hunger of a ghost That made no good return. He saw too much: The accumulated wisdom of his years Had so conclusively made plain to him The permanent profusion of a world Where everybody might have everything To do, and almost everything to eat, That he was jubilantly satisfied And all unthwarted by adversity. Young George knew things. The world, he had found out, Was a good place, and life was a good game-- Particularly when Aunt Imogen Was in it. And one day it came to pass-- One rainy day when she was holding him And rocking him--that he, in his own right, Took it upon himself to tell her so; And something in his way of telling it-- The language, or the tone, or something else-- Gripped like a baby’s fingers on her throat, And then went feeling through as if to make A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved And unsophisticated confidence Went mercilessly home; and had she sat Before a looking glass, the deeps of it Could not have shown more clearly to her then Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown, The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes With anguish and intolerable mist. The blow that she had vaguely thrust aside Like fright so many times had found her now: Clean-thrust and final it had come to her From a child’s lips at last, as it had come Never before, and as it might be felt Never again. Some grief, like some delight, Stings hard but once: to custom after that The rapture or the pain submits itself, And we are wiser than we were before. And Imogen was wiser; though at first Her dream-defeating wisdom was indeed A thankless heritage: there was no sweet, No bitter now; nor was there anything To make a daily meaning for her life-- Till truth, like Harlequin, leapt out somehow From ambush and threw sudden savor to it-- But the blank taste of time. There were no dreams, No phantoms in her future any more: One clinching revelation of what was, One by-flash of irrevocable chance, Had acridly but honestly foretold The mystical fulfillment of a life That might have once.... But that was all gone by: There was no need of reaching back for that: The triumph was not hers: there was no love Save borrowed love: there was no might have been.

But there was yet Young George--and he had gone Conveniently to sleep, like a good boy; And there was yet Sylvester with his drum, And there was frowzle-headed little Jane; And there was Jane the sister, and the mother,-- Her sister, and the mother of them all. They were not hers, not even one of them: She was not born to be so much as that, For she was born to be Aunt Imogen. Now she could see the truth and look at it; Now she could make stars out where once had palled A future’s emptiness; now she could share With others--ah, the others!--to the end The largess of a woman who could smile; Now it was hers to dance the folly down, And all the murmuring; now it was hers To be Aunt Imogen.--So, when Young George Woke up and blinked at her with his big eyes, And smiled to see the way she blinked at him, ’Twas only in old concord with the stars That she took hold of him and held him close, Close to herself, and crushed him till he laughed.

THE KLONDIKE

Never mind the day we left, or the way the women clung to us; All we need now is the last way they looked at us. Never mind the twelve men there amid the cheering-- Twelve men or one man, ’twill soon be all the same; For this is what we know: we are five men together, Five left o’ twelve men to find the golden river.

Far we came to find it out, but the place was here for all of us; Far, far we came, and here we have the last of us. We that were the front men, we that would be early, We that had the faith, and the triumph in our eyes: We that had the wrong road, twelve men together,-- Singing when the devil sang to find the golden river.

Say the gleam was not for us, but never say we doubted it; Say the wrong road was right before we followed it. We that were the front men, fit for all forage,-- Say that while we dwindle we are front men still; For this is what we know to-night: we’re starving here together-- Starving on the wrong road to find the golden river.

Wrong, we say, but wait a little: hear him in the corner there; He knows more than we, and he’ll tell us if we listen there-- He that fought the snow-sleep less than all the others Stays awhile yet, and he knows where he stays: Foot and hand a frozen clout, brain a freezing feather, Still he’s here to talk with us and to the golden river.

“Flow,” he says, “and flow along, but you cannot flow away from us; All the world’s ice will never keep you far from us; Every man that heeds your call takes the way that leads him-- The one way that’s his way, and lives his own life: Starve or laugh, the game goes on, and on goes the river; Gold or no, they go their way--twelve men together.

“Twelve,” he says, “who sold their shame for a lure you call too fair for them-- You that laugh and flow to the same word that urges them: Twelve who left the old town shining in the sunset, Left the weary street and the small safe days: Twelve who knew but one way out, wide the way or narrow: Twelve who took the frozen chance and laid their lives on yellow.

“Flow by night and flow by day, nor ever once be seen by them; Flow, freeze, and flow, till time shall hide the bones of them; Laugh and wash their names away, leave them all forgotten, Leave the old town to crumble where it sleeps; Leave it there as they have left it, shining in the valley,-- Leave the town to crumble down and let the women marry.

“Twelve of us or five,” he says, “we know the night is on us now: Five while we last, and we may as well be thinking now: Thinking each his own thought, knowing, when the light comes, Five left or none left, the game will not be lost. Crouch or sleep, we go the way, the last way together: Five or none, the game goes on, and on goes the river.

“For after all that we have done and all that we have failed to do, Life will be life and the world will have its work to do: Every man who follows us will heed in his own fashion The calling and the warning and the friends who do not know: Each will hold an icy knife to punish his heart’s lover, And each will go the frozen way to find the golden river.”

There you hear him, all he says, and the last we’ll ever get from him. Now he wants to sleep, and that will be the best for him. Let him have his own way--no, you needn’t shake him-- Your own turn will come, so let the man sleep. For this is what we know: we are stalled here together-- Hands and feet and hearts of us, to find the golden river.

And there’s a quicker way than sleep?... Never mind the looks of him: All he needs now is a finger on the eyes of him. You there on the left hand, reach a little over-- Shut the stars away, or he’ll see them all night: He’ll see them all night and he’ll see them all to-morrow, Crawling down the frozen sky, cold and hard and yellow.

Won’t you move an inch or two--to keep the stars away from him? --No, he won’t move, and there’s no need of asking him. Never mind the twelve men, never mind the women; Three while we last, we’ll let them all go; And we’ll hold our thoughts north while we starve here together, Looking each his own way to find the golden river.

THE GROWTH OF “LORRAINE”

I

While I stood listening, discreetly dumb, Lorraine was having the last word with me: “I know,” she said, “I know it, but you see Some creatures are born fortunate, and some Are born to be found out and overcome,-- Born to be slaves, to let the rest go free; And if I’m one of them (and I must be) You may as well forget me and go home.

“You tell me not to say these things, I know, But I should never try to be content: I’ve gone too far; the life would be too slow. Some could have done it--some girls have the stuff; But I can’t do it: I don’t know enough. I’m going to the devil.”--And she went.

II

I did not half believe her when she said That I should never hear from her again; Nor when I found a letter from Lorraine, Was I surprised or grieved at what I read: “Dear friend, when you find this, I shall be dead. You are too far away to make me stop. They say that one drop--think of it, one drop!-- Will be enough,--but I’ll take five instead.

“You do not frown because I call you friend, For I would have you glad that I still keep Your memory, and even at the end-- Impenitent, sick, shattered--cannot curse The love that flings, for better or for worse, This worn-out, cast-out flesh of mine to sleep.”

THE SAGE

Foreguarded and unfevered and serene, Back to the perilous gates of Truth he went-- Back to fierce wisdom and the Orient, To the Dawn that is, that shall be, and has been: Previsioned of the madness and the mean He stood where Asia, crowned with ravishment, The curtain of Love’s inner shrine had rent, And after had gone scarred by the Unseen.

There at his touch there was a treasure chest, And in it was a gleam, but not of gold; And on it, like a flame, these words were scrolled: “I keep the mintage of Eternity. Who comes to take one coin may take the rest, And all may come--but not without the key.”

ERASMUS

When he protested, not too solemnly, That for a world’s achieving maintenance The crust of overdone divinity Lacked aliment, they called it recreance; And when he chose through his own glass to scan Sick Europe, and reduced, unyieldingly, The monk within the cassock to the man Within the monk, they called it heresy.

And when he made so perilously bold As to be scattered forth in black and white, Good fathers looked askance at him and rolled Their inward eyes in anguish and affright; There were some of them did shake at what was told, And they shook best who knew that he was right.

THE WOMAN AND THE WIFE

I--THE EXPLANATION

“You thought we knew,” she said, “but we were wrong. This we can say, the rest we do not say; Nor do I let you throw yourself away Because you love me. Let us both be strong, And we shall find in sorrow, before long, Only the price Love ruled that we should pay: The dark is at the end of every day, And silence is the end of every song.

“You ask me for one proof that I speak right, But I can answer only what I know; You look for just one lie to make black white, But I can tell you only what is true-- God never made me for the wife of you. This we can say,--believe me!... Tell me so!”

II--THE ANNIVERSARY

“Give me the truth, whatever it may be. You thought we knew, now tell me what you miss: You are the one to tell me what it is-- You are a man, and you have married me. What is it worth to-night that you can see More marriage in the dream of one dead kiss Than in a thousand years of life like this? Passion has turned the lock, Pride keeps the key.

“Whatever I have said or left unsaid, Whatever I have done or left undone,-- Tell me. Tell me the truth.... Are you afraid? Do you think that Love was ever fed with lies But hunger lived thereafter in his eyes? Do you ask me to take moonlight for the sun?”

THE BOOK OF ANNANDALE

I

Partly to think, more to be left alone, George Annandale said something to his friends-- A word or two, brusque, but yet smoothed enough To suit their funeral gaze--and went upstairs; And there, in the one room that he could call His own, he found a kind of meaningless Annoyance in the mute familiar things That filled it; for the grate’s monotonous gleam Was not the gleam that he had known before, The books were not the books that used to be, The place was not the place. There was a lack Of something; and the certitude of death Itself, as with a furtive questioning, Hovered, and he could not yet understand. He knew that she was gone--there was no need Of any argued proof to tell him that, For they had buried her that afternoon, Under the leaves and snow; and still there was A doubt, a pitiless doubt, a plunging doubt, That struck him, and upstartled when it struck, The vision, the old thought in him. There was A lack, and one that wrenched him; but it was Not that--not that. There was a present sense Of something indeterminably near-- The soul-clutch of a prescient emptiness That would not be foreboding. And if not, What then?--or was it anything at all? Yes, it was something--it was everything-- But what was everything? or anything?

Tired of time, bewildered, he sat down; But in his chair he kept on wondering That he should feel so desolately strange And yet--for all he knew that he had lost More of the world than most men ever win-- So curiously calm. And he was left Unanswered and unsatisfied: there came No clearer meaning to him than had come Before; the old abstraction was the best That he could find, the farthest he could go; To that was no beginning and no end-- No end that he could reach. So he must learn To live the surest and the largest life Attainable in him, would he divine The meaning of the dream and of the words That he had written, without knowing why, On sheets that he had bound up like a book And covered with red leather. There it was-- There in his desk, the record he had made, The spiritual plaything of his life: There were the words no eyes had ever seen Save his; there were the words that were not made For glory or for gold. The pretty wife Whom he had loved and lost had not so much As heard of them. They were not made for her. His love had been so much the life of her, And hers had been so much the life of him, That any wayward phrasing on his part Would have had no moment. Neither had lived enough To know the book, albeit one of them Had grown enough to write it. There it was, However, though he knew not why it was: There was the book, but it was not for her, For she was dead. And yet, there was the book.

Thus would his fancy circle out and out, And out and in again, till he would make As if with a large freedom to crush down Those under-thoughts. He covered with his hands His tired eyes, and waited: he could hear-- Or partly feel and hear, mechanically-- The sound of talk, with now and then the steps And skirts of some one scudding on the stairs, Forgetful of the nerveless funeral feet That she had brought with her; and more than once There came to him a call as of a voice-- A voice of love returning--but not hers. Whose he knew not, nor dreamed; nor did he know, Nor did he dream, in his blurred loneliness Of thought, what all the rest might think of him.

For it had come at last, and she was gone With all the vanished women of old time,-- And she was never coming back again. Yes, they had buried her that afternoon, Under the frozen leaves and the cold earth, Under the leaves and snow. The flickering week, The sharp and certain day, and the long drowse Were over, and the man was left alone. He knew the loss--Therefore it puzzled him That he should sit so long there as he did, And bring the whole thing back--the love, the trust, The pallor, the poor face, and the faint way She last had looked at him--and yet not weep, Or even choose to look about the room To see how sad it was; and once or twice He winked and pinched his eyes against the flame And hoped there might be tears. But hope was all, And all to him was nothing: he was lost. And yet he was not lost: he was astray-- Out of his life and in another life; And in the stillness of this other life He wondered and he drowsed. He wondered when It was, and wondered if it ever was On earth that he had known the other face-- The searching face, the eloquent, strange face-- That with a sightless beauty looked at him And with a speechless promise uttered words That were not the world’s words, or any kind That he had known before. What was it, then? What was it held him--fascinated him? Why should he not be human? He could sigh, And he could even groan,--but what of that? There was no grief left in him. Was he glad?

Yet how could he be glad, or reconciled, Or anything but wretched and undone? How could he be so frigid and inert-- So like a man with water in his veins Where blood had been a little while before? How could he sit shut in there like a snail? What ailed him? What was on him? Was he glad? Over and over again the question came, Unanswered and unchanged,--and there he was. But what in heaven’s name did it all mean? If he had lived as other men had lived, If home had ever shown itself to be The counterfeit that others had called home, Then to this undivined resource of his There were some key; but now ... Philosophy? Yes, he could reason in a kind of way That he was glad for Miriam’s release-- Much as he might be glad to see his friends Laid out around him with their grave-clothes on, And this life done for them; but something else There was that foundered reason, overwhelmed it, And with a chilled, intuitive rebuff Beat back the self-cajoling sophistries That his half-tutored thought would half-project.

What was it, then? Had he become transformed And hardened through long watches and long grief Into a loveless, feelingless dead thing That brooded like a man, breathed like a man,-- Did everything but ache? And was a day To come some time when feeling should return Forever to drive off that other face-- The lineless, indistinguishable face-- That once had thrilled itself between his own And hers there on the pillow,--and again Between him and the coffin-lid had flashed Like fate before it closed,--and at the last Had come, as it should seem, to stay with him, Bidden or not? He were a stranger then, Foredrowsed awhile by some deceiving draught Of poppied anguish, to the covert grief And the stark loneliness that waited him, And for the time were cursedly endowed With a dull trust that shammed indifference To knowing there would be no touch again Of her small hand on his, no silencing Of her quick lips on his, no feminine Completeness and love-fragrance in the house, No sound of some one singing any more, No smoothing of slow fingers on his hair, No shimmer of pink slippers on brown tiles.

But there was nothing, nothing, in all that: He had not fooled himself so much as that; He might be dreaming or he might be sick, But not like that. There was no place for fear, No reason for remorse. There was the book That he had made, though.... It might be the book; Perhaps he might find something in the book; But no, there could be nothing there at all-- He knew it word for word; but what it meant-- He was not sure that he had written it For what it meant; and he was not quite sure That he had written it;--more likely it Was all a paper ghost.... But the dead wife Was real: he knew that, for he had been To see them bury her; and he had seen The flowers and the snow and the stripped limbs Of trees; and he had heard the preacher pray; And he was back again, and he was glad. Was he a brute? No, he was not a brute: He was a man--like any other man: He had loved and married his wife Miriam, They had lived a little while in paradise And she was gone; and that was all of it.

But no, not all of it--not all of it: There was the book again; something in that Pursued him, overpowered him, put out The futile strength of all his whys and wheres, And left him unintelligibly numb-- Too numb to care for anything but rest. It must have been a curious kind of book That he had made: it was a drowsy book At any rate. The very thought of it Was like the taste of some impossible drink-- A taste that had no taste, but for all that Had mixed with it a strange thought-cordial, So potent that it somehow killed in him The ultimate need of doubting any more-- Of asking any more. Did he but live The life that he must live, there were no more To seek.--The rest of it was on the way.

Still there was nothing, nothing, in all this-- Nothing that he cared now to reconcile With reason or with sorrow. All he knew For certain was that he was tired out: His flesh was heavy and his blood beat small; Something supreme had been wrenched out of him As if to make vague room for something else. He had been through too much. Yes, he would stay There where he was and rest.--And there he stayed; The daylight became twilight, and he stayed; The flame and the face faded, and he slept. And they had buried her that afternoon, Under the tight-screwed lid of a long box, Under the earth, under the leaves and snow.

II--DAMARIS

Look where she would, feed conscience how she might, There was but one way now for Damaris-- One straight way that was hers, hers to defend, At hand, imperious. But the nearness of it, The flesh-bewildering simplicity, And the plain strangeness of it, thrilled again That wretched little quivering single string Which yielded not, but held her to the place Where now for five triumphant years had slept The flameless dust of Argan.--He was gone, The good man she had married long ago; And she had lived, and living she had learned, And surely there was nothing to regret: Much happiness had been for each of them, And they had been like lovers to the last: And after that, and long, long after that, Her tears had washed out more of widowed grief Than smiles had ever told of other joy.-- But could she, looking back, find anything That should return to her in the new time, And with relentless magic uncreate This temple of new love where she had thrown Dead sorrow on the altar of new life? Only one thing, only one thread was left; When she broke that, when reason snapped it off, And once for all, baffled, the grave let go The trivial hideous hold it had on her,-- Then she were free, free to be what she would, Free to be what she was.--And yet she stayed, Leashed, as it were, and with a cobweb strand, Close to a tombstone--maybe to starve there.