Part 19

"For it's true Nature, or God, gives birth and also death. And power has never come to draw the sting Of death or make it pleasant, creed nor faith Prevents disease, old age and death at last. This truth is here and we must face it, or Lie to ourselves and cloud our brains with lies, Postponements and illusions, childish hopes! But lie most childish is the Christian myth Of Adam's fall, by which disease and death Entered the world, until the Savior came And conquered death. He did? But people die, Some millions slaughtered in the war! They live In heaven, say your Elenor Murrays, well, Who knows this? If you know it, why drop tears For people better off? How ludicrous The patch-work is! I leave it, turn again To what man in this world can do with life Made free of superstition, rules and faiths, That make him lie to self and to his fellows."...

And Barrett Bays, now warmed up to his work, Grown calmer, stronger, mind returned, that found Full courage for the thought, the word to say it Recurred to Elenor Murray, analyzed:-- And now a final word: "This Elenor Murray, What was she, just a woman, a little life Swept in the war and broken? If no more, She is not worth these words: She is the symbol Of our America, perhaps this world This side of India, of America At least she is the symbol. What was she? A restlessness, a hunger, and a zeal; A hope for goodness, and a tenderness; A love, a sorrow, and a venturing will; A dreamer fooled but dreaming still, a vision That followed lures that fled her, generous, loving, But also avid and insatiable; An egoism chained and starved too long That breaks away and runs; a cruelty, A wilfulness, a dealer in false weights, And measures of herself, her duty, others, A lust, a slick hypocrisy and a faith Faithless and hollow. But at last I say She taught me, saved me for myself, and turned My steps upon the path of making self As much as I can make myself--my thanks To Elenor Murray!"

"For that day I saw The war for what it was, and saw myself An artificial factor, working there Because of Elenor Murray--what a fool! I was not really needed, like too many Was just pretending, though I did not know That I was just pretending, saw myself Swept in this mad procession by a woman; And through myself I saw the howling mob Back in America that shouted hate, In God's name, all the carriers of flags, The superheated patriots who did nothing, Gave nothing but the clapping of their hands, And shouts for freedom of the seas. The souls Who hated freedom on the sea or earth, Had, as the vile majority, set up Intolerable tyrannies in America, America that launched herself without A God or faith, but in the name of man And for humanity, so long accursed By Gods and priests--the vile majority! Which in the war, and through the war went on With other tyrannies as to meat and drink, Thought, speech, the mind in living--here was I One of the vile majority through a woman-- And serving in the war because of her, And meretricious sentiments of her. You see I had the madness of the world, Was just as crazy as America. And like America must wake from madness And suffer, and regret, and build again. My soul was soiled, you see. And now I saw How she had pressed her lips against my soul And sapped my spirit in the name of beauty She simulated; for a loyalty Her lips averred; how as a courtesan She had made soft my tissues, like an apple Handled too much; how vision of me went Into her life sucked forth; how never a word Which ever came from her interpreted In terms of worth the war; how she had coiled Her serpent loins about me; how she draped Herself in ardors borrowed; how my arms Were mottled from the needle's scar where she Had shot the opiates of her lying soul; How asking truth, she was herself untrue; How she, adventuress in the war, had sought From lust grown stale, renewal of herself. And then at last I saw her scullery brows Fail out and fade beside the Republic's face, And leave me free upon the hills, who saw, Strong, seeking cleanliness in truth, her hand Which sought the cup worn smooth by leper lips Dipped in the fountain where the thirst of many Passionate pilgrims had been quenched, Not lifted up by me, nor yet befriended By the cleaner cup I offered. Now you think That I am hard. Philosophy is hard, And I philosophize, admit as well That I have failed, am full of faults myself, All faults, we'll say, but one, I trust and pray The fault of falsehood and hypocrisy."...

"I gave my work in Paris up--that day Made ready to return, but with this thought To use my wisdom for the war, do work For America that had no touch of her, No flavor of her nature, far removed From the symphony of sex, be masculine, Alone, and self-sufficient, needing nothing, No hand, no kiss, no mate, pure thought alone Directed to this work. I found the work And gave it all my energy."

"From then I wrote her nothing, though she wrote to me These more than hundred letters--here they are! Since you have mine brought to you from New York All written before she went to France, I think You should have hers to make the woman out And read her as she wrote herself to me. The rest is brief. She cabled when she sailed, And wrote me from New York. While at LeRoy With Irma Leese she wrote me. Then that day She telephoned me when she motored here With Irma Leese, and said: 'Forgive, forgive, O see me, come to me, or let me come To you, you cannot crush me out. These months Of silence, what are they? Eternity Makes nothing of these months. I love you, never In all eternity shall cease to love you, Love makes you mine, and you must come to me Now or hereafter.'"

"And you see at last My soul was clear again, as clean and cold As our March days, as clear too, and the war Stood off envisioned for the thing it was. Peace now had come, which helped our eyes to see What dread event the war was. So to see This woman with these eyes of mine, made true And unpersuadable of her plaints and ways I gave consent and went."

"Arriving first, I walked along the river till she came. And as I saw her, I looked through the tricks Of dress she played to win me, I could see How she arrayed herself before the mirror, Adjusting this or that to make herself Victorious in the meeting. But my eyes Were wizard eyes for her, and this she knew, Began at first to writhe, change color, flap Her nervous hands in gestures half controlled. I only said, 'Good morning,' took her hand, She tried to kiss me, but I drew away. 'I have been true,' she said, 'I love you, dear, If I was false and did not love you, why Would I pursue you, write you, all against Your coldness and your silence? O believe me, The war and you have changed me. I have served, Served hard among the sufferers in the war, Sustained by love for you. I come to you And give my life to you, take it and use, Keep me your secret joy. I do not dream Of winning you in marriage. Here and now I humble self to you, ask nothing of you, Except your kindness, love again, if love Can come again to you--O this must be! It is my due who love you, with my soul, My body.'"

"'No,' I said, 'I can forgive All things but lying and hypocrisy.'... How could I trust her? She had kept from me The diary, threw it from the window, what Was life of her in France? Should I expunge This Gregory Wenner, what was life of her In France, I ask. And so I said to her: 'I have no confidence in you'--O well I told the jury all. But quick at once She showed to me, that if I could forgive Her course of lying, she was changed to me, The war had changed her, she was hard and wild, Schooled in the ways of soldiers, and in war. That beauty of her womanhood was gone, Transmuted into waywardness, distaste For simple ways, for quiet, loveliness. The adventuress in her was magnified, Cleared up and set, she had become a shrike, A spar hawk, and I loathed her for these ways Which she revealed, dropping her gentleness When it had failed her. Yes, I saw in her The war at last; its lying and its hate, Its special pleading, and its double dealing, Its lust, its greed, its covert purposes, Its passion out of hell which obelised Such noble things in man. Its crooked uses Of lofty spirits, flaming fires of youth, Young dreamers, lovers. And at last she said, As I have told the jury, what she did Was natural, and I cursed her. Then she shook, Turned pale, and reeled, I caught her, held her up, She died right in my arms! And this is all; Except that had I killed her and should spend My days in prison for it, I am free, My spirit being free."

"Who was this woman? This Elenor Murray was America; Corrupt, deceived, deceiving, self-deceived, Half-disciplined, half-lettered, crude and smart, Enslaved yet wanting freedom, brave and coarse, Cowardly, shabby, hypocritical, Generous, loving, noble, full of prayer, Scorning, embracing rituals, recreant To Christ so much professed; adventuresome; Curious, mediocre, venal, hungry For money, place, experience, restless, no Repose, restraint; before the world made up To act and sport ideals, go abroad To bring the world its freedom, having choked Freedom at home--the girl was this because These things were bred in her, she breathed them in Here where she lived and grew."

Then Barrett Bays stepped down And said, "If this is all, I'd like to go." Then David Borrow whispered in the ear Of Merival, and Merival conferred With Ritter and Llewellyn George and said: "We may need you again, a deputy Will take you to my house, and for the time Keep you in custody."

The deputy Came in and led him from the jury room.

ELENOR MURRAY

Coroner Merival took the hundred letters Which Elenor Murray wrote to Barrett Bays, Found some of them unopened, as he said, And read them to the jury. Day by day She made a record of her life, and wrote Her life out hour by hour, that he might know. The hundredth letter was the last she wrote. And this the Coroner found unopened, cut The envelope and read it in these words:

"You see I am at Nice. If you have read The other letters that I wrote you since Our parting there in Paris, you will know About my illness; but I write you now Some other details."

"I went back to work So troubled and depressed about you, dear, About myself as well. I thought of you, Your suffering and doubt, perhaps your hate. And since you do not write me, not a line Have written since we parted, it may be Hatred has entered you to make distrust Less hard to bear. But in no waking hour, And in no hour of sleep when I have dreamed, Have you been from my mind. I love you, dear, Shall always love you, all eternity Cannot exhaust my love, no change shall come To change my love. And yet to love you so, And have no recompense but silence, thoughts Of your contempt for me, make exquisite The suffering of my spirit. Could I sing My sorrow would enchant the world, or write, I might regain your love with beauty born Out of this agony."

"When I returned I had three typhoid cases given me. And with that passion which you see in me I gave myself to save them, took this love Which fills my heart for you and nursed them with it; Said to myself to keep me on my feet When I was staggering from fatigue, 'Give now Out of this love, it may be God's own gift With which you may restore these boys to health. What matter if he love you not.' And so For twelve hours day by day I waged with death A slowly winning battle."

"As they rallied, But when my strength was almost spent--what comes? This Miriam Fay writes odiously to me. She has heard something of our love, or sensed Some dereliction, since she learned that I Had not been to confessional. Anyway She writes me, writes our head-nurse. All at once A cloud of vile suspicion, like a dust Blown from an alley takes my breath away, And blinds my eyes. With all these things piled up, My labors and my sorrow, your neglect, My fears of a dishonorable discharge From service, which I love, I faint, collapse, Have streptococcus of the throat, and lie Two weeks in fever, sleepless, and with thoughts Of you, and what may happen, my disgrace. But suffering brought me friends, the officers Perhaps had heard the scandal, but they knew My heart was in the work. The major who Was the attending doctor of these boys I broke myself with nursing, cared for me, And cheered me with his praise. And so it was Your little soldier, still I call myself, Your little soldier, though you own me not, Turned failure into victory, won by pain Befriending hands. The major kept me here And intercepted my discharge, procured My furlough here in Nice."

"I rose from bed, Went back to work, in nine days failed again, This time with influenza; for three weeks Was ill enough to die, for all the while My fever raged, my heart was hurting too, Because of you. When I got up again I looked a ghost, was weaker than a child, At last came here to Nice."

"This is the hundredth Letter that I've written since we parted. My heart is tired, dear, I shall write no more. You shall have silence for your silence, yet When I am silent, trust me none the less, Believe I love you. If you say that I Have hidden secrets, have not told you all, The diary flung away to keep my life Beyond your eye's inspection, still I say Where is your right to know what lips I've kissed, What hopes or dreams I cherished in the past Before I knew you. If you still accuse My spirit of deceit, hypocrisy In lifting up my flower of love to you Fresh, as it seemed, with morning dew, not tears, I have my own defense for that, you'll see. Or lastly, if your love is turned to gall Because, as you discovered, body of love Was given to Gregory Wenner, after you Had come to me in love and chosen me As servant of you in the war, I write To clear myself to you respecting that, And re-insist 'twas body of love alone, Not love I gave, and what I gave was given Because you won me, left me, did not claim As wholly yours what you had won. But now, As I have hope of life beyond the grave, As I love God, though serving Him but ill, I say to you, I have been wholly yours In spirit and in body since the day I gave to you the locket, sat with you And heard the waltz of Chopin, six days after I went with Gregory Wenner. I explain Why I did this, shall mention it no more; You must be satisfied or go your way In bitterness and hatred."

"But first, my love, As spirits equal and with equal rights, Or privilege of equal wrongs, have I Demanded former purity of you? I have repelled revealments of your past; Have never questioned of your marriage, asked, Which might be juster, rights withdrawn from her; May rightly think, since you and she have life In one abode together, that you live As marriage warrants. And above it all Have I not written you to go your way, Find pleasures where you could, have only begged That you keep out of love, continue to give Your love to me? And why? Be cynical, And think I gave you freedom as a gallant That I might with a quiet conscience take Such freedom for myself. It is not true: I've learned the human body, know the male, And know his life is motile, does not rest, And wait, as woman's does, cannot do so. So understanding have put down distaste, That you should fare in freedom, in my heart Have wished that love or ideals might sustain Your spirit; but if not, my heart is filled With happiness, if you love me. Take these thoughts And with them solve your sorrow for my past, Your loathing of it, if you feel that way However bad it be, whatever sins Imagination in you stirred depicts As being in my past."

"Men have been known Whom women made fifth husbands, more than that. Not my case, I'll say that, and if you face Reality, and put all passion love Where nature puts it by the side of love Which custom favors, you have only left The matter of the truth to grasp, believe, See clearly and accept: Do I swear true I love you, and since loving you am faithful, Cannot be otherwise, nor wish to be?"

"Dear, listen and be fair. You did not love me When first I came to you. You did not ask, Because of love, a faithfulness; in truth You did not ask a faithfulness at all. But then and theretofore you treated me As woman to be won, a happiness To be achieved and put aside. Be fair, This was your mood. But if you loved me then, Or soon thereafter loved me, as I know, What should I do? I loved you, am a woman. At last behold your love, am lifted, thrilled. See what I thought was love before was nothing; Know I was never loved before you loved me; And know as well I never loved before; Know all the former raptures of my heart As buds in March closed hard and scentless, never The June before for my heart! O, my love, What should I do when this most priceless gift Was held up like a crown within your hands To place upon my brows--what should I do? Take you aside and say, here is the truth, Here's Gregory Wenner--what's the good of that? How had it benefited you or me, Increased your love, or founded it upon A surer rock than beauty? Hideous truth! Useless too often, childish in such case. You would have suffered, turned from me, and lost The rapture which I gave you, and if rapture Be not a prize, where in this world so much Of ugliness and agony prevails, I do not know our life."

"But just suppose I gave you rapture, beauty--you concede I gave you these, that's why you suffer so: You choose to think them spurious since you found I knew this Gregory Wenner, are they so? They are as real in spite of Gregory Wenner As if my lips had been a cradled child's. But just suppose, as I began to say, You never had discovered Gregory Wenner, And had the rapture, beauty which you had, How stands the case? Was I not justified In hiding Gregory Wenner to preserve The beauty and the rapture which you craved? Dear, it was love of beauty which impelled What you have called deceit, it was my woman's Passionate hope to give the man she loved The beauty which he saw in her that inspired My acting, as you phrase it, an elaborate Hypocrisy, an ugly word from you!... But listen, dear, how spirit works in love: When you beheld me pure, I would be pure; As virginal, I would be virginal; As innocent, I would be innocent; As truthful, constant, so I would be these Though to be truthful, constant when I loved you Came to me like my breath, as natural. So I would be all things to you for love, Fill full your dreams, your vision of my soul For now and future days, but make myself In days before I knew you what you thought, Believed and cherished. Hence if you combine The thought that what I was did not concern you, With fear that if you knew, your heart would change; And with these join that passionate zeal of love To be your lover, wholly beautiful, You have the exposition of my soul In its elaborate deceit,--your words."

"Some fifty years ago a man and woman Are talking in a room, say certain things, We were not there! We two are with each other Somewhere, and fifty years from now, we two Will look to after souls who were not there Like figures in a crystal globe; I mean To lift to light the wounds of brooding love, And show you that the world contains events Of which we live in ignorance, if we know They hurt us with their mystery, coming near In our soul's cycle, somehow. But the dead, And what they lived, what are they?--what the things Of our dead selves to selves who are alive, And live the hour that's given us?"

"What's your past To me, beloved, if your soul and body Are mine to-day, not only mine, but made By living more my own, more rich for me, More truly harmonized with me? Believe me You are my highest hope made real at last, The climax of my love life, I accept Whatever passed in rooms in years gone by; Whatever contacts, raptures, pains or hopes As schooling of your soul to make it precious, And for my worship, my advancement, kneel And thank the God of mysteries and wisdom Who made you for me, let me find you, love you!"

"Now of myself a word. In years to come These words I write will seem all truth to you, Their prism colors, violet and red, Will fade away and leave them in the light Arranged and reasonable and wholly true. Then you will read the words: I found you, dear, After a life of pain; and you will see My spirit like a blossom that you watch From budding to unfolding, knowing thus How it matured from day to day. I say My life has been all pain, I see at first A father and a mother linked in strife. Am thrown upon my girlhood's strength to teach, Earn money for my schooling, would know French; I studied Greek a little, gave it up, Distractions, duties, came too fast for me. I longed to sing, took lessons, lack of money Ended the lessons. But above it all My heart was like an altar lit with flame, Aspired to heaven, asked for sacrifice, For incense to be bright, more beautiful For beauty's sake. And in my soul's despair, And just to use this vital flame, I turned To God, the church. You must be stone to hear Such words as these and not relent, an image Of basalt which I pray to not to see And not to hear! But listen! look at me, Did I become a drifter, wholly fail? Did I become a common woman, turn To common life and ways? Can you dispute My eyes were fixed upon a lovelier life, Have never gaze withdrawn from loveliness? Did I give up, or break, turn to the flesh, Pleasures, the solace of the senses--No! Where some take drink to ease their hurts and dull Their disappointments, I renewed my will To sacrifice and service, work, who saw These things in essence may be drink as well, And bring the end, oblivion while you live, But bring supremacy instead of failure, Collapse, disgust and fears. Think what you will Of me for Gregory Wenner, and imagine The worst you may, I stand here as I am, With my life proven! And to end the pain I went to nurse the soldiers in the war With thoughts that if I died in service, good! Not that I gladly give up life, I love it. But life must be surrendered; let it be In service, as some end it up in drink, Or opium or lust. Beloved heart, I know my will is stronger than my vision, That passion masters judgment; that my love For love and life and beauty are too much For gifts like mine; I know that I am dumb, Songless, without articulate words--but still My very dumbness is a kind of speech Which some day will flood down your deafened rocks, And sweep my meaning over you."