Chapter 3

Yes, may they come, and soon. Again I say, May they come soon! -- before too many of them Shall be the bloody cost of our defection. When hell waits on the dawn of a new state, Better it were that hell should not wait long, -- Or so it is I see it who should see As far or farther into time tonight Than they who talk and tremble for me now, Or wish me to those everlasting fires That are for me no fear. Too many fires Have sought me out and seared me to the bone -- Thereby, for all I know, to temper me For what was mine to do. If I did ill What I did well, let men say I was mad; Or let my name for ever be a question That will not sleep in history. What men say I was will cool no cannon, dull no sword, Invalidate no truth. Meanwhile, I was; And the long train is lighted that shall burn, Though floods of wrath may drench it, and hot feet May stamp it for a slight time into smoke That shall blaze up again with growing speed, Until at last a fiery crash will come To cleanse and shake a wounded hemisphere, And heal it of a long malignity That angry time discredits and disowns. Tonight there are men saying many things; And some who see life in the last of me Will answer first the coming call to death; For death is what is coming, and then life. I do not say again for the dull sake Of speech what you have heard me say before, But rather for the sake of all I am, And all God made of me. A man to die As I do must have done some other work Than man's alone. I was not after glory, But there was glory with me, like a friend, Throughout those crippling years when friends were few, And fearful to be known by their own names When mine was vilified for their approval. Yet friends they are, and they did what was given Their will to do; they could have done no more. I was the one man mad enough, it seems, To do my work; and now my work is over. And you, my dear, are not to mourn for me, Or for your sons, more than a soul should mourn In Paradise, done with evil and with earth. There is not much of earth in what remains For you; and what there may be left of it For your endurance you shall have at last In peace, without the twinge of any fear For my condition; for I shall be done With plans and actions that have heretofore Made your days long and your nights ominous With darkness and the many distances That were between us. When the silence comes, I shall in faith be nearer to you then Than I am now in fact. What you see now Is only the outside of an old man, Older than years have made him. Let him die, And let him be a thing for little grief. There was a time for service, and he served; And there is no more time for anything But a short gratefulness to those who gave Their scared allegiance to an enterprise That has the name of treason -- which will serve As well as any other for the present. There are some deeds of men that have no names, And mine may like as not be one of them. I am not looking far for names tonight. The King of Glory was without a name Until men gave him one; yet there He was, Before we found Him and affronted Him With numerous ingenuities of evil, Of which one, with His aid, is to be swept And washed out of the world with fire and blood.

Once I believed it might have come to pass With a small cost of blood; but I was dreaming -- Dreaming that I believed. The Voice I heard When I left you behind me in the north, -- To wait there and to wonder and grow old Of loneliness, -- told only what was best, And with a saving vagueness, I should know Till I knew more. And had I known even then -- After grim years of search and suffering, So many of them to end as they began -- After my sickening doubts and estimations Of plans abandoned and of new plans vain -- After a weary delving everywhere For men with every virtue but the Vision -- Could I have known, I say, before I left you That summer morning, all there was to know -- Even unto the last consuming word That would have blasted every mortal answer As lightning would annihilate a leaf, I might have trembled on that summer morning; I might have wavered; and I might have failed.

And there are many among men today To say of me that I had best have wavered. So has it been, so shall it always be, For those of us who give ourselves to die Before we are so parcelled and approved As to be slaughtered by authority. We do not make so much of what they say As they of what our folly says of us; They give us hardly time enough for that, And thereby we gain much by losing little. Few are alive to-day with less to lose Than I who tell you this, or more to gain; And whether I speak as one to be destroyed For no good end outside his own destruction, Time shall have more to say than men shall hear Between now and the coming of that harvest Which is to come. Before it comes, I go -- By the short road that mystery makes long For man's endurance of accomplishment. I shall have more to say when I am dead.

The False Gods

"We are false and evanescent, and aware of our deceit, From the straw that is our vitals to the clay that is our feet. You may serve us if you must, and you shall have your wage of ashes, -- Though arrears due thereafter may be hard for you to meet.

"You may swear that we are solid, you may say that we are strong, But we know that we are neither and we say that you are wrong; You may find an easy worship in acclaiming our indulgence, But your large admiration of us now is not for long.

"If your doom is to adore us with a doubt that's never still, And you pray to see our faces -- pray in earnest, and you will. You may gaze at us and live, and live assured of our confusion: For the False Gods are mortal, and are made for you to kill.

"And you may as well observe, while apprehensively at ease With an Art that's inorganic and is anything you please, That anon your newest ruin may lie crumbling unregarded, Like an old shrine forgotten in a forest of new trees.

"Howsoever like no other be the mode you may employ, There's an order in the ages for the ages to enjoy; Though the temples you are shaping and the passions you are singing Are a long way from Athens and a longer way from Troy.

"When we promise more than ever of what never shall arrive, And you seem a little more than ordinarily alive, Make a note that you are sure you understand our obligations -- For there's grief always auditing where two and two are five.

"There was this for us to say and there was this for you to know, Though it humbles and it hurts us when we have to tell you so. If you doubt the only truth in all our perjured composition, May the True Gods attend you and forget us when we go."

Archibald's Example

Old Archibald, in his eternal chair, Where trespassers, whatever their degree, Were soon frowned out again, was looking off Across the clover when he said to me:

"My green hill yonder, where the sun goes down Without a scratch, was once inhabited By trees that injured him -- an evil trash That made a cage, and held him while he bled.

"Gone fifty years, I see them as they were Before they fell. They were a crooked lot To spoil my sunset, and I saw no time In fifty years for crooked things to rot.

"Trees, yes; but not a service or a joy To God or man, for they were thieves of light. So down they came. Nature and I looked on, And we were glad when they were out of sight.

"Trees are like men, sometimes; and that being so, So much for that." He twinkled in his chair, And looked across the clover to the place That he remembered when the trees were there.

London Bridge

"Do I hear them? Yes, I hear the children singing -- and what of it? Have you come with eyes afire to find me now and ask me that? If I were not their father and if you were not their mother, We might believe they made a noise. . . . What are you -- driving at!"

"Well, be glad that you can hear them, and be glad they are so near us, -- For I have heard the stars of heaven, and they were nearer still. All within an hour it is that I have heard them calling, And though I pray for them to cease, I know they never will; For their music on my heart, though you may freeze it, will fall always, Like summer snow that never melts upon a mountain-top. Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? Do you hear the children singing? . . . God, will you make them stop!"

"And what now in his holy name have you to do with mountains? We're back to town again, my dear, and we've a dance tonight. Frozen hearts and falling music? Snow and stars, and -- what the devil! Say it over to me slowly, and be sure you have it right."

"God knows if I be right or wrong in saying what I tell you, Or if I know the meaning any more of what I say. All I know is, it will kill me if I try to keep it hidden -- Well, I met him. . . . Yes, I met him, and I talked with him -- today."

"You met him? Did you meet the ghost of someone you had poisoned, Long ago, before I knew you for the woman that you are? Take a chair; and don't begin your stories always in the middle. Was he man, or was he demon? Anyhow, you've gone too far To go back, and I'm your servant. I'm the lord, but you're the master. Now go on with what you know, for I'm excited."

"Do you mean -- Do you mean to make me try to think that you know less than I do?"

"I know that you foreshadow the beginning of a scene. Pray be careful, and as accurate as if the doors of heaven Were to swing or to stay bolted from now on for evermore."

"Do you conceive, with all your smooth contempt of every feeling, Of hiding what you know and what you must have known before? Is it worth a woman's torture to stand here and have you smiling, With only your poor fetish of possession on your side? No thing but one is wholly sure, and that's not one to scare me; When I meet it I may say to God at last that I have tried. And yet, for all I know, or all I dare believe, my trials Henceforward will be more for you to bear than are your own; And you must give me keys of yours to rooms I have not entered. Do you see me on your threshold all my life, and there alone? Will you tell me where you see me in your fancy -- when it leads you Far enough beyond the moment for a glance at the abyss?"

"Will you tell me what intrinsic and amazing sort of nonsense You are crowding on the patience of the man who gives you -- this? Look around you and be sorry you're not living in an attic, With a civet and a fish-net, and with you to pay the rent. I say words that you can spell without the use of all your letters; And I grant, if you insist, that I've a guess at what you meant."

"Have I told you, then, for nothing, that I met him? Are you trying To be merry while you try to make me hate you?"

"Think again, My dear, before you tell me, in a language unbecoming To a lady, what you plan to tell me next. If I complain, If I seem an atom peevish at the preference you mention -- Or imply, to be precise -- you may believe, or you may not, That I'm a trifle more aware of what he wants than you are. But I shouldn't throw that at you. Make believe that I forgot. Make believe that he's a genius, if you like, -- but in the meantime Don't go back to rocking-horses. There, there, there, now."

"Make believe! When you see me standing helpless on a plank above a whirlpool, Do I drown, or do I hear you when you say it? Make believe? How much more am I to say or do for you before I tell you That I met him! What's to follow now may be for you to choose. Do you hear me? Won't you listen? It's an easy thing to listen. . . ."

"And it's easy to be crazy when there's everything to lose."

"If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? If you save me, and I lose him -- I don't know -- it won't much matter. I dare say that I've lied enough, but now I do not lie."

"Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. There you are -- piff! presto!"

"When I came into this room, It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; And I told myself before I came to find you, `I shall tell him, If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.' And if you say, as I've no doubt you will before I finish, That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, Don't think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge Of how little you found that's in me and was in me all along. I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, I'd be half as much as horses, -- and it seems that I was wrong; I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it -- Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories With a value more elusive than a dollar's? Are you sure That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger To endure another like it -- and another -- till I'm dead?"

"Has your tame cat sold a picture? -- or more likely had a windfall? Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing. Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . . What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . If you. . . ."

"If I don't?"

"There are men who say there's reason hidden somewhere in a woman, But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung."

"He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. I wonder if he makes believe that he is growing young; I wonder if he makes believe that women who are giving All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible. . . ."

"Stop -- you devil!"

". . . Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. If a dollar's worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together, Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered That I made you into someone else. . . . Oh! . . . Well, there are worse ways. But why aim it at my feet -- unless you fear you may be sorry. . . . There are many days ahead of you."

"I do not see those days."

"I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die? Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?"

"Damn the children!"

"Why? What have THEY done? . . . Well, then, -- do it. . . . Do it now, and have it over."

"Oh, you devil! . . . Oh, you. . . ."

"No, I'm not a devil, I'm a prophet -- One who sees the end already of so much that one end more Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before. But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres, On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. There! -- I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't like it. Shut the drawer now. No -- no -- don't cancel anything. I'll dance until I drop. I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away somewhere, and leave me. . . . Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, will they never stop!"

Tasker Norcross

"Whether all towns and all who live in them -- So long as they be somewhere in this world That we in our complacency call ours -- Are more or less the same, I leave to you. I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile, We've all two legs -- and as for that, we haven't -- There were three kinds of men where I was born: The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross. Now there are two kinds."

"Meaning, as I divine, Your friend is dead," I ventured.

Ferguson, Who talked himself at last out of the world He censured, and is therefore silent now, Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead -- Or most of them."

"Remember one that isn't," I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears; Treasure him also for his understanding." Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again: "You have an overgrown alacrity For saying nothing much and hearing less; And I've a thankless wonder, at the start, How much it is to you that I shall tell What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross, And how much to the air that is around you. But given a patience that is not averse To the slow tragedies of haunted men -- Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye To know them at their firesides, or out walking, --"

"Horrors," I said, "are my necessity; And I would have them, for their best effect, Always out walking."

Ferguson frowned at me: "The wisest of us are not those who laugh Before they know. Most of us never know -- Or the long toil of our mortality Would not be done. Most of us never know -- And there you have a reason to believe In God, if you may have no other. Norcross, Or so I gather of his infirmity, Was given to know more than he should have known, And only God knows why. See for yourself An old house full of ghosts of ancestors, Who did their best, or worst, and having done it, Died honorably; and each with a distinction That hardly would have been for him that had it, Had honor failed him wholly as a friend. Honor that is a friend begets a friend. Whether or not we love him, still we have him; And we must live somehow by what we have, Or then we die. If you say chemistry, Then you must have your molecules in motion, And in their right abundance. Failing either, You have not long to dance. Failing a friend, A genius, or a madness, or a faith Larger than desperation, you are here For as much longer than you like as may be. Imagining now, by way of an example, Myself a more or less remembered phantom -- Again, I should say less -- how many times A day should I come back to you? No answer. Forgive me when I seem a little careless, But we must have examples, or be lucid Without them; and I question your adherence To such an undramatic narrative As this of mine, without the personal hook."

"A time is given in Ecclesiastes For divers works," I told him. "Is there one For saying nothing in return for nothing? If not, there should be." I could feel his eyes, And they were like two cold inquiring points Of a sharp metal. When I looked again, To see them shine, the cold that I had felt Was gone to make way for a smouldering Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then, Could never quench with kindness or with lies. I should have done whatever there was to do For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned In honesty for once around the clock The loss of him, for my sake or for his, Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve, Had I the power and the unthinking will To make him tread again without an aim The road that was behind him -- and without The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness That he contended was imperative.

After a silence that had been too long, "It may be quite as well we don't," he said; "As well, I mean, that we don't always say it. You know best what I mean, and I suppose You might have said it better. What was that? Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible? Well, it's a word; and a word has its use, Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave. It's a good word enough. Incorrigible, May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross. See for yourself that house of his again That he called home: An old house, painted white, Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb To look at or to live in. There were trees -- Too many of them, if such a thing may be -- Before it and around it. Down in front There was a road, a railroad, and a river; Then there were hills behind it, and more trees. The thing would fairly stare at you through trees, Like a pale inmate out of a barred window With a green shade half down; and I dare say People who passed have said: `There's where he lives. We know him, but we do not seem to know That we remember any good of him, Or any evil that is interesting. There you have all we know and all we care.' They might have said it in all sorts of ways; And then, if they perceived a cat, they might Or might not have remembered what they said. The cat might have a personality -- And maybe the same one the Lord left out Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it, Saw the same sun go down year after year; All which at last was my discovery. And only mine, so far as evidence Enlightens one more darkness. You have known All round you, all your days, men who are nothing -- Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet Of any other need it has of them Than to make sextons hardy -- but no less Are to themselves incalculably something, And therefore to be cherished. God, you see, Being sorry for them in their fashioning, Indemnified them with a quaint esteem Of self, and with illusions long as life. You know them well, and you have smiled at them; And they, in their serenity, may have had Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they That see themselves for what they never were Or were to be, and are, for their defect, At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks That pass their tranquil ears."

"Come, come," said I; "There may be names in your compendium That we are not yet all on fire for shouting. Skin most of us of our mediocrity, We should have nothing then that we could scratch. The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please, And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross."