University of Virginia Library

Cavender, sure that she was there, could see
The room. It was the same as in years gone,
But for a baffling unreality
Which dimmed and insulated everything
Ineffably with change and accusation.
Nothing would ever be the same again,
For he was not the same; and the whole house
Was like a thing alive only with dying.
A nameless innovation was at work
In walls and corners; and all over it,
In all its darknesses and silences,
He could feel atoms moving and conspiring
Against him, and death rustling in the shadows.
Nothing was on his side; and certainly
Not the still woman who invited him
Indifferently to rapture or despair.
She was herself as he remembered her—
All but that emanation of his doubt,
Enshrouding and surrounding her tonight
With new mysteriousness; she was herself
One moment, and another she was the devil,
Dressed with her face and form, and in the clothes
That liked her best. He had not asked for them,
But they had come with her, coming as if
They had been called; and he remembered them
As if they burned him. She had put them on
To mock him, or he thought so, long ago,
When he was blinded by the sight of them
And of her wearing them as a child might,
Softer than lies, cleaner than innocence,
And asking to be praised. Now she was asking
For more than praise, more than forgiveness, more
Than life. She would not ask to be forgiven
While she had him to see. She would ask rather
To see him lying there dead before her feet.
There would be more of a consistency
In that than in submission; and far more
Of much-offended nature as he knew it
In men and things and time. He should have known
Before, not after; and he got of that
As good a compensation as one has
Of hoarding bottles that have held great wines
Of a lost vintage. She had been wine for him,
And of a power that had usurped his wits,
Once on a time, leaving of him a ruin
That was alive, a memory that could move.
Why should he look to her for less than harm,
Albeit she had brought with her, she told him,
Some drops of hope? He wondered where they were,
And in what vial of wrath she had subdued
Their wildness with her scorn.

To shift his wonder
Another way, she was regarding him
With kindness now, and with a wistful care
That healed him while it cut. “I look about,”
She said, “and things I see are like old stories,
So many of them forgotten. They come back
To me like songs not heard since heaven knows when,
Or like forgotten odors, bringing with them
Pictures of old regrets and pleasures ended,
And of old places that would not be there
If we went there to find them. It is better
Never to go, unless the pain of seeing
No more old things and places as they were
Be pleasure for us—and not always then,
If habit follows. Dead hands holding us
Are dangerous, and may not let go of us
Until we strike them; and if we do that,
They seem to suffer, as maybe they do.
I say this with old sounds and images
Besieging me and telling me of you—
Which is a miracle, if you see it so,—
Before you saw me in a twisted mirror
That you might once have broken, but would not,
Which is another pity; for without it
To plague and change you, all the rest of me
Would have been perfect—or, if not so, quite,
Would have been near enough. You would have found
Your way home in the dark more pleasantly
Than with a light like yours, and would have found
A pleasant lady waiting—which is more
Than all men always find when they go home,
Or wish to find, as many of them would say—
Veraciously enough. But they were never
Of your exacting fancy and sad skill,
Dissolving doubts in their developments,
Regardless of the presence or existence
Of that which you must find. And now I see
More grateful things before me, or behind me,
Than you and your doubts at work together with me
In darkness; and I catch a better music
Than my words now are making for your ears.
Why should we not go back and hear again
Songs you have heard me singing in this room
So many and many a time? I have them still.
Perhaps if I should sing you one of them,
You would forget your doubts, and then be sorry
For what you did to me. For a short time
You might believe me, and then not believe—
Which would be more like waking from a dream
Of joy to misery, than like joy itself;
So maybe it were better not to sing,
Though I will if you ask. But what a child
I must be to consider singing to you,
With your face looking at me! What a way
We women have, having no foresight in us,
Of seeing time only as the minute given
For us to take, as a bird takes a worm,
Or as man takes a woman when his love
Prevails more in his blood than in his heart—
A subterfuge and a discrepancy
Ensured by nature not to be uncommon.
And there's where nature, having a plan for us
Too large for your belief or your evasion,
Has made us as we are, women and men;
But why with such a sad misapprehension
Of our acquaintance with ourselves, I ask
As you are asking, and I cannot tell you—
Except as I am told that we must learn
Of our defects and doubts, however they hurt.
Love is not vengeance, though it may be death,
Which may be life. You may know more of that,
Presently. But I'm far away from singing
Now, and I must remember what came first
With the old sights and sounds; for you came first—
You and your ways. You and your many ways.
I may have had a few you may have noticed,
But God forgot one, or omitted it,
In my construction. There should have been a way
Provided for a glimpse into your heart,
Where I was to be carried so compactly
And unobtrusively on all your travels,
And in your doings for your daily bread,
With a few luxuries, or perquisites,
Not to be shared with me. My vanity
Misled me to suppose that I should be
Enough, but there was never enough for you.
I should have foreseen that your daily bread
Was mostly to be change, and that your theme
Of being was wholly to be you. No doubt
My pride was in a panic when it first
Conceived how little for you there was of me
That was not either a body or a face;
If so, my panic had some precedents,
Which notably did not help. Why am I saying
All this, when all that's over? Let's go back,
And let me see you as you were at first:
You were a man of many promises,
With deeds enough already to warrant them;
You were a playful and persuasive man,
With power and will beneath your levity
To make a woman curious to be bent
A little, but not broken; you were a man
Who covered yourself with your vitality
So well that only another man might find you—
And he might not; you were a man designed
To change a woman to a desperation,
And to destroy her when your passion felt
A twinge of insecurity. I'll wager
You have not had so many compliments
In twelve years until now. Tell me you have,
And I shall know that you are lying to me;
And I will tell you more than you will hear
Of what you have been having—for I know.”

There may have been some healing wistfulness
In her beginning, and some kindness too,
But none that was to last. No permanence
Was ever a part of her, nor was it now;
Not that it mattered now. She might enlarge
His errors, and a former few offences,
Into enormities and still be secure.
Holding a whip that was beyond his reach
And seeing, she could smile and strike him with it
Till he should cower, and with a smarting soul
Pray for her mercy—which was nothing slight
Or small, he knew, to pray for, whether or not
She struck him deeper still. She might not do it.
She might, knowing so much more now than he,
Tell him, or let him see, she found no joy
In smiting him, merely to see him suffer—
Without a word to say. It would be worse
To cringe and flinch and ache, having no word
To say, than it would be to curse and shriek
In protest, having at least a stricken right
Of protestation. Men were not born to meet
So much as this; and though it was their doing,
It was not they who did it. Some such balm
Assuaged him only for another onslaught
Of writhing certainty that he was held
In toils that he had woven for his long
Constriction and imprisonment alone.
If she was there to lacerate him, she
Could only be God's agent in the matter—
And so there must be God; or if not God,
A purpose or a law. Or was the world,
And the strange parasites infesting it,
Serpent or man or limpet, or what not,
Merely a seeming-endless incident
Of doom? If it was so, why was it so?
He could do nothing. He was in a trap.
Nothing was on his side.

“To look at you,”
She murmured, with a slow unfeeling languor,
As well as with a sort of lazy triumph,
“One could imagine that you have at last
Invested fate with an intelligence—
Which is a blow and a beneficence
Together, sometimes. What's to be done for it?
What's to be done for taking on yourself
The purpose, or the law, that puzzles you,
And troubles you, and makes you miserable?
What's to be done for trying to shake down
The stars? If you prevailed, and were successful,
I doubt if you could put them back again;
And that would be embarrassment indeed.
You were a man of many ways and means,
Of many infringements and necessities;
And you could smile away to grief and shipwreck
Those who annoyed you and impeded you
In your more secular performances;
But when you crushed a man and ended him
In your routine, you sighed and wished him well,
And first were sure that he was in the way
Of your more splendid gains and benefits.
You made the world an easier place, or said so,
For the rank and file to live in, or to die in,
As that might be. You should have made yourself
An easier way to walk in; and should first
Have been assured there was no darker way
Ordained for you than by your own self-blindness.
How could you always know that I was lying?
I never told you so. How sure were you
That all the costly flowers you bought for me
Were as intact in their enforced perfection
As I was in my natural innocence?
You should have known. Cavender, you should have known,
Before your stars came down.”

He could say little
To her defeating eyes; he could say less
To her white throat and arms, and her hands folded
So placidly and so conformed for torture
That he would not believe them hers. They waited,
Willing, in all appearance, to wait always,
While she sat watching him; and they were hands
Forbidden to be touched again by his.
They were remembered hands, and were so small
To hold so much. They could hold everything.
They could hold him, and crush him, if they would,
And fling him where they would. They were still hands
To say so much; and they were cruel hands
To be so silent. He would not look at them;
For there was peril in their gentleness,
And warning in their strength. He could say nothing
To them; but he could speak, after a time,
After a fashion, thickly:

“Was it easy
For you to smile at me while you were saying
That we had better not go back? Why not—
If we go far enough? You have no right
To let yourself be listening while I speak,
But since you too have spoken and heard words
Of mine already, and have not disappeared
At sound of them, as I believed you might,
I have a weak and most unhappy wish
To wander back, just for the sake of going,
Over some roads that were to lead to you,
Where they all ended—when I ended them.
I shall not ask you to go over them
With me tonight, for they were not your roads.
They were all waiting before I was born,
Perhaps, for me to take. Perhaps you know,
And will not tell me; or you may not know.
God knows I am not asking you to say.
I'm only wondering if along those roads
There was a devil ahead of me, unseen
And unsuspected; for there may have been one,
Because there must have been. You will see that,
If you will see me now. You will not care,
For that would be incredible—as you were
When first I found you, and as you remained;
As you remained too long. There are some women
Whose privilege is to treasure and conserve
Their mystery, and to make as much of it
As heaven may give them leave and means. But you,
Having so perilous an abundance of it,
Made for yourself a peril of its abuse—
Unconscious of how near you lived with madness
In one who could not know. If I had known,
I should be free, and you would not be here.
There would have been an end, but not the end
That was. I might be now as you are now—
Though I should not be here. If you are here,
And you must be, for God's sake, do not go!
Laramie! Do not go! I am not trying
To shake even what dust weighs from my shoulders.
Let them bear all there is for them to bear,
And lash me if you must. But do not go!
You have not said what you are here to say.
God will not let you go!”

Her folded hands
Remained as ever. Only her lips and eyes
Revealed a furtive and unhurried scorn
That was a promise but was not an answer.
Then she said, smiling, and with eyes half-closed,
“Your talk is rather as that of one forgetting
The size of life. But then, you never knew it,
Except as yours. The world was made for you,
And you were master of as much of it
As had your shadow on it while you stayed
At home. Your travels and advantages
Undid you and the freedom of your soul
And mind and body. You have not stepped since then
With the same enviable indifference
To the unwinking eye that's always watching
The mighty when they're tripped. I can remember
When there was not a way of mortal walking
So firm, and so erect and independent,
And so distinct in its authority,
As yours. But there was wickedness and waste
In your abused abundance (as you say
There was in mine, while saying you don't know)—
Which is so lamentably why it is
That you are here. I shall not go away,
So long as you are gracious and respectful,
Until you tell me, after good reflection,
Whether you wish to go with me, or stay.
I shall not have your life. I do not want it.
There is a purpose, or a law, you say,
That worries you. Well, one of them may use it,
For something. I doubt if God remembers it.
There have been so many since then.”

Her eyes were open,
Having in them a light that held no love;
And that which on her lips had been a smile
Became a slow short laughter. He could feel
Once more a moisture coming on his forehead,
And he was trembling in a cold dismay
Of unbelief. Whose words had he been hearing?
Was Laramie saying them? She must have said them,
For there she was; and she was smiling still,
Sleepily, once he would have called it, smiling
Himself, and valuing her with tenderness,
Because she was so beautiful to look at,
And comforting to touch. Now, if he touched her,
She might be nothing. He must not forget
That she had warned him, and he must remember
His place among men who have not a place;
And after that, if there was profit in it,
He might assay the dross of his deserving
To find there more than scorn or less than hate.
What should he try to find where all was dust?
If she had brought with her those drops of hope,
They were concealed with her identity;
And she had not yet promised he should have them.

He started at the sound of her low voice,
So low and soothing that he might have wept
Hearing it; and he saw now in her face
The coming of another gentleness,
A chiding, and a sorrow. “I am sorry,”
She said, “if I was bitter with you just then,
But your words before mine were not assuring:
There would have been an end, if you had known,
You said, but not that end. Why do you fly
So far away from me on the dark wings
Of your uncertainty? Why do you say the end?
If you had known, there might have been no end;
And you and I together might still be here,
Happy as children, with age watching us
From out of corners, but not touching us.
Oh no, not yet. We might be like two squirrels
Having a home in a large hollow tree,
More to be judged than those who had no tree
Like ours, and had not our exclusive store
Of nuts and acorns—which are necessary,
No matter how much the squirrels love each other,
Or with what loyalty. Why should it be,
With all the rest unfailing and abundant,
That loyalty should cultivate so little
Concern to save itself? Why are we made
So restless, and insatiable in change,
That we must have a food that is not ours?
And having poured the vinegar of suspicion
On food that once we found so appetizing,
Why in the name of heaven are we amazed
To find it not so sweet? And having soiled
Ourselves illustriously enough to serve
As migratory landmarks for the town,
Why must we look so viciously for spots
Where we must find them, even if we must make them?
The spots you found on me would have surprised
A leopard.”

Was she never to be herself,
He wondered; and he watched her watching him,
As one amused and weary of seeing him,
And unmoved by his wonder. Half she said
Had more the tenor of recrimination
Born of his long remorse and self-defeat
Than of her native way; and half she said
Was like her when he had adored and prized her
As an unmatched possession, which was all
There was in reason for a man to do;
And he was reasonable. Idolatry
Was never more so—never until there came
An evening when his idol swayed and mocked him,
As if to seize him and to strangle him.
He could not see what happened after that,
Or say what happened. He could only know
When the world stopped, and all the stars were dark,
And when the moon, the same moon that had seen
A steaming world before there was a man,
Gave no more light, although it was still shining.
And it was shining now—even as the eyes
Of Laramie were shining, without light
To guide him, or to show him where he was,
Or what was coming. If she did not know,
She might be merciful, and without mercy
Say that he was to suffer and to die
At fate's appointed pleasure. If she had come
Only for that, why had she come at all?
Why had she come so far without a reason?
It was a part of her to have no reasons,
And perhaps that was one.

“You should have known.
Cavender, you should have known.” Like drops of lead
Those words had burned a way into his heart,
Where they still burned. What manner of wife was this
To endure him in his guilt and ignominy,
And laugh while she endured? It was her way
Sometimes, and long ago, to laugh at him
When he was wise and solemn, but that was over—
Longer ago than ageless men remember.
He had been dead and damned again to living
Since then, and that was why he was alive.
One memory was between him and all time
Before it. All his time now was eternal,
And she was watching him as if she knew it.
“Cavender, why go back and try so hard
To bury yourself behind your memories?”
She frowned, he thought; and in her voice he felt
A pitying triumph that was worse than hate.
“You cannot hide yourself. There is for you
Only one memory left; and I can see you
Through it as clearly as through mountain air.
There's nothing in this going back of yours
But a sick hope to find some reason there,
Stronger than you, for what you did to me.
Some overwhelming heritage may have done it,
You hope; and so it may. I hope so, too.
Unhappily, you must die to find that out,
If ever you are to know. How shall I say
What you, who knew so little while you believed
Yourself a king of life, may learn of death?
You may learn all, or nothing. Why look to me
For wisdom that is not for man or woman?
Do you not see me as a woman still?
I should have said so. Cavender, Cavender, think
No more of going back, there's nothing there.
Twelve years ago it was all swept away,
And there your time begins—where your life ended.
The rest of it is only a long dying.
If you revealed yourself and told the law
Your story, you would not have so long a death,
And you might gain somewhat. The laws of men,
Along with older laws and purposes,
Might serve you well. Why not? Remorse and pain
May be the curse of our accomplishment
On earth, and may be our career, sometimes.
It may be, and it is. If there's a justice,
I have not found it yet, though I have hope;
And I have brought some drops of it for you.
I mentioned them.”

“Good God in heaven!” he cried.
His wisdom and expediency forgotten,
He was a mendicant imploring her
To cease, and let him know. “Tell me the truth,”
He begged, “and you may let the dogs of hell
Follow and eat me. I shall not care then.
Tell me that I was mad for doubting you,
Or that a poison that was burning in me
Was truth on fire, as I believed it was.
I am not asking now to be forgiven,
Or dreaming of it. Laramie! Let me know,
And leave me then to die. I can do that.
Living and dying will be no more then
Than clouds on water. I have had death enough
To care no more for dying than for sleeping—
If I could sleep. I shall not sleep again
Until I know. And even if I be told,
I shall not walk again with men and women.
My God, that I should come to this—to this!
Laramie, give me the last drop of hope
That you will tell me, and then you may kill me.
Laramie, let me know!”

“Living and dying,”
She said, with hardness gleaming in her eyes,—
“Your living and my dying, for example,
Are nothing to your knowing whether or not
My freedom was a sin. Why do you ask,
I wonder.” Her mouth was harder than her eyes
Now, and there was no pity for him in either,
While for a time of silence she sat there,
With her hands folded, always watching him.
“Why do you ask for what I cannot tell?”
She said; and seeing his face incredulous
With pain, and tortured with abject amazement,
She asked again, as anyone might, surprised,
“How shall I tell you, when I do not know?”