University of Virginia Library

With his word that he would stay until tomorrow,
He obeyed; and with a willingness unknown
For so long that he was loth to recognize it
As a wish to breathe again the breath of life,
He could see, like fallen walls of an old city
In a plain where there was only sand and death,
Dead emptiness of hate and desolation
That he would not recall. He would forget it,
And by it be forgotten. He was tired
Of deserts, and had found at last that his,
Where he had groped and stumbled for so long,
Had been too barren a place even for death
To dwell in. Death had abandoned Malory,
Or was not yet his friend. There was no friend
Anywhere, and he saw no need of one.
If glimmerings that attended him today
Were intimations of a coming light,
He was to be alone for a long time,
And with no friends in sight. If he deserved them
Or if his light required them in his picture,
No doubt they would be there eventually.
But for the present they were far away,
And better so. He would have little for them,
Or for the solace of their wakeful ears.
Their presence would be kindness at his heels,
And underfoot, imploring to be stepped on
If in the way, and angry if obeyed.
There was a time for friends that was not now.
If he should find a way back to himself,
His enemies, long pursued and long forsaken,
Would be his friends; for death, living in them,
Would be his life. There was no answer yet.
His fancies came and went, and were as vain
As a dumb wave that he saw burrowing
Among weed-muffled rocks to find a sound
That was not there. From where he stood, alone,
A few rocks and the sea was all there was
Of a life-burdened world except himself;
And he was not yet small enough to carry
A whole world's burden. There was hope in that,
If there was none in those recurrent waves
That came and lifted always the same weeds,
Until they were like coarse and floating hair
Of giant women drowned and turned to stone,
And fell to rise again to the same end
That was no end, and always came to nothing.
In clouds that came and went, there was at least
A sort of promise, for they came and went;
But here there was a promise of nothing else
Than waves and waves, and then waves, and more waves,
That went and came. There was nothing in them for men
Whose imminent need to live was a parole
And a probation; and there was less for men
Who came from Sharon yesterday to die.
He found an inland way among the trees
More to his fancy. They would not go from him
And then come back. He was tired of things that moved
And did no more. He had been one of them
So long, for the achievement of so little,
That he would rest—who had no power to rest.
He should not rest again until he died,
Which was a thing to know. If Nightingale
Told him of what was his, he would deny it,
And say it was not his. Nothing was his,
Which was another thing for him to know.

In the afternoon, with Nightingale before him,
Silent, in the same room, in the same chair,
Malory found the task of saying nothing
Only a somewhat easier one than speech.
Having his wits, he was uncomfortable
With Nightingale, who was aware of more
Than would have been a pleasure to explain
Of Malory's constraint. If in his eyes
There was a stricken willingness to smile,
With any encouragement, he could find none
In Malory's face, and said, indifferently,
“I'm glad you keep your word, and are to stay
With me until tomorrow. I like doctors,
Lawyers, and criminals, and all true men
Who keep their word; also those competent
Grand-nephews of Jehu who drive our cars.
If you are willing, we'll have one of them
Here now, and we'll go rolling. With two slaves
To put me in and take me out again,
I do a deal of rolling, and feel the world
Rolling away—though you may not believe it.
For why should you believe me, Malory,
Whatever I say? And yet, you may as well.
I'll say a little more while we are going,
And seeing the world the Lord has made so fair
For our defeats and victories. Vae victis.
Pronounce it as you think a noble Roman
Might once have uttered it, and say it twice.
I've an impatient and laborious ear
For listening while I ride, so you need say
Only those words, and say them to yourself.
We shall have time to scan familiar scenes
Again, and I shall not be long in saying
All I shall say.”

Nightingale's word was good,
And he was not long saying to Malory
As much as was required of him to hear,
And hear without reply. “I shall not know
What you are trying to do if you insist
On argument, or on immediate speech.
So, Malory, put yourself aside, and hold
Your scientific tongue. Imprison it
Behind your teeth and say it is a tiger—
A thing to do a fractious deal of harm
If it goes wild. Besides, I have no ears,
And I am rather helpless in some ways.
Remember that; also conserve a thought
Of millions who have never heard of you
Or me, and of more millions who are coming.
So for God's sake be quiet, and admire
The outside of God's world, which is not bad.
Perhaps we may as well not go to Sharon
Today. Perhaps we may as well not go
Tomorrow. I shall go there, before long,
For there the Nightingales have always gone
When they have done their singing.”

Malory stood
Once more by the wide window, where he saw
Those tumbling and unceasing little waves
Until it seemed that he had seen them there
Since he was born; and they were not his waves.
Yet surely they were flashing with a language.
That was important and inevitable;
There were too many of them to be dismissed
By one whose life was only a little more
Of time than one of theirs. If theirs were lost,
Why should not his be lost and be as nothing
In a more stormy and unsounded ocean
Than ever filled the valleys of a world
For men to weigh and measure? There was time
For living in himself and on himself,
Like a thought-eating worm, and dying of it
Unthought of, or for life larger than that,
Larger than self, and one that was not death.
There was avengingly not time for both;
And his was not the least of wavering lives
That had not stood when shaken. He was not
The least of summoned men who had served well,
And, having lost themselves in a great darkness,
Had not returned and were no longer sought
Among the missing, and no longer missed.
Had he returned? Was this the light again,
Or was a darkness worse than any other,
A darkness only felt, deceiving him?
He was not sure of anything since that ride,
Except that it was over, and that hours
Made days and years, and not so many of them
As there were waves.

“Well, Malory, by my soul!”
Said Nightingale. “If I've a memory left
Of anything pleasant, and a right to say so,
That was a pleasant ride. You like my ocean
Better, perhaps; yet even if it were yours,
You would not wear a window out with watching
The same one thing, and always the same thing.
I am the watcher who can swear to that.
We've had a ride; and since you are still here,
The prisoner of your word, we'll have some drink—
Which is forbidden. I shall not die of it.
If I should die just now, I should be going
A little too soon. You, a benign pursuer
Of hidden miseries, and of hidden means
To rid a more or less debatable race
Of their pernicious presence, are excused
From caring, or trying to care, whether I die
Tomorrow or today. There are more reasons
For your not caring than I'll reiterate;
There are more reasons than there may be days
For me to say them over and be sorry
For being as I have been. For a man with eyes
To see more surely what there was before him
Than eyes of the less fortunate may see,
I have not seen so well as men supposed,
And may be still supposing. Twice in my life
I have been blind; and that was a bad matter:
Once when I sank my judgment and your money
Into that most unhappy hole in the ground;
Once when I kicked my decency and honor
In after them. My purpose is to say
So clearly what I did that I shall never
Say it again. I'm sure you understand
Everything now, except that I should do it;
And sometime when you ask a streptococcus
Why it's a streptococcus, you may learn
All that I know of a dead Nightingale
That will not die. I'll say no more of devils,
But out of all this ruin, I'll save a few
Opinions and ideas for the small profit
Of having them. I have not seen the devil,
But I have seen sufficient of his work
Not to make light of him, or to invite him
Into my house again. The ruin I made
Is not all ruin, unless you make it so.
But if you ask why Agatha was chosen
To be the innocent means and sacrifice,
You will ask more than me before you know.
I shall not tell you. I am too blind for that.
I was not blind at first with Agatha—
I was almost ... But what's the use of time,
If it will not be done when it's all gone?
We were not going back, but Agatha
Was calling me; and when she calls, I go—
And do not find her. There is little for me
To find, wherever I look. My blemishes
And evils now are mostly a sad trash
Of memory to be swept and blown away,
Or blown so as to leave you a clear path.
You and the world are in a partnership
Too large and too impersonal to include
A presence of sick hate. You owe yourself
To your unhappy millions in your city
Of cries and silences and suffering hope.
And there are many millions more to be,
And to be stricken. The world is not all pain,
But there is pain enough ahead of it,
And in it, to ensure the resurrection
Of you and your awakening faculties
For the few hours that we call years of life
That you may find remaining. There's a bell
Ringing, and not for you. We are not subtle
Today, Malory; there's hardly need of it.
I hope it's not another one come to kill me,
For you and Absalom, the Lord's appointed—
Who lived a while in heaven before he died,
And was a king of earth, having what he wanted—
Have so enriched me with an overplus
Of armament that I shall need no more
To scare my ghosts and enemies away,
If one day there should be too many of them.
I'll fancy rather it's a man of law—
This time; and it's as well for you to know him.
You are not fearing lawyers; not today.
Wherefore, we'll have him in. He's a good lawyer,
And does not know that I'm not a good man.
He knows too many others who are worse.
He has no knowledge of the lights I had
And could not follow; and if he knew of them,
And of the several ways where I've been lost,
Most likely he would not believe in them,
Having no time for visions or inventions.
Another day you may enlighten him
Somewhat, as you think best. When you are here,
You and your microbes, and your apparatus,
Your staff, your patients, and your God knows what,
You will know why it was this house was built.
A knowledge that was out of my possession
Till yesterday is a good knowledge now
For you, and who shall say how many more?
A pleasant home for microbes, I should call it,
Though it has never been a home for me.”

The lawyer's entrance came to no long writing
Of a long story. It was all revealed
In words that held a latent increment
Larger than any estate. It was not land
And houses, and abundant maintenance,
That Malory found when he was given to read
The text of Nightingale's last composition,
But an imperious, fixed, and lonely way
Of life in service. There was no escape
From the long sentence of his usefulness.
He was a slave now in a city of pain,
A pullulating place that was all places,
And soon or late the last abode of man
Till his departure. There was no fear of joy
To be a stain on his inheritance,
Except the lonely joy of being alive
In a good servitude, and of not being
Obscurely and unintelligibly wasted.
Now he could say what Agatha may have meant,
Between him and her grave, when she was there
To welcome him with an untroubled smile
On his dark road—one that would still be gray,
For him, and endless, if he found no light
For others. He was alone, and would remain so,
Until he found more light.

“So much for that,”
Said Nightingale; and having signed his name,
He smiled at Malory and the man of law
With purpose and approval. “It's all done,”
He said, “and I've a planet off my shoulders.
I was tired of being Atlas; for my world,
Though it was no enormous one, was heavy.
And now that you two estimable agents
Of my deliverance are not unacquainted,
I should be glad if you would leave me here
A while to be alone, and not to talk.
Be sorry for an ominous example,
And let yourselves so live that you may not
Be living on wheels one day in a large house,
Alone—not even if you have always wanted
A large house by the sea. You will come back,
But I'll shake hands with you for your assistance,
And wish you a good ride. This is a day
For riding, and a good day for some thought
On my part. It is not like every day.”

They left him smiling, and, as Malory knew,
In more pain than his body alone could feel.
They rode as easy strangers, having no food
For malice or mistrust. If one of them
Acknowledged inwardly a futile envy
Of such an unforeseen and unexplained
Cascade of shining fortune for another,
Nothing was to be done to a man's name
Written by him whose name was his to write.
They rode, and had but little to say of him,
Who, seemingly, had said everything for once
And all, and on a small array of paper.
For an hour they rode, in the late afternoon,
With trees and fields and houses on one side,
And with an ocean on the other, darker
As daylight faded, and with smaller waves
That had a slower motion as they rose
And broke more quietly now, and made less foam.
They told of a beginning of long silence
That night, and were somehow, for Malory,
Like toiling, weary people, who were soon
To have some rest before they toiled again,
And for a season were not to be waves.
Having each his personal fancy for companion,
They rode, saying what the old amenities
Required as best they might, and they came back;
And when they came to Nightingale's, they rolled
Quietly in on crushed blue stone to find
A strange house not so quiet, and a stranger
Within that was invisible, and a shape
Of someone that was no one, still in his chair,
With Malory's pistol on the floor beside him.
What Malory once had called his only wealth
Had given him wealth to serve, and without waiting.
Nightingale had said nothing about waiting,
And Malory had known why.

Alone that evening
With all there was to see of Nightingale,
Lying at last unharassed and untorn,
Malory sat with fate, and gazed at it.
“Well, Nightingale, you are quiet enough now,”
He thought; “and you have earned now, in your way,
Or in another way that was not yours,
The privilege of a sleep—if you are sleeping.
You have bound me hand and foot, body and brain,
To service. I owe to Agatha, and to you,
All that I owe mankind. It's all an owing,
For me, and shall be one till I have paid
To man my sum of knowledge, which is little,
God knows, though not so little as I should be
For hiding it, or for throwing it away.
The light you could not follow is not mine,
Which is my light—a safer one for me,
No doubt, than if it threw a gleam too far
To show my steps. There is no grief in me
For your release, and there is no hate now
For Agatha's. If I could bring her back,
By calling her, to live and die again,
I should be silent; for I cannot know
The pain there was that was not hers to suffer,
Because she was not here. I cannot know,
For certain, that your way, dark as it was,
Was not the necessary way of life.
There was in yours at least a buried light
For time and man; and science, living in time,
May find at last a gleam nearer than yours,
For those who are not born to follow it
Before it has been found. There is, meanwhile,
A native light for others, but none born
Of penitence, or of man's fear to die.
Fear is not light, and you were never afraid.
You were blind, Nightingale, but never afraid;
And even when you were blind, you may have seen,
Darkly, where you were going, and where you are.
For where you are tonight, there was your place;
And your dark glass is broken.”

He looked up
From Nightingale to see, against the wall,
Dimly, and on dim wheels, a dead man's chair
With no man in it. Here was the same room
Where fate was waiting for him yesterday—
With a presence now of death to make it empty,
And the difference of a day to make it his.
Here was a place where gold would buy no sorrow,
And the embellished rhetoric of regret
Would soon be words forgotten, and no more.
There was nothing left of Nightingale but silence,
And a cold weight of mystery that was man,
And was no longer man—as waves outside
Were cold and still, and were no longer waves.
There was nothing left for Malory but remembrance
Of the best that was behind him, and life struggling
In the darkness of a longer way before him
Than a way there was from anywhere to Sharon—
A darkness where his eyes were to be guided
By light that would be his, and Nightingale's.