Collected poems of Edwin Arlington Robinson

Althea, like a white bird left alone
In a still cage of leaves and memories,
Sat watching summer, seeing no more of it
Than scattered sunlight—which was better at least
For her to see than rain. There was no sound,
Or sight of sound, to say that even a leaf
Had left in it a whisper. The last voice
Had spoken, and said all there was to know.
The man whose voice it was that she had heard
There yesterday was now as far from her,
And was a phantom as intangible
To capture, as remembrance would have been
Of her first knowledge that she was alive.
Her world was dry and silent, and green vines
Around her where she sat, watching her thoughts,
Glimmered in vain to say their light was not
A darkness. If she looked away from them,
She might see other light for other women,
But they were all too far for much of that,
This afternoon; and she was only one
Of the Lord's playthings—if there was a Lord
Who lighted lamps only to put them out.
The sun might be a lamp, or the white furnace
Itself of life on earth, and it might burn
Earth and all on it slowly to a cinder,
Before Althea saw where she was going,
Or where there was to go, or what there was

1232

Worth finding if she went. Calamity
Bewildered and outraged reality
Within her so completely, and profoundly,
That sorrow fought with rage to find a name
For nothingness. She made a little image
Of crumbling arrogance and desperation,
Saying its name was pride, telling herself
That if she held it fast and prayed to it,
And trusted it, she would be saved at last,
And satisfied. But while she fondled it,
Clutching it with an unavailing hope,
She felt and watched it falling dismally
To pieces; and she saw the pieces falling
Relentlessly to dust. Women in books
Had made of pride a guidance and a magic,
And walked with it through fire and desolation
To strength and safety. Women alive, also,
With only pride for sorrow's mask and armor,
Had suffered charmingly; for she had seen them,
And seeing them she had wondered not a little
How it was done. Now it was hers to know
More than a babbling tells. Never till now
Had she foreseen herself assailable
And appetizing to the common tongue,
But now she was, or was to be tomorrow,
A diet and a sustenance of talk
For an immortal hunger that began
In Eden, when Eve told the animals
All about man. There were tears blinding her,
And she could only smile at a brave fancy,
Forlornly with her mouth; and her mouth shook
In a new way that was not humorous.
There was no mirth in Eden. There was fire;
And she was driven alone into the dark,

1233

Where there was no way back. She must go on
Alone; and there was no place anywhere
For her to go. It was all old enough,
Or so tradition sang; and she supposed
That there were women enough who might have told her
That it was always new, and very strange.

There was no sound until her heart heard steps
Of someone coming. Was he coming back?
Never, she said; and she prayed, saying it,
That he was coming back. Hidden by trees
That once had shaded her lost ancestors,
A man, with a man's feet, was coming nearer,
Soon to be visible, and now recognized
As one of all men, saving always one,
Who might not be unwelcome. Unannounced
And unexpected, here he was again,
After another foreign wandering,
Deploringly to find only himself
Attending and awaiting him, he said,
Wherever he went next. Althea's house
Was always the last house he left behind him,
He said, and it was always the first house
Before him sailing home. Always, he said.
Althea might explain it or forget it,
But so it was. It was her fault, not his,
He said, that she was perfect.

“Where,” she asked,
“Have you been hiding for a hundred years?”
She said it with a smile at which he stared
With doubt that would have been unmannerly
Anywhere else. “When you are sure you know
My face—well, you might ask me for my name.”
And then she bit her lips.

1234

“I know all that,
My child,” he said. “I know you never meant it.
Moreover I have asked for it already,
More times than you have trees. Just why, I wonder,
Am I, a man of merit, always asking
At the wrong door? And about when, if ever,
Are you to pleasure my nobility
So far as to believe me, and to trust me?”

There was no cloud or question in her eyes
When she said, “I have always trusted you.
I shall believe you too, some day or other.
When you have carved for me an amulet
Of quicksilver, perhaps, I shall believe you.
And I shall say to it how sorry I am
For having let you go. But don't go now!”

His round untroubled face, alive with charm
That would have neutralized an ugliness
Not there, and with a weakness underlying
A solemn counterfeit of easy strength,
Was that of a safe counsellor—for her,
At least. If there was nothing else in him
For sorrow to be sure of, there was love—
A love that was uncertain of its name,
And for its best endurance better so.
“I shall not go—not yet,” he said. “Not yet—
Not even if you throw ornaments at me.”
And after a small comment on his absence,
Uttered and heard indifferently, he laid
His warm hands like a father's on her shoulders,
And fancied he could feel her soul and body
Trembling together under a thin shroud
Of summer white. He frowned and shook her slightly.

1235

“Now sit you down and tell good Doctor Quick
What most it is that isn't as it should be,”
He said, letting her go like a man losing
More than was his to hold. “So. Here we are.
I had supposed there would be joy-bells ringing
By this time, or before. But I don't hear them.
And as for joy, what thief has hidden it,
Or frightened it away? It has not gone
For always. And where's Talifer, meanwhile?
He is not dead. You would have told me so.
You said it would be June, and time says June
Is half a part already of time's ashes.
And if he is not dead, what means all this
That I don't see? If ever a man pursued
One woman only, and that woman you,
And worshipped her, that man was Talifer.
Why are you here? Why have you not his name?
Why is the last of all the Talifers
Alone in his old house? And why are you
Alone in your old house? Do you love houses
More than you love yourselves? I should have known
A few more men and women by this time
Than would have been enough to make amazement
A stranger to their most egregious doings;
But I saw wrong—and where? Until you tell me,
My wits will have no pivot, and my friendship
Will have no exercise. I am working hard,
You see, to make your way an easier one
To find, if not to follow. Follow it now,
And you will have me with you to the end;
For I am Doctor Quick, your humble servant,
Respectful and obedient, and for ever.”

“I know you are a friend,” Althea said,
“And I am safe with you in word and person.

1236

With June half gone, I cannot be amazed
That you are here, with all your knives, to cut
Sick answers out of me to make me well.
I felt you cutting me, and may have suffered—
Although no cry came out of me, or none
That you could hear. Before I heard you coming,
Rumors or news of me must have been waiting
To seize your ears and fill them. You heard something.”

“I heard what I believed was only nonsense
Unparalleled,” he said. “You aren't confirming—
Regretfully I say it—my belief.
There was a time when two and two meant four;
Now they mean zero. And there was a time
When everything meant room for nothing else,
Or need of it; now it means ravening folly
For those who are elected to possess it.
These are new times, and there are new diseases
To make new invalids and imbeciles
Out of the soundest and the worthiest.
Now tell me what in hell's unhallowed name
Ails Talifer.”

Althea moved her shoulders,
And laughed at him—as well as she could laugh;
And he sat watching a small piece of light
Lying on her soft orange-colored hair
Like a pale flame. “You know the only answer,”
She said; “and like so many a man of healing,
You have no more to say.”

“Oh yes, I have,”
He answered. “I have more than would be sweet
For you to hear. I have not heard the truth;
I have heard early talk. If, as I gather,
Talifer told you only yesterday

1237

Of his compelled descent to the ninth circle,
The town must wait, feeding on inference—
A food, alas, on which a town may feed
And fatten for some time. We can't help that;
Yet I may still help you.”

“Yes, possibly,”
She said; “or you may say green leaves are crimson;
Or you may push that shadow on the wall
Back where it was when I was here alone;
Or you may rub it out. I'll never deny
Your powers till I have seen them all at work.
And will you please forgive me? You are kind,
And you are my good friend. But kindness fails
When fate cuts off its hands. You are sincere,
This time, and I can ask of you no more.
If there were decency of hope or sense
In asking you for more, you might be sorry—
For I might ask too much. Women are greedy,
So long as there is hope, and may not always
Count what hope costs, or where. But you are safe;
All you possess is yours. I cannot use it,
For it would buy me nothing—which is mine
Already in abundance. All the rest
Went yesterday.”

“We'll say so, and forget.”
He said it with a slow security
That puzzled her, and made her stare at him,
And wait for more. “We'll say so, for your sake,
And for the sake of harmony. Why bring in
Too soon the discord of a contradiction?
We do not need it yet, for I am hearing
More than your story tells; and I am seeing
More than a child who dreams. So Talifer

1238

Came yesterday. I should know more of him
For knowing what he said. I know his theme,
But not his variations. Keren-Happuch
Was one of Job's three daughters, a fair damsel,
The fairer for a full inheritance.
This Karen here, our neighbor, Talifer's Karen,
Inherited a face, and little else
Than a cool brain. Let her be boiled or frozen,
Her feminine temperature, if she has any,
Would feel no change.”

“If Job had three of her,”
Althea said, “he would have had enough
Without his boils. O Lord, what am I saying!
Don't listen. I don't know. I only know
That she has always hated me politely,
And flattered me because I have a house
That has an atmosphere and a tradition.
I do not need her envy or her learning—
You are not hearing this—to fathom that.
And now I have a man's word—yesterday
I had it, from his lips—that he has found,
At last, in her ... No, I'm afraid to say it;
For I can't laugh today. And if you laugh,
I shall be sorry that you are my friend,
And that I cannot kill you. Well, then, listen:
Unless you listen you will never learn
What he has found in her. What do you think?
He has found—Peace. At last, he has found Peace.
I say it with a capital because
I see it written so on everything,
And everywhere I look. He was not sure,
With all that he believed was loyalty,
That he found Peace with me. And honor says
Hypocrisy can hide itself no longer

1239

Within his heart. He feels it rankling there;
And where it rankles there may not be Peace.
Never, he says. He will be true and kind
Before it is too late for truth and kindness,
He says—to me! He will be kind to me
Before it is too late! What has she done?
And how, with her waxed language, has she done it?
Where is that wealth of sense and truth and wisdom
I gloried in because I called it his,
Till it was partly mine? Where's all that strength
Of his that made me strong, and humbled me
To such a comfort of security
That I loved life because he was alive?
What's a face made of strength, if it's a false one?
And what's this new necessity of honor—
This Peace? Am I a firebrand, or a whirlwind?
I thought he needed—me; and I was happy,
And wrong. Have I so little in my poor head
That he has pounded it and found it hollow?”

“Since that was in you to be said,” said he,
“Let the past welcome it. For you must wait.
Now you are lost, and you are going nowhere.
There's more in this than has a definition.
If this were all an educated malice
On her side, and a silliness on his,
And a weak readiness to share disaster,
Most of us might be hanged and the world better
Without us. As for Talifer, we must wait.
I have seen men with jaws built to eat iron,
With eyes to scare you, chins invincible,
And royal noses; and I've seen them doing
More foolishness than you may dream of seeing
In forty nights. From all you say of him,
The man is bitten and the venom has him.

1240

I do not say that Karen is a serpent,
Or any such easy trash of melodrama
As that. She is more like an ivory fish—
If you have seen one. They are fascinating,
For reason of their slimness and their skins,
But they are not proliferous, or domestic,
And are not good to eat.”

“Has one a right
To wonder, and to ask,” Althea ventured,
Not struggling to conceal an interest,
“When you made such a progress in your knowledge
Of her and her best qualities?”

He laughed:
“She felt a fever coming to consume her,
Once on a time, and sent for Doctor Quick,
Who found she had not fire enough inside her
For a combustion. She is still alive.
My lamp would still be going if she were dead.”
He blew smoke at a walking grasshopper
On the porch-rail beside him, and was quiet.

“You and your nonsense are on friendly ground,”
Althea said; “and while you play together,
You will not be molested. I like children,
But not so well, sometimes, when they would make
A child of me. I am to wait, you say.
When a ship sinks, do those on board step out
And wait there for another?”

“No,” said he;
“But sometimes there are life-boats, hen-coops, belts,
Or furniture afloat that may be useful.
We do not mostly drown if we can swim,
Or drift, somehow, to shore.”

1241

“What do you mean,
Chiefly, by that?” she asked, with an unguarded
Sharpness edging her words. “I shall survive,
Undoubtedly. I shall not drown myself;
And I shall never find the shore again
That once I thought so firm. Now it is there
No longer: there is only darkness now,
And a black ocean where an island was
That was my little world. O God, how little
It was—if I had known! You do not see me—
You are not looking at me. Don't forget.”

He rose, and with his quiet strength again,
Held her and felt her shaking in his hands.
“I shall forget,” he said, “and so will you—
Sometime. Now listen, while I tell you ...”

“No!”
She cried, and laughed. “Don't tell me anything!
For I know everything! He has found—Peace!
Peace! Peace!” ... She would have fallen to the floor,
Still laughing, if his hands had let her go.
At last there was a trembling time of silence
Till he released her, and stood watching her
With eyes of sorrow and uncertainty.

“Now that's all over.” He sat facing her,
And smiling from his chair. “We'll have no more
Of that sort, if you please. Now, if you listen,
I'll tell you something that you never knew.
I can see things. La ci darem la mano.”
He turned her hands, and while he studied them,
He sang until she smiled. “I can see change
Before you, like a friend who can do nothing
Until he comes. But you will see him coming,
And I shall see you waiting—learning to wait,
We'll say at first; and you are quick to learn.

1242

You always were—though you have never learned,
Entirely, what you lost in leaving me
To grope alone and unappreciated
To a forgotten grave. But that's outside
The mark of our attention, which is time.
Learn to believe in time, if not in me.”

“I might believe in you, my friend,” she said,
“And praise you, if I knew what you were saying.”

He rose to go: “My dearest friend alive,
Believe in time—which holds for many, I fear,
Only itself and emptiness. For you,
You know not what it holds. But you must wait,
And save yourself to wait. Patience will help
To save, but will not come if not invited;
And your significant red head will help
To save. I hope to God there is no woman
Who could love me as you love Talifer.
And so farewell, my child—but not for ever.”

II

Leaving Althea and her trees behind him,
He found his way into a drowsy street
Where progress and improvement and raw change
Had not yet entered. There were trees here too,
If not a forest of them like Althea's,
On either side, sufficient and unchanged.
Among them, two tall oaks that he admired
Were like two giants always at the door
Of an immortal princess in a cottage,
With white walls and green shutters, and green grass
Growing all round it. He had said to Karen
That she must be immortal, for he knew,
As one who studied them, no general ills

1243

Or shocks that might invade or dislocate
The comely realm of her serenity
And her repose. He found her reading Greek,
In a room cooled as if her presence cooled it,
And found her as exotically fair
And as impeccable for contemplation
As ever. A saint's face of ivory white,
So moulded as to be almost unholy
In its immune perfection, with dark eyes
Always impassable, and with darker hair
Never disturbed, awaited him and smiled
At him, with no surprise, as at a friend
Who had come yesterday, or every day,
At the same hour.

She rose and welcomed him
With unexcited hands, and felt his mouth
Warm on her cheek, where it found, as expected,
No interest or resistance. “You asked once
What good it does,” he said, “and I'll be damned
If I've an answer yet. How do you do?”

“As always, as you see,” she said. “Sit down,
And tell me all about it.”

“Willingly,”
Said he, “but I would rather you said first
What you must have to tell. Suppose you talk,
And tell me all about it. Karen, Karen,
In a land burning certainly to ashes,
You are as cool and lovely as a trout.
Of just what unimpassioned particles
Are you composed, I wonder. In this weather,
How do you show yourself so heinously
Refrigerated, and so heavenly clean?
Yes, I have heard a little, inevitably.”

1244

“There's nothing in me that is out of nature,
I hope,” she said. “I have no wings, or scales.
You mean that you have seen Althea first.
Quick, you are not opaque.”

“Who says I am?
Yes, I have seen Althea. I heard news
That left a fatherly curiosity
Unable not to see her. From all signs
That she revealed to my transparency,
And from her language, I should make of her
A woman with a wisdom to meet fate,
And recognize it—which, as you have found
In Aristophanes and Adam Smith,
Maybe, is not a woman's first enjoyment
Of all those intuitions. I'm not affirming
That she is happy, for you know she isn't.
Since you know that, you may as well decide
That she will have no joy in hating you.
She will not make a banquet of her heart,
Or whistle for a vulture. What's all this
Offensive and irrelevant intellect
Inhabiting your table? Bacon—Locke—
Plato—Plotinus—Hermes Trismegistus—
Herodotus—Hume—Cicero—Lucretius—
Greek—Latin—Greek—more Greek. What do you mean
By making love to man? You are not nature.”

She shook her head at him forgivingly;
“I am not sure that in Althea's place
I might not be less generous, and see fate
More as a monster, as you say I am,
Than as my portion of uncertain life.
Althea and I are friends—I hope we are—

1245

But we are not, we'll say, inseparable.
We are not quite ...”

“I know you are not quite,”
He said. “Not at all quite. You have not lapped
Your cream from the same saucer. That's a figure.”

“Your compliments and implications, Quick,
Are fringed with an unfading elegance.
I treasure them. You are calling us two cats.”

“Well, aren't you—rather? In a way of pastime,
Aren't you? If not, I'm not importunate
To carry you two together in one basket
For a long ride. I can feel strangulations
Of a soul-terror worse than seeing the devil,
Seeing in fancy what might be uncovered.
Praise God, that's not to be. And this that happens,
This news of you and Talifer, makes me ask
What you are doing; and why, in the Lord's sight,
You are disowning and abandoning
Your freedom—which has always been, you say,
The well-spring and the fountain of your life.
I know; but implications agitate you,
And facts are tiresome food. What I don't know
Is what you may see coming. You read logic
With one eye, while ambition blinds the other;
Which, I suppose, is one way to be free.
Karen, O Karen, you are the Lord's despair.
You say, as you would say what time it is,
That manners, or conventions, are no more
To you than creeds or rituals; and you say
That if so minded you would throw your cap
Sky-high; and I, being figurative myself,
And in extremity no obstructionist,

1246

Have done my possible to inveigle you
Along the path where roses, and primroses,
And such like, are indigenous and perennial.
You say that you were never a botanist;
You always look up from Thucydides,
And tell me to go home. I can't go home.
Damn it, I have no home. I've only a house—
My uncle's house it was—and I'm an orphan.
Before he died, my sinful uncle said
That I should never attain. I was like Reuben,
He said, because like him I was unstable,
And told me where to find him in the Bible.
He died, leaving all to me—and to my honor.
He must have enjoyed that. And since he died,
Honor has only made me miserable,
And worn to weary grief my fiery spirit;
Honor has been the cross that I have carried,
Unseen and unrewarded, all these years.
Don't wish that you might have it. Karen, Karen,
I look at you sometimes with a sad fear
That you are mostly made of beauty and brains—
A coalescence rarer than green robins,
Yet not quite all there is that's in a woman.
And while you laugh, that little house in Wales—
You know about it—is there waiting for us,
Above a lovely jingling little river
That you will not believe until you see it.
You would be happy there, and be as free
As a wild mountain bird. You could read Hume,
And Hermes Trismegistus, all day long;
You could have goldfish, and a marmoset.
Karen, I don't believe you have a cap;
Leastwise, I've never seen you with one on.
No, you have only hats. Karen, O Karen,
Why do you break my heart?”

1247

“If you are patient,”
She answered, laughing quietly, “one reason
May soon be seen and heard.” A velvet crunch
Of a car coming ceased, and the car stopped;
And out of it came Talifer. “Now look,”
She said, “and tell me if you see a reason.”

He turned and saw, and said, “Yes, I can see it.
I can see Samuel Talifer, Esquire,
With white new trousers and a Leghorn hat,
And a blue coat. Lord, how he shines! I mean,
With his own light. Karen, how in God's name
Are these things done?

“Your compliments again,”
She said, “but never mind. I shall be jealous,
For I shall see his eyes forgetting me,
And seeing only you. Finding you here,
He will be thrilled, for reasons more than one,
And will say words, perhaps, that may as well,
And may as easily, be said now as ever.”

Commanding and erect—an admiral,
At least, if not a monarch, in appearance—
Talifer, with himself and with his presence,
Filled instantly the doorway. Standing there
A moment, he was like Quick's picture of him,
Drawn swiftly for Althea to remember
Too clearly and too well. A power to bend
Or break was in his face, and in his eyes
The conquering gleam—which is a gleam sometimes
Of more fire than is there; and in his voice
There was a ripe repose—which might, without
Its honest warmth, have been complacency.
To Karen, having smiled admiringly

1248

And passionately at her cool perfection,
He said, “So he comes here to see you first—
Before he comes to me. Well, I forgive him.
I cannot be offended or surprised.
Quick, you are welcome. What have you brought home?”

The doctor shook his head, and with a sigh
Displayed his empty hands: “What you have seen,
What you behold. Only myself, God help me.
My sinful uncle should have lived for ever,
And left me penniless. Then I might have toiled
And won some praise of Aesculapius,
And for myself some credit. I have merit,
Though few perceive it. I shall roam this world
No longer, for there's nothing in it now
But places—only places. You have robbed
Them all of glory and life. Persepolis
Is now as jolly a town as Paris was
Before the war. I'll roam the world no more,
For you have stolen the beauty and the brain
That once it had for its illumination.
Now there is only twilight. This is all
As true as you are glad you are not dead,
And you have made it so.”

Talifer beamed.
“I have not stolen,” he said, with a warm eye
On Karen—“I could never have done that,
And could have done it only less for trying.
No, it was fate—or name it as you may—
That gave me vision while time promised me
That I was not too late, if I made haste.
At first I doubted, and at last believed—
Though I must wonder still.” He found a chair,
And filled it splendidly.

1249

“I dare avouch,”
Quick said, “that you have done some wondering.
In your place, Talifer, I should say my prayers,
And be a child again. Why should one man
Have all, when there are legions of the worthy,
Like me, who are inglorious and forsaken?
I can see one who sees me now as large
In glory as a large Angora cat,
Who brings a mouse and blinks at her for praise.”

“Where is it?” Karen asked. “You roam the world,
You tell me, and you don't bring even a mouse
For me as a remembrance. I suspect
That you have as much more to learn of cats
As women have of men—which, for our good,
Is a great deal.” She smiled, with eyes half open,
And watched him while he thought.

Talifer coughed
Indulgently at these irrelevancies,
And with a restive surety of intention
Secured a silence: “We are friends together,
By chance here at this hour; and at this hour,
As well as at another, for aught I know
Against it, I may say, to our friend here,
Truth he has not yet heard; and to you, Karen,
For whom alone I have a nearer name,
Truth you have partly heard, before and after
My telling it. You are not two women, Karen,
With even your knowledge. And I am less at ease
Than once I was with an assumed acquaintance
With unrevealed experiences not ours
To share; and I am humbler for the warning.
There's a humility for the fortunate,
Which, if acknowledged, profits and exalts him.

1250

I shall not be deceived, or not in this.
Here are no mysteries. For in every heart,
I fear, there lives a wish that has a life
Longer than hope; and it is better there
Than an undying lie, and is far safer,
And has more kindness in it. If I felt
Or feared in this the presence of a loose
And easy reasoning, I should not be happy;
And surely not, so far as I'm the measure,
The happiest man alive. But even the first
Among the chosen of the undeserving
May wish there were no price of pain for those
Who may not be forgotten. You, Quick, return
To us unchanged and welcome, and surprised—
Immoderately, perhaps, and pardonably;
And as you are surprised, you will believe;
And in believing will remember always,
That after a wise fight with first illusions,
And after their inevitable surrender,
And while there was still time, I have found Peace.”

“He says it also with a capital,
As I supposed he would, and he believes it,”
Quick thought; and then he said, “If the Peace-makers
Are truly to be called the Children of God,
And Scripture says they are, I see a place,
A pleasant place, not far away from them,
For the Peace-finders. You are there, Talifer—
Or if not yet, you will be. I have listened,
Admiring your reserves and your repressions,
And with a trained ear for your modulations;
And while I may be still a bit bewildered,
May truth forbid that I should be astonished.
Who could see Karen there and be amazed
At man's defeat and his capitulation?

1251

You are a sensitive citizen, Talifer,
And are a decent man. The which being so,
You have your feelings. Now my wicked uncle
Was a dry-languaged man, who boiled his words
Down to the bottom; and sometimes he burnt them—
Or they burnt me. And his incisive habit
Taught me a brevity that I may forget,
Except for solemn and important moments,
When words are mostly steam. You mean to say,
That while you only thought you loved Althea,
You know that you love Karen, and are glad
That you found out in time to save yourself,
And all three, from disaster and the devil.
And while you are the happiest man alive—
You always were exclusive—you are sorry
To leave Althea down there, and all alone,
Thinking of you. That's well, and to your credit,
And about all there is; and neither joy
Nor sorrow has ever changed a calendar.
The sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow—
And peace be with you all. Can I say more?”

“Well, no,” said Talifer. He said it slowly,
And he smiled while he scowled. “I dare say not.
Or not in your allusive uncle's language.”

“Then why say more, when more would only mean
Good wishes and good fortune for you all?
May joy await you, and may time forget you.
God knows if I were God, you would be happy,
And there would be no pain for any of you.
If choice were mine, I should walk always laden
With living seeds of joy, in a large sack;
And I should sow them so promiscuously
That all should have a portion. When I died,

1252

The world would miss me; and you, Talifer,
And many another, would soon be visited
By canvassers, all sorrowful, for money,
Wherewith to build anon a monument
For Doctor Quick. Alas, I say, no glory
Shall sing to men the good that I have done—
Which yet may be a little.”

Karen smiled,
Appraising him again with eyes half shut
That held a captive gleam. “And why a little,”
She asked, “when you have seen so many changes,
And in an hour or two? How do you know
That other changes are not on their way,
Or that you may escape them? There are women
Whose hair and eyes are not so dark as mine—
And who care more for manners.”

Talifer
Caressed his iron chin with knowing fingers,
And contemplated Quick with knowing eyes.
“Karen has learning that we cannot read,”
He said; “and she has wisdom beyond beauty—
If there may be such wisdom. You had better
Think more than twice, my friend, and solemnly,
Of her least urgent word.”

“By chance,” Quick said,
With Karen's eyes, unchanged, assisting him,
“My thought was following, if not solemnly,
The path of your advice. Now I have come
To a grim wall, with a locked entrance in it;
And I read over it, Che sarà sarà—
Which means, we are to say no more of that.
My prepossession is to be the sower

1253

Of joyful grain, that none of us may starve.
Would you forbid me? Not for your two noses.
I knew it. So farewell, but not for ever.”

Talifer laughed, if not with all his power:
“While I'm on wheels, no friends of mine shall walk
On such a day as this; and last of all
Two that are with me now. Come, both of you.”

“No,” Karen said, “take this physician home
With you, and give him something cool to drink.
Some of the same they gave to Socrates
Will be the best—for him. He speaks in figures.”

When they had left a silent mile or two
Of heat behind them, Quick said, gratefully,
“Now I can see why Karen is for you
A treasure not of earth, a gem celestial.
There was a comprehension more than woman's,
A foresight more than man's, if I may say so,
In her command that you take me alone,
And show me why the blue bells ring in Scotland—
With lots of bubbles and ice. You owe as much,
If only in a way of celebration.”

“Her thought was in my mind,” said Talifer,
Who steered without a smile through a small forest
Into a spacious field of green, where stood,
Vine-grown for years, the mansion of his fathers.
He was the last of a decrescent line
That now reproached him; and though he had found,
And in one body, all the beauty and mind
Of woman, accumulated and perfected,
And though he was today the happiest man
Alive, or should have been, he was not smiling.

1254

“You have more trees, Talifer, than Althea,”
Quick said, when they were sitting in a shade,
With the whole paraphernalia of refreshment
Before them on a table. “They are like me—
Except that some of them bear fruit. Without them,
You would not have your beechnuts, or your acorns.
And so the Lord provides.”

“Yes, I have trees,”
Talifer said, and for a while sat thinking.
“Quick, we are friends. You will not mind my saying
That once or twice your words this afternoon
Were, possibly, more pointed and explicit
Than they were necessary—or, say prepared.
A meaning may be present without showing
Its head and shaking it, or showing its teeth.
You know this world. You know the ruin that lies
And fond hypocrisies have wrought in it;
And you must know it was more honorable,
Although there was a price of sorrow and pain
Involved, and more considerate, and more manlike,
On my side, not to fail when I was tested.
I thought I knew myself, but I knew nothing
Till Karen found and taught me. So no more
Of that. You are my friend, and will forgive me,
And wish us all the joy that will be ours.”

“Prepared? Or necessary? Why, God bless you,
And shield you, Talifer. Was I ever prepared?
My sinful uncle was my preparation;
And when he said that I was necessary,
I was not there. Now let's go back a bit.
For ten years you have hardly seen this place—
This place where you were born. Two years ago
You came back—finally—and found Althea,

1255

Still waiting; and you would have married her,
If you had not found Karen, who came later,
And fallen before her beauty and her brains,
And—well, her God knows what. I cannot name it.
The skeleton facts are there—for you, and me,
And a few thousand more, to recognize.
And if they are, what of it? You are not fate.
Why then be so mysterious and secretive,
When all's as plain as two men under a tree?
You look at me as if reproach, or doubt,
Might still be tickling you, but that's a fancy.
There's nothing in that but a few memories
That won't die all at once. They may die slowly;
They may not wholly die. If they do not,
No more shall Talifer die, says Doctor Quick.
And as for honor—why do you mention honor?
Is honor not your breath and your complexion?
Is honor not the color of your eyes?
And as for joy, you must know more of it
Today than most of us are ever to know—
Although I'm praying that you may live to read
Your knowledge of it now as men may read
Old school-books found forgotten in an attic,
And smile at sight of them as they remember
How hard it was to learn what looks so easy.
That's how I wish you happiness, my friend.
Now I shall say no more. I'll drink the rest.”

“And Karen, Quick? Have you, perhaps, forgotten
Karen?” Talifer scanned him piercingly,
And with a sort of smile.

“Karen? My God!”
Quick answered, and he waved an empty glass.
“Forgotten? Forget Karen? Do men forget

1256

To die when they are drowning? What's the matter?
You scare me when you look at me like that.
Talifer, you are a damned basilisk.
Your eyes burn holes in me. Karen—of course!
By heaven, we might have thought she was left out,”
He said, and laughed as merrily as a child.

III

“Another summer brings another June,
With August on the way. When August comes,
Our friends will have an anniversary,
And celebrate, maybe, their overflowing
First year of ecstasy. They have come back
As frisk from their delirious honey-moon
As two bedraggled spaniels tied together
Out in the rain all night.”

Althea frowned
On Doctor Quick, who pondered with an air
Of one who was not telling everything.
“I cannot say,” she said; “I have not seen them.
I hope they like each other.”

“Well, they don't,”
Said he; “and I'm at work on a prognosis—
Which is a medical word, my frowning one,
Meaning their chance or probability
Of getting well. Their case is not a nice one.
No pills or tinctures that I know about
Will cure them, and I'm sorry; which is to say
I'm sinful glad. Why so? It serves 'em right.
And I speak with a heart swollen so large
With kindness and insatiable good will
To man and woman that I'm short of breath.

1257

I'd be a better doctor if my heart
Were not so large. I should have been a priest;
For I might then have comforted the wicked,
If not the selfish and infatuated,
Who are God's own to save. His laws are said
To be obscure; yet my belief in them
Uncovers them, and sees them occupied
Not far from where we live. They are outside
The kingdom of our wits, and frequently
Are inconsiderate of our best mistakes.
They wake us up and make us hate ourselves
Till we cease hating them. Sometimes we can't;
And we are for the scrap-heap, to be wasted.
We dread the sound of our deliverers,
And shut them out, because we like to starve;
Or say because we cannot face ourselves
In a true looking-glass. Few of us can;
But that won't save our neighbors, who are shaken
Out of a silly dream that won't come back
To punish them again. They are awake
Today in a cold prison, which has a door
That has no bolt. And there's a looking-glass;
And there's our old friend Time. You may remember
When I presented him, a year ago,
And asked you to believe in him. He knows you,
And he will not forget you. He remembers
Your shameless estimation of my merit
Because of my large heart—which is a menace
To eminence and applause. My godless uncle
Knew it, although he said it differently—
In words less tempered with extenuation,
And so the more profanely to the point.”

Althea smiled, with a satirical
Affection in her eyes: “You like your voice;

1258

You like your voice more than you like your friends;
Or you would tell them, confidentially,
What you are trying to say. What has your heart
To do—you mention hearts as if you had one—
With our imprisoned neighbors? I am sorry
For all who are in prisons. I am in one,
And I am just as sorry for myself,
And doing myself no good. About the best
That I have done is not to have done worse
Than to lose all that I believed was mine,
And to be disillusioned and deceived
Unspeakably in what I have supposed
Was my importance. When the Bible says
No chastening for the present seemeth joyous,
I don't say that it does. Is there much left
For me to say?”

“No, not much—for the present,”
He said; and he repeated, “for the present.
But fix your diligence hard on those three words,
And hold them well. Don't let them get away.
Don't play with them. I doubt if in our language
There are three other words that will say half
To you that they are saying. For your life's sake,
Seize them. They are the best words in your book.”

“There are not many,” she said, “that are worth reading.
I see so many pages that are empty,
Or blurred with memories that have lost a meaning,
That nowadays it looks best in the dark;
And if I touch it, I've a dusty finger
To pay for my indifference.”

“You are not
Indifferent; you are desperate,” said he;
“And that's not good for ladies living alone.”

1259

She sighed, and writhing slightly under her clothes,
Laughed at him with a melancholy pity:
“There never was a doctor in the world
Before who knew so much. If desperation
Is a mistake, and a wrong medicine
For loneliness, have you an easier one
To swallow, or a sweeter one to taste?
If you have in your pharma-what-you-call-it
A drug for memory that will make it sleep,
And has no evil in it, for heaven's sake,
Bring me as many blessed pounds of it
As you may carry and not break your back.”

“My back will carry mountains. It is yours,
Not mine,” said he, “that is in danger now.
For it has carried all that it should bear,
And for as long as would be necessary
If reason were the king of circumstance,
And could wear folly's crown. But since it isn't,
And can't, it can do only what it can—
Which is occasionally not a little.
It may be well for you and your impatience,
Before you wear another pillow out
With your indignant head, trying to sleep,
First to get down on your two little knees
And thank the Lord that folly, with all his power,
Is not yet absolute.”

“It will do no good,”
She said, “to tell you twice how fond you are
Of hearing your own voice. It's a good voice,
But it is not the Lord's, or an archangel's.
And why be suddenly so concentrated
On folly? Am I a fool? You dwell on it
As if you had just found a new disease.”

1260

He smiled, and smoked. “No, it is not a new one.
Indeed, I do not know of one that's older.
I saw the Talifers—I mean Talifer
And his exotic helpmate—yesterday;
And that may be why folly follows me
Like a wet dog today. The law may call her
A wife, but she was never a Talifer,
And never will be one. So there remains
Only one Talifer; and who shall say
That more than one might not be a profusion,
A prodigal duplication, if you like,
Or a majestic error. For one of him—
And you will surely say it after me—
Will serve, at least for one community,
Better than two. Would you have, if you might,
Two Talifers in one town?”

“There are not two,”
She snapped, “in this town, or in any other.
If I don't sleep tonight as once I did,
When I was two feet long, never suppose
My fear of hearing there's another like him
Keeps me awake. There's not another like him.
You know there never was, and never will be.”

“The biologic odds are all against it;
Yet I don't know, for sure,” he said, and laughed
Inside; and feeling his laugh, Althea scowled.
“There may be one somewhere; and where he is,
He will be notable, and will be observed
And envied, and will not escape, not wholly,
The qualifying eye and the true tongue.
For truth will say that no man has a right
To look so great and still be not so great.

1261

When all is said, you know, this Talifer
Is not a Julius Caesar—which is well;
For with a Julius Caesar in your house,
You might not be so tranquil as without him.
Talifer would be more to your desire.
And yet, you know, this Talifer, on occasion,
May weigh an atom heavy. While he looks
To be made only of magnificence,
And race, and grace, there may be, on occasion,
A few too many mortal ounces of him;
And on occasion—I go timorously—
When he is not too sure of his foundation,
He might appear to the malevolent
A little owlish and oracular—
As when he told, with Karen listening
Like an oblivious kitten, how it was
That he awoke (he must have been like Saul
Before he became Paul) and found—what was it?—
Peace, with a capital. That's what it was,
And a good thing to find. Yet, all the same,
He was, you know—he was, he was, you know—
Well, I said heavy.”

“I dare say he was,”
Althea cried, with her eyes flashing anger.
“And if he was, it's a great shame and pity
That there is nothing to be done about it.”
She rose and looked away, rubbing her eyes
In disappointed rage. “Why do you tell
These things to me?” she said, turning at last
To see him. “I thought—I thought—you were a friend.
If there's a grain of tiresome useless truth
In this, are you supposing that I care?
Why do you say this now? What does it mean?”

1262

He was already there, and his warm hands
Were on her shoulders, holding her securely.
“Only to see the sparks, my fiery one,”
He said, and laughed. “Only to see them fly,
And to be sure the fire has not gone out.
And as for Talifer, you are right, my child,
You are quite right. There's an elected remnant,
A scattered one, a small one, far to seek,
On whom accomplishment, as the word goes,
Might be a blemish—like a price-mark scratched
On a jade vase. They are themselves enough.
Their being alive is their accomplishment,
Their presence and urbanity their service.
They are more loved than envied, never hated,
And are so few that they are never scorned.
I have known two of them in forty years,
And one of them is dead. Now I have told
As much as need be told of Talifer,
And may as well get out. The wedding guest
Here beats his breast. Farewell, but not for ever.”
He drummed himself like an orang-outang,
And disappeared. Althea, trembling, watched him.
Long after he had vanished and was lost
Among the trees, Althea could still see him,
As he was when he left her. He was laughing,
As if he did not care whether she trembled
Or not. And trembling still, she wondered why
He laughed—or why an anniversary
In August was amusing. Still she trembled,
And still she wondered why.

There were no signs
In August of an anniversary
More festive than today's of yesterday,
Or none to be discerned. Quick, leisurely

1263

Approaching, found them where not long ago
He had congratulated Talifer,
He feared, somewhat evasively. Today,
Evasion would have hung its head and hidden
Behind a tree. There was nothing to evade;
And there was less to mourn or deprecate,
Since all was going well.

Talifer rose,
And with a carved smile on an older face,
Composed a welcome that would serve; and Karen,
With eyes half shut, gave him some languid fingers
To do with as he might. “Where is the band?”
He asked, with a grimace after a pause.
“If you are so indifferent and informal,
And so inured to joy that you don't feel it,
My small attention, Karen, and remembrance—
Don't forget that—I fear, may not excite you.
I hoped it might. But I was always hoping,
And am addicted still to certainties.
If you, whom God hath joined, don't understand it,
I'll tell you that his purpose, dark sometimes,
Was never clearer. Karen, you are lovely,
But you are not alert. Open your eyes
Wider, and try to purr, and put your paws
Out nicely. For this time I've brought a mouse.
Regard him: Apollonius Rhodius.
You said that you had never tasted him,
And I remembered—as I'm doing always,
And having not so much as a kind word.
He looks a bit forgotten and long-tailed
To me perhaps, but I don't have to eat him.
Now he is yours; and with my compliments,
And with my most agreeable intimations
Of your contented coming retrospect.

1264

Nothing is lost, or it is best to think so;
And life, if not unduly maimed or stretched,
Is not too long. You are both doing your best.
Why do these trees, who are all strength and wisdom,
Grow up, with roots in earth, instead of down,
With roots in air? Think for an hour of that,
And find your thoughts becoming beautiful.
Think for an hour of how and why things grow.
If there's to be no music, or thanksgiving,
There may be hidden drink. Will Talifer
Please clap his hands and see?”

“I will,” said Karen.
“If you must pay for hearing yourself talk,
You have my thanks for Apollonius.
I'm purring them. There are not many cats
Today who are pursuing him.”

Talifer's mouth
Deformed his countenance till it became
A face that was as homelike and engaging
As a bronze Dante smiling. “Quick,” he said,
“You are the crowned among the fortunate.
You know what women want.”

“I do,” said Quick—
“Sometimes; and I have lost a world of sleep
For what they do not want. They don't want me,
Talifer. There are two at least who don't;
And elsewhere there are probably some others.
I don't know why. I'm cheerful; I can talk;
I have a studious eye for small attentions;
I pick things up; I'm kind to animals;
I dance with feet that are not too ferocious;
I can shift busily from the wrong note,

1265

And fade from argument imperceptibly;
I can be childlike when they flatter me,
And tell them lies that they like best to hear;
I can be gracious when they say I'm going
To places where I'd rather be damned than go;
I can avoid reminding them that men
Are sometimes restive and preoccupied
With trivial claims and interferences
Of life and death. But they, not knowing my worth,
Make light of me. A sigh for merit wasted
Says I am not the man. I don't know why.
Althea's thumbs are down at sight of me—
While Karen here would pour petroleum
All over me, and sing to see me burn.
I don't know why.”

“You might think for an hour,”
Said Karen, who rose drowsily and yawned
Behind her Apollonius Rhodius.
“I'll send out what you creatures think you need,
And take a nap. You will do better alone.
Cats can read signs.”

“An anniversary nap,”
Quick said, “is always a brave evidence.
It argues that a year of discipline
Has not undone the present or laid waste
The future. You will live for a long time,
And may as well prepare.” He followed her
With eyes that asked and answered an old question,
And watched her all the way into the house.

“Well, Talifer,” he said as he sat down,
“You are not voluble this afternoon.

1266

You leave to me and to my reticence
The normal occupation of three tongues.
I miss today the measured eloquence
That I heard once—only a little more
Than one brief year ago—in Karen's cottage,
When I came back and was to be surprised.
You told me then that I was your best friend,
And I believed you. I believe you still—
As you do. For you must, or you would never
Have listened the other day when I set out
So painfully to prove it. Where's the use,
When a thing's here, for men like you and me
To say it's warm, or that September's coming,
Or so on? When I told you, for your knowledge,
Only what you told me when you were silent,
You had your reason for not showing me
The short way home. You are about the last
On whom the uninvited would intrude
Without a warning and at least a small
Response. Was I misled when I was here
Last time—last week? When I do less than well,
I shall have doubts, or qualms, and hesitations.
But hark—do I hear tinklings in the distance?
By heaven, I do. Karen, though cold herself,
Remembers warmth in others. Or doesn't she?
I may be going too fast.”

“What in God's name,”
Talifer said, relaxing desolately,
And all but angrily, “do you know about it?
You know as much as you have read in books,
Written by those who know no more than you
Of what it means to live, as I have lived,
For twelve months, and each longer than the last,
In an—in a—...”

1267

“In an aquarium,
May be, perhaps, what you are trying to say,”
Quick answered, filling slowly a tall glass.
“And if I don't know everything about it,
I do know two determining good reasons
Why you are to escape—over the top,
Flop, flop, down to the good warm earth again,
And solid on your feet. Where, and oh, where ...
Not far from here, my friend, if I guess well.”

Talifer sighed, watching a frosted glass
With clear eyes that saw nothing. “I don't know,”
He said, “that I shall ever escape—from her.
I found her yesterday, lying asleep,
With sunlight shining on her like warm glory
On a white saint with hair as dark as night.
She was too beautiful to be a woman.
She was like nothing I had seen before,
And had a saint's appearance, or a child's—
I don't know which. Her face was partly turned
Away from me, and there was her white throat—
A small thing to mean life. For just a moment
I thought how pleasant it would be to seize it,
And hold it; and I was sorry and ashamed.
For though it was at worst a bitter fancy,
I wished it had not been.”

Quick, who was drinking,
Chuckled and choked. “When I was young,” he said,
“I could have slain at least three schoolmasters,
Who lathered me when I was not absorbed,
And been a merry child. I was not merry,
Because my uncle was not imaginative.
He would begin sometimes where the schoolmasters
Left off. My uncle was a sinful man,

1268

Who left me everything. When I was older,
He said I was like Reuben, son of Jacob,
Because I was unstable—and so I am,
Somewhat, though I have merit. No, Talifer,
I am not fearful of your isolating
Body and soul of anything that's alive—
Not even of a wasp—or never unless
He stings you twice. If there is nothing worse
In you than an incipient willingness
To strangle Karen, you are sound and safe,
And far from crime's alarms.”

Talifer tapped
His glass with idle fingers, and said, grimly,
“I'll venture to believe it, if you say so.
Nevertheless, I could say things to you
That in a meaningless and friendly way
You might believe you partly understood.
But they are best not said.”

The doctor poked
His cubes of ice: “You do not have to say them,
Talifer, for I know them. Disembarrass
Your brain of its indelicate preparations,
And finish that drink before it is all water.
For you have lived a year too long on water,
And your discretion will be inundated
Unless you act. In ages unrecorded
You may have been aquatic, but your fins
And gills are gone, and you have two legs now.
You are not even amphibious, Talifer;
And you are not to drown because a woman,
Who is in habit more than in appearance
A watchful trout or an elusive eel,
Has made you to believe you might as well.

1269

It is not so. No more are you to perish
For a sphinx-eyed Greek-reading Lorelei,
Or philosophic siren. God knows best
Why she was born, or why she must be here,
From nowhere, to become the chatelaine
Of your unhappy castle. At first sight,
And by the nameless law that lets you know,
Karen appraised Althea and envied her,
And hated her with her best graciousness—
Which is, if you still notice it, a thing
Considerable—and was repaid at once
With hate as gracious, and with more sparks in it.
If Karen saw them, and with her perceptions
There is a possibility that she did,
She may have made of them partly a reason
For teaching you to swim. Is it not strange
That one right woman, dowered with fate for you,
Should be left waiting while you might possess
And cherish, in an amatory trance,
A changeling epicene anomaly,
Who sleeps, and finds her catnip in the classics?
Is it, or is it not, remarkable?
I don't say. All I say is, your release
Will not wait for next year, or the year after.”

Talifer shrugged his admirable shoulders,
And answered first with a forgiving smile:
“I cannot follow if you go too fast.
We Talifers have always found ourselves
A little behind—or, if you like, old-fashioned;
Or feudal, if you like. Feudal, or foolish,
Or what you will, and maybe never in step
With a world hurrying after a brass band
That plays—yes, rather too loud. We are inclined
To let the world go by, and doing no harm,

1270

To stay for a while longer as we are—
‘We’ being only one, the last of us.
I do not know that we are right or wrong,
Or what is wrong or right, or how much longer
We shall go on—if we go on at all.
Assuming a short view, it looks today
As if in me might be the end of us.
But there are still some providential clouds
Between now and tomorrow, and I'll wait.
An ancient fancy has passed on to us
An old man with an hour-glass and a scythe—
Which, with him always mowing, may reduce
My tangled weeds and grass to a clean field.
I have had glimpses, though I see just now
Nothing impending. There has been no stain
On our name yet; and Karen, whatever she is,
Has done my name no wrong. There is a duty,
It seems to me, that I owe to my name,
And to the voices of my ancestors.
I may not always think so. And the voices—
Time and events may drown them.”

“Talifer,”
Quick murmured, pouring not quite half a pint
Of amber spirit into his large glass,
“If my descriptive and incisive uncle
Were now alive, and sitting with us here,
He could say everything aloud to you
That I can only whisper silently
To a sad heart. If I am stimulated,
And say things to you that I do not mean,
I mean them all the same. You are my friend,
Talifer; and you are, if you don't mind,
At times a rather splendid sort of ass—
A nobler sort, we'll say, than should be nibbling

1271

Where there is nothing but dead leaves to eat.
You are the last of all the Talifers;
And you might yet be monstrously in tune
With your inertia and your temporizing,
If you should drown yourself for one of those
Incurable stupidities of duty
That would be wept in heaven. Time and events?
God help us, Talifer. If I go home
From here inebriated, and scare women,
Or make of merit a fell spectacle
For curious and contaminable youth,
It will go on your books. For you have done
A sinful thing in rifling, as you have,
The last and inmost pocket of my faith,
Which held a jewel that will be lost to me,
And to far more than me, unless, by heaven,
You give it back and promise never again
To stir my sorrow and wrath, or make me cry
Into my drink, or make me wring my hands,
Or, like a wounded and forsaken hound,
Howl all night long, as I shall, presently,
If you should say again, in one relation,
Time and events. To hell with time and events,
And first with time. And you know what I mean.
Your eyes do, if you don't. For both of them
Are shining with a bright benevolence
That augurs well. You will not drown yourself;
And you may still find Peace. Who shall say no?”

Talifer, startled for a moment, stared
At Quick, whose countenance was not unflushed,
And smiled. “There may have been some temporizing
In my last words,” he said. “I have forgotten
Just what they were, or what they may have meant.
There are so many words that mean so little.

1272

If I know what yours mean, you will have patience.
Sometimes I do not know what anything means;
And you might not, with my last year behind you.”

IV

There came at last a shining afternoon
In late September when his trees all sang,
For Talifer, a fiery dirge together
Of lights and silences. Leaving his house,
Ivied half over with a still vermilion,
Behind him in the sunlight, he walked slowly
Along a darkening road, with trees all round him
That hid the sky with red and yellow leaves,
Of which a few, as he went on alone,
Fell warningly, and in their falling whispered
Relentlessly of time. Time and events,
He muttered, with a twinge of reminiscence,
Had wrought no miracle yet; and he moved on,
Where many a Talifer had gone before him,
Till he was outside his inheritance
And on the world's highway, where still he owned
His human and inalienable right
To walk and do no harm. So Talifer walked,
And did no harm, and had no premonition
Of what a few next hours of life may hide
From man or woman.

He walked until he paused,
Like one compelled to pause, where two stone posts
That were at once familiar and forbidding
Told where he was. A curving road, soon lost
Among remembered autumn-colored trees
That were like his, lay silent there before him,
Like a deserted way to things all gone,

1273

Until a moving shape that was a woman
Came as if called; and seeing Talifer there,
Below her at the gate, where she had seen him
So many times, paused like a frightened ghost
Before she came to greet him.

“Is it you?”
She asked, and let her trembling hand remain
In his until he let it go. “They told me
That you were here again. I hope you are both—
Happy.”

Talifer knew there was no truth
In that, for her large eyes and trembling mouth
Told what a liar she was, and left him asking
If this could be Althea there before him,
After so long. She was almost like one risen
Out of a grave where he had buried her
Alive, and she was not reproaching him.
Sorrow and joy and hope were in those eyes
That would not look from his; and there was fear,
Which might have pierced him deeper with remorse
If hope had not withheld it. He felt most
That she was there, that she was touching him,
And that she was alive, and was Althea.
There might be time for more when he knew more,
And she knew all. So he stood watching her,
And searching with a fearsome exultation
A face not ruinously beautiful,
Yet fair as a face need be to reveal
A beauty that is made of more than faces,
A mobile and a multiple confusion
Of humor, truth, and passion, and of love
That outwears time. Talifer knew them all,

1274

And saw them all again as he had left them.
Sorrow and pain had only softened them;
And anger, which he knew, knowing Althea,
Must once have been a tenant of their house,
Was not there now. There was no trace of it;
And in its absence his humility
Found more room to be felt—as her eyes told him,
And soon her shaken smile. Talifer tried
To talk, but her accusing wonderment
And fear, and half-emerging happiness,
Were made of questions that were now too many
And large for him to answer. He must wait,
And while he had it might as well not let
The moment go.

“You hope that I am—happy?
You said so.” Then he paused, waiting for time
To give him language to go on with it.
“Before I answer that,” he said, not trying
To hide the truth, which in his hungry eyes
Was hers to read, “may I not ask you first
If I have come to nothing in your sight
That you should ask me that? If I deserve
No answer, you deserve no persecution,
And shall have none—from me. If I deserve,
Sometime, a time that is imaginable,
More than another moment of your kindness,
You will not quite forget? Althea, tell me.
Althea, do you hope that I am happy?
If in your heart you do, no matter what things
You say, I shall have no right to be sorry,
And I shall never come this way again.”

“If I believed you never would,” she said,
“I should have many reasons to be sorry,

1275

And a few rights. You have not taken them
Away; you cannot have them. They are mine.”

“I came today because day follows night,
Althea—which may not be, if we knew all,
The least of reasons. At a future time,
It might be charity, if you cared enough,
To say where you believe the best of me
Is buried in me; for it is in me somewhere,
For what it may be worth. Once I believed
That I was not a fool—till I became one.
Today I have a yearning to go back
And find myself again, to recognize
Today in yesterday—which may be asking
A man's whole world too much. How shall I know
Whether I'm there or not, if none shall tell me?
It is important that I find myself;
For we that are no more than ordinary
Are more for that the creatures of our lapses.
They make us—or unmake us. Erring man
Has a cold eye for other men's mistakes,
And women a colder one—which is as well,
Most likely, for a world so full of traps.
If this is unexpected, or prolonged,
You are permitted to interpret it
Alone when I am gone, and as you may.
Althea, if my wishes are worth keeping,
I wish that happiness may still surprise you,
And that you may not damn me to the dust
Until you know. Quick would applaud me now,
And say bravo. If you do, I can bear it.
God gave the moment and I merely seized it.
Tell me, Althea. Tell me—are you sorry?
You have not told me yet to go away,
And your large eyes have still a kindness in them.

1276

If it is only pity, never say so;
Leave me in ignorance, and let me follow
The way that I must find. I have said this
Because time whispered softly in my ear,
And said I might as well. Whether or not
The moment is a trusty counsellor,
We cannot always know. Sometimes it is.”

Althea, whose large eyes were seeing just then
Nothing too clearly, could not see the smile
Of hope in Talifer's. But she could feel it
In the warm melancholy of his voice,
And then she did not care. She rubbed her eyes
Industriously and thoroughly, till she saw him
All as he used to be; and then she laughed
In a doubt-haunted way as if afraid
He might not still be there and was a spirit.

“Well, no,” she said, “I may not have been ready
For time's advice—or for so much of it.
I'll trust that he was kind. He can be kind,
And he can be as cruel as a tiger
That waits in places for what comes along—
Which might not be so bad if he were not
So fierce and so terrific, as your eyes are
When you don't know. But they are not so now;
Now they are kind. I might say they were sorry,
If I knew more of what is hidden in them.”

“Unless I have been looking at a stranger,
With voice and eyes and features of Althea,
You know enough,” he murmured, and looked hard
At a red leaf that had come fluttering down
While he was listening. He took it up,

1277

And after holding it as if uncertain
Of whose red leaf it was, said, like a boy,
“Will you keep this until I come again?”

A warmness, like a sudden wave of healing,
Touched her and filled her and brought happiness,
Unwarranted or not—she did not ask—
Into her eyes, where she could feel it shining.
“I will,” she said; “and I may keep it longer.
Have I no rights? It came down from my tree.”

He smiled, and seizing her small hands, forgot
That his were strong. “God knows you have a right
To more than I have yet to say is yours.
You may have that as well as your red leaf—
If you have room for both, and have a notion
That they go well together.”

“It is good,”
She said, “to find a glimmer of yourself,
In the same face I knew. For when you looked
At me last year, there was no mercy in it.
You don't know how you looked, or how you talked.
You were so solemn and so terrible,
So sure that you were done with me for always,
That I believed—no, I can't lie to you;
One part of it I'm sure you must have heard
In someone else's house before you said it.
I can't believe you found it. ‘Peace,’ I mean.
I shouldn't have said that, and so I said it.
Only a thoughtful and sweet-natured ferret
Like me, would do it.” She made her large eyes larger,
While from his coat she plucked invisible threads
And held them in the air for him to see.

1278

Talifer fixed his eyes on the red leaf,
And then on her changed face: “If what you mean
Is what I see, you have already said it.
But we had best not be here any longer,
Or we shall soon be news. You will not lose it?”

“No, I shall always have it, and I'll watch it.
If rightly kept, they last for a long time—
I shouldn't wonder if a hundred years.
Good-bye, and thank you for it.”

Talifer's world
Was larger as he wandered slowly back,
And autumn held a glory and a warmth
Of colors that had shone nowhere on earth
An hour before. The tunnelled road he found
Through his own trees and foliage, waiting for him,
Was none that he had followed in his life
Till now. It was all new and unexplored,
And was beyond remembrance or belief,
Till suddenly, half-covered with the same
Vermilion, his house told him with hard silence
That here was home. It did not look like home,
And felt less like it as he entered it
And found the same things he had always known
Awaiting him—still there as they had been
When he was born, and some as long before him
As there were Talifers who had lived and died
Within those walls. He was the last of them,
And he had bound himself by church and state,
In a blind lapse of pagan turbulence,
To a soul-frozen disillusionment
That was not woman and was not for man.

A breathing silence and a western light
Was on the couch where Karen lay asleep

1279

While he came in unheard. He felt Althea
There with him, like an injured wistful spirit
That might be with him for as long as life,
And injured for as long, unless he made
Of his not yet humiliated name
A target and a plaything for the town
To pelt with ignominy, and to laugh at
As a high-flying game brought down at last,
And sadly spattered. If it must be so,
He reasoned, he had made the way for it.
So far as man alone made anything here—
A master-question that his pride evaded,
Save in appraising others—he had made
His bed, and here was what he found in it—
One of an ancient God's wise mockeries,
Perhaps, and a right punishment for a fool.
So he might think so long as his eyes rested
On anything not that face. No man could watch
A face and form so harrowingly divine
As hers and tell himself it was all folly
To be its famished prey. But what of that?
There was no sustenance in repeating it,
And no especial sense. The more he gazed
In vain upon that seeming heaven-wrought sheath
Of ice and intellect and indifference,
The more he felt the presence of Althea,
With a forgiving and amused reproach
In her expectant eyes. What was a name,
A shield, or a tradition, or a legend
Worth now, he thought; and in Althea's eyes
He found the only answer. And once more
He gazed at Karen, sleeping. “God in heaven,”
He groaned—“God, fate, or nature, or mischance,
Why was this woman born!” Unconsciously
He raised his arms in angry supplication,

1280

Clutching at nothing with indignant hands
That would have torn the veil between man's folly
And fate. His will was his alone no longer,
And he could only ask, and ask unanswered,
“Why was this woman born!”

With upraised hands
That had no purpose, and with eyes ablaze
With fire that was not his to feel or know,
He stared at her; and while he stared, his words
Were answered with a terror-laden shriek,
A writhing, and a moaning, and a leap
From where she had been lying to the floor,
Where now she stood with hands holding her throat,
Like one who had seen death. She seemed to wait;
And when he made a forward step to save her,
Covered her eyes and swayed. He lifted her,
And felt the frightened warmth of her soft body
Trembling in helplessness. She was alive,
And was awake; but life was horror breathing,
And consciousness a terror without speech.
He laid her softly on the couch again,
And stroked her cold white fingers while a slow
Unfolding of incredible comprehension
Chilled him with her mistake.

“Karen,” he said,
“What fearful dream is this that I have broken?
And why were you afraid to find me here?
I have stood here and seen you lying asleep
Before—because you were so beautiful.
There was no other reason. Did you dream
That I could hurt you, Karen?” He could feel
His words drawn out of him like heavy weights
Of uselessness, and now he felt the sweat

1281

Of cold despair for having spoken them.
They were not words, although they were the truth,
For Karen to believe.

“Don't look at me!”
She cried, and snatched her fingers out of his
As if the touch and sight of them were fire
And death. “Don't touch me with those hands!
Don't look at me! It was your eyes! Your eyes!
It was your hands—it was your hands and eyes!
It was your eyes! Your eyes!” She threw herself
Upright, and groped away like a blind child
Until there was a chair that she could feel
Between him and her fear. She clung to it
As people sinking cling to sinking things
At sea before they drown. “Don't look at me!”
She cried again. “Don't tell me anything—
It was your eyes! Your eyes!”

Talifer sat
Amazed and helpless, fearing if he arose,
Or moved, or spoke, nothing would come of it
But that mad shriek repeated. So he sat
With sad eyes looking at the floor, and waited—
For what, he did not know. The only sound
He heard was of a quick and fearful breathing,
Which hurt him as a stinging lash would hurt,
And made a pain of silence. He looked up
To find her facing him, with her dark eyes
Fixed on him with an unbelieving fear,
Which had a darker and a wilder light
Than fury would have had, or woman's hate.
It was a fear that had no thought of him,
Save as a nameless horror watching her,
And holding her, he fancied, as a serpent

1282

Would hold a bird. And there was pity in that,
And sorrow that was not to be endured
Longer with nothing said.

So he said, “Karen,
You poor bewildered and unhappy child,
You poor mistaken child, what have I done?
I'll tell you, if I can. You were asleep,
And woke up suddenly to find me there,
With my hands raised in hopelessness above you.
I raised them, and not knowing why I did it,
Held them above you and your loveliness,
And your deceiving and unearthly coldness,
And said to God, ‘Why was this woman born?’
You may have heard. If not, you hear it now.
There was no anger in me when I said it;
There was just wonder, and a long despair.
I would not injure you to save my life.
And when you saw me there, there was in me
No thought or furthest wish to give you pain,
Or to molest your sleep. You might have slept
Until you woke to find the sun gone down;
And I should have gone softly somewhere else.
I should have gone like Ahab. He went softly.”
He smiled at her with only a drawn hope,
And thought of nothing better.

After a pause
That each long second lengthened painfully,
He spoke again: “Will you believe me, Karen?
You would not have me telling lies to you,
For somehow I believe that you would know them.
You know so much that I'm afraid of you—
And yet so little as to believe your life
Unsafe with me. This is all comedy,
Karen; and with your knowledge you must know it,

1283

Or must believe that I'm a scurvy fiend,
And liar; and you will never believe that,
Strive as you may. A tortured evidence
May torture truth until it has no features
For even itself to recognize. But—Karen!
You must believe me, for I said the truth.
It was not easy. And we, not being two fools,
Must own the presence of an error somewhere,
And at a better time—not now, God knows—
Acknowledge it, and find what's left to do
With our mishandled lives. I am not mighty,
And when my life is done, so few will know
Or care, that I might sigh to think of it,
If sighs were seeds of glory. I'm not glorious,
Karen, nor am I eminently vicious;
For I can swear to you that I am decent,
And swear again that I am not a liar;
And I'm not much for swearing. If my word
To you were not sufficient, all my oaths
To God would be no more. You saw my hands
Uplifted in a solemn desperation
That may have had a sort of humor in it.
I don't know what it was. I looked at you,
And saw you sleeping there, so beautiful,
So inaccessible and impossible,
That I—well, I forgot what I was doing.
You are enough to make a man forget
That earth is not a tomb—where the dead live,
All reading only what the dead have written,
And all as beautiful as ...”

“Don't!” she cried.
“I have read everything—and in your eyes.
I saw your eyes—and there was death in them.
No!—stay away—don't touch me!”

1284

Talifer, rising,
Like a man battling with a last despair,
Would have restrained and held her, and with words
Of sorrow and assurance pacified her
Into a right belief. But she escaped,
And like a frightened fox eluded him,
This way and that, crying “Quick! Quick! Where are you!”
Out of the room and through the hall she ran,
And through the open doorway to the road
That ran like a long tunnel under trees
Into the town. He did not follow her,
Nor could he have said why. He only knew
There was a will not his that hindered him,
And held him there alone. She would come back
Before she had gone far, and would be sorry
For what she said. If she did not come back ...
He shook his head, and found that he was smiling
Because two mighty and invisible hands
Imprisoned him from action. And he knew,
And would have known if she had never told him,
Where she was going.

And while Talifer,
With trees that might have been the walls of time
Between him and the truth, was asking fate
What a red leaf was saying to Althea
In a new language, there was Doctor Quick,
Reading at home serenely a new book
About the universe, and learning from it
Knowledge as far beyond phenomenon
As brontosauruses had known before him.
Yawning, he stretched himself, and saw the sun
Above a distant hill. The day was going,
He thought, and would be gone with nothing done

1285

Deserving a red letter; and he sighed,
With an untroubled comfortable envy
Of mightier men than he, who had performed
Or thought immortally, and had left their deeds
And thoughts behind them for mankind to cherish.
He sighed again, fearing that he would leave
Only what undiscriminating fortune
Had left to him; and if his pride was quiet
Because of that, his grief to be unwritten
Among the mighty was an easier pang
To bear than endless pain and destitution—
Of which in lives around him he had seen
Far more than was a pleasure. On the whole,
He fancied he was not the most accurst
Of men, and was about to yawn for that,
When someone running, while a startled maid
Stood watching, found a way to where he was,
And stood there panting while she looked at him
With scared, beseeching eyes.

“For God's sake—Karen!”
He said, and shut the door. She ran to him
As to a sturdy father—which may never
Have been quite his imaginary status
In her proximity—and with quivering arms
Around his neck, held herself close to him,
And was held closer still. “Take me away!”
She moaned: “If you meant anything when you said it,
Take me away from here, where I shan't see them—
Where I shan't see his eyes!”

For the first time
A dream that had been his, mostly the whim
Of a luxurious curiosity
That loyalty had for a year disowned,

1286

Was granted. He had not expected it,
But here it was; and what the devil it meant
Would in its time be told. When she looked up,
He kissed her, and her warm lips answered his
As if she cared. He wondered if she did,
Or if she could have told, or if it mattered,
Whether she knew or not. For there she was,
The loveliest biological achievement
That his prehensive eyes had yet approved,
Or that his arms had held. If Talifer
Had lost his wits and thought he had found peace
In finding her, he was to be forgiven,
Though Quick was at a loss for Talifer's
Envisagement of peace. He lifted her,
More for the sake of holding her, perhaps,
Than for her visible need of being lifted,
And left her in a chair. “Drink this,” he said,
“And tell me all about it. Talifer,
Unless another man has had his name,
Would have it so. Tell me, in your own way,
What has been said or done; and in my way,
I'll tell you how it looks.”

“I was asleep,”
She said; “and when I woke I saw his hands,
High in the air above me, like great claws.
And then I saw—and then I saw—his eyes!
I saw death in his eyes—and then I screamed.
I leapt away from him and almost fainted.
He carried me, as you did now, and laid me
In the same place where I awoke and saw him—
And saw his eyes. He talked about his hands,
And said that they were only asking God
Why I was born. But he could see his hands,
And may have told the truth. He could not see

1287

His eyes, or what was in them that I saw,
And could not tell the truth. I saw his eyes—
And I saw death in them. His eyes! His eyes!”

Quick rubbed his chin, and said assuringly,
“It sounds to me more like a benediction,
Or a farewell. He raised his hands to heaven,
And asked why you were born? He might do that,
You see, if you forgot that you were married;
And if you did, it's too late to remember.
There are too many forces you don't know.
Or do you? The Lord knows just what you know,
And why you gave yourself to Talifer—
If ever you did. You never wanted him;
You only wanted what Althea wanted;
And with your face and your anatomy,
And your pied-piper voice, and your quaint learning—
Which, in a crazy way, made all the rest
The more unreal and indispensable—
You stole him, as you might steal priests and bishops,
If you set out. You are the devil, Karen;
And you must not go back to Talifer.
You could not if you would—though, I'll assure you,
Talifer's eyes are not so terrible
As you believe them. If a good old dog
Had wakened you as he did, suddenly,
And you had seen his eyes examining you
Too curiously, you might have found in them
Death and hell-fire together. You might have yelled;
And the good dog, not knowing what else to do,
Might have stood up amazed, on his hind legs,
And barked as if he'd bite you. It was all
A wild misunderstanding on your part,
Yet one we don't regret. You can't go back.”

1288

“I know I can't,” she said. “I am afraid.
I can't go back. You know I can't stay here.
What can I do? What is there left to do?”
He smiled—or grinned: “Oh, there are lots of things.
So far as I can see with your sphinx-eyes
What's left for you to do, I should say first
That you might best imagine yourself running
Out of a burning house, Talifer's house,
And that by now the whole manorial mass
Is no more than a seething crumbling ruin,
Roaring and smoking, with brave firemen spouting
Water all over it that will do no good.
For now it is too late. Nothing of yours
That you're not wearing on your body and bones
Is left. So where's the use of going back?
You don't want Talifer; and from your account,
He doesn't want you. He may have burned, also;
And ashes may be all that you and sorrow
May find of him to mourn. Now there's a thought
Worth polishing and holding to the light.
And all this might have happened. Since it hasn't,
You'll need a few discreet commodities,
More personal and more individual
Than I have here. I shall see Talifer,
And he, with a few prompt and willing words
To your obedient maid, will give me all
You'll need for a few days. And in ten minutes,
Or maybe twenty, I shall be here again.
And all the while I'm gone this world of ours
That was here yesterday will have been whirling
Around the sun—because the sun, being stronger,
Will have his way. And there is a law stronger
Than all the suns that has you in its keeping—
But we'll forget that now. You know it better
Than I can say it—and you can't go back.

1289

You are afraid to go, and you are right—
Though not for the wrong reason you have given.
Even so, you can't go back.”

Karen, who heard him
As an imprisoned victim of a siege
Might have heard murmurs of encouragement
Above the roar of a surrounding battle,
Stared at him with despairing eyes wide open,
Pounding her knees with her two little fists.
“But you are blind!” she cried. “I can't stay here.
I won't stay here! The town would laugh for ever
At me—and I won't be ridiculous.
I'd rather be dead than be ridiculous.”

He stilled her quickly, with a lifted hand
Commanding quiet, and with a patient frown:
“Child of anticipation and illusion,
Not more than one of those invisible ears,
Which might be seen, could have been listening,
Or you'd not say with any such violence
That you will not stay here. I know you won't.
And I know you will never go back again
To find the webs of Talifer's traditions
Entangling and delaying you for nothing.
And you don't dare to go. I forgot that.
You will not flout fate's opportunity,
Which is a part of an immortal progress
In which you are a pilgrim, whether or no.
Now let us yoke our brilliant wits together
And find out, by geography at first,
Just where you are. You are three hours from New York,
And there's a tavern there; and there's a ship
That sails away sometimes. If I know more
Than owls—reputed falsely to be wise—

1290

All you may ask will be sent after you
Before you sail. Nothing of yours that's here
Will be withheld or misappropriated.
Your things, your trinkets, and your dictionaries,
Your Plato, and your Hermes Trismegistus,
And your new Apollonius Rhodius,
And all your little friends, will follow you.
I shall not hold you to your invitation
Till you are more composed. Only, remember
That I'm still here, and your inveterate slave.
Don't be delirious, don't be agitated,
And don't forget that little house in Wales.”

V

One sunny Sunday morning, two years after,
Talifer came down stairs and found Althea
Laughing. When asked what she was laughing at,
She said, “At you, and Quick, and everything
That makes a creature pleased to be alive,
To see what comes. There was a time she wasn't—
Or wasn't particular. Are you more resigned,
And ready for your endurance to the end?”
She watched him with amusement in her eyes,
And he could see that she was throbbing with it,
Although it was not audible: “If you are,
I'm grateful. For you see if you were not,
Good Doctor Quick's untiring services
Might have a sad reward, and his return
Show for him nothing but a blighted harvest
Of all the joyful grain he has been sowing.
But if you're happy, and I'm laughing at you,
It could not all have fallen by the wayside,
Or upon stony places, or been mildewed
Before it fell. Surely it must have been

1291

Good grain, or it would never have come up.”

“Resigned? Of course I am.” He laid his hands
Carefully on her head, and pulled her ears.
“Resigned, and reconciled, and undefeated
By a few obstacles and reservations.
I knew that if I married this red hair,
Sorrow would come of it, and servitude.
Yet I was not prepared or fortified
For any such unbecoming levity
As yours. Perhaps you are not quite aware
That this will be the first home-breaker's welcome
In my remembrance—and I hope the last.”

“I'll hope so, certainly.” She poked a part
Of a pink tongue out at him, and withdrew it
Suddenly, with a frown at his appearance.
“But you had best be watchful, and hereafter
Never wear one like that.”

Talifer cast
A downward look upon himself, and said,
“You call me too conservative, and have fits
To find that I've a memory. What's wrong with it?
Is it not cheerful, and inspiriting?
Is this day an occasion of no color?
With our deliverer—for whose intercession
We should have proper thanks and gratitude
In preparation—coming this afternoon,
You laugh and shake yourself. If you should laugh
Yourself to death, what would become of me?
Have you no self-repose? Have you no morals?”

“I don't know,” said Althea, “but I rather
Expect I haven't. And we'll call this thing
One of my lord's mistaken elegances—

1292

Which mercifully are not habitual,
Or frequent. Now I have it; and I'll hide it
Where you will never more be dazzled by it
Into temptation. In a secret manner
That we'll invent, we may, if we are crafty,
Give it anonymously to the orphans.
When brides wear tiger-lilies, you may get you
Another just like it. I've a slow suspicion
That you had best remain conservative
For a while longer. Quick, if he should see it,
Would say that any woman who could watch it,
And be unmoved, would carry the cat to church.
Have you forgotten the grave hours of thought
He must have given to our complexities
Before he smashed them—as he might a clock
Because it wouldn't go? Now do you see?”

“I see why you can't help yourself from being
The seemingest red-headed Rose of Sharon
That ever blossomed on a Sunday morning,”
Said Talifer: “If I put on a red one,
Harmonious and agreeable with your hair,
Quick will appreciate the inspiration,
Giving you all the praise. I shall not mind.
Sorrow has taught the family worm to smile
And suffer, and to see no use in turning.
How is young Samuel?”

“He is happy and well.”
She said; “and for as long as heavenly mercy
Protects and shelters him, no clouds to come
Will dim the sunshine of his ignorance.
He is not old enough to know his father.”

Talifer, with a fond joy in his eyes,
And a forgotten collar in his fingers,

1293

Stood like a schoolboy taller than his mother,
And helplessly transfixed with happiness
For getting himself praised. The more she laughed,
The more he beamed with a beatified
Paralysis that was unassailable;
And when with a reluctant resignation
He left her standing there, still laughing at him,
He made a violent and unusual face
That warmed her with a grateful reassurance
Of an unspoken code. If he should break it,
He would break everything, and himself with it,
And she knew that he knew it. She was born
To be like that, and Talifer should by now
Know what he wanted. She believed he did;
And comforted with her belief, she tied
A long cravat into a careful ruin
Of hard and irremediable knots,
Each in itself a pleasing piece of work,
And all a gratifying morning pastime.
When it was done, she sat there dangling it
Like a too-many-colored knotted snake
That she had slain. When Talifer returned,
He might say that a resident snake-killer
Would have been useful earlier. If he didn't,
He might still think so without saying so.
She held it up again to see it hang
And swing, and watched it as contentedly
As if it had been Karen.

That afternoon,
Alone under a tree, Althea played
With memory, as in childhood she had played
With a loose tooth, and so relived an hour
At home, three years ago, when Talifer,
Like a man changed into another man,

1294

Had come, as he had made himself believe,
To set her free, and to be honorable,
Before it was too late. She felt the same
Sick chill going through her; and this time she wondered
If she enjoyed it, now the past was over,
And finally decided that she did.
All this that she had now, it seemed, was more
Than even God gave for nothing, or chance offered
Once in a hundred years to mortal choice
Because it happened so; and she knew better
Than to believe that her being miserable
Would heal the common wound. She might, indeed,
Be of more use upright and fortunate
Than supine and rebellious. She was doing
Some good, and if the world would not behave
More as it might if jungle-minded knaves
And patriots were not always playing with it,
Her tears would do no more. If Quick should come
Prepared for happiness, and should find a woman
With a world on her shoulders, he might wish
That he had never chosen or encountered
The task of her salvation.

She looked up,
And there was Talifer, who had come unseen,
And with a meditative solemn step
That made no sound. He sat and looked at her
As at a loved one who had stolen something,
Or at a dead friend whom he had offended
Before he died. And then he said, “I wonder
If all men have inside them little tombs,
Where squirming memories are like jacks-in-boxes
Pressed under covers that will not stay down.
Most likely all have several. But there's one
In me that has a small mean demon in it,

1295

Whose head it will not hide for longer time
Than to prepare to pop it out again
When least announced. I have sent reason down
To plead with it, and humor to engage it
With its own method; but they both come back,
One with no language left, and one in tears.
It might be worse if Quick were not your friend,
And mine; for he was there in Karen's cottage
When I explained, and said I had found—peace;
And that's what I'd eat lizards to forget.
I am not naturally an imbecile,
Or you would not be here; and Quick would not
Have seized the moment when he had it with him,
And held it for your sake. It was for you
That he concerned himself so diligently
With my well-being. What are you laughing at?
You have been laughing ever since you got up.
Your Pilgrim Mothers would have spanked you for it.”

“No doubt,” she said. “Conditions and opinions
Prevailed then of a nature to make ladies
More vigorous and severe in their devotions,
And their observances, than they are now,
And men more stern and awful. In those days,
A faith in something hard and horrible
May have been necessary to transform
A forest wilderness into this place here,
Which looks as if the vikings might have seen it,
Just as it is. But I'm afraid they didn't.
Somebody must have worked. And we must hope,
For their sake, they were happier for believing
The more they toiled and the less fun they had,
The more God loved them for it. I can see,
Without being metaphysical in the least,
Why they believed no easy-going God

1296

Could have made men to fell so many trees,
And lift so many rocks, and women to bear,
As needful rest and incidental change,
From twelve to twenty children between sweepings
And garnishings. A woman must have some rest.
It may be weakness and a shrinking sin
For me to say so, but I'm pleased no less
Not to have come so early. I am proud
Of what was done by those who were before me,
But not for life itself would I go back
To be my great-great-grandmother—who, I'm told,
Wore herself out at ninety and died smiling,
Sorry to go so soon. I'm still uncertain
That I've a sinless right to think of her
Except down on my knees; yet all the same,
I'd rather be where her bones are than be living
Her life instead of mine. You never supposed
That I could be so truthful, but I can—
On Sunday. In the world that's on its way,
We shall be only ornamental remnants;
We shall be curiosities—or we should be
If we were here. It's well to know the worst,
And face it like a Roman—or a Spartan,
If you like Spartans. I have hated them
Intensely, always. When you married me,
You married a thing clinging to the past
With a tenacious pride, something like yours.
You married a proud limpet—though I say it
Only to you and your ferocious eyes,
Which have a peaceful and domestic shine
Just now that doesn't scare me. If you knew
What you were doing when you brought me here,
We should go on, with only normal bloodshed,
Until we are no more.”

1297

“I don't account,”
Said Talifer, laughing at her with his eyes,
“For all these powerful thoughts of yours today.
You must have read a book. In any event,
I am not unimpressed; I have, in fact,
Done some unspoken thinking recently,
In which I have some pride. You can't have all
The pride there is; and here is the right moment
For your new estimation of my brain.
Here is young Samuel in his chariot,
Coming to listen. He must know sometime
His useful doom; and if he hears it now,
Being his father's son, he will not flinch.
When he grows up, we'll make the scion work
Unceasingly, and save the family honor
From any such disrepute and execration
As your forebodings may anticipate.
Today the only vision, except yourself,
That haunts me is the coming of our friend,
About now, from experiment and exile—
Two years of it. Well, he is wiser now,
And soon should be in sight, with his round face
Haggard and hardly to be recognized.
He will need spirits to invigorate him,
And sympathy not much easier to express
Than to experience. You are still deceived,
I see, with a false presence, or pale phantom,
Of something you insist is humorous
In my calamitous lapse and aberration,
But if you try to find it with my eyes,
You may search harder than you do with yours,
And see it indistinctly. If you were not
A sanctified and precious vessel of sin,
You might restrain your mirth. If you had morals,

1298

You would remember that you have a son,
Who may, as he develops and observes,
Be more and more like you than like his father.
Have you considered that, and all it means?
And here he is. Remark him, and remember
That he is yours to ruin.”

The son and heir,
From his perambulator, scanned his father
Somewhat as if in doubt of his importance;
And having striven in vain to change his mind,
He fixed a beaming gaze upon his mother,
And with a language of one syllable
And of two hands, made himself understood.
She lifted him from his imprisonment
And held him as if he were naturally
A part of her, and was no trouble to hold—
Which was a mystery still to Talifer,
Who found him fearsome and irregular,
And of no constant length or magnitude.
Like one who had read somewhere in a treatise
How it was done, he touched his infant's nose
With an abrupt unfaltering forefinger,
And sat back with an air of one who knew
What was expected and could always do it—
All with a shrewd smile of encouragement
And confidence between him and his son,
Who promptly welcomed and rewarded it
With a malignant scowl.

“I can hear steps,”
Althea said. “I hear him—and I see him.
And I see nothing haggard or decrepit,
Or different. I should call him the same Quick
That went away from us two years ago.

1299

He walks, if anything, with a firmer foot,
And with a surer freedom in his legs
Than ever. He looks happy.”

“There might be,”
Said Talifer, with a dryness, “if we knew them,
Some reasons why he should—reasons apart
From seeing you and me. He knows more now
Than he did once, and that may be sufficient
To make him happy; although the happiest
Are nowhere the most learned. You might ask him.”

“Well, well, my children! What have you been doing?”
Now in a chair, with a large glass before him,
Quick smiled upon the scene of his return
With retrospective eyes: “God bless my soul!
Babies, and everything. His father beams
As if he thought the race, with him to save it,
Might still go on. I've seen the same before,
And always have accepted and respected,
Impartially, its import and assurance.
A face like Talifer's is like a sunrise
After unhappy days of gloom and rain.
I can remember when that face foretold
Only disintegration and despair.
Look at it now. And who is this new person,
Who sees more than he thinks he'd better say?
Give him to me. Children and animals
Know they are safe with me, and they alone
Appreciate immediately my merit.
No, I'm not going to drop him. Once I knew
A gentleman who was dropped in infancy
Out of a window, inadvertently,
By a red-headed mother. He was never
The same man afterwards. And what would be

1300

This giant's name, perhaps? Micajah? Manfred?
Or Samuel would it be—after his father?”

“Yes, Samuel would it be—after his father,”
Althea said. “And if his name and station
Command no more respect than they are getting
From you, his patient father may be heard from.”

The doctor looked up from his infant burden
At Talifer, and then looked down again:
“You hear that, Samuel? Your patient father.
My God, but he was patient, Samuel—
If that's the word—and for some months too long.
But he was nothing to your patient mother,
And she was not so patient. No, it is not
The word, but let it pass. I'll tell somewhat
About it, if you listen. You should know it;
And if your father tells me I'm a liar,
I'll tell you more, for he'll be one himself.
Your inferences may not yet have dimmed
Your knowledge, Samuel, with a suspicion
That somehow this obscure phenomenon
Of ambulant mortality called man
Pays variously, with more than coin of earth,
For more than his terrestrial apparatus;
And you are not to suffer, or shoot yourself,
If you don't know. There are things I don't know.
I don't know why your mother should have paid
So heavily for your father's education.
But if she's happy with him, and satisfied,
He may be worth the price. We shall not ask
Your mother to go back for confirmation.
You must have learned by this time, Samuel,
The folly of that. You show it in your face.
You are presumably omniscient now—

1301

At least you look so; and it has been argued
That we are all omniscient at your age,
And year by year are sillier till we die.
Sometimes it would appear so, certainly.
But that's an unproductive argument,
Like most, and we will not pursue it now.
Leaving it out, your father, Samuel,
Was manifestly for a time foredoomed.
He should have been. If I may seem severe,
Ask him one question for his meek assurance
That there's a genius in my moderation:
Ask him if he was not for a sad season,
Common to men who, having all God may give,
Cry for the unpossessed, considerably
An ass. Ask him, and he will not deny it,
For he knows better. You see, Samuel,
I say to you what I say to your father.
I am not ambidextrous in my friendship;
When I have gifts in one hand for my friend,
I have not in the other a sharp knife
For my friend's back. I'm rectitude all over,
And yet unstable. Your mother always knew it,
And weighed me with a lightness undeserved.
When she is old, and I am here no more,
She'll plant a little flower where I am buried,
And she'll sit watching it for hours and hours.
And then there was my uncle, a stern fellow,
Who said I was like Reuben in the Bible,
Who was no good at all. He might have broken
His father's heart if it had not been Jacob's,
Which was a rather tough one. So was mine;
It had to be. And yet I too can suffer.
I've suffered pangs and spasms seeing your father
Led helplessly to cold incarceration,
Where he believed was Peace—with a capital.

1302

He told us he believed it. Now your mother,
Who has good manners when she thinks of them,
Is going to be amused. Whenever she frowns
Or glares at you, or takes you over her knee,
Samuel, you have only to say ‘Peace,’
And all will be forgotten. Observe her now:
Her most unworthy thoughts are slinking back,
Maliciously, just to remind your father
Of all he should have seen.”

“You can do nothing,”
Talifer said. “She was like that this morning.
She still believes that there was something quaint,
Or funny, in my misfortune. She had better
Do so than make a fireside viper of it,
For that's a serpent not so easy to kill.
I thought first it was pathological,
But now it appears harmless—mere illusion.
She will not die of it.”

Quick only smiled
With a calm satisfaction while Althea
Shook with unmanageable memories
In struggling silence. “You see, Samuel,
She will not die of it. It's mere illusion.
How do you know that you are not illusion,
Samuel? No, your mother won't die of it;
She can't. She was prepared by destiny,
Samuel, to fulfil your father's life
With more than he deserved; with so much more,
Indeed, that a probation was created
In the false image of an Ashtoreth,
Or Lilith, or Fish-Venus, or some sort
Of perilous reptile fashioned as a woman.
She had ambitions, and a learned eye

1303

For the necessities of impending years,
And a sweet hatred of your gentle mother,
Who would have salted her while she was frying
Alive, and would have turned her with a fork,
And fanned the fire at times. Wherefore your father,
Not being so strong as fate was, married her;
And then his wits came back. Quite as a man
Wakes in a sweat from a malefic nightmare,
Your father came to daylight and saw truth—
By which I mean your mother—but the Fish
Was with him still. Now God knows what affliction,
Disaster, or destruction might have followed
Your father's hesitations and traditions,
And his forgetfulness that there's a knife
For more knots than are cut, if Doctor Quick,
His good friend and your mother's faithful slave,
Had not lived in this town. Strange as it sounds,
Your father, Samuel, might still have his Fish,
And you might be more surely an illusion
Than you are now; and with a blasting peril
Unparalleled haunting him and his house,
He might at last have cursed all out of him
The courage and sense to let your mother know.
But for the foresight of good Doctor Quick,
Your mother might never have known—though I'll be just,
And we will not believe it. Time and Events,
Your father's team of galloping tortoises,
Who arrived suddenly one afternoon,
Would have come sometime anyhow; and your mother,
Not fitted for the part of an impatient
Griselda, would have frowned unfeelingly
On numerous men of merit, like myself,
And still would have been waiting for your father,
Who is not nearly so remarkable,
Or so celestially worth waiting for,

1304

As she believes he is. But fate said yes,
And so it was. And so good Doctor Quick,
As always, did the work and had no pay.
There's a word waiting on your mother's tongue
To be a wasp.”

“You always liked your voice,”
Althea said: “I've always told you so.
Go on, please. You are company.”

“I will,
For Samuel's sake, if you are so insistent.
Well, Samuel, as it proved, Time and Events
Were of a sudden service, as your father
Believed they might be. But if Doctor Quick
Had been elsewhere than here, or naturally
Had been less prompt and loyal in his habit,
I am not saying, Samuel, or surmising,
What might have fallen. At a sad sacrifice,
And a large inconvenience and expense,
He ferried the Fish-Venus and her playmates,
Her Plato, and her Hermes Trismegistus,
And her new Apollonius Rhodius,
Over the ocean to a little house
In Wales, which he had most erroneously
Supposed would hold her. But she wouldn't have Wales.
She said Wales was too chilly and too remote—
Which, had they been the last two adjectives
Alive, would never have been her two to use.
There was a magic river to make music,
And there were trees and hills and dictionaries,
Philosophers, and all the Greek and Latin
That any normal monster would require
For heavenly bread to feed her and her beauty,
But when October came she smiled and flew.

1305

She was so beautiful that many believed
She was not real; and, Samuel, they were wrong.
She was unusual, but was not illusion;
She was no more illusion than you are,
Samuel. If you doubt me, ask your father;
And if he fidgets and stays reticent,
Ask anyone who's from Oxford. She's in Oxford,
Samuel, where she's had, or so I gather,
A fur-lined assignation with the past
Since her first sight of the Greek alphabet.
At any rate, she is there, where she is happy,
And harmless, too—unless to curious youth,
Who, seeing her suddenly, may forget their Greek
And metaphysics, which, could they only know it,
Is about all they see. If you and I,
Samuel, were out walking over there,
We might observe, with schooled serenity,
Dons following her like dogs, and ancient sages,
With a last gleam of evil in their eyes,
Watching her and forgetting their arthritis.
Your father, free, and far away from her,
Forgives her; and as long as his remittance
Has wings, she will have paradise in the bank.”

“I think young Samuel may have heard enough,”
Althea said, still quivering silently
With a recurrent mirth of reminiscence
Not shared by Talifer, nor indignantly
Reproved. “Give him to me,” she said.

“All right,”
Said Quick, “but you will scare him, and he'll hate you.
Have you no sort of reverence or regard
For what a mother means? How sure are you
That you have not a wrathful Julius Caesar,

1306

Beginning to make faces while you shake him,
And meaning soon to howl?”

Talifer nodded,
With an agreement of one not annoyed:
“At first I was alarmed,” he said, “but later
Became cold-hearted and resigned. So now,
When it comes on, I wear the face of patience,
And wait till she returns. If she had manners,
Or morals, her obliterative instinct
Would urge her to conceal, or to forget,
Her joy in my remorse. If she had mercy,
Or decent sympathies, or a character,
She might, with years, be an agreeable helpmate.
But while she lets her memories and inventions
Rummage the past, more like a thankless cat
In an ash-can than an obedient wife,
What has a man to say? What has a man
To do, but wear the face of patience?”

“Take him,”
She said, and gave young Samuel to his father,
Who fancied for a minute he was nursing
An insane centipede. But no complaint
Came out of him, while with efficient hands
He mastered and compressed his struggling son,
And listened with a smile to the slow tone
Of peaceful bells that sounded from afar
Through the late afternoon. Althea, watching
Alternately the two contented faces
Of two admiring men, quivered and shook
Unfeelingly, until she moaned and choked
With an accumulation of impressions,
And had from Doctor Quick no more attention
Than a barbaric laugh. Young Samuel,

1307

Too long misused, employed his power of sound
As an elected and clairvoyant martyr
Might publish the injustice of his birth,
With none to notice him. Talifer, smiling,
With eyes that were no longer terrifying,
Saw now around him only quiet and rest,
And realization; and with grateful ears
That were attuned again to pleasant music,
Heard nothing but the mellow bells of peace.

University of Virginia Library

TALIFER (1933)

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