University of Virginia Library

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
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,
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.

“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.
“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.
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
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
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
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.
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.”

“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.
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.”