University of Virginia Library

The old house where Alan Eliot first saw light
Was hidden among dark intermingling pines,
A meadowy ramble from that savage coast
Against whose myriad-harbored ruggedness
The Atlantic, as if ired that Maine should be,
Tumbles his cold tempestuous emerald. Here
The spacious homestead rose, to its neighbor sea,
Through prim dull rooms and silent shadowed halls,
Grown murmurously kinned, like an upflung shell.

Child voices, in past years, had gayly rung
Out among these lone paths where now the weed
Pushed rank disfeaturing leafage; in the dusk
Of these now desolate chambers brilliant smiles
From blooming mouths had burst; these wordless walls
Where grim occasional Eliots posed in paint,
Had heard the adoring vows of lover-lips
That now were dust; and higher, in attic rooms,
Great odorous chests held fragments of the past,
Spicily buried there by buried hands,—
The grandam's ancient neckerchief beside
The babe's robe and the yellowing bridal veil.

And yet the old homestead was not masterless,
For Alan Eliot dwelt here, loving well
The slow consecutive quietudes of days,
Linked like calm pools; and blithely, now and then,
Like a sudden bright-clad butterfly in a wood,
His brother Adrian, fresh from college bonds,
Would speed, with shining eyes of larkspur-blue
And sunny locks and rich mellifluous laugh,
To the still shade of Alan's library,
Deep under spells of tome and globe and bust.

“Bat of the unwholesome book-shelf,” he would cry,
“Profit by nature's courteous accident
That made you brother to the auroral lark!
Come, blink and flutter awhile in open sun!”
And Alan—for he had loved with utter love
This boy, a decade younger than himself,
Since first his name left Adrian's lisping lips—
Would rise, and throwing down whate'er he read,
Walk seaward o'er the lawns at Adrian's side,
Heeding the lad's felicitous fluencies,
Watching him paint, with quick yet forceful brush,
On canvas of collegiate anecdote,
Pictures where many a sacred rule defied,
And many a foolish escapade, stood out
From backgrounds dark with professiorial wrath.

And now when Adrian, having overswept
The full curriculum into seniorhood,
Came home with a small modest honor, won
Lightly, and worn yet lightlier, like a rose,
To Alan, as near the shore they strolled, he spoke
(While the deep blue of heaven, one summer morn,
Looked all its soul out into the bland sea),
With words whose hardy vehemence might have stung
But for the watchful love that instantly
Healed what it hurt; and Adrian's words were these:

“O Alan, it is not well with you, not well!
You have made the mind the body's sepulchre;
You have thwarted manhood's genial equipoise;
The alert red blood, that feeds on light and air,
You have thinned amid the darkness and the damp
Of those long murky vaults that history's hand
Paves with the whitening bones of dead men's thought,
Ah, brother, this grave paleness on your cheek
Meets dissonantly morning's radiant cheer,
And all this amethyst amplitude of sea
Can glass no flash of joy in your dulled eyes!
Look you, I pluck one delicate dandelion;
Touch to your nostril its cool feathery gold,
And tell me, does the aroma, faint and fresh
As though, days off, the ambrosial rosy foot
Of Hebe had softly touched it, thrilling it,
Bear to you no consolatory balm,
No chaste intangible spell that never hid
In all proud Alexandria's ruined scrolls?
But, Alan, if you are mindful of my love,
My brother-love that fondly looks to you
As sire and brother interblent in one,
Being like a vine too bounteous for its prop,
O'erflowing this with deeps of lavish leaves,—
O Alan, if you are mindful of such love,
Hereafter cloak yourself not all in gloom,
Forget your books for a little space each day,
Companion me in drive or walk or sail,
And let the alluring summer start your sap,
Till stubborn boughs with richer greenery
Welcome this love of mine that holds your love
As dearer boon than ever bough to bird!”
Then Adrian saw on Alan's firm lean face
A smile that wholly bathed it, as the sun
Bathes a dark sea-crag in aerial gold;
And flinging an arm about his brother's neck,
While leisurely they sauntered seaward thus
(A wan-browed scholar with thought-furrowed face,
A merry-eyed athlete, deft at oar and ball),
Adrian made happy plans for future hours.
And “We shall see, next winter,” he gayly said,
“No splintry icicles hang brittle spears
Among the shivering pines, nor hear the howl
Of wolfish winds at the jarred homestead-panes,
Nor the wild riotous clash of wave on strand.
But we shall sail the blue Neapolitan bay,
Or breathe the empurpled Roman air, or watch
From gondolas the Venetian moonlight clothe
Pale immemorial sculptured palaces.
For though we are thus dissimilar, we two,
Still there is that in either's life which leans
Invisible arms toward those old storied lands.
Meanwhile 't were best if I could win you forth
A little among those neighbor village-folk,
Our parents' friends—and in departed years
Kindliest of friends to us, but now estranged
By dumb discourtesy of neglect, though chilled
To ice that one full smile would quickly thaw.”
And Alan answered then, with positiveness,
“Rome, Naples, all sweet Italy, if you will,
But not that garrulous village, packed with spite,
A-buzz with scandalous bees, a gossip-hive.”
Yet Adrian pleaded hard, and gained at length
A part if not the entirety of his will.
For Alan went with him, on a near day,
To visit one whom their dead sire had loved,
Old Lemuel Lane, once village-minister,
But sitting now, at seventy years and five,
Tired out beside the toilful road of life,
As laborers pause at evening ere they walk
Homeward to rest, and dreamily overhead
The twilight tinges heaven; so Lemuel sat,
Calm in the dying twilight of his life,
Its peaceful glimmerings on his silver hair,
And voices from the far past calling him,
Vague as the tremulous night-breeze in deep boughs.

He had been no gentle zealot, in his time,
For the rigid creed he clung to, Lemuel Lane.
From the prim altar of his plain-built church,
When the hardy biceps yet was in its prime,
He had pounded his good share of the “awful wrath
And scathing vengeance of eternal God.”
Yet though he had preached for half a century
Apocalyptic swords and ruthless fire
To self-admitted worms, in the man's heart lay,
Close-gloomed with overtangling bigotries,
A limpid spring of love to his fellow-men;
And from the placid waters of this love
(Which is the holiest any heart may feel,
Being so self-taintless) glad mouths might have drunk
Long balmy draughts of chaste philosophy.
As it was, he made his Christians, Lemuel Lane,
Much as old heathen Hadrian murdered his,—
From a sense of duty.
Grown beneath his hand,
Lilian, his orphan grandchild, seemed to some
Cold as the silvery ice-flower on a pane,—
A lily blossoming in the frosty air
Of a stern theology's bleak dogmatisms.
Yet to the spring of sweet spontaneous love
Within her grandsire's heart, this girl had found
Some shadowy secret spiritual path,
Some devious daisied byway, hers alone.
And for the coldness of her saintly face,
Whence in smooth waves the pale-gold hair flowed back
Above large serious eyes of starry gray,
Such coldness meant but youth's fresh purity,
Since Lilian's life was like the morning dew
That waits for a sun to thrill its crystal soul!
And even as dew when touched by summer dawn,
She had sense of inward splendor and new warmth
In that sweet hour when Adrian Eliot's smile
First met her look as toward the rose-wound porch
Of Lemuel's cottage he and Alan came
Up through the hollyhocks' red minarets,
One grave as twilight and one merry as noon.

And Adrian, sweeping with astonished eyes
Her beauty, grace by grace discovering it,
Was first to speak; and Lilian loved his voice,
So mellow it rang with manly gentleness.
And while she answered diffidently low,
He noted with mute wonder each choice charm
Of deep bright eyelash, temple tender-veined,
Lip curling upward like an innocent child's,
Clear dainty dimple on the rounded chin,
And wide brow, candid as a stainless heaven!

And now, because he had loved their father well,
Old Lemuel, coming later, staff in hand,
Gave to both guests warm greeting; but his brow
Saddened at fitful whiles amid the talk,
When memories of neglect o'erswept his heart
And thoughts of how his counsel once had served
As trusty guide to Alan's orphaned youth.
Nor could he stay his speech from wandering hints,
Pregnant with sad reproach. The world was changed,
Yes, mightily changed, he knew, of later years!
Even here in quiet Maine there had been folk
Who had felt the social ripple, as one might say,
Rush broadening from the central turbulence.
Satan was at his own sly tricks again!
(With raps of the stout stick in the withered hand.)
He had bottled that old hell-broth, atheism,
In fine new bottles branded ... what was the name?
And made this modern monkey-theorist loose
A locust-plague of speculative doubts,
To light on Eden's green faith-watered sward
And leave it desolation! Ah, for a time
To worship science in place of God might serve,
But soon or late must Ashtoreth and Baal
Be tumbled over in the iniquitous groves
By their own worshippers, while the wrath of Heaven
Thundered along the land ... “Yet, Alan, lad
(For lad you still must seem to these dim eyes),
I cast no bitterness on your father's son;
I am not your judge—God knows I wish I were!
They say you are grown right scholarly and wise,
Have had the old homestead-library well vamped,
Stored it with books in more than one strange tongue,
And set it round with marble and bronze Voltaires
And half the ungodly eminence of earth
Since Romulus. ... Well, you come at last to see
The old man your father loved once,—him who thinks
Full often, latterly, that he lives too long
Here in a world where newness fogs the past,
Where that which men call progress, he decay,
Gathers its thickening mildew o'er all faith,
And flaps aloft its impious carrion-wings
Above the white inviolate shape of Christ,
Still gleaming from the imperishable Cross!”

So Lemuel's warm polemic words boiled on,
Throwing off at intervals that ancient fume
Whose strong fanatic must yet stoutly clung
To many a tome on Alan's gloomy shelves,
Classic, mediæval, heathen, Christian sort,
Monkish or Protestant,—whatever shows
Mankind stanch-moored among conservatisms,
Or lighting reverent tripods at the foot
Of some adored idea, whose idol bulk
Clogs the fair fluent stream of onward thought
With might of damming prejudice. Alan heard
As one for whom the words were tales twice-told,
Smiling a little with his sombre lips,
Letting his eyes, more often than he knew,
Wander to Lilian's ethereal face.
But Lilian guessed not of these furtive looks,
For close within the spell of Adrian's voice,
His glowing smile and happy graciousness,
Heart-charmed she sat, and when he had gone, that day,
Heart-charmed she dealt in memories of him still;
Nor seemed herself through many an after-hour,
But moved about with absent eyes of dream,
Oblivious of small household offices,
Or now remembering her forgetfulness
With a rosy blush.
But on her life there fell
The sudden chilling grief, ere many weeks,
Of her loved grandsire's death: for Lilian stole
At dusk, one evening, to his half-shut door,
And called him, once, again, and yet again,
Till hearing but the clock's quick tick within,
She entered. There, by an open window, sat
Old Lemuel; breezes moved his silver hair;
A Bible on his still knee lay unclosed,
With fluttering leaves; his head, fallen backward, told
Only of calm sleep; on his faded cheek
A sunbeam smote from the dying west ... vague fear
Laid its cold clasp round Lilian's heart ... she sprang
Nearer, with a cry ... through all that night till dawn
She lay and moaned beside the sheeted dead.
Forlornest shadow, with the expiring flame
Of Lemuel's life, wrapt Lilian's. He who went
Had been her last of kindred. Only a life
Deserted thus by one whole perished race
Can truly feel the sacred bond of blood!
And he, the dead man, though he had often seemed
In other eyes a rigorous guard enough,
A seraph-martinet, at the gate of Heaven,
In hers wore tenderer traits; for she had heard
Humanity's full-pulsed heart beat forcefully
Below the corselet of this paladin saint.
Loud-roared were his sulphureous prophecies
On Sabbath morns, yet often afterward,
She lingering by his arm-chair, he would drop
In silence on her curls, with delicate touch,
Benedictions. “Ah, I knew him, only I,”
She sobbed to the kind neighbors when they came.
“I had his honey, if others felt his sting.
I loved him, knowing him what he was ... and now
I am kinless and alone!”
But Lilian found
Another trouble thwarting her young life;
For with the old preacher died his wage, and she,
Left with no guard against the fangs of want
Save the frail needle she so deftly plied,
Fought with proud plaintless quiet her brave fight
For bread. And now, on a certain eve, it fell,
While passing homeward in the dubious blue
Of dusk to the village outskirts, quick of step
(Her gold hair lovelier for her darksome gear,
Her pale face glimmering paler), that she met
Adrian, and that with courtly gentleness,
Passing, he held a moment in his own
Her tremulous hand. “I came in search of you,”
He murmured; “at your door I left my horse;
They had told me you would take this path ... I learned
But lately that your home was changed.” Therewith,
Dropping her hand, he walked at Lilian's side,
Below the outflowering stars, in the cool dusk.

And Adrian further said, in gentlest way,
“You have need of help; your grandsire was well-loved
Of our dead father. Alan and myself
Would hold it precious privilege to make
Your burden lighter for you ... Sanction us!”
And Lilian answered, with an upward look
And starrier from those great gray eyes of hers
Full into Adrian's own: “I give you thanks.
But see, I am decent-clad and well to do;
I have need of neither lodgement, clothes, nor bread.
Work brings me all. It is my amulet, work,
And guards me from myself; for one's own thoughts
Are bitter visitants to a life that moves
Kinless, alone, through this unpitying world!”

“Nay, kinless, if you will,” said Adrian then,
Impetuously, “but therefore not alone!”
His voice for an instant shook with one rich throb
Of feeling. Lilian's fluttered heart stood still,
But her deep shining eyes irresistibly
Were lifted up toward his, and there she read ...
She knew not what; and o'er the shadowy land
A sweet wild wind, that sprang from the summer sea
And smelt of its waves, came floating; and this wind
Bore to the ears of Lilian's soul a sound
Like trilling tinkles of many silver bells,
Joy-bells, and to her soul's pure lips it bore
A draught of that strange rich unearthly wine
Whose mellowing grape has bathed a magic globe
In sunlight of Hesperian valleylands!

The heavens had long been whitened with their stars
When Adrian at the homestead-gate, that night,
Drew rein. And many another night he walked
With Lilian while the summer lived, nor thought
If Alan's brows were gloomier, or its word
Less frequent on the reticent scholar's lip.
For love, first love, that sweet blithe torch-bearer,
Had waved his rosy torch through Adrian's soul,
Till every mood of it henceforth was clad
In gracious glory, and he beheld the world
With altered eye. The summer suns, for him,
Sank westward with a kinglier gorgeousness,
The daisy rocked to breeze of balmier touch,
And richlier orbed in reaches of dim pearl,
Nightly chaste Hesper trembled.
Through these days
An agony gnawed Alan Eliot's heart,
Though his brother dreamed it not. For since the hour
When Lilian stood upon the rose-wound porch,
Meeting himself and Adrian, Alan's thought
Had dwelt with secret fire of growing love
On her bright shape; yet he had found this love
As strange a guest within his studious life
As a laughing child-face in some solemn vault.
Never till now he had known what live love meant,
Never till now had seen its fleshly form,
But always watched it, from cold critic heights,
In some Greek statuesque Æschylean way,
Glide as a ghost amid the ghostly past.

But now its influence dragged him from his books,
Hollowed his faded cheek and glazed his eye,
And sent him wandering through the summer lands,
Goaded by sharp shame; for he had willed, this man,
Always to sit aloof, exemptedly,
Like a Trojan elder on the Scæan tower,
And view that battle of souls, humanity,
With contemplating unparticipant look.
But a sudden shaft of fight had struck him down,
Mocking the arrogance that dared to claim
It might elude the ineludible doom
And miss the big wounds and deep aches of life,
Withdrawn in calms of intellectual ease.

Yet still he stoutly grasped the stubborn hope
That grave self-counsels would avail at last
Balsamically to assuage this hurt.
He swore that he would never look again,
Of his free act, on Lilian's face; he swore
To tear this folly of feeling like a weed
From where it thrust such violative root.
And now for some brief while the man's great will
Seemed possible victor. With grim lips compressed,
Like one who sets heel on a serpent's head,
He whispered to his own strange heart, “I win.”
Then came the abrupt news of old Lemuel's death. ...
He must not, he nor Adrian, miss to stand
At burial of their father's trusted friend. ...
And so the brothers went, and Lilian's face,
With all its mute pale pathos, touched his soul,
O'erthrowing his imperious resolve,
Unmanacling his passion, ruining all
The work of weeks. And Adrian, who had known
Nothing before, knew nothing now, but thought
His brother led by whim or heed of health
To roam for hours on long and lonely tramps.
Longer they grew, and less could study lure
The uneasy mind as new days glided on.
But now he had made avowal to himself,
Strange lover that he was, of full defeat.
First would he let one decorous mourning-month
Elapse, and then his wooing in good truth
Frankly should open. “I have failed,” he said,
“I am despicably weak;” yet while he spoke
A strong joy trembled in his breast, a light
As of some pure divine dawn seemed to make
His future wealthful with surpassing hope,
And vaguely on his haughty heart there fell
Delicious realization of how love
Finds in humility its own best pride,
And from ecstatic self-abasement plucks
A purple dignity.
In these same hours
It fell that Adrian from some village folk,
Riding one day past doors he had known a boy,
Learned of young Lilian's poverty and how
She had fought with want. In conference, that night,
Between himself and Alan it was planned
That Adrian should make offer of large help,
But delicately, not in way to wound.
And Adrian, little dreaming of the snare
Latent in those deep amiable eyes,
With Lilian had held converse, as we know.
And often again they met, and made at last
Betrayal and confession absolute,
Either to either, of undying love!
And Alan, ignorant of these happy trysts,
Was murmuring to himself, “The time is ripe,”
When suddenly, a thunderbolt of shock,
The appalling truth leapt forth and struck him dumb.

For Adrian joined him in a seaward walk,
One vaporous morning when the dewy leaves
Were garbed in gaudy omen of their death.
Autumn, now boldly dominant again,
Had woven her brilliant spells about the trees
And touched the distances with hazier blue,
Or brought the sweetly querulous winds from south
To search for the ruined rose they never found.
And then, with glad awakening from grave dreams
Of the flown summer, she had made her skies
Clear-cold, her breezes amply resonant,
Her flaky and rolling clouds a power to shed
Long tracts of shadow across the glowing slopes.
And then she had fallen to sleep again for days,
And through her dreams the bland winds moved once more.

On such a languid morn the brothers went
By pastoral ways toward the misty sea.
A withering splendor of slim golden-rods
Plumed many a knoll, and rich imperial tints
Yet lingered in the clustering aster-sprays.
The encrimsoned sumachs lifted garnet knots
Of fruitage, and a murmurous maple-grove
Blazed as with blended scarlets, pinks and golds
Of some thick gaudy stuff from Orient looms.
Those plenteous vines, the ivies of our west,
Wrapt with their vivid and luxurious red
The yellowing hickory's trunk or the dark fringe
Of oval cedars; heavy from lithe stems
Drooped the black lustrous beads of the elder-flower,
And roseate on their prickly girandoles
Burned the pale delicate thistles like dim flames.
Faint lazy airs went wandering o'er the land,
Rustling the brittle pomp of low-fallen leaves,
And at the pale sky's limit, velvet-soft,
One stagnant ring of smoky purple drowsed.

And now it was that Adrian spoke, low-voiced,
Of how deep love had strengthened in his life
To sweet vitality through these late weeks.
And yet he had named no name when Alan said:
“What, boy! At your age? ... You are young to bear
This weightsome yoke you talk so glibly of.
Nay, now, be sure that what you take for gold,
True passionate gold, will turn, some future day,
Illusory glitter, transient flash of whim.”
Then Adrian answered: “Alan, I should shame
To give so noble a girl so light a love!
You know her ill indeed, or you would know
How whitely beams among all kindred sort
Her spirit, a holy lamp of womanhood!
And yet you have beheld her face ere this,
For she is Lilian Lane, by Lemuel's death
Left poor and kinless, though incapable
To lean on any staff but brave self-help.”

So Adrian proudly yet unwittingly
Spoke, and on Alan Eliot's soul there fell
The darkness of an anguish unforeseen,
Blackening the misty waters that he neared.

And Adrian further spoke of Lilian's love,
The rapture of remembrance blinding him
To Alan's fiery eyes and livid lips,
Both partly hidden from his own bright look.
“She is all sweet golden fealty and trust,”
He murmured; then, with lightsome laughter, said:
“But, Alan, you will smile when you have seen
The lofty pedestal she thrones me on!
I am hero, prince, king, demigod to her,
Dear Lilian!” ... And in Alan a wild voice
Was mutely crying: “O God! must I walk here
Beside this insolent urchin-thief who robs
My future of all hope, yet say no word?”

And still within the man tyrannic pride
Put vetoing silence on his mouth, and wove
A gradual mask about his tell-tale face,
And nerved him potently, erewhile, to speak
With tranquil voice and unimpassioned mien,
Of Adrian's love to Adrian. Hot flame raged
Below his calmness, yet it raged unseen;
Hot curses leapt to his lips, but did not pass;
He smiled full often, though he had liefer groan,
Even laughed once, with superb hypocrisy;
So mighty a thing is pride in some men's souls.

But when he had escaped from Adrian's sight,
Close-shut within the cloistral library
That teemed with memories of his peaceful past,
Then fiercely, in one burst of vehemence,
His great pain spoke aloud. He seemed to strike
Abruptly against a future that forbade
All prescience, dumb as a great bolted door!
How must it fare with him in after time?
How might he live, thus maimed by a crushing blow?
Ah, fool, to have lingered, lingered! Adrian's hand
Had plucked from out the field this daisy-star
For which he had waited in his egotism,
So certain, with insensate certainty,
That the mere wanting its pale fragile bloom
Ordained possession! Had he strength to play
His needed rôle of smooth serenity
When the hour should come for clasping with his own
Lilian's complaisant hand, while wishing her
All earthly happiness in Adrian's love?
“Ah, how I have served as puppet,” Alan moaned,
“For problematic and inscrutable fate!
O fearful force of what we name events!
Who dares to babble and prate of human will?
Nay, nay, we are all mere straws upon the brook,
Leaves in the wind, who dream we sail or fly
Whither each pleases, yet are borne along
Obedient always to some mighty law!
We smile: it is a part of the awful scheme!
We weep: some long vast sequence gains a link!
And whence we move and toward what final bourne
We know not, burrowing sightless through the dark,
Like moles! ...”
He hugged this baleful fatalism
For days, and from its darkness gathered light,
As one that wins from a rank noisome herb
The salve of healing; and he attained at length
Some sort of inward peace below a mask
Of outward calm, ere Lilian looked on him
And let his hand press hers with firm cool touch.
Then gravely but with easeful grace he said:
“Believe me, Adrian's choice of wife and mine
Of sister blend in happiest accord.”
But Adrian, who stood near, called laughingly:
“Come, seal that pretty sentiment with a kiss!”
Then soon did Lilian feel against her brow
Two lips of ice, and shivering ill could choke
Back into silence an affrighted cry. ...

That night no sleep touched Alan Eliot's brain.
That night, and many another night, he lay
As wakeful as the turbulent autumn winds
That shook the towering pines on the chill lawns
And spoke the language of his own despair!
And many a day the solemn library
Knew not his presence, but for hours he sat
Near a stern lonesome cliff whose bold wall verged
A tongue of bleak precipitous coastland, set
Jaggedly seaward, well aloof from home.

Now, under this wild cliff-line, as it chanced,
The silver chisels of the sea had wrought
A shallow cave, lined thick with beaded kelp.
But overhead the abrupt height backward fell,
And in the hollow, as though half-poised in air,
Jutted from out a bed of stolid earth
One ponderous rounded boulder that had hung
Above the cave for immemorial years.
To Alan, through his boyhood, this quaint cave
Had ever seemed a thing of wondrous craft;
He had dreamed, in other days, that when the tide
Had filled its weedy void with foamful surge,
Here might some lissome gold-haired mermaid dwell,
Singing rich passionate songs on summer nights
To her gold lute; for weeks no foot save his
Would haunt the bald acclivities above
Or the drab sands beneath, so drearily
Was this bleak shore to its own bleakness left.
But once, as Alan faithfully recalled,
His father and himself had wandered here
Below the boulder, close against the cave;
And Alan's father musingly had said,
Not knowing if Alan heard, or caring not,
“Our stormy winters, with their vast sea-shocks,
Will drag that stone, one day, from where it clings.”

Since then much earth had left the beetling stone,
But still it hung; and now, on a dull eve,
While Alan stared at the dull iron sea,
Sharp rain from an iron heaven fell chillingly
And drove him homeward in the teeth of the wind,
Shivering; and clear through one long fretful week,
Made captive by the incessant rain, he bode
Within the house; but Adrian braved, each day,
Boreas in all his maddest moods to leave
The lover's kiss on Lilian's lifted mouth.
And Alan, knowing of where he went, would feel
New pangs of infinite envy; and the peace
That latterly had ruled him disappeared,
Imperative unrest replacing it,
And dark wild fits when Adrian's face or voice,
Met suddenly, made him ache with hate.
Not lost
On Adrian was the sullen word or look.
For often his brother's mien would startle him,
And set him wondering “What can ail the man?”
And soon within his large and generous heart
Adrian mused sweetly: “Is he angered, then?
Perchance he has cause for anger: what know I?
Perchance I may have wounded him with depth
By some light act; for he is wise and good,
Learned beyond many a one deemed scholarly,
And shrewd in worldly ways though shunning them.
So were it best to frankly ask my fault,
And being assured of that, frankly to ask
His pardon.”
On the morn that Adrian made
This high and pure resolve, the prisoning rain
In volumes of dark vapor densely rolled
Eastward and left the deep vast dome of heaven
With wintry pearl in its cold limpid blue.
And from the window of his room, that day,
It chanced that Adrian saw his brother go
(A dark tall shape, clear-seen in frosty air)
Forth where the distant promontory loomed.
And Adrian followed, saying inwardly:
“Now is my time. There will I meet with him
As though by accident, and ask my fault.”

Meanwhile with bowed head, with determined step
And thoughts that fed on darkness, Alan passed
Right to the cliff's gray edge. The tide was low,
And not the loftiest wave that smote the beach
Could slip its rapid sheet of stealthy foam
Farther than midway of the sand's brown floor.
And now while Alan from the sheer cliff watched
The exultant and illimitable glow
Of autumn ocean, suddenly a bird
Soared from beneath him with one husky scream,
And near the spot whence the wild thing had leapt,
Amazed he looked on Adrian, who in turn
Gazed at the egress of the cave as one
Whom boyish memory quite enthralls; and soon,
Drawn by this power of memory to explore
The weedy and darksome grotto, Adrian
Entered it, vanishing from him who watched.

Then stole a ghastly thought through Alan's mind
While he beheld the great o'erbrowing stone,
And noted how the wash of recent rains
Had channelled its engirding earth and sent
Huge flakes below. ... “One vigorous push,” he thought,
“Just at the proper moment, when the boy
Emerges thence ... a single vigorous push,
And who shall say if the great stone, quite loosed,
Would tumble not to the underlying shore?”
So flashed the hideous thought through Alan's brain.
But the next instant, with astounded sight,
As though the horrid shadow of his own dream
Had suddenly grown substance, he discerned
The lapsing of moist earth-clods round the stone,
Saw it sink slowly downward and then hang
Motionless, and at length with monstrous lurch
Fall crashing and thundering shoreward from the cliff.

Dizzied and horror-chilled he stood awhile,
Then dropped his look to where the vast mass lay.
The cave no more was visible; its mouth
Was sealed with a dread seal that one man's strength
Were powerless to dissever as the touch
From ripple of risen tide were powerless.
And he who had gone within stood sepulchred,
Breathing dense darkness through his very blood,
Trapped in a fastness fronting dangerous reefs
That scared away all chance of aiding sails,
While imminent cliff and bouldered shore might meet
For long bluff windy days no visitant
Save some shrill feathered waif of the air and sea.

Such thought sprang up like fire in Alan's breast ...
“And yet, by a mercy,” cried his spirit, “fate
Allots that you shall see the dreadful sight!
Deliverance breathes in you! Go, shriek to him
Instantly through that great entombing mass
That you, his brother, have seen all! Cry forth:
‘Be of good cheer. You are safe as though you heard
Already scores of hands wrench, pry, and pierce!’
Haste! go to him now! Each minute of duress
Is big with torture ere he knows you near!
Let sixty such wild minutes clustering make
An hour, and liberty might find the man
With horror-whitened hair and gibbering lips!”

Already Alan Eliot bent his steps
Down toward the cumbered cave; already, too,
His face was softening, and a piteous light
Burned in his gaze; eager to save he looked,
Eager to melt by a cry of Adrian's name
The trance of mortal fear that now must wrap
His brother's heart.
Then suddenly all changed.
He paused beside a rough declivity,
Sank down in trembling heap, bowed his head low,
And stared with eyes of spectral fixity
At nothing; then with dull strange hollow voice
He spoke, yet doubtless knew not if he spoke,
Muttering:
“I saw, I know it! I alone!
The man I have loathed as we loathe all that bars
Clear path toward those attainments we most love,
Waits for my will to crush him or to save!
My will? But will is choice between two acts,
And choice is minion of desire. Free will!
Pah! men with catchwords flatter their own fates!
Effect forever spaniels at the heel
Of cause; one mood begets the next; and we,
Powerless to shape two simultaneous deeds,
Are choiceless through apparent power of choice.
What cause now governs me, to what effect?
Love's hand, grown steel, drags me to slake my hate!
Within the unmeasured deeps of my own love
I am weak as some stray meteor wildly flung
Through starry and dark-blue altitudes of night,
Whither it knows not, knowing alone it serves
The radiant rapid slave of sovereign law.
So I serve now! Let Adrian die! ...”
The words
Faltered upon his blanched lips, then; he hid
His low face wholly from the sun, with hands
That showed the tremor storming his bowed frame.
He thought of Adrian sweating icy sweat
There in the awful bondage of his tomb.
He felt the agony, the keen despair
Of hours immense as years within that cave,
Black terrible hours of gropings and vain cries
That filled with fearful hoarseness the rasped throat
And tinged with blood the blind dilated eye.
He loathed himself that even his passing thought
Should take this murderous and infernal shape.
To his feet he sprang, sped downward a brief space,
And waved both arms high, as in helpful sign ...
Then, with abrupt restraint, he paused once more.
His devil had caught him now in mastering grip;
He clenched both hands to a knot, smiled a set smile,
Breathed hard, the blank look in his eyes again,
And then, at mad precipitate break-neck speed,
Fled from the shore. ...
Up the drab sands the surf
With affluent or with refluent motion swung;
Dim veils of vapor, shreds of the late wrack,
Moved ghostly across the lucid blue of heaven;
The austere cliffs bathed their rude granitic might
In the bold windy glow of the fresh morn,
And if above splashed waves or hurrying breeze,
Any vague strange cry haunted that far place,
Only the fleet gull heard it, glimmering past,
Or the wild white hawk on the jutting crag.
[OMITTED]
After three days a clouded morning brought
Lilian, alarmed and pale, to Alan's doors.
Pale and of marble calmness, Alan met
Her eager questions. No, he had heard, himself,
Nothing of Adrian, seen no trace of him,
Since, at an early hour, three morns ago,
His brother had departed, whither bound
He knew not, nor could find a soul that knew.
Then Lilian uttered a great plaintive cry.
“Missing three days! Three days!” A querulous fear
Shrilled in her voice. “Three days! Yet have you made
No effort to discover if any harm
Has reached him?” “Nay,” said Alan, colder-voiced,
“I have done the best I knew, and should have gone
This day to inquire of you concerning him,
Had you not sought me.” Now poor Lilian's eyes
Glittered in tears. “I have been to blame,” she cried,
“For thus impetuously chiding you!”
She caught his hand ... then, shivering as from pain,
Dropt it because its coldness pierced her heart.

The slow inevitable morrows came,
Widened their weeks to months immutably,
Their months to a year. Pangs of surpassing grief
Had racked poor Lilian, and her hope had ceased
Either that Adrian lived or that the dark
Mystery of his vanishment would clear.
And Alan now and then would visit her
Throughout this time; solemn as death their talks,
Filled with low-murmured reference to the lost.
And often against her will would Lilian show,
In that white way of still persistent tears,
How a hurt heart will bleed. So one year went.

But in the year that followed Adrian's loss
It fell, one day, that Alan suddenly told
Lilian of his great love. For while they sat
Near the broad hearth where a big lurid log
Brightened its dreamy red as the blue dusk
Of drear December deepened, Alan spoke
His passion, saying, “I love you, Lilian—
I love you from my soul! God knows I do!”
Strongly those grave words rang from his grave lips.
And Lilian trembled, there in the dim room,
Awed by the revelation of this love
Undreamed of till it flashed upon her now
From out the man's cold sombreness, as when
A cavernous cloud is drenched with elfin fire
For an instant, while it hangs in breezeless gloom,
And all its inward haunts of coast, peak, glen,
Viewed fleetingly, a new weird world in air,
Glimmer to die; but as they die we have gazed
Into the cloud's wild soul: even thus with her,
Who seemed to have seen through Alan Eliot's soul.

Then she rose up and answered with slow words:
“I wonder you should tell me of such love!”
And said no more, but stole away from him,
Leaving him quite alone in the dim room,—
With ghastly firelit face, dark-shining eyes,
Mouth saturnine and rigid-folded arms.
[OMITTED]
They who abode with Alan in the old house
Where now he lived the old life of grim recluse,
Whispered that they had heard, through these same months,
Keen cries or deep groans, in the middle night,
From Alan's chamber echoing; and once
A wrinkled wreck of woman, she who served
As Alan's trusted nurse long years before,
Declared that going aloft to bed, one night,
She had met her master roaming the great hall,
And by the light of her dim lamp had seen
That he was clad as though of mind to fare
Into the sharp dark out of doors; but soon
She had seen, moreover, from his vacant face,
His frigid sightless look, his stiff strange walk,
That the man slept, and crying had wakened him;
And though he had borne himself in mindless way
When first awake, muttering and gesturing,
He presently became his old stern self,
Thanked her who roused him, and so passed to bed.
[OMITTED]
Though Lilian fled from Alan on that day
When, in the firelit dusk, he told his love,
She formed no hard resolve to break with him;
But rather, when he came again, by signs
Her sensitive face made easy to discern
He read her pity and was ill-pleased with it,
Yet murmured to his heart that pity and love
Were often each to each like sire to child.
So more weeks passed, and Alan grew again
Lilian's close friend, her constant visitor.
And Lilian, whose girl-eyes had always seen
Learning at distance, like some town remote
That crowds a mist of towers against the blue,
Seemed with this man, by gradual paths of talk,
To wander nearer, till the glimmering grace
Of column, frieze and stately portico
From dim neutrality gleamed clear of shape.
And he could soften his voice with sweet accords,
Could soften his lean cold face, too, when with her,
And deft of phrase he was, by fluent tricks
That knew to hide the difficult prongs of fact
In all he uttered, as fleet streams will hide
With glassy oversweep some bulging stone.
Richly his dark eyes flashed, too, now and then,
And voice and eyes told Lilian more than once
Things that she found it meagre joy to know,
While thrilled with growing pleasure when she thought
“This man, so intellectually a man,
So finelier-fashioned both in mind and heart
Than other men, loves me who am cultureless,
Even ignorant.” So the weeks went, and so
Alan still wooed, and after many days
Again he avowed his passion fervently,
And Lilian answered, “Nay, I am not worth
Such love as yours!” (and while she spoke her breast
Was stirred with no sweet warmth, and equably
Throbbed her calm pulse;) “but it is honor, still,
To have had this high love proffered.” ... Then he spoke,
Persuasively because of his vast love,
And in a little while he had won his cause,
And girded her with worshipping arms, and put
His lips against her brow. ... But quickly then,
Shivering she writhed from out his close embrace,
And crying aloud yet incoherently,
Sank on a couch, and with palm-shaded face
Burst into sobs. And bending over her,
Alan put question, “Lilian, what is this?” ...
At first she would not answer, but at last
With face yet hid she moaned in plaintive way,
As though to herself, “Now am I sure indeed
That Adrian lives not, for I have seen his ghost!”
And Alan Eliot, with fear-whitened cheek,
Started at this, then hastily went out
Into the cool Spring twilight where aloft
Hung a wan moon whose globe caught paler fire
As the day darkened. Lowered was his face,
But those who passed him, had they looked on it,
Would then have seen how all its lineaments
Had grown one horror. ...
Simply these were wed
In a few weeks, and Alan Eliot gained
That which he had desired so boundlessly,
Yet gained it not, since Lilian, while she strove
To play her wifely part in wifeliest way,
Left from it that intangible delight
Which is to woman's hand-clasp, smile or kiss
As odor unto flower. She could not feign
That higher holier feeling, and he saw
Both that she tried and that she failed outright;
And drearily, or sometimes passionately,
Or sometimes filled with haunting fear, he said
All low to himself, in guilty whisper, then:
“The dead man stands between us ...”
Gloomier grown,
When now their days of honeymoon were fled,
He yet would show for Lilian the same love
As always, though with feverish outbursts broken,
Or touched, it might be, with sharp petulance
No sooner shown than sternly self-condemned.
But now it fell that Lilian altered much,
Given to long gazings at her husband's face
When he observed her not, or, if he marked,
Prone to avert her eyes bewilderedly,
Like one surprised in some delinquent deed.
And Alan, wondering, questioned of himself
Wherefore this curious change had risen, and soon
Saw other signs in Lilian that aroused
Wonder, anxiety, he knew not what. ...

One night, when all the house was deadly still,
And wholly dark, and clocks from room to room
Struck the small hours in doleful muffled throbs,
There went forth to the starlight of the lawn
A human shape, arrayed for open night.
Now this was Alan Eliot that went forth;
And though he walked with firm and even pace,
He slept. ...
The heavens looked one pale crust of stars,
The journeying breeze blew suave with latter May,
And night hung sparkling o'er the drowsy sea.

Out toward the tongue of bleak precipitous land
Whose horrid secret he and no man else
Had known since fell that huge entombing rock,
Went Alan, and in wondrous manner found,
Although he slept, the old egress of the cave,
Still barred with the old enormous boulder. Here
He paused on sands left bare from fallen tides,
And laying both hands on the boulder, said,
With voice so hollow as to seem not his:
“Adrian, I saw it fall and shut you in!
I saw it fall, and now I hurry away
For help. ... What hideous thought was that? No, no!
I hurry away for help! Keep Lilian's love! ...
Turn murderer?—steep myself in loathsome crime?—
I, Alan Eliot, I who drank so deep
Of knowledge! I, who have seen the roots of life
Coiling their toughness down amid the dark
Of the Unknowable, and traced the streams
Of good and evil to their uttermost urns,—
I sink like this in vulgar mire of sin,
And all for a fern-frail creature, one slight girl!
No! no! say what you please, philosophy;
Man's will is wholly free will; crime is crime,
Not a mere malady of the brain. We stand,
Whether God cares or not, for all our deeds
Accountable in sight of our own souls.
No! no! hark, Adrian, brother Adrian!
The Adrian that I bore, a little lad,
Here on these shoulders, hark! ... I hurry away
For help. ...”
A something plucked his sleeve and woke
Alan; the starlight showed a livid face,
Lilian's; for she had followed him by stealth,
Knowing he slept; and now she had heard his words
That flashed their terrible torch on other words,
Dull mutterings heard while she in other nights
Had lain beside him. Never woman born
Was gentlier fashioned through and through her soul
Than Lilian; but her lovely face was now
Imperious, her meek eyes were fired with hate.
Large loomed her stature by the starlit sea,
For untold wrath possessed her, and a sense
Of outrage in its grief-born might sublime.
And now her voice rang hoarsely on the night,
A voice where love met loathing, and where, too,
Transcendent anguish dashed itself on speech.

“God tears from all this horror the veil at last!
I see you now the vile mean thing you are,
Monster abominable, hypocrite
Supreme! ... Ah, Heaven, though I was reared to trust
God utterly, my spirit falters now
In faith toward that high hand which seems to lay
Such heavy curse upon it; for I feel
My whole self, body and soul, at this wild hour,
One blackness of pollution from your love!
How to your own foul heart you must have laughed,
Remembering that through pity I wedded you!
What wonder Adrian left the dark of death
To warn me, when your first audacious kiss
Laid its unguessed corruption on my brow?
He should have struck you a great vengeful blow
Before your impious arms dared clasp this neck!
Oh, my lost Adrian, my one only love,
'T is woe enough to learn your fearful fate,
But ah, worse woe that I have wived with him
Whose unconjectured baseness let you die!
How could the very stone of your dread tomb
Not render you in mercy back to light?
How could the winds not bear me as they went
Echoes of your mad summons, or the sea
Not sap the bases of your ghastly tomb?”

She paused, and in the silence that ensued,
He heard her laboring breath sound short and strong.

“But now if I seem sport for a whim of God,
Oh, rest sure, Alan Eliot, none the less,
That somewhere lurks the atonement of your sin,
Stretched like the waiting rack that wrings men's frames.
I love the old savage creed my grandsire taught,
The creed of endless penance in hot hell,—
Yes, love it now, though once I hated it!
From this dark hour I yearn to test its truth,—
To feel that you in torment exquisite
Eternally shall writhe! Oh, if my curse
Can send you swiftlier to that agony,
Then hear me, Thou that calling of old to Cain,
Didst ask of him a brother! May this man,
For howsoever long he bides on earth,
Feel always round his heart a hand of steel
That slowly tears it from his breast, and yet
Never so tears it; and may mighty pangs
Of self-contempt assail and crush him down!
May deadly dreams clasp clammy hands with him
In the dusk halls of slumber, till he wakes
With shuddering cry and cold sweat-beaded skin!
May all his life till death be misery,
And all his after-life infinitude
Of pain! O God, may this man crawl to death
Panting for draughts of it yet find worse thirst,
Even as a soldier on some battle-field
May drag his bleeding gashes toward what looks
A stream's dear edge, and groaning thankfully,
With drought-cracked lips drink in sun-blistered clay!”
[OMITTED]
Long ere she ceased he had covered with both hands
His face. And now between a shriek and sob
Her fierce words ended, and she dashed away,
Flying in madness of despair to friends
That dwelt amid the village: these she found,
Rousing them up from sleep and thrilling them
With her dark story; some believed it not,
But thought she raved, so frantic was her mien.

Yet with the morrow's light her better self
Returned, and as a devil exorcised,
Her spirit of curseful vengeance passed away.

But no smile ever touched her gentle face,
From this until the hour, ten full years thence,
That saw her die; and all her lovely hair,
After that wild night by the starlit sea,
Was white as with the snows of seventy years.

Yet through her life thenceforward precious peace
Touched her with soft remedial balm; she gained
Sweet quiet and the inestimable joy
Of pardoning him who wrought her such vast harm.
For at the last calm moment of her life,
A great smile lit her lips, and “Long ago,”
She said, “I have forgiven him everything. ...
And if he lives on earth I would he knew
That dying I have forgiven him everything. ...
And if he is dead, may God be merciful
A little more to him because of this,
That Lilian Lane forgives him everything!”
Then once she murmured “Adrian,” and so died.

Yet though 't is years since her poor bruised soul went,
No human eye, from that dire night till now,
Has knowingly seen Alan Eliot's face.
If he be live or dead it is not known;
A mystery darker than young Adrian's tomb
Shadows him, and the old homestead, standing yet,
Hears through its empty chambers the long roar
Of winter ocean, or when summer blooms,
Looks from its dusty and cobwebbed panes to see
The rank grass deepen down the untended lawn,
Or on the untraversed paths green giant weeds
Throng insolent, and then rot themselves away.