University of Virginia Library

In the quiet Colonial years
Arthur Carisfort came overseas,
Here to build him a mansion that rose
From the heart of Virginia's wide woods.
Never statlier home had been seen,
Until now, below skies of our land;
Never hallways and chambers more proud,
Never courtyard or terrace devised
With expansion more nobly diffuse.
From a hillside the lawns wavered green
Till they broke on a river's full flash,
And were merged, near its bank, in the peace
Of a village with gardens and streets
Almost calm as the greensward they met.
There alone through a decade of years,
Lingered Carisfort, wrapt, as it seemed,
In the charge of his one youthful child.

Many stories were told of the cause
Which had urged him from England, to dwell
So companionless but for the boy
Whom he treasured and guarded and taught.
Some avowed he was blighted in soul
By the blow of a widowing death;
Others claimed that his life had been seared
By dishonor and anguish far worse;
Others breathed of a treason acute
Which had made the King's axe graze his neck.
Still, the secret of why he had sought
Meditation and solitude, lay
Like a goblet or gem earth has hid
Under layers of oblivious dust.

Not a villager knew him for stern
When he passed with rare feet among men.
In his mien abode courtesy blent
With a sadness that lured while it chilled.
He was tall, yet of stature unbowed,
Though the hair to his temples clung white
As the locks of a brow twice his years.
Many deeds of sweet charity clad
With rich human aromas his name.
Only gossip's most poisonous mood
Found a sneer that could soil him, and this
Died in time of its own bitter sting.

Had they known him, these townsfolk, indeed,
How their hearts might with pity have pulsed!
Early wed to his cousin, who died
At the birth of the boy he so loved,
Fierce on Carisfort broke like a storm
Recognition of destiny's curse.
No recoiling! the thing must be faced.
There he stood near the dead wife, his kin,
Whose last moments with madness were fraught.
Long ago in his youth, he had learned,
Vaguely heeding, of ancestors racked
By the same savage ill. From his mind
Every vapor of doubt slowly crept.
Should he dwell here in England, or go
Where the sly push of sex in his blood
Might be smitten by loneliness dead?
To his own heart he put question thus,
And the silence there thundered him “Go”...
“Let me think not,” heroic he mused,
“Of the grim fate that bans me and thralls.
Motes like mortals may rave at their dooms—
What avails it? Heredity's arm
Is a power that to thwart were to twist
The white bolt of the lightning in twain.
More than self, too, I shield this frail boy...
Whatsoe'er our progenitors did
In their dissolute bouts and amours,
They have left me my conscience at least,
And to make their dumb clay mine excuse
For desertion of duty, were shame
Such as cowards might clutch at, not I.
We, the last of the Carisforts, owe
Generations unborn holy debts.
They have called me an infidel here
In my brave Devon home, girt with ease;
Let them learn not or learn, as fate wills,
How distrust of men's alterant creeds
May below it hide loyalty stanch
To the weal of a world packed with pains,—
Incorruptibly reaching toward right
As the pale wings of ships reach through dusk
Toward the patience of calm pilot stars.”

So he mused, Arthur Carisfort; so
He had made of his musings firm fact.
Year by year, from the funds of a brain
Long ere then stored with culture, he strove
To instruct and train Malcolm, his son.
And the boy, quick of wit, paid him well
For tuitions by love spurred and sped.
At eighteen, fair of face, large of limb,
Life for Malcolm was one giddy joy.
Through the mountains he rode hours alone,
Never dreaming of weariness. Weeks
Would elapse, yet he saw not a face
Save a few of his household. A heart
More replete with chaste innocence beat
Never yet in the breast of a boy.
All obedience, he sought not the town
Where it crouched at the stream's flashing curve.
“Go not there,” said his father. The lad
Would have died ere he flouted such hest.

Peace abode at the great house, unstirred
By a faint wave of discord, straight on
Till befell Malcolm's twentieth year.
Then it chanced that one morning he met
Ruth Allaire, with the buttercup-gold
Of her curls, with the rose of her mouth,
As she strolled from the village to bear
Cheer and help for a woodlander's wife
Who lay dying. 'Twas June, and the leaves
Twinkled moist from the fresh roadside boughs.
Birds were warbling deliriums of song
To the sky's cloudless crystal, and airs
Full of odors and cadences roamed
Through the meadows and foliage as fond
As the hands of a bridegroom that steal
O'er the tresses and brows of his bride.

Just a gaze, and for Malcolm and Ruth
Speech was rosy necessity, love
Golden sequence, each quick in its course
As the glitters from dew struck by dawn.
Thus to meet was for warm youth like theirs
No less nature to meet yet again
Than if two stars from wide wastes of heaven,
Having once interblended stray beams,
Evermore should be brightly allied.

Now to Malcolm new life was alleged,
Half of happiness, half of remorse.
Many meetings with Ruth did he hold
In the dusk of dense oaks near the verge
Of the village, nor far from her home.
Like himself was the maiden sole child
Of a father as fond as his own.
Yet while one dwelt austerely aloof,
One was loved for his wealth of kind works,
Eager sympathies, taintless ideals,—
A Virginian of that nobler mould
War and time have annulled, living now
But in chronicle's dim-pictured page.

Then at last, with the truth on his lips,
With a heart throbbing guiltily quick,
To his father went Malcolm, one eve,
In the dark-panelled room where he sat
Near a lamp shining clear on his book.
“I would speak with you,” murmured the youth;
“I would tell of unduteous deceits.”

Round his neck in an instant he felt
The embrace of his father. “My boy,
Do not hesitate; leave nothing hid.
It was better—far wiser—to seek
Full confession, as thus. Tell me all.”

So enjoined, with glad candor that leapt
From that soilless young spirit enshrined
In the grace, height and health of his frame,
Unreluctant of detail, right on,
Full of penitence yet well devoid
Of humility suppliant or veiled,
In his rich eager voice Malcolm spoke.

Not a syllable Carisfort missed;
Not a meaning, or shade of one, slipped
From his calm but intense mood of heed.
Then at last, when the tale had been told,
White and silent he stared at his son.

“Oh, my father,” cried Malcolm, aghast
At the change his avowals had wrought,
“Pray you, speak! Have I angered you?”

“No!”

As he heard, Malcolm shuddered, so bleak
Did the dominant utterance float
On the absolute stillness...

Erelong,
With his look unfamiliar and wild,
Flashed the next words from Carisfort, full
Of the fierce love brutes keep for their kind.

“Not in anger! Nay, boy, light of life,
Star of cheer, bloom of hope, son more sweet
To my bosom than rain to sere grass,
Not in anger! Yet heavenly as love
Such as mine, it ordains, it commands
With a voice that is worldlier than sin!
All the fault is not yours; I have erred
In my custody, fond though its aims!”
Then he told of the curse that for years
Had o'ershadowed the Carisfort name.
Not a detail he spared; his discourse,
Like the glass of a wizard, lured out
From remoteness of ancestry shapes
Diabolic or piteous or gross.
To the whitening cheek of his son
Came the witness of pain and dismay.
Yet he crushed all compassion; the truth
Now too tardily spoke, must be bared,
Though its nudity, hideous as hate,
Were a torture to him that beheld.

So at length, having swept through the dark
Of disconsolate annals like these,
To the pale boy said Carisfort “Choose
If the viperous evils I name
Shall be fed with new life from your blood!
Here is peace, in the home I have built
For your pleasure through years yet to be.
What is love but a madness, at most?
All of life that is choicest lies hid
In the leaves yonder bookshelves enshrine.
But the glorious and mutable hills,
With a steed that shall rival the wind,
These are yours, O my Malcolm, as well!..
What is love but a madness, at most?”

Then the boy answered, “Father, no, no!
Were the house you have built here a hall
Full of grandeur kings covet, my heart
Could but hate it if shared not with her!
Surely never till now have I known
Half the meaning of solitude. Now
Neither meadow nor mountain may lend
Sweet companionship just as of old,
But in every fair phase of each one
I discern a mysterious defect,—
Shy, elusive, at first, yet when found.
Speaking only her absence! How, then,
Could I pass years that reft me of Ruth?
Better death, were it coiled in the balm
Of her kiss, like a worm in ripe fruit!”

“Worse than death,” said his father, “were life
Such as this you demand. Ah, my lad,
In her kiss lurks a woe that may waste
With its ravage your children and hers!
Have I taught you so fatally ill
That you dare turn from duty's deep eyes
When they front you so steadfast as now?
See—your own yea or nay shall resolve
If through long lines of beings unborn
You perpetuate sorrow like pest,
Or destroy it through stanch rule of self.”

Into Malcolm's clear look stole the light
Of rebellion, its breath curled his lip.

“No, my father. Since nature decrees
I should cloister not spirit and sense
Amid abstinence, penance, retreat,
Far the wiser, I judge it, to bow
Mine obeisance, nor thwart nature's will.”

“You defy me, then, Malcolm?”

“Not so.
I revere you as always, but feel
That a power I may name not compels
From your counsels my purpose,—though firm
In its dear filial troth stays my love!”

“As you please,” rang from Carisfort. “Go!
Nay, no hand-clasp nor kiss for good-night!
On the morrow, sir—Oh, my poor boy!
Since you seek it, here—here, as of yore,
To this breast that your young gold of hair
Hath been pillowed so oft by!”

His voice,
Full of obdurate rigors at first,
Soon had melted with fatherhood. Close
Once again, for a brief while, he clasped
In his arms the astonished boy; then,
With release and a hand-wave that meant
“Pray you, leave me,” he sought his desk, there
Low to bend o'er its big lamplit book.

But when Malcolm had passed from the room
He arose, and with gesture abrupt,
From a casement swept back the still folds
Of its tapestries, baring to view
An immense bulk of mountain that seemed
Like a vast ocean-billow some spell
Hath made immobile; darkly it curved
In its majesty, mystery and grace,
Below beams of the large vernal moon.

“O inscrutable night,” mused this man,
“How you look your indifference divine
On mortality's pathos of pain!
Many millions ere I have gazed forth
At your infinite beauty, to find
Uncompassionate absence of help.
We that toil with the tangle of life
May but seek its unravelment here
In the silence our human souls hoard.
And while seeking it thus, how we fail!
Yet there comes to us all, if we cast
Underfoot every impulse of self,
Some response we may cling to and trust,
Though its tidings be torture! I gain
From the oracle fearful command.
Shall I heed it? Why not? To recoil
In disdain of it only may mean
The continuance, age after age,
Of a race racked with malady dire.
Shall I dare let this wrong fester on?
What's morality? Service to men
By each leal individual man.
Metaphysics may mould from its fogs
This or that fair fantastical shape
Transcendental believers adore.
My philosophy pauses devout
At the lintels of reason; my love
Kneels at altars philanthropy builds.
When the ravening cancer frets flesh
'Tis the cold knife of science that cures,
Not the herb superstition hath culled.
Science reigns. .. 'Twas astrology, once,
Haughty stars, icy moon, that ye faced.
'Tis astronomy now—weak, I own,
To decipher your whither and whence,
Yet a millionfold mightier, truth knows!
Good from evil? Religion's glib lie!
Good and evil are foes hot with hate.
Who engendered them? God? Wherefore, then?
Did he make them to mar with their feuds
This humanity needless to make
Save as angels, his glorious caprice
And the replica grand of himself?
Nay, my god is mankind; he will delve
Through creations dark fundaments; he
Will twist fingers round obstinate roots,
Disentangle mysterious coils,
In the black reek of poison plant balm,
Tear diseases like weeds from the blood,
Knead to harmony civic disputes,
Turn the planet millennial—when all
That now breathe on it long have lain dust.
Yet this dazzling accomplishment lags
Through indefinite centuries; we,
Born so soon on a mere infant world,
Can but serve as purblind pioneers
For its future magnificence. Most
That we do is frail, tentative, yet
By some poor pulse of effort we still
May allege ourselves duteous and fine—
Not the sluggards who take life as brutes
Take a bone betwixt gluttonous teeth.
I'll do my share, at least. .. Ah, they knew,
Those old Romans,—Virginius that smote
The white paps of his desecrate girl,
And rough Brutus, who flared on the mob
Slain Lucretia .. they died for ideas!
Let me die so—and he, my sweet boy!”

O'er the casement flung Carisfort, now,
Its voluminous curtain. The room
For a moment seemed absolute dark,
Till aloof, burning tranquil, he saw
From his desk the familiar lamp shine
Which had glimmered so many a night
On the pages he read in old tomes
Rich with musings of seers long entombed.

In a brief while his visage had grown
Drawn, cadaverous. .. Moving as one
Half unconscious, he trod hall or stair,
And at last by the bed of his boy,
White and stirless he waited. No sign
Save of slumber's benignant control.
From a window unshaded, the moon
Smote with delicate splendor the brow,
Throat and lips of the sleeper. He smiled,
And the smile seemed a silvery ghost
Of some flower that in gardens of dream
Hath unfolded its petals for Love
While it walks there to pause and behold,
With its arm round the warm neck of Youth.

“Let him die so. .. I envy his death.”

This from Carisfort, hardly more said
Than 'twas thought. On a knife that he drew,
Flashed the moonlight. .. No cry left the boy;
All too merciful shot the sure blow.

At the village, that night, cries arose
When a mist hued like blood scaled the heaven.
What was this leapt so fearful afar?
Was the Carisfort homestead ablaze?
In a tumult they rushed, boys and men—
Women, too, though past midnight the hour.
When the first hardy runner attained
The great structure, its doom had been sealed.
Well had Carisfort planned his wild scheme..
For from basements and attics alike
Did profuse jets of scarlet outpour,
And a gaunt lurid column of smoke
From the main roof was towering august.

To an awestricken mob soon had swelled
They that stared on the hungry turmoil.
Like a shadowy accomplice, the wind
Sped with fleet volatility here,
There and everywhere, kindling the greed
Of combustion, as hate kindles crime.

“Look—the North wing!” a shout rang from some,
And in hurrying wonder all sped
Where the North wing stood shrouded with fire.
At a casement—one moment, no more—
Like a phantom gleamed Carisfort. Close
To his breast he had gathered a form
That was limp as if lifeless. .. He stooped,
And with eager lips pressed the slant cheek...
Then a scorpion of flame writhed its way
To the casement, and watchers beheld
In its place one red frenzy of glare.
When the dawn with reluctant pearl pushed
From horizon to zenith, it showed
In the mansion's proud place fuming bulks
Of charred rafter and dislocate stone.

But the Carisfort curse was annulled.
Nevermore by this race would be reaped
That implacable harvest of pain
Which “the sins of the parents” had sown.