The risen sun, sparkling upon their bridles,
Hastened the roan horses; and brought Bruce--
Brought even the stiff doctor--beams of hope,
Of something like belief; though Bruce remembered,
And groaned as he remembered, how the nurse,
Weeping, had looked afraid when he came home;
How she and the dark man she had for helper,
Bending above the sufferer, grew sad,
Grew guilty as he came, hearing with him
His little mother’s whimpers, and the cry--
Sudden, as if death were in the room--
Of Dora when she saw him. And his father’s
Feebleness--now he remembered that,
And groaned.
“But couldn’t the nurse--for she was there--
Wouldn’t the nurse have known?”
“I tell you, boy,
I have no nurse. Something is stranger here--
Giddup!--than God is ever going to tell me.
Nurse? There was no such.”
And the horses galloped,
Jingling their bright bridles, till the dooryard
Darkened them, and Bruce’s mother stumbled,
Her apron at her face, among the plum trees.
“I am alone,” she cried, “except for him--”
She pointed where her husband, on a stone
As grey as he was, sat and held his forehead--
“We are alone now, my boy. Too late,
Doctor. Even the nurse is gone. The child,
The dear child, is dead. They both are dead--
Dora, and the other one that never,
Never, never breathed.”
She clutched at Bruce,
Feeling the doctor brush them as he passed,
Then feeling not at all. She only nodded,
Nodded, as her son repeated: “Dead--
Dora, she is dead.” And bore her in,
A limp superfluous bundle.
“Oh, my boy!”--
Perceptibly her white lips lived again--
“Beautiful! One thing about her going,
Oh, my boy, was beautiful. She saw--
Or thought she saw--ten angels in the room.
She counted them. But only three had wings.
She counted the big wings. And said the nurse
Was queen above all others.”
“Nurse? What nurse?”
The doctor in the doorway shook his head,
Frowning, as if to free it from the cobweb
Sound of that false word. “There was no such--”
But the small mother never would believe--
He knew it--and Bruce never would believe.
Who had this tall impostor woman been?
And why? And who the other one? Bruce had said:
“A teacher, too--her friend.” There was no such--
The doctor shook his head. Shame on those bunglers--
Butcherers of girls--who with their knotted
Grass roots and their needles--natural thorns--
Had poisoned the sweet blood, the delicate place.
Where were they, vagrants, now? Could any law
Catch up with their coarse hands, and cleanse the world
Of meddlers on the march? For they were somewhere
Still, the doctor knew; and looked at Bruce
Bent dumbly over Dora. In good time
The boy would feel. He was so quiet now--
An animal, playing dead.
Then Daniel stood there--
Daniel, with Darius at his heels:
An old hound whom giant grief had gentled.
Yet he could move, and did, to where no daughter
Welcomed his hard hand; which nevertheless
Hovered and touched her--touched her, so that tears
Followed, and streamed his face.
“I brought him here,”
Said Daniel. “I was told of it by one--
By two--but they are gone. They do not matter.
Both of them are gone. They said they knew--
My lodgers--then they went. But that’s no matter.
I told her father, and he came with me.
Look at him now. And her. We are not enemies.
Who is my enemy?”
“I was,” said Bruce.
“You were. And I was Dora’s. What I did--”
“You did. But never tell it. As my friend
In sorrow, never say it. There are ears--”
He went to where his mother, staring up,
Saw none but that dear face.
Then Daniel’s stillness
Reigned in the room.
Even the doctor, going,
Went as a thought does, thinly; but his mind
Was more with Mary and her living child,
In the lost church, than here.
A living child.
He must go back to that small son; must listen
To the soft mother’s voice. Why had he stopped her?
“Quiet. No more talking.” Was even then
This mystery in his head, this hazy mirror
Of a much older birth? Who was it? When?
What torment not to remember. Just like this,
Yet where? He drove and thought; and was the image
Of a whole people, impotent to see now
The one god it had.
So three old friends,
By death remade, stood looking down at Dora.
X
Already, in this moment before silver
Morning, ten were on their way to sea.
Already, over mountains and rock rivers--
Tawny with high autumn, yet no sun
Uprisen had revealed it--Hermes sped
And spoke not. At the center of his band,
Encircled, he was thoughtful as he flew
And flew to where a smoking funnel waited,
By a smooth prow whereon the ten would ride,
Would ride the waste Atlantic.
“They were small,
These people, they were pitiful and small,”
Said Hermes, half aloud. “Yet not unworthy,
Nobles, of our regard.”
“They did not guess,”
Said Artemis, “how small.”
“They could not measure,”
Flashed the grey eyes of swift Athene, flying,
“Difference. They were lonely. They had nothing
Past them to compare. They do not move,
These persons, among greater persons still.
The knowledge of the difference is all.
Mortals with art to measure it are never
Pitiful.”
“I thought,” mused Aphrodite,
Beautiful by night as her own star,
Her morning’s mirror, up now in the east,
“I thought I met a presence in that musty
Stable. Felt a power. Yet all so quiet--
Not even the black beetles crept away.
Queer, if it was a god--their only god,
And none of the fools knew.”
“It was your own
Mind’s darkness,” Ares muttered; and Hephaestus
Laughed--at Aphrodite he could laugh,
Now that his limbs were free.
“Was there a song?
Even a musty music? Where a god is,
Surely the air will sound.” Apollo hummed,
Remembering the barn dance and the moon.
“Did you hear anything to prove a presence?”
Artemis, her green robe gilded suddenly
By the first beams of sun, was angry still.
“She heard but her own hatefulness, that plotted
Death.”
“I left the living in your hands--
Yours, and the mighty angel’s. If you erred,
Darling of fawns and virgins, I regret,
As you must, any faltering of skill.”
“Regret!” The speed of Artemis redoubled
As fury filled her. “Lying, laughing word!
You poison the whole dawn with it, as then
You poisoned--for I know you did--the thorns,
The rare leaves I used.”
But Hermes cried:
“Peace, peace between you, daughters! What is done
Is done. There the ship rides that we take--
As one we take it, homing to those lands
Where sleep is our best portion. Only sleep.”
He sighed, and the archangels echoed him:
Those three whose sire, unknown to them last night,
Had dreamed again--a star above a stable.
“Not even sleep,” said Michael. “No, not even
Sleep,” droned weary Gabriel. But Raphael’s
Sadness was for Artemis to see,
And seeing, to have pity on, that no word
Henceforth could express.
For now the ship
Whistled, and the spires above the harbor
Glistened, and the hawsers, letting go,
Dangled in salt.
So easterly they sailed,
And sailed; then south a little. And the crew
Thought only of the Pillars, of the inland
Sea where waves were smaller. But these ten,
Prone on the prow, disdained the autumn danger
Of storm, of the dark swell. Their daily vision--
Common to them all, since reconciled--
Was the long night ahead; or over Asia,
Centuries upon centuries of flying,
Flying where no desert, green with the Word,
Blossomed and blessed them.
Now as in a dream
Never to be redreamed the hills behind them,
Huddling that valley, muffled its fine cries
Of people trapped in sorrow. Even its glad souls,
Silenced, were obscure as drops of dew
Hung in the wild Antipodes. No mortal
Summer would be given these again:
These deities, these angels, who as the dark sea
Heaved went on themselves as waves do,
Wearily, yet smiling as in a dream.
[Illustration: COLOPHON]
This book has been designed and printed by Carroll Coleman at The
Prairie Press in Iowa City, Iowa. The types are Caslon and Frye’s
Ornamented and the paper is Linweave Early American.