Produced by Bryan Ness and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was
produced from images generously made available by The
Internet Archive.)
DOMESDAY BOOK
SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY
BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS
SOME PRESS OPINIONS
"One of the greatest books of the present century."--_Nation._
"The 'Spoon River Anthology' has certain qualities essential to
greatness--originality of conception and treatment, a daring that would
soar to the stars, an instant felicity and facility of expression."--C. E.
LAWRENCE in _The Daily Chronicle_.
"Mr. Edgar Lee Masters will become a classic ... so close-packed is the
book's pregnant wit, so outspoken its language, so destructive of cant and
pharisaism and the veneer of the proprieties, so piercingly true in
insight."--EDWARD GARNETT in _The Manchester Guardian_.
"It is a remarkable book and it grips."--_Daily Telegraph._
"This book is of a quality that will endure.... Mr. Masters has been
daring with the certainty of success."--_Liverpool Daily Post._
"A quite remarkable volume of verse ... quite masterly."--_Sphere._
"Its reality, ingenuity, irony, insight, and vision are
unique."--_Bookman._
DOMESDAY BOOK
BY EDGAR LEE MASTERS
AUTHOR OF "SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY," ETC.
LONDON
EVELEIGH NASH COMPANY
LIMITED
1921
COPYRIGHT IN THE U. S. A.
BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
_Printed in the United States of America_
TO MY FATHER
HARDIN WALLACE MASTERS
SPLENDID INDIVIDUAL OF
A PASSING SPECIES--AN AMERICAN
CONTENTS
PAGE
DOMESDAY BOOK 1
THE BIRTH OF ELENOR MURRAY 4
FINDING OF THE BODY 9
THE CORONER 13
HENRY MURRAY 23
MRS. MURRAY 36
ALMA BELL TO THE CORONER 50
GREGORY WENNER 59
MRS. GREGORY WENNER 71
DR. TRACE TO THE CORONER 80
IRMA LEESE 84
MIRIAM FAY'S LETTER 94
ARCHIBALD LOWELL 101
WIDOW FORTELKA 110
REV. PERCY FERGUSON 118
DR. BURKE 126
CHARLES WARREN, THE SHERIFF 138
THE GOVERNOR 152
JOHN SCOFIELD 158
GOTTLIEB GERALD 163
LILLI ALM 173
FATHER WHIMSETT 179
JOHN CAMPBELL AND CARL EATON 188
AT FAIRBANKS 210
ANTON SOSNOWSKI 219
CONSIDER FREELAND 229
GEORGE JOSLIN ON LA MENKEN 237
WILL PAGET ON DEMOS AND HOGOS 247
THE HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT 254
JANE FISHER 270
HENRY BAKER, AT NEW YORK 277
LOVERIDGE CHASE 286
AT NICE 289
THE MAJOR AND ELENOR MURRAY AT NICE 305
THE CONVENT 312
BARRETT BAYS 319
ELENOR MURRAY 356
THE JURY DELIBERATES 377
THE VERDICT 395
DOMESDAY BOOK
DOMESDAY BOOK
Take any life you choose and study it:
It gladdens, troubles, changes many lives.
The life goes out, how many things result?
Fate drops a stone, and to the utmost shores
The circles spread.
Now, such a book were endless,
If every circle, riffle should be traced
Of any life--and so of Elenor Murray,
Whose life was humble and whose death was tragic.
And yet behold the riffles spread, the lives
That are affected, and the secrets gained
Of lives she never knew of, as for that.
For even the world could not contain the books
That should be written, if all deeds were traced,
Effects, results, gains, losses, of her life,
And of her death.
Concretely said, in brief,
A man and woman have produced this child;
What was the child's pre-natal circumstance?
How did her birth affect the father, mother?
What did their friends, old women, relatives
Take from the child in feeling, joy or pain?
What of her childhood friends, her days at school,
Her teachers, girlhood sweethearts, lovers later,
When she became a woman? What of these?
And what of those who got effects because
They knew this Elenor Murray?
Then she dies.
Read how the human secrets are exposed
In many lives because she died--not all
Lives, by her death affected, written here.
The reader may trace out such other riffles
As come to him--this book must have an end.
Enough is shown to show what could be told
If we should write a world of books. In brief
One feature of the plot elaborates
The closeness of one life, however humble
With every life upon this globe. In truth
I sit here in Chicago, housed and fed,
And think the world secure, at peace, the clock
Just striking three, in Europe striking eight:
And in some province, in some palace, hut,
Some words are spoken, or a fisticuff
Results between two brawlers, and for that
A blue-eyed boy, my grandson, we may say,
Not even yet in seed, but to be born
A half a century hence, is by those words,
That fisticuff, drawn into war in Europe,
Shrieks from a bullet through the groin, and lies
Under the sod of France.
But to return
To Elenor Murray, I have made a book
Called Domesday Book, a census spiritual
Taken of our America, or in part
Taken, not wholly taken, it may be.
For William Merival, the coroner,
Who probed the death of Elenor Murray goes
As far as may be, and beyond his power,
In diagnosis of America,
While finding out the cause of death. In short
Becomes a William the Conqueror that way
In making up a Domesday Book for us....
Of this a little later. But before
We touch upon the Domesday book of old,
We take up Elenor Murray, show her birth;
Then skip all time between and show her death;
Then take up Coroner Merival--who was he?
Then trace the life of Elenor Murray through
The witnesses at the inquest on the body
Of Elenor Murray;--also letters written,
And essays written, conversations heard,
But all evoked by Elenor Murray's death.
And by the way trace riffles here and there....
A word now on the Domesday book of old:
Remember not a book of doom, but a book
Of houses; domus, house, so domus book.
And this book of the death of Elenor Murray
Is not a book of doom, though showing too
How fate was woven round her, and the souls
That touched her soul; but is a house book too
Of riches, poverty, and weakness, strength
Of this our country.
If you take St. Luke
You find an angel came to Mary, said:
Hail! thou art highly favored, shalt conceive,
Bring forth a son, a king for David's throne:--
So tracing life before the life was born.
We do the same for Elenor Murray, though
No man or angel said to Elenor's mother:
You have found favor, you are blessed of God,
You shall conceive, bring forth a daughter blest,
And blessing you. Quite otherwise the case,
As being blest or blessing, something like
Perhaps, in that desire, or flame of life,
Which gifts new souls with passion, strength and love....
This is the manner of the girl's conception,
And of her birth:--...
THE BIRTH OF ELENOR MURRAY
What are the mortal facts
With which we deal? The man is thirty years,
Most vital, in a richness physical,
Of musical heart and feeling; and the woman
Is twenty-eight, a cradle warm and rich
For life to grow in.
And the time is this:
This Henry Murray has a mood of peace,
A splendor as of June, has for the time
Quelled anarchy within him, come to law,
Sees life a thing of beauty, happiness,
And fortune glow before him. And the mother,
Sunning her feathers in his genial light,
Takes longing and has hope. For body's season
The blood of youth leaps in them like a fountain,
And splashes musically in the crystal pool
Of quiet days and hours. They rise refreshed,
Feel all the sun's strength flow through muscles, nerves;
Extract from food no poison, only health;
Are sensitive to simple things, the turn
Of leaves on trees, flowers springing, robins' songs.
Now such a time must prosper love's desire,
Fed gently, tended wisely, left to mount
In flame and light. A prospering fate occurs
To send this Henry Murray from his wife,
And keep him absent for a month--inspire
A daily letter, written of the joys,
And hopes they have together, and omit,
Forgotten for the time, old aches, despairs,
Forebodings for the future.
What results?
For thirty days her youth, and youthful blood
Under the stimulus of absence, letters,
And growing longing, laves and soothes and feeds,
Like streams that nourish fields, her body's being.
Enriches cells to plumpness, dim, asleep,
Which stretch, expand and turn, the prototype
Of a baby newly born; which after the cry
At midnight, taking breath an hour before,--
That cry which is of things most tragical,
The tragedy most poignant--sleeps and rests,
And flicks its little fingers, with closed eyes
Senses with visions of unopened leaves
This monstrous and external sphere, the world,
And what moves in it.
So she thinks of him,
And longs for his return, and as she longs
The rivers of her body run and ripple,
Refresh and quicken her. The morning's light
Flutters upon the ceiling, and she lies
And stretches drowsily in the breaking slumber
Of fluctuant emotion, calls to him
With spirit and flesh, until his very name
Seems like to form in sound, while lips are closed,
And tongue is motionless, beyond herself,
And in the middle spaces of the room
Calls back to her.
And Henry Murray caught,
In letters, which she sent him, all she felt,
Re-kindled it and sped it back to her.
Then came a lover's fancy in his brain:
He would return unlooked for--who, the god,
Inspired the fancy?--find her in what mood
She might be in his absence, where no blur
Of expectation of his coming changed
Her color, flame of spirit. And he bought
Some chablis and a cake, slipped noiselessly
Into the chamber where she lay asleep,
And had a light upon her face before
She woke and saw him.
How she cried her joy!
And put her arms around him, burned away
In one great moment from a goblet of fire,
Which over-flowed, whatever she had felt
Of shrinking or distaste, or loveless hands
At any time before, and burned it there
Till even the ashes sparkled, blew away
In incense and in light.
She rose and slipped
A robe on and her slippers; drew a stand
Between them for the chablis and the cake.
And drank and ate with him, and showed her teeth,
While laughing, shaking curls, and flinging back
Her head for rapture, and in little crows.
And thus the wine caught up the resting cells,
And flung them in the current, and their blood
Flows silently and swiftly, running deep;
And their two hearts beat like the rhythmic chimes
Of little bells of steel made blue by flame,
Because their lives are ready now, and life
Cries out to life for life to be. The fire,
Lit in the altar of their eyes, is blind
For mysteries that urge, the blood of them
In separate streams would mingle, hurried on
By energy from the heights of ancient mountains;
The God himself, and Life, the Gift of God.
And as result the hurrying microcosms
Out of their beings sweep, seek out, embrace,
Dance for the rapture of freedom, being loosed;
Unite, achieve their destiny, find the cradle
Of sleep and growth, take up the cryptic task
Of maturation and of fashioning;
Where no light is except the light of God
To light the human spirit, which emerges
From nothing that man knows; and where a face,
To be a woman's or a man's takes form:
Hands that shall gladden, lips that shall enthrall
With songs or kisses, hands and lips, perhaps,
To hurt and poison. All is with the fates,
And all beyond us.
Now the seed is sown,
The flower must grow and blossom. Something comes,
Perhaps, to whisper something in the ear
That will exert itself against the mass
That grows, proliferates; but for the rest
The task is done. One thing remains alone:
It is a daughter, woman, that you bear,
A whisper says to her--It is her wish--
Her wish materializes in a voice
Which says: the name of Elenor is sweet,
Choose that for her--Elenor, which is light,
The light of Helen, but a lesser light
In this our larger world; a light to shine,
And lure amid the tangled woodland ways
Of this our life; a firefly beating wings
Here, there amid the thickets of hard days.
And to go out at last, as all lights do,
And leave a memory, perhaps, but leave
No meaning to be known of any man....
So Elenor Murray is conceived and born.
* * * * *
But now this Elenor Murray being born,
We start not with her life, but with her death,
The finding of her body by the river.
And then as Coroner Merival takes proof
Her life comes forth, until the Coroner
Traces it to the moment of her death.
And thus both life and death of her are known.
This the beginning of the mystery:--
FINDING OF THE BODY
Elenor Murray, daughter of Henry Murray,
The druggist at LeRoy, a village near
The shadow of Starved Rock, this Elenor
But recently returned from France, a heart
Who gave her service in the world at war,
Was found along the river's shore, a mile
Above Starved Rock, on August 7th, the day
Year 1679, LaSalle set sail
For Michilmackinac to reach Green Bay
In the _Griffin_, in the winter snow and sleet,
Reaching "Lone Cliff," Starved Rock its later name,
Also La Vantum, village of the tribe
Called Illini.
This may be taken to speak
The symbol of her life and fate. For first
This Elenor Murray comes into this life,
And lives her youth where the Rock's shadow falls,
As if to say her life should starve and lie
Beneath a shadow, wandering in the world,
As Cavalier LaSalle did, born at Rouen,
Shot down on Trinity River, Texas. She
Searches for life and conquest of herself
With the same sleepless spirit of LaSalle;
And comes back to the shadow of the Rock,
And dies beneath its shadow. Cause of death?
Was she like Sieur LaSalle shot down, or choked,
Struck, poisoned? Let the coroner decide.
Who, hearing of the matter, takes the body
And brings it to LeRoy, is taking proofs;
Lets doctors cut the body, probe and peer
To find the cause of death.
And so this morning
Of August 7th, as a hunter walks--
Looking for rabbits maybe, aimless hunting--
Over the meadow where the Illini's
La Vantum stood two hundred years before,
Gun over arm in readiness for game,
Sees some two hundred paces to the south
Bright colors, red and blue; thinks off the bat
A human body lies there, hurries on
And finds the girl's dead body, hatless head,
The hat some paces off, as if she fell
In such way that the hat dashed off. Her arms
Lying outstretched, the body half on side,
The face upturned to heaven, open eyes
That might have seen Starved Rock until the eyes
Sank down in darkness where no image comes.
This hunter knew the body, bent and looked;
Gave forth a gasp of horror, leaned and touched
The cold hand of the dead: saw in her pocket,
Sticking above the pocket's edge a banner,
And took it forth, saw it was Joan of Arc
In helmet and cuirass, kneeling in prayer.
And in the banner a paper with these words:
"To be brave, and not to flinch." And standing there
This hunter knew that Elenor Murray came
Some days before from France, was visiting
An aunt, named Irma Leese beyond LeRoy.
What was she doing by the river's shore?
He saw no mark upon her, and no blood;
No pistol by her, nothing disarranged
Of hair or clothing, showing struggle--nothing
To indicate the death she met. Who saw her
Before or when she died? How long had death
Been on her eyes? Some hours, or over-night.
The hunter touched her hand, already stiff;
And saw the dew upon her hair and brow,
And a blue deadness in her eyes, like pebbles.
The lips were black, and bottle flies had come
To feed upon her tongue. 'Tis ten o'clock,
The coolness of the August night unchanged
By this spent sun of August. And the moon
Lies dead and wasted there beyond Starved Rock.
The moon was beautiful last night! To walk
Beside the river under the August moon
Took Elenor Murray's fancy, as he thinks.
Then thinking of the aunt of Elenor Murray,
Who should be notified, the hunter runs
To tell the aunt--but there's the coroner--
Is there not law the coroner should know?
Should not the body lie, as it was found,
Until the coroner takes charge of it?
Should not he stand on guard? And so he runs,
And from a farmer's house by telephone
Sends word to Coroner Merival. Then returns
And guards the body.
Here is riffle first:
The coroner sat with his traveling bags,
Was closing up his desk, had planned a trip
With boon companions, they were with him there;
The auto waited at the door to take them
To catch the train for northern Michigan.
He closed the desk and they arose to go.
Just then the telephone began to ring,
The hunter at the other end was talking,
And told of Elenor Murray. Merival
Turned to his friends and said: "The jig is up.
Here is an inquest, and of moment too.
I cannot go, but you jump in the car,
And go--you'll catch the train if you speed up."
They begged him to permit his deputy
To hold the inquest. Merival said "no,"
And waived them off. They left. He got a car
And hurried to the place where Eleanor lay....
Now who was Merival the Coroner?
For we shall know of Elenor through him,
And know her better, knowing Merival.
THE CORONER
Merival, of a mother fair and good,
A father sound in body and in mind,
Rich through three thousand acres left to him
By that same father dying, mother dead
These many years, a bachelor, lived alone
In the rambling house his father built of stone
Cut from the quarry near at hand, above
The river's bend, before it meets the island
Where Starved Rock rises.
Here he had returned,
After his Harvard days, took up the task
Of these three thousand acres, while his father
Aging, relaxed his hand. From farm to farm
Rode daily, kept the books, bred cattle, sheep,
Raised seed corn, tried the secrets of DeVries,
And Burbank in plant breeding.
Day by day,
His duties ended, he sat at a window
In a great room of books where lofty shelves
Were packed with cracking covers; newer books
Flowed over on the tables, round the globes
And statuettes of bronze. Upon the wall
The portraits hung of father and of mother,
And two moose heads above the mantel stared,
The trophies of a hunt in youth.
So Merival
At a bay window sat in the great room,
Felt and beheld the stream of life and thought
Flow round and through him, to a sound in key
With his own consciousness, the murmurous voice
Of his own soul.
Along a lawn that sloped
Some hundred feet to the river he would muse.
Or through the oaks and elms and silver birches
Between the plots of flowers and rows of box
Look at the distant scene of hilly woodlands.
And why no woman in his life, no face
Smiling from out the summer house of roses,
Such riotous flames against the distant green?
And why no sons and daughters, strong and fair,
To use these horses, ponies, tramp the fields,
Shout from the tennis court, swim, skate and row?
He asked himself the question many times,
And gave himself the answer. It was this:
At twenty-five a woman crossed his path--
Let's have the story as the world believes it,
Then have the truth. She was betrothed to him,
But went to France to study, died in France.
And so he mourned her, kept her face enshrined,
Was wedded to her spirit, could not brook
The coming of another face to blur
This face of faces! So the story went
Around the country. But his grief was not
The grief they told. The pang that gnawed his heart,
And took his spirit, dulled his man's desire
Took root in shame, defeat, rejected love.
He had gone east to meet her and to wed her,
Now turned his thirtieth year; when he arrived
He found his dear bride flown, a note for him,
Left with the mother, saying she had flown,
And could not marry him, it would not do,
She did not love him as a woman should
Who makes a pact for life; her heart was set
For now upon her music, she was off
To France for study, wished him well, in truth--
Some woman waited him who was his mate....
So Merival read over many times
The letter, tried to find a secret hope
Lodged back of words--was this a woman's way
To lure him further, win him to more depths?
He half resolved to follow her to France;
Then as he thought of what he was himself
In riches, breeding, place, and manliness
His egotism rose, fed by the hurt:
She might stay on in France for aught he cared!
What was she, anyway, that she could lose
Such happiness and love? for he had given
In a great passion out of a passionate heart
All that was in him--who was she to spurn
A gift like this? Yet always in his heart
Stirred something which by him was love and hate.
And when the word came she had died, the word
She loved a maestro, and the word like gas,
Which poisons, creeps and is not known, that death
Came to her somehow through a lawless love,
Or broken love, disaster of some sort,
His spirit withered with its bitterness.
And in the years to come he feared to give
With unreserve his heart, his leaves withheld
From possible frost, dreamed on and drifted on
Afraid to venture, having scarcely strength
To seek and try, endure defeat again.
Thus was his youth unsatisfied, and as hope
Of something yet to be to fill his hope
Died not, but with each dawn awoke to move
Its wings, his youth continued past his years.
The very cry of youth, which would not cease
Kept all the dreams and passions of his youth
Wakeful, expectant--kept his face and frame
Rosy and agile as he neared the mark
Of fifty years.
But every day he sat
As one who waited. What would come to him?
What soul would seek him in this room of books?
But yet no soul he found when he went forth,
Breaking his solitude, to towns.
What waste
Thought Merival, of spirit, but what waste
Of spirit in the lives he knew! What homes
Where children starve for bread, or starve for love,
Half satisfied, half-schooled are driven forth
With aspirations broken, or with hopes
Or talents bent or blasted! O, what wives
Drag through the cheerless days, what marriages
Cling and exhaust to death, and warp and stain
The children! If a business, like this farm,
Were run on like economy, a year
Would see its ruin! But he thought, at last,
Of spiritual economy, so to save
The lives of men and women, use their powers
To ends that suit.
And thus when on a time
A miner lost his life there at LeRoy,
And when the inquest found the man was killed
Through carelessness of self, while full of drink,
Merival, knowing that the drink was caused
By hopeless toil and by a bitter grief
Touching a daughter, who had strayed and died,
First wondered if in cases like to this
Good might result, if there was brought to light
All secret things; and in the course of time,
If many deaths were probed, a store of truth
Might not be gathered which some genius hand
Could use to work out laws, instructions, systems
For saving and for using wasting spirits,
So wasted in the chaos, in the senseless
Turmoil and madness of this reckless life,
Which treats the spirit as the cheapest thing,
Since it is so abundant.
Thoughts like these
Led Merival to run for coroner.
The people wondered why he sought the office.
But when they gave it to him, and he used
His private purse to seek for secret faults,
In lives grown insupportable, for causes
Which prompted suicide, the people wondered,
The people murmured sometimes, and his foes
Mocked or traduced his purpose.
Merival
The coroner is now two years in office
When Henry Murray's daughter Elenor
Found by the river, gives him work to do
In searching out her life's fate, cause of death,
How, in what manner, and by whom or what
Said Elenor's dead body came to death;
And of all things which might concern the same,
With all the circumstances pertinent,
Material or in anywise related,
Or anywise connected with said death.
And as in other cases Merival
Construed the words of law, as written above:
All circumstances material or related,
Or anywise connected with said death,
To give him power as coroner to probe
To ultimate secrets, causes intimate
In birth, environment, crises of the soul,
Grief, disappointment, hopes deferred or ruined.
So now he exercised his power to strip
This woman's life of vestments, to lay bare
Her soul, though other souls should run and rave
For nakedness and shame.
So Merival
Returning from the river with the body
Of Elenor Murray thought about the woman;
Recalled her school days in LeRoy--the night
When she was graduated at the High School; thought
About her father, mother, girlhood friends;
And stories of her youth came back to him.
The whispers of her leaving home, the trips
She took, her father's loveless ways. And wonder
For what she did and made of self, possessed
His thinking; and the fancy grew in him
No chance for like appraisal had been his
Of human worth and waste, this man who knew
Both life and books. And lately he had read
The history of King William and his book.
And even the night before this Elenor's body
Was found beside the river--this he read,
Perhaps, he thought, was reading it when Elenor
Was struck down or was choked. How strange the hour
Whose separate place finds Merival with a book,
And Elenor with death, brings them together,
And for result blends book and death!... He knew
By Domesday Book King William had a record
Of all the crown's possessions, had the names
Of all land-holders, had the means of knowing
The kingdom's strength for war; it gave the data
How to increase the kingdom's revenue.
It was a record in a case of titles,
Disputed or at issue to appeal to.
So Merival could say: My inquests show
The country's wealth or poverty in souls,
And what the country's strength is, who by right
May claim his share-ship in the country's life;
How to increase the country's glory, power.
Why not a Domesday Book in which are shown
A certain country's tenures spiritual?
And if great William held great council once
To make inquiry of the nation's wealth,
Shall not I as a coroner in America,
Inquiring of a woman's death, make record
Of lives which have touched hers, what lives she touched;
And how her death by surest logic touched
This life or that, was cause of causes, proved
The event that made events?
So Merival
Brought in a jury for the inquest work
As follows: Winthrop Marion, learned and mellow,
A journalist in Chicago, keeping still
His residence at LeRoy. And David Borrow,
A sunny pessimist of varied life,
Ingenious thought, a lawyer widely read.
And Samuel Ritter, owner of the bank,
A classmate of the coroner at Harvard.
Llewellyn George, but lately come from China,
A traveler, intellectual, anti-social
Searcher for life and beauty, devotee
Of such diversities as Nietzsche, Plato.
Also a Reverend Maiworm noted for
Charitable deeds and dreams. And Isaac Newfeldt
Who in his youth had studied Adam Smith,
And since had studied tariffs, lands and money,
Economies of nations.
And because
They were the friends of Merival, and admired
His life and work, they dropped their several tasks
To serve as jurymen.
The hunter came
And told his story: how he found the body,
What hour it was, and how the body lay;
About the banner in the woman's pocket,
Which Coroner Merival had taken, seen,
And wondered over. For if Elenor
Was not a Joan too, why treasure this?
Did she take Joan's spirit for her guide?
And write these words: "To be brave and not to flinch"?
She wrote them; for her father said: "It's true
That is her writing," when he saw the girl
First brought to Merival's office.
Merival
Amid this business gets a telegram:
Tom Norman drowned, one of the men with whom
He planned this trip to Michigan. Later word
Tom Norman and the other, Wilbur Horne
Are in a motor-boat. Tom rises up
To get the can of bait and pitches out,
His friend leaps out to help him. But the boat
Goes on, the engine going, there they fight
For life amid the waves. Tom has been hurt,
Somehow in falling, cannot save himself,
And tells his friend to leave him, swim away.
His friend is forced at last to swim away,
And makes the mile to shore by hardest work.
Tom Norman, dead, leaves wife and children caught
In business tangles which he left to build
New strength, to disentangle, on the trip.
The rumor goes that Tom was full of drink,
Thus lost his life. But if our Elenor Murray
Had not been found beside the river, what
Had happened? If the coroner had been there,
And run the engine, steered the boat beside
The drowning man, and Wilbur Horne--what drink
Had caused the death of Norman? Or again,
Perhaps the death of Elenor saved the life
Of Merival, by keeping him at home
And safe from boats and waters.
Anyway,
As Elenor Murray's body has no marks,
And shows no cause of death, the coroner
Sends out for Dr. Trace and talks to him
Of things that end us, says to Dr. Trace
Perform the autopsy on Elenor Murray.
And while the autopsy was being made
By Dr. Trace, he calls the witnesses
The father first of Elenor Murray, who
Tells Merival this story:
HENRY MURRAY
Henry Murray, father of Elenor Murray,
Willing to tell the coroner Merival
All things about himself, about his wife,
All things as well about his daughter, touching
Her growth, and home life, if the coroner
Would hear him privately, save on such things
Strictly relating to the inquest, went
To Coroner Merival's office and thus spoke:
I was born here some sixty years ago,
Was nurtured in these common schools, too poor
To satisfy a longing for a college.
Felt myself gifted with some gifts of mind,
Some fineness of perception, thought, began
By twenty years to gather books and read
Some history, philosophy and science.
Had vague ambitions, analyzed perhaps,
To learn, be wise.
Now if you study me,
Look at my face, you'll see some trace of her:
My brow is hers, my mouth is hers, my eyes
Of lighter color are yet hers, this way
I have of laughing, as I saw inside
The matter deeper cause for laughter, hers.
And my jaw hers betokening a will,
Hers too, with chin that mitigates the will,
Shading to softness as hers did.
Our minds
Had something too in common: first this will
Which tempted fate to bend it, break it too--
I know not why in her case or in mine.
But when my will is bent I grow morose,
And when it's broken, I become a scourge
To all around me. Yes, I've visited
A life-time's wrath upon my wife. This daughter
When finding will subdued did not give up,
But took the will for something else--went on
By ways more prosperous; but alas! poor me!
I hold on when defeated, and lie down
When I am beaten, growling, ruminate
Upon my failure, think of nothing else.
But truth to tell, while we two were opposed,
This daughter and myself, while temperaments
Kept us at sword's points, while I saw in her
Traits of myself I liked not, also traits
Of the child's mother which I loathe, because
They have undone me, helped at least--no less
I see this child as better than myself,
And better than her mother, so admire.
Also I never trusted her; as a child
She would rush in relating lying wonders;
She feigned emotions, purposes and moods;
She was a little actress from the first,
And all her high resolves from first to last
Seemed but a robe with flowing sleeves in which
Her hands could hide some theft, some secret spoil.
When she was fourteen I could see in her
The passionate nature of her mother--well
You know a father's feelings when he sees
His daughter sensed by youths and lusty men
As one of the kind for capture. It's a theme
A father cannot talk of with his daughter.
He may say, "have a care," or "I forbid
Your strolling, riding with these boys at night."
But if the daughter stands and eyes the father,
As she did me with flaming eyes, then goes
Her way in secret, lies about her ways,
The father can but wonder, watch or brood,
Or switch her maybe, for I switched her once,
And found it did no good. I needed here
The mother's aid, but no, her mother saw
Herself in the girl, and said she knew the girl,
That I was too suspicious, out of touch
With a young girl's life, desire for happiness.
But when this Alma Bell affair came up,
And the school principal took pains to say
My daughter was too reckless of her name
In strolling and in riding, then my wife
Howled at me like a tigress: whip that man!
And as my daughter cried, and my wife screeched,
And called me coward if I let him go,
I rushed out to the street and finding him
Beat up his face, though almost dropping dead
From my exertion. Well, the aftermath
Was worse for me, not only by the talk,
But in my mind who saw no gratitude
In daughter or in mother for my deed.
The daughter from that day took up a course
More secret from my eyes, more variant
From any wish I had. We stood apart,
And grew apart thereafter. And from that day
My wife grew worse in temper, worse in nerves.
And though the people say she is my slave,
That I alone, of all who live, have conquered
Her spirit, still what despotism works
Free of reprisals, or of breakings-forth
When hands are here, not there?
But to return:
One takes up something for a livelihood,
And dreams he'll leave it later, when in time
His plans mature; and as he earns and lives,
With some time for his plans, hopes for the day
When he may step forth from his olden life
Into a new life made thus gradually,
I hoped to be a lawyer; but to live
I started as a drug clerk--look to-day
I own that little drug store--here I am
With drugs my years through, drugged myself at last.
And as a clerk I met my wife--went mad
About her, and I see in Elenor
Her mother's gift for making fools of men.
Why, I can scarce explain it, it's the flesh,
But then it's spirit too. Such flaming up
As came from flames like ours, but more of hers
Burned in the children. Yes, it might be well
For theorists in heredity to think
About the matter.
Well, but how about
The flames that make the children? For this woman
Too surely ruined me and sapped my life.
You hear much of the vampire, but what wife
Has not more chance for eating up a man?
She has him daily, has him fast for years.
A man can shake a vampire off, but how
To shake a wife off, when the children come,
And you must leave your place, your livelihood
To shake her off? And if you shake her off
Where do you go? what do you do? and how?
You see 'twas love that caught me, yet even so
I had resisted love had I not seen
A chance to rise through marriage. It was this:
You know, of course, my wife was Elenor Fouche,
Daughter of Arthur, thought to be so rich.
And I had hopes to patch my fortunes up
In this alliance, and become a lawyer.
What happened? Why they helped me not at all.
The children came, and I was chained to work,
To clothe and feed a family--all the while
My soul combusted with this aspiration,
And my good nature went to ashes, dampened
By secret tears which filtered through as lye.
Then finally, when my wife's father died,
After our marriage, twenty years or so,
His fortune came to nothing, all she got
Went to that little house we live in here--
It needs paint now, the porch has rotten boards--
And I was forced to see these children learn
What public schools could teach, and even as I
Left school half taught, and never went to college,
So did these children, saving Elenor,
Who saw two years of college--earned herself
By teaching. I choke up, just wait a minute!
What depths of calmness may a man come to
As father, who can think of this and be
Quiet about his heart? His heart will hurt,
Move, as it were, as a worm does with its pain.
And these days now, when trembling hands and head
Foretell decline, or worse, and make me think
As face to face with God, most earnestly,
Most eager for the truth, I wonder much
If I misjudged this daughter, canvass her
Myself to see if I had power to do
A better part by her. That is the way
This daughter has got in my soul. At first
She incubates in me as force unknown,
A spirit strange yet kindred, in my life;
And we are hostile and yet drawn together;
But when we're drawn together see and feel
These oppositions. Next she's in my life--
The second stage of the fever--as dislike,
Repugnance, and I wish her out of sight,
Out of my life. Then comes these ugly things,
Like Alma Bell, and rumors from away
Where she is teaching, and I put her out
Of life and thought the more, and wonder why
I fathered such a nature, whence it came.
Well, then the fever goes and I am weak,
Repentant it may be, delirious visions
That haunted me in fever plague me yet,
Even while I think them visions, nothing else.
So I grow pitiful and blame myself
For any part I had in her mistakes,
Sorrows and struggles, and I curse myself
That I was powerless to help her more--
Thus is she like a fever in my life.
Well, then the child grows up. But as a child
She dances, laughs and sings. At three years springs
For minutes and for minutes on her toes,
Like skipping rope, clapping her hands the while,
Her blue eyes twinkling, and her milk-white teeth
Glistening as she gurgled, shouted, laughed--
There never was such vital strength. I give
The pictures as my memory took them. Next
I see her looking side-ways at me, as if
She studied me, avoided me. The child
Is now ten years of age; and now I know
She smelled the rats that made the family hearth
A place for scampering; the horrors of our home.
She thought I brought the rats and kept them there,
These rats of bickering, anger, strife at home.
I knew she blamed me for her mother's moods
Who dragged about the kitchen day by day,
Sad faced and silent. So the upshot was
I had two enemies in the house, where once
I had but one, her mother. This made worse
The state for both, and worse the state for me.
And so it goes. Then next there's Alma Bell.
The following year my daughter finished up
The High School--and we sit--my wife and I
To see the exercises. And that summer Elenor,
Now eighteen and a woman, goes about--
I don't know what she does, sometimes I see
Some young man with her walking. But at home,
When I come in, the mother and the daughter
Put pedals on their talk, or change the theme--
I am shut out.
And in the fall I learn
From some outsider that she's teaching school,
And later people laugh and talk to me
About her feat of cowing certain Czechs,
Who broke her discipline in school.
Well, then
Two years go on that have no memory,
Just like sick days in bed when you lie there
And wake and sleep and wait. But finally
Her mother says: "To-night our Elenor
Leaves for Los Angeles." And then the mother,
To hide a sob, coughs nervously and leaves
The room where I am, for the kitchen--I
Sit with the evening paper, let it fall,
Then hold it up to read again and try
To say to self, "All right, what if she goes?"
The evening meal goes hard, for Elenor
Shines forth in kindness for me, talks and laughs--
I choke again.... She says to me if God
Had meant her for a better youth, then God
Had given her a better youth; she thanks me
For making High School possible to her,
And says all will be well--she will earn money
To go to college, that she will gain strength
By helping self--Just think, my friend, to hear
Such words, which in their kindness proved my failure,
When I had hoped, aspired, when I had given
My very soul, whether I liked this daughter,
Or liked her not, out of a generous hand,
Large hearted in its carelessness to give
A daughter of such mind a place in life,
And schooling for the place.
The meal was over.
We stood there silent; then her face grew wet
With tears, as wet as blossoms soaked with rain.
She took my hand and took her mother's hand,
And put our hands together--then she said:
"Be friends, be friends," and hurried from the room,
Her mother following. I stepped out-doors,
And stood what seemed a minute, entered again,
Walked to the front room, from the window saw
Elenor and her mother in the street.
The girl was gone! How could I follow them?
They had not asked me. So I stood and saw
The canvas telescope her mother carried.
They disappeared. I went back to my store,
Came back at nine o'clock, lighted a match
And saw my wife in bed, cloths on her eyes.
She turned her face to the wall, and didn't speak.
Next morning at the breakfast table she,
Complaining of a stiff arm, said: "that satchel
Was weighted down with books, my arm is stiff--
Elenor took French books to study French.
When she can pay a teacher, she will learn
How to pronounce the words, but by herself
She'll learn the grammar, how to read." She knew
How words like that would hurt!
I merely said:
"A happy home is better than knowing French,"
And went off to my store.
But coroner,
Search for the men in her life. When she came
Back from the West after three years, I knew
By look of her eyes that some one filled her life,
Had taken her life and body. What if I
Had failed as father in the way I failed?
And what if our home was not home to her?
She could have married--why not? If a girl
Can fascinate the men--I know she could--
She can have marriage, if she wants to marry.
Unless she runs to men already married,
And if she does so, don't you make her out
As loose and bad?
Well, what is more to tell?
She learned French, seemed to know the ways of the world,
Knew books, knew how to dress, gave evidence
Of contact with refinements; letters came
When she was here at intervals inscribed
In writing of elite ones, gifted maybe.
And she was filial and kind to me,
Most kind toward her mother, gave us things
At Christmas time. But still her way was such
That I as well had been familiar with her
As with some formal lady visiting.
She came back here before she went to France,
Staid two days with us. Once upon the porch
She turned to me and said: "I wish to honor
Mother and you by serving in the war.
You must rejoice that I can serve--you must!
But most I wish to honor America,
This land of promise, of fulfillment, too,
Which proves to all the world that men and women
Are born alike of God, at least that riches
And classes formed in pride have neither hearts,
Nor minds above the souls of those who work.
This land that reared me is my dearest love,
I go to serve the country."
Pardon me!
A man of my age in an hour like this
Must cry a little--wait till I can say
The last words that she said to me.
She put
Her arms about me, then she said to me:
"I am so glad my life and place in life
Were such that I was forced to rise or sink,
To strive or fail. God has been good to me,
Who gifted me with spirit to aspire."
I go back to my store now. In these days,
Last days, of course, I try to be a husband,
Try to be kinder to the mother of Elenor.
Death is not far off, and that makes us think.
We may be over soft or penitent;
Forgive where we should hate still, being soft;
And fade off from the wrongs, we brooded on;
And cease to care life has been badly lived,
From first to last. But none the less our vision
Seems clearer as we end this trivial life.
And so I try to be a kinder husband
To Elenor's mother.
So spoke Henry Murray
To Merival; a stenographer took down
His words, and they were written out and shown
The jury. Afterward the mother came
And told her story to the coroner,
Also reported, written out, and shown
The jury. But it happened thus with her:
She waited in the coroner's outer room
Until her husband told his story, then
With eyes upon the floor, passing her husband,
The two in silence passing, as he left
The coroner's office, spoke amid her sighs,
Her breath long drawn at intervals, looking down
The while she spoke:
MRS. MURRAY
I think, she said at first,
My daughter did not kill herself. I'm sure
Someone did violence to her, your tests,
Examination will prove violence.
It would be like her fate to meet with such:
Poor child, unfortunate from birth, at least
Unfortunate in fortune, peace and joy.
Or else if she met with no violence,
Some sudden crisis of her woman's heart
Came on her by the river, the result
Of strains and labors in the war in France.
I'll tell you why I say this: First I knew
She had come near me from New York, there came
A letter from her, saying she had come
To visit with her aunt there near LeRoy,
And rest and get the country air. She said
To keep it secret, not to tell her father;
That she was in no frame of mind to come
And be with us, and see her father, see
Our life, which is the same as it was when
She was a child and after. But she said
To come to her. And so the day before
They found her by the river I went over
And saw her for the day. She seemed most gay,
Gave me the presents which she brought from France,
Told me of many things, but rather more
By way of half told things than something told
Continuously, you know. She had grown fairer,
She had a majesty of countenance,
A luminous glory shone about her face,
Her voice was softer, eyes looked tenderer.
She held my hands so lovingly when we met.
She kissed me with such silent, speaking love.
But then she laughed and told me funny stories.
She seemed all hope, and said she'd rest awhile
Before she made a plan for life again.
And when we parted, she said: "Mother, think
What trip you'd like to take. I've saved some money,
And you must have a trip, a rest, construct
Yourself anew for life." So, as I said,
She came to death by violence, or else
She had some weakness that she hid from me
Which came upon her quickly.
For the rest,
Suppose I told you all my life, and told
What was my waste in life and what in hers,
How I have lived, and how poor Elenor
Was raised or half-raised--what's the good of that?
Are not there rooms of books, of tales and poems
And histories to show all secrets of life?
Does anyone live now, or learn a thing
Not lived and learned a thousand times before?
The trouble is these secrets are locked up
In books and might as well be locked in graves,
Since they mean nothing till you live yourself.
And I suppose the race will live and suffer
As long as leaves put forth in spring, live over
The very sorrows, horrors that we live.
Wisdom is here, but how to learn that wisdom,
And use it while life's worth the living, that's
The thing to be desired. But let it go.
If any soul can profit by my life,
Or by my Elenor's, I trust he may,
And help him to it.
Coroner Merival,
Even the children in this neighborhood
Know something of my husband and of me,
Our struggle and unhappiness, even the children
Hear Alma Bell's name mentioned with a look.
And if you went about here to inquire
About my Elenor, you'd find them saying
She was a wonder girl, or this or that.
But then you'd feel a closing up of speech,
As if a door closed softly, just a way
To indicate that something else was there,
Somewhere in the person's room of thoughts.
This is the truth, since I was told a man
Came here to ask about her, when she asked
To serve in France, the matter of Alma Bell
Traced down and probed.
It being true, therefore,
That you and all the rest know of my life,
Our life at home, it matters nothing then
That I go on and tell you what I think
Made sorrow for us, what our waste was, tell you
How the yarn knotted as we took the skein
And wound it to a ball, and made the ball
So hardly knotted that the yarn held fast
Would not unwind for knitting.
Well, you know
My father Arthur Fouche, my mother too.
They reared me with the greatest care. You know
They sent me to St. Mary's, where I learned
Fine things, to be a lady--learned to dance,
To play on the piano, sing a little;
Learned French, Italian, learned to know good books,
The beauty of a poem or a tale;
Learned elegance of manners, how to walk,
Stand, breathe, keep well, be radiant and strong,
And so in all to make life beautiful,
Become the helpful wife of some strong man,
The mother of fine children. Well, at school
We girls were guarded from the men, and so
We went to town surrounded by our teachers,
And only saw the boys when some girl's brother
Came to the school to visit, perhaps a girl
Consent had of her parents to receive
A beau sometimes. But then I had no beau;
And had I had my father would have kept him
Away from me at school.
For truth to tell
When I had finished school, came back to home
They kept the men away, there was no man
Quite good enough to call. Now here begins
My fate, as you will see; their very care
To make me what they wished, to have my life
Grow safely, prosperously, was my undoing.
I had a sister named Corinne who suffered
Because of that; my father guarded me
Against all strolling lovers, unknown men.
But here was Henry Murray, whom they knew,
And trusted too; and though they never dreamed
I'd marry him, they trusted him to call.
He seemed a quiet, diligent young man,
Aspiring in the world. And so they thought
They'd solve my loneliness and restless spirits
By opening the door to him. My fate!
They let him call upon me twice a month.
He was in love with me before this started,
That's why he tried to call. But as for me,
He was a man, that's all, a being only
In the world to talk to, help my loneliness.
I had no love for him, no more than I
Had love for father's tenant on the farm.
And what I knew of marriage, what it means
Was what a child knows. If you'll credit me
I thought a man and woman slept together,
Lay side by side, and somehow, I don't know,
That children came.
But then I was so vital,
Rebellious, hungering for freedom, that
No chance was too indifferent to put by
What offered freedom from the prison home,
The watchfulness of father and of mother,
The rigor of my discipline. And in truth
No other man came by, no prospect showed
Of going on a visit, finding life
Some other place. And so it came about,
After I knew this man two months, one night
I made a rope of sheets, down from my window
Descended to his arms, eloped in short,
And married Henry Murray, and found out
What marriage is, believe me. Well, I think
The time will come when marriage will be known
Before the parties tie themselves for life.
How do you know a man, or know a woman
Until the flesh instructs you? Do you know
A man until you see him face to face?
Or know what texture is his hand until
You touch his hand? Well, lastly no one knows
Whether a man is mate for you before
You mate with him. I hope to see the day
When men and women, to try out their souls
Will live together, learning A. B. C.'s
Of life before they write their fates for life.