Appeared before the coroner she told
Of Elenor Murray's visit, of the morning
She left to walk, was never seen again.
And brought the coroner some letters sent
By Elenor from France. What follows now
Is what the coroner, or the jury heard
From Irma Leese, from letters drawn--beside
The riffle that the death of Elenor Murray
Sent round the life of Irma Leese, which spread
To Tokio and touched a man, the son
Of Irma Leese's sister, dead Corinne,
The mother of this man in Tokio.
IRMA LEESE
Elenor Murray landing in New York,
After a weary voyage, none too well,
Staid in the city for a week and then
Upon a telegram from Irma Leese,
Born Irma Fouche, her aunt who lived alone
This summer in the Fouche house near LeRoy,
Came west to visit Irma Leese and rest.
For Elenor Murray had not been herself
Since that hard spring when in the hospital,
Caring for soldiers stricken with the flu,
She took bronchitis, after weeks in bed
Rose weak and shaky, crept to health again
Through egg-nogs, easy strolls about Bordeaux.
And later went to Nice upon a furlough
To get her strength again.
But while she saw
Her vital flame burn brightly, as of old
On favored days, yet for the rest the flame
Sputtered or sank a little. So she thought
How good it might be to go west and stroll
About the lovely country of LeRoy,
And hear the whispering cedars by a window
In the Fouche mansion where this Irma Leese,
Her aunt, was summering. So she telegraphed,
And being welcomed, went.
This stately house,
Built sixty years before by Arthur Fouche,
A brick home with a mansard roof, an oriel
That looked between the cedars, and a porch
With great Ionic columns, from the street
Stood distantly amid ten acres of lawn,
Trees, flower plots--belonged to Irma Leese,
Who had reclaimed it from a chiropractor,
To cleanse the name of Fouche from that indignity,
And bring it in the family again,
Since she had spent her girlhood, womanhood
To twenty years amid its twenty rooms.
For Irma Leese at twenty years had married
And found herself at twenty-five a widow,
With money left her, then had tried again,
And after years dissolved the second pact,
And made a settlement, was rich in fact,
Now forty-two. Five years before had come
And found the house she loved a sanitarium,
A chiropractor's home. And as she stood
Beside the fence and saw the oriel,
Remembered all her happiness on this lawn
With brothers and with sisters, one of whom
Was Elenor Murray's mother, then she willed
To buy the place and spend some summers here.
And here she was the summer Elenor Murray
Returned from France.
And Irma Leese had said:
"Here is your room, it has the oriel,
And there's the river and the hills for you.
Have breakfast in your room what hour you will,
Rise when you will. We'll drive and walk and rest,
Run to Chicago when we have a mind.
I have a splendid chauffeur now and maids.
You must grow strong and well."
And Elenor Murray
Gasped out her happiness for the pretty room,
And stood and viewed the river and the hills,
And wept a little on the gentle shoulder
Of Irma Leese.
And so the days had passed
Of walking, driving, resting, many talks;
For Elenor Murray spoke to Irma Leese
Of tragic and of rapturous days in France,
And Irma Leese, though she had lived full years,
Had scarcely lived as much as Elenor Murray,
And could not hear enough from Elenor Murray
Of the war and France, but mostly she would urge
Her niece to tell of what affairs of love
Had come to her. And Elenor Murray told
Of Gregory Wenner, save she did not tell
The final secret, with a gesture touched
The story off by saying: It was hopeless,
I went into religion to forget.
But on a day she said to Irma Leese:
"I almost met my fate at Nice," then sketched
A hurried picture of a brief romance.
But Elenor Murray told her nothing else
Of loves or men. But all the while the aunt
Weighed Elenor Murray, on a day exclaimed:
"I see myself in you, and you are like
Your Aunt Corinne who died in ninety-two.
I'll tell you all about your Aunt Corinne
Some day when we are talking, but I see
You have the Fouche blood--we are lovers all.
Your mother is a lover, Elenor,
If you would know it."
"O, your Aunt Corinne
She was most beautiful, but unfortunate.
Her husband was past sixty when she married,
And she was thirty-two. He was distinguished,
Had money and all that, but youth is all,
Is everything for love, and she was young,
And he was old."
A week or two had passed
Since Elenor Murray came to Irma Leese,
When on a morning fire broke from the eaves
And menaced all the house; but maids and gardeners
With buckets saved the house, while Elenor Murray
And Irma Leese dipped water from the barrels
That stood along the ell.
A week from that
A carpenter was working at the eaves
Along the ell, and in the garret knelt
To pry up boards and patch. When as he pried
A board up, he beheld between the rafters
A package of old letters stained and frayed,
Tied with a little ribbon almost dust.
And when he went down-stairs, delivered it
To Irma Leese and said: Here are some letters
I found up in the garret under the floor,
I pried up in my work.
Then Irma Leese
Looked at the letters, saw her sister's hand,
Corinne's upon the letters, opened, read,
And saw the story which she knew before
Brought back in this uncanny way, the hand
Which wrote the letters six and twenty years
Turned back to dust. And when her niece came in
She showed the letters, said, "I'll let you read,
I'll tell you all about them":
"When Corinne
Was nineteen, very beautiful and vital,
Red-cheeked, a dancer, bubbling like new wine,
A catch, as you may know, you see this house
Was full of laughter then, so many children.
We had our parties, too, and young men thought,
Each one of us would have a dowry splendid--
A young man from Chicago came along,
A lawyer there, but lately come from Pittsburgh
To practice, win his way. I knew this man.
He was a handsome dog with curly hair,
Blue eyes and sturdy figure. Well, Corinne
Quite lost her heart. He came here to a dance,
And so the game commenced. And father thought
The fellow was not right, but all of us,
Your mother and myself said, yes he is,
And we conspired to help Corinne and smooth
The path of confidence. But later on
Corinne was not so buoyant, would not talk
With me, your mother freely. Then at last
Her eyes were sometimes red; we knew she wept.
And, then Corinne was sent away. Well, here
You'll guess the rest. Her health was breaking down,
That's true enough; the world could think its thoughts,
And say his love grew cold, or she found out
The black-leg that he was, and he was that.
But Elenor, the truth was more than that,
Corinne had been betrayed, she went away
To right herself--these letters prove the case,
Which all the gossips, busy as they were,
Could not make out. The paper at LeRoy
Had printed that she went to pay a visit
To relatives in the east. Three months or so
She came back well and rosy. But meanwhile
Your grandfather had paid this shabby scoundrel
A sum of money, I forget the sum,
To get these letters of your Aunt Corinne--
These letters here. This matter leaked, of course.
And then we let the story take this form
And moulded it a little to this form:
The fellow was a scoundrel--this was proved
When he took money to return her letters.
They were love letters, they had been engaged,
She thought him worthy, found herself deceived
Proved, too, by taking money, when at first
He looked with honorable eyes to young Corinne,
And won her trust. And so Corinne lived here
Ten years or more, at thirty married the judge,
Her senior thirty years, and went away.
She bore a child and died--look Elenor
Here are the letters which she took and nailed
Beneath the garret floor. We'll read them through,
And then I'll burn them."
Irma Leese rose up
And put the letters in her desk and said:
"Let's ride along the river." So they rode,
But as they rode, the day being clear and mild
The fancy took them to Chicago, where
They lunched and spent the afternoon, returning
At ten o'clock that night.
And the next morning
When Irma Leese expected Elenor
To rise and join her, asked for her, a maid
Told Irma Leese that Elenor had gone
To walk somewhere. And all that day she waited.
But as night came, she fancied Elenor
Had gone to see her mother, once rose up
To telephone, then stopped because she felt
Elenor might have plans she would not wish
Her mother to get wind of--let it go.
But when night came, she wondered, fell asleep
With wondering and worry.
But next morning
As she was waiting for the car to come
To motor to LeRoy, and see her sister,
Elenor's mother, in a casual way,
Learn if her niece was there, and waiting read
The letters of Corinne, the telephone
Rang in an ominous way, and Irma Leese
Sprang up to answer, got the tragic word
Of Elenor Murray found beside the river.
Left all the letters spilled upon her desk
And motored to the river, to LeRoy
Where Coroner Merival took the body.
Just
As Irma Leese departed, in the room
A sullen maid revengeful for the fact
She was discharged, was leaving in a day,
Entered and saw the letters, read a little,
And gathered them, went to her room and packed
Her telescope and left, went to LeRoy,
And gave a letter to this one and that,
Until the servant maids and carpenters
And some lubricous fellows at LeRoy
Who made companions of these serving maids,
Had each a letter of the dead Corinne,
Which showed at last, after some twenty years,
Of silence and oblivion, to LeRoy
With memory to refresh, that poor Corinne
Had given her love, herself, had been betrayed,
Abandoned by a scoundrel.
Merival,
The Coroner, when told about the letters,
For soon the tongues were wagging in LeRoy,
Went here and there to find them, till he learned
What quality of love the dead Corinne
Had given to this man. Then shook his head,
Resolved to see if he could not unearth
In Elenor Murray's life some faithless lover
Who sought her death.
The letters' riffle crawled
Through shadows of the waters of LeRoy
Until it looked a snake, was seen as such
In Tokio by Franklin Hollister,
The son of dead Corinne; it seemed a snake:
He heard the coroner through neglect or malice
Had let the letters scatter--not the truth;--
The coroner had gathered up the letters,
Befriending Irma Leese; she got them back
Through Merival. The riffle's just the same.
And hence this man in Tokio is crazed
For shame and fear--for fear the girl he loves
Will hear his mother's story and break off
Her marriage promise.
So in reckless rage
He posts a letter off to Lawyer Hood,
Chicago, Illinois--the coroner
Gets all the story through this Lawyer Hood,
Long after Elenor's inquest is at end.
Meantime he cools, is wiser, thinks it bad
To stir the scandal with a suit at law.
And then when cooled he hears from Lawyer Hood
Who tells him what the truth is. So it ends.
* * * * *
These letters and the greenish wave that coiled
At Tokio is beyond the coroner's eye
Fixed on the water where the pebble fell:--
This death of Elenor, circles close at hand
Engage his interest. Now he seeks to learn
About her training and religious life.
And hears of Miriam Fay, a friend he thinks,
And confidant of her religious life,
Head woman of the school where Elenor
Learned chemistry, materia medica,
Anatomy, to fit her for the work
Of nursing. And he writes this Miriam Fay
And Miriam Fay responds. The letter comes
Before the jury. Here is what she wrote:--
MIRIAM FAY'S LETTER
Elenor Murray asked to go in training
And came to see me, but the school was full,
We could not take her. Then she asked to stand
Upon a list and wait, I put her off.
She came back, and she came back, till at last
I took her application; then she came
And pushed herself and asked when she could come,
And start to train. At last I laughed and said:
"Well, come to-morrow." I had never seen
Such eagerness, persistence. So she came.
She tried to make a friend of me, perhaps
Since it was best, I being in command.
But anyway she wooed me, tried to please me.
And spite of everything I grew to love her,
Though I distrusted her. But yet again
I had belief in her best self, though doubting
The girl somehow. But when I learned the girl
Had never had religious discipline,
Her father without faith, her mother too,
Her want of moral sense, I understood.
She lacked stability of spirit, to-day
She would be one thing, something else the next.
Shot up in fire, which failed and died away
And I began to see her fraternize
With girls who had her traits, too full of life
To be what they should be, unstable too,
Much like herself.
Not long before she came
Into the training school, six months, perhaps,
She had some tragedy, I don't know what,
Had been quite ill in body and in mind.
When she went into training I could see
Her purpose to wear down herself, forget
In weariness of body, something lived.
She was alert and dutiful and sunny,
Kept all the rules, was studious, led the class,
Excelled, I think, in studies of the nerves,
The mind grown sick.
As we grew better friends,
More intimate, she talked about religion,
And sacred subjects, asked about the church.
I gave her books to read, encouraged her,
Asked her to make her peace with God, and set
Her feet in pious paths. At last she said
She wished to be baptized, confirmed. I made
The plans for her, she was baptized, confirmed,
Went to confessional, and seemed renewed
In spirit by conversion. For at once
Her zeal was like a flame at Pentecost,
She almost took the veil, but missing that,
She followed out the discipline to the letter,
Kept all the feast days, went to mass, communion,
Did works of charity; indeed, I think
She spent her spare hours all in all at sewing
There with the sisters for the poor. She had,
When she came to me, jewelry of value,
A diamond solitaire, some other things.
I missed them, and she said she sold them, gave
The money to a home for friendless children.
And I remember when she said her father
Had wronged, misvalued her; but now her love,
Made more abundant by the love of Christ,
Had brought her to forgiveness. All her mood
Was of humility and sacrifice.
One time I saw her at the convent, sitting
Upon a foot-stool at the gracious feet
Of the Mother Superior, sewing for the poor;
Hair parted in the middle, curls combed out.
Then was it that I missed her jewelry.
She looked just like a poor maid, humble, patient,
Head bent above her sewing, eyes averted.
The room was silent with religious thought.
I loved her then and pitied her. But now
I think she had that in her which at times
Made her a flagellant, at other times
A rioter. She used the church to drag
Her life from something, took it for a bladder
To float her soul when it was perilled. First,
She did not sell her jewelry; this ring,
Too brilliant for forgetting, or to pass
Unnoticed when she wore it, showed again
Upon her finger after she had come
Out of her training, was a graduate.
She had a faculty for getting in
Where elegance and riches were. She went
Among the great ones, when she found a way,
And traveled with them where she learned the life
Of notables, aristocrats. It was there,
Or when from duty free and feasting, gadding
The ring showed on her finger.
In two years
She dropped the church. New friends made in the school,
New interests, work that took her energies
And this religious flare had cured her up
Of what was killing her when first I knew her.
There was another thing that drew her back
To flesh, away from spirit: She saw bodies,
And handled bodies as a nurse, forgot
The body is the spirit's temple, fell
To some materialism of thought. And now
Avoided me, was much away, of course,
On duty here and there. I tried to hold her,
Protect and guide her, wrote to her at times
To make confession, take communion. She
Ignored these letters. But I heard her say
The body was as natural as the soul,
And just as natural its desires. She kept
Out of the wreck of faith one thing alone,
If she kept that: She could endure to hear
God's name profaned, but would not stand to hear
The Savior's spoken in irreverence.
She was afraid, no doubt. Or to be just,
The tender love of Christ, his sacrifice,
Perhaps had won her wholly--let it go,
I'll say that much for her.
Why am I harsh?
Because I saw the good in her all streaked
With so much evil, evil known and lived
In knowledge of it, clung to none the less,
Unstable as water, how could she succeed?
Untruthful, how could confidence be hers?
I sometimes think she joined the church to mask
A secret life, renewed forgiven sins.
After she cloaked herself with piety.
Perhaps, at least, when she saw what to do,
And how to do it, using these detours
Of piety to throw us off, who else
Had seen what doors she entered, whence she came.
She wronged the church, I think, made it a screen
To stand behind for kisses, to look from
Inviting kisses. Then, as I have said,
She took materialism from her work,
And so renewed her sins. She drank, I think,
And smoked and feasted; but as for the rest,
The smoke obscured the flame, but there is flame
Or fire at least where there is smoke.
You ask
What took her to the war? Why only this:
Adventure, chance of marriage, amorous conquests--
The girl was mad for men, although I saw
Her smoke obscured the flame, I never saw her
Except with robins far too tame or lame
To interest her, and robins prove to me
The hawk is somewhere, waits for night to join
His playmate when the robins are at rest.
You see the girl has madness in her, flies
From exaltation up to ecstasy.
Feeds on emotion, never has enough.
Tries all things, states of spirit, even beliefs.
Passes from lust (I think) to celibacy,
Feasts, fasts, eats, starves, has raptures then inflicts
The whip upon her back, is penitent,
Then proud, is humble, then is arrogant,
Looks down demurely, stares you out of face,
But runs the world around. For in point of fact,
She traveled much, knew cities and their ways;
And when I used to see her at the convent
So meek, clothed like a sewing maid, at once
The pictures that she showed me of herself
At seaside places or on boulevards,
Her beauty clothed in linen or in silk,
Came back to mind, and I would resurrect
The fragments of our talks in which I saw
How she knew foods and drinks and restaurants,
And fashionable shops. This girl could fool the elect--
She fooled me for a time. I found her out.
Did she aspire? Perhaps, if you believe
It's aspiration to seek out the rich,
And ape them. Not for me. Of course she went
To get adventure in the war, perhaps
She got too much. But as to waste of life,
She might have been a quiet, noble woman
Keeping her place in life, not trying to rise
Out of her class--too useless--in her class
Making herself all worthy, serviceable.
You'll find 'twas pride that slew her. Very like
She found a rich man, tried to hold him, lost
Her honor and her life in consequence.
* * * * *
When Merival showed this letter to the jury,
Marion the juryman spoke up:
"You know that type of woman--saintly hag!
I wouldn't take her word about a thing
By way of inference, or analysis.
They had some trouble, she and Elenor
You may be sure." And Merival replied:
"Take it for what it's worth. I leave you now
To see the man who owns the _Daily Times_.
He's turned upon our inquest, did you see
The jab he gives me? I can jab as well."
So Merival went out and took with him
A riffle in the waters of circumstance
Set up by Elenor Murray's death to one
Remote, secure in greatness--to the man
Who ran the _Times_.
ARCHIBALD LOWELL
Archibald Lowell, owner of the _Times_
Lived six months of the year at Sunnyside,
His Gothic castle near LeRoy, so named
Because no sun was in him, it may be.
His wife was much away when on this earth
At cures, in travel, fighting psychic ills,
Approaching madness, dying nerves. They said
Her heart was starved for living with a man
So cold and silent. Thirty years she lived
Bound to this man, in restless agony,
And as she could not free her life from his,
Nor keep it living with him, on a day
She stuck a gas hose in her mouth and drank
Her lungs full of the lethal stuff and died.
That was the very day the hunter found
Elenor Murray's body near the river.
A servant saw this Mrs. Lowell lying
A copy of the _Times_ clutched in her hand,
Which published that a slip of paper found
In Elenor Murray's pocket had these words
"To be brave and not to flinch." And was she brave,
And nerved to end it by these words of Elenor?
But Archibald, the husband, could not bear
To have the death by suicide made known.
He laid the body out, as if his wife
Had gone to bed as usual, turned a jet
And left it, just as if his wife had failed
To fully turn it, then went in the room;
Then called the servants, did not know that one
Had seen her with the _Times_ clutched in her hand.
He thought the matter hidden. Merival,
All occupied with Elenor Murray's death
Gave to a deputy the Lowell inquest.
But later what this servant saw was told
To Merival.
And now no more alone
Than when his wife lived, Lowell passed the days
At Sunnyside, as he had done for years.
He sat alone, and paced the rooms alone,
With hands behind him clasped, in fear and wonder
Of life and what life is. He rode about,
And viewed his blooded cattle on the hills.
But what were all these rooms and acres to him
With no face near him but the servants, gardeners?
Sometimes he wished he had a child to draw
Upon his fabulous income, growing more
Since all his life was centered in the _Times_
To swell its revenues, and in the process
His spirit was more fully in the _Times_
Than in his body. There were eyes who saw
How deftly was his spirit woven in it
Until it was a scarf to bind and choke
The public throat, or stifle honest thought
Like a soft pillow offered for the head,
But used to smother. There were eyes who saw
The working of its ways emasculate,
Its tones of gray, where flame had been the thing,
Its timorous steps, while spying on the public,
To learn the public's thought. Its cautious pauses,
With foot uplifted, ears pricked up to hear
A step fall, twig break. Platitudes in progress--
With sugar coat of righteousness and order,
Respectability.
Did the public make it?
Or did it make the public, that it fitted
With such exactness in the communal life?
Some thousands thought it fair--what should they think
When it played neutral in the matter of news
To both sides of the question, though at last
It turned the judge, and chose the better side,
Determined from the first, a secret plan,
And cunning way to turn the public scale?
Some thousands liked the kind of news it printed
Where no sensation flourished--smallest type
That fixed attention for the staring eyes
Needed for type so small. But others knew
It led the people by its fair pretensions,
And used them in the end. In any case
This editor played hand-ball in this way:
The advertisers tossed the ball, the readers
Caught it and tossed it to the advertisers:
And as the readers multiplied, the columns
Of advertising grew, and Lowell's thought
Was how to play the one against the other,
And fill his purse.
It was an ingrown mind,
And growing more ingrown with time. Afraid
Of crowds and streets, uncomfortable in clubs,
No warmth in hands to touch his fellows' hands,
Keeping aloof from politicians, loathing
The human alderman who bails the thief;
The little scamp who pares a little profit,
And grafts upon a branch that takes no harm.
He loved the active spirit, if it worked,
And feared the active spirit, if it played.
This Lowell hid himself from favor seekers,
Such letters filtered to him through a sieve
Of secretaries. If he had a friend,
Who was a mind to him as well, perhaps
It was a certain lawyer, but who knew?
And cursed with monophobia, none the less
This Lowell lived alone there near LeRoy,
Surrounded by his servants, at his desk
A secretary named McGill, who took
Such letters, editorials as he spoke.
His life was nearly waste. A peanut stand
Should be as much remembered as the _Times_,
When fifty years are passed.
And every month
The circulation manager came down
To tell the great man of the gain or loss
The paper made that month in circulation,
In advertising, chiefly. Lowell took
The audit sheets and studied them, and gave
Steel bullet words of order this or that.
He took the dividends, and put them--where?
God knew alone.
He went to church sometimes,
On certain Sundays, for a pious mother
Had reared him so, and sat there like a corpse,
A desiccated soul, so dry the moss
Upon his teeth was dry.