That was the first and last with him?' She said,
'That is the truth.' 'You lie,' I answered her.
'You lie and all your course has been a lie:
Your words that asked me to be true to you,
That I could break your heart. The breasts you showed
Flowering because of me, as you declared;
Our intimacy of bodies in the dance
Now first permitted you because of love;
Your plaints for truth and for fidelity,
Your fears, a practiced veteran in the game,
All simulated. And your prayer to God
For me, our love, your protests for the war,
For service, sacrifice, your mother hunger,
Are all elaborate lies, hypocrisies,
Studied in coolest cruelty, and mockery
Of every lovely thing, if there can be
A holy thing in life, as there cannot,
As you have proven it. The diary's gone--
And let it go--you kept it from my eyes
Which shows that there was more. What are you then,
A whore, that's all, a masquerading whore,
Not worthy of the hand that plies her trade
In openness, without deceit. For if
This was the first and only time with him
Here is dissimulation month by month
By word of mouth, in letters by the score;
And here your willingness to take my soul
And feed upon it. Knowing that my soul
Through what I thought was love was caught and whirled
To faith in the war, and faith in you as one
Who symbolized the war as good, as means
Of goodness for the world--and this deceit,
Insane, remorseless, conscienceless, is worse
Than what you did with him. I could forgive
Disloyalty like that, but this deceit
Is unforgivable. I go,' I said.
I turned to leave. She rose up from the bed,
'Forgive! Forgive!' she pleaded, 'I was mad,
Be fair! Be fair! You took me, turned from me,
Seemed not to want me, so I went to him.
I cried the whole day long when first I gave
Myself to you, for thinking you had found
All that you wanted, left me, did not care
To see me any more. I swear to you
I have been faithful to you since that day
When we heard Chopin played, and I could see
You loved me, and I loved you. O be fair!'"...
Then Barrett Bays shook like an animal
That starves and freezes. And the jury looked
And waited till he got control of self
And spoke again his horror and his grief:--
"I left her, went upon the silent streets,
And walked the night through half insane, I think.
Cannot remember what I saw that night,
Have only blurs of buildings, arches, towers,
Remember dawn at last, returning strength,
And taking rolls and coffee, all my spirit
Grown clear and hard as crystal, with a will
As sharp as steel to find reality:
To see life as it is and face its terrors,
And never feel a tremor, bat an eye.
Drink any cup to find the truth, and be
A pioneer in a world made new again,
Stripped of the husks, bring new faith to the world,
Of souls devoted to themselves to make
Souls truer, more developed, wise and fair!
Write down the creed of service, and write in
Self-culture, self-dependence, throw away
The testaments of Jesus, old and new,
Save as they speak and help the river life
To mould our truer beings; the rest discard
Which teaches compensation, to forgive
That you may be forgiven, mercy show
That mercy may be yours, and love your neighbor,
Love so to gain--all balances like this
Of doctrine for the spirit false and vile,
Corrupted with such calculating filth;
And if you'd be the greatest, be the servant--
When one to be the greatest must be great
In self, a light, a harmony in self,
Perfected by the inner law, the works
Done for the sake of beauty, for the self
Without the hope of gain except the soul,
Your one possession, grows a perfect thing
If tended, studied, disciplined. While all
This ethic of the war, the sickly creed
Which Elenor Murray mouthed, but hides the will
Which struggles still, would live, lies to itself,
Lies to its neighbor and the world, and leaves
Our life upon a wall of rotting rock
Of village mortals, patriotism, lies!"
"And as for that, what did I see in Paris
But human nature working in the war
As everywhere it works in peace? Cabals,
And jealousies and hatreds, greed alert;
Ambition, cruelty, strife piled on strife;
No peace in labor that was done for peace;
Hypocrisy elaborate and rampant.
Saw at first hand what coiled about the breast
Of Florence Nightingale when she suffered, strove
In the Crimean War, struck down by envy,
Or nearly so. Oh, is it human nature,
That fights like maggots in the rotting carcass?
Or is it human nature tortured, bound
By artificial doctrines, creeds which all
Pretend belief in, really doubt, resist
And cannot live by?"
"If I had a thought
Of charity toward this woman then
It was that she, a little mind, had tried
To live the faith against her nature, used
A woman's cunning to get on in life.
For as I said it was her lies that hurt.
And had she lied, had she been living free,
Unshackled of our system, faith and cult,
American or Christian, what you will?
"She was a woman free or bound, but women
Enslave and rule by sex. The female tigers
Howl in the jungle when their dugs are dry
For meat to suckle cubs. And Germany
Of bullet heads and bristling pompadours,
And wives made humble, cowed by basso brutes,
Had women to enslave the brutes with sex,
And make them seek possessions, land and food
For breeding women and for broods."
"And now
If women make the wars, yet nurse the sick,
The wounded in the wars, when peace results,
What peace will be, except a peace that fools
The gaping idealist, all souls in truth
But souls like mine? A peace that leaves the world
Just where it was with women in command
Who, weak but cunning, clinging to the faith
Of Christ, therefore as organized and made
A part, if not the whole of western culture.
Away with all of this! Blow down the mists,
The rainbows, give us air and cloudless skies.
Give water to our fevered eyes, give strength
To see what is and live it, tear away
These clumsy scaffoldings, by which the mystics,
Ascetics, mad-men all St. Stylites
Would rise above the world of body, brain,
Thirst, hunger, living, nature! Let us free
The soul of man from sophists, logic spinners,
The mad-magicians who would conjure death,
Yet fear him most themselves, the coward hearts
Who mouth eternal bliss, yet cling to earth
And keep away from heaven."
"For it's true
Nature, or God, gives birth and also death.
And power has never come to draw the sting
Of death or make it pleasant, creed nor faith
Prevents disease, old age and death at last.
This truth is here and we must face it, or
Lie to ourselves and cloud our brains with lies,
Postponements and illusions, childish hopes!
But lie most childish is the Christian myth
Of Adam's fall, by which disease and death
Entered the world, until the Savior came
And conquered death. He did? But people die,
Some millions slaughtered in the war! They live
In heaven, say your Elenor Murrays, well,
Who knows this? If you know it, why drop tears
For people better off? How ludicrous
The patch-work is! I leave it, turn again
To what man in this world can do with life
Made free of superstition, rules and faiths,
That make him lie to self and to his fellows."...
And Barrett Bays, now warmed up to his work,
Grown calmer, stronger, mind returned, that found
Full courage for the thought, the word to say it
Recurred to Elenor Murray, analyzed:--
And now a final word: "This Elenor Murray,
What was she, just a woman, a little life
Swept in the war and broken? If no more,
She is not worth these words: She is the symbol
Of our America, perhaps this world
This side of India, of America
At least she is the symbol. What was she?
A restlessness, a hunger, and a zeal;
A hope for goodness, and a tenderness;
A love, a sorrow, and a venturing will;
A dreamer fooled but dreaming still, a vision
That followed lures that fled her, generous, loving,
But also avid and insatiable;
An egoism chained and starved too long
That breaks away and runs; a cruelty,
A wilfulness, a dealer in false weights,
And measures of herself, her duty, others,
A lust, a slick hypocrisy and a faith
Faithless and hollow. But at last I say
She taught me, saved me for myself, and turned
My steps upon the path of making self
As much as I can make myself--my thanks
To Elenor Murray!"
"For that day I saw
The war for what it was, and saw myself
An artificial factor, working there
Because of Elenor Murray--what a fool!
I was not really needed, like too many
Was just pretending, though I did not know
That I was just pretending, saw myself
Swept in this mad procession by a woman;
And through myself I saw the howling mob
Back in America that shouted hate,
In God's name, all the carriers of flags,
The superheated patriots who did nothing,
Gave nothing but the clapping of their hands,
And shouts for freedom of the seas. The souls
Who hated freedom on the sea or earth,
Had, as the vile majority, set up
Intolerable tyrannies in America,
America that launched herself without
A God or faith, but in the name of man
And for humanity, so long accursed
By Gods and priests--the vile majority!
Which in the war, and through the war went on
With other tyrannies as to meat and drink,
Thought, speech, the mind in living--here was I
One of the vile majority through a woman--
And serving in the war because of her,
And meretricious sentiments of her.
You see I had the madness of the world,
Was just as crazy as America.
And like America must wake from madness
And suffer, and regret, and build again.
My soul was soiled, you see. And now I saw
How she had pressed her lips against my soul
And sapped my spirit in the name of beauty
She simulated; for a loyalty
Her lips averred; how as a courtesan
She had made soft my tissues, like an apple
Handled too much; how vision of me went
Into her life sucked forth; how never a word
Which ever came from her interpreted
In terms of worth the war; how she had coiled
Her serpent loins about me; how she draped
Herself in ardors borrowed; how my arms
Were mottled from the needle's scar where she
Had shot the opiates of her lying soul;
How asking truth, she was herself untrue;
How she, adventuress in the war, had sought
From lust grown stale, renewal of herself.
And then at last I saw her scullery brows
Fail out and fade beside the Republic's face,
And leave me free upon the hills, who saw,
Strong, seeking cleanliness in truth, her hand
Which sought the cup worn smooth by leper lips
Dipped in the fountain where the thirst of many
Passionate pilgrims had been quenched,
Not lifted up by me, nor yet befriended
By the cleaner cup I offered. Now you think
That I am hard. Philosophy is hard,
And I philosophize, admit as well
That I have failed, am full of faults myself,
All faults, we'll say, but one, I trust and pray
The fault of falsehood and hypocrisy."...
"I gave my work in Paris up--that day
Made ready to return, but with this thought
To use my wisdom for the war, do work
For America that had no touch of her,
No flavor of her nature, far removed
From the symphony of sex, be masculine,
Alone, and self-sufficient, needing nothing,
No hand, no kiss, no mate, pure thought alone
Directed to this work. I found the work
And gave it all my energy."
"From then
I wrote her nothing, though she wrote to me
These more than hundred letters--here they are!
Since you have mine brought to you from New York
All written before she went to France, I think
You should have hers to make the woman out
And read her as she wrote herself to me.
The rest is brief. She cabled when she sailed,
And wrote me from New York. While at LeRoy
With Irma Leese she wrote me. Then that day
She telephoned me when she motored here
With Irma Leese, and said: 'Forgive, forgive,
O see me, come to me, or let me come
To you, you cannot crush me out. These months
Of silence, what are they? Eternity
Makes nothing of these months. I love you, never
In all eternity shall cease to love you,
Love makes you mine, and you must come to me
Now or hereafter.'"
"And you see at last
My soul was clear again, as clean and cold
As our March days, as clear too, and the war
Stood off envisioned for the thing it was.
Peace now had come, which helped our eyes to see
What dread event the war was. So to see
This woman with these eyes of mine, made true
And unpersuadable of her plaints and ways
I gave consent and went."
"Arriving first,
I walked along the river till she came.
And as I saw her, I looked through the tricks
Of dress she played to win me, I could see
How she arrayed herself before the mirror,
Adjusting this or that to make herself
Victorious in the meeting. But my eyes
Were wizard eyes for her, and this she knew,
Began at first to writhe, change color, flap
Her nervous hands in gestures half controlled.
I only said, 'Good morning,' took her hand,
She tried to kiss me, but I drew away.
'I have been true,' she said, 'I love you, dear,
If I was false and did not love you, why
Would I pursue you, write you, all against
Your coldness and your silence? O believe me,
The war and you have changed me. I have served,
Served hard among the sufferers in the war,
Sustained by love for you. I come to you
And give my life to you, take it and use,
Keep me your secret joy. I do not dream
Of winning you in marriage. Here and now
I humble self to you, ask nothing of you,
Except your kindness, love again, if love
Can come again to you--O this must be!
It is my due who love you, with my soul,
My body.'"
"'No,' I said, 'I can forgive
All things but lying and hypocrisy.'...
How could I trust her? She had kept from me
The diary, threw it from the window, what
Was life of her in France? Should I expunge
This Gregory Wenner, what was life of her
In France, I ask. And so I said to her:
'I have no confidence in you'--O well
I told the jury all. But quick at once
She showed to me, that if I could forgive
Her course of lying, she was changed to me,
The war had changed her, she was hard and wild,
Schooled in the ways of soldiers, and in war.
That beauty of her womanhood was gone,
Transmuted into waywardness, distaste
For simple ways, for quiet, loveliness.
The adventuress in her was magnified,
Cleared up and set, she had become a shrike,
A spar hawk, and I loathed her for these ways
Which she revealed, dropping her gentleness
When it had failed her. Yes, I saw in her
The war at last; its lying and its hate,
Its special pleading, and its double dealing,
Its lust, its greed, its covert purposes,
Its passion out of hell which obelised
Such noble things in man. Its crooked uses
Of lofty spirits, flaming fires of youth,
Young dreamers, lovers. And at last she said,
As I have told the jury, what she did
Was natural, and I cursed her. Then she shook,
Turned pale, and reeled, I caught her, held her up,
She died right in my arms! And this is all;
Except that had I killed her and should spend
My days in prison for it, I am free,
My spirit being free."
"Who was this woman?
This Elenor Murray was America;
Corrupt, deceived, deceiving, self-deceived,
Half-disciplined, half-lettered, crude and smart,
Enslaved yet wanting freedom, brave and coarse,
Cowardly, shabby, hypocritical,
Generous, loving, noble, full of prayer,
Scorning, embracing rituals, recreant
To Christ so much professed; adventuresome;
Curious, mediocre, venal, hungry
For money, place, experience, restless, no
Repose, restraint; before the world made up
To act and sport ideals, go abroad
To bring the world its freedom, having choked
Freedom at home--the girl was this because
These things were bred in her, she breathed them in
Here where she lived and grew."
Then Barrett Bays stepped down
And said, "If this is all, I'd like to go."
Then David Borrow whispered in the ear
Of Merival, and Merival conferred
With Ritter and Llewellyn George and said:
"We may need you again, a deputy
Will take you to my house, and for the time
Keep you in custody."
The deputy
Came in and led him from the jury room.
ELENOR MURRAY
Coroner Merival took the hundred letters
Which Elenor Murray wrote to Barrett Bays,
Found some of them unopened, as he said,
And read them to the jury. Day by day
She made a record of her life, and wrote
Her life out hour by hour, that he might know.
The hundredth letter was the last she wrote.
And this the Coroner found unopened, cut
The envelope and read it in these words:
"You see I am at Nice. If you have read
The other letters that I wrote you since
Our parting there in Paris, you will know
About my illness; but I write you now
Some other details."
"I went back to work
So troubled and depressed about you, dear,
About myself as well. I thought of you,
Your suffering and doubt, perhaps your hate.
And since you do not write me, not a line
Have written since we parted, it may be
Hatred has entered you to make distrust
Less hard to bear. But in no waking hour,
And in no hour of sleep when I have dreamed,
Have you been from my mind. I love you, dear,
Shall always love you, all eternity
Cannot exhaust my love, no change shall come
To change my love. And yet to love you so,
And have no recompense but silence, thoughts
Of your contempt for me, make exquisite
The suffering of my spirit. Could I sing
My sorrow would enchant the world, or write,
I might regain your love with beauty born
Out of this agony."
"When I returned
I had three typhoid cases given me.
And with that passion which you see in me
I gave myself to save them, took this love
Which fills my heart for you and nursed them with it;
Said to myself to keep me on my feet
When I was staggering from fatigue, 'Give now
Out of this love, it may be God's own gift
With which you may restore these boys to health.
What matter if he love you not.' And so
For twelve hours day by day I waged with death
A slowly winning battle."
"As they rallied,
But when my strength was almost spent--what comes?
This Miriam Fay writes odiously to me.
She has heard something of our love, or sensed
Some dereliction, since she learned that I
Had not been to confessional. Anyway
She writes me, writes our head-nurse. All at once
A cloud of vile suspicion, like a dust
Blown from an alley takes my breath away,
And blinds my eyes. With all these things piled up,
My labors and my sorrow, your neglect,
My fears of a dishonorable discharge
From service, which I love, I faint, collapse,
Have streptococcus of the throat, and lie
Two weeks in fever, sleepless, and with thoughts
Of you, and what may happen, my disgrace.
But suffering brought me friends, the officers
Perhaps had heard the scandal, but they knew
My heart was in the work. The major who
Was the attending doctor of these boys
I broke myself with nursing, cared for me,
And cheered me with his praise. And so it was
Your little soldier, still I call myself,
Your little soldier, though you own me not,
Turned failure into victory, won by pain
Befriending hands. The major kept me here
And intercepted my discharge, procured
My furlough here in Nice."
"I rose from bed,
Went back to work, in nine days failed again,
This time with influenza; for three weeks
Was ill enough to die, for all the while
My fever raged, my heart was hurting too,
Because of you. When I got up again
I looked a ghost, was weaker than a child,
At last came here to Nice."
"This is the hundredth
Letter that I've written since we parted.
My heart is tired, dear, I shall write no more.
You shall have silence for your silence, yet
When I am silent, trust me none the less,
Believe I love you. If you say that I
Have hidden secrets, have not told you all,
The diary flung away to keep my life
Beyond your eye's inspection, still I say
Where is your right to know what lips I've kissed,
What hopes or dreams I cherished in the past
Before I knew you. If you still accuse
My spirit of deceit, hypocrisy
In lifting up my flower of love to you
Fresh, as it seemed, with morning dew, not tears,
I have my own defense for that, you'll see.
Or lastly, if your love is turned to gall
Because, as you discovered, body of love
Was given to Gregory Wenner, after you
Had come to me in love and chosen me
As servant of you in the war, I write
To clear myself to you respecting that,
And re-insist 'twas body of love alone,
Not love I gave, and what I gave was given
Because you won me, left me, did not claim
As wholly yours what you had won. But now,
As I have hope of life beyond the grave,
As I love God, though serving Him but ill,
I say to you, I have been wholly yours
In spirit and in body since the day
I gave to you the locket, sat with you
And heard the waltz of Chopin, six days after
I went with Gregory Wenner. I explain
Why I did this, shall mention it no more;
You must be satisfied or go your way
In bitterness and hatred."
"But first, my love,
As spirits equal and with equal rights,
Or privilege of equal wrongs, have I
Demanded former purity of you?
I have repelled revealments of your past;
Have never questioned of your marriage, asked,
Which might be juster, rights withdrawn from her;
May rightly think, since you and she have life
In one abode together, that you live
As marriage warrants. And above it all
Have I not written you to go your way,
Find pleasures where you could, have only begged
That you keep out of love, continue to give
Your love to me? And why? Be cynical,
And think I gave you freedom as a gallant
That I might with a quiet conscience take
Such freedom for myself. It is not true:
I've learned the human body, know the male,
And know his life is motile, does not rest,
And wait, as woman's does, cannot do so.
So understanding have put down distaste,
That you should fare in freedom, in my heart
Have wished that love or ideals might sustain
Your spirit; but if not, my heart is filled
With happiness, if you love me. Take these thoughts
And with them solve your sorrow for my past,
Your loathing of it, if you feel that way
However bad it be, whatever sins
Imagination in you stirred depicts
As being in my past."
"Men have been known
Whom women made fifth husbands, more than that.
Not my case, I'll say that, and if you face
Reality, and put all passion love
Where nature puts it by the side of love
Which custom favors, you have only left
The matter of the truth to grasp, believe,
See clearly and accept: Do I swear true
I love you, and since loving you am faithful,
Cannot be otherwise, nor wish to be?"
"Dear, listen and be fair. You did not love me
When first I came to you. You did not ask,
Because of love, a faithfulness; in truth
You did not ask a faithfulness at all.
But then and theretofore you treated me
As woman to be won, a happiness
To be achieved and put aside. Be fair,
This was your mood. But if you loved me then,
Or soon thereafter loved me, as I know,
What should I do? I loved you, am a woman.
At last behold your love, am lifted, thrilled.
See what I thought was love before was nothing;
Know I was never loved before you loved me;
And know as well I never loved before;
Know all the former raptures of my heart
As buds in March closed hard and scentless, never
The June before for my heart! O, my love,
What should I do when this most priceless gift
Was held up like a crown within your hands
To place upon my brows--what should I do?
Take you aside and say, here is the truth,
Here's Gregory Wenner--what's the good of that?
How had it benefited you or me,
Increased your love, or founded it upon
A surer rock than beauty? Hideous truth!
Useless too often, childish in such case.
You would have suffered, turned from me, and lost
The rapture which I gave you, and if rapture
Be not a prize, where in this world so much
Of ugliness and agony prevails,
I do not know our life."
"But just suppose
I gave you rapture, beauty--you concede
I gave you these, that's why you suffer so:
You choose to think them spurious since you found
I knew this Gregory Wenner, are they so?
They are as real in spite of Gregory Wenner
As if my lips had been a cradled child's.
But just suppose, as I began to say,
You never had discovered Gregory Wenner,
And had the rapture, beauty which you had,
How stands the case? Was I not justified
In hiding Gregory Wenner to preserve
The beauty and the rapture which you craved?
Dear, it was love of beauty which impelled
What you have called deceit, it was my woman's
Passionate hope to give the man she loved
The beauty which he saw in her that inspired
My acting, as you phrase it, an elaborate
Hypocrisy, an ugly word from you!...
But listen, dear, how spirit works in love:
When you beheld me pure, I would be pure;
As virginal, I would be virginal;
As innocent, I would be innocent;
As truthful, constant, so I would be these
Though to be truthful, constant when I loved you
Came to me like my breath, as natural.
So I would be all things to you for love,
Fill full your dreams, your vision of my soul
For now and future days, but make myself
In days before I knew you what you thought,
Believed and cherished. Hence if you combine
The thought that what I was did not concern you,
With fear that if you knew, your heart would change;
And with these join that passionate zeal of love
To be your lover, wholly beautiful,
You have the exposition of my soul
In its elaborate deceit,--your words."