There are souls to whom crumbs are sufficient, at least They seem not to value love"s opulent feast.
They neglect, they ignore, they abuse, or destroy What to some poor starved life had been earth"s rarest joy.
"Tis a curious fact that love"s banqueting table Full often is spread for the guest the least able To do the feast justice. The G.o.ds take delight In offering crusts to the starved appet.i.te And rich fruits, to the sated or sickly.
The eyes Of the surgeon were fixed on Ruth"s face with a wise Knowing look in their depths, and he said to himself, "There"s a mystery here which young Cupid, sly elf, Could account for. I judge by her voice and her face That the wife of this man holds no very warm place In Miss Somerville"s heart, though she names her as friend.
Ah, full many a drama has come to an end "Neath the walls of Bellevue, and the curtain will fall On one actor to-night; though the audience call, He will make no response, once he pa.s.ses from view, For Death is the prompter who gives him the cue."
The wisest minds err. When a clergyman tries To tell a man where he will go when he dies, Or when a physician makes bold to aver Just the length of a life here, both usually err.
So it is not surprising that Roger, at dawn, Sat propped up by pillows, still haggard and wan, But seemingly stronger, and eager to tell His story to Ruth ere the death shadows fell.
"If I go before Mabel can reach me," he sighed, "Tell her this: that my heart was all hers when I died, Was all hers while I lived. Ah! I see how you start, But that other--G.o.d pity her--not with my heart, But my sensual senses I loved her. The fire Of her glance blinded men to all things save desire.
It called to the beast chained within us. Her lips Held the nectar that makes a man mad when he sips.
Her touch was delirium. In the fierce joys Of her kisses there lurked the fell curse which destroys All such rapture--satiety. When pa.s.sion dies, And the mind finds no pleasure, the spirit no ties To replace it, disgust digs its grave. Ay! disgust Is ever the s.e.xton who buries dead l.u.s.t.
When two people wander from virtue"s straight track, One always grows weary and longs to go back.
Well, I wearied. G.o.d knows how I struggled to hide The truth from the poor, erring soul at my side.
And G.o.d knows how I hated my life when I first Found that pa.s.sion"s mad potion had palled on my thirst.
Once false to my virtues, now false to my sin, I seemed less to myself than I ever had been.
We parted. This bullet hole here in my breast Proceeds with the story and tells you the rest.
She smiled, I remember, in saying adieu: Then two swift, sharp reports--and I woke in Bellevue With one ball in my breast.
_Ruth:_
And the other in hers.
No more with wild sorrow that sad bosom stirs.
She is dead, sir, the woman you led to her ruin.
_Roger:_
The woman led me. Ah! not all the undoing In these matters lies at man"s door. In the mind Of full many a so-called chaste woman we find Unchaste longings. The world heaps on man its abuse When he woos without wedding; yet women seduce And betray us; they lure us and lead us to shame; As they share in the sin, let them share in the blame.
_Ruth:_
Hush! the woman is dead.
_Roger:_
And I dying. But truth Is not changed by the death of two people! Oh, Ruth, Be just ere you judge me! the death of my child Half unbalanced my reason; weak, wretched and wild With drink and with sorrows, the devil"s own chance Flung me down by the side of a woman whose glance Was an opiate, lulling the conscience. I fell, With the woman who tempted me, down to dark h.e.l.l.
In the honey of sin hides the sting of the bee.
The honey soon sated--the sting stayed with me.
Like a d.a.m.ned soul I looked from my Hades, above To the world I had left, and I craved the pure love That but late had seemed cold, unresponsive. Her eyes, Mabel"s eyes, shone in dreams from the far distant skies Of the lost world of goodness and virtue. Like one Who is burning with thirst "neath a hot desert sun, I longed for her kiss, cool, reluctant, but pure.
Ah! man"s love for good women alone can endure, For virtue is G.o.d, the Eternal. The rest Is but chaos. The worst must give way to the best.
Tell Mabel--Ruth, Ruth, she is here, oh thank G.o.d.
She stood, like a violet sprung from the sod, By his bedside; pale, beautiful, dewy with tears.
The spectre of death bridged the chasm of years: He sighed on her bosom. "Forgive, oh forgive!"
She kissed his pale forehead and answered him: "Live, Live, my husband! oh plead with the angels to stay Until G.o.d, too, has pardoned your sins. Let us pray."
Ruth slipped from the room all unnoticed. She seemed Like a sleeper who wakens and knows he has dreamed And is dazed with reality. On, as if led By some presence unseen, to the inn of the dead She pa.s.sed swiftly; the pale silent guest whom she sought Lay alone on her narrow and unadorned cot.
No hand had placed blossoms about her; no tear Of love or of sorrow had hallowed that bier.
The desperate smile life had left on her face Death retained; but he touched, too, her brow with a grace And a radiance, subtle, mysterious. Under The half drooping lids lay a look of strange wonder, As if on the sight of those sorrowing eyes The unexplored country had dawned with surprise.
The pure, living woman leaned over the dead, Lovely sinner, and kissed her. "G.o.d rest you," she said.
"Poor suffering soul, you were forged in that Source Where the lightnings are fashioned. Love guided, your force Would have been like a current of life giving joys, And not like the death dealing bolt which destroys.
Oh, shame to the parents who dared give you birth, To live and to love and to suffer on earth, With the serious lessons of life unexplained, And your pa.s.sionate nature untaught and untrained.
You would not lie here in your youth and your beauty If your mother had known what was motherhood"s duty.
The age calls to woman, "Go, broaden your lives,"
While for lack of good mothers the Potter"s Field thrives.
But you, poor unfortunate, you shall not lie In that dust heap of death; while the summers roll by You shall sleep where green hillsides are kissed by the wave, And the soft hand of pity shall care for your grave.
XI.
_Ruth"s Letter to Maurice, Six Months Later._
The springtime is here in our old home again, Which again you have left. Oh, most worthy of men, Why grieve for unworthiness? Why waste your life For a woman who never was meant for a wife?
Mabel Lee has no love in her nature. Your heart Would have starved in her keeping. She plays her new part, As the faithful, forgiving, sweet spouse, with content.
I think she is secretly glad Roger went Astray for a season. She stands up still higher On her pedestal, now, for Bay Bend to admire.
She is pleased with herself. As for Roger, he trots Like a lamb in her wake, with the blemishing spots Of his sins washed away by the Church. Oh I seem To myself, in these days, like one waked from a dream To blessed reality. Off in the Bay I saw a fair snowy sailed ship yesterday.
The masts shone like gold, and the furrowed waves laughed, To be beat into foam by the beautiful craft.
But close in the harbor I saw the ship lying; What seemed like the wings of a sea gull when flying, Were weather stained sheets; there were no masts of gold, And the craft was uncleanly, unseaworthy, old.
Well, the man whom I loved, and loved vainly, and whom I fancied had shadowed my whole life with gloom, Has been shown to my sight like that ship in the Bay, And all my illusions have vanished away.
The man is by nature weak, selfish, unstable.
I think if some woman more loving than Mabel, More tender, more tactful, less painfully good, Had directed his home-life, perchance Roger would Have evolved his best self, that pure atom of G.o.d, Which lies deep in each heart like a seed in the sod.
"Tis the world"s over-virtuous women, ofttimes, Who drive men of weak will into s.e.xual crimes.
I pity him. (G.o.d knows I pity, each, all Of the poor striving souls who grope blindly and fall By the wayside of life.) But the love which unbidden Crept into my heart, and was guarded and hidden For years, that has vanished. It pa.s.sed like a breath, In the gray Autumn morning when Roger faced death, As he thought, and uncovered his heart to my sight.
Like a corpse, resurrected and brought to the light, Which crumbles to ashes, the love of my youth Crumbled off into nothingness. Ah, it is truth; Love can die! You may hold it is not the true thing, Not the genuine pa.s.sion, which dies or takes wing; But the soil of the heart, like the soil of the earth, May, at varying times of the seasons, give birth To bluebells, and roses, and bright goldenrod.
Each one is a gift from the garden of G.o.d, Though it dies when its season is over. Why cling To the withered dead stalk of the blossoms of spring Through a lifetime, Maurice? It is stubbornness only, Not constancy, which makes full many lives lonely.
They want their own way, and, like cross children, fling Back the gifts which, in place of the lost flowers of spring, Fate offers them. Life holds in store for you yet Better things, dear Maurice, than a dead violet, As it holds better things than dead daisies for me.
To Roger Montrose, let us leave Mabel Lee, With our blessing. They seem to be happy; or she Seems content with herself and her province; while he Has the look of one who, overfed with emotion, Tries a diet of spiritual health-food, devotion.
He is broken in strength, and his face has the hue Of a man to whom pa.s.sion has bidden adieu.
He has time now to worship his G.o.d and his wife.
She seems better pleased with the dregs of his life Than she was with the bead of it.
Well, let them make What they will of their future. Maurice, for my sake And your own, put them out of your thoughts. All too brief And too broad is this life to be ruined by grief Over one human atom. Like mellowing rain, Which enriches the soil of the soul and the brain, Should the sorrow of youth be; and not like the breath Of the cyclone, which carries destruction and death.
Come, Maurice, let philosophy lift you above The gloom and despair of unfortunate love.
Sometimes, if we look a woe straight in the face, It loses its terrors and seems commonplace; While sorrow will follow and find if we roam.
Come, help me to turn the old house into home.
We have youth, health, and competence. Why should we go Out into G.o.d"s world with long faces of woe?
Let our pleasures have speech, let our sorrows be dumb, Let us laugh at despair and contentment will come.
Let us teach earth"s repiners to look through glad eyes, For the world needs the happy far more than the wise.
I am one of the women whose talent and taste Lie in home-making. All else I do seems mere waste Of time and intention; but no woman can Make a house seem a home without aid of a man.
He is sinew and bone, she is spirit and life.
Until the veiled future shall bring you a wife, Me a mate (and both wait for us somewhere, dear brother), Let us bury old corpses and live for each other.
You will write, and your great heart athrob through your pen Shall strengthen earth"s weak ones with courage again.
Where your epigrams fail, I will offer a pill, And doctor their bodies with "new woman" skill.
(Once a wife, I will drop from my name the M. D.