| FEAR, like a living fire that only death | |
| Might one day cool, had now in Avon’s eyes | |
| Been witness for so long of an invasion | |
| That made of a gay friend whom we had known | |
| Almost a memory, wore no other name | 5 |
| As yet for us than fear. Another man | |
| Than Avon might have given to us at least | |
| A futile opportunity for words | |
| We might regret. But Avon, since it happened, | |
| Fed with his unrevealing reticence | 10 |
| The fire of death we saw that horribly | |
| Consumed him while he crumbled and said nothing. | |
| |
| So many a time had I been on the edge, | |
| And off again, of a foremeasured fall | |
| Into the darkness and discomfiture | 15 |
| Of his oblique rebuff, that finally | |
| My silence honored his, holding itself | |
| Away from a gratuitous intrusion | |
| That likely would have widened a new distance | |
| Already wide enough, if not so new. | 20 |
| But there are seeming parallels in space | |
| That may converge in time; and so it was | |
| I walked with Avon, fought and pondered with him, | |
| While he made out a case for So-and-so, | |
| Or slaughtered What’s-his-name in his old way, | 25 |
| With a new difference. Nothing in Avon lately | |
| Was, or was ever again to be for us, | |
| Like him that we remembered; and all the while | |
| We saw that fire at work within his eyes | |
| And had no glimpse of what was burning there. | 30 |
| |
| So for a year it went; and so it went | |
| For half another year—when, all at once, | |
| At someone’s tinkling afternoon at home | |
| I saw that in the eyes of Avon’s wife | |
| The fire that I had met the day before | 35 |
| In his had found another living fuel. | |
| To look at her and then to think of him, | |
| And thereupon to contemplate the fall | |
| Of a dim curtain over the dark end | |
| Of a dark play, required of me no more | 40 |
| Clairvoyance than a man who cannot swim | |
| Will exercise in seeing that his friend | |
| Off shore will drown except he save himself. | |
| To her I could say nothing, and to him | |
| No more than tallied with a long belief | 45 |
| That I should only have it back again | |
| For my chagrin to ruminate upon, | |
| Ingloriously, for the still time it starved; | |
| And that would be for me as long a time | |
| As I remembered Avon—who is yet | 50 |
| Not quite forgotten. On the other hand, | |
| For saying nothing I might have with me always | |
| An injured and recriminating ghost | |
| Of a dead friend. The more I pondered it | |
| The more I knew there was not much to lose, | 55 |
| Albeit for one whose delving hitherto | |
| Had been a forage of his own affairs, | |
| The quest, however golden the reward, | |
| Was irksome—and as Avon suddenly | |
| And soon was driven to let me see, was needless. | 60 |
| It seemed an age ago that we were there | |
| One evening in the room that in the days | |
| When they could laugh he called the Library. | |
| “He calls it that, you understand,” she said, | |
| “Because the dictionary always lives here. | 65 |
| He’s not a man of books, yet he can read, | |
| And write. He learned it all at school.”—He smiled, | |
| And answered with a fervor that rang then | |
| Superfluous: “Had I learned a little more | |
| At school, it might have been as well for me.” | 70 |
| And I remember now that he paused then, | |
| Leaving a silence that one had to break. | |
| But this was long ago, and there was now | |
| No laughing in that house. We were alone | |
| This time, and it was Avon’s time to talk. | 75 |
| |
| I waited, and anon became aware | |
| That I was looking less at Avon’s eyes | |
| Than at the dictionary, like one asking | |
| Already why we make so much of words | |
| That have so little weight in the true balance. | 80 |
| “Your name is Resignation for an hour,” | |
| He said; “and I’m a little sorry for you. | |
| So be resigned. I shall not praise your work, | |
| Or strive in any way to make you happy. | |
| My purpose only is to make you know | 85 |
| How clearly I have known that you have known | |
| There was a reason waited on your coming, | |
| And, if it’s in me to see clear enough, | |
| To fish the reason out of a black well | |
| Where you see only a dim sort of glimmer | 90 |
| That has for you no light.” | |
| |
| “I see the well,” | |
| I said, “but there’s a doubt about the glimmer— | |
| Say nothing of the light. I’m at your service; | |
| And though you say that I shall not be happy, | 95 |
| I shall be if in some way I may serve. | |
| To tell you fairly now that I know nothing | |
| Is nothing more than fair.”—“You know as much | |
| As any man alive—save only one man, | |
| If he’s alive. Whether he lives or not | 100 |
| Is rather for time to answer than for me; | |
| And that’s a reason, or a part of one, | |
| For your appearance here. You do not know him, | |
| And even if you should pass him in the street | |
| He might go by without your feeling him | 105 |
| Between you and the world. I cannot say | |
| Whether he would, but I suppose he might.” | |
| |
| “And I suppose you might, if urged,” I said, | |
| “Say in what water it is that we are fishing. | |
| You that have reasons hidden in a well, | 110 |
| Not mentioning all your nameless friends that walk | |
| The streets and are not either dead or living | |
| For company, are surely, one would say | |
| To be forgiven if you may seem distraught— | |
| I mean distrait. I don’t know what I mean. | 115 |
| I only know that I am at your service, | |
| Always, yet with a special reservation | |
| That you may deem eccentric. All the same | |
| Unless your living dead man comes to life, | |
| Or is less indiscriminately dead, | 120 |
| I shall go home.” | |
| |
| “No, you will not go home,” | |
| Said Avon; “or I beg that you will not.” | |
| So saying, he went slowly to the door | |
| And turned the key. “Forgive me and my manners, | 125 |
| But I would be alone with you this evening. | |
| The key, as you observe, is in the lock; | |
| And you may sit between me and the door, | |
| Or where you will. You have my word of honor | |
| That I would spare you the least injury | 130 |
| That might attend your presence here this evening.” | |
| |
| “I thank you for your soothing introduction, | |
| Avon,” I said. “Go on. The Lord giveth, | |
| The Lord taketh away. I trust myself | |
| Always to you and to your courtesy. | 135 |
| Only remember that I cling somewhat | |
| Affectionately to the old tradition.”— | |
| “I understand you and your part,” said Avon; | |
| “And I dare say it’s well enough, tonight, | |
| We play around the circumstance a little. | 140 |
| I’ve read of men that half way to the stake | |
| Would have their little joke. It’s well enough; | |
| Rather a waste of time, but well enough.” | |
| |
| I listened as I waited, and heard steps | |
| Outside of one who paused and then went on; | 145 |
| And, having heard, I might as well have seen | |
| The fear in his wife’s eyes. He gazed away, | |
| As I could see, in helpless thought of her, | |
| And said to me: “Well, then, it was like this. | |
| Some tales will have a deal of going back | 150 |
| In them before they are begun. But this one | |
| Begins in the beginning—when he came. | |
| I was a boy at school, sixteen years old, | |
| And on my way, in all appearances, | |
| To mark an even-tempered average | 155 |
| Among the major mediocrities | |
| Who serve and earn with no especial noise | |
| Or vast reward. I saw myself, even then, | |
| A light for no high shining; and I feared | |
| No boy or man—having, in truth, no cause. | 160 |
| I was enough a leader to be free, | |
| And not enough a hero to be jealous. | |
| Having eyes and ears, I knew that I was envied, | |
| And as a proper sort of compensation | |
| Had envy of my own for two or three— | 165 |
| But never felt, and surely never gave, | |
| The wound of any more malevolence | |
| Than decent youth, defeated for a day, | |
| May take to bed with him and kill with sleep. | |
| So, and so far, my days were going well, | 170 |
| And would have gone so, but for the black tiger | |
| That many of us fancy is in waiting, | |
| But waits for most of us in fancy only. | |
| For me there was no fancy in his coming, | |
| Though God knows I had never summoned him, | 175 |
| Or thought of him. To this day I’m adrift | |
| And in the dark, out of all reckoning, | |
| To find a reason why he ever was, | |
| Or what was ailing Fate when he was born | |
| On this alleged God-ordered earth of ours. | 180 |
| Now and again there comes one of his kind— | |
| By chance, we say. I leave all that to you. | |
| Whether it was an evil chance alone, | |
| Or some invidious juggling of the stars, | |
| Or some accrued arrears of ancestors | 185 |
| Who throve on debts that I was here to pay, | |
| Or sins within me that I knew not of, | |
| Or just a foretaste of what waits in hell | |
| For those of us who cannot love a worm,— | |
| Whatever it was, or whence or why it was, | 190 |
| One day there came a stranger to the school. | |
| And having had one mordacious glimpse of him | |
| That filled my eyes and was to fill my life, | |
| I have known Peace only as one more word | |
| Among the many others we say over | 195 |
| That have an airy credit of no meaning. | |
| One of these days, if I were seeing many | |
| To live, I might erect a cenotaph | |
| To Job’s wife. I assume that you remember; | |
| If you forget, she’s extant in your Bible.” | 200 |
| |
| Now this was not the language of a man | |
| Whom I had known as Avon, and I winced | |
| Hearing it—though I knew that in my heart | |
| There was no visitation of surprise. | |
| Unwelcome as it was, and off the key | 205 |
| Calamitously, it overlived a silence | |
| That was itself a story and affirmed | |
| A savage emphasis of honesty | |
| That I would only gladly have attuned | |
| If possible, to vinous innovation. | 210 |
| But his indifferent wassailing was always | |
| Too far within the measure of excess | |
| For that; and then there were those eyes of his. | |
| Avon indeed had kept his word with me, | |
| And there was not much yet to make me happy. | 215 |
| |
| “So there we were,” he said, “we two together, | |
| Breathing one air. And how shall I go on | |
| To say by what machinery the slow net | |
| Of my fantastic and increasing hate | |
| Was ever woven as it was around us? | 220 |
| I cannot answer; and you need not ask | |
| What undulating reptile he was like, | |
| For such a worm as I discerned in him | |
| Was never yet on earth or in the ocean, | |
| Or anywhere else than in my sense of him. | 225 |
| Had all I made of him been tangible, | |
| The Lord must have invented long ago | |
| Some private and unspeakable new monster | |
| Equipped for such a thing’s extermination; | |
| Whereon the monster, seeing no other monster | 230 |
| Worth biting, would have died with his work done. | |
| There’s a humiliation in it now, | |
| As there was then, and worse than there was then; | |
| For then there was the boy to shoulder it | |
| Without the sickening weight of added years | 235 |
| Galling him to the grave. Beware of hate | |
| That has no other boundary than the grave | |
| Made for it, or for ourselves. Beware, I say; | |
| And I’m a sorry one, I fear, to say it, | |
| Though for the moment we may let that go | 240 |
| And while I’m interrupting my own story | |
| I’ll ask of you the favor of a look | |
| Into the street. I like it when it’s empty. | |
| There’s only one man walking? Let him walk. | |
| I wish to God that all men might walk always, | 245 |
| And so, being busy, love one another more.” | |
| |
| “Avon,” I said, now in my chair again, | |
| “Although I may not be here to be happy, | |
| If you are careless, I may have to laugh. | |
| I have disliked a few men in my life, | 250 |
| But never to the scope of wishing them | |
| To this particular pedestrian hell | |
| Of your affection. I should not like that. | |
| Forgive me, for this time it was your fault.” | |
| |
| He drummed with all his fingers on his chair, | 255 |
| And, after a made smile of acquiescence, | |
| Took up again the theme of his aversion, | |
| Which now had flown along with him alone | |
| For twenty years, like Io’s evil insect, | |
| To sting him when it would. The decencies | 260 |
| Forbade that I should look at him for ever, | |
| Yet many a time I found myself ashamed | |
| Of a long staring at him, and as often | |
| Essayed the dictionary on the table, | |
| Wondering if in its interior | 265 |
| There was an uncompanionable word | |
| To say just what was creeping in my hair, | |
| At which my scalp would shrink,—at which, again, | |
| I would arouse myself with a vain scorn, | |
| Remembering that all this was in New York— | 270 |
| As if that were somehow the banishing | |
| For ever of all unseemly presences— | |
| And listen to the story of my friend, | |
| Who, as I feared, was not for me to save, | |
| And, as I knew, knew also that I feared it. | 275 |
| |
| “Humiliation,” he began again, | |
| “May be or not the best of all bad names | |
| I might employ; and if you scent remorse, | |
| There may be growing such a flower as that | |
| In the unsightly garden where I planted, | 280 |
| Not knowing the seed or what was coming of it. | |
| I’ve done much wondering if I planted it; | |
| But our poor wonder, when it comes too late, | |
| Fights with a lath, and one that solid fact | |
| Breaks while it yawns and looks another way | 285 |
| For a less negligible adversary. | |
| Away with wonder, then; though I’m at odds | |
| With conscience, even tonight, for good assurance | |
| That it was I, or chance and I together, | |
| Did all that sowing. If I seem to you | 290 |
| To be a little bitten by the question, | |
| Without a miracle it might be true; | |
| The miracle is to me that I’m not eaten | |
| Long since to death of it, and that you sit | |
| With nothing more agreeable than a ghost. | 295 |
| If you had thought a while of that, you might, | |
| Unhappily, not have come; and your not coming | |
| Would have been desolation—not for you, | |
| God save the mark!—for I would have you here. | |
| I shall not be alone with you to listen; | 300 |
| And I should be far less alone tonight | |
| With you away, make what you will of that. | |
| |
| “I said that we were going back to school, | |
| And we may say that we are there—with him. | |
| This fellow had no friend, and, as for that, | 305 |
| No sign of an apparent need of one, | |
| Save always and alone—myself. He fixed | |
| His heart and eyes on me, insufferably,— | |
| And in a sort of Nemesis-like way, | |
| Invincibly. Others who might have given | 310 |
| A welcome even to him, or I’ll suppose so— | |
| Adorning an unfortified assumption | |
| With gold that might come off with afterthought— | |
| Got never, if anything, more out of him | |
| Than a word flung like refuse in their faces, | 315 |
| And rarely that. For God knows what good reason, | |
| He lavished his whole altered arrogance | |
| On me; and with an overweening skill, | |
| Which had sometimes almost a cringing in it, | |
| Found a few flaws in my tight mail of hate | 320 |
| And slowly pricked a poison into me | |
| In which at first I failed at recognizing | |
| An unfamiliar subtle sort of pity. | |
| But so it was, and I believe he knew it; | |
| Though even to dream it would have been absurd— | 325 |
| Until I knew it, and there was no need | |
| Of dreaming. For the fellow’s indolence, | |
| And his malignant oily swarthiness | |
| Housing a reptile blood that I could see | |
| Beneath it, like hereditary venom | 330 |
| Out of old human swamps, hardly revealed | |
| Itself the proper spawning-ground of pity. | |
| But so it was. Pity, or something like it, | |
| Was in the poison of his proximity; | |
| For nothing else that I have any name for | 335 |
| Could have invaded and so mastered me | |
| With a slow tolerance that eventually | |
| Assumed a blind ascendency of custom | |
| That saw not even itself. When I came in, | |
| Often I’d find him strewn along my couch | 340 |
| Like an amorphous lizard with its clothes on, | |
| Reading a book and waiting for its dinner. | |
| His clothes were always odiously in order, | |
| Yet I should not have thought of him as clean— | |
| Not even if he had washed himself to death | 345 |
| Proving it. There was nothing right about him. | |
| Then he would search, never quite satisfied, | |
| Though always in a measure confident, | |
| My eyes to find a welcome waiting in them, | |
| Unwilling, as I see him now, to know | 350 |
| That it would never be there. Looking back, | |
| I am not sure that he would not have died | |
| For me, if I were drowning or on fire, | |
| Or that I would not rather have let myself | |
| Die twice than owe the debt of my survival | 355 |
| To him, though he had lost not even his clothes. | |
| No, there was nothing right about that fellow; | |
| And after twenty years to think of him | |
| I should be quite as helpless now to serve him | |
| As I was then. I mean—without my story. | 360 |
| Be patient, and you’ll see just what I mean— | |
| Which is to say, you won’t. But you can listen, | |
| And that’s itself a large accomplishment | |
| Uncrowned; and may be, at a time like this, | |
| A mighty charity. It was in January | 365 |
| This evil genius came into our school, | |
| And it was June when he went out of it— | |
| If I may say that he was wholly out | |
| Of any place that I was in thereafter. | |
| But he was not yet gone. When we are told | 370 |
| By Fate to bear what we may never bear, | |
| Fate waits a little while to see what happens; | |
| And this time it was only for the season | |
| Between the swift midwinter holidays | |
| And the long progress into weeks and months | 375 |
| Of all the days that followed—with him there | |
| To make them longer. I would have given an eye, | |
| Before the summer came, to know for certain | |
| That I should never be condemned again | |
| To see him with the other; and all the while | 380 |
| There was a battle going on within me | |
| Of hate that fought remorse—if you must have it— | |
| Never to win,… never to win but once, | |
| And having won, to lose disastrously, | |
| And as it was to prove, interminably— | 385 |
| Or till an end of living may annul, | |
| If so it be, the nameless obligation | |
| That I have not the Christian revenue | |
| In me to pay. A man who has no gold, | |
| Or an equivalent, shall pay no gold | 390 |
| Until by chance or labor or contrivance | |
| He makes it his to pay; and he that has | |
| No kindlier commodity than hate, | |
| Glossed with a pity that belies itself | |
| In its negation and lacks alchemy | 395 |
| To fuse itself to—love, would you have me say? | |
| I don’t believe it. No, there is no such word. | |
| If I say tolerance, there’s no more to say. | |
| And he who sickens even in saying that— | |
| What coin of God has he to pay the toll | 400 |
| To peace on earth? Good will to men—oh, yes! | |
| That’s easy; and it means no more than sap, | |
| Until we boil the water out of it | |
| Over the fire of sacrifice. I’ll do it; | |
| And in a measurable way I’ve done it— | 405 |
| But not for him. What are you smiling at? | |
| Well, so it went until a day in June. | |
| We were together under an old elm, | |
| Which now, I hope, is gone—though it’s a crime | |
| In me that I should have to wish the death | 410 |
| Of such a tree as that. There were no trees | |
| Like those that grew at school—until he came. | |
| We stood together under it that day, | |
| When he, by some ungovernable chance, | |
| All foreign to the former crafty care | 415 |
| That he had used never to cross my favor, | |
| Told of a lie that stained a friend of mine | |
| With a false blot that a few days washed off. | |
| A trifle now, but a boy’s honor then— | |
| Which then was everything. There were some words | 420 |
| Between us, but I don’t remember them. | |
| All I remember is a bursting flood | |
| Of half a year’s accumulated hate, | |
| And his incredulous eyes before I struck him. | |
| He had gone once too far; and when he knew it, | 425 |
| He knew it was all over; and I struck him. | |
| Pound for pound, he was the better brute; | |
| But bulking in the way then of my fist | |
| And all there was alive in me to drive it, | |
| Three of him misbegotten into one | 430 |
| Would have gone down like him—and being larger, | |
| Might have bled more, if that were necessary. | |
| He came up soon; and if I live for ever, | |
| The vengeance in his eyes, and a weird gleam | |
| Of desolation—it I make you see it— | 435 |
| Will be before me as it is tonight. | |
| I shall not ever know how long it was | |
| I waited his attack that never came; | |
| It might have been an instant or an hour | |
| That I stood ready there, watching his eyes, | 440 |
| And the tears running out of them. They made | |
| Me sick, those tears; for I knew, miserably, | |
| They were not there for any pain he felt. | |
| I do not think he felt the pain at all. | |
| He felt the blow.… Oh, the whole thing was bad— | 445 |
| So bad that even the bleaching suns and rains | |
| Of years that wash away to faded lines, | |
| Or blot out wholly, the sharp wrongs and ills | |
| Of youth, have had no cleansing agent in them | |
| To dim the picture. I still see him going | 450 |
| Away from where I stood; and I shall see him | |
| Longer, sometime, than I shall see the face | |
| Of whosoever watches by the bed | |
| On which I die—given I die that way. | |
| I doubt if he could reason his advantage | 455 |
| In living any longer after that | |
| Among the rest of us. The lad he slandered, | |
| Or gave a negative immunity | |
| No better than a stone he might have thrown | |
| Behind him at his head, was of the few | 460 |
| I might have envied; and for that being known, | |
| My fury became sudden history, | |
| And I a sudden hero. But the crown | |
| I wore was hot; and I would happily | |
| Have hurled it, if I could, so far away | 465 |
| That over my last hissing glimpse of it | |
| There might have closed an ocean. He went home | |
| The next day, and the same unhappy chance | |
| That first had fettered me and my aversion | |
| To his unprofitable need of me | 470 |
| Brought us abruptly face to face again | |
| Beside the carriage that had come for him. | |
| We met, and for a moment we were still— | |
| Together. But I was reading in his eyes | |
| More than I read at college or at law | 475 |
| In years that followed. There was blankly nothing | |
| For me to say, if not that I was sorry; | |
| And that was more than hate would let me say— | |
| Whatever the truth might be. At last he spoke, | |
| And I could see the vengeance in his eyes, | 480 |
| And a cold sorrow—which, if I had seen | |
| Much more of it, might yet have mastered me. | |
| But I would see no more of it. ‘Well, then,’ | |
| He said, ‘have you thought yet of anything | |
| Worth saying? If so, there’s time. If you are silent, | 485 |
| I shall know where you are until you die.’ | |
| I can still hear him saying those words to me | |
| Again, without a loss or an addition; | |
| I know, for I have heard them ever since. | |
| And there was in me not an answer for them | 490 |
| Save a new roiling silence. Once again | |
| I met his look, and on his face I saw | |
| There was a twisting in the swarthiness | |
| That I had often sworn to be the cast | |
| Of his ophidian mind. He had no soul. | 495 |
| There was to be no more of him—not then. | |
| The carriage rolled away with him inside, | |
| Leaving the two of us alive together | |
| In the same hemisphere to hate each other. | |
| I don’t know now whether he’s here alive, | 500 |
| Or whether he’s here dead. But that, of course, | |
| As you would say, is only a tired man’s fancy. | |
| You know that I have driven the wheels too fast | |
| Of late, and all for gold I do not need. | |
| When are we mortals to be sensible, | 505 |
| Paying no more for life than life is worth? | |
| Better for us, no doubt, we do not know | |
| How much we pay or what it is we buy.” | |
| He waited, gazing at me as if asking | |
| The worth of what the universe had for sale | 510 |
| For one confessed remorse. Avon, I knew, | |
| Had driven the wheels too fast, and not for gold. | |
| |
| “If you had given him then your hand,” I said, | |
| “And spoken, though it strangled you, the truth, | |
| I should not have the melancholy honor | 515 |
| Of sitting here alone with you this evening. | |
| If only you had shaken hands with him, | |
| And said the truth, he would have gone his way. | |
| And you your way. He might have wished you dead, | |
| But he would not have made you miserable. | 520 |
| At least,” I added, indefensibly, | |
| “That’s what I hope is true.” | |
| |
| He pitied me, | |
| But had the magnanimity not to say so. | |
| “If only we had shaken hands,” he said, | 525 |
| “And I had said the truth, we might have been | |
| In half a moment rolling on the gravel. | |
| If I had said the truth, I should have said | |
| That never at any moment on the clock | |
| Above us in the tower since his arrival | 530 |
| Had I been in a more proficient mood | |
| To throttle him. If you had seen his eyes | |
| As I did, and if you had seen his face | |
| At work as I did, you might understand. | |
| I was ashamed of it, as I am now, | 535 |
| But that’s the prelude to another theme; | |
| For now I’m saying only what had happened | |
| If I had taken his hand and said the truth. | |
| The wise have cautioned us that where there’s hate | |
| There’s also fear. The wise are right sometimes. | 540 |
| There may be now, but there was no fear then. | |
| There was just hatred, hauled up out of hell | |
| For me to writhe in; and I writhed in it.” | |
| |
| I saw that he was writhing in it still; | |
| But having a magnanimity myself, | 545 |
| I waited. There was nothing else to do | |
| But wait, and to remember that his tale, | |
| Though well along, as I divined it was, | |
| Yet hovered among shadows and regrets | |
| Of twenty years ago. When he began | 550 |
| Again to speak, I felt them coming nearer. | |
| |
| “Whenever your poet or your philosopher | |
| Has nothing richer for us,” he resumed, | |
| “He burrows among remnants, like a mouse | |
| In a waste-basket, and with much dry noise | 555 |
| Comes up again, having found Time at the bottom | |
| And filled himself with its futility. | |
| ‘Time is at once,’ he says, to startle us, | |
| ‘A poison for us, if we make it so, | |
| And, if we make it so, an antidote | 560 |
| For the same poison that afflicted us.’ | |
| I’m witness to the poison, but the cure | |
| Of my complaint is not, for me, in Time. | |
| There may be doctors in eternity | |
| To deal with it, but they are not here now. | 565 |
| There’s no specific for my three diseases | |
| That I could swallow, even if I should find it, | |
| And I shall never find it here on earth.” | |
| |
| “Mightn’t it be as well, my friend,” I said, | |
| “For you to contemplate the uncompleted | 570 |
| With not such an infernal certainty?” | |
| |
| “And mightn’t it be as well for you, my friend,” | |
| Said Avon, “to be quiet while I go on? | |
| When I am done, then you may talk all night— | |
| Like a physician who can do no good, | 575 |
| But knows how soon another would have his fee | |
| Were he to tell the truth. Your fee for this | |
| Is in my gratitude and my affection; | |
| And I’m not eager to be calling in | |
| Another to take yours away from you, | 580 |
| Whatever it’s worth. I like to think I know. | |
| Well then, again. The carriage rolled away | |
| With him inside; and so it might have gone | |
| For ten years rolling on, with him still in it, | |
| For all it was I saw of him. Sometimes | 585 |
| I heard of him, but only as one hears | |
| Of leprosy in Boston or New York | |
| And wishes it were somewhere else. He faded | |
| Out of my scene—yet never quite out of it: | |
| ‘I shall know where you are until you die,’ | 590 |
| Were his last words; and they are the same words | |
| That I received thereafter once a year, | |
| Infallibly on my birthday, with no name; | |
| Only a card, and the words printed on it. | |
| No, I was never rid of him—not quite; | 595 |
| Although on shipboard, on my way from here | |
| To Hamburg, I believe that I forgot him. | |
| But once ashore, I should have been half ready | |
| To meet him there, risen up out of the ground, | |
| With hoofs and horns and tail and everything. | 600 |
| Believe me, there was nothing right about him, | |
| Though it was not in Hamburg that I found him. | |
| Later, in Rome, it was we found each other, | |
| For the first time since we had been at school. | |
| There was the same slow vengeance in his eyes | 605 |
| When he saw mine, and there was a vicious twist | |
| On his amphibious face that might have been | |
| On anything else a smile—rather like one | |
| We look for on the stage than in the street. | |
| I must have been a yard away from him | 610 |
| Yet as we passed I felt the touch of him | |
| Like that of something soft in a dark room. | |
| There’s hardly need of saying that we said nothing, | |
| Or that we gave each other an occasion | |
| For more than our eyes uttered. He was gone | 615 |
| Before I knew it, like a solid phantom; | |
| And his reality was for me some time | |
| In its achievement—given that one’s to be | |
| Convinced that such an incubus at large | |
| Was ever quite real. The season was upon us | 620 |
| When there are fitter regions in the world— | |
| Though God knows he would have been safe enough— | |
| Than Rome for strayed Americans to live in, | |
| And when the whips of their itineraries | |
| Hurry them north again. I took my time, | 625 |
| Since I was paying for it, and leisurely | |
| Went where I would—though never again to move | |
| Without him at my elbow or behind me. | |
| My shadow of him, wherever I found myself, | |
| Might horribly as well have been the man— | 630 |
| Although I should have been afraid of him | |
| No more than of a large worm in a salad. | |
| I should omit the salad, certainly, | |
| And wish the worm elsewhere. And so he was, | |
| In fact; yet as I go on to grow older, | 635 |
| I question if there’s anywhere a fact | |
| That isn’t the malevolent existence | |
| Of one man who is dead, or is not dead, | |
| Or what the devil it is that he may be. | |
| There must be, I suppose, a fact somewhere, | 640 |
| But I don’t know it. I can only tell you | |
| That later, when to all appearances | |
| I stood outside a music-hall in London, | |
| I felt him and then saw that he was there. | |
| Yes, he was there, and had with him a woman | 645 |
| Who looked as if she didn’t know. I’m sorry | |
| To this day for that woman—who, no doubt, | |
| Is doing well. Yes, there he was again; | |
| There were his eyes and the same vengeance in them | |
| That I had seen in Rome and twice before— | 650 |
| Not mentioning all the time, or most of it, | |
| Between the day I struck him and that evening. | |
| That was the worst show that I ever saw, | |
| But you had better see it for yourself | |
| Before you say so too. I went away, | 655 |
| Though not for any fear that I could feel | |
| Of him or of his worst manipulations, | |
| But only to be out of the same air | |
| That made him stay alive in the same world | |
| With all the gentlemen that were in irons | 660 |
| For uncommendable extravagances | |
| That I should reckon slight compared with his | |
| Offence of being. Distance would have made him | |
| A moving fly-speck on the map of life,— | |
| But he would not be distant, though his flesh | 665 |
| And bone might have been climbing Fujiyama | |
| Or Chimborazo—with me there in London, | |
| Or sitting here. My doom it was to see him, | |
| Be where I might. That was ten years ago; | |
| And having waited season after season | 670 |
| His always imminent evil recrudescence, | |
| And all for nothing, I was waiting still, | |
| When the Titanic touched a piece of ice | |
| And we were for a moment where we are, | |
| With nature laughing at us. When the noise | 675 |
| Had spent itself to names, his was among them; | |
| And I will not insult you or myself | |
| With a vain perjury. I was far from cold. | |
| It seemed as for the first time in my life | |
| I knew the blessedness of being warm; | 680 |
| And I remember that I had a drink, | |
| Having assuredly no need of it. | |
| Pity a fool for his credulity, | |
| If so you must. But when I found his name | |
| Among the dead, I trusted once the news; | 685 |
| And after that there were no messages | |
| In ambush waiting for me on my birthday. | |
| There was no vestige yet of any fear, | |
| You understand—if that’s why you are smiling.” | |
| |
| I said that I had not so much as whispered | 690 |
| The name aloud of any fear soever, | |
| And that I smiled at his unwonted plunge | |
| Into the perilous pool of Dionysus. | |
| “Well, if you are so easily diverted | |
| As that,” he said, drumming his chair again, | 695 |
| “You will be pleased, I think, with what is coming; | |
| And though there be divisions and departures, | |
| Imminent from now on, for your diversion | |
| I’ll do the best I can. More to the point, | |
| I know a man who if his friends were like him | 700 |
| Would live in the woods all summer and all winter, | |
| Leaving the town and its iniquities | |
| To die of their own dust. But having his wits, | |
| Henceforth he may conceivably avoid | |
| The adventure unattended. Last October | 705 |
| He took me with him into the Maine woods, | |
| Where, by the shore of a primeval lake, | |
| With woods all round it, and a voyage away | |
| From anything wearing clothes, he had reared somehow | |
| A lodge, or camp, with a stone chimney in it, | 710 |
| And a wide fireplace to make men forget | |
| Their sins who sat before it in the evening, | |
| Hearing the wind outside among the trees | |
| And the black water washing on the shore. | |
| I never knew the meaning of October | 715 |
| Until I went with Asher to that place, | |
| Which I shall not investigate again | |
| Till I be taken there by other forces | |
| Than are innate in my economy. | |
| ‘You may not like it,’ Asher said, ‘but Asher | 720 |
| Knows what is good. So put your faith in Asher, | |
| And come along with him. He’s an odd bird, | |
| Yet I could wish for the world’s decency | |
| There might be more of him. And so it was | |
| I found myself, at first incredulous, | 725 |
| Down there with Asher in the wilderness, | |
| Alive at last with a new liberty | |
| And with no sore to fester. He perceived | |
| In me an altered favor of God’s works, | |
| And promptly took upon himself the credit, | 730 |
| Which, in a fashion, was as accurate | |
| As one’s interpretation of another | |
| Is like to be. So for a frosty fortnight | |
| We had the sunlight with us on the lake, | |
| And the moon with us when the sun was down. | 735 |
| ‘God gave his adjutants a holiday,’ | |
| Asher assured me, ‘when He made this place’; | |
| And I agreed with him that it was heaven,— | |
| Till it was hell for me for then and after. | |
| |
| “There was a village miles away from us | 740 |
| Where now and then we paddled for the mail | |
| And incidental small commodities | |
| That perfect exile might require, and stayed | |
| The night after the voyage with an antique | |
| Survival of a broader world than ours | 745 |
| Whom Asher called The Admiral. This time, | |
| A little out of sorts and out of tune | |
| With paddling, I let Asher go alone, | |
| Sure that his heart was happy. Then it was | |
| That hell came. I sat gazing over there | 750 |
| Across the water, watching the sun’s last fire | |
| Above those gloomy and indifferent trees | |
| That might have been a wall around the world, | |
| When suddenly, like faces over the lake, | |
| Out of the silence of that other shore | 755 |
| I was aware of hidden presences | |
| That soon, no matter how many of them there were, | |
| Would all be one. I could not look behind me, | |
| Where I could hear that one of them was breathing, | |
| For, if I did, those others over there | 760 |
| Might all see that at last I was afraid; | |
| And I might hear them without seeing them, | |
| Seeing that other one. You were not there; | |
| And it is well for you that you don’t know | |
| What they are like when they should not be there. | 765 |
| And there were chilly doubts of whether or not | |
| I should be seeing the rest that I should see | |
| With eyes, or otherwise. I could not be sure; | |
| And as for going over to find out, | |
| All I may tell you now is that my fear | 770 |
| Was not the fear of dying, though I knew soon | |
| That all the gold in all the sunken ships | |
| That have gone down since Tyre would not have paid | |
| For me the ferriage of myself alone | |
| To that infernal shore. I was in hell, | 775 |
| Remember; and if you have never been there | |
| You may as well not say how easy it is | |
| To find the best way out. There may not be one. | |
| Well, I was there; and I was there alone— | |
| Alone for the first time since I was born; | 780 |
| And I was not alone. That’s what it is | |
| To be in hell. I hope you will not go there. | |
| All through that slow, long, desolating twilight | |
| Of incoherent certainties, I waited; | |
| Never alone—never to be alone; | 785 |
| And while the night grew down upon me there, | |
| I thought of old Prometheus in the story | |
| That I had read at school, and saw mankind | |
| All huddled into clusters in the dark, | |
| Calling to God for light. There was a light | 790 |
| Coming for them, but there was none for me | |
| Until a shapeless remnant of a moon | |
| Rose after midnight over the black trees | |
| Behind me. I should hardly have confessed | |
| The heritage then of my identity | 795 |
| To my own shadow; for I was powerless there, | |
| As I am here. Say what you like to say | |
| To silence, but say none of it to me | |
| Tonight. To say it now would do no good, | |
| And you are here to listen. Beware of hate, | 800 |
| And listen. Beware of hate, remorse, and fear, | |
| And listen. You are staring at the damned, | |
| But yet you are no more the one than he | |
| To say that it was he alone who planted | |
| The flower of death now growing in his garden. | 805 |
| Was it enough, I wonder, that I struck him? | |
| I shall say nothing. I shall have to wait | |
| Until I see what’s coming, if it comes, | |
| When I’m a delver in another garden— | |
| If such an one there be. If there be none, | 810 |
| All’s well—and over. Rather a vain expense, | |
| One might affirm—yet there is nothing lost. | |
| Science be praised that there is nothing lost.” | |
| |
| I’m glad the venom that was on his tongue | |
| May not go down on paper; and I’m glad | 815 |
| No friend of mine alive, far as I know, | |
| Has a tale waiting for me with an end | |
| Like Avon’s. There was here an interruption, | |
| Though not a long one—only while we heard, | |
| As we had heard before, the ghost of steps | 820 |
| Faintly outside. We knew that she was there | |
| Again; and though it was a kindly folly, | |
| I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep. | |
| |
| “I was afraid, this time, but not of man— | |
| Or man as you may figure him,” he said. | 825 |
| “It was not anything my eyes had seen | |
| That I could feel around me in the night, | |
| There by that lake. If I had been alone, | |
| There would have been the joy of being free, | |
| Which in imagination I had won | 830 |
| With unimaginable expiation— | |
| But I was not alone. If you had seen me, | |
| Waiting there for the dark and looking off | |
| Over the gloom of that relentless water, | |
| Which had the stillness of the end of things | 835 |
| That evening on it, I might well have made | |
| For you the picture of the last man left | |
| Where God, in his extinction of the rest, | |
| Had overlooked him and forgotten him. | |
| Yet I was not alone. Interminably | 840 |
| The minutes crawled along and over me, | |
| Slow, cold, intangible, and invisible, | |
| As if they had come up out of that water. | |
| How long I sat there I shall never know, | |
| For time was hidden out there in the black lake, | 845 |
| Which now I could see only as a glimpse | |
| Of black light by the shore. There were no stars | |
| To mention, and the moon was hours away | |
| Behind me. There was nothing but myself, | |
| And what was coming. On my breast I felt | 850 |
| The touch of death, and I should have died then. | |
| I ruined good Asher’s autumn as it was, | |
| For he will never again go there alone, | |
| If ever he goes at all. Nature did ill | |
| To darken such a faith in her as his, | 855 |
| Though he will have it that I had the worst | |
| Of her defection, and will hear no more | |
| Apologies. If it had to be for someone, | |
| I think it well for me it was for Asher. | |
| I dwell on him, meaning that you may know him | 860 |
| Before your last horn blows. He has a name | |
| That’s like a tree, and therefore like himself— | |
| By which I mean you find him where you leave him. | |
| I saw him and The Admiral together | |
| While I was in the dark, but they were far— | 865 |
| Far as around the world from where I was; | |
| And they knew nothing of what I saw not | |
| While I knew only I was not alone. | |
| I made a fire to make the place alive, | |
| And locked the door. But even the fire was dead, | 870 |
| And all the life there was was in the shadow | |
| It made of me. My shadow was all of me; | |
| The rest had had its day, and there was night | |
| Remaining—only night, that’s made for shadows, | |
| Shadows and sleep and dreams, or dreams without it. | 875 |
| The fire went slowly down, and now the moon, | |
| Or that late wreck of it, was coming up; | |
| And though it was a martyr’s work to move, | |
| I must obey my shadow, and I did. | |
| There were two beds built low against the wall, | 880 |
| And down on one of them, with all my clothes on, | |
| Like a man getting into his own grave, | |
| I lay—and waited. As the firelight sank, | |
| The moonlight, which had partly been consumed | |
| By the black trees, framed on the other wall | 885 |
| A glimmering window not far from the ground. | |
| The coals were going, and only a few sparks | |
| Were there to tell of them; and as they died | |
| The window lightened, and I saw the trees. | |
| They moved a little, but I could not move, | 890 |
| More than to turn my face the other way; | |
| And then, if you must have it so, I slept. | |
| We’ll call it so—if sleep is your best name | |
| For a sort of conscious, frozen catalepsy | |
| Wherein a man sees all there is around him | 895 |
| As if it were not real, and he were not | |
| Alive. You may call it anything you please | |
| That made me powerless to move hand or foot, | |
| Or to make any other living motion | |
| Than after a long horror, without hope, | 900 |
| To turn my face again the other way. | |
| Some force that was not mine opened my eyes, | |
| And, as I knew it must be,—it was there.” | |
| |
| Avon covered his eyes—whether to shut | |
| The memory and the sight of it away, | 905 |
| Or to be sure that mine were for the moment | |
| Not searching his with pity, is now no matter. | |
| My glance at him was brief, turning itself | |
| To the familiar pattern of his rug, | |
| Wherein I may have sought a consolation— | 910 |
| As one may gaze in sorrow on a shell, | |
| Or a small apple. So it had come, I thought; | |
| And heard, no longer with a wonderment, | |
| The faint recurring footsteps of his wife, | |
| Who, knowing less than I knew, yet knew more. | 915 |
| Now I could read, I fancied, through the fear | |
| That latterly was living in her eyes, | |
| To the sure source of its authority. | |
| But he went on, and I was there to listen: | |
| |
| “And though I saw it only as a blot | 920 |
| Between me and my life, it was enough | |
| To make me know that he was watching there— | |
| Waiting for me to move, or not to move, | |
| Before he moved. Sick as I was with hate | |
| Reborn, and chained with fear that was more than fear, | 925 |
| I would have gambled all there was to gain | |
| Or lose in rising there from where I lay | |
| And going out after it. ‘Before the dawn,’ | |
| I reasoned, ‘there will be a difference here. | |
| Therefore it may as well be done outside.’ | 930 |
| And then I found I was immovable, | |
| As I had been before; and a dead sweat | |
| Rolled out of me as I remembered him | |
| When I had seen him leaving me at school. | |
| ‘I shall know where you are until you die,’ | 935 |
| Were the last words that I had heard him say; | |
| And there he was. Now I could see his face, | |
| And all the sad, malignant desperation | |
| That was drawn on it after I had struck him, | |
| And on my memory since that afternoon. | 940 |
| But all there was left now for me to do | |
| Was to lie there and see him while he squeezed | |
| His unclean outlines into the dim room, | |
| And half erect inside, like a still beast | |
| With a face partly man’s, came slowly on | 945 |
| Along the floor to the bed where I lay, | |
| And waited. There had been so much of waiting, | |
| Through all those evil years before my respite— | |
| Which now I knew and recognized at last | |
| As only his more venomous preparation | 950 |
| For the vile end of a deceiving peace— | |
| That I began to fancy there was on me | |
| The stupor that explorers have alleged | |
| As evidence of nature’s final mercy | |
| When tigers have them down upon the earth | 955 |
| And wild hot breath is heavy on their faces. | |
| I could not feel his breath, but I could hear it; | |
| Though fear had made an anvil of my heart | |
| Where demons, for the joy of doing it, | |
| Were sledging death down on it. And I saw | 960 |
| His eyes now, as they were, for the first time— | |
| Aflame as they had never been before | |
| With all their gathered vengeance gleaming in them, | |
| And always that unconscionable sorrow | |
| That would not die behind it. Then I caught | 965 |
| The shadowy glimpse of an uplifted arm, | |
| And a moon-flash of metal. That was all.… | |
| |
| “When I believed I was alive again | |
| I was with Asher and The Admiral, | |
| Whom Asher had brought with him for a day | 970 |
| With nature. They had found me when they came; | |
| And there was not much left of me to find. | |
| I had not moved or known that I was there | |
| Since I had seen his eyes and felt his breath; | |
| And it was not for some uncertain hours | 975 |
| After they came that either would say how long | |
| That might have been. It should have been much longer. | |
| All you may add will be your own invention, | |
| For I have told you all there is to tell. | |
| Tomorrow I shall have another birthday, | 980 |
| And with it there may come another message— | |
| Although I cannot see the need of it, | |
| Or much more need of drowning, if that’s all | |
| Men drown for—when they drown. You know as much | |
| As I know about that, though I’ve a right, | 985 |
| If not a reason, to be on my guard; | |
| And only God knows what good that will do. | |
| Now you may get some air. Good night!—and thank you.” | |
| He smiled, but I would rather he had not. | |
| |
| I wished that Avon’s wife would go to sleep, | 990 |
| But whether she found sleep that night or not | |
| I do not know. I was awake for hours, | |
| Toiling in vain to let myself believe | |
| That Avon’s apparition was a dream, | |
| And that he might have added, for romance, | 995 |
| The part that I had taken home with me | |
| For reasons not in Avon’s dictionary. | |
| But each recurrent memory of his eyes, | |
| And of the man himself that I had known | |
| So long and well, made soon of all my toil | 1000 |
| An evanescent and a vain evasion; | |
| And it was half as in expectancy | |
| That I obeyed the summons of his wife | |
| A little before dawn, and was again | |
| With Avon in the room where I had left him, | 1005 |
| But not with the same Avon I had left. | |
| The doctor, an august authority, | |
| With eminence abroad as well as here, | |
| Looked hard at me as if I were the doctor | |
| And he the friend. “I have had eyes on Avon | 1010 |
| For more than half a year,” he said to me, | |
| “And I have wondered often what it was | |
| That I could see that I was not to see. | |
| Though he was in the chair where you are looking, | |
| I told his wife—I had to tell her something— | 1015 |
| It was a nightmare and an aneurism; | |
| And so, or partly so, I’ll say it was. | |
| The last without the first will be enough | |
| For the newspapers and the undertaker; | |
| Yet if we doctors were not all immune | 1020 |
| From death, disease, and curiosity, | |
| My diagnosis would be sorry for me. | |
| He died, you know, because he was afraid— | |
| And he had been afraid for a long time; | |
| And we who knew him well would all agree | 1025 |
| To fancy there was rather more than fear. | |
| The door was locked inside—they broke it in | |
| To find him—but she heard him when it came. | |
| There are no signs of any visitors, | |
| Or need of them. If I were not a child | 1030 |
| Of science, I should say it was the devil. | |
| I don’t believe it was another woman, | |
| And surely it was not another man.” | |
