# The Children of the Night (1921)/The Night Before

THE NIGHT BEFORE
Look you, Dominie; look you, and listen! Look in my face, first; search every line there; Mark every feature,—chin, lip, and forehead! Look in my eyes, and tell me the lesson You read there; measure my nose, and tell me Where I am wanting! A man's nose, Dominie, Is often the cast of his inward spirit; So mark mine well. But why do you smile so? Pity, or what? Is it written all over, This face of mine, with a brute's confession? Nothing but sin there? nothing but hell-scars? Or is it because there is something better— A glimmer of good, maybe—or a shadow Of something that's followed me down from childhood— Followed me all these years and kept me, Spite of my slips and sins and follies, Spite of my last red sin, my murder,— Just out of hell? Yes? something of that kind? And you smile for that? You're a good man, Dominie, The one good man in the world who knows me,— My one good friend in a world that mocks me, Here in this hard stone cage. But I leave it To-morrow. To-morrow! My God! am I crying? Are these things tears? Tears! What! am I frightened? I, who swore I should go to the scaffold With big strong steps, and—No more. I thank you,
But no—I am all right now! No!—listen! I am here to be hanged; to be hanged to-morrow At six o'clock, when the sun is rising. And why am I here? Not a soul can tell you But this poor shivering thing before you, This fluttering wreck of the man God made him, For God knows what wild reason. Hear me, And learn from my lips the truth of my story. There's nothing strange in what I shall tell you, Nothing mysterious, nothing unearthly,— But damnably human,—and you shall hear it. Not one of those little black lawyers had guessed it; The judge, with his big bald head, never knew it; And the jury (God rest their poor souls!) never dreamed it. Once there were three in the world who could tell it; Now there are two. There’ll be two to-morrow,— You, my friend, and—But there's the story:—
When I was a boy the world was heaven. I never knew then that the men and the women Who petted and called me a brave big fellow Were ever less happy than I; but wisdom— Which comes with the years, you know—soon showed me The secret of all my glittering childhood, The broken key to the fairies' castle That held my life in the fresh, glad season
When I was the king of the earth. Then slowly— And yet so swiftly!—there came the knowledge That the marvellous life I had lived was my life; That the glorious world I had loved was my world; And that every man, and every woman, And every child was a different being, Wrought with a different heat, and fired With passions born of a single spirit; That the pleasure I felt was not their pleasure, Nor my sorrow—a kind of nameless pity For something, I knew not what—their sorrow. And thus was I taught my first hard lesson,— The lesson we suffer the most in learning: That a happy man is a man forgetful Of all the torturing ills around him. When or where I first met the woman I cherished and made my wife, no matter. Enough to say that I found her and kept her Here in my heart with as pure a devotion As ever Christ felt for his brothers. Forgive me For naming His name in your patient presence; But I feel my words, and the truth I utter Is God's own truth. I loved that woman,— Not for her face, but for something fairer, Something diviner, I thought, than beauty: I loved the spirit—the human something That seemed to chime with my own condition, And make soul-music when we were together;
And we were never apart, from the moment My eyes flashed into her eyes the message That swept itself in a quivering answer Back through my strange lost being. My pulses Leapt with an aching speed; and the measure Of this great world grew small and smaller, Till it seemed the sky and the land and the ocean Closed at last in a mist all golden Around us two. And we stood for a season Like gods outflung from chaos, dreaming That we were the king and the queen of the fire That reddened the clouds of love that held us Blind to the new world soon to be ours— Ours to seize and sway. The passion Of that great love was a nameless passion, Bright as the blaze of the sun at noonday, Wild as the flames of hell; but, mark you, Never a whit less pure for its fervor. The baseness in me (for I was human) Burned like a worm, and perished; and nothing Was left me then but a soul that mingled Itself with hers, and swayed and shuddered In fearful triumph. When I consider That helpless love and the cursed folly That wrecked my life for the sake of a woman Who broke with a laugh the chains of her marriage (Whatever the word may mean), I wonder If all the woe was her sin, or whether
The chains themselves were enough to lead her In love's despite to break them. . . . Sinners And saints—I say—are rocked in the cradle, But never are known till the will within them Speaks in its own good time. So I foster Even to-night for the woman who wronged me, Nothing of hate, nor of love, but a feeling Of still regret; for the man—But hear me, And judge for yourself:—
For a time the seasons Changed and passed in a sweet succession That seemed to me like an endless music: Life was a rolling psalm, and the choirs Of God were glad for our love. I fancied All this, and more than I dare to tell you To-night,—yes, more than I dare to remember; And then—well, the music stopped. There are moments In all men’s lives when it stops, I fancy,— Or seems to stop,—till it comes to cheer them Again with a larger sound. The curtain Of life just then is lifted a little To give to their sight new joys—new sorrows— Or nothing at all, sometimes. I was watching The slow, sweet scenes of a golden picture, Flushed and alive with a long delusion That made the murmur of home, when I shuddered
And felt like a knife that awful silence That comes when the music goes—forever. The truth came over my life like a darkness Over a forest where one man wanders, Worse than alone. For a time I staggered And stumbled on with a weak persistence After the phantom of hope that darted And dodged like a frightened thing before me, To quit me at last, and vanish. Nothing Was left me then but the curse of living And bearing through all my days the fever And thirst of a poisoned love. Were I stronger, Or weaker, perhaps my scorn had saved me, Given me strength to crush my sorrow With hate for her and the world that praised her— To have left her, then and there—to have conquered That old false life with a new and a wiser,— Such things are easy in words. You listen, And frown, I suppose, that I never mention That beautiful word, forgive!—I forgave her First of all; and I praised kind Heaven That I was a brave, clean man to do it; And then I tried to forget. Forgiveness! What does it mean when the one forgiven Shivers and weeps and clings and kisses The credulous fool that holds her, and tells him A thousand things of a good man's mercy, And then slips off with a laugh and plunges
Back to the sin she has quit for a season, To tell him that hell and the world are better For her than a prophet's heaven. Believe me, The love that dies ere its flames are wasted In search of an alien soul is better, Better by far than the lonely passion That burns back into the heart that feeds it. For I loved her still, and the more she mocked me,—
Fooled with her endless pleading promise Of future faith,—the more I believed her The penitent thing she seemed; and the stronger Her choking arms and her small hot kisses Bound me and burned my brain to pity, The more she grew to the heavenly creature That brightened the life I had lost forever. The truth was gone somehow for the moment; The curtain fell for a time; and I fancied We were again like gods together, Loving again with the old glad rapture. But scenes like these, too often repeated, Failed at last, and her guile was wasted. I made an end of her shrewd caresses And told her a few straight words. She took them Full at their worth—and the farce was over. ****** At first my dreams of the past upheld me, But they were a short support: the present Pushed them away, and I fell. The mission
Of life (whatever it was) was blasted; My game was lost. And I met the winner Of that foul deal as a sick slave gathers His painful strength at the sight of his master; And when he was past I cursed him, fearful Of that strange chance which makes us mighty Or mean, or both. I cursed him and hated The stones he pressed with his heel; I followed His easy march with a backward envy, And cursed myself for the beast within me. But pride is the master of love, and the vision Of those old days grew faint and fainter: The counterfeit wife my mercy sheltered Was nothing now but a woman,—a woman Out of my way and out of my nature. My battle with blinded love was over, My battle with aching pride beginning. If I was the loser at first, I wonder If I am the winner now! . . . I doubt it. My life is a losing game; and to-morrow— To-morrow!—Christ! did I say to-morrow? . . Is your brandy good for death? . . . There, listen:—
When loves goes out, and a man is driven To shun mankind for the scars that make him A joke for all chattering tongues, he carries A double burden. The woes I suffered After that hard betrayal made me
Pity, at first, all breathing creatures On this bewildered earth. I studied Their faces and made for myself the story Of all their scattered lives. Like brothers And sisters they seemed to me then; and I nourished A stranger friendship wrought in my fancy Between those people and me. But somehow, As time went on, there came queer glances Out of their eyes, and the shame that stung me Harassed my pride with a crazed impression That every face in the surging city Was turned to me; and I saw sly whispers, Now and then, as I walked and wearied My wasted life twice over in bearing With all my sorrow the sorrows of others,— Till I found myself their fool. Then I trembled,— A poor scared thing,—and their prying faces Told me the ghastly truth: they were laughing At me and my fate. My God, I could feel it— That laughter! And then the children caught it; And I, like a struck dog, crept and listened. And then when I met the man who had weakened A woman's love to his own desire, It seemed to me that all hell were laughing In fiendish concert! I was their victim— And his, and hate's. And there was the struggle. As long as the earth we tread holds something A tortured heart can love, the meaning
Of life is not wholly blurred; but after The last loved thing in the world has left us, We know the triumph of hate. The glory Of good goes out forever; the beacon Of sin is the light that leads us downward— Down to the fiery end. The road runs Right through hell; and the souls that follow The cursed ways where its windings lead them Suffer enough, I say, to merit All grace that a God can give.—The fashion Of our belief is to lift all beings Born for a life that knows no struggle In sin's tight snares to eternal glory— All apart from the branded millions Who carry through life their faces graven With sure brute scars that tell the story Of their foul, fated passions. Science Has yet no salve to smooth or soften The cradle-scars of a tyrant's visage; No drug to purge from the vital essence Of souls the sleeping venom. Virtue May flower in hell, when its roots are twisted And wound with the roots of vice; but the stronger Never is known till there comes that battle With sin to prove the victor. Perilous Things are these demons we call our passions: Slaves are we of their roving fancies, Fools of their devilish glee.—You think me,
I know, in this maundering way designing To lighten the load of my guilt and cast it Half on the shoulders of God. But hear me! I'm partly a man,—for all my weakness,— If weakness it were to stand and murder Before men's eyes the man who had murdered Me, and driven my burning forehead With horns for the world to laugh at. Trust me! And try to believe my words but a portion Of what God's purpose made me! The coward Within me cries for this; and I beg you Now, as I come to the end, to remember That women and men are on earth to travel All on a different road. Hereafter The roads may meet. . . . I trust in something— I know not what. . . .
Well, this was the way of it:— Stung with the shame and the secret fury That comes to the man who has thrown his pittance Of self at a traitor's feet, I wandered Weeks and weeks in a baffled frenzy, Till at last the devil spoke. I heard him, And laughed at the love that strove to touch me,— The dead, lost love; and I gripped the demon Close to my breast, and held him, praising The fates and the furies that gave me the courage To follow his wild command. Forgetful
Of all to come when the work was over,— There came to me then no stony vision Of these three hundred days,—I cherished An awful joy in my brain. I pondered And weighed the thing in my mind, and gloried In life to think that I was to conquer Death at his own dark door,—and chuckled To think of it done so cleanly. One evening I knew that my time had come. I shuddered A little, but rather for doubt than terror, And followed him,—led by the nameless devil I worshipped and called my brother. The city Shone like a dream that night; the windows Flashed with a piercing flame, and the pavements Pulsed and swayed with a warmth—or something That seemed so then to my feet—and thrilled me With a quick, dizzy joy; and the women And men, like marvellous things of magic, Floated and laughed and sang by my shoulder, Sent with a wizard motion. Through it And over and under it all there sounded A murmur of life, like bees; and I listened And laughed again to think of the flower That grew, blood-red, for me! . . . This fellow Was one of the popular sort who flourish Unruffled where gods would fall. For a conscience He carried a snug deceit that made him The man of the time and the place, whatever
The time or the place might be. Were he sounding, With a genial craft that cloaked its purpose, Nigh to itself, the depth of a woman Fooled with his brainless art, or sending The midnight home with songs and bottles,— The cad was there, and his ease forever Shone with the smooth and slippery polish That tells the snake. That night he drifted Into an up-town haunt and ordered— Whatever it was—with a soft assurance That made me mad as I stood behind him, Gripping his death, and waited. Coward, I think, is the name the world has given To men like me; but I’ll swear I never Thought of my own disgrace when I shot him— Yes, in the back,—I know it, I know it Now; but what if I do? . . . As I watched him Lying there dead in the scattered sawdust, Wet with a day's blown froth, I noted That things were still; that the walnut tables, Where men but a moment before were sitting, Were gone; that a screen of something around me Shut them out of my sight. But the gilded Signs of a hundred beers and whiskeys Flashed from the walls above, and the mirrors And glasses behind the bar were lighted In some strange way, and into my spirit A thousand shafts of terrible fire
Burned like death, and I fell. The story Of what came then, you know.
But tell me, What does the whole thing mean? What are we,— Slaves of an awful ignorance? puppets Pulled by a fiend? or gods, without knowing it? Do we shut from ourselves our own salvation,— Or what do we do! I tell you, Dominie, There are times in the lives of us poor devils When heaven and hell get mixed. Though conscience May come like a whisper of Christ to warn us Away from our sins, it is lost or laughed at,— And then we fall. And for all who have fallen— Even for him—I hold no malice, Nor much compassion: a mightier mercy Than mine must shrive him.—And I—I am going Into the light?—or into the darkness? Why do I sit through these sickening hours, And hope? Good God! are they hours?—hours? Yes! I am done with days. And to-morrow— We two may meet! To-morrow!—To-morrow! . . .