# Avon's harvest

AVON'S HARVEST
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
Poems
The Children of the Night Captain Craig The Town Down the River The Man Against the Sky Merlin Lancelot The Three Taverns
Plays
Van Zorn. A Comedy in Three Acts The Porcupine. A Drama in Three Acts
AVON'S HARVEST
BY
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1921,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1921.
TO
SETH ELLIS POPE
AVON'S HARVEST
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 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 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 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. 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, 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.
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 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 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 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 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, 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.
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. 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." And I remembered 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.
I waited, and anon became aware That I was looking less at Avon's eyes Than at another thing that had a gleam Quite of its own. "And what the devil's that?" I questioned.—"Only what you see," said Avon; "Merely a dagger on a dictionary. Daggers are out of date, but there you are. Take it; and if you like it, shave with it."
"If that's the merry best that you can do, My friend," said I, willing to lay it back, "I recommend that you be serious."— "You are the judge and only arbiter Of that," said he; "and that's why you are here. Your name is Resignation for an hour, 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 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 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, 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 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 Between you and the world. I cannot say For sure 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, Daggers on dictionaries, men 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. I only know that I am at your service, And that your ornament there on the book
Is not at all a proper toy for children. We're not exactly in the nursery now, I know—though I may soon be there myself. Unless your living dead man comes to life, Or is less indiscriminately dead, 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, 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. And if that thing annoys you, Take it, and hide it. I'm not using it.
It's there merely by way of illustration."
"If there are to be many of them like that, We'll as well have your tale without your pictures," I told him. "I am not much given to nerves, But that thing savors of experience Too surely, and of active intimacies Too sharply. But no matter; the Lord giveth, The Lord taketh away. I trust myself Always to you and to your courtesy. 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. 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; 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 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 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. 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— 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, 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, 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. Now and again there comes one of his ilk— 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 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, 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 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."
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 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. 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.
"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?
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. 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
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
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.
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, 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, 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,
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 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 another focus, preferably That least engaging of exotic steel, Which in the distance, on the dictionary, Shone, I conceived, with something of the fire That lived in Avon's eye. At other times There might be cold things 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— 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.
"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, 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
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 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. 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; 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, 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 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, 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 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— 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 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 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 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 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 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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— 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 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 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
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— 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 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 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 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, 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 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—if I make you see it— 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, 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— 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 cleasing agent in them To dim the picture. I still see him going 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 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 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
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 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 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,
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, 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 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. 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, 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, 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 For one confessed remorse. Avon, I knew, Had driven the wheels too fast, but 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 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. 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, "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 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, 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. 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, I waited. There was nothing else to do But wait, and to remember that his tale, Though nearly done, as I divined it was, Yet hovered among shadows and regrets Of twenty years ago. When he began 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 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 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. 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 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, 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, 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 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,' 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; 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. 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 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 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 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 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, 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— 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, 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,
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 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— 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, 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 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 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 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 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; And I remember that I had a drink, Having assuredly no need of it. 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 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, "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 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 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, 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 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 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, 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, 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. '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 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 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 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 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 Might all see that at last I was afraid; And I might hear them without seeing them, Hearing 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. 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 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, 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; 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; 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
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 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, 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. 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, 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 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 the while we heard, As we had heard before, the ghost of steps 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. "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 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 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
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, 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 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, 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 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— 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, 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. 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, 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 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, 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 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, 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, 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— As one may gaze in sorrow on a shell, Or a small apple. So it had come, I thought; And heard, no more with any wonderment, The faint recurring footsteps of his wife, Who, knowing less than I knew, yet knew more. 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 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, 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, 'that will be a difference here. Therefore it may as well be done outside.’ 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,’
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. 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 Along the floor to the bed where I lay, And waited. I had waited for so long 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 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 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 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 With nature. That's about the whole of it,
Except the thing there on the dictionary. They found it on me with the point of it Touching my throat. I had not moved since then; And it was not for some uncertain hours 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, And with it there may come another message— Although I cannot see the need of it. You may as well take that thing home with you, And so be sure that I'm not using it. They may arrest you, but good night!—and thank you." He smiled, but I would rather he had not.
I wished that Avon's wife would go to sleep, 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, The rest of it which I had taken away 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 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, 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 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— 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 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 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 Of science, I should say it was the devil. I don't believe it was another woman, And surely it was not another man."
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