Children of the Night






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 love 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! . . .

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