第24章 SATIRES OF CIRCUMSTANCES IN FIFTEEN GLIMPSES(2)

And lightly still she laughs to him, As if to sell were a mere gay whim, And that, to be frank, Life were indeed To her not vinegar and gall, But fresh and honey-like; and Need No household skeleton at all.

IX--AT THE ALTAR-RAIL

"My bride is not coming, alas!" says the groom, And the telegram shakes in his hand. "I own It was hurried! We met at a dancing-room When I went to the Cattle-Show alone, And then, next night, where the Fountain leaps, And the Street of the Quarter-Circle sweeps.

"Ay, she won me to ask her to be my wife -

'Twas foolish perhaps!--to forsake the ways Of the flaring town for a farmer's life.

She agreed. And we fixed it. Now she says:

'It's sweet of you, dear, to prepare me a nest, But a swift, short, gay life suits me best.

What I really am you have never gleaned;

I had eaten the apple ere you were weaned.'"

X--IN THE NUPTIAL CHAMBER

"O that mastering tune?" And up in the bed Like a lace-robed phantom springs the bride;

"And why?" asks the man she had that day wed, With a start, as the band plays on outside.

"It's the townsfolks' cheery compliment Because of our marriage, my Innocent."

"O but you don't know! 'Tis the passionate air To which my old Love waltzed with me, And I swore as we spun that none should share My home, my kisses, till death, save he!

And he dominates me and thrills me through, And it's he I embrace while embracing you!"

XI--IN THE RESTAURANT

"But hear. If you stay, and the child be born, It will pass as your husband's with the rest, While, if we fly, the teeth of scorn Will be gleaming at us from east to west;

And the child will come as a life despised;

I feel an elopement is ill-advised!"

"O you realize not what it is, my dear, To a woman! Daily and hourly alarms Lest the truth should out. How can I stay here, And nightly take him into my arms!

Come to the child no name or fame, Let us go, and face it, and bear the shame."

XII--AT THE DRAPER'S

"I stood at the back of the shop, my dear, But you did not perceive me.

Well, when they deliver what you were shown _I_ shall know nothing of it, believe me!"

And he coughed and coughed as she paled and said, "O, I didn't see you come in there -

Why couldn't you speak?"--"Well, I didn't. I left That you should not notice I'd been there.

"You were viewing some lovely things. 'Soon required For a widow, of latest fashion';

And I knew 'twould upset you to meet the man Who had to be cold and ashen "And screwed in a box before they could dress you 'In the last new note in mourning,'

As they defined it. So, not to distress you, I left you to your adorning."

XIII--ON THE DEATH-BED

"I'll tell--being past all praying for -

Then promptly die . . . He was out at the war, And got some scent of the intimacy That was under way between her and me;

And he stole back home, and appeared like a ghost One night, at the very time almost That I reached her house. Well, I shot him dead, And secretly buried him. Nothing was said.

"The news of the battle came next day;

He was scheduled missing. I hurried away, Got out there, visited the field, And sent home word that a search revealed He was one of the slain; though, lying alone And stript, his body had not been known.

"But she suspected. I lost her love, Yea, my hope of earth, and of Heaven above;

And my time's now come, and I'll pay the score, Though it be burning for evermore."

XIV--OVER THE COFFIN

They stand confronting, the coffin between, His wife of old, and his wife of late, And the dead man whose they both had been Seems listening aloof, as to things past date.

--"I have called," says the first. "Do you marvel or not?"

"In truth," says the second, "I do--somewhat."

"Well, there was a word to be said by me! . . .

I divorced that man because of you -

It seemed I must do it, boundenly;

But now I am older, and tell you true, For life is little, and dead lies he;

I would I had let alone you two!

And both of us, scorning parochial ways, Had lived like the wives in the patriarchs' days."

XV--IN THE MOONLIGHT

"O lonely workman, standing there In a dream, why do you stare and stare At her grave, as no other grave there were?

"If your great gaunt eyes so importune Her soul by the shine of this corpse-cold moon, Maybe you'll raise her phantom soon!"

"Why, fool, it is what I would rather see Than all the living folk there be;

But alas, there is no such joy for me!"

"Ah--she was one you loved, no doubt, Through good and evil, through rain and drought, And when she passed, all your sun went out?"

"Nay: she was the woman I did not love, Whom all the others were ranked above, Whom during her life I thought nothing of."