Chapter 2

Trace, he calls the witnesses
The father first of Elenor Murray, who
Tells Merival this story:

HENRY MURRAY

Henry Murray, father of Elenor Murray,
Willing to tell the coroner Merival
All things about himself, about his wife,
All things as well about his daughter, touching
Her growth, and home life, if the coroner
Would hear him privately, save on such things
Strictly relating to the inquest, went
To Coroner Merival's office and thus spoke:
I was born here some sixty years ago,
Was nurtured in these common schools, too poor
To satisfy a longing for a college.
Felt myself gifted with some gifts of mind,
Some fineness of perception, thought, began
By twenty years to gather books and read
Some history, philosophy and science.
Had vague ambitions, analyzed perhaps,
To learn, be wise.

Now if you study me,
Look at my face, you'll see some trace of her:
My brow is hers, my mouth is hers, my eyes
Of lighter color are yet hers, this way
I have of laughing, as I saw inside
The matter deeper cause for laughter, hers.
And my jaw hers betokening a will,
Hers too, with chin that mitigates the will,
Shading to softness as hers did.

Our minds
Had something too in common: first this will
Which tempted fate to bend it, break it too--
I know not why in her case or in mine.
But when my will is bent I grow morose,
And when it's broken, I become a scourge
To all around me. Yes, I've visited
A life-time's wrath upon my wife. This daughter
When finding will subdued did not give up,
But took the will for something else--went on
By ways more prosperous; but alas! poor me!
I hold on when defeated, and lie down
When I am beaten, growling, ruminate
Upon my failure, think of nothing else.
But truth to tell, while we two were opposed,
This daughter and myself, while temperaments
Kept us at sword's points, while I saw in her
Traits of myself I liked not, also traits
Of the child's mother which I loathe, because
They have undone me, helped at least--no less
I see this child as better than myself,
And better than her mother, so admire.
Also I never trusted her; as a child
She would rush in relating lying wonders;
She feigned emotions, purposes and moods;
She was a little actress from the first,
And all her high resolves from first to last
Seemed but a robe with flowing sleeves in which
Her hands could hide some theft, some secret spoil.
When she was fourteen I could see in her
The passionate nature of her mother--well
You know a father's feelings when he sees
His daughter sensed by youths and lusty men
As one of the kind for capture. It's a theme
A father cannot talk of with his daughter.
He may say, "have a care," or "I forbid
Your strolling, riding with these boys at night."
But if the daughter stands and eyes the father,
As she did me with flaming eyes, then goes
Her way in secret, lies about her ways,
The father can but wonder, watch or brood,
Or switch her maybe, for I switched her once,
And found it did no good. I needed here
The mother's aid, but no, her mother saw
Herself in the girl, and said she knew the girl,
That I was too suspicious, out of touch
With a young girl's life, desire for happiness.
But when this Alma Bell affair came up,
And the school principal took pains to say
My daughter was too reckless of her name
In strolling and in riding, then my wife
Howled at me like a tigress: whip that man!
And as my daughter cried, and my wife screeched,
And called me coward if I let him go,
I rushed out to the street and finding him
Beat up his face, though almost dropping dead
From my exertion. Well, the aftermath
Was worse for me, not only by the talk,
But in my mind who saw no gratitude
In daughter or in mother for my deed.
The daughter from that day took up a course
More secret from my eyes, more variant
From any wish I had. We stood apart,
And grew apart thereafter. And from that day
My wife grew worse in temper, worse in nerves.
And though the people say she is my slave,
That I alone, of all who live, have conquered
Her spirit, still what despotism works
Free of reprisals, or of breakings-forth
When hands are here, not there?

But to return:
One takes up something for a livelihood,
And dreams he'll leave it later, when in time
His plans mature; and as he earns and lives,
With some time for his plans, hopes for the day
When he may step forth from his olden life
Into a new life made thus gradually,
I hoped to be a lawyer; but to live
I started as a drug clerk--look to-day
I own that little drug store--here I am
With drugs my years through, drugged myself at last.
And as a clerk I met my wife--went mad
About her, and I see in Elenor
Her mother's gift for making fools of men.
Why, I can scarce explain it, it's the flesh,
But then it's spirit too. Such flaming up
As came from flames like ours, but more of hers
Burned in the children. Yes, it might be well
For theorists in heredity to think
About the matter.

Well, but how about
The flames that make the children? For this woman
Too surely ruined me and sapped my life.
You hear much of the vampire, but what wife
Has not more chance for eating up a man?
She has him daily, has him fast for years.

A man can shake a vampire off, but how
To shake a wife off, when the children come,
And you must leave your place, your livelihood
To shake her off? And if you shake her off
Where do you go? what do you do? and how?
You see 'twas love that caught me, yet even so
I had resisted love had I not seen
A chance to rise through marriage. It was this:
You know, of course, my wife was Elenor Fouche,
Daughter of Arthur, thought to be so rich.
And I had hopes to patch my fortunes up
In this alliance, and become a lawyer.
What happened? Why they helped me not at all.
The children came, and I was chained to work,
To clothe and feed a family--all the while
My soul combusted with this aspiration,
And my good nature went to ashes, dampened
By secret tears which filtered through as lye.
Then finally, when my wife's father died,
After our marriage, twenty years or so,
His fortune came to nothing, all she got
Went to that little house we live in here--
It needs paint now, the porch has rotten boards--
And I was forced to see these children learn
What public schools could teach, and even as I
Left school half taught, and never went to college,
So did these children, saving Elenor,
Who saw two years of college--earned herself
By teaching. I choke up, just wait a minute!
What depths of calmness may a man come to
As father, who can think of this and be
Quiet about his heart? His heart will hurt,
Move, as it were, as a worm does with its pain.
And these days now, when trembling hands and head
Foretell decline, or worse, and make me think
As face to face with God, most earnestly,
Most eager for the truth, I wonder much
If I misjudged this daughter, canvass her
Myself to see if I had power to do
A better part by her. That is the way
This daughter has got in my soul. At first
She incubates in me as force unknown,
A spirit strange yet kindred, in my life;
And we are hostile and yet drawn together;
But when we're drawn together see and feel
These oppositions. Next she's in my life--
The second stage of the fever--as dislike,
Repugnance, and I wish her out of sight,
Out of my life. Then comes these ugly things,
Like Alma Bell, and rumors from away
Where she is teaching, and I put her out
Of life and thought the more, and wonder why
I fathered such a nature, whence it came.
Well, then the fever goes and I am weak,
Repentant it may be, delirious visions
That haunted me in fever plague me yet,
Even while I think them visions, nothing else.
So I grow pitiful and blame myself
For any part I had in her mistakes,
Sorrows and struggles, and I curse myself
That I was powerless to help her more--
Thus is she like a fever in my life.

Well, then the child grows up. But as a child
She dances, laughs and sings. At three years springs
For minutes and for minutes on her toes,
Like skipping rope, clapping her hands the while,
Her blue eyes twinkling, and her milk-white teeth
Glistening as she gurgled, shouted, laughed--
There never was such vital strength. I give
The pictures as my memory took them. Next
I see her looking side-ways at me, as if
She studied me, avoided me. The child
Is now ten years of age; and now I know
She smelled the rats that made the family hearth
A place for scampering; the horrors of our home.
She thought I brought the rats and kept them there,
These rats of bickering, anger, strife at home.
I knew she blamed me for her mother's moods
Who dragged about the kitchen day by day,
Sad faced and silent. So the upshot was
I had two enemies in the house, where once
I had but one, her mother. This made worse
The state for both, and worse the state for me.
And so it goes. Then next there's Alma Bell.
The following year my daughter finished up
The High School--and we sit--my wife and I
To see the exercises. And that summer Elenor,
Now eighteen and a woman, goes about--
I don't know what she does, sometimes I see
Some young man with her walking. But at home,
When I come in, the mother and the daughter
Put pedals on their talk, or change the theme--
I am shut out.

And in the fall I learn
From some outsider that she's teaching school,
And later people laugh and talk to me
About her feat of cowing certain Czechs,
Who broke her discipline in school.

Well, then
Two years go on that have no memory,
Just like sick days in bed when you lie there
And wake and sleep and wait. But finally
Her mother says: "To-night our Elenor
Leaves for Los Angeles." And then the mother,
To hide a sob, coughs nervously and leaves
The room where I am, for the kitchen--I
Sit with the evening paper, let it fall,
Then hold it up to read again and try
To say to self, "All right, what if she goes?"
The evening meal goes hard, for Elenor
Shines forth in kindness for me, talks and laughs--
I choke again.... She says to me if God
Had meant her for a better youth, then God
Had given her a better youth; she thanks me
For making High School possible to her,
And says all will be well--she will earn money
To go to college, that she will gain strength
By helping self--Just think, my friend, to hear
Such words, which in their kindness proved my failure,
When I had hoped, aspired, when I had given
My very soul, whether I liked this daughter,
Or liked her not, out of a generous hand,
Large hearted in its carelessness to give
A daughter of such mind a place in life,
And schooling for the place.

The meal was over.
We stood there silent; then her face grew wet
With tears, as wet as blossoms soaked with rain.
She took my hand and took her mother's hand,
And put our hands together--then she said:
"Be friends, be friends," and hurried from the room,
Her mother following. I stepped out-doors,
And stood what seemed a minute, entered again,
Walked to the front room, from the window saw
Elenor and her mother in the street.
The girl was gone! How could I follow them?
They had not asked me. So I stood and saw
The canvas telescope her mother carried.
They disappeared. I went back to my store,
Came back at nine o'clock, lighted a match
And saw my wife in bed, cloths on her eyes.
She turned her face to the wall, and didn't speak.

Next morning at the breakfast table she,
Complaining of a stiff arm, said: "that satchel
Was weighted down with books, my arm is stiff--
Elenor took French books to study French.
When she can pay a teacher, she will learn
How to pronounce the words, but by herself
She'll learn the grammar, how to read." She knew
How words like that would hurt!

I merely said:
"A happy home is better than knowing French,"
And went off to my store.

But coroner,
Search for the men in her life. When she came
Back from the West after three years, I knew
By look of her eyes that some one filled her life,
Had taken her life and body. What if I
Had failed as father in the way I failed?
And what if our home was not home to her?
She could have married--why not? If a girl
Can fascinate the men--I know she could--
She can have marriage, if she wants to marry.
Unless she runs to men already married,
And if she does so, don't you make her out
As loose and bad?

Well, what is more to tell?
She learned French, seemed to know the ways of the world,
Knew books, knew how to dress, gave evidence
Of contact with refinements; letters came
When she was here at intervals inscribed
In writing of elite ones, gifted maybe.
And she was filial and kind to me,
Most kind toward her mother, gave us things
At Christmas time. But still her way was such
That I as well had been familiar with her
As with some formal lady visiting.
She came back here before she went to France,
Staid two days with us. Once upon the porch
She turned to me and said: "I wish to honor
Mother and you by serving in the war.
You must rejoice that I can serve--you must!
But most I wish to honor America,
This land of promise, of fulfillment, too,
Which proves to all the world that men and women
Are born alike of God, at least that riches
And classes formed in pride have neither hearts,
Nor minds above the souls of those who work.
This land that reared me is my dearest love,
I go to serve the country."

Pardon me!
A man of my age in an hour like this
Must cry a little--wait till I can say
The last words that she said to me.

She put
Her arms about me, then she said to me:
"I am so glad my life and place in life
Were such that I was forced to rise or sink,
To strive or fail. God has been good to me,
Who gifted me with spirit to aspire."
I go back to my store now. In these days,
Last days, of course, I try to be a husband,
Try to be kinder to the mother of Elenor.
Death is not far off, and that makes us think.
We may be over soft or penitent;
Forgive where we should hate still, being soft;
And fade off from the wrongs, we brooded on;
And cease to care life has been badly lived,
From first to last. But none the less our vision
Seems clearer as we end this trivial life.
And so I try to be a kinder husband
To Elenor's mother.

So spoke Henry Murray
To Merival; a stenographer took down
His words, and they were written out and shown
The jury. Afterward the mother came
And told her story to the coroner,
Also reported, written out, and shown
The jury. But it happened thus with her:
She waited in the coroner's outer room
Until her husband told his story, then
With eyes upon the floor, passing her husband,
The two in silence passing, as he left
The coroner's office, spoke amid her sighs,
Her breath long drawn at intervals, looking down
The while she spoke:

MRS. MURRAY

I think, she said at first,
My daughter did not kill herself. I'm sure
Someone did violence to her, your tests,
Examination will prove violence.
It would be like her fate to meet with such:
Poor child, unfortunate from birth, at least
Unfortunate in fortune, peace and joy.
Or else if she met with no violence,
Some sudden crisis of her woman's heart
Came on her by the river, the result
Of strains and labors in the war in France.
I'll tell you why I say this: First I knew
She had come near me from New York, there came
A letter from her, saying she had come
To visit with her aunt there near LeRoy,
And rest and get the country air. She said
To keep it secret, not to tell her father;
That she was in no frame of mind to come
And be with us, and see her father, see
Our life, which is the same as it was when
She was a child and after. But she said
To come to her. And so the day before
They found her by the river I went over
And saw her for the day. She seemed most gay,
Gave me the presents which she brought from France,
Told me of many things, but rather more
By way of half told things than something told
Continuously, you know. She had grown fairer,
She had a majesty of countenance,
A luminous glory shone about her face,
Her voice was softer, eyes looked tenderer.
She held my hands so lovingly when we met.
She kissed me with such silent, speaking love.
But then she laughed and told me funny stories.
She seemed all hope, and said she'd rest awhile
Before she made a plan for life again.
And when we parted, she said: "Mother, think
What trip you'd like to take. I've saved some money,
And you must have a trip, a rest, construct
Yourself anew for life." So, as I said,
She came to death by violence, or else
She had some weakness that she hid from me
Which came upon her quickly.

For the rest,
Suppose I told you all my life, and told
What was my waste in life and what in hers,
How I have lived, and how poor Elenor
Was raised or half-raised--what's the good of that?
Are not there rooms of books, of tales and poems
And histories to show all secrets of life?
Does anyone live now, or learn a thing
Not lived and learned a thousand times before?
The trouble is these secrets are locked up
In books and might as well be locked in graves,
Since they mean nothing till you live yourself.
And I suppose the race will live and suffer
As long as leaves put forth in spring, live over
The very sorrows, horrors that we live.
Wisdom is here, but how to learn that wisdom,
And use it while life's worth the living, that's
The thing to be desired. But let it go.
If any soul can profit by my life,
Or by my Elenor's, I trust he may,
And help him to it.

Coroner Merival,
Even the children in this neighborhood
Know something of my husband and of me,
Our struggle and unhappiness, even the children
Hear Alma Bell's name mentioned with a look.
And if you went about here to inquire
About my Elenor, you'd find them saying
She was a wonder girl, or this or that.
But then you'd feel a closing up of speech,
As if a door closed softly, just a way
To indicate that something else was there,
Somewhere in the person's room of thoughts.
This is the truth, since I was told a man
Came here to ask about her, when she asked
To serve in France, the matter of Alma Bell
Traced down and probed.

It being true, therefore,
That you and all the rest know of my life,
Our life at home, it matters nothing then
That I go on and tell you what I think
Made sorrow for us, what our waste was, tell you
How the yarn knotted as we took the skein
And wound it to a ball, and made the ball
So hardly knotted that the yarn held fast
Would not unwind for knitting.

Well, you know
My father Arthur Fouche, my mother too.
They reared me with the greatest care. You know
They sent me to St. Mary's, where I learned
Fine things, to be a lady--learned to dance,
To play on the piano, sing a little;
Learned French, Italian, learned to know good books,
The beauty of a poem or a tale;
Learned elegance of manners, how to walk,
Stand, breathe, keep well, be radiant and strong,
And so in all to make life beautiful,
Become the helpful wife of some strong man,
The mother of fine children. Well, at school
We girls were guarded from the men, and so
We went to town surrounded by our teachers,
And only saw the boys when some girl's brother
Came to the school to visit, perhaps a girl
Consent had of her parents to receive
A beau sometimes. But then I had no beau;
And had I had my father would have kept him
Away from me at school.

For truth to tell
When I had finished school, came back to home
They kept the men away, there was no man
Quite good enough to call. Now here begins
My fate, as you will see; their very care
To make me what they wished, to have my life
Grow safely, prosperously, was my undoing.
I had a sister named Corinne who suffered
Because of that; my father guarded me
Against all strolling lovers, unknown men.
But here was Henry Murray, whom they knew,
And trusted too; and though they never dreamed
I'd marry him, they trusted him to call.
He seemed a quiet, diligent young man,
Aspiring in the world. And so they thought
They'd solve my loneliness and restless spirits
By opening the door to him. My fate!
They let him call upon me twice a month.
He was in love with me before this started,
That's why he tried to call. But as for me,
He was a man, that's all, a being only
In the world to talk to, help my loneliness.
I had no love for him, no more than I
Had love for father's tenant on the farm.
And what I knew of marriage, what it means
Was what a child knows. If you'll credit me
I thought a man and woman slept together,
Lay side by side, and somehow, I don't know,
That children came.

But then I was so vital,
Rebellious, hungering for freedom, that
No chance was too indifferent to put by
What offered freedom from the prison home,
The watchfulness of father and of mother,
The rigor of my discipline. And in truth
No other man came by, no prospect showed
Of going on a visit, finding life
Some other place. And so it came about,
After I knew this man two months, one night
I made a rope of sheets, down from my window
Descended to his arms, eloped in short,
And married Henry Murray, and found out
What marriage is, believe me. Well, I think
The time will come when marriage will be known
Before the parties tie themselves for life.
How do you know a man, or know a woman
Until the flesh instructs you? Do you know
A man until you see him face to face?
Or know what texture is his hand until
You touch his hand? Well, lastly no one knows
Whether a man is mate for you before
You mate with him. I hope to see the day
When men and women, to try out their souls
Will live together, learning A. B. C.'s
Of life before they write their fates for life.

Our story started then. To sate their rage
My father and my mother cut me off,
And so we had bread problems from the first.
He made but little clerking in the store,
Besides his mind was on the law and books.
These were the early tangles of our yarn.
And I grew worried as the children came,
Two sons at first, and I was far from well,
One died at five years, and I almost died
For grief at this. But down below all things,
Far down below all tune or scheme of sound,
Where no rests were, but only ceaseless dirge,
Was my heart's _de profundis_, crying out
My thirst for love, not thirst for his, but thirst
For love that quenched it. But the only water
That passed my lips was desert water, poisoned
By arsenic from his rocks. My soul grew bitter,
Then sweetened under the cross, grew bitter again.
My life lay raving on the desert sands.
To speak more plainly, sleep deserted me.
I could not sleep for thought, and for a will
That could not bend, but hoped that death or something
Would take him from me, bring me love before
My face was withered, as it is to-day.
At last the doctor found me growing mad
For lack of sleep. Why was I so, he asked.
You must give up this psychic work and quit
This psychic writing, let the spirits go.
Well, it was true that years before I found
I heard and saw with higher power, received
Deep messages from spirits, from my boy
Who passed away. And as to this, who knows?--
Surely no doctor--of this psychic power.
You may be called neurotic, what is that?
Perhaps it is the soul become so fine
It leaves the body, or shakes down the body
With energy too subtle for the body.
But I was sleepless for these years, at last
The secret lost of sleep, for seven days
And seven nights could find no sleep, until
I lay upon the lawn and pushed my head,
As a dog does around, around, around.
There was a devil in me, at one with me,
And neither to be put out, nor yet subdued
By help outside, and nothing to be done
Except to find escape by knife, or pistol,
And thus get sleep. Escape! Oh, that's the word!
There's something in the soul that says escape!
Fly, fly from something, and in truth, my friend,
Life's restlessness, however healthful it be,
Is motived by this urge to fly, escape:
Well, to go on, they gave me everything,
At last they gave me chloral, but no sleep!
And finally I closed my eyes and quick
The secret came to me, as one might find,
After forgetting how, to swim, or walk,
After a sickness, and for just two minutes
I slept, and then I got the secret back,
And later slept.

So I possessed myself.
But for these years sleep but two hours or so.
Why do I wake? The spirits let me sleep.
Oh, no it is my longing that will rest not,
These thoughts of him that rest not, and this love
That never has been satisfied, this heart
So empty all these years; the bitterness
Of living face to face with one you loathe,
Yet pity, while you hate yourself for feeling
Such bitterness toward another soul,
As wretched as your own. But then as well
I could not sleep for Elenor, for her fate,
Never to have a chance in life. I saw
Our poverty made surer; year by year
Slip by with chances slipping.

Oh, that child!
When I first felt her lips that sucked my breasts
My heart went muffled like a bird that tries
To pour its whole song in one note and fails
Out of its very ecstasy. A daughter,
A little daughter at my breast, a soul
Of a woman to be! I knew her spirit then,
Felt all my love and longing in her lips,
Felt all my passion, purity of desire
In those sweet lips that sucked my breasts. Oh, rapture,
Oh highest rapture God had given me
To see her roll upon my arm and smile,
Full fed, the milk that gurgled from her lips!
Such blue eyes--oh, my child! My child! my child!
I have no hope now of this life--no hope
Except to take you to my breast again.
God will be good and give you to me, or
God will bring sleep to me, a sleep so still
I shall not miss you, Elenor.

I go on.
I see her when she first began to walk.
She ran at first, just like a baby quail.
She never walked. She danced into this life.
She used to dance for minutes on her toes.
My starved heart bore her vital in some way.
My hope which would not die had made her gay,
And unafraid and venturesome and hopeful.
She did not know what sadness was, or fear,
Or anything but laughter, play and fun.
Not till she grew to ten years and could see
The place in life that God had given her
Between my life and his; and then I saw
A thoughtfulness come over her, as a cloud
Passes across the sun, and makes one place
A shadow while the landscape lies in light:
So quietness would come over her, with smiles
Around her quietness and sunniest laughter
Fast following on her quietness.