MIRIAM FAY’S LETTER

Elenor Murray asked to go in training
And came to see me, but the school was full,
We could not take her. Then she asked to stand
Upon a list and wait, I put her off.
She came back, and she came back, till at last
I took her application; then she came
And pushed herself and asked when she could come,
And start to train. At last I laughed and said:
“Well, come to-morrow.” I had never seen
Such eagerness, persistence. So she came.
She tried to make a friend of me, perhaps
Since it was best, I being in command.
But anyway she wooed me, tried to please me.
And spite of everything I grew to love her,
Though I distrusted her. But yet again
I had belief in her best self, though doubting
The girl somehow. But when I learned the girl
Had never had religious discipline,
Her father without faith, her mother too,
Her want of moral sense, I understood.
She lacked stability of spirit, to-day
She would be one thing, something else the next.
Shot up in fire, which failed and died away
And I began to see her fraternize
With girls who had her traits, too full of life
To be what they should be, unstable too,
Much like herself.
Not long before she came
Into the training school, six months, perhaps,
She had some tragedy, I don’t know what,
Had been quite ill in body and in mind.
When she went into training I could see
Her purpose to wear down herself, forget
In weariness of body, something lived.
She was alert and dutiful and sunny,
Kept all the rules, was studious, led the class,
Excelled, I think, in studies of the nerves,
The mind grown sick.
As we grew better friends,
More intimate, she talked about religion,
And sacred subjects, asked about the church.
I gave her books to read, encouraged her,
Asked her to make her peace with God, and set
Her feet in pious paths. At last she said
She wished to be baptized, confirmed. I made
The plans for her, she was baptized, confirmed,
Went to confessional, and seemed renewed
In spirit by conversion. For at once
Her zeal was like a flame at Pentecost,
She almost took the veil, but missing that,
She followed out the discipline to the letter,
Kept all the feast days, went to mass, communion,
Did works of charity; indeed, I think
She spent her spare hours all in all at sewing
There with the sisters for the poor. She had,
When she came to me, jewelry of value,
A diamond solitaire, some other things.
I missed them, and she said she sold them, gave
The money to a home for friendless children.
And I remember when she said her father
Had wronged, misvalued her; but now her love,
Made more abundant by the love of Christ,
Had brought her to forgiveness. All her mood
Was of humility and sacrifice.

One time I saw her at the convent, sitting
Upon a foot-stool at the gracious feet
Of the Mother Superior, sewing for the poor;
Hair parted in the middle, curls combed out.
Then was it that I missed her jewelry.
She looked just like a poor maid, humble, patient,
Head bent above her sewing, eyes averted.
The room was silent with religious thought.
I loved her then and pitied her. But now
I think she had that in her which at times
Made her a flagellant, at other times
A rioter. She used the church to drag
Her life from something, took it for a bladder
To float her soul when it was perilled. First,
She did not sell her jewelry; this ring,
Too brilliant for forgetting, or to pass
Unnoticed when she wore it, showed again
Upon her finger after she had come
Out of her training, was a graduate.
She had a faculty for getting in
Where elegance and riches were. She went
Among the great ones, when she found a way,
And traveled with them where she learned the life
Of notables, aristocrats. It was there,
Or when from duty free and feasting, gadding
The ring showed on her finger.
In two years
She dropped the church. New friends made in the school,
New interests, work that took her energies
And this religious flare had cured her up
Of what was killing her when first I knew her.
There was another thing that drew her back
To flesh, away from spirit: She saw bodies,
And handled bodies as a nurse, forgot
The body is the spirit’s temple, fell
To some materialism of thought. And now
Avoided me, was much away, of course,
On duty here and there. I tried to hold her,
Protect and guide her, wrote to her at times
To make confession, take communion. She
Ignored these letters. But I heard her say
The body was as natural as the soul,
And just as natural its desires. She kept
Out of the wreck of faith one thing alone,
If she kept that: She could endure to hear
God’s name profaned, but would not stand to hear
The Savior’s spoken in irreverence.
She was afraid, no doubt. Or to be just,
The tender love of Christ, his sacrifice,
Perhaps had won her wholly—let it go,
I’ll say that much for her.
Why am I harsh?
Because I saw the good in her all streaked
With so much evil, evil known and lived
In knowledge of it, clung to none the less,
Unstable as water, how could she succeed?
Untruthful, how could confidence be hers?
I sometimes think she joined the church to mask
A secret life, renewed forgiven sins.
After she cloaked herself with piety.
Perhaps, at least, when she saw what to do,
And how to do it, using these detours
Of piety to throw us off, who else
Had seen what doors she entered, whence she came.
She wronged the church, I think, made it a screen
To stand behind for kisses, to look from
Inviting kisses. Then, as I have said,
She took materialism from her work,
And so renewed her sins. She drank, I think,
And smoked and feasted; but as for the rest,
The smoke obscured the flame, but there is flame
Or fire at least where there is smoke.
You ask
What took her to the war? Why only this:
Adventure, chance of marriage, amorous conquests—
The girl was mad for men, although I saw
Her smoke obscured the flame, I never saw her
Except with robins far too tame or lame
To interest her, and robins prove to me
The hawk is somewhere, waits for night to join
His playmate when the robins are at rest.
You see the girl has madness in her, flies
From exaltation up to ecstasy.
Feeds on emotion, never has enough.
Tries all things, states of spirit, even beliefs.
Passes from lust (I think) to celibacy,
Feasts, fasts, eats, starves, has raptures then inflicts
The whip upon her back, is penitent,
Then proud, is humble, then is arrogant,
Looks down demurely, stares you out of face,
But runs the world around. For in point of fact,
She traveled much, knew cities and their ways;
And when I used to see her at the convent
So meek, clothed like a sewing maid, at once
The pictures that she showed me of herself
At seaside places or on boulevards,
Her beauty clothed in linen or in silk,
Came back to mind, and I would resurrect
The fragments of our talks in which I saw
How she knew foods and drinks and restaurants,
And fashionable shops. This girl could fool the elect—
She fooled me for a time. I found her out.
Did she aspire? Perhaps, if you believe
It’s aspiration to seek out the rich,
And ape them. Not for me. Of course she went
To get adventure in the war, perhaps
She got too much. But as to waste of life,
She might have been a quiet, noble woman
Keeping her place in life, not trying to rise
Out of her class—too useless—in her class
Making herself all worthy, serviceable.
You’ll find ’twas pride that slew her. Very like
She found a rich man, tried to hold him, lost
Her honor and her life in consequence.
————
When Merival showed this letter to the jury,
Marion the juryman spoke up:
“You know that type of woman—saintly hag!
I wouldn’t take her word about a thing
By way of inference, or analysis.
They had some trouble, she and Elenor
You may be sure.” And Merival replied:
“Take it for what it’s worth. I leave you now
To see the man who owns the Daily Times.
He’s turned upon our inquest, did you see
The jab he gives me? I can jab as well.”
So Merival went out and took with him
A riffle in the waters of circumstance
Set up by Elenor Murray’s death to one
Remote, secure in greatness—to the man
Who ran the Times.

ARCHIBALD LOWELL

Archibald Lowell, owner of the Times
Lived six months of the year at Sunnyside,
His Gothic castle near LeRoy, so named
Because no sun was in him, it may be.
His wife was much away when on this earth
At cures, in travel, fighting psychic ills,
Approaching madness, dying nerves. They said
Her heart was starved for living with a man
So cold and silent. Thirty years she lived
Bound to this man, in restless agony,
And as she could not free her life from his,
Nor keep it living with him, on a day
She stuck a gas hose in her mouth and drank
Her lungs full of the lethal stuff and died.
That was the very day the hunter found
Elenor Murray’s body near the river.
A servant saw this Mrs. Lowell lying
A copy of the Times clutched in her hand,
Which published that a slip of paper found
In Elenor Murray’s pocket had these words
“To be brave and not to flinch.” And was she brave,
And nerved to end it by these words of Elenor?
But Archibald, the husband, could not bear
To have the death by suicide made known.
He laid the body out, as if his wife
Had gone to bed as usual, turned a jet
And left it, just as if his wife had failed
To fully turn it, then went in the room;
Then called the servants, did not know that one
Had seen her with the Times clutched in her hand.
He thought the matter hidden. Merival,
All occupied with Elenor Murray’s death
Gave to a deputy the Lowell inquest.
But later what this servant saw was told
To Merival.
And now no more alone
Than when his wife lived, Lowell passed the days
At Sunnyside, as he had done for years.
He sat alone, and paced the rooms alone,
With hands behind him clasped, in fear and wonder
Of life and what life is. He rode about,
And viewed his blooded cattle on the hills.
But what were all these rooms and acres to him
With no face near him but the servants, gardeners?
Sometimes he wished he had a child to draw
Upon his fabulous income, growing more
Since all his life was centered in the Times
To swell its revenues, and in the process
His spirit was more fully in the Times
Than in his body. There were eyes who saw
How deftly was his spirit woven in it
Until it was a scarf to bind and choke
The public throat, or stifle honest thought
Like a soft pillow offered for the head,
But used to smother. There were eyes who saw
The working of its ways emasculate,
Its tones of gray, where flame had been the thing,
Its timorous steps, while spying on the public,
To learn the public’s thought. Its cautious pauses,
With foot uplifted, ears pricked up to hear
A step fall, twig break. Platitudes in progress—
With sugar coat of righteousness and order,
Respectability.
Did the public make it?
Or did it make the public, that it fitted
With such exactness in the communal life?
Some thousands thought it fair—what should they think
When it played neutral in the matter of news
To both sides of the question, though at last
It turned the judge, and chose the better side,
Determined from the first, a secret plan,
And cunning way to turn the public scale?
Some thousands liked the kind of news it printed
Where no sensation flourished—smallest type
That fixed attention for the staring eyes
Needed for type so small. But others knew
It led the people by its fair pretensions,
And used them in the end. In any case
This editor played hand-ball in this way:
The advertisers tossed the ball, the readers
Caught it and tossed it to the advertisers:
And as the readers multiplied, the columns
Of advertising grew, and Lowell’s thought
Was how to play the one against the other,
And fill his purse.
It was an ingrown mind,
And growing more ingrown with time. Afraid
Of crowds and streets, uncomfortable in clubs,
No warmth in hands to touch his fellows’ hands,
Keeping aloof from politicians, loathing
The human alderman who bails the thief;
The little scamp who pares a little profit,
And grafts upon a branch that takes no harm.
He loved the active spirit, if it worked,
And feared the active spirit, if it played.
This Lowell hid himself from favor seekers,
Such letters filtered to him through a sieve
Of secretaries. If he had a friend,
Who was a mind to him as well, perhaps
It was a certain lawyer, but who knew?
And cursed with monophobia, none the less
This Lowell lived alone there near LeRoy,
Surrounded by his servants, at his desk
A secretary named McGill, who took
Such letters, editorials as he spoke.
His life was nearly waste. A peanut stand
Should be as much remembered as the Times,
When fifty years are passed.
And every month
The circulation manager came down
To tell the great man of the gain or loss
The paper made that month in circulation,
In advertising, chiefly. Lowell took
The audit sheets and studied them, and gave
Steel bullet words of order this or that.
He took the dividends, and put them—where?
God knew alone.
He went to church sometimes,
On certain Sundays, for a pious mother
Had reared him so, and sat there like a corpse,
A desiccated soul, so dry the moss
Upon his teeth was dry.
And on a day,
His wife now in the earth a week or so,
Himself not well, the doctor there to quiet
His fears of sudden death, pains in the chest,
His manager had come—was made to wait
Until the doctor finished—brought the sheets
Which showed the advertising, circulation.
And Lowell studied them and said at last:
“That new reporter makes the Murray inquest
A thing of interest, does the public like it?”
To which the manager: “It sells the paper.”
And then the great man: “It has served its use.
Now being nearly over, print these words:
The Murray inquest shows to what a length
Fantastic wit can go, it should be stopped.”
An editorial later might be well:
Comment upon a father and a mother
Invaded in their privacy, and life
In intimate relations dragged to view
To sate the curious eye.
Next day the Times
Rebuked the coroner in these words. And then
Merival sent word: “I come to see you,
Or else you come to see me, or by process
If you refuse.” And so the editor
Invited Merival to Sunnyside
To talk the matter out. This was the talk:
First Merival went over all the ground
In mild locution, what he sought to do.
How as departments in the war had studied
Disease and what not, tabulated facts,
He wished to make a start for knowing lives,
And finding remedies for lives. It’s true
Not much might be accomplished, also true
The poet and the novelist gave thought,
Analysis to lives, yet who could tell
What system might grow up to find the fault
In marriage as it is, in rearing children
In motherhood, in homes; for Merival
By way of wit said to this dullest man:
“I know of mother and of home, of heaven
I’ve yet to learn.” Whereat the great man winced,
To hear the home and motherhood so slurred,
And briefly said the Times would go its way
To serve the public interests, and to foster
American ideals as he conceived them.
Then Merival who knew the great man’s nature,
How small it was and barren, cold and dull,
And wedded to small things, to gold, and fear
Of change, and knew the life the woman lived,—
These seven days in the earth—with such a man,
Just by a zephyr of intangible thought
Veered round the talk to her, to voice a wonder
About the jet left turned, his deputy
Had overlooked a hose which she could drink
Gas from a jet. “You needn’t touch the jet.
Just leave it as she left it—hide the hose,
And leave the gas on, put the woman in bed.”
“This deputy,” said Merival, “was slack
And let a verdict pass of accident.”
“Oh yes” said Merival, “your servant told
About the hose, the Times clutched in her hand.
And may I test this jet, while I am here?
Go up to see and test it?”
Whereupon
The great man with wide eyes stared in the eyes
Of Merival, was speechless for a moment,
Not knowing what to say, while Merival
Read something in his eyes, saw in his eyes
The secret beat to cover, saw the man
Turn head away which shook a little, saw
His chest expand for breath, and heard at last
The editor in four steel bullet words,
“It is not necessary.”
Merival
Had trapped the solitary fox—arose
And going said: “If it was suicide
The inquest must be changed.”
The editor
Looked through the window at the coroner
Walking the gravel walk, and saw his hand
Unlatch the iron gate, and saw him pass
From view behind the trees.
Then horror rose
Within his brain, a nameless horror took
The heart of him, for fear this coroner
Would dig this secret up, and show the world
The dead face of the woman self-destroyed,
And of the talk, which would not come to him,
To poison air he breathed no less, of why
This woman took her life; if for ill health
Then why ill health? O, well he knew at heart
What he had done to break her, starve her life.
And now accused himself too much for words,
Ways, temperament of him that murdered her,
For lovelessness, and for deliberate hands
That pushed her off and down.
He rode that day
To see his cattle, overlook the work,
But when night came with silence and the cry
Of night-hawks, and the elegy of leaves
Beneath the stars that looked so cold at him
As he turned seeking sleep, the dreaded pain
Grew stronger in his breast. Dawn came at last
And then the stir and voices of the maids.
And after breakfast in the carven room
Archibald Lowell standing by the mantel
In his great library, felt sudden pain;
Saw sudden darkness, nothing saw at once,
Lying upon the marble of the hearth;
His great head cut which struck the post of brass
In the hearth’s railing—only a little blood!
Archibald Lowell being dead at last;
The Times left to the holders of the stock
Who kept his policy, and kept the Times
As if the great man lived.

And Merival
Taking the doctor’s word that death was caused
By angina pectoris, let it drop.
And went his way with Elenor Murray’s case.
————
So Lowell’s dead and buried; had to die,
But not through Elenor Murray. That’s the Fate
That laughs at greatness, little things that sneak
From alien neighborhoods of life and kill.
And Lowell leaves a will, to which a boy—
Who sold the Times once, afterward the Star—
Is alien as this Elenor to the man
Who owned the Times. But still is brought in touch
With Lowell’s will, because this Lowell died
Before he died. And Merival learns the facts
And brings them to the jury in these words:—

WIDOW FORTELKA

Marie Fortelka, widow, mother of Josef,
Now seventeen, an invalid at home
In a house, in Halstead Street, his running side
Aching with broken ribs, read in the Times
Of Lowell’s death the editor, dressed herself
To call on William Rummler, legal mind
For Lowell and the Times.
It was a day
When fog hung over the city, and she thought
Of fogs in Germany whence she came, and thought
Of hard conditions there when she was young.
Then as her boy, this Josef, coughed, she looked
And felt a pang at heart, a rise of wrath,
And heard him moan for broken ribs and lungs
That had been bruised or mashed. America,
Oh yes, America, she said to self,
How is it different from the land I left?
And then her husband’s memory came to mind:
How he had fled his country to be free,
And come to Philadelphia, with the thrill
Of new life found, looked at the famous Hall
Which gave the Declaration, cried and laughed
And said: “The country’s free, and I am here,
I am free now, a man, no more a slave.”
What did he find? A job, but prices high.
Wages decreased in winter, then a strike.
He joined the union, found himself in jail
For passing hand-bills which announced the strike,
And asked the public to take note, and punish
The corporation, not to trade with it,
For its injustice toward the laborers.
And in the court he heard the judge decide:
“Free speech cannot be used to gain the ends
Of ruin by conspiracy like this
Against a business. Men from foreign lands,
Of despot rule and poverty, who come
For liberty and means of life among us
Must learn that liberty is ordered liberty,
And is not license, freedom to commit
Injury to another.”
So in jail
He lay his thirty days out, went to work
Where he could find it, found the union smashed,
Himself compelled to take what job he could,
What wages he was offered. And his children
Kept coming year by year till there were eight,
And Josef was but ten. And then he died
And left this helpless family, and the boy
Sold papers on the street, ten years of age,
The widow washed.
And first he sold the Times
And helped to spread the doctrines of the Times
Of ordered liberty and epicene
Reforms of this or that. But when the Star
With millions back of it broke in the field
He changed and sold the Star, too bad for him—
Discovered something:
Josef did not know
The corners of the street are free to all,
Or free to none, where newsboys stood and sold,
And kept their stands, or rather where the powers
That kept the great conspiracy of the press
Controlled the stands, and to prevent the Star
From gaining foot-hold. Not upon this corner
Nor on that corner, any corner in short
Shall newsboys sell the Star. But Josef felt,
Being a boy, indifferent to the rules,
Well founded, true or false, that all the corners
Were free to all, and for his daring, strength
Had been selected, picked to sell the Star,
And break the ground, gain place upon the stands.
He had been warned from corners, chased and boxed
By heavy fists from corners more than once
Before the day they felled him. On that day
A monster bully, once a pugilist,
Came on him selling the Star and knocked him down,
Kicked in his ribs and broke a leg and cracked
His little skull.
And so they took him home
To Widow Fortelka and the sisters, brothers,
Whose bread he earned. And there he lay and moaned,
And when he sat up had a little cough,
Was short of breath.
And on this foggy day
When Widow Fortelka reads in the Times
That Lowell, the editor, is dead, he sits
With feet wrapped in a quilt and gets his breath
With open mouth, his face is brightly flushed;
A fetid sweetness fills the air of the room
That from his open mouth comes. Josef lingers
A few weeks yet—he has tuberculosis.
And so his mother looks at him, resolves
To call this day on William Rummler, see
If Lowell’s death has changed the state of things;
And if the legal mind will not relent
Now that the mind that fed it lies in death.
It’s true enough, she thinks, I was dismissed,
And sent away for good, but never mind.
It can’t be true this pugilist went farther
Than the authority of his hiring, that’s
The talk this lawyer gave her, used a word
She could not keep in mind—the lawyer said
Respondeat superior in this case
Was not in point—and if it could be proved
This pugilist was hired by the Times,
No one could prove the Times had hired him
To beat a boy, commit a crime. Well, then
“What was he hired for?” the widow asked.
And then she talked with newsboys, and they said
The papers had their sluggers, all of them,
Even the Star, and that was just a move
In getting circulation, keeping it.
And all these sluggers watched the stands and drove
The newsboys selling Stars away.
No matter,
She could not argue with this lawyer Rummler,
Who said: “You must excuse me, go away,
I’m sorry, but there’s nothing I can do.”
Now Widow Fortelka had never heard
Of Elenor Murray, had not read a line
Of Elenor Murray’s death beside the river.
She was as ignorant of the interview
Between the coroner and this editor
Who died next morning fearing Merival
Would dig up Mrs. Lowell and expose
Her suicide, as conferences of spirits
Directing matters in another world.
Her thought was moulded no less by the riffles
That spread from Elenor Murray and her death.
And she resolved to see this lawyer Rummler,
And try again to get a settlement
To help her dying boy. And so she went.
That morning Rummler coming into town
Had met a cynic friend upon the train
Who used his tongue as freely as his mood
Moved him to use it. So he said to Rummler:
“I see your client died—a hell of a life
That fellow lived, a critic in our midst
Both hated and caressed. And I suppose
You drew his will and know it, I will bet,
If he left anything to charity,
Or to the city, it is some narcotic
To keep things as they are, the ailing body
To dull and bring forgetfulness of pain.
He was a fine albino of the soul,
No pigment in his genesis to give
Color to hair or eyes, he had no gonads.”
And William Rummler laughed and said, “You’ll see
What Lowell did when I probate the will.”
Then William Rummler thought that very moment
Of plans whereby his legal mind could thrive
Upon the building of the big hotel
To Lowell’s memory, for perpetual use
Of the Y. M. C. A., the seminary, too,
In Moody’s memory for an orthodox
Instruction in the bible.
With such things
In mind, this William Rummler opened the door,
And stepped into his office, got a shock
From seeing Widow Fortelka on the bench,
Where clients waited, waiting there for him.
She rose and greeted him, and William Rummler
Who in a stronger moment might have said:
“You must excuse me, I have told you, madam,
I can do nothing for you,” let her follow
Into his private office and sit down
And there renew her suit.
She said to him:
“My boy is dying now, I think his ribs
Were driven in his lungs and punctured them.
He coughs the worst stuff up you ever saw.
And has an awful fever, sweats his clothes
Right through, is breathless, cannot live a month.
And I know you can help me. Mr. Lowell,
So you told me, refused a settlement,
Because this pugilist was never hired
To beat my boy, or any boy; for fear
It would be an admission, and be talked of,
And lead another to demand some money.
But now he’s dead, and surely you are free
To help me some, so that this month or two,
While my boy Joe is dying he can have
What milk he wants and food, and when he dies,
A decent coffin, burial. Then perhaps
There will be something left to help me with—
I wash to feed the children, as you know.”
And William Rummler looked at her and thought
For one brief moment with his lawyer mind
About this horror, while the widow wept,
And as she wept a culprit mood was his
For thinking of the truth, for well he knew
This slugger had been hired for such deeds,
And here was one result. And in his pain
The cynic words his friend had said to him
Upon the train began to stir, and then
He felt a rush of feeling, blood, and thought
Of clause thirteen in Lowell’s will, which gave
The trustees power, and he was chief trustee,
To give some worthy charity once a year,
Not to exceed a thousand dollars. So
He thought to self, “This is a charity.
I will advance the money, get it back
As soon as I probate the will.”
At last
He broke this moment’s musing and spoke up:
“Your case appeals to me. You may step out,
And wait till I prepare the papers, then
I’ll have a check made for a thousand dollars.”
Widow Fortelka rose up and took
The crucifix she wore and kissed it, wept
And left the room.
————
Now here’s the case of Percy Ferguson
You’d think his life was safe from Elenor Murray.
No preacher ever ran a prettier boat
Than Percy Ferguson, all painted white
With polished railings, flying at the fore
The red and white and blue. Such little waves
Set dancing by the death of Elenor Murray
To sink so fine a boat, and leave the Reverend
To swim to shore! he couldn’t walk the waves!

REV. PERCY FERGUSON