The Great Valley

by Edgar Lee Masters

Then in the process of her being’s story
She married a man of riches and took over
Dresses and jewels, houses, with her lover.
And learned the ways of Paris and New York,
And how to sit, or look, or use one’s fork.
And how to speak in French, and how to dress.
And how to find and use the loveliness
That gold brings. And she lived where thought is white
With its great longing for the infinite,
Where pale youths dream and write,
And starve and lie awake at night;
Where sculpture, music and where painting is
On priceless canvases.
But none of this saw she
In feeding her desire with jollity
In the cafés and in society;
Wherever the denials of her youth
Could be made whole, or leveled up
With idle splendor or the champagne cup.
That was her dream of making her life truth,
Till she devoured her husband like a leman—
She was at last one of this kind of women.
Then as a widow she came journeying back
With trunks and maids upon a New Year’s day
Over her childhood’s disappointed track.

Her father meanwhile had gone on the way
Which was his at the start.
His life was like a bruise which does not smart
Now that it has grown hard.
And he was stoical like one who hugs
His inner self until sensation dies,
Or dulls his fears or sorrows with strong drugs.
There was a light of hardness in his eyes
Through which no one could see his secret pain.
Failure had made him so—he could explain
To no one how he had been caught in life;
Sometimes it seemed himself, sometimes his wife,
And he had thought of it so much he lost
Perspective of himself, therefore he kept
Great silence, speaking little, even then
But trivial things. He trod his path and slept,
And rose to tread the path and slept again.
He was resolved to pay the bitter cost
And not cry out—his thinking stood on guard
To this end chiefly.

With impassive heart
He wrote his daughter on a postal card
To come, if it should please her, and be home
On Christmas, if she could, on New Year’s day
If she preferred, but anyway to come.

If a ghost could patch its tomb
With a trowel from time to time,
If it had a little lime,
So as to stop the cracks and growing rifts,
That would be like this man who hated gifts
Because he scarce could give them, and had patched
With hardness where his heart had broken
In years gone for the holidays when she
Cried in such ignorance of his poverty.
Now with walled feelings he could sit unspoken
Of what he felt, regretted, or had lost—
He was that kind of ghost.
So when the daughter came he only had
Her mother and the dinner, greetings glad,
And certain pride because her life had matched
With childhood’s hopes—but still he had no gifts
For Christmas or for New Year’s, and the daughter
Wept when she found it so,—’twas always so,—
It made her youthful bitterness alive.
And so she spilled her water
Out of a trembling hand at dinner and arose
And left the table. But with specs on nose
Self-mastered, not revealing
What was his feeling,
The father ate the dinner alone, while mother
Was comforting the daughter.

“He might have given me a dollar, a little book,
A handkerchief, or any other
Little thing, he always acted so.”
The mother tried to soothe her daughter’s woe.
But while they were together, the father took
His steps up town and when the two came back
They found him gone and the room growing black
From falling night....

But later he came in
And sat by the fire all silent. This had been
His New Year’s day! And later his wife came
And sat across him silent in her blame
Of him and of his life.

She said at last:
“Blanche is heart sick.”

“Well, I am sixty-five,”
He answered her, “and never while I’m alive
Will I remember Christmas or a New Year’s day.
I’m glad so many of such days are past,
They have been always this way. We had dinner
And ourselves for her and she brought herself
And nothing else. This is the way to win her
Admiration, yet this thing of giving
Dollars or books, wins only a little thrill
Of tickled pride or egotism, still
I might have done it, just to have the peace
Of her self-satisfaction.”

Said the wife:
“You might find happiness in her happiness.
The only thing you understand in living
Is how to stand your misery, one can guess
The working of your thought.”

Ere she could cease
The daughter entered like the devil’s elf,
And saw her father bent before the fire,
And saw the back of his head which spoke to her
Of hardness, or of something that she hated
Which moved her pity and her hate at once.