Smith, great writer
of stories, drank; found it immortalised his pen;
Fused in his brain-pan,
else a blank, heavens of glory now and then;
Gave him the magical
genius touch; God-given power to gouge out, fling
Flat in your face a
soul-thought Bing!
Twiddle
your heart-strings in his clutch.
“Bah!” said
Smith, “let my body lie stripped to the buff
in swinish shame,
If I can blaze in the
radiant sky out of adoring stars my name.
Sober am I nonentitized;
drunk am I more than half a god.
Well, let the flesh
be sacrificed; spirit shall speak and shame the clod.
Who would not gladly,
gladly give Life to do one thing that will live?”
Smith had a friend,
we’ll call him Brown;
dearer than
brothers were those two.
When in the wassail
Smith would drown,
Brown would
rescue and pull him through.
When Brown was needful
Smith would lend; so it fell as the years went by,
Each on the other would
depend: then at the last Smith came to die.
There Brown sat in the
sick man’s room, still as a stone in his despair;
Smith bent on him his
eyes of doom, shook back his lion mane of hair;
Said: “Is
there one in my chosen line, writer of forthright tales
my peer?
Look in that little
desk of mine; there is a package, bring it here.
Story of stories, gem
of all; essence and triumph, key and clue;
Tale of a loving woman’s
fall; soul swept hell-ward, and God! it’s true.
I was the man
Oh, yes, I’ve paid, paid with mighty and mordant
pain.
Look! here’s the
masterpiece I’ve made out of my sin, my manhood
slain.
Art supreme! yet the
world would stare, know my mistress and blaze my shame.
I have a wife and daughter
there! take it and thrust it in the flame.”
Brown answered:
“Master, you have dipped
pen in your
heart, your phrases sear.
Ruthless, unflinching,
you have stripped naked your soul and set it here.
Have I not loved you
well and true? See! between us the shadows drift;
This bit of blood and
tears means You oh, let me have it, a
parting gift.
Sacred I’ll hold
it, a trust divine; sacred your honour, her dark despair;
Never shall it see printed
line: here, by the living God I swear.”
Brown on a Bible laid
his hand; Smith, great writer of stories, sighed:
“Comrade, I trust
you, and understand. Keep my secret!”
And so he died.
Smith was buried
up soared his sales; lured you his books in every store;
Exquisite, whimsy, heart-wrung
tales; men devoured them and craved for more.
So when it slyly got
about Brown had a posthumous manuscript,
Jones, the publisher,
sought him out, into his pocket deep he dipped.
“A thousand dollars?”
Brown shook his head.
“The
story is not for sale,” he said.
Jones went away, then
others came. Tempted and taunted, Brown was true.
Guarded at friendship’s
shrine the fame
of the unpublished
story grew and grew.
It’s a long, long
lane that has no end,
but some
lanes end in the Potter’s field;
Smith to Brown had been
more than friend: patron, protector, spur and
shield.
Poor, loving-wistful,
dreamy Brown, long and lean, with a smile askew,
Friendless he wandered
up and down, gaunt as a wolf, as hungry too.
Brown with his lilt
of saucy rhyme, Brown with his tilt of tender mirth
Garretless in the gloom
and grime, singing his glad, mad songs of earth:
So at last with a faith
divine, down and down to the Hunger-line.
There as he stood in
a woeful plight,
tears a-freeze
on his sharp cheek-bones,
Who should chance to
behold his plight,
but the
publisher, the plethoric Jones;
Peered at him for a
little while, held out a bill: “NOW,
will you sell?”
Brown scanned it with
his twisted smile:
“A
thousand dollars! you go to hell!”
Brown enrolled in the
homeless host, sleeping anywhere, anywhen;
Suffered, strove, became
a ghost, slave of the lamp for other men;
For What’s-his-name
and So-and-so in the abyss his soul he stripped,
Yet in his want, his
worst of woe, held he fast to the manuscript.
Then one day as he chewed
his pen, half in hunger and half despair,
Creaked the door of
his garret den; Dick, his brother, was standing there.
Down on the pallet bed
he sank, ashen his face, his voice a wail:
“Save me, brother!
I’ve robbed the bank; to-morrow it’s ruin,
capture, gaol.
Yet there’s a
chance: I could to-day pay back the money, save
our name;
You have a manuscript,
they say,
worth a
thousand think, man! the shame. . . .”
Brown with his heart
pain-pierced the while,
with his
stern, starved face, and his lips stone-pale,
Shuddered and smiled
his twisted smile: “Brother, I guess you
go to gaol.”
While poor Brown in
the leer of dawn wrestled with God for the sacred fire,
Came there a woman weak
and wan, out of the mob, the murk, the mire;
Frail as a reed, a fellow
ghost, weary with woe, with sorrowing;
Two pale souls in the
legion lost; lo! Love bent with a tender wing,
Taught them a joy so
deep, so true,
it seemed
that the whole-world fabric shook,
Thrilled and dissolved
in radiant dew; then Brown made him a golden book,
Full of the faith that
Life is good, that the earth is a dream divinely fair,
Lauding his gem of womanhood
in many a lyric rich and rare;
Took it to Jones, who
shook his head: “I will consider it,”
he said.
While he considered,
Brown’s wife lay clutched in the tentacles of
pain;
Then came the doctor,
grave and grey; spoke of decline, of nervous strain;
Hinted Egypt, the South
of France Brown with terror was tiger-gripped.
Where was the money?
What the chance? Pitiful God! . . . the manuscript!
A thousand dollars!
his only hope!
he gazed
and gazed at the garret wall. . . .
Reached at last for
the envelope, turned to his wife and told her all.
Told of his friend,
his promise true; told like his very heart would break:
“Oh, my dearest!
what shall I do? shall I not sell it for your sake?”
Ghostlike she lay, as
still as doom; turned to the wall her weary head;
Icy-cold in the pallid
gloom, silent as death . . . at last she said:
“Do! my husband?
Keep your vow! Guard his secret and let me die.
. . .
Oh, my dear, I must
tell you now THE WOMAN HE LOVED AND
WRONGED WAS I;
Darling! I haven’t
long to live: I never told you forgive,
forgive!”
For a long, long time
Brown did not speak;
sat bleak-browed
in the wretched room;
Slowly a tear stole
down his cheek,
and he kissed
her hand in the dismal gloom.
To break his oath, to
brand her shame;
his well-loved
friend, his worshipped wife;
To keep his vow, to
save her name, yet at the cost of what? Her life!
A moment’s space
did he hesitate, a moment of pain and dread and doubt,
Then he broke the seals,
and, stern as fate,
unfolded
the sheets and spread them out. . . .
On his knees by her
side he limply sank,
peering
amazed EACH PAGE WAS BLANK.
(For oh, the supremest
of our art are the stories we do not dare to tell,
Locked in the silence
of the heart,
for the
awful records of Heav’n and Hell.)
Yet those two in the
silence there, seemed less weariful than before.
Hark! a step on the
garret stair, a postman knocks at the flimsy door.
“Registered letter!”
Brown thrills with fear;
opens, and
reads, then bends above:
“Glorious tidings!
Egypt, dear! The book is accepted
life and love.”