Classic Poem

THE D OCTOR'S Account OF IT

P OURING slow digitalis into a phial
For some over-forgetful heart's beating,
He said, " What lay at the root of all was only
Too much belief in God — and yet too little;
For superstition and atheism are born
Of the same mother ... as you will perceive.

" The apple-tree stood there by the well-sweep,
Not wholly withered as now, and with fruit on it —
The kind of fruit you bite into, then drop,
As if thinking of Eve and the Garden of Eden.
And here at the window where we sit sat Jem,
His brooding jealousy as dark and seething
As the cloud that rose behind the wood yonder
And shoved the heat of August down on earth.

" He was looking out upon his wife, Hester,
A morning-glory slip of a thing, I 'd say,
Who had gone to escape his mood out into the orchard
And who stood there by the shrivelled tree reaching
To pluck one of the apples — and he was asking
Himself with sullen pain: " Can I trust her?
She 's ripe for any man's desire, that 's plain,
And Gary knows it. . . . Why then may the smiles
She gives not mean that he already has plucked her? "
He was asking that; and in a brace of moments
Would likely enough have sunk into a slough
Of remorse for his shameful thought of her,
Had not the bolt — mind you, from a blue sky —
For the storm still hung stagnant there in the west —
Had it not fallen, — thunder, and then lightning,
A shivering sharp incandescent flame of it,
And struck her with such fiery jagged suddenness
That she fell down, charred and shrivelled, to earth.

" Incredible?
" To him, yes, as well as you; but also
Quite Biblical, or so he chose to take it:
And medicine for that was not at hand.
The funeral in the rain the next day —
When she was laid between a fir and willow
Upon our hill of dank text-ridden tombs —
Was solemn with a sense that God's judgment
Had fallen on some secret wickedness,
And what that wickedness was, Jem's jealousy,
Now fortified by fate, no longer questioned.

" When therefore he had turned his mare's head homeward
From the cemetery, through the sucking mud
And under dripping hedges, every hoof-beat
And heart-beat drove bitterness into him;
And night blackened bitterness to hate;
And day heated hate to white revenge.
For though a voice whispered he might be wrong,
That a judgment of God might fall upon the pure,
As blight upon innocent fields of grain,
Another voice told him relentlessly
That God, smiting only one of the sinners,
Who had seared his happiness this side of Heaven,
Had left the other to be punished by —
He did not say himself — though all his hate did.

" Then came the night he went to seek Gary:
Out past the withered apple, whose charred limbs
Shone gritty in the moon; up through the wood
That flung dark shadows on his path like spells;
Then down the valley to a cottage door
Draped in unearthly stillness by the gloom.
His heart was beating blindly, the blood pushed
Painfully at the hot base of his brain.
He struck upon the door and had words ready —
Ready as shot — to pour into the soul
Of the opener — as shot rammed in his gun.
But when the door rasped and swung and he sought
To pull the nerve-trigger that should release them
And after them the gun's avenging lead,
When he beheld Gary gravely there
In half-somnambulistic wonder gaping,
Only a ghastly impotent gurgle came
Out of his lips — and apoplectic writhings.
Then he fell down — yes! — as Hester had fallen,
A paralytic, his passion swiftly thwarted,
And was borne into the house, shrunken and helpless.

" He lay there through the long weeks that followed,
His tongue a moveless clot within his mouth,
His legs will-less logs of misery,
His eyes wandering ever toward Gary, —
Who tended him with pale pondering patience, —
And ever seeking the bitter roots of truth.
Then one day Gary comprehending said,
" Was it that, Jem? You believed her faithless?
Well, man, you wronged her — and have wronged me too. "
Whereat the spasm of life left in the dying
Took hold of Jem's dead strangled tongue and cried,
" If it is true, then ... there is no God! "
And with that moan he fell back into silence,
As a stone into a pool, leaving but shudders
To ripple over awe-struck Gary's gaze.

" Too much belief, I say: and yet too little.
But you will pardon me; this digitalis
Demands ..."
He passed with it beyond the door.