Part 7

"And it's easy to be crazy when there's everything to lose."

"If at last you have a notion that I mean what I am saying, Do I seem to tell you nothing when I tell you I shall try? If you save me, and I lose him -- I don't know -- it won't much matter. I dare say that I've lied enough, but now I do not lie."

"Do you fancy me the one man who has waited and said nothing While a wife has dragged an old infatuation from a tomb? Give the thing a little air and it will vanish into ashes. There you are -- piff! presto!"

"When I came into this room, It seemed as if I saw the place, and you there at your table, As you are now at this moment, for the last time in my life; And I told myself before I came to find you, `I shall tell him, If I can, what I have learned of him since I became his wife.' And if you say, as I've no doubt you will before I finish, That you have tried unceasingly, with all your might and main, To teach me, knowing more than I of what it was I needed, Don't think, with all you may have thought, that you have tried in vain; For you have taught me more than hides in all the shelves of knowledge Of how little you found that's in me and was in me all along. I believed, if I intruded nothing on you that I cared for, I'd be half as much as horses, -- and it seems that I was wrong; I believed there was enough of earth in me, with all my nonsense Over things that made you sleepy, to keep something still awake; But you taught me soon to read my book, and God knows I have read it -- Ages longer than an angel would have read it for your sake. I have said that you must open other doors than I have entered, But I wondered while I said it if I might not be obscure. Is there anything in all your pedigrees and inventories With a value more elusive than a dollar's? Are you sure That if I starve another year for you I shall be stronger To endure another like it -- and another -- till I'm dead?"

"Has your tame cat sold a picture? -- or more likely had a windfall? Or for God's sake, what's broke loose? Have you a bee-hive in your head? A little more of this from you will not be easy hearing. Do you know that? Understand it, if you do; for if you won't. . . . What the devil are you saying! Make believe you never said it, And I'll say I never heard it. . . . Oh, you. . . . If you. . . ."

"If I don't?"

"There are men who say there's reason hidden somewhere in a woman, But I doubt if God himself remembers where the key was hung."

"He may not; for they say that even God himself is growing. I wonder if he makes believe that he is growing young; I wonder if he makes believe that women who are giving All they have in holy loathing to a stranger all their lives Are the wise ones who build houses in the Bible. . . ."

"Stop -- you devil!"

". . . Or that souls are any whiter when their bodies are called wives. If a dollar's worth of gold will hoop the walls of hell together, Why need heaven be such a ruin of a place that never was? And if at last I lied my starving soul away to nothing, Are you sure you might not miss it? Have you come to such a pass That you would have me longer in your arms if you discovered That I made you into someone else. . . . Oh! . . . Well, there are worse ways. But why aim it at my feet -- unless you fear you may be sorry. . . . There are many days ahead of you."

"I do not see those days."

"I can see them. Granted even I am wrong, there are the children. And are they to praise their father for his insight if we die? Do you hear them? Do you hear them overhead -- the children -- singing? Do you hear them? Do you hear the children?"

"Damn the children!"

"Why? What have THEY done? . . . Well, then, -- do it. . . . Do it now, and have it over."

"Oh, you devil! . . . Oh, you. . . ."

"No, I'm not a devil, I'm a prophet -- One who sees the end already of so much that one end more Would have now the small importance of one other small illusion, Which in turn would have a welcome where the rest have gone before. But if I were you, my fancy would look on a little farther For the glimpse of a release that may be somewhere still in sight. Furthermore, you must remember those two hundred invitations For the dancing after dinner. We shall have to shine tonight. We shall dance, and be as happy as a pair of merry spectres, On the grave of all the lies that we shall never have to tell; We shall dance among the ruins of the tomb of our endurance, And I have not a doubt that we shall do it very well. There! -- I'm glad you've put it back; for I don't like it. Shut the drawer now. No -- no -- don't cancel anything. I'll dance until I drop. I can't walk yet, but I'm going to. . . . Go away somewhere, and leave me. . . . Oh, you children! Oh, you children! . . . God, will they never stop!"

Tasker Norcross

"Whether all towns and all who live in them -- So long as they be somewhere in this world That we in our complacency call ours -- Are more or less the same, I leave to you. I should say less. Whether or not, meanwhile, We've all two legs -- and as for that, we haven't -- There were three kinds of men where I was born: The good, the not so good, and Tasker Norcross. Now there are two kinds."

"Meaning, as I divine, Your friend is dead," I ventured.

Ferguson, Who talked himself at last out of the world He censured, and is therefore silent now, Agreed indifferently: "My friends are dead -- Or most of them."

"Remember one that isn't," I said, protesting. "Honor him for his ears; Treasure him also for his understanding." Ferguson sighed, and then talked on again: "You have an overgrown alacrity For saying nothing much and hearing less; And I've a thankless wonder, at the start, How much it is to you that I shall tell What I have now to say of Tasker Norcross, And how much to the air that is around you. But given a patience that is not averse To the slow tragedies of haunted men -- Horrors, in fact, if you've a skilful eye To know them at their firesides, or out walking, --"

"Horrors," I said, "are my necessity; And I would have them, for their best effect, Always out walking."

Ferguson frowned at me: "The wisest of us are not those who laugh Before they know. Most of us never know -- Or the long toil of our mortality Would not be done. Most of us never know -- And there you have a reason to believe In God, if you may have no other. Norcross, Or so I gather of his infirmity, Was given to know more than he should have known, And only God knows why. See for yourself An old house full of ghosts of ancestors, Who did their best, or worst, and having done it, Died honorably; and each with a distinction That hardly would have been for him that had it, Had honor failed him wholly as a friend. Honor that is a friend begets a friend. Whether or not we love him, still we have him; And we must live somehow by what we have, Or then we die. If you say chemistry, Then you must have your molecules in motion, And in their right abundance. Failing either, You have not long to dance. Failing a friend, A genius, or a madness, or a faith Larger than desperation, you are here For as much longer than you like as may be. Imagining now, by way of an example, Myself a more or less remembered phantom -- Again, I should say less -- how many times A day should I come back to you? No answer. Forgive me when I seem a little careless, But we must have examples, or be lucid Without them; and I question your adherence To such an undramatic narrative As this of mine, without the personal hook."

"A time is given in Ecclesiastes For divers works," I told him. "Is there one For saying nothing in return for nothing? If not, there should be." I could feel his eyes, And they were like two cold inquiring points Of a sharp metal. When I looked again, To see them shine, the cold that I had felt Was gone to make way for a smouldering Of lonely fire that I, as I knew then, Could never quench with kindness or with lies. I should have done whatever there was to do For Ferguson, yet I could not have mourned In honesty for once around the clock The loss of him, for my sake or for his, Try as I might; nor would his ghost approve, Had I the power and the unthinking will To make him tread again without an aim The road that was behind him -- and without The faith, or friend, or genius, or the madness That he contended was imperative.

After a silence that had been too long, "It may be quite as well we don't," he said; "As well, I mean, that we don't always say it. You know best what I mean, and I suppose You might have said it better. What was that? Incorrigible? Am I incorrigible? Well, it's a word; and a word has its use, Or, like a man, it will soon have a grave. It's a good word enough. Incorrigible, May be, for all I know, the word for Norcross. See for yourself that house of his again That he called home: An old house, painted white, Square as a box, and chillier than a tomb To look at or to live in. There were trees -- Too many of them, if such a thing may be -- Before it and around it. Down in front There was a road, a railroad, and a river; Then there were hills behind it, and more trees. The thing would fairly stare at you through trees, Like a pale inmate out of a barred window With a green shade half down; and I dare say People who passed have said: `There's where he lives. We know him, but we do not seem to know That we remember any good of him, Or any evil that is interesting. There you have all we know and all we care.' They might have said it in all sorts of ways; And then, if they perceived a cat, they might Or might not have remembered what they said. The cat might have a personality -- And maybe the same one the Lord left out Of Tasker Norcross, who, for lack of it, Saw the same sun go down year after year; All which at last was my discovery. And only mine, so far as evidence Enlightens one more darkness. You have known All round you, all your days, men who are nothing -- Nothing, I mean, so far as time tells yet Of any other need it has of them Than to make sextons hardy -- but no less Are to themselves incalculably something, And therefore to be cherished. God, you see, Being sorry for them in their fashioning, Indemnified them with a quaint esteem Of self, and with illusions long as life. You know them well, and you have smiled at them; And they, in their serenity, may have had Their time to smile at you. Blessed are they That see themselves for what they never were Or were to be, and are, for their defect, At ease with mirrors and the dim remarks That pass their tranquil ears."

"Come, come," said I; "There may be names in your compendium That we are not yet all on fire for shouting. Skin most of us of our mediocrity, We should have nothing then that we could scratch. The picture smarts. Cover it, if you please, And do so rather gently. Now for Norcross."

Ferguson closed his eyes in resignation, While a dead sigh came out of him. "Good God!" He said, and said it only half aloud, As if he knew no longer now, nor cared, If one were there to listen: "Have I said nothing -- Nothing at all -- of Norcross? Do you mean To patronize him till his name becomes A toy made out of letters? If a name Is all you need, arrange an honest column Of all the people you have ever known That you have never liked. You'll have enough; And you'll have mine, moreover. No, not yet. If I assume too many privileges, I pay, and I alone, for their assumption; By which, if I assume a darker knowledge Of Norcross than another, let the weight Of my injustice aggravate the load That is not on your shoulders. When I came To know this fellow Norcross in his house, I found him as I found him in the street -- No more, no less; indifferent, but no better. `Worse' were not quite the word: he was not bad; He was not . . . well, he was not anything. Has your invention ever entertained The picture of a dusty worm so dry That even the early bird would shake his head And fly on farther for another breakfast?"

"But why forget the fortune of the worm," I said, "if in the dryness you deplore Salvation centred and endured? Your Norcross May have been one for many to have envied."