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Alma Bell To The Coroner

by Edgar Lee Masters

What my name is, or where I live, or if

I am that Alma Bell whose name is broached

With Elenor Murray's who shall know from this?

My hand-writing I hide in type, I send

This letter through a friend who will not tell.

But first, since no chance ever yet was mine

To speak my heart out, since if I had tried

These fifteen years ago to tell my heart,

I must have failed for lack of words and mind,

I speak my heart out now. I knew the soul

Of Elenor Murray, knew it at the time,

Have verified my knowledge in these years,

Who have not lost her, have kept touch with her

In letters, know the splendid sacrifice

She made in the war. She was a human soul

Earth is not blest with often.

First I say

I knew her when she first came to my class

Turned seventeen just then - such blue-bell eyes,

And such a cataract of dark brown hair,

And such a brow, sweet lips, and such a way

Of talking with a cunning gasp, as if

To catch breath for the words. And such a sense

Of fitness, beauty, delicacy. But more

Such vital power that shook her silver nerves,

And made her dim to others; but to me

She was all sanity of soul, her body,

The instruments of life, were overborne

By that great flame of hers. And if her music

Fell sometimes into discord, which I doubt,

It was her heart-strings which could not vibrate

For human weakness, what the soul of her

Struck for response; and when the strings so failed

She was more grieved than I, or anyone,

Who listened and expected more.

Well, then

What was my love? I am not loath to tell.

I could not touch her hand without a thrill,

Nor kiss her lips but I felt purified,

Exalted in some way. And if fatigue,

The hopeless, daily ills of teaching brought

My spirit to distress, and if I went,

As oftentimes I did, to call upon her

After the school hours, as I heard her step

Responding to my knock, my heart went up,

Her face framed by the opened door - what peace

Was mine to see it, peace ineffable

And rest were mine to sit with her and hear

That voice of hers where breath was caught for words,

That cunning gasp and pause!

I loved her then,

Have loved her always, love her now no less.

I feel her spirit somehow, can take out

Her letters, photograph, and find a joy

That such a soul lived, was in truth my soul,

Must always be my soul.

What was this love?

Why only this, shame nature if you will:

But since man's body is not man's alone,

Nor woman's body wholly feminine,

A biologic truth, our body's souls

Are neither masculine nor feminine,

But part and part; from whence our souls play forth

Part masculine, part feminine - this woman

Had that of body first which made her soul,

Or made her soul play in its way, and I

Had that of body which made soul of me

Play in its way. Our music met, that's all,

And harmonized. The flesh's explanation

Is not important, nor to tell whence comes

A love in the heart - the thing is love at last:

Love which unites and comforts, glorifies,

Enlarges spirit, woos to generous life,

Invites to sacrifice, to service, clothes

This poor dull earth with glory, makes the dawn

An hour of high resolve, the night a hope

For dawn for fuller life, the day a time

For working out the soul in terms of love.

This was my love for Elenor Murray - this

Her love for me, I think. Her sacrifice

In the war I traced to our love - all the good

Her life set into being, into motion

Has in it something of this love of ours.

How good is God who gives us love, the lens

Through which we see the beauty, hid from eyes

That have no love, no lens.

Then what are spirits?

Effluvia material of our bodies?

Or is the spirit all - the body nothing,

Since every atom, particle of matter

With its interstices of soul, divides

Until there is no matter, only soul?

But what is love but of the soul - what flesh

Knows love but through the soul? May it not be

As soul learns love through flesh, it may at last,

Helped on its way by flesh, discard the flesh: -

As cured men leave their crutches - and go on

Loving with spirits. For it seems to me

I must find Elenor Murray as a spirit,

Myself a spirit, love her as I loved her

These years on earth, but with a clearer fire,

Flame that is separate from fuel, burning

Eternal through itself.

And here a word:

My love for Elenor Murray never had

Other expression than the look of eyes,

The spiritual thrill of listening to her voice,

A hand clasp, kiss upon the lips at best,

Better to find her soul, as Plato says.

Too true I left LeRoy under a cloud,

Because of love for Elenor Murray - yet

Not lawless love, I write now to make clear

What love was mine - and you must understand.

But let me tell how life has dealt with me,

Then judge my purpose, dream, the quality

Of Elenor Murray judge, who in some way,

Somehow has drawn me onward, upward too,

I hope, as I have striven.

I did fear

Her safety, and her future, did reprove

Her conduct, its appearance, rather more

In dread of gossip, dread of ways to follow

From such free ways begun at seventeen,

In innocence, out of a vital heart.

But when a bud is opening what stray bees

Come to drag pollen over it, and set

Life going to the end in the fruit of life!

O, my wish was to keep her for some love

To ripen in a rich maturity.

My care proved useless - or shall I say so?

Or anyone say so? since no mind knows

What failure here may somewhere prove a gain.

There was that man who came into her life

With heart unsatisfied, bound to a woman

He wedded early. Elenor Murray's love

Destroyed this man by human measurements.

And he destroyed her, so they say. But yet

She poured her love upon him, lit her soul

With brighter flames for love of him. At last

She knew no thing but love and sacrifice.

She wrote me last her life was just one pain,

Had always been so from the first, and now

She wished to fling her spirit in the war,

Give, serve, nor count the cost, win death and God

In service in the war - O, loveliest soul

I pray and pray to meet you once again!

So was her life a ruin, was it waste?

She was a prodigal flower that never shut

Its petals, even in darkness, let her soul

Escape when, where it would.

But to myself:

I dragged myself to England from LeRoy

And plunged in life, philosophies of life,

Spinoza and what not, read poetry,

Heard music too, Tschaikowsky, Wagner, all

Who tried to make sound tell the secret thing

That drove me wild in searching love. And lovers

I had one after the other, having fallen

To that belief the way is by the body.

But I was fooled and grew by slow degrees.

And then there came a wild man in my life,

A vagabond, a madman, genius - well,

We both went mad, and I smashed everything,

And ran away, threw all the world for him,

Only to find myself worn out, half dead

At last, as it were out of delirium.

And for four years sat by the sea, or made

Visits to Paris, where I met the man

I married. Then how strange! I gave myself

Wholly to bearing children, just to find

Some explanation of myself, some work

Wholly absorbing, lives to take my love.

And here I was instructed, found a step

For my poor feet to mount by. Though submerged,

Alone too much, my husband not the mate

I dreamed of, hearing echoes in my dreams

Of London and of Paris, sometimes voices

Of lovers lost and vanished; still I've found

A peace sometimes, a stay, too, in the innocence

And helplessness of children.

But you see,

In spite of all we do, however high

And fiercely mounts desire, life imposes

Repression, sacrifice, renunciation.

And our poor souls fall muddied in the ditch,

Or take the discipline and live life out.

So Elenor Murray lived and did not fail.

And so it was the knowledge of her life

Kept me in spite of failures at the task

Of holding to my self.

These two months passed

I found I had not killed desire - found

Among a group a chance to try again

For happiness, but knew it was not there.

Then to my children I came back and said:

"Free once again through suffering." So I prayed:

"Come to me flame of spirit, fire of worship,

Bright fire of song; if I but be myself,

Work through my fate, you shall be mine at last."...

Then was it that I heard from Elenor Murray -

Such letters, such outpourings of herself!

Poor woman leaving love that could not be

More than it was; how wise she was to fly,

And use that love for service, as she did;

Extract its purest essence for the war,

And ease death with it, merging love and death

Into that mystic union, seen at last

By Elenor Murray.

When I heard she came

All broken from the war, and died somehow

There by the river, then she seemed to me

More near - I seemed to feel her; little zephyrs

Blowing about my face, when I sat looking

Over the sea in my rose bower, seemed

The exhalation of her soul that caught

Its breath for words. I see her in my dreams -

O, my pure soul, what have you been to me,

What must you be hereafter!

But my friend,

And I must call you friend, whose strength in life

Drives you to find economies of spirit,

And save the waste of spirit, you must find

Whatever waste there was of Elenor Murray

Of love or faith, or time, or strength, great gain

In spite of early chances, father, mother,

Too loveless, negligent, or ignorant;

Her mother instinct never blessed with children.

I sometimes think no life is without use -

For even weeds that sow themselves, frost reaped

And matted on the ground, enrich the soil,

Or feed some life. Our eyes must see the end

Of what these growths are for, before we say

Where waste is and where gain.

* * * * *

Coroner Merival woke to scan the Times,

And read the story of the suicide

Of Gregory Wenner, circle big enough

From Elenor Murray's death, but unobserved

Of Merival, until he heard the hint

Of Dr. Trace, who made the autopsy,

That Gregory Wenner might have caused the death

Of Eleanor Murray, or at least was near

When Elenor Murray died. Here is the story

Worked out by Merival as he went about

Unearthing secrets, asking here and there

What Gregory Wenner was to Elenor Murray.

The coroner had a friend who was the friend

Of Mrs. Wenner. Acting on the hint

Of Dr. Trace he found this friend and learned

What follows here of Gregory Wenner, then

What Mrs. Wenner learned in coming home

To bury Gregory Wenner. What he learned

The coroner told the jury. Here's the life

Of Gregory Wenner first: