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Widow La Rue

by Edgar Lee Masters

What will happen, Widow La Rue?

For last night at three o'clock

You woke and saw by your window again

Amid the shadowy locust grove

The phantom of the old soldier:

A shadow of blue, like mercury light -

What will happen, Widow La Rue?

* * * * *

What may not happen

In this place of summer loneliness?

For neither the sunlight of July,

Nor the blue of the lake,

Nor the green boundaries of cool woodlands,

Nor the song of larks and thrushes,

Nor the bravuras of bobolinks,

Nor scents of hay new mown,

Nor the ox-blood sumach cones,

Nor the snow of nodding yarrow,

Nor clover blossoms on the dizzy crest

Of the bluff by the lake

Can take away the loneliness

Of this July by the lake!

* * * * *

Last night you saw the old soldier

By your window, Widow La Rue!

Or was it your husband you saw,

As he lay by the gate so long ago?

With the iris of his eyes so black,

And the white of his eyes so china-blue,

And specks of blood on his face,

Like a wall specked by a shake a brush;

And something like blubber or pinkish wax,

Hiding the gash in his throat - -

The serum and blood blown up by the breath

From emptied lungs.

So Widow La Rue has gone to a friend

For the afternoon and the night,

Where the phantom will not come,

Where the phantom may be forgotten.

And scarcely has she turned the road,

Round the water-mill by the creek,

When the telephone rings and daughter Flora

Springs up from a drowsy chair

And the ennui of a book,

And runs to answer the call.

And her heart gives a bound,

And her heart stops still,

As she hears the voice, and a faintness courses

Quick as poison through all her frame.

And something like bees swarming in her breast

Comes to her throat in a surge of fear,

Rapture, passion, for what is the voice

But the voice of her lover?

And just because she is here alone

In this desolate summer-house by the lake;

And just because this man is forbidden

To cross her way, for a taint in his blood

Of drink, from a father who died of drink;

And just because he is in her thought

By night and day,

The voice of him heats her through like fire.

She sways from dizziness,

The telephone falls from her shaking hand. ...

He is in the village, is walking out,

He will be at the door in an hour.

III

The sun is half a hand above the lake

In a sky of lemon-dust down to the purple vastness.

On the dizzy crest of the bluff the balls of clover

Bow in the warm wind blowing across a meadow

Where hay-cocks stand new-piled by the harvesters

Clear to the forest of pine and beech at the meadow's end.

A robin on the tip of a poplar's spire

Sings to the sinking sun and the evening planet.

Over the olive green of the darkening forest

A thin moon slits the sky and down the road

Two lovers walk.

It is night when they reappear

From the forest, walking the hay-field over.

And the sky is so full of stars it seems

Like a field of buckwheat. And the lovers look up,

Then stand entranced under the silence of stars,

And in the silence of the scented hay-field

Blurred only by a lisp of the listless water

A hundred feet below.

And at last they sit by a cock of hay,

As warm as the nest of a bird,

Hand clasped in hand and silent,

Large-eyed and silent.

* * * * *

O, daughter Flora!

Delicious weakness is on you now,

With your lover's face above you.

You can scarcely lift your hand,

Or turn your head

Pillowed upon the fragrant hay.

You dare not open your moistened eyes

For fear of this sky of stars,

For fear of your lover's eyes.

The trance of nature has taken you

Rocked on creation's tide.

And the kinship you feel for this man,

Confessed this night - so often confessed

And wondered at -

Has coiled its final sorcery about you.

You do not know what it is,

Nor care what it is,

Nor care what fate is to come, -

The night has you.

You only move white, fainting hands

Against his strength, then let them fall.

Your lips are parted over set teeth;

A dewy moisture with the aroma of a woman's body

Maddens your lover,

And in a swift and terrible moment

The mystery of love is unveiled to you. ...

Then your lover sits up with a sigh.

But you lie there so still with closed eyes.

So content, scarcely breathing under that ocean of stars.

A night bird calls, and a vagrant zephyr

Stirs your uncoiled hair on your bare bosom,

But you do not move.

And the sun comes up at last

Finding you asleep in his arms,

There by the hay cock.

And he kisses your tears away,

And redeems his word of last night,

For down to the village you go

And take your vows before the Pastor there,

And then return to the summer house. ...

All is well.

Widow La Rue has returned

And is rocking on the porch -

What is about to happen?

For last night the phantom of the old soldier

Appeared to her again -

It followed her to the house of her friend,

And appeared again.

But more than ever was it her husband,

With the iris of his eyes so black,

And the white of his eyes so china-blue.

And while she thinks of it,

And wonders what is about to happen,

She hears laughter,

And looking up, beholds her daughter

And the forbidden lover.

* * * * *

And then the daughter and her husband

Come to the porch and the daughter says

"We have just been married in the village, mother;

Will you forgive us?

This is your son; you must kiss your son."

And Widow La Rue from her chair arises

And calmly takes her child in her arms,

And clasps his hand.

And after gazing upon him

Imperturbably as Clytemnestra looked

Upon returning Agamemnon,

With a light in her eyes which neither fathomed,

She kissed him,

And in a calm voice blessed them.

Then sent her daughter, singing,

On an errand back to the village

To market for dinner, saying:

"We'll talk over plans, my dear."

And the young husband

Rocks on the porch without a thought

Of the lightning about to strike.

And like Clytemnestra, Widow La Rue

Enters the house.

And while he is rocking, with all his spirit in a rythmic rapture,

The Widow La Rue takes a seat in the room

By a window back of the chair where he rocks,

And drawing the shade

She speaks:

"These two nights past I have seen the phantom of the old soldier

Who haunts the midnights

Of this summer loneliness.

And I knew that a doom was at hand. ...

You have married my daughter, and this is the doom. ...

O, God in heaven!"

Then a horror as of a writhing whiteness

Winds out of the July glare

And stops the flow of his blood,

As he hears from the re-echoing room

The voice of Widow La Rue

Moving darkly between banks

Of delirious fear and woe!

"Be calm till you hear me through. ...

Do not move, or enter here,

I am hiding my face from you. ...

Hear me through, and then fly.

I warned her against you, but how could I tell her

Why you were not for her?

But tell me now, have you come together?

No? Thank God for that. ...

For you must not come together. ...

Now listen while I whisper to you:

My daughter was born of a lawless love

For a man I loved before I married,

And when, for five years, no child came

I went to this man

And begged him to give me a child. ...

Well then ... the child was born, your wife as it seems. ...

And when my husband saw her,

And saw the likeness of this man in her face

He went out of the house, where they found him later

By the entrance gate

With the iris of his eyes so black,

And the white of his eyes so china-blue,

And specks of blood on his face,

Like a wall specked by a shake of a brush.

And something like blubber or pinkish wax

Hiding the gash in his throat -

The serum and blood blown up by the breath

From emptied lungs. Yes, there by the gate, O God!

Quit rocking your chair! Don't you understand?

Quit rocking your chair! Go! Go!

Leap from the bluff to the rocks on the shore!

Take down the sickle and end yourself!

You don't care, you say, for all I've told you?

Well, then, you see, you're older than Flora. ...

And her father died when she was a baby. ...

And you were four when your father died. ...

And her father died on the very day

That your father died,

At the verv same moment. ...

On the very same bed. ...

Don't you understand?"

He ceases to rock. He reels from the porch,

He runs and stumbles to reach the road.

He yells and curses and tears his hair.

He staggers and falls and rises and runs.

And Widow La Rue

With the eyes of Clytemnestra

Stands at the window and watches him

Running and tearing his hair.

VII

She seems so calm when the daughter returns.

She only says: "He has gone to the meadow,

He will soon be back. ..."

But he never came back.

And the years went on till the daughter's hair

Was white as her mother's there in the grave.

She was known as the bride whom the bridegroom left

And didn't say good-bye.