title: Jordan farms, an epic in homespun,
text: i v ,. « " • * *o & 4> «$V c'* *fi ^« *V* AV * AW/k° <5p cj* * °fc**. ♦* • A V *^ : **** * * ^•'TTT*'** %, 1 ' * - ^ o 9 A * * °^ ** -o* J. **. V* *' «. s*^v ^0< ^ V v • • • •- ^c* *9^ * • • • * r* ,* .. .** ^ V , •. • ^ ^ ° *' * •v Q V _ a « . _ o_ * JORDAN FARMS AN EPIC IN HOMESPUN JORDAN FARMS AN EPIC IN HOMESPUN By FREDERICK E. PIERCE Author of " The World That God Destroyed, and Other Poems" NEW HAVEN, CONNECTICUT YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS MDCCCCXVI &*\< Copyright, 1916 By Yale University Press First published, October, 1916 OCT 23 1916 CI.A445297 TO THE UNKNOWN RELATIVES OF NEW ENGLAND'S GREAT MEN CONTENTS PAGE Prelude. The Village Cemetery .... 1 Part One. The Trail of the Waster A. What I Learned from Henry Jor- dan's Neighbors 5 B. What I Learned from Mrs. Ormond (formerly Hester Dane) ... 9 C. What I Learned from Judge Wey- burne 20 Part Two. The Builder Behind the Waster D. W T hat I Learned from Professor Mil- ner 37 E. What I Learned from Marshall Jor- dan 48 F. Nunc Dimittis — Being What I Found Among Henry Jordan's Papers and What Dreams I Dreamed over Them 66 JORDAN FARMS AN EPIC IN HOMESPUN PRELUDE THE VILLAGE CEMETERY Let him who loves a stern and rural tale, Told simply of stern, simple lives, give ear, Crouched on the grass of this old burial-ground, Where many an hour the butterflies and I Watched day unheeded glide to evening. Here Meet past and present; each memorial stone Links dead and living, makes us heirs of time's Great human treasure trove. A voice around Goes up as out of Dante's world of dead, Old love and hate and noble deeds unknown. In these two graves lie kinsmen, dust by dust. One woman loved them both, one rood of ground Shall hold their bones till time forget its count; Yet Congo's heat and Greenland's frozen world Were not more sundered than their lives and souls. And I, who never saw them, hearing long In sad rehearsal tales that haunt the tomb, Mused near their graves in twilight's mellowing beam, Or drowsy noontide, till my thoughts communed With them, or what they were. Then, curious grown, 3 JORDAN FARMS From all remaining records and the talk Of aged folk I strove to build anew The lives that were, the changing characters, The men who walked these fields and now are not. As erst in Endor, round the spell they rise Of witch and Saul, of playmate, friend, and foe. Dead feet are on the grass of other years; Old deeds are done; old words from echo's tomb Reverberate, hollow sounding, false or true, Such dim half-truths as buried lives allow. Even while I write my models melt and change; The old New England like the gray Old Year Dies on the stroke of twelve; and at the door His red-cheeked opposite brings in the new. And I, who saw the old days fading, tell What future readers may but find in tombs. Count not my story sad; for many a time Are Hope's apostles they who walk in tears Life's darkest nook to find joy even there. I lead through night, but night with rising stars. PART ONE THE TRAIL OF THE WASTER From the confessionals I hear arise Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies. Longfellow's Divina Commedia. Dante, who loved well because he hated, Hated wickedness that hinders loving. Browning's One Word More. A. WHAT I LEARNED FROM HENRY JORDAN'S NEIGHBORS The hills roll down to plain, the plain to knolls, The knolls in turn to pool and swampy swale, White flash of fall, and homes far off and few. There deep in green, so walled about with trees It looks a sylvan temple miles away, But near a farmhouse weathered, marred, and old, Stands Jordan Farms. Around it drowse the fields Where Henry Jordan played, and earlier yet His uncle Wellman. Ancient ivies drape, Unchanged, the room that saw the buried born. I paused in entering. Lowing cattle came Along the highway urged by shouting men, Red Devon oxen, handsome, sleek, and strong, Their wide horns flashing in the noon. Behind Their owner rode, pink-cheeked and cheery-eyed, Incarnate gale and sun; and seeing me He leisurely halted in the wind and shade. "A handsome place," he said, "but ruined now, With mossy roofs and window-frames awry, And tumbling walls and acres gone to waste, Where fifty years ago no finer farm Was found for miles, more rich and handsome too, 6 JORDAN FARMS In Almon Jordan's time. But when he died His young half-brother Wellman, whom his wife, Some say, preferred in childhood, married her; Then waste, decay, and ruin followed fast. "And Henry, Almon's boy, had gifts of mind That elsewhere might have shone ; his baby head His father blessed in dying, telling them all, 'Give him the chance I never had.' But here His wild stepfather's waste and mother's folly Chained him at work God never meant him for. So year on year he drudged against the grain With dead men's debts on land the dead ran down, Among these lonely hills where no one comes; Read books for hours to make his mind forget; And piled up useless knowledge, and grew poor." "Yes, yes," a passing neighbor echoed, sad As earth's grim prose in fancy's emerald isle, A village lawyer, bowed and white with years, "Wellman was only a boy and praised by all, Mother and ladies, college mates and friends, More loved than loving, marrying lightly; and grew — No matter what, since he is dead, but darkened By petty tyranny all his stepson's boyhood. "One summer evening near The Farms I heard A voice that mocked and domineered, and saw, JORDAN FARMS 7 On drawing closer, Wellman's angry form, Fading in night among the tamarack trees. In glowing moonlight Henry passed, mere child, Before that home the dead had built for him, Trembling with powerlessness of wrath, and sob- bing Wild threats of what his manhood's years would do. "Some loved the orphan boy; he grew in time Grave, reverent, fearing God and wronging none; But fates were all against the man; his life, However good, was one long failure, sir." He shook his head; and over him a breeze Woke a dry sob among the brooding boughs, The drover echoing, "failure." I in doubt Approached the dead man's hushed and empty house. Too old, too molded round dead lives it seemed To make new bVes a home; yet sunny in age, And calm in green seclusion. Ruby-throats Built in the doorway, hummed among the flowers. The long grass drowsed with naught to do but dream. Like hospitable souls the apple-trees Reached down their reddening meal; and lisping leaves 8 JORDAN FARMS Breathed table-talk of dead New England dames Through endless afternoons. Embayed in green, The porch, all verdure, seemed a twinkling pool, With trumpet-flowers for mirrored moonlight ; only- One spray above the door and entering guest Hung arms of benison, floral bugles flaring, Blowing dumb music out of no-man's land, Or out of lands that hold the owner now. His scythe hung rusting in the butternut. His ox-yoke rotted by the cherry's root. And saw and plane, the rust on tooth and edge, Amid the shavings where he left them lay. With borrowed key I softly tried the door, That yielded groaning; and alone I stood Where he so many a time had stood alone. Ancestral faces from their frames looked down. Old portraits lined the mantel-ledge, dark-stained, Perhaps where rain from leaking roofs had run, Or tears from welling hearts. A marker lay Between his Bible's leaves at John Fourteen. "Let not your heart be troubled," he had read; "Ye trust in God, believe ye too in me"; "I will not leave you comfortless." Even so. The Family Record, dim with time, was torn Where Wellman's name should be ; but right above Some later hand had traced the name again. That might mean much or nothing. All beside Was eloquent of a good and tranquil past. B. WHAT I LEARNED FROM MRS. ORMOND (FORMERLY HESTER DANE) With rustic, old-time elegance, her room Wherein I waited seemed an ancient isle In seas of modern change, ancestral plate On time-worn sideboard, chairs that Lafayette Might bow above to grave colonial dames. In front the windows viewed a yard with flowers. Behind they framed a scene of harvest where With cracking whips great nodding loads of hay Creaked slowly up to broad and shadowy barns. There moved the present flushed with heat and hope. My hostess entering led the past with her. "Your thoughts would make the dead relive; for me Still Henry Jordan lived, so late he died. How he and I grew friends at first remains A small blue peak in memory's distant haze, Too dim through years to trace the path we trod, Though not too dim to know we once were there. But I remember following far with him The small brown brook among the alders winding, 10 JORDAN FARMS To watch the darting trout, or sit for hours On banks of fragrant mint, whose woven leaves We sailed in garlands down the dimpling stream. Through dark ravines where rills ran strangely red From moldering sandstone walls, and hemlocks hung Like night at noon, in timorous j oy we stole ; Or carved our names' initials interlaced On some broad beech's smooth and silvery rind. And head by head above the books we loved, The queer old books enchanting children then, When all were rare, and welcome being rare, We roamed with elves and talking birds, or cried At woes of many a heroine, robbed and wronged. Quaint Bible tales and history's lives we learned; And where the words were blind read meanings in, Such as make authors gasp and children glad. "Much too we played together. Deep in wood There grew a tree whose trunk, too early bent, Rose not in air but crept along the ground, All save the branching top that skyward spread. Here hour by hour where no intruder came In play we voyaged a fancied deep, our hull The trunk with upright boughs for mast; our sails The leaves that shook in wind forever cool. All tales and pictures out of foreign lands We gathered there, and studying them for chart Sailed where we would. Along the mottled trunk JORDAN FARMS 11 The weeds and grasses, ruffled by the breeze, Waved up and down like billows as we steered. Only at times of one we spoke, whose oars In that dark wood we feared or feigned to fear, A pirate Wellman, who must never know Our ship or where it sailed. He never knew. "To that child's tryst one morning Henry came With cheerful face that laughed among the leaves. 'Wellman is gone,' he cried, 'Wellman is gone, Far, far out west to Californian mines, With half a world between us. Mother cried, Because he goes and quarreling made him go; But I — I'm glad!' That was a happy day. Through oak and tulip-tree the sunbeam slid; Deep in the woodland sang a hermit thrush; And on our sylvan galley, hour by hour, Through haunted seas we old shall sail no more We floated forth together. Many a year On deeps where dipped no pirate Wellman's prow Our lives went gliding happily after that. He had no sister, brother none had I; Sister and brother in our souls we grew, Too close to be most close — or soon forget. "There came a time when one most dear to me Grew dear to him in ways I never dreamed. This ambrotype, faded as memories fade, Was hers her bridal day — the face he chose — 12 JORDAN FARMS With glad yet haunted eyes, as if she knew That love was near and death not far away That fateful hour. She died so long ago The mere recalling tells me I am old. Sweet, gentle face; men like a clinging vine, And love its memory past all living love When death undoes its beauty. Peace to the dead ! "She was my little sister, sir; and I, Who half had mothered, could not hate her now For stealing him, whose grave and careworn face — When he was man and she was only a child — Would meet her laugh with slowly kindling smile. So child grew woman, playmate grew beloved, Before we knew, but yet no pledge was theirs. "For Henry dared not marry, not with her, That fragile child, unfit for want's hard road, The bitter, only road that Wellman's life — Thoughtless and free, flinging the golden shower — Left that impoverished home. And duty stilled Each bridal thought before a mother's need. For wild, fast men, her husband's western mates, Had trained in vices never known till then That pleasure-loving heart. Those golden dreams, Returning others robbed of health and home, To Wellman's friends gave back a ruined soul, Incurable. For old days women still, Though men condemn, recall him tenderly; JORDAN FARMS 13 Great nature's work of mingled grace and guile, With charm so sweet his victim, knowing all, Forgave, — so once to women Wellman seemed. And this his angel yet may plead above: Each darkest deed, all malice, all things more Than wayward flights of many a petted son, Were never seen before those western years With wild adventurers, ruiners of their friends. "Now first across my sister's humble days Flashed fortune's changing gleam. A gray great- uncle, Whose daughter's name she bore, whose dim old eyes Beheld in her his own dead Ellen's youth, Moved by sad memories willed her all he owned, Green miles of meadow, golden wands to wave And make hope's visions true, the long deferred. "This Wellman learned when sin's requiting hour — That troubled conscience, yet with driving fear Made dumb its warning — placed him, home and name, And loved one's peace if yet he loved, in power Of one who wooed our little heiress. Then — We guess what terms they made, what bland excuse. 'No harm,' their evil angel whispered, 'nay, 14, JORDAN FARMS True kindness rather, guiding one so young To her own good, uniting wealth to wealth.' So, plotting well, between the loving pair They thrust an evil shadow, lengthening still; Till all one night, while Henry talked with us, Burst out like lightning. Clearly yet I see The nephew-stepson's angry face, the lips Lashing the liar, and eyes like probing fire, A lifetime's injuries finding voice at last. Even I who knew him stared; and Ellen heard White as the lily bells her bosom heaved. Just once I thought, 'She might not choose him now'; Till Wellman, cowering but defiant, sneered, 'Brave frightener of girls !' and Henry turning Stopped short before her glance. In that long pause Between our blinds through open windows blew The dewy blossom's odor. Hushed and mild The rippling river talked with tranquil night. Then something touched me, now remembering first His lack of sisters, all she meant to me. I stole away, and past my window heard A wild, dark figure muttering curses go. "Late, late that evening after Wellman left They sat beneath the maple, through whose leaves The moon looked in, retired, and looked again. Some barrier broke that hour, beyond recall JORDAN FARMS 15 Uniting two who might have chosen others ; But all is past, and none can change it now. "Yet fatal work began that moonlit night From Wellman foiled, whose bright, unbalanced mind Too much our uncle's feeble age admired. And now beside his deathbed Wellman urged Art, charm, and flattery, too, in anger's cause. Our uncle died. His first will, seven years made, Gave Ellen all; the last, a fortnight old, Gave part to Wellman, most to charity. "But nothing of that one week before we knew, My sister's bridal night, when late in June Before this very alcove where to-day I sit so old and lonely, stood the bride; And friends who made life sweet for her and me In voices now unheard breathed hope and love Round sunset-kindled windows. Red and white, Lining the wall from gate to doorway, bloomed My great-grandmother's roses. Dewy winds With breath of honeysuckle filled the air; And all seemed happy. First to greet the bride Was Wellman, bowing like some old grandee. He may have smiled at what he learned that day, And all know now, his triumph and his shame. He kissed the bride his bygone joys made poor, And mocking wished her joy, and went his way. 16 JORDAN FARMS "And so my sister came to Jordan Farms. With sunny head, like morning light she flitted By smoky wainscot, huge, colonial crane, And long, dark cellars piled with cask and bin, Or fed the flushed and hurrying harvest hands When sheaves were heaped and rumbling thunder- heads heaving. And she was glad ; but round the place there clung Black nearing clouds that kindness hid from her. Often at night, he told me, half awake The new-made husband saw through darkened panes The peering boughs of elm and tamarack grow Dim wolves of want that rose and fell on wind Against the barrier soon to give them way; And groaned and said: 'He might have kept his wealth, But told in time that we could wait and plan.' With bitterer tears dead love and late remorse Wet the frayed pillow where his mother dreamed, Or showed the gray grandmother's grief, who lay Mourning, she moaned, beside her open grave. Her Wellman, youngest born, bright, handsome, learned, — Child of the gay young wooer whom in youth She chose, misjudged, refused; and married late, — Who drank up knowledge at a glance, and flashed And scintillated while the rest were dumb, Indulged and flattered through the years to be JORDAN FARMS 17 The family plunderer and the family shame; And ever in her eyes the dumb reproach Of him who stayed, her younger Esau, robbed Of wealth, career, and boyhood's happy hours. "A year went by. A child was born, but died At four days old, the prettiest little thing, The only grandchild mother's house had known. Within the chapel Henry sat by me — For grief that moment drew our minds together — Sole, lonely mourners. Till the sexton came Against his heart the little coffin lay. That was the only time in all his life Those hands held son of his; and he, I know, Thought much of children. Winter came again; And darker yet the shade of death returned For my doomed sister, yet, disguised, it long Left hope alive; and bitterly Henry thought How wasted wealth that either might have owned, When life hung wavering in the doubtful scale Perhaps had saved her; but I think not so Nor lay her death on Wellman's burdened soul. Her heart was brave, and like a saint she died. "Three hours past midnight from the door I stepped ; 'Twas bitter cold, keen stars and twinkling frost. All life seemed exiled from the frozen fields. A something dead, a living force of death, 18 JORDAN FARMS Gripped face and bosom. Hollow underfoot Like ancient coffins crunched the crusted snow; And sidelong through a distant window glowed The dreary lamp that watched a passing soul. Then some one came and whispered, 'All is over'; And in I went, and found my sister's hand Clasped in her husband's, but between the two The Mystery old as Eve. Above her closed The grave, and from her burial we returned To that still house and evening's silent meal. "Two hollow, aching hearts where each might fill The other's void, and bound with common grief, We parted late that night. The silvering moon Made rugged cliffs loom bland and beautiful. So grief that hour transformed and mellowed him. He pressed my hand and whispered, 'Come again, Come often now. Hester, good-night, good-night.' Often I came; and often near my door He filled her chair among the lily leaves At first. Then sorrow waned and life renewed, Life with one task for him and one for me. Young grasses peeped on Ellen's grave ; and over Dead grief and hope grew cares of everyday. "I laid my flowers to-day on Ellen's mound, And half on his, sighing in that still plot Of ancient memories, over withered dreams JORDAN FARMS 19 Of girlhood's glad, undisillusioned dawn; The poor, forgotten farmer's wife, the low, Unheeded grave of him who all those years Had looked on life with brave, clear, open eyes, To find its hidden wealth and share with me. But God knows worth, however men forget." C. WHAT I LEARNED FROM JUDGE WEYBURNE Lonely but lovely, ridged and rent by streams, 'Mid shoaling verdure, ever changing bloom, And gemmed with lakes, that little town unrolls Whereof I tell. With nature's hush enamoured, Retired from courts, Judge Weyburne here grows old Among the scenes from which his boyhood climbed. And underneath his elms, or cool within His deep verandah hung with rustling vines, Through which I often thought a phantom past Moved while he spoke, he told me all he knew Of Jordan Farms. His voice was like the leaves At times, a rustling sorrow for the dead. "Last night so sweetly untranslatable The brook flowed talking through the bygone years, It washed my thoughts by memories old and sad In Wellman's life, that, wrecking hopes of friends, Trod selfish joy's familiar, time-worn road To fraud and public shame, till grief and care His life had caused broke her who loved him down. Long years of sickness fell on Jordan Farms. Henry's last hope of college, friends, career, JORDAN FARMS 21 Such feeble hope as Wellman's waste had left, Died out in eyes that watched a mother's bed; Died out in ears the doctor's warning filled: 'Her broken mind clings round her home of years ; If torn away her tottering reason goes'; And groaning out of life's great hope resigned, The son on whom the load had fallen — stayed. "Now when he weighed his future, prisoned here, A Tennyson's Ulysses, only bound Forever on his little Ithaca, Forever watching from his vine-clad porch Man's far-off knowledge like a setting star, Forever hearing in his ear the moan Of western seas no bark of his might sail, — Chained down for life at all he least could do, — If then at midnight, tired and wronged, he heard A late returning reveler drive below, Unharness, fume, and reeling climb the stair, I'll not condemn his wrath. But household grief And alienated friends uniting, caused That elder prodigal's willing exile soon, His burden dropped for other lives to bear. "Years Wellman roamed, as once in earlier days, Far from New England; other friends he gained, Flattered and fleeced and lost; and might be dead For all that those he left behind him heard. 22 JORDAN FARMS "Meanwhile his nephew's married life, that pure, Uplifting force, keen contrast with his own, Was closed by death. But still the work went on Begun by woman's hand, though cold the hand. His wedded days had opened wide for him An unread volume, gently, gravely sweet, In life's long series. Still with tear-dimmed eyes In silent hours of evening he could con That revelation, though the gentle hand That gave it first no more could turn the page. Some months perhaps he gazed with breaking heart On empty cloak or chair; but healing time Poured balm on that, and round them wove a world Of tender musings, holy memories. Still from his album spoke her buried face. Her thoughts moved still, awakening in his brain From bygone words he now had time to weigh. And so the years went by like drifting clouds. "Then, old before her time, his mother died, Leaving her little that remained to him. And strangely soon her death drew Wellman home. His vulture nostril sniffed the dead, and hoped Some legacy. New friends had found him out, And driven the hunted fox to seek his den. Now, too, the only home his waste had left Was that wild, wind-swept tract on Harmon hill That years ago his wife had deeded him, Not his to sell, but his for life to use. JORDAN FARMS 23 There on his eyrie perched the bird of prey; For folly and fate and wrong before his birth Had made him that, a helpless, hungering thing, To guard against through life, and pity dead. That presence woke in Henry's days a mood He hoped outgrown, bickering and sordid care, The kind man's wrath at being roused to wrath, Marring with rage calm hours of thought and love, As bitter boyhood marred. He told me once How first they met after those years between. "It was an evening hour in harvest time. And Henry down among the marshy swales And bottomlands was mowing, tired with toil, But calm at heart, at peace with God and man. No sound was there but the soft swish his scythe Made, shearing through the deep marsh grass, no stir But those same grasses, waving dreamily In winds of coming night. Earth seemed as if It had forgotten ages long ago Man and the works of man. In such an hour May souls win searoom to put forth and sail, Free from the storms of passion, where no thoughts Of other minds, like rocks protruding, threat The fleet and fragile dream. On Henry stole, As many a time before, the spell. Just then A misty form by pool and alder-clump More near and near approached. At first it seemed 24, JORDAN FARMS A phantom stolen from his thoughts, or sent From night's dim bound ; but soon a face appeared, Then mockery, and the earthling's evil mood; And frowning front to front the kinsmen met. "Quick challenge there and sneering, bold reply, Touched rumored insult done the newly dead, That now was owned as true. In western lands, The hour death freed him, Wellman wooed and won, With lies that hid the truth from her, a wife Too good for him to nurse and feed his age; Child too of one whom Henry's father loved, A cousin lost on western prairies, dead, And long not heard from. 'So your sweet, mild blood, In one your cousin though no blood of mine, May soothe my evenings.' Wellman sneered and went, Dwindling through haze; and seemed in Henry's eye A great brown spider crawling down its web To a new fly, a victim near and dear, Whom dead men's voices bade him watch and guard. "Good cause for fear was there. If ever wife Through loving heart and undiscerning eye By very virtues might make Wellman worse, JORDAN FARMS 25 That wife ill fortune gave. But what she told, And he denied not, of their life together On Harmon hill, must damn him. Far from towns, High up with howling winds in winter's teeth, The only road that through ravine and wood Sought out their home banked fathom deep with snow, No man nor woman in the house but them, No neighbor but the stars and wailing night, She lay there at his mercy, helpless heard That sly, edged malice, armed with wit, or saw The Circe cup poured out, the man turned brute, The brute turned savage, and her home his den. "On such a night, when every breath of air Was barbed with cold and thick with whirling snow, One knocked on Henry's door. He opening saw His uncle's wife, her little son on arm, On those chill doorstones, wrapped in shawls that gleamed With tags of ice, like corpses both from cold. She entered reeling, blown by entering wind, Then faced her host. Snowflakes were in her hair, And prayer and wrath and anguish in her eyes. " 'I come to you,' she said, 'a friendless woman, Find none save you who, kindred even in law, Might hear my husband's deed this evening told, 26 JORDAN FARMS And give me help.' Half fainting here she sank. And Henry made the fire roar up the flue, Gave her warm drinks and wraps, and played the nurse, With still, white lips and eyes that shone like knives. "Hours passed, and through the storm a man rode down, Mad with debauchery and the night's wild spell. As midnight struck he knocked on Henry's door. Then the pale wife between the drowsing fire And drowsing women called to watch with her, Started from slumber, heard against the pane The beating of the spruce's wind-blown boughs Like cold, insistent fingers gloved with snow, And close without two voices, one that called For entrance like the rapping twigs, and seemed Like them inhuman cold, yet wildly whirled In vortices of tempest; then the other Made answer curt and stern as ringing iron. The sterner voice prevailed; the other mixed With howling gusts through distance, drowned in rasp Of closing doors and bolts that shot in place. She drew the curtain. Through the grizzly whirl Moved a gray form that seemed a moving drift Out of the light, and out of her life forever. JORDAN FARMS 27 "That other entering softly roused the fire, Gently and gravely bade his guest good-night, And late alone sat near the flames, that lit A strangely tranquil face, in steely calm, Calm as the sword that slays and quivers not; Calm from the strong man's joy in righteous wrath, When mercy leagues with all it fought before. In such a mood he summoned law to part Whom man had joined and God had willed asunder, Inexorable as fate, while safe through him A pallid woman shunned the world and mourned. "And Wellman's wife divorced him, bringing home — To childhood's door, the door she left as bride — A helpless child and broken heart to show What marriage gave her. God, we say, knows best; But I could weep for all the happy lives That might have been had Wellman never lived, And weep for him among his victims too. "Within a month a poor, unlettered girl, Who posed as wife and might or might not be, Called from some past none knew of, shared his home, And shared his night of life that darkened now. 28 JORDAN FARMS For on that lonely hill with none but her, Save some chance workman in the fields by day, Depraved with drink and greed, by solitude Walled off from friendship's humanizing sun, What moods he sounded none shall ever know. "Sometimes we saw him like his manhood's ghost, Pale, sunken cheek and gray, disheveled hair, And cold blue eye with glint of opium dreams, Glide still by former friends, or watch for hours, With thoughts he never told, his boyhood's home. "And once when sickness called, up Harmon hill With Hester Ormond, then a bride, I rode Through landscape lovely as my words are sad. Above the peaks of all the region round, Wild, rocky crest and skyward heaving wood, Cleared round the summit, like a dome it rolls, With billowy pasture and smooth meadow, swept By winds before unbroken many a mile. Men say that from its top when air is clear They see the distant Sound like shining haze Past ridge on ridge of dim blue hills, that seem To melt and mingle with the sea and sky. "The house is low and small, in open sun On east and south, with apple-trees behind; JORDAN FARMS 29 But north a tall, dense hedge of hemlocks gives A touch of wild and somber beauty, dark As evil and mysterious as the dead. "Here Wellman, wandering in delirium, lay. And Hester watched that day, and I in turn That night, a glorious night of harvest moon. As midnight neared the pillowed face began, In strange, coherent, lucid lunacy, A story never meant for me. He told How Henry slowly after Ellen's death — Slowly, her memory held him back for years — Turned toward the sister, might have married her In middle age and love's mild afterglow. Then friends departing called her far away; And letters passed that fell in Wellman's hand, And went no further. Hurt and far from home, She waited long, then married one most kind, But not her choice, and wore her bridal veil As mournful mark of love's negation now, Not love's new dawn. I thought the speaker raved, Till, pointing me with bony hand, he showed The very drawer wherein the letters lay. I found and brought them, proof of all he said, Each old envelope like a coffin holding Chill outer form where once a hope had lived. What made him do it? Spite or jealousy; Sheer will's perversion wrought by dissolute years ; Or hope of aid from one who, kind to him, 30 JORDAN FARMS Thus married wealth and so might help him more? I asked him there; but through delirium's wall No question pierced, no answer ever came, Or ever will. In that bare, dismal room, With lamp turned down, while on the roof above Moved whispering boughs, and moonlight robed the world, 'Twas eerie, half unearthly all alone To hear him talk to none who heard him. Once He rose among the bedclothes, crying at me, 'I fooled you, lovers !' and the aureoled heaven Through broken pane and sagging casement lit That wild, gaunt, mocking face. And then again In changing mood he seemed to feel remorse, Till all was lost in aimless babbling, talk Of college days with wealthier mates than he, Vain hopes, and money this one owed by rights, And house and lands another robbed him of. I once told Henry what that night revealed; But Hester knows not yet, and hours next day Watched there in pitying kindness, on her left The old locked drawer with letters tragic now, And on her right the man who marred her life. "He drowned that winter, drowned before my eyes. With sad, foreboding heart in afternoon I drove along the lake, whose frozen face That hour was empty. I remember well JORDAN FARMS 31 To my town eyes how desolate seemed the scene. For thaws that followed storms made puddled ice All pied with slush and snow, and draggled woods On melting snowbanks dripped disconsolately. "Then Henry came beyond a little cove That laid between a treacherous frozen floor, Feeding his cattle, and Wellman through the fields Rounding the lake's curved margin, joined him there. I reined my pony wondering what might be. Across the pool the lonely landscape framed A leering haystack, ugly, squat, and brown, 'Mid shaggy steers, and those two muffled forms That filled the foreground seemed as bleak and stern. A long hill-meadow joined the land of both, That Wellman claimed but Henry owned and mowed Always; it cost them bitter words before. Brokenly and confusedly from far I heard that mentioned. High their voices rose, And each called back in parting sounds I lost. "That angry hour made Wellman rash and blind. With face turned backward, toward the sleigh he came Across the ice, that on a day like this 32 JORDAN FARMS Was death's own trap, — and broke so near the bank He could not save himself though others might. I saw and ran, slipped, fell, and rose and ran, And knew it vain, but saw that fatal cry Reached Henry's ear. One moment fixed he stood In doubt or dying wrath, then down the shore, Hurrying and white and risking life, he came. The ice broke through with him, but 'twas in shoal, He yet might save, — when some old, gnarled root Deep under water caught his foot and held. Wildly he wrestled with the claw that gripped, But all in vain, and soon he knew it vain. The water bubbled near, and that grim sky Looked down unmoved, till on the bank we stood, Where neighbors near us round a prostrate form Talked in low tones, and one was answering, 'dead.' I saw on Henry's face a mournful frown Pass by and die away. With forehead bowed, And frame that seemed to drop a lifelong load In one great hour, he whispered as in prayer: 'I would have saved him, God, but better so; Far better so for dead and living both.' For years I heard that whisper, hear it now. "That day, in doubt if Wellman's mate were wife, We asked his nephew, being next of kin, JORDAN FARMS 33 'Where shall we bury him?' 'Anywhere/ he said; 'Close at my mother's feet, if so you will, To ask her pardon; or far as strangers lie. But bury him honorably, leaving room for me By Ellen's mound.' Then some one said, 'Whom life Divided let the grave divide in death,' And bade us dig beside that willow tree. But while the sexton worked a cousin came; — She died herself next year; she always held That Wellman was a brand men failed to pluck From burning at due time. 'I'll have no gulf Divide my cousin from his family dust,' She said; 'fill up that pit and dig again. Eternity is long; in all that time The man who here abased his life might lift it; And these two streams that from one fountain ran In the great sea of glass mingled with fire Might flow together.' So we dug again, In that still place where yesterday I stood; Where age, deep reading hearts, and back of them What made those hearts ere they could mold themselves, Finds many a fierce illusion melt away; Where pitying lips that once condemned recant. And there by wife and stepson Wellman lies, According to old faith, which I believe, Till the last trump shall summon. Ample time Will they have there to grow more reconciled." PART TWO THE BUILDER BEHIND THE WASTER Therefore I summon age To grant youth's heritage, Life's struggle having so far reached its term: Thence shall I pass, approved A man, for aye removed From the developed brute; a God though in the germ. Browning's Rabbi Ben Ezra. The sulphurous rifts of passion and woe Lie deep 'neath a silence pure and smooth, Like burnt-out craters healed with snow. Lowell's Vision of Sir Launfal. D. WHAT I LEARNED FROM PROFESSOR MILNER "Look there along my finger. Mile on mile Through parted hills the curling river rolls. The lovelier that they run not where they chose But where they could, the giant spirals gleam, Like some great poet's thought, that urging long, And hearing far beyond the summoning sea, Broke out a way through language. Ten miles north, With foot in stream and windy head, that height, As I remember, looks down on Jordan Farms, The quaint old homestead; lanes and weathered walls, And ancient well-sweep, and gnarled cherry-trees That blossomed white in April. Henry dead — His well and words beneath the cherry bough Were welcome both. The past lived here in him. "Thought, faith, and commerce found their channel once Through these hill towns, that life's withdrawing flood Leaves only stagnant pools. His type is fading, Forever dwindling, drifting townward ever, Where once 'twas common: self-taught rural sons 38 JORDAN FARMS Of those grave, old-time farmer Puritans, Who plowed and hewed and sharpened tools beneath The grand, grave shadow of the eternal world, By swath and dairy weighed God's law and man's. "Just one and twenty years it is to-night Since first I trod this valley. Here I came With gaunt old Veering, searching cliff and stream, And shells and strata, where they dumbly told Of rocks upheaved in some dim dawn of time. And searching so we came by Jordan Farms. Then Henry, glad to quaff a scholar's lore, And roam the fields, for days was host and guide. I see him yet against the morning sun And dewy pastures, walking paths with me; Now pointing where the far-off fissures ran Of earthquakes ages old, and rivers wound; Now urging us under a burning sun To raid his orchard, saying pears were here, And apples there, and cherry and plum beyond. So Veering studied cliffs, and I our guide, A soul like Adirondack mountains, worn Through bygone storms in unremembered years; High spires, where once the cloud for pennon flew, Pared halfway down to plain, but massive still. "One day far off on Harmon hill he mowed When letters came; and lured by highland air, JORDAN FARMS 39 Whose vagrant breezes down our valleys blew Through wilted fields, I rode with them to him. Topping a hill almost a mountain lay That airy meadow, high and far from man On the lone, houseless peak, where bush and twig Shook evermore in wind. Below I viewed Rough range, green valley, crinkling brook; and gray O'er field and spire a muttering storm drove on. So dark it neared I sought the gaunt old barn, Whose huge gray doors hung wide, and windy sill Looked eagle-like for many a league below. Just as I mused, 'So near the floors of God Romance might walk with toil,' I heard behind Gruff teamster's shout and snapping thong; and then Between the doors a yoke of oxen plunged, With rocking horns, the piled-up hay behind Reeling and yawing like a ship at sea. Even as they came the storm above them broke, Lashing the shingles loud as giant knouts, And wrapping earth in scurrying veils of gray. A voice I knew rose through the patter and whirl; And in the door, hatless, with wind-blown hair, Stood Henry Jordan, framed in crackling clouds. Above the maple shook and thunder rang. Behind in drowsy undertone we heard The oxen munch the mows. The wild fresh air Flowed by without, the clover scent within; 40 JORDAN FARMS And loud o'erhead through beam and board re- sounded The wind's huzza and drops in rhythmic dance. "By lightning gleams he read his letters through, And not more strangely moved have households heard A broken clock none thought to hear again Striking beneath a ghostly hand. In rain, Scarce heeding where he drove, he rode away ; And half that night men heard him pace his room, Talking at times to empty air, till pale, With hollow, haunted eyes, he came at dawn. 'My uncle's one time wife has died,' he said, 'In poverty, friends dead and helpers gone. The world's cold charity has lodged her son In this rich orphanage that writes me now, Demanding aid. I promise nothing yet, But come with me and see the youngster's face.' "All day we journeyed, first by woodland roads, Where crowding bushes washed our brows with dew, And then by train. Silent with hat drawn down Sat Henry, hardly hearing words I said. And billowy meadows and the echoing hills, And rivers flashing sunlight, and the rest, Fled by unseen. But when our journey closed Beneath the great foundation's door, where wealth JORDAN FARMS 41 From toil or sin of generations gone Now housed the orphan poor, he suddenly paused, Conning these words that lined the cornerstone: For Orphan Children, Built by Aaron Dane. 'And think,' he said, 'his treasure might have built Rich tombstones for the dead who need them not, Need nothing now on earth from him or me. What better use could I have found ? Through me, Not mine but held in trust for dead of mine, Its later channel must have poured it here. The deed was child of one who wronged me; yet — God willed it good, it bears no taint of him.' I saw no point in what he said; he seemed Conversing rather with himself than me. "But when his infant cousin crowned his knees The man grew changed, tender yet warily fierce, In wavering doubt, as one might think the Moor Eyed Desdemona when he hoped her true. Above those azure orbs he bent his own, As if he waved a torch behind that door Of thought's dim cave and asked who dwelt within. Then close to either infant cheek he held A childish portrait near the lad's in age; I've seen one since; 'twas Wellman when at school. Now on the painted boy, now on the living, Now on that sweet young face where girlhood seemed With parted lips to wait life's blessing, gazed 42 JORDAN FARMS The tense, dark eyes that seemed to strain and burn. Then up he rose and clasped the trembling lad. 'I think he is his mother's child/ he said, 'And therefore henceforth mine.' That very night We took the boy with us and journeyed home. "Through long, dull, drowsy hours the rushing train Piled mile on mile; and soon on Henry's breast The weary boy had sobbed himself to sleep. As sea-gulls nest beneath the sheltering ledge Of ocean's cliff, the curly head lay safe Under the gaunt, broad shoulder; and above Two eyes looked down on him like ocean's deep, Soft, fathomless, but revealing through their gleam Hints of old wrecks and woes the waves had hid. Sometimes on craggy heights the moonbeams fell, On shining lake and swiftly sliding tree. Sometimes beside us like a phantom train Our own reflection rolled. I winked and drowsed; But still in waking saw the slumbering boy, And those deep eyes that watched him as he slept. "So God's good angel entered Henry's home In likeness of a little child, and drove The lingering shadow from his lonely days. JORDAN FARMS 43 "For many a summer after that we met, By woodland lane or meadow heaped with hay In hours of toil. Or under arching elms He leisurely conned some volume, his or mine, And puffed from tranquil pipe the filmy wreaths He watched in thinking, counting himself alone With God and ancient solitude. But when My step rang near him, down the book would fall On turf or moss, and out his comment came, Keen nature's challenge to my greater lore. Then we below would argue, and above The chattering squirrels argued, and the wind Blew lazily through the leaves and waving grass. Or where some highland river's curling sweep Had mined the bones of ancient Indian braves, He told the legends of his township, lives Of early settlers, thrilling, often sad, Of feathered chiefs whose moccasins had brushed Through dew and blood there in old woodland wars; And weighed with me the rights and wrongs of deeds Awful to think of in that forest dusk. "Warm friends were his; and one in widow's veil, — When Marshall, Wellman's child, neared man- hood, — came To make her birthplace home, near woodland mills 44 JORDAN FARMS That, once her husband's, now were hers, and lay- In a small valley rumbling drowsily. Dark groves of hemlock lined the long ravine, Where often for beauty of the scene we drove, And the unpausing wheels that hummed below Waked thoughts of laborers lost in fairyland. But angry millhands once in drunken mob Endangering her and hers, we rode through night; Came none too soon; and there my comrade spoke, Revealing powers unguessed till then, and calmed The angry crowd and sent them home in shame. 