FullReads

There as he stood in a woeful plight,
tears a-freeze on his sharp cheek-bones,
Who should chance to behold his plight,
but the publisher, the plethoric Jones;
Peered at him for a little while, held out a bill: ” NOW, will you sell?”
Brown scanned it with his twisted smile:
“A thousand dollars! you go to hell!”

Brown enrolled in the homeless host, sleeping anywhere, anywhen;
Suffered, strove, became a ghost, slave of the lamp for other men;
For What’s-his-name and So-and-so in the abyss his soul he stripped,
Yet in his want, his worst of woe, held he fast to the manuscript.
Then one day as he chewed his pen, half in hunger and half despair,
Creaked the door of his garret den; Dick, his brother, was standing there.
Down on the pallet bed he sank, ashen his face, his voice a wail:
“Save me, brother! I’ve robbed the bank; to-morrow it’s ruin, capture, gaol.
Yet there’s a chance: I could to-day pay back the money, save our name;
You have a manuscript, they say,
worth a thousand — think, man! the shame. . . .”
Brown with his heart pain-pierced the while,
with his stern, starved face, and his lips stone-pale,
Shuddered and smiled his twisted smile: “Brother, I guess you go to gaol.”

While poor Brown in the leer of dawn wrestled with God for the sacred fire,
Came there a woman weak and wan, out of the mob, the murk, the mire;
Frail as a reed, a fellow ghost, weary with woe, with sorrowing;
Two pale souls in the legion lost; lo! Love bent with a tender wing,
Taught them a joy so deep, so true,
it seemed that the whole-world fabric shook,
Thrilled and dissolved in radiant dew; then Brown made him a golden book,
Full of the faith that Life is good, that the earth is a dream divinely fair,
Lauding his gem of womanhood in many a lyric rich and rare;
Took it to Jones, who shook his head: “I will consider it,” he said.

While he considered, Brown’s wife lay clutched in the tentacles of pain;
Then came the doctor, grave and grey; spoke of decline, of nervous strain;
Hinted Egypt, the South of France — Brown with terror was tiger-gripped.
Where was the money? What the chance? Pitiful God! . . . the manuscript!
A thousand dollars! his only hope!
he gazed and gazed at the garret wall. . . .
Reached at last for the envelope, turned to his wife and told her all.
Told of his friend, his promise true; told like his very heart would break:
“Oh, my dearest! what shall I do? shall I not sell it for your sake?”
Ghostlike she lay, as still as doom; turned to the wall her weary head;
Icy-cold in the pallid gloom, silent as death . . . at last she said:
“Do! my husband? Keep your vow! Guard his secret and let me die. . . .
Oh, my dear, I must tell you now — THE WOMAN HE LOVED AND WRONGED WAS I ;
Darling! I haven’t long to live: I never told you — forgive, forgive!”

For a long, long time Brown did not speak;
sat bleak-browed in the wretched room;
Slowly a tear stole down his cheek,
and he kissed her hand in the dismal gloom.
To break his oath, to brand her shame;
his well-loved friend, his worshipped wife;
To keep his vow, to save her name, yet at the cost of what? Her life!
A moment’s space did he hesitate, a moment of pain and dread and doubt,
Then he broke the seals, and, stern as fate,
unfolded the sheets and spread them out. . . .
On his knees by her side he limply sank,
peering amazed — EACH PAGE WAS BLANK.

(For oh, the supremest of our art are the stories we do not dare to tell,
Locked in the silence of the heart,
for the awful records of Heav’n and Hell.)

Yet those two in the silence there, seemed less weariful than before.
Hark! a step on the garret stair, a postman knocks at the flimsy door.
“Registered letter!” Brown thrills with fear;
opens, and reads, then bends above:
“Glorious tidings! Egypt, dear! The book is accepted — life and love.”