Alma Bell To The Coroner

    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: