GREGORY WENNER

Gregory Wenner's brother married the mother

Of Alma Bell, the daughter of a marriage

The mother made before. Kinship enough

To justify a call on Wenner's power

When Alma Bell was face to face with shame.

And Gregory Wenner went to help the girl,

And for a moment looked on Elenor Murray

Who left the school-room passing through the hall,

A girl of seventeen. He left his business

Of massing millions in the city, to help

Poor Alma Bell, and three years afterward

In the Garden of the Gods he saw again

The face of Elenor Murray — what a fate

For Gregory Wenner!

But when Alma Bell

Wrote him for help his mind was roiled with cares:

A money magnate had signed up a loan

For half a million, to which Wenner added

That much beside, earned since his thirtieth year,

Now forty-two, with which to build a block

Of sixteen stories on a piece of ground

Leased in the loop for nine and ninety years.

But now a crabbed miser, much away,

Following the sun, and reached through agents, lawyers,

Owning the land next to the Wenner land,

Refused to have the sixteen story wall

Adjoin his wall, without he might select

His son-in-law as architect to plan

The sixteen-story block of Gregory Wenner.

And Gregory Wenner caught in such a trap,

The loan already bargained for and bound

In a hard money lender's giant grasp,

Consented to the terms, let son-in-law

Make plans and supervise the work.

Five years

Go by before the evil blossoms fully;

But here's the bud: Gregory Wenner spent

His half-a-million on the building, also

Four hundred thousand of the promised loan,

Made by the money magnate — then behold

The money magnate said: “You cannot have

Another dollar, for the bonds you give

Are scarcely worth the sum delivered now

Pursuant to the contract. I have learned

Your architect has blundered, in five years

Your building will be leaning, soon enough

It will be wrecked by order of the city.”

And Gregory Wenner found he spoke the truth.

But went ahead to finish up the building,

And raked and scraped, fell back on friends for loans,

Mortgaged his home for money, just to finish

This sixteen-story building, kept a hope

The future would reclaim him.

Gregory Wenner

Who seemed so powerful in his place in life

Had all along this cancer in his life:

He owned the building, but he owed the money,

And all the time the building took a slant,

By just a little every year. And time

Made matters worse for him, increased his foes

As he stood for the city in its warfares

Against the surface railways, telephones;

And earned thereby the wrath of money lenders,

Who made it hard for him to raise a loan,

Who needed loans habitually. Besides

He had the trouble of an invalid wife

Who went from hospitals to sanitariums,

And traveled south, and went in search of health.

Now Gregory Wenner reaches forty-five,

He's fought a mighty battle, but grows tired.

The building leans a little more each year.

And money, as before, is hard to get.

And yet he lives and keeps a hope.

At last

He does not feel so well, has dizzy spells.

The doctor recommends a change of scene.

And Gregory Wenner starts to see the west.

He visits Denver. Then upon a day

He walks about the Garden of the Gods,

And sees a girl who stands alone and looks

About the Garden's wonders. Then he sees

The girl is Elenor Murray, who has grown

To twenty-years, who looks that seventeen

When first he saw her. He remembers her,

And speaks of Alma Bell, that Alma Bell

Is kindred to him. Where is Alma Bell,

He has not heard about her in these years?

And Elenor Murray colors, and says: “Look,

There is a white cloud on the mountain top.”

And thus the talk commences.

Elenor Murray

Shows forth the vital spirit that is hers.

She dances on her toes and crows in wonder,

Flings up her arms in rapture. What a world

Of beauty and of hope! For not her life

Of teaching school, a school of Czechs and Poles

There near LeRoy, since she left school and taught,

These two years now, nor arid life at home,

Her father sullen and her mother saddened;

Nor yet that talk of Alma Bell and her

That like a corpse's gas has scented her,

And made her struggles harder in LeRoy —

Not these have quenched her flame, or made it burn

Less brightly. Though at last she left LeRoy

To fly old things, the dreary home, begin

A new life teaching in Los Angeles.

Gregory Wenner studies her and thinks

That Alma Bell was right to reprimand

Elenor Murray for her reckless ways

Of strolling and of riding. And perhaps

Real things were back of ways to be construed

In innocence or wisdom — for who knows?

His thought ran. Such a pretty face, blue eyes,

And such a buoyant spirit.

So they wandered

About the Garden of the Gods, and took

A meal together at the restaurant.

And as they talked, he told her of himself,

About his wife long ill, this trip for health —

She sensed a music sadness in his soul.

And Gregory Wenner heard her tell her life

Of teaching, of the arid home, the shadow

That fell on her at ten years, when she saw

The hopeless, loveless life of father, mother.

And his great hunger, and his solitude

Reached for the soothing hand of Elenor Murray,

And Elenor Murray having life to give

By her maternal strength and instinct gave.

The man began to laugh, forgot his health,

The leaning building, and the money lenders,

And found his void of spirit growing things —

He loved this girl. And Elenor Murray seeing

This strong man with his love, and seeing too

How she could help him, with that venturesome

And prodigal emotion which was hers

Flung all herself to help him, being a soul

Who tried all things in courage, staked her heart

On good to come.

They took the train together.

They stopped at Santa Cruz, and on the rocks

Heard the Pacific dash himself and watched

The moon upon the water, breathed the scent

Of oriental flowerings. There at last

Under the spell of nature Gregory Wenner

Bowed down his head upon his breast and shook

For those long years of striving and of haggling,

And for this girl, but mostly for a love

That filled him now. And when he spoke again

Of his starved life, his homeless years, the girl,

Her mind resolved through thinking she could serve

This man and bring him happiness, but with heart

Flaming to heaven with the miracle

Of love for him, down looking at her hands

Which fingered nervously her dress's hem,

Said with that gasp which made her voice so sweet:

“Do what you will with me, to ease your heart

And help your life.”

And Gregory Wenner shaken,

Astonished and made mad with ecstasy

Pressed her brown head against his breast and wept.

And there at Santa Cruz they lived a week,

Till Elenor Murray went to take her school,

He to the north en route for home.

Five years

Had passed since then. And on this day poor Wenner

Looks from a little office at his building

Visibly leaning now, the building lost,

The bonds foreclosed; this is the very day

A court gives a receiver charge of it.

And he, these several months reduced to deals

In casual properties, in trivial trades,

Hard pressed for money, has gone up and down

Pursuing prospects, possibilities,

Scanning each day financial sheets and looking

For clues to lead to money. And he finds

His strength and hope not what they were before.

His wife is living on, no whit restored.

And Gregory Wenner thinks, would they not say

I killed myself because I lost my building,

If I should kill myself, and leave a note

That business worries drove me to the deed,

My building this day taken, a receiver

In charge of what I builded out of my dream.

And yet he said to self, that would be false:

It's Elenor Murray's death that makes this life

So hard to bear, and thoughts of Elenor Murray

Make life a torture. First that I had to live

Without her as my wife, and next the fact

That I have taken all her life's thought, ruined

Her chance for home and marriage; that I have seen

Elenor Murray struggle in the world,

And go forth to the war with just the thought

To serve, if it should kill her.

Then his mind

Ran over these five years when Elenor Murray

Throughout gave such devotion, constant thought,

Filled all his mind and heart, and kept her voice

Singing or talking in his memory's ear,

In absence with long letters, when together

With passionate utterances of love. The girl

Loved Gregory Wenner, but the girl had found

A comfort for her spiritual solitude,

And got a strength in taking Wenner's strength.

For at the last one soul lives on another.

And Elenor Murray could not live except

She had a soul to live for, and a soul

On which to pour her passion, taking back

The passion of that soul in recompense.

Gregory Wenner served her power and genius

For giving and for taking so to live,

Achieve and flame; and found them in some moods

Somehow demoniac when his spirits sank,

And drink was all that kept him on his feet.

And so when Elenor Murray came to him

And said this life of teaching was too much,

Could not be longer borne, he thought the time

Had come to end the hopeless love. He raised

The money by the hardest means to pay

Elenor Murray's training as a nurse,

By this to set her free from teaching school,

And then he set about to crush the girl

Out of his life.

For Gregory Wenner saw

Between this passion and his failing thought,

And gray hairs coming, fortune slip like sand.

And saw his mind diffuse itself in worries,

In longing for her: found himself at times

Too much in need of drink, and shrank to see

What wishes rose that death might take his wife,

And let him marry Elenor Murray, cure

His life with having her beside him, dreaming

That somehow Elenor Murray could restore

His will and vision, by her passion's touch,

And mother instinct make him whole again.

But if he could not have her for his wife,

And since the girl absorbed him in this life

Of separation which made longing greater,

Just as it lacked the medium to discharge

The great emotion it created, Wenner

Caught up his shreds of strength to crush her out

Of his life, told her so, when he had raised

The money for her training. For he saw

How ruin may overtake a man, and ruin

Pass by the woman, whom the world would judge

As ruined long ago. But look, he thought,

I pity her, not for our sin, if it be,

But that I have absorbed her life; and yet

The girl is mastering life, while I fall down.

She has absorbed me, if the wrong lies here.

And thus his thought went round.

And Elenor Murray

Accepted what he said and went her way

With words like these: “My love and prayers are yours

While life is with us.” Then she turned to study,

And toiled each day till night brought such fatigue

That sleep fell on her. Was it to forget?

And meanwhile she embraced the faith and poured

Her passion driven by a rapturous will

Into religion, trod her path in silence,

Save for a card at Christmas time for him,

Sometimes a little message from some place

Whereto her duty called her.

Gregory Wenner

Stands at the window of his desolate office,

And looks out on his sixteen-story building

Irrevocably lost this day. His mind runs back

To that day in the Garden of the Gods,

That night at Santa Cruz, and then his eyes

Made piercing sharp by sorrow cleave the clay

That lies upon the face of Elenor Murray,

And see the flesh of her the worms have now.

How strange, he thinks, to flit into this life

Singing and radiant, to suffer, toil,

To serve in the war, return to girlhood's scenes,

To die, to be a memory for a day,

Then be forgotten. O, this life of ours.

Why is not God ashamed for graveyards, why

So thoughtless of our passion he lets play

This tragedy.

And Gregory Wenner thought

About the day he stood here, even as now

And heard a step, a voice, and looked around

Saw Elenor Murray, felt her arms again,

Her kiss upon his cheek, and saw her face

As light was beating on it, heard her gasp

In ecstasy for going to the war,

To which that day she gave her pledge. And heard

Her words of consecration. Heard her say,

As though she were that passionate Heloise

Brought into life again: “All I have done

Was done for love of you, all I have asked

Was only you, not what belonged to you.

I did not hope for marriage or for gifts.

I have not gratified my will, desires,

But yours I sought to gratify. I have longed

To be yours wholly, I have kept for self

Nothing, have lived for you, have lived for you

These years when you thought best to crush me out.

And now though there's a secret in my heart,

Not wholly known to me, still I can know it

By seeing you again, I think, by touching

Your hand again. Your life has tortured me,

Both for itself, and since I could not give

Out of my heart enough to make your life

A way of peace, a way of happiness.”

Then Gregory Wenner thought how she looked down

And said: “Since I go to the war, would God

Look with disfavor on us if you took me

In your arms wholly once again? My friend,

Not with the thought to leave me soon, but sleeping

Like mates, as birds do, making sleep so sweet

Close to each other as God means we should.

I mingle love of God with love of you,

And in the night-time I can pray for you

With you beside me, find God closer then.

Who knows, you may take strength from such an hour.”

Then Gregory Wenner lived that night again,

And the next morning when she rose and shook,

As it were night gathered dew upon fresh wings,

The vital water from her glowing flesh.

And shook her hair out, laughed and said to him:

“Courage and peace, my friend.” And how they passed

Among the multitude, when he took her hand

And said farewell, and hastened to this room

To seek for chances in another day,

And never saw her more.

And all these thoughts

Coming on Gregory Wenner swept his soul

Till it seemed like a skiff in mid-sea under

A sky unreckoning, where neither bread,

Nor water, save salt water, were for lips.

And over him descended a blank light

Of life's futility, since now this hour

Life dropped the mask and showed him just a skull.

And a strange fluttering of the nerves came on him,

So that he clutched the window frame, lest he

Spring from the window to the street below.

And he was seized with fear that said to fly,

Go somewhere, find some one, so to draw out

This madness which was one with him and in him,

And which some one in pity must relieve,

Something must cure. And in this sudden horror

Of self, this ebbing of the tides of life,

Leaving his shores to visions, where he saw

Horrible creatures stir amid the slime,

Gregory Wenner hurried from the room

And walked the streets to find his thought again

Wherewith to judge if he should kill himself

Or look to find a path in life once more.

And Gregory Wenner sitting in his club

Wrote to his brother thus: “I cannot live

Now that my business is so tangled up,

Bury my body by my father's side.”

Next day the papers headlined Gregory Wenner:

“Loss of a building drives to suicide.”

Elenor Murray's death kills Gregory Wenner

And Gregory Wenner dying make a riffle

In Mrs. Wenner's life — reveals to her

A secret long concealed:—