Transcriber's Note:
The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.
TWO MOTHERS
BY
JOHN G. NEIHARDT
The Splendid Wayfaring
The Song of Three Friends
The Song of Hugh Glass
The Quest
TWO MOTHERS
BY
JOHN G. NEIHARDT
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1921
All rights reserved
Copyright, 1913
By POETRY: A MAGAZINE OF VERSE
Copyright, 1915
By THE FORUM
Copyright, 1921,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
Set up and electrotyped. Published, January, 1921
TO
ALICE AND MONA
CONTENTS
EIGHT HUNDRED RUBLES
GIRL’S SONG
Noble Kreider
The heart’s an open inn,
And from the four winds fare....
Vagrants blind with care,
Waifs that limp with sin;
Ghosts of what has been,...
Wraiths of what may be:...
But One shall bring the sacred gift
And which ... is He?
And with their wounds of care
And with their scars of sin....
All these shall en-ter in
To find a welcome there;
And he who gives with prayer
Shall be the richer host:...
For surely unto him shall come
The Holy Ghost.
The last stanza same as second except in second “‘Tis he” at close of stanza take “he” on C for end.
TWO MOTHERS
EIGHT HUNDRED RUBLES
The combined living room and kitchen of a peasant house. Before an open fire, where supper is in preparation, stoops a girl of about sixteen. It is evening and dusk is growing. Vines hang outside and the light of a rising moon comes through the window.
Girl
(Singing.)
The heart’s an open inn,
And from the four winds fare
Vagrants blind with care,
Waifs that limp with sin;
Ghosts of what has been,
Wraiths of what may be:
But one shall bring the sacred gift—
And which is he?
And with their wounds of care
And with their scars of sin,
All these shall enter in
To find a welcome there;
And he who gives with prayer
Shall be the richer host;
For surely unto him shall come
The Holy Ghost.
(Ceases singing and stares into the fire.)
What if he’d vanish like a dream one keeps
No more than starshine when the morning breaks!
I’ll look again.
(Arises, goes softly to the open window and looks out into the garden.)
How peacefully he sleeps!
The red rose shields him from the moon that makes
The garden like a witch-tale whispered low.
He came a stranger, yet he is not strange;
For O, how often I have dreamed it so,
Until a sudden, shivering gust of change
Went over things, making the cow-sheds flare
On fire with splendor while one might count three,
And riding swiftly down the populous air,
Prince-like he came for me.
There were no banners when he really came,
No clatter of brave steel chafing in the sheath,
No trumpets blown to hoarseness with his fame.
Silently trudging over the dusky heath,
Clad in a weave of twilight, shod with dew,
Weary he came and hungry to the door.
The lifting latch made music, and I knew
My prince was dream no more.
(Sings low.)
O weary heart and sore,
O yearning eyes that blur,
A hand that drips with myrrh
Is knocking at the door!
The waiting time is o’er,
Be glad, look up and see
How splendid is a dream come true—
‘Tis he! ‘Tis he!
(During the latter part of the song, the back door opens and the father and mother enter, stooped beneath heavy packs.)
Mother
What’s this, eh? Howling like a dog in heat,
Snout to the moon! And not a bite to eat,
And the pot scorching like the devil’s pit!
Bestir yourself there, will you! Here you sit
Tra-la-ing while the supper goes to rack,
And your old father like to break his back,
Tramping from market!
Father
Tut, tut! Girls must sing,
And one burned supper is a little thing
In seventy creeping years.
Mother
Ah, there it goes!
My hunger makes no difference, I suppose!
Tra-la, tut tut, and I can slave and slave
Until my nose seems sniffing for a grave,
I’m bent so—and it’s little that you care!
Girl
(Who has arisen from window and regards her mother as in a dream.)
Hush, Mother dear, you’ll wake him!
Mother
Wake him? Where?
Who sleeps that should not wake? Are you bewitched?
Hush me again, and you’ll be soundly switched!
As though I were a work brute to be dumb!
I’ll talk my fill!
Girl
O Mother, he has come——
Mother
(Her body straightening slightly from its habitual stoop)
Eh? Who might come that I would care to know
Since Ivan left?—He’s dead.
Father
Aye, years ago,
And stubborn grieving is a foolish sin.
Mother
(With the old weary voice.)
One’s head runs empty and the ghosts get in
When one is old and stooped.
(Peevishly to the girl.)
Bestir yourself!
Lay plates and light the candles on the shelf.
No corpse lies here that it should be so dark.
(Girl, moving as in a trance, lights candles with a brand from the fireplace. Often she glances expectantly at the window. The place is fully illumined.)
What ails the hussy?
Father
‘Tis a crazy lark
Sings in her head all day. Don’t be too rough.
Come twenty winters, ‘twill be still enough,
God knows!
Mother
(At the fireplace.)
I heard no larks sing at her age.
They put me in the field to earn a wage
And be some use in the world.
(To girl.)
What! Dawdling yet?
I’ll lark you in a way you won’t forget,
Come forty winters! Speak! What do you mean?
Girl
(Still staring at the window and speaking dreamily as to herself.)
Up from the valley creeps the loving green
Until the loneliest hill-top is a bride.
Mother
The girl’s gone daft!
Father
‘Tis vapors. Let her bide.
She’s weaving bride-veils with a woof of the moon,
And every wind’s a husband. All too soon
She’ll stitch at grave-clothes in a stuff more stern.
Girl
(Arousing suddenly.)
I’m sorry that I let the supper burn—
‘Tis all so sweet, I scarce know what I do—
He came——
Mother
Who came?
Girl
A stranger that I knew;
And he was weary, so I took him in
And gave him supper, thinking ‘twere a sin
That anyone should want and be denied.
And while he ate, the place seemed glorified,
As though it were the Saviour sitting there!
It could not be the sunset bound his hair
Briefly with golden haloes—made his eyes
Such depths to gaze in with a dumb surprise
While one blinked thrice!—Then suddenly it passed,
And he was some old friend returned at last
After long years.
Mother
A pretty tale, indeed!
And so it was our supper went to feed
A sneaking ne’er-do-well, a shiftless scamp!
Girl
O Mother, wasn’t Jesus Christ a tramp?
Mother
Hush, will you! hush! ‘Tis plain the Devil’s here!
To think my only child should live to jeer
At holy things!
Father
Come, don’t abuse the maid.
They say He was a carpenter by trade,
Yet no one ever saw the house He built.
Mother
So! Shield the minx! Make nothing of her guilt,
And let the Devil get her—as he will!
I’ll hold my tongue and work, and eat my fill
From what the beggars leave, for all you care!
Quick! Where’s this scoundrel?
Girl
‘Sh! He’s sleeping there
Out in the garden.
(Shows a gold piece.)
Mother, see, he paid
So much more than he owed us, I’m afraid.
We lose in taking, profit what we give.
Mother
(Taking the coin.)
What! Gold? A clever bargain, as I live!
It’s five times what the fowls brought!—Not so bad!
And yet—I’ll wager ‘tis not all he had—
Eh?
Girl
No—eight hundred rubles in a sack!
Mother
Eight—hundred—rubles! Yet the times are slack,
And coins don’t spawn like fishes, Goodness knows!
I’ll warrant he’s some thief that comes and goes
About the country with a ready smile
And that soft speech that is the Devil’s guile,
Nosing out hoards that reek with honest sweat!
Ha, ha—there’s little here that he can get.
(Goes to window softly, peers out, then closes the casement.)
Eight—hundred—rubles—
Girl
Mother, had you heard
How loving kindness spoke in every word,
You could not doubt him. O, his eyes were mild,
And there were heavens in them when he smiled!
Mother
Satan can outsmile God.
Girl
No, no, I’m sure
He brought some gift of good that shall endure
And be a blessing to us!
Mother
So indeed!
Eight—hundred—rubles—with the power to breed
Litters of copecks till one need not work!
Eight hundred hundred backaches somehow lurk
In that snug wallet.
(To the father.)
What’s the thing to do?
Father
It would be pleasant with a pot of brew
To talk until the windows glimmer pale.
‘Tis good to harken to a traveller’s tale
Of things far off where almost no one goes.
Mother
As well to parley with a wind that blows
Across fat fields, yet has no grain to share.
Rubles are rubles, and a tale is air.
I’ll have the rubles!
Girl
(Aghast.)
Mother! Mother dear!
What if ‘twere Ivan sleeping far from here,
And some one else should do this sinful deed!
Mother
Had they not taken my son, I should not need
Eight hundred rubles now! The world’s made wrong,
And I’ll not live to vex it very long.
Who work should take their wages where they can.
It should have been my boy come back a man,
With this same goodly hoard to bring us cheer.
Now let some other mother peer and peer
At her own window through a blurring pane,
And see the world go out in salty rain,
And start at every gust that shakes the door!
What does a green girl know? You never bore
A son that you should prate of wrong and right!
I tell you, I have wakened in the night,
Feeling his milk-teeth sharp upon my breast,
And for one aching moment I was blest,
Until I minded that ‘twas years ago
These flattened paps went milkless—and I know!
Girl
O Mother! ‘twould be sin!
Mother
Sin! What is that—
When all the world prowls like a hungry cat,