breakfast table she,
Complaining of a stiff arm, said: “that satchel
Was weighted down with books, my arm is stiff—
Elenor took French books to study French.
When she can pay a teacher, she will learn
How to pronounce the words, but by herself
She’ll learn the grammar, how to read.” She knew
How words like that would hurt!

I merely said:
“A happy home is better than knowing French,”
And went off to my store.

But coroner,
Search for the men in her life. When she came
Back from the West after three years, I knew
By look of her eyes that some one filled her life,
Had taken her life and body. What if I
Had failed as father in the way I failed?
And what if our home was not home to her?
She could have married—why not? If a girl
Can fascinate the men—I know she could—
She can have marriage, if she wants to marry.
Unless she runs to men already married,
And if she does so, don’t you make her out
As loose and bad?

Well, what is more to tell?
She learned French, seemed to know the ways of the world,
Knew books, knew how to dress, gave evidence
Of contact with refinements; letters came
When she was here at intervals inscribed
In writing of elite ones, gifted maybe.
And she was filial and kind to me,
Most kind toward her mother, gave us things
At Christmas time. But still her way was such
That I as well had been familiar with her
As with some formal lady visiting.
She came back here before she went to France,
Staid two days with us. Once upon the porch
She turned to me and said: “I wish to honor
Mother and you by serving in the war.
You must rejoice that I can serve—you must!
But most I wish to honor America,
This land of promise, of fulfillment, too,
Which proves to all the world that men and women
Are born alike of God, at least that riches
And classes formed in pride have neither hearts,
Nor minds above the souls of those who work.
This land that reared me is my dearest love,
I go to serve the country.”

Pardon me!
A man of my age in an hour like this
Must cry a little—wait till I can say
The last words that she said to me.

She put
Her arms about me, then she said to me:
“I am so glad my life and place in life
Were such that I was forced to rise or sink,
To strive or fail. God has been good to me,
Who gifted me with spirit to aspire.”
I go back to my store now. In these days,
Last days, of course, I try to be a husband,
Try to be kinder to the mother of Elenor.
Death is not far off, and that makes us think.
We may be over soft or penitent;
Forgive where we should hate still, being soft;
And fade off from the wrongs, we brooded on;
And cease to care life has been badly lived,
From first to last. But none the less our vision
Seems clearer as we end this trivial life.
And so I try to be a kinder husband
To Elenor’s mother.

So spoke Henry Murray
To Merival; a stenographer took down
His words, and they were written out and shown
The jury. Afterward the mother came
And told her story to the coroner,
Also reported, written out, and shown
The jury. But it happened thus with her:
She waited in the coroner’s outer room
Until her husband told his story, then
With eyes upon the floor, passing her husband,
The two in silence passing, as he left
The coroner’s office, spoke amid her sighs,
Her breath long drawn at intervals, looking down
The while she spoke:

MRS. MURRAY