The sun rose with a heat that meant
A thirsty day for straining labour.
Yet, ere the hour, and singing, went
The deckhands, children of Content.
They waited at the blind wharf-door.
" Ole Boss late? No-sir-ree! Ole sun
Hisself's got up too early, shore,"
They said, and watched the river foam.
The foreman sought old Garth at home.

He found Jess — in delirium,
The servant and a doctor near.
" Old Garth?" He was not in his room,
The bed untouched: that was the sum.
Back to the wharf the foreman hurried,
Scattered the idlers, tried the door.
It gave ... past him the cat scurried,
Mewing with fear. ... The wharfman lay
As tranquil as all dead men may.

The inquest came. The long slow tread
Of hearse and carriage to the place
Where dead men do not rail, being dead;
Where for the worst a prayer is read.
" His violence was apoplectic
And the heart failed," the verdict ran.
Jess, fevered, incoherent, hectic,
Picked flowers in delirium
For Ellen — adding sum to sum.

And Ellen, through forbiddance breaking,
Trampled entreaty and command,
Into her hands her young life taking,
Sat by him in his sleep or waking.
" Yes, Jess," she said to the poor brain
That blindly, blindly added blossoms, —
Each to her heart a joy, a pain —
" Yes, dear, but sleep a little now —
For it is Ellen wipes your brow."

Oh, would he live? For weeks the wing
Of Death hung shadowy at his heart,
Ready with silent winnowing
To beat — and leave there but a thing.
But Ellen held it back with hope
And tender courage and desire:
Not while one feeble ray could grope
Through the dark pinion would she yield:
So nurse and doctor, too, were steeled.

Then one day when an autumn leaf,
The first, fell drifting to the street,
And Ellen like a shade of grief
Stood at the window, came relief.
Jess woke. The window glimmered there,
Ellen within it like a dream
That soon would vanish — leaving air
Tortured again, he knew, with all
The fever things that creep and crawl.

And so he did not dare to speak,
But waited while the sunset flared
And lit her with a golden streak
Of glory — then he murmured weak,
" Ellen!" ... She turned and saw his eyes
Clear of the turbid wandering.
Then through her tears and tearful cries
Of swift thanksgiving, on her knees
Beside him poured her ecstasies.

" You have come back! you have come back!
Oh, Jess, I thought you never would!"
Then she remembered his long lack
Of rest — and calmed her blissful rack.
He was content to gaze at her
And wonder if he were not dead
And she a radiant minister.
He slept the night through, and at dawn
Awoke — and still she was not gone.

" But what has happened?" was his thought
Always in the blest hours that followed.
He had been ill, he knew, distraught:
But that forgetfulness had caught
Away, to some dark oubliette
Of memory, his piteous crime
He did not know: nor question yet
Wherefore his father did not come:
About his father all was numb.

But he must ask. And so one day:
" Where is my father?" And his eyes
Wandered to Ellen's — where they lay
In a deep trust, as but love's may.
Ready was she with answer, " Jess,
We may be married now — there 's none
Who will forbid it, no, not one.
Your father, dear — your father 's dead,
And mine of shame must let us wed."

His father dead? Why did the thought
Seem to him like a thing exhumed
From his own brain — not gently caught
From Ellen's lips with low love fraught?
And why could he not tear away
The shroud of strange forgetfulness
That darkly round the hours lay
Ere he was ill? — " I'm glad," he said,
" I 'm glad, Ellen, that we may wed."

She laughed at his weak joylessness.
" But hear," she cried, " how rapturous
My lover is! I must be less
Securely his — or sip distress!
He 'll wed me out of gratitude
To pay my nursing of him next!"
But when she saw a tragic brood
Of troubles haunting still his eye,
She said, " Ah, sleep, dear" — and sat by.

His strength grew — and one day he rose.
Then came the wedding quietly.
But still within him there were foes
He hid from Ellen ... shadowy woes.
" Do not! do not!" they seemed to moan.
Though why they should forbid his bliss
He could not tell. Yet thrice alone
He seemed when Ellen was his wife —
And there before him lay all life.

About the honeymoon they hung,
Those shadowy woes; and anxiously
Ellen had watched him — sometimes stung
With fear lest love from him was wrung.
" All will be well," he said, " let us
Go home, and work will make me whole."
Then he would kiss her tremulous,
And think, " What is it calling me?
Will nothing ease this mystery?"

They went — and their first night was glad
With hope — for she was in his house:
His now, with all old Garth once had:
His ... yet a thought came to him, mad.
He longed to flee it secretly,
To let all go — rise from her side
And run as from some destiny.
But could he from a horror run
That had no name, no shape — was none?

He rose — and tried to sing. With work
Untroubled veins would come again.
" Good-bye, dear." In the words no lurk
Of presage pierced him with its dirk.
Soon was the wharf in sight; the river
Rippled around it silvery.
Was it the cold wind made him shiver?
He forced his feet; and soon the greeting
Of many rugged hands was meeting.

Then with the foreman's orders given,
He turned to mount toward the office
Whither he had been driven, driven,
By the thing hid in him, unshriven.
Passing the window he beheld
A child upon the deck below.
A wish to speak to it upwelled.
But he went on — on, through the door,
Across the bloodstain on the floor.

Then on the desk he saw the weight.
It stopped his feet — and shuddering
As in a strained hypnotic state
He was drawn backward by his fate.
He gazed as one who in a beryl
Calls up the ghosts of dead events
Despite the prescience of their peril,
Compelled — by something in his brain.
Then memory swept through him plain.

The weight again was in his hand ...
He saw his father's blood-lit eyes ...
He flung it, as his fear's demand ...
The night was lit as by a brand.
Then came the darkness and the stumbling
Toward the dead thing upon the floor;
Anguish then, and the fever's rumbling,
Telling him ever through its blur
He was his father's murderer.

" Oh, God," he moaned, " what shall I do?"
And gazed unseeing on the river —
Which was not with him yet quite through —
" What have I brought love's beauty to?"
He moaned again, then to his feet
Sprang with his hands locked on his breast,
And, as one who transcends defeat,
Though he must die, said tearful, " Yes ...
I must confess. I — will confess."

He started to the door, aware,
Or half aware, of stir below.
He staggered blindly down the stair.
Who called his name — what happened there?
The deckhands huddled on the edge
Of the chill wharf were in commotion.
" He 's sunk ... run! ... ketch him! ... git the dredge!"
They cried — and in the water Jess
Saw a child's face in drowning stress.

Jess knew no more than that he slipped,
As down into the icy flood
He plunged, and that his limbs were gripped
By cramps and all strength from him stripped.
The child beside him sank, then he
Sank too, once, twice — how cold, how cold
Was the brown water's mastery.
He thought of Ellen — saw her face,
And then was nowhere, in no place.