A Servant to Servants
I didn’t make you
know how glad I was
To have you come and camp
here on our land.
I promised myself to get down
some day
And see the way you lived,
but I don’t know!
With a houseful of hungry
men to feed
I guess you’d find….
It seems to me
I can’t express my feelings
any more
Than I can raise my voice
or want to lift
My hand (oh, I can lift it
when I have to).
Did ever you feel so?
I hope you never.
It’s got so I don’t
even know for sure
Whether I am glad, sorry,
or anything.
There’s nothing but
a voice-like left inside
That seems to tell me how
I ought to feel,
And would feel if I wasn’t
all gone wrong.
You take the lake. I
look and look at it.
I see it’s a fair, pretty
sheet of water.
I stand and make myself repeat
out loud
The advantages it has, so
long and narrow,
Like a deep piece of some
old running river
Cut short off at both ends.
It lies five miles
Straight away through the
mountain notch
From the sink window where
I wash the plates,
And all our storms come up
toward the house,
Drawing the slow waves whiter
and whiter and whiter.
It took my mind off doughnuts
and soda biscuit
To step outdoors and take
the water dazzle
A sunny morning, or take the
rising wind
About my face and body and
through my wrapper,
When a storm threatened from
the Dragon’s Den,
And a cold chill shivered
across the lake.
I see it’s a fair, pretty
sheet of water,
Our Willoughby! How did
you hear of it?
I expect, though, everyone’s
heard of it.
In a book about ferns?
Listen to that!
You let things more like feathers
regulate
Your going and coming.
And you like it here?
I can see how you might.
But I don’t know!
It would be different if more
people came,
For then there would be business.
As it is,
The cottages Len built, sometimes
we rent them,
Sometimes we don’t.
We’ve a good piece of shore
That ought to be worth something,
and may yet.
But I don’t count on
it as much as Len.
He looks on the bright side
of everything,
Including me. He thinks
I’ll be all right
With doctoring. But it’s
not medicine—
Lowe is the only doctor’s
dared to say so—
It’s rest I want—there,
I have said it out—
From cooking meals for hungry
hired men
And washing dishes after them—from
doing
Things over and over that
just won’t stay done.
By good rights I ought not
to have so much
Put on me, but there seems
no other way.
Len says one steady pull more
ought to do it.
He says the best way out is
always through.
And I agree to that, or in
so far
As that I can see no way out
but through—
Leastways for me—and
then they’ll be convinced.
It’s not that Len don’t
want the best for me.
It was his plan our moving
over in
Beside the lake from where
that day I showed you
We used to live—ten
miles from anywhere.
We didn’t change without
some sacrifice,
But Len went at it to make
up the loss.
His work’s a man’s,
of course, from sun to sun,
But he works when he works
as hard as I do—
Though there’s small
profit in comparisons.
(Women and men will make them
all the same.)
But work ain’t all.
Len undertakes too much.
He’s into everything
in town. This year
It’s highways, and he’s
got too many men
Around him to look after that
make waste.
They take advantage of him
shamefully,
And proud, too, of themselves
for doing so.
We have four here to board,
great good-for-nothings,
Sprawling about the kitchen
with their talk
While I fry their bacon.
Much they care!
No more put out in what they
do or say
Than if I wasn’t in
the room at all.
Coming and going all the time,
they are:
I don’t learn what their
names are, let alone
Their characters, or whether
they are safe
To have inside the house with
doors unlocked.
I’m not afraid of them,
though, if they’re not
Afraid of me. There’s
two can play at that.
I have my fancies: it
runs in the family.
My father’s brother
wasn’t right. They kept him
Locked up for years back there
at the old farm.
I’ve been away once—yes,
I’ve been away.
The State Asylum. I was
prejudiced;
I wouldn’t have sent
anyone of mine there;
You know the old idea—the
only asylum
Was the poorhouse, and those
who could afford,
Rather than send their folks
to such a place,
Kept them at home; and it
does seem more human.
But it’s not so:
the place is the asylum.
There they have every means
proper to do with,
And you aren’t darkening
other people’s lives—
Worse than no good to them,
and they no good
To you in your condition;
you can’t know
Affection or the want of it
in that state.
I’ve heard too much
of the old-fashioned way.
My father’s brother,
he went mad quite young.
Some thought he had been bitten
by a dog,
Because his violence took
on the form
Of carrying his pillow in
his teeth;
But it’s more likely
he was crossed in love,
Or so the story goes.
It was some girl.
Anyway all he talked about
was love.
They soon saw he would do
someone a mischief
If he wa’n’t kept
strict watch of, and it ended
In father’s building
him a sort of cage,
Or room within a room, of
hickory poles,
Like stanchions in the barn,
from floor to ceiling,—
A narrow passage all the way
around.
Anything they put in for furniture
He’d tear to pieces,
even a bed to lie on.
So they made the place comfortable
with straw,
Like a beast’s stall,
to ease their consciences.
Of course they had to feed
him without dishes.
They tried to keep him clothed,
but he paraded
With his clothes on his arm—all
of his clothes.
Cruel—it sounds.
I ’spose they did the best
They knew. And just when
he was at the height,
Father and mother married,
and mother came,
A bride, to help take care
of such a creature,
And accommodate her young
life to his.
That was what marrying father
meant to her.
She had to lie and hear love
things made dreadful
By his shouts in the night.
He’d shout and shout
Until the strength was shouted
out of him,
And his voice died down slowly
from exhaustion.
He’d pull his bars apart
like bow and bow-string,
And let them go and make them
twang until
His hands had worn them smooth
as any ox-bow.
And then he’d crow as
if he thought that child’s play—
The only fun he had.
I’ve heard them say, though,
They found a way to put a
stop to it.
He was before my time—I
never saw him;
But the pen stayed exactly
as it was
There in the upper chamber
in the ell,
A sort of catch-all full of
attic clutter.
I often think of the smooth
hickory bars.
It got so I would say—you
know, half fooling—
“It’s time I took
my turn upstairs in jail”—
Just as you will till it becomes
a habit.
No wonder I was glad to get
away.
Mind you, I waited till Len
said the word.
I didn’t want the blame
if things went wrong.
I was glad though, no end,
when we moved out,
And I looked to be happy,
and I was,
As I said, for a while—but
I don’t know!
Somehow the change wore out
like a prescription.
And there’s more to
it than just window-views
And living by a lake.
I’m past such help—
Unless Len took the notion,
which he won’t,
And I won’t ask him—it’s
not sure enough.
I ’spose I’ve
got to go the road I’m going:
Other folks have to, and why
shouldn’t I?
I almost think if I could
do like you,
Drop everything and live out
on the ground—
But it might be, come night,
I shouldn’t like it,
Or a long rain. I should
soon get enough,
And be glad of a good roof
overhead.
I’ve lain awake thinking
of you, I’ll warrant,
More than you have yourself,
some of these nights.
The wonder was the tents weren’t
snatched away
From over you as you lay in
your beds.
I haven’t courage for
a risk like that.
Bless you, of course, you’re
keeping me from work,
But the thing of it is, I
need to be kept.
There’s work enough
to do—there’s always that;
But behind’s behind.
The worst that you can do
Is set me back a little more
behind.
I sha’n’t catch
up in this world, anyway.
I’d rather you’d
not go unless you must.
