Domesday Book

by Edgar Lee Masters

  THE CORONER

  Merival, of a mother fair and good, A father sound in body and in mind, Rich through three thousand acres left to him By that same father dying, mother dead These many years, a bachelor, lived alone In the rambling house his father built of stone Cut from the quarry near at hand, above The river's bend, before it meets the island Where Starved Rock rises.

  Here he had returned, After his Harvard days, took up the task Of these three thousand acres, while his father Aging, relaxed his hand. From farm to farm Rode daily, kept the books, bred cattle, sheep, Raised seed corn, tried the secrets of DeVries, And Burbank in plant breeding.

  Day by day, His duties ended, he sat at a window In a great room of books where lofty shelves Were packed with cracking covers; newer books Flowed over on the tables, round the globes And statuettes of bronze. Upon the wall The portraits hung of father and of mother, And two moose heads above the mantel stared, The trophies of a hunt in youth.

  So Merival At a bay window sat in the great room, Felt and beheld the stream of life and thought Flow round and through him, to a sound in key With his own consciousness, the murmurous voice Of his own soul.

  Along a lawn that sloped Some hundred feet to the river he would muse. Or through the oaks and elms and silver birches Between the plots of flowers and rows of box Look at the distant scene of hilly woodlands. And why no woman in his life, no face Smiling from out the summer house of roses, Such riotous flames against the distant green? And why no sons and daughters, strong and fair, To use these horses, ponies, tramp the fields, Shout from the tennis court, swim, skate and row? He asked himself the question many times, And gave himself the answer. It was this:

  At twenty-five a woman crossed his path-- Let's have the story as the world believes it, Then have the truth. She was betrothed to him, But went to France to study, died in France. And so he mourned her, kept her face enshrined, Was wedded to her spirit, could not brook The coming of another face to blur This face of faces! So the story went Around the country. But his grief was not The grief they told. The pang that gnawed his heart, And took his spirit, dulled his man's desire Took root in shame, defeat, rejected love. He had gone east to meet her and to wed her, Now turned his thirtieth year; when he arrived He found his dear bride flown, a note for him, Left with the mother, saying she had flown, And could not marry him, it would not do, She did not love him as a woman should Who makes a pact for life; her heart was set For now upon her music, she was off To France for study, wished him well, in truth-- Some woman waited him who was his mate.... So Merival read over many times The letter, tried to find a secret hope Lodged back of words--was this a woman's way To lure him further, win him to more depths? He half resolved to follow her to France; Then as he thought of what he was himself In riches, breeding, place, and manliness His egotism rose, fed by the hurt: She might stay on in France for aught he cared! What was she, anyway, that she could lose Such happiness and love? for he had given In a great passion out of a passionate heart All that was in him--who was she to spurn A gift like this? Yet always in his heart Stirred something which by him was love and hate. And when the word came she had died, the word She loved a maestro, and the word like gas, Which poisons, creeps and is not known, that death Came to her somehow through a lawless love, Or broken love, disaster of some sort, His spirit withered with its bitterness. And in the years to come he feared to give With unreserve his heart, his leaves withheld From possible frost, dreamed on and drifted on Afraid to venture, having scarcely strength To seek and try, endure defeat again.

  Thus was his youth unsatisfied, and as hope Of something yet to be to fill his hope Died not, but with each dawn awoke to move Its wings, his youth continued past his years. The very cry of youth, which would not cease Kept all the dreams and passions of his youth Wakeful, expectant--kept his face and frame Rosy and agile as he neared the mark Of fifty years.

  But every day he sat As one who waited. What would come to him? What soul would seek him in this room of books? But yet no soul he found when he went forth, Breaking his solitude, to towns.

  What waste Thought Merival, of spirit, but what waste Of spirit in the lives he knew! What homes Where children starve for bread, or starve for love, Half satisfied, half-schooled are driven forth With aspirations broken, or with hopes Or talents bent or blasted! O, what wives Drag through the cheerless days, what marriages Cling and exhaust to death, and warp and stain The children! If a business, like this farm, Were run on like economy, a year Would see its ruin! But he thought, at last, Of spiritual economy, so to save The lives of men and women, use their powers To ends that suit.

  And thus when on a time A miner lost his life there at LeRoy, And when the inquest found the man was killed Through carelessness of self, while full of drink, Merival, knowing that the drink was caused By hopeless toil and by a bitter grief Touching a daughter, who had strayed and died, First wondered if in cases like to this Good might result, if there was brought to light All secret things; and in the course of time, If many deaths were probed, a store of truth Might not be gathered which some genius hand Could use to work out laws, instructions, systems For saving and for using wasting spirits, So wasted in the chaos, in the senseless Turmoil and madness of this reckless life, Which treats the spirit as the cheapest thing, Since it is so abundant.

  Thoughts like these Led Merival to run for coroner. The people wondered why he sought the office. But when they gave it to him, and he used His private purse to seek for secret faults, In lives grown insupportable, for causes Which prompted suicide, the people wondered, The people murmured sometimes, and his foes Mocked or traduced his purpose.

  Merival The coroner is now two years in office When Henry Murray's daughter Elenor Found by the river, gives him work to do In searching out her life's fate, cause of death, How, in what manner, and by whom or what Said Elenor's dead body came to death; And of all things which might concern the same, With all the circumstances pertinent, Material or in anywise related, Or anywise connected with said death. And as in other cases Merival Construed the words of law, as written above: All circumstances material or related, Or anywise connected with said death, To give him power as coroner to probe To ultimate secrets, causes intimate In birth, environment, crises of the soul, Grief, disappointment, hopes deferred or ruined. So now he exercised his power to strip This woman's life of vestments, to lay bare Her soul, though other souls should run and rave For nakedness and shame.

  So Merival Returning from the river with the body Of Elenor Murray thought about the woman; Recalled her school days in LeRoy--the night When she was graduated at the High School; thought About her father, mother, girlhood friends; And stories of her youth came back to him. The whispers of her leaving home, the trips She took, her father's loveless ways. And wonder For what she did and made of self, possessed His thinking; and the fancy grew in him No chance for like appraisal had been his Of human worth and waste, this man who knew Both life and books. And lately he had read The history of King William and his book. And even the night before this Elenor's body Was found beside the river--this he read, Perhaps, he thought, was reading it when Elenor Was struck down or was choked. How strange the hour Whose separate place finds Merival with a book, And Elenor with death, brings them together, And for result blends book and death!... He knew By Domesday Book King William had a record Of all the crown's possessions, had the names Of all land-holders, had the means of knowing The kingdom's strength for war; it gave the data How to increase the kingdom's revenue. It was a record in a case of titles, Disputed or at issue to appeal to. So Mer
ival could say: My inquests show The country's wealth or poverty in souls, And what the country's strength is, who by right May claim his share-ship in the country's life; How to increase the country's glory, power. Why not a Domesday Book in which are shown A certain country's tenures spiritual? And if great William held great council once To make inquiry of the nation's wealth, Shall not I as a coroner in America, Inquiring of a woman's death, make record Of lives which have touched hers, what lives she touched; And how her death by surest logic touched This life or that, was cause of causes, proved The event that made events?

  So Merival Brought in a jury for the inquest work As follows: Winthrop Marion, learned and mellow, A journalist in Chicago, keeping still His residence at LeRoy. And David Borrow, A sunny pessimist of varied life, Ingenious thought, a lawyer widely read. And Samuel Ritter, owner of the bank, A classmate of the coroner at Harvard. Llewellyn George, but lately come from China, A traveler, intellectual, anti-social Searcher for life and beauty, devotee Of such diversities as Nietzsche, Plato. Also a Reverend Maiworm noted for Charitable deeds and dreams. And Isaac Newfeldt Who in his youth had studied Adam Smith, And since had studied tariffs, lands and money, Economies of nations.

  And because They were the friends of Merival, and admired His life and work, they dropped their several tasks To serve as jurymen.

  The hunter came And told his story: how he found the body, What hour it was, and how the body lay; About the banner in the woman's pocket, Which Coroner Merival had taken, seen, And wondered over. For if Elenor Was not a Joan too, why treasure this? Did she take Joan's spirit for her guide? And write these words: "To be brave and not to flinch"? She wrote them; for her father said: "It's true That is her writing," when he saw the girl First brought to Merival's office.

  Merival Amid this business gets a telegram: Tom Norman drowned, one of the men with whom He planned this trip to Michigan. Later word Tom Norman and the other, Wilbur Horne Are in a motor-boat. Tom rises up To get the can of bait and pitches out, His friend leaps out to help him. But the boat Goes on, the engine going, there they fight For life amid the waves. Tom has been hurt, Somehow in falling, cannot save himself, And tells his friend to leave him, swim away. His friend is forced at last to swim away, And makes the mile to shore by hardest work. Tom Norman, dead, leaves wife and children caught In business tangles which he left to build New strength, to disentangle, on the trip. The rumor goes that Tom was full of drink, Thus lost his life. But if our Elenor Murray Had not been found beside the river, what Had happened? If the coroner had been there, And run the engine, steered the boat beside The drowning man, and Wilbur Horne--what drink Had caused the death of Norman? Or again, Perhaps the death of Elenor saved the life Of Merival, by keeping him at home And safe from boats and waters.

  Anyway, As Elenor Murray's body has no marks, And shows no cause of death, the coroner Sends out for Dr. Trace and talks to him Of things that end us, says to Dr. Trace Perform the autopsy on Elenor Murray. And while the autopsy was being made By Dr. Trace, he calls the witnesses The father first of Elenor Murray, who Tells Merival this story: