| AUNT IMOGEN was coming, and therefore | |
| The children—Jane, Sylvester, and Young George— | |
| Were eyes and ears; for there was only one | |
| Aunt Imogen to them in the whole world, | |
| And she was in it only for four weeks | 5 |
| In fifty-two. But those great bites of time | |
| Made all September a Queen’s Festival; | |
| And they would strive, informally, to make | |
| The most of them.—The mother understood, | |
| And wisely stepped away. Aunt Imogen | 10 |
| Was there for only one month in the year, | |
| While she, the mother,—she was always there; | |
| And that was what made all the difference. | |
| She knew it must be so, for Jane had once | |
| Expounded it to her so learnedly | 15 |
| That she had looked away from the child’s eyes | |
| And thought; and she had thought of many things. | |
| |
| There was a demonstration every time | |
| Aunt Imogen appeared, and there was more | |
| Than one this time. And she was at a loss | 20 |
| Just how to name the meaning of it all: | |
| It puzzled her to think that she could be | |
| So much to any crazy thing alive— | |
| Even to her sister’s little savages | |
| Who knew no better than to be themselves; | 25 |
| But in the midst of her glad wonderment | |
| She found herself besieged and overcome | |
| By two tight arms and one tumultuous head, | |
| And therewith half bewildered and half pained | |
| By the joy she felt and by the sudden love | 30 |
| That proved itself in childhood’s honest noise. | |
| Jane, by the wings of sex, had reached her first; | |
| And while she strangled her, approvingly, | |
| Sylvester thumped his drum and Young George howled. | |
| But finally, when all was rectified, | 35 |
| And she had stilled the clamor of Young George | |
| By giving him a long ride on her shoulders, | |
| They went together into the old room | |
| That looked across the fields; and Imogen | |
| Gazed out with a girl’s gladness in her eyes, | 40 |
| Happy to know that she was back once more | |
| Where there were those who knew her, and at last | |
| Had gloriously got away again | |
| From cabs and clattered asphalt for a while; | |
| And there she sat and talked and looked and laughed | 45 |
| And made the mother and the children laugh. | |
| Aunt Imogen made everybody laugh. | |
| |
| There was the feminine paradox—that she | |
| Who had so little sunshine for herself | |
| Should have so much for others. How it was | 50 |
| That she could make, and feel for making it, | |
| So much of joy for them, and all along | |
| Be covering, like a scar, and while she smiled, | |
| That hungering incompleteness and regret— | |
| That passionate ache for something of her own, | 55 |
| For something of herself—she never knew. | |
| She knew that she could seem to make them all | |
| Believe there was no other part of her | |
| Than her persistent happiness; but the why | |
| And how she did not know. Still none of them | 60 |
| Could have a thought that she was living down— | |
| Almost as if regret were criminal, | |
| So proud it was and yet so profitless— | |
| The penance of a dream, and that was good. | |
| Her sister Jane—the mother of little Jane, | 65 |
| Sylvester, and Young George—might make herself | |
| Believe she knew, for she—well, she was Jane. | |
| |
| Young George, however, did not yield himself | |
| To nourish the false hunger of a ghost | |
| That made no good return. He saw too much: | 70 |
| The accumulated wisdom of his years | |
| Had so conclusively made plain to him | |
| The permanent profusion of a world | |
| Where everybody might have everything | |
| To do, and almost everything to eat, | 75 |
| That he was jubilantly satisfied | |
| And all unthwarted by adversity. | |
| Young George knew things. The world, he had found out, | |
| Was a good place, and life was a good game— | |
| Particularly when Aunt Imogen | 80 |
| Was in it. And one day it came to pass— | |
| One rainy day when she was holding him | |
| And rocking him—that he, in his own right, | |
| Took it upon himself to tell her so; | |
| And something in his way of telling it— | 85 |
| The language, or the tone, or something else— | |
| Gripped like insidious fingers on her throat, | |
| And then went foraging as if to make | |
| A plaything of her heart. Such undeserved | |
| And unsophisticated confidence | 90 |
| Went mercilessly home; and had she sat | |
| Before a looking glass, the deeps of it | |
| Could not have shown more clearly to her then | |
| Than one thought-mirrored little glimpse had shown, | |
| The pang that wrenched her face and filled her eyes | 95 |
| With anguish and intolerable mist. | |
| The blow that she had vaguely thrust aside | |
| Like fright so many times had found her now: | |
| Clean-thrust and final it had come to her | |
| From a child’s lips at last, as it had come | 100 |
| Never before, and as it might be felt | |
| Never again. Some grief, like some delight, | |
| Stings hard but once: to custom after that | |
| The rapture or the pain submits itself, | |
| And we are wiser than we were before. | 105 |
| And Imogen was wiser; though at first | |
| Her dream-defeating wisdom was indeed | |
| A thankless heritage: there was no sweet, | |
| No bitter now; nor was there anything | |
| To make a daily meaning for her life— | 110 |
| Till truth, like Harlequin, leapt out somehow | |
| From ambush and threw sudden savor to it— | |
| But the blank taste of time. There were no dreams, | |
| No phantoms in her future any more: | |
| One clinching revelation of what was | 115 |
| One by-flash of irrevocable chance, | |
| Had acridly but honestly foretold | |
| The mystical fulfilment of a life | |
| That might have once … But that was all gone by: | |
| There was no need of reaching back for that: | 120 |
| The triumph was not hers: there was no love | |
| Save borrowed love: there was no might have been. | |
| |
| But there was yet Young George—and he had gone | |
| Conveniently to sleep, like a good boy; | |
| And there was yet Sylvester with his drum, | 125 |
| And there was frowzle-headed little Jane; | |
| And there was Jane the sister, and the mother,— | |
| Her sister, and the mother of them all. | |
| They were not hers, not even one of them: | |
| She was not born to be so much as that, | 130 |
| For she was born to be Aunt Imogen. | |
| Now she could see the truth and look at it; | |
| Now she could make stars out where once had palled | |
| A future’s emptiness; now she could share | |
| With others—ah, the others!—to the end | 135 |
| The largess of a woman who could smile; | |
| Now it was hers to dance the folly down, | |
| And all the murmuring; now it was hers | |
| To be Aunt Imogen.—So, when Young George | |
| Woke up and blinked at her with his big eyes, | 140 |
| And smiled to see the way she blinked at him, | |
| ’T was only in old concord with the stars | |
| That she took hold of him and held him close, | |
| Close to herself, and crushed him till he laughed. | |
