I

Just where the Ohio bends away
From Coal-Mine Hill and doubles back
Between low corn-lands that display
Their tasselled ranks in wide array,
The city lies in a moon-curve,
A crescent smoky at one tip,
But at the other's sunny swerve,
From mill and factory afar,
Green-sheltered homes and churches are.

The river frontage has a strip
Of park-way here, a narrow space
Of grass and trees where one may lip
The cool west breeze and watch suns dip.
Across, the dam lies; elbowed out
Into mid-stream, to turn its flow
To wharf and warehouse built about
The levee's cobbled slope — where tug
And busy steamer churn and chug.

And here old Garth was master — coarse
In fibre as split hickory;
Shouting command with curse as hoarse
As the tug-hoots, and with a force
That beat into the ears and brain
Of clerk and deckhand, who in fear
Hurried about with doubled strain
To check invoice, or lift the weight
On streaming backs of crowded freight.

Jess was among them — Jess, his son,
A lad of twenty — clear of eye
And clean of limb, just such a one
As made you ask of earth and sun,
And of all baffling Nature, how?
How have you charmed from a dull stock
Of narrow tyranny this brow?
Can you at will say to the womb
Heredity is not man's doom?

Answer is wanting. But despite
A parentage unbeautiful
The lad had grown — keen to delight
In beauty and in love, its light.
Wherefore old Garth, dimly suspecting,
And hating what was not himself,
Or like himself, did no neglecting,
But tore the boy at a young age
Away to toil's hard tutelage.

Away from school — from the new dreams
That books had kindled in his eyes;
Away from friends, and the first gleams
Of freedom with which friendship streams.
" Work — if you 're son of mine — not spend,"
To Jess, seventeen, the churl had said.
And there had been a wordless end;
Upon the wharf Jess took his place,
Renouncing all things — save one face:

The face of Ellen Arden — young
With all the Aprils of the world,
And sweet with all the beauty wrung
From flower-bells by the wind swung.
A face that Jess had first beheld
Coming toward him through new throes
Of manhood that within him swelled:
And that was instantly the goal
Of his imagination's soul.

For they had met immortally.
From the first moment when she saw
Old Garth with hot authority
Burn the boy's cheeks, her heart sprang free;
Free of the difference of wealth
And rooted rank and social sheen —
For what are these to young love's health? —
" Your father 's cruel," Ellen had said.
For him it struck his father dead.

For though upon the wharf next day
To toil with negroes he was put,
To lifting cotton, wheat, and hay
And cane cut from the brakes of May;
And though he heard his father's voice
Swing like a whip across his back,
It had no smallest power to rout
The bliss of knowing that her face
Was in a world where he had place.

Nor for years then was there a change.
He lent his youth, unpaid, to toil,
Nor scarcely thought of it as strange,
Or dreamed that he might farther range.
For Ellen was the Spring's glad green,
And Ellen was the Autumn's gold,
She was all things of joy between.
Till once he saw her with another,
Then a fear took him, with its smother.

What if he lost her? — she must wed:
And could she wed a work-for-nothing?
It raised old Garth up from the dead,
" He owes me more," said Jess, " than bread."
It raised old Garth out of the shroud
That Ellen — who had called him cruel —
Had made the boy's indifference proud
To wrap him in. " He 's mean," said Jess,
" But he shan't steal my happiness."

Down to the wharf that night he went
And hung lonely over the water,
Brooding until the eve-star spent
Her fire within the West's wide tent.
No craft was on the current; all
Were tied along the shore for sleep.
Only the ripple's idle fall,
Or the hull-rats, broke through his sense
Of injury and impotence.

For the old man was strong, he knew,
And a son's rights were as a slave's.
But I will have them — if she's true —
More wages now — and those past due."
He wandered home, rehearsing words,
Those ageless actors, in his heart,
Though all his spirit was in curds
Of bitterness before the fight
To win what was his human right.

He rose: old Garth at breakfast looked
Him over with a scurrile eye,
And said, " Curse you, what 's got you hooked?
You 're late and I 've much business booked."
Jess flung no answer: he would wait
And in the wharf office have it out.
" Had I a mother to abate
The loneliness I feel!" he said.
His mother at his birth was dead.

He took his hat — looked in the glass:
Would he see Ellen? Chance so fell.
His heart beat with a riot mass
Of struggling raptures. ... Would she pass,
Would she? ... before he reached the corner?
He hurried, and she slowed her step,
A kindness that seemed to adorn her
In the boy's eye with deity:
He worshipped — then prayed out his plea:

" Oh, Ellen, I was thinking of you,"
And swift he saw her face turn roses.
" Ellen, may I not dare to love you?
I do, more than the skies above you.
I do, I do, though you are rich
And beautiful and all that 's bright.
And I could climb out of this ditch
Of drudgery and win the world
If you within my heart were furled.

" My father 's a mere riverman,
Who gives me bread alone for wages,
But that should never be a ban,
Love a far wider gulf can span.
I have no money, save the store
He 's stinted from me these three years,
But he shall pay me now the more —
For I am worth it — or I 'll take
What 's mine, and wharf-dust from me shake."

She listened — and her heart went white
Then red again with the glad blood.
She loved him, yet it was not quite
The love that conquers all despite.
And then her people — and their wrath;
For they would cast her off, she knew,
Since there were riches in her path:
The other he had seen her with
Was one whose wealth transcended myth.

" Oh, Jess, I am afraid," she cried,
" I think I love you, but my life
Has been by pride and place dyed,
And with you I should be untried.
If you had money — and no father
To fetter us in the world's eye!
Wait, Jess, a little while, I 'd rather."
Then with a flutter she was gone —
But not the dawn with her — the dawn!

For love had spoken. So desire
For wealth and freedom broke out in
The boy — as might a forest fire
That sweeps all down and will not tire.
He hastened to the ringing wharf.
The old man waited at the door.
" By Hell, do you expect to dwarf
My business with delays like this?"
He swore, and struck Jess with a hiss.

Jess quivered, then said, " Come with me
Into the office: you must hear.
I 've wormed it to your tyranny
Enough: now something else must be."
" What?" said the old man. " Come? — I will,
And smash your liver into sense.
You 'll learn this is no kid-glove-mill.
I know well how your lily throat
Is strangled in a petticoat."

They went: the door was closed behind.
Without the deckhands grinned and waited.
" Ole boss, he shore cuts to the rind,"
One said. " Young boss don't know his kind."
Within, the boy, trembling as sons
Will tremble before fathers only,
Strained for the breath of self-control
To say with dignity his soul.

" I 've worked three years and you have had
Less words from me than I 've had wages.
I 've toiled: for what? To see you pad
Your purse — and add to it and add.
Nor did I care: the days were good,
Rich with the golden hair of Ellen.
But now I want a livelihood —
Pay for the past — and for the wife
I hope to win, a decent life.

" I know the trade: give me but these
And I will soon double your gains.
But give them not — and I will squeeze
What's mine." Old Garth smote on his knees,
" What's yours?" he cried. " Know this, you whelp,
Who lift this whine that I am thieving.
I 'll give you what will be more help."
He struck Jess and the boy went down,
In long unconsciousness to drown. ...