Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, AFTER THE WEDDING, by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS



Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

AFTER THE WEDDING, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I thought we never should be rid of them!
Last Line: To find our own past in their future there!
Alternate Author Name(s): Howells, W. D.
Subject(s): Daughters; Love - Marital; Marriage; Parents; Wedded Love; Marriage - Love; Weddings; Husbands; Wives; Parenthood


The best room of a village house, after the bride and groom have gone and the
wedding guests have left the father and the mother of the bride alone. They are
a pair in later middle life with hair beginning to be gray. The father stands at
the window staring out. The mother goes restively about, noting this thing and
that.

The Mother: I thought we never should be rid of them!
The laughing, and the screaming, and the chatter,
I though would drive me wild. Now they are gone,
And I can breathe a little while before
I begin putting things in place again.
But what confusion! I should think a whirlwind
Had swept the whole house through, up stairs and down.
It seemed as if those people had no mercy.
And she, before that wall of roses there,
Standing through all so patient and so gentle,
And smiling so on every one that came
To shake hands with her, or to kiss her—white
As the white dress she wore! Ah, no one knew,
As I knew what it cost her to keep up.
I knew her heart was aching for the home
That she was leaving, so that when it came
To the good-by, I almost felt it break
Against my own. Dearest, you do believe
He will be good to her? You do believe—
What are you looking at out of the window?
The Father, without turning:
At the old slippers they threw after her.
The rice lies in the road as thick as snow.
The Mother: Those silly old customs, how I hate them all!
But if they help to keep our thoughts away—
You do see something else!
The Father: No, nothing else.
I was just wondering if I might not hear
The whistle of their train.
The Mother: And have you heard it?
The Father: Not yet.
The Mother: Then come and sit down here by me,
And tell me how it was when we were married.
He comes slowly from the window and stands before her.
Do you suppose I looked as pale as she did?
I know I did not! I was sure of you
For life and death. Why do not you sit down?
He sinks absently beside her on the sofa. She pulls his arm round her
waist.
There, now, I do not feel so much afraid!
The Father: Afraid of what?
The Mother: How can I tell you what?
Afraid for her of all that I was then
So radiantly glad of for myself.
Do you believe we really were so happy?
I was one craze of hope and trust in you.
But was that happiness? Do you believe
He will be good to her as you have been
To me?
The Father: Oh, yes.
The Mother: Why do you answer so,
Sighing like that?
The Father: Because men are not good,
As women are.
The Mother: Yes, I kept thinking that,
Through the whole service, when the promises
He made seemed broken in the very making.
How little we know about him! A few months
Since she first saw him, and we give her to him
As trustfully as if we had known him always.
The Father: And we ourselves, we had not known each other
Longer than they when we were married.
The Mother: Oh,
But that was different!
The Father: No, it was the same
And it was like most of the marriages
That have been and that shall be to the end,
They liked the charm of strangeness in each other.
The Mother: But men and women are quite strange enough,
Merely as men and women, to each other,
When they have lived their whole lives long together.
And we ourselves, we took too many chances.
I did not think you ever would be harsh,
And when you spoke the first harsh word to me—
I believe, if he is ever unkind to her,
That I shall know it, wherever it may be.
She will come to me somehow in her grief,
And let me comfort her poor ghost with mine,
For it would kill us both. Do you suppose—
Do you believe he ever will be harsh
With her?
The Father: I almost think you ask me that
Just to torment me.
The Mother: There, that is so like you!
You cannot talk of her as if she were
A woman after all. But, I can tell you,
She in her turn can bear all I have borne;
And though she seems so frail and sensitive,
She is not one to break at a mere touch.
But men are that way, I have noticed it;
They think their wives can endure everything,
Their daughters nothing. You are not listening!
The Father: Yes, I am listening. What is it you mean?
The Mother: You are tenderer of your children than your wives
Because you love what is yourselves in them,
And you must love somebody else in us.
Cannot you give me a moment's sympathy
Now when I have nobody left but you?
What are you thinking of, I'd like to know?
The Father, going back to the window and kneeling on the window-seat,
with his forehead against the pane:
The night when she was born.
The Mother: I knew it! I
Was thinking of it too, and how it seemed
As if she had somehow chosen us to be
Her father and her mother.
The Father: Why not him,
Then, for her husband, by a mystery
As sacred?
The Mother: Oh, why do you ask? Because
There is no other world, now, as there was
Then, where the mystery could shape itself—
No hitherto, as there is no hereafter.
We have destroyed it for ourselves and her,
And love for all of us is as much a thing
Of earth as death itself.
The Father: I never said
That world did not exist.
The Mother: Oh, no, you only
Said that you did not know, and I have only
Bettered your ignorance a little and said
I knew. Women must have some faith or other,
Even if they make a faith of disbelief;
They cannot halt half-way in yes and no;
And she is more like me than you in that,
Though she is like you in so many things.
That shattered fantasy—or, what you please—
Cannot be mended now and used again;
And howsoever she has chosen him,—
Or, if you like, he has been chosen for her,—
The choice is made between his love and ours.
The home she seemed to bring, then, when she came,
Now is gone, it lies here in the dust.
Oh, I can pick the house up, after while,
But never pick the home up, while I live!
Well, let it be! I suppose you will call it
Nature, and preach that cold philosophy
Of yours; that every home is founded on
The ruin of some other home and shall be
The ruin out of which still other homes
Shall grow in turn, and so on to the end.
I find no comfort in it, and my heart
Aches for the child that is not less my child
Because she is her husband's wife. Oh, yes,
If we were two fond optimistic fools,
I dare say we should sit here in this horror,
And hold each other's hands and smile to think
Of what a brilliant wedding it had been;
How everybody said how well she looked,
And how he was so handsome and so manly;
And try to follow them in imagination
To their new house, and settle them in it;
And say how soon we would be hearing from her,
And then how soon they would come back to us
Next summer. But we have not been that kind.
We have always said the things we really thought,
And not shrunk from the facts; and now I face them,
And say this wedding—Hark! was that their train?
The Father: It is the freight mounting the grade. Their train
Is overdue, but it will soon be there.
The Mother: If it would never come or never go!
If all the worlds that whir around the sun
Could stop, and none of them go on again!
Once I had courage for us both, and now
You ought to have it. Oh, say something, do,
To help me bear it!
The Father: What is it I should say!
The Mother: That it has been all my own doing! Say
That I would have it, and am like the mothers,
The stupid mothers, still uncivilized,
That wish their daughters married for the sake
Of being married: that would help me bear it.
If you blamed me then I could blame you too,
And say you wished it quite as much as I.
The Father: We neither of us wished it, and I think
We have always blamed each other needlessly.
The Mother: Yes, and I cannot bear it as I used
When she was with us. Now that she is gone
And you are all in all to me again,
Dearest, you must be very good to me.
Did you hear something?
The Father, going to the window:
Yes, I thought I heard
The coming of their train; but it was nothing.
The Mother, unheedingly: The worst of all was having to part so—
Hurried and fluttered— up there in her room,
Where she had been so long our little child,
And with that hubbub going on down here,
Not realize that we were parting. Oh,
If we could only have had a little time
And quiet for it! Hark! What noise was that?
The Father: What noise?
The Mother: Something that sounded like a voice!
Her voice! I know it must have been her voice!
She rushes to the window and stares out.
I always knew within my heart that she
Would call for me, if any unhappiness
Greater than she could bear should come to her.
The Father: But what unhappiness—
The Mother: A tone, a look!
The Father: With our arms round her yet? He could not. That Would be
against nature.
The Mother: Nature! How you men
Are always thinking about nature! Little
You understand her! Nature flatters men.
She gives men mastery and health and life,
And women subjection, weakness, pain and death.
We know what nature is and you know nothing.
She takes our youth and wastes it upon you,
She steals our beauty for you, and she uses
Our love itself to enslave us to you. Nature!
The Father: Has it been really so with you and me?
The Mother: How do I know? You may have been unlike Other men.
The Father: No, but quite like other men;
Not better. Shall she take her chance with him?
Speak out now from the worst you know of me,
And say if you would have her back again.
The Mother: It keeps on calling! Can it be her voice?
The Father: Then say it is her voice. What will you answer?
Shall she come home and be our child again?
The Mother: You put it all on me!
The Father: Then if I take
The burden all upon myself, and choose—
The Mother: What?
The Father: That her longing for us should have power
To bring her back?
The Mother: To say good-by again?
The Father: To stay and never say good-by again,
To leave her husband and to cleave to us.
The Mother: I cannot let you choose! For oh! it seems
That it would really happen if you chose.
Wait, wait a minute, while I try to think,
How would it be, if she came back again,
And crept once more into this empty shell
Of life that has been lived! What is there here,
But two old hearts that hardly have enough
Of love left for each other? And she needs
The whole of such love as I found in you
When I had given you all the love I had.
No, she must go with him as I with you.
Because she has been all in all to us
So long, and yet for such a little time,
We have come to think that she must be unlike
Others, and she must be above their fate.
But that is foolish. She must take her chance,
As I took mine, and as we women have
Taken our chance from the beginning. There!
I give her up for the first time and last!
Tell her—I talk as if you were with her
There, and not here with me!
The Father: And I—I feel
As if we both were there with her and with Each other here.
The Mother: And so we shall be always;
And most with her when most we are alone,
See, they have mounted to their train together!
She stands a moment at the door and waves
The hand that is not held in his towards us—
And they are gone into their unknown world
To find our own past in their future there!





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