’Yes,’ he replied, ’But not a man like him.’ ’Why not a man like him?’ she said, ’What next?’ By this they’d reached her cottage in the dim, Among the daisies that the cold had kexed. ’Because I say. Now, Anna, don’t be vexed.’ ’I’m more than vexed,’ she said, ’with words like these. "You say," indeed. How dare you. Leave me, please.’
’Anna, my Anna.’ ’Leave me.’ She was cold, Proud and imperious with a lifting lip, Blazing within, but outwardly controlled; He had a colt’s first instant of the whip. The long lash curled to cut a second strip. ’You to presume to teach. Of course, I know You’re mother’s Sunday scholar, aren’t you? Go.’
She slammed the door behind her, clutching skirts. ’Anna.’ He heard her bedroom latches thud. He learned at last how bitterly love hurts; He longed to cut her throat and see her blood, To stamp her blinking eyeballs into mud. ’Anna, by God!’ Love’s many torments make That tune soon change to ’Dear, for Jesus’ sake.’
He beat the door for her. She never stirred, But primming bitter lips before her glass; Admired her hat as though she hadn’t heard, And tried her front hair parted, and in mass. She heard her lover’s hasty footsteps pass. ’He’s gone,’ she thought. She crouched below the pane, And heard him cursing as he tramped the lane.
Rage ran in Jimmy as he tramped the night; Rage, strongly mingled with a youth’s disgust At finding a beloved woman light, And all her precious beauty dirty dust; A tinsel-varnish gilded over lust. Nothing but that. He sat him down to rage, Beside the stream whose waters never age.
Plashing, it slithered down the tiny fall To eddy wrinkles in the trembling pool With that light voice whose music cannot pall, Always the note of solace, flute-like, cool. And when hot-headed man has been a fool, He could not do a wiser thing than go To that dim pool where purple teazles grow.
He glowered there until suspicion came, Suspicion, anger’s bastard, with mean tongue, To mutter to him till his heart was flame, And every fibre of his soul was wrung, That even then Ern and his Anna clung Mouth against mouth in passionate embrace. There was no peace for Jimmy in the place.
Raging he hurried back to learn the truth. The little swinging wicket glimmered white, The chimney jagged the skyline like a tooth, Bells came in swoons for it was Sunday night. The garden was all dark, but there was light Up in the little room where Anna slept: The hot blood beat his brain; he crept, he crept.