OystersBroiled chicken with asparagus, sweet potatoes, peasice-cream and cakeand coffee.
OystersBroiled chicken with asparagus, sweet potatoes, peasice-cream and cakeand coffee.
OystersBroiled chicken with asparagus, sweet potatoes, peasice-cream and cakeand coffee.
“I’m so happy!” she said, her eyes flooding out upon the face of Fanny. “I am so glad we have met at last!”
—She asks me no question of myself. Not that she fears lest I ask questions of her. She wants that. Your eyes and your lips so finely cut, so frozen in their revolt ... how long ago was that?... ask: I should ask of yourself. I cannot. Let me sit here, Clara, quiet. The food, O the good food! Let me sit here in your eyes. I cannot give you that which my asking of you would mean. I cannot. There is a little openness between us ... our separate years. In it I breathe. If you cover it with your coming close, I shall choke.
“We are going to a show,” said Clara. “Which show shall it be?”
“I have seen no play for so long! How should I know?”
“I’ll choose.”
She called the waiter. “Bring me an evening paper.”
—So strong and sure of herself! I am weak beside you.... Am I better than you?
At last Fanny’s eyes could open, could meet the glow of her friend’s.
“I am glad we ran into each other.... I am glad to see you.”
Clara was pale.—She is very understanding.... No ... not to-night shall I be better than you, strange girl crowned in your defeat. I know what you have done. I am glad to be willing to be weak beside you.
Once again Clara smiled. “Here’s a good one. Music ... you need music and dancing.”
—I live in music and dance....
“O I am so happy! I have missed you, Fanny. I did not know until there you were gone.... I did not know....” She stopped. Fanny’s eyes were turned inward.—Don’t, don’t! they said.—The space between us is what I breathe. There was silence.
Fanny was weak. She had walked level through the dark. Now for some time she felt that she was mounting. Felt this as one would who tramped in blackness by the strain upon herself. She could not touch the essence of her thoughts, gazing at Clara. They both had left acommon world which they had never shared, years since. What in the sheer uncommonness of their separate careers was it they felt they shared? It was very strange to Fanny. They had no mutual subject. They sat across the table from each other, mostly in silence. What there had been to speak of ... Christopher Johns, the Office ... was dead in them both, was no subject. Yet now they shared a silence, they shared a pregnancy.—I am at ease, here, weary, full of food.... I am going to listen to music. Mounting, I am at rest!
They sat in the first row of the Balcony. Fanny knew these two young women ... one not so young!... sharp in the motley welter of the crowd. They were swathed together in one sharpness by the anarchic auras of the other men and women. Fanny saw herself: small, pallid, worn in her black skirt and her dun waist, close to this girl who had sold her defeat for the clear rose-colored smartness of her suit, for the diamond pin under her lovely throat, for the sleek health of her hair. But her eyes, she felt her eyes greater than ever, wandering in the hunger of her face ... the eyes of Clara were great and were her own.
The music was far away.... “This is a tale of far away, a world I have left and forgotten.” The curtain rose. The actors were clad in costumes of 1840. White Pierrot danced through the glitter of ladies in prim bonnets, gleaming bared breasts, hooped skirts. Rhymed words, words of love and fidelity and perfection chimed with the pelt of taffetas and brocade, of powdered hands flirting fans: and white Pierrot with eyes lost inthe paint of a gay world, seeking love and perfection.
—People do not dream this way. I was not alive then. This is a costume comedy with pretty airs. Romantic ... means false, in time and in place. Fanny struggled now against a world falsely remembered.—This is not true, not yours. Pierrot was in love with a fine lady who tinkled at a clavichord ... gowned in sheer black with her white shoulders bare. Her flirting shoulders and her painted lips took his round love: his deep was lost in her shallow: Pierrot was lost. He left her broken: and another man with words of love sharp like hooks to catch her flesh caught in her shoulders (they had not turned for Pierrot), turned her round, won her.
... A sad play with laughing music ... little streams of water running up the dark side of a mountain. Impossible ... unreal. Fanny saw the breaking audience. It rose and splintered in the new light house. Men and women suddenly distinct like the jewels in their hair, like the hard smiles, hard lines of face against the new blare of the lighted house. No. The play was real. Laughter went twinkling up the steep of mountains. Laughter flowed up hill. That was the way of laughter.—You men and women falling away downhill, have you never laughed? Upward! upward! Fanny pressed Clara’s arm.
They stood in the night. The breast of Fanny flowed with her hurt and her life: her heart was liquid at last: her hurt and her life, pressed so long against the urge of Clara, melted andflowed. She took the hands of her friend. She pressed them. She knew what was to be....
They walked through the broken throng of men and women parting, waiting: through the bright weave of carriage calls, whispers, farewells: through the new freshet of the City’s stream spreading in blue and green and gold, soon lost. They walked in silence. They were putting off a moment of decision. The Elevated Structure stood like a sentence. Fanny’s arm that had held Clara’s dropped to her side. A train, jingling with lights, drew past....
—It goes and goes, it comes to the window where I work, to the window where I stand this instant at a table. I tear and rip ... I work in the thick shadows of dead life. I look at the train that passes. It is there!
Fanny held out her hand.... A little man, square black beard, small red lips, sharp greedy eyes, stood with his hairy hands upon her shoulders. Mr. Rachmann!—She sought the hand of her friend.
Clara’s lips sharpened.
“Where do you live?” she spoke. “I want to see you soon.”
Fanny shook her head. Mr. Rachmann went. The lips of Clara parted, they were wet.
“I do not understand.”
“Look at me, Clara.”
“You won’t let me see you?”
“O do understand! Can you see me? Can we see each other, Dear?”
Clara’s face broke.
“You can’t do this. You can’t. You don’t know what you mean. Let me come. I am all alone. O don’t judge me, Fanny!”
“You know I don’t judge you.”
“Let me see you ... once.”
They were rigid in struggle.
“Clara, I am afraid to see you.”
... Still....
“I am going a way that is terrible and unknown. It does not get easier. There is no getting used to it. Each moment, there is yearning to turn ... get out ... fall away....”
The girl straightened. “You think I do not understand,” came her clearer voice. “But I do. More than you, perhaps.... You need not give me your address.”
Fanny was warm and broken against the clearness of Clara.—What does this mean? Why do I reject her? She was still.
“Good-by,” said Clara.
—You need me. You need me? Say that you need me, girl.
The hand of each held more than the hand of the other.
“It’s all right....” A moment Clara smiled. Then her eyes looked within, they met the eyes of Fanny deeply in a far space where they were not apart.
“Good-by.”
—There is love in you. Love, love. What wisdom? You are not saying, Good-by. You are saying, Love!
Fanny was still. And alone.
* * *
Without turning she walked. Swift walking. She was aware of herself walking swift beneath the Elevated trains, and of not moving at all. She did not like this shadowy way with lights upon the sides of it like little creatures burning to get in. It was full of noise and heaviness and booming steel. A side street ... quieter, cold ... swung to her face. Southward again. But now an Avenue all open to the stars.
The tall buildings rose melting into mist. Stars flickered faint over the stillness of their pointed thrusts. They rose from stone, rigid, equal: a stone City lay before her and the houses stood one stuff with the hard death beneath her feet. Men and women, like house, like street, passed on: wrapped in stone muffledness. They were muffled in dim rigor. They were masked.
The City was masked. Corner of wall soaring, clusters of passers-by, the buzz of motors pulling with rubbered gait through the damp asphalt ... were features of a Mask. She felt its stillness, its stifled comfort: underneath, a heated flesh she could not touch.
Her feet, beating the street, beat with her eyes and soul against the Mask of a world. It was unrolling. Sharp stone towers swathed in blue mist, private mansions mansard-roofed, façade of church, flourish of store with its show-windowsalight like gems set in the pallor of the night ... masked, hid away. She was unmoving while the dominant procession pressed before her. And the men and women, sparse, impervious, aloof, were details of the pageant that defiled. Yet it seemed to Fanny she beheld an act deeply ceremonial, religious. The high masked world ... human and stone ... became a chant, lifted in stilled ecstasy unto some god....
Her room was outside all this. The gas jet she lit stood on the whitewashed wall, made it orange, made shadow of bureau and chair stand stiff like marionettes ... stiffly agile ... upon the orange glare. She was shut in: the pageant and the hymn to a lost god were far away. Yet now in the room it was to her as if she stood at a window. She looked out secure upon the song and pageant of the world....
—I am very quiet. A terrible thing has come to me. I have met Clara, the one person in the world who knows of me and cares ... and I have sent her away. A terrible thing has taken place. I am quiet.
She was afraid of thinking ... afraid of how clear she saw. She took off her clothes, she turned out the light. She lifted wide the little window that lifted her eyes above a jagged finger of roof to the sky. Lavendar-blue it was, washed in pale streakings of eternal fire. She lay stretched-out in her bed: warm, with eyes so wide she could feel the night pour in to them.... Manifold Night! Night of the straining of flame through space, Night of the march of stone masks above the softness of men. Night——
A question stood sharp up:—“Why did I want to turn round, walking downtown? Why did I not turn round? What was the thought always there as I walked—as of a face and a will watching——“
Fanny smiled. “You wish she had followed you. She didn’t! Never fear. She is not that sort ... strong unsentimental Clara.”
Fanny saw Clara naked in a wide soft bed. Very sharp she saw her: the small clear breasts, the fluted strain of the thighs, the tender cushion of her belly. A man-form, vague, bore down upon her belly. Fanny could see no more. She feared to sense that if she dared see more she might see Johns! She saw a desecration as if the talons and beak of a great bird tore at the thighs of Clara ... strips of the flesh of herself. She could not bear it. Her palms clutched over her eyes and ears. She turned writhing upon her stomach. She was still.
—Poor Harry!...
“No,” she said aloud. “You wanted her to follow and she did not. She respects you too much. Can’t you respect yourself? What you said to Clara was true ... the long and terrible Way that you must go. Cannot you say to yourself what you said to Clara?” Once more Fanny lay in her bed straight-stretched and her eyes open: once more the light poured in upon her eyes.
Her head was light. It lifted her like a balloon above the City. She was afloat above the brittle stone. The world was black and was suffused by fires. The light was the Black breathing.
“It is true,” said her mouth. “I am falling upward. I have nothing to do with this. I am falling upward.”
Her words lifted upon the Night that poured in her eyes. She saw her words. She saw herself. She drank her words and herself.
—I hope it is not Johns who is keeping Clara. No. It is not he. Clara would not ... even if he would ... after what was. Why do I care? I am not done with Clara!... But I did right. I must say No and No ... endlessly No to all the world’s questions. That is saying Yes—to what? How strange it is, this Being in me that flies. I am the wings of myself.
She was very light. She was afloat in an impenetrable Dark which yet she pierced for she was suffusion of light. She lay there, eyes and mouth wide open, limp palms at her sides, and heard the cadence of her breath.
—I am not unhappy, she thought. Then her eyes closed....
She was in a station of the Subway. Clara was beside her. Crowds surged in four great streams. She lost Clara. She was afraid. Streams dark and turgid beneath the crust of the earth were men and women. She saw ten thousand hats and gloves and skirts in sharp detail. She saw beneath the pandemonium of colored cloths, straw, feathers, leather ... each one sheerly alone ... a single Skin. She felt the Skin grey-white. The straws and silks and collars pricked the Skin: and the Skin hurt. She wanted to be naked of these vari-colors. They hurt. The crowds flowed on. Uponthe faces of the men and women were smiles: the faces were not naked, they were covered with smiles. Upon the feet of the men and women were shoes. Shoes and smiles pricked in hard waves on the grey-white Skin.
She was aware of this steel cavern under the crust of the earth where four streams ploughed and mangled upon each other. On the steel were casings of cement. It was rough. It cut against the quick of her nails. It pricked the steel that held the edge of the earth.
She was aware of this all one, in a great hurt, as she lay asleep with her skin against the rough stuff of her blanket.
Upon the Subway cave was the stone street. Upon the stone street were the buildings. In the cave, in the street, in the buildings, flowed the people. They were a black blood flowing everywhere. Here they were thickest. They caught the rigid Subway cave: it rocked. The street was rocked with the rocking hole below. The towering houses swung and dipped in a steep measure, over the streets, over the plunging Subway throng, under the Sky. A mighty rhythm ran with the black blood through the stone world. It danced. The Subway rolled and bounced. Buildings bent down, jerked high, circled their points in a great Dance under a sky that was still.
Fanny watched the dancing world as if it were close to her: as if it were upon her like her heaving breast.
“I am the Dancer,” she cried.
She danced. She was still, she was in bed. Butshe danced. In the veer of houses, in the see-saw of streets, Fanny danced. Over her head she was aware of a sky steadfast.
Fanny danced faster. Towers of stone leaped up now, leaving the streets. Towers of stone soared like rockets against the still stars and came back. Gutters twirled: crowds wove into pythonic knots. The skies caught Dance, like fire. The stars moved very finely; they did not swing far from their orbits: rather they tremored, they shone in vibrance, they sang like high notes very fast ... and the sky swung long, swung so slow like a tide through the warp of trilling stars that it was hard to know that the sky moved. In the clothes of the dancing Subway throng there were bugs: they danced. In the roofs of the street, there were stars: they danced. Fanny saw the bugs dancing, and the dancing stars.
“I am the Dancer,” she cried. She danced through the Night....
She opened her eyes at last to a day pale wornout. She lay in her bed, under the haggard morning as under a wet sheet. She was unable to move.
“I am sick,” she said aloud. Then again she slept.
When she awoke it was still day. Sharp stillness. She heard the blood beat in her temples. Her body was blanched, it was dead. Her head lay hot and swollen above an inert body.
She shut her eyes. The day swathed her head in myriad light shawls. One by one the shawls withdrew, they were gone. She opened her eyes against black Nothingness. It raced into her eyes, it won her swollen head. But her body it could not touch. Her body like a knife-thrust lay, white and still, within the belly of night.
—I must get up. She tried to get up and could not. She lay in her warm water. Her body prevailed. The water was cold. It was dry. Her head scolded against her stricken body. Her body endured like a bar of steel. It was solid death in a melted world that was dying.
There were days and there were nights. There were nights and there were days. The world winked open, the world winked shut. Rain dribbled into her window: sunbeams deflected lay like gold dust against it. Below, in the houses, feet fell; voices rose, fell; shadows of human will writhed up the twisted stairs to her white room: no substance followed. She was alone: her blanched dead body and her boiling head. Beneath her a great Void in which the sounds of doors and feet and words, the rumble of a cart, angled about like little balls of celluloid in a great hollow caldron.
Day night day ... the world winked dimmer. Fanny’s form lay like a wave-washed beam on the edge of the sea. Color was long since washed. The water sucked at the meat and the juice of the wood. It was porous light, it was rotten before the ceaseless suck of the water of the sea. Herhead was lower. It no longer boiled above her body.
Then Fanny shut her eyes: and her eyes were all of her head that was not like her body ... dim and porous and sucked.
“Is this what all was for?” said her eyes. “Have I gone through all this—all this—to die like a cat in a barn?”
She knew she was not to die.
“I am going to die. My life has been nonsense ... and now I am going to die.”
She knew she was not to die.
Her eyes were still. There was a great Pain clenching her breast and her bowels. No pain had been before.
“How long have I been lying here? How many days ... is it weeks?... I have not eaten? Will nobody come?”
Her body was Pain. Her body was coming alive, so it was Pain.
“Will no one come? Will you let me die like a cat? I am thirsty ... I am sick! I cannot move. I danced too much. I am paralyzed with Dancing. Don’t let me die.”
Her body was coming alive, so that it cried.
“Edith ... Edith, save me! Harry—won’t you nurse me? I have nursed you so often. Water! My child! O Mother ... Clara I did not mean——“
Her body was coming alive, so that it was afraid. It screamed, it lied, it abused: it wanted the water of life.
“It is too late. I am alone. Something waswrong with you, Fanny. You seemed good and sound enough. But something was wrong with you, Fanny.... Look at you now: you Fanny Dirk, you bright Fanny ... mother and wife ... you now.”
She knew she was not to die. She knew there was nothing wrong.
“Does God send clean creatures to a death like this? Death in a stinking room where no one comes to see what is the matter after days and days. Starving to death alone, in New York.... O how rotten you must have been!”
She knew she was not rotten.
“Is there nothing left? No one single thing? Mother, I can’t find you. Edith, I can’t see you. Harry—Edith—all gone. Is there nothing left? Yes: one thing left.”
Fanny lifted her shoulders faintly from the bed with straining elbows. Her heavy head fell backward: her eyes swung dizzy toward the ceiling.
“God! you aren’t much for me. But I believe in you. Do you hear? Even now. I am not rotten, God. I have not done wrong, God. You must hear me, for I believe in you, somehow, my Father. This is all right. This is not just—this is not unjust. It is part of the world. I am leaving the world. But I have been a part. I believe that, God. I have been a part and you need all parts. You have needed me, God?”
There were tears in her eyes ... cool good tears. “Say you have needed me, God, for a part in your ... something. Whatever it is. You’ve done with me, now. But you’ve used me. Haven’t youused me, God? You’re casting me in the ash-heap I know. Can’t you say at least ‘Thank you’ before I am gone?”
Fanny sank back upon her pillow. Tears made cool stains down the hot parch of her cheeks. Her eyes roved through the opaque bright room, breaking against the cruel harshness of familiar objects. Her hands against each other on her breast tremored and fell apart. Her mouth moved.—Is this the end?
She knew there was no end.
A great Peace came. Her body was soft and enfolded. Warm waters held her close, washed her of anguish, washed her of doubt and of weakness, washed her at last of self. Fanny was perfect in sleep like a child in its mother. There was a smile on her mouth....
* * *
Long hours the room with its still freight moved through the world. Unbroken, like a seed, buried and hard in the earth. At dusk the door opened slowly. Clara stepped into the room.
The prostrate friend in the stiff iron bed, black hair matted over the hot white face, the walls, very still, very cold, shutting this beaten flesh into their death ... struck Clara in the door.
Her hands clutched her throat. She knelt beside the bed. Her hands and cheeks took in the heavy breath, the burning brow, voluptuously. “Thank God,” she murmured. Then the luxury of sense and of articulation went. Clara was action.
Ten minutes later, a physician stood with her at the bedside.
Fanny opened her eyes to a world softened and new. A warm world, she accepted like a child, without wonder. Over the gas-jet was a shade of green. The walls cast a kind dimness. On the deep windowsill a brazier burned. Bottles stood sheer from the shadow, blue and black and brown ... warm emanations of a good will they seemed in their suggestion that being ill she was nursed, being weak fortified. They stood beneath the tender steam of the brazier like good words.
The room was warm. It had warm breath. Itwas alive and gentle wrapping her about like fond extensions of these quiet, these brand-new sheets.... Magic! all good ... all so more natural than that hard seed of the past she had dwelt in, been imprisoned in: long walls, rigid, shutting her up, lifting her softness hard above the City’s hardness. Fanny drew out her hands from the warm covers. Fingers touched, tried each other: fingers pressed in the moist flesh of her palms ... lean hands yet new. The room was a caress.
Through the moving door came a figure very high: figure slim and athrob beneath a drawn green gown, under black hair let loose upon its shoulders.
Clara pressed sheer through the caressing room. Clara! Magic and wonderlessness, most magical of all. Clara! with her hair let down, in a green wrap. Her loom was the substance of the warming air: her being sheer over the bed was the mouth that had uttered all these transforming words: the blue alcohol flame, the bottles, medicine, milk, the soothing walls about the fended light,herself, newest word of all, that lay in a clean bed ... the truest and the sweetest word of all this mouth that was Clara.
“Dear, dear,” came Clara’s voice. “You are awake and you are better.”
She sat beside her. She gave her broth. Fanny was soothed, in a oneness swallowing the hot broth: she was one with Clara.... Dimmed gas, bowed throat of her friend and agile hands holding the cup and the spoon were one, articulately, with her own heavy eyes and the lips she felt asshe opened them and swallowed. There was her will, there were the features of her will. What touched her eyes and her skin, her ears and her taste was a symphonic unity which she could love, as she lay swathed within it, as a child loves its own body....
Clara slept in a big armchair which had appeared in the room’s transforming. Each day came the Doctor. He had a little ruddy VanDyck beard and eyes that twinkled. He had soothing hands. He was a part of Clara ... hence of Fanny. When he left, there was his soothing wake in the soft brown air of the room.
“You are silent,” she said to him, “like a canoe.”
“Well, we’ll paddle you back to shore and health,” he smiled. She saw the eyes of Clara beam excitement.
“You have not spoken,” Clara said, “you have not spoken before!”
—I love my silence. Fanny lay back in her new thick pillows. I am going to be silent.
“Soon we can bring you away from this dreadful place. Can’t we, Doctor?”
He nodded.
—I shall keep my silence as long as I can.
Fanny looked with warm eyes at the glass of milk which Clara held for her.—I could hold it now. But I won’t. She did not speak.
And Clara spoke little. Words about her comfort, words about her food, words of endearingreproof when Fanny woke too early or did not finish her toast.
But already Clara was no longer herself. Fanny saw her long dark face, haggard now and pale with heavy eyes. She saw the hand that feeding trembled a bit.
“You are not a mother. Yet I am your child. Just a little longer. For you are not a mother. I am a mother.”
Her eyes shone happy with an unuttered promise: “I shall be a mother to you. You shall see.” But Fanny dared not speak. For she knew when her words came, there would come from within her, deeper within her, her words’ denial.
Clara’s strong hands, tense like a cord, soothed her gown, clutched her shoulders, lifted her so that she could drink.
“To-morrow, dear, to-morrow we bundle you into a cab. At last! Away from this dreadful place.”
“Where?”
“To my place,” said Clara.
—I shall not speak ... yet awhile. For I am afraid of the word that will come when I speak.
The girl knelt down at the bed. Her head lay on Fanny’s breast. Her hands went wistful searching to upon her eyes, upon her mouth. Her eyes were shut and her lips moist upon the gown of Fanny....
FANNY sat in sun that was caressed and tamed by high blue curtains. She shadowed a mirror in her hand ... it gave her eyes her face ... with a sharp shoulder.—They used not to be sharp!... Wrist tiring with its tiny burden, arm taut and thin in the blue housegown Clara made her wear welded the silver glass with its sheer image to her face. Her eye, seeking its own secret, worked unaware through the medium of parched hand, spent wrist, peaked shoulder. No glamor was between her eye and its reflection.
Her face was overlaid with shadows: subtly, terribly it was increased beyond its natural buoyance as if sudden in that Night she had danced through all of life had made invasion of her large eyes, of her delicate nose, of her mouth quick like a young leaf, and forced its burden on them. She had brought from her home the face of a girl: she looked at a face branded her own and the world’s.
About this weighted face the room she sat in: cushioned, satined, a room of crude caresses. She alone was salient peering into this image of herself. She alone had mass and had dimension: and all of it upon her little features, drawing them, deforming them, making them ugly. Making them herself.
—I must face this! I have become a person.
She felt herself as a sharp weight set in softness. So she was upheld: but she was free. Therewas a bar between herself....—I am true!... and these warm falsehoods Clara had set her in.
—Saved me by them! I know that. You are all Lies about me, yet me who am true you have saved. Without you what could Clara’s naked love have done? Without you wouldn’t she be dead as I was? Your milk, your covers, your warmth ... lies: O my still bed, O sun that falls about the grey of my shoulders like a lawn of Spring upon an autumn earth—bless you, for there is quiet in you yet, and it has let me think.
... When I am at last all in thought, I am in the way of the end. To end is to be healed. I understand that. Life is a wound that only life can heal.
—I might have died without beginning! You, lies, saved me. What does that mean?
She lay back in her chair and the mirror fell to her lap.—I have lost so much hair ... black, lovely ... don’t think of that, that is not thinking! All you must fall as the hair fell. Fanny’s eyes closed. She slept.
She came to waking with her head forward and her hand upheld, watching her face in the glass. Clara was in the door.
—Did my looking at her asleep ... how she has grown old!... make her raise the glass like that to her shut eyes? Then they opened. Clara was afraid of the displacement her thoughts might make: she moved in her room and sent out wordsin it as if the air were tight with some subtle, feeling substance easily overflowed.
“How are you, dearie?... Been sleeping?”
She laid a bunch of violets in Fanny’s lap.
Fanny smiled, her eyes and her hands clasping the flowers thanked her.
“I’m so much better. Where have you been?”
“Just shopping.”
Fanny had asked no such question before. Clara sensed beneath it the significant stir of her friend’s mind once more into the outer world. The outer world! What was going to be when Fanny once took note of her own world? She could not talk, for she was afraid. She drew a chair beside her in the sun, and held her hand and was still.
“You are looking better. I have a broiler for you.Nowyou must begin toeat.”
Her stress stroked a wish: Fanny should eat long, must lose herself for a long time in eating.
“I have been thinking,” Fanny said. “The sun’s so good, I’d like to walk in it.”
“Dearie, it’s cold and raw out.”
“I know it is.”
“It’s only good in a warm room ... like this.”
“I know.”
Fanny’s hand clasped over Clara’s, silencing her. They sat in silence. With gazes long and almost parallel they thought of the sun that was good only in a warm room.
“My room,” thought Clara.
“Whose room?” thought Fanny....
“Clara tell me, ... you were not shopping. Why can’t you tell me where you were?”
“Dear, when you’re well—“
“I am well now. A little weak, but well. Didn’t you say yourself—“
“I’ve been with him.”
“You needn’t hide it. Don’t you think I know?”
“Yes, Fan. But it’s all so untrue, since you are here.”
“He must be good, never to come around.”
“He knows all about you ... and he won’t come—until I tell him it’s alright. Hehasbeen good. He has left me alone. Well—he knows if he didn’t—“
“Tell him to come,” said Fanny.
Clara jumped up. She was afraid and uncertain. She knew not why she was so. “I must see about dinner.” She tossed off her hat and was gone.
It was a little flat. The dining room, the living room, the bed room, were compact and warm in dull brown, rose, blue. They were retiscent rooms, stiff proper little places furnished as with sedate conventions. Naught of vice, naught of abandon about them: they had no strength but they were full of ease. Like married old ladies, they were at rest on something very sure. Fanny did not understand them. But in her fever she had taken and used them as a babe its nurse.
Fanny and Clara ate, almost in silence. Fanny’s half chicken ... she made her friend take the other half ... was a luscious problem. She must eat it fast ... before it got cold or spoiled ... it held her like a spell in its succulent evanescent glow. It lay in the white plate the color of sunstone.
“Since I have been here,” she said, “no one has come to your place. No one. You’ve broken up your whole life because of me. Dear Clara ... that’s a hard thing for me to know.”
“I’ve had no time for my friends. I’ve had too anxious, too wonderful a time, nursing you, Dear.”
“I was very sick?” Fanny smiled. “When I looked in the glass today I knew that. I’m an old woman, Clara.”
The girl shook her head. “Don’t talk that way!” Her eyes were full on Fanny with a joy that was not denial. She did not mind. “You are not old,” she said. “But you’re mature ... somehow I suppose, next to all us, you must seem old to yourself. You are ripe, Fanny. You are glorious.” Her face glowed with the hard repressiveness against her feeling which was her only show of feeling.
“Come, now ... to bed.”
She helped her to undress, diffident but sure: the gestures of a nurse swathed in a mist of sentiment of a bridegroom. She smoothed the covers: she placed a hand on Fanny’s brow pressing her head within the pillow, folding the soft quilt at her chin. She did not kiss her other than so, with her hands. But once, in those gigantic days of theshadow of the Church, of the shadow of what else that had come and was to come! had Clara’s lips touched Fanny.
* * *
Fanny lay in Clara’s bed ... for a month Clara had slept beside her in a cot. And Clara, by the low table lamp that drooped above her shoulder shedding a bloom upon her neck, read aloud a story....
Words were like pebbles against an iron wall. They rang upon a sudden sense in Fanny of the bed she was in. Bed large and deep with hangings of lavender, bed all about her like strong arms of a mother she had never known yet hers!... Clara sharp within it ... sharp breasts, sharp thigh, sharp tenderness of stomach: and the vague black manform looming!... this bed about her. Its arms were warm and were hostile. There was care in them, mother’s care, and yet they had no sense in their great balm of what she was they shielded. Fanny lay ... the words of Clara reading against her were futile ... in the arms of an alien creature who had given her birth. Being of shame, being of denial of herself, and yet she was its thing. Fanny knew the ineffable rightness of her lying there, of her healing there: of this monstrous mother. From this she must suck life, from this which was of alien flesh and spirit she must build herself. Strange angry mother ... her own!... holding her life and lifting her above it.
Words of Clara were little clangors, shells ofsound far off. Fanny lay ... Clara’s bed! Clara’s bed and his!... enswooned in great arms muffling her and feeding. Very white....
She saw black earth, earth breaking against rock. In a crevice of stone through loam, through rotted brush and last year’s leaves she saw a root, swollen and livid-red, thrust a small green shoot: upon it pendant a cupped bud like a pearl. She saw in a Spring of sweeping clouds above a steaming earth, a blood-root blossom....
The clouds were gone, there was mist. There was earth lost in feathery warm mist. There were bursts of trees budding ... the feathery mist ... the blood-root.
Waking she saw this room.
Clara’s cot empty. With covers thrown back it held in its sheets the impress of her body. Shades drawn. A purblind light soiled from its passage through the grey-brick airshaft lay on the blue and lavender like smut. A gilded radiator buzzed and spat....
Fanny heard Clara in the kitchen getting her breakfast. The negress maid did not appear before eleven: and this morning Clara was going to New Jersey to see a married sister who was very ill.
She stood in the doorway. The sooty shade of the room lay in her face, filling the folds of resolution under eyes, beside her mouth, with a harsh darkness.
—She is not well. She is not happy! Clara looks herself.
—And the room—it is itself.
Fanny felt salience in the ugly morning ... for the first time felt salience about her.
—It’ll go. You’ll put up the shade. You’ll cover up these beds ... sheets speak. Some of the sunlight from across the way will filter in. Sun lies sometimes. These true shadows for seeing where I am will go. Fanny could not smile.
“You’re still half asleep,” said Clara. “Want to sleep some more? Lucy could get you breakfast later on.”
“No. I’m awake. You bring in the little table. Let’s breakfast together.”
“In here?” Clara’s smile softened the shadows in her face.
“Yes. Right here. Do!” ...
She felt she must face this room, this heavy stifled room, this weighty fact of where she was and with what. She must eat this room with her breakfast....
It was hard to swallow. Her throat was dry and was full. Above her the chandelier came down in a tawdry twist of gilt from the dim ceiling. The gilt flaked, and she saw black iron.
“Does it taste good?” asked Clara.
She looked at Clara.—God, how dare I pity her! You are good. What you have, you have given me.... “Yes, Dear, it tastes good. You made it. It tastes of your hands.”
They ate ... the breakfast, the room.
“Give me your hand!” Fanny clasped it across the table. A bit of toast it held fell in the sudden sally and the butter smeared the palm. Fannyopened the palm, she held it full against her mouth. She kissed the grease and the flesh.
“I am eating you,” she spoke.
Clara’s eyes were frightened. So she laughed.
“You dear!... Could you eat some more toast?”
—How do I know what I eat?God, you insult us.If we must feed on dirtWhy give us love of the Clean?Why give us fear of the dirtIf we must feed on dirt?Since we must eat and eatWhy give us knowledge?...What do I eat?If I must feed on YouGod, why do I forget?
—How do I know what I eat?God, you insult us.If we must feed on dirtWhy give us love of the Clean?Why give us fear of the dirtIf we must feed on dirt?Since we must eat and eatWhy give us knowledge?...What do I eat?If I must feed on YouGod, why do I forget?
—How do I know what I eat?God, you insult us.If we must feed on dirtWhy give us love of the Clean?Why give us fear of the dirtIf we must feed on dirt?Since we must eat and eatWhy give us knowledge?...What do I eat?If I must feed on YouGod, why do I forget?
* * *
The whole day alone, she promised to herself. Lucy in the other rooms would intervene a little: nothing was perfect. Yet Fanny felt that this was good. She was at ease in her armchair. Soon the sun would sweep into her place. And Lucy had the musical quiet of her folk, she really did not interfere more than a cat might ... a useful cat who would bring her her lunch on the portable table and her drops every three hours. Lucy had a soothing grain, almost like sunlight ... a sort of saffron practicable sunlight.
“Ev’thing a’right now, Mis’ Fanny?”
“Yes, Lucy. Thank you.”
The girl swayed on her little haunches, holding her hands across her breast.
“It’s gone to be a fine day. That’ll mak’ you fine, Mis’ Fanny, right soon again.”
“I wish I was as fine as you.”
“Aw Mis’ Fanny!” Her hands beat out in protest ... glad gaunt hands stripped by their work of flesh, and yet the music of them lived in their bone and their gesture. Lucy went off, her soft shoes patting like the cushioned feet of a tamed panther.
The door closed to the kitchen; Fanny was alone. Lucy would seek her den and fill it with steam and suds, wrap a red rag around her head and fall to work with an occasional cry like a wildbeast musing: lost in a sort of virginal ecstacy which Fanny loved, of work and dreaming.
—She’s diligent! If she were German, wouldn’t I say: No one but a German could be so thorough? And she’s a negress. White blood yes ... but it dilutes, that’s all, the mellow flow of her life. O you superior Lucy! Yet she’s colored.
Fanny thought of the ugly prejudices which still lay rooted in her mind. She could praise Lucy if she patronized her too. Take away the condescension and at once she looked into a pool, misted by childhood fears and girlish passion, of black distrust.
—No use thinking of all that. I believe I had a mind: it might have amounted to something, too. A woman’s mind at work ... as a woman’s mind ... not as a lawyer’s or a doctor’s ... like some men’s minds: what’d the world have said to that? Well, it’s too late. My mind is a wreck also. It keeps on going, like an engine, broken and off its track, ploughing the earth and itself. Going ... and going. Who knows though? Perhaps it is not off its track. Perhaps my way is not a two-rail track over a flat plain land. There are other dimensions.
—O I must have faith! That is the terrible thing ... how in my weakness my faith went also. Faith and strength seem to go together. That’s a good sign, is it not? Proves faith is not born of weakness. My faith takespower. It’s hard work. Come back!
—There is nothing else. It is inevitable. Like a tree that grows. And has its seasons. Whatdoes it know about them? ‘Now I burst into blossoms ... now I am in leaves ... now I am stark and cold.’ I am ashamed. Weak failure! Rescued by Clara, living on Clara, in a flat some man gave Clara. Shame!... Well, it is Winter. Didn’t Leon know that it all meant something?... Did he foresee a thing like this? What would he say?... Harry was wrong. O I am sure of that. I am the answer to Harry. What did he know of Scripture ... of Jesus? We have taken Christ and his name. What have we done with him? What more than the Jews who refused him? Are they Christ, themselves?... Why do I think so tenderly of Jews?
—Leon? One man.... If Edith were his, not Harry’s, would she love me? You are nine years old, my beloved. I can see you. I can see you so clear because I see you naked. What clothes have you on today, going to school?... Mrs. Parker’s School. That wouldn’t change. Motherless child, you have a mother. Can’t you feel ... O you mustfeelyour mother!...
—Suppose she could see her mother! No ... not with your young eyes. How could they understand? Fanny shrank in her chair....—Thank God, I am hidden away.... But my name? Let it stand. Some day perhaps, since she is my own, she may have eyes that can see me....
—No. Never! That is all past.
She knew that this was past. She knew there was in her still living, that which could not bear that it was: a part of her that held the memoryand hope of her child close to her breast, sucking yet giving her warmth.
—My little girl! As you grow, you become smaller beside me. For I grow so much faster. My little girl! Will you catch up with your mother?
The mother saw her naked. She was willowy supple, tender like a flower. Her flesh was cream and crisp, it was like the meat of a fresh peach.
The mother saw her clothed. She stands in a blue gingham frock, almost hidden away by a blue and white checked apron. But the black stockings were there and the tight sleeves and the loved white neck. A dark braid fell across her shoulder, tied with a stiff blue bow.—Her hair is not dark! Mine ... mine is black. Smile at me.Where is her face?
Fanny was troubled: she saw her child again. She wore an apple green mulle dress very clear and clean as it hung straight from her shoulders. The loved white neck! pulsant with breath of her child. She curtsies. There was a flounce at the hem: and at the end of the puffed sleeves was a ruffle. Edith’s bare arms! She wore white stockings, little canvas pumps.—She is thin!—And her hair? and her face?
Fanny shut her eyes and her hands waved with pain before them. She knew these dresses were her own! She saw her child in her own girlish frocks.... And her hair? It was golden ... but it would get dark.—As dark as mine?
—Does she have my frocks and my hair? Through Fanny’s mind passed dresses she hadworn: for romping and for dancing, for lessons and for parties.—I have forgotten not a single one. Are Edith’s really the same?
She was moved. She moved against her emotion.—I do not see her!Yourdresses—not herface! Has she the same frocks? Fanny knew this could not be.... She knew there still lived within her that which needed to play with the sweet fancy that it was.
“But no,” she murmured. “In no way be like me! Edith ... to save you from that ... come, look at your Mother!”
With her daughter’s eyes, Fanny beheld herself.—I am not hateful. She was a little woman, breaking and bewildered with flood of a world within her heart. She was a little woman tortured in the uses of a Hand that would not leave her alone.
—But I don’t see an end....There is no end.I do not see a growth....There is no growing.... Let me rest here quiet. I am still weak. Too weak to assemble my thoughts. What if the room is Clara’s ... Clara’s lover’s (is there at least love here?) What do these things mean, beside the truth that I am quiet?
The sun sent a sudden shaft under the cornice of the opposite house. It lay in a cold glare, gradually milding, on her.
So Fanny gave up thinking.—Why am I so hungry, having done nothing?
Lucy cleared the table ... folded it.
“O it was good, child!”
“Thank you, Mis’ Fanny.”
“No, Lucy: leave the table. Bring me the cards.”
“Yes, Mis’ Fanny.”
Fanny playedCanfield. And even this was beyond her. She was amazed to find that she had placed a red Jack under a red Queen: over there was a black Three under a Five! “I am skipping chances and making horrible mistakes.”
She shook her head. “How dull I am!” She was helpless against it.—Stupider than Lucy. Duller than the stupidest person in the world. She smiled. She knew that the reason was that she was filling with a Light.
—When I was pregnant with Edith, sometimes I was like this.
She fell back in her chair, and shut her eyes.—What is it this time? She slept....
The bell awoke her. Her nerves jangled bright and disparate like the three tones of the electric bell. Lucy appeared.
“Why Mis’ Fanny ... it’s some frien’s o’ Miss Clara—“
Fanny’s words were swift action. “Did you send them away?”
“No ’m, I didn’t yet. Ah—Ah tole ’em ter wait. Should Ah—?”
“Let them come in. Tell them Miss Clara’s friend is here and will be glad to receive them.”
Lucy stood suspended in the unheard-of formal words of this lady whose value she sensed. By her face, she understood. She went out.
Fanny’s awareness was sheer above the drowseof her chair. Her eyes commanded her face: they were suddenly young.
The door opened. Two women ... Lucy shut them in, and they were three together.
One was a girl, short in her coat of black velours, all black except the gleaming face under black eyes, black toque: all round and yet her eyes watched Fanny sharply. Hostilely. Beside her a tall lank woman, very blonde, rose like the embodiment of the strange stroke in the round girl’s eyes.
They stood, Fanny got up.
“You must come in. Clara’s away for the day. But I’ve been so eager to meet Clara’s friends.”
The taller one nodded.
—What does she recognize, that she nods, in my words?
“My name is Sennister—Susan Sennister. This is Miss Liebovitz.”
Fanny took a hand, white in its feel beneath the long glove, and took a hand small like a child’s, warm and ruddy: gloveless.
“Do sit down.”
Miss Sennister looked at her companion. “Guess we got time, Tessie?”
“Sure we have,” she smiled. “We really came to have a glimpse of you.” Her smile was rounder.
“I’m glad,” said Fanny. She looked at Susan Sennister, to make her also smile. It would helpmatters. Miss Sennister smiled. But the smile did not help. It hurt.
“I have been sick.... Probably you know. And Clara’s been an angel.”
“She is an angel,” said the tall woman, as if Fanny had not meant it.
“O ... she’s a good thing,” said Tessie Liebovitz. Her black eyes lay on Fanny’s.—There is no misunderstanding! They were soft. “We love Clara,” she said. “We say yes ... just automatically ... to Clara’s friends.”
“Thank you,” Fanny looked sternly at Susan Sennister. “That’s a beginning at least.” She wanted to smile. This woman was so very stiff. She must be very stern.—How can I tell? What are they?... She went on: “I say Yes to the friends of Clara—but with all my heart.”
“Have you been here long?” asked Tessie.
“Very long!”
“We heard her speak of you, before she brought you here,” said Susan. Then she settled back in her chair. Something within her was released. She pulled off her gloves. Her shoulders slackened. “That don’t prove anything, of course.” Her smile was different ... sweeter in its hurt. “Clara’s like all of us. We are good pals. We have a lot of secrets ... trade secrets we chew over. That gives us an air of being close. But a real confidence ...? Not us!”
“O I don’t know,” said Tessie.
“That’s just it—you don’t.”
There was a pause. Fanny was in the sun ... feeling herself within it strangely, unfairlywarmed against these two. She wanted to warm them.
“Won’t one of you take this chair? The sun’s so good.”
“We’ve had more of it than you,” said Susan Sennister. “Stay where you are.”
There was another pause filled now with three smiles that were unstrained.
Fanny’s head was light.—My! I am weak. There was a dim strip weighing above her eyes, on her brow. Beyond, in back of her head, she was light. So that her head seemed tilted toward her eyes. She saw these women.—I can be comfortable with them! They are strong: they could comfort her. Tessie Liebovitz chatted. Her own lips moved. She said nothing. But they were moist....
Then she saw: Long black earth. A man was standing still. He had gnarled hands, all else of him was young. He had clear-grey eyes, he had bronzed hair and beard. His cheeks were hardened by hot winds, but his lips that were free of the beard were soft and red against the showing of white skin.
She saw him clear upon the long black earth.—He is Jesus!
Many people passed him. She did not see them. But she saw the eyes and hands of Jesus go forth quietly to each.... They passed. The eyes and the hands of Jesus came back to themselves. The earth was harder and harder. The earth passed by him. Villages and cities passed. Altars were shut against his hands. Priests were shutagainst his eyes. The houses of the great passed him shut. And the earth grew blacker....
The earth was very black. A tree, blasted by lightning, thrust its ruin against a purple sky. The earth was very black. And Christ stood on it underneath the sky, and far from the solitary tree that twisted leafless over the horizon. Christ raised his arms, but his eyes looked down upon the barren earth. He was changed. He was twisted like the tree. He was shaped like the tree. Like it he was broken and bent from stanchioning purple sky above a barren earth. But he was white. And his beard was red. He had no hands, he had lost his hands even as the tree its leaves. His feet were buried underneath the ground.
A woman was before him. In a scarlet robe, against her breast, she held a boy.
“Lord,” she said, “this is my child. He drives me each day into the Marketplace with paint on my lips.”
“Why do you call me ‘Lord’?”
“Are you not Lord of us all?”
The black earth bloomed. Jesus was gay, he was a clear young man. With his two hands he touched the shrouded hair of the woman and it streamed like chrysoprase.
“Your child has blessed you,” he said.
She parted her robe, it was green also: it fell away and she was naked before Jesus. Her belly was silken smooth, her breasts thrust up like buds in a new Spring: she had born no child and she had known no man. Before Christ her body was sweet like a lily at dawn.
Fanny pressed her brow with her two hands, and saw the quiet women. They had stopped talking. They looked at her deep, and their voices had lagged away.
“O ... you will have tea!”
“Thank you, No. I’m afraid—we tire you. We’d better go. You’re not too strong yet.” Susan Sennister got up.
Fanny was warm in their understanding, and was ashamed. “O don’t go! You make me feel—I’m a bad substitute for Clara. Please!”
Susan sat stiffly, then she relaxed.
“You know,” she said, “it seems to me I’ve seen you before.”
“And I’ve seen you!”
“When was that?”
“O ages,” said Fanny.—Am I mad? “Before we were born? And you too, Tessie Liebovitz. You were singing.”
“No,” said the girl, serious. “I was playing the violin.”
“Your fingers were singing, then.”
“They were too small,” said Tessie.
“Too small to sing?”
“Too small to sing ... too small to sing,” the girl whispered rapt. “So I work—my body, see? It works for my fingers that were too small to play.”
“What was I doing?” Susan leaned forward.
“Your hands are frightful. One of them clasping, clutching ... one of them thrusting away.” Fanny’s hands were before her in a frantic dumb-play.
Susan laughed. “How right you are!”
“I am a fool,” cried Fanny.—Am I mad? I do not seem to mind. They seem to understand—something. Am I a fool?
“She is wonderful,” said Tessie.
“Clara told us—“
“What?”
Susan got up. She held Fanny’s face gently in her hands. She kissed her brow. “—that we would love you.”
Lucy came in with tea.
“Clara saved my life.”
“She’s a good thing,” said Tessie....
They drank their tea in silence. No hand trembled.
Susan and Tessie got up.
“You must not get up!”
They came close to Fanny. Her eyes were almost parallel with Tessie’s red mouth which had spoken. She looked up at the straight lips of Susan. On Susan’s neck she saw a birthmark, black like a footprint. Against it, all she was white.
“We’re going to come again—“
“When you’re better—“
“Iambetter,” Fanny smiled.
Tessie said: “You are a woman.”
* * *
Clara was there, and she still vibrant from it all.
“You had visitors,” Fanny said. “Miss Sennister and Miss Liebovitz.”
Clara studied the face of her friend.—What have they left upon her? within her? She saw the face of Fanny glow: it was aquiver and alive, her face, as not for a long time.
“I gave them tea. That was right, was it not? The little girl’s a dear.”
“Yes.”
“When she left, she threw her arms around me and kissed me.”
“You had a good time together?”
“Yes. And you, Dear? Your sister?”
“She is worse. But she won’t die. Not that sort of thing. Just pine away and eat up her husband’s money and nag her children.”
“There’s nothing to do, I suppose?”
“Of course not. You liked Tessie? Not Susan.”
“I did not understand her?”
“Do you think you understood Tessie?” Clara was eager. She did not challenge. She wished to be assured.
“I think so.... All except those hands—“
“Hands!”
“That is: that is what I understood the best: they’re the key, so little and so terrible. You see, I know that. Only, I haven’t used the key.”
She smiled in the amazed eyes of Clara.
“Fanny, you sometimes frighten me.” Clara took her hand and held it long and looked at it. Then she squeezed it and smiled also.
“You don’t mean to say: this very first time she told you herstory!”
“No. Why did you think so, Clara?”
“What you said about her hands.”
“Who couldn’t see that? They are so small and tortured—plump perverse hands. She had no gloves. Her hands, Clara—her hands have—“
Fanny stopped. She could not go on.
“Yes?”
“Well,” she whispered half to herself, “ ...something ruins all of us, I suppose.”
She was blanched as if she had walked leisuredly upon a strange outlandish road, forgetful it was so: and sudden there was a precipice below her feet. Mind held back her almost plunging body with the plunge’s horror. She recoiled.
“I know what you were going to say,” Clara’s voice was hard, “her hands it was, thatruinedher....”
“Clara!”
“We are ruined, for you. I know it. You are right. We are bad women ... ruined....”
“Clara!”
Fanny jumped up. She faced her friend. She sought her eyes, sad and rebellious, and held them.
“Clara, you have saved me, you are sound. It is I who am broken. When one is broken, Clara, one does not always quickly understand. One lacks words. One falls back, Clara, on words that for today are lies.”
She clasped the wrists of her friend. They stood tense, against each other: so. In a taut silence.
“We are all ruined,” came Clara’s voice. “But you still love.”
“Then none of us are ruined.”
Clara’s head tossed in anger. “No sentiment!”
“There are no ruins I tell you,” Fanny met her.
Fanny lay quiet in bed. She was relaxed at last. The vibrance of these many hours had run out into a Space beyond her, where the sharp thrusts through her nerves lay lost in a pool of glow.
She lay in this glow in bed: Clara beside her, responsive to her friend’s new peace but unaware of its synthesis of warring parts meeting beyond her.
“Should I read?” she asked.
“Tell me about your friends.”
“They are friends of mine.” Clara raised her head as if her words were a challenge. Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut, waiting.
“There’s Tess. Poor Dear,” at last.... “Her story’s not hard to tell. That’s why I was wondering how you knew. Didn’t she hint? Well, I don’t wonder after all, Dear.Youare so wonderful O I am glad to have you here. I want to keep you forever. If only I could.... Well: Tessie was born in some mudhole South—Carolina, I think. Her Pa kept a general store ... does still I suppose. He’s a Jew, you know. Tess says he never was no good as a business man. But a dear! He’d sit in his room back ofthe store, holding some old Bible in his hand ... or a prayer-book ... and sing it out, half-aloud, with his head and his shoulders swayin’, keepin’ time. Tessie says that is what Music meant to her.... When the poor old man learned she was musical, Tess says, he fell on his knees. I can just see him, his thin old knees half worn through the black pants, creaking and cracking on the dirty floor. And he thanked the Lord who, if hehadtaken away his wife, had given him a daughter who loved music. There were other children, but they simply didn’t count. He didn’t have more than enough to keep ’em all in food, but Tess got a violin. And soon the Dame that taught violin, piano, French and artistic sewing in the Town told the old man Tessie knew more than she did about music. She was a wonder, she said. She ought to study in a big City and go in for concerts.
“Well ... the old man got down on his shakey knees again: and this time he didn’t pray: he swore he’d get the cash to send Tess to Richmond or New York, if he had to starve for it ... even if he had to sell—O I forgot. The old man had one proud possession. He was a poor old ignorant man, but one of his ancestors had been Wise and a Rabbi. He kept a mouldy store and kept it badly: but this Thing he still had from the wise old Rabbi ... and it shone in their home like the sun. Tessie gives it a name I can’t remember ... but I can see it. A sort of breast-plate it was ... a breast-plate of some holy Priest of their religion: square and in gold. And set in it, in four rows of three each, were oblong gems. Each was different—camelian and ruby and lapis and topaz and jasper and amethyst and agate: I don’t remember them all. On each was carved a holy word in ancient Hebrew. Well, there was the mouldy store and this thing of glory shinin’ in it. But there was the daughter who could make Music. So she could make it right, the old man sold his treasure. He was religious. Keeping that Relic was part of his religion ... but giving it up was also part of his religion. Tessie got a first class violin ... they cost like fury, you know. And then everything went well. I don’t know the particulars. Some big guy from New York who was down in Charleston gave her a hearing and next year Tess bought a new dress and a bag and took the train to New York. Her Dad had even mortgaged the store. But there was Tess gettin’ ready to earn thousands in New York ... while the rest of the Liebovitz clan in mudhole, South Carolina, lived on water and hope.”