SIXPavement Broken

Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut. In the pause:

“Then it happened,” she murmured.

“Yes,”

—As always.Lord, why is it always?Why do you break the soilIn which you plant the seed?

“—the old master, Tessie says she loved him, waved his hands and pulled his beard. ‘You have talent, Fraulein. O you have genius. You are music! But those hands. What are we going to do about that hand?’ They were too small, Fan. You saw ’em. They were too small. You got to do all sorts of stunts on a fiddle before you go in for concerts. And her fingers simply weretoo short. Not too short for playin’ in an orchestra or somethin’ ... but for a concert, where you stand up all by yourself.... Well, Tessie hadn’t come to New York and put the Liebovitz clan on bread and water and made the old man sell part of his religion for another part, just to play fiddle in a restaurant. She went to a doctor or something of the sort who told her he could stretch her fingers. He stretched ’em alright—“

Fanny raised herself on her arms from the pillow, her eyes still shut.

“—till something tore.”

“Till something broke.”

“It was all over.”

“I know the rest,” said Fanny. She sank back in her pillow. Both of them were quiet....

Each was conscious of the other’s breathing. The room was heavy.

Clara stirred. “Shall I open a window?” she asked.

“What about the other?” Fanny held her.

“O I can’t say much about Sennister. I have known her for a long time ... nearly four years I think. She just is: she has no tale of woe.”

“You are good friends?”

“Yes. I have learned a lot from Susan. She is wise. She has a brain, I’ll tell you. She thinks a lot ... and reads.”

“What does she read?”

“O books you’ve never heard of. But I don’t think she gets her ideas from them. They’rehers, you bet.”

“Tessie, I guess, has learned a lot from her also.”

“She’s our Sunday school teacher,” Clara smiled.

“I see.”

“She has a religion. She believes—shall I tell you what she says?”

“Why not?”

“She says: ‘I believe in the power of Hate,I believe in the truth of Sin.I believe in the failure of Truth.’”

Fanny was silent.

“One day she made us learn all that by heart. Don’t take it too serious, Fan dear. She’d had a drop too much. She was jolly. So were we all.... It’s a joke, of course....”

“Clara, you know it’s no joke. You know it’s a religion.”

“I suppose so. It don’t fit in very well, though, does it? with the religion of the Bible.”

“There are so many religions of the Bible. Perhaps it fits in right well.”

Clara’s nervous laugh: “You and Susan’ll get on well together. You are both philosophers. But you’re bothgood—though you’re better, Dear, and deeper. I know that. Susan talks awful bad. But you know, Dear, what she sayshassomething to do with Christianity. Sort of twisted like. But ithas. You wait and see. When you know her. Susan ... she’s like a saint....”

—Christ, you must loose your buried feet and your arms without hands!Christ, you must not be twisted like that tree!Christ, you must not be rooted like a tree!Walk the earth, brother.

Fanny’s eyes shut once more. She saw the white neck of Susan Sennister: on its side the little birthmark like the print of a black foot ... clear because her neck was white. She heard her voice: the resonant low voice of one who speaks often with herself. She saw the black eyes of Tessie upon her: the full lips, redder than rouge, the crowded high-pressed brow, the child-hands....

Clara sat still.—She will go to sleep now.

* * *

Fire in Clara’s eyes. The desperate embrace together of her life and of her love for Fanny rose lucent in them. She said:

“Well, if you want to meet my friends, you shall meet them. I’ll give a party to celebrate your being here, and your getting well—and the hope that you’ll stay on.”

“That’ll be fun!”

“Then there’ll be more than just me to do the hoping.”

“You’re a dear.”

Fanny saw a party of eighteen years ago. She met Harry there. They walked the verandah ... walked back and forth three dances.

The espagnols are open. The music flutters through into the purple night like cherry-colored ribbons.

“Let’s go on the lawn,” he said. “Let’s dance on the lawn.”

“We can dance here.”

“No. Let’s dance on the lawn.”

“Then we won’t dance.”

But at last she yielded. He clasped her waist. He sprang with her through the elastic night. The grass was moving crystal sea under their silent feet.

Her breath bounded against his. “You see?” he panted. “You must always do as I say....” And even then, even then she sensed in his wordswhat she willed, not he.—Was it so later?His going down, the agony ... whatshewilled?

“O I’m so anxious to know whom all I’m going to meet.”

Clara shook her head. “Such folk as you have never met.”

“I hope so! I want to meet new sorts. I want to find a new world. I am sure it will be better. It’s yours, Dear.”

“They’re all I have.”

“Don’t you dare apologize! Don’t you dare spoil it. I feel as if I could be happy again. Whomever it’s with—I’ll be happy with them.”

“They’re a strange lot,” Clara laughed.

“Who?”

“Well, there’s a Judge: there’s a Gambler: there’s an Officer of Police: there’s a queer guy who ought to be a poet——“

“O how exciting! Do the Policeman and the Gambler get on?”

“They’re side-kicks——“

“Side-kicks?”

“Partners.”

“My! what a lot I’m going to learn,” she murmured.

“That’s what brought Tessie and Susan together. Her man’s a police Leftenant. Tessie’s is Abraham Mangel——“

“And Clara, yours——“

“That’s a secret, Dear. You call him Mr. Mark.... O I can tell you. Tellin’ you a secret’s like burying it. Don’t you let on. He’s really a Judge, Dear. Right in New York! Think of that.He’s so good.... Shall I tell you his right name? Sure never to let on? Judge Mark Pfennig.”

“Judge ... Mark ... Pfennig,” she repeated slowly.

“He’s a Jew,” Clara said groping. She won courage from the soft distance in Fanny’s eyes, inquiring, pondering. “Like most of ’em. They’re the best, Fan. Really.”

“Why are they the best?”

“They’re the wisest ... and the gentlest. They’re hardest and softest. Wait till you see Abe Mangel with Tess. He treats her like a father. Like a sentimental father. Those old puffy eyes of his with little ridges of flesh beneath ’em—just like her Dad in Carolina, I bet. Onlywise.”

“You say he’s agambler?”

“Well, not really. Never plays. Not he! He owns a big joint, that’s all.”

“And ... Susan’s——“

“Silly! Gambling’s against the Law. You know that, don’t you? Well, what does that mean? Any respectable Gambler who wants to make a ‘go’ must have a side partner on the Force.”

“O—I see.”

“You’ll see, all right. But you don’t now. You’re shocked. When one’s shocked one don’t see. I found that out. Bein’ shocked is the same as bein’ blind.... Fanny: do you really want to meet them?”

Fanny pondered: her head low, her eyes fallen upon her lacing andunlacing fingers. Tessie and Susan and Clara....—She has saved me ... for what?... were in her pondering eyes. She saw Clara always.—What do I see of Clara? what know? And what of Tessie, Susan? She saw them often, they came often now. They sat there, quiet, proper, eyes veiled.... Hurt eyes. Fanny thought of Stride the Kentucky colt whom she had gentled when she was a girl. They were good friends. Stride knew her, knew that she would not hurt her, knew that she cared for her wisely. Stride knew, standing there aquiver while she came toward her bringing a handful of oats, that oats were good. Yet beneath the knowing in Stride’s eyes at times a deeper world looked out on Fanny: a world of strangeness, of the expectancy of harm. So now....—They love me. That first time showed. Even Susan in her secret way. Yet they are so still! so far! I do not touch them.

Never had she touched Stride. Never. Now?

Sudden the thought came:—There is a part of them, a whole dimension I can not see! She wanted to see it....—Their men?

—Sisters! why do I call you so? I want to touch you. That I may know perhaps why we are sisters?

Fanny’s hands went up, and her head. Brightly: “Yes! Give the party. Do! Ask everyone....”

There was something Clara, standing there, wondering for her answer, understood. She took Fanny’s hands and clasped them close in her own. She kissed them.

AT last the bell rang the door opened, Clara’s man came in. Clara got up and they shook hands. Fanny was aware in the long strain of waiting that her power to feel was gone.—I shall understand nothing.

“This is my friend, Mark. Fanny, Mr. Mark.”

He was long and moist and breathless. He laid on the sofa carefully a bundle of bottles of wine. His broad black frock coat was worn to a gloss. His skin seemed also, though his hands were white, dark and glossed like his coat. His coat was a uniform and so was his skin. He was behind them.

—I shall understand nothing!

Mr. Mark sat down, his legs were short and his knees pointed beneath the mound of his belly. They chatted ... all three ... she too.

“Well, dear,” his breath was short and thick, “expecting the crowd?”

“O no. Just Tessie and Susan, and Abe Mangel and Jim of course. My friend wants to meet my friends.”

Fanny began to see him under the cloud of himself: ... the grey sharp face, larded in fat, the shiny eyes set deep, the lips rounded and red and soft-thrust forward from a chin too long and grey-blue with its undertone of beard. His nose twitched, conspicuous, large-pored, under a brow that was smooth and white like a card.

“It’s good of you, Madame. We’re not such a bad lot.”

“O ... I could know that,” Fanny laughed, “from just knowing Clara.”

“That good we’re not ... not as good as Clara. But we do our best.”

Clara laughed. He sighed, and his little eyes, hard like the shoe-button eyes of a rag doll, rolled up.

In this opening of mood, Fanny looked at the room ... hard gas-jets, brash lambrequins, plush.... Room she had lived in ... the floor was blood-red beneath a shrill blue carpet. Details ... details. It meant nothing. It formed no word.

The door opened again, again. Susan Sennister stood there bleak and tense like a caustic refrain to the long heavy man at her side: he was spiritually galvanized, he moved for all his power as if he were lined with metal ... Lieutenant Statt. Tessie ensconced in a big chair with her feet trilling, mocked him. A man, soft, short, slow, with unctious hands and voice, watched her effrontery with eyes afraid in his heavy mournful face.—That is Abe Mangel.

—But I have learned something in all these years? She stopped the rush of her amazement.—Be still. Just wait.

They were not bothered by her. Their knowing each other wove a glutinous web through the room, and she held in it: her stirring could not have torn it, she was tight. It was a gross warm knowing: no subtle brain-fabric ... bowel-strong and sure. Fanny felt her shoulders pressed together, her head high and sheer, in this viscous tissue of their being together.

Mr. Mark cleared a lamp and a pile of magazines from the table. Lucy came in, brought glasses which she placed. Mr. Mark with ceremonial noise uncorked three bottles of red wine and stood them beside the glasses. The talk was slow and thick: the wine diluting it, freeing it, making it run faster....

“You don’t drink?” Mr. Mark stood over Fanny. She smiled up, full of the incongruous sense of smiling not at a man but at some official structure....

“I’m afraid—my Doctor——“

“Mrs. Luve is not quite well yet, you know, Mark,” said Clara.

All eyes turned upon Fanny: Mr. Mark’s wilfully considerate, Tessie’s hurt and afraid blazing a partnership she had no mind of, Susan’s in a twinging message that was somehow sweet, Mangel’s soft because they were always soft.

Fanny felt the hard stare of Statt ... empty like a stone.

“O well—do give me a glass.”

She sipped.

“It’s good stuff,” said Tessie.

Susan, warmed, looked at Jim Statt and her warmth turned on him.

“Of course, that stiff’s too good to touch liquor! And he’s as healthy as a brickbat. All his virtue allows is pullin’ joints!”

Statt shrugged his shoulders. Then he smiled broadly, as if suddenly aware that Susan had flattered him. Mangel, holding his glass aloft, smacked his lips.... The eyes were gone from Fanny. They did not come back.

She drank her wine. She was relieved and brightened. She thought of a field: it expands as the cloud barring the sun sails by.... The eyes were gone.

She thought of her own place with these strange thick people. Who were they?—a Judge, a Police Lieutenant, a Gambling-house proprietor, three prostitutes, herself! She did not know who they were.

Mr. Mark argued with pointing forefinger:

“Of course we do good! Would the people feel secure if we didn’t have courts and judges?”

“You do no good. None of us knows how to do good, I tell you,” said Abe Mangel. “We are all in the Dark. I can argue as good as you. Couldn’t I say: I am a public benefactor? What do I live on? The luxury and the vice of the weak and the damn-fools. That’s what I trim. That’s what I get rid of. Ain’t it better to live on that than on the hard workers and the good folk? now I ask you! O bosh! I don’t make no such delusions for myself. We don’t know—none of us—how to do good.”

Statt sat stiffly in his chair. He listened, but as one might listen to the wind.... The philosophic argument wore down. Mangel and Mark were unable to support it. They drank wine and turned to their women....

Tessie sat on Abe Mangel’s lap: sideways andstill with her feet tossing. He caressed her neck with a soft and meaty hand.

“Well, dearie—well, dearie, are you happier?” he crooned.

Susan and Jim Statt were close together on the sofa, looking before them, saying no word to each other. And the large Mr. Mark, his manners like his sumptuous prim coat, chatted with Clara, and Fanny, listening, added an easy word.

At a late hour they got up said good-by, and were gone.

* * *

Fanny saw them again and again. She had little talks with each of them, alone. She found she was fond of them all.

“It’s good to come here, Clara,” Statt stalked in. “I told Susan to come, too.... Here, Broaddus, up here.” The door stayed open. A young big patrolman in uniform (Statt wore plain clothes always) mounted the stair, puffing. He deposited a case in the hall.

“Champagne ... and good,” said Statt.

The patrolman, red faced, soft with blue eyes somewhat dimmed, went down.

“Brought them for you,” Statt turned to Fanny ... “set you up.... From Diggens.”

“Diggens!” Clara exclaimed. “You’ve pulled Diggens!”

“Yes....”

“What did she do?” asked Fanny.

“Slow on payment. See? And always tryin’ to bargain for a lower price. Yesterday I getmad. Sort of lost my temper. Perhaps I was wrong. Old Dig was a right sort of bitch. Well—too late now. She’s pinched. Here’s good wine, at least.”

He kicked the case with heavy boots. He was big and sure. Fanny and Clara stood beneath his imperturbable mass.

—How can I thank him? He’s a brute. He’s a monster! Fanny spoke to him:

“Don’t kick that case, Lieutenant Jim.”

“Why? Afraid I’ll break the bottles?”

“No.... Afraid they’ll break you.”

“Breakme!”

“Hm ... hm, Lieutenant Jim. You’re so brittle.—O ever so much brittler than bottles.”

He looked at her in a pause that ended with a chuckle.

“O you don’t say!” The skin of his face was rough: his features were too big. He seemed carved—crudely—by a dull-souled sculptor.

“You’re a brittle child,” said Fanny.—Why do I speak so?

“And you?”

“I’m a child too. You and I are the children here. Yes we are! We two must look out!”

“Not Mark?... not Clara?... not Mangel?”

“O Mangel is old! and so is Tessie! and so is Clara. You are a stupid, stubborn child, I tell you. Look out. Me too. We mustn’t hurt each other.... And you’d better stop breaking the Law.”

“My dear sister child, you don’t seem to understand. I don’tbreakthe Law.”

Fanny wavered.—Why do I speak so?

“Don’t you know, you come from the South, don’t you?... that gambling and prostitution are illegal in New York? I am an Officer of the New York Police. I am the head of what is known in the papers as the Strong Arm Squad. I raid Houses of gambling and prostitution.”

“All——“

“Those that don’t do their duty.”

“How can an illegal house do its duty?”

“By supporting the Police, of course—the way we must be supported. I have needs——“

Statt’s face was serious and serene. He stretched out a long leg.... “Needs——” and kicked the case of wine. “You don’t savvy much, little stupid woman from Dixie.”

She watched him close.

“Aren’t you afraid, Jim Statt?”

He drew in his leg and crossed it over the other.

“I’m an Officer of Police. I’m a Roman Catholic. What have I got to fear?” ...

Tessie came in, tossing off her hat. Tessie hated hats and gloves.

“—Hasn’t Abe been here? O hello Statt.”

“He’s nursing a hurt,” he answered her. “I’ve raised his price.”

The little girl glowered over the big man.

“You look out,” she muttered. “Don’t hurt Abe Mangel too much.”

“No?... why not?” sneered Jim Statt.

“He’ll turn good——“

Fanny took a magazine and went into the corner of the room beside the curtains. She tried toread. She did not see the page. What did this mean?He’ll turn good!Was that what Jews did when they were hurt too much! Was that when they saw God?...—Harry and I blinded by a blow thatyousee God by? Fanny sat brooding over the blank page of her book ... brooding of the Bible, brooding over the words of Jesus Christ: hearing the sneers of Statt, the swift shrill scold of Tessie, the warm weary murmur of Clara.

—O it is good I am here!

Learning ... learning....

She saw no thing. She understood no thing. But she was at ease as an infant, also perhaps not knowing, who sucks and who swallows.—Why is Statt also a child?

Abe Mangel was there. He bowed to the group near the door and came beside Fanny. She held out both her hands and smiled at him.

“Sit down!”

Old man with the heavy face of the Jew!—Your eyes are dark wells, your brow is dry and rumpled like an old bit of parchment. Your nose and your lips droop wearily, old man!

“You are tired, Mr. Mangel.”

“O it’s nothing. Tessie’ll cheer me up, a little....”

“Mr. Mangel—may I ask you a question?”

He looked at Fanny with compassion.—You are young too? you too ask questions?... “Why of course, Fanny. Go on.”

“Why do I like you, Mr. Mangel?”

“O—that! You’ll hav’ to answer that yourself. Such woman foolishness, likingme! how can a man explain?”

“You are a bad man, aren’t you?”

“Very bad. I ain’t no better than acrook. Only richer. My wife dresses better.” His eyes twinkled.

“Well, I can’t help it. I like you.”

He smiled at her with his weary slow-twinkling eyes. She saw his hands ... gnarled yet fat, ugly yet expressive.

“And I like you, Fanny Luve. What’s the difference why you like me? Don’t ask no foolish questions about a good thing. Take it.”

“But are you glad I like you?”

“I should say so! That sort of foolishness ... that’s all that makes life liveable, I say! That sort of foolishness—you know what it is?—it’s Trut’.”

“You think.”

“O no. I am too tired to think. When I was young, I thought. I was clever. I was full of dreams. I thought—I thought ... instead of learning to make money. When it was too late, I had to stop thinking of anything except how to make money, because earlier I hadn’t thought ofthatat all. It don’t pay to be a thinker. You end up by being a gambler.”

“All thinkers——?”

“I should imagine so,” said Mangel. He brooded. Stiffly he got up. “Look here! What sort of nonsense are you making me say? Fanny Luve, I’m a stupid old feller. I don’t know nothing. Thirty years ago I was a stupid young feller. I’m sure. I guess I never knew how to think.”

She held up her face to him.

“I don’t know how to think, either. I am stupid too.”

Abe Mangel shook his head.

“You’re funny. You make me feel we don’t know how to think ... and we don’t know how to be good.... We men and women.”

He smiled with his old eyes. But his brow was frowning. He walked away to Tessie.

* * *

Fanny:—— You are there!The world is dark, there is no light in the world.The world is close, I feel you there about me.You stir, you crouch, you are still.You do not know that I am here, knowing you.You lift your voices, they give no sound:Shrieking they are still.—Only the dark worldHolding you and me....No word, no hand-touch, no signal of the eyeBinds us: onlyA dark world.—Yet we are close!Could one be closer in the Sun,Loving in the lap of the Spring?Harry and I, were we so close?Edith and I ... you in the grip of my bowels, you in the suck of my blood and my heavy breasts.Were we so close?—A dark world holds usStrange from each other, groping with blank eyes,With blank mouths....Closely.Clara:—— You are not well yet, you are not ready to leave me.What is the matter with you?Why are you still here?O I am glad you are here! You are balm, you are pressing sharpness on my ache ...I do not understand.—You are good friends with Mark, and with Susan and Tessie.Also they already feel how right that you are here with us.And Mangel feels it. Statt feels nothing. Statt does not count.Is it because you are not well, not complete, that you stay?Is it because we must heal you, must complete you, that you stay?Then you will go?—when you have taken from us ... what?You give?... You give—to me how deeply, to us all how deeply!What can we give to you? How can we heal and complete you?—Is it our hurt that you would take from us?Is it our broken-ness that will complete you?Mangel:—— Tessie should be my daughter.Then the Fear of God would keep her flesh away.You have shown me, Luve woman, that Tessie is my daughter.—I am made of filth. If I could stop hating myself!I am a dirty Jew ... I hate Statt.... He makes me feel—this....But who is he?His body is straighter because he has no soul.(There are times when I would love to kiss his body.)—My soul is beautiful. My soul says to me:You are a dirty Jew!...What is the use? One picks the smut from one’s nose,But one’s nose smells on, the smut comes back,What is the use of having a beautiful soul?No one tells Statt that he is a dirty Dutchman.—You, little girl, with the apple breasts and the hips hard and sweet like an apple,You are my soul and you are far away.You should be my daughter.Then I should not have to hold you naked....She is my daughter! O if I could say that, say: Father!Not:—a whore and a dirty Jew that keeps her.Tessie:—— Music is a dancing wallBetween me and the mad man world.Wall danced away.Stiff man world holds me and pierces me.You, Abe, at least have hands soft-speaking.—Fanny Luve ... what is the name of your kid?Susan:—— I ask myself no question.O horror, O torrent of horrorIf I asked a question.—The mountainsideIs steep, is snow.I mount, I mount.I am erect: my shoulders and my feetFreeze sharp.—O the horror, O the torrent, O the floodDown-pouring ...If I asked a question.Mark:—— Well, what difference does it make?At least half my life is good.I’m a good Judge, I’m a good husband and father.Who in New York can say as much for himself?

—Only the dark worldHolding you and me....No word, no hand-touch, no signal of the eyeBinds us: onlyA dark world.

—Yet we are close!Could one be closer in the Sun,Loving in the lap of the Spring?Harry and I, were we so close?Edith and I ... you in the grip of my bowels, you in the suck of my blood and my heavy breasts.Were we so close?

—A dark world holds usStrange from each other, groping with blank eyes,With blank mouths....Closely.

Clara:—— You are not well yet, you are not ready to leave me.What is the matter with you?Why are you still here?O I am glad you are here! You are balm, you are pressing sharpness on my ache ...I do not understand.

—You are good friends with Mark, and with Susan and Tessie.Also they already feel how right that you are here with us.And Mangel feels it. Statt feels nothing. Statt does not count.Is it because you are not well, not complete, that you stay?Is it because we must heal you, must complete you, that you stay?Then you will go?—when you have taken from us ... what?You give?... You give—to me how deeply, to us all how deeply!What can we give to you? How can we heal and complete you?

—Is it our hurt that you would take from us?Is it our broken-ness that will complete you?

Mangel:—— Tessie should be my daughter.Then the Fear of God would keep her flesh away.You have shown me, Luve woman, that Tessie is my daughter.

—I am made of filth. If I could stop hating myself!I am a dirty Jew ... I hate Statt.... He makes me feel—this....But who is he?His body is straighter because he has no soul.(There are times when I would love to kiss his body.)

—My soul is beautiful. My soul says to me:You are a dirty Jew!...What is the use? One picks the smut from one’s nose,But one’s nose smells on, the smut comes back,What is the use of having a beautiful soul?No one tells Statt that he is a dirty Dutchman.

—You, little girl, with the apple breasts and the hips hard and sweet like an apple,You are my soul and you are far away.You should be my daughter.Then I should not have to hold you naked....She is my daughter! O if I could say that, say: Father!Not:—a whore and a dirty Jew that keeps her.

Tessie:—— Music is a dancing wallBetween me and the mad man world.Wall danced away.Stiff man world holds me and pierces me.You, Abe, at least have hands soft-speaking.

—Fanny Luve ... what is the name of your kid?

Susan:—— I ask myself no question.O horror, O torrent of horrorIf I asked a question.

—The mountainsideIs steep, is snow.I mount, I mount.I am erect: my shoulders and my feetFreeze sharp.

—O the horror, O the torrent, O the floodDown-pouring ...If I asked a question.

Mark:—— Well, what difference does it make?At least half my life is good.I’m a good Judge, I’m a good husband and father.Who in New York can say as much for himself?

... They looked on Fanny naturally, without color of her ... seeing her within the way of their looking on themselves: so that they came not to ask who she was who was there.

“Well, all right then ... if you ask me: you’re right. Mangel gets my goat. I can’t go him.He’s nothin’ but a damn gambler. Why does he put on airs?”

“I never saw him put on airs,” said Fanny.

They stood. Her face, upturned to James Statt’s gray one, glowed in a strange way.

“He’s so humble——“

“Is that putting on airs, Jim?”

Statt stirred in discomfort.

“You’re right,” she went on. “It’s the worst sort of putting on airs.”

“There, you see? The damn little weasel! I’ll stand none of his nonsense!”

“He don’t give you any, Jim.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

“I know that you hate him because he’s just himself.”

“Jew!”

“He’s cringing and a coward. But even so, he makes us feel small, don’t he, Jim?”

“Us small? Are you crazy? Us small?”

“Surely. Even when he is ever so mean and humble, he is asserting to our souls ... to all in us that feels and understands ... that he is one of those high up ... who have made us feel and understand.”

“Fanny, you’re crazy. I’ll kill the little beggar!”

“You won’t dispose of him that way, you silly boy. It’s nothe....”

“God damn him.”

“Jim, you have no mind and you have no heart. You don’t learn at all, Jim. Why instead of swearing at Abe Mangel don’t you see himstraight? God hasn’t damned him. God’s damned us perhaps ... by spreading him and the likes of him all over the world: or blessed us. I don’t know, Jim. Buthe’snot damned.”

“O look here, Fanny. I don’t know what you’re talking about. Even Susan don’t, either, half the time. None of us. But we like you fine just the same. Now, it ain’t because Mangel’s a Jew that I can’t go him. You’re wrong there, Fanny. I know lots of Jews. Lots of my pals is Jews. Mark Pfennig’s one, for instance. All the gamblers ... half the gunmen ... the best of the bulls ... the sharpest of the lawyers....”

“But Mangel’s different——?”

“Yes! His doddering old big-nosed face bowing into the room. His softy grey hands weaving inside each other. His flat feet that don’t make a squeak.”

“Is he square?”

“O he’s square, all right.... So far. He’s shrewd. He can be hard and smart, believe me! It ain’t that, Fanny.”

“A lot you know what it is? It’s because he’s a Jew, I tell you.”

“It ain’t. I got lots of friends——“

“Jim, I don’t think anybody can be a Jew, just because his name happens to be Cohn or Levy.”

“Fanny ... you’re crazy!”

* * *

One twilight Fanny had them clear....

More and more they came to Clara’s flat. Evening ‘parties’ were frequent. Afternoons, Tessieand Susan often called for Fanny, and took her for a walk or to a show. It was Spring. The City lay beneath the Sun’s lubricity. The dirt in the hard streets was fecund. The sparrows and the robins daubed the warming world with their swift flashes of life. It was Spring. And Fanny moved, somnambulant, through a strange ease spread for her by hands forever less strange.

—You ... and you ... and you: now I see you clear.

These men and women were no accident. They had words now she understood. They had wills now—here was the wonder of her life—that touched her own. Not Harry’s will had touched hers. Not her child’s, to eat her’s up. Not Christopher Johns’. And Leon’s ... Leon’s will had stood beyond her, over the ken of her horizons.

These wills touched hers!—these wills of women disgraced, of men criminal and broken, outlawed and dissolute.

—I have two hands, and upon each of them five fingers. My sickness, the harsh four years since Jonathan, have wasted my flesh. Yet it is somehow sweet. My hair is not the verdant hedge it was, it is a little stringy, a little limp. But still black. My eyes have fire at times. I am thirty-five ... and I am real, Fanny Luve!

They felt that she felt them clear. Clara above all. The women above all. Her feeling them clear at last was a bridge to them. Their will, long champing on the brink of their division, moved on her own.

Already they had spoken of details of their dream to Mark Pfennig, to Statt, to Mangel.

“We will take a House. And you will take care of us, Fanny!”

“And make us behave.”

“And make the men behave.”

“And bring God with you?” whispered Clara low....

They sat at her feet that evening after the magic dusk of a hard city melting to Spring: they were in Clara’s bedroom.

From her chair, Fanny touched them: her fingers in their hair: her skirt fringing their arms and their faces.

“It’s all arranged, Fanny dear.”

They were below her, seated on the floor ... Clara and Tessie and Susan. Their will surged over her head.

She was flooded with their will. Slowly her hands stroked hair and cheek. Their will stormed her head ... surged torrentful about her.

Her eyes lay quietly upon the faces of her friends. And her hands slow. And their will a tempest.

Slowly, Fanny nodded.

Her left hand closed tight on the hand of Clara. Her right hand upon Tessie’s upbrushed hair contracted until the scalp of Tessie hurt. She nodded slowly....

* * *

The street is quiet. The House stands braced in a wall of higher houses dusty and grimed about their stifled worlds. It is of four stories. Its mellow red brick glows with at least half a hundred years. White net curtains angle the square windows. The stoop has an iron rail that peels as Judge Mark mounts, his heaving mass buttressed by a soft white hand upon it.

He upholds his right palm with its rust stains to Fanny.

“I wish you’d have that rail off. Every time I come here I’ve got to wash before I can even sit down.”

Susan laughs. Tessie is humming, and her eyes slide away with her balancing tune. Clara does not care.

“I won’t change it,” says Fanny. “I love that old rail. It’s pretty. Besides, if it wasn’t there some night you’d fall over into the airy-way.”

“Put another in its place.”

“Well, I won’t. And I won’t have the bricks painted either.”

“Yes, but you went and did the windows—“

“She did them herself,” says Clara.

“Don’t you think the blue goes nice with the red? It was fun.”

... An old house in which lived an old couple and a little maid dressed all in black, with an apron like a robin-white-breast. A big house:these two old persons: one young. She brought her lovers to her fourth-floor precincts. Creaking stair ... creaking bannister ... a mutter: the hard sweet adventure that became no lighter and no less sweet. Her masters listened for the clandestine footprints groping, mounting: for the swifter descent as if the man had left a burden above. They loved the love affairs of their pretty little maid. She made them young, she added zest to their evenings of Patience....—“We won’t need you any longer, Zoe. We’re going to bed. Good-night, dear....” their knowing her wickedness spiced their prim demeanor, brought them delight in the prim way of their maid. The old lady died. A month: then again the furtive mounting steps. The old man could not bear it. In his muffled reception of the loveplay overhead he learned how he missed his wife: how in the license of their maid now many years, he and his dried spouse had stolen fruit to themselves. In the gap between the guessed fulness above and the empty bed beside him, his nerves gave out. He withered and he died....

The paint of the windowsills and the Dutch net curtains are Fanny’s. Little else. The house has the plethoric gloom of its mahogany false-Empire chairs, its red brocades, its striped and flowered walls. The beds are new and all alike: bright brass, cheap, furnished with soft mattresses.

In the basement is the dining-room and the kitchen. Upon the first floor a sitting room and two partitioned cardrooms. On the second floor, Susan and Tessie each has her bedroom. Above,Clara has hers, and the back room is reserved for whatever friend be granted it for the night. On the top floor in back is the room of Lucy the maid and a storeroom: in the front, the home of Fanny, a room to sleep in, a room to stay in alone: for it is understood that no one enter. Here then she faced her life.

—My name is Frances. Frances Dirk. Frances Luve. Luve.... Fourteen years ago there was Harry. Nine years ago he went and there was Edith. Six years ... near seven ... a man came back in a black suit with white sharp lips, quoting the words of Jesus. Harry, that. Just a less Christian Harry ... whipping me out with the words of a Jew. And Edith has kept on growing. I see you! I feel you!

—This is my Home. Do you see it, Leon? This is myhome, I tell you. For this I came North. For this, in the talk we never had, you told me I did right. Leon does not know. Edith will never know. Whores and gamblers and corrupted officers of the Law ... God knows. God is interested. He must be. It must mean something....

She thought of her failures in New York. The House became a reality upon her ... a sort of scarlet flower upon her black tree of failures.—I have a will. I have a soul. I shall not let them die. What she possessed of strength she forced herself to give, now, wholly to the House.—It must mean something!

She studied her men and women. All of them. All of them, despite their falsity of life, held a grain of loveliness. Perhaps because this grainhad been so stubborn to live, their life in the world was false? She did not know.—But it shall grow! The House shall mean something!

She made herself comfortable. There was plenty of money. She went to old shops, glowing in walls of dusty woodcuts, classic figures steel-engraved; shops that were a litter of ripe yesterdays crippled out of shape, beyond words, still mellow. Here, piece by piece, leisuredly, she picked together things for her room:—pictures, a Pembroke table, a Hepplewhite desk, a set of slender American Windsor chairs. She picked up three graceful glass goblets, three candlesticks of pewter. She made her room lovely. She watched her language. She kept her language pure. She watched the furrows in her cheeks and the grayness. The great illness and the years before it were gone, but they had taken her bloom and her hair’s wave. She used paint ... judiciously at first. But here, her taste failed, unnourished in the tasteless world about her, and by the world of her own past where they did not paint at all: so that she came to use paint badly.

She was past thirty-five. She was a little stooped, a little brittle, broken. All of her body had gone from curve to angle. Man moved her not at all. She thought of the body of man without memory, without desire. She bought a Bible. She bought a copy, bound in crumbling black Levant, of a certain Pascal’sThoughtsshe had found once, browsing. It was Englished from the French. She liked him, whoever he was. He knew life. Yet he seemed young.

As her face grew sallow and the roundness of her cheeks sagged long, as her hair became hard and her knees went stiff, all of this resilience of fire drew to the eyes of Fanny. They were larger, blacker. They were hot wells of thought, sealed fountains of vision that leaped at times upward through the gray earth slumber of men.

And her hands had fingers sensitized like filaments of seed. They seemed, as her eyes saw, to spin with their faint tremor of response a woman’s clasp about the reach of her seeing.

—Harry said Jesus said—— But perhaps I can understand. From Harry’s standpoint it was the ugly word and the ugly thing. That’s it! That’s what Jesus meant. You, Boy ... you broke me and when you had broken me you came back and what you had done to me made me a horror to yourself. Poor Harry, I forgive you. For I understand. Like a child, you could not bear to see your own bad act. You meant to thrust out that ... not the beauty that was borne of it despite you. Who can thrust out beauty? Jesus didn’t preach. Jesus described the state of children like yourself. I guess his people were children like yourself. Some folk have grown up since then. And you, who quote Jesus, haven’t. That’s funny, too. And all’s forgivable. Even you, down there, respectable and holy ... bringing up Edith to be a child like yourself.

—But I love her. What can I do? Lord, I’m beginning to think! so that my love for my child does not burn me, twist me into despair? Youdown there ... my Darling, ... not knowing your mother, judging her with the child judgments of your father ... God! but I must be strong. Despair is childish too. My love, it is a torrent within me. Love, anger, need ... turn it away from your hurts. Turn it away from yourself ... which it can only break against and wreck. Turn it where it can flow. Edith, shall I succeed in daring to think of youhere?...

—Why is it poison to me when I judge?... You, Jim Statt, you are a callous monster. You’ve a soul as black as hell. If I judge you I am poisoned.... You, Susan, you’re twisted. You hold a man in your arms to feel him die there ... all that is really he. That’s your love: hate. That’s your passion: death. If I judge you, I am poisoned.... And you, sweet Tessie, you’re hardest of all. With your sensitive soft soul and your unbalanced eyes: with your wanton small hands that turned you from an artist into this. If I despise you, Tessie, I am poisoned.

—Clara, thee I love. My dark white mate! My boy! If I make plans for thee, dearest, if I dream to help thee, I am poisoned.

—What is happening to me? I am no good. I am no better. Is it better not to hate? not to despise, not to plan? Better or worse, I have no choice. If I judge I am poisoned....

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