—O the black night into which you wereborn, my child.O the long pain you stood upon: it rose likea flame from my womb you stood upon... up, up throughout you, to your eyesand fingers.O the black night of fiery pain you were,with your sucking mouth upon my nakedflesh....We dawn together, Love, into a sleep wherewith eyes openCooly we walk toward Day.
—O the black night into which you wereborn, my child.O the long pain you stood upon: it rose likea flame from my womb you stood upon... up, up throughout you, to your eyesand fingers.O the black night of fiery pain you were,with your sucking mouth upon my nakedflesh....We dawn together, Love, into a sleep wherewith eyes openCooly we walk toward Day.
—O the black night into which you wereborn, my child.O the long pain you stood upon: it rose likea flame from my womb you stood upon... up, up throughout you, to your eyesand fingers.O the black night of fiery pain you were,with your sucking mouth upon my nakedflesh....
We dawn together, Love, into a sleep wherewith eyes openCooly we walk toward Day.
Fanny held her child and again she looked unwilted into sun. It was to her as if she gazed on a bright field, and there above flowers, under a sky, stood a woman sheer with a child in her arms. Her feet in grasswere cool. Her hair in sky was cool. She was sheer, cool ... unburned by the fires of birth. She was born ... washed clean of the bloods of birth and born. Very cool, very sheer. So Fanny saw herself.
... Saw certain things making her sunny field of the world—as the light of her vision lay clarified in context of green thrusts running, forms sprayed and ashift over earth.
She had long talks holding her child in her arms....
“I must be more to him when he comes back than I was ever! I can be more!
“I accept you, Harry. I have no pride, I am humble. I challenge drink, gaming, women. I am ashamed no longer. I shall beat them. I shall crowd them out. I shall be for you what they lied seeming they could be for you. You will find me everywhere, meet me nowhere. No obstruction. You will find me risen in a great pride, in a great strength, now that my pride is gone and I have lain, prostrate naked, sucking the strength of a stranger.”
—O stranger! not a thought more for you. Not a thought. That is as you will. Harry, he made me love you.
She went into her room, stripped her clothes from her shoulders. She looked in a glass at her nakedness, feeling under her eyes her shoulders gleam like cool flames upward.
It was strange: her shoulders were untouched, her breasts had not fallen.—I am whole! Come, Harry, take me.
There had been a wind, there had been a bathfor her naked shoulders. She was naked, flushed by a swift wind ... gone ... cleansed by a running water ... run away.—I am whole, I am born. Will you come, Harry, so you can see the woman who has been born?
She stood long, looking at her naked self. She was clad in a bloom. She was a hard young world in its first Spring. She found that she was laughing. She pressed her laughing fingers into her firm breasts.
“I am good,” she said, very sober. She caught up her child. Cheek upon hers she swayed, very still, very sober. “O we are good. Good, we two! Won’t you hurry, Man?” ...
“Now I see you. Clear! Never has any woman seen her love as I see you. I am a woman born. Edith dear, look at your Mother. You are a child born.... I am a woman born. I am rarer than you! I am very rare. I see you clear, you little sucking flesh. Sweet, sweet! I see him clear; wistful yearnful boy, with a soul all wrinkled and athrob like your forehead, Sweet, when you were born ... a soul open and empty and greedy like your mouth, when you were born.
“ ...Come, suck me, you two dear ones!”
—Do I see my love clear? If I do, I see a fading.... “I abdicate that sight, my dear Beloved. My hands must not shake, when you come back to me shaking.”
—What is love? what is a field?... a running of sweet grass over earth, grass leaping away from the earth in which it lives.... My love is youand you ... that is seeing enough!
—Love is the field and woodlands of the world.
She was a little woman waiting for her husband....
Strange news came to her world of Harry Howland Luve ... thrilled it, made it talk.... “Blood will tell.” ... “After the wild oats the sturdier planting....” “God has his way....” “From one drunkenness to another.” Fanny took to herself the news and felt it true. The path of her man came clear in her white mind.
—I feel him, all the way he has crawled livid red from my hands. He turns, full flow, to my breast! She saw his path like a writing.
The Reverend Doctor Poole brought her his gift of comfort wrapped in complacence.
She made him sit down, he chose the stiffest chair.—I must subdue myself, she felt. He was brittle, little. She held back the flood of herself. But it was easy since his sharp small eyes not knowing she was a flood, brought her help.
“Your husband, my Dear, has found Christ.
“It happened in New York. Never mind, my child, where ... and who shall ever say How? He has found Christ and like Him he has risen. More, my daughter. Like Him, he is walking the ways of men bringing God’s word. Who has found Christtruly, in every respect must act like Him. I am very gratified ... very grateful. I have come to you, my daughter, ... you have neglected our Church, never mind, Dear, the strayed sheep isthe dearest to the Lord and to the humblest Pastor ... to pray with you Thanksgiving and rejoicing. Your husband will be here soon. You know from his dear father what he’s doing?... He goes from College to College telling young men how he slipped down the pleasant path to Hell—and at its gate found Christ.... I have had word from colleagues in Princeton, Yale, Williams ... elsewhere. His effect on the student bodies is amazing, electrifying. A true evangel. He is eloquent, simple ... rather his message is, that speaks through his lips. The students learn how he ... as they do ... played a little, drank a little, smoked—all the little innocent indulgences ... and what horror happened. They flock up, after his visit, and sign the pledge of Purity, join fellowship in Christ. He has received invitations from dozens of Christian institutions to come with his message, to help save our Christian youth. He has found a true work, indeed.... And you, daughter, have been worthy of him ... waiting. Prepare yourself now for the return of your Bridegroom.”
* * *
Face clawed close by myriad tiny fears and horrors. Hot eyes. Feet stumbling. As Harry’s body lurched forward, his feet stumbled faster to support it. Hands dead white leaves, dry, crackling at his sides.... A saloon swings open, his head bowed above thin shoulders twitches in, away from the crash of an impending train above on its swinging iron rail. Wave of acrid beer,soiled flesh, wet clothes. Above it, his head a moment is still.... Sober. Harry steps up to the bar, with sharp feet and hands marshalling sudden to his head against the lazy swing of his body within the fetid wave. He grasps a glass of whiskey, carries it untouched before him to a corner. Bodies huddled like hulks of beef or pork, covered with rags. He floats above them, finds a seat, bowing to a naked wooden table. Invitation. Glass elbows on the naked table. Head on the table? No!—One gulp to swing my body free with my sharp head ... to soberness.... So....—What am I?...
Harry Howland Luve gazed on his world. A man snoring near him blew a spray of blood from his mashed nose. A man, beside a barrel, let his fingers trail like grey worms through the sawdust ... a red tongue broke through the muck of his mouth, licked the grey worms of his hands, he slept again. At the bar, careening like ships on a wave of the world, heads dipped into huge glasses, swung against mirrors, broke thudding upon a window upon a wall that was a grin of hardness.—What am I? Harry Howland Luve laboriously counted his fingers....—One two three four ... one two three four ... one two: my God! where is my fifth finger? “I lack a finger! I lack a finger!” Body with head feet hands was one ... a toss, a catapult from the stinking Harp House into a darkness clear, biting, without, beneath the surge of the “L.” He flew. “I lack a finger.” He stopped. “What else do I lack?” Again a train. He was caught. He could not move.—It is coming over! He was clamped; the train’s murmur rose to a beat, a roar, a crash. Iron and wood and steam shrieked and stampeded, mountained on his head. He was clamped. He was a silence of horror under a mountain of noise, crushing against the eggshell of his skull.... It passed....—I am alive. He walked quiet now, looking on the pavement tracks for his lost finger.
“You have lost something?” A black form rose from the street like smoke on a clear night. “Yes ... I have lost ... have lost....” “Perhaps,” said the smokey man, “I can help you to find. Come along, Brother.” He clasped his arm. The smokey man of God, the white seeker of color moved down the cavern of Chatham Square where the high houses dimmed away like stalactytes and the “L” thrust its lance into the belly of a world too weary to cry, too worn to bleed. Before him Harry Luve held his white dry hand. “My finger,” he muttered. “Yes,” said the man of God. “I see ... your pointing finger....”
He sat in a quiet room. Coffee and a sandwich rolled in his raw stomach. “That tastes good, eh?” said the man of smoke. “Hot, eh? Whiskey makes you shiver, I’ll bet.” Luve held his hands together and began to cry. “Heat is the best thing in the world. Good heat is God. False heat is the Devil ... and makes you shiver,” he said. “Another cup of coffee?”
“My finger ... my finger!” “Brace up, man. You’re a gentleman. You were. I can see that.See clear, and you’re whole....” “How can I see clear when I lack ... I lack—” ... “Hush—listen.”
There was a sound like a soft white quiet on a red wound. Music.
“Bow your head, Brother.... Listen.”
The quiet crept upon his body. Tucked in his toes, moistened his hands, lay on his mouth. The quiet was warm. Was music. Harry shut his eyes. The wave of the world, booze and streaking men, fell away. He was in a flatness downy with gentle grass above a gentle river. His feet hurt, he was glad, hurting was living. A warm cloud muffled his head: through his eyes and mouth, through the warm cloud came words:
“Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy Kingdom ... give us this day our daily ... not into temptation ... for thine is the Kingdom ... halleluja, Blesst!... the glory for ever and ever ... seek and ye shall find ... seek seek and and ye ye ... unto you opened ... unto you, opened ... Blood of the Lamb, red blood, ... there is a quiet house, all white, where it is warm this bitter Winter night ... all warm a quiet house ... and arms holding me to a redness, passion, that is allowed. Allowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... allowed. Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy.... Fanny’s red, I have seen her red blood. Since I have married her, holy ... red and holy ... knock and it shall be ... opened ... red warm, dear ... all white is the blood of the Christ....”
“Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy Kingdom ... give us this day our daily ... not into temptation ... for thine is the Kingdom ... halleluja, Blesst!... the glory for ever and ever ... seek and ye shall find ... seek seek and and ye ye ... unto you opened ... unto you, opened ... Blood of the Lamb, red blood, ... there is a quiet house, all white, where it is warm this bitter Winter night ... all warm a quiet house ... and arms holding me to a redness, passion, that is allowed. Allowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... allowed. Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy.... Fanny’s red, I have seen her red blood. Since I have married her, holy ... red and holy ... knock and it shall be ... opened ... red warm, dear ... all white is the blood of the Christ....”
The smokey man was speaking: “Miracle is not dead.”
Harry Luve rolled around upon his face. The music was still. A new quiet, also warm, wrapped him about. He rolled and rolled in a warm water. “The quiet is ever’ where.”
His eyes gleamed against a blackness suddenly calm and dun, a wall. He looked at a wall in a lighted room. He saw a man beside him clad in black. A hand touched his. Harry was thankful how that hand touched his.
“I have seen,” he said, “ ... O I have seen—“
The hand clasped his. “What, brother, have you seen?”
Harry wrenched away his hands, placed them like fenders before him.
“Let me—let me—!” he stopped. He swayed caught: he flew caught in a chord that sped with the bright room through a roaring darkness. Roar! He was dizzy. He tried to cry. He saw his hands speeding before his eyes like two birds through cavernous space. He stopped from breath ... one two three four FIVE ... he counted his flying fingers. A tiny spring sang over his eyes, sang fraying ready to break. He wanted to cry ... five five!... a little woman flew before his hands like a white bird in the blackness. Naked. One red spot in her naked body where he had made red once ... Fanny!... warm ... allowed.Hallowed allowed hallowed allowed.The red spot was a painted house home ... could be about him.... Blessed are they that mourn ... blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit ... comforted ... Kingdom of Heaven leadus not ... rejoice exceeding glad ... into temptation——
“—Warm and sweet is the blood of the LambThat washes us sinners white.Sinners sinnersBlack and quivering sinners weAnd the blood of the Lamb it warms usIt washes us sinners white.”
“—Warm and sweet is the blood of the LambThat washes us sinners white.Sinners sinnersBlack and quivering sinners weAnd the blood of the Lamb it warms usIt washes us sinners white.”
“—Warm and sweet is the blood of the LambThat washes us sinners white.Sinners sinnersBlack and quivering sinners weAnd the blood of the Lamb it warms usIt washes us sinners white.”
... The hand of the man in black touched his again. Smokey ... flame. Warmness, red warmness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring burst. His eyes burst out into myriad diamond stars. A sluice opened. He was all wet. His soul poured ... a pent torrent ... out: speechless whiteness.
“Something—say something, Brother! What wrestles in you? What chokes you? What do you see?”
“Christ!” gasped Harry Rowland Luve: then he slept.
* * *
Mrs. Luve leaned back in her chair, took the brimming words of Samson Brenner.
They poured from him, free, full, into the dark pool of her eyes. They poured bright, candid: in the dark pool they fell dark.
—You talk of your fears and your pains: you talk of your loves and your dreams. You are a Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never in your mouth?
—O there is reason, deep! What is the pain of nearness—you pampered Jew, you Jew-boy, plump about sorrow—that blots the word Christ from your mouth?
“Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose myself, there sudden I am. I do not know myself, but I say ‘that is me!’”—Pampered boy. “I talk and talk. God knows of what and why. Mrs. Luve, do I bore you?”
“You move along a path that is mine. Go on. I have no earthly thing to do but hear you.”
“You are grave!”
“Not so grave as you.”
“But I laugh. I must tell you ... the first time I really heard laughter....”
—You move upon my life like a broken sun ashift through cloud at evening after a black day.... You in the flame of my candles, you in theblack of my room.... What is this word Christ you know too deep to utter?”
Fanny standing moved her hand from the gathered flowers on the table ... cherry and pear buds high, bowls of anemone, violets ... to her lips.
“He is coming!” She stood.
The door thrust forward—and was away from between them. Clad in white she held firm against the sight of him; tall and dark with pale hands and face, he rose from her still eyes like a column of smoke.
“Harry!” Then she held out her arms.
He shut the door. He knelt.
“Get up, husband.”
He kissed her hands.
She lifted his head in her two palms, lifted him up. His lips were on hers.
They were thin, sweet, laden now with little gasps of air warmed sweet in sweet lungs: no smells of liquor and smoke like a hot corrugation scraping her sense.
He broke from her and sat in a chair. His breath was sudden, he had run a race. One hand lay palpitant against a knee: breathless, afraid, a being out of its element. She thought of a sea. He was fished up dry from a sea.
“Harry,” she spoke low. She knelt at his feet: she looked up: she could smile now.
“Get up, wife.”
“No ... let me. Let me always.”
His dry hands, tremulous, waved about her hair: seeking, afraid: they were moths now, fluttering upon a light: so his eyes. His face was pale and hurt turned down upon her smiling. Fluttering search collapsed. He hid his face in his hands.
“Do not cry now.” She felt shut out by his hiding hands.
“I do not cry. Instead, I pray.”
He looked at her. All of him was dry. From his words he seemed to have won bravery. She felt shut out in his looking.
His eyes were braver: his hands. They moved forward upon her shadowing face: they sought a thing, found it. They carried her mouth upon his, differently, upward. He stood, she under him. Her flesh touched his flesh.
Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black ... and in prayer. Lips washed clean of liquor, scrubbed lips, thin ... very thin. Hands corroded in cleanliness against the nape of her neck. Odorless, fireless.... Fanny flung her arms about him.... Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a world. She clasped him close.
“Harry—Harry,” she cried. “O I am so glad you are——” she stopped. She lay swaying in his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint moan rose from her parted lips as her arms clasped tighter....
They sat and looked at each other.
“You have loved me, Fanny.”
“Yes ... yes.”
“You are my wife.”
She could say no word. She could feel no thing to turn into a word. She was a wisp of cloud: beneath her a weathercock stood still. Harry moveless pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody spike ... under a sky with one wisp of cloud.
From a fringed green horizon, memory like a wind moved up to her.
—I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated my new free strength to that. I have sworn how I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together!
“You know about me,” he said.
“I know you have come back, and I love you ... love you.”
“I must tell you all ... all the sin. You are my wife.”
“Tell me now, only that you are mine.”
“I am yours: for you are my wife since in my sinning you have loved me, Fanny. God rewards me. You were there, awaiting my conversion.”
“We are wedded at last. Do not use words I cannot understand.”
“You must hear all my sins....”
Why did she feel:—He is satisfied with his words?
“I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my way of being cleansed, to speak my sins. As they come forth from my mouth, they cleanse—God has made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am washed clean, speaking them. Already scores of boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All their horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand washing clean.”
Why did she feel:—Speaking, he moves away?
—I am jealous of your sins. What are sins?
“Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can bury them. Then we can start to build. Then you can come and hold me.”
“I was away more than two years....”
—He has come back to hold me.... I will hold him so he understands he has come back to hold me.... O to be held!... He has never held me. We were too wise, we fools, to hold each other. In a plunging world ... O my God how the world veers and plunges ... what fools not to hold each other.
He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwelling again with his sins. He was warm in them. When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife, his eyes were colder.
—Hold me. Hold me! Let me hold you. Come plant your hand in my heart. He spoke, dwelling warm in his sins.
—Damn your sins!
He ended. He came to her and knelt once more. Not feeling him, she let him.
“Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife ... do you forgive me?”
Not feeling him there, she was very quiet.
“I do not feel, my love, that there is anything to forgive.”
She looked straight, a little to the side of his white face. She was still.
“We were young,” then she said.—I must speak. “And did not know. All that is past, but is good ... all ... since now we know.”
“I have sinned deeply. Forgive me.”
“You wandered loosely, because I held youloose: because you did not hold me. Now we clasp each other close. It is not a sin to have been a child.”
“Bless you. Bless you.”
“I have learned——“
“You have been always wonderful.”
“No, Harry. I have learned. I have changed.”
“You.... You have not needed to change.”
She looked at him. “Two years you left me alone: and before that two years you left me alone while I was forced to live with a drunkard. Do you think these years did nothing to me?”
“You suffered.”
“And what might come of suffering!”
“Fanny, my Christian wife, you were strong, you were not harmed by suffering. You remained pure. You have been not changed, dear: tempered.”
“O Harry, I am afraid ... so afraid of your words.”
“You are a Christian, dear, and do not know it. That is why you are frightened by my words.”
“You never saw me, Harry.”
“Yes, dear, always. Under a mist, but always. The mist lifted. Darling, I must tell you: that frightful immortal night ... you and Christ.... I saw you both at once together.”
“You never saw me. You do not know how I have changed.”
“You love me?”
“O my darling!”
“You suffered, waiting....”
She put his hands together: helpless she beat her hands against his hands clasped hard.
“You did not give up ... waiting, suffering?”
“I knew you would come back. I saw you, always, coming. Now I know that.”
“Then you have not changed. For you do love me, then.”
“Harry, love to survive must change.”
“Dear, dear ... you were right. I have told my sins. Each one. You have them all. You must remember them all. Let me hold you now, in silence.”
“But Harry, perhaps I too have the need of telling.”
“You have no sin.”
“No Harry, I have no sin. But there are other tidings.”
“Hush, dearest. Hold me——“
“Listen!”
He looked at her. Impatience bit his lip, puckered his eyes slightly.
“ ...Have you thought ever, Harry, of what I did, these years of waiting? of what I was? Harry, look at me clear. Have you ever tried to see me?”
“My Christian wife!”
—Patience, patience!... “Harry, this coming home must be beautiful, it must not be hideous. Give it your share of light, Harry. You must to save it, to make it. Look at me.”
He puckered his brow: he suffered, looking at her beauty he would ...now he had confessed his sins ... have preferred to kiss.—All of you, hidden under your white prim dress! “It is so long since I have kissed you.”
“Harry, your word sin, does it cover up from your eyes what you and I have done? Am I right, dearest, to fear your word sin?”
—I want to kiss you. You are my wife and have forgiven me. I’m done with vices. I have the right, by God! to kiss your mouth and....
“Your going away killed me, Harry. I was near dead before you went. Your going away killed me.”
“Forgive me, I say.”
“Never! if you use that word. Forgiveness, sin ... they are words, Harry, that cover up. You killed me; you did not sin. You struggled for life and killed me. That is all. I struggled for life, after your struggle had killed me. Can you imagine how I needed, alone here in the house with Edith whom you have never seen, to struggle against the death in which your going buried me?”
“Edith——!”
“She is asleep. Have you thought, Harry?”
He stood up. “What can I do or say? Yes I have thought. It is that agony I brought to you which I call my sin: it is my heartache for it, my rushing back to you with hands imploring, that cries ‘Forgiveness.’ You stop me.”
“Harry you did not sin, because you needed life. Always that comes first; our need of life. I did not give you life. I don’t know why, but I did not give you life. You went elsewhere, fumbled. Now I feel strong. I feel now, Love, that I can give you life. We can now, from our newstrength, at last give life to each other. If I did not know this, I would never have seen you again.
“But Harry ... please, please understand! I understand your wandering, your hurting, almost your killing of yourself and of me ... in order to find breath. Understand mine!”
“What do you mean, Fanny?”
“I am human also. I am not ... I do not want to be that perfect emptiness you call your Christian wife. O my beloved, I am all warm for you, I am all living for you, because I too have struggled and have wandered ... in order to find breath.”
“What do you mean?”
She stood close to him. “Look at me close, my love.”
“What do you mean?” Very slowly, his pale white hands with their blue veins curled up like leaves in autumn, drying, drying: fists.
“Do you feel how I love you? Do you feel ... O you must ... how my love now, that was a little stupid girlish thing, has bloomed: how it is full of blood, full of sustaining sweetness? Do you not feel, Harry, how you have come back to a love that will feed you, that will lift you up until the end of years?”
“Yes ... I feel that. What do you mean?”
“That love is over the despair and death of our past years as a tree is over the ground.”
“Fanny ... I....”
“ ...rooted in it. I was under the ground. That shows I loved you. Always, always. If I had not loved you, I should not have been so deep-buried under the ground. I was dead. That shows I loved you. I am all open in the air, high to you. That shows I love you. Love for you has never stopped, it has grown.”
“What do you mean ...?”
“There was a thing that helped me to push up from my despair, from my death under the ground where you had buried me, Harry. There was a man....”
Harry Luve stepped forward and viced her wrists: “A man—!”
“Harry dearest, you must letmenow,menow tell you all about it.”
He stopped her. “One thing only.... This man—” His voice broke. He dropped her wrists. His face was an ashen mist. “For God’s sake, Fanny! You didn’t ... you didn’t, Fanny—“
His eyes saw her. Saw her face. Her face nodded.
His hands covered his face. He flinched away. He saw her not. He went back, back ... the wall caught him. He crumpled to the floor. He lay under his white hands. Lay long....
At last:
“Harry, Harry ... it was because I loved you. O the hurt! See, I have killed you too. Because I loved you.... I too needed to live, for you had killed me. Do not judge yet. Let me tell you, let me help us understand. I heard you ... your horrors, your orgies, your hells. O Harry, this was not so ... this was clean somehow ... leading to birth,to you. It was, since I am here now, loving you ... ready to give you all, all of a life I have at last won to give you. O my boy....”
With each word she crept closer, sank nearer beside him. She knelt beside him. She sought his hands, his eyes ... his eyes. He saw her face hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled beyond her.... He saw not her face, not her hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very soft, very penetrable ... hers ... darkly penetrable; they were the stuff of his flesh, they were the stuff of his brain and they were pierced by someone!... He saw rootflesh of a man ...not he!piercing the stuff of his brain.
He got up. Her face was still low where his face had been. Her face was near his feet. His feet touched her face.
“Our Lord has spoken,” he said, “and I throw no stone.”
She was very still, her face low above his feet. Listening with a firm stillness her body was hard and she held her face above his feet.
“Our Lord has spoken further!—‘But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to commit adultery.’ So has said our Lord.”
She was moveless.
“What do you mean?” she said.
“Rise up.”
“Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try to tell you what I know now I must: how I was helpless, how I was poisoned dead ... how I was lifted up.”
“Get up.”
“O Harry, Harry ... I have killed you, too.”
“Get up, I say.”
She lifted her face, furrowed with tears, to his.
“I did not choose, Beloved, the Way I was saved....”
“Do you put that on God? or on Christ who has spoken against you?”
“When has He spoken against me?” Fanny Luve stood silently before him.
“He has spoken against you ... even He. He has said: Cast no stone. No stone shall be cast by me. He has said: Put her away....”
Her hands clenched under his mouth.
“—and I put you away.”
“You put me away!”
“I put you away.... Not for myself. I must travel. It is my mission to travel from College to College. I must be away much from my home, bringing where I can to my brothers the Word ... the Word of our Lord who puts you away. I put you away ... for the sake of my child.”
“Whom you have never seen!”
“Whom you shall never see—“
FANNY DIRK Luve stood on the Bridge where she could see the river up and down.
—I know what I am going to do. I know. Not die. Not going to see—What can I—? Since she knew, “Why! Why!” she said aloud.
She searched the world trying to find the anguish—I am not going to die!... of what she was to do.—Why not? But she knew that.... Not die. Not see her child.... She saw the river.
The river came to her from trees. The city, a raised shadow near her eyes, pulled her eyelids down away from there beyond, where she lay once on her back. She lies on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting in erection, spilling in bud. Over: he.... From these trees came the river ... from this past ... flowing like the dimension that was time upon her standing on the Bridge. Time and the river were one. It swept upon her from the past of trees, past of sweet love, thrust against her, surging resistless; it was going to overwhelm her. Where? Time and the river flung in a stroke eternally sure against her standing dry in anguish—love an edged steel—on the Bridge. She turned. It turned her. Time and the river sweeping from rootage and trees struck her now in the back. She saw where it flowed.
It flowed into flat land. A rugose strewing of rust and yard and factory was the flat land. Thecity in the heights fell down from its proud mansions—through dawdling soiled cottages, through clustered shanties—fell to the flat land of rust and coal. Slow brackish river here, turmoiled ... full. It swirled in oil, it recoiled from the harsh thrusts of the makings of men—of junkyards. River and time stole through this newness of noise and filth away, in a filmy scarf of smoke-bitten locusts, beyond the eyes of Fanny. She felt in her back the subtle thrust of a beginning world of high-banked trees free in the air: how it fell, grew, now hurling through noise, dirt, misery—making, struggle to make!—to beyond her eyes that lay so wistfully against the dying locusts, unable to fall farther.
And at her side the city fell along. From its secluded shadow—warmed mansions fell with her along into a rising clatter of smoke, a foam of steel, huddling men moving.... Mist.
Black-purple mist ... red rust ... the shriek of wheels crunching resistless against and upon steel lines thrust resistless also.
Fanny left the Bridge....
* * *
In one hand of Fanny was a valise. Her other hand was a fist.
Her mouth asking for a ticket shut fast. Her hand counting change shut fast. She sat in a train, shut.
The moving train worked at her, stole up in her, swayed, shook, pried her open. Her feet in theopening rhythm of the train. Her legs. Her loins. Warm loins. Breasts, not so frozen, melting. Her head, erect on her frozen breast, now plunged in their melting. She sat in a train, open.... She lay in a hot bath of her melted pain and life, flowing within it, open.
She had no sense of a world of objects—fragments to beat against her. She was all melted hot. She had a sense of the whole world ... whole worlds ... all ... falling. The train fell sure, it was sure of itself in its fall. It fell with the world it held so sure, so steadfast; it was a blessing so. She had the sense of the whole world falling in a stark cadence upward upon God. Tears, battle ecstacy of loss ... a falling somehow upward upon God.
Her hands gripped the plush arms, shrill sharp against the quick of her nails. The world was her world again, and was a delirious tangle of broken objects hurling against her eyes. She was bruised and aghast in the rain of broken objects of her world. But that which she had sensed in the melt of worlds remained. All fell upward ... let her pray!—can I dare?... fell upward upon God.
—I am falling away. Grappling, crying, she saw at last how real was this falling away from the whole warm world of her sorrows and joys and wants.—Edith, Harry; myself, O Edith my heart!It is true.Can I fall upward?...
The fast train seemed to be running over her life. It ran over an earth full of flying fragments. Over houses, fence snapping, cows dipped sudden into trees, pool flaring skyward, cloud-full, caughtin the porch of a house, road ribboning a tobacco-field, shaken straight, road stiff like a rod flashing away beneath her.—This is Virginia, this is I. The fast train running over her life smoothed it clear....
She could have remained and fought him for her child, she could not. She could have remained and won him ... repulsive ... she could not. She moved upon a track that was there she sensed before her moving upon it. But Edith! What sort of a life is this, moving away from Edith? The pain of her deprival was a thousand pains, gray: a thousand gray birds circling her in mist.—I am suffering, suffering. Can I stand this? The mists cleared. She saw her Pain clear ... one Pain ... one moment. Pain. She saw that it was not a thousand pains, weeping in gray wings mistily about her. She saw that it was Life.
Life solid and salient.
—What is this terror? What have I to do with this terror?
You are within it!
... Like this Virginia, an unbroken sweep, broken alone by the unwonted stress of the dimension of moving. One can face solid. One has two eyes and a mind for facing solid.... She loved her daughter.—I love you, love you! More things she loved. Not Harry perhaps, O yes ... the warm dreams she had born in Harry. The house around Edith. Clean beds, linen her own, the kitchen where she came each day and the apron she tied about her hips and the hips too she loved which arms must circle she wassure of. Edith’s. Home, daughter, man ... why were they all destroyed?
—But they have never been.What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream.Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood.My dream’s blood flows!
—But they have never been.What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream.Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood.My dream’s blood flows!
—But they have never been.What have they been?... pool of my blood of dream.Stagnant and dead: pool of my clotted blood.My dream’s blood flows!
It was true. Bleeding to death? Bleeding to birth? She did not know. But flowing.
“God, let me think!” The words came aloud.—God, let me think! now silent....—Edith? Yes, Edith was flowing alive. But Edith was not herself, notherblood flowing. Edith’s blood flowing. Let it flow for Edith.
Fanny sat shaken in a mother’s storm. Help for her child. Could her child flow first alone? Where was the mother to help her? Father? Fanny sat trembling. She saw him, as he oldens in the cant moulds of his ideals. Harry, pious, weak, stale ... leading the life of her child. What did she have of her father?—If she is like her father let her rot! But now would she not surely be like him? She alone could save her child from that.She alone could, who could not.... The train ran.... Fanny saw the Town, it would be the world of her child growing, of her child learning to live in the world. World of such women! Edith’s blue eyes, open beneath the dimpled softness of her brows, behold a world of such women ... the only world! Stiff brittle creatures, floating upon the viscid surface of a stream they have no weight to pierce. And their Laws: “Have no weight,have no thrust that might pierce the viscid surface of our stream.” World of such men! Liars, builders of lies, men taught to pray to Christ and to cheat their fellows, to cheat their women and wear them ... trim them then wear them ... taught to ignore half of the aching world that was black.—Let me go back to Edith! O let me go back!... The train ran smooth.—You may not.
Fanny faced the dead of her heart. She felt the world of her child clear, how it stank, how it swarmed like an evil stinking weed sucking the soil of God. She saw the blue eyes of her girl. They stood upon a body, white and clear like a flower: and all about, the Weed, swarming and purulent with its harsh roots sucking soil, with its hot leaves stealing sun.—What can I do? She faced she could do nothing. Yet reasonably something. Fight ... pursuade. There was reason with the cry of her mangled heart that there was much she could do.Turn back.The train, racing, swept her eyes upon a world lying folded in myriad skies, a world solid, a world one with space and stars ... space solid joined her to the stars as her white body joined her eyes to her limbs. One. And Edith within it, flowing her way. Ruthlessly hers....—Let her blood flow for her.
Fanny facing the dead of her heart faced the life of failure. She knew at last she could live.
The train swam into a strewing of neat flat houses, cut across asphalt. A marble Dome in sun rose above smoke of roofs. Washington!... Leon’shome.—I must change here. Every hour New York trains every ... get there by day, though.
Fanny walked through a city incredibly neat.—Very fine. Government world. Fine and dead. It has not started to grow, it has not started to be. It is easy and fine, like a nonexistence.
Her feet were heavy as if she were walking in space.
“When, God,” she said aloud, “do I begin to think?”
* * *
She stood halted by a building. She knew which building it was.—— He is inside! Of course perhaps he is inside no longer. It was a gray pile rising in numberless piddling columns to the white of the sky. It was cold. She looked at it. “I am not going in.”
He was perfect in her. Why should she go in to take from him perfection? She was afraid for his perfection.—How can he be this holy man in this grave? The Government Building stood like an insolent lackey fending her off. It glared at her and was very insecure and stupid within its ruffles of marble. It strutted its turrets before her like a vain proud bird.—He is perfect. He is done. He is no more. He is buried here. She felt a great need to see him.
She knew she must not. “I must seek you,” she whispered against the mounting marble, “differently.”
She walked and knew that Leon Dannenbergwho was in each of her steps, in each of her pangs, in each leap forward of her blood was forever beyond her eyes.—Here you are, holy man. Where am I? There you are.
She walked away. A vast openness was upon her flank, it ached sweetly as if her blood poured through it. An open longing lay upon her flesh as if she walked away from him who had given her birth.—You are behind. Not so far behind as Edith. Nearer, holy man. Farther ahead.
But as she walked the inept city, a scene came and it filled her. She gave herself her scene fully, voluptuously ... starving ... while the long buildings passed her in a squad of uniformed dull giants.
He is up from a wide desk. He says no word, looking deep in her eyes. One instant doubt as to the full free independence of her coming. Doubt goes before the intelligence of her eyes. He took her hands, very lightly, released them.
“I am going North. I am on my way North.”
“How can I help you?”
“You have helped me all you can.”
“He came back ... you told him?”
She nodded.
“He did not understand?”
“How could we expect he should understand? Would I? Do I?... if this all was not mine ...?”
“It is good, Fanny Luve. Go ahead.”
His face sudden is like a field under a sky oflonging: a sun came down; his face glows in tender fear: it shadows to resolution.
“You must go North. We can’t understand. I can see, you are going right.”
“How can you see that, Leon?”
“No day since I left have you been far from me. You come into my thinking, my dreaming, into my sudden flying visions. You measure yourself always with them, with the best of them, Fanny. You measure full with them.”
“What you have said I could have said.”
His eyes came very near. They filled with tears of her. He looked away.
“But I am vague. O Leon, so blind!”
“You are no longer afraid of being blind. You are ready.”
“Leon, what am I going to be?”
“We are no longer prophets ... save in our lives. Live, Fanny.”
“Leon, I could fight.... I could win her, I could save her.”
“No, Fanny ... you are going to live.”
“I ... and Edith?”
“You....”
She walked with mouth tear-brimmed and open out of her fancied words. She saw about her with relentless eyes, felt with relentless feet, this hard pavement, these hard houses, hard white sky. Out of the deep scene came now upon her, as her mouth shut, clearer and more solid than the stone city his last words:
“You, Fanny ... not Edith,you... are to live.”
Clear feet carried body erect through the stone city. Mother worlds in blood poured from her, leaving white feet, white body, while the soul of Fanny swooned in a ruthless knowledge.
AMAN and a woman walked this day with Autumn burning all about them. The sun lay in thin cloud. The trees burst.
“I have found out, Fanny,” he said.
She was so shorter than he and her steps swifter than his long lurches. She felt him from his broad brown halfshoes upward ... big fleshly man, somehow lithe, somehow gentle like song above his crude-rhythming feet. And his hairy great hands she felt—as when they were on her body like a little child’s, so helpless yearning, so imperious.
“I knew I should find out if I gave myself the space to: that’s why I brought you up here. We came yesterday. This morning I know ... that I have known since the day you came into the Office asking for a job.”
She laughed.—I can laugh!
“O I see your thought: ‘That’s the conventional phrase.’”
“ ...from Christopher Johns!”
“Maybe he’s been so durn unconventional these forty years because he hadn’t found himself. Maybe he feels, now he can look at last straight at you and himself and understand, it’d be good to be conventional: like rolling in warm blankets which the hard days’ work has paid for.”
She felt the dissonance of her feet striking the rutted road beside his.
“There must have been a frost last night.”
“Look at that maple! It’s a blazing red, because there was a frost.”
She looked. He was keeping step.
“I mean it, Fanny. It’s nearly two years since I’ve known you ... nearly two years you’ve worked for me ... one year we’re—well—lovers though I fear the word for the rare wonder you have given me—why, why? But now it is a blossom of knowing, a whole Spring of knowing, woman! There has been SylviaFrau, there has been Sadie. I chuck ’em both, and when it is done we marry.”
“Jonathan! I want you to walk quiet ... miles and miles beside me quiet, today all day—do you understand? I am listening for something.”
She knew he would, clutching his stick behind him in two fists.
Two years ... they tramped ... two years....
—You are Fanny Dirk, Mrs. Luve.... I’ll keep that name! And you have gotten tired already, tired of what if you look and face it you will find all bundled and labelled in two years. Labelled to know, Bundled ... to throw out! That’s clear, though the facing, the training of my eyes and the opening of my mind to hold what I face, is going to be hard.... Here is an autumn day and a dear man trudging so you are alone with it. Day of glory, day of flame, day of death. The leaves are singing for they are going to fall. The trees are singing for they are going to sleep. The world is a maze of trumpeting insects, loomed with flutters of dry grass, trill of seed, for soon comes snow stillness. O Fanny, once you were Springtime! I hear a man talk blossom and I feel September. The bundles ... the labels ... two years inventoried! Aren’t you a business woman, Fanny, earning two thousand a year? A year ... two years. Each year has a Spring and a Fall. A third year might green if you burn away like these trees.
“It is simply,” she whispered to herself, and the man watched her mouth: “do I want to green like these trees?... When will I learn to think?”
She knew already what was to be.
She struggled only, she gave this full free day in the air only, to know Why. Did not the world have reasons? She had suffered losing two lives that grew within her flesh. She had asked Why, and in the questioning been rent away so even these agonies were dim: they were worlds dead like dim moons in the dawn of her adventure. And that adventure was Why!
—Why shall I say No very soon ... so very soon? Why am I going to leave the warm of this dear man, the ease, the goodness of it all—why am I going to push him back into new Emptiness?
She saw him that first day: his arms thrust out, nervous arms, haggard hands, hair wet ...business man! this big bumping child, bumping in Emptiness? Dear ... so good (she could see that at once as of a horse and a dog all in one, and his life a currycomb brushing wrong, a bone marrowless): now, back he goes into worse Emptiness. Why?