Life the conqueror over death,
Death the conqueror over life.
Was the song a male thing, the call of the male to the female, a lie,
as her mother had said? It did not sound like a lie. The song had come
from the lips of the man Walter and she had left him and had come to
her mother. Then Melville Stoner, another male, had come to her. In him
also was singing the song of life and death. When the song stopped
singing within one did death come? Was death but denial? The song was
singing within herself. What a confusion!
After her last outcry Ma Wescott had gone weeping up the stairs and to
her own room and to bed. After a time Rosalind followed. She threw
herself onto her own bed without undressing. Both women lay waiting.
Outside in the darkness before his house sat Melville Stoner, the male,
the man who knew of all that had passed between mother and daughter.
Rosalind thought of the bridge over the river near the factory in the
city and of the gulls floating in the air high above the river. She
wished herself there, standing on the bridge. "It would be sweet now to
throw my body down into the river," she thought. She imagined herself
falling swiftly and the swifter fall of the birds down out of the sky.
They were swooping down to pick up the life she was ready to drop,
sweeping swiftly and beautifully down. That was what the song Walter
had sung was about.
* * * * *
Henry Wescott came home from his evening at Emanuel Wilson's store. He
went heavily through the house to the back door and the pump. There was
the slow creaking sound of the pump working and then he came into the
house and put the pail of water on the box by the kitchen sink. A
little of the water spilled. There was a soft little slap--like a
child's bare feet striking the floor--
Rosalind arose. The dead cold weariness that had settled down upon her
went away. Cold dead hands had been gripping her. Now they were swept
aside. Her bag was in a closet but she had forgotten it. Quickly she
took off her shoes and holding them in her hands went out into the hall
in her stockinged feet. Her father came heavily up the stairs past her
as she stood breathless with her body pressed against the wall in the
hallway.
How quick and alert her mind had become! There was a train Eastward
bound toward Chicago that passed through Willow Springs at two in the
morning. She would not wait for it. She would walk the eight miles to
the next town to the east. That would get her out of town. It would
give her something to do. "I need to be moving now," she thought as she
ran down the stairs and went silently out of the house.
She walked on the grass beside the sidewalk to the gate before Melville
Stoner's house and he came down to the gate to meet her. He laughed
mockingly. "I fancied I might have another chance to walk with you
before the night was gone," he said bowing. Rosalind did not know how
much of the conversation between herself and her mother he had heard.
It did not matter. He knew all Ma Wescott had said, all she could say
and all Rosalind could say or understand. The thought was infinitely
sweet to Rosalind. It was Melville Stoner who lifted the town of Willow
Springs up out of the shadow of death. Words were unnecessary. With him
she had established the thing beyond words, beyond passion--the
fellowship in living, the fellowship in life.
They walked in silence to the town's edge and then Melville Stoner put
out his hand. "You'll come with me?" she asked, but he shook his head
and laughed. "No," he said, "I'll stay here. My time for going passed
long ago. I'll stay here until I die. I'll stay here with my thoughts."
He turned and walked away into the darkness beyond the round circle of
light cast by the last street lamp on the street that now became a
country road leading to the next town to the east. Rosalind stood to
watch him go and something in his long loping gait again suggested to
her mind the figure of a gigantic bird. "He is like the gulls that
float above the river in Chicago," she thought. "His spirit floats
above the town of Willow Springs. When the death in life comes to the
people here he swoops down, with his mind, plucking out the beauty of
them."
She walked at first slowly along the road between corn fields. The
night was a vast quiet place into which she could walk in peace. A
little breeze rustled the corn blades but there were no dreadful
significant human sounds, the sounds made by those who lived physically
but who in spirit were dead, had accepted death, believed only in
death. The corn blades rubbed against each other and there was a low
sweet sound as though something was being born, old dead physical life
was being torn away, cast aside. Perhaps new life was coming into the
land.
Rosalind began to run. She had thrown off the town and her father and
mother as a runner might throw off a heavy and unnecessary garment. She
wished also to throw off the garments that stood between her body and
nudity. She wanted to be naked, new born. Two miles out of town a
bridge crossed Willow Creek. It was now empty and dry but in the
darkness she imagined it filled with water, swift running water, water
the color of chrysoprase. She had been running swiftly and now she
stopped and stood on the bridge her breath coming in quick little
gasps.
After a time she went on again, walking until she had regained her
breath and then running again. Her body tingled with life. She did not
ask herself what she was going to do, how she was to meet the problem
she had come to Willow Springs half hoping to have solved by a word
from her mother. She ran. Before her eyes the dusty road kept coming up
to her out of darkness. She ran forward, always forward into a faint
streak of light. The darkness unfolded before her. There was joy in the
running and with every step she took she achieved a new sense of
escape. A delicious notion came into her mind. As she ran she thought
the light under her feet became more distinct. It was, she thought, as
though the darkness had grown afraid in her presence and sprang aside,
out of her path. There was a sensation of boldness. She had herself
become something that within itself contained light. She was a creator
of light. At her approach darkness grew afraid and fled away into the
distance. When that thought came she found herself able to run without
stopping to rest and half wished she might run on forever, through the
land, through towns and cities, driving darkness away with her
presence.