... 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 my _home_, 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 grain
had 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’s _Thoughts_ she 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? You down
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 you _here_?...
--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....
--Our world unfolds beyond itself,
It is a yearning, it is a leaping toward God.
--I see Him!
When the trees break out,
When the trees heave up,
--I see Him!
When men dance like little trees full of Springtime,
There you are, God. Here.... I am unafraid.
You cannot kill me, for I am part of your Spring.
* * * * *
In the warm smoke shadow of the room the chandelier thrust its gas
tongues weakly. Beneath it on the table stood bottles of whiskey and gin
and syphon water. Night. The backyards swathed silence: the shut of a
window, the call of a cat were in the Night like little breaks in a
close textured weave.
A slight man with heavy sparse-haired head on thin shoulders, frail
chest, spoke in a singing voice. His English was good, the Irish brogue
was thick.
“It’s this way--it’s this way. We sit here night after night and we have
a good time. What is it we do really? We destroy ourselves, and that
means we hurt less. We drug ourselves down to these parts of life which
are happy.”
“Man is not happy?”
“Man,” Daniel Scome went on, “is caught between the fulness of the brute
and the fulness of manhood. That’s where we are. We’re half way. And
we’re weary and comfortless. Where we are we suffer. We cannot rest. We
cannot forget. Because we are half way. We must go on, to a new
happiness: or we must go back.”
“That’s what we do,” said Mangel. “We go back....”
A voice came from the shadow: “We got laws and governments ... we got
arts and War, so we can go back comfortably. Yes.”
“We’re corrupted. Adam and Eve have damned us,” spoke the thrust, sure
of itself, of Statt. “We don’t slump back. We’re naturally brutes.”
“I don’t believe you!” cried Mangel.
“Of course you don’t. You ain’t a Christian.”
“Nor you!” said Daniel Scome. “If we were naturally brutes, God would
not bother about us.”
“Nor we about God,” said Fanny.
“It comes to the same thing. We are half way, I tell you. We got to push
on ... or we got to fall back.”
Tessie sighed. “I am tired. I don’t want to do anything.”
“And I am tired too,” Susan chimed in. “So I don’t do anything. I don’t
climb. I don’t fall. I’d like to see anyone of you budge me!”
“But you climb,” said Fanny softly: Susan did not hear. “You are all
cold with climbing....”
In the corner beside Statt, shadowed, sat a tall spare creature with a
knot of hair on a high fanatical brow, and eyes that burned blue in the
dark.
“Sing then!” said he. His name was Loyden. If he had another name, no
one there knew it. “If you’re tired, sing. If you want to go up, sing.
If you want to fall back, sing!”
“Boy, you are crazy,” said Mangel.
LOYDEN: I didn’t say I wasn’t. You aren’t logical. I said, _sing_! That
has nothing to do with crazy or not crazy.
FANNY: But if we want to be sane--
SCOME: We want to be too many things. Loyden’s right. We want the
truth--and we’re afraid of being mad. There we are caught, again, half
way--half way between what is really One.
LOYDEN: We’re not caught when we sing ... not when we dance--
STATT: You old scarecrow, what are you preaching about? Who ever heard
your voice? Who ever saw you shake a leg?
LOYDEN: I have forgotten how to--without the Music.
TESSIE: Don’t talk about music! You get on my nerves.
LOYDEN: You see? It gets on her nerves. The weakling. Music oozed out of
her, died down to her hands. And when they got twisted, it went away.
SCOME: We don’t know how to dance. That’s why we’re here, drinking and
loving women.
SUSAN: You don’t love us!
CLARA: (muttering) Only a woman can love a woman.
LOYDEN: We don’t know how to dance. Dance for us, Judge Mark.
MARK: Shut up!
LOYDEN: (With a rising inflection to his voice) Dance for us, Mangel.
MANGEL: I could read the Bible? Be still!
LOYDEN: The Western world is dying!
... There is a hush. And Loyden’s voice that was shrill moves down to a
low monotone swaying within the heavy fumes and shadows of the room like
a bird planing....
LOYDEN: Death creeps up. Death creeps down. The eyes are dead already.
Who of the Western World can see? The feet and the legs are dead
already. Where is there Dance, where is there Music among us? Among the
Black men, among the Yellow men, among the Red men, yes. They still have
living limbs. They still have living eyes. We stiffen with Death. Death
creeps up, Death creeps down ... into the heart of the dying Western
World.
... There was a pause. The eyes of all gazed into the shadow where a
long thin head, wild-haired, wild-throated, cast out words upon them.
The eyes of all turned: Fanny was out of her chair. She moved to the
bottle-littered table under the gas. The yellow light lay heavy on her
hair, made her face glow pallid about her eyes that were dark within
themselves.
“I will dance for you,” she said.
She lifted her hands. They were little and very white upon her emaciate
arms.
“Look up!”
But her eyes did not look up. They were dark and lost within themselves.
“I will dance for you. Look up!” So she stood, with her hands high,
moveless.
The Night rolled slowly: lifting the room with a faint jerking onward.
They felt the rhythm of the moving room, sailing upon the Night. Their
heads swayed and their eyes, upturned, stirred faintly, carried by the
slow-voyaging room.
The arms of Fanny were rigid over her head. But she swayed along. The
pulse in her throat swayed with it. Each thing of matter, each thing of
thought in the room swayed on ... except the rigid arms of Fanny....
Stopped!... For the room was there.
They looked upon the miracle of their being still in the room. Chairs,
lights, bottles, persons ... all was still in the room.
They got out of their chairs. They sank to their knees on the floor.
“No!” shouted Fanny.
They were afraid.
“You cannot dance on your knees! Get up! Can’t you see?”
They saw her above them: dancing. They saw the floor beneath them:
dancing.... The walls! They clasped with terror for the pitching floor.
They clawed and clasped. They found each other. They were glad. They
subsided. Flesh pressed against flesh. Teeth knocked against teeth.
Brows beat upon carpet....
In the corner, infinitely far from her, for he, like her arms, had not
moved with the room, sat Loyden.
“What did I tell you, Luve? The Western World is dying.”
* * * * *
Still the candles burned on the mellow table: Samson Brenner and Mrs.
Luve looked on each other’s faces above the flames. Rising and rising,
the candle flames came lower. Lower at last than the faces of the woman
and boy, and of the high wine glasses.
She said: “Steadily more and more, I came to think about your People.
They were all about me. They were all sorts. I wanted something of them.
But they knew nothing. They knew nothing of themselves. Where was the
difference between them and us? They had the same women, they had the
same money, they played the same miserable games for both. Why did I
want something of them?...
“The Truth!... Perhaps because of Leon ... perhaps because of the
ministry of Harry; because I knew of my own weakness--I wanted of them
the Truth.
“There were six years of the House.”
“And then--?” the boy’s voice was hoarse. He felt the sordid room and
the sordid flat. He had forgot the sordid reason of his coming. He felt
the sharp incongruence of the wine he had drunk and of the slender
glasses, and of the candles that rose and that burned, rising, lower, at
the table. “What was the end?”
“The struggle between Jim Statt and Mangel grew. It grew bitter. There
was no reason for it. Statt persecuted Abe ... pinched him and tortured
him: above all humiliated him. Until what Tessie had foreseen came
true.”
“What was that?”
“Mangel the dirty Jew--O he was that!--Mangel turned good.”
* * * * *
Clara is sick.
“I find nothing serious,” says the Doctor. “A bad bronchial cough, a
chest none too strong but unaffected. Somewhat run-down--and nervous.”
Fanny knew better--and worse.
Clara stays in bed. The House moves on. But with six years done, Fanny
can see a difference: and in no fact more clearly than that Clara is
sick.
--She is wearing out! _She_ who is not thirty. The House is wearing out.
I?
She brought her friend to her own room on the Fourth floor, where it was
quieter, where they could be better together. The Fourth floor was a
hush over the hard accent of the House.
“I am happy here,” smiled Clara. “It’s great fun being sick--and having
you nurse me in your own dear place.”
Mark came little: came less. Nobody cared. Clara and Fanny thought
nothing of that. But Clara got no better. There she was weak ... no
worse ... but also no better.
“The House wears away,” thought Fanny ... and tried not to think of
that. “What does that matter?” But the House went on.
Fanny shopped and ruled and entertained. There was the hush above that
grew: there was the wonted accent of their world below, wearing,
wearing....
“I am afraid perhaps, I’m just lazy,” Clara said. “Doc don’t think I’m
sick. I’d better get up--“
“You’re tired, dear.”
“To-morrow I get up!”
“No.... Clara, when you get up, you’ll go back to your room downstairs.
I love you, here, Clara.”
Clara’s heavy eyelids shut with a soft gesture of retiscence. The light
in the room was dimmed. The wood was old and mellow all about them.
“Thank you,” she murmured.
Laughter and a volley of words pushed up.
“Who’s that?”
“Mildred Dozen is here. And Thelma----“
“They’re wild animals, aren’t they?”
“Yes. But Thelma’s stayed wild. Mildred’s a wild animal tamed....”
Clara pondered. “They fit down there.”
“You mean: we fit up here?”
Clara’s eyes large on her friend: “We fit together....”
Fanny sat beside her on the bed and took her hand. So they stayed. Fanny
saw two lines running close ... red lines ...: they bellied out, wide,
wide to hold the House: they ran in close once more. They were less
red--dimmer.
Laughter and words below volleyed up to them ... anonymous, sharp.
“Tell me,” said Clara, “don’t you think--“
“What dear?”
“That we fit together?”
Fanny bent over the white face of her friend. Suddenly, she kissed her
lips. She laughed.
“You’ll get better now.”
“Fanny,” the words came low. “Do I want to get better?”
* * * * *
It was afternoon, and Fanny serving tea.
She gave a cup to Jack Baruch: rich-bodied boy with thin long wrists and
gold-curled hair, vague eyes, and a cupid’s Bow for a mouth.
She gave a cup to Foxie Wesser--master of Jack: a fellow angular and
small with sharp nose, sharp eyes.
She gave a cup to Thelma Clark and to Mildred.
“I like tea,” said Jack.
“Why shouldn’t you?” asked Fanny. It struck her sudden how quietly these
two young men were dressed in their excellent store clothes.
“Well, it’s funny to like _tea_. Luve, you’re a wonder, makin’ us come
here and have a good time, drinking _tea_.”
Thelma’s laughter: “Only boneheads need booze. I’m tryin’ and tryin’ to
like tea. Ever since I been comin’ here, I been tryin’. But I can’t
just. I’m a bonehead.”
“Wisht I had your wits,” said Mildred. She was blonde, doll-petite. Her
lips curled lecherous in her narrow face.
“What d’ya mean? _I_ have wits?” Thelma’s laughter. “I’m a damn fool.
Ask Jack. That’s why I love him.”
She turned her face--honest face with square chin and high clear
cheekbones--to the pretty boy she loved. It was plain she loved him.
--My friends! These boys, these girls. Jack Baruch who picks pockets.
Wesser who handles men like Baruch and the gunmen for Mangel and for
Statt--Wesser who was the Diplomat of pool-rooms, with his sharp smooth
chin and his excellent English, and his intelligent calm. These girls--
Thelma got up. She kissed Jack, she kissed Fanny. She paid no attention
to the other two.
“Me for my afternoon’s walk. Good-by.”
“You’re sensible, dear,” said Fanny: the lithe full body moved half in a
prance away.
Wesser was still.--Where is the calm of Wesser? Wesser was troubled. The
absence of Thelma who meant laughter and noise seemed to make him
uncovered. He picked at his trousers. He smoked his cigar with a harsh
swiftness ... he who was so smooth. Jack was jolly. He who had brought
into the too hard sureness of the House a bloom of adolescent
melancholy, laughed now loudly.
Jim Statt came in.
“Well, Wesser ... spoken to Fanny?”
“No,” he looked furtively away.
Statt grunted and sat.
“A’right then. I might ’a’ known you’d flinch. Well, _I_ won’t.”
“Right-O,” Wesser’s eyes flashed. He muttered: “Your affair after
all....”
“Have some tea, Jim?” Fanny held a cup.
“Thank you.... Have you seen _The World_?”
“Now look here, Jim ... you know I never read the papers.”
“Of course not. You read up-to-date stuff like the Bible. I know you.
But here you’ve been chewing with Wesser and Jack for an hour ... and
he’s not told you a thing.”
“Lieutenant, I’ve been drinking tea. Shop ... and tea ... don’t rhyme.”
“Hell ... well Fanny, things are bad. Mangel was raided last night.”
Fanny gripped her chair. Sudden, she saw Clara upstairs in bed ... white
... in the House wearing, wearing.
“I didn’t have a damn thing to do with it, Fan,” Jim went on. “I know
appearances are against me. I ain’t had no love for Abe Mangel. But I
didn’t do it--“
“Well, you can fix that up--“
“If you’d read the papers like a modern citizen, you’d know better.
Mangel knows I didn’t do it. Mangel’s gone crazy. He’s had his own place
raided!”
“What!”
“And he’s an appointment for to-morrow morning with the District
Attorney to peach on the whole damn System.”
Fanny was still. She took the paper that Statt handed her. She did not
read it.
“He’ll go,” she murmured.
“He’s in earnest.”
“He’ll go. You’ve made him into this, Jim. He’ll go.”
“Unless we stop him.”
“You can’t.”
“Yes we can, Fanny. We can--and we got to-night to do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Abe’s coming here to-night ... to talk to you.”
“Yes?”
“He goes out of that door--feet first.”
Fanny stood up.
“You mean--you dare to mean--“
Statt stood also. Mildred and Baruch and Wesser sat.
“Now look here, Fanny ... don’t be a damn fool too. Cards on the table.
Wesser has the program all arranged. There’s no other way for any of us.
Too late. The three boys are ready with the guns. Pfennig and Susan are
off. They won’t be back till the coast is clear. So is the cook. And
there ain’t any danger. You know the sureness of the House. If it’s done
here, it’s done. And if it’s _not_ done here,--why it will be, earlier,
somewhere else. Almost as safe. But your House goes to Hell. Do you get
me?... Either here ... or out you go, the bunch of you.”
“Mark?”
Jim Statt smiled. “Have you seen Pfennig? Has he been here of late to
see Clara, while she’s so sick? I guess not. And you won’t see him
either. He got wind o’ this comin’ ... the wise old owl ... before it
came. He is safe--outside.”
“Tessie?”
“She’s gone with Pfennig. It’s been brewing for a long time, ever since
Clara sort of dimmed. Everybody was wise, my dear Fanny, except you. You
see too many ghosts.”
She saw the House, very real, clattering, crashing--
“You’re threatening me, Jim.”
“Fanny, not if you don’t act foolish. It’s too late, even if we could
seal him up. You got the House here with Clara sick in it. Sick as hell.
Tessie’s gone. Susan’s ready. It’s the best place to do a necessary job.
That’s all, girl! Do you want to get smashed? Right away--turned
out--and Clara too, right out of bed?”
Fanny stood calm a moment. Then she sat down.
“Get out of here, Statt,” she said, trying to calm her voice. “Get out
of here. Quick!”
“Hold her!” cried Statt. Fanny leaped toward the back. Jack Baruch
caught her.
“Jack--let go!”
“She won’t do it. I see that,” said Statt. “She’ll phone to Mangel.”
“Jack--let go!”
“I can’t, Fanny. I’m sorry.”
“Bind her to that chair.”
Statt watched the operation. “Now, bind the chair.” The rope ate tight
and inevitable in her flesh.
“My men’ll come at ten ... and pull you ... and release you. Mangel
pipes at the same hour. It’ll be at the Dominion Cafe--if you want to
know, dear. And as to you ... don’t forget: we have your story and
you’ve got a daughter.” Fanny for a moment fainted in the burn of horror
and shame that flooded her eyes. “Come now,” she heard him again as he
turned to the others. “Out of this.”
They went before him docilely: not daring to look back.
But Statt looked back. He came back.
“You’ve always been crazy, Fanny Luve,” he said. “And now, doin’ this
... and for a dirty Jew ... for a Jew you don’t give a damn for ... for
a Jew you can’t save.” He looked at her.
She lay strained in her bonds. But her mind was free. And her face, free
looking at him, was calm.
Statt came forward a little more.
“Why are you crazy, Fanny Luve?”
He stooped to his knee: he kissed the hand of Fanny. Then he tramped
out.
* * * * *
There was a smile on the face of Mrs. Luve. Her eyes saw happenings far
away as if all happenings far away were happenings to smile on.
“For six hours I lay bound. I called and cried for Clara who was in bed
upstairs. Just three flights up. She did not hear me.... She had heard
too many other calls, I guess, since she lay there, to understand that
this call was for her.” Mrs. Luve smiled. “No bell rang all that time,
and I stopped calling....