FIVE Clara

FANNY sat in sun that was caressed and tamed by high blue curtains. She shadowed a mirror in her hand ... it gave her eyes her face ... with a sharp shoulder.—They used not to be sharp!... Wrist tiring with its tiny burden, arm taut and thin in the blue housegown Clara made her wear welded the silver glass with its sheer image to her face. Her eye, seeking its own secret, worked unaware through the medium of parched hand, spent wrist, peaked shoulder. No glamor was between her eye and its reflection.

Her face was overlaid with shadows: subtly, terribly it was increased beyond its natural buoyance as if sudden in that Night she had danced through all of life had made invasion of her large eyes, of her delicate nose, of her mouth quick like a young leaf, and forced its burden on them. She had brought from her home the face of a girl: she looked at a face branded her own and the world’s.

About this weighted face the room she sat in: cushioned, satined, a room of crude caresses. She alone was salient peering into this image of herself. She alone had mass and had dimension: and all of it upon her little features, drawing them, deforming them, making them ugly. Making them herself.

—I must face this! I have become a person.

She felt herself as a sharp weight set in softness. So she was upheld: but she was free. There was a bar between herself....—I am true!... and these warm falsehoods Clara had set her in.

—Saved me by them! I know that. You are all Lies about me, yet me who am true you have saved. Without you what could Clara’s naked love have done? Without you wouldn’t she be dead as I was? Your milk, your covers, your warmth ... lies: O my still bed, O sun that falls about the grey of my shoulders like a lawn of Spring upon an autumn earth—bless you, for there is quiet in you yet, and it has let me think.

... When I am at last all in thought, I am in the way of the end. To end is to be healed. I understand that. Life is a wound that only life can heal.

—I might have died without beginning! You, lies, saved me. What does that mean?

She lay back in her chair and the mirror fell to her lap.—I have lost so much hair ... black, lovely ... don’t think of that, that is not thinking! All you must fall as the hair fell. Fanny’s eyes closed. She slept.

She came to waking with her head forward and her hand upheld, watching her face in the glass. Clara was in the door.

—Did my looking at her asleep ... how she has grown old!... make her raise the glass like that to her shut eyes? Then they opened. Clara was afraid of the displacement her thoughts might make: she moved in her room and sent out words in it as if the air were tight with some subtle, feeling substance easily overflowed.

“How are you, dearie?... Been sleeping?”

She laid a bunch of violets in Fanny’s lap.

Fanny smiled, her eyes and her hands clasping the flowers thanked her.

“I’m so much better. Where have you been?”

“Just shopping.”

Fanny had asked no such question before. Clara sensed beneath it the significant stir of her friend’s mind once more into the outer world. The outer world! What was going to be when Fanny once took note of her own world? She could not talk, for she was afraid. She drew a chair beside her in the sun, and held her hand and was still.

“You are looking better. I have a broiler for you. Now you must begin to eat.”

Her stress stroked a wish: Fanny should eat long, must lose herself for a long time in eating.

“I have been thinking,” Fanny said. “The sun’s so good, I’d like to walk in it.”

“Dearie, it’s cold and raw out.”

“I know it is.”

“It’s only good in a warm room ... like this.”

“I know.”

Fanny’s hand clasped over Clara’s, silencing her. They sat in silence. With gazes long and almost parallel they thought of the sun that was good only in a warm room.

“My room,” thought Clara.

“Whose room?” thought Fanny....

“Clara tell me, ... you were not shopping. Why can’t you tell me where you were?”

“Dear, when you’re well—“

“I am well now. A little weak, but well. Didn’t you say yourself—“

“I’ve been with him.”

“You needn’t hide it. Don’t you think I know?”

“Yes, Fan. But it’s all so untrue, since you are here.”

“He must be good, never to come around.”

“He knows all about you ... and he won’t come—until I tell him it’s alright. He has been good. He has left me alone. Well—he knows if he didn’t—“

“Tell him to come,” said Fanny.

Clara jumped up. She was afraid and uncertain. She knew not why she was so. “I must see about dinner.” She tossed off her hat and was gone.

It was a little flat. The dining room, the living room, the bed room, were compact and warm in dull brown, rose, blue. They were retiscent rooms, stiff proper little places furnished as with sedate conventions. Naught of vice, naught of abandon about them: they had no strength but they were full of ease. Like married old ladies, they were at rest on something very sure. Fanny did not understand them. But in her fever she had taken and used them as a babe its nurse.

Fanny and Clara ate, almost in silence. Fanny’s half chicken ... she made her friend take the other half ... was a luscious problem. She must eat it fast ... before it got cold or spoiled ... it held her like a spell in its succulent evanescent glow. It lay in the white plate the color of sunstone.

“Since I have been here,” she said, “no one has come to your place. No one. You’ve broken up your whole life because of me. Dear Clara ... that’s a hard thing for me to know.”

“I’ve had no time for my friends. I’ve had too anxious, too wonderful a time, nursing you, Dear.”

“I was very sick?” Fanny smiled. “When I looked in the glass today I knew that. I’m an old woman, Clara.”

The girl shook her head. “Don’t talk that way!” Her eyes were full on Fanny with a joy that was not denial. She did not mind. “You are not old,” she said. “But you’re mature ... somehow I suppose, next to all us, you must seem old to yourself. You are ripe, Fanny. You are glorious.” Her face glowed with the hard repressiveness against her feeling which was her only show of feeling.

“Come, now ... to bed.”

She helped her to undress, diffident but sure: the gestures of a nurse swathed in a mist of sentiment of a bridegroom. She smoothed the covers: she placed a hand on Fanny’s brow pressing her head within the pillow, folding the soft quilt at her chin. She did not kiss her other than so, with her hands. But once, in those gigantic days of the shadow of the Church, of the shadow of what else that had come and was to come! had Clara’s lips touched Fanny.

* * *

Fanny lay in Clara’s bed ... for a month Clara had slept beside her in a cot. And Clara, by the low table lamp that drooped above her shoulder shedding a bloom upon her neck, read aloud a story....

Words were like pebbles against an iron wall. They rang upon a sudden sense in Fanny of the bed she was in. Bed large and deep with hangings of lavender, bed all about her like strong arms of a mother she had never known yet hers!... Clara sharp within it ... sharp breasts, sharp thigh, sharp tenderness of stomach: and the vague black manform looming!... this bed about her. Its arms were warm and were hostile. There was care in them, mother’s care, and yet they had no sense in their great balm of what she was they shielded. Fanny lay ... the words of Clara reading against her were futile ... in the arms of an alien creature who had given her birth. Being of shame, being of denial of herself, and yet she was its thing. Fanny knew the ineffable rightness of her lying there, of her healing there: of this monstrous mother. From this she must suck life, from this which was of alien flesh and spirit she must build herself. Strange angry mother ... her own!... holding her life and lifting her above it.

Words of Clara were little clangors, shells of sound far off. Fanny lay ... Clara’s bed! Clara’s bed and his!... enswooned in great arms muffling her and feeding. Very white....

She saw black earth, earth breaking against rock. In a crevice of stone through loam, through rotted brush and last year’s leaves she saw a root, swollen and livid-red, thrust a small green shoot: upon it pendant a cupped bud like a pearl. She saw in a Spring of sweeping clouds above a steaming earth, a blood-root blossom....

The clouds were gone, there was mist. There was earth lost in feathery warm mist. There were bursts of trees budding ... the feathery mist ... the blood-root.

Waking she saw this room.

Clara’s cot empty. With covers thrown back it held in its sheets the impress of her body. Shades drawn. A purblind light soiled from its passage through the grey-brick airshaft lay on the blue and lavender like smut. A gilded radiator buzzed and spat....

Fanny heard Clara in the kitchen getting her breakfast. The negress maid did not appear before eleven: and this morning Clara was going to New Jersey to see a married sister who was very ill.

She stood in the doorway. The sooty shade of the room lay in her face, filling the folds of resolution under eyes, beside her mouth, with a harsh darkness.

—She is not well. She is not happy! Clara looks herself.

—And the room—it is itself.

Fanny felt salience in the ugly morning ... for the first time felt salience about her.

—It’ll go. You’ll put up the shade. You’ll cover up these beds ... sheets speak. Some of the sunlight from across the way will filter in. Sun lies sometimes. These true shadows for seeing where I am will go. Fanny could not smile.

“You’re still half asleep,” said Clara. “Want to sleep some more? Lucy could get you breakfast later on.”

“No. I’m awake. You bring in the little table. Let’s breakfast together.”

“In here?” Clara’s smile softened the shadows in her face.

“Yes. Right here. Do!” ...

She felt she must face this room, this heavy stifled room, this weighty fact of where she was and with what. She must eat this room with her breakfast....

It was hard to swallow. Her throat was dry and was full. Above her the chandelier came down in a tawdry twist of gilt from the dim ceiling. The gilt flaked, and she saw black iron.

“Does it taste good?” asked Clara.

She looked at Clara.—God, how dare I pity her! You are good. What you have, you have given me.... “Yes, Dear, it tastes good. You made it. It tastes of your hands.”

They ate ... the breakfast, the room.

“Give me your hand!” Fanny clasped it across the table. A bit of toast it held fell in the sudden sally and the butter smeared the palm. Fanny opened the palm, she held it full against her mouth. She kissed the grease and the flesh.

“I am eating you,” she spoke.

Clara’s eyes were frightened. So she laughed.

“You dear!... Could you eat some more toast?”

* * *

The whole day alone, she promised to herself. Lucy in the other rooms would intervene a little: nothing was perfect. Yet Fanny felt that this was good. She was at ease in her armchair. Soon the sun would sweep into her place. And Lucy had the musical quiet of her folk, she really did not interfere more than a cat might ... a useful cat who would bring her her lunch on the portable table and her drops every three hours. Lucy had a soothing grain, almost like sunlight ... a sort of saffron practicable sunlight.

“Ev’thing a’right now, Mis’ Fanny?”

“Yes, Lucy. Thank you.”

The girl swayed on her little haunches, holding her hands across her breast.

“It’s gone to be a fine day. That’ll mak’ you fine, Mis’ Fanny, right soon again.”

“I wish I was as fine as you.”

“Aw Mis’ Fanny!” Her hands beat out in protest ... glad gaunt hands stripped by their work of flesh, and yet the music of them lived in their bone and their gesture. Lucy went off, her soft shoes patting like the cushioned feet of a tamed panther.

The door closed to the kitchen; Fanny was alone. Lucy would seek her den and fill it with steam and suds, wrap a red rag around her head and fall to work with an occasional cry like a wild beast musing: lost in a sort of virginal ecstacy which Fanny loved, of work and dreaming.

—She’s diligent! If she were German, wouldn’t I say: No one but a German could be so thorough? And she’s a negress. White blood yes ... but it dilutes, that’s all, the mellow flow of her life. O you superior Lucy! Yet she’s colored.

Fanny thought of the ugly prejudices which still lay rooted in her mind. She could praise Lucy if she patronized her too. Take away the condescension and at once she looked into a pool, misted by childhood fears and girlish passion, of black distrust.

—No use thinking of all that. I believe I had a mind: it might have amounted to something, too. A woman’s mind at work ... as a woman’s mind ... not as a lawyer’s or a doctor’s ... like some men’s minds: what’d the world have said to that? Well, it’s too late. My mind is a wreck also. It keeps on going, like an engine, broken and off its track, ploughing the earth and itself. Going ... and going. Who knows though? Perhaps it is not off its track. Perhaps my way is not a two-rail track over a flat plain land. There are other dimensions.

—O I must have faith! That is the terrible thing ... how in my weakness my faith went also. Faith and strength seem to go together. That’s a good sign, is it not? Proves faith is not born of weakness. My faith takes power. It’s hard work. Come back!

—There is nothing else. It is inevitable. Like a tree that grows. And has its seasons. What does it know about them? ‘Now I burst into blossoms ... now I am in leaves ... now I am stark and cold.’ I am ashamed. Weak failure! Rescued by Clara, living on Clara, in a flat some man gave Clara. Shame!... Well, it is Winter. Didn’t Leon know that it all meant something?... Did he foresee a thing like this? What would he say?... Harry was wrong. O I am sure of that. I am the answer to Harry. What did he know of Scripture ... of Jesus? We have taken Christ and his name. What have we done with him? What more than the Jews who refused him? Are they Christ, themselves?... Why do I think so tenderly of Jews?

—Leon? One man.... If Edith were his, not Harry’s, would she love me? You are nine years old, my beloved. I can see you. I can see you so clear because I see you naked. What clothes have you on today, going to school?... Mrs. Parker’s School. That wouldn’t change. Motherless child, you have a mother. Can’t you feel ... O you must feel your mother!...

—Suppose she could see her mother! No ... not with your young eyes. How could they understand? Fanny shrank in her chair....—Thank God, I am hidden away.... But my name? Let it stand. Some day perhaps, since she is my own, she may have eyes that can see me....

—No. Never! That is all past.

She knew that this was past. She knew there was in her still living, that which could not bear that it was: a part of her that held the memory and hope of her child close to her breast, sucking yet giving her warmth.

—My little girl! As you grow, you become smaller beside me. For I grow so much faster. My little girl! Will you catch up with your mother?

The mother saw her naked. She was willowy supple, tender like a flower. Her flesh was cream and crisp, it was like the meat of a fresh peach.

The mother saw her clothed. She stands in a blue gingham frock, almost hidden away by a blue and white checked apron. But the black stockings were there and the tight sleeves and the loved white neck. A dark braid fell across her shoulder, tied with a stiff blue bow.—Her hair is not dark! Mine ... mine is black. Smile at me. Where is her face?

Fanny was troubled: she saw her child again. She wore an apple green mulle dress very clear and clean as it hung straight from her shoulders. The loved white neck! pulsant with breath of her child. She curtsies. There was a flounce at the hem: and at the end of the puffed sleeves was a ruffle. Edith’s bare arms! She wore white stockings, little canvas pumps.—She is thin!—And her hair? and her face?

Fanny shut her eyes and her hands waved with pain before them. She knew these dresses were her own! She saw her child in her own girlish frocks.... And her hair? It was golden ... but it would get dark.—As dark as mine?

—Does she have my frocks and my hair? Through Fanny’s mind passed dresses she had worn: for romping and for dancing, for lessons and for parties.—I have forgotten not a single one. Are Edith’s really the same?

She was moved. She moved against her emotion.—I do not see her! Your dresses—not her face! Has she the same frocks? Fanny knew this could not be.... She knew there still lived within her that which needed to play with the sweet fancy that it was.

“But no,” she murmured. “In no way be like me! Edith ... to save you from that ... come, look at your Mother!”

With her daughter’s eyes, Fanny beheld herself.—I am not hateful. She was a little woman, breaking and bewildered with flood of a world within her heart. She was a little woman tortured in the uses of a Hand that would not leave her alone.

—But I don’t see an end.... There is no end. I do not see a growth.... There is no growing. ... Let me rest here quiet. I am still weak. Too weak to assemble my thoughts. What if the room is Clara’s ... Clara’s lover’s (is there at least love here?) What do these things mean, beside the truth that I am quiet?

The sun sent a sudden shaft under the cornice of the opposite house. It lay in a cold glare, gradually milding, on her.

So Fanny gave up thinking.—Why am I so hungry, having done nothing?

Lucy cleared the table ... folded it.

“O it was good, child!”

“Thank you, Mis’ Fanny.”

“No, Lucy: leave the table. Bring me the cards.”

“Yes, Mis’ Fanny.”

Fanny played Canfield. And even this was beyond her. She was amazed to find that she had placed a red Jack under a red Queen: over there was a black Three under a Five! “I am skipping chances and making horrible mistakes.”

She shook her head. “How dull I am!” She was helpless against it.—Stupider than Lucy. Duller than the stupidest person in the world. She smiled. She knew that the reason was that she was filling with a Light.

—When I was pregnant with Edith, sometimes I was like this.

She fell back in her chair, and shut her eyes.—What is it this time? She slept....

The bell awoke her. Her nerves jangled bright and disparate like the three tones of the electric bell. Lucy appeared.

“Why Mis’ Fanny ... it’s some frien’s o’ Miss Clara—“

Fanny’s words were swift action. “Did you send them away?”

“No ’m, I didn’t yet. Ah—Ah tole ’em ter wait. Should Ah—?”

“Let them come in. Tell them Miss Clara’s friend is here and will be glad to receive them.”

Lucy stood suspended in the unheard-of formal words of this lady whose value she sensed. By her face, she understood. She went out.

Fanny’s awareness was sheer above the drowse of her chair. Her eyes commanded her face: they were suddenly young.

The door opened. Two women ... Lucy shut them in, and they were three together.

One was a girl, short in her coat of black velours, all black except the gleaming face under black eyes, black toque: all round and yet her eyes watched Fanny sharply. Hostilely. Beside her a tall lank woman, very blonde, rose like the embodiment of the strange stroke in the round girl’s eyes.

They stood, Fanny got up.

“You must come in. Clara’s away for the day. But I’ve been so eager to meet Clara’s friends.”

The taller one nodded.

—What does she recognize, that she nods, in my words?

“My name is Sennister—Susan Sennister. This is Miss Liebovitz.”

Fanny took a hand, white in its feel beneath the long glove, and took a hand small like a child’s, warm and ruddy: gloveless.

“Do sit down.”

Miss Sennister looked at her companion. “Guess we got time, Tessie?”

“Sure we have,” she smiled. “We really came to have a glimpse of you.” Her smile was rounder.

“I’m glad,” said Fanny. She looked at Susan Sennister, to make her also smile. It would help matters. Miss Sennister smiled. But the smile did not help. It hurt.

“I have been sick.... Probably you know. And Clara’s been an angel.”

“She is an angel,” said the tall woman, as if Fanny had not meant it.

“O ... she’s a good thing,” said Tessie Liebovitz. Her black eyes lay on Fanny’s.—There is no misunderstanding! They were soft. “We love Clara,” she said. “We say yes ... just automatically ... to Clara’s friends.”

“Thank you,” Fanny looked sternly at Susan Sennister. “That’s a beginning at least.” She wanted to smile. This woman was so very stiff. She must be very stern.—How can I tell? What are they?... She went on: “I say Yes to the friends of Clara—but with all my heart.”

“Have you been here long?” asked Tessie.

“Very long!”

“We heard her speak of you, before she brought you here,” said Susan. Then she settled back in her chair. Something within her was released. She pulled off her gloves. Her shoulders slackened. “That don’t prove anything, of course.” Her smile was different ... sweeter in its hurt. “Clara’s like all of us. We are good pals. We have a lot of secrets ... trade secrets we chew over. That gives us an air of being close. But a real confidence ...? Not us!”

“O I don’t know,” said Tessie.

“That’s just it—you don’t.”

There was a pause. Fanny was in the sun ... feeling herself within it strangely, unfairly warmed against these two. She wanted to warm them.

“Won’t one of you take this chair? The sun’s so good.”

“We’ve had more of it than you,” said Susan Sennister. “Stay where you are.”

There was another pause filled now with three smiles that were unstrained.

Fanny’s head was light.—My! I am weak. There was a dim strip weighing above her eyes, on her brow. Beyond, in back of her head, she was light. So that her head seemed tilted toward her eyes. She saw these women.—I can be comfortable with them! They are strong: they could comfort her. Tessie Liebovitz chatted. Her own lips moved. She said nothing. But they were moist....

Then she saw: Long black earth. A man was standing still. He had gnarled hands, all else of him was young. He had clear-grey eyes, he had bronzed hair and beard. His cheeks were hardened by hot winds, but his lips that were free of the beard were soft and red against the showing of white skin.

She saw him clear upon the long black earth.—He is Jesus!

Many people passed him. She did not see them. But she saw the eyes and hands of Jesus go forth quietly to each.... They passed. The eyes and the hands of Jesus came back to themselves. The earth was harder and harder. The earth passed by him. Villages and cities passed. Altars were shut against his hands. Priests were shut against his eyes. The houses of the great passed him shut. And the earth grew blacker....

The earth was very black. A tree, blasted by lightning, thrust its ruin against a purple sky. The earth was very black. And Christ stood on it underneath the sky, and far from the solitary tree that twisted leafless over the horizon. Christ raised his arms, but his eyes looked down upon the barren earth. He was changed. He was twisted like the tree. He was shaped like the tree. Like it he was broken and bent from stanchioning purple sky above a barren earth. But he was white. And his beard was red. He had no hands, he had lost his hands even as the tree its leaves. His feet were buried underneath the ground.

A woman was before him. In a scarlet robe, against her breast, she held a boy.

“Lord,” she said, “this is my child. He drives me each day into the Marketplace with paint on my lips.”

“Why do you call me ‘Lord’?”

“Are you not Lord of us all?”

The black earth bloomed. Jesus was gay, he was a clear young man. With his two hands he touched the shrouded hair of the woman and it streamed like chrysoprase.

“Your child has blessed you,” he said.

She parted her robe, it was green also: it fell away and she was naked before Jesus. Her belly was silken smooth, her breasts thrust up like buds in a new Spring: she had born no child and she had known no man. Before Christ her body was sweet like a lily at dawn.

Fanny pressed her brow with her two hands, and saw the quiet women. They had stopped talking. They looked at her deep, and their voices had lagged away.

“O ... you will have tea!”

“Thank you, No. I’m afraid—we tire you. We’d better go. You’re not too strong yet.” Susan Sennister got up.

Fanny was warm in their understanding, and was ashamed. “O don’t go! You make me feel—I’m a bad substitute for Clara. Please!”

Susan sat stiffly, then she relaxed.

“You know,” she said, “it seems to me I’ve seen you before.”

“And I’ve seen you!”

“When was that?”

“O ages,” said Fanny.—Am I mad? “Before we were born? And you too, Tessie Liebovitz. You were singing.”

“No,” said the girl, serious. “I was playing the violin.”

“Your fingers were singing, then.”

“They were too small,” said Tessie.

“Too small to sing?”

“Too small to sing ... too small to sing,” the girl whispered rapt. “So I work—my body, see? It works for my fingers that were too small to play.”

“What was I doing?” Susan leaned forward.

“Your hands are frightful. One of them clasping, clutching ... one of them thrusting away.” Fanny’s hands were before her in a frantic dumb-play.

Susan laughed. “How right you are!”

“I am a fool,” cried Fanny.—Am I mad? I do not seem to mind. They seem to understand—something. Am I a fool?

“She is wonderful,” said Tessie.

“Clara told us—“

“What?”

Susan got up. She held Fanny’s face gently in her hands. She kissed her brow. “—that we would love you.”

Lucy came in with tea.

“Clara saved my life.”

“She’s a good thing,” said Tessie....

They drank their tea in silence. No hand trembled.

Susan and Tessie got up.

“You must not get up!”

They came close to Fanny. Her eyes were almost parallel with Tessie’s red mouth which had spoken. She looked up at the straight lips of Susan. On Susan’s neck she saw a birthmark, black like a footprint. Against it, all she was white.

“We’re going to come again—“

“When you’re better—“

“I am better,” Fanny smiled.

Tessie said: “You are a woman.”

* * *

Clara was there, and she still vibrant from it all.

“You had visitors,” Fanny said. “Miss Sennister and Miss Liebovitz.”

Clara studied the face of her friend.—What have they left upon her? within her? She saw the face of Fanny glow: it was aquiver and alive, her face, as not for a long time.

“I gave them tea. That was right, was it not? The little girl’s a dear.”

“Yes.”

“When she left, she threw her arms around me and kissed me.”

“You had a good time together?”

“Yes. And you, Dear? Your sister?”

“She is worse. But she won’t die. Not that sort of thing. Just pine away and eat up her husband’s money and nag her children.”

“There’s nothing to do, I suppose?”

“Of course not. You liked Tessie? Not Susan.”

“I did not understand her?”

“Do you think you understood Tessie?” Clara was eager. She did not challenge. She wished to be assured.

“I think so.... All except those hands—“

“Hands!”

“That is: that is what I understood the best: they’re the key, so little and so terrible. You see, I know that. Only, I haven’t used the key.”

She smiled in the amazed eyes of Clara.

“Fanny, you sometimes frighten me.” Clara took her hand and held it long and looked at it. Then she squeezed it and smiled also.

“You don’t mean to say: this very first time she told you her story!”

“No. Why did you think so, Clara?”

“What you said about her hands.”

“Who couldn’t see that? They are so small and tortured—plump perverse hands. She had no gloves. Her hands, Clara—her hands have—“

Fanny stopped. She could not go on.

“Yes?”

“Well,” she whispered half to herself, “ ...something ruins all of us, I suppose.”

She was blanched as if she had walked leisuredly upon a strange outlandish road, forgetful it was so: and sudden there was a precipice below her feet. Mind held back her almost plunging body with the plunge’s horror. She recoiled.

“I know what you were going to say,” Clara’s voice was hard, “her hands it was, that ruined her....”

“Clara!”

“We are ruined, for you. I know it. You are right. We are bad women ... ruined....”

“Clara!”

Fanny jumped up. She faced her friend. She sought her eyes, sad and rebellious, and held them.

“Clara, you have saved me, you are sound. It is I who am broken. When one is broken, Clara, one does not always quickly understand. One lacks words. One falls back, Clara, on words that for today are lies.”

She clasped the wrists of her friend. They stood tense, against each other: so. In a taut silence.

“We are all ruined,” came Clara’s voice. “But you still love.”

“Then none of us are ruined.”

Clara’s head tossed in anger. “No sentiment!”

“There are no ruins I tell you,” Fanny met her.

Fanny lay quiet in bed. She was relaxed at last. The vibrance of these many hours had run out into a Space beyond her, where the sharp thrusts through her nerves lay lost in a pool of glow.

She lay in this glow in bed: Clara beside her, responsive to her friend’s new peace but unaware of its synthesis of warring parts meeting beyond her.

“Should I read?” she asked.

“Tell me about your friends.”

“They are friends of mine.” Clara raised her head as if her words were a challenge. Fanny lay still, with her eyes shut, waiting.

“There’s Tess. Poor Dear,” at last.... “Her story’s not hard to tell. That’s why I was wondering how you knew. Didn’t she hint? Well, I don’t wonder after all, Dear. You are so wonderful O I am glad to have you here. I want to keep you forever. If only I could.... Well: Tessie was born in some mudhole South—Carolina, I think. Her Pa kept a general store ... does still I suppose. He’s a Jew, you know. Tess says he never was no good as a business man. But a dear! He’d sit in his room back of the store, holding some old Bible in his hand ... or a prayer-book ... and sing it out, half-aloud, with his head and his shoulders swayin’, keepin’ time. Tessie says that is what Music meant to her.... When the poor old man learned she was musical, Tess says, he fell on his knees. I can just see him, his thin old knees half worn through the black pants, creaking and cracking on the dirty floor. And he thanked the Lord who, if he had taken away his wife, had given him a daughter who loved music. There were other children, but they simply didn’t count. He didn’t have more than enough to keep ’em all in food, but Tess got a violin. And soon the Dame that taught violin, piano, French and artistic sewing in the Town told the old man Tessie knew more than she did about music. She was a wonder, she said. She ought to study in a big City and go in for concerts.

“Well ... the old man got down on his shakey knees again: and this time he didn’t pray: he swore he’d get the cash to send Tess to Richmond or New York, if he had to starve for it ... even if he had to sell—O I forgot. The old man had one proud possession. He was a poor old ignorant man, but one of his ancestors had been Wise and a Rabbi. He kept a mouldy store and kept it badly: but this Thing he still had from the wise old Rabbi ... and it shone in their home like the sun. Tessie gives it a name I can’t remember ... but I can see it. A sort of breast-plate it was ... a breast-plate of some holy Priest of their religion: square and in gold. And set in it, in four rows of three each, were oblong gems. Each was different—camelian and ruby and lapis and topaz and jasper and amethyst and agate: I don’t remember them all. On each was carved a holy word in ancient Hebrew. Well, there was the mouldy store and this thing of glory shinin’ in it. But there was the daughter who could make Music. So she could make it right, the old man sold his treasure. He was religious. Keeping that Relic was part of his religion ... but giving it up was also part of his religion. Tessie got a first class violin ... they cost like fury, you know. And then everything went well. I don’t know the particulars. Some big guy from New York who was down in Charleston gave her a hearing and next year Tess bought a new dress and a bag and took the train to New York. Her Dad had even mortgaged the store. But there was Tess gettin’ ready to earn thousands in New York ... while the rest of the Liebovitz clan in mudhole, South Carolina, lived on water and hope.”

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

“Then it happened,” she murmured.

“Yes,”

“—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 were too 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’re hers, 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?”

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 both good—though you’re better, Dear, and deeper. I know that. Susan talks awful bad. But you know, Dear, what she says has something to do with Christianity. Sort of twisted like. But it has. You wait and see. When you know her. Susan ... she’s like a saint....”

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 words what she willed, not he.—Was it so later? His going down, the agony ... what she willed?

“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. Only wise.”

“You say he’s a gambler?”

“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 and unlacing 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.