SIX Pavement Broken

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

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

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

—I shall understand nothing!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m afraid—my Doctor——“

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

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

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

“O well—do give me a glass.”

She sipped.

“It’s good stuff,” said Tessie.

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

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

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

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

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

Mr. Mark argued with pointing forefinger:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

“Champagne ... and good,” said Statt.

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

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

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

“Yes....”

“What did she do?” asked Fanny.

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

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

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

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

“Why? Afraid I’ll break the bottles?”

“No.... Afraid they’ll break you.”

“Break me!”

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

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

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

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

“And you?”

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

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

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

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

Fanny wavered.—Why do I speak so?

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

“All——“

“Those that don’t do their duty.”

“How can an illegal house do its duty?”

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

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

She watched him close.

“Aren’t you afraid, Jim Statt?”

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

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

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

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

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

The little girl glowered over the big man.

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

“No?... why not?” sneered Jim Statt.

“He’ll turn good——“

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

—O it is good I am here!

Learning ... learning....

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

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

“Sit down!”

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

“You are tired, Mr. Mangel.”

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

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

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

“Why do I like you, Mr. Mangel?”

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

“You are a bad man, aren’t you?”

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

“Well, I can’t help it. I like you.”

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

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

“But are you glad I like you?”

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

“You think.”

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

“All thinkers——?”

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

She held up her face to him.

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

Abe Mangel shook his head.

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

“He’s so humble——“

“Is that putting on airs, Jim?”

Statt stirred in discomfort.

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

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

“He don’t give you any, Jim.”

“Well, you know what I mean.”

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

“Jew!”

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

“Us small? Are you crazy? Us small?”

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

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

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

“God damn him.”

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

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

“But Mangel’s different——?”

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

“Is he square?”

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

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

“It ain’t. I got lots of friends——“

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

“Fanny ... you’re crazy!”

* * *

One twilight Fanny had them clear....

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And make us behave.”

“And make the men behave.”

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

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

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

“It’s all arranged, Fanny dear.”

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

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

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

Slowly, Fanny nodded.

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

“Put another in its place.”

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

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

“She did them herself,” says Clara.

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

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

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

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

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

—This is my Home. Do you see it, Leon? This is 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....

* * *

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....

“It seemed to me though, that I could hear the shot that got old Abe in the heart, as he stepped out into the street through the cafe’s swinging door.... Very soon after that, the police. Clara and I were thrown into the street. Clara died in the Hospital of pneumonia. That is all.”