TWO River Garden

SPRING ... a Southern city in song. A city drifting fading into the wide arms of earth, into trees, fields running under grass, into trees, into high thrusts of earth, into trees, trees. The city a raised shadow upon earth. Against earth’s sweep through the Precinct of suns and stars, apart from sun and stars—blotch of hard houses leaning back upon the dead days of their makers—whole city leaning back, falling away from the wide freedom of sun, earth, stars, twirling together locked. And they two ... man and girl ... clasped in the steadfast spin of life—sun stars earth dust—that swung away from the city.

Fanny Dirk was on her back. Under: grass, roots thrusting up in erection, spilling in bud. Over: he. Under and over: One. She was viced in One: Grass, hair, fingers, twigs broken to leaf, lips and earth hot against her.... One. She was surrounded by One. She was beyond distinctions. She was One. She was in ecstasy....

Then they walked to their horses on the distant road.

A house, coddling itself warm, despite bright elms, in its shadows of men, cast a grey finger up from the Town to the young man’s mind. His house ... running no longer away from the immobile dance of earth and sun ... reached up now, arrogant, clambered with its long harsh shadows into the mind and mood of his mother’s and father’s son.

“Fanny!”

—Harry, Harry.... O you ... you my life!

“Fanny, now we must get married.”

—Hush! I hate you. How can you speak so now?

“Why are you silent, Fanny? I’m a gentleman, little girl. Don’t think I respect you less, because you love me.... I love you ... we....”

—No respect, then!

“ ...will be married. You are not less the lady.”

—Stop, stop, stop!

“Secretly, of course. Till I am done with College. Not so long, Honey. You can wait? We’ll have a real wedding, then.”

—Can’t you stop? What are you killing? What are you killing? Can’t we stop?

Fanny Dirk became the wife of Harry Howland Luve.

* * *

Mrs. Luve held her slender glass in frail spent fingers. She sipped. Her hot eyes swept above frail flesh, spun glass.

—I want you to see me! I want you to see me!

Mr. Samson nodded.—What else can I do?

—Can you see this? I was as fresh and ruddy as a maple blossom!...

She was hard, she was intact. Her husband took her to a little house on the best street: three squares away was the Luve Mansion which one day should be his. “This is our home. It’s small dear. But so are you small. We’ll live here till our love bursts it.”

He was tall and thin, yet he gave the air of softness. His big black eyes being soft, his delicate hair that lay thinning on the transparent tinge of his brow gave his sapling body the air of holding a softness. He had small dimpled hands tapering to fingers with which to hold her who was hard and intact.

“O I love it!”

She did not love the hard Luve Mansion, her own home had been prim and small, her hardness needed tender and small things of the world.

“O I love it, Harry! I’m glad it’s no larger. O—what a kitchen! Can’t I do for you right snug in that gem of a kitchen.”

“No, sweet, not that. Mammy Sue comes along. I can’t say No to Mammy. I can’t begin now saying No ... when I’m married. She’s been waiting’, fixin’ for that. She’s been totin’ me from a baby just for that. You’ll surrender, Honey! She loves you for making me surrender ... to her.”

“And I bake such biscuits.”

“You may ... when Mammy’s not looking.”

She made him sit down. “You’re so high!” She clapped her hands. Sharp, she kissed his hair, his eyes, his nose, his mouth. Sharp kisses. Each finger tip she kissed. “O—O you!” She opened his waistcoat, she opened one button of his shirt. A sharp kiss on his chest. She leaped away, clapped her hands.

“I’ll manage Mammy.”

“Whom couldn’t you manage?”

—You.... I leap gaily clapping my hands, my Love. I leap on Pain, on the shadow of Doubt I leap. What can I do with you?

She was on her knees: her arms embraced his legs, her cheek was hot against his cold shoes.

—Under the Pain is there sunlight for dancing? Under the doubt is there a solid world?

“She loves me,” said to himself Harry Howland Luve. “Blessed sweet!”—Well, I’ve married her. She’s married to a Luve. She’s leaping, dancing on a joy I can understand.

* * *

Mrs. Luve and Mr. Samson talked of small matters pleasantly.

—He sits there sweetly, chatting of small matters. O it is good. O it is cool water. Bless you! He leaves me alone, he does not touch me. I am myself. We move marvelously into myself. He is content there, merely talking, with me a woman, of small matters.

—I have a mind, good mind for others. You shall have the benefit of that whenever you need it. I’ll find out whenever ... good good Boy!...

—I am alone. That is the blessing of talking with you here on cool small matters. You do not touch me as the world does when I am alone with no one. O you heal me: will you at least, after these years, these years, such years, be my healer? Not touching! The heal and the health and the miracle of that. Not touched, at last. The years full of bloody bubbles, each year a bubble of my blood unhealed. I shall not tell you of myself. You will feel....

—For thanks of God ... your God.... I embrace you, Boy. When one has a God one can have cool small matters. Let us talk on, for your God’s sake, of your cool small matters.

* * *

“Why do you drink? O Harry ... why, why now?”

“You are not always there. At College you were not there, Fanny. Drink was. One took what was to take.”

“But now....”

“Drink was there first. O I don’t know. When I am drunk I am wrapped in warm smooth clinging stuffs—like entrails—like insides of a great warm creature. When I drink I am wrapped in a woman.... Let me creep into you, Beloved. Farther, nearer. O you are so whole. Won’t you let me creep away inside of you?”

“Harry I am all open to you. Come.”

“No dear. O my love! No, dear, I can’t. God damn you. You entice me ... impossibly. There you are—you are a woman, there. I can’t touch you ... you’re there. I am here. Touch you? Break you. I’d smash you into this air if I could. Damn you! Damn you. Why shouldn’t I have another drink? It goes inside of me ... all of it ... serves me ... warms me. It’s mine, that. Going inside of me, same as me going inside of it. Inside of you ... impossibilities. God damn your sure solid eyes. Let me get out.”

She lifted his head from her lap. “Go then.”

He rose uneasy to his feet. He wiped straying silk hairs from his swimming eyes. He turned: stumbled: sank. He sobbed.

She placed him on his back on the floor: cradled his head in her hands.

“Let me get out! Let me get out!” he shouted, motionless.

“Sh-sh. You can go.”

“Fanny, Fanny,” he whispered, “hold me ... hold me still.” His body swung on the floor, the floor careened about his eyes. Her arms, cradling him, swaying his head, were alone moveless.

She dragged him to bed. He was a helpless drunken child. She undressed him. Her hands, touching his naked body, brought to his face a veil of ease. Her hands ceased. He raised his naked flesh from the hot covers.

“Give me a drink!”

“No.”

His eyes swung back from the wall of her response. But his arms surged forward, they caught her. He dragged her against his naked flesh....

She, little woman, sat in her rocking chair on the porch, looked up at the flood of sun and tried to find the world.

—Up the sun that is warm and good, up the sun that blinds me Struggling, not overwhelmed, I send my eyes....

She was clad in a pink dress whose dainty softness brought clear the silvery atunement of her body. There was naught slack in her. Her bare arms were a gentling, a subtle rounding of her bones: a haze of dark hair on them: hands rose intact and long from the fine wrists like flower from stem. The little breasts stood in the pink tulle, alert, infinitely one with the awareness of her eyes and wrists ... like the antennæ of a bug holding the world upon their frailty.

She sat challenging sun: not wilting: waiting her husband.

—Every day now he drinks. He gambles. He loves me. What have I to do with cards and liquor?

She, larger woman, sat deeper in her chair: lost now in a swathing gown of gray that rose like a wave to her white neck. Her shoulders and her chest; bare, were still planturous in their running variance of plane and mood: strong seeking chin, throat swelling as if with graceful words, chest rising downward from the aloof virginity of her neck to the slow fulness of her heavying breasts. Fanny was pregnant. She sat there ... taut limpid body ... in the sun, eyes unwilted, about her child like a sunny song hiding an omen. She sat there gradually giving way ... her taut and limpid sun-shape giving way ... to the dark press of a swollen larva tangled inside her blood, pressing, kicking, sucking weight to rend.

Harry Luve was gone three days, without a word ... plenty of signs. She knew.

—He has gone. I shall see him again. O yes. Long after I have looked in my child’s eyes. Thank God for that! I shall look long, years perhaps? long and deep in my baby’s eyes in order to understand how I must see him again.

His going down was simple like all of Harry Luve ... simple like a very plaintive song. She sat between the high sun and the low wail of her husband: balanced about a child.

How sustain the light madnesses of College? except in drink and gambling. How nourish the child in him he was? save with the rolling bloods of liquor, the swift tossings, cradlings, plungings of luck at cards. At the end of deep immersement in a helpless joy forever Birth which was an end: the Birth here at last Disgrace, as the Birth once air. Too much money lost, too much folly of a night in his cups. A woman half dead, half naked, bent across a table, a mirror smashed, ten thousand dollars debt. A birth that! Harry slipped down into it as doubtless he had slipped from his mother’s womb ... whimpering, blinking, inarticulate—nostalgic. He was gone.

But his father had Honor to groom. The debt was paid, the woman was salvaged and sent off. No word in the papers.

“He will find out he’s safe ... turn up, sobered ... my Dear. Never worry,” his father assured her.

“And I ...?”

“You are his wife, Frances. You must wait.”

She got up.

“Will you move my chair, Colonel Luve ... over there?”

She walked, clear slender neck and legs with her child so full before her her walk seemed to say: “My child comes first.”

Her husband’s parent shook his head.

“What can you do, my daughter? You must wait....”

She sank in her new-placed chair.

“ ...in the sun.”

—She is pregnant, Colonel Luve explained away the inconsequent words.

Fanny waited.

* * *

“I know your name.... I knew it always ... now you will let me?—Samson Brenner.”

“You say my name as if it meant something.”

“Perhaps it does. Perhaps it does. Go on.”

“I sometimes wonder why I am studying Law. Writing poems is more fun ... and you know? seems realler!”

“Yet you distrust writing poems....”

“—bad poems.”

“Bad because you distrust doing anything for fun?”

“You know, I think you’re right!”

He smiled like a child, pleased but a bit scared when he finds true what he had sought in make-believe. His brow wrinkled. He turned away from the brass glare of the light.

“That light is horrid,” she said.

“—all substitutes for the sun,” he said.

“That is so.”

“Yet what a wonder what a glory,” his body stiffened, “that we should have a substitute at all!”

“Why glory, Samson Brenner, if the substitute is false?... Wait.”

Mrs. Luve came back. She placed two candles between them on the Pembroke table.

“Shut out the gas,” she said.

There was blackness, heavy, hot, clasping them both. Two jets of liquid glow tongued from the mellow wood, made the wood lift and gleam like a sun’s ray through moving cloud: cast wreathings subtle, evanescent, out against the blackness.

They were quiet. The candles ... two fingers rose, touched them across the table, joined them, hushed them.

“May I say something to you?”

“What, Mrs. Luve?”

“You have a tongue that speaks truth, you have a tongue that lies.”

“Haven’t we all?”

“You must not have a tongue that lies: for you have a tongue that is true.”

“Haven’t we all ...?”

“You must not——“

* * *

Fanny looked out from her back sun-parlor upon trees.

Beside a high grey wall rose the thick life of a magnolia; beech and cherry and dogwood sang their light swift presences, a lawn was fresh like dew.

“Trees,” she murmured....—They have waited the Winter. It is Spring, they prepare to give a whole new life—blossom and seed. That is why it is Spring. Each year ... at their feet the dead leaves sink and rot. They push forth new ones. Each year.... They cannot help themselves.

She could go no farther.—Helpless bravery.... Upstairs in her cradle Edith slept. Harry was gone, voiceless, eight months. She was imprisoned in her man’s absence, in her child’s presence.

She had a dream. Harry jumped on his black horse, stood over her in his stirrups. He ribboned the black flanks red with his spurs. The horse leaped: as he flew away he leaned to her and cut deep her breast with his crop.... She awoke thinking of Edith. Her child was the red salute of Harry’s going: the scar of it. She loved her child.

She had a dream. A tall man with a baby’s face lay crowding in her arms. She could kiss his baby’s face, but he had tall legs, they spun and twirled about her. They struck a lamp which fell, the house was in flame. All of the town rushed into her house: she saw his father and mother, her mother who was dead and brother ... all of the city came into her sitting among flame holding a baby face. They stood there, pointing, poising, sneering at her. “What is she going to do? She sat rigid holding her baby face. What a fool, she sits there nursing a dead child with fire all about her!” She was helpless.

Now, sitting, watching the brave helpless trees she could go no farther. She had a child whom she loved and who was the wound of another love upon her.

—Trees do not think, they are brave helplessly. Why am I not brave? Trees lift into air. I am buried.

She was buried. Her friends and her relations, seeing her Mrs. Luve, buried her daily. Her child, seeing her mother, buried her daily. Her husband, a distant stroke in a far world, ploughing, ploughing like steel ... heaping the soil of his ploughings forever upon her, buried.

—Trees do not think. I try to think. Thinking is bad for Winter. Thinking is bad for Spring. Thinking chills Spring. Thinking calls sap to Winter which Winter kills. Yet I must think ... for I am motionless. To think is to move when one is motionless. Trees move forever. Leaf and trunk move upward, circle out: seed moves downward, inward. Trees swing forever so they are thoughtless. But I am a broken curve, a splintered part of a Circle I cannot see.... My thought’s a finger feeling from the line of my brokenness for a Roundness beyond me.

—What am I going to do? How am I going to think?

She was the wife of Harry Howland Luve. Pretty clever astounding Fanny Dirk: here’s a riddle for your independence, which we ... your Town ... have had to swallow ever since you were a child bossing your schoolmates, snubbing the smart young men, running through the gray-mossed tangles of our thoughts and ways like an April wind through a sleepy August. You have shocked us, angered us, made us love and accept you. You caught the best match of Town ... here is a riddle for you, smartie Fanny Dirk!

He will come back: she was very quick to find her own way, her own words for it: yet who of us dare say she was not always the lady? Mrs. Harry Luve. He will come back. Nothing for her after all but to sit and wait him....

She had a dream. Her bed was a vast blackness.—It is white, I have no eyes so my bed is black. It was soft and rich, it was comfortable. She lay within it, folded, lost, and it was white vast comfort all about her. A Hand from a sharp wrist thrust down, clasped her throat ... pressed. She was pressed deeper within the bed: as the Hand pressed down her throat was deep beneath her body, deep beneath her head: her mind and her blood rushed down from her head and body to her swollen throat that a white Hand pressed. The bed unfolded lip within lip as had her body when Harry loved her: now her body cut deep into the bed ... enfolded it was lost in the bed’s blind comfort.... She saw the Hand that pressed her down by the throat. Upon one finger was the ring of Harry: upon another finger was the wedding ring she had worn secret for a year, and was the diamond ring set in platinum which he had given her later. The Hand was colorless like the shell of a departed locust. The wrist above it was long and red and moist. The Hand, pinning her throat, was dry, her throat was dry. She lay there cased in her hot bed ... frozen: under a Hand that pinned her.

She got up. She went to her child and held her in her arms. Edith slept. She held her close against her breast. She stiffened her arms in order to be still. Within, a voice shrieked: “Wake, wake!” It touched the air through her hardened nipples. It touched her child. Edith awoke. She placed her back in her crib.

“Sleep, daughter ... always sleep.”

Saying these words, she felt her gums were hard; it was her gums, it was her teeth that said them. Her lips were still! She kissed her daughter.

—Lips had better kiss.

The child, who had lain wide-eyed silent, fell asleep....

Fanny stood beside her bed. It loomed like a white sucking mouth—white lips. She pulled a quilt away, sank to the floor. With knees high huddled in her arms, near her chin, and the quilt lightly touching her bare toes, her knees, her mouth, she slept on the floor. The world’s blackness, the ghost-grained night of her sleep was not the world, not her sleep ... was the bed above her. Blackness was spun white threads come to rest: each thread beside the other, each thread of white not touching any other. She lay escaped from her Bed in undulant hardness, she flowed ... at last at rest ... like a red worm through water....

—At this Party too, they aren’t going to let me be gay!

All they would not let her. They smiled on her and carefully patterned their talk. They had eyes forever wiping against her thoughts. They must have hated her, had she been gay and forgetful of her loss. They did not want to hate her. They preserved her low and broken where they did not need to hate her. “Dear poor Fanny—so brave!” Their words and their ways announced: “We try to be gay with you, we try to make you gay.” They would not let her be gay. They hoisted their talk uphill against the evident pull of their sole interest in her, of their solemn compassion for her. They would not let her forget. “We are being gay, we are trying to cheer you up. We are talking with you of indifferent matters.” So....

Fanny waited ... here too. In these bright congestions of men and women was there not surely somewhere a color that went with her own, a tone that could make her vibrate? She waited in stiff rigor, not knowing she waited.... Gowns and shoes ... words put on like gowns and shoes over different flesh. She smelt at times under satin and starch warm flesh that needed air. She sat and let herself be talked to, be sympathized with, be gloated over.—If only you’d shout you are glad! Healthy that, naked.... O no. She was stiff as in death.

A tall man, dark....—Newcomer, strange ... moved up to her and spoke. Words not spawned or swerved by her own story: words she needed not to hear since they were fending away a world that would not let her be gay. In a new separateness Fanny felt herself....

Felt herself laughing.

Found her feet, after his quiet resolute own, pattering out to a seclusive alcove.

She saw him.—I don’t size you up. I don’t care! You release my feet and my laughter. You are big strong ... black ... what are you?

He came to her home.

Her ears did not count, yet her ears did for they had given her a label to stick on him so he could pass through her door.... Leon Dannenberg—attorney from Washington—Government lawyer—on short business here. He passed through. More than her eyes saw that he was very strong with hands full of ease. She leaned back in her rocker: her toes jutted forward: they twinkled against his black strength.

They chatted, she had no ears, she had voice. She was gay.

When he left her: “You are unhappy, Mrs. Luve,” he said. “I think you are the unhappiest woman I have known. You must be strong, then ... too.”

She took his hand and liked how her hand was lost in his hand that was full of ease.

“You let me be gay.”

“I’m coming whenever this Case ... and these Conferences ... let me.”

“I have respect for you,” he said. He took her in his arms and kissed her....

He said: “We are strangers ... we are strangers who respect each other.”

“Help me,” he said.

“Help you?”

“Help me to bring you to yourself. You are stunned. Ill things come over you and you are stunned, you cannot make yourself clean.... I want you naked. Help me. Naked against me naked. You will be at last yourself ... inviolate. Help me!”

He undressed her. She helped him to undress her. She lay in his arms: lost sweetly like a tree in a warm wind.

“You make me feel that I have roots,” she told him.

She found that she had been buried in a corrodent silence. She was lifted forth. She had words.

“You are strong,” he said, “and you have been a fool.”

Holding her in his arms, he was to her a sunrise ... cool ... cutting mists and a dim sleep. She lay in him like a warm creature in a gentle sun, sucking sun ... all open.

“Soon I must go ... back to Washington ... my home.”

“You have a home?”

“Why do you doubt it?”

“You are so strong away from home.”

“You are a glory, Frances Luve. You are a spirit like a tree, standing alone on a single rock in a marshland.”

“That is what you think of my people?”

“That is what I think of your people.”

“But have you a home?”

“The Western World,” he smiled with a fine bitterness that hurt her. “I am a Jew, you know.”

“Yes ... I know,” she hushed.

“The first Jew you have ever known?”

“The first....”

“Do you know me, Fanny?”

“Will I ever know?... You are going away.”

“That is right, also.”

“Yes.” She looked at him. She sat high above his prone strong body; looked at him. “Yes, it is right. I look at you. You are beautiful. You are clean. You are wilful and straight. You have black curling hair like a savage dance all over the white tenderness of your body. You have eyes that look forever. Yet I do not love you. I love my husband. He is weak and dirty. Until you came I said: ‘He is weak and dirty, I hate him.’ You came with your clear strength. You took me naked. I took you naked. Because I have taken you clean and strong I know that it is he whom I love.”

He held her hand.

“There is God,” he said, “May he bless you.”

“What does that mean ... if He blesses?”

“The Jews in three thousand bloody years have not found out.”

“I tell you I do not love you: I tell you and you bless me.”

“I reverence you, Fanny. You are clear like water. Love is a word I have not won the use of.”

“What have you done to me!”

“You are water, Frances. You were muddied and thick. You can look down, now, through the clearness of yourself, to the dirt base of yourself....”

“ ...to Harry!”

“See him clear, through your own clean-ness.”

“You are strong. O how strong you are, you man who have won for yourself a power in the world that hates you. Your people have been beaten bloody: always, always. Beaten bloody by their God ... beaten bloody by the world to which they gave their God. They are a bent dark people. Yet you have won for yourself a body fair to see. Never shall I forget your lovely body. Yet I do not love you. I love a man who had all and who cast it away: who was fair as you were never and who has dirtied himself.”

“He only deserves your love.”

“Why that?”

“ ...if you care for him.” He took her hand again. “Since you care to care for him....”

“Good-by,” he said.

She said: “The word Love is never in your mouth.”

“Good-by,” he said.

She said: “I will do what you want.... I would do always what you want. I do not love you: but I bow to you. I kiss your feet. You are holy.... Why are you holy?”

“I have moved you only as a wind that passes.”

“You are putting me aside,” she said.

“No. I touch your branches. I spread them. I take seed of you with me to the fallow meadows. I do not stir your roots.”

“They feel sunshine for you have spread me open.”

“I do not stir your roots—because I have respect for the word Love.”

“Good-bye, then, Leon. I shall find out what this great truth is ... this truth I know, the first truth I have ever known ... that you are holy.”

“Good-by,” he said. Then he went.

* * *

Mrs. Luve looked through the golden flame of an old table, of two candles, burning within the blackness of her room. There ... not of the mellow flame, not of the dark ... a young man speaking of small matters. Where the flame touched him he glowed; where the night touched him his body withdrew harsh into shadow. What is this encaverned boy, talking of small matters?

—He is plump: he is a boy: he has no strength of his own. He is very strong and he is very old. Blond hair curls from bland brow. They are Jews ... he was straight like steel, hard, sure. So gentle. Sureness alone is gentle in a fumbling world.... Are you hard also?”

—You do not know, but I have seen your parents. If I said so would you flush? would your heart rush back in panic, hide in your flesh I have touched by seeing your parents? She counted me change so soberly ... correct, correct ... ‘If I make a mistake against you I will lose by and by: if I make a mistake against me I lose now.’ The greed of justice in your mother counting me change. That time when the clerks were all busy and I in a hurry, your father came out smiling, sold me—what was it?—sausage and cheese? So simple, so condescending he was. You are the child of such parents. They have saved: they have saved in justice of greed, in justice of condescension: and of this saving of their greed and arrogance, you buy your College books, you buy your poetry books, you buy your hours here. Aren’t you ashamed? No he is not ashamed. He is right. Sausages and dollars saved are slime, are lies. You are true, Samson Brenner. You are older than your stinking parents.

She filled his glass with wine.

He sipped. His eyes were hot amber in an iron vat. He asked no question, he sipped.

“Do you want to hear the poem?” he said.

—I hear it already. “Repeat it.”

He did not question her words, he did not question her wine. He took them. His head bent forward. He held his face in his hands ... soft hands. He spoke his poem through soft hands. The poem was a stiff, an alien thing: but her words she had not spoken in the glow of his face were his and came back to her, a poem.

—I become myself. I become untouched. Speak on, Boy. Make me untouched!... He has young eyes—the shadows that rim them are marked by thousand years....

* * *

The world was a sunny field and the young mother walked in it and was herself. Each thing was itself, stood clear up in the sunny field of the world. Black ant over a tuft of grass held the sun in its blackness. Grass threw sparkle of sun against a blue sky dazed with sunniness.—I too walking and carrying the sun. I am very sharply myself, like an ant, like a leaf, throwing with them the sun in a vast gold shower upward into the sky....

Leon was gone: there would be no word of any sort further between them.

Fanny had a way of sitting on her porch and pinching the flesh of her bared arm. Solid! She loved her solidness—I am real! She was sunny with feeling her flesh and her soul real.

—Harry is coming back. O I know! I must be ready, I must be real.

She was real. Her thoughts, her feelings, her pain were petal and stamen and pistil of the full flower of her realness. Sitting now, different, in her little house where she had been abandoned ... above the pry and the impudent concern of those about her, above the hurt and the insult of Harry’s going ... facing the sacrament of his return—how? beaten, broken?—fully as she had faced no truth in all her life.

... With her child in arms she could pinch bravely and find real....

—I can kiss you now—Baby! little sister!—we wait together for him who is coming back.

—Coming at last. For the first time coming. There was a holy man. He released us, stripped us naked to ourselves. And because of a holy man, we can wait real now, sure, intact, so gently wait and so long, for a man who is coming.

—We need not ask who he is. He is ours. He will find us and love us, won’t he, little sister?... and leave us no more.

—Like you! O my blessed baby—like you whom I was strong enough to bear, not strong enough till now to look upon—like you he is ours.

Fanny held her child and again she looked unwilted into sun. It was to her as if she gazed on a bright field, and there above flowers, under a sky, stood a woman sheer with a child in her arms. Her feet in grass were cool. Her hair in sky was cool. She was sheer, cool ... unburned by the fires of birth. She was born ... washed clean of the bloods of birth and born. Very cool, very sheer. So Fanny saw herself.

... Saw certain things making her sunny field of the world—as the light of her vision lay clarified in context of green thrusts running, forms sprayed and ashift over earth.

She had long talks holding her child in her arms....

“I must be more to him when he comes back than I was ever! I can be more!

“I accept you, Harry. I have no pride, I am humble. I challenge drink, gaming, women. I am ashamed no longer. I shall beat them. I shall crowd them out. I shall be for you what they lied seeming they could be for you. You will find me everywhere, meet me nowhere. No obstruction. You will find me risen in a great pride, in a great strength, now that my pride is gone and I have lain, prostrate naked, sucking the strength of a stranger.”

—O stranger! not a thought more for you. Not a thought. That is as you will. Harry, he made me love you.

She went into her room, stripped her clothes from her shoulders. She looked in a glass at her nakedness, feeling under her eyes her shoulders gleam like cool flames upward.

It was strange: her shoulders were untouched, her breasts had not fallen.—I am whole! Come, Harry, take me.

There had been a wind, there had been a bath for her naked shoulders. She was naked, flushed by a swift wind ... gone ... cleansed by a running water ... run away.—I am whole, I am born. Will you come, Harry, so you can see the woman who has been born?

She stood long, looking at her naked self. She was clad in a bloom. She was a hard young world in its first Spring. She found that she was laughing. She pressed her laughing fingers into her firm breasts.

“I am good,” she said, very sober. She caught up her child. Cheek upon hers she swayed, very still, very sober. “O we are good. Good, we two! Won’t you hurry, Man?” ...

“Now I see you. Clear! Never has any woman seen her love as I see you. I am a woman born. Edith dear, look at your Mother. You are a child born.... I am a woman born. I am rarer than you! I am very rare. I see you clear, you little sucking flesh. Sweet, sweet! I see him clear; wistful yearnful boy, with a soul all wrinkled and athrob like your forehead, Sweet, when you were born ... a soul open and empty and greedy like your mouth, when you were born.

“ ...Come, suck me, you two dear ones!”

—Do I see my love clear? If I do, I see a fading.... “I abdicate that sight, my dear Beloved. My hands must not shake, when you come back to me shaking.”

—What is love? what is a field?... a running of sweet grass over earth, grass leaping away from the earth in which it lives.... My love is you and you ... that is seeing enough!

—Love is the field and woodlands of the world.

She was a little woman waiting for her husband....

Strange news came to her world of Harry Howland Luve ... thrilled it, made it talk.... “Blood will tell.” ... “After the wild oats the sturdier planting....” “God has his way....” “From one drunkenness to another.” Fanny took to herself the news and felt it true. The path of her man came clear in her white mind.

—I feel him, all the way he has crawled livid red from my hands. He turns, full flow, to my breast! She saw his path like a writing.

The Reverend Doctor Poole brought her his gift of comfort wrapped in complacence.

She made him sit down, he chose the stiffest chair.—I must subdue myself, she felt. He was brittle, little. She held back the flood of herself. But it was easy since his sharp small eyes not knowing she was a flood, brought her help.

“Your husband, my Dear, has found Christ.

“It happened in New York. Never mind, my child, where ... and who shall ever say How? He has found Christ and like Him he has risen. More, my daughter. Like Him, he is walking the ways of men bringing God’s word. Who has found Christ truly, in every respect must act like Him. I am very gratified ... very grateful. I have come to you, my daughter, ... you have neglected our Church, never mind, Dear, the strayed sheep is the dearest to the Lord and to the humblest Pastor ... to pray with you Thanksgiving and rejoicing. Your husband will be here soon. You know from his dear father what he’s doing?... He goes from College to College telling young men how he slipped down the pleasant path to Hell—and at its gate found Christ.... I have had word from colleagues in Princeton, Yale, Williams ... elsewhere. His effect on the student bodies is amazing, electrifying. A true evangel. He is eloquent, simple ... rather his message is, that speaks through his lips. The students learn how he ... as they do ... played a little, drank a little, smoked—all the little innocent indulgences ... and what horror happened. They flock up, after his visit, and sign the pledge of Purity, join fellowship in Christ. He has received invitations from dozens of Christian institutions to come with his message, to help save our Christian youth. He has found a true work, indeed.... And you, daughter, have been worthy of him ... waiting. Prepare yourself now for the return of your Bridegroom.”

* * *

Face clawed close by myriad tiny fears and horrors. Hot eyes. Feet stumbling. As Harry’s body lurched forward, his feet stumbled faster to support it. Hands dead white leaves, dry, crackling at his sides.... A saloon swings open, his head bowed above thin shoulders twitches in, away from the crash of an impending train above on its swinging iron rail. Wave of acrid beer, soiled flesh, wet clothes. Above it, his head a moment is still.... Sober. Harry steps up to the bar, with sharp feet and hands marshalling sudden to his head against the lazy swing of his body within the fetid wave. He grasps a glass of whiskey, carries it untouched before him to a corner. Bodies huddled like hulks of beef or pork, covered with rags. He floats above them, finds a seat, bowing to a naked wooden table. Invitation. Glass elbows on the naked table. Head on the table? No!—One gulp to swing my body free with my sharp head ... to soberness.... So....—What am I? ...

Harry Howland Luve gazed on his world. A man snoring near him blew a spray of blood from his mashed nose. A man, beside a barrel, let his fingers trail like grey worms through the sawdust ... a red tongue broke through the muck of his mouth, licked the grey worms of his hands, he slept again. At the bar, careening like ships on a wave of the world, heads dipped into huge glasses, swung against mirrors, broke thudding upon a window upon a wall that was a grin of hardness.—What am I? Harry Howland Luve laboriously counted his fingers....—One two three four ... one two three four ... one two: my God! where is my fifth finger? “I lack a finger! I lack a finger!” Body with head feet hands was one ... a toss, a catapult from the stinking Harp House into a darkness clear, biting, without, beneath the surge of the “L.” He flew. “I lack a finger.” He stopped. “What else do I lack?” Again a train. He was caught. He could not move.—It is coming over! He was clamped; the train’s murmur rose to a beat, a roar, a crash. Iron and wood and steam shrieked and stampeded, mountained on his head. He was clamped. He was a silence of horror under a mountain of noise, crushing against the eggshell of his skull.... It passed....—I am alive. He walked quiet now, looking on the pavement tracks for his lost finger.

“You have lost something?” A black form rose from the street like smoke on a clear night. “Yes ... I have lost ... have lost....” “Perhaps,” said the smokey man, “I can help you to find. Come along, Brother.” He clasped his arm. The smokey man of God, the white seeker of color moved down the cavern of Chatham Square where the high houses dimmed away like stalactytes and the “L” thrust its lance into the belly of a world too weary to cry, too worn to bleed. Before him Harry Luve held his white dry hand. “My finger,” he muttered. “Yes,” said the man of God. “I see ... your pointing finger....”

He sat in a quiet room. Coffee and a sandwich rolled in his raw stomach. “That tastes good, eh?” said the man of smoke. “Hot, eh? Whiskey makes you shiver, I’ll bet.” Luve held his hands together and began to cry. “Heat is the best thing in the world. Good heat is God. False heat is the Devil ... and makes you shiver,” he said. “Another cup of coffee?”

“My finger ... my finger!” “Brace up, man. You’re a gentleman. You were. I can see that. See clear, and you’re whole....” “How can I see clear when I lack ... I lack—” ... “Hush—listen.”

There was a sound like a soft white quiet on a red wound. Music.

“Bow your head, Brother.... Listen.”

The quiet crept upon his body. Tucked in his toes, moistened his hands, lay on his mouth. The quiet was warm. Was music. Harry shut his eyes. The wave of the world, booze and streaking men, fell away. He was in a flatness downy with gentle grass above a gentle river. His feet hurt, he was glad, hurting was living. A warm cloud muffled his head: through his eyes and mouth, through the warm cloud came words:

“Our Father which art in Heaven ... thy Kingdom ... give us this day our daily ... not into temptation ... for thine is the Kingdom ... halleluja, Blesst!... the glory for ever and ever ... seek and ye shall find ... seek seek and and ye ye ... unto you opened ... unto you, opened ... Blood of the Lamb, red blood, ... there is a quiet house, all white, where it is warm this bitter Winter night ... all warm a quiet house ... and arms holding me to a redness, passion, that is allowed. Allowed ... hallowed ... hallowed ... allowed. Christ smiles on it, his blood is red and holy.... Fanny’s red, I have seen her red blood. Since I have married her, holy ... red and holy ... knock and it shall be ... opened ... red warm, dear ... all white is the blood of the Christ....”

The smokey man was speaking: “Miracle is not dead.”

Harry Luve rolled around upon his face. The music was still. A new quiet, also warm, wrapped him about. He rolled and rolled in a warm water. “The quiet is ever’ where.”

His eyes gleamed against a blackness suddenly calm and dun, a wall. He looked at a wall in a lighted room. He saw a man beside him clad in black. A hand touched his. Harry was thankful how that hand touched his.

“I have seen,” he said, “ ... O I have seen—“

The hand clasped his. “What, brother, have you seen?”

Harry wrenched away his hands, placed them like fenders before him.

“Let me—let me—!” he stopped. He swayed caught: he flew caught in a chord that sped with the bright room through a roaring darkness. Roar! He was dizzy. He tried to cry. He saw his hands speeding before his eyes like two birds through cavernous space. He stopped from breath ... one two three four FIVE ... he counted his flying fingers. A tiny spring sang over his eyes, sang fraying ready to break. He wanted to cry ... five five!... a little woman flew before his hands like a white bird in the blackness. Naked. One red spot in her naked body where he had made red once ... Fanny!... warm ... allowed. Hallowed allowed hallowed allowed. The red spot was a painted house home ... could be about him.... Blessed are they that mourn ... blessed are they that mourn. Blessed are the poor in spirit ... comforted ... Kingdom of Heaven lead us not ... rejoice exceeding glad ... into temptation——

... The hand of the man in black touched his again. Smokey ... flame. Warmness, red warmness, white from hallowedness. The tiny spring burst. His eyes burst out into myriad diamond stars. A sluice opened. He was all wet. His soul poured ... a pent torrent ... out: speechless whiteness.

“Something—say something, Brother! What wrestles in you? What chokes you? What do you see?”

“Christ!” gasped Harry Rowland Luve: then he slept.

* * *

Mrs. Luve leaned back in her chair, took the brimming words of Samson Brenner.

They poured from him, free, full, into the dark pool of her eyes. They poured bright, candid: in the dark pool they fell dark.

—You talk of your fears and your pains: you talk of your loves and your dreams. You are a Jew, you are true. Why is the word Christ never in your mouth?

—O there is reason, deep! What is the pain of nearness—you pampered Jew, you Jew-boy, plump about sorrow—that blots the word Christ from your mouth?

“Mrs. Luve, I forget myself. I talk. I lose myself, there sudden I am. I do not know myself, but I say ‘that is me!’”—Pampered boy. “I talk and talk. God knows of what and why. Mrs. Luve, do I bore you?”

“You move along a path that is mine. Go on. I have no earthly thing to do but hear you.”

“You are grave!”

“Not so grave as you.”

“But I laugh. I must tell you ... the first time I really heard laughter....”

—You move upon my life like a broken sun ashift through cloud at evening after a black day.... You in the flame of my candles, you in the black of my room.... What is this word Christ you know too deep to utter?”

Fanny standing moved her hand from the gathered flowers on the table ... cherry and pear buds high, bowls of anemone, violets ... to her lips.

“He is coming!” She stood.

The door thrust forward—and was away from between them. Clad in white she held firm against the sight of him; tall and dark with pale hands and face, he rose from her still eyes like a column of smoke.

“Harry!” Then she held out her arms.

He shut the door. He knelt.

“Get up, husband.”

He kissed her hands.

She lifted his head in her two palms, lifted him up. His lips were on hers.

They were thin, sweet, laden now with little gasps of air warmed sweet in sweet lungs: no smells of liquor and smoke like a hot corrugation scraping her sense.

He broke from her and sat in a chair. His breath was sudden, he had run a race. One hand lay palpitant against a knee: breathless, afraid, a being out of its element. She thought of a sea. He was fished up dry from a sea.

“Harry,” she spoke low. She knelt at his feet: she looked up: she could smile now.

“Get up, wife.”

“No ... let me. Let me always.”

His dry hands, tremulous, waved about her hair: seeking, afraid: they were moths now, fluttering upon a light: so his eyes. His face was pale and hurt turned down upon her smiling. Fluttering search collapsed. He hid his face in his hands.

“Do not cry now.” She felt shut out by his hiding hands.

“I do not cry. Instead, I pray.”

He looked at her. All of him was dry. From his words he seemed to have won bravery. She felt shut out in his looking.

His eyes were braver: his hands. They moved forward upon her shadowing face: they sought a thing, found it. They carried her mouth upon his, differently, upward. He stood, she under him. Her flesh touched his flesh.

Tall white flesh, scabbarded in black ... and in prayer. Lips washed clean of liquor, scrubbed lips, thin ... very thin. Hands corroded in cleanliness against the nape of her neck. Odorless, fireless.... Fanny flung her arms about him.... Shoulders pointed forward, thrusting away a world. She clasped him close.

“Harry—Harry,” she cried. “O I am so glad you are——” she stopped. She lay swaying in his arms, clasping him tighter, tighter. A faint moan rose from her parted lips as her arms clasped tighter....

They sat and looked at each other.

“You have loved me, Fanny.”

“Yes ... yes.”

“You are my wife.”

She could say no word. She could feel no thing to turn into a word. She was a wisp of cloud: beneath her a weathercock stood still. Harry moveless pinned like a weathercock upon a bloody spike ... under a sky with one wisp of cloud.

From a fringed green horizon, memory like a wind moved up to her.

—I love him. I serve him. I have dedicated my new free strength to that. I have sworn how I was wanting, how I failed. Life now together!

“You know about me,” he said.

“I know you have come back, and I love you ... love you.”

“I must tell you all ... all the sin. You are my wife.”

“Tell me now, only that you are mine.”

“I am yours: for you are my wife since in my sinning you have loved me, Fanny. God rewards me. You were there, awaiting my conversion.”

“We are wedded at last. Do not use words I cannot understand.”

“You must hear all my sins....”

Why did she feel:—He is satisfied with his words?

“I know my sins. God has put upon me, as my way of being cleansed, to speak my sins. As they come forth from my mouth, they cleanse—God has made a miracle in that they cleanse. I am washed clean, speaking them. Already scores of boys, young men, hearing them, are clean. All their horror, each detail of my sins, is a hand washing clean.”

Why did she feel:—Speaking, he moves away?

—I am jealous of your sins. What are sins?

“Tell me at once, then, Harry. Then we can bury them. Then we can start to build. Then you can come and hold me.”

“I was away more than two years....”

—He has come back to hold me.... I will hold him so he understands he has come back to hold me.... O to be held!... He has never held me. We were too wise, we fools, to hold each other. In a plunging world ... O my God how the world veers and plunges ... what fools not to hold each other.

He spoke, he was very eloquent and sure, dwelling again with his sins. He was warm in them. When he looked out from his hot sins to his wife, his eyes were colder.

—Hold me. Hold me! Let me hold you. Come plant your hand in my heart. He spoke, dwelling warm in his sins.

—Damn your sins!

He ended. He came to her and knelt once more. Not feeling him, she let him.

“Fanny, my dearest, my wife, my wife ... do you forgive me?”

Not feeling him there, she was very quiet.

“I do not feel, my love, that there is anything to forgive.”

She looked straight, a little to the side of his white face. She was still.

“We were young,” then she said.—I must speak. “And did not know. All that is past, but is good ... all ... since now we know.”

“I have sinned deeply. Forgive me.”

“You wandered loosely, because I held you loose: because you did not hold me. Now we clasp each other close. It is not a sin to have been a child.”

“Bless you. Bless you.”

“I have learned——“

“You have been always wonderful.”

“No, Harry. I have learned. I have changed.”

“You.... You have not needed to change.”

She looked at him. “Two years you left me alone: and before that two years you left me alone while I was forced to live with a drunkard. Do you think these years did nothing to me?”

“You suffered.”

“And what might come of suffering!”

“Fanny, my Christian wife, you were strong, you were not harmed by suffering. You remained pure. You have been not changed, dear: tempered.”

“O Harry, I am afraid ... so afraid of your words.”

“You are a Christian, dear, and do not know it. That is why you are frightened by my words.”

“You never saw me, Harry.”

“Yes, dear, always. Under a mist, but always. The mist lifted. Darling, I must tell you: that frightful immortal night ... you and Christ.... I saw you both at once together.”

“You never saw me. You do not know how I have changed.”

“You love me?”

“O my darling!”

“You suffered, waiting....”

She put his hands together: helpless she beat her hands against his hands clasped hard.

“You did not give up ... waiting, suffering?”

“I knew you would come back. I saw you, always, coming. Now I know that.”

“Then you have not changed. For you do love me, then.”

“Harry, love to survive must change.”

“Dear, dear ... you were right. I have told my sins. Each one. You have them all. You must remember them all. Let me hold you now, in silence.”

“But Harry, perhaps I too have the need of telling.”

“You have no sin.”

“No Harry, I have no sin. But there are other tidings.”

“Hush, dearest. Hold me——“

“Listen!”

He looked at her. Impatience bit his lip, puckered his eyes slightly.

“ ...Have you thought ever, Harry, of what I did, these years of waiting? of what I was? Harry, look at me clear. Have you ever tried to see me?”

“My Christian wife!”

—Patience, patience!... “Harry, this coming home must be beautiful, it must not be hideous. Give it your share of light, Harry. You must to save it, to make it. Look at me.”

He puckered his brow: he suffered, looking at her beauty he would ... now he had confessed his sins ... have preferred to kiss.—All of you, hidden under your white prim dress! “It is so long since I have kissed you.”

“Harry, your word sin, does it cover up from your eyes what you and I have done? Am I right, dearest, to fear your word sin?”

—I want to kiss you. You are my wife and have forgiven me. I’m done with vices. I have the right, by God! to kiss your mouth and....

“Your going away killed me, Harry. I was near dead before you went. Your going away killed me.”

“Forgive me, I say.”

“Never! if you use that word. Forgiveness, sin ... they are words, Harry, that cover up. You killed me; you did not sin. You struggled for life and killed me. That is all. I struggled for life, after your struggle had killed me. Can you imagine how I needed, alone here in the house with Edith whom you have never seen, to struggle against the death in which your going buried me?”

“Edith——!”

“She is asleep. Have you thought, Harry?”

He stood up. “What can I do or say? Yes I have thought. It is that agony I brought to you which I call my sin: it is my heartache for it, my rushing back to you with hands imploring, that cries ‘Forgiveness.’ You stop me.”

“Harry you did not sin, because you needed life. Always that comes first; our need of life. I did not give you life. I don’t know why, but I did not give you life. You went elsewhere, fumbled. Now I feel strong. I feel now, Love, that I can give you life. We can now, from our new strength, at last give life to each other. If I did not know this, I would never have seen you again.

“But Harry ... please, please understand! I understand your wandering, your hurting, almost your killing of yourself and of me ... in order to find breath. Understand mine!”

“What do you mean, Fanny?”

“I am human also. I am not ... I do not want to be that perfect emptiness you call your Christian wife. O my beloved, I am all warm for you, I am all living for you, because I too have struggled and have wandered ... in order to find breath.”

“What do you mean?”

She stood close to him. “Look at me close, my love.”

“What do you mean?” Very slowly, his pale white hands with their blue veins curled up like leaves in autumn, drying, drying: fists.

“Do you feel how I love you? Do you feel ... O you must ... how my love now, that was a little stupid girlish thing, has bloomed: how it is full of blood, full of sustaining sweetness? Do you not feel, Harry, how you have come back to a love that will feed you, that will lift you up until the end of years?”

“Yes ... I feel that. What do you mean?”

“That love is over the despair and death of our past years as a tree is over the ground.”

“Fanny ... I....”

“ ...rooted in it. I was under the ground. That shows I loved you. Always, always. If I had not loved you, I should not have been so deep-buried under the ground. I was dead. That shows I loved you. I am all open in the air, high to you. That shows I love you. Love for you has never stopped, it has grown.”

“What do you mean ...?”

“There was a thing that helped me to push up from my despair, from my death under the ground where you had buried me, Harry. There was a man....”

Harry Luve stepped forward and viced her wrists: “A man—!”

“Harry dearest, you must let me now, me now tell you all about it.”

He stopped her. “One thing only.... This man—” His voice broke. He dropped her wrists. His face was an ashen mist. “For God’s sake, Fanny! You didn’t ... you didn’t, Fanny—“

His eyes saw her. Saw her face. Her face nodded.

His hands covered his face. He flinched away. He saw her not. He went back, back ... the wall caught him. He crumpled to the floor. He lay under his white hands. Lay long....

At last:

“Harry, Harry ... it was because I loved you. O the hurt! See, I have killed you too. Because I loved you.... I too needed to live, for you had killed me. Do not judge yet. Let me tell you, let me help us understand. I heard you ... your horrors, your orgies, your hells. O Harry, this was not so ... this was clean somehow ... leading to birth, to you. It was, since I am here now, loving you ... ready to give you all, all of a life I have at last won to give you. O my boy....”

With each word she crept closer, sank nearer beside him. She knelt beside him. She sought his hands, his eyes ... his eyes. He saw her face hands eyes kneeling beside him who was crumpled beyond her.... He saw not her face, not her hands. He saw white thighs, white, wide, very soft, very penetrable ... hers ... darkly penetrable; they were the stuff of his flesh, they were the stuff of his brain and they were pierced by someone!... He saw rootflesh of a man ... not he! piercing the stuff of his brain.

He got up. Her face was still low where his face had been. Her face was near his feet. His feet touched her face.

“Our Lord has spoken,” he said, “and I throw no stone.”

She was very still, her face low above his feet. Listening with a firm stillness her body was hard and she held her face above his feet.

“Our Lord has spoken further!—‘But I say unto you, that whosoever shall put away his wife saving for the cause of fornication causeth her to commit adultery.’ So has said our Lord.”

She was moveless.

“What do you mean?” she said.

“Rise up.”

“Let me here, dearest, try to tell you all. Try to tell you what I know now I must: how I was helpless, how I was poisoned dead ... how I was lifted up.”

“Get up.”

“O Harry, Harry ... I have killed you, too.”

“Get up, I say.”

She lifted her face, furrowed with tears, to his.

“I did not choose, Beloved, the Way I was saved....”

“Do you put that on God? or on Christ who has spoken against you?”

“When has He spoken against me?” Fanny Luve stood silently before him.

“He has spoken against you ... even He. He has said: Cast no stone. No stone shall be cast by me. He has said: Put her away....”

Her hands clenched under his mouth.

“—and I put you away.”

“You put me away!”

“I put you away.... Not for myself. I must travel. It is my mission to travel from College to College. I must be away much from my home, bringing where I can to my brothers the Word ... the Word of our Lord who puts you away. I put you away ... for the sake of my child.”

“Whom you have never seen!”

“Whom you shall never see—“