Part 8

VERA—Or shall I show you the album that no one ever sees? [_She laughs._] If we had any friends we would have to throw that book in the fire.

THE DOVE—And you would have to clear the entry——

VERA—True. It’s because of that picture of the Venetian courtesans that I send Amelia out for the butter, I don’t dare let the grocer call.

THE DOVE—You have cut yourselves off—just because you’re lonely.

VERA—Yes, just because we are lonely.

THE DOVE—It’s quite wonderful.

VERA—It’s a wonder the neighbours don’t complain of Amelia’s playing that way on the violin.

THE DOVE—I had not noticed.

VERA—No, I presume not, but everyone else in the house has. No nice woman slurs as many notes as Amelia does! [_At this moment_ AMELIA _enters the outer room. She is wearing a cloak with three shoulder-capes, a large plumed hat, and skirt with many flounces._]

AMELIA—[_From the entry._] You should come and see Carpaccio’s Deux Courtisanes Vénitiennes now, the sun is shining right in on the head of the one in the foreground. [_She begins to hum an Italian street song._] Well, I have brought a little something and a bottle of wine. The wine is for you, my Dove—and for you, Vera, I’ve a long green feather. [_Pause in which_ THE DOVE _continues to polish the blade of the sword_. VERA _has picked up her book_.]

AMELIA—[_Advancing into the room, shrugging._] It’s damp! [_Seeing_ THE DOVE _still at work_.] What a sweet, gentle creature, what a little Dove it is! Ah, God, it’s a sin, truly it’s a sin that I, a woman with temperament, permit a young girl to stay in the same room with me!

THE DOVE—[_In a peaceful voice._] I’ve loaded all the pistols——

VERA—[_With suppressed anger._] Shined all the swords, ground all the poniard points! Attack a man now if you dare, he’ll think you’re playing with him!

AMELIA—[_In an awful voice._] Vera! [_She begins pacing._] Disaster! disaster!—wherever I go, disaster! A woman selling fish tried to do me out of a quarter and when I remonstrated with her, she said with a wink: “I, too, have been bitten by the fox!”

THE DOVE—If you’ll sit down I’ll make some tea.

AMELIA—No, no, we’ll have a little lunch soon, only I never can get the corks out of bottles.

THE DOVE—I can.

VERA—Rubbish! [_She gets up and goes out._]

AMELIA—Well, has anything happened since I went out?

THE DOVE—No.

AMELIA—No, no, it never does. [_She begins to walk about hurriedly._] Aren’t there a great many flies in here?

THE DOVE—Yes, the screens should be put up.

AMELIA—No, no, no, I don’t want anything to be shut out. Flies have a right to more than life, they have a right to be curious.

THE DOVE—A bat flew into the room last night.

AMELIA—[_Shuddering._] Some day I shall look like a bat, having beaten my wings about every corner of the world, and never having hung over anything but myself——

THE DOVE—And this morning, early, before you got up, the little seamstress’ monkey walked in through the window——

AMELIA—[_Stopping short._] Are we to become infested?

THE DOVE—Yesterday the mail-man offered me some dancing mice, he’s raising them.

AMELIA—[_Throwing up her hands._] There! You see! [_Pause._] Why should I wear red heels? Why does my heart beat?

THE DOVE—Red heels are handsome.

AMELIA—Yes, yes, that’s what I say [_she begins to dance_]. Little one, were you ever held in the arms of the one you love?

THE DOVE—Who knows?

AMELIA—If we had not been left an income we might have been in danger—well, let us laugh [_she takes a few more dance steps_]. Eating makes one fat, nothing more, and exercising reduces one, nothing more. Drink wine—put flesh on the instep, the instep that used to tell such a sweet story—and then the knees—fit for nothing but prayers! The hands—too fat to wander! [_she waves her arm_]. Then one exercises, but it’s never the same; what one has, is always better than what one regains. Is it not so, my little one? But never mind, don’t answer. I’m in an excellent humour—I could talk for hours, all about myself—to myself, for myself. God! I’d like to tear out all the wires in the house! Destroy all the tunnels in the city, leave nothing underground or hidden or useful, oh, God, God! [_She has danced until she comes directly in front of_ THE DOVE. _She drops on her knees and lays her arms on either side of_ THE DOVE.] I hate the chimneys on the houses, I hate the doorways, I hate you, I hate Vera, but most of all I hate my red heels!

THE DOVE—[_Almost inaudibly._] Now, now!

AMELIA—[_In high excitement._] Give me the sword! It has been sharpened long enough, give it to me, give it to me! [_She makes a blind effort to find the sword; finding_ THE DOVE’S _hand instead, she clutches it convulsively. Slowly_ THE DOVE _bares Amelia’s left shoulder and breast, and leaning down, sets her teeth in. Amelia gives a slight, short stifled cry. At the same moment_ VERA _appears in the doorway with the uncorked bottle_. THE DOVE _stands up swiftly, holding a pistol. She turns in the doorway hastily vacated by_ VERA.]

THE DOVE—So! [_She bows, a deep military bow, and turning goes into the entry._]

THE VOICE OF THE DOVE—For the house of Burgson! [_A moment later a shot is heard._]

AMELIA—[_Running after her._] Oh, my God!

VERA—What has she done?

AMELIA—[_Reappearing in the doorway with the picture of the Venetian courtesans, through which there is a bullet hole—slowly, but with emphasis._] _This_ is obscene!

CURTAIN

MOTHER

A feeble light flickered in the pawn shop at Twenty-nine. Usually, in the back of this shop, reading by this light—a rickety lamp with a common green cover—sat Lydia Passova, the mistress.

Her long heavy head was divided by straight bound hair. Her high firm bust was made still higher and still firmer by German corsets. She was excessively tall, due to extraordinarily long legs. Her eyes were small, and not well focused. The left was slightly distended from the long use of a magnifying glass.

She was middle-aged, and very slow in movement, though well balanced. She wore coral in her ears, a coral necklace, and many coral finger rings.

There was about her jewelry some of the tragedy of all articles that find themselves in pawn, and she moved among the trays like the guardians of cemetery grounds, who carry about with them some of the lugubrious stillness of the earth on which they have been standing.

She dealt, in most part, in cameos, garnets, and a great many inlaid bracelets and cuff-links. There were a few watches however, and silver vessels and fishing tackle and faded slippers—and when, at night, she lit the lamp, these and the trays of precious and semi-precious stones, and the little ivory crucifixes, one on either side of the window, seemed to be leading a swift furtive life of their own, conscious of the slow pacing woman who was known to the street as Lydia Passova.

No one knew her, not even her lover—a little nervous fellow, an Englishman quick in speech with a marked accent, a round-faced youth with a deep soft cleft in his chin, on which grew two separate tufts of yellow hair. His eyes were wide and pale, and his eyeteeth prominent.

He dressed in tweeds, walked with the toes in, seemed sorrowful when not talking, laughed a great deal and was nearly always to be found in the café about four of an afternoon.

When he spoke it was quick and jerky. He had spent a great deal of his time in Europe, especially the watering places—and had managed to get himself in trouble in St. Moritz, it was said, with a well-connected family.

He liked to seem a little eccentric and managed it simply enough while in America. He wore no hat, and liked to be found reading the _London Times_, under a park lamp at three in the morning.

Lydia Passova was never seen with him. She seldom left her shop, however, she was always pleased when he wanted to go anywhere: “Go,” she would say, kissing his hand, “and when you are tired come back.”

Sometimes she would make him cry. Turning around she would look at him a little surprised, with lowered lids, and a light tightening of the mouth.

“Yes,” he would say, “I know I’m trivial—well then, here I go, I will leave you, not disturb you any longer!” and darting for the door he would somehow end by weeping with his head buried in her lap.

She would say, “There, there—why are you so nervous?”

And he would laugh again: “My father was a nervous man, and my mother was high-strung, and as for me——” He would not finish.

Sometimes he would talk to her for long hours, she seldom answering, occupied with her magnifying glass and her rings, but in the end she was sure to send him out with: “That’s all very true, I have no doubt; now go out by yourself and think it over”—and he would go, with something like relief, embracing her large hips with his small strong arms.

They had known each other a very short time, three or four months. He had gone in to pawn his little gold ring, he was always in financial straits, though his mother sent him five pounds a week; and examining the ring, Lydia Passova had been so quiet, inevitable, necessary, that it seemed as if he must have known her forever—“at some time,” as he said.

Yet they had never grown together. They remained detached, and on her part, quiet, preoccupied.

He never knew how much she liked him. She never told him; if he asked she would look at him in that surprised manner, drawing her mouth together.

In the beginning he had asked her a great many times, clinging to her, and she moved about arranging her trays with a slight smile, and in the end lowered her hand and stroked him gently.

He immediately became excited. “Let us dance,” he cried, “I have a great capacity for happiness.”

“Yes, you are very happy,” she said.

“You understand, don’t you?” he asked abruptly.

“What?”

“That my tears are nothing, have no significance, they are just a protective fluid—when I see anything happening that is about to affect my happiness I cry, that’s all.”

“Yes,” Lydia Passova said, “I understand.” She turned around reaching up to some shelves, and over her shoulder she asked, “Does it hurt?”

“No, it only frightens me. You never cry, do you?”

“No, I never cry.”

That was all. He never knew where she had come from, what her life had been, if she had or had not been married, if she had or had not known lovers; all that she would say was, “Well, you are with me, does that tell you nothing?” and he had to answer, “No, it tells me nothing.”

When he was sitting in the café he often thought to himself, “There’s a great woman”—and he was a little puzzled why he thought this because his need of her was so entirely different from any need he seemed to remember having possessed before.

There was no swagger in him about her, the swagger he had always felt for his conquests with women. Yet there was not a trace of shame—he was neither proud nor shy about Lydia Passova, he was something entirely different. He could not have said himself what his feeling was—but it was in no way disturbing.

People had, it is true, begun to tease him:

“You’re a devil with the ladies.”

Where this had made him proud, now it made him uneasy.

“Now, there’s a certain Lydia Passova for instance, who would ever have thought——”

Furious he would rise.

“So, you do feel——”

He would walk away, stumbling a little among the chairs, putting his hand on the back of every one on the way to the door.

Yet he could see that, in her time, Lydia Passova had been a “perverse” woman—there was, about everything she did, an economy that must once have been a very sensitive and a very sensuous impatience, and because of this everyone who saw her felt a personal loss.

Sometimes, tormented, he would come running to her, stopping abruptly, putting it to her this way:

“Somebody has said something to me.”

“When—where?”

“Now, in the café.”

“What?”

“I don’t know, a reproach——”

She would say:

“We are all, unfortunately, only what we are.”

She had a large and beautiful angora cat, it used to sit in the tray of amethysts and opals and stare at her from very bright cold eyes. One day it died, and calling her lover to her she said:

“Take her out and bury her.” And when he had buried her he came back, his lips twitching.

“You loved that cat—this will be a great loss.”

“Have I a memory?” she inquired.

“Yes,” he answered.

“Well,” she said quietly, fixing her magnifying glass firmly in her eye. “We have looked at each other, that is enough.”

And then one day she died.

The caretaker of the furnace came to him, where he was sipping his liqueur as he talked to his cousin, a pretty little blond girl, who had a boring and comfortably provincial life, and who was beginning to chafe.

He got up, trembling, pale, and hurried out.

The police were there, and said they thought it had been heart failure.

She lay on the couch in the inner room. She was fully dressed, even to her coral ornaments; her shoes were neatly tied—large bows of a ribbed silk.

He looked down. Her small eyes were slightly open, the left, that had used the magnifying glass, was slightly wider than the other. For a minute she seemed quite natural. She had the look of one who is about to say: “Sit beside me.”

Then he felt the change. It was in the peculiar heaviness of the head—sensed through despair and not touch. The high breasts looked very still, the hands were half closed, a little helpless, as in life—hands that were too proud to “hold.” The drawn-up limb exposed a black petticoat and a yellow stocking. It seemed that she had become hard—set, as in a mould—that she rejected everything now, but in rejecting had bruised him with a last terrible pressure. He moved and knelt down. He shivered. He put his closed hands to his eyes. He could not weep.

She was an old woman, he could see that. The ceasing of that one thing that she could still have for anyone made it simple and direct.

Something oppressed him, weighed him down, bent his shoulders, closed his throat. He felt as one feels who has become conscious of passion for the first time, in the presence of a relative.

He flung himself on his face, like a child.

That night, however, he wept, lying in bed, his knees drawn up.

SONG IN AUTUMN

The wind comes down before the creeping night And you, my love, are hid within the green Long grasses; and the dusk steals up between Each leaf, as through the shadow quick with fright The startled hare leaps up and out of sight.

The hedges whisper in their loaded boughs Where warm birds slumber, pressing wing to wing, All pulsing faintly, like a muted string Above us where we weary of our vows— And hidden underground the soft moles drowse.

THE NIGGER

John Hardaway was dying. That wasn’t what he minded. His small, well-shaped hands twitched at the soft coverlet which rose and fell slowly with his breathing, and he breathed hard with mouth open, showing all his teeth.

Rabb, the nigger, crouched in the corner. The air about her was heavy with her odour. She kept blinking her eyes. She was awed at the presence of her master, but ashamed too, ashamed that he was dying—ashamed as she would have been had he been caught at his toilet.

Rabb was a good nigger; she had served John Hardaway’s mother, she had seen her die—old Mrs. Hardaway fluttered against her lace like a bird caught in deep foliage—Rabb had been able to do something about Mrs. Hardaway’s death because Mrs. Hardaway had loved her, in her way.

Mrs. Hardaway had died understandably—she had breathed hard too, opening her mouth, but it was gentle and eager, like a child at the breast.

Rabb had tried to be near her, had put her hands on her. But the thing she was trying to touch lay in some hidden corner of Mrs. Hardaway, as a cat hides away under a bed, and Rabb had done nothing after all.

But it was different with John Hardaway. She watched life playing coquettishly with him. It played with him as a dog plays with an old coat. It shook him suddenly in great gusts of merriment. It played with his eyelids; it twisted his mouth, it went in and out of his body, like a flame running through a funnel—throwing him utterly aside in the end, leaving him cold, lonely, and forbidding.

John Hardaway hated negroes with that hate a master calls love. He was a Southerner and never forgot it. Rabb had nursed him when he was an infant, she had seen him grow up into a big boy, and then she had been there when he broke his mistress’s back by some flaw in his otherwise flawless passion.

From time to time John Hardaway called for water. And when Rabb tried to lift his head, he cursed her for a ‘black bitch’—but in the end he had to let her hold it.

John Hardaway was fifty-nine, he had lived well, scornfully, and this always makes the end easier; he had been a gentleman in the only way a Southerner has of being one—he never forgot that he was a Hardaway——

He called out to her now:

“When I die—leave the room.”

“Yes, sah,” she whispered sadly.

“Bring me the broth.”

She brought it trembling. She was very tired and very hungry, and she wanted to whistle but she only whispered:

“Ain’t there nothing I kin do for you?”

“Open the window.”

“It’s night air, sah——”

“Open it, fool——”

She went to the window and opened it. She was handsome when she reached up, and her nose was almost as excellent as certain Jewish noses; her throat was smooth, and it throbbed.

Toward ten o’clock that night John Hardaway began to sing to himself. He was fond of French, but what he learned in French he sang in English.

“Ah, my little one—I have held you on my knee——

“I have kissed your ears and throat——

“Now I set you down——

“You may do as you will.”

He tried to turn over—but failed, and so he lay there staring into the fire.

At this point in the death of John Hardaway, Rabb, the nigger, came out of her corner, and ceased trembling. She was hungry and began heating some soup in a saucepan.

“What are you doing?” John Hardaway inquired abruptly.

“I’s hungry, sah.”

“Then get out of here—get into the kitchen.”

“Yes, sah,” but she did not move.

John Hardaway breathed heavily, a mist went over his eyes—presently, after interminable years, he lifted his lids. Rabb was now slowly sipping the steaming soup.

“You damned nigger!”

She got up from her haunches hurriedly—placing her hand in front of her, backing toward the door.

“Little one, I have taken you on my knee——”

Rabb crept back—she came up to the bed.

“Massah, don’t you think——?”

“What?”

“A priest—maybe?”

“Fool!”

“Yes, sah, I only wanted to make safe.”

He tried to laugh. He pressed his knees together. He had forgotten her.

Finally toward dawn he began to wander.

Rabb moistened the roll of red flesh inside her lip and set her teeth. She began to grin at nothing at all, stroking her hips.

He called to her.

“I want to tell you something.”

She came forward—rolling her eyes.

“Come closer.”

She came.

“Lean down!” She leaned down, but already the saliva began to fill her mouth.

“Are you frightened?”

“No, sah,” she lied.

He raised his hand but it fell back, feebly. “Keep your place,” he whispered, and instantly went to sleep.

He began to rattle in his throat, while Rabb crouched in the corner, holding her breasts in her folded arms and rocking softly on the balls of her feet.

The rattling kept on. Rabb began creeping toward him on hands and knees.

“Massah!”

He did not move.

“John!”

He felt a strange sensation—he lifted his eyelids with their fringe of white lashes and almost inaudibly said:

“Now go!”

He had closed his eyes a long time, when he was troubled with the thought that someone was trying to get into his body as he left it. He opened his eyes and there stood Rabb the nigger very close, looking down at him.

A gush of blood sprang from his nose.

“No, sah!”

He began to gasp. Rabb the nigger stood up to her full height and looked down at him. She began to fan him, quickly. He breathed more hurriedly, his chest falling together like a house of cards. He tried to speak, he could not.

Suddenly Rabb bent down and leaning her mouth to his, breathed into him, one great and powerful breath. His chest rose, he opened his eyes, said “Ah!” and died.

Rabb ran her tongue along her lips, and raising her eyes, stared at a spot on the wall a little higher than she was wont to. After a while she remembered her unfinished soup.

LULLABY

When I was a young child I slept with a dog, I lived without trouble and I thought no harm; I ran with the boys and I played leap-frog; Now it is a girl’s head that lies on my arm.

Then I grew a little, picked plantain in the yard; Now I dwell in Greenwich, and the people do not call; Then I planted pepper-seed and stamped on them hard. Now I am very quiet and I hardly plan at all.

Then I pricked my finger on a thorn, or a thistle, Put the finger in my mouth, and ran to my mother. Now I lie here, with my eyes on a pistol. There will be a morrow, and another, and another.

INDIAN SUMMER

At the age of fifty-three Madame Boliver was young again. She was suddenly swept away in a mad current of reckless and beautiful youth. What she had done with those years that had counted up into such a perfect conclusion, she could not tell—it was a strange, vague dream. She had been plain, almost ugly, shy, an old maid. She was tall and awkward—she sat down as if she were going to break when she was in those new years that girls call early bloom.

When she was thirty she had been frankly and astonishingly Yankee; she came toward one with an erect and angular stride. She was severe, silent and curious. It was probably due to this that she was called Madame. She dressed in black outlined with white collar and cuffs, her hair was drawn straight back and showed large lobed and pale ears. The tight drawn hair exposed her features to that utter and unlovely nakedness that some clean rooms are exposed to by the catching back of heavy and melancholy curtains—she looked out upon life with that same unaccustomed and expectant expression that best rooms wear when thrown open for the one yearly festivity that proclaims their owners well to do.

She had no friends and could not keep acquaintances—her speech was sharp, quick and truthful. She spoke seldom, but with such fierce strictness and accuracy that those who came into contact with her once, took precautions not to be thus exposed a second time.

She grew older steadily and without regret—long before the age of thirty she had given up all expectations of a usual life or any hopes of that called “unusual”; she walked in a straight path between the two, and she was content and speculated little upon this thing in her that had made her unloved and unlovely.

Her sisters had married and fallen away about her as blossoms are carried off, leaving the stalk—their children came like bits of pollen and she enjoyed them and was mildly happy. Once she, too, had dreamed of love, but that was before she had attained to the age of seventeen—by that time she knew that no one could or would ask for her hand—she was plain and unattractive and she was satisfied.

She had become at once the drudge and the adviser—all things were laid upon her both to solve and to produce. She laboured for others easily and willingly and they let her labour.

At fifty-three she blazed into a riotous Indian Summer of loveliness. She was tall and magnificent. She carried with her a flavour of some exotic flower; she exhaled something that savoured of those excellences of odour and tone akin to pain and to pleasure; she lent a plastic embodiment to all hitherto unembodied things. She was like some rare wood, carved into a melting form—she breathed abruptly as one who has been dead for half a century.