Chapter IV: Part 4

The dark comes up, my little love, and dyes
Your fallen lids with stain of ebony,
And draws a thread of fear ’tween you and me
Pulling thin blindness down across our eyes—
And far within the vale a lost bird cries.

Does not the wind moan round your painted towers
Like rats within an empty granary?
The clapper lost, and long blown out to sea
Your windy doves. And here the black bat cowers
Against your clock that never strikes the hours.

And now I say, has not the mountain’s base
Here trembled long ago unto the cry
“I love you, ah, I love you!” Now we die
And lay, all silent, to the earth our face.
Shall that cast out the echo of this place?

Has not one in the dark funereal
Heard foot-fall fearful, born of no man’s tread,
And felt the wings of death, though no wing spread
And on his cheek a tear, though no tear fell—
And a voice saying without breath “Farewell!”

THE DOVE

PERSONS: │
AMELIA │_Sisters_
BURGSON │
VERA BURGSON│ 〃

THE DOVE— │_A young girl living with the_ BURGSONS

TIME—_Early morning_

PLACE—_The_ BURGSON _Apartment, a long, low rambling affair at the top
of a house in the heart of the city_.

_The decoration is garish, dealing heavily in reds and pinks. There is an evident attempt to make the place look luxuriously sensual. The furniture is all of the reclining type._

_The walls are covered with a striped paper in red and white. Only two pictures are evident, one of the Madonna and child, and one of an early English tandem race._

_There are firearms everywhere. Many groups of swords, ancient and modern, are secured to the walls. A pistol or two lie in chairs, etc._

_There is only one door, which leads out into the back hall directly back centre._

AMELIA BURGSON _is a woman rather over the normal in height, with large braids of very yellow hair, done about a long face. She seems vitally hysterical_.

VERA BURGSON _is small, thin and dark_.

THE DOVE _is a slight girl barely out of her teens; she is as delicate as china with almost dangerously transparent skin. Her nose is high-bridged and thin, her hands and feet are also very long and delicate. She has red hair, very elegantly coiffured. When she moves_ [_seldom_] _the slightest line runs between her legs, giving her the expectant waiting air of a deer._

_At the rising of the curtain_ THE DOVE, _gowned in white, is seated on the divan polishing the blade of an immense sword. Half reclining to her right lies_ VERA _in a thin yellow morning gown. A French novel has half fallen from her hand. Her eyes are closed._

THE DOVE—Yes, I’m hurrying.

VERA—That’s best, she will be back soon.

THE DOVE—She is never gone long.

VERA—No, never very long—one would grow old waiting for the day on which she would stay an hour—a whole hour.

THE DOVE—Yes, that’s true.

VERA—[_Wearily._] She says we live dangerously; [_laughs_] why, we can’t even keep the flies out.

THE DOVE—Yes, there are a great many flies.

VERA—[_After a pause._] Shall I ever have a lover, do you suppose?

THE DOVE—[_Turning the sword over._] No, I suppose not.

VERA—Yet Amelia and I have made it our business to know—everything.

THE DOVE—Yes?

VERA—Yes. We say this little thing in French and that little thing in Spanish, and we collect knives and pistols, but we only shoot our buttons off with the guns and cut our darning cotton with the knives, and we’ll never, never be perverse though our entire education has been about knees and garters and pinches on hindquarters—elegantly bestowed—, and we keep a few animals—very badly—hoping to see something first-hand—and our beds are as full of yellow pages and French jokes as a bird’s nest is full of feathers— God! [_she stands up abruptly_] little one, why do I wear lace at my elbows?

THE DOVE—You have pretty arms.

VERA—Nonsense! Lace swinging back and forth like that, tickling my arms, well, that’s not beauty——

THE DOVE—I know.

VERA—[_Returning to her couch._] I sometimes wonder what you do know, you are such a strange happening, anyway. Well then, tell me what you think of me and what you think of my sister, you have been here long enough. Why do you stay? Do you love us?

THE DOVE—I love something that you have.

VERA—What?

THE DOVE—Your religious natures.

VERA—Good heavens!

THE DOVE—You misunderstand me. I call that imagination that is the growth of ignorance, religion.

VERA—And why do you like that?

THE DOVE—Because it goes farther than knowledge.

VERA—You know, sometimes I wish——

THE DOVE—Yes?

VERA—That you had lived all we pretend we have.

THE DOVE—Why?

VERA—I don’t know, but somehow someone like you should know—everything.

THE DOVE—Do I seem so young?

VERA—I know, that’s what’s so odd. [_Impatiently._] For heaven’s sake, will you stop polishing that infernal weapon!

THE DOVE—[_Quietly._] She said to me:

“Take all the blood stains off first, then polish it.”

VERA—There you are; she is quite mad, there’s no doubt. Blood stains! Why, she would be afraid to cut her chops with it—and as for the rest of her manifestations—nonsense!

THE DOVE—She carries a pistol with her, just to go around the corner for a pound of butter.

VERA—It’s wicked! She keeps an enormous blunderbuss in the corner of her room, but when I make up her bed, all I find is some Parisienne bathing girl’s picture stuck full of pin holes——

THE DOVE—I know, she sits beside me for hours making those pin holes in the borders of everything in sight.

VERA—[_With a strange anger._] Why do you stay?

THE DOVE—Why should I go?

VERA—I should think this house and two such advanced virgins as Amelia and myself would drive you to despair——

THE DOVE—No, no, I’m not driven to despair——

VERA—What do you find here?

THE DOVE—I love Amelia.

VERA—Another reason for going away.

THE DOVE—Is it?

VERA—Yes, it is.

THE DOVE—Strange, I don’t feel that way about it.

VERA—Sometimes I think——

THE DOVE—Yes?

VERA—That you are the mad one, and that we are just eccentric.

THE DOVE—Yet my story is quite simple.

VERA—I’m not so certain.

THE DOVE—Yet you have heard it.

VERA—There’s more than one hears.

THE DOVE—I was born on a farm——

VERA—So you say.

THE DOVE—I became very fond of moles—it’s so daring of them to be in the darkness underground. And then I like the open fields, too—they say there’s nothing like nature for the simple spirit.

VERA—Yes, and I’ve long had my suspicions of nature.

THE DOVE—Be that as it may, my brothers were fond of me—in a way, and my father in—a way—then I came to New York——

VERA—And took up the painting of china——

THE DOVE—Exactly. I was at that for three years, then one day I met you walking through the park, do you remember? You had a parasol, you tipped it back of your head, you looked at me a long time. Then I met Amelia, by the same high fence in the same park, and I bowed to her in an almost military fashion, my heels close together——

VERA—And you never did anything wild, insane——

THE DOVE—It depends on what you call wild, insane——

VERA—[_With great excitement._] Have you ever taken opium or hasheesh?

THE DOVE—[_As if answering._] There are many kinds of dreams—in one you laugh, in another you weep——

VERA—[_Wringing her hands._] Yes, yes, once I dreamed. A dream in the day, with my eyes wide open. I dreamt I was a Dresden doll and that I had been blown down by the wind and that I broke all to pieces—that is, my arms and my head broke all to pieces—but that I was surprised to find that my china skirt had become flexible, as if it were made of chiffon and lace.

THE DOVE—You see, there are many dreams——

VERA—Have you ever felt that your bones were utterly sophisticated but that your flesh was keeping them from expressing themselves?

THE DOVE—Or vice versa?

VERA—Yes, or vice versa.

THE DOVE—There are many kinds of dreams——

VERA—You know, I’m afraid of you!

THE DOVE—Me?

VERA—Yes, you seem so gentle—do we not call you the Dove? And you are so little—so little it’s almost immoral, you make me feel as if——

THE DOVE—As if?

VERA—Well, as if your terrible quality were not one of action, but just the opposite, as if you wanted to prevent nothing.

THE DOVE—There are enough people preventing things, aren’t there?

VERA—Yes—that’s why you frighten me.

THE DOVE—Because I let everything go on, as far as it can go?

VERA—Yes, because you disturb nothing.

THE DOVE—I see.

VERA—You never meddle——

THE DOVE—No, I never meddle.

VERA—You don’t even observe as other people do, you don’t watch. Why, if I were to come to you, wringing my hands saying, “Amelia has shot herself,” I don’t believe you would stand up.

THE DOVE—No, I don’t suppose I would, but I would do something for all that.

VERA—What?

THE DOVE—I should want to be very sure you wrung your hands as much as possible, and that Amelia had gotten all there was to get out of the bullet before she died.

VERA—It’s all very well, but why don’t you do something?

THE DOVE—A person who is capable of anything needs no practice.

VERA—You are probably maligning yourself, you are a gentle creature, a very girl——

THE DOVE—If you were sensitive you would not say that.

VERA—Well, perhaps. [_She laughs a hard laugh._] What can you expect of a lumber dealer’s daughter?

THE DOVE—Why are you so restless, Vera?

VERA—Because I’m a woman. I leave my life entirely to my imagination and my imagination is terrific. I can’t even turn to religion for the _prie-dieu_ inclines me to one thing only—so there you are!

THE DOVE—You imagine—many things?

VERA—You know well enough—sitting here day after day, giving my mind everything to do, the body nothing——

THE DOVE—What do you want, Vera?

VERA—Some people would say a lover, but I don’t say a lover; some people would say a home, but I don’t say a home. You see I have imagined myself beyond the need of the usual home and beyond the reach of the usual lover——

THE DOVE—Then?

VERA—Perhaps what I really want is a reason for using one of these pistols! [_She laughs and lies back._ THE DOVE, _having risen, goes up behind_ VERA _and places her hand on her throat_.]

THE DOVE—Now you may use one of those pistols.

VERA—[_Startled, but making no attempt to remove the_ DOVE’S _hand_.] For such a _little_ thing?

THE DOVE—[_Dropping her hand, once more taking up her old position, sword on knee._] Ah!

VERA—Why do you say that? [_She is evidently agitated._]

THE DOVE—I suppose I shall _always_ wait.

VERA—What is the matter?

THE DOVE—Always, always!

VERA—What _is_ the matter?

THE DOVE—I suppose I’m waiting for the person who will know that anything is a reason for using a pistol, unless one is waiting for the obvious, and the obvious has never been sufficient reason.

VERA—It’s all hopeless, I am hopeless and Amelia is hopeless, and as for you—— [_She makes a gesture._]

THE DOVE—I’ve never held anything against hopelessness.

VERA—Now what do you mean?

THE DOVE—It doesn’t matter.

VERA—[_After a long pause._] I wish you danced.

THE DOVE—Perhaps I do.

VERA—It might make me happier.

THE DOVE—[_Irrelevantly._] Why don’t people get angry at each other, quite suddenly and without reason?

VERA—Why should they?

THE DOVE—Isn’t there something fine and cold and detached about a causeless anger?

VERA—I suppose so, it depends——

THE DOVE—No, it does not depend, that’s exactly it; to have a reason is to cheapen rage. I wish every man were beyond the reach of his own biography.

VERA—You are either quite an idiot, or a saint.

THE DOVE—I thought we had discussed that.

VERA—[_Dashed but not showing it._] Yes, a saint.

THE DOVE—[_Continuing._] I’m impatient of necessary continuity, I’m too sensitive, perhaps. I want the beautiful thing to be, how can logic have anything to do with it, or probable sequence?

VERA—You make my hair stand on end!

THE DOVE—Of course, that’s logical!

VERA—Then how is it you like Amelia? And how do you stand me?

THE DOVE—Because you are two splendid dams erected about two little puddles.

VERA—You’re horrid!

THE DOVE—Only horrid!

VERA—Yes, I’m really afraid of you.

THE DOVE—Afraid?

VERA—For instance, when you’re out of this room all these weapons might be a lot of butter knives or pop guns, but let you come in——

THE DOVE—Well?

VERA—It becomes an arsenal.

THE DOVE—Yet you call me the Dove.

VERA—Amelia called you the Dove, I’d never have thought of it. It’s just like Amelia to call the only dangerous thing she ever knew the “Dove.”

THE DOVE—Yes, there’s something in that.

VERA—Shall I sing for you?

THE DOVE—If you like.

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.

Her face, it is true, was not that plump, downy and senseless countenance of the early young—it was thin and dark and marked with a few very sensitive wrinkles; about the mouth there were signs of a humour she had never possessed, of a love she had never known, of a joy she had never experienced and of a wisdom impossible for her to have acquired. Her still, curious eyes with their blue-white borders and the splendid irises were half veiled by strange dusty lids. The hair, that had once been drawn back, was still drawn back, but no appallingly severe features were laid bare. Instead the hair seemed to confer a favour on all those who might look upon its restrained luxury, for it uncovered a face at once valuable and unusual.

Her smile was rich in colour—the scarlet of her gums, the strange whiteness of her teeth, the moisture of the sensitive mouth, all seemed as if Madame Boliver were something dyed through with perfect and rare life.

Now when she entered a room everyone paused, looking up and speaking together. She was quite conscious of this and it pleased her—not because she was too unutterably vain, but because it was so new and so unexpected.

For a while her very youth satisfied her—she lived with herself as though she were a second person who had been permitted access to the presence of some lovely and some longed-for dream.

She did not know what to do. If she could have found religion newly with her new youth she would have worshipped and have been profoundly glad of the kneeling down and the rising up attendant with faith, but this was a part of her old childhood and it did not serve.

She had prayed then because she was ugly; she could not pray now because she was beautiful—she wanted something new to stand before, to speak to.

One by one the old and awkward things went, leaving in their wake Venetian glass and bowls of onyx, silks, cushions and perfume. Her books became magazines with quaint, unsurpassable and daring illustrations.

Presently she had a salon. She was the rage. Gentlemen in political whiskers, pomaded and curled, left their coats in the embrace of pompous and refined footmen.

Young students with boutonnières and ambitions came; an emissary or two dropped in, proffered their hearts and departed. Poets and musicians, littérateurs and artists experimenting in the modern, grouped themselves about her mantels like butterflies over bonbons and poured sentiment upon sentiment into her ears.

Several gentlemen of leisure and millions courted her furiously with small tears in the corners of their alert eyes. Middle-aged professors and one deacon were among the crowd that filled her handsome apartment on those days when she entertained.

There was something about Madame Boliver that could not quite succumb to herself. She was still afraid; she would start, draw her hand away and pale abruptly in the middle of some ardent proposal—she would hurry to the mirror at such times, though she never turned her head to look in.

Was it possible that she was beautiful now? And if so, would it remain? And her heart said, “Yes, it will remain,” until at last she believed it.

She put the past behind her and tried to forget it. It hurt her to remember it, as if it were something that she had done in a moment of absent-mindedness and of which she had to be ashamed. She remembered it as one remembers some small wrong deed hidden for years. She thought about her past unattractiveness as another would have thought of some cruelty. Her eyes watered when she remembered her way of looking at herself in her twenties. Her mouth trembled when she thought back to its severity and its sharp retorts.

Her very body reproached her for all that had been forced upon it in her other youth, and a strange passion came upon her, turning her memory of her sisters into something at times like that hatred felt by the oppressed who remember the oppression when it has given way to plenty.

But now she was free. She expanded, she sang, she dreamed for long hours, her elbows upon the casement, looking out into the garden. She smiled, remembering the old custom of serenading, and wondered when she, too, would know it.

That she was fifty-three never troubled her. It never even occurred to her. She had been fifty-three long ago at twenty, and now she was twenty at fifty-three, that was all—this was compensation, and if she had been through her middle age in youth she could go through her youth in middle age.

At times she thought how much more beautiful nature is in its treacheries than its remedies.

Those who hovered about her offered, time on time, to marry her, to carry her away into Italy or to Spain, to lavish money and devotion on her, and in the beginning she had been almost too ready to accept them in their assurances, because the very assurances were so new and so delightful.

But in spite of it she was, somewhere beneath her youth, old enough to know that she did not love as she would love, and she waited with a patience made pleasant by the constant attentions of the multitude.

And then Petkoff, “the Russian,” had come, accompanied by one of the younger students.

A heavy fur cap came down to the borders of his squinting and piercing eyes. He wore a mixture of clothing that proclaimed him at once foreign and poor. His small moustache barely covered sensitive and well shaped lips, and the little line of hair that reached down on each side of his close-set ears gave him an early period expression as if he, too, in spite of his few years, might have lived in the time when she was a girl.

He could not have been much over thirty, perhaps just thirty—he said little but never took his eyes off the object of his interest.

He spoke well enough, with an occasional lapse into Russian, which was very piquant. He swept aside all other aspirants with his steady and centred gaze. He ignored the rest of the company so completely as to rob him of rudeness. If one is ignorant of the very presence of his fellow beings, at most he can only be called “strange.”

Petkoff was both an ambitious and a self-centred man—all his qualities were decisive and not hesitatingly crooked, providing he needed crookedness to win his point. He was attractive to Madame Boliver because he was as strange as she was herself, her youth was foreign, and so was Petkoff.

He had come to this country to start a venture that promised to be successful; in the meantime, he had to be careful both in person and in heart.

What he felt for Madame Boliver was at first astonishment that such a woman was still unmarried; he knew nothing of her past, and guessed at her age much below the real figure. After a while this astonishment gave way to pleasure and then to real and very sincere love.

He began to pay court to her, neglecting his business a little and worrying over that end of it, but persisting, nevertheless.

He could see that she, on her side, was becoming deeply attached to him. He would walk about in the park for hours arguing this affair out to himself. Both the shoulds and should nots.

It got him nowhere except into a state of impatience. He liked clear-cut acts and he could not decide to go or stay. As it was, nothing could be worse for his business than this same feverish indecision. He made up his mind.

Madame Boliver was radiantly happy. She began to draw away from a life of entertainment and, instead, turned most of her energies into the adoration of her first real love. She accepted him promptly, and with a touch of her old firm and sharp decisiveness, and a hint of her utter frankness. He told her that she took him as she would have taken a piece of cake at a tea party, and they both laughed.

That was in the Winter. Madame Boliver was fifty-five—he never asked her how old she was and she never thought to tell him. They set the day for their wedding early in the following June.

They were profoundly happy. One by one the younger, more ardent admirers fell off, but very slowly; they turned their heads a little as they went, being both too vain and too skeptical to believe that this would last.

She still held receptions and still her rooms were flooded, but when Petkoff entered, a little better dressed but still a bit heedless of the throng, they hushed their highest hilarities and spoke of the new novels and the newest trend in art.

Petkoff had taken notice of them to that degree necessary to a man who knows what he has won, and from whom and how many. He looked upon them casually, but with a hint of well-being.

Madame Boliver grew more beautiful, more radiant, more easeful. Her movements began to resemble flowing water; she was almost too happy, too supple, too conscious of her well-being. She became arrogant, but still splendid; she became vain, but still gracious; she became accustomed to herself, but still reflective. She could be said to have bloomed at too auspicious an age; she was old enough to appreciate it, and this is a very dangerous thing.

She spent hours at the hair dresser’s and the dressmaker’s. Her dressing table resembled a battlefield. It supported all the armament for keeping age at a distance. She rode in the avenue in an open carriage, and smiled when the society notices mentioned her name and ran her picture.

She finally gave one the impression of being beautiful, but too conscious of it; talented, but too vain; easy of carriage, but too reliant on it; of being strange and rare and wonderful, but a little too strange, a little too rare, a little too wonderful. She became magnificently complex to outward appearances, yet in her soul Madame Boliver still kept her honesty, her frankness and her simplicity.

And then one day Madame Boliver took to her bed. It began with a headache and ended with severe chills. She hoped to get up on the following day, and she remained there a week; she put her party off, expecting to be able to be about, but instead she gave it sitting in a chair supported by cushions.

Petkoff was worried and morose. He had given a good deal of time to Madame Boliver, and he cared for her in a selfish and all-engrossing way. When she stood up no longer he broke a Venetian tumbler by throwing it into the fireplace. When she laughed at this he suddenly burst out into very heavy weeping. She tried to comfort him, but he would not be comforted. She promised him that she would walk soon, as a mother promises a child some longed-for object. When she said, “I will be well, dear, soon; after all I’m a young woman,” he stopped and looked at her through a film of painful tears.

“But are you?” he said, voicing for the first time his inner fear.

And it was then that the horror of the situation dawned upon her. In youth, when youth comes rightly, there is old age in which to lose it complacently, but when it comes in old age there is no time to watch it go.

She sat up and stared at him.

“Why, yes,” she said in a flat and firm voice, “that’s so. I am no longer of few years.”

She could not say “no longer young,” because she was young.

“It will make no difference.”

“Ah,” she said, “it will make no difference to you, but it will make a difference to us.”

She lay back and sighed, and presently she asked him to leave her a little while.

When he had gone she summoned the doctor.

She said: “My friend—am I dying—so soon?”

He shook his head emphatically. “Of course not,” he assured her; “we will have you up in a week or so.”

“What is it, then, that keeps me here now?”

“You have tired yourself out, that is all. You see, such extensive entertaining, my dear madame, will tax the youngest of us.” He shook his head at this and twisted his moustache. She sent him away also.

The next few days were happy ones. She felt better. She sat up without fatigue. She was joyful in Petkoff’s renewed affections. He had been frightened, and he lavished more extravagant praise and endearing terms on her than ever before. He was like a man who, seeing his fortune go, found how dear it was to him after all and how necessary when it returned to him. By almost losing her he appreciated what he should have felt if he had lost her indeed.

It got to be a joke between them that they had held any fears at all. At the club he beat his friends on the back and cried:

“Gentlemen, a beautiful and young woman.” And they used to beat his back, exclaiming: “Lucky, by God!”

She ordered a large stock of wine and cakes for the wedding party, bought some new Venetian glasses and indulged in a few rare old carpets for the floor. She had quite a fancy, too, for a new gown offered at a remarkably low sum, but she began to curb herself, for she had been very extravagant as it was.

And then one day she died.

Petkoff came in a wild, strange mood. Four candles were burning at head and feet, and Madame Boliver was more lovely than ever. Stamping, so that he sent up little spirals of dust from the newly acquired carpet, Petkoff strode up and down beside the bier. He leaned over and lit a cigarette by one of the flickering flames of the candles. Madame Boliver’s elderly sister, who was kneeling, coughed and looked reproachfully upward at the figure of Petkoff, who had once again forgotten everyone and everything. “Damn it!” he said, putting his fingers into his vest.

I’D HAVE YOU THINK OF ME

As one who, leaning on the wall, once drew
Thick blossoms down, and hearkened to the hum
Of heavy bees slow rounding the wet plum,
And heard across the fields the patient coo
Of restless birds bewildered with the dew.

As one whose thoughts were mad in painful May,
With melancholy eyes turned toward her love,
And toward the troubled earth whereunder throve
The chilly rye and coming hawthorn spray—
With one lean, pacing hound, for company.

THE RABBIT