Lord, I wish I had of diedIn Egypt land!

　　While Elisha was speaking, Elizabeth felt that the Lord was speaking a message to her heart, thatthis fiery visitation was meant for her; and that she humbled herself to listen, God would give toher the interpretation. This certainty did not fill her with exultation, but with fear. She was afraidof what God might say–of what displeasure, what condemnation, what prophesies of trial yet to beendured might issue from His mouth.

　　Now Elisha ceased to speak, and rose; now he sat at the piano. There was muted singing allaround her; yet she waited. Before her mind’s eyes wavered, in a light like the light from a fire, theface of John, whom she had brought so unwillingly into the world. It was for his deliverance thatshe wept to-night: that he might be carried, past wrath unspeakable, into a state of grace.

　　They were singing:

　　‘Must Jesus bear the cross alone,And all the world go free?’

　　Elisha picked out the song on the piano, his fingers seeming to hesitate, almost to beunwilling. She, too, strained against her great unwillingness, but forced her heart to say Amen, asthe voice of Praying Mother Washington picked up the response:

　　‘No, there’s a cross for everyone.

　　And there’s a cross for me.’

　　She heard weeping near her—was it Ella Mae? or Florence? or the echo, magnified, of herown tears? The weeping was buried beneath the song. She had been hearing this song all her life,she had grown up with it, bur she had never understood it as well as she understood it now. It filedthe church, as though the church had merely become a hollow or a void, echoing with the voicesthat had driven her to this dark place. Her aunt had sung it always, harshly, under her breath, in abitter pride:

　　‘The consecrated cross I’ll bearTill death shall set me free,And then go home, a crown to wear’

　　For there’s a crown for me.’

　　She was probably an old, old woman now, still in the same harshness of spirit, singing thissong in the tiny house down home which she and Elizabeth had shared so long. And she did notknow of Elizabeth’s shame—Elizabeth had not written about John until long after she was marriedto Gabriel; and the Lord had never allowed her aunt to come to New York City. Her aunt hadalways prophesied that Elizabeth would come to no good end, proud, and vain, and foolish as shewas, and having been allowed to run wild all her childhood years.

　　Her aunt had come second in the series of disasters that has ended Elizabeth’s childhood.

　　First, when she eight, going nine, her mother had died, an event not immediately recognizedbyElizabe(was) thasadisaster,s(on) ince she had scarcely known her mother and had certainlynever loved her. Her mother had been very fair, and beautiful, and delicate of health, so that shestayed in bed most of the time, reading spiritualist pamphlets concerning the benefits of diseaseand complaining to Elizabeth’s father of how she suffered. Elizabeth remembered of her only thatshe wept very easily and that she smelled like stale milk—it was, perhaps, her mother’s disquietingcolor that, whenever she was held in her mother’s arms, made Elizabeth think of milk. He motherdid not, however, hold Elizabeth in her arms very often. Elizabeth very quickly suspected that thiswas because she was so very much darker that her mother and not nearly, of course, so beautiful.

　　When she faced her mother she was shy, downcast, sullen. She did not know how to answer hermother’s shrill, meaningless questions, put with the furious affectation of material concern; shecould not pretend, when she kissed her mother, or submitted to her mother’s kiss, that she wasmoved by anything more than an unpleasant sense of duty. This, of course, bred in her mother akind of baffled fury, and she never tired of telling Elizabeth that she was an ‘unnatural’ child.

　　But it was very different with her father; she was—and so Elizabeth never failed to think ofhim—young, and handsome, and kind, and generous; and he loved his daughter. He told her thatshe was the apple of his eye, that she was wound around his heartstrings, that she was surely thefinest little lady in the land. When she was with her father she pranced and postured like a veryqueen: and she was not afraid of anything, save the moment when he would say that it wasbedtime, or that he had to be ‘getting along.’ He was always buying her things, things to wear andthings to play with, and taking her on Sundays from long walks through the country, or to thecircus, when the circus was in town, or to Punch and Judy shows. And he was dark, like Elizabeth,and gentle, and proud; he had never been angry with her, but she had seen him angry a few timeswith other people—her mother, for example, and later, of course, her aunt. Her mother was alwaysangry and Elizabeth paid no attention; and, later, her aunt was perpetually angry and Elizabethlearned to bear it: but if her father has ever been angry with her—in those days—she would havewanted to die.

　　Neither had he ever learned of her disgrace; when it happened, she could not think how totell him, how to bring such pain to him who had had such pain already. Later, when she wouldhave told him, he was long past caring, in the silent ground.

　　She thought of him now, while the singing and weeping went on around her—and shethought how he would have love his grandson, who was like him in so many ways. Perhaps shedreamed it, but she did not believe she dreamed when at moments she thought she heard in Johnechoes, curiously distant and distorted, of her father’s gentleness, and the trick of his laugh—howhe threw his head back and the years that marked his face fled away, and the soft eyes softened andthe mouth turned at the corners like a little boy’s mouth—and that deadly pride of her father’sbehind which he retired when confronted by the nastiness of other people. It was he who had toldher to weep, when she wept, alone; never to let the world see, never to ask for mercy; if one had todie, to go ahead and die, but never to let oneself be beaten. He had said this to her on one of thelast times she had seen him, when she was being carried miles away, to Maryland, to live with heraunt. She had reason, in the years that followed, to remember his saying this; and time, at last, todiscover in herself the depths of bitterness in her father from which these words had come.

　　For when her mother died, the world fell down; her aunt, her mother’s older sister, arrived,and stood appalled at Elizabeth’s vanity and uselessness; and decided, immediately, that her fatherwas not fit person to raise a child, especially, as she darkly said, an innocent little girl. And it wasthis decision on the part of her aunt, for which Elizabeth did not forgive her for many years, thatprecipitated the third disaster, the separation of herself from her father—from all that she loved onearth.

　　For her father ran what her aunt called a ‘house’—not the house where they lived, butanother house, to which, as Elizabeth gathered, wicked people often came. And he had also, toElizabeth’s rather horrified confusion, a ‘stable.’ Low, common niggers, the lowest of the low,came from all over (and sometimes brought their women and sometimes found them there) to eat,and drink cheap moonshine, and play music all night long—and to do worse things, her aunt’sdreadful silence then suggested, which were far better left unsaid. And she would, she swore, moveHeaven and earth before she would let her sister’s daughter grow up with such a man. Without,however, so much as looking at Heaven, and without troubling any more of the earth than that part of it which held the courthouse, she won the day. Like a clap of thunder, or like a magic spell, likelight one moment and darkness the next, Elizabeth’s life had changed. Her mother was dead, herfather banished, and she lived in the shadow of her aunt.

　　Or, more exactly, as she thought now, the shadow in which had lived was fear—fear mademore dense by hatred. Not for a moment had she judged her father; it would have made nodifference to her love for him had she been told, and even seen it proved, that he was first cousin tothe Devil. The proof would not have existed for her, and if it had she would not have regrettedbeing his daughter, or have asked for anything better than to suffer at his side in Hell. And whenshe had been taken from him her imagination had been wholly unable to lend reality to thewickedness of which he stood accused—she, certainly, did not accuse him. She screamed inanguish when he put her from him and turned to go, and she had to be carried to the train. Andlater, when she understood perfectly all that had happened then, still in her heart she could notaccuse him. Perhaps his life had been wicked, but he had been very good to her. His life hadcertainly cost him enough in pain to make the world’s judgment a thing of no account. They hadnot known him as she had known him; they did not care as she had cared! It only made her sad thathe never, as he had promised, came to take her away, and that while she was growing up she sawhim so seldom. When she became a young woman she did not see him at all; but that was her ownfault.

　　No, she did not accuse him; but she accused her aunt, and this from the moment sheunderstood that her aunt had loved her mother, but did not love him. This could only mean that heraunt could not love her, either, and nothing in her life with her aunt ever proved Elizabeth wrong.

　　It was true that her aunt was always talking of how much she loved her sister’s daughter, and whatgreat sacrifices she had made on her account, and what great care she took to see to it thatElizabeth should grow up a good, Christian girl. But Elizabeth was not for a moment fooled, anddid not, for as long as she lived with her, fail to despise her aunt. She sensed that what her auntspoke of as love was something else—a bribe, a threat, an indecent will to power. She knew thatthe kind of imprisonment that love might impose was also, mysteriously, a freedom for the souland spirit, was water in the dry place, and had nothing to do with the prisons, churches, laws,rewards, and punishments, that so positively cluttered the landscape of her aunt’s mind.

　　And yet, to-night, in her great confusion, she wondered if she had not been wrong; if therehad not been something that she had overlooked, for which the Lord had made her suffer. ‘Youlittle miss great-I-am,’ her aunt had said to her in those days, ‘you better watch your step, you hearme? You go walking around with your nose in the air, the Lord’s going to let you fall right ondown to the bottom of the ground. You mark my words. You’ll see.’

　　To this perpetual accusation Elizabeth had never replied; she merely regarded her aunt witha wide-eyed insolent stare, meant at once to register her disdain and to thwart any pretext forpunishment. And this trick, which she had, unconsciously, picked up from her father, rarely failedto work. As the years went on, her aunt seemed to gauge in a look the icy distances that Elizabethhad put between them, and that would certainly never be conquered now. And she would add,looking down, and under her breath: ‘ ’Cause God don’t like it.’

　　‘I sure don’t care what God don’t like, or you, either,’ Elizabeth heart replied. ‘I’m goingaway from here. He’s going to come and get me, and ‘I’m going away from here.’

　　 ‘He’ was her father, who never came. As the years passed, she replied only: ‘I’m goingaway from here.’ And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel between her breasts; it waswritten in fire on the dark sky of her mind.

　　But, yes—there was something she had overlooked. Pride goeth before destruction; and ahaughty spirit before a fall. She had not known this: she had not imagined that she could fall. Shewondered, to-night, how she could give this knowledge to her son; if she could help him to endurewhat could now no longer be changed; if for ever, she came into the store alone, wearing her bestwhite summer dress and with her hair, newly straightened and curled at the ends, tied with a scarletribbon. She was going to a great church picnic with her aunt, and had come in to buy some lemons.

　　She passed the owner of the store, who was a very fat man, sitting out on the pavement, fanninghimself; he asked her, as she passed, if it was hot enough for her, and she said something andwalked into the dark, heavy-smelling store, where flies buzzed, and where Richard sat on thecounter reading a book.

　　She felt immediately guilty about having disturbed him, and muttered apologetically thatshe only wanted to buy some lemons. She expected him to get them for her in his sullen fashionand go back to his book, but he smiled, and said:

　　‘Is that all you want? You better think now. You sure you ain’t forgot nothing?’

　　She had never seen him smile before, nor had she really, for that matter, ever heard hisvoice. Her heart gave a dreadful leap and then, as dreadfully, seemed to have stopped for ever. Shecould only stand there, staring at him. If he had asked her to repeat what she wanted she could notpossibly have remembered what it was. And she found that she was looking into his eyes andwhere she had thought there was no light at all she found a light she had never seen before—andhe was smiling still, but there was something curiously urgent in his smile. Then he said: ‘Howmany lemons, little girl?’

　　‘Six,’ she said at last, and discovered to her vast relief that nothing had happened: the sunwas still shinning, the fat man still sat at the door, her heart was beating as though it had neverstopped. She was not, however, fooled; she remembered the instant at which her heart had stopped,and she knew that it beat now with a difference.

　　He put the lemons into a bag, with a curious difference, she came closer to the counter togive him the money. She was in a terrible state, for she found that she could neither take her eyesoff him nor look at him.

　　‘Is that your mother you come in with all the time?’ he asked.

　　‘No,’ she said, ‘that’s my aunt.’ She did not know why she said it, but she said: ‘Mymother’s dead.’

　　‘Oh,’ he said. Then: ‘Mine, too.’ They both looked thoughtfully at the money on thecounter. He picked it up, but did not move. ‘I didn’t think it was your mother,’ he said, finally.

　　‘Why?’

　　‘I don’t know. She don’t look like you.’

　　He started to light a cigarette, and then looked at her and put the packet in his pocket again.

　　 ‘Don’t mind me,’ she said quickly. ‘Anyway, I got to go. She’s waiting—we going out.’

　　He turned and banged the cash register. She picked up her lemons. He gave her her change.

　　She felt that she ought to say something else—it didn’t seem right, somewhat, just to walk out—but she could not think of anything. But he said:

　　‘Then that’s why you so dressed up to-day. Where you going to go?’

　　‘We going to a picnic—a church picnic,’ she said, and suddenly, unaccountably, and forthe first time, smiled.

　　And he smiled, too, and lit his cigarette, blowing the smoke carefully away from her. ‘Youlike picnics?’

　　‘Sometimes,’ she said. She was not comfortable with him yet, and still she was beginningto feel that she would like to stand and talk to him all day. She wanted to ask him what he wasreading, but she did not dare. Yet: ‘What’s your name?’ she abruptly brought out.

　　‘Richard,’ he said.

　　‘Oh,’ she said thoughtfully. Then: ‘Mine’s Elizabeth.’

　　‘I know,’ he said. ‘I heard her call you one time.’

　　‘Well,’ she said helplessly, after a long pause, ‘good-bye.’

　　‘Good-bye? You ain’t going away, is you?’

　　‘Oh, no,’ she said, in confusion.

　　‘Well,’ he said, and smiled and bowed, ‘good day.’

　　‘Yes,’ she said, ‘good day.’

　　And she turned and walked out into the streets; no the same streets from which she hadentered a moment ago. These streets, the sky above, the sun, the drifting people, all had, in amoment, changed, and would never be the same again.

　　‘You remember that day,’ he asked much later, ‘when you come into the store?’

　　‘Yes?’

　　‘Well, you was mighty pretty.’

　　‘I didn’t think you never looked at me.’

　　‘Well, I didn’t think you never looked at me.’

　　‘You was reading a book.’

　　‘Yes.’

　　‘What book was it, Richard?’

　　‘Oh, I don’t remember. Just a book.’

　　‘You smiled.’

　　‘You did, too.’

　　 ‘No, I didn’t. I remember.’

　　‘Yes, you did.’

　　‘No, I didn’t. Not till you did.’

　　‘Well, anyway—you was mighty pretty.’

　　She did not like to think of what hardness of heart, what calculated weeping, what deceit,what cruelty she now went into battle with her aunt fro her freedom. And she wont it, even thoughon certain not-to-be-dismissed conditions. The principal condition was that she should put herselfunder the protection of a distant, unspeakably respectable female relative of her aunt’s, who livedin New York City—for when the summer ended, Richard said that he was going there and hewanted her to come with him. They would get married there. Richard said that he hated the South,and this was perhaps the reason it did not occurred to either of them to begin their married lifethere. And Elizabeth was checked by the fear that if her aunt should discover how things stoodbetween her and Richard she would find, as she had found so many years before in the case of herfather, some means of bringing about their separation. This, as Elizabeth later considered it, wasthe first in the sordid series of mistakes which was to cause her to fall so low.

　　But to look back from the stony plane along the road which led one to that place is not atall the same thing as walking on the road; the perspective, to say the very least, changes only withthe journey; only when the road has, all abruptly and treacherously, and with an absoluteness thatpermits no argument, turned or dropped or risen is one able to see all that one could not have seenfrom any other place. In those days, had the Lord Himself descended from Heaven with trumpetstelling her to turn back, she could scarcely have heard Him, and could certainly not have heeded.

　　She lived, in those days, in a fiery storm, of which Richard was the center and the heart. And shefought only to reach him—only that; she was afraid of what might happen if they were kept fromone another; for what might come after she had no thoughts or fears to spare.

　　Her pretext for coming to New York was to take advantage of the greater opportunities theNorth offered colored people; to study in a Northern school, and to find a better job than any shewas likely to be offered in the South. Her aunt, who listened to this with no diminution of herhabitual scorn, was yet unable to deny that from generation to generation, things, as she grudginglyput it, were bound to change—and neither could she quite take the position of seeming to stand inElizabeth’s way. In the winter of 1920, as the year began, Elizabeth found herself in an ugly backroom in Harlem in the home of her aunt’s relative, a woman whose respectability was immediatelyevident from the incense she burned in her rooms and the spiritualist séances she held everySaturday night.

　　The house was still standing, not very far away; often she was forced to pass it. Withoutlooking up, she was able to see the windows of the apartment in which she had lived, and thewoman’s sign was in the window still: MADAME WILLIAMS, SPIRITUALIST.

　　She found a job as a chambermaid in the same hotel in which Richard worked as lift-boy.

　　Richard said that they would marry as soon as he had saved some money. But since he was goingto school at night and made very little money, their marriage, which she had thought of as takingplace almost as soon as she arrived, was planned for a future that grew ever more remote. And this presented her with a problem that she had refused, at home in Maryland, to think about, but fromwhich, now, she could not escape: the problem of their life together. Reality, so to speak, burst infor the first time on her great dreaming, and she found occasion to wonder, ruefully, what hadmade her imagine that, once with Richard, she would have been able to withstand him. She hadkept, precariously enough, what her aunt referred to as her pearl without price while she had beenwith Richard down home. This, which she had taken as witness to her own feminine moralstrength, had been due to nothing more, it now developed, than her great fear of her aunt, and thelack, in that small town, of opportunity. Here, in this great city where no one cared, where peoplemight live in the same building for years and never speak to one another, she found herself, whenRichard took her in his arms, on the edge of a steep place: and down she rushed, on the descentuncaring, into the dreadful sea.

　　So it began. Had it been waiting for her since the day she had been taken from her father’sarm? The world in which she now found herself was not unlike the world from which she had, solong ago, been rescued. Here were the women who had been the cause of her aunt’s mostpassionate condemnation of her father—hard-drinking, hard-taking, with whisky-and cigarette-breath, and moving with the mystic authority of women who knew what sweet violence might beacted out under the moon and stars, or beneath the tigerish lights of the city, in the raucous hay orthe singing bed. And was she, Elizabeth, so sweetly fallen, so tightly chained, one of these womennow? And here were the men who had come day and night to visit her father’s ‘stable’—with theirsweet talk and music, and their violence and their sex—black, brown, and beige, who looked onher with lewd, and lustful, and laughing eyes. And these were Richard’s friends. Not one of themever went to church—one might scarcely have imagined that they knew that churches existed—they all, hourly, daily, in their speech, in their lives, and in their hearts, cursed God. They allseemed to be saying, as Richard, when she once timidly mentioned the love of Jesus, said: ‘Youcan tell that puking bastard to kiss my big black arse.’

　　She, for very terror on hearing this, had wept; yet she could not deny that for such anabundance of bitterness there was a positive fountain of grief. There was not, after all, a greatdifference between the world of the North and that of the South which she had fled; there was onlythis difference: the North promised more. And this similarity: what it promised it did not give, andwhat it gave, at length and grudgingly with one hand, it took back with the other. Now sheunderstood in this nervous, hollow, ringing city, that nervousness of Richard’s which had soattracted her—a tension so total, and so without the hope, or the possibility of release, orresolution, that she felt it in his muscles, and heard it in his breathing, even as on her breast he fellasleep.

　　And this was perhaps why she had never thought to leave him, frightened though she wasduring all that time, and in a world in which, had it not been for Richard, she could have found noplace to put her feet. She did not leave him, because she was afraid of what it might happen to himwithout her. She did not resist him, because he needed her. And she did not press about marriagebecause, upset as he was about everything, she was afraid of having him upset about her, too. Shethought of herself as his strength; in a world of shadows, the indisputable reality to which he couldalways repair. And, again, for all that had come, she could not regret this. She had tried, but she had never been and was not now, even to-night, truly sorry. Where, then, was her repentance? Andhow could God hear her cry?

　　They had been very happy together, in the beginning; and until the very end he had beenvery good to her, had not ceased to love her, and tried always to make her know it. No more thanshe had been able to accuse her father had she ever been able to accuse him. His weakness sheunderstood, and his terror, and even his bloody end. What life had made him bear, her lover, thiswild, unhappy boy, many another stronger and more virtuous man might not have borne so well.

　　Saturday was their best day, for they only worked until o’clock. They had all the afternoonto be together, and nearly all of the night, since Madame William had her séances on Saturdaynight and preferred that Elizabeth, before whose silent skepticism departed spirits might findthemselves reluctant to speak, should not be in the house. They met at the service entrance.

　　Richard was always there before her, looking, oddly, much younger and less anonymous withoutthe ugly, tight-fitting, black uniform that he had to wear when working. He would be talking, orlaughing with some of the other boys, or shooting dice, and when he heard her step down the long,stone hall he would look up, laughing; and wickedly nudging one of the other boys, he would halfshout, half sing: ‘He-y! Look-a-there, ain’t she pretty?’

　　She never failed, at this—which was why he never failed to do it—to blush, half-smiling,half-frowning, and nervously to touch the collar of her dress.

　　‘Sweet Georgia Brown!’ somebody might say.

　　‘Miss Brown to you,’ said Richard, then, and took her arm.

　　‘Yeah, that’s right,’ somebody else would say, ‘you better hold on to little Miss Bright-eyes, don’t somebody sure going to take her away from you.’

　　‘Yeah,’ said another voice, ‘and it might be me.’

　　‘Oh, no,’ said Richard, moving with her toward the street, ‘ain’t nobody going to take mylittle Little-bit away from me.’

　　Little-bit: it had been his name for her. And sometimes he called her Sandwich Mouth, orFunnyface, or Frog-eyes. She would not, of course, have endured these names from anyone else,nor, had she not found herself, with joy and helplessness (and a sleeping panic), living it out,would she ever have suffered herself so publicly to become a man’s property—‘concubine,’ heraunt would have said, and at night, alone, she rolled the word, tart like lemon rind, on her tongue.

　　She was descending with Richard to the sea. She would have to climb back up alone, butshe did not know this then. Leaving the boys in the hall, they gained the midtown New Yorkstreets.

　　‘And what we going to do to-day, Little-bit?’ With that smile of his, and those depthlesseyes, beneath the towers of the white city, with people, white, hurrying all around them.

　　‘I don’t know, honey. What you want to do?’

　　‘Well, maybe, we go to a museum.’

　　The first time he suggested this, she demanded, in panic, if they would be allowed to enter.

　　 ‘Sure, they let niggers in,’ Richard said. ‘Ain’t we got to be educated, too—to live with themotherf——s?

　　He never ‘watched’ his language with her, which at first she took as evidence of hiscontempt because she had fallen so easily, and which later she took as evidence of his love.

　　And then he took her to the Museum of Natural History, or the Metropolitan Museum ofArt, where they were almost certain to be the only black people, and he guided her through thehalls, which never ceased in her imagination to be as cold as tombstones, it was then she sawanother life in him. It never ceased to frighten her, this passion he brought to something she couldnot understand.

　　For she never grasped—not at any rate with her mind—what, with such incandescence, hetried to tell her on these Saturday afternoons. She could not find, between herself and the Africanstatuette, or totem pole, on which he gazed with such melancholy wonder, any point of contact.

　　She was only glad that she did not look that way. She preferred to look, in the other museum, at thepaintings; but still she did not understand anything he said about them. She did not know why heso adored things that were so long dead; what sustenance they give him, what secrets he hoped towrest from them. But she understood, at least, that they did give him a kind of bitter nourishment,and that the secrets they held for him were a matter of his life and death. It frightened her becauseshe felt that he was reaching for the moon and that he would, therefore, be dashed down againstthe rocks; but she did not say any of this. She only listened, and in her heart she prayed for him.

　　But on other Saturdays they went to see a movie; they went to see a play; they visited hisfriends; they walked through Central Park. She liked the park because, however spuriously, it recreated something of the landscape she had known. How many afternoons had they walked there!

　　She had always, since, avoided it. They bought peanuts and for hours fed the animals at the zoo;they bought soda pop and drank it on the grass; they walked along the reservoir and Richardexplained how a city like a New York found water to drink. Mixed with her fear for him was atotal admiration: that he had learned so young, so much. People stared at them but she did notmind; he noticed, but he did not seem to notice. But sometimes he would ask, in the middle of asentence—concerned, possibly, with ancient Rome:

　　‘Little-bit—d’you love me?’

　　And she wondered how he could doubt it. She thought how infirm she must be not to havebeen able to make him know it; and she raised her eyes to his, and she said the only thing shecould say:

　　‘I wish to God I may die if I don’t love you. There ain’t no sky above us if I don’t loveyou.’

　　Then he would look ironically up at the sky, and take her arm with a firmer pressure, andthey would walk on.

　　Once, she asked him:

　　‘Richard, did you go to school much when you was little?’

　　And he looked at her a long moment. Then:

　　 ‘Baby, I done told you, my mama died when I was born. And my daddy, he weren’tnowhere to be found. Ain’t nobody never took care of me. I just moved from one place to another.

　　When one set of folks got tired of me they sent me down the line. I didn’t hardly go to school atall.’

　　‘Then how come you got to be so smart? how come you got to know so much?’

　　And he smiled, pleased, but he said: ‘Little-bit, I don’t know so much.’ Then he said, witha change in his face and voice which she had grown to know: ‘I just decided me one day that I wasgoing to get to know everything them white bastards knew, and I was going to get to know it betterthan them, so could no white son-of-a-bitch nowhere never talk me down, and never make me feellike I was dirt, when I could read him the alphabet, back, front, and sideways. He weren’t going tobeat my arse, then. And if he tried to kill me, I’d take him with me, I swear to my mother I would.’

　　Then he looked at her again, and smiled and kissed her, and he said: ‘That’s how I got to know somuch, baby.’

　　She asked: ‘And what you going to do, Richard? What you want to be?’

　　And his face clouded. ‘I don’t know. I got to find out. Looks like I can’t get my mindstraight nohow.’

　　She did not know why he couldn’t—or she could only dimly face it—but she knew hespoke the truth.

　　She had made her great mistake with Richard in not telling him that she was going to havea child. Perhaps, she thought now, if she had told him everything might have been very different,and he would be living yet. But the circumstances under which she had discovered herself to bepregnant had been such to make her decide, for his sake to hold her peace awhile. Frightened asshe was, she dared not add to the panic that overtook him on the last summer of his life.

　　And yet perhaps it was, after all, this—this failure to demand of his strength what it mightthen, most miraculously, have been found able to bear; by which—indeed, how could she know?—his strength might have been strengthened, for which she prayed to-night to be forgiven. Perhapsshe had lost her love because she had not, in the end, believed in it enough.

　　She lived quite a long way from Richard—four underground stops; and when it was timefor her to go home, he always took the underground uptown with her and walked her to her door.

　　On a Saturday when they had forgotten the time and stayed together later than usual, he left at herdoor at two o’clock in the morning. They said good night hurriedly, for she was afraid of troublewhen she got upstairs—though, in fact, Madame Williams seemed astonishingly indifferent to thehours Elizabeth kept—and he wanted to hurry back home and go to bed. Yet, as he hurried offdown the dark, murmuring street, she had a sudden impulse to call him back, to ask him to take herwith him and never let her go again. She hurried up the steps, smiling a little at this fancy: it wasbecause he looked so young and defenceless as he walked away, and yet so jaunty and strong.

　　He was to come the next evening at supper-time, to make at last, at Elizabeth’s urging, theacquaintance of Madame Williams. But he did not come. She drove Madame Williams wild withher sudden sensitivity to footsteps on the stairs. Having told Madame Williams that a gentlemanwas coming to visit her, she did not dare, of course, to leave the house and go out looking for him, thus giving Madame Williams the impression that she dragged men in off the streets. At teno’clock, having eaten no supper, a detail unnoticed by her hostess, she went to bed, her headaching and her heart sick with fear; fear over what had happened to Richard, who had never kepther waiting before; and fear involving all that was beginning to happen in her body.

　　And on Monday morning he was not at work. She left during the lunch hour to go to hisroom. He was not there. His landlady said that he had not been there all week-end. While Elizabethstood trembling and indecisive in the hall, two white policemen entered.

　　She knew the moment she saw them, and before they mentioned his name, that somethingterrible had happened to Richard. Her heart, as on that bright summer day when he had first spokento her, gave a terrible bound and then was still, with an awful, wounded stillness. She put out onehand to touch the wall in order to keep standing.

　　‘This here young lady was just looking for him,’ she heard the landlady say.

　　They all looked at her.

　　‘You this girl?’ one of the policemen asked.

　　She looked up at his sweating face, on which a lascivious smile had immediately appeared,and straightened, trying to control her trembling.

　　‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where is he?’

　　‘He’s in jail, honey,’ the other policeman said.

　　‘What for?’

　　‘For robbing a white man’s store, black girl. That’s what for.’

　　She found, and thanked Heaven for it, that a cold, stony rage had entered her. She would,otherwise, certainly have fallen down, or began to weep. She looked at the smiling policeman.

　　‘Richard ain’t robbed no store,’ she said. ‘Tell me where he is.’

　　‘And I tell you,’ he said, not smiling, ‘that your boyfriend robbed a store and he’s in jail forit. He’s going to stay there, too—now, what you got to say to that?’

　　‘And he probably did it for you, too,’ the other policeman said. ‘You look like a girl a mancould rob a store for.’

　　She said nothing; she was thinking how to get to see him, how to get him out.

　　One of them, the smiler, turned now to the landlady and said: ‘Let’s have the key to hisroom. How long’s he been living here?’

　　‘About a year,’ the landlady said. She looked unhappily at Elizabeth. ‘He seemed like areal nice boy.’

　　‘Ah, yes,’ he said, mounting the steps, ‘they all seem like real nice boys when they paytheir rent.’

　　‘You going to take me to see him?’ she asked of the remaining policeman. She foundherself fascinated by the gun in the holster, the club at his side. She wanted to take that pistol and empty it into his round, red face; to take that club and strike with all her strength against the baseof his skull where his cap ended, until the ugly, silky, white man’s hair was matted with blood andbrains.

　　‘Sure, girl,’ he said, ‘you’re coming right along with us. The man at the station-housewants to ask you some questions.’

　　The smiling policeman came down again. ‘Ain’t nothing up there,’ he said. ‘Let’s go.’

　　She moved between them, out into the sun. She knew that there was nothing to be gainedby talking to them any more. She was entirely in their power; she would have to think faster thanthey could think; she would have to contain the fear and her hatred, and find out what could bedone. Not for anything short of Richard’s life, and not, possibly, even for that, would she havewept before them, or asked of them a kindness.

　　A small crowd, children and curious passers-by, followed them as they walked the long,dusty, sunlight street. She hoped only that they would not pass anyone she knew; she kept her headhigh, looking straight ahead, and felt the skin settle over her bones as though she were wearing amask.

　　And at the station she somewhat got past their brutal laughter. (What was he doing withyou, girl, until two o’clock in the morning?—Next time you feel like that, girl, you come by hereand talk to me.) She felt that she was about to burst, or vomit, or die. Though the sweat stood outcruelly, like needless on her brow, and she felt herself, from every side, being covered with a stinkand filth, she found out, in their own good time, what she wanted to know. He was being held in aprison downtown called the Tombs (the name made her heart turn over), and she could see him tomorrow. The state, or the prison, or someone, had already assigned him a lawyer; he would bebrought to trial next week.

　　But the next day, when she saw him, she wept. He had been beaten, he whispered to her,and he could hardly walk. His body, she later discovered, bore almost no bruises, but was full ofstrange, painful swellings, and there was a welt above one eye.

　　He had not, of course, robbed the store, but, when he left her that Saturday night, had gonedown into the underground station to wait for his train. It was late, and the trains were slow; hewas all alone on the platform, only half awake, thinking, he said, of her.

　　Then, from the far end of the platform, he heard a sound of running; and, looking up, hesaw two colored boys come running down the steps. Their clothes were torn, and they werefrightened; they came up the platform and stood near him, breathing hard. He was about to askthem what the trouble was when, running across the tracks toward them, and followed by a whiteman, he saw another colored boy; and at the same instant another white man came running downthe underground steps.

　　Then he came full awake, in panic; he knew that whatever the trouble was, it was now histrouble also; for these white men would make no distinction between him and the three boys theywere after. They were all colored, they were about the same age, and here they stood together onthe underground platform. And they were all, with no questions asked, herded upstairs, and intothe wagon and to the station-house.

　　 At the station Richard gave his name and address and age and occupation. Then for the firsttime he stated that he was not involved, and asked one of the other boys to corroborate histestimony. This they rather despairingly did. They might, Elizabeth felt, have done it sooner, butthey probably also felt that it would be useless to speak. And they were not believed; the owner ofthe store was being brought there to make the identification. And Richard tried to relax: the mancould not say that he had been there if he had never seen him before.

　　But when the owner came, a short man with a bloody shirt—for they had knifed him—inthe company of yet another policeman, he looked at the four boys before him and said: ‘Yeah,that’s them, all right.’

　　Then Richard shouted: ‘But I wasn’t there! Look at me, goddammit—I wasn’t there!’

　　‘You black bastard,’ the man said, looking at him, ‘you’re all the same.’

　　Then there was silence in the station, the eyes of the white men all watching. And Richardsaid, but quietly, knowing that he was lost: ‘But all the same, mister, I wasn’t there.’ And helooked at the white man’s bloody shirt and thought, he told Elizabeth, at the bottom of his heart: ‘Iwish to God they’d killed you.’

　　Then the questioning began. The three boys signed a confession at once, but Richard wouldnot sign. He said at last that he would die before he signed a confession to something he hadn’tdone. ‘Well then,’ said one of them, hitting him suddenly across the head, ‘maybe you will die,you black son-of-a-bitch.’ And the beating began. He would not, then, talk to her about it; shefound that, before the dread and the hatred that filled her mind, her imagination faltered and heldits peace.

　　‘What we going to do? she asked at last.

　　He smiled a vicious smile—she had never seen such a smile on his face before. ‘Maybeyou ought to pray to that Jesus of yours and get Him to come down and tell these white mensomething.’ He looked at her a long, dying moment. ‘Because I don’t know nothing else to do,’ hesaid.

　　She suggested: ‘Richard, what about another lawyer?’

　　And he smiled again. ‘I declare,’ he said, ‘Little-bit’s been holding out on me. She got afortune tied up in a sock, and she ain’t never told me nothing about it.’

　　She had been trying to save money for a whole year, but she had only thirty dollars. She satbefore him, going over in her mind all the things she might do to raise money, even to going on thestreets. Then, for very helplessness, she began to shake with sobbing. At this, his face becameRichard’s face again. He said in a shaking voice: ‘Now, look here, Little-bit, don’t you be like that.

　　We going to work this out all right.’ But she could not stop sobbing. ‘Elizabeth,’ he whispered,‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth.’ Then the man came and said that it was time for her to go. And she rose.

　　She had brought two packets of cigarettes for him, and they were still in her bag. Wholly ignorantof prison, she did not dare to give them to him under the man’s eyes. And, somehow, her failure toremember to give him the cigarettes, when she knew how much he smoked, made her wept theharder. She tried—and failed—to smile at him, and she was slowly led to the door. The sun nearlyblinded her, and she heard him whisper behind her: ‘So long, baby. Be good.’

　　 In the streets she did not know what to do. She stood awhile before the dreadful gates, andthen she walked and walked until she came to a coffee shop where taxi drivers and the people whoworked in nearby offices hurried in and out all day. Usually she was afraid to go into downtownestablishments, where only white people were, but to-day she did not care. She felt that if anyonesaid anything to her she would turn and curse him like the lowest bitch on the street. If anyonetouched her, she would do her best to send his soul to Hell.

　　But no one touched her; no one spoke. She drank her coffee, sitting in the strong sun thatfell through the window. Now it came to her how alone, how frightened she was; she had neverbeen so frightened in her life before. She knew that she was pregnant—knew it, as the old folkssaid, in her bones; and if Richard should be sent away, what, under heaven, could she do? Twoyears, three years—she had no idea how long he might be sent away for—what would she do? Andhow could she keep her aunt from knowing? And if her aunt should find out, then her father wouldknow, too. The tears welled up, and she drank her cold, tasteless coffee. And what would they dowith Richard? And if they sent him away, what would he be like, then, when he returned? Shelooked out into the quiet, sunny streets, and for the first time in her life, she hated it all—the whitecity, the white world. She could not, that day, think of one decent white person in the whole world.

　　She sat there, and she hoped that one day God, with tortures inconceivable, would grind themutterly into humility, and make them know that black boys and black girls, whom they treated withsuch condescension, such disdain, and such good humor, had hearts like human beings, too, morehuman hearts than theirs.

　　But Richard was not sent away. Against the testimony of the three robbers, and her owntestimony, and, under oath, the storekeeper’s indecision, there was no evidence on which toconvict him. The courtroom seemed to feel, with some complacency and some disappointment,that it was his great good luck to be left off so easily. They went immediately to his room. Andthere—she was never all her life long to forget it—he threw himself, face downward, on his bedand wept.

　　She had only seen one other man weep before—her father—and it had not been like this.

　　She touched him, but he did not stop. Her own tears fell on his dirty, uncombed hair. She tried tohold him, but for a long while he would not be held. His body was like iron; she could find nosoftness in it. She sat curled like a frightened child on the edge of the bed, her hand on his back,waiting for the storm to pass over. It was then that she decided not to tell him yet about the child.

　　By and by he called her name. And then he turned, and she held him against her breast,while he sighed and shook. He fell asleep at last, clinging to her as though he were going downinto the water for the last time.

　　And it was the last time. That night he cut his wrists with his razor and he was found in themorning by his landlady, his eyes staring upward with no light, dead among the scarlet sheets.

　　And now they were singing:

　　‘Somebody needs you, Lord,Come by here.’

　　 At her back, above her, she heard Gabriel’s voice. He had risen and was helping the othersto pray through. She wondered if John were still on his knees, or had risen, with a child’simpatience, and was staring around the church. There was a stiffness in him that would be hard tobreak, but that, nevertheless, would one day surely be broken. As hers had been, and Richard’s—there was no escape for anyone. God was everywhere, terrible, the living God; and so high, thesong said, you couldn’t get over Him; so low you couldn’t get under Him; so wide you couldn’tget around Him; but must come in at the door.

　　And she, she knew to-day that door: a living, wrathful gate. She knew through what firesthe soul must crawl, and with what weeping one passed over. Men spoke of how the heart brokeup, but never spoke of how the soul hung speechless in the pause, the void, the terror between theliving and the dead; how, all garments rent and cast aside, the naked soul passed over the verymouth of Hell. Once there, there was no turning back; once there, the soul remembered, though theheart sometimes forgot. For the world called to the heart, which stammered to reply; life, and love,and revelry, and, most falsely, hope, called the forgetful, the human heart. Only the soul, obsessedwith the journey it had made, and had still to make, pursued its mysterious and dreadful end; andcarried, heavy with weeping and bitterness, the heart along.

　　And, therefore, there was war in Heaven, and weeping before the throne: the heart chainedto the soul, and the soul imprisoned within the flesh—a weeping, a confusion, and a weightunendurable filled all the earth. Only the love of God could establish order in this chaos; to Himthe soul must turn to be delivered.

　　But what a turning! How could she fail to pray that He would have mercy on her son, andspare him the sin-born anguish of his father and his mother. And that his heart might know a littlejoy before the long bitterness descended.

　　Yet she knew that her weeping and her prayers were in vain. What was coming wouldsurely come; nothing could stop it. She had tried, once, to protect someone and had only hurledhim into prison. And she thought to-night, as she had thought so often, that it might have beenbetter, after all, to have done what she had first determined in her heart to do—to have given herson away to strangers, who might have loved him more than Gabriel had ever loved him. She hadbelieved him when he said that God had sent him to her for a sign. He had said that he wouldcherish her until the grave, and that he would love her nameless son as though he were his ownflesh. And he had kept the letter of his promise: he had fed him and clothed him and taught him theBible—but the spirit was not there. And he cherished—if he cherished her—only because she wasthe mother of his son, Roy. All of this she had through the painful years divined. He certainly didnot know she knew it, and she wondered if he knew it himself.

　　She had met him through Florence. Florence and she had met at work in the middle of thesummer, a year after Richard’s death. John was then over six months old.

　　She was very lonely that summer, and beaten down. She was living alone with John in afurnished room even grimmer than the room that had been hers in Madame Williams’s apartment.

　　She had, of course, left Madame Williams’s immediately upon the death of Richard, saying thatshe had found a sleep-in job in the country. She had been terribly grateful that summer for Madame Williams’s indifference; the woman had simply not seemed to see that Elizabeth,overnight, had become an old woman and was half mad with fear and grief. She wrote her aunt thedriest, and briefest, and coldest of notes, not wishing in any way to awaken whatever concernmight yet slumber in her breast, telling her the same thing she had told Madame Williams, andtelling hr not to worry, she was in the hands of God. And she certainly was; through a bitternessthat only the hand of God could have laid on her, this same hand brought her through.

　　Florence and Elizabeth worked as cleaning-women in a high, vast, stony office-building onWall Street. They arrived in the evening and spent the night going through the great deserted hallsand the silent offices with mops and pails and brooms. It was terrible work, and Elizabeth hated it;but it was at night, and she had taken it joyfully, since it meant that she could take care of Johnherself all day and not have to spend extra money to keep in a nursery. She worried about him allnight long, of course, but at least at night he was sleeping. She could only pray that the housewould not burn down, that he would not fall out of bed or, in some mysterious way, turn on thegas-burner, and she had asked the woman next door, who unhappily drank too much, to keep aneye out for him. This woman, with whom she sometimes spent an hour or so in the afternoons, andher landlady, were the only people she saw. She had stopped seeing Richard’s friends because, forsome reason, she did not want them to know about Richard’s child; and because, too, the momenthe was dead it became immediately apparent on both sides how little they had in common. Andshe did not seek new people; rather, she fled from them. She could not bear, in her changed andfallen state, to submit herself to the eyes of others. The Elizabeth that she had been was buried faraway—with her lost and silent father, with her aunt, in Richard’s grave—and the Elizabeth she hadbecome she did not recognize, she did not want to know.

　　But one night, when work was ended, Florence invited her to share a cup of coffee in theall-night coffee shop nearby. Elizabeth had, of course, been invited before by other people—thenight watchman, for example—but she had always said no. She pleaded the excuse of her baby,whom she must rush home to feed. She was pretending in those days to be a young widow, and shewore a wedding ring. Very shortly, fewer people asked her, and she achieved the reputation ofbeing ‘stuck up.’

　　Florence had scarcely ever spoken to her before she arrived at this merciful unpopularity;but Elizabeth had noticed Florence. She moved in a silent ferocity of dignity which barely escapedbeing ludicrous. She was extremely unpopular also and she had nothing whatever to do with any ofthe women she worked with. She was, for one thing, a good deal older, and she seemed to havenothing to laugh or gossip about. She came to work, and she did her work, and she left. One couldnot imagine what she was thinking as she marched so grimly down the halls, he head tied up in arag, a bucket and a mop in her hands. Elizabeth thought that she must once have been very rich,and had lost her money; and she felt for her, as one fallen woman for another, a certain kinship.

　　A cup of coffee together, as day was breaking, became in time their habit. They sat togetherin the coffee shop, which was always empty when they arrived and was crowded fifteen minuteslater when they left, and had their coffee and doughnuts before they took the underground uptown.

　　While they had their coffee, and on the ride uptown, they talked, principally about Florence, howbadly people treated her, and how empty her life was now that her husband was dead. He hadadored her, she told Elizabeth, and satisfied her every whim, but he had tended to irresponsibility.

　　 If she had told him once, she had told him a hundred times: ‘Frank, you better take out lifeinsurance.’ But he had thought—and wasn’t it just like a man!—that he would live for ever. Nowhere she was, a woman getting along in years, forced to make her living among all the black scumof this wicked city. Elizabeth, a little astonished at the need for confession betrayed by this proudwoman, listened, nevertheless, with great sympathy. She was very grateful for Florence’s interest.

　　Florence was so much older and seemed so kind.

　　It doubt this, Florence’s age and kindness, that led Elizabeth, with no premeditation, (was) to ta(no) ke Florence into her confidence. Looking back, she found it hard to believe thatshe could have been so desperate, or so childish; though, again, on looking back, she was able tosee clearly what she then so incoherently felt: how much she needed another human being,somewhere, who knew the truth about her.

　　Florence had often said how glad she would be to make the acquaintance of little Johnny;she was sure, she said, that any child of Elizabeth’s must be a wonderful child. On a Sunday nearthe end of that summer, Elizabeth dressed him in his best clothes and took him to Florence’shouse. She was oddly and fearfully depressed that day; and John was not in a good mood. Shefound herself staring at him darkly, as though she were trying to read his future in his face. Hewould grow big one day, he would talk, and he would ask her questions. What questions would heask her, what answers would she give? She surely would not be able to lie to him indefinitelyabout his father, for one day he would be old enough to realize that it was not his father’s name hebore. Richard had been a fatherless child, she helplessly, bitterly remembered as she carried Johnthrough the busy, summer, Sunday streets. When one set of folks got tired of me they sent me downthe line. Yes, down the line, through poverty, hunger, wandering, cruelty, fear, and trembling, todeath. And she thought of the boys who had gone to prison. Were they there still? Would John beone of these boys one day? These boys, now, who stood before drug-store windows, before poolrooms, on every street corner, who whistled after her, whose lean bodies fairly rang, it seemed,with idleness, and malice, and frustration. How could she hope, alone, and in famine as she was, toput herself between him and this so wide and raging destruction? And then, as though to confirmher in all her dark imaginings, he began, as she reached the underground steps, to whimper, andmoan, and cry.

　　And he kept this up, too, all the way uptown—so that, what with the impossibility ofpleasing him that day, no matter what she did, what with restless weight, and the heat, and thesmiling, staring people, and the strange dread that weighed on her so heavily, she was nearly readyto weep by the time she arrived at Florence’s door.

　　He, at that moment, to her exasperated relief, became the most cheerful of infants. Florencewas wearing a heavy, old-fashioned garnet brooch, which, as she opened the door, immediatelyattracted John’s eye. He began reaching for the brooch and babbling and spitting at Florence asthough he had known her all of his short life.

　　‘Well!’ said Florence, ‘when he get big enough to really go after the ladies you going tohave your hands full, girl.’

　　‘That,’ said Elizabeth, grimly, ‘is the Lord’s truth. He keeps me so busy now I don’t knowhalf the time if I’m coming or going.’

　　 Florence, meanwhile, attempted to distract John’s attention from the brooch by offeringhim an orange; but he had seen oranges before; he merely looked at it a moment before letting itfall to the floor. He began again, in his disturbingly fluid fashion, to quarrel about the brooch.

　　‘He like you,’ said Elizabeth, finally, calmed a little by watching him.

　　‘You must be tired,’ said Florence, then: ‘Put him down there.’ And she dragged one largeeasy chair to the table so that John could watch them while they ate.

　　‘I got a letter from my brother the other day,’ she said, bringing the food to the table. ‘Hiswife, poor ailing soul. done passed on, and he thinking about coming North.’

　　‘You ain’t never told me,’ said Elizabeth, with a quick and rather false interest, ‘you had abrother! And he coming up here?’

　　‘So he say. Ain’t nothing, I reckon, to keep him down home no more—now Deborah’sgone.’ She sat down opposite Elizabeth. ‘I ain’t seen him,’ she said, musingly, ‘for more thantwenty years.’

　　‘Then it’ll be a great day,’ Elizabeth smiled, ‘when you two meet again.’

　　Florence shook her head, and motioned for Elizabeth to start eating. ‘No,’ she said, ‘weain’t never got along, and I don’t reckon he’s changed.’

　　‘Twenty years is a mighty long time,’ Elizabeth said, ‘he’s bound to have changed some.’

　　‘That man,’ said Florence, ‘would have to do a whole lot of changing before him and mehit it off. No,’—she paused, grimly, sadly—‘I’m mighty sorry he’s coming. I didn’t look to seehim no more in this world—or in the next one, neither.’

　　This was not, Elizabeth felt, the way a sister ought to talk about her brother, especially tosomeone who knew him not at all, and who would, probably, eventually meet him. She asked,helplessly:

　　‘What do he do—your brother?’

　　‘He some kind of preacher,’ said Florence. ‘I ain’t never heard him. When I was home heweren’t doing nothing but chasing after women and lying in the ditches, drunk.’

　　‘I hope,’ laughed Elizabeth, ‘he done changed his ways at least.’

　　‘Folks,’ said Florence, ‘can change their ways much as they want to. But I don’t care howmany times you change your ways, what’s in you is in you, and it’s got to come out.’

　　‘Yes,’ said Elizabeth, thoughtfully. ‘But don’t you think,’ she hesitantly asked, ‘that theLord can change a person’s heart?’

　　‘I done heard it said often enough,’ said Florence, ‘but I got yet to see it. These niggersrunning around, talking about the Lord done changed their hearts—ain’t nothing happened to themniggers. They got the same old black hearts they was born with. I reckon the Lord done give themthose hearts—and, honey, the Lord don’t give out no second helpings, I’m here to tell you.’

　　 ‘No,’ said Elizabeth heavily, after a long pause. She turned to look at John, who was grimlydestroying the square, tasseled doilies that decorated Florence’s easy chair. ‘I reckon that’s thetruth. Look like it go around once, and that’s that. You miss it, and you’s fixed for fair.’

　　‘Now you sound,’ said Florence, ‘mighty sad all of a sudden. What’s the matter with you?’

　　‘Nothing,’ she said. She turned back to the table. Then, helplessly, and thinking that shemust not say too much: ‘I was just thinking about this boy here, what’s going to happen to him,how I’m going to raise him, in this awful city all by myself.’

　　‘But you ain’t fixing, is you,’ asked Florence, ‘to stay single all your days? You’s a rightyoung girl, and a right pretty girl. I wouldn’t be in no hurry if I was you to find no new husband. Idon’t believe the nigger’s been born what knows how to treat a woman right. You got time, honey,so take your time.’

　　‘I ain’t,’ said Elizabeth, quietly, ‘got so much time.’ She could not stop herself; thoughsomething warned her to hold her peace, the words poured out. ‘You see this wedding ring? Well,I bought this ring myself. This boy ain’t got no daddy.’

　　Now she had said it: the words could not be called back. And she felt, as sheb sat,trembling, at Florence’s table, a reckless, pained relief.

　　Florence stared at her with a pity so intense that it resembled anger. She looked at John,and then back at Elizabeth.

　　‘You poor thing,’ said Florence, leaning back in her chair, her face still filled with thisstrange, brooding fury, ‘you is had a time, ain’t you?’

　　‘I was scared,’ Elizabeth brought out, shivering, still compelled to speak.

　　‘I ain’t never,’ said Florence, seen it to fail. Look like ain’t no woman born what don’t getwalked over by some no-count man. Look like ain’t no woman nowhere but ain’t been draggeddown in the dirt by some man, and left there, too, while he go on about his business.’

　　Elizabeth sat at the table, numb, with nothing more to say.

　　‘What he do,’ asked Florence, finally, ‘run off and leave you?’

　　‘Oh, no,’ cried Elizabeth, quickly, and the tears sprang to her eyes, ‘he weren’t like that!

　　He died, just like I say—he got in trouble, and he died—a long time before this boy was born.’ Shebegan to weep with the same helplessness with which she had been speaking. Florence rose andcame over to Elizabeth, holding Elizabeth’s head against her breast. ‘He wouldn’t never of leftme,’ said Elizabeth, ‘but he died.’

　　And now she wept, after her long austerity, as though she would never be able to stop.

　　‘Hush now,’ said Florence, gently, ‘hush now. You going to frighten the little fellow. Hedon’t want to see his mamma cry. All right,’ she whispered to John, who had ceased his attempts atdestruction, and stared now at the two women, ‘all right. Everything’s all right.’

　　Elizabeth sat up and reached in her handbag for a handkerchief, and began to dry her eyes.

　　 ‘Yes,’ said Florence, moving to the window, ‘the menfolk, they die, all right. And it’s uswomen who walk around, like the Bible says, and mourn. The menfolk, they die, and it’s over forthem, but we women, we have to keep on living and try to forget what they done to us. Yes, Lord——’ and she paused; she turned and came back to Elizabeth. ‘Yes, Lord,’ she repeated, ‘don’t Iknow.’

　　‘I’m mighty sorry,’ said Elizabeth, ‘to upset your nice dinner this way.’

　　‘Girl,’ said Florence, ‘don’t you say a word about being sorry, or I’ll show you to this door.

　　You pick up that boy and sit down there in that easy chair and pull yourself together. I’m going outin the kitchen and make us something cold to drink. You try not to fret, honey. The Lord, He ain’tgoing to let you fall but so low.’

　　Then she met Gabriel, two or three weeks later, at Florence’s house on a Sunday.

　　Nothing Florence had said had prepared her for him. She had expected him to be older thanFlorence, and bald, or gray. But he seemed considerably younger than his sister, with all his teethand hair. There he sat, that Sunday, in Florence’s tiny, fragile parlor, a very rock, it seemed to theeye of her confusion, in her so weary land.

　　She remembered that as she mounted the stairs with John’s heavy weight in her arms, andas she entered the door, she heard music, which became perceptible fainter as Florence closed thedoor behind her. John had heard it, too, and had responded by wriggling, and moving his hands inthe air, and making noises, meant, she supposed, to be taken for a song. ‘You’s a nigger, all right,’

　　she thought with amusement and impatience—for it was someone’s gramophone, on a lower floor,filling the air with the slow, high, measured wailing of the blues.

　　Gabriel rose, it seemed to her, with a speed and eagerness that were not merely polite. Shewondered immediately if Florence had told him about her. And this caused her to stiffen with atentative anger against Florence, and with pride and fear. Yet when she looked into his eyes shefound there a strange humility, an altogether unexpected kindness. She felt the anger go out of her,and her defensive pride; but somewhere, crouching, the fear remained.

　　Then Florence introduced them, saying: ‘Elizabeth, this here’s my brother I been tellingyou so much about. He’s a preacher, honey—so we got to be mighty careful what we talk aboutwhen he’s around.’

　　Then she said, with a smile less barbed and ambiguous than his sister’s remark: ‘Ain’t noneed to be afraid of me, sister. I ain’t nothing but a poor, weak vessel in the hands of the Lord.’

　　‘You see!’ said Florence, grimly. She took John from his mother’s arms. ‘And this here’slittle Johnny,’ she said, ‘shake hands with the preacher, Johnny.’

　　But John was staring at the door that held back the music; towards which, withinsistence at once furious and feeble, his hands were still outstretched. He looked questioningly,(an) reproachfully, at his mother, who laughed, watching him, and said, ‘Johnny want to hear somemore of that music. He like to started dancing when we was coming up the stairs.’

　　 Gabriel laughed, and said, circling around Florence to look into John’s face: ‘Got a man inthe Bible, son, who like music, too. He used to play on his harp before the king, and he got todancing once day before the Lord. You reckon you going to dance for the Lord one of these days?’

　　John looked with a child’s impenetrable gravity into the preacher’s face, as though he wereturning this question over in his mind and would answer when he had thought it out. Gabrielsmiled at him, a strange smile—strangely, she thought, loving—and touched him on the crown ofthe head.

　　‘He a mighty fine boy,’ said Gabriel. ‘With them big eyes he ought to see everything in theBible.’

　　And they all laughed. Florence moved to deposit John in the easy chair that was his Sundaythrone. And Elizabeth found that she was watching Gabriel, unable to find in the man before herthe brother whom Florence so despised.

　　They sat down at the table, John placed between herself and Florence and opposite Gabriel.

　　‘So,’ Elizabeth said, with a nervous pleasantness, it being necessary, she felt, to saysomething, ‘you just getting to this big city? It must seem mighty strange to you.’

　　His eyes were still on John, whose eyes had not left him. Then he looked again atElizabeth. She felt that the air between them was beginning to be charged, and she could find noname, or reason, for the secret excitement that moved in her.

　　‘It’s mighty big,’ he said, ‘and looks to me—and sounds to me—like the Devil’s workingevery day.’

　　This was in reference to the music, which had not ceased, but she felt, immediately, that itincluded her; this, and something else in Gabriel’s eyes, made her look down quickly to her plate.

　　‘He ain’t,’ said Florence, briskly, ‘working no harder up here than he worked down home.

　　Them niggers down home,’ she said to Elizabeth, ‘they think New York ain’t nothing but one long,Sunday drunk. They don’t know. Somebody better tell them—they can get better moonshine rightthere where they is than they likely to here—and cheaper, too.’

　　‘But I do hope,’ he said, with a smile, ‘that you ain’t taken to drinking moonshine, sister.’

　　‘It wasn’t never me,’ she said, promptly, ‘had that habit.’

　　‘Don’t know,’ he persisted, still smiling, and still looking at Elizabeth, ‘tell me folks dothings up North they wouldn’t think about doing down home.’

　　‘Folks got their dirt to do,’ said Florence. ‘They going to do it, no matter where they is.

　　Folks do lot of things down home they don’t want nobody to know about.’

　　‘Like my aunt used to say,’ Elizabeth said, smiling timidly, ‘she used to say, folks surebetter not do in the dark what they’s scared to look at in the light.’

　　She had meant it as a kind of joke; but the words were not out of her mouth before shelonged for the power to call them back. They rang in her own ears like a confession.

　　‘That’s the Lord’s truth,’ he said, after the briefest pause. ‘Does you really believe that?’

　　 She forced herself to look up at him, and felt at that moment the intensity of the attentionthat Florence fixed on her, as though she were trying to shout a warning. She knew that it wassomething in Gabriel’s voice that had caused Florence, suddenly, to be so wary and so tense. Butshe did not drop her eyes from Gabriel’s eyes. She answered him: ‘Yes. That’s the way I want tolive.’

　　‘Then the Lord’s going to bless you,’ he said, ‘and open up the windows of Heaven for you—for you and that boy. He going to pour down blessings on you till you won’t know where to putthem. You mark my words.

　　‘Yes,’ said Florence, mildly, ‘you mark his words.’

　　But neither of them looked at her. It came into Elizabeth’s mind, filling her mind: Allthings work together for good to them that love the Lord. She tried to obliterate this burningphrase, and what it made her feel. What it made her feel, for the first time since the death ofRichard, was hope; his voice had made her feel that she was not altogether cast down, that Godmight raise her again in honor; his eyes had made her know that she could be—again, this time inhonor—a woman. Then, from what seemed to be a great, cloudy distance, he smiled at her—andshe smiled.

　　The distant gramophone stuck now, suddenly, on a grinding, wailing, sardonic trumpet-note; this blind, ugly crying swelled the moment and filled the room. She looked down at John. Ahand somewhere struck the gramophone arm and sent the silver needle on its way through thewhirling, black grooves, like something bobbing, anchorless, in the middle of the sea.

　　‘Johnny’s done fell asleep,’ she said.

　　She, who had descended with such joy and pain, had begun her upward climb—upward,with her baby, on the steep, steep side of the mountain.

　　She felt a great commotion in the air around her—a great excitement, muted, waiting on the Lord.

　　And the air seemed to tremble, as before a storm. A light seemed to hang—just above, and allaround them—about to burst into revelation. In the great crying, the great singing all around her, inthe wind that gathered to fill the church, she did not hear her husband; and she thought of John assitting, silent now and sleepy, far in the back of the church—watching, with that wonder and thatterror in his eyes. She did not raise her head. She wished to tarry yet a little longer, that God mightspeak to her.

　　It had been before this very altar that she had come to kneel, so many years ago, to beforgiven. When the autumn came, and the air was dry and sharp, and the wind high, she wasalways with Gabriel. Florence did not approve of this, and Florence said so often; but she neversaid more than this, for the reason, Elizabeth decided, that she had no evil to report—it was onlythat she was not fond of her brother. But even had Florence been able to find a languageunmistakable in which to convey her prophecies, Elizabeth could no have heeded her becauseGabriel had become her strength. He watched over her and her baby as though it had become hiscalling; he was very good to John, and played with him, and bought him things, as though Johnwere his own. She knew that his wife had died childless, and that he had always wanted a son—he was praying still, he told her, that God would bless him with a son. She thought sometimes, lyingon her bed alone, and thinking of all his kindness, that perhaps John was that son, and that hewould grow one day to comfort and bless them both. Then she thought how, now, she wouldembrace again the faith she had abandoned, and walk again in the light from which, with Richard,she had so far fled. Sometimes, thinking of Gabriel, she remembered Richard—his voice, hisbreath, his arms—with a terrible pain; and then she felt herself shrinking from Gabriel’santicipated touch. But this shrinking she would not countenance. She told herself that it wasfoolish and sinful to look backward when her safety lay before her, like a hiding-place hewn in theside of the mountain.

　　‘Sister,’ he asked one night, ‘don’t you reckon you ought to give your heart to the Lord?’

　　They were in the dark streets, walking to church. He had asked her this question before, butnever in such a tone; she had never before felt so compelling a need to reply.

　　‘I reckon,’ she said.

　　‘If you call on the Lord,’ he said, ‘He’ll lift you up, He’ll give you your heart’s desire. I’ma witness,’ he said, and smiled at her, ‘you call on the Lord, you wait on the Lord, He’ll answer.

　　God’s promises don’t never fail.’

　　Her arm was in his, and she felt him trembling with his passion.

　　‘Till you come,’ she said, in a low, trembling voice, ‘I didn’t never hardly go to church atall, Reverend. Look like I couldn’t see my way nohow—I was all bowed down with shame … andsin.’

　　She could hardly bring the last words out, and as she spoke tears were in her eyes. She hadtold him that John was nameless; and she had tried to tell him something of her suffering, too. Inthose days he had seemed to understand, and he had not stood in judgment on her. When had he sogreatly changed? Or was it that he had not changed, but that her eyes had been opened through thepain he had caused her?

　　‘Well,’ he said, ‘I done come, and it was the hand of the Lord what sent me. He brought ustogether for a sign. You fall on your knees and see if that ain’t so—you fall down and ask Him tospeak to you to-night.’

　　Yes, a sign, she thought, a sign of His mercy, a sign of Hs forgiveness.

　　When they reached the church doors he paused, and looked at her and made his promise.

　　‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘when you go down on your knees to-night, I want you to askthe Lord to speak to your heart, and tell you how to answer what I’m going to say.’

　　She stood a little below him, one foot lifted to the short, stone step that led to the churchentrance, and looked up into his face. And looking into his face, which burned—in the dim, yellowlight that hung about them there—like the face of a man who has wrestled with angels and demonsand looked on the face of God, it came to her, oddly, and all at once, that she had become awoman.

　　‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said, ‘the Lord’s been speaking to my heart, and I believe it’s His willthat you and me should be man and wife.’

　　 And he paused; she said nothing. His eyes moved over her body.

　　‘I know,’ he said, trying to smile, and in a lower voice, ‘I’m a lot older than you. But thatdon’t make no difference. I’m a mighty strong man yet. I done been down the line, SisterElizabeth, and maybe I can keep you from making … some of my mistakes, bless the Lord …maybe I can help keep your foot from stumbling … again … girl … for as long as we’s in thisworld.’

　　Still she waited.

　　‘And I’ll love you,’ he said, ‘and I’ll honor you … until the day God calls me home.’

　　Slow tears rose to her eyes; of joy, for what she had come to; of anguish, for the road thathad brought her here.

　　‘And I’ll love your son, your little boy,’ he said at last, ‘just like he was my own. He won’tnever have to fret or worry about nothing; he won’t never be cold or hungry as long as I’m aliveand I got my two hands to work with. I swear this before my God,’ he said, ‘because He done giveme back something I thought was lost.’

　　Yes, she thought, a sign—a sign that He is mighty to save. Then she moved and stood onthe short step, next to him, before the doors.

　　‘Sister Elizabeth,’ he said—and she would carry to the grave the memory of his grace andhumility at that moment, ‘will you pray?’

　　‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I been praying. I’m going to pray.’

　　They had entered this church;, these doors; and when the pastor made the altar call, sherose, while she heard them praising God, and walked down the long church aisle; down this aisle,to this altar, before this golden cross; to these tears, into this battle—would the battle end one day?

　　When she rose, and as they walked once more through the streets, he had called her God’sdaughter, handmaiden to God’s minister. He had kissed her on the brow, with tears, and said thatGod had brought them together to be each other’s deliverance. And she had wept, in her great joythat the hand of God had changed her life, had lifted her up and set her on the solid rock, alone.

　　She thought of that far-off day when John had come into the world—that moment, thebeginning of her life and death. Down she had gone that day, alone, a heaviness intolerable at herwaist, a secret in her loins, down into the darkness, weeping and groaning and cursing God. Howlong she had bled, and sweated, and cried, no language on earth could tell—how long she hadcrawled through darkness she would never, never know. There, her beginning, and she foughtthrough darkness still; toward that moment when she would make her peace with God, when shewould hear Him speak, and He would wipe all tears from her eyes; as, in that other darkness, aftereternity, she had heard John cry.

　　As now, in the sudden silence, she heard him cry: not the cry of the child, newborn, beforethe common light of earth; but the cry of the man-child, bestial, before the light that comes downfrom Heaven. She opened her eyes and stood straight up; all of the saints surrounded her; Gabrielstood staring, struck rigid as a pillar in the temple. On the threshing-floor, in the center of thecrying, singing saints, John lay astonished beneath the power of the Lord.

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