PROLOGUE

As a child, Luce was running to the store to get a small can of oil, for it was growing dark and she had the lamp to fill. Across the street the lamp-lighter was lifting a burning swab of waste to the street-lamp, a gasoline lamp on the top of a high post. The lamp-lighter stood on a ladder to lift the brand, and when the lamp was lit he would take the ladder on his shoulder and walk away at an even step, the same yesterday and the same tomorrow. When he had new shoes the step was marked with crying leather. She ran past the lamp-lighter hardly giving a moment to look at him, for she knew all his ways and all his motions, all the rhythms of his feet. The street-lamp made a thin, feeble light when there was any day left in the air, but the lighter had to start on his rounds early to have all the lamps ready by the time the dark came to the last one at the end of Hill Street. The lamp flickered dimly in the light of day that was left in the air, but after a little a passer would be glad for the glow; it showed the way to the pump and helped one

over the well-curb and over the stones at the crossing. On dark nights when there was a wind the mules in the livery stable cried out with great cries. There would[2] be a wind that night making little wells of feeling pool up in one’s chest, and a thought of Mome, the city, came to her mind.

There, in Mome, all the lights were electric, and there was one great light over all the place, a high great light like a sun. It shone down on the streets and on the tall house where Mr. Preston, the richest man in the world, kept his money—the money house—and on the fountains in the square. It made a great sheet of light that spread over Mome as a sunset would spread over a hill. But there were dark alleyways for all that, and dark doorways, and at the thought deep wells of feeling would pool up in one’s chest, dark roadways and deep doorways and dark lanes where wheels had cut deep tracks. There would be houses standing high above lanes and late wagons going down into the dark. There would be a little light at the corner, electric but very little, blinking in the fog. A thief would be slipping down a dark lane with—what? one could never think what—in his hand.

In the store the boy with thin arms took her oil can and said, “A dime’s worth?” and set the can aside to wait until the man came with the key to the oil house. She stood beside the old black man who was buying a nickel’s worth of meal and a dime’s worth of bacon, her eyes on the hurrying clerk whose arms reached here and there above the barrels and weighed the sugar as it poured in a stream into a sack. She enjoyed the crowding of the store and the pageant of[3] buying. A heroic freedom surrounded the man, old Anthony Bell, who bought lavishly, never asking the price, calling over the heads of the others, “A hundred pounds of sugar. Send it up tomorrow.” He had stepped lightly in at the doorway, a lifted head, the large gesture of shouting and the lifted cane, “Send it up tomorrow,” and then his exit while the piece went forward, the play enhanced.

Moll Peters, the negress, came heavily in at the door and stood beyond Luce, waiting her turn. She was large and fat and the belt of her apron sank into the rolls of her body and was lost from sight. She would buy freely as long as her money lasted, buying for her children on Hill Street; she cooked at the hotel and had no need to buy food for herself. “Ol’ Hog Mouth, what-all you a-buyen?” she said to a tall man who stood beyond her, a tall yellow man whose clothes were white with plaster. “You ain’t treated Moll this whole enduren year.” Her voice came from her mouth with a clatter of low half-musical squawks and softly blurred vowels delicately stressed.

“Aw, go on,” the man said. He kept in a good humor.

“It’s a God’s truth, now. Whenever did you-all ever treat Moll? Pocket full o’ money. Ol’ Stingy! Buy Moll some candy.”

“Aw go on. Buy your own candy.”

“It’s a God’s own truth, now. Whenever did you ever buy Moll any candy? Go and buy me some candy.”

[4]

“I ain’t got no money. I swear I’m got to ask credit till Sat’day for a little meal and lard. I swear.”

“Aw, buy me some candy.”

Moll was trying to make up with the yellow man. The grocer’s clerk came back with the can of oil and Luce dumped the money, a nickel and five coppers, into his large hand and turned quickly toward the door, remembering now that she must fill the lamp. She ran home through the twilight. The lamp-lighter had gone from the street now and all the lights glimmered faintly, broadly, because they had not yet been concentrated into points by the dark. They marched unevenly up the street, far past the Baptist Church, past the Seminary gate.

In the lecture room of the church Miss Charlotte Bell played the march for the children. There was to be a pageant. The girls walked to the time of the music, spreading over the platform and returning, opening the lines and making fans or closing together into a design. Theodosia Bell, Miss Charlotte’s daughter, walked first, leading, and the music of the piano said the words of the song as Miss Charlotte drummed the keys with her fingers. Miss Charlotte hardly looked at the piano as she played. She looked at the girls who were walking up and down, her head turned about, her lips bending into smiles or her head nodding. Miss[5] Patty Thomas ran up and down before the platform telling how the march should be done. “Now, all together. Up front, Theodosia. Now down center back.” Her tongue clicked over the words and she was important beating her hands. Theodosia walked tossing her body with the up-and-down toss of the music, to the words which the girls would sing after a little, “To the tap of the drum here we come come come.” There was a stop to rearrange some of the girls.

“Whose little girl is this? What’s her name?”

“Luce. She’s Luce Jarvis.”

“She lives down the street a way.”

It was Miss Charlotte who had answered the last. Luce walked near the end of the line and they were off again to the tap of the music, some of them lilting to the time, some heavily laboring, unaware of the beat. If Miss Charlotte nodded her head to the patter of feet she smiled the next instant, but when the song was done, while Miss Patty talked to the children about what they should do, Miss Charlotte sat as if she did not hear, and then her lips were without life and a darkness seemed to have come over her. She looked then at the piano keys, her hands in her lap, or her younger child, Annie, would creep up beside her and push her little face into her broad shoulder.

A boy was taken to the platform to say a piece, Miss Patty showing him how, and the other children went to the seats or they spread about on the floor. “To the tap of the drum here we come come come” had been[6] set aside now, and a girl said, “I like that song.” “It’s a Faust march,” Miss Charlotte said. The word “Faust” fitted to Miss Charlotte’s mouth after it had been said and remained hers entirely, whatever it meant. The Bells lived a little way up the street past the well from which Luce drank, past the street-light, the house standing under a great tree and near two other trees. Looking at Miss Charlotte after she had grown dark, the music ended, her face heavy, Luce thought of the word Anthony, Anthony Bell, the old man, father to Horace Bell who was Miss Charlotte’s husband. Anthony Bell, as words, made a sort of singing in her thought if they came forward as tone, or if they lay quiet they were reminiscent of the faint kindness offered by drama, by enriched being. He was an old man and a scholar, as was said. Luce remembered

their house with Miss Charlotte walking on the lower gallery and saw the planes of her pale dress as she stood a moment before one of the large square pillars. Anthony Bell came and went behind her, stepping along the gallery in his easy slippers, taking a morning walk. Now the voice of the boy tattled endlessly over the piece he was learning to say and the little girls lolled together, teasing one another slyly. Luce went into Miss Patty’s feet as they twinkled about and she felt the flutter of the skirt as it swept her ankles, and she knew what it was to be two slim little shoes buckled over two insteps that rested on pointed toes and hour-glass heels, and to walk in harmony with someone’s[7] thinking, up and down, objecting, agreeing, complaining, repeating. Near at hand the piano was a large black box holding an infinity of tunes somehow in its sides. She looked at Charlotte Bell where she sat waiting. The eyes were dark, averted, and the mouth had no smile. Her large shoulders were erect and her rich dress crumpled about her feet.

Charlotte Bell’s hands could fly easily over the piano if she were minded to make a tune. Sometimes in the evening old Anthony played his fiddle standing beside her as she played. Her rich white dress had many yards of small lace sewed into it in designs and her hat was off. Her dark hair was laid softly over her head and knotted at the back in a large coil. Luce looked at her and felt her presence reach past the white dress as if there were some large thing inside. Then she laid her bare. She tore away the clothes from around her shoulders and opened her body. She emptied the heart out of it and flung out the entrails, for she had seen men butcher a hog. She went searching down through blood and veins, liver and lights, smelt and kidney. Out came the fat, the guts, the ribs. She was looking for something. Then on beyond, past the flesh, to the bone, she was searching. Past the brains, past the skull bone. She flung everything aside as she took it out and went deeper, eager to find. Past the bones she came to the skin again, on the other side, and finally to the red of

the yarn carpet, everything rejected, nothing found, nothing left. Quickly she reassembled Miss Charlotte.[8] She brought back the bone, the flesh, the organs. She hooked the right arm onto its shoulder and hooked on the left. She set her head on her shoulders and fitted her back into her dress. Put together again, Miss Charlotte suggested something within, hinted of it with her turning mouth and with the slight movement of her limbs under the pretty dress, gave a brief warning of it in the way the lace was sewed into the dress and the way the two large pins were placed to hold up her hair.

All the while the red of the carpet and the smell of the carpet gave a flavor of Sunday and the catechism. There was a question then, she thought, for every answer. The little girls were weary of the boy’s speech and his dull gestures and weary of Miss Patty’s efforts to arouse his voice to eloquence. Luce looked from one to another, letting her self enter the arrogance of one, the humility of one, the stupidity of one. She saw what it would be not to know a rhythm, to march as Esther marched, on dull feet. The tone of the Sunday questioning pervaded the place, question and answer, final and done, well said. All that was asked had a reply, curt and certain. She looked at Miss Charlotte where she sat behind the piano, her eyes on the keys, and the questions took possession of the event.

Who made you, Miss Charlotte?

God.

[9]

Why did God make Miss Charlotte?

For His own glory.

Old Mr. Bell had a collection of Indian arrow-points and stone hatchets mounted and displayed in cabinets that were strung through the halls and passages of the house. Luce had once stood wondering at the door of a hallway while Theodosia called to her to come and play. “Oh, come on, come on,” she had called. “Leave those old rubbishes. What’s any good beside a game? You’re It. Come on.” But a child had told of a wonder. Old Mr. Bell had once opened the cabinet of Indian relics and had shown the children the arrow-flints, had let them take some of them into their hands. They were hard stone weapons from the stone age of the country before the time of the white men. Luce had not been present and the cabinets had never been opened for her. Miss Charlotte sat now turning the pages of a music book, her eyes busy with the songs in the book. Once, in a game, when she was not It, and when she was so well hidden that no one could find her, so well that she was forgotten, Luce had slipped into the hallway of the largest of the cabinets,

a rear enclosed gallery, and had looked her fill at the wonders inside. She knew that these wonders had been picked up from an old Indian battlefield not far from the town. Horace Bell was a tall man, standing above most of the people of the street. He had a great voice that sometimes burst from the court-room when[10] he made a speech there. He had a pride in his voice and he liked to roll out long sayings that gave it a chance to flow and turn and recede. One day he had boomed at some pigeons that took flight and swept across the street by the pump with a low thunder of wings, and he had made a saying quickly to run with them in their going, his eyes full of his laughter. He had then run his hand through his upstanding yellow hair with a great gesture and had taken a remembered delight in the pigeons and his voice that could match their rumble of wings. Miss Tennie Burden, Tennessee, lived out another street. The Sunday questioning passed into the region of Miss Charlotte’s darkly averted, sad face.

How can I glorify God?

By loving Him and doing His holy will.

Can you see God?

No, but He can always see me.

Does Charlotte Bell know about Tennie Burden?

She knows.

Does she care because Horace Bell goes to sit in Miss Tennie’s doorway?

Ask somebody else.

Why would she care?

A big girl said she would care. A big girl knew why.

What do Horace Bell and Miss Tennie talk about?

[11]

About old times.

Who is Miss Tennie’s husband?

Mr. Joe Burden.

How many children has Miss Tennie got?

Two. Joyce and Evaline.

Any boys?

No boys.

How do you know that you have a soul?

Because I can think about God and the world to come.

I can’t think about God and the world to come.

Try.

I tried.

Who made Theodosia Bell?

God, I reckon.

Is God a smell or something?

Whose little girl is this?

Luce. Luce Jarvis.

She lives down the street a way.

Her own look had looked back at her out of Charlotte Bell’s look when Charlotte had spoken to give the answer. To see Charlotte then was to remember Tennessee Burden and to pluck in mind at the strange fair vapor that gathered before Charlotte’s darkness and over her sadness, Tennie Burden, her bright hair easily curled over her head. She would sit in her door all day, the gallery with its high pillars running close to the roadway, and she would stop any who passed to[12] talk a little. The cushions at her feet were soft and warm. She would stop any who passed, even Moll Peters, even Uncle Nelse, even Stiggins, the small yellow boy who lived in the livery stable.

Questioning the question, the hour passed and was eaten away entirely when the march began again. “To the tap of the drum here we come come come” spread through the entire air now. Luce looked at Theodosia as she marched and looked into her pride in walking first and her pride again in the feel of the drumming of the music, her feet set down rightly upon the rhythm. She looked at her. She was the daughter of Charlotte Bell and Horace. Her hair was brown with an over-tint of red that showed at the sides where the rolls were turned up to the light and showed again where the ends of the braid sprayed out beyond the ribbon below her shoulders and down her back. She spread a trail of herself down the platform as she went proudly first, the other girls walking on her steps, setting feet down where she guided, she leaving a comet-train of herself behind to be entered, walked into, known by the knower, the chronicler.

The boy who lived in the livery stable was named Stiggins, a yellow boy who slept somewhere in the stable in the straw. If travelers came long after night they were obliged to pound on the door and cry out[13] for admittance for their horses, and then the night man would send Stiggins down to open the door. The men who worked at the stable gave Stiggins bits of money from time to time. When there was not much to do the hostlers would tease Stiggins by locking him into the loft or the old harness closet or by holding him under the spout of the pump. Or they would crack a whip under his knees to make him jump up high to avoid the keen sting of the whip-snapper. Sometimes when the proprietor was gone all day this sport went on for hours until Stiggins would cry, but if he cried he was unfailingly locked into the loft or the harness closet. He seemed happiest on court day when there was a great crowd in town and many horses to care for. Everybody was busy then, calling him to do this or to do that, speaking quickly, even cheerily. “Here,

Stig, take this filly and hurry back with fifty-four. Twenty-two wants feed, but sixteen just a hitch.”

Stiggins was not, in fact, a name; some of the men had given it to him one day when he was leaping to escape the whip. His mother was Dolly Brown, a half-witted negress who lived in the alley behind the jail, and his father had been some white man. Luce saw him going about, a small boy, as small as herself; and he belonged to the stable. He was not, she assumed, a real being, and it did not matter what one did to him. Push him into the stall where the horse manure was thrown, make him pump all morning at the broken pump, tear a bigger hole in his old ragged breeches, or[14] make him leap to avoid the whip, it was no matter. He was a half-wit; he could never learn; he was not real. But Luce was often sorry for Stig. She had inferred that he was not a real creature, and this pity which she had was, then, sentimental. Even she felt that it must be somehow false and unnecessary, pretty in some way, as if one would be sorry for a hog because it lay in the mire. His mouth was loose and easy to drip. He would do anything anyone told him to do, or

once in a while, reversed, he would do nothing anyone told him to do. He was not real, was scarcely there at all, was not a being; but often when he was tormented until he cried, or when he was locked into the filthy dark of the old harness closet, or when his clothes were torn anew until he cringed under some sort of shame that, curiously enough, he seemed to have about him, Luce would feel the approach of her own tears and a hurt would gather in her breast and spread as a fog through her members, through the substance of the earth and the air. She would wander about, unable to discover the cause, unable to discern the result or resolve it to any meanings. At the end of her confusion she would think again of Mome with richer ecstasy.

The streets of Mome were the streets of Anneville, running right and left, in and out, as she knew and saw, but over these—Hill Street, Main Street, Jackson Street, Simon Street, Tucker Lane, Crabtree Lane—lay the great city of Mome, reaching out for miles[15] and adding other streets and avenues, Chester, Dover, Cowslip, Bangor, Elm, Pine, Walnut, Vine, and many more, running out among fair parks and lovely gardens. Instead of the low shops on Main Street there arose great office buildings and spires and towers where people fluttered by, quick in their steps, beautiful, alert. On Jackson Street in Anneville grew great poplar trees under which men sat all day telling slow stories they had told over and over before, old men grown epic with age and fatalism. Their refrains recurring were, “Ain’t that always the way!... No sooner you get ... but along comes a place to spend it.... Looks like as soon as a man gets on his feet.... Always the way....” They spoke without malice, interspersing their wisdom with long slow happenings. “Did ever you know hit to fail?...