 The Ghetto from the Ghetto and Other Poems This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Sue Anderson. The Ghetto from the Ghetto and Other Poems by Lola Ridge 1. Cool, inaccessible air is floating in velvety blackness, shot with steel blue lights, but no breath stirs the heat, leaning its ponderous bulk upon the ghetto, and most on Hester Street. The heat, nosing in the body's overflow, like a beast pressing its great steaming belly close, covering all avenues of air. The heat in Hester Street heaped like a drae with the garbage of the world. Bodies dangle from the fire escapes, or sprawl over the stoops, upturned faces glimmer paladly, herring yellow faces spotted as with a mold, and moist faces of girls like dank white lilies, and infants' faces with open parched mouths that suck at the air as at empty teats. Young women pass in groups converging to the forms and meeting halls, surging, indomitable, slow, through the gross underbrush of heat. Their heads are uncovered to the stars, and they call to the young men and to one another with a free camaraderie. Only their eyes are ancient and alone. The street crawls undulent like a river addled with its hot tide of flesh that ever thickens. Heavy surges of flesh break over the pavements, clavoring like a surf. Flesh of this abiding brood of those ancient mothers who saw the dawn break over Egypt, and turned their cakes upon the dry-hot stones and went on till the gold of the Egyptians fell down off their arms, fasting and a thirst, and yet on. Did they vision with those eyes darkly clear that looked the sun in the face and were not blinded across the centuries the march of their enduring flesh? Did they hear under the molten silence of the desert like a stopped wheel and the scorpions tick-ticking on the sand the infinite procession of those feet? II I room at Sodos in the little green room that was Benny's, with Sadie and her old father and her mother, who is not so old and wears her own hair. Old Sodos no longer makes saddles, he has forgotten how. He has forgotten most things, even Benny who stays away and sends wine on holidays. And he does not like Sadie's mother who hides God's candles, nor Sadie, whose young pagan breath puts out the light that should burn always like errands before the Lord. Time spins like a crazy dial in his brain. And night by night I see the love gesture of his arm in his green greasy coat sleeve, circling the book and the candles gleaming starkly on the blotched paper whiteness of his face like a miswritten psalm. Night by night I hear his lifted praise like a broken whinnying before the Lord's shut gate. Sadie dresses in black. She has black wet hair full of cold lights and a fine drawn face, too white. All day the power machine's drone in her ears. All day the fine dust flies till throats are parched and itch and the heat like a kept corpse fowls to the last corner. Then when needles move more slowly on the cloth and sweaty fingers slacken and hair falls in damp wisps over the eyes, sped by some power within Sadie quivers like a rod, a thin black piston flying one with her machine. She who stabs the piecework with her bitter eye and bids the girls, slow down, you'll have him cutting us again. She fiery static atom held in place by the fierce pressure all about speeds up the driven wheels and biting steel that twice has nipped her to the bone. At night she reads those books that have most unset thought new-pored and malleable to which her thought leaps fusing at white heat, or spits her fire out in some dim manger of a hall, or at a protest meeting on the square, her lit eyes kindling the mob, or dances madly at a festival. Each dawn finds her a little whiter, though up and keyed to the long day, alert yet weary, like a bird that all night long has beat about a light. The gentile lover that she charms and shrews is one more pebble in the pack for Sadie's mother, who greets him with her narrowed eyes that hold some welcome back. What's to be done she'll say when Sadie wants she takes. Better than Benny with his Christian woman, a man is not so like if they should fight to call her Jew. Yet when she lies in bed and the soft babble of their talk comes to her, and the silences, I know she never sleeps till the keen draught blowing up the empty hall, edges through her transom, and she hears his foot on the first stairs. Sarah and Anna live on the floor above. Sarah is swarthy and ill-dressed. Life for her has no ritual. She would break an ideal like an egg for the winged thing at the core. Her mind is hard and brilliant and cutting, like an acetylene torch. If any impurities drift there they must be burnt up as in a clear flame. It is droll that she should work in a pants factory. Yet, where else, tousled and collar awry at her olive throat, besides, her hands are unkept. With English and everything there is so little time. She reads without bias, doubting clamorously, psychology, plays, science, philosophies, those giant flowers that have bloomed and withered scattering their seed. And out of this young, forcing soil what growth may come, what amazing blossomings. Anna is different. One is always aware of Anna, and the young men turn their heads to look at her. She has the appeal of a folk song, and her cheap clothes are always in rhythm. When the strike was on she gave half her pay. She would give anything save the praise that is hers and the love of her lyric body. But Sarah's desire covets nothing apart. She would share all things, even her lover. 3. The sturdy ghetto children march by the parade, waving their toy flags, prancing to the bugles, lusty, unafraid, shaking little firesticks at the night. The old, blinking night, swerving out of the way, wrapped in her darkness like a shawl. But a small girl cowers apart. Her braided head, shiny as a blackbird's in the gleam of the torchlight, is poised as for flight. Her eyes have the glow of darken lights. She stammers in Yiddish, but I do not understand, and there flits across her face a shadow, as of a drawn blind. I give her an orange, large and golden, and she looks at it blankly. I take her little cold hand and try to draw her to me, but she is stiff, like a doll. Suddenly she darts through the crowd like a little white panic, blown along the night away from the terror of oncoming feet and drums rattling like curses in red roaring mouths, and torches spluttering silver fire and lights that nose out hiding places, to the night, squatting like a hunchback under the curved stoop. The old, mammy night that has outlived beauty and knows the ways of fear. The night, wide opening crooked and comforting arms, hiding her as in a voluminous skirt. The sturdy ghetto children march by the parade, waving their toy flags, prancing to the bugles, lusty, unafraid. But I see a white frock and eyes like hooded lights out of the shadow of pogroms watching, watching. 4. Calicoes and furs, pocketbooks and scarves, razor-strops and knives, patterns in check, olive hands and russet head, pickles red and coppery, green pickles, brown pickles, patterns in tapestry, coral beads, blue beads, beads of pearl and amber, gougas, beauty pins, the jewellery for chits, darting rays of violet, amethyst and jade, all the colors out to play, jumbly or decently, patterns in stained glass, shivered into bits, nooses of gay ribbon tugging at one's sleeve, dainty little garters hanging out their sign, hero-powder frilly things, therosanzee feather, white beards, black beards like knots in the weave, and ah, the little babies, shiny black-eyed babies, half a million pink toes wriggling all together, baskets full of babies like grapes on a vine, mothers waddling in and out, making all things right, picking up the slipped threads in Grand Street at night, Grand Street like a great bazaar, crowded like a float, bulging like a crazy quilt, stretched on a line, but nearer seen this litter of the East takes on a garbled majesty, the herded stalls in disillute array, the glitter and the jumbled finery, and strangely juxtaposed, cans, paper, rags, and colors decomposing, faded like old hair, with flashes of barbaric hues and eyes of mystery, flung like an ancient tapestry of motley weave upon the open wall of this new land. Here a tawny-headed girl, lemons in a greenish broth, and a huge earthen bowl, by a bronze merchant with a tall black lambswool cap upon his head, he has no glance for her, his thrifty eyes bend, glittering, intent, their hoarded looks upon his merchandise, as though it were some splendid cloth or sumptuous rainement, stitched in gold and red. He seldom talks save of the goods he spreads, the meager cotton with its dismal flower, but with his skinny hands that harbor like two hawks above some luscious meat, he fingers lovingly each calicole, as though it were a gorgeous shawl, or costly vesture, wrought in silken thread, or strange bright carpet made for sandled feet. Here an old scholar stands, his brooding eyes that hold long vistas without end, of caravans and trees and roads, and cities dwindling in remembrance, bend mostly on his tapes and thread. What if they tweak his beard, these raw young seed of Israel, who have no backward vision in their eyes, and mock him as he sways above the sunken arches of his feet? They find no peg to hang their taunts upon, his soul is like a rock that bears a front-worn smooth by the coarse friction of the sea, and, unperturbed, he keeps his bitter peace. What if a rigid arm and stuffed blue shape, backed by a nickel star, does prod him on, taking his proud patience for humility? All gutters are as one to that old race that has been thrust from off the curbstones of the world, and he smiles with the pale irony of one who holds the wisdom of the Talmud stored away in his mind's lavender. But this young trader, born to trade as to a call, pedals the notions of the hour, the gestures of the craft are his, and all the lore, as when to hold, withdraw, persuade, advance, and be it gum or flags or cleanall or the newest thing in tags, demand goes to him as the bee to flower. And he, appraising all who come and go, with his amazing sleight of mind and glance, and nimble thought and nature balanced like the scales at knot, looks westward where the trade lights glow, and sees his vision rise, a tape-ruled vision circumscribed in stone some fifty stories to the skies. V. As I sit in my little fifth-floor room, bare, safe for bed and chair, and coppery stains left by seeping rains, on the low ceiling and green plaster walls, where, when night falls, golden lady-bugs come out of their holes, and roaches seep your brown consort, I hear bells peeling out of the great church at Rutgers Street, holding its high-flung cross above the ghetto, and one floor down across the court the parrot screaming, for a waltz, for a waltz! The parrot, frowsy white, everlastingly swinging on its iron bar. A little old woman with the wig of smooth black hair, gummed about her shrunken brows, comes sometimes on the fire escape. An old, stooped mother, the left shoulder low, with that uneven dupiness that women know who have suckled many young. Yet I have seen no other than the parrot there. I watch her mornings as she shakes her rugs, feebly with futile reach, and fingers without clutch. Her thues are slack, and curved the ruin back, and flesh in purple like old meat, yet each conspires to feed those guttering fires with which her eyes are quick. On Friday nights her candles signal infinite fine rays to other windows, coupling other lights, linking the tenements like an endless prayer. She seems less lonely than the bird, that day by day about the dismal house screams out his frenzied word. That night by night if a dog yelps, or a cat yalls, or sick child whines, or a door screeches on its hinges, or a man and woman fight, sends his cry above the huddle roofs. For a waltz! For a waltz! 6. In this dingy cafe the old men sit, muffled in woolens. Everything is faded, shabby, colorless, old. The chairs loose-jointed, creaking like old bones. The tables, the waiters, the walls, whose mottled plaster blends in one tone with the old flesh. Young life and young thought are alike barred, and no unheralded noises jolt old nerves, and old wheezy breaths pass around old thoughts dry as snuff. And there is no divergence and no friction, as life is flattened and ground as by many mills. And it is here the committee, sweet-breathed and smooth of skin and supple of spine and knee, with shining unpouched eyes and the blood-high-powered leaping inflexible arteries, the insolent young, enthusiastic, undiscriminating committee, who would placard tombstones and scattered leaflets even in graves, comes trampling with sacrilegious feet. The old men turn stiffly, mumbling to each other. They are gentle and torpid and busy with eating. But one lifts a face of clayish pallor. There is a dull fury in his eyes, like little rusty grates. He rises slowly, trembling in his many swathings like an awakened mummy. Ridiculous, yet terrible. And the committee flings him a waste-glance, dropping a leaflet by his plate. A lone fire flickers in the dusty eyes, the lips chant inaudibly, the warped, shrunken body straightens like a tree, and he curses with uplifted arms and perished fingers claw-like clutching. So centuries ago the old men cursed Acosta, when they were prophetic, hurt upon their sepulchres, those feet that may not halt nor turn aside for ancient things. 7. Here in this room, bare like a barn, egos gesture one to the other, naked, unformed, unwinned egos out of the shell, examining, searching, devouring, avid alike for the flower or the dung, having no dainty antenna for the touch and withdrawal, only the open maw. Egos coin, expanding in the mean egg, little squat-taylors with unkept faces, pale as lard, firm-makers, factory-hands, shop-workers, newsboys with battling eyes, and bodies yet vibrant with the momentum of long runs. Here and there, a woman, words, words, words, pattering like hail, like hail falling without aim, egos rampant screaming each other down. One motions perpetually, waving arms like over-growths, he has burning eyes and a cough, and a thin voice piping like a flute among trombones. One red-bearded, rearing, a welter of maimed face bashed in from some old wound, garbles Max Stirner. His words knock each other like little wooden blocks, no one heeds him, and a lank boy with hair over his eyes pounds upon the table. He is chairman. Egos yet in the primer, hearing wool voices, chanting grand arias, majors resonant, stunning with sound, baffling minors half-heard like rain on pools, majestic discordances, greater than harmonies, gleaning out of it all, passion, bewilderment, pain. Egos yearning with the world-old want in their eyes, hurt, hot eyes that do not sleep enough, striving with infinite effort, frustrate yet ever pursuing the great white liberty, trailing her dissolving glory over each hard one barricade, only to fade anew. Egos crying out of unkept deeps, and waving their dreams like flags, multicolored dreams, winged and glorious. A gas jet throws a stunted flame, vaguely illuminating the groping faces, and through the uncurtained window falls the waist-light of stars, as cold as wise men's eyes, indifferent great stars, fortuitously glancing at the secret meeting in this shut-in room, bare as a manger. 8. Lights go out, and the stark trunks of the factories melt into the drawn darkness, sheathing like a seamless garment. And mothers take home their babies, waxen and delicately curled, like little potted flowers closed under the stars. Lights go out, and the young men shut their eyes, but life turns in them. Life in the cramped ova, tearing and rendering asunder its living cells, wars, arts, discoveries, rebellions, travails, immolations, cataclysms, hates, pent in the shut flesh. And the young men twist on their beds in languor and dizziness unsupportable, their eyes heavy and dimmed, with dust of long oblivions in the gray pulp behind, staring as through a choked glass. And they gaze at the moon throwing off a faint heat, the moon, blonde and burning, creeping to their cots, softly as on naked feet, lolling on the coverlet, like a woman offering her white body. Nude glory of the moon, that leaps like an athlete on the bosoms of the young girls stripped of their linens, stroking their breasts that are smooth and cool as mother of pearl, till the nipples tingle and burn as though little lips plucked at them, they shudder and grow faint, and their ears are filled as with a delirious rhapsody that life, like a drunken player, strikes out of their clear white bodies as out of ivory keys. Lights go out, and the great lovers linger in little groups still passionately debating. Or one may walk in silence listening only to the still summons of life, life making the great demand, calling its new Christs till tears come blurring the stars that grow tender and comforting like the eyes of comrades, and the moon rolls behind the battery, like a word molten out of the mouth of God. Lights go out, and colors rush together, fusing and floating away, pale worn gold like the settings of old jewels, mauves, exquisite, tremulous, and luminous purples and burning spires and orials of light, like shimmering auras. They are covering up the push carts, now all have gone save an old man with mirrors, little oval mirrors like tiny pools, he shuffles up a darkened street, and the moon burnishes his mirrors till they shine like phosphorus. The moon like a skull, staring out of eyeless sockets at the old men trundling home the push carts. Nine. A Saladon is in the sky as I enter my little green room, Sadie's light is still burning. Without the frail moon worn to a silvery tissue throws a faint glamour on the roofs and down the shadowy spires. Lights tiptoe out, softly as when lovers close street doors. Out of the battery a little wind stirs idly, as an arm trails over a boat's side in dalliance, rippling the smooth, dead surface of the heat, and Hester Street, like a falorn woman overborn by many babies at her teats, turns on her trampled bed to meet the day. Life, startling, vigorous life that squirms under my touch, and baffles me when I try to examine it, or hurls me back without apology, leaving my ego ruffled and preening itself. Life, articulate shrill, screaming in provocative assertion, or out of the black and clotted gutters piping in silvery thin sweet staccato of children's laughter, or clinging over the push carts like a litter of tiny bells, or the jingle of silver coins perpetually changing hands, or like the Jordan somberly swirling into multuous uncharted tides, surface calm, electric currents of life, throwing off thoughts like sparks, glittering, disappearing, making unknown circuits, or out of spent particles stirring feeble contortions in old faiths, passing before the new. Long nights argued away in meeting halls, back of interminable stairways, in Romanian wine shops, and little Russian tea rooms, feet echoing through deserted streets in the soft darkness before dawn, brows aching, throbbing, burning, life leaping in the shaken flesh, like flame at an asbestos curtain. Life, pent overflowing stoops and facades, jostling, pushing, contriving, seething as in a great vat, bartering, changing, extorting, dreaming, debating, aspiring, astounding, indestructible life of the ghetto, strong flux of life like a bitter wine, out of the bloody stills of the world, out of the passion eternal. End of the ghetto from the ghetto and other poems by Lola Ridge. No bless from the copycat and other stories. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Recording by Rosie. No bless from the copycat and other stories by Mary E. Wilkins Freeman. Margaret Lee encountered in her late middle age the rather singular straight of being entirely alone in the world. She was unmarried, and as far as relatives were concerned, she had none except those connected with her by ties not of blood, but by marriage. Margaret had not married when her flesh had been comparative. Later, when it had become superlative, she had no opportunities to marry. Life would have been hard enough for Margaret under any circumstances. But it was especially hard living, as she did, with her father's stepdaughter and that daughter's husband. Margaret's stepmother had been a child in spite of her two marriages and a very silly, although pretty child. The daughter Camille was like her, although not so pretty, and the man whom Camille had married was what Margaret had been taught to regard as common. His business pursuits were regular and partook of mystery. He always smoked cigarettes and chewed gum. He wore loud shirts and a diamond scarf pin which had upon him the appearance of stolen goods. The gem had belonged to Margaret's own mother, but when Camille expressed a desire to present it to Jack Desmond, Margaret had yielded with no outward hesitation, but afterward she wept miserably over its loss when alone in her room. The spirit had gone out of Margaret, the little which she had possessed. She had always been a gentle, sensitive creature, and was almost helpless before the wishes of others. After all, it had been a long time since Margaret had been able to force the ring even upon her little finger, but she had derived a small pleasure from the reflection that she owned it in its faded velvet box, hidden under laces in her top-bureau drawer. She did not like to see it blazing forth from the tie of this very ordinary young man who had married Camille. Margaret had a gentle, high-bred contempt for Jack Desmond, but at the same time a vague fear of him. Jack had a measure of unscrupulous business shrewdness which spared nothing and nobody, and that in spite of the fact that he had not succeeded. Margaret owned the old lee-place, which had been magnificent, but of late years the expenditures had been reduced and it had deteriorated. The conservatories had been closed. There was only one horse in the stable. Jack had bought him. He was a worn-out trodder with legs carefully bandaged. Jack drove him at reckless speed, not considering those slender, braceleted legs. Jack had a racing-gig, and went in it with striped coat, cap on one side, cigarette in his mouth, lines held taut, skimming along the roads in clouds of dust. He thought himself the man and true sportsman which he was not. Some of the old lee-silver had paid for that waning trodder. Camille adored Jack and cared for no associations, no society, for which he was not suited. Before the trodder was bought, she told Margaret that the kind of dinners which she was able to give in Fairhill were awfully slow. If we could afford to have some men out from the city, some nice fellers that Jack knows, it would be worthwhile, said she. But we have grown so hard up we can't do a thing to make it worth their while. Those men haven't got any use for a back-number-old place like this. We can't take them round in autos nor give them a chance at cards, for Jack couldn't pay if he lost, and Jack is awful honorable. We can't have the right kind of folks here for any fun. I don't propose to ask the rector and his wife, and old Mr. Harvey, or people like the leeches. The leeches are a very good family, said Margaret Feebley. I don't care for good old families when they are so slow, retorted Camille. The fellers we could have here, if we were rich enough, come from fine families, but they are up to date. It's no use hanging on to old silver dishes we never use, and that I don't intend to spoil my hands shining. Poor Jack don't have much fun anyway. If he wants that trodder, he says it's going dirt cheap. I think it's mean he can't have it, instead of your hanging on to a lot of out-of-style old silver, so there. Two generations ago there had been French blood in Camille's family. She put on her clothes beautifully, and she had a dark, rather fine-featured, alert little face, which gave a wrong impression, for she was essentially vulgar. Sometimes poor Margaret Lee wished that Camille had been definitely vicious, if only she might be possessed of more of the characteristics of breeding. Camille so irritated Margaret in those somewhat abstruse traits called sensibilities, that she felt as if she were living with a sort of spiritual nutmeg grater. Seldom did Camille speak that she did not jar Margaret, although unconsciously. Camille meant to be kind to the stout woman, whom she pitied as far as she was capable of pitting without understanding. She realized that it must be horrible to be no longer young, and so stout that one was fairly monstrous, but how horrible she could not with her mentality conceive. Jack also meant to be kind. He was not of the brutal, that is, intentionally brutal type, but he had a shrewd eye to the betterment of himself, and no realization of the torture he inflicted upon those who opposed that betterment. For a long time matters had been worse than usual financially in the Lee House. The sisters had been left in charge of the sadly dwindled estate, and had depended upon the judgment, or lack of judgment, of Jack. He approved of taking her chances and striking for larger income. The few good old grandfather securities had been sold, and wild ones from the very jungle of commerce had been substituted. Jack, like most men of his type, while shrewd, was as credulous as a child. He lied himself, and expected all men to tell him the truth. Camille at his bidding mortgaged the old place, and Margaret dared not oppose. Taxes were not paid, interest was not paid, credit was exhausted. Then the House was put up at public auction, and brought little more than sufficient to pay the creditors. Jack took the balance and staked it in a few games of chance, and of course lost. The weary trotter stumbled one day and had to be shot. Jack became desperate. He frightened Camille. He was suddenly morose. He bade Camille pack and Margaret also, and they obeyed. Camille stowed away her crumpled finery in the bulging old trunks, and Margaret folded daintily her few remnants of past treasures. She had an old silk gown or two, which resisted with their rich honesty the inroads of time, and a few pieces of old lace, which Camille understood no better than she understood their owner. Then Margaret and the Desmond's went to the city, and lived in a horrible tawdry little flat in a tawdry locality. Jack roared with bitter mirth when he saw poor Margaret forced to enter her tiny room sidewise. Camille laughed also, although she chided Jack gently. Mean of you to make fun of poor Margaret, Jackie, dear, she said. For a few weeks Margaret's life in that flat was horrible. Then it became still worse. Margaret nearly filled with her weary, ridiculous bulk her little room, and she remained there most of the time, although it was sunny and noisy, its one window giving on a courtyard strung with clotheslines and teeming with boisterous life. Camille and Jack went trolley-riding, and made shift to entertain a little merry but questionable people, who gave them passes to vaudeville and entertained in their turn until the small hours. Unquestionably these people suggested to Jack Desmond the scheme which spelled tragedy to Margaret. She always remembered one little dark man with keen eyes who had seen her disappearing through her door of a Sunday night when all these gay, bedraggled birds were at liberty and the fun ran high. Great Scott, the man had said, and Margaret had heard him demand of Jack that she be recalled. She obeyed, and the man was introduced, also the other members of the party. Margaret Lee stood in the midst of this throng and heard their repressed hitters of mirth at her appearance. Everybody there was in good humour with the exception of Jack, who was still nursing his bad luck and the little dark man whom Jack owed. The eyes of Jack and the little dark man made Margaret cold with a terror of something she knew not what. Before that terror the shame and mortification of her exhibition to that merry company was of no import. She stood among them, silent, immense, clad in her dark purple silk gowns spread over a great hoop skirt. A real lace collar lay softly over her enormous billowing shoulders. Real lace ruffles lay over her great shapeless hands. Her face, the delicacy of whose features was veiled with flesh, flushed and paled. Not even flesh could subdue the sad brilliancy of her dark blue eyes, fixed inward upon her own sad state, unregardful of the company. She made an indefinite murmur of response to the salutations given her, and then retreated. She heard the roar of laughter after she had squeezed through the door of her room. Then she heard eager conversation of which she did not catch the real import, but which terrified her with chance expressions. She was quite sure that she was the subject of that eager discussion. She was quite sure that had boated her no good. In a few days she knew the worst, and the worst was beyond her utmost imaginings. This was before the days of moving picture shows. It was the day of humiliating spectacles of deformities when inventions of amusements for the people had not progressed. It was the day of exhibitions of sad freaks of nature, calculated to provoke tears rather than laughter in the healthy-minded, and poor Margaret Lee was a chosen victim. Camille informed her in a few words of her fate. Camille was sorry for her, although not in the least understanding why she was sorry. She realized dimly that Margaret would be distressed, but she was unable from her narrow point of view to comprehend fully the whole tragedy. Jack has gone broke, stated Camille. He owes Bill Stark a pile and he can't pay a cent of it, and Jack's good sense of honour about a poker debt is about the biggest thing in his character. Jack has got to pay. And Bill has a little circus going to travel all summer, and he's offered big money for you. Jack can pay Bill what he owes him and will have enough to live on and have lots of fun going around. You hadn't ought to make a fuss about it. Margaret, pale as death, stared at the girl, partly slim and common and pretty, who stared back laughingly, although still with a glimmer of uncomprehending pity in her black eyes. What does he want me for, gasped Margaret? For a show, because you are so big, replied Camille, you will make us all rich, Margaret, ain't it nice? Then Camille screamed, the shill raucous scream of the woman of her type, for Margaret had fallen back in a dead faint, her immense bulk inert in her chair. Jack came running in alarm. Margaret had suddenly gained value in his shrewd eyes. He was as pale as she. Finally Margaret raised her head, opened her miserable eyes, and regained her consciousness of herself in what lay before her. There was no course open but submission. She knew that from the first. All three faced destitution. She was the one financial asset, she and her poor flesh. She had to face it and with what dignity she could muster. Margaret had great piety. She kept constantly before her mental vision the fact in which she believed that the world which she found so hard and which put her to unspeakable torture was not all. A week elapsed before the wretched little show of which she was to be a member went on the road, and night after night she prayed. She besieged her God for strength. She never prayed for respite. Her realization of the situation and her lofty resolution prevented that. The awful, ridiculous combat was before her. There was no evasion. She prayed only for the strength which leads to victory. However when the time came it was all worse than she had imagined. How could a woman gently born and bred conceived of the horrible ignominy of such life? She was dragged hither and yawn to this and that little town. She traveled through sweltering heat on jolting trains. She slept in tents. She lived. She, Margaret Lee, on terms of equality with the common and the vulgar. Daily her absurd unwieldiness was exhibited to crowds screaming with laughter. Even her faith wavered. It seemed to her that there was nothing for evermore beyond those staring jeering faces of silly mirth and delight at sight of her seated in two chairs clad in a pink spangled dress, her vast shoulders bare and sparkling with a tawdry necklace, her great bare arms covered with brass bracelets, her hands encased in short white kid gloves, over the fingers of which she wore a number of rings, aged properties. Margaret became a horror to herself. At times it seemed to her that she was in the way of fairly losing her own identity. It mattered little that Camille and Jack were very kind to her that they showed her the nice things which her terrible earnings had enabled them to have. She sat in her two chairs, the two chairs proved a most successful advertisement, with her two kid cushiony hands clenched in her pink spangled lap, and she suffered agony of soul which made her inner self stern and terrible behind that great pink mask of face. And nobody realized until one sultry day when the show opened at a village in a pocket of green hills, indeed its name was Green Hill, and Sidney Lord went to see it. Margaret who had schooled herself to look upon her audience as if they were not, suddenly comprehended among them another soul who understood her own. She met the eyes of the man and a wonderful comfort as of a cool breeze blowing over the face of clear water came to her. She knew that the man understood. She knew that she had his fullest sympathy. She saw also a comrade in the toils of comic tragedy, for Sidney Lord was in the same case. He was a mountain of flesh. As a matter of fact had he not been known in Green Hill and respected as a man of weight of character as well as of body, and of an old family, he would have rivaled Margaret. Beside him sat an elderly woman, sweet-faced, slightly bent as to her slender shoulders as if with a chronic attitude of submission. She was Sidney's widowed sister, Ellen Waters. She lived with her brother and kept his house and had no will other than his. Sidney Lord and his sister remained when the rest of the audience had drifted out after the privileged handshakes with the queen of the show. Every time a coarse rustic hand reached familiarity after Margaret's Sidney shrink. He motioned his sister to remain seated when he approached the stage. Jack Desmond, who had been exploiting Margaret, gazed at him with admiring curiosity. Sidney waved him away with a commanding gesture. I wish to speak to her a moment. Pray leave the tent, he said, and Jack obeyed. People always obeyed Sidney Lord. Sidney stood before Margaret and he saw the clear crystal which was herself, within all the flesh, clad in a tawdry raiment, and she knew that he saw it. Good God! said Sidney. You are a lady. He continued to gaze at her, and his eyes, large and brown, became blurred, at the same time his mouth tightened. How came you to be in such a place as this? demanded Sidney. He spoke almost as if he were angry with her. Margaret explained briefly. It is an outrage, declared Sidney. He said it, however, rather absently. He was reflecting. Where do you live? he asked. Here. You mean, they make up a bed for me here, after the people have gone. And I suppose you had, before this, a comfortable house. The house which my grandfather Lee owned, the old Lee mansion house, before we went to the city. It was a very fine old colonial house, explained Margaret, in her finely modulated voice. And you had a good room? The southeast chamber had always been mine. It was very large, and the furniture was old Spanish mahogany. And now, said Sidney. Yes, said Margaret. She looked at him, and her serious blue eyes seemed to see past him. It will not last, she said. What do you mean? I try to learn a lesson. I am a child in the school of God. My lesson is one that always ends in peace. Good God! said Sidney. He motioned to his sister, and Ellen approached in a frightened fashion. Her brother could do no wrong, but this was the unusual, and alarmed her. This lady began Sidney. Miss Lee, said Margaret. I was never married. I am Miss Margaret Lee. This, said Sidney, is my sister Ellen, Mrs. Waters. Ellen, I wish you to meet Miss Lee. Ellen took into her own Margaret's hand, and said feebly that it was a beautiful day, and she hoped Miss Lee found Green Hill a pleasant place to visit. Sidney moved slowly out of the tent, and found Jack Desmond. He was standing near with Camille, who looked her best in a pale blue summer silk, and a black hat trimmed with roses. Jack and Camille never really knew how the great man had managed, but presently Margaret had gone away with him and his sister. Jack and Camille looked at each other. Oh, Jack, ought you to have let her go, said Camille. What made you let her go? asked Jack. I don't know. I couldn't say anything. That man has a tremendous way with him. Goodness! He is all right here in the place anyhow, said Jack. They look up to him. He is a big bug here. Comes of a family like Margaret's, though he hasn't got much money. Some chaps were bragging that they had a bigger show than her right here, and I found out. Suppose, said Camille, Margaret does not come back. He could not keep her without being arrested, declared Jack, but he looked uneasy. He had, however, looked uneasy for some time. The fact was Margaret had been very gradually losing weight. Moreover, she was not well. That very night after the show was over, Bill Stark, the dark little man, had a talk with the Desmond's about it. Truth is, before long, if you don't look out, you'll have to pad her, said Bill, and giants don't amount to a row of pins after that begins. Camille looked worried and sulky. She ain't very well anyhow, said she. I ain't going to kill Margaret. It's a good thing she's got a chance to have a night's rest in a house, said Bill Stark. The fat man has asked her to stay with him and his sister, while the show is here, said Jack. The sister invited her, said Camille, with a little stiffness. She was common, but she had lived with Lees, and her mother had married a Lea. She knew what was due Margaret and also do herself. The truth is, said Camille, this is an awful sort of life for a woman like Margaret. She and her folks were never used to anything like it. Why didn't you make your beauty husband hustle and take care of her and you then? demanded Bill, who admired Camille, and disliked her because she had no eyes for him. My husband has been unfortunate. He has done the best he could, responded Camille. Come, Jack, no use talking about it any longer. Yes, Margaret will pick up. Come along, I'm tired out. That night Margaret Lees slept in a sweet chamber with muslin curtains at the windows, in a massive old mahogany bed, much like hers which had been sacrificed at an auction sale. The bed linen was linen and smelled of lavender. Margaret was too happy to sleep. She lay in the cool, fragrant sheets and was happy, and convinced of the presence of the God to whom she had prayed. All night Sidney Lorde sat downstairs in his book-walled sanctum and studied over the situation. It was a crucial one. The great psychological moment of Sidney Lorde's life, for night errantry, had arrived. He studied the thing from every point of view. There was no romance about it. These were hard, sordid, tragic, ludicrous facts with which he had to deal. He knew to a nicety the agonies which Margaret suffered. He knew because of his own capacity for sufferings of like stress. And she as a woman and a lady, he said aloud. If Sidney had been rich enough the matter would have been simple. He could have paid Jack and Camille enough to quiet them, and Margaret could have lived with him and his sister and their two old servants. But he was not rich. He was even poor. The price to be paid for Margaret's liberty was a bitter one, but it was that or nothing. Sidney faced it. He looked about the room. To him the walls lined with the dull gleams of old books were lovely. There was an oil portrait of his mother over the mantle-shelf. The weather was warm now and there was no need for a hearth-fire, but how exquisitely home-like and dear that room could be when the snow drove outside and there was the leap of flame in the hearth. Sidney was a scholar and a gentleman. He had led a gentle and sequestered life. Here in his native village there was none to jive and sneer. The contrast of the travelling show would be as great for him as it had been for Margaret, but he was the male of the species and she the female. Chivalry, racial, harking back to the beginning of nobility and the human, to its earliest dawn, fired Sidney. The pale daylight invaded the study. Sidney, as truly as any knight of old, had girded himself, and with no hope, no thought of reward for the battle in the eternal service of the strong for the weak, which makes the true worth of the strong. There was only one way. Sidney Lord took it. His sister was spared the knowledge of the truth for a long while. When she knew she did not lament, since Sidney had taken the course, it must be right. As for Margaret not knowing the truth, she yielded. She was really on the verge of illness. Her spirit was of too fine a strain to enable her body to endure long. When she was told that she was to remain with Sidney's sister while Sidney went away on business, she made no objection. A wonderful sense of relief, as of wings of healing being spread under her despair, was upon her. Camille came to bid her good-bye. I hope you have a nice visit in this lovely house, said Camille, and kissed her. Camille was astute and to be trusted. She did not betray Sidney's confidence. Sidney used a disguise, a dark wig over his partially bald head, and a little makeup, and he travelled about with the show and sat on three chairs, and shook hands with the gaping crowd and was curiously happy. It was discomfort. It was ignominy. It was maddening to support by the exhibition of his physical deformity a perfectly worthless young couple like Jack and Camille Desmond, but it was all superbly ennobling for the man himself. Always as he sat on his three chairs, immense grotesque, the more grotesque for his splendid dignity of bearing, there was in his soul of a gallant gentleman the consciousness of that other whom he was shielding from a similar ordeal. Compassion and generosity, so great that they comprehended love itself and excelled its highest type, irradiated the whole being of the fat man exposed to the gaze of his inferiors. Chivalry, which rendered him almost godlike, strengthened him for his task. Sidney thought always of Margaret as distinct from her physical self, a sort of crystalline, angelic soul with no encumbrance of earth. He achieved a purely spiritual conception of her. And Margaret, living again by her gentle lady life, was likewise ennobled by a gratitude which transformed her. Always a clear and beautiful soul, she gave out new lights of character like a jewel in the sun. And she also thought of Sidney as distinct from his physical self. The consciousness of the two human beings, one of the other, was a consciousness as of two wonderful lines of good and beauty, moving forever parallel, separate and inseparable in an eternal harmony of spirit. End of No Bless, recording by Rosie.