“What’s happened?”
“Has he told them what’s what?”
“Are they deserting us? Are they running away?”
But the colored club women walked away in silence in the rain. They parted at the corner and one said:
“I’m proud of him, at last.”
But the other spit:
“The beast!”
XXV
Sammy’s world was tottering, and looking upon its astonishing ruins he could only gasp blankly:
“What t’ hell!”
Never before in his long career and wide acquaintanceship with human nature had it behaved in so fantastic and unpredictable a manner. Never had it acted with such incalculable and utter disregard of all rules and wise saws. That a man should cheat, lie, steal, and seduce women, was to Sammy’s mind almost normal; that he should tell the truth, give away his money, and stick by his wife was also at times probable. These things happened. He’d seen them done. But that a man with everything should choose nothing: that a man with high office in his grasp, money ready to pour into his pocket, a home like this, and both a wife and a sweetheart, should toss them all away and walk out into the rain without his hat, just for an extra excursion with a skirt—
“What t’ hell!” gasped Sammy, groping back into the empty house. Then suddenly he heard the voice of Sara.
He found her standing stark alone, a pitiful, tragic figure amid the empty glitter of her triumph, with her flesh-colored chiffon and her jewels, her smooth stockings and silver slippers. She had stripped the beads from her throat, and they were dripping through her clenched fingers. She had half torn the lace from her breast, and she stood there flushed, trembling, furious with anger, and almost screaming to ears that did not hear and to guests already gone.
“Haven’t I been decent? Haven’t I fought off you beasts and made me a living and a home with my own hands? Wasn’t I married like a respectable woman, and didn’t I drag this fool out of jail and make him a man? And what do I get? What do I get? Here I am, disgraced and ruined, mocked and robbed, a laughingstock to all Chicago. What did he want? What did the jackass want, my God? A cabaret instead of a home? A whore instead of a wife? Wasn’t I true to him? Did I ever let a man touch me? I made money—sure, I made money. I had to make money. He couldn’t. I made money out of politics. What in hell is politics for, if it isn’t for somebody to make money? Must we hand all the graft over to the holy white folks? And now he disgraces me! Just when I win, he throws me over for a common bawd from the streets, and a mess of dirty white laborers; a common slut stealing decent women’s husbands. Oh—”
Sammy touched her hesitatingly on the shoulder and pleaded:
“Don’t crack, kid. Stand the gaff. I’ll see you through.”
But she shrank away from him and screamed:
“Get out, don’t touch me. Oh, damn him, damn him! I wish I could horsewhip them; I wish I could kill them both.”
And suddenly Sara crumpled to the floor, crushing and tearing her silks and scattering her jewels, drawing her knees up tight and gripping them with twitching hands, burying her hair, her head and streaming eyes, in the crimson carpet, and rolling and shaking and struggling with strangling sobs.
While without gray mists lay thin upon a pale and purple city. Through them, like cold, wet tears dripped the slow brown rain. The muffled roar of moving millions thundered low upon the wind, and the blue wind sighed and sank into the black night; and through the chill dripping of the waters, hatless and coatless, moved two shapes, hand in hand, with uplifted heads, singing to the storm.
Part IV
The Maharajah of Bwodpur
1926, April–April, 1927
The miracle is Spring. Spring in the heart and throat of the world. Spring in Virginia, Spring in India, Spring in Chicago. Shining rain and crimson song, roll and thunder of symphony in color, shade and tint of flower and vine and budding leaf. Spring—two Springs, with a little Winter between. But what if Spring dip down to Winter and die, shall not a lovelier Spring live again? Love is eternal Spring. Life lifts itself out of the Winter of death. Children sing in mud and rain and wind. Earth climbs aloft and sits astride the weeping skies.
I
The rain was falling steadily. One could hear its roar and drip and splash upon the roof. All the world was still. Kautilya listened dreamily. There was a sense of warmth and luxury about her. Silk touched and smoothed her skin. Her tired body rested on soft rugs that yielded beneath her and lay gently in every curve and crevice of her body. She heard the low music of the rain above, and the crimson, yellow, and gold of a blazing fire threw its shadows all along the walls and ceiling. The shadows turned happily and secretly, revealing and hiding the wild hues of a great picture, the reflections of a mirror, the flowers and figures of the wall. In silence she lay in strange peace and happiness—not trying to think, but trying to sense the flood of the meaning of that happiness that spread above her. Her head lifted; slowly, noiselessly, with infinite tenderness, she stretched her arms toward Matthew, till his head slipped down upon her shoulder. Then, on great, slow, crimson islands of dream, the world floated away, the rain sang; and she slept again.
Long hours afterward in the silence that comes before the dim blue breaking of the dawn, Matthew awoke with a start. The rain had ceased; the fire was dim and low; a vague sense of terror gripped him.
