The dark mother

by Waldo David Frank

“Well, Davie, tell me how have you been?”

It was hard for him to speak. It was impossible for him to smile as he wished to. Cornelia seemed inadequate to his young hunger. He was angry at himself for this. He owed her better. He was not a very good and loyal friend, he supposed. Tom was right in what he said, however wrong in what he was. He walked beside Cornelia to the car, through the sweet May night: and in order to hold himself beside her and take her arm at the crossing, he needed to forget her....

On the top floor of the house of the Daindries was a wide quiet room which Helen had fitted out for her own. Its easy spaces were conserved and rounded by the uncluttered furniture. Nothing was large and ponderous to defeat them. Two lamps stood wide away on little tables. Their low light brought out the warm dark stroke of the couch and absorbed the rugs. The gray walls had a retreating texture.

The guests sat very hushed and hidden in the shadows and the music. A tall girl swayed by the piano: she was raw-boned and gaunt above the light of the lamp. Her docked hair flung away from the sheer strong forehead. She played with a restraint that burned: it was her restraint that she flung circling and lowering from her sharp shoulders down upon the hidden guests.

The guests sat, suddenly tamed, suddenly cowed. They were the world to David—a motley mass made one by the dark and the music, that would rise up again and be a tearing thing against his life. Now they were breathing hard; something had shut them up in their own narrow breasts.

The girl stepped toward them, away from the piano. The piano was silent. He who had sat at it and followed her mood, who had trailed like a wake in a muffled sea upon her passage was now withdrawn. The girl stood like one naked above the room. The music she had played and the guests lay trammeled spirits at her feet. She moved and stepped upon them. She lifted her violin to play alone. It was Bach she was playing.

She was a sharp high figure cutting the dark room. Her violin was a hard creature that sobbed and was soft. She and her violin and the huddled life of the world within the room were the music that was Bach.

As she played she moved. She moved up and down: she was very free with her sweeping arm and her long legs walking as she played. From her freedom came an uttered Law and fell upon them all.

They were struck by the clear strokes of her playing and her walking up and down: they were showered in the fire of this molten music....

David recaptured himself. He seemed to be sitting in a black pool of life. All of the lives of these about him were one: they were melted together. They had no being apart, they had no light. They were a black pool, stirless. Now he felt somewhere still a glow: under the black hush and above the strokes of the music. His senses went seeking a glow that he felt somewhere still.