Chapter II

The pulse of moving left them numb. The pensiveness of rapid flight through the world came near them, could not transfix their numbness. Men and women in a railroad car--serried, determined; pointed the train, flung it against the city. David sat next the window. He saw the world fly past as if afraid and offended. The green comfort of meadows was too sweet for the sharp earnestness of the travelers. They had no will for the shadow of trees and the cool ambiance of little rivers. Their mood was a straight hard hot track of steel along which they flung: their mood cut through smile of fields, slumber of towns. Their minds hurled the train....

Tom and David sat together swathed in the pensiveness of travel. David was restrained and somehow broken. Tom made efforts to read. Mostly he held the book in his lap and looked before him. He spoke to David but David was impossible to speak to. Tom understood.

His own coming to New York, eight years before, was there. It was an ecstasy, an angry birth. Manhattan girdled in flame, Manhattan a woman, terrible, virgin, and he aware of his own love and of his impotence before her. Moving in the train with Tom, this time beside the mystery of David, as that first time beside the mystery of his fate, was the seed of Tom’s fate--his past. Moving in Tom along the iron rails....

The train and the rails and that world were gone: were become a cloud of sense lifting him elsewhere. He dreamed of New York, of Ohio ... locust grove, slender, reticent, athrill with the restraint of some secret ... he dreamed of them as if they were not, he only was ... he a dream.

Night cast down curtains. Tom looked at David again, and seemed to enter and know him. David was moving forward to the City as to a death he must pass through. The City was a cloud for them both ... though a different cloud ... whose blackness wreathed far over their afternoon. But David was distant from Thomas Rennard. David felt he might know this man and the City at a single moment: know them at once and together.

Sharp long shadows crouched across the aisle of the car. Heads and shoulders of men and women loomed from a common gloom that expressed their oneness. Men and women were single-mooded, single-loined, they were a swaying, night-bound creature.

Four men--more nearly boys save one who was old--got up and reached to the racks above the windows. They took violins and mandolins from cases. They tuned them. The old one who was leader struck a chord. A chorus of voices--male and wistfully female--quavered about the car.

Only the four who stood were visible. Song rose from underneath them, tremulous and pervasive, rose from the gloom of the car. It was a song of folk, a song of yearning. Passion shot it through and passion ribbed it, it was a song of tender sorrow. The voices of women rose in it like waving of lonely trees in a wide bare field--rose and swayed, wept and subsided. The voices of men rose higher, mastering, comforting the low wail of women.

The melody throbbed higher. Sharp flashings of desire were now the women’s voices: the men were weary and disconsolate, dying down. The song was over.

A new silence lay in the car. The car ran on, subdued in it and sweetened.

The leader lifted his violin. He was a man of gray hair and tremorous shoulders. His back was to David. The three boys rose again. Two of them very dark with hot tender eyes and glowing hair. The third was light, all his skin and hair was golden. David knew they were foreigners.

There was laughter in the song. Sunlight aglisten on tears. Laughter of longing beyond hope, laughter of proud submission. The women’s voices welled like a sudden sea. Their liquid accents spoke of the softness of hands and the roundness of breasts, of the defiant promise of loyal children. Laughter of love and blood. They sat half lost in the gloom--wistful maidens, battered women--breeders of the defiance of loyal children. Their eyes glowed as they sang, their lips were round and wet with their song. The music rippled and foamed and raced. The men joined in--hard, staccato lancings of laughter--the music of men who had such mothers. The car was caught and was quick in their ecstasy. The car laughed on, raced on, under a song of low fields and mounting conquering laughter.

David was lifted up. His veins were eager with melody, his eyes were dim. Never had he heard such music.

“Who are they?”

“Little Russians, I think. Ukrainians. Landless folk whose song is their land.”

Tom also was moved. Differently. He listened to the music--thinking of the silent passengers about this little group of immigrants--the voiceless Anglo-Saxons, himself.

“If I had songs like that ... if I could sing such songs!” David wanted to say. He said nothing. His own violin seemed a mute thing.

They were singing. An almost silent song, a song without words, a song so wide and deep alone the cries of women and men could compass it. Voices rose and rolled, faintly, wavering. The song was flame: it smoldered in the car: it glowed there, a little flame in a black cold hearth.

The song leaped up. Darts of burning, flashes of spark: a man’s voice crackled against the women. The song was a blaze. It roared; it danced and consumed.

David and Tom saw the rapt eyes of women--stronger suddenly than the gloom. Saw the sway of the men, singing and playing together.

The song died down. It was ember, crimson coal. It was ash....

* * * * *

Night was there. The lamps burned fitfully overhead. Without was a dark rushing of buildings. Night and the City was there. The singing was over.

David’s heart was full of the blood of songs: they were singing still in his heart. He looked out of the window.

Black. A dim rushing of buildings--a rushing of swarming streets gutted with yellow lights. Life out there was burning against black--was being swept into black.

In the window David saw himself reflected, saw past himself to Tom and the vague faces of the car. His own face was pale, there in the frame of the window. His own face lay half blotted out in the swinging of streets as under water. Tom’s face was pale and clear. David looked out of the window seeing the City: and saw imprinted there the faces of David and his new friend--white, ghostly, real. His heart beat with agony of portent.

Another silence. Silence of preparation.

The car prepared to die--to be shattered into two-score lives, into a thousand passions. The steel-straight mood racing to the City was done. In its place a flutter of moods, a scatter as of birds under low skies.

Above the lamplight, under the swaying ceiling, shreds of song hovered, torn remnants of voices.

The train shrieked and shivered, it plunged into a tunnel.

Smoke swept away David’s vision. The City was gone from the window and the reflection in it of himself. Teeming pouring blackness without.

David turned and looked in the car. It was hot and hard to breathe. Thin threads of smoke seeped in from the windows. They writhed about, they trailed upwards to the ceiling. Smoke was where songs had lingered....