How can one account for such a complete drying up of all the spiritual sources in the life of a people? When one observes a youth of eighteen on a city street and sees the calloused scar that has become his life, and remembers the same youth as he was ten years before when he was a child of eight, one knows what has happened though the cause be hidden. One knows that there came a time when life stopped growing for that youth and the scar began; and one feels that if he could only find the reason and the cure, he would know what revolutions are.
In Libya Hill there must have been a time when life stopped growing and the scar began. But the learned economists of “the system” do not bother about this. For them, it belongs to the realm of the metaphysical—they are impatient of it, they will not trouble with it, they want to confine the truth within their little picket fence of facts. But they cannot. It is not enough to talk about the subtle complications of the credit structure, the intrigues of politics and business, the floating of bond issues, the dangers of inflation, speculation, and unsound prices, or the rise and decline of banks. When all these facts are added up, they still don’t give the answer. For there is something more to say.
So with Libya Hill:
One does not know at just what moment it began, but one suspects that it began at some time long past in the lone, still watches of the night, when all the people lay waiting in their beds in darkness. Waiting for what? They did not know. They only hoped that it would happen—some thrilling and impossible fulfilment, some glorious enrichment and release of their pent lives, some ultimate escape from their own tedium.
But it did not come.
Meanwhile, the stiff boughs creaked in the cold bleakness of the corner lights, and the whole town waited, imprisoned in its tedium.
And sometimes, in furtive hallways, doors opened and closed, there was a padding of swift, naked feet, the stealthy rattling of brass casters, and behind old battered shades, upon the edge of Nigger-town, the dull and fetid quickenings of lust.
Sometimes, in grimy stews of night’s asylumage, an oath, a blow, a fight.
Sometimes, through the still air, a shot, the letting of nocturnal blood.
And always, through broken winds, the sounds of shifting engines in the station yards, far off, along the river’s edge—and suddenly the thunder of great wheels, the tolling of the bell, the loneliness of the whistle cry wailed back, receding towards the North, and towards the hope, the promise, and the memory of the world unfound.
Meanwhile, the boughs creaked bleakly in stiff light, ten thousand men were waiting in the darkness, far off a dog howled, and the Court-House bell struck three.
No answer? Impossible?...Then let those—if such there be—who have not waited in the darkness, find answers of their own.
But if speech could frame what spirit utters, if tongue could tell what the lone heart knows, there would be answers somewhat other than those which are shaped by the lean pickets of rusty facts. There would be answers of men waiting, who have not spoken yet.
*
Below the starred immensity of mountain night old Rumford Bland, he that is called “The Judge”, strokes his sunken jaws reflectively as he stands at the darkened window of his front office and looks out with sightless eyes upon the ruined town. It is cool and sweet to-night, the myriad promises of life are lyric in the air. Gem-strewn in viewless linkage on the hills the lights make a bracelet for the town. The blind man knows that they are there, although he cannot see them. He strokes his sunken jaws reflectively and smiles his ghostly smile.
It is so cool and sweet to-night, and spring has come. There never was a year like this, they say, for dogwood in the hills. There are so many thrilling, secret things upon the air to-night—a burst of laughter, and young voices, faint, half-broken, and the music of a dance—how could one know that when the blind man smiles and stroke’s his sunken jaws reflectively, he is looking out upon a ruined town?
The new Court-House and City Hall are very splendid in the dark to-night. But he has never seen them—they were built since he went blind. Their fronts are bathed, so people say, in steady, secret light just like the nation’s dome at Washington. The blind man strokes his sunken jaws reflectively. Well, they should be splendid—they cost enough.
Beneath the starred immensity of mountain night there is something stirring in the air, a rustling of young leaves. And round the grass roots there is something stirring in the earth to-night. And below the grass roots and the sod, below the dew-wet pollen of young flowers, there is something alive and stirring. The blind man strokes his sunken jaws reflectively. Aye, there below, where the eternal worm keeps vigil, there is something stirring in the earth. Down, down below, where the worm incessant through the ruined house makes stir.
What lies there stir-less in the earth to-night, down where the worm keeps vigil?