JOHN THE BAPTIST
BY WALDO FRANK
THE room was bright with the sun. Three stories up. Three dark halls, three worn stairs, the mustiness of walls to which grimed hands, worn shoulders had rubbed their intricate soiled burden, held up this room that was all bright with the sun.
The door was open: two windows with their mesh Dutch curtains were thrown high: Clara Jones dusted.
She was a short woman, coloured a dark brown in which were shadows of blue and orange. She was of indeterminate age. She worked slowly, diligently, with a sort of submissive rhythm to the sweep of her arms, the sway of her head: as if an invisible Master timed her work with gentle strokes on her bent back. The contours and objects of the room were a familiar haze against her hands. Her eyes did not take in the books upon the mantel, the morris chair which her hands groomed and shifted, the blue cover of the couch which the room's tenant used for a bed. Her eyes were focused dimly beyond the room, beyond the sunlight also that did not make them blink—beyond the sun. At times a murmur as of words answering in herself, a shred of tune, came from her. And these were in unison with the rapt measure of her work. And it with the distant fixedness of her eyes that moved as if to remain upon some point either far within or far without herself. Or both. . . .
A tall young man . . . almost a boy . . . stood in the door. He buttressed both his palms against the threshold's sides: he watched her.
Her face turned to her shoulder: then fell forwards back into its somnolent rhythm.
"Lor! that you already? You-all quick this mo'nin'."
"May I come in?"
"Sho'ly, sho'ly. Sit down over th'ah."
She did not stop. She held a broom in her two brown hands. With a steady stroke of shoulder back and forth it went, rasping . . . swinging: her small soft body cadenced with its stiff advance.
"Th'ah you are, Mr Loer!" She waved a musty rag over his desk, over a picture nailed above it. "Th'ah you are."
