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her association with people something quite different, and that it was
possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes
into a room. Day and night she thought of the matter, but although the thing
she wanted so earnestly was something very warm and close it had as yet no
conscious connection with sex. It had not become that definite, and her mind
had only alighted upon the person of John Hardy because he was at hand and
unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly to her.
The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were both older than Louise. In a
certain kind of knowledge of the world they were years older. They lived as
all of the young women of Middle Western towns lived. In those days young
women did not go out of our towns to Eastern colleges and ideas in regard to
social classes had hardly begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in
much the same social position as a daughter of a farmer or a merchant, and
there were no leisure classes. A girl was "nice" or she was "not nice." If a
nice girl, she had a young man who came to her house to see her on Sunday
and on Wednesday evenings. Sometimes she went with her young man to a dance
or a church social. At other times she received him at the house and was
given the use of the parlor for that purpose. No one intruded upon her. For
hours the two sat behind closed doors. Sometimes the lights were turned low
and the young man and woman embraced. Cheeks became hot and hair
disarranged. After a year or two, if the impulse within them became strong
and insistent enough, they married.
One evening during her first winter in Winesburg, Louise had an
adventure that gave a new impulse to her desire to break down the wall that
she thought stood between her and John Hardy. It was Wednesday and
immediately after the evening meal Albert Hardy put on his hat and went
away. Young John brought the wood and put it in the box in Louise's room.
"You do work hard, don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then before she could
answer he also went away.
Louise heard him go out of the house and had a mad desire to run after
him. Opening her window she leaned out and called softly, "John, dear John,
come back, don't go away." The night was cloudy and she could not see far
into the darkness, but as she waited she fancied she could hear a soft
little noise as of someone going on tiptoes through the trees in the
orchard. She was frightened and closed the window quickly. For an hour she
moved about the room trembling with excitement and when she could not longer
bear the waiting, she crept into the hall and down the stairs into a
closet-like room that opened off the parlor.
Louise had decided that she would perform the courageous act that had
for weeks been in her mind. She was convinced that John Hardy had concealed
himself in the orchard beneath her window and she was determined to find him
and tell him that she wanted him to come close to her, to hold her in his
arms, to tell her of his thoughts and dreams and to listen while she told
him her thoughts and dreams. "In the darkness it will be easier to say
things," she whispered to herself, as she stood in the little room groping
for the door.
And then suddenly Louise realized that she was not alone in the house.
In the parlor on the other side of the door a man's voice spoke softly and
the door opened. Louise just had time to conceal herself in a little opening
beneath the stairway when Mary Hardy, accompanied by her young man, came
into the little dark room.
For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and listened.
Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the man who had come to spend the
evening with her, brought to the country girl a knowledge of men and women.
Putting her head down until she was curled into a little ball she lay
perfectly still. It seemed to her that by some strange impulse of the gods,
a great gift had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not understand the
older woman's determined protest.
The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed her. When she
struggled and laughed, he but held her the more tightly. For an hour the
contest between them went on and then they went back into the parlor and
Louise escaped up the stairs. "I hope you were quiet out there. You must not
disturb the little mouse at her studies," she heard Harriet saying to her
sister as she stood by her own door in the hallway above.
Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night, when all in the
house were asleep, she crept downstairs and slipped it under his door. She
was afraid that if she did not do the thing at once her courage would fail.
In the note she tried to be quite definite about what she wanted. "I want
someone to love me and I want to love someone," she wrote. "If you are the
one for me I want you to come into the orchard at night and make a noise
under my window. It will be easy for me to crawl down over the shed and come
to you. I am thinking about it all the time, so if you are to come at all
you must come soon."
For a long time Louise did not know what would be the outcome of her
bold attempt to secure for herself a lover. In a way she still did not know
whether or not she wanted him to come. Sometimes it seemed to her that to be
held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of life, and then a new impulse
came and she was terribly afraid. The age-old woman's desire to be possessed
had taken possession of her, but so vague was her notion of life that it
seemed to her just the touch of John Hardy's hand upon her own hand would
satisfy. She wondered if he would understand that. At the table next day
while Albert Hardy talked and the two girls whispered and laughed, she did
not look at John but at the table and as soon as possible escaped. In the
evening she went out of the house until she was sure he had taken the wood
to her room and gone away. When after several evenings of intense listening
she heard no call from the darkness in the orchard, she was half beside
herself with grief and decided that for her there was no way to break
through the wall that had shut her off from the joy of life.
And then on a Monday evening two or three weeks after the writing of
the note, John Hardy came for her. Louise had so entirely given up the
thought of his coming that for a long time she did not hear the call that
came up from the orchard. On the Friday evening before, as she was being
driven back to the farm for the week-end by one of the hired men, she had on
an impulse done a thing that had startled her, and as John Hardy stood in
the darkness below and called her name softly and insistently, she walked
about in her room and wondered what new impulse had led her to commit so
ridiculous an act.
The farm hand, a young fellow with black curly hair, had come for her
somewhat late on that Friday evening and they drove home in the darkness.
Louise, whose mind was filled with thoughts of John Hardy, tried to make
talk but the country boy was embarrassed and would say nothing. Her mind
began to review the loneliness of her childhood and she remembered with a
pang the sharp new loneliness that had just come to her. "I hate everyone,"
she cried suddenly, and then broke forth into a tirade that frightened her
escort. "I hate father and the old man Hardy, too," she declared vehemently.
"I get my lessons there in the school in town but I hate that also."
Louise frightened the farm hand still more by turning and putting her
cheek down upon his shoulder. Vaguely she hoped that he like that young man
who had stood in the darkness with Mary would put his arms about her and
kiss her, but the country boy was only alarmed. He struck the horse with the
whip and began to whistle. "The road is rough, eh?" he said loudly. Louise
was so angry that reaching up she snatched his hat from his head and threw
it into the road. When he jumped out of the buggy and went to get it, she
drove off and left him to walk the rest of the way back to the farm.
Louise Bentley took John Hardy to be her lover. That was not what she
wanted but it was so the young man had interpreted her approach to him, and
so anxious was she to achieve something else that she made no resistance.
When after a few months they were both afraid that she was about to become a
mother, they went one evening to the county seat and were married. For a few
months they lived in the Hardy house and then took a house of their own. All
during the first year Louise tried to make her husband understand the vague
and intangible hunger that had led to the writing of the note and that was
still unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into his arms and tried to talk
of it, but always without success. Filled with his own notions of love
between men and women, he did not listen but began to kiss her upon the
lips. That confused her so that in the end she did not want to be kissed.
She did not know what she wanted.
When the alarm that had tricked them into marriage proved to be
groundless, she was angry and said bitter, hurtful things. Later when her
son David was born, she could not nurse him and did not know whether she
wanted him or not. Sometimes she stayed in the room with him all day,
walking about and occasionally creeping close to touch him tenderly with her
hands, and then other days came when she did not want to see or be near the
tiny bit of humanity that had come into the house. When John Hardy
reproached her for her cruelty, she laughed. "It is a man child and will get
what it wants anyway," she said sharply. "Had it been a woman child there is
nothing in the world I would not have done for it."
IV
Terror
WHEN DAVID HARDY was a tall boy of fifteen, he, like his mother, had an
adventure that changed the whole current of his life and sent him out of his
quiet corner into the world. The shell of the circumstances of his life was
broken and he was compelled to start forth. He left Winesburg and no one
there ever saw him again. After his disappearance, his mother and
grandfather both died and his father became very rich. He spent much money
in trying to locate his son, but that is no part of this story.
It was in the late fall of an unusual year on the Bentley farms.
Everywhere the crops had been heavy. That spring, Jesse had bought part of a
long strip of black swamp land that lay in the valley of Wine Creek. He got
the land at a low price but had spent a large sum of money to improve it.
Great ditches had to be dug and thousands of tile laid. Neighboring farmers
shook their heads over the expense. Some of them laughed and hoped that
Jesse would lose heavily by the venture, but the old man went silently on
with the work and said nothing.
When the land was drained he planted it to cabbages and onions, and
again the neighbors laughed. The crop was, however, enormous and brought
high prices. In the one year Jesse made enough money to pay for all the cost
of preparing the land and had a surplus that enabled him to buy two more
farms. He was exultant and could not conceal his delight. For the first time
in all the history of his ownership of the farms, he went among his men with
a smiling face.
Jesse bought a great many new machines for cutting down the cost of
labor and all of the remaining acres in the strip of black fertile swamp
land. One day he went into Winesburg and bought a bicycle and a new suit of
clothes for David and he gave his two sisters money with which to go to a
religious convention at Cleveland, Ohio.
In the fall of that year when the frost came and the trees in the
forests along Wine Creek were golden brown, David spent every moment when he
did not have to attend school, out in the open. Alone or with other boys he
went every afternoon into the woods to gather nuts. The other boys of the
countryside, most of them sons of laborers on the Bentley farms, had guns
with which they went hunting rabbits and squirrels, but David did not go
with them. He made himself a sling with rubber bands and a forked stick and
went off by himself to gather nuts. As he went about thoughts came to him.
He realized that he was almost a man and wondered what he would do in life,
but before they came to anything, the thoughts passed and he was a boy
again. One day he killed a squirrel that sat on one of the lower branches of
a tree and chattered at him. Home he ran with the squirrel in his hand. One
of the Bentley sisters cooked the little animal and he ate it with great
gusto. The skin he tacked on a board and suspended the board by a string
from his bedroom window.
That gave his mind a new turn. After that he never went into the woods
without carrying the sling in his pocket and he spent hours shooting at
imaginary animals concealed among the brown leaves in the trees. Thoughts of
his coming manhood passed and he was content to be a boy with a boy's
impulses.
One Saturday morning when he was about to set off for the woods with
the sling in his pocket and a bag for nuts on his shoulder, his grandfather
stopped him. In the eyes of the old man was the strained serious look that
always a little frightened David. At such times Jesse Bentley's eyes did not
look straight ahead but wavered and seemed to be looking at nothing.
Something like an invisible curtain appeared to have come between the man
and all the rest of the world. "I want you to come with me," he said
briefly, and his eyes looked over the boy's head into the sky. "We have
something important to do today. You may bring the bag for nuts if you wish.
It does not matter and anyway we will be going into the woods."
Jesse and David set out from the Bentley farmhouse in the old phaeton
that was drawn by the white horse. When they had gone along in silence for a
long way they stopped at the edge of a field where a flock of sheep were
grazing. Among the sheep was a lamb that had been born out of season, and
this David and his grandfather caught and tied so tightly that it looked
like a little white ball. When they drove on again Jesse let David hold the
lamb in his arms. "I saw it yesterday and it put me in mind of what I have
long wanted to do," he said, and again he looked away over the head of the
boy with the wavering, uncertain stare in his eyes.
After the feeling of exaltation that had come to the farmer as a result
of his successful year, another mood had taken possession of him. For a long
time he had been going about feeling very humble and prayerful. Again he
walked alone at night thinking of God and as he walked he again connected
his own figure with the figures of old days. Under the stars he knelt on the
wet grass and raised up his voice in prayer. Now he had decided that like
the men whose stories filled the pages of the Bible, he would make a
sacrifice to God. "I have been given these abundant crops and God has also
sent me a boy who is called David," he whispered to himself. "Perhaps I
should have done this thing long ago." He was sorry the idea had not come
into his mind in the days before his daughter Louise had been born and
thought that surely now when he had erected a pile of burning sticks in some
lonely place in the woods and had offered the body of a lamb as a burnt
offering, God would appear to him and give him a message.
More and more as he thought of the matter, he thought also of David and
his passionate self-love was partially forgotten. "It is time for the boy to
begin thinking of going out into the world and the message will be one
concerning him," he decided. "God will make a pathway for him. He will tell
me what place David is to take in life and when he shall set out on his
journey. It is right that the boy should be there. If I am fortunate and an
angel of God should appear, David will see the beauty and glory of God made
manifest to man. It will make a true man of God of him also."
In silence Jesse and David drove along the road until they came to that
place where Jesse had once before appealed to God and had frightened his
grandson. The morning had been bright and cheerful, but a cold wind now
began to blow and clouds hid the sun. When David saw the place to which they
had come he began to tremble with fright, and when they stopped by the
bridge where the creek came down from among the trees, he wanted to spring
out of the phaeton and run away.
A dozen plans for escape ran through David's head, but when Jesse
stopped the horse and climbed over the fence into the wood, he followed. "It
is foolish to be afraid. Nothing will happen," he told himself as he went
along with the lamb in his arms. There was something in the helplessness of
the little animal held so tightly in his arms that gave him courage. He
could feel the rapid beating of the beast's heart and that made his own
heart beat less rapidly. As he walked swiftly along behind his grandfather,
he untied the string with which the four legs of the lamb were fastened
together. "If anything happens we will run away together," he thought.
In the woods, after they had gone a long way from the road, Jesse
stopped in an opening among the trees where a clearing, overgrown with small
bushes, ran up from the creek. He was still silent but began at once to
erect a heap of dry sticks which he presently set afire. The boy sat on the
ground with the lamb in his arms. His imagination began to invest every
movement of the old man with significance and he became every moment more
afraid. "I must put the blood of the lamb on the head of the boy," Jesse
muttered when the sticks had begun to blaze greedily, and taking a long
knife from his pocket he turned and walked rapidly across the clearing
toward David.
Terror seized upon the soul of the boy. He was sick with it. For a
moment he sat perfectly still and then his body stiffened and he sprang to
his feet. His face became as white as the fleece of the lamb that, now
finding itself suddenly released, ran down the hill. David ran also. Fear
made his feet fly. Over the low bushes and logs he leaped frantically. As he
ran he put his hand into his pocket and took out the branched stick from
which the sling for shooting squirrels was suspended. When he came to the
creek that was shallow and splashed down over the stones, he dashed into the
water and turned to look back, and when he saw his grandfather still running
toward him with the long knife held tightly in his hand he did not hesitate,
but reaching down, selected a stone and put it in the sling. With all his
strength he drew back the heavy rubber bands and the stone whistled through
the air. It hit Jesse, who had entirely forgotten the boy and was pursuing
the lamb, squarely in the head. With a groan he pitched forward and fell
almost at the boy's feet. When David saw that he lay still and that he was
apparently dead, his fright increased immeasurably. It became an insane
panic.
With a cry he turned and ran off through the woods weeping
convulsively. "I don't care--I killed him, but I don't care," he sobbed. As
he ran on and on he decided suddenly that he would never go back again to
the Bentley farms or to the town of Winesburg. "I have killed the man of God
and now I will myself be a man and go into the world," he said stoutly as he
stopped running and walked rapidly down a road that followed the windings of
Wine Creek as it ran through fields and forests into the west.
On the ground by the creek Jesse Bentley moved uneasily about. He
groaned and opened his eyes. For a long time he lay perfectly still and
looked at the sky. When at last he got to his feet, his mind was confused
and he was not surprised by the boy's disappearance. By the roadside he sat
down on a log and began to talk about God. That is all they ever got out of
him. Whenever David's name was mentioned he looked vaguely at the sky and
said that a messenger from God had taken the boy. "It happened because I was
too greedy for glory," he declared, and would have no more to say in the
matter.
A MAN OF IDEAS
HE LIVED WITH his mother, a grey, silent woman with a peculiar ashy
complexion. The house in which they lived stood in a little grove of trees
beyond where the main street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek. His name was
Joe Welling, and his father had been a man of some dignity in the community,
a lawyer, and a member of the state legislature at Columbus. Joe himself was
small of body and in his character unlike anyone else in town. He was like a
tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire.
No, he wasn't like that-- he was like a man who is subject to fits, one who
walks among his fellow men inspiring fear because a fit may come upon him
suddenly and blow him away into a strange uncanny physical state in which
his eyes roll and his legs and arms jerk. He was like that, only that the
visitation that descended upon Joe Welling was a mental and not a physical
thing. He was beset by ideas and in the throes of one of his ideas was
uncontrollable. Words rolled and tumbled from his mouth. A peculiar smile
came upon his lips. The edges of his teeth that were tipped with gold
glistened in the light. Pouncing upon a bystander he began to talk. For the
bystander there was no escape. The excited man breathed into his face,
peered into his eyes, pounded upon his chest with a shaking forefinger,
demanded, compelled attention.
In those days the Standard Oil Company did not deliver oil to the
consumer in big wagons and motor trucks as it does now, but delivered
instead to retail grocers, hardware stores, and the like. Joe was the
Standard Oil agent in Winesburg and in several towns up and down the
railroad that went through Winesburg. He collected bills, booked orders, and
did other things. His father, the legislator, had secured the job for him.
In and out of the stores of Winesburg went Joe Welling--silent,
excessively polite, intent upon his business. Men watched him with eyes in
which lurked amusement tempered by alarm. They were waiting for him to break
forth, preparing to flee. Although the seizures that came upon him were
harmless enough, they could not be laughed away. They were overwhelming.
Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality became gigantic. It
overrode the man to whom he talked, swept him away, swept all away, all who
stood within sound of his voice.
In Sylvester West's Drug Store stood four men who were talking of horse
racing. Wesley Moyer's stallion, Tony Tip, was to race at the June meeting
at Tiffin, Ohio, and there was a rumor that he would meet the stiffest
competition of his career. It was said that Pop Geers, the great racing
driver, would himself be there. A doubt of the success of Tony Tip hung
heavy in the air of Winesburg.
Into the drug store came Joe Welling, brushing the screen door
violently aside. With a strange absorbed light in his eyes he pounced upon
Ed Thomas, he who knew Pop Geers and whose opinion of Tony Tip's chances was
worth considering.
"The water is up in Wine Creek," cried Joe Welling with the air of
Pheidippides bringing news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle at
Marathon. His finger beat a tattoo upon Ed Thomas's broad chest. "By Trunion
bridge it is within eleven and a half inches of the flooring," he went on,
the words coming quickly and with a little whistling noise from between his
teeth. An expression of helpless annoyance crept over the faces of the four.
"I have my facts correct. Depend upon that. I went to Sinnings'
Hardware Store and got a rule. Then I went back and measured. I could hardly
believe my own eyes. It hasn't rained you see for ten days. At first I
didn't know what to think. Thoughts rushed through my head. I thought of
subterranean passages and springs. Down under the ground went my mind,
delving about. I sat on the floor of the bridge and rubbed my head. There
wasn't a cloud in the sky, not one. Come out into the street and you'll see.
There wasn't a cloud. There isn't a cloud now. Yes, there was a cloud. I
don't want to keep back any facts. There was a cloud in the west down near
the horizon, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
"Not that I think that has anything to do with it. There it is, you
see. You understand how puzzled I was.
"Then an idea came to me. I laughed. You'll laugh, too. Of course it
rained over in Medina County. That's interesting, eh? If we had no trains,
no mails, no telegraph, we would know that it rained over in Medina County.
That's where Wine Creek comes from. Everyone knows that. Little old Wine
Creek brought us the news. That's interesting. I laughed. I thought I'd tell
you--it's interesting, eh?"
Joe Welling turned and went out at the door. Taking a book from his
pocket, he stopped and ran a finger down one of the pages. Again he was
absorbed in his duties as agent of the Standard Oil Company. "Hern's Grocery
will be getting low on coal oil. I'll see them," he muttered, hurrying along
the street, and bowing politely to the right and left at the people walking
past.
When George Willard went to work for the Winesburg Eagle he was
besieged by Joe Welling. Joe envied the boy. It seemed to him that he was
meant by Nature to be a reporter on a newspaper. "It is what I should be
doing, there is no doubt of that," he declared, stopping George Willard on
the sidewalk before Daugherty's Feed Store. His eyes began to glisten and
his forefinger to tremble. "Of course I make more money with the Standard
Oil Company and I'm only telling you," he added. "I've got nothing against
you but I should have your place. I could do the work at odd moments. Here
and there I would run finding out things you'll never see."
Becoming more excited Joe Welling crowded the young reporter against
the front of the feed store. He appeared to be lost in thought, rolling his
eyes about and running a thin nervous hand through his hair. A smile spread
over his face and his gold teeth glittered. "You get out your note book," he
commanded. "You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket, don't you? I
knew you did. Well, you set this down. I thought of it the other day. Let's
take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things.
You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed
store, the trees down the street there--they're all on fire. They're burning
up. Decay you see is always going on. It doesn't stop. Water and paint can't
stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire, too.
The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in
big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That will make 'em look up. They'll say
you're a smart one. I don't care. I don't envy you. I just snatched that
idea out of the air. I would make a newspaper hum. You got to admit that."'
Turning quickly, Joe Welling walked rapidly away. When he had taken
several steps he stopped and looked back. "I'm going to stick to you," he
said. "I'm going to make you a regular hummer. I should start a newspaper
myself, that's what I should do. I'd be a marvel. Everybody knows that."
When George Willard had been for a year on the Winesburg Eagle, four
things happened to Joe Welling. His mother died, he came to live at the New
Willard House, he became involved in a love affair, and he organized the
Winesburg Baseball Club.
Joe organized the baseball club because he wanted to be a coach and in
that position he began to win the respect of his townsmen. "He is a wonder,"
they declared after Joe's team had whipped the team from Medina County. "He
gets everybody working together. You just watch him."
Upon the baseball field Joe Welling stood by first base, his whole body
quivering with excitement. In spite of themselves all the players watched
him closely. The opposing pitcher became confused.
"Now! Now! Now! Now!" shouted the excited man. "Watch me! Watch me!
Watch my fingers! Watch my hands! Watch my feet! Watch my eyes! Let's work
together here! Watch me! In me you see all the movements of the game! Work
with me! Work with me! Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!"
With runners of the Winesburg team on bases, Joe Welling became as one
inspired. Before they knew what had come over them, the base runners were
watching the man, edging off the bases, advancing, retreating, held as by an
invisible cord. The players of the opposing team also watched Joe. They were
fascinated. For a moment they watched and then, as though to break a spell
that hung over them, they began hurling the ball wildly about, and amid a
series of fierce animal-like cries from the coach, the runners of the
Winesburg team scampered home.
Joe Welling's love affair set the town of Winesburg on edge. When it
began everyone whispered and shook his head. When people tried to laugh, the
laughter was forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with Sarah King, a lean,
sad-looking woman who lived with her father and brother in a brick house
that stood opposite the gate leading to the Winesburg Cemetery.
The two Kings, Edward the father, and Tom the son, were not popular in
Winesburg. They were called proud and dangerous. They had come to Winesburg
from some place in the South and ran a cider mill on the Trunion Pike. Tom
King was reported to have killed a man before he came to Winesburg. He was
twenty-seven years old and rode about town on a grey pony. Also he had a
long yellow mustache that dropped down over his teeth, and always carried a
heavy, wicked-looking walking stick in his hand. Once he killed a dog with
the stick. The dog belonged to Win Pawsey, the shoe merchant, and stood on
the sidewalk wagging its tail. Tom King killed it with one blow. He was
arrested and paid a fine of ten dollars.
Old Edward King was small of stature and when he passed people in the
street laughed a queer unmirthful laugh. When he laughed he scratched his
left elbow with his right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn
through from the habit. As he walked along the street, looking nervously
about and laughing, he seemed more dangerous than his silent, fierce-looking
son.
When Sarah King began walking out in the evening with Joe Welling,
people shook their heads in alarm. She was tall and pale and had dark rings
under her eyes. The couple looked ridiculous together. Under the trees they
walked and Joe talked. His passionate eager protestations of love, heard
coming out of the darkness by the cemetery wall, or from the deep shadows of
the trees on the hill that ran up to the Fair Grounds from Waterworks Pond,
were repeated in the stores. Men stood by the bar in the New Willard House
laughing and talking of Joe's courtship. After the laughter came the
silence. The Winesburg baseball team, under his management, was winning game
after game, and the town had begun to respect him. Sensing a tragedy, they
waited, laughing nervously.
Late on a Saturday afternoon the meeting between Joe Welling and the
two Kings, the anticipation of which had set the town on edge, took place in
Joe Welling's room in the New Willard House. George Willard was a witness to
the meeting. It came about in this way:
When the young reporter went to his room after the evening meal he saw
Tom King and his father sitting in the half darkness in Joe's room. The son
had the heavy walking stick in his hand and sat near the door. Old Edward
King walked nervously about, scratching his left elbow with his right hand.
The hallways were empty and silent.
George Willard went to his own room and sat down at his desk. He tried
to write but his hand trembled so that he could not hold the pen. He also
walked nervously up and down. Like the rest of the town of Winesburg he was
perplexed and knew not what to do.
It was seven-thirty and fast growing dark when Joe Welling came along
the station platform toward the New Willard House. In his arms he held a
bundle of weeds and grasses. In spite of the terror that made his body
shake, George Willard was amused at the sight of the small spry figure
holding the grasses and half running along the platform.
Shaking with fright and anxiety, the young reporter lurked in the
hallway outside the door of the room in which Joe Welling talked to the two
Kings. There had been an oath, the nervous giggle of old Edward King, and
then silence. Now the voice of Joe Welling, sharp and clear, broke forth.
George Willard began to laugh. He understood. As he had swept all men before
him, so now Joe Welling was carrying the two men in the room off their feet
with a tidal wave of words. The listener in the hall walked up and down,
lost in amazement.
Inside the room Joe Welling had paid no attention to the grumbled
threat of Tom King. Absorbed in an idea he closed the door and, lighting a
lamp, spread the handful of weeds and grasses upon the floor. "I've got
something here," he announced solemnly. "I was going to tell George Willard
about it, let him make a piece out of it for the paper. I'm glad you're
here. I wish Sarah were here also. I've been going to come to your house and
tell you of some of my ideas. They're interesting. Sarah wouldn't let me.
She said we'd quarrel. That's foolish."
Running up and down before the two perplexed men, Joe Welling began to
explain. "Don't you make a mistake now," he cried. "This is something big."
His voice was shrill with excitement. "You just follow me, you'll be
interested. I know you will. Suppose this--suppose all of the wheat, the
corn, the oats, the peas, the potatoes, were all by some miracle swept away.
Now here we are, you see, in this county. There is a high fence built all
around us. We'll suppose that. No one can get over the fence and all the
fruits of the earth are destroyed, nothing left but these wild things, these
grasses. Would we be done for? I ask you that. Would we be done for?" Again
Tom King growled and for a moment there was silence in the room. Then again
Joe plunged into the exposition of his idea. "Things would go hard for a
time. I admit that. I've got to admit that. No getting around it. We'd be
hard put to it. More than one fat stomach would cave in. But they couldn't
down us. I should say not."
Tom King laughed good naturedly and the shivery, nervous laugh of
Edward King rang through the house. Joe Welling hurried on. "We'd begin, you
see, to breed up new vegetables and fruits. Soon we'd regain all we had
lost. Mind, I don't say the new things would be the same as the old. They
wouldn't. Maybe they'd be better, maybe not so good. That's interesting, eh?
You can think about that. It starts your mind working, now don't it?"
In the room there was silence and then again old Edward King laughed
nervously. "Say, I wish Sarah was here," cried Joe Welling. "Let's go up to
your house. I want to tell her of this."
There was a scraping of chairs in the room. It was then that George
Willard retreated to his own room. Leaning out at the window he saw Joe
Welling going along the street with the two Kings. Tom King was forced to
take extraordinary long strides to keep pace with the little man. As he
strode along, he leaned over, listening--absorbed, fascinated. Joe Welling
again talked excitedly. "Take milkweed now," he cried. "A lot might be done
with milkweed, eh? It's almost unbelievable. I want you to think about it. I
want you two to think about it. There would be a new vegetable kingdom you
see. It's interesting, eh? It's an idea. Wait till you see Sarah, she'll get
the idea. She'll be interested. Sarah is always interested in ideas. You
can't be too smart for Sarah, now can you? Of course you can't. You know
that."
ADVENTURE
ALICE HINDMAN, a woman of twenty-seven when George Willard was a mere
boy, had lived in Winesburg all her life. She clerked in Winney's Dry Goods
Store and lived with her mother, who had married a second husband.
Alice's step-father was a carriage painter, and given to drink. His
story is an odd one. It will be worth telling some day.
At twenty-seven Alice was tall and somewhat slight. Her head was large
and overshadowed her body. Her shoulders were a little stooped and her hair
and eyes brown. She was very quiet but beneath a placid exterior a continual
ferment went on.
When she was a girl of sixteen and before she began to work in the
store, Alice had an affair with a young man. The young man, named Ned
Currie, was older than Alice. He, like George Willard, was employed on the
Winesburg Eagle and for a long time he went to see Alice almost every
evening. Together the two walked under the trees through the streets of the
town and talked of what they would do with their lives. Alice was then a
very pretty girl and Ned Currie took her into his arms and kissed her. He
became excited and said things he did not intend to say and Alice, betrayed
by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life,
also grew excited. She also talked. The outer crust of her life, all of her
natural diffidence and reserve, was tom away and she gave herself over to
the emotions of love. When, late in the fall of her sixteenth year, Ned
Currie went away to Cleveland where he hoped to get a place on a city
newspaper and rise in the world, she wanted to go with him. With a trembling
voice she told him what was in her mind. "I will work and you can work," she
said. "I do not want to harness you to a needless expense that will prevent
your making progress. Don't marry me now. We will get along without that and
we can be together. Even though we live in the same house no one will say
anything. In the city we will be unknown and people will pay no attention to
us."
Ned Currie was puzzled by the determination and abandon of his
sweetheart and was also deeply touched. He had wanted the girl to become his
mistress but changed his mind. He wanted to protect and care for her. "You
don't know what you're talking about," he said sharply; "you may be sure
I'll let you do no such thing. As soon as I get a good job I'll come back.
For the present you'll have to stay here. It's the only thing we can do."
On the evening before he left Winesburg to take up his new life in the
city, Ned Currie went to call on Alice. They walked about through the
streets for an hour and then got a rig from Wesley Moyer's livery and went
for a drive in the country. The moon came up and they found themselves
unable to talk. In his sadness the young man forgot the resolutions he had
made regarding his conduct with the girl.
They got out of the buggy at a place where a long meadow ran down to
the bank of Wine Creek and there in the dim light became lovers. When at
midnight they returned to town they were both glad. It did not seem to them
that anything that could happen in the future could blot out the wonder and
beauty of the thing that had happened. "Now we will have to stick to each
other, whatever happens we will have to do that," Ned Currie said as he left
the girl at her father's door.
The young newspaper man did not succeed in getting a place on a
Cleveland paper and went west to Chicago. For a time he was lonely and wrote
to Alice almost every day. Then he was caught up by the life of the city; he
began to make friends and found new interests in life. In Chicago he boarded
at a house where there were several women. One of them attracted his
attention and he forgot Alice in Winesburg. At the end of a year he had
stopped writing letters, and only once in a long time, when he was lonely or
when he went into one of the city parks and saw the moon shining on the
grass as it had shone that night on the meadow by Wine Creek, did he think
of her at all.
In Winesburg the girl who had been loved grew to be a woman. When she
was twenty-two years old her father, who owned a harness repair shop, died
suddenly. The harness maker was an old soldier, and after a few months his
wife received a widow's pension. She used the first money she got to buy a
loom and became a weaver of carpets, and Alice got a place in Winney's
store. For a number of years nothing could have induced her to believe that
Ned Currie would not in the end return to her.
She was glad to be employed because the daily round of toil in the
store made the time of waiting seem less long and uninteresting. She began
to save money, thinking that when she had saved two or three hundred dollars
she would follow her lover to the city and try if her presence would not win
back his affections.
Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had happened in the moonlight
in the field, but felt that she could never marry another man. To her the
thought of giving to another what she still felt could belong only to Ned
seemed monstrous. When other young men tried to attract her attention she
would have nothing to do with them. "I am his wife and shall remain his wife
whether he comes back or not," she whispered to herself, and for all of her
willingness to support herself could not have understood the growing modern
idea of a woman's owning herself and giving and taking for her own ends in
life.
Alice worked in the dry goods store from eight in the morning until six
at night and on three evenings a week went back to the store to stay from
seven until nine. As time passed and she became more and more lonely she
began to practice the devices common to lonely people. When at night she
went upstairs into her own room she knelt on the floor to pray and in her
prayers whispered things she wanted to say to her lover. She became attached
to inanimate objects, and because it was her own, could not bare to have
anyone touch the furniture of her room. The trick of saving money, begun for
a purpose, was carried on after the scheme of going to the city to find Ned
Currie had been given up. It became a fixed habit, and when she needed new
clothes she did not get them. Sometimes on rainy afternoons in the store she
got out her bank book and, letting it lie open before her, spent hours
dreaming impossible dreams of saving money enough so that the interest would
support both herself and her future husband.
"Ned always liked to travel about," she thought. "I'll give him the
chance. Some day when we are married and I can save both his money and my
own, we will be rich. Then we can travel together all over the world."
In the dry goods store weeks ran into months and months into years as
Alice waited and dreamed of her lover's return. Her employer, a grey old man
with false teeth and a thin grey mustache that drooped down over his mouth,
was not given to conversation, and sometimes, on rainy days and in the
winter when a storm raged in Main Street, long hours passed when no
customers came in. Alice arranged and rearranged the stock. She stood near
the front window where she could look down the deserted street and thought
of the evenings when she had walked with Ned Currie and of what he had said.
"We will have to stick to each other now." The words echoed and re-echoed
through the mind of the maturing woman. Tears came into her eyes. Sometimes
when her employer had gone out and she was alone in the store she put her
head on the counter and wept. "Oh, Ned, I am waiting," she whispered over
and over, and all the time the creeping fear that he would never come back
grew stronger within her.
In the spring when the rains have passed and before the long hot days
of summer have come, the country about Winesburg is delightful. The town
lies in the midst of open fields, but beyond the fields are pleasant patches
of woodlands. In the wooded places are many little cloistered nooks, quiet
places where lovers go to sit on Sunday afternoons. Through the trees they
look out across the fields and see farmers at work about the barns or people
driving up and down on the roads. In the town bells ring and occasionally a
train passes, looking like a toy thing in the distance.
For several years after Ned Currie went away Alice did not go into the
wood with the other young people on Sunday, but one day after he had been
gone for two or three years and when her loneliness seemed unbearable, she
put on her best dress and set out. Finding a little sheltered place from
which she could see the town and a long stretch of the fields, she sat down.
Fear of age and ineffectuality took possession of her. She could not sit
still, and arose. As she stood looking out over the land something, perhaps
the thought of never ceasing life as it expresses itself in the flow of the
possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes
into a room. Day and night she thought of the matter, but although the thing
she wanted so earnestly was something very warm and close it had as yet no
conscious connection with sex. It had not become that definite, and her mind
had only alighted upon the person of John Hardy because he was at hand and
unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly to her.
The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were both older than Louise. In a
certain kind of knowledge of the world they were years older. They lived as
all of the young women of Middle Western towns lived. In those days young
women did not go out of our towns to Eastern colleges and ideas in regard to
social classes had hardly begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in
much the same social position as a daughter of a farmer or a merchant, and
there were no leisure classes. A girl was "nice" or she was "not nice." If a
nice girl, she had a young man who came to her house to see her on Sunday
and on Wednesday evenings. Sometimes she went with her young man to a dance
or a church social. At other times she received him at the house and was
given the use of the parlor for that purpose. No one intruded upon her. For
hours the two sat behind closed doors. Sometimes the lights were turned low
and the young man and woman embraced. Cheeks became hot and hair
disarranged. After a year or two, if the impulse within them became strong
and insistent enough, they married.
One evening during her first winter in Winesburg, Louise had an
adventure that gave a new impulse to her desire to break down the wall that
she thought stood between her and John Hardy. It was Wednesday and
immediately after the evening meal Albert Hardy put on his hat and went
away. Young John brought the wood and put it in the box in Louise's room.
"You do work hard, don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then before she could
answer he also went away.
Louise heard him go out of the house and had a mad desire to run after
him. Opening her window she leaned out and called softly, "John, dear John,
come back, don't go away." The night was cloudy and she could not see far
into the darkness, but as she waited she fancied she could hear a soft
little noise as of someone going on tiptoes through the trees in the
orchard. She was frightened and closed the window quickly. For an hour she
moved about the room trembling with excitement and when she could not longer
bear the waiting, she crept into the hall and down the stairs into a
closet-like room that opened off the parlor.
Louise had decided that she would perform the courageous act that had
for weeks been in her mind. She was convinced that John Hardy had concealed
himself in the orchard beneath her window and she was determined to find him
and tell him that she wanted him to come close to her, to hold her in his
arms, to tell her of his thoughts and dreams and to listen while she told
him her thoughts and dreams. "In the darkness it will be easier to say
things," she whispered to herself, as she stood in the little room groping
for the door.
And then suddenly Louise realized that she was not alone in the house.
In the parlor on the other side of the door a man's voice spoke softly and
the door opened. Louise just had time to conceal herself in a little opening
beneath the stairway when Mary Hardy, accompanied by her young man, came
into the little dark room.
For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and listened.
Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the man who had come to spend the
evening with her, brought to the country girl a knowledge of men and women.
Putting her head down until she was curled into a little ball she lay
perfectly still. It seemed to her that by some strange impulse of the gods,
a great gift had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not understand the
older woman's determined protest.
The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed her. When she
struggled and laughed, he but held her the more tightly. For an hour the
contest between them went on and then they went back into the parlor and
Louise escaped up the stairs. "I hope you were quiet out there. You must not
disturb the little mouse at her studies," she heard Harriet saying to her
sister as she stood by her own door in the hallway above.
Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night, when all in the
house were asleep, she crept downstairs and slipped it under his door. She
was afraid that if she did not do the thing at once her courage would fail.
In the note she tried to be quite definite about what she wanted. "I want
someone to love me and I want to love someone," she wrote. "If you are the
one for me I want you to come into the orchard at night and make a noise
under my window. It will be easy for me to crawl down over the shed and come
to you. I am thinking about it all the time, so if you are to come at all
you must come soon."
For a long time Louise did not know what would be the outcome of her
bold attempt to secure for herself a lover. In a way she still did not know
whether or not she wanted him to come. Sometimes it seemed to her that to be
held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of life, and then a new impulse
came and she was terribly afraid. The age-old woman's desire to be possessed
had taken possession of her, but so vague was her notion of life that it
seemed to her just the touch of John Hardy's hand upon her own hand would
satisfy. She wondered if he would understand that. At the table next day
while Albert Hardy talked and the two girls whispered and laughed, she did
not look at John but at the table and as soon as possible escaped. In the
evening she went out of the house until she was sure he had taken the wood
to her room and gone away. When after several evenings of intense listening
she heard no call from the darkness in the orchard, she was half beside
herself with grief and decided that for her there was no way to break
through the wall that had shut her off from the joy of life.
And then on a Monday evening two or three weeks after the writing of
the note, John Hardy came for her. Louise had so entirely given up the
thought of his coming that for a long time she did not hear the call that
came up from the orchard. On the Friday evening before, as she was being
driven back to the farm for the week-end by one of the hired men, she had on
an impulse done a thing that had startled her, and as John Hardy stood in
the darkness below and called her name softly and insistently, she walked
about in her room and wondered what new impulse had led her to commit so
ridiculous an act.
The farm hand, a young fellow with black curly hair, had come for her
somewhat late on that Friday evening and they drove home in the darkness.
Louise, whose mind was filled with thoughts of John Hardy, tried to make
talk but the country boy was embarrassed and would say nothing. Her mind
began to review the loneliness of her childhood and she remembered with a
pang the sharp new loneliness that had just come to her. "I hate everyone,"
she cried suddenly, and then broke forth into a tirade that frightened her
escort. "I hate father and the old man Hardy, too," she declared vehemently.
"I get my lessons there in the school in town but I hate that also."
Louise frightened the farm hand still more by turning and putting her
cheek down upon his shoulder. Vaguely she hoped that he like that young man
who had stood in the darkness with Mary would put his arms about her and
kiss her, but the country boy was only alarmed. He struck the horse with the
whip and began to whistle. "The road is rough, eh?" he said loudly. Louise
was so angry that reaching up she snatched his hat from his head and threw
it into the road. When he jumped out of the buggy and went to get it, she
drove off and left him to walk the rest of the way back to the farm.
Louise Bentley took John Hardy to be her lover. That was not what she
wanted but it was so the young man had interpreted her approach to him, and
so anxious was she to achieve something else that she made no resistance.
When after a few months they were both afraid that she was about to become a
mother, they went one evening to the county seat and were married. For a few
months they lived in the Hardy house and then took a house of their own. All
during the first year Louise tried to make her husband understand the vague
and intangible hunger that had led to the writing of the note and that was
still unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into his arms and tried to talk
of it, but always without success. Filled with his own notions of love
between men and women, he did not listen but began to kiss her upon the
lips. That confused her so that in the end she did not want to be kissed.
She did not know what she wanted.
When the alarm that had tricked them into marriage proved to be
groundless, she was angry and said bitter, hurtful things. Later when her
son David was born, she could not nurse him and did not know whether she
wanted him or not. Sometimes she stayed in the room with him all day,
walking about and occasionally creeping close to touch him tenderly with her
hands, and then other days came when she did not want to see or be near the
tiny bit of humanity that had come into the house. When John Hardy
reproached her for her cruelty, she laughed. "It is a man child and will get
what it wants anyway," she said sharply. "Had it been a woman child there is
nothing in the world I would not have done for it."
IV
Terror
WHEN DAVID HARDY was a tall boy of fifteen, he, like his mother, had an
adventure that changed the whole current of his life and sent him out of his
quiet corner into the world. The shell of the circumstances of his life was
broken and he was compelled to start forth. He left Winesburg and no one
there ever saw him again. After his disappearance, his mother and
grandfather both died and his father became very rich. He spent much money
in trying to locate his son, but that is no part of this story.
It was in the late fall of an unusual year on the Bentley farms.
Everywhere the crops had been heavy. That spring, Jesse had bought part of a
long strip of black swamp land that lay in the valley of Wine Creek. He got
the land at a low price but had spent a large sum of money to improve it.
Great ditches had to be dug and thousands of tile laid. Neighboring farmers
shook their heads over the expense. Some of them laughed and hoped that
Jesse would lose heavily by the venture, but the old man went silently on
with the work and said nothing.
When the land was drained he planted it to cabbages and onions, and
again the neighbors laughed. The crop was, however, enormous and brought
high prices. In the one year Jesse made enough money to pay for all the cost
of preparing the land and had a surplus that enabled him to buy two more
farms. He was exultant and could not conceal his delight. For the first time
in all the history of his ownership of the farms, he went among his men with
a smiling face.
Jesse bought a great many new machines for cutting down the cost of
labor and all of the remaining acres in the strip of black fertile swamp
land. One day he went into Winesburg and bought a bicycle and a new suit of
clothes for David and he gave his two sisters money with which to go to a
religious convention at Cleveland, Ohio.
In the fall of that year when the frost came and the trees in the
forests along Wine Creek were golden brown, David spent every moment when he
did not have to attend school, out in the open. Alone or with other boys he
went every afternoon into the woods to gather nuts. The other boys of the
countryside, most of them sons of laborers on the Bentley farms, had guns
with which they went hunting rabbits and squirrels, but David did not go
with them. He made himself a sling with rubber bands and a forked stick and
went off by himself to gather nuts. As he went about thoughts came to him.
He realized that he was almost a man and wondered what he would do in life,
but before they came to anything, the thoughts passed and he was a boy
again. One day he killed a squirrel that sat on one of the lower branches of
a tree and chattered at him. Home he ran with the squirrel in his hand. One
of the Bentley sisters cooked the little animal and he ate it with great
gusto. The skin he tacked on a board and suspended the board by a string
from his bedroom window.
That gave his mind a new turn. After that he never went into the woods
without carrying the sling in his pocket and he spent hours shooting at
imaginary animals concealed among the brown leaves in the trees. Thoughts of
his coming manhood passed and he was content to be a boy with a boy's
impulses.
One Saturday morning when he was about to set off for the woods with
the sling in his pocket and a bag for nuts on his shoulder, his grandfather
stopped him. In the eyes of the old man was the strained serious look that
always a little frightened David. At such times Jesse Bentley's eyes did not
look straight ahead but wavered and seemed to be looking at nothing.
Something like an invisible curtain appeared to have come between the man
and all the rest of the world. "I want you to come with me," he said
briefly, and his eyes looked over the boy's head into the sky. "We have
something important to do today. You may bring the bag for nuts if you wish.
It does not matter and anyway we will be going into the woods."
Jesse and David set out from the Bentley farmhouse in the old phaeton
that was drawn by the white horse. When they had gone along in silence for a
long way they stopped at the edge of a field where a flock of sheep were
grazing. Among the sheep was a lamb that had been born out of season, and
this David and his grandfather caught and tied so tightly that it looked
like a little white ball. When they drove on again Jesse let David hold the
lamb in his arms. "I saw it yesterday and it put me in mind of what I have
long wanted to do," he said, and again he looked away over the head of the
boy with the wavering, uncertain stare in his eyes.
After the feeling of exaltation that had come to the farmer as a result
of his successful year, another mood had taken possession of him. For a long
time he had been going about feeling very humble and prayerful. Again he
walked alone at night thinking of God and as he walked he again connected
his own figure with the figures of old days. Under the stars he knelt on the
wet grass and raised up his voice in prayer. Now he had decided that like
the men whose stories filled the pages of the Bible, he would make a
sacrifice to God. "I have been given these abundant crops and God has also
sent me a boy who is called David," he whispered to himself. "Perhaps I
should have done this thing long ago." He was sorry the idea had not come
into his mind in the days before his daughter Louise had been born and
thought that surely now when he had erected a pile of burning sticks in some
lonely place in the woods and had offered the body of a lamb as a burnt
offering, God would appear to him and give him a message.
More and more as he thought of the matter, he thought also of David and
his passionate self-love was partially forgotten. "It is time for the boy to
begin thinking of going out into the world and the message will be one
concerning him," he decided. "God will make a pathway for him. He will tell
me what place David is to take in life and when he shall set out on his
journey. It is right that the boy should be there. If I am fortunate and an
angel of God should appear, David will see the beauty and glory of God made
manifest to man. It will make a true man of God of him also."
In silence Jesse and David drove along the road until they came to that
place where Jesse had once before appealed to God and had frightened his
grandson. The morning had been bright and cheerful, but a cold wind now
began to blow and clouds hid the sun. When David saw the place to which they
had come he began to tremble with fright, and when they stopped by the
bridge where the creek came down from among the trees, he wanted to spring
out of the phaeton and run away.
A dozen plans for escape ran through David's head, but when Jesse
stopped the horse and climbed over the fence into the wood, he followed. "It
is foolish to be afraid. Nothing will happen," he told himself as he went
along with the lamb in his arms. There was something in the helplessness of
the little animal held so tightly in his arms that gave him courage. He
could feel the rapid beating of the beast's heart and that made his own
heart beat less rapidly. As he walked swiftly along behind his grandfather,
he untied the string with which the four legs of the lamb were fastened
together. "If anything happens we will run away together," he thought.
In the woods, after they had gone a long way from the road, Jesse
stopped in an opening among the trees where a clearing, overgrown with small
bushes, ran up from the creek. He was still silent but began at once to
erect a heap of dry sticks which he presently set afire. The boy sat on the
ground with the lamb in his arms. His imagination began to invest every
movement of the old man with significance and he became every moment more
afraid. "I must put the blood of the lamb on the head of the boy," Jesse
muttered when the sticks had begun to blaze greedily, and taking a long
knife from his pocket he turned and walked rapidly across the clearing
toward David.
Terror seized upon the soul of the boy. He was sick with it. For a
moment he sat perfectly still and then his body stiffened and he sprang to
his feet. His face became as white as the fleece of the lamb that, now
finding itself suddenly released, ran down the hill. David ran also. Fear
made his feet fly. Over the low bushes and logs he leaped frantically. As he
ran he put his hand into his pocket and took out the branched stick from
which the sling for shooting squirrels was suspended. When he came to the
creek that was shallow and splashed down over the stones, he dashed into the
water and turned to look back, and when he saw his grandfather still running
toward him with the long knife held tightly in his hand he did not hesitate,
but reaching down, selected a stone and put it in the sling. With all his
strength he drew back the heavy rubber bands and the stone whistled through
the air. It hit Jesse, who had entirely forgotten the boy and was pursuing
the lamb, squarely in the head. With a groan he pitched forward and fell
almost at the boy's feet. When David saw that he lay still and that he was
apparently dead, his fright increased immeasurably. It became an insane
panic.
With a cry he turned and ran off through the woods weeping
convulsively. "I don't care--I killed him, but I don't care," he sobbed. As
he ran on and on he decided suddenly that he would never go back again to
the Bentley farms or to the town of Winesburg. "I have killed the man of God
and now I will myself be a man and go into the world," he said stoutly as he
stopped running and walked rapidly down a road that followed the windings of
Wine Creek as it ran through fields and forests into the west.
On the ground by the creek Jesse Bentley moved uneasily about. He
groaned and opened his eyes. For a long time he lay perfectly still and
looked at the sky. When at last he got to his feet, his mind was confused
and he was not surprised by the boy's disappearance. By the roadside he sat
down on a log and began to talk about God. That is all they ever got out of
him. Whenever David's name was mentioned he looked vaguely at the sky and
said that a messenger from God had taken the boy. "It happened because I was
too greedy for glory," he declared, and would have no more to say in the
matter.
A MAN OF IDEAS
HE LIVED WITH his mother, a grey, silent woman with a peculiar ashy
complexion. The house in which they lived stood in a little grove of trees
beyond where the main street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek. His name was
Joe Welling, and his father had been a man of some dignity in the community,
a lawyer, and a member of the state legislature at Columbus. Joe himself was
small of body and in his character unlike anyone else in town. He was like a
tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire.
No, he wasn't like that-- he was like a man who is subject to fits, one who
walks among his fellow men inspiring fear because a fit may come upon him
suddenly and blow him away into a strange uncanny physical state in which
his eyes roll and his legs and arms jerk. He was like that, only that the
visitation that descended upon Joe Welling was a mental and not a physical
thing. He was beset by ideas and in the throes of one of his ideas was
uncontrollable. Words rolled and tumbled from his mouth. A peculiar smile
came upon his lips. The edges of his teeth that were tipped with gold
glistened in the light. Pouncing upon a bystander he began to talk. For the
bystander there was no escape. The excited man breathed into his face,
peered into his eyes, pounded upon his chest with a shaking forefinger,
demanded, compelled attention.
In those days the Standard Oil Company did not deliver oil to the
consumer in big wagons and motor trucks as it does now, but delivered
instead to retail grocers, hardware stores, and the like. Joe was the
Standard Oil agent in Winesburg and in several towns up and down the
railroad that went through Winesburg. He collected bills, booked orders, and
did other things. His father, the legislator, had secured the job for him.
In and out of the stores of Winesburg went Joe Welling--silent,
excessively polite, intent upon his business. Men watched him with eyes in
which lurked amusement tempered by alarm. They were waiting for him to break
forth, preparing to flee. Although the seizures that came upon him were
harmless enough, they could not be laughed away. They were overwhelming.
Astride an idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality became gigantic. It
overrode the man to whom he talked, swept him away, swept all away, all who
stood within sound of his voice.
In Sylvester West's Drug Store stood four men who were talking of horse
racing. Wesley Moyer's stallion, Tony Tip, was to race at the June meeting
at Tiffin, Ohio, and there was a rumor that he would meet the stiffest
competition of his career. It was said that Pop Geers, the great racing
driver, would himself be there. A doubt of the success of Tony Tip hung
heavy in the air of Winesburg.
Into the drug store came Joe Welling, brushing the screen door
violently aside. With a strange absorbed light in his eyes he pounced upon
Ed Thomas, he who knew Pop Geers and whose opinion of Tony Tip's chances was
worth considering.
"The water is up in Wine Creek," cried Joe Welling with the air of
Pheidippides bringing news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle at
Marathon. His finger beat a tattoo upon Ed Thomas's broad chest. "By Trunion
bridge it is within eleven and a half inches of the flooring," he went on,
the words coming quickly and with a little whistling noise from between his
teeth. An expression of helpless annoyance crept over the faces of the four.
"I have my facts correct. Depend upon that. I went to Sinnings'
Hardware Store and got a rule. Then I went back and measured. I could hardly
believe my own eyes. It hasn't rained you see for ten days. At first I
didn't know what to think. Thoughts rushed through my head. I thought of
subterranean passages and springs. Down under the ground went my mind,
delving about. I sat on the floor of the bridge and rubbed my head. There
wasn't a cloud in the sky, not one. Come out into the street and you'll see.
There wasn't a cloud. There isn't a cloud now. Yes, there was a cloud. I
don't want to keep back any facts. There was a cloud in the west down near
the horizon, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand.
"Not that I think that has anything to do with it. There it is, you
see. You understand how puzzled I was.
"Then an idea came to me. I laughed. You'll laugh, too. Of course it
rained over in Medina County. That's interesting, eh? If we had no trains,
no mails, no telegraph, we would know that it rained over in Medina County.
That's where Wine Creek comes from. Everyone knows that. Little old Wine
Creek brought us the news. That's interesting. I laughed. I thought I'd tell
you--it's interesting, eh?"
Joe Welling turned and went out at the door. Taking a book from his
pocket, he stopped and ran a finger down one of the pages. Again he was
absorbed in his duties as agent of the Standard Oil Company. "Hern's Grocery
will be getting low on coal oil. I'll see them," he muttered, hurrying along
the street, and bowing politely to the right and left at the people walking
past.
When George Willard went to work for the Winesburg Eagle he was
besieged by Joe Welling. Joe envied the boy. It seemed to him that he was
meant by Nature to be a reporter on a newspaper. "It is what I should be
doing, there is no doubt of that," he declared, stopping George Willard on
the sidewalk before Daugherty's Feed Store. His eyes began to glisten and
his forefinger to tremble. "Of course I make more money with the Standard
Oil Company and I'm only telling you," he added. "I've got nothing against
you but I should have your place. I could do the work at odd moments. Here
and there I would run finding out things you'll never see."
Becoming more excited Joe Welling crowded the young reporter against
the front of the feed store. He appeared to be lost in thought, rolling his
eyes about and running a thin nervous hand through his hair. A smile spread
over his face and his gold teeth glittered. "You get out your note book," he
commanded. "You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket, don't you? I
knew you did. Well, you set this down. I thought of it the other day. Let's
take decay. Now what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things.
You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here and this feed
store, the trees down the street there--they're all on fire. They're burning
up. Decay you see is always going on. It doesn't stop. Water and paint can't
stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire, too.
The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just say in
big letters 'The World Is On Fire.' That will make 'em look up. They'll say
you're a smart one. I don't care. I don't envy you. I just snatched that
idea out of the air. I would make a newspaper hum. You got to admit that."'
Turning quickly, Joe Welling walked rapidly away. When he had taken
several steps he stopped and looked back. "I'm going to stick to you," he
said. "I'm going to make you a regular hummer. I should start a newspaper
myself, that's what I should do. I'd be a marvel. Everybody knows that."
When George Willard had been for a year on the Winesburg Eagle, four
things happened to Joe Welling. His mother died, he came to live at the New
Willard House, he became involved in a love affair, and he organized the
Winesburg Baseball Club.
Joe organized the baseball club because he wanted to be a coach and in
that position he began to win the respect of his townsmen. "He is a wonder,"
they declared after Joe's team had whipped the team from Medina County. "He
gets everybody working together. You just watch him."
Upon the baseball field Joe Welling stood by first base, his whole body
quivering with excitement. In spite of themselves all the players watched
him closely. The opposing pitcher became confused.
"Now! Now! Now! Now!" shouted the excited man. "Watch me! Watch me!
Watch my fingers! Watch my hands! Watch my feet! Watch my eyes! Let's work
together here! Watch me! In me you see all the movements of the game! Work
with me! Work with me! Watch me! Watch me! Watch me!"
With runners of the Winesburg team on bases, Joe Welling became as one
inspired. Before they knew what had come over them, the base runners were
watching the man, edging off the bases, advancing, retreating, held as by an
invisible cord. The players of the opposing team also watched Joe. They were
fascinated. For a moment they watched and then, as though to break a spell
that hung over them, they began hurling the ball wildly about, and amid a
series of fierce animal-like cries from the coach, the runners of the
Winesburg team scampered home.
Joe Welling's love affair set the town of Winesburg on edge. When it
began everyone whispered and shook his head. When people tried to laugh, the
laughter was forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with Sarah King, a lean,
sad-looking woman who lived with her father and brother in a brick house
that stood opposite the gate leading to the Winesburg Cemetery.
The two Kings, Edward the father, and Tom the son, were not popular in
Winesburg. They were called proud and dangerous. They had come to Winesburg
from some place in the South and ran a cider mill on the Trunion Pike. Tom
King was reported to have killed a man before he came to Winesburg. He was
twenty-seven years old and rode about town on a grey pony. Also he had a
long yellow mustache that dropped down over his teeth, and always carried a
heavy, wicked-looking walking stick in his hand. Once he killed a dog with
the stick. The dog belonged to Win Pawsey, the shoe merchant, and stood on
the sidewalk wagging its tail. Tom King killed it with one blow. He was
arrested and paid a fine of ten dollars.
Old Edward King was small of stature and when he passed people in the
street laughed a queer unmirthful laugh. When he laughed he scratched his
left elbow with his right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn
through from the habit. As he walked along the street, looking nervously
about and laughing, he seemed more dangerous than his silent, fierce-looking
son.
When Sarah King began walking out in the evening with Joe Welling,
people shook their heads in alarm. She was tall and pale and had dark rings
under her eyes. The couple looked ridiculous together. Under the trees they
walked and Joe talked. His passionate eager protestations of love, heard
coming out of the darkness by the cemetery wall, or from the deep shadows of
the trees on the hill that ran up to the Fair Grounds from Waterworks Pond,
were repeated in the stores. Men stood by the bar in the New Willard House
laughing and talking of Joe's courtship. After the laughter came the
silence. The Winesburg baseball team, under his management, was winning game
after game, and the town had begun to respect him. Sensing a tragedy, they
waited, laughing nervously.
Late on a Saturday afternoon the meeting between Joe Welling and the
two Kings, the anticipation of which had set the town on edge, took place in
Joe Welling's room in the New Willard House. George Willard was a witness to
the meeting. It came about in this way:
When the young reporter went to his room after the evening meal he saw
Tom King and his father sitting in the half darkness in Joe's room. The son
had the heavy walking stick in his hand and sat near the door. Old Edward
King walked nervously about, scratching his left elbow with his right hand.
The hallways were empty and silent.
George Willard went to his own room and sat down at his desk. He tried
to write but his hand trembled so that he could not hold the pen. He also
walked nervously up and down. Like the rest of the town of Winesburg he was
perplexed and knew not what to do.
It was seven-thirty and fast growing dark when Joe Welling came along
the station platform toward the New Willard House. In his arms he held a
bundle of weeds and grasses. In spite of the terror that made his body
shake, George Willard was amused at the sight of the small spry figure
holding the grasses and half running along the platform.
Shaking with fright and anxiety, the young reporter lurked in the
hallway outside the door of the room in which Joe Welling talked to the two
Kings. There had been an oath, the nervous giggle of old Edward King, and
then silence. Now the voice of Joe Welling, sharp and clear, broke forth.
George Willard began to laugh. He understood. As he had swept all men before
him, so now Joe Welling was carrying the two men in the room off their feet
with a tidal wave of words. The listener in the hall walked up and down,
lost in amazement.
Inside the room Joe Welling had paid no attention to the grumbled
threat of Tom King. Absorbed in an idea he closed the door and, lighting a
lamp, spread the handful of weeds and grasses upon the floor. "I've got
something here," he announced solemnly. "I was going to tell George Willard
about it, let him make a piece out of it for the paper. I'm glad you're
here. I wish Sarah were here also. I've been going to come to your house and
tell you of some of my ideas. They're interesting. Sarah wouldn't let me.
She said we'd quarrel. That's foolish."
Running up and down before the two perplexed men, Joe Welling began to
explain. "Don't you make a mistake now," he cried. "This is something big."
His voice was shrill with excitement. "You just follow me, you'll be
interested. I know you will. Suppose this--suppose all of the wheat, the
corn, the oats, the peas, the potatoes, were all by some miracle swept away.
Now here we are, you see, in this county. There is a high fence built all
around us. We'll suppose that. No one can get over the fence and all the
fruits of the earth are destroyed, nothing left but these wild things, these
grasses. Would we be done for? I ask you that. Would we be done for?" Again
Tom King growled and for a moment there was silence in the room. Then again
Joe plunged into the exposition of his idea. "Things would go hard for a
time. I admit that. I've got to admit that. No getting around it. We'd be
hard put to it. More than one fat stomach would cave in. But they couldn't
down us. I should say not."
Tom King laughed good naturedly and the shivery, nervous laugh of
Edward King rang through the house. Joe Welling hurried on. "We'd begin, you
see, to breed up new vegetables and fruits. Soon we'd regain all we had
lost. Mind, I don't say the new things would be the same as the old. They
wouldn't. Maybe they'd be better, maybe not so good. That's interesting, eh?
You can think about that. It starts your mind working, now don't it?"
In the room there was silence and then again old Edward King laughed
nervously. "Say, I wish Sarah was here," cried Joe Welling. "Let's go up to
your house. I want to tell her of this."
There was a scraping of chairs in the room. It was then that George
Willard retreated to his own room. Leaning out at the window he saw Joe
Welling going along the street with the two Kings. Tom King was forced to
take extraordinary long strides to keep pace with the little man. As he
strode along, he leaned over, listening--absorbed, fascinated. Joe Welling
again talked excitedly. "Take milkweed now," he cried. "A lot might be done
with milkweed, eh? It's almost unbelievable. I want you to think about it. I
want you two to think about it. There would be a new vegetable kingdom you
see. It's interesting, eh? It's an idea. Wait till you see Sarah, she'll get
the idea. She'll be interested. Sarah is always interested in ideas. You
can't be too smart for Sarah, now can you? Of course you can't. You know
that."
ADVENTURE
ALICE HINDMAN, a woman of twenty-seven when George Willard was a mere
boy, had lived in Winesburg all her life. She clerked in Winney's Dry Goods
Store and lived with her mother, who had married a second husband.
Alice's step-father was a carriage painter, and given to drink. His
story is an odd one. It will be worth telling some day.
At twenty-seven Alice was tall and somewhat slight. Her head was large
and overshadowed her body. Her shoulders were a little stooped and her hair
and eyes brown. She was very quiet but beneath a placid exterior a continual
ferment went on.
When she was a girl of sixteen and before she began to work in the
store, Alice had an affair with a young man. The young man, named Ned
Currie, was older than Alice. He, like George Willard, was employed on the
Winesburg Eagle and for a long time he went to see Alice almost every
evening. Together the two walked under the trees through the streets of the
town and talked of what they would do with their lives. Alice was then a
very pretty girl and Ned Currie took her into his arms and kissed her. He
became excited and said things he did not intend to say and Alice, betrayed
by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life,
also grew excited. She also talked. The outer crust of her life, all of her
natural diffidence and reserve, was tom away and she gave herself over to
the emotions of love. When, late in the fall of her sixteenth year, Ned
Currie went away to Cleveland where he hoped to get a place on a city
newspaper and rise in the world, she wanted to go with him. With a trembling
voice she told him what was in her mind. "I will work and you can work," she
said. "I do not want to harness you to a needless expense that will prevent
your making progress. Don't marry me now. We will get along without that and
we can be together. Even though we live in the same house no one will say
anything. In the city we will be unknown and people will pay no attention to
us."
Ned Currie was puzzled by the determination and abandon of his
sweetheart and was also deeply touched. He had wanted the girl to become his
mistress but changed his mind. He wanted to protect and care for her. "You
don't know what you're talking about," he said sharply; "you may be sure
I'll let you do no such thing. As soon as I get a good job I'll come back.
For the present you'll have to stay here. It's the only thing we can do."
On the evening before he left Winesburg to take up his new life in the
city, Ned Currie went to call on Alice. They walked about through the
streets for an hour and then got a rig from Wesley Moyer's livery and went
for a drive in the country. The moon came up and they found themselves
unable to talk. In his sadness the young man forgot the resolutions he had
made regarding his conduct with the girl.
They got out of the buggy at a place where a long meadow ran down to
the bank of Wine Creek and there in the dim light became lovers. When at
midnight they returned to town they were both glad. It did not seem to them
that anything that could happen in the future could blot out the wonder and
beauty of the thing that had happened. "Now we will have to stick to each
other, whatever happens we will have to do that," Ned Currie said as he left
the girl at her father's door.
The young newspaper man did not succeed in getting a place on a
Cleveland paper and went west to Chicago. For a time he was lonely and wrote
to Alice almost every day. Then he was caught up by the life of the city; he
began to make friends and found new interests in life. In Chicago he boarded
at a house where there were several women. One of them attracted his
attention and he forgot Alice in Winesburg. At the end of a year he had
stopped writing letters, and only once in a long time, when he was lonely or
when he went into one of the city parks and saw the moon shining on the
grass as it had shone that night on the meadow by Wine Creek, did he think
of her at all.
In Winesburg the girl who had been loved grew to be a woman. When she
was twenty-two years old her father, who owned a harness repair shop, died
suddenly. The harness maker was an old soldier, and after a few months his
wife received a widow's pension. She used the first money she got to buy a
loom and became a weaver of carpets, and Alice got a place in Winney's
store. For a number of years nothing could have induced her to believe that
Ned Currie would not in the end return to her.
She was glad to be employed because the daily round of toil in the
store made the time of waiting seem less long and uninteresting. She began
to save money, thinking that when she had saved two or three hundred dollars
she would follow her lover to the city and try if her presence would not win
back his affections.
Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had happened in the moonlight
in the field, but felt that she could never marry another man. To her the
thought of giving to another what she still felt could belong only to Ned
seemed monstrous. When other young men tried to attract her attention she
would have nothing to do with them. "I am his wife and shall remain his wife
whether he comes back or not," she whispered to herself, and for all of her
willingness to support herself could not have understood the growing modern
idea of a woman's owning herself and giving and taking for her own ends in
life.
Alice worked in the dry goods store from eight in the morning until six
at night and on three evenings a week went back to the store to stay from
seven until nine. As time passed and she became more and more lonely she
began to practice the devices common to lonely people. When at night she
went upstairs into her own room she knelt on the floor to pray and in her
prayers whispered things she wanted to say to her lover. She became attached
to inanimate objects, and because it was her own, could not bare to have
anyone touch the furniture of her room. The trick of saving money, begun for
a purpose, was carried on after the scheme of going to the city to find Ned
Currie had been given up. It became a fixed habit, and when she needed new
clothes she did not get them. Sometimes on rainy afternoons in the store she
got out her bank book and, letting it lie open before her, spent hours
dreaming impossible dreams of saving money enough so that the interest would
support both herself and her future husband.
"Ned always liked to travel about," she thought. "I'll give him the
chance. Some day when we are married and I can save both his money and my
own, we will be rich. Then we can travel together all over the world."
In the dry goods store weeks ran into months and months into years as
Alice waited and dreamed of her lover's return. Her employer, a grey old man
with false teeth and a thin grey mustache that drooped down over his mouth,
was not given to conversation, and sometimes, on rainy days and in the
winter when a storm raged in Main Street, long hours passed when no
customers came in. Alice arranged and rearranged the stock. She stood near
the front window where she could look down the deserted street and thought
of the evenings when she had walked with Ned Currie and of what he had said.
"We will have to stick to each other now." The words echoed and re-echoed
through the mind of the maturing woman. Tears came into her eyes. Sometimes
when her employer had gone out and she was alone in the store she put her
head on the counter and wept. "Oh, Ned, I am waiting," she whispered over
and over, and all the time the creeping fear that he would never come back
grew stronger within her.
In the spring when the rains have passed and before the long hot days
of summer have come, the country about Winesburg is delightful. The town
lies in the midst of open fields, but beyond the fields are pleasant patches
of woodlands. In the wooded places are many little cloistered nooks, quiet
places where lovers go to sit on Sunday afternoons. Through the trees they
look out across the fields and see farmers at work about the barns or people
driving up and down on the roads. In the town bells ring and occasionally a
train passes, looking like a toy thing in the distance.
For several years after Ned Currie went away Alice did not go into the
wood with the other young people on Sunday, but one day after he had been
gone for two or three years and when her loneliness seemed unbearable, she
put on her best dress and set out. Finding a little sheltered place from
which she could see the town and a long stretch of the fields, she sat down.
Fear of age and ineffectuality took possession of her. She could not sit
still, and arose. As she stood looking out over the land something, perhaps
the thought of never ceasing life as it expresses itself in the flow of the