 14 THE THINKER The house in which Seth Richmond of Winesburg lived with his mother had been at one time the show-place of the town. But when young Seth lived there, its glory had become somewhat dimmed. The huge brick house, which Banker White had built on Buckeye Street, had overshadowed it. The Richmond place was in a little valley far out at the end of Main Street. Farmers coming into town by a dusty road from the south, passed by a grove of walnut trees, skirted the fairground with its high-bored fence covered with advertisements, and trotted their horses down through the valley past the Richmond place into town. As much of the country north and south of Winesburg was devoted to fruit and berry-raising, Seth saw wagon-loads of berry-pickers—boys, girls, and women—going to the fields in the morning and returning covered with dust in the evening. The chattering crowd, with their rude jokes cried out from wagon to wagon, sometimes irritated him sharply. He regretted that he also could not laugh boisterously, shot meaningless jokes, and make of himself a figure in the endless stream of moving, giggling activity that went up and down the road. The Richmond house was built of limestone, and, although it was set in the village to have become run down, had in reality grown more beautiful with every passing year. Every day time had begun a little to colour the stone, lending a golden richness to its surface, and in the evening or on dark days touching the shaded places beneath the eaves with wavering patches of browns and blacks. The house had been built by Seth's grandfather, a stone quarryman, and it, together with the stone quarries on Lake Erie, eighteen miles to the north, had been left to his son, Clarence Richmond, Seth's father. Clarence Richmond, a quiet, passionate man extraordinarily admired by his neighbours, had been killed in a street fight with the editor of a newspaper in Toledo, Ohio. The fight concerned the publication of Clarence Richmond's name coupled with that of a women's school teacher, and, as the dead men had begun the row by firing upon the editor, the effort to punish the slayer was unsuccessful. After the quarryman's death, it was found that much of the money left to him had been squandered in speculation and in insecure investments made through the influence of friends. Left with but a small income, Virginia Richmond had settled down to a retired life in the village and to the raising of her son. Although she had been deeply moved by the death of the husband and father, she did not at all believe the stories concerning him that ran about after his death. To her mind, the sensitive, boyish man whom all had instinctively loved was but an unfortunate, a being too fine for everyday life. You'll be hearing all sorts of stories, but you are not to believe what you hear," she said to her son. He was a good man, full of tenderness for everyone, and should not have tried to be a man of affairs. No matter how much I were to plan and dream of your future, I could not imagine anything better for you than that you turn out as good a man as your father. Several years after the death of her husband, Virginia Richmond had become alarmed at the growing demands upon her income and had set herself to the task of increasing it. She had learned stenography and, through the influence of her husband's friends, got the position of court stenographer at the county seat. Before she went by train each morning during the sessions of the court, and when no court sat, spent her days working among the rose-bushers in her garden. She was a tall, straight figure of a woman, with a plain face and a great mass of brown hair. In the relationship between Seth Richmond and his mother, there was a quality that, even at eighteen, had begun to color all of his traffic with men. At almost unhealthy respect for the youth kept the mother, for the most part, silent in his presence. When she did speak sharply to him, he had only to look steadily into her eyes to see dawning there the puzzled look he had already noticed in the eyes of others when he looked at them. The truth was that the son thought with remarkable clearness, and the mother did not. She expected from all people certain conventional reactions to life. A boy was your son, you scolded him, and he trembled and looked at the floor. When you had scolded enough, he wept, and all was forgiven. After the weeping, and when he had gone to bed, you crept into his room and kissed him. Virginia Richmond could not understand why her son did not do these things. After the severest reprimand, he did not tremble and look at the floor, but instead looked steadily at her, causing uneasy doubts to invade her mind. As for creeping into his room, after Seth had passed his fifteenth year, she would have been half afraid to do anything of the kind. Once when he was a boy of sixteen, Seth, in company with two other boys, ran away from home. The three boys climbed into the open door of an empty freight car, and rode some forty miles to a town where a fair was being held. One of the boys had a bottle filled with a combination of whiskey and blackberry wine, and the three sat with legs dangling out of the car door drinking from the bottle. Seth's two companions sang and waved their hands to idlers about the stations of the towns through which the train passed. They plant raids upon the baskets of farmers who had come with their families to the fair. We will live like kings and won't have to spend a penny to see the fair and horse races! they declared boastfully. After the disappearance of Seth, Virginia Richmond walked up and down the floor of her home, filled with vague alarms. Although on the next day she discovered, through an inquiry made by the town marshal, on what adventure the boys had gone, she could not quiet herself. All through the night she lay awake hearing the clock tick, and telling herself that Seth, like his father, would come to a sudden and violent end. So determined was she that the boy should this time feel the weight of a wrath that, although she would not allow the marshal to interfere with his adventure, she got out a pencil and paper and wrote down a series of sharp, stinging reproofs she intended to pour out upon him. The reproofs she committed to memory, going about the garden and saying them aloud like an actor memorizing his part. And when, at the end of the week, Seth returned, a little weary and with cold soot in his ears and about his eyes, she again found herself unable to reproof him. Walking into the house, he hung his cap on a nail by the kitchen door, and stood looking steadily at her. I wanted to turn back within an hour after we had started, he explained. I didn't know what to do. I knew you would be bothered, but I knew also that if I didn't go on, I would be ashamed of myself. I went through with the whole thing for my own good. It was uncomfortable, sleeping on wet straw, and two drunken negroes came and slept with us. When I stole a lunch basket out of a farmer's wagon, I couldn't help thinking of his children going all day without food. I was sick of the whole affair, but I was determined to stick it out until the other boys were ready to come back. Glad you did stick it out, replied the mother half resentfully, and kissing him upon the forehead, pretended to busy herself with the work about the house. On a summer evening, Seth Richmond went to the new Willard house to visit his friend George Willard. It had rained during the afternoon, but as he walked through Main Street, the sky had partially cleared and a golden glow lit up the west. Going around a corner, he turned in at the door of the hotel, and began to climb the stairway leading up to his friend's room. In the hotel office, the proprietor and two traveling men were engaged in a discussion of politics. On the stairway, Seth stopped and listened to the voices of the men below. They were excited and talking rapidly. Tom Willard was berating the traveling men. I'm a Democrat, but your talk makes me sick, he said. You don't understand McKinley. McKinley and Mark Hanna are friends. It is impossible, perhaps, for your mind to grasp that. If anyone tells you that a friendship can be deeper and bigger and more worthwhile than dollars and cents, or even more worthwhile than state politics, you snicker and laugh. The landlord was interrupted by one of the guests, a tall, gray mustached man who worked for a wholesale grocery house. Do you think that I've lived in Cleveland all these years without knowing Mark Hanna? He demanded. Your talk is pithful. Hanna is after money and nothing else. This McKinley is his tool. He has McKinley bluffed and don't you forget it. The young man on the stairs did not linger to hear the rest of the discussion, but went on up the stairway and into the dark little hall. Something in the voices of the men talking in the hotel office started a chain of thoughts in his mind. He was lonely, and had begun to think that loneliness was a part of his character, something that would always stay with him. Stepping into a side hall, he stood by a window that looked into an alleyway. At the back of his shop stood Abner Groff, the town baker. His tiny bloodshot eyes looked up and down the alleyway. In his shop someone called the baker, who pretended not to hear. The baker had an empty milk bottle in his hand and an angry, swollen look in his eyes. In Winesburg Seth Richmond was called the Deep One. He's like his father, men said as he went through the streets. He'll break out some of these days you wait and see. The talk of the town and the respect with which men and boys instinctively greeted him, as all men greet silent people, had affected Seth Richmond's outlook on life and on himself. He, like most boys, was deeper than boys are given credit for being, but he was not what the men of the town and even his mother thought him to be. No great underlying purpose lay back of his habitual silence, and he had no definite plan for his life. When the boys with whom he associated were noisy and quarrelsome, he stood quietly at one side. With calm eyes he watched the gesticulating lively figures of his companions. He wasn't particularly interested in what was going on, and sometimes wondered if he would ever be particularly interested in anything. Now, as he stood in the half darkness by the window watching the baker, he wished that he himself might become thoroughly stirred by something, even if by the fits of sullen anger for which Baker Groff was noted. It would be better for me if I could become excited and wrangle about politics like windy old Tom Willard, he thought, as he left the window and went again along the hallway to the room occupied by his friend George Willard. Well, George Willard was older than Seth Richmond, but in the rather odd friendship between the two it was he who was forever courting and the younger boy who was being courted. The paper on which George worked had one policy. It strove to mention by name in each issue as many as possible of the inhabitants of the village. Like an excited dog, George Willard ran here and there noting on his pad of paper who had gone on business to the county seat or had returned from a visit to a neighboring village. All day he wrote little facts upon the pad. A pay your ringlet had received a shipment of straw hats, and Byerbaum and Tom Marshall were in Cleveland Friday. Uncle Tom Sinnings is building a new barn on his place on the Valley Road. The idea that George Willard would someday become a writer had given him a place of distinction in Winesburg, and to Seth Richmond he talked continually of the matter. It's the easiest of all lives to live, he declared, becoming excited and boastful. Here and there you go and there's no one to boss you. Though you are in India or in the South Seas in a boat, you have but to write and there you are. Wait till I get my name up and then see what fun I shall have." In George Willard's room which had a window looking down on an alleyway and one that looked across railroad tracks to Biff Carter's lunchroom facing the railroad station, Seth Richmond sat in a chair and looked at the floor. George Willard, who had been sitting for an hour idly playing with a lead pencil, greeted him effusively. I've been trying to write a love story, he explained, laughing nervously. Lighting a pipe he began walking up and down the room. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going to fall in love. I've been sitting here and thinking it over and I'm going to do it. As though embarrassed by his declaration George went to a window and turning his back to his friend leaned out. I know who I'm going to fall in love with, he said sharply. It's Helen White. She's the only girl in town with any get-up to her. Struck with his new idea, young Willard turned and walked toward his visitor. Look here, he said. You know Helen White better than I do. I want you to tell her what I said. You just get to talking to her and say that I'm in love with her. See what she says to that and see how she takes it. And then you come and tell me. Seth Richmond arose and went toward the door. The words of his comrade irritated him unbearably. Well, good-bye, he said briefly. George was amazed. Running forward he stood in the darkness trying to look into Seth's face. What's the matter with you? What are you going to do? You stay here and let's talk, he urged. A wave of resentment directed against his friend, the men of the town who were, he thought, perpetually talking of nothing, and most of all, against his own habit of silence, made Seth half desperate. Oh, speak to her yourself! He burst forth and then, going quickly through the door, slammed it sharply in his friend's face. I'm going to find Helen White and talk to her, but not about him, he muttered. Seth went down the stairway and, out the front door of the hotel, muttering with wrath. Crossing a little dusty street and climbing a low iron railing, he went to sit upon the grass in the station yard. George Willard, he thought, a profound fool, and he wished that he had said so more vigorously. Although his acquaintanceship with Helen White, the maker's daughter, was outwardly but casual, she was often the subject of his thoughts, and he felt that she was something private and personal to himself. The busy fool with his love stories, he muttered, staring back over his shoulder at George Willard's room, why does he never tire of his eternal talking? It was Barry Harvest's time in Winesburg, and upon the station platform, men and boys loaded the boxes of red fragrant berries into two express cars that stood upon the sighting. A June moon was in the sky, although in the west a storm threatened, and no street lamps were lighted. In the dim light the figures of the men standing upon the express truck and pitching the boxes in at the doors of the cars were but dimly discernible. Upon the iron railing that protected the station lawn sat other men. Pipes were lighted, and village jokes went back and forth. Away in the distance a train whistled, and the men loading the boxes into the cars worked with renewed activity. Seth arose from his place on the grass and went silently past the men perched upon the railing and into Main Street. He had come to a resolution. I'll get out of here, he told himself. What good am I here? I'm going to some city and go to work. I'll tell mother about it to-morrow. Seth Richmond went slowly along Main Street, past Wacker's cigar store in the town hall and into Buckeye Street. He was depressed by the thought that he was not a part of the life of his own town, but the depression did not cut deeply as he did not think of himself as at fault. In the heavy shadows of a big tree before Dr. Welling's house, he stopped and stood watching half-witted Turk Smollett, who was pushing a wheel barrel in the road. The old man, with his absurdly boyish mind, had a dozen long boards on the wheel barrel, and as he hurried along the street balanced the load with extreme nicety. Easy there, Turk! Steady now, old boy! The old man shouted to himself and laughed so that the load of boards rocked dangerously. Seth knew Turk Smollett, the half-dangerous old woodchopper, whose peculiarities added so much of color to the life of the village. He knew that when Turk got into Main Street, he would become the center of a whirlwind of cries and comments, that in truth the old man was going far out of his way in order to pass through Main Street and exhibit his skill in wheeling the boards. If George Willard were here, he'd have something to say, thought Seth. George belongs to this town, he'd shout at Turk, and Turk would shout at him. They'd both be secretly pleased by what they had said. It's different with me, I don't belong, I'll not make a fuss about it, but I'm going to get out of here. Seth stumbled forward through the half-darkness, feeling himself an outcast in his own town. He began to pity himself, but a sense of the absurdity of his thoughts made him smile. In the end he decided that he was simply old beyond his years, had not at all a subject for self-pity. I'm made to go to work. I may be able to make a place for myself by steady working, and I might as well be at it, he decided. Seth went to the house of Banker White and stood in the darkness by the front door. On the door hung a heavy brass knocker, an innovation introduced into the village by Helen White's mother, who had also organized a women's club for the study of poetry. Seth raised the knocker and let it fall. Its heavy clatter sounded like a report from distant guns. Hell, awkward and foolish I am, he thought. If Mrs. White comes to the door, I won't know what to say. Well, it was Helen White who came to the door and found Seth standing at the edge of the porch. Blushing with pleasure she stepped forward, closing the door softly. I'm going to get out of town. I don't know what I'll do, but I'm going to get out of here and go to work. I think I'll go to Columbus, he said. Perhaps I'll get into the state university down there. Anyway, I'm going. I'll tell Mother to-night. He hesitated and looked doubtfully about. Perhaps you wouldn't mind coming to walk with me? Seth and Helen walked through the streets beneath the trees. Heavy clouds had drifted across the face of the moon and before them in the deep twilight went a man with a short ladder upon his shoulder. Hurrying forward, the man stopped at the street crossing and, putting the ladder against the wooden lamppost, lighted the village lights so that their way was half lighted, half darkened, by the lamps and by the deepening shadows cast by the low-branched trees. In the tops of the trees the wind began to play, disturbing the sleeping birds so that they flew about, calling plaintively. In the lighted space before one of the lamps, two bats wheeled and circled, pursuing the gathering swarm of night flies. Since Seth had been a boy in knee-trousers, there had been a half-expressed intimacy between him and the maiden who now for the first time walked beside him. For a time she had been beset with a madness for writing notes which she addressed to Seth. He had found them concealed in his books at school and one had been given him by a child met in the street while several had been delivered through the village post office. The notes had been written in a round boyish hand and had reflected a mind inflamed by novel reading. Seth had not answered them, although he had been moved and flattered by some of the sentences scrawled in pencil upon the station area of the banker's wife. Putting them into the pocket of his coat, he went through the street or stood by the fence in the schoolyard with something burning at his side. He thought it fine that he should be thus selected as the favorite of the richest and most attractive girl in town. Helen and Seth stopped by a fence near where a low dark building faced the street. The building had once been a factory for the making of barrel staves, but was now vacant. Across the street upon the porch of a house, a man and woman talked of their childhood, their voices coming clearly across to the half-embarassed youth and maiden. There was a sound of scraping chairs and the man and woman came down the gravel path to a wooden gate. Standing outside the gate, the man leaned over and kissed the woman. For old times' sake, he said, and turning walked rapidly away along the sidewalk. That's Belle Turner, whispered Helen, and put her hand boldly into Seth's hand. I didn't know that she had a fellow. I thought she was too old for that. Seth laughed uneasily. The hand of the girl was warm and a strange, dizzy feeling crept over him. Into his mind came a desire to tell her something he had been determined not to tell. George Willards in love with you, he said, and in spite of his agitation, his voice was low and quiet. He's writing a story, and he wants to be in love. He wants to know how it feels. He wanted me to tell you and see what you said. Again Helen and Seth walked in silence. They came to the garden surrounding the old Richmond place, and going through a gap in the hedge said, sat on a wooden bench beneath a bush. On the street, as he walked beside the girl, new and daring thoughts had come into Seth Richmond's mind. He began to regret his decision to get out of town. It would be something new and altogether delightful to remain and walk often through the streets with Helen White, he thought. At imagination he saw himself putting his arm about her waist and feeling her arms clasped tightly about his neck. One of those odd combinations of events and places made him connect the idea of love-making with this girl and a spot he had visited some days before. He had gone on an errand to the house of a farmer who lived on a hillside beyond the fairground and had returned by a path through a field. At the foot of the hill below the farmer's house Seth had stopped beneath a sycamore tree and looked about him. A soft humming-noise had greeted his ears. For a moment he had thought the tree must be the home of a swarm of bees. And then, looking down, Seth had seen the bees everywhere all about him in the long grass. He stood in a mass of weeds that grew waist high in the field that ran away from the hillside. The weeds were a bloom with tiny purple blossoms and gave forth an overpowering fragrance. Upon the weeds the bees were gathered in armies, singing as they worked. Seth imagined himself lying on a summer evening buried deep among the weeds beneath the tree. Beside him, in the scene built in his fancy, lay Helen White, her hand lying in his hand. A peculiar reluctance kept him from kissing her lips, but he felt he might have done that if he had wished. Instead he lay perfectly still, looking at her, and listening to the army of bees that sang the sustained masterful song of labor above his head. On the bench in the garden Seth stirred uneasily, releasing the hand of the girl. He thrust his hands into his trouser pockets, a desire to impress the mind of his companion with the importance of the resolution he had made came over him, and he nodded his head toward the house. Mother will make a fuss, I suppose, he whispered. She hasn't thought at all about what I'm going to do in life. She thinks I'm going to stay on here forever just being a boy. Seth's voice became charged with boyish earnestness. You see, I've got to strike out. I've got to get to work. It's what I'm good for. Helen White was impressed. She nodded her head and a feeling of admiration swept over her. This is as it should be. She thought, this boy is not a boy at all, but a strong, purposeful man. Certain vague desires that had been invading her body were swept away, and she sat up very straight on the bench. The thunder continued to rumble, and flashes of heat lightning lit up the eastern sky. The garden that had been so mysterious and vast, a place that with Seth beside her might have become the background for strange and wonderful adventures, now seemed no more than an ordinary Winesburg backyard, quite definite and limited in its outlines. What will you do up there? She whispered. Seth turned half around on the bench, striving to see her face in the darkness. He thought her infinitely more sensible and straightforward than George Willard, and was glad he had come away from his friend. A feeling of impatience with the town that had been in his mind returned, and he tried to tell her of it. Everyone talks and talks, he began. I'm sick of it. I'll do something and get into some kind of work where talk don't count. Maybe I'll just be a mechanic in a shop, I don't know. I guess, I don't care much. I just want to work and keep quiet. That's all I've got in my mind. Seth arose from the bench and put out his hand. He did not want to bring the meeting to an end, but could not think of anything more to say. It's the last time we'll see each other. He whispered. A wave of sentiments swept over Helen. Putting her hand upon Seth's shoulder, she started to draw his face down toward her own upturned face. The act was one of pure affection and cutting regret that some vague adventure that had been present in the spirit of the night would now never be realized. I think I'd better be going along, she said, letting her hand fall heavily to her side. A thought came to her. Don't you go with me. I want to be alone. She said, you go and talk with your mother. You'd better do that now. Seth hesitated, and as he stood waiting, the girl turned and ran away through the hedge. A desire to run after her came to him, but he only stood staring, perplexed and puzzled by her action as he had been perplexed and puzzled by all of the life of the town out of which she had come. Walking slowly toward the house, he stopped in the shadow of a large tree and looked at his mother sitting by a lighted window busily sowing. The feeling of loneliness that had visited him earlier in the evening returned and colored his thoughts of the adventure through which he had just passed. Huh! he exclaimed, turning and staring in the direction taken by Helen White. That's how things will turn out. She'll be like the rest. I suppose she'll begin now to look at me in a funny way. He looked at the ground and pondered this thought. She'll be embarrassed and feel strange when I'm around. He whispered to himself, that's how it'll be. That's how everything will turn out. When it comes to loving someone, it won't never be me. It'll be someone else, some fool, someone who talks a lot. Someone like that George Willard. LibriVox.org Redden recorded by Betsy Bush, Marquette Michigan, July 2007 Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson Section 15 Tandy Until she was seven years old, she lived in an old unpainted house on an unused road that led off Trunyan Pike. Her father gave her but little attention and her mother was dead. The father spent his time talking and thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself an agnostic, and was so absorbed in destroying the ideas of God that had crept into the minds of his neighbors that he never saw God manifesting himself in the little child that, half forgotten, lived here and there on the bounty of her dead mother's relatives. A stranger came to Winesburg and saw in the child what the father did not see. He was a tall, red-haired young man, who was almost always drunk. Sometimes he sat in a chair before the new Willard House, with Tom Hard, the father. As Tom talked, declaring there could be no God, the stranger smiled and winked at the bystanders. He and Tom became friends and were much together. The stranger was the son of a rich merchant of Cleveland and had come to Winesburg on a mission. He wanted to cure himself of the habit of drink, and thought that by escaping from his city associates and living in a rural community he would have a better chance in the struggle with the appetite that was destroying him. His sojourn in Winesburg was not a success. The dullness of the passing hours led to his drinking harder than ever. But he did succeed in doing something. He gave a name rich with meaning to Tom Hard's daughter. One evening when he was recovering from a long debauch, the stranger came reeling along the main street of the town. Tom Hard sat in a chair before the new Willard House, with his daughter, then a child of five, on his knees. Beside him on the board sidewalk sat young George Willard. The stranger dropped into a chair beside them. His body shook, and when he tried to talk his voice trembled. It was late evening, and darkness lay over the town, and over the railroad that ran along the foot of a little incline before the hotel. Somewhere in the distance, off to the west, there was a prolonged blast from the whistle of a passenger train, a dog that had been sleeping in the roadway arose and barked. The stranger began to babble and make a prophecy concerning the child that lay in the arms of the agnostic. I came here to quit drinking, he said, and tears began to run down his cheeks. He did not look at Tom Hard, but leaned forward and stared into the darkness as though seeing a vision. I ran away to the country to be cured, but I am not cured. There is a reason. He turned to look at the child who sat up very straight on her father's knee and returned the look. The stranger touched Tom Hard on the arm. Drink is not the only thing to which I am addicted, he said. There is something else. I am a lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable, you see. There are few who understand that. The stranger became silent and seemed overcome with sadness, but another blast from the whistle of the passenger engine aroused him. I have not lost faith, I proclaim that. I have only been brought to the place where I know my faith will not be realized, he declared hoarsely. He looked hard at the child and began to address her, paying no more attention to the father. There is a woman coming, he said, and his voice was now sharp and earnest. I have missed her, you see. She did not come in my time. You may be the woman. It would be like fate to let me stand in her presence once, on such an evening as this, when I have destroyed myself with drink, and she is as yet only a child. The shoulders of the stranger shook violently, and when he tried to roll a cigarette the paper fell from his trembling fingers. He grew angry and scolded. They think it's easy to be a woman, to be loved, but I know better, he declared. Again he turned to the child. I understand, he cried, perhaps of all men I alone understand. His glance again wandered away to the darkened street. I know about her, although she has never crossed my path, he said softly. I know about her struggles and her defeats. It is because of her defeats that she is to me the lovely one. Out of her defeats has been born a new quality of woman. I have a name for it. I call it Tandy. I made up the name when I was a true dreamer and before my body became vile. It is the quality of being strong to be loved. It is something men need from women, and that they do not get. The stranger arose and stood before Tom hard. His body rocked back and forth, and he seemed about to fall. But instead he dropped to his knees on the sidewalk and raised the hands of the little girl to his drunken lips. He kissed them ecstatically. Be Tandy, little one, he pleaded. Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything. Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or woman. Be Tandy. The stranger arose and staggered off down the street. A day or two later he got aboard a train and returned to his home in Cleveland. On the summer evening after the talk before the hotel, Tom hard took the girl child to the house of a relative where she had been invited to spend the night. As he went along in the darkness under the trees, he forgot the babbling voices of the stranger, and his mind returned to the making of arguments by which he might destroy men's faith in God. He spoke his daughter's name and she began to weep. I don't want to be called that, she declared. I want to be called Tandy, Tandy hard. The child wept so bitterly that Tom hard was touched and tried to comfort her. He stopped beneath the tree and taking her into his arms began to caress her. Be good now, he said sharply, but she would not be quieted. With childish abandon she gave herself over to grief, her voice breaking the evening stillness of the street. I want to be Tandy. I want to be Tandy. I want to be Tandy hard, she cried, shaking her head and sobbing as though her young strength were not enough to bear the vision the words of the drunkard had brought to her. End of Section 15 Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson Section 16 The Strength of God Concerning the Reverend Curtis Hartman The Strength of God The Reverend Curtis Hartman was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Winesburg and had been in that position ten years. He was forty years old and by his nature very silent and reticent. To preach, standing in the pulpit before the people, was always a hardship for him, and from Wednesday morning until Saturday evening he thought of nothing but the two sermons that must be preached on Sunday. Early on Sunday morning he went into a little room called a study in the bell tower of the church and prayed. In his prayers there was one note that always predominated. Give me strength and courage for thy work, O Lord, he pleaded kneeling on the bare floor and bowing his head in the presence of the task that laid before him. The Reverend Hartman was a tall man with a brown beard. His wife, a stout, nervous woman, was the daughter of a manufacturer of underwear at Cleveland, Ohio. The minister himself was rather a favourite in the town. The elders of the church liked him because he was quiet and unpretentious, and Mrs. White, the banker's wife, thought him scholarly and refined. The Presbyterian church held itself somewhat aloof from the other churches of Winesburg. It was larger and more imposing, and its minister was better paid. He even had a carriage of his own, and on summer evenings sometimes drove about town with his wife. Through Main Street and up and down Buckeye Street he went, bowing gravely to the people, while his wife, a fire with secret pride, looked at him out of the corners of her eyes and worried lest the horse became frightened and ran away. For a good many years after he came to Winesburg things went well with Curtis Hartman. He was not one to arouse keen enthusiasm among the worshipers in his church, but on the other hand he made no enemies. In reality he was much in earnest and sometimes suffered prolonged periods of remorse because he could not go crying the word of God in the highways and byways of the town. He wondered if the flame of the spirit really burned in him and dreamed of a day when a strong, sweet, new current of power would come like a great wind into his voice and his soul and the people would tremble before the spirit of God made manifest in him. I am a poor stick, and that will never really happen to me, he mused, dejectedly, and then a patient's smile lit up his features. Oh well, I suppose I'm doing well enough, he added philosophically. The room in the bell-tower of the church, where, on Sunday mornings, the minister prayed for an increase in him of the power of God, had but one window. It was long and narrow, and swung outward on a hinge like a door. On the window, made of little leaded panes, was a design showing the Christ laying his hand upon the head of a child. One Sunday morning in the summer, as he sat by his desk in the room with a large Bible open before him, and the sheets of his sermons scattered about, the minister was shocked to see, in the upper room of the house next door, a woman lying in her bed and smoking a cigarette while she read a book. Curtis Hartman went on tiptoe to the window and closed it softly. He was horror-stricken at the thought of a woman smoking and trembled also to think that his eyes, just raised from the pages of the Book of God, had looked upon the bare shoulders and white throat of a woman. With his brain in a whirl he went down into the pulpit and preached a long sermon without once thinking of his gestures or his voice. The sermon attracted unusual attention because of its power and clearness. I wonder if she is listening. If my voice is carrying a message into her soul, he thought, and began to hope that on future Sunday mornings he might be able to say words that would touch and awaken the woman, apparently far gone in secret sin. The house next door to the Presbyterian Church, through the windows of which the minister had seen the sight that had so upset him, was occupied by two women. Aunt Elizabeth Swift, a grey, competent-looking widow with money in the Winesburg National Bank, lived there with her daughter, Kate Swift, a schoolteacher. The schoolteacher was 30 years old and had a neat, trim-looking figure. She had few friends and bore a reputation of having a sharp tongue. When he began to think about her, Curtis Hartman remembered that she had been to Europe and had lived for two years in New York City. Perhaps after all her smoking means nothing, he thought. He began to remember that when he was a student in college and occasionally read novels, good although somewhat worldly women had smoked through the pages of a book that had once fallen into his hands. With a rush of new determination he worked on his sermons all through the week and forgot in his zeal to reach the ears and soul of this new listener both his embarrassment in the pulpit and the necessity of prayer in the study on Sunday mornings. Reverend Hartman's experience with women had been somewhat limited. He was the son of a wagon maker from Muncie, Indiana and had worked his way through college. The daughter of the underwear manufacturer had boarded in a house where he lived during his school days and he'd married her after a formal and prolonged courtship carried on for the most part by the girl herself. On his marriage day the underwear manufacturer had given his daughter five thousand dollars and he promised to leave her at least twice that amount in his will. The minister had thought himself fortunate in marriage and had never permitted himself to think of other women. What he wanted was to do the work of God quietly and earnestly. In the soul of the minister a struggle awoke. From wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift and through his sermons to delve into her soul he began to want also to look again at the figure lying white and quiet on the bed. On a Sunday morning when he could not sleep because of his thoughts he arose and went to walk in the streets. When he'd gone along Main Street almost to the old Richmond place he stopped and picking up a stone rushed off to the room in the bell tower. With the stone he broke out a corner of the window and then locked the door and sat down at the desk before the open Bible to wait. When the shade of the window to Kate Swift's room was raised he could see through the hole directly into her bed. But she was not there. She also had arisen and had gone for a walk and the hand that raised the shade was the hand of Aunt Elizabeth Swift. The minister almost wept with joy at this deliverance from the carnal desire to peep and went back to his own house praising God. In an ill moment he forgot however to stop the hole in the window. The piece of glass broken out of the corner of the window just nipped off the bare heel of the boy standing motionless and looking with rapt eyes at the face of the Christ. Curtis Hartman forgot his sermon on that Sunday morning. He talked to his congregation and in his talk said that it was a mistake for people to think of their minister as a man set aside and intended by nature to lead a blameless life. Out of my own experience I know that we who are the ministers of God's word are beset by the same temptations that assail you, he declared. I have been tempted and surrendered to temptation. It is only the hand of God placed beneath my head that has raised me up. As he has raised me so also will he raise you. Do not despair. In your hour of sin raise your eyes to the skies and you will be again and again saved. Resolutely the minister put the thoughts of the woman in the bed out of his mind and began to be something like a lover in the presence of his wife. One evening when they drove out together he turned the horse out of Buckeye Street and in the darkness on Gospel Hill above Waterworks Pond put his arm about Sarah Hartman's waist. When he had eaten breakfast in the morning and was ready to retire to his study at the back of his house he went around the table and kissed his wife on the cheek. When thoughts of Kate Swift came into his head he smiled and raised his eyes to the skies. Into seed for me master he muttered keep me in the narrow path intent on thy work. And now began the real struggle in the soul of the brown-bearded minister. By chance he discovered that Kate Swift was in the habit of lying in her bed in the evenings and reading a book. A lamp stood on a table by the side of the bed and the light streamed down upon her white shoulders and bare throat. On the evening when he made the discovery the minister sat at the desk in the dusty room from nine until after eleven and when her light was put out stumbled out of the church to spend two more hours walking and praying in the streets. He did not want to kiss the shoulders in the throat of Kate Swift and had not allowed his mind to dwell on such thoughts. He did not know what he wanted. I am God's child and he must save me from myself he cried in the darkness under the trees that he wandered in the streets. By a tree he stood and looked at the sky that was covered with hurrying clouds. He began to talk to God intimately and closely. Please, Father, do not forget me. Give me power to go to-morrow and repair the hole in the window. Lift my eyes again to the skies. Stay with me, thy servant, in his hour of need. Up and down to the silent streets walked the minister he could not understand the temptation that had come to him nor could he fathom the reason for its coming. In a way he began to blame God saying to himself that he tried to keep his feet in the true path and had not run about seeking sin. Through my days as a young man and all through my life here I have gone quietly about my work, he declared. Why now shall I be tempted? What have I done that this burden should be laid on me? Three times during the early fall and winter of that year Curtis Hartman crept out of his house to the room in the bell tower to sit in the darkness looking at the figure of Kate Swift lying in her bed and later went to walk and pray in the streets. He could not understand himself. For weeks he would go along scarcely thinking of the schoolteacher and telling himself that he had conquered the carnal desire to look at her body and then something would happen. As he sat in the study of his own house hard at work on a sermon he would become nervous and begin to walk up and down the room. I will go out into the streets he told himself and even as he let himself in at the church door he persistently denied to himself the cause of his being there. I will not repair the hole in the window and I will train myself to come here at night and sit in the presence of this woman without raising my eyes. I will not be defeated in this thing. The Lord has devised this temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope my way out of darkness into the light of righteousness. One night in January when it was bitter cold and snow lay deep in the streets of Winesburg Curtis Hartman paid his last visit to the room in the bell tower of the church. It was past nine o'clock when he left his own house and he set out so hurriedly that he forgot to put on his overshoes. In Main Street no one was abroad but Hop Higgins, the night watchman and in the whole town no one was awake but the watchman and young George Willard who sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle trying to write a story. Along the street to the church went the minister plowing to the drifts and thinking that this time he would utterly give way to sin. I want to look at the woman and to think of kissing her shoulders and I am going to let myself think what I choose he declared bitterly and tears came into his eyes. He began to think that he would get out of the ministry and try some other way of life. I shall go to some city and get into business he declared. If my nature is such that I cannot resist sin I shall give myself over to sin at least I shall not be a hypocrite preaching the word of God with my mind thinking of the shoulders and neck of a woman who does not belong to me. It was cold in the room of the bell-tower of the church on that January night and almost as soon as he came into the room Curtis Hartman knew that if he stayed he would be ill. His feet were wet from tramping in the snow and there was no fire. In the room in the house next door Kate Swift had not yet appeared. With grim determination the man sat down to wait. Sitting in the chair and gripping the edge of the desk and quietly the Bible he stared into the darkness thinking the blackest thoughts of his life. He thought of his wife and for the moment almost hated her. She's always been ashamed of passion and has cheated me, he thought. Man has a right to expect living passion and beauty in a woman. He has no right to forget that he is an animal and in me there's something that is Greek. I will throw off the woman of my bosom and seek other women. I will besiege the school teacher. In the face of all men and if I am a creature of carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts. The distracted man trembled from head to foot partly from cold, partly from the struggle in which he was engaged. Hours passed and a fever assailed his body. His throat began to hurt and his teeth shattered. His feet on the study floor felt like two cakes of ice. Still he would not give up. I will see this woman and will think the thoughts I have never dared to think," he told himself, gripping the edge of the desk and waiting. Curtis Hartman came near dying from the effects of that night of waiting in the church and also he found in the thing that happened what he took to be the way of life for him. On other evenings when he'd waited he'd not been able to see through the little hole in the glass any part of the school teacher's room except that occupied by her bed. In the darkness he'd waited until the woman suddenly appeared sitting in the bed in her white night-rope. When the light was turned up she propped herself up among the pillows and read a book. Sometimes she smoked one of the cigarettes. Only her bare shoulders and her throat were visible. On the January night after he'd come near dying with cold and after his mind had two or three times actually slipped away into an odd land of fantasy so that he had by an exercise of willpower to force himself back into consciousness Kate Swift appeared. In the room next door a lamp was lighted and the waiting man stared into an empty bed. Then upon the bed before his eyes a naked woman threw herself lying face downwards she wept and beat with her fists upon the pillow. In the final outburst of weeping she half arose and in the presence of the man who'd waited to look and not to think thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the lamp light her figure slim and strong looked like the figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ on the ledded window. Curtis Hartman never remembered how he got out of the church. With a cry he arose on the floor. The Bible fell making a great clatter in the silence. When the light in the house next door went out he stumbled down the stairway and into the street. Along the street he went and ran in at the door of the Winesburg Eagle. To George Willet who was tramping up and down in the office undergoing a struggle of his own he began to talk half incoherently. The ways of God are beyond human understanding the door. He began to advance upon the young man, his eyes glowing and his voice ringing with fervour. I have found the light, he cried. After ten years in this town God has manifested himself to me in the body of a woman. His voice dropped and he began to whisper. I did not understand, he said. What I took to be a trial of my soul was only a preparation for a new and more beautiful fervour of the spirit. God has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the schoolteacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do you know Kate Swift? Although she may not be aware of it she is an instrument of God bearing the message of truth. Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and ran out of the office. At the door he stopped and after looking up and down the deserted street turned again to George Willet. I am delivered. Have no fear. He held up a bleeding fist for the young man to see. I smashed the glass of the window, he cried. Now it will have to be wholly replaced. The strength of God was in me and I broke it with my fist. End of Section 16 Section 17 of Winesburg, Ohio This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org This recording by Chris Hughes readear.blogspot.com Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson Section 17 The Teacher Snow lay deep in the streets of Winesburg. It had begun to snow about ten o'clock in the morning and a wind sprang up and blew the snow in clouds along Main Street. The frozen mud roads that led into town were fairly smooth and in places ice covered the mud. There will be good slaying, said Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith Saloon. Out of the saloon he went and met Sylvester West, the druggist stumbling along in the kind of heavy overshoes and slacks. Snow will bring the people into town on Saturday, said the druggist. The two men stopped and discussed their affairs. Will Henderson, who had on a light overcoat and no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left foot with the toe of his right. Snow will be good for the wheat, observed the druggist, sagely. Young George Willard, who had nothing to do, was glad because he did not have any. The weekly paper had been printed and taken to the post office Wednesday evening and the snow began to fall on Thursday. At eight o'clock, after the morning train had passed, he put on a pair of skates in his pocket and went up to Waterworks Pond, but did not go skating. Passed the pond and along a path that followed Wine Creek he went until he came to a grove of beech trees. He sat in the log and sat down at the end of the log to think. When the snow began to fall and the wind to blow, he hurried about getting fuel for the fire. The young reporter was thinking of Kate Swift, who had once been his schoolteacher. On the evening before he had gone to her house to get a book she wanted him to read and had been alone with her for an hour. After him, with great earnestness, he could not make out what she meant by her talk. He began to believe she must be in love with him and the thought was both pleasing and annoying. Up from the log he sprang and began to pile sticks on the fire. Looking about to be sure he was alone he talked aloud, pretending he was in the presence of the woman. Oh! you're just letting on. You know you are," he declared. The young man got up and went back along the path towards town leaving the fire blazing in the wood. As he went through the streets the skates clanked in his pocket. In his own room in the new Willard House he built a fire in the stove and lay down on top of the bed. He began to have lustful thoughts and pulling down the shade of the window closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall. He took a pillow into his arms and embraced it thinking first of the school teacher who by her words had stirred something within him and later of Helen White the slim daughter of the town banker with whom he'd been for a long time half in love. By nine o'clock of that evening snow lay deep in the streets and the weather had become bitter cold. It was difficult to walk about. The stores were dark and the people had crawled away to their houses. The evening train from Cleveland was very late but nobody was interested in its arrival. By ten o'clock all but four of the eighteen hundred citizens of the town were in bed. Hop Higgins the night watchman was partially awake. He was lame and carried a heavy stick. On dark nights he carried a lantern. Between nine and ten o'clock he walked through the hills. Up and down Main Street he stumbled through the drifts trying the doors of the stores. Then he went into alleyways and tried the back doors. Finding all tight he hurried around the corner to the new Willard House and beat on the door. Through the rest of the night he intended to stay by the stove. You're good or bad I'll keep the stove going and took off his shoes. When the boy had gone to sleep he began to think of his own affairs. He intended to paint his house in the spring and sat by the stove calculating the cost of paint and labour. That led him into other calculations. The night watchman was sixty years old and wanted to retire. He had been a soldier in the Civil War and drew a small pension. He hoped to find some a new method of making a living and aspired to become a professional breeder of ferrets. Already he had four of the strangely shaped savage little creatures that are used by sportsmen in the pursuit of rabbits in the cellar of his house. Now I have one male and three females he mused. If I am lucky by spring I shall have twelve or fifteen. In another year I shall be able to begin advertising ferrets for sale in the sporting papers. The night watchman settled in his chair and his mind became a blank. He did not sleep. By years of practice he trained himself to sit for hours through the long nights neither asleep nor awake. In the morning he was almost as refreshed as though he had slept. With Hop Higgins safely stowed away in the chair behind the stove only three people were awake in Winesburg. George Willard was in the office of the eagle pretending to be at work on the writing of a story but in reality continuing the mood of the morning by the fire in the wood. In the bell tower of the Presbyterian church the reverend Curtis Hartman was sitting in the darkness preparing himself for a revelation from God. And Kate Swift, the school teacher was leaving her house for a walk in the storm. It was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out and the walk was unpremeditated. It was as though the man and the boy, by thinking of her had driven her forth into the wintery streets. Aunt Elizabeth Swift had gone to the county seat concerning some business in connection with the mortgages in which she had money invested and would not be back until the next day. By a huge stove called a base burner in the living room the house sat the daughter reading a book. Suddenly she sprang to her feet and snatching a cloak from a rack by the front door ran out of the house. At the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in Winesburg as a pretty woman. Her complexion was not good and her face was covered with blotches that indicated bad health. Alone in the night in the winter streets she was lovely. Her back was straight her shoulders square and her features were as the features of a tiny goddess on a pedestal in a garden in the dim light of a summer evening. During the afternoon the school teacher had been to see Dr. Welling concerning her health. The doctor had scolded her and had declared she was in danger of losing her hearing. It was foolish for Kate Swift to be abroad in the storm, foolish and perhaps dangerous. A woman in the streets did not remember the words of the doctor and would not have turned back had she remembered. She was very cold but after walking for five minutes no longer minded the cold. First she went to the end of her own street and then across a pair of hay-scales set in the ground before a feed barn and into Trunnion Pike. A long Trunnion Pike she went to Nedwinter's Barn and turning east followed a street of low frame houses that led over Gospel Hill into Sucker Road that ran down a shallow valley past Ike's Mead's Chicken Farm into Waterworks Pond. As she went along the bold excited mood that had driven her out of doors passed and then returned again. There was something biting and forbidding in the character of Kate Swift. Everyone felt it. In the school room she was silent, cold and stern close to her pupils. Once in a long while something seemed to have come over her and she was happy. All the children in the school room felt the effect of her happiness. For a time they did not work but sat back in their chairs and looked at her. With hands clasped behind her back the school teacher walked up and down in the school room and talked very rapidly. It did not seem to matter her mind. Once she talked to the children of Charles Lamb and made up strange intimate little stories concerning the life of the dead writer. The stories were told with the air of one who'd lived in a house with Charles Lamb and knew all the secrets of his private life. The children were somewhat confused thinking Charles Lamb must be someone who'd once lived in Winesburg. On another occasion the teacher talked to the children Venuto Cellini. That time they laughed. What a bragging, blustering, brave, lovable fellow she made of the old artist. Concerning him also she invented anecdotes. There was one of a German music teacher who had a room above Cellini's lodgings in the city of Milan that made the boys guffaw. Sugar's McNutts, a fat boy with red cheeks, laughed so hard that he became dizzy and Kate Swift laughed with him. Then suddenly she became again cold and stern. On the winter night when she walked through the deserted snow-covered streets a crisis had come into the life of the schoolteacher. Although no one in Winesburg would have suspected it her life had been very adventurous. It was still adventurous. Day by day as she worked in the schoolroom or walked in the streets and desire fought within her. Behind a cold exterior the most extraordinary events transpired in her mind. The people of the town thought of her as a confirmed old maid and because she spoke sharply and went her own way thought her lacking in all the human feeling that did so much to make and mar their own lives. In reality she was the most eagerly passionate soul among them and more than once for years since she'd come back from her travels to settle in Winesburg and become a schoolteacher had been compelled to go out of the house and walk half through the night fighting out some battle raging within. Once on a night when it rained she'd stayed out six hours and when she came home had a quarrel with Aunt Elizabeth Swift. I'm glad you're not a man said the mother sharply. More than once I've waited for your father to come into I've had my share of uncertainty and you cannot blame me if I do not want to see the worst side of him reproduced in you. Kate Swift's mind was ablaze with thoughts of George Willard. In something he had written as a schoolboy she thought she had recognised the spark of genius and wanted to blow on the spark. One day in the summer she'd gone to the Eagle office where she'd been unoccupied had taken him out Main Street to the fairground where the two sat on a grassy bank and talked. The schoolteacher tried to bring home to the mind of the boys some conception of the difficulties he would have to face as a writer. You will have to know life she declared and her voice trembled with earnestness. She took hold of George Willard's shoulders and turned him about and thought them about to embrace. If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with words she explained. It will be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better prepared. Now it's time to be living. I don't want to frighten you but I would like to make you understand the import of what you think of attempting. You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about what they say. On the evening before that stormy Thursday night when the Reverend Curtis Hartman sat in the bell tower of the church waiting to look at her body young Willard had gone to visit the teacher and to borrow a book. It was then the thing happened that confused and puzzled the boy. He had the book under his arm and was preparing to depart. Again Kate Swift talked with great earnestness. Night was coming on and the light in the room grew dim. As he turned to go she spoke his name softly and with an impulsive movement took hold of his hand. Because the reporter was rapidly becoming a man something of his man's appeal combined with the winsomeness of the boy stirred the heart of the lonely woman. A passionate desire to have him understand the import of life to learn to interpret it truly and honestly swept over her. Leaning forward her lips brushed his cheek. At the same moment he for the first time became aware of the marked beauty of her features. They were both embarrassed and to relieve her feelings she became harsh and domineering. What's the use? It will be ten years before you begin to understand what I mean when I talk to you she cried passionately. On the night of the storm she sat in the church waiting for her. Kate Swift went to the office of the Winesburg Eagle intending to have another talk with the boy. After the long walk in the snow she was cold, lonely and tired. As she came through Main Street she saw the light from the print shop window shining on the snow and on an impulse opened the door and went in. For an hour she sat by the stove in the office talking of life. She talked with passionate earnestness. The impulse that had driven her out into the snow poured itself out into talk. She became inspired as she sometimes did in the presence of the children in school a great eagerness to open the door of life to the boy who had been her pupil and who she thought might possess a talent for the understanding of life had possession of her. So strong was her passion that it became something physical. Again her hands took hold of his shoulders and she turned him about. In the dim light her eyes blazed. She arose and laughed not sharply as was customary with her but in a queer, hesitating way. I must be going, she said. In a moment if I stay I'll be wanting to kiss you. In the newspaper office a confusion arose. Kate Swift turned and walked to the door. She was a teacher but she was also a woman. As she looked at George Willard the passionate desire to be loved by a man that a thousand times before swept like a storm over her body took possession of her. In the lamplight George Willard looked no longer a boy but a man ready to play the part of a man. The school teacher let George Willard take her into his arms. In the warm little office the air became suddenly heavy and the strength went out of her body. Leaning against a low counter by the door she waited. When he came and put a hand on her shoulder she turned and let her body fall heavily against him. For George Willard the confusion was immediately increased. For a moment he held the body of the woman tightly against his body and then it stiffened. Two sharp little fists began to beat on his face when the school teacher had run away and left him alone he walked up and down the office swearing furiously. It was into this confusion that the Reverend Curtis Hartman protruded himself. When he came in George Willard thought the town had gone mad. Shaking a bleeding fist in the air the minister proclaimed the woman George had only a moment before held in his arms an instrument of God bearing a message of truth. George blew out the lamp by the window and locking the door of the print shop went home. Through the hotel office passed Hop Higgins lost in his dreams of the raising of ferrets he went up into his own room. The fire and the stove had gone out and he undressed in the cold. When he got into bed the sheets were like blankets of dry snow. George Willard rolled about in the bed on which he had lain in the afternoon hugging the pillow and thinking thoughts of Kate Swift. The words of the minister who he thought had gone suddenly insane rang in his ears. His eyes stared about the room. The resentment natural to the baffled male passed and he tried to understand what had happened. He could not make it out. Over and over he turned the matter in his mind. Hours passed and he began to think it must be time for another day to come. At four o'clock he pulled the covers up about his neck and tried to sleep. When he became drowsy and closed his eyes he raised a hand and with it groped about in the darkness. I have missed something I have missed something Kate Swift was trying to tell me he muttered sleepily. Then he slept and in all Winesburg he was the last soul on that winter night to go to sleep. End of Section 17 Section 18 of Winesburg, Ohio This is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Read and recorded by Betsy Bush Marquette, Michigan, July 2007 Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson Section 18 of Winesburg, Ohio He was the son of Mrs. Al Robinson who once owned a farm on a side road leading off Trunyan Pike east of Winesburg and two miles beyond the town limits. The farmhouse was painted brown and the blinds to all of the windows facing the road were kept closed. In the road before the house a flock of chickens accompanied by two guinea hens lay in the deep dust. He walked in the house with his mother in those days and when he was a young boy went to school at the Winesburg High School. Old citizens remembered him as a quiet smiling youth inclined to silence. He walked in the middle of the road when he came into town and sometimes read a book. Drivers of teams had to shout and swear to make him realize where he was so that he would turn out to be. In the middle of the road Enoch went to New York City and was a city man for 15 years. He studied French and went to an art school hoping to develop a faculty he had for drawing. In his own mind he planned to go to Paris and to finish his art education among the masters there but that never turned out. Nothing ever turned out that might have expressed themselves through the brush of a painter but he was always a child and that was a handicap to his worldly development. He never grew up and of course he couldn't understand people and he couldn't make people understand him. The child in him kept bumping against things against actualities like money and sex and opinions. Once he was hit by a street car and thrown against an iron post that made him lame. It was one of the many things that kept things from turning out for Enoch Robinson. In New York City when he first went there to live and before he became confused and disconcerted by the facts of life Enoch went about a good deal with young men. He got into a group of other young artists both men and women and in the evenings they sometimes came to visit him in his room. Once he got drunk a police station where a police magistrate frightened him horribly and once he tried to have an affair with a woman of the town met on the sidewalk before his lodging-house the woman and Enoch walked together three blocks and then the young man grew afraid and ran away. The woman had been drinking and the incident amused her. She leaned against the wall of a building and laughed so heartily that another man stopped and laughed with her. The two went away together still laughing and Enoch crept off to his room trembling and vexed. The room in which young Robinson lived in New York faced Washington Square and was long and narrow like a hallway. It is important to get that fixed in your mind. The story of Enoch is in fact the story of a room almost more than it is the story of a man. And so into the room in the evening came young Enoch's friends. There was nothing particularly striking about them except that they were artists of the kind that talk. Everyone knows of the talking artists. Throughout all of the known history of the world they have gathered in rooms and talked. They talk of art and are passionately almost feverishly in earnest about it. They think it matters much more than it does. And so these people gathered and smoked cigarettes and talked. And Enoch Robinson, the boy from the farm near Winesburg was there. He stayed in a corner and for the most part said nothing. How his big blue child-like eyes stared about. On the walls were pictures he had made crude things half finished. His friends talked of these leaning back in their chairs. They talked and talked with their heads rocking from side to side. Words were said about line and values and composition. Lots of words such as are always being said. Enoch wanted to talk too, but he didn't know how. He was too excited to talk coherently. When he tried he sputtered and stammered and his voice sounded strange and squeaky to him. That made him stop talking. He knew what he wanted to say, but he knew also that he could never by any possibility say it. When a picture he had painted was under discussion he wanted to burst out with something like this. You don't get the point, he wanted to explain. The picture you see doesn't consist of the things you see and say words about. There is something else, something you don't see at all, something you aren't intended to see. Look at this one over here, by the door here, where the light from the window falls on it. The dark spot by the road that you might not notice at all is, you see, the beginning of the road. There is something hidden among the elders there, such as used to grow beside the road before our house back in Winesburg, Ohio. And in among the elders there is something hidden. It is a woman. That's what it is. She has been thrown from a horse and the horse has run away out of sight. Do you not see how the old man who drives a cart looks anxiously about? He knows there is something in the elders, something hidden away, and yet he doesn't quite know. It's a woman, you see. That's what it is. It's a woman, and oh, she is lovely. She is hurt and suffering, but she makes no sound. Don't you see how it is? She lies quite still, white and still, and the beauty comes out from her and spreads over everything. It is in the sky back there and all around everywhere. I didn't try to paint the woman, of course. She is too beautiful to be painted. How dull to talk of composition and such things. Why do you not look at the sky and then run away as I used to do when I was a boy back there in Winesburg, Ohio? That is the kind of thing young Enoch Robinson trembled to say to the guests who came into his room when he was a young fellow in New York City, and ended by saying nothing. Then he began to doubt his own mind. He was afraid the things he felt were not getting expressed in the pictures he painted. In a half-indignant mood he stopped inviting people into his room and presently got into the habit of locking the door. He began to think that enough people had visited him, that he did not need people any more. With quick imagination he began to invent his own people in Enoch and to whom he explained the things he had been unable to explain to living people. His room began to be inhabited by the spirits of men and women among whom he went, in his turn saying words. It was as though everyone Enoch Robinson had ever seen had left with him some essence of himself, something he could mould and change to suit his own fancy, something that understood the wounded woman behind the elders in the pictures. The mild blue-eyed young Ohio boy was a complete egotist, as all children are egotists. He did not want friends for the quite simple reason that no child wants friends. He wanted most of all the people of his own mind, people with whom he could really talk, people he could hurang and scold by the hour, servants, you see, he was always self-confident and bold. They might talk, to be sure, and even have opinions of their own. But always he talked last and best. He was like a writer busy among the figures of his brain, a kind of tiny blue-eyed king he was in a six-dollar room facing Washington Square in the city of New York. Then Enoch Robinson got married. He began to get lonely and to want to touch his hands. Days passed when his room seemed empty. Lust visited his body and desire grew in his mind. At night strange fevers burning within kept him awake. He married a girl who sat in a chair next to his own in the art school and went to live in an apartment house in Brooklyn. Two children were born to the woman he married and Enoch got a job in a place where illustrations are made for advertisements. That began another phase of Enoch's life. He began to play at a new game. For a while he was very proud of himself in the role of producing Citizen of the World. He dismissed the essence of things and played with realities. In the fall he voted at an election and he had a newspaper thrown on his porch each morning. When in the evening he came home from work he got off a street car and walked sedately along behind some businessman striving to look very substantial and important. As a pair of taxes he thought he should post himself on how things are run. I'm getting to be of some moment a real part of things of the state and the city and all that. He told himself with an amusing miniature air of dignity. Once coming home from Philadelphia he had a discussion with a man met on a train. Enoch talked about the advisability of operating the railroads and the man gave him a cigar. It was Enoch's notion that such a move on the part of the government would be a good thing and he grew quite excited as he talked. Later he remembered his own words with pleasure. I gave him something to think about that fellow. He muttered to himself as he climbed the stairs to his Brooklyn apartment. To be sure Enoch's marriage did not turn out. He began to feel choked and walled in by the life in the apartment and to feel toward his wife and even toward his children as he had felt concerning the friends who once came to visit him. He began to tell little lies about business engagements that would give him freedom to walk alone in the street at night and the chance offering he secretly re-rented the room facing Washington Square. Then Mrs. Al Robinson died on the farm near Winesburg which was one of the most dangerous from the bank that acted as trustee of her estate. That took Enoch out of the world of men altogether. He gave the money to his wife and told her he could not live in the apartment anymore. She cried and was angry and threatened but he only stared at her and went his own way. In reality the wife did not care much. She thought Enoch slightly insane and was a little afraid of him. She took the two children and went to a village in Connecticut where she had lived as a girl. In the end she married a man who bought and sold real estate and was contented enough. And so Enoch Robinson stayed in the New York room among the people of his fancy playing with them, talking to them, happy as a child is happy. They were an odd lot, Enoch's people. They were made, I suppose, out of real people he had seen an appeal to him. There was a woman with a sword in her hand, an old man with a long white beard who went about followed by a dog, a young girl whose stockings were always coming down and hanging over her shoe-tops. There must have been two dozen of the shadow people invented by the child-mind of Enoch Robinson who lived in the room with him. And Enoch was happy. Into the room he went and locked the door. With an absurd air of importance he talked aloud, giving instructions, making comments on life. He was happy and satisfied to go on making his living in the advertising place until something happened. Of course, something did happen. That is why he went back to live in Winesburg and why we know about him. The thing that happened was a woman. It would be that way. He was too happy. Something had to come into his world. Something had to drive him out of the New York room with his life an obscure jerky little figure bobbing up and down on the streets of an Ohio town at evening when the sun was going down behind the roof of Wesley Moyer's livery barn. About the thing that happened Enoch told George Willard about it one night. He wanted to talk to someone and he chose the young newspaper reporter because the two happened to be thrown together at a time when the younger man was in a mood to understand. Youthful sadness, young man's sadness, the sadness of a growing boy in a village at the year's end opened the lips of the old man. The sadness was in the heart of George Willard and was without meaning, but it appealed to Enoch Robinson. It rained on the evening when the two met and talked, a drizzly wet October rain. The fruition of the year had come and the night should have been fine with a moon in the sky and the crisp sharp promise but it wasn't that way. It rained and little puddles of water shown under the street lamps on Main Street. In the woods in the darkness beyond the fairground water dripped from the black trees. Beneath the trees wet leaves were pasted against tree roots that protruded from the ground. In gardens back of houses in Winesburg dry shriveled potato vines lay sprawled on the ground. Men who had finished the evening meal and who had planned to go uptown to talk the evening away with other men at the back of some store changed their minds. George Willard tramped about in the rain and was glad that it rained. He felt that way. He was like Enoch Robinson on the evenings when the old man came down out of his room and wandered alone in the streets. He was like that only that George Willard had become a tall young man and did not think it manly to weep on. For a month his mother had been very ill and that was something to do with his sadness but not much. He thought about himself and to the young that always brings sadness. Enoch Robinson and George Willard met beneath the wooden awning that extended out over the sidewalk before Voigt's wagon shop on Maumee Street just off the Main Street of Winesburg. They went together from there through the rain-washed streets of the old man's room on the third floor of the Hefner Block. The young reporter went willingly enough. Enoch Robinson asked him to go after the two had talked for ten minutes. The boy was a little afraid but had never been more curious in his life. A hundred times he had heard the old man spoken of as a little off his head and he thought himself rather brave and manly to go at all. From the very beginning, in the street in the rain, the old man talked away, trying to tell the story of the room in Washington Square and of his life in the room. You will understand if you try hard enough," he said conclusively. I have looked at you when you went past me on the street and I think you can understand. It isn't hard. All you have to do is to believe what I say. Just listen and believe. That's all there is to it. It was past eleven o'clock that evening when old Enoch, George Willard in the room in the Hefner Block, came to the vital thing, the story of the woman and of what drove him out of the city to live out his life alone and defeated in Winesburg. He sat on a cot by the window with his head in his hand and George Willard was in a chair by a table. A kerosene lamp sat on the table in the room although almost bare of furniture was scrupulously clean. As the man talked, George Willard began to feel to get out of the chair and sit on the cot also. He wanted to put his arms about the little old man. In the half-darkness the man talked and the boy listened, filled with sadness. She got to coming in there after there hadn't been anyone in the room for years, said Enoch Robinson. She saw me in the hallway of the house and we got acquainted. I don't know just what she did in her own room. I never went there. She was a musician and played a violin. Every now and then she came and knocked at the door and I opened it. In she came and sat down beside me, just sat and looked about and said nothing. Anyway she said nothing that mattered. The old man arose from the cot and moved about the room. The overcoat he wore was wet from the rain and drops of water kept falling with a soft thump on the floor. When he again sat upon the cot George Willard got out of the chair and sat beside him. I had a feeling about her. She sat there in the room with me and she was too big for the room. I felt that she was driving everything else away. We just talked of little things but I couldn't sit still. I wanted to touch her with my fingers and to kiss her. Her hands were so strong and her face was so good and she looked at me all the time. The trembling voice of the old man and his body shook as from a chill. I was afraid, he whispered. I was terribly afraid. I didn't want to let her come in when she knocked at the door but I couldn't sit still. No, no, I said to myself but I got up and opened the door just the same. She was so grown up, you see. She was a woman. I thought she would be bigger than I was there in that room. Enoch Robinson stared at George Willard. His childlike blue eyes shining in the lamp light. Again he shivered. I wanted her and all the time I didn't want her, he explained. Then I began to tell her about my people about everything that meant anything to me. I tried to keep quiet, to keep myself to myself but I couldn't. I felt just as I did about opening the door. Sometimes I ached to have her go away and never come back any more. The old man sprang to his feet and his voice shook with excitement. One night something happened. I became mad to make her understand me and to know what a big thing I was in that room. I wanted her to see how important I was. I told her over and over. When she tried to go away I ran and locked the door. I followed her about. I talked and talked and then all of a sudden things went to smash. A look came into her eyes and I knew she did understand. Maybe she had understood all the time. I was furious. I couldn't stand it. I wanted her to understand. But don't you see, I couldn't let her understand. I felt that then she would know everything. That I would be submerged, drowned out, you see. That's how it is. I don't know why. The old man dropped into a chair by the lamp and the boy listened, filled with awe. Go away, boy," said the man. Don't stay here with me any more. I thought it might be a good thing to tell you, but it isn't. I don't want to talk any more. Go away. George Willard shook his head and a note of command came into his voice. Don't stop now. Tell me the rest of it," he commanded sharply. What happened? Tell me the end of the story. Enoch Robinson sprang to his feet and ran to the window that looked down into the deserted main street of Winesburg. George Willard followed. By the window the two stood, the tall, awkward boy-man and the little wrinkled man-boy. The childish, eager voice carried forward the tale. I swore at her, he explained. I said vile words. I ordered her to go away and not to come back. I said terrible things. At first she pretended not to understand, but I kept at it. I screamed and stamped on the floor. I made the house ring with my curses. I didn't want ever to see her again, and I knew, after some of the things I said, that I never would see her again. The old man's voice broke and he shook his head. Things went to smash, he said quietly and sadly. Out she went through the door and all the life there had been in the room followed her out. She took all of my people away. They all went out through the door after her. That's the way it was. George Willard turned and went out of Enoch Robinson's room. In the darkness by the window, as he went through the door, he could hear the thin old man whimpering and complaining. I'm alone. I'm alone here, said the voice. It was warm and friendly in my room, but now I'm all alone. End of Section 18, Loneliness. Section 19 of Winesburg, Ohio. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Section 19. An Awakening. Belle Carpenter had a dark skin, gray eyes, and thick lips. She was tall and strong. When Black Thoughts visited her, she grew angry and wished she were a man and could fight someone with her fists. She worked in the millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate McHugh and during the day set trimming hats by a window at the rear of the store. She was the daughter of Henry Carpenter, bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Winesburg, and lived with him in a gloomy old house far out at the end of Buckeye Street. The house was surrounded by pine trees and there was no grass beneath the trees. A rusty, tin eaves trough had slipped from its fastenings at the back of the house and when the wind blew, it beat against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal drumming noise that sometimes persisted all through the night. When she was a young girl, Henry Carpenter made life almost emerge from girlhood into womanhood. He lost his power over her. The bookkeeper's life was made up of innumerable little pettinesses. When he went to the bank in the morning, he stepped into a closet and put on a black alpaca coat that had become shabby with age. At night, when he returned to his home, he donned another black alpaca coat. Every evening he pressed the clothes worn in the streets. He had invented an arrangement of boards for the purpose. They were placed between the boards and the boards were clamped together with heavy screws. In the morning he wiped the boards with a damp cloth and stood them upright behind the dining-room door. If they were moved during the day he was speechless with anger. It did not recover his equilibrium for a week. The bank cashier was a little bully and was afraid of his daughter. She, he realized, knew the story of his brutal treatment of her mother and hired a handful of soft mud taken from the road into the house. With the mud she smeared the face of the boards used for the pressing of trousers and then went back to her work feeling relieved and happy. Bell Carpenter occasionally walked out in the evening with George Willard. Secretly she loved another man but her love affair about which no one knew caused her much anxiety. She was in love with Ed Hanby, bartender in Ed Griffith Saloon and went about with the young reporter the kind of relief to her feelings. She did not think that her station in life would permit her to be seen in the company of the bartender and walked about under the trees with George Willard and let him kiss her to relieve a longing that was very insistent in her nature. She felt that she could keep the younger man within bounds. About Ed Hanby she was somewhat uncertain. Hanby, the bartender, was a tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty who lived in a room upstairs above Griffith Saloon. He was large and his eyes unusually small, but his voice as though striving to conceal the power back of his fists was soft and quiet. At twenty-five the bartender had inherited a large farm from an uncle in Indiana. When sold the farm brought in eight thousand dollars which Ed spent in six months. Going to Sandusky on Lake Erie he began an orgy of dissipation the story of which afterward filled his hometown with awe. Here and there he went throwing the money about driving carriages through the streets giving wine parties to crowds of men and women playing cards for high stakes and keeping mistresses whose wardrobes cost him hundreds of dollars. One night at a resort called Cedar Point he got into a fight and ran amok like a wild thing. With his fist he broke a large mirror in the washroom of a hotel and later went about smashing windows and breaking chairs and dance-holes for the joy of hearing the glass rattle on the floor and seeing the terror in the eyes of clerks who had come from Sandusky to spend the evening at the resort with their sweethearts. The affair between Ed Hanby and Belle Carpenter on the surface amounted to nothing. He had succeeded in spending but one evening in her company. On that evening he hired a horse and buggy at Wesley Moyer's livery barn and took her for a drive. The conviction that she was the woman of his nature demanded that he must get her settled upon him and he told her of his desires. The bartender was ready to marry and he began trying to earn money for the support of his wife but so simple was his nature that he found it difficult to explain his intentions. His body ached with physical longing and with his body he expressed himself. Taking the milliner into his arms and holding her tightly in spite of her struggles he kissed her until she became helpless. Then he brought her back to town and let her out of the buggy. When I get hold of you again I'll not let you go. He declared as he turned to drive away. Then jumping out of the buggy he gripped her shoulders with his strong hands. I'll keep you for good the next time, he said. You might as well make up your mind to that. It's you and me for it and I'm going to have you before I get through. One night in January when there was a new moon George Willard, who was in Ed Handby's mind the only obstacle to his getting-bell carpenter, went for a walk. Early that evening George went into Ransom Serbuck's pool-room with Seth Richard and Art Wilson son of the town butcher. Seth Richmond stood with his back against the wall and remained silent. But George Willard talked. The pool-room was filled with Winesburg boys and they talked of women. The young reporter got into that vein. He said that women should look out for themselves. That the fellow who went out with a girl was not responsible for what happened. As he talked he looked about, eager for attention. He held the floor for five minutes and then Art Wilson began to talk. Art was learning the barber's trade in Cowprouse's shop and already began to consider himself an authority in such matters as baseball, horse racing, drinking, and going about with women. He began to tell of a night when he, with two men from Winesburg, went into a house of prostitution at the county seat. The butcher's son held a cigar in the side of his mouth and as he talked spat on the floor. The women in the place couldn't embarrass me, though they tried hard enough, and he boasted. One of the girls in the house tried to get fresh but I fooled her. As soon as she began to talk I went and sat in her lap. Everyone in the room laughed when I kissed her. I taught her to let me alone. George Willard went out of the pool room and into Main Street. For days the weather had been bitter cold with a high wind blowing down on the town from Lake Erie, eighteen miles to the north. But on that night the wind had died away and a new moon made the night unusually lovely. Without thinking where he was going or what he wanted to do George went out of Main Street and began walking in dimly lighted streets filled with frame houses. Out of doors under the black sky filled with stars he forgot his companions of the pool room. Because it was dark and he was alone he began to talk aloud. In a spirit of play he reeled along the street imitating a drunken man and then imagined himself a soldier that jingled as he walked. As a soldier he pictured himself as an inspector passing before a long line of men who stood at attention. He began to examine the accoutrements of the men. Before a tree he stopped and began to scold. Your pack is not an order, he said sharply. How many times will I have to speak of this matter? Everything must be in order here. We have a difficult task before us and no difficult task can be done without order. Hypnotized by his own words men stumbled along the board sidewalk saying more words. There is a law for armies and for men too he muttered lost in reflection. The law begins with little things and spreads out until it covers everything. In every little thing there must be order in the place where men work in their clothes, in their thoughts. I myself must be orderly I must learn that law I must get myself into touch with something orderly and big that swings through the night like a star in my little way I must begin to learn something to give and swing and work with life with the law. George Willard stopped by a picket fence near a street lamp and his body began to tremble. He had never before thought such thoughts as had just come into his head and he wondered where they had come from. For the moment it seemed to him that some voice outside of himself had been talking as he walked. He was amazed and delighted with his own mind and when he walked on again spoke of the matter with fervor. To come out of Ransom Surbeck's pool room and think things like that, he whispered, it is better to be alone. If I talked like Art Wilson, the boys would understand me, but they wouldn't understand what I've been thinking down here. In Winesburg, as in all Ohio towns of twenty years ago, there was a section in which lived day laborers. As the time of factories had not yet come, the laborers worked in the fields or were section hands on the railroads. They worked twelve hours a day on the long day of toil. The houses in which they lived were small, cheaply constructed wooden affairs with a garden at the back. The more comfortable among them kept cows and perhaps a pig housed in a little shed at the rear of the garden. With his head filled with resounding thoughts George Willard walked into such a street on the clear January night. The street was dimly lighted and in places there was no sidewalk. In the scene that lay about him there was something that excited for a year he had been devoting all of his odd moments to the reading of books and now some tale he had read concerning life in old world towns of the Middle Ages came sharply back to his mind so that he stumbled forward with the curious feeling of one revisiting a place that had been part of some former existence. On an impulse he turned out of the street and went into a little dark alleyway behind the sheds in which lived the cows and pigs. For half an hour he stayed in the alleyway smelling the strong smell of animals too closely housed and letting his mind play with the strange new thoughts that came to him. The very rankness of the smell of manure in the clear sweet air awoke something heady in his brain. The poor little houses lighted by kerosene lamps. The smoke from the chimneys mounting straight up into the clear air. The grunting of pigs, the women clad in cheap calico dresses and washing dishes in the kitchens. The footsteps of men coming out of the houses of the stores and saloons of Main Street. The dogs barking and the children crying. All of these things made him seem as he lurked in the darkness oddly detached and apart from all life. The excited young man unable to bear the weight of his own thoughts began to move cautiously along the alleyway. A dog attacked him and had to be driven away with stones and a man appeared at the door of one of the houses and swore at the dog. George went into a vacant lot and throwing back his head looked up at the sky. He felt unutterably big and remade by the simple experience through which he had been passing. And in a kind of fervor of emotion put up his hands thrusting them into the darkness above his head and muttering words. The desire to say words overcame him and he said words without meaning rolling them over on his tongue and saying them because they were brave words full of meaning. Death he muttered. Night. The sea. Fear. George Willard came out of the vacant lot and stood again on the sidewalk facing the houses. He felt that all of the people in the little street must be brothers and sisters to him and he wished he had the courage to call them out of their houses and to shake their hands. If there were only a woman here I would take hold of her hand and we would run until we were both tired out. He thought that would make me feel better. With the thought of a woman in his mind he walked out of the street and went toward the house where Belle Carpenter lived. He thought she would understand his mood and that he could achieve in her presence a position he had long been wanting to achieve. In the past when he had been with her and had kissed her lips he had come away filled with anger at himself. He had felt like one being used for some obscure purpose and had not enjoyed the feeling. Now he thought he had suddenly become too big to be used. When George got to Belle Carpenter's house there had already been a visitor there before him. Ed Hanby had come to the door and calling Belle out of the house had tried to talk to her. He had wanted to ask the woman to come away with him and to be his wife but when she came and stood by the door he lost his self-assurance and became sullen. You stay away from that kid he growled thinking of George Willard and then not knowing what else to say turned to go away. If I catch you together I will break your bones in his too he added. The bartender had come to Woo not to threaten and was angry with himself because of his failure. When her lover had departed Belle went indoors and ran hurriedly upstairs. From a window at the upper part of the house she saw Ed Hanby cross the street and sit down on a horse block before the house of a neighbor. In the dim light the man sat motionless holding his head in his hands. She was made happy by the sight and when George Willard came to the door defensively and hurriedly put on her hat. She thought that as she walked through the streets with young Willard Ed Hanby would follow and she wanted to make him suffer. For an hour Belle Carpenter and the young reporter walked about under the trees in the sweet night air. George Willard was full of big words. The sense of power that had come to him during the hour in the darkness in the alleyway remained with him and he talked boldly swaggering along and swinging his arms about. He wanted to make Belle Carpenter realize that he was aware of his former weakness and that he had changed. You'll find me different, he declared thrusting his hands into his pockets and looking boldly into her eyes. I don't know why but it is so. You've got to take me for a man or let me alone. That's how it is. Up and down the quiet streets under the new moon went the woman and the boy. When George had finished talking they turned down a side street and went across a bridge into a path that ran up the side of a hill. The hill began at Waterworks Pond and climbed upward to the Winesburg fairgrounds. On the hillside grew dense bushes and small trees and among the bushes were little open spaces carpeted with long grass, now stiff and frozen. As he walked behind the woman up the hill George Willard's heart began to beat rapidly and his shoulders straightened. Suddenly he decided that Belle Carpenter was about to surrender herself to him. A new force that had manifested itself in him had, he felt, been at work upon her and had led to her conquest. The thought made him half-drunk with the sense of masculine power. Although he had been annoyed that as they walked about she had not seemed to be listening to his words. The fact that she had accompanied him to this place took all his doubts away. It is different. Everything has become different, he thought and taking hold of her shoulder turned her about and stood looking at her his eyes shining with pride. Belle Carpenter did not resist. When he kissed her upon the lips she leaned heavily against him and looked over his shoulder into the darkness. In her whole attitude there was a suggestion of waiting. Again as in the alleyway George Willard's mind ran off into words and holding the woman tightly he whispered the words into the still night. Lust he whispered, lust and night and women. George Willard did not understand what happened to him that night on the hillside. Later when he got to his own room he wanted to weep and then grew half insane with anger and hate. He hated Belle Carpenter and was sure that all his life he would continue to hate her. On the hillside he had led the woman to one of the little open spaces among the bushes and had dropped to his knees beside her. As in the vacant lot by the laborer's houses he had put up his hands in gratitude for the new power in himself and was waiting for the woman to speak when Ed Handby appeared. The bartender did not want to beat the boy who he thought had tried to take his woman away. He knew that beating was unnecessary that he had power within himself to accomplish his purpose without using his fists. Gripping George by the shoulder and pulling him to his feet he held him with one hand while he looked at Belle Carpenter seated on the grass. Then with a quick wide movement of his arm the younger man sprawling away into the bushes and began to bully the woman who had risen to her feet. You're no good," he said roughly. I've half a mind not to bother with you. I'd let you alone if I didn't want you so much. On his hands and knees in the bushes George Willard stared at the scene before him and tried hard to think. He prepared to spring at the man who had humiliated him. To be beaten seemed to be infinitely better than to be thus hurled ignimoniously aside. Sometimes the young reporter sprang at Ed Hanby and each time the bartender catching him by the shoulder hurled him back into the bushes. The older man seemed prepared to keep the exercise going indefinitely but George Willard's head struck the root of a tree and he lay still. Then Ed Hanby took Belle Carpenter by the arm and marched her away. George heard the man and woman making their way through the bushes. As he crept down the hillside his heart was sick within him. And he hated the fate that had brought about his humiliation. When his mind went back to the hour alone in the alleyway he was puzzled and stopping in the darkness listened. Hoping to hear again the voice outside himself that had so short a time before put new courage into his heart. When his way homeward let him again into the street of frame houses he could not bear the sight and began to run wanting to get quickly out of the neighborhood that now seemed to him utterly squalid and commonplace. End of section 19