 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. To learn more or to volunteer, visit LibriVox.org. Reading today by WebWebster, www.webslog.com. Franklin, Tennessee, June 2007. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Section 8, Godliness. Part 2, Also Concerning Jesse Bentley. David Hardy of Winesburg, Ohio was the grandson of Jesse Bentley, the owner of Bentley Farms. When he was twelve years old, he went to the old Bentley place to live. His mother, Louise Bentley, the girl who came into the world on that night when Jesse ran through the fields crying to God that he'd be given a son, had grown to womanhood on the farm, and had married young John Hardy of Winesburg, who became a banker. Louise and her husband did not live happily together, and everyone agreed that she was to blame. She was a small woman with sharp gray eyes and black hair. From childhood she had been inclined to fits of temper, and when not angry she was often morose and silent. In Winesburg it was said that she drank. Her husband, the banker, who was a careful shrewd man, tried hard to make her happy. When he began to make money he bought for her a large brick house on Elm Street in Winesburg, and he was the first man in that town to keep a man-servant to drive his wife's carriage. But Louise could not be made happy. She flew in to half insane fits of temper during which she was sometimes silent, sometimes noisy and quarrelsome. She swore and cried out in her anger. She got a knife from the kitchen and threatened her husband's life. Once she deliberately set fire to the house, and often she hid herself away for days in her own room and would see no one. Her life, lived as a half-wrecklose, gave rise to all sorts of stories concerning her. It was said that she took drugs and that she often hid herself away from people because she was so under the influence of drink that her condition could not be concealed. Sometimes on summer afternoon she came out of the house and got into her carriage. Dismissing the driver she took the reins in her own hands and drove off at top speed through the streets. If a pedestrian got in the way she drove straight ahead and the frightened citizen had to escape as best he could. To the people of the town it seemed as though she wanted to run them down. When she had driven through several streets, tearing around corners and beating the horses with the whip she drove off into the country. On the country roads, after she had gotten out of the sight of the houses she let her horses slow to a walk and her wild, reckless mood passed. She became thoughtful and muttered words. Sometimes tears came to her eyes and then when she came back into town again she drove furiously through the quiet streets. But for the influence of her husband and the respect he inspired in people's minds she would have been arrested more than once by the town's marshal. Young David Hardy grew up in the house with this woman and as can be well imagined there was not much joy in his childhood. He was too young then to have opinions of his own about people but at times it was difficult for him not to have very definite opinions about the woman who was his mother. David was always a quiet, orderly boy and for a long time was thought by the people of Winesburg to be something of a dullard. His eyes were brown and as a child he had a habit of looking at things and people a long time without appearing to see what he was looking at. When he heard his mother spoke enough harshly or when he overheard her berating his father he was frightened and ran away to hide. Sometimes he could not find a hiding place in that confused him. Turning his face toward a tree or if he was indoors toward a wall he closed his eyes and tried not to think of anything. He had a habit of talking aloud to himself and early in life a spirit of quiet sadness often took possession of him. On the occasions when David went to visit his grandfather on the Bentley Farm he was altogether contented and happy. Often he wished that he could never have to go back to town and once when he had come home from the farm after a long visit something happened that had had a lasting effect on his mind. David had come back into town with one of the hired men. The man was in a hurry to go about his own affairs and left the boy at the head of the street in which the Hardy House stood. It was early dusk of a fall evening and the sky was overcast with clouds. Something happened to David. He could not bear to go into the house where his mother and father lived and on an impulse he decided to run away from home. He intended to go back to the farm and to his grandfather but lost his way and for hours he wandered weeping and frightened on country roads. It started to rain and lightning flashed in the sky. The boy's imagination was excited and he fancied that he could see and hear strange things in the darkness. Into his mind came the conviction that he was walking and running in some terrible void where no one had ever been before. The darkness about him seemed limitless. The sound of the wind blowing in trees was terrifying. When a team of horses approached along the road in which he walked he was frightened and climbed a fence. Through a field he ran until he came into another road and getting upon his knees felt of the soft ground with his fingers. But for the figure of his grandfather whom he was afraid he would never find in the darkness he thought the world must be altogether empty. When his cries were heard by a farmer who was walking home from town and he was brought back to his father's house he was so tired and excited that he did not know what was happening to him. By chance David's father knew that he had disappeared. On the street he had met the farmhand from the Bentley Place and knew of his son's return to town. When the boy did not come home an alarm was set up and John Hardy with several men of the town went to search the country. The report that David had been kidnapped ran about through the streets of Weinsburg. When he came home there were no lights in the house but his mother appeared and clutched him eagerly in her arms. David thought she had suddenly become another woman. He could not believe that so delightful a thing had happened. With her own hands Louis Hardy bathed his tired young body and cooked him food. She would not let him go to bed but when he had put on his nightgown blew out the lights and sat down in a chair to hold him in her arms. For an hour the woman sat in the darkness and held her boy. All the time she kept talking in a low voice. David could not understand what had so changed her. Her habitually dissatisfied face had become, he thought, the most peaceful and lovely thing he had ever seen. When she began to weep she held him more and more tightly. On and on went her voice. It was not harsh or shrill as when she talked to her husband but was like rain falling on trees. Presently men began coming to the door to report that he had not been found but she made him hide and be silent until she had sent them away. He thought it must be a game his mother and the men of the town were playing with him and he laughed joyously. Into his mind came the thought that his having been lost and frightened in a darkness was an altogether unimportant matter. He thought he would have been willing to go through the frightful experience a thousand times to be sure of finding at the end of the long black road a thing so lovely as his mother had suddenly become. During the last years of young David's boyhood he saw his mother but seldom and she became for him just a woman with whom he had once lived. Still he could not get her figure out of his mind and as he grew older it became more definite. When he was twelve years old he went to the Bentley farm to live. Old Jesse came into town and fairly demanded that he be given charge of the boy. The old man was excited and determined on having his own way. He talked to John Hardy in the office of the Winesburg Savings Bank and then the two men went to the house on Elm Street to talk to Louise. They both expected her to make trouble but were mistaken. She was very quiet and when Jesse had explained his mission and had gone on at some length about the advantages to come through having the boy out of doors and in the quiet atmosphere of the old farmhouse she nodded her head in approval. It is an atmosphere not corrupted by my presence. She said sharply. Her shoulders shook and she seemed about to fly into a fit of temper. It is a place for a man-child, although it was never a place for me. She went on. You never wanted me there and, of course, the air of your house did me no good. It was like poison in my blood but it would be different with him. Louise turned and went out of the room, leaving the two men to sit in embarrassed silence. As very often happened she later stayed in her room for days. Even when the boy's clothes were packed and he was taken away she did not appear. The loss of her son made a sharp break in her life and she seemed less inclined to quarrel with her husband. John Hardy thought it had all turned out very well indeed. And so young David went to live in the Bentley farmhouse with Jesse. Two of the old farmer's sisters were alive and still lived in the house. They were afraid of Jesse and rarely spoke when he was about. One of the women who had been noted for her flaming red hair when she was younger was a born mother and became the boy's caretaker. Every night when he had gone to bed she went into his room and sat on the floor until he fell asleep. When he became drowsy she became bold and whispered things that he later thought he must have dreamed. Her soft low voice called him endearing names and he dreamed that his mother had come to him and that she had changed so that she was always as she had been that time after he ran away. He also grew bold and reaching out his hand stroked the face of the woman on the floor so that she was ecstatically happy. Everyone in the old house became happy after the boy went there. The hard insistent thing in Jesse Bentley that had kept the people in the house silent and timid and that had never been dispelled by the presence of the girl Louise was apparently swept away by the coming of the boy. It was as though God had relented and sent a son to the man. The man who had proclaimed himself the only true servant of God in all the valley of Wine Creek and who had wanted God to send him a sign of approval by way of a son out of the womb of Catherine began to think that at last his prayers had been answered. Although he was at that time only fifty-five years old he looked seventy and was worn out with much thinking and scheming. The effort he had made to extend his land holdings had been successful and there were few farms in the valley that did not belong to him. But until David came he was a bitterly disappointed man. There were two influences at work in Jesse Bentley and all his life, his mind, had been a battleground for these influences. First there was the old thing in him. He wanted to be a man of God and a leader among men of God. His walking in the fields and through the forests at night had brought him close to nature and there were forces in the passionately religious man that ran out to the forces in nature. The disappointment that had come to him when a daughter and not a son had been born to Catherine had fallen on him like a blow struck by some unseen hand and the blow had somewhat softened his egotism. He still believed God might at any moment make himself manifest out of the winds or the clouds but he no longer demanded such recognition. Instead he prayed for it. Sometimes he was altogether doubtful and thought God had deserted the world. He regretted the fate that had not let him live in a simpler and sweeter time when, at the beckoning of some strange cloud in the sky, men left their lands and houses and went forth into the wilderness to create new races. While he worked night and day to make his farms more productive and to extend his holdings of land, he regretted that he could not use his own restless energy in the building of temples, the slaying of unbelievers and in general in the work of glorifying God's name on earth. This is what Jesse hungered for and then also he hungered for something else. He had grown into maturity in America in the years after the Civil War and he, like all men of his time, had been touched by the deep influences that were at work in the country during those years when modern industrialism was being born. He began by buying machines that would prohibit him to do the work of the farms while employing fewer men and he sometimes thought that if he were a younger man he would have given up farming altogether and started a factory in Weinberg for the making of machinery. Jesse formed the habit of reading newspapers and magazines. He invented a machine for the making of fence out of wire. Faintly he realized that the atmosphere of old times and places that he had always cultivated in his own mind was strange and foreign to the thing that was growing up in the minds of others. The beginning of the most materialistic age in the history of the world, when wars would be fought without patriotism, when men would forget God and only pay attention to moral standards, when the will to power would replace the will to serve in beauty would be well nigh forgotten and the terrible headlong rush of mankind toward the acquiring of possessions was telling its story to Jesse, the man of God, as it was to the men about him. The greedy thing in him wanted to make money faster than it could be made by telling the land. More than once he went into Weinberg to talk with his son-in-law John Hardy about it. You are a banker and you'll have choices I never had, he said, and his eyes shown. I'm thinking about it all the time. Big things are going to be done in the country and there will be more money to be made than I ever dreamed of. You get into it. I wish I were younger and had your chance. Jesse Bentley walked up and down the bank office and grew more and more excited as he talked. At one time in his life he had been threatened with paralysis and his left side remained somewhat weakened. As he talked his left eyelid twitched. Later, when he drove back home and when night was come on and the stars came out, it was harder to get back the old feeling of a close and personal God who lived in the sky overhead and who might, at any moment, reach out his hand, touch him on the shoulder, and appoint him some heroic task to be done. Jesse's mind was fixed upon the things read in newspapers and magazines, unfortunes to be made almost without effort by shrewd men who bought and sold. For him, the coming of the boy David, did much to bring back with renewed force the old faith and it seemed to him that God had at last looked with favor upon him. As for the boy on the farm, life began to reveal itself to him in a thousand new and delightful ways. The kindly attitude of all about him expanded his quiet nature and he lost the half timid, hesitating manner he had always had with his people. At night, when he went to bed after a long day of adventures in the stables, in the fields, or driving about from farm to farm with his grandfather, he wanted to embrace everyone in the house. If surely bently the woman who came each night to sit on the floor by his bedside did not appear at once, he went to the head of the stairs and shouted, his young voice reigned through the narrow halls where for so long there had been a tradition of silence. In the morning, when he awoke and lay still in bed, the sounds that came to him through the windows filled him with delight. He thought with a shudder of the life in the house in Linesburg and of his mother's angry voice that had always made him tremble. There in the country all sounds were pleasant sounds. When he awoke at dawn the barnyard back of the house also awoke. In the house people stirred about. In Lies's stouten the half-witted girl was poked in the ribs by a farmhand and giggled noisily. In some distant field a cow balled and was answered by the cattle in the stables, and one of the farmhands spoke sharply to the horse who was grooming by the stable door. David leaped out of bed and ran to the window. All of the people stirring about excited his mind and he wondered what his mother was doing in the house in town. From the windows of his own room he could not see directly into the barnyard where the farmhands had now all assembled to do the morning chores, but he could hear the voices of the men and the neighing of the horses. When one of the men laughed he laughed also. Leaning out of the open window he looked into an orchard where a fat sow wandered about with a litter of tiny pigs that are heels. Every morning he counted the pigs four, five, six, seven. He said slowly, wetting his finger and making straight up and down marks on the window ledge. David ran to put on his trousers and shirt, a feverish desire to get out of doors to possession of him. Every morning he made such a noise coming downstairs that Aunt Kelly, the housekeeper, declared that he was trying to tear the house down. When he had run through the long, old house, shutting the doors behind him with a bang he came into the barnyard and looked about with an amazed air of expectancy. It seemed to him that in such a place tremendous things might have happened during the night. The farmhands looked at him and laughed. Harry Strader, an old man who had been on the farm since Jesse came into possession and who, before David's time, had never been known to make a joke, made the same joke every morning. It amused David so that he laughed and clapped his hands. See, come here and look, cried the old man. Grandfather Jesse's white mare has torn the black stocking she wears on her foot. Day after day through the long summer Jesse Bentley drove from farm to farm and down the valley of Wine Creek and his grandson went with him. They rode in a comfortable old faton drawn by the white horse. The old man scratched his thin white beard and talked to himself of his plans for increasing the productiveness of the fields they visited and of God's part in the plans all men made. Sometimes he looked at David and smiled happily and then for a long time he appeared to forget the boy's existence. More and more every day now his mind turned back to the dreams that had filled his mind when he had first come out of the city to live on the land. One afternoon he startled David by letting his dreams take possession of him. With the boy as a witness he went through a ceremony and brought about an accident that nearly destroyed the companionship that was growing up between them. Jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant part of the valley some miles from home. A forest came down to the road and through the forest Wine Creek wriggled its way over stones toward a distant river. All the afternoon Jesse had been in a meditative mood and now he began to talk. His mind went back to the night when he had been frightened by thoughts of a giant that might come to rob and ponder him of his possessions and again as on that night when he had run through the fields crying for a son he became excited to the edge of insanity. Stopping the horse he got out of the buggy and asked David to get out also. The two climbed over a fence and walked along the bank of a stream. The boy paid no attention to the muttering of his grandfather but ran along beside him and wondered what was going to happen. When a rabbit jumped up and ran away through the woods he clapped his hands and danced with the light. He looked at the tall trees and was sorry that he was not a little animal to climb high in the air without being frightened. Stooping he picked up a small stone and threw it over the head of his grandfather into a clump of bushes. Wake up, little animal! Go! Climb to the top of the trees! He shouted on a shrill voice. He bently went along under the trees with his head bowed and with his mind in a ferment. His earnestness affected the boy who presently became silent and a little alarmed. Into the old man's mind had come the notion that he could bring from God a word or a sign out of the sky, that the presence of the boy and the man on their knees in some lonely spot in the forest would make the miracle he had been waiting for almost inevitable. It was in just such a place as this that other David tended the sheep when his father came and told him to go down unto Saul, he muttered. Taking the boy roughly by the shoulder he climbed over a fallen log and when he had come to an open place among the trees he dropped upon his knees and began to pray in a loud voice. A kind of terror he had never known before took possession of David. Crouching beneath a tree he watched the old man on the ground before him and his own knees began to tremble. It seemed to him that he was in the presence not only of his grandfather but of someone else, someone who might hurt him, someone who was not kindly but dangerous and brutal. He began to cry and reaching down picked up a small stick which he held tightly gripped between his fingers. When Jesse Bentley absorbed in his own idea, suddenly arose in advance toward him, his terror grew until his whole body shook. In the woods an intense silence seemed to lie over everything and suddenly out of the silence came the old man's harsh and insistent voice. Gripping the boy's shoulders Jesse turned his face to the sky and shouted. The whole left side of his face twitched and his hand on the boy's shoulder twitched also. Make a sign to me, God! he cried. Here I stand with the boy, David. Come down to me, out of the sky, and make thy presence known to me. With a cry of fear David turned and shaking himself loose from the hands that held him ran away from the forest. He did not believe that the old man who turned up his face and in a harsh voice shouted the sky was his grandfather at all. The man did not look like his grandfather. The conviction that something strange and terrible had happened that by some miracle a new and dangerous person had come into the body of a kindly old man took possession of him. On and on he ran down the hillside sobbing as he ran. When he fell over the roots of a tree and in falling struck his head he arose and tried to run again. His head was hurt so that he presently fell down and lay still. But it was only after Jesse had carried him to the buggy and he awoke to find the old man's hand stroking his head tenderly that the terror left him. Take me away. There's a terrible man back there in the woods, he declared firmly, while Jesse looked over the tops of the trees and again his lips cried out, God, what have I done that thou dost not approve of me? he whispered softly, saying the words over and over as he drove rapidly along the road with the boy's cut and bleeding head held tenderly against his shoulder. End of Section 8. Section 9 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 reading by Stuart Wills. Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson. Section 9. Godliness. Part 3. Surrender. The story of Louise Bentley, who became Mrs. John Hardy and lived with her husband in a brick house on Elm Street in Winesburg, is a story of misunderstanding. Before such women as Louise can be understood in their lives made livable, much will have to be done, thoughtful books will have to be written, and thoughtful lives lived by people about them. Born of a delicate and overworked mother and an impulsive, hard, imaginative father, who did not look with favor upon her coming into the world, Louise was from childhood in neurotic, one of the race of oversensitive women that in later days industrialism was to bring in such great numbers into the world. During her early years she lived on the Bentley Farm, a silent, moody child, wanting love more than anything else in the world and not getting it. When she was fifteen she went to live in Winesburg with the family of Albert Hardy, who had a store for the sale of buggies and wagons, and who was a member of the Town Board of Education. Louise went into town to be a student in the Winesburg High School, and she went to live at the Hardys because Albert Hardy and her father were friends. Hardy, the vehicle merchant of Winesburg, like thousands of other men of his times, was an enthusiast on the subject of education. He had made his own way in the world without learning got from books, but he was convinced that had he but known books things would have gone better with him. To everyone who came into his shop he talked of the matter, and in his own household he drove his family distracted by his constant harping on the subject. He had two daughters and one son, John Hardy, and more than once the daughters threatened to leave school all together. As a matter of principle they did just enough work in their classes to avoid punishment. I hate books and I hate anyone who likes books. Harriet, the younger of the two girls, declared passionately. In Winesburg, as on the farm, Louise was not happy. For years she had dreamed of the time when she could go forth into the world, and she looked upon the move into the Hardy household as a great step in the direction of freedom. Always when she had thought of the matter it had seemed to her that in town all must be gaiety in life, but there men and women must live happily and freely, giving and taking friendship and affection, as one takes the feel of a wind on the cheek. After the silence and the cheerlessness of life in the Bentley House she dreamed of stepping forth into an atmosphere that was warm and pulsating with life and reality. And in the Hardy household Louise might have got something of the thing for which she so hungered, but for a mistake she made when she had just come to town. Louise won the disfavor of the two Hardy girls, Mary and Harriet, by her application to her studies in school. She did not come to the house until the day when school was to begin, and knew nothing of the feeling they had in the matter. She was timid, and during the first month made no acquaintances. Every Friday afternoon one of the hired men from the farm drove into Winesburg and took her home for the weekend, so that she did not spend the Saturday holiday with the town people. Because she was embarrassed and lonely, she worked constantly at her studies. To Mary and Harriet it seemed as though she tried to make trouble for them by her proficiency. In her eagerness to appear well Louise wanted to answer every question put to the class by the teacher. She jumped up and down and her eyes flashed. Then when she had answered some question the others in the class had been unable to answer, she smiled happily. See, I have done it for you, her eyes seemed to say. You need not bother about the matter. I will answer all the questions. For the whole class it will be easy while I am here. In the evening after supper in the Hardy House Albert Hardy began to praise Louise. One of the teachers had spoken highly of her and he was delighted. Well, again I have heard it, he began, looking hard at his daughters, and then turning to smile at Louise. Another of the teachers has told me of the good work Louise is doing. Everyone in Winesburg is telling me how smart she is. I am ashamed that they do not speak so of my own girls. Arising the merchant marched about the room and lighted his evening cigar. The two girls looked at each other and shook their heads wearily. Seeing their indifference the father became angry. I tell you it is something for you two to be thinking about. He cried glaring at them. There is a big change coming here in America, and in learning is the only hope of the coming generations. Louise is the daughter of a rich man, but she is not ashamed to study. It should make you ashamed to see what she does. The merchant took his hat from a rack by the door and prepared to depart for the evening. At the door he stopped and glared back. So fierce was his manner that Louise was frightened and ran upstairs to her own room. The daughters began to speak of their own affairs. Pay attention to me, roared the merchant. Your minds are lazy. Your indifference to education is affecting your characters. You will amount to nothing. Now mark what I say. Louise will be so far ahead of you that you will never catch up. The distracted man went out of the house and into the street shaking with wrath. He went along muttering words and swearing, but when he got into Main Street his anger passed. He stopped to talk of the weather or the crops with some other merchant or with a farmer who had come into town and forgot his daughters altogether, or if he thought of them only shrugged his shoulders. Oh, well. Girls will be girls, he muttered philosophically. In the house when Louise came down into the room where the two girls sat they would have nothing to do with her. One evening after she had been there for more than six weeks and was heartbroken because of the continued air of coldness with which she was always greeted she burst into tears. Shut up your crying and go back to your own room and to your books, Mary Hardy said sharply. The room occupied by Louise was on the second floor of the Hardy House and her window looked out upon an orchard. There was a stove in the room and every evening young John Hardy carried up an armful of wood and put it in a box that stood by the wall. During the second month after she came to the house Louise gave up all hope of getting on a friendly footing with the Hardy Girls and went to her own room as soon as the evening meal was at an end. Her mind began to play with thoughts of making friends with John Hardy. When he came into the room with the wood in his arms she pretended to be busy with her studies but watched him eagerly. When he had put the wood in the box and turned to go out she put down her head and blushed. She tried to make talk but could say nothing and after he had gone she was angry at herself for her stupidity. The mind of the country girl became filled with the idea of drawing close to the young man. She thought that in him might be found the quality she had all her life been seeking in people. It seemed to her that between herself and all the other people in the world a wall had been built up and that she was living just on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must be quite open and understandable to others. She became obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a courageous act on her part to make all of her association with people something quite different and that it was possible by such an act to pass into a new life as one opens a door and goes into a room. Day and night she thought of the matter. But although the thing she wanted so earnestly was something very warm and close it had as yet no conscious connection with sex. It had not become that definite and her mind had only alighted upon the person of John Hardy because he was at hand and unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly to her. The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were both older than Louise. In a certain kind of knowledge of the world they were years older. They lived as all of the young women of Middle Western towns lived. In those days young women did not go out of our towns to Eastern colleges and ideas in regard to social classes had hardly begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in much the same social position as the daughter of a farmer or a merchant. And there were no leisure classes. A girl was nice or she was not nice. If a nice girl she had a young man who came to her house to see her on Sunday and on Wednesday evenings sometimes she went with her young man to a dance or a church social. At other times she received him at the house and was given the use of the parlor for that purpose. No one intruded upon her. For hours the two sat behind closed doors. Sometimes the lights were turned low and the young man and woman embraced. Cheeks became hot and hair disarranged. After a year or two if the impulse within them became strong and insistent enough they married. One evening during her first winter in Weinsburg Louise had an adventure that gave a new impulse to her desire to break down the wall that she thought stood between her and John Hardy. It was Wednesday and immediately after the evening meal Albert Hardy put on his hat and went away. Young John brought the wood and put it in the box in Louise's room. You do work hard, don't you? he said awkwardly. And then before she could answer he also went away. Louise heard him go out of the house and had a mad desire to run after him. Opening her window she leaned out and called softly. John, dear John, come back. Don't go away. The night was cloudy and she could not see far into the darkness. But as she waited she fancied she could hear a soft little noise as of someone going on tiptoes through the trees in the orchard. She was frightened and closed the window quickly. For an hour she moved about the room trembling with excitement and when she could not longer bear the waiting she crept into the hall and down the stairs into a closet-like room that opened off the parlor. Louise had decided that she would perform the courageous act that had for weeks been in her mind. She was convinced that John Hardy had concealed himself in the orchard beneath her window and she was determined to find him and tell him that she wanted him to come close to her, to hold her in his arms, to tell her of his thoughts and dreams, and to listen while she told him her thoughts and dreams. In the darkness it will be easier to say things she whispered to herself as she stood in the little room groping for the door. And then suddenly Louise realized that she was not alone in the house. In the parlor on the other side of the door a man's voice spoke softly and the door opened. Louise just had time to conceal herself in a little opening beneath the stairway when Mary Hardy, accompanied by her young man, came into the little dark room. For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and listened. Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the man who had come to spend the evening with her, brought to the country girl a knowledge of men and women. Putting her head down until she was curled into a little ball she lay perfectly still. It seemed to her that by some strange impulse of the gods a great gift had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not understand the older woman's determined protest. The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed her. When she struggled and laughed he but held her more tightly. For an hour the contest between them went on and then they went back into the parlor and Louise escaped up the stairs. I hope you were quiet out there. You must not disturb the little mouse at her studies. She heard Harriet sang to her sister as she stood by her own door in the hallway above. Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night when all in the house were asleep she crept downstairs and slipped it under his door. She was afraid that if she did not do the thing at once her courage would fail. In the note she tried to be quite definite about what she wanted. I want someone to love me and I want to love someone she wrote. If you are the one for me I want you to come into the orchard at night and make a noise under my window. It will be easy for me to crawl down over the shed and come to you. I am thinking about it all the time so if you are to come at all you must come soon. For a long time Louise did not know what would be the outcome of her bold attempt to secure for herself a lover. In a way she still did not know whether or not she wanted him to come. Sometimes it seemed to her that to be held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of life and then a new impulse came and she was terribly afraid. The age old woman's desire to be possessed had taken possession of her but so vague was her notion of life that it seemed to her that just the touch of John Hardy's hand upon her own hand would satisfy. She wondered if he would understand that. At the table next day while Albert Hardy talked and the two girls whispered and laughed she did not look at John but at the table and as soon as possible escaped. In the evening she went out of the house until she was sure he had taken the wood to her room and gone away. When after several evenings of intense listening she heard no call from the darkness in the orchard she was half beside herself with grief and decided that for her there was no way to break through the wall that had shut her off from the joy of life. And then on a Monday evening two or three weeks after the writing of the note John Hardy came for her. Louise had so entirely given up the thought of his coming that for a long time she did not hear the call that came up from the orchard. On the Friday evening before as she was being driven back to the farm for the weekend by one of the hired men she had on an impulse done a thing that had startled her. And as John Hardy stood in the darkness below and called her name softly and insistently she walked about in her room and wondered what new impulse had led her to commit so ridiculous an act. The farmhand a young fellow with black curly hair had come for her somewhat late on that Friday evening and they drove home in the darkness. Louise whose mind was filled with thoughts of John Hardy tried to make talk but the country boy was embarrassed and would say nothing. Her mind began to review the loneliness of her childhood and she remembered with a pang the sharp new loneliness that had just come to her. I hate everyone she cried suddenly and then broke forth into a tirade that frightened her escort. I hate father and the old man Hardy too she declared vehemently. I get my lessons there in the school in town but I hate that also. Louise frightened the farmhand still more by turning and putting her cheek down upon his shoulder. Vaguely she hoped that he like that young man who had stood in the darkness with Mary would put his arms about her and kiss her but the country boy was only alarmed. He struck the horse with the whip and began to whistle. The road is rough eh? he said loudly. Louise was so angry that reaching up she snatched his hat from his head and threw it into the road. When he jumped out of the buggy and went to get it she drove off and left him to walk the rest of the way back to the farm. Louise Bentley took John Hardy to be her lover. That was not what she wanted but it was so the young man had interpreted her approach to him and so anxious was she to achieve something else that she made no resistance. When after a few months they were both afraid that she was about to become a mother they went one evening to the county seat and were married. For a few months they lived in the Hardy house and then took a house of their own. All during the first year Louise tried to make her husband understand the vague and intangible hunger that had led to the writing of the note and that was still unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into his arms and tried to talk of it but always without success. Filled with his own notions of love between men and women he did not listen but began to kiss her upon the lips. That confused her so that in the end she did not want to be kissed. She did not know what she wanted. When the alarm that had tricked them into marriage proved to be groundless she was angry and said bitter hurtful things. Later when her son David was born she could not nurse him and did not know whether she wanted him or not. Sometimes she stayed in the room with him all day walking about and occasionally creeping close to touch him tenderly with her hands and then other days came when she did not want to see or be near the tiny bit of humanity that had come into the house. When John Hardy reproached her for her cruelty she laughed. It is a man-child and we'll get what it wants anyway, she said sharply. Had it been a woman-child there is nothing in the world I would not have done for it. End of section 9 Section 10 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 10 Godliness. Part 4 Terror. When David Hardy was a tall boy of 15 he, like his mother, had an adventure that changed the whole current of his life and sent him out of his quiet corner into the world. The shell of the circumstances of his life was broken and he was compelled to start forth. He left Winesburg and no one there ever saw him again. After his disappearance his mother and grandfather both died and his father became very rich. He spent much money in trying to locate his son but that is no part of this story. It was in the late fall of an unusual year on the Bentley Farms. Everywhere the crops had been heavy. That spring Jesse had bought part of a long strip of black swamp land that lay in the valley of Wine Creek. He got the land at a low price but had spent a large sum of money to improve it. Great ditches had to be dug and thousands of tile laid. Neighboring farmers shook their heads over the expense. Some of them laughed and hoped that Jesse would lose heavily by the venture but the old man went silently on with the work and said nothing. When the land was drained he planted it to cabbages and onions and again the neighbours laughed. The crop was, however, enormous and brought high prices. In the one year Jesse made enough money to pay for all the cost of preparing the land and had a surplus that enabled him to buy two more farms. He was exultant and could not conceal his delight. For the first time in all the history of his ownership of the farms he went among his men with a smiling face. Jesse bought a great many new machines for cutting down the cost of labour and all of the remaining acres in the strip of black fertile swamp land. One day he went into Winesburg and bought a bicycle and a new suit of clothes for David and he gave his two sisters money with which to go to a religious convention at Cleveland, Ohio. In the fall of that year when the frost came and the trees in the forests along Wine Creek were gold and brown David spent every moment when he did not have to attend school out in the open. Alone or with other boys he went every afternoon into the woods to gather nuts. The other boys of the countryside, most of them sons of labourers on the Bentley farms, had guns with which they went hunting rabbits and squirrels, but David did not go with them. He made himself a sling with rubber bands and a forked stick and went off by himself to gather nuts. As he went about thoughts came to him. He realized that he was almost a man and wondered what he would do in life. But before they came to anything the thoughts passed and he was a boy again. One day he killed a squirrel that sat on one of the lower branches of a tree and chattered at him. Home he ran with the squirrel in his hand. One of the Bentley sisters cooked the little animal and he ate it with great gusto. The skin he tacked on a board and suspended the board by a string from his bedroom window. That gave his mind a new turn. After that he never went into the woods without carrying the sling in his pocket and he spent hours shooting at imaginary animals concealed among the brown leaves in the trees. Thoughts of his coming manhood passed and he was content to be a boy with a boy's impulses. One Saturday morning when he was about to set off for the woods with the sling in his pocket and a bag for nuts on his shoulder his grandfather stopped him. In the eyes of the old man was the strained serious look that always a little frightened David. At such times Jesse Bentley's eyes did not look straight ahead but wavered and seemed to be looking at nothing. Something like an invisible curtain appeared to have come between the man and all the rest of the world. I want you to come with me, he said briefly, and his eyes looked over the boy's head into the sky. We have something important to do today. You may bring the bag for nuts if you wish. It does not matter and anyway we'll be going into the woods. Jesse and David set out from the Bentley farmhouse in the old phyton that was drawn by the white horse. When they'd gone along in silence for a long way they stopped at the edge of a field where a flock of sheep were grazing. Among the sheep was a lamb that had been born out of season and this David and his grandfather caught and tied so tightly that it looked like a little white ball. When they drove on again Jesse let David hold the lamb in his arms. I saw it yesterday and it put me in mind of what I have long wanted to do, he said, and again he looked away over the head of the boy with the wavering uncertain stare in his eyes. After the feeling of exaltation that had come to the farmer as a result of his successful year another mood had taken possession of him. For a long time he'd been going about feeling very humble and prayerful. Again he walked alone at night, thinking of God, and as he walked he again connected his own figure with the figures of old days. Under the stars he knelt on the wet grass and raised up his voice in prayer. Now he had decided that like the men whose stories filled the pages of the Bible he would make a sacrifice to God. I have been given these abundant crops and God has also sent me a boy who is called David, he whispered to himself, perhaps I should have done this thing long ago. He was sorry the idea had not come into his mind in the days before his daughter Louise had been born, and thought that surely now when he had erected a pile of burning sticks in some lonely place in the woods and had offered the body of a lamb as a burnt offering, God would appear to him and give him a message. More and more as he thought of the matter he thought also of David, and his passionate self-love was partially forgotten. It is time for the boy to begin thinking of going out into the world and the message will be one concerning him, he decided. God will make a pathway for him, he will tell me what place David is to take in life, and when he shall set out on his journey. It is right that the boy should be there. If I am fortunate, and an angel of God should appear, David will see the beauty and glory of God made manifest to man. It will make a true man of God of him also. In silence Jesse and David drove along the road until they came to that place where Jesse had once before appealed to God and had frightened his grandson. The morning had been bright and cheerful, but a cold wind now began to blow and clouds hid the sun. When David saw the place to which they had come he began to tremble with fright, and when they stopped by the bridge where the creek came down from among the trees he wanted to spring out of the fight on and run away. A dozen plans for escape ran through David's head, but when Jesse stopped the horse and climbed over the fence into the wood he followed. It is foolish to be afraid, nothing will happen, he told himself as he went along with the lamb in his arms. There was something in the helplessness of the little animal held so tightly in his arms that gave him courage. He could feel the rapid beating of the beast's heart and that made his own heart beat less rapidly. As he walked swiftly along behind his grandfather he untied the string with which the four legs of the lamb were fastened together. If anything happens we will run away together, he thought. In the woods, after they had gone a long way from the road, Jesse stopped in an opening among the trees where a clearing, overgrown with small bushes, ran up from the creek. He was still silent, but began at once to erect a heap of dry sticks which he presently set afire. The boy sat on the ground with the lamb in his arms. His imagination began to invest every movement of the old man with significance, and he became every moment more afraid. I must put the blood of the lamb on the head of the boy, Jesse muttered, when the sticks had begun to blaze greedily, and taking a long knife from his pocket he turned and walked rapidly across the clearing toward David. Terror seized upon the soul of the boy. He was sick with it. For a moment he sat perfectly still, and then his body stiffened and he sprang to his feet. His face became as white as the fleece of the lamb that, now finding itself suddenly released, ran down the hill. David ran also. Fear made his feet fly. Over the low bushes and logs he leaped frantically. As he ran he put his hand into his pocket and took out the branch stick from which the sling for shooting squirrels was suspended. When he came to the creek that was shallow and splashed down over the stones, he dashed into the water and turned to look back, and when he saw his grandfather still running toward him, with the long knife held tightly in his hand, he did not hesitate, but reached down, selected a stone and put it in the sling. With all his strength he drew back the heavy rubber bands and the stone whistled through the air. It hit Jesse, who had entirely forgotten the boy and was pursuing the lamb, squarely in the head. With a groan he pitched forward and fell almost at the boy's feet. When David saw that he lay still and that he was apparently dead, his fright increased immeasurably. It became an insane panic. With a cry he turned and ran off through the woods, weeping convulsively. I don't care, I killed him, but I don't care, he sobbed. As he ran on and on, he decided suddenly that he would never go back again to the Bentley Farms or to the town of Winesburg. I have killed the man of God, and now I will myself be a man and go into the world," he said stoutly, as he stopped running, and walked rapidly down a road that followed the windings of Wine Creek as it ran through fields and forests into the west. On the ground by the creek Jesse Bentley moved uneasily about. He groaned and opened his eyes. For a long time he lay perfectly still and looked at the sky. When at last he got to his feet his mind was confused and he was not surprised by the boy's disappearance. By the roadside he sat down on a log and began to talk about God. That is all they ever got out of him. Whenever David's name was mentioned he looked vaguely at the sky and said that a messenger from God had taken the boy. It happened because I was too greedy for glory, he declared, and would have no more to say on the matter. End of section 10 Section 11 A Man of Ideas He lived with his mother, a gray silent woman, with a peculiar ashy complexion. The house in which they lived stood in a little grove of trees beyond where the main street of Winesburg crossed Wine Creek. His name was Joe Welling and his father had been a man of some dignity in the community, a lawyer and a member of the state legislature at Columbus. Joe himself was small of body and in his character unlike anyone else in town. He was like a tiny little volcano that lies silent for days and then suddenly spouts fire. No, he wasn't like that. He was like a man who is subject to fits, one who walks among his fellow men inspiring fear because a fit may come upon him suddenly and blow him away into a strange uncanny physical state in which his eyes roll in his legs and arms jerk. He was like that. Only that the visitation that descended upon Joe Welling was a mental and not a physical thing. He was beset by ideas and in the throes of one of his ideas was uncontrollable. Words rolled and tumbled from his mouth. A peculiar smile came upon his lips. The edges of his teeth that were tipped with gold glistened in the light. Pouncing upon a bystander he began to talk. For the bystander there was no escape. The excited man breathed into his face, peered into his eyes, pounded upon his chest with a shaking forefinger, demanded compelled attention. In those days the standard oil company did not deliver oil to the consumer in big wagons and motor trucks as it does now, but delivered instead to retail grocers, hardware stores and the like. Joe was the standard oil agent in Weinsburg and in several towns up and down the railroad that went through Weinsburg. He collected bills, booked orders, and did other things. His father, the legislator, had secured the job for him. In and out of the stores of Weinsburg went Joe Welling, silent, excessively polite, and tent upon his business. Men watched him with eyes in which lurked amusement tempered by alarm. They were waiting for him to break forth, preparing to flee. Although the seizures that came upon him were harmless enough, they could not be laughed away. They were overwhelming. A stride and idea, Joe was overmastering. His personality became gigantic. It overrode the man to whom he talked, swept him away, swept all away, all who stood within sound of his voice. In Sylvester West's drug store stood four men who were talking of horse racing. Wesley Moyer Stalin, Tony Tip, was to race at the June meeting at Tiffin, Ohio, and there was a rumor that he would meet the stiffest competition of his career. It was said that Pop Gears, the great racing driver, would himself be there. A doubt of the success of Tony Tip hung heavy in the air of Weinsburg. Into the drug store came Joe Welling, brushing the screen door wide. He violently aside. With a strange absorbed light in his eyes he pounced upon Ed Thomas, who knew Pop Gears and whose opinion of Tony Tip's chances was worth considering. The water is up and Wine Creek cried Joe Welling with the air of fidipities, bringing news of the victory of the Greeks in the struggle at Marathon. His finger beat a tattoo upon Ed Thomas' broad chest. By Trunnion Bridge it is within eleven and a half inches of the flooring, he went on, the words coming quickly and with a little whistling noise from between his teeth. An expression of helpless annoyance crept over the faces of the four. I have my facts correct, depend upon that. I went to Sinning's Hardware Store and got a rule. Then I went back and measured. I could hardly believe my own eyes. It hasn't rained you see for ten days. At first I didn't know what to think. Thoughts rushed through my head. I thought of sub-Duranian passages and springs down under the ground went my mind delving about. I sat on the floor of the bridge and rubbed my head. There wasn't a cloud in the sky, not one. Come out into the street and you'll see there wasn't a cloud. There isn't a cloud now. Yes, there was a cloud. I don't want to keep back any facts. There was a cloud in the west, down near the horizon, a cloud no bigger than a man's hand. Not that I think that has anything to do with it. There it is, you see, you understand how puzzled I was. Then an idea came to me. I laughed. You'll laugh too. Of course it rained over in Medina County. That's interesting, eh? If we had no trains, no mails, no telegraph, we would know that it rained over in Medina County. That's where Wine Creek comes from. Everyone knows that. Little old Wine Creek brought us the news. That's interesting. I laughed. I thought I'd tell you. It's interesting, eh? Joe Welling turned and went out at the door. Taking a book from his pocket, he stopped and ran a finger down one of the pages. Again he was absorbed in his duties as agent of the Standard Oil Company. Herne's grocery will be getting low on coal. I'll see them, he muttered, hurrying along the street and bowing politely to the right and left as the people walked past. When George Willard went to work for the Winesburg Eagle, he was besieged by Joe Welling. Joe envied the boy. It seemed to him that he was meant by nature to be a reporter on a newspaper. It is what I should be doing. There is no doubt of that, he declared, stopping George Willard on the sidewalk before Doherty's feed store. His eyes began to glisten and his forefinger to tremble. Of course, I make more money with the Standard Oil Company and I'm only telling you, he added. I've got nothing against you, but I should have your place. I could do the work at odd moments. Here and there, I would run, finding out things you'll never see. Becoming more excited, Joe Welling crowded the young reporter against the front of the feed store. He appeared to be lost in thought, rolling his eyes about and running a thin nervous hand through his hair. A smile spread over his face and his gold teeth glittered. You get out your notebook, he commanded. You carry a little pad of paper in your pocket, don't you? I knew you did. Well, let's take decay. Now, what is decay? It's fire. It burns up wood and other things. You never thought of that? Of course not. This sidewalk here in this feed store, the trees down the street there. They're all on fire. They're burning up. Decay, you see, is always going on. It don't stop. Water and paint can't stop it. If a thing is iron, then what? It rusts, you see. That's fire, too. The world is on fire. Start your pieces in the paper that way. Just saying big letters. The world is on fire. That will make them look up. They'll say you're a smart one. I don't care. I don't envy you. I just snatched that idea out of the air. I would make a newspaper hum. You got to admit that. Turning quickly, Joe Welling walked rapidly away. When he had taken several steps, he stopped and looked back. I'm going to stick to you, he said. I'm going to make you a regular hummer. I should start a newspaper myself. That's what I should do. I'd be a marvel. Everybody knows that. When George Willard had been for a year on the Winesburg Eagle, four things happened to Joe Welling. His mother died. He came to live at the new Willard House. He became involved in a love affair and he organized the Winesburg Baseball Club. Joe organized the Baseball Club because he wanted to be a coach. And in that position, he began to win the respect of his townsmen. He is a wonder, they declared, after Joe's team had whipped the team from Medina County. He gets everybody working together. You just watch him. Upon the baseball field, Joe Welling stood by first base. His whole body quivering with excitement. In spite of themselves, all of the players watched him closely. The opposing pitcher became confused. Now, now, now, now, shouted the excited man. Watch me, watch me, watch my fingers, watch my hands, watch my feet, watch my eyes. Let's work together here. Watch me. In me, you see all the movements of the game. Work with me, work with me. Watch me, watch me, watch me. With runners of the Winesburg team on bases, Joe Welling became as one inspired. Before they knew what had come over them, the base runners were watching the man, edging off the baseball. Advancing, retreating, held as by an invisible cord. The players of the opposing team also watched Joe. They were fascinated. For a moment, they watched, and then as though to break a spell that hung over them. They began hurling the ball wildly about, and amid a series of fierce animal-like cries from the coach, the runners of the Winesburg team scampered home. Joe Welling's love affair set the town of Winesburg on edge. When it began, everyone whispered and shook his head. When people tried to laugh, the laughter was forced and unnatural. Joe fell in love with Sarah King, a lean, sad-looking woman who lived with her father and brother in a brick house that stood opposite the gate leading to the Winesburg cemetery. The two kings, Edward the father and Tom the son, were not popular in Winesburg. They were called proud and dangerous. They had come to Winesburg from some place in the south, and ran a cider mill on the Trunnion Pike. Tom King was reported to have killed a man before he came to Winesburg. He was 27 years old and rode about town on a gray pony. Also, he had a long yellow mustache that dropped down over his teeth, and always carried a heavy, wicked-looking walking stick in his hand. Once he killed a dog with a stick, the dog belonged to Winn Palsy, the shoe merchant, and stood on the sidewalk wagging its tail. Tom King killed it with one blow. He was arrested and paid a fine of $10. Old Edward King was small of stature, and when he passed people in the street, laughed a queer unmerthful laugh. When he laughed, he scratched his left elbow with his right hand. The sleeve of his coat was almost worn through from the habit. As he walked along the street, looking nervously about and laughing, he seemed more dangerous than his silent, fierce-looking son. When Sarah King began walking out in the evening with Joe Welling, people shook their heads in alarm. She was tall and pale and had dark rings under her eyes. The couple looked ridiculous together. Under the trees they walked, and Joe talked. His passionate, eager protestations of love heard coming out of the darkness by the cemetery wall, or from the deep shadows of the trees on the hill that ran up to the fairgrounds from the Water Works pond, were repeated in the stores. Men stood by the bar in the new Willard House laughing and talking of Joe's courtship. After the laughter came silence. The Winesburg baseball team under his management was winning game after game, and the town had begun to respect him. Sensing a tragedy, they waited, laughing nervously. Late on a Saturday afternoon, the meeting between Joe Welling and the two kings, the anticipation of which had set the town on edge, took place in Joe Welling's room in the new Willard House. George Willard was a witness to the meeting. It came about in this way. When the young reporter went to his room after the evening meal, he saw Tom King and his father sitting in the half-darkness in Joe's room. The son had the heavy walking stick in his hand and sat near the door. Old Edward King walked nervously about, scratching his left elbow with his right hand. The hallways were empty and silent. George Willard went to his own room and sat down at his desk. He tried to write, but his hand trembled so that he could not hold the pen. He also walked nervously up and down, like the rest of the town of Weinsburg he was perplexed and knew not what to do. It was seven thirty in fast growing dark when Joe Welling came along the station platform toward the new Willard House. In his arms, he held a bundle of weeds and grasses. In spite of the terror that made his body shake, George Willard was amused at the sight of the small spry figure holding the grasses and half running along the platform. Shaking with fright and anxiety, the young reporter alerted in the hallway outside the door of the room in which Joe Welling talked to the two kings. There had been an oath, the nervous giggle of Old Edward King, and then silence. Now the voice of Joe Welling, sharp and clear, broke forth. George Willard began to laugh. He understood. As he had swept all men before him, so now Joe Welling was carrying the two men in the room off their feet with a tidal wave of words. The listener in the hall walked up and down, lost in amazement. Inside the room, Joe Welling had paid no attention to the grumbled thread of Tom King. Absorbed in an idea, he closed the door and lighting a lamp, spread the handful of weeds and grasses upon the floor. I've got something here, he announced solemnly. I was going to tell George Willard about it. Let him make a piece out of it for the paper. I'm glad you're here. I wish Sarah were here also. I've been going to come to your house and tell you of some of my ideas. They're interesting. Sarah wouldn't let me. She said we'd quarrel. That's foolish. Running up and down before the two perplexed men, Joe Welling began to explain. Don't you make a mistake now, he cried. This is something big. His voice was shrill with excitement. You just follow me and you'll be interested. I know you will. Suppose this. Suppose all of the wheat, the corn, the oats, the peas, the potatoes were all by some miracle swept away. Now here we are, you see, in this county. There is a high fence built all around us. We'll suppose that. No one can get over the fence and all the fruits of the earth are destroyed. Nothing left, but these wild things, these grasses. Would we be done for? I ask you that. Would we be done for? Again, Tom King growled. And for a moment, there was silence in the room. Then again, Joe plunged into the exposition of his idea. Things would go hard for a time. I admit that. I've got to admit that. No getting around it. We'd be hard put to it. More than one fat stomach would cave in, but they couldn't down us. I should say not. Tom King laughed good naturedly in the shivery nervous laugh of Edward King rang through the house. Joe Welling hurried on. We'd begin, you see, to breed up new vegetables and fruits. Soon we'd regain all we had lost. Mind, I don't say the new things would be the same as the old. They wouldn't. Maybe they'd be better. Maybe not so good. That's interesting, huh? You can think about that. It starts your mind working. Now, don't it? In the room, there was silence. And then again, old Edward King laughed nervously. Say, I wish Sarah were here, cried Joe Welling. Let's go up to your house. I want to tell her of this. There was a scraping of chairs in the room. It was then that George Willard retreated to his own room. Leaning out at the window, he saw Joe Welling going along the street with the two kings. Tom King was forced to take extraordinary long strides to keep pace with the little man. As he strode along, he leaned over, listening, absorbed. Fascinated. Joe Welling again talked excitedly. Take milkweed now, he cried. A lot might be done with milkweed, huh? It's almost unbelievable. I want you to think about it. I want you too to think about it. There would be a new vegetable kingdom, you see. It's interesting, eh? It's an idea. Wait till you see Sarah. She'll get the idea. She'll be interested. Sarah is always interested in ideas. You can't be too smart for Sarah now, can you? Of course you can't. You know that. End of Section 11 Recording by Craig Summers Canton, North Carolina Section 12 of Winesburg, Ohio This is a LibraVox recording. All LibraVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please visit LibraVox.org Winesburg, Ohio by Sherman Anderson Section 12 Adventure Alice Heineman, a woman of 27 when George Willard was a mere boy, had lived in Winesburg all her life. She clerked in Winnie's Dry Goods store and lived with her mother who had married a second husband. Alice's stepfather was a carriage painter and given to drink. His story is an odd one. It will be worth telling someday. At 27 Alice was tall and somewhat slight. Her head was large and overshadowed her body. Her shoulders were a little stooped and her hair and eyes brown. She was very quiet but beneath a placid exterior a continual ferment went on. When she was a girl of 16 and before she began to work in the store Alice had an affair with a young man. The young man named Ned Currie was older than Alice. He, like George Willard was employed on the Winesburg Eagle and for a long time he went to see Alice almost every evening. Together the two walked under the trees and through the streets of the town and talked of what they would do with their lives. Alice was then a very pretty girl and Ned Currie took her into his arms and kissed her. He became excited and said things he did not intend to say and Alice, betrayed by her desire to have something beautiful come into her rather narrow life also grew excited. She also talked. The outer crust of her life all of her natural diffidence and reserve was torn away and she gave herself over to the emotions of love. When late in the fall of her sixteenth year Ned Currie went away to Cleveland where he hoped to get a place on the city newspaper and rise in the world she wanted to go with him. With a trembling voice she told him what was in her mind. I will work and you can work she said. I do not want to harness you to a needless expense that will prevent your making progress. Don't marry me now. We will get along without that and we can be together. Even though we live in the same house no one will say anything. In the city we will be unknown and people will pay no attention to us. Ned Currie was puzzled by the determination and abandon of his sweetheart and was also deeply touched. He had wanted the girl to become his mistress but changed his mind. He wanted to protect and care for her. You don't know what you're talking about he said sharply. You may be sure I'll let you do no such thing. As soon as I get a good job I'll come back. For the present you'll have to stay here. It's the only thing we can do. On the evening before he left Winesburg to take up his new life in the city Ned Currie went to call on Ellis. They walked about through the streets for an hour and then got a rig from Wesley Moyer's livery and went for a drive in the country. The moon came up and they found themselves unable to talk. In his sadness the young man forgot the resolutions he had made regarding his conduct with the girl. They got out of the buggy at a place where a long meadow ran down to the bank of Wine Creek and there in the dim light became lovers. When at midnight they returned to town they were both glad. It did not seem to them that anything that could happen in the future could blot out the wonder and beauty of the thing that had happened. Now we will have to stick to each other. Whatever happens we will have to do that. Ned Currie said as he left the girl at her father's door. The young newspaper man did not succeed in getting a place on a Cleveland paper and went west to Chicago. For a time he was lonely and wrote to Ellis almost every day. Then he was cut up by the life of the city. He began to make friends and found new interest in life. In Chicago he boarded at a house where there were several women. One of them attracted his attention and he forgot Alice in Winesburg. At the end of a year he had stopped writing letters and only once in a long time when he was lonely or when he went into one of the city parks and saw the moon shining on the grass as it had shown that night on the meadow by Wine Creek did he think of her at all. In Winesburg the girl who had been loved grew to be a woman. When she was 22 years old her father who owned a harness repair shop died suddenly. The harness maker was an old soldier and after a few months his wife received a widows pension. She used the first money she got to buy a loom and became a weaver of carpets and Alice got a place in Winnie's store. For a number of years nothing could have induced her to believe that Ned Currie would not in the end return to her. She was glad to be employed because the daily round of toil in the store made the time of waiting seem less long and uninteresting. She began to save money thinking that when she saved two or three hundred dollars she would follow her lover to the city and try if her presence would not win back his affections. Alice did not blame Ned Currie for what had happened in the moonlight in the field but felt that she could never marry another man. To her the thought of giving to another which she still felt could belong only to Ned seemed monstrous. When other young men tried to attract her attention she would have nothing to do with them. I am his wife and shall remain his wife whether he comes back or not she whispered to herself and for all of her willingness to support herself could not have understood the growing modern idea of a woman's owning herself and giving and taking for her own ends in life. Alice worked in the dry good store from eight in the morning until six at night and on three evenings a week went back to the store to stay from seven until nine. As time passed and she became more and more lonely she began to practice the devices common to lonely people. When at night she went upstairs into her room she knelt on the floor to pray and in her prayers whispered things she wanted to say to her lover. She became attached to inanimate objects and because it was her own could not bear to have anyone touch the furniture of her room. The trick of saving money begun for a purpose was carried on after the scheme of going to the city to find Ned Curry had been given up. It became a fixed habit and when she needed new clothes she did not get them. Sometimes on rainy afternoons in the store she got out her bank book and letting it lie open before spent hours dreaming impossible dreams of saving money enough so that the interest would support both herself and her future husband. Ned always liked to travel about she thought. I'll give him the chance some day when we are married and I can save both his money and my own we will be rich. Then we can travel together all over the world. In the dry goods store weeks ran into months and months into years as Alice waited and dreamed of her lover's return. Her employer a gray old man with false teeth and a gray thin mustache that drooped down over his mouth was not given to conversation and sometimes on rainy days and in the winter when a storm raged in Main Street long hours passed when no customers came in. Alice arranged and rearranged the stock. She stood near the front window where she could look down the deserted street and thought of the evenings when she had walked with Ned Curry and of what he had said. We will have to stick to each other now. The words echoed and re-echoed through the mind of the maturing woman. Tears came into her eyes. Sometimes when her employer had gone out and she was alone in the store she put her head on the counter and wept. Oh Ned, I am waiting. She whispered over and over and all the time the creeping fear that he would never come back grew stronger within her. In the spring when the rains have passed and before the long hot days of summer have come the country about Winesburg is delightful. The town lies in the midst of open fields but beyond the fields are pleasant patches of woodlands. In the wooded places are many little cloistered nooks quiet places where lovers go to sit on Sunday afternoons. Through the trees they look out across the fields and see farmers at work about the barns or people driving up and down on the roads. In the town bells ring and occasionally a train passes looking like a toy thing in the distance. For several years after Ned Curry went away Alice did not go into the wood with the other young people on Sunday but one day after he had been gone for two or three years and when her loneliness seemed unbearable she put on her best dress and set out. Finding a little sheltered place from which she could see the town and a long stretch of the fields she sat down. Fear of age and ineffectuality took possession of her. She could not sit still and arose. As she stood looking out over the land something perhaps the thought of never ceasing life as it expresses itself in the flow of the seasons fixed her mind on the passing years. With a shiver of dread she realized that for her the beauty and freshness of youth had passed. For the first time she felt that she had been cheated. She did not blame Ned Curry and did not know what to blame. Sadness swept over her. Dropping to her knees she tried to pray but instead of prayers word of protest came to her lips. It is not going to come to me. I will never find happiness. Why do I tell myself lies she cried and an odd sense of relief came with this. Her first bold attempt to face the fear that had become a part of her everyday life. In the year when Alice Heinemann became 25 two things happened to disturb the dull uneventfulness of her days. Her mother married Bush Milton the carriage painter of Winesburg and she herself became a member of the Winesburg Methodist Church. Alice joined the church because she had become frightened by the loneliness of her position in life. Her mother's second marriage had emphasized her isolation. I am becoming old and queer. If Ned comes he will not want me. In the city where he is living men are perpetually young. There is so much going on that they do not have time to grow old she told herself with a grim little smile and went resolutely about the business of becoming acquainted with people. Every Thursday evening when the store had closed she went to a prayer meeting in the basement of the church and on Sunday evening attended a meeting of an organization called the Epworth League. When Will Hurley, a middle-aged man who clerked in a drug store and who also belonged to the church offered to walk home with her she did not protest. Of course I will not let him make a practice of being with me but if he comes to see me once in a long time there can be no harm in that, she told herself, still determined in her loyalty to Ned Curry. Without realizing what was happening Alice was trying feebly at first but with growing determination to get a new hold upon life. Beside the drug clerk she walked in silence but sometimes in the darkness as they went stolidly along she put out her hand and touched softly the foals of his coat. When he left her at the gate before her mother's house she did not go indoors but stood for a moment by the door. She went to call to the drug clerk to ask him to sit with her in the darkness on the porch before the house but was afraid he would not understand. It is not him that I want, she told herself. I want to avoid being so much alone. If I am not careful I will grow unaccustomed to being with people. During the early fall of her 27th year a passionate restlessness took possession of Alice. She could not bear to be in the company of the drug clerk and when in the evening he came to walk with her she sent him away. Her mind became intensely active and when, weary from the long hours of standing behind the counter in the store she went home and crawled into bed she could not sleep. With staring eyes she looked into the darkness. Her imagination, like a child awakened from long sleep played about the room. Deep within her there was something that would not be cheated by fantasies and that demanded some definite answer from life. Alice took a pillow into her arms and held it tightly against her breast. Getting out of bed she arranged a blanket so in the darkness it looked like a form lying between the sheets and kneeling beside the bed she caressed it with spring words over and over like a refrain. Why doesn't something happen? Why am I left here alone? she muttered. Although she sometimes thought of Ned Currie she no longer depended on him. Her desire had grown vague. She did not want Ned Currie or any other man. She wanted to be loved to have something answer the call that was growing louder and louder within her. And then one night when it rained Alice had an adventure. It frightened and confused her. She had come home from the store at nine and found the house empty. Bush Milton had gone off to town and her mother to the house of a neighbor. Alice went upstairs to her room and undressed in the darkness. For a moment she stood by the window hearing the rain beat against the glass and then a strange desire took possession of her. Without stopping to think of what she intended to do she ran downstairs through the dark house and out into the rain. As she stood on the little grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain on her body a mad desire to run naked through the streets took possession of her. She thought that the rain would have some creative and wonderful effect on her body. Not for years had she felt so full of youth and courage. She went to leap and run to cry out to find some other lonely human and embrace him. On the brick sidewalk before the house a man stumbled homeward. Alice started to run. A wild, desperate mood took possession of her. What do I care who he is? He is alone and I will go to him, she thought, and then without stopping to consider the possible result of her madness called softly. Wait! she cried. Don't go away. Whoever you are, you must wait. The man on the sidewalk stopped and stood listening. He was an old man and somewhat deaf. Putting his hand to his mouth he shouted, What? What say, he called? Alice dropped to the ground and lay trembling. She was so frightened at the thought of what she had done that when the man had gone on his way she did not dare get to her feet but crawled on hands and knees through the grass to the house. When she got to her own room she bolted the door and drew her dressing table across the doorway. Her body shook as with a chill and her hands trembled so that she had difficulty getting into her nightdress. When she got into bed she buried her face in the pillow and wept brokenheartedly. What is the matter with me? I will do something dreadful if I am not careful, she thought. And turning her face to the wall began trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone even in Winesburg. End of section 12 Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson section 13 Respectability concerning Wash Williams If you have lived in cities and have walked in the park on a summer afternoon you have perhaps seen blinking in a corner of his iron cage a huge grotesque kind of monkey a creature with ugly sagging hairless skin below his eyes and a bright purple underbody. This monkey is a true monster. In the completeness of his ugliness he achieved a kind of perverted beauty. Children stopping before the cage are fascinated. Men turn away with an air of disgust and women linger for a moment trying perhaps to remember which one of their male acquaintances the thing in some faint way resembles. Had you been in the earlier years of your life a citizen of the village of Winesburg, Ohio there would have been for you no mystery in regard to the beast in his cage. It is like Wash Williams he would have said. As he sits in the corner there the beast is exactly like old Wash sitting on the grass in the station yard on a summer evening after he has closed his office for the night. Wash Williams, the telegraph operator of Winesburg was the ugliest thing in town. His girth was immense his neck thin his legs feeble he was dirty. Everything about him was unclean even the whites of his eyes look soiled. I go too fast. Not everything about Wash was unclean. He took care of his hands. His fingers were fat but there was something sensitive and shapely in the hand that lay on the table by the instrument in the telegraph office. In his youth Wash Williams had been called the best telegraph operator in the state. And in spite of his degradement to the obscure office at Winesburg he was still proud of his ability. Wash Williams did not associate with the men of the town in which he lived. I'll have nothing to do with them. He said looking with bleary eyes at the men who walked along the station platform past the telegraph office. Up along Main Street he went in the evening to Ed Griffith's saloon and after drinking unbelievable quantities of beer staggered off to his room in the new Willard House and to his bed for the night. Wash Williams was a man of courage. A thing had happened to him that made him hate life and he hated it wholeheartedly with the abandon of a poet. First of all he hated women. Bitches he called them. His feeling toward men was somewhat different. He pitied them. Does not every man let his life be managed for him by some bitch or another? He asked. In Winesburg no attention was paid to Wash Williams and his hatred of his fellows. Once Mrs. White, the banker's wife, complained to the telegraph company saying the office in Winesburg was dirty and smelled abominably. But nothing came of her complaint. Here and there a man respected the operator. Instinctively the man felt in him a glowing resentment of something he had not the courage to resent. When Wash walked through the streets such a one had an instinct to pay him homage, to raise his hat or to bow before him. The superintendent who had supervised over the telegraph operators on the railroad that went through Winesburg felt that way. He had put Wash into the obscure office at Winesburg to avoid discharging him and he meant to keep him there. When he received the letter of complaint from the banker's wife, he tore it up and laughed unpleasantly. For some reason he thought of his own wife as he tore up the letter. Wash Williams once had a wife. When he was still a young man he married a woman at Dayton, Ohio. The woman was tall and slender and had blue eyes and yellow hair. Wash was himself a calmly youth. He loved the woman with the love as absorbing as the hatred he later felt for all women. In all of Winesburg there was but one person who knew the story of the thing that had made ugly, the person and the character of Wash Williams. He once told the story to George Willard and the telling of the tale came about in this way. George Willard went one evening to walk with Bell Carpenter a trimmer of women's hats who worked in a millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate McHugh. The young man was not in love with the woman who in fact had a suitor who worked as a bartender in Ed Griffith's saloon. But as they walked about under the trees they occasionally embraced. The night and their own thoughts had aroused something in them. As they were returning to Main Street they passed the little lawn beside the railroad station and saw Wash Williams apparently asleep on the grass beneath a tree. On the next evening the operator and George Willard walked out together. Down the railroad they went and sat on a pile of decaying railroad ties beside the tracks. It was then that the operator told the young reporter his story of hate. Perhaps a dozen times George Willard and the strange, shapeless man who lived at his father's hotel had been on the point of talking. The young man looked at the hideous, leering face staring about the hotel dining room and was consumed with curiosity. Something he saw lurking in the staring eyes told him that the man who had nothing to say to others had nevertheless something to say to him. On the pile of railroad ties on the summer evening he waited expectantly. When the operator remained silent and seemed to have changed his mind about talking he tried to make conversation. Were you ever married, Mr. Williams? He began. I suppose you were and your wife is dead. Is that it? Wash Williams spat forth a succession of vile oaths. Yes, she is dead, he agreed. She is dead as all women are dead. She is a living dead thing. Walking in the sight of men and making the earth foul by her presence. Staring into the boy's eyes the man became purple with rage. Don't have full notions in your head, he commanded. My wife, she is dead. Yes, Shirley, I tell you all women are dead. My mother, your mother, that tall, dark woman who works in the mill and restore and with whom I saw you walking about yesterday. All of them, they're all dead. I tell you, there is something rotten about them. I was married, sure. My wife was dead before she married me. She was a foul thing, come out a woman more foul. She was a thing sent to make life unbearable to me. I was a fool. Do you see, as you are now, and so I married this woman, I would like to see men a little begin to understand women. They are sent to prevent men making the world worthwhile. It is a trick in nature. They are creeping, crawling, squirming things. They, with their soft hands and their blue eyes, the sight of a woman sickens me. Why, I don't kill every woman I see, I don't know. Half frightened and yet fascinated by the light burning in the eyes of the hideous old man, George Willard listened, a fire with curiosity. Darkness came on and he leaned forward, trying to see the face of the old man who talked. When, in the gathering darkness, he could no longer see the purple bloated face and the burning eyes, a curious fancy came to him. Wash Williams talked in low, even tones that made his words seem the more terrible. In the darkness, the young reporter found himself imagining that he sat on the railroad ties beside a calmly young man with black hair and black shining eyes. There was something almost beautiful in the voice of Wash Williams, the hideous, telling his story of hate. The telegraph operator of Winesburg, sitting in the darkness on the railroad ties, had become a poet. Hatred had raised him to that elevation. It is because I saw you kissing the lips of that Bill Carpenter that I tell you my story, he said. What happened to me may next happen to you. I want to put you on your guard. Already you may be having dreams in your head. I want to destroy them. Wash Williams began telling the story of his married life with a tall blonde girl with the blue eyes whom he had met when he was a young operator at Dayton, Ohio. Here and there his story was touched with moments of beauty, intermingled with strings of vile curses. The operator had married the daughter of a dentist, who was the youngest of three sisters. On his marriage day, because of his ability, he was promoted to a position as dispatcher at an increased salary and sent to an office at Columbus, Ohio. There he settled down with his young wife and began buying a house on the installment plan. The young telegraph operator was madly in love. With a kind of religious fervor, he had managed to go through the pitfalls of his youth and to remain virginal until after his marriage. He made for George Willard a picture of his life in the house at Columbus, Ohio with the young wife. In the garden back of our house, we planted vegetables, he said. You know, peas and corn and such things. We went to Columbus in early March, and as soon as the days became warm, I went to work in the garden. With the spade, I turned up the black ground, while she ran about, laughing, pretending to be afraid of the worms I uncovered. Late in April came the planting. In the little paths among the seed beds, she stood holding a paper bag in her hand. The bag was filled with seeds. A few at a time, she handed me the seeds that I might thrust them into the warm, soft ground. For a moment, there was a catch in the voice of the man talking in the darkness. I loved her, he said. I don't claim not to be a fool, and I love her yet. There in the dusk and the spring evening, I crawled along the black ground to her feet, and I groveled before her. I kissed her shoes and the ankles above her shoes. When the hem of her garment touched my face, I trembled. When after two years of that life, I found she had managed to acquire three other lovers who came regularly to our house when I was away at work. I didn't want to touch them or her. I just sent her home to her mother and said nothing. There was nothing to say. I had $400 in the bank, and I gave her that. I didn't ask her reasons. I didn't say anything. When she had gone, I cried like a silly boy. Pretty soon, I had a chance to sell the house, and I sent that money to her. Wash Williams and George Willard arose from the pile of railroad ties and walked along the tracks toward town. The operator finished his tale quickly, breathlessly. Her mother sent for me, he said. She wrote me a letter and asked me to come to their house at Dayton. When I got there, it was evening. About this time. Wash Williams' voice rose to a half scream. I sat in the parlor of that house two hours. Her mother took me in there and left me. Their house was stylish. They were what is called respectable people. They were plush chairs and a couch in the room. I was trembling all over. I hated the man I thought had wronged her. I was sick of living alone and wanted her back. The longer I waited, the more raw and tender I became. I thought that if she came in and just touched me with her hand, I would perhaps faint away. I ached to forgive and forget. Wash Williams stopped and stood staring at George Willard. The boy's body shook as if from a chill. Again the man's voice became soft and low. She came into the room naked, he went on. Her mother did that. While I sat there, she was taking the girl's clothes off, perhaps coaxing her to do it. First I heard voices at the door that led into a little hallway and then it opened softly. The girl was ashamed and stood perfectly still, staring at the floor. The mother didn't come into the room. When she had pushed the girl in through the door, she stood in the hallway waiting, hoping we would, well, you see, waiting. George Willard and the telegraph operator came into the main street of Winesburg. The lights from the store windows lay bright and shining on the sidewalks. People moved about laughing and talking. The young reporter felt ill and weak. In imagination he also became old and shapeless. I didn't get the mother killed, said Wash Williams, staring up and down the street. I struck her once with a chair. And then the neighbors came in and took it away. She screams so loud, you see. I won't ever have a chance to kill her now. She died of a fever a month after that happened. End of section 13.