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More Short Stories: Sorted by Author | Sorted by Title The
Strength Of God, from
"Winesburg,
Ohio"
THE
REVEREND Curtis Hartman was pastor of the Presbyterian Church of
Winesburg, and had been in that position ten years.
He was forty years old, and by his nature very silent and
reticent. To preach,
standing in the pulpit before the people, was always a hardship
for him and from Wednesday morning until Saturday evening he
thought of nothing but the two sermons that must be preached on
Sunday. Early on Sunday morning he went into a little room called
a study in the bell tower of the church and prayed.
In his prayers there was one note that always predominated.
"Give me strength and courage for Thy work, O
Lord!" he pleaded, kneeling on the bare floor and bowing his
head in the presence of the task that lay before him. The
Reverend Hartman was a tall man with a brown beard. His wife, a stout, nervous woman, was the daughter of a
manufacturer of underwear at Cleveland, Ohio.
The minister himself was rather a favorite in the town.
The elders of the church liked him because he was quiet and
unpretentious and Mrs. White, the banker's wife, thought him
scholarly and refined. The
Presbyterian Church held itself somewhat aloof from the other
churches of Winesburg. It
was larger and more imposing and its minister was better paid.
He even had a carriage of his own and on summer evenings
sometimes drove about town with his wife.
Through Main Street and up and down Buckeye Street he went,
bowing gravely to the people, while his wife, afire with secret
pride, looked at him out of the corners of her eyes and worried
lest the horse become frightened and run away. |
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For
a good many years after he came to Winesburg things went well with
Curtis Hartman. He
was not one to arouse keen enthusiasm among the worshippers in his
church but on the other hand he made no enemies.
In reality he was much in earnest and sometimes suffered
prolonged periods of remorse because he could not go crying the
word of God in the highways and byways of the town.
He wondered if the flame of the spirit really burned in him
and dreamed of a day when a strong sweet new current of power
would come like a great wind into his voice and his soul and the
people would tremble before the spirit of God made manifest in
him. "I am a
poor stick and that will never really happen to me," he mused
dejectedly, and then a patient smile lit up his features.
"Oh well, I suppose I'm doing well enough," he
added philosophically. The
room in the bell tower of the church, where on Sunday mornings the
minister prayed for an increase in him of the power of God, had
but one window. It
was long and narrow and swung outward on a hinge like a door.
On the window, made of little leaded panes, was a design
showing the Christ laying his hand upon the head of a child. One
Sunday morning in the summer as he sat by his desk in the room
with a large Bible opened before him, and the sheets of his sermon
scattered about, the minister was shocked to see, in the upper
room of the house next door, a woman lying in her bed and smoking
a cigarette while she read a book. Curtis Hartman went on tiptoe
to the window and closed it softly.
He was horror stricken at the thought of a woman smoking
and trembled also to think that his eyes, just raised from the
pages of the book of God, had looked upon the bare shoulders and
white throat of a woman. With
his brain in a whirl he went down into the pulpit and preached a
long sermon without once thinking of his gestures or his voice. The sermon attracted unusual attention because of its power
and clearness. "I
wonder if she is listening, if my voice is carrying a message into
her soul," he thought and began to hope that on future Sunday
mornings he might be able to say words that would touch and awaken
the woman apparently far gone in secret sin. The
house next door to the Presbyterian Church, through the windows of
which the minister had seen the sight that had so upset him, was
occupied by two women. Aunt
Elizabeth Swift, a grey competentlooking widow with money in the
Winesburg National Bank, lived there with her daughter Kate Swift,
a school teacher. The school teacher was thirty years old and had a neat
trim-looking figure. She had few friends and bore a reputation of
having a sharp tongue. When
he began to think about her, Curtis Hartman remembered that she
had been to Europe and had lived for two years in New York City.
"Perhaps after all her smoking means nothing," he
thought. He began to
remember that when he was a student in college and occasionally
read novels, good although somewhat worldly women, had smoked
through the pages of a book that had once fallen into his hands.
With a rush of new determination he worked on his sermons
all through the week and forgot, in his zeal to reach the ears and
the soul of this new listener, both his embarrassment in the
pulpit and the necessity of prayer in the study on Sunday
mornings. Reverend
Hartman's experience with women had been somewhat limited.
He was the son of a wagon maker from Muncie, Indiana, and
had worked his way through college. The daughter of the underwear manufacturer had boarded in a
house where he lived during his school days and he had married her
after a formal and prolonged courtship, carried on for the most
part by the girl herself. On
his marriage day the underwear manufacturer had given his daughter
five thousand dollars and he promised to leave her at least twice
that amount in his will. The minister had thought himself fortunate in marriage and
had never permitted himself to think of other women. He did not want to think of other women. What he wanted was
to do the work of God quietly and earnestly. In
the soul of the minister a struggle awoke.
From wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift, and through
his sermons to delve into her soul, he began to want also to look
again at the figure lying white and quiet in the bed.
On a Sunday morning when he could not sleep because of his
thoughts he arose and went to walk in the streets.
When he had gone along Main Street almost to the old
Richmond place he stopped and picking up a stone rushed off to the
room in the bell tower. With the stone he broke out a corner of the window and then
locked the door and sat down at the desk before the open Bible to
wait. When the shade
of the window to Kate Swift's room was raised he could see,
through the hole, directly into her bed, but she was not there.
She also had arisen and had gone for a walk and the hand
that raised the shade was the hand of Aunt Elizabeth Swift. The
minister almost wept with joy at this deliverance from the carnal
desire to "peep" and went back to his own house praising
God. In an ill moment
he forgot, however, to stop the hole in the window. The piece of
glass broken out at the corner of the window just nipped off the
bare heel of the boy standing motionless and looking with rapt
eyes into the face of the Christ. Curtis
Hartman forgot his sermon on that Sunday morning. He talked to his congregation and in his talk said that it
was a mistake for people to think of their minister as a man set
aside and intended by nature to lead a blameless life.
"Out of my own experience I know that we, who are the
ministers of God's word, are beset by the same temptations that
assail you," he declared.
"I have been tempted and have surrendered to
temptation. It is
only the hand of God, placed beneath my head, that has raised me
up. As he has raised me so also will he raise you. Do not despair. In your hour of sin raise your eyes to the skies and you will
be again and again saved." Resolutely
the minister put the thoughts of the woman in the bed out of his
mind and began to be something like a lover in the presence of his
wife. One evening when they drove out together he turned the horse
out of Buckeye Street and in the darkness on Gospel Hill, above
Waterworks Pond, put his arm about Sarah Hartman's waist.
When he had eaten breakfast in the morning and was ready to
retire to his study at the back of his house he went around the
table and kissed his wife on the cheek.
When thoughts of Kate Swift came into his head, he smiled
and raised his eyes to the skies. "Intercede for me,
Master," he muttered, "keep me in the narrow path intent
on Thy work." And
now began the real struggle in the soul of the brown-bearded
minister. By chance
he discovered that Kate Swift was in the habit of lying in her bed
in the evenings and reading a book.
A lamp stood on a table by the side of the bed and the
light streamed down upon her white shoulders and bare throat.
On the evening when he made the discovery the minister sat
at the desk in the dusty room from nine until after eleven and
when her light was put out stumbled out of the church to spend two
more hours walking and praying in the streets.
He did not want to kiss the shoulders and the throat of
Kate Swift and had not allowed his mind to dwell on such thoughts.
He did not know what he wanted. "I am God's child and
he must save me from myself," he cried, in the darkness under
the trees as he wandered in the streets.
By a tree he stood and looked at the sky that was covered
with hurrying clouds. He
began to talk to God intimately and closely.
"Please, Father, do not forget me.
Give me power to go tomorrow and repair the hole in the
window. Lift my eyes
again to the skies. Stay
with me, Thy servant, in his hour of need." Up
and down through the silent streets walked the minister and for
days and weeks his soul was troubled.
He could not understand the temptation that had come to him
nor could he fathom the reason for its coming.
In a way he began to blame God, saying to himself that he
had tried to keep his feet in the true path and had not run about
seeking sin. "Through my days as a young man and all through
my life here I have gone quietly about my work," he declared.
"Why now should I be tempted? What have I done that
this burden should be laid on me?" Three
times during the early fall and winter of that year Curtis Hartman
crept out of his house to the room in the bell tower to sit in the
darkness looking at the figure of Kate Swift lying in her bed and
later went to walk and pray in the streets.
He could not understand himself.
For weeks he would go along scarcely thinking of the school
teacher and telling himself that he had conquered the carnal
desire to look at her body. And then something would happen.
As he sat in the study of his own house, hard at work on a
sermon, he would become nervous and begin to walk up and down the
room. "I will go
out into the streets," he told himself and even as he let
himself in at the church door he persistently denied to himself
the cause of his being there.
"I will not repair the hole in the window and I will
train myself to come here at night and sit in the presence of this
woman without raising my eyes. I will not be defeated in this
thing. The Lord has
devised this temptation as a test of my soul and I will grope my
way out of darkness into the light of righteousness." One
night in January when it was bitter cold and snow lay deep on the
streets of Winesburg Curtis Hartman paid his last visit to the
room in the bell tower of the church.
It was past nine o'clock when he left his own house and he
set out so hurriedly that he forgot to put on his overshoes.
In Main Street no one was abroad but Hop Higgins the night
watchman and in the whole town no one was awake but the watchman
and young George Willard, who sat in the office of the Winesburg
Eagle trying to write a story.
Along the street to the church went the minister, plowing
through the drifts and thinking that this time he would utterly
give way to sin. "I
want to look at the woman and to think of kissing her shoulders
and I am going to let myself think what I choose," he
declared bitterly and tears came into his eyes.
He began to think that he would get out of the ministry and
try some other way of life. "I shall go to some city and get
into business," he declared.
"If my nature is such that I cannot resist sin, I
shall give myself over to sin.
At least I shall not be a hypocrite, preaching the word of
God with my mind thinking of the shoulders and neck of a woman who
does not belong to me." It
was cold in the room of the bell tower of the church on that
January night and almost as soon as he came into the room Curtis
Hartman knew that if he stayed he would be ill.
His feet were wet from tramping in the snow and there was
no fire. In the room
in the house next door Kate Swift had not yet appeared.
With grim determination the man sat down to wait.
Sitting in the chair and gripping the edge of the desk on
which lay the Bible he stared into the darkness thinking the
blackest thoughts of his life.
He thought of his wife and for the moment almost hated her.
"She has always been ashamed of passion and has
cheated me," he thought.
"Man has a right to expect living passion and beauty
in a woman. He has no
right to forget that he is an animal and in me there is something
that is Greek. I will
throw off the woman of my bosom and seek other women.
I will besiege this school teacher.
I will fly in the face of all men and if I am a creature of
carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts." The
distracted man trembled from head to foot, partly from cold,
partly from the struggle in which he was engaged.
Hours passed and a fever assailed his body.
His throat began to hurt and his teeth chattered.
His feet on the study floor felt like two cakes of ice.
Still he would not give up.
"I will see this woman and will think the thoughts I
have never dared to think," he told himself, gripping the
edge of the desk and waiting. Curtis
Hartman came near dying from the effects of that night of waiting
in the church, and also he found in the thing that happened what
he took to be the way of life for him.
On other evenings when he had waited he had not been able
to see, through the little hole in the glass, any part of the
school teacher's room except that occupied by her bed.
In the darkness he had waited until the woman suddenly
appeared sitting in the bed in her white nightrobe.
When the light was turned up she propped herself up among
the' pillows and read a book. Sometimes she smoked one of the
cigarettes. Only her
bare shoulders and throat were visible. On
the January night, after he had come near dying with cold and
after his mind had two or three times actually slipped away into
an odd land of fantasy so that he had by an exercise of will power
to force himself back into consciousness, Kate Swift appeared.
In the room next door a lamp was lighted and the waiting
man stared into an empty bed.
Then upon the bed before his eyes a naked woman threw
herself. Lying face
downward she wept and beat with her fists upon the pillow.
With a final outburst of weeping she half arose, and in the
presence of the man who had waited to look and not to think
thoughts the woman of sin began to pray.
In the lamplight her figure, slim and strong, looked like
the figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ on the leaded
window. Curtis
Hartman never remembered how he got out of the church.
With a cry he arose, dragging the heavy desk along the
floor. The Bible
fell, making a great clatter in the silence.
When the light in the house next door went out he stumbled
down the stairway and into the street.
Along the street he went and ran in at the door of the
Winesburg Eagle. To George Willard, who was tramping up and down
in the office undergoing a struggle of his own, he began to talk
half incoherently. "The
ways of God are beyond human understanding," he cried,
running in quickly and closing the door.
He began to advance upon the young man, his eyes glowing
and his voice ringing with fervor.
"I have found the light," he cried.
"After ten years in this town, God has manifested
himself to me in the body of a woman." His voice dropped and
he began to whisper. "I
did not understand," he said.
"What I took to be a trial of my soul was only a
preparation for a new and more beautiful fervor of the spirit.
God has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the
school teacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do
you know Kate Swift? Although she may not be aware of it, she is
an instrument of God, bearing the message of truth." Reverend
Curtis Hartman turned and ran out of the office. At the door he stopped, and after looking up and down the
deserted street, turned again to George Willard. "I am delivered. Have
no fear." He held up a bleeding fist for the young man to
see. "I smashed
the glass of the window," he cried.
"Now it will have to be wholly replaced.
The strength of God was in me and I broke it with my
fist."
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