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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 would 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 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 farm hand 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 Winesburg. 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 Louise 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 he 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 laughed joyously.
Into his mind came the thought that his having been lost and
frightened in the darkness was an altogether unimportant matter. He thought that 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 with 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 will 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 Katherine, began to think that at last
his prayers had been answered. Although
he was at that time only fiftyfive 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 Katherine had
fallen upon him like a blow struck by some unseen hand and the blow had
somewhat softened his egotism. He
still believed that 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.
That
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 modem
industrialism was being born. He
began to buy machines that would permit 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 give up farming altogether and start a factory in Winesburg 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 and beauty would be well-nigh forgotten in 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 tilling the land. More
than once he went into Winesburg to talk with his son-in-law John Hardy
about it. "You are a
banker and you will have chances I never had," he said and his eyes
shone. "I am 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 in 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 came 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 for him some heroic task to be done.
Jesse's mind was fixed upon the things read in newspapers and
magazines, on fortunes 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
Sherley Bentley, 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 ringing 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 in to him through the windows filled him with delight.
He thought with a shudder of the life in the house in Winesburg 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.
Eliza Stoughton the half-witted girl was poked in the ribs by a farm
hand and giggled noisily, in some distant field a cow bawled and was
answered by the cattle in the stables, and one of the farm hands spoke
sharply to the horse he was grooming by the stable door.
David leaped out of bed and ran to a 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 farm hands had now all assembled to do the morning shores, 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 at the open window, he looked into an orchard where a fat
sow wandered about with a litter of tiny pigs at her 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 took possession of him.
Every morning he made such a noise coming down stairs that Aunt
Callie, the housekeeper, declared 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 farm hands looked at
him and laughed. Henry 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 tom the black stocking she
wears on her foot."
Day
after day through the long summer, Jesse Bentley drove from farm to farm up
and down the valley of Wine Creek, and his grandson went with him.
They rode in a comfortable old phaeton 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 again 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 entire
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 plunder 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 the 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 delight. 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
and climb to the top of the trees," he shouted in a shrill voice.
Jesse
Bentley 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 now he could bring
from God a word or a sign out of the sky, that the presence of the boy and
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 rather 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 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 in his fingers.
When Jesse Bentley, absorbed in his own idea, suddenly arose and
advanced 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 through the forest.
He did not believe that the man who turned up his face and in a harsh
voice shouted at 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 the 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 on again. His
head hurt so that presently he 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
is a terrible man back there in the woods," he declared firmly, while
Jesse looked away over the tops of the trees and again his lips cried out to
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.
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