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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 altogether.
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 and life, that 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 week-end, 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 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 of 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 a daughter of a farmer or a
merchant, and there were no leisure classes.
A girl was "nice" or she was "not nice." If a
nice girl, she had a young man who came to her house to see her on Sunday
and on Wednesday evenings. Sometimes
she went with her young man to a dance or a church social.
At other times she received him at the house and was given the use of
the parlor for that purpose. No
one intruded upon her. For
hours the two sat behind closed doors.
Sometimes the lights were turned low and the young man and woman
embraced. Cheeks became hot and hair disarranged. After a year or two, if the impulse within them became strong
and insistent enough, they married.
One
evening during her first winter in Winesburg, Louise had an adventure that
gave a new impulse to her desire to break down the wall that she thought
stood between her and John Hardy. It
was Wednesday and immediately after the evening meal Albert Hardy put on his
hat and went away. Young John
brought the wood and put it in the box in Louise's room.
"You do work hard, don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then
before she could answer he also went away.
Louise
heard him go out of the house and had a mad desire to run after him.
Opening her window she leaned out and called softly, "John, dear
John, come back, don't go away." The night was cloudy and she could not
see far into the darkness, but as she waited she fancied she could hear a
soft little noise as of someone going on tiptoes through the trees in the
orchard. She was frightened and
closed the window quickly. For
an hour she moved about the room trembling with excitement and when she
could not longer bear the waiting, she crept into the hall and down the
stairs into a closet-like room that opened off the parlor.
Louise
had decided that she would perform the courageous act that had for weeks
been in her mind. She was convinced that John Hardy had concealed himself in
the orchard beneath her window and she was determined to find him and tell
him that she wanted him to come close to her, to hold her in his arms, to
tell her of his thoughts and dreams and to listen while she told him her
thoughts and dreams. "In the darkness it will be easier to say
things," she whispered to herself, as she stood in the little room
groping for the door.
And
then suddenly Louise realized that she was not alone in the house.
In the parlor on the other side of the door a man's voice spoke
softly and the door opened. Louise just had time to conceal herself in a little opening
beneath the stairway when Mary Hardy, accompanied by her young man, came
into the little dark room.
For
an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and listened.
Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the man who had come to
spend the evening with her, brought to the country girl a knowledge of men
and women. Putting her head
down until she was curled into a little ball she lay perfectly still. It
seemed to her that by some strange impulse of the gods, a great gift had
been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not understand the older woman's
determined protest.
The
young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed her.
When she struggled and laughed, he but held her the more tightly.
For an hour the contest between them went on and then they went back
into the parlor and Louise escaped up the stairs.
"I hope you were quiet out there.
You must not disturb the little mouse at her studies," she heard
Harriet saying to her sister as she stood by her own door in the hallway
above.
Louise
wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night, when all in the house were
asleep, she crept downstairs and slipped it under his door.
She was afraid that if she did not do the thing at once her courage
would fail. In the note she
tried to be quite definite about what she wanted.
"I want someone to love me and I want to love someone," she
wrote. "If you are the one for me I want you to come into the orchard
at night and make a noise under my window.
It will be easy for me to crawl down over the shed and come to you.
I am thinking about it all the time, so if you are to come at all you
must come soon."
For
a long time Louise did not know what would be the outcome of her bold
attempt to secure for herself a lover.
In a way she still did not know whether or not she wanted him to
come. Sometimes it seemed to
her that to be held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of life, and
then a new impulse came and she was terribly afraid.
The age-old woman's desire to be possessed had taken possession of
her, but so vague was her notion of life that it seemed to her just the
touch of John Hardy's hand upon her own hand would satisfy.
She wondered if he would understand that. At the table next day while Albert Hardy talked and the two
girls whispered and laughed, she did not look at John but at the table and
as soon as possible escaped. In
the evening she went out of the house until she was sure he had taken the
wood to her room and gone away. When
after several evenings of intense listening she heard no call from the
darkness in the orchard, she was half beside herself with grief and decided
that for her there was no way to break through the wall that had shut her
off from the joy of life.
And
then on a Monday evening two or three weeks after the writing of the note,
John Hardy came for her. Louise
had so entirely given up the thought of his coming that for a long time she
did not hear the call that came up from the orchard.
On the Friday evening before, as she was being driven back to the
farm for the week-end by one of the hired men, she had on an impulse done a
thing that had startled her, and as John Hardy stood in the darkness below
and called her name softly and insistently, she walked about in her room and
wondered what new impulse had led her to commit so ridiculous an act.
The
farm hand, a young fellow with black curly hair, had come for her somewhat
late on that Friday evening and they drove home in the darkness.
Louise, whose mind was filled with thoughts of John Hardy, tried to
make talk but the country boy was embarrassed and would say nothing.
Her mind began to review the loneliness of her childhood and she
remembered with a pang the sharp new loneliness that had just come to her.
"I hate everyone," she cried suddenly, and then broke forth
into a tirade that frightened her escort.
"I hate father and the old man Hardy, too," she declared
vehemently. "I get my lessons there in the school in town but I hate
that also."
Louise
frightened the farm hand still more by turning and putting her cheek down
upon his shoulder. Vaguely she
hoped that he like that young man who had stood in the darkness with Mary
would put his arms about her and kiss her, but the country boy was only
alarmed. He struck the horse
with the whip and began to whistle. "The
road is rough, eh?" he said loudly.
Louise was so angry that reaching up she snatched his hat from his
head and threw it into the road. When
he jumped out of the buggy and went to get it, she drove off and left him to
walk the rest of the way back to the farm.
Louise
Bentley took John Hardy to be her lover. That was not what she wanted but it
was so the young man had interpreted her approach to him, and so anxious was
she to achieve something else that she made no resistance.
When after a few months they were both afraid that she was about to
become a mother, they went one evening to the county seat and were married.
For a few months they lived in the Hardy house and then took a house
of their own. All during the
first year Louise tried to make her husband understand the vague and
intangible hunger that had led to the writing of the note and that was still
unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into his arms and tried to talk of
it, but always without success. Filled
with his own notions of love between men and women, he did not listen but
began to kiss her upon the lips. That
confused her so that in the end she did not want to be kissed. She did not
know what she wanted.
When
the alarm that had tricked them into marriage proved to be groundless, she
was angry and said bitter, hurtful things.
Later when her son David was born, she could not nurse him and did
not know whether she wanted him or not.
Sometimes she stayed in the room with him all day, walking about and
occasionally creeping close to touch him tenderly with her hands, and then
other days came when she did not want to see or be near the tiny bit of
humanity that had come into the house.
When John Hardy reproached her for her cruelty, she laughed.
"It is a man child and will get what it wants anyway," she
said sharply. "Had it been
a woman child there is nothing in the world I would not have done for
it."
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