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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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