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Up
from the log he sprang and began to pile sticks on the fire.
Looking about to be sure he was alone he talked aloud pretending he
was in the presence of the woman, "Oh,, you're just letting on, you
know you are," he declared. "I am going to find out about you. You wait and see."
The
young man got up and went back along the path toward town leaving the fire
blazing in the wood. As he went
through the streets the skates clanked in his pocket.
In his own room in the New Willard House he built a fire in the stove
and lay down on top of the bed. He
began to have lustful thoughts and pulling down the shade of the window
closed his eyes and turned his face to the wall.
He took a pillow into his arms and embraced it thinking first of the
school teacher, who by her words had stirred something within him, and later
of Helen White, the slim daughter of the town banker, with whom he had been
for a long time half in love.
By
nine o'clock of that evening snow lay deep in the streets and the weather
had become bitter cold. It was difficult to walk about.
The stores were dark and the people had crawled away to their houses.
The evening train from Cleveland was very late but nobody was interested in
its arrival. By ten o'clock all
but four of the eighteen hundred citizens of the town were in bed.
Hop
Higgins, the night watchman, was partially awake. He was lame and carried a heavy stick. On dark nights he carried a lantern. Between nine and ten o'clock he went his rounds.
Up and down Main Street he stumbled through the drifts trying the
doors of the stores. Then he
went into alleyways and tried the back doors.
Finding all tight he hurried around the corner to the New Willard
House and beat on the door. Through the rest of the night he intended to stay by the
stove. "You go to bed.
I'll keep the stove going," he said to the boy who slept on a
cot in the hotel office.
Hop
Higgins sat down by the stove and took off his shoes. When the boy had gone to sleep he began to think of his own
affairs. He intended to paint
his house in the spring and sat by the stove calculating the cost of paint
and labor. That led him into
other calculations. The night
watchman was sixty years old and wanted to retire.
He had been a soldier in the Civil War and drew a small pension.
He hoped to find some new method of making a living and aspired to
become a professional breeder of ferrets. Already he had four of the
strangely shaped savage little creatures, that are used by sportsmen in the
pursuit of rabbits, in the cellar of his house.
"Now I have one male and three females," he mused.
"If I am lucky by spring I shall have twelve or fifteen. In
another year I shall be able to begin advertising ferrets for sale in the
sporting papers."
The
nightwatchman settled into his chair and his mind became a blank.
He did not sleep. By years of practice he had trained himself to sit for hours
through the long nights neither asleep nor awake. In the morning he was
almost as refreshed as though he had slept.
With
Hop Higgins safely stowed away in the chair behind the stove only three
people were awake in Winesburg. George
Willard was in the office of the Eagle pretending to be at work on the
writing of a story but in reality continuing the mood of the morning by the
fire in the wood. In the bell
tower of the Presbyterian Church the Reverend Curtis Hartman was sitting in
the darkness preparing himself for a revelation from God, and Kate Swift,
the school teacher, was leaving her house for a walk in the storm.
It
was past ten o'clock when Kate Swift set out and the walk was
unpremeditated. It was as
though the man and the boy, by thinking of her, had driven her forth into
the wintry streets. Aunt
Elizabeth Swift had gone to the county seat concerning some business in
connection with mortgages in which she had money invested and would not be
back until the next day. By a
huge stove, called a base burner, in the living room of the house sat the
daughter reading a book. Suddenly
she sprang to her feet and, snatching a cloak from a rack by the front door,
ran out of the house.
At
the age of thirty Kate Swift was not known in Winesburg as a pretty woman.
Her complexion was not good and her face was covered with blotches
that indicated ill health. Alone in the night in the winter streets she was lovely.
Her back was straight, her shoulders square, and her features were as
the features of a tiny goddess on a pedestal in a garden in the dim light of
a summer evening.
During
the afternoon the school teacher had been to see Doctor Welling concerning
her health. The doctor had
scolded her and had declared she was in danger of losing her hearing. It was foolish for Kate Swift to be abroad in the storm,
foolish and perhaps dangerous.
The
woman in the streets did not remember the words of the doctor and would not
have turned back had she remembered. She
was very cold but after walking for five minutes no longer minded the cold.
First she went to the end of her own street and then across a pair of hay
scales set in the ground before a feed barn and into Trunion Pike.
Along Trunion Pike she went to Ned Winters' barn and turning east
followed a street of low frame houses that led over Gospel Hill and into
Sucker Road that ran down a shallow valley past Ike Smead's chicken farm to
Waterworks Pond. As she went
along, the bold, excited mood that had driven her out of doors passed and
then returned again.
There
was something biting and forbidding in the character of Kate Swift.
Everyone felt it. In the schoolroom she was silent, cold, and stern, and yet in
an odd way very close to her pupils. Once
in a long while something seemed to have come over her and she was happy.
All of the children in the schoolroom felt the effect of her
happiness. For a time they did
not work but sat back in their chairs and looked at her.
With
hands clasped behind her back the school teacher walked up and down in the
schoolroom and talked very rapidly. It
did not seem to matter what subject came into her mind.
Once she talked to the children of Charles Lamb and made up strange,
intimate little stories concerning the life of the dead writer.
The stories were told with the air of one who had lived in a house
with Charles Lamb and knew all the secrets of his private life.
The children were somewhat confused, thinking Charles Lamb must be
someone who had once lived in Winesburg.
On
another occasion the teacher talked to the children of Benvenuto Cellini.
That time they laughed. What a bragging, blustering, brave, lovable
fellow she made of the old artist! Concerning him also she invented
anecdotes. There was one of a
German music teacher who had a room above Cellini's lodgings in the city of
Milan that made the boys guffaw. Sugars McNutts, a fat boy with red cheeks,
laughed so hard that he became dizzy and fell off his seat and Kate Swift
laughed with him. Then suddenly
she became again cold and stern.
On
the winter night when she walked through the deserted snow-covered streets,
a crisis had come into the life of the school teacher. Although no one in Winesburg would have suspected it, her
life had been very adventurous. It
was still adventurous. Day by day as she worked in the schoolroom or walked
in the streets, grief, hope, and desire fought within her. Behind a cold exterior the most extraordinary events
transpired in her mind. The
people of the town thought of her as a confirmed old maid and because she
spoke sharply and went her own way thought her lacking in all the human
feeling that did so much to make and mar their own lives. In reality she was
the most eagerly passionate soul among them, and more than once, in the five
years since she had come back from her travels to settle in Winesburg and
become a school teacher, had been compelled to go out of the house and walk
half through the night fighting out some battle raging within.
Once on a night when it rained she had stayed out six hours and when
she came home had a quarrel with Aunt Elizabeth Swift.
"I am glad you're not a man," said the mother sharply.
"More than once I've waited for your father to come home, not
knowing what new mess he had got into.
I've had my share of uncertainty and you cannot blame me if I do not
want to see the worst side of him reproduced in you."
Kate
Swift's mind was ablaze with thoughts of George Willard.
In something he had written as a school boy she thought she had
recognized the spark of genius and wanted to blow on the spark. One day in
the summer she had gone to the Eagle office and finding the boy unoccupied
had taken him out Main Street to the Fair Ground, where the two sat on a
grassy bank and talked. The
school teacher tried to bring home to the mind of the boy some conception of
the difficulties he would have to face as a writer. "You will have to know life," she declared, and her
voice trembled with earnestness. She took hold of George Willard's shoulders
and turned him about so that she could look into his eyes.
A passer-by might have thought them about to embrace.
"If you are to become a writer you'll have to stop fooling with
words," she explained. "It
would be better to give up the notion of writing until you are better
prepared. Now it's time to be living.
I don't want to frighten you, but I would like to make you understand
the import of what you think of attempting.
You must not become a mere peddler of words. The thing to learn is to know what people are thinking about,
not what they say."
On
the evening before that stormy Thursday night when the Reverend Curtis
Hartman sat in the bell tower of the church waiting to look at her body,
young Willard had gone to visit the teacher and to borrow a book. It was then the thing happened that confused and puzzled the
boy. He had the book under his
arm and was preparing to depart. Again
Kate Swift talked with great earnestness.
Night was coming on and the light in the room grew dim.
As he turned to go she spoke his name softly and with an impulsive
movement took hold of his hand. Because the reporter was rapidly becoming a man something of
his man's appeal, combined with the winsomeness of the boy, stirred the
heart of the lonely woman. A
passionate desire to have him understand the import of life, to learn to
interpret it truly and honestly, swept over her.
Leaning forward, her lips brushed his cheek.
At the same moment he for the first time became aware of the marked
beauty of her features. They
were both embarrassed, and to relieve her feeling she became harsh and
domineering. "What's the
use? It will be ten years before you begin to understand what I mean when I
talk to you," she cried passionately.
On
the night of the storm and while the minister sat in the church waiting for
her, Kate Swift went to the office of the Winesburg Eagle, intending to have
another talk with the boy. After
the long walk in the snow she was cold, lonely, and tired.
As she came through Main Street she saw the fight from the printshop
window shining on the snow and on an impulse opened the door and went in.
For an hour she sat by the stove in the office talking of life.
She talked with passionate earnestness.
The impulse that had driven her out into the snow poured itself out
into talk. She became inspired
as she sometimes did in the presence of the children in school.
A great eagerness to open the door of life to the boy, who had been
her pupil and who she thought might possess a talent for the understanding
of life, had possession of her. So
strong was her passion that it became something physical.
Again her hands took hold of his shoulders and she turned him about.
In the dim light her eyes blazed.
She arose and laughed, not sharply as was customary with her, but in
a queer, hesitating way. "I
must be going," she said. "In
a moment, if I stay, I'll be wanting to kiss you."
In
the newspaper office a confusion arose.
Kate Swift turned and walked to the door.
She was a teacher but she was also a woman. As she looked at George Willard, the passionate desire to be
loved by a man, that had a thousand times before swept like a storm over her
body, took possession of her. In the lamplight George Willard looked no
longer a boy, but a man ready to play the part of a man.
The
school teacher let George Willard take her into his arms.
In the warm little office the air became suddenly heavy and the
strength went out of her body. Leaning against a low counter by the door she waited.
When he came and put a hand on her shoulder she turned and let her
body fall heavily against him. For George Willard the confusion was immediately increased.
For a moment he held the body of the woman tightly against his body
and then it stiffened. Two sharp little fists began to beat on his face. When the
school teacher had run away and left him alone, he walked up and down the
office swearing furiously.
It
was into this confusion that the Reverend Curtis Hartman protruded himself.
When he came in George Willard thought the town had gone mad. Shaking
a bleeding fist in the air, the minister proclaimed the woman George had
only a moment before held in his arms an instrument of God bearing a message
of truth.
George
blew out the lamp by the window and locking the door of the printshop went
home. Through the hotel office, past Hop Higgins lost in his dream of the
raising of ferrets, he went and up into his own room. The fire in the stove had gone out and he undressed in the
cold. When he got into bed the
sheets were like blankets of dry snow.
George
Willard rolled about in the bed on which had lain in the afternoon hugging
the pillow and thinking thoughts of Kate Swift.
The words of the minister, who he thought had gone suddenly insane,
rang in his ears. His eyes
stared about the room. The
resentment, natural to the baffled male, passed and he tried to understand
what had happened. He could not
make it out. Over and over he
turned the matter in his mind. Hours
passed and he began to think it must be time for another day to come.
At four o'clock he pulled the covers up about his neck and tried to
sleep. When he became drowsy
and closed his eyes, he raised a hand and with it groped about in the
darkness. "I have missed
something. I have missed
something Kate Swift was trying to tell me," he muttered sleepily.
Then he slept and in all Winesburg he was the last soul on that
winter night to go to sleep.
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