|
Belle
Carpenter occasionally walked out in the evening with George Willard.
Secretly she loved another man, but her love affair, about which no
one knew, caused her much anxiety. She
was in love with Ed Handby, bartender in Ed Griffith's Saloon, and went
about with the young reporter as a kind of relief to her feelings.
She did not think that her station in life would permit her to be
seen in the company of the bartender and walked about under the trees with
George Willard and let him kiss her to relieve a longing that was very
insistent in her nature. She
felt that she could keep the younger man within bounds.
About Ed Handby she was somewhat uncertain.
Handby,
the bartender, was a tall, broad-shouldered man of thirty who lived in a
room upstairs above Griffith's saloon.
His fists were large and his eyes unusually small, but his voice, as
though striving to conceal the power back of his fists, was soft and quiet.
At
twenty-five the bartender had inherited a large farm from an uncle in
Indiana. When sold, the farm
brought in eight thousand dollars, which Ed spent in six months. Going to Sandusky, on Lake Erie, he began an orgy of
dissipation, the story of which afterward filled his home town with awe.
Here and there he went throwing the money about, driving carriages
through the streets, giving wine parties to crowds of men and women, playing
cards for high stakes and keeping mistresses whose wardrobes cost him
hundreds of dollars. One night
at a resort called Cedar Point, he got into a fight and ran amuck like a
wild thing. With his fist he
broke a large mirror in the wash room of a hotel and later went about
smashing windows and breaking chairs in dance halls for the joy of hearing
the glass rattle on the floor and seeing the terror in the eyes of clerks
who had come from Sandusky to spend the evening at the resort with their
sweethearts.
The
affair between Ed Handby and Belle Carpenter on the surface amounted to
nothing. He had succeeded in
spending but one evening in her company. On that evening he hired a horse
and buggy at Wesley Moyer's livery barn and took her for a drive. The
conviction that she was the woman his nature demanded and that he must get
her settled upon him and he told her of his desires.
The bartender was ready to marry and to begin trying to earn money
for the support of his wife, but so simple was his nature that he found it
difficult to explain his intentions. His
body ached with physical longing and with his body he expressed himself.
Taking the milliner into his arms and holding her tightly in spite of
her struggles, he kissed her until she became helpless.
Then he brought her back to town and let her out of the buggy.
"When I get hold of you again I'll not let you go.
You can't play with me," he declared as he turned to drive away.
Then, jumping out of the buggy, he gripped her shoulders with his
strong hands. "I'll keep
you for good the next time," he said.
"You might as well make up your mind to that.
It's you and me for it and I'm going to have you before I get
through."
One
night in January when there was a new moon George Willard, who was in Ed
Handby's mind the only obstacle to his getting Belle Carpenter, went for a
walk. Early that evening George
went into Ransom Surbeck's pool room with Seth Richmond and Art Wilson, son
of the town butcher. Seth
Richmond stood with his back against the wall and remained silent, but
George Willard talked. The pool
room was filled with Winesburg boys and they talked of women.
The young reporter got into that vein.
He said that women should look out for themselves, that the fellow
who went out with a girl was not responsible for what happened.
As he talked he looked about, eager for attention.
He held the floor for five minutes and then Art Wilson began to talk.
Art was learning the barber's trade in Cal Prouse's shop and already began
to consider himself an authority in such matters as baseball, horse racing,
drinking, and going about with women. He
began to tell of a night when he with two men from Winesburg went into a
house of prostitution at the county seat.
The butcher's son held a cigar in the side of his mouth and as he
talked spat on the floor. "The women in the place couldn't embarrass me although
they tried hard enough," he boasted.
"One of the girls in the house tried to get fresh, but I fooled
her. As soon as she began to talk I went and sat in her lap.
Everyone in the room laughed when I kissed her.
I taught her to let me alone."
George
Willard went out of the pool room and into Main Street.
For days the weather had been bitter cold with a high wind blowing
down on the town from Lake Erie, eighteen miles to the north, but on that
night the wind had died away and a new moon made the night unusually lovely.
Without thinking where he was going or what he wanted to do, George
went out of Main Street and began walking in dimly lighted streets filled
with frame houses.
Out
of doors under the black sky filled with stars he forgot his companions of
the pool room. Because it was
dark and he was alone he began to talk aloud. In a spirit of play he reeled
along the street imitating a drunken man and then imagined himself a soldier
clad in shining boots that reached to the knees and wearing a sword that
jingled as he walked. As a
soldier he pictured himself as an inspector, passing before a long line of
men who stood at attention. He began to examine the accoutrements of the
men. Before a tree he stopped and began to scold.
"Your pack is not in order," he said sharply.
"How many times will I have to speak of this matter? Everything
must be in order here. We have
a difficult task before us and no difficult task can be done without
order."
Hypnotized
by his own words, the young man stumbled along the board sidewalk saying
more words. "There is a
law for armies and for men too," he muttered, lost in reflection.
"The law begins with little things and spreads out until it
covers everything. In every
little thing there must be order, in the place where men work, in their
clothes, in their thoughts. I
myself must be orderly. I must
learn that law. I must get
myself into touch with something orderly and big that swings through the
night like a star. In my little
way I must begin to learn something, to give and swing and work with life,
with the law."
George
Willard stopped by a picket fence near a street lamp and his body began to
tremble. He had never before
thought such thoughts as had just come into his head and he wondered where
they had come from. For the
moment it seemed to him that some voice outside of himself had been talking
as he walked. He was amazed and
delighted with his own mind and when he walked on again spoke of the matter
with fervor. "To come out
of Ransom Surbeck's pool room and think things like that," he
whispered. "It is better to be alone.
If I talked like Art Wilson the boys would understand me but they
wouldn't understand what I've been thinking down here."
In
Winesburg, as in all Ohio towns of twenty years ago, there was a section in
which lived day laborers. As
the time of factories had not yet come, the laborers worked in the fields or
were section hands on the railroads. They
worked twelve hours a day and received one dollar for the long day of toil.
The houses in which they lived were small cheaply constructed wooden
affairs with a garden at the back. The
more comfortable among them kept cows and perhaps a pig, housed in a little
shed at the rear of the garden.
With
his head filled with resounding thoughts, George Willard walked into such a
street on the clear January night. The
street was dimly lighted and in places there was no sidewalk.
In the scene that lay about him there was something that excited his
already aroused fancy. For a year he had been devoting all of his odd moments to the
reading of books and now some tale he had read concerning fife in old world
towns of the middle ages came sharply back to his mind so that he stumbled
forward with the curious feeling of one revisiting a place that had been a
part of some former existence. On
an impulse he turned out of the street and went into a little dark alleyway
behind the sheds in which lived the cows and pigs.
For
a half hour he stayed in the alleyway, smelling the strong smell of animals
too closely housed and letting his mind play with the strange new thoughts
that came to him. The very
rankness of the smell of manure in the clear sweet air awoke something heady
in his brain. The poor little
houses lighted by kerosene lamps, the smoke from the chimneys mounting
straight up into the clear air, the grunting of pigs, the women clad in
cheap calico dresses and washing dishes in the kitchens, the footsteps of
men coming out of the houses and going off to the stores and saloons of Main
Street, the dogs barking and the children crying--all of these things made
him seem, as he lurked in the darkness, oddly detached and apart from all
life.
The
excited young man, unable to bear the weight of his own thoughts, began to
move cautiously along the alleyway. A
dog attacked him and had to be driven away with stones, and a man appeared
at the door of one of the houses and swore at the dog. George went into a
vacant lot and throwing back his head looked up at the sky. He felt unutterably big and remade by the simple experience
through which he had been passing and in a kind of fervor of emotion put up
his hands, thrusting them into the darkness above his head and muttering
words. The desire to say words
overcame him and he said words without meaning, rolling them over on his
tongue and saying them because they were brave words, full of meaning.
"Death," he muttered, night, the sea, fear,
loveliness."
George
Willard came out of the vacant lot and stood again on the sidewalk facing
the houses. He felt that all of
the people in the little street must be brothers and sisters to him and he
wished he had the courage to call them out of their houses and to shake
their hands. "If there
were only a woman here I would take hold of her hand and we would run until
we were both tired out," he thought.
"That would make me feel better." With the thought of a
woman in his mind he walked out of the street and went toward the house
where Belle Carpenter lived. He thought she would understand his mood and
that he could achieve in her presence a position he had long been wanting to
achieve. In the past when he had been with her and had kissed her lips
he had come away filled with anger at himself.
He had felt like one being used for some obscure purpose and had not
enjoyed the feeling. Now he
thought he had suddenly become too big to be used.
When
George got to Belle Carpenter's house there had already been a visitor there
before him. Ed Handby had come
to the door and calling Belle out of the house had tried to talk to her.
He had wanted to ask the woman to come away with him and to be his
wife, but when she came and stood by the door he lost his self-assurance and
became sullen. "You stay
away from that kid," he growled, thinking of George Willard, and then,
not knowing what else to say, turned to go away.
"If I catch you together I will break your bones and his
too," he added. The
bartender had come to woo, not to threaten, and was angry with himself
because of his failure.
When
her lover had departed Belle went indoors and ran hurriedly upstairs.
From a window at the upper part of the house she saw Ed Handby cross
the street and sit down on a horse block before the house of a neighbor.
In the dim light the man sat motionless holding his head in his
hands. She was made happy by the sight, and when George Willard came
to the door she greeted him effusively and hurriedly put on her hat.
She thought that, as she walked through the streets with young
Willard, Ed Handby would follow and she wanted to make him suffer.
For
an hour Belle Carpenter and the young reporter walked about under the trees
in the sweet night air. George
Willard was full of big words. The
sense of power that had come to him during the hour in the darkness in the
alleyway remained with him and he talked boldly, swaggering along and
swinging his arms about. He
wanted to make Belle Carpenter realize that he was aware of his former
weakness and that he had changed. "You'll
find me different," he declared, thrusting his hands into his pockets
and looking boldly into her eyes. "I
don't know why but it is so. You've
got to take me for a man or let me alone.
That's how it is."
Up
and down the quiet streets under the new moon went the woman and the boy.
When George had finished talking they turned down a side street and
went across a bridge into a path that ran up the side of a hill.
The hill began at Waterworks Pond and climbed upward to the Winesburg
Fair Grounds. On the hillside
grew dense bushes and small trees and among the bushes were little open
spaces carpeted with long grass, now stiff and frozen.
As
he walked behind the woman up the hill George Willard's heart began to beat
rapidly and his shoulders straightened. Suddenly he decided that Belle Carpenter was about to
surrender herself to him. The
new force that had manifested itself in him had, he felt, been at work upon
her and had led to her conquest. The
thought made him half drunk with the sense of masculine power.
Although he had been annoyed that as they walked about she had not
seemed to be listening to his words, the fact that she had accompanied him
to this place took all his doubts away.
"It is different. Everything
has become different," he thought and taking hold of her shoulder
turned her about and stood looking at her, his eyes shining with pride.
Belle
Carpenter did not resist. When
he kissed her upon the lips she leaned heavily against him and looked over
his shoulder into the darkness. In
her whole attitude there was a suggestion of waiting. Again, as in the
alleyway, George Willard's mind ran off into words and, holding the woman
tightly he whispered the words into the still night.
"Lust," he whispered, "lust and night and women."
George
Willard did not understand what happened to him that night on the hillside.
Later, when he got to his own room, he wanted to weep and then grew
half insane with anger and hate. He
hated Belle Carpenter and was sure that all his life he would continue to
hate her. On the hillside he
had led the woman to one of the little open spaces among the bushes and had
dropped to his knees beside her. As
in the vacant lot, by the laborers' houses, he had put up his hands in
gratitude for the new power in himself and was waiting for the woman to
speak when Ed Handby appeared.
The
bartender did not want to beat the boy, who he thought had tried to take his
woman away. He knew that
beating was unnecessary, that he had power within himself to accomplish his
purpose without using his fists. Gripping
George by the shoulder and pulling him to his feet, he held him with one
hand while he looked at Belle Carpenter seated on the grass.
Then with a quick wide movement of his arm he sent the younger man
sprawling away into the bushes and began to bully the woman, who had risen
to her feet. "You're no
good," he said roughly. "I've
half a mind not to bother with you. I'd
let you alone if I didn't want you so much."
On
his hands and knees in the bushes George Willard stared at the scene before
him and tried hard to think. He
prepared to spring at the man who had humiliated him.
To be beaten seemed to be infinitely better than to be thus hurled
ignominiously aside.
Three
times the young reporter sprang at Ed Handby and each time the bartender,
catching him by the shoulder, hurled him back into the bushes. The older man
seemed prepared to keep the exercise going indefinitely but George Willard's
head struck the root of a tree and he lay still. Then Ed Handby took Belle Carpenter by the arm and marched
her away.
George
heard the man and woman making their way through the bushes.
As he crept down the hillside his heart was sick within him.
He hated himself and he hated the fate that had brought about his
humiliation. When his mind went
back to the hour alone in the alleyway he was puzzled and stopping in the
darkness listened, hoping to hear again the voice outside himself that had
so short a time before put new courage into his heart.
When his way homeward led him again into the street of frame houses
he could not bear the sight and began to run, wanting to get quickly out of
the neighborhood that now seemed to him utterly squalid and commonplace.
|
Table of Contents
