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When
the moment of sophistication came to George Willard his mind turned to Helen
White, the Winesburg banker's daughter.
Always he had been conscious of the girl growing into womanhood as he
grew into manhood. Once on a
summer night when he was eighteen, he had walked with her on a country road
and in her presence had given way to an impulse to boast, to make himself
appear big and significant in her eyes.
Now he wanted to see her for another purpose.
He wanted to tell her of the new impulses that had come to him.
He had tried to make her think of him as a man when he knew nothing
of manhood and now he wanted to be with her and to try to make her feel the
change he believed had taken place in his nature.
As
for Helen White, she also had come to a period of change. What George felt, she in her young woman's way felt also.
She was no longer a girl and hungered to reach into the grace and
beauty of womanhood. She had
come home from Cleveland, where she was attending college, to spend a day at
the Fair. She also had begun to
have memories. During the day
she sat in the grand-stand with a young man, one of the instructors from the
college, who was a guest of her mother's.
The young man was of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt at once he
would not do for her purpose. At
the Fair she was glad to be seen in his company as he was well dressed and a
stranger. She knew that the
fact of his presence would create an impression.
During the day she was happy, but when night came on she began to
grow restless. She wanted to
drive the instructor away, to get out of his presence.
While they sat together in the grand-stand and while the eyes of
former schoolmates were upon them, she paid so much attention to her escort
that he grew interested. "A scholar needs money.
I should marry a woman with money," he mused.
Helen
White was thinking of George Willard even as he wandered gloomily through
the crowds thinking of her. She
remembered the summer evening when they had walked together and wanted to
walk with him again. She
thought that the months she had spent in the city, the going to theaters and
the seeing of great crowds wandering in lighted thoroughfares, had changed
her profoundly. She wanted him
to feel and be conscious of the change in her nature.
The
summer evening together that had left its mark on the memory of both the
young man and woman had, when looked at quite sensibly, been rather stupidly
spent. They had walked out of
town along a country road. Then
they had stopped by a fence near a field of young corn and George had taken
off his coat and let it hang on his arm.
"Well, I've stayed here in Winesburg--yes--I've not yet gone
away but I'm growing up," he had said.
"I've been reading books and I've been thinking.
I'm going to try to amount to something in life.
"Well,"
he explained, "that isn't the point.
Perhaps I'd better quit talking."
The confused boy put his hand on the girl's arm. His voice trembled.
The two started to walk back along the road toward town.
In his desperation George boasted, "I'm going to be a big man,
the biggest that ever lived here in Winesburg," he declared.
"I want you to do something, I don't know what.
Perhaps it is none of my business.
I want you to try to be different from other women.
You see the point. It's none of my business I tell you. I want you to be a beautiful woman. You see what I want."
The
boy's voice failed and in silence the two came back into town and went along
the street to Helen White's house. At
the gate he tried to say something impressive.
Speeches he had thought out came into his head, but they seemed
utterly pointless. "I
thought--I used to think--I had it in my mind you would marry Seth Richmond.
Now I know you won't," was all he could find to say as she went
through the gate and toward the door of her house.
On
the warm fall evening as he stood in the stairway and looked at the crowd
drifting through Main Street, George thought of the talk beside the field of
young corn and was ashamed of the figure he had made of himself. In the street the people surged up and down like cattle
confined in a pen. Buggies and
wagons almost filled the narrow thoroughfare.
A band played and small boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between
the legs of men. Young men with
shining red faces walked awkwardly about with girls on their arms. In a room above one of the stores, where a dance was to be
held, the fiddlers tuned their instruments.
The broken sounds floated down through an open window and out across
the murmur of voices and the loud blare of the horns of the band.
The medley of sounds got on young Willard's nerves.
Everywhere, on all sides, the sense of crowding, moving life closed
in about him. He wanted to run away by himself and think.
"If she wants to stay with that fellow she may.
Why should I care? What difference does it make to me?" he
growled and went along Main Street and through Hern's Grocery into a side
street.
George
felt so utterly lonely and dejected that he wanted to weep but pride made
him walk rapidly along, swinging his arms.
He came to Wesley Moyer's livery barn and stopped in the shadows to
listen to a group of men who talked of a race Wesley's stallion, Tony Tip,
had won at the Fair during the afternoon.
A crowd had gathered in front of the barn and before the crowd walked
Wesley, prancing up and down boasting.
He held a whip in his hand and kept tapping the ground. Little puffs of dust arose in the lamplight.
"Hell, quit your talking," Wesley exclaimed.
"I wasn't afraid, I knew I had 'em beat all the time.
I wasn't afraid."
Ordinarily
George Willard would have been intensely interested in the boasting of
Moyer, the horseman. Now it
made him angry. He turned and
hurried away along the street. "Old
windbag," he sputtered. "Why
does he want to be bragging? Why don't he shut up?"
George
went into a vacant lot and, as he hurried along, fell over a pile of
rubbish. A nail protruding from
an empty barrel tore his trousers. He
sat down on the ground and swore. With
a pin he mended the torn place and then arose and went on.
"I'll go to Helen White's house, that's what I'll do.
I'll walk right in. I'll
say that I want to see her. I'll
walk right in and sit down, that's what I'll do," he declared, climbing
over a fence and beginning to run.
On
the veranda of Banker White's house Helen was restless and distraught.
The instructor sat between the mother and daughter.
His talk wearied the girl. Although
he had also been raised in an Ohio town, the instructor began to put on the
airs of the city. He wanted to
appear cosmopolitan. "I
like the chance you have given me to study the background out of which most
of our girls come," he declared. "It
was good of you, Mrs. White, to have me down for the day." He turned to
Helen and laughed. "Your
life is still bound up with the life of this town?" he asked.
"There are people here in whom you are interested?" To the
girl his voice sounded pompous and heavy.
Helen
arose and went into the house. At
the door leading to a garden at the back she stopped and stood listening.
Her mother began to talk. "There
is no one here fit to associate with a girl of Helen's breeding," she
said.
Helen
ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the house and into the garden.
In the darkness she stopped and stood trembling.
It seemed to her that the world was full of meaningless people saying
words. Afire with eagerness she ran through a garden gate and,
turning a corner by the banker's barn, went into a little side street.
"George! Where are you, George?" she cried, filled with
nervous excitement. She stopped
running, and leaned against a tree to laugh hysterically.
Along the dark little street came George Willard, still saying words.
"I'm going to walk right into her house.
I'll go right in and sit down, " he declared as he came up to
her. He stopped and stared
stupidly. "Come on,"
he said and took hold of her hand. With
hanging heads they walked away along the street under the trees.
Dry leaves rustled under foot. Now
that he had found her George wondered what he had better do and say.
At
the upper end of the Fair Ground, in Winesburg, there is a half decayed old
grand-stand. It has never been
painted and the boards are all warped out of shape.
The Fair Ground stands on top of a low hill rising out of the valley
of Wine Creek and from the grand-stand one can see at night, over a
cornfield, the lights of the town reflected against the sky.
George
and Helen climbed the hill to the Fair Ground, coming by the path past
Waterworks Pond. The feeling of loneliness and isolation that had come to
the young man in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and
intensified by the presence of Helen. What
he felt was reflected in her.
In
youth there are always two forces fighting in people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles against the thing
that reflects and remembers, and the older, the more sophisticated thing had
possession of George Willard. Sensing
his mood, Helen walked beside him filled with respect.
When they got to the grand-stand they climbed up under the roof and
sat down on one of the long bench-like seats.
There
is something memorable in the experience to be had by going into a fair
ground that stands at the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after the
annual fair has been held. The
sensation is one never to be forgotten.
On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the day just passed, have come the people
pouring in from the town and the country around.
Farmers with their wives and children and all the people from the
hundreds of little frame houses have gathered within these board walls.
Young girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of the
affairs of their lives. The
place has been filled to overflowing with life.
It has itched and squirmed with life and now it is night and the life
has all gone away. The silence
is almost terrifying. One
conceals oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree and what there
is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified.
One shudders at the thought of the meaninglessness of life while at
the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people, one loves
life so intensely that tears come into the eyes.
In
the darkness under the roof of the grand-stand, George Willard sat beside
Helen White and felt very keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of
existence. Now that he had come
out of town where the presence of the people stirring about, busy with a
multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the irritation was all gone.
The presence of Helen renewed and refreshed him.
It was as though her woman's hand was assisting him to make some
minute readjustment of the machinery of his life.
He began to think of the people in the town where he had always lived
with something like reverence. He had reverence for Helen.
He wanted to love and to be loved by her, but he did not want at the
moment to be confused by her womanhood.
In the darkness he took hold of her hand and when she crept close put
a hand on her shoulder. A wind
began to blow and he shivered. With
all his strength he tried to hold and to understand the mood that had come
upon him. In that high place in
the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and
waited. In the mind of each was
the same thought. "I have
come to this lonely place and here is this other," was the substance of
the thing felt.
In
Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into the long night of the late
fall. Farm horses jogged away
along lonely country roads pulling their portion of weary people.
Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off the sidewalks and lock
the doors of stores. In the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and
further down Main Street the fiddlers, their instruments tuned, sweated and
worked to keep the feet of youth flying over a dance floor.
In
the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White and George Willard remained
silent. Now and then the spell
that held them was broken and they turned and tried in the dim light to see
into each other's eyes. They
kissed but that impulse did not last. At
the upper end of the Fair Ground a half dozen men worked over horses that
had raced during the afternoon. The
men had built a fire and were heating kettles of water.
Only their legs could be seen as they passed back and forth in the
light. When the wind blew the
little flames of the fire danced crazily about.
George
and Helen arose and walked away into the darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn that had not yet
been cut. The wind whispered
among the dry corn blades. For
a moment during the walk back into town the spell that held them was broken.
When they had come to the crest of Waterworks Hill they stopped by a
tree and George again put his hands on the girl's shoulders.
She embraced him eagerly and then again they drew quickly back from
that impulse. They stopped kissing and stood a little apart.
Mutual respect grew big in them.
They were both embarrassed and to relieve their embarrassment dropped
into the animalism of youth. They
laughed and began to pull and haul at each other.
In some way chastened and purified by the mood they had been in, they
became, not man and woman, not boy and girl, but excited little animals.
It
was so they went down the hill. In
the darkness they played like two splendid young things in a young world.
Once, running swiftly forward, Helen tripped George and he fell.
He squirmed and shouted. Shaking with laughter, he roiled down the
hill. Helen ran after him. For
just a moment she stopped in the darkness.
There was no way of knowing what woman's thoughts went through her
mind but, when the bottom of the hill was reached and she came up to the
boy, she took his arm and walked beside him in dignified silence.
For some reason they could not have explained they had both got from
their silent evening together the thing needed. Man or boy, woman or girl,
they had for a moment taken hold of the thing that makes the mature life of
men and women in the modern world possible.
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