Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life
In the morning when he awoke and lay still in bed, the sounds that came
in to him through the windows filled him with delight. He thought with
a shudder of the life in the house in Winesburg and of his mother’s
angry voice that had always made him tremble. There in the country all
sounds were pleasant sounds. When he awoke at dawn the barnyard back of
the house also awoke. In the house people stirred about. Eliza
Stoughton the half-witted girl was poked in the ribs by a farm hand and
giggled noisily, in some distant field a cow bawled and was answered by
the cattle in the stables, and one of the farm hands spoke sharply to
the horse he was grooming by the stable door. David leaped out of bed
and ran to a window. All of the people stirring about excited his mind,
and he wondered what his mother was doing in the house in town.
From the windows of his own room he could not see directly into the
barnyard where the farm hands had now all assembled to do the morning
shores, but he could hear the voices of the men and the neighing of the
horses. When one of the men laughed, he laughed also. Leaning out at
the open window, he looked into an orchard where a fat sow wandered
about with a litter of tiny pigs at her heels. Every morning he counted
the pigs. “Four, five, six, seven,” he said slowly, wetting his finger
and making straight up and down marks on the window ledge. David ran to
put on his trousers and shirt. A feverish desire to get out of doors
took possession of him. Every morning he made such a noise coming down
stairs that Aunt Callie, the housekeeper, declared he was trying to
tear the house down. When he had run through the long old house,
shutting the doors behind him with a bang, he came into the barnyard
and looked about with an amazed air of expectancy. It seemed to him
that in such a place tremendous things might have happened during the
night. The farm hands looked at him and laughed. Henry Strader, an old
man who had been on the farm since Jesse came into possession and who
before David’s time had never been known to make a joke, made the same
joke every morning. It amused David so that he laughed and clapped his
hands. “See, come here and look,” cried the old man. “Grandfather
Jesse’s white mare has torn the black stocking she wears on her foot.”
Day after day through the long summer, Jesse Bentley drove from farm to
farm up and down the valley of Wine Creek, and his grandson went with
him. They rode in a comfortable old phaeton drawn by the white horse.
The old man scratched his thin white beard and talked to himself of his
plans for increasing the productiveness of the fields they visited and
of God’s part in the plans all men made. Sometimes he looked at David
and smiled happily and then for a long time he appeared to forget the
boy’s existence. More and more every day now his mind turned back again
to the dreams that had filled his mind when he had first come out of
the city to live on the land. One afternoon he startled David by
letting his dreams take entire possession of him. With the boy as a
witness, he went through a ceremony and brought about an accident that
nearly destroyed the companionship that was growing up between them.
Jesse and his grandson were driving in a distant part of the valley
some miles from home. A forest came down to the road and through the
forest Wine Creek wriggled its way over stones toward a distant river.
All the afternoon Jesse had been in a meditative mood and now he began
to talk. His mind went back to the night when he had been frightened by
thoughts of a giant that might come to rob and plunder him of his
possessions, and again as on that night when he had run through the
fields crying for a son, he became excited to the edge of insanity.
Stopping the horse he got out of the buggy and asked David to get out
also. The two climbed over a fence and walked along the bank of the
stream. The boy paid no attention to the muttering of his grandfather,
but ran along beside him and wondered what was going to happen. When a
rabbit jumped up and ran away through the woods, he clapped his hands
and danced with delight. He looked at the tall trees and was sorry that
he was not a little animal to climb high in the air without being
frightened. Stooping, he picked up a small stone and threw it over the
head of his grandfather into a clump of bushes. “Wake up, little
animal. Go and climb to the top of the trees,” he shouted in a shrill
voice.
Jesse Bentley went along under the trees with his head bowed and with
his mind in a ferment. His earnestness affected the boy, who presently
became silent and a little alarmed. Into the old man’s mind had come
the notion that now he could bring from God a word or a sign out of the
sky, that the presence of the boy and man on their knees in some lonely
spot in the forest would make the miracle he had been waiting for
almost inevitable. “It was in just such a place as this that other
David tended the sheep when his father came and told him to go down
unto Saul,” he muttered.
Taking the boy rather roughly by the shoulder, he climbed over a fallen
log and when he had come to an open place among the trees he dropped
upon his knees and began to pray in a loud voice.
A kind of terror he had never known before took possession of David.
Crouching beneath a tree he watched the man on the ground before him
and his own knees began to tremble. It seemed to him that he was in the
presence not only of his grandfather but of someone else, someone who
might hurt him, someone who was not kindly but dangerous and brutal. He
began to cry and reaching down picked up a small stick, which he held
tightly gripped in his fingers. When Jesse Bentley, absorbed in his own
idea, suddenly arose and advanced toward him, his terror grew until his
whole body shook. In the woods an intense silence seemed to lie over
everything and suddenly out of the silence came the old man’s harsh and
insistent voice. Gripping the boy’s shoulders, Jesse turned his face to
the sky and shouted. The whole left side of his face twitched and his
hand on the boy’s shoulder twitched also. “Make a sign to me, God,” he
cried. “Here I stand with the boy David. Come down to me out of the sky
and make Thy presence known to me.”
With a cry of fear, David turned and, shaking himself loose from the
hands that held him, ran away through the forest. He did not believe
that the man who turned up his face and in a harsh voice shouted at the
sky was his grandfather at all. The man did not look like his
grandfather. The conviction that something strange and terrible had
happened, that by some miracle a new and dangerous person had come into
the body of the kindly old man, took possession of him. On and on he
ran down the hillside, sobbing as he ran. When he fell over the roots
of a tree and in falling struck his head, he arose and tried to run on
again. His head hurt so that presently he fell down and lay still, but
it was only after Jesse had carried him to the buggy and he awoke to
find the old man’s hand stroking his head tenderly that the terror left
him. “Take me away. There is a terrible man back there in the woods,”
he declared firmly, while Jesse looked away over the tops of the trees
and again his lips cried out to God. “What have I done that Thou dost
not approve of me,” he whispered softly, saying the words over and over
as he drove rapidly along the road with the boy’s cut and bleeding head
held tenderly against his shoulder.
SURRENDER
PART THREE
The story of Louise Bentley, who became Mrs. John Hardy and lived with
her husband in a brick house on Elm Street in Winesburg, is a story of
misunderstanding.
Before such women as Louise can be understood and their lives made
livable, much will have to be done. Thoughtful books will have to be
written and thoughtful lives lived by people about them.
Born of a delicate and overworked mother, and an impulsive, hard,
imaginative father, who did not look with favor upon her coming into
the world, Louise was from childhood a neurotic, one of the race of
over-sensitive women that in later days industrialism was to bring in
such great numbers into the world.
During her early years she lived on the Bentley farm, a silent, moody
child, wanting love more than anything else in the world and not
getting it. When she was fifteen she went to live in Winesburg with the
family of Albert Hardy, who had a store for the sale of buggies and
wagons, and who was a member of the town board of education.
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