Winesburg, Ohio: A Group of Tales of Ohio Small Town Life
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.”
THE TEACHER
Snow lay deep in the streets of Winesburg. It had begun to snow about
ten o’clock in the morning and a wind sprang up and blew the snow in
clouds along Main Street. The frozen mud roads that led into town were
fairly smooth and in places ice covered the mud. “There will be good
sleighing,” said Will Henderson, standing by the bar in Ed Griffith’s
saloon. Out of the saloon he went and met Sylvester West the druggist
stumbling along in the kind of heavy overshoes called arctics. “Snow
will bring the people into town on Saturday,” said the druggist. The
two men stopped and discussed their affairs. Will Henderson, who had on
a light overcoat and no overshoes, kicked the heel of his left foot
with the toe of the right. “Snow will be good for the wheat,” observed
the druggist sagely.
Young George Willard, who had nothing to do, was glad because he did
not feel like working that day. The weekly paper had been printed and
taken to the post office Wednesday evening and the snow began to fall
on Thursday. At eight o’clock, after the morning train had passed, he
put a pair of skates in his pocket and went up to Waterworks Pond but
did not go skating. Past the pond and along a path that followed Wine
Creek he went until he came to a grove of beech trees. There he built a
fire against the side of a log and sat down at the end of the log to
think. When the snow began to fall and the wind to blow he hurried
about getting fuel for the fire.
The young reporter was thinking of Kate Swift, who had once been his
school teacher. On the evening before he had gone to her house to get a
book she wanted him to read and had been alone with her for an hour.
For the fourth or fifth time the woman had talked to him with great
earnestness and he could not make out what she meant by her talk. He
began to believe she must be in love with him and the thought was both
pleasing and annoying.
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