Book Four: Chapter XIII

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Hugh first saw Clara Butterworth one day in July when she had been at homefor a month. She came to his shop late one afternoon with her father and aman who had been employed to manage the new bicycle factory. The three gotout of Tom's buggy and came into the shop to see Hugh's new invention, thehay-loading apparatus. Tom and the man named Alfred Buckley went to therear of the shop, and Hugh was left alone with the woman. She was dressedin a light summer gown and her cheeks were flushed. Hugh stood by a benchnear an open window and listened while she talked of how much the town hadchanged in the three years she had been away. "It is your doing, every onesays that," she declared.

　　Clara had been waiting for an opportunity to talk to Hugh. She began askingquestions regarding his work and what was to come of it. "When everythingis done by machines, what are people to do?" she asked. She seemed to takeit for granted that the inventor had thought deeply on the subject ofindustrial development, a subject on which Kate Chanceller had often talkedduring a whole evening. Having heard Hugh spoken of as one who had a greatbrain, she wanted to see the brain at work.

　　Alfred Buckley came often to her father's house and wanted to marry Clara.In the evening the two men sat on the front porch of the farmhouse andtalked of the town and the big things that were to be done there. Theyspoke of Hugh, and Buckley, an energetic, talkative fellow with a long jawand restless gray eyes who had come from New York City, suggested schemesfor using him. Clara gathered that there was a plan on foot to get controlof Hugh's future inventions and thereby gain an advantage over SteveHunter.

　　The whole matter puzzled Clara. Alfred Buckley had asked her to marry himand she had put the matter off. The proposal had been a formal thing, notat all what she had expected from a man she was to take as a partner forlife, but Clara was at the moment very seriously determined upon marriage.The New York man was at her father's house several evenings every week.She had never walked about with him nor had they in any way come close toeach other. He seemed too much occupied with work to be personal and hadproposed marriage by writing her a letter. Clara got the letter from thepost-office and it upset her so that she felt she could not for a time gointo the presence of any one she knew. "I am unworthy of you, but I wantyou to be my wife. I will work for you. I am new here and you do not knowme very well. All I ask is the privilege of proving my merit. I want you tobe my wife, but before I dare come and ask you to do me so great an honor Ifeel I must prove myself worthy," the letter said.

　　Clara had driven into town alone on the day when she received it and latergot into her buggy and drove south past the Butterworth farm into thehills. She forgot to go home to lunch or to the evening meal. The horsejogged slowly along, protesting and trying to turn back at every crossroad, but she kept on and did not get home until midnight. When she reachedthe farmhouse her father was waiting. He went with her into the barnyardand helped unhitch the horse. Nothing was said, and after a moment'sconversation having nothing to do with the subject that occupied both theirminds, she went upstairs and tried to think the matter out. She becameconvinced that her father had something to do with the proposal of marriagethat he knew about it and had waited for her to come home in order to seehow it had affected her.

　　Clara wrote a reply that was as non-committal as the proposal itself. "Ido not know whether I want to marry you or not. I will have to becomeacquainted with you. I however thank you for the offer of marriage and whenyou feel that the right time has come, we will talk about it," she wrote.

　　After the exchange of letters, Alfred Buckley came to her father's housemore often than before, but he and Clara did not become better acquainted.He did not talk to her, but to her father. Although she did not know it,the rumor that she was to marry the New York man had already run abouttown. She did not know whether her father or Buckley had told the tale.

　　On the front porch of the farmhouse through the summer evenings the two mentalked of the progress, of the town and the part they were taking and hopedto take in its future growth. The New York man had proposed a scheme toTom. He was to go to Hugh and propose a contract giving the two men anoption on all his future inventions. As the inventions were completedthey were to be financed in New York City, and the two men would give upmanufacture and make money much more rapidly as promoters. They hesitatedbecause they were afraid of Steve Hunter, and because Tom was afraid Hughwould not fall in with their plan. "It wouldn't surprise me if Stevealready had such a contract with him. He's a fool if he hasn't," the olderman said.

　　Evening after evening the two men talked and Clara sat in the deep shadowsat the back of the porch and listened. The enmity that had existed betweenherself and her father seemed to be forgotten. The man who had asked her tomarry him did not look at her, but her father did. Buckley did most of thetalking and spoke of New York City business men, already famous throughoutthe Middle West as giants of finance, as though they were his life-longfriends. "They'll put over anything I ask them to," he declared.

　　Clara tried to think of Alfred Buckley as a husband. Like Hugh McVey hewas tall and gaunt but unlike the inventor, whom she had seen two or threetimes on the street, he was not carelessly dressed. There was somethingsleek about him, something that suggested a well-bred dog, a hound perhaps.As he talked he leaned forward like a greyhound in pursuit of a rabbit. Hishair was carefully parted and his clothes fitted him like the skin of ananimal. He wore a diamond scarf pin. His long jaw, it seemed to her, wasalways wagging. Within a few days after the receipt of his letter shehad made up her mind that she did not want him as a husband, and she wasconvinced he did not want her. The whole matter of marriage had, she wassure, been in some way suggested by her father. When she came to thatconclusion she was both angry and in an odd way touched. She did notinterpret it as fear of some sort of indiscretion on her part, but thoughtthat her father wanted her to marry because he wanted her to be happy. Asshe sat in the darkness on the front porch of the farmhouse the voices ofthe two men became indistinct. It was as though her mind went out of herbody and like a living thing journeyed over the world. Dozens of men shehad seen and had casually addressed, young fellows attending school atColumbus and boys of the town with whom she had gone to parties and danceswhen she was a young girl, came to stand before her. She saw their figuresdistinctly, but remembered them at some advantageous moment of her contactwith them. At Columbus there was a young man from a town in the southernend of the State, one of the sort that is always in love with a woman.During her first year in school he had noticed Clara, had been undecidedas to whether he had better pay attention to her or to a little black-eyedtown girl who was in their classes. Several times he walked down thecollege hill and along the street with Clara. The two stood at a streetcrossing where she was in the habit of taking a car. Several cars wentby as they stood together by a bush that grew by a high stone wall. Theytalked of trivial matters, a comedy club that had been organized in theschool, the chances of victory for the football team. The young man was oneof the actors in a play to be given by the comedy club and told Clara ofhis experiences at rehearsals. As he talked his eyes began to shine and heseemed to be looking, not at her face or body, but at something within her.For a time, perhaps for fifteen minutes, there was a possibility that thetwo people would love each other. Then the young man went away and latershe saw him walking under the trees on the college campus with the littleblack-eyed town girl.

　　As she sat on the porch in the darkness in the summer evenings, Clarathought of the incident and of dozens of other swift-passing contactsshe had made with men. The voices of the two men talking of money-makingwent on and on. Whenever she came back out of her introspective world ofthought, Alfred Buckley's long jaw was wagging. He was always at work,steadily, persistently urging something on her father. It was difficultfor Clara to think of her father as a rabbit, but the notion that AlfredBuckley was like a hound stayed with her. "The wolf and the wolfhound," shethought absent-mindedly.

　　Clara was twenty-three and seemed to herself mature. She did not intendwasting any more time going to school and did not want to be a professionalwoman, like Kate Chanceller. There was something she did want and in away some man, she did not know what man it would be, was concerned in thematter. She was very hungry for love, but might have got that from anotherwoman. Kate Chanceller would have loved her. She was not unconscious ofthe fact that their friendship had been something more than friendship.Kate loved to hold Clara's hand and wanted to kiss and caress her. Theinclination had been put down by Kate herself, a struggle had gone on inher, and Clara had been dimly conscious of it and had respected Kate formaking it.

　　Why? Clara asked herself that question a dozen times during the early weeksof that summer. Kate Chanceller had taught her to think. When they weretogether Kate did both the thinking and the talking, but now Clara's mindhad a chance. There was something back of her desire for a man. She wantedsomething more than caresses. There was a creative impulse in her thatcould not function until she had been made love to by a man. The man shewanted was but an instrument she sought in order that she might fulfillherself. Several times during those evenings in the presence of the twomen, who talked only of making money out of the products of another man'smind, she almost forced her mind out into a concrete thought concerningwomen, and then it became again befogged.

　　Clara grew tired of thinking, and listened to the talk. The name of HughMcVey played through the persistent conversation like a refrain. It becamefixed in her mind. The inventor was not married. By the social system underwhich she lived that and that only made him a possibility for her purposes.She began to think of the inventor, and her mind, weary of playing abouther own figure, played about the figure of the tall, serious-looking manshe had seen on Main Street. When Alfred Buckley had driven away to townfor the night, she went upstairs to her own room but did not get into bed.Instead, she put out her light and sat by an open window that looked outupon the orchard and from which she could see a little stretch of the roadthat ran past the farm house toward town. Every evening before AlfredBuckley went away, there was a little scene on the front porch. When thevisitor got up to go, her father made some excuse for going indoors oraround the corner of the house into the barnyard. "I will have Jim Priesthitch up your horse," he said and hurried away. Clara was left in thecompany of the man who had pretended he wanted to marry her, and who, shewas convinced, wanted nothing of the kind. She was not embarrassed, butcould feel his embarrassment and enjoyed it. He made formal speeches.

　　"Well, the night is fine," he said. Clara hugged the thought that he wasuncomfortable. "He has taken me for a green country girl, impressed withhim because he is from the city and dressed in fine clothes," she thought.Sometimes her father stayed away five or ten minutes and she did not say aword. When her father returned Alfred Buckley shook hands with him and thenturned to Clara, apparently now quite at his ease. "We have bored you, I'mafraid," he said. He took her hand and leaning over, kissed the back of itceremoniously. Her father looked away. Clara went upstairs and sat by thewindow. She could hear the two men continuing their talk in the road beforethe house. After a time the front door banged, her father came into thehouse and the visitor drove away. Everything became quiet and for a longtime she could hear the hoofs of Alfred Buckley's horse beating a rapidtattoo on the road that led down into town.

　　Clara thought of Hugh McVey. Alfred Buckley had spoken of him as abackwoodsman with a streak of genius. He constantly harped on the notionthat he and Tom could use the man for their own ends, and she wondered ifboth of the men were making as great a mistake about the inventor as theywere about her. In the silent summer night, when the sound of the horse'shoofs had died away and when her father had quit stirring about the house,she heard another sound. The corn-cutting machine factory was very busy andhad put on a night shift. When the night was still, or when there was aslight breeze blowing up the hill from town, there was a low rumbling soundcoming from many machines working in wood and steel, followed at regularintervals by the steady breathing of a steam engine.

　　The woman at the window, like every one else in her town and in all thetowns of the mid-western country, became touched with the idea of theromance of industry. The dreams of the Missouri boy that he had fought, hadby the strength of his persistency twisted into new channels so that theyhad expressed themselves in definite things, in corn-cutting machines andin machines for unloading coal cars and for gathering hay out of a fieldand loading it on wagons without aid of human hands, were still dreams andcapable of arousing dreams in others. They awoke dreams in the mind of thewoman. The figures of other men that had been playing through her mindslipped away and but the one figure remained. Her mind made up storiesconcerning Hugh. She had read the absurd tale that had been printed in theCleveland paper and her fancy took hold of it. Like every other citizenof America she believed in heroes. In books and magazines she had readof heroic men who had come up out of poverty by some strange alchemy tocombine in their stout persons all of the virtues. The broad, rich landdemanded gigantic figures, and the minds of men had created the figures.Lincoln, Grant, Garfield, Sherman, and a half dozen other men weresomething more than human in the minds of the generation that cameimmediately after the days of their stirring performance. Already industrywas creating a new set of semi-mythical figures. The factory at work in thenight-time in the town of Bidwell became, to the mind of the woman sittingby the window in the farm house, not a factory but a powerful animal,a powerful beast-like thing that Hugh had tamed and made useful to hisfellows. Her mind ran forward and took the taming of the beast for granted.The hunger of her generation found a voice in her. Like every one else shewanted heroes, and Hugh, to whom she had never talked and about whom sheknew nothing, became a hero. Her father, Alfred Buckley, Steve Hunter andthe rest were after all pigmies. Her father was a schemer; he had evenschemed to get her married, perhaps to further his own plans. In realityhis schemes were so ineffective that she did not need to be angry with him.There was but one man of them all who was not a schemer. Hugh was what shewanted to be. He was a creative force. In his hands dead inanimate thingsbecame creative forces. He was what she wanted not herself but perhaps ason, to be. The thought, at last definitely expressed, startled Clara, andshe arose from the chair by the window and prepared to go to bed. Somethingwithin her body ached, but she did not allow herself to pursue further thethoughts she had been having.

　　On the day when she went with her father and Alfred Buckley to visit Hugh'sshop, Clara knew that she wanted to marry the man she would see there. Thethought was not expressed in her but slept like a seed newly planted infertile soil. She had herself managed that she be taken to the factory andhad also managed that she be left with Hugh while the two men went to lookat the half-completed hay-loader at the back of the shop.

　　She had begun talking to Hugh while the four people stood on the littlegrass plot before the shop. They went inside and her father and Buckleywent through a door toward the rear. She stopped by a bench and as shecontinued talking Hugh was compelled to stop and stand beside her. Sheasked questions, paid him vague compliments, and as he struggled, trying tomake conversation, she studied him. To cover his confusion he half turnedaway and looked out through a window into Turner's Pike. His eyes, shedecided, were nice. They were somewhat small, but there was something grayand cloudy in them, and the gray cloudiness gave her confidence in theperson behind the eyes. She could, she felt, trust him. There was somethingin his eyes that was like the things most grateful to her own nature,the sky seen across an open stretch of country or over a river that ranstraight away into the distance. Hugh's hair was coarse like the mane of ahorse, and his nose was like the nose of a horse. He was, she decided, verylike a horse; an honest, powerful horse, a horse that was humanized by themysterious, hungering thing that expressed itself through his eyes. "If Ihave to live with an animal; if, as Kate Chanceller once said, we womenhave to decide what other animal we are to live with before we can beginbeing humans, I would rather live with a strong, kindly horse than a wolfor a wolfhound," she found herself thinking.