Chapter I

by Sherwood Anderson

　　Rosalind Wescott, a tall strong looking woman of twenty-seven, waswalking on the railroad track near the town of Willow Springs, Iowa. Itwas about four in the afternoon of a day in August, and the third daysince she had come home to her native town from Chicago, where she wasemployed.

　　At that time Willow Springs was a town of about three thousand people.It has grown since. There was a public square with the town hall in thecentre and about the four sides of the square and facing it were themerchandising establishments. The public square was bare and grassless,and out of it ran streets of frame houses, long straight streets thatfinally became country roads running away into the flat prairiecountry.

　　Although she had told everyone that she had merely come home for ashort visit because she was a little homesick, and although she wantedin particular to have a talk with her mother in regard to a certainmatter, Rosalind had been unable to talk with anyone. Indeed she hadfound it difficult to stay in the house with her mother and father andall the time, day and night, she was haunted by a desire to get out oftown. As she went along the railroad tracks in the hot afternoonsunshine she kept scolding herself. "I've grown moody and no good. If Iwant to do it why don't I just go ahead and not make a fuss," shethought.

　　For two miles the railroad tracks, eastward out of Willow Springs, wentthrough corn fields on a flat plain. Then there was a little dip in theland and a bridge over Willow Creek. The Creek was altogether dry nowbut trees grew along the edge of the grey streak of cracked mud that inthe fall, winter and spring would be the bed of the stream. Rosalindleft the tracks and went to sit under one of the trees. Her cheeks wereflushed and her forehead wet. When she took off her hat her hair felldown in disorder and strands of it clung to her hot wet face. She satin what seemed a kind of great bowl on the sides of which the corn grewrank. Before her and following the bed of the stream there was a dustypath along which cows came at evening from distant pastures. A greatpancake formed of cow dung lay nearby. It was covered with grey dustand over it crawled shiny black beetles. They were rolling the dunginto balls in preparation for the germination of a new generation ofbeetles.

　　Rosalind had come on the visit to her home town at a time of the yearwhen everyone wished to escape from the hot dusty place. No one hadexpected her and she had not written to announce her coming. One hotmorning in Chicago she had got out of bed and had suddenly begunpacking her bag, and on that same evening there she was in WillowSprings, in the house where she had lived until her twenty-first year,among her own people. She had come up from the station in the hotel busand had walked into the Wescott house unannounced. Her father was atthe pump by the kitchen door and her mother came into the living roomto greet her wearing a soiled kitchen apron. Everything in the housewas just as it always had been. "I just thought I would come home for afew days," she said, putting down her bag and kissing her mother.

　　Ma and Pa Wescott had been glad to see their daughter. On the eveningof her arrival they were excited and a special supper was prepared.After supper Pa Wescott went up town as usual, but he stayed only a fewminutes. "I just want to run to the postoffice and get the eveningpaper," he said apologetically. Rosalind's mother put on a clean dressand they all sat in the darkness on the front porch. There was talk, ofa kind. "Is it hot in Chicago now? I'm going to do a good deal ofcanning this fall. I thought later I would send you a box of cannedfruit. Do you live in the same place on the North Side? It must be nicein the evening to be able to walk down to the park by the lake."

　　* * * * *Rosalind sat under the tree near the railroad bridge two miles fromWillow Springs and watched the tumble bugs at work. Her whole body washot from the walk in the sun and the thin dress she wore clung to herlegs. It was being soiled by the dust on the grass under the tree.

　　She had run away from town and from her mother's house. All during thethree days of her visit she had been doing that. She did not go fromhouse to house to visit her old schoolgirl friends, the girls whounlike herself had stayed in Willow Springs, had got married andsettled down there. When she saw one of these women on the street inthe morning, pushing a baby carriage and perhaps followed by a smallchild, she stopped. There was a few minutes of talk. "It's hot. Do youlive in the same place in Chicago? My husband and I hope to take thechildren and go away for a week or two. It must be nice in Chicagowhere you are so near the lake." Rosalind hurried away.

　　All the hours of her visit to her mother and to her home town had beenspent in an effort to hurry away.

　　From what? Rosalind defended herself. There was something she had comefrom Chicago hoping to be able to say to her mother. Did she reallywant to talk with her about things? Had she thought, by again breathingthe air of her home town, to get strength to face life and itsdifficulties?

　　There was no point in her taking the hot uncomfortable trip fromChicago only to spend her days walking in dusty country roads orbetween rows of cornfields in the stifling heat along the railroadtracks.

　　"I must have hoped. There is a hope that cannot be fulfilled," shethought vaguely.

　　Willow Springs was a rather meaningless, dreary town, one of thousandsof such towns in Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas, Iowa, but hermind made it more dreary.

　　She sat under the tree by the dry bed of Willow Creek thinking of thestreet in town where her mother and father lived, where she had liveduntil she had become a woman. It was only because of a series ofcircumstances she did not live there now. Her one brother, ten yearsolder than herself, had married and moved to Chicago. He had asked herto come for a visit and after she got to the city she stayed. Herbrother was a traveling salesman and spent a good deal of time awayfrom home. "Why don't you stay here with Bess and learn stenography,"he asked. "If you don't want to use it you don't have to. Dad can lookout for you all right. I just thought you might like to learn."

　　* * * * *"That was six years ago," Rosalind thought wearily. "I've been a citywoman for six years." Her mind hopped about. Thoughts came and went. Inthe city, after she became a stenographer, something for a timeawakened her. She wanted to be an actress and went in the evening to adramatic school. In an office where she worked there was a young man, aclerk. They went out together, to the theatre or to walk in the park inthe evening. They kissed.

　　Her thoughts came sharply back to her mother and father, to her home inWillow Springs, to the street in which she had lived until her twenty-first year.

　　It was but an end of a street. From the windows at the front of hermother's house six other houses could be seen. How well she knew thestreet and the people in the houses! Did she know them? From hereighteenth and until her twenty-first year she had stayed at home,helping her mother with the housework, waiting for something. Otheryoung women in town waited just as she did. They like herself hadgraduated from the town high school and their parents had no intentionof sending them away to college. There was nothing to do but wait. Someof the young women--their mothers and their mothers' friends stillspoke of them as girls--had young men friends who came to see them onSunday and perhaps also on Wednesday or Thursday evenings. Othersjoined the church, went to prayer meetings, became active members ofsome church organization. They fussed about.

　　Rosalind had done none of these things. All through those three tryingyears in Willow Springs she had just waited. In the morning there wasthe work to do in the house and then, in some way, the day wore itselfaway. In the evening her father went up town and she sat with hermother. Nothing much was said. After she had gone to bed she lay awake,strangely nervous, eager for something to happen that never wouldhappen. The noises of the Wescott house cut across her thoughts. Whatthings went through her mind!

　　There was a procession of people always going away from her. Sometimesshe lay on her belly at the edge of a ravine. Well it was not a ravine.It had two walls of marble and on the marble face of the walls strangefigures were carved. Broad steps led down--always down and away. Peoplewalked along the steps, between the marble walls, going down and awayfrom her.

　　What people! Who were they? Where did they come from? Where were theygoing? She was not asleep but wide awake. Her bedroom was dark. Thewalls and ceiling of the room receded. She seemed to hang suspended inspace, above the ravine--the ravine with walls of white marble overwhich strange beautiful lights played.

　　The people who went down the broad steps and away into infinitedistance--they were men and women. Sometime a young girl like herselfbut in some way sweeter and purer than herself, passed alone. The younggirl walked with a swinging stride, going swiftly and freely like abeautiful young animal. Her legs and arms were like the slender topbranches of trees swaying in a gentle wind. She also went down andaway.

　　Others followed along the marble steps. Young boys walked alone. Adignified old man followed by a sweet faced woman passed. What aremarkable man! One felt infinite power in his old frame. There weredeep wrinkles in his face and his eyes were sad. One felt he kneweverything about life but had kept something very precious alive inhimself. It was that precious thing that made the eyes of the woman whofollowed him burn with a strange fire. They also went down along thesteps and away.

　　Down and away along the steps went others--how many others, men andwomen, boys and girls, single old men, old women who leaned on sticksand hobbled along.

　　In the bed in her father's house as she lay awake Rosalind's head grewlight. She tried to clutch at something, understand something.

　　She couldn't. The noises of the house cut across her waking dream. Herfather was at the pump by the kitchen door. He was pumping a pail ofwater. In a moment he would bring it into the house and put it on a boxby the kitchen sink. A little of the water would slop over on thefloor. There would be a sound like a child's bare foot striking thefloor. Then her father would go to wind the clock. The day was done.Presently there would be the sound of his heavy feet on the floor ofthe bedroom above and he would get into bed to lie beside Rosalind'smother.

　　The night noises of her father's house had been in some way terrible tothe girl in the years when she was becoming a woman. After chance hadtaken her to the city she never wanted to think of them again. Even inChicago where the silence of nights was cut and slashed by a thousandnoises, by automobiles whirling through the streets, by the belatedfootsteps of men homeward bound along the cement sidewalks aftermidnight, by the shouts of quarreling men drunk on summer nights, evenin the great hubbub of noises there was comparative quiet. Theinsistent clanging noises of the city nights were not like the homelyinsistent noises of her father's house. Certain terrible truths aboutlife did not abide in them, they did not cling so closely to life anddid not frighten as did the noises in the one house on the quiet streetin the town of Willow Springs. How often, there in the city, in themidst of the great noises she had fought to escape the little noises!Her father's feet were on the steps leading into the kitchen. Now hewas putting the pail of water on the box by the kitchen sink. Upstairsher mother's body fell heavily into bed. The visions of the greatmarble-lined ravine down along which went the beautiful people flewaway. There was the little slap of water on the kitchen floor. It waslike a child's bare foot striking the floor. Rosalind wanted to cryout. Her father closed the kitchen door. Now he was winding the clock.In a moment his feet would be on the stairs--

　　There were six houses to be seen from the windows of the Wescott house.In the winter smoke from six brick chimneys went up into the sky. Therewas one house, the next one to the Wescott's place, a small frameaffair, in which lived a man who was thirty-five years old whenRosalind became a woman of twenty-one and went away to the city. Theman was unmarried and his mother, who had been his housekeeper, haddied during the year in which Rosalind graduated from the high school.After that the man lived alone. He took his dinner and supper at thehotel, down town on the square, but he got his own breakfast, made hisown bed and swept out his own house. Sometimes he walked slowly alongthe street past the Wescott house when Rosalind sat alone on the frontporch. He raised his hat and spoke to her. Their eyes met. He had along, hawk-like nose and his hair was long and uncombed.

　　Rosalind thought about him sometimes. It bothered her a little that hesometimes went stealing softly, as though not to disturb her, acrossher daytime fancies.

　　As she sat that day by the dry creek bed Rosalind thought about thebachelor, who had now passed the age of forty and who lived on thestreet where she had lived during her girlhood. His house was separatedfrom the Wescott house by a picket fence. Sometimes in the morning heforgot to pull his blinds and Rosalind, busy with the housework in herfather's house, had seen him walking about in his underwear. It was--uh, one could not think of it.

　　The man's name was Melville Stoner. He had a small income and did nothave to work. On some days he did not leave his house and go to thehotel for his meals but sat all day in a chair with his nose buried ina book.

　　There was a house on the street occupied by a widow who raisedchickens. Two or three of her hens were what the people who lived onthe street called 'high flyers.' They flew over the fence of thechicken yard and escaped and almost always they came at once into theyard of the bachelor. The neighbors laughed about it. It wassignificant, they felt. When the hens had come into the yard of thebachelor, Stoner, the widow with a stick in her hand ran after them.Melville Stoner came out of his house and stood on a little porch infront. The widow ran through the front gate waving her arms wildly andthe hens made a great racket and flew over the fence. They ran down thestreet toward the widow's house. For a moment she stood by the Stonergate. In the summer time when the windows of the Wescott house wereopen Rosalind could hear what the man and woman said to each other. InWillow Springs it was not thought proper for an unmarried woman tostand talking to an unmarried man near the door of his bachelorestablishment. The widow wanted to observe the conventions. Still shedid linger a moment, her bare arm resting on the gate post. What brighteager little eyes she had! "If those hens of mine bother you I wish youwould catch them and kill them," she said fiercely. "I am always gladto see them coming along the road," Melville Stoner replied, bowing.Rosalind thought he was making fun of the widow. She liked him forthat. "I'd never see you if you did not have to come here after yourhens. Don't let anything happen to them," he said, bowing again.

　　For a moment the man and woman lingered looking into each other's eyes.From one of the windows of the Wescott house Rosalind watched thewoman. Nothing more was said. There was something about the woman shehad not understood--well the widow's senses were being fed. Thedeveloping woman in the house next door had hated her.

　　* * * * *Rosalind jumped up from under the tree and climbed up the railroadembankment. She thanked the gods she had been lifted out of the life ofthe town of Willow Springs and that chance had set her down to live ina city. "Chicago is far from beautiful. People say it is just a bignoisy dirty village and perhaps that's what it is, but there issomething alive there," she thought. In Chicago, or at least during thelast two or three years of her life there, Rosalind felt she hadlearned a little something of life. She had read books for one thing,such books as did not come to Willow Springs, books that Willow Springsknew nothing about, she had gone to hear the Symphony Orchestra, shehad begun to understand something of the possibility of line and color,had heard intelligent, understanding men speak of these things. InChicago, in the midst of the twisting squirming millions of men andwomen there were voices. One occasionally saw men or at least heard ofthe existence of men who, like the beautiful old man who had walkedaway down the marble stairs in the vision of her girlhood nights, hadkept some precious thing alive in themselves.

　　And there was something else--it was the most important thing of all.For the last two years of her life in Chicago she had spent hours, daysin the presence of a man to whom she could talk. The talks had awakenedher. She felt they had made her a woman, had matured her.

　　"I know what these people here in Willow Springs are like and what Iwould have been like had I stayed here," she thought. She felt relievedand almost happy. She had come home at a crisis of her own life hopingto be able to talk a little with her mother, or if talk provedimpossible hoping to get some sense of sisterhood by being in herpresence. She had thought there was something buried away, deep withinevery woman, that at a certain call would run out to other women. Nowshe felt that the hope, the dream, the desire she had cherished wasaltogether futile. Sitting in the great flat bowl in the midst of thecorn lands two miles from her home town where no breath of air stirredand seeing the beetles at their work of preparing to propagate a newgeneration of beetles, while she thought of the town and its people,had settled something for her. Her visit to Willow Springs had come tosomething after all.

　　Rosalind's figure had still much of the spring and swing of youth init. Her legs were strong and her shoulders broad. She went swingingalong the railroad track toward town, going westward. The sun had begunto fall rapidly down the sky. Away over the tops of the corn in one ofthe great fields she could see in the distance to where a man wasdriving a motor along a dusty road. The wheels of the car kicked updust through which the sunlight played. The floating cloud of dustbecame a shower of gold that settled down over the fields. "When awoman most wants what is best and truest in another woman, even in herown mother, she isn't likely to find it," she thought grimly. "Thereare certain things every woman has to find out for herself, there is aroad she must travel alone. It may only lead to some more ugly andterrible place, but if she doesn't want death to overtake her and livewithin her while her body is still alive she must set out on thatroad."

　　Rosalind walked for a mile along the railroad track and then stopped. Afreight train had gone eastward as she sat under the tree by the creekbed and now, there beside the tracks, in the grass was the body of aman. It lay still, the face buried in the deep burned grass. At onceshe concluded the man had been struck and killed by the train. The bodyhad been thrown thus aside. All her thoughts went away and she turnedand started to tiptoe away, stepping carefully along the railroad ties,making no noise. Then she stopped again. The man in the grass might notbe dead, only hurt, terribly hurt. It would not do to leave him there.She imagined him mutilated but still struggling for life and herselftrying to help him. She crept back along the ties. The man's legs werenot twisted and beside him lay his hat. It was as though he had put itthere before lying down to sleep, but a man did not sleep with his faceburied in the grass in such a hot uncomfortable place. She drew nearer."O, you Mister," she called, "O, you--are you hurt?"

　　The man in the grass sat up and looked at her. He laughed. It wasMelville Stoner, the man of whom she had just been thinking and inthinking of whom she had come to certain settled conclusions regardingthe futility of her visit to Willow Springs. He got to his feet andpicked up his hat. "Well, hello, Miss Rosalind Wescott," he saidheartily. He climbed a small embankment and stood beside her. "I knewyou were at home on a visit but what are you doing out here?" he askedand then added, "What luck this is! Now I shall have the privilege ofwalking home with you. You can hardly refuse to let me walk with youafter shouting at me like that."

　　They walked together along the tracks he with his hat in his hand.Rosalind thought he looked like a gigantic bird, an aged wise old bird,"perhaps a vulture" she thought. For a time he was silent and then hebegan to talk, explaining his lying with his face buried in the grass.There was a twinkle in his eyes and Rosalind wondered if he waslaughing at her as she had seen him laugh at the widow who owned thehens.

　　He did not come directly to the point and Rosalind thought it strangethat they should walk and talk together. At once his words interestedher. He was so much older than herself and no doubt wiser. How vain shehad been to think herself so much more knowing than all the people ofWillow Springs. Here was this man and he was talking and his talk didnot sound like anything she had ever expected to hear from the lips ofa native of her home town. "I want to explain myself but we'll wait alittle. For years I've been wanting to get at you, to talk with you,and this is my chance. You've been away now five or six years and havegrown into womanhood.

　　"You understand it's nothing specially personal, my wanting to get atyou and understand you a little," he added quickly. "I'm that way abouteveryone. Perhaps that's the reason I live alone, why I've nevermarried or had personal friends. I'm too eager. It isn't comfortable toothers to have me about."

　　Rosalind was caught up by this new view point of the man. She wondered.In the distance along the tracks the houses of the town came intosight. Melville Stoner tried to walk on one of the iron rails but aftera few steps lost his balance and fell off. His long arms whirled about.A strange intensity of mood and feeling had come over Rosalind. In onemoment Melville Stoner was like an old man and then he was like a boy.Being with him made her mind, that had been racing all afternoon, racefaster than ever.

　　When he began to talk again he seemed to have forgotten the explanationhe had intended making. "We've lived side by side but we've hardlyspoken to each other," he said. "When I was a young man and you were agirl I used to sit in the house thinking of you. We've really beenfriends. What I mean is we've had the same thoughts."

　　He began to speak of life in the city where she had been living,condemning it. "It's dull and stupid here but in the city you have yourown kind of stupidity too," he declared. "I'm glad I do not livethere."

　　In Chicago when she had first gone there to live a thing had sometimeshappened that had startled Rosalind. She knew no one but her brotherand his wife and was sometimes very lonely. When she could no longerbear the eternal sameness of the talk in her brother's house she wentout to a concert or to the theatre. Once or twice when she had no moneyto buy a theatre ticket she grew bold and walked alone in the streets,going rapidly along without looking to the right or left. As she sat inthe theatre or walked in the street an odd thing sometimes happened.Someone spoke her name, a call came to her. The thing happened at aconcert and she looked quickly about. All the faces in sight had thatpeculiar, half bored, half expectant expression one grows accustomed toseeing on the faces of people listening to music. In the entire theatreno one seemed aware of her. On the street or in the park the call hadcome when she was utterly alone. It seemed to come out of the air, frombehind a tree in the park.

　　And now as she walked on the railroad tracks with Melville Stoner thecall seemed to come from him. He walked along apparently absorbed withhis own thoughts, the thoughts he was trying to find words to express.His legs were long and he walked with a queer loping gait. The idea ofsome great bird, perhaps a sea-bird stranded far inland, stayed inRosalind's mind but the call did not come from the bird part of him.There was something else, another personality hidden away. Rosalindfancied the call came this time from a young boy, from such anotherclear-eyed boy as she had once seen in her waking dreams at night inher father's house, from one of the boys who walked on the marblestairway, walked down and away. A thought came that startled her. "Theboy is hidden away in the body of this strange bird-like man," she toldherself. The thought awoke fancies within her. It explained much in thelives of men and women. An expression, a phrase, remembered from herchildhood when she had gone to Sunday School in Willow Springs, cameback to her mind. "And God spoke to me out of a burning bush." Shealmost said the words aloud.

　　Melville Stoner loped along, walking on the railroad ties and talking.He seemed to have forgotten the incident of his lying with his noseburied in the grass and was explaining his life lived alone in thehouse in town. Rosalind tried to put her own thoughts aside and tolisten to his words but did not succeed very well. "I came home herehoping to get a little closer to life, to get, for a few days, out ofthe company of a man so I could think about him. I fancied I could getwhat I wanted by being near mother, but that hasn't worked. It would bestrange if I got what I am looking for by this chance meeting withanother man," she thought. Her mind went on recording thoughts. Sheheard the spoken words of the man beside her but her own mind went on,also making words. Something within herself felt suddenly relaxed andfree. Ever since she had got off the train at Willow Springs three daysbefore there had been a great tenseness. Now it was all gone. Shelooked at Melville Stoner who occasionally looked at her. There wassomething in his eyes, a kind of laughter--a mocking kind of laughter.His eyes were grey, of a cold greyness, like the eyes of a bird.

　　"It has come into my mind--I have been thinking--well you see you havenot married in the six years since you went to live in the city. Itwould be strange and a little amusing if you are like myself, if youcannot marry or come close to any other person," he was saying.

　　Again he spoke of the life he led in his house. "I sometimes sit in myhouse all day, even when the weather is fine outside," he said. "Youhave no doubt seen me sitting there. Sometimes I forget to eat. I readbooks all day, striving to forget myself and then night comes and Icannot sleep.

　　"If I could write or paint or make music, if I cared at all aboutexpressing what goes on in my mind it would be different. However, Iwould not write as others do. I would have but little to say about whatpeople do. What do they do? In what way does it matter? Well you seethey build cities such as you live in and towns like Willow Springs,they have built this railroad track on which we are walking, they marryand raise children, commit murders, steal, do kindly acts. What does itmatter? You see we are walking here in the hot sun. In five minutesmore we will be in town and you will go to your house and I to mine.You will eat supper with your father and mother. Then your father willgo up town and you and your mother will sit together on the frontporch. There will be little said. Your mother will speak of herintention to can fruit. Then your father will come home and you willall go to bed. Your father will pump a pail of water at the pump by thekitchen door. He will carry it indoors and put it on a box by thekitchen sink. A little of the water will be spilled. It will make asoft little slap on the kitchen floor--"

　　"Ha!"

　　Melville Stoner turned and looked sharply at Rosalind who had grown alittle pale. Her mind raced madly, like an engine out of control. Therewas a kind of power in Melville Stoner that frightened her. By therecital of a few commonplace facts he had suddenly invaded her secretplaces. It was almost as though he had come into the bedroom in herfather's house where she lay thinking. He had in fact got into her bed.He laughed again, an unmirthful laugh. "I'll tell you what, we knowlittle enough here in America, either in the towns or in the cities,"he said rapidly. "We are all on the rush. We are all for action. I sitstill and think. If I wanted to write I'd do something. I'd tell whateveryone thought. It would startle people, frighten them a little, eh?I would tell you what you have been thinking this afternoon while youwalked here on this railroad track with me. I would tell you what yourmother has been thinking at the same time and what she would like tosay to you."

　　Rosalind's face had grown chalky white and her hands trembled. They gotoff the railroad tracks and into the streets of Willow Springs. Achange came over Melville Stoner. Of a sudden he seemed just a man offorty, a little embarrassed by the presence of the younger woman, alittle hesitant. "I'm going to the hotel now and I must leave youhere," he said. His feet made a shuffling sound on the sidewalk. "Iintended to tell you why you found me lying out there with my faceburied in the grass," he said. A new quality had come into his voice.It was the voice of the boy who had called to Rosalind out of the bodyof the man as they walked and talked on the tracks. "Sometimes I can'tstand my life here," he said almost fiercely and waved his long armsabout. "I'm alone too much. I grow to hate myself. I have to run out oftown."

　　The man did not look at Rosalind but at the ground. His big feetcontinued shuffling nervously about. "Once in the winter time I thoughtI was going insane," he said. "I happened to remember an orchard, fivemiles from town where I had walked one day in the late fall when thepears were ripe. A notion came into my head. It was bitter cold but Iwalked the five miles and went into the orchard. The ground was frozenand covered with snow but I brushed the snow aside. I pushed my faceinto the grass. In the fall when I had walked there the ground wascovered with ripe pears. A fragrance arose from them. They were coveredwith bees that crawled over them, drunk, filled with a kind of ecstacy.I had remembered the fragrance. That's why I went there and put my faceinto the frozen grass. The bees were in an ecstasy of life and I hadmissed life. I have always missed life. It always goes away from me. Ialways imagined people walking away. In the spring this year I walkedon the railroad track out to the bridge over Willow Creek. Violets grewin the grass. At that time I hardly noticed them but today Iremembered. The violets were like the people who walk away from me. Amad desire to run after them had taken possession of me. I felt like abird flying through space. A conviction that something had escaped meand that I must pursue it had taken possession of me."

　　Melville Stoner stopped talking. His face also had grown white and hishands also trembled. Rosalind had an almost irresistible desire to putout her hand and touch his hand. She wanted to shout, crying--"I amhere. I am not dead. I am alive." Instead she stood in silence, staringat him, as the widow who owned the high flying hens had stared.Melville Stoner struggled to recover from the ecstasy into which he hadbeen thrown by his own words. He bowed and smiled. "I hope you are inthe habit of walking on railroad tracks," he said. "I shall in thefuture know what to do with my time. When you come to town I shall campon the railroad tracks. No doubt, like the violets, you have left yourfragrance out there." Rosalind looked at him. He was laughing at her ashe had laughed when he talked to the widow standing at his gate. Shedid not mind. When he had left her she went slowly through the streets.The phrase that had come into her mind as they walked on the trackscame back and she said it over and over. "And God spoke to me out of aburning bush." She kept repeating the phrase until she got back intothe Wescott house.

　　* * * * *Rosalind sat on the front porch of the house where her girlhood hadbeen spent. Her father had not come home for the evening meal. He was adealer in coal and lumber and owned a number of unpainted sheds facinga railroad siding west of town. There was a tiny office with a stoveand a desk in a corner by a window. The desk was piled high withunanswered letters and with circulars from mining and lumber companies.Over them had settled a thick layer of coal dust. All day he sat in hisoffice looking like an animal in a cage, but unlike a caged animal hewas apparently not discontented and did not grow restless. He was theone coal and lumber dealer in Willow Springs. When people wanted one ofthese commodities they had to come to him. There was no other place togo. He was content. In the morning as soon as he got to his office heread the Des Moines paper and then if no one came to disturb him he satall day, by the stove in winter and by an open window through the longhot summer days, apparently unaffected by the marching change ofseasons pictured in the fields, without thought, without hope, withoutregret that life was becoming an old worn out thing for him.

　　In the Wescott house Rosalind's mother had already begun the canning ofwhich she had several times spoken. She was making gooseberry jam.Rosalind could hear the pots boiling in the kitchen. Her mother walkedheavily. With the coming of age she was beginning to grow fat.

　　The daughter was weary from much thinking. It had been a day of manyemotions. She took off her hat and laid it on the porch beside her.Melville Stoner's house next door had windows that were like eyesstaring at her, accusing her. "Well now, you see, you have gone toofast," the house declared. It sneered at her. "You thought you knewabout people. After all you knew nothing." Rosalind held her head inher hands. It was true she had misunderstood. The man who lived in thehouse was no doubt like other people in Willow Springs. He was not, asshe had smartly supposed, a dull citizen of a dreary town, one who knewnothing of life. Had he not said words that had startled her, torn herout of herself?

　　Rosalind had an experience not uncommon to tired nervous people. Hermind, weary of thinking, did not stop thinking but went on faster thanever. A new plane of thought was reached. Her mind was like a flyingmachine that leaves the ground and leaps into the air.

　　It took hold upon an idea expressed or implied in something MelvilleStoner had said. "In every human being there are two voices, eachstriving to make itself heard."

　　A new world of thought had opened itself before her. After all humanbeings might be understood. It might be possible to understand hermother and her mother's life, her father, the man she loved, herself.There was the voice that said words. Words came forth from lips. Theyconformed, fell into a certain mold. For the most part the words had nolife of their own. They had come down out of old times and many of themwere no doubt once strong living words, coming out of the depth ofpeople, out of the bellies of people. The words had escaped out of ashut-in place. They had once expressed living truth. Then they had goneon being said, over and over, by the lips of many people, endlessly,wearily.

　　She thought of men and women she had seen together, that she had heardtalking together as they sat in the street cars or in apartments orwalked in a Chicago park. Her brother, the traveling salesman, and hiswife had talked half wearily through the long evenings she had spentwith them in their apartment. It was with them as with the otherpeople. A thing happened. The lips said certain words but the eyes ofthe people said other words. Sometimes the lips expressed affectionwhile hatred shone out of the eyes. Sometimes it was the other wayabout. What a confusion!

　　It was clear there was something hidden away within people that couldnot get itself expressed except accidentally. One was startled oralarmed and then the words that fell from the lips became pregnantwords, words that lived.

　　The vision that had sometimes visited her in her girlhood as she lay inbed at night came back. Again she saw the people on the marblestairway, going down and away, into infinity. Her own mind began tomake words that struggled to get themselves expressed through her lips.She hungered for someone to whom to say the words and half arose to goto her mother, to where her mother was making gooseberry jam in thekitchen, and then sat down again. "They were going down into the hallof the hidden voices," she whispered to herself. The words excited andintoxicated her as had the words from the lips of Melville Stoner. Shethought of herself as having quite suddenly grown amazingly,spiritually, even physically. She felt relaxed, young, wonderfullystrong. She imagined herself as walking, as had the young girl she hadseen in the vision, with swinging arms and shoulders, going down amarble stairway--down into the hidden places in people, into the hallof the little voices. "I shall understand after this, what shall I notunderstand?" she asked herself.

　　Doubt came and she trembled a little. As she walked with him on therailroad track Melville Stoner had gone down within herself. Her bodywas a house, through the door of which he had walked. He had knownabout the night noises in her father's house--her father at the wellby the kitchen door, the slap of the spilled water on the floor. Evenwhen she was a young girl and had thought herself alone in the bed inthe darkness in the room upstairs in the house before which she nowsat, she had not been alone. The strange bird-like man who lived in thehouse next door had been with her, in her room, in her bed. Years laterhe had remembered the terrible little noises of the house and had knownhow they had terrified her.

　　There was something terrible in his knowledge too. He had spoken, givenforth his knowledge, but as he did so there was laughter in his eyes,perhaps a sneer.

　　In the Wescott house the sounds of housekeeping went on. A man who hadbeen at work in a distant field, who had already begun his fallplowing, was unhitching his horses from the plow. He was far away,beyond the street's end, in a field that swelled a little out of theplain. Rosalind stared. The man was hitching the horses to a wagon. Shesaw him as through the large end of a telescope. He would drive thehorses away to a distant farmhouse and put them into a barn. Then hewould go into a house where there was a woman at work. Perhaps thewoman like her mother would be making gooseberry jam. He would grunt asher father did when at evening he came home from the little hot officeby the railroad siding. "Hello," he would say, flatly, indifferently,stupidly. Life was like that.

　　Rosalind became weary of thinking. The man in the distant field had gotinto his wagon and was driving away. In a moment there would be nothingleft of him but a thin cloud of dust that floated in the air. In thehouse the gooseberry jam had boiled long enough. Her mother waspreparing to put it into glass jars. The operation produced a newlittle side current of sounds. She thought again of Melville Stoner.For years he had been sitting, listening to sounds. There was a kind ofmadness in it.

　　She had got herself into a half frenzied condition. "I must stop it,"she told herself. "I am like a stringed instrument on which the stringshave been tightened too much." She put her face into her hands,wearily.

　　And then a thrill ran through her body. There was a reason for MelvilleStoner's being what he had become. There was a locked gateway leadingto the marble stairway that led down and away, into infinity, into thehall of the little voices and the key to the gateway was love. Warmthcame back into Rosalind's body. "Understanding need not lead toweariness," she thought. Life might after all be a rich, a triumphantthing. She would make her visit to Willow Springs count for somethingsignificant in her life. For one thing she would really approach hermother, she would walk into her mother's life. "It will be my firsttrip down the marble stairway," she thought and tears came to her eyes.In a moment her father would be coming home for the evening meal butafter supper he would go away. The two women would be alone together.Together they would explore a little into the mystery of life, theywould find sisterhood. The thing she had wanted to talk about withanother understanding woman could be talked about then. There might yetbe a beautiful outcome to her visit to Willow Springs and to hermother.