Book V: Chapter VI

by Sherwood Anderson

　　McGregor left the telling of the story of his love to Margaret. EdithCarson who knew defeat so well and who had in her the courage ofdefeat was to meet defeat at his hands through the undefeated womanand he let himself forget the whole matter. For a month he had beentrying to get workingmen to take up the idea of the Marching Menwithout success and after the talk with Margaret he kept doggedly atthe work.

　　And then one evening something happened that aroused him. The MarchingMen idea that had become more than half intellectualised became againa burning passion and the matter of his life with women got itselfcleared up swiftly and finally.

　　It was night and McGregor stood upon the platform of the ElevatedRailroad at State and Van Buren Streets. He had been feeling guiltyconcerning Edith and had been intending to go out to her place but thescene in the street below fascinated him and he remained standing,looking along the lighted thoroughfare.

　　For a week there had been a strike of teamsters in the city and thatafternoon there had been a riot. Windows had been smashed and severalmen injured. Now the evening crowds gathered and speakers climbed uponboxes to talk. Everywhere there was a great wagging of jaws and wavingof arms. McGregor grew reminiscent. Into his mind came the littlemining town and he saw himself again a boy sitting in the darkness onthe steps before his mother's bake shop and trying to think. Again infancy he saw the disorganised miners tumbling out of the saloon tostand on the street swearing and threatening and again he was filledwith contempt for them.

　　And then in the heart of the great western city the same thinghappened that had happened when he was a boy in Pennsylvania. Theofficials of the city, having decided to startle the strikingteamsters by a display of force, sent a regiment of state troopsmarching through the streets. The soldiers were dressed in brownuniforms. They were silent. As McGregor looked down they turned out ofPolk Street and came with swinging measured tread up State Street pastthe disorderly mobs on the sidewalk and the equally disorderlyspeakers on the curb.

　　McGregor's heart beat so that he nearly choked. The men in theuniforms, each in himself meaning nothing, had become by theirmarching together all alive with meaning. Again he wanted to shout, torun down into the street and embrace them. The strength in them seemedto kiss, as with the kiss of a lover, the strength within himself andwhen they had passed and the disorderly jangle of voices broke outagain he got on a car and went out to Edith's with his heart afirewith resolution.

　　Edith Carson's millinery shop was in the hands of a new owner. She hadsold out and fled. McGregor stood in the show room looking about himat the cases filled with their feathery finery and at the hats alongthe wall. The light from a street lamp that came in at the windowstarted millions of tiny motes dancing before his eyes.

　　Out of the room at the back of the shop--the room where he had seenthe tears of suffering in Edith's eyes--came a woman who told him ofEdith's having sold the business. She was excited by the message shehad to deliver and walked past the waiting man, going to the screendoor to stand with her back to him and look up the street.

　　Out of the corners of her eyes the woman looked at him. She was asmall black-haired woman with two gleaming gold teeth and with glasseson her nose. "There has been a lovers' quarrel here," she toldherself.

　　"I have bought the store," she said aloud. "She told me to tell youthat she had gone."

　　McGregor did not wait for more but hurried past the woman into thestreet. In his heart was a feeling of dumb aching loss. On an impulsehe turned and ran back.

　　Standing in the street by the screen door he shouted hoarsely. "Wheredid she go?" he demanded.

　　The woman laughed merrily. She felt that she was getting with the shopa flavour of romance and adventure very attractive to her. Then shewalked to the door and smiled through the screen. "She has only justleft," she said. "She went to the Burlington station. I think she hasgone West. I heard her tell the man about her trunk. She has beenaround here for two days since I bought the shop. I think she has beenwaiting for you to come. You did not come and now she has gone andperhaps you won't find her. She did not look like one who wouldquarrel with a lover."

　　The woman in the shop laughed softly as McGregor hurried away. "Nowwho would think that quiet little woman would have such a lover?" sheasked herself.

　　Down the street ran McGregor and raising his hand stopped a passingautomobile. The woman saw him seated in the automobile talking to agrey-haired man at the wheel and then the machine turned anddisappeared up the street at a law-breaking pace.

　　McGregor had again a new light on the character of Edith Carson. "Ican see her doing it," he told himself--"cheerfully telling Margaretthat it didn't matter and all the time planning this in the back ofher head. Here all of these years she has been leading a life of herown. The secret longings, the desires and the old human hunger forlove and happiness and expression have been going on under her placidexterior as they have under my own."

　　McGregor thought of the busy days behind him and realised with shamehow little Edith had seen of him. It was in the days when his bigmovement of The Marching Men was just coming into the light and on thenight before he had been in a conference of labour men who had wantedhim to make a public demonstration of the power he had secretly beenbuilding up. Every day his office was filled with newspaper men whoasked questions and demanded explanations. And in the meantime Edithhad been selling her shop to that woman and getting ready todisappear.

　　In the railroad station McGregor found Edith sitting in a corner withher face buried in the crook of her arm. Gone was the placid exterior.Her shoulders seemed narrower. Her hand, hanging over the back of theseat in front of her, was white and lifeless.

　　McGregor said nothing but snatched up the brown leather bag that satbeside her on the floor and taking her by the arm led her up a flightof stone steps to the street.