Seeds

by Sherwood Anderson

He was a small man with a beard and was very nervous. I remember howthe cords of his neck were drawn taut.For years he had been trying to cure people of illness by the methodcalled psychoanalysis. The idea was the passion of his life. "I camehere because I am tired," he said dejectedly. "My body is not tired butsomething inside me is old and worn-out. I want joy. For a few days orweeks I would like to forget men and women and the influences that makethem the sick things they are."There is a note that comes into the human voice by which you may knowreal weariness. It comes when one has been trying with all his heartand soul to think his way along some difficult road of thought. Of asudden he finds himself unable to go on. Something within him stops. Atiny explosion takes place. He bursts into words and talks, perhapsfoolishly. Little side currents of his nature he didn't know were thererun out and get themselves expressed. It is at such times that a manboasts, uses big words, makes a fool of himself in general.And so it was the doctor became shrill. He jumped up from the stepswhere we had been sitting, talking and walked about. "You come from theWest. You have kept away from people. You have preserved yourself--damnyou! I haven't--" His voice had indeed become shrill. "I have enteredinto lives. I have gone beneath the surface of the lives of men andwomen. Women especially I have studied--our own women, here inAmerica.""You have loved them?" I suggested."Yes," he said. "Yes--you are right there. I have done that. It is theonly way I can get at things. I have to try to love. You see how thatis? It's the only way. Love must be the beginning of things with me."I began to sense the depths of his weariness. "We will go swim in thelake," I urged."I don't want to swim or do any damn plodding thing. I want to run andshout," he declared. "For awhile, for a few hours, I want to be like adead leaf blown by the winds over these hills. I have one desire andone only--to free myself."We walked in a dusty country road. I wanted him to know that I thoughtI understood, so I put the case in my own way.When he stopped and stared at me I talked. "You are no more and nobetter than myself," I declared. "You are a dog that has rolled inoffal, and because you are not quite a dog you do not like the smell ofyour own hide."In turn my voice became shrill. "You blind fool," I cried impatiently."Men like you are fools. You cannot go along that road. It is given tono man to venture far along the road of lives."I became passionately in earnest. "The illness you pretend to cure isthe universal illness," I said. "The thing you want to do cannot bedone. Fool--do you expect love to be understood?"We stood in the road and looked at each other. The suggestion of asneer played about the corners of his mouth. He put a hand on myshoulder and shook me. "How smart we are--how aptly we put things!"He spat the words out and then turned and walked a little away. "Youthink you understand, but you don't understand," he cried. "What yousay can't be done can be done. You're a liar. You cannot be so definitewithout missing something vague and fine. You miss the whole point. Thelives of people are like young trees in a forest. They are being chokedby climbing vines. The vines are old thoughts and beliefs planted bydead men. I am myself covered by crawling creeping vines that chokeme."He laughed bitterly. "And that's why I want to run and play," he said."I want to be a leaf blown by the wind over hills. I want to die and beborn again, and I am only a tree covered with vines and slowly dying. Iam, you see, weary and want to be made clean. I am an amateur venturingtimidly into lives," he concluded. "I am weary and want to be madeclean. I am covered by creeping crawling things." * * * * *A woman from Iowa came here to Chicago and took a room in a house onthe west-side. She was about twenty-seven years old and ostensibly shecame to the city to study advanced methods for teaching music.A certain young man also lived in the west-side house. His room faced along hall on the second floor of the house and the one taken by thewoman was across the hall facing his room.In regard to the young man--there is something very sweet in hisnature. He is a painter but I have often wished he would decide tobecome a writer. He tells things with understanding and he does notpaint brilliantly.And so the woman from Iowa lived in the west-side house and came homefrom the city in the evening. She looked like a thousand other womenone sees in the streets every day. The only thing that at all made herstand out among the women in the crowds was that she was a little lame.Her right foot was slightly deformed and she walked with a limp. Forthree months she lived in the house--where she was the only womanexcept the landlady--and then a feeling in regard to her began to growup among the men of the house.The men all said the same thing concerning her. When they met in thehallway at the front of the house they stopped, laughed and whispered."She wants a lover," they said and winked. "She may not know it but alover is what she needs."One knowing Chicago and Chicago men would think that an easy want to besatisfied. I laughed when my friend--whose name is LeRoy--told me thestory, but he did not laugh. He shook his head. "It wasn't so easy," hesaid. "There would be no story were the matter that simple."LeRoy tried to explain. "Whenever a man approached her she becamealarmed," he said. Men kept smiling and speaking to her. They invitedher to dinner and to the theatre, but nothing would induce her to walkin the streets with a man. She never went into the streets at night.When a man stopped and tried to talk with her in the hallway she turnedher eyes to the floor and then ran into her room. Once a young drygoodsclerk who lived there induced her to sit with him on the steps beforethe house.He was a sentimental fellow and took hold of her hand. When she beganto cry he was alarmed and arose. He put a hand on her shoulder andtried to explain, but under the touch of his fingers her whole bodyshook with terror. "Don't touch me," she cried, "don't let your handstouch me!" She began to scream and people passing in the street stoppedto listen. The drygoods clerk was alarmed and ran upstairs to his ownroom. He bolted the door and stood listening. "It is a trick," hedeclared in a trembling voice. "She is trying to make trouble. I didnothing to her. It was an accident and anyway what's the matter? I onlytouched her arm with my fingers."Perhaps a dozen times LeRoy has spoken to me of the experience of theIowa woman in the west-side house. The men there began to hate her.Although she would have nothing to do with them she would not let themalone. In a hundred ways she continually invited approaches that whenmade she repelled. When she stood naked in the bathroom facing thehallway where the men passed up and down she left the door slightlyajar. There was a couch in the living room down stairs, and when menwere present she would sometimes enter and without saying a word throwherself down before them. On the couch she lay with lips drawn slightlyapart. Her eyes stared at the ceiling. Her whole physical being seemedto be waiting for something. The sense of her filled the room. The menstanding about pretended not to see. They talked loudly. Embarrassmenttook possession of them and one by one they crept quietly away.One evening the woman was ordered to leave the house. Someone, perhapsthe drygoods clerk, had talked to the landlady and she acted at once."If you leave tonight I shall like it that much better," LeRoy heardthe elder woman's voice saying. She stood in the hallway before theIowa woman's room. The landlady's voice rang through the house.LeRoy the painter is tall and lean and his life has been spent indevotion to ideas. The passions of his brain have consumed the passionsof his body. His income is small and he has not married. Perhaps he hasnever had a sweetheart. He is not without physical desire but he is notprimarily concerned with desire.On the evening when the Iowa woman was ordered to leave the west-sidehouse, she waited until she thought the landlady had gone down stairs,and then went into LeRoy's room. It was about eight o'clock and he satby a window reading a book. The woman did not knock but opened thedoor. She said nothing but ran across the floor and knelt at his feet.LeRoy said that her twisted foot made her run like a wounded bird, thather eyes were burning and that her breath came in little gasps. "Takeme," she said, putting her face down upon his knees and tremblingviolently. "Take me quickly. There must be a beginning to things. Ican't stand the waiting. You must take me at once."You may be quite sure LeRoy was perplexed by all this. From what he hassaid I gathered that until that evening he had hardly noticed thewoman. I suppose that of all the men in the house he had been the mostindifferent to her. In the room something happened. The landladyfollowed the woman when she ran to LeRoy, and the two women confrontedhim. The woman from Iowa knelt trembling and frightened at his feet.The landlady was indignant. LeRoy acted on impulse. An inspiration cameto him. Putting his hand on the kneeling woman's shoulder he shook herviolently. "Now behave yourself," he said quickly. "I will keep mypromise." He turned to the landlady and smiled. "We have been engagedto be married," he said. "We have quarreled. She came here to be nearme. She has been unwell and excited. I will take her away. Please don'tlet yourself be annoyed. I will take her away."When the woman and LeRoy got out of the house she stopped weeping andput her hand into his. Her fears had all gone away. He found a room forher in another house and then went with her into a park and sat on abench. * * * * *Everything LeRoy has told me concerning this woman strengthens mybelief in what I said to the man that day in the mountains. You cannotventure along the road of lives. On the bench he and the woman talkeduntil midnight and he saw and talked with her many times later. Nothingcame of it. She went back, I suppose, to her place in the West.In the place from which she had come the woman had been a teacher ofmusic. She was one of four sisters, all engaged in the same sort ofwork and, LeRoy says, all quiet capable women. Their father had diedwhen the eldest girl was not yet ten, and five years later the motherdied also. The girls had a house and a garden.In the nature of things I cannot know what the lives of the women werelike but of this one may be quite certain--they talked only of women'saffairs, thought only of women's affairs. No one of them ever had alover. For years no man came near the house.Of them all only the youngest, the one who came to Chicago, was visiblyaffected by the utterly feminine quality of their lives. It didsomething to her. All day and every day she taught music to young girlsand then went home to the women. When she was twenty-five she began tothink and to dream of men. During the day and through the evening shetalked with women of women's affairs, and all the time she wanteddesperately to be loved by a man. She went to Chicago with that hope inmind. LeRoy explained her attitude in the matter and her strangebehavior in the west-side house by saying she had thought too much andacted too little. "The life force within her became decentralized," hedeclared. "What she wanted she could not achieve. The living forcewithin could not find expression. When it could not get expressed inone way it took another. Sex spread itself out over her body. Itpermeated the very fibre of her being. At the last she was sexpersonified, sex become condensed and impersonal. Certain words, thetouch of a man's hand, sometimes even the sight of a man passing in thestreet did something to her." * * * * *Yesterday I saw LeRoy and he talked to me again of the woman and herstrange and terrible fate.We walked in the park by the lake. As we went along the figure of thewoman kept coming into my mind. An idea came to me."You might have been her lover," I said. "That was possible. She wasnot afraid of you."LeRoy stopped. Like the doctor who was so sure of his ability to walkinto lives he grew angry and scolded. For a moment he stared at me andthen a rather odd thing happened. Words said by the other man in thedusty road in the hills came to LeRoy's lips and were said over again.The suggestion of a sneer played about the corners of his mouth. "Howsmart we are. How aptly we put things," he said.The voice of the young man who walked with me in the park by the lakein the city became shrill. I sensed the weariness in him. Then helaughed and said quietly and softly, "It isn't so simple. By being sureof yourself you are in danger of losing all of the romance of life. Youmiss the whole point. Nothing in life can be settled so definitely. Thewoman--you see--was like a young tree choked by a climbing vine. Thething that wrapped her about had shut out the light. She was agrotesque as many trees in the forest are grotesques. Her problem wassuch a difficult one that thinking of it has changed the whole currentof my life. At first I was like you. I was quite sure. I thought Iwould be her lover and settle the matter."LeRoy turned and walked a little away. Then he came back and took holdof my arm. A passionate earnestness took possession of him. His voicetrembled. "She needed a lover, yes, the men in the house were quiteright about that," he said. "She needed a lover and at the same time alover was not what she needed. The need of a lover was, after all, aquite secondary thing. She needed to be loved, to be long and quietlyand patiently loved. To be sure she is a grotesque, but then all thepeople in the world are grotesques. We all need to be loved. What wouldcure her would cure the rest of us also. The disease she had is, yousee, universal. We all want to be loved and the world has no plan forcreating our lovers."LeRoy's voice dropped and he walked beside me in silence. We turnedaway from the lake and walked under trees. I looked closely at him. Thecords of his neck were drawn taut. "I have seen under the shell of lifeand I am afraid," he mused. "I am myself like the woman. I am coveredwith creeping crawling vine-like things. I cannot be a lover. I am notsubtle or patient enough. I am paying old debts. Old thoughts andbeliefs--seeds planted by dead men--spring up in my soul and choke me."For a long time we walked and LeRoy talked, voicing the thoughts thatcame into his mind. I listened in silence. His mind struck upon therefrain voiced by the man in the mountains. "I would like to be a deaddry thing," he muttered looking at the leaves scattered over the grass."I would like to be a leaf blown away by the wind." He looked up andhis eyes turned to where among the trees we could see the lake in thedistance. "I am weary and want to be made clean. I am a man covered bycreeping crawling things. I would like to be dead and blown by the windover limitless waters," he said. "I want more than anything else in theworld to be clean."

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