The Door of the Trap

by Sherwood Anderson

Winifred Walker understood some things clearly enough. She understoodthat when a man is put behind iron bars he is in prison. Marriage wasmarriage to her.It was that to her husband Hugh Walker, too, as he found out. Still hedidn't understand. It might have been better had he understood, then hemight at least have found himself. He didn't. After his marriage fiveor six years passed like shadows of wind blown trees playing on a wall.He was in a drugged, silent state. In the morning and evening every dayhe saw his wife. Occasionally something happened within him and hekissed her. Three children were born. He taught mathematics in thelittle college at Union Valley, Illinois, and waited.For what? He began to ask himself that question. It came to him atfirst faintly like an echo. Then it became an insistent question. "Iwant answering," the question seemed to say. "Stop fooling along. Giveyour attention to me."Hugh walked through the streets of the Illinois town. "Well, I'mmarried. I have children," he muttered.He went home to his own house. He did not have to live within hisincome from the little college, and so the house was rather large andcomfortably furnished. There was a negro woman who took care of thechildren and another who cooked and did the housework. One of the womenwas in the habit of crooning low soft negro songs. Sometimes Hughstopped at the house door and listened. He could see through the glassin the door into the room where his family was gathered. Two childrenplayed with blocks on the floor. His wife sat sewing. The old negresssat in a rocking chair with his youngest child, a baby, in her arms.The whole room seemed under the spell of the crooning voice. Hugh fellunder the spell. He waited in silence. The voice carried him far awaysomewhere, into forests, along the edges of swamps. There was nothingvery definite about his thinking. He would have given a good deal to beable to be definite.He went inside the house. "Well, here I am," his mind seemed to say,"here I am. This is my house, these are my children."He looked at his wife Winifred. She had grown a little plump sincetheir marriage. "Perhaps it is the mother in her coming out, she hashad three children," he thought.The crooning old negro woman went away, taking the youngest child withher. He and Winifred held a fragmentary conversation. "Have you beenwell to-day, dear?" she asked. "Yes," he answered.If the two older children were intent on their play his chain ofthought was not broken. His wife never broke it as the children didwhen they came running to pull and tear at him. Throughout the earlyevening, after the children went to bed, the surface of the shell ofhim was not broken at all. A brother college professor and his wifecame in or he and Winifred went to a neighbor's house. There was talk.Even when he and Winifred were alone together in the house there wastalk. "The shutters are becoming loose," she said. The house was an oldone and had green shutters. They were continually coming loose and atnight blew back and forth on their hinges making a loud banging noise.Hugh made some remark. He said he would see a carpenter about theshutters. Then his mind began playing away, out of his wife's presence,out of the house, in another sphere. "I am a house and my shutters areloose," his mind said. He thought of himself as a living thing inside ashell, trying to break out. To avoid distracting conversation he got abook and pretended to read. When his wife had also begun to read hewatched her closely, intently. Her nose was so and so and her eyes soand so. She had a little habit with her hands. When she became lost inthe pages of a book the hand crept up to her cheek, touched it and thenwas put down again. Her hair was not in very good order. Since hermarriage and the coming of the children she had not taken good care ofher body. When she read her body slumped down in the chair. It becamebag-like. She was one whose race had been run.Hugh's mind played all about the figure of his wife but did not reallyapproach the woman who sat before him. It was so with his children.Sometimes, just for a moment, they were living things to him, things asalive as his own body. Then for long periods they seemed to go far awaylike the crooning voice of the negress.It was odd that the negress was always real enough. He felt anunderstanding existed between himself and the negress. She was outsidehis life. He could look at her as at a tree. Sometimes in the eveningwhen she had been putting the children to bed in the upper part of thehouse and when he sat with a book in his hand pretending to read, theold black woman came softly through the room, going toward the kitchen.She did not look at Winifred, but at Hugh. He thought there was astrange, soft light in her old eyes. "I understand you, my son," hereyes seemed to say.Hugh was determined to get his life cleaned up if he could manage it."All right, then," he said, as though speaking to a third person in theroom. He was quite sure there was a third person there and that thethird person was within himself, inside his body. He addressed thethird person."Well, there is this woman, this person I married, she has the air ofsomething accomplished," he said, as though speaking aloud. Sometimesit almost seemed to him he had spoken aloud and he looked quickly andsharply at his wife. She continued reading, lost in her book. "That maybe it," he went on. "She has had these children. They are accomplishedfacts to her. They came out of her body, not out of mine. Her body hasdone something. Now it rests. If she is becoming a little bag-like,that's all right."He got up and making some trivial excuse got out of the room and out ofthe house. In his youth and young manhood the long periods of walkingstraight ahead through the country, that had come upon him likevisitations of some recurring disease, had helped. Walking solvednothing. It only tired his body, but when his body was tired he couldsleep. After many days of walking and sleeping something occurred. Thereality of life was in some queer way re-established in his mind. Somelittle thing happened. A man walking in the road before him threw astone at a dog that ran barking out of a farm-house. It was eveningperhaps, and he walked in a country of low hills. Suddenly he came outupon the top of one of the hills. Before him the road dipped down intodarkness but to the west, across fields, there was a farm-house. Thesun had gone down, but a faint glow lit the western horizon. A. womancame out of the farmhouse and went toward a barn. He could not see herfigure distinctly. She seemed to be carrying something, no doubt a milkpail; she was going to a barn to milk a cow.The man in the road who had thrown the stone at the farm dog had turnedand seen Hugh in the road behind him. He was a little ashamed of havingbeen afraid of the dog. For a moment he seemed about to wait and speakto Hugh, and then was overcome with confusion and hurried away. He wasa middle-aged man, but quite suddenly and unexpectedly he looked like aboy.As for the farm woman, dimly seen going toward a distant barn, she alsostopped and looked toward him. It was impossible she should have seenhim. She was dressed in white and he could see her but dimly againstthe blackish green of the trees of an orchard behind her. Still shestood looking and seemed to look directly into his eyes. He had a queersensation of her having been lifted by an unseen hand and brought tohim. It seemed to him he knew all about her life, all about the life ofthe man who had thrown the stone at the dog.In his youth, when life had stepped out of his grasp, Hugh had walkedand walked until several such things had occurred and then suddenly hewas all right again and could again work and live among men.After his marriage and after such an evening at home he started walkingrapidly as soon as he left the house. As quickly as possible he got outof town and struck out along a road that led over the rolling prairie."Well, I can't walk for days and days as I did once," he thought."There are certain facts in life and I must face facts. Winifred, mywife, is a fact, and my children are facts. I must get my fingers onfacts. I must live by them and with them. It's the way lives arelived."Hugh got out of town and on to a road that ran between cornfields. Hewas an athletic looking man and wore loose fitting clothes. He wentalong distraught and puzzled. In a way he felt like a man capable oftaking a man's place in life and in another way he didn't at all.The country spread out, wide, in all directions. It was always nightwhen he walked thus and he could not see, but the realization ofdistances was always with him. "Everything goes on and on but I standstill," he thought. He had been a professor in the little college forsix years. Young men and women had come into a room and he had taughtthem. It was nothing. Words and figures had been played with. An efforthad been made to arouse minds.For what?There was the old question, always coming back, always wantinganswering as a little animal wants food. Hugh gave up trying to answer.He walked rapidly, trying to grow physically tired. He made his mindattend to little things in the effort to forget distances. One night hegot out of the road and walked completely around a cornfield. Hecounted the stalks in each hill of corn and computed the number ofstalks in a whole field. "It should yield twelve hundred bushels ofcorn, that field," he said to himself dumbly, as though it mattered tohim. He pulled a little handful of cornsilk out of the top of an ear ofcorn and played with it. He tried to fashion himself a yellowmoustache. "I'd be quite a fellow with a trim yellow moustache," hethought.One day in his class-room Hugh suddenly began to look with new interestat his pupils. A young girl attracted his attention. She sat beside theson of a Union Valley merchant and the young man was writing somethingon the back of a book. She looked at it and then turned her head away.The young man waited.It was winter and the merchant's son had asked the girl to go with himto a skating party. Hugh, however, did not know that. He felt suddenlyold. When he asked the girl a question she was confused. Her voicetrembled.When the class was dismissed an amazing thing happened. He asked themerchant's son to stay for a moment and, when the two were alonetogether in the room, he grew suddenly and furiously angry. His voicewas, however, cold and steady. "Young man," he said, "you do not comeinto this room to write on the back of a book and waste your time. If Isee anything of the kind again I'll do something you don't expect. I'llthrow you out through a window, that's what I'll do."Hugh made a gesture and the young man went away, white and silent. Hughfelt miserable. For several days he thought about the girl who hadquite accidentally attracted his attention. "I'll get acquainted withher. I'll find out about her," he thought.It was not an unusual thing for professors in the college at UnionValley to take students home to their houses. Hugh decided he wouldtake the girl to his home. He thought about it several days and lateone afternoon saw her going down the college hill ahead of him.The girl's name was Mary Cochran and she had come to the school but afew months before from a place called Huntersburg, Illinois, no doubtjust such another place as Union Valley. He knew nothing of her exceptthat her father was dead, her mother too, perhaps. He walked rapidlydown the hill to overtake her. "Miss Cochran," he called, and wassurprised to find that his voice trembled a little. "What am I so eagerabout?" he asked himself. A new life began in Hugh Walker's house. Itwas good for the man to have some one there who did not belong to him,and Winifred Walker and the children accepted the presence of the girl.Winifred urged her to come again. She did come several times a week.To Mary Cochran it was comforting to be in the presence of a family ofchildren. On winter afternoons she took Hugh's two sons and a sled andwent to a small hill near the house. Shouts arose. Mary Cochran pulledthe sled up the hill and the children followed. Then they all cametearing down together.The girl, developing rapidly into womanhood, looked upon Hugh Walker assomething that stood completely outside her own life. She and the manwho had become suddenly and intensely interested in her had little tosay to each other and Winifred seemed to have accepted her withoutquestion as an addition to the household. Often in the afternoon whenthe two negro women were busy she went away leaving the two olderchildren in Mary's charge.It was late afternoon and perhaps Hugh had walked home with Mary fromthe college. In the spring he worked in the neglected garden. It hadbeen plowed and planted, but he took a hoe and rake and puttered about.The children played about the house with the college girl. Hugh did notlook at them but at her. "She is one of the world of people with whom Ilive and with whom I am supposed to work here," he thought. "UnlikeWinifred and these children she does not belong to me. I could go toher now, touch her fingers, look at her and then go away and never seeher again."That thought was a comfort to the distraught man. In the evening whenhe went out to walk the sense of distance that lay all about him didnot tempt him to walk and walk, going half insanely forward for hours,trying to break through an intangible wall.He thought about Mary Cochran. She was a girl from a country town. Shemust be like millions of American girls. He wondered what went on inher mind as she sat in his class-room, as she walked beside him alongthe streets of Union Valley, as she played with the children in theyard beside his house.In the winter, when in the growing darkness of a late afternoon Maryand the children built a snow man in the yard, he went upstairs andstood in the darkness to look out a window. The tall straight figure ofthe girl, dimly seen, moved quickly about. "Well, nothing has happenedto her. She may be anything or nothing. Her figure is like a young treethat has not borne fruit," he thought. He went away to his own room andsat for a long time in the darkness. That night when he left the housefor his evening's walk he did not stay long but hurried home and wentto his own room. He locked the door. Unconsciously he did not wantWinifred to come to the door and disturb his thoughts. Sometimes shedid that.All the time she read novels. She read the novels of Robert LouisStevenson. When she had read them all she began again.Sometimes she came upstairs and stood talking by his door. She toldsome tale, repeated some wise saying that had fallen unexpectedly fromthe lips of the children. Occasionally she came into the room andturned out the light. There was a couch by a window. She went to sit onthe edge of the couch. Something happened. It was as it had been beforetheir marriage. New life came into her figure. He also went to sit onthe couch and she put up her hand and touched his face.Hugh did not want that to happen now. He stood within the room for amoment and then unlocked the door and went to the head of the stairs."Be quiet when you come up, Winifred. I have a headache and am going totry to sleep," he lied.When he had gone back to his own room and locked the door again he feltsafe. He did not undress but threw himself on the couch and turned outthe light.He thought about Mary Cochran, the school girl, but was sure he thoughtabout her in a quite impersonal way. She was like the woman going tomilk cows he had seen across hills when he was a young fellow andwalked far and wide over the country to cure the restlessness inhimself. In his life she was like the man who threw the stone at dog."Well, she is unformed; she is like a young tree," he told himselfagain. "People are like that. They just grow up suddenly out ofchildhood. It will happen to my own children. My little Winifred thatcannot yet say words will suddenly be like this girl. I have notselected her to think about for any particular reason. For some reasonI have drawn away from life and she has brought me back. It might havehappened when I saw a child playing in the street or an old man goingup a stairway into a house. She does not belong to me. She will go awayout of my sight. Winifred and the children will stay on and on here andI will stay on and on. We are imprisoned by the fact that we belong toeach other. This Mary Cochran is free, or at least she is free as faras this prison is concerned. No doubt she will, after a while make aprison of her own and live in it, but I will have nothing to do withthe matter."By the time Mary Cochran was in her third year in the college at UnionValley she had become almost a fixture in the Walker household. Stillshe did not know Hugh. She knew the children better than he did,perhaps better than their mother. In the fall she and the two boys wentto the woods to gather nuts. In the winter they went skating on alittle pond near the house.Winifred accepted her as she accepted everything, the service of thetwo negroes, the coming of the children, the habitual silence of herhusband.And then quite suddenly and unexpectedly Hugh's silence, that hadlasted all through his married life, was broken up. He walked homewardwith a German who had the chair of modern languages in the school andgot into a violent quarrel. He stopped to speak to men on the street.When he went to putter about in the garden he whistled and sang.One afternoon in the fall he came home and found the whole familyassembled in the living room of the house. The children were playing onthe floor and the negress sat in the chair by the window with hisyoungest child in her arms, crooning one of the negro songs. MaryCochran was there. She sat reading a book.Hugh walked directly toward her and looked over her shoulder. At thatmoment Winifred came into the room. He reached forward and snatched thebook out of the girl's hands. She looked up startled. With an oath hethrew it into the fire that burned in an open grate at the side of theroom. A flood of words ran from him. He cursed books and people andschools. "Damn it all," he said. "What makes you want to read aboutlife? What makes people want to think about life? Why don't they live?Why don't they leave books and thoughts and schools alone?"He turned to look at his wife who had grown pale and stared at him witha queer fixed uncertain stare. The old negro woman got up and wentquickly away. The two older children began to cry. Hugh was miserable.He looked at the startled girl in the chair who also had tears in hereyes, and at his wife. His fingers pulled nervously at his coat. To thetwo women he looked like a boy who had been caught stealing food in apantry. "I am having one of my silly irritable spells," he said,looking at his wife but in reality addressing the girl. "You see I ammore serious than I pretend to be. I was not irritated by your book butby something else. I see so much that can be done in life and I do solittle."He went upstairs to his own room wondering why he had lied to the twowomen, why he continually lied to himself.Did he lie to himself? He tried to answer the question but couldn't. Hewas like one who walks in the darkness of the hallway of a house andcomes to a blank wall. The old desire to run away from life, to wearhimself out physically, came back upon him like a madness.For a long time he stood in the darkness inside his own room. Thechildren stopped crying and the house became quiet again. He could hearhis wife's voice speaking softly and presently the back door of thehouse banged and he knew the schoolgirl had gone away.Life in the house began again. Nothing happened. Hugh ate his dinner insilence and went for a long walk. For two weeks Mary Cochran did notcome to his house and then one day he saw her on the college grounds.She was no longer one of his pupils. "Please do not desert us becauseof my rudeness," he said. The girl blushed and said nothing. When hegot home that evening she was in the yard beside the house playing withthe children. He went at once to his own room. A hard smile came andwent on his face. "She isn't like a young tree any more. She is almostlike Winifred. She is almost like a person who belongs here, whobelongs to me and my life," he thought. * * * * *Mary Cochran's visits to the Walker household came to an end veryabruptly. One evening when Hugh was in his room she came up thestairway with the two boys. She had dined with the family and wasputting the two boys into their beds. It was a privilege she claimedwhen she dined with the Walkers.Hugh had hurried upstairs immediately after dining. He knew where hiswife was. She was downstairs, sitting under a lamp, reading one of thebooks of Robert Louis Stevenson.For a long time Hugh could hear the voices of his children on the floorabove. Then the thing happened.Mary Cochran came down the stairway that led past the door of his room.She stopped, turned back and climbed the stairs again to the roomabove. Hugh arose and stepped into the hallway. The schoolgirl hadreturned to the children's room because she had been suddenly overtakenwith a hunger to kiss Hugh's oldest boy, now a lad of nine. She creptinto the room and stood for a long time looking at the two boys, whounaware of her presence had gone to sleep. Then she stole forward andkissed the boy lightly. When she went out of the room Hugh stood in thedarkness waiting for her. He took hold of her hand and led her down thestairs to his own room.She was terribly afraid and her fright in an odd way pleased him."Well," he whispered, "you can't understand now what's going to happenhere but some day you will. I'm going to kiss you and then I'm going toask you to go out of this house and never come back."He held the girl against his body and kissed her upon the cheeks andlips. When he led her to the door she was so weak with fright and withnew, strange, trembling desires that she could with difficulty make herway down the stair and into his wife's presence. "She will lie now," hethought, and heard her voice coming up the stairs like an echo to histhoughts. "I have a terrible headache. I must hurry home," he heard hervoice saying. The voice was dull and heavy. It was not the voice of ayoung girl."She is no longer like a young tree," he thought. He was glad and proudof what he had done. When he heard the door at the back of the houseclose softly his heart jumped. A strange quivering light came into hiseyes. "She will be imprisoned but I will have nothing to do with it.She will never belong to me. My hands will never build a prison forher," he thought with grim pleasure.

Previous Authors：Senility Next Authors：The Dumb Man