Book Four: Chapter XX

by Sherwood Anderson

　　It was a hot, dusty day, a week after Hugh's marriage to Clara, and Hughwas at work in his shop at Bidwell. How many days, weeks, and months hehad already worked there, thinking in iron--twisted, turned, tortured tofollow the twistings and turnings of his mind--standing all day by a benchbeside other workmen--before him always the little piles of wheels, stripsof unworked iron and steel, blocks of wood, the paraphernalia of theinventor's trade. Beside him, now that money had come to him, more and moreworkmen, men who had invented nothing, who were without distinction in thelife of the community, who had married no rich man's daughter.

　　In the morning the other workmen, skillful fellows, who knew as Hugh hadnever known, the science of their iron craft, came straggling through theshop door into his presence. They were a little embarrassed before him. Thegreatness of his name rang in their minds.

　　Many of the workmen were husbands, fathers of families. In the morning theyleft their houses gladly but nevertheless came somewhat reluctantly tothe shop. As they came along the street, past other houses, they smokeda morning pipe. Groups were formed. Many legs straggled along the street.At the door of the shop each man stopped. There was a sharp tapping sound.Pipe bowls were knocked out against the door sill. Before he came into theshop, each man looked out across the open country that stretched away tothe north.

　　For a week Hugh had been married to a woman who had not yet become hiswife. She belonged, still belonged, to a world he had thought of as outsidethe possibilities of his life. Was she not young, strong, straight of body?Did she not array herself in what seemed unbelievably beautiful clothes?The clothes she wore were a symbol of herself. For him she wasunattainable.

　　And yet she had consented to become his wife, had stood with him before aman who had said words about honor and obedience.

　　Then there had come the two terrible evenings--when he had gone backto the farmhouse with her to find the wedding feast set in their honor,and that other evening when old Tom had brought him to the farmhouse adefeated, frightened man who hoped the woman would put out her hand, wouldreassure him.

　　Hugh was sure he had missed the great opportunity of his life. He hadmarried, but his marriage was not a marriage. He had got himself into aposition from which there was no possibility of escaping. "I'm a coward,"he thought, looking at the other workmen in the shop. They, like himself,were married men and lived in a house with a woman. At night they wentboldly into the presence of the woman. He had not done that when theopportunity offered, and Clara could not come to him. He could understandthat. His hands had builded a wall and the passing days were huge stonesput on top of the wall. What he had not done became every day a more andmore impossible thing to do.

　　Tom, having taken Hugh back to Clara, was still concerned over the outcomeof their adventure. Every day he came to the shop and in the evening cameto see them at the farmhouse. He hovered about, was like a mother birdwhose offspring had been prematurely pushed out of the nest. Every morninghe came into the shop to talk with Hugh. He made jokes about married life.Winking at a man standing nearby he put his hand familiarly on Hugh'sshoulder. "Well, how does married life go? It seems to me you're a littlepale," he said laughing.

　　In the evening he came to the farmhouse and sat talking of his affairs, ofthe progress and growth of the town and his part in it. Without hearing hiswords both Clara and Hugh sat in silence, pretending to listen, glad of hispresence.

　　Hugh came to the shop at eight. On other mornings, all through that longweek of waiting, Clara had driven him to his work, the two riding insilence down Medina Road and through the crowded streets of the town; buton that morning he had walked.

　　On Medina Road, near the bridge where he had once stood with Clara andwhere he had seen her hot with anger, something had happened, a trivialthing. A male bird pursued a female among the bushes beside the road. Thetwo feathered, living creatures, vividly colored, alive with life, pitchedand swooped through the air. They were like moving balls of light going inand out of the dark green of foliage. There was in them a madness, a riotof life.

　　Hugh had been tricked into stopping by the roadside. A tangle of thingsthat had filled his mind, the wheels, cogs, levers, all the intricate partsof the hay-loading machine, the things that lived in his mind until hishand had made them into facts, were blown away like dust. For a moment hewatched the living riotous things and then, as though jerking himself backinto a path from which his feet had wandered, hurried onward to the shop,looking as he went not into the branches of trees, but downward at the dustof the road.

　　In the shop Hugh tried all morning to refurnish the warehouse of his mind,to put back into it the things blown so recklessly away. At ten Tom camein, talked for a moment and then flitted away. "You are still there. Mydaughter still has you. You have not run away again," he seemed to besaying to himself.

　　The day grew warm and the sky, seen through the shop window by the benchwhere Hugh tried to work, was overcast with clouds.

　　At noon the workmen went away, but Clara, who on other days had come todrive Hugh to the farmhouse for lunch, did not appear. When all was silentin the shop he stopped work, washed his hands and put on his coat.

　　He went to the shop door and then came back to the bench. Before him layan iron wheel on which he had been at work. It was intended to drive someintricate part of the hay-loading machine. Hugh took it in his hand andcarried it to the back of the shop where there was an anvil. Withoutconsciousness and scarcely realizing what he did he laid it on the anviland taking a great sledge in his hand swung it over his head.

　　The blow struck was terrific. Into it Hugh put all of his protest againstthe grotesque position into which he had been thrown by his marriage toClara.

　　The blow accomplished nothing. The sledge descended and the comparativelydelicate metal wheel was twisted, knocked out of shape. It spurted fromunder the head of the sledge and shot past Hugh's head and out through awindow, breaking a pane of glass. Fragments of the broken glass fell with asharp little tinkling sound upon a heap of twisted pieces of iron and steellying beside the anvil....

　　Hugh did not eat lunch that day nor did he go to the farmhouse or return towork at the shop. He walked, but this time did not walk in country roadswhere male and female birds dart in and out of bushes. An intense desire toknow something intimate and personal concerning men and women and the livesthey led in their houses had taken possession of him. He walked in thedaylight up and down in the streets of Bidwell.

　　To the right, over the bridge leading out of Turner's Road, the main streetof Bidwell ran along a river bank. In that direction the hills out of thecountry to the south came down to the river's edge and there was a highbluff. On the bluff and back of it on a sloping hillside many of the morepretentious new houses of the prosperous Bidwell citizens had been built.Facing the river were the largest houses, with grounds in which trees andshrubs had been planted and in the streets along the hill, less and lesspretentious as they receded from the river, were other houses built andbeing built, long rows of houses, long streets of houses, houses in brick,stone, and wood.

　　Hugh went from the river front back into this maze of streets and houses.Some instinct led him there. It was where the men and women of Bidwell whohad prospered and had married went to live, to make themselves houses. Hisfather-in-law had offered to buy him a river front place and already thatmeant much in Bidwell.

　　He wanted to see women who, like Clara, had got themselves husbands, whatthey were like. "I've seen enough of men," he thought half resentfully ashe went along.

　　All afternoon he walked in streets, going up and down before houses inwhich women lived with their men. A detached mood had possession of him.For an hour he stood under a tree idly watching workmen engaged in buildinganother house. When one of the workmen spoke to him he walked away and wentinto a street where men were laying a cement pavement before a completedhouse.

　　In a furtive way he kept looking about for women, hungering to see theirfaces. "What are they up to? I'd like to find out," his mind seemed to besaying.

　　The women came out of the doors of the houses and passed him as he wentslowly along. Other women in carriages drove in the streets. They werewell-dressed women and seemed sure of themselves. "Things are all rightwith me. For me things are settled and arranged," they seemed to say. Allthe streets in which he walked seemed to be telling the story of thingssettled and arranged. The houses spoke of the same things. "I am a house.I am not built until things are settled and arranged. I mean that," theysaid.

　　Hugh grew very tired. In the later afternoon a small bright-eyed woman--nodoubt she had been one of the guests at his wedding feast--stopped him."Are you planning to buy or build up our way, Mr. McVey?" she asked. Heshook his head. "I'm looking around," he said and hurried away.

　　Anger took the place of perplexity in him. The women he saw in the streetsand in the doors of the houses were such women as his own woman Clara. Theyhad married men--"no better than myself," he told himself, growing bold.

　　They had married men and something had happened to them. Something wassettled. They could live in streets and in houses. Their marriages had beenreal marriages and he had a right to a real marriage. It was not too muchto expect out of life.

　　"Clara has a right to that also," he thought and his mind began to idealizethe marriages of men and women. "On every hand here I see them, the neat,well-dressed, handsome women like Clara. How happy they are!

　　"Their feathers have been ruffled though," he thought angrily. "It was withthem as with that bird I saw being pursued through the trees. There hasbeen pursuit and a pretense of trying to escape. There has been an effortmade that was not an effort, but feathers have been ruffled here."

　　When his thoughts had driven him into a half desperate mood Hugh wentout of the streets of bright, ugly, freshly built, freshly painted andfurnished houses, and down into the town. Several men homeward bound at theend of their day of work called to him. "I hope you are thinking of buyingor building up our way," they said heartily.

　　* * * * *It began to rain and darkness came, but Hugh did not go home to Clara. Itdid not seem to him that he could spend another night in the house withher, lying awake, hearing the little noises of the night, waiting--forcourage. He could not sit under the lamp through another evening pretendingto read. He could not go with Clara up the stairs only to leave her with acold "good-night" at the top of the stairs.

　　Hugh went up the Medina Road almost to the house and then retraced hissteps and got into a field. There was a low swampy place in which thewater came up over his shoetops, and after he had crossed that there wasa field overgrown with a tangle of vines. The night became so dark thathe could see nothing and darkness reigned over his spirit. For hours hewalked blindly, but it did not occur to him that as he waited, hating thewaiting, Clara also waited; that for her also it was a time of trial anduncertainty. To him it seemed her course was simple and easy. She was awhite pure thing--waiting--for what? for courage to come in to him in orderthat an assault be made upon her whiteness and purity.

　　That was the only answer to the question Hugh could find within himself.The destruction of what was white and pure was a necessary thing in life.It was a thing men must do in order that life go on. As for women, theymust be white and pure--and wait.

　　* * * * *Filled with inward resentment Hugh at last did go to the farmhouse. Wetand with dragging, heavy feet he turned out of the Medina Road to find thehouse dark and apparently deserted.

　　Then a new and puzzling situation arose. When he stepped over the thresholdand into the house he knew Clara was there.

　　On that day she had not driven him to work in the morning or gone for himat noon hour because she did not want to look at him in the light of day,did not want again to see the puzzled, frightened look in his eyes. She hadwanted him in the darkness alone, had waited for darkness. Now it was darkin the house and she waited for him.

　　How simple it was! Hugh came into the living-room, stumbled forward intothe darkness, and found the hat-rack against the wall near the stairwayleading to the bedrooms above. Again he had surrendered what he would nodoubt have called the manhood in himself, and hoped only to be able toescape the presence he felt in the room, to creep off upstairs to his bed,to lie awake listening to noises, waiting miserably for another day tocome. But when he had put his dripping hat on one of the pegs of the rackand had found the lower step with his foot thrust into darkness, a voicecalled to him.

　　"Come here, Hugh," Clara said softly and firmly, and like a boy caughtdoing a forbidden act he went toward her. "We have been very silly, Hugh,"he heard her voice saying softly.

　　* * * * *Hugh went to where Clara sat in a chair by a window. From him there wasno protest and no attempt to escape the love-making that followed. For amoment he stood in silence and could see her white figure below him in thechair. It was like something still far away, but coming swiftly as a birdflies to him--upward to him. Her hand crept up and lay in his hand. Itseemed unbelievably large. It was not soft, but hard and firm. When herhand had rested in his for a moment she arose and stood beside him. Thenthe hand went out of his and touched, caressed his wet coat, his wet hair,his cheeks. "My flesh must be white and cold," he thought, and then he didnot think any more.

　　Gladness took hold of him, a gladness that came up out of the inner partsof himself as she had come up to him out of the chair. For days, weeks, hehad been thinking of his problem as a man's problem, his defeat had been aman's defeat.

　　Now there was no defeat, no problem, no victory. In himself he did notexist. Within himself something new had been born or another something thathad always lived with him had stirred to life. It was not awkward. It wasnot afraid. It was a thing as swift and sure as the flight of the male birdthrough the branches of trees and it was in pursuit of something light andswift in her, something that would fly through light and darkness but flynot too swiftly, something of which he need not be afraid, something thatwithout the need of understanding he could understand as one understandsthe need of breath in a close place.

　　With a laugh as soft and sure as her own Hugh took Clara into his arms.A few minutes later they went up stairs and twice Hugh stumbled on thestairway. It did not matter. His long awkward body was a thing outsidehimself. It might stumble and fall many times but the new thing he hadfound, the thing inside himself that responded to the thing inside theshell that was Clara his wife, did not stumble. It flew like a bird out ofdarkness into the light. At the moment he thought the sweeping flight oflife thus begun would run on forever.