Book Three: Chapter IX

by Sherwood Anderson

　　The Woodburns of Columbus were wealthy by the standards of their day. Theylived in a large house and kept two carriages and four servants, but hadno children. Henderson Woodburn was small of stature, wore a gray beard,and was neat and precise about his person. He was treasurer of the plowmanufacturing company and was also treasurer of the church he and hiswife attended. In his youth he had been called "Hen" Woodburn and hadbeen bullied by larger boys, and when he grew to be a man and after hispersistent shrewdness and patience had carried him into a position of somepower in the business life of his native city he in turn became somethingof a bully to the men beneath him. He thought his wife Priscilla had comefrom a better family than his own and was a little afraid of her. When theydid not agree on any subject, she expressed her opinion gently but firmly,while he blustered for a time and then gave in. After a misunderstandinghis wife put her arms about his neck and kissed the bald spot on the top ofhis head. Then the subject was forgotten.

　　Life in the Woodburn house was lived without words. After the stir andbustle of the farm, the silence of the house for a long time frightenedClara. Even when she was alone in her own room she walked about on tiptoe.Henderson Woodburn was absorbed in his work, and when he came home in theevening, ate his dinner in silence and then worked again. He brought homeaccount books and papers from the office and spread them out on a table inthe living room. His wife Priscilla sat in a large chair under a lamp andknitted children's stockings. They were, she told Clara, for the childrenof the poor. As a matter of fact the stockings never left her house. In alarge trunk in her room upstairs lay hundreds of pairs knitted during thetwenty-five years of her family life.

　　Clara was not very happy in the Woodburn household, but on the other hand,was not very unhappy. She attended to her studies at the Universitypassably well and in the late afternoons took a walk with a girl classmate,attended a matinee at the theater, or read a book. In the evening she satwith her aunt and uncle until she could no longer bear the silence, andthen went to her own room, where she studied until it was time to go tobed. Now and then she went with the two older people to a social affair atthe church, of which Henderson Woodburn was treasurer, or accompanied themto dinners at the homes of other well-to-do and respectable business men.On several occasions young men, sons of the people with whom the Woodburnsdined, or students at the university, came in the evening to call. On suchan occasion Clara and the young man sat in the parlor of the house andtalked. After a time they grew silent and embarrassed in each other'spresence. From the next room Clara could hear the rustling of the paperscontaining the columns of figures over which her uncle was at work. Heraunt's knitting needles clicked loudly. The young man told a tale of somefootball game, or if he had already gone out into the world, talked of hisexperiences as a traveler selling the wares manufactured or merchandized byhis father. Such visits all began at the same hour, eight o'clock, and theyoung man left the house promptly at ten. Clara grew to feel that she wasbeing merchandized and that they had come to look at the goods. One eveningone of the men, a fellow with laughing blue eyes and kinky yellow hair,unconsciously disturbed her profoundly. All the evening he talked just asthe others had talked and got out of his chair to go away at the prescribedhour. Clara walked with him to the door. She put out her hand, which heshook cordially. Then he looked at her and his eyes twinkled. "I've hada good time," he said. Clara had a sudden and almost overpowering desireto embrace him. She wanted to disturb his assurance, to startle him bykissing him on the lips or holding him tightly in her arms. Shutting thedoor quickly, she stood with her hand on the door-knob, her whole bodytrembling. The trivial by-products of her age's industrial madness wenton in the next room. The sheets of paper rustled and the knitting needlesclicked. Clara thought she would like to call the young man back into thehouse, lead him to the room where the meaningless industry went endlesslyon and there do something that would shock them and him as they had neverbeen shocked before. She ran quickly upstairs. "What is getting to be thematter with me?" she asked herself anxiously.

　　* * * * *One evening in the month of May, during her third year at the University,Clara sat on the bank of a tiny stream by a grove of trees, far out on theedge of a suburban village north of Columbus. Beside her sat a young mannamed Frank Metcalf whom she had known for a year and who had once been astudent in the same classes with herself. He was the son of the presidentof the plow manufacturing company of which her uncle was treasurer. As theysat together by the stream the afternoon light began to fade and darknesscame on. Before them across an open field stood a factory, and Clararemembered that the whistle had long since blown and the men from thefactory had gone home. She grew restless and sprang to her feet. YoungMetcalf who had been talking very earnestly arose and stood beside her."I can't marry for two years, but we can be engaged and that will be allthe same thing as far as the right and wrong of what I want and need isconcerned. It isn't my fault I can't ask you to marry me now," he declared."In two years now, I'll inherit eleven thousand dollars. My aunt left it tome and the old fool went and fixed it so I don't get it if I marry beforeI'm twenty-four. I want that money. I've got to have it, but I got to haveyou too."

　　Clara looked away into the evening darkness and waited for him to finishhis speech. All afternoon he had been making practically the same speech,over and over. "Well, I can't help it, I'm a man," he said doggedly. "Ican't help it, I want you. I can't help it, my aunt was an old fool." Hebegan to explain the necessity of remaining unmarried in order that hecould receive the eleven thousand dollars. "If I don't get that money I'llbe just the same as I am now," he declared. "I won't be any good." He grewangry and, thrusting his hands into his pockets, stared also across thefield into the darkness. "Nothing keeps me satisfied," he said. "I hatebeing in my father's business and I hate going to school. In only two yearsI'll get the money. Father can't keep it from me. I'll take it and lightout. I don't know just what I'll do. I'm going maybe to Europe, that's whatI'm going to do. Father wants me to stay here and work in his office. Tohell with that. I want to travel. I'll be a soldier or something. AnywayI'll get out of here and go somewhere and do something exciting, somethingalive. You can go with me. We'll cut out together. Haven't you got thenerve? Why don't you be my woman?"

　　Young Metcalf took hold of Clara's shoulder and tried to take her into hisarms. For a moment they struggled and then, in disgust, he stepped awayfrom her and again began to scold.

　　Clara walked away across two or three vacant lots and got into a street ofworkingmen's houses, the man following at her heels. Night had come and thepeople in the street facing the factory had already disposed of the eveningmeal. Children and dogs played in the road and a strong smell of food hungin the air. To the west across the fields, a passenger train ran past goingtoward the city. Its light made wavering yellow patches against the bluishblack sky. Clara wondered why she had come to the out of the way place withFrank Metcalf. She did not like him, but there was a restlessness in himthat was like the restless thing in herself. He did not want stupidly toaccept life, and that fact made him brother to herself. Although he was buttwenty-two years old, he had already achieved an evil reputation. A servantin his father's house had given birth to a child by him, and it had cost agood deal of money to get her to take the child and go away without makingan open scandal. During the year before he had been expelled from theUniversity for throwing another young man down a flight of stairs, and itwas whispered about among the girl students that he often got violentlydrunk. For a year he had been trying to ingratiate himself with Clara, hadwritten her letters, sent flowers to her house, and when he met her on thestreet had stopped to urge that she accept his friendship. On the day inMay she had met him on the street and he had begged that she give him onechance to talk things out with her. They had met at a street crossing wherecars went past into the suburban villages that lay about the city. "Comeon," he had urged, "let's take a street car ride, let's get out of thecrowds, I want to talk to you." He had taken hold of her arm and fairlydragged her to a car. "Come and hear what I have to say," he had urged,"then if you don't want to have anything to do with me, all right. Youcan say so and I'll let you alone." After she had accompanied him to thesuburb of workingmen's houses, in the vicinity of which they had spent theafternoon in the fields, Clara had found he had nothing to urge upon herexcept the needs of his body. Still she felt there was something he wantedto say that had not been said. He was restless and dissatisfied with hislife, and at bottom she felt that way about her own life. During the lastthree years she had often wondered why she had come to the school and whatshe was to gain by learning things out of books. The days and months wentpast and she knew certain rather uninteresting facts she had not knownbefore. How the facts were to help her to live, she couldn't make out.They had nothing to do with such problems as her attitude toward men likeJohn May the farm hand, the school teacher who had taught her something byholding her in his arms and kissing her, and the dark sullen young man whonow walked beside her and talked of the needs of his body. It seemed toClara that every additional year spent at the University but served toemphasize its inadequacy. It was so also with the books she read and thethoughts and actions of the older people about her. Her aunt and uncledid not talk much, but seemed to take it for granted she wanted to livesuch another life as they were living. She thought with horror of theprobability of marrying a maker of plows or of some other dull necessityof life and then spending her days in the making of stockings for babiesthat did not come, or in some other equally futile manifestation of herdissatisfaction. She realized with a shudder that men like her uncle, whospent their lives in adding up rows of figures or doing over and over sometremendously trivial thing, had no conception of any outlook for theirwomen beyond living in a house, serving them physically, wearing perhapsgood enough clothes to help them make a show of prosperity and success, anddrifting finally into a stupid acceptance of dullness--an acceptance thatboth she and the passionate, twisted man beside her were fighting against.

　　In a class in the University Clara had met, during that her third yearthere, a woman named Kate Chanceller, who had come to Columbus with herbrother from a town in Missouri, and it was this woman who had given herthoughts form, who had indeed started her thinking of the inadequacy ofher life. The brother, a studious, quiet man, worked as a chemist in amanufacturing plant somewhere at the edge of town. He was a musician andwanted to become a composer. One evening during the winter his sister Katehad brought Clara to the apartment where the two lived, and the three hadbecome friends. Clara had learned something there that she did not yetunderstand and never did get clearly into her consciousness. The truth wasthat the brother was like a woman and Kate Chanceller, who wore skirts andhad the body of a woman, was in her nature a man. Kate and Clara spent manyevenings together later and talked of many things not usually touched on bygirl students. Kate was a bold, vigorous thinker and was striving to gropeher way through her own problem in life and many times, as they walkedalong the street or sat together in the evening, she forgot her companionand talked of herself and the difficulties of her position in life. "It'sabsurd the way things are arranged," she said. "Because my body is madein a certain way I'm supposed to accept certain rules for living. Therules were not made for me. Men manufactured them as they manufacturecan-openers, on the wholesale plan." She looked at Clara and laughed. "Tryto imagine me in a little lace cap, such as your aunt wears about thehouse, and spending my days knitting baby stockings," she said.

　　The two women had spent hours talking of their lives and in speculatingon the differences in their natures. The experience had been tremendouslyeducational for Clara. As Kate was a socialist and Columbus was rapidlybecoming an industrial city, she talked of the meaning of capital and laborand the effect of changing conditions on the lives of men and women. ToKate, Clara could talk as to a man, but the antagonism that so often existsbetween men and women did not come into and spoil their companionship. Inthe evening when Clara went to Kate's house her aunt sent a carriage tobring her home at nine. Kate rode home with her. They got to the Woodburnhouse and went in. Kate was bold and free with the Woodburns, as with herbrother and Clara. "Come," she said laughing, "put away your figures andyour knitting. Let's talk." She sat in a large chair with her legs crossedand talked with Henderson Woodburn of the affairs of the plow company. Thetwo got into a discussion of the relative merits of the free trade andprotection ideas. Then the two older people went to bed and Kate talked toClara. "Your uncle is an old duffer," she said. "He knows nothing about themeaning of what he's doing in life." When she started home afoot across thecity, Clara was alarmed for her safety. "You must get a cab or let me wakeup uncle's man; something may happen," she said. Kate laughed and went off,striding along the street like a man. Sometimes she thrust her hands intoher skirt pockets, that were like the trouser pockets of a man, and it wasdifficult for Clara to remember that she was a woman. In Kate's presenceshe became bolder than she had ever been with any one. One evening she toldthe story of the thing that had happened to her that afternoon long beforeon the farm, the afternoon when, her mind having been inflamed by the wordsof Jim Priest regarding the sap that goes up the tree and by the warmsensuous beauty of the day, she had wanted so keenly to draw close to someone. She explained to Kate how she had been so brutally jarred out of thefeeling in herself that she felt was at bottom all right. "It was like ablow in the face at the hand of God," she said.

　　Kate Chanceller was excited as Clara told the tale and listened with afiery light burning in her eyes. Something in her manner encouraged Clarato tell also of her experiments with the school teacher and for the firsttime she got a sense of justice toward men by talking to the woman who washalf a man. "I know that wasn't square," she said. "I know now, when I talkto you, but I didn't know then. With the school teacher I was as unfair asJohn May and my father were with me. Why do men and women have to fighteach other? Why does the battle between them have to go on?"

　　Kate walked up and down before Clara and swore like a man. "Oh, hell," sheexclaimed, "men are such fools and I suppose women are as bad. They areboth too much one thing. I fall in between. I've got my problem too, butI'm not going to talk about it. I know what I'm going to do. I'm going tofind some kind of work and do it." She began to talk of the stupidity ofmen in their approach to women. "Men hate such women as myself," she said."They can't use us, they think. What fools! They should watch and study us.Many of us spend our lives loving other women, but we have skill. Beingpart women, we know how to approach women. We are not blundering and crude.Men want a certain thing from you. It is delicate and easy to kill. Loveis the most sensitive thing in the world. It's like an orchid. Men try topluck orchids with ice tongs, the fools."

　　Walking to where Clara stood by a table, and taking her by the shoulder,the excited woman stood for a long time looking at her. Then she picked upher hat, put it on her head, and with a flourish of her hand started forthe door. "You can depend on my friendship," she said. "I'll do nothing toconfuse you. You'll be in luck if you can get that kind of love orfriendship from a man."

　　Clara kept thinking of the words of Kate Chanceller on the evening when shewalked through the streets of the suburban village with Frank Metcalf, andlater as the two sat on the car that took them back to the city. With theexception of another student named Phillip Grimes, who had come to see hera dozen times during her second year in the University, young Metcalf wasthe only one of perhaps a dozen men she had met since leaving the farm whohad been attracted to her. Phillip Grimes was a slender young fellow withblue eyes, yellow hair and a not very vigorous mustache. He was from asmall town in the northern end of the State, where his father published aweekly newspaper. When he came to see Clara he sat on the edge of his chairand talked rapidly. Some person he had seen in the street had interestedhim. "I saw an old woman on the car," he began. "She had a basket on herarm. It was filled with groceries. She sat beside me and talked aloud toherself." Clara's visitor repeated the words of the old woman on the car.He speculated about her, wondered what her life was like. When he hadtalked of the old woman for ten or fifteen minutes, he dropped the subjectand began telling of another experience, this time with a man who soldfruit at a street crossing. It was impossible to be personal with PhillipGrimes. Nothing but his eyes were personal. Sometimes he looked at Clara ina way that I made her feel that her clothes were being stripped from herbody, and that she was being made to stand naked in the room before hervisitor. The experience, when it came, was not entirely a physical one. Itwas only in part that. When the thing happened Clara saw her whole lifebeing stripped bare. "Don't look at me like that," she once said somewhatsharply, when his eyes had made her so uncomfortable she could no longerremain silent. Her remark had frightened Phillip Grimes away. He got up atonce, blushed, stammered something about having another engagement, andhurried away.

　　In the street car, homeward bound beside Frank Metcalf, Clara thought ofPhillip Grimes and wondered whether or not he would have stood the test ofKate Chanceller's speech regarding love and friendship. He had confusedher, but that was perhaps her own fault. He had not insisted on himselfat all. Frank Metcalf had done nothing else. "One should be able," shethought, "to find somewhere a man who respects himself and his own desiresbut can understand also the desires and fears of a woman." The street carwent bouncing along over railroad crossings and along residence streets.Clara looked at her companion, who stared straight ahead, and then turnedto look out of the car window. The window was open and she could see theinteriors of the laborers' houses along the streets. In the evening withthe lamps lighted they seemed cosy and comfortable. Her mind ran back tothe life in her father's house and its loneliness. For two summers she hadescaped going home. At the end of her first year in school she had made anillness of her uncle's an excuse for spending the summer in Columbus, andat the end of the second year she had found another excuse for not going.This year she felt she would have to go home. She would have to sit dayafter day at the farm table with the farm hands. Nothing would happen. Herfather would remain silent in her presence. She would become bored andweary of the endless small talk of the town girls. If one of the town boysbegan to pay her special attention, her father would become suspicious andthat would lead to resentment in herself. She would do something she didnot want to do. In the houses along the streets through which the carpassed, she saw women moving about. Babies cried and men came out of thedoors and stood talking to one another on the sidewalks. She decidedsuddenly that she was taking the problem of her own life too seriously."The thing to do is to get married and then work things out afterward," shetold herself. She made up her mind that the puzzling, insistent antagonismthat existed between men and women was altogether due to the fact that theywere not married and had not the married people's way of solving suchproblems as Frank Metcalf had been talking about all afternoon. She wishedshe were with Kate Chancellor so that she could discuss with her this newviewpoint. When she and Frank Metcalf got off the car she was no longer ina hurry to go home to her uncle's house. Knowing she did not want to marryhim, she thought that in her turn she would talk, that she would try tomake him see her point of view as all the afternoon he had been trying tomake her see his.

　　For an hour the two people walked about and Clara talked. She forgot aboutthe passage of time and the fact that she had not dined. Not wishing totalk of marriage, she talked instead of the possibility of friendshipbetween men and women. As she talked her own mind seemed to her to havebecome clearer. "It's all foolishness your going on as you have," shedeclared. "I know how dissatisfied and unhappy you sometimes are. I oftenfeel that way myself. Sometimes I think it's marriage I want. I reallythink I want to draw close to some one. I believe every one is hungry forthat experience. We all want something we are not willing to pay for. Wewant to steal it or have it given us. That's what's the matter with me, andthat's what's the matter with you."

　　They came to the Woodburn house, and turning in stood on a porch in thedarkness by the front door. At the back of the house Clara could seea light burning. Her aunt and uncle were at the eternal figuring andknitting. They were finding a substitute for living. It was the thing FrankMetcalf was protesting against and was the real reason for her own constantsecret protest. She took hold of the lapel of his coat, intending to make aplea, to urge upon him the idea of a friendship that would mean somethingto them both. In the darkness she could not see his rather heavy, sullenface. The maternal instinct became strong in her and she thought of himas a wayward, dissatisfied boy, wanting love and understanding as she hadwanted to be loved and understood by her father when life in the moment ofthe awakening of her womanhood seemed ugly and brutal. With her free handshe stroked the sleeve of his coat. Her gesture was misunderstood by theman who was not thinking of her words but of her body and of his hungerto possess it. He took her into his arms and held her tightly against hisbreast. She tried to struggle, to tear herself away but, although she wasstrong and muscular, she found herself unable to move. As he held heruncle, who had heard the two people come up the steps to the door, threw itopen. Both he and his wife had on several occasions warned Clara to havenothing to do with young Metcalf. One day when he had sent flowers to thehouse, her aunt had urged her to refuse to receive them. "He's a bad,dissipated, wicked man," she had said. "Have nothing to do with him." Whenhe saw his niece in the arms of the man who had been the subject of so muchdiscussion in his own house and in every respectable house in Columbus,Henderson Woodburn was furious. He forgot the fact that young Metcalf wasthe son of the president of the company of which he was treasurer. Itseemed to him that some sort of a personal insult had been thrown at him bya common ruffian. "Get out of here," he screamed. "What do you mean, younasty villain? Get out of here."

　　Frank Metcalf went off along the street laughing defiantly, and Clara wentinto the house. The sliding doors that led into the living room had beenthrown open and the light from a hanging lamp streamed in upon her. Herhair was disheveled and her hat twisted to one side. The man and womanstared at her. The knitting needles and a sheet of paper held in theirhands suggested what they had been doing while Clara was getting anotherlesson from life. Her aunt's hands trembled and the knitting needlesclicked together. Nothing was said and the confused and angry girl ran up astairway to her own room. She locked herself in and knelt on the floor bythe bed. She did not pray. Her association with Kate Chanceller had givenher another outlet for her feelings. Pounding with her fists on the bedcoverings, she swore. "Fools, damned fools, the world is filled withnothing but a lot of damned fools."