Unlighted Lamps

by Sherwood Anderson

Mary Cochran went out of the rooms where she lived with her father,Doctor Lester Cochran, at seven o'clock on a Sunday evening. It wasJune of the year nineteen hundred and eight and Mary was eighteen yearsold. She walked along Tremont to Main Street and across the railroadtracks to Upper Main, lined with small shops and shoddy houses, arather quiet cheerless place on Sundays when there were few peopleabout. She had told her father she was going to church but did notintend doing anything of the kind. She did not know what she wanted todo. "I'll get off by myself and think," she told herself as she walkedslowly along. The night she thought promised to be too fine to be spentsitting in a stuffy church and hearing a man talk of things that hadapparently nothing to do with her own problem. Her own affairs wereapproaching a crisis and it was time for her to begin thinkingseriously of her future.The thoughtful serious state of mind in which Mary found herself hadbeen induced in her by a conversation had with her father on theevening before. Without any preliminary talk and quite suddenly andabruptly he had told her that he was a victim of heart disease andmight die at any moment. He had made the announcement as they stoodtogether in the Doctor's office, back of which were the rooms in whichthe father and daughter lived.It was growing dark outside when she came into the office and found himsitting alone. The office and living rooms were on the second floor ofan old frame building in the town of Huntersburg, Illinois, and as theDoctor talked he stood beside his daughter near one of the windows thatlooked down into Tremont Street. The hushed murmur of the town'sSaturday night life went on in Main Street just around a corner, andthe evening train, bound to Chicago fifty miles to the east, had justpassed. The hotel bus came rattling out of Lincoln Street and wentthrough Tremont toward the hotel on Lower Main. A cloud of dust kickedup by the horses' hoofs floated on the quiet air. A straggling group ofpeople followed the bus and the row of hitching posts on Tremont Streetwas already lined with buggies in which farmers and their wives haddriven into town for the evening of shopping and gossip.After the station bus had passed three or four more buggies were driveninto the street. From one of them a young man helped his sweetheart toalight. He took hold of her arm with a certain air of tenderness, and ahunger to be touched thus tenderly by a man's hand, that had come toMary many times before, returned at almost the same moment her fathermade the announcement of his approaching death.As the Doctor began to speak Barney Smithfield, who owned a livery barnthat opened into Tremont Street directly opposite the building in whichthe Cochrans lived, came back to his place of business from his eveningmeal. He stopped to tell a story to a group of men gathered before thebarn door and a shout of laughter arose. One of the loungers in thestreet, a strongly built young man in a checkered suit, stepped awayfrom the others and stood before the liveryman. Having seen Mary he wastrying to attract her attention. He also began to tell a story and ashe talked he gesticulated, waved his arms and from time to time lookedover his shoulder to see if the girl still stood by the window and ifshe were watching.Doctor Cochran had told his daughter of his approaching death in a coldquiet voice. To the girl it had seemed that everything concerning herfather must be cold and quiet. "I have a disease of the heart," he saidflatly, "have long suspected there was something of the sort the matterwith me and on Thursday when I went into Chicago I had myself examined.The truth is I may die at any moment. I would not tell you but for onereason--I will leave little money and you must be making plans for thefuture."The Doctor stepped nearer the window where his daughter stood with herhand on the frame. The announcement had made her a little pale and herhand trembled. In spite of his apparent coldness he was touched andwanted to reassure her. "There now," he said hesitatingly, "it'lllikely be all right after all. Don't worry. I haven't been a doctor forthirty years without knowing there's a great deal of nonsense aboutthese pronouncements on the part of experts. In a matter like this,that is to say when a man has a disease of the heart, he may putterabout for years." He laughed uncomfortably. "I've even heard it saidthat the best way to insure a long life is to contract a disease of theheart."With these words the Doctor had turned and walked out of his office,going down a wooden stairway to the street. He had wanted to put hisarm about his daughter's shoulder as he talked to her, but never havingshown any feeling in his relations with her could not sufficientlyrelease some tight thing in himself.Mary had stood for a long time looking down into the street. The youngman in the checkered suit, whose name was Duke Yetter, had finishedtelling his tale and a shout of laughter arose. She turned to looktoward the door through which her father had passed and dread tookpossession of her. In all her life there had never been anything warmand close. She shivered although the night was warm and with a quickgirlish gesture passed her hand over her eyes.The gesture was but an expression of a desire to brush away the cloudof fear that had settled down upon her but it was misinterpreted byDuke Yetter who now stood a little apart from the other men before thelivery barn. When he saw Mary's hand go up he smiled and turningquickly to be sure he was unobserved began jerking his head and makingmotions with his hand as a sign that he wished her to come down intothe street where he would have an opportunity to join her. * * * * *On the Sunday evening Mary, having walked through Upper Main, turnedinto Wilmott, a street of workmens' houses. During that year the firstsign of the march of factories westward from Chicago into the prairietowns had come to Huntersburg. A Chicago manufacturer of furniture hadbuilt a plant in the sleepy little farming town, hoping thus to escapethe labor organizations that had begun to give him trouble in the city.At the upper end of town, in Wilmott, Swift, Harrison and ChestnutStreets and in cheap, badly-constructed frame houses, most of thefactory workers lived. On the warm summer evening they were gathered onthe porches at the front of the houses and a mob of children played inthe dusty streets. Red-faced men in white shirts and without collarsand coats slept in chairs or lay sprawled on strips of grass or on thehard earth before the doors of the houses. The laborers' wives hadgathered in groups and stood gossiping by the fences that separated theyards. Occasionally the voice of one of the women arose sharp anddistinct above the steady flow of voices that ran like a murmuringriver through the hot little streets.In the roadway two children had got into a fight. A thick-shoulderedred-haired boy struck another boy who had a pale sharp-featured face, ablow on the shoulder. Other children came running. The mother of thered-haired boy brought the promised fight to an end. "Stop it Johnny, Itell you to stop it. I'll break your neck if you don't," the womanscreamed.The pale boy turned and walked away from his antagonist. As he wentslinking along the sidewalk past Mary Cochran his sharp little eyes,burning with hatred, looked up at her.Mary went quickly along. The strange new part of her native town withthe hubbub of life always stirring and asserting itself had a strongfascination for her. There was something dark and resentful in her ownnature that made her feel at home in the crowded place where lifecarried itself off darkly, with a blow and an oath. The habitualsilence of her father and the mystery concerning the unhappy marriedlife of her father and mother, that had affected the attitude towardher of the people of the town, had made her own life a lonely one andhad encouraged in her a rather dogged determination to in some waythink her own way through the things of life she could not understand.And back of Mary's thinking there was an intense curiosity and acourageous determination toward adventure. She was like a little animalof the forest that has been robbed of its mother by the gun of asportsman and has been driven by hunger to go forth and seek food.Twenty times during the year she had walked alone at evening in the newand fast growing factory district of her town. She was eighteen and hadbegun to look like a woman, and she felt that other girls of the townof her own age would not have dared to walk in such a place alone. Thefeeling made her somewhat proud and as she went along she looked boldlyabout.Among the workers in Wilmott Street, men and women who had been broughtto town by the furniture manufacturer, were many who spoke in foreigntongues. Mary walked among them and liked the sound of the strangevoices. To be in the street made her feel that she had gone out of hertown and on a voyage into a strange land. In Lower Main Street or inthe residence streets in the eastern part of town where lived the youngmen and women she had always known and where lived also the merchants,the clerks, the lawyers and the more well-to-do American workmen ofHuntersburg, she felt always a secret antagonism to herself. Theantagonism was not due to anything in her own character. She was sureof that. She had kept so much to herself that she was in fact butlittle known. "It is because I am the daughter of my mother," she toldherself and did not walk often in the part of town where other girls ofher class lived.Mary had been so often in Wilmott Street that many of the people hadbegun to feel acquainted with her. "She is the daughter of some farmerand has got into the habit of walking into town," they said. A red-haired, broad-hipped woman who came out at the front door of one of thehouses nodded to her. On a narrow strip of grass beside another housesat a young man with his back against a tree. He was smoking a pipe,but when he looked up and saw her he took the pipe from his mouth. Shedecided he must be an Italian, his hair and eyes were so black. "Nebella! si fai un onore a passare di qua," he called waving his hand andsmiling.Mary went to the end of Wilmott Street and came out upon a countryroad. It seemed to her that a long time must have passed since she lefther father's presence although the walk had in fact occupied but a fewminutes. By the side of the road and on top of a small hill there was aruined barn, and before the barn a great hole filled with the charredtimbers of what had once been a farmhouse. A pile of stones lay besidethe hole and these were covered with creeping vines. Between the siteof the house and the barn there was an old orchard in which grew a massof tangled weeds.Pushing her way in among the weeds, many of which were covered withblossoms, Mary found herself a seat on a rock that had been rolledagainst the trunk of an old apple tree. The weeds half concealed herand from the road only her head was visible. Buried away thus in theweeds she looked like a quail that runs in the tall grass and that onhearing some unusual sound, stops, throws up its head and looks sharplyabout.The doctor's daughter had been to the decayed old orchard many timesbefore. At the foot of the hill on which it stood the streets of thetown began, and as she sat on the rock she could hear faint shouts andcries coming out of Wilmott Street. A hedge separated the orchard fromthe fields on the hillside. Mary intended to sit by the tree untildarkness came creeping over the land and to try to think out some planregarding her future. The notion that her father was soon to die seemedboth true and untrue, but her mind was unable to take hold of thethought of him as physically dead. For the moment death in relation toher father did not take the form of a cold inanimate body that was tobe buried in the ground, instead it seemed to her that her father wasnot to die but to go away somewhere on a journey. Long ago her motherhad done that. There was a strange hesitating sense of relief in thethought. "Well," she told herself, "when the time comes I also shall besetting out, I shall get out of here and into the world." On severaloccasions Mary had gone to spend a day with her father in Chicago andshe was fascinated by the thought that soon she might be going there tolive. Before her mind's eye floated a vision of long streets filledwith thousands of people all strangers to herself. To go into suchstreets and to live her life among strangers would be like coming outof a waterless desert and into a cool forest carpeted with tender younggrass.In Huntersburg she had always lived under a cloud and now she wasbecoming a woman and the close stuffy atmosphere she had alwaysbreathed was becoming constantly more and more oppressive. It was trueno direct question had ever been raised touching her own standing inthe community life, but she felt that a kind of prejudice against herexisted. While she was still a baby there had been a scandal involvingher father and mother. The town of Huntersburg had rocked with it andwhen she was a child people had sometimes looked at her with mockingsympathetic eyes. "Poor child! It's too bad," they said. Once, on acloudy summer evening when her father had driven off to the country andshe sat alone in the darkness by his office window, she heard a man andwoman in the street mention her name. The couple stumbled along in thedarkness on the sidewalk below the office window. "That daughter of DocCochran's is a nice girl," said the man. The woman laughed. "She'sgrowing up and attracting men's attention now. Better keep your eyes inyour head. She'll turn out bad. Like mother, like daughter," the womanreplied.For ten or fifteen minutes Mary sat on the stone beneath the tree inthe orchard and thought of the attitude of the town toward herself andher father. "It should have drawn us together," she told herself, andwondered if the approach of death would do what the cloud that had foryears hung over them had not done. It did not at the moment seem to hercruel that the figure of death was soon to visit her father. In a wayDeath had become for her and for the time a lovely and gracious figureintent upon good. The hand of death was to open the door out of herfather's house and into life. With the cruelty of youth she thoughtfirst of the adventurous possibilities of the new life.Mary sat very still. In the long weeds the insects that had beendisturbed in their evening song began to sing again. A robin flew intothe tree beneath which she sat and struck a clear sharp note of alarm.The voices of people in the town's new factory district came softly upthe hillside. They were like bells of distant cathedrals calling peopleto worship. Something within the girl's breast seemed to break andputting her head into her hands she rocked slowly back and forth. Tearscame accompanied by a warm tender impulse toward the living men andwomen of Huntersburg.And then from the road came a call. "Hello there kid," shouted a voice,and Mary sprang quickly to her feet. Her mellow mood passed like a puffof wind and in its place hot anger came.In the road stood Duke Yetter who from his loafing place before thelivery barn had seen her set out for the Sunday evening walk and hadfollowed. When she went through Upper Main Street and into the newfactory district he was sure of his conquest. "She doesn't want to beseen walking with me," he had told himself, "that's all right. Sheknows well enough I'll follow but doesn't want me to put in anappearance until she is well out of sight of her friends. She's alittle stuck up and needs to be brought down a peg, but what do I care?She's gone out of her way to give me this chance and maybe she's onlyafraid of her dad."Duke climbed the little incline out of the road and came into theorchard, but when he reached the pile of stones covered by vines hestumbled and fell. He arose and laughed. Mary had not waited for him toreach her but had started toward him, and when his laugh broke thesilence that lay over the orchard she sprang forward and with her openhand struck him a sharp blow on the cheek. Then she turned and as hestood with his feet tangled in the vines ran out to the road. "If youfollow or speak to me I'll get someone to kill you," she shouted.Mary walked along the road and down the hill toward Wilmott Street.Broken bits of the story concerning her mother that had for yearscirculated in town had reached her ears. Her mother, it was said, haddisappeared on a summer night long ago and a young town rough, who hadbeen in the habit of loitering before Barney Smithfield's Livery Barn,had gone away with her. Now another young rough was trying to make upto her. The thought made her furious.Her mind groped about striving to lay hold of some weapon with whichshe could strike a more telling blow at Duke Yetter. In desperation itlit upon the figure of her father already broken in health and nowabout to die. "My father just wants the chance to kill some such fellowas you," she shouted, turning to face the young man, who having gotclear of the mass of vines in the orchard, had followed her into theroad. "My father just wants to kill someone because of the lies thathave been told in this town about mother."Having given way to the impulse to threaten Duke Yetter Mary wasinstantly ashamed of her outburst and walked rapidly along, the tearsrunning from her eyes. With hanging head Duke walked at her heels. "Ididn't mean no harm, Miss Cochran," he pleaded. "I didn't mean no harm.Don't tell your father. I was only funning with you. I tell you Ididn't mean no harm." * * * * *The light of the summer evening had begun to fall and the faces of thepeople made soft little ovals of light as they stood grouped under thedark porches or by the fences in Wilmott Street. The voices of thechildren had become subdued and they also stood in groups. They becamesilent as Mary passed and stood with upturned faces and staring eyes."The lady doesn't live very far. She must be almost a neighbor," sheheard a woman's voice saying in English. When she turned her head shesaw only a crowd of dark-skinned men standing before a house. Fromwithin the house came the sound of a woman's voice singing a child tosleep.The young Italian, who had called to her earlier in the evening and whowas now apparently setting out of his own Sunday evening's adventures,came along the sidewalk and walked quickly away into the darkness. Hehad dressed himself in his Sunday clothes and had put on a black derbyhat and a stiff white collar, set off by a red necktie. The shiningwhiteness of the collar made his brown skin look almost black. Hesmiled boyishly and raised his hat awkwardly but did not speak.Mary kept looking back along the street to be sure Duke Yetter had notfollowed but in the dim light could see nothing of him. Her angryexcited mood went away.She did not want to go home and decided it was too late to go tochurch. From Upper Main Street there was a short street that raneastward and fell rather sharply down a hillside to a creek and abridge that marked the end of the town's growth in that direction. Shewent down along the street to the bridge and stood in the failing lightwatching two boys who were fishing in the creek.A broad-shouldered man dressed in rough clothes came down along thestreet and stopping on the bridge spoke to her. It was the first timeshe had ever heard a citizen of her home town speak with feeling of herfather. "You are Doctor Cochran's daughter?" he asked hesitatingly. "Iguess you don't know who I am but your father does." He pointed towardthe two boys who sat with fishpoles in their hands on the weed-grownbank of the creek. "Those are my boys and I have four other children,"he explained. "There is another boy and I have three girls. One of mydaughters has a job in a store. She is as old as yourself." The manexplained his relations with Doctor Cochran. He had been a farmlaborer, he said, and had but recently moved to town to work in thefurniture factory. During the previous winter he had been ill for along time and had no money. While he lay in bed one of his boys fellout of a barn loft and there was a terrible cut in his head."Your father came every day to see us and he sewed up my Tom's head."The laborer turned away from Mary and stood with his cap in his handlooking toward the boys. "I was down and out and your father not onlytook care of me and the boys but he gave my old woman money to buy thethings we had to have from the stores in town here, groceries andmedicines." The man spoke in such low tones that Mary had to leanforward to hear his words. Her face almost touched the laborer'sshoulder. "Your father is a good man and I don't think he is veryhappy," he went on. "The boy and I got well and I got work here in townbut he wouldn't take any money from me. 'You know how to live with yourchildren and with your wife. You know how to make them happy. Keep yourmoney and spend it on them,' that's what he said to me."The laborer went on across the bridge and along the creek bank towardthe spot where his two sons sat fishing and Mary leaned on the railingof the bridge and looked at the slow moving water. It was almost blackin the shadows under the bridge and she thought that it was thus herfather's life had been lived. "It has been like a stream running alwaysin shadows and never coming out into the sunlight," she thought, andfear that her own life would run on in darkness gripped her. A greatnew love for her father swept over her and in fancy she felt his armsabout her. As a child she had continually dreamed of caresses receivedat her father's hands and now the dream came back. For a long time shestood looking at the stream and she resolved that the night should notpass without an effort on her part to make the old dream come true.When she again looked up the laborer had built a little fire of sticksat the edge of the stream. "We catch bullheads here," he called. "Thelight of the fire draws them close to the shore. If you want to comeand try your hand at fishing the boys will lend you one of the poles.""O, I thank you, I won't do it tonight," Mary said, and then fearingshe might suddenly begin weeping and that if the man spoke to her againshe would find herself unable to answer, she hurried away. "Good bye!"shouted the man and the two boys. The words came quite spontaneouslyout of the three throats and created a sharp trumpet-like effect thatrang like a glad cry across the heaviness of her mood. * * * * *When his daughter Mary went out for her evening walk Doctor Cochran satfor an hour alone in his office. It began to grow dark and the men whoall afternoon had been sitting on chairs and boxes before the liverybarn across the street went home for the evening meal. The noise ofvoices grew faint and sometimes for five or ten minutes there wassilence. Then from some distant street came a child's cry. Presentlychurch bells began to ring.The Doctor was not a very neat man and sometimes for several days heforgot to shave. With a long lean hand he stroked his half grown beard.His illness had struck deeper than he had admitted even to himself andhis mind had an inclination to float out of his body. Often when he satthus his hands lay in his lap and he looked at them with a child'sabsorption. It seemed to him they must belong to someone else. He grewphilosophic. "It's an odd thing about my body. Here I've lived in itall these years and how little use I have had of it. Now it's going todie and decay never having been used. I wonder why it did not getanother tenant." He smiled sadly over this fancy but went on with it."Well I've had thoughts enough concerning people and I've had the useof these lips and a tongue but I've let them lie idle. When my Ellenwas here living with me I let her think me cold and unfeeling whilesomething within me was straining and straining trying to tear itselfloose."He remembered how often, as a young man, he had sat in the evening insilence beside his wife in this same office and how his hands had achedto reach across the narrow space that separated them and touch herhands, her face, her hair.Well, everyone in town had predicted his marriage would turn out badly!His wife had been an actress with a company that came to Huntersburgand got stranded there. At the same time the girl became ill and had nomoney to pay for her room at the hotel. The young doctor had attendedto that and when the girl was convalescent took her to ride about thecountry in his buggy. Her life had been a hard one and the notion ofleading a quiet existence in the little town appealed to her.And then after the marriage and after the child was born she hadsuddenly found herself unable to go on living with the silent cold man.There had been a story of her having run away with a young sport, theson of a saloon keeper who had disappeared from town at the same time,but the story was untrue. Lester Cochran had himself taken her toChicago where she got work with a company going into the far westernstates. Then he had taken her to the door of her hotel, had put moneyinto her hands and in silence and without even a farewell kiss hadturned and walked away.The Doctor sat in his office living over that moment and other intensemoments when he had been deeply stirred and had been on the surface socool and quiet. He wondered if the woman had known. How many times hehad asked himself that question. After he left her that night at thehotel door she never wrote. "Perhaps she is dead," he thought for thethousandth time.A thing happened that had been happening at odd moments for more than ayear. In Doctor Cochran's mind the remembered figure of his wife becameconfused with the figure of his daughter. When at such moments he triedto separate the two figures, to make them stand out distinct from eachother, he was unsuccessful. Turning his head slightly he imagined hesaw a white girlish figure coming through a door out of the rooms inwhich he and his daughter lived. The door was painted white and swungslowly in a light breeze that came in at an open window. The wind ransoftly and quietly through the room and played over some papers lyingon a desk in a corner. There was a soft swishing sound as of a woman'sskirts. The doctor arose and stood trembling. "Which is it? Is it youMary or is it Ellen?" he asked huskily.On the stairway leading up from the street there was the sound of heavyfeet and the outer door opened. The doctor's weak heart fluttered andhe dropped heavily back into his chair.A man came into the room. He was a farmer, one of the doctor'spatients, and coming to the centre of the room he struck a match, heldit above his head and shouted. "Hello!" he called. When the doctorarose from his chair and answered he was so startled that the matchfell from his hand and lay burning faintly at his feet.The young farmer had sturdy legs that were like two pillars of stonesupporting a heavy building, and the little flame of the match thatburned and fluttered in the light breeze on the floor between his feetthrew dancing shadows along the walls of the room. The doctor'sconfused mind refused to clear itself of his fancies that now began tofeed upon this new situation.He forgot the presence of the farmer and his mind raced back over hislife as a married man. The flickering light on the wall recalledanother dancing light. One afternoon in the summer during the firstyear after his marriage his wife Ellen had driven with him into thecountry. They were then furnishing their rooms and at a farmer's houseEllen had seen an old mirror, no longer in use, standing against a wallin a shed. Because of something quaint in the design the mirror hadtaken her fancy and the farmer's wife had given it to her. On the drivehome the young wife had told her husband of her pregnancy and thedoctor had been stirred as never before. He sat holding the mirror onhis knees while his wife drove and when she announced the coming of thechild she looked away across the fields.How deeply etched, that scene in the sick man's mind! The sun was goingdown over young corn and oat fields beside the road. The prairie landwas black and occasionally the road ran through short lanes of treesthat also looked black in the waning light.The mirror on his knees caught the rays of the departing sun and sent agreat ball of golden light dancing across the fields and among thebranches of trees. Now as he stood in the presence of the farmer and asthe little light from the burning match on the floor recalled thatother evening of dancing lights, he thought he understood the failureof his marriage and of his life. On that evening long ago when Ellenhad told him of the coming of the great adventure of their marriage hehad remained silent because he had thought no words he could utterwould express what he felt. There had been a defense for himself builtup. "I told myself she should have understood without words and I'veall my life been telling myself the same thing about Mary. I've been afool and a coward. I've always been silent because I've been afraid ofexpressing myself--like a blundering fool. I've been a proud man and acoward."Tonight I'll do it. If it kills me I'll make myself talk to the girl,"he said aloud, his mind coming back to the figure of his daughter."Hey! What's that?" asked the farmer who stood with his hat in his handwaiting to tell of his mission.The doctor got his horse from Barney Smithfield's livery and drove offto the country to attend the farmer's wife who was about to give birthto her first child. She was a slender narrow-hipped woman and the childwas large, but the doctor was feverishly strong. He worked desperatelyand the woman, who was frightened, groaned and struggled. Her husbandkept coming in and going out of the room and two neighbor womenappeared and stood silently about waiting to be of service. It was pastten o'clock when everything was done and the doctor was ready to departfor town.The farmer hitched his horse and brought it to the door and the doctordrove off feeling strangely weak and at the same time strong. Howsimple now seemed the thing he had yet to do. Perhaps when he got homehis daughter would have gone to bed but he would ask her to get up andcome into the office. Then he would tell the whole story of hismarriage and its failure sparing himself no humiliation. "There wassomething very dear and beautiful in my Ellen and I must make Maryunderstand that. It will help her to be a beautiful woman," he thought,full of confidence in the strength of his resolution.He got to the door of the livery barn at eleven o'clock and BarneySmithfield with young Duke Yetter and two other men sat talking there.The liveryman took his horse away into the darkness of the barn and thedoctor stood for a moment leaning against the wall of the building. Thetown's night watchman stood with the group by the barn door and aquarrel broke out between him and Duke Yetter, but the doctor did nothear the hot words that flew back and forth or Duke's loud laughter atthe night watchman's anger. A queer hesitating mood had takenpossession of him.There was something he passionately desired to do but could notremember. Did it have to do with his wife Ellen or Mary his daughter?The figures of the two women were again confused in his mind and to addto the confusion there was a third figure, that of the woman he hadjust assisted through child birth. Everything was confusion. He startedacross the street toward the entrance of the stairway leading to hisoffice and then stopped in the road and stared about. Barney Smithfieldhaving returned from putting his horse in the stall shut the door ofthe barn and a hanging lantern over the door swung back and forth. Itthrew grotesque dancing shadows down over the faces and forms of themen standing and quarreling beside the wall of the barn. * * * * *Mary sat by a window in the doctor's office awaiting his return. Soabsorbed was she in her own thoughts that she was unconscious of thevoice of Duke Yetter talking with the men in the street.When Duke had come into the street the hot anger of the early part ofthe evening had returned and she again saw him advancing toward her inthe orchard with the look of arrogant male confidence in his eyes butpresently she forgot him and thought only of her father. An incident ofher childhood returned to haunt her. One afternoon in the month of Maywhen she was fifteen her father had asked her to accompany him on anevening drive into the country. The doctor went to visit a sick womanat a farmhouse five miles from town and as there had been a great dealof rain the roads were heavy. It was dark when they reached thefarmer's house and they went into the kitchen and ate cold food off akitchen table. For some reason her father had, on that evening,appeared boyish and almost gay. On the road he had talked a little.Even at that early age Mary had grown tall and her figure was becomingwomanly. After the cold supper in the farm kitchen he walked with heraround the house and she sat on a narrow porch. For a moment her fatherstood before her. He put his hands into his trouser pockets andthrowing back his head laughed almost heartily. "It seems strange tothink you will soon be a woman," he said. "When you do become a womanwhat do you suppose is going to happen, eh? What kind of a life willyou lead? What will happen to you?"The doctor sat on the porch beside the child and for a moment she hadthought he was about to put his arm around her. Then he jumped up andwent into the house leaving her to sit alone in the darkness.As she remembered the incident Mary remembered also that on thatevening of her childhood she had met her father's advances in silence.It seemed to her that she, not her father, was to blame for the lifethey had led together. The farm laborer she had met on the bridge hadnot felt her father's coldness. That was because he had himself beenwarm and generous in his attitude toward the man who had cared for himin his hour of sickness and misfortune. Her father had said that thelaborer knew how to be a father and Mary remembered with what warmththe two boys fishing by the creek had called to her as she went awayinto the darkness. "Their father has known how to be a father becausehis children have known how to give themselves," she thought guiltily.She also would give herself. Before the night had passed she would dothat. On that evening long ago and as she rode home beside her fatherhe had made another unsuccessful effort to break through the wall thatseparated them. The heavy rains had swollen the streams they had tocross and when they had almost reached town he had stopped the horse ona wooden bridge. The horse danced nervously about and her father heldthe reins firmly and occasionally spoke to him. Beneath the bridge theswollen stream made a great roaring sound and beside the road in a longflat field there was a lake of flood water. At that moment the moon hadcome out from behind clouds and the wind that blew across the watermade little waves. The lake of flood water was covered with dancinglights. "I'm going to tell you about your mother and myself," herfather said huskily, but at that moment the timbers of the bridge beganto crack dangerously and the horse plunged forward. When her father hadregained control of the frightened beast they were in the streets ofthe town and his diffident silent nature had reasserted itself.Mary sat in the darkness by the office window and saw her father driveinto the street. When his horse had been put away he did not, as washis custom, come at once up the stairway to the office but lingered inthe darkness before the barn door. Once he started to cross the streetand then returned into the darkness.Among the men who for two hours had been sitting and talking quietly aquarrel broke out. Jack Fisher the town nightwatchman had been tellingthe others the story of a battle in which he had fought during theCivil War and Duke Yetter had begun bantering him. The nightwatchmangrew angry. Grasping his nightstick he limped up and down. The loudvoice of Duke Yetter cut across the shrill angry voice of the victim ofhis wit. "You ought to a flanked the fellow, I tell you Jack. Yes sir'ee, you ought to a flanked that reb and then when you got him flankedyou ought to a knocked the stuffings out of the cuss. That's what Iwould a done," Duke shouted, laughing boisterously. "You would a raisedhell, you would," the night watchman answered, filled with ineffectualwrath.The old soldier went off along the street followed by the laughter ofDuke and his companions and Barney Smithfield, having put the doctor'shorse away, came out and closed the barn door. A lantern hanging abovethe door swung back and forth. Doctor Cochran again started across thestreet and when he had reached the foot of the stairway turned andshouted to the men. "Good night," he called cheerfully. A strand ofhair was blown by the light summer breeze across Mary's cheek and shejumped to her feet as though she had been touched by a hand reached outto her from the darkness. A hundred times she had seen her fatherreturn from drives in the evening but never before had he said anythingat all to the loiterers by the barn door. She became half convincedthat not her father but some other man was now coming up the stairway.The heavy dragging footsteps rang loudly on the wooden stairs and Maryheard her father set down the little square medicine case he alwayscarried. The strange cheerful hearty mood of the man continued but hismind was in a confused riot. Mary imagined she could see his dark formin the doorway. "The woman has had a baby," said the hearty voice fromthe landing outside the door. "Who did that happen to? Was it Ellen orthat other woman or my little Mary?"A stream of words, a protest came from the man's lips. "Who's beenhaving a baby? I want to know. Who's been having a baby? Life doesn'twork out. Why are babies always being born?" he asked.A laugh broke from the doctor's lips and his daughter leaned forwardand gripped the arms of her chair. "A babe has been born," he saidagain. "It's strange eh, that my hands should have helped a baby beborn while all the time death stood at my elbow?"Doctor Cochran stamped upon the floor of the landing. "My feet are coldand numb from waiting for life to come out of life," he said heavily."The woman struggled and now I must struggle."Silence followed the stamping of feet and the tired heavy declarationfrom the sick man's lips. From the street below came another loud shoutof laughter from Duke Yetter.And then Doctor Cochran fell backward down the narrow stairs to thestreet. There was no cry from him, just the clatter of his shoes uponthe stairs and the terrible subdued sound of the body falling.Mary did not move from her chair. With closed eyes she waited. Herheart pounded. A weakness complete and overmastering had possession ofher and from feet to head ran little waves of feeling as though tinycreatures with soft hair-like feet were playing upon her body.It was Duke Yetter who carried the dead man up the stairs and laid himon a bed in one of the rooms back of the office. One of the men who hadbeen sitting with him before the door of the barn followed lifting hishands and dropping them nervously. Between his fingers he held aforgotten cigarette the light from which danced up and down in thedarkness.

Unlighted Lamps was featured as TheShort Story of the Day on Sat, Nov 23, 2013

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