GODLINESS PART III
Surrender
The story of Louise Bentley, who became Mrs. John Hardy
and lived with her husband in a brick house on Elm
Street in Winesburg, is a story of misunderstanding.
Before such women as Louise can be understood and their
lives made livable, much will have to be done.
Thoughtful books will have to be written and thoughtful
lives lived by people about them.
Born of a delicate and overworked mother, and an
impulsive, hard, imaginative father, who did not look
with favor upon her coming into the world, Louise was
from childhood a neurotic, one of the race of
over-sensitive women that in later days industrialism
was to bring in such great numbers into the world.
During her early years she lived on the Bentley farm, a
silent, moody child, wanting love more than anything
else in the world and not getting it. When she was
fifteen she went to live in Winesburg with the family
of Albert Hardy, who had a store for the sale of
buggies and wagons, and who was a member of the town
board of education.
Louise went into town to be a student in the Winesburg
High School and she went to live at the Hardys' because
Albert Hardy and her father were friends.
Hardy, the vehicle merchant of Winesburg, like
thousands of other men of his times, was an enthusiast
on the subject of education. He had made his own way in
the world without learning got from books, but he was
convinced that had he but known books things would have
gone better with him. To everyone who came into his
shop he talked of the matter, and in his own household
he drove his family distracted by his constant harping
on the subject.
He had two daughters and one son, John Hardy, and more
than once the daughters threatened to leave school
altogether. As a matter of principle they did just
enough work in their cla**es to avoid punishment. "I
hate books and I hate anyone who likes books," Harriet,
the younger of the two girls, declared pa**ionately.
In Winesburg as on the farm Louise was not happy. For
years she had dreamed of the time when she could go
forth into the world, and she looked upon the move into
the Hardy household as a great step in the direction of
freedom. Always when she had thought of the matter, it
had seemed to her that in town all must be gaiety and
life, that there men and women must live happily and
freely, giving and taking friendship and affection as
one takes the feel of a wind on the cheek. After the
silence and the cheerlessness of life in the Bentley
house, she dreamed of stepping forth into an atmosphere
that was warm and pulsating with life and reality. And
in the Hardy household Louise might have got something
of the thing for which she so hungered but for a
mistake she made when she had just come to town.
Louise won the disfavor of the two Hardy girls, Mary
and Harriet, by her application to her studies in
school. She did not come to the house until the day
when school was to begin and knew nothing of the
feeling they had in the matter. She was timid and
during the first month made no acquaintances. Every
Friday afternoon one of the hired men from the farm
drove into Winesburg and took her home for the
week-end, so that she did not spend the Saturday
holiday with the town people. Because she was
embarra**ed and lonely she worked constantly at her
studies. To Mary and Harriet, it seemed as though she
tried to make trouble for them by her proficiency. In
her eagerness to appear well Louise wanted to answer
every question put to the cla** by the teacher. She
jumped up and down and her eyes flashed. Then when she
had answered some question the others in the cla** had
been unable to answer, she smiled happily. "See, I have
done it for you," her eyes seemed to say. "You need not
bother about the matter. I will answer all questions.
For the whole cla** it will be easy while I am here."
In the evening after supper in the Hardy house, Albert
Hardy began to praise Louise. One of the teachers had
spoken highly of her and he was delighted. "Well, again
I have heard of it," he began, looking hard at his
daughters and then turning to smile at Louise. "Another
of the teachers has told me of the good work Louise is
doing. Everyone in Winesburg is telling me how smart
she is. I am ashamed that they do not speak so of my
own girls." Arising, the merchant marched about the
room and lighted his evening cigar.
The two girls looked at each other and shook their
heads wearily. Seeing their indifference the father
became angry. "I tell you it is something for you two
to be thinking about," he cried, glaring at them.
"There is a big change coming here in America and in
learning is the only hope of the coming generations.
Louise is the daughter of a rich man but she is not
ashamed to study. It should make you ashamed to see
what she does."
The merchant took his hat from a rack by the door and
prepared to depart for the evening. At the door he
stopped and glared back. So fierce was his manner that
Louise was frightened and ran upstairs to her own room.
The daughters began to speak of their own affairs. "Pay
attention to me," roared the merchant. "Your minds are
lazy. Your indifference to education is affecting your
characters. You will amount to nothing. Now mark what I
say--Louise will be so far ahead of you that you will
never catch up."
The distracted man went out of the house and into the
street shaking with wrath. He went along muttering
words and swearing, but when he got into Main Street
his anger pa**ed. He stopped to talk of the weather or
the crops with some other merchant or with a farmer who
had come into town and forgot his daughters altogether
or, if he thought of them, only shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, well, girls will be girls," he muttered
philosophically.
In the house when Louise came down into the room where
the two girls sat, they would have nothing to do with
her. One evening after she had been there for more than
six weeks and was heartbroken because of the continued
air of coldness with which she was always greeted, she
burst into tears. "Shut up your crying and go back to
your own room and to your books," Mary Hardy said
sharply.
* * *
The room occupied by Louise was on the second floor of
the Hardy house, and her window looked out upon an
orchard. There was a stove in the room and every
evening young John Hardy carried up an armful of wood
and put it in a box that stood by the wall. During the
second month after she came to the house, Louise gave
up all hope of getting on a friendly footing with the
Hardy girls and went to her own room as soon as the
evening meal was at an end.
Her mind began to play with thoughts of making friends
with John Hardy. When he came into the room with the
wood in his arms, she pretended to be busy with her
studies but watched him eagerly. When he had put the
wood in the box and turned to go out, she put down her
head and blushed. She tried to make talk but could say
nothing, and after he had gone she was angry at herself
for her stupidity.
The mind of the country girl became filled with the
idea of drawing close to the young man. She thought
that in him might be found the quality she had all her
life been seeking in people. It seemed to her that
between herself and all the other people in the world,
a wall had been built up and that she was living just
on the edge of some warm inner circle of life that must
be quite open and understandable to others. She became
obsessed with the thought that it wanted but a
courageous act on her part to make all of her
a**ociation with people something quite different, and
that it was possible by such an act to pa** into a new
life as one opens a door and goes into a room. Day and
night she thought of the matter, but although the thing
she wanted so earnestly was something very warm and
close it had as yet no conscious connection with s**.
It had not become that definite, and her mind had only
alighted upon the person of John Hardy because he was
at hand and unlike his sisters had not been unfriendly
to her.
The Hardy sisters, Mary and Harriet, were both older
than Louise. In a certain kind of knowledge of the
world they were years older. They lived as all of the
young women of Middle Western towns lived. In those
days young women did not go out of our towns to Eastern
colleges and ideas in regard to social cla**es had
hardly begun to exist. A daughter of a laborer was in
much the same social position as a daughter of a farmer
or a merchant, and there were no leisure cla**es. A
girl was "nice" or she was "not nice." If a nice girl,
she had a young man who came to her house to see her on
Sunday and on Wednesday evenings. Sometimes she went
with her young man to a dance or a church social. At
other times she received him at the house and was given
the use of the parlor for that purpose. No one intruded
upon her. For hours the two sat behind closed doors.
Sometimes the lights were turned low and the young man
and woman embraced. Cheeks became hot and hair
disarranged. After a year or two, if the impulse within
them became strong and insistent enough, they married.
One evening during her first winter in Winesburg,
Louise had an adventure that gave a new impulse to her
desire to break down the wall that she thought stood
between her and John Hardy. It was Wednesday and
immediately after the evening meal Albert Hardy put on
his hat and went away. Young John brought the wood and
put it in the box in Louise's room. "You do work hard,
don't you?" he said awkwardly, and then before she
could answer he also went away.
Louise heard him go out of the house and had a mad
desire to run after him. Opening her window she leaned
out and called softly, "John, dear John, come back,
don't go away." The night was cloudy and she could not
see far into the darkness, but as she waited she
fancied she could hear a soft little noise as of
someone going on tiptoes through the trees in the
orchard. She was frightened and closed the window
quickly. For an hour she moved about the room trembling
with excitement and when she could not longer bear the
waiting, she crept into the hall and down the stairs
into a closet-like room that opened off the parlor.
Louise had decided that she would perform the
courageous act that had for weeks been in her mind. She
was convinced that John Hardy had concealed himself in
the orchard beneath her window and she was determined
to find him and tell him that she wanted him to come
close to her, to hold her in his arms, to tell her of
his thoughts and dreams and to listen while she told
him her thoughts and dreams. "In the darkness it will
be easier to say things," she whispered to herself, as
she stood in the little room groping for the door.
And then suddenly Louise realized that she was not
alone in the house. In the parlor on the other side of
the door a man's voice spoke softly and the door
opened. Louise just had time to conceal herself in a
little opening beneath the stairway when Mary Hardy,
accompanied by her young man, came into the little dark
room.
For an hour Louise sat on the floor in the darkness and
listened. Without words Mary Hardy, with the aid of the
man who had come to spend the evening with her, brought
to the country girl a knowledge of men and women.
Putting her head down until she was curled into a
little ball she lay perfectly still. It seemed to her
that by some strange impulse of the gods, a great gift
had been brought to Mary Hardy and she could not
understand the older woman's determined protest.
The young man took Mary Hardy into his arms and kissed
her. When she struggled and laughed, he but held her
the more tightly. For an hour the contest between them
went on and then they went back into the parlor and
Louise escaped up the stairs. "I hope you were quiet
out there. You must not disturb the little mouse at her
studies," she heard Harriet saying to her sister as she
stood by her own door in the hallway above.
Louise wrote a note to John Hardy and late that night,
when all in the house were asleep, she crept downstairs
and slipped it under his door. She was afraid that if
she did not do the thing at once her courage would
fail. In the note she tried to be quite definite about
what she wanted. "I want someone to love me and I want
to love someone," she wrote. "If you are the one for me
I want you to come into the orchard at night and make a
noise under my window. It will be easy for me to crawl
down over the shed and come to you. I am thinking about
it all the time, so if you are to come at all you must
come soon."
For a long time Louise did not know what would be the
outcome of her bold attempt to secure for herself a
lover. In a way she still did not know whether or not
she wanted him to come. Sometimes it seemed to her that
to be held tightly and kissed was the whole secret of
life, and then a new impulse came and she was terribly
afraid. The age-old woman's desire to be possessed had
taken possession of her, but so vague was her notion of
life that it seemed to her just the touch of John
Hardy's hand upon her own hand would satisfy. She
wondered if he would understand that. At the table next
day while Albert Hardy talked and the two girls
whispered and laughed, she did not look at John but at
the table and as soon as possible escaped. In the
evening she went out of the house until she was sure he
had taken the wood to her room and gone away. When
after several evenings of intense listening she heard
no call from the darkness in the orchard, she was half
beside herself with grief and decided that for her
there was no way to break through the wall that had
shut her off from the joy of life.
And then on a Monday evening two or three weeks after
the writing of the note, John Hardy came for her.
Louise had so entirely given up the thought of his
coming that for a long time she did not hear the call
that came up from the orchard. On the Friday evening
before, as she was being driven back to the farm for
the week-end by one of the hired men, she had on an
impulse done a thing that had startled her, and as John
Hardy stood in the darkness below and called her name
softly and insistently, she walked about in her room
and wondered what new impulse had led her to commit so
ridiculous an act.
The farm hand, a young fellow with black curly hair,
had come for her somewhat late on that Friday evening
and they drove home in the darkness. Louise, whose mind
was filled with thoughts of John Hardy, tried to make
talk but the country boy was embarra**ed and would say
nothing. Her mind began to review the loneliness of her
childhood and she remembered with a pang the sharp new
loneliness that had just come to her. "I hate
everyone," she cried suddenly, and then broke forth
into a tirade that frightened her escort. "I hate
father and the old man Hardy, too," she declared
vehemently. "I get my lessons there in the school in
town but I hate that also."
Louise frightened the farm hand still more by turning
and putting her cheek down upon his shoulder. Vaguely
she hoped that he like that young man who had stood in
the darkness with Mary would put his arms about her and
kiss her, but the country boy was only alarmed. He
struck the horse with the whip and began to whistle.
"The road is rough, eh?" he said loudly. Louise was so
angry that reaching up she snatched his hat from his
head and threw it into the road. When he jumped out of
the buggy and went to get it, she drove off and left
him to walk the rest of the way back to the farm.
Louise Bentley took John Hardy to be her lover. That
was not what she wanted but it was so the young man had
interpreted her approach to him, and so anxious was she
to achieve something else that she made no resistance.
When after a few months they were both afraid that she
was about to become a mother, they went one evening to
the county seat and were married. For a few months they
lived in the Hardy house and then took a house of their
own. All during the first year Louise tried to make her
husband understand the vague and intangible hunger that
had led to the writing of the note and that was still
unsatisfied. Again and again she crept into his arms
and tried to talk of it, but always without success.
Filled with his own notions of love between men and
women, he did not listen but began to kiss her upon the
lips. That confused her so that in the end she did not
want to be kissed. She did not know what she wanted.
When the alarm that had tricked them into marriage
proved to be groundless, she was angry and said bitter,
hurtful things. Later when her son David was born, she
could not nurse him and did not know whether she wanted
him or not. Sometimes she stayed in the room with him
all day, walking about and occasionally creeping close
to touch him tenderly with her hands, and then other
days came when she did not want to see or be near the
tiny bit of humanity that had come into the house. When
John Hardy reproached her for her cruelty, she laughed.
"It is a man child and will get what it wants anyway,"
she said sharply. "Had it been a woman child there is
nothing in the world I would not have done for it."