CHAPTER IX
The Woodburns of Columbus were wealthy by the standards of their day.They lived in a large house and kept two carriages and four servants,but had no children. Henderson Woodburn was small of stature, wore agray beard, and was neat and precise about his person. He was treasurerof the plow manufacturing company and was also treasurer of the churchhe and his wife attended. In his youth he had been called "Hen" Woodburnand had been bullied by larger boys, and when he grew to be a man andafter his persistent shrewdness and patience had carried him into aposition of some power in the business life of his native city he inturn became something of a bully to the men beneath him. He thoughthis wife Priscilla had come from a better family than his own and wasa little afraid of her. When they did not agree on any subject, sheexpressed her opinion gently but firmly, while he blustered for a timeand then gave in. After a misunderstanding his wife put her arms abouthis neck and kissed the bald spot on the top of his head. Then thesubject 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 ontiptoe. Henderson Woodburn was absorbed in his work, and when he camehome in the evening, ate his dinner in silence and then worked again.He brought home account books and papers from the office and spread themout on a table in the living room. His wife Priscilla sat in a largechair under a lamp and knitted children's stockings. They were, she toldClara, for the children of the poor. As a matter of fact the stockingsnever left her house. In a large trunk in her room upstairs lay hundredsof pairs knitted during the twenty-five years of her family life.
Clara was not very happy in the Woodburn household, but on theother hand, was not very unhappy. She attended to her studies at theUniversity passably well and in the late afternoons took a walk with agirl classmate, attended a matinee at the theater, or read a book. Inthe evening she sat with her aunt and uncle until she could no longerbear the silence, and then went to her own room, where she studieduntil it was time to go to bed. Now and then she went with the two olderpeople to a social affair at the church, of which Henderson Woodburnwas treasurer, or accompanied them to dinners at the homes of otherwell-to-do and respectable business men. On several occasions young men,sons of the people with whom the Woodburns dined, or students at theuniversity, came in the evening to call. On such an occasion Clara andthe young man sat in the parlor of the house and talked. After a timethey grew silent and embarrassed in each other's presence. From the nextroom Clara could hear the rustling of the papers containing the columnsof figures over which her uncle was at work. Her aunt's knitting needlesclicked loudly. The young man told a tale of some football game, or ifhe had already gone out into the world, talked of his experiences as atraveler selling the wares manufactured or merchandized by his father.Such visits all began at the same hour, eight o'clock, and the young manleft the house promptly at ten. Clara grew to feel that she was beingmerchandized 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 justas the others had talked and got out of his chair to go away at theprescribed hour. Clara walked with him to the door. She put out herhand, which he shook cordially. Then he looked at her and his eyestwinkled. "I've had a good time," he said. Clara had a sudden and almostoverpowering desire to embrace him. She wanted to disturb his assurance,to startle him by kissing him on the lips or holding him tightly inher arms. Shutting the door quickly, she stood with her hand on thedoor-knob, her whole body trembling. The trivial by-products of herage's industrial madness went on in the next room. The sheets of paperrustled and the knitting needles clicked. Clara thought she would liketo call the young man back into the house, lead him to the room wherethe meaningless industry went endlessly on and there do something thatwould shock them and him as they had never been shocked before. She ranquickly upstairs. "What is getting to be the matter with me?" she askedherself anxiously.
* * * * *
One evening in the month of May, during her third year at theUniversity, Clara sat on the bank of a tiny stream by a grove of trees,far out on the edge of a suburban village north of Columbus. Beside hersat a young man named Frank Metcalf whom she had known for a year andwho had once been a student in the same classes with herself. He wasthe son of the president of the plow manufacturing company of which heruncle was treasurer. As they sat together by the stream the afternoonlight began to fade and darkness came on. Before them across an openfield stood a factory, and Clara remembered that the whistle hadlong since blown and the men from the factory had gone home. She grewrestless and sprang to her feet. Young Metcalf who had been talking veryearnestly arose and stood beside her. "I can't marry for two years,but we can be engaged and that will be all the same thing as far as theright and wrong of what I want and need is concerned. It isn't my faultI can't ask you to marry me now," he declared. "In two years now, I'llinherit eleven thousand dollars. My aunt left it to me and the old foolwent and fixed it so I don't get it if I marry before I'm twenty-four. Iwant that money. I've got to have it, but I got to have you too."
Clara looked away into the evening darkness and waited for him tofinish his speech. All afternoon he had been making practically thesame speech, over and over. "Well, I can't help it, I'm a man," he saiddoggedly. "I can't help it, I want you. I can't help it, my aunt was anold fool." He began to explain the necessity of remaining unmarried inorder that he could receive the eleven thousand dollars. "If I don't getthat money I'll be just the same as I am now," he declared. "I won'tbe any good." He grew angry and, thrusting his hands into his pockets,stared also across the field into the darkness. "Nothing keeps mesatisfied," he said. "I hate being in my father's business and I hategoing to school. In only two years I'll get the money. Father can't keepit from me. I'll take it and light out. I don't know just what I'll do.I'm going maybe to Europe, that's what I'm going to do. Father wantsme to stay here and work in his office. To hell with that. I want totravel. I'll be a soldier or something. Anyway I'll get out of here andgo somewhere and do something exciting, something alive. You can go withme. We'll cut out together. Haven't you got the nerve? Why don't you bemy woman?"
Young Metcalf took hold of Clara's shoulder and tried to take her intohis arms. For a moment they struggled and then, in disgust, he steppedaway from her and again began to scold.
Clara walked away across two or three vacant lots and got into a streetof workingmen's houses, the man following at her heels. Night had comeand the people in the street facing the factory had already disposedof the evening meal. Children and dogs played in the road and astrong smell of food hung in the air. To the west across the fields, apassenger train ran past going toward the city. Its light made waveringyellow patches against the bluish black sky. Clara wondered why she hadcome to the out of the way place with Frank Metcalf. She did not likehim, but there was a restlessness in him that was like the restlessthing in herself. He did not want stupidly to accept life, and that factmade him brother to herself. Although he was but twenty-two years old,he had already achieved an evil reputation. A servant in his father'shouse had given birth to a child by him, and it had cost a good deal ofmoney to get her to take the child and go away without making an openscandal. During the year before he had been expelled from the Universityfor throwing another young man down a flight of stairs, and it waswhispered about among the girl students that he often got violentlydrunk. For a year he had been trying to ingratiate himself with Clara,had written her letters, sent flowers to her house, and when he met heron the street had stopped to urge that she accept his friendship. On theday in May she had met him on the street and he had begged that she givehim one chance to talk things out with her. They had met at a streetcrossing where cars went past into the suburban villages that lay aboutthe city. "Come on," he had urged, "let's take a street car ride, let'sget out of the crowds
, I want to talk to you." He had taken hold of herarm and fairly dragged 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 withme, all right. You can say so and I'll let you alone." After she hadaccompanied him to the suburb of workingmen's houses, in the vicinity ofwhich they had spent the afternoon in the fields, Clara had found he hadnothing to urge upon her except the needs of his body. Still she feltthere was something he wanted to say that had not been said. He wasrestless and dissatisfied with his life, and at bottom she felt that wayabout her own life. During the last three years she had often wonderedwhy she had come to the school and what she was to gain by learningthings out of books. The days and months went past and she knew certainrather uninteresting facts she had not known before. How the facts wereto help her to live, she couldn't make out. They had nothing to do withsuch problems as her attitude toward men like John May the farm hand,the school teacher who had taught her something by holding her in hisarms and kissing her, and the dark sullen young man who now walkedbeside her and talked of the needs of his body. It seemed to Clara thatevery additional year spent at the University but served to emphasizeits inadequacy. It was so also with the books she read and the thoughtsand actions of the older people about her. Her aunt and uncle did nottalk much, but seemed to take it for granted she wanted to live suchanother 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,who spent their lives in adding up rows of figures or doing over andover some tremendously trivial thing, had no conception of any outlookfor their women beyond living in a house, serving them physically,wearing perhaps good enough clothes to help them make a show ofprosperity and success, and drifting finally into a stupid acceptanceof dullness--an acceptance that both she and the passionate, twisted manbeside 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 sisterKate had brought Clara to the apartment where the two lived, and thethree had become friends. Clara had learned something there that she didnot yet understand and never did get clearly into her consciousness.The truth was that the brother was like a woman and Kate Chanceller, whowore skirts and had the body of a woman, was in her nature a man. Kateand Clara spent many evenings together later and talked of many thingsnot usually touched on by girl students. Kate was a bold, vigorousthinker and was striving to grope her way through her own problem inlife and many times, as they walked along the street or sat togetherin the evening, she forgot her companion and talked of herself and thedifficulties of her position in life. "It's absurd the way things arearranged," she said. "Because my body is made in a certain way I'msupposed to accept certain rules for living. The rules were not madefor me. Men manufactured them as they manufacture can-openers, on thewholesale plan." She looked at Clara and laughed. "Try to imagine me ina little lace cap, such as your aunt wears about the house, and spendingmy 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 beentremendously educational for Clara. As Kate was a socialist and Columbuswas rapidly becoming an industrial city, she talked of the meaning ofcapital and labor and the effect of changing conditions on the lives ofmen and women. To Kate, Clara could talk as to a man, but the antagonismthat so often exists between men and women did not come into and spoiltheir companionship. In the evening when Clara went to Kate's house heraunt sent a carriage to bring her home at nine. Kate rode home with her.They got to the Woodburn house and went in. Kate was bold and free withthe Woodburns, as with her brother and Clara. "Come," she said laughing,"put away your figures and your knitting. Let's talk." She sat in alarge chair with her legs crossed and talked with Henderson Woodburn ofthe affairs of the plow company. The two got into a discussion of therelative merits of the free trade and protection ideas. Then the twoolder people went to bed and Kate talked to Clara. "Your uncle is anold duffer," she said. "He knows nothing about the meaning of what he'sdoing in life." When she started home afoot across the city, Clara wasalarmed for her safety. "You must get a cab or let me wake up uncle'sman; something may happen," she said. Kate laughed and went off,striding along the street like a man. Sometimes she thrust her handsinto her skirt pockets, that were like the trouser pockets of a man, andit was difficult for Clara to remember that she was a woman. In Kate'spresence she became bolder than she had ever been with any one. Oneevening she told the story of the thing that had happened to her thatafternoon long before on the farm, the afternoon when, her mind havingbeen inflamed by the words of Jim Priest regarding the sap that goes upthe tree and by the warm sensuous beauty of the day, she had wanted sokeenly to draw close to some one. She explained to Kate how she had beenso brutally jarred out of the feeling in herself that she felt was atbottom all right. "It was like a blow in the face at the hand of God,"she said.
Kate Chanceller was excited as Clara told the tale and listened witha fiery light burning in her eyes. Something in her manner encouragedClara to tell also of her experiments with the school teacher and forthe first time she got a sense of justice toward men by talking to thewoman who was half a man. "I know that wasn't square," she said. "I knownow, when I talk to you, but I didn't know then. With the school teacherI was as unfair as John May and my father were with me. Why do men andwomen have to fight each other? Why does the battle between them have togo on?"
Kate walked up and down before Clara and swore like a man. "Oh, hell,"she exclaimed, "men are such fools and I suppose women are as bad. Theyare both too much one thing. I fall in between. I've got my problem too,but I'm not going to talk about it. I know what I'm going to do. I'mgoing to find some kind of work and do it." She began to talk of thestupidity of men in their approach to women. "Men hate such women asmyself," she said. "They can't use us, they think. What fools! Theyshould watch and study us. Many of us spend our lives loving otherwomen, but we have skill. Being part women, we know how to approachwomen. We are not blundering and crude. Men want a certain thing fromyou. It is delicate and easy to kill. Love is the most sensitive thingin the world. It's like an orchid. Men try to pluck orchids with icetongs, 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 pickedup her hat, put it on her head, and with a flourish of her hand startedfor the door. "You can depend on my friendship," she said. "I'll donothing to confuse you. You'll be in luck if you can get that kind oflove or friendship from a man."
Clara kept thinking of the words of Kate Chanceller on the eveningwhen she walked through the streets of the suburban village with FrankMetcalf, and later as the two sat on the car that took them back to thecity. With the exception of another student named Phillip Grimes,who had come to see her a dozen times during her second year in theUniversity, young Metcalf was the only one of perhaps a dozen men shehad met since leaving the farm who had been attracted to her. PhillipGrimes was a slender young fellow with blue eyes, yellow hair and a notvery vigorous mustache. He was from a small town in the northern end ofthe State, where his father published a weekly newspaper. When he cameto see Clara he sat on the edge of his chair and talked rapidly. Someperson he had seen in the street had interested him. "I saw an old womanon the car," he began. "She had a basket on her arm. It was filledwith groceries. She sat beside me and talked aloud to herself." Clara'svisitor repea
ted the words of the old woman on the car. He speculatedabout her, wondered what her life was like. When he had talked of theold woman for ten or fifteen minutes, he dropped the subject and begantelling of another experience, this time with a man who sold fruit at astreet crossing. It was impossible to be personal with Phillip Grimes.Nothing but his eyes were personal. Sometimes he looked at Clara in away 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.It was only in part that. When the thing happened Clara saw her wholelife being stripped bare. "Don't look at me like that," she once saidsomewhat sharply, when his eyes had made her so uncomfortable she couldno longer remain silent. Her remark had frightened Phillip Grimes away.He got up at once, blushed, stammered something about having anotherengagement, and hurried away.
In the street car, homeward bound beside Frank Metcalf, Clara thought ofPhillip Grimes and wondered whether or not he would have stood thetest of Kate Chanceller's speech regarding love and friendship. He hadconfused her, but that was perhaps her own fault. He had not insistedon himself at all. Frank Metcalf had done nothing else. "One should beable," she thought, "to find somewhere a man who respects himself andhis own desires but can understand also the desires and fears of awoman." The street car went bouncing along over railroad crossingsand along residence streets. Clara looked at her companion, who staredstraight ahead, and then turned to look out of the car window. Thewindow was open and she could see the interiors of the laborers' housesalong the streets. In the evening with the lamps lighted they seemedcosy and comfortable. Her mind ran back to the life in her father'shouse and its loneliness. For two summers she had escaped going home.At the end of her first year in school she had made an illness of heruncle's an excuse for spending the summer in Columbus, and at the endof the second year she had found another excuse for not going. This yearshe felt she would have to go home. She would have to sit day after dayat the farm table with the farm hands. Nothing would happen. Her fatherwould remain silent in her presence. She would become bored and weary ofthe endless small talk of the town girls. If one of the town boys beganto 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 ofthe doors 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,"she told herself. She made up her mind that the puzzling, insistentantagonism that existed between men and women was altogether due to thefact that they were not married and had not the married people's wayof solving such problems as Frank Metcalf had been talking about allafternoon. She wished she were with Kate Chancellor so that she coulddiscuss with her this new viewpoint. When she and Frank Metcalf got offthe car she was no longer in a hurry to go home to her uncle's house.Knowing she did not want to marry him, she thought that in her turn shewould talk, that she would try to make him see her point of view as allthe afternoon he had been trying to make her see his.
For an hour the two people walked about and Clara talked. She forgotabout the passage of time and the fact that she had not dined. Notwishing to talk of marriage, she talked instead of the possibility offriendship between men and women. As she talked her own mind seemed toher to have become clearer. "It's all foolishness your going on as youhave," she declared. "I know how dissatisfied and unhappy you sometimesare. I often feel that way myself. Sometimes I think it's marriage Iwant. I really think I want to draw close to some one. I believe everyone is hungry for that experience. We all want something we are notwilling to pay for. We want to steal it or have it given us. That'swhat's the matter with me, and that'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 thingFrank Metcalf was protesting against and was the real reason for herown constant secret protest. She took hold of the lapel of his coat,intending to make a plea, to urge upon him the idea of a friendship thatwould mean something to them both. In the darkness she could not see hisrather heavy, sullen face. The maternal instinct became strong in herand she thought of him as a wayward, dissatisfied boy, wanting love andunderstanding as she had wanted to be loved and understood by her fatherwhen life in the moment of the awakening of her womanhood seemed uglyand brutal. With her free hand she stroked the sleeve of his coat. Hergesture was misunderstood by the man who was not thinking of her wordsbut of her body and of his hunger to possess it. He took her into hisarms and held her tightly against his breast. She tried to struggle, totear herself away but, although she was strong and muscular, she foundherself unable to move. As he held her uncle, who had heard the twopeople come up the steps to the door, threw it open. Both he and hiswife had on several occasions warned Clara to have nothing to do withyoung Metcalf. One day when he had sent flowers to the house, her aunthad urged her to refuse to receive them. "He's a bad, dissipated, wickedman," she had said. "Have nothing to do with him." When he saw his niecein the arms of the man who had been the subject of so much discussionin his own house and in every respectable house in Columbus, HendersonWoodburn was furious. He forgot the fact that young Metcalf was the sonof the president of the company of which he was treasurer. It seemedto him that some sort of a personal insult had been thrown at him by acommon 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 Clarawent into the house. The sliding doors that led into the living room hadbeen thrown open and the light from a hanging lamp streamed in upon her.Her hair was disheveled and her hat twisted to one side. The man andwoman stared at her. The knitting needles and a sheet of paper held intheir hands suggested what they had been doing while Clara was gettinganother lesson from life. Her aunt's hands trembled and the knittingneedles clicked together. Nothing was said and the confused and angrygirl ran up a stairway to her own room. She locked herself in and knelton the floor by the bed. She did not pray. Her association with KateChanceller had given her another outlet for her feelings. Pounding withher fists on the bed coverings, she swore. "Fools, damned fools, theworld is filled with nothing but a lot of damned fools."
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