Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  Her thoughts... “Where have they been in this storm? They aren’t driving.”

  “Damn her and her thoughts,” Ethel said to herself.

  Blanche would be thinking that Ethel with Tom Riddle might get into some such position, as regards her man, she was herself in.

  Was there something to be settled with her, as there had been with the young man, Red Oliver, as there was still something to be settled between herself and Tom Riddle? “Not to-night anyway, I hope. For God’s sake not to-night.”

  “It’s the limit. It’s enough.”

  And anyway what was to be settled as between her and Blanche? “She is another woman. I am glad of that.” She tried to put Blanche out of her mind.

  She thought of the men now concerned in her life, of her father, of the young man Red Oliver, of Tom Riddle.

  Of one thing she could be quite sure. Her father would never be much aware of what was going on about him. He was a man for whom life separated itself into broad lines, the good and the bad. He would make quick judgments always, as he decided cases in court. “You are guilty. You are not guilty.”

  For that reason, life, actual life, would always baffle him. It must always have done that. People wouldn’t behave as he thought they should. With Ethel, his daughter, he had got puzzled and confused. He had got personal. “Is she trying to punish me? Is life trying to punish me?”

  This because she, the daughter, had problems her father couldn’t understand. He had never tried to get understanding. “How the hell does he think it comes to people, if it does come? Does he think certain people, good people, like himself, are born with it?

  “What is wrong with my wife, Blanche? Why does she not behave as she should?

  “Now there is my daughter, too. Why is she turning out like this?”

  There was her father and there was the young man with whom she had suddenly dared be so intimate without really being intimate at all. She had let him make love to her. She had practically compelled him to make love to her.

  There was a kind of sweetness in him, even a kind of cleanness. He had not been soiled as she had...

  She must have wanted his sweetness, his cleanness, had grabbed at it.

  “Did I only succeed in soiling him, too?

  “I know this. I grabbed, but I didn’t get what I grabbed for.”

  *

  ETHEL was feverish. It was a night. She wasn’t through with the night yet.

  It never rains but it pours. She was lying on the bed in the dark hot room. Her long slender body was stretched out there. There was a tension, little nerves crying out. The little nerves under her knees were taut. She raised her legs and kicked impatiently. She lay still.

  She sat up stiffly in the bed. The door from the hallway had opened softly. Blanche had come into the room. She advanced halfway across the room. She was clad in a white night-gown. She whispered, “Ethel.”

  “Yes.”

  Ethel’s voice was harsh. She was startled. In all of the communication between the two women, since Ethel had come home to Langdon to live, to be the town librarian, there had been a kind of play. It was half play, half something else. The two women had wanted to help each other. Was something else going to happen to Ethel now? She had a premonition. “Don’t. Don’t. Go away,” she wanted to cry.

  “To-night I did something not nice. Now something is going to be done to me.” How did she know that?

  Blanche was always wanting to touch her. She always got up late in the morning, after Ethel did. She had strange habits. At night, when Ethel was not at home, she went upstairs to her room early. What did she do up there? She did not sleep. Sometimes, at two or three in the morning, Ethel was awakened, hearing Blanche prowling about the house. She went to the kitchen and got food. In the morning she heard Ethel preparing to leave the house and came downstairs.

  She looked untidy. Even her night-gown was not very clean. She approached Ethel. “I wanted to see what you were wearing.” There was that queer passion, always to know what Ethel was wearing. She wanted to give Ethel money to buy clothes. “You know how I am. I don’t care what I wear,” she said. She said it with a little fling of her head.

  She wanted to approach Ethel, put her hands on her. “That’s nice. It’s lovely on you,” she said. “That cloth is nice.” She put her hands on Ethel’s dress. “You understand what to wear and how to wear it.” When Ethel left the house, Blanche came to the front door. She stood there watching Ethel go off along the street.

  Now she was in the room where Ethel was lying naked on the bed. She came softly across the room. She hadn’t even put on bedroom slippers. She was in her bare feet and her feet made no sound. She was like a cat. She sat on the edge of the bed.

  “Ethel.”

  “Yes.” Ethel wanted to get up quickly and put on her pajamas.

  “Lie still, Ethel,” Blanche said. “I have been waiting for you, waiting for you to come.”

  Her voice now was not sharp and harsh. A kind of softness had crept into it. It was a pleading voice. “There has been a misunderstanding. We haven’t understood each other,”

  Blanche said. There was a faint light in the room. It came through an open transom from a dim lamp burning in the hallway outside the door. It was the door by which Blanche had entered. Ethel could hear her father snoring in his bed in a nearby room.

  “It has been a long time. I have waited a long time,” Blanche said. It was queer. Tom Riddle had, just an hour before, said something of the same sort. “I hope it will not be long now,” Tom had said.

  “Now,” Blanche was saying.

  Blanche’s hand, her little sharp bony hand touched Ethel’s shoulder.

  She had put her hand out, touching Ethel. Ethel had grown rigid. She said nothing. At the touch of the hand her body trembled. “I thought to-night I thought... it is to-night or never. I thought something was to be decided,” Blanche said.

  She spoke in a low soft voice, unlike her voice as Ethel knew it. She spoke as one in a trance. For just a moment Ethel was relieved. “She is walking in her sleep. She is not awake.” The conviction passed quickly.

  “I have been knowing all evening. ‘There are the two men, the older one and a younger. She will be making up her mind,’ I thought. I wanted to stop it.

  “I don’t want you to do it. I don’t want you to do it.”

  She was soft and pleading. Now her hand had begun to caress Ethel. It was creeping down along her body, over her breasts, over her hips. Ethel remained rigid. She felt cold and weak. “It’s coming,” she thought.

  What was coming?

  “You have to decide sometime. You have to be something.

  “You are a whore or you are a woman.

  “You have to take responsibility.”

  There were queer distorted sentences running through Ethel’s mind. It was as though some person, not Blanche, not young Red Oliver, not Tom Riddle, were whispering to her.

  “There is a self and another self.

  “A woman is a woman or she is not a woman.

  “A man is a man or he is not a man.”

  More and more sentences running through Ethel’s head, apparently disjointed sentences. It was as though some older, some more sophisticated and evil thing, like another person, had come into her, had come in with the touch of Blanche’s hand.... The hand continued creeping up and down her body, over her breasts, over her hips... “It can be sweet,” a voice said. “It can be very very sweet.

  “There was a snake in Eden.

  “Do you like snakes?”

  Thoughts in Ethel, racing thoughts, thoughts she had never had before. “There is this thing we call individuality in us. It is a disease. I have thought, ‘I must save myself.’ That is what I have been thinking. I have always been thinking that.

  “Once I was a young girl,” Ethel thought suddenly. “I wonder if I was nice, if I was born nice.

  “Was I intended to be something, a woman perhaps?” There was a queer dawning noti
on of womanhood, something even noble, something patient, something understanding.

  What a mess life could get into! Every one saying to some one, “Save me. Save me.”

  Sex twisting people. It had twisted Ethel. She knew it.

  “I am sure you have experimented. You have tried men,” Blanche said in her strange new soft voice. “I don’t know why but I am sure.”

  “They won’t do. They won’t do.

  “I hate them.

  “I hate them.

  “They spoil everything. I hate them.”

  Now she had put her face down close to Ethel’s face.

  “We let them. We even go toward them.

  “There is something in them we think we want.”

  “Ethel. Don’t you understand? I love you. I have tried to make you know.”

  Blanche had put her face down close to Ethel’s. For a time she was still there. Ethel could feel the woman’s breath on her cheek. The minutes passed. There was an interval that, to Ethel, seemed hours. Blanche’s lips touched Ethel’s shoulders.

  *

  IT was enough. With a kind of spasmodic movement, a twist of her body, throwing the woman off, Ethel sprang out of bed. A struggle began in the room. Afterwards Ethel never knew how long it went on.

  She knew it was the end of something, the beginning of something.

  She was fighting for something. When she sprang, twisted herself out of bed, out of Blanche’s arms, and stood on her feet, Blanche sprang at her again. Ethel stood erect beside the bed and Blanche threw herself at her feet. She threw her arms about Ethel’s body, clung desperately there. Ethel was dragging her across the room.

  The two women had begun to wrestle. How strong Blanche was! Now her lips were kissing Ethel’s body, her thighs, her legs! The kisses did not touch Ethel. It was as though she were a tree and some strange bird with a long sharp bill was pecking away at her, at some outer part of her. She was not sorry for Blanche now. She herself had become cruel.

  She had got one of her hands into Blanche’s hair and was pulling the face and lips away from her body. She had become strong, but Blanche was also strong. Slowly she forced Blanche’s head away from herself. “Never. Never that,” she said.

  She did not say the words aloud. Even then, at that moment, she was conscious of the fact that she did not want her father to know what was going on in his house. “I wouldn’t want to hurt him like that.” Here was something she would never want any man to know. Now it would be comparatively easy for her to tell Tom Riddle about Red Oliver... if she decided she wanted Tom Riddle for her man... what she had thought she had wanted of the younger man, the experiment she had made, its failure.

  “No! No!”

  “Blanche! Blanche!”

  It was necessary to bring Blanche back out of the place into which she had got. If Blanche had made a mess of her life it was her own mess. She had a desire not to betray Blanche.

  She had hold of Blanche’s hair and was pulling. With a sudden wrench she turned Blanche’s face up to her own and with her free hand struck her in the face.

  She kept striking. With all her strength she struck. She remembered something she had heard sometime, somewhere. “If you are a swimmer and have gone to rescue a drowning man or woman if he resists or struggles, strike him. Knock him unconscious.”

  She struck and struck. Now she was dragging Blanche toward the door of the room. It was odd. Blanche did not seem to mind being struck. She seemed to like it. She did not try to turn her face away from the blows.

  Ethel had wrenched the door to the hallway open and had got Blanche outside and into the hallway. With a final effort she freed herself from the body clinging to her body. Blanche fell to the floor. There was a look in her eyes. “Well, I am licked. Anyway I tried.”

  She had got back the thing by which she lived, her contempt.

  ETHEL stepped back into her own room and closed and bolted the door. Inside the door she stood with one hand on the knob, the other hand resting on a door panel. She was weak.

  She listened. Her father had awakened. She heard him get out of his bed.

  He was fumbling for a light. He was getting to be an old man.

  He stumbled against a chair. His voice was quavering. “Ethel! Blanche! What has happened?”

  “It will go on now like that in this house,” thought Ethel. “At least I will not be here.”

  “Ethel! Blanche! What has happened?” The voice of her father was the voice of a scared child. He was getting old. His voice trembled. He was getting old and he had never grown up. He had always been a child, would be a child to the end.

  “It might be why women could so hate and detest men.”

  There was a moment of intense silence and then Ethel heard Blanche’s voice. “Great God,” she thought. The voice was as it had always been when Blanche addressed her husband. It was sharp, a little hard, clear. “Nothing has happened, dear,” the voice said. “I was in Ethel’s room. We were talking in there.”

  “Go back to sleep,” the voice said. There was something terrible in the command.

  Ethel heard her father’s voice. He was grumbling. “I wish you would not wake me up,” the voice said. Ethel heard him getting heavily back into bed.

  5

  IT WAS EARLY morning. The room in the Long house in which Ethel lived had a window looking out toward the field her father owned, the field that sloped down to a creek, the field into which she had gone as a young girl to meet a bad little boy. In the hot summer the field got almost bare; it got burned brown. You looked at it and thought... “a cow won’t get much in that field”... you thought. The cow Ethel’s father had now had a broken horn.

  So! The horn of a cow gets broken.

  In the morning, even in the early morning, in Langdon, Georgia, heat. If it has rained, it isn’t quite so hot. You have to be born to it. You must not mind.

  You can have a lot of things happen to you and then... there you are.

  You are standing in a room. If you are a woman, you are putting on a dress. You are a man and are putting on a shirt.

  It’s funny, men and women don’t understand each other better. They should.

  “I guess they don’t care. I guess they don’t give a goddamn. They get so they don’t give a goddamn.

  “Goddamn. Goddamn. Noggle is a nice word. Noggle me. Noggle yourself across a room. Noggle yourself into pants, into a skirt. Noggle yourself into a coat. Noggle yourself downtown. Noggle, noggle.

  “It’s Sunday. Be a man. Go on, take a walk with your wife.”

  Ethel tired... a little crazy maybe. Where had she heard, or seen, the word “noggle”?

  Once, in Chicago, a man talking. It was strange for him to come back to Ethel, that summer morning in Georgia, after the night, after the sleepless night, after the adventure with Red Oliver, after Blanche. He came into her room and sat down.

  How absurd! It was only the memory of him that came. That’s nice. If you are a woman, the memory of a man can come right into your room as you sit dressing. You are quite naked. What? What difference does it make! “Come in, sit down. Touch me. Don’t touch me. Thoughts, touch me.”

  Suppose the man is a nut. Suppose he is a middle-aged, bald-headed man. Ethel saw that one once. She heard him talk. She remembered him. She liked him.

  He talked crazily. Well. Was he drunk? Could anything be crazier than the Long house in Langdon, Georgia? People might go past the house along a street. How would they know it was a crazy house?

  The man in Chicago. Again Ethel was with Harold Grey. You go through life gathering up people. You are a woman and are with a man a good deal. Then you aren’t with him any more. So there he is, just the same, a part of you. He touched you. He walked beside you. You liked him or didn’t like him. You were cruel to him. You’re sorry.

  His color in you, a little, your color in him.

  In Chicago, at a party, a man talking. It was at another evening party, at the house of one of Harold Grey’s friends
. This one was a man, a historian, an out-of-doors man, a historian...

  A man who gathered people about him. He had a nice wife, a tall handsome dignified wife.

  There was a man in his house, sitting with two young women, in a room. Ethel was there, listening. The man was talking of God. Was he drunk? There had been drinks.

  “So, every one wants God.”

  It was a middle-aged, bald-headed man talking.

  Who had started that conversation? It had been started at dinner. “So, I guess every one wants God.”

  Some one at table, at dinner, had spoken of Henry Adams, another historian, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres. “White soul of the Middle Ages.” Historians talking. Every one wants God.

  A man talked to two women. He was eager, nice. “We have been a lot of fools, we men of the Western world.

  “So we took our religion from the Jews... a lot of wanderers... in a dry barren land.

  “I guess they did not like the land.

  “So they put God up in the sky... a mysterious god, far away.”

  “You read about it... in the Old Testament,” the man said. “They couldn’t make it go. The people kept running away. They went off and worshipped a statue of brass, a golden calf. They were right.

  “So they got up the story about Christ. Do you want to know why? They had to get it up. All is getting lost. Get up a story. They had to try to get it down to earth where people could get hold of it.

  “So. So. So.

  “So they got up about Christ. Good.

  “They put that in about immaculate conception? Isn’t just any ordinary conception nice? I think it is. It’s nice.”

  There were two young women in the room that time, with that man. They blushed. They listened to him. Ethel wasn’t in the conversation. She listened. Afterwards she found out that the man at the historian’s house that night was a painter, a queer bird. Perhaps he was drunk. There were cocktails, plenty of cocktails.