BELLE CARPENTER had a dark skin, grey eyes, and
thick lips. She was tall and strong. When black
thoughts visited her she grew angry and wished she
were a man and could fight someone with her fists.
She worked in the millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate
McHugh and during the day sat trimming hats by a
window at the rear of the store. She was the daughter of Henry Carpenter, bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Winesburg, and lived with him in a
gloomy old house far out at the end of Buckeye
Street. The house was surrounded by pine trees and
there was no grass beneath the trees. A rusty tin
eaves-trough had slipped from its fastenings at the
back of the house and when the wind blew it beat
against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal
drumming noise that sometimes persisted all through
the night.
When she was a young girl Henry Carpenter
made life almost unbearable for Belle, but as she
emerged from girlhood into womanhood he lost his
power over her. The bookkeeper's life was made up
of innumerable little pettinesses. When he went to
the bank in the morning he stepped into a closet
and put on a black alpaca coat that had become
shabby with age. At night when he returned to his
home he donned another black alpaca coat. Every
evening he pressed the clothes worn in the streets.
He had invented an arrangement of boards for the
purpose. The trousers to his street suit were placed
between the boards and the boards were clamped
together with heavy screws. In the morning he
wiped the boards with a damp cloth and stood them
upright behind the dining room door. If they were
moved during the day he was speechless with anger
and did not recover his equilibrium for a week.
The bank cashier was a little bully and was afraid
of his daughter. She, he realized, knew the story of
his brutal treatment of her mother and hated him
for it. One day she went home at noon and carried
a handful of soft mud, taken from the road, into the
house. With the mud she smeared the face of the
boards used for the pressing of trousers and then
went back to her work feeling relieved and happy.
Belle Carpenter occasionally walked out in the
evening with George Willard. Secretly she loved another man, but her love affair, about which no one
knew, caused her much anxiety. She was in love
with Ed Handby, bartender in Ed Griffith's Saloon,
and went about with the young reporter as a kind
of relief to her feelings. She did not think that her
station in life would permit her to be seen in the
company of the bartender and walked about under
the trees with George Willard and let him kiss her
to relieve a longing that was very insistent in her
nature. She felt that she could keep the younger
man within bounds. About Ed Handby she was
somewhat uncertain.
Handby, the bartender, was a tall, broad-shouldered
man of thirty who lived in a room upstairs above
Griffith's saloon. His fists were large and his eyes
unusually small, but his voice, as though striving to
conceal the power back of his fists, was soft and
quiet.
At twenty-five the bartender had inherited a large
farm from an uncle in Indiana. When sold, the farm
brought in eight thousand dollars, which Ed spent
in six months. Going to Sandusky, on Lake Erie,
he began an orgy of dissipation, the story of which
afterward filled his home town with awe. Here and
there he went throwing the money about, driving
carriages through the streets, giving wine parties to
crowds of men and women, playing cards for high
stakes and keeping mistresses whose wardrobes cost
him hundreds of dollars. One night at a resort called
Cedar Point, he got into a fight and ran amuck like
a wild thing. With his fist he broke a large mirror
in the wash room of a hotel and later went about
smashing windows and breaking chairs in dance
halls for the joy of hearing the glass rattle on the
floor and seeing the terror in the eyes of clerks who
had come from Sandusky to spend the evening at
the resort with their sweethearts.
The affair between Ed Handby and Belle Carpenter on the surface amounted to nothing. He had succeeded in spending but one evening in her company.
On that evening he hired a horse and buggy at Wesley Moyer's livery barn and took her for a drive.
The conviction that she was the woman his nature
demanded and that he must get her settled upon
him and he told her of his desires. The bartender
was ready to marry and to begin trying to earn
money for the support of his wife, but so simple
was his nature that he found it difficult to explain
his intentions. His body ached with physical longing
and with his body he expressed himself. Taking the
milliner into his arms and holding her tightly in
spite of her struggles, he kissed her until she became
helpless. Then he brought her back to town and let
her out of the buggy. "When I get hold of you again
I'll not let you go. You can't play with me," he declared as he turned to drive away. Then, jumping
out of the buggy, he gripped her shoulders with his
strong hands. "I'll keep you for good the next time,"
he said. "You might as well make up your mind to
that. It's you and me for it and I'm going to have
you before I get through."
One night in January when there was a new moon
George Willard, who was in Ed Handby's mind the
only obstacle to his getting Belle Carpenter, went for
a walk. Early that evening George went into Ransom
Surbeck's pool room with Seth Richmond and Art
Wilson, son of the town butcher. Seth Richmond
stood with his back against the wall and remained
silent, but George Willard talked. The pool room
was filled with Winesburg boys and they talked of
women. The young reporter got into that vein. He
said that women should look out for themselves,
that the fellow who went out with a girl was not
responsible for what happened. As he talked he
looked about, eager for attention. He held the floor
for five minutes and then Art Wilson began to talk.
Art was learning the barber's trade in Cal Prouse's
shop and already began to consider himself an authority in such matters as baseball, horse racing,
drinking, and going about with women. He began
to tell of a night when he with two men from Winesburg went into a house of prostitution at the county
seat. The butcher's son held a cigar in the side of
his mouth and as he talked spat on the floor. "The
women in the place couldn't embarrass me although
they tried hard enough," he boasted. "One of the
girls in the house tried to get fresh, but I fooled her.
As soon as she began to talk I went and sat in her
lap. Everyone in the room laughed when I kissed
her. I taught her to let me alone."
George Willard went out of the pool room and
into Main Street. For days the weather had been
bitter cold with a high wind blowing down on the
town from Lake Erie, eighteen miles to the north,
but on that night the wind had died away and a
new moon made the night unusually lovely. Without thinking where he was going or what he wanted
to do, George went out of Main Street and began
walking in dimly lighted streets filled with frame
houses.
Out of doors under the black sky filled with stars
he forgot his companions of the pool room. Because
it was dark and he was alone he began to talk aloud.
In a spirit of play he reeled along the street imitating
a drunken man and then imagined himself a soldier
clad in shining boots that reached to the knees and
wearing a sword that jingled as he walked. As a
soldier he pictured himself as an inspector, passing
before a long line of men who stood at attention.
He began to examine the accoutrements of the men.
Before a tree he stopped and began to scold. "Your
pack is not in order," he said sharply. "How many
times will I have to speak of this matter? Everything
must be in order here. We have a difficult task before us and no difficult task can be done without
order."
Hypnotized by his own words, the young man
stumbled along the board sidewalk saying more
words. "There is a law for armies and for men too,"
he muttered, lost in reflection. "The law begins with
little things and spreads out until it covers everything. In every little thing there must be order, in
the place where men work, in their clothes, in their
thoughts. I myself must be orderly. I must learn that
law. I must get myself into touch with something
orderly and big that swings through the night like
a star. In my little way I must begin to learn something, to give and swing and work with life, with
the law."
George Willard stopped by a picket fence near a
street lamp and his body began to tremble. He had
never before thought such thoughts as had just
come into his head and he wondered where they
had come from. For the moment it seemed to him
that some voice outside of himself had been talking
as he walked. He was amazed and delighted with
his own mind and when he walked on again spoke
of the matter with fervor. "To come out of Ransom
Surbeck's pool room and think things like that," he
whispered. "It is better to be alone. If I talked like
Art Wilson the boys would understand me but they
wouldn't understand what I've been thinking down
here."
In Winesburg, as in all Ohio towns of twenty
years ago, there was a section in which lived day
laborers. As the time of factories had not yet come,
the laborers worked in the fields or were section
hands on the railroads. They worked twelve hours
a day and received one dollar for the long day of
toil. The houses in which they lived were small
cheaply constructed wooden affairs with a garden at
the back. The more comfortable among them kept
cows and perhaps a pig, housed in a little shed at
the rear of the garden.
With his head filled with resounding thoughts,
George Willard walked into such a street on the clear
January night. The street was dimly lighted and in
places there was no sidewalk. In the scene that lay
about him there was something that excited his already aroused fancy. For a year he had been devoting all of his odd moments to the reading of books
and now some tale he had read concerning fife in
old world towns of the middle ages came sharply
back to his mind so that he stumbled forward with
the curious feeling of one revisiting a place that had
been a part of some former existence. On an impulse
he turned out of the street and went into a little
dark alleyway behind the sheds in which lived the
cows and pigs.
For a half hour he stayed in the alleyway, smelling
the strong smell of animals too closely housed and
letting his mind play with the strange new thoughts
that came to him. The very rankness of the smell of
manure in the clear sweet air awoke something
heady in his brain. The poor little houses lighted
by kerosene lamps, the smoke from the chimneys
mounting straight up into the clear air, the grunting
of pigs, the women clad in cheap calico dresses and
washing dishes in the kitchens, the footsteps of men
coming out of the houses and going off to the stores
and saloons of Main Street, the dogs barking and
the children crying--all of these things made him
seem, as he lurked in the darkness, oddly detached
and apart from all life.
The excited young man, unable to bear the weight
of his own thoughts, began to move cautiously
along the alleyway. A dog attacked him and had to
be driven away with stones, and a man appeared at
the door of one of the houses and swore at the dog.
George went into a vacant lot and throwing back his
head looked up at the sky. He felt unutterably big
and remade by the simple experience through which
he had been passing and in a kind of fervor of emotion put up his hands, thrusting them into the darkness above his head and muttering words. The
desire to say words overcame him and he said
words without meaning, rolling them over on his
tongue and saying them because they were brave
words, full of meaning. "Death," he muttered,
night, the sea, fear, loveliness."
George Willard came out of the vacant lot and
stood again on the sidewalk facing the houses. He
felt that all of the people in the little street must be
brothers and sisters to him and he wished he had
the courage to call them out of their houses and to
shake their hands. "If there were only a woman here
I would take hold of her hand and we would run
until we were both tired out," he thought. "That
would make me feel better." With the thought of a
woman in his mind he walked out of the street and
went toward the house where Belle Carpenter lived.
He thought she would understand his mood and
that he could achieve in her presence a position he
had long been wanting to achieve. In the past when
he had been with her and had kissed her lips he
had come away filled with anger at himself. He had
felt like one being used for some obscure purpose
and had not enjoyed the feeling. Now he thought
he had suddenly become too big to be used.
When George got to Belle Carpenter's house there
had already been a visitor there before him. Ed
Handby had come to the door and calling Belle out
of the house had tried to talk to her. He had wanted
to ask the woman to come away with him and to be
his wife, but when she came and stood by the door
he lost his self-assurance and became sullen. "You
stay away from that kid," he growled, thinking of
George Willard, and then, not knowing what else to
say, turned to go away. "If I catch you together I
will break your bones and his too," he added. The
bartender had come to woo, not to threaten, and
was angry with himself because of his failure.
When her lover had departed Belle went indoors
and ran hurriedly upstairs. From a window at the
upper part of the house she saw Ed Handby cross
the street and sit down on a horse block before the
house of a neighbor. In the dim light the man sat
motionless holding his head in his hands. She was
made happy by the sight, and when George Willard
came to the door she greeted him effusively and
hurriedly put on her hat. She thought that, as she
walked through the streets with young Willard, Ed
Handby would follow and she wanted to make him
suffer.
For an hour Belle Carpenter and the young reporter walked about under the trees in the sweet
night air. George Willard was full of big words. The
sense of power that had come to him during the
hour in the darkness in the alleyway remained with
him and he talked boldly, swaggering along and
swinging his arms about. He wanted to make Belle
Carpenter realize that he was aware of his former
weakness and that he had changed. "You'll find me
different," he declared, thrusting his hands into his
pockets and looking boldly into her eyes. "I don't
know why but it is so. You've got to take me for a
man or let me alone. That's how it is."
Up and down the quiet streets under the new
moon went the woman and the boy. When George
had finished talking they turned down a side street
and went across a bridge into a path that ran up the
side of a hill. The hill began at Waterworks Pond
and climbed upward to the Winesburg Fair
Grounds. On the hillside grew dense bushes and
small trees and among the bushes were little open
spaces carpeted with long grass, now stiff and
frozen.
As he walked behind the woman up the hill
George Willard's heart began to beat rapidly and his
shoulders straightened. Suddenly he decided that
Belle Carpenter was about to surrender herself to
him. The new force that had manifested itself in him
had, he felt, been at work upon her and had led to
her conquest. The thought made him half drunk
with the sense of masculine power. Although he
had been annoyed that as they walked about she
had not seemed to be listening to his words, the fact
that she had accompanied him to this place took
all his doubts away. "It is different. Everything has
become different," he thought and taking hold of
her shoulder turned her about and stood looking at
her, his eyes shining with pride.
Belle Carpenter did not resist. When he kissed her
upon the lips she leaned heavily against him and
looked over his shoulder into the darkness. In her
whole attitude there was a suggestion of waiting.
Again, as in the alleyway, George Willard's mind
ran off into words and, holding the woman tightly
he whispered the words into the still night. "Lust,"
he whispered, "lust and night and women."
George Willard did not understand what happened to him that night on the hillside. Later, when
he got to his own room, he wanted to weep and
then grew half insane with anger and hate. He hated
Belle Carpenter and was sure that all his life he
would continue to hate her. On the hillside he had
led the woman to one of the little open spaces
among the bushes and had dropped to his knees
beside her. As in the vacant lot, by the laborers'
houses, he had put up his hands in gratitude for the
new power in himself and was waiting for the
woman to speak when Ed Handby appeared.
The bartender did not want to beat the boy, who
he thought had tried to take his woman away. He
knew that beating was unnecessary, that he had
power within himself to accomplish his purpose
without using his fists. Gripping George by the
shoulder and pulling him to his feet, he held him
with one hand while he looked at Belle Carpenter
seated on the grass. Then with a quick wide movement of his arm he sent the younger man sprawling
away into the bushes and began to bully the
woman, who had risen to her feet. "You're no
good," he said roughly. "I've half a mind not to
bother with you. I'd let you alone if I didn't want
you so much."
On his hands and knees in the bushes George
Willard stared at the scene before him and tried hard
to think. He prepared to spring at the man who had
humiliated him. To be beaten seemed to be infinitely
better than to be thus hurled ignominiously aside.
Three times the young reporter sprang at Ed
Handby and each time the bartender, catching him
by the shoulder, hurled him back into the bushes.
The older man seemed prepared to keep the exercise
going indefinitely but George Willard's head struck
the root of a tree and he lay still. Then Ed Handby
took Belle Carpenter by the arm and marched her
away.
George heard the man and woman making their
way through the bushes. As he crept down the hillside his heart was sick within him. He hated himself
and he hated the fate that had brought about his
humiliation. When his mind went back to the hour
alone in the alleyway he was puzzled and stopping
in the darkness listened, hoping to hear again the
voice outside himself that had so short a time before
put new courage into his heart. When his way
homeward led him again into the street of frame
houses he could not bear the sight and began to
run, wanting to get quickly out of the neighborhood
that now seemed to him utterly squalid and
commonplace.
Loneliness