THE STRENGTH OF GOD
THE REVEREND Curtis Hartman was pastor of the
Presbyterian Church of Winesburg, and had been in
that position ten years. He was forty years old, and
by his nature very silent and reticent. To preach,
standing in the pulpit before the people, was always
a hardship for him and from Wednesday morning
until Saturday evening he thought of nothing but
the two sermons that must be preached on Sunday.
Early on Sunday morning he went into a little room
called a study in the bell tower of the church and
prayed. In his prayers there was one note that always predominated. "Give me strength and courage
for Thy work, O Lord!" he pleaded, kneeling on the
bare floor and bowing his head in the presence of
the task that lay before him.
The Reverend Hartman was a tall man with a
brown beard. His wife, a stout, nervous woman,
was the daughter of a manufacturer of underwear
at Cleveland, Ohio. The minister himself was rather
a favorite in the town. The elders of the church liked
him because he was quiet and unpretentious and
Mrs. White, the banker's wife, thought him scholarly and refined.
The Presbyterian Church held itself somewhat
aloof from the other churches of Winesburg. It was
larger and more imposing and its minister was better
paid. He even had a carriage of his own and on
summer evenings sometimes drove about town with
his wife. Through Main Street and up and down
Buckeye Street he went, bowing gravely to the people, while his wife, afire with secret pride, looked
at him out of the corners of her eyes and worried
lest the horse become frightened and run away.
For a good many years after he came to Winesburg things went well with Curtis Hartman. He was
not one to arouse keen enthusiasm among the worshippers in his church but on the other hand he
made no enemies. In reality he was much in earnest
and sometimes suffered prolonged periods of remorse because he could not go crying the word of
God in the highways and byways of the town. He
wondered if the flame of the spirit really burned in
him and dreamed of a day when a strong sweet new
current of power would come like a great wind into
his voice and his soul and the people would tremble
before the spirit of God made manifest in him. "I
am a poor stick and that will never really happen to
me," he mused dejectedly, and then a patient smile
lit up his features. "Oh well, I suppose I'm doing
well enough," he added philosophically.
The room in the bell tower of the church, where
on Sunday mornings the minister prayed for an increase in him of the power of God, had but one
window. It was long and narrow and swung outward on a hinge like a door. On the window, made
of little leaded panes, was a design showing the
Christ laying his hand upon the head of a child.
One Sunday morning in the summer as he sat by
his desk in the room with a large Bible opened before him, and the sheets of his sermon scattered
about, the minister was shocked to see, in the upper
room of the house next door, a woman lying in her
bed and smoking a cigarette while she read a book.
Curtis Hartman went on tiptoe to the window and
closed it softly. He was horror stricken at the
thought of a woman smoking and trembled also to
think that his eyes, just raised from the pages of the
book of God, had looked upon the bare shoulders
and white throat of a woman. With his brain in a
whirl he went down into the pulpit and preached a
long sermon without once thinking of his gestures
or his voice. The sermon attracted unusual attention
because of its power and clearness. "I wonder if she
is listening, if my voice is carrying a message into
her soul," he thought and began to hope that on
future Sunday mornings he might be able to say
words that would touch and awaken the woman
apparently far gone in secret sin.
The house next door to the Presbyterian Church,
through the windows of which the minister had seen
the sight that had so upset him, was occupied by
two women. Aunt Elizabeth Swift, a grey competent-looking widow with money in the Winesburg National Bank, lived there with her daughter Kate
Swift, a school teacher. The school teacher was
thirty years old and had a neat trim-looking figure.
She had few friends and bore a reputation of having
a sharp tongue. When he began to think about her,
Curtis Hartman remembered that she had been to
Europe and had lived for two years in New York
City. "Perhaps after all her smoking means nothing," he thought. He began to remember that when
he was a student in college and occasionally read
novels, good although somewhat worldly women,
had smoked through the pages of a book that had
once fallen into his hands. With a rush of new determination he worked on his sermons all through the
week and forgot, in his zeal to reach the ears and the
soul of this new listener, both his embarrassment in
the pulpit and the necessity of prayer in the study
on Sunday mornings.
Reverend Hartman's experience with women had
been somewhat limited. He was the son of a wagon
maker from Muncie, Indiana, and had worked his
way through college. The daughter of the underwear manufacturer had boarded in a house where
he lived during his school days and he had married
her after a formal and prolonged courtship, carried
on for the most part by the girl herself. On his marriage day the underwear manufacturer had given his
daughter five thousand dollars and he promised to
leave her at least twice that amount in his will. The
minister had thought himself fortunate in marriage
and had never permitted himself to think of other
women. He did not want to think of other women.
What he wanted was to do the work of God quietly
and earnestly.
In the soul of the minister a struggle awoke. From
wanting to reach the ears of Kate Swift, and through
his sermons to delve into her soul, he began to want
also to look again at the figure lying white and quiet
in the bed. On a Sunday morning when he could
not sleep because of his thoughts he arose and went
to walk in the streets. When he had gone along
Main Street almost to the old Richmond place he
stopped and picking up a stone rushed off to the
room in the bell tower. With the stone he broke out
a corner of the window and then locked the door
and sat down at the desk before the open Bible to
wait. When the shade of the window to Kate Swift's
room was raised he could see, through the hole,
directly into her bed, but she was not there. She
also had arisen and had gone for a walk and the
hand that raised the shade was the hand of Aunt
Elizabeth Swift.
The minister almost wept with joy at this deliverance from the carnal desire to "peep" and went back
to his own house praising God. In an ill moment he
forgot, however, to stop the hole in the window.
The piece of glass broken out at the corner of the
window just nipped off the bare heel of the boy
standing motionless and looking with rapt eyes into
the face of the Christ.
Curtis Hartman forgot his sermon on that Sunday
morning. He talked to his congregation and in his
talk said that it was a mistake for people to think of
their minister as a man set aside and intended by
nature to lead a blameless life. "Out of my own
experience I know that we, who are the ministers of
God's word, are beset by the same temptations that
assail you," he declared. "I have been tempted and
have surrendered to temptation. It is only the hand
of God, placed beneath my head, that has raised me
up. As he has raised me so also will he raise you.
Do not despair. In your hour of sin raise your eyes
to the skies and you will be again and again saved."
Resolutely the minister put the thoughts of the
woman in the bed out of his mind and began to be
something like a lover in the presence of his wife.
One evening when they drove out together he
turned the horse out of Buckeye Street and in the
darkness on Gospel Hill, above Waterworks Pond,
put his arm about Sarah Hartman's waist. When he
had eaten breakfast in the morning and was ready
to retire to his study at the back of his house he
went around the table and kissed his wife on the
cheek. When thoughts of Kate Swift came into his
head, he smiled and raised his eyes to the skies.
"Intercede for me, Master," he muttered, "keep me
in the narrow path intent on Thy work."
And now began the real struggle in the soul of
the brown-bearded minister. By chance he discovered that Kate Swift was in the habit of lying in her
bed in the evenings and reading a book. A lamp
stood on a table by the side of the bed and the light
streamed down upon her white shoulders and bare
throat. On the evening when he made the discovery
the minister sat at the desk in the dusty room from
nine until after eleven and when her light was put
out stumbled out of the church to spend two more
hours walking and praying in the streets. He did
not want to kiss the shoulders and the throat of Kate
Swift and had not allowed his mind to dwell on
such thoughts. He did not know what he wanted.
"I am God's child and he must save me from myself," he cried, in the darkness under the trees as
he wandered in the streets. By a tree he stood and
looked at the sky that was covered with hurrying
clouds. He began to talk to God intimately and
closely. "Please, Father, do not forget me. Give me
power to go tomorrow and repair the hole in the
window. Lift my eyes again to the skies. Stay with
me, Thy servant, in his hour of need."
Up and down through the silent streets walked
the minister and for days and weeks his soul was
troubled. He could not understand the temptation
that had come to him nor could he fathom the reason for its coming. In a way he began to blame God,
saying to himself that he had tried to keep his feet
in the true path and had not run about seeking sin.
"Through my days as a young man and all through
my life here I have gone quietly about my work,"
he declared. "Why now should I be tempted? What
have I done that this burden should be laid on me?"
Three times during the early fall and winter of
that year Curtis Hartman crept out of his house to
the room in the bell tower to sit in the darkness
looking at the figure of Kate Swift lying in her bed
and later went to walk and pray in the streets. He
could not understand himself. For weeks he would
go along scarcely thinking of the school teacher and
telling himself that he had conquered the carnal desire to look at her body. And then something would
happen. As he sat in the study of his own house,
hard at work on a sermon, he would become nervous and begin to walk up and down the room. "I
will go out into the streets," he told himself and
even as he let himself in at the church door he persistently denied to himself the cause of his being
there. "I will not repair the hole in the window and
I will train myself to come here at night and sit in
the presence of this woman without raising my eyes.
I will not be defeated in this thing. The Lord has
devised this temptation as a test of my soul and I
will grope my way out of darkness into the light of
righteousness."
One night in January when it was bitter cold and
snow lay deep on the streets of Winesburg Curtis
Hartman paid his last visit to the room in the bell
tower of the church. It was past nine o'clock when
he left his own house and he set out so hurriedly
that he forgot to put on his overshoes. In Main
Street no one was abroad but Hop Higgins the night
watchman and in the whole town no one was awake
but the watchman and young George Willard, who
sat in the office of the Winesburg Eagle trying to write
a story. Along the street to the church went the
minister, plowing through the drifts and thinking
that this time he would utterly give way to sin. "I
want to look at the woman and to think of kissing
her shoulders and I am going to let myself think
what I choose," he declared bitterly and tears came
into his eyes. He began to think that he would get
out of the ministry and try some other way of life.
"I shall go to some city and get into business," he
declared. "If my nature is such that I cannot resist
sin, I shall give myself over to sin. At least I shall
not be a hypocrite, preaching the word of God with
my mind thinking of the shoulders and neck of a
woman who does not belong to me."
It was cold in the room of the bell tower of the
church on that January night and almost as soon as
he came into the room Curtis Hartman knew that if
he stayed he would be ill. His feet were wet from
tramping in the snow and there was no fire. In the
room in the house next door Kate Swift had not
yet appeared. With grim determination the man sat
down to wait. Sitting in the chair and gripping the
edge of the desk on which lay the Bible he stared
into the darkness thinking the blackest thoughts of
his life. He thought of his wife and for the moment
almost hated her. "She has always been ashamed of
passion and has cheated me," he thought. "Man has
a right to expect living passion and beauty in a
woman. He has no right to forget that he is an animal and in me there is something that is Greek. I
will throw off the woman of my bosom and seek
other women. I will besiege this school teacher. I
will fly in the face of all men and if I am a creature
of carnal lusts I will live then for my lusts."
The distracted man trembled from head to foot,
partly from cold, partly from the struggle in which
he was engaged. Hours passed and a fever assailed
his body. His throat began to hurt and his teeth
chattered. His feet on the study floor felt like two
cakes of ice. Still he would not give up. "I will see
this woman and will think the thoughts I have never
dared to think," he told himself, gripping the edge
of the desk and waiting.
Curtis Hartman came near dying from the effects
of that night of waiting in the church, and also he
found in the thing that happened what he took to
be the way of life for him. On other evenings when
he had waited he had not been able to see, through
the little hole in the glass, any part of the school
teacher's room except that occupied by her bed. In
the darkness he had waited until the woman suddenly appeared sitting in the bed in her white night-
robe. When the light was turned up she propped
herself up among the' pillows and read a book.
Sometimes she smoked one of the cigarettes. Only
her bare shoulders and throat were visible.
On the January night, after he had come near
dying with cold and after his mind had two or three
times actually slipped away into an odd land of fantasy so that he had by an exercise of will power
to force himself back into consciousness, Kate Swift
appeared. In the room next door a lamp was lighted
and the waiting man stared into an empty bed. Then
upon the bed before his eyes a naked woman threw
herself. Lying face downward she wept and beat
with her fists upon the pillow. With a final outburst
of weeping she half arose, and in the presence of
the man who had waited to look and not to think
thoughts the woman of sin began to pray. In the
lamplight her figure, slim and strong, looked like
the figure of the boy in the presence of the Christ
on the leaded window.
Curtis Hartman never remembered how he got
out of the church. With a cry he arose, dragging the
heavy desk along the floor. The Bible fell, making a
great clatter in the silence. When the light in the
house next door went out he stumbled down the
stairway and into the street. Along the street he
went and ran in at the door of the Winesburg Eagle.
To George Willard, who was tramping up and down
in the office undergoing a struggle of his own, he
began to talk half incoherently. "The ways of God
are beyond human understanding," he cried, running in quickly and closing the door. He began to
advance upon the young man, his eyes glowing and
his voice ringing with fervor. "I have found the
light," he cried. "After ten years in this town, God
has manifested himself to me in the body of a
woman." His voice dropped and he began to whisper. "I did not understand," he said. "What I took
to be a trial of my soul was only a preparation for
a new and more beautiful fervor of the spirit. God
has appeared to me in the person of Kate Swift, the
school teacher, kneeling naked on a bed. Do you
know Kate Swift? Although she may not be aware
of it, she is an instrument of God, bearing the message of truth."
Reverend Curtis Hartman turned and ran out of
the office. At the door he stopped, and after looking
up and down the deserted street, turned again to
George Willard. "I am delivered. Have no fear." He
held up a bleeding fist for the young man to see. "I
smashed the glass of the window," he cried. "Now
it will have to be wholly replaced. The strength of
God was in me and I broke it with my fist."
Tandy