IT WAS EARLY evening of a day in, the late fall and
the Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of
country people into town. The day had been clear
and the night came on warm and pleasant. On the
Trunion Pike, where the road after it left town
stretched away between berry fields now covered
with dry brown leaves, the dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children, curled into little balls,
slept on the straw scattered on wagon beds. Their
hair was full of dust and their fingers black and
sticky. The dust rolled away over the fields and the
departing sun set it ablaze with colors.
In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the
stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses
whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about,
children became lost and cried lustily, an American
town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.
Pushing his way through the crowds in Main
Street, young George Willard concealed himself in
the stairway leading to Doctor Reefy's office and
looked at the people. With feverish eyes he watched
the faces drifting past under the store lights.
Thoughts kept coming into his head and he did not
want to think. He stamped impatiently on the
wooden steps and looked sharply about. "Well, is
she going to stay with him all day? Have I done all
this waiting for nothing?" he muttered.
George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast
growing into manhood and new thoughts had been
coming into his mind. All that day, amid the jam of
people at the Fair, he had gone about feeling lonely.
He was about to leave Winesburg to go away to
some city where he hoped to get work on a city
newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood that
had taken possession of him was a thing known to
men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new
sense of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-
tragic figure. He wanted someone to understand the
feeling that had taken possession of him after his
mother's death.
There is a time in the life of every boy when he
for the first time takes the backward view of life.
Perhaps that is the moment when he crosses the line
into manhood. The boy is walking through the street
of his town. He is thinking of the future and of the
figure he will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under a tree and waits as for a voice
calling his name. Ghosts of old things creep into his
consciousness; the voices outside of himself whisper
a message concerning the limitations of life. From
being quite sure of himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If he be an imaginative boy a
door is tom open and for the first time he looks out
upon the world, seeing, as though they marched in
procession before him, the countless figures of men
who before his time have come out of nothingness
into the world, lived their lives and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp he sees
himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind through
the streets of his village. He knows that in spite of
all the stout talk of his fellows he must live and die
in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a thing
destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers and
looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has lived
seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long
march of humanity. Already he hears death calling.
With all his heart he wants to come close to some
other human, touch someone with his hands, be
touched by the hand of another. If he prefers that
the other be a woman, that is because he believes
that a woman will be gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of all, understanding.
When the moment of sophistication came to George
Willard his mind turned to Helen White, the Winesburg banker's daughter. Always he had been conscious of the girl growing into womanhood as he
grew into manhood. Once on a summer night when
he was eighteen, he had walked with her on a country road and in her presence had given way to an
impulse to boast, to make himself appear big and
significant in her eyes. Now he wanted to see her
for another purpose. He wanted to tell her of the
new impulses that had come to him. He had tried
to make her think of him as a man when he knew
nothing of manhood and now he wanted to be with
her and to try to make her feel the change he believed had taken place in his nature.
As for Helen White, she also had come to a period
of change. What George felt, she in her young woman's way felt also. She was no longer a girl and
hungered to reach into the grace and beauty of
womanhood. She had come home from Cleveland,
where she was attending college, to spend a day at
the Fair. She also had begun to have memories. During the day she sat in the grand-stand with a young
man, one of the instructors from the college, who
was a guest of her mother's. The young man was
of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt at once he
would not do for her purpose. At the Fair she was
glad to be seen in his company as he was well
dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of
his presence would create an impression. During the
day she was happy, but when night came on she
began to grow restless. She wanted to drive the instructor away, to get out of his presence. While they
sat together in the grand-stand and while the eyes
of former schoolmates were upon them, she paid so
much attention to her escort that he grew interested.
"A scholar needs money. I should marry a woman
with money," he mused.
Helen White was thinking of George Willard even
as he wandered gloomily through the crowds thinking of her. She remembered the summer evening
when they had walked together and wanted to walk
with him again. She thought that the months she
had spent in the city, the going to theaters and the
seeing of great crowds wandering in lighted thoroughfares, had changed her profoundly. She wanted
him to feel and be conscious of the change in her
nature.
The summer evening together that had left its
mark on the memory of both the young man and
woman had, when looked at quite sensibly, been
rather stupidly spent. They had walked out of town
along a country road. Then they had stopped by a
fence near a field of young corn and George had
taken off his coat and let it hang on his arm. "Well,
I've stayed here in Winesburg--yes--I've not yet
gone away but I'm growing up," he had said. "I've
been reading books and I've been thinking. I'm
going to try to amount to something in life.
"Well," he explained, "that isn't the point. Perhaps I'd better quit talking."
The confused boy put his hand on the girl's arm.
His voice trembled. The two started to walk back
along the road toward town. In his desperation
George boasted, "I'm going to be a big man, the
biggest that ever lived here in Winesburg," he declared. "I want you to do something, I don't know
what. Perhaps it is none of my business. I want you
to try to be different from other women. You see
the point. It's none of my business I tell you. I want
you to be a beautiful woman. You see what I want."
The boy's voice failed and in silence the two came
back into town and went along the street to Helen
White's house. At the gate he tried to say something
impressive. Speeches he had thought out came into
his head, but they seemed utterly pointless. "I
thought--I used to think--I had it in my mind you
would marry Seth Richmond. Now I know you
won't," was all he could find to say as she went
through the gate and toward the door of her house.
On the warm fall evening as he stood in the stairway and looked at the crowd drifting through Main
Street, George thought of the talk beside the field of
young corn and was ashamed of the figure he had
made of himself. In the street the people surged up
and down like cattle confined in a pen. Buggies and
wagons almost filled the narrow thoroughfare. A
band played and small boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between the legs of men. Young men
with shining red faces walked awkwardly about
with girls on their arms. In a room above one of the
stores, where a dance was to be held, the fiddlers
tuned their instruments. The broken sounds floated
down through an open window and out across the
murmur of voices and the loud blare of the horns
of the band. The medley of sounds got on young
Willard's nerves. Everywhere, on all sides, the sense
of crowding, moving life closed in about him. He
wanted to run away by himself and think. "If she
wants to stay with that fellow she may. Why should
I care? What difference does it make to me?" he
growled and went along Main Street and through
Hern's Grocery into a side street.
George felt so utterly lonely and dejected that he
wanted to weep but pride made him walk rapidly
along, swinging his arms. He came to Wesley Moyer's livery barn and stopped in the shadows to listen
to a group of men who talked of a race Wesley's
stallion, Tony Tip, had won at the Fair during the
afternoon. A crowd had gathered in front of the
barn and before the crowd walked Wesley, prancing
up and down boasting. He held a whip in his hand
and kept tapping the ground. Little puffs of dust
arose in the lamplight. "Hell, quit your talking,"
Wesley exclaimed. "I wasn't afraid, I knew I had
'em beat all the time. I wasn't afraid."
Ordinarily George Willard would have been intensely interested in the boasting of Moyer, the
horseman. Now it made him angry. He turned and
hurried away along the street. "Old windbag," he
sputtered. "Why does he want to be bragging? Why
don't he shut up?"
George went into a vacant lot and, as he hurried
along, fell over a pile of rubbish. A nail protruding
from an empty barrel tore his trousers. He sat down
on the ground and swore. With a pin he mended
the torn place and then arose and went on. "I'll go
to Helen White's house, that's what I'll do. I'll walk
right in. I'll say that I want to see her. I'll walk right
in and sit down, that's what I'll do," he declared,
climbing over a fence and beginning to run.
***
On the veranda of Banker White's house Helen
was restless and distraught. The instructor sat between the mother and daughter. His talk wearied
the girl. Although he had also been raised in an
Ohio town, the instructor began to put on the airs
of the city. He wanted to appear cosmopolitan. "I
like the chance you have given me to study the background out of which most of our girls come," he
declared. "It was good of you, Mrs. White, to have
me down for the day." He turned to Helen and
laughed. "Your life is still bound up with the life of
this town?" he asked. "There are people here in
whom you are interested?" To the girl his voice
sounded pompous and heavy.
Helen arose and went into the house. At the door
leading to a garden at the back she stopped and
stood listening. Her mother began to talk. "There is
no one here fit to associate with a girl of Helen's
breeding," she said.
Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of
the house and into the garden. In the darkness she
stopped and stood trembling. It seemed to her that
the world was full of meaningless people saying
words. Afire with eagerness she ran through a garden gate and, turning a corner by the banker's barn,
went into a little side street. "George! Where are
you, George?" she cried, filled with nervous excitement. She stopped running, and leaned against a
tree to laugh hysterically. Along the dark little street
came George Willard, still saying words. "I'm going
to walk right into her house. I'll go right in and sit
down, " he declared as he came up to her. He
stopped and stared stupidly. "Come on," he said
and took hold of her hand. With hanging heads they
walked away along the street under the trees. Dry
leaves rustled under foot. Now that he had found
her George wondered what he had better do and
say.
***
At the upper end of the Fair Ground, in Winesburg, there is a half decayed old grand-stand. It has
never been painted and the boards are all warped
out of shape. The Fair Ground stands on top of a
low hill rising out of the valley of Wine Creek and
from the grand-stand one can see at night, over a
cornfield, the lights of the town reflected against the
sky.
George and Helen climbed the hill to the Fair
Ground, coming by the path past Waterworks Pond.
The feeling of loneliness and isolation that had come
to the young man in the crowded streets of his town
was both broken and intensified by the presence of
Helen. What he felt was reflected in her.
In youth there are always two forces fighting in
people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles
against the thing that reflects and remembers, and
the older, the more sophisticated thing had possession of George Willard. Sensing his mood, Helen
walked beside him filled with respect. When they
got to the grand-stand they climbed up under the
roof and sat down on one of the long bench-like
seats.
There is something memorable in the experience
to be had by going into a fair ground that stands at
the edge of a Middle Western town on a night after
the annual fair has been held. The sensation is one
never to be forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not
of the dead, but of living people. Here, during the
day just passed, have come the people pouring in
from the town and the country around. Farmers
with their wives and children and all the people
from the hundreds of little frame houses have gathered within these board walls. Young girls have
laughed and men with beards have talked of the
affairs of their lives. The place has been filled to
overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed
with life and now it is night and the life has all gone
away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals
oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree
and what there is of a reflective tendency in his nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of
the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant, and if the people of the town are his people,
one loves life so intensely that tears come into the
eyes.
In the darkness under the roof of the grand-stand,
George Willard sat beside Helen White and felt very
keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of existence. Now that he had come out of town where
the presence of the people stirring about, busy with
a multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the
irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed and refreshed him. It was as though her
woman's hand was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of the machinery of his life. He
began to think of the people in the town where he
had always lived with something like reverence.
He had reverence for Helen. He wanted to love and
to be loved by her, but he did not want at the moment to be confused by her womanhood. In the
darkness he took hold of her hand and when she
crept close put a hand on her shoulder. A wind
began to blow and he shivered. With all his strength
he tried to hold and to understand the mood that
had come upon him. In that high place in the darkness the two oddly sensitive human atoms held each
other tightly and waited. In the mind of each was
the same thought. "I have come to this lonely place
and here is this other," was the substance of the
thing felt.
In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out
into the long night of the late fall. Farm horses
jogged away along lonely country roads pulling their
portion of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods in off the sidewalks and lock the doors
of stores. In the Opera House a crowd had gathered
to see a show and further down Main Street the
fiddlers, their instruments tuned, sweated and
worked to keep the feet of youth flying over a dance
floor.
In the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White
and George Willard remained silent. Now and then
the spell that held them was broken and they turned
and tried in the dim light to see into each other's
eyes. They kissed but that impulse did not last. At
the upper end of the Fair Ground a half dozen men
worked over horses that had raced during the afternoon. The men had built a fire and were heating
kettles of water. Only their legs could be seen as
they passed back and forth in the light. When the
wind blew the little flames of the fire danced crazily
about.
George and Helen arose and walked away into
the darkness. They went along a path past a field of
corn that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered
among the dry corn blades. For a moment during
the walk back into town the spell that held them
was broken. When they had come to the crest of
Waterworks Hill they stopped by a tree and George
again put his hands on the girl's shoulders. She embraced him eagerly and then again they drew
quickly back from that impulse. They stopped kissing and stood a little apart. Mutual respect grew big
in them. They were both embarrassed and to relieve
their embarrassment dropped into the animalism of
youth. They laughed and began to pull and haul at
each other. In some way chastened and purified by
the mood they had been in, they became, not man
and woman, not boy and girl, but excited little
animals.
It was so they went down the hill. In the darkness
they played like two splendid young things in a
young world. Once, running swiftly forward, Helen
tripped George and he fell. He squirmed and shouted.
Shaking with laughter, he roiled down the hill.
Helen ran after him. For just a moment she stopped
in the darkness. There was no way of knowing what
woman's thoughts went through her mind but,
when the bottom of the hill was reached and she
came up to the boy, she took his arm and walked
beside him in dignified silence. For some reason
they could not have explained they had both got
from their silent evening together the thing needed.
Man or boy, woman or girl, they had for a moment
taken hold of the thing that makes the mature life
of men and women in the modern world possible.
Death