Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 47

  “There are things to be said and understood between us before I can come to you as a suitor. I did not think I should feel toward a woman as I feel toward you and I have certain adjustments to make. I thought I could get along without your kind of women. I thought you were not for me — with the work I have thought out to do in the world. If you will not marry me I’ll be glad to know now so that I can get my mind straightened out.”

  Margaret raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder. The act was a kind of acknowledgment of his right to talk to her so directly. She said nothing. Filled with a thousand messages of love and tenderness she longed to pour into his ear she stood in silence on the gravel path with her hand on his shoulder.

  And then an absurd thing happened. The fear that Margaret might come to some quick decision that would affect all of their future together made McGregor frantic. He did not want her to speak and wished his own words unsaid. “Wait. Not now,” he cried and threw up his hand intending to take her hand. His fist struck the arm that lay on his shoulder and it in turn knocked his hat flying into the road. McGregor started to run after it and then stopped. He put his hand to his head and appeared lost in thought. When he turned again to pursue the hat Margaret, unable longer to control herself, shouted with laughter.

  Hatless, McGregor walked up Drexel Boulevard in the soft stillness of the summer night. He was annoyed at the outcome of the evening and in his heart half wished that Margaret had sent him away defeated. His arms ached to have her against his breast but his mind kept presenting one after another the objections to marriage with her. “Men are submerged by such women and forget their work,” he told himself. “They sit looking into the soft brown eyes of their beloved, thinking of happiness. A man should go about his work thinking of that. The fire that runs through the veins of his body should light his mind. One wants to take the love of woman as an end in life and the woman accepts that and is made happy by it.” He thought with gratitude of Edith in her shop on Monroe Street. “I do not sit in my room at night dreaming of taking her in my arms and pouring kisses on her lips,” he whispered.

  In the door of her house Mrs. Ormsby had stood watching McGregor and Margaret. She had seen them stop at the end of the walk. The figure of the man was lost in shadows and that of Margaret stood alone, outlined against a distant light. She saw Margaret’s hand thrust out — was she clutching his sleeve — and heard the murmur of voices. And then the man precipitating himself into the street. His hat catapulted ahead of him and a quick outburst of half-hysterical laughter broke the stillness.

  Laura Ormsby was furious. Although she hated McGregor she could not bear the thought that laughter should break the spell of romance. “She is just like her father,” she muttered. “At least she might show some spirit and not be like a wooden thing, ending her first talk with a lover with a laugh like that.”

  As for Margaret she stood in the darkness trembling with happiness. She imagined herself going up the dark stairway to McGregor’s office in Van Buren Street where once she had gone to take him news of the murder case — laying her hand upon his shoulder and saying, “Take me in your arms and kiss me. I am your woman. I want to live with you. I am ready to renounce my people and my world and to live your life for your sake.” Margaret, standing in the darkness before the huge old house in Drexel Boulevard, imagined herself with Beaut McGregor — living with him as his wife in a small apartment over a fish market on a West Side street. Why a fish market she could not have said.

  CHAPTER V

  EDITH CARSON WAS six years older than McGregor and lived entirely within herself. Hers was one of those natures that do not express themselves in words. Although at his coming into the shop her heart beat high no colour came to her cheeks and her pale eyes did not flash back into his a message. Day after day she sat in her shop at work, quiet, strong in her own kind of faith, ready to give her money, her reputation, and if need be her life to the working out of her own dream of womanhood. She did not see in McGregor the making of a man of genius as did Margaret and did not hope to express through him a secret desire for power. She was a working woman and to her he represented all men. In her secret heart she thought of him merely as the man — her man.

  And to McGregor Edith was companion and friend. He saw her sitting year after year in her shop, putting money into the savings bank, keeping a cheerful front before the world, never assertive, kindly, in her own way sure of herself. “We could go on forever as we are now and she be none the less pleased,” he told himself.

  One afternoon after a particularly hard week of work he went out to her place to sit in her little workroom and think out the matter of marrying Margaret Ormsby. It was a quiet season in Edith’s trade and she was alone in the shop serving a customer. McGregor lay down upon the little couch in the workroom. For a week he had been speaking to gatherings of workmen night after night and later had sat in his own room thinking of Margaret. Now on the couch with the murmur of voices in his ears he fell asleep.

  When he awoke it was late in the night and on the floor by the side of the couch sat Edith with her fingers in his hair.

  McGregor opened his eyes quietly and looked at her. He could see a tear running down her cheek. She was staring straight ahead at the wall of the room and by the dim light that came through a window he could see the drawn cords of her little neck and the knot of mouse coloured hair on her head.

  McGregor closed his eyes quickly. He felt like one who has been aroused out of sleep by a dash of cold water across his breast. It came over him with a rush that Edith Carson had been expecting something from him — something he was not prepared to give.

  She got up after a time and crept quietly away into the shop and with a great clatter and bustle he arose also and began calling loudly. He demanded the time and complained about a missed appointment. Turning up the gas, Edith walked with him to the door. On her face sat the old placid smile. McGregor hurried away into the darkness and spent the rest of the night walking in the streets.

  The next day he went to Margaret Ormsby at the settlement house. With her he used no art. Driving straight to the point he told her of the undertaker’s daughter sitting beside him on the eminence above Coal Creek, of the barber and his talk of women on the park bench and how that had led him to that other woman kneeling on the floor in the little frame house, his fists in her hair and of Edith Carson whose companionship had saved him from all of these.

  “If you can’t hear all of this and still want life with me,” he said, “there is no future for us together. I want you. I’m afraid of you and afraid of my love for you but still I want you. I’ve been seeing your face floating above the audiences in the halls where I’ve been at work. I’ve looked at babies in the arms of workingmen’s wives and wanted to see my babe in your arms. I care more for what I am doing than I do for you but I love you.”

  McGregor arose and stood over her. “I love you with my arms aching to close about you, with my brain planning the triumph of the workers, with all of the old perplexing human love that I had almost thought I would never want.

  “I can’t bear this waiting. I can’t bear this not knowing so that I can tell Edith. I can’t have my mind filled with the need of you just as men are beginning to catch the infection of an idea and are looking to me for clear-headed leadership. Take me or let me go and live my life.”

  Margaret Ormsby looked at McGregor. When she spoke her voice was as quiet as the voice of her father telling a workman in the shop what to do with a broken machine.

  “I am going to marry you,” she said simply. “I am full of the thought of it. I want you, want you so blindly that I think you can’t understand.”

  She stood up facing him and looked into his eyes.

  “You must wait,” she said. “I must see Edith, I myself must do that. All these years she has served you — she has had that privilege.”

  McGregor looked across the table into the beautiful eyes of the woman he loved.

  “You belong t
o me even if I do belong to Edith,” he said.

  “I will see Edith,” Margaret answered again.

  CHAPTER VI

  MCGREGOR LEFT THE telling of the story of his love to Margaret. Edith Carson who knew defeat so well and who had in her the courage of defeat was to meet defeat at his hands through the undefeated woman and he let himself forget the whole matter. For a month he had been trying to get workingmen to take up the idea of the Marching Men without success and after the talk with Margaret he kept doggedly at the work.

  And then one evening something happened that aroused him. The Marching Men idea that had become more than half intellectualised became again a burning passion and the matter of his life with women got itself cleared up swiftly and finally.

  It was night and McGregor stood upon the platform of the Elevated Railroad at State and Van Buren Streets. He had been feeling guilty concerning Edith and had been intending to go out to her place but the scene in the street below fascinated him and he remained standing, looking along the lighted thoroughfare.

  For a week there had been a strike of teamsters in the city and that afternoon there had been a riot. Windows had been smashed and several men injured. Now the evening crowds gathered and speakers climbed upon boxes to talk. Everywhere there was a great wagging of jaws and waving of arms. McGregor grew reminiscent. Into his mind came the little mining town and he saw himself again a boy sitting in the darkness on the steps before his mother’s bake shop and trying to think. Again in fancy he saw the disorganised miners tumbling out of the saloon to stand on the street swearing and threatening and again he was filled with contempt for them.

  And then in the heart of the great western city the same thing happened that had happened when he was a boy in Pennsylvania. The officials of the city, having decided to startle the striking teamsters by a display of force, sent a regiment of state troops marching through the streets. The soldiers were dressed in brown uniforms. They were silent. As McGregor looked down they turned out of Polk Street and came with swinging measured tread up State Street past the disorderly mobs on the sidewalk and the equally disorderly speakers on the curb.

  McGregor’s heart beat so that he nearly choked. The men in the uniforms, each in himself meaning nothing, had become by their marching together all alive with meaning. Again he wanted to shout, to run down into the street and embrace them. The strength in them seemed to kiss, as with the kiss of a lover, the strength within himself and when they had passed and the disorderly jangle of voices broke out again he got on a car and went out to Edith’s with his heart afire with resolution.

  Edith Carson’s millinery shop was in the hands of a new owner. She had sold out and fled. McGregor stood in the show room looking about him at the cases filled with their feathery finery and at the hats along the wall. The light from a street lamp that came in at the window started millions of tiny motes dancing before his eyes.

  Out of the room at the back of the shop — the room where he had seen the tears of suffering in Edith’s eyes — came a woman who told him of Edith’s having sold the business. She was excited by the message she had to deliver and walked past the waiting man, going to the screen door to stand with her back to him and look up the street.

  Out of the corners of her eyes the woman looked at him. She was a small black-haired woman with two gleaming gold teeth and with glasses on her nose. “There has been a lovers’ quarrel here,” she told herself.

  “I have bought the store,” she said aloud. “She told me to tell you that she had gone.”

  McGregor did not wait for more but hurried past the woman into the street. In his heart was a feeling of dumb aching loss. On an impulse he turned and ran back.

  Standing in the street by the screen door he shouted hoarsely. “Where did she go?” he demanded.

  The woman laughed merrily. She felt that she was getting with the shop a flavour of romance and adventure very attractive to her. Then she walked to the door and smiled through the screen. “She has only just left,” she said. “She went to the Burlington station. I think she has gone West. I heard her tell the man about her trunk. She has been around here for two days since I bought the shop. I think she has been waiting for you to come. You did not come and now she has gone and perhaps you won’t find her. She did not look like one who would quarrel with a lover.”

  The woman in the shop laughed softly as McGregor hurried away. “Now who would think that quiet little woman would have such a lover?” she asked herself.

  Down the street ran McGregor and raising his hand stopped a passing automobile. The woman saw him seated in the automobile talking to a grey-haired man at the wheel and then the machine turned and disappeared up the street at a law-breaking pace.

  McGregor had again a new light on the character of Edith Carson. “I can see her doing it,” he told himself— “cheerfully telling Margaret that it didn’t matter and all the time planning this in the back of her head. Here all of these years she has been leading a life of her own. The secret longings, the desires and the old human hunger for love and happiness and expression have been going on under her placid exterior as they have under my own.”

  McGregor thought of the busy days behind him and realised with shame how little Edith had seen of him. It was in the days when his big movement of The Marching Men was just coming into the light and on the night before he had been in a conference of labour men who had wanted him to make a public demonstration of the power he had secretly been building up. Every day his office was filled with newspaper men who asked questions and demanded explanations. And in the meantime Edith had been selling her shop to that woman and getting ready to disappear.

  In the railroad station McGregor found Edith sitting in a corner with her face buried in the crook of her arm. Gone was the placid exterior. Her shoulders seemed narrower. Her hand, hanging over the back of the seat in front of her, was white and lifeless.

  McGregor said nothing but snatched up the brown leather bag that sat beside her on the floor and taking her by the arm led her up a flight of stone steps to the street.

  CHAPTER VII

  IN THE ORMSBY household father and daughter sat in the darkness on the veranda. After Laura Ormsby’s encounter with McGregor there had been another talk between her and David. Now she had gone on a visit to her home-town in Wisconsin and father and daughter sat together.

  To his wife David had talked pointedly of Margaret’s affair. “It is not a matter of good sense,” he had said; “one can not pretend there is a prospect of happiness in such an affair. The man is no fool and may some day be a big man but it will not be the kind of bigness that will bring either happiness or contentment to a woman like Margaret. He may end his life in jail.”

  McGregor and Edith walked up the gravel walk and stood by the front door of the Ormsby house. From the darkness on the veranda came the hearty voice of David. “Come and sit out here,” he said.

  McGregor stood silently waiting. Edith clung to his arm. Margaret got up and coming forward stood looking at them. With a jump at her heart she sensed the crisis suggested by the presence of these two people. Her voice trembled with alarm. “Come in,” she said, turning and leading the way into the house.

  The man and woman followed Margaret. At the door McGregor stopped and called to David. “We want you in here with us,” he said harshly.

  In the drawing room the four people waited. The great chandelier threw its light down upon them. In her chair Edith sat and looked at the floor.

  “I’ve made a mistake,” said McGregor. “I’ve been going on and on making a mistake.” He turned to Margaret. “We didn’t count on something here. There is Edith. She isn’t what we thought.”

  Edith said nothing. The weary stoop stayed in her shoulders. She felt that if McGregor had brought her to the house and to this woman he loved to seal their parting she would sit quietly until that was over and then go on to the loneliness she believed must be her portion.

  To Margaret the coming of the man
and woman was a portent of evil. She also was silent, expecting a shock. When her lover spoke she also looked at the floor. To herself she was saying, “He is going to take himself away and marry this other woman. I must be prepared to hear him say that.” In the doorway stood David. “He is going to give me back Margaret,” he thought, and his heart danced with happiness.

  McGregor walked across the room and stood looking at the two women. His blue eyes were cold and filled with intense curiosity concerning them and himself. He wanted to test them and to test himself. “If I am clear-headed now I shall go on with the dream,” he thought. “If I fail in this I shall fail in everything.” Turning he took hold of the sleeve of David’s coat and pulled him across the room so that the two men stood together. Then he looked hard at Margaret. As he talked to her he continued to stand thus with his hand on her father’s arm. The action caught David’s fancy and a thrill of admiration ran through him. “Here is a man,” he told himself.

  “You thought Edith was ready to see us get married. Well she was. She is now and you see what it has done to her,” said McGregor.

  The daughter of the ploughmaker started to speak. Her face was chalky white. McGregor threw up his hands.

  “Wait,” he said, “a man and woman can’t live together for years and then part like two men friends. Something gets into them to prevent. They find they love each other. I’ve found out that though I want you, I love Edith. She loves me. Look at her.”

  Margaret half arose from her chair. McGregor went on. Into his voice came the harsh quality that made men fear and follow him. “Oh, we’ll be married, Margaret and I,” he said; “her beauty has won me. I follow beauty. I want beautiful children. That is my right.”

  He turned to Edith and stood staring at her.