Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson

by Sherwood Anderson

  I am building me a house slowly — a house in which I may live. Day by day the bricks are piled in long rows, making walls. Doors are hung and shingles are cut for the roof. The air is heavy with the perfume of logs, new-cut.

  In the morning you may see my house building — in the street, at the corner by the stone church — in a valley beyond your house, where the road dips down and crosses a bridge.

  It is morning and the house is almost complete.

  It is evening and my house is in ruins. Weeds and vines have grown in the broken walls. The rafters of the house I aspired to build are buried in long grass. They have decayed. Worms live in them. You will find the ruins of my house in a street of your town, on a country road, in a long street hung with smoke-clouds in a city.

  This is a day, a week, a month. My house is not built. Would you come into my house? Take this key. Come in.

  Bruce wrote words on pieces of paper as he sat on the edge of his cot and as the spring rains swept over the hill on which he lived temporarily near Aline.

  My house is in the perfume of the rose that grows in her garden, it sleeps in the eyes of a nigger who works on the docks in New Orleans. It is built on the foundation of a thought I am not man enough to express. I am not subtle enough to build my house. No man is subtle enough to build his house.

  It perhaps cannot be built. Bruce got off his cot and went outside again into the rain. There was a dim light now burning in a room upstairs in the Grey house. It might be someone was ill. How absurd! When you are building, why not build? When you are singing a song, sing it. How much better to say to oneself that Aline did not sleep. For me the lie, the golden lie! To-morrow or the day after I shall awake, shall be compelled to awake.

  Did Aline know? Did she secretly share in the excitement that was so shaking Bruce, making his fingers fumble as he worked in the garden during the day, making it so difficult for him to raise his eyes and look at her when there was any chance she might be looking at him? “Well, well, take it easy. Don’t worry. You haven’t done anything yet,” he told himself. After all, the whole thing, his applying for the place in the garden, the being near her, was but an adventure, one of the adventures of life, the sort of adventure perhaps he had secretly been seeking when he left Chicago. A series of adventures — little glowing moments, flashes in darkness, and then utter darkness and death. He had been told that some of the bright-colored insects that already on warm days invaded the garden lived but for a day. No good dying, however, before your moment came, killing the moment by too much thinking.

  It was a fresh adventure each day when she came into the garden to direct his work. Now there was some use for the gowns she had bought in Paris during the month after Fred had left. If they were unfitted for morning wear in a garden, did it matter? She did not put them on until after Fred left in the morning. There were two servants in the house, but they were both negresses. Negro women have an instinctive understanding. They say nothing, being wise in woman-lore. What they can get they take. That is understood.

  Fred left at eight, driving sometimes, sometimes walking away down the hill. He did not speak to Bruce or look at him. There was no doubt he disliked the idea of the young white man working in the garden. His dislike of the idea was in his shoulders, in the lines of his back, as he walked away. It gave Bruce a kind of half-ugly satisfaction. Why? The man, her husband, he had told himself, did not matter, did not exist — at least not in the world of his fancy.

  The adventure lay in her coming out of the house, being near him sometimes for an hour or two in the morning and for another hour or two in the afternoon. He shared in her plans for the garden, did things carefully as she directed. She spoke and he heard her voice. When he thought her back was turned, or when, as happened sometimes on warm mornings, she sat on a bench, some distance away, and pretended to read a book, he stole furtive glances. How good that her husband could buy her expensive and simple gowns, well-made shoes. The fact of the big wheel company going on down the river, of Sponge Martin varnishing automobile wheels, began to have a point. He had himself worked in the factory for some months, and had varnished a certain number of wheels. Some pennies of the profits from his own labor had perhaps gone into buying things for her to wear, a bit of lace about the wrists, a quarter-yard of the cloth that made the dress she wore. Good to look at her and smile at one’s own thoughts, play with one’s own thoughts. One might as well take things as they are. He, himself, could never be a successful manufacturer. As for her being Fred Grey’s wife. If a painter has painted a canvas and has hung it, does it remain his canvas? If a man has written a poem, does it remain his poem? What absurdity! As for Fred Grey — he should have been glad. If he loved her, how good to think another loved also. You are doing well, Mr. Grey. Do ‘tend up to your affairs. Make money. Buy her many beautiful things. I do not know how to do it. If the shoe were on the other foot. Well, you see, it isn’t. It couldn’t be. Why think of it?

  The situation the better really that Aline did not belong to Bruce, that she belonged to another. If she belonged to him he would have to go into the house with her, sit down with her at table, see too much of her. The worst was that she would see too much of him. She would find out about him. That was hardly the point of his adventure. Now, as matters stood, she could, if the fancy came to her, think of him as he thought of her, and he would do nothing to disturb her thoughts. “Life is better,” Bruce whispered to himself, “now that men and women have become civilized enough not to want to see too much of each other. Marriage is a relic of barbarism. It is the civilized man who clothes himself and his women, develops his decorative sense in the process. Once men did not even clothe the bodies of themselves or their women. Stinking hides drying on the floor of a cave. Later they learned to clothe not only the body but all the details of life. Sewerage came into vogue, ladies of the court of the early French kings — the Medici ladies, too — must have smelled abominably before they learned to douse themselves with scents.”

  Nowdays houses were built that allowed somewhat for separate existence, individual existence within the walls of the house. Better if men built their houses even more judiciously, separated themselves more and more.

  Let lovers creep in. Yourself become a lover creeping, creeping. What makes you think you are too ugly to be a lover? What the world wanted was more lovers and fewer husbands and wives. Bruce did not think much concerning the soundness of his thoughts. Would you question the soundness of Cezanne’s thoughts as he stood before the canvas? Would you question the soundness of Keats’ thoughts as he sang?

  Much better that Aline, his lady, belonged to Fred Grey — a manufacturer of the town of Old Harbor in Indiana. Why have factories in towns like Old Harbor if no Alines are to result? Are we to remain always barbarians?

  In another mood Bruce might well wonder how much Fred Grey knew, how much he was capable of knowing. Can anything happen in the world without all concerned knowing?

  They would try, however, to suppress their own knowledge. How natural and human to do so. In war or in peace we do not kill the man we hate. We try to kill the thing we hate in ourselves.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  FRED GREY WALKED down the path to the gate in the morning. Sometimes he turned and looked at Bruce. The two men had not as vet spoken to each other.

  No man likes the thought of another man, a white man, rather good to look upon, alone all day with his wife in a garden — no one else about but two negro women. Negro women have no moral sense. They will do anything. They like it maybe, don’t pretend not to like it. That’s what makes the whites so angry about them when they think about it. Such cattle! If we can’t have good serious men in this country what are we coming to?

  One afternoon in May, Bruce had been down into the town to buy some needed garden-tools, and he was walking back up the hill and there was Fred Grey walking just ahead of him. Fred was younger than himself but was some two or three inches shorter.

  Now that he sat all d
ay at a desk in the factory office and lived well, Fred was inclined to grow fat. He had developed a paunch and his cheeks had grown puffy. He thought it would be a good thing, for a time anyway, to walk back and forth to his work. If Old Harbor only had a golf-course. Someone ought to promote one. The trouble was that there were not enough people of his class in town to support a country club.

  The two men were climbing up the hill and Fred was aware of Bruce’s presence behind him. How unfortunate! If he had been behind, with. Bruce in front, he could have regulated his own pace and could have spent the time as he walked along sizing the man up. After having glanced back and seen Bruce he did not turn again. Had Bruce known that he had turned his head to look? It was a question, one of those annoying little questions that can so get on a man’s nerves.

  When Bruce had come to work in the Greys’ garden Fred had at once recognized him as the man who had worked in the factory beside Sponge Martin, and had asked Aline about him, but she had replied by merely shaking her head. “Really, I know nothing about him, but he works very well,” she had said. How could you go back of that? You couldn’t. To imply, to suggest anything. Impossible! A man can’t be a barbarian like that.

  If Aline hadn’t loved him why had she married him? If he had married a poor girl then he might have grounds for suspicion, but Aline’s father was a good sound man and had a big law-practice in Chicago. A lady is a lady. That’s one advantage of marrying a lady. You don’t have to be always asking yourself questions.

  When you are walking up a hill before a man who is your gardener what is the best thing to do? In the time of Fred’s grandfather and even in his father’s time all men in Indiana small towns were pretty much alike. Anyway they thought they were pretty much alike, but times had changed.

  The street up which Fred was climbing was one of the most exclusive in Old Harbor. Doctors and lawyers, a bank cashier, the best people in town lived up there now. Fred had rather got the jump on them because the house at the very top of the hill had belonged to his family for three generations. Three generations in an Indiana town, particularly if you have money, means something.

  That gardener Aline had hired was always about with Sponge Martin when he worked down at the factory; and of Sponge, Fred had a memory. When he was a boy, he went down to Sponge’s carriage-painting shop with his father and there was a row. A good thing, Fred thought, that times had changed, I’d fire that Sponge, only — The trouble was that Sponge had lived in the town since he was a boy. Everyone knew him and everyone liked him. You don’t want to get a town down on you if you have to live there. And then, too, Sponge was a good workman, no doubt of that. The foreman said he could do more work than any other man in his department and do it with one hand tied behind him. A man had to realize his obligations. Just because you own or control a factory you can’t treat men as you please. There is an obligation implied in the control of capital. You’ve got to realize that.

  If Fred waited for Bruce, walked up the hill beside him, past the houses scattered along the hill, what then? What would the two men talk about? “I don’t like the looks of him much,” Fred told himself. He wondered why.

  There was a certain tone a factory-owner like himself simply had to take toward the men who worked for him. When you are in the army it’s different, of course.

  Had Fred been driving his car that evening it would have been easy enough to stop and offer the gardener a lift. That’s something different. It puts things on a different basis. If you are driving a good car you stop and say, “Jump in.” It’s nice. It’s democratic and at the same time you are all right. Well, you see, you own the car, after all. You shift the gears, step on the gas. There is something to talk about. There isn’t any question of whether or not one man puffs a bit more than the other, climbing a hill. No one puffs. You speak about the car, growl about it a little. “Yes, it’s a good enough car, but the upkeep is too much. Sometimes I think I will sell it and buy a Ford.” You praise the Ford, speak of Henry Ford as a great man. “He’s the kind of man we ought to have as President. What we need is a good careful business administration.” You speak of Henry Ford without any tinge of jealousy, show you are a broad-minded man. “That peace-ship idea he had was kinda nutty, don’t you think? Yes, but he has sure wiped that all out since.”

  But afoot! On your own legs! A man ought to cut out smoking so much. Fred had done too much sitting at a desk since he had got out of the army.

  Sometimes he read articles in the magazines or newspapers. Such and such a great business man was careful about his diet. In the evening before going to bed he drank a glass of milk and ate a cracker. In the morning he got up early and took a brisk walk. Head clear for business. Damn! You get a good car and then you walk, to improve your wind, to keep in shape. Aline was right not to care much for driving about in the evening in the car. She liked to work in her garden. Aline had a good figure. Fred was proud of his wife. A fine little woman.

  Fred had a story about life in the army he liked to tell sometimes to Harcourt or to some traveling man— “You can’t tell how men will turn out when they are put to the test. In the army we had big men and little men. You would think, now wouldn’t you, that the big men would stand the grind the best? Well, you would be fooled. We had a fellow in our company, only weighed a hundred and eighteen. At home he had been a drug-clerk or something like that. He hardly ate enough to keep a sparrow alive, always seemed about to die, but he was a fooler. Gee, he was tough. He lasted and lasted.”

  “Better walk a little faster, avoid an embarrassing situation” — Fred thought. He increased his pace, not too much. He didn’t want the fellow behind him to know he was trying to avoid him. The fool might think he was afraid of something.

  Thoughts going on. Fred didn’t like such thoughts. Why in hell hadn’t Aline been satisfied with the negro gardener?

  Well, a man couldn’t say to his wife— “I don’t like the looks of things here. I don’t like the idea of a young white man alone with you all day in the garden.” A man might imply — what — well, physical danger. If he did she would laugh.

  To say too much would imply — Well, something like an equality between himself and Bruce. That sort of thing was all right in the army. You had to do it there. But in civil life — To say anything would be to say too much, to imply too much.

  Damn!

  Better to walk faster. Show him that although a man sits all day at a desk, keeping things going for just such laboring-men as himself, keeping their wages coming in, people’s children fed, all that sort of thing, that in spite of everything a man’s legs and wind are all right.

  Fred had got to the Greys’ front gate but a few steps ahead of Bruce, and had immediately gone into the house without looking back. The walk had been a sort of revelation to Bruce. This business of building himself up, in his own mind, as a man asking nothing — nothing but the privilege of loving.

  There had been a rather nasty inclination to taunt her husband, make him feel uncomfortable. The footsteps of the gardener had constantly drawn nearer and nearer. A sharp click-click, of heavy shoes at first on a cement sidewalk and then on a brick pavement. Bruce’s wind was good. He did not mind climbing. Well, he had seen Fred look around. He knew what was going on in Fred’s mind.

  Fred — listening to the footsteps— “I wish some of the men who work for me at the factory would show that much life. I’ll bet when he worked at the factory he never hurried to his job.”

  Bruce — with a smile on his lips — a rather mean feeling of satisfaction within.

  “He is afraid. Then he knows. He knows but is afraid to know.”

  As they neared the top of the hill Fred had an inclination to run, but checked it. There was an attempt at dignity. The man’s back told Bruce what he wanted to know. He remembered the man Smedley who had been such a delight to Sponge.

  “We men are pleasant things. There is so much good-will in us.”

  He had got almost to the place where he could by
a special effort step on Fred’s heels.

  Inside something singing — a challenge. “I could if I wanted to. I could if I wanted to.”

  Could what?

  BOOK NINE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  SHE HAD GOT him near her and he seemed to her dumb, afraid to speak for himself. How bold one can be in fancy and how very difficult it is to be bold in fact. Having him there, in the garden at work, where she could see him every day, made her realize, as she had never before realized, the maleness of the male, at least of the American male. A Frenchman would have been another problem. She was infinitely relieved that he was not a Frenchman. What strange things males were, really. When she was not in the garden she could, by going upstairs into her own room, sit and look at him. He was trying so earnestly to be a gardener, making such a bungle of it for the most part.

  And what thoughts must be going on in his head. If Fred and Bruce but knew how, as she sat by the window upstairs, she sometimes laughed at both of them, they might both be angry and flee the place for good. When Fred left in the morning at eight she ran quickly upstairs to watch him go. He walked down the path to the front gate with an attempt at dignity, as though to say, “I know nothing of what is going on here, in fact I am sure nothing is going on. It is beneath my dignity to suppose there is anything going on. To allow there was anything going on would be too much of a comedown. You see how it is. Watch my back as I walk along. You see, don’t you, how unperturbed I am? I’m Fred Grey, am I not? As for these upstarts — !”