All right for a woman to play but she must not play too long. The males have her there.
Aline was no longer young, but her body as yet retained its rather finely-drawn elasticity. Within her body she could still walk in her garden, feeling it — her body — as one might feel a perfectly-made gown. When you get a bit older you adopt men’s notions of life, of morality. Loveliness of person is perhaps something like the throat of a singer. You are born with it. You have it or you haven’t. If you are a man and your woman is not lovely it is your business to throw about her person the aroma of loveliness. She will be very thankful to you for that. It may be what the imagination is for. That at least, to the mind of the woman, is what the male fancy is for. Of what other use is it — to her?
It is only when you are young that you, being a woman, may be a woman. It is only when you are young that you, being male, can be a poet. Hurry. When you have crossed the line you cannot turn back. Doubts will creep in. You will become moral and stern. Then you must begin thinking of life after death, get for yourself, if you can, a spiritual lover.
Negroes singing —
An’ the. Lord said...
Hurry, hurry.
Negroes singing had sometimes a way of getting at the ultimate truth of things. Twο negro women sang in the kitchen of the house as Aline sat by the window upstairs watching her husband go down the path, watching the man Bruce digging in the garden. Bruce stopped digging and looked at Fred. He had a certain advantage. He looked at Fred’s back. Fred did not dare turn to look at him. There was something Fred had to hang onto. He was gripping something, with his fingers, hanging onto what? Himself, of course.
Everything had become a little tense in the house and in the garden on the hill. How much native cruelty in women! The two negro women in the house sang, did their work, looked and listened. Aline was herself, as yet, quite cool. She had committed herself to nothing.
Sitting by the window upstairs or walking in the garden one did not need to look at the man working there, one did not have to think of another man gone down a hill to a factory.
One could look at trees, plants growing.
There was a simple natural cruel thing called nature. One could think of that, feel a part of that. One plant sprang quickly up, choking another that grew beneath it. A tree having got a better start than another threw its shadow down, choking the sunlight out from a smaller tree. Its roots spread more rapidly through the ground sucking up the life-giving moisture. A tree was a tree. One did not question it. Could a woman be just a woman, for a time? She had to be that to be a woman at all.
Bruce was going about the garden plucking out of the ground the weaker plants. Already he had learned that much of gardening. It did not take one long to learn.
For Aline, a feeling of life surging through her, during the spring days. Now she was herself, the woman given her chance, perhaps the one chance she would have.
“The world is so full of cant, isn’t it, dear? Yes, but it is better to seem to subscribe.”
A flashing moment for the woman to be the woman, for the poet to be the poet. Once she, Aline, had felt something, one evening in Paris — but another woman, Rose Frank, had got the better of her.
She had tried feebly — being in fancy a Rose Frank, being an Esther Walker.
From her window above, and sometimes as she sat in the garden holding a book, she looked searchingly at Bruce. What nonsense books are!
“Well, my dear, we have to have something to carry us over the dull times. Yes, but so much of life is dull, isn’t it, dear?”
When Aline sat in the garden looking at Bruce he did not dare yet raise his eyes to look at her. When he did the test might come.
She felt quite sure.
What she told herself was that he was one who could, at moments, become blind, let go all holds, drop bade into nature from which he came, be the man to her woman, for the moment at least.
After that had happened — ?
She would wait and see what next, after that had happened. To ask the question in advance would be to become a man, and that she was not ready to do yet.
Aline, smiling. There was a thing Fred could not do but she did not as yet hate him for his inability. That kind of hatred might come later, if nothing happened now, if she let her chance go.
Always from the first Fred had wanted a nice, firm little wall built about him. He wanted to be safe behind the wall, feel safe. A man within the walls of a house, safe, a woman’s hand holding his hand, warmly — awaiting him. All others shut out by the walls of the house. Was it any wonder men had been so busy building walls, strengthening the walls, fighting, killing each other, building systems of philosophy, building systems of morality?
“But, my dear, they meet with no competition behind the walls. Do you blame them? It is their one chance, you see. We women do the same thing when we get some man safe. It is all very well having no competition when you are sure of yourself, but how long can a woman remain sure? Do be reasonable, my dear. It is only being reasonable that we can live with men at all.”
So few women get lovers, really. Nowadays few men or women believe in love at all. Look at the books they write, the pictures they paint, the music they make. Civilization is perhaps nothing but a process of finding out what you cannot have. What you cannot have you make fun of. You belittle it if you can. You make it unpleasant to others too. Throw mud at it, jeer at it — wanting it, God knows how badly, all the time of course.
There is a thing men do not accept. They — the men are too crude. There is too much childishness in them. They are proud, exacting, sure of themselves and their own little systems.
All about is life but they have put themselves above life.
What they do not dare accept is the fact, the mystery, life itself.
Flesh is flesh, a tree is a tree, grass is grass. The flesh of women is the flesh of trees, of flowers, of grasses.
Bruce in the garden, his fingers touching the young trees, the young plants, was touching with his fingers also Aline’s flesh. Her flesh grew warm. There was a whirling, singing thing within.
On many days she did no thinking at all. She walked in the garden, sat on a bench holding a book — waited.
What things books are, painting, sculpture, poems. Men write, carve, paint. It is a way of dodging the issue. They do so like to think no issue exists. Look, look at me. I am the center of life, the creator — when I have ceased to exist, nothing exists.
Well, isn’t that true, for me at least?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
ALINE WALKED IN her garden, watching Bruce.
It might have been more obvious to him that she would not have gone so far, had she not been ready, at the right moment, to go further.
She meant really to try his boldness.
There are moments when boldness is the most important attribute in life.
Days and weeks passed.
The two negro women in the house watched and waited. Often they looked at each other and giggled. The air on the hilltop was filled with laughter — dark laughter.
“Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord! Oh, Lord!” one of them cried to the other. She laughed — a high-pitched negro laugh.
Fred Grey knew, but was afraid to know. The two men would both have been shocked had they known how shrewd and bold Aline — the innocent, quiet-looking one — had become, but they would never know. The two negro women perhaps knew but that did not matter. Negro women know how to be quiet, when whites are concerned.
BOOK TEN
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
ALINE LAY IN her bed. It was late in the afternoon of a day in early June. It had happened, and Bruce had gone, where, Aline did not know. A halfhour before, he had gone down the stairs and out of the house. She had heard him moving along the gravel path.
It was a warm, fragrant day and a gentle breeze blew across the hill and in at a window.
If Bruce were wise now he would simply disappear. Could a man have that much wisdom
? Aline smiled at the thought.
Of one thing Aline was quite sure, and when the thought came to her it was like a cool hand passed lightly over hot fevered flesh.
Now she would have a child, a son perhaps. That was the next step — the next event. One cannot be so deeply stirred without something happening, but what would she do when it did happen? Would she go quietly along, letting Fred think it was his child?
Why not? The event would make Fred so proud, so happy. There was no doubt that, since she had married him, Aline had often been rather irritated and bored by Fred, by his childishness, his obtuseness. But now? Well, he had thought the factory mattered, that his own war-record mattered, that the position of the Grey family in the community mattered most of all; and these things had mattered, to him, to Aline too, in a way, in quite a secondary way she knew now. But why deny him what he so wanted in life, what he at least thought he wanted? The Greys of Old Harbor, Indiana. They had already gone on for three generations, and that was a long time in America, in Indiana. First a shrewd horse-trading Grey, a little coarse, chewing tobacco, liking to bet on horse-races, a true democrat, hail-fellow-well-met, putting cash away all the time. Then the banker Grey, still shrewd, but become cautious — friend to the governor of the state, a contributor to Republican campaign funds, once talked of mildly as a candidate for the United States Senate. He might have got it if he hadn’t happened to be a banker. It isn’t very good policy to put a banker on the ticket in a doubtful year. The two older Greys, and then Fred — not so bold, not so shrewd. There was little doubt Fred was, in his way, the best of the three. He wanted consciousness of quality, sought consciousness of quality.
A fourth Grey who wasn’t a Grey at all. Her Grey. She might name him Dudley Grey — or Bruce Grey. Would she be bold enough to do that? It would perhaps be taking too many chances.
As for Bruce — well, she had selected him — not consciously. Things had happened. She had been so much bolder than she had planned. Really she had only intended playing with him, exerting her power over him. One can grow very tired and bored waiting — waiting in a garden on a hill in Indiana.
As she lay on the bed in her own room in the Grey house, at the top of the hill, Aline could, by turning her head on the pillow, see along the skyline, above the hedge that surrounded the garden, the upper part of the figure of anyone moving along the only street on the hilltop. Mrs. Willmott came out of her house and went along the street. And so she also had stayed at home on that day when all the others on the hilltop had gone down into the town. Mrs. Willmott had hay fever in the summer. In another week or two she would be going away to northern Michigan. Was she now coming to call on Aline, or was she going on down the hillside to some other house for an afternoon’s call? If she came to the Grey house Aline had but to lie quietly, pretending she was asleep. If Mrs. Willmott but knew of the events in the Grey house on that afternoon! What joy for her, joy akin to the joy thousands of people get from some story spread across the front page of a newspaper. Aline trembled a little. She had taken such chances, run such risks. There was in her something of the satisfaction men feel after a battle during which they have escaped uninjured. Her thoughts were a little vulgar-human. She wanted to gloat over Mrs. Willmott, who was walking down the hill to call upon a neighbor, but whose husband would later pick her up so that she would not have to climb back to her own house. When you have hay fever you must be careful. If Mrs. Willmott only knew. She knew nothing. There was no reason why anyone should ever know now.
The day had begun by Fred’s getting into his soldier’s uniform. The town of Old Harbor, following the example of Paris, London, New York, thousands of smaller towns and cities, was to express its sorrow for the dead of the World War by dedicating a statue in a small park at the river’s edge, down near Fred’s factory. In Paris, the President of France, members of the Chamber of Deputies, great generals, the Tiger of France himself. Well, the Tiger won’t ever have to argue with Prexy Wilson again, will he? He and Lloyd George can rest now, take their ease at home. In spite of the fact that France is the center of Western civilization, a statue will be unveiled that would give an artist the jimjams. In London, the King, the Prince of Wales, the Dolly Sisters — no — no.
In Old Harbor, the Mayor, members of the City Council, the Governor of the State, coming to deliver an address, prominent citizens riding in automobiles.
Fred, the richest man in town walking in the ranks with the common soldiers. He had wanted Aline to be there, but she had just assumed that she would stay at home, and it had been difficult for him to protest. Although many of the men, with whom he would march shoulder to shoulder — privates like himself — were workmen in his factory, Fred felt rather fine about the whole matter. This was something different than walking up a hillside with a gardener, a workman — really a servant. One becomes impersonal. You march and you are a part of something bigger than any man, you are a part of your country, of its power and might. No man can claim equality with you because you have marched with him into battle, because you have marched with him in a parade commemorating battles. There are certain things common to all men — birth and death, for example. You do not claim equality with a man because you and he were both born of women, because, when your time comes, you will both die.
In his uniform Fred had looked absurdly boyish. Really, if you are going to do things like that you should not grow a little round paunch, your cheeks should not grow fat.
Fred had driven up the hill at noon to put on the uniform. There was a band playing downtown somewhere, and the quick march-music, blown that way by the wind, came distinctly up the hill and into the house and garden.
Everyone on the march, the world on the march. Fred had such a brisk, businesslike air. He wanted to say “come on down, Aline,” but didn’t. When he went down the path to the car the gardener Bruce was not in sight. Really it was nonsense his not having managed to get a commission when he went into the war, but what was done was done. There would be men of much lower station in the town’s life who would be wearing swords and tailor-made uniforms.
When Fred had gone Aline had stayed for two or three hours in her room upstairs. The two negro women were also going. Presently they went down along the path to the gate. For them it was a gala occasion. They had put on gayly-colored dresses. There was a tall black woman and an older woman with a rich brown skin and a great broad back. They went down to the gate together, prancing a little, Aline thought. When they got down into the town where the men were marching and the bands were playing they would prance more. Nigger women prancing for nigger men. “Come on, baby!”
“Oh, Lord!”
“Oh, Lord!”
“Were you in the war?”
“Yes, sah. Government war, labor battalion, American Army. Dat’s me, sweety.”
Aline had intended nothing, had made no plans. She sat in her room pretending to read a book. Howells’ “The Rise of Silas Lapham.”
The pages danced. Down below in the town the band played. Men were marching. There was no war nοw. The dead cannot arise and march. Only those who survive can march.
“Now! Now!”
Something whispered inside her. Had she really intended? Why, after all, had she wanted the man Bruce near her? Is every woman at bottom, first of all, a wanton? What nonsense!
She put the book aside and got another. Really!
Lying on the bed she held the book in her hand. Lying thus on the bed and looking out through a window she could see only the sky and the top of trees. A bird flew across the sky and lit in one of the branches of a near-by tree. The bird looked directly at her. Was it laughing at her? She had been so wise, had thought herself superior to her husband Fred, to the man Bruce too. As for the man Bruce, what did she know of him?
She got another book and opened it at random.
I will not say “it matters but little,” for on the contrary to know the answer were of supreme importance to us. But, in the meantime, and until we shall lea
rn whether it be the flower that endeavors to maintain and perfect the life that nature has placed within it, or whether it be nature that puts forth an effort to maintain and improve the degree of existence the flower has assumed, or finally whether it be chance that ultimately governs chance, a multitude of semblance invite us to believe that something equal to our loftiest thoughts issues at times from a common source.
Thoughts! “Issues at times from a common source.” What did the man of the book mean? Of what was he writing? Men writing books! You do or you don’t! What is it you want?
“My dear, books do so fill in the times between.” Aline arose and went down into the garden carrying the book in her hand.
Perhaps the man Bruce had gone with the others down into the town. Well, that was hardly likely. He had said nothing about it. Bruce was not one of the sort who go into wars unless forced in. He was what he was, a man wandering about, seeking something. Such men separate themselves too much from common men and then feel lonely. They are always going about searching — waiting — for what?
Bruce was in the garden at work. He had that day put on a new blue uniform, such as workmen wear, and now he stood with a garden-hose in his hand watering the plants. The blue of working-men’s uniforms is rather lovely. The rough cloth feels firm and good under the hand. He also looked strangely like a boy, pretending to be a workman. Fred pretending he was a common man, a private in the ranks of life.
A strange world of pretense. Keep it up. Keep it up.
“Keep afloat. Keep afloat.”
If you let down for a moment — ?
Aline sat on a bench beneath a tree that grew on one of the terraces of the garden and Bruce stood holding the garden-hose on a lower terrace. He did not look at her. She did not look at him. Really!
What did she know of him?
Suppose she were to give him the ultimate challenge? But how do you do that?
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 117
