Thoughts... as though a boy had run along the dark night street of Langdon, Georgia, with a handful of little stones. He stopped in the dark street outside the library. The little stones were thrown. They came rattling sharply against a window.
Thoughts like that.
She had brought a light rain-coat with her and went and put it on. She was tall. She was slender. She began doing the little trick Tom Riddle did. She straightened her shoulders. Beauty has a queer trick with women. It is a quality. It plays about in the penumbra. It settles suddenly upon them, sometimes when they think they have been most ugly. She turned out the one light, the one over her own desk, and went to stand near the door. “Things pass like that,” she thought. There had been for some weeks this desire in her. The young man, Red Oliver, was nice. He had been half frightened, eager. He had kissed her eagerly with half-frightened hunger, her lips, her neck. It had been nice. It had been not-nice. He had been convinced by her. He had not been convinced. “I am a man and have got a woman. I am not a man. I have not got her.”
No, it hadn’t been nice. There had been no real surrender in her. All the time she had known... “All the time I knew how it would be after it had happened, if I let it happen,” she told herself. Everything had been in her own hands.
“I have done something not nice to him.”
People were perpetually doing it to each other. It wasn’t just this one thing... two bodies clasp together trying that.
People did harm to each other. Her father had done it to his second wife, Blanche, and in turn now Blanche was trying to do it to her father. What an ugly jam... Ethel was mellow now.... There was softness, regret. She wanted to cry.
“I wish I were a little girl.” Little memories. She was a little girl again. She saw herself as a little girl.
Her own mother was alive. She was with her mother. They were walking in a street. Her mother held the hand of the girl child that was Ethel. “Was I that child once? Why did life do it to me?”
“Now don’t be blaming life. Damn self-pity.”
There was a tree, in spring wind, in early April wind. The leaves on the tree played. They danced.
She was standing in the dark large room of the library, near the door, the door through which young Red Oliver had just disappeared. “My lover? No!” Already she had forgotten him. She stood there thinking of something else. It was very quiet in the street outside. After the rain the Georgia night would be cooler, but it would still be hot. Now the heat would be damp and heavy. Although the rain had passed there were still occasional flashes of lightning, faint flashes, coming from far off now, from the receding storm. She had spoiled her relations with the young Langdon man who had been in love with her, who had had a passionate desire for her. She knew that. It might go out of him now. He might not have it any more. No more dreams of her at night — in him... hunger... wanting... for her.
If, for him, in him, for some other woman, now, presently. Had she also spoiled her relations with the room in which she worked? A little shudder ran through her and she went quickly outside.
It was to be an eventful night in Ethel’s life. When she got outside she thought at first she was alone. At least the chances were that no one would ever know what had happened. Did she care? She didn’t care. She did care.
When you are a mess inside, you don’t want any one to know. You straighten your shoulders. Push against ft. Push against it. Push. Push.
“Everybody doing it. Everybody doing it.
“For Christ’s sweet sake be merciful to me, a sinner.” The library building was just off Main Street and at the corner of Main Street there was a tall old brick building with a clothing store on the ground floor and a hall above. The hall was the meeting place of some lodge and there was an open stairway leading up. Ethel walked along the street and when she came to the stairway she saw a man standing there, half hidden in the darkness. He stepped toward her.
It was Tom Riddle.
He was there standing. He was there coming.
“Another?
“I might with him too... be a whore, take them all.
“Damn. To hell with all of them.
“So,” she thought. “He has been watching.” She wondered how much he had seen.
If he had come down past the library, during the storm. If he had looked in. It seemed unlike what she thought of him. “I saw a light in the library and then I saw it go out,” he said, simply. He lied. He had seen the younger man, Red Oliver, go into the library.
Then he had seen the light go out. There was a hurt in him.
“I have no rights over her. I want her.”
His own life wasn’t so nice. He knew. “We might begin. I might learn, even to love.”
His own thoughts.
The younger man, leaving the library, had passed quite close to him, but had not seen him standing in a hallway. He had drawn himself back.
“What right have I prying on her? She has promised me nothing.”
There had been something. There was a light, a street light. He had seen young Red Oliver’s face. It wasn’t the face of a satisfied lover.
It was the face of a puzzled boy. Gladness in the man. A queer not understandable sadness in the man, not for himself, but for the other.
“I thought you would be coming along,” he said to Ethel. He was walking along beside her now. He was silent. They walked thus through Main Street and got presently into the residential street at the end of which Ethel lived.
There had come a reaction in Ethel now. She was even frightened. “What a fool I was, what a damn fool! I’ve spoiled everything. I have spoiled things with that boy and with this man.”
After all, a woman is a woman. She wants a man.
“She can be such a fool, throwing herself away, throwing herself here and there, so that no man will want her.
“Now don’t blame that boy. You did it. You did it.”
It might be that Tom Riddle had suspected something. It might have been his test of her. She did not want to believe that. There was a way in which this man, this so-called hard-boiled man, obviously a realist, if there could be such a thing among Southern men... there was a way in which he had already won her respect. If she was to lose him. She did not want to lose him, because — out of weariness and perplexity — she had been a fool again.
Tom Riddle walked along beside her in silence. Although she was tall, for a woman, he was taller. In the light of the street lights through which they passed she tried to look at his face without his knowing that she was looking, that she was anxious. Did he know? Was he judging her? Drops of water from the recent heavy rain kept pattering down from the shade trees under which they walked. They had got through Main Street. It was deserted. There were little pools of water on the sidewalks and water, shining and yellow in the lights from corner street lamps, ran in the gutters.
At one place there was no walk. There had been a brick walk but it had been taken up. A new cement walk was to be laid. They had to walk in wet sand. A thing happened. Tom Riddle started to take Ethel’s arm and then he didn’t take it. There was a little hesitant shy movement. It touched something in her.
There was a moment... a little passing thing. “If he, this one, is like that, he can be like that.”
It was an idea, faint, drifting across her mind. Some man, older than herself, more mature.
To know that she, like any woman, perhaps like any man, wanted... wanted nobility, cleanliness.
“If he knew and forgave me, I would hate him.
“There has been too much hatred. I don’t want any more.”
Could he, this older man... could he know why she had taken the boy... he was a boy really... Red Oliver... and knowing, could he... not blame... not forgive... not think of himself in the impossibly noble position of being one to forgive?
She grew desperate. “I wish I hadn’t done it. I wish I hadn’t done it,” she thought. She tried something. “Were you ever in a certain position...” she said
to Tom Riddle... “I mean going ahead and doing something you wanted to do and at the same time didn’t want to do... that you knew you didn’t want to do... and didn’t know?”
It was a fool question. She was frightened by her own words. “If he suspects something, if he saw that boy come out of the library, I am only confirming his suspicion.”
She was frightened by her own words, but went ahead hurriedly. “There was something you were ashamed of doing, but wanted to do and knew that after you had done it you would be more ashamed.”
“Yes,” he said quietly, “a thousand times. I’m always doing it.” They walked in silence after that until they got to the Long house. He did not try to detain her. She was curious and excited. “If he knows and can take it like this, really wanting me as his wife, as he says, he is something new in my experience of men.” There was a little warm feeling. “Is it possible? We are neither of us good people, do not want to be good.” Now she was identifying herself with him. At table in the Long house, sometimes nowadays, her father spoke of this man, of Tom Riddle. He did not address his remarks to his daughter, but to Blanche. Blanche encouraged it. She mentioned Tom Riddle. “How many loose women has that man had?” When Blanche asked that she looked up quickly at Ethel. “I am only goading him on. He’s just a fool man. I want to see him blow himself up — with wind.”
Her eyes saying that to Ethel. “We women understand. Men are only foolish windy children.” There would be some such question thrust out, Blanche wanting to put her husband in a certain position in relation to Ethel, wanting a little to bother Ethel.. there was the fiction carried on that Ethel’s father did not know of the lawyer’s interest in his daughter....
If the man, Tom Riddle, had known of that, he might perhaps only have been amused.
“You women settle it... settle your own goodness, your own badness.”
“A man walking, being, eating, sleeping... unafraid of men... unafraid of women.
“Not having too much bunk in him. Every man would have to have some. You could forgive some.
“Don’t expect too much. Life is full of bunk. We eat it, sleep it, dream it, breathe it.” There was a chance that, for such men as her father, the good solid men of the town, Tom Riddle had his own kind of contempt... “as I have,” Ethel thought.
Stories told about the man, his bold running about with loose women, his being a Republican, making deals about Federal patronage, handling Negro delegates at national conventions of the Republican Party, being in with gamblers, horsy men... He must have been into all sorts of what were called, “crooked political deals,” fighting all the time a queer battle in life in that so-smug religious, portentous Southern community. In the South every man seemed to hold up as his ideal what he called, “being a gentleman.” Tom Riddle, if he were the Tom Riddle Ethel had now begun to build up, was suddenly building up that night as he walked with her, would have laughed at that idea. “Gentleman, hell. You ought to know what I know.” Now suddenly she could imagine his saying that, without much bitterness, taking a kind of hypocrisy in the others for granted... not being made too sore, too resentful by it. He had said he wanted her as his wife, and dimly she now understood, or suddenly hoped, she was realizing what he had meant.
He even wanted to be tender with her, surround her with a sort of elegance. If he suspected... he must at least have seen Red Oliver coming out of the dark library but a few minutes before she came out... since she had seen him earlier in the evening in the street.
Had he been watching her?
Could he understand something else... that she had wanted to try something out, find out something?
He had taken her to see that young man play baseball. The name of Red Oliver had never been mentioned between them. Had he taken her there, merely to watch her?... to find out something about her?
“Maybe you know now.”
She was resentful. The feeling passed. She was not resentful.
He had implied, or even said, that, in asking her to marry him, he wanted something definite. He wanted her because he thought she had style. “You are nice. It’s nice walking beside a proud fine woman. You say to yourself, ‘she’s mine.’
“It’s nice having her in your house.
“A man feels himself more the man having a fine woman he can call his woman.”
He had worked and schemed to get money. Obviously his first wife had been something of a frump, pretty dull. Now he had a fine house and wanted a partner in life who would run his house in a certain style, who knew clothes and could wear clothes. He wanted people to be aware...
“Look. That’s Tom Riddle’s wife.”
“She sure has style, hasn’t she? There is some class to that one.”
For the same reason perhaps that such a man might like to own a stable of race horses, wanting the best, the fastest. It had been frankly such a proposal. “Let’s not be romantic or sentimental. We both want something. I can help you and you can help me.” He hadn’t used exactly these words. They were implied.
If he could feel now, even if he knew what had happened on that evening, if he could feel.... “I haven’t got you yet. You are free yet. If we make a deal I will expect you to stick to your side of the bargain.
“If, knowing what had happened, if he did know, could feel like that.”
All of these thoughts running through Ethel’s head during the walk homeward with Tom Riddle that evening, he saying nothing. She was nervous and excited. There was a low picket fence before Judge Long’s house and he stopped at the gate. It was rather dark. She fancied he was smiling, as though he knew her thoughts. She had made another man feel ineffectual, unsuccessful with her, in spite of what had happened... in spite of the thing that was presumed to make a man, any man, feel very manly and strong.
Now she was feeling ineffectual. At the gate that night Tom Riddle said something. She had been wondering how much he knew. He knew nothing. What had happened in the library had happened during a violent rainstorm. To have seen he would have had to creep through the rain to a window. Now suddenly she remembered that, as they had walked through Main Street, some section of her brain had noted that fact, that the rain-coat he had on was not very wet.
He wasn’t the sort who would creep to a window. “Now wait,” Ethel said to herself that night. “He might even have done that, if he had thought of it, if he had been suspicious, if he had wanted to do it.
“I am not going to begin by setting him up as some sort of nobleman.
“After what has happened it would make him impossible for me.”
At that it might have been rather a fine test of a man, of a man with this man’s realistic viewpoint on life... to have seen that... another man and the woman he wanted....
What would he tell himself? How much figure would what he thought her style, her class, how much figure would it cut then?
“It would have been rather too much. He couldn’t have stood it. No man could stand it. If I were a man, I wouldn’t.
“We go along, hurting, slowly educating ourselves, fighting toward some sort of truth. It seems inevitable.”
Tom Riddle was speaking to Ethel. “Good night. I can’t help hoping you will decide to do it. I mean... I’m waiting. I’ll be waiting. I hope it won’t be long.
“Come any time,” he said. “I’m ready.”
He leaned a little toward her. Was he going to try to kiss her. She wanted to cry out, “Wait. Not yet. I must have time to think.”
He didn’t. If he had in mind trying to kiss her, he changed his mind. His body straightened itself. There was that queer little gesture in him, a straightening of stooped shoulders, a pushing... as though against life itself... as though to say, “push up... push up...” to himself... talking to himself... like herself in that. “Good night,” he said, and walked rapidly away.
*
“IT begins. Will it never end?” Ethel thought that. She went into the house. There was that queer feeling, immediately she had got inside, that
Blanche sensed that it had been an upsetting night for her.
Ethel was resentful. “At any rate, she couldn’t know anything.”
“Good night. What I have said goes.” Tom Riddle’s words also in Ethel’s mind. It sounded as though he did know something, suspected something.... “I don’t care. I hardly know whether or not I care,” Ethel thought.
“Yes, I would care. If he is to know I’d rather tell him.
“But I am not close enough to him to go tell him things. I don’t want a father confessor.
“Perhaps I do.”
Evidently it was going to be a night of intensive selfconsciousness for her. She went into her room, out of the hallway downstairs, where there was a light burning. It was dark upstairs where Blanche now slept. She took off her clothes hurriedly and threw them on a chair. Quite naked, she threw herself on the bed. There was a little light coming into the room, faintly, through a transom. She lit a cigarette but did not smoke. It tasted stale in the darkness and she got out of bed and put it out.
It wasn’t quite out. There was a little pale insistent cigarette stink.
“Walk a mile for a Camel.”
“Not a cough in a carload.” It was to be a dark soft sticky Southern night after rain. She felt exhausted.
“Women. What things they are! What a thing I am!” she thought.
Was it because she was aware of Blanche, the other woman in that house, now perhaps awake in her room, also thinking. Ethel was herself trying to think her way through something. Her mind had got started. It wouldn’t quit. She was tired and wanting to sleep, wanting to forget the experiences of the night in sleep, but she knew she couldn’t sleep. If her affair with that boy, if it had come off, if it had been what she really had wanted.... “I might then have slept. I would have been at least a satisfied animal.” Why was she now so suddenly conscious of that other woman in the house, that Blanche? Nothing to her really, her father’s wife, “his problem, thank God, not mine,” she thought. Why did she have the feeling that Blanche was awake, that she also was thinking, that she had been watching for the homecoming, had seen the man, Tom Riddle, at the gate with Ethel?
Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson Page 161
