Chapter: DEATH

The stairway leading up to Doctor Reefy's office, in
the Heffner Block above the Paris Dry Goods store, was
but dimly lighted. At the head of the stairway hung a
lamp with a dirty chimney that was fastened by a
bracket to the wall. The lamp had a tin reflector,
brown with rust and covered with dust. The people who
went up the stairway followed with their feet the feet
of many who had gone before. The soft boards of the
stairs had yielded under the pressure of feet and deep
hollows marked the way.

At the top of the stairway a turn to the right brought
you to the doctor's door. To the left was a dark
hallway filled with rubbish. Old chairs, carpenter's
horses, step ladders and empty boxes lay in the
darkness waiting for shins to be barked. The pile of
rubbish belonged to the Paris Dry Goods Company. When a
counter or a row of shelves in the store became
useless, clerks carried it up the stairway and threw it
on the pile.

Doctor Reefy's office was as large as a barn. A stove
with a round paunch sat in the middle of the room.
Around its base was piled sawdust, held in place by
heavy planks nailed to the floor. By the door stood a
huge table that had once been a part of the furniture
of Herrick's Clothing Store and that had been used for
displaying custom-made clothes. It was covered with
books, bottles, and surgical instruments. Near the edge
of the table lay three or four apples left by John
Spaniard, a tree nurseryman who was Doctor Reefy's
friend, and who had slipped the apples out of his
pocket as he came in at the door.

At middle age Doctor Reefy was tall and awkward. The
grey beard he later wore had not yet appeared, but on
the upper lip grew a brown mustache. He was not a
graceful man, as when he grew older, and was much
occupied with the problem of disposing of his hands and
feet.

On summer afternoons, when she had been married many
years and when her son George was a boy of twelve or
fourteen, Elizabeth Willard sometimes went up the worn
steps to Doctor Reefy's office. Already the woman's
naturally tall figure had begun to droop and to drag
itself listlessly about. Ostensibly she went to see the
doctor because of her health, but on the half dozen
occasions when she had been to see him the outcome of
the visits did not primarily concern her health. She
and the doctor talked of that but they talked most of
her life, of their two lives and of the ideas that had
come to them as they lived their lives in Winesburg.

In the big empty office the man and the woman sat
looking at each other and they were a good deal alike.
Their bodies were different, as were also the color of
their eyes, the length of their noses, and the
circumstances of their existence, but something inside
them meant the same thing, wanted the same release,
would have left the same impression on the memory of an
onlooker. Later, and when he grew older and married a
young wife, the doctor often talked to her of the hours
spent with the sick woman and expressed a good many
things he had been unable to express to Elizabeth. He
was almost a poet in his old age and his notion of what
happened took a poetic turn. "I had come to the time in
my life when prayer became necessary and so I invented
gods and prayed to them," he said. "I did not say my
prayers in words nor did I kneel down but sat perfectly
still in my chair. In the late afternoon when it was
hot and quiet on Main Street or in the winter when the
days were gloomy, the gods came into the office and I
thought no one knew about them. Then I found that this
woman Elizabeth knew, that she worshipped also the same
gods. I have a notion that she came to the office
because she thought the gods would be there but she was
happy to find herself not alone just the same. It was
an experience that cannot be explained, although I
suppose it is always happening to men and women in all
sorts of places."

            *       *       *

On the summer afternoons when Elizabeth and the doctor
sat in the office and talked of their two lives they
talked of other lives also. Sometimes the doctor made
philosophic epigrams. Then he chuckled with amusement.
Now and then after a period of silence, a word was said
or a hint given that strangely illuminated the life of
the speaker, a wish became a desire, or a dream, half
dead, flared suddenly into life. For the most part the
words came from the woman and she said them without
looking at the man.

Each time she came to see the doctor the hotel keeper's
wife talked a little more freely and after an hour or
two in his presence went down the stairway into Main
Street feeling renewed and strengthened against the
dullness of her days. With something approaching a
girlhood swing to her body she walked along, but when
she had got back to her chair by the window of her room
and when darkness had come on and a girl from the hotel
dining room brought her dinner on a tray, she let it
grow cold. Her thoughts ran away to her girlhood with
its passionate longing for adventure and she remembered
the arms of men that had held her when adventure was a
possible thing for her. Particularly she remembered one
who had for a time been her lover and who in the moment
of his passion had cried out to her more than a hundred
times, saying the same words madly over and over: "You
dear! You dear! You lovely dear!" The words, she
thought, expressed something she would have liked to
have achieved in life.

In her room in the shabby old hotel the sick wife of
the hotel keeper began to weep and, putting her hands
to her face, rocked back and forth. The words of her
one friend, Doctor Reefy, rang in her ears. "Love is
like a wind stirring the grass beneath trees on a black
night," he had said. "You must not try to make love
definite. It is the divine accident of life. If you try
to be definite and sure about it and to live beneath
the trees, where soft night winds blow, the long hot
day of disappointment comes swiftly and the gritty dust
from passing wagons gathers upon lips inflamed and made
tender by kisses."

Elizabeth Willard could not remember her mother who had
died when she was but five years old. Her girlhood had
been lived in the most haphazard manner imaginable. Her
father was a man who had wanted to be let alone and the
affairs of the hotel would not let him alone. He also
had lived and died a sick man. Every day he arose with
a cheerful face, but by ten o'clock in the morning all
the joy had gone out of his heart. When a guest
complained of the fare in the hotel dining room or one
of the girls who made up the beds got married and went
away, he stamped on the floor and swore. At night when
he went to bed he thought of his daughter growing up
among the stream of people that drifted in and out of
the hotel and was overcome with sadness. As the girl
grew older and began to walk out in the evening with
men he wanted to talk to her, but when he tried was not
successful. He always forgot what he wanted to say and
spent the time complaining of his own affairs.

In her girlhood and young womanhood Elizabeth had tried
to be a real adventurer in life. At eighteen life had
so gripped her that she was no longer a virgin but,
although she had a half dozen lovers before she married
Tom Willard, she had never entered upon an adventure
prompted by desire alone. Like all the women in the
world, she wanted a real lover. Always there was
something she sought blindly, passionately, some hidden
wonder in life. The tall beautiful girl with the
swinging stride who had walked under the trees with men
was forever putting out her hand into the darkness and
trying to get hold of some other hand. In all the
babble of words that fell from the lips of the men with
whom she adventured she was trying to find what would
be for her the true word.

Elizabeth had married Tom Willard, a clerk in her
father's hotel, because he was at hand and wanted to
marry at the time when the determination to marry came
to her. For a while, like most young girls, she thought
marriage would change the face of life. If there was in
her mind a doubt of the outcome of the marriage with
Tom she brushed it aside. Her father was ill and near
death at the time and she was perplexed because of the
meaningless outcome of an affair in which she had just
been involved. Other girls of her age in Winesburg were
marrying men she had always known, grocery clerks or
young farmers. In the evening they walked in Main
Street with their husbands and when she passed they
smiled happily. She began to think that the fact of
marriage might be full of some hidden significance.
Young wives with whom she talked spoke softly and
shyly. "It changes things to have a man of your own,"
they said.

On the evening before her marriage the perplexed girl
had a talk with her father. Later she wondered if the
hours alone with the sick man had not led to her
decision to marry. The father talked of his life and
advised the daughter to avoid being led into another
such muddle. He abused Tom Willard, and that led
Elizabeth to come to the clerk's defense. The sick man
became excited and tried to get out of bed. When she
would not let him walk about he began to complain.
"I've never been let alone," he said. "Although I've
worked hard I've not made the hotel pay. Even now I owe
money at the bank. You'll find that out when I'm gone."

The voice of the sick man became tense with
earnestness. Being unable to arise, he put out his hand
and pulled the girl's head down beside his own.
"There's a way out," he whispered. "Don't marry Tom
Willard or anyone else here in Winesburg. There is
eight hundred dollars in a tin box in my trunk. Take it
and go away."

Again the sick man's voice became querulous. "You've
got to promise," he declared. "If you won't promise not
to marry, give me your word that you'll never tell Tom
about the money. It is mine and if I give it to you
I've the right to make that demand. Hide it away. It is
to make up to you for my failure as a father. Some time
it may prove to be a door, a great open door to you.
Come now, I tell you I'm about to die, give me your
promise."

            *       *       *

In Doctor Reefy's office, Elizabeth, a tired gaunt old
woman at forty-one, sat in a chair near the stove and
looked at the floor. By a small desk near the window
sat the doctor. His hands played with a lead pencil
that lay on the desk. Elizabeth talked of her life as a
married woman. She became impersonal and forgot her
husband, only using him as a lay figure to give point
to her tale. "And then I was married and it did not
turn out at all," she said bitterly. "As soon as I had
gone into it I began to be afraid. Perhaps I knew too
much before and then perhaps I found out too much
during my first night with him. I don't remember.

"What a fool I was. When father gave me the money and
tried to talk me out of the thought of marriage, I
would not listen. I thought of what the girls who were
married had said of it and I wanted marriage also. It
wasn't Tom I wanted, it was marriage. When father went
to sleep I leaned out of the window and thought of the
life I had led. I didn't want to be a bad woman. The
town was full of stories about me. I even began to be
afraid Tom would change his mind."

The woman's voice began to quiver with excitement. To
Doctor Reefy, who without realizing what was happening
had begun to love her, there came an odd illusion. He
thought that as she talked the woman's body was
changing, that she was becoming younger, straighter,
stronger. When he could not shake off the illusion his
mind gave it a professional twist. "It is good for both
her body and her mind, this talking," he muttered.

The woman began telling of an incident that had
happened one afternoon a few months after her marriage.
Her voice became steadier. "In the late afternoon I
went for a drive alone," she said. "I had a buggy and a
little grey pony I kept in Moyer's Livery. Tom was
painting and repapering rooms in the hotel. He wanted
money and I was trying to make up my mind to tell him
about the eight hundred dollars father had given to me.
I couldn't decide to do it. I didn't like him well
enough. There was always paint on his hands and face
during those days and he smelled of paint. He was
trying to fix up the old hotel, and make it new and
smart."

The excited woman sat up very straight in her chair and
made a quick girlish movement with her hand as she told
of the drive alone on the spring afternoon. "It was
cloudy and a storm threatened," she said. "Black clouds
made the green of the trees and the grass stand out so
that the colors hurt my eyes. I went out Trunion Pike a
mile or more and then turned into a side road. The
little horse went quickly along up hill and down. I was
impatient. Thoughts came and I wanted to get away from
my thoughts. I began to beat the horse. The black
clouds settled down and it began to rain. I wanted to
go at a terrible speed, to drive on and on forever. I
wanted to get out of town, out of my clothes, out of my
marriage, out of my body, out of everything. I almost
killed the horse, making him run, and when he could not
run any more I got out of the buggy and ran afoot into
the darkness until I fell and hurt my side. I wanted to
run away from everything but I wanted to run towards
something too. Don't you see, dear, how it was?"

Elizabeth sprang out of the chair and began to walk
about in the office. She walked as Doctor Reefy thought
he had never seen anyone walk before. To her whole body
there was a swing, a rhythm that intoxicated him. When
she came and knelt on the floor beside his chair he
took her into his arms and began to kiss her
passionately. "I cried all the way home," she said, as
she tried to continue the story of her wild ride, but
he did not listen. "You dear! You lovely dear! Oh you
lovely dear!" he muttered and thought he held in his
arms not the tired-out woman of forty-one but a lovely
and innocent girl who had been able by some miracle to
project herself out of the husk of the body of the
tired-out woman.

Doctor Reefy did not see the woman he had held in his
arms again until after her death. On the summer
afternoon in the office when he was on the point of
becoming her lover a half grotesque little incident
brought his love-making quickly to an end. As the man
and woman held each other tightly heavy feet came
tramping up the office stairs. The two sprang to their
feet and stood listening and trembling. The noise on
the stairs was made by a clerk from the Paris Dry Goods
Company. With a loud bang he threw an empty box on the
pile of rubbish in the hallway and then went heavily
down the stairs. Elizabeth followed him almost
immediately. The thing that had come to life in her as
she talked to her one friend died suddenly. She was
hysterical, as was also Doctor Reefy, and did not want
to continue the talk. Along the street she went with
the blood still singing in her body, but when she
turned out of Main Street and saw ahead the lights of
the New Willard House, she began to tremble and her
knees shook so that for a moment she thought she would
fall in the street.

The sick woman spent the last few months of her life
hungering for death. Along the road of death she went,
seeking, hungering. She personified the figure of death
and made him now a strong black-haired youth running
over hills, now a stern quiet man marked and scarred by
the business of living. In the darkness of her room she
put out her hand, thrusting it from under the covers of
her bed, and she thought that death like a living thing
put out his hand to her. "Be patient, lover," she
whispered. "Keep yourself young and beautiful and be
patient."

On the evening when disease laid its heavy hand upon
her and defeated her plans for telling her son George
of the eight hundred dollars hidden away, she got out
of bed and crept half across the room pleading with
death for another hour of life. "Wait, dear! The boy!
The boy! The boy!" she pleaded as she tried with all of
her strength to fight off the arms of the lover she had
wanted so earnestly.

            *       *       *

Elizabeth died one day in March in the year when her
son George became eighteen, and the young man had but
little sense of the meaning of her death. Only time
could give him that. For a month he had seen her lying
white and still and speechless in her bed, and then one
afternoon the doctor stopped him in the hallway and
said a few words.

The young man went into his own room and closed the
door. He had a queer empty feeling in the region of his
stomach. For a moment he sat staring at, the floor and
then jumping up went for a walk. Along the station
platform he went, and around through residence streets
past the high-school building, thinking almost entirely
of his own affairs. The notion of death could not get
hold of him and he was in fact a little annoyed that
his mother had died on that day. He had just received a
note from Helen White, the daughter of the town banker,
in answer to one from him. "Tonight I could have gone
to see her and now it will have to be put off," he
thought half angrily.

Elizabeth died on a Friday afternoon at three o'clock.
It had been cold and rainy in the morning but in the
afternoon the sun came out. Before she died she lay
paralyzed for six days unable to speak or move and with
only her mind and her eyes alive. For three of the six
days she struggled, thinking of her boy, trying to say
some few words in regard to his future, and in her eyes
there was an appeal so touching that all who saw it
kept the memory of the dying woman in their minds for
years. Even Tom Willard, who had always half resented
his wife, forgot his resentment and the tears ran out
of his eyes and lodged in his mustache. The mustache
had begun to turn grey and Tom colored it with dye.
There was oil in the preparation he used for the
purpose and the tears, catching in the mustache and
being brushed away by his hand, formed a fine mist-like
vapor. In his grief Tom Willard's face looked like the
face of a little dog that has been out a long time in
bitter weather.

George came home along Main Street at dark on the day
of his mother's death and, after going to his own room
to brush his hair and clothes, went along the hallway
and into the room where the body lay. There was a
candle on the dressing table by the door and Doctor
Reefy sat in a chair by the bed. The doctor arose and
started to go out. He put out his hand as though to
greet the younger man and then awkwardly drew it back
again. The air of the room was heavy with the presence
of the two self-conscious human beings, and the man
hurried away.

The dead woman's son sat down in a chair and looked at
the floor. He again thought of his own affairs and
definitely decided he would make a change in his life,
that he would leave Winesburg. "I will go to some city.
Perhaps I can get a job on some newspaper," he thought,
and then his mind turned to the girl with whom he was
to have spent this evening and again he was half angry
at the turn of events that had prevented his going to
her.

In the dimly lighted room with the dead woman the young
man began to have thoughts. His mind played with
thoughts of life as his mother's mind had played with
the thought of death. He closed his eyes and imagined
that the red young lips of Helen White touched his own
lips. His body trembled and his hands shook. And then
something happened. The boy sprang to his feet and
stood stiffly. He looked at the figure of the dead
woman under the sheets and shame for his thoughts swept
over him so that he began to weep. A new notion came
into his mind and he turned and looked guiltily about
as though afraid he would be observed.

George Willard became possessed of a madness to lift
the sheet from the body of his mother and look at her
face. The thought that had come into his mind gripped
him terribly. He became convinced that not his mother
but someone else lay in the bed before him. The
conviction was so real that it was almost unbearable.
The body under the sheets was long and in death looked
young and graceful. To the boy, held by some strange
fancy, it was unspeakably lovely. The feeling that the
body before him was alive, that in another moment a
lovely woman would spring out of the bed and confront
him, became so overpowering that he could not bear the
suspense. Again and again he put out his hand. Once he
touched and half lifted the white sheet that covered
her, but his courage failed and he, like Doctor Reefy,
turned and went out of the room. In the hallway outside
the door he stopped and trembled so that he had to put
a hand against the wall to support himself. "That's not
my mother. That's not my mother in there," he whispered
to himself and again his body shook with fright and
uncertainty. When Aunt Elizabeth Swift, who had come to
watch over the body, came out of an adjoining room he
put his hand into hers and began to sob, shaking his
head from side to side, half blind with grief. "My
mother is dead," he said, and then forgetting the woman
he turned and stared at the door through which he had
just come. "The dear, the dear, oh the lovely dear,"
the boy, urged by some impulse outside himself,
muttered aloud.

As for the eight hundred dollars the dead woman had
kept hidden so long and that was to give George Willard
his start in the city, it lay in the tin box behind the
plaster by the foot of his mother's bed. Elizabeth had
put it there a week after her marriage, breaking the
plaster away with a stick. Then she got one of the
workmen her husband was at that time employing about
the hotel to mend the wall. "I jammed the corner of the
bed against it," she had explained to her husband,
unable at the moment to give up her dream of release,
the release that after all came to her but twice in her
life, in the moments when her lovers Death and Doctor
Reefy held her in their arms.

 Doctor Reefy's office is a large, untidy room, above the Paris Dry Goods Store. Often, George's mother, Elizabeth Willard comes to his office ostensibly to discuss about her health, but more to sit with the doctor and talk of life. George is then a boy of twelve or fourteen, and his mother forty-one years. Elizabeth speaks a great deal about her life before her marriage. In her younger days she was quite an adventurer seeking boys out. She wished to find a real lover. She seemed to be forever putting out her hand in the darkness seeking some other hand. When she marries Tom, she marries for the sake of marriage, hoping to find some significance in it for her. But marriage doesnt help her. As Elizabeth sits with Doctor Reefy and describes her earlier life, she seems to change back into the girl she was and the doctor can't help noticing it. In his passion he takes her in his arms and almost makes love to her, if it wasnt for a heavy footstep to be heard outside the door they wouldnt have broken free from each other. Elizabeth then leaves the doctor, but after that she just begins to decline. She awaits death, personified as a young lover holding out his arms to her. In her last days she is not even able to tell George of the eight hundred dollars stowed away. George is at first surprised at her death and is slightly displeased as it jeopardized his meeting with Helen White. But while watching the covered dead body he feels that the sheet covers a young lady who might rise any moment. He runs away from the room half blind with grief and crying, 'My mother is dead.'

