Chapter: SOPHISTICATION

It was early evening of a day in the late fall and the
Winesburg County Fair had brought crowds of country
people into town. The day had been clear and the night
came on warm and pleasant. On the Trunion Pike, where
the road after it left town stretched away between
berry fields now covered with dry brown leaves, the
dust from passing wagons arose in clouds. Children,
curled into little balls, slept on the straw scattered
on wagon beds. Their hair was full of dust and their
fingers black and sticky. The dust rolled away over the
fields and the departing sun set it ablaze with colors.

In the main street of Winesburg crowds filled the
stores and the sidewalks. Night came on, horses
whinnied, the clerks in the stores ran madly about,
children became lost and cried lustily, an American
town worked terribly at the task of amusing itself.

Pushing his way through the crowds in Main Street,
young George Willard concealed himself in the stairway
leading to Doctor Reefy's office and looked at the
people. With feverish eyes he watched the faces
drifting past under the store lights. Thoughts kept
coming into his head and he did not want to think. He
stamped impatiently on the wooden steps and looked
sharply about. "Well, is she going to stay with him all
day? Have I done all this waiting for nothing?" he
muttered.

George Willard, the Ohio village boy, was fast growing
into manhood and new thoughts had been coming into his
mind. All that day, amid the jam of people at the Fair,
he had gone about feeling lonely. He was about to leave
Winesburg to go away to some city where he hoped to get
work on a city newspaper and he felt grown up. The mood
that had taken possession of him was a thing known to
men and unknown to boys. He felt old and a little
tired. Memories awoke in him. To his mind his new sense
of maturity set him apart, made of him a half-tragic
figure. He wanted someone to understand the feeling
that had taken possession of him after his mother's
death.

There is a time in the life of every boy when he for
the first time takes the backward view of life. Perhaps
that is the moment when he crosses the line into
manhood. The boy is walking through the street of his
town. He is thinking of the future and of the figure he
will cut in the world. Ambitions and regrets awake
within him. Suddenly something happens; he stops under
a tree and waits as for a voice calling his name.
Ghosts of old things creep into his consciousness; the
voices outside of himself whisper a message concerning
the limitations of life. From being quite sure of
himself and his future he becomes not at all sure. If
he be an imaginative boy a door is torn open and for the
first time he looks out upon the world, seeing, as
though they marched in procession before him, the
countless figures of men who before his time have come
out of nothingness into the world, lived their lives
and again disappeared into nothingness. The sadness of
sophistication has come to the boy. With a little gasp
he sees himself as merely a leaf blown by the wind
through the streets of his village. He knows that in
spite of all the stout talk of his fellows he must live
and die in uncertainty, a thing blown by the winds, a
thing destined like corn to wilt in the sun. He shivers
and looks eagerly about. The eighteen years he has
lived seem but a moment, a breathing space in the long
march of humanity. Already he hears death calling. With
all his heart he wants to come close to some other
human, touch someone with his hands, be touched by the
hand of another. If he prefers that the other be a
woman, that is because he believes that a woman will be
gentle, that she will understand. He wants, most of
all, understanding.

When the moment of sophistication came to George
Willard his mind turned to Helen White, the Winesburg
banker's daughter. Always he had been conscious of the
girl growing into womanhood as he grew into manhood.
Once on a summer night when he was eighteen, he had
walked with her on a country road and in her presence
had given way to an impulse to boast, to make himself
appear big and significant in her eyes. Now he wanted
to see her for another purpose. He wanted to tell her
of the new impulses that had come to him. He had tried
to make her think of him as a man when he knew nothing
of manhood and now he wanted to be with her and to try
to make her feel the change he believed had taken place
in his nature.

As for Helen White, she also had come to a period of
change. What George felt, she in her young woman's way
felt also. She was no longer a girl and hungered to
reach into the grace and beauty of womanhood. She had
come home from Cleveland, where she was attending
college, to spend a day at the Fair. She also had begun
to have memories. During the day she sat in the
grand-stand with a young man, one of the instructors
from the college, who was a guest of her mother's. The
young man was of a pedantic turn of mind and she felt
at once he would not do for her purpose. At the Fair
she was glad to be seen in his company as he was well
dressed and a stranger. She knew that the fact of his
presence would create an impression. During the day she
was happy, but when night came on she began to grow
restless. She wanted to drive the instructor away, to
get out of his presence. While they sat together in the
grand-stand and while the eyes of former schoolmates
were upon them, she paid so much attention to her
escort that he grew interested. "A scholar needs money.
I should marry a woman with money," he mused.

Helen White was thinking of George Willard even as he
wandered gloomily through the crowds thinking of her.
She remembered the summer evening when they had walked
together and wanted to walk with him again. She thought
that the months she had spent in the city, the going to
theaters and the seeing of great crowds wandering in
lighted thoroughfares, had changed her profoundly. She
wanted him to feel and be conscious of the change in
her nature.

The summer evening together that had left its mark on
the memory of both the young man and woman had, when
looked at quite sensibly, been rather stupidly spent.
They had walked out of town along a country road. Then
they had stopped by a fence near a field of young corn
and George had taken off his coat and let it hang on
his arm. "Well, I've stayed here in
Winesburg--yes--I've not yet gone away but I'm growing
up," he had said. "I've been reading books and I've
been thinking. I'm going to try to amount to something
in life.

"Well," he explained, "that isn't the point. Perhaps
I'd better quit talking."

The confused boy put his hand on the girl's arm. His
voice trembled. The two started to walk back along the
road toward town. In his desperation George boasted,
"I'm going to be a big man, the biggest that ever lived
here in Winesburg," he declared. "I want you to do
something, I don't know what. Perhaps it is none of my
business. I want you to try to be different from other
women. You see the point. It's none of my business I
tell you. I want you to be a beautiful woman. You see
what I want."

The boy's voice failed and in silence the two came back
into town and went along the street to Helen White's
house. At the gate he tried to say something
impressive. Speeches he had thought out came into his
head, but they seemed utterly pointless. "I thought--I
used to think--I had it in my mind you would marry Seth
Richmond. Now I know you won't," was all he could find
to say as she went through the gate and toward the door
of her house.

On the warm fall evening as he stood in the stairway
and looked at the crowd drifting through Main Street,
George thought of the talk beside the field of young
corn and was ashamed of the figure he had made of
himself. In the street the people surged up and down
like cattle confined in a pen. Buggies and wagons
almost filled the narrow thoroughfare. A band played
and small boys raced along the sidewalk, diving between
the legs of men. Young men with shining red faces
walked awkwardly about with girls on their arms. In a
room above one of the stores, where a dance was to be
held, the fiddlers tuned their instruments. The broken
sounds floated down through an open window and out
across the murmur of voices and the loud blare of the
horns of the band. The medley of sounds got on young
Willard's nerves. Everywhere, on all sides, the sense
of crowding, moving life closed in about him. He wanted
to run away by himself and think. "If she wants to stay
with that fellow she may. Why should I care? What
difference does it make to me?" he growled and went
along Main Street and through Hern's Grocery into a
side street.

George felt so utterly lonely and dejected that he
wanted to weep but pride made him walk rapidly along,
swinging his arms. He came to Wesley Moyer's livery
barn and stopped in the shadows to listen to a group of
men who talked of a race Wesley's stallion, Tony Tip,
had won at the Fair during the afternoon. A crowd had
gathered in front of the barn and before the crowd
walked Wesley, prancing up and down boasting. He held a
whip in his hand and kept tapping the ground. Little
puffs of dust arose in the lamplight. "Hell, quit your
talking," Wesley exclaimed. "I wasn't afraid, I knew I
had 'em beat all the time. I wasn't afraid."

Ordinarily George Willard would have been intensely
interested in the boasting of Moyer, the horseman. Now
it made him angry. He turned and hurried away along the
street. "Old windbag," he sputtered. "Why does he want
to be bragging? Why don't he shut up?"

George went into a vacant lot and, as he hurried along,
fell over a pile of rubbish. A nail protruding from an
empty barrel tore his trousers. He sat down on the
ground and swore. With a pin he mended the torn place
and then arose and went on. "I'll go to Helen White's
house, that's what I'll do. I'll walk right in. I'll
say that I want to see her. I'll walk right in and sit
down, that's what I'll do," he declared, climbing over
a fence and beginning to run.

            *       *       *

On the veranda of Banker White's house Helen was
restless and distraught. The instructor sat between the
mother and daughter. His talk wearied the girl.
Although he had also been raised in an Ohio town, the
instructor began to put on the airs of the city. He
wanted to appear cosmopolitan. "I like the chance you
have given me to study the background out of which most
of our girls come," he declared. "It was good of you,
Mrs. White, to have me down for the day." He turned to
Helen and laughed. "Your life is still bound up with
the life of this town?" he asked. "There are people
here in whom you are interested?" To the girl his voice
sounded pompous and heavy.

Helen arose and went into the house. At the door
leading to a garden at the back she stopped and stood
listening. Her mother began to talk. "There is no one
here fit to associate with a girl of Helen's breeding,"
she said.

Helen ran down a flight of stairs at the back of the
house and into the garden. In the darkness she stopped
and stood trembling. It seemed to her that the world
was full of meaningless people saying words. Afire with
eagerness she ran through a garden gate and, turning a
corner by the banker's barn, went into a little side
street. "George! Where are you, George?" she cried,
filled with nervous excitement. She stopped running,
and leaned against a tree to laugh hysterically. Along
the dark little street came George Willard, still
saying words. "I'm going to walk right into her house.
I'll go right in and sit down," he declared as he came
up to her. He stopped and stared stupidly. "Come on,"
he said and took hold of her hand. With hanging heads
they walked away along the street under the trees. Dry
leaves rustled under foot. Now that he had found her
George wondered what he had better do and say.

            *       *       *

At the upper end of the Fair Ground, in Winesburg,
there is a half decayed old grand-stand. It has never
been painted and the boards are all warped out of
shape. The Fair Ground stands on top of a low hill
rising out of the valley of Wine Creek and from the
grand-stand one can see at night, over a cornfield, the
lights of the town reflected against the sky.

George and Helen climbed the hill to the Fair Ground,
coming by the path past Waterworks Pond. The feeling of
loneliness and isolation that had come to the young man
in the crowded streets of his town was both broken and
intensified by the presence of Helen. What he felt was
reflected in her.

In youth there are always two forces fighting in
people. The warm unthinking little animal struggles
against the thing that reflects and remembers, and the
older, the more sophisticated thing had possession of
George Willard. Sensing his mood, Helen walked beside
him filled with respect. When they got to the
grand-stand they climbed up under the roof and sat down
on one of the long bench-like seats.

There is something memorable in the experience to be
had by going into a fair ground that stands at the edge
of a Middle Western town on a night after the annual
fair has been held. The sensation is one never to be
forgotten. On all sides are ghosts, not of the dead,
but of living people. Here, during the day just passed,
have come the people pouring in from the town and the
country around. Farmers with their wives and children
and all the people from the hundreds of little frame
houses have gathered within these board walls. Young
girls have laughed and men with beards have talked of
the affairs of their lives. The place has been filled
to overflowing with life. It has itched and squirmed
with life and now it is night and the life has all gone
away. The silence is almost terrifying. One conceals
oneself standing silently beside the trunk of a tree
and what there is of a reflective tendency in his
nature is intensified. One shudders at the thought of
the meaninglessness of life while at the same instant,
and if the people of the town are his people, one loves
life so intensely that tears come into the eyes.

In the darkness under the roof of the grand-stand,
George Willard sat beside Helen White and felt very
keenly his own insignificance in the scheme of
existence. Now that he had come out of town where the
presence of the people stirring about, busy with a
multitude of affairs, had been so irritating, the
irritation was all gone. The presence of Helen renewed
and refreshed him. It was as though her woman's hand
was assisting him to make some minute readjustment of
the machinery of his life. He began to think of the
people in the town where he had always lived with
something like reverence. He had reverence for Helen.
He wanted to love and to be loved by her, but he did
not want at the moment to be confused by her womanhood.
In the darkness he took hold of her hand and when she
crept close put a hand on her shoulder. A wind began to
blow and he shivered. With all his strength he tried to
hold and to understand the mood that had come upon him.
In that high place in the darkness the two oddly
sensitive human atoms held each other tightly and
waited. In the mind of each was the same thought. "I
have come to this lonely place and here is this other,"
was the substance of the thing felt.

In Winesburg the crowded day had run itself out into
the long night of the late fall. Farm horses jogged
away along lonely country roads pulling their portion
of weary people. Clerks began to bring samples of goods
in off the sidewalks and lock the doors of stores. In
the Opera House a crowd had gathered to see a show and
further down Main Street the fiddlers, their
instruments tuned, sweated and worked to keep the feet
of youth flying over a dance floor.

In the darkness in the grand-stand Helen White and
George Willard remained silent. Now and then the spell
that held them was broken and they turned and tried in
the dim light to see into each other's eyes. They
kissed but that impulse did not last. At the upper end
of the Fair Ground a half dozen men worked over horses
that had raced during the afternoon. The men had built
a fire and were heating kettles of water. Only their
legs could be seen as they passed back and forth in the
light. When the wind blew the little flames of the fire
danced crazily about.

George and Helen arose and walked away into the
darkness. They went along a path past a field of corn
that had not yet been cut. The wind whispered among the
dry corn blades. For a moment during the walk back into
town the spell that held them was broken. When they had
come to the crest of Waterworks Hill they stopped by a
tree and George again put his hands on the girl's
shoulders. She embraced him eagerly and then again they
drew quickly back from that impulse. They stopped
kissing and stood a little apart. Mutual respect grew
big in them. They were both embarrassed and to relieve
their embarrassment dropped into the animalism of
youth. They laughed and began to pull and haul at each
other. In some way chastened and purified by the mood
they had been in, they became, not man and woman, not
boy and girl, but excited little animals.

It was so they went down the hill. In the darkness
they played like two splendid young things in a young
world. Once, running swiftly forward, Helen tripped
George and he fell. He squirmed and shouted. Shaking
with laughter, he roiled down the hill. Helen ran after
him. For just a moment she stopped in the darkness.
There was no way of knowing what woman's thoughts went
through her mind but, when the bottom of the hill was
reached and she came up to the boy, she took his arm
and walked beside him in dignified silence. For some
reason they could not have explained they had both got
from their silent evening together the thing needed.
Man or boy, woman or girl, they had for a moment taken
hold of the thing that makes the mature life of men and
women in the modern world possible.

 It is the time of the country fair, at Winesburg. The day is filled with noise and excitement and people, and the night is still and warm. George is looking at the store lights and waiting for Helen White. George has fast grown into manhood. After his mother's death a sense of maturity has filled him and to his mind it makes him a half-tragic figure. George has seen Helen grow from girlhood into womanhood, as he grew into manhood himself. He now remembers how he had boasted to Helen White earlier about the things he would do when he grew up, and he feels embarrassed of his words. While at the fair, Helen is with her instructor. A pedantic man he both repels and attracts her. At the fair, she is glad of his well-dressed company but at home she gets tired of his act of superiority. She wishes to be with George, and at the same time, George too decides to go to her house. They meet and he takes her to the top of the hill overlooking the Fair ground. The night is still and both feel a sense of insignificance in the scheme of existence. They kiss and hold hands but the impulse does not last. Finally as they return home they throw away their cloak of maturity and don their childhood cloak. They play around pushing and laughing and teasing. At the end of the evening, they are both satisfied as if they had got the thing they had needed.

