When the alarm that had tricked them into marriage proved to be groundless, she was angry and said bitter, hurtful things.  Later when her son David was born, she could not nurse him and did not know whether she wanted him or not.  Sometimes she stayed in the room with him all day, walking about and occasionally creeping close to touch him tenderly with her hands, and then other days came when she did not want to see or be near the tiny bit of humanity that had come into the house.  When John Hardy reproached her for her cruelty, she laughed.  “It is a man child and will get what it wants anyway,” she said sharply.  “Had it been a woman child there is nothing in the world I would not have done for it.”

IV

Terror

When David Hardy was a tall boy of fifteen, he, like his mother, had an adventure that changed the whole current of his life and sent him out of his quiet corner into the world.  The shell of the circumstances of his life was broken and he was compelled to start forth.  He left Winesburg and no one there ever saw him again.  After his disappearance, his mother and grandfather both died and his father became very rich.  He spent much money in trying to locate his son, but that is no part of this story.

It was in the late fall of an unusual year on the Bentley farms.  Everywhere the crops had been heavy.  That spring, Jesse had bought part of a long strip of black swamp land that lay in the valley of Wine Creek.  He got the land at a low price but had spent a large sum of money to improve it.  Great ditches had to be dug and thousands of tile laid.  Neighboring farmers shook their heads over the expense.  Some of them laughed and hoped that Jesse would lose heavily by the venture, but the old man went silently on with the work and said nothing.

When the land was drained he planted it to cabbages and onions, and again the neighbors laughed.  The crop was, however, enormous and brought high prices.  In the one year Jesse made enough money to pay for all the cost of preparing the land and had a surplus that enabled him to buy two more farms.  He was exultant and could not conceal his delight.  For the first time in all the history of his ownership of the farms, he went among his men with a smiling face.

Jesse bought a great many new machines for cutting down the cost of labor and all of the remaining acres in the strip of black fertile swamp land.  One day he went into Winesburg and bought a bicycle and a new suit of clothes for David and he gave his two sisters money with which to go to a religious convention at Cleveland, Ohio.