Enoch Robinson sprang to his feet and ran to the window that looked down into the deserted main street of Winesburg.  George Willard followed.  By the window the two stood, the tall awkward boy-man and the little wrinkled man-boy.  The childish, eager voice carried forward the tale.  “I swore at her,” he explained.  “I said vile words.  I ordered her to go away and not to come back.  Oh, I said terrible things.  At first she pretended not to understand but I kept at it.  I screamed and stamped on the floor.  I made the house ring with my curses.  I didn’t want ever to see her again and I knew, after some of the things I said, that I never would see her again.”

The old man’s voice broke and he shook his head.  “Things went to smash,” he said quietly and sadly.  “Out she went through the door and all the life there had been in the room followed her out.  She took all of my people away.  They all went out through the door after her.  That’s the way it was.”

George Willard turned and went out of Enoch Robinson’s room.  In the darkness by the window, as he went through the door, he could hear the thin old voice whimpering and complaining.  “I’m alone, all alone here,” said the voice.  “It was warm and friendly in my room but now I’m all alone.”

AN AWAKENING

Belle Carpenter had a dark skin, grey eyes, and thick lips.  She was tall and strong.  When black thoughts visited her she grew angry and wished she were a man and could fight someone with her fists.  She worked in the millinery shop kept by Mrs. Kate McHugh and during the day sat trimming hats by a window at the rear of the store.  She was the daughter of Henry Carpenter, bookkeeper in the First National Bank of Winesburg, and lived with him in a gloomy old house far out at the end of Buckeye Street.  The house was surrounded by pine trees and there was no grass beneath the trees.  A rusty tin eaves-trough had slipped from its fastenings at the back of the house and when the wind blew it beat against the roof of a small shed, making a dismal drumming noise that sometimes persisted all through the night.

When she was a young girl Henry Carpenter made life almost unbearable for Belle, but as she emerged from girlhood into womanhood he lost his power over her.  The bookkeeper’s life was made up of innumerable little pettinesses.  When he went to the bank in the morning he stepped into a closet and put on a black alpaca coat that had become shabby with age.  At night when he returned to his home he donned another black alpaca coat.  Every evening he pressed the clothes worn in the streets.  He had invented an arrangement of boards for the purpose.  The trousers to his street suit were placed between the boards and the boards were clamped together with heavy screws.  In the morning he wiped the boards with a damp cloth and stood them upright behind the dining room door.  If they were moved during the day he was speechless with anger and did not recover his equilibrium for a week.