Until she was seven years old she lived in an old unpainted house on an
unused road that led off Trunion Pike. Her father gave her but little
attention and her mother was dead. The father spent his time talking
and thinking of religion. He proclaimed himself an agnostic and was so
absorbed in destroying the ideas of God that had crept into the minds
of his neighbors that he never saw God manifesting himself in the
little child that, half forgotten, lived here and there on the bounty
of her dead mother’s relatives.
A stranger came to Winesburg and saw in the child what the father did
not see. He was a tall, redhaired young man who was almost always
drunk. Sometimes he sat in a chair before the New Willard House with
Tom Hard, the father. As Tom talked, declaring there could be no God,
the stranger smiled and winked at the bystanders. He and Tom became
friends and were much together.
The stranger was the son of a rich merchant of Cleveland and had come
to Winesburg on a mission. He wanted to cure himself of the habit of
drink, and thought that by escaping from his city associates and living
in a rural community he would have a better chance in the struggle with
the appetite that was destroying him.
His sojourn in Winesburg was not a success. The dullness of the passing
hours led to his drinking harder than ever. But he did succeed in doing
something. He gave a name rich with meaning to Tom Hard’s daughter.
One evening when he was recovering from a long debauch the stranger
came reeling along the main street of the town. Tom Hard sat in a chair
before the New Willard House with his daughter, then a child of five,
on his knees. Beside him on the board sidewalk sat young George
Willard. The stranger dropped into a chair beside them. His body shook
and when he tried to talk his voice trembled.
It was late evening and darkness lay over the town and over the
railroad that ran along the foot of a little incline before the hotel.
Somewhere in the distance, off to the west, there was a prolonged blast
from the whistle of a passenger engine. A dog that had been sleeping in
the roadway arose and barked. The stranger began to babble and made a
prophecy concerning the child that lay in the arms of the agnostic.
“I came here to quit drinking,” he said, and tears began to run down
his cheeks. He did not look at Tom Hard, but leaned forward and stared
into the darkness as though seeing a vision. “I ran away to the country
to be cured, but I am not cured. There is a reason.” He turned to look
at the child who sat up very straight on her father’s knee and returned
the look.
The stranger touched Tom Hard on the arm. “Drink is not the only thing
to which I am addicted,” he said. “There is something else. I am a
lover and have not found my thing to love. That is a big point if you
know enough to realize what I mean. It makes my destruction inevitable,
you see. There are few who understand that.”
The stranger became silent and seemed overcome with sadness, but
another blast from the whistle of the passenger engine aroused him. “I
have not lost faith. I proclaim that. I have only been brought to the
place where I know my faith will not be realized,” he declared
hoarsely. He looked hard at the child and began to address her, paying
no more attention to the father. “There is a woman coming,” he said,
and his voice was now sharp and earnest. “I have missed her, you see.
She did not come in my time. You may be the woman. It would be like
fate to let me stand in her presence once, on such an evening as this,
when I have destroyed myself with drink and she is as yet only a
child.”
The shoulders of the stranger shook violently, and when he tried to
roll a cigarette the paper fell from his trembling fingers. He grew
angry and scolded. “They think it’s easy to be a woman, to be loved,
but I know better,” he declared. Again he turned to the child. “I
understand,” he cried. “Perhaps of all men I alone understand.”
His glance again wandered away to the darkened street. “I know about
her, although she has never crossed my path,” he said softly. “I know
about her struggles and her defeats. It is because of her defeats that
she is to me the lovely one. Out of her defeats has been born a new
quality in woman. I have a name for it. I call it Tandy. I made up the
name when I was a true dreamer and before my body became vile. It is
the quality of being strong to be loved. It is something men need from
women and that they do not get.”
The stranger arose and stood before Tom Hard. His body rocked back and
forth and he seemed about to fall, but instead he dropped to his knees
on the sidewalk and raised the hands of the little girl to his drunken
lips. He kissed them ecstatically. “Be Tandy, little one,” he pleaded.
“Dare to be strong and courageous. That is the road. Venture anything.
Be brave enough to dare to be loved. Be something more than man or
woman. Be Tandy.”
The stranger arose and staggered off down the street. A day or two
later he got aboard a train and returned to his home in Cleveland. On
the summer evening, after the talk before the hotel, Tom Hard took the
girl child to the house of a relative where she had been invited to
spend the night. As he went along in the darkness under the trees he
forgot the babbling voice of the stranger and his mind returned to the
making of arguments by which he might destroy men’s faith in God. He
spoke his daughter’s name and she began to weep.
“I don’t want to be called that,” she declared. “I want to be called
Tandy—Tandy Hard.” The child wept so bitterly that Tom Hard was touched
and tried to comfort her. He stopped beneath a tree and, taking her
into his arms, began to caress her. “Be good, now,” he said sharply;
but she would not be quieted. With childish abandon she gave herself
over to grief, her voice breaking the evening stillness of the street.
“I want to be Tandy. I want to be Tandy. I want to be Tandy Hard,” she
cried, shaking her head and sobbing as though her young strength were
not enough to bear the vision the words of the drunkard had brought to
her.