Stories of Erskine Caldwell by Erskine Caldwell

I touched her, but she clung to me as tightly as I held her, and the hammering of her heart drove into me, stroke after stroke, like an expanding wedge, the spears of her breasts.
    “Richard, kiss me before you go,” she said.
    She ran to the door, holding it open for me. She picked up the lamp from the table and walked ahead up the stairs to the floor above.
    At my door she waited until I could light her lamp, and then she handed me mine.
    “Good night, Gretchen,” I said.
    “Good night, Richard.”
    I turned down the wick of her lamp to keep it from smoking, and then she went across the hall towards her room.
    “I’ll call you in the morning in time for you to catch your train, Richard.”
    “All right, Gretchen. Don’t let me oversleep, because it leaves the station at seven-thirty.”
    “I’ll wake you in plenty of time, Richard,” she said.
    The door was closed after her, and I turned and went into my room. I shut the door and slowly began to undress. After I had blown out the lamp and had got into bed, I lay tensely awake. I knew I could never go to sleep, and I sat up in bed and smoked cigarette after cigarette, blowing the smoke through the screen at the window. The house was quiet. Occasionally, I thought I heard the sounds of muffled movements in Gretchen’s room across the hall, but I was not certain.
    I could not determine how long a time I had sat there on the edge of the bed, stiff and erect, thinking of Gretchen, when suddenly I found myself jumping to my feet. I opened the door and ran across the hall. Gretchen’s’ door was closed, but I knew it would not be locked, and I turned the knob noiselessly. A slender shaft of light broke through the opening I had made. It was not necessary to open the door wider, because I saw Gretchen only a few steps away, almost within arm’s reach of me. I closed my eyes tightly for a moment, thinking of her as I had all during the day’s ride up from the coast.
    Gretchen had not heard me open her door, and she did not know I was there. Her lamp was burning brightly on the table.
    I had not expected to find her awake, and I had thought surely she would be in bed. She knelt on the rug beside her bed, her head bowed over her arms and her body shaken with sobs.
    Gretchen’s hair was lying over her shoulders, tied over the top of her head with a pale blue ribbon. Her nightgown was white silk, hemmed with a delicate lace, and around her neck the collar of lace was thrown open.
    I knew how beautiful she was when I saw her then, even though I had always thought her lovely. I had never seen a girl so beautiful as Gretchen.
    She had not heard me at her door, and she still did not know I was there. She knelt beside her bed, her hands clenched before her, crying.
    When I had first opened the door, I did not know what I was about to do; but now that I had seen her in her room, kneeling in prayer beside her bed, unaware that I was looking upon her and hearing her words and sobs, I was certain that I could never care for anyone else as I did for her. I had not known until then, but in the revelation of a few seconds I knew that I did love her.
    I closed the door softly and went back to my room. There I found a chair and placed it beside the window to wait for the coming of day. At the window I sat and looked down into the bottom of the valley where the warm river lay. As my eyes grew more accustomed to the darkness, I felt as if I were coming closer and closer to it, so close that I might have reached out and touched the warm water with my hands.
    Later in the night, towards morning, I thought I heard someone in Gretchen’s room moving softly over the floor as one who would go from window to window. Once I was certain I heard someone in the hall, close to my door.
    When the sun rose over the top of the mountain, I got up and dressed. Later, I heard Gretchen leave her room and go downstairs, I knew she was hurrying to prepare breakfast for me before I left to get on the