MAIN STREET by SINCLAIR LEWIS

from marital relations to national politics, and she tried to
exult in it. Only she did not find it. She saw the women who
made bandages for the Red Cross giving up bridge, and
laughing at having to do without sugar, but over the surgicaldressings
they did not speak of God and the souls of men,
but of Miles Bjornstam's impudence, of Terry Gould's scandalous
carryings-on with a farmer's daughter four years ago,
of cooking cabbage, and of altering blouses. Their references
to the war touched atrocities only. She herself was
punctual, and efficient at making dressings, but she could not,
like Mrs. Lyman Cass and Mrs. Bogart, fill the dressings
with hate for enemies.
When she protested to Vida, "The young do the work while
these old ones sit around and interrupt us and gag with hate
because they're too feeble to do anything but hate," then
Vida turned on her:
"If you can't be reverent, at least don't be so pert and
opinionated, now when men and women are dying. Some of
us--we have given up so much, and we're glad to. At least
we expect that you others sha'n't try to be witty at our
expense."
There was weeping.
Carol did desire to see the Prussian autocracy defeated;
she did persuade herself that there were no autocracies save
that of Prussia; she did thrill to motion-pictures of troops
embarking in New York; and she was uncomfortable when she
met Miles Bjornstam on the street and he croaked:
"How's tricks? Things going fine with me; got two new
cows. Well, have you become a patriot? Eh? Sure, they'll
bring democracy--the democracy of death. Yes, sure, in every
war since the Garden of Eden the workmen have gone out to
fight each other for perfectly good reasons--handed to them
by their bosses. Now me, I'm wise. I'm so wise that I know
I don't know anything about the war."
It was not a thought of the war that remained with her
after Miles's declamation but a perception that she and Vida
and all of the good-intentioners who wanted to "do something
for the common people" were insignificant, because the
"common people" were able to do things for themselves,
and highly likely to, as soon as they learned the fact. The
conception of millions of workmen like Miles taking control
frightened her, and she scuttled rapidly away from the thought
of a time when she might no longer retain the position of
Lady Bountiful to the Bjornstams and Beas and Oscarinas
whom she loved--and patronized.
III
It was in June, two months after America's entrance into
the war, that the momentous event happened--the visit of
the great Percy Bresnahan, the millionaire president of the
Velvet Motor Car Company of Boston, the one native son
who was always to be mentioned to strangers.
For two weeks there were rumors. Sam Clark cried to
Kennicott, "Say, I hear Perce Bresnahan is coming! By
golly it'll be great to see the old scout, eh?" Finally the
Dauntless printed, on the front page with a No. 1 head, a letter
from Bresnahan to Jackson Elder:
DEAR JACK:
Well, Jack, I find I can make it. I'm to go to Washington as a
dollar a year man for the government, in the aviation motor section,
and tell them how much I don't know about carburetors. But before
I start in being a hero I want to shoot out and catch me a big black
bass and cuss out you and Sam Clark and Harry Haydock and Will
Kennicott and the rest of you pirates. I'll land in G. P. on June 7,
on No. 7 from Mpls. Shake a day-day. Tell Bert Tybee to save
me a glass of beer.
Sincerely yours,
Perce.
All members of the social, financial, scientific, literary, and
sporting sets were at No. 7 to meet Bresnahan; Mrs. Lyman
Cass was beside Del Snafflin the barber, and Juanita Haydock
almost cordial to Miss Villets the librarian. Carol saw Bresnahan
laughing down at them from the train vestibule--big,
immaculate, overjawed, with the eye of an executive. In the
voice of the professional Good Fellow he bellowed, "Howdy,
folks!" As she was introduced to him (not he to her) Bresnahan
looked into her eyes, and his hand-shake was warm, unhurried.
He declined the offers of motors; he walked off, his arm
about the shoulder of Nat Hicks the sporting tailor, with the
elegant Harry Haydock carrying one of his enormous pale
leather bags, Del Snafflin the other, Jack Elder bearing an
overcoat, and Julius Flickerbaugh the fishing-tackle. Carol
noted that though Bresnahan wore spats and a stick, no small
boy jeered. She decided, "I must have Will get a doublebreasted
blue coat and a wing collar and a dotted bow-tie
like his."
That evening, when Kennicott was trimming the grass along
the walk with sheep-shears, Bresnahan rolled up, alone. He
was now in corduroy trousers, khaki shirt open at the throat,
a white boating hat, and marvelous canvas-and-leather shoes
"On the job there, old Will! Say, my Lord, this is living, to
come back and get into a regular man-sized pair of pants.
They can talk all they want to about the city, but my idea
of a good time is to loaf around and see you boys and catch
a gamey bass!"
He hustled up the walk and blared at Carol, "Where's that
little fellow? I hear you've got one fine big he-boy that you're
holding out on me!"
"He's gone to bed," rather briefly.
"I know. And rules are rules, these days. Kids get routed
through the shop like a motor. But look here, sister; I'm
one great hand at busting rules. Come on now, let Uncle
Perce have a look at him. Please now, sister?"
He put his arm about her waist; it was a large, strong,
sophisticated arm, and very agreeable; he grinned at her with
a devastating knowingness, while Kennicott glowed inanely.
She flushed; she was alarmed by the ease with which the
big-city man invaded her guarded personality. She was glad,
in retreat, to scamper ahead of the two men up-stairs to the
hall-room in which Hugh slept. All the way Kennicott
muttered, "Well, well, say, gee whittakers but it's good to have
you back, certainly is good to see you!"
Hugh lay on his stomach, making an earnest business of
sleeping. He burrowed his eyes in the dwarf blue pillow to
escape the electric light, then sat up abruptly, small and frail
in his woolly nightdrawers, his floss of brown hair wild, the
pillow clutched to his breast. He wailed. He stared at the
stranger, in a manner of patient dismissal. He explained
confidentially to Carol, "Daddy wouldn't let it be morning
yet. What does the pillow say?"
Bresnahan dropped his arm caressingly on Carol's shoulder;
he pronounced, "My Lord, you're a lucky girl to have a fine
young husk like that. I figure Will knew what he was doing
when he persuaded you to take a chance on an old bum like
him! They tell me you come from St. Paul. We're going to
get you to come to Boston some day." He leaned over the
bed. "Young man, you're the slickest sight I've seen this
side of Boston. With your permission, may we present you
with a slight token of our regard and appreciation of your
long service?"
He held out a red rubber Pierrot. Hugh remarked, "Gimme
it," hid it under the bedclothes, and stared at Bresnahan
as though he had never seen the man before.
For once Carol permitted herself the spiritual luxury of
not asking "Why, Hugh dear, what do you say when some
one gives you a present?" The great man was apparently
waiting. They stood in inane suspense till Bresnahan led
them out, rumbling, "How about planning a fishing-trip,
Will?"
He remained for half an hour. Always he told Carol what
a charming person she was; always he looked at her knowingly.
"Yes. He probably would make a woman fall in love with
him. But it wouldn't last a week. I'd get tired of his
confounded buoyancy. His hypocrisy. He's a spiritual bully.
He makes me rude to him in self-defense. Oh yes, he is glad
to be here. He does like us. He's so good an actor that he
convinces his own self. . . . I'd HATE him in Boston.
He'd have all the obvious big-city things. Limousines.
Discreet evening-clothes. Order a clever dinner at a smart
restaurant. Drawing-room decorated by the best firm--but the
pictures giving him away. I'd rather talk to Guy Pollock in
his dusty office. . . . How I lie! His arm coaxed my
shoulder and his eyes dared me not to admire him. I'd be
afraid of him. I hate him! . . . Oh, the inconceivable
egotistic imagination of women! All this stew of analysss.
about a man, a good, decent, friendly, efficient man, because he
was kind to me, as Will's wife!"
IV
The Kennicotts, the Elders, the Clarks, and Bresnahan went
fishing at Red Squaw Lake. They drove forty miles to the lake
in Elder's new Cadillac. There was much laughter and bustle
at the start, much storing of lunch-baskets and jointed poles,
much inquiry as to whether it would really bother Carol to
sit with her feet up on a roll of shawls. When they were
ready to go Mrs. Clark lamented, "Oh, Sam, I forgot my
magazine," and Bresnahan bullied, "Come on now, if you
women think you're going to be literary, you can't go with
us tough guys!" Every one laughed a great deal, and as
they drove on Mrs. Clark explained that though probably she
would not have read it, still, she might have wanted to, while
the other girls had a nap in the afternoon, and she was right
in the middle of a serial--it was an awfully exciting story--
it seems that this girl was a Turkish dancer (only she was
really the daughter of an American lady and a Russian prince)
and men kept running after her, just disgustingly, but she
remained pure, and there was a scene----
While the men floated on the lake, casting for black bass,
the women prepared lunch and yawned. Carol was a little
resentful of the manner in which the men assumed that they
did not care to fish. "I don't want to go with them, but
I would like the privilege of refusing."
The lunch was long and pleasant. It was a background
for the talk of the great man come home, hints of cities and
large imperative affairs and famous people, jocosely modest
admissions that, yes, their friend Perce was doing about as
well as most of these "Boston swells that think so much of
themselves because they come from rich old families and went
to college and everything. Believe me, it's us new business men
that are running Beantown today, and not a lot of fussy old
bucks snoozing in their clubs!"
Carol realized that he was not one of the sons of Gopher
Prairie who, if they do not actually starve in the East, are
invariably spoken of as "highly successful"; and she found
behind his too incessant flattery a genuine affection for his
mates. It was in the matter of the war that he most favored
and thrilled them. Dropping his voice while they bent nearer
(there was no one within two miles to overhear), he disclosed
the fact that in both Boston and Washington he'd been getting
a lot of inside stuff on the war--right straight from
headquarters--he was in touch with some men--couldn't name
them but they were darn high up in both the War and State
Departments--and he would say--only for Pete's sake they
mustn't breathe one word of this; it was strictly on the Q.T.
and not generally known outside of Washington--but just
between ourselves--and they could take this for gospel--Spain
had finally decided to join the Entente allies in the Grand
Scrap. Yes, sir, there'd be two million fully equipped Spanish
soldiers fighting with us in France in one month now. Some
surprise for Germany, all right!
"How about the prospects for revolution in Germany?"
reverently asked Kennicott.
The authority grunted, "Nothing to it. The one thing you
can bet on is that no matter what happens to the German
people, win or lose, they'll stick by the Kaiser till hell freezes
over. I got that absolutely straight, from a fellow who's on
the inside of the inside in Washington. No, sir! I don't
pretend to know much about international affairs but one thing
you can put down as settled is that Germany will be a Hohenzollern
empire for the next forty years. At that, I don't know
as it's so bad. The Kaiser and the Junkers keep a firm hand
on a lot of these red agitators who'd be worse than a king if
they could get control."
"I'm terribly interested in this uprising that overthrew
the Czar in Russia," suggested Carol. She had finally been
conquered by the man's wizard knowledge of affairs.
Kennicott apologized for her: "Carrie's nuts about this
Russian revolution. Is there much to it, Perce?"
"There is not!" Bresnahan said flatly. "I can speak by
the book there. Carol, honey, I'm surprised to find you talking
like a New York Russian Jew, or one of these long-hairs! I
can tell you, only you don't need to let every one in on it,
this is confidential, I got it from a man who's close to the
State Department, but as a matter of fact the Czar will be back
in power before the end of the year. You read a lot about
his retiring and about his being killed, but I know he's got a
big army back of him, and he'll show these damn agitators,
lazy beggars hunting for a soft berth bossing the poor goats
that fall for 'em, he'll show 'em where they get off!"
Carol was sorry to hear that the Czar was coming back,
but she said nothing. The others had looked vacant at the
mention of a country so far away as Russia. Now they edged
in and asked Bresnahan what he thought about the Packard
car, investments in Texas oil-wells, the comparative merits of
young men born in Minnesota and in Massachusetts, the question
of prohibition, the future cost of motor tires, and wasn't
it true that American aviators put it all over these Frenchmen?
They were glad to find that he agreed with them on every
point.
As she heard Bresnahan announce, "We're perfectly willing
to talk to any committee the men may choose, but we're not
going to stand for some outside agitator butting in and telling
us how we're going to run our plant!" Carol remembered
that Jackson Elder (now meekly receiving New Ideas) had
said the same thing in the same words.
While Sam Clark was digging up from his memory a long
and immensely detailed story of the crushing things he had
said to a Pullman porter, named George, Bresnahan hugged
his knees and rocked and watched Carol. She wondered if he
did not understand the laboriousness of the smile with which
she listened to Kennicott's account of the "good one he had
on Carrie," that marital, coyly improper, ten-times-told tale
of how she had forgotten to attend to Hugh because she was
"all het up pounding the box"--which may be translated as
"eagerly playing the piano." She was certain that Bresnahan
saw through her when she pretended not to hear Kennicott's
invitation to join a game of cribbage. She feared the comments
he might make; she was irritated by her fear.
She was equally irritated, when the motor returned through
Gopher Prairie, to find that she was proud of sharing in
Bresnahan's kudos as people waved, and Juanita Haydock
leaned from a window. She said to herself, "As though I
cared whether I'm seen with this fat phonograph!" and
simultaneously, "Everybody has noticed how much Will and
I are playing with Mr. Bresnahan."
The town was full of his stories, his friendliness, his memory
for names, his clothes, his trout-flies, his generosity. He had
given a hundred dollars to Father Klubok the priest, and a
hundred to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel the Baptist minister,
for Americanization work.
At the Bon Ton, Carol heard Nat Hicks the tailor exulting:
"Old Perce certainly pulled a good one on this fellow
Bjornstam that always is shooting off his mouth. He's
supposed to of settled down since he got married, but Lord,
those fellows that think they know it all, they never change.
Well, the Red Swede got the grand razz handed to him, all
right. He had the nerve to breeze up to Perce, at Dave Dyer's,
and he said, he said to Perce, `I've always wanted to look
at a man that was so useful that folks would pay him a million
dollars for existing,' and Perce gave him the once-over and
come right back, `Have, eh?' he says. `Well,' he says, `I've
been looking for a man so useful sweeping floors that I could
pay him four dollars a day. Want the job, my friend?' Ha,
ha, ha! Say, you know how lippy Bjornstam is? Well for
once he didn't have a thing to say. He tried to get fresh,
and tell what a rotten town this is, and Perce come right
back at him, `If you don't like this country, you better get
out of it and go back to Germany, where you belong!' Say,
maybe us fellows didn't give Bjornstam the horse-laugh though!
Oh, Perce is the white-haired boy in this burg, all rightee!"
V
Bresnahan had borrowed Jackson Elder's motor; he stopped
at the Kennicotts'; he bawled at Carol, rocking with Hugh
en the porch, "Better come for a ride."
She wanted to snub him. "Thanks so much, but I'm being
maternal."
"Bring him along! Bring him along!" Bresnahan was
out of the seat, stalking up the sidewalk, and the rest of her
protests and dignities were feeble.
She did not bring Hugh along.
Bresnahan was silent for a mile, in words, But he looked
at her as though he meant her to know that he understood
everything she thought.
She observed how deep was his chest.
"Lovely fields over there," he said.
"You really like them? There's no profit in them."
He chuckled. "Sister, you can't get away with it. I'm
onto you. You consider me a big bluff. Well, maybe I am.
But so are you, my dear--and pretty enough so that I'd
try to make love to you, if I weren't afraid you'd slap me."
"Mr. Bresnahan, do you talk that way to your' wife's
friends? And do you call them `sister'?"
"As a matter of fact, I do! And I make 'em like it.
Score two!" But his chuckle was not so rotund, and he was
very attentive to the ammeter.
In a moment he was cautiously attacking: "That's a wonderful
boy, Will Kennicott. Great work these country practitioners
are doing. The other day, in Washington, I was
talking to a big scientific shark, a professor in Johns Hopkins
medical school, and he was saying that no one has ever
sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the
sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the
young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped
up in their laboratories that they miss the human element.
Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable
human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc
that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me
that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter
practitioners I've ever met. Eh?"
"I'm sure he is. He's a servant of reality."
"Come again? Um. Yes. All of that, whatever that is. . . .
Say, child, you don't care a whole lot for Gopher Prairie,
if I'm not mistaken."
"Nope."
"There's where you're missing a big chance. There's nothing
to these cities. Believe me, I KNOW! This is a good town,
as they go. You're lucky to be here. I wish I could shy on!"
"Very well, why don't you?"
"Huh? Why--Lord--can't get away fr----"
"You don't have to stay. I do! So I want to change it.
Do you know that men like you, prominent men, do quite a
reasonable amount of harm by insisting that your native towns
and native states are perfect? It's you who encourage the
denizens not to change. They quote you, and go on believing
that they live in paradise, and----" She clenched her fist.
"The incredible dullness of it!"
"Suppose you were right. Even so, don't you think you
waste a lot of thundering on one poor scared little town?
Kind of mean!"
"I tell you it's dull. DULL!"
"The folks don't find it dull. These couples like the
Haydocks have a high old time; dances and cards----"
"They don't. They're bored. Almost every one here is.
Vacuousness and bad manners and spiteful gossip--that's what
I hate."
"Those things--course they're here. So are they in Boston!
And every place else! Why, the faults you find in this town
are simply human nature, and never will be changed."
"Perhaps. But in a Boston all the good Carols (I'll admit
I have no faults) can find one another and play. But here--
I'm alone, in a stale pool--except as it's stirred by the great
Mr. Bresnahan!"
"My Lord, to hear you tell it, a fellow 'd think that all
the denizens, as you impolitely call 'em, are so confoundedly
unhappy that it's a wonder they don't all up and commit
suicide. But they seem to struggle along somehow!"
"They don't know what they miss. And anybody can
endure anything. Look at men in mines and in prisons."
He drew up on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie.
He glanced across the reeds reflected on the water, the quiver
of wavelets like crumpled tinfoil, the distant shores patched
with dark woods, silvery oats and deep yellow wheat. He
patted her hand. "Sis---- Carol, you're a darling girl, but
you're difficult. Know what I think?"
"Yes."
"Humph. Maybe you do, but---- My humble (not too
humble!) opinion is that you like to be different. You like
to think you're peculiar. Why, if you knew how many tens
of thousands of women, especially in New York, say just what
you do, you'd lose all the fun of thinking you're a lone genius
and you'd be on the band-wagon whooping it up for Gopher
Prairie and a good decent family life. There's always about
a million young women just out of college who want to teach
their grandmothers how to suck eggs."
"How proud you are of that homely rustic metaphor! You
use it at `banquets' and directors' meetings, and boast of
your climb from a humble homestead."
"Huh! You may have my number. I'm not telling. But
look here: You're so prejudiced against Gopher Prairie that
you overshoot the mark; you antagonize those who might be
inclined to agree with you in some particulars but---- Great
guns, the town can't be all wrong!"
"No, it isn't. But it could be. Let me tell you a fable.
Imagine a cavewoman complaining to her mate. She doesn't
like one single thing; she hates the damp cave, the rats
running over her bare legs, the stiff skin garments, the eating
of half-raw meat, her husband's bushy face, the constant
battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her
unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace. Her man
protests, `But it can't all be wrong!' and he thinks he has
reduced her to absurdity. Now you assume that a world
which produces a Percy Bresnahan and a Velvet Motor Company
must be civilized. It is? Aren't we only about half-way
along in barbarism? I suggest Mrs. Bogart as a test. And
we'll continue in barbarism just as long as people as nearly
intelligent as you continue to defend things as they are
because they are."
"You're a fair spieler, child. But, by golly, I'd like to see
you try to design a new manifold, or run a factory and keep
a lot of your fellow reds from Czech-slovenski-magyargodknowswheria
on the job! You'd drop your theories so
darn quick! I'm not any defender of things as they are.
Sure. They're rotten. Only I'm sensible."
He preached his gospel: love of outdoors, Playing the Game,
loyalty to friends. She had the neophyte's shock of discovery
that, outside of tracts, conservatives do not tremble and find
no answer when an iconoclast turns on them, but retort with
agility and confusing statistics.
He was so much the man, the worker, the friend, that she
liked him when she most tried to stand out against him; he
was so much the successful executive that she did not want
him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called
"parlor socialists" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly
new) had a power which made her wish to placate his
company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he
demanded, "Would you like to associate with nothing but a
lot of turkey-necked, horn-spectacled nuts that have
adenoids and need a hair-cut, and that spend all their time kicking
about `conditions' and never do a lick of work?" she said,
"No, but just the same----" When he asserted, "Even if
your cavewoman was right in knocking the whole works, I
bet some red-blooded Regular Fellow, some real He-man,
found her a nice dry cave, and not any whining criticizing
radical," she wriggled her head feebly, between a nod and a
shake.
His large hands, sensual lips, easy voice supported his selfconfidence.
He made her feel young and soft--as Kennicott
had once made her feel. She had nothing to say when he
bent his powerful head and experimented, "My dear, I'm
sorry I'm going away from this town. You'd be a darling
child to play with. You ARE pretty! Some day in Boston
I'll show you how we buy a lunch. Well, hang it, got to be
starting back."
The only answer to his gospel of beef which she could find,
when she was home, was a wail of "But just the same----"
She did not see him again before he departed for Washington.
His eyes remained. His glances at her lips and hair and
shoulders had revealed to her that she was not a wife-andmother
alone, but a girl; that there still were men in the
world, as there had been in college days.
That admiration led her to study Kennicott, to tear at the
shroud of intimacy, to perceive the strangeness of the most
familiar.
CHAPTER XXIV
I
ALL that midsummer month Carol was sensitive to Kennicott.
She recalled a hundred grotesqueries: her comic dismay at
his having chewed tobacco, the evening when she had tried
to read poetry to him; matters which had seemed to vanish
with no trace or sequence. Always she repeated that he had
been heroically patient in his desire to join the army. She
made much of her consoling affection for him in little things.
She liked the homeliness of his tinkering about the house; his
strength and handiness as he tightened the hinges of a shutter;
his boyishness when he ran to her to be comforted because he
had found rust in the barrel of his pump-gun. But at the
highest he was to her another Hugh, without the glamor of
Hugh's unknown future.
There was, late in June, a day of heat-lightning.
Because of the work imposed by the absence of the other
doctors the Kennicotts had not moved to the lake cottage
but remained in town, dusty and irritable. In the afternoon,
when she went to Oleson & McGuire's (formerly Dahl &
Oleson's), Carol was vexed by the assumption of the youthful
clerk, recently come from the farm, that he had to be
neighborly and rude. He was no more brusquely familiar than
a dozen other clerks of the town, but her nerves were heatscorched.
When she asked for codfish, for supper, he grunted, "What
d'you want that darned old dry stuff for?"
"I like it!"
"Punk! Guess the doc can afford something better than
that. Try some of the new wienies we got in. Swell. The
Haydocks use 'em."
She exploded. "My dear young man, it is not your duty to
instruct me in housekeeping, and it doesn't particularly
concern me what the Haydocks condescend to approve!"
He was hurt. He hastily wrapped up the leprous fragment
of fish; he gaped as she trailed out. She lamented, "I
shouldn't have spoken so. He didn't mean anything. He
doesn't know when he is being rude."
Her repentance was not proof against Uncle Whittier when
she stopped in at his grocery for salt and a package of
safety matches. Uncle Whittier, in a shirt collarless and soaked
with sweat in a brown streak down his back, was whining
at a clerk, "Come on now, get a hustle on and lug that pound
cake up to Mis' Cass's. Some folks in this town think a
storekeeper ain't got nothing to do but chase out 'phoneorders.
. . . Hello, Carrie. That dress you got on looks
kind of low in the neck to me. May be decent and modest--
I suppose I'm old-fashioned--but I never thought much of
showing the whole town a woman's bust! Hee, hee, hee!
. . . . Afternoon, Mrs. Hicks. Sage? Just out of it.
Lemme sell you some other spices. Heh?" Uncle Whittier was
nasally indignant "CERTAINLY! Got PLENTY other spices jus'
good as sage for any purp'se whatever! What's the matter
with--well, with allspice?" When Mrs. Hicks had gone, he
raged, "Some folks don't know what they want!"
"Sweating sanctimonious bully--my husband's uncle!"
thought Carol.
She crept into Dave Dyer's. Dave held up his arms with,
"Don't shoot! I surrender!" She smiled, but it occurred to
her that for nearly five years Dave had kept up this game of
pretending that she threatened his life.
As she went dragging through the prickly-hot street she
reflected that a citizen of Gopher Prairie does not have jests--
he has a jest. Every cold morning for five winters Lyman Cass
had remarked, "Fair to middlin' chilly--get worse before it
gets better." Fifty times had Ezra Stowbody informed the
public that Carol had once asked, "Shall I indorse this check
on the back?" Fifty times had Sam Clark called to her,
"Where'd you steal that hat?" Fifty times had the mention
of Barney Cahoon, the town drayman, like a nickel in a slot
produced from Kennicott the apocryphal story of Barney's
directing a minister, "Come down to the depot and get your
case of religious books--they're leaking!"
She came home by the unvarying route. She knew every
house-front, every street-crossing, every billboard, every tree,
every dog. She knew every blackened banana-skin and empty
cigarette-box in the gutters. She knew every greeting. When
Jim Howland stopped and gaped at her there was no possibility
that he was about to confide anything but his grudging, "Well,
haryuh t'day?"
All her future life, this same red-labeled bread-crate in
front of the bakery, this same thimble-shaped crack in the
sidewalk a quarter of a block beyond Stowbody's granite hitchingpost----
She silently handed her purchases to the silent Oscarina.
She sat on the porch, rocking, fanning, twitchy with Hugh's
whining.
Kennicott came home, grumbled, "What the devil is the kid
yapping about?"
"I guess you can stand it ten minutes if I can stand it all
day!"
He came to supper in his shirt sleeves, his vest partly open,
revealing discolored suspenders.
"Why don't you put on your nice Palm Beach suit, and take
off that hideous vest?" she complained.
"Too much trouble. Too hot to go up-stairs."
She realized that for perhaps a year she had not definitely
looked at her husband. She regarded his table-manners. He
violently chased fragments of fish about his plate with a knife
and licked the knife after gobbling them. She was slightly
sick. She asserted, "I'm ridiculous. What do these things
matter! Don't be so simple!" But she knew that to her they
did matter, these solecisms and mixed tenses of the table.
She realized that they found little to say; that, incredibly,
they were like the talked-out couples whom she had pitied at
restaurants.
Bresnahan would have spouted in a lively, exciting,
unreliable manner. . . .
She realized that Kennicott's clothes were seldom pressed.
His coat was wrinkled; his trousers would flap at the knees
when he arose. His shoes were unblacked, and they were of
an elderly shapelessness. He refused to wear soft hats;
cleaved to a hard derby, as a symbol of virility and
prosperity; and sometimes he forgot to take it off in the house.
She peeped at his cuffs. They were frayed in prickles of
starched linen. She had turned them once; she clipped them
every week; but when she had begged him to throw the
shirt away, last Sunday morning at the crisis of the weekly
bath, he had uneasily protested, "Oh, it'll wear quite a while
yet."
He was shaved (by himself or more socially by Del Snafflin)
only three times a week. This morning had not been one of
the three times.
Yet he was vain of his new turn-down collars and sleek ties;
he often spoke of the "sloppy dressing" of Dr. McGanum;
and he laughed at old men who wore detachable cuffs or
Gladstone collars.
Carol did not care much for the creamed codfish that
evening.
She noted that his nails were jagged and ill-shaped from
his habit of cutting them with a pocket-knife and despising
a nail-file as effeminate and urban. That they were invariably
clean, that his were the scoured fingers of the surgeon, made
his stubborn untidiness the more jarring. They were wise
hands, kind hands, but they were not the hands of love.
She remembered him in the days of courtship. He had tried
to please her, then, had touched her by sheepishly wearing
a colored band on his straw hat. Was it possible that those
days of fumbling for each other were gone so completely?
He had read books, to impress her; had said (she recalled it
ironically) that she was to point out his every fault; had
insisted once, as they sat in the secret place beneath the walls
of Fort Snelling----
She shut the door on her thoughts. That was sacred ground.
But it WAS a shame that----
She nervously pushed away her cake and stewed apricots.
After supper, when they had been driven in from the porch
by mosquitos, when Kennicott had for the two-hundredth
time in five years commented, "We must have a new screen
on the porch--lets all the bugs in," they sat reading, and she
noted, and detested herself for noting, and noted again his
habitual awkwardness. He slumped down in one chair, his
legs up on another, and he explored the recesses of his left
ear with the end of his little finger--she could hear the
faint smack--he kept it up--he kept it up----
He blurted, "Oh. Forgot tell you. Some of the fellows coming
in to play poker this evening. Suppose we could have some
crackers and cheese and beer?"
She nodded.
"He might have mentioned it before. Oh well, it's his
house."
The poker-party straggled in: Sam Clark, Jack Elder,
Dave Dyer, Jim Howland. To her they mechanically said,
" 'Devenin'," but to Kennicott, in a heroic male manner,
"Well, well, shall we start playing? Got a hunch I'm going
to lick somebody real bad." No one suggested that she join
them. She told herself that it was her own fault, because
she was not more friendly; but she remembered that they
never asked Mrs. Sam Clark to play.
Bresnahan would have asked her.
She sat in the living-room, glancing across the hall at the
men as they humped over the dining table.
They were in shirt sleeves; smoking, chewing, spitting
incessantly; lowering their voices for a moment so that she
did not hear what they said and afterward giggling hoarsely;
using over and over the canonical phrases: "Three to dole,"
"I raise you a finif," "Come on now, ante up; what do you
think this is, a pink tea?" The cigar-smoke was acrid and
pervasive. The firmness with which the men mouthed their
cigars made the lower part of their faces expressionless, heavy,
unappealing. They were like politicians cynically dividing
appointments.
How could they understand her world?
Did that faint and delicate world exist? Was she a fool?
She doubted her world, doubted herself, and was sick in the
acid, smoke-stained air.
She slipped back into brooding upon the habituality of the
house.
Kennicott was as fixed in routine as an isolated old man.
At first he had amorously deceived himself into liking her
experiments with food--the one medium in which she could
express imagination--but now he wanted only his round of
favorite dishes: steak, roast beef, boiled pig's-feet, oatmeal,
baked apples. Because at some more flexible period he had advanced
from oranges to grape-fruit he considered himself an epicure.
During their first autumn she had smiled over his affection
for his hunting-coat, but now that the leather had come
unstitched in dribbles of pale yellow thread, and tatters of
canvas, smeared with dirt of the fields and grease from guncleaning,
hung in a border of rags, she hated the thing.
Wasn't her whole life like that hunting-coat?
She knew every nick and brown spot on each piece of the
set of china purchased by Kennicott's mother in 1895--discreet
china with a pattern of washed-out forget-me-nots, rimmed
with blurred gold: the gravy-boat, in a saucer which did not
match, the solemn and evangelical covered vegetable-dishes,
the two platters.
Twenty times had Kennicott sighed over the fact that Bea
had broken the other platter--the medium-sized one.
The kitchen.
Damp black iron sink, damp whitey-yellow drain-board with
shreds of discolored wood which from long scrubbing were
as soft as cotton thread, warped table, alarm clock, stove
bravely blackened by Oscarina but an abomination in its
loose doors and broken drafts and oven that never would keep
an even heat.
Carol had done her best by the kitchen: painted it white,
put up curtains, replaced a six-year-old calendar by a color
print. She had hoped for tiling, and a kerosene range for
summer cooking, but Kennicott always postponed these expenses.
She was better acquainted with the utensils in the kitchen
than with Vida Sherwin or Guy Pollock. The can-opener,
whose soft gray metal handle was twisted from some ancient
effort to pry open a window, was more pertinent to her than
all the cathedrals in Europe; and more significant than the
future of Asia was the never-settled weekly question as to
whether the small kitchen knife with the unpainted handle or
the second-best buckhorn carving-knife was better for cutting
up cold chicken for Sunday supper.
II
She was ignored by the males till midnight. Her husband
called, "Suppose we could have some eats, Carrie?" As she
passed through the dining-room the men smiled on her, bellysmiles.
None of them noticed her while she was serving the
crackers and cheese and sardines and beer. They were
determining the exact psychology of Dave Dyer in standing
pat, two hours before.
When they were gone she said to Kennicott, "Your friends
have the manners of a barroom. They expect me to wait on
them like a servant. They're not so much interested in me as
they would be in a waiter, because they don't have to tip me.
Unfortunately! Well, good night."
So rarely did she nag in this petty, hot-weather fashion
that he was astonished rather than angry. "Hey! Wait!
What's the idea? I must say I don't get you. The boys----
Barroom? Why, Perce Bresnahan was saying there isn't a
finer bunch of royal good fellows anywhere than just the
crowd that were here tonight!"
They stood in the lower hall. He was too shocked to go on
with his duties of locking the front door and winding his
watch and the clock.
"Bresnahan! I'm sick of him!" She meant nothing in
particular.
"Why, Carrie, he's one of the biggest men in the country!
Boston just eats out of his hand!"
"I wonder if it does? How do we know but that in Boston,
among well-bred people, he may be regarded as an absolute
lout? The way he calls women `Sister,' and the way----"
"Now look here! That'll do! Of course I know you don't
mean it--you're simply hot and tired, and trying to work
off your peeve on me. But just the same, I won't stand your
jumping on Perce. You---- It's just like your attitude
toward the war-so darn afraid that America will become
militaristic----"
"But you are the pure patriot!"
"By God, I am!"
"Yes, I heard you talking to Sam Clark tonight about ways
of avoiding the income tax!"
He had recovered enough to lock the door; he clumped
up-stairs ahead of her, growling, "You don't know what you're
talking about. I'm perfectly willing to pay my full tax--fact,
I'm in favor of the income tax--even though I do think it's
a penalty on frugality and enterprise--fact, it's an unjust,
darn-fool tax. But just the same, I'll pay it. Only, I'm not
idiot enough to pay more than the government makes me pay,
and Sam and I were just figuring out whether all automobile
expenses oughn't to be exemptions. I'll take a lot off you,
Carrie, but I don't propose for one second to stand your saying
I'm not patriotic. You know mighty well and good that
I've tried to get away and join the army. And at the beginning
of the whole fracas I said--I've said right along--that we
ought to have entered the war the minute Germany invaded
Belgium. You don't get me at all. You can't appreciate
a man's work. You're abnormal. You've fussed so much
with these fool novels and books and all this highbrow
junk---- You like to argue!"
It ended, a quarter of an hour later, in his calling her a
"neurotic" before he turned away and pretended to sleep.
For the first time they had failed to make peace.
"There are two races of people, only two, and they live side
by side. His calls mine `neurotic'; mine calls his `stupid.'
We'll never understand each other, never; and it's madness
for us to debate--to lie together in a hot bed in a creepy
room--enemies, yoked."
III
It clarified in her the longing for a place of her own.
"While it's so hot, I think I'll sleep in the spare room," she
said next day.
"Not a bad idea." He was cheerful and kindly.
The room was filled with a lumbering double bed and a
cheap pine bureau. She stored the bed in the attic; replaced
it by a cot which, with a denim cover, made a couch by
day; put in a dressing-table, a rocker transformed by a cretonne
cover; had Miles Bjornstam build book-shelves.
Kennicott slowly understood that she meant to keep up
her seclusion. In his queries, "Changing the whole room?"
"Putting your books in there?" she caught his dismay. But
it was so easy, once her door was closed, to shut out his worry.
That hurt her--the ease of forgetting him.
Aunt Bessie Smail sleuthed out this anarchy. She yammered,
"Why, Carrie, you ain't going to sleep all alone by yourself?
I don't believe in that. Married folks should have the
same room, of course! Don't go getting silly notions.
No telling what a thing like that might lead to. Suppose I
up and told your Uncle Whit that I wanted a room of my own!"
Carol spoke of recipes for corn-pudding.
But from Mrs. Dr. Westlake she drew encouragement. She
had made an afternoon call on Mrs. Westlake. She was for
the first time invited up-stairs, and found the suave old
woman sewing in a white and mahogany room with a small
bed.
"Oh, do you have your own royal apartments, and the
doctor his?" Carol hinted.
"Indeed I do! The doctor says it's bad enough to have to
stand my temper at meals. Do----" Mrs. Westlake looked
at her sharply. "Why, don't you do the same thing?"
"I've been thinking about it." Carol laughed in an
embarrassed way. "Then you wouldn't regard me as a complete
hussy if I wanted to be by myself now and then?"
"Why, child, every woman ought to get off by herself and
turn over her thoughts--about children, and God, and how
bad her complexion is, and the way men don't really understand
her, and how much work she finds to do in the house,
and how much patience it takes to endure some things in a
man's love."
"Yes!" Carol said it in a gasp, her hands twisted
together. She wanted to confess not only her hatred for the
Aunt Bessies but her covert irritation toward those she best
loved: her alienation from Kennicott, her disappointment in
Guy Pollock, her uneasiness in the presence of Vida. She had
enough self-control to confine herself to, "Yes. Men! The dear
blundering souls, we do have to get off and laugh at them."
"Of course we do. Not that you have to laugh at Dr.
Kennicott so much, but MY man, heavens, now there's a
rare old bird! Reading story-books when he ought to be tending
to business! `Marcus Westlake,' I say to him, `you're a
romantic old fool.' And does he get angry? He does not!
He chuckles and says, `Yes, my beloved, folks do say that
married people grow to resemble each other!' Drat him!"
Mrs. Westlake laughed comfortably.
After such a disclosure what could Carol do but return
the courtesy by remarking that as for Kennicott, he wasn't
romantic enough--the darling. Before she left she had babbled
to Mrs. Westlake her dislike for Aunt Bessie, the fact that
Kennicott's income was now more than five thousand a year,
her view of the reason why Vida had married Raymie (which
included some thoroughly insincere praise of Raymie's "kind
heart"), her opinion of the library-board, just what Kennicott
had said about Mrs. Carthal's diabetes, and what Kennicott
thought of the several surgeons in the Cities.
She went home soothed by confession, inspirited by finding
a new friend.
IV
The tragicomedy of the "domestic situation."
Oscarina went back home to help on the farm, and Carol had
a succession of maids, with gaps between. The lack of servants
was becoming one of the most cramping problems of the prairie
town. Increasingly the farmers' daughters rebelled against
village dullness, and against the unchanged attitude of the
Juanitas toward "hired girls." They went off to city kitchens,
or to city shops and factories, that they might be free and
even human after hours.
The Jolly Seventeen were delighted at Carol's desertion by
the loyal Oscarina. They reminded her that she had said, "I
don't have any trouble with maids; see how Oscarina stays on."
Between incumbencies of Finn maids from the North Woods,
Germans from the prairies, occasional Swedes and Norwegians
and Icelanders, Carol did her own work--and endured Aunt
Bessie's skittering in to tell her how to dampen a broom for
fluffy dust, how to sugar doughnuts, how to stuff a goose.
Carol was deft, and won shy praise from Kennicott, but as her
shoulder blades began to sting, she wondered how many
millions of women had lied to themselves during the deathrimmed
years through which they had pretended to enjoy the
puerile methods persisting in housework.
She doubted the convenience and, as a natural sequent, the
sanctity of the monogamous and separate home which she had
regarded as the basis of all decent life.
She considered her doubts vicious. She refused to remember
how many of the women of the Jolly Seventeen nagged their
husbands and were nagged by them.
She energetically did not whine to Kennicott. But her eyes
ached; she was not the girl in breeches and a flannel shirt who
had cooked over a camp-fire in the Colorado mountains five
years ago. Her ambition was to get to bed at nine; her
strongest emotion was resentment over rising at half-past six
to care for Hugh. The back of her neck ached as she got out
of bed. She was cynical about the joys of a simple laborious
life. She understood why workmen and workmen's wives are
not grateful to their kind employers.
At mid-morning, when she was momentarily free from the
ache in her neck and back, she was glad of the reality of
work. The hours were living and nimble. But she had no
desire to read the eloquent little newspaper essays in praise of
labor which are daily written by the white-browed journalistic
prophets. She felt independent and (though she hid it)
a bit surly.
In cleaning the house she pondered upon the maid's-room.
It was a slant-roofed, small-windowed hole above the kitchen,
oppressive in summer, frigid in winter. She saw that while
she had been considering herself an unusually good mistress,
she had been permitting her friends Bea and Oscarina to live
in a sty. She complained to Kennicott. "What's the matter
with it?" he growled, as they stood on the perilous stairs
dodging up from the kitchen. She commented upon the sloping
roof of unplastered boards stained in brown rings by the
rain, the uneven floor, the cot and its tumbled discouragedlooking
quilts, the broken rocker, the distorting mirror.
"Maybe it ain't any Hotel Radisson parlor, but still, it's
so much better than anything these hired girls are accustomed
to at home that they think it's fine. Seems foolish to spend
money when they wouldn't appreciate it."
But that night he drawled, with the casualness of a man who
wishes to be surprising and delightful, "Carrie, don't know
but what we might begin to think about building a new
house, one of these days. How'd you like that?"
"W-why----"
"I'm getting to the point now where I feel we can afford
one--and a corker! I'll show this burg something like a real
house! We'll put one over on Sam and Harry! Make folks
sit up an' take notice!"
"Yes," she said.
He did not go on.
Daily he returned to the subject of the new house, but as
to time and mode he was indefinite. At first she believed.
She babbled of a low stone house with lattice windows and
tulip-beds, of colonial brick, of a white frame cottage with
green shutters and dormer windows. To her enthusiasms he
answered, "Well, ye-es, might be worth thinking about.
Remember where I put my pipe?" When she pressed him he
fidgeted, "I don't know; seems to me those kind of houses you
speak of have been overdone."
It proved that what he wanted was a house exactly like
Sam Clark's, which was exactly like every third new house in
every town in the country: a square, yellow stolidity with immaculate
clapboards, a broad screened porch, tidy grass-plots,
and concrete walks; a house resembling the mind of a
merchant who votes the party ticket straight and goes to church
once a month and owns a good car.
He admitted, "Well, yes, maybe it isn't so darn artistic
but---- Matter of fact, though, I don't want a place just like
Sam's. Maybe I would cut off that fool tower he's got, and
I think probably it would look better painted a nice cream
color. That yellow on Sam's house is too kind of flashy.
Then there's another kind of house that's mighty nice and
substantial-looking, with shingles, in a nice brown stain,
instead of clapboards--seen some in Minneapolis. You're way
off your base when you say I only like one kind of house!"
Uncle Whittier and Aunt Bessie came in one evening when
Carol was sleepily advocating a rose-garden cottage.
"You've had a lot of experience with housekeeping, aunty,
and don't you think," Kennicott appealed, "that it would be
sensible to have a nice square house, and pay more attention
to getting a crackajack furnace than to all this architecture
and doodads?"
Aunt Bessie worked her lips as though they were an elastic
band. "Why of course! I know how it is with young folks
like you, Carrie; you want towers and bay-windows and pianos
and heaven knows what all, but the thing to get is closets and
a good furnace and a handy place to hang out the washing, and
the rest don't matter."
Uncle Whittier dribbled a little, put his face near to Carol's,
and sputtered, "Course it don't! What d'you care what folks
think about the outside of your house? It's the inside you're
living in. None of my business, but I must say you young
folks that'd rather have cakes than potatoes get me riled."
She reached her room before she became savage. Below,
dreadfully near, she could hear the broom-swish of Aunt
Bessie's voice, and the mop-pounding of Uncle Whittier's
grumble. She had a reasonless dread that they would
intrude on her, then a fear that she would yield to Gopher
Prairie's conception of duty toward an Aunt Bessie and go
down-stairs to be "nice." She felt the demand for standardized
behavior coming in waves from all the citizens who sat
in their sitting-rooms watching her with respectable eyes,
waiting, demanding, unyielding. She snarled, "Oh, all right,
I'll go!" She powdered her nose, straightened her collar,
and coldly marched down-stairs. The three elders ignored
her. They had advanced from the new house to agreeable
general fussing. Aunt Bessie was saying, in a tone like the
munching of dry toast:
"I do think Mr. Stowbody ought to have had the rain-pipe
fixed at our store right away. I went to see him on Tuesday
morning before ten, no, it was couple minutes after ten, but
anyway, it was long before noon--I know because I went right
from the bank to the meat market to get some steak--my! I
think it's outrageous, the prices Oleson & McGuire charge for
their meat, and it isn't as if they gave you a good cut either
but just any old thing, and I had time to get it, and I
stopped in at Mrs. Bogart's to ask about her rheumatism----"
Carol was watching Uncle Whittier. She knew from his
taut expression that he was not listening to Aunt Bessie but
herding his own thoughts, and that he would interrupt her
bluntly. He did:
"Will, where c'n I get an extra pair of pants for this coat
and vest? D' want to pay too much."
"Well, guess Nat Hicks could make you up a pair. But
if I were you, I'd drop into Ike Rifkin's--his prices are lower
than the Bon Ton's."
"Humph. Got the new stove in your office yet?"
"No, been looking at some at Sam Clark's but----"
"Well, y' ought get 't in. Don't do to put off getting a
stove all summer, and then have it come cold on you in the
fall."
Carol smiled upon them ingratiatingly. "Do you dears
mind if I slip up to bed? I'm rather tired--cleaned the
upstairs today."
She retreated. She was certain that they were discussing
her, and foully forgiving her. She lay awake till she heard the
distant creak of a bed which indicated that Kennicott had
retired. Then she felt safe.
It was Kennicott who brought up the matter of the Smails
at breakfast. With no visible connection he said, "Uncle
Whit is kind of clumsy, but just the same, he's a pretty wise
old coot. He's certainly making good with the store."
Carol smiled, and Kennicott was pleased that she had come
to her senses. "As Whit says, after all the first thing is to
have the inside of a house right, and darn the people on the
outside looking in!"
It seemed settled that the house was to be a sound example
of the Sam Clark school.
Kennicott made much of erecting it entirely for her and the
baby. He spoke of closets for her frocks, and "a comfy sewingroom."
But when he drew on a leaf from an old accountbook
(he was a paper-saver and a string-picker) the plans for
the garage, he gave much more attention to a cement floor
and a work-bench and a gasoline-tank than he had to sewingrooms.
She sat back and was afraid.
In the present rookery there were odd things--a step up
from the hall to the dining-room, a picturesqueness in the shed
and bedraggled lilac bush. But the new place would be smooth,
standardized, fixed. It was probable, now that Kennicott was
past forty, and settled, that this would be the last venture
he would ever make in building. So long as she stayed in this
ark, she would always have a possibility of change, but once
she was in the new house, there she would sit for all the rest
of her life--there she would die. Desperately she wanted to
put it off, against the chance of miracles. While Kennicott
was chattering about a patent swing-door for the garage she
saw the swing-doors of a prison.
She never voluntarily returned to the project. Aggrieved,
Kennicott stopped drawing plans, and in ten days the new
house was forgotten.
V
Every year since their marriage Carol had longed for a trip
through the East. Every year Kennicott had talked of
attending the American Medical Association convention, "and
then afterwards we could do the East up brown. I know New
York clean through--spent pretty near a week there--but I
would like to see New England and all these historic places
and have some sea-food." He talked of it from February to
May, and in May he invariably decided that coming confinementcases
or land-deals would prevent his "getting away from
home-base for very long THIS year--and no sense going till we
can do it right."
The weariness of dish-washing had increased her desire to
go. She pictured herself looking at Emerson's manse, bathing
in a surf of jade and ivory, wearing a trottoir and a summer
fur, meeting an aristocratic Stranger. In the spring Kennicott
had pathetically volunteered, "S'pose you'd like to get in a
good long tour this summer, but with Gould and Mac away
and so many patients depending on me, don't see how I can
make it. By golly, I feel like a tightwad though, not taking
you." Through all this restless July after she had tasted
Bresnahan's disturbing flavor of travel and gaiety, she wanted to go,
but she said nothing. They spoke of and postponed a trip
to the Twin Cities. When she suggested, as though it were a
tremendous joke, "I think baby and I might up and leave you,
and run off to Cape Cod by ourselves!" his only reaction was
"Golly, don't know but what you may almost have to do
that, if we don't get in a trip next year."
Toward the end of July he proposed, "Say, the Beavers are
holding a convention in Joralemon, street fair and everything.
We might go down tomorrow. And I'd like to see Dr. Calibree
about some business. Put in the whole day. Might help
some to make up for our trip. Fine fellow, Dr. Calibree."
Joralemon was a prairie town of the size of Gopher Prairie.
Their motor was out of order, and there was no passengertrain
at an early hour. They went down by freight-train,
after the weighty and conversational business of leaving Hugh
with Aunt Bessie. Carol was exultant over this irregular
jaunting. It was the first unusual thing, except the glance of
Bresnahan, that had happened since the weaning of Hugh.
They rode in the caboose, the small red cupola-topped car
jerked along at the end of the train. It was a roving shanty,
the cabin of a land schooner, with black oilcloth seats along
the side, and for desk, a pine board to be let down on hinges.
Kennicott played seven-up with the conductor and two brakemen.
Carol liked the blue silk kerchiefs about the brakemen's
throats; she liked their welcome to her, and their air of
friendly independence. Since there were no sweating passengers
crammed in beside her, she reveled in the train's slowness. She
was part of these lakes and tawny wheat-fields. She liked the
smell of hot earth and clean grease; and the leisurely chug-achug,
chug-a-chug of the trucks was a song of contentment in
the sun.
She pretended that she was going to the Rockies. When
they reached Joralemon she was radiant with holiday-making.
Her eagerness began to lessen the moment they stopped at
a red frame station exactly like the one they had just left
at Gopher Prairie, and Kennicott yawned, "Right on time.
Just in time for dinner at the Calibrees'. I 'phoned the doctor
from G. P. that we'd be here. `We'll catch the freight that
gets in before twelve,' I told him. He said he'd meet us at the
depot and take us right up to the house for dinner. Calibree
is a good man, and you'll find his wife is a mighty brainy
little woman, bright as a dollar. By golly, there he is."
Dr. Calibree was a squat, clean-shaven, conscientious-looking
man of forty. He was curiously like his own brown-painted
motor car, with eye-glasses for windshield. "Want you to
meet my wife, doctor--Carrie, make you 'quainted with Dr.
Calibree," said Kennicott. Calibree bowed quietly and shook
her hand, but before he had finished shaking it he was
concentrating upon Kennicott with, "Nice to see you, doctor.
Say, don't let me forget to ask you about what you did in that
exopthalmic goiter case--that Bohemian woman at Wahkeenyan."
The two men, on the front seat of the car, chanted goiters
and ignored her. She did not know it. She was trying to feed
her illusion of adventure by staring at unfamiliar houses. . .
drab cottages, artificial stone bungalows, square painty stolidities
with immaculate clapboards and broad screened porches
and tidy grass-plots.
Calibree handed her over to his wife, a thick woman who
called her "dearie," and asked if she was hot and, visibly
searching for conversation, produced, "Let's see, you and the
doctor have a Little One, haven't you?" At dinner Mrs. Calibree
served the corned beef and cabbage and looked steamy,
looked like the steamy leaves of cabbage. The men were
oblivious of their wives as they gave the social passwords of
Main Street, the orthodox opinions on weather, crops, and
motor cars, then flung away restraint and gyrated in the
debauch of shop-talk. Stroking his chin, drawling in the ecstasy
of being erudite, Kennicott inquired, "Say, doctor, what
success have you had with thyroid for treatment of pains in the
legs before child-birth?"
Carol did not resent their assumption that she was too
ignorant to be admitted to masculine mysteries. She was used to
it. But the cabbage and Mrs. Calibree's monotonous "I don't
know what we're coming to with all this difficulty getting hired
girls" were gumming her eyes with drowsiness. She sought
to clear them by appealing to Calibree, in a manner of exaggerated
liveliness, "Doctor, have the medical societies in
Minnesota ever advocated legislation for help to nursing mothers?"
Calibree slowly revolved toward her. "Uh--I've never--
uh--never looked into it. I don't believe much in getting
mixed up in politics." He turned squarely from her and, peering
earnestly at Kennicott, resumed, "Doctor, what's been your
experience with unilateral pyelonephritis? Buckburn of Baltimore
advocates decapsulation and nephrotomy, but seems to
me----"
Not till after two did they rise. In the lee of the stonily
mature trio Carol proceeded to the street fair which added
mundane gaiety to the annual rites of the United and Fraternal
Order of Beavers. Beavers, human Beavers, were everywhere:
thirty-second degree Beavers in gray sack suits and decent
derbies, more flippant Beavers in crash summer coats and straw
hats, rustic Beavers in shirt sleeves and frayed suspenders;
but whatever his caste-symbols, every Beaver was distinguished
by an enormous shrimp-colored ribbon lettered in silver, "Sir
Knight and Brother, U. F. O. B., Annual State Convention."
On the motherly shirtwaist of each of their wives was a badge
"Sir Knight's Lady." The Duluth delegation had brought their
famous Beaver amateur band, in Zouave costumes of green
velvet jacket, blue trousers, and scarlet fez. The strange
thing was that beneath their scarlet pride the Zouaves' faces
remained those of American business-men, pink, smooth, eyeglassed;
and as they stood playing in a circle, at the corner
of Main Street and Second, as they tootled on fifes or with
swelling cheeks blew into cornets, their eyes remained as
owlish as though they were sitting at desks under the sign
"This Is My Busy Day."
Carol had supposed that the Beavers were average citizens
organized for the purposes of getting cheap life-insurance and
playing poker at the lodge-rooms every second Wednesday, but
she saw a large poster which proclaimed:
BEAVERS
U. F. O. B.
The greatest influence for good citizenship in the
country. The jolliest aggregation of red-blooded,
open-handed, hustle-em-up good fellows in the world.
Joralemon welcomes you to her hospitable city.
Kennicott read the poster and to Calibree admired, "Strong
lodge, the Beavers. Never joined. Don't know but what I will,"
Calibree adumbrated, "They're a good bunch. Good strong
lodge. See that fellow there that's playing the snare drum?
He's the smartest wholesale grocer in Duluth, they say. Guess
it would be worth joining. Oh say, are you doing much
insurance examining?"
They went on to the street fair.
Lining one block of Main Street were the "attractions"--
two hot-dog stands, a lemonade and pop-corn stand, a merrygo-
round, and booths in which balls might be thrown at rag
dolls, if one wished to throw balls at rag dolls. The dignified
delegates were shy of the booths, but country boys with brickred
necks and pale-blue ties and bright-yellow shoes, who had
brought sweethearts into town in somewhat dusty and listed
Fords, were wolfing sandwiches, drinking strawberry pop out of
bottles, and riding the revolving crimson and gold horses. They
shrieked and giggled; peanut-roasters whistled; the merry-goround
pounded out monotonous music; the barkers bawled,
"Here's your chance--here's your chance--come on here, boy--
come on here--give that girl a good time--give her a swell
time--here's your chance to win a genuwine gold watch for
five cents, half a dime, the twentieth part of a dollah!" The
prairie sun jabbed the unshaded street with shafts that were
like poisonous thorns the tinny cornices above the brick stores
were glaring; the dull breeze scattered dust on sweaty Beavers
who crawled along in tight scorching new shoes, up two blocks
and back, up two blocks and back, wondering what to do next,
working at having a good time.
Carol's head ached as she trailed behind the unsmiling Calibrees
along the block of booths. She chirruped at Kennicott, "Let's be wild!
Let's ride on the merry-go-round and grab a gold ring!"
Kennicott considered it, and mumbled to Calibree, "Think you folks
would like to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?"
Calibree considered it, and mumbled to his wife, "Think
you'd like to stop and try a ride on the merry-go-round?"
Mrs. Calibree smiled in a washed-out manner, and sighed,
"Oh no, I don't believe I care to much, but you folks go ahead
and try it."
Calibree stated to Kennicott, "No, I don't believe we care
to a whole lot, but you folks go ahead and try it."
Kennicott summarized the whole case against wildness:
"Let's try it some other time, Carrie."
She gave it up. She looked at the town. She saw that in
adventuring from Main Street, Gopher Prairie, to Main Street,
Joralemon, she had not stirred. There were the same twostory
brick groceries with lodge-signs above the awnings; the
same one-story wooden millinery shop; the same fire-brick
garages; the same prairie at the open end of the wide street;
the same people wondering whether the levity of eating a hotdog
sandwich would break their taboos.
They reached Gopher Prairie at nine in the evening.
"You look kind of hot," said Kennicott.
"Yes."
"Joralemon is an enterprising town, don't you think so?"
She broke. "No! I think it's an ash-heap."
"Why, Carrie!"
He worried over it for a week. While he ground his plate
with his knife as he energetically pursued fragments of bacon,
he peeped at her.
CHAPTER XXV
"CARRIE'S all right. She's finicky, but she'll get over it. But
I wish she'd hurry up about it! What she can't understand
is that a fellow practising medicine in a small town like this
has got to cut out the highbrow stuff, and not spend all his
time going to concerts and shining his shoes. (Not but what
he might be just as good at all these intellectual and art
things as some other folks, if he had the time for it!)" Dr.
Will Kennicott was brooding in his office, during a free moment
toward the end of the summer afternoon. He hunched down
in his tilted desk-chair, undid a button of his shirt, glanced
at the state news in the back of the Journal of the American
Medical Association, dropped the magazine, leaned back with
his right thumb hooked in the arm-hole of his vest and his
left thumb stroking the back of his hair.
"By golly, she's taking an awful big chance, though. You'd
expect her to learn by and by that I won't be a parlor lizard.
She says we try to `make her over.' Well, she's always trying
to make me over, from a perfectly good M. D. into a damn
poet with a socialist necktie! She'd have a fit if she knew
how many women would be willing to cuddle up to Friend Will
and comfort him, if he'd give 'em the chance! There's
still a few dames that think the old man isn't so darn
unattractive! I'm glad I've ducked all that woman-game since
I've been married but---- Be switched if sometimes I don't
feel tempted to shine up to some girl that has sense enough
to take life as it is; some frau that doesn't want to talk
Longfellow all the time, but just hold my hand and say, `You
look all in, honey. Take it easy, and don't try to talk.'
"Carrie thinks she's such a whale at analyzing folks. Giving
the town the once-over. Telling us where we get off. Why,
she'd simply turn up her toes and croak if she found out how
much she doesn't know about the high old times a wise guy
could have in this burg on the Q.T., if he wasn't faithful to
his wife. But I am. At that, no matter what faults she's
got, there's nobody here, no, nor in Minn'aplus either, that's
as nice-looking and square and bright as Carrie. She ought
to of been an artist or a writer or one of those things. But
once she took a shot at living here, she ought to stick by it.
Pretty---- Lord yes. But cold. She simply doesn't know
what passion is. She simply hasn't got an I--dea how hard
it is for a full-blooded man to go on pretending to be satisfied
with just being endured. It gets awful tiresome, having to
feel like a criminal just because I'm normal. She's getting
so she doesn't even care for my kissing her. Well----
"I guess I can weather it, same as I did earning my way
through school and getting started in practise. But I wonder
how long I can stand being an outsider in my own home?"
He sat up at the entrance of Mrs. Dave Dyer. She slumped
into a chair and gasped with the heat. He chuckled, "Well,
well, Maud, this is fine. Where's the subscription-list? What
cause do I get robbed for, this trip?"
"I haven't any subscription-list, Will. I want to see you
professionally."
"And you a Christian Scientist? Have you given that up?
What next? New Thought or Spiritualism?"
"No, I have not given it up!"
"Strikes me it's kind of a knock on the sisterhood, your
coming to see a doctor!"
"No, it isn't. It's just that my faith isn't strong enough
yet. So there now! And besides, you ARE kind of consoling,
Will. I mean as a man, not just as a doctor. You're so strong
and placid."
He sat on the edge of his desk, coatless, his vest swinging
open with the thick gold line of his watch-chain across the
gap, his hands in his trousers pockets, his big arms bent and
easy. As she purred he cocked an interested eye. Maud
Dyer was neurotic, religiocentric, faded; her emotions were
moist, and her figure was unsystematic--splendid thighs and
arms, with thick ankles, and a body that was bulgy in the
wrong places. But her milky skin was delicious, her eyes were
alive, her chestnut hair shone, and there was a tender slope
from her ears to the shadowy place below her jaw.
With unusual solicitude he uttered his stock phrase, "Well,
what seems to be the matter, Maud?"
"I've got such a backache all the time. I'm afraid the
organic trouble that you treated me for is coming back."
"Any definite signs of it?"
"N-no, but I think you'd better examine me."
"Nope. Don't believe it's necessary, Maud. To be honest,
between old friends, I think your troubles are mostly imaginary.
I can't really advise you to have an examination."
She flushed, looked out of the window. He was conscious
that his voice was not impersonal and even.
She turned quickly. "Will, you always say my troubles
are imaginary. Why can't you be scientific? I've been reading
an article about these new nerve-specialists, and they claim
that lots of `imaginary' ailments, yes, and lots of real pain,
too, are what they call psychoses, and they order a change in
a woman's way of living so she can get on a higher plane----"
"Wait! Wait! Whoa-up! Wait now! Don't mix up
your Christian Science and your psychology! They're two
entirely different fads! You'll be mixing in socialism next!
You're as bad as Carrie, with your `psychoses.' Why, Good
Lord, Maud, I could talk about neuroses and psychoses and
inhibitions and repressions and complexes just as well as any
damn specialist, if I got paid for it, if I was in the city and
had the nerve to charge the fees that those fellows do. If a
specialist stung you for a hundred-dollar consultation-fee and
told you to go to New York to duck Dave's nagging, you'd
do it, to save the hundred dollars! But you know me--I'm
your neighbor--you see me mowing the lawn--you figure I'm
just a plug general practitioner. If I said, `Go to New York,'
Dave and you would laugh your heads off and say, `Look at
the airs Will is putting on. What does he think he is?'
"As a matter of fact, you're right. You have a perfectly
well-developed case of repression of sex instinct, and it raises
the old Ned with your body. What you need is to get away
from Dave and travel, yes, and go to every dog-gone kind of
New Thought and Bahai and Swami and Hooptedoodle meeting
you can find. I know it, well 's you do. But how can
I advise it? Dave would be up here taking my hide off.
I'm willing to be family physician and priest and lawyer and
plumber and wet-nurse, but I draw the line at making Dave
loosen up on money. Too hard a job in weather like this!
So, savvy, my dear? Believe it will rain if this heat
keeps----"
"But, Will, he'd never give it to me on my say-so. He'd
never let me go away. You know how Dave is: so jolly and
liberal in society, and oh, just LOVES to match quarters, and such
a perfect sport if he loses! But at home he pinches a nickel
till the buffalo drips blood. I have to nag him for every
single dollar."
"Sure, I know, but it's your fight, honey. Keep after him.
He'd simply resent my butting in."
He crossed over and patted her shoulder. Outside the window,
beyond the fly-screen that was opaque with dust and
cottonwood lint, Main Street was hushed except for the
impatient throb of a standing motor car. She took his firm
hand, pressed his knuckles against her cheek.
"O Will, Dave is so mean and little and noisy--the shrimp!
You're so calm. When he's cutting up at parties I see you
standing back and watching him--the way a mastiff watches
a terrier."
He fought for professional dignity with, "Dave 's not a
bad fellow."
Lingeringly she released his hand. "Will, drop round by
the house this evening and scold me. Make me be good and
sensible. And I'm so lonely."
"If I did, Dave would be there, and we'd have to play cards.
It's his evening off from the store."
"No. The clerk just got called to Corinth--mother sick.
Dave will be in the store till midnight. Oh, come on over.
There's some lovely beer on the ice, and we can sit and talk
and be all cool and lazy. That wouldn't be wrong of us, WOULD it!"
"No, no, course it wouldn't be wrong. But still, oughtn't
to----" He saw Carol, slim black and ivory, cool, scornful
of intrigue.
"All right. But I'll be so lonely."
Her throat seemed young, above her loose blouse of muslin
and machine-lace.
"Tell you, Maud: I'll drop in just for a minute, if I happen
to be called down that way."
"If you'd like," demurely. "O Will, I just want comfort.
I know you're all married, and my, such a proud papa, and of
course now---- If I could just sit near you in the dusk, and
be quiet, and forget Dave! You WILL come?"
"Sure I will!"
"I'll expect you. I'll be lonely if you don't come! Good-by."
He cursed himself: "Darned fool, what 'd I promise to go
for? I'll have to keep my promise, or she'll feel hurt. She's
a good, decent, affectionate girl, and Dave's a cheap skate,
all right. She's got more life to her than Carol has. All my
fault, anyway. Why can't I be more cagey, like Calibree and
McGanum and the rest of the doctors? Oh, I am, but Maud's
such a demanding idiot. Deliberately bamboozling me into
going up there tonight. Matter of principle: ought not to
let her get away with it. I won't go. I'll call her up and
tell her I won't go. Me, with Carrie at home, finest little
woman in the world, and a messy-minded female like Maud
Dyer--no, SIR! Though there's no need of hurting her feelings.
I may just drop in for a second, to tell her I can't stay. All
my fault anyway; ought never to have started in and jollied
Maud along in the old days. If it's my fault, I've got no
right to punish Maud. I could just drop in for a second and
then pretend I had a country call and beat it. Damn nuisance,
though, having to fake up excuses. Lord, why can't the women
let you alone? Just because once or twice, seven hundred
million years ago, you were a poor fool, why can't they let
you forget it? Maud's own fault. I'll stay strictly away.
Take Carrie to the movies, and forget Maud. . . . But it
would be kind of hot at the movies tonight."
He fled from himself. He rammed on his hat, threw his
coat over his arm, banged the door, locked it, tramped
downstairs. "I won't go!" he said sturdily and, as he said it,
he would have given a good deal to know whether he was
going.
He was refreshed, as always, by the familiar windows and
faces. It restored his soul to have Sam Clark trustingly
bellow, "Better come down to the lake this evening and have a
swim, doc. Ain't you going to open your cottage at all, this
summer? By golly, we miss you." He noted the progress
on the new garage. He had triumphed in the laying of every
course of bricks; in them he had seen the growth of the town.
His pride was ushered back to its throne by the respectfulness
of Oley Sundquist: "Evenin', doc! The woman is a lot
better. That was swell medicine you gave her." He was
calmed by the mechanicalness of the tasks at home: burning
the gray web of a tent-worm on the wild cherry tree, sealing
with gum a cut in the right front tire of the car, sprinkling
the road before the house. The hose was cool to his hands.
As the bright arrows fell with a faint puttering sound, a
crescent of blackness was formed in the gray dust.
Dave Dyer came along.
"Where going, Dave?"
"Down to the store. Just had supper."
"But Thursday 's your night off."
"Sure, but Pete went home. His mother 's supposed to
be sick. Gosh, these clerks you get nowadays--overpay 'em
and then they won't work!"
"That's tough, Dave. You'll have to work clear up till
twelve, then."
"Yup. Better drop in and have a cigar, if you're downtown.
"Well, I may, at that. May have to go down and see Mrs.
Champ Perry. She's ailing. So long, Dave."
Kennicott had not yet entered the house. He was
conscious that Carol was near him, that she was important, that
he was afraid of her disapproval; but he was content to be
alone. When he had finished sprinkling he strolled into the
house, up to the baby's room, and cried to Hugh, "Storytime
for the old man, eh?"
Carol was in a low chair, framed and haloed by the window
behind her, an image in pale gold. The baby curled in her
lap, his head on her arm, listening with gravity while she
sang from Gene Field:
'Tis little Luddy-Dud in the morning--
'Tis little Luddy-Dud at night:
And all day long
'Tis the same dear song
Of that growing, crowing, knowing little sprite.
Kennicott was enchanted.
"Maud Dyer? I should say not!"
When the current maid bawled up-stairs, "Supper on de
table!" Kennicott was upon his back, flapping his hands in
the earnest effort to be a seal, thrilled by the strength with
which his son kicked him. He slipped his arm about Carol's
shoulder; he went down to supper rejoicing that he was cleansed
of perilous stuff. While Carol was putting the baby to bed
he sat on the front steps. Nat Hicks, tailor and roue, came
to sit beside him. Between waves of his hand as he drove
off mosquitos, Nat whispered, "Say, doc, you don't feel like
imagining you're a bacheldore again, and coming out for a Time
tonight, do you?"
"As how?"
"You know this new dressmaker, Mrs. Swiftwaite?--swell
dame with blondine hair? Well, she's a pretty good goer.
Me and Harry Haydock are going to take her and that fat
wren that works in the Bon Ton--nice kid, too--on an auto
ride tonight. Maybe we'll drive down to that farm Harry
bought. We're taking some beer, and some of the smoothest
rye you ever laid tongue to. I'm not predicting none, but
if we don't have a picnic, I'll miss my guess."
"Go to it. No skin off my ear, Nat. Think I want to
be fifth wheel in the coach?"
"No, but look here: The little Swiftwaite has a friend with
her from Winona, dandy looker and some gay bird, and Harry
and me thought maybe you'd like to sneak off for one evening."
"No--no----"
"Rats now, doc, forget your everlasting dignity. You used
to be a pretty good sport yourself, when you were foot-free."
It may have been the fact that Mrs. Swiftwaite's friend
remained to Kennicott an ill-told rumor, it may have been
Carol's voice, wistful in the pallid evening as she sang to
Hugh, it may have been natural and commendable virtue, but
certainly he was positive:
"Nope. I'm married for keeps. Don't pretend to be any
saint. Like to get out and raise Cain and shoot a few drinks.
But a fellow owes a duty---- Straight now, won't you feel
like a sneak when you come back to the missus after your
jamboree?"
"Me? My moral in life is, `What they don't know won't hurt
'em none.' The way to handle wives, like the fellow says,
is to catch 'em early, treat 'em rough, and tell 'em nothing!"
"Well, that's your business, I suppose. But I can't get
away with it. Besides that--way I figure it, this illicit lovemaking
is the one game that you always lose at. If you do
lose, you feel foolish; and if you win, as soon as you find out
how little it is that you've been scheming for, why then you
lose worse than ever. Nature stinging us, as usual. But at
that, I guess a lot of wives in this burg would be surprised if
they knew everything that goes on behind their backs, eh, Nattie?"
"WOULD they! Say, boy! If the good wives knew what
some of the boys get away with when they go down to the
Cities, why, they'd throw a fit! Sure you won't come, doc?
Think of getting all cooled off by a good long drive, and then the
lov-e-ly Swiftwaite's white hand mixing you a good stiff highball!"
"Nope. Nope. Sorry. Guess I won't," grumbled Kennicott.
He was glad that Nat showed signs of going. But he was
restless. He heard Carol on the stairs. "Come have a seat--
have the whole earth!" he shouted jovially.
She did not answer his joviality. She sat on the porch,
rocked silently, then sighed, "So many mosquitos out here.
You haven't had the screen fixed."
As though he was testing her he said quietly, "Head aching again?"
"Oh, not much, but---- This maid is SO slow to learn.
I have to show her everything. I had to clean most of the
silver myself. And Hugh was so bad all afternoon. He
whined so. Poor soul, he was hot, but he did wear me out."
"Uh---- You usually want to get out. Like to walk down
to the lake shore? (The girl can stay home.) Or go to
the movies? Come on, let's go to the movies! Or shall we
jump in the car and run out to Sam's, for a swim?"
"If you don't mind, dear, I'm afraid I'm rather tired."
"Why don't you sleep down-stairs tonight, on the couch?
Be cooler. I'm going to bring down my mattress. Come on!
Keep the old man company. Can't tell--I might get scared of
burglars. Lettin' little fellow like me stay all alone by
himself!"
"It's sweet of you to think of it, but I like my own room
so much. But you go ahead and do it, dear. Why don't
you sleep on the couch, instead of putting your mattress on
the floor? Well I believe I'll run in and read for just
a second--want to look at the last Vogue--and then perhaps
I'll go by-by. Unless you want me, dear? Of course if
there's anything you really WANT me for?"
"No. No. . . . Matter of fact, I really ought to run
down and see Mrs. Champ Perry. She's ailing. So you skip
in and---- May drop in at the drug store. If I'm not home
when you get sleepy, don't wait up for me."
He kissed her, rambled off, nodded to Jim Howland, stopped
indifferently to speak to Mrs. Terry Gould. But his heart
was racing, his stomach was constricted. He walked more
slowly. He reached Dave Dyer's yard. He glanced in. On
the porch, sheltered by a wild-grape vine, was the figure of a
woman in white. He heard the swing-couch creak as she
sat up abruptly, peered, then leaned back and pretended
to relax.
"Be nice to have some cool beer. Just drop in for a second,"
he insisted, as he opened the Dyer gate.
II
Mrs. Bogart was calling upon Carol, protected by Aunt
Bessie Smail.
"Have you heard about this awful woman that's supposed
to have come here to do dressmaking--a Mrs. Swiftwaite--
awful peroxide blonde?" moaned Mrs. Bogart. "They say
there's some of the awfullest goings-on at her house--mere
boys and old gray-headed rips sneaking in there evenings
and drinking licker and every kind of goings-on. We women
can't never realize the carnal thoughts in the hearts of men.
I tell you, even though I been acquainted with Will Kennicott
almost since he was a mere boy, seems like, I wouldn't trust
even him! Who knows what designin' women might tempt
him! Especially a doctor, with women rushin' in to see him
at his office and all! You know I never hint around, but
haven't you felt that----"
Carol was furious. "I don't pretend that Will has no
faults. But one thing I do know: He's as simple-hearted
about what you call `goings-on' as a babe. And if he ever
were such a sad dog as to look at another woman, I certainly
hope he'd have spirit enough to do the tempting, and not be
coaxed into it, as in your depressing picture!"
"Why, what a wicked thing to say, Carrie!" from Aunt
Bessie.
"No, I mean it! Oh, of course, I don't mean it! But----
I know every thought in his head so well that he couldn't
hide anything even if he wanted to. Now this morning----
He was out late, last night; he had to go see Mrs. Perry,
who is ailing, and then fix a man's hand, and this morning
he was so quiet and thoughtful at breakfast and----" She
leaned forward, breathed dramatically to the two perched
harpies, "What do you suppose he was thinking of?"
"What?" trembled Mrs. Bogart.
"Whether the grass needs cutting, probably! There, there!
Don't mind my naughtiness. I have some fresh-made raisin
cookies for you."
CHAPTER XXVI
CAROL'S liveliest interest was in her walks with the baby.
Hugh wanted to know what the box-elder tree said, and what
the Ford garage said, and what the big cloud said, and she
told him, with a feeling that she was not in the least making
up stories, but discovering the souls of things. They had an
especial fondness for the hitching-post in front of the mill.
It was a brown post, stout and agreeable; the smooth leg
of it held the sunlight, while its neck, grooved by hitchingstraps,
tickled one's fingers. Carol had never been awake
to the earth except as a show of changing color and great
satisfying masses; she had lived in people and in ideas about
having ideas; but Hugh's questions made her attentive to the
comedies of sparrows, robins, blue jays, yellowhammers; she
regained her pleasure in the arching flight of swallows, and
added to it a solicitude about their nests and family squabbles.
She forgot her seasons of boredom. She said to Hugh,
"We're two fat disreputable old minstrels roaming round the
world," and he echoed her, "Roamin' round--roamin' round."
The high adventure, the secret place to which they both
fled joyously, was the house of Miles and Bea and Olaf Bjornstam.
Kennicott steadily disapproved of the Bjornstams. He
protested, "What do you want to talk to that crank for?" He
hinted that a former "Swede hired girl" was low company
for the son of Dr. Will Kennicott. She did not explain. She
did not quite understand it herself; did not know that in the
Bjornstams she found her friends, her club, her sympathy
and her ration of blessed cynicism. For a time the gossip of
Juanita Haydock and the Jolly Seventeen had been a refuge
from the droning of Aunt Bessie, but the relief had not
continued. The young matrons made her nervous. They talked
so loud, always so loud. They filled a room with clashing
cackle; their jests and gags they repeated nine times over.
Unconsciously, she had discarded the Jolly Seventeen, Guy
Pollock, Vida, and every one save Mrs. Dr. Westlake and the
friends whom she did not clearly know as friends--the Bjornstams.
To Hugh, the Red Swede was the most heroic and powerful
person in the world. With unrestrained adoration he trotted
after while Miles fed the cows, chased his one pig--an animal
of lax and migratory instincts--or dramatically slaughtered a
chicken. And to Hugh, Olaf was lord among mortal men, less
stalwart than the old monarch, King Miles, but more understanding
of the relations and values of things, of small sticks,
lone playing-cards, and irretrievably injured hoops.
Carol saw, though she did not admit, that Olaf was not
only more beautiful than her own dark child, but more gracious.
Olaf was a Norse chieftain: straight, sunny-haired, largelimbed,
resplendently amiable to his subjects. Hugh was a
vulgarian; a bustling business man. It was Hugh that bounced
and said "Let's play"; Olaf that opened luminous blue eyes
and agreed "All right," in condescending gentleness. If Hugh
batted him--and Hugh did bat him--Olaf was unafraid but
shocked. In magnificent solitude he marched toward the
house, while Hugh bewailed his sin and the overclouding of
august favor.
The two friends played with an imperial chariot which
Miles had made out of a starch-box and four red spools;
together they stuck switches into a mouse-hole, with vast
satisfaction though entirely without known results.
Bea, the chubby and humming Bea, impartially gave cookies
and scoldings to both children, and if Carol refused a cup of
coffee and a wafer of buttered knackebrod, she was desolated.
Miles had done well with his dairy. He had six cows,
two hundred chickens, a cream separator, a Ford truck. In the
spring he had built a two-room addition to his shack. That
illustrious building was to Hugh a carnival. Uncle Miles did
the most spectacular, unexpected things: ran up the ladder;
stood on the ridge-pole, waving a hammer and singing something
about "To arms, my citizens"; nailed shingles faster
than Aunt Bessie could iron handkerchiefs; and lifted a twoby-
six with Hugh riding on one end and Olaf on the other.
Uncle Miles's most ecstatic trick was to make figures not on
paper but right on a new pine board, with the broadest softest
pencil in the world. There was a thing worth seeing!
The tools! In his office Father had tools fascinating in their
shininess and curious shapes, but they were sharp, they were
something called sterized, and they distinctly were not for
boys to touch. In fact it was a good dodge to volunteer "I
must not touch," when you looked at the tools on the glass
shelves in Father's office. But Uncle Miles, who was a person
altogether superior to Father, let you handle all his kit except
the saws. There was a hammer with a silver head; there was a
metal thing like a big L; there was a magic instrument, very
precious, made out of costly red wood and gold, with a tube
which contained a drop--no, it wasn't a drop, it was a nothing,
which lived in the water, but the nothing LOOKED like a drop,
and it ran in a frightened way up and down the tube, no
matter how cautiously you tilted the magic instrument. And
there were nails, very different and clever--big valiant spikes,
middle-sized ones which were not very interesting, and shinglenails
much jollier than the fussed-up fairies in the yellow
book.
II
While he had worked on the addition Miles had talked
frankly to Carol. He admitted now that so long as he stayed
in Gopher Prairie he would remain a pariah. Bea's Lutheran
friends were as much offended by his agnostic gibes as the
merchants by his radicalism. "And I can't seem to keep my
mouth shut. I think I'm being a baa-lamb, and not springing
any theories wilder than `c-a-t spells cat,' but when folks
have gone, I re'lize I've been stepping on their pet religious
corns. Oh, the mill foreman keeps dropping in, and that Danish
shoemaker, and one fellow from Elder's factory, and a few
Svenskas, but you know Bea: big good-hearted wench like
her wants a lot of folks around--likes to fuss over 'em--never
satisfied unless she tiring herself out making coffee for somebody.
"Once she kidnapped me and drug me to the Methodist
Church. I goes in, pious as Widow Bogart, and sits still
and never cracks a smile while the preacher is favoring us
with his misinformation on evolution. But afterwards, when
the old stalwarts were pumphandling everybody at the door
and calling 'em `Brother' and `Sister,' they let me sail right
by with nary a clinch. They figure I'm the town badman.
Always will be, I guess. It'll have to be Olaf who goes on.
`And sometimes---- Blamed if I don't feel like coming out and
saying, `I've been conservative. Nothing to it. Now I'm
going to start something in these rotten one-horse lumbercamps
west of town.' But Bea's got me hypnotized. Lord, Mrs.
Kennicott, do you re'lize what a jolly, square, faithful woman
she is? And I love Olaf---- Oh well, I won't go and get
sentimental on you.
"Course I've had thoughts of pulling up stakes and going
West. Maybe if they didn't know it beforehand, they wouldn't
find out I'd ever been guilty of trying to think for myself.
But--oh, I've worked hard, and built up this dairy business,
and I hate to start all over again, and move Bea and the kid
into another one-room shack. That's how they get us!
Encourage us to be thrifty and own our own houses, and then,
by golly, they've got us; they know we won't dare risk
everything by committing lez--what is it? lez majesty?--I
mean they know we won't be hinting around that if we had
a co-operative bank, we could get along without Stowbody.
Well---- As long as I can sit and play pinochle with Bea,
and tell whoppers to Olaf about his daddy's adventures in the
woods, and how he snared a wapaloosie and knew Paul Bunyan,
why, I don't mind being a bum. It's just for them that
I mind. Say! Say! Don't whisper a word to Bea, but when
I get this addition done, I'm going to buy her a phonograph!"
He did.
While she was busy with the activities her work-hungry
muscles found--washing, ironing, mending, baking, dusting,
preserving, plucking a chicken, painting the sink; tasks which,
because she was Miles's full partner, were exciting and creative
--Bea listened to the phonograph records with rapture like
that of cattle in a warm stable. The addition gave her a
kitchen with a bedroom above. The original one-room shack
was now a living-room, with the phonograph, a genuine leatherupholstered
golden-oak rocker, and a picture of Governor John
Johnson.
In late July Carol went to the Bjornstams' desirous of a
chance to express her opinion of Beavers and Calibrees and
Joralemons. She found Olaf abed, restless from a slight fever,
and Bea flushed and dizzy but trying to keep up her work.
She lured Miles aside and worried:
"They don't look at all well. What's the matter?"
"Their stomachs are out of whack. I wanted to call in
Doc Kennicott, but Bea thinks the doc doesn't like us--
she thinks maybe he's sore because you come down here. But
I'm getting worried."
"I'm going to call the doctor at once."
She yearned over Olaf. His lambent eyes were stupid, he
moaned, he rubbed his forehead.
"Have they been eating something that's been bad for
them?" she fluttered to Miles.
"Might be bum water. I'll tell you: We used to get our
water at Oscar Eklund's place, over across the street, but
Oscar kept dinging at me, and hinting I was a tightwad not
to dig a well of my own. One time he said, `Sure, you
socialists are great on divvying up other folks' money--and
water!' I knew if he kept it up there'd be a fuss, and I
ain't safe to have around, once a fuss starts; I'm likely to
forget myself and let loose with a punch in the snoot. I
offered to pay Oscar but he refused--he'd rather have the
chance to kid me. So I starts getting water down at Mrs.
Fageros's, in the hollow there, and I don't believe it's real
good. Figuring to dig my own well this fall."
One scarlet word was before Carol's eyes while she listened
She fled to Kennicott's office. He gravely heard her out;
nodded, said, "Be right over."
He examined Bea and Olaf. He shook his head. "Yes.
Looks to me like typhoid."
"Golly, I've seen typhoid in lumber-camps," groaned Miles,
all the strength dripping out of him. "Have they got it
very bad?"
"Oh, we'll take good care of them," said Kennicott, and
for the first time in their acquaintance he smiled on Miles
and clapped his shoulder.
"Won't you need a nurse?" demanded Carol.
"Why----" To Miles, Kennicott hinted, "Couldn't you
get Bea's cousin, Tina?"
"She's down at the old folks', in the country."
"Then let me do it!" Carol insisted. "They need some
one to cook for them, and isn't it good to give them sponge
baths, in typhoid?"
"Yes. All right." Kennicott was automatic; he was the
official, the physician. "I guess probably it would be hard to
get a nurse here in town just now. Mrs. Stiver is busy with
an obstetrical case, and that town nurse of yours is off on
vacation, ain't she? All right, Bjornstam can spell you at
night."
All week, from eight each morning till midnight, Carol fed
them, bathed them, smoothed sheets, took temperatures.
Miles refused to let her cook. Terrified, pallid, noiseless in
stocking feet, he did the kitchen work and the sweeping, his
big red hands awkwardly careful. Kennicott came in three
times a day, unchangingly tender and hopeful in the sickroom,
evenly polite to Miles.
Carol understood how great was her love for her friends.
It bore her through; it made her arm steady and tireless to
bathe them. What exhausted her was the sight of Bea and
Olaf turned into flaccid invalids, uncomfortably flushed after
taking food, begging for the healing of sleep at night.
During the second week Olaf's powerful legs were flabby.
Spots of a viciously delicate pink came out on his chest and
back. His cheeks sank. He looked frightened. His tongue
was brown and revolting. His confident voice dwindled to a
bewildered murmur, ceaseless and racking.
Bea had stayed on her feet too long at the beginning. The
moment Kennicott had ordered her to bed she had begun to
collapse. One early evening she startled them by screaming,
in an intense abdominal pain, and within half an hour she was
in a delirium. Till dawn Carol was with her, and not all of
Bea's groping through the blackness of half-delirious pain
was so pitiful to Carol as the way in which Miles silently
peered into the room from the top of the narrow stairs. Carol
slept three hours next morning, and ran back. Bea was altogether
delirious but she muttered nothing save, "Olaf--ve
have such a good time----"
At ten, while Carol was preparing an ice-bag in the kitchen,
Miles answered a knock. At the front door she saw
Vida Sherwin, Maud Dyer, and Mrs. Zitterel, wife of the
Baptist pastor. They were carrying grapes, and women'smagazines,
magazines with high-colored pictures and optimistic
fiction.
"We just heard your wife was sick. We've come to see
if there isn't something we can do," chirruped Vida.
Miles looked steadily at the three women. "You're too
late. You can't do nothing now. Bea's always kind of hoped
that you folks would come see her. She wanted to have a
chance and be friends. She used to sit waiting for somebody
to knock. I've seen her sitting here, waiting. Now---- Oh,
you ain't worth God-damning." He shut the door.
All day Carol watched Olaf's strength oozing. He was
emaciated. His ribs were grim clear lines, his skin was
clammy, his pulse was feeble but terrifyingly rapid. It beat--
beat--beat in a drum-roll of death. Late that afternoon
he sobbed, and died.
Bea did not know it. She was delirious. Next morning,
when she went, she did not know that Olaf would no longer
swing his lath sword on the door-step, no longer rule his
subjects of the cattle-yard; that Miles's son would not go
East to college.
Miles, Carol, Kennicott were silent. They washed the bodies
together, their eyes veiled.
"Go home now and sleep. You're pretty tired. I can't ever
pay you back for what you done," Miles whispered to Carol.
"Yes. But I'll be back here tomorrow. Go with you to
the funeral," she said laboriously.
When the time for the funeral came, Carol was in bed,
collapsed. She assumed that neighbors would go. They had
not told her that word of Miles's rebuff to Vida had spread
through town, a cyclonic fury.
It was only by chance that, leaning on her elbow in bed,
she glanced through the window and saw the funeral of Bea
and Olaf. There was no music, no carriages. There was only
Miles Bjornstam, in his black wedding-suit, walking quite
alone, head down, behind the shabby hearse that bore the
bodies of his wife and baby.
An hour after, Hugh came into her room crying, and when
she said as cheerily as she could, "What is it, dear?" he
besought, "Mummy, I want to go play with Olaf."
That afternoon Juanita Haydock dropped in to brighten
Carol. She said, "Too bad about this Bea that was your
hired girl. But I don't waste any sympathy on that man of
hers. Everybody says he drank too much, and treated his
family awful, and that's how they got sick."
CHAPTER XXVII
I
A LETTER from Raymie Wutherspoon, in France, said that he
had been sent to the front, been slightly wounded, been made
a captain. From Vida's pride Carol sought to draw a stimulant
to rouse her from depression.
Miles had sold his dairy. He had several thousand dollars.
To Carol he said good-by with a mumbled word, a harsh
hand-shake, "Going to buy a farm in northern Alberta--far
off from folks as I can get." He turned sharply away, but
he did not walk with his former spring. His shoulders seemed
old.
It was said that before he went he cursed the town.
There was talk of arresting him, of riding him on a rail. It
was rumored that at the station old Champ Perry rebuked
him, "You better not come back here. We've got respect for
your dead, but we haven't got any for a blasphemer and a
traitor that won't do anything for his country and only bought
one Liberty Bond."
Some of the people who had been at the station declared that
Miles made some dreadful seditious retort: something about
loving German workmen more than American bankers; but
others asserted that he couldn't find one word with which to
answer the veteran; that he merely sneaked up on the platform
of the train. He must have felt guilty, everybody agreed,
for as the train left town, a farmer saw him standing in the
vestibule and looking out.
His house--with the addition which he had built four
months ago--was very near the track on which his train passed.
When Carol went there, for the last time, she found Olaf's
chariot with its red spool wheels standing in the sunny corner
beside the stable. She wondered if a quick eye could have
noticed it from a train.
That day and that week she went reluctantly to Red Cross
work; she stitched and packed silently, while Vida read the war
bulletins. And she said nothing at all when Kennicott commented,
"From what Champ says, I guess Bjornstam was a
bad egg, after all. In spite of Bea, don't know but what the
citizens' committee ought to have forced him to be patriotic--
let on like they could send him to jail if he didn't volunteer and
come through for bonds and the Y. M. C. A. They've worked
that stunt fine with all these German farmers."
II
She found no inspiration but she did find a dependable
kindness in Mrs. Westlake, and at last she yielded to the old
woman's receptivity and had relief in sobbing the story of
Bea.
Guy Pollock she often met on the street, but he was merely
a pleasant voice which said things about Charles Lamb and
sunsets.
Her most positive experience was the revelation of Mrs.
Flickerbaugh, the tall, thin, twitchy wife of the attorney.
Carol encountered her at the drug store.
"Walking?" snapped Mrs. Flickerbaugh.
"Why, yes."
"Humph. Guess you're the only female in this town that
retains the use of her legs. Come home and have a cup o'
tea with me."
Because she had nothing else to do, Carol went. But she
was uncomfortable in the presence of the amused stares which
Mrs. Flickerbaugh's raiment drew. Today, in reeking early
August, she wore a man's cap, a skinny fur like a dead cat,
a necklace of imitation pearls, a scabrous satin blouse, and a
thick cloth skirt hiked up in front.
"Come in. Sit down. Stick the baby in that rocker. Hope
you don't mind the house looking like a rat's nest. You don't
like this town. Neither do I," said Mrs. Flickerbaugh.
"Why----"
"Course you don't!"
"Well then, I don't! But I'm sure that some day I'll find
some solution. Probably I'm a hexagonal peg. Solution: find
the hexagonal hole." Carol was very brisk.
"How do you know you ever will find it?"
"There's Mrs. Westlake. She's naturally a big-city woman--
she ought to have a lovely old house in Philadelphia or Boston
--but she escapes by being absorbed in reading."
"You be satisfied to never do anything but read?"
"No, but Heavens, one can't go on hating a town
always!"
"Why not? I can! I've hated it for thirty-two years. I'll
die here--and I'll hate it till I die. I ought to have been a
business woman. I had a good deal of talent for tending to
figures. All gone now. Some folks think I'm crazy. Guess
I am. Sit and grouch. Go to church and sing hymns. Folks
think I'm religious. Tut! Trying to forget washing and
ironing and mending socks. Want an office of my own, and
sell things. Julius never hear of it. Too late."
Carol sat on the gritty couch, and sank into fear. Could
this drabness of life keep up forever, then? Would she some
day so despise herself and her neighbors that she too would
walk Main Street an old skinny eccentric woman in a mangy
cat's-fur? As she crept home she felt that the trap had
finally closed. She went into the house, a frail small woman,
still winsome but hopeless of eye as she staggered with the
weight of the drowsy boy in her arms.
She sat alone on the porch, that evening. It seemed that
Kennicott had to make a professional call on Mrs. Dave
Dyer.
Under the stilly boughs and the black gauze of dusk the
street was meshed in silence. There was but the hum of
motor tires crunching the road, the creak of a rocker on the
Howlands' porch, the slap of a hand attacking a mosquito, a
heat-weary conversation starting and dying, the precise rhythm
of crickets, the thud of moths against the screen--sounds that
were a distilled silence. It was a street beyond the end of the
world, beyond the boundaries of hope. Though she should sit
here forever, no brave procession, no one who was interesting,
would be coming by. It was tediousness made tangible, a
street builded of lassitude and of futility.
Myrtle Cass appeared, with Cy Bogart. She giggled and
bounced when Cy tickled her ear in village love. They strolled
with the half-dancing gait of lovers, kicking their feet out
sideways or shuffling a dragging jig, and the concrete walk sounded
to the broken two-four rhythm. Their voices had a dusky
turbulence. Suddenly, to the woman rocking on the porch of
the doctor's house, the night came alive, and she felt that
everywhere in the darkness panted an ardent quest which she
was missing as she sank back to wait for---- There must be
something.
CHAPTER XXVIII
IT WAS at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August that
Carol heard of "Elizabeth," from Mrs. Dave Dyer.
Carol was fond of Maud Dyer, because she had been particularly
agreeable lately; had obviously repented of the nervous
distaste which she had once shown. Maud patted her hand
when they met, and asked about Hugh.
Kennicott said that he was "kind of sorry for the girl,
some ways; she's too darn emotional, but still, Dave is sort
of mean to her." He was polite to poor Maud when they
all went down to the cottages for a swim. Carol was proud of
that sympathy in him, and now she took pains to sit with their
new friend.
Mrs. Dyer was bubbling, "Oh, have you folks heard about
this young fellow that's just come to town that the boys call
`Elizabeth'? He's working in Nat Hicks's tailor shop. I bet
he doesn't make eighteen a week, but my! isn't he the perfect
lady though! He talks so refined, and oh, the lugs he puts on
--belted coat, and pique collar with a gold pin, and socks
to match his necktie, and honest--you won't believe this, but
I got it straight--this fellow, you know he's staying at Mrs.
Gurrey's punk old boarding-house, and they say he asked Mrs.
Gurrey if he ought to put on a dress-suit for supper! Imagine!
Can you beat that? And him nothing but a Swede tailor--Erik
Valborg his name is. But he used to be in a tailor shop
in Minneapolis (they do say he's a smart needle-pusher, at
that) and he tries to let on that he's a regular city fellow.
They say he tries to make people think he's a poet--carries
books around and pretends to read 'em. Myrtle Cass says
she met him at a dance, and he was mooning around all
over the place, and he asked her did she like flowers and
poetry and music and everything; he spieled like he was a
regular United States Senator; and Myrtle--she's a devil, that
girl, ha! ha!--she kidded him along, and got him going, and
honest, what d'you think he said? He said he didn't find any
intellectual companionship in this town. Can you BEAT it?
Imagine! And him a Swede tailor! My! And they say he's
the most awful mollycoddle--looks just like a girl. The boys
call him `Elizabeth,' and they stop him and ask about the
books he lets on to have read, and he goes and tells them,
and they take it all in and jolly him terribly, and he never gets
onto the fact they're kidding him. Oh, I think it's just TOO funny!"
The Jolly Seventeen laughed, and Carol laughed with them.
Mrs. Jack Elder added that this Erik Valborg had confided
to Mrs. Gurrey that he would "love to design clothes for
women." Imagine! Mrs. Harvey Dillon had had a glimpse
of him, but honestly, she'd thought he was awfully handsome.
This was instantly controverted by Mrs. B. J. Gougerling,
wife of the banker. Mrs. Gougerling had had, she reported,
a good look at this Valborg fellow. She and B. J.
had been motoring, and passed "Elizabeth" out by McGruder's
Bridge. He was wearing the awfullest clothes, with the waist
pinched in like a girl's. He was sitting on a rock doing
nothing, but when he heard the Gougerling car coming he
snatched a book out of his pocket, and as they went by he
pretended to be reading it, to show off. And he wasn't really
good-looking--just kind of soft, as B. J. had pointed out.
When the husbands came they joined in the expose. "My
name is Elizabeth. I'm the celebrated musical tailor. The
skirts fall for me by the thou. Do I get some more veal
loaf?" merrily shrieked Dave Dyer. He had some admirable
stories about the tricks the town youngsters had played on
Valborg. They had dropped a decaying perch into his pocket.
They had pinned on his back a sign, "I'm the prize boob,
kick me."
Glad of any laughter, Carol joined the frolic, and surprised
them by crying, "Dave, I do think you're the dearest thing
since you got your hair cut!" That was an excellent sally.
Everybody applauded. Kennicott looked proud.
She decided that sometime she really must go out of her
way to pass Hicks's shop and see this freak.
II
She was at Sunday morning service at the Baptist Church,
in a solemn row with her husband, Hugh, Uncle Whittier,
Aunt Bessie.
Despite Aunt Bessie's nagging the Kennicotts rarely
attended church. The doctor asserted, "Sure, religion is a fine
influence--got to have it to keep the lower classes in order--
fact, it's the only thing that appeals to a lot of those fellows
and makes 'em respect the rights of property. And I guess this
theology is O.K.; lot of wise old coots figured it all out, and
they knew more about it than we do." He believed in the
Christian religion, and never thought about it, he believed
in the church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by
Carol's lack of faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the
nature of the faith that she lacked.
Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic.
When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers
droning that the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable
ethical problem for children to think about; when she
experimented with Wednesday prayer-meeting and listened to
store-keeping elders giving their unvarying weekly testimony
in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases
as "washed in the blood of the lamb" and "a vengeful God";
when Mrs. Bogart boasted that through his boyhood she had
made Cy confess nightly upon the basis of the Ten
Commandments; then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian
religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as
Zoroastrianism--without the splendor. But when she went
to church suppers and felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with
which the sisters served cold ham and scalloped potatoes;
when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to her, on an afternoon call,
"My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes you to come
into abiding grace," then Carol found the humanness behind
the sanguinary and alien theology. Always she perceived that
the churches--Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Catholic,
all of them--which had seemed so unimportant to the judge's
home in her childhood, so isolated from the city struggle in
St. Paul, were still, in Gopher Prairie, the strongest of the
forces compelling respectability.
This August Sunday she had been tempted by the announcement
that the Reverend Edmund Zitterel would preach on the
topic "America, Face Your Problems!" With the great war,
workmen in every nation showing a desire to control industries,
Russia hinting a leftward revolution against Kerensky,
woman suffrage coming, there seemed to be plenty of problems
for the Reverend Mr. Zitterel to call on America to face.
Carol gathered her family and trotted off behind Uncle
Whittier.
The congregation faced the heat with informality. Men
with highly plastered hair, so painfully shaved that their faces
looked sore, removed their coats, sighed, and unbuttoned two
buttons of their uncreased Sunday vests. Large-bosomed,
white-bloused, hot-necked, spectacled matrons--the Mothers
in Israel, pioneers and friends of Mrs. Champ Perry--waved
their palm-leaf fans in a steady rhythm. Abashed boys slunk
into the rear pews and giggled, while milky little girls, up front
with their mothers, self-consciously kept from turning around.
The church was half barn and half Gopher Prairie parlor.
The streaky brown wallpaper was broken in its dismal sweep
only by framed texts, "Come unto Me" and "The Lord is
My Shepherd," by a list of hymns, and by a crimson and
green diagram, staggeringly drawn upon hemp-colored paper,
indicating the alarming ease with which a young man may
descend from Palaces of Pleasure and the House of Pride to
Eternal Damnation. But the varnished oak pews and the new
red carpet and the three large chairs on the platform, behind
the bare reading-stand, were all of a rocking-chair comfort.
Carol was civic and neighborly and commendable today.
She beamed and bowed. She trolled out with the others the
hymn:
How pleasant 'tis on Sabbath morn
To gather in the church
And there I'll have no carnal thoughts,
Nor sin shall me besmirch.
With a rustle of starched linen skirts and stiff shirt-fronts,
the congregation sat down, and gave heed to the Reverend
Mr. Zitterel. The priest was a thin, swart, intense young
man with a bang. He wore a black sack suit and a lilac tie.
He smote the enormous Bible on the reading-stand, vociferated,
"Come, let us reason together," delivered a prayer informing
Almighty God of the news of the past week, and began to
reason.
It proved that the only problems which America had to
face were Mormonism and Prohibition:
"Don't let any of these self-conceited fellows that are
always trying to stir up trouble deceive you with the belief
that there's anything to all these smart-aleck movements to
let the unions and the Farmers' Nonpartisan League kill all
our initiative and enterprise by fixing wages and prices. There
isn't any movement that amounts to a whoop without it's got
a moral background. And let me tell you that while folks
are fussing about what they call `economics' and `socialism'
and `science' and a lot of things that are nothing in the world
but a disguise for atheism, the Old Satan is busy spreading
his secret net and tentacles out there in Utah, under his guise
of Joe Smith or Brigham Young or whoever their leaders
happen to be today, it doesn't make any difference, and they're
making game of the Old Bible that has led this American
people through its manifold trials and tribulations to its firm
position as the fulfilment of the prophecies and the recognized
leader of all nations. `Sit thou on my right hand till I make
thine enemies the footstool of my feet,' said the Lord of Hosts,
Acts II, the thirty-fourth verse--and let me tell you right now,
you got to get up a good deal earlier in the morning than you
get up even when you're going fishing, if you want to be
smarter than the Lord, who has shown us the straight and narrow
way, and he that passeth therefrom is in eternal peril and,
to return to this vital and terrible subject of Mormonism--and
as I say, it is terrible to realize how little attention is given
to this evil right here in our midst and on our very doorstep,
as it were--it's a shame and a disgrace that the Congress of
these United States spends all its time talking about
inconsequential financial matters that ought to be left to the Treasury
Department, as I understand it, instead of arising in their
might and passing a law that any one admitting he is a Mormon
shall simply be deported and as it were kicked out of this
free country in which we haven't got any room for polygamy
and the tyrannies of Satan.
"And, to digress for a moment, especially as there are more
of them in this state than there are Mormons, though you
never can tell what will happen with this vain generation of
young girls, that think more about wearing silk stockings than
about minding their mothers and learning to bake a good loaf
of bread, and many of them listening to these sneaking Mormon
missionaries--and I actually heard one of them talking right
out on a street-corner in Duluth, a few years ago, and the
officers of the law not protesting--but still, as they are a smaller
but more immediate problem, let me stop for just a moment
to pay my respects to these Seventh-Day Adventists. Not that
they are immoral, I don't mean, but when a body of men
go on insisting that Saturday is the Sabbath, after Christ himself
has clearly indicated the new dispensation, then I think
the legislature ought to step in----"
At this point Carol awoke.
She got through three more minutes by studying the face
of a girl in the pew across: a sensitive unhappy girl whose
longing poured out with intimidating self-revelation as she
worshiped Mr. Zitterel. Carol wondered who the girl was. She
had seen her at church suppers. She considered how many
of the three thousand people in the town she did not know;
to how many of them the Thanatopsis and the Jolly Seventeen
were icy social peaks; how many of them might be toiling
through boredom thicker than her own--with greater courage.
She examined her nails. She read two hymns. She got some
satisfaction out of rubbing an itching knuckle. She pillowed
on her shoulder the head of the baby who, after killing time
in the same manner as his mother, was so fortunate as to
fall asleep. She read the introduction, title-page, and
acknowledgment of copyrights, in the hymnal. She tried to evolve
a philosophy which would explain why Kennicott could never
tie his scarf so that it would reach the top of the gap in his
turn-down collar.
There were no other diversions to be found in the pew.
She glanced back at the congregation. She thought that it
would be amiable to bow to Mrs. Champ Perry.
Her slow turning head stopped, galvanized.
Across the aisle, two rows back, was a strange young man
who shone among the cud-chewing citizens like a visitant from
the sun-amber curls, low forehead, fine nose, chin smooth
but not raw from Sabbath shaving. His lips startled her. The
lips of men in Gopher Prairie are flat in the face, straight and
grudging. The stranger's mouth was arched, the upper lip
short. He wore a brown jersey coat, a delft-blue bow, a white
silk shirt, white flannel trousers. He suggested the ocean
beach, a tennis court, anything but the sun-blistered utility
of Main Street.
A visitor from Minneapolis, here for business? No. He
wasn't a business man. He was a poet. Keats was in his face,
and Shelley, and Arthur Upson, whom she had once seen in
Minneapolis. He was at once too sensitive and too sophisticated
to touch business as she knew it in Gopher Prairie.
With restrained amusement he was analyzing the noisy Mr.
Zitterel. Carol was ashamed to have this spy from the Great
World hear the pastor's maundering. She felt responsible for
the town. She resented his gaping at their private rites.
She flushed, turned away. But she continued to feel his
presence.
How could she meet him? She must! For an hour of talk.
He was all that she was hungry for. She could not let
him get away without a word--and she would have to. She
pictured, and ridiculed, herself as walking up to him and
remarking, "I am sick with the Village Virus. Will you please
tell me what people are saying and playing in New York?"
She pictured, and groaned over, the expression of Kennicott
if she should say, "Why wouldn't it be reasonable for you, my
soul, to ask that complete stranger in the brown jersey coat to
come to supper tonight?"
She brooded, not looking back. She warned herself that
she was probably exaggerating; that no young man could have
all these exalted qualities. Wasn't he too obviously smart,
too glossy-new? Like a movie actor. Probably he was a
traveling salesman who sang tenor and fancied himself in
imitations of Newport clothes and spoke of "the swellest
business proposition that ever came down the pike." In a
panic she peered at him. No! This was no hustling salesman,
this boy with the curving Grecian lips and the serious eyes.
She rose after the service, carefully taking Kennicott's arm
and smiling at him in a mute assertion that she was devoted
to him no matter what happened. She followed the Mystery's
soft brown jersey shoulders out of the church.
Fatty Hicks, the shrill and puffy son of Nat, flapped his
hand at the beautiful stranger and jeered, "How's the kid?
All dolled up like a plush horse today, ain't we!"
Carol was exceeding sick. Her herald from the outside
was Erik Valborg, "Elizabeth." Apprentice tailor! Gasoline
and hot goose! Mending dirty jackets! Respectfully holding
a tape-measure about a paunch!
And yet, she insisted, this boy was also himself.
III
They had Sunday dinner with the Smails, in a dining-room
which centered about a fruit and flower piece and a crayonenlargement
of Uncle Whittier. Carol did not heed Aunt
Bessie's fussing in regard to Mrs. Robert B. Schminke's bead
necklace and Whittier's error in putting on the striped pants,
day like this. She did not taste the shreds of roast pork. She
said vacuously:
"Uh--Will, I wonder if that young man in the white flannel
trousers, at church this morning, was this Valborg person that
they're all talking about?"
"Yump. That's him. Wasn't that the darudest get-up he
had on!" Kennicott scratched at a white smear on his hard
gray sleeve.
"It wasn't so bad. I wonder where he comes from? He
seems to have lived in cities a good deal. Is he from the
East?"
"The East? Him? Why, he comes from a farm right up
north here, just this side of Jefferson. I know his father
slightly--Adolph Valborg--typical cranky old Swede farmer."
"Oh, really?" blandly.
"Believe he has lived in Minneapolis for quite some time,
though. Learned his trade there. And I will say he's bright,
some ways. Reads a lot. Pollock says he takes more books
out of the library than anybody else in town. Huh! He's
kind of like you in that!"
The Smails and Kennicott laughed very much at this sly
jest. Uncle Whittier seized the conversation. "That fellow
that's working for Hicks? Milksop, that's what he is. Makes
me tired to see a young fellow that ought to be in the war,
or anyway out in the fields earning his living honest, like
I done when I was young, doing a woman's work and then
come out and dress up like a show-actor! Why, when I was
his age----"
Carol reflected that the carving-knife would make an
excellent dagger with which to kill Uncle Whittier. It would
slide in easily. The headlines would be terrible
Kennicott said judiciously, "Oh, I don't want to be unjust
to him. I believe he took his physical examination for military
service. Got varicose veins--not bad, but enough to disqualify
him. Though I will say he doesn't look like a fellow that
would be so awful darn crazy to poke his bayonet into a
Hun's guts."
"Will! PLEASE!"
"Well, he don't. Looks soft to me. And they say he told
Del Snafflin, when he was getting a hair-cut on Saturday, that
he wished he could play the piano."
"Isn't it wonderful how much we all know about one another
in a town like this," said Carol innocently.
Kennicott was suspicious, but Aunt Bessie, serving the floating
island pudding, agreed, "Yes, it is wonderful. Folks can
get away with all sorts of meannesses and sins in these
terrible cities, but they can't here. I was noticing this tailor
fellow this morning, and when Mrs. Riggs offered to share her
hymn-book with him, he shook his head, and all the while we
was singing he just stood there like a bump on a log and never
opened his mouth. Everybody says he's got an idea that he's got
so much better manners and all than what the rest of us have,
but if that's what he calls good manners, I want to know!"
Carol again studied the carving-knife. Blood on the whiteness
of a tablecloth might be gorgeous.
Then:
"Fool! Neurotic impossibilist! Telling yourself orchard
fairy-tales--at thirty. . . . Dear Lord, am I really THIRTY?
That boy can't be more than twenty-five."
IV
She went calling.
Boarding with the Widow Bogart was Fern Mullins, a girl
of twenty-two who was to be teacher of English, French, and
gymnastics in the high school this coming session. Fern
Mullins had come to town early, for the six-weeks normal
course for country teachers. Carol had noticed her on the
street, had heard almost as much about her as about Erik
Valborg. She was tall, weedy, pretty, and incurably rakish.
Whether she wore a low middy collar or dressed reticently
for school in a black suit with a high-necked blouse, she was
airy, flippant. "She looks like an absolute totty," said all
the Mrs. Sam Clarks, disapprovingly, and all the Juanita
Haydocks, enviously.
That Sunday evening, sitting in baggy canvas lawn-chairs
beside the house, the Kennicotts saw Fern laughing with Cy
Bogart who, though still a junior in high school, was now
a lump of a man, only two or three years younger than Fern.
Cy had to go downtown for weighty matters connected with the
pool-parlor. Fern drooped on the Bogart porch, her chin in
her hands.
"She looks lonely," said Kennicott.
"She does, poor soul. I believe I'll go over and speak to
her. I was introduced to her at Dave's but I haven't called."
Carol was slipping across the lawn, a white figure in the
dimness, faintly brushing the dewy grass. She was thinking of
Erik and of the fact that her feet were wet, and she was casual
in her greeting: "Hello! The doctor and I wondered if you
were lonely."
Resentfully, "I am!"
Carol concentrated on her. "My dear, you sound so! I
know how it is. I used to be tired when I was on the job--
I was a librarian. What was your college? I was Blodgett."
More interestedly, "I went to the U." Fern meant the
University of Minnesota.
"You must have had a splendid time. Blodgett was a bit
dull."
"Where were you a librarian?" challengingly.
"St. Paul--the main library."
"Honest? Oh dear, I wish I was back in the Cities! This
is my first year of teaching, and I'm scared stiff. I did have
the best time in college: dramatics and basket-ball and fussing
and dancing--I'm simply crazy about dancing. And here,
except when I have the kids in gymnasium class, or when I'm
chaperoning the basket-ball team on a trip out-of-town, I won't
dare to move above a whisper. I guess they don't care much
if you put any pep into teaching or not, as long as you look
like a Good Influence out of school-hours--and that means
never doing anything you want to. This normal course is
bad enough, but the regular school will be FIERCE! If it wasn't
too late to get a job in the Cities, I swear I'd resign here.
I bet I won't dare to go to a single dance all winter. If I cut
loose and danced the way I like to, they'd think I was a
perfect hellion--poor harmless me! Oh, I oughtn't to be
talking like this. Fern, you never could be cagey!"
"Don't be frightened, my dear! . . . Doesn't that
sound atrociously old and kind! I'm talking to you the way
Mrs. Westlake talks to me! That's having a husband and a
kitchen range, I suppose. But I feel young, and I want to
dance like a--like a hellion?--too. So I sympathize."
Fern made a sound of gratitude. Carol inquired, "What
experience did you have with college dramatics? I tried to
start a kind of Little Theater here. It was dreadful. I must
tell you about it----"
Two hours later, when Kennicott came over to greet Fern
and to yawn, "Look here, Carrie, don't you suppose you better
be thinking about turning in? I've got a hard day tomorrow,"
the two were talking so intimately that they constantly
interrupted each other.
As she went respectably home, convoyed by a husband, and
decorously holding up her skirts, Carol rejoiced, "Everything
has changed! I have two friends, Fern and---- But who's
the other? That's queer; I thought there was---- Oh, how
absurd!"
V
She often passed Erik Valborg on the street; the brown
jersey coat became unremarkable. When she was driving with
Kennicott, in early evening, she saw him on the lake shore,
reading a thin book which might easily have been poetry. She
noted that he was the only person in the motorized town who
still took long walks.
She told herself that she was the daughter of a judge, the
wife of a doctor, and that she did not care to know a capering
tailor. She told herself that she was not responsive to men. . .
not even to Percy Bresnahan. She told herself that a woman
of thirty who heeded a boy of twenty-five was ridiculous.
And on Friday, when she had convinced herself that
the errand was necessary, she went to Nat Hicks's shop,
bearing the not very romantic burden of a pair of her husband's
trousers. Hicks was in the back room. She faced the Greek
god who, in a somewhat ungodlike way, was stitching a coat
on a scaley sewing-machine, in a room of smutted plaster walls.
She saw that his hands were not in keeping with a Hellenic
face. They were thick, roughened with needle and hot iron
and plow-handle. Even in the shop he persisted in his finery.
He wore a silk shirt, a topaz scarf, thin tan shoes.
This she absorbed while she was saying curtly, "Can I
get these pressed, please?"
Not rising from the sewing-machine he stuck out his hand,
mumbled, "When do you want them?"
"Oh, Monday."
The adventure was over. She was marching out.
"What name?" he called after her.
He had risen and, despite the farcicality of Dr. Will
Kennicott's bulgy trousers draped over his arm, he had the grace
of a cat.
"Kennicott."
"Kennicott. Oh! Oh say, you're Mrs. Dr. Kennicott then,
aren't you?"
"Yes." She stood at the door. Now that she had carried
out her preposterous impulse to see what he was like, she was
cold, she was as ready to detect familiarities as the virtuous
Miss Ella Stowbody.
"I've heard about you. Myrtle Cass was saying you got
up a dramatic club and gave a dandy play. I've always wished
I had a chance to belong to a Little Theater, and give some
European plays, or whimsical like Barrie, or a pageant."
He pronounced it "pagent"; he rhymed "pag" with "rag."
Carol nodded in the manner of a lady being kind to a tradesman,
and one of her selves sneered, "Our Erik is indeed a lost
John Keats."
He was appealing, "Do you suppose it would be possible
to get up another dramatic club this coming fall?"
"Well, it might be worth thinking of." She came out of
her several conflicting poses, and said sincerely, "There's a new
teacher, Miss Mullins, who might have some talent. That
would make three of us for a nucleus. If we could scrape up
half a dozen we might give a real play with a small cast. Have
you had any experience?"
"Just a bum club that some of us got up in Minneapolis
when I was working there. We had one good man, an interior
decorator--maybe he was kind of sis and effeminate, but he
really was an artist, and we gave one dandy play. But I----
Of course I've always had to work hard, and study by myself,
and I'm probably sloppy, and I'd love it if I had training in
rehearsing--I mean, the crankier the director was, the better
I'd like it. If you didn't want to use me as an actor, I'd love
to design the costumes. I'm crazy about fabrics--textures
and colors and designs."
She knew that he was trying to keep her from going, trying
to indicate that he was something more than a person to whom
one brought trousers for pressing. He besought:
"Some day I hope I can get away from this fool repairing,
when I have the money saved up. I want to go East and work
for some big dressmaker, and study art drawing, and become
a high-class designer. Or do you think that's a kind of fiddlin'
ambition for a fellow? I was brought up on a farm. And then
monkeyin' round with silks! I don't know. What do you
think? Myrtle Cass says you're awfully educated."
"I am. Awfully. Tell me: Have the boys made fun of
your ambition?"
She was seventy years old, and sexless, and more advisory
than Vida Sherwin.
"Well, they have, at that. They've jollied me a good deal,
here and Minneapolis both. They say dressmaking is ladies'
work. (But I was willing to get drafted for the war! I tried
to get in. But they rejected me. But I did try! ) I thought
some of working up in a gents' furnishings store, and I had
a chance to travel on the road for a clothing house, but somehow--
I hate this tailoring, but I can't seem to get enthusiastic
about salesmanship. I keep thinking about a room in gray
oatmeal paper with prints in very narrow gold frames--or
would it be better in white enamel paneling?--but anyway, it
looks out on Fifth Avenue, and I'm designing a sumptuous----"
He made it "sump-too-ous"--"robe of linden green chiffon
over cloth of gold! You know--tileul. It's elegant. . . .
What do you think?"
"Why not? What do you care for the opinion of city
rowdies, or a lot of farm boys? But you mustn't, you really
mustn't, let casual strangers like me have a chance to judge
you."
"Well---- You aren't a stranger, one way. Myrtle Cass
--Miss Cass, should say--she's spoken about you so often. I
wanted to call on you--and the doctor--but I didn't quite
have the nerve. One evening I walked past your house, but
you and your husband were talking on the porch, and you
looked so chummy and happy I didn't dare butt in."
Maternally, "I think it's extremely nice of you to want
to be trained in--in enunciation by a stage-director. Perhaps
I could help you. I'm a thoroughly sound and uninspired
schoolma'am by instinct; quite hopelessly mature."
"Oh, you aren't EITHER!"
She was not very successful at accepting his fervor with the
air of amused woman of the world, but she sounded reasonably
impersonal: "Thank you. Shall we see if we really can get
up a new dramatic club? I'll tell you: Come to the house this
evening, about eight. I'll ask Miss Mullins to come over, and
we'll talk about it."
VI
"He has absolutely no sense of humor. Less than Will. But
hasn't he----- What is a `sense of humor'? Isn't the thing
he lacks the back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here?
Anyway---- Poor lamb, coaxing me to stay and play with
him! Poor lonely lamb! If he could be free from Nat Hickses,
from people who say `dandy' and `bum,' would he develop?
"I wonder if Whitman didn't use Brooklyn back-street slang,
as a boy?
"No. Not Whitman. He's Keats--sensitive to silken
things. `Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes as are the
tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings.' Keats, here! A bewildered
spirit fallen on Main Street. And Main Street laughs till it
aches, giggles till the spirit doubts his own self and tries to give
up the use of wings for the correct uses of a `gents' furnishings
store.' Gopher Prairie with its celebrated eleven miles of
cement walk. . . . I wonder how much of the cement
is made out of the tombstones of John Keatses?"
VII
Kennicott was cordial to Fern Mullins, teased her, told her
he was a "great hand for running off with pretty schoolteachers,"
and promised that if the school-board should object
to her dancing, he would "bat 'em one over the head and tell
'em how lucky they were to get a girl with some go to her, for
once."
But to Erik Valborg he was not cordial. He shook hands
loosely, and said, "H' are yuh."
Nat Hicks was socially acceptable; he had been here for
years, and owned his shop; but this person was merely Nat's
workman, and the town's principle of perfect democracy was
not meant to be applied indiscriminately.
The conference on a dramatic club theoretically included
Kennicott, but he sat back, patting yawns, conscious of Fern's
ankles, smiling amiably on the children at their sport.
Fern wanted to tell her grievances; Carol was sulky every
time she thought of "The Girl from Kankakee"; it was Erik
who made suggestions. He had read with astounding breadth,
and astounding lack of judgment. His voice was sensitive to
liquids, but he overused the word "glorious." He mispronounced
a tenth of the words he had from books, but he knew
it. He was insistent, but he was shy.
When he demanded, "I'd like to stage `Suppressed Desires,'
by Cook and Miss Glaspell," Carol ceased to be patronizing.
He was not the yearner: he was the artist, sure of his vision.
"I'd make it simple. Use a big window at the back, with a
cyclorama of a blue that would simply hit you in the eye,
and just one tree-branch, to suggest a park below. Put the
breakfast table on a dais. Let the colors be kind of arty and
tea-roomy--orange chairs, and orange and blue table, and blue
Japanese breakfast set, and some place, one big flat smear of
black--bang! Oh. Another play I wish we could do is Tennyson
Jesse's `The Black Mask.' I've never seen it but----
Glorious ending, where this woman looks at the man with his
face all blown away, and she just gives one horrible scream."
"Good God, is that your idea of a glorious ending?" bayed
Kennicott.
"That sounds fierce! I do love artistic things, but not the
horrible ones," moaned Fern Mullins.
Erik was bewildered; glanced at Carol. She nodded loyally.
At the end of the conference they had decided nothing.
CHAPTER XXIX
SHE had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this Sunday
afternoon.
She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an ancient highwater suit,
tramping sullenly and alone, striking at the rails with a stick.
For a second she unreasoningly wanted to avoid him, but she
kept on, and she serenely talked about God, whose voice, Hugh
asserted, made the humming in the telegraph wires. Erik
stared, straightened. They greeted each other with "Hello."
"Hugh, say how-do-you-do to Mr. Valborg."
"Oh, dear me, he's got a button unbuttoned," worried Erik,
kneeling. Carol frowned, then noted the strength with which
he swung the baby in the air.
"May I walk along a piece with you?"
"I'm tired. Let's rest on those ties. Then I must be trotting
back."
They sat on a heap of discarded railroad ties, oak logs
spotted with cinnamon-colored dry-rot and marked with
metallic brown streaks where iron plates had rested. Hugh
learned that the pile was the hiding-place of Injuns; he went
gunning for them while the elders talked of uninteresting
things.
The telegraph wires thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above
them; the rails were glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled
dusty. Across the track was a pasture of dwarf clover and
sparse lawn cut by earthy cow-paths; beyond its placid narrow
green, the rough immensity of new stubble, jagged with wheatstacks
like huge pineapples.
Erik talked of books; flamed like a recent convert to any
faith. He exhibited as many titles and authors as possible,
halting only to appeal, "Have you read his last book? Don't
you think he's a terribly strong writer?"
She was dizzy. But when he insisted, "You've been a
librarian; tell me; do I read too much fiction?" she advised
him loftily, rather discursively. He had, she indicated, never
studied. He had skipped from one emotion to another.
Especially--she hesitated, then flung it at him--he must not guess
at pronunciations; he must endure the nuisance of stopping to
reach for the dictionary.
"I'm talking like a cranky teacher," she sighed.
"No! And I will study! Read the damned dictionary right
through." He crossed his legs and bent over, clutching his
ankle with both hands. "I know what you mean. I've been
rushing from picture to picture, like a kid let loose in an art
gallery for the first time. You see, it's so awful recent that
I've found there was a world--well, a world where beautiful
things counted. I was on the farm till I was nineteen. Dad
is a good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he first
sent me off to learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing,
and he had a cousin that'd made a lot of money tailoring out
in Dakota, and he said tailoring was a lot like drawing, so he
sent me down to a punk hole called Curlew, to work in a
tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months' schooling
a year--walked to school two miles, through snow up to
my knees--and Dad never would stand for my having a single
book except schoolbooks.
"I never read a novel till I got `Dorothy Vernon of Haddon
Hall' out of the library at Curlew. I thought it was the
loveliest thing in the world! Next I read `Barriers Burned
Away' and then Pope's translation of Homer. Some
combination, all right! When I went to Minneapolis, just two
years ago, I guess I'd read pretty much everything in that
Curlew library, but I'd never heard of Rossetti or John Sargent
or Balzac or Brahms. But---- Yump, I'll study. Look here!
Shall I get out of this tailoring, this pressing and repairing?"
"I don't see why a surgeon should spend very much time
cobbling shoes."
"But what if I find I can't really draw and design? After
fussing around in New York or Chicago, I'd feel like a fool
if I had to go back to work in a gents' furnishings store!"
"Please say `haberdashery.' "
"Haberdashery? All right. I'll remember." He shrugged
and spread his fingers wide.
She was humbled by his humility; she put away in her
mind, to take out and worry over later, a speculation as to
whether it was not she who was naive. She urged, "What
if you do have to go back? Most of us do! We can't all
be artists--myself, for instance. We have to darn socks, and
yet we're not content to think of nothing but socks and darningcotton.
I'd demand all I could get--whether I finally settled
down to designing frocks or building temples or pressing pants.
What if you do drop back? You'll have had the adventure.
Don't be too meek toward life! Go! You're young, you're
unmarried. Try everything! Don't listen to Nat Hicks and
Sam Clark and be a `steady young man'--in order to help
them make money. You're still a blessed innocent. Go and
play till the Good People capture you!"
"But I don't just want to play. I want to make something
beautiful. God! And I don't know enough. Do you get it?
Do you understand? Nobody else ever has! Do you understand?"
"Yes."
"And so---- But here's what bothers me: I like fabrics;
dinky things like that; little drawings and elegant words. But
look over there at those fields. Big! New! Don't it seem
kind of a shame to leave this and go back to the East and
Europe, and do what all those people have been doing so long?
Being careful about words, when there's millions of bushels off
wheat here! Reading this fellow Pater, when I've helped Dad
to clear fields!"
"It's good to clear fields. But it's not for you. It's one
of our favorite American myths that broad plains necessarily
make broad minds, and high mountains make high purpose.
I thought that myself, when I first came to the prairie. `Big--
new.' Oh, I don't want to deny the prairie future. It will
be magnificent. But equally I'm hanged if I want to be bullied
by it, go to war on behalf of Main Street, be bullied and BULLIED
by the faith that the future is already here in the present, and
that all of us must stay and worship wheat-stacks and insist
that this is `God's Country'--and never, of course, do
anything original or gay-colored that would help to make that
future! Anyway, you don't belong here. Sam Clark and Nat
Hicks, that's what our big newness has produced. Go! Before
it's too late, as it has been for--for some of us. Young man,
go East and grow up with the revolution! Then perhaps you
may come back and tell Sam and Nat and me what to do with
the land we've been clearing--if we'll listen--if we don't lynch
you first!"
He looked at her reverently. She could hear him saying,
"I've always wanted to know a woman who would talk to
me like that."
Her hearing was faulty. He was saying nothing of the sort.
He was saying:
"Why aren't you happy with your husband?"
"I--you----"
"He doesn't care for the `blessed innocent' part of you,
does he!"
"Erik, you mustn't----"
"First you tell me to go and be free, and then you say that
I `mustn't'!"
"I know. But you mustn't---- You must be more
impersonal!"
He glowered at her like a downy young owl. She wasn't
sure but she thought that he muttered, "I'm damned if I will."
She considered with wholesome fear the perils of meddling with
other people's destinies, and she said timidly, "Hadn't we
better start back now?"
He mused, "You're younger than I am. Your lips are for
songs about rivers in the morning and lakes at twilight. I don't
see how anybody could ever hurt you. . . . Yes. We better go."
He trudged beside her, his eyes averted. Hugh experimentally
took his thumb. He looked down at the baby seriously.
He burst out, "All right. I'll do it. I'll stay here
one year. Save. Not spend so much money on clothes. And
then I'll go East, to art-school. Work on the side-tailor shop,
dressmaker's. I'll learn what I'm good for: designing clothes,
stage-settings, illustrating, or selling collars to fat men. All
settled." He peered at her, unsmiling.
"Can you stand it here in town for a year?"
"With you to look at?"
"Please! I mean: Don't the people here think you're an
odd bird? (They do me, I assure you!)"
"I don't know. I never notice much. Oh, they do kid me
about not being in the army--especially the old warhorses, the
old men that aren't going themselves. And this Bogart boy.
And Mr. Hicks's son--he's a horrible brat. But probably he's
licensed to say what he thinks about his father's hired man!"
"He's beastly!"
They were in town. They passed Aunt Bessie's house. Aunt
Bessie and Mrs. Bogart were at the window, and Carol saw
that they were staring so intently that they answered her wave
only with the stiffly raised hands of automatons. In the next
block Mrs. Dr. Westlake was gaping from her porch. Carol
said with an embarrassed quaver:
"I want to run in and see Mrs. Westlake. I'll say good-by here."
She avoided his eyes.
Mrs. Westlake was affable. Carol felt that she was expected
to explain; and while she was mentally asserting that she'd
be hanged if she'd explain, she was explaining:
"Hugh captured that Valborg boy up the track. They
became such good friends. And I talked to him for a while. I'd
heard he was eccentric, but really, I found him quite intelligent.
Crude, but he reads--reads almost the way Dr. Westlake does."
"That's fine. Why does he stick here in town? What's
this I hear about his being interested in Myrtle Cass?"
"I don't know. Is he? I'm sure he isn't! He said he was
quite lonely! Besides, Myrtle is a babe in arms!"
"Twenty-one if she's a day!"
"Well---- Is the doctor going to do any hunting this fall?"
II
The need of explaining Erik dragged her back into doubting.
For all his ardent reading, and his ardent life, was he anything
but a small-town youth bred on an illiberal farm and in cheap
tailor shops? He had rough hands. She had been attracted
only by hands that were fine and suave, like those of her father.
Delicate hands and resolute purpose. But this boy--powerful
seamed hands and flabby will.
"It's not appealing weakness like his, but sane strength that
win animate the Gopher Prairies. Only---- Does that mean
anything? Or am I echoing Vida? The world has always let
`strong' statesmen and soldiers--the men with strong voices--
take control, and what have the thundering boobies done?
What is `strength'?
"This classifying of people! I suppose tailors differ as much
as burglars or kings.
"Erik frightened me when he turned on me. Of course
he didn't mean anything, but I mustn't let him be so personal.
"Amazing impertinence!
"But he didn't mean to be.
"His hands are FIRM. I wonder if sculptors don't have
thick hands, too?
"Of course if there really is anything I can do to HELP the boy----
"Though I despise these people who interfere. He must be independent."
III
She wasn't altogether pleased, the week after, when Erik was
independent and, without asking for her inspiration, planned
the tennis tournament. It proved that he had learned to play
in Minneapolis; that, next to Juanita Haydock, he had the
best serve in town. Tennis was well spoken of in Gopher
Prairie and almost never played. There were three courts:
one belonging to Harry Haydock, one to the cottages at the
lake, and one, a rough field on the outskirts, laid out by a
defunct tennis association.
Erik had been seen in flannels and an imitation panama hat,
playing on the abandoned court with Willis Woodford, the clerk
in Stowbody's bank. Suddenly he was going about proposing
the reorganization of the tennis association, and writing names
in a fifteen-cent note-book bought for the purpose at Dyer's.
When he came to Carol he was so excited over being an
organizer that he did not stop to talk of himself and Aubrey
Beardsley for more than ten minutes. He begged, "Will you
get some of the folks to come in?" and she nodded agreeably.
He proposed an informal exhibition match to advertise the
association; he suggested that Carol and himself, the Haydocks,
the Woodfords, and the Dillons play doubles, and that the
association be formed from the gathered enthusiasts. He had
asked Harry Haydock to be tentative president. Harry, he
reported, had promised, "All right. You bet. But you go
ahead and arrange things, and I'll O.K. 'em." Erik planned
that the match should be held Saturday afternoon, on the old
public court at the edge of town. He was happy in being, for
the first time, part of Gopher Prairie.
Through the week Carol heard how select an attendance
there was to be.
Kennicott growled that he didn't care to go.
Had he any objections to her playing with Erik?
No; sure not; she needed the exercise.
Carol went to the match early. The court was in a meadow
out on the New Antonia road. Only Erik was there. He was
dashing about with a rake, trying to make the court somewhat
less like a plowed field. He admitted that he had stage
fright at the thought of the coming horde. Willis and Mrs.
Woodford arrived, Willis in home-made knickers and black
sneakers through at the toe; then Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon,
people as harmless and grateful as the Woodfords.
Carol was embarrassed and excessively agreeable, like the
bishop's lady trying not to feel out of place at a Baptist
bazaar.
They waited.
The match was scheduled for three. As spectators there
assembled one youthful grocery clerk, stopping his Ford delivery
wagon to stare from the seat, and one solemn small boy, tugging
a smaller sister who had a careless nose.
"I wonder where the Haydocks are? They ought to show
up, at least," said Erik.
Carol smiled confidently at him, and peered down the empty
road toward town. Only heat-waves and dust and dusty
weeds.
At half-past three no one had come, and the grocery boy
reluctantly got out, cranked his Ford, glared at them in a
disillusioned manner, and rattled away. The small boy and his
sister ate grass and sighed.
The players pretended to be exhilarated by practising
service, but they startled at each dust-cloud from a motor car.
None of the cars turned into the meadow-none till a quarter
to four, when Kennicott drove in.
Carol's heart swelled. "How loyal he is! Depend on him!
He'd come, if nobody else did. Even though he doesn't care
for the game. The old darling!"
Kennicott did not alight. He called out, "Carrie! Harry
Haydock 'phoned me that they've decided to hold the tennis
matches, or whatever you call 'em, down at the cottages at the
lake, instead of here. The bunch are down there now: Haydocks
and Dyers and Clarks and everybody. Harry wanted to
know if I'd bring you down. I guess I can take the time--
come right back after supper."
Before Carol could sum it all up, Erik stammered, "Why,
Haydock didn't say anything to me about the change. Of
course he's the president, but----"
Kennicott looked at him heavily, and grunted, "I don't know
a thing about it. . . . Coming, Carrie?"
"I am not! The match was to be here, and it will be here!
You can tell Harry Haydock that he's beastly rude!" She
rallied the five who had been left out, who would always be
left out. "Come on! We'll toss to see which four of us play
the Only and Original First Annual Tennis Tournament of
Forest Hills, Del Monte, and Gopher Prairie!"
"Don't know as I blame you," said Kennicott. "Well
have supper at home then?" He drove off.
She hated him for his composure. He had ruined her
defiance. She felt much less like Susan B. Anthony as she turned
to her huddled followers.
Mrs. Dillon and Willis Woodford lost the toss. The others
played out the game, slowly, painfully, stumbling on the rough
earth, muffing the easiest shots, watched only by the small boy
and his sniveling sister. Beyond the court stretched the eternal
stubble-fields. The four marionettes, awkwardly going through
exercises, insignificant in the hot sweep of contemptuous land,
were not heroic; their voices did not ring out in the score, but
sounded apologetic; and when the game was over they glanced
about as though they were waiting to be laughed at.
They walked home. Carol took Erik's arm. Through her
thin linen sleeve she could feel the crumply warmth of his
familiar brown jersey coat. She observed that there were
purple and red gold threads interwoven with the brown. She
remembered the first time she had seen it.
Their talk was nothing but improvisations on the theme:
"I never did like this Haydock. He just considers his own
convenience." Ahead of them, the Dillons and Woodfords
spoke of the weather and B. J. Gougerling's new bungalow. No
one referred to their tennis tournament. At her gate Carol
shook hands firmly with Erik and smiled at him.
Next morning, Sunday morning, when Carol was on the
porch, the Haydocks drove up.
"We didn't mean to be rude to you, dearie!" implored
Juanita. "I wouldn't have you think that for anything. We
planned that Will and you should come down and have supper
at our cottage."
"No. I'm sure you didn't mean to be." Carol was superneighborly.
"But I do think you ought to apologize to poor
Erik Valborg. He was terribly hurt."
"Oh. Valborg. I don't care so much what he thinks,"
objected Harry. "He's nothing but a conceited buttinsky.
Juanita and I kind of figured he was trying to run this
tennis thing too darn much anyway."
"But you asked him to make arrangements."
"I know, but I don't like him. Good Lord, you couldn't
hurt his feelings! He dresses up like a chorus man--and,
by golly, he looks like one!--but he's nothing but a Swede farm
boy, and these foreigners, they all got hides like a covey of
rhinoceroses ."
"But he IS hurt!"
"Well---- I don't suppose I ought to have gone off halfcocked,
and not jollied him along. I'll give him a cigar.
He'll----"
Juanita had been licking her lips and staring at Carol. She
interrupted her husband, "Yes, I do think Harry ought to
fix it up with him. You LIKE him, DON'T you, Carol??"
Over and through Carol ran a frightened cautiousness.
"Like him? I haven't an I--dea. He seems to be a very decent
young man. I just felt that when he'd worked so hard on
the plans for the match, it was a shame not to be nice to him."
"Maybe there's something to that," mumbled Harry; then,
at sight of Kennicott coming round the corner tugging the red
garden hose by its brass nozzle, he roared in relief, "What
d' you think you're trying to do, doc?"
While Kennicott explained in detail all that he thought he
was trying to do, while he rubbed his chin and gravely stated,
"Struck me the grass was looking kind of brown in patches--
didn't know but what I'd give it a sprinkling," and while
Harry agreed that this was an excellent idea, Juanita made
friendly noises and, behind the gilt screen of an affectionate
smile, watched Carol's face.
IV
She wanted to see Erik. She wanted some one to play with!
There wasn't even so dignified and sound an excuse as
having Kennicott's trousers pressed; when she inspected them,
all three pairs looked discouragingly neat. She probably
would not have ventured on it had she not spied Nat Hicks
in the pool-parlor, being witty over bottle-pool. Erik was
alone! She fluttered toward the tailor shop, dashed into its
slovenly heat with the comic fastidiousness of a humming bird
dipping into a dry tiger-lily. It was after she had entered
that she found an excuse.
Erik was in the back room, cross-legged on a long table,
sewing a vest. But he looked as though he were doing this
eccentric thing to amuse himself.
"Hello. I wonder if you couldn't plan a sports-suit for
me?" she said breathlessly.
He stared at her; he protested, "No, I won't! God! I'm
not going to be a tailor with you!"
"Why, Erik!" she said, like a mildly shocked mother.
It occurred to her that she did not need a suit, and that
the order might have been hard to explain to Kennicott.
He swung down from the table. "I want to show you
something." He rummaged in the roll-top desk on which Nat
Hicks kept bills, buttons, calendars, buckles, thread-channeled
wax, shotgun shells, samples of brocade for "fancy vests,"
fishing-reels, pornographic post-cards, shreds of buckram lining.
He pulled out a blurred sheet of Bristol board and
anxiously gave it to her. It was a sketch for a frock. It
was not well drawn; it was too finicking; the pillars in the
background were grotesquely squat. But the frock had an
original back, very low, with a central triangular section from
the waist to a string of jet beads at the neck.
"It's stunning. But how it would shock Mrs. Clark!"
"Yes, wouldn't it!"
"You must let yourself go more when you're drawing."
"Don't know if I can. I've started kind of late. But
listen! What do you think I've done this two weeks? I've
read almost clear through a Latin grammar, and about twenty
pages of Caesar."
"Splendid! You are lucky. You haven't a teacher to make
you artificial."
"You're my teacher!"
There was a dangerous edge of personality to his voice.
She was offended and agitated. She turned her shoulder on
him, stared through the back window, studying this typical
center of a typical Main Street block, a vista hidden from
casual strollers. The backs of the chief establishments in town
surrounded a quadrangle neglected, dirty, and incomparably
dismal. From the front, Howland & Gould's grocery was
smug enough, but attached to the rear was a lean-to of storm
streaked pine lumber with a sanded tar roof--a staggering
doubtful shed behind which was a heap of ashes, splintered
packing-boxes, shreds of excelsior, crumpled straw-board,
broken olive-bottles, rotten fruit, and utterly disintegrated
vegetables: orange carrots turning black, and potatoes with
ulcers. The rear of the Bon Ton Store was grim with blistered
black-painted iron shutters, under them a pile of once glossy
red shirt-boxes, now a pulp from recent rain.
As seen from Main Street, Oleson & McGuire's Meat Market
had a sanitary and virtuous expression with its new tile
counter, fresh sawdust on the floor, and a hanging veal cut
in rosettes. But she now viewed a back room with a homemade
refrigerator of yellow smeared with black grease. A man
in an apron spotted with dry blood was hoisting out a hard
slab of meat.
Behind Billy's Lunch, the cook, in an apron which must
long ago have been white, smoked a pipe and spat at the
pest of sticky flies. In the center of the block, by itself, was
the stable for the three horses of the drayman, and beside it a
pile of manure.
The rear of Ezra Stowbody's bank was whitewashed, and
back of it was a concrete walk and a three-foot square of
grass, but the window was barred, and behind the bars she
saw Willis Woodford cramped over figures in pompous books.
He raised his head, jerkily rubbed his eyes, and went back
to the eternity of figures.
The backs of the other shops were an impressionistic picture
of dirty grays, drained browns, writhing heaps of refuse.
"Mine is a back-yard romance--with a journeyman tailor!"
She was saved from self-pity as she began to think through
Erik's mind. She turned to him with an indignant, "It's
disgusting that this is all you have to look at."
He considered it. "Outside there? I don't notice much.
I'm learning to look inside. Not awful easy!"
"Yes. . . . I must be hurrying."
As she walked home--without hurrying--she remembered
her father saying to a serious ten-year-old Carol, "Lady, only
a fool thinks he's superior to beautiful bindings, but only a
double-distilled fool reads nothing but bindings."
She was startled by the return of her father, startled by a
sudden conviction that in this flaxen boy she had found
the gray reticent judge who was divine love, perfect understanding.
She debated it, furiously denied it, reaffirmed it,
ridiculed it. Of one thing she was unhappily certain: there
was nothing of the beloved father image in Will Kennicott.
V
She wondered why she sang so often, and why she found
so many pleasant things--lamplight seen though trees on
a cool evening, sunshine on brown wood, morning sparrows,
black sloping roofs turned to plates of silver by moonlight.
Pleasant things, small friendly things, and pleasant places--a
field of goldenrod, a pasture by the creek--and suddenly a
wealth of pleasant people. Vida was lenient to Carol at the
surgical-dressing class; Mrs. Dave Dyer flattered her with
questions about her health, baby, cook, and opinions on the
war.
Mrs. Dyer seemed not to share the town's prejudice against
Erik. "He's a nice-looking fellow; we must have him go on
one of our picnics some time." Unexpectedly, Dave Dyer also
liked him. The tight-fisted little farceur had a confused
reverence for anything that seemed to him refined or clever. He
answered Harry Haydock's sneers, "That's all right now!
Elizabeth may doll himself up too much, but he's smart, and
don't you forget it! I was asking round trying to find
out where this Ukraine is, and darn if he didn't tell me.
What's the matter with his talking so polite? Hell's bells,
Harry, no harm in being polite. There's some regular hemen
that are just as polite as women, prett' near."
Carol found herself going about rejoicing, "How neighborly
the town is!" She drew up with a dismayed "Am I falling in
love with this boy? That's ridiculous! I'm merely interested
in him. I like to think of helping him to succeed."
But as she dusted the living-room, mended a collar-band,
bathed Hugh, she was picturing herself and a young artistan
Apollo nameless and evasive--building a house in the
Berkshires or in Virginia; exuberantly buying a chair with his
first check; reading poetry together, and frequently being
earnest over valuable statistics about labor; tumbling out of
bed early for a Sunday walk, and chattering (where Kennicott
would have yawned) over bread and butter by a lake. Hugh
was in her pictures, and he adored the young artist, who made
castles of chairs and rugs for him. Beyond these playtimes
she saw the "things I could do for Erik"--and she admitted that Erik
did partly make up the image of her altogether perfect artist.
In panic she insisted on being attentive to Kennicott, when
he wanted to be left alone to read the newspaper.
VI
She needed new clothes. Kennicott had promised, "We'll
have a good trip down to the Cities in the fall, and take plenty
of time for it, and you can get your new glad-rags then." But
as she examined her wardrobe she flung her ancient black
velvet frock on the floor and raged, "They're disgraceful.
Everything I have is falling to pieces."
There was a new dressmaker and milliner, a Mrs.
Swiftwaite. It was said that she was not altogether an elevating
influence in the way she glanced at men; that she would as
soon take away a legally appropriated husband as not; that if
there WAS any Mr. Swiftwaite, "it certainly was strange that
nobody seemed to know anything about him!" But she had
made for Rita Gould an organdy frock and hat to match
universally admitted to be "too cunning for words," and the
matrons went cautiously, with darting eyes and excessive
politeness, to the rooms which Mrs. Swiftwaite had taken in
the old Luke Dawson house, on Floral Avenue.
With none of the spiritual preparation which normally
precedes the buying of new clothes in Gopher Prairie, Carol
marched into Mrs. Swiftwaite's, and demanded, "I want to
see a hat, and possibly a blouse."
In the dingy old front parlor which she had tried to make
smart with a pier glass, covers from fashion magazines,
anemic French prints, Mrs. Swiftwaite moved smoothly among
the dress-dummies and hat-rests, spoke smoothly as she took
up a small black and red turban. "I am sure the lady will
find this extremely attractive."
"It's dreadfully tabby and small-towny," thought Carol,
while she soothed, "I don't believe it quite goes with me."
"It's the choicest thing I have, and I'm sure you'll find
it suits you beautifully. It has a great deal of chic. Please
try it on," said Mrs. Swiftwaite, more smoothly than ever.
Carol studied the woman. She was as imitative as a glass
diamond. She was the more rustic in her effort to appear
urban. She wore a severe high-collared blouse with a row of
small black buttons, which was becoming to her low-breasted
slim neatness, but her skirt was hysterically checkered, her
cheeks were too highly rouged, her lips too sharply penciled.
She was magnificently a specimen of the illiterate divorcee of
forty made up to look thirty, clever, and alluring.
While she was trying on the hat Carol felt very condescending.
She took it off, shook her head, explained with the kind
smile for inferiors, "I'm afraid it won't do, though it's
unusually nice for so small a town as this."
"But it's really absolutely New-Yorkish."
"Well, it----"
"You see, I know my New York styles. I lived in New
York for years, besides almost a year in Akron!"
"You did?" Carol was polite, and edged away, and went
home unhappily. She was wondering whether her own airs
were as laughable as Mrs. Swiftwaite's. She put on the eyeglasses
which Kennicott had recently given to her for reading,
and looked over a grocery bill. She went hastily up to her
room, to her mirror. She was in a mood of self-depreciation.
Accurately or not, this was the picture she saw in the mirror:
Neat rimless eye-glasses. Black hair clumsily tucked under
a mauve straw hat which would have suited a spinster. Cheeks
clear, bloodless. Thin nose. Gentle mouth and chin. A
modest voile blouse with an edging of lace at the neck. A
virginal sweetness and timorousness--no flare of gaiety, no
suggestion of cities, music, quick laughter.
"I have become a small-town woman. Absolute. Typical.
Modest and moral and safe. Protected from life. GENTEEL!
The Village Virus--the village virtuousness. My hair--just
scrambled together. What can Erik see in that wedded spinster
there? He does like me! Because I'm the only woman who's
decent to him! How long before he'll wake up to me? . . .
I've waked up to myself. . . . Am I as old as--as old as I am?
"Not really old. Become careless. Let myself look tabby.
"I want to chuck every stitch I own. Black hair and
pale cheeks--they'd go with a Spanish dancer's costume--
rose behind my ear, scarlet mantilla over one shoulder, the
other bare."
She seized the rouge sponge, daubed her cheeks, scratched at
her lips with the vermilion pencil until they stung, tore open
her collar. She posed with her thin arms in the attitude of
the fandango. She dropped them sharply. She shook her head.
"My heart doesn't dance," she said. She flushed as she
fastened her blouse.
"At least I'm much more graceful than Fern Mullins.
Heavens! When I came here from the Cities, girls imitated
me. Now I'm trying to imitate a city girl."
CHAPTER XXX
FERN Mullins rushed into the house on a Saturday morning
early in September and shrieked at Carol, "School starts next
Tuesday. I've got to have one more spree before I'm arrested.
Let's get up a picnic down the lake for this afternoon. Won't
you come, Mrs. Kennicott, and the doctor? Cy Bogart wants
to go--he's a brat but he's lively."
"I don't think the doctor can go," sedately. "He said
something about having to make a country call this afternoon.
But I'd love to."
"That's dandy! Who can we get?"
"Mrs. Dyer might be chaperon. She's been so nice. And
maybe Dave, if he could get away from the store."
"How about Erik Valborg? I think he's got lots more style
than these town boys. You like him all right, don't you?"
So the picnic of Carol, Fern, Erik, Cy Bogart, and the
Dyers was not only moral but inevitable.
They drove to the birch grove on the south shore of Lake
Minniemashie. Dave Dyer was his most clownish self. He
yelped, jigged, wore Carol's hat, dropped an ant down Fern's
back, and when they went swimming (the women modestly
changing in the car with the side curtains up, the men
undressing behind the bushes, constantly repeating, "Gee, hope
we don't run into poison ivy"), Dave splashed water on
them and dived to clutch his wife's ankle. He infected the
others. Erik gave an imitation of the Greek dancers he had
seen in vaudeville, and when they sat down to picnic supper
spread on a lap-robe on the grass, Cy climbed a tree to throw
acorns at them.
But Carol could not frolic.
She had made herself young, with parted hair, sailor blouse
and large blue bow, white canvas shoes and short linen skirt.
Her mirror had asserted that she looked exactly as she had in
college, that her throat was smooth, her collar-bone not very
noticeable. But she was under restraint. When they swam
she enjoyed the freshness of the water but she was irritated by
Cy's tricks, by Dave's excessive good spirits. She admired
Erik's dance; he could never betray bad taste, as Cy did, and
Dave. She waited for him to come to her. He did not come.
By his joyousness he had apparently endeared himself to
the Dyers. Maud watched him and, after supper, cried to
him, "Come sit down beside me, bad boy!" Carol winced
at his willingness to be a bad boy and come and sit, at his
enjoyment of a not very stimulating game in which Maud, Dave,
and Cy snatched slices of cold tongue from one another's
plates. Maud, it seemed, was slightly dizzy from the swim.
She remarked publicly, "Dr. Kennicott has helped me so much
by putting me on a diet," but it was to Erik alone that she
gave the complete version of her peculiarity in being so
sensitive, so easily hurt by the slightest cross word, that she simply
had to have nice cheery friends.
Erik was nice and cheery.
Carol assured herself, "Whatever faults I may have, I
certainly couldn't ever be jealous. I do like Maud; she's
always so pleasant. But I wonder if she isn't just a bit fond of
fishing for men's sympathy? Playing with Erik, and her
married---- Well---- But she looks at him in that languishing,
swooning, mid-Victorian way. Disgusting!"
Cy Bogart lay between the roots of a big birch, smoking his
pipe and teasing Fern, assuring her that a week from now,
when he was again a high-school boy and she his teacher, he'd
wink at her in class. Maud Dyer wanted Erik to "come down
to the beach to see the darling little minnies." Carol was left
to Dave, who tried to entertain her with humorous accounts
of Ella Stowbody's fondness for chocolate peppermints. She
watched Maud Dyer put her hand on Erik's shoulder to steady
herself.
"Disgusting!" she thought.
Cy Bogart covered Fern's nervous hand with his red paw, and
when she bounced with half-anger and shrieked, "Let go, I
tell you!" he grinned and waved his pipe--a gangling twentyyear-
old satyr.
"Disgusting!"
When Maud and Erik returned and the grouping shifted,
Erik muttered at Carol, "There's a boat on shore. Let's skip
off and have a row."
"What will they think?" she worried. She saw Maud
Dyer peer at Erik with moist possessive eyes. "Yes! Let's!"
she said.
She cried to the party, with the canonical amount of
sprightliness, "Good-by, everybody. We'll wireless you from China."
As the rhythmic oars plopped and creaked, as she floated
on an unreality of delicate gray over which the sunset was
poured out thin, the irritation of Cy and Maud slipped away.
Erik smiled at her proudly. She considered him--coatless, in
white thin shirt. She was conscious of his male differentness,
of his flat masculine sides, his thin thighs, his easy rowing.
They talked of the library, of the movies. He hummed and
she softly sang "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." A breeze
shivered across the agate lake. The wrinkled water was like
armor damascened and polished. The breeze flowed round the
boat in a chill current. Carol drew the collar of her middy
blouse over her bare throat.
"Getting cold. Afraid we'll have to go back," she said.
"Let's not go back to them yet. They'll be cutting up.
Let's keep along the shore."
"But you enjoy the `cutting up!' Maud and you had a
beautiful time."
"Why! We just walked on the shore and talked about
fishing!"
She was relieved, and apologetic to her friend Maud. "Of
course. I was joking."
"I'll tell you! Let's land here and sit on the shore--that
bunch of hazel-brush will shelter us from the wind--and watch
the sunset. It's like melted lead. Just a short while! We
don't want to go back and listen to them!"
"No, but----" She said nothing while he sped ashore.
The keel clashed on the stones. He stood on the forward seat,
holding out his hand. They were alone, in the ripple-lapping
silence. She rose slowly, slowly stepped over the water in the
bottom of the old boat. She took his hand confidently.
Unspeaking they sat on a bleached log, in a russet twilight which
hinted of autumn. Linden leaves fluttered about them.
"I wish---- Are you cold now?" he whispered.
"A little." She shivered. But it was not with cold.
"I wish we could curl up in the leaves there, covered all
up, and lie looking out at the dark."
"I wish we could." As though it was comfortably understood
that he did not mean to be taken seriously.
"Like what all the poets say--brown nymph and faun."
"No. I can't be a nymph any more. Too old---- Erik,
am I old? Am I faded and small-towny?"
"Why, you're the youngest---- Your eyes are like a
girl's. They're so--well, I mean, like you believed everything.
Even if you do teach me, I feel a thousand years older
than you, instead of maybe a year younger."
"Four or five years younger!"
"Anyway, your eyes are so innocent and your cheeks so
soft---- Damn it, it makes me want to cry, somehow, you're
so defenseless; and I want to protect you and---- There's
nothing to protect you against!"
"Am I young? Am I? Honestly? Truly?" She
betrayed for a moment the childish, mock-imploring tone that
comes into the voice of the most serious woman when an
agreeable man treats her as a girl; the childish tone and
childish pursed-up lips and shy lift of the cheek.
"Yes, you are!"
"You're dear to believe it, Will--ERIK!"
"Will you play with me? A lot?"
"Perhaps."
"Would you really like to curl in the leaves and watch the
stars swing by overhead?"
"I think it's rather better to be sitting here!" He twined
his fingers with hers. "And Erik, we must go back."
"Why?"
"It's somewhat late to outline all the history of social
custom!"
"I know. We must. Are you glad we ran away though?"
"Yes." She was quiet, perfectly simple. But she rose.
He circled her waist with a brusque arm. She did not resist.
She did not care. He was neither a peasant tailor, a potential
artist, a social complication, nor a peril. He was himself, and
in him, in the personality flowing from him, she was unreasoningly
content. In his nearness she caught a new view of his
head; the last light brought out the planes of his neck, his
flat ruddied cheeks, the side of his nose, the depression of his
temples. Not as coy or uneasy lovers but as companions they
walked to the boat, and he lifted her up on the prow.
She began to talk intently, as he rowed: "Erik, you've got
to work! You ought to be a personage. You're robbed of
your kingdom. Fight for it! Take one of these correspondence
courses in drawing--they mayn't be any good in themselves,
but they'll make you try to draw and----"
As they reached the picnic ground she perceived that it was
dark, that they had been gone for a long time.
"What will they say?" she wondered.
The others greeted them with the inevitable storm of humor
and slight vexation: "Where the deuce do you think you've
been?" "You're a fine pair, you are!" Erik and Carol
looked self-conscious; failed in their effort to be witty. All the
way home Carol was embarrassed. Once Cy winked at her.
That Cy, the Peeping Tom of the garage-loft, should consider
her a fellow-sinner---- She was furious and frightened and
exultant by turns, and in all her moods certain that Kennicott
would read her adventuring in her face.
She came into the house awkwardly defiant.
Her husband, half asleep under the lamp, greeted her, "Well,
well, have nice time?"
She could not answer. He looked at her. But his look
did not sharpen. He began to wind his watch, yawning the old
"Welllllll, guess it's about time to turn in."
That was all. Yet she was not glad. She was almost
disappointed.
II
Mrs. Bogart called next day. She had a hen-like, crumbpecking,
diligent appearance. Her smile was too innocent. The
pecking started instantly:
"Cy says you had lots of fun at the picnic yesterday. Did
you enjoy it?"
"Oh yes. I raced Cy at swimming. He beat me badly.
He's so strong, isn't he!"
"Poor boy, just crazy to get into the war, too, but----
This Erik Valborg was along, wa'n't he?"
"Yes."
"I think he's an awful handsome fellow, and they say he's
smart. Do you like him?"
"He seems very polite."
"Cy says you and him had a lovely boat-ride. My, that
must have been pleasant."
"Yes, except that I couldn't get Mr. Valborg to say a word.
I wanted to ask him about the suit Mr. Hicks is making for
my husband. But he insisted on singing. Still, it was restful,
floating around on the water and singing. So happy and
innocent. Don't you think it's a shame, Mrs. Bogart, that people
in this town don't do more nice clean things like that, instead
of all this horrible gossiping?"
"Yes. . . . Yes."
Mrs. Bogart sounded vacant. Her bonnet was awry; she
was incomparably dowdy. Carol stared at her, felt contemptuous,
ready at last to rebel against the trap, and as the rusty
goodwife fished again, "Plannin' some more picnics?" she
flung out, "I haven't the slightest idea! Oh. Is that Hugh
crying? I must run up to him."
But up-stairs she remembered that Mrs. Bogart had seen her
walking with Erik from the railroad track into town, and she
was chilly with disquietude.
At the Jolly Seventeen, two days after, she was effusive to
Maud Dyer, to Juanita Haydock. She fancied that every one
was watching her, but she could not be sure, and in rare strong
moments she did not care. She could rebel against the town's
prying now that she had something, however indistinct, for
which to rebel.
In a passionate escape there must be not only a place from
which to flee but a place to which to flee. She had known
that she would gladly leave Gopher Prairie, leave Main Street
and all that it signified, but she had had no destination. She
had one now. That destination was not Erik Valborg and the
love of Erik. She continued to assure herself that she wasn't
in love with him but merely "fond of him, and interested in
his success." Yet in him she had discovered both her need of
youth and the fact that youth would welcome her. It was not
Erik to whom she must escape, but universal and joyous youth,
in class-rooms, in studios, in offices, in meetings to protest
against Things in General. . . . But universal and joyous
youth rather resembled Erik.
All week she thought of things she wished to say to him.
High, improving things. She began to admit that she was
lonely without him. Then she was afraid.
It was at the Baptist church supper, a week after the picnic,
that she saw him again. She had gone with Kennicott and
Aunt Bessie to the supper, which was spread on oilclothcovered
and trestle-supported tables in the church basement.
Erik was helping Myrtle Cass to fill coffee cups for the waitresses.
The congregation had doffed their piety. Children
tumbled under the tables, and Deacon Pierson greeted the
women with a rolling, "Where's Brother Jones, sister, where's
Brother Jones? Not going to be with us tonight? Well,
you tell Sister Perry to hand you a plate, and make 'em give
you enough oyster pie!"
Erik shared in the cheerfulness. He laughed with Myrtle,
jogged her elbow when she was filling cups, made deep mock
bows to the waitresses as they came up for coffee. Myrtle
was enchanted by his humor. From the other end of the room,
a matron among matrons, Carol observed Myrtle, and hated
her, and caught herself at it. "To be jealous of a woodenfaced
village girl!" But she kept it up. She detested Erik;
gloated over his gaucheries--his "breaks," she called them.
When he was too expressive, too much like a Russian dancer,
in saluting Deacon Pierson, Carol had the ecstasy of pain in
seeing the deacon's sneer. When, trying to talk to three girls
at once, he dropped a cup and effeminately wailed, "Oh dear!"
she sympathized with--and ached over--the insulting secret
glances of the girls.
From meanly hating him she rose to compassion as she saw
that his eyes begged every one to like him. She perceived how
inaccurate her judgments could be. At the picnic she had
fancied that Maud Dyer looked upon Erik too sentimentally,
and she had snarled, "I hate these married women who cheapen
themselves and feed on boys." But at the supper Maud was one
of the waitresses; she bustled with platters of cake, she was
pleasant to old women; and to Erik she gave no attention at all.
Indeed, when she had her own supper, she joined the Kennicotts,
and how ludicrous it was to suppose that Maud was a
gourmet of emotions Carol saw in the fact that she talked
not to one of the town beaux but to the safe Kennicott himself!
When Carol glanced at Erik again she discovered that Mrs.
Bogart had an eye on her. It was a shock to know that at last
there was something which could make her afraid of Mrs.
Bogart's spying.
"What am I doing? Am I in love with Erik? Unfaithful? I?
I want youth but I don't want him--I mean, I don't want youth--
enough to break up my life. I must get out of this. Quick."
She said to Kennicott on their way home, "Will! I want to run away
for a few days. Wouldn't you like to skip down to Chicago?"
"Still be pretty hot there. No fun in a big city till winter.
What do you want to go for?"
"People! To occupy my mind. I want stimulus."
"Stimulus?" He spoke good-naturedly. "Who's been feeding
you meat? You got that `stimulus' out of one of these fool
stories about wives that don't know when they're well off.
Stimulus! Seriously, though, to cut out the jollying, I can't
get away."
"Then why don't I run off by myself?"
"Why---- 'Tisn't the money, you understand. But what
about Hugh?"
"Leave him with Aunt Bessie. It would be just for a few days."
"I don't think much of this business of leaving kids around.
Bad for 'em."
"So you don't think----"
"I'll tell you: I think we better stay put till after the war.
Then we'll have a dandy long trip. No, I don't think you
better plan much about going away now."
So she was thrown at Erik.
III
She awoke at ebb-time, at three of the morning, woke sharply
and fully; and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing
sentence on a cruel swindler she gave judgment:
"A pitiful and tawdry love-affair.
"No splendor, no defiance. A self-deceived little woman
whispering in corners with a pretentious little man.
"No, he is not. He is fine. Aspiring. It's not his fault.
His eyes are sweet when he looks at me. Sweet, so sweet."
She pitied herself that her romance should be pitiful; she
sighed that in this colorless hour, to this austere self, it should
seem tawdry.
Then, in a very great desire of rebellion and unleashing of all
her hatreds, "The pettier and more tawdry it is, the more blame
to Main Street. It shows how much I've been longing to escape.
Any way out! Any humility so long as I can flee. Main Street
has done this to me. I came here eager for nobilities, ready for
work, and now---- Any way out.
"I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness.
They don't know, they don't understand how agonizing their
complacent dullness is. Like ants and August sun on a wound.
"Tawdry! Pitiful! Carol--the clean girl that used to
walk so fast!--sneaking and tittering in dark corners, being
sentimental and jealous at church suppers!"
At breakfast--time her agonies were night-blurred, and
persisted only as a nervous irresolution.
IV
Few of the aristocrats of the Jolly Seventeen attended the
humble folk-meets of the Baptist and Methodist church suppers,
where the Willis Woodfords, the Dillons, the Champ Perrys,
Oleson the butcher, Brad Bemis the tinsmith, and Deacon Pierson
found release from loneliness. But all of the smart set
went to the lawn-festivals of the Episcopal Church, and were
reprovingly polite to outsiders.
The Harry Haydocks gave the last lawn-festival of the
season; a splendor of Japanese lanterns and card-tables and
chicken patties and Neapolitan ice-cream. Erik was no longer
entirely an outsider. He was eating his ice-cream with a group
of the people most solidly "in"--the Dyers, Myrtle Cass, Guy
Pollock, the Jackson Elders. The Haydocks themselves kept
aloof, but the others tolerated him. He would never, Carol
fancied, be one of the town pillars, because he was not orthodox
in hunting and motoring and poker. But he was winning
approbation by his liveliness, his gaiety--the qualities least
important in him.
When the group summoned Carol she made several very
well-taken points in regard to the weather
Myrtle cried to Erik, "Come on! We don't belong with
these old folks. I want to make you 'quainted with the jolliest
girl, she comes from Wakamin, she's staying with Mary Howland."
Carol saw him being profuse to the guest from Wakamin.
She saw him confidentially strolling with Myrtle. She burst
out to Mrs. Westlake, "Valborg and Myrtle seem to have quite
a crush on each other."
Mrs. Westlake glanced at her curiously before she mumbled,
"Yes, don't they."
"I'm mad, to talk this way," Carol worried.
She had regained a feeling of social virtue by telling Juanita
Haydock "how darling her lawn looked with the Japanese
lanterns" when she saw that Erik was stalking her. Though
he was merely ambling about with his hands in his pockets,
though he did not peep at her, she knew that he was calling
her. She sidled away from Juanita. Erik hastened to her. She
nodded coolly (she was proud of her coolness).
"Carol! I've got a wonderful chance! Don't know but
what some ways it might be better than going East to take
art. Myrtle Cass says---- I dropped in to say howdy to
Myrtle last evening, and had quite a long talk with her father,
and he said he was hunting for a fellow to go to work in the
flour mill and learn the whole business, and maybe become
general manager. I know something about wheat from my
farming, and I worked a couple of months in the flour mill at
Curlew when I got sick of tailoring. What do you think? You
said any work was artistic if it was done by an artist. And
flour is so important. What do you think?"
"Wait! Wait!"
This sensitive boy would be very skilfully stamped into
conformity by Lyman Cass and his sallow daughter; but did she
detest the plan for this reason?" I must be honest. I mustn't
tamper with his future to please my vanity." But she had no
sure vision. She turned on him:
"How can I decide? It's up to you. Do you want to
become a person like Lym Cass, or do you want to become a
person like--yes, like me! Wait! Don't be flattering.
Be honest. This is important."
"I know. I am a person like you now! I mean, I want to rebel."
"Yes. We're alike," gravely.
"Only I'm not sure I can put through my schemes. I really
can't draw much. I guess I have pretty fair taste in fabrics, but
since I've known you I don't like to think about fussing with
dress-designing. But as a miller, I'd have the means--books,
piano, travel."
"I'm going to be frank and beastly. Don't you realize that
it isn't just because her papa needs a bright young man in the
mill that Myrtle is amiable to you? Can't you understand
what she'll do to you when she has you, when she sends you to
church and makes you become respectable?"
He glared at her. "I don't know. I suppose so."
"You are thoroughly unstable!"
"What if I am? Most fish out of water are! Don't talk
like Mrs. Bogart! How can I be anything but `unstable'--
wandering from farm to tailor shop to books, no training,
nothing but trying to make books talk to me! Probably I'll
fail. Oh, I know it; probably I'm uneven. But I'm not
unstable in thinking about this job in the mill--and Myrtle. I
know what I want. I want you!"
"Please, please, oh, please!"
"I do. I'm not a schoolboy any more. I want you. If
I take Myrtle, it's to forget you."
"Please, please!"
"It's you that are unstable! You talk at things and play
at things, but you're scared. Would I mind it if you and I
went off to poverty, and I had to dig ditches? I would not!
But you would. I think you would come to like me, but you
won't admit it. I wouldn't have said this, but when you
sneer at Myrtle and the mill---- If I'm not to have good
sensible things like those, d' you think I'll be content with
trying to become a damn dressmaker, after YOU? Are you fair?
Are you?"
"No, I suppose not."
"Do you like me? Do you?"
"Yes---- No! Please! I can't talk any more."
"Not here. Mrs. Haydock is looking at us."
"No, nor anywhere. O Erik, I am fond of you, but I'm
afraid."
"What of?"
"Of Them! Of my rulers--Gopher Prairie. . . . My dear boy,
we are talking very foolishly. I am a normal wife
and a good mother, and you are--oh, a college freshman."
"You do like me! I'm going to make you love me!"
She looked at him once, recklessly, and walked away with a
serene gait that was a disordered flight.
Kennicott grumbled on their way home, "You and this
Valborg fellow seem quite chummy."
"Oh, we are. He's interested in Myrtle Cass, and I was
telling him how nice she is."
In her room she marveled, "I have become a liar. I'm
snarled with lies and foggy analyses and desires--I who was
clear and sure."
She hurried into Kennicott's room, sat on the edge of his
bed. He flapped a drowsy welcoming hand at her from the
expanse of quilt and dented pillows.
"Will, I really think I ought to trot off to St. Paul or
Chicago or some place."
"I thought we settled all that, few nights ago! Wait till
we can have a real trip." He shook himself out of his
drowsiness. "You might give me a good-night kiss."
She did--dutifully. He held her lips against his for an
intolerable time. "Don't you like the old man any more?" he
coaxed. He sat up and shyly fitted his palm about the
slimness of her waist.
"Of course. I like you very much indeed." Even to herself
it sounded flat. She longed to be able to throw into her
voice the facile passion of a light woman. She patted his cheek.
He sighed, "I'm sorry you're so tired. Seems like----
But of course you aren't very strong."
"Yes. . . . Then you don't think--you're quite sure I
ought to stay here in town?"
"I told you so! I certainly do!"
She crept back to her room, a small timorous figure in white.
"I can't face Will down--demand the right. He'd be
obstinate. And I can't even go off and earn my living again.
Out of the habit of it. He's driving me---- I'm afraid of
what he's driving me to. Afraid.
"That man in there, snoring in stale air, my husband?
Could any ceremony make him my husband?
"No. I don't want to hurt him. I want to love him. I
can't, when I'm thinking of Erik. Am I too honest--a funny
topsy-turvy honesty--the faithfulness of unfaith? I wish I
had a more compartmental mind, like men. I'm too monogamous--
toward Erik!--my child Erik, who needs me.
"Is an illicit affair like a gambling debt--demands stricter
honor than the legitimate debt of matrimony, because it's not
legally enforced?
"That's nonsense! I don't care in the least for Erik!
Not for any man. I want to be let alone, in a woman world--
a world without Main Street, or politicians, or business men,
or men with that sudden beastly hungry look, that glistening
unfrank expression that wives know----
"If Erik were here, if he would just sit quiet and kind and
talk, I could be still, I could go to sleep.
"I am so tired. If I could sleep----"
CHAPTER XXXI
THEIR night came unheralded.
Kennicott was on a country call. It was cool but Carol
huddled on the porch, rocking, meditating, rocking. The house
was lonely and repellent, and though she sighed, "I ought
to go in and read--so many things to read--ought to go in," she
remained. Suddenly Erik was coming, turning in, swinging
open the screen door, touching her hand.
"Erik!"
"Saw your husband driving out of town. Couldn't stand
it."
"Well---- You mustn't stay more than five minutes."
"Couldn't stand not seeing you. Every day, towards
evening, felt I had to see you--pictured you so clear. I've been
good though, staying away, haven't I!"
"And you must go on being good."
"Why must I?"
"We better not stay here on the porch. The Howlands
across the street are such window-peepers, and Mrs.
Bogart----"
She did not look at him but she could divine his tremulousness
as he stumbled indoors. A moment ago the night had been
coldly empty; now it was incalculable, hot, treacherous. But
it is women who are the calm realists once they discard the
fetishes of the premarital hunt. Carol was serene as she
murmured, "Hungry? I have some little honey-colored cakes.
You may have two, and then you must skip home."
"Take me up and let me see Hugh asleep."
"I don't believe----"
"Just a glimpse!"
"Well----"
She doubtfully led the way to the hallroom-nursery. Their
heads close, Erik's curls pleasant as they touched her cheek,
they looked in at the baby. Hugh was pink with slumber.
He had burrowed into his pillow with such energy that it was
almost smothering him. Beside it was a celluloid rhinoceros;
tight in his hand a torn picture of Old King Cole.
"Shhh!" said Carol, quite automatically. She tiptoed in
to pat the pillow. As she returned to Erik she had a friendly
sense of his waiting for her. They smiled at each other. She
did not think of Kennicott, the baby's father. What she did
think was that some one rather like Erik, an older and surer
Erik, ought to be Hugh's father. The three of them would
play--incredible imaginative games.
"Carol! You've told me about your own room. Let me
peep in at it."
"But you mustn't stay, not a second. We must go
downstairs."
"Yes."
"Will you be good?"
"R-reasonably!" He was pale, large-eyed, serious.
"You've got to be more than reasonably good!" She felt
sensible and superior; she was energetic about pushing open
the door.
Kennicott had always seemed out of place there but Erik
surprisingly harmonized with the spirit of the room as he
stroked the books, glanced at the prints. He held out his
hands. He came toward her. She was weak, betrayed to a
warm softness. Her head was tilted back. Her eyes were
closed. Her thoughts were formless but many-colored. She
felt his kiss, diffident and reverent, on her eyelid.
Then she knew that it was impossible.
She shook herself. She sprang from him. "Please!" she
said sharply.
He looked at her unyielding.
"I am fond of you," she said. "Don't spoil everything.
Be my friend."
"How many thousands and millions of women must have
said that! And now you! And it doesn't spoil everything.
It glorifies everything."
"Dear, I do think there's a tiny streak of fairy in you--
whatever you do with it. Perhaps I'd have loved that once.
But I won't. It's too late. But I'll keep a fondness for you.
Impersonal--I will be impersonal! It needn't be just a thin
talky fondness. You do need me, don't you? Only you and
my son need me. I've wanted so to be wanted! Once I
wanted love to be given to me. Now I'll be content if I can
give. . . . Almost content!
"We women, we like to do things for men. Poor men!
We swoop on you when you're defenseless and fuss over you
and insist on reforming you. But it's so pitifully deep in us.
You'll be the one thing in which I haven't failed. Do something
definite! Even if it's just selling cottons. Sell beautiful
cottons--caravans from China----"
"Carol! Stop! You do love me!"
"I do not! It's just---- Can't you understand? Everything
crushes in on me so, all the gaping dull people, and I look
for a way out---- Please go. I can't stand any more.
Please!"
He was gone. And she was not relieved by the quiet of the
house. She was empty and the house was empty and she
needed him. She wanted to go on talking, to get this threshed
out, to build a sane friendship. She wavered down to the
living-room, looked out of the bay-window. He was not to
be seen. But Mrs. Westlake was. She was walking past, and
in the light from the corner arc-lamp she quickly inspected
the porch, the windows. Carol dropped the curtain, stood with
movement and reflection paralyzed. Automatically, without
reasoning, she mumbled, "I will see him again soon and make
him understand we must be friends. But---- The house is
so empty. It echoes so."
II
Kennicott had seemed nervous and absent-minded through
that supper-hour, two evenings after. He prowled about the
living-room, then growled:
"What the dickens have you been saying to Ma Westlake?"
Carol's book rattled. "What do you mean?"
"I told you that Westlake and his wife were jealous of us,
and here you been chumming up to them and---- From what
Dave tells me, Ma Westlake has been going around town saying
you told her that you hate Aunt Bessie, and that you fixed
up your own room because I snore, and you said Bjornstam
was too good for Bea, and then, just recent, that you were
sore on the town because we don't all go down on our knees
and beg this Valborg fellow to come take supper with us. God
only knows what else she says you said."
"It's not true, any of it! I did like Mrs. Westlake, and
I've called on her, and apparently she's gone and twisted
everything I've said----"
"Sure. Of course she would. Didn't I tell you she would?
She's an old cat, like her pussyfooting, hand-holding husband.
Lord, if I was sick, I'd rather have a faith-healer than Westlake,
and she's another slice off the same bacon. What I can't
understand though----"
She waited, taut.
"----is whatever possessed you to let her pump you, bright
a girl as you are. I don't care what you told her--we all get
peeved sometimes and want to blow off steam, that's natural--
but if you wanted to keep it dark, why didn't you advertise
it in the Dauntless, or get a megaphone and stand on top of
the hotel and holler, or do anything besides spill it to her!"
"I know. You told me. But she was so motherly. And
I didn't have any woman---- Vida 's become so married and
proprietary."
"Well, next time you'll have better sense."
He patted her head, flumped down behind his newspaper,
said nothing more.
Enemies leered through the windows, stole on her from
the hall. She had no one save Erik. This kind good man
Kennicott--he was an elder brother. It was Erik, her fellow
outcast, to whom she wanted to run for sanctuary. Through
her storm she was, to the eye, sitting quietly with her fingers
between the pages of a baby-blue book on home-dressmaking.
But her dismay at Mrs. Westlake's treachery had risen to
active dread. What had the woman said of her and Erik?
What did she know? What had she seen? Who else would
join in the baying hunt? Who else had seen her with Erik?
What had she to fear from the Dyers, Cy Bogart, Juanita,
Aunt Bessie? What precisely had she answered to Mrs.
Bogart's questioning?
All next day she was too restless to stay home, yet as she
walked the streets on fictitious errands she was afraid of every
person she met. She waited for them to speak; waited with
foreboding. She repeated, "I mustn't ever see Erik again."
But the words did not register. She had no ecstatic indulgence
in the sense of guilt which is, to the women of Main Street,
the surest escape from blank tediousness.
At five, crumpled in a chair in the living-room, she started
at the sound of the bell. Some one opened the door. She
waited, uneasy. Vida Sherwin charged into the room. "Here's
the one person I can trust!" Carol rejoiced.
Vida was serious but affectionate. She bustled at Carol
with, "Oh, there you are, dearie, so glad t' find you in, sit
down, want to talk to you."
Carol sat, obedient.
Vida fussily tugged over a large chair and launched out:
"I've been hearing vague rumors you were interested in
this Erik Valborg. I knew you couldn't be guilty, and I'm
surer than ever of it now. Here we are, as blooming as a daisy."
"How does a respectable matron look when she feels guilty?"
Carol sounded resentful.
"Why---- Oh, it would show! Besides! I know that you,
of all people, are the one that can appreciate Dr. Will."
"What have you been hearing?"
"Nothing, really. I just heard Mrs. Bogart say she'd seen
you and Valborg walking together a lot." Vida's chirping
slackened. She looked at her nails. "But---- I suspect
you do like Valborg. Oh, I don't mean in any wrong way.
But you're young; you don't know what an innocent liking
might drift into. You always pretend to be so sophisticated
and all, but you're a baby. Just because you are so innocent,
you don't know what evil thoughts may lurk in that fellow's brain."
"You don't suppose Valborg could actually think about
making love to me?"
Her rather cheap sport ended abruptly as Vida cried, with
contorted face, "What do you know about the thoughts in
hearts? You just play at reforming the world. You don't
know what it means to suffer."
There are two insults which no human being will endure:
the assertion that he hasn't a sense of humor, and the doubly
impertinent assertion that he has never known trouble. Carol
said furiously, "You think I don't suffer? You think I've
always had an easy----"
"No, you don't. I'm going to tell you something I've
never told a living soul, not even Ray." The dam of repressed
imagination which Vida had builded for years, which now,
with Raymie off at the wars, she was building again, gave way.
"I was--I liked Will terribly well. One time at a party--oh,
before he met you, of course--but we held hands, and we were
so happy. But I didn't feel I was really suited to him. I let
him go. Please don't think I still love him! I see now that
Ray was predestined to be my mate. But because I liked him,
I know how sincere and pure and noble Will is, and his
thoughts never straying from the path of rectitude, and----
If I gave him up to you, at least you've got to appreciate him!
We danced together and laughed so, and I gave him up,
but---- This IS my affair! I'm NOT intruding! I see the
whole thing as he does, because of all I've told you. Maybe
it's shameless to bare my heart this way, but I do it for him--
for him and you!"
Carol understood that Vida believed herself to have recited
minutely and brazenly a story of intimate love; understood
that, in alarm, she was trying to cover her shame as she
struggled on, "Liked him in the most honorable way--simply
can't help it if I still see things through his eyes---- If I
gave him up, I certainly am not beyond my rights in demanding
that you take care to avoid even the appearance of evil
and----" She was weeping; an insignificant, flushed, ungracefully
weeping woman.
Carol could not endure it. She ran to Vida, kissed her
forehead, comforted her with a murmur of dove-like sounds,
sought to reassure her with worn and hastily assembled gifts
of words: "Oh, I appreciate it so much," and "You are so
fine and splendid," and "Let me assure you there isn't a thing
to what you've heard," and "Oh, indeed, I do know how
sincere Will is, and as you say, so--so sincere."
Vida believed that she had explained many deep and devious
matters. She came out of her hysteria like a sparrow shaking
off rain-drops. She sat up, and took advantage of her victory:
"I don't want to rub it in, but you can see for yourself
now, this is all a result of your being so discontented and
not appreciating the dear good people here. And another
thing: People like you and me, who want to reform things,
have to be particularly careful about appearances. Think
how much better you can criticize conventional customs if you
yourself live up to them, scrupulously. Then people can't
say you're attacking them to excuse your own infractions."
To Carol was given a sudden great philosophical
understanding, an explanation of half the cautious reforms in history.
"Yes. I've heard that plea. It's a good one. It sets
revolts aside to cool. It keeps strays in the flock. To word
it differently: `You must live up to the popular code if you
believe in it; but if you don't believe in it, then you MUST live
up to it!' "
"I don't think so at all," said Vida vaguely. She began to
look hurt, and Carol let her be oracular.
III
Vida had done her a service; had made all agonizing seem
so fatuous that she ceased writhing and saw that her whole
problem was simple as mutton: she was interested in Erik's
aspiration; interest gave her a hesitating fondness for him;
and the future would take care of the event. . . . But
at night, thinking in bed, she protested, "I'm not a falsely
accused innocent, though! If it were some one more resolute
than Erik, a fighter, an artist with bearded surly lips----
They're only in books. Is that the real tragedy, that I never
shall know tragedy, never find anything but blustery
complications that turn out to be a farce?
"No one big enough or pitiful enough to sacrifice for.
Tragedy in neat blouses; the eternal flame all nice and safe
in a kerosene stove. Neither heroic faith nor heroic guilt.
Peeping at love from behind lace curtains--on Main Street!"
Aunt Bessie crept in next day, tried to pump her, tried to
prime the pump by again hinting that Kennicott might have
his own affairs. Carol snapped, "Whatever I may do, I'll
have you to understand that Will is only too safe!" She
wished afterward that she had not been so lofty. How much
would Aunt Bessie make of "Whatever I may do?"
When Kennicott came home he poked at things, and hemmed,
and brought out, "Saw aunty, this afternoon. She said you
weren't very polite to her."
Carol laughed. He looked at her in a puzzled way and
fled to his newspaper.
IV
She lay sleepless. She alternately considered ways of leaving
Kennicott, and remembered his virtues, pitied his bewilderment
in face of the subtle corroding sicknesses which he could not
dose nor cut out. Didn't he perhaps need her more than did
the book-solaced Erik? Suppose Will were to die, suddenly.
Suppose she never again saw him at breakfast, silent but
amiable, listening to her chatter. Suppose he never again
played elephant for Hugh. Suppose---- A country call, a
slippery road, his motor skidding, the edge of the road
crumbling, the car turning turtle, Will pinned beneath, suffering,
brought home maimed, looking at her with spaniel eyes--or
waiting for her, calling for her, while she was in Chicago,
knowing nothing of it. Suppose he were sued by some vicious
shrieking woman for malpractice. He tried to get witnesses;
Westlake spread lies; his friends doubted him; his selfconfidence
was so broken that it was horrible to see the
indecision of the decisive man; he was convicted, handcuffed,
taken on a train----
She ran to his room. At her nervous push the door swung
sharply in, struck a chair. He awoke, gasped, then in a
steady voice: "What is it, dear? Anything wrong?" She
darted to him, fumbled for the familiar harsh bristly cheek.
How well she knew it, every seam, and hardness of bone, and
roll of fat! Yet when he sighed, "This is a nice visit," and
dropped his hand on her thin-covered shoulder, she said, too
cheerily, "I thought I heard you moaning. So silly of me.
Good night, dear."
V
She did not see Erik for a fortnight, save once at church
and once when she went to the tailor shop to talk over the
plans, contingencies, and strategy of Kennicott's annual
campaign for getting a new suit. Nat Hicks was there, and he
was not so deferential as he had been. With unnecessary
jauntiness he chuckled, "Some nice flannels, them samples,
heh?" Needlessly he touched her arm to call attention to the
fashion-plates, and humorously he glanced from her to Erik.
At home she wondered if the little beast might not be
suggesting himself as a rival to Erik, but that abysmal
bedragglement she would not consider.
She saw Juanita Haydock slowly walking past the house--
as Mrs. Westlake had once walked past.
She met Mrs. Westlake in Uncle Whittier's store, and before
that alert stare forgot her determination to be rude, and was
shakily cordial.
She was sure that all the men on the street, even Guy
Pollock and Sam Clark, leered at her in an interested hopeful
way, as though she were a notorious divorcee. She felt as
insecure as a shadowed criminal. She wished to see Erik, and
wished that she had never seen him. She fancied that Kennicott
was the only person in town who did not know all--
know incomparably more than there was to know--about herself
and Erik. She crouched in her chair as she imagined men
talking of her, thick-voiced, obscene, in barber shops and the
tobacco-stinking pool parlor.
Through early autumn Fern Mullins was the only person
who broke the suspense. The frivolous teacher had come to
accept Carol as of her own youth, and though school had
begun she rushed in daily to suggest dances, welsh-rabbit
parties.
Fern begged her to go as chaperon to a barn-dance in the
country, on a Saturday evening. Carol could not go. The
next day, the storm crashed.
CHAPTER XXXII
I
CAROL was on the back porch, tightening a bolt on the baby's
go-cart, this Sunday afternoon. Through an open window of
the Bogart house she heard a screeching, heard Mrs. Bogart's
haggish voice:
. . .did too, and there's no use your denying it
no you don't, you march yourself right straight out
of the house. . .never in my life heard of such. . .
never had nobody talk to me like. . .walk in the ways
of sin and nastiness. . .leave your clothes here, and
heaven knows that's more than you deserve. . .any of
your lip or I'll call the policeman."
The voice of the other interlocutor Carol did not catch,
nor, though Mrs. Bogart was proclaiming that he was her
confidant and present assistant, did she catch the voice of Mrs.
Bogart's God.
"Another row with Cy," Carol inferred.
She trundled the go-cart down the back steps and tentatively
wheeled it across the yard, proud of her repairs. She heard
steps on the sidewalk. She saw not Cy Bogart but Fern
Mullins, carrying a suit-case, hurrying up the street with her
head low. The widow, standing on the porch with buttery
arms akimbo, yammered after the fleeing girl:
"And don't you dare show your face on this block again.
You can send the drayman for your trunk. My house has
been contaminated long enough. Why the Lord should afflict
me----"
Fern was gone. The righteous widow glared, banged into
the house, came out poking at her bonnet, marched away.
By this time Carol was staring in a manner not visibly to be
distinguished from the window-peeping of the rest of Gopher
Prairie. She saw Mrs. Bogart enter the Howland house, then
the Casses'. Not till suppertime did she reach the Kennicotts.
The doctor answered her ring, and greeted her, "Well, well?
how's the good neighbor?"
The good neighbor charged into the living-room, waving the
most unctuous of black kid gloves and delightedly sputtering:
"You may well ask how I am! I really do wonder how I
could go through the awful scenes of this day--and the
impudence I took from that woman's tongue, that ought to be
cut out----"
"Whoa! Whoa! Hold up!" roared Kennicott. "Who's
the hussy, Sister Bogart? Sit down and take it cool and tell
us about it."
"I can't sit down, I must hurry home, but I couldn't devote
myself to my own selfish cares till I'd warned you, and heaven
knows I don't expect any thanks for trying to warn the town
against her, there's always so much evil in the world that folks
simply won't see or appreciate your trying to safeguard
them---- And forcing herself in here to get in with you and
Carrie, many 's the time I've seen her doing it, and, thank
heaven, she was found out in time before she could do any
more harm, it simply breaks my heart and prostrates me to
think what she may have done already, even if some of us
that understand and know about things----"
"Whoa-up! Who are you talking about?"
"She's talking about Fern Mullins," Carol put in, not
pleasantly.
"Huh?"
Kennicott was incredulous.
"I certainly am!" flourished Mrs. Bogart, "and good and
thankful you may be that I found her out in time, before she
could get YOU into something, Carol, because even if you are
my neighbor and Will's wife and a cultured lady, let me tell
you right now, Carol Kennicott, that you ain't always as
respectful to--you ain't as reverent--you don't stick by the
good old ways like they was laid down for us by God in the
Bible, and while of course there ain't a bit of harm in having
a good laugh, and I know there ain't any real wickedness in
you, yet just the same you don't fear God and hate the
transgressors of his commandments like you ought to, and you may
be thankful I found out this serpent I nourished in my bosom
--and oh yes! oh yes indeed! my lady must have two eggs
every morning for breakfast, and eggs sixty cents a dozen,
and wa'n't satisfied with one, like most folks--what did she
care how much they cost or if a person couldn't make hardly
nothing on her board and room, in fact I just took her in out
of charity and I might have known from the kind of stockings
and clothes that she sneaked into my house in her trunk----"
Before they got her story she had five more minutes of
obscene wallowing. The gutter comedy turned into high
tragedy, with Nemesis in black kid gloves. The actual story
was simple, depressing, and unimportant. As to details Mrs.
Bogart was indefinite, and angry that she should be questioned.
Fern Mullins and Cy had, the evening before, driven alone
to a barn-dance in the country. (Carol brought out the
admission that Fern had tried to get a chaperon.) At the dance
Cy had kissed Fern--she confessed that. Cy had obtained a
pint of whisky; he said that he didn't remember where he had
got it; Mrs. Bogart implied that Fern had given it to him; Fern
herself insisted that he had stolen it from a farmer's overcoat--
which, Mrs. Bogart raged, was obviously a lie. He had
become soggily drunk. Fern had driven him home; deposited
him, retching and wabbling, on the Bogart porch.
Never before had her boy been drunk, shrieked Mrs. Bogart.
When Kennicott grunted, she owned, "Well, maybe once or
twice I've smelled licker on his breath." She also, with an
air of being only too scrupulously exact, granted that sometimes
he did not come home till morning. But he couldn't
ever have been drunk, for he always had the best excuses:
the other boys had tempted him to go down the lake spearing
pickerel by torchlight, or he had been out in a "machine that
ran out of gas." Anyway, never before had her boy fallen
into the hands of a "designing woman."
"What do you suppose Miss Mullins could design to do with
him?" insisted Carol.
Mrs. Bogart was puzzled, gave it up, went on. This morning,
when she had faced both of them, Cy had manfully confessed
that all of the blame was on Fern, because the teacher--his
own teacher--had dared him to take a drink. Fern had tried
to deny it.
"Then," gabbled Mrs. Bogart, "then that woman had the
impudence to say to me, `What purpose could I have in wanting
the filthy pup to get drunk?' That's just what she called
him--pup. `I'll have no such nasty language in my house,'
I says, `and you pretending and pulling the wool over people's
eyes and making them think you're educated and fit to be a
teacher and look out for young people's morals--you're worse
'n any street-walker!' I says. I let her have it good. I
wa'n't going to flinch from my bounden duty and let her think
that decent folks had to stand for her vile talk. `Purpose?'
I says, `Purpose? I'll tell you what purpose you had! Ain't
I seen you making up to everything in pants that'd waste
time and pay attention to your impert'nence? Ain't I seen
you showing off your legs with them short skirts of yours,
trying to make out like you was so girlish and la-de-da,
running along the street?' "
Carol was very sick at this version of Fern's eager youth,
but she was sicker as Mrs. Bogart hinted that no one could
tell what had happened between Fern and Cy before the
drive home. Without exactly describing the scene, by her
power of lustful imagination the woman suggested dark country
places apart from the lanterns and rude fiddling and banging
dance-steps in the barn, then madness and harsh hateful
conquest. Carol was too sick to interrupt. It was Kennicott
who cried, "Oh, for God's sake quit it! You haven't any idea
what happened. You haven't given us a single proof yet that
Fern is anything but a rattle-brained youngster."
"I haven't, eh? Well, what do you say to this? I come
straight out and I says to her, `Did you or did you not taste the
whisky Cy had?' and she says, `I think I did take one sip--
Cy made me,' she said. She owned up to that much, so you
can imagine----"
"Does that prove her a prostitute?" asked Carol.
"Carrie! Don't you never use a word like that again!"
wailed the outraged Puritan.
"Well, does it prove her to be a bad woman, that she took
a taste of whisky? I've done it myself!"
"That's different. Not that I approve your doing it. What
do the Scriptures tell us? `Strong drink is a mocker'! But
that's entirely different from a teacher drinking with one of her
own pupils."
"Yes, it does sound bad. Fern was silly, undoubtedly. But
as a matter of fact she's only a year or two older than Cy
and probably a good many years younger in experience of
vice."
"That's--not--true! She is plenty old enough to corrupt
him!
"The job of corrupting Cy was done by your sinless town,
five years ago!"
Mrs. Bogart did not rage in return. Suddenly she was
hopeless. Her head drooped. She patted her black kid gloves,
picked at a thread of her faded brown skirt, and sighed, "He's
a good boy, and awful affectionate if you treat him right.
Some thinks he's terrible wild, but that's because he's young.
And he's so brave and truthful--why, he was one of the first
in town that wanted to enlist for the war, and I had to speak
real sharp to him to keep him from running away. I didn't
want him to get into no bad influences round these camps--
and then," Mrs. Bogart rose from her pitifulness, recovered her
pace, "then I go and bring into my own house a woman that's
worse, when all's said and done, than any bad woman he could
have met. You say this Mullins woman is too young and
inexperienced to corrupt Cy. Well then, she's too young and
inexperienced to teach him, too, one or t'other, you can't have
your cake and eat it! So it don't make no difference which
reason they fire her for, and that's practically almost what
I said to the school-board."
"Have you been telling this story to the members of the
school-board?"
"I certainly have! Every one of 'em! And their wives
I says to them, ` 'Tain't my affair to decide what you should
or should not do with your teachers,' I says, `and I ain't
presuming to dictate in any way, shape, manner, or form. I just
want to know,' I says, `whether you're going to go on record
as keeping here in our schools, among a lot of innocent boys
and girls, a woman that drinks, smokes, curses, uses bad
language, and does such dreadful things as I wouldn't lay tongue
to but you know what I mean,' I says, `and if so, I'll just
see to it that the town learns about it.' And that's what I told
Professor Mott, too, being superintendent--and he's a righteous
man, not going autoing on the Sabbath like the school-board
members. And the professor as much as admitted he was
suspicious of the Mullins woman himself."
II
Kennicott was less shocked and much less frightened than
Carol, and more articulate in his description of Mrs. Bogart,
when she had gone.
Maud Dyer telephoned to Carol and, after a rather
improbable question about cooking lima beans with bacon, demanded,
"Have you heard the scandal about this Miss Mullins
and Cy Bogart?"
"I'm sure it's a lie."
"Oh, probably is." Maud's manner indicated that the
falsity of the story was an insignificant flaw in its general
delightfulness.
Carol crept to her room, sat with hands curled tight
together as she listened to a plague of voices. She could hear the
town yelping with it, every soul of them, gleeful at new details,
panting to win importance by having details of their own to
add. How well they would make up for what they had been
afraid to do by imagining it in another! They who had not
been entirely afraid (but merely careful and sneaky), all the
barber-shop roues and millinery-parlor mondaines, how archly
they were giggling (this second--she could hear them at it);
with what self-commendation they were cackling their suavest
wit: "You can't tell ME she ain't a gay bird; I'm wise!"
And not one man in town to carry out their pioneer tradition
of superb and contemptuous cursing, not one to verify the
myth that their "rough chivalry" and "rugged virtues" were
more generous than the petty scandal-picking of older lands,
not one dramatic frontiersman to thunder, with fantastic and
fictional oaths, "What are you hinting at? What are you
snickering at? What facts have you? What are these unheardof
sins you condemn so much--and like so well?"
No one to say it. Not Kennicott nor Guy Pollock nor
Champ Perry.
Erik? Possibly. He would sputter uneasy protest.
She suddenly wondered what subterranean connection her
interest in Erik had with this affair. Wasn't it because they
had been prevented by her caste from bounding on her own
trail that they were howling at Fern?
III
Before supper she found, by half a dozen telephone calls,
that Fern had fled to the Minniemashie House. She hastened
there, trying not to be self-conscious about the people who
looked at her on the street. The clerk said indifferently that
he "guessed" Miss Mullins was up in Room 37, and left Carol
to find the way. She hunted along the stale-smelling corridors
with their wallpaper of cerise daisies and poison-green rosettes,
streaked in white spots from spilled water, their frayed
red and yellow matting, and rows of pine doors painted a
sickly blue. She could not find the number. In the darkness
at the end of a corridor she had to feel the aluminum figures
on the door-panels. She was startled once by a man's voice:
"Yep? Whadyuh want?" and fled. When she reached the
right door she stood listening. She made out a long sobbing.
There was no answer till her third knock; then an alarmed
"Who is it? Go away!"
Her hatred of the town turned resolute as she pushed open
the door.
Yesterday she had seen Fern Mullins in boots and tweed
skirt and canary-yellow sweater, fleet and self-possessed. Now
she lay across the bed, in crumpled lavender cotton and shabby
pumps, very feminine, utterly cowed. She lifted her head in
stupid terror. Her hair was in tousled strings and her face
was sallow, creased. Her eyes were a blur from weeping.
"I didn't! I didn't!" was all she would say at first, and
she repeated it while Carol kissed her cheek, stroked her
hair, bathed her forehead. She rested then, while Carol looked
about the room--the welcome to strangers, the sanctuary of
hospitable Main Street, the lucrative property of Kennicott's
friend, Jackson Elder. It smelled of old linen and decaying
carpet and ancient tobacco smoke. The bed was rickety, with
a thin knotty mattress; the sand-colored walls were scratched
and gouged; in every corner, under everything, were fluffy
dust and cigar ashes; on the tilted wash-stand was a nicked
and squatty pitcher; the only chair was a grim straight object
of spotty varnish; but there was an altogether splendid gilt
and rose cuspidor.
She did not try to draw out Fern's story; Fern insisted on
telling it.
She had gone to the party, not quite liking Cy but willing
to endure him for the sake of dancing, of escaping from Mrs.
Bogart's flow of moral comments, of relaxing after the first
strained weeks of teaching. Cy "promised to be good." He
was, on the way out. There were a few workmen from Gopher
Prairie at the dance, with many young farm-people. Half
a dozen squatters from a degenerate colony in a brush-hidden
hollow, planters of potatoes, suspected thieves, came in noisily
drunk. They all pounded the floor of the barn in old-fashioned
square dances, swinging their partners, skipping, laughing,
under the incantations of Del Snafflin the barber, who fiddled
and called the figures. Cy had two drinks from pocket-flasks.
Fern saw him fumbling among the overcoats piled on the feedbox
at the far end of the barn; soon after she heard a farmer
declaring that some one had stolen his bottle. She taxed Cy
with the theft; he chuckled, "Oh, it's just a joke; I'm going
to give it back." He demanded that she take a drink. Unless
she did, he wouldn't return the bottle.
"I just brushed my lips with it, and gave it back to him,"
moaned Fern. She sat up, glared at Carol. "Did you ever
take a drink?"
"I have. A few. I'd love to have one right now! This
contact with righteousness has about done me up!"
Fern could laugh then. "So would I! I don't suppose I've
had five drinks in my life, but if I meet just one more Bogart
and Son---- Well, I didn't really touch that bottle--horrible
raw whisky--though I'd have loved some wine. I felt so jolly.
The barn was almost like a stage scene--the high rafters, and
the dark stalls, and tin lanterns swinging, and a silage-cutter
up at the end like some mysterious kind of machine. And
I'd been having lots of fun dancing with the nicest young
farmer, so strong and nice, and awfully intelligent. But I got
uneasy when I saw how Cy was. So I doubt if I touched two
drops of the beastly stuff. Do you suppose God is punishing
me for even wanting wine?"
"My dear, Mrs. Bogart's god may be--Main Street's god.
But all the courageous intelligent people are fighting him. . .
though he slay us."
Fern danced again with the young farmer; she forgot Cy
while she was talking with a girl who had taken the University
agricultural course. Cy could not have returned the bottle;
he came staggering toward her--taking time to make himself
offensive to every girl on the way and to dance a jig. She
insisted on their returning. Cy went with her, chuckling and
jigging. He kissed her, outside the door. . . . "And
to think I used to think it was interesting to have men kiss
you at a dance!". . . She ignored the kiss, in the need
of getting him home before he started a fight. A farmer helped
her harness the buggy, while Cy snored in the seat. He awoke
before they set out; all the way home he alternately slept and
tried to make love to her.
"I'm almost as strong as he is. I managed to keep him
away while I drove--such a rickety buggy. I didn't feel like
a girl; I felt like a scrubwoman--no, I guess I was too scared
to have any feelings at all. It was terribly dark. I got home,
somehow. But it was hard, the time I had to get out, and it
was quite muddy, to read a sign-post--I lit matches that I
took from Cy's coat pocket, and he followed me--he fell off the
buggy step into the mud, and got up and tried to make love
to me, and---- I was scared. But I hit him. Quite hard.
And got in, and so he ran after the buggy, crying like a baby,
and I let him in again, and right away again he was trying----
But no matter. I got him home. Up on the porch. Mrs.
Bogart was waiting up. . . .
"You know, it was funny; all the time she was--oh, talking
to me--and Cy was being terribly sick--I just kept thinking,
`I've still got to drive the buggy down to the livery stable.
I wonder if the livery man will be awake?' But I got through
somehow. I took the buggy down to the stable, and got to
my room. I locked my door, but Mrs. Bogart kept saying
things, outside the door. Stood out there saying things about
me, dreadful things, and rattling the knob. And all the while
I could hear Cy in the back yard-being sick. I don't think
I'll ever marry any man. And then today----
"She drove me right out of the house. She wouldn't listen
to me, all morning. Just to Cy. I suppose he's over his
headache now. Even at breakfast he thought the whole thing
was a grand joke. I suppose right this minute he's going
around town boasting about his `conquest.' You understand--
oh, DON'T you understand? I DID keep him away! But I don't
see how I can face my school. They say country towns are
fine for bringing up boys in, but---- I can't believe this is
me, lying here and saying this. I don't BELIEVE what happened
last night.
"Oh. This was curious: When I took off my dress last
night--it was a darling dress, I loved it so, but of course the
mud had spoiled it. I cried over it and---- No matter. But
my white silk stockings were all torn, and the strange thing is,
I don't know whether I caught my legs in the briers when I got
out to look at the sign-post, or whether Cy scratched me when
I was fighting him off."
IV
Sam Clark was president of the school-board. When Carol
told him Fern's story Sam looked sympathetic and neighborly,
and Mrs. Clark sat by cooing, "Oh, isn't that too bad." Carol
was interrupted only when Mrs. Clark begged, "Dear, don't
speak so bitter about `pious' people. There's lots of sincere
practising Christians that are real tolerant. Like the Champ
Perrys."
"Yes. I know. Unfortunately there are enough kindly
people in the churches to keep them going."
When Carol had finished, Mrs. Clark breathed, "Poor girl;
I don't doubt her story a bit," and Sam rumbled, "Yuh, sure.
Miss Mullins is young and reckless, but everybody in town,
except Ma Bogart, knows what Cy is. But Miss Mullins was
a fool to go with him."
"But not wicked enough to pay for it with disgrace?"
"N-no, but----" Sam avoided verdicts, clung to the
entrancing horrors of the story. "Ma Bogart cussed her out all
morning, did she? Jumped her neck, eh? Ma certainly is
one hell-cat."
"Yes, you know how she is; so vicious."
"Oh no, her best style ain't her viciousness. What she pulls
in our store is to come in smiling with Christian Fortitude and
keep a clerk busy for one hour while she picks out half a dozen
fourpenny nails. I remember one time----"
"Sam!" Carol was uneasy. "You'll fight for Fern, won't
you? When Mrs. Bogart came to see you did she make definite
charges?"
"Well, yes, you might say she did."
"But the school-board won't act on them?"
"Guess we'll more or less have to."
"But you'll exonerate Fern?"
"I'll do what I can for the girl personally, but you know
what the board is. There's Reverend Zitterel; Sister Bogart
about half runs his church, so of course he'll take her say-so;
and Ezra Stowbody, as a banker he has to be all hell for
morality and purity. Might 's well admit it, Carrie; I'm afraid
there'll be a majority of the board against her. Not that any
of us would believe a word Cy said, not if he swore it on a
stack of Bibles, but Still, after all this gossip, Miss Mullins
wouldn't hardly be the party to chaperon our basket-ball team
when it went out of town to play other high schools, would
she!"
"Perhaps not, but couldn't some one else?"
"Why, that's one of the things she was hired for." Sam
sounded stubborn.
"Do you realize that this isn't just a matter of a job, and
hiring and firing; that it's actually sending a splendid girl out
with a beastly stain on her, giving all the other Bogarts in the
world a chance at her? That's what will happen if you discharge her."
Sam moved uncomfortably, looked at his wife, scratched his
head, sighed, said nothing.
"Won't you fight for her on the board? If you lose, won't
you, and whoever agrees with you, make a minority report?"
"No reports made in a case like this. Our rule is to just
decide the thing and announce the final decision, whether it's
unanimous or not."
"Rules! Against a girl's future! Dear God! Rules of a
school-board! Sam! Won't you stand by Fern, and threaten
to resign from the board if they try to discharge her?"
Rather testy, tired of so many subtleties, he complained,
"Well, I'll do what I can, but I'll have to wait till the board
meets."
And "I'll do what I can," together with the secret admission
"Of course you and I know what Ma Bogart is," was all Carol
could get from Superintendent George Edwin Mott, Ezra Stowbody,
the Reverend Mr. Zitterel or any other member of the
school-board.
Afterward she wondered whether Mr. Zitterel could have
been referring to herself when he observed, "There's too much
license in high places in this town, though, and the wages of
sin is death--or anyway, bein' fired." The holy leer with which
the priest said it remained in her mind.
She was at the hotel before eight next morning. Fern longed
to go to school, to face the tittering, but she was too shaky.
Carol read to her all day and, by reassuring her, convinced her
own self that the school-board would be just. She was less
sure of it that evening when, at the motion pictures, she heard
Mrs. Gougerling exclaim to Mrs. Howland, "She may be so
innocent and all, and I suppose she probably is, but still, if she
drank a whole bottle of whisky at that dance, the way everybody
says she did, she may have forgotten she was so innocent!
Hee, hee, hee!" Maud Dyer, leaning back from her seat, put
in, "That's what I've said all along. I don't want to roast
anybody, but have you noticed the way she looks at men?"
"When will they have me on the scaffold?" Carol speculated.
Nat Hicks stopped the Kennicotts on their way home. Carol
hated him for his manner of assuming that they two had a
mysterious understanding. Without quite winking he seemed
to wink at her as he gurgled, "What do you folks think about
this Mullins woman? I'm not strait-laced, but I tell you we
got to have decent women in our schools. D' you know what
I heard? They say whatever she may of done afterwards, this
Mullins dame took two quarts of whisky to the dance with
her, and got stewed before Cy did! Some tank, that wren!
Ha, ha. ha!"
"Rats, I don't believe it," Kennicott muttered.
He got Carol away before she was able to speak.
She saw Erik passing the house, late, alone, and she stared
after him, longing for the lively bitterness of the things he
would say about the town. Kennicott had nothing for her but
"Oh, course, ev'body likes a juicy story, but they don't intend
to be mean."
She went up to bed proving to herself that the members of
the school-board were superior men.
It was Tuesday afternoon before she learned that the board
had met at ten in the morning and voted to "accept Miss
Fern Mullins's resignation." Sam Clark telephoned the news
to her. "We're not making any charges. We're just letting
her resign. Would you like to drop over to the hotel and ask
her to write the resignation, now we've accepted it? Glad I
could get the board to put it that way. It's thanks to you."
"But can't you see that the town will take this as proof
of the charges?"
"We're--not--making--no--charges--whatever!" Sam was
obviously finding it hard to be patient.
Fern left town that evening.
Carol went with her to the train. The two girls elbowed
through a silent lip-licking crowd. Carol tried to stare them
down but in face of the impishness of the boys and the bovine
gaping of the men, she was embarrassed. Fern did not glance
at them. Carol felt her arm tremble, though she was tearless,
listless, plodding. She squeezed Carol's hand, said something
unintelligible, stumbled up into the vestibule.
Carol remembered that Miles Bjornstam had also taken a
train. What would be the scene at the station when she
herself took departure?
She walked up-town behind two strangers.
One of them was giggling, "See that good-looking wench
that got on here? The swell kid with the small black hat?
She's some charmer! I was here yesterday, before my jump to
Ojibway Falls, and I heard all about her. Seems she was a
teacher, but she certainly was a high-roller--O boy!--high,
wide, and fancy! Her and couple of other skirts bought a
whole case of whisky and went on a tear, and one night, darned
if this bunch of cradle-robbers didn't get hold of some young
kids, just small boys, and they all got lit up like a White Way,
and went out to a roughneck dance, and they say----"
The narrator turned, saw a woman near and, not being a
common person nor a coarse workman but a clever salesman
and a householder, lowered his voice for the rest of the tale.
During it the other man laughed hoarsely.
Carol turned off on a side-street.
She passed Cy Bogart. He was humorously narrating some
achievement to a group which included Nat Hicks, Del Snafflin,
Bert Tybee the bartender, and A. Tennyson O'Hearn the
shyster lawyer. They were men far older than Cy but they
accepted him as one of their own, and encouraged him to
go on.
It was a week before she received from Fern a letter of
which this was a part:
. . .& of course my family did not really believe the story but
as they were sure I must have done something wrong they just
lectured me generally, in fact jawed me till I have gone to live at
a boarding house. The teachers' agencies must know the story,
man at one almost slammed the door in my face when I went to
ask about a job, & at another the woman in charge was beastly.
Don't know what I will do. Don't seem to feel very well. May
marry a fellow that's in love with me but he's so stupid that he
makes me SCREAM.
Dear Mrs. Kennicott you were the only one that believed me.
I guess it's a joke on me, I was such a simp, I felt quite heroic
while I was driving the buggy back that night & keeping Cy away
from me. I guess I expected the people in Gopher Prairie to admire
me. I did use to be admired for my athletics at the U.--just five
months ago.
CHAPTER XXXIII
FOR a month which was one suspended moment of doubt she
saw Erik only casually, at an Eastern Star dance, at the shop,
where, in the presence of Nat Hicks, they conferred with
immense particularity on the significance of having one or two
buttons on the cuff of Kennicott's New Suit. For the benefit
of beholders they were respectably vacuous.
Thus barred from him, depressed in the thought of Fern,
Carol was suddenly and for the first time convinced that she
loved Erik.
She told herself a thousand inspiriting things which he would
say if he had the opportunity; for them she admired him,
loved him. But she was afraid to summon him. He understood,
he did not come. She forgot her every doubt of him,
and her discomfort in his background. Each day it seemed
impossible to get through the desolation of not seeing him.
Each morning, each afternoon, each evening was a compartment
divided from all other units of time, distinguished by a sudden
"Oh! I want to see Erik!" which was as devastating as
though she had never said it before.
There were wretched periods when she could not picture
him. Usually he stood out in her mind in some little moment--
glancing up from his preposterous pressing-iron, or running on
the beach with Dave Dyer. But sometimes he had vanished;
he was only an opinion. She worried then about his appearance:
Weren't his wrists too large and red? Wasn't his nose
a snub, like so many Scandinavians? Was he at all the graceful
thing she had fancied? When she encountered him on the
street she was as much reassuring herself as rejoicing in his
presence. More disturbing than being unable to visualize him
was the darting remembrance of some intimate aspect: his
face as they had walked to the boat together at the picnic;
the ruddy light on his temples, neck-cords, flat cheeks.
On a November evening when Kennicott was in the country
she answered the bell and was confused to find Erik at the
door, stooped, imploring, his hands in the pockets of his
topcoat. As though he had been rehearsing his speech he instantly
besought:
"Saw your husband driving away. I've got to see you. I
can't stand it. Come for a walk. I know! People might
see us. But they won't if we hike into the country. I'll wait
for you by the elevator. Take as long as you want to--oh,
come quick!"
"In a few minutes," she promised.
She murmured, "I'll just talk to him for a quarter of an
hour and come home." She put an her tweed coat and rubber
overshoes, considering how honest and hopeless are rubbers,
how clearly their chaperonage proved that she wasn't going
to a lovers' tryst.
She found him in the shadow of the grain-elevator, sulkily
kicking at a rail of the side-track. As she came toward him
she fancied that his whole body expanded. But he said nothing,
nor she; he patted her sleeve, she returned the pat, and they
crossed the railroad tracks, found a road, clumped toward
open country.
"Chilly night, but I like this melancholy gray," he said.
"Yes."
They passed a moaning clump of trees and splashed along
the wet road. He tucked her hand into the side-pocket of his
overcoat. She caught his thumb and, sighing, held it exactly
as Hugh held hers when they went walking. She thought
about Hugh. The current maid was in for the evening, but
was it safe to leave the baby with her? The thought was
distant and elusive.
Erik began to talk, slowly, revealingly. He made for her a
picture of his work in a large tailor shop in Minneapolis: the
steam and heat, and the drudgery; the men in darned vests
and crumpled trousers, men who "rushed growlers of beer"
and were cynical about women, who laughed at him and played
jokes on him. "But I didn't mind, because I could keep away
from them outside. I used to go to the Art Institute and the
Walker Gallery, and tramp clear around Lake Harriet, or hike
out to the Gates house and imagine it was a chateau in Italy
and I lived in it. I was a marquis and collected tapestries--
that was after I was wounded in Padua. The only really bad
time was when a tailor named Finkelfarb found a diary I was
trying to keep and he read it aloud in the shop--it was a
bad fight." He laughed. "I got fined five dollars. But that's
all gone now. Seems as though you stand between me and
the gas stoves--the long flames with mauve edges, licking up
around the irons and making that sneering sound all day--
aaaaah!"
Her fingers tightened about his thumb as she perceived the
hot low room, the pounding of pressing-irons, the reek of
scorched cloth, and Erik among giggling gnomes. His fingertip
crept through the opening of her glove and smoothed her
palm. She snatched her hand away, stripped off her glove,
tucked her hand back into his.
He was saying something about a "wonderful person." In
her tranquillity she let the words blow by and heeded only the
beating wings of his voice.
She was conscious that he was fumbling for impressive
speech.
"Say, uh--Carol, I've written a poem about you."
"That's nice. Let's hear it."
"Damn it, don't be so casual about it! Can't you take me
seriously?"
"My dear boy, if I took you seriously----! I don't want
us to be hurt more than--more than we will be. Tell me the
poem. I've never had a poem written about me!"
"It isn't really a poem. It's just some words that I love
because it seems to me they catch what you are. Of course
probably they won't seem so to anybody else, but----
Well----
Little and tender and merry and wise
With eyes that meet my eyes.
Do you get the idea the way I do?"
"Yes! I'm terribly grateful!" And she was grateful--
while she impersonally noted how bad a verse it was.
She was aware of the haggard beauty in the lowering night.
Monstrous tattered clouds sprawled round a forlorn moon;
puddles and rocks glistened with inner light. They were passing
a grove of scrub poplars, feeble by day but looming now
like a menacing wall. She stopped. They heard the branches
dripping, the wet leaves sullenly plumping on the soggy earth.
"Waiting--waiting--everything is waiting," she whispered.
She drew her hand from his, pressed her clenched fingers
against her lips. She was lost in the somberness. "I am
happy--so we must go home, before we have time to become
unhappy. But can't we sit on a log for a minute and just
listen?"
"No. Too wet. But I wish we could build a fire, and you
could sit on my overcoat beside it. I'm a grand fire-builder!
My cousin Lars and me spent a week one time in a cabin
way up in the Big Woods, snowed in. The fireplace was filled
with a dome of ice when we got there, but we chopped it out,
and jammed the thing full of pine-boughs. Couldn't we build
a fire back here in the woods and sit by it for a while?"
She pondered, half-way between yielding and refusal. Her
head ached faintly. She was in abeyance. Everything, the
night, his silhouette, the cautious-treading future, was as
undistinguishable as though she were drifting bodiless in a Fourth
Dimension. While her mind groped, the lights of a motor car
swooped round a bend in the road, and they stood farther
apart. "What ought I to do?" she mused. "I think----
Oh, I won't be robbed! I AM good! If I'm so enslaved that
I can't sit by the fire with a man and talk, then I'd better
be dead!"
The lights of the thrumming car grew magically; were upon
them; abruptly stopped. From behind the dimness of the
windshield a voice, annoyed, sharp: "Hello there!"
She realized that it was Kennicott.
The irritation in his voice smoothed out. "Having a walk?"
They made schoolboyish sounds of assent.
"Pretty wet, isn't it? Better ride back. Jump up in front
here, Valborg."
His manner of swinging open the door was a command.
Carol was conscious that Erik was climbing in, that she was
apparently to sit in the back, and that she had been left to
open the rear door for herself. Instantly the wonder which
had flamed to the gusty skies was quenched, and she was
Mrs. W. P. Kennicott of Gopher Prairie, riding in a squeaking
old car, and likely to be lectured by her husband.
She feared what Kennicott would say to Erik. She bent
toward them. Kennicott was observing, "Going to have some
rain before the night 's over, all right."
"Yes," said Erik.
"Been funny season this year, anyway. Never saw it with
such a cold October and such a nice November. 'Member
we had a snow way back on October ninth! But it certainly
was nice up to the twenty-first, this month--as I remember it,
not a flake of snow in November so far, has there been? But
I shouldn't wonder if we'd be having some snow 'most any
time now."
"Yes, good chance of it," said Erik.
"Wish I'd had more time to go after the ducks this fall.
By golly, what do you think?" Kennicott sounded appealing.
"Fellow wrote me from Man Trap Lake that he shot seven
mallards and couple of canvas-back in one hour!"
"That must have been fine," said Erik.
Carol was ignored. But Kennicott was blustrously cheerful.
He shouted to a farmer, as he slowed up to pass the frightened
team, "There we are--schon gut!" She sat back, neglected,
frozen, unheroic heroine in a drama insanely undramatic. She
made a decision resolute and enduring. She would tell
Kennicott---- What would she tell him? She could not say that
she loved Erik. DID she love him? But she would have it
out. She was not sure whether it was pity for Kennicott's
blindness, or irritation at his assumption that he was enough
to fill any woman's life, which prompted her, but she knew
that she was out of the trap, that she could be frank; and she
was exhilarated with the adventure of it. . .while in
front he was entertaining Erik:
"Nothing like an hour on a duck-pass to make you relish
your victuals and---- Gosh, this machine hasn't got the
power of a fountain pen. Guess the cylinders are jam-cram-full
of carbon again. Don't know but what maybe I'll have to
put in another set of piston-rings."
He stopped on Main Street and clucked hospitably, "There,
that'll give you just a block to walk. G' night."
Carol was in suspense. Would Erik sneak away?
He stolidly moved to the back of the car, thrust in his hand,
muttered, "Good night--Carol. I'm glad we had our walk."
She pressed his hand. The car was flapping on. He was
hidden from her--by a corner drug store on Main Street!
Kennicott did not recognize her till he drew up before the
house. Then he condescended, "Better jump out here and
I'll take the boat around back. Say, see if the back door is
unlocked, will you?" She unlatched the door for him. She
realized that she still carried the damp glove she had stripped
off for Erik. She drew it on. She stood in the center of the
living-room, unmoving, in damp coat and muddy rubbers.
Kennicott was as opaque as ever. Her task wouldn't be anything
so lively as having to endure a scolding, but only an
exasperating effort to command his attention so that he would
understand the nebulous things she had to tell him, instead
of interrupting her by yawning, winding the clock, and going
up to bed. She heard him shoveling coal into the furnace. He
came through the kitchen energetically, but before he spoke
to her he did stop in the hall, did wind the clock.
He sauntered into the living-room and his glance passed
from her drenched hat to her smeared rubbers. She could
hear--she could hear, see, taste, smell, touch--his "Better
take your coat off, Carrie; looks kind of wet." Yes, there it
was:
"Well, Carrie, you better----" He chucked his own coat
on a chair, stalked to her, went on with a rising tingling voice,
"----you better cut it out now. I'm not going to do the outraged
husband stunt. I like you and I respect you, and I'd
probably look like a boob if I tried to be dramatic. But I think
it's about time for you and Valborg to call a halt before you get
in Dutch, like Fern Mullins did."
"Do you----"
"Course. I know all about it. What d' you expect in a
town that's as filled with busybodies, that have plenty of time
to stick their noses into other folks' business, as this is? Not
that they've had the nerve to do much tattling to me, but
they've hinted around a lot, and anyway, I could see for myself
that you liked him. But of course I knew how cold you were,
I knew you wouldn't stand it even if Valborg did try to hold
your hand or kiss you, so I didn't worry. But same time, I
hope you don't suppose this husky young Swede farmer is as
innocent and Platonic and all that stuff as you are! Wait
now, don't get sore! I'm not knocking him. He isn't a bad
sort. And he's young and likes to gas about books. Course
you like him. That isn't the real rub. But haven't you just
seen what this town can do, once it goes and gets moral on
you, like it did with Fern? You probably think that two
young folks making love are alone if anybody ever is, but
there's nothing in this town that you don't do in company
with a whole lot of uninvited but awful interested guests.
Don't you realize that if Ma Westlake and a few others got
started they'd drive you up a tree, and you'd find yourself so
well advertised as being in love with this Valborg fellow that
you'd HAVE to be, just to spite 'em!"
"Let me sit down," was all Carol could say. She drooped
on the couch, wearily, without elasticity.
He yawned, "Gimme your coat and rubbers," and while
she stripped them off he twiddled his watch-chain, felt the
radiator, peered at the thermometer. He shook out her wraps
in the hall, hung them up with exactly his usual care. He
pushed a chair near to her and sat bolt up. He looked like
a physician about to give sound and undesired advice.
Before he could launch into his heavy discourse she
desperately got in, "Please! I want you to know that I was
going to tell you everything, tonight."
"Well, I don't suppose there's really much to tell."
"But there is. I'm fond of Erik. He appeals to something
in here." She touched her breast. "And I admire him. He
isn't just a `young Swede farmer.' He's an artist----"
"Wait now! He's had a chance all evening to tell you
what a whale of a fine fellow he is. Now it's my turn. I can't
talk artistic, but---- Carrie, do you understand my work?"
He leaned forward, thick capable hands on thick sturdy thighs,
mature and slow, yet beseeching. "No matter even if you are
cold, I like you better than anybody in the world. One time
I said that you were my soul. And that still goes. You're
all the things that I see in a sunset when I'm driving in from
the country, the things that I like but can't make poetry of.
Do you realize what my job is? I go round twenty-four hours
a day, in mud and blizzard, trying my damnedest to heal
everybody, rich or poor. You--that 're always spieling about
how scientists ought to rule the world, instead of a bunch
of spread-eagle politicians--can't you see that I'm all the
science there is here? And I can stand the cold and the bumpy
roads and the lonely rides at night. All I need is to have you
here at home to welcome me. I don't expect you to be
passionate--not any more I don't--but I do expect you to
appreciate my work. I bring babies into the world, and save
lives, and make cranky husbands quit being mean to their
wives. And then you go and moon over a Swede tailor because
he can talk about how to put ruchings on a skirt! Hell of a
thing for a man to fuss over!"
She flew out at him: "You make your side clear. Let me
give mine. I admit all you say--except about Erik. But is
it only you, and the baby, that want me to back you up, that
demand things from me? They're all on me, the whole town!
I can feel their hot breaths on my neck! Aunt Bessie and
that horrible slavering old Uncle Whittier and Juanita and
Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. Bogart and all of them. And you
welcome them, you encourage them to drag me down into their
cave! I won't stand it! Do you hear? Now, right now, I'm
done. And it's Erik who gives me the courage. You say he
just thinks about ruches (which do not usually go on skirts,
by the way!). I tell you he thinks about God, the God that
Mrs. Bogart covers up with greasy gingham wrappers! Erik
will be a great man some day, and if I could contribute one
tiny bit to his success----"
"Wait, wait, wait now! Hold up! You're assuming that
your Erik will make good. As a matter of fact, at my age he'll
be running a one-man tailor shop in some burg about the size
of Schoenstrom."
"He will not!"
"That's what he's headed for now all right, and he's twentyfive
or -six and---- What's he done to make you think he'll
ever be anything but a pants-presser?"
"He has sensitiveness and talent----"
"Wait now! What has he actually done in the art line?
Has he done one first-class picture or--sketch, d' you call it?
Or one poem, or played the piano, or anything except gas
about what he's going to do?"
She looked thoughtful.
"Then it's a hundred to one shot that he never will. Way
I understand it, even these fellows that do something pretty
good at home and get to go to art school, there ain't more
than one out of ten of 'em, maybe one out of a hundred, that
ever get above grinding out a bum living--about as artistic
as plumbing. And when it comes down to this tailor, why,
can't you see--you that take on so about psychology--can't
you see that it's just by contrast with folks like Doc McGanum
or Lym Cass that this fellow seems artistic? Suppose you'd
met up with him first in one of these reg'lar New York studios!
You wouldn't notice him any more 'n a rabbit!"
She huddled over folded hands like a temple virgin shivering
on her knees before the thin warmth of a brazier. She could
not answer.
Kennicott rose quickly, sat on the couch, took both her
hands. "Suppose he fails--as he will! Suppose he goes back
to tailoring, and you're his wife. Is that going to be this
artistic life you've been thinking about? He's in some bum
shack, pressing pants all day, or stooped over sewing, and
having to be polite to any grouch that blows in and jams a
dirty stinking old suit in his face and says, `Here you, fix
this, and be blame quick about it.' He won't even have enough
savvy to get him a big shop. He'll pike along doing his own
work--unless you, his wife, go help him, go help him in the
shop, and stand over a table all day, pushing a big heavy iron.
Your complexion will look fine after about fifteen years of
baking that way, won't it! And you'll be humped over like
an old hag. And probably you'll live in one room back of
the shop. And then at night--oh, you'll have your artist--
sure! He'll come in stinking of gasoline, and cranky from
hard work, and hinting around that if it hadn't been for you,
he'd of gone East and been a great artist. Sure! And you'll
be entertaining his relatives---- Talk about Uncle Whit!
You'll be having some old Axel Axelberg coming in with manure
on his boots and sitting down to supper in his socks and yelling
at you, `Hurry up now, you vimmin make me sick!' Yes,
and you'll have a squalling brat every year, tugging at you
while you press clothes, and you won't love 'em like you do
Hugh up-stairs, all downy and asleep----"
"Please! Not any more!"
Her face was on his knee.
He bent to kiss her neck. "I don't want to be unfair. I
guess love is a great thing, all right. But think it would stand
much of that kind of stuff? Oh, honey, am I so bad? Can't
you like me at all? I've--I've been so fond of you!"
She snatched up his hand, she kissed it. Presently she
sobbed, "I won't ever see him again. I can't, now. The
hot living-room behind the tailor shop---- I don't love him
enough for that. And you are---- Even if I were sure of
him, sure he was the real thing, I don't think I could actually
leave you. This marriage, it weaves people together. It's
not easy to break, even when it ought to be broken."
"And do you want to break it?"
"No!"
He lifted her, carried her up-stairs, laid her on her bed,
turned to the door.
"Come kiss me," she whimpered.
He kissed her lightly and slipped away. For an hour she
heard him moving about his room, lighting a cigar, drumming
with his knuckles on a chair. She felt that he was a bulwark
between her and the darkness that grew thicker as the delayed
storm came down in sleet.
II
He was cheery and more casual than ever at breakfast. All
day she tried to devise a way of giving Erik up. Telephone?
The village central would unquestionably "listen in." A
letter? It might be found. Go to see him? Impossible.
That evening Kennicott gave her, without comment, an
envelope. The letter was signed "E. V."
I know I can't do anything but make trouble for you, I think.
I am going to Minneapolis tonight and from there as soon as I can
either to New York or Chicago. I will do as big things as I can.
I I can't write I love you too much God keep you.
Until she heard the whistle which told her that the
Minneapolis train was leaving town, she kept herself from thinking,
from moving. Then it was all over. She had no plan nor
desire for anything.
When she caught Kennicott looking at her over his newspaper
she fled to his arms, thrusting the paper aside, and for
the first time in years they were lovers. But she knew that she
still had no plan in life, save always to go along the same
streets, past the same people, to the same shops.
III
A week after Erik's going the maid startled her by
announcing, "There's a Mr. Valborg down-stairs say he vant to
see you."
She was conscious of the maid's interested stare, angry at
this shattering of the calm in which she had hidden. She
crept down, peeped into the living-room. It was not Erik
Valborg who stood there; it was a small, gray-bearded, yellowfaced
man in mucky boots, canvas jacket, and red mittens.
He glowered at her with shrewd red eyes.
"You de doc's wife?"
"Yes."
"I'm Adolph Valborg, from up by Jefferson. I'm Erik's
father."
"Oh!" He was a monkey-faced little man, and not gentle.
"What you done wit' my son?"
"I don't think I understand you."
"I t'ink you're going to understand before I get t'rough!
Where is he?"
"Why, really---- I presume that he's in Minneapolis."
"You presume!" He looked through her with a
contemptuousness such as she could not have imagined. Only an
insane contortion of spelling could portray his lyric whine, his
mangled consonants. He clamored, "Presume! Dot's a fine
word! I don't want no fine words and I don't want no more
lies! I want to know what you KNOW!"
"See here, Mr. Valborg, you may stop this bullying right
now. I'm not one of your farmwomen. I don't know where
your son is, and there's no reason why I should know." Her
defiance ran out in face of his immense flaxen stolidity. He
raised his fist, worked up his anger with the gesture, and
sneered:
"You dirty city women wit' your fine ways and fine dresses!
A father come here trying to save his boy from wickedness,
and you call him a bully! By God, I don't have to take
nothin' off you nor your husband! I ain't one of your hired
men. For one time a woman like you is going to hear de trut'
about what you are, and no fine city words to it, needer."
"Really, Mr. Valborg----"
"What you done wit' him? Heh? I'll yoost tell you what
you done! He was a good boy, even if he was a damn fool.
I want him back on de farm. He don't make enough money
tailoring. And I can't get me no hired man! I want to take
him back on de farm. And you butt in and fool wit' him and
make love wit' him, and get him to run away!"
"You are lying! It's not true that---- It's not true, and
if it were, you would have no right to speak like this."
"Don't talk foolish. I know. Ain't I heard from a fellow
dot live right here in town how you been acting wit' de boy?
I know what you done! Walking wit' him in de country!
Hiding in de woods wit' him! Yes and I guess you talk about
religion in de woods! Sure! Women like you--you're worse
dan street-walkers! Rich women like you, wit' fine husbands
and no decent work to do--and me, look at my hands, look
how I work, look at those hands! But you, oh God no, you
mustn't work, you're too fine to do decent work. You got
to play wit' young fellows, younger as you are, laughing and
rolling around and acting like de animals! You let my son
alone, d' you hear?" He was shaking his fist in her face. She
could smell the manure and sweat. "It ain't no use talkin' to
women like you. Get no trut' out of you. But next time I
go by your husband!"
He was marching into the hall. Carol flung herself on him,
her clenching hand on his hayseed-dusty shoulder. "You
horrible old man, you've always tried to turn Erik into a slave,
to fatten your pocketbook! You've sneered at him, and
overworked him, and probably you've succeeded in preventing his
ever rising above your muck-heap! And now because you can't
drag him back, you come here to vent---- Go tell my husband,
go tell him, and don't blame me when he kills you, when
my husband kills you--he will kill you----"
The man grunted, looked at her impassively, said one word,
and walked out.
She heard the word very plainly.
She did not quite reach the couch. Her knees gave way,
she pitched forward. She heard her mind saying, "You
haven't fainted. This is ridiculous. You're simply dramatizing
yourself. Get up." But she could not move. When
Kennicott arrived she was lying on the couch. His step
quickened. "What's happened, Carrie? You haven't got a
bit of blood in your face."
She clutched his arm. "You've got to be sweet to me, and
kind! I'm going to California--mountains, sea. Please don't
argue about it, because I'm going."
Quietly, "All right. We'll go. You and I. Leave the kid
here with Aunt Bessie."
"Now!"
"Well yes, just as soon as we can get away. Now don't
talk any more. Just imagine you've already started." He
smoothed her hair, and not till after supper did he continue:
"I meant it about California. But I think we better wait
three weeks or so, till I get hold of some young fellow released
from the medical corps to take my practice. And if people
are gossiping, you don't want to give them a chance by running
away. Can you stand it and face 'em for three weeks or so?"
"Yes," she said emptily.
IV
People covertly stared at her on the street. Aunt Bessie
tried to catechize her about Erik's disappearance, and it was
Kennicott who silenced the woman with a savage, "Say, are
you hinting that Carrie had anything to do with that fellow's
beating it? Then let me tell you, and you can go right out
and tell the whole bloomin' town, that Carrie and I took Val--
took Erik riding, and he asked me about getting a better job
in Minneapolis, and I advised him to go to it. . . .
Getting much sugar in at the store now?"
Guy Pollock crossed the street to be pleasant apropos of
California and new novels. Vida Sherwin dragged her to the
Jolly Seventeen. There, with every one rigidly listening, Maud
Dyer shot at Carol, "I hear Erik has left town."
Carol was amiable. "Yes, so I hear. In fact, he called
me up--told me he had been offered a lovely job in the city.
So sorry he's gone. He would have been valuable if we'd
tried to start the dramatic association again. Still, I wouldn't
be here for the association myself, because Will is all in from
work, and I'm thinking of taking him to California. Juanita--
you know the Coast so well--tell me: would you start in at
Los Angeles or San Francisco, and what are the best hotels?"
The Jolly Seventeen looked disappointed, but the Jolly
Seventeen liked to give advice, the Jolly Seventeen liked to
mention the expensive hotels at which they had stayed. (A
meal counted as a stay.) Before they could question her
again Carol escorted in with drum and fife the topic of Raymie
Wutherspoon. Vida had news from her husband. He had
been gassed in the trenches, had been in a hospital for two
weeks, had been promoted to major, was learning French.
She left Hugh with Aunt Bessie.
But for Kennicott she would have taken him. She hoped
that in some miraculous way yet unrevealed she might find
it possible to remain in California. She did not want to see
Gopher Prairie again.
The Smails were to occupy the Kennicott house, and quite
the hardest thing to endure in the month of waiting was the
series of conferences between Kennicott and Uncle Whittier
in regard to heating the garage and having the furnace flues
cleaned.
Did Carol, Kennicott inquired, wish to stop in Minneapolis
to buy new clothes?
"No! I want to get as far away as I can as soon as I can.
Let's wait till Los Angeles."
"Sure, sure! Just as you like. Cheer up! We're going
to have a large wide time, and everything 'll be different when
we come back."
VI
Dusk on a snowy December afternoon. The sleeper which
would connect at Kansas City with the California train rolled
out of St. Paul with a chick-a-chick, chick-a-chick, chick-achick
as it crossed the other tracks. It bumped through the
factory belt, gained speed. Carol could see nothing but gray
fields, which had closed in on her all the way from Gopher
Prairie. Ahead was darkness.
"For an hour, in Minneapolis, I must have been near Erik.
He's still there, somewhere. He'll be gone when I come back.
I'll never know where he has gone."
As Kennicott switched on the seat-light she turned drearily
to the illustrations in a motion-picture magazine.
CHAPTER XXXIV
THEY journeyed for three and a half months. They saw the
Grand Canyon, the adobe walls of Sante Fe and, in a drive
from El Paso into Mexico, their first foreign land. They jogged
from San Diego and La Jolla to Los Angeles, Pasadena, Riverside,
through towns with bell-towered missions and orangegroves;
they viewed Monterey and San Francisco and a
forest of sequoias. They bathed in the surf and climbed
foothills and danced, they saw a polo game and the making of
motion-pictures, they sent one hundred and seventeen souvenir
post-cards to Gopher Prairie, and once, on a dune by a foggy
sea when she was walking alone, Carol found an artist, and he
looked up at her and said, "Too damned wet to paint; sit
down and talk," and so for ten minutes she lived in a romantic
novel.
Her only struggle was in coaxing Kennicott not to spend
all his time with the tourists from the ten thousand other
Gopher Prairies. In winter, California is full of people from
Iowa and Nebraska, Ohio and Oklahoma, who, having traveled
thousands of miles from their familiar villages, hasten to secure
an illusion of not having left them. They hunt for people from
their own states to stand between them and the shame of naked
mountains; they talk steadily, in Pullmans, on hotel porches,
at cafeterias and motion-picture shows, about the motors and
crops and county politics back home. Kennicott discussed
land-prices with them, he went into the merits of the several
sorts of motor cars with them, he was intimate with train
porters, and he insisted on seeing the Luke Dawsons at their
flimsy bungalow in Pasadena, where Luke sat and yearned to
go back and make some more money. But Kennicott gave
promise of learning to play. He shouted in the pool at the
Coronado, and he spoke of (though he did nothing more radical
than speak of) buying evening-clothes. Carol was touched
by his efforts to enjoy picture galleries, and the dogged way in
which he accumulated dates and dimensions when they followed
monkish guides through missions.
She felt strong. Whenever she was restless she dodged her
thoughts by the familiar vagabond fallacy of running away
from them, of moving on to a new place, and thus she persuaded
herself that she was tranquil. In March she willingly
agreed with Kennicott that it was time to go home. She was
longing for Hugh.
They left Monterey on April first, on a day of high blue
skies and poppies and a summer sea.
As the train struck in among the hills she resolved, "I'm
going to love the fine Will Kennicott quality that there is in
Gopher Prairie. The nobility of good sense. It will be sweet
to see Vida and Guy and the Clarks. And I'm going to see
my baby! All the words he'll be able to say now! It's a
new start. Everything will be different!"
Thus on April first, among dappled hills and the bronze of
scrub oaks, while Kennicott seesawed on his toes and chuckled,
"Wonder what Hugh'll say when he sees us?"
Three days later they reached Gopher Prairie in a sleet
storm.
II
No one knew that they were coming; no one met them;
and because of the icy roads, the only conveyance at the station
was the hotel 'bus, which they missed while Kennicott
was giving his trunk-check to the station agent--the only
person to welcome them. Carol waited for him in the station,
among huddled German women with shawls and umbrellas, and
ragged-bearded farmers in corduroy coats; peasants mute as
oxen, in a room thick with the steam of wet coats, the reek
of the red-hot stove, the stench of sawdust boxes which served
as cuspidors. The afternoon light was as reluctant as a winter
dawn.
"This is a useful market-center, an interesting pioneer post,
but it is not a home for me," meditated the stranger Carol.
Kennicott suggested, "I'd 'phone for a flivver but it'd take
quite a while for it to get here. Let's walk."
They stepped uncomfortably from the safety of the plank
platform and, balancing on their toes, taking cautious strides,
ventured along the road. The sleety rain was turning to snow.
The air was stealthily cold. Beneath an inch of water was a
layer of ice, so that as they wavered with their suit-cases they
slid and almost fell. The wet snow drenched their gloves; the
water underfoot splashed their itching ankles. They scuffled
inch by inch for three blocks. In front of Harry Haydock's
Kennicott sighed:
"We better stop in here and 'phone for a machine."
She followed him like a wet kitten.
The Haydocks saw them laboring up the slippery concrete
walk, up the perilous front steps, and came to the door
chanting:
"Well, well, well, back again, eh? Say, this is fine! Have
a fine trip? My, you look like a rose, Carol. How did you
like the coast, doc? Well, well, well! Where-all did you
go?"
But as Kennicott began to proclaim the list of places
achieved, Harry interrupted with an account of how much
he himself had seen, two years ago. When Kennicott boasted,
"We went through the mission at Santa Barbara," Harry
broke in, "Yeh, that's an interesting old mission. Say, I'll
never forget that hotel there, doc. It was swell. Why, the
rooms were made just like these old monasteries. Juanita
and I went from Santa Barbara to San Luis Obispo. You folks
go to San Luis Obispo?"
"No, but----"
"Well you ought to gone to San Luis Obispo. And then
we went from there to a ranch, least they called it a ranch----"
Kennicott got in only one considerable narrative, which
began:
"Say, I never knew--did you, Harry?--that in the Chicago
district the Kutz Kar sells as well as the Overland? I never
thought much of the Kutz. But I met a gentleman on the
train--it was when we were pulling out of Albuquerque, and
I was sitting on the back platform of the observation car,
and this man was next to me and he asked me for a light,
and we got to talking, and come to find out, he came from
Aurora, and when he found out I came from Minnesota he
asked me if I knew Dr. Clemworth of Red Wing, and of course,
while I've never met him, I've heard of Clemworth lots of
times, and seems he's this man's brother! Quite a coincidence!
Well, we got to talking, and we called the porter--that was a
pretty good porter on that car--and we had a couple bottles
of ginger ale, and I happened to mention the Kutz Kar, and
this man--seems he's driven a lot of different kinds of cars--
he's got a Franklin now--and he said that he'd tried the Kutz
and liked it first-rate. Well, when we got into a station--
I don't remember the name of it--Carrie, what the deuce
was the name of that first stop we made the other side of
Albuquerque?--well, anyway, I guess we must have stopped
there to take on water, and this man and I got out to stretch
our legs, and darned if there wasn't a Kutz drawn right up
at the depot platform, and he pointed out something I'd never
noticed, and I was glad to learn about it: seems that the gear
lever in the Kutz is an inch longer----"
Even this chronicle of voyages Harry interrupted, with
remarks on the advantages of the ball-gear-shift.
Kennicott gave up hope of adequate credit for being a
traveled man, and telephoned to a garage for a Ford taxicab,
while Juanita kissed Carol and made sure of being the first
to tell the latest, which included seven distinct and proven
scandals about Mrs. Swiftwaite, and one considerable doubt as
to the chastity of Cy Bogart.
They saw the Ford sedan making its way over the waterlined
ice, through the snow-storm, like a tug-boat in a fog.
The driver stopped at a corner. The car skidded, it turned
about with comic reluctance, crashed into a tree, and stood
tilted on a broken wheel.
The Kennicotts refused Harry Haydock's not too urgent
offer to take them home in his car "if I can manage to get
it out of the garage--terrible day--stayed home from the
store--but if you say so, I'll take a shot at it." Carol gurgled,
"No, I think we'd better walk; probably make better time, and
I'm just crazy to see my baby." With their suit-cases they
waddled on. Their coats were soaked through.
Carol had forgotten her facile hopes. She looked about
with impersonal eyes. But Kennicott, through rain-blurred
lashes, caught the glory that was Back Home.
She noted bare tree-trunks, black branches, the spongy
brown earth between patches of decayed snow on the lawns.
The vacant lots were full of tall dead weeds. Stripped of
summer leaves the houses were hopeless--temporary shelters.
Kennicott chuckled, "By golly, look down there! Jack Elder
must have painted his garage. And look! Martin Mahoney
has put up a new fence around his chicken yard. Say, that's
a good fence, eh? Chicken-tight and dog-tight. That's
certainly a dandy fence. Wonder how much it cost a yard?
Yes, sir, they been building right along, even in winter. Got
more enterprise than these Californians. Pretty good to be
home, eh?"
She noted that all winter long the citizens had been throwing
garbage into their back yards, to be cleaned up in spring. The
recent thaw had disclosed heaps of ashes, dog-bones, torn
bedding, clotted paint-cans, all half covered by the icy pools
which filled the hollows of the yards. The refuse had stained
the water to vile colors of waste: thin red, sour yellow, streaky
brown.
Kennicott chuckled, "Look over there on Main Street!
They got the feed store all fixed up, and a new sign on it,
black and gold. That'll improve the appearance of the block
a lot."
She noted that the few people whom they passed wore their
raggedest coats for the evil day. They were scarecrows in a
shanty town. . . . "To think," she marveled, "of coming
two thousand miles, past mountains and cities, to get off here,
and to plan to stay here! What conceivable reason for
choosing this particular place?"
She noted a figure in a rusty coat and a cloth cap.
Kennicott chuckled, "Look who's coming! It's Sam Clark!
Gosh, all rigged out for the weather."
The two men shook hands a dozen times and, in the
Western fashion, bumbled, "Well, well, well, well, you old
hell-hound, you old devil, how are you, anyway? You old
horse-thief, maybe it ain't good to see you again!" While Sam
nodded at her over Kennicott's shoulder, she was embarrassed.
"Perhaps I should never have gone away. I'm out of
practise in lying. I wish they would get it over! Just a
block more and--my baby!"
They were home. She brushed past the welcoming Aunt
Bessie and knelt by Hugh. As he stammered, "O mummy,
mummy, don't go away! Stay with me, mummy!" she cried,
"No, I'll never leave you again!"
He volunteered, "That's daddy."
"By golly, he knows us just as if we'd never been away!"
said Kennicott. "You don't find any of these California kids
as bright as he is, at his age!"
When the trunk came they piled about Hugh the bewhiskered
little wooden men fitting one inside another, the miniature junk,
and the Oriental drum, from San Francisco Chinatown; the
blocks carved by the old Frenchman in San Diego; the lariat
from San Antonio.
"Will you forgive mummy for going away? Will you?"
she whispered.
Absorbed in Hugh, asking a hundred questions about him--
had he had any colds? did he still dawdle over his oatmeal?
what about unfortunate morning incidents? she viewed Aunt
Bessie only as a source of information, and was able to ignore
her hint, pointed by a coyly shaken finger, "Now that you've
had such a fine long trip and spent so much money and all,
I hope you're going to settle down and be satisfied and
not----"
"Does he like carrots yet?" replied Carol.
She was cheerful as the snow began to conceal the slatternly
yards. She assured herself that the streets of New York and
Chicago were as ugly as Gopher Prairie in such weather; she
dismissed the thought, "But they do have charming interiors
for refuge." She sang as she energetically looked over Hugh's clothes.
The afternoon grew old and dark. Aunt Bessie went home.
Carol took the baby into her own room. The maid came in
complaining, "I can't get no extra milk to make chipped beef
for supper." Hugh was sleepy, and he had been spoiled by
Aunt Bessie. Even to a returned mother, his whining and
his trick of seven times snatching her silver brush were
fatiguing. As a background, behind the noises of Hugh
and the kitchen, the house reeked with a colorless stillness.
From the window she heard Kennicott greeting the Widow
Bogart as he had always done, always, every snowy evening:
"Guess this 'll keep up all night." She waited. There they
were, the furnace sounds, unalterable, eternal: removing ashes,
shoveling coal.
Yes. She was back home! Nothing had changed. She
had never been away. California? Had she seen it? Had she
for one minute left this scraping sound of the small shovel in
the ash-pit of the furnace? But Kennicott preposterously
supposed that she had. Never had she been quite so far from
going away as now when he believed she had just come back.
She felt oozing through the walls the spirit of small houses and
righteous people. At that instant she knew that in running
away she had merely hidden her doubts behind the officious
stir of travel.
"Dear God, don't let me begin agonizing again!" she sobbed.
Hugh wept with her.
"Wait for mummy a second!" She hastened down to the
cellar, to Kennicott.
He was standing before the furnace. However inadequate
the rest of the house, he had seen to it that the fundamental
cellar should be large and clean, the square pillars whitewashed,
and the bins for coal and potatoes and trunks convenient. A
glow from the drafts fell on the smooth gray cement floor at
his feet. He was whistling tenderly, staring at the furnace
with eyes which saw the black-domed monster as a symbol
of home and of the beloved routine to which he had returned--
his gipsying decently accomplished, his duty of viewing
"sights" and "curios" performed with thoroughness.
Unconscious of her, he stooped and peered in at the blue flames
among the coals. He closed the door briskly, and made a
whirling gesture with his right hand, out of pure bliss.
He saw her. "Why, hello, old lady! Pretty darn good to
be back, eh?"
"Yes," she lied, while she quaked, "Not now. I can't face
the job of explaining now. He's been so good. He trusts
me. And I'm going to break his heart!"
She smiled at him. She tidied his sacred cellar by throwing
an empty bluing bottle into the trash bin. She mourned, "It's
only the baby that holds me. If Hugh died----" She fled
upstairs in panic and made sure that nothing had happened to
Hugh in these four minutes.
She saw a pencil-mark on a window-sill. She had made it
on a September day when she had been planning a picnic for
Fern Mullins and Erik. Fern and she had been hysterical with
nonsense, had invented mad parties for all the coming winter.
She glanced across the alley at the room which Fern had
occupied. A rag of a gray curtain masked the still window.
She tried to think of some one to whom she wanted to
telephone. There was no one.
The Sam Clarks called that evening and encouraged her to
describe the missions. A dozen times they told her how glad
they were to have her back.
"It is good to be wanted," she thought. "It will drug me.
But---- Oh, is all life, always, an unresolved But?"
CHAPTER XXXV
SHE tried to be content, which was a contradiction in terms.
She fanatically cleaned house all April. She knitted a sweater
for Hugh. She was diligent at Red Cross work. She was
silent when Vida raved that though America hated war as much
as ever, we must invade Germany and wipe out every man,
because it was now proven that there was no soldier in the
German army who was not crucifying prisoners and cutting off
babies' hands.
Carol was volunteer nurse when Mrs. Champ Perry suddenly
died of pneumonia.
In her funeral procession were the eleven people left out
of the Grand Army and the Territorial Pioneers, old men and
women, very old and weak, who a few decades ago had been
boys and girls of the frontier, riding broncos through the rank
windy grass of this prairie. They hobbled behind a band made
up of business men and high-school boys, who straggled along
without uniforms or ranks or leader, trying to play Chopin's
Funeral March--a shabby group of neighbors with grave eyes,
stumbling through the slush under a solemnity of faltering
music.
Champ was broken. His rheumatism was worse. The rooms
over the store were silent. He could not do his work as buyer
at the elevator. Farmers coming in with sled-loads of wheat
complained that Champ could not read the scale, that he
seemed always to be watching some one back in the darkness
of the bins. He was seen slipping through alleys, talking
to himself, trying to avoid observation, creeping at last to the
cemetery. Once Carol followed him and found the coarse,
tobacco-stained, unimaginative old man lying on the snow of
the grave, his thick arms spread out across the raw mound
as if to protect her from the cold, her whom he had carefully
covered up every night for sixty years, who was alone there
now, uncared for.
The elevator company, Ezra Stowbody president, let him go.
The company, Ezra explained to Carol, had no funds for
giving pensions.
She tried to have him appointed to the postmastership, which,
since all the work was done by assistants, was the one sinecure
in town, the one reward for political purity. But it proved
that Mr. Bert Tybee, the former bartender, desired the postmastership.
At her solicitation Lyman Cass gave Champ a warm berth
as night watchman. Small boys played a good many tricks
on Champ when he fell asleep at the mill.
II
She had vicarious happiness in the return of Major Raymond
Wutherspoon. He was well, but still weak from having been
gassed; he had been discharged and he came home as the
first of the war veterans. It was rumored that he surprised
Vida by coming unannounced, that Vida fainted when she saw
him, and for a night and day would not share him with the
town. When Carol saw them Vida was hazy about everything
except Raymie, and never went so far from him that she
could not slip her hand under his. Without understanding
why Carol was troubled by this intensity. And Raymie--
surely this was not Raymie, but a sterner brother of his, this
man with the tight blouse, the shoulder emblems, the trim legs
in boots. His face seemed different, his lips more tight. He
was not Raymie; he was Major Wutherspoon; and Kennicott
and Carol were grateful when he divulged that Paris wasn't half
as pretty as Minneapolis, that all of the American soldiers had
been distinguished by their morality when on leave. Kennicott
was respectful as he inquired whether the Germans had good
aeroplanes, and what a salient was, and a cootie, and Going
West.
In a week Major Wutherspoon was made full manager of the
Bon Ton. Harry Haydock was going to devote himself to the
half-dozen branch stores which he was establishing at crossroads
hamlets. Harry would be the town's rich man in the
coming generation, and Major Wutherspoon would rise with
him, and Vida was jubilant, though she was regretful at having
to give up most of her Red Cross work. Ray still needed
nursing, she explained.
When Carol saw him with his uniform off, in a pepper-and
salt suit and a new gray felt hat, she was disappointed. He
was not Major Wutherspoon; he was Raymie
For a month small boys followed him down the street, and
everybody called him Major, but that was presently shortened
to Maje, and the small boys did not look up from their marbles
as he went by.
III
The town was booming, as a result of the war price of wheat.
The wheat money did not remain in the pockets of the
farmers; the towns existed to take care of all that. Iowa
farmers were selling their land at four hundred dollars an acre
and coming into Minnesota. But whoever bought or sold
or mortgaged, the townsmen invited themselves to the feast--
millers, real-estate men, lawyers, merchants, and Dr. Will
Kennicott. They bought land at a hundred and fifty, sold it
next day at a hundred and seventy, and bought again. In
three months Kennicott made seven thousand dollars, which
was rather more than four times as much as society paid him
for healing the sick.
In early summer began a "campaign of boosting." The
Commercial Club decided that Gopher Prairie was not only a
wheat-center but also the perfect site for factories, summer
cottages, and state institutions. In charge of the campaign was
Mr. James Blausser, who had recently come to town to
speculate in land. Mr. Blausser was known as a Hustler. He
liked to be called Honest Jim. He was a bulky, gauche, noisy,
humorous man, with narrow eyes, a rustic complexion, large
red hands, and brilliant clothes. He was attentive to all
women. He was the first man in town who had not been
sensitive enough to feel Carol's aloofness. He put his arm
about her shoulder while he condescended to Kennicott, "Nice
lil wifey, I'll say, doc," and when she answered, not warmly,
"Thank you very much for the imprimatur," he blew on her
neck, and did not know that he had been insulted.
He was a layer-on of hands. He never came to the house
without trying to paw her. He touched her arm, let his fist
brush her side. She hated the man, and she was afraid of
him. She wondered if he had heard of Erik, and was taking
advantage. She spoke ill of him at home and in public places,
but Kennicott and the other powers insisted, "Maybe he is
kind of a roughneck, but you got to hand it to him; he's got
more git-up-and-git than any fellow that ever hit this burg.
And he's pretty cute, too. Hear what he said to old Ezra?
Chucked him in the ribs and said, `Say, boy, what do you
want to go to Denver for? Wait 'll I get time and I'll move
the mountains here. Any mountain will be tickled to death
to locate here once we get the White Way in!' "
The town welcomed Mr. Blausser as fully as Carol snubbed
him. He was the guest of honor at the Commercial Club
Banquet at the Minniemashie House, an occasion for menus
printed in gold (but injudiciously proof-read), for free cigars,
soft damp slabs of Lake Superior whitefish served as fillet of
sole, drenched cigar-ashes gradually filling the saucers of coffee
cups, and oratorical references to Pep, Punch, Go, Vigor,
Enterprise, Red Blood, He-Men, Fair Women, God's Country, James
J. Hill, the Blue Sky, the Green Fields, the Bountiful Harvest,
Increasing Population, Fair Return on Investments, Alien
Agitators Who Threaten the Security of Our Institutions, the
Hearthstone the Foundation of the State, Senator Knute
Nelson, One Hundred Per Cent. Americanism, and Pointing
with Pride.
Harry Haydock, as chairman, introduced Honest Jim
Blausser. "And I am proud to say, my fellow citizens, that
in his brief stay here Mr. Blausser has become my warm
personal friend as well as my fellow booster, and I advise you
all to very carefully attend to the hints of a man who knows
how to achieve."
Mr. Blausser reared up like an elephant with a camel's neck
--red faced, red eyed, heavy fisted, slightly belching--a born
leader, divinely intended to be a congressman but deflected to
the more lucrative honors of real-estate. He smiled on his
warm personal friends and fellow boosters, and boomed:
"I certainly was astonished in the streets of our lovely little
city, the other day. I met the meanest kind of critter that
God ever made--meaner than the horned toad or the Texas
lallapaluza! (Laughter.) And do you know what the animile
was? He was a knocker! (Laughter and applause.)
"I want to tell you good people, and it's just as sure as
God made little apples, the thing that distinguishes our American
commonwealth from the pikers and tin-horns in other
countries is our Punch. You take a genuwine, honest-to-God
homo Americanibus and there ain't anything he's afraid to
tackle. Snap and speed are his middle name! He'll put her
across if he has to ride from hell to breakfast, and believe me,
I'm mighty good and sorry for the boob that's so unlucky as to
get in his way, because that poor slob is going to wonder where
he was at when Old Mr. Cyclone hit town! (Laughter.)
"Now, frien's, there's some folks so yellow and small and
so few in the pod that they go to work and claim that those--
of us that have the big vision are off our trolleys. They say
we can't make Gopher Prairie, God bless her! just as big as
Minneapolis or St. Paul or Duluth. But lemme tell you right
here and now that there ain't a town under the blue canopy
of heaven that's got a better chance to take a running jump
and go scooting right up into the two-hundred-thousand class
than little old G. P.! And if there's anybody that's got such
cold kismets that he's afraid to tag after Jim Blausser on the
Big Going Up, then we don't want him here! Way I figger it,
you folks are just patriotic enough so that you ain't going to
stand for any guy sneering and knocking his own town, no
matter how much of a smart Aleck he is--and just on the side
I want to add that this Farmers' Nonpartisan League and the
whole bunch of socialists are right in the same category, or,
as the fellow says, in the same scategory, meaning This Way
Out, Exit, Beat It While the Going's Good, This Means You,
for all knockers of prosperity and the rights of property!
"Fellow citizens, there's a lot of folks, even right here in this
fair state, fairest and richest of all the glorious union, that
stand up on their hind legs and claim that the East and Europe
put it all over the golden Northwestland. Now let me nail
that lie right here and now. `Ah-ha,' says they, `so Jim
Blausser is claiming that Gopher Prairie is as good a place
to live in as London and Rome and--and all the rest of the Big
Burgs, is he? How does the poor fish know?' says they. Well
I'll tell you how I know! I've seen 'em! I've done Europe
from soup to nuts! They can't spring that stuff on Jim
Blausser and get away with it! And let me tell you that the
only live thing in Europe is our boys that are fighting there
now! London--I spent three days, sixteen straight hours a
day, giving London the once-over, and let me tell you that it's
nothing but a bunch of fog and out-of-date buildings that no
live American burg would stand for one minute. You may
not believe it, but there ain't one first-class skyscraper in the
whole works. And the same thing goes for that crowd of crabs
and snobs Down East, and next time you hear some zob
from Yahooville-on-the-Hudson chewing the rag and bulling
and trying to get your goat, you tell him that no two-fisted
enterprising Westerner would have New York for a gift!
"Now the point of this is: I'm not only insisting that Gopher
Prairie is going to be Minnesota's pride, the brightest ray in the
glory of the North Star State, but also and furthermore that
it is right now, and still more shall be, as good a place to live
in, and love in, and bring up the Little Ones in, and it's got
as much refinement and culture, as any burg on the whole
bloomin' expanse of God's Green Footstool, and that goes, get
me, that goes!"
Half an hour later Chairman Haydock moved a vote of
thanks to Mr. Blausser.
The boosters' campaign was on.
The town sought that efficient and modern variety of fame
which is known as "publicity." The band was reorganized,
and provided by the Commercial Club with uniforms of purple
and gold. The amateur baseball-team hired a semi-professional
pitcher from Des Moines, and made a schedule of games with
every town for fifty miles about. The citizens accompanied
it as "rooters," in a special car, with banners lettered "Watch
Gopher Prairie Grow," and with the band playing "Smile,
Smile, Smile." Whether the team won or lost the Dauntless
loyally shrieked, "Boost, Boys, and Boost Together--Put
Gopher Prairie on the Map--Brilliant Record of Our Matchless
Team."
Then, glory of glories, the town put in a White Way. White
Ways were in fashion in the Middlewest. They were composed
of ornamented posts with clusters of high-powered electric
lights along two or three blocks on Main Street. The Dauntless
confessed: "White Way Is Installed--Town Lit Up Like
Broadway--Speech by Hon. James Blausser--Come On You
Twin Cities--Our Hat Is In the Ring."
The Commercial Club issued a booklet prepared by a great
and expensive literary person from a Minneapolis advertising
agency, a red-headed young man who smoked cigarettes in a
long amber holder. Carol read the booklet with a certain
wonder. She learned that Plover and Minniemashie Lakes
were world-famed for their beauteous wooded shores and gamey
pike and bass not to be equalled elsewhere in the entire
country; that the residences of Gopher Prairie were models of
dignity, comfort, and culture, with lawns and gardens known
far and wide; that the Gopher Prairie schools and public
library, in its neat and commodious building, were celebrated
throughout the state; that the Gopher Prairie mills made the
best flour in the country; that the surrounding farm lands were
renowned, where'er men ate bread and butter, for their
incomparable No. 1 Hard Wheat and Holstein-Friesian cattle;
and that the stores in Gopher Prairie compared favorably with
Minneapolis and Chicago in their abundance of luxuries and
necessities and the ever-courteous attention of the skilled
clerks. She learned, in brief, that this was the one Logical
Location for factories and wholesale houses.
"THERE'S where I want to go; to that model town Gopher
Prairie," said Carol.
Kennicott was triumphant when the Commercial Club did
capture one small shy factory which planned to make wooden
automobile-wheels, but when Carol saw the promoter she could
not feel that his coming much mattered--and a year after,
when he failed, she could not be very sorrowful.
Retired farmers were moving into town. The price of lots
had increased a third. But Carol could discover no more
pictures nor interesting food nor gracious voices nor amusing
conversation nor questing minds. She could, she asserted,
endure a shabby but modest town; the town shabby and
egomaniac she could not endure. She could nurse Champ
Perry, and warm to the neighborliness of Sam Clark, but she
could not sit applauding Honest Jim Blausser. Kennicott had
begged her, in courtship days, to convert the town to beauty.
If it was now as beautiful as Mr. Blausser and the Dauntless
said, then her work was over, and she could go.
CHAPTER XXXVI
KENNICOTT was not so inhumanly patient that he could continue
to forgive Carol's heresies, to woo her as he had on the
venture to California. She tried to be inconspicuous, but she
was betrayed by her failure to glow over the boosting.
Kennicott believed in it; demanded that she say patriotic
things about the White Way and the new factory. He snorted,
"By golly, I've done all I could, and now I expect you to
play the game. Here you been complaining for years about
us being so poky, and now when Blausser comes along and does
stir up excitement and beautify the town like you've always
wanted somebody to, why, you say he's a roughneck, and you
won't jump on the band-wagon."
Once, when Kennicott announced at noon-dinner, "What do
you know about this! They say there's a chance we may
get another factory--cream-separator works!" he added, "You
might try to look interested, even if you ain't!" The baby
was frightened by the Jovian roar; ran wailing to hide his
face in Carol's lap; and Kennicott had to make himself humble
and court both mother and child. The dim injustice of not
being understood even by his son left him irritable. He felt
injured.
An event which did not directly touch them brought down
his wrath.
In the early autumn, news came from Wakamin that the
sheriff had forbidden an organizer for the National
Nonpartisan League to speak anywhere in the county. The
organizer had defied the sheriff, and announced that in a few
days he would address a farmers' political meeting. That
night, the news ran, a mob of a hundred business men led by
the sheriff--the tame village street and the smug village faces
ruddled by the light of bobbing lanterns, the mob flowing
between the squatty rows of shops--had taken the organizer
from his hotel, ridden him on a fence-rail, put him on a
freight train, and warned him not to return.
The story was threshed out in Dave Dyer's drug store, with
Sam Clark, Kennicott, and Carol present.
"That's the way to treat those fellows--only they ought
to have lynched him!" declared Sam, and Kennicott and Dave
Dyer joined in a proud "You bet!"
Carol walked out hastily, Kennicott observing her.
Through supper-time she knew that he was bubbling and
would soon boil over. When the baby was abed, and they sat
composedly in canvas chairs on the porch, he experimented;
"I had a hunch you thought Sam was kind of hard on that
fellow they kicked out of Wakamin."
"Wasn't Sam rather needlessly heroic?"
"All these organizers, yes, and a whole lot of the German
and Squarehead farmers themselves, they're seditious as the
devil--disloyal, non-patriotic, pro-German pacifists, that's
what they are!"
"Did this organizer say anything pro-German?"
"Not on your life! They didn't give him a chance!" His
laugh was stagey.
"So the whole thing was illegal--and led by the sheriff!
Precisely how do you expect these aliens to obey your law if
the officer of the law teaches them to break it? Is it a new
kind of logic?"
"Maybe it wasn't exactly regular, but what's the odds?
They knew this fellow would try to stir up trouble. Whenever
it comes right down to a question of defending Americanism
and our constitutional rights, it's justifiable to set aside
ordinary procedure."
"What editorial did he get that from?" she wondered, as
she protested, "See here, my beloved, why can't you Tories
declare war honestly? You don't oppose this organizer because
you think he's seditious but because you're afraid that
the farmers he is organizing will deprive you townsmen of the
money you make out of mortgages and wheat and shops.
Of course, since we're at war with Germany, anything that any
one of us doesn't like is `pro-German,' whether it's business
competition or bad music. If we were fighting England,
you'd call the radicals `pro-English.' When this war is over,
I suppose you'll be calling them `red anarchists.' What an
eternal art it is--such a glittery delightful art--finding hard
names for our opponents! How we do sanctify our efforts to
keep them from getting the holy dollars we want for ourselves!
The churches have always done it, and the political orators--
and I suppose I do it when I call Mrs. Bogart a `Puritan' and
Mr. Stowbody a `capitalist.' But you business men are going
to beat all the rest of us at it, with your simple-hearted,
energetic, pompous----"
She got so far only because Kennicott was slow in shaking
off respect for her. Now he bayed:
"That'll be about all from you! I've stood for your sneering
at this town, and saying how ugly and dull it is. I've stood
for your refusing to appreciate good fellows like Sam. I've
even stood for your ridiculing our Watch Gopher Prairie Grow
campaign. But one thing I'm not going to stand: I'm not
going to stand my own wife being seditious. You can camouflage
all you want to, but you know darn well that these
radicals, as you call 'em, are opposed to the war, and let me
tell you right here and now, and you and all these long-haired
men and short-haired women can beef all you want to, but
we're going to take these fellows, and if they ain't patriotic,
we're going to make them be patriotic. And--Lord knows
I never thought I'd have to say this to my own wife--but if
you go defending these fellows, then the same thing applies to
you! Next thing, I suppose you'll be yapping about free
speech. Free speech! There's too much free speech and free
gas and free beer and free love and all the rest of your damned
mouthy freedom, and if I had my way I'd make you folks live
up to the established rules of decency even if I had to take
you----"
"Will!" She was not timorous now. "Am I pro-German
if I fail to throb to Honest Jim Blausser, too? Let's have my
whole duty as a wife!"
He was grumbling, "The whole thing's right in line with
the criticism you've always been making. Might have known
you'd oppose any decent constructive work for the town or
for----"
"You're right. All I've done has been in line. I don't
belong to Gopher Prairie. That isn't meant as a
condemnation of Gopher Prairie, and it may be a condemnation
of me. All right! I don't care! I don't belong here, and
I'm going. I'm not asking permission any more. I'm simply
going."
He grunted. "Do you mind telling me, if it isn't too much
trouble, how long you're going for?"
"I don't know. Perhaps for a year. Perhaps for a lifetime."
"I see. Well, of course, I'll be tickled to death to sell out
my practise and go anywhere you say. Would you like to have
me go with you to Paris and study art, maybe, and wear
velveteen pants and a woman's bonnet, and live on spaghetti?"
"No, I think we can save you that trouble. You don't
quite understand. I am going--I really am--and alone! I've
got to find out what my work is----"
"Work? Work? Sure! That's the whole trouble with
you! You haven't got enough work to do. If you had five
kids and no hired girl, and had to help with the chores and
separate the cream, like these farmers' wives, then you wouldn't
be so discontented."
"I know. That's what most men--and women--like you
WOULD say. That's how they would explain all I am and all
I want. And I shouldn't argue with them. These business
men, from their crushing labors of sitting in an office seven
hours a day, would calmly recommend that I have a dozen
children. As it happens, I've done that sort of thing. There've
been a good many times when we hadn't a maid, and I did
all the housework, and cared for Hugh, and went to Red Cross,
and did it all very efficiently. I'm a good cook and a good
sweeper, and you don't dare say I'm not!"
"N-no, you're----"
"But was I more happy when I was drudging? I was not.
I was just bedraggled and unhappy. It's work--but not my
work. I could run an office or a library, or nurse and teach
children. But solitary dish-washing isn't enough to satisfy me
--or many other women. We're going to chuck it. We're
going to wash 'em by machinery, and come out and play with
you men in the offices and clubs and politics you've cleverly
kept for yourselves! Oh, we're hopeless, we dissatisfied
women! Then why do you want to have us about the place,
to fret you? So it's for your sake that I'm going!"
"Of course a little thing like Hugh makes no difference!"
"Yes, all the difference. That's why I'm going to take him
with me."
"Suppose I refuse?"
"You won't!"
Forlornly, "Uh---- Carrie, what the devil is it you want,
anyway?"
"Oh, conversation! No, it's much more than that. I think
it's a greatness of life--a refusal to be content with even the
healthiest mud."
"Don't you know that nobody ever solved a problem by
running away from it?"
"Perhaps. Only I choose to make my own definition of
`running away' I don't call---- Do you realize how big a
world there is beyond this Gopher Prairie where you'd keep
me all my life? It may be that some day I'll come back, but
not till I can bring something more than I have now. And
even if I am cowardly and run away--all right, call it cowardly,
call me anything you want to! I've been ruled too long by
fear of being called things. I'm going away to be quiet and
think. I'm--I'm going! I have a right to my own life."
"So have I to mine!"
"Well?"
"I have a right to my life--and you're it, you're my life!
You've made yourself so. I'm damned if I'll agree to all your
freak notions, but I will say I've got to depend on you. Never
thought of that complication, did you, in this `off to Bohemia,
and express yourself, and free love, and live your own life'
stuff!"
"You have a right to me if you can keep me. Can you?"
He moved uneasily.
II
For a month they discussed it. They hurt each other very
much, and sometimes they were close to weeping, and invariably
he used banal phrases about her duties and she used phrases
quite as banal about freedom, and through it all, her discovery
that she really could get away from Main Street was as sweet
as the discovery of love. Kennicott never consented definitely.
At most he agreed to a public theory that she was "going to
take a short trip and see what the East was like in wartime."
She set out for Washington in October--just before the
war ended.
She had determined on Washington because it was less
intimidating than the obvious New York, because she hoped to
find streets in which Hugh could play, and because in the stress
of war-work, with its demand for thousands of temporary
clerks, she could be initiated into the world of offices.
Hugh was to go with her, despite the wails and rather
extensive comments of Aunt Bessie.
She wondered if she might not encounter Erik in the East
but it was a chance thought, soon forgotten.
III
The last thing she saw on the station platform was Kennicott,
faithfully waving his hand, his face so full of uncomprehending
loneliness that he could not smile but only twitch up
his lips. She waved to him as long as she could, and when
he was lost she wanted to leap from the vestibule and run
back to him. She thought of a hundred tendernesses she had
neglected.
She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was
not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate,
which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward
she began to climb.
She sighed, "I couldn't do this if it weren't for Will's
kindness, his giving me money." But a second after: "I wonder
how many women would always stay home if they had the
money?"
Hugh complained, "Notice me, mummy!" He was beside
her on the red plush seat of the day-coach; a boy of three
and a half. "I'm tired of playing train. Let's play something
else. Let's go see Auntie Bogart."
"Oh, NO! Do you really like Mrs. Bogart?"
"Yes. She gives me cookies and she tells me about the
Dear Lord. You never tell me about the Dear Lord. Why
don't you tell me about the Dear Lord? Auntie Bogart says
I'm going to be a preacher. Can I be a preacher? Can
I preach about the Dear Lord?"
"Oh, please wait till my generation has stopped rebelling
before yours starts in!"
"What's a generation?"
"It's a ray in the illumination of the spirit."
"That's foolish." He was a serious and literal person, and
rather humorless. She kissed his frown, and marveled:
"I am running away from my husband, after liking a
Swedish ne'er-do-well and expressing immoral opinions, just
as in a romantic story. And my own son reproves me because
I haven't given him religious instruction. But the story
doesn't go right. I'm neither groaning nor being dramatically
saved. I keep on running away, and I enjoy it. I'm mad
with joy over it. Gopher Prairie is lost back there in the
dust and stubble, and I look forward----"
She continued it to Hugh: "Darling, do you know what
mother and you are going to find beyond the blue horizon
rim?"
"What?" flatly.
"We're going to find elephants with golden howdahs from
which peep young maharanees with necklaces of rubies, and a
dawn sea colored like the breast of a dove, and a white and
green house filled with books and silver tea-sets."
"And cookies?"
"Cookies? Oh, most decidedly cookies. We've had enough
of bread and porridge. We'd get sick on too many cookies,
but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all."
"That's foolish."
"It is, O male Kennicott!"
"Huh!" said Kennicott II, and went to sleep on her shoulder.
IV
The theory of the Dauntless regarding Carol's absence:
Mrs. Will Kennicott and son Hugh left on No. 24 on Saturday
last for a stay of some months in Minneapolis Chicago New
York, and Washington. Mrs. Kennicott confided to Ye Scribe
that she will be connected with one of the multifarious war activities
now centering in the Nation's Capital for a brief period before
returning. Her countless friends who appreciate her splendid labors
with the local Red Cross realize how valuable she will be to any
war board with which she chooses to become connected. Gopher
Prairie thus adds another shining star to its service flag and
without wishing to knock any neighboring communities, we would
like to know any town of anywheres near our size in the state
that has such a sterling war record. Another reason why you'd
better Watch Gopher Prairie Grow.
* * *
Mr. and Mrs. David Dyer, Mrs. Dyer's sister, Mrs. Jennie Dayborn
of Jackrabbit, and Dr. Will Kennicott drove to Minniemashie
on Tuesday for a delightful picnic.
CHAPTER XXXVII
I
SHE found employment in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance.
Though the armistice with Germany was signed a few weeks
after her coming to Washington, the work of the bureau continued.
She filed correspondence all day; then she dictated
answers to letters of inquiry. It was an endurance of
monotonous details, yet she asserted that she had found "real work."
Disillusions she did have. She discovered that in the
afternoon, office routine stretches to the grave. She discovered that
an office is as full of cliques and scandals as a Gopher Prairie
She discovered that most of the women in the government
bureaus lived unhealthfully, dining on snatches in their
crammed apartments. But she also discovered that business
women may have friendships and enmities as frankly as men
and may revel in a bliss which no housewife attains--a free
Sunday. It did not appear that the Great World needed her
inspiration, but she felt that her letters, her contact with
the anxieties of men and women all over the country, were
a part of vast affairs, not confined to Main Street and a kitchen
but linked with Paris, Bangkok, Madrid.
She perceived that she could do office work without losing
any of the putative feminine virtue of domesticity; that cooking
and cleaning, when divested of the fussing of an Aunt
Bessie, take but a tenth of the time which, in a Gopher
Prairie, it is but decent to devote to them.
Not to have to apologize for her thoughts to the Jolly
Seventeen, not to have to report to Kennicott at the end of the
day all that she had done or might do, was a relief which made
up for the office weariness. She felt that she was no longer
one-half of a marriage but the whole of a human being.
II
Washington gave her all the graciousness in which she had
had faith: white columns seen across leafy parks, spacious
avenues, twisty alleys. Daily she passed a dark square house
with a hint of magnolias and a courtyard behind it, and a tall
curtained second-story window through which a woman was
always peering. The woman was mystery, romance, a story
which told itself differently every day; now she was a
murderess, now the neglected wife of an ambassador. It was
mystery which Carol had most lacked in Gopher Prairie, where
every house was open to view, where every person was but
too easy to meet, where there were no secret gates opening
upon moors over which one might walk by moss-deadened
paths to strange high adventures in an ancient garden.
As she flitted up Sixteenth Street after a Kreisler recital,
given late in the afternoon for the government clerks, as the
lamps kindled in spheres of soft fire, as the breeze flowed into
the street, fresh as prairie winds and kindlier, as she glanced
up the elm alley of Massachusetts Avenue, as she was rested
by the integrity of the Scottish Rite Temple, she loved the
city as she loved no one save Hugh. She encountered negro
shanties turned into studios, with orange curtains and pots of
mignonette; marble houses on New Hampshire Avenue, with
butlers and limousines; and men who looked like fictional
explorers and aviators. Her days were swift, and she knew that
in her folly of running away she had found the courage to
be wise.
She had a dispiriting first month of hunting lodgings in the
crowded city. She had to roost in a hall-room in a moldy
mansion conducted by an indignant decayed gentlewoman,
and leave Hugh to the care of a doubtful nurse. But later
she made a home.
III
Her first acquaintances were the members of the Tincomb
Methodist Church, a vast red-brick tabernacle. Vida Sherwin
had given her a letter to an earnest woman with eye-glasses,
plaid silk waist, and a belief in Bible Classes, who introduced
her to the Pastor and the Nicer Members of Tincomb. Carol
recognized in Washington as she had in California a transplanted
and guarded Main Street. Two-thirds of the churchmembers
had come from Gopher Prairies. The church was
their society and their standard; they went to Sunday service,
Sunday School, Christian Endeavor, missionary lectures, church
suppers, precisely as they had at home; they agreed that
ambassadors and flippant newspapermen and infidel scientists of
the bureaus were equally wicked and to be avoided; and by
cleaving to Tincomb Church they kept their ideals from all
contamination.
They welcomed Carol, asked about her husband, gave her
advice regarding colic in babies, passed her the gingerbread
and scalloped potatoes at church suppers, and in general made
her very unhappy and lonely, so that she wondered if she
might not enlist in the militant suffrage organization and be
allowed to go to jail.
Always she was to perceive in Washington (as doubtless she
would have perceived in New York or London) a thick streak
of Main Street. The cautious dullness of a Gopher Prairie
appeared in boarding-houses where ladylike bureau-clerks
gossiped to polite young army officers about the movies; a
thousand Sam Clarks and a few Widow Bogarts were to be
identified in the Sunday motor procession, in theater parties, and
at the dinners of State Societies, to which the emigres from
Texas or Michigan surged that they might confirm themselves
in the faith that their several Gopher Prairies were notoriously
"a whole lot peppier and chummier than this stuck-up East."
But she found a Washington which did not cleave to Main
Street.
Guy Pollock wrote to a cousin, a temporary army captain, a
confiding and buoyant lad who took Carol to tea-dances, and
laughed, as she had always wanted some one to laugh, about
nothing in particular. The captain introduced her to the
secretary of a congressman, a cynical young widow with many
acquaintances in the navy. Through her Carol met commanders
and majors, newspapermen, chemists and geographers and fiscal
experts from the bureaus, and a teacher who was a familiar
of the militant suffrage headquarters. The teacher took her
to headquarters. Carol never became a prominent suffragist.
Indeed her only recognized position was as an able addresser
of envelopes. But she was casually adopted by this family
of friendly women who, when they were not being mobbed or
arrested, took dancing lessons or went picnicking up the
Chesapeake Canal or talked about the politics of the American
Federation of Labor.
With the congressman's secretary and the teacher Carol
leased a small flat. Here she found home, her own place and
her own people. She had, though it absorbed most of her
salary, an excellent nurse for Hugh. She herself put him to
bed and played with him on holidays. There were walks with
him, there were motionless evenings of reading, but chiefly
Washington was associated with people, scores of them, sitting
about the flat, talking, talking, talking, not always wisely but
always excitedly. It was not at all the "artist's studio" of
which, because of its persistence in fiction, she had dreamed.
Most of them were in offices all day, and thought more in
card-catalogues or statistics than in mass and color. But they
played, very simply, and they saw no reason why anything
which exists cannot also be acknowledged.
She was sometimes shocked quite as she had shocked Gopher
Prairie by these girls with their cigarettes and elfish knowledge.
When they were most eager about soviets or canoeing, she
listened, longed to have some special learning which would
distinguish her, and sighed that her adventure had come so
late. Kennicott and Main Street had drained her self-reliance;
the presence of Hugh made her feel temporary. Some day--
oh, she'd have to take him back to open fields and the right
to climb about hay-lofts.
But the fact that she could never be eminent among these
scoffing enthusiasts did not keep her from being proud of
them, from defending them in imaginary conversations with
Kennicott, who grunted (she could hear his voice), "They're
simply a bunch of wild impractical theorists sittin' round
chewing the rag," and "I haven't got the time to chase after
a lot of these fool fads; I'm too busy putting aside a stake for
our old age."
Most of the men who came to the flat, whether they were
army officers or radicals who hated the army, had the easy
gentleness, the acceptance of women without embarrassed
banter, for which she had longed in Gopher Prairie. Yet they
seemed to be as efficient as the Sam Clarks. She concluded
that it was because they were of secure reputation, not hemmed
in by the fire of provincial jealousies. Kennicott had asserted
that the villager's lack of courtesy is due to his poverty.
"We're no millionaire dudes," he boasted. Yet these army
and navy men, these bureau experts, and organizers of
multitudinous leagues, were cheerful on three or four thousand a
year, while Kennicott had, outside of his land speculations,
six thousand or more, and Sam had eight.
Nor could she upon inquiry learn that many of this reckless
race died in the poorhouse. That institution is reserved for
men like Kennicott who, after devoting fifty years to "putting
aside a stake," incontinently invest the stake in spurious oilstocks.
IV
She was encouraged to believe that she had not been
abnormal in viewing Gopher Prairie as unduly tedious and
slatternly. She found the same faith not only in girls escaped
from domesticity but also in demure old ladies who, tragically
deprived of esteemed husbands and huge old houses, yet
managed to make a very comfortable thing of it by living in
small flats and having time to read.
But she also learned that by comparison Gopher Prairie
was a model of daring color, clever planning, and frenzied
intellectuality. From her teacher-housemate she had a sardonic
description of a Middlewestern railroad-division town, of the
same size as Gopher Prairie but devoid of lawns and trees, a
town where the tracks sprawled along the cinder-scabbed
Main Street, and the railroad shops, dripping soot from eaves
and doorway, rolled out smoke in greasy coils.
Other towns she came to know by anecdote: a prairie village
where the wind blew all day long, and the mud was two feet
thick in spring, and in summer the flying sand scarred newpainted
houses and dust covered the few flowers set out in
pots. New England mill-towns with the hands living in rows
of cottages like blocks of lava. A rich farming-center in New
Jersey, off the railroad, furiously pious, ruled by old men,
unbelievably ignorant old men, sitting about the grocery talking
of James G. Blaine. A Southern town, full of the magnolias
and white columns which Carol had accepted as proof of
romance, but hating the negroes, obsequious to the Old
Families. A Western mining-settlement like a tumor. A booming
semi-city with parks and clever architects, visited by
famous pianists and unctuous lecturers, but irritable from a
struggle between union labor and the manufacturers' association,
so that in even the gayest of the new houses there was a
ceaseless and intimidating heresy-hunt.
V
The chart which plots Carol's progress is not easy to read.
The lines are broken and uncertain of direction; often instead
of rising they sink in wavering scrawls; and the colors are
watery blue and pink and the dim gray of rubbed pencil
marks. A few lines are traceable.
Unhappy women are given to protecting their sensitiveness
by cynical gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought
religions, or by a fog of vagueness. Carol had hidden in none
of these refuges from reality, but she, who was tender and
merry, had been made timorous by Gopher Prairie. Even her
flight had been but the temporary courage of panic. The
thing she gained in Washington was not information about
office-systems and labor unions but renewed courage, that
amiable contempt called poise. Her glimpse of tasks involving
millions of people and a score of nations reduced Main Street
from bloated importance to its actual pettiness. She could
never again be quite so awed by the power with which she
herself had endowed the Vidas and Blaussers and Bogarts.
From her work and from her association with women who
had organized suffrage associations in hostile cities, or had
defended political prisoners, she caught something of an
impersonal attitude; saw that she had been as touchily personal
as Maud Dyer.
And why, she began to ask, did she rage at individuals? Not
individuals but institutions are the enemies, and they most
afflict the disciples who the most generously serve them. They
insinuate their tyranny under a hundred guises and pompous
names, such as Polite Society, the Family, the Church, Sound
Business, the Party, the Country, the Superior White Race;
and the only defense against them, Carol beheld, is
unembittered laughter.
CHAPTER XXXVIII
SHE had lived in Washington for a year. She was tired of the
office. It was tolerable, far more tolerable than housework, but
it was not adventurous.
She was having tea and cinnamon toast, alone at a small
round table on the balcony of Rauscher's Confiserie. Four
debutantes clattered in. She had felt young and dissipated,
had thought rather well of her black and leaf-green suit, but
as she watched them, thin of ankle, soft under the chin,
seventeen or eighteen at most, smoking cigarettes with the correct
ennui and talking of "bedroom farces" and their desire to
"run up to New York and see something racy," she became
old and rustic and plain, and desirous of retreating from these
hard brilliant children to a life easier and more sympathetic.
When they flickered out and one child gave orders to a chauffeur,
Carol was not a defiant philosopher but a faded government
clerk from Gopher Prairie, Minnesota
She started dejectedly up Connecticut Avenue. She stopped,
her heart stopped. Coming toward her were Harry and Juanita
Haydock. She ran to them, she kissed Juanita, while Harry
confided, "Hadn't expected to come to Washington--had to
go to New York for some buying--didn't have your address
along--just got in this morning--wondered how in the world
we could get hold of you."
She was definitely sorry to hear that they were to leave at
nine that evening, and she clung to them as long as she could.
She took them to St. Mark's for dinner. Stooped, her elbows
on the table, she heard with excitement that "Cy Bogart had
the 'flu, but of course he was too gol-darn mean to die of it."
"Will wrote me that Mr. Blausser has gone away. How did
he get on?"
"Fine! Fine! Great loss to the town. There was a real
public-spirited fellow, all right!"
She discovered that she now had no opinions whatever about
Mr. Blausser, and she said sympathetically, "Will you keep
up the town-boosting campaign?"
Harry fumbled, "Well, we've dropped it just temporarily,
but--sure you bet! Say, did the doc write you about the
luck B. J. Gougerling had hunting ducks down in Texas?"
When the news had been told and their enthusiasm had
slackened she looked about and was proud to be able to point
out a senator, to explain the cleverness of the canopied garden.
She fancied that a man with dinner-coat and waxed mustache
glanced superciliously at Harry's highly form-fitting brightbrown
suit and Juanita's tan silk frock, which was doubtful at
the seams. She glared back, defending her own, daring the
world not to appreciate them.
Then, waving to them, she lost them down the long train
shed. She stood reading the list of stations: Harrisburg,
Pittsburg, Chicago. Beyond Chicago----? She saw the lakes
and stubble fields, heard the rhythm of insects and the creak
of a buggy, was greeted by Sam Clark's "Well, well, how's
the little lady?"
Nobody in Washington cared enough for her to fret about
her sins as Sam did.
But that night they had at the flat a man just back from
Finland.
II
She was on the Powhatan roof with the captain. At a table,
somewhat vociferously buying improbable "soft drinks" for
two fluffy girls, was a man with a large familiar back.
"Oh! I think I know him," she murmured.
"Who? There? Oh, Bresnahan, Percy Bresnahan."
"Yes. You've met him? What sort of a man is he?"
"He's a good-hearted idiot. I rather like him, and I believe
that as a salesman of motors he's a wonder. But he's a
nuisance in the aeronautic section. Tries so hard to be useful
but he doesn't know anything--he doesn't know anything.
Rather pathetic: rich man poking around and trying to be
useful. Do you want to speak to him?"
"No--no--I don't think so."
III
She was at a motion-picture show. The film was a highly
advertised and abysmal thing smacking of simpering hairdressers,
cheap perfume, red-plush suites on the back streets
of tenderloins, and complacent fat women chewing gum. It
pretended to deal with the life of studios. The leading man did
a portrait which was a masterpiece. He also saw visions in
pipe-smoke, and was very brave and poor and pure. He had
ringlets, and his masterpiece was strangely like an enlarged
photograph.
Carol prepared to leave.
On the screen, in the role of a composer, appeared an actor
called Eric Valour.
She was startled, incredulous, then wretched. Looking
straight out at her, wearing a beret and a velvet jacket, was
Erik Valborg.
He had a pale part, which he played neither well nor badly.
She speculated, "I could have made so much of him----"
She did not finish her speculation.
She went home and read Kennicott's letters. They had
seemed stiff and undetailed, but now there strode from them
a personality, a personality unlike that of the languishing
young man in the velvet jacket playing a dummy piano in a
canvas room.
IV
Kennicott first came to see her in November, thirteen months
after her arrival in Washington. When he announced that
he was coming she was not at all sure that she wished to
see him. She was glad that he had made the decision himself.
She had leave from the office for two days.
She watched him marching from the train, solid, assured,
carrying his heavy suit-case, and she was diffident--he was
such a bulky person to handle. They kissed each other
questioningly, and said at the same time, "You're looking fine;
how's the baby?" and "You're looking awfully well, dear;
how is everything?"
He grumbled, "I don't want to butt in on any plans you've
made or your friends or anything, but if you've got time for
it, I'd like to chase around Washington, and take in some
restaurants and shows and stuff, and forget work for a while."
She realized, in the taxicab, that he was wearing a soft
gray suit, a soft easy hat, a flippant tie.
"Like the new outfit? Got 'em in Chicago. Gosh, I hope
they're the kind you like."
They spent half an hour at the flat, with Hugh. She was
flustered, but he gave no sign of kissing her again.
As he moved about the small rooms she realized that he
had had his new tan shoes polished to a brassy luster. There
was a recent cut on his chin. He must have shaved on the
train just before coming into Washington.
It was pleasant to feel how important she was, how many
people she recognized, as she took him to the Capitol, as she
told him (he asked and she obligingly guessed) how many
feet it was to the top of the dome, as she pointed out Senator
LaFollette and the vice-president, and at lunch-time showed
herself an habitue by leading him through the catacombs to
the senate restaurant.
She realized that he was slightly more bald. The familiar
way in which his hair was parted on the left side agitated
her. She looked down at his hands, and the fact that his nails
were as ill-treated as ever touched her more than his pleading
shoe-shine.
"You'd like to motor down to Mount Vernon this afternoon,
wouldn't you?" she said.
It was the one thing he had planned. He was delighted that
it seemed to be a perfectly well bred and Washingtonian thing
to do.
He shyly held her hand on the way, and told her the news:
they were excavating the basement for the new schoolbuilding,
Vida "made him tired the way she always looked at the Maje,"
poor Chet Dashaway had been killed in a motor accident out
on the Coast. He did not coax her to like him. At Mount
Vernon he admired the paneled library and Washington's
dental tools.
She knew that he would want oysters, that he would have
heard of Harvey's apropos of Grant and Blaine, and she took
him there. At dinner his hearty voice, his holiday enjoyment
of everything, turned into nervousness in his desire to know
a number of interesting matters, such as whether they still were
married. But be did not ask questions, and be said nothing
about her returning. He cleared his throat and observed, "Oh
say, been trying out the old camera. Don't you think these
are pretty good?"
He tossed over to her thirty prints of Gopher Prairie and
the country about. Without defense, she was thrown into it.
She remembered that he had lured her with photographs in
courtship days; she made a note of his sameness, his satisfaction
with the tactics which had proved good before; but she
forgot it in the familiar places. She was seeing the sunspeckled
ferns among birches on the shore of Minniemashie,
wind-rippled miles of wheat, the porch of their own house where
Hugh had played, Main Street where she knew every window
and every face.
She handed them back, with praise for his photography, and
he talked of lenses and time-exposures.
Dinner was over and they were gossiping of her friends at
the flat, but an intruder was with them, sitting back, persistent,
inescapable. She could not endure it. She stammered:
"I had you check your bag at the station because I wasn't
quite sure where you'd stay. I'm dreadfully sorry we haven't
room to put you up at the flat. We ought to have seen about
a room for you before. Don't you think you better call up
the Willard or the Washington now?"
He peered at her cloudily. Without words he asked,
without speech she answered, whether she was also going to the
Willard or the Washington. But she tried to look as though
she did not know that they were debating anything of the
sort. She would have hated him had he been meek about it.
But he was neither meek nor angry. However impatient he
may have been with her blandness he said readily:
"Yes, guess I better do that. Excuse me a second. Then
how about grabbing a taxi (Gosh, isn't it the limit the way
these taxi shuffers skin around a corner? Got more nerve
driving than I have!) and going up to your flat for a while?
Like to meet your friends--must be fine women--and I might
take a look and see how Hugh sleeps. Like to know how he
breathes. Don't think he has adenoids, but I better make sure,
eh?" He patted her shoulder.
At the flat they found her two housemates and a girl who
had been to jail for suffrage. Kennicott fitted in surprisingly.
He laughed at the girl's story of the humors of a hungerstrike;
he told the secretary what to do when her eyes were
tired from typing; and the teacher asked him--not as the husband
of a friend but as a physician--whether there was "anything
to this inoculation for colds."
His colloquialisms seemed to Carol no more lax than their
habitual slang.
Like an older brother he kissed her good-night in the midst
of the company.
"He's terribly nice," said her housemates, and waited for
confidences. They got none, nor did her own heart. She could
find nothing definite to agonize about. She felt that she was
no longer analyzing and controlling forces, but swept on by
them.
He came to the flat for breakfast, and washed the dishes.
That was her only occasion for spite. Back home he never
thought of washing dishes!
She took him to the obvious "sights"--the Treasury, the
Monument, the Corcoran Gallery, the Pan-American Building,
the Lincoln Memorial, with the Potomac beyond it and the
Arlington hills and the columns of the Lee Mansion. For all
his willingness to play there was over him a melancholy which
piqued her. His normally expressionless eyes had depths to
them now, and strangeness. As they walked through Lafayette
Square, looking past the Jackson statue at the lovely tranquil
facade of the White House, he sighed, "I wish I'd had a shot
at places like this. When I was in the U., I had to earn part
of my way, and when I wasn't doing that or studying, I guess
I was roughhousing. My gang were a great bunch for
bumming around and raising Cain. Maybe if I'd been caught
early and sent to concerts and all that---- Would I have
been what you call intelligent?"
"Oh, my dear, don't be humble! You are intelligent! For
instance, you're the most thorough doctor----"
He was edging about something he wished to say. He
pounced on it:
"You did like those pictures of G. P. pretty well, after all,
didn't you!"
"Yes, of course."
"Wouldn't be so bad to have a glimpse of the old town,
would it!"
"No, it wouldn't. Just as I was terribly glad to see the
Haydocks. But please understand me! That doesn't mean
that I withdraw all my criticisms. The fact that I might like
a glimpse of old friends hasn't any particular relation to the
question of whether Gopher Prairie oughtn't to have festivals
and lamb chops."
Hastily, "No, no! Sure not. I und'stand."
"But I know it must have been pretty tiresome to have to
live with anybody as perfect as I was."
He grinned. She liked his grin.
V
He was thrilled by old negro coachmen, admirals, aeroplanes,
the building to which his income tax would eventually go, a
Rolls-Royce, Lynnhaven oysters, the Supreme Court Room,
a New York theatrical manager down for the try-out of a play,
the house where Lincoln died, the cloaks of Italian officers, the
barrows at which clerks buy their box-lunches at noon, the
barges on the Chesapeake Canal, and the fact that District
of Columbia cars had both District and Maryland licenses.
She resolutely took him to her favorite white and green
cottages and Georgian houses. He admitted that fanlights, and
white shutters against rosy brick, were more homelike than a
painty wooden box. He volunteered, "I see how you mean.
They make me think of these pictures of an old-fashioned
Christmas. Oh, if you keep at it long enough you'll have Sam
and me reading poetry and everything. Oh say, d' I tell you
about this fierce green Jack Elder's had his machine painted?"
VI
They were at dinner.
He hinted, "Before you showed me those places today,
I'd already made up my mind that when I built the new house
we used to talk about, I'd fix it the way you wanted it. I'm
pretty practical about foundations and radiation and stuff like
that, but I guess I don't know a whole lot about architecture."
"My dear, it occurs to me with a sudden shock that I don't
either!"
"Well--anyway--you let me plan the garage and the plumbing,
and you do the rest, if you ever--I mean--if you ever
want to."
Doubtfully, "That's sweet of you."
"Look here, Carrie; you think I'm going to ask you to love
me. I'm not. And I'm not going to ask you to come back to
Gopher Prairie!"
She gaped.
"It's been a whale of a fight. But I guess I've got myself
to see that you won't ever stand G. P. unless you WANT to
come back to it. I needn't say I'm crazy to have you. But
I won't ask you. I just want you to know how I wait for you.
Every mail I look for a letter, and when I get one I'm kind of
scared to open it, I'm hoping so much that you're coming back.
Evenings---- You know I didn't open the cottage down at
the lake at all, this past summer. Simply couldn't stand all
the others laughing and swimming, and you not there. I used
to sit on the porch, in town, and I--I couldn't get over the
feeling that you'd simply run up to the drug store and would
be right back, and till after it got dark I'd catch myself
watching, looking up the street, and you never came, and the
house was so empty and still that I didn't like to go in.
And sometimes I fell asleep there, in my chair, and didn't
wake up till after midnight, and the house---- Oh, the devil!
Please get me, Carrie. I just want you to know how welcome
you'll be if you ever do come. But I'm not asking you to."
"You're---- It's awfully----"
"'Nother thing. I'm going to be frank. I haven't always
been absolutely, uh, absolutely, proper. I've always loved you
more than anything else in the world, you and the kid. But
sometimes when you were chilly to me I'd get lonely and
sore, and pike out and---- Never intended----"
She rescued him with a pitying, "It's all right. Let's forget
it."
"But before we were married you said if your husband
ever did anything wrong, you'd want him to tell you."
"Did I? I can't remember. And I can't seem to think. Oh,
my dear, I do know how generously you're trying to make me
happy. The only thing is---- I can't think. I don't know
what I think."
"Then listen! Don't think! Here's what I want you to
do! Get a two-weeks leave from your office. Weather's
beginning to get chilly here. Let's run down to Charleston
and Savannah and maybe Florida.
"A second honeymoon?" indecisively.
"No. Don't even call it that. Call it a second wooing.
I won't ask anything. I just want the chance to chase around
with you. I guess I never appreciated how lucky I was to
have a girl with imagination and lively feet to play with.
So---- Could you maybe run away and see the South with
me? If you wanted to, you could just--you could just pretend
you were my sister and---- I'll get an extra nurse for Hugh!
I'll get the best dog-gone nurse in Washington!"
VII
It was in the Villa Margherita, by the palms of the
Charleston Battery and the metallic harbor, that her aloofness
melted.
When they sat on the upper balcony, enchanted by the
moon glitter, she cried, "Shall I go back to Gopher Prairie
with you? Decide for me. I'm tired of deciding and undeciding."
"No. You've got to do your own deciding. As a matter of
fact, in spite of this honeymoon, I don't think I want you to
come home. Not yet."
She could only stare.
"I want you to be satisfied when you get there. I'll do
everything I can to keep you happy, but I'll make lots of
breaks, so I want you to take time and think it over."
She was relieved. She still had a chance to seize splendid
indefinite freedoms. She might go--oh, she'd see Europe, somehow,
before she was recaptured. But she also had a firmer
respect for Kennicott. She had fancied that her life might
make a story. She knew that there was nothing heroic or
obviously dramatic in it, no magic of rare hours, nor valiant
challenge, but it seemed to her that she was of some
significance because she was commonplaceness, the ordinary life
of the age, made articulate and protesting. It had not occurred
to her that there was also a story of Will Kennicott, into which
she entered only so much as he entered into hers; that he
had bewilderments and concealments as intricate as her own,
and soft treacherous desires for sympathy.
Thus she brooded, looking at the amazing sea, holding his
hand.
VIII
She was in Washington; Kennicott was in Gopher Prairie,
writing as dryly as ever about water-pipes and goose-hunting
and Mrs. Fageros's mastoid.
She was talking at dinner to a generalissima of suffrage.
Should she return?
The leader spoke wearily:
"My dear, I'm perfectly selfish. I can't quite visualize the
needs of your husband, and it seems to me that your baby
will do quite as well in the schools here as in your barracks at
home."
"Then you think I'd better not go back?" Carol sounded
disappointed.
"It's more difficult than that. When I say that I'm selfish
I mean that the only thing I consider about women is whether
they're likely to prove useful in building up real political power
for women. And you? Shall I be frank? Remember when
I say `you' I don't mean you alone. I'm thinking of thousands
of women who come to Washington and New York and Chicago
every year, dissatisfied at home and seeking a sign in the
heavens--women of all sorts, from timid mothers of fifty in
cotton gloves, to girls just out of Vassar who organize strikes
in their own fathers' factories! All of you are more or less
useful to me, but only a few of you can take my place, because
I have one virtue (only one): I have given up father and
mother and children for the love of God.
"Here's the test for you: Do you come to `conquer the
East,' as people say, or do you come to conquer yourself?
"It's so much more complicated than any of you know--so
much more complicated than I knew when I put on Ground
Grippers and started out to reform the world. The final
complication in `conquering Washington' or `conquering New
York' is that the conquerors must beyond all things not
conquer! It must have been so easy in the good old days when
authors dreamed only of selling a hundred thousand volumes,
and sculptors of being feted in big houses, and even the
Uplifters like me had a simple-hearted ambition to be elected to
important offices and invited to go round lecturing. But we
meddlers have upset everything. Now the one thing that is
disgraceful to any of us is obvious success. The Uplifter who
is very popular with wealthy patrons can be pretty sure that
he has softened his philosophy to please them, and the author
who is making lots of money--poor things, I've heard 'em
apologizing for it to the shabby bitter-enders; I've seen 'em
ashamed of the sleek luggage they got from movie rights.
"Do you want to sacrifice yourself in such a topsy-turvy
world, where popularity makes you unpopular with the people
you love, and the only failure is cheap success, and the only
individualist is the person who gives up all his individualism
to serve a jolly ungrateful proletariat which thumbs its nose at
him?"
Carol smiled ingratiatingly, to indicate that she was indeed
one who desired to sacrifice, but she sighed, "I don't know;
I'm afraid I'm not heroic. I certainly wasn't out home. Why
didn't I do big effective----"
"Not a matter of heroism. Matter of endurance. Your
Middlewest is double-Puritan--prairie Puritan on top of New
England Puritan; bluff frontiersman on the surface, but in its
heart it still has the ideal of Plymouth Rock in a sleet-storm.
There's one attack you can make on it, perhaps the only kind
that accomplishes much anywhere: you can keep on looking
at one thing after another in your home and church and bank,
and ask why it is, and who first laid down the law that it had
to be that way. If enough of us do this impolitely enough,
then we'll become civilized in merely twenty thousand years
or so, instead of having to wait the two hundred thousand
years that my cynical anthropologist friends allow. . . .
Easy, pleasant, lucrative home-work for wives: asking people
to define their jobs. That's the most dangerous doctrine I
know!"
Carol was mediating, "I will go back! I will go on asking
questions. I've always done it, and always failed at it, and it's
all I can do. I'm going to ask Ezra Stowbody why he's
opposed to the nationalization of railroads, and ask Dave Dyer
why a druggist always is pleased when he's called `doctor,'
and maybe ask Mrs. Bogart why she wears a widow's veil that
looks like a dead crow."
The woman leader straightened. "And you have one thing.
You have a baby to hug. That's my temptation. I dream of
babies--of a baby--and I sneak around parks to see them
playing. (The children in Dupont Circle are like a poppygarden.)
And the antis call me `unsexed'!"
Carol was thinking, in panic, "Oughtn't Hugh to have
country air? I won't let him become a yokel. I can guide
him away from street-corner loafing. . . . I think I can."
On her way home: "Now that I've made a precedent, joined
the union and gone out on one strike and learned personal
solidarity, I won't be so afraid. Will won't always be resisting
my running away. Some day I really will go to Europe with
him. . .or without him.
"I've lived with people who are not afraid to go to jail.
I could invite a Miles Bjornstam to dinner without being
afraid of the Haydocks. . .I think I could.
"I'll take back the sound of Yvette Guilbert's songs and
Elman's violin. They'll be only the lovelier against the thrumming
of crickets in the stubble on an autumn day.
"I can laugh now and be serene. . .I think I can."
Though she should return, she said, she would not be utterly
defeated. She was glad of her rebellion. The prairie was no
longer empty land in the sun-glare; it was the living tawny
beast which she had fought and made beautiful by fighting;
and in the village streets were shadows of her desires and the
sound of her marching and the seeds of mystery and greatness.
IX
Her active hatred of Gopher Prairie had run out. She saw
it now as a toiling new settlement. With sympathy she
remembered Kennicott's defense of its citizens as "a lot of
pretty good folks, working hard and trying to bring up their
families the best they can." She recalled tenderly the young
awkwardness of Main Street and the makeshifts of the little
brown cottages; she pitied their shabbiness and isolation; had
compassion for their assertion of culture, even as expressed in
Thanatopsis papers, for their pretense of greatness, even as
trumpeted in "boosting." She saw Main Street in the dusty
prairie sunset, a line of frontier shanties with solemn lonely
people waiting for her, solemn and lonely as an old man who
has outlived his friends. She remembered that Kennicott and
Sam Clark had listened to her songs, and she wanted to run
to them and sing.
"At last," she rejoiced, "I've come to a fairer attitude
toward the town. I can love it, now."
She was, perhaps, rather proud of herself for having acquired
so much tolerance.
She awoke at three in the morning, after a dream of being
tortured by Ella Stowbody and the Widow Bogart.
"I've been making the town a myth. This is how people
keep up the tradition of the perfect home-town, the happy
boyhood, the brilliant college friends. We forget so. I've
been forgetting that Main Street doesn't think it's in the least
lonely and pitiful. It thinks it's God's Own Country. It isn't
waiting for me. It doesn't care."
But the next evening she again saw Gopher Prairie as her
home, waiting for her in the sunset, rimmed round with
splendor.
She did not return for five months more; five months
crammed with greedy accumulation of sounds and colors to
take back for the long still days.
She had spent nearly two years in Washington.
When she departed for Gopher Prairie, in June, her second
baby was stirring within her.
CHAPTER XXXIX
SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations would be.
She wondered about it so much that she had every sensation
she had imagined. She was excited by each familiar porch,
each hearty "Well, well!" and flattered to be, for a day, the
most important news of the community. She bustled about,
making calls. Juanita Haydock bubbled over their Washington
encounter, and took Carol to her social bosom. This ancient
opponent seemed likely to be her most intimate friend, for
Vida Sherwin, though she was cordial, stood back and watched
for imported heresies.
In the evening Carol went to the mill. The mystical Om-
Om-Om of the dynamos in the electric-light plant behind the
mill was louder in the darkness. Outside sat the night watchman,
Champ Perry. He held up his stringy hands and
squeaked, "We've all missed you terrible."
Who in Washington would miss her?
Who in Washington could be depended upon like Guy
Pollock? When she saw him on the street, smiling as always,
he seemed an eternal thing, a part of her own self.
After a week she decided that she was neither glad nor
sorry to be back. She entered each day with the matter-of-fact
attitude with which she had gone to her office in Washington.
It was her task; there would be mechanical details and
meaningless talk; what of it?
The only problem which she had approached with emotion
proved insignificant. She had, on the train, worked herself
up to such devotion that she was willing to give up her own
room, to try to share all of her life with Kennicott.
He mumbled, ten minutes after she had entered the house,
"Say, I've kept your room for you like it was. I've kind of
come round to your way of thinking. Don't see why folks
need to get on each other's nerves just because they're friendly.
Darned if I haven't got so I like a little privacy and mulling
things over by myself."
II
She had left a city which sat up nights to talk of universal
transition; of European revolution, guild socialism, free verse.
She had fancied that all the world was changing.
She found that it was not.
In Gopher Prairie the only ardent new topics were prohibition,
the place in Minneapolis where you could get whisky at
thirteen dollars a quart, recipes for home-made beer, the "high
cost of living," the presidential election, Clark's new car, and
not very novel foibles of Cy Bogart. Their problems were
exactly what they had been two years ago, what they had been
twenty years ago, and what they would be for twenty years
to come. With the world a possible volcano, the husbandmen
were plowing at the base of the mountain. A volcano does
occasionally drop a river of lava on even the best of agriculturists,
to their astonishment and considerable injury, but their
cousins inherit the farms and a year or two later go back to
the plowing.
She was unable to rhapsodize much over the seven new
bungalows and the two garages which Kennicott had made to
seem so important. Her intensest thought about them was,
"Oh yes, they're all right I suppose." The change which she
did heed was the erection of the schoolbuilding, with its cheerful
brick walls, broad windows, gymnasium, classrooms for
agriculture and cooking. It indicated Vida's triumph, and it
stirred her to activity--any activity. She went to Vida with a
jaunty, "I think I shall work for you. And I'll begin at the
bottom."
She did. She relieved the attendant at the rest-room for
an hour a day. Her only innovation was painting the pine
table a black and orange rather shocking to the Thanatopsis.
She talked to the farmwives and soothed their babies and was
happy.
Thinking of them she did not think of the ugliness of Main
Street as she hurried along it to the chatter of the Jolly
Seventeen.
She wore her eye-glasses on the street now. She was
beginning to ask Kennicott and Juanita if she didn't look young,
much younger than thirty-three. The eye-glasses pinched her
nose. She considered spectacles. They would make her seem
older, and hopelessly settled. No! She would not wear spectacles
yet. But she tried on a pair at Kennicott's office. They
really were much more comfortable.
III
Dr. Westlake, Sam Clark, Nat Hicks, and Del Snafflin were
talking in Del's barber shop.
"Well, I see Kennicott's wife is taking a whirl at the restroom,
now," said Dr. Westlake. He emphasized the "now."
Del interrupted the shaving of Sam and, with his brush
dripping lather, he observed jocularly:
"What'll she be up to next? They say she used to claim
this burg wasn't swell enough for a city girl like her, and
would we please tax ourselves about thirty-seven point nine and
fix it all up pretty, with tidies on the hydrants and statoos on
the lawns----"
Sam irritably blew the lather from his lips, with milky
small bubbles, and snorted, "Be a good thing for most of us
roughnecks if we did have a smart woman to tell us how to
fix up the town. Just as much to her kicking as there was
to Jim Blausser's gassing about factories. And you can bet
Mrs. Kennicott is smart, even if she is skittish. Glad to see
her back."
Dr. Westlake hastened to play safe. "So was I! So was I!
She's got a nice way about her, and she knows a good deal
about books, or fiction anyway. Of course she's like all the
rest of these women--not solidly founded--not scholarly--
doesn't know anything about political economy--falls for every
new idea that some windjamming crank puts out. But she's
a nice woman. She'll probably fix up the rest-room, and the
rest-room is a fine thing, brings a lot of business to town. And
now that Mrs. Kennicott's been away, maybe she's got over
some of her fool ideas. Maybe she realizes that folks simply
laugh at her when she tries to tell us how to run everything."
"Sure. She'll take a tumble to herself," said Nat Hicks,
sucking in his lips judicially. "As far as I'm concerned, I'll
say she's as nice a looking skirt as there is in town. But yow!"
His tone electrified them. "Guess she'll miss that Swede
Valborg that used to work for me! They was a pair! Talking
poetry and moonshine! If they could of got away with it,
they'd of been so darn lovey-dovey----"
Sam Clark interrupted, "Rats, they never even thought
about making love, Just talking books and all that junk.
I tell you, Carrie Kennicott's a smart woman, and these smart
educated women all get funny ideas, but they get over 'em
after they've had three or four kids. You'll see her settled
down one of these days, and teaching Sunday School and
helping at sociables and behaving herself, and not trying to
butt into business and politics. Sure!"
After only fifteen minutes of conference on her stockings,
her son, her separate bedroom, her music, her ancient interest
in Guy Pollock, her probable salary in Washington, and every
remark which she was known to have made since her return,
the supreme council decided that they would permit Carol
Kennicott to live, and they passed on to a consideration of
Nat Hicks's New One about the traveling salesman and the
old maid.
IV
For some reason which was totally mysterious to Carol,
Maud Dyer seemed to resent her return. At the Jolly Seventeen
Maud giggled nervously, "Well, I suppose you found
war-work a good excuse to stay away and have a swell time.
Juanita! Don't you think we ought to make Carrie tell us
about the officers she met in Washington?"
They rustled and stared. Carol looked at them. Their
curiosity seemed natural and unimportant.
"Oh yes, yes indeed, have to do that some day," she yawned.
She no longer took Aunt Bessie Smail seriously enough to
struggle for independence. She saw that Aunt Bessie did not
mean to intrude; that she wanted to do things for all the
Kennicotts. Thus Carol hit upon the tragedy of old age, which
is not that it is less vigorous than youth, but that it is not
needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness, so
important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected
with laughter. She divined that when Aunt Bessie came in
with a jar of wild-grape jelly she was waiting in hope of being
asked for the recipe. After that she could be irritated but she
could not be depressed by Aunt Bessie's simoom of questioning.
She wasn't depressed even when she heard Mrs. Bogart
observe, "Now we've got prohibition it seems to me that the
next problem of the country ain't so much abolishing
cigarettes as it is to make folks observe the Sabbath and arrest
these law-breakers that play baseball and go to the movies
and all on the Lord's Day."
Only one thing bruised Carol's vanity. Few people asked her
about Washington. They who had most admiringly begged
Percy Bresnahan for his opinions were least interested in her
facts. She laughed at herself when she saw that she had
expected to be at once a heretic and a returned hero; she was
very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as much
as ever.
Her baby, born in August, was a girl. Carol could not
decide whether she was to become a feminist leader or marry
a scientist or both, but did settle on Vassar and a tricolette
suit with a small black hat for her Freshman year.
VI
Hugh was loquacious at breakfast. He desired to give his
impressions of owls and F Street.
"Don't make so much noise. You talk too much," growled
Kennicott.
Carol flared. "Don't speak to him that way! Why don't
you listen to him? He has some very interesting things to
tell."
"What's the idea? Mean to say you expect me to spend
all my time listening to his chatter?"
"Why not?"
"For one thing, he's got to learn a little discipline. Time
for him to start getting educated."
"I've learned much more discipline, I've had much more
education, from him than he has from me."
"What's this? Some new-fangled idea of raising kids you
got in Washington?"
"Perhaps. Did you ever realize that children are people?"
"That's all right. I'm not going to have him monopolizing
the conversation."
"No, of course. We have our rights, too. But I'm going
to bring him up as a human being. He has just as many
thoughts as we have, and I want him to develop them, not
take Gopher Prairie's version of them. That's my biggest
work now--keeping myself, keeping you, from `educating'
him."
"Well, let's not scrap about it. But I'm not going to have
him spoiled."
Kennicott had forgotten it in ten minutes; and she forgot
it--this time.
VII
The Kennicotts and the Sam Clarks had driven north to a
duck-pass between two lakes, on an autumn day of blue and
copper.
Kennicott had given her a light twenty-gauge shotgun. She
had a first lesson in shooting, in keeping her eyes open, not
wincing, understanding that the bead at the end of the barrel
really had something to do with pointing the gun. She was
radiant; she almost believed Sam when he insisted that it was
she who had shot the mallard at which they had fired together.
She sat on the bank of the reedy lake and found rest in
Mrs. Clark's drawling comments on nothing. The brown dusk
was still. Behind them were dark marshes. The plowed acres
smelled fresh. The lake was garnet and silver. The voices of
the men, waiting for the last flight, were clear in the cool air.
"Mark left!" sang Kennicott, in a long-drawn call.
Three ducks were swooping down in a swift line. The guns
banged, and a duck fluttered. The men pushed their light
boat out on the burnished lake, disappeared beyond the reeds.
Their cheerful voices and the slow splash and clank of oars
came back to Carol from the dimness. In the sky a fiery plain
sloped down to a serene harbor. It dissolved; the lake was
white marble; and Kennicott was crying, "Well, old lady, how
about hiking out for home? Supper taste pretty good, eh?"
"I'll sit back with Ethel," she said, at the car.
It was the first time she had called Mrs. Clark by her given
name; the first time she had willingly sat back, a woman of
Main Street.
"I'm hungry. It's good to be hungry," she reflected, as
they drove away.
She looked across the silent fields to the west. She was
conscious of an unbroken sweep of land to the Rockies, to
Alaska, a dominion which will rise to unexampled greatness
when other empires have grown senile. Before that time, she
knew, a hundred generations of Carols will aspire and go down
in tragedy devoid of palls and solemn chanting, the humdrum
inevitable tragedy of struggle against inertia.
"Let's all go to the movies tomorrow night. Awfully
exciting film," said Ethel Clark.
"Well, I was going to read a new book but---- All right,
let's go," said Carol.
VIII
"They're too much for me," Carol sighed to Kennicott.
"I've been thinking about getting up an annual Community
Day, when the whole town would forget feuds and go out and
have sports and a picnic and a dance. But Bert Tybee
(why did you ever elect him mayor?)--he's kidnapped my idea.
He wants the Community Day, but he wants to have some
politician `give an address.' That's just the stilted sort of
thing I've tried to avoid. He asked Vida, and of course she
agreed with him."
Kennicott considered the matter while he wound the clock
and they tramped up-stairs.
"Yes, it would jar you to have Bert butting in," he said amiably.
"Are you going to do much fussing over this Community stunt?
Don't you ever get tired of fretting and stewing and experimenting?"
"I haven't even started. Look!" She led him to the
nursery door, pointed at the fuzzy brown head of her daughter.
"Do you see that object on the pillow? Do you know what
it is? It's a bomb to blow up smugness. If you Tories were
wise, you wouldn't arrest anarchists; you'd arrest all these
children while they're asleep in their cribs. Think what that
baby will see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000!
She may see an industrial union of the whole world, she may
see aeroplanes going to Mars."
"Yump, probably be changes all right," yawned Kennicott.
She sat on the edge of his bed while he hunted through his bureau
for a collar which ought to be there and persistently wasn't.
"I'll go on, always. And I am happy. But this Community
Day makes me see how thoroughly I'm beaten."
"That darn collar certainly is gone for keeps," muttered
Kennicott and, louder, "Yes, I guess you I didn't quite
catch what you said, dear."
She patted his pillows, turned down his sheets, as she reflected:
"But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures
by sneering at my aspirations, by pretending to have gone
beyond them. I do not admit that Main Street is as beautiful
as it should be! I do not admit that Gopher Prairie is
greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit that
dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have
fought the good fight, but I have kept the faith."
"Sure. You bet you have," said Kennicott. "Well, good night.
Sort of feels to me like it might snow tomorrow. Have to
be thinking about putting up the storm-windows pretty soon.
Say, did you notice whether the girl put that screwdriver back?"