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diff --git a/old/543.txt b/old/543.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..fa5fff4 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/543.txt @@ -0,0 +1,20024 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: Main Street + +Author: Sinclair Lewis + +Release Date: April 12, 2006 [EBook #543] +[Last corrected: October 13, 2011] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAIN STREET *** + + + + +Produced by Charles Keller + + + + + +MAIN STREET + +By Sinclair Lewis + + + +To James Branch Cabell and Joseph Hergesheimer + + + + +This is America--a town of a few thousand, in a region of wheat and corn +and dairies and little groves. + +The town is, in our tale, called "Gopher Prairie, Minnesota." But its +Main Street is the continuation of Main Streets everywhere. The story +would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois, +and not very differently would it be told Up York State or in the +Carolina hills. + +Main Street is the climax of civilization. That this Ford car might +stand in front of the Bon Ton Store, Hannibal invaded Rome and Erasmus +wrote in Oxford cloisters. What Ole Jenson the grocer says to Ezra +Stowbody the banker is the new law for London, Prague, and the +unprofitable isles of the sea; whatsoever Ezra does not know and +sanction, that thing is heresy, worthless for knowing and wicked to +consider. + +Our railway station is the final aspiration of architecture. Sam +Clark's annual hardware turnover is the envy of the four counties which +constitute God's Country. In the sensitive art of the Rosebud Movie +Palace there is a Message, and humor strictly moral. + +Such is our comfortable tradition and sure faith. Would he not betray +himself an alien cynic who should otherwise portray Main Street, or +distress the citizens by speculating whether there may not be other +faiths? + + + +CHAPTER I + +I + +ON a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago, +a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky. +She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows of +skyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squaws +and portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all about +her. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, the +reasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructor +had stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears. + +A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied her +taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving +beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened +to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted her +arms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, a +lock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinking +the air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy of +expectant youth. + +It is Carol Milford, fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College. + +The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed with +axes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebellious +girl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the American +Middlewest. + + + +II + + +Blodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis. It is a bulwark of sound +religion. It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin, +and Robert Ingersoll. Pious families in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the +Dakotas send their children thither, and Blodgett protects them from the +wickedness of the universities. But it secretes friendly girls, young +men who sing, and one lady instructress who really likes Milton and +Carlyle. So the four years which Carol spent at Blodgett were not +altogether wasted. The smallness of the school, the fewness of rivals, +permitted her to experiment with her perilous versatility. She played +tennis, gave chafing-dish parties, took a graduate seminar in the drama, +went "twosing," and joined half a dozen societies for the practise of +the arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture. + +In her class there were two or three prettier girls, but none more +eager. She was noticeable equally in the classroom grind and at dances, +though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett, scores recited +more accurately and dozens Bostoned more smoothly. Every cell of her +body was alive--thin wrists, quince-blossom skin, ingenue eyes, black +hair. + +The other girls in her dormitory marveled at the slightness of her +body when they saw her in sheer negligee, or darting out wet from a +shower-bath. She seemed then but half as large as they had supposed; +a fragile child who must be cloaked with understanding kindness. +"Psychic," the girls whispered, and "spiritual." Yet so radioactive +were her nerves, so adventurous her trust in rather vaguely conceived +sweetness and light, that she was more energetic than any of the hulking +young women who, with calves bulging in heavy-ribbed woolen stockings +beneath decorous blue serge bloomers, thuddingly galloped across the +floor of the "gym" in practise for the Blodgett Ladies' Basket-Ball +Team. + +Even when she was tired her dark eyes were observant. She did not yet +know the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudly +dull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyes +would never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous. + +For all her enthusiasms, for all the fondness and the "crushes" which +she inspired, Carol's acquaintances were shy of her. When she was most +ardently singing hymns or planning deviltry she yet seemed gently aloof +and critical. She was credulous, perhaps; a born hero-worshipper; yet +she did question and examine unceasingly. Whatever she might become she +would never be static. + +Her versatility ensnared her. By turns she hoped to discover that she +had an unusual voice, a talent for the piano, the ability to act, to +write, to manage organizations. Always she was disappointed, but always +she effervesced anew--over the Student Volunteers, who intended to +become missionaries, over painting scenery for the dramatic club, over +soliciting advertisements for the college magazine. + +She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel. +Out of the dusk her violin took up the organ theme, and the candle-light +revealed her in a straight golden frock, her arm arched to the bow, her +lips serious. Every man fell in love then with religion and Carol. + +Throughout Senior year she anxiously related all her experiments and +partial successes to a career. Daily, on the library steps or in the +hall of the Main Building, the co-eds talked of "What shall we do when +we finish college?" Even the girls who knew that they were going to be +married pretended to be considering important business positions; +even they who knew that they would have to work hinted about fabulous +suitors. As for Carol, she was an orphan; her only near relative was a +vanilla-flavored sister married to an optician in St. Paul. She had used +most of the money from her father's estate. She was not in love--that +is, not often, nor ever long at a time. She would earn her living. + +But how she was to earn it, how she was to conquer the world--almost +entirely for the world's own good--she did not see. Most of the girls +who were not betrothed meant to be teachers. Of these there were two +sorts: careless young women who admitted that they intended to leave the +"beastly classroom and grubby children" the minute they had a chance to +marry; and studious, sometimes bulbous-browed and pop-eyed maidens who +at class prayer-meetings requested God to "guide their feet along the +paths of greatest usefulness." Neither sort tempted Carol. The former +seemed insincere (a favorite word of hers at this era). The earnest +virgins were, she fancied, as likely to do harm as to do good by their +faith in the value of parsing Caesar. + +At various times during Senior year Carol finally decided upon studying +law, writing motion-picture scenarios, professional nursing, and +marrying an unidentified hero. + +Then she found a hobby in sociology. + +The sociology instructor was new. He was married, and therefore taboo, +but he had come from Boston, he had lived among poets and socialists and +Jews and millionaire uplifters at the University Settlement in New +York, and he had a beautiful white strong neck. He led a giggling class +through the prisons, the charity bureaus, the employment agencies of +Minneapolis and St. Paul. Trailing at the end of the line Carol was +indignant at the prodding curiosity of the others, their manner of +staring at the poor as at a Zoo. She felt herself a great liberator. +She put her hand to her mouth, her forefinger and thumb quite painfully +pinching her lower lip, and frowned, and enjoyed being aloof. + +A classmate named Stewart Snyder, a competent bulky young man in a gray +flannel shirt, a rusty black bow tie, and the green-and-purple class +cap, grumbled to her as they walked behind the others in the muck of the +South St. Paul stockyards, "These college chumps make me tired. They're +so top-lofty. They ought to of worked on the farm, the way I have. These +workmen put it all over them." + +"I just love common workmen," glowed Carol. + +"Only you don't want to forget that common workmen don't think they're +common!" + +"You're right! I apologize!" Carol's brows lifted in the astonishment of +emotion, in a glory of abasement. Her eyes mothered the world. Stewart +Snyder peered at her. He rammed his large red fists into his pockets, +he jerked them out, he resolutely got rid of them by clenching his hands +behind him, and he stammered: + +"I know. You _get_ people. Most of these darn co-eds----Say, Carol, you +could do a lot for people." + +"Oh--oh well--you know--sympathy and everything--if you were--say you +were a lawyer's wife. You'd understand his clients. I'm going to be a +lawyer. I admit I fall down in sympathy sometimes. I get so dog-gone +impatient with people that can't stand the gaff. You'd be good for +a fellow that was too serious. Make him more--more--YOU +know--sympathetic!" + +His slightly pouting lips, his mastiff eyes, were begging her to beg him +to go on. She fled from the steam-roller of his sentiment. She cried, +"Oh, see those poor sheep--millions and millions of them." She darted +on. + +Stewart was not interesting. He hadn't a shapely white neck, and he had +never lived among celebrated reformers. She wanted, just now, to have +a cell in a settlement-house, like a nun without the bother of a black +robe, and be kind, and read Bernard Shaw, and enormously improve a horde +of grateful poor. + +The supplementary reading in sociology led her to a book on +village-improvement--tree-planting, town pageants, girls' clubs. It +had pictures of greens and garden-walls in France, New England, +Pennsylvania. She had picked it up carelessly, with a slight yawn which +she patted down with her finger-tips as delicately as a cat. + +She dipped into the book, lounging on her window-seat, with her slim, +lisle-stockinged legs crossed, and her knees up under her chin. +She stroked a satin pillow while she read. About her was the clothy +exuberance of a Blodgett College room: cretonne-covered window-seat, +photographs of girls, a carbon print of the Coliseum, a chafing-dish, +and a dozen pillows embroidered or beaded or pyrographed. Shockingly out +of place was a miniature of the Dancing Bacchante. It was the only trace +of Carol in the room. She had inherited the rest from generations of +girl students. + +It was as a part of all this commonplaceness that she regarded the +treatise on village-improvement. But she suddenly stopped fidgeting. She +strode into the book. She had fled half-way through it before the three +o'clock bell called her to the class in English history. + +She sighed, "That's what I'll do after college! I'll get my hands on +one of these prairie towns and make it beautiful. Be an inspiration. I +suppose I'd better become a teacher then, but--I won't be that kind of +a teacher. I won't drone. Why should they have all the garden suburbs +on Long Island? Nobody has done anything with the ugly towns here in the +Northwest except hold revivals and build libraries to contain the Elsie +books. I'll make 'em put in a village green, and darling cottages, and a +quaint Main Street!" + +Thus she triumphed through the class, which was a typical Blodgett +contest between a dreary teacher and unwilling children of twenty, won +by the teacher because his opponents had to answer his questions, while +their treacherous queries he could counter by demanding, "Have you +looked that up in the library? Well then, suppose you do!" + +The history instructor was a retired minister. He was sarcastic today. +He begged of sporting young Mr. Charley Holmberg, "Now Charles, would it +interrupt your undoubtedly fascinating pursuit of that malevolent fly +if I were to ask you to tell us that you do not know anything about King +John?" He spent three delightful minutes in assuring himself of the fact +that no one exactly remembered the date of Magna Charta. + +Carol did not hear him. She was completing the roof of a half-timbered +town hall. She had found one man in the prairie village who did not +appreciate her picture of winding streets and arcades, but she had +assembled the town council and dramatically defeated him. + + + +III + + +Though she was Minnesota-born Carol was not an intimate of the prairie +villages. Her father, the smiling and shabby, the learned and teasingly +kind, had come from Massachusetts, and through all her childhood he +had been a judge in Mankato, which is not a prairie town, but in its +garden-sheltered streets and aisles of elms is white and green New +England reborn. Mankato lies between cliffs and the Minnesota River, +hard by Traverse des Sioux, where the first settlers made treaties +with the Indians, and the cattle-rustlers once came galloping before +hell-for-leather posses. + +As she climbed along the banks of the dark river Carol listened to its +fables about the wide land of yellow waters and bleached buffalo bones +to the West; the Southern levees and singing darkies and palm trees +toward which it was forever mysteriously gliding; and she heard again +the startled bells and thick puffing of high-stacked river steamers +wrecked on sand-reefs sixty years ago. Along the decks she saw +missionaries, gamblers in tall pot hats, and Dakota chiefs with scarlet +blankets. . . . Far off whistles at night, round the river bend, +plunking paddles reechoed by the pines, and a glow on black sliding +waters. + +Carol's family were self-sufficient in their inventive life, with +Christmas a rite full of surprises and tenderness, and "dressing-up +parties" spontaneous and joyously absurd. The beasts in the Milford +hearth-mythology were not the obscene Night Animals who jump out +of closets and eat little girls, but beneficent and bright-eyed +creatures--the tam htab, who is woolly and blue and lives in the +bathroom, and runs rapidly to warm small feet; the ferruginous oil +stove, who purrs and knows stories; and the skitamarigg, who will play +with children before breakfast if they spring out of bed and close the +window at the very first line of the song about puellas which father +sings while shaving. + +Judge Milford's pedagogical scheme was to let the children read whatever +they pleased, and in his brown library Carol absorbed Balzac and +Rabelais and Thoreau and Max Muller. He gravely taught them the letters +on the backs of the encyclopedias, and when polite visitors asked about +the mental progress of the "little ones," they were horrified to hear +the children earnestly repeating A-And, And-Aus, Aus-Bis, Bis-Cal, +Cal-Cha. + +Carol's mother died when she was nine. Her father retired from the +judiciary when she was eleven, and took the family to Minneapolis. There +he died, two years after. Her sister, a busy proper advisory soul, older +than herself, had become a stranger to her even when they lived in the +same house. + +From those early brown and silver days and from her independence of +relatives Carol retained a willingness to be different from brisk +efficient book-ignoring people; an instinct to observe and wonder +at their bustle even when she was taking part in it. But, she felt +approvingly, as she discovered her career of town-planning, she was now +roused to being brisk and efficient herself. + + + +IV + + +In a month Carol's ambition had clouded. Her hesitancy about becoming a +teacher had returned. She was not, she worried, strong enough to endure +the routine, and she could not picture herself standing before grinning +children and pretending to be wise and decisive. But the desire for +the creation of a beautiful town remained. When she encountered an item +about small-town women's clubs or a photograph of a straggling Main +Street, she was homesick for it, she felt robbed of her work. + +It was the advice of the professor of English which led her to study +professional library-work in a Chicago school. Her imagination carved +and colored the new plan. She saw herself persuading children to read +charming fairy tales, helping young men to find books on mechanics, +being ever so courteous to old men who were hunting for newspapers--the +light of the library, an authority on books, invited to dinners with +poets and explorers, reading a paper to an association of distinguished +scholars. + + + +V + + +The last faculty reception before commencement. In five days they would +be in the cyclone of final examinations. + +The house of the president had been massed with palms suggestive of +polite undertaking parlors, and in the library, a ten-foot room with a +globe and the portraits of Whittier and Martha Washington, the student +orchestra was playing "Carmen" and "Madame Butterfly." Carol was dizzy +with music and the emotions of parting. She saw the palms as a jungle, +the pink-shaded electric globes as an opaline haze, and the eye-glassed +faculty as Olympians. She was melancholy at sight of the mousey girls +with whom she had "always intended to get acquainted," and the half +dozen young men who were ready to fall in love with her. + +But it was Stewart Snyder whom she encouraged. He was so much manlier +than the others; he was an even warm brown, like his new ready-made suit +with its padded shoulders. She sat with him, and with two cups of +coffee and a chicken patty, upon a pile of presidential overshoes in the +coat-closet under the stairs, and as the thin music seeped in, Stewart +whispered: + +"I can't stand it, this breaking up after four years! The happiest years +of life." + +She believed it. "Oh, I know! To think that in just a few days we'll be +parting, and we'll never see some of the bunch again!" + +"Carol, you got to listen to me! You always duck when I try to talk +seriously to you, but you got to listen to me. I'm going to be a big +lawyer, maybe a judge, and I need you, and I'd protect you----" + +His arm slid behind her shoulders. The insinuating music drained her +independence. She said mournfully, "Would you take care of me?" She +touched his hand. It was warm, solid. + +"You bet I would! We'd have, Lord, we'd have bully times in Yankton, +where I'm going to settle----" + +"But I want to do something with life." + +"What's better than making a comfy home and bringing up some cute kids +and knowing nice homey people?" + +It was the immemorial male reply to the restless woman. Thus to the +young Sappho spake the melon-venders; thus the captains to Zenobia; and +in the damp cave over gnawed bones the hairy suitor thus protested to +the woman advocate of matriarchy. In the dialect of Blodgett College but +with the voice of Sappho was Carol's answer: + +"Of course. I know. I suppose that's so. Honestly, I do love children. +But there's lots of women that can do housework, but I--well, if you +HAVE got a college education, you ought to use it for the world." + +"I know, but you can use it just as well in the home. And gee, Carol, +just think of a bunch of us going out on an auto picnic, some nice +spring evening." + +"Yes." + +"And sleigh-riding in winter, and going fishing----" + +Blarrrrrrr! The orchestra had crashed into the "Soldiers' Chorus"; and +she was protesting, "No! No! You're a dear, but I want to do things. +I don't understand myself but I want--everything in the world! Maybe I +can't sing or write, but I know I can be an influence in library work. +Just suppose I encouraged some boy and he became a great artist! I +will! I will do it! Stewart dear, I can't settle down to nothing but +dish-washing!" + +Two minutes later--two hectic minutes--they were disturbed by +an embarrassed couple also seeking the idyllic seclusion of the +overshoe-closet. + +After graduation she never saw Stewart Snyder again. She wrote to him +once a week--for one month. + + + +VI + + +A year Carol spent in Chicago. Her study of library-cataloguing, +recording, books of reference, was easy and not too somniferous. She +reveled in the Art Institute, in symphonies and violin recitals and +chamber music, in the theater and classic dancing. She almost gave up +library work to become one of the young women who dance in cheese-cloth +in the moonlight. She was taken to a certified Studio Party, with +beer, cigarettes, bobbed hair, and a Russian Jewess who sang the +Internationale. It cannot be reported that Carol had anything +significant to say to the Bohemians. She was awkward with them, and +felt ignorant, and she was shocked by the free manners which she had for +years desired. But she heard and remembered discussions of Freud, Romain +Rolland, syndicalism, the Confederation Generale du Travail, feminism +vs. haremism, Chinese lyrics, nationalization of mines, Christian +Science, and fishing in Ontario. + +She went home, and that was the beginning and end of her Bohemian life. + +The second cousin of Carol's sister's husband lived in Winnetka, and +once invited her out to Sunday dinner. She walked back through Wilmette +and Evanston, discovered new forms of suburban architecture, and +remembered her desire to recreate villages. She decided that she would +give up library work and, by a miracle whose nature was not very clearly +revealed to her, turn a prairie town into Georgian houses and Japanese +bungalows. + +The next day in library class she had to read a theme on the use of the +Cumulative Index, and she was taken so seriously in the discussion that +she put off her career of town-planning--and in the autumn she was in +the public library of St. Paul. + + + +VII + + +Carol was not unhappy and she was not exhilarated, in the St. Paul +Library. She slowly confessed that she was not visibly affecting lives. +She did, at first, put into her contact with the patrons a willingness +which should have moved worlds. But so few of these stolid worlds wanted +to be moved. When she was in charge of the magazine room the readers did +not ask for suggestions about elevated essays. They grunted, "Wanta find +the Leather Goods Gazette for last February." When she was giving +out books the principal query was, "Can you tell me of a good, light, +exciting love story to read? My husband's going away for a week." + +She was fond of the other librarians; proud of their aspirations. And by +the chance of propinquity she read scores of books unnatural to her gay +white littleness: volumes of anthropology with ditches of foot-notes +filled with heaps of small dusty type, Parisian imagistes, Hindu recipes +for curry, voyages to the Solomon Isles, theosophy with modern American +improvements, treatises upon success in the real-estate business. She +took walks, and was sensible about shoes and diet. And never did she +feel that she was living. + +She went to dances and suppers at the houses of college acquaintances. +Sometimes she one-stepped demurely; sometimes, in dread of life's +slipping past, she turned into a bacchanal, her tender eyes excited, her +throat tense, as she slid down the room. + +During her three years of library work several men showed diligent +interest in her--the treasurer of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, a +newspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official. None of them made her +more than pause in thought. For months no male emerged from the mass. +Then, at the Marburys', she met Dr. Will Kennicott. + + + +CHAPTER II + +IT was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the flat of the +Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighbor +and friend of Carol's sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling representative of +an insurance company. They made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffee +lap suppers, and they regarded Carol as their literary and artistic +representative. She was the one who could be depended upon to appreciate +the Caruso phonograph record, and the Chinese lantern which Mr. Marbury +had brought back as his present from San Francisco. Carol found the +Marburys admiring and therefore admirable. + +This September Sunday evening she wore a net frock with a pale pink +lining. A nap had soothed away the faint lines of tiredness beside her +eyes. She was young, naive, stimulated by the coolness. She flung +her coat at the chair in the hall of the flat, and exploded into +the green-plush living-room. The familiar group were trying to be +conversational. She saw Mr. Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics in +a high school, a chief clerk from the Great Northern Railway offices, +a young lawyer. But there was also a stranger, a thick tall man of +thirty-six or -seven, with stolid brown hair, lips used to giving +orders, eyes which followed everything good-naturedly, and clothes which +you could never quite remember. + +Mr. Marbury boomed, "Carol, come over here and meet Doc Kennicott--Dr. +Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie. He does all our insurance-examining up +in that neck of the woods, and they do say he's some doctor!" + +As she edged toward the stranger and murmured nothing in particular, +Carol remembered that Gopher Prairie was a Minnesota wheat-prairie town +of something over three thousand people. + +"Pleased to meet you," stated Dr. Kennicott. His hand was strong; the +palm soft, but the back weathered, showing golden hairs against firm red +skin. + +He looked at her as though she was an agreeable discovery. She tugged +her hand free and fluttered, "I must go out to the kitchen and help Mrs. +Marbury." She did not speak to him again till, after she had heated +the rolls and passed the paper napkins, Mr. Marbury captured her with +a loud, "Oh, quit fussing now. Come over here and sit down and tell +us how's tricks." He herded her to a sofa with Dr. Kennicott, who was +rather vague about the eyes, rather drooping of bulky shoulder, as +though he was wondering what he was expected to do next. As their host +left them, Kennicott awoke: + +"Marbury tells me you're a high mogul in the public library. I was +surprised. Didn't hardly think you were old enough. I thought you were a +girl, still in college maybe." + +"Oh, I'm dreadfully old. I expect to take to a lip-stick, and to find a +gray hair any morning now." + +"Huh! You must be frightfully old--prob'ly too old to be my +granddaughter, I guess!" + +Thus in the Vale of Arcady nymph and satyr beguiled the hours; precisely +thus, and not in honeyed pentameters, discoursed Elaine and the worn Sir +Launcelot in the pleached alley. + +"How do you like your work?" asked the doctor. + +"It's pleasant, but sometimes I feel shut off from things--the steel +stacks, and the everlasting cards smeared all over with red rubber +stamps." + +"Don't you get sick of the city?" + +"St. Paul? Why, don't you like it? I don't know of any lovelier view +than when you stand on Summit Avenue and look across Lower Town to the +Mississippi cliffs and the upland farms beyond." + +"I know but----Of course I've spent nine years around the Twin +Cities--took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U., and had my internship in a +hospital in Minneapolis, but still, oh well, you don't get to know folks +here, way you do up home. I feel I've got something to say about running +Gopher Prairie, but you take it in a big city of two-three hundred +thousand, and I'm just one flea on the dog's back. And then I like +country driving, and the hunting in the fall. Do you know Gopher Prairie +at all?" + +"No, but I hear it's a very nice town." + +"Nice? Say honestly----Of course I may be prejudiced, but I've seen an +awful lot of towns--one time I went to Atlantic City for the American +Medical Association meeting, and I spent practically a week in New York! +But I never saw a town that had such up-and-coming people as Gopher +Prairie. Bresnahan--you know--the famous auto manufacturer--he comes +from Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up there! And it's a darn pretty +town. Lots of fine maples and box-elders, and there's two of the +dandiest lakes you ever saw, right near town! And we've got seven miles +of cement walks already, and building more every day! Course a lot of +these towns still put up with plank walks, but not for us, you bet!" + +"Really?" + +(Why was she thinking of Stewart Snyder?) + +"Gopher Prairie is going to have a great future. Some of the best dairy +and wheat land in the state right near there--some of it selling right +now at one-fifty an acre, and I bet it will go up to two and a quarter +in ten years!" + +"Is----Do you like your profession?" + +"Nothing like it. Keeps you out, and yet you have a chance to loaf in +the office for a change." + +"I don't mean that way. I mean--it's such an opportunity for sympathy." + +Dr. Kennicott launched into a heavy, "Oh, these Dutch farmers don't want +sympathy. All they need is a bath and a good dose of salts." + +Carol must have flinched, for instantly he was urging, "What I mean +is--I don't want you to think I'm one of these old salts-and-quinine +peddlers, but I mean: so many of my patients are husky farmers that I +suppose I get kind of case-hardened." + +"It seems to me that a doctor could transform a whole community, if he +wanted to--if he saw it. He's usually the only man in the neighborhood +who has any scientific training, isn't he?" + +"Yes, that's so, but I guess most of us get rusty. We land in a rut of +obstetrics and typhoid and busted legs. What we need is women like you +to jump on us. It'd be you that would transform the town." + +"No, I couldn't. Too flighty. I did used to think about doing just that, +curiously enough, but I seem to have drifted away from the idea. Oh, I'm +a fine one to be lecturing you!" + +"No! You're just the one. You have ideas without having lost feminine +charm. Say! Don't you think there's a lot of these women that go out for +all these movements and so on that sacrifice----" + +After his remarks upon suffrage he abruptly questioned her about +herself. His kindliness and the firmness of his personality enveloped +her and she accepted him as one who had a right to know what she +thought and wore and ate and read. He was positive. He had grown from a +sketched-in stranger to a friend, whose gossip was important news. She +noticed the healthy solidity of his chest. His nose, which had seemed +irregular and large, was suddenly virile. + +She was jarred out of this serious sweetness when Marbury bounced over +to them and with horrible publicity yammered, "Say, what do you two +think you're doing? Telling fortunes or making love? Let me warn you +that the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Carol. Come on now, folks, shake a +leg. Let's have some stunts or a dance or something." + +She did not have another word with Dr. Kennicott until their parting: + +"Been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Milford. May I see you some +time when I come down again? I'm here quite often--taking patients to +hospitals for majors, and so on." + +"Why----" + +"What's your address?" + +"You can ask Mr. Marbury next time you come down--if you really want to +know!" + +"Want to know? Say, you wait!" + + + +II + + +Of the love-making of Carol and Will Kennicott there is nothing to be +told which may not be heard on every summer evening, on every shadowy +block. + +They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang phrases and flares +of poetry; their silences were contentment, or shaky crises when his arm +took her shoulder. All the beauty of youth, first discovered when it +is passing--and all the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried man +encountering a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of her +employment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she is glad to serve. + +They liked each other honestly--they were both honest. She was +disappointed by his devotion to making money, but she was sure that +he did not lie to patients, and that he did keep up with the medical +magazines. What aroused her to something more than liking was his +boyishness when they went tramping. + +They walked from St. Paul down the river to Mendota, Kennicott more +elastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crepe shirt, Carol youthful in a +tam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge suit with an absurdly and +agreeably broad turn-down linen collar, and frivolous ankles above +athletic shoes. The High Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting from +low banks to a palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paul +side, upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardens +and shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards, sheets of +corrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river. Carol leaned +over the rail of the bridge to look down at this Yang-tse village; +in delicious imaginary fear she shrieked that she was dizzy with the +height; and it was an extremely human satisfaction to have a strong male +snatch her back to safety, instead of having a logical woman teacher or +librarian sniff, "Well, if you're scared, why don't you get away from +the rail, then?" + +From the cliffs across the river Carol and Kennicott looked back at St. +Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from the dome of the cathedral to +the dome of the state capitol. + +The river road led past rocky field slopes, deep glens, woods flamboyant +now with September, to Mendota, white walls and a spire among trees +beneath a hill, old-world in its placid ease. And for this fresh land, +the place is ancient. Here is the bold stone house which General Sibley, +the king of fur-traders, built in 1835, with plaster of river mud, and +ropes of twisted grass for laths. It has an air of centuries. In its +solid rooms Carol and Kennicott found prints from other days which the +house had seen--tail-coats of robin's-egg blue, clumsy Red River carts +laden with luxurious furs, whiskered Union soldiers in slant forage caps +and rattling sabers. + +It suggested to them a common American past, and it was memorable +because they had discovered it together. They talked more trustingly, +more personally, as they trudged on. They crossed the Minnesota River in +a rowboat ferry. They climbed the hill to the round stone tower of Fort +Snelling. They saw the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota, +and recalled the men who had come here eighty years ago--Maine +lumbermen, York traders, soldiers from the Maryland hills. + +"It's a good country, and I'm proud of it. Let's make it all that those +old boys dreamed about," the unsentimental Kennicott was moved to vow. + +"Let's!" + +"Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the town--well--make +it artistic. It's mighty pretty, but I'll admit we aren't any too darn +artistic. Probably the lumber-yard isn't as scrumptious as all these +Greek temples. But go to it! Make us change!" + +"I would like to. Some day!" + +"Now! You'd love Gopher Prairie. We've been doing a lot with lawns +and gardening the past few years, and it's so homey--the big trees +and----And the best people on earth. And keen. I bet Luke Dawson----" + +Carol but half listened to the names. She could not fancy their ever +becoming important to her. + +"I bet Luke Dawson has got more money than most of the swells on Summit +Avenue; and Miss Sherwin in the high school is a regular wonder--reads +Latin like I do English; and Sam Clark, the hardware man, he's a +corker--not a better man in the state to go hunting with; and if +you want culture, besides Vida Sherwin there's Reverend Warren, the +Congregational preacher, and Professor Mott, the superintendent of +schools, and Guy Pollock, the lawyer--they say he writes regular poetry +and--and Raymie Wutherspoon, he's not such an awful boob when you get to +KNOW him, and he sings swell. And----And there's plenty of others. Lym +Cass. Only of course none of them have your finesse, you might call it. +But they don't make 'em any more appreciative and so on. Come on! We're +ready for you to boss us!" + +They sat on the bank below the parapet of the old fort, hidden from +observation. He circled her shoulder with his arm. Relaxed after the +walk, a chill nipping her throat, conscious of his warmth and power, she +leaned gratefully against him. + +"You know I'm in love with you, Carol!" + +She did not answer, but she touched the back of his hand with an +exploring finger. + +"You say I'm so darn materialistic. How can I help it, unless I have you +to stir me up?" + +She did not answer. She could not think. + +"You say a doctor could cure a town the way he does a person. Well, you +cure the town of whatever ails it, if anything does, and I'll be your +surgical kit." + +She did not follow his words, only the burring resoluteness of them. + +She was shocked, thrilled, as he kissed her cheek and cried, "There's +no use saying things and saying things and saying things. Don't my arms +talk to you--now?" + +"Oh, please, please!" She wondered if she ought to be angry, but it was +a drifting thought, and she discovered that she was crying. + +Then they were sitting six inches apart, pretending that they had never +been nearer, while she tried to be impersonal: + +"I would like to--would like to see Gopher Prairie." + +"Trust me! Here she is! Brought some snapshots down to show you." + +Her cheek near his sleeve, she studied a dozen village pictures. They +were streaky; she saw only trees, shrubbery, a porch indistinct in leafy +shadows. But she exclaimed over the lakes: dark water reflecting wooded +bluffs, a flight of ducks, a fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide straw +hat, holding up a string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge of +Plover Lake had the air of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow in +the crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house, reeds in +thin black lines, arches of frosty grasses. It was an impression of cool +clear vigor. + +"How'd it be to skate there for a couple of hours, or go zinging along +on a fast ice-boat, and skip back home for coffee and some hot wienies?" +he demanded. + +"It might be--fun." + +"But here's the picture. Here's where you come in." + +A photograph of a forest clearing: pathetic new furrows straggling among +stumps, a clumsy log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with hay. +In front of it a sagging woman with tight-drawn hair, and a baby +bedraggled, smeary, glorious-eyed. + +"Those are the kind of folks I practise among, good share of the time. +Nels Erdstrom, fine clean young Svenska. He'll have a corking farm in +ten years, but now----I operated his wife on a kitchen table, with my +driver giving the anesthetic. Look at that scared baby! Needs some woman +with hands like yours. Waiting for you! Just look at that baby's eyes, +look how he's begging----" + +"Don't! They hurt me. Oh, it would be sweet to help him--so sweet." + +As his arms moved toward her she answered all her doubts with "Sweet, so +sweet." + + + +CHAPTER III + +UNDER the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mass of steel. An +irritable clank and rattle beneath a prolonged roar. The sharp scent of +oranges cutting the soggy smell of unbathed people and ancient baggage. + +Towns as planless as a scattering of pasteboard boxes on an attic floor. +The stretch of faded gold stubble broken only by clumps of willows +encircling white houses and red barns. + +No. 7, the way train, grumbling through Minnesota, imperceptibly +climbing the giant tableland that slopes in a thousand-mile rise from +hot Mississippi bottoms to the Rockies. + +It is September, hot, very dusty. + +There is no smug Pullman attached to the train, and the day coaches of +the East are replaced by free chair cars, with each seat cut into two +adjustable plush chairs, the head-rests covered with doubtful linen +towels. Halfway down the car is a semi-partition of carved oak columns, +but the aisle is of bare, splintery, grease-blackened wood. There is no +porter, no pillows, no provision for beds, but all today and all tonight +they will ride in this long steel box-farmers with perpetually tired +wives and children who seem all to be of the same age; workmen going to +new jobs; traveling salesmen with derbies and freshly shined shoes. + +They are parched and cramped, the lines of their hands filled with +grime; they go to sleep curled in distorted attitudes, heads against the +window-panes or propped on rolled coats on seat-arms, and legs thrust +into the aisle. They do not read; apparently they do not think. They +wait. An early-wrinkled, young-old mother, moving as though her joints +were dry, opens a suit-case in which are seen creased blouses, a pair +of slippers worn through at the toes, a bottle of patent medicine, a tin +cup, a paper-covered book about dreams which the news-butcher has coaxed +her into buying. She brings out a graham cracker which she feeds to a +baby lying flat on a seat and wailing hopelessly. Most of the crumbs +drop on the red plush of the seat, and the woman sighs and tries to +brush them away, but they leap up impishly and fall back on the plush. + +A soiled man and woman munch sandwiches and throw the crusts on the +floor. A large brick-colored Norwegian takes off his shoes, grunts in +relief, and props his feet in their thick gray socks against the seat in +front of him. + +An old woman whose toothless mouth shuts like a mud-turtle's, and whose +hair is not so much white as yellow like moldy linen, with bands of pink +skull apparent between the tresses, anxiously lifts her bag, opens it, +peers in, closes it, puts it under the seat, and hastily picks it up and +opens it and hides it all over again. The bag is full of treasures and +of memories: a leather buckle, an ancient band-concert program, +scraps of ribbon, lace, satin. In the aisle beside her is an extremely +indignant parrakeet in a cage. + +Two facing seats, overflowing with a Slovene iron-miner's family, +are littered with shoes, dolls, whisky bottles, bundles wrapped in +newspapers, a sewing bag. The oldest boy takes a mouth-organ out of his +coat pocket, wipes the tobacco crumbs off, and plays "Marching through +Georgia" till every head in the car begins to ache. + +The news-butcher comes through selling chocolate bars and lemon drops. +A girl-child ceaselessly trots down to the water-cooler and back to her +seat. The stiff paper envelope which she uses for cup drips in the aisle +as she goes, and on each trip she stumbles over the feet of a carpenter, +who grunts, "Ouch! Look out!" + +The dust-caked doors are open, and from the smoking-car drifts back a +visible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle of +laughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit and +lavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man in +garage overalls. + +The smell grows constantly thicker, more stale. + + + +II + + +To each of the passengers his seat was his temporary home, and most of +the passengers were slatternly housekeepers. But one seat looked clean +and deceptively cool. In it were an obviously prosperous man and a +black-haired, fine-skinned girl whose pumps rested on an immaculate +horsehide bag. + +They were Dr. Will Kennicott and his bride, Carol. + +They had been married at the end of a year of conversational courtship, +and they were on their way to Gopher Prairie after a wedding journey in +the Colorado mountains. + +The hordes of the way-train were not altogether new to Carol. She had +seen them on trips from St. Paul to Chicago. But now that they had +become her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn, she had an +acute and uncomfortable interest in them. They distressed her. They +were so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no American +peasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imagination +and enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling man +working over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as well +as Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission to +poverty. They were peasants, she groaned. + +"Isn't there any way of waking them up? What would happen if they +understood scientific agriculture?" she begged of Kennicott, her hand +groping for his. + +It had been a transforming honeymoon. She had been frightened to +discover how tumultuous a feeling could be roused in her. Will had been +lordly--stalwart, jolly, impressively competent in making camp, tender +and understanding through the hours when they had lain side by side in a +tent pitched among pines high up on a lonely mountain spur. + +His hand swallowed hers as he started from thoughts of the practise to +which he was returning. "These people? Wake 'em up? What for? They're +happy." + +"But they're so provincial. No, that isn't what I mean. They're--oh, so +sunk in the mud." + +"Look here, Carrie. You want to get over your city idea that because a +man's pants aren't pressed, he's a fool. These farmers are mighty keen +and up-and-coming." + +"I know! That's what hurts. Life seems so hard for them--these lonely +farms and this gritty train." + +"Oh, they don't mind it. Besides, things are changing. The auto, the +telephone, rural free delivery; they're bringing the farmers in closer +touch with the town. Takes time, you know, to change a wilderness like +this was fifty years ago. But already, why, they can hop into the Ford +or the Overland and get in to the movies on Saturday evening quicker +than you could get down to 'em by trolley in St. Paul." + +"But if it's these towns we've been passing that the farmers run to for +relief from their bleakness----Can't you understand? Just LOOK at them!" + +Kennicott was amazed. Ever since childhood he had seen these towns from +trains on this same line. He grumbled, "Why, what's the matter with 'em? +Good hustling burgs. It would astonish you to know how much wheat and +rye and corn and potatoes they ship in a year." + +"But they're so ugly." + +"I'll admit they aren't comfy like Gopher Prairie. But give 'em time." + +"What's the use of giving them time unless some one has desire and +training enough to plan them? Hundreds of factories trying to make +attractive motor cars, but these towns--left to chance. No! That can't +be true. It must have taken genius to make them so scrawny!" + +"Oh, they're not so bad," was all he answered. He pretended that his +hand was the cat and hers the mouse. For the first time she tolerated +him rather than encouraged him. She was staring out at Schoenstrom, a +hamlet of perhaps a hundred and fifty inhabitants, at which the train +was stopping. + +A bearded German and his pucker-mouthed wife tugged their enormous +imitation-leather satchel from under a seat and waddled out. The station +agent hoisted a dead calf aboard the baggage-car. There were no other +visible activities in Schoenstrom. In the quiet of the halt, Carol could +hear a horse kicking his stall, a carpenter shingling a roof. + +The business-center of Schoenstrom took up one side of one block, facing +the railroad. It was a row of one-story shops covered with galvanized +iron, or with clapboards painted red and bilious yellow. The buildings +were as ill-assorted, as temporary-looking, as a mining-camp street in +the motion-pictures. The railroad station was a one-room frame box, a +mirey cattle-pen on one side and a crimson wheat-elevator on the other. +The elevator, with its cupola on the ridge of a shingled roof, resembled +a broad-shouldered man with a small, vicious, pointed head. The only +habitable structures to be seen were the florid red-brick Catholic +church and rectory at the end of Main Street. + +Carol picked at Kennicott's sleeve. "You wouldn't call this a not-so-bad +town, would you?" + +"These Dutch burgs ARE kind of slow. Still, at that----See that fellow +coming out of the general store there, getting into the big car? I met +him once. He owns about half the town, besides the store. Rauskukle, his +name is. He owns a lot of mortgages, and he gambles in farm-lands. Good +nut on him, that fellow. Why, they say he's worth three or four hundred +thousand dollars! Got a dandy great big yellow brick house with tiled +walks and a garden and everything, other end of town--can't see it from +here--I've gone past it when I've driven through here. Yes sir!" + +"Then, if he has all that, there's no excuse whatever for this place! +If his three hundred thousand went back into the town, where it belongs, +they could burn up these shacks, and build a dream-village, a jewel! Why +do the farmers and the town-people let the Baron keep it?" + +"I must say I don't quite get you sometimes, Carrie. Let him? They can't +help themselves! He's a dumm old Dutchman, and probably the priest can +twist him around his finger, but when it comes to picking good farming +land, he's a regular wiz!" + +"I see. He's their symbol of beauty. The town erects him, instead of +erecting buildings." + +"Honestly, don't know what you're driving at. You're kind of played out, +after this long trip. You'll feel better when you get home and have a +good bath, and put on the blue negligee. That's some vampire costume, +you witch!" + +He squeezed her arm, looked at her knowingly. + +They moved on from the desert stillness of the Schoenstrom station. The +train creaked, banged, swayed. The air was nauseatingly thick. Kennicott +turned her face from the window, rested her head on his shoulder. She +was coaxed from her unhappy mood. But she came out of it unwillingly, +and when Kennicott was satisfied that he had corrected all her worries +and had opened a magazine of saffron detective stories, she sat upright. + +Here--she meditated--is the newest empire of the world; the Northern +Middlewest; a land of dairy herds and exquisite lakes, of new +automobiles and tar-paper shanties and silos like red towers, of clumsy +speech and a hope that is boundless. An empire which feeds a quarter of +the world--yet its work is merely begun. They are pioneers, these sweaty +wayfarers, for all their telephones and bank-accounts and automatic +pianos and co-operative leagues. And for all its fat richness, theirs is +a pioneer land. What is its future? she wondered. A future of cities +and factory smut where now are loping empty fields? Homes universal and +secure? Or placid chateaux ringed with sullen huts? Youth free to find +knowledge and laughter? Willingness to sift the sanctified lies? Or +creamy-skinned fat women, smeared with grease and chalk, gorgeous in the +skins of beasts and the bloody feathers of slain birds, playing bridge +with puffy pink-nailed jeweled fingers, women who after much expenditure +of labor and bad temper still grotesquely resemble their own flatulent +lap-dogs? The ancient stale inequalities, or something different in +history, unlike the tedious maturity of other empires? What future and +what hope? + +Carol's head ached with the riddle. + +She saw the prairie, flat in giant patches or rolling in long hummocks. +The width and bigness of it, which had expanded her spirit an hour ago, +began to frighten her. It spread out so; it went on so uncontrollably; +she could never know it. Kennicott was closeted in his detective story. +With the loneliness which comes most depressingly in the midst of many +people she tried to forget problems, to look at the prairie objectively. + +The grass beside the railroad had been burnt over; it was a smudge +prickly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire +fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off +from the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, +prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvet +stretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marched +like soldiers in worn yellow tabards. The newly plowed fields were +black banners fallen on the distant slope. It was a martial immensity, +vigorous, a little harsh, unsoftened by kindly gardens. + +The expanse was relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wild +grass; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with the +flicker of blackbirds' wings across them. + +All this working land was turned into exuberance by the light. The +sunshine was dizzy on open stubble; shadows from immense cumulus clouds +were forever sliding across low mounds; and the sky was wider and +loftier and more resolutely blue than the sky of cities . . . she +declared. + +"It's a glorious country; a land to be big in," she crooned. + +Then Kennicott startled her by chuckling, "D' you realize the town after +the next is Gopher Prairie? Home!" + + + +III + + +That one word--home--it terrified her. Had she really bound herself to +live, inescapably, in this town called Gopher Prairie? And this thick +man beside her, who dared to define her future, he was a stranger! She +turned in her seat, stared at him. Who was he? Why was he sitting with +her? He wasn't of her kind! His neck was heavy; his speech was heavy; he +was twelve or thirteen years older than she; and about him was none of +the magic of shared adventures and eagerness. She could not believe that +she had ever slept in his arms. That was one of the dreams which you had +but did not officially admit. + +She told herself how good he was, how dependable and understanding. She +touched his ear, smoothed the plane of his solid jaw, and, turning away +again, concentrated upon liking his town. It wouldn't be like these +barren settlements. It couldn't be! Why, it had three thousand +population. That was a great many people. There would be six hundred +houses or more. And----The lakes near it would be so lovely. She'd seen +them in the photographs. They had looked charming . . . hadn't they? + +As the train left Wahkeenyan she began nervously to watch for the +lakes--the entrance to all her future life. But when she discovered +them, to the left of the track, her only impression of them was that +they resembled the photographs. + +A mile from Gopher Prairie the track mounts a curving low ridge, and she +could see the town as a whole. With a passionate jerk she pushed up the +window, looked out, the arched fingers of her left hand trembling on the +sill, her right hand at her breast. + +And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the +hamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicott was +it exceptional. The huddled low wooden houses broke the plains scarcely +more than would a hazel thicket. The fields swept up to it, past it. +It was unprotected and unprotecting; there was no dignity in it nor +any hope of greatness. Only the tall red grain-elevator and a few tinny +church-steeples rose from the mass. It was a frontier camp. It was not a +place to live in, not possibly, not conceivably. + +The people--they'd be as drab as their houses, as flat as their fields. +She couldn't stay here. She would have to wrench loose from this man, +and flee. + +She peeped at him. She was at once helpless before his mature fixity, +and touched by his excitement as he sent his magazine skittering along +the aisle, stooped for their bags, came up with flushed face, and +gloated, "Here we are!" + +She smiled loyally, and looked away. The train was entering town. The +houses on the outskirts were dusky old red mansions with wooden frills, +or gaunt frame shelters like grocery boxes, or new bungalows with +concrete foundations imitating stone. + +Now the train was passing the elevator, the grim storage-tanks for oil, +a creamery, a lumber-yard, a stock-yard muddy and trampled and stinking. +Now they were stopping at a squat red frame station, the platform +crowded with unshaven farmers and with loafers--unadventurous people +with dead eyes. She was here. She could not go on. It was the end--the +end of the world. She sat with closed eyes, longing to push past +Kennicott, hide somewhere in the train, flee on toward the Pacific. + +Something large arose in her soul and commanded, "Stop it! Stop being a +whining baby!" She stood up quickly; she said, "Isn't it wonderful to be +here at last!" + +He trusted her so. She would make herself like the place. And she was +going to do tremendous things---- + +She followed Kennicott and the bobbing ends of the two bags which +he carried. They were held back by the slow line of disembarking +passengers. She reminded herself that she was actually at the dramatic +moment of the bride's home-coming. She ought to feel exalted. She felt +nothing at all except irritation at their slow progress toward the door. + +Kennicott stooped to peer through the windows. He shyly exulted: + +"Look! Look! There's a bunch come down to welcome us! Sam Clark and the +missus and Dave Dyer and Jack Elder, and, yes sir, Harry Haydock and +Juanita, and a whole crowd! I guess they see us now. Yuh, yuh sure, they +see us! See 'em waving!" + +She obediently bent her head to look out at them. She had hold of +herself. She was ready to love them. But she was embarrassed by the +heartiness of the cheering group. From the vestibule she waved to them, +but she clung a second to the sleeve of the brakeman who helped her down +before she had the courage to dive into the cataract of hand-shaking +people, people whom she could not tell apart. She had the impression +that all the men had coarse voices, large damp hands, tooth-brush +mustaches, bald spots, and Masonic watch-charms. + +She knew that they were welcoming her. Their hands, their smiles, their +shouts, their affectionate eyes overcame her. She stammered, "Thank you, +oh, thank you!" + +One of the men was clamoring at Kennicott, "I brought my machine down to +take you home, doc." + +"Fine business, Sam!" cried Kennicott; and, to Carol, "Let's jump in. +That big Paige over there. Some boat, too, believe me! Sam can show +speed to any of these Marmons from Minneapolis!" + +Only when she was in the motor car did she distinguish the three people +who were to accompany them. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essence +of decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, rugged +of neck but sleek and round of face--face like the back of a spoon bowl. +He was chuckling at her, "Have you got us all straight yet?" + +"Course she has! Trust Carrie to get things straight and get 'em darn +quick! I bet she could tell you every date in history!" boasted her +husband. + +But the man looked at her reassuringly and with a certainty that he +was a person whom she could trust she confessed, "As a matter of fact I +haven't got anybody straight." + +"Course you haven't, child. Well, I'm Sam Clark, dealer in hardware, +sporting goods, cream separators, and almost any kind of heavy junk you +can think of. You can call me Sam--anyway, I'm going to call you Carrie, +seein' 's you've been and gone and married this poor fish of a bum medic +that we keep round here." Carol smiled lavishly, and wished that she +called people by their given names more easily. "The fat cranky lady +back there beside you, who is pretending that she can't hear me giving +her away, is Mrs. Sam'l Clark; and this hungry-looking squirt up here +beside me is Dave Dyer, who keeps his drug store running by not filling +your hubby's prescriptions right--fact you might say he's the guy that +put the 'shun' in 'prescription.' So! Well, leave us take the bonny +bride home. Say, doc, I'll sell you the Candersen place for three +thousand plunks. Better be thinking about building a new home for +Carrie. Prettiest Frau in G. P., if you asks me!" + +Contentedly Sam Clark drove off, in the heavy traffic of three Fords and +the Minniemashie House Free 'Bus. + +"I shall like Mr. Clark . . . I CAN'T call him 'Sam'! They're all so +friendly." She glanced at the houses; tried not to see what she saw; +gave way in: "Why do these stories lie so? They always make the bride's +home-coming a bower of roses. Complete trust in noble spouse. Lies about +marriage. I'm NOT changed. And this town--O my God! I can't go through +with it. This junk-heap!" + +Her husband bent over her. "You look like you were in a brown study. +Scared? I don't expect you to think Gopher Prairie is a paradise, after +St. Paul. I don't expect you to be crazy about it, at first. But you'll +come to like it so much--life's so free here and best people on earth." + +She whispered to him (while Mrs. Clark considerately turned away), "I +love you for understanding. I'm just--I'm beastly over-sensitive. Too +many books. It's my lack of shoulder-muscles and sense. Give me time, +dear." + +"You bet! All the time you want!" + +She laid the back of his hand against her cheek, snuggled near him. She +was ready for her new home. + +Kennicott had told her that, with his widowed mother as housekeeper, he +had occupied an old house, "but nice and roomy, and well-heated, best +furnace I could find on the market." His mother had left Carol her love, +and gone back to Lac-qui-Meurt. + +It would be wonderful, she exulted, not to have to live in Other +People's Houses, but to make her own shrine. She held his hand tightly +and stared ahead as the car swung round a corner and stopped in the +street before a prosaic frame house in a small parched lawn. + + + +IV + + +A concrete sidewalk with a "parking" of grass and mud. A square smug +brown house, rather damp. A narrow concrete walk up to it. Sickly yellow +leaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds and snags +of wool from the cotton-woods. A screened porch with pillars of thin +painted pine surmounted by scrolls and brackets and bumps of jigsawed +wood. No shrubbery to shut off the public gaze. A lugubrious bay-window +to the right of the porch. Window curtains of starched cheap lace +revealing a pink marble table with a conch shell and a Family Bible. + +"You'll find it old-fashioned--what do you call it?--Mid-Victorian. I +left it as is, so you could make any changes you felt were necessary." +Kennicott sounded doubtful for the first time since he had come back to +his own. + +"It's a real home!" She was moved by his humility. She gaily motioned +good-by to the Clarks. He unlocked the door--he was leaving the choice +of a maid to her, and there was no one in the house. She jiggled while +he turned the key, and scampered in. . . . It was next day before either +of them remembered that in their honeymoon camp they had planned that he +should carry her over the sill. + +In hallway and front parlor she was conscious of dinginess and +lugubriousness and airlessness, but she insisted, "I'll make it all +jolly." As she followed Kennicott and the bags up to their bedroom she +quavered to herself the song of the fat little-gods of the hearth: + + I have my own home, + To do what I please with, + To do what I please with, + My den for me and my mate and my cubs, + My own! + +She was close in her husband's arms; she clung to him; whatever of +strangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none of +that mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, run +her fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat, +seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in the +courage and kindness of her man a shelter from the perplexing world. + +"Sweet, so sweet," she whispered. + + + +CHAPTER IV + +I + +"THE Clarks have invited some folks to their house to meet us, tonight," +said Kennicott, as he unpacked his suit-case. + +"Oh, that is nice of them!" + +"You bet. I told you you'd like 'em. Squarest people on earth. Uh, +Carrie----Would you mind if I sneaked down to the office for an hour, +just to see how things are?" + +"Why, no. Of course not. I know you're keen to get back to work." + +"Sure you don't mind?" + +"Not a bit. Out of my way. Let me unpack." + +But the advocate of freedom in marriage was as much disappointed as +a drooping bride at the alacrity with which he took that freedom and +escaped to the world of men's affairs. She gazed about their bedroom, +and its full dismalness crawled over her: the awkward knuckly L-shape +of it; the black walnut bed with apples and spotty pears carved on the +headboard; the imitation maple bureau, with pink-daubed scent-bottles +and a petticoated pin-cushion on a marble slab uncomfortably like a +gravestone; the plain pine washstand and the garlanded water-pitcher and +bowl. The scent was of horsehair and plush and Florida Water. + +"How could people ever live with things like this?" she shuddered. She +saw the furniture as a circle of elderly judges, condemning her to death +by smothering. The tottering brocade chair squeaked, "Choke her--choke +her--smother her." The old linen smelled of the tomb. She was alone in +this house, this strange still house, among the shadows of dead thoughts +and haunting repressions. "I hate it! I hate it!" she panted. "Why did I +ever----" + +She remembered that Kennicott's mother had brought these family +relics from the old home in Lac-qui-Meurt. "Stop it! They're perfectly +comfortable things. They're--comfortable. Besides----Oh, they're +horrible! We'll change them, right away." + +Then, "But of course he HAS to see how things are at the office----" + +She made a pretense of busying herself with unpacking. The chintz-lined, +silver-fitted bag which had seemed so desirable a luxury in St. Paul was +an extravagant vanity here. The daring black chemise of frail chiffon +and lace was a hussy at which the deep-bosomed bed stiffened in disgust, +and she hurled it into a bureau drawer, hid it beneath a sensible linen +blouse. + +She gave up unpacking. She went to the window, with a purely literary +thought of village charm--hollyhocks and lanes and apple-cheeked +cottagers. What she saw was the side of the Seventh-Day Adventist +Church--a plain clapboard wall of a sour liver color; the ash-pile +back of the church; an unpainted stable; and an alley in which a Ford +delivery-wagon had been stranded. This was the terraced garden below her +boudoir; this was to be her scenery for---- + +"I mustn't! I mustn't! I'm nervous this afternoon. Am I sick? . . . Good +Lord, I hope it isn't that! Not now! How people lie! How these stories +lie! They say the bride is always so blushing and proud and happy when +she finds that out, but--I'd hate it! I'd be scared to death! Some +day but----Please, dear nebulous Lord, not now! Bearded sniffy old +men sitting and demanding that we bear children. If THEY had to bear +them----! I wish they did have to! Not now! Not till I've got hold of +this job of liking the ash-pile out there! . . . I must shut up. I'm +mildly insane. I'm going out for a walk. I'll see the town by myself. My +first view of the empire I'm going to conquer!" + +She fled from the house. + +She stared with seriousness at every concrete crossing, every +hitching-post, every rake for leaves; and to each house she devoted all +her speculation. What would they come to mean? How would they look six +months from now? In which of them would she be dining? Which of these +people whom she passed, now mere arrangements of hair and clothes, would +turn into intimates, loved or dreaded, different from all the other +people in the world? + +As she came into the small business-section she inspected a broad-beamed +grocer in an alpaca coat who was bending over the apples and celery on a +slanted platform in front of his store. Would she ever talk to him? What +would he say if she stopped and stated, "I am Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. Some +day I hope to confide that a heap of extremely dubious pumpkins as a +window-display doesn't exhilarate me much." + +(The grocer was Mr. Frederick F. Ludelmeyer, whose market is at the +corner of Main Street and Lincoln Avenue. In supposing that only she was +observant Carol was ignorant, misled by the indifference of cities. She +fancied that she was slipping through the streets invisible; but when +she had passed, Mr. Ludelmeyer puffed into the store and coughed at his +clerk, "I seen a young woman, she come along the side street. I bet she +iss Doc Kennicott's new bride, good-looker, nice legs, but she wore a +hell of a plain suit, no style, I wonder will she pay cash, I bet she +goes to Howland & Gould's more as she does here, what you done with the +poster for Fluffed Oats?") + + + +II + + +When Carol had walked for thirty-two minutes she had completely covered +the town, east and west, north and south; and she stood at the corner of +Main Street and Washington Avenue and despaired. + +Main Street with its two-story brick shops, its story-and-a-half wooden +residences, its muddy expanse from concrete walk to walk, its huddle +of Fords and lumber-wagons, was too small to absorb her. The broad, +straight, unenticing gashes of the streets let in the grasping prairie +on every side. She realized the vastness and the emptiness of the land. +The skeleton iron windmill on the farm a few blocks away, at the north +end of Main Street, was like the ribs of a dead cow. She thought of the +coming of the Northern winter, when the unprotected houses would crouch +together in terror of storms galloping out of that wild waste. They +were so small and weak, the little brown houses. They were shelters for +sparrows, not homes for warm laughing people. + +She told herself that down the street the leaves were a splendor. The +maples were orange; the oaks a solid tint of raspberry. And the lawns +had been nursed with love. But the thought would not hold. At best the +trees resembled a thinned woodlot. There was no park to rest the eyes. +And since not Gopher Prairie but Wakamin was the county-seat, there was +no court-house with its grounds. + +She glanced through the fly-specked windows of the most pretentious +building in sight, the one place which welcomed strangers and +determined their opinion of the charm and luxury of Gopher Prairie--the +Minniemashie House. It was a tall lean shabby structure, three stories +of yellow-streaked wood, the corners covered with sanded pine slabs +purporting to symbolize stone. In the hotel office she could see a +stretch of bare unclean floor, a line of rickety chairs with brass +cuspidors between, a writing-desk with advertisements in mother-of-pearl +letters upon the glass-covered back. The dining-room beyond was a jungle +of stained table-cloths and catsup bottles. + +She looked no more at the Minniemashie House. + +A man in cuffless shirt-sleeves with pink arm-garters, wearing a linen +collar but no tie, yawned his way from Dyer's Drug Store across to the +hotel. He leaned against the wall, scratched a while, sighed, and in a +bored way gossiped with a man tilted back in a chair. A lumber-wagon, +its long green box filled with large spools of barbed-wire fencing, +creaked down the block. A Ford, in reverse, sounded as though it +were shaking to pieces, then recovered and rattled away. In the Greek +candy-store was the whine of a peanut-roaster, and the oily smell of +nuts. + +There was no other sound nor sign of life. + +She wanted to run, fleeing from the encroaching prairie, demanding the +security of a great city. Her dreams of creating a beautiful town were +ludicrous. Oozing out from every drab wall, she felt a forbidding spirit +which she could never conquer. + +She trailed down the street on one side, back on the other, glancing +into the cross streets. It was a private Seeing Main Street tour. She +was within ten minutes beholding not only the heart of a place called +Gopher Prairie, but ten thousand towns from Albany to San Diego: + +Dyer's Drug Store, a corner building of regular and unreal blocks of +artificial stone. Inside the store, a greasy marble soda-fountain with +an electric lamp of red and green and curdled-yellow mosaic +shade. Pawed-over heaps of tooth-brushes and combs and packages of +shaving-soap. Shelves of soap-cartons, teething-rings, garden-seeds, +and patent medicines in yellow "packages-nostrums" for consumption, for +"women's diseases"--notorious mixtures of opium and alcohol, in +the very shop to which her husband sent patients for the filling of +prescriptions. + +From a second-story window the sign "W. P. Kennicott, Phys. & Surgeon," +gilt on black sand. + +A small wooden motion-picture theater called "The Rosebud Movie Palace." +Lithographs announcing a film called "Fatty in Love." + +Howland & Gould's Grocery. In the display window, black, overripe +bananas and lettuce on which a cat was sleeping. Shelves lined with red +crepe paper which was now faded and torn and concentrically spotted. +Flat against the wall of the second story the signs of lodges--the +Knights of Pythias, the Maccabees, the Woodmen, the Masons. + +Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market--a reek of blood. + +A jewelry shop with tinny-looking wrist-watches for women. In front of +it, at the curb, a huge wooden clock which did not go. + +A fly-buzzing saloon with a brilliant gold and enamel whisky sign across +the front. Other saloons down the block. From them a stink of stale +beer, and thick voices bellowing pidgin German or trolling out dirty +songs--vice gone feeble and unenterprising and dull--the delicacy of a +mining-camp minus its vigor. In front of the saloons, farmwives sitting +on the seats of wagons, waiting for their husbands to become drunk and +ready to start home. + +A tobacco shop called "The Smoke House," filled with young men shaking +dice for cigarettes. Racks of magazines, and pictures of coy fat +prostitutes in striped bathing-suits. + +A clothing store with a display of "ox-blood-shade Oxfords with bull-dog +toes." Suits which looked worn and glossless while they were still new, +flabbily draped on dummies like corpses with painted cheeks. + +The Bon Ton Store--Haydock & Simons'--the largest shop in town. The +first-story front of clear glass, the plates cleverly bound at the edges +with brass. The second story of pleasant tapestry brick. One window of +excellent clothes for men, interspersed with collars of floral pique +which showed mauve daisies on a saffron ground. Newness and an obvious +notion of neatness and service. Haydock & Simons. Haydock. She had met a +Haydock at the station; Harry Haydock; an active person of thirty-five. +He seemed great to her, now, and very like a saint. His shop was clean! + +Axel Egge's General Store, frequented by Scandinavian farmers. In the +shallow dark window-space heaps of sleazy sateens, badly woven galateas, +canvas shoes designed for women with bulging ankles, steel and red glass +buttons upon cards with broken edges, a cottony blanket, a granite-ware +frying-pan reposing on a sun-faded crepe blouse. + +Sam Clark's Hardware Store. An air of frankly metallic enterprise. Guns +and churns and barrels of nails and beautiful shiny butcher knives. + +Chester Dashaway's House Furnishing Emporium. A vista of heavy oak +rockers with leather seats, asleep in a dismal row. + +Billy's Lunch. Thick handleless cups on the wet oilcloth-covered +counter. An odor of onions and the smoke of hot lard. In the doorway a +young man audibly sucking a toothpick. + +The warehouse of the buyer of cream and potatoes. The sour smell of a +dairy. + +The Ford Garage and the Buick Garage, competent one-story brick +and cement buildings opposite each other. Old and new cars on +grease-blackened concrete floors. Tire advertisements. The roaring of +a tested motor; a racket which beat at the nerves. Surly young men in +khaki union-overalls. The most energetic and vital places in town. + +A large warehouse for agricultural implements. An impressive barricade +of green and gold wheels, of shafts and sulky seats, belonging +to machinery of which Carol knew nothing--potato-planters, +manure-spreaders, silage-cutters, disk-harrows, breaking-plows. + +A feed store, its windows opaque with the dust of bran, a patent +medicine advertisement painted on its roof. + +Ye Art Shoppe, Prop. Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks, Christian Science Library +open daily free. A touching fumble at beauty. A one-room shanty of +boards recently covered with rough stucco. A show-window delicately rich +in error: vases starting out to imitate tree-trunks but running off +into blobs of gilt--an aluminum ash-tray labeled "Greetings from +Gopher Prairie"--a Christian Science magazine--a stamped sofa-cushion +portraying a large ribbon tied to a small poppy, the correct skeins of +embroidery-silk lying on the pillow. Inside the shop, a glimpse of bad +carbon prints of bad and famous pictures, shelves of phonograph records +and camera films, wooden toys, and in the midst an anxious small woman +sitting in a padded rocking chair. + +A barber shop and pool room. A man in shirt sleeves, presumably Del +Snafflin the proprietor, shaving a man who had a large Adam's apple. + +Nat Hicks's Tailor Shop, on a side street off Main. A one-story +building. A fashion-plate showing human pitchforks in garments which +looked as hard as steel plate. + +On another side street a raw red-brick Catholic Church with a varnished +yellow door. + +The post-office--merely a partition of glass and brass shutting off +the rear of a mildewed room which must once have been a shop. A tilted +writing-shelf against a wall rubbed black and scattered with official +notices and army recruiting-posters. + +The damp, yellow-brick schoolbuilding in its cindery grounds. + +The State Bank, stucco masking wood. + +The Farmers' National Bank. An Ionic temple of marble. Pure, exquisite, +solitary. A brass plate with "Ezra Stowbody, Pres't." + +A score of similar shops and establishments. + +Behind them and mixed with them, the houses, meek cottages or large, +comfortable, soundly uninteresting symbols of prosperity. + +In all the town not one building save the Ionic bank which gave pleasure +to Carol's eyes; not a dozen buildings which suggested that, in the +fifty years of Gopher Prairie's existence, the citizens had realized +that it was either desirable or possible to make this, their common +home, amusing or attractive. + +It was not only the unsparing unapologetic ugliness and the rigid +straightness which overwhelmed her. It was the planlessness, the flimsy +temporariness of the buildings, their faded unpleasant colors. The +street was cluttered with electric-light poles, telephone poles, +gasoline pumps for motor cars, boxes of goods. Each man had built +with the most valiant disregard of all the others. Between a large +new "block" of two-story brick shops on one side, and the fire-brick +Overland garage on the other side, was a one-story cottage turned into +a millinery shop. The white temple of the Farmers' Bank was elbowed back +by a grocery of glaring yellow brick. One store-building had a patchy +galvanized iron cornice; the building beside it was crowned with +battlements and pyramids of brick capped with blocks of red sandstone. + +She escaped from Main Street, fled home. + +She wouldn't have cared, she insisted, if the people had been comely. +She had noted a young man loafing before a shop, one unwashed hand +holding the cord of an awning; a middle-aged man who had a way of +staring at women as though he had been married too long and too +prosaically; an old farmer, solid, wholesome, but not clean--his face +like a potato fresh from the earth. None of them had shaved for three +days. + +"If they can't build shrines, out here on the prairie, surely there's +nothing to prevent their buying safety-razors!" she raged. + +She fought herself: "I must be wrong. People do live here. It CAN'T be +as ugly as--as I know it is! I must be wrong. But I can't do it. I can't +go through with it." + +She came home too seriously worried for hysteria; and when she found +Kennicott waiting for her, and exulting, "Have a walk? Well, like +the town? Great lawns and trees, eh?" she was able to say, with a +self-protective maturity new to her, "It's very interesting." + + + +III + + +The train which brought Carol to Gopher Prairie also brought Miss Bea +Sorenson. + +Miss Bea was a stalwart, corn-colored, laughing young woman, and she was +bored by farm-work. She desired the excitements of city-life, and the +way to enjoy city-life was, she had decided, to "go get a yob as hired +girl in Gopher Prairie." She contentedly lugged her pasteboard telescope +from the station to her cousin, Tina Malmquist, maid of all work in the +residence of Mrs. Luke Dawson. + +"Vell, so you come to town," said Tina. + +"Ya. Ay get a yob," said Bea. + +"Vell. . . . You got a fella now?" + +"Ya. Yim Yacobson." + +"Vell. I'm glat to see you. How much you vant a veek?" + +"Sex dollar." + +"There ain't nobody pay dat. Vait! Dr. Kennicott, I t'ink he marry a +girl from de Cities. Maybe she pay dat. Vell. You go take a valk." + +"Ya," said Bea. + +So it chanced that Carol Kennicott and Bea Sorenson were viewing Main +Street at the same time. + +Bea had never before been in a town larger than Scandia Crossing, which +has sixty-seven inhabitants. + +As she marched up the street she was meditating that it didn't hardly +seem like it was possible there could be so many folks all in one place +at the same time. My! It would take years to get acquainted with them +all. And swell people, too! A fine big gentleman in a new pink shirt +with a diamond, and not no washed-out blue denim working-shirt. A lovely +lady in a longery dress (but it must be an awful hard dress to wash). +And the stores! + +Not just three of them, like there were at Scandia Crossing, but more +than four whole blocks! + +The Bon Ton Store--big as four barns--my! it would simply scare a person +to go in there, with seven or eight clerks all looking at you. And the +men's suits, on figures just like human. And Axel Egge's, like home, +lots of Swedes and Norskes in there, and a card of dandy buttons, like +rubies. + +A drug store with a soda fountain that was just huge, awful long, and +all lovely marble; and on it there was a great big lamp with the biggest +shade you ever saw--all different kinds colored glass stuck together; +and the soda spouts, they were silver, and they came right out of the +bottom of the lamp-stand! Behind the fountain there were glass shelves, +and bottles of new kinds of soft drinks, that nobody ever heard of. +Suppose a fella took you THERE! + +A hotel, awful high, higher than Oscar Tollefson's new red barn; three +stories, one right on top of another; you had to stick your head back +to look clear up to the top. There was a swell traveling man in +there--probably been to Chicago, lots of times. + +Oh, the dandiest people to know here! There was a lady going by, you +wouldn't hardly say she was any older than Bea herself; she wore a dandy +new gray suit and black pumps. She almost looked like she was looking +over the town, too. But you couldn't tell what she thought. Bea would +like to be that way--kind of quiet, so nobody would get fresh. Kind +of--oh, elegant. + +A Lutheran Church. Here in the city there'd be lovely sermons, and +church twice on Sunday, EVERY Sunday! + +And a movie show! + +A regular theater, just for movies. With the sign "Change of bill every +evening." Pictures every evening! + +There were movies in Scandia Crossing, but only once every two weeks, +and it took the Sorensons an hour to drive in--papa was such a tightwad +he wouldn't get a Ford. But here she could put on her hat any evening, +and in three minutes' walk be to the movies, and see lovely fellows in +dress-suits and Bill Hart and everything! + +How could they have so many stores? Why! There was one just for tobacco +alone, and one (a lovely one--the Art Shoppy it was) for pictures and +vases and stuff, with oh, the dandiest vase made so it looked just like +a tree trunk! + +Bea stood on the corner of Main Street and Washington Avenue. The roar +of the city began to frighten her. There were five automobiles on the +street all at the same time--and one of 'em was a great big car that +must of cost two thousand dollars--and the 'bus was starting for a train +with five elegant-dressed fellows, and a man was pasting up red bills +with lovely pictures of washing-machines on them, and the jeweler was +laying out bracelets and wrist-watches and EVERYTHING on real velvet. + +What did she care if she got six dollars a week? Or two! It was worth +while working for nothing, to be allowed to stay here. And think how it +would be in the evening, all lighted up--and not with no lamps, but with +electrics! And maybe a gentleman friend taking you to the movies and +buying you a strawberry ice cream soda! + +Bea trudged back. + +"Vell? You lak it?" said Tina. + +"Ya. Ay lak it. Ay t'ink maybe Ay stay here," said Bea. + + + +IV + + +The recently built house of Sam Clark, in which was given the party to +welcome Carol, was one of the largest in Gopher Prairie. It had a clean +sweep of clapboards, a solid squareness, a small tower, and a large +screened porch. Inside, it was as shiny, as hard, and as cheerful as a +new oak upright piano. + +Carol looked imploringly at Sam Clark as he rolled to the door and +shouted, "Welcome, little lady! The keys of the city are yourn!" + +Beyond him, in the hallway and the living-room, sitting in a vast prim +circle as though they were attending a funeral, she saw the guests. They +were WAITING so! They were waiting for her! The determination to be all +one pretty flowerlet of appreciation leaked away. She begged of Sam, +"I don't dare face them! They expect so much. They'll swallow me in one +mouthful--glump!--like that!" + +"Why, sister, they're going to love you--same as I would if I didn't +think the doc here would beat me up!" + +"B-but----I don't dare! Faces to the right of me, faces in front of me, +volley and wonder!" + +She sounded hysterical to herself; she fancied that to Sam Clark she +sounded insane. But he chuckled, "Now you just cuddle under Sam's wing, +and if anybody rubbers at you too long, I'll shoo 'em off. Here we go! +Watch my smoke--Sam'l, the ladies' delight and the bridegrooms' terror!" + +His arm about her, he led her in and bawled, "Ladies and worser halves, +the bride! We won't introduce her round yet, because she'll never get +your bum names straight anyway. Now bust up this star-chamber!" + +They tittered politely, but they did not move from the social security +of their circle, and they did not cease staring. + +Carol had given creative energy to dressing for the event. Her hair was +demure, low on her forehead with a parting and a coiled braid. Now she +wished that she had piled it high. Her frock was an ingenue slip +of lawn, with a wide gold sash and a low square neck, which gave a +suggestion of throat and molded shoulders. But as they looked her over +she was certain that it was all wrong. She wished alternately that she +had worn a spinsterish high-necked dress, and that she had dared to +shock them with a violent brick-red scarf which she had bought in +Chicago. + +She was led about the circle. Her voice mechanically produced safe +remarks: + +"Oh, I'm sure I'm going to like it here ever so much," and "Yes, we did +have the best time in Colorado--mountains," and "Yes, I lived in St. +Paul several years. Euclid P. Tinker? No, I don't REMEMBER meeting him, +but I'm pretty sure I've heard of him." + +Kennicott took her aside and whispered, "Now I'll introduce you to them, +one at a time." + +"Tell me about them first." + +"Well, the nice-looking couple over there are Harry Haydock and his +wife, Juanita. Harry's dad owns most of the Bon Ton, but it's Harry who +runs it and gives it the pep. He's a hustler. Next to him is Dave Dyer +the druggist--you met him this afternoon--mighty good duck-shot. +The tall husk beyond him is Jack Elder--Jackson Elder--owns the +planing-mill, and the Minniemashie House, and quite a share in the +Farmers' National Bank. Him and his wife are good sports--him and Sam +and I go hunting together a lot. The old cheese there is Luke Dawson, +the richest man in town. Next to him is Nat Hicks, the tailor." + +"Really? A tailor?" + +"Sure. Why not? Maybe we're slow, but we are democratic. I go hunting +with Nat same as I do with Jack Elder." + +"I'm glad. I've never met a tailor socially. It must be charming to meet +one and not have to think about what you owe him. And do you----Would +you go hunting with your barber, too?" + +"No but----No use running this democracy thing into the ground. +Besides, I've known Nat for years, and besides, he's a mighty good shot +and----That's the way it is, see? Next to Nat is Chet Dashaway. Great +fellow for chinning. He'll talk your arm off, about religion or politics +or books or anything." + +Carol gazed with a polite approximation to interest at Mr. Dashaway, +a tan person with a wide mouth. "Oh, I know! He's the furniture-store +man!" She was much pleased with herself. + +"Yump, and he's the undertaker. You'll like him. Come shake hands with +him." + +"Oh no, no! He doesn't--he doesn't do the embalming and all +that--himself? I couldn't shake hands with an undertaker!" + +"Why not? You'd be proud to shake hands with a great surgeon, just after +he'd been carving up people's bellies." + +She sought to regain her afternoon's calm of maturity. "Yes. You're +right. I want--oh, my dear, do you know how much I want to like the +people you like? I want to see people as they are." + +"Well, don't forget to see people as other folks see them as they are! +They have the stuff. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan came from here? +Born and brought up here!" + +"Bresnahan?" + +"Yes--you know--president of the Velvet Motor Company of Boston, +Mass.--make the Velvet Twelve--biggest automobile factory in New +England." + +"I think I've heard of him." + +"Sure you have. Why, he's a millionaire several times over! Well, Perce +comes back here for the black-bass fishing almost every summer, and he +says if he could get away from business, he'd rather live here than +in Boston or New York or any of those places. HE doesn't mind Chet's +undertaking." + +"Please! I'll--I'll like everybody! I'll be the community sunbeam!" + +He led her to the Dawsons. + +Luke Dawson, lender of money on mortgages, owner of Northern cut-over +land, was a hesitant man in unpressed soft gray clothes, with bulging +eyes in a milky face. His wife had bleached cheeks, bleached hair, +bleached voice, and a bleached manner. She wore her expensive green +frock, with its passementeried bosom, bead tassels, and gaps between the +buttons down the back, as though she had bought it second-hand and was +afraid of meeting the former owner. They were shy. It was "Professor" +George Edwin Mott, superintendent of schools, a Chinese mandarin turned +brown, who held Carol's hand and made her welcome. + +When the Dawsons and Mr. Mott had stated that they were "pleased to meet +her," there seemed to be nothing else to say, but the conversation went +on automatically. + +"Do you like Gopher Prairie?" whimpered Mrs. Dawson. + +"Oh, I'm sure I'm going to be ever so happy." + +"There's so many nice people." Mrs. Dawson looked to Mr. Mott for social +and intellectual aid. He lectured: + +"There's a fine class of people. I don't like some of these retired +farmers who come here to spend their last days--especially the Germans. +They hate to pay school-taxes. They hate to spend a cent. But the rest +are a fine class of people. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan came from +here? Used to go to school right at the old building!" + +"I heard he did." + +"Yes. He's a prince. He and I went fishing together, last time he was +here." + +The Dawsons and Mr. Mott teetered upon weary feet, and smiled at Carol +with crystallized expressions. She went on: + +"Tell me, Mr. Mott: Have you ever tried any experiments with any of the +new educational systems? The modern kindergarten methods or the Gary +system?" + +"Oh. Those. Most of these would-be reformers are simply +notoriety-seekers. I believe in manual training, but Latin and +mathematics always will be the backbone of sound Americanism, no matter +what these faddists advocate--heaven knows what they do want--knitting, +I suppose, and classes in wiggling the ears!" + +The Dawsons smiled their appreciation of listening to a savant. Carol +waited till Kennicott should rescue her. The rest of the party waited +for the miracle of being amused. + +Harry and Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons and Dr. Terry Gould--the young +smart set of Gopher Prairie. She was led to them. Juanita Haydock flung +at her in a high, cackling, friendly voice: + +"Well, this is SO nice to have you here. We'll have some good +parties--dances and everything. You'll have to join the Jolly Seventeen. +We play bridge and we have a supper once a month. You play, of course?" + +"N-no, I don't." + +"Really? In St. Paul?" + +"I've always been such a book-worm." + +"We'll have to teach you. Bridge is half the fun of life." Juanita had +become patronizing, and she glanced disrespectfully at Carol's golden +sash, which she had previously admired. + +Harry Haydock said politely, "How do you think you're going to like the +old burg?" + +"I'm sure I shall like it tremendously." + +"Best people on earth here. Great hustlers, too. Course I've had lots +of chances to go live in Minneapolis, but we like it here. Real he-town. +Did you know that Percy Bresnahan came from here?" + +Carol perceived that she had been weakened in the biological struggle +by disclosing her lack of bridge. Roused to nervous desire to regain +her position she turned on Dr. Terry Gould, the young and pool-playing +competitor of her husband. Her eyes coquetted with him while she gushed: + +"I'll learn bridge. But what I really love most is the outdoors. Can't +we all get up a boating party, and fish, or whatever you do, and have a +picnic supper afterwards?" + +"Now you're talking!" Dr. Gould affirmed. He looked rather too obviously +at the cream-smooth slope of her shoulder. "Like fishing? Fishing is my +middle name. I'll teach you bridge. Like cards at all?" + +"I used to be rather good at bezique." + +She knew that bezique was a game of cards--or a game of something else. +Roulette, possibly. But her lie was a triumph. Juanita's handsome, +high-colored, horsey face showed doubt. Harry stroked his nose and said +humbly, "Bezique? Used to be great gambling game, wasn't it?" + +While others drifted to her group, Carol snatched up the conversation. +She laughed and was frivolous and rather brittle. She could not +distinguish their eyes. They were a blurry theater-audience before which +she self-consciously enacted the comedy of being the Clever Little Bride +of Doc Kennicott: + +"These-here celebrated Open Spaces, that's what I'm going out for. I'll +never read anything but the sporting-page again. Will converted me on +our Colorado trip. There were so many mousey tourists who were afraid +to get out of the motor 'bus that I decided to be Annie Oakley, the Wild +Western Wampire, and I bought oh! a vociferous skirt which revealed +my perfectly nice ankles to the Presbyterian glare of all the Ioway +schoolma'ams, and I leaped from peak to peak like the nimble chamoys, +and----You may think that Herr Doctor Kennicott is a Nimrod, but you +ought to have seen me daring him to strip to his B. V. D.'s and go +swimming in an icy mountain brook." + +She knew that they were thinking of becoming shocked, but Juanita +Haydock was admiring, at least. She swaggered on: + +"I'm sure I'm going to ruin Will as a respectable practitioner----Is he +a good doctor, Dr. Gould?" + +Kennicott's rival gasped at this insult to professional ethics, and he +took an appreciable second before he recovered his social manner. +"I'll tell you, Mrs. Kennicott." He smiled at Kennicott, to imply that +whatever he might say in the stress of being witty was not to count +against him in the commercio-medical warfare. "There's some people +in town that say the doc is a fair to middlin' diagnostician and +prescription-writer, but let me whisper this to you--but for heaven's +sake don't tell him I said so--don't you ever go to him for anything +more serious than a pendectomy of the left ear or a strabismus of the +cardiograph." + +No one save Kennicott knew exactly what this meant, but they laughed, +and Sam Clark's party assumed a glittering lemon-yellow color of brocade +panels and champagne and tulle and crystal chandeliers and sporting +duchesses. Carol saw that George Edwin Mott and the blanched Mr. and +Mrs. Dawson were not yet hypnotized. They looked as though they wondered +whether they ought to look as though they disapproved. She concentrated +on them: + +"But I know whom I wouldn't have dared to go to Colorado with! Mr. +Dawson there! I'm sure he's a regular heart-breaker. When we were +introduced he held my hand and squeezed it frightfully." + +"Haw! Haw! Haw!" The entire company applauded. Mr. Dawson was beatified. +He had been called many things--loan-shark, skinflint, tightwad, +pussyfoot--but he had never before been called a flirt. + +"He is wicked, isn't he, Mrs. Dawson? Don't you have to lock him up?" + +"Oh no, but maybe I better," attempted Mrs. Dawson, a tint on her pallid +face. + +For fifteen minutes Carol kept it up. She asserted that she was going +to stage a musical comedy, that she preferred cafe parfait to beefsteak, +that she hoped Dr. Kennicott would never lose his ability to make love +to charming women, and that she had a pair of gold stockings. They gaped +for more. But she could not keep it up. She retired to a chair behind +Sam Clark's bulk. The smile-wrinkles solemnly flattened out in the faces +of all the other collaborators in having a party, and again they stood +about hoping but not expecting to be amused. + +Carol listened. She discovered that conversation did not exist in Gopher +Prairie. Even at this affair, which brought out the young smart set, +the hunting squire set, the respectable intellectual set, and the solid +financial set, they sat up with gaiety as with a corpse. + +Juanita Haydock talked a good deal in her rattling voice but it was +invariably of personalities: the rumor that Raymie Wutherspoon was going +to send for a pair of patent leather shoes with gray buttoned tops; the +rheumatism of Champ Perry; the state of Guy Pollock's grippe; and the +dementia of Jim Howland in painting his fence salmon-pink. + +Sam Clark had been talking to Carol about motor cars, but he felt +his duties as host. While he droned, his brows popped up and down. He +interrupted himself, "Must stir 'em up." He worried at his wife, "Don't +you think I better stir 'em up?" He shouldered into the center of the +room, and cried: + +"Let's have some stunts, folks." + +"Yes, let's!" shrieked Juanita Haydock. + +"Say, Dave, give us that stunt about the Norwegian catching a hen." + +"You bet; that's a slick stunt; do that, Dave!" cheered Chet Dashaway. + +Mr. Dave Dyer obliged. + +All the guests moved their lips in anticipation of being called on for +their own stunts. + +"Ella, come on and recite 'Old Sweetheart of Mine,' for us," demanded +Sam. + +Miss Ella Stowbody, the spinster daughter of the Ionic bank, scratched +her dry palms and blushed. "Oh, you don't want to hear that old thing +again." + +"Sure we do! You bet!" asserted Sam. + +"My voice is in terrible shape tonight." + +"Tut! Come on!" + +Sam loudly explained to Carol, "Ella is our shark at elocuting. She's +had professional training. She studied singing and oratory and dramatic +art and shorthand for a year, in Milwaukee." + +Miss Stowbody was reciting. As encore to "An Old Sweetheart of Mine," +she gave a peculiarly optimistic poem regarding the value of smiles. + +There were four other stunts: one Jewish, one Irish, one juvenile, and +Nat Hicks's parody of Mark Antony's funeral oration. + +During the winter Carol was to hear Dave Dyer's hen-catching +impersonation seven times, "An Old Sweetheart of Mine" nine times, the +Jewish story and the funeral oration twice; but now she was ardent +and, because she did so want to be happy and simple-hearted, she was as +disappointed as the others when the stunts were finished, and the party +instantly sank back into coma. + +They gave up trying to be festive; they began to talk naturally, as they +did at their shops and homes. + +The men and women divided, as they had been tending to do all evening. +Carol was deserted by the men, left to a group of matrons who steadily +pattered of children, sickness, and cooks--their own shop-talk. She was +piqued. She remembered visions of herself as a smart married woman in +a drawing-room, fencing with clever men. Her dejection was relieved by +speculation as to what the men were discussing, in the corner between +the piano and the phonograph. Did they rise from these housewifely +personalities to a larger world of abstractions and affairs? + +She made her best curtsy to Mrs. Dawson; she twittered, "I won't have my +husband leaving me so soon! I'm going over and pull the wretch's +ears." She rose with a jeune fille bow. She was self-absorbed and +self-approving because she had attained that quality of sentimentality. +She proudly dipped across the room and, to the interest and commendation +of all beholders, sat on the arm of Kennicott's chair. + +He was gossiping with Sam Clark, Luke Dawson, Jackson Elder of the +planing-mill, Chet Dashaway, Dave Dyer, Harry Haydock, and Ezra +Stowbody, president of the Ionic bank. + +Ezra Stowbody was a troglodyte. He had come to Gopher Prairie in 1865. +He was a distinguished bird of prey--swooping thin nose, turtle mouth, +thick brows, port-wine cheeks, floss of white hair, contemptuous eyes. +He was not happy in the social changes of thirty years. Three decades +ago, Dr. Westlake, Julius Flickerbaugh the lawyer, Merriman Peedy the +Congregational pastor and himself had been the arbiters. That was as +it should be; the fine arts--medicine, law, religion, and +finance--recognized as aristocratic; four Yankees democratically +chatting with but ruling the Ohioans and Illini and Swedes and Germans +who had ventured to follow them. But Westlake was old, almost retired; +Julius Flickerbaugh had lost much of his practice to livelier attorneys; +Reverend (not The Reverend) Peedy was dead; and nobody was impressed in +this rotten age of automobiles by the "spanking grays" which Ezra still +drove. The town was as heterogeneous as Chicago. Norwegians and Germans +owned stores. The social leaders were common merchants. Selling nails +was considered as sacred as banking. These upstarts--the Clarks, the +Haydocks--had no dignity. They were sound and conservative in politics, +but they talked about motor cars and pump-guns and heaven only knew +what new-fangled fads. Mr. Stowbody felt out of place with them. But +his brick house with the mansard roof was still the largest residence in +town, and he held his position as squire by occasionally appearing among +the younger men and reminding them by a wintry eye that without the +banker none of them could carry on their vulgar businesses. + +As Carol defied decency by sitting down with the men, Mr. Stowbody was +piping to Mr. Dawson, "Say, Luke, when was't Biggins first settled in +Winnebago Township? Wa'n't it in 1879?" + +"Why no 'twa'n't!" Mr. Dawson was indignant. "He come out from Vermont +in 1867--no, wait, in 1868, it must have been--and took a claim on the +Rum River, quite a ways above Anoka." + +"He did not!" roared Mr. Stowbody. "He settled first in Blue Earth +County, him and his father!" + +("What's the point at issue?") Carol whispered to Kennicott. + +("Whether this old duck Biggins had an English setter or a Llewellyn. +They've been arguing it all evening!") + +Dave Dyer interrupted to give tidings, "D' tell you that Clara Biggins +was in town couple days ago? She bought a hot-water bottle--expensive +one, too--two dollars and thirty cents!" + +"Yaaaaaah!" snarled Mr. Stowbody. "Course. She's just like her grandad +was. Never save a cent. Two dollars and twenty--thirty, was it?--two +dollars and thirty cents for a hot-water bottle! Brick wrapped up in a +flannel petticoat just as good, anyway!" + +"How's Ella's tonsils, Mr. Stowbody?" yawned Chet Dashaway. + +While Mr. Stowbody gave a somatic and psychic study of them, Carol +reflected, "Are they really so terribly interested in Ella's tonsils, +or even in Ella's esophagus? I wonder if I could get them away from +personalities? Let's risk damnation and try." + +"There hasn't been much labor trouble around here, has there, Mr. +Stowbody?" she asked innocently. + +"No, ma'am, thank God, we've been free from that, except maybe with +hired girls and farm-hands. Trouble enough with these foreign farmers; +if you don't watch these Swedes they turn socialist or populist or some +fool thing on you in a minute. Of course, if they have loans you can +make 'em listen to reason. I just have 'em come into the bank for a +talk, and tell 'em a few things. I don't mind their being democrats, +so much, but I won't stand having socialists around. But thank God, we +ain't got the labor trouble they have in these cities. Even Jack Elder +here gets along pretty well, in the planing-mill, don't you, Jack?" + +"Yep. Sure. Don't need so many skilled workmen in my place, and it's +a lot of these cranky, wage-hogging, half-baked skilled mechanics that +start trouble--reading a lot of this anarchist literature and union +papers and all." + +"Do you approve of union labor?" Carol inquired of Mr. Elder. + +"Me? I should say not! It's like this: I don't mind dealing with my men +if they think they've got any grievances--though Lord knows what's come +over workmen, nowadays--don't appreciate a good job. But still, if they +come to me honestly, as man to man, I'll talk things over with them. But +I'm not going to have any outsider, any of these walking delegates, or +whatever fancy names they call themselves now--bunch of rich grafters, +living on the ignorant workmen! Not going to have any of those fellows +butting in and telling ME how to run MY business!" + +Mr. Elder was growing more excited, more belligerent and patriotic. "I +stand for freedom and constitutional rights. If any man don't like my +shop, he can get up and git. Same way, if I don't like him, he gits. +And that's all there is to it. I simply can't understand all these +complications and hoop-te-doodles and government reports and wage-scales +and God knows what all that these fellows are balling up the labor +situation with, when it's all perfectly simple. They like what I pay +'em, or they get out. That's all there is to it!" + +"What do you think of profit-sharing?" Carol ventured. + +Mr. Elder thundered his answer, while the others nodded, solemnly and +in tune, like a shop-window of flexible toys, comic mandarins and judges +and ducks and clowns, set quivering by a breeze from the open door: + +"All this profit-sharing and welfare work and insurance and old-age +pension is simply poppycock. Enfeebles a workman's independence--and +wastes a lot of honest profit. The half-baked thinker that isn't dry +behind the ears yet, and these suffragettes and God knows what all +buttinskis there are that are trying to tell a business man how to run +his business, and some of these college professors are just about as +bad, the whole kit and bilin' of 'em are nothing in God's world but +socialism in disguise! And it's my bounden duty as a producer to resist +every attack on the integrity of American industry to the last ditch. +Yes--SIR!" + +Mr. Elder wiped his brow. + +Dave Dyer added, "Sure! You bet! What they ought to do is simply to +hang every one of these agitators, and that would settle the whole thing +right off. Don't you think so, doc?" + +"You bet," agreed Kennicott. + +The conversation was at last relieved of the plague of Carol's +intrusions and they settled down to the question of whether the justice +of the peace had sent that hobo drunk to jail for ten days or twelve. +It was a matter not readily determined. Then Dave Dyer communicated his +carefree adventures on the gipsy trail: + +"Yep. I get good time out of the flivver. 'Bout a week ago I motored +down to New Wurttemberg. That's forty-three----No, let's see: It's +seventeen miles to Belldale, and 'bout six and three-quarters, call it +seven, to Torgenquist, and it's a good nineteen miles from there to New +Wurttemberg--seventeen and seven and nineteen, that makes, uh, let me +see: seventeen and seven 's twenty-four, plus nineteen, well say plus +twenty, that makes forty-four, well anyway, say about forty-three +or -four miles from here to New Wurttemberg. We got started about +seven-fifteen, prob'ly seven-twenty, because I had to stop and fill the +radiator, and we ran along, just keeping up a good steady gait----" + +Mr. Dyer did finally, for reasons and purposes admitted and justified, +attain to New Wurttemberg. + +Once--only once--the presence of the alien Carol was recognized. Chet +Dashaway leaned over and said asthmatically, "Say, uh, have you been +reading this serial 'Two Out' in Tingling Tales? Corking yarn! Gosh, the +fellow that wrote it certainly can sling baseball slang!" + +The others tried to look literary. Harry Haydock offered, "Juanita is +a great hand for reading high-class stuff, like 'Mid the Magnolias' by +this Sara Hetwiggin Butts, and 'Riders of Ranch Reckless.' Books. But +me," he glanced about importantly, as one convinced that no other hero +had ever been in so strange a plight, "I'm so darn busy I don't have +much time to read." + +"I never read anything I can't check against," said Sam Clark. + +Thus ended the literary portion of the conversation, and for seven +minutes Jackson Elder outlined reasons for believing that the +pike-fishing was better on the west shore of Lake Minniemashie than on +the east--though it was indeed quite true that on the east shore Nat +Hicks had caught a pike altogether admirable. + +The talk went on. It did go on! Their voices were monotonous, +thick, emphatic. They were harshly pompous, like men in the +smoking-compartments of Pullman cars. They did not bore Carol. They +frightened her. She panted, "They will be cordial to me, because my man +belongs to their tribe. God help me if I were an outsider!" + +Smiling as changelessly as an ivory figurine she sat quiescent, avoiding +thought, glancing about the living-room and hall, noting their betrayal +of unimaginative commercial prosperity. Kennicott said, "Dandy interior, +eh? My idea of how a place ought to be furnished. Modern." She looked +polite, and observed the oiled floors, hard-wood staircase, unused +fireplace with tiles which resembled brown linoleum, cut-glass vases +standing upon doilies, and the barred, shut, forbidding unit bookcases +that were half filled with swashbuckler novels and unread-looking sets +of Dickens, Kipling, O. Henry, and Elbert Hubbard. + +She perceived that even personalities were failing to hold the party. +The room filled with hesitancy as with a fog. People cleared their +throats, tried to choke down yawns. The men shot their cuffs and the +women stuck their combs more firmly into their back hair. + +Then a rattle, a daring hope in every eye, the swinging of a door, the +smell of strong coffee, Dave Dyer's mewing voice in a triumphant, "The +eats!" They began to chatter. They had something to do. They could +escape from themselves. They fell upon the food--chicken sandwiches, +maple cake, drug-store ice cream. Even when the food was gone they +remained cheerful. They could go home, any time now, and go to bed! + +They went, with a flutter of coats, chiffon scarfs, and good-bys. + +Carol and Kennicott walked home. + +"Did you like them?" he asked. + +"They were terribly sweet to me." + +"Uh, Carrie----You ought to be more careful about shocking folks. +Talking about gold stockings, and about showing your ankles to +schoolteachers and all!" More mildly: "You gave 'em a good time, but I'd +watch out for that, 'f I were you. Juanita Haydock is such a damn cat. I +wouldn't give her a chance to criticize me." + +"My poor effort to lift up the party! Was I wrong to try to amuse them?" + +"No! No! Honey, I didn't mean----You were the only up-and-coming person +in the bunch. I just mean----Don't get onto legs and all that immoral +stuff. Pretty conservative crowd." + +She was silent, raw with the shameful thought that the attentive circle +might have been criticizing her, laughing at her. + +"Don't, please don't worry!" he pleaded. + +"Silence." + +"Gosh; I'm sorry I spoke about it. I just meant----But they were crazy +about you. Sam said to me, 'That little lady of yours is the slickest +thing that ever came to this town,' he said; and Ma Dawson--I didn't +hardly know whether she'd like you or not, she's such a dried-up old +bird, but she said, 'Your bride is so quick and bright, I declare, she +just wakes me up.'" + +Carol liked praise, the flavor and fatness of it, but she was so +energetically being sorry for herself that she could not taste this +commendation. + +"Please! Come on! Cheer up!" His lips said it, his anxious shoulder said +it, his arm about her said it, as they halted on the obscure porch of +their house. + +"Do you care if they think I'm flighty, Will?" + +"Me? Why, I wouldn't care if the whole world thought you were this or +that or anything else. You're my--well, you're my soul!" + +He was an undefined mass, as solid-seeming as rock. She found his +sleeve, pinched it, cried, "I'm glad! It's sweet to be wanted! You must +tolerate my frivolousness. You're all I have!" + +He lifted her, carried her into the house, and with her arms about his +neck she forgot Main Street. + + + +CHAPTER V + +I + + +"WE'LL steal the whole day, and go hunting. I want you to see the +country round here," Kennicott announced at breakfast. "I'd take the +car--want you to see how swell she runs since I put in a new piston. +But we'll take a team, so we can get right out into the fields. Not many +prairie chickens left now, but we might just happen to run onto a small +covey." + +He fussed over his hunting-kit. He pulled his hip boots out to full +length and examined them for holes. He feverishly counted his shotgun +shells, lecturing her on the qualities of smokeless powder. He drew the +new hammerless shotgun out of its heavy tan leather case and made her +peep through the barrels to see how dazzlingly free they were from rust. + +The world of hunting and camping-outfits and fishing-tackle was +unfamiliar to her, and in Kennicott's interest she found something +creative and joyous. She examined the smooth stock, the carved hard +rubber butt of the gun. The shells, with their brass caps and sleek +green bodies and hieroglyphics on the wads, were cool and comfortably +heavy in her hands. + +Kennicott wore a brown canvas hunting-coat with vast pockets lining +the inside, corduroy trousers which bulged at the wrinkles, peeled and +scarred shoes, a scarecrow felt hat. In this uniform he felt virile. +They clumped out to the livery buggy, they packed the kit and the box of +lunch into the back, crying to each other that it was a magnificent day. + +Kennicott had borrowed Jackson Elder's red and white English setter, a +complacent dog with a waving tail of silver hair which flickered in the +sunshine. As they started, the dog yelped, and leaped at the horses' +heads, till Kennicott took him into the buggy, where he nuzzled Carol's +knees and leaned out to sneer at farm mongrels. + +The grays clattered out on the hard dirt road with a pleasant song of +hoofs: "Ta ta ta rat! Ta ta ta rat!" It was early and fresh, the air +whistling, frost bright on the golden rod. As the sun warmed the world +of stubble into a welter of yellow they turned from the highroad, +through the bars of a farmer's gate, into a field, slowly bumping over +the uneven earth. In a hollow of the rolling prairie they lost sight +even of the country road. It was warm and placid. Locusts trilled among +the dry wheat-stalks, and brilliant little flies hurtled across the +buggy. A buzz of content filled the air. Crows loitered and gossiped in +the sky. + +The dog had been let out and after a dance of excitement he settled down +to a steady quartering of the field, forth and back, forth and back, his +nose down. + +"Pete Rustad owns this farm, and he told me he saw a small covey of +chickens in the west forty, last week. Maybe we'll get some sport after +all," Kennicott chuckled blissfully. + +She watched the dog in suspense, breathing quickly every time he seemed +to halt. She had no desire to slaughter birds, but she did desire to +belong to Kennicott's world. + +The dog stopped, on the point, a forepaw held up. + +"By golly! He's hit a scent! Come on!" squealed Kennicott. He leaped +from the buggy, twisted the reins about the whip-socket, swung her out, +caught up his gun, slipped in two shells, stalked toward the rigid dog, +Carol pattering after him. The setter crawled ahead, his tail quivering, +his belly close to the stubble. Carol was nervous. She expected clouds +of large birds to fly up instantly. Her eyes were strained with staring. +But they followed the dog for a quarter of a mile, turning, doubling, +crossing two low hills, kicking through a swale of weeds, crawling +between the strands of a barbed-wire fence. The walking was hard on +her pavement-trained feet. The earth was lumpy, the stubble prickly and +lined with grass, thistles, abortive stumps of clover. She dragged and +floundered. + +She heard Kennicott gasp, "Look!" Three gray birds were starting up +from the stubble. They were round, dumpy, like enormous bumble bees. +Kennicott was sighting, moving the barrel. She was agitated. Why didn't +he fire? The birds would be gone! Then a crash, another, and two birds +turned somersaults in the air, plumped down. + +When he showed her the birds she had no sensation of blood. These heaps +of feathers were so soft and unbruised--there was about them no hint of +death. She watched her conquering man tuck them into his inside pocket, +and trudged with him back to the buggy. + +They found no more prairie chickens that morning. + +At noon they drove into her first farmyard, a private village, a white +house with no porches save a low and quite dirty stoop at the back, +a crimson barn with white trimmings, a glazed brick silo, an +ex-carriage-shed, now the garage of a Ford, an unpainted cow-stable, a +chicken-house, a pig-pen, a corn-crib, a granary, the galvanized-iron +skeleton tower of a wind-mill. The dooryard was of packed yellow clay, +treeless, barren of grass, littered with rusty plowshares and wheels +of discarded cultivators. Hardened trampled mud, like lava, filled the +pig-pen. The doors of the house were grime-rubbed, the corners and eaves +were rusted with rain, and the child who stared at them from the kitchen +window was smeary-faced. But beyond the barn was a clump of scarlet +geraniums; the prairie breeze was sunshine in motion; the flashing metal +blades of the windmill revolved with a lively hum; a horse neighed, a +rooster crowed, martins flew in and out of the cow-stable. + +A small spare woman with flaxen hair trotted from the house. She was +twanging a Swedish patois--not in monotone, like English, but singing +it, with a lyrical whine: + +"Pete he say you kom pretty soon hunting, doctor. My, dot's fine you +kom. Is dis de bride? Ohhhh! Ve yoost say las' night, ve hope maybe ve +see her som day. My, soch a pretty lady!" Mrs. Rustad was shining with +welcome. "Vell, vell! Ay hope you lak dis country! Von't you stay for +dinner, doctor?" + +"No, but I wonder if you wouldn't like to give us a glass of milk?" +condescended Kennicott. + +"Vell Ay should say Ay vill! You vait har a second and Ay run on de +milk-house!" She nervously hastened to a tiny red building beside the +windmill; she came back with a pitcher of milk from which Carol filled +the thermos bottle. + +As they drove off Carol admired, "She's the dearest thing I ever saw. +And she adores you. You are the Lord of the Manor." + +"Oh no," much pleased, "but still they do ask my advice about things. +Bully people, these Scandinavian farmers. And prosperous, too. Helga +Rustad, she's still scared of America, but her kids will be doctors and +lawyers and governors of the state and any darn thing they want to." + +"I wonder----" Carol was plunged back into last night's Weltschmerz. +"I wonder if these farmers aren't bigger than we are? So simple and +hard-working. The town lives on them. We townies are parasites, and yet +we feel superior to them. Last night I heard Mr. Haydock talking about +'hicks.' Apparently he despises the farmers because they haven't reached +the social heights of selling thread and buttons." + +"Parasites? Us? Where'd the farmers be without the town? Who lends them +money? Who--why, we supply them with everything!" + +"Don't you find that some of the farmers think they pay too much for the +services of the towns?" + +"Oh, of course there's a lot of cranks among the farmers same as there +are among any class. Listen to some of these kickers, a fellow'd +think that the farmers ought to run the state and the whole +shooting-match--probably if they had their way they'd fill up the +legislature with a lot of farmers in manure-covered boots--yes, and +they'd come tell me I was hired on a salary now, and couldn't fix my +fees! That'd be fine for you, wouldn't it!" + +"But why shouldn't they?" + +"Why? That bunch of----Telling ME----Oh, for heaven's sake, let's quit +arguing. All this discussing may be all right at a party but----Let's +forget it while we're hunting." + +"I know. The Wonderlust--probably it's a worse affliction than the +Wanderlust. I just wonder----" + +She told herself that she had everything in the world. And after each +self-rebuke she stumbled again on "I just wonder----" + +They ate their sandwiches by a prairie slew: long grass reaching up out +of clear water, mossy bogs, red-winged black-birds, the scum a splash of +gold-green. Kennicott smoked a pipe while she leaned back in the buggy +and let her tired spirit be absorbed in the Nirvana of the incomparable +sky. + +They lurched to the highroad and awoke from their sun-soaked drowse at +the sound of the clopping hoofs. They paused to look for partridges in a +rim of woods, little woods, very clean and shiny and gay, silver birches +and poplars with immaculate green trunks, encircling a lake of sandy +bottom, a splashing seclusion demure in the welter of hot prairie. + +Kennicott brought down a fat red squirrel and at dusk he had a dramatic +shot at a flight of ducks whirling down from the upper air, skimming the +lake, instantly vanishing. + +They drove home under the sunset. Mounds of straw, and wheat-stacks like +bee-hives, stood out in startling rose and gold, and the green-tufted +stubble glistened. As the vast girdle of crimson darkened, the fulfilled +land became autumnal in deep reds and browns. The black road before +the buggy turned to a faint lavender, then was blotted to uncertain +grayness. Cattle came in a long line up to the barred gates of the +farmyards, and over the resting land was a dark glow. + +Carol had found the dignity and greatness which had failed her in Main +Street. + + + +II + + +Till they had a maid they took noon dinner and six o'clock supper at +Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house. + +Mrs. Elisha Gurrey, relict of Deacon Gurrey the dealer in hay and grain, +was a pointed-nosed, simpering woman with iron-gray hair drawn so tight +that it resembled a soiled handkerchief covering her head. But she was +unexpectedly cheerful, and her dining-room, with its thin tablecloth on +a long pine table, had the decency of clean bareness. + +In the line of unsmiling, methodically chewing guests, like horses at +a manger, Carol came to distinguish one countenance: the pale, long, +spectacled face and sandy pompadour hair of Mr. Raymond P. Wutherspoon, +known as "Raymie," professional bachelor, manager and one half the +sales-force in the shoe-department of the Bon Ton Store. + +"You will enjoy Gopher Prairie very much, Mrs. Kennicott," petitioned +Raymie. His eyes were like those of a dog waiting to be let in out of +the cold. He passed the stewed apricots effusively. "There are a great +many bright cultured people here. Mrs. Wilks, the Christian Science +reader, is a very bright woman--though I am not a Scientist myself, +in fact I sing in the Episcopal choir. And Miss Sherwin of the high +school--she is such a pleasing, bright girl--I was fitting her to a pair +of tan gaiters yesterday, I declare, it really was a pleasure." + +"Gimme the butter, Carrie," was Kennicott's comment. She defied him by +encouraging Raymie: + +"Do you have amateur dramatics and so on here?" + +"Oh yes! The town's just full of talent. The Knights of Pythias put on a +dandy minstrel show last year." + +"It's nice you're so enthusiastic." + +"Oh, do you really think so? Lots of folks jolly me for trying to get +up shows and so on. I tell them they have more artistic gifts than they +know. Just yesterday I was saying to Harry Haydock: if he would read +poetry, like Longfellow, or if he would join the band--I get so much +pleasure out of playing the cornet, and our band-leader, Del Snafflin, +is such a good musician, I often say he ought to give up his barbering +and become a professional musician, he could play the clarinet in +Minneapolis or New York or anywhere, but--but I couldn't get Harry to +see it at all and--I hear you and the doctor went out hunting yesterday. +Lovely country, isn't it. And did you make some calls? The mercantile +life isn't inspiring like medicine. It must be wonderful to see how +patients trust you, doctor." + +"Huh. It's me that's got to do all the trusting. Be damn sight more +wonderful 'f they'd pay their bills," grumbled Kennicott and, to Carol, +he whispered something which sounded like "gentleman hen." + +But Raymie's pale eyes were watering at her. She helped him with, "So +you like to read poetry?" + +"Oh yes, so much--though to tell the truth, I don't get much time +for reading, we're always so busy at the store and----But we had the +dandiest professional reciter at the Pythian Sisters sociable last +winter." + +Carol thought she heard a grunt from the traveling salesman at the end +of the table, and Kennicott's jerking elbow was a grunt embodied. She +persisted: + +"Do you get to see many plays, Mr. Wutherspoon?" + +He shone at her like a dim blue March moon, and sighed, "No, but I do +love the movies. I'm a real fan. One trouble with books is that they're +not so thoroughly safeguarded by intelligent censors as the movies are, +and when you drop into the library and take out a book you never know +what you're wasting your time on. What I like in books is a wholesome, +really improving story, and sometimes----Why, once I started a novel by +this fellow Balzac that you read about, and it told how a lady wasn't +living with her husband, I mean she wasn't his wife. It went into +details, disgustingly! And the English was real poor. I spoke to the +library about it, and they took it off the shelves. I'm not narrow, +but I must say I don't see any use in this deliberately dragging in +immorality! Life itself is so full of temptations that in literature one +wants only that which is pure and uplifting." + +"What's the name of that Balzac yarn? Where can I get hold of it?" +giggled the traveling salesman. + +Raymie ignored him. "But the movies, they are mostly clean, and their +humor----Don't you think that the most essential quality for a person to +have is a sense of humor?" + +"I don't know. I really haven't much," said Carol. + +He shook his finger at her. "Now, now, you're too modest. I'm sure we +can all see that you have a perfectly corking sense of humor. Besides, +Dr. Kennicott wouldn't marry a lady that didn't have. We all know how he +loves his fun!" + +"You bet. I'm a jokey old bird. Come on, Carrie; let's beat it," +remarked Kennicott. + +Raymie implored, "And what is your chief artistic interest, Mrs. +Kennicott?" + +"Oh----" Aware that the traveling salesman had murmured, "Dentistry," +she desperately hazarded, "Architecture." + +"That's a real nice art. I've always said--when Haydock & Simons were +finishing the new front on the Bon Ton building, the old man came to me, +you know, Harry's father, 'D. H.,' I always call him, and he asked me +how I liked it, and I said to him, 'Look here, D. H.,' I said--you see, +he was going to leave the front plain, and I said to him, 'It's all very +well to have modern lighting and a big display-space,' I said, 'but when +you get that in, you want to have some architecture, too,' I said, and +he laughed and said he guessed maybe I was right, and so he had 'em put +on a cornice." + +"Tin!" observed the traveling salesman. + +Raymie bared his teeth like a belligerent mouse. "Well, what if it is +tin? That's not my fault. I told D. H. to make it polished granite. You +make me tired!" + +"Leave us go! Come on, Carrie, leave us go!" from Kennicott. + +Raymie waylaid them in the hall and secretly informed Carol that she +musn't mind the traveling salesman's coarseness--he belonged to the +hwa pollwa. + +Kennicott chuckled, "Well, child, how about it? Do you prefer an +artistic guy like Raymie to stupid boobs like Sam Clark and me?" + +"My dear! Let's go home, and play pinochle, and laugh, and be foolish, +and slip up to bed, and sleep without dreaming. It's beautiful to be +just a solid citizeness!" + + + +III + +From the Gopher Prairie Weekly Dauntless: + + +One of the most charming affairs of the season was held Tuesday evening +at the handsome new residence of Sam and Mrs. Clark when many of our +most prominent citizens gathered to greet the lovely new bride of our +popular local physician, Dr. Will Kennicott. All present spoke of the +many charms of the bride, formerly Miss Carol Milford of St. Paul. Games +and stunts were the order of the day, with merry talk and conversation. +At a late hour dainty refreshments were served, and the party broke up +with many expressions of pleasure at the pleasant affair. Among those +present were Mesdames Kennicott, Elder---- + +* * * * * + +Dr. Will Kennicott, for the past several years one of our most popular +and skilful physicians and surgeons, gave the town a delightful surprise +when he returned from an extended honeymoon tour in Colorado this week +with his charming bride, nee Miss Carol Milford of St. Paul, whose +family are socially prominent in Minneapolis and Mankato. Mrs. Kennicott +is a lady of manifold charms, not only of striking charm of appearance +but is also a distinguished graduate of a school in the East and has +for the past year been prominently connected in an important position +of responsibility with the St. Paul Public Library, in which city Dr. +"Will" had the good fortune to meet her. The city of Gopher Prairie +welcomes her to our midst and prophesies for her many happy years in +the energetic city of the twin lakes and the future. The Dr. and Mrs. +Kennicott will reside for the present at the Doctor's home on Poplar +Street which his charming mother has been keeping for him who has now +returned to her own home at Lac-qui-Meurt leaving a host of friends who +regret her absence and hope to see her soon with us again. + + + +IV + + +She knew that if she was ever to effect any of the "reforms" which she +had pictured, she must have a starting-place. What confused her during +the three or four months after her marriage was not lack of perception +that she must be definite, but sheer careless happiness of her first +home. + +In the pride of being a housewife she loved every detail--the brocade +armchair with the weak back, even the brass water-cock on the hot-water +reservoir, when she had become familiar with it by trying to scour it to +brilliance. + +She found a maid--plump radiant Bea Sorenson from Scandia Crossing. Bea +was droll in her attempt to be at once a respectful servant and a bosom +friend. They laughed together over the fact that the stove did not draw, +over the slipperiness of fish in the pan. + +Like a child playing Grandma in a trailing skirt, Carol paraded uptown +for her marketing, crying greetings to housewives along the way. +Everybody bowed to her, strangers and all, and made her feel that they +wanted her, that she belonged here. In city shops she was merely A +Customer--a hat, a voice to bore a harassed clerk. Here she was Mrs. Doc +Kennicott, and her preferences in grape-fruit and manners were known +and remembered and worth discussing . . . even if they weren't worth +fulfilling. + +Shopping was a delight of brisk conferences. The very merchants whose +droning she found the dullest at the two or three parties which were +given to welcome her were the pleasantest confidants of all when they +had something to talk about--lemons or cotton voile or floor-oil. +With that skip-jack Dave Dyer, the druggist, she conducted a long +mock-quarrel. She pretended that he cheated her in the price of +magazines and candy; he pretended she was a detective from the Twin +Cities. He hid behind the prescription-counter, and when she stamped +her foot he came out wailing, "Honest, I haven't done nothing crooked +today--not yet." + +She never recalled her first impression of Main Street; never +had precisely the same despair at its ugliness. By the end of two +shopping-tours everything had changed proportions. As she never entered +it, the Minniemashie House ceased to exist for her. Clark's Hardware +Store, Dyer's Drug Store, the groceries of Ole Jenson and Frederick +Ludelmeyer and Howland & Gould, the meat markets, the notions +shop--they expanded, and hid all other structures. When she entered Mr. +Ludelmeyer's store and he wheezed, "Goot mornin', Mrs. Kennicott. Vell, +dis iss a fine day," she did not notice the dustiness of the shelves +nor the stupidity of the girl clerk; and she did not remember the mute +colloquy with him on her first view of Main Street. + +She could not find half the kinds of food she wanted, but that made +shopping more of an adventure. When she did contrive to get sweetbreads +at Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market the triumph was so vast that she buzzed +with excitement and admired the strong wise butcher, Mr. Dahl. + +She appreciated the homely ease of village life. She liked the old men, +farmers, G.A.R. veterans, who when they gossiped sometimes squatted on +their heels on the sidewalk, like resting Indians, and reflectively spat +over the curb. + +She found beauty in the children. + +She had suspected that her married friends exaggerated their passion +for children. But in her work in the library, children had become +individuals to her, citizens of the State with their own rights and +their own senses of humor. In the library she had not had much time +to give them, but now she knew the luxury of stopping, gravely asking +Bessie Clark whether her doll had yet recovered from its rheumatism, and +agreeing with Oscar Martinsen that it would be Good Fun to go trapping +"mushrats." + +She touched the thought, "It would be sweet to have a baby of my own. I +do want one. Tiny----No! Not yet! There's so much to do. And I'm still +tired from the job. It's in my bones." + +She rested at home. She listened to the village noises common to all +the world, jungle or prairie; sounds simple and charged with magic--dogs +barking, chickens making a gurgling sound of content, children at play, +a man beating a rug, wind in the cottonwood trees, a locust fiddling, +a footstep on the walk, jaunty voices of Bea and a grocer's boy in the +kitchen, a clinking anvil, a piano--not too near. + +Twice a week, at least, she drove into the country with Kennicott, to +hunt ducks in lakes enameled with sunset, or to call on patients who +looked up to her as the squire's lady and thanked her for toys and +magazines. Evenings she went with her husband to the motion pictures and +was boisterously greeted by every other couple; or, till it became too +cold, they sat on the porch, bawling to passers-by in motors, or to +neighbors who were raking the leaves. The dust became golden in the low +sun; the street was filled with the fragrance of burning leaves. + + + +V + + +But she hazily wanted some one to whom she could say what she thought. + +On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and wished that the +telephone would ring, Bea announced Miss Vida Sherwin. + +Despite Vida Sherwin's lively blue eyes, if you had looked at her in +detail you would have found her face slightly lined, and not so much +sallow as with the bloom rubbed off; you would have found her chest +flat, and her fingers rough from needle and chalk and penholder; her +blouses and plain cloth skirts undistinguished; and her hat worn too far +back, betraying a dry forehead. But you never did look at Vida Sherwin +in detail. You couldn't. Her electric activity veiled her. She was as +energetic as a chipmunk. Her fingers fluttered; her sympathy came out +in spurts; she sat on the edge of a chair in eagerness to be near her +auditor, to send her enthusiasms and optimism across. + +She rushed into the room pouring out: "I'm afraid you'll think the +teachers have been shabby in not coming near you, but we wanted to +give you a chance to get settled. I am Vida Sherwin, and I try to teach +French and English and a few other things in the high school." + +"I've been hoping to know the teachers. You see, I was a librarian----" + +"Oh, you needn't tell me. I know all about you! Awful how much I +know--this gossipy village. We need you so much here. It's a dear loyal +town (and isn't loyalty the finest thing in the world!) but it's a +rough diamond, and we need you for the polishing, and we're ever so +humble----" She stopped for breath and finished her compliment with a +smile. + +"If I COULD help you in any way----Would I be committing the +unpardonable sin if I whispered that I think Gopher Prairie is a tiny +bit ugly?" + +"Of course it's ugly. Dreadfully! Though I'm probably the only person in +town to whom you could safely say that. (Except perhaps Guy Pollock +the lawyer--have you met him?--oh, you MUST!--he's simply a +darling--intelligence and culture and so gentle.) But I don't care so +much about the ugliness. That will change. It's the spirit that gives +me hope. It's sound. Wholesome. But afraid. It needs live creatures like +you to awaken it. I shall slave-drive you!" + +"Splendid. What shall I do? I've been wondering if it would be possible +to have a good architect come here to lecture." + +"Ye-es, but don't you think it would be better to work with existing +agencies? Perhaps it will sound slow to you, but I was thinking----It +would be lovely if we could get you to teach Sunday School." + +Carol had the empty expression of one who finds that she has been +affectionately bowing to a complete stranger. "Oh yes. But I'm afraid I +wouldn't be much good at that. My religion is so foggy." + +"I know. So is mine. I don't care a bit for dogma. Though I do stick +firmly to the belief in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man +and the leadership of Jesus. As you do, of course." + +Carol looked respectable and thought about having tea. + +"And that's all you need teach in Sunday School. It's the personal +influence. Then there's the library-board. You'd be so useful on that. +And of course there's our women's study club--the Thanatopsis Club." + +"Are they doing anything? Or do they read papers made out of the +Encyclopedia?" + +Miss Sherwin shrugged. "Perhaps. But still, they are so earnest. They +will respond to your fresher interest. And the Thanatopsis does do a +good social work--they've made the city plant ever so many trees, and +they run the rest-room for farmers' wives. And they do take such an +interest in refinement and culture. So--in fact, so very unique." + +Carol was disappointed--by nothing very tangible. She said politely, +"I'll think them all over. I must have a while to look around first." + +Miss Sherwin darted to her, smoothed her hair, peered at her. "Oh, +my dear, don't you suppose I know? These first tender days of +marriage--they're sacred to me. Home, and children that need you, and +depend on you to keep them alive, and turn to you with their wrinkly +little smiles. And the hearth and----" She hid her face from Carol as +she made an activity of patting the cushion of her chair, but she went +on with her former briskness: + +"I mean, you must help us when you're ready. . . . I'm afraid you'll +think I'm conservative. I am! So much to conserve. All this treasure of +American ideals. Sturdiness and democracy and opportunity. Maybe not at +Palm Beach. But, thank heaven, we're free from such social distinctions +in Gopher Prairie. I have only one good quality--overwhelming belief in +the brains and hearts of our nation, our state, our town. It's so strong +that sometimes I do have a tiny effect on the haughty ten-thousandaires. +I shake 'em up and make 'em believe in ideals--yes, in themselves. But +I get into a rut of teaching. I need young critical things like you to +punch me up. Tell me, what are you reading?" + +"I've been re-reading 'The Damnation of Theron Ware.' Do you know it?" + +"Yes. It was clever. But hard. Man wanted to tear down, not build up. +Cynical. Oh, I do hope I'm not a sentimentalist. But I can't see any use +in this high-art stuff that doesn't encourage us day-laborers to plod +on." + +Ensued a fifteen-minute argument about the oldest topic in the world: +It's art but is it pretty? Carol tried to be eloquent regarding honesty +of observation. Miss Sherwin stood out for sweetness and a cautious use +of the uncomfortable properties of light. At the end Carol cried: + +"I don't care how much we disagree. It's a relief to have somebody +talk something besides crops. Let's make Gopher Prairie rock to its +foundations: let's have afternoon tea instead of afternoon coffee." + +The delighted Bea helped her bring out the ancestral folding +sewing-table, whose yellow and black top was scarred with dotted lines +from a dressmaker's tracing-wheel, and to set it with an embroidered +lunch-cloth, and the mauve-glazed Japanese tea-set which she had brought +from St. Paul. Miss Sherwin confided her latest scheme--moral motion +pictures for country districts, with light from a portable dynamo +hitched to a Ford engine. Bea was twice called to fill the hot-water +pitcher and to make cinnamon toast. + +When Kennicott came home at five he tried to be courtly, as befits the +husband of one who has afternoon tea. Carol suggested that Miss Sherwin +stay for supper, and that Kennicott invite Guy Pollock, the much-praised +lawyer, the poetic bachelor. + +Yes, Pollock could come. Yes, he was over the grippe which had prevented +his going to Sam Clark's party. + +Carol regretted her impulse. The man would be an opinionated politician, +heavily jocular about The Bride. But at the entrance of Guy Pollock she +discovered a personality. Pollock was a man of perhaps thirty-eight, +slender, still, deferential. His voice was low. "It was very good of you +to want me," he said, and he offered no humorous remarks, and did not +ask her if she didn't think Gopher Prairie was "the livest little burg +in the state." + +She fancied that his even grayness might reveal a thousand tints of +lavender and blue and silver. + +At supper he hinted his love for Sir Thomas Browne, Thoreau, Agnes +Repplier, Arthur Symons, Claude Washburn, Charles Flandrau. He presented +his idols diffidently, but he expanded in Carol's bookishness, in Miss +Sherwin's voluminous praise, in Kennicott's tolerance of any one who +amused his wife. + +Carol wondered why Guy Pollock went on digging at routine law-cases; +why he remained in Gopher Prairie. She had no one whom she could ask. +Neither Kennicott nor Vida Sherwin would understand that there might be +reasons why a Pollock should not remain in Gopher Prairie. She enjoyed +the faint mystery. She felt triumphant and rather literary. She already +had a Group. It would be only a while now before she provided the town +with fanlights and a knowledge of Galsworthy. She was doing things! As +she served the emergency dessert of cocoanut and sliced oranges, she +cried to Pollock, "Don't you think we ought to get up a dramatic club?" + + + +CHAPTER VI + +I + +WHEN the first dubious November snow had filtered down, shading with +white the bare clods in the plowed fields, when the first small fire +had been started in the furnace, which is the shrine of a Gopher Prairie +home, Carol began to make the house her own. She dismissed the parlor +furniture--the golden oak table with brass knobs, the moldy brocade +chairs, the picture of "The Doctor." She went to Minneapolis, to scamper +through department stores and small Tenth Street shops devoted to +ceramics and high thought. She had to ship her treasures, but she wanted +to bring them back in her arms. + +Carpenters had torn out the partition between front parlor and back +parlor, thrown it into a long room on which she lavished yellow and +deep blue; a Japanese obi with an intricacy of gold thread on stiff +ultramarine tissue, which she hung as a panel against the maize wall; a +couch with pillows of sapphire velvet and gold bands; chairs which, in +Gopher Prairie, seemed flippant. She hid the sacred family phonograph in +the dining-room, and replaced its stand with a square cabinet on which +was a squat blue jar between yellow candles. + +Kennicott decided against a fireplace. "We'll have a new house in a +couple of years, anyway." + +She decorated only one room. The rest, Kennicott hinted, she'd better +leave till he "made a ten-strike." + +The brown cube of a house stirred and awakened; it seemed to be in +motion; it welcomed her back from shopping; it lost its mildewed +repression. + +The supreme verdict was Kennicott's "Well, by golly, I was afraid the +new junk wouldn't be so comfortable, but I must say this divan, or +whatever you call it, is a lot better than that bumpy old sofa we had, +and when I look around----Well, it's worth all it cost, I guess." + +Every one in town took an interest in the refurnishing. The carpenters +and painters who did not actually assist crossed the lawn to peer +through the windows and exclaim, "Fine! Looks swell!" Dave Dyer at +the drug store, Harry Haydock and Raymie Wutherspoon at the Bon Ton, +repeated daily, "How's the good work coming? I hear the house is getting +to be real classy." + +Even Mrs. Bogart. + +Mrs. Bogart lived across the alley from the rear of Carol's house. She +was a widow, and a Prominent Baptist, and a Good Influence. She had so +painfully reared three sons to be Christian gentlemen that one of them +had become an Omaha bartender, one a professor of Greek, and one, Cyrus +N. Bogart, a boy of fourteen who was still at home, the most brazen +member of the toughest gang in Boytown. + +Mrs. Bogart was not the acid type of Good Influence. She was the soft, +damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging, melancholy, depressingly +hopeful kind. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of old and +indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Bogart, and when they are served at +Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they +keep up the resemblance. + +Carol had noted that Mrs. Bogart from her side window kept an eye upon +the house. The Kennicotts and Mrs. Bogart did not move in the same +sets--which meant precisely the same in Gopher Prairie as it did on +Fifth Avenue or in Mayfair. But the good widow came calling. + +She wheezed in, sighed, gave Carol a pulpy hand, sighed, glanced sharply +at the revelation of ankles as Carol crossed her legs, sighed, inspected +the new blue chairs, smiled with a coy sighing sound, and gave voice: + +"I've wanted to call on you so long, dearie, you know we're neighbors, +but I thought I'd wait till you got settled, you must run in and see me, +how much did that big chair cost?" + +"Seventy-seven dollars!" + +"Sev----Sakes alive! Well, I suppose it's all right for them that can +afford it, though I do sometimes think----Of course as our pastor said +once, at Baptist Church----By the way, we haven't seen you there yet, +and of course your husband was raised up a Baptist, and I do hope +he won't drift away from the fold, of course we all know there isn't +anything, not cleverness or gifts of gold or anything, that can make +up for humility and the inward grace and they can say what they want to +about the P. E. church, but of course there's no church that has more +history or has stayed by the true principles of Christianity better +than the Baptist Church and----In what church were you raised, Mrs. +Kennicott?" + +"W-why, I went to Congregational, as a girl in Mankato, but my college +was Universalist." + +"Well----But of course as the Bible says, is it the Bible, at least I +know I have heard it in church and everybody admits it, it's proper for +the little bride to take her husband's vessel of faith, so we all hope +we shall see you at the Baptist Church and----As I was saying, of course +I agree with Reverend Zitterel in thinking that the great trouble with +this nation today is lack of spiritual faith--so few going to church, +and people automobiling on Sunday and heaven knows what all. But still +I do think that one trouble is this terrible waste of money, people +feeling that they've got to have bath-tubs and telephones in their +houses----I heard you were selling the old furniture cheap." + +"Yes!" + +"Well--of course you know your own mind, but I can't help thinking, when +Will's ma was down here keeping house for him--SHE used to run in to SEE +me, real OFTEN!--it was good enough furniture for her. But there, there, +I mustn't croak, I just wanted to let you know that when you find you +can't depend on a lot of these gadding young folks like the Haydocks and +the Dyers--and heaven only knows how much money Juanita Haydock blows in +in a year--why then you may be glad to know that slow old Aunty Bogart +is always right there, and heaven knows----" A portentous sigh. "--I +HOPE you and your husband won't have any of the troubles, with sickness +and quarreling and wasting money and all that so many of these young +couples do have and----But I must be running along now, dearie. It's +been such a pleasure and----Just run in and see me any time. I hope Will +is well? I thought he looked a wee mite peaked." + +It was twenty minutes later when Mrs. Bogart finally oozed out of the +front door. Carol ran back into the living-room and jerked open the +windows. "That woman has left damp finger-prints in the air," she said. + + + +II + + +Carol was extravagant, but at least she did not try to clear herself of +blame by going about whimpering, "I know I'm terribly extravagant but I +don't seem to be able to help it." + +Kennicott had never thought of giving her an allowance. His mother had +never had one! As a wage-earning spinster Carol had asserted to her +fellow librarians that when she was married, she was going to have an +allowance and be business-like and modern. But it was too much trouble +to explain to Kennicott's kindly stubbornness that she was a practical +housekeeper as well as a flighty playmate. She bought a budget-plan +account book and made her budgets as exact as budgets are likely to be +when they lack budgets. + +For the first month it was a honeymoon jest to beg prettily, to confess, +"I haven't a cent in the house, dear," and to be told, "You're an +extravagant little rabbit." But the budget book made her realize how +inexact were her finances. She became self-conscious; occasionally she +was indignant that she should always have to petition him for the money +with which to buy his food. She caught herself criticizing his belief +that, since his joke about trying to keep her out of the poorhouse had +once been accepted as admirable humor, it should continue to be his +daily bon mot. It was a nuisance to have to run down the street after +him because she had forgotten to ask him for money at breakfast. + +But she couldn't "hurt his feelings," she reflected. He liked the +lordliness of giving largess. + +She tried to reduce the frequency of begging by opening accounts and +having the bills sent to him. She had found that staple groceries, +sugar, flour, could be most cheaply purchased at Axel Egge's rustic +general store. She said sweetly to Axel: + +"I think I'd better open a charge account here." + +"I don't do no business except for cash," grunted Axel. + +She flared, "Do you know who I am?" + +"Yuh, sure, I know. The doc is good for it. But that's yoost a rule I +made. I make low prices. I do business for cash." + +She stared at his red impassive face, and her fingers had the +undignified desire to slap him, but her reason agreed with him. "You're +quite right. You shouldn't break your rule for me." + +Her rage had not been lost. It had been transferred to her husband. She +wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but she had no money. She ran up +the stairs to Kennicott's office. On the door was a sign advertising a +headache cure and stating, "The doctor is out, back at----" Naturally, +the blank space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran down +to the drug store--the doctor's club. + +As she entered she heard Mrs. Dyer demanding, "Dave, I've got to have +some money." + +Carol saw that her husband was there, and two other men, all listening +in amusement. + +Dave Dyer snapped, "How much do you want? Dollar be enough?" + +"No, it won't! I've got to get some underclothes for the kids." + +"Why, good Lord, they got enough now to fill the closet so I couldn't +find my hunting boots, last time I wanted them." + +"I don't care. They're all in rags. You got to give me ten dollars----" + +Carol perceived that Mrs. Dyer was accustomed to this indignity. She +perceived that the men, particularly Dave, regarded it as an excellent +jest. She waited--she knew what would come--it did. Dave yelped, +"Where's that ten dollars I gave you last year?" and he looked to the +other men to laugh. They laughed. + +Cold and still, Carol walked up to Kennicott and commanded, "I want to +see you upstairs." + +"Why--something the matter?" + +"Yes!" + +He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office. Before he +could get out a query she stated: + +"Yesterday, in front of a saloon, I heard a German farm-wife beg her +husband for a quarter, to get a toy for the baby--and he refused. Just +now I've heard Mrs. Dyer going through the same humiliation. And I--I'm +in the same position! I have to beg you for money. Daily! I have just +been informed that I couldn't have any sugar because I hadn't the money +to pay for it!" + +"Who said that? By God, I'll kill any----" + +"Tut. It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg +you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And +hereafter to remember it. The next time, I sha'n't beg. I shall simply +starve. Do you understand? I can't go on being a slave----" + +Her defiance, her enjoyment of the role, ran out. She was sobbing +against his overcoat, "How can you shame me so?" and he was blubbering, +"Dog-gone it, I meant to give you some, and I forgot it. I swear I won't +again. By golly I won't!" + +He pressed fifty dollars upon her, and after that he remembered to give +her money regularly . . . sometimes. + +Daily she determined, "But I must have a stated amount--be +business-like. System. I must do something about it." And daily she +didn't do anything about it. + + + +III + + +Mrs. Bogart had, by the simpering viciousness of her comments on the new +furniture, stirred Carol to economy. She spoke judiciously to Bea +about left-overs. She read the cookbook again and, like a child with +a picture-book, she studied the diagram of the beef which gallantly +continues to browse though it is divided into cuts. + +But she was a deliberate and joyous spendthrift in her preparations for +her first party, the housewarming. She made lists on every envelope +and laundry-slip in her desk. She sent orders to Minneapolis "fancy +grocers." She pinned patterns and sewed. She was irritated when +Kennicott was jocular about "these frightful big doings that are going +on." She regarded the affair as an attack on Gopher Prairie's timidity +in pleasure. "I'll make 'em lively, if nothing else. I'll make 'em stop +regarding parties as committee-meetings." + +Kennicott usually considered himself the master of the house. At his +desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol of happiness, and she +ordered porridge for breakfast, which was his symbol of morality. But +when he came home on the afternoon before the housewarming he found +himself a slave, an intruder, a blunderer. Carol wailed, "Fix the +furnace so you won't have to touch it after supper. And for heaven's +sake take that horrible old door-mat off the porch. And put on your nice +brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so late? Would you mind +hurrying? Here it is almost suppertime, and those fiends are just as +likely as not to come at seven instead of eight. PLEASE hurry!" + +She was as unreasonable as an amateur leading woman on a first night, +and he was reduced to humility. When she came down to supper, when she +stood in the doorway, he gasped. She was in a silver sheath, the calyx +of a lily, her piled hair like black glass; she had the fragility and +costliness of a Viennese goblet; and her eyes were intense. He was +stirred to rise from the table and to hold the chair for her; and all +through supper he ate his bread dry because he felt that she would think +him common if he said "Will you hand me the butter?" + + + +IV + + +She had reached the calmness of not caring whether her guests liked +the party or not, and a state of satisfied suspense in regard to Bea's +technique in serving, before Kennicott cried from the bay-window in +the living-room, "Here comes somebody!" and Mr. and Mrs. Luke Dawson +faltered in, at a quarter to eight. Then in a shy avalanche arrived +the entire aristocracy of Gopher Prairie: all persons engaged in a +profession, or earning more than twenty-five hundred dollars a year, or +possessed of grandparents born in America. + +Even while they were removing their overshoes they were peeping at the +new decorations. Carol saw Dave Dyer secretively turn over the gold +pillows to find a price-tag, and heard Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh, the +attorney, gasp, "Well, I'll be switched," as he viewed the vermilion +print hanging against the Japanese obi. She was amused. But her high +spirits slackened as she beheld them form in dress parade, in a long, +silent, uneasy circle clear round the living-room. She felt that she had +been magically whisked back to her first party, at Sam Clark's. + +"Have I got to lift them, like so many pigs of iron? I don't know that I +can make them happy, but I'll make them hectic." + +A silver flame in the darkling circle, she whirled around, drew them +with her smile, and sang, "I want my party to be noisy and undignified! +This is the christening of my house, and I want you to help me have a +bad influence on it, so that it will be a giddy house. For me, won't you +all join in an old-fashioned square dance? And Mr. Dyer will call." + +She had a record on the phonograph; Dave Dyer was capering in the center +of the floor, loose-jointed, lean, small, rusty headed, pointed of nose, +clapping his hands and shouting, "Swing y' pardners--alamun lef!" + +Even the millionaire Dawsons and Ezra Stowbody and "Professor" George +Edwin Mott danced, looking only slightly foolish; and by rushing about +the room and being coy and coaxing to all persons over forty-five, Carol +got them into a waltz and a Virginia Reel. But when she left them to +disenjoy themselves in their own way Harry Haydock put a one-step record +on the phonograph, the younger people took the floor, and all the elders +sneaked back to their chairs, with crystallized smiles which meant, +"Don't believe I'll try this one myself, but I do enjoy watching the +youngsters dance." + +Half of them were silent; half resumed the discussions of that afternoon +in the store. Ezra Stowbody hunted for something to say, hid a yawn, and +offered to Lyman Cass, the owner of the flour-mill, "How d' you folks +like the new furnace, Lym? Huh? So." + +"Oh, let them alone. Don't pester them. They must like it, or they +wouldn't do it." Carol warned herself. But they gazed at her so +expectantly when she flickered past that she was reconvinced that in +their debauches of respectability they had lost the power of play as +well as the power of impersonal thought. Even the dancers were gradually +crushed by the invisible force of fifty perfectly pure and well-behaved +and negative minds; and they sat down, two by two. In twenty minutes the +party was again elevated to the decorum of a prayer-meeting. + +"We're going to do something exciting," Carol exclaimed to her new +confidante, Vida Sherwin. She saw that in the growing quiet her voice +had carried across the room. Nat Hicks, Ella Stowbody, and Dave Dyer +were abstracted, fingers and lips slightly moving. She knew with a +cold certainty that Dave was rehearsing his "stunt" about the Norwegian +catching the hen, Ella running over the first lines of "An Old +Sweetheart of Mine," and Nat thinking of his popular parody on Mark +Antony's oration. + +"But I will not have anybody use the word 'stunt' in my house," she +whispered to Miss Sherwin. + +"That's good. I tell you: why not have Raymond Wutherspoon sing?" + +"Raymie? Why, my dear, he's the most sentimental yearner in town!" + +"See here, child! Your opinions on house-decorating are sound, but your +opinions of people are rotten! Raymie does wag his tail. But the poor +dear----Longing for what he calls 'self-expression' and no training in +anything except selling shoes. But he can sing. And some day when +he gets away from Harry Haydock's patronage and ridicule, he'll do +something fine." + +Carol apologized for her superciliousness. She urged Raymie, and warned +the planners of "stunts," "We all want you to sing, Mr. Wutherspoon. +You're the only famous actor I'm going to let appear on the stage +tonight." + +While Raymie blushed and admitted, "Oh, they don't want to hear me," he +was clearing his throat, pulling his clean handkerchief farther out of +his breast pocket, and thrusting his fingers between the buttons of his +vest. + +In her affection for Raymie's defender, in her desire to "discover +artistic talent," Carol prepared to be delighted by the recital. + +Raymie sang "Fly as a Bird," "Thou Art My Dove," and "When the Little +Swallow Leaves Its Tiny Nest," all in a reasonably bad offertory tenor. + +Carol was shuddering with the vicarious shame which sensitive people +feel when they listen to an "elocutionist" being humorous, or to a +precocious child publicly doing badly what no child should do at all. +She wanted to laugh at the gratified importance in Raymie's half-shut +eyes; she wanted to weep over the meek ambitiousness which clouded like +an aura his pale face, flap ears, and sandy pompadour. She tried to look +admiring, for the benefit of Miss Sherwin, that trusting admirer of all +that was or conceivably could be the good, the true, and the beautiful. + +At the end of the third ornithological lyric Miss Sherwin roused from +her attitude of inspired vision and breathed to Carol, "My! That was +sweet! Of course Raymond hasn't an unusually good voice, but don't you +think he puts such a lot of feeling into it?" + +Carol lied blackly and magnificently, but without originality: "Oh yes, +I do think he has so much FEELING!" + +She saw that after the strain of listening in a cultured manner the +audience had collapsed; had given up their last hope of being amused. +She cried, "Now we're going to play an idiotic game which I learned in +Chicago. You will have to take off your shoes, for a starter! After that +you will probably break your knees and shoulder-blades." + +Much attention and incredulity. A few eyebrows indicating a verdict that +Doc Kennicott's bride was noisy and improper. + +"I shall choose the most vicious, like Juanita Haydock and myself, as +the shepherds. The rest of you are wolves. Your shoes are the sheep. +The wolves go out into the hall. The shepherds scatter the sheep through +this room, then turn off all the lights, and the wolves crawl in from +the hall and in the darkness they try to get the shoes away from +the shepherds--who are permitted to do anything except bite and use +black-jacks. The wolves chuck the captured shoes out into the hall. No +one excused! Come on! Shoes off!" + +Every one looked at every one else and waited for every one else to +begin. + +Carol kicked off her silver slippers, and ignored the universal glance +at her arches. The embarrassed but loyal Vida Sherwin unbuttoned her +high black shoes. Ezra Stowbody cackled, "Well, you're a terror to old +folks. You're like the gals I used to go horseback-riding with, back in +the sixties. Ain't much accustomed to attending parties barefoot, +but here goes!" With a whoop and a gallant jerk Ezra snatched off his +elastic-sided Congress shoes. + +The others giggled and followed. + +When the sheep had been penned up, in the darkness the timorous wolves +crept into the living-room, squealing, halting, thrown out of their +habit of stolidity by the strangeness of advancing through nothingness +toward a waiting foe, a mysterious foe which expanded and grew more +menacing. The wolves peered to make out landmarks, they touched gliding +arms which did not seem to be attached to a body, they quivered with a +rapture of fear. Reality had vanished. A yelping squabble suddenly rose, +then Juanita Haydock's high titter, and Guy Pollock's astonished, "Ouch! +Quit! You're scalping me!" + +Mrs. Luke Dawson galloped backward on stiff hands and knees into the +safety of the lighted hallway, moaning, "I declare, I nev' was so +upset in my life!" But the propriety was shaken out of her, and she +delightedly continued to ejaculate "Nev' in my LIFE" as she saw the +living-room door opened by invisible hands and shoes hurling through it, +as she heard from the darkness beyond the door a squawling, a bumping, +a resolute "Here's a lot of shoes. Come on, you wolves. Ow! Y' would, +would you!" + +When Carol abruptly turned on the lights in the embattled living-room, +half of the company were sitting back against the walls, where they had +craftily remained throughout the engagement, but in the middle of the +floor Kennicott was wrestling with Harry Haydock--their collars torn +off, their hair in their eyes; and the owlish Mr. Julius Flickerbaugh +was retreating from Juanita Haydock, and gulping with unaccustomed +laughter. Guy Pollock's discreet brown scarf hung down his back. Young +Rita Simons's net blouse had lost two buttons, and betrayed more of her +delicious plump shoulder than was regarded as pure in Gopher Prairie. +Whether by shock, disgust, joy of combat, or physical activity, all the +party were freed from their years of social decorum. George Edwin Mott +giggled; Luke Dawson twisted his beard; Mrs. Clark insisted, "I did too, +Sam--I got a shoe--I never knew I could fight so terrible!" + +Carol was certain that she was a great reformer. + +She mercifully had combs, mirrors, brushes, needle and thread ready. She +permitted them to restore the divine decency of buttons. + +The grinning Bea brought down-stairs a pile of soft thick sheets of +paper with designs of lotos blossoms, dragons, apes, in cobalt and +crimson and gray, and patterns of purple birds flying among sea-green +trees in the valleys of Nowhere. + +"These," Carol announced, "are real Chinese masquerade costumes. I got +them from an importing shop in Minneapolis. You are to put them on over +your clothes, and please forget that you are Minnesotans, and turn into +mandarins and coolies and--and samurai (isn't it?), and anything else +you can think of." + +While they were shyly rustling the paper costumes she disappeared. Ten +minutes after she gazed down from the stairs upon grotesquely ruddy +Yankee heads above Oriental robes, and cried to them, "The Princess +Winky Poo salutes her court!" + +As they looked up she caught their suspense of admiration. They saw an +airy figure in trousers and coat of green brocade edged with gold; a +high gold collar under a proud chin; black hair pierced with jade pins; +a languid peacock fan in an out-stretched hand; eyes uplifted to a +vision of pagoda towers. When she dropped her pose and smiled down +she discovered Kennicott apoplectic with domestic pride--and gray Guy +Pollock staring beseechingly. For a second she saw nothing in all the +pink and brown mass of their faces save the hunger of the two men. + +She shook off the spell and ran down. "We're going to have a real +Chinese concert. Messrs. Pollock, Kennicott, and, well, Stowbody are +drummers; the rest of us sing and play the fife." + +The fifes were combs with tissue paper; the drums were tabourets and the +sewing-table. Loren Wheeler, editor of the Dauntless, led the orchestra, +with a ruler and a totally inaccurate sense of rhythm. The music was a +reminiscence of tom-toms heard at circus fortune-telling tents or at +the Minnesota State Fair, but the whole company pounded and puffed and +whined in a sing-song, and looked rapturous. + +Before they were quite tired of the concert Carol led them in a dancing +procession to the dining-room, to blue bowls of chow mein, with Lichee +nuts and ginger preserved in syrup. + +None of them save that city-rounder Harry Haydock had heard of any +Chinese dish except chop sooey. With agreeable doubt they ventured +through the bamboo shoots into the golden fried noodles of the chow +mein; and Dave Dyer did a not very humorous Chinese dance with Nat +Hicks; and there was hubbub and contentment. + +Carol relaxed, and found that she was shockingly tired. She had carried +them on her thin shoulders. She could not keep it up. She longed for +her father, that artist at creating hysterical parties. She thought of +smoking a cigarette, to shock them, and dismissed the obscene thought +before it was quite formed. She wondered whether they could for five +minutes be coaxed to talk about something besides the winter top +of Knute Stamquist's Ford, and what Al Tingley had said about his +mother-in-law. She sighed, "Oh, let 'em alone. I've done enough." She +crossed her trousered legs, and snuggled luxuriously above her saucer +of ginger; she caught Pollock's congratulatory still smile, and thought +well of herself for having thrown a rose light on the pallid lawyer; +repented the heretical supposition that any male save her husband +existed; jumped up to find Kennicott and whisper, "Happy, my lord? . . . +No, it didn't cost much!" + +"Best party this town ever saw. Only----Don't cross your legs in that +costume. Shows your knees too plain." + +She was vexed. She resented his clumsiness. She returned to Guy Pollock +and talked of Chinese religions--not that she knew anything whatever +about Chinese religions, but he had read a book on the subject as, on +lonely evenings in his office, he had read at least one book on every +subject in the world. Guy's thin maturity was changing in her vision +to flushed youth and they were roaming an island in the yellow sea of +chatter when she realized that the guests were beginning that cough +which indicated, in the universal instinctive language, that they +desired to go home and go to bed. + +While they asserted that it had been "the nicest party they'd ever +seen--my! so clever and original," she smiled tremendously, shook hands, +and cried many suitable things regarding children, and being sure to +wrap up warmly, and Raymie's singing and Juanita Haydock's prowess at +games. Then she turned wearily to Kennicott in a house filled with quiet +and crumbs and shreds of Chinese costumes. + +He was gurgling, "I tell you, Carrie, you certainly are a wonder, and +guess you're right about waking folks up. Now you've showed 'em how, +they won't go on having the same old kind of parties and stunts and +everything. Here! Don't touch a thing! Done enough. Pop up to bed, and +I'll clear up." + +His wise surgeon's-hands stroked her shoulder, and her irritation at his +clumsiness was lost in his strength. + + + +V + +From the Weekly Dauntless: + + +One of the most delightful social events of recent months was held +Wednesday evening in the housewarming of Dr. and Mrs. Kennicott, who +have completely redecorated their charming home on Poplar Street, and +is now extremely nifty in modern color scheme. The doctor and his bride +were at home to their numerous friends and a number of novelties in +diversions were held, including a Chinese orchestra in original and +genuine Oriental costumes, of which Ye Editor was leader. Dainty +refreshments were served in true Oriental style, and one and all voted a +delightful time. + + + +VI + + +The week after, the Chet Dashaways gave a party. The circle of mourners +kept its place all evening, and Dave Dyer did the "stunt" of the +Norwegian and the hen. + + + +CHAPTER VII + +I + +GOPHER PRAIRIE was digging in for the winter. Through late November and +all December it snowed daily; the thermometer was at zero and might +drop to twenty below, or thirty. Winter is not a season in the North +Middlewest; it is an industry. Storm sheds were erected at every door. +In every block the householders, Sam Clark, the wealthy Mr. Dawson, all +save asthmatic Ezra Stowbody who extravagantly hired a boy, were seen +perilously staggering up ladders, carrying storm windows and screwing +them to second-story jambs. While Kennicott put up his windows Carol +danced inside the bedrooms and begged him not to swallow the screws, +which he held in his mouth like an extraordinary set of external false +teeth. + +The universal sign of winter was the town handyman--Miles Bjornstam, a +tall, thick, red-mustached bachelor, opinionated atheist, general-store +arguer, cynical Santa Claus. Children loved him, and he sneaked +away from work to tell them improbable stories of sea-faring and +horse-trading and bears. The children's parents either laughed at him +or hated him. He was the one democrat in town. He called both Lyman Cass +the miller and the Finn homesteader from Lost Lake by their first names. +He was known as "The Red Swede," and considered slightly insane. + +Bjornstam could do anything with his hands--solder a pan, weld an +automobile spring, soothe a frightened filly, tinker a clock, carve a +Gloucester schooner which magically went into a bottle. Now, for a week, +he was commissioner general of Gopher Prairie. He was the only person +besides the repairman at Sam Clark's who understood plumbing. Everybody +begged him to look over the furnace and the water-pipes. He rushed +from house to house till after bedtime--ten o'clock. Icicles from burst +water-pipes hung along the skirt of his brown dog-skin overcoat; his +plush cap, which he never took off in the house, was a pulp of ice and +coal-dust; his red hands were cracked to rawness; he chewed the stub of +a cigar. + +But he was courtly to Carol. He stooped to examine the furnace flues; he +straightened, glanced down at her, and hemmed, "Got to fix your furnace, +no matter what else I do." + +The poorer houses of Gopher Prairie, where the services of Miles +Bjornstam were a luxury--which included the shanty of Miles +Bjornstam--were banked to the lower windows with earth and manure. Along +the railroad the sections of snow fence, which had been stacked all +summer in romantic wooden tents occupied by roving small boys, were set +up to prevent drifts from covering the track. + +The farmers came into town in home-made sleighs, with bed-quilts and hay +piled in the rough boxes. + +Fur coats, fur caps, fur mittens, overshoes buckling almost to the +knees, gray knitted scarfs ten feet long, thick woolen socks, canvas +jackets lined with fluffy yellow wool like the plumage of ducklings, +moccasins, red flannel wristlets for the blazing chapped wrists +of boys--these protections against winter were busily dug out of +moth-ball-sprinkled drawers and tar-bags in closets, and all over town +small boys were squealing, "Oh, there's my mittens!" or "Look at my +shoe-packs!" There is so sharp a division between the panting summer and +the stinging winter of the Northern plains that they rediscovered with +surprise and a feeling of heroism this armor of an Artic explorer. + +Winter garments surpassed even personal gossip as the topic at parties. +It was good form to ask, "Put on your heavies yet?" There were as many +distinctions in wraps as in motor cars. The lesser sort appeared in +yellow and black dogskin coats, but Kennicott was lordly in a long +raccoon ulster and a new seal cap. When the snow was too deep for his +motor he went off on country calls in a shiny, floral, steel-tipped +cutter, only his ruddy nose and his cigar emerging from the fur. + +Carol herself stirred Main Street by a loose coat of nutria. Her +finger-tips loved the silken fur. + +Her liveliest activity now was organizing outdoor sports in the +motor-paralyzed town. + +The automobile and bridge-whist had not only made more evident the +social divisions in Gopher Prairie but they had also enfeebled the +love of activity. It was so rich-looking to sit and drive--and so easy. +Skiing and sliding were "stupid" and "old-fashioned." In fact, the +village longed for the elegance of city recreations almost as much as +the cities longed for village sports; and Gopher Prairie took as +much pride in neglecting coasting as St. Paul--or New York--in going +coasting. Carol did inspire a successful skating-party in mid-November. +Plover Lake glistened in clear sweeps of gray-green ice, ringing to the +skates. On shore the ice-tipped reeds clattered in the wind, and oak +twigs with stubborn last leaves hung against a milky sky. Harry Haydock +did figure-eights, and Carol was certain that she had found the perfect +life. But when snow had ended the skating and she tried to get up a +moonlight sliding party, the matrons hesitated to stir away from their +radiators and their daily bridge-whist imitations of the city. She had +to nag them. They scooted down a long hill on a bob-sled, they upset +and got snow down their necks they shrieked that they would do it again +immediately--and they did not do it again at all. + +She badgered another group into going skiing. They shouted and threw +snowballs, and informed her that it was SUCH fun, and they'd have +another skiing expedition right away, and they jollily returned home and +never thereafter left their manuals of bridge. + +Carol was discouraged. She was grateful when Kennicott invited her to +go rabbit-hunting in the woods. She waded down stilly cloisters +between burnt stump and icy oak, through drifts marked with a million +hieroglyphics of rabbit and mouse and bird. She squealed as he leaped +on a pile of brush and fired at the rabbit which ran out. He belonged +there, masculine in reefer and sweater and high-laced boots. That night +she ate prodigiously of steak and fried potatoes; she produced electric +sparks by touching his ear with her finger-tip; she slept twelve hours; +and awoke to think how glorious was this brave land. + +She rose to a radiance of sun on snow. Snug in her furs she +trotted up-town. Frosted shingles smoked against a sky colored like +flax-blossoms, sleigh-bells clinked, shouts of greeting were loud in the +thin bright air, and everywhere was a rhythmic sound of wood-sawing. It +was Saturday, and the neighbors' sons were getting up the winter fuel. +Behind walls of corded wood in back yards their sawbucks stood in +depressions scattered with canary-yellow flakes of sawdust. The frames +of their buck-saws were cherry-red, the blades blued steel, and the +fresh cut ends of the sticks--poplar, maple, iron-wood, birch--were +marked with engraved rings of growth. The boys wore shoe-packs, blue +flannel shirts with enormous pearl buttons, and mackinaws of crimson, +lemon yellow, and foxy brown. + +Carol cried "Fine day!" to the boys; she came in a glow to Howland & +Gould's grocery, her collar white with frost from her breath; she bought +a can of tomatoes as though it were Orient fruit; and returned home +planning to surprise Kennicott with an omelet creole for dinner. + +So brilliant was the snow-glare that when she entered the house she +saw the door-knobs, the newspaper on the table, every white surface as +dazzling mauve, and her head was dizzy in the pyrotechnic dimness. When +her eyes had recovered she felt expanded, drunk with health, mistress of +life. The world was so luminous that she sat down at her rickety little +desk in the living-room to make a poem. (She got no farther than "The +sky is bright, the sun is warm, there ne'er will be another storm.") + +In the mid-afternoon of this same day Kennicott was called into the +country. It was Bea's evening out--her evening for the Lutheran Dance. +Carol was alone from three till midnight. She wearied of reading pure +love stories in the magazines and sat by a radiator, beginning to brood. + +Thus she chanced to discover that she had nothing to do. + + + +II + + +She had, she meditated, passed through the novelty of seeing the +town and meeting people, of skating and sliding and hunting. Bea was +competent; there was no household labor except sewing and darning +and gossipy assistance to Bea in bed-making. She couldn't satisfy her +ingenuity in planning meals. At Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market you didn't +give orders--you wofully inquired whether there was anything today +besides steak and pork and ham. The cuts of beef were not cuts. They +were hacks. Lamb chops were as exotic as sharks' fins. The meat-dealers +shipped their best to the city, with its higher prices. + +In all the shops there was the same lack of choice. She could not find +a glass-headed picture-nail in town; she did not hunt for the sort of +veiling she wanted--she took what she could get; and only at Howland & +Gould's was there such a luxury as canned asparagus. Routine care was +all she could devote to the house. Only by such fussing as the Widow +Bogart's could she make it fill her time. + +She could not have outside employment. To the village doctor's wife it +was taboo. + +She was a woman with a working brain and no work. + +There were only three things which she could do: Have children; start +her career of reforming; or become so definitely a part of the town that +she would be fulfilled by the activities of church and study-club and +bridge-parties. + +Children, yes, she wanted them, but----She was not quite ready. She had +been embarrassed by Kennicott's frankness, but she agreed with him +that in the insane condition of civilization, which made the rearing +of citizens more costly and perilous than any other crime, it was +inadvisable to have children till he had made more money. She was +sorry----Perhaps he had made all the mystery of love a mechanical +cautiousness but----She fled from the thought with a dubious, "Some +day." + +Her "reforms," her impulses toward beauty in raw Main Street, they had +become indistinct. But she would set them going now. She would! She +swore it with soft fist beating the edges of the radiator. And at the +end of all her vows she had no notion as to when and where the crusade +was to begin. + +Become an authentic part of the town? She began to think with unpleasant +lucidity. She reflected that she did not know whether the people liked +her. She had gone to the women at afternoon-coffees, to the merchants +in their stores, with so many outpouring comments and whimsies that +she hadn't given them a chance to betray their opinions of her. The men +smiled--but did they like her? She was lively among the women--but +was she one of them? She could not recall many times when she had been +admitted to the whispering of scandal which is the secret chamber of +Gopher Prairie conversation. + +She was poisoned with doubt, as she drooped up to bed. + +Next day, through her shopping, her mind sat back and observed. Dave +Dyer and Sam Clark were as cordial as she had been fancying; but wasn't +there an impersonal abruptness in the "H' are yuh?" of Chet Dashaway? +Howland the grocer was curt. Was that merely his usual manner? + +"It's infuriating to have to pay attention to what people think. In +St. Paul I didn't care. But here I'm spied on. They're watching +me. I mustn't let it make me self-conscious," she coaxed +herself--overstimulated by the drug of thought, and offensively on the +defensive. + + + +III + + +A thaw which stripped the snow from the sidewalks; a ringing iron night +when the lakes could be heard booming; a clear roistering morning. In +tam o'shanter and tweed skirt Carol felt herself a college junior going +out to play hockey. She wanted to whoop, her legs ached to run. On the +way home from shopping she yielded, as a pup would have yielded. She +galloped down a block and as she jumped from a curb across a welter of +slush, she gave a student "Yippee!" + +She saw that in a window three old women were gasping. Their triple +glare was paralyzing. Across the street, at another window, the curtain +had secretively moved. She stopped, walked on sedately, changed from the +girl Carol into Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. + +She never again felt quite young enough and defiant enough and free +enough to run and halloo in the public streets; and it was as a Nice +Married Woman that she attended the next weekly bridge of the Jolly +Seventeen. + + + +IV + + +The Jolly Seventeen (the membership of which ranged from fourteen to +twenty-six) was the social cornice of Gopher Prairie. It was the country +club, the diplomatic set, the St. Cecilia, the Ritz oval room, the Club +de Vingt. To belong to it was to be "in." Though its membership partly +coincided with that of the Thanatopsis study club, the Jolly Seventeen +as a separate entity guffawed at the Thanatopsis, and considered it +middle-class and even "highbrow." + +Most of the Jolly Seventeen were young married women, with their +husbands as associate members. Once a week they had a women's +afternoon-bridge; once a month the husbands joined them for supper and +evening-bridge; twice a year they had dances at I. O. O. F. Hall. Then +the town exploded. Only at the annual balls of the Firemen and of the +Eastern Star was there such prodigality of chiffon scarfs and tangoing +and heart-burnings, and these rival institutions were not select--hired +girls attended the Firemen's Ball, with section-hands and laborers. Ella +Stowbody had once gone to a Jolly Seventeen Soiree in the village hack, +hitherto confined to chief mourners at funerals; and Harry Haydock and +Dr. Terry Gould always appeared in the town's only specimens of evening +clothes. + +The afternoon-bridge of the Jolly Seventeen which followed Carol's +lonely doubting was held at Juanita Haydock's new concrete bungalow, +with its door of polished oak and beveled plate-glass, jar of ferns in +the plastered hall, and in the living-room, a fumed oak Morris chair, +sixteen color-prints, and a square varnished table with a mat made of +cigar-ribbons on which was one Illustrated Gift Edition and one pack of +cards in a burnt-leather case. + +Carol stepped into a sirocco of furnace heat. They were already playing. +Despite her flabby resolves she had not yet learned bridge. She was +winningly apologetic about it to Juanita, and ashamed that she should +have to go on being apologetic. + +Mrs. Dave Dyer, a sallow woman with a thin prettiness devoted to +experiments in religious cults, illnesses, and scandal-bearing, shook +her finger at Carol and trilled, "You're a naughty one! I don't believe +you appreciate the honor, when you got into the Jolly Seventeen so +easy!" + +Mrs. Chet Dashaway nudged her neighbor at the second table. But Carol +kept up the appealing bridal manner so far as possible. She twittered, +"You're perfectly right. I'm a lazy thing. I'll make Will start teaching +me this very evening." Her supplication had all the sound of birdies +in the nest, and Easter church-bells, and frosted Christmas cards. +Internally she snarled, "That ought to be saccharine enough." She sat in +the smallest rocking-chair, a model of Victorian modesty. But she saw or +she imagined that the women who had gurgled at her so welcomingly when +she had first come to Gopher Prairie were nodding at her brusquely. + +During the pause after the first game she petitioned Mrs. Jackson Elder, +"Don't you think we ought to get up another bob-sled party soon?" + +"It's so cold when you get dumped in the snow," said Mrs. Elder, +indifferently. + +"I hate snow down my neck," volunteered Mrs. Dave Dyer, with an +unpleasant look at Carol and, turning her back, she bubbled at Rita +Simons, "Dearie, won't you run in this evening? I've got the loveliest +new Butterick pattern I want to show you." + +Carol crept back to her chair. In the fervor of discussing the game they +ignored her. She was not used to being a wallflower. She struggled to +keep from oversensitiveness, from becoming unpopular by the sure method +of believing that she was unpopular; but she hadn't much reserve of +patience, and at the end of the second game, when Ella Stowbody sniffily +asked her, "Are you going to send to Minneapolis for your dress for +the next soiree--heard you were," Carol said "Don't know yet" with +unnecessary sharpness. + +She was relieved by the admiration with which the jeune fille Rita +Simons looked at the steel buckles on her pumps; but she resented Mrs. +Howland's tart demand, "Don't you find that new couch of yours is too +broad to be practical?" She nodded, then shook her head, and touchily +left Mrs. Howland to get out of it any meaning she desired. Immediately +she wanted to make peace. She was close to simpering in the sweetness +with which she addressed Mrs Howland: "I think that is the prettiest +display of beef-tea your husband has in his store." + +"Oh yes, Gopher Prairie isn't so much behind the times," gibed Mrs. +Howland. Some one giggled. + +Their rebuffs made her haughty; her haughtiness irritated them to +franker rebuffs; they were working up to a state of painfully righteous +war when they were saved by the coming of food. + +Though Juanita Haydock was highly advanced in the matters of +finger-bowls, doilies, and bath-mats, her "refreshments" were typical +of all the afternoon-coffees. Juanita's best friends, Mrs. Dyer and Mrs. +Dashaway, passed large dinner plates, each with a spoon, a fork, and a +coffee cup without saucer. They apologized and discussed the afternoon's +game as they passed through the thicket of women's feet. Then they +distributed hot buttered rolls, coffee poured from an enamel-ware pot, +stuffed olives, potato salad, and angel's-food cake. There was, even in +the most strictly conforming Gopher Prairie circles, a certain option +as to collations. The olives need not be stuffed. Doughnuts were in some +houses well thought of as a substitute for the hot buttered rolls. +But there was in all the town no heretic save Carol who omitted +angel's-food. + +They ate enormously. Carol had a suspicion that the thriftier housewives +made the afternoon treat do for evening supper. + +She tried to get back into the current. She edged over to Mrs. McGanum. +Chunky, amiable, young Mrs. McGanum with her breast and arms of a +milkmaid, and her loud delayed laugh which burst startlingly from +a sober face, was the daughter of old Dr. Westlake, and the wife of +Westlake's partner, Dr. McGanum. Kennicott asserted that Westlake and +McGanum and their contaminated families were tricky, but Carol had found +them gracious. She asked for friendliness by crying to Mrs. McGanum, +"How is the baby's throat now?" and she was attentive while Mrs. McGanum +rocked and knitted and placidly described symptoms. + +Vida Sherwin came in after school, with Miss Ethel Villets, the +town librarian. Miss Sherwin's optimistic presence gave Carol more +confidence. She talked. She informed the circle "I drove almost down to +Wahkeenyan with Will, a few days ago. Isn't the country lovely! And I do +admire the Scandinavian farmers down there so: their big red barns and +silos and milking-machines and everything. Do you all know that lonely +Lutheran church, with the tin-covered spire, that stands out alone on +a hill? It's so bleak; somehow it seems so brave. I do think the +Scandinavians are the hardiest and best people----" + +"Oh, do you THINK so?" protested Mrs. Jackson Elder. "My husband says +the Svenskas that work in the planing-mill are perfectly terrible--so +silent and cranky, and so selfish, the way they keep demanding raises. +If they had their way they'd simply ruin the business." + +"Yes, and they're simply GHASTLY hired girls!" wailed Mrs. Dave Dyer. +"I swear, I work myself to skin and bone trying to please my hired +girls--when I can get them! I do everything in the world for them. They +can have their gentleman friends call on them in the kitchen any time, +and they get just the same to eat as we do, if there's, any left over, +and I practically never jump on them." + +Juanita Haydock rattled, "They're ungrateful, all that class of people. +I do think the domestic problem is simply becoming awful. I don't know +what the country's coming to, with these Scandahoofian clodhoppers +demanding every cent you can save, and so ignorant and impertinent, +and on my word, demanding bath-tubs and everything--as if they weren't +mighty good and lucky at home if they got a bath in the wash-tub." + +They were off, riding hard. Carol thought of Bea and waylaid them: + +"But isn't it possibly the fault of the mistresses if the maids are +ungrateful? For generations we've given them the leavings of food, and +holes to live in. I don't want to boast, but I must say I don't have +much trouble with Bea. She's so friendly. The Scandinavians are sturdy +and honest----" + +Mrs. Dave Dyer snapped, "Honest? Do you call it honest to hold us up for +every cent of pay they can get? I can't say that I've had any of them +steal anything (though you might call it stealing to eat so much that a +roast of beef hardly lasts three days), but just the same I don't intend +to let them think they can put anything over on ME! I always make them +pack and unpack their trunks down-stairs, right under my eyes, and then +I know they aren't being tempted to dishonesty by any slackness on MY +part!" + +"How much do the maids get here?" Carol ventured. + +Mrs. B. J. Gougerling, wife of the banker, stated in a shocked manner, +"Any place from three-fifty to five-fifty a week! I know positively that +Mrs. Clark, after swearing that she wouldn't weaken and encourage them +in their outrageous demands, went and paid five-fifty--think of it! +practically a dollar a day for unskilled work and, of course, her food +and room and a chance to do her own washing right in with the rest of +the wash. HOW MUCH DO YOU PAY, Mrs. KENNICOTT?" + +"Yes! How much do you pay?" insisted half a dozen. + +"W-why, I pay six a week," she feebly confessed. + +They gasped. Juanita protested, "Don't you think it's hard on the rest +of us when you pay so much?" Juanita's demand was reinforced by the +universal glower. + +Carol was angry. "I don't care! A maid has one of the hardest jobs on +earth. She works from ten to eighteen hours a day. She has to wash slimy +dishes and dirty clothes. She tends the children and runs to the door +with wet chapped hands and----" + +Mrs. Dave Dyer broke into Carol's peroration with a furious, "That's all +very well, but believe me, I do those things myself when I'm without +a maid--and that's a good share of the time for a person that isn't +willing to yield and pay exorbitant wages!" + +Carol was retorting, "But a maid does it for strangers, and all she gets +out of it is the pay----" + +Their eyes were hostile. Four of them were talking at once. Vida +Sherwin's dictatorial voice cut through, took control of the revolution: + +"Tut, tut, tut, tut! What angry passions--and what an idiotic +discussion! All of you getting too serious. Stop it! Carol Kennicott, +you're probably right, but you're too much ahead of the times. Juanita, +quit looking so belligerent. What is this, a card party or a hen fight? +Carol, you stop admiring yourself as the Joan of Arc of the hired girls, +or I'll spank you. You come over here and talk libraries with Ethel +Villets. Boooooo! If there's any more pecking, I'll take charge of the +hen roost myself!" + +They all laughed artificially, and Carol obediently "talked libraries." + +A small-town bungalow, the wives of a village doctor and a village +dry-goods merchant, a provincial teacher, a colloquial brawl over +paying a servant a dollar more a week. Yet this insignificance echoed +cellar-plots and cabinet meetings and labor conferences in Persia +and Prussia, Rome and Boston, and the orators who deemed themselves +international leaders were but the raised voices of a billion Juanitas +denouncing a million Carols, with a hundred thousand Vida Sherwins +trying to shoo away the storm. + +Carol felt guilty. She devoted herself to admiring the spinsterish Miss +Villets--and immediately committed another offense against the laws of +decency. + +"We haven't seen you at the library yet," Miss Villets reproved. + +"I've wanted to run in so much but I've been getting settled and----I'll +probably come in so often you'll get tired of me! I hear you have such a +nice library." + +"There are many who like it. We have two thousand more books than +Wakamin." + +"Isn't that fine. I'm sure you are largely responsible. I've had some +experience, in St. Paul." + +"So I have been informed. Not that I entirely approve of library methods +in these large cities. So careless, letting tramps and all sorts of +dirty persons practically sleep in the reading-rooms." + +"I know, but the poor souls----Well, I'm sure you will agree with me in +one thing: The chief task of a librarian is to get people to read." + +"You feel so? My feeling, Mrs. Kennicott, and I am merely quoting +the librarian of a very large college, is that the first duty of the +CONSCIENTIOUS librarian is to preserve the books." + +"Oh!" Carol repented her "Oh." Miss Villets stiffened, and attacked: + +"It may be all very well in cities, where they have unlimited funds, to +let nasty children ruin books and just deliberately tear them up, and +fresh young men take more books out than they are entitled to by the +regulations, but I'm never going to permit it in this library!" + +"What if some children are destructive? They learn to read. Books are +cheaper than minds." + +"Nothing is cheaper than the minds of some of these children that come +in and bother me simply because their mothers don't keep them home where +they belong. Some librarians may choose to be so wishy-washy and turn +their libraries into nursing-homes and kindergartens, but as long as I'm +in charge, the Gopher Prairie library is going to be quiet and decent, +and the books well kept!" + +Carol saw that the others were listening, waiting for her to be +objectionable. She flinched before their dislike. She hastened to smile +in agreement with Miss Villets, to glance publicly at her wrist-watch, +to warble that it was "so late--have to hurry home--husband--such nice +party--maybe you were right about maids, prejudiced because Bea so +nice--such perfectly divine angel's-food, Mrs. Haydock must give me the +recipe--good-by, such happy party----" + +She walked home. She reflected, "It was my fault. I was touchy. And I +opposed them so much. Only----I can't! I can't be one of them if I must +damn all the maids toiling in filthy kitchens, all the ragged hungry +children. And these women are to be my arbiters, the rest of my life!" + +She ignored Bea's call from the kitchen; she ran up-stairs to the +unfrequented guest-room; she wept in terror, her body a pale arc as +she knelt beside a cumbrous black-walnut bed, beside a puffy mattress +covered with a red quilt, in a shuttered and airless room. + + + +CHAPTER VIII + + +"DON'T I, in looking for things to do, show that I'm not attentive +enough to Will? Am I impressed enough by his work? I will be. Oh, I will +be. If I can't be one of the town, if I must be an outcast----" + +When Kennicott came home she bustled, "Dear, you must tell me a lot more +about your cases. I want to know. I want to understand." + +"Sure. You bet." And he went down to fix the furnace. + +At supper she asked, "For instance, what did you do today?" + +"Do today? How do you mean?" + +"Medically. I want to understand----" + +"Today? Oh, there wasn't much of anything: couple chumps with +bellyaches, and a sprained wrist, and a fool woman that thinks she wants +to kill herself because her husband doesn't like her and----Just routine +work." + +"But the unhappy woman doesn't sound routine!" + +"Her? Just case of nerves. You can't do much with these marriage +mix-ups." + +"But dear, PLEASE, will you tell me about the next case that you do +think is interesting?" + +"Sure. You bet. Tell you about anything that----Say that's pretty good +salmon. Get it at Howland's?" + + + +II + + +Four days after the Jolly Seventeen debacle Vida Sherwin called and +casually blew Carol's world to pieces. + +"May I come in and gossip a while?" she said, with such excess of bright +innocence that Carol was uneasy. Vida took off her furs with a bounce, +she sat down as though it were a gymnasium exercise, she flung out: + +"Feel disgracefully good, this weather! Raymond Wutherspoon says if he +had my energy he'd be a grand opera singer. I always think this climate +is the finest in the world, and my friends are the dearest people in the +world, and my work is the most essential thing in the world. Probably +I fool myself. But I know one thing for certain: You're the pluckiest +little idiot in the world." + +"And so you are about to flay me alive." Carol was cheerful about it. + +"Am I? Perhaps. I've been wondering--I know that the third party to a +squabble is often the most to blame: the one who runs between A and B +having a beautiful time telling each of them what the other has said. +But I want you to take a big part in vitalizing Gopher Prairie and +so----Such a very unique opportunity and----Am I silly?" + +"I know what you mean. I was too abrupt at the Jolly Seventeen." + +"It isn't that. Matter of fact, I'm glad you told them some wholesome +truths about servants. (Though perhaps you were just a bit tactless.) +It's bigger than that. I wonder if you understand that in a secluded +community like this every newcomer is on test? People cordial to her +but watching her all the time. I remember when a Latin teacher came here +from Wellesley, they resented her broad A. Were sure it was affected. Of +course they have discussed you----" + +"Have they talked about me much?" + +"My dear!" + +"I always feel as though I walked around in a cloud, looking out at +others but not being seen. I feel so inconspicuous and so normal--so +normal that there's nothing about me to discuss. I can't realize that +Mr. and Mrs. Haydock must gossip about me." Carol was working up a small +passion of distaste. "And I don't like it. It makes me crawly to think +of their daring to talk over all I do and say. Pawing me over! I resent +it. I hate----" + +"Wait, child! Perhaps they resent some things in you. I want you to try +and be impersonal. They'd paw over anybody who came in new. Didn't you, +with newcomers in College?" + +"Yes." + +"Well then! Will you be impersonal? I'm paying you the compliment of +supposing that you can be. I want you to be big enough to help me make +this town worth while." + +"I'll be as impersonal as cold boiled potatoes. (Not that I shall ever +be able to help you 'make the town worth while.') What do they say about +me? Really. I want to know." + +"Of course the illiterate ones resent your references to anything +farther away than Minneapolis. They're so suspicious--that's it, +suspicious. And some think you dress too well." + +"Oh, they do, do they! Shall I dress in gunny-sacking to suit them?" + +"Please! Are you going to be a baby?" + +"I'll be good," sulkily. + +"You certainly will, or I won't tell you one single thing. You must +understand this: I'm not asking you to change yourself. Just want you +to know what they think. You must do that, no matter how absurd their +prejudices are, if you're going to handle them. Is it your ambition to +make this a better town, or isn't it?" + +"I don't know whether it is or not!" + +"Why--why----Tut, tut, now, of course it is! Why, I depend on you. +You're a born reformer." + +"I am not--not any more!" + +"Of course you are." + +"Oh, if I really could help----So they think I'm affected?" + +"My lamb, they do! Now don't say they're nervy. After all, Gopher +Prairie standards are as reasonable to Gopher Prairie as Lake Shore +Drive standards are to Chicago. And there's more Gopher Prairies than +there are Chicagos. Or Londons. And----I'll tell you the whole story: +They think you're showing off when you say 'American' instead of +'Ammurrican.' They think you're too frivolous. Life's so serious to them +that they can't imagine any kind of laughter except Juanita's snortling. +Ethel Villets was sure you were patronizing her when----" + +"Oh, I was not!" + +"----you talked about encouraging reading; and Mrs. Elder thought you +were patronizing when you said she had 'such a pretty little car.' She +thinks it's an enormous car! And some of the merchants say you're too +flip when you talk to them in the store and----" + +"Poor me, when I was trying to be friendly!" + +"----every housewife in town is doubtful about your being so chummy with +your Bea. All right to be kind, but they say you act as though she were +your cousin. (Wait now! There's plenty more.) And they think you were +eccentric in furnishing this room--they think the broad couch and that +Japanese dingus are absurd. (Wait! I know they're silly.) And I guess +I've heard a dozen criticize you because you don't go to church oftener +and----" + +"I can't stand it--I can't bear to realize that they've been saying all +these things while I've been going about so happily and liking them. I +wonder if you ought to have told me? It will make me self-conscious." + +"I wonder the same thing. Only answer I can get is the old saw about +knowledge being power. And some day you'll see how absorbing it is to +have power, even here; to control the town----Oh, I'm a crank. But I do +like to see things moving." + +"It hurts. It makes these people seem so beastly and treacherous, when +I've been perfectly natural with them. But let's have it all. What did +they say about my Chinese house-warming party?" + +"Why, uh----" + +"Go on. Or I'll make up worse things than anything you can tell me." + +"They did enjoy it. But I guess some of them felt you were showing +off--pretending that your husband is richer than he is." + +"I can't----Their meanness of mind is beyond any horrors I could +imagine. They really thought that I----And you want to 'reform' people +like that when dynamite is so cheap? Who dared to say that? The rich or +the poor?" + +"Fairly well assorted." + +"Can't they at least understand me well enough to see that though I +might be affected and culturine, at least I simply couldn't commit that +other kind of vulgarity? If they must know, you may tell them, with my +compliments, that Will makes about four thousand a year, and the party +cost half of what they probably thought it did. Chinese things are not +very expensive, and I made my own costume----" + +"Stop it! Stop beating me! I know all that. What they meant was: they +felt you were starting dangerous competition by giving a party such as +most people here can't afford. Four thousand is a pretty big income for +this town." + +"I never thought of starting competition. Will you believe that it was +in all love and friendliness that I tried to give them the gayest party +I could? It was foolish; it was childish and noisy. But I did mean it so +well." + +"I know, of course. And it certainly is unfair of them to make fun of +your having that Chinese food--chow men, was it?--and to laugh about +your wearing those pretty trousers----" + +Carol sprang up, whimpering, "Oh, they didn't do that! They didn't poke +fun at my feast, that I ordered so carefully for them! And my little +Chinese costume that I was so happy making--I made it secretly, to +surprise them. And they've been ridiculing it, all this while!" + +She was huddled on the couch. + +Vida was stroking her hair, muttering, "I shouldn't----" + +Shrouded in shame, Carol did not know when Vida slipped away. The +clock's bell, at half past five, aroused her. "I must get hold of myself +before Will comes. I hope he never knows what a fool his wife is. . . . +Frozen, sneering, horrible hearts." + +Like a very small, very lonely girl she trudged up-stairs, slow step by +step, her feet dragging, her hand on the rail. It was not her husband +to whom she wanted to run for protection--it was her father, her smiling +understanding father, dead these twelve years. + + + +III + + +Kennicott was yawning, stretched in the largest chair, between the +radiator and a small kerosene stove. + +Cautiously, "Will dear, I wonder if the people here don't criticize me +sometimes? They must. I mean: if they ever do, you mustn't let it bother +you." + +"Criticize you? Lord, I should say not. They all keep telling me you're +the swellest girl they ever saw." + +"Well, I've just fancied----The merchants probably think I'm too fussy +about shopping. I'm afraid I bore Mr. Dashaway and Mr. Howland and Mr. +Ludelmeyer." + +"I can tell you how that is. I didn't want to speak of it but since +you've brought it up: Chet Dashaway probably resents the fact that you +got this new furniture down in the Cities instead of here. I didn't want +to raise any objection at the time but----After all, I make my money +here and they naturally expect me to spend it here." + +"If Mr. Dashaway will kindly tell me how any civilized person can +furnish a room out of the mortuary pieces that he calls----" She +remembered. She said meekly, "But I understand." + +"And Howland and Ludelmeyer----Oh, you've probably handed 'em a few +roasts for the bum stocks they carry, when you just meant to jolly 'em. +But rats, what do we care! This is an independent town, not like these +Eastern holes where you have to watch your step all the time, and live +up to fool demands and social customs, and a lot of old tabbies always +busy criticizing. Everybody's free here to do what he wants to." He said +it with a flourish, and Carol perceived that he believed it. She turned +her breath of fury into a yawn. + +"By the way, Carrie, while we're talking of this: Of course I like +to keep independent, and I don't believe in this business of binding +yourself to trade with the man that trades with you unless you really +want to, but same time: I'd be just as glad if you dealt with Jenson or +Ludelmeyer as much as you ran, instead of Howland & Gould, who go to Dr. +Gould every last time, and the whole tribe of 'em the same way. I don't +see why I should be paying out my good money for groceries and having +them pass it on to Terry Gould!" + +"I've gone to Howland & Gould because they're better, and cleaner." + +"I know. I don't mean cut them out entirely. Course Jenson is +tricky--give you short weight--and Ludelmeyer is a shiftless old Dutch +hog. But same time, I mean let's keep the trade in the family whenever +it is convenient, see how I mean?" + +"I see." + +"Well, guess it's about time to turn in." + +He yawned, went out to look at the thermometer, slammed the door, patted +her head, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yawned, wound the clock, went down +to look at the furnace, yawned, and clumped up-stairs to bed, casually +scratching his thick woolen undershirt. + +Till he bawled, "Aren't you ever coming up to bed?" she sat unmoving. + + + +CHAPTER IX + + +I + +SHE had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a pretty educational +dance and found that the lambs were wolves. There was no way out between +their pressing gray shoulders. She was surrounded by fangs and sneering +eyes. + +She could not go on enduring the hidden derision. She wanted to flee. +She wanted to hide in the generous indifference of cities. She practised +saying to Kennicott, "Think perhaps I'll run down to St. Paul for a few +days." But she could not trust herself to say it carelessly; could not +abide his certain questioning. + +Reform the town? All she wanted was to be tolerated! + +She could not look directly at people. She flushed and winced before +citizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of study, and in their +good-mornings she heard a cruel sniggering. + +She encountered Juanita Haydock at Ole Jenson's grocery. She besought, +"Oh, how do you do! Heavens, what beautiful celery that is!" + +"Yes, doesn't it look fresh. Harry simply has to have his celery on +Sunday, drat the man!" + +Carol hastened out of the shop exulting, "She didn't make fun of me. . . . +Did she?" + +In a week she had recovered from consciousness of insecurity, of shame +and whispering notoriety, but she kept her habit of avoiding people. She +walked the streets with her head down. When she spied Mrs. McGanum or +Mrs. Dyer ahead she crossed over with an elaborate pretense of looking +at a billboard. Always she was acting, for the benefit of every one she +saw--and for the benefit of the ambushed leering eyes which she did not +see. + +She perceived that Vida Sherwin had told the truth. Whether she entered +a store, or swept the back porch, or stood at the bay-window in the +living-room, the village peeped at her. Once she had swung along the +street triumphant in making a home. Now she glanced at each house, and +felt, when she was safely home, that she had won past a thousand +enemies armed with ridicule. She told herself that her sensitiveness +was preposterous, but daily she was thrown into panic. She saw curtains +slide back into innocent smoothness. Old women who had been entering +their houses slipped out again to stare at her--in the wintry quiet she +could hear them tiptoeing on their porches. When she had for a blessed +hour forgotten the searchlight, when she was scampering through a chill +dusk, happy in yellow windows against gray night, her heart checked +as she realized that a head covered with a shawl was thrust up over a +snow-tipped bush to watch her. + +She admitted that she was taking herself too seriously; that villagers +gape at every one. She became placid, and thought well of her +philosophy. But next morning she had a shock of shame as she entered +Ludelmeyer's. The grocer, his clerk, and neurotic Mrs. Dave Dyer had been +giggling about something. They halted, looked embarrassed, babbled about +onions. Carol felt guilty. That evening when Kennicott took her to call +on the crochety Lyman Casses, their hosts seemed flustered at their +arrival. Kennicott jovially hooted, "What makes you so hang-dog, Lym?" +The Casses tittered feebly. + +Except Dave Dyer, Sam Clark, and Raymie Wutherspoon, there were no +merchants of whose welcome Carol was certain. She knew that she read +mockery into greetings but she could not control her suspicion, could +not rise from her psychic collapse. She alternately raged and flinched +at the superiority of the merchants. They did not know that they +were being rude, but they meant to have it understood that they were +prosperous and "not scared of no doctor's wife." They often said, "One +man's as good as another--and a darn sight better." This motto, however, +they did not commend to farmer customers who had had crop failures. The +Yankee merchants were crabbed; and Ole Jenson, Ludelmeyer, and Gus Dahl, +from the "Old Country," wished to be taken for Yankees. James Madison +Howland, born in New Hampshire, and Ole Jenson, born in Sweden, both +proved that they were free American citizens by grunting, "I don't +know whether I got any or not," or "Well, you can't expect me to get it +delivered by noon." + +It was good form for the customers to fight back. Juanita Haydock +cheerfully jabbered, "You have it there by twelve or I'll snatch that +fresh delivery-boy bald-headed." But Carol had never been able to play +the game of friendly rudeness; and now she was certain that she never +would learn it. She formed the cowardly habit of going to Axel Egge's. + +Axel was not respectable and rude. He was still a foreigner, and he +expected to remain one. His manner was heavy and uninterrogative. His +establishment was more fantastic than any cross-roads store. No one save +Axel himself could find anything. A part of the assortment of children's +stockings was under a blanket on a shelf, a part in a tin ginger-snap +box, the rest heaped like a nest of black-cotton snakes upon a +flour-barrel which was surrounded by brooms, Norwegian Bibles, dried +cod for ludfisk, boxes of apricots, and a pair and a half of lumbermen's +rubber-footed boots. The place was crowded with Scandinavian farmwives, +standing aloof in shawls and ancient fawn-colored leg o' mutton jackets, +awaiting the return of their lords. They spoke Norwegian or Swedish, and +looked at Carol uncomprehendingly. They were a relief to her--they were +not whispering that she was a poseur. + +But what she told herself was that Axel Egge's was "so picturesque and +romantic." + +It was in the matter of clothes that she was most self-conscious. + +When she dared to go shopping in her new checked suit with the +black-embroidered sulphur collar, she had as good as invited all of +Gopher Prairie (which interested itself in nothing so intimately as in +new clothes and the cost thereof) to investigate her. It was a smart +suit with lines unfamiliar to the dragging yellow and pink frocks of the +town. The Widow Bogart's stare, from her porch, indicated, "Well I +never saw anything like that before!" Mrs. McGanum stopped Carol at +the notions shop to hint, "My, that's a nice suit--wasn't it terribly +expensive?" The gang of boys in front of the drug store commented, "Hey, +Pudgie, play you a game of checkers on that dress." Carol could not +endure it. She drew her fur coat over the suit and hastily fastened the +buttons, while the boys snickered. + + + +II + + +No group angered her quite so much as these staring young roues. + +She had tried to convince herself that the village, with its fresh air, +its lakes for fishing and swimming, was healthier than the artificial +city. But she was sickened by glimpses of the gang of boys from fourteen +to twenty who loafed before Dyer's Drug Store, smoking cigarettes, +displaying "fancy" shoes and purple ties and coats of diamond-shaped +buttons, whistling the Hoochi-Koochi and catcalling, "Oh, you baby-doll" +at every passing girl. + +She saw them playing pool in the stinking room behind Del Snafflin's +barber shop, and shaking dice in "The Smoke House," and gathered in +a snickering knot to listen to the "juicy stories" of Bert Tybee, the +bartender of the Minniemashie House. She heard them smacking moist lips +over every love-scene at the Rosebud Movie Palace. At the counter of the +Greek Confectionery Parlor, while they ate dreadful messes of decayed +bananas, acid cherries, whipped cream, and gelatinous ice-cream, they +screamed to one another, "Hey, lemme 'lone," "Quit dog-gone you, looka +what you went and done, you almost spilled my glass swater," "Like hell +I did," "Hey, gol darn your hide, don't you go sticking your coffin +nail in my i-scream," "Oh you Batty, how juh like dancing with Tillie +McGuire, last night? Some squeezing, heh, kid?" + +By diligent consultation of American fiction she discovered that this +was the only virile and amusing manner in which boys could function; +that boys who were not compounded of the gutter and the mining-camp +were mollycoddles and unhappy. She had taken this for granted. She had +studied the boys pityingly, but impersonally. It had not occurred to her +that they might touch her. + +Now she was aware that they knew all about her; that they were waiting +for some affectation over which they could guffaw. No schoolgirl passed +their observation-posts more flushingly than did Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. In +shame she knew that they glanced appraisingly at her snowy overshoes, +speculating about her legs. Theirs were not young eyes--there was no +youth in all the town, she agonized. They were born old, grim and old +and spying and censorious. + +She cried again that their youth was senile and cruel on the day when +she overheard Cy Bogart and Earl Haydock. + +Cyrus N. Bogart, son of the righteous widow who lived across the alley, +was at this time a boy of fourteen or fifteen. Carol had already seen +quite enough of Cy Bogart. On her first evening in Gopher Prairie Cy +had appeared at the head of a "charivari," banging immensely upon a +discarded automobile fender. His companions were yelping in imitation +of coyotes. Kennicott had felt rather complimented; had gone out and +distributed a dollar. But Cy was a capitalist in charivaris. He returned +with an entirely new group, and this time there were three automobile +fenders and a carnival rattle. When Kennicott again interrupted his +shaving, Cy piped, "Naw, you got to give us two dollars," and he got it. +A week later Cy rigged a tic-tac to a window of the living-room, and the +tattoo out of the darkness frightened Carol into screaming. Since +then, in four months, she had beheld Cy hanging a cat, stealing melons, +throwing tomatoes at the Kennicott house, and making ski-tracks across +the lawn, and had heard him explaining the mysteries of generation, +with great audibility and dismaying knowledge. He was, in fact, a museum +specimen of what a small town, a well-disciplined public school, a +tradition of hearty humor, and a pious mother could produce from the +material of a courageous and ingenious mind. + +Carol was afraid of him. Far from protesting when he set his mongrel on +a kitten, she worked hard at not seeing him. + +The Kennicott garage was a shed littered with paint-cans, tools, a +lawn-mower, and ancient wisps of hay. Above it was a loft which Cy +Bogart and Earl Haydock, young brother of Harry, used as a den, for +smoking, hiding from whippings, and planning secret societies. They +climbed to it by a ladder on the alley side of the shed. + +This morning of late January, two or three weeks after Vida's +revelations, Carol had gone into the stable-garage to find a hammer. +Snow softened her step. She heard voices in the loft above her: + +"Ah gee, lez--oh, lez go down the lake and swipe some mushrats out of +somebody's traps," Cy was yawning. + +"And get our ears beat off!" grumbled Earl Haydock. + +"Gosh, these cigarettes are dandy. 'Member when we were just kids, and +used to smoke corn-silk and hayseed?" + +"Yup. Gosh!" + +Spit. "Silence." + +"Say Earl, ma says if you chew tobacco you get consumption." + +"Aw rats, your old lady is a crank." + +"Yuh, that's so." Pause. "But she says she knows a fella that did." + +"Aw, gee whiz, didn't Doc Kennicott used to chew tobacco all the time +before he married this-here girl from the Cities? He used to spit---Gee! +Some shot! He could hit a tree ten feet off." + +This was news to the girl from the Cities. + +"Say, how is she?" continued Earl. + +"Huh? How's who?" + +"You know who I mean, smarty." + +A tussle, a thumping of loose boards, silence, weary narration from Cy: + +"Mrs. Kennicott? Oh, she's all right, I guess." Relief to Carol, below. +"She gimme a hunk o' cake, one time. But Ma says she's stuck-up as hell. +Ma's always talking about her. Ma says if Mrs. Kennicott thought as much +about the doc as she does about her clothes, the doc wouldn't look so +peaked." + +Spit. Silence. + +"Yuh. Juanita's always talking about her, too," from Earl. "She says +Mrs. Kennicott thinks she knows it all. Juanita says she has to laugh +till she almost busts every time she sees Mrs. Kennicott peerading along +the street with that 'take a look--I'm a swell skirt' way she's got. But +gosh, I don't pay no attention to Juanita. She's meaner 'n a crab." + +"Ma was telling somebody that she heard that Mrs. Kennicott claimed she +made forty dollars a week when she was on some job in the Cities, and +Ma says she knows posolutely that she never made but eighteen a week--Ma +says that when she's lived here a while she won't go round making a fool +of herself, pulling that bighead stuff on folks that know a whole lot +more than she does. They're all laughing up their sleeves at her." + +"Say, jever notice how Mrs. Kennicott fusses around the house? Other +evening when I was coming over here, she'd forgot to pull down the +curtain, and I watched her for ten minutes. Jeeze, you'd 'a' died +laughing. She was there all alone, and she must 'a' spent five minutes +getting a picture straight. It was funny as hell the way she'd stick out +her finger to straighten the picture--deedle-dee, see my tunnin' 'ittle +finger, oh my, ain't I cute, what a fine long tail my cat's got!" + +"But say, Earl, she's some good-looker, just the same, and O Ignatz! the +glad rags she must of bought for her wedding. Jever notice these low-cut +dresses and these thin shimmy-shirts she wears? I had a good squint at +'em when they were out on the line with the wash. And some ankles she's +got, heh?" + +Then Carol fled. + +In her innocence she had not known that the whole town could discuss +even her garments, her body. She felt that she was being dragged naked +down Main Street. + +The moment it was dusk she pulled down the window-shades, all the shades +flush with the sill, but beyond them she felt moist fleering eyes. + + + +III + + +She remembered, and tried to forget, and remembered more sharply the +vulgar detail of her husband's having observed the ancient customs +of the land by chewing tobacco. She would have preferred a prettier +vice--gambling or a mistress. For these she might have found a luxury +of forgiveness. She could not remember any fascinatingly wicked hero of +fiction who chewed tobacco. She asserted that it proved him to be a man +of the bold free West. She tried to align him with the hairy-chested +heroes of the motion-pictures. She curled on the couch a pallid softness +in the twilight, and fought herself, and lost the battle. Spitting did +not identify him with rangers riding the buttes; it merely bound him to +Gopher Prairie--to Nat Hicks the tailor and Bert Tybee the bartender. + +"But he gave it up for me. Oh, what does it matter! We're all filthy in +some things. I think of myself as so superior, but I do eat and digest, +I do wash my dirty paws and scratch. I'm not a cool slim goddess on +a column. There aren't any! He gave it up for me. He stands by me, +believing that every one loves me. He's the Rock of Ages--in a storm of +meanness that's driving me mad . . . it will drive me mad." + +All evening she sang Scotch ballads to Kennicott, and when she noticed +that he was chewing an unlighted cigar she smiled maternally at his +secret. + +She could not escape asking (in the exact words and mental intonations +which a thousand million women, dairy wenches and mischief-making +queens, had used before her, and which a million million women will +know hereafter), "Was it all a horrible mistake, my marrying him?" She +quieted the doubt--without answering it. + + + +IV + + +Kennicott had taken her north to Lac-qui-Meurt, in the Big Woods. It was +the entrance to a Chippewa Indian reservation, a sandy settlement among +Norway pines on the shore of a huge snow-glaring lake. She had her first +sight of his mother, except the glimpse at the wedding. Mrs. Kennicott +had a hushed and delicate breeding which dignified her woodeny +over-scrubbed cottage with its worn hard cushions in heavy rockers. +She had never lost the child's miraculous power of wonder. She asked +questions about books and cities. She murmured: + +"Will is a dear hard-working boy but he's inclined to be too serious, +and you've taught him how to play. Last night I heard you both laughing +about the old Indian basket-seller, and I just lay in bed and enjoyed +your happiness." + +Carol forgot her misery-hunting in this solidarity of family life. +She could depend upon them; she was not battling alone. Watching Mrs. +Kennicott flit about the kitchen she was better able to translate +Kennicott himself. He was matter-of-fact, yes, and incurably mature. He +didn't really play; he let Carol play with him. But he had his mother's +genius for trusting, her disdain for prying, her sure integrity. + +From the two days at Lac-qui-Meurt Carol drew confidence in herself, +and she returned to Gopher Prairie in a throbbing calm like those golden +drugged seconds when, because he is for an instant free from pain, a +sick man revels in living. + +A bright hard winter day, the wind shrill, black and silver clouds +booming across the sky, everything in panicky motion during the brief +light. They struggled against the surf of wind, through deep snow. +Kennicott was cheerful. He hailed Loren Wheeler, "Behave yourself while +I been away?" The editor bellowed, "B' gosh you stayed so long that +all your patients have got well!" and importantly took notes for the +Dauntless about their journey. Jackson Elder cried, "Hey, folks! How's +tricks up North?" Mrs. McGanum waved to them from her porch. + +"They're glad to see us. We mean something here. These people are +satisfied. Why can't I be? But can I sit back all my life and be +satisfied with 'Hey, folks'? They want shouts on Main Street, and I want +violins in a paneled room. Why----?" + + + +V + + +Vida Sherwin ran in after school a dozen times. She was tactful, +torrentially anecdotal. She had scuttled about town and plucked +compliments: Mrs. Dr. Westlake had pronounced Carol a "very sweet, +bright, cultured young woman," and Brad Bemis, the tinsmith at Clark's +Hardware Store, had declared that she was "easy to work for and awful +easy to look at." + +But Carol could not yet take her in. She resented this outsider's +knowledge of her shame. Vida was not too long tolerant. She hinted, +"You're a great brooder, child. Buck up now. The town's quit criticizing +you, almost entirely. Come with me to the Thanatopsis Club. They +have some of the BEST papers, and current-events discussions--SO +interesting." + +In Vida's demands Carol felt a compulsion, but she was too listless to +obey. + +It was Bea Sorenson who was really her confidante. + +However charitable toward the Lower Classes she may have thought +herself, Carol had been reared to assume that servants belong to +a distinct and inferior species. But she discovered that Bea was +extraordinarily like girls she had loved in college, and as a companion +altogether superior to the young matrons of the Jolly Seventeen. Daily +they became more frankly two girls playing at housework. Bea artlessly +considered Carol the most beautiful and accomplished lady in the +country; she was always shrieking, "My, dot's a swell hat!" or, "Ay +t'ink all dese ladies yoost die when dey see how elegant you do your +hair!" But it was not the humbleness of a servant, nor the hypocrisy of +a slave; it was the admiration of Freshman for Junior. + +They made out the day's menus together. Though they began with +propriety, Carol sitting by the kitchen table and Bea at the sink or +blacking the stove, the conference was likely to end with both of them +by the table, while Bea gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her, +or Carol admitted, "Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more clever +than Dr. McGanum." When Carol came in from marketing, Bea plunged into +the hall to take off her coat, rub her frostied hands, and ask, "Vos +dere lots of folks up-town today?" + +This was the welcome upon which Carol depended. + + + +VI + +Through her weeks of cowering there was no change in her surface life. +No one save Vida was aware of her agonizing. On her most despairing +days she chatted to women on the street, in stores. But without +the protection of Kennicott's presence she did not go to the Jolly +Seventeen; she delivered herself to the judgment of the town only when +she went shopping and on the ritualistic occasions of formal afternoon +calls, when Mrs. Lyman Cass or Mrs. George Edwin Mott, with clean gloves +and minute handkerchiefs and sealskin card-cases and countenances of +frozen approbation, sat on the edges of chairs and inquired, "Do you +find Gopher Prairie pleasing?" When they spent evenings of social +profit-and-loss at the Haydocks' or the Dyers' she hid behind Kennicott, +playing the simple bride. + +Now she was unprotected. Kennicott had taken a patient to Rochester +for an operation. He would be away for two or three days. She had not +minded; she would loosen the matrimonial tension and be a fanciful girl +for a time. But now that he was gone the house was listeningly empty. +Bea was out this afternoon--presumably drinking coffee and talking about +"fellows" with her cousin Tina. It was the day for the monthly supper +and evening-bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, but Carol dared not go. + +She sat alone. + + + +CHAPTER X + +THE house was haunted, long before evening. Shadows slipped down the +walls and waited behind every chair. + +Did that door move? + +No. She wouldn't go to the Jolly Seventeen. She hadn't energy enough to +caper before them, to smile blandly at Juanita's rudeness. Not today. +But she did want a party. Now! If some one would come in this afternoon, +some one who liked her--Vida or Mrs. Sam Clark or old Mrs. Champ Perry +or gentle Mrs. Dr. Westlake. Or Guy Pollock! She'd telephone---- + +No. That wouldn't be it. They must come of themselves. + +Perhaps they would. + +Why not? + +She'd have tea ready, anyway. If they came--splendid. If not--what did +she care? She wasn't going to yield to the village and let down; she was +going to keep up a belief in the rite of tea, to which she had always +looked forward as the symbol of a leisurely fine existence. And it would +be just as much fun, even if it was so babyish, to have tea by herself +and pretend that she was entertaining clever men. It would! + +She turned the shining thought into action. She bustled to the kitchen, +stoked the wood-range, sang Schumann while she boiled the kettle, warmed +up raisin cookies on a newspaper spread on the rack in the oven. She +scampered up-stairs to bring down her filmiest tea-cloth. She arranged +a silver tray. She proudly carried it into the living-room and set it on +the long cherrywood table, pushing aside a hoop of embroidery, a volume +of Conrad from the library, copies of the Saturday Evening Post, the +Literary Digest, and Kennicott's National Geographic Magazine. + +She moved the tray back and forth and regarded the effect. She shook +her head. She busily unfolded the sewing-table set it in the bay-window, +patted the tea-cloth to smoothness, moved the tray. "Some time I'll have +a mahogany tea-table," she said happily. + +She had brought in two cups, two plates. For herself, a straight chair, +but for the guest the big wing-chair, which she pantingly tugged to the +table. + +She had finished all the preparations she could think of. She sat and +waited. She listened for the door-bell, the telephone. Her eagerness was +stilled. Her hands drooped. + +Surely Vida Sherwin would hear the summons. + +She glanced through the bay-window. Snow was sifting over the ridge +of the Howland house like sprays of water from a hose. The wide +yards across the street were gray with moving eddies. The black trees +shivered. The roadway was gashed with ruts of ice. + +She looked at the extra cup and plate. She looked at the wing-chair. It +was so empty. + +The tea was cold in the pot. With wearily dipping fingertip she tested +it. Yes. Quite cold. She couldn't wait any longer. + +The cup across from her was icily clean, glisteningly empty. + +Simply absurd to wait. She poured her own cup of tea. She sat and stared +at it. What was it she was going to do now? Oh yes; how idiotic; take a +lump of sugar. + +She didn't want the beastly tea. + +She was springing up. She was on the couch, sobbing. + + + +II + + +She was thinking more sharply than she had for weeks. + +She reverted to her resolution to change the town--awaken it, prod it, +"reform" it. What if they were wolves instead of lambs? They'd eat her +all the sooner if she was meek to them. Fight or be eaten. It was easier +to change the town completely than to conciliate it! She could not take +their point of view; it was a negative thing; an intellectual squalor; +a swamp of prejudices and fears. She would have to make them take hers. +She was not a Vincent de Paul, to govern and mold a people. What of +that? The tiniest change in their distrust of beauty would be the +beginning of the end; a seed to sprout and some day with thickening +roots to crack their wall of mediocrity. If she could not, as she +desired, do a great thing nobly and with laughter, yet she need not be +content with village nothingness. She would plant one seed in the blank +wall. + +Was she just? Was it merely a blank wall, this town which to three +thousand and more people was the center of the universe? Hadn't she, +returning from Lac-qui-Meurt, felt the heartiness of their greetings? +No. The ten thousand Gopher Prairies had no monopoly of greetings and +friendly hands. Sam Clark was no more loyal than girl librarians she +knew in St. Paul, the people she had met in Chicago. And those others +had so much that Gopher Prairie complacently lacked--the world of gaiety +and adventure, of music and the integrity of bronze, of remembered +mists from tropic isles and Paris nights and the walls of Bagdad, of +industrial justice and a God who spake not in doggerel hymns. + +One seed. Which seed it was did not matter. All knowledge and freedom +were one. But she had delayed so long in finding that seed. Could she +do something with this Thanatopsis Club? Or should she make her house +so charming that it would be an influence? She'd make Kennicott like +poetry. That was it, for a beginning! She conceived so clear a picture +of their bending over large fair pages by the fire (in a non-existent +fireplace) that the spectral presences slipped away. Doors no longer +moved; curtains were not creeping shadows but lovely dark masses in the +dusk; and when Bea came home Carol was singing at the piano which she +had not touched for many days. + +Their supper was the feast of two girls. Carol was in the dining-room, +in a frock of black satin edged with gold, and Bea, in blue gingham and +an apron, dined in the kitchen; but the door was open between, and +Carol was inquiring, "Did you see any ducks in Dahl's window?" and Bea +chanting, "No, ma'am. Say, ve have a svell time, dis afternoon. Tina she +have coffee and knackebrod, and her fella vos dere, and ve yoost laughed +and laughed, and her fella say he vos president and he going to make +me queen of Finland, and Ay stick a fedder in may hair and say Ay bane +going to go to var--oh, ve vos so foolish and ve LAUGH so!" + +When Carol sat at the piano again she did not think of her husband but +of the book-drugged hermit, Guy Pollock. She wished that Pollock would +come calling. + +"If a girl really kissed him, he'd creep out of his den and be human. If +Will were as literate as Guy, or Guy were as executive as Will, I think +I could endure even Gopher Prairie. It's so hard to mother Will. I +could be maternal with Guy. Is that what I want, something to mother, a +man or a baby or a town? I WILL have a baby. Some day. But to have him +isolated here all his receptive years---- + +"And so to bed. + +"Have I found my real level in Bea and kitchen-gossip? + +"Oh, I do miss you, Will. But it will be pleasant to turn over in bed as +often as I want to, without worrying about waking you up. + +"Am I really this settled thing called a 'married woman'? I feel +so unmarried tonight. So free. To think that there was once a Mrs. +Kennicott who let herself worry over a town called Gopher Prairie when +there was a whole world outside it! + +"Of course Will is going to like poetry." + + + +III + + +A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down +on the earth; an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled +wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The lines of roofs and +sidewalks sharp and inescapable. + +The second day of Kennicott's absence. + +She fled from the creepy house for a walk. It was thirty below zero; +too cold to exhilarate her. In the spaces between houses the wind caught +her. It stung, it gnawed at nose and ears and aching cheeks, and she +hastened from shelter to shelter, catching her breath in the lee of a +barn, grateful for the protection of a billboard covered with ragged +posters showing layer under layer of paste-smeared green and streaky +red. + +The grove of oaks at the end of the street suggested Indians, hunting, +snow-shoes, and she struggled past the earth-banked cottages to the +open country, to a farm and a low hill corrugated with hard snow. In +her loose nutria coat, seal toque, virginal cheeks unmarked by lines of +village jealousies, she was as out of place on this dreary hillside as +a scarlet tanager on an ice-floe. She looked down on Gopher Prairie. The +snow, stretching without break from streets to devouring prairie beyond, +wiped out the town's pretense of being a shelter. The houses were black +specks on a white sheet. Her heart shivered with that still loneliness +as her body shivered with the wind. + +She ran back into the huddle of streets, all the while protesting that +she wanted a city's yellow glare of shop-windows and restaurants, or the +primitive forest with hooded furs and a rifle, or a barnyard warm and +steamy, noisy with hens and cattle, certainly not these dun houses, +these yards choked with winter ash-piles, these roads of dirty snow and +clotted frozen mud. The zest of winter was gone. Three months more, till +May, the cold might drag on, with the snow ever filthier, the weakened +body less resistent. She wondered why the good citizens insisted on +adding the chill of prejudice, why they did not make the houses of their +spirits more warm and frivolous, like the wise chatterers of Stockholm +and Moscow. + +She circled the outskirts of the town and viewed the slum of "Swede +Hollow." Wherever as many as three houses are gathered there will be a +slum of at least one house. In Gopher Prairie, the Sam Clarks boasted, +"you don't get any of this poverty that you find in cities--always +plenty of work--no need of charity--man got to be blame shiftless if he +don't get ahead." But now that the summer mask of leaves and grass was +gone, Carol discovered misery and dead hope. In a shack of thin boards +covered with tar-paper she saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, working +in gray steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy chopped wood. He had a torn +jacket, muffler of a blue like skimmed milk. His hands were covered with +red mittens through which protruded his chapped raw knuckles. He halted +to blow on them, to cry disinterestedly. + +A family of recently arrived Finns were camped in an abandoned stable. A +man of eighty was picking up lumps of coal along the railroad. + +She did not know what to do about it. She felt that these independent +citizens, who had been taught that they belonged to a democracy, would +resent her trying to play Lady Bountiful. + +She lost her loneliness in the activity of the village industries--the +railroad-yards with a freight-train switching, the wheat-elevator, +oil-tanks, a slaughter-house with blood-marks on the snow, the creamery +with the sleds of farmers and piles of milk-cans, an unexplained stone +hut labeled "Danger--Powder Stored Here." The jolly tombstone-yard, +where a utilitarian sculptor in a red calfskin overcoat whistled as +he hammered the shiniest of granite headstones. Jackson Elder's small +planing-mill, with the smell of fresh pine shavings and the burr of +circular saws. Most important, the Gopher Prairie Flour and Milling +Company, Lyman Cass president. Its windows were blanketed with +flour-dust, but it was the most stirring spot in town. Workmen were +wheeling barrels of flour into a box-car; a farmer sitting on sacks of +wheat in a bobsled argued with the wheat-buyer; machinery within the +mill boomed and whined, water gurgled in the ice-freed mill-race. + +The clatter was a relief to Carol after months of smug houses. She +wished that she could work in the mill; that she did not belong to the +caste of professional-man's-wife. + +She started for home, through the small slum. Before a tar-paper shack, +at a gateless gate, a man in rough brown dogskin coat and black plush +cap with lappets was watching her. His square face was confident, +his foxy mustache was picaresque. He stood erect, his hands in his +side-pockets, his pipe puffing slowly. He was forty-five or -six, +perhaps. + +"How do, Mrs. Kennicott," he drawled. + +She recalled him--the town handyman, who had repaired their furnace at +the beginning of winter. + +"Oh, how do you do," she fluttered. + +"My name 's Bjornstam. 'The Red Swede' they call me. Remember? Always +thought I'd kind of like to say howdy to you again." + +"Ye--yes----I've been exploring the outskirts of town." + +"Yump. Fine mess. No sewage, no street cleaning, and the Lutheran +minister and the priest represent the arts and sciences. Well, thunder, +we submerged tenth down here in Swede Hollow are no worse off than you +folks. Thank God, we don't have to go and purr at Juanity Haydock at the +Jolly Old Seventeen." + +The Carol who regarded herself as completely adaptable was uncomfortable +at being chosen as comrade by a pipe-reeking odd-job man. Probably he +was one of her husband's patients. But she must keep her dignity. + +"Yes, even the Jolly Seventeen isn't always so exciting. It's very cold +again today, isn't it. Well----" + +Bjornstam was not respectfully valedictory. He showed no signs of +pulling a forelock. His eyebrows moved as though they had a life of +their own. With a subgrin he went on: + +"Maybe I hadn't ought to talk about Mrs. Haydock and her Solemcholy +Seventeen in that fresh way. I suppose I'd be tickled to death if I was +invited to sit in with that gang. I'm what they call a pariah, I guess. +I'm the town badman, Mrs. Kennicott: town atheist, and I suppose I must +be an anarchist, too. Everybody who doesn't love the bankers and the +Grand Old Republican Party is an anarchist." + +Carol had unconsciously slipped from her attitude of departure into an +attitude of listening, her face full toward him, her muff lowered. She +fumbled: + +"Yes, I suppose so." Her own grudges came in a flood. "I don't see why +you shouldn't criticize the Jolly Seventeen if you want to. They aren't +sacred." + +"Oh yes, they are! The dollar-sign has chased the crucifix clean off +the map. But then, I've got no kick. I do what I please, and I suppose I +ought to let them do the same." + +"What do you mean by saying you're a pariah?" + +"I'm poor, and yet I don't decently envy the rich. I'm an old bach. +I make enough money for a stake, and then I sit around by myself, and +shake hands with myself, and have a smoke, and read history, and I don't +contribute to the wealth of Brother Elder or Daddy Cass." + +"You----I fancy you read a good deal." + +"Yep. In a hit-or-a-miss way. I'll tell you: I'm a lone wolf. I trade +horses, and saw wood, and work in lumber-camps--I'm a first-rate +swamper. Always wished I could go to college. Though I s'pose I'd find +it pretty slow, and they'd probably kick me out." + +"You really are a curious person, Mr.----" + +"Bjornstam. Miles Bjornstam. Half Yank and half Swede. Usually known as +'that damn lazy big-mouthed calamity-howler that ain't satisfied with +the way we run things.' No, I ain't curious--whatever you mean by +that! I'm just a bookworm. Probably too much reading for the amount +of digestion I've got. Probably half-baked. I'm going to get in +'half-baked' first, and beat you to it, because it's dead sure to be +handed to a radical that wears jeans!" + +They grinned together. She demanded: + +"You say that the Jolly Seventeen is stupid. What makes you think so?" + +"Oh, trust us borers into the foundation to know about your leisure +class. Fact, Mrs. Kennicott, I'll say that far as I can make out, the +only people in this man's town that do have any brains--I don't mean +ledger-keeping brains or duck-hunting brains or baby-spanking brains, +but real imaginative brains--are you and me and Guy Pollock and the +foreman at the flour-mill. He's a socialist, the foreman. (Don't tell +Lym Cass that! Lym would fire a socialist quicker than he would a +horse-thief!)" + +"Indeed no, I sha'n't tell him." + +"This foreman and I have some great set-to's. He's a regular old-line +party-member. Too dogmatic. Expects to reform everything from +deforestration to nosebleed by saying phrases like 'surplus value.' +Like reading the prayer-book. But same time, he's a Plato J. Aristotle +compared with people like Ezry Stowbody or Professor Mott or Julius +Flickerbaugh." + +"It's interesting to hear about him." + +He dug his toe into a drift, like a schoolboy. "Rats. You mean I talk +too much. Well, I do, when I get hold of somebody like you. You probably +want to run along and keep your nose from freezing." + +"Yes, I must go, I suppose. But tell me: Why did you leave Miss Sherwin, +of the high school, out of your list of the town intelligentsia?" + +"I guess maybe she does belong in it. From all I can hear she's in +everything and behind everything that looks like a reform--lot more +than most folks realize. She lets Mrs. Reverend Warren, the president +of this-here Thanatopsis Club, think she's running the works, but Miss +Sherwin is the secret boss, and nags all the easy-going dames into doing +something. But way I figure it out----You see, I'm not interested in +these dinky reforms. Miss Sherwin's trying to repair the holes in this +barnacle-covered ship of a town by keeping busy bailing out the water. +And Pollock tries to repair it by reading poetry to the crew! Me, I want +to yank it up on the ways, and fire the poor bum of a shoemaker that +built it so it sails crooked, and have it rebuilt right, from the keel +up." + +"Yes--that--that would be better. But I must run home. My poor nose is +nearly frozen." + +"Say, you better come in and get warm, and see what an old bach's shack +is like." + +She looked doubtfully at him, at the low shanty, the yard that was +littered with cord-wood, moldy planks, a hoopless wash-tub. She was +disquieted, but Bjornstam did not give her the opportunity to be +delicate. He flung out his hand in a welcoming gesture which assumed +that she was her own counselor, that she was not a Respectable Married +Woman but fully a human being. With a shaky, "Well, just a moment, to +warm my nose," she glanced down the street to make sure that she was not +spied on, and bolted toward the shanty. + +She remained for one hour, and never had she known a more considerate +host than the Red Swede. + +He had but one room: bare pine floor, small work-bench, wall bunk with +amazingly neat bed, frying-pan and ash-stippled coffee-pot on the +shelf behind the pot-bellied cannon-ball stove, backwoods chairs--one +constructed from half a barrel, one from a tilted plank--and a row of +books incredibly assorted; Byron and Tennyson and Stevenson, a manual of +gas-engines, a book by Thorstein Veblen, and a spotty treatise on "The +Care, Feeding, Diseases, and Breeding of Poultry and Cattle." + +There was but one picture--a magazine color-plate of a steep-roofed +village in the Harz Mountains which suggested kobolds and maidens with +golden hair. + +Bjornstam did not fuss over her. He suggested, "Might throw open your +coat and put your feet up on the box in front of the stove." He tossed +his dogskin coat into the bunk, lowered himself into the barrel chair, +and droned on: + +"Yeh, I'm probably a yahoo, but by gum I do keep my independence by +doing odd jobs, and that's more 'n these polite cusses like the clerks +in the banks do. When I'm rude to some slob, it may be partly because I +don't know better (and God knows I'm not no authority on trick forks +and what pants you wear with a Prince Albert), but mostly it's because I +mean something. I'm about the only man in Johnson County that remembers +the joker in the Declaration of Independence about Americans being +supposed to have the right to 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of +happiness.' + +"I meet old Ezra Stowbody on the street. He looks at me like he wants me +to remember he's a highmuckamuck and worth two hundred thousand dollars, +and he says, 'Uh, Bjornquist----' + +"'Bjornstam's my name, Ezra,' I says. HE knows my name, all rightee. + +"'Well, whatever your name is,' he says, 'I understand you have a +gasoline saw. I want you to come around and saw up four cords of maple +for me,' he says. + +"'So you like my looks, eh?' I says, kind of innocent. + +"'What difference does that make? Want you to saw that wood before +Saturday,' he says, real sharp. Common workman going and getting fresh +with a fifth of a million dollars all walking around in a hand-me-down +fur coat! + +"'Here's the difference it makes,' I says, just to devil him. 'How do +you know I like YOUR looks?' Maybe he didn't look sore! 'Nope,' I says, +thinking it all over, 'I don't like your application for a loan. Take it +to another bank, only there ain't any,' I says, and I walks off on him. + +"Sure. Probably I was surly--and foolish. But I figured there had to be +ONE man in town independent enough to sass the banker!" + +He hitched out of his chair, made coffee, gave Carol a cup, and talked +on, half defiant and half apologetic, half wistful for friendliness +and half amused by her surprise at the discovery that there was a +proletarian philosophy. + +At the door, she hinted: + +"Mr. Bjornstam, if you were I, would you worry when people thought you +were affected?" + +"Huh? Kick 'em in the face! Say, if I were a sea-gull, and all over +silver, think I'd care what a pack of dirty seals thought about my +flying?" + +It was not the wind at her back, it was the thrust of Bjornstam's scorn +which carried her through town. She faced Juanita Haydock, cocked +her head at Maud Dyer's brief nod, and came home to Bea radiant. She +telephoned Vida Sherwin to "run over this evening." She lustily played +Tschaikowsky--the virile chords an echo of the red laughing philosopher +of the tar-paper shack. + +(When she hinted to Vida, "Isn't there a man here who amuses himself by +being irreverent to the village gods--Bjornstam, some such a name?" +the reform-leader said "Bjornstam? Oh yes. Fixes things. He's awfully +impertinent.") + + + +IV + + +Kennicott had returned at midnight. At breakfast he said four several +times that he had missed her every moment. + +On her way to market Sam Clark hailed her, "The top o' the mornin' +to yez! Going to stop and pass the time of day mit Sam'l? Warmer, eh? +What'd the doc's thermometer say it was? Say, you folks better come +round and visit with us, one of these evenings. Don't be so dog-gone +proud, staying by yourselves." + +Champ Perry the pioneer, wheat-buyer at the elevator, stopped her in +the post-office, held her hand in his withered paws, peered at her +with faded eyes, and chuckled, "You are so fresh and blooming, my dear. +Mother was saying t'other day that a sight of you was better 'n a dose +of medicine." + +In the Bon Ton Store she found Guy Pollock tentatively buying a modest +gray scarf. "We haven't seen you for so long," she said. "Wouldn't you +like to come in and play cribbage, some evening?" As though he meant it, +Pollock begged, "May I, really?" + +While she was purchasing two yards of malines the vocal Raymie +Wutherspoon tiptoed up to her, his long sallow face bobbing, and he +besought, "You've just got to come back to my department and see a pair +of patent leather slippers I set aside for you." + +In a manner of more than sacerdotal reverence he unlaced her boots, +tucked her skirt about her ankles, slid on the slippers. She took them. + +"You're a good salesman," she said. + +"I'm not a salesman at all! I just like elegant things. All this is so +inartistic." He indicated with a forlornly waving hand the shelves of +shoe-boxes, the seat of thin wood perforated in rosettes, the display of +shoe-trees and tin boxes of blacking, the lithograph of a smirking +young woman with cherry cheeks who proclaimed in the exalted poetry of +advertising, "My tootsies never got hep to what pedal perfection was +till I got a pair of clever classy Cleopatra Shoes." + +"But sometimes," Raymie sighed, "there is a pair of dainty little shoes +like these, and I set them aside for some one who will appreciate. When +I saw these I said right away, 'Wouldn't it be nice if they fitted Mrs. +Kennicott,' and I meant to speak to you first chance I had. I haven't +forgotten our jolly talks at Mrs. Gurrey's!" + +That evening Guy Pollock came in and, though Kennicott instantly +impressed him into a cribbage game, Carol was happy again. + + + +V + + +She did not, in recovering something of her buoyancy, forget her +determination to begin the liberalizing of Gopher Prairie by the easy +and agreeable propaganda of teaching Kennicott to enjoy reading poetry +in the lamplight. The campaign was delayed. Twice he suggested that they +call on neighbors; once he was in the country. The fourth evening +he yawned pleasantly, stretched, and inquired, "Well, what'll we do +tonight? Shall we go to the movies?" + +"I know exactly what we're going to do. Now don't ask questions! Come +and sit down by the table. There, are you comfy? Lean back and forget +you're a practical man, and listen to me." + +It may be that she had been influenced by the managerial Vida Sherwin; +certainly she sounded as though she was selling culture. But she dropped +it when she sat on the couch, her chin in her hands, a volume of Yeats +on her knees, and read aloud. + +Instantly she was released from the homely comfort of a prairie town. +She was in the world of lonely things--the flutter of twilight linnets, +the aching call of gulls along a shore to which the netted foam crept +out of darkness, the island of Aengus and the elder gods and the eternal +glories that never were, tall kings and women girdled with crusted gold, +the woful incessant chanting and the---- + +"Heh-cha-cha!" coughed Dr. Kennicott. She stopped. She remembered that +he was the sort of person who chewed tobacco. She glared, while he +uneasily petitioned, "That's great stuff. Study it in college? I +like poetry fine--James Whitcomb Riley and some of Longfellow--this +'Hiawatha.' Gosh, I wish I could appreciate that highbrow art stuff. But +I guess I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks." + +With pity for his bewilderment, and a certain desire to giggle, she +consoled him, "Then let's try some Tennyson. You've read him?" + +"Tennyson? You bet. Read him in school. There's that: + + And let there be no (what is it?) of farewell + When I put out to sea, + But let the---- + +Well, I don't remember all of it but----Oh, sure! And there's that 'I +met a little country boy who----' I don't remember exactly how it goes, +but the chorus ends up, 'We are seven.'" + +"Yes. Well----Shall we try 'The Idylls of the King?' They're so full of +color." + +"Go to it. Shoot." But he hastened to shelter himself behind a cigar. + +She was not transported to Camelot. She read with an eye cocked on him, +and when she saw how much he was suffering she ran to him, kissed his +forehead, cried, "You poor forced tube-rose that wants to be a decent +turnip!" + +"Look here now, that ain't----" + +"Anyway, I sha'n't torture you any longer." + +She could not quite give up. She read Kipling, with a great deal of +emphasis: + + +There's a REGIMENT a-COMING down the GRAND Trunk ROAD. + + +He tapped his foot to the rhythm; he looked normal and reassured. But +when he complimented her, "That was fine. I don't know but what you +can elocute just as good as Ella Stowbody," she banged the book and +suggested that they were not too late for the nine o'clock show at the +movies. + +That was her last effort to harvest the April wind, to teach divine +unhappiness by a correspondence course, to buy the lilies of Avalon and +the sunsets of Cockaigne in tin cans at Ole Jenson's Grocery. + +But the fact is that at the motion-pictures she discovered herself +laughing as heartily as Kennicott at the humor of an actor who stuffed +spaghetti down a woman's evening frock. For a second she loathed her +laughter; mourned for the day when on her hill by the Mississippi +she had walked the battlements with queens. But the celebrated cinema +jester's conceit of dropping toads into a soup-plate flung her into +unwilling tittering, and the afterglow faded, the dead queens fled +through darkness. + + + +VI + + +She went to the Jolly Seventeen's afternoon bridge. She had learned +the elements of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played quietly and +reasonably badly. She had no opinions on anything more polemic than +woolen union-suits, a topic on which Mrs. Howland discoursed for five +minutes. She smiled frequently, and was the complete canary-bird in her +manner of thanking the hostess, Mrs. Dave Dyer. + +Her only anxious period was during the conference on husbands. + +The young matrons discussed the intimacies of domesticity with a +frankness and a minuteness which dismayed Carol. Juanita Haydock +communicated Harry's method of shaving, and his interest in +deer-shooting. Mrs. Gougerling reported fully, and with some irritation, +her husband's inappreciation of liver and bacon. Maud Dyer chronicled +Dave's digestive disorders; quoted a recent bedtime controversy with +him in regard to Christian Science, socks and the sewing of buttons +upon vests; announced that she "simply wasn't going to stand his always +pawing girls when he went and got crazy-jealous if a man just danced +with her"; and rather more than sketched Dave's varieties of kisses. + +So meekly did Carol give attention, so obviously was she at last +desirous of being one of them, that they looked on her fondly, and +encouraged her to give such details of her honeymoon as might be of +interest. She was embarrassed rather than resentful. She deliberately +misunderstood. She talked of Kennicott's overshoes and medical ideals +till they were thoroughly bored. They regarded her as agreeable but +green. + +Till the end she labored to satisfy the inquisition. She bubbled at +Juanita, the president of the club, that she wanted to entertain them. +"Only," she said, "I don't know that I can give you any refreshments as +nice as Mrs. Dyer's salad, or that simply delicious angel's-food we had +at your house, dear." + +"Fine! We need a hostess for the seventeenth of March. Wouldn't it be +awfully original if you made it a St. Patrick's Day bridge! I'll be +tickled to death to help you with it. I'm glad you've learned to play +bridge. At first I didn't hardly know if you were going to like Gopher +Prairie. Isn't it dandy that you've settled down to being homey with us! +Maybe we aren't as highbrow as the Cities, but we do have the daisiest +times and--oh, we go swimming in summer, and dances and--oh, lots of +good times. If folks will just take us as we are, I think we're a pretty +good bunch!" + +"I'm sure of it. Thank you so much for the idea about having a St. +Patrick's Day bridge." + +"Oh, that's nothing. I always think the Jolly Seventeen are so good at +original ideas. If you knew these other towns Wakamin and Joralemon and +all, you'd find out and realize that G. P. is the liveliest, smartest +town in the state. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan, the famous auto +manufacturer, came from here and----Yes, I think that a St. Patrick's +Day party would be awfully cunning and original, and yet not too queer +or freaky or anything." + + + +CHAPTER XI + +I + +SHE had often been invited to the weekly meetings of the Thanatopsis, +the women's study club, but she had put it off. The Thanatopsis was, +Vida Sherwin promised, "such a cozy group, and yet it puts you in touch +with all the intellectual thoughts that are going on everywhere." + +Early in March Mrs. Westlake, wife of the veteran physician, marched +into Carol's living-room like an amiable old pussy and suggested, "My +dear, you really must come to the Thanatopsis this afternoon. Mrs. +Dawson is going to be leader and the poor soul is frightened to death. +She wanted me to get you to come. She says she's sure you will brighten +up the meeting with your knowledge of books and writings. (English +poetry is our topic today.) So shoo! Put on your coat!" + +"English poetry? Really? I'd love to go. I didn't realize you were +reading poetry." + +"Oh, we're not so slow!" + +Mrs. Luke Dawson, wife of the richest man in town, gaped at them +piteously when they appeared. Her expensive frock of beaver-colored +satin with rows, plasters, and pendants of solemn brown beads was +intended for a woman twice her size. She stood wringing her hands in +front of nineteen folding chairs, in her front parlor with its faded +photograph of Minnehaha Falls in 1890, its "colored enlargement" of +Mr. Dawson, its bulbous lamp painted with sepia cows and mountains and +standing on a mortuary marble column. + +She creaked, "O Mrs. Kennicott, I'm in such a fix. I'm supposed to lead +the discussion, and I wondered would you come and help?" + +"What poet do you take up today?" demanded Carol, in her library tone of +"What book do you wish to take out?" + +"Why, the English ones." + +"Not all of them?" + +"W-why yes. We're learning all of European Literature this year. +The club gets such a nice magazine, Culture Hints, and we follow its +programs. Last year our subject was Men and Women of the Bible, and next +year we'll probably take up Furnishings and China. My, it does make a +body hustle to keep up with all these new culture subjects, but it is +improving. So will you help us with the discussion today?" + +On her way over Carol had decided to use the Thanatopsis as the tool +with which to liberalize the town. She had immediately conceived +enormous enthusiasm; she had chanted, "These are the real people. When +the housewives, who bear the burdens, are interested in poetry, it means +something. I'll work with them--for them--anything!" + +Her enthusiasm had become watery even before thirteen women resolutely +removed their overshoes, sat down meatily, ate peppermints, dusted their +fingers, folded their hands, composed their lower thoughts, and invited +the naked muse of poetry to deliver her most improving message. They had +greeted Carol affectionately, and she tried to be a daughter to them. +But she felt insecure. Her chair was out in the open, exposed to their +gaze, and it was a hard-slatted, quivery, slippery church-parlor chair, +likely to collapse publicly and without warning. It was impossible to +sit on it without folding the hands and listening piously. + +She wanted to kick the chair and run. It would make a magnificent +clatter. + +She saw that Vida Sherwin was watching her. She pinched her wrist, as +though she were a noisy child in church, and when she was decent and +cramped again, she listened. + +Mrs. Dawson opened the meeting by sighing, "I'm sure I'm glad to see you +all here today, and I understand that the ladies have prepared a number +of very interesting papers, this is such an interesting subject, the +poets, they have been an inspiration for higher thought, in fact wasn't +it Reverend Benlick who said that some of the poets have been as much an +inspiration as a good many of the ministers, and so we shall be glad to +hear----" + +The poor lady smiled neuralgically, panted with fright, scrabbled about +the small oak table to find her eye-glasses, and continued, "We +will first have the pleasure of hearing Mrs. Jenson on the subject +'Shakespeare and Milton.'" + +Mrs. Ole Jenson said that Shakespeare was born in 1564 and died 1616. He +lived in London, England, and in Stratford-on-Avon, which many American +tourists loved to visit, a lovely town with many curios and old houses +well worth examination. Many people believed that Shakespeare was the +greatest play-wright who ever lived, also a fine poet. Not much was +known about his life, but after all that did not really make so much +difference, because they loved to read his numerous plays, several of +the best known of which she would now criticize. + +Perhaps the best known of his plays was "The Merchant of Venice," having +a beautiful love story and a fine appreciation of a woman's brains, +which a woman's club, even those who did not care to commit themselves +on the question of suffrage, ought to appreciate. (Laughter.) Mrs. +Jenson was sure that she, for one, would love to be like Portia. The +play was about a Jew named Shylock, and he didn't want his daughter to +marry a Venice gentleman named Antonio---- + +Mrs. Leonard Warren, a slender, gray, nervous woman, president of the +Thanatopsis and wife of the Congregational pastor, reported the birth +and death dates of Byron, Scott, Moore, Burns; and wound up: + +"Burns was quite a poor boy and he did not enjoy the advantages we enjoy +today, except for the advantages of the fine old Scotch kirk where he +heard the Word of God preached more fearlessly than even in the finest +big brick churches in the big and so-called advanced cities of today, +but he did not have our educational advantages and Latin and the other +treasures of the mind so richly strewn before the, alas, too ofttimes +inattentive feet of our youth who do not always sufficiently appreciate +the privileges freely granted to every American boy rich or poor. Burns +had to work hard and was sometimes led by evil companionship into low +habits. But it is morally instructive to know that he was a good +student and educated himself, in striking contrast to the loose ways and +so-called aristocratic society-life of Lord Byron, on which I have just +spoken. And certainly though the lords and earls of his day may have +looked down upon Burns as a humble person, many of us have greatly +enjoyed his pieces about the mouse and other rustic subjects, with their +message of humble beauty--I am so sorry I have not got the time to quote +some of them." + +Mrs. George Edwin Mott gave ten minutes to Tennyson and Browning. + +Mrs. Nat Hicks, a wry-faced, curiously sweet woman, so awed by her +betters that Carol wanted to kiss her, completed the day's grim task by +a paper on "Other Poets." The other poets worthy of consideration were +Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, Gray, Mrs. Hemans, and Kipling. + +Miss Ella Stowbody obliged with a recital of "The Recessional" and +extracts from "Lalla Rookh." By request, she gave "An Old Sweetheart of +Mine" as encore. + +Gopher Prairie had finished the poets. It was ready for the next week's +labor: English Fiction and Essays. + +Mrs. Dawson besought, "Now we will have a discussion of the papers, and +I am sure we shall all enjoy hearing from one who we hope to have as a +new member, Mrs. Kennicott, who with her splendid literary training and +all should be able to give us many pointers and--many helpful pointers." + +Carol had warned herself not to be so "beastly supercilious." She had +insisted that in the belated quest of these work-stained women was +an aspiration which ought to stir her tears. "But they're so +self-satisfied. They think they're doing Burns a favor. They don't +believe they have a 'belated quest.' They're sure that they have culture +salted and hung up." It was out of this stupor of doubt that Mrs. +Dawson's summons roused her. She was in a panic. How could she speak +without hurting them? + +Mrs. Champ Perry leaned over to stroke her hand and whisper, "You look +tired, dearie. Don't you talk unless you want to." + +Affection flooded Carol; she was on her feet, searching for words and +courtesies: + +"The only thing in the way of suggestion----I know you are following +a definite program, but I do wish that now you've had such a splendid +introduction, instead of going on with some other subject next year you +could return and take up the poets more in detail. Especially actual +quotations--even though their lives are so interesting and, as Mrs. +Warren said, so morally instructive. And perhaps there are several poets +not mentioned today whom it might be worth while considering--Keats, for +instance, and Matthew Arnold and Rossetti and Swinburne. Swinburne would +be such a--well, that is, such a contrast to life as we all enjoy it in +our beautiful Middle-west----" + +She saw that Mrs. Leonard Warren was not with her. She captured her by +innocently continuing: + +"Unless perhaps Swinburne tends to be, uh, more outspoken than you, than +we really like. What do you think, Mrs. Warren?" + +The pastor's wife decided, "Why, you've caught my very thoughts, Mrs. +Kennicott. Of course I have never READ Swinburne, but years ago, when +he was in vogue, I remember Mr. Warren saying that Swinburne (or was +it Oscar Wilde? but anyway:) he said that though many so-called +intellectual people posed and pretended to find beauty in Swinburne, +there can never be genuine beauty without the message from the heart. +But at the same time I do think you have an excellent idea, and though +we have talked about Furnishings and China as the probable subject for +next year, I believe that it would be nice if the program committee +would try to work in another day entirely devoted to English poetry! In +fact, Madame Chairman, I so move you." + +When Mrs. Dawson's coffee and angel's-food had helped them to recover +from the depression caused by thoughts of Shakespeare's death they all +told Carol that it was a pleasure to have her with them. The membership +committee retired to the sitting-room for three minutes and elected her +a member. + +And she stopped being patronizing. + +She wanted to be one of them. They were so loyal and kind. It was they +who would carry out her aspiration. Her campaign against village sloth +was actually begun! On what specific reform should she first loose +her army? During the gossip after the meeting Mrs. George Edwin Mott +remarked that the city hall seemed inadequate for the splendid modern +Gopher Prairie. Mrs. Nat Hicks timidly wished that the young people +could have free dances there--the lodge dances were so exclusive. The +city hall. That was it! Carol hurried home. + +She had not realized that Gopher Prairie was a city. From Kennicott she +discovered that it was legally organized with a mayor and city-council +and wards. She was delighted by the simplicity of voting one's self a +metropolis. Why not? + +She was a proud and patriotic citizen, all evening. + + + +II + + +She examined the city hall, next morning. She had remembered it only as +a bleak inconspicuousness. She found it a liver-colored frame coop half +a block from Main Street. The front was an unrelieved wall of clapboards +and dirty windows. It had an unobstructed view of a vacant lot and Nat +Hicks's tailor shop. It was larger than the carpenter shop beside it, +but not so well built. + +No one was about. She walked into the corridor. On one side was the +municipal court, like a country school; on the other, the room of the +volunteer fire company, with a Ford hose-cart and the ornamental helmets +used in parades, at the end of the hall, a filthy two-cell jail, now +empty but smelling of ammonia and ancient sweat. The whole second story +was a large unfinished room littered with piles of folding chairs, a +lime-crusted mortar-mixing box, and the skeletons of Fourth of July +floats covered with decomposing plaster shields and faded red, white, +and blue bunting. At the end was an abortive stage. The room was large +enough for the community dances which Mrs. Nat Hicks advocated. But +Carol was after something bigger than dances. + +In the afternoon she scampered to the public library. + +The library was open three afternoons and four evenings a week. It was +housed in an old dwelling, sufficient but unattractive. Carol caught +herself picturing pleasanter reading-rooms, chairs for children, an art +collection, a librarian young enough to experiment. + +She berated herself, "Stop this fever of reforming everything! I WILL be +satisfied with the library! The city hall is enough for a beginning. +And it's really an excellent library. It's--it isn't so bad. . . . Is +it possible that I am to find dishonesties and stupidity in every +human activity I encounter? In schools and business and government and +everything? Is there never any contentment, never any rest?" + +She shook her head as though she were shaking off water, and hastened +into the library, a young, light, amiable presence, modest in unbuttoned +fur coat, blue suit, fresh organdy collar, and tan boots roughened from +scuffling snow. Miss Villets stared at her, and Carol purred, "I was so +sorry not to see you at the Thanatopsis yesterday. Vida said you might +come." + +"Oh. You went to the Thanatopsis. Did you enjoy it?" + +"So much. Such good papers on the poets." Carol lied resolutely. "But I +did think they should have had you give one of the papers on poetry!" + +"Well----Of course I'm not one of the bunch that seem to have the +time to take and run the club, and if they prefer to have papers on +literature by other ladies who have no literary training--after all, why +should I complain? What am I but a city employee!" + +"You're not! You're the one person that does--that does--oh, you do so +much. Tell me, is there, uh----Who are the people who control the club?" + +Miss Villets emphatically stamped a date in the front of "Frank on the +Lower Mississippi" for a small flaxen boy, glowered at him as though she +were stamping a warning on his brain, and sighed: + +"I wouldn't put myself forward or criticize any one for the world, and +Vida is one of my best friends, and such a splendid teacher, and there +is no one in town more advanced and interested in all movements, but I +must say that no matter who the president or the committees are, Vida +Sherwin seems to be behind them all the time, and though she is always +telling me about what she is pleased to call my 'fine work in the +library,' I notice that I'm not often called on for papers, though Mrs. +Lyman Cass once volunteered and told me that she thought my paper on +'The Cathedrals of England' was the most interesting paper we had, the +year we took up English and French travel and architecture. But----And +of course Mrs. Mott and Mrs. Warren are very important in the club, as +you might expect of the wives of the superintendent of schools and +the Congregational pastor, and indeed they are both very cultured, +but----No, you may regard me as entirely unimportant. I'm sure what I +say doesn't matter a bit!" + +"You're much too modest, and I'm going to tell Vida so, and, uh, I +wonder if you can give me just a teeny bit of your time and show me +where the magazine files are kept?" + +She had won. She was profusely escorted to a room like a grandmother's +attic, where she discovered periodicals devoted to house-decoration and +town-planning, with a six-year file of the National Geographic. Miss +Villets blessedly left her alone. Humming, fluttering pages with +delighted fingers, Carol sat cross-legged on the floor, the magazines in +heaps about her. + +She found pictures of New England streets: the dignity of Falmouth, the +charm of Concord, Stockbridge and Farmington and Hillhouse Avenue. The +fairy-book suburb of Forest Hills on Long Island. Devonshire cottages +and Essex manors and a Yorkshire High Street and Port Sunlight. The +Arab village of Djeddah--an intricately chased jewel-box. A town in +California which had changed itself from the barren brick fronts and +slatternly frame sheds of a Main Street to a way which led the eye down +a vista of arcades and gardens. + +Assured that she was not quite mad in her belief that a small American +town might be lovely, as well as useful in buying wheat and selling +plows, she sat brooding, her thin fingers playing a tattoo on her +cheeks. She saw in Gopher Prairie a Georgian city hall: warm brick walls +with white shutters, a fanlight, a wide hall and curving stair. She +saw it the common home and inspiration not only of the town but of +the country about. It should contain the court-room (she couldn't get +herself to put in a jail), public library, a collection of excellent +prints, rest-room and model kitchen for farmwives, theater, lecture +room, free community ballroom, farm-bureau, gymnasium. Forming about it +and influenced by it, as mediaeval villages gathered about the castle, +she saw a new Georgian town as graceful and beloved as Annapolis or that +bowery Alexandria to which Washington rode. + +All this the Thanatopsis Club was to accomplish with no difficulty +whatever, since its several husbands were the controllers of business +and politics. She was proud of herself for this practical view. + +She had taken only half an hour to change a wire-fenced potato-plot into +a walled rose-garden. She hurried out to apprize Mrs. Leonard Warren, as +president of the Thanatopsis, of the miracle which had been worked. + + + +III + + +At a quarter to three Carol had left home; at half-past four she had +created the Georgian town; at a quarter to five she was in the dignified +poverty of the Congregational parsonage, her enthusiasm pattering upon +Mrs. Leonard Warren like summer rain upon an old gray roof; at two +minutes to five a town of demure courtyards and welcoming dormer windows +had been erected, and at two minutes past five the entire town was as +flat as Babylon. + +Erect in a black William and Mary chair against gray and speckly-brown +volumes of sermons and Biblical commentaries and Palestine geographies +upon long pine shelves, her neat black shoes firm on a rag-rug, herself +as correct and low-toned as her background, Mrs. Warren listened without +comment till Carol was quite through, then answered delicately: + +"Yes, I think you draw a very nice picture of what might easily come to +pass--some day. I have no doubt that such villages will be found on the +prairie--some day. But if I might make just the least little criticism: +it seems to me that you are wrong in supposing either that the city hall +would be the proper start, or that the Thanatopsis would be the right +instrument. After all, it's the churches, isn't it, that are the +real heart of the community. As you may possibly know, my husband +is prominent in Congregational circles all through the state for +his advocacy of church-union. He hopes to see all the evangelical +denominations joined in one strong body, opposing Catholicism and +Christian Science, and properly guiding all movements that make for +morality and prohibition. Here, the combined churches could afford +a splendid club-house, maybe a stucco and half-timber building with +gargoyles and all sorts of pleasing decorations on it, which, it seems +to me, would be lots better to impress the ordinary class of people than +just a plain old-fashioned colonial house, such as you describe. And +that would be the proper center for all educational and pleasurable +activities, instead of letting them fall into the hands of the +politicians." + +"I don't suppose it will take more than thirty or forty years for the +churches to get together?" Carol said innocently. + +"Hardly that long even; things are moving so rapidly. So it would be a +mistake to make any other plans." + +Carol did not recover her zeal till two days after, when she tried Mrs. +George Edwin Mott, wife of the superintendent of schools. + +Mrs. Mott commented, "Personally, I am terribly busy with dressmaking +and having the seamstress in the house and all, but it would be splendid +to have the other members of the Thanatopsis take up the question. +Except for one thing: First and foremost, we must have a new +schoolbuilding. Mr. Mott says they are terribly cramped." + +Carol went to view the old building. The grades and the high school were +combined in a damp yellow-brick structure with the narrow windows of an +antiquated jail--a hulk which expressed hatred and compulsory training. +She conceded Mrs. Mott's demand so violently that for two days she +dropped her own campaign. Then she built the school and city hall +together, as the center of the reborn town. + +She ventured to the lead-colored dwelling of Mrs. Dave Dyer. Behind the +mask of winter-stripped vines and a wide porch only a foot above the +ground, the cottage was so impersonal that Carol could never visualize +it. Nor could she remember anything that was inside it. But Mrs. Dyer +was personal enough. With Carol, Mrs. Howland, Mrs. McGanum, and Vida +Sherwin she was a link between the Jolly Seventeen and the serious +Thanatopsis (in contrast to Juanita Haydock, who unnecessarily boasted +of being a "lowbrow" and publicly stated that she would "see herself +in jail before she'd write any darned old club papers"). Mrs. Dyer was +superfeminine in the kimono in which she received Carol. Her skin was +fine, pale, soft, suggesting a weak voluptuousness. At afternoon-coffees +she had been rude but now she addressed Carol as "dear," and insisted on +being called Maud. Carol did not quite know why she was uncomfortable +in this talcum-powder atmosphere, but she hastened to get into the fresh +air of her plans. + +Maud Dyer granted that the city hall wasn't "so very nice," yet, as Dave +said, there was no use doing anything about it till they received +an appropriation from the state and combined a new city hall with +a national guard armory. Dave had given verdict, "What these mouthy +youngsters that hang around the pool-room need is universal military +training. Make men of 'em." + +Mrs. Dyer removed the new schoolbuilding from the city hall: + +"Oh, so Mrs. Mott has got you going on her school craze! She's been +dinging at that till everybody's sick and tired. What she really wants +is a big office for her dear bald-headed Gawge to sit around and look +important in. Of course I admire Mrs. Mott, and I'm very fond of +her, she's so brainy, even if she does try to butt in and run the +Thanatopsis, but I must say we're sick of her nagging. The old building +was good enough for us when we were kids! I hate these would-be women +politicians, don't you?" + + + +IV + + +The first week of March had given promise of spring and stirred Carol +with a thousand desires for lakes and fields and roads. The snow was +gone except for filthy woolly patches under trees, the thermometer +leaped in a day from wind-bitten chill to itchy warmth. As soon as Carol +was convinced that even in this imprisoned North, spring could exist +again, the snow came down as abruptly as a paper storm in a theater; the +northwest gale flung it up in a half blizzard; and with her hope of a +glorified town went hope of summer meadows. + +But a week later, though the snow was everywhere in slushy heaps, the +promise was unmistakable. By the invisible hints in air and sky and +earth which had aroused her every year through ten thousand generations +she knew that spring was coming. It was not a scorching, hard, dusty day +like the treacherous intruder of a week before, but soaked with languor, +softened with a milky light. Rivulets were hurrying in each alley; a +calling robin appeared by magic on the crab-apple tree in the Howlands' +yard. Everybody chuckled, "Looks like winter is going," and "This 'll +bring the frost out of the roads--have the autos out pretty soon +now--wonder what kind of bass-fishing we'll get this summer--ought to be +good crops this year." + +Each evening Kennicott repeated, "We better not take off our Heavy +Underwear or the storm windows too soon--might be 'nother spell of +cold--got to be careful 'bout catching cold--wonder if the coal will +last through?" + +The expanding forces of life within her choked the desire for reforming. +She trotted through the house, planning the spring cleaning with Bea. +When she attended her second meeting of the Thanatopsis she said nothing +about remaking the town. She listened respectably to statistics on +Dickens, Thackeray, Jane Austen, George Eliot, Scott, Hardy, Lamb, De +Quincey, and Mrs. Humphry Ward, who, it seemed, constituted the writers +of English Fiction and Essays. + +Not till she inspected the rest-room did she again become a fanatic. +She had often glanced at the store-building which had been turned into +a refuge in which farmwives could wait while their husbands transacted +business. She had heard Vida Sherwin and Mrs. Warren caress the virtue +of the Thanatopsis in establishing the rest-room and in sharing with the +city council the expense of maintaining it. But she had never entered it +till this March day. + +She went in impulsively; nodded at the matron, a plump worthy widow +named Nodelquist, and at a couple of farm-women who were meekly rocking. +The rest-room resembled a second-hand store. It was furnished with +discarded patent rockers, lopsided reed chairs, a scratched pine table, +a gritty straw mat, old steel engravings of milkmaids being morally +amorous under willow-trees, faded chromos of roses and fish, and a +kerosene stove for warming lunches. The front window was darkened by +torn net curtains and by a mound of geraniums and rubber-plants. + +While she was listening to Mrs. Nodelquist's account of how many +thousands of farmers' wives used the rest-room every year, and how much +they "appreciated the kindness of the ladies in providing them with +this lovely place, and all free," she thought, "Kindness nothing! The +kind-ladies' husbands get the farmers' trade. This is mere commercial +accommodation. And it's horrible. It ought to be the most charming room +in town, to comfort women sick of prairie kitchens. Certainly it ought +to have a clear window, so that they can see the metropolitan life go +by. Some day I'm going to make a better rest-room--a club-room. Why! +I've already planned that as part of my Georgian town hall!" + +So it chanced that she was plotting against the peace of the Thanatopsis +at her third meeting (which covered Scandinavian, Russian, and Polish +Literature, with remarks by Mrs. Leonard Warren on the sinful paganism +of the Russian so-called church). Even before the entrance of the +coffee and hot rolls Carol seized on Mrs. Champ Perry, the kind and +ample-bosomed pioneer woman who gave historic dignity to the modern +matrons of the Thanatopsis. She poured out her plans. Mrs. Perry nodded +and stroked Carol's hand, but at the end she sighed: + +"I wish I could agree with you, dearie. I'm sure you're one of the +Lord's anointed (even if we don't see you at the Baptist Church as often +as we'd like to)! But I'm afraid you're too tender-hearted. When Champ +and I came here we teamed-it with an ox-cart from Sauk Centre to Gopher +Prairie, and there was nothing here then but a stockade and a few +soldiers and some log cabins. When we wanted salt pork and gunpowder, we +sent out a man on horseback, and probably he was shot dead by the +Injuns before he got back. We ladies--of course we were all farmers +at first--we didn't expect any rest-room in those days. My, we'd have +thought the one they have now was simply elegant! My house was roofed +with hay and it leaked something terrible when it rained--only dry place +was under a shelf. + +"And when the town grew up we thought the new city hall was real fine. +And I don't see any need for dance-halls. Dancing isn't what it was, +anyway. We used to dance modest, and we had just as much fun as all +these young folks do now with their terrible Turkey Trots and hugging +and all. But if they must neglect the Lord's injunction that young girls +ought to be modest, then I guess they manage pretty well at the K. +P. Hall and the Oddfellows', even if some of tie lodges don't always +welcome a lot of these foreigners and hired help to all their dances. +And I certainly don't see any need of a farm-bureau or this domestic +science demonstration you talk about. In my day the boys learned to farm +by honest sweating, and every gal could cook, or her ma learned her +how across her knee! Besides, ain't there a county agent at Wakamin? He +comes here once a fortnight, maybe. That's enough monkeying with this +scientific farming--Champ says there's nothing to it anyway. + +"And as for a lecture hall--haven't we got the churches? Good deal +better to listen to a good old-fashioned sermon than a lot of geography +and books and things that nobody needs to know--more 'n enough heathen +learning right here in the Thanatopsis. And as for trying to make a +whole town in this Colonial architecture you talk about----I do love +nice things; to this day I run ribbons into my petticoats, even if +Champ Perry does laugh at me, the old villain! But just the same I don't +believe any of us old-timers would like to see the town that we worked +so hard to build being tore down to make a place that wouldn't look like +nothing but some Dutch story-book and not a bit like the place we loved. +And don't you think it's sweet now? All the trees and lawns? And such +comfy houses, and hot-water heat and electric lights and telephones +and cement walks and everything? Why, I thought everybody from the Twin +Cities always said it was such a beautiful town!" + +Carol forswore herself; declared that Gopher Prairie had the color of +Algiers and the gaiety of Mardi Gras. + +Yet the next afternoon she was pouncing on Mrs. Lyman Cass, the +hook-nosed consort of the owner of the flour-mill. + +Mrs. Cass's parlor belonged to the crammed-Victorian school, as Mrs. +Luke Dawson's belonged to the bare-Victorian. It was furnished on two +principles: First, everything must resemble something else. A rocker had +a back like a lyre, a near-leather seat imitating tufted cloth, and +arms like Scotch Presbyterian lions; with knobs, scrolls, shields, and +spear-points on unexpected portions of the chair. The second principle +of the crammed-Victorian school was that every inch of the interior must +be filled with useless objects. + +The walls of Mrs. Cass's parlor were plastered with "hand-painted" +pictures, "buckeye" pictures, of birch-trees, news-boys, puppies, and +church-steeples on Christmas Eve; with a plaque depicting the Exposition +Building in Minneapolis, burnt-wood portraits of Indian chiefs of no +tribe in particular, a pansy-decked poetic motto, a Yard of Roses, and +the banners of the educational institutions attended by the Casses' two +sons--Chicopee Falls Business College and McGillicuddy University. One +small square table contained a card-receiver of painted china with a rim +of wrought and gilded lead, a Family Bible, Grant's Memoirs, the latest +novel by Mrs. Gene Stratton Porter, a wooden model of a Swiss chalet +which was also a bank for dimes, a polished abalone shell holding one +black-headed pin and one empty spool, a velvet pin-cushion in a gilded +metal slipper with "Souvenir of Troy, N. Y." stamped on the toe, and an +unexplained red glass dish which had warts. + +Mrs. Cass's first remark was, "I must show you all my pretty things and +art objects." + +She piped, after Carol's appeal: + +"I see. You think the New England villages and Colonial houses are so +much more cunning than these Middlewestern towns. I'm glad you feel that +way. You'll be interested to know I was born in Vermont." + +"And don't you think we ought to try to make Gopher Prai----" + +"My gracious no! We can't afford it. Taxes are much too high as it is. +We ought to retrench, and not let the city council spend another cent. +Uh----Don't you think that was a grand paper Mrs. Westlake read about +Tolstoy? I was so glad she pointed out how all his silly socialistic +ideas failed." + +What Mrs. Cass said was what Kennicott said, that evening. Not in twenty +years would the council propose or Gopher Prairie vote the funds for a +new city hall. + + + +V + + +Carol had avoided exposing her plans to Vida Sherwin. She was shy of the +big-sister manner; Vida would either laugh at her or snatch the idea and +change it to suit herself. But there was no other hope. When Vida came +in to tea Carol sketched her Utopia. + +Vida was soothing but decisive: + +"My dear, you're all off. I would like to see it: a real gardeny place +to shut out the gales. But it can't be done. What could the clubwomen +accomplish?" + +"Their husbands are the most important men in town. They ARE the town!" + +"But the town as a separate unit is not the husband of the Thanatopsis. +If you knew the trouble we had in getting the city council to spend the +money and cover the pumping-station with vines! Whatever you may think +of Gopher Prairie women, they're twice as progressive as the men." + +"But can't the men see the ugliness?" + +"They don't think it's ugly. And how can you prove it? Matter of taste. +Why should they like what a Boston architect likes?" + +"What they like is to sell prunes!" + +"Well, why not? Anyway, the point is that you have to work from the +inside, with what we have, rather than from the outside, with foreign +ideas. The shell ought not to be forced on the spirit. It can't be! The +bright shell has to grow out of the spirit, and express it. That means +waiting. If we keep after the city council for another ten years they +MAY vote the bonds for a new school." + +"I refuse to believe that if they saw it the big men would be too +tight-fisted to spend a few dollars each for a building--think!--dancing +and lectures and plays, all done co-operatively!" + +"You mention the word 'co-operative' to the merchants and they'll +lynch you! The one thing they fear more than mail-order houses is that +farmers' co-operative movements may get started." + +"The secret trails that lead to scared pocket-books! Always, in +everything! And I don't have any of the fine melodrama of fiction: the +dictagraphs and speeches by torchlight. I'm merely blocked by stupidity. +Oh, I know I'm a fool. I dream of Venice, and I live in Archangel and +scold because the Northern seas aren't tender-colored. But at least they +sha'n't keep me from loving Venice, and sometime I'll run away----All +right. No more." + +She flung out her hands in a gesture of renunciation. + + + +VI + + +Early May; wheat springing up in blades like grass; corn and potatoes +being planted; the land humming. For two days there had been steady +rain. Even in town the roads were a furrowed welter of mud, hideous to +view and difficult to cross. Main Street was a black swamp from curb to +curb; on residence streets the grass parking beside the walks oozed gray +water. It was prickly hot, yet the town was barren under the bleak sky. +Softened neither by snow nor by waving boughs the houses squatted and +scowled, revealed in their unkempt harshness. + +As she dragged homeward Carol looked with distaste at her clay-loaded +rubbers, the smeared hem of her skirt. She passed Lyman Cass's +pinnacled, dark-red, hulking house. She waded a streaky yellow pool. +This morass was not her home, she insisted. Her home, and her beautiful +town, existed in her mind. They had already been created. The task was +done. What she really had been questing was some one to share them with +her. Vida would not; Kennicott could not. + +Some one to share her refuge. + +Suddenly she was thinking of Guy Pollock. + +She dismissed him. He was too cautious. She needed a spirit as young and +unreasonable as her own. And she would never find it. Youth would never +come singing. She was beaten. + +Yet that same evening she had an idea which solved the rebuilding of +Gopher Prairie. + +Within ten minutes she was jerking the old-fashioned bell-pull of Luke +Dawson. Mrs. Dawson opened the door and peered doubtfully about the +edge of it. Carol kissed her cheek, and frisked into the lugubrious +sitting-room. + +"Well, well, you're a sight for sore eyes!" chuckled Mr. Dawson, +dropping his newspaper, pushing his spectacles back on his forehead. + +"You seem so excited," sighed Mrs. Dawson. + +"I am! Mr. Dawson, aren't you a millionaire?" + +He cocked his head, and purred, "Well, I guess if I cashed in on all my +securities and farm-holdings and my interests in iron on the Mesaba and +in Northern timber and cut-over lands, I could push two million dollars +pretty close, and I've made every cent of it by hard work and having the +sense to not go out and spend every----" + +"I think I want most of it from you!" + +The Dawsons glanced at each other in appreciation of the jest; and +he chirped, "You're worse than Reverend Benlick! He don't hardly ever +strike me for more than ten dollars--at a time!" + +"I'm not joking. I mean it! Your children in the Cities are grown-up and +well-to-do. You don't want to die and leave your name unknown. Why not +do a big, original thing? Why not rebuild the whole town? Get a great +architect, and have him plan a town that would be suitable to the +prairie. Perhaps he'd create some entirely new form of architecture. +Then tear down all these shambling buildings----" + +Mr. Dawson had decided that she really did mean it. He wailed, "Why, +that would cost at least three or four million dollars!" + +"But you alone, just one man, have two of those millions!" + +"Me? Spend all my hard-earned cash on building houses for a lot of +shiftless beggars that never had the sense to save their money? Not +that I've ever been mean. Mama could always have a hired girl to do the +work--when we could find one. But her and I have worked our fingers to +the bone and--spend it on a lot of these rascals----?" + +"Please! Don't be angry! I just mean--I mean----Oh, not spend all of it, +of course, but if you led off the list, and the others came in, and if +they heard you talk about a more attractive town----" + +"Why now, child, you've got a lot of notions. Besides what's the matter +with the town? Looks good to me. I've had people that have traveled +all over the world tell me time and again that Gopher Prairie is the +prettiest place in the Middlewest. Good enough for anybody. Certainly +good enough for Mama and me. Besides! Mama and me are planning to go +out to Pasadena and buy a bungalow and live there." + + + +VII + + +She had met Miles Bjornstam on the street. For the second of welcome +encounter this workman with the bandit mustache and the muddy overalls +seemed nearer than any one else to the credulous youth which she was +seeking to fight beside her, and she told him, as a cheerful anecdote, a +little of her story. + +He grunted, "I never thought I'd be agreeing with Old Man Dawson, the +penny-pinching old land-thief--and a fine briber he is, too. But you +got the wrong slant. You aren't one of the people--yet. You want to do +something for the town. I don't! I want the town to do something for +itself. We don't want old Dawson's money--not if it's a gift, with a +string. We'll take it away from him, because it belongs to us. You got +to get more iron and cussedness into you. Come join us cheerful bums, +and some day--when we educate ourselves and quit being bums--we'll take +things and run 'em straight." + +He had changed from her friend to a cynical man in overalls. She could +not relish the autocracy of "cheerful bums." + +She forgot him as she tramped the outskirts of town. + +She had replaced the city hall project by an entirely new and highly +exhilarating thought of how little was done for these unpicturesque +poor. + + + +VIII + + +The spring of the plains is not a reluctant virgin but brazen and soon +away. The mud roads of a few days ago are powdery dust and the puddles +beside them have hardened into lozenges of black sleek earth like +cracked patent leather. + +Carol was panting as she crept to the meeting of the Thanatopsis program +committee which was to decide the subject for next fall and winter. + +Madam Chairman (Miss Ella Stowbody in an oyster-colored blouse) asked if +there was any new business. + +Carol rose. She suggested that the Thanatopsis ought to help the poor +of the town. She was ever so correct and modern. She did not, she said, +want charity for them, but a chance of self-help; an employment bureau, +direction in washing babies and making pleasing stews, possibly a +municipal fund for home-building. "What do you think of my plans, Mrs. +Warren?" she concluded. + +Speaking judiciously, as one related to the church by marriage, Mrs. +Warren gave verdict: + +"I'm sure we're all heartily in accord with Mrs. Kennicott in feeling +that wherever genuine poverty is encountered, it is not only noblesse +oblige but a joy to fulfil our duty to the less fortunate ones. But I +must say it seems to me we should lose the whole point of the thing by +not regarding it as charity. Why, that's the chief adornment of the true +Christian and the church! The Bible has laid it down for our guidance. +'Faith, Hope, and CHARITY,' it says, and, 'The poor ye have with ye +always,' which indicates that there never can be anything to these +so-called scientific schemes for abolishing charity, never! And isn't it +better so? I should hate to think of a world in which we were deprived +of all the pleasure of giving. Besides, if these shiftless folks realize +they're getting charity, and not something to which they have a right, +they're so much more grateful." + +"Besides," snorted Miss Ella Stowbody, "they've been fooling you, Mrs. +Kennicott. There isn't any real poverty here. Take that Mrs. Steinhof +you speak of: I send her our washing whenever there's too much for our +hired girl--I must have sent her ten dollars' worth the past year alone! +I'm sure Papa would never approve of a city home-building fund. Papa +says these folks are fakers. Especially all these tenant farmers that +pretend they have so much trouble getting seed and machinery. Papa +says they simply won't pay their debts. He says he's sure he hates to +foreclose mortgages, but it's the only way to make them respect the +law." + +"And then think of all the clothes we give these people!" said Mrs. +Jackson Elder. + +Carol intruded again. "Oh yes. The clothes. I was going to speak of +that. Don't you think that when we give clothes to the poor, if we +do give them old ones, we ought to mend them first and make them as +presentable as we can? Next Christmas when the Thanatopsis makes its +distribution, wouldn't it be jolly if we got together and sewed on the +clothes, and trimmed hats, and made them----" + +"Heavens and earth, they have more time than we have! They ought to be +mighty good and grateful to get anything, no matter what shape it's in. +I know I'm not going to sit and sew for that lazy Mrs. Vopni, with all +I've got to do!" snapped Ella Stowbody. + +They were glaring at Carol. She reflected that Mrs. Vopni, whose husband +had been killed by a train, had ten children. + +But Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks was smiling. Mrs. Wilks was the proprietor of +Ye Art Shoppe and Magazine and Book Store, and the reader of the small +Christian Science church. She made it all clear: + +"If this class of people had an understanding of Science and that we are +the children of God and nothing can harm us, they wouldn't be in error +and poverty." + +Mrs. Jackson Elder confirmed, "Besides, it strikes me the club is +already doing enough, with tree-planting and the anti-fly campaign and +the responsibility for the rest-room--to say nothing of the fact that +we've talked of trying to get the railroad to put in a park at the +station!" + +"I think so too!" said Madam Chairman. She glanced uneasily at Miss +Sherwin. "But what do you think, Vida?" + +Vida smiled tactfully at each of the committee, and announced, "Well, I +don't believe we'd better start anything more right now. But it's been +a privilege to hear Carol's dear generous ideas, hasn't it! Oh! There is +one thing we must decide on at once. We must get together and oppose +any move on the part of the Minneapolis clubs to elect another State +Federation president from the Twin Cities. And this Mrs. Edgar Potbury +they're putting forward--I know there are people who think she's a +bright interesting speaker, but I regard her as very shallow. What do +you say to my writing to the Lake Ojibawasha Club, telling them that if +their district will support Mrs. Warren for second vice-president, we'll +support their Mrs. Hagelton (and such a dear, lovely, cultivated woman, +too) for president." + +"Yes! We ought to show up those Minneapolis folks!" Ella Stowbody +said acidly. "And oh, by the way, we must oppose this movement of Mrs. +Potbury's to have the state clubs come out definitely in favor of woman +suffrage. Women haven't any place in politics. They would lose all their +daintiness and charm if they became involved in these horried plots +and log-rolling and all this awful political stuff about scandal and +personalities and so on." + +All--save one--nodded. They interrupted the formal business-meeting +to discuss Mrs. Edgar Potbury's husband, Mrs. Potbury's income, Mrs. +Potbury's sedan, Mrs. Potbury's residence, Mrs. Potbury's oratorical +style, Mrs. Potbury's mandarin evening coat, Mrs. Potbury's coiffure, +and Mrs. Potbury's altogether reprehensible influence on the State +Federation of Women's Clubs. + +Before the program committee adjourned they took three minutes to +decide which of the subjects suggested by the magazine Culture Hints, +Furnishings and China, or The Bible as Literature, would be better for +the coming year. There was one annoying incident. Mrs. Dr. Kennicott +interfered and showed off again. She commented, "Don't you think that we +already get enough of the Bible in our churches and Sunday Schools?" + +Mrs. Leonard Warren, somewhat out of order but much more out of temper, +cried, "Well upon my word! I didn't suppose there was any one who felt +that we could get enough of the Bible! I guess if the Grand Old Book +has withstood the attacks of infidels for these two thousand years it is +worth our SLIGHT consideration!" + +"Oh, I didn't mean----" Carol begged. Inasmuch as she did mean, it was +hard to be extremely lucid. "But I wish, instead of limiting ourselves +either to the Bible, or to anecdotes about the Brothers Adam's wigs, +which Culture Hints seems to regard as the significant point about +furniture, we could study some of the really stirring ideas that are +springing up today--whether it's chemistry or anthropology or labor +problems--the things that are going to mean so terribly much." + +Everybody cleared her polite throat. + +Madam Chairman inquired, "Is there any other discussion? Will some +one make a motion to adopt the suggestion of Vida Sherwin--to take up +Furnishings and China?" + +It was adopted, unanimously. + +"Checkmate!" murmured Carol, as she held up her hand. + +Had she actually believed that she could plant a seed of liberalism +in the blank wall of mediocrity? How had she fallen into the folly of +trying to plant anything whatever in a wall so smooth and sun-glazed, +and so satisfying to the happy sleepers within? + + + +CHAPTER XII + +ONE week of authentic spring, one rare sweet week of May, one tranquil +moment between the blast of winter and the charge of summer. Daily Carol +walked from town into flashing country hysteric with new life. + +One enchanted hour when she returned to youth and a belief in the +possibility of beauty. + +She had walked northward toward the upper shore of Plover Lake, taking +to the railroad track, whose directness and dryness make it the natural +highway for pedestrians on the plains. She stepped from tie to tie, in +long strides. At each road-crossing she had to crawl over a cattle-guard +of sharpened timbers. She walked the rails, balancing with arms +extended, cautious heel before toe. As she lost balance her body bent +over, her arms revolved wildly, and when she toppled she laughed aloud. + +The thick grass beside the track, coarse and prickly with many burnings, +hid canary-yellow buttercups and the mauve petals and woolly sage-green +coats of the pasque flowers. The branches of the kinnikinic brush were +red and smooth as lacquer on a saki bowl. + +She ran down the gravelly embankment, smiled at children gathering +flowers in a little basket, thrust a handful of the soft pasque flowers +into the bosom of her white blouse. Fields of springing wheat drew her +from the straight propriety of the railroad and she crawled through the +rusty barbed-wire fence. She followed a furrow between low wheat blades +and a field of rye which showed silver lights as it flowed before the +wind. She found a pasture by the lake. So sprinkled was the pasture with +rag-baby blossoms and the cottony herb of Indian tobacco that it spread +out like a rare old Persian carpet of cream and rose and delicate green. +Under her feet the rough grass made a pleasant crunching. Sweet winds +blew from the sunny lake beside her, and small waves sputtered on the +meadowy shore. She leaped a tiny creek bowered in pussy-willow buds. She +was nearing a frivolous grove of birch and poplar and wild plum trees. + +The poplar foliage had the downiness of a Corot arbor; the green and +silver trunks were as candid as the birches, as slender and lustrous +as the limbs of a Pierrot. The cloudy white blossoms of the plum trees +filled the grove with a springtime mistiness which gave an illusion of +distance. + +She ran into the wood, crying out for joy of freedom regained after +winter. Choke-cherry blossoms lured her from the outer sun-warmed spaces +to depths of green stillness, where a submarine light came through the +young leaves. She walked pensively along an abandoned road. She found a +moccasin-flower beside a lichen-covered log. At the end of the road she +saw the open acres--dipping rolling fields bright with wheat. + +"I believe! The woodland gods still live! And out there, the great land. +It's beautiful as the mountains. What do I care for Thanatopsises?" + +She came out on the prairie, spacious under an arch of boldly cut +clouds. Small pools glittered. Above a marsh red-winged blackbirds +chased a crow in a swift melodrama of the air. On a hill was silhouetted +a man following a drag. His horse bent its neck and plodded, content. + +A path took her to the Corinth road, leading back to town. Dandelions +glowed in patches amidst the wild grass by the way. A stream golloped +through a concrete culvert beneath the road. She trudged in healthy +weariness. + +A man in a bumping Ford rattled up beside her, hailed, "Give you a lift, +Mrs. Kennicott?" + +"Thank you. It's awfully good of you, but I'm enjoying the walk." + +"Great day, by golly. I seen some wheat that must of been five inches +high. Well, so long." + +She hadn't the dimmest notion who he was, but his greeting warmed her. +This countryman gave her a companionship which she had never (whether +by her fault or theirs or neither) been able to find in the matrons and +commercial lords of the town. + +Half a mile from town, in a hollow between hazelnut bushes and a brook, +she discovered a gipsy encampment: a covered wagon, a tent, a bunch of +pegged-out horses. A broad-shouldered man was squatted on his heels, +holding a frying-pan over a camp-fire. He looked toward her. He was +Miles Bjornstam. + +"Well, well, what you doing out here?" he roared. "Come have a hunk o' +bacon. Pete! Hey, Pete!" + +A tousled person came from behind the covered wagon. + +"Pete, here's the one honest-to-God lady in my bum town. Come on, crawl +in and set a couple minutes, Mrs. Kennicott. I'm hiking off for all +summer." + +The Red Swede staggered up, rubbed his cramped knees, lumbered to the +wire fence, held the strands apart for her. She unconsciously smiled at +him as she went through. Her skirt caught on a barb; he carefully freed +it. + +Beside this man in blue flannel shirt, baggy khaki trousers, uneven +suspenders, and vile felt hat, she was small and exquisite. + +The surly Pete set out an upturned bucket for her. She lounged on it, +her elbows on her knees. "Where are you going?" she asked. + +"Just starting off for the summer, horse-trading." Bjornstam chuckled. +His red mustache caught the sun. "Regular hoboes and public benefactors +we are. Take a hike like this every once in a while. Sharks on horses. +Buy 'em from farmers and sell 'em to others. We're honest--frequently. +Great time. Camp along the road. I was wishing I had a chance to say +good-by to you before I ducked out but----Say, you better come along +with us." + +"I'd like to." + +"While you're playing mumblety-peg with Mrs. Lym Cass, Pete and me +will be rambling across Dakota, through the Bad Lands, into the butte +country, and when fall comes, we'll be crossing over a pass of the Big +Horn Mountains, maybe, and camp in a snow-storm, quarter of a mile right +straight up above a lake. Then in the morning we'll lie snug in our +blankets and look up through the pines at an eagle. How'd it strike you? +Heh? Eagle soaring and soaring all day--big wide sky----" + +"Don't! Or I will go with you, and I'm afraid there might be some slight +scandal. Perhaps some day I'll do it. Good-by." + +Her hand disappeared in his blackened leather glove. From the turn in +the road she waved at him. She walked on more soberly now, and she was +lonely. + +But the wheat and grass were sleek velvet under the sunset; the prairie +clouds were tawny gold; and she swung happily into Main Street. + + + +II + + +Through the first days of June she drove with Kennicott on his calls. +She identified him with the virile land; she admired him as she saw with +what respect the farmers obeyed him. She was out in the early chill, +after a hasty cup of coffee, reaching open country as the fresh sun came +up in that unspoiled world. Meadow larks called from the tops of thin +split fence-posts. The wild roses smelled clean. + +As they returned in late afternoon the low sun was a solemnity of radial +bands, like a heavenly fan of beaten gold; the limitless circle of the +grain was a green sea rimmed with fog, and the willow wind-breaks were +palmy isles. + +Before July the close heat blanketed them. The tortured earth cracked. +Farmers panted through corn-fields behind cultivators and the sweating +flanks of horses. While she waited for Kennicott in the car, before a +farmhouse, the seat burned her fingers and her head ached with the glare +on fenders and hood. + +A black thunder-shower was followed by a dust storm which turned the +sky yellow with the hint of a coming tornado. Impalpable black dust +far-borne from Dakota covered the inner sills of the closed windows. + +The July heat was ever more stifling. They crawled along Main Street by +day; they found it hard to sleep at night. They brought mattresses down +to the living-room, and thrashed and turned by the open window. Ten +times a night they talked of going out to soak themselves with the +hose and wade through the dew, but they were too listless to take the +trouble. On cool evenings, when they tried to go walking, the gnats +appeared in swarms which peppered their faces and caught in their +throats. + +She wanted the Northern pines, the Eastern sea, but Kennicott declared +that it would be "kind of hard to get away, just NOW." The Health and +Improvement Committee of the Thanatopsis asked her to take part in the +anti-fly campaign, and she toiled about town persuading householders to +use the fly-traps furnished by the club, or giving out money prizes to +fly-swatting children. She was loyal enough but not ardent, and without +ever quite intending to, she began to neglect the task as heat sucked at +her strength. + +Kennicott and she motored North and spent a week with his mother--that +is, Carol spent it with his mother, while he fished for bass. + +The great event was their purchase of a summer cottage, down on Lake +Minniemashie. + +Perhaps the most amiable feature of life in Gopher Prairie was the +summer cottages. They were merely two-room shanties, with a seepage of +broken-down chairs, peeling veneered tables, chromos pasted on wooden +walls, and inefficient kerosene stoves. They were so thin-walled and so +close together that you could--and did--hear a baby being spanked in the +fifth cottage off. But they were set among elms and lindens on a bluff +which looked across the lake to fields of ripened wheat sloping up to +green woods. + +Here the matrons forgot social jealousies, and sat gossiping in gingham; +or, in old bathing-suits, surrounded by hysterical children, they +paddled for hours. Carol joined them; she ducked shrieking small boys, +and helped babies construct sand-basins for unfortunate minnows. +She liked Juanita Haydock and Maud Dyer when she helped them make +picnic-supper for the men, who came motoring out from town each evening. +She was easier and more natural with them. In the debate as to whether +there should be veal loaf or poached egg on hash, she had no chance to +be heretical and oversensitive. + +They danced sometimes, in the evening; they had a minstrel show, with +Kennicott surprisingly good as end-man; always they were encircled by +children wise in the lore of woodchucks and gophers and rafts and willow +whistles. + +If they could have continued this normal barbaric life Carol would have +been the most enthusiastic citizen of Gopher Prairie. She was relieved +to be assured that she did not want bookish conversation alone; that she +did not expect the town to become a Bohemia. She was content now. She +did not criticize. + +But in September, when the year was at its richest, custom dictated that +it was time to return to town; to remove the children from the waste +occupation of learning the earth, and send them back to lessons about +the number of potatoes which (in a delightful world untroubled by +commission-houses or shortages in freight-cars) William sold to John. +The women who had cheerfully gone bathing all summer looked doubtful +when Carol begged, "Let's keep up an outdoor life this winter, let's +slide and skate." Their hearts shut again till spring, and the nine +months of cliques and radiators and dainty refreshments began all over. + + + +III + + +Carol had started a salon. + +Since Kennicott, Vida Sherwin, and Guy Pollock were her only lions, +and since Kennicott would have preferred Sam Clark to all the poets and +radicals in the entire world, her private and self-defensive clique did +not get beyond one evening dinner for Vida and Guy, on her first wedding +anniversary; and that dinner did not get beyond a controversy regarding +Raymie Wutherspoon's yearnings. + +Guy Pollock was the gentlest person she had found here. He spoke of her +new jade and cream frock naturally, not jocosely; he held her chair +for her as they sat down to dinner; and he did not, like Kennicott, +interrupt her to shout, "Oh say, speaking of that, I heard a good story +today." But Guy was incurably hermit. He sat late and talked hard, and +did not come again. + +Then she met Champ Perry in the post-office--and decided that in the +history of the pioneers was the panacea for Gopher Prairie, for all +of America. We have lost their sturdiness, she told herself. We must +restore the last of the veterans to power and follow them on the +backward path to the integrity of Lincoln, to the gaiety of settlers +dancing in a saw-mill. + +She read in the records of the Minnesota Territorial Pioneers that only +sixty years ago, not so far back as the birth of her own father, four +cabins had composed Gopher Prairie. The log stockade which Mrs. Champ +Perry was to find when she trekked in was built afterward by the +soldiers as a defense against the Sioux. The four cabins were inhabited +by Maine Yankees who had come up the Mississippi to St. Paul and driven +north over virgin prairie into virgin woods. They ground their own +corn; the men-folks shot ducks and pigeons and prairie chickens; the +new breakings yielded the turnip-like rutabagas, which they ate raw +and boiled and baked and raw again. For treat they had wild plums and +crab-apples and tiny wild strawberries. + +Grasshoppers came darkening the sky, and in an hour ate the farmwife's +garden and the farmer's coat. Precious horses painfully brought from +Illinois, were drowned in bogs or stampeded by the fear of blizzards. +Snow blew through the chinks of new-made cabins, and Eastern children, +with flowery muslin dresses, shivered all winter and in summer were red +and black with mosquito bites. Indians were everywhere; they camped in +dooryards, stalked into kitchens to demand doughnuts, came with rifles +across their backs into schoolhouses and begged to see the pictures +in the geographies. Packs of timber-wolves treed the children; and the +settlers found dens of rattle-snakes, killed fifty, a hundred, in a day. + +Yet it was a buoyant life. Carol read enviously in the admirable +Minnesota chronicles called "Old Rail Fence Corners" the reminiscence of +Mrs. Mahlon Black, who settled in Stillwater in 1848: + +"There was nothing to parade over in those days. We took it as it came +and had happy lives. . . . We would all gather together and in about two +minutes would be having a good time--playing cards or dancing. . . . We +used to waltz and dance contra dances. None of these new jigs and not +wear any clothes to speak of. We covered our hides in those days; no +tight skirts like now. You could take three or four steps inside our +skirts and then not reach the edge. One of the boys would fiddle a while +and then some one would spell him and he could get a dance. Sometimes +they would dance and fiddle too." + +She reflected that if she could not have ballrooms of gray and rose +and crystal, she wanted to be swinging across a puncheon-floor with a +dancing fiddler. This smug in-between town, which had exchanged "Money +Musk" for phonographs grinding out ragtime, it was neither the heroic +old nor the sophisticated new. Couldn't she somehow, some yet unimagined +how, turn it back to simplicity? + +She herself knew two of the pioneers: the Perrys. Champ Perry was the +buyer at the grain-elevator. He weighed wagons of wheat on a rough +platform-scale, in the cracks of which the kernels sprouted every +spring. Between times he napped in the dusty peace of his office. + +She called on the Perrys at their rooms above Howland & Gould's grocery. + +When they were already old they had lost the money, which they had +invested in an elevator. They had given up their beloved yellow brick +house and moved into these rooms over a store, which were the Gopher +Prairie equivalent of a flat. A broad stairway led from the street +to the upper hall, along which were the doors of a lawyer's office, a +dentist's, a photographer's "studio," the lodge-rooms of the Affiliated +Order of Spartans and, at the back, the Perrys' apartment. + +They received her (their first caller in a month) with aged fluttering +tenderness. Mrs. Perry confided, "My, it's a shame we got to entertain +you in such a cramped place. And there ain't any water except that ole +iron sink outside in the hall, but still, as I say to Champ, beggars +can't be choosers. 'Sides, the brick house was too big for me to sweep, +and it was way out, and it's nice to be living down here among folks. +Yes, we're glad to be here. But----Some day, maybe we can have a house +of our own again. We're saving up----Oh, dear, if we could have our own +home! But these rooms are real nice, ain't they!" + +As old people will, the world over, they had moved as much as possible +of their familiar furniture into this small space. Carol had none of the +superiority she felt toward Mrs. Lyman Cass's plutocratic parlor. She +was at home here. She noted with tenderness all the makeshifts: the +darned chair-arms, the patent rocker covered with sleazy cretonne, the +pasted strips of paper mending the birch-bark napkin-rings labeled "Papa" +and "Mama." + +She hinted of her new enthusiasm. To find one of the "young folks" who +took them seriously, heartened the Perrys, and she easily drew from +them the principles by which Gopher Prairie should be born again--should +again become amusing to live in. + +This was their philosophy complete . . . in the era of aeroplanes and +syndicalism: + +The Baptist Church (and, somewhat less, the Methodist, Congregational, +and Presbyterian Churches) is the perfect, the divinely ordained +standard in music, oratory, philanthropy, and ethics. "We don't need +all this new-fangled science, or this terrible Higher Criticism that's +ruining our young men in colleges. What we need is to get back to the +true Word of God, and a good sound belief in hell, like we used to have +it preached to us." + +The Republican Party, the Grand Old Party of Blaine and McKinley, is the +agent of the Lord and of the Baptist Church in temporal affairs. + +All socialists ought to be hanged. + +"Harold Bell Wright is a lovely writer, and he teaches such good morals +in his novels, and folks say he's made prett' near a million dollars out +of 'em." + +People who make more than ten thousand a year or less than eight hundred +are wicked. + +Europeans are still wickeder. + +It doesn't hurt any to drink a glass of beer on a warm day, but anybody +who touches wine is headed straight for hell. + +Virgins are not so virginal as they used to be. + +Nobody needs drug-store ice cream; pie is good enough for anybody. + +The farmers want too much for their wheat. + +The owners of the elevator-company expect too much for the salaries they +pay. + +There would be no more trouble or discontent in the world if everybody +worked as hard as Pa did when he cleared our first farm. + + + +IV + + +Carol's hero-worship dwindled to polite nodding, and the nodding +dwindled to a desire to escape, and she went home with a headache. + +Next day she saw Miles Bjornstam on the street. + +"Just back from Montana. Great summer. Pumped my lungs chuck-full of +Rocky Mountain air. Now for another whirl at sassing the bosses of +Gopher Prairie." She smiled at him, and the Perrys faded, the pioneers +faded, till they were but daguerreotypes in a black walnut cupboard. + + + +CHAPTER XIII + +SHE tried, more from loyalty than from desire, to call upon the Perrys +on a November evening when Kennicott was away. They were not at home. + +Like a child who has no one to play with she loitered through the dark +hall. She saw a light under an office door. She knocked. To the person +who opened she murmured, "Do you happen to know where the Perrys are?" +She realized that it was Guy Pollock. + +"I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Kennicott, but I don't know. Won't you come in +and wait for them?" + +"W-why----" she observed, as she reflected that in Gopher Prairie it +is not decent to call on a man; as she decided that no, really, she +wouldn't go in; and as she went in. + +"I didn't know your office was up here." + +"Yes, office, town-house, and chateau in Picardy. But you can't see +the chateau and town-house (next to the Duke of Sutherland's). They're +beyond that inner door. They are a cot and a wash-stand and my other +suit and the blue crepe tie you said you liked." + +"You remember my saying that?" + +"Of course. I always shall. Please try this chair." + +She glanced about the rusty office--gaunt stove, shelves of tan +law-books, desk-chair filled with newspapers so long sat upon that they +were in holes and smudged to grayness. There were only two things which +suggested Guy Pollock. On the green felt of the table-desk, between +legal blanks and a clotted inkwell, was a cloissone vase. On a swing +shelf was a row of books unfamiliar to Gopher Prairie: Mosher editions +of the poets, black and red German novels, a Charles Lamb in crushed +levant. + +Guy did not sit down. He quartered the office, a grayhound on the scent; +a grayhound with glasses tilted forward on his thin nose, and a silky +indecisive brown mustache. He had a golf jacket of jersey, worn through +at the creases in the sleeves. She noted that he did not apologize for +it, as Kennicott would have done. + +He made conversation: "I didn't know you were a bosom friend of the +Perrys. Champ is the salt of the earth but somehow I can't imagine him +joining you in symbolic dancing, or making improvements on the Diesel +engine." + +"No. He's a dear soul, bless him, but he belongs in the National Museum, +along with General Grant's sword, and I'm----Oh, I suppose I'm seeking +for a gospel that will evangelize Gopher Prairie." + +"Really? Evangelize it to what?" + +"To anything that's definite. Seriousness or frivolousness or both. I +wouldn't care whether it was a laboratory or a carnival. But it's merely +safe. Tell me, Mr. Pollock, what is the matter with Gopher Prairie?" + +"Is anything the matter with it? Isn't there perhaps something the +matter with you and me? (May I join you in the honor of having something +the matter?)" + +"(Yes, thanks.) No, I think it's the town." + +"Because they enjoy skating more than biology?" + +"But I'm not only more interested in biology than the Jolly Seventeen, +but also in skating! I'll skate with them, or slide, or throw snowballs, +just as gladly as talk with you." + +("Oh no!") + +("Yes!) But they want to stay home and embroider." + +"Perhaps. I'm not defending the town. It's merely----I'm a confirmed +doubter of myself. (Probably I'm conceited about my lack of conceit!) +Anyway, Gopher Prairie isn't particularly bad. It's like all villages in +all countries. Most places that have lost the smell of earth but not +yet acquired the smell of patchouli--or of factory-smoke--are just as +suspicious and righteous. I wonder if the small town isn't, with some +lovely exceptions, a social appendix? Some day these dull market-towns +may be as obsolete as monasteries. I can imagine the farmer and his +local store-manager going by monorail, at the end of the day, into a +city more charming than any William Morris Utopia--music, a university, +clubs for loafers like me. (Lord, how I'd like to have a real club!)" + +She asked impulsively, "You, why do you stay here?" + +"I have the Village Virus." + +"It sounds dangerous." + +"It is. More dangerous than the cancer that will certainly get me +at fifty unless I stop this smoking. The Village Virus is the germ +which--it's extraordinarily like the hook-worm--it infects ambitious +people who stay too long in the provinces. You'll find it epidemic among +lawyers and doctors and ministers and college-bred merchants--all these +people who have had a glimpse of the world that thinks and laughs, +but have returned to their swamp. I'm a perfect example. But I sha'n't +pester you with my dolors." + +"You won't. And do sit down, so I can see you." + +He dropped into the shrieking desk-chair. He looked squarely at her; she +was conscious of the pupils of his eyes; of the fact that he was a man, +and lonely. They were embarrassed. They elaborately glanced away, and +were relieved as he went on: + +"The diagnosis of my Village Virus is simple enough. I was born in an +Ohio town about the same size as Gopher Prairie, and much less +friendly. It'd had more generations in which to form an oligarchy of +respectability. Here, a stranger is taken in if he is correct, if he +likes hunting and motoring and God and our Senator. There, we didn't +take in even our own till we had contemptuously got used to them. It +was a red-brick Ohio town, and the trees made it damp, and it smelled of +rotten apples. The country wasn't like our lakes and prairie. There were +small stuffy corn-fields and brick-yards and greasy oil-wells. + +"I went to a denominational college and learned that since dictating +the Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God has +never done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it. From +college I went to New York, to the Columbia Law School. And for four +years I lived. Oh, I won't rhapsodize about New York. It was dirty and +noisy and breathless and ghastly expensive. But compared with the moldy +academy in which I had been smothered----! I went to symphonies twice +a week. I saw Irving and Terry and Duse and Bernhardt, from the top +gallery. I walked in Gramercy Park. And I read, oh, everything. + +"Through a cousin I learned that Julius Flickerbaugh was sick and +needed a partner. I came here. Julius got well. He didn't like my way of +loafing five hours and then doing my work (really not so badly) in one. +We parted. + +"When I first came here I swore I'd 'keep up my interests.' Very lofty! +I read Browning, and went to Minneapolis for the theaters. I thought I +was 'keeping up.' But I guess the Village Virus had me already. I was +reading four copies of cheap fiction-magazines to one poem. I'd put off +the Minneapolis trips till I simply had to go there on a lot of legal +matters. + +"A few years ago I was talking to a patent lawyer from Chicago, and +I realized that----I'd always felt so superior to people like Julius +Flickerbaugh, but I saw that I was as provincial and behind-the-times as +Julius. (Worse! Julius plows through the Literary Digest and the Outlook +faithfully, while I'm turning over pages of a book by Charles Flandrau +that I already know by heart.) + +"I decided to leave here. Stern resolution. Grasp the world. Then I +found that the Village Virus had me, absolute: I didn't want to face +new streets and younger men--real competition. It was too easy to go on +making out conveyances and arguing ditching cases. So----That's all of +the biography of a living dead man, except the diverting last chapter, +the lies about my having been 'a tower of strength and legal wisdom' +which some day a preacher will spin over my lean dry body." + +He looked down at his table-desk, fingering the starry enameled vase. + +She could not comment. She pictured herself running across the room +to pat his hair. She saw that his lips were firm, under his soft faded +mustache. She sat still and maundered, "I know. The Village Virus. +Perhaps it will get me. Some day I'm going----Oh, no matter. At least, +I am making you talk! Usually you have to be polite to my garrulousness, +but now I'm sitting at your feet." + +"It would be rather nice to have you literally sitting at my feet, by a +fire." + +"Would you have a fireplace for me?" + +"Naturally! Please don't snub me now! Let the old man rave. How old are +you, Carol?" + +"Twenty-six, Guy." + +"Twenty-six! I was just leaving New York, at twenty-six. I heard Patti +sing, at twenty-six. And now I'm forty-seven. I feel like a child, yet +I'm old enough to be your father. So it's decently paternal to imagine +you curled at my feet. . . . Of course I hope it isn't, but we'll +reflect the morals of Gopher Prairie by officially announcing that it +is! . . . These standards that you and I live up to! There's one thing +that's the matter with Gopher Prairie, at least with the ruling-class +(there is a ruling-class, despite all our professions of democracy). +And the penalty we tribal rulers pay is that our subjects watch us +every minute. We can't get wholesomely drunk and relax. We have to be +so correct about sex morals, and inconspicuous clothes, and doing our +commercial trickery only in the traditional ways, that none of us can +live up to it, and we become horribly hypocritical. Unavoidably. The +widow-robbing deacon of fiction can't help being hypocritical. The +widows themselves demand it! They admire his unctuousness. And look at +me. Suppose I did dare to make love to--some exquisite married woman. +I wouldn't admit it to myself. I giggle with the most revolting +salaciousness over La Vie Parisienne, when I get hold of one in Chicago, +yet I shouldn't even try to hold your hand. I'm broken. It's the +historical Anglo-Saxon way of making life miserable. . . . Oh, my dear, +I haven't talked to anybody about myself and all our selves for years." + +"Guy! Can't we do something with the town? Really?" + +"No, we can't!" He disposed of it like a judge ruling out an improper +objection; returned to matters less uncomfortably energetic: "Curious. +Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her +grow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise the +devil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes. +Here in Gopher Prairie we've cleared the fields, and become soft, so +we make ourselves unhappy artificially, at great expense and exertion: +Methodists disliking Episcopalians, the man with the Hudson laughing at +the man with the flivver. The worst is the commercial hatred--the grocer +feeling that any man who doesn't deal with him is robbing him. What +hurts me is that it applies to lawyers and doctors (and decidedly +to their wives!) as much as to grocers. The doctors--you know about +that--how your husband and Westlake and Gould dislike one another." + +"No! I won't admit it!" + +He grinned. + +"Oh, maybe once or twice, when Will has positively known of a case where +Doctor--where one of the others has continued to call on patients longer +than necessary, he has laughed about it, but----" + +He still grinned. + +"No, REALLY! And when you say the wives of the doctors share these +jealousies----Mrs. McGanum and I haven't any particular crush on each +other; she's so stolid. But her mother, Mrs. Westlake--nobody could be +sweeter." + +"Yes, I'm sure she's very bland. But I wouldn't tell her my heart's +secrets if I were you, my dear. I insist that there's only one +professional-man's wife in this town who doesn't plot, and that is you, +you blessed, credulous outsider!" + +"I won't be cajoled! I won't believe that medicine, the priesthood of +healing, can be turned into a penny-picking business." + +"See here: Hasn't Kennicott ever hinted to you that you'd better be nice +to some old woman because she tells her friends which doctor to call in? +But I oughtn't to----" + +She remembered certain remarks which Kennicott had offered regarding the +Widow Bogart. She flinched, looked at Guy beseechingly. + +He sprang up, strode to her with a nervous step, smoothed her hand. She +wondered if she ought to be offended by his caress. Then she wondered if +he liked her hat, the new Oriental turban of rose and silver brocade. + +He dropped her hand. His elbow brushed her shoulder. He flitted over to +the desk-chair, his thin back stooped. He picked up the cloisonne vase. +Across it he peered at her with such loneliness that she was startled. +But his eyes faded into impersonality as he talked of the jealousies +of Gopher Prairie. He stopped himself with a sharp, "Good Lord, Carol, +you're not a jury. You are within your legal rights in refusing to +be subjected to this summing-up. I'm a tedious old fool analyzing the +obvious, while you're the spirit of rebellion. Tell me your side. What +is Gopher Prairie to you?" + +"A bore!" + +"Can I help?" + +"How could you?" + +"I don't know. Perhaps by listening. I haven't done that tonight. +But normally----Can't I be the confidant of the old French plays, the +tiring-maid with the mirror and the loyal ears?" + +"Oh, what is there to confide? The people are savorless and proud of +it. And even if I liked you tremendously, I couldn't talk to you without +twenty old hexes watching, whispering." + +"But you will come talk to me, once in a while?" + +"I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to develop my own large capacity +for dullness and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I've +tried. I'd better 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied to +be--nothing." + +"Don't be cynical. It hurts me, in you. It's like blood on the wing of a +humming-bird." + +"I'm not a humming-bird. I'm a hawk; a tiny leashed hawk, pecked to +death by these large, white, flabby, wormy hens. But I am grateful to +you for confirming me in the faith. And I'm going home!" + +"Please stay and have some coffee with me." + +"I'd like to. But they've succeeded in terrorizing me. I'm afraid of +what people might say." + +"I'm not afraid of that. I'm only afraid of what you might say!" He +stalked to her; took her unresponsive hand. "Carol! You have been happy +here tonight? (Yes. I'm begging!)" + +She squeezed his hand quickly, then snatched hers away. She had but +little of the curiosity of the flirt, and none of the intrigante's joy +in furtiveness. If she was the naive girl, Guy Pollock was the clumsy +boy. He raced about the office; he rammed his fists into his pockets. +He stammered, "I--I--I----Oh, the devil! Why do I awaken from smooth +dustiness to this jagged rawness? I'll make I'm going to trot down the +hall and bring in the Dillons, and we'll all have coffee or something." + +"The Dillons?" + +"Yes. Really quite a decent young pair--Harvey Dillon and his wife. He's +a dentist, just come to town. They live in a room behind his office, +same as I do here. They don't know much of anybody----" + +"I've heard of them. And I've never thought to call. I'm horribly +ashamed. Do bring them----" + +She stopped, for no very clear reason, but his expression said, her +faltering admitted, that they wished they had never mentioned the +Dillons. With spurious enthusiasm he said, "Splendid! I will." From the +door he glanced at her, curled in the peeled leather chair. He slipped +out, came back with Dr. and Mrs. Dillon. + +The four of them drank rather bad coffee which Pollock made on a +kerosene burner. They laughed, and spoke of Minneapolis, and were +tremendously tactful; and Carol started for home, through the November +wind. + + + +CHAPTER XIV + +SHE was marching home. + +"No. I couldn't fall in love with him. I like him, very much. But +he's too much of a recluse. Could I kiss him? No! No! Guy Pollock at +twenty-six I could have kissed him then, maybe, even if I were married +to some one else, and probably I'd have been glib in persuading myself +that 'it wasn't really wrong.' + +"The amazing thing is that I'm not more amazed at myself. I, the +virtuous young matron. Am I to be trusted? If the Prince Charming +came---- + +"A Gopher Prairie housewife, married a year, and yearning for a 'Prince +Charming' like a bachfisch of sixteen! They say that marriage is a magic +change. But I'm not changed. But---- + +"No! I wouldn't want to fall in love, even if the Prince did come. I +wouldn't want to hurt Will. I am fond of Will. I am! He doesn't stir me, +not any longer. But I depend on him. He is home and children. + +"I wonder when we will begin to have children? I do want them. + +"I wonder whether I remembered to tell Bea to have hominy tomorrow, +instead of oatmeal? She will have gone to bed by now. Perhaps I'll be up +early enough---- + +"Ever so fond of Will. I wouldn't hurt him, even if I had to lose the +mad love. If the Prince came I'd look once at him, and run. Darn fast! +Oh, Carol, you are not heroic nor fine. You are the immutable vulgar +young female. + +"But I'm not the faithless wife who enjoys confiding that she's +'misunderstood.' Oh, I'm not, I'm not! + +"Am I? + +"At least I didn't whisper to Guy about Will's faults and his blindness +to my remarkable soul. I didn't! Matter of fact, Will probably +understands me perfectly! If only--if he would just back me up in +rousing the town. + +"How many, how incredibly many wives there must be who tingle over the +first Guy Pollock who smiles at them. No! I will not be one of that +herd of yearners! The coy virgin brides. Yet probably if the Prince were +young and dared to face life---- + +"I'm not half as well oriented as that Mrs. Dillon. So obviously adoring +her dentist! And seeing Guy only as an eccentric fogy. + +"They weren't silk, Mrs. Dillon's stockings. They were lisle. Her legs +are nice and slim. But no nicer than mine. I hate cotton tops on silk +stockings. . . . Are my ankles getting fat? I will NOT have fat ankles! + +"No. I am fond of Will. His work--one farmer he pulls through diphtheria +is worth all my yammering for a castle in Spain. A castle with baths. + +"This hat is so tight. I must stretch it. Guy liked it. + +"There's the house. I'm awfully chilly. Time to get out the fur coat. +I wonder if I'll ever have a beaver coat? Nutria is NOT the same thing! +Beaver-glossy. Like to run my fingers over it. Guy's mustache like +beaver. How utterly absurd! + +"I am, I AM fond of Will, and----Can't I ever find another word than +'fond'? + +"He's home. He'll think I was out late. + +"Why can't he ever remember to pull down the shades? Cy Bogart and all +the beastly boys peeping in. But the poor dear, he's absent-minded about +minute--minush--whatever the word is. He has so much worry and work, +while I do nothing but jabber to Bea. + +"I MUSTN'T forget the hominy----" + +She was flying into the hall. Kennicott looked up from the Journal of +the American Medical Society. + +"Hello! What time did you get back?" she cried. + +"About nine. You been gadding. Here it is past eleven!" Good-natured yet +not quite approving. + +"Did it feel neglected?" + +"Well, you didn't remember to close the lower draft in the furnace." + +"Oh, I'm so sorry. But I don't often forget things like that, do I?" + +She dropped into his lap and (after he had jerked back his head to save +his eye-glasses, and removed the glasses, and settled her in a position +less cramping to his legs, and casually cleared his throat) he kissed +her amiably, and remarked: + +"Nope, I must say you're fairly good about things like that. I wasn't +kicking. I just meant I wouldn't want the fire to go out on us. Leave +that draft open and the fire might burn up and go out on us. And the +nights are beginning to get pretty cold again. Pretty cold on my drive. +I put the side-curtains up, it was so chilly. But the generator is +working all right now." + +"Yes. It is chilly. But I feel fine after my walk." + +"Go walking?" + +"I went up to see the Perrys." By a definite act of will she added +the truth: "They weren't in. And I saw Guy Pollock. Dropped into his +office." + +"Why, you haven't been sitting and chinning with him till eleven +o'clock?" + +"Of course there were some other people there and----Will! What do you +think of Dr. Westlake?" + +"Westlake? Why?" + +"I noticed him on the street today." + +"Was he limping? If the poor fish would have his teeth X-rayed, I'll bet +nine and a half cents he'd find an abscess there. 'Rheumatism' he calls +it. Rheumatism, hell! He's behind the times. Wonder he doesn't bleed +himself! Wellllllll----" A profound and serious yawn. "I hate to break +up the party, but it's getting late, and a doctor never knows when he'll +get routed out before morning." (She remembered that he had given this +explanation, in these words, not less than thirty times in the year.) "I +guess we better be trotting up to bed. I've wound the clock and looked +at the furnace. Did you lock the front door when you came in?" + +They trailed up-stairs, after he had turned out the lights and twice +tested the front door to make sure it was fast. While they talked +they were preparing for bed. Carol still sought to maintain privacy by +undressing behind the screen of the closet door. Kennicott was not so +reticent. Tonight, as every night, she was irritated by having to push +the old plush chair out of the way before she could open the closet +door. Every time she opened the door she shoved the chair. Ten times an +hour. But Kennicott liked to have the chair in the room, and there was +no place for it except in front of the closet. + +She pushed it, felt angry, hid her anger. Kennicott was yawning, more +portentously. The room smelled stale. She shrugged and became chatty: + +"You were speaking of Dr. Westlake. Tell me--you've never summed him up: +Is he really a good doctor?" + +"Oh yes, he's a wise old coot." + +("There! You see there is no medical rivalry. Not in my house!" she said +triumphantly to Guy Pollock.) + +She hung her silk petticoat on a closet hook, and went on, "Dr. Westlake +is so gentle and scholarly----" + +"Well, I don't know as I'd say he was such a whale of a scholar. I've +always had a suspicion he did a good deal of four-flushing about that. +He likes to have people think he keeps up his French and Greek and Lord +knows what all; and he's always got an old Dago book lying around the +sitting-room, but I've got a hunch he reads detective stories 'bout like +the rest of us. And I don't know where he'd ever learn so dog-gone many +languages anyway! He kind of lets people assume he went to Harvard +or Berlin or Oxford or somewhere, but I looked him up in the medical +register, and he graduated from a hick college in Pennsylvania, 'way +back in 1861!" + +"But this is the important thing: Is he an honest doctor?" + +"How do you mean 'honest'? Depends on what you mean." + +"Suppose you were sick. Would you call him in? Would you let me call him +in?" + +"Not if I were well enough to cuss and bite, I wouldn't! No, SIR! I +wouldn't have the old fake in the house. Makes me tired, his everlasting +palavering and soft-soaping. He's all right for an ordinary bellyache +or holding some fool woman's hand, but I wouldn't call him in for an +honest-to-God illness, not much I wouldn't, NO-sir! You know I don't +do much back-biting, but same time----I'll tell you, Carrrie: I've never +got over being sore at Westlake for the way he treated Mrs. Jonderquist. +Nothing the matter with her, what she really needed was a rest, but +Westlake kept calling on her and calling on her for weeks, almost every +day, and he sent her a good big fat bill, too, you can bet! I never +did forgive him for that. Nice decent hard-working people like the +Jonderquists!" + +In her batiste nightgown she was standing at the bureau engaged in the +invariable rites of wishing that she had a real dressing-table with a +triple mirror, of bending toward the streaky glass and raising her chin +to inspect a pin-head mole on her throat, and finally of brushing her +hair. In rhythm to the strokes she went on: + +"But, Will, there isn't any of what you might call financial rivalry +between you and the partners--Westlake and McGanum--is there?" + +He flipped into bed with a solemn back-somersault and a ludicrous kick +of his heels as he tucked his legs under the blankets. He snorted, "Lord +no! I never begrudge any man a nickel he can get away from me--fairly." + +"But is Westlake fair? Isn't he sly?" + +"Sly is the word. He's a fox, that boy!" + +She saw Guy Pollock's grin in the mirror. She flushed. + +Kennicott, with his arms behind his head, was yawning: + +"Yump. He's smooth, too smooth. But I bet I make prett' near as much +as Westlake and McGanum both together, though I've never wanted to grab +more than my just share. If anybody wants to go to the partners instead +of to me, that's his business. Though I must say it makes me tired when +Westlake gets hold of the Dawsons. Here Luke Dawson had been coming to +me for every toeache and headache and a lot of little things that just +wasted my time, and then when his grandchild was here last summer and +had summer-complaint, I suppose, or something like that, probably--you +know, the time you and I drove up to Lac-qui-Meurt--why, Westlake got +hold of Ma Dawson, and scared her to death, and made her think the kid +had appendicitis, and, by golly, if he and McGanum didn't operate, and +holler their heads off about the terrible adhesions they found, and what +a regular Charley and Will Mayo they were for classy surgery. They let +on that if they'd waited two hours more the kid would have developed +peritonitis, and God knows what all; and then they collected a nice +fat hundred and fifty dollars. And probably they'd have charged three +hundred, if they hadn't been afraid of me! I'm no hog, but I certainly +do hate to give old Luke ten dollars' worth of advice for a dollar and a +half, and then see a hundred and fifty go glimmering. And if I can't do +a better 'pendectomy than either Westlake or McGanum, I'll eat my hat!" + +As she crept into bed she was dazzled by Guy's blazing grin. She +experimented: + +"But Westlake is cleverer than his son-in-law, don't you think?" + +"Yes, Westlake may be old-fashioned and all that, but he's got a certain +amount of intuition, while McGanum goes into everything bull-headed, and +butts his way through like a damn yahoo, and tries to argue his patients +into having whatever he diagnoses them as having! About the best thing +Mac can do is to stick to baby-snatching. He's just about on a par with +this bone-pounding chiropractor female, Mrs. Mattie Gooch." + +"Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. McGanum, though--they're nice. They've been +awfully cordial to me." + +"Well, no reason why they shouldn't be, is there? Oh, they're nice +enough--though you can bet your bottom dollar they're both plugging for +their husbands all the time, trying to get the business. And I don't +know as I call it so damn cordial in Mrs. McGanum when I holler at her +on the street and she nods back like she had a sore neck. Still, she's +all right. It's Ma Westlake that makes the mischief, pussyfooting around +all the time. But I wouldn't trust any Westlake out of the whole lot, +and while Mrs. McGanum SEEMS square enough, you don't never want to +forget that she's Westlake's daughter. You bet!" + +"What about Dr. Gould? Don't you think he's worse than either Westlake +or McGanum? He's so cheap--drinking, and playing pool, and always +smoking cigars in such a cocky way----" + +"That's all right now! Terry Gould is a good deal of a tin-horn sport, +but he knows a lot about medicine, and don't you forget it for one +second!" + +She stared down Guy's grin, and asked more cheerfully, "Is he honest, +too?" + +"Ooooooooooo! Gosh I'm sleepy!" He burrowed beneath the bedclothes in +a luxurious stretch, and came up like a diver, shaking his head, as +he complained, "How's that? Who? Terry Gould honest? Don't start me +laughing--I'm too nice and sleepy! I didn't say he was honest. I said +he had savvy enough to find the index in 'Gray's Anatomy,' which is more +than McGanum can do! But I didn't say anything about his being honest. +He isn't. Terry is crooked as a dog's hind leg. He's done me more than +one dirty trick. He told Mrs. Glorbach, seventeen miles out, that I +wasn't up-to-date in obstetrics. Fat lot of good it did him! She came +right in and told me! And Terry's lazy. He'd let a pneumonia patient +choke rather than interrupt a poker game." + +"Oh no. I can't believe----" + +"Well now, I'm telling you!" + +"Does he play much poker? Dr. Dillon told me that Dr. Gould wanted him +to play----" + +"Dillon told you what? Where'd you meet Dillon? He's just come to town." + +"He and his wife were at Mr. Pollock's tonight." + +"Say, uh, what'd you think of them? Didn't Dillon strike you as pretty +light-waisted?" + +"Why no. He seemed intelligent. I'm sure he's much more wide-awake than +our dentist." + +"Well now, the old man is a good dentist. He knows his business. And +Dillon----I wouldn't cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you. +All right for Pollock, and that's none of our business, but we----I +think I'd just give the Dillons the glad hand and pass 'em up." + +"But why? He isn't a rival." + +"That's--all--right!" Kennicott was aggressively awake now. "He'll work +right in with Westlake and McGanum. Matter of fact, I suspect they +were largely responsible for his locating here. They'll be sending him +patients, and he'll send all that he can get hold of to them. I don't +trust anybody that's too much hand-in-glove with Westlake. You give +Dillon a shot at some fellow that's just bought a farm here and drifts +into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with +him, you'll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!" + +Carol reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed. She +draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Kennicott, her chin +in her hands. In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the +hall she could see that he was frowning. + +"Will, this is--I must get this straight. Some one said to me the other +day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors +hate each other, because of the money----" + +"Who said that?" + +"It doesn't matter." + +"I'll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin. She's a brainy woman, but +she'd be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn't let +so much of her brains ooze out that way." + +"Will! O Will! That's horrible! Aside from the vulgarity----Some ways, +Vida is my best friend. Even if she HAD said it. Which, as a matter of +fact, she didn't." He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and +green flannelette pajamas. He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his +fingers, and growled: + +"Well, if she didn't say it, let's forget her. Doesn't make any +difference who said it, anyway. The point is that you believe it. God! +To think you don't understand me any better than that! Money!" + +("This is the first real quarrel we've ever had," she was agonizing.) + +He thrust out his long arm and snatched his wrinkly vest from a chair. +He took out a cigar, a match. He tossed the vest on the floor. He +lighted the cigar and puffed savagely. He broke up the match and snapped +the fragments at the foot-board. + +She suddenly saw the foot-board of the bed as the foot-stone of the +grave of love. + +The room was drab-colored and ill-ventilated--Kennicott did not "believe +in opening the windows so darn wide that you heat all outdoors." The +stale air seemed never to change. In the light from the hall they were +two lumps of bedclothes with shoulders and tousled heads attached. + +She begged, "I didn't mean to wake you up, dear. And please don't smoke. +You've been smoking so much. Please go back to sleep. I'm sorry." + +"Being sorry 's all right, but I'm going to tell you one or two things. +This falling for anybody's say-so about medical jealousy and competition +is simply part and parcel of your usual willingness to think the worst +you possibly can of us poor dubs in Gopher Prairie. Trouble with women +like you is, you always want to ARGUE. Can't take things the way they +are. Got to argue. Well, I'm not going to argue about this in any way, +shape, manner, or form. Trouble with you is, you don't make any effort +to appreciate us. You're so damned superior, and think the city is such +a hell of a lot finer place, and you want us to do what YOU want, all +the time----" + +"That's not true! It's I who make the effort. It's they--it's you--who +stand back and criticize. I have to come over to the town's opinion; +I have to devote myself to their interests. They can't even SEE my +interests, to say nothing of adopting them. I get ever so excited about +their old Lake Minniemashie and the cottages, but they simply guffaw (in +that lovely friendly way you advertise so much) if I speak of wanting to +see Taormina also." + +"Sure, Tormina, whatever that is--some nice expensive millionaire +colony, I suppose. Sure; that's the idea; champagne taste and beer +income; and make sure that we never will have more than a beer income, +too!" + +"Are you by any chance implying that I am not economical?" + +"Well, I hadn't intended to, but since you bring it up yourself, I don't +mind saying the grocery bills are about twice what they ought to be." + +"Yes, they probably are. I'm not economical. I can't be. Thanks to you!" + +"Where d' you get that 'thanks to you'?" + +"Please don't be quite so colloquial--or shall I say VULGAR?" + +"I'll be as damn colloquial as I want to. How do you get that 'thanks to +you'? Here about a year ago you jump me for not remembering to give you +money. Well, I'm reasonable. I didn't blame you, and I SAID I was to +blame. But have I ever forgotten it since--practically?" + +"No. You haven't--practically! But that isn't it. I ought to have an +allowance. I will, too! I must have an agreement for a regular stated +amount, every month." + +"Fine idea! Of course a doctor gets a regular stated amount! Sure! A +thousand one month--and lucky if he makes a hundred the next." + +"Very well then, a percentage. Or something else. No matter how much you +vary, you can make a rough average for----" + +"But what's the idea? What are you trying to get at? Mean to say I'm +unreasonable? Think I'm so unreliable and tightwad that you've got to +tie me down with a contract? By God, that hurts! I thought I'd been +pretty generous and decent, and I took a lot of pleasure--thinks I, +'she'll be tickled when I hand her over this twenty'--or fifty, or +whatever it was; and now seems you been wanting to make it a kind of +alimony. Me, like a poor fool, thinking I was liberal all the while, and +you----" + +"Please stop pitying yourself! You're having a beautiful time feeling +injured. I admit all you say. Certainly. You've given me money both +freely and amiably. Quite as if I were your mistress!" + +"Carrie!" + +"I mean it! What was a magnificent spectacle of generosity to you was +humiliation to me. You GAVE me money--gave it to your mistress, if she +was complaisant, and then you----" + +"Carrie!" + +"(Don't interrupt me!)--then you felt you'd discharged all obligation. +Well, hereafter I'll refuse your money, as a gift. Either I'm your +partner, in charge of the household department of our business, with a +regular budget for it, or else I'm nothing. If I'm to be a mistress, +I shall choose my lovers. Oh, I hate it--I hate it--this smirking and +hoping for money--and then not even spending it on jewels as a mistress +has a right to, but spending it on double-boilers and socks for you! +Yes indeed! You're generous! You give me a dollar, right out--the only +proviso is that I must spend it on a tie for you! And you give it when +and as you wish. How can I be anything but uneconomical?" + +"Oh well, of course, looking at it that way----" + +"I can't shop around, can't buy in large quantities, have to stick to +stores where I have a charge account, good deal of the time, can't plan +because I don't know how much money I can depend on. That's what I pay +for your charming sentimentalities about giving so generously. You make +me----" + +"Wait! Wait! You know you're exaggerating. You never thought about that +mistress stuff till just this minute! Matter of fact, you never have +'smirked and hoped for money.' But all the same, you may be right. You +ought to run the household as a business. I'll figure out a definite +plan tomorrow, and hereafter you'll be on a regular amount or +percentage, with your own checking account." + +"Oh, that IS decent of you!" She turned toward him, trying to be +affectionate. But his eyes were pink and unlovely in the flare of the +match with which he lighted his dead and malodorous cigar. His head +drooped, and a ridge of flesh scattered with pale small bristles bulged +out under his chin. + +She sat in abeyance till he croaked: + +"No. 'Tisn't especially decent. It's just fair. And God knows I want +to be fair. But I expect others to be fair, too. And you're so high and +mighty about people. Take Sam Clark; best soul that ever lived, honest +and loyal and a damn good fellow----" + +("Yes, and a good shot at ducks, don't forget that!") + +("Well, and he is a good shot, too!) Sam drops around in the evening to +sit and visit, and by golly just because he takes a dry smoke and rolls +his cigar around in his mouth, and maybe spits a few times, you look +at him as if he was a hog. Oh, you didn't know I was onto you, and I +certainly hope Sam hasn't noticed it, but I never miss it." + +"I have felt that way. Spitting--ugh! But I'm sorry you caught my +thoughts. I tried to be nice; I tried to hide them." + +"Maybe I catch a whole lot more than you think I do!" + +"Yes, perhaps you do." + +"And d' you know why Sam doesn't light his cigar when he's here?" + +"Why?" + +"He's so darn afraid you'll be offended if he smokes. You scare him. +Every time he speaks of the weather you jump him because he ain't +talking about poetry or Gertie--Goethe?--or some other highbrow junk. +You've got him so leery he scarcely dares to come here." + +"Oh, I AM sorry. (Though I'm sure it's you who are exaggerating now.") + +"Well now, I don't know as I am! And I can tell you one thing: if you +keep on you'll manage to drive away every friend I've got." + +"That would be horrible of me. You KNOW I don't mean to Will, what is it +about me that frightens Sam--if I do frighten him." + +"Oh, you do, all right! 'Stead of putting his legs up on another chair, +and unbuttoning his vest, and telling a good story or maybe kidding +me about something, he sits on the edge of his chair and tries to make +conversation about politics, and he doesn't even cuss, and Sam's never +real comfortable unless he can cuss a little!" + +"In other words, he isn't comfortable unless he can behave like a +peasant in a mud hut!" + +"Now that'll be about enough of that! You want to know how you scare +him? First you deliberately fire some question at him that you know darn +well he can't answer--any fool could see you were experimenting with +him--and then you shock him by talking of mistresses or something, like +you were doing just now----" + +"Of course the pure Samuel never speaks of such erring ladies in his +private conversations!" + +"Not when there's ladies around! You can bet your life on that!" + +"So the impurity lies in failing to pretend that----" + +"Now we won't go into all that--eugenics or whatever damn fad you choose +to call it. As I say, first you shock him, and then you become so darn +flighty that nobody can follow you. Either you want to dance, or you +bang the piano, or else you get moody as the devil and don't want to +talk or anything else. If you must be temperamental, why can't you be +that way by yourself?" + +"My dear man, there's nothing I'd like better than to be by myself +occasionally! To have a room of my own! I suppose you expect me to sit +here and dream delicately and satisfy my 'temperamentality' while you +wander in from the bathroom with lather all over your face, and shout, +'Seen my brown pants?'" + +"Huh!" He did not sound impressed. He made no answer. He turned out of +bed, his feet making one solid thud on the floor. He marched from the +room, a grotesque figure in baggy union-pajamas. She heard him drawing +a drink of water at the bathroom tap. She was furious at the +contemptuousness of his exit. She snuggled down in bed, and looked +away from him as he returned. He ignored her. As he flumped into bed he +yawned, and casually stated: + +"Well, you'll have plenty of privacy when we build a new house. + +"When?" + +"Oh, I'll build it all right, don't you fret! But of course I don't +expect any credit for it." + +Now it was she who grunted "Huh!" and ignored him, and felt independent +and masterful as she shot up out of bed, turned her back on him, +fished a lone and petrified chocolate out of her glove-box in the +top right-hand drawer of the bureau, gnawed at it, found that it had +cocoanut filling, said "Damn!" wished that she had not said it, so that +she might be superior to his colloquialism, and hurled the chocolate +into the wastebasket, where it made an evil and mocking clatter among +the debris of torn linen collars and toothpaste box. Then, in great +dignity and self-dramatization, she returned to bed. + +All this time he had been talking on, embroidering his assertion that +he "didn't expect any credit." She was reflecting that he was a rustic, +that she hated him, that she had been insane to marry him, that she had +married him only because she was tired of work, that she must get her +long gloves cleaned, that she would never do anything more for him, +and that she mustn't forget his hominy for breakfast. She was roused to +attention by his storming: + +"I'm a fool to think about a new house. By the time I get it built +you'll probably have succeeded in your plan to get me completely in +Dutch with every friend and every patient I've got." + +She sat up with a bounce. She said coldly, "Thank you very much for +revealing your real opinion of me. If that's the way you feel, if I'm +such a hindrance to you, I can't stay under this roof another minute. +And I am perfectly well able to earn my own living. I will go at once, +and you may get a divorce at your pleasure! What you want is a nice +sweet cow of a woman who will enjoy having your dear friends talk about +the weather and spit on the floor!" + +"Tut! Don't be a fool!" + +"You will very soon find out whether I'm a fool or not! I mean it! Do +you think I'd stay here one second after I found out that I was injuring +you? At least I have enough sense of justice not to do that." + +"Please stop flying off at tangents, Carrie. This----" + +"Tangents? TANGENTS! Let me tell you----" + +"----isn't a theater-play; it's a serious effort to have us get together +on fundamentals. We've both been cranky, and said a lot of things we +didn't mean. I wish we were a couple o' bloomin' poets and just talked +about roses and moonshine, but we're human. All right. Let's cut out +jabbing at each other. Let's admit we both do fool things. See here: You +KNOW you feel superior to folks. You're not as bad as I say, but you're +not as good as you say--not by a long shot! What's the reason you're so +superior? Why can't you take folks as they are?" + +Her preparations for stalking out of the Doll's House were not yet +visible. She mused: + +"I think perhaps it's my childhood." She halted. When she went on +her voice had an artificial sound, her words the bookish quality of +emotional meditation. "My father was the tenderest man in the world, but +he did feel superior to ordinary people. Well, he was! And the Minnesota +Valley----I used to sit there on the cliffs above Mankato for hours at a +time, my chin in my hand, looking way down the valley, wanting to write +poems. The shiny tilted roofs below me, and the river, and beyond it the +level fields in the mist, and the rim of palisades across----It held my +thoughts in. I LIVED, in the valley. But the prairie--all my thoughts go +flying off into the big space. Do you think it might be that?" + +"Um, well, maybe, but----Carrie, you always talk so much about getting +all you can out of life, and not letting the years slip by, and here you +deliberately go and deprive yourself of a lot of real good home pleasure +by not enjoying people unless they wear frock coats and trot out----" + +("Morning clothes. Oh. Sorry. Didn't mean t' interrupt you.") + +"----to a lot of tea-parties. Take Jack Elder. You think Jack hasn't got +any ideas about anything but manufacturing and the tariff on lumber. +But do you know that Jack is nutty about music? He'll put a grand-opera +record on the phonograph and sit and listen to it and close his +eyes----Or you take Lym Cass. Ever realize what a well-informed man he +is?" + +"But IS he? Gopher Prairie calls anybody 'well-informed' who's been +through the State Capitol and heard about Gladstone." + +"Now I'm telling you! Lym reads a lot--solid stuff--history. Or take +Mart Mahoney, the garageman. He's got a lot of Perry prints of famous +pictures in his office. Or old Bingham Playfair, that died here 'bout a +year ago--lived seven miles out. He was a captain in the Civil War, +and knew General Sherman, and they say he was a miner in Nevada right +alongside of Mark Twain. You'll find these characters in all these small +towns, and a pile of savvy in every single one of them, if you just dig +for it." + +"I know. And I do love them. Especially people like Champ Perry. But I +can't be so very enthusiastic over the smug cits like Jack Elder." + +"Then I'm a smug cit, too, whatever that is." + +"No, you're a scientist. Oh, I will try and get the music out of Mr. +Elder. Only, why can't he let it COME out, instead of being ashamed of +it, and always talking about hunting dogs? But I will try. Is it all +right now?" + +"Sure. But there's one other thing. You might give me some attention, +too!" + +"That's unjust! You have everything I am!" + +"No, I haven't. You think you respect me--you always hand out some +spiel about my being so 'useful.' But you never think of me as having +ambitions, just as much as you have----" + +"Perhaps not. I think of you as being perfectly satisfied." + +"Well, I'm not, not by a long shot! I don't want to be a plug general +practitioner all my life, like Westlake, and die in harness because I +can't get out of it, and have 'em say, 'He was a good fellow, but he +couldn't save a cent.' Not that I care a whoop what they say, after I've +kicked in and can't hear 'em, but I want to put enough money away so you +and I can be independent some day, and not have to work unless I feel +like it, and I want to have a good house--by golly, I'll have as good +a house as anybody in THIS town!--and if we want to travel and see your +Tormina or whatever it is, why we can do it, with enough money in our +jeans so we won't have to take anything off anybody, or fret about our +old age. You never worry about what might happen if we got sick and +didn't have a good fat wad salted away, do you!" + +"I don't suppose I do." + +"Well then, I have to do it for you. And if you think for one moment +I want to be stuck in this burg all my life, and not have a chance to +travel and see the different points of interest and all that, then you +simply don't get me. I want to have a squint at the world, much's you +do. Only, I'm practical about it. First place, I'm going to make the +money--I'm investing in good safe farmlands. Do you understand why now?" + +"Yes." + +"Will you try and see if you can't think of me as something more than +just a dollar-chasing roughneck?" + +"Oh, my dear, I haven't been just! I AM difficile. And I won't call on +the Dillons! And if Dr. Dillon is working for Westlake and McGanum, I +hate him!" + + + +CHAPTER XV + +THAT December she was in love with her husband. + +She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of a +country physician. The realities of the doctor's household were colored +by her pride. + +Late at night, a step on the wooden porch, heard through her confusion +of sleep; the storm-door opened; fumbling over the inner door-panels; +the buzz of the electric bell. Kennicott muttering "Gol darn it," but +patiently creeping out of bed, remembering to draw the covers up to keep +her warm, feeling for slippers and bathrobe, clumping down-stairs. + +From below, half-heard in her drowsiness, a colloquy in the +pidgin-German of the farmers who have forgotten the Old Country language +without learning the new: + +"Hello, Barney, wass willst du?" + +"Morgen, doctor. Die Frau ist ja awful sick. All night she been having +an awful pain in de belly." + +"How long she been this way? Wie lang, eh?" + +"I dunno, maybe two days." + +"Why didn't you come for me yesterday, instead of waking me up out of a +sound sleep? Here it is two o'clock! So spat--warum, eh?" + +"Nun aber, I know it, but she got soch a lot vorse last evening. I +t'ought maybe all de time it go avay, but it got a lot vorse." + +"Any fever?" + +"Vell ja, I t'ink she got fever." + +"Which side is the pain on?" + +"Huh?" + +"Das Schmertz--die Weh--which side is it on? Here?" + +"So. Right here it is." + +"Any rigidity there?" + +"Huh?" + +"Is it rigid--stiff--I mean, does the belly feel hard to the fingers?" + +"I dunno. She ain't said yet." + +"What she been eating?" + +"Vell, I t'ink about vot ve alwis eat, maybe corn beef and cabbage and +sausage, und so weiter. Doc, sie weint immer, all the time she holler +like hell. I vish you come." + +"Well, all right, but you call me earlier, next time. Look here, Barney, +you better install a 'phone--telephone haben. Some of you Dutchmen will +be dying one of these days before you can fetch the doctor." + +The door closing. Barney's wagon--the wheels silent in the snow, but the +wagon-body rattling. Kennicott clicking the receiver-hook to rouse the +night telephone-operator, giving a number, waiting, cursing mildly, +waiting again, and at last growling, "Hello, Gus, this is the doctor. +Say, uh, send me up a team. Guess snow's too thick for a machine. Going +eight miles south. All right. Huh? The hell I will! Don't you go back +to sleep. Huh? Well, that's all right now, you didn't wait so very darn +long. All right, Gus; shoot her along. By!" + +His step on the stairs; his quiet moving about the frigid room while he +dressed; his abstracted and meaningless cough. She was supposed to be +asleep; she was too exquisitely drowsy to break the charm by speaking. +On a slip of paper laid on the bureau--she could hear the pencil +grinding against the marble slab--he wrote his destination. He went out, +hungry, chilly, unprotesting; and she, before she fell asleep again, +loved him for his sturdiness, and saw the drama of his riding by night +to the frightened household on the distant farm; pictured children +standing at a window, waiting for him. He suddenly had in her eyes the +heroism of a wireless operator on a ship in a collision; of an explorer, +fever-clawed, deserted by his bearers, but going on--jungle--going---- + +At six, when the light faltered in as through ground glass and bleakly +identified the chairs as gray rectangles, she heard his step on the +porch; heard him at the furnace: the rattle of shaking the grate, the +slow grinding removal of ashes, the shovel thrust into the coal-bin, +the abrupt clatter of the coal as it flew into the fire-box, the fussy +regulation of drafts--the daily sounds of a Gopher Prairie life, now +first appealing to her as something brave and enduring, many-colored +and free. She visioned the fire-box: flames turned to lemon and metallic +gold as the coal-dust sifted over them; thin twisty flutters of purple, +ghost flames which gave no light, slipping up between the dark banked +coals. + +It was luxurious in bed, and the house would be warm for her when +she rose, she reflected. What a worthless cat she was! What were her +aspirations beside his capability? + +She awoke again as he dropped into bed. + +"Seems just a few minutes ago that you started out!" + +"I've been away four hours. I've operated a woman for appendicitis, in +a Dutch kitchen. Came awful close to losing her, too, but I pulled her +through all right. Close squeak. Barney says he shot ten rabbits last +Sunday." + +He was instantly asleep--one hour of rest before he had to be up and +ready for the farmers who came in early. She marveled that in what was +to her but a night-blurred moment, he should have been in a distant +place, have taken charge of a strange house, have slashed a woman, saved +a life. + +What wonder he detested the lazy Westlake and McGanum! How could the +easy Guy Pollock understand this skill and endurance? + +Then Kennicott was grumbling, "Seven-fifteen! Aren't you ever going +to get up for breakfast?" and he was not a hero-scientist but a rather +irritable and commonplace man who needed a shave. They had coffee, +griddle-cakes, and sausages, and talked about Mrs. McGanum's atrocious +alligator-hide belt. Night witchery and morning disillusion were alike +forgotten in the march of realities and days. + + +II + +Familiar to the doctor's wife was the man with an injured leg, driven in +from the country on a Sunday afternoon and brought to the house. He +sat in a rocker in the back of a lumber-wagon, his face pale from the +anguish of the jolting. His leg was thrust out before him, resting on +a starch-box and covered with a leather-bound horse-blanket. His drab +courageous wife drove the wagon, and she helped Kennicott support him as +he hobbled up the steps, into the house. + +"Fellow cut his leg with an ax--pretty bad gash--Halvor Nelson, nine +miles out," Kennicott observed. + +Carol fluttered at the back of the room, childishly excited when she was +sent to fetch towels and a basin of water. Kennicott lifted the farmer +into a chair and chuckled, "There we are, Halvor! We'll have you out +fixing fences and drinking aquavit in a month." The farmwife sat on +the couch, expressionless, bulky in a man's dogskin coat and unplumbed +layers of jackets. The flowery silk handkerchief which she had worn over +her head now hung about her seamed neck. Her white wool gloves lay in +her lap. + +Kennicott drew from the injured leg the thick red "German sock," the +innumerous other socks of gray and white wool, then the spiral bandage. +The leg was of an unwholesome dead white, with the black hairs feeble +and thin and flattened, and the scar a puckered line of crimson. Surely, +Carol shuddered, this was not human flesh, the rosy shining tissue of +the amorous poets. + +Kennicott examined the scar, smiled at Halvor and his wife, chanted, +"Fine, b' gosh! Couldn't be better!" + +The Nelsons looked deprecating. The farmer nodded a cue to his wife and +she mourned: + +"Vell, how much ve going to owe you, doctor?" + +"I guess it'll be----Let's see: one drive out and two calls. I guess +it'll be about eleven dollars in all, Lena." + +"I dunno ve can pay you yoost a little w'ile, doctor." + +Kennicott lumbered over to her, patted her shoulder, roared, "Why, Lord +love you, sister, I won't worry if I never get it! You pay me next fall, +when you get your crop. . . . Carrie! Suppose you or Bea could shake up +a cup of coffee and some cold lamb for the Nelsons? They got a long cold +drive ahead." + + +III + + +He had been gone since morning; her eyes ached with reading; Vida +Sherwin could not come to tea. She wandered through the house, empty as +the bleary street without. The problem of "Will the doctor be home in +time for supper, or shall I sit down without him?" was important in +the household. Six was the rigid, the canonical supper-hour, but at +half-past six he had not come. Much speculation with Bea: Had the +obstetrical case taken longer than he had expected? Had he been called +somewhere else? Was the snow much heavier out in the country, so that he +should have taken a buggy, or even a cutter, instead of the car? Here in +town it had melted a lot, but still---- + +A honking, a shout, the motor engine raced before it was shut off. + +She hurried to the window. The car was a monster at rest after furious +adventures. The headlights blazed on the clots of ice in the road so +that the tiniest lumps gave mountainous shadows, and the taillight cast +a circle of ruby on the snow behind. Kennicott was opening the door, +crying, "Here we are, old girl! Got stuck couple times, but we made it, +by golly, we made it, and here we be! Come on! Food! Eatin's!" + +She rushed to him, patted his fur coat, the long hairs smooth but chilly +to her fingers. She joyously summoned Bea, "All right! He's here! We'll +sit right down!" + + +IV + + +There were, to inform the doctor's wife of his successes no clapping +audiences nor book-reviews nor honorary degrees. But there was a +letter written by a German farmer recently moved from Minnesota to +Saskatchewan: + + +Dear sor, as you haf bin treading mee for a fue Weaks dis Somer and +seen wat is rong wit mee so in Regarding to dat i wont to tank you. the +Doctor heir say wat shot bee rong wit mee and day give mee som Madsin +but it diten halp mee like wat you dit. Now day glaim dat i Woten Neet +aney Madsin ad all wat you tink? + +Well i haven ben tacking aney ting for about one & 1/2 Mont but i dont +get better so i like to heir Wat you tink about it i feel like dis +Disconfebil feeling around the Stomac after eating and dat Pain around +Heard and down the arm and about 3 to 3 1/2 Hour after Eating i feel +weeak like and dissy and a dull Hadig. Now you gust lett mee know Wat +you tink about mee, i do Wat you say. + + +V + + +She encountered Guy Pollock at the drug store. He looked at her as +though he had a right to; he spoke softly. "I haven't see you, the last +few days." + +"No. I've been out in the country with Will several times. He's so----Do +you know that people like you and me can never understand people like +him? We're a pair of hypercritical loafers, you and I, while he quietly +goes and does things." + +She nodded and smiled and was very busy about purchasing boric acid. He +stared after her, and slipped away. + +When she found that he was gone she was slightly disconcerted. + + +VI + + +She could--at times--agree with Kennicott that the shaving-and-corsets +familiarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity but a wholesome +frankness; that artificial reticences might merely be irritating. She +was not much disturbed when for hours he sat about the living-room in +his honest socks. But she would not listen to his theory that "all this +romance stuff is simply moonshine--elegant when you're courting, but no +use busting yourself keeping it up all your life." + +She thought of surprises, games, to vary the days. She knitted an +astounding purple scarf, which she hid under his supper plate. (When +he discovered it he looked embarrassed, and gasped, "Is today an +anniversary or something? Gosh, I'd forgotten it!") + +Once she filled a thermos bottle with hot coffee a corn-flakes box with +cookies just baked by Bea, and bustled to his office at three in the +afternoon. She hid her bundles in the hall and peeped in. + +The office was shabby. Kennicott had inherited it from a medical +predecessor, and changed it only by adding a white enameled +operating-table, a sterilizer, a Roentgen-ray apparatus, and a small +portable typewriter. It was a suite of two rooms: a waiting-room with +straight chairs, shaky pine table, and those coverless and unknown +magazines which are found only in the offices of dentists and +doctors. The room beyond, looking on Main Street, was business-office, +consulting-room, operating-room, and, in an alcove, bacteriological +and chemical laboratory. The wooden floors of both rooms were bare; the +furniture was brown and scaly. + +Waiting for the doctor were two women, as still as though they were +paralyzed, and a man in a railroad brakeman's uniform, holding his +bandaged right hand with his tanned left. They stared at Carol. She sat +modestly in a stiff chair, feeling frivolous and out of place. + +Kennicott appeared at the inner door, ushering out a bleached man with +a trickle of wan beard, and consoling him, "All right, Dad. Be careful +about the sugar, and mind the diet I gave you. Gut the prescription +filled, and come in and see me next week. Say, uh, better, uh, better +not drink too much beer. All right, Dad." + +His voice was artificially hearty. He looked absently at Carol. He was +a medical machine now, not a domestic machine. "What is it, Carrie?" he +droned. + +"No hurry. Just wanted to say hello." + +"Well----" + +Self-pity because he did not divine that this was a surprise party +rendered her sad and interesting to herself, and she had the pleasure of +the martyrs in saying bravely to him, "It's nothing special. If you're +busy long I'll trot home." + +While she waited she ceased to pity and began to mock herself. For the +first time she observed the waiting-room. Oh yes, the doctor's family +had to have obi panels and a wide couch and an electric percolator, but +any hole was good enough for sick tired common people who were nothing +but the one means and excuse for the doctor's existing! No. She couldn't +blame Kennicott. He was satisfied by the shabby chairs. He put up with +them as his patients did. It was her neglected province--she who had +been going about talking of rebuilding the whole town! + +When the patients were gone she brought in her bundles. + +"What's those?" wondered Kennicott. + +"Turn your back! Look out of the window!" + +He obeyed--not very much bored. When she cried "Now!" a feast of cookies +and small hard candies and hot coffee was spread on the roll-top desk in +the inner room. + +His broad face lightened. "That's a new one on me! Never was more +surprised in my life! And, by golly, I believe I am hungry. Say, this is +fine." + +When the first exhilaration of the surprise had declined she demanded, +"Will! I'm going to refurnish your waiting-room!" + +"What's the matter with it? It's all right." + +"It is not! It's hideous. We can afford to give your patients a better +place. And it would be good business." She felt tremendously politic. + +"Rats! I don't worry about the business. You look here now: As I told +you----Just because I like to tuck a few dollars away, I'll be switched +if I'll stand for your thinking I'm nothing but a dollar-chasing----" + +"Stop it! Quick! I'm not hurting your feelings! I'm not criticizing! I'm +the adoring least one of thy harem. I just mean----" + +Two days later, with pictures, wicker chairs, a rug, she had made the +waiting-room habitable; and Kennicott admitted, "Does look a lot better. +Never thought much about it. Guess I need being bullied." + +She was convinced that she was gloriously content in her career as +doctor's-wife. + + +VII + + +She tried to free herself from the speculation and disillusionment which +had been twitching at her; sought to dismiss all the opinionation of an +insurgent era. She wanted to shine upon the veal-faced bristly-bearded +Lyman Cass as much as upon Miles Bjornstam or Guy Pollock. She gave a +reception for the Thanatopsis Club. But her real acquiring of merit +was in calling upon that Mrs. Bogart whose gossipy good opinion was so +valuable to a doctor. + +Though the Bogart house was next door she had entered it but three +times. Now she put on her new moleskin cap, which made her face small +and innocent, she rubbed off the traces of a lip-stick--and fled across +the alley before her admirable resolution should sneak away. + +The age of houses, like the age of men, has small relation to their +years. The dull-green cottage of the good Widow Bogart was twenty years +old, but it had the antiquity of Cheops, and the smell of mummy-dust. +Its neatness rebuked the street. The two stones by the path were painted +yellow; the outhouse was so overmodestly masked with vines and lattice +that it was not concealed at all; the last iron dog remaining in Gopher +Prairie stood among whitewashed conch-shells upon the lawn. The hallway +was dismayingly scrubbed; the kitchen was an exercise in mathematics, +with problems worked out in equidistant chairs. + +The parlor was kept for visitors. Carol suggested, "Let's sit in the +kitchen. Please don't trouble to light the parlor stove." + +"No trouble at all! My gracious, and you coming so seldom and all, and +the kitchen is a perfect sight, I try to keep it clean, but Cy will +track mud all over it, I've spoken to him about it a hundred times if +I've spoken once, no, you sit right there, dearie, and I'll make a fire, +no trouble at all, practically no trouble at all." + +Mrs. Bogart groaned, rubbed her joints, and repeatedly dusted her hands +while she made the fire, and when Carol tried to help she lamented, +"Oh, it doesn't matter; guess I ain't good for much but toil and workin' +anyway; seems as though that's what a lot of folks think." + +The parlor was distinguished by an expanse of rag carpet from which, as +they entered, Mrs. Bogart hastily picked one sad dead fly. In the center +of the carpet was a rug depicting a red Newfoundland dog, reclining in a +green and yellow daisy field and labeled "Our Friend." The parlor organ, +tall and thin, was adorned with a mirror partly circular, partly square, +and partly diamond-shaped, and with brackets holding a pot of geraniums, +a mouth-organ, and a copy of "The Oldtime Hymnal." On the center +table was a Sears-Roebuck mail-order catalogue, a silver frame with +photographs of the Baptist Church and of an elderly clergyman, and +an aluminum tray containing a rattlesnake's rattle and a broken +spectacle-lens. + +Mrs. Bogart spoke of the eloquence of the Reverend Mr. Zitterel, +the coldness of cold days, the price of poplar wood, Dave Dyer's new +hair-cut, and Cy Bogart's essential piety. "As I said to his Sunday +School teacher, Cy may be a little wild, but that's because he's got so +much better brains than a lot of these boys, and this farmer that claims +he caught Cy stealing 'beggies, is a liar, and I ought to have the law +on him." + +Mrs. Bogart went thoroughly into the rumor that the girl waiter at +Billy's Lunch was not all she might be--or, rather, was quite all she +might be. + +"My lands, what can you expect when everybody knows what her mother was? +And if these traveling salesmen would let her alone she would be all +right, though I certainly don't believe she ought to be allowed to think +she can pull the wool over our eyes. The sooner she's sent to the +school for incorrigible girls down at Sauk Centre, the better for all +and----Won't you just have a cup of coffee, Carol dearie, I'm sure you +won't mind old Aunty Bogart calling you by your first name when you +think how long I've known Will, and I was such a friend of his dear +lovely mother when she lived here and--was that fur cap expensive? +But----Don't you think it's awful, the way folks talk in this town?" + +Mrs. Bogart hitched her chair nearer. Her large face, with its +disturbing collection of moles and lone black hairs, wrinkled +cunningly. She showed her decayed teeth in a reproving smile, and in the +confidential voice of one who scents stale bedroom scandal she breathed: + +"I just don't see how folks can talk and act like they do. You don't +know the things that go on under cover. This town--why it's only the +religious training I've given Cy that's kept him so innocent of--things. +Just the other day----I never pay no attention to stories, but I heard +it mighty good and straight that Harry Haydock is carrying on with a +girl that clerks in a store down in Minneapolis, and poor Juanita +not knowing anything about it--though maybe it's the judgment of +God, because before she married Harry she acted up with more than one +boy----Well, I don't like to say it, and maybe I ain't up-to-date, like +Cy says, but I always believed a lady shouldn't even give names to all +sorts of dreadful things, but just the same I know there was at least +one case where Juanita and a boy--well, they were just dreadful. +And--and----Then there's that Ole Jenson the grocer, that thinks he's so +plaguey smart, and I know he made up to a farmer's wife and----And this +awful man Bjornstam that does chores, and Nat Hicks and----" + +There was, it seemed, no person in town who was not living a life of +shame except Mrs. Bogart, and naturally she resented it. + +She knew. She had always happened to be there. Once, she whispered, she +was going by when an indiscreet window-shade had been left up a couple +of inches. Once she had noticed a man and woman holding hands, and right +at a Methodist sociable! + +"Another thing----Heaven knows I never want to start trouble, but I +can't help what I see from my back steps, and I notice your hired girl +Bea carrying on with the grocery boys and all----" + +"Mrs. Bogart! I'd trust Bea as I would myself!" + +"Oh, dearie, you don't understand me! I'm sure she's a good girl. I mean +she's green, and I hope that none of these horrid young men that there +are around town will get her into trouble! It's their parents' fault, +letting them run wild and hear evil things. If I had my way there +wouldn't be none of them, not boys nor girls neither, allowed to know +anything about--about things till they was married. It's terrible the +bald way that some folks talk. It just shows and gives away what awful +thoughts they got inside them, and there's nothing can cure them except +coming right to God and kneeling down like I do at prayer-meeting every +Wednesday evening, and saying, 'O God, I would be a miserable sinner +except for thy grace.' + +"I'd make every last one of these brats go to Sunday School and learn +to think about nice things 'stead of about cigarettes and goings-on--and +these dances they have at the lodges are the worst thing that ever +happened to this town, lot of young men squeezing girls and finding +out----Oh, it's dreadful. I've told the mayor he ought to put a stop +to them and----There was one boy in this town, I don't want to be +suspicious or uncharitable but----" + +It was half an hour before Carol escaped. + +She stopped on her own porch and thought viciously: + +"If that woman is on the side of the angels, then I have no choice; I +must be on the side of the devil. But--isn't she like me? She too wants +to 'reform the town'! She too criticizes everybody! She too thinks the +men are vulgar and limited! AM I LIKE HER? This is ghastly!" + +That evening she did not merely consent to play cribbage with Kennicott; +she urged him to play; and she worked up a hectic interest in land-deals +and Sam Clark. + + +VIII + + +In courtship days Kennicott had shown her a photograph of Nels +Erdstrom's baby and log cabin, but she had never seen the Erdstroms. +They had become merely "patients of the doctor." Kennicott telephoned +her on a mid-December afternoon, "Want to throw your coat on and drive +out to Erdstrom's with me? Fairly warm. Nels got the jaundice." + +"Oh yes!" She hastened to put on woolen stockings, high boots, sweater, +muffler, cap, mittens. + +The snow was too thick and the ruts frozen too hard for the motor. They +drove out in a clumsy high carriage. Tucked over them was a blue woolen +cover, prickly to her wrists, and outside of it a buffalo robe, humble +and moth-eaten now, used ever since the bison herds had streaked the +prairie a few miles to the west. + +The scattered houses between which they passed in town were small and +desolate in contrast to the expanse of huge snowy yards and wide +street. They crossed the railroad tracks, and instantly were in the farm +country. The big piebald horses snorted clouds of steam, and started to +trot. The carriage squeaked in rhythm. Kennicott drove with clucks of +"There boy, take it easy!" He was thinking. He paid no attention to +Carol. Yet it was he who commented, "Pretty nice, over there," as they +approached an oak-grove where shifty winter sunlight quivered in the +hollow between two snow-drifts. + +They drove from the natural prairie to a cleared district which twenty +years ago had been forest. The country seemed to stretch unchanging to +the North Pole: low hill, brush-scraggly bottom, reedy creek, muskrat +mound, fields with frozen brown clods thrust up through the snow. + +Her ears and nose were pinched; her breath frosted her collar; her +fingers ached. + +"Getting colder," she said. + +"Yup." + +That was all their conversation for three miles. Yet she was happy. + +They reached Nels Erdstrom's at four, and with a throb she recognized +the courageous venture which had lured her to Gopher Prairie: the +cleared fields, furrows among stumps, a log cabin chinked with mud and +roofed with dry hay. But Nels had prospered. He used the log cabin as a +barn; and a new house reared up, a proud, unwise, Gopher Prairie +house, the more naked and ungraceful in its glossy white paint and pink +trimmings. Every tree had been cut down. The house was so unsheltered, +so battered by the wind, so bleakly thrust out into the harsh clearing, +that Carol shivered. But they were welcomed warmly enough in the +kitchen, with its crisp new plaster, its black and nickel range, its +cream separator in a corner. + +Mrs. Erdstrom begged her to sit in the parlor, where there was a +phonograph and an oak and leather davenport, the prairie farmer's +proofs of social progress, but she dropped down by the kitchen stove and +insisted, "Please don't mind me." When Mrs. Erdstrom had followed the +doctor out of the room Carol glanced in a friendly way at the grained +pine cupboard, the framed Lutheran Konfirmations Attest, the traces +of fried eggs and sausages on the dining table against the wall, and a +jewel among calendars, presenting not only a lithographic young woman +with cherry lips, and a Swedish advertisement of Axel Egge's grocery, +but also a thermometer and a match-holder. + +She saw that a boy of four or five was staring at her from the hall, +a boy in gingham shirt and faded corduroy trousers, but large-eyed, +firm-mouthed, wide-browed. He vanished, then peeped in again, biting his +knuckles, turning his shoulder toward her in shyness. + +Didn't she remember--what was it?--Kennicott sitting beside her at Fort +Snelling, urging, "See how scared that baby is. Needs some woman like +you." + +Magic had fluttered about her then--magic of sunset and cool air and the +curiosity of lovers. She held out her hands as much to that sanctity as +to the boy. + +He edged into the room, doubtfully sucking his thumb. + +"Hello," she said. "What's your name?" + +"Hee, hee, hee!" + +"You're quite right. I agree with you. Silly people like me always ask +children their names." + +"Hee, hee, hee!" + +"Come here and I'll tell you the story of--well, I don't know what it +will be about, but it will have a slim heroine and a Prince Charming." + +He stood stoically while she spun nonsense. His giggling ceased. She was +winning him. Then the telephone bell--two long rings, one short. + +Mrs. Erdstrom galloped into the room, shrieked into the transmitter, +"Vell? Yes, yes, dis is Erdstrom's place! Heh? Oh, you vant de doctor?" + +Kennicott appeared, growled into the telephone: + +"Well, what do you want? Oh, hello Dave; what do you want? Which +Morgenroth's? Adolph's? All right. Amputation? Yuh, I see. Say, Dave, +get Gus to harness up and take my surgical kit down there--and have him +take some chloroform. I'll go straight down from here. May not get +home tonight. You can get me at Adolph's. Huh? No, Carrie can give the +anesthetic, I guess. G'-by. Huh? No; tell me about that tomorrow--too +damn many people always listening in on this farmers' line." + +He turned to Carol. "Adolph Morgenroth, farmer ten miles southwest of +town, got his arm crushed-fixing his cow-shed and a post caved in on +him--smashed him up pretty bad--may have to amputate, Dave Dyer says. +Afraid we'll have to go right from here. Darn sorry to drag you clear +down there with me----" + +"Please do. Don't mind me a bit." + +"Think you could give the anesthetic? Usually have my driver do it." + +"If you'll tell me how." + +"All right. Say, did you hear me putting one over on these goats that +are always rubbering in on party-wires? I hope they heard me! Well. . . . +Now, Bessie, don't you worry about Nels. He's getting along all right. +Tomorrow you or one of the neighbors drive in and get this prescription +filled at Dyer's. Give him a teaspoonful every four hours. Good-by. +Hel-lo! Here's the little fellow! My Lord, Bessie, it ain't possible +this is the fellow that used to be so sickly? Why, say, he's a great big +strapping Svenska now--going to be bigger 'n his daddy!" + +Kennicott's bluffness made the child squirm with a delight which Carol +could not evoke. It was a humble wife who followed the busy doctor out +to the carriage, and her ambition was not to play Rachmaninoff better, +nor to build town halls, but to chuckle at babies. + +The sunset was merely a flush of rose on a dome of silver, with oak +twigs and thin poplar branches against it, but a silo on the horizon +changed from a red tank to a tower of violet misted over with gray. The +purple road vanished, and without lights, in the darkness of a world +destroyed, they swayed on--toward nothing. + +It was a bumpy cold way to the Morgenroth farm, and she was asleep when +they arrived. + +Here was no glaring new house with a proud phonograph, but a low +whitewashed kitchen smelling of cream and cabbage. Adolph Morgenroth was +lying on a couch in the rarely used dining-room. His heavy work-scarred +wife was shaking her hands in anxiety. + +Carol felt that Kennicott would do something magnificent and startling. +But he was casual. He greeted the man, "Well, well, Adolph, have to fix +you up, eh?" Quietly, to the wife, "Hat die drug store my schwartze bag +hier geschickt? So--schon. Wie viel Uhr ist 's? Sieben? Nun, lassen uns +ein wenig supper zuerst haben. Got any of that good beer left--giebt 's +noch Bier?" + +He had supped in four minutes. His coat off, his sleeves rolled up, he +was scrubbing his hands in a tin basin in the sink, using the bar of +yellow kitchen soap. + +Carol had not dared to look into the farther room while she labored over +the supper of beer, rye bread, moist cornbeef and cabbage, set on the +kitchen table. The man in there was groaning. In her one glance she +had seen that his blue flannel shirt was open at a corded tobacco-brown +neck, the hollows of which were sprinkled with thin black and gray +hairs. He was covered with a sheet, like a corpse, and outside the sheet +was his right arm, wrapped in towels stained with blood. + +But Kennicott strode into the other room gaily, and she followed him. +With surprising delicacy in his large fingers he unwrapped the towels +and revealed an arm which, below the elbow, was a mass of blood and raw +flesh. The man bellowed. The room grew thick about her; she was very +seasick; she fled to a chair in the kitchen. Through the haze of nausea +she heard Kennicott grumbling, "Afraid it will have to come off, Adolph. +What did you do? Fall on a reaper blade? We'll fix it right up. Carrie! +CAROL!" + +She couldn't--she couldn't get up. Then she was up, her knees like +water, her stomach revolving a thousand times a second, her eyes filmed, +her ears full of roaring. She couldn't reach the dining-room. She was +going to faint. Then she was in the dining-room, leaning against the +wall, trying to smile, flushing hot and cold along her chest and sides, +while Kennicott mumbled, "Say, help Mrs. Morgenroth and me carry him +in on the kitchen table. No, first go out and shove those two tables +together, and put a blanket on them and a clean sheet." + +It was salvation to push the heavy tables, to scrub them, to be exact in +placing the sheet. Her head cleared; she was able to look calmly in at +her husband and the farmwife while they undressed the wailing man, got +him into a clean nightgown, and washed his arm. Kennicott came to lay +out his instruments. She realized that, with no hospital facilities, yet +with no worry about it, her husband--HER HUSBAND--was going to perform +a surgical operation, that miraculous boldness of which one read in +stories about famous surgeons. + +She helped them to move Adolph into the kitchen. The man was in such a +funk that he would not use his legs. He was heavy, and smelled of sweat +and the stable. But she put her arm about his waist, her sleek head by +his chest; she tugged at him; she clicked her tongue in imitation of +Kennicott's cheerful noises. + +When Adolph was on the table Kennicott laid a hemispheric steel and +cotton frame on his face; suggested to Carol, "Now you sit here at his +head and keep the ether dripping--about this fast, see? I'll watch +his breathing. Look who's here! Real anesthetist! Ochsner hasn't got a +better one! Class, eh? . . . Now, now, Adolph, take it easy. This won't +hurt you a bit. Put you all nice and asleep and it won't hurt a bit. +Schweig' mal! Bald schlaft man grat wie ein Kind. So! So! Bald geht's +besser!" + +As she let the ether drip, nervously trying to keep the rhythm that +Kennicott had indicated, Carol stared at her husband with the abandon of +hero-worship. + +He shook his head. "Bad light--bad light. Here, Mrs. Morgenroth, you +stand right here and hold this lamp. Hier, und dieses--dieses lamp +halten--so!" + +By that streaky glimmer he worked, swiftly, at ease. The room was still. +Carol tried to look at him, yet not look at the seeping blood, the +crimson slash, the vicious scalpel. The ether fumes were sweet, choking. +Her head seemed to be floating away from her body. Her arm was feeble. + +It was not the blood but the grating of the surgical saw on the living +bone that broke her, and she knew that she had been fighting off nausea, +that she was beaten. She was lost in dizziness. She heard Kennicott's +voice-- + +"Sick? Trot outdoors couple minutes. Adolph will stay under now." + +She was fumbling at a door-knob which whirled in insulting circles; +she was on the stoop, gasping, forcing air into her chest, her head +clearing. As she returned she caught the scene as a whole: the cavernous +kitchen, two milk-cans a leaden patch by the wall, hams dangling from a +beam, bats of light at the stove door, and in the center, illuminated +by a small glass lamp held by a frightened stout woman, Dr. Kennicott +bending over a body which was humped under a sheet--the surgeon, his +bare arms daubed with blood, his hands, in pale-yellow rubber gloves, +loosening the tourniquet, his face without emotion save when he threw +up his head and clucked at the farmwife, "Hold that light steady just a +second more--noch blos esn wenig." + +"He speaks a vulgar, common, incorrect German of life and death and +birth and the soil. I read the French and German of sentimental +lovers and Christmas garlands. And I thought that it was I who had the +culture!" she worshiped as she returned to her place. + +After a time he snapped, "That's enough. Don't give him any more ether." +He was concentrated on tying an artery. His gruffness seemed heroic to +her. + +As he shaped the flap of flesh she murmured, "Oh, you ARE wonderful!" + +He was surprised. "Why, this is a cinch. Now if it had been like last +week----Get me some more water. Now last week I had a case with an ooze +in the peritoneal cavity, and by golly if it wasn't a stomach ulcer that +I hadn't suspected and----There. Say, I certainly am sleepy. Let's turn +in here. Too late to drive home. And tastes to me like a storm coming." + + +IX + + +They slept on a feather bed with their fur coats over them; in the +morning they broke ice in the pitcher--the vast flowered and gilt +pitcher. + +Kennicott's storm had not come. When they set out it was hazy and +growing warmer. After a mile she saw that he was studying a dark cloud +in the north. He urged the horses to the run. But she forgot his unusual +haste in wonder at the tragic landscape. The pale snow, the prickles of +old stubble, and the clumps of ragged brush faded into a gray obscurity. +Under the hillocks were cold shadows. The willows about a farmhouse were +agitated by the rising wind, and the patches of bare wood where the bark +had peeled away were white as the flesh of a leper. The snowy slews were +of a harsh flatness. The whole land was cruel, and a climbing cloud of +slate-edged blackness dominated the sky. + +"Guess we're about in for a blizzard," speculated Kennicott "We can make +Ben McGonegal's, anyway." + +"Blizzard? Really? Why----But still we used to think they were fun when +I was a girl. Daddy had to stay home from court, and we'd stand at the +window and watch the snow." + +"Not much fun on the prairie. Get lost. Freeze to death. Take no +chances." He chirruped at the horses. They were flying now, the carriage +rocking on the hard ruts. + +The whole air suddenly crystallized into large damp flakes. The horses +and the buffalo robe were covered with snow; her face was wet; the +thin butt of the whip held a white ridge. The air became colder. The +snowflakes were harder; they shot in level lines, clawing at her face. + +She could not see a hundred feet ahead. + +Kennicott was stern. He bent forward, the reins firm in his coonskin +gauntlets. She was certain that he would get through. He always got +through things. + +Save for his presence, the world and all normal living disappeared. They +were lost in the boiling snow. He leaned close to bawl, "Letting the +horses have their heads. They'll get us home." + +With a terrifying bump they were off the road, slanting with two wheels +in the ditch, but instantly they were jerked back as the horses fled +on. She gasped. She tried to, and did not, feel brave as she pulled the +woolen robe up about her chin. + +They were passing something like a dark wall on the right. "I know that +barn!" he yelped. He pulled at the reins. Peeping from the covers she +saw his teeth pinch his lower lip, saw him scowl as he slackened and +sawed and jerked sharply again at the racing horses. + +They stopped. + +"Farmhouse there. Put robe around you and come on," he cried. + +It was like diving into icy water to climb out of the carriage, but +on the ground she smiled at him, her face little and childish and pink +above the buffalo robe over her shoulders. In a swirl of flakes which +scratched at their eyes like a maniac darkness, he unbuckled the +harness. He turned and plodded back, a ponderous furry figure, holding +the horses' bridles, Carol's hand dragging at his sleeve. + +They came to the cloudy bulk of a barn whose outer wall was directly +upon the road. Feeling along it, he found a gate, led them into a yard, +into the barn. The interior was warm. It stunned them with its languid +quiet. + +He carefully drove the horses into stalls. + +Her toes were coals of pain. "Let's run for the house," she said. + +"Can't. Not yet. Might never find it. Might get lost ten feet away from +it. Sit over in this stall, near the horses. We'll rush for the house +when the blizzard lifts." + +"I'm so stiff! I can't walk!" + +He carried her into the stall, stripped off her overshoes and boots, +stopping to blow on his purple fingers as he fumbled at her laces. +He rubbed her feet, and covered her with the buffalo robe and +horse-blankets from the pile on the feed-box. She was drowsy, hemmed in +by the storm. She sighed: + +"You're so strong and yet so skilful and not afraid of blood or storm +or----" + +"Used to it. Only thing that's bothered me was the chance the ether +fumes might explode, last night." + +"I don't understand." + +"Why, Dave, the darn fool, sent me ether, instead of chloroform like I +told him, and you know ether fumes are mighty inflammable, especially +with that lamp right by the table. But I had to operate, of +course--wound chuck-full of barnyard filth that way." + +"You knew all the time that----Both you and I might have been blown up? +You knew it while you were operating?" + +"Sure. Didn't you? Why, what's the matter?" + + + +CHAPTER XVI + +KENNICOTT was heavily pleased by her Christmas presents, and he gave her +a diamond bar-pin. But she could not persuade herself that he was much +interested in the rites of the morning, in the tree she had decorated, +the three stockings she had hung, the ribbons and gilt seals and hidden +messages. He said only: + +"Nice way to fix things, all right. What do you say we go down to Jack +Elder's and have a game of five hundred this afternoon?" + +She remembered her father's Christmas fantasies: the sacred old rag +doll at the top of the tree, the score of cheap presents, the punch and +carols, the roast chestnuts by the fire, and the gravity with which the +judge opened the children's scrawly notes and took cognizance of demands +for sled-rides, for opinions upon the existence of Santa Claus. She +remembered him reading out a long indictment of himself for being a +sentimentalist, against the peace and dignity of the State of Minnesota. +She remembered his thin legs twinkling before their sled---- + +She muttered unsteadily, "Must run up and put on my shoes--slippers so +cold." In the not very romantic solitude of the locked bathroom she sat +on the slippery edge of the tub and wept. + + +II + + +Kennicott had five hobbies: medicine, land-investment, Carol, motoring, +and hunting. It is not certain in what order he preferred them. Solid +though his enthusiasms were in the matter of medicine--his admiration +of this city surgeon, his condemnation of that for tricky ways of +persuading country practitioners to bring in surgical patients, +his indignation about fee-splitting, his pride in a new X-ray +apparatus--none of these beatified him as did motoring. + +He nursed his two-year-old Buick even in winter, when it was stored in +the stable-garage behind the house. He filled the grease-cups, varnished +a fender, removed from beneath the back seat the debris of gloves, +copper washers, crumpled maps, dust, and greasy rags. Winter noons he +wandered out and stared owlishly at the car. He became excited over a +fabulous "trip we might take next summer." He galloped to the station, +brought home railway maps, and traced motor-routes from Gopher Prairie +to Winnipeg or Des Moines or Grand Marais, thinking aloud and expecting +her to be effusive about such academic questions as "Now I wonder if we +could stop at Baraboo and break the jump from La Crosse to Chicago?" + +To him motoring was a faith not to be questioned, a high-church cult, +with electric sparks for candles, and piston-rings possessing the +sanctity of altar-vessels. His liturgy was composed of intoned and +metrical road-comments: "They say there's a pretty good hike from Duluth +to International Falls." + +Hunting was equally a devotion, full of metaphysical concepts veiled +from Carol. All winter he read sporting-catalogues, and thought about +remarkable past shots: "'Member that time when I got two ducks on a +long chance, just at sunset?" At least once a month he drew his favorite +repeating shotgun, his "pump gun," from its wrapper of greased canton +flannel; he oiled the trigger, and spent silent ecstatic moments aiming +at the ceiling. Sunday mornings Carol heard him trudging up to the +attic and there, an hour later, she found him turning over boots, wooden +duck-decoys, lunch-boxes, or reflectively squinting at old shells, +rubbing their brass caps with his sleeve and shaking his head as he +thought about their uselessness. + +He kept the loading-tools he had used as a boy: a capper for shot-gun +shells, a mold for lead bullets. When once, in a housewifely frenzy for +getting rid of things, she raged, "Why don't you give these away?" he +solemnly defended them, "Well, you can't tell; they might come in handy +some day." + +She flushed. She wondered if he was thinking of the child they would +have when, as he put it, they were "sure they could afford one." + +Mysteriously aching, nebulously sad, she slipped away, half-convinced +but only half-convinced that it was horrible and unnatural, this +postponement of release of mother-affection, this sacrifice to her +opinionation and to his cautious desire for prosperity. + +"But it would be worse if he were like Sam Clark--insisted on having +children," she considered; then, "If Will were the Prince, wouldn't I +DEMAND his child?" + +Kennicott's land-deals were both financial advancement and favorite +game. Driving through the country, he noticed which farms had good +crops; he heard the news about the restless farmer who was "thinking +about selling out here and pulling his freight for Alberta." He asked +the veterinarian about the value of different breeds of stock; he +inquired of Lyman Cass whether or not Einar Gyseldson really had had a +yield of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He was always consulting +Julius Flickerbaugh, who handled more real estate than law, and more law +than justice. He studied township maps, and read notices of auctions. + +Thus he was able to buy a quarter-section of land for one hundred and +fifty dollars an acre, and to sell it in a year or two, after installing +a cement floor in the barn and running water in the house, for one +hundred and eighty or even two hundred. + +He spoke of these details to Sam Clark . . . rather often. + +In all his games, cars and guns and land, he expected Carol to take an +interest. But he did not give her the facts which might have created +interest. He talked only of the obvious and tedious aspects; never of +his aspirations in finance, nor of the mechanical principles of motors. + +This month of romance she was eager to understand his hobbies. She +shivered in the garage while he spent half an hour in deciding whether +to put alcohol or patent non-freezing liquid into the radiator, or to +drain out the water entirely. "Or no, then I wouldn't want to take +her out if it turned warm--still, of course, I could fill the +radiator again--wouldn't take so awful long--just take a few pails +of water--still, if it turned cold on me again before I drained +it----Course there's some people that put in kerosene, but they say it +rots the hose-connections and----Where did I put that lug-wrench?" + +It was at this point that she gave up being a motorist and retired to +the house. + +In their new intimacy he was more communicative about his practise; +he informed her, with the invariable warning not to tell, that Mrs. +Sunderquist had another baby coming, that the "hired girl at Howland's +was in trouble." But when she asked technical questions he did not know +how to answer; when she inquired, "Exactly what is the method of taking +out the tonsils?" he yawned, "Tonsilectomy? Why you just----If there's +pus, you operate. Just take 'em out. Seen the newspaper? What the devil +did Bea do with it?" + +She did not try again. + + +III + + +They had gone to the "movies." The movies were almost as vital +to Kennicott and the other solid citizens of Gopher Prairie as +land-speculation and guns and automobiles. + +The feature film portrayed a brave young Yankee who conquered a South +American republic. He turned the natives from their barbarous habits of +singing and laughing to the vigorous sanity, the Pep and Punch and +Go, of the North; he taught them to work in factories, to wear Klassy +Kollege Klothes, and to shout, "Oh, you baby doll, watch me gather +in the mazuma." He changed nature itself. A mountain which had borne +nothing but lilies and cedars and loafing clouds was by his Hustle so +inspirited that it broke out in long wooden sheds, and piles of iron +ore to be converted into steamers to carry iron ore to be converted into +steamers to carry iron ore. + +The intellectual tension induced by the master film was relieved by a +livelier, more lyric and less philosophical drama: Mack Schnarken and +the Bathing Suit Babes in a comedy of manners entitled "Right on the +Coco." Mr. Schnarken was at various high moments a cook, a life-guard, +a burlesque actor, and a sculptor. There was a hotel hallway up which +policemen charged, only to be stunned by plaster busts hurled upon them +from the innumerous doors. If the plot lacked lucidity, the dual motif +of legs and pie was clear and sure. Bathing and modeling were equally +sound occasions for legs; the wedding-scene was but an approach to the +thunderous climax when Mr. Schnarken slipped a piece of custard pie into +the clergyman's rear pocket. + +The audience in the Rosebud Movie Palace squealed and wiped their eyes; +they scrambled under the seats for overshoes, mittens, and mufflers, +while the screen announced that next week Mr. Schnarken might be seen +in a new, riproaring, extra-special superfeature of the Clean Comedy +Corporation entitled, "Under Mollie's Bed." + +"I'm glad," said Carol to Kennicott as they stooped before the northwest +gale which was torturing the barren street, "that this is a moral +country. We don't allow any of these beastly frank novels." + +"Yump. Vice Society and Postal Department won't stand for them. The +American people don't like filth." + +"Yes. It's fine. I'm glad we have such dainty romances as 'Right on the +Coco' instead." + +"Say what in heck do you think you're trying to do? Kid me?" + +He was silent. She awaited his anger. She meditated upon his gutter +patois, the Boeotian dialect characteristic of Gopher Prairie. He +laughed puzzlingly. When they came into the glow of the house he laughed +again. He condescended: + +"I've got to hand it to you. You're consistent, all right. I'd of +thought that after getting this look-in at a lot of good decent farmers, +you'd get over this high-art stuff, but you hang right on." + +"Well----" To herself: "He takes advantage of my trying to be good." + +"Tell you, Carrie: There's just three classes of people: folks that +haven't got any ideas at all; and cranks that kick about everything; and +Regular Guys, the fellows with sticktuitiveness, that boost and get the +world's work done." + +"Then I'm probably a crank." She smiled negligently. + +"No. I won't admit it. You do like to talk, but at a show-down you'd +prefer Sam Clark to any damn long-haired artist." + +"Oh--well----" + +"Oh well!" mockingly. "My, we're just going to change everything, aren't +we! Going to tell fellows that have been making movies for ten years +how to direct 'em; and tell architects how to build towns; and make the +magazines publish nothing but a lot of highbrow stories about old maids, +and about wives that don't know what they want. Oh, we're a terror! . . . +Come on now, Carrie; come out of it; wake up! You've got a fine nerve, +kicking about a movie because it shows a few legs! Why, you're always +touting these Greek dancers, or whatever they are, that don't even wear +a shimmy!" + +"But, dear, the trouble with that film--it wasn't that it got in so many +legs, but that it giggled coyly and promised to show more of them, and +then didn't keep the promise. It was Peeping Tom's idea of humor." + +"I don't get you. Look here now----" + +She lay awake, while he rumbled with sleep + +"I must go on. My 'crank ideas;' he calls them. I thought that adoring +him, watching him operate, would be enough. It isn't. Not after the +first thrill. + +"I don't want to hurt him. But I must go on. + +"It isn't enough, to stand by while he fills an automobile radiator and +chucks me bits of information. + +"If I stood by and admired him long enough, I would be content. I would +become a 'nice little woman.' The Village Virus. Already----I'm not +reading anything. I haven't touched the piano for a week. I'm letting +the days drown in worship of 'a good deal, ten plunks more per acre.' I +won't! I won't succumb! + +"How? I've failed at everything: the Thanatopsis, parties, pioneers, +city hall, Guy and Vida. But----It doesn't MATTER! I'm not trying to +'reform the town' now. I'm not trying to organize Browning Clubs, +and sit in clean white kids yearning up at lecturers with ribbony +eyeglasses. I am trying to save my soul. + +"Will Kennicott, asleep there, trusting me, thinking he holds me. And +I'm leaving him. All of me left him when he laughed at me. It wasn't +enough for him that I admired him; I must change myself and grow like +him. He takes advantage. No more. It's finished. I will go on." + + +IV + + +Her violin lay on top of the upright piano. She picked it up. Since she +had last touched it the dried strings had snapped, and upon it lay a +gold and crimson cigar-band. + + +V + + +She longed to see Guy Pollock, for the confirming of the brethren in +the faith. But Kennicott's dominance was heavy upon her. She could not +determine whether she was checked by fear or him, or by inertia--by +dislike of the emotional labor of the "scenes" which would be involved +in asserting independence. She was like the revolutionist at fifty: +not afraid of death, but bored by the probability of bad steaks and bad +breaths and sitting up all night on windy barricades. + +The second evening after the movies she impulsively summoned Vida +Sherwin and Guy to the house for pop-corn and cider. In the living-room +Vida and Kennicott debated "the value of manual training in grades below +the eighth," while Carol sat beside Guy at the dining table, buttering +pop-corn. She was quickened by the speculation in his eyes. She +murmured: + +"Guy, do you want to help me?" + +"My dear! How?" + +"I don't know!" + +He waited. + +"I think I want you to help me find out what has made the darkness of +the women. Gray darkness and shadowy trees. We're all in it, ten million +women, young married women with good prosperous husbands, and business +women in linen collars, and grandmothers that gad out to teas, and wives +of under-paid miners, and farmwives who really like to make butter and +go to church. What is it we want--and need? Will Kennicott there would +say that we need lots of children and hard work. But it isn't that. +There's the same discontent in women with eight children and one more +coming--always one more coming! And you find it in stenographers and +wives who scrub, just as much as in girl college-graduates who wonder +how they can escape their kind parents. What do we want?" + +"Essentially, I think, you are like myself, Carol; you want to go back +to an age of tranquillity and charming manners. You want to enthrone +good taste again." + +"Just good taste? Fastidious people? Oh--no! I believe all of us want +the same things--we're all together, the industrial workers and the +women and the farmers and the negro race and the Asiatic colonies, and +even a few of the Respectables. It's all the same revolt, in all the +classes that have waited and taken advice. I think perhaps we want a +more conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying. +We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We're +tired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tired +of hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and the +husbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for a +Utopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it; +trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've said +that. We want our Utopia NOW--and we're going to try our hands at it. +All we want is--everything for all of us! For every housewife and every +longshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We want +everything. We shatn't get it. So we shatn't ever be content----" + +She wondered why he was wincing. He broke in: + +"See here, my dear, I certainly hope you don't class yourself with a lot +of trouble-making labor-leaders! Democracy is all right theoretically, +and I'll admit there are industrial injustices, but I'd rather have them +than see the world reduced to a dead level of mediocrity. I refuse to +believe that you have anything in common with a lot of laboring men +rowing for bigger wages so that they can buy wretched flivvers and +hideous player-pianos and----" + +At this second, in Buenos Ayres, a newspaper editor broke his routine of +being bored by exchanges to assert, "Any injustice is better than seeing +the world reduced to a gray level of scientific dullness." At this +second a clerk standing at the bar of a New York saloon stopped milling +his secret fear of his nagging office-manager long enough to growl +at the chauffeur beside him, "Aw, you socialists make me sick! I'm an +individualist. I ain't going to be nagged by no bureaus and take orders +off labor-leaders. And mean to say a hobo's as good as you and me?" + +At this second Carol realized that for all Guy's love of dead elegances +his timidity was as depressing to her as the bulkiness of Sam Clark. She +realized that he was not a mystery, as she had excitedly believed; not +a romantic messenger from the World Outside on whom she could count for +escape. He belonged to Gopher Prairie, absolutely. She was snatched back +from a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street. + +He was completing his protest, "You don't want to be mixed up in all +this orgy of meaningless discontent?" + +She soothed him. "No, I don't. I'm not heroic. I'm scared by all the +fighting that's going on in the world. I want nobility and adventure, +but perhaps I want still more to curl on the hearth with some one I +love." + +"Would you----" + +He did not finish it. He picked up a handful of pop-corn, let it run +through his fingers, looked at her wistfully. + +With the loneliness of one who has put away a possible love Carol saw +that he was a stranger. She saw that he had never been anything but +a frame on which she had hung shining garments. If she had let him +diffidently make love to her, it was not because she cared, but because +she did not care, because it did not matter. + +She smiled at him with the exasperating tactfulness of a woman checking +a flirtation; a smile like an airy pat on the arm. She sighed, "You're +a dear to let me tell you my imaginary troubles." She bounced up, and +trilled, "Shall we take the pop-corn in to them now?" + +Guy looked after her desolately. + +While she teased Vida and Kennicott she was repeating, "I must go on." + + +VI + + +Miles Bjornstam, the pariah "Red Swede," had brought his circular saw +and portable gasoline engine to the house, to cut the cords of poplar +for the kitchen range. Kennicott had given the order; Carol knew nothing +of it till she heard the ringing of the saw, and glanced out to see +Bjornstam, in black leather jacket and enormous ragged purple +mittens, pressing sticks against the whirling blade, and flinging +the stove-lengths to one side. The red irritable motor kept up a red +irritable "tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip." The whine of the saw rose till it +simulated the shriek of a fire-alarm whistle at night, but always at the +end it gave a lively metallic clang, and in the stillness she heard the +flump of the cut stick falling on the pile. + +She threw a motor robe over her, ran out. Bjornstam welcomed her, "Well, +well, well! Here's old Miles, fresh as ever. Well say, that's all right; +he ain't even begun to be cheeky yet; next summer he's going to take you +out on his horse-trading trip, clear into Idaho." + +"Yes, and I may go!" + +"How's tricks? Crazy about the town yet?" + +"No, but I probably shall be, some day." + +"Don't let 'em get you. Kick 'em in the face!" + +He shouted at her while he worked. The pile of stove-wood grew +astonishingly. The pale bark of the poplar sticks was mottled with +lichens of sage-green and dusty gray; the newly sawed ends were +fresh-colored, with the agreeable roughness of a woolen muffler. To the +sterile winter air the wood gave a scent of March sap. + +Kennicott telephoned that he was going into the country. Bjornstam had +not finished his work at noon, and she invited him to have dinner with +Bea in the kitchen. She wished that she were independent enough to dine +with these her guests. She considered their friendliness, she sneered at +"social distinctions," she raged at her own taboos--and she continued +to regard them as retainers and herself as a lady. She sat in the +dining-room and listened through the door to Bjornstam's booming and +Bea's giggles. She was the more absurd to herself in that, after the +rite of dining alone, she could go out to the kitchen, lean against the +sink, and talk to them. + +They were attracted to each other; a Swedish Othello and Desdemona, more +useful and amiable than their prototypes. Bjornstam told his scapes: +selling horses in a Montana mining-camp, breaking a log-jam, being +impertinent to a "two-fisted" millionaire lumberman. Bea gurgled "Oh +my!" and kept his coffee cup filled. + +He took a long time to finish the wood. He had frequently to go into the +kitchen to get warm. Carol heard him confiding to Bea, "You're a darn +nice Swede girl. I guess if I had a woman like you I wouldn't be such +a sorehead. Gosh, your kitchen is clean; makes an old bach feel sloppy. +Say, that's nice hair you got. Huh? Me fresh? Saaaay, girl, if I ever do +get fresh, you'll know it. Why, I could pick you up with one finger, +and hold you in the air long enough to read Robert J. Ingersoll clean +through. Ingersoll? Oh, he's a religious writer. Sure. You'd like him +fine." + +When he drove off he waved to Bea; and Carol, lonely at the window +above, was envious of their pastoral. + +"And I----But I will go on." + + +CHAPTER XVII + +I + +THEY were driving down the lake to the cottages that moonlit January +night, twenty of them in the bob-sled. They sang "Toy Land" and "Seeing +Nelly Home"; they leaped from the low back of the sled to race over the +slippery snow ruts; and when they were tired they climbed on the runners +for a lift. The moon-tipped flakes kicked up by the horses settled over +the revelers and dripped down their necks, but they laughed, yelped, +beat their leather mittens against their chests. The harness rattled, +the sleigh-bells were frantic, Jack Elder's setter sprang beside the +horses, barking. + +For a time Carol raced with them. The cold air gave fictive power. She +felt that she could run on all night, leap twenty feet at a stride. But +the excess of energy tired her, and she was glad to snuggle under the +comforters which covered the hay in the sled-box. + +In the midst of the babel she found enchanted quietude. + +Along the road the shadows from oak-branches were inked on the snow +like bars of music. Then the sled came out on the surface of Lake +Minniemashie. Across the thick ice was a veritable road, a short-cut +for farmers. On the glaring expanse of the lake-levels of hard crust, +flashes of green ice blown clear, chains of drifts ribbed like the +sea-beach--the moonlight was overwhelming. It stormed on the snow, it +turned the woods ashore into crystals of fire. The night was tropical +and voluptuous. In that drugged magic there was no difference between +heavy heat and insinuating cold. + +Carol was dream-strayed. The turbulent voices, even Guy Pollock being +connotative beside her, were nothing. She repeated: + + Deep on the convent-roof the snows + Are sparkling to the moon. + +The words and the light blurred into one vast indefinite happiness, and +she believed that some great thing was coming to her. She withdrew from +the clamor into a worship of incomprehensible gods. The night expanded, +she was conscious of the universe, and all mysteries stooped down to +her. + +She was jarred out of her ecstasy as the bob-sled bumped up the steep +road to the bluff where stood the cottages. + +They dismounted at Jack Elder's shack. The interior walls of unpainted +boards, which had been grateful in August, were forbidding in the chill. +In fur coats and mufflers tied over caps they were a strange company, +bears and walruses talking. Jack Elder lighted the shavings waiting in +the belly of a cast-iron stove which was like an enlarged bean-pot. +They piled their wraps high on a rocker, and cheered the rocker as it +solemnly tipped over backward. + +Mrs. Elder and Mrs. Sam Clark made coffee in an enormous blackened tin +pot; Vida Sherwin and Mrs. McGanum unpacked doughnuts and gingerbread; +Mrs. Dave Dyer warmed up "hot dogs"--frankfurters in rolls; Dr. Terry +Gould, after announcing, "Ladies and gents, prepare to be shocked; shock +line forms on the right," produced a bottle of bourbon whisky. + +The others danced, muttering "Ouch!" as their frosted feet struck the +pine planks. Carol had lost her dream. Harry Haydock lifted her by the +waist and swung her. She laughed. The gravity of the people who stood +apart and talked made her the more impatient for frolic. + +Kennicott, Sam Clark, Jackson Elder, young Dr. McGanum, and James +Madison Howland, teetering on their toes near the stove, conversed +with the sedate pomposity of the commercialist. In details the men were +unlike, yet they said the same things in the same hearty monotonous +voices. You had to look at them to see which was speaking. + +"Well, we made pretty good time coming up," from one--any one. + +"Yump, we hit it up after we struck the good going on the lake." + +"Seems kind of slow though, after driving an auto." + +"Yump, it does, at that. Say, how'd you make out with that Sphinx tire +you got?" + +"Seems to hold out fine. Still, I don't know's I like it any better than +the Roadeater Cord." + +"Yump, nothing better than a Roadeater. Especially the cord. The cord's +lots better than the fabric." + +"Yump, you said something----Roadeater's a good tire." + +"Say, how'd you come out with Pete Garsheim on his payments?" + +"He's paying up pretty good. That's a nice piece of land he's got." + +"Yump, that's a dandy farm." + +"Yump, Pete's got a good place there." + +They glided from these serious topics into the jocose insults which are +the wit of Main Street. Sam Clark was particularly apt at them. "What's +this wild-eyed sale of summer caps you think you're trying to pull +off?" he clamored at Harry Haydock. "Did you steal 'em, or are you just +overcharging us, as usual? . . . Oh say, speaking about caps, d'I ever +tell you the good one I've got on Will? The doc thinks he's a pretty +good driver, fact, he thinks he's almost got human intelligence, but one +time he had his machine out in the rain, and the poor fish, he hadn't +put on chains, and thinks I----" + +Carol had heard the story rather often. She fled back to the dancers, +and at Dave Dyer's masterstroke of dropping an icicle down Mrs. +McGanum's back she applauded hysterically. + +They sat on the floor, devouring the food. The men giggled amiably as +they passed the whisky bottle, and laughed, "There's a real sport!" when +Juanita Haydock took a sip. Carol tried to follow; she believed that she +desired to be drunk and riotous; but the whisky choked her and as she +saw Kennicott frown she handed the bottle on repentantly. Somewhat too +late she remembered that she had given up domesticity and repentance. + +"Let's play charades!" said Raymie Wutherspoon. + +"Oh yes, do let us," said Ella Stowbody. + +"That's the caper," sanctioned Harry Haydock. + +They interpreted the word "making" as May and King. The crown was a red +flannel mitten cocked on Sam Clark's broad pink bald head. They forgot +they were respectable. They made-believe. Carol was stimulated to cry: + +"Let's form a dramatic club and give a play! Shall we? It's been so much +fun tonight!" + +They looked affable. + +"Sure," observed Sam Clark loyally. + +"Oh, do let us! I think it would be lovely to present 'Romeo and +Juliet'!" yearned Ella Stowbody. + +"Be a whale of a lot of fun," Dr. Terry Gould granted. + +"But if we did," Carol cautioned, "it would be awfully silly to have +amateur theatricals. We ought to paint our own scenery and everything, +and really do something fine. There'd be a lot of hard work. Would +you--would we all be punctual at rehearsals, do you suppose?" + +"You bet!" "Sure." "That's the idea." "Fellow ought to be prompt at +rehearsals," they all agreed. + +"Then let's meet next week and form the Gopher Prairie Dramatic +Association!" Carol sang. + +She drove home loving these friends who raced through moonlit snow, +had Bohemian parties, and were about to create beauty in the theater. +Everything was solved. She would be an authentic part of the town, +yet escape the coma of the Village Virus. . . . She would be free of +Kennicott again, without hurting him, without his knowing. + +She had triumphed. + +The moon was small and high now, and unheeding. + + +II + + +Though they had all been certain that they longed for the privilege of +attending committee meetings and rehearsals, the dramatic association as +definitely formed consisted only of Kennicott, Carol, Guy Pollock, +Vida Sherwin, Ella Stowbody, the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Dyers, Raymie +Wutherspoon, Dr. Terry Gould, and four new candidates: flirtatious Rita +Simons, Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon and Myrtle Cass, an uncomely but +intense girl of nineteen. Of these fifteen only seven came to the first +meeting. The rest telephoned their unparalleled regrets and engagements +and illnesses, and announced that they would be present at all other +meetings through eternity. + +Carol was made president and director. + +She had added the Dillons. Despite Kennicott's apprehension the dentist +and his wife had not been taken up by the Westlakes but had remained +as definitely outside really smart society as Willis Woodford, who was +teller, bookkeeper, and janitor in Stowbody's bank. Carol had noted Mrs. +Dillon dragging past the house during a bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, +looking in with pathetic lips at the splendor of the accepted. She +impulsively invited the Dillons to the dramatic association meeting, and +when Kennicott was brusque to them she was unusually cordial, and felt +virtuous. + +That self-approval balanced her disappointment at the smallness of the +meeting, and her embarrassment during Raymie Wutherspoon's repetitions +of "The stage needs uplifting," and "I believe that there are great +lessons in some plays." + +Ella Stowbody, who was a professional, having studied elocution in +Milwaukee, disapproved of Carol's enthusiasm for recent plays. Miss +Stowbody expressed the fundamental principle of the American drama: the +only way to be artistic is to present Shakespeare. As no one listened to +her she sat back and looked like Lady Macbeth. + + +III + + +The Little Theaters, which were to give piquancy to American drama three +or four years later, were only in embryo. But of this fast coming revolt +Carol had premonitions. She knew from some lost magazine article that +in Dublin were innovators called The Irish Players. She knew confusedly +that a man named Gordon Craig had painted scenery--or had he written +plays? She felt that in the turbulence of the drama she was discovering +a history more important than the commonplace chronicles which dealt +with senators and their pompous puerilities. She had a sensation of +familiarity; a dream of sitting in a Brussels cafe and going afterward +to a tiny gay theater under a cathedral wall. + +The advertisement in the Minneapolis paper leaped from the page to her +eyes: + + The Cosmos School of Music, Oratory, and + Dramatic Art announces a program of four + one-act plays by Schnitzler, Shaw, Yeats, + and Lord Dunsany. + +She had to be there! She begged Kennicott to "run down to the Cities" +with her. + +"Well, I don't know. Be fun to take in a show, but why the deuce do you +want to see those darn foreign plays, given by a lot of amateurs? Why +don't you wait for a regular play, later on? There's going to be some +corkers coming: 'Lottie of Two-Gun Rancho,' and 'Cops and Crooks'--real +Broadway stuff, with the New York casts. What's this junk you want +to see? Hm. 'How He Lied to Her Husband.' That doesn't listen so bad. +Sounds racy. And, uh, well, I could go to the motor show, I suppose. I'd +like to see this new Hup roadster. Well----" + +She never knew which attraction made him decide. + +She had four days of delightful worry--over the hole in her one good +silk petticoat, the loss of a string of beads from her chiffon and brown +velvet frock, the catsup stain on her best georgette crepe blouse. She +wailed, "I haven't a single solitary thing that's fit to be seen in," +and enjoyed herself very much indeed. + +Kennicott went about casually letting people know that he was "going to +run down to the Cities and see some shows." + +As the train plodded through the gray prairie, on a windless day with +the smoke from the engine clinging to the fields in giant cotton-rolls, +in a low and writhing wall which shut off the snowy fields, she did not +look out of the window. She closed her eyes and hummed, and did not know +that she was humming. + +She was the young poet attacking fame and Paris. + +In the Minneapolis station the crowd of lumberjacks, farmers, and +Swedish families with innumerous children and grandparents and paper +parcels, their foggy crowding and their clamor confused her. She felt +rustic in this once familiar city, after a year and a half of +Gopher Prairie. She was certain that Kennicott was taking the wrong +trolley-car. By dusk, the liquor warehouses, Hebraic clothing-shops, +and lodging-houses on lower Hennepin Avenue were smoky, hideous, +ill-tempered. She was battered by the noise and shuttling of the +rush-hour traffic. When a clerk in an overcoat too closely fitted at the +waist stared at her, she moved nearer to Kennicott's arm. The clerk was +flippant and urban. He was a superior person, used to this tumult. Was +he laughing at her? + +For a moment she wanted the secure quiet of Gopher Prairie. + +In the hotel-lobby she was self-conscious. She was not used to hotels; +she remembered with jealousy how often Juanita Haydock talked of the +famous hotels in Chicago. She could not face the traveling salesmen, +baronial in large leather chairs. She wanted people to believe that her +husband and she were accustomed to luxury and chill elegance; she was +faintly angry at him for the vulgar way in which, after signing the +register "Dr. W. P. Kennicott & wife," he bellowed at the clerk, "Got a +nice room with bath for us, old man?" She gazed about haughtily, but as +she discovered that no one was interested in her she felt foolish, and +ashamed of her irritation. + +She asserted, "This silly lobby is too florid," and simultaneously she +admired it: the onyx columns with gilt capitals, the crown-embroidered +velvet curtains at the restaurant door, the silk-roped alcove where +pretty girls perpetually waited for mysterious men, the two-pound boxes +of candy and the variety of magazines at the news-stand. The hidden +orchestra was lively. She saw a man who looked like a European diplomat, +in a loose top-coat and a Homburg hat. A woman with a broadtail coat, +a heavy lace veil, pearl earrings, and a close black hat entered the +restaurant. "Heavens! That's the first really smart woman I've seen in a +year!" Carol exulted. She felt metropolitan. + +But as she followed Kennicott to the elevator the coat-check girl, a +confident young woman, with cheeks powdered like lime, and a blouse +low and thin and furiously crimson, inspected her, and under that +supercilious glance Carol was shy again. She unconsciously waited +for the bellboy to precede her into the elevator. When he snorted "Go +ahead!" she was mortified. He thought she was a hayseed, she worried. + +The moment she was in their room, with the bellboy safely out of the +way, she looked critically at Kennicott. For the first time in months +she really saw him. + +His clothes were too heavy and provincial. His decent gray suit, made +by Nat Hicks of Gopher Prairie, might have been of sheet iron; it had +no distinction of cut, no easy grace like the diplomat's Burberry. His +black shoes were blunt and not well polished. His scarf was a stupid +brown. He needed a shave. + +But she forgot her doubt as she realized the ingenuities of the room. +She ran about, turning on the taps of the bathtub, which gushed instead +of dribbling like the taps at home, snatching the new wash-rag out of +its envelope of oiled paper, trying the rose-shaded light between the +twin beds, pulling out the drawers of the kidney-shaped walnut desk to +examine the engraved stationery, planning to write on it to every one +she knew, admiring the claret-colored velvet armchair and the blue rug, +testing the ice-water tap, and squealing happily when the water really +did come out cold. She flung her arms about Kennicott, kissed him. + +"Like it, old lady?" + +"It's adorable. It's so amusing. I love you for bringing me. You really +are a dear!" + +He looked blankly indulgent, and yawned, and condescended, "That's a +pretty slick arrangement on the radiator, so you can adjust it at any +temperature you want. Must take a big furnace to run this place. Gosh, I +hope Bea remembers to turn off the drafts tonight." + +Under the glass cover of the dressing-table was a menu with the most +enchanting dishes: breast of guinea hen De Vitresse, pommes de terre a +la Russe, meringue Chantilly, gateaux Bruxelles. + +"Oh, let's----I'm going to have a hot bath, and put on my new hat with +the wool flowers, and let's go down and eat for hours, and we'll have a +cocktail!" she chanted. + +While Kennicott labored over ordering it was annoying to see him permit +the waiter to be impertinent, but as the cocktail elevated her to a +bridge among colored stars, as the oysters came in--not canned oysters +in the Gopher Prairie fashion, but on the half-shell--she cried, "If you +only knew how wonderful it is not to have had to plan this dinner, and +order it at the butcher's and fuss and think about it, and then +watch Bea cook it! I feel so free. And to have new kinds of food, and +different patterns of dishes and linen, and not worry about whether the +pudding is being spoiled! Oh, this is a great moment for me!" + + +IV + + +They had all the experiences of provincials in a metropolis. After +breakfast Carol bustled to a hair-dresser's, bought gloves and a blouse, +and importantly met Kennicott in front of an optician's, in accordance +with plans laid down, revised, and verified. They admired the diamonds +and furs and frosty silverware and mahogany chairs and polished morocco +sewing-boxes in shop-windows, and were abashed by the throngs in the +department-stores, and were bullied by a clerk into buying too many +shirts for Kennicott, and gaped at the "clever novelty perfumes--just +in from New York." Carol got three books on the theater, and spent +an exultant hour in warning herself that she could not afford this +rajah-silk frock, in thinking how envious it would make Juanita Haydock, +in closing her eyes, and buying it. Kennicott went from shop to shop, +earnestly hunting down a felt-covered device to keep the windshield of +his car clear of rain. + +They dined extravagantly at their hotel at night, and next morning +sneaked round the corner to economize at a Childs' Restaurant. They were +tired by three in the afternoon, and dozed at the motion-pictures and +said they wished they were back in Gopher Prairie--and by eleven in the +evening they were again so lively that they went to a Chinese restaurant +that was frequented by clerks and their sweethearts on pay-days. They +sat at a teak and marble table eating Eggs Fooyung, and listened to a +brassy automatic piano, and were altogether cosmopolitan. + +On the street they met people from home--the McGanums. They laughed, +shook hands repeatedly, and exclaimed, "Well, this is quite a +coincidence!" They asked when the McGanums had come down, and begged for +news of the town they had left two days before. Whatever the +McGanums were at home, here they stood out as so superior to all the +undistinguishable strangers absurdly hurrying past that the Kennicotts +held them as long as they could. The McGanums said good-by as though +they were going to Tibet instead of to the station to catch No. 7 north. + +They explored Minneapolis. Kennicott was conversational and technical +regarding gluten and cockle-cylinders and No. I Hard, when they were +shown through the gray stone hulks and new cement elevators of the +largest flour-mills in the world. They looked across Loring Park and +the Parade to the towers of St. Mark's and the Procathedral, and the +red roofs of houses climbing Kenwood Hill. They drove about the chain of +garden-circled lakes, and viewed the houses of the millers and lumbermen +and real estate peers--the potentates of the expanding city. They +surveyed the small eccentric bungalows with pergolas, the houses of +pebbledash and tapestry brick with sleeping-porches above sun-parlors, +and one vast incredible chateau fronting the Lake of the Isles. They +tramped through a shining-new section of apartment-houses; not the tall +bleak apartments of Eastern cities but low structures of cheerful yellow +brick, in which each flat had its glass-enclosed porch with swinging +couch and scarlet cushions and Russian brass bowls. Between a waste of +tracks and a raw gouged hill they found poverty in staggering shanties. + +They saw miles of the city which they had never known in their days +of absorption in college. They were distinguished explorers, and they +remarked, in great mutual esteem, "I bet Harry Haydock's never seen the +City like this! Why, he'd never have sense enough to study the machinery +in the mills, or go through all these outlying districts. Wonder folks +in Gopher Prairie wouldn't use their legs and explore, the way we do!" + +They had two meals with Carol's sister, and were bored, and felt that +intimacy which beatifies married people when they suddenly admit that +they equally dislike a relative of either of them. + +So it was with affection but also with weariness that they approached +the evening on which Carol was to see the plays at the dramatic school. +Kennicott suggested not going. "So darn tired from all this walking; +don't know but what we better turn in early and get rested up." It was +only from duty that Carol dragged him and herself out of the warm +hotel, into a stinking trolley, up the brownstone steps of the converted +residence which lugubriously housed the dramatic school. + + +V + + +They were in a long whitewashed hall with a clumsy draw-curtain across +the front. The folding chairs were filled with people who looked washed +and ironed: parents of the pupils, girl students, dutiful teachers. + +"Strikes me it's going to be punk. If the first play isn't good, let's +beat it," said Kennicott hopefully. + +"All right," she yawned. With hazy eyes she tried to read the lists of +characters, which were hidden among lifeless advertisements of pianos, +music-dealers, restaurants, candy. + +She regarded the Schnitzler play with no vast interest. The actors +moved and spoke stiffly. Just as its cynicism was beginning to rouse her +village-dulled frivolity, it was over. + +"Don't think a whale of a lot of that. How about taking a sneak?" +petitioned Kennicott. + +"Oh, let's try the next one, 'How He Lied to Her Husband.'" + +The Shaw conceit amused her, and perplexed Kennicott: + +"Strikes me it's darn fresh. Thought it would be racy. Don't know as I +think much of a play where a husband actually claims he wants a fellow +to make love to his wife. No husband ever did that! Shall we shake a +leg?" + +"I want to see this Yeats thing, 'Land of Heart's Desire.' I used to +love it in college." She was awake now, and urgent. "I know you didn't +care so much for Yeats when I read him aloud to you, but you just see if +you don't adore him on the stage." + +Most of the cast were as unwieldy as oak chairs marching, and the +setting was an arty arrangement of batik scarfs and heavy tables, but +Maire Bruin was slim as Carol, and larger-eyed, and her voice was +a morning bell. In her, Carol lived, and on her lifting voice was +transported from this sleepy small-town husband and all the rows of +polite parents to the stilly loft of a thatched cottage where in a green +dimness, beside a window caressed by linden branches, she bent over a +chronicle of twilight women and the ancient gods. + +"Well--gosh--nice kid played that girl--good-looker," said Kennicott. +"Want to stay for the last piece? Heh?" + +She shivered. She did not answer. + +The curtain was again drawn aside. On the stage they saw nothing but +long green curtains and a leather chair. Two young men in brown robes +like furniture-covers were gesturing vacuously and droning cryptic +sentences full of repetitions. + +It was Carol's first hearing of Dunsany. She sympathized with the +restless Kennicott as he felt in his pocket for a cigar and unhappily +put it back. + +Without understanding when or how, without a tangible change in the +stilted intoning of the stage-puppets, she was conscious of another time +and place. + +Stately and aloof among vainglorious tiring-maids, a queen in robes +that murmured on the marble floor, she trod the gallery of a crumbling +palace. In the courtyard, elephants trumpeted, and swart men with beards +dyed crimson stood with blood-stained hands folded upon their hilts, +guarding the caravan from El Sharnak, the camels with Tyrian stuffs +of topaz and cinnabar. Beyond the turrets of the outer wall the jungle +glared and shrieked, and the sun was furious above drenched orchids. +A youth came striding through the steel-bossed doors, the sword-bitten +doors that were higher than ten tall men. He was in flexible mail, and +under the rim of his planished morion were amorous curls. His hand was +out to her; before she touched it she could feel its warmth---- + +"Gosh all hemlock! What the dickens is all this stuff about, Carrie?" + +She was no Syrian queen. She was Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. She fell with a +jolt into a whitewashed hall and sat looking at two scared girls and a +young man in wrinkled tights. + +Kennicott fondly rambled as they left the hall: + +"What the deuce did that last spiel mean? Couldn't make head or tail of +it. If that's highbrow drama, give me a cow-puncher movie, every time! +Thank God, that's over, and we can get to bed. Wonder if we wouldn't +make time by walking over to Nicollet to take a car? One thing I will +say for that dump: they had it warm enough. Must have a big hot-air +furnace, I guess. Wonder how much coal it takes to run 'em through the +winter?" + +In the car he affectionately patted her knee, and he was for a second +the striding youth in armor; then he was Doc Kennicott of Gopher +Prairie, and she was recaptured by Main Street. Never, not all her life, +would she behold jungles and the tombs of kings. There were strange +things in the world, they really existed; but she would never see them. + +She would recreate them in plays! + +She would make the dramatic association understand her aspiration. They +would, surely they would---- + +She looked doubtfully at the impenetrable reality of yawning trolley +conductor and sleepy passengers and placards advertising soap and +underwear. + + + +CHAPTER XVIII + +I + +SHE hurried to the first meeting of the play-reading committee. Her +jungle romance had faded, but she retained a religious fervor, a surge +of half-formed thought about the creation of beauty by suggestion. + +A Dunsany play would be too difficult for the Gopher Prairie +association. She would let them compromise on Shaw--on "Androcles and +the Lion," which had just been published. + +The committee was composed of Carol, Vida Sherwin, Guy Pollock, Raymie +Wutherspoon, and Juanita Haydock. They were exalted by the picture of +themselves as being simultaneously business-like and artistic. They +were entertained by Vida in the parlor of Mrs. Elisha Gurrey's +boarding-house, with its steel engraving of Grant at Appomattox, its +basket of stereoscopic views, and its mysterious stains on the gritty +carpet. + +Vida was an advocate of culture-buying and efficiency-systems. She +hinted that they ought to have (as at the committee-meetings of the +Thanatopsis) a "regular order of business," and "the reading of the +minutes," but as there were no minutes to read, and as no one knew +exactly what was the regular order of the business of being literary, +they had to give up efficiency. + +Carol, as chairman, said politely, "Have you any ideas about what play +we'd better give first?" She waited for them to look abashed and vacant, +so that she might suggest "Androcles." + +Guy Pollock answered with disconcerting readiness, "I'll tell you: since +we're going to try to do something artistic, and not simply fool around, +I believe we ought to give something classic. How about 'The School for +Scandal'?" + +"Why----Don't you think that has been done a good deal?" + +"Yes, perhaps it has." + +Carol was ready to say, "How about Bernard Shaw?" when he treacherously +went on, "How would it be then to give a Greek drama--say 'Oedipus +Tyrannus'?" + +"Why, I don't believe----" + +Vida Sherwin intruded, "I'm sure that would be too hard for us. Now I've +brought something that I think would be awfully jolly." + +She held out, and Carol incredulously took, a thin gray pamphlet +entitled "McGinerty's Mother-in-law." It was the sort of farce which is +advertised in "school entertainment" catalogues as: + + +Riproaring knock-out, 5 m. 3 f., time 2 hrs., interior set, popular with +churches and all high-class occasions. + + +Carol glanced from the scabrous object to Vida, and realized that she +was not joking. + +"But this is--this is--why, it's just a----Why, Vida, I thought you +appreciated--well--appreciated art." + +Vida snorted, "Oh. Art. Oh yes. I do like art. It's very nice. But after +all, what does it matter what kind of play we give as long as we get the +association started? The thing that matters is something that none of +you have spoken of, that is: what are we going to do with the money, if +we make any? I think it would be awfully nice if we presented the high +school with a full set of Stoddard's travel-lectures!" + +Carol moaned, "Oh, but Vida dear, do forgive me but this farce----Now +what I'd like us to give is something distinguished. Say Shaw's +'Androcles.' Have any of you read it?" + +"Yes. Good play," said Guy Pollock. + +Then Raymie Wutherspoon astoundingly spoke up: + +"So have I. I read through all the plays in the public library, so's +to be ready for this meeting. And----But I don't believe you grasp +the irreligious ideas in this 'Androcles,' Mrs. Kennicott. I guess the +feminine mind is too innocent to understand all these immoral writers. +I'm sure I don't want to criticize Bernard Shaw; I understand he is very +popular with the highbrows in Minneapolis; but just the same----As far +as I can make out, he's downright improper! The things he SAYS----Well, +it would be a very risky thing for our young folks to see. It seems to +me that a play that doesn't leave a nice taste in the mouth and that +hasn't any message is nothing but--nothing but----Well, whatever it may +be, it isn't art. So----Now I've found a play that is clean, and there's +some awfully funny scenes in it, too. I laughed out loud, reading it. +It's called 'His Mother's Heart,' and it's about a young man in college +who gets in with a lot of free-thinkers and boozers and everything, but +in the end his mother's influence----" + +Juanita Haydock broke in with a derisive, "Oh rats, Raymie! Can the +mother's influence! I say let's give something with some class to it. +I bet we could get the rights to 'The Girl from Kankakee,' and that's a +real show. It ran for eleven months in New York!" + +"That would be lots of fun, if it wouldn't cost too much," reflected +Vida. + +Carol's was the only vote cast against "The Girl from Kankakee." + + +II + + +She disliked "The Girl from Kankakee" even more than she had expected. +It narrated the success of a farm-lassie in clearing her brother of a +charge of forgery. She became secretary to a New York millionaire and +social counselor to his wife; and after a well-conceived speech on the +discomfort of having money, she married his son. + +There was also a humorous office-boy. + +Carol discerned that both Juanita Haydock and Ella Stowbody wanted the +lead. She let Juanita have it. Juanita kissed her and in the exuberant +manner of a new star presented to the executive committee her theory, +"What we want in a play is humor and pep. There's where American +playwrights put it all over these darn old European glooms." + +As selected by Carol and confirmed by the committee, the persons of the +play were: + + John Grimm, a millionaire . . . . Guy Pollock + His wife. . . . . . . . . Miss Vida Sherwin + His son . . . . . . . . . Dr. Harvey Dillon + His business rival. . . . . . . Raymond T. Wutherspoon + Friend of Mrs. Grimm . . . . . . Miss Ella Stowbody + The girl from Kankakee . . . . . Mrs. Harold C. Haydock + Her brother. . . . . . . . Dr. Terence Gould + Her mother . . . . . . . . Mrs. David Dyer + Stenographer . . . . . . . . Miss Rita Simons + Office-boy . . . . . . . . Miss Myrtle Cass + Maid in the Grimms' home . . . . Mrs. W. P. Kennicott + Direction of Mrs. Kennicott + +Among the minor lamentations was Maud Dyer's "Well of course I suppose I +look old enough to be Juanita's mother, even if Juanita is eight months +older than I am, but I don't know as I care to have everybody noticing +it and----" + +Carol pleaded, "Oh, my DEAR! You two look exactly the same age. I chose +you because you have such a darling complexion, and you know with powder +and a white wig, anybody looks twice her age, and I want the mother to +be sweet, no matter who else is." + +Ella Stowbody, the professional, perceiving that it was because of a +conspiracy of jealousy that she had been given a small part, alternated +between lofty amusement and Christian patience. + +Carol hinted that the play would be improved by cutting, but as every +actor except Vida and Guy and herself wailed at the loss of a single +line, she was defeated. She told herself that, after all, a great deal +could be done with direction and settings. + +Sam Clark had boastfully written about the dramatic association to his +schoolmate, Percy Bresnahan, president of the Velvet Motor Company +of Boston. Bresnahan sent a check for a hundred dollars; Sam added +twenty-five and brought the fund to Carol, fondly crying, "There! +That'll give you a start for putting the thing across swell!" + +She rented the second floor of the city hall for two months. All through +the spring the association thrilled to its own talent in that dismal +room. They cleared out the bunting, ballot-boxes, handbills, legless +chairs. They attacked the stage. It was a simple-minded stage. It was +raised above the floor, and it did have a movable curtain, painted with +the advertisement of a druggist dead these ten years, but otherwise +it might not have been recognized as a stage. There were two +dressing-rooms, one for men, one for women, on either side. The +dressing-room doors were also the stage-entrances, opening from the +house, and many a citizen of Gopher Prairie had for his first glimpse of +romance the bare shoulders of the leading woman. + +There were three sets of scenery: a woodland, a Poor Interior, and a +Rich Interior, the last also useful for railway stations, offices, and +as a background for the Swedish Quartette from Chicago. There were three +gradations of lighting: full on, half on, and entirely off. + +This was the only theater in Gopher Prairie. It was known as the "op'ra +house." Once, strolling companies had used it for performances of "The +Two Orphans," and "Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model," and "Othello" with +specialties between acts, but now the motion-pictures had ousted the +gipsy drama. + +Carol intended to be furiously modern in constructing the office-set, +the drawing-room for Mr. Grimm, and the Humble Home near Kankakee. +It was the first time that any one in Gopher Prairie had been so +revolutionary as to use enclosed scenes with continuous side-walls. The +rooms in the op'ra house sets had separate wing-pieces for sides, which +simplified dramaturgy, as the villain could always get out of the hero's +way by walking out through the wall. + +The inhabitants of the Humble Home were supposed to be amiable and +intelligent. Carol planned for them a simple set with warm color. She +could see the beginning of the play: all dark save the high settles and +the solid wooden table between them, which were to be illuminated by a +ray from offstage. The high light was a polished copper pot filled with +primroses. Less clearly she sketched the Grimm drawing-room as a series +of cool high white arches. + +As to how she was to produce these effects she had no notion. + +She discovered that, despite the enthusiastic young writers, the +drama was not half so native and close to the soil as motor cars and +telephones. She discovered that simple arts require sophisticated +training. She discovered that to produce one perfect stage-picture would +be as difficult as to turn all of Gopher Prairie into a Georgian garden. + +She read all she could find regarding staging, she bought paint and +light wood; she borrowed furniture and drapes unscrupulously; she made +Kennicott turn carpenter. She collided with the problem of lighting. +Against the protest of Kennicott and Vida she mortgaged the association +by sending to Minneapolis for a baby spotlight, a strip light, a dimming +device, and blue and amber bulbs; and with the gloating rapture of +a born painter first turned loose among colors, she spent absorbed +evenings in grouping, dimming-painting with lights. + +Only Kennicott, Guy, and Vida helped her. They speculated as to how +flats could be lashed together to form a wall; they hung crocus-yellow +curtains at the windows; they blacked the sheet-iron stove; they put on +aprons and swept. The rest of the association dropped into the theater +every evening, and were literary and superior. They had borrowed +Carol's manuals of play-production and had become extremely stagey in +vocabulary. + +Juanita Haydock, Rita Simons, and Raymie Wutherspoon sat on a sawhorse, +watching Carol try to get the right position for a picture on the wall +in the first scene. + +"I don't want to hand myself anything but I believe I'll give a swell +performance in this first act," confided Juanita. "I wish Carol wasn't +so bossy though. She doesn't understand clothes. I want to wear, oh, +a dandy dress I have--all scarlet--and I said to her, 'When I enter +wouldn't it knock their eyes out if I just stood there at the door in +this straight scarlet thing?' But she wouldn't let me." + +Young Rita agreed, "She's so much taken up with her old details and +carpentering and everything that she can't see the picture as a whole. +Now I thought it would be lovely if we had an office-scene like the one +in 'Little, But Oh My!' Because I SAW that, in Duluth. But she simply +wouldn't listen at all." + +Juanita sighed, "I wanted to give one speech like Ethel Barrymore would, +if she was in a play like this. (Harry and I heard her one time in +Minneapolis--we had dandy seats, in the orchestra--I just know I could +imitate her.) Carol didn't pay any attention to my suggestion. I don't +want to criticize but I guess Ethel knows more about acting than Carol +does!" + +"Say, do you think Carol has the right dope about using a strip light +behind the fireplace in the second act? I told her I thought we ought to +use a bunch," offered Raymie. "And I suggested it would be lovely if we +used a cyclorama outside the window in the first act, and what do you +think she said? 'Yes, and it would be lovely to have Eleanora Duse play +the lead,' she said, 'and aside from the fact that it's evening in the +first act, you're a great technician,' she said. I must say I think she +was pretty sarcastic. I've been reading up, and I know I could build a +cyclorama, if she didn't want to run everything." + +"Yes, and another thing, I think the entrance in the first act ought to +be L. U. E., not L. 3 E.," from Juanita. + +"And why does she just use plain white tormenters?" + +"What's a tormenter?" blurted Rita Simons. + +The savants stared at her ignorance. + + +III + + +Carol did not resent their criticisms, she didn't very much resent +their sudden knowledge, so long as they let her make pictures. It was at +rehearsals that the quarrrels broke. No one understood that rehearsals +were as real engagements as bridge-games or sociables at the Episcopal +Church. They gaily came in half an hour late, or they vociferously came +in ten minutes early, and they were so hurt that they whispered about +resigning when Carol protested. They telephoned, "I don't think I'd +better come out; afraid the dampness might start my toothache," or +"Guess can't make it tonight; Dave wants me to sit in on a poker game." + +When, after a month of labor, as many as nine-elevenths of the cast were +often present at a rehearsal; when most of them had learned their parts +and some of them spoke like human beings, Carol had a new shock in the +realization that Guy Pollock and herself were very bad actors, and that +Raymie Wutherspoon was a surprisingly good one. For all her visions +she could not control her voice, and she was bored by the fiftieth +repetition of her few lines as maid. Guy pulled his soft mustache, +looked self-conscious, and turned Mr. Grimm into a limp dummy. But +Raymie, as the villain, had no repressions. The tilt of his head was +full of character; his drawl was admirably vicious. + +There was an evening when Carol hoped she was going to make a play; a +rehearsal during which Guy stopped looking abashed. + +From that evening the play declined. + +They were weary. "We know our parts well enough now; what's the use of +getting sick of them?" they complained. They began to skylark; to play +with the sacred lights; to giggle when Carol was trying to make the +sentimental Myrtle Cass into a humorous office-boy; to act everything +but "The Girl from Kankakee." After loafing through his proper part +Dr. Terry Gould had great applause for his burlesque of "Hamlet." Even +Raymie lost his simple faith, and tried to show that he could do a +vaudeville shuffle. + +Carol turned on the company. "See here, I want this nonsense to stop. +We've simply got to get down to work." + +Juanita Haydock led the mutiny: "Look here, Carol, don't be so bossy. +After all, we're doing this play principally for the fun of it, and if +we have fun out of a lot of monkey-shines, why then----" + +"Ye-es," feebly. + +"You said one time that folks in G. P. didn't get enough fun out of +life. And now we are having a circus, you want us to stop!" + +Carol answered slowly: "I wonder if I can explain what I mean? It's the +difference between looking at the comic page and looking at Manet. I +want fun out of this, of course. Only----I don't think it would be +less fun, but more, to produce as perfect a play as we can." She was +curiously exalted; her voice was strained; she stared not at the company +but at the grotesques scrawled on the backs of wing-pieces by forgotten +stage-hands. "I wonder if you can understand the 'fun' of making a +beautiful thing, the pride and satisfaction of it, and the holiness!" + +The company glanced doubtfully at one another. In Gopher Prairie it +is not good form to be holy except at a church, between ten-thirty and +twelve on Sunday. + +"But if we want to do it, we've got to work; we must have +self-discipline." + +They were at once amused and embarrassed. They did not want to affront +this mad woman. They backed off and tried to rehearse. Carol did not +hear Juanita, in front, protesting to Maud Dyer, "If she calls it fun +and holiness to sweat over her darned old play--well, I don't!" + + +IV + + +Carol attended the only professional play which came to Gopher Prairie +that spring. It was a "tent show, presenting snappy new dramas under +canvas." The hard-working actors doubled in brass, and took tickets; +and between acts sang about the moon in June, and sold Dr. Wintergreen's +Surefire Tonic for Ills of the Heart, Lungs, Kidneys, and Bowels. They +presented "Sunbonnet Nell: A Dramatic Comedy of the Ozarks," with J. +Witherbee Boothby wringing the soul by his resonant "Yuh ain't done +right by mah little gal, Mr. City Man, but yer a-goin' to find that back +in these-yere hills there's honest folks and good shots!" + +The audience, on planks beneath the patched tent, admired Mr. Boothby's +beard and long rifle; stamped their feet in the dust at the spectacle +of his heroism; shouted when the comedian aped the City Lady's use of a +lorgnon by looking through a doughnut stuck on a fork; wept visibly over +Mr. Boothby's Little Gal Nell, who was also Mr. Boothby's legal wife +Pearl, and when the curtain went down, listened respectfully to Mr. +Boothby's lecture on Dr. Wintergreen's Tonic as a cure for tape-worms, +which he illustrated by horrible pallid objects curled in bottles of +yellowing alcohol. + +Carol shook her head. "Juanita is right. I'm a fool. Holiness of the +drama! Bernard Shaw! The only trouble with 'The Girl from Kankakee' is +that it's too subtle for Gopher Prairie!" + +She sought faith in spacious banal phrases, taken from books: "the +instinctive nobility of simple souls," "need only the opportunity, to +appreciate fine things," and "sturdy exponents of democracy." But these +optimisms did not sound so loud as the laughter of the audience at the +funny-man's line, "Yes, by heckelum, I'm a smart fella." She wanted to +give up the play, the dramatic association, the town. As she came out +of the tent and walked with Kennicott down the dusty spring street, she +peered at this straggling wooden village and felt that she could not +possibly stay here through all of tomorrow. + +It was Miles Bjornstam who gave her strength--he and the fact that every +seat for "The Girl from Kankakee" had been sold. + +Bjornstam was "keeping company" with Bea. Every night he was sitting on +the back steps. Once when Carol appeared he grumbled, "Hope you're going +to give this burg one good show. If you don't, reckon nobody ever will." + + +V + + +It was the great night; it was the night of the play. The two +dressing-rooms were swirling with actors, panting, twitchy pale. Del +Snafflin the barber, who was as much a professional as Ella, having once +gone on in a mob scene at a stock-company performance in Minneapolis, +was making them up, and showing his scorn for amateurs with, "Stand +still! For the love o' Mike, how do you expect me to get your eyelids +dark if you keep a-wigglin'?" The actors were beseeching, "Hey, Del, put +some red in my nostrils--you put some in Rita's--gee, you didn't hardly +do anything to my face." + +They were enormously theatric. They examined Del's makeup box, they +sniffed the scent of grease-paint, every minute they ran out to peep +through the hole in the curtain, they came back to inspect their wigs +and costumes, they read on the whitewashed walls of the dressing-rooms +the pencil inscriptions: "The Flora Flanders Comedy Company," and "This +is a bum theater," and felt that they were companions of these vanished +troupers. + +Carol, smart in maid's uniform, coaxed the temporary stage-hands to +finish setting the first act, wailed at Kennicott, the electrician, "Now +for heaven's sake remember the change in cue for the ambers in Act Two," +slipped out to ask Dave Dyer, the ticket-taker, if he could get some +more chairs, warned the frightened Myrtle Cass to be sure to upset the +waste-basket when John Grimm called, "Here you, Reddy." + +Del Snafflin's orchestra of piano, violin, and cornet began to tune up +and every one behind the magic line of the proscenic arch was frightened +into paralysis. Carol wavered to the hole in the curtain. There were so +many people out there, staring so hard---- + +In the second row she saw Miles Bjornstam, not with Bea but alone. +He really wanted to see the play! It was a good omen. Who could tell? +Perhaps this evening would convert Gopher Prairie to conscious beauty. + +She darted into the women's dressing-room, roused Maud Dyer from her +fainting panic, pushed her to the wings, and ordered the curtain up. + +It rose doubtfully, it staggered and trembled, but it did get up without +catching--this time. Then she realized that Kennicott had forgotten to +turn off the houselights. Some one out front was giggling. + +She galloped round to the left wing, herself pulled the switch, looked +so ferociously at Kennicott that he quaked, and fled back. + +Mrs. Dyer was creeping out on the half-darkened stage. The play was +begun. + +And with that instant Carol realized that it was a bad play abominably +acted. + +Encouraging them with lying smiles, she watched her work go to pieces. +The settings seemed flimsy, the lighting commonplace. She watched +Guy Pollock stammer and twist his mustache when he should have been a +bullying magnate; Vida Sherwin, as Grimm's timid wife, chatter at the +audience as though they were her class in high-school English; Juanita, +in the leading role, defy Mr. Grimm as though she were repeating a list +of things she had to buy at the grocery this morning; Ella Stowbody +remark "I'd like a cup of tea" as though she were reciting "Curfew Shall +Not Ring Tonight"; and Dr. Gould, making love to Rita Simons, squeak, +"My--my--you--are--a--won'erful--girl." + +Myrtle Cass, as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the applause of +her relatives, then so much agitated by the remarks of Cy Bogart, in the +back row, in reference to her wearing trousers, that she could hardly +be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so unsociable as to devote himself +entirely to acting. + +That she was right in her opinion of the play Carol was certain when +Miles Bjornstam went out after the first act, and did not come back. + + +VI + + +Between the second and third acts she called the company together, +and supplicated, "I want to know something, before we have a chance to +separate. Whether we're doing well or badly tonight, it is a beginning. +But will we take it as merely a beginning? How many of you will pledge +yourselves to start in with me, right away, tomorrow, and plan for +another play, to be given in September?" + +They stared at her; they nodded at Juanita's protest: "I think +one's enough for a while. It's going elegant tonight, but another +play----Seems to me it'll be time enough to talk about that next fall. +Carol! I hope you don't mean to hint and suggest we're not doing fine +tonight? I'm sure the applause shows the audience think it's just +dandy!" + +Then Carol knew how completely she had failed. + +As the audience seeped out she heard B. J. Gougerling the banker say to +Howland the grocer, "Well, I think the folks did splendid; just as good +as professionals. But I don't care much for these plays. What I like is +a good movie, with auto accidents and hold-ups, and some git to it, and +not all this talky-talk." + +Then Carol knew how certain she was to fail again. + +She wearily did not blame them, company nor audience. Herself she blamed +for trying to carve intaglios in good wholesome jack-pine. + +"It's the worst defeat of all. I'm beaten. By Main Street. 'I must go +on.' But I can't!" + +She was not vastly encouraged by the Gopher Prairie Dauntless: + +. . . would be impossible to distinguish among the actors when all gave +such fine account of themselves in difficult roles of this well-known +New York stage play. Guy Pollock as the old millionaire could not have +been bettered for his fine impersonation of the gruff old millionaire; +Mrs. Harry Haydock as the young lady from the West who so easily showed +the New York four-flushers where they got off was a vision of loveliness +and with fine stage presence. Miss Vida Sherwin the ever popular teacher +in our high school pleased as Mrs. Grimm, Dr. Gould was well suited in +the role of young lover--girls you better look out, remember the doc is a +bachelor. The local Four Hundred also report that he is a great hand at +shaking the light fantastic tootsies in the dance. As the stenographer +Rita Simons was pretty as a picture, and Miss Ella Stowbody's long and +intensive study of the drama and kindred arts in Eastern schools was +seen in the fine finish of her part. + +. . . to no one is greater credit to be given than to Mrs. Will Kennicott +on whose capable shoulders fell the burden of directing. + + +"So kindly," Carol mused, "so well meant, so neighborly--and so +confoundedly untrue. Is it really my failure, or theirs?" + +She sought to be sensible; she elaborately explained to herself that it +was hysterical to condemn Gopher Prairie because it did not foam over +the drama. Its justification was in its service as a market-town for +farmers. How bravely and generously it did its work, forwarding the +bread of the world, feeding and healing the farmers! + +Then, on the corner below her husband's office, she heard a farmer +holding forth: + +"Sure. Course I was beaten. The shipper and the grocers here wouldn't +pay us a decent price for our potatoes, even though folks in the cities +were howling for 'em. So we says, well, we'll get a truck and ship 'em +right down to Minneapolis. But the commission merchants there were in +cahoots with the local shipper here; they said they wouldn't pay us +a cent more than he would, not even if they was nearer to the market. +Well, we found we could get higher prices in Chicago, but when we tried +to get freight cars to ship there, the railroads wouldn't let us have +'em--even though they had cars standing empty right here in the yards. +There you got it--good market, and these towns keeping us from it. Gus, +that's the way these towns work all the time. They pay what they want +to for our wheat, but we pay what they want us to for their clothes. +Stowbody and Dawson foreclose every mortgage they can, and put in tenant +farmers. The Dauntless lies to us about the Nonpartisan League, the +lawyers sting us, the machinery-dealers hate to carry us over bad years, +and then their daughters put on swell dresses and look at us as if we +were a bunch of hoboes. Man, I'd like to burn this town!" + +Kennicott observed, "There's that old crank Wes Brannigan shooting off +his mouth again. Gosh, but he loves to hear himself talk! They ought to +run that fellow out of town!" + + +VII + + +She felt old and detached through high-school commencement week, which +is the fete of youth in Gopher Prairie; through baccalaureate sermon, +senior Parade, junior entertainment, commencement address by an Iowa +clergyman who asserted that he believed in the virtue of virtuousness, +and the procession of Decoration Day, when the few Civil War veterans +followed Champ Perry, in his rusty forage-cap, along the spring-powdered +road to the cemetery. She met Guy; she found that she had nothing to +say to him. Her head ached in an aimless way. When Kennicott rejoiced, +"We'll have a great time this summer; move down to the lake early and +wear old clothes and act natural," she smiled, but her smile creaked. + +In the prairie heat she trudged along unchanging ways, talked about +nothing to tepid people, and reflected that she might never escape from +them. + +She was startled to find that she was using the word "escape." + +Then, for three years which passed like one curt paragraph, she ceased +to find anything interesting save the Bjornstams and her baby. + + + +CHAPTER XIX + +I + +IN three years of exile from herself Carol had certain experiences +chronicled as important by the Dauntless, or discussed by the Jolly +Seventeen, but the event unchronicled, undiscussed, and supremely +controlling, was her slow admission of longing to find her own people. + + +II + + +Bea and Miles Bjornstam were married in June, a month after "The Girl +from Kankakee." Miles had turned respectable. He had renounced his +criticisms of state and society; he had given up roving as horse-trader, +and wearing red mackinaws in lumber-camps; he had gone to work as +engineer in Jackson Elder's planing-mill; he was to be seen upon the +streets endeavoring to be neighborly with suspicious men whom he had +taunted for years. + +Carol was the patroness and manager of the wedding. Juanita Haydock +mocked, "You're a chump to let a good hired girl like Bea go. Besides! +How do you know it's a good thing, her marrying a sassy bum like this +awful Red Swede person? Get wise! Chase the man off with a mop, and +hold onto your Svenska while the holding's good. Huh? Me go to their +Scandahoofian wedding? Not a chance!" + +The other matrons echoed Juanita. Carol was dismayed by the casualness +of their cruelty, but she persisted. Miles had exclaimed to her, "Jack +Elder says maybe he'll come to the wedding! Gee, it would be nice to +have Bea meet the Boss as a reg'lar married lady. Some day I'll be so +well off that Bea can play with Mrs. Elder--and you! Watch us!" + +There was an uneasy knot of only nine guests at the service in the +unpainted Lutheran Church--Carol, Kennicott, Guy Pollock, and the Champ +Perrys, all brought by Carol; Bea's frightened rustic parents, her +cousin Tina, and Pete, Miles's ex-partner in horse-trading, a surly, +hairy man who had bought a black suit and come twelve hundred miles from +Spokane for the event. + +Miles continuously glanced back at the church door. Jackson Elder did +not appear. The door did not once open after the awkward entrance of the +first guests. Miles's hand closed on Bea's arm. + +He had, with Carol's help, made his shanty over into a cottage with +white curtains and a canary and a chintz chair. + +Carol coaxed the powerful matrons to call on Bea. They half scoffed, +half promised to go. + +Bea's successor was the oldish, broad, silent Oscarina, who was +suspicious of her frivolous mistress for a month, so that Juanita +Haydock was able to crow, "There, smarty, I told you you'd run into the +Domestic Problem!" But Oscarina adopted Carol as a daughter, and with +her as faithful to the kitchen as Bea had been, there was nothing +changed in Carol's life. + + +III + + +She was unexpectedly appointed to the town library-board by Ole Jenson, +the new mayor. The other members were Dr. Westlake, Lyman Cass, Julius +Flickerbaugh the attorney, Guy Pollock, and Martin Mahoney, former +livery-stable keeper and now owner of a garage. She was delighted. She +went to the first meeting rather condescendingly, regarding herself +as the only one besides Guy who knew anything about books or library +methods. She was planning to revolutionize the whole system. + +Her condescension was ruined and her humility wholesomely increased when +she found the board, in the shabby room on the second floor of the house +which had been converted into the library, not discussing the weather +and longing to play checkers, but talking about books. She discovered +that amiable old Dr. Westlake read everything in verse and "light +fiction"; that Lyman Cass, the veal-faced, bristly-bearded owner of the +mill, had tramped through Gibbon, Hume, Grote, Prescott, and the other +thick historians; that he could repeat pages from them--and did. When +Dr. Westlake whispered to her, "Yes, Lym is a very well-informed man, +but he's modest about it," she felt uninformed and immodest, and scolded +at herself that she had missed the human potentialities in this vast +Gopher Prairie. When Dr. Westlake quoted the "Paradiso," "Don Quixote," +"Wilhelm Meister," and the Koran, she reflected that no one she knew, +not even her father, had read all four. + +She came diffidently to the second meeting of the board. She did not +plan to revolutionize anything. She hoped that the wise elders might be +so tolerant as to listen to her suggestions about changing the shelving +of the juveniles. + +Yet after four sessions of the library-board she was where she had been +before the first session. She had found that for all their pride in +being reading men, Westlake and Cass and even Guy had no conception of +making the library familiar to the whole town. They used it, they passed +resolutions about it, and they left it as dead as Moses. Only the Henty +books and the Elsie books and the latest optimisms by moral female +novelists and virile clergymen were in general demand, and the board +themselves were interested only in old, stilted volumes. They had no +tenderness for the noisiness of youth discovering great literature. + +If she was egotistic about her tiny learning, they were at least as much +so regarding theirs. And for all their talk of the need of additional +library-tax none of them was willing to risk censure by battling for it, +though they now had so small a fund that, after paying for rent, heat, +light, and Miss Villets's salary, they had only a hundred dollars a year +for the purchase of books. + +The Incident of the Seventeen Cents killed her none too enduring +interest. + +She had come to the board-meeting singing with a plan. She had made +a list of thirty European novels of the past ten years, with twenty +important books on psychology, education, and economics which the +library lacked. She had made Kennicott promise to give fifteen dollars. +If each of the board would contribute the same, they could have the +books. + +Lym Cass looked alarmed, scratched himself, and protested, "I think +it would be a bad precedent for the board-members to contribute +money--uh--not that I mind, but it wouldn't be fair--establish +precedent. Gracious! They don't pay us a cent for our services! +Certainly can't expect us to pay for the privilege of serving!" + +Only Guy looked sympathetic, and he stroked the pine table and said +nothing. + +The rest of the meeting they gave to a bellicose investigation of the +fact that there was seventeen cents less than there should be in the +Fund. Miss Villets was summoned; she spent half an hour in explosively +defending herself; the seventeen cents were gnawed over, penny by penny; +and Carol, glancing at the carefully inscribed list which had been +so lovely and exciting an hour before, was silent, and sorry for Miss +Villets, and sorrier for herself. + +She was reasonably regular in attendance till her two years were up and +Vida Sherwin was appointed to the board in her place, but she did not +try to be revolutionary. In the plodding course of her life there was +nothing changed, and nothing new. + + +IV + + +Kennicott made an excellent land-deal, but as he told her none of the +details, she was not greatly exalted or agitated. What did agitate her +was his announcement, half whispered and half blurted, half tender and +half coldly medical, that they "ought to have a baby, now they could +afford it." They had so long agreed that "perhaps it would be just as +well not to have any children for a while yet," that childlessness had +come to be natural. Now, she feared and longed and did not know; she +hesitatingly assented, and wished that she had not assented. + +As there appeared no change in their drowsy relations, she forgot all +about it, and life was planless. + + +V + + +Idling on the porch of their summer cottage at the lake, on afternoons +when Kennicott was in town, when the water was glazed and the whole air +languid, she pictured a hundred escapes: Fifth Avenue in a snow-storm, +with limousines, golden shops, a cathedral spire. A reed hut on +fantastic piles above the mud of a jungle river. A suite in Paris, +immense high grave rooms, with lambrequins and a balcony. The Enchanted +Mesa. An ancient stone mill in Maryland, at the turn of the road, +between rocky brook and abrupt hills. An upland moor of sheep and +flitting cool sunlight. A clanging dock where steel cranes unloaded +steamers from Buenos Ayres and Tsing-tao. A Munich concert-hall, and a +famous 'cellist playing--playing to her. + +One scene had a persistent witchery: + +She stood on a terrace overlooking a boulevard by the warm sea. She was +certain, though she had no reason for it, that the place was Mentone. +Along the drive below her swept barouches, with a mechanical tlot-tlot, +tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, and great cars with polished black hoods and +engines quiet as the sigh of an old man. In them were women erect, +slender, enameled, and expressionless as marionettes, their small hands +upon parasols, their unchanging eyes always forward, ignoring the men +beside them, tall men with gray hair and distinguished faces. Beyond the +drive were painted sea and painted sands, and blue and yellow pavilions. +Nothing moved except the gliding carriages, and the people were small +and wooden, spots in a picture drenched with gold and hard bright blues. +There was no sound of sea or winds; no softness of whispers nor of +falling petals; nothing but yellow and cobalt and staring light, and the +never-changing tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot---- + +She startled. She whimpered. It was the rapid ticking of the clock which +had hypnotized her into hearing the steady hoofs. No aching color of the +sea and pride of supercilious people, but the reality of a round-bellied +nickel alarm-clock on a shelf against a fuzzy unplaned pine wall, with +a stiff gray wash-rag hanging above it and a kerosene-stove standing +below. + +A thousand dreams governed by the fiction she had read, drawn from the +pictures she had envied, absorbed her drowsy lake afternoons, but +always in the midst of them Kennicott came out from town, drew on khaki +trousers which were plastered with dry fish-scales, asked, "Enjoying +yourself?" and did not listen to her answer. + +And nothing was changed, and there was no reason to believe that there +ever would be change. + + +VI + + +Trains! + +At the lake cottage she missed the passing of the trains. She realized +that in town she had depended upon them for assurance that there +remained a world beyond. + +The railroad was more than a means of transportation to Gopher Prairie. +It was a new god; a monster of steel limbs, oak ribs, flesh of gravel, +and a stupendous hunger for freight; a deity created by man that he +might keep himself respectful to Property, as elsewhere he had elevated +and served as tribal gods the mines, cotton-mills, motor-factories, +colleges, army. + +The East remembered generations when there had been no railroad, and had +no awe of it; but here the railroads had been before time was. The towns +had been staked out on barren prairie as convenient points for future +train-halts; and back in 1860 and 1870 there had been much profit, much +opportunity to found aristocratic families, in the possession of advance +knowledge as to where the towns would arise. + +If a town was in disfavor, the railroad could ignore it, cut it off from +commerce, slay it. To Gopher Prairie the tracks were eternal verities, +and boards of railroad directors an omnipotence. The smallest boy or the +most secluded grandam could tell you whether No. 32 had a hot-box last +Tuesday, whether No. 7 was going to put on an extra day-coach; and the +name of the president of the road was familiar to every breakfast table. + +Even in this new era of motors the citizens went down to the station +to see the trains go through. It was their romance; their only mystery +besides mass at the Catholic Church; and from the trains came lords of +the outer world--traveling salesmen with piping on their waistcoats, and +visiting cousins from Milwaukee. + +Gopher Prairie had once been a "division-point." The roundhouse and +repair-shops were gone, but two conductors still retained residence, +and they were persons of distinction, men who traveled and talked to +strangers, who wore uniforms with brass buttons, and knew all about +these crooked games of con-men. They were a special caste, neither above +nor below the Haydocks, but apart, artists and adventurers. + +The night telegraph-operator at the railroad station was the most +melodramatic figure in town: awake at three in the morning, alone in a +room hectic with clatter of the telegraph key. All night he "talked" +to operators twenty, fifty, a hundred miles away. It was always to be +expected that he would be held up by robbers. He never was, but round +him was a suggestion of masked faces at the window, revolvers, cords +binding him to a chair, his struggle to crawl to the key before he +fainted. + +During blizzards everything about the railroad was melodramatic. There +were days when the town was completely shut off, when they had no mail, +no express, no fresh meat, no newspapers. At last the rotary snow-plow +came through, bucking the drifts, sending up a geyser, and the way to +the Outside was open again. The brakemen, in mufflers and fur caps, +running along the tops of ice-coated freight-cars; the engineers +scratching frost from the cab windows and looking out, inscrutable, +self-contained, pilots of the prairie sea--they were heroism, they were +to Carol the daring of the quest in a world of groceries and sermons. + +To the small boys the railroad was a familiar playground. They climbed +the iron ladders on the sides of the box-cars; built fires behind piles +of old ties; waved to favorite brakemen. But to Carol it was magic. + +She was motoring with Kennicott, the car lumping through darkness, the +lights showing mud-puddles and ragged weeds by the road. A train coming! +A rapid chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck. It was hurling +past--the Pacific Flyer, an arrow of golden flame. Light from the +fire-box splashed the under side of the trailing smoke. Instantly the +vision was gone; Carol was back in the long darkness; and Kennicott was +giving his version of that fire and wonder: "No. 19. Must be 'bout ten +minutes late." + +In town, she listened from bed to the express whistling in the cut a +mile north. Uuuuuuu!--faint, nervous, distrait, horn of the free night +riders journeying to the tall towns where were laughter and +banners and the sound of bells--Uuuuu! Uuuuu!--the world going +by--Uuuuuuu!--fainter, more wistful, gone. + +Down here there were no trains. The stillness was very great. The +prairie encircled the lake, lay round her, raw, dusty, thick. Only the +train could cut it. Some day she would take a train; and that would be a +great taking. + + +VII + + +She turned to the Chautauqua as she had turned to the dramatic +association, to the library-board. + +Besides the permanent Mother Chautauqua, in New York, there are, all +over these States, commercial Chautauqua companies which send out to +every smallest town troupes of lecturers and "entertainers" to give a +week of culture under canvas. Living in Minneapolis, Carol had never +encountered the ambulant Chautauqua, and the announcement of its coming +to Gopher Prairie gave her hope that others might be doing the vague +things which she had attempted. She pictured a condensed university +course brought to the people. Mornings when she came in from the lake +with Kennicott she saw placards in every shop-window, and strung on +a cord across Main Street, a line of pennants alternately worded +"The Boland Chautauqua COMING!" and "A solid week of inspiration and +enjoyment!" But she was disappointed when she saw the program. It did +not seem to be a tabloid university; it did not seem to be any kind of +a university; it seemed to be a combination of vaudeville performance Y. +M. C. A. lecture, and the graduation exercises of an elocution class. + +She took her doubt to Kennicott. He insisted, "Well, maybe it won't be +so awful darn intellectual, the way you and I might like it, but it's +a whole lot better than nothing." Vida Sherwin added, "They have +some splendid speakers. If the people don't carry off so much actual +information, they do get a lot of new ideas, and that's what counts." + +During the Chautauqua Carol attended three evening meetings, two +afternoon meetings, and one in the morning. She was impressed by the +audience: the sallow women in skirts and blouses, eager to be made to +think, the men in vests and shirt-sleeves, eager to be allowed to laugh, +and the wriggling children, eager to sneak away. She liked the plain +benches, the portable stage under its red marquee, the great tent over +all, shadowy above strings of incandescent bulbs at night and by day +casting an amber radiance on the patient crowd. The scent of dust +and trampled grass and sun-baked wood gave her an illusion of Syrian +caravans; she forgot the speakers while she listened to noises outside +the tent: two farmers talking hoarsely, a wagon creaking down Main +Street, the crow of a rooster. She was content. But it was the +contentment of the lost hunter stopping to rest. + +For from the Chautauqua itself she got nothing but wind and chaff and +heavy laughter, the laughter of yokels at old jokes, a mirthless and +primitive sound like the cries of beasts on a farm. + +These were the several instructors in the condensed university's +seven-day course: + +Nine lecturers, four of them ex-ministers, and one an ex-congressman, +all of them delivering "inspirational addresses." The only facts or +opinions which Carol derived from them were: Lincoln was a celebrated +president of the United States, but in his youth extremely poor. James +J. Hill was the best-known railroad-man of the West, and in his youth +extremely poor. Honesty and courtesy in business are preferable +to boorishness and exposed trickery, but this is not to be taken +personally, since all persons in Gopher Prairie are known to be honest +and courteous. London is a large city. A distinguished statesman once +taught Sunday School. + +Four "entertainers" who told Jewish stories, Irish stories, German +stories, Chinese stories, and Tennessee mountaineer stories, most of +which Carol had heard. + +A "lady elocutionist" who recited Kipling and imitated children. + +A lecturer with motion-pictures of an Andean exploration; excellent +pictures and a halting narrative. + +Three brass-bands, a company of six opera-singers, a Hawaiian sextette, +and four youths who played saxophones and guitars disguised as +wash-boards. The most applauded pieces were those, such as the "Lucia" +inevitability, which the audience had heard most often. + +The local superintendent, who remained through the week while the other +enlighteners went to other Chautauquas for their daily performances. The +superintendent was a bookish, underfed man who worked hard at rousing +artificial enthusiasm, at trying to make the audience cheer by dividing +them into competitive squads and telling them that they were intelligent +and made splendid communal noises. He gave most of the morning lectures, +droning with equal unhappy facility about poetry, the Holy Land, and the +injustice to employers in any system of profit-sharing. + +The final item was a man who neither lectured, inspired, nor +entertained; a plain little man with his hands in his pockets. All the +other speakers had confessed, "I cannot keep from telling the citizens +of your beautiful city that none of the talent on this circuit have +found a more charming spot or more enterprising and hospitable people." +But the little man suggested that the architecture of Gopher Prairie was +haphazard, and that it was sottish to let the lake-front be monopolized +by the cinder-heaped wall of the railroad embankment. Afterward the +audience grumbled, "Maybe that guy's got the right dope, but what's the +use of looking on the dark side of things all the time? New ideas are +first-rate, but not all this criticism. Enough trouble in life without +looking for it!" + +Thus the Chautauqua, as Carol saw it. After it, the town felt proud and +educated. + + +VIII + + +Two weeks later the Great War smote Europe. + +For a month Gopher Prairie had the delight of shuddering, then, as the +war settled down to a business of trench-fighting, they forgot. + +When Carol talked about the Balkans, and the possibility of a German +revolution, Kennicott yawned, "Oh yes, it's a great old scrap, but it's +none of our business. Folks out here are too busy growing corn to monkey +with any fool war that those foreigners want to get themselves into." + +It was Miles Bjornstam who said, "I can't figure it out. I'm opposed to +wars, but still, seems like Germany has got to be licked because them +Junkers stands in the way of progress." + +She was calling on Miles and Bea, early in autumn. They had received +her with cries, with dusting of chairs, and a running to fetch water for +coffee. Miles stood and beamed at her. He fell often and joyously into +his old irreverence about the lords of Gopher Prairie, but always--with +a certain difficulty--he added something decorous and appreciative. + +"Lots of people have come to see you, haven't they?" Carol hinted. + +"Why, Bea's cousin Tina comes in right along, and the foreman at the +mill, and----Oh, we have good times. Say, take a look at that Bea! +Wouldn't you think she was a canary-bird, to listen to her, and to see +that Scandahoofian tow-head of hers? But say, know what she is? She's +a mother hen! Way she fusses over me--way she makes old Miles wear a +necktie! Hate to spoil her by letting her hear it, but she's one pretty +darn nice--nice----Hell! What do we care if none of the dirty snobs come +and call? We've got each other." + +Carol worried about their struggle, but she forgot it in the stress of +sickness and fear. For that autumn she knew that a baby was coming, +that at last life promised to be interesting in the peril of the great +change. + + + +CHAPTER XX + +I + +THE baby was coming. Each morning she was nauseated, chilly, bedraggled, +and certain that she would never again be attractive; each twilight +she was afraid. She did not feel exalted, but unkempt and furious. The +period of daily sickness crawled into an endless time of boredom. It +became difficult for her to move about, and she raged that she, who +had been slim and light-footed, should have to lean on a stick, and be +heartily commented upon by street gossips. She was encircled by greasy +eyes. Every matron hinted, "Now that you're going to be a mother, +dearie, you'll get over all these ideas of yours and settle down." +She felt that willy-nilly she was being initiated into the assembly +of housekeepers; with the baby for hostage, she would never escape; +presently she would be drinking coffee and rocking and talking about +diapers. + +"I could stand fighting them. I'm used to that. But this being taken in, +being taken as a matter of course, I can't stand it--and I must stand +it!" + +She alternately detested herself for not appreciating the kindly women, +and detested them for their advice: lugubrious hints as to how much she +would suffer in labor, details of baby-hygiene based on long experience +and total misunderstanding, superstitious cautions about the things she +must eat and read and look at in prenatal care for the baby's soul, and +always a pest of simpering baby-talk. Mrs. Champ Perry bustled in to +lend "Ben Hur," as a preventive of future infant immorality. The Widow +Bogart appeared trailing pinkish exclamations, "And how is our lovely +'ittle muzzy today! My, ain't it just like they always say: being in +a Family Way does make the girlie so lovely, just like a Madonna. Tell +me--" Her whisper was tinged with salaciousness--"does oo feel the dear +itsy one stirring, the pledge of love? I remember with Cy, of course he +was so big----" + +"I do not look lovely, Mrs. Bogart. My complexion is rotten, and my hair +is coming out, and I look like a potato-bag, and I think my arches are +falling, and he isn't a pledge of love, and I'm afraid he WILL look like +us, and I don't believe in mother-devotion, and the whole business is a +confounded nuisance of a biological process," remarked Carol. + +Then the baby was born, without unusual difficulty: a boy with straight +back and strong legs. The first day she hated him for the tides of pain +and hopeless fear he had caused; she resented his raw ugliness. After +that she loved him with all the devotion and instinct at which she +had scoffed. She marveled at the perfection of the miniature hands as +noisily as did Kennicott, she was overwhelmed by the trust with +which the baby turned to her; passion for him grew with each unpoetic +irritating thing she had to do for him. + +He was named Hugh, for her father. + +Hugh developed into a thin healthy child with a large head and straight +delicate hair of a faint brown. He was thoughtful and casual--a +Kennicott. + +For two years nothing else existed. She did not, as the cynical matrons +had prophesied, "give up worrying about the world and other folks' +babies soon as she got one of her own to fight for." The barbarity of +that willingness to sacrifice other children so that one child might +have too much was impossible to her. But she would sacrifice herself. +She understood consecration--she who answered Kennicott's hints about +having Hugh christened: "I refuse to insult my baby and myself by asking +an ignorant young man in a frock coat to sanction him, to permit me +to have him! I refuse to subject him to any devil-chasing rites! If I +didn't give my baby--MY BABY--enough sanctification in those nine hours +of hell, then he can't get any more out of the Reverend Mr. Zitterel!" + +"Well, Baptists hardly ever christen kids. I was kind of thinking more +about Reverend Warren," said Kennicott. + +Hugh was her reason for living, promise of accomplishment in the future, +shrine of adoration--and a diverting toy. "I thought I'd be a dilettante +mother, but I'm as dismayingly natural as Mrs. Bogart," she boasted. + +For two--years Carol was a part of the town; as much one of Our Young +Mothers as Mrs. McGanum. Her opinionation seemed dead; she had no +apparent desire for escape; her brooding centered on Hugh. While she +wondered at the pearl texture of his ear she exulted, "I feel like an +old woman, with a skin like sandpaper, beside him, and I'm glad of it! +He is perfect. He shall have everything. He sha'n't always stay here in +Gopher Prairie. . . . I wonder which is really the best, Harvard or Yale +or Oxford?" + + +II + + +The people who hemmed her in had been brilliantly reinforced by Mr. and +Mrs. Whittier N. Smail--Kennicott's Uncle Whittier and Aunt Bessie. + +The true Main Streetite defines a relative as a person to whose house +you go uninvited, to stay as long as you like. If you hear that Lym Cass +on his journey East has spent all his time "visiting" in Oyster Center, +it does not mean that he prefers that village to the rest of New +England, but that he has relatives there. It does not mean that he has +written to the relatives these many years, nor that they have ever given +signs of a desire to look upon him. But "you wouldn't expect a man to +go and spend good money at a hotel in Boston, when his own third cousins +live right in the same state, would you?" + +When the Smails sold their creamery in North Dakota they visited Mr. +Smail's sister, Kennicott's mother, at Lac-qui-Meurt, then plodded on +to Gopher Prairie to stay with their nephew. They appeared unannounced, +before the baby was born, took their welcome for granted, and +immediately began to complain of the fact that their room faced north. + +Uncle Whittier and Aunt Bessie assumed that it was their privilege as +relatives to laugh at Carol, and their duty as Christians to let her +know how absurd her "notions" were. They objected to the food, to +Oscarina's lack of friendliness, to the wind, the rain, and the +immodesty of Carol's maternity gowns. They were strong and enduring; for +an hour at a time they could go on heaving questions about her father's +income, about her theology, and about the reason why she had not put on +her rubbers when she had gone across the street. For fussy discussion +they had a rich, full genius, and their example developed in Kennicott a +tendency to the same form of affectionate flaying. + +If Carol was so indiscreet as to murmur that she had a small headache, +instantly the two Smails and Kennicott were at it. Every five minutes, +every time she sat down or rose or spoke to Oscarina, they twanged, "Is +your head better now? Where does it hurt? Don't you keep hartshorn in +the house? Didn't you walk too far today? Have you tried hartshorn? +Don't you keep some in the house so it will be handy? Does it feel +better now? How does it feel? Do your eyes hurt, too? What time do you +usually get to bed? As late as THAT? Well! How does it feel now?" + +In her presence Uncle Whittier snorted at Kennicott, "Carol get these +headaches often? Huh? Be better for her if she didn't go gadding around +to all these bridge-whist parties, and took some care of herself once in +a while!" + +They kept it up, commenting, questioning, commenting, questioning, +till her determination broke and she bleated, "For heaven's SAKE, don't +dis-CUSS it! My head 's all RIGHT!" + +She listened to the Smails and Kennicott trying to determine by +dialectics whether the copy of the Dauntless, which Aunt Bessie wanted +to send to her sister in Alberta, ought to have two or four cents +postage on it. Carol would have taken it to the drug store and weighed +it, but then she was a dreamer, while they were practical people (as +they frequently admitted). So they sought to evolve the postal rate from +their inner consciousnesses, which, combined with entire frankness in +thinking aloud, was their method of settling all problems. + +The Smails did not "believe in all this nonsense" about privacy and +reticence. When Carol left a letter from her sister on the table, she +was astounded to hear from Uncle Whittier, "I see your sister says her +husband is doing fine. You ought to go see her oftener. I asked Will +and he says you don't go see her very often. My! You ought to go see her +oftener!" + +If Carol was writing a letter to a classmate, or planning the week's +menus, she could be certain that Aunt Bessie would pop in and titter, +"Now don't let me disturb you, I just wanted to see where you were, +don't stop, I'm not going to stay only a second. I just wondered if +you could possibly have thought that I didn't eat the onions this noon +because I didn't think they were properly cooked, but that wasn't the +reason at all, it wasn't because I didn't think they were well cooked, +I'm sure that everything in your house is always very dainty and nice, +though I do think that Oscarina is careless about some things, she +doesn't appreciate the big wages you pay her, and she is so cranky, all +these Swedes are so cranky, I don't really see why you have a Swede, +but----But that wasn't it, I didn't eat them not because I didn't think +they weren't cooked proper, it was just--I find that onions don't agree +with me, it's very strange, ever since I had an attack of biliousness +one time, I have found that onions, either fried onions or raw ones, and +Whittier does love raw onions with vinegar and sugar on them----" + +It was pure affection. + +Carol was discovering that the one thing that can be more disconcerting +than intelligent hatred is demanding love. + +She supposed that she was being gracefully dull and standardized in +the Smails' presence, but they scented the heretic, and with +forward-stooping delight they sat and tried to drag out her ludicrous +concepts for their amusement. They were like the Sunday-afternoon mob +starting at monkeys in the Zoo, poking fingers and making faces and +giggling at the resentment of the more dignified race. + +With a loose-lipped, superior, village smile Uncle Whittier hinted, +"What's this I hear about your thinking Gopher Prairie ought to be +all tore down and rebuilt, Carrie? I don't know where folks get these +new-fangled ideas. Lots of farmers in Dakota getting 'em these days. +About co-operation. Think they can run stores better 'n storekeepers! +Huh!" + +"Whit and I didn't need no co-operation as long as we was farming!" +triumphed Aunt Bessie. "Carrie, tell your old auntie now: don't you ever +go to church on Sunday? You do go sometimes? But you ought to go every +Sunday! When you're as old as I am, you'll learn that no matter how +smart folks think they are, God knows a whole lot more than they do, and +then you'll realize and be glad to go and listen to your pastor!" + +In the manner of one who has just beheld a two-headed calf they repeated +that they had "never HEARD such funny ideas!" They were staggered to +learn that a real tangible person, living in Minnesota, and married +to their own flesh-and-blood relation, could apparently believe that +divorce may not always be immoral; that illegitimate children do not +bear any special and guaranteed form of curse; that there are ethical +authorities outside of the Hebrew Bible; that men have drunk wine yet +not died in the gutter; that the capitalistic system of distribution and +the Baptist wedding-ceremony were not known in the Garden of Eden; that +mushrooms are as edible as corn-beef hash; that the word "dude" is +no longer frequently used; that there are Ministers of the Gospel +who accept evolution; that some persons of apparent intelligence and +business ability do not always vote the Republican ticket straight; that +it is not a universal custom to wear scratchy flannels next the skin +in winter; that a violin is not inherently more immoral than a chapel +organ; that some poets do not have long hair; and that Jews are not +always pedlers or pants-makers. + +"Where does she get all them the'ries?" marveled Uncle Whittier Smail; +while Aunt Bessie inquired, "Do you suppose there's many folks got +notions like hers? My! If there are," and her tone settled the fact that +there were not, "I just don't know what the world's coming to!" + +Patiently--more or less--Carol awaited the exquisite day when they would +announce departure. After three weeks Uncle Whittier remarked, "We kinda +like Gopher Prairie. Guess maybe we'll stay here. We'd been wondering +what we'd do, now we've sold the creamery and my farms. So I had a talk +with Ole Jenson about his grocery, and I guess I'll buy him out and +storekeep for a while." + +He did. + +Carol rebelled. Kennicott soothed her: "Oh, we won't see much of them. +They'll have their own house." + +She resolved to be so chilly that they would stay away. But she had no +talent for conscious insolence. They found a house, but Carol was never +safe from their appearance with a hearty, "Thought we'd drop in this +evening and keep you from being lonely. Why, you ain't had them curtains +washed yet!" Invariably, whenever she was touched by the realization +that it was they who were lonely, they wrecked her pitying affection by +comments--questions--comments--advice. + +They immediately became friendly with all of their own race, with the +Luke Dawsons, the Deacon Piersons, and Mrs. Bogart; and brought them +along in the evening. Aunt Bessie was a bridge over whom the older +women, bearing gifts of counsel and the ignorance of experience, poured +into Carol's island of reserve. Aunt Bessie urged the good Widow Bogart, +"Drop in and see Carrie real often. Young folks today don't understand +housekeeping like we do." + +Mrs. Bogart showed herself perfectly willing to be an associate +relative. + +Carol was thinking up protective insults when Kennicott's mother came +down to stay with Brother Whittier for two months. Carol was fond of +Mrs. Kennicott. She could not carry out her insults. + +She felt trapped. + +She had been kidnaped by the town. She was Aunt Bessie's niece, and she +was to be a mother. She was expected, she almost expected herself, to +sit forever talking of babies, cooks, embroidery stitches, the price of +potatoes, and the tastes of husbands in the matter of spinach. + +She found a refuge in the Jolly Seventeen. She suddenly understood that +they could be depended upon to laugh with her at Mrs. Bogart, and she +now saw Juanita Haydock's gossip not as vulgarity but as gaiety and +remarkable analysis. + +Her life had changed, even before Hugh appeared. She looked forward to +the next bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, and the security of whispering +with her dear friends Maud Dyer and Juanita and Mrs. McGanum. + +She was part of the town. Its philosophy and its feuds dominated her. + + +III + + +She was no longer irritated by the cooing of the matrons, nor by their +opinion that diet didn't matter so long as the Little Ones had plenty of +lace and moist kisses, but she concluded that in the care of babies as +in politics, intelligence was superior to quotations about pansies. She +liked best to talk about Hugh to Kennicott, Vida, and the Bjornstams. +She was happily domestic when Kennicott sat by her on the floor, to +watch baby make faces. She was delighted when Miles, speaking as one man +to another, admonished Hugh, "I wouldn't stand them skirts if I was you. +Come on. Join the union and strike. Make 'em give you pants." + +As a parent, Kennicott was moved to establish the first child-welfare +week held in Gopher Prairie. Carol helped him weigh babies and +examine their throats, and she wrote out the diets for mute German and +Scandinavian mothers. + +The aristocracy of Gopher Prairie, even the wives of the rival doctors, +took part, and for several days there was community spirit and much +uplift. But this reign of love was overthrown when the prize for Best +Baby was awarded not to decent parents but to Bea and Miles Bjornstam! +The good matrons glared at Olaf Bjornstam, with his blue eyes, his +honey-colored hair, and magnificent back, and they remarked, "Well, Mrs. +Kennicott, maybe that Swede brat is as healthy as your husband says he +is, but let me tell you I hate to think of the future that awaits any +boy with a hired girl for a mother and an awful irreligious socialist +for a pa!" + +She raged, but so violent was the current of their respectability, so +persistent was Aunt Bessie in running to her with their blabber, that +she was embarrassed when she took Hugh to play with Olaf. She hated +herself for it, but she hoped that no one saw her go into the Bjornstam +shanty. She hated herself and the town's indifferent cruelty when she +saw Bea's radiant devotion to both babies alike; when she saw Miles +staring at them wistfully. + +He had saved money, had quit Elder's planing-mill and started a dairy +on a vacant lot near his shack. He was proud of his three cows and sixty +chickens, and got up nights to nurse them. + +"I'll be a big farmer before you can bat an eye! I tell you that young +fellow Olaf is going to go East to college along with the Haydock kids. +Uh----Lots of folks dropping in to chin with Bea and me now. Say! Ma +Bogart come in one day! She was----I liked the old lady fine. And the +mill foreman comes in right along. Oh, we got lots of friends. You bet!" + + +IV + + +Though the town seemed to Carol to change no more than the surrounding +fields, there was a constant shifting, these three years. The citizen of +the prairie drifts always westward. It may be because he is the heir of +ancient migrations--and it may be because he finds within his own +spirit so little adventure that he is driven to seek it by changing his +horizon. The towns remain unvaried, yet the individual faces alter +like classes in college. The Gopher Prairie jeweler sells out, for no +discernible reason, and moves on to Alberta or the state of Washington, +to open a shop precisely like his former one, in a town precisely like +the one he has left. There is, except among professional men and the +wealthy, small permanence either of residence or occupation. A man +becomes farmer, grocer, town policeman, garageman, restaurant-owner, +postmaster, insurance-agent, and farmer all over again, and the +community more or less patiently suffers from his lack of knowledge in +each of his experiments. + +Ole Jenson the grocer and Dahl the butcher moved on to South Dakota +and Idaho. Luke and Mrs. Dawson picked up ten thousand acres of prairie +soil, in the magic portable form of a small check book, and went to +Pasadena, to a bungalow and sunshine and cafeterias. Chet Dashaway sold +his furniture and undertaking business and wandered to Los Angeles, +where, the Dauntless reported, "Our good friend Chester has accepted a +fine position with a real-estate firm, and his wife has in the charming +social circles of the Queen City of the Southwestland that same +popularity which she enjoyed in our own society sets." + +Rita Simons was married to Terry Gould, and rivaled Juanita Haydock as +the gayest of the Young Married Set. But Juanita also acquired merit. +Harry's father died, Harry became senior partner in the Bon Ton Store, +and Juanita was more acidulous and shrewd and cackling than ever. She +bought an evening frock, and exposed her collar-bone to the wonder of +the Jolly Seventeen, and talked of moving to Minneapolis. + +To defend her position against the new Mrs. Terry Gould she sought to +attach Carol to her faction by giggling that "SOME folks might call Rita +innocent, but I've got a hunch that she isn't half as ignorant of things +as brides are supposed to be--and of course Terry isn't one-two-three as +a doctor alongside of your husband." + +Carol herself would gladly have followed Mr. Ole Jenson, and migrated +even to another Main Street; flight from familiar tedium to new tedium +would have for a time the outer look and promise of adventure. She +hinted to Kennicott of the probable medical advantages of Montana and +Oregon. She knew that he was satisfied with Gopher Prairie, but it gave +her vicarious hope to think of going, to ask for railroad folders at the +station, to trace the maps with a restless forefinger. + +Yet to the casual eye she was not discontented, she was not an abnormal +and distressing traitor to the faith of Main Street. + +The settled citizen believes that the rebel is constantly in a stew of +complaining and, hearing of a Carol Kennicott, he gasps, "What an +awful person! She must be a Holy Terror to live with! Glad MY folks are +satisfied with things way they are!" Actually, it was not so much as +five minutes a day that Carol devoted to lonely desires. It is +probable that the agitated citizen has within his circle at least one +inarticulate rebel with aspirations as wayward as Carol's. + +The presence of the baby had made her take Gopher Prairie and the brown +house seriously, as natural places of residence. She pleased Kennicott +by being friendly with the complacent maturity of Mrs. Clark and Mrs. +Elder, and when she had often enough been in conference upon the Elders' +new Cadillac car, or the job which the oldest Clark boy had taken in +the office of the flour-mill, these topics became important, things to +follow up day by day. + +With nine-tenths of her emotion concentrated upon Hugh, she did not +criticize shops, streets, acquaintances . . . this year or two. She +hurried to Uncle Whittier's store for a package of corn-flakes, she +abstractedly listened to Uncle Whittier's denunciation of Martin +Mahoney for asserting that the wind last Tuesday had been south and not +southwest, she came back along streets that held no surprises nor the +startling faces of strangers. Thinking of Hugh's teething all the way, +she did not reflect that this store, these drab blocks, made up all her +background. She did her work, and she triumphed over winning from the +Clarks at five hundred. + +The most considerable event of the two years after the birth of Hugh +occurred when Vida Sherwin resigned from the high school and was +married. Carol was her attendant, and as the wedding was at the +Episcopal Church, all the women wore new kid slippers and long white kid +gloves, and looked refined. + +For years Carol had been little sister to Vida, and had never in the +least known to what degree Vida loved her and hated her and in curious +strained ways was bound to her. + + + +CHAPTER XXI + +I + +GRAY steel that seems unmoving because it spins so fast in the balanced +fly-wheel, gray snow in an avenue of elms, gray dawn with the sun behind +it--this was the gray of Vida Sherwin's life at thirty-six. + +She was small and active and sallow; her yellow hair was faded, and +looked dry; her blue silk blouses and modest lace collars and high black +shoes and sailor hats were as literal and uncharming as a schoolroom +desk; but her eyes determined her appearance, revealed her as a +personage and a force, indicated her faith in the goodness and purpose +of everything. They were blue, and they were never still; they expressed +amusement, pity, enthusiasm. If she had been seen in sleep, with the +wrinkles beside her eyes stilled and the creased lids hiding the radiant +irises, she would have lost her potency. + +She was born in a hill-smothered Wisconsin village where her father +was a prosy minister; she labored through a sanctimonious college; she +taught for two years in an iron-range town of blurry-faced Tatars and +Montenegrins, and wastes of ore, and when she came to Gopher Prairie, +its trees and the shining spaciousness of the wheat prairie made her +certain that she was in paradise. + +She admitted to her fellow-teachers that the schoolbuilding was +slightly damp, but she insisted that the rooms were "arranged so +conveniently--and then that bust of President McKinley at the head of +the stairs, it's a lovely art-work, and isn't it an inspiration to have +the brave, honest, martyr president to think about!" She taught French, +English, and history, and the Sophomore Latin class, which dealt in +matters of a metaphysical nature called Indirect Discourse and the +Ablative Absolute. Each year she was reconvinced that the pupils were +beginning to learn more quickly. She spent four winters in building up +the Debating Society, and when the debate really was lively one Friday +afternoon, and the speakers of pieces did not forget their lines, she +felt rewarded. + +She lived an engrossed useful life, and seemed as cool and simple as an +apple. But secretly she was creeping among fears, longing, and guilt. +She knew what it was, but she dared not name it. She hated even the +sound of the word "sex." When she dreamed of being a woman of the harem, +with great white warm limbs, she awoke to shudder, defenseless in +the dusk of her room. She prayed to Jesus, always to the Son of God, +offering him the terrible power of her adoration, addressing him as the +eternal lover, growing passionate, exalted, large, as she contemplated +his splendor. Thus she mounted to endurance and surcease. + +By day, rattling about in many activities, she was able to ridicule her +blazing nights of darkness. With spurious cheerfulness she announced +everywhere, "I guess I'm a born spinster," and "No one will ever marry +a plain schoolma'am like me," and "You men, great big noisy bothersome +creatures, we women wouldn't have you round the place, dirtying up nice +clean rooms, if it wasn't that you have to be petted and guided. We just +ought to say 'Scat!' to all of you!" + +But when a man held her close at a dance, even when "Professor" +George Edwin Mott patted her hand paternally as they considered the +naughtinesses of Cy Bogart, she quivered, and reflected how superior she +was to have kept her virginity. + +In the autumn of 1911, a year before Dr. Will Kennicott was married, +Vida was his partner at a five-hundred tournament. She was thirty-four +then; Kennicott about thirty-six. To her he was a superb, boyish, +diverting creature; all the heroic qualities in a manly magnificent +body. They had been helping the hostess to serve the Waldorf salad and +coffee and gingerbread. They were in the kitchen, side by side on a +bench, while the others ponderously supped in the room beyond. + +Kennicott was masculine and experimental. He stroked Vida's hand, he put +his arm carelessly about her shoulder. + +"Don't!" she said sharply. + +"You're a cunning thing," he offered, patting the back of her shoulder +in an exploratory manner. + +While she strained away, she longed to move nearer to him. He bent over, +looked at her knowingly. She glanced down at his left hand as it touched +her knee. She sprang up, started noisily and needlessly to wash the +dishes. He helped her. He was too lazy to adventure further--and too +used to women in his profession. She was grateful for the impersonality +of his talk. It enabled her to gain control. She knew that she had +skirted wild thoughts. + +A month after, on a sleighing-party, under the buffalo robes in the +bob-sled, he whispered, "You pretend to be a grown-up schoolteacher, but +you're nothing but a kiddie." His arm was about her. She resisted. + +"Don't you like the poor lonely bachelor?" he yammered in a fatuous way. + +"No, I don't! You don't care for me in the least. You're just practising +on me." + +"You're so mean! I'm terribly fond of you." + +"I'm not of you. And I'm not going to let myself be fond of you, +either." + +He persistently drew her toward him. She clutched his arm. Then she +threw off the robe, climbed out of the sled, raced after it with Harry +Haydock. At the dance which followed the sleigh-ride Kennicott was +devoted to the watery prettiness of Maud Dyer, and Vida was noisily +interested in getting up a Virginia Reel. Without seeming to watch +Kennicott, she knew that he did not once look at her. + +That was all of her first love-affair. + +He gave no sign of remembering that he was "terribly fond." She waited +for him; she reveled in longing, and in a sense of guilt because she +longed. She told herself that she did not want part of him; unless he +gave her all his devotion she would never let him touch her; and when +she found that she was probably lying, she burned with scorn. She fought +it out in prayer. She knelt in a pink flannel nightgown, her thin hair +down her back, her forehead as full of horror as a mask of tragedy, +while she identified her love for the Son of God with her love for a +mortal, and wondered if any other woman had ever been so sacrilegious. +She wanted to be a nun and observe perpetual adoration. She bought a +rosary, but she had been so bitterly reared as a Protestant that she +could not bring herself to use it. + +Yet none of her intimates in the school and in the boarding-house knew +of her abyss of passion. They said she was "so optimistic." + +When she heard that Kennicott was to marry a girl, pretty, young, and +imposingly from the Cities, Vida despaired. She congratulated Kennicott; +carelessly ascertained from him the hour of marriage. At that hour, +sitting in her room, Vida pictured the wedding in St. Paul. Full of an +ecstasy which horrified her, she followed Kennicott and the girl who had +stolen her place, followed them to the train, through the evening, the +night. + +She was relieved when she had worked out a belief that she wasn't really +shameful, that there was a mystical relation between herself and Carol, +so that she was vicariously yet veritably with Kennicott, and had the +right to be. + +She saw Carol during the first five minutes in Gopher Prairie. She +stared at the passing motor, at Kennicott and the girl beside him. In +that fog world of transference of emotion Vida had no normal jealousy +but a conviction that, since through Carol she had received Kennicott's +love, then Carol was a part of her, an astral self, a heightened and +more beloved self. She was glad of the girl's charm, of the smooth black +hair, the airy head and young shoulders. But she was suddenly angry. +Carol glanced at her for a quarter-second, but looked past her, at an +old roadside barn. If she had made the great sacrifice, at least she +expected gratitude and recognition, Vida raged, while her conscious +schoolroom mind fussily begged her to control this insanity. + +During her first call half of her wanted to welcome a fellow reader of +books; the other half itched to find out whether Carol knew anything +about Kennicott's former interest in herself. She discovered that Carol +was not aware that he had ever touched another woman's hand. Carol was +an amusing, naive, curiously learned child. While Vida was most actively +describing the glories of the Thanatopsis, and complimenting this +librarian on her training as a worker, she was fancying that this girl +was the child born of herself and Kennicott; and out of that symbolizing +she had a comfort she had not known for months. + +When she came home, after supper with the Kennicotts and Guy Pollock, +she had a sudden and rather pleasant backsliding from devotion. She +bustled into her room, she slammed her hat on the bed, and chattered, "I +don't CARE! I'm a lot like her--except a few years older. I'm light and +quick, too, and I can talk just as well as she can, and I'm sure----Men +are such fools. I'd be ten times as sweet to make love to as that dreamy +baby. And I AM as good-looking!" + +But as she sat on the bed and stared at her thin thighs, defiance oozed +away. She mourned: + +"No. I'm not. Dear God, how we fool ourselves! I pretend I'm +'spiritual.' I pretend my legs are graceful. They aren't. They're +skinny. Old-maidish. I hate it! I hate that impertinent young woman! A +selfish cat, taking his love for granted. . . . No, she's adorable. . . . +I don't think she ought to be so friendly with Guy Pollock." + +For a year Vida loved Carol, longed to and did not pry into the details +of her relations with Kennicott, enjoyed her spirit of play as expressed +in childish tea-parties, and, with the mystic bond between them +forgotten, was healthily vexed by Carol's assumption that she was a +sociological messiah come to save Gopher Prairie. This last facet of +Vida's thought was the one which, after a year, was most often turned to +the light. In a testy way she brooded, "These people that want to change +everything all of a sudden without doing any work, make me tired! Here I +have to go and work for four years, picking out the pupils for +debates, and drilling them, and nagging at them to get them to look up +references, and begging them to choose their own subjects--four years, +to get up a couple of good debates! And she comes rushing in, and +expects in one year to change the whole town into a lollypop paradise +with everybody stopping everything else to grow tulips and drink tea. +And it's a comfy homey old town, too!" + +She had such an outburst after each of Carol's campaigns--for better +Thanatopsis programs, for Shavian plays, for more human schools--but she +never betrayed herself, and always she was penitent. + +Vida was, and always would be, a reformer, a liberal. She believed that +details could excitingly be altered, but that things-in-general were +comely and kind and immutable. Carol was, without understanding or +accepting it, a revolutionist, a radical, and therefore possessed of +"constructive ideas," which only the destroyer can have, since the +reformer believes that all the essential constructing has already been +done. After years of intimacy it was this unexpressed opposition more +than the fancied loss of Kennicott's love which held Vida irritably +fascinated. + +But the birth of Hugh revived the transcendental emotion. She was +indignant that Carol should not be utterly fulfilled in having borne +Kennicott's child. She admitted that Carol seemed to have affection and +immaculate care for the baby, but she began to identify herself now with +Kennicott, and in this phase to feel that she had endured quite too much +from Carol's instability. + +She recalled certain other women who had come from the Outside and had +not appreciated Gopher Prairie. She remembered the rector's wife who had +been chilly to callers and who was rumored throughout the town to +have said, "Re-ah-ly I cawn't endure this bucolic heartiness in the +responses." The woman was positively known to have worn handkerchiefs in +her bodice as padding--oh, the town had simply roared at her. Of course +the rector and she were got rid of in a few months. + +Then there was the mysterious woman with the dyed hair and penciled +eyebrows, who wore tight English dresses, like basques, who smelled of +stale musk, who flirted with the men and got them to advance money +for her expenses in a lawsuit, who laughed at Vida's reading at a +school-entertainment, and went off owing a hotel-bill and the three +hundred dollars she had borrowed. + +Vida insisted that she loved Carol, but with some satisfaction she +compared her to these traducers of the town. + + +II + + +Vida had enjoyed Raymie Wutherspoon's singing in the Episcopal choir; +she had thoroughly reviewed the weather with him at Methodist sociables +and in the Bon Ton. But she did not really know him till she moved to +Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house. It was five years after her affair with +Kennicott. She was thirty-nine, Raymie perhaps a year younger. + +She said to him, and sincerely, "My! You can do anything, with your +brains and tact and that heavenly voice. You were so good in 'The Girl +from Kankakee.' You made me feel terribly stupid. If you'd gone on the +stage, I believe you'd be just as good as anybody in Minneapolis. But +still, I'm not sorry you stuck to business. It's such a constructive +career." + +"Do you really think so?" yearned Raymie, across the apple-sauce. + +It was the first time that either of them had found a dependable +intellectual companionship. They looked down on Willis Woodford the +bank-clerk, and his anxious babycentric wife, the silent Lyman Casses, +the slangy traveling man, and the rest of Mrs. Gurrey's unenlightened +guests. They sat opposite, and they sat late. They were exhilarated to +find that they agreed in confession of faith: + +"People like Sam Clark and Harry Haydock aren't earnest about music and +pictures and eloquent sermons and really refined movies, but then, on +the other hand, people like Carol Kennicott put too much stress on all +this art. Folks ought to appreciate lovely things, but just the same, +they got to be practical and--they got to look at things in a practical +way." + +Smiling, passing each other the pressed-glass pickle-dish, seeing Mrs. +Gurrey's linty supper-cloth irradiated by the light of intimacy, Vida +and Raymie talked about Carol's rose-colored turban, Carol's sweetness, +Carol's new low shoes, Carol's erroneous theory that there was no need +of strict discipline in school, Carol's amiability in the Bon Ton, +Carol's flow of wild ideas, which, honestly, just simply made you +nervous trying to keep track of them. + +About the lovely display of gents' shirts in the Bon Ton window as +dressed by Raymie, about Raymie's offertory last Sunday, the fact that +there weren't any of these new solos as nice as "Jerusalem the Golden," +and the way Raymie stood up to Juanita Haydock when she came into the +store and tried to run things and he as much as told her that she was +so anxious to have folks think she was smart and bright that she +said things she didn't mean, and anyway, Raymie was running the +shoe-department, and if Juanita, or Harry either, didn't like the way he +ran things, they could go get another man. + +About Vida's new jabot which made her look thirty-two (Vida's estimate) +or twenty-two (Raymie's estimate), Vida's plan to have the high-school +Debating Society give a playlet, and the difficulty of keeping the +younger boys well behaved on the playground when a big lubber like Cy +Bogart acted up so. + +About the picture post-card which Mrs. Dawson had sent to Mrs. Cass from +Pasadena, showing roses growing right outdoors in February, the change +in time on No. 4, the reckless way Dr. Gould always drove his auto, the +reckless way almost all these people drove their autos, the fallacy of +supposing that these socialists could carry on a government for as much +as six months if they ever did have a chance to try out their theories, +and the crazy way in which Carol jumped from subject to subject. + +Vida had once beheld Raymie as a thin man with spectacles, mournful +drawn-out face, and colorless stiff hair. Now she noted that his jaw was +square, that his long hands moved quickly and were bleached in a refined +manner, and that his trusting eyes indicated that he had "led a clean +life." She began to call him "Ray," and to bounce in defense of his +unselfishness and thoughtfulness every time Juanita Haydock or Rita +Gould giggled about him at the Jolly Seventeen. + +On a Sunday afternoon of late autumn they walked down to Lake +Minniemashie. Ray said that he would like to see the ocean; it must be a +grand sight; it must be much grander than a lake, even a great big lake. +Vida had seen it, she stated modestly; she had seen it on a summer trip +to Cape Cod. + +"Have you been clear to Cape Cod? Massachusetts? I knew you'd traveled, +but I never realized you'd been that far!" + +Made taller and younger by his interest she poured out, "Oh my yes. +It was a wonderful trip. So many points of interest through +Massachusetts--historical. There's Lexington where we turned back +the redcoats, and Longfellow's home at Cambridge, and Cape Cod--just +everything--fishermen and whale-ships and sand-dunes and everything." + +She wished that she had a little cane to carry. He broke off a willow +branch. + +"My, you're strong!" she said. + +"No, not very. I wish there was a Y. M. C. A. here, so I could take up +regular exercise. I used to think I could do pretty good acrobatics, if +I had a chance." + +"I'm sure you could. You're unusually lithe, for a large man." + +"Oh no, not so very. But I wish we had a Y. M. It would be dandy to have +lectures and everything, and I'd like to take a class in improving +the memory--I believe a fellow ought to go on educating himself and +improving his mind even if he is in business, don't you, Vida--I guess +I'm kind of fresh to call you 'Vida'!" + +"I've been calling you 'Ray' for weeks!" + +He wondered why she sounded tart. + +He helped her down the bank to the edge of the lake but dropped her hand +abruptly, and as they sat on a willow log and he brushed her sleeve, he +delicately moved over and murmured, "Oh, excuse me--accident." + +She stared at the mud-browned chilly water, the floating gray reeds. + +"You look so thoughtful," he said. + +She threw out her hands. "I am! Will you kindly tell me what's the use +of--anything! Oh, don't mind me. I'm a moody old hen. Tell me about your +plan for getting a partnership in the Bon Ton. I do think you're right: +Harry Haydock and that mean old Simons ought to give you one." + +He hymned the old unhappy wars in which he had been Achilles and the +mellifluous Nestor, yet gone his righteous ways unheeded by the cruel +kings. . . . "Why, if I've told 'em once, I've told 'em a dozen times to +get in a side-line of light-weight pants for gents' summer wear, and of +course here they go and let a cheap kike like Rifkin beat them to it and +grab the trade right off 'em, and then Harry said--you know how Harry +is, maybe he don't mean to be grouchy, but he's such a sore-head----" + +He gave her a hand to rise. "If you don't MIND. I think a fellow is +awful if a lady goes on a walk with him and she can't trust him and he +tries to flirt with her and all." + +"I'm sure you're highly trustworthy!" she snapped, and she sprang up +without his aid. Then, smiling excessively, "Uh--don't you think Carol +sometimes fails to appreciate Dr. Will's ability?" + + +III + + +Ray habitually asked her about his window-trimming, the display of the +new shoes, the best music for the entertainment at the Eastern Star, and +(though he was recognized as a professional authority on what the town +called "gents' furnishings") about his own clothes. She persuaded him +not to wear the small bow ties which made him look like an elongated +Sunday School scholar. Once she burst out: + +"Ray, I could shake you! Do you know you're too apologetic? You always +appreciate other people too much. You fuss over Carol Kennicott when she +has some crazy theory that we all ought to turn anarchists or live on +figs and nuts or something. And you listen when Harry Haydock tries to +show off and talk about turnovers and credits and things you know lots +better than he does. Look folks in the eye! Glare at 'em! Talk deep! +You're the smartest man in town, if you only knew it. You ARE!" + +He could not believe it. He kept coming back to her for confirmation. He +practised glaring and talking deep, but he circuitously hinted to Vida +that when he had tried to look Harry Haydock in the eye, Harry had +inquired, "What's the matter with you, Raymie? Got a pain?" But +afterward Harry had asked about Kantbeatum socks in a manner which, Ray +felt, was somehow different from his former condescension. + +They were sitting on the squat yellow satin settee in the boarding-house +parlor. As Ray reannounced that he simply wouldn't stand it many more +years if Harry didn't give him a partnership, his gesticulating hand +touched Vida's shoulders. + +"Oh, excuse me!" he pleaded. + +"It's all right. Well, I think I must be running up to my room. +Headache," she said briefly. + + +IV + + +Ray and she had stopped in at Dyer's for a hot chocolate on their way +home from the movies, that March evening. Vida speculated, "Do you know +that I may not be here next year?" + +"What do you mean?" + +With her fragile narrow nails she smoothed the glass slab which formed +the top of the round table at which they sat. She peeped through the +glass at the perfume-boxes of black and gold and citron in the hollow +table. She looked about at shelves of red rubber water-bottles, pale +yellow sponges, wash-rags with blue borders, hair-brushes of polished +cherry backs. She shook her head like a nervous medium coming out of a +trance, stared at him unhappily, demanded: + +"Why should I stay here? And I must make up my mind. Now. Time to renew +our teaching-contracts for next year. I think I'll go teach in some +other town. Everybody here is tired of me. I might as well go. Before +folks come out and SAY they're tired of me. I have to decide tonight. I +might as well----Oh, no matter. Come. Let's skip. It's late." + +She sprang up, ignoring his wail of "Vida! Wait! Sit down! Gosh! I'm +flabbergasted! Gee! Vida!" She marched out. While he was paying his +check she got ahead. He ran after her, blubbering, "Vida! Wait!" In the +shade of the lilacs in front of the Gougerling house he came up with +her, stayed her flight by a hand on her shoulder. + +"Oh, don't! Don't! What does it matter?" she begged. She was sobbing, +her soft wrinkly lids soaked with tears. "Who cares for my affection or +help? I might as well drift on, forgotten. O Ray, please don't hold +me. Let me go. I'll just decide not to renew my contract here, and--and +drift--way off----" + +His hand was steady on her shoulder. She dropped her head, rubbed the +back of his hand with her cheek. + +They were married in June. + + +V + + +They took the Ole Jenson house. "It's small," said Vida, "but it's got +the dearest vegetable garden, and I love having time to get near to +Nature for once." + +Though she became Vida Wutherspoon technically, and though she certainly +had no ideals about the independence of keeping her name, she continued +to be known as Vida Sherwin. + +She had resigned from the school, but she kept up one class in English. +She bustled about on every committee of the Thanatopsis; she was always +popping into the rest-room to make Mrs. Nodelquist sweep the floor; +she was appointed to the library-board to succeed Carol; she taught the +Senior Girls' Class in the Episcopal Sunday School, and tried to revive +the King's Daughters. She exploded into self-confidence and happiness; +her draining thoughts were by marriage turned into energy. She became +daily and visibly more plump, and though she chattered as eagerly, she +was less obviously admiring of marital bliss, less sentimental about +babies, sharper in demanding that the entire town share her reforms--the +purchase of a park, the compulsory cleaning of back-yards. + +She penned Harry Haydock at his desk in the Bon Ton; she interrupted +his joking; she told him that it was Ray who had built up the +shoe-department and men's department; she demanded that he be made a +partner. Before Harry could answer she threatened that Ray and she would +start a rival shop. "I'll clerk behind the counter myself, and a Certain +Party is all ready to put up the money." + +She rather wondered who the Certain Party was. + +Ray was made a one-sixth partner. + +He became a glorified floor-walker, greeting the men with new poise, no +longer coyly subservient to pretty women. When he was not affectionately +coercing people into buying things they did not need, he stood at the +back of the store, glowing, abstracted, feeling masculine as he recalled +the tempestuous surprises of love revealed by Vida. + +The only remnant of Vida's identification of herself with Carol was a +jealousy when she saw Kennicott and Ray together, and reflected that +some people might suppose that Kennicott was his superior. She was sure +that Carol thought so, and she wanted to shriek, "You needn't try to +gloat! I wouldn't have your pokey old husband. He hasn't one single bit +of Ray's spiritual nobility." + + + +CHAPTER XXII + +I + +THE greatest mystery about a human being is not his reaction to sex or +praise, but the manner in which he contrives to put in twenty-four hours +a day. It is this which puzzles the long-shoreman about the clerk, the +Londoner about the bushman. It was this which puzzled Carol in regard +to the married Vida. Carol herself had the baby, a larger house to care +for, all the telephone calls for Kennicott when he was away; and she +read everything, while Vida was satisfied with newspaper headlines. + +But after detached brown years in boarding-houses, Vida was hungry for +housework, for the most pottering detail of it. She had no maid, nor +wanted one. She cooked, baked, swept, washed supper-cloths, with +the triumph of a chemist in a new laboratory. To her the hearth was +veritably the altar. When she went shopping she hugged the cans of soup, +and she bought a mop or a side of bacon as though she were preparing for +a reception. She knelt beside a bean sprout and crooned, "I raised this +with my own hands--I brought this new life into the world." + +"I love her for being so happy," Carol brooded. "I ought to be that way. +I worship the baby, but the housework----Oh, I suppose I'm fortunate; so +much better off than farm-women on a new clearing, or people in a slum." + +It has not yet been recorded that any human being has gained a very +large or permanent contentment from meditation upon the fact that he is +better off than others. + +In Carol's own twenty-four hours a day she got up, dressed the baby, had +breakfast, talked to Oscarina about the day's shopping, put the baby on +the porch to play, went to the butcher's to choose between steak and +pork chops, bathed the baby, nailed up a shelf, had dinner, put the baby +to bed for a nap, paid the iceman, read for an hour, took the baby out +for a walk, called on Vida, had supper, put the baby to bed, darned +socks, listened to Kennicott's yawning comment on what a fool Dr. +McGanum was to try to use that cheap X-ray outfit of his on an +epithelioma, repaired a frock, drowsily heard Kennicott stoke the +furnace, tried to read a page of Thorstein Veblen--and the day was gone. + +Except when Hugh was vigorously naughty, or whiney, or laughing, +or saying "I like my chair" with thrilling maturity, she was always +enfeebled by loneliness. She no longer felt superior about that +misfortune. She would gladly have been converted to Vida's satisfaction +in Gopher Prairie and mopping the floor. + + +II + + +Carol drove through an astonishing number of books from the public +library and from city shops. Kennicott was at first uncomfortable over +her disconcerting habit of buying them. A book was a book, and if you +had several thousand of them right here in the library, free, why the +dickens should you spend your good money? After worrying about it for +two or three years, he decided that this was one of the Funny Ideas +which she had caught as a librarian and from which she would never +entirely recover. + +The authors whom she read were most of them frightfully annoyed by the +Vida Sherwins. They were young American sociologists, young English +realists, Russian horrorists; Anatole France, Rolland, Nexo, Wells, +Shaw, Key, Edgar Lee Masters, Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Henry +Mencken, and all the other subversive philosophers and artists whom +women were consulting everywhere, in batik-curtained studios in New +York, in Kansas farmhouses, San Francisco drawing-rooms, Alabama schools +for negroes. From them she got the same confused desire which the +million other women felt; the same determination to be class-conscious +without discovering the class of which she was to be conscious. + +Certainly her reading precipitated her observations of Main Street, of +Gopher Prairie and of the several adjacent Gopher Prairies which she had +seen on drives with Kennicott. In her fluid thought certain convictions +appeared, jaggedly, a fragment of an impression at a time, while she was +going to sleep, or manicuring her nails, or waiting for Kennicott. + +These convictions she presented to Vida Sherwin--Vida +Wutherspoon--beside a radiator, over a bowl of not very good walnuts and +pecans from Uncle Whittier's grocery, on an evening when both Kennicott +and Raymie had gone out of town with the other officers of the Ancient +and Affiliated Order of Spartans, to inaugurate a new chapter at +Wakamin. Vida had come to the house for the night. She helped in putting +Hugh to bed, sputtering the while about his soft skin. Then they talked +till midnight. + +What Carol said that evening, what she was passionately thinking, was +also emerging in the minds of women in ten thousand Gopher Prairies. Her +formulations were not pat solutions but visions of a tragic futility. +She did not utter them so compactly that they can be given in her words; +they were roughened with "Well, you see" and "if you get what I mean" +and "I don't know that I'm making myself clear." But they were definite +enough, and indignant enough. + + +III + + +In reading popular stories and seeing plays, asserted Carol, she +had found only two traditions of the American small town. The first +tradition, repeated in scores of magazines every month, is that the +American village remains the one sure abode of friendship, honesty, +and clean sweet marriageable girls. Therefore all men who succeed in +painting in Paris or in finance in New York at last become weary of +smart women, return to their native towns, assert that cities are +vicious, marry their childhood sweethearts and, presumably, joyously +abide in those towns until death. + +The other tradition is that the significant features of all villages are +whiskers, iron dogs upon lawns, gold bricks, checkers, jars of gilded +cat-tails, and shrewd comic old men who are known as "hicks" and who +ejaculate "Waal I swan." This altogether admirable tradition rules +the vaudeville stage, facetious illustrators, and syndicated newspaper +humor, but out of actual life it passed forty years ago. Carol's small +town thinks not in hoss-swapping but in cheap motor cars, +telephones, ready-made clothes, silos, alfalfa, kodaks, phonographs, +leather-upholstered Morris chairs, bridge-prizes, oil-stocks, +motion-pictures, land-deals, unread sets of Mark Twain, and a chaste +version of national politics. + +With such a small-town life a Kennicott or a Champ Perry is content, but +there are also hundreds of thousands, particularly women and young men, +who are not at all content. The more intelligent young people (and the +fortunate widows!) flee to the cities with agility and, despite the +fictional tradition, resolutely stay there, seldom returning even for +holidays. The most protesting patriots of the towns leave them in old +age, if they can afford it, and go to live in California or in the +cities. + +The reason, Carol insisted, is not a whiskered rusticity. It is nothing +so amusing! + +It is an unimaginatively standardized background, a sluggishness of +speech and manners, a rigid ruling of the spirit by the desire to appear +respectable. It is contentment . . . the contentment of the quiet +dead, who are scornful of the living for their restless walking. It is +negation canonized as the one positive virtue. It is the prohibition of +happiness. It is slavery self-sought and self-defended. It is dullness +made God. + +A savorless people, gulping tasteless food, and sitting afterward, +coatless and thoughtless, in rocking-chairs prickly with inane +decorations, listening to mechanical music, saying mechanical things +about the excellence of Ford automobiles, and viewing themselves as the +greatest race in the world. + + +IV + + +She had inquired as to the effect of this dominating dullness upon +foreigners. She remembered the feeble exotic quality to be found in the +first-generation Scandinavians; she recalled the Norwegian Fair at the +Lutheran Church, to which Bea had taken her. There, in the bondestue, +the replica of a Norse farm kitchen, pale women in scarlet jackets +embroidered with gold thread and colored beads, in black skirts with a +line of blue, green-striped aprons, and ridged caps very pretty to set +off a fresh face, had served rommegrod og lefse--sweet cakes and sour +milk pudding spiced with cinnamon. For the first time in Gopher Prairie +Carol had found novelty. She had reveled in the mild foreignness of it. + +But she saw these Scandinavian women zealously exchanging their spiced +puddings and red jackets for fried pork chops and congealed white +blouses, trading the ancient Christmas hymns of the fjords for "She's My +Jazzland Cutie," being Americanized into uniformity, and in less than +a generation losing in the grayness whatever pleasant new customs +they might have added to the life of the town. Their sons finished the +process. In ready-made clothes and ready-made high-school phrases they +sank into propriety, and the sound American customs had absorbed without +one trace of pollution another alien invasion. + +And along with these foreigners, she felt herself being ironed into +glossy mediocrity, and she rebelled, in fear. + +The respectability of the Gopher Prairies, said Carol, is reinforced by +vows of poverty and chastity in the matter of knowledge. Except for +half a dozen in each town the citizens are proud of that achievement +of ignorance which it is so easy to come by. To be "intellectual" or +"artistic" or, in their own word, to be "highbrow," is to be priggish +and of dubious virtue. + +Large experiments in politics and in co-operative distribution, ventures +requiring knowledge, courage, and imagination, do originate in the West +and Middlewest, but they are not of the towns, they are of the farmers. +If these heresies are supported by the townsmen it is only by occasional +teachers doctors, lawyers, the labor unions, and workmen like Miles +Bjornstam, who are punished by being mocked as "cranks," as "half-baked +parlor socialists." The editor and the rector preach at them. The cloud +of serene ignorance submerges them in unhappiness and futility. + + +V + + +Here Vida observed, "Yes--well----Do you know, I've always thought +that Ray would have made a wonderful rector. He has what I call an +essentially religious soul. My! He'd have read the service beautifully! +I suppose it's too late now, but as I tell him, he can also serve +the world by selling shoes and----I wonder if we oughtn't to have +family-prayers?" + + +VI + + +Doubtless all small towns, in all countries, in all ages, Carol +admitted, have a tendency to be not only dull but mean, bitter, infested +with curiosity. In France or Tibet quite as much as in Wyoming or +Indiana these timidities are inherent in isolation. + +But a village in a country which is taking pains to become altogether +standardized and pure, which aspires to succeed Victorian England as the +chief mediocrity of the world, is no longer merely provincial, no longer +downy and restful in its leaf-shadowed ignorance. It is a force seeking +to dominate the earth, to drain the hills and sea of color, to set Dante +at boosting Gopher Prairie, and to dress the high gods in Klassy Kollege +Klothes. Sure of itself, it bullies other civilizations, as a traveling +salesman in a brown derby conquers the wisdom of China and tacks +advertisements of cigarettes over arches for centuries dedicate to the +sayings of Confucius. + +Such a society functions admirably in the large production of cheap +automobiles, dollar watches, and safety razors. But it is not satisfied +until the entire world also admits that the end and joyous purpose of +living is to ride in flivvers, to make advertising-pictures of dollar +watches, and in the twilight to sit talking not of love and courage but +of the convenience of safety razors. + +And such a society, such a nation, is determined by the Gopher Prairies. +The greatest manufacturer is but a busier Sam Clark, and all the rotund +senators and presidents are village lawyers and bankers grown nine feet +tall. + +Though a Gopher Prairie regards itself as a part of the Great World, +compares itself to Rome and Vienna, it will not acquire the scientific +spirit, the international mind, which would make it great. It picks at +information which will visibly procure money or social distinction. +Its conception of a community ideal is not the grand manner, the noble +aspiration, the fine aristocratic pride, but cheap labor for the kitchen +and rapid increase in the price of land. It plays at cards on greasy +oil-cloth in a shanty, and does not know that prophets are walking and +talking on the terrace. + +If all the provincials were as kindly as Champ Perry and Sam Clark there +would be no reason for desiring the town to seek great traditions. It is +the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Dyers, the Jackson Elders, small busy men +crushingly powerful in their common purpose, viewing themselves as men +of the world but keeping themselves men of the cash-register and the +comic film, who make the town a sterile oligarchy. + + +VII + + +She had sought to be definite in analyzing the surface ugliness of +the Gopher Prairies. She asserted that it is a matter of universal +similarity; of flimsiness of construction, so that the towns resemble +frontier camps; of neglect of natural advantages, so that the hills +are covered with brush, the lakes shut off by railroads, and the +creeks lined with dumping-grounds; of depressing sobriety of color; +rectangularity of buildings; and excessive breadth and straightness of +the gashed streets, so that there is no escape from gales and from sight +of the grim sweep of land, nor any windings to coax the loiterer along, +while the breadth which would be majestic in an avenue of palaces makes +the low shabby shops creeping down the typical Main Street the more mean +by comparison. + +The universal similarity--that is the physical expression of the +philosophy of dull safety. Nine-tenths of the American towns are so +alike that it is the completest boredom to wander from one to another. +Always, west of Pittsburg, and often, east of it, there is the same +lumber yard, the same railroad station, the same Ford garage, the same +creamery, the same box-like houses and two-story shops. The new, more +conscious houses are alike in their very attempts at diversity: the same +bungalows, the same square houses of stucco or tapestry brick. The shops +show the same standardized, nationally advertised wares; the newspapers +of sections three thousand miles apart have the same "syndicated +features"; the boy in Arkansas displays just such a flamboyant +ready-made suit as is found on just such a boy in Delaware, both of them +iterate the same slang phrases from the same sporting-pages, and if +one of them is in college and the other is a barber, no one may surmise +which is which. + +If Kennicott were snatched from Gopher Prairie and instantly conveyed +to a town leagues away, he would not realize it. He would go down +apparently the same Main Street (almost certainly it would be called +Main Street); in the same drug store he would see the same young man +serving the same ice-cream soda to the same young woman with the same +magazines and phonograph records under her arm. Not till he had climbed +to his office and found another sign on the door, another Dr. Kennicott +inside, would he understand that something curious had presumably +happened. + +Finally, behind all her comments, Carol saw the fact that the prairie +towns no more exist to serve the farmers who are their reason of +existence than do the great capitals; they exist to fatten on the +farmers, to provide for the townsmen large motors and social preferment; +and, unlike the capitals, they do not give to the district in return for +usury a stately and permanent center, but only this ragged camp. It is a +"parasitic Greek civilization"--minus the civilization. + +"There we are then," said Carol. "The remedy? Is there any? Criticism, +perhaps, for the beginning of the beginning. Oh, there's nothing that +attacks the Tribal God Mediocrity that doesn't help a little . . . and +probably there's nothing that helps very much. Perhaps some day the +farmers will build and own their market-towns. (Think of the club they +could have!) But I'm afraid I haven't any 'reform program.' Not any +more! The trouble is spiritual, and no League or Party can enact a +preference for gardens rather than dumping-grounds. . . . There's my +confession. WELL?" + +"In other words, all you want is perfection?" + +"Yes! Why not?" + +"How you hate this place! How can you expect to do anything with it if +you haven't any sympathy?" + +"But I have! And affection. Or else I wouldn't fume so. I've learned +that Gopher Prairie isn't just an eruption on the prairie, as I thought +first, but as large as New York. In New York I wouldn't know more than +forty or fifty people, and I know that many here. Go on! Say what you're +thinking." + +"Well, my dear, if I DID take all your notions seriously, it would be +pretty discouraging. Imagine how a person would feel, after working hard +for years and helping to build up a nice town, to have you airily flit +in and simply say 'Rotten!' Think that's fair?" + +"Why not? It must be just as discouraging for the Gopher Prairieite to +see Venice and make comparisons." + +"It would not! I imagine gondolas are kind of nice to ride in, but we've +got better bath-rooms! But----My dear, you're not the only person in +this town who has done some thinking for herself, although (pardon my +rudeness) I'm afraid you think so. I'll admit we lack some things. Maybe +our theater isn't as good as shows in Paris. All right! I don't want +to see any foreign culture suddenly forced on us--whether it's +street-planning or table-manners or crazy communistic ideas." + +Vida sketched what she termed "practical things that will make a happier +and prettier town, but that do belong to our life, that actually are +being done." Of the Thanatopsis Club she spoke; of the rest-room, the +fight against mosquitos, the campaign for more gardens and shade-trees +and sewers--matters not fantastic and nebulous and distant, but +immediate and sure. + +Carol's answer was fantastic and nebulous enough: + +"Yes. . . . Yes. . . . I know. They're good. But if I could put through +all those reforms at once, I'd still want startling, exotic things. Life +is comfortable and clean enough here already. And so secure. What it +needs is to be less secure, more eager. The civic improvements which +I'd like the Thanatopsis to advocate are Strindberg plays, and classic +dancers--exquisite legs beneath tulle--and (I can see him so clearly!) +a thick, black-bearded, cynical Frenchman who would sit about and drink +and sing opera and tell bawdy stories and laugh at our proprieties and +quote Rabelais and not be ashamed to kiss my hand!" + +"Huh! Not sure about the rest of it but I guess that's what you and all +the other discontented young women really want: some stranger kissing +your hand!" At Carol's gasp, the old squirrel-like Vida darted out and +cried, "Oh, my dear, don't take that too seriously. I just meant----" + +"I know. You just meant it. Go on. Be good for my soul. Isn't it funny: +here we all are--me trying to be good for Gopher Prairie's soul, and +Gopher Prairie trying to be good for my soul. What are my other sins?" + +"Oh, there's plenty of them. Possibly some day we shall have your fat +cynical Frenchman (horrible, sneering, tobacco-stained object, ruining +his brains and his digestion with vile liquor!) but, thank heaven, for +a while we'll manage to keep busy with our lawns and pavements! You see, +these things really are coming! The Thanatopsis is getting somewhere. +And you----" Her tone italicized the words--"to my great disappointment, +are doing less, not more, than the people you laugh at! Sam Clark, +on the school-board, is working for better school ventilation. Ella +Stowbody (whose elocuting you always think is so absurd) has persuaded +the railroad to share the expense of a parked space at the station, to +do away with that vacant lot. + +"You sneer so easily. I'm sorry, but I do think there's something +essentially cheap in your attitude. Especially about religion. + +"If you must know, you're not a sound reformer at all. You're an +impossibilist. And you give up too easily. You gave up on the new +city hall, the anti-fly campaign, club papers, the library-board, the +dramatic association--just because we didn't graduate into Ibsen the +very first thing. You want perfection all at once. Do you know what the +finest thing you've done is--aside from bringing Hugh into the world? +It was the help you gave Dr. Will during baby-welfare week. You didn't +demand that each baby be a philosopher and artist before you weighed +him, as you do with the rest of us. + +"And now I'm afraid perhaps I'll hurt you. We're going to have a new +schoolbuilding in this town--in just a few years--and we'll have it +without one bit of help or interest from you! + +"Professor Mott and I and some others have been dinging away at the +moneyed men for years. We didn't call on you because you would never +stand the pound-pound-pounding year after year without one bit of +encouragement. And we've won! I've got the promise of everybody who +counts that just as soon as war-conditions permit, they'll vote the +bonds for the schoolhouse. And we'll have a wonderful building--lovely +brown brick, with big windows, and agricultural and manual-training +departments. When we get it, that'll be my answer to all your theories!" + +"I'm glad. And I'm ashamed I haven't had any part in getting it. +But----Please don't think I'm unsympathetic if I ask one question: Will +the teachers in the hygienic new building go on informing the children +that Persia is a yellow spot on the map, and 'Caesar' the title of a +book of grammatical puzzles?" + + +VIII + + +Vida was indignant; Carol was apologetic; they talked for another hour, +the eternal Mary and Martha--an immoralist Mary and a reformist Martha. +It was Vida who conquered. + +The fact that she had been left out of the campaign for the new +schoolbuilding disconcerted Carol. She laid her dreams of perfection +aside. When Vida asked her to take charge of a group of Camp Fire Girls, +she obeyed, and had definite pleasure out of the Indian dances and +ritual and costumes. She went more regularly to the Thanatopsis. With +Vida as lieutenant and unofficial commander she campaigned for a village +nurse to attend poor families, raised the fund herself, saw to it that +the nurse was young and strong and amiable and intelligent. + +Yet all the while she beheld the burly cynical Frenchman and the +diaphanous dancers as clearly as the child sees its air-born playmates; +she relished the Camp Fire Girls not because, in Vida's words, "this +Scout training will help so much to make them Good Wives," but because +she hoped that the Sioux dances would bring subversive color into their +dinginess. + +She helped Ella Stowbody to set out plants in the tiny triangular park +at the railroad station; she squatted in the dirt, with a small curved +trowel and the most decorous of gardening gauntlets; she talked to Ella +about the public-spiritedness of fuchsias and cannas; and she felt +that she was scrubbing a temple deserted by the gods and empty even of +incense and the sound of chanting. Passengers looking from trains saw +her as a village woman of fading prettiness, incorruptible virtue, and +no abnormalities; the baggageman heard her say, "Oh yes, I do think +it will be a good example for the children"; and all the while she saw +herself running garlanded through the streets of Babylon. + +Planting led her to botanizing. She never got much farther than +recognizing the tiger lily and the wild rose, but she rediscovered +Hugh. "What does the buttercup say, mummy?" he cried, his hand full of +straggly grasses, his cheek gilded with pollen. She knelt to embrace +him; she affirmed that he made life more than full; she was altogether +reconciled . . . for an hour. + +But she awoke at night to hovering death. She crept away from the hump +of bedding that was Kennicott; tiptoed into the bathroom and, by the +mirror in the door of the medicine-cabinet, examined her pallid face. + +Wasn't she growing visibly older in ratio as Vida grew plumper and +younger? Wasn't her nose sharper? Wasn't her neck granulated? She +stared and choked. She was only thirty. But the five years since her +marriage--had they not gone by as hastily and stupidly as though she had +been under ether; would time not slink past till death? She pounded her +fist on the cool enameled rim of the bathtub and raged mutely against +the indifferent gods: + +"I don't care! I won't endure it! They lie so--Vida and Will and Aunt +Bessie--they tell me I ought to be satisfied with Hugh and a good home +and planting seven nasturtiums in a station garden! I am I! When I die +the world will be annihilated, as far as I'm concerned. I am I! I'm not +content to leave the sea and the ivory towers to others. I want them for +me! Damn Vida! Damn all of them! Do they think they can make me believe +that a display of potatoes at Howland & Gould's is enough beauty and +strangeness?" + + + +CHAPTER XXIII + +I + +WHEN America entered the Great European War, Vida sent Raymie off to an +officers' training-camp--less than a year after her wedding. Raymie was +diligent and rather strong. He came out a first lieutenant of infantry, +and was one of the earliest sent abroad. + +Carol grew definitely afraid of Vida as Vida transferred the passion +which had been released in marriage to the cause of the war; as she +lost all tolerance. When Carol was touched by the desire for heroism +in Raymie and tried tactfully to express it, Vida made her feel like an +impertinent child. + +By enlistment and draft, the sons of Lyman Cass, Nat Hicks, Sam Clark +joined the army. But most of the soldiers were the sons of German and +Swedish farmers unknown to Carol. Dr. Terry Gould and Dr. McGanum became +captains in the medical corps, and were stationed at camps in Iowa and +Georgia. They were the only officers, besides Raymie, from the Gopher +Prairie district. Kennicott wanted to go with them, but the several +doctors of the town forgot medical rivalry and, meeting in council, +decided that he would do better to wait and keep the town well till he +should be needed. Kennicott was forty-two now; the only youngish doctor +left in a radius of eighteen miles. Old Dr. Westlake, who loved comfort +like a cat, protestingly rolled out at night for country calls, and +hunted through his collar-box for his G. A. R. button. + +Carol did not quite know what she thought about Kennicott's going. +Certainly she was no Spartan wife. She knew that he wanted to go; she +knew that this longing was always in him, behind his unchanged +trudging and remarks about the weather. She felt for him an admiring +affection--and she was sorry that she had nothing more than affection. + +Cy Bogart was the spectacular warrior of the town. Cy was no longer the +weedy boy who had sat in the loft speculating about Carol's egotism and +the mysteries of generation. He was nineteen now, tall, broad, busy, the +"town sport," famous for his ability to drink beer, to shake dice, to +tell undesirable stories, and, from his post in front of Dyer's drug +store, to embarrass the girls by "jollying" them as they passed. His +face was at once peach-bloomed and pimply. + +Cy was to be heard publishing it abroad that if he couldn't get the +Widow Bogart's permission to enlist, he'd run away and enlist without +it. He shouted that he "hated every dirty Hun; by gosh, if he could just +poke a bayonet into one big fat Heinie and learn him some decency and +democracy, he'd die happy." Cy got much reputation by whipping a farmboy +named Adolph Pochbauer for being a "damn hyphenated German." . . . This +was the younger Pochbauer, who was killed in the Argonne, while he was +trying to bring the body of his Yankee captain back to the lines. At +this time Cy Bogart was still dwelling in Gopher Prairie and planning to +go to war. + + +II + + +Everywhere Carol heard that the war was going to bring a basic change +in psychology, to purify and uplift everything 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 +surgical-dressings 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 +double-breasted 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 analysis 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 on 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-magyar-godknowswheria 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 self-confidence. +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-and-mother 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 heat-scorched. + +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 'phone-orders. . . . +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 hitching-post---- + +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 gun-cleaning, 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, belly-smiles. 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 death-rimmed 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 discouraged-looking 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 sewing-room." But when +he drew on a leaf from an old account-book (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 +sewing-rooms. + +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 confinement-cases 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 passenger-train 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-a-chug, 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, +eye-glassed; 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 merry-go-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-go-round 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 two-story 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 hot-dog +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, +"Story-time 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 love-making 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 hitching-straps, 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, large-limbed, 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 two-by-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 +shingle-nails 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 +lumber-camps 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 leather-upholstered +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 sick-room, +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's-magazines, 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 crayon-enlargement 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 darndest 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 school-teachers," 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 wheat-stacks 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 darning-cotton. +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 will +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 super-neighborly. "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 half-cocked, 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 under-standing. 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 he-men 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 eye-glasses 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 twenty-year-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, crumb-pecking, 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 oilcloth-covered 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 wooden-faced 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 self-confidence 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 +unheard-of 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 out-raged 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 twenty-five 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, yellow-faced 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-a-chick 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 orange-groves; 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 water-lined 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 church-members +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 oil-stocks. + + +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 new-painted 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 bright-brown 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 hair-dressers, 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 he did not ask questions, and +he 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 sun-speckled 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 hunger-strike; 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 poppy-garden.) 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 rest-room, 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?" + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MAIN STREET *** + +***** This file should be named 543.txt or 543.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/543/ + +Produced by Charles Keller and David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, +set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to +copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to +protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. 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