_ 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 im-
maculate 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 exag-
gerated 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. _