_ 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 correspon-
dence 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 wait-
resses. 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----" _