Main Street
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 í-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