Main Street
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