Main Street
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.”