CHAPTER I

by Sinclair Lewis

　　ION a hill by the Mississippi where Chippewas camped two generations ago,a girl stood in relief against the cornflower blue of Northern sky.She saw no Indians now; she saw flour-mills and the blinking windows ofskyscrapers in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Nor was she thinking of squawsand portages, and the Yankee fur-traders whose shadows were all abouther. She was meditating upon walnut fudge, the plays of Brieux, thereasons why heels run over, and the fact that the chemistry instructorhad stared at the new coiffure which concealed her ears.A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheat-lands bellied hertaffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and movingbeauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightenedto wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom. She lifted herarms, she leaned back against the wind, her skirt dipped and flared, alock blew wild. A girl on a hilltop; credulous, plastic, young; drinkingthe air as she longed to drink life. The eternal aching comedy ofexpectant youth.It is Carol Milford, fleeing for an hour from Blodgett College.The days of pioneering, of lassies in sunbonnets, and bears killed withaxes in piney clearings, are deader now than Camelot; and a rebelliousgirl is the spirit of that bewildered empire called the AmericanMiddlewest.IIBlodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis. It is a bulwark of soundreligion. It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin,and Robert Ingersoll. Pious families in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, theDakotas send their children thither, and Blodgett protects them from thewickedness of the universities. But it secretes friendly girls, youngmen who sing, and one lady instructress who really likes Milton andCarlyle. So the four years which Carol spent at Blodgett were notaltogether wasted. The smallness of the school, the fewness of rivals,permitted her to experiment with her perilous versatility. She playedtennis, gave chafing-dish parties, took a graduate seminar in the drama,went "twosing," and joined half a dozen societies for the practise ofthe arts or the tense stalking of a thing called General Culture.In her class there were two or three prettier girls, but none moreeager. She was noticeable equally in the classroom grind and at dances,though out of the three hundred students of Blodgett, scores recitedmore accurately and dozens Bostoned more smoothly. Every cell of herbody was alive--thin wrists, quince-blossom skin, ingenue eyes, blackhair.The other girls in her dormitory marveled at the slightness of herbody when they saw her in sheer negligee, or darting out wet from ashower-bath. She seemed then but half as large as they had supposed;a fragile child who must be cloaked with understanding kindness."Psychic," the girls whispered, and "spiritual." Yet so radioactivewere her nerves, so adventurous her trust in rather vaguely conceivedsweetness and light, that she was more energetic than any of the hulkingyoung women who, with calves bulging in heavy-ribbed woolen stockingsbeneath decorous blue serge bloomers, thuddingly galloped across thefloor of the "gym" in practise for the Blodgett Ladies' Basket-BallTeam.Even when she was tired her dark eyes were observant. She did not yetknow the immense ability of the world to be casually cruel and proudlydull, but if she should ever learn those dismaying powers, her eyeswould never become sullen or heavy or rheumily amorous.For all her enthusiasms, for all the fondness and the "crushes" whichshe inspired, Carol's acquaintances were shy of her. When she was mostardently singing hymns or planning deviltry she yet seemed gently aloofand critical. She was credulous, perhaps; a born hero-worshipper; yetshe did question and examine unceasingly. Whatever she might become shewould never be static.Her versatility ensnared her. By turns she hoped to discover that shehad an unusual voice, a talent for the piano, the ability to act, towrite, to manage organizations. Always she was disappointed, but alwaysshe effervesced anew--over the Student Volunteers, who intended tobecome missionaries, over painting scenery for the dramatic club, oversoliciting advertisements for the college magazine.She was on the peak that Sunday afternoon when she played in chapel.Out of the dusk her violin took up the organ theme, and the candle-lightrevealed her in a straight golden frock, her arm arched to the bow, herlips serious. Every man fell in love then with religion and Carol.Throughout Senior year she anxiously related all her experiments andpartial successes to a career. Daily, on the library steps or in thehall of the Main Building, the co-eds talked of "What shall we do whenwe finish college?" Even the girls who knew that they were going to bemarried pretended to be considering important business positions;even they who knew that they would have to work hinted about fabuloussuitors. As for Carol, she was an orphan; her only near relative was avanilla-flavored sister married to an optician in St. Paul. She had usedmost of the money from her father's estate. She was not in love--thatis, not often, nor ever long at a time. She would earn her living.But how she was to earn it, how she was to conquer the world--almostentirely for the world's own good--she did not see. Most of the girlswho were not betrothed meant to be teachers. Of these there were twosorts: careless young women who admitted that they intended to leave the"beastly classroom and grubby children" the minute they had a chance tomarry; and studious, sometimes bulbous-browed and pop-eyed maidens whoat class prayer-meetings requested God to "guide their feet along thepaths of greatest usefulness." Neither sort tempted Carol. The formerseemed insincere (a favorite word of hers at this era). The earnestvirgins were, she fancied, as likely to do harm as to do good by theirfaith in the value of parsing Caesar.At various times during Senior year Carol finally decided upon studyinglaw, writing motion-picture scenarios, professional nursing, andmarrying an unidentified hero.Then she found a hobby in sociology.The sociology instructor was new. He was married, and therefore taboo,but he had come from Boston, he had lived among poets and socialists andJews and millionaire uplifters at the University Settlement in NewYork, and he had a beautiful white strong neck. He led a giggling classthrough the prisons, the charity bureaus, the employment agencies ofMinneapolis and St. Paul. Trailing at the end of the line Carol wasindignant at the prodding curiosity of the others, their manner ofstaring at the poor as at a Zoo. She felt herself a great liberator.She put her hand to her mouth, her forefinger and thumb quite painfullypinching her lower lip, and frowned, and enjoyed being aloof.A classmate named Stewart Snyder, a competent bulky young man in a grayflannel shirt, a rusty black bow tie, and the green-and-purple classcap, grumbled to her as they walked behind the others in the muck of theSouth St. Paul stockyards, "These college chumps make me tired. They'reso top-lofty. They ought to of worked on the farm, the way I have. Theseworkmen put it all over them.""I just love common workmen," glowed Carol."Only you don't want to forget that common workmen don't think they'recommon!""You're right! I apologize!" Carol's brows lifted in the astonishment ofemotion, in a glory of abasement. Her eyes mothered the world. StewartSnyder peered at her. He rammed his large red fists into his pockets,he jerked them out, he resolutely got rid of them by clenching his handsbehind him, and he stammered:"I know. You _get_ people. Most of these darn co-eds----Say, Carol, youcould do a lot for people.""Oh--oh well--you know--sympathy and everything--if you were--say youwere a lawyer's wife. You'd understand his clients. I'm going to be alawyer. I admit I fall down in sympathy sometimes. I get so dog-goneimpatient with people that can't stand the gaff. You'd be good fora fellow that was too serious. Make him more--more--YOUknow--sympathetic!"His slightly pouting lips, his mastiff eyes, were begging her to beg himto go on. She fled from the steam-roller of his sentiment. She cried,"Oh, see those poor sheep--millions and millions of them." She dartedon.Stewart was not interesting. He hadn't a shapely white neck, and he hadnever lived among celebrated reformers. She wanted, just now, to havea cell in a settlement-house, like a nun without the bother of a blackrobe, and be kind, and read Bernard Shaw, and enormously improve a hordeof grateful poor.The supplementary reading in sociology led her to a book onvillage-improvement--tree-planting, town pageants, girls' clubs. Ithad pictures of greens and garden-walls in France, New England,Pennsylvania. She had picked it up carelessly, with a slight yawn whichshe patted down with her finger-tips as delicately as a cat.She dipped into the book, lounging on her window-seat, with her slim,lisle-stockinged legs crossed, and her knees up under her chin.She stroked a satin pillow while she read. About her was the clothyexuberance of a Blodgett College room: cretonne-covered window-seat,photographs of girls, a carbon print of the Coliseum, a chafing-dish,and a dozen pillows embroidered or beaded or pyrographed. Shockingly outof place was a miniature of the Dancing Bacchante. It was the only traceof Carol in the room. She had inherited the rest from generations ofgirl students.It was as a part of all this commonplaceness that she regarded thetreatise on village-improvement. But she suddenly stopped fidgeting. Shestrode into the book. She had fled half-way through it before the threeo'clock bell called her to the class in English history.She sighed, "That's what I'll do after college! I'll get my hands onone of these prairie towns and make it beautiful. Be an inspiration. Isuppose I'd better become a teacher then, but--I won't be that kind ofa teacher. I won't drone. Why should they have all the garden suburbson Long Island? Nobody has done anything with the ugly towns here in theNorthwest except hold revivals and build libraries to contain the Elsiebooks. I'll make 'em put in a village green, and darling cottages, and aquaint Main Street!"Thus she triumphed through the class, which was a typical Blodgettcontest between a dreary teacher and unwilling children of twenty, wonby the teacher because his opponents had to answer his questions, whiletheir treacherous queries he could counter by demanding, "Have youlooked that up in the library? Well then, suppose you do!"The history instructor was a retired minister. He was sarcastic today.He begged of sporting young Mr. Charley Holmberg, "Now Charles, would itinterrupt your undoubtedly fascinating pursuit of that malevolent flyif I were to ask you to tell us that you do not know anything about KingJohn?" He spent three delightful minutes in assuring himself of the factthat no one exactly remembered the date of Magna Charta.Carol did not hear him. She was completing the roof of a half-timberedtown hall. She had found one man in the prairie village who did notappreciate her picture of winding streets and arcades, but she hadassembled the town council and dramatically defeated him.IIIThough she was Minnesota-born Carol was not an intimate of the prairievillages. Her father, the smiling and shabby, the learned and teasinglykind, had come from Massachusetts, and through all her childhood hehad been a judge in Mankato, which is not a prairie town, but in itsgarden-sheltered streets and aisles of elms is white and green NewEngland reborn. Mankato lies between cliffs and the Minnesota River,hard by Traverse des Sioux, where the first settlers made treatieswith the Indians, and the cattle-rustlers once came galloping beforehell-for-leather posses.As she climbed along the banks of the dark river Carol listened to itsfables about the wide land of yellow waters and bleached buffalo bonesto the West; the Southern levees and singing darkies and palm treestoward which it was forever mysteriously gliding; and she heard againthe startled bells and thick puffing of high-stacked river steamerswrecked on sand-reefs sixty years ago. Along the decks she sawmissionaries, gamblers in tall pot hats, and Dakota chiefs with scarletblankets. . . . Far off whistles at night, round the river bend,plunking paddles reechoed by the pines, and a glow on black slidingwaters.Carol's family were self-sufficient in their inventive life, withChristmas a rite full of surprises and tenderness, and "dressing-upparties" spontaneous and joyously absurd. The beasts in the Milfordhearth-mythology were not the obscene Night Animals who jump outof closets and eat little girls, but beneficent and bright-eyedcreatures--the tam htab, who is woolly and blue and lives in thebathroom, and runs rapidly to warm small feet; the ferruginous oilstove, who purrs and knows stories; and the skitamarigg, who will playwith children before breakfast if they spring out of bed and close thewindow at the very first line of the song about puellas which fathersings while shaving.Judge Milford's pedagogical scheme was to let the children read whateverthey pleased, and in his brown library Carol absorbed Balzac andRabelais and Thoreau and Max Muller. He gravely taught them the letterson the backs of the encyclopedias, and when polite visitors asked aboutthe mental progress of the "little ones," they were horrified to hearthe children earnestly repeating A-And, And-Aus, Aus-Bis, Bis-Cal,Cal-Cha.Carol's mother died when she was nine. Her father retired from thejudiciary when she was eleven, and took the family to Minneapolis. Therehe died, two years after. Her sister, a busy proper advisory soul, olderthan herself, had become a stranger to her even when they lived in thesame house.From those early brown and silver days and from her independence ofrelatives Carol retained a willingness to be different from briskefficient book-ignoring people; an instinct to observe and wonderat their bustle even when she was taking part in it. But, she feltapprovingly, as she discovered her career of town-planning, she was nowroused to being brisk and efficient herself.IVIn a month Carol's ambition had clouded. Her hesitancy about becoming ateacher had returned. She was not, she worried, strong enough to endurethe routine, and she could not picture herself standing before grinningchildren and pretending to be wise and decisive. But the desire forthe creation of a beautiful town remained. When she encountered an itemabout small-town women's clubs or a photograph of a straggling MainStreet, she was homesick for it, she felt robbed of her work.It was the advice of the professor of English which led her to studyprofessional library-work in a Chicago school. Her imagination carvedand colored the new plan. She saw herself persuading children to readcharming fairy tales, helping young men to find books on mechanics,being ever so courteous to old men who were hunting for newspapers--thelight of the library, an authority on books, invited to dinners withpoets and explorers, reading a paper to an association of distinguishedscholars.VThe last faculty reception before commencement. In five days they wouldbe in the cyclone of final examinations.The house of the president had been massed with palms suggestive ofpolite undertaking parlors, and in the library, a ten-foot room with aglobe and the portraits of Whittier and Martha Washington, the studentorchestra was playing "Carmen" and "Madame Butterfly." Carol was dizzywith music and the emotions of parting. She saw the palms as a jungle,the pink-shaded electric globes as an opaline haze, and the eye-glassedfaculty as Olympians. She was melancholy at sight of the mousey girlswith whom she had "always intended to get acquainted," and the halfdozen young men who were ready to fall in love with her.But it was Stewart Snyder whom she encouraged. He was so much manlierthan the others; he was an even warm brown, like his new ready-made suitwith its padded shoulders. She sat with him, and with two cups ofcoffee and a chicken patty, upon a pile of presidential overshoes in thecoat-closet under the stairs, and as the thin music seeped in, Stewartwhispered:"I can't stand it, this breaking up after four years! The happiest yearsof life."She believed it. "Oh, I know! To think that in just a few days we'll beparting, and we'll never see some of the bunch again!""Carol, you got to listen to me! You always duck when I try to talkseriously to you, but you got to listen to me. I'm going to be a biglawyer, maybe a judge, and I need you, and I'd protect you----"His arm slid behind her shoulders. The insinuating music drained herindependence. She said mournfully, "Would you take care of me?" Shetouched his hand. It was warm, solid."You bet I would! We'd have, Lord, we'd have bully times in Yankton,where I'm going to settle----""But I want to do something with life.""What's better than making a comfy home and bringing up some cute kidsand knowing nice homey people?"It was the immemorial male reply to the restless woman. Thus to theyoung Sappho spake the melon-venders; thus the captains to Zenobia; andin the damp cave over gnawed bones the hairy suitor thus protested tothe woman advocate of matriarchy. In the dialect of Blodgett College butwith the voice of Sappho was Carol's answer:"Of course. I know. I suppose that's so. Honestly, I do love children.But there's lots of women that can do housework, but I--well, if youHAVE got a college education, you ought to use it for the world.""I know, but you can use it just as well in the home. And gee, Carol,just think of a bunch of us going out on an auto picnic, some nicespring evening.""Yes.""And sleigh-riding in winter, and going fishing----"Blarrrrrrr! The orchestra had crashed into the "Soldiers' Chorus"; andshe was protesting, "No! No! You're a dear, but I want to do things.I don't understand myself but I want--everything in the world! Maybe Ican't sing or write, but I know I can be an influence in library work.Just suppose I encouraged some boy and he became a great artist! Iwill! I will do it! Stewart dear, I can't settle down to nothing butdish-washing!"Two minutes later--two hectic minutes--they were disturbed byan embarrassed couple also seeking the idyllic seclusion of theovershoe-closet.After graduation she never saw Stewart Snyder again. She wrote to himonce a week--for one month.VIA year Carol spent in Chicago. Her study of library-cataloguing,recording, books of reference, was easy and not too somniferous. Shereveled in the Art Institute, in symphonies and violin recitals andchamber music, in the theater and classic dancing. She almost gave uplibrary work to become one of the young women who dance in cheese-clothin the moonlight. She was taken to a certified Studio Party, withbeer, cigarettes, bobbed hair, and a Russian Jewess who sang theInternationale. It cannot be reported that Carol had anythingsignificant to say to the Bohemians. She was awkward with them, andfelt ignorant, and she was shocked by the free manners which she had foryears desired. But she heard and remembered discussions of Freud, RomainRolland, syndicalism, the Confederation Generale du Travail, feminismvs. haremism, Chinese lyrics, nationalization of mines, ChristianScience, and fishing in Ontario.She went home, and that was the beginning and end of her Bohemian life.The second cousin of Carol's sister's husband lived in Winnetka, andonce invited her out to Sunday dinner. She walked back through Wilmetteand Evanston, discovered new forms of suburban architecture, andremembered her desire to recreate villages. She decided that she wouldgive up library work and, by a miracle whose nature was not very clearlyrevealed to her, turn a prairie town into Georgian houses and Japanesebungalows.The next day in library class she had to read a theme on the use of theCumulative Index, and she was taken so seriously in the discussion thatshe put off her career of town-planning--and in the autumn she was inthe public library of St. Paul.VIICarol was not unhappy and she was not exhilarated, in the St. PaulLibrary. She slowly confessed that she was not visibly affecting lives.She did, at first, put into her contact with the patrons a willingnesswhich should have moved worlds. But so few of these stolid worlds wantedto be moved. When she was in charge of the magazine room the readers didnot ask for suggestions about elevated essays. They grunted, "Wanta findthe Leather Goods Gazette for last February." When she was givingout books the principal query was, "Can you tell me of a good, light,exciting love story to read? My husband's going away for a week."She was fond of the other librarians; proud of their aspirations. And bythe chance of propinquity she read scores of books unnatural to her gaywhite littleness: volumes of anthropology with ditches of foot-notesfilled with heaps of small dusty type, Parisian imagistes, Hindu recipesfor curry, voyages to the Solomon Isles, theosophy with modern Americanimprovements, treatises upon success in the real-estate business. Shetook walks, and was sensible about shoes and diet. And never did shefeel that she was living.She went to dances and suppers at the houses of college acquaintances.Sometimes she one-stepped demurely; sometimes, in dread of life'sslipping past, she turned into a bacchanal, her tender eyes excited, herthroat tense, as she slid down the room.During her three years of library work several men showed diligentinterest in her--the treasurer of a fur-manufacturing firm, a teacher, anewspaper reporter, and a petty railroad official. None of them made hermore than pause in thought. For months no male emerged from the mass.Then, at the Marburys', she met Dr. Will Kennicott.