CHAPTER II

by Sinclair Lewis

　　IT was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the flat of theJohnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs. Marbury was a neighborand friend of Carol's sister; Mr. Marbury a traveling representative ofan insurance company. They made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffeelap suppers, and they regarded Carol as their literary and artisticrepresentative. She was the one who could be depended upon to appreciatethe Caruso phonograph record, and the Chinese lantern which Mr. Marburyhad brought back as his present from San Francisco. Carol found theMarburys admiring and therefore admirable.This September Sunday evening she wore a net frock with a pale pinklining. A nap had soothed away the faint lines of tiredness beside hereyes. She was young, naive, stimulated by the coolness. She flungher coat at the chair in the hall of the flat, and exploded intothe green-plush living-room. The familiar group were trying to beconversational. She saw Mr. Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics ina high school, a chief clerk from the Great Northern Railway offices,a young lawyer. But there was also a stranger, a thick tall man ofthirty-six or -seven, with stolid brown hair, lips used to givingorders, eyes which followed everything good-naturedly, and clothes whichyou could never quite remember.Mr. Marbury boomed, "Carol, come over here and meet Doc Kennicott--Dr.Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie. He does all our insurance-examining upin that neck of the woods, and they do say he's some doctor!"As she edged toward the stranger and murmured nothing in particular,Carol remembered that Gopher Prairie was a Minnesota wheat-prairie townof something over three thousand people."Pleased to meet you," stated Dr. Kennicott. His hand was strong; thepalm soft, but the back weathered, showing golden hairs against firm redskin.He looked at her as though she was an agreeable discovery. She tuggedher hand free and fluttered, "I must go out to the kitchen and help Mrs.Marbury." She did not speak to him again till, after she had heatedthe rolls and passed the paper napkins, Mr. Marbury captured her witha loud, "Oh, quit fussing now. Come over here and sit down and tellus how's tricks." He herded her to a sofa with Dr. Kennicott, who wasrather vague about the eyes, rather drooping of bulky shoulder, asthough he was wondering what he was expected to do next. As their hostleft them, Kennicott awoke:"Marbury tells me you're a high mogul in the public library. I wassurprised. Didn't hardly think you were old enough. I thought you were agirl, still in college maybe.""Oh, I'm dreadfully old. I expect to take to a lip-stick, and to find agray hair any morning now.""Huh! You must be frightfully old--prob'ly too old to be mygranddaughter, I guess!"Thus in the Vale of Arcady nymph and satyr beguiled the hours; preciselythus, and not in honeyed pentameters, discoursed Elaine and the worn SirLauncelot in the pleached alley."How do you like your work?" asked the doctor."It's pleasant, but sometimes I feel shut off from things--the steelstacks, and the everlasting cards smeared all over with red rubberstamps.""Don't you get sick of the city?""St. Paul? Why, don't you like it? I don't know of any lovelier viewthan when you stand on Summit Avenue and look across Lower Town to theMississippi cliffs and the upland farms beyond.""I know but----Of course I've spent nine years around the TwinCities--took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U., and had my internship in ahospital in Minneapolis, but still, oh well, you don't get to know folkshere, way you do up home. I feel I've got something to say about runningGopher Prairie, but you take it in a big city of two-three hundredthousand, and I'm just one flea on the dog's back. And then I likecountry driving, and the hunting in the fall. Do you know Gopher Prairieat all?""No, but I hear it's a very nice town.""Nice? Say honestly----Of course I may be prejudiced, but I've seen anawful lot of towns--one time I went to Atlantic City for the AmericanMedical Association meeting, and I spent practically a week in New York!But I never saw a town that had such up-and-coming people as GopherPrairie. Bresnahan--you know--the famous auto manufacturer--he comesfrom Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up there! And it's a darn prettytown. Lots of fine maples and box-elders, and there's two of thedandiest lakes you ever saw, right near town! And we've got seven milesof cement walks already, and building more every day! Course a lot ofthese towns still put up with plank walks, but not for us, you bet!""Really?"(Why was she thinking of Stewart Snyder?)"Gopher Prairie is going to have a great future. Some of the best dairyand wheat land in the state right near there--some of it selling rightnow at one-fifty an acre, and I bet it will go up to two and a quarterin ten years!""Is----Do you like your profession?""Nothing like it. Keeps you out, and yet you have a chance to loaf inthe office for a change.""I don't mean that way. I mean--it's such an opportunity for sympathy."Dr. Kennicott launched into a heavy, "Oh, these Dutch farmers don't wantsympathy. All they need is a bath and a good dose of salts."Carol must have flinched, for instantly he was urging, "What I meanis--I don't want you to think I'm one of these old salts-and-quininepeddlers, but I mean: so many of my patients are husky farmers that Isuppose I get kind of case-hardened.""It seems to me that a doctor could transform a whole community, if hewanted to--if he saw it. He's usually the only man in the neighborhoodwho has any scientific training, isn't he?""Yes, that's so, but I guess most of us get rusty. We land in a rut ofobstetrics and typhoid and busted legs. What we need is women like youto jump on us. It'd be you that would transform the town.""No, I couldn't. Too flighty. I did used to think about doing just that,curiously enough, but I seem to have drifted away from the idea. Oh, I'ma fine one to be lecturing you!""No! You're just the one. You have ideas without having lost femininecharm. Say! Don't you think there's a lot of these women that go out forall these movements and so on that sacrifice----"After his remarks upon suffrage he abruptly questioned her aboutherself. His kindliness and the firmness of his personality envelopedher and she accepted him as one who had a right to know what shethought and wore and ate and read. He was positive. He had grown from asketched-in stranger to a friend, whose gossip was important news. Shenoticed the healthy solidity of his chest. His nose, which had seemedirregular and large, was suddenly virile.She was jarred out of this serious sweetness when Marbury bounced overto them and with horrible publicity yammered, "Say, what do you twothink you're doing? Telling fortunes or making love? Let me warn youthat the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Carol. Come on now, folks, shake aleg. Let's have some stunts or a dance or something."She did not have another word with Dr. Kennicott until their parting:"Been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Milford. May I see you sometime when I come down again? I'm here quite often--taking patients tohospitals for majors, and so on.""Why----""What's your address?""You can ask Mr. Marbury next time you come down--if you really want toknow!""Want to know? Say, you wait!"IIOf the love-making of Carol and Will Kennicott there is nothing to betold which may not be heard on every summer evening, on every shadowyblock.They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang phrases and flaresof poetry; their silences were contentment, or shaky crises when his armtook her shoulder. All the beauty of youth, first discovered when itis passing--and all the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried manencountering a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of heremployment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she is glad to serve.They liked each other honestly--they were both honest. She wasdisappointed by his devotion to making money, but she was sure thathe did not lie to patients, and that he did keep up with the medicalmagazines. What aroused her to something more than liking was hisboyishness when they went tramping.They walked from St. Paul down the river to Mendota, Kennicott moreelastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crepe shirt, Carol youthful in atam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge suit with an absurdly andagreeably broad turn-down linen collar, and frivolous ankles aboveathletic shoes. The High Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting fromlow banks to a palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paulside, upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardensand shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards, sheets ofcorrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river. Carol leanedover the rail of the bridge to look down at this Yang-tse village;in delicious imaginary fear she shrieked that she was dizzy with theheight; and it was an extremely human satisfaction to have a strong malesnatch her back to safety, instead of having a logical woman teacher orlibrarian sniff, "Well, if you're scared, why don't you get away fromthe rail, then?"From the cliffs across the river Carol and Kennicott looked back at St.Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from the dome of the cathedral tothe dome of the state capitol.The river road led past rocky field slopes, deep glens, woods flamboyantnow with September, to Mendota, white walls and a spire among treesbeneath a hill, old-world in its placid ease. And for this fresh land,the place is ancient. Here is the bold stone house which General Sibley,the king of fur-traders, built in 1835, with plaster of river mud, andropes of twisted grass for laths. It has an air of centuries. In itssolid rooms Carol and Kennicott found prints from other days which thehouse had seen--tail-coats of robin's-egg blue, clumsy Red River cartsladen with luxurious furs, whiskered Union soldiers in slant forage capsand rattling sabers.It suggested to them a common American past, and it was memorablebecause they had discovered it together. They talked more trustingly,more personally, as they trudged on. They crossed the Minnesota River ina rowboat ferry. They climbed the hill to the round stone tower of FortSnelling. They saw the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota,and recalled the men who had come here eighty years ago--Mainelumbermen, York traders, soldiers from the Maryland hills."It's a good country, and I'm proud of it. Let's make it all that thoseold boys dreamed about," the unsentimental Kennicott was moved to vow."Let's!""Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the town--well--makeit artistic. It's mighty pretty, but I'll admit we aren't any too darnartistic. Probably the lumber-yard isn't as scrumptious as all theseGreek temples. But go to it! Make us change!""I would like to. Some day!""Now! You'd love Gopher Prairie. We've been doing a lot with lawnsand gardening the past few years, and it's so homey--the big treesand----And the best people on earth. And keen. I bet Luke Dawson----"Carol but half listened to the names. She could not fancy their everbecoming important to her."I bet Luke Dawson has got more money than most of the swells on SummitAvenue; and Miss Sherwin in the high school is a regular wonder--readsLatin like I do English; and Sam Clark, the hardware man, he's acorker--not a better man in the state to go hunting with; and ifyou want culture, besides Vida Sherwin there's Reverend Warren, theCongregational preacher, and Professor Mott, the superintendent ofschools, and Guy Pollock, the lawyer--they say he writes regular poetryand--and Raymie Wutherspoon, he's not such an awful boob when you get toKNOW him, and he sings swell. And----And there's plenty of others. LymCass. Only of course none of them have your finesse, you might call it.But they don't make 'em any more appreciative and so on. Come on! We'reready for you to boss us!"They sat on the bank below the parapet of the old fort, hidden fromobservation. He circled her shoulder with his arm. Relaxed after thewalk, a chill nipping her throat, conscious of his warmth and power, sheleaned gratefully against him."You know I'm in love with you, Carol!"She did not answer, but she touched the back of his hand with anexploring finger."You say I'm so darn materialistic. How can I help it, unless I have youto stir me up?"She did not answer. She could not think."You say a doctor could cure a town the way he does a person. Well, youcure the town of whatever ails it, if anything does, and I'll be yoursurgical kit."She did not follow his words, only the burring resoluteness of them.She was shocked, thrilled, as he kissed her cheek and cried, "There'sno use saying things and saying things and saying things. Don't my armstalk to you--now?""Oh, please, please!" She wondered if she ought to be angry, but it wasa drifting thought, and she discovered that she was crying.Then they were sitting six inches apart, pretending that they had neverbeen nearer, while she tried to be impersonal:"I would like to--would like to see Gopher Prairie.""Trust me! Here she is! Brought some snapshots down to show you."Her cheek near his sleeve, she studied a dozen village pictures. Theywere streaky; she saw only trees, shrubbery, a porch indistinct in leafyshadows. But she exclaimed over the lakes: dark water reflecting woodedbluffs, a flight of ducks, a fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide strawhat, holding up a string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge ofPlover Lake had the air of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow inthe crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house, reeds inthin black lines, arches of frosty grasses. It was an impression of coolclear vigor."How'd it be to skate there for a couple of hours, or go zinging alongon a fast ice-boat, and skip back home for coffee and some hot wienies?"he demanded."It might be--fun.""But here's the picture. Here's where you come in."A photograph of a forest clearing: pathetic new furrows straggling amongstumps, a clumsy log cabin chinked with mud and roofed with hay.In front of it a sagging woman with tight-drawn hair, and a babybedraggled, smeary, glorious-eyed."Those are the kind of folks I practise among, good share of the time.Nels Erdstrom, fine clean young Svenska. He'll have a corking farm inten years, but now----I operated his wife on a kitchen table, with mydriver giving the anesthetic. Look at that scared baby! Needs some womanwith hands like yours. Waiting for you! Just look at that baby's eyes,look how he's begging----""Don't! They hurt me. Oh, it would be sweet to help him--so sweet."As his arms moved toward her she answered all her doubts with "Sweet, sosweet."