CHAPTER III

by Sinclair Lewis

　　UNDER the rolling clouds of the prairie a moving mass of steel. Anirritable clank and rattle beneath a prolonged roar. The sharp scent oforanges cutting the soggy smell of unbathed people and ancient baggage.Towns as planless as a scattering of pasteboard boxes on an attic floor.The stretch of faded gold stubble broken only by clumps of willowsencircling white houses and red barns.No. 7, the way train, grumbling through Minnesota, imperceptiblyclimbing the giant tableland that slopes in a thousand-mile rise fromhot Mississippi bottoms to the Rockies.It is September, hot, very dusty.There is no smug Pullman attached to the train, and the day coaches ofthe East are replaced by free chair cars, with each seat cut into twoadjustable plush chairs, the head-rests covered with doubtful linentowels. Halfway down the car is a semi-partition of carved oak columns,but the aisle is of bare, splintery, grease-blackened wood. There is noporter, no pillows, no provision for beds, but all today and all tonightthey will ride in this long steel box-farmers with perpetually tiredwives and children who seem all to be of the same age; workmen going tonew jobs; traveling salesmen with derbies and freshly shined shoes.They are parched and cramped, the lines of their hands filled withgrime; they go to sleep curled in distorted attitudes, heads against thewindow-panes or propped on rolled coats on seat-arms, and legs thrustinto the aisle. They do not read; apparently they do not think. Theywait. An early-wrinkled, young-old mother, moving as though her jointswere dry, opens a suit-case in which are seen creased blouses, a pairof slippers worn through at the toes, a bottle of patent medicine, a tincup, a paper-covered book about dreams which the news-butcher has coaxedher into buying. She brings out a graham cracker which she feeds to ababy lying flat on a seat and wailing hopelessly. Most of the crumbsdrop on the red plush of the seat, and the woman sighs and tries tobrush them away, but they leap up impishly and fall back on the plush.A soiled man and woman munch sandwiches and throw the crusts on thefloor. A large brick-colored Norwegian takes off his shoes, grunts inrelief, and props his feet in their thick gray socks against the seat infront of him.An old woman whose toothless mouth shuts like a mud-turtle's, and whosehair is not so much white as yellow like moldy linen, with bands of pinkskull apparent between the tresses, anxiously lifts her bag, opens it,peers in, closes it, puts it under the seat, and hastily picks it up andopens it and hides it all over again. The bag is full of treasures andof memories: a leather buckle, an ancient band-concert program,scraps of ribbon, lace, satin. In the aisle beside her is an extremelyindignant parrakeet in a cage.Two facing seats, overflowing with a Slovene iron-miner's family,are littered with shoes, dolls, whisky bottles, bundles wrapped innewspapers, a sewing bag. The oldest boy takes a mouth-organ out of hiscoat pocket, wipes the tobacco crumbs off, and plays "Marching throughGeorgia" till every head in the car begins to ache.The news-butcher comes through selling chocolate bars and lemon drops.A girl-child ceaselessly trots down to the water-cooler and back to herseat. The stiff paper envelope which she uses for cup drips in the aisleas she goes, and on each trip she stumbles over the feet of a carpenter,who grunts, "Ouch! Look out!"The dust-caked doors are open, and from the smoking-car drifts back avisible blue line of stinging tobacco smoke, and with it a crackle oflaughter over the story which the young man in the bright blue suit andlavender tie and light yellow shoes has just told to the squat man ingarage overalls.The smell grows constantly thicker, more stale.IITo each of the passengers his seat was his temporary home, and most ofthe passengers were slatternly housekeepers. But one seat looked cleanand deceptively cool. In it were an obviously prosperous man and ablack-haired, fine-skinned girl whose pumps rested on an immaculatehorsehide bag.They were Dr. Will Kennicott and his bride, Carol.They had been married at the end of a year of conversational courtship,and they were on their way to Gopher Prairie after a wedding journey inthe Colorado mountains.The hordes of the way-train were not altogether new to Carol. She hadseen them on trips from St. Paul to Chicago. But now that they hadbecome her own people, to bathe and encourage and adorn, she had anacute and uncomfortable interest in them. They distressed her. Theywere so stolid. She had always maintained that there is no Americanpeasantry, and she sought now to defend her faith by seeing imaginationand enterprise in the young Swedish farmers, and in a traveling manworking over his order-blanks. But the older people, Yankees as wellas Norwegians, Germans, Finns, Canucks, had settled into submission topoverty. They were peasants, she groaned."Isn't there any way of waking them up? What would happen if theyunderstood scientific agriculture?" she begged of Kennicott, her handgroping for his.It had been a transforming honeymoon. She had been frightened todiscover how tumultuous a feeling could be roused in her. Will had beenlordly--stalwart, jolly, impressively competent in making camp, tenderand understanding through the hours when they had lain side by side in atent pitched among pines high up on a lonely mountain spur.His hand swallowed hers as he started from thoughts of the practise towhich he was returning. "These people? Wake 'em up? What for? They'rehappy.""But they're so provincial. No, that isn't what I mean. They're--oh, sosunk in the mud.""Look here, Carrie. You want to get over your city idea that because aman's pants aren't pressed, he's a fool. These farmers are mighty keenand up-and-coming.""I know! That's what hurts. Life seems so hard for them--these lonelyfarms and this gritty train.""Oh, they don't mind it. Besides, things are changing. The auto, thetelephone, rural free delivery; they're bringing the farmers in closertouch with the town. Takes time, you know, to change a wilderness likethis was fifty years ago. But already, why, they can hop into the Fordor the Overland and get in to the movies on Saturday evening quickerthan you could get down to 'em by trolley in St. Paul.""But if it's these towns we've been passing that the farmers run to forrelief from their bleakness----Can't you understand? Just LOOK at them!"Kennicott was amazed. Ever since childhood he had seen these towns fromtrains on this same line. He grumbled, "Why, what's the matter with 'em?Good hustling burgs. It would astonish you to know how much wheat andrye and corn and potatoes they ship in a year.""But they're so ugly.""I'll admit they aren't comfy like Gopher Prairie. But give 'em time.""What's the use of giving them time unless some one has desire andtraining enough to plan them? Hundreds of factories trying to makeattractive motor cars, but these towns--left to chance. No! That can'tbe true. It must have taken genius to make them so scrawny!""Oh, they're not so bad," was all he answered. He pretended that hishand was the cat and hers the mouse. For the first time she toleratedhim rather than encouraged him. She was staring out at Schoenstrom, ahamlet of perhaps a hundred and fifty inhabitants, at which the trainwas stopping.A bearded German and his pucker-mouthed wife tugged their enormousimitation-leather satchel from under a seat and waddled out. The stationagent hoisted a dead calf aboard the baggage-car. There were no othervisible activities in Schoenstrom. In the quiet of the halt, Carol couldhear a horse kicking his stall, a carpenter shingling a roof.The business-center of Schoenstrom took up one side of one block, facingthe railroad. It was a row of one-story shops covered with galvanizediron, or with clapboards painted red and bilious yellow. The buildingswere as ill-assorted, as temporary-looking, as a mining-camp street inthe motion-pictures. The railroad station was a one-room frame box, amirey cattle-pen on one side and a crimson wheat-elevator on the other.The elevator, with its cupola on the ridge of a shingled roof, resembleda broad-shouldered man with a small, vicious, pointed head. The onlyhabitable structures to be seen were the florid red-brick Catholicchurch and rectory at the end of Main Street.Carol picked at Kennicott's sleeve. "You wouldn't call this a not-so-badtown, would you?""These Dutch burgs ARE kind of slow. Still, at that----See that fellowcoming out of the general store there, getting into the big car? I methim once. He owns about half the town, besides the store. Rauskukle, hisname is. He owns a lot of mortgages, and he gambles in farm-lands. Goodnut on him, that fellow. Why, they say he's worth three or four hundredthousand dollars! Got a dandy great big yellow brick house with tiledwalks and a garden and everything, other end of town--can't see it fromhere--I've gone past it when I've driven through here. Yes sir!""Then, if he has all that, there's no excuse whatever for this place!If his three hundred thousand went back into the town, where it belongs,they could burn up these shacks, and build a dream-village, a jewel! Whydo the farmers and the town-people let the Baron keep it?""I must say I don't quite get you sometimes, Carrie. Let him? They can'thelp themselves! He's a dumm old Dutchman, and probably the priest cantwist him around his finger, but when it comes to picking good farmingland, he's a regular wiz!""I see. He's their symbol of beauty. The town erects him, instead oferecting buildings.""Honestly, don't know what you're driving at. You're kind of played out,after this long trip. You'll feel better when you get home and have agood bath, and put on the blue negligee. That's some vampire costume,you witch!"He squeezed her arm, looked at her knowingly.They moved on from the desert stillness of the Schoenstrom station. Thetrain creaked, banged, swayed. The air was nauseatingly thick. Kennicottturned her face from the window, rested her head on his shoulder. Shewas coaxed from her unhappy mood. But she came out of it unwillingly,and when Kennicott was satisfied that he had corrected all her worriesand had opened a magazine of saffron detective stories, she sat upright.Here--she meditated--is the newest empire of the world; the NorthernMiddlewest; a land of dairy herds and exquisite lakes, of newautomobiles and tar-paper shanties and silos like red towers, of clumsyspeech and a hope that is boundless. An empire which feeds a quarter ofthe world--yet its work is merely begun. They are pioneers, these sweatywayfarers, for all their telephones and bank-accounts and automaticpianos and co-operative leagues. And for all its fat richness, theirs isa pioneer land. What is its future? she wondered. A future of citiesand factory smut where now are loping empty fields? Homes universal andsecure? Or placid chateaux ringed with sullen huts? Youth free to findknowledge and laughter? Willingness to sift the sanctified lies? Orcreamy-skinned fat women, smeared with grease and chalk, gorgeous in theskins of beasts and the bloody feathers of slain birds, playing bridgewith puffy pink-nailed jeweled fingers, women who after much expenditureof labor and bad temper still grotesquely resemble their own flatulentlap-dogs? The ancient stale inequalities, or something different inhistory, unlike the tedious maturity of other empires? What future andwhat hope?Carol's head ached with the riddle.She saw the prairie, flat in giant patches or rolling in long hummocks.The width and bigness of it, which had expanded her spirit an hour ago,began to frighten her. It spread out so; it went on so uncontrollably;she could never know it. Kennicott was closeted in his detective story.With the loneliness which comes most depressingly in the midst of manypeople she tried to forget problems, to look at the prairie objectively.The grass beside the railroad had been burnt over; it was a smudgeprickly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wirefences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them offfrom the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field,prickly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvetstretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marchedlike soldiers in worn yellow tabards. The newly plowed fields wereblack banners fallen on the distant slope. It was a martial immensity,vigorous, a little harsh, unsoftened by kindly gardens.The expanse was relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wildgrass; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with theflicker of blackbirds' wings across them.All this working land was turned into exuberance by the light. Thesunshine was dizzy on open stubble; shadows from immense cumulus cloudswere forever sliding across low mounds; and the sky was wider andloftier and more resolutely blue than the sky of cities . . . shedeclared."It's a glorious country; a land to be big in," she crooned.Then Kennicott startled her by chuckling, "D' you realize the town afterthe next is Gopher Prairie? Home!"IIIThat one word--home--it terrified her. Had she really bound herself tolive, inescapably, in this town called Gopher Prairie? And this thickman beside her, who dared to define her future, he was a stranger! Sheturned in her seat, stared at him. Who was he? Why was he sitting withher? He wasn't of her kind! His neck was heavy; his speech was heavy; hewas twelve or thirteen years older than she; and about him was none ofthe magic of shared adventures and eagerness. She could not believe thatshe had ever slept in his arms. That was one of the dreams which you hadbut did not officially admit.She told herself how good he was, how dependable and understanding. Shetouched his ear, smoothed the plane of his solid jaw, and, turning awayagain, concentrated upon liking his town. It wouldn't be like thesebarren settlements. It couldn't be! Why, it had three thousandpopulation. That was a great many people. There would be six hundredhouses or more. And----The lakes near it would be so lovely. She'd seenthem in the photographs. They had looked charming . . . hadn't they?As the train left Wahkeenyan she began nervously to watch for thelakes--the entrance to all her future life. But when she discoveredthem, to the left of the track, her only impression of them was thatthey resembled the photographs.A mile from Gopher Prairie the track mounts a curving low ridge, and shecould see the town as a whole. With a passionate jerk she pushed up thewindow, looked out, the arched fingers of her left hand trembling on thesill, her right hand at her breast.And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all thehamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicott wasit exceptional. The huddled low wooden houses broke the plains scarcelymore than would a hazel thicket. The fields swept up to it, past it.It was unprotected and unprotecting; there was no dignity in it norany hope of greatness. Only the tall red grain-elevator and a few tinnychurch-steeples rose from the mass. It was a frontier camp. It was not aplace to live in, not possibly, not conceivably.The people--they'd be as drab as their houses, as flat as their fields.She couldn't stay here. She would have to wrench loose from this man,and flee.She peeped at him. She was at once helpless before his mature fixity,and touched by his excitement as he sent his magazine skittering alongthe aisle, stooped for their bags, came up with flushed face, andgloated, "Here we are!"She smiled loyally, and looked away. The train was entering town. Thehouses on the outskirts were dusky old red mansions with wooden frills,or gaunt frame shelters like grocery boxes, or new bungalows withconcrete foundations imitating stone.Now the train was passing the elevator, the grim storage-tanks for oil,a creamery, a lumber-yard, a stock-yard muddy and trampled and stinking.Now they were stopping at a squat red frame station, the platformcrowded with unshaven farmers and with loafers--unadventurous peoplewith dead eyes. She was here. She could not go on. It was the end--theend of the world. She sat with closed eyes, longing to push pastKennicott, hide somewhere in the train, flee on toward the Pacific.Something large arose in her soul and commanded, "Stop it! Stop being awhining baby!" She stood up quickly; she said, "Isn't it wonderful to behere at last!"He trusted her so. She would make herself like the place. And she wasgoing to do tremendous things----She followed Kennicott and the bobbing ends of the two bags whichhe carried. They were held back by the slow line of disembarkingpassengers. She reminded herself that she was actually at the dramaticmoment of the bride's home-coming. She ought to feel exalted. She feltnothing at all except irritation at their slow progress toward the door.Kennicott stooped to peer through the windows. He shyly exulted:"Look! Look! There's a bunch come down to welcome us! Sam Clark and themissus and Dave Dyer and Jack Elder, and, yes sir, Harry Haydock andJuanita, and a whole crowd! I guess they see us now. Yuh, yuh sure, theysee us! See 'em waving!"She obediently bent her head to look out at them. She had hold ofherself. She was ready to love them. But she was embarrassed by theheartiness of the cheering group. From the vestibule she waved to them,but she clung a second to the sleeve of the brakeman who helped her downbefore she had the courage to dive into the cataract of hand-shakingpeople, people whom she could not tell apart. She had the impressionthat all the men had coarse voices, large damp hands, tooth-brushmustaches, bald spots, and Masonic watch-charms.She knew that they were welcoming her. Their hands, their smiles, theirshouts, their affectionate eyes overcame her. She stammered, "Thank you,oh, thank you!"One of the men was clamoring at Kennicott, "I brought my machine down totake you home, doc.""Fine business, Sam!" cried Kennicott; and, to Carol, "Let's jump in.That big Paige over there. Some boat, too, believe me! Sam can showspeed to any of these Marmons from Minneapolis!"Only when she was in the motor car did she distinguish the three peoplewho were to accompany them. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essenceof decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, ruggedof neck but sleek and round of face--face like the back of a spoon bowl.He was chuckling at her, "Have you got us all straight yet?""Course she has! Trust Carrie to get things straight and get 'em darnquick! I bet she could tell you every date in history!" boasted herhusband.But the man looked at her reassuringly and with a certainty that hewas a person whom she could trust she confessed, "As a matter of fact Ihaven't got anybody straight.""Course you haven't, child. Well, I'm Sam Clark, dealer in hardware,sporting goods, cream separators, and almost any kind of heavy junk youcan think of. You can call me Sam--anyway, I'm going to call you Carrie,seein' 's you've been and gone and married this poor fish of a bum medicthat we keep round here." Carol smiled lavishly, and wished that shecalled people by their given names more easily. "The fat cranky ladyback there beside you, who is pretending that she can't hear me givingher away, is Mrs. Sam'l Clark; and this hungry-looking squirt up herebeside me is Dave Dyer, who keeps his drug store running by not fillingyour hubby's prescriptions right--fact you might say he's the guy thatput the 'shun' in 'prescription.' So! Well, leave us take the bonnybride home. Say, doc, I'll sell you the Candersen place for threethousand plunks. Better be thinking about building a new home forCarrie. Prettiest Frau in G. P., if you asks me!"Contentedly Sam Clark drove off, in the heavy traffic of three Fords andthe Minniemashie House Free 'Bus."I shall like Mr. Clark . . . I CAN'T call him 'Sam'! They're all sofriendly." She glanced at the houses; tried not to see what she saw;gave way in: "Why do these stories lie so? They always make the bride'shome-coming a bower of roses. Complete trust in noble spouse. Lies aboutmarriage. I'm NOT changed. And this town--O my God! I can't go throughwith it. This junk-heap!"Her husband bent over her. "You look like you were in a brown study.Scared? I don't expect you to think Gopher Prairie is a paradise, afterSt. Paul. I don't expect you to be crazy about it, at first. But you'llcome to like it so much--life's so free here and best people on earth."She whispered to him (while Mrs. Clark considerately turned away), "Ilove you for understanding. I'm just--I'm beastly over-sensitive. Toomany books. It's my lack of shoulder-muscles and sense. Give me time,dear.""You bet! All the time you want!"She laid the back of his hand against her cheek, snuggled near him. Shewas ready for her new home.Kennicott had told her that, with his widowed mother as housekeeper, hehad occupied an old house, "but nice and roomy, and well-heated, bestfurnace I could find on the market." His mother had left Carol her love,and gone back to Lac-qui-Meurt.It would be wonderful, she exulted, not to have to live in OtherPeople's Houses, but to make her own shrine. She held his hand tightlyand stared ahead as the car swung round a corner and stopped in thestreet before a prosaic frame house in a small parched lawn.IVA concrete sidewalk with a "parking" of grass and mud. A square smugbrown house, rather damp. A narrow concrete walk up to it. Sickly yellowleaves in a windrow with dried wings of box-elder seeds and snagsof wool from the cotton-woods. A screened porch with pillars of thinpainted pine surmounted by scrolls and brackets and bumps of jigsawedwood. No shrubbery to shut off the public gaze. A lugubrious bay-windowto the right of the porch. Window curtains of starched cheap lacerevealing a pink marble table with a conch shell and a Family Bible."You'll find it old-fashioned--what do you call it?--Mid-Victorian. Ileft it as is, so you could make any changes you felt were necessary."Kennicott sounded doubtful for the first time since he had come back tohis own."It's a real home!" She was moved by his humility. She gaily motionedgood-by to the Clarks. He unlocked the door--he was leaving the choiceof a maid to her, and there was no one in the house. She jiggled whilehe turned the key, and scampered in. . . . It was next day before eitherof them remembered that in their honeymoon camp they had planned that heshould carry her over the sill.In hallway and front parlor she was conscious of dinginess andlugubriousness and airlessness, but she insisted, "I'll make it alljolly." As she followed Kennicott and the bags up to their bedroom shequavered to herself the song of the fat little-gods of the hearth: I have my own home, To do what I please with, To do what I please with, My den for me and my mate and my cubs, My own! She was close in her husband's arms; she clung to him; whatever ofstrangeness and slowness and insularity she might find in him, none ofthat mattered so long as she could slip her hands beneath his coat, runher fingers over the warm smoothness of the satin back of his waistcoat,seem almost to creep into his body, find in him strength, find in thecourage and kindness of her man a shelter from the perplexing world."Sweet, so sweet," she whispered.