CHAPTER XIII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　SHE tried, more from loyalty than from desire, to call upon the Perryson a November evening when Kennicott was away. They were not at home.Like a child who has no one to play with she loitered through the darkhall. She saw a light under an office door. She knocked. To the personwho opened she murmured, "Do you happen to know where the Perrys are?"She realized that it was Guy Pollock."I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Kennicott, but I don't know. Won't you come inand wait for them?""W-why----" she observed, as she reflected that in Gopher Prairie itis not decent to call on a man; as she decided that no, really, shewouldn't go in; and as she went in."I didn't know your office was up here.""Yes, office, town-house, and chateau in Picardy. But you can't seethe chateau and town-house (next to the Duke of Sutherland's). They'rebeyond that inner door. They are a cot and a wash-stand and my othersuit and the blue crepe tie you said you liked.""You remember my saying that?""Of course. I always shall. Please try this chair."She glanced about the rusty office--gaunt stove, shelves of tanlaw-books, desk-chair filled with newspapers so long sat upon that theywere in holes and smudged to grayness. There were only two things whichsuggested Guy Pollock. On the green felt of the table-desk, betweenlegal blanks and a clotted inkwell, was a cloissone vase. On a swingshelf was a row of books unfamiliar to Gopher Prairie: Mosher editionsof the poets, black and red German novels, a Charles Lamb in crushedlevant.Guy did not sit down. He quartered the office, a grayhound on the scent;a grayhound with glasses tilted forward on his thin nose, and a silkyindecisive brown mustache. He had a golf jacket of jersey, worn throughat the creases in the sleeves. She noted that he did not apologize forit, as Kennicott would have done.He made conversation: "I didn't know you were a bosom friend of thePerrys. Champ is the salt of the earth but somehow I can't imagine himjoining you in symbolic dancing, or making improvements on the Dieselengine.""No. He's a dear soul, bless him, but he belongs in the National Museum,along with General Grant's sword, and I'm----Oh, I suppose I'm seekingfor a gospel that will evangelize Gopher Prairie.""Really? Evangelize it to what?""To anything that's definite. Seriousness or frivolousness or both. Iwouldn't care whether it was a laboratory or a carnival. But it's merelysafe. Tell me, Mr. Pollock, what is the matter with Gopher Prairie?""Is anything the matter with it? Isn't there perhaps something thematter with you and me? (May I join you in the honor of having somethingthe matter?)""(Yes, thanks.) No, I think it's the town.""Because they enjoy skating more than biology?""But I'm not only more interested in biology than the Jolly Seventeen,but also in skating! I'll skate with them, or slide, or throw snowballs,just as gladly as talk with you."("Oh no!")("Yes!) But they want to stay home and embroider.""Perhaps. I'm not defending the town. It's merely----I'm a confirmeddoubter of myself. (Probably I'm conceited about my lack of conceit!)Anyway, Gopher Prairie isn't particularly bad. It's like all villages inall countries. Most places that have lost the smell of earth but notyet acquired the smell of patchouli--or of factory-smoke--are just assuspicious and righteous. I wonder if the small town isn't, with somelovely exceptions, a social appendix? Some day these dull market-townsmay be as obsolete as monasteries. I can imagine the farmer and hislocal store-manager going by monorail, at the end of the day, into acity more charming than any William Morris Utopia--music, a university,clubs for loafers like me. (Lord, how I'd like to have a real club!)"She asked impulsively, "You, why do you stay here?""I have the Village Virus.""It sounds dangerous.""It is. More dangerous than the cancer that will certainly get meat fifty unless I stop this smoking. The Village Virus is the germwhich--it's extraordinarily like the hook-worm--it infects ambitiouspeople who stay too long in the provinces. You'll find it epidemic amonglawyers and doctors and ministers and college-bred merchants--all thesepeople who have had a glimpse of the world that thinks and laughs,but have returned to their swamp. I'm a perfect example. But I sha'n'tpester you with my dolors.""You won't. And do sit down, so I can see you."He dropped into the shrieking desk-chair. He looked squarely at her; shewas conscious of the pupils of his eyes; of the fact that he was a man,and lonely. They were embarrassed. They elaborately glanced away, andwere relieved as he went on:"The diagnosis of my Village Virus is simple enough. I was born in anOhio town about the same size as Gopher Prairie, and much lessfriendly. It'd had more generations in which to form an oligarchy ofrespectability. Here, a stranger is taken in if he is correct, if helikes hunting and motoring and God and our Senator. There, we didn'ttake in even our own till we had contemptuously got used to them. Itwas a red-brick Ohio town, and the trees made it damp, and it smelled ofrotten apples. The country wasn't like our lakes and prairie. There weresmall stuffy corn-fields and brick-yards and greasy oil-wells."I went to a denominational college and learned that since dictatingthe Bible, and hiring a perfect race of ministers to explain it, God hasnever done much but creep around and try to catch us disobeying it. Fromcollege I went to New York, to the Columbia Law School. And for fouryears I lived. Oh, I won't rhapsodize about New York. It was dirty andnoisy and breathless and ghastly expensive. But compared with the moldyacademy in which I had been smothered----! I went to symphonies twicea week. I saw Irving and Terry and Duse and Bernhardt, from the topgallery. I walked in Gramercy Park. And I read, oh, everything."Through a cousin I learned that Julius Flickerbaugh was sick andneeded a partner. I came here. Julius got well. He didn't like my way ofloafing five hours and then doing my work (really not so badly) in one.We parted."When I first came here I swore I'd 'keep up my interests.' Very lofty!I read Browning, and went to Minneapolis for the theaters. I thought Iwas 'keeping up.' But I guess the Village Virus had me already. I wasreading four copies of cheap fiction-magazines to one poem. I'd put offthe Minneapolis trips till I simply had to go there on a lot of legalmatters."A few years ago I was talking to a patent lawyer from Chicago, andI realized that----I'd always felt so superior to people like JuliusFlickerbaugh, but I saw that I was as provincial and behind-the-times asJulius. (Worse! Julius plows through the Literary Digest and the Outlookfaithfully, while I'm turning over pages of a book by Charles Flandrauthat I already know by heart.)"I decided to leave here. Stern resolution. Grasp the world. Then Ifound that the Village Virus had me, absolute: I didn't want to facenew streets and younger men--real competition. It was too easy to go onmaking out conveyances and arguing ditching cases. So----That's all ofthe biography of a living dead man, except the diverting last chapter,the lies about my having been 'a tower of strength and legal wisdom'which some day a preacher will spin over my lean dry body."He looked down at his table-desk, fingering the starry enameled vase.She could not comment. She pictured herself running across the roomto pat his hair. She saw that his lips were firm, under his soft fadedmustache. She sat still and maundered, "I know. The Village Virus.Perhaps it will get me. Some day I'm going----Oh, no matter. At least,I am making you talk! Usually you have to be polite to my garrulousness,but now I'm sitting at your feet.""It would be rather nice to have you literally sitting at my feet, by afire.""Would you have a fireplace for me?""Naturally! Please don't snub me now! Let the old man rave. How old areyou, Carol?""Twenty-six, Guy.""Twenty-six! I was just leaving New York, at twenty-six. I heard Pattising, at twenty-six. And now I'm forty-seven. I feel like a child, yetI'm old enough to be your father. So it's decently paternal to imagineyou curled at my feet. . . . Of course I hope it isn't, but we'llreflect the morals of Gopher Prairie by officially announcing that itis! . . . These standards that you and I live up to! There's one thingthat's the matter with Gopher Prairie, at least with the ruling-class(there is a ruling-class, despite all our professions of democracy).And the penalty we tribal rulers pay is that our subjects watch usevery minute. We can't get wholesomely drunk and relax. We have to beso correct about sex morals, and inconspicuous clothes, and doing ourcommercial trickery only in the traditional ways, that none of us canlive up to it, and we become horribly hypocritical. Unavoidably. Thewidow-robbing deacon of fiction can't help being hypocritical. Thewidows themselves demand it! They admire his unctuousness. And look atme. Suppose I did dare to make love to--some exquisite married woman.I wouldn't admit it to myself. I giggle with the most revoltingsalaciousness over La Vie Parisienne, when I get hold of one in Chicago,yet I shouldn't even try to hold your hand. I'm broken. It's thehistorical Anglo-Saxon way of making life miserable. . . . Oh, my dear,I haven't talked to anybody about myself and all our selves for years.""Guy! Can't we do something with the town? Really?""No, we can't!" He disposed of it like a judge ruling out an improperobjection; returned to matters less uncomfortably energetic: "Curious.Most troubles are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make hergrow wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we raise thedevil just for pleasure--wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes.Here in Gopher Prairie we've cleared the fields, and become soft, sowe make ourselves unhappy artificially, at great expense and exertion:Methodists disliking Episcopalians, the man with the Hudson laughing atthe man with the flivver. The worst is the commercial hatred--the grocerfeeling that any man who doesn't deal with him is robbing him. Whathurts me is that it applies to lawyers and doctors (and decidedlyto their wives!) as much as to grocers. The doctors--you know aboutthat--how your husband and Westlake and Gould dislike one another.""No! I won't admit it!"He grinned."Oh, maybe once or twice, when Will has positively known of a case whereDoctor--where one of the others has continued to call on patients longerthan necessary, he has laughed about it, but----"He still grinned."No, REALLY! And when you say the wives of the doctors share thesejealousies----Mrs. McGanum and I haven't any particular crush on eachother; she's so stolid. But her mother, Mrs. Westlake--nobody could besweeter.""Yes, I'm sure she's very bland. But I wouldn't tell her my heart'ssecrets if I were you, my dear. I insist that there's only oneprofessional-man's wife in this town who doesn't plot, and that is you,you blessed, credulous outsider!""I won't be cajoled! I won't believe that medicine, the priesthood ofhealing, can be turned into a penny-picking business.""See here: Hasn't Kennicott ever hinted to you that you'd better be niceto some old woman because she tells her friends which doctor to call in?But I oughtn't to----"She remembered certain remarks which Kennicott had offered regarding theWidow Bogart. She flinched, looked at Guy beseechingly.He sprang up, strode to her with a nervous step, smoothed her hand. Shewondered if she ought to be offended by his caress. Then she wondered ifhe liked her hat, the new Oriental turban of rose and silver brocade.He dropped her hand. His elbow brushed her shoulder. He flitted over tothe desk-chair, his thin back stooped. He picked up the cloisonne vase.Across it he peered at her with such loneliness that she was startled.But his eyes faded into impersonality as he talked of the jealousiesof Gopher Prairie. He stopped himself with a sharp, "Good Lord, Carol,you're not a jury. You are within your legal rights in refusing tobe subjected to this summing-up. I'm a tedious old fool analyzing theobvious, while you're the spirit of rebellion. Tell me your side. Whatis Gopher Prairie to you?""A bore!""Can I help?""How could you?""I don't know. Perhaps by listening. I haven't done that tonight.But normally----Can't I be the confidant of the old French plays, thetiring-maid with the mirror and the loyal ears?""Oh, what is there to confide? The people are savorless and proud ofit. And even if I liked you tremendously, I couldn't talk to you withouttwenty old hexes watching, whispering.""But you will come talk to me, once in a while?""I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to develop my own large capacityfor dullness and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I'vetried. I'd better 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied tobe--nothing.""Don't be cynical. It hurts me, in you. It's like blood on the wing of ahumming-bird.""I'm not a humming-bird. I'm a hawk; a tiny leashed hawk, pecked todeath by these large, white, flabby, wormy hens. But I am grateful toyou for confirming me in the faith. And I'm going home!""Please stay and have some coffee with me.""I'd like to. But they've succeeded in terrorizing me. I'm afraid ofwhat people might say.""I'm not afraid of that. I'm only afraid of what you might say!" Hestalked to her; took her unresponsive hand. "Carol! You have been happyhere tonight? (Yes. I'm begging!)"She squeezed his hand quickly, then snatched hers away. She had butlittle of the curiosity of the flirt, and none of the intrigante's joyin furtiveness. If she was the naive girl, Guy Pollock was the clumsyboy. He raced about the office; he rammed his fists into his pockets.He stammered, "I--I--I----Oh, the devil! Why do I awaken from smoothdustiness to this jagged rawness? I'll make I'm going to trot down thehall and bring in the Dillons, and we'll all have coffee or something.""The Dillons?""Yes. Really quite a decent young pair--Harvey Dillon and his wife. He'sa dentist, just come to town. They live in a room behind his office,same as I do here. They don't know much of anybody----""I've heard of them. And I've never thought to call. I'm horriblyashamed. Do bring them----"She stopped, for no very clear reason, but his expression said, herfaltering admitted, that they wished they had never mentioned theDillons. With spurious enthusiasm he said, "Splendid! I will." From thedoor he glanced at her, curled in the peeled leather chair. He slippedout, came back with Dr. and Mrs. Dillon.The four of them drank rather bad coffee which Pollock made on akerosene burner. They laughed, and spoke of Minneapolis, and weretremendously tactful; and Carol started for home, through the Novemberwind.