CHAPTER XV

by Sinclair Lewis

　　THAT December she was in love with her husband.She romanticized herself not as a great reformer but as the wife of acountry physician. The realities of the doctor's household were coloredby her pride.Late at night, a step on the wooden porch, heard through her confusionof sleep; the storm-door opened; fumbling over the inner door-panels;the buzz of the electric bell. Kennicott muttering "Gol darn it," butpatiently creeping out of bed, remembering to draw the covers up to keepher warm, feeling for slippers and bathrobe, clumping down-stairs.From below, half-heard in her drowsiness, a colloquy in thepidgin-German of the farmers who have forgotten the Old Country languagewithout learning the new:"Hello, Barney, wass willst du?""Morgen, doctor. Die Frau ist ja awful sick. All night she been havingan awful pain in de belly.""How long she been this way? Wie lang, eh?""I dunno, maybe two days.""Why didn't you come for me yesterday, instead of waking me up out of asound sleep? Here it is two o'clock! So spat--warum, eh?""Nun aber, I know it, but she got soch a lot vorse last evening. It'ought maybe all de time it go avay, but it got a lot vorse.""Any fever?""Vell ja, I t'ink she got fever.""Which side is the pain on?""Huh?""Das Schmertz--die Weh--which side is it on? Here?""So. Right here it is.""Any rigidity there?""Huh?""Is it rigid--stiff--I mean, does the belly feel hard to the fingers?""I dunno. She ain't said yet.""What she been eating?""Vell, I t'ink about vot ve alwis eat, maybe corn beef and cabbage andsausage, und so weiter. Doc, sie weint immer, all the time she hollerlike hell. I vish you come.""Well, all right, but you call me earlier, next time. Look here, Barney,you better install a 'phone--telephone haben. Some of you Dutchmen willbe dying one of these days before you can fetch the doctor."The door closing. Barney's wagon--the wheels silent in the snow, but thewagon-body rattling. Kennicott clicking the receiver-hook to rouse thenight telephone-operator, giving a number, waiting, cursing mildly,waiting again, and at last growling, "Hello, Gus, this is the doctor.Say, uh, send me up a team. Guess snow's too thick for a machine. Goingeight miles south. All right. Huh? The hell I will! Don't you go backto sleep. Huh? Well, that's all right now, you didn't wait so very darnlong. All right, Gus; shoot her along. By!"His step on the stairs; his quiet moving about the frigid room while hedressed; his abstracted and meaningless cough. She was supposed to beasleep; she was too exquisitely drowsy to break the charm by speaking.On a slip of paper laid on the bureau--she could hear the pencilgrinding against the marble slab--he wrote his destination. He went out,hungry, chilly, unprotesting; and she, before she fell asleep again,loved him for his sturdiness, and saw the drama of his riding by nightto the frightened household on the distant farm; pictured childrenstanding at a window, waiting for him. He suddenly had in her eyes theheroism of a wireless operator on a ship in a collision; of an explorer,fever-clawed, deserted by his bearers, but going on--jungle--going----At six, when the light faltered in as through ground glass and bleaklyidentified the chairs as gray rectangles, she heard his step on theporch; heard him at the furnace: the rattle of shaking the grate, theslow grinding removal of ashes, the shovel thrust into the coal-bin,the abrupt clatter of the coal as it flew into the fire-box, the fussyregulation of drafts--the daily sounds of a Gopher Prairie life, nowfirst appealing to her as something brave and enduring, many-coloredand free. She visioned the fire-box: flames turned to lemon and metallicgold as the coal-dust sifted over them; thin twisty flutters of purple,ghost flames which gave no light, slipping up between the dark bankedcoals.It was luxurious in bed, and the house would be warm for her whenshe rose, she reflected. What a worthless cat she was! What were heraspirations beside his capability?She awoke again as he dropped into bed."Seems just a few minutes ago that you started out!""I've been away four hours. I've operated a woman for appendicitis, ina Dutch kitchen. Came awful close to losing her, too, but I pulled herthrough all right. Close squeak. Barney says he shot ten rabbits lastSunday."He was instantly asleep--one hour of rest before he had to be up andready for the farmers who came in early. She marveled that in what wasto her but a night-blurred moment, he should have been in a distantplace, have taken charge of a strange house, have slashed a woman, saveda life.What wonder he detested the lazy Westlake and McGanum! How could theeasy Guy Pollock understand this skill and endurance?Then Kennicott was grumbling, "Seven-fifteen! Aren't you ever goingto get up for breakfast?" and he was not a hero-scientist but a ratherirritable and commonplace man who needed a shave. They had coffee,griddle-cakes, and sausages, and talked about Mrs. McGanum's atrociousalligator-hide belt. Night witchery and morning disillusion were alikeforgotten in the march of realities and days.IIFamiliar to the doctor's wife was the man with an injured leg, driven infrom the country on a Sunday afternoon and brought to the house. Hesat in a rocker in the back of a lumber-wagon, his face pale from theanguish of the jolting. His leg was thrust out before him, resting ona starch-box and covered with a leather-bound horse-blanket. His drabcourageous wife drove the wagon, and she helped Kennicott support him ashe hobbled up the steps, into the house."Fellow cut his leg with an ax--pretty bad gash--Halvor Nelson, ninemiles out," Kennicott observed.Carol fluttered at the back of the room, childishly excited when she wassent to fetch towels and a basin of water. Kennicott lifted the farmerinto a chair and chuckled, "There we are, Halvor! We'll have you outfixing fences and drinking aquavit in a month." The farmwife sat onthe couch, expressionless, bulky in a man's dogskin coat and unplumbedlayers of jackets. The flowery silk handkerchief which she had worn overher head now hung about her seamed neck. Her white wool gloves lay inher lap.Kennicott drew from the injured leg the thick red "German sock," theinnumerous other socks of gray and white wool, then the spiral bandage.The leg was of an unwholesome dead white, with the black hairs feebleand thin and flattened, and the scar a puckered line of crimson. Surely,Carol shuddered, this was not human flesh, the rosy shining tissue ofthe amorous poets.Kennicott examined the scar, smiled at Halvor and his wife, chanted,"Fine, b' gosh! Couldn't be better!"The Nelsons looked deprecating. The farmer nodded a cue to his wife andshe mourned:"Vell, how much ve going to owe you, doctor?""I guess it'll be----Let's see: one drive out and two calls. I guessit'll be about eleven dollars in all, Lena.""I dunno ve can pay you yoost a little w'ile, doctor."Kennicott lumbered over to her, patted her shoulder, roared, "Why, Lordlove you, sister, I won't worry if I never get it! You pay me next fall,when you get your crop. . . . Carrie! Suppose you or Bea could shake upa cup of coffee and some cold lamb for the Nelsons? They got a long colddrive ahead."IIIHe had been gone since morning; her eyes ached with reading; VidaSherwin could not come to tea. She wandered through the house, empty asthe bleary street without. The problem of "Will the doctor be home intime for supper, or shall I sit down without him?" was important inthe household. Six was the rigid, the canonical supper-hour, but athalf-past six he had not come. Much speculation with Bea: Had theobstetrical case taken longer than he had expected? Had he been calledsomewhere else? Was the snow much heavier out in the country, so that heshould have taken a buggy, or even a cutter, instead of the car? Here intown it had melted a lot, but still----A honking, a shout, the motor engine raced before it was shut off.She hurried to the window. The car was a monster at rest after furiousadventures. The headlights blazed on the clots of ice in the road sothat the tiniest lumps gave mountainous shadows, and the taillight casta circle of ruby on the snow behind. Kennicott was opening the door,crying, "Here we are, old girl! Got stuck couple times, but we made it,by golly, we made it, and here we be! Come on! Food! Eatin's!"She rushed to him, patted his fur coat, the long hairs smooth but chillyto her fingers. She joyously summoned Bea, "All right! He's here! We'llsit right down!"IVThere were, to inform the doctor's wife of his successes no clappingaudiences nor book-reviews nor honorary degrees. But there was aletter written by a German farmer recently moved from Minnesota toSaskatchewan:Dear sor, as you haf bin treading mee for a fue Weaks dis Somer andseen wat is rong wit mee so in Regarding to dat i wont to tank you. theDoctor heir say wat shot bee rong wit mee and day give mee som Madsinbut it diten halp mee like wat you dit. Now day glaim dat i Woten Neetaney Madsin ad all wat you tink?Well i haven ben tacking aney ting for about one & 1/2 Mont but i dontget better so i like to heir Wat you tink about it i feel like disDisconfebil feeling around the Stomac after eating and dat Pain aroundHeard and down the arm and about 3 to 3 1/2 Hour after Eating i feelweeak like and dissy and a dull Hadig. Now you gust lett mee know Watyou tink about mee, i do Wat you say.VShe encountered Guy Pollock at the drug store. He looked at her asthough he had a right to; he spoke softly. "I haven't see you, the lastfew days.""No. I've been out in the country with Will several times. He's so----Doyou know that people like you and me can never understand people likehim? We're a pair of hypercritical loafers, you and I, while he quietlygoes and does things."She nodded and smiled and was very busy about purchasing boric acid. Hestared after her, and slipped away.When she found that he was gone she was slightly disconcerted.VIShe could--at times--agree with Kennicott that the shaving-and-corsetsfamiliarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity but a wholesomefrankness; that artificial reticences might merely be irritating. Shewas not much disturbed when for hours he sat about the living-room inhis honest socks. But she would not listen to his theory that "all thisromance stuff is simply moonshine--elegant when you're courting, but nouse busting yourself keeping it up all your life."She thought of surprises, games, to vary the days. She knitted anastounding purple scarf, which she hid under his supper plate. (Whenhe discovered it he looked embarrassed, and gasped, "Is today ananniversary or something? Gosh, I'd forgotten it!")Once she filled a thermos bottle with hot coffee a corn-flakes box withcookies just baked by Bea, and bustled to his office at three in theafternoon. She hid her bundles in the hall and peeped in.The office was shabby. Kennicott had inherited it from a medicalpredecessor, and changed it only by adding a white enameledoperating-table, a sterilizer, a Roentgen-ray apparatus, and a smallportable typewriter. It was a suite of two rooms: a waiting-room withstraight chairs, shaky pine table, and those coverless and unknownmagazines which are found only in the offices of dentists anddoctors. The room beyond, looking on Main Street, was business-office,consulting-room, operating-room, and, in an alcove, bacteriologicaland chemical laboratory. The wooden floors of both rooms were bare; thefurniture was brown and scaly.Waiting for the doctor were two women, as still as though they wereparalyzed, and a man in a railroad brakeman's uniform, holding hisbandaged right hand with his tanned left. They stared at Carol. She satmodestly in a stiff chair, feeling frivolous and out of place.Kennicott appeared at the inner door, ushering out a bleached man witha trickle of wan beard, and consoling him, "All right, Dad. Be carefulabout the sugar, and mind the diet I gave you. Gut the prescriptionfilled, and come in and see me next week. Say, uh, better, uh, betternot drink too much beer. All right, Dad."His voice was artificially hearty. He looked absently at Carol. He wasa medical machine now, not a domestic machine. "What is it, Carrie?" hedroned."No hurry. Just wanted to say hello.""Well----"Self-pity because he did not divine that this was a surprise partyrendered her sad and interesting to herself, and she had the pleasure ofthe martyrs in saying bravely to him, "It's nothing special. If you'rebusy long I'll trot home."While she waited she ceased to pity and began to mock herself. For thefirst time she observed the waiting-room. Oh yes, the doctor's familyhad to have obi panels and a wide couch and an electric percolator, butany hole was good enough for sick tired common people who were nothingbut the one means and excuse for the doctor's existing! No. She couldn'tblame Kennicott. He was satisfied by the shabby chairs. He put up withthem as his patients did. It was her neglected province--she who hadbeen going about talking of rebuilding the whole town!When the patients were gone she brought in her bundles."What's those?" wondered Kennicott."Turn your back! Look out of the window!"He obeyed--not very much bored. When she cried "Now!" a feast of cookiesand small hard candies and hot coffee was spread on the roll-top desk inthe inner room.His broad face lightened. "That's a new one on me! Never was moresurprised in my life! And, by golly, I believe I am hungry. Say, this isfine."When the first exhilaration of the surprise had declined she demanded,"Will! I'm going to refurnish your waiting-room!""What's the matter with it? It's all right.""It is not! It's hideous. We can afford to give your patients a betterplace. And it would be good business." She felt tremendously politic."Rats! I don't worry about the business. You look here now: As I toldyou----Just because I like to tuck a few dollars away, I'll be switchedif I'll stand for your thinking I'm nothing but a dollar-chasing----""Stop it! Quick! I'm not hurting your feelings! I'm not criticizing! I'mthe adoring least one of thy harem. I just mean----"Two days later, with pictures, wicker chairs, a rug, she had made thewaiting-room habitable; and Kennicott admitted, "Does look a lot better.Never thought much about it. Guess I need being bullied."She was convinced that she was gloriously content in her career asdoctor's-wife.VIIShe tried to free herself from the speculation and disillusionment whichhad been twitching at her; sought to dismiss all the opinionation of aninsurgent era. She wanted to shine upon the veal-faced bristly-beardedLyman Cass as much as upon Miles Bjornstam or Guy Pollock. She gave areception for the Thanatopsis Club. But her real acquiring of meritwas in calling upon that Mrs. Bogart whose gossipy good opinion was sovaluable to a doctor.Though the Bogart house was next door she had entered it but threetimes. Now she put on her new moleskin cap, which made her face smalland innocent, she rubbed off the traces of a lip-stick--and fled acrossthe alley before her admirable resolution should sneak away.The age of houses, like the age of men, has small relation to theiryears. The dull-green cottage of the good Widow Bogart was twenty yearsold, but it had the antiquity of Cheops, and the smell of mummy-dust.Its neatness rebuked the street. The two stones by the path were paintedyellow; the outhouse was so overmodestly masked with vines and latticethat it was not concealed at all; the last iron dog remaining in GopherPrairie stood among whitewashed conch-shells upon the lawn. The hallwaywas dismayingly scrubbed; the kitchen was an exercise in mathematics,with problems worked out in equidistant chairs.The parlor was kept for visitors. Carol suggested, "Let's sit in thekitchen. Please don't trouble to light the parlor stove.""No trouble at all! My gracious, and you coming so seldom and all, andthe kitchen is a perfect sight, I try to keep it clean, but Cy willtrack mud all over it, I've spoken to him about it a hundred times ifI've spoken once, no, you sit right there, dearie, and I'll make a fire,no trouble at all, practically no trouble at all."Mrs. Bogart groaned, rubbed her joints, and repeatedly dusted her handswhile she made the fire, and when Carol tried to help she lamented,"Oh, it doesn't matter; guess I ain't good for much but toil and workin'anyway; seems as though that's what a lot of folks think."The parlor was distinguished by an expanse of rag carpet from which, asthey entered, Mrs. Bogart hastily picked one sad dead fly. In the centerof the carpet was a rug depicting a red Newfoundland dog, reclining in agreen and yellow daisy field and labeled "Our Friend." The parlor organ,tall and thin, was adorned with a mirror partly circular, partly square,and partly diamond-shaped, and with brackets holding a pot of geraniums,a mouth-organ, and a copy of "The Oldtime Hymnal." On the centertable was a Sears-Roebuck mail-order catalogue, a silver frame withphotographs of the Baptist Church and of an elderly clergyman, andan aluminum tray containing a rattlesnake's rattle and a brokenspectacle-lens.Mrs. Bogart spoke of the eloquence of the Reverend Mr. Zitterel,the coldness of cold days, the price of poplar wood, Dave Dyer's newhair-cut, and Cy Bogart's essential piety. "As I said to his SundaySchool teacher, Cy may be a little wild, but that's because he's got somuch better brains than a lot of these boys, and this farmer that claimshe caught Cy stealing 'beggies, is a liar, and I ought to have the lawon him."Mrs. Bogart went thoroughly into the rumor that the girl waiter atBilly's Lunch was not all she might be--or, rather, was quite all shemight be."My lands, what can you expect when everybody knows what her mother was?And if these traveling salesmen would let her alone she would be allright, though I certainly don't believe she ought to be allowed to thinkshe can pull the wool over our eyes. The sooner she's sent to theschool for incorrigible girls down at Sauk Centre, the better for alland----Won't you just have a cup of coffee, Carol dearie, I'm sure youwon't mind old Aunty Bogart calling you by your first name when youthink how long I've known Will, and I was such a friend of his dearlovely mother when she lived here and--was that fur cap expensive?But----Don't you think it's awful, the way folks talk in this town?"Mrs. Bogart hitched her chair nearer. Her large face, with itsdisturbing collection of moles and lone black hairs, wrinkledcunningly. She showed her decayed teeth in a reproving smile, and in theconfidential voice of one who scents stale bedroom scandal she breathed:"I just don't see how folks can talk and act like they do. You don'tknow the things that go on under cover. This town--why it's only thereligious training I've given Cy that's kept him so innocent of--things.Just the other day----I never pay no attention to stories, but I heardit mighty good and straight that Harry Haydock is carrying on with agirl that clerks in a store down in Minneapolis, and poor Juanitanot knowing anything about it--though maybe it's the judgment ofGod, because before she married Harry she acted up with more than oneboy----Well, I don't like to say it, and maybe I ain't up-to-date, likeCy says, but I always believed a lady shouldn't even give names to allsorts of dreadful things, but just the same I know there was at leastone case where Juanita and a boy--well, they were just dreadful.And--and----Then there's that Ole Jenson the grocer, that thinks he's soplaguey smart, and I know he made up to a farmer's wife and----And thisawful man Bjornstam that does chores, and Nat Hicks and----"There was, it seemed, no person in town who was not living a life ofshame except Mrs. Bogart, and naturally she resented it.She knew. She had always happened to be there. Once, she whispered, shewas going by when an indiscreet window-shade had been left up a coupleof inches. Once she had noticed a man and woman holding hands, and rightat a Methodist sociable!"Another thing----Heaven knows I never want to start trouble, but Ican't help what I see from my back steps, and I notice your hired girlBea carrying on with the grocery boys and all----""Mrs. Bogart! I'd trust Bea as I would myself!""Oh, dearie, you don't understand me! I'm sure she's a good girl. I meanshe's green, and I hope that none of these horrid young men that thereare around town will get her into trouble! It's their parents' fault,letting them run wild and hear evil things. If I had my way therewouldn't be none of them, not boys nor girls neither, allowed to knowanything about--about things till they was married. It's terrible thebald way that some folks talk. It just shows and gives away what awfulthoughts they got inside them, and there's nothing can cure them exceptcoming right to God and kneeling down like I do at prayer-meeting everyWednesday evening, and saying, 'O God, I would be a miserable sinnerexcept for thy grace.'"I'd make every last one of these brats go to Sunday School and learnto think about nice things 'stead of about cigarettes and goings-on--andthese dances they have at the lodges are the worst thing that everhappened to this town, lot of young men squeezing girls and findingout----Oh, it's dreadful. I've told the mayor he ought to put a stopto them and----There was one boy in this town, I don't want to besuspicious or uncharitable but----"It was half an hour before Carol escaped.She stopped on her own porch and thought viciously:"If that woman is on the side of the angels, then I have no choice; Imust be on the side of the devil. But--isn't she like me? She too wantsto 'reform the town'! She too criticizes everybody! She too thinks themen are vulgar and limited! AM I LIKE HER? This is ghastly!"That evening she did not merely consent to play cribbage with Kennicott;she urged him to play; and she worked up a hectic interest in land-dealsand Sam Clark.VIIIIn courtship days Kennicott had shown her a photograph of NelsErdstrom's baby and log cabin, but she had never seen the Erdstroms.They had become merely "patients of the doctor." Kennicott telephonedher on a mid-December afternoon, "Want to throw your coat on and driveout to Erdstrom's with me? Fairly warm. Nels got the jaundice.""Oh yes!" She hastened to put on woolen stockings, high boots, sweater,muffler, cap, mittens.The snow was too thick and the ruts frozen too hard for the motor. Theydrove out in a clumsy high carriage. Tucked over them was a blue woolencover, prickly to her wrists, and outside of it a buffalo robe, humbleand moth-eaten now, used ever since the bison herds had streaked theprairie a few miles to the west.The scattered houses between which they passed in town were small anddesolate in contrast to the expanse of huge snowy yards and widestreet. They crossed the railroad tracks, and instantly were in the farmcountry. The big piebald horses snorted clouds of steam, and started totrot. The carriage squeaked in rhythm. Kennicott drove with clucks of"There boy, take it easy!" He was thinking. He paid no attention toCarol. Yet it was he who commented, "Pretty nice, over there," as theyapproached an oak-grove where shifty winter sunlight quivered in thehollow between two snow-drifts.They drove from the natural prairie to a cleared district which twentyyears ago had been forest. The country seemed to stretch unchanging tothe North Pole: low hill, brush-scraggly bottom, reedy creek, muskratmound, fields with frozen brown clods thrust up through the snow.Her ears and nose were pinched; her breath frosted her collar; herfingers ached."Getting colder," she said."Yup."That was all their conversation for three miles. Yet she was happy.They reached Nels Erdstrom's at four, and with a throb she recognizedthe courageous venture which had lured her to Gopher Prairie: thecleared fields, furrows among stumps, a log cabin chinked with mud androofed with dry hay. But Nels had prospered. He used the log cabin as abarn; and a new house reared up, a proud, unwise, Gopher Prairiehouse, the more naked and ungraceful in its glossy white paint and pinktrimmings. Every tree had been cut down. The house was so unsheltered,so battered by the wind, so bleakly thrust out into the harsh clearing,that Carol shivered. But they were welcomed warmly enough in thekitchen, with its crisp new plaster, its black and nickel range, itscream separator in a corner.Mrs. Erdstrom begged her to sit in the parlor, where there was aphonograph and an oak and leather davenport, the prairie farmer'sproofs of social progress, but she dropped down by the kitchen stove andinsisted, "Please don't mind me." When Mrs. Erdstrom had followed thedoctor out of the room Carol glanced in a friendly way at the grainedpine cupboard, the framed Lutheran Konfirmations Attest, the tracesof fried eggs and sausages on the dining table against the wall, and ajewel among calendars, presenting not only a lithographic young womanwith cherry lips, and a Swedish advertisement of Axel Egge's grocery,but also a thermometer and a match-holder.She saw that a boy of four or five was staring at her from the hall,a boy in gingham shirt and faded corduroy trousers, but large-eyed,firm-mouthed, wide-browed. He vanished, then peeped in again, biting hisknuckles, turning his shoulder toward her in shyness.Didn't she remember--what was it?--Kennicott sitting beside her at FortSnelling, urging, "See how scared that baby is. Needs some woman likeyou."Magic had fluttered about her then--magic of sunset and cool air and thecuriosity of lovers. She held out her hands as much to that sanctity asto the boy.He edged into the room, doubtfully sucking his thumb."Hello," she said. "What's your name?""Hee, hee, hee!""You're quite right. I agree with you. Silly people like me always askchildren their names.""Hee, hee, hee!""Come here and I'll tell you the story of--well, I don't know what itwill be about, but it will have a slim heroine and a Prince Charming."He stood stoically while she spun nonsense. His giggling ceased. She waswinning him. Then the telephone bell--two long rings, one short.Mrs. Erdstrom galloped into the room, shrieked into the transmitter,"Vell? Yes, yes, dis is Erdstrom's place! Heh? Oh, you vant de doctor?"Kennicott appeared, growled into the telephone:"Well, what do you want? Oh, hello Dave; what do you want? WhichMorgenroth's? Adolph's? All right. Amputation? Yuh, I see. Say, Dave,get Gus to harness up and take my surgical kit down there--and have himtake some chloroform. I'll go straight down from here. May not gethome tonight. You can get me at Adolph's. Huh? No, Carrie can give theanesthetic, I guess. G'-by. Huh? No; tell me about that tomorrow--toodamn many people always listening in on this farmers' line."He turned to Carol. "Adolph Morgenroth, farmer ten miles southwest oftown, got his arm crushed-fixing his cow-shed and a post caved in onhim--smashed him up pretty bad--may have to amputate, Dave Dyer says.Afraid we'll have to go right from here. Darn sorry to drag you cleardown there with me----""Please do. Don't mind me a bit.""Think you could give the anesthetic? Usually have my driver do it.""If you'll tell me how.""All right. Say, did you hear me putting one over on these goats thatare always rubbering in on party-wires? I hope they heard me! Well. . . .Now, Bessie, don't you worry about Nels. He's getting along all right.Tomorrow you or one of the neighbors drive in and get this prescriptionfilled at Dyer's. Give him a teaspoonful every four hours. Good-by.Hel-lo! Here's the little fellow! My Lord, Bessie, it ain't possiblethis is the fellow that used to be so sickly? Why, say, he's a great bigstrapping Svenska now--going to be bigger 'n his daddy!"Kennicott's bluffness made the child squirm with a delight which Carolcould not evoke. It was a humble wife who followed the busy doctor outto the carriage, and her ambition was not to play Rachmaninoff better,nor to build town halls, but to chuckle at babies.The sunset was merely a flush of rose on a dome of silver, with oaktwigs and thin poplar branches against it, but a silo on the horizonchanged from a red tank to a tower of violet misted over with gray. Thepurple road vanished, and without lights, in the darkness of a worlddestroyed, they swayed on--toward nothing.It was a bumpy cold way to the Morgenroth farm, and she was asleep whenthey arrived.Here was no glaring new house with a proud phonograph, but a lowwhitewashed kitchen smelling of cream and cabbage. Adolph Morgenroth waslying on a couch in the rarely used dining-room. His heavy work-scarredwife was shaking her hands in anxiety.Carol felt that Kennicott would do something magnificent and startling.But he was casual. He greeted the man, "Well, well, Adolph, have to fixyou up, eh?" Quietly, to the wife, "Hat die drug store my schwartze baghier geschickt? So--schon. Wie viel Uhr ist 's? Sieben? Nun, lassen unsein wenig supper zuerst haben. Got any of that good beer left--giebt 'snoch Bier?"He had supped in four minutes. His coat off, his sleeves rolled up, hewas scrubbing his hands in a tin basin in the sink, using the bar ofyellow kitchen soap.Carol had not dared to look into the farther room while she labored overthe supper of beer, rye bread, moist cornbeef and cabbage, set on thekitchen table. The man in there was groaning. In her one glance shehad seen that his blue flannel shirt was open at a corded tobacco-brownneck, the hollows of which were sprinkled with thin black and grayhairs. He was covered with a sheet, like a corpse, and outside the sheetwas his right arm, wrapped in towels stained with blood.But Kennicott strode into the other room gaily, and she followed him.With surprising delicacy in his large fingers he unwrapped the towelsand revealed an arm which, below the elbow, was a mass of blood and rawflesh. The man bellowed. The room grew thick about her; she was veryseasick; she fled to a chair in the kitchen. Through the haze of nauseashe heard Kennicott grumbling, "Afraid it will have to come off, Adolph.What did you do? Fall on a reaper blade? We'll fix it right up. Carrie!CAROL!"She couldn't--she couldn't get up. Then she was up, her knees likewater, her stomach revolving a thousand times a second, her eyes filmed,her ears full of roaring. She couldn't reach the dining-room. She wasgoing to faint. Then she was in the dining-room, leaning against thewall, trying to smile, flushing hot and cold along her chest and sides,while Kennicott mumbled, "Say, help Mrs. Morgenroth and me carry himin on the kitchen table. No, first go out and shove those two tablestogether, and put a blanket on them and a clean sheet."It was salvation to push the heavy tables, to scrub them, to be exact inplacing the sheet. Her head cleared; she was able to look calmly in ather husband and the farmwife while they undressed the wailing man, gothim into a clean nightgown, and washed his arm. Kennicott came to layout his instruments. She realized that, with no hospital facilities, yetwith no worry about it, her husband--HER HUSBAND--was going to performa surgical operation, that miraculous boldness of which one read instories about famous surgeons.She helped them to move Adolph into the kitchen. The man was in such afunk that he would not use his legs. He was heavy, and smelled of sweatand the stable. But she put her arm about his waist, her sleek head byhis chest; she tugged at him; she clicked her tongue in imitation ofKennicott's cheerful noises.When Adolph was on the table Kennicott laid a hemispheric steel andcotton frame on his face; suggested to Carol, "Now you sit here at hishead and keep the ether dripping--about this fast, see? I'll watchhis breathing. Look who's here! Real anesthetist! Ochsner hasn't got abetter one! Class, eh? . . . Now, now, Adolph, take it easy. This won'thurt you a bit. Put you all nice and asleep and it won't hurt a bit.Schweig' mal! Bald schlaft man grat wie ein Kind. So! So! Bald geht'sbesser!"As she let the ether drip, nervously trying to keep the rhythm thatKennicott had indicated, Carol stared at her husband with the abandon ofhero-worship.He shook his head. "Bad light--bad light. Here, Mrs. Morgenroth, youstand right here and hold this lamp. Hier, und dieses--dieses lamphalten--so!"By that streaky glimmer he worked, swiftly, at ease. The room was still.Carol tried to look at him, yet not look at the seeping blood, thecrimson slash, the vicious scalpel. The ether fumes were sweet, choking.Her head seemed to be floating away from her body. Her arm was feeble.It was not the blood but the grating of the surgical saw on the livingbone that broke her, and she knew that she had been fighting off nausea,that she was beaten. She was lost in dizziness. She heard Kennicott'svoice--"Sick? Trot outdoors couple minutes. Adolph will stay under now."She was fumbling at a door-knob which whirled in insulting circles;she was on the stoop, gasping, forcing air into her chest, her headclearing. As she returned she caught the scene as a whole: the cavernouskitchen, two milk-cans a leaden patch by the wall, hams dangling from abeam, bats of light at the stove door, and in the center, illuminatedby a small glass lamp held by a frightened stout woman, Dr. Kennicottbending over a body which was humped under a sheet--the surgeon, hisbare arms daubed with blood, his hands, in pale-yellow rubber gloves,loosening the tourniquet, his face without emotion save when he threwup his head and clucked at the farmwife, "Hold that light steady just asecond more--noch blos esn wenig.""He speaks a vulgar, common, incorrect German of life and death andbirth and the soil. I read the French and German of sentimentallovers and Christmas garlands. And I thought that it was I who had theculture!" she worshiped as she returned to her place.After a time he snapped, "That's enough. Don't give him any more ether."He was concentrated on tying an artery. His gruffness seemed heroic toher.As he shaped the flap of flesh she murmured, "Oh, you ARE wonderful!"He was surprised. "Why, this is a cinch. Now if it had been like lastweek----Get me some more water. Now last week I had a case with an oozein the peritoneal cavity, and by golly if it wasn't a stomach ulcer thatI hadn't suspected and----There. Say, I certainly am sleepy. Let's turnin here. Too late to drive home. And tastes to me like a storm coming."IXThey slept on a feather bed with their fur coats over them; in themorning they broke ice in the pitcher--the vast flowered and giltpitcher.Kennicott's storm had not come. When they set out it was hazy andgrowing warmer. After a mile she saw that he was studying a dark cloudin the north. He urged the horses to the run. But she forgot his unusualhaste in wonder at the tragic landscape. The pale snow, the prickles ofold stubble, and the clumps of ragged brush faded into a gray obscurity.Under the hillocks were cold shadows. The willows about a farmhouse wereagitated by the rising wind, and the patches of bare wood where the barkhad peeled away were white as the flesh of a leper. The snowy slews wereof a harsh flatness. The whole land was cruel, and a climbing cloud ofslate-edged blackness dominated the sky."Guess we're about in for a blizzard," speculated Kennicott "We can makeBen McGonegal's, anyway.""Blizzard? Really? Why----But still we used to think they were fun whenI was a girl. Daddy had to stay home from court, and we'd stand at thewindow and watch the snow.""Not much fun on the prairie. Get lost. Freeze to death. Take nochances." He chirruped at the horses. They were flying now, the carriagerocking on the hard ruts.The whole air suddenly crystallized into large damp flakes. The horsesand the buffalo robe were covered with snow; her face was wet; thethin butt of the whip held a white ridge. The air became colder. Thesnowflakes were harder; they shot in level lines, clawing at her face.She could not see a hundred feet ahead.Kennicott was stern. He bent forward, the reins firm in his coonskingauntlets. She was certain that he would get through. He always gotthrough things.Save for his presence, the world and all normal living disappeared. Theywere lost in the boiling snow. He leaned close to bawl, "Letting thehorses have their heads. They'll get us home."With a terrifying bump they were off the road, slanting with two wheelsin the ditch, but instantly they were jerked back as the horses fledon. She gasped. She tried to, and did not, feel brave as she pulled thewoolen robe up about her chin.They were passing something like a dark wall on the right. "I know thatbarn!" he yelped. He pulled at the reins. Peeping from the covers shesaw his teeth pinch his lower lip, saw him scowl as he slackened andsawed and jerked sharply again at the racing horses.They stopped."Farmhouse there. Put robe around you and come on," he cried.It was like diving into icy water to climb out of the carriage, buton the ground she smiled at him, her face little and childish and pinkabove the buffalo robe over her shoulders. In a swirl of flakes whichscratched at their eyes like a maniac darkness, he unbuckled theharness. He turned and plodded back, a ponderous furry figure, holdingthe horses' bridles, Carol's hand dragging at his sleeve.They came to the cloudy bulk of a barn whose outer wall was directlyupon the road. Feeling along it, he found a gate, led them into a yard,into the barn. The interior was warm. It stunned them with its languidquiet.He carefully drove the horses into stalls.Her toes were coals of pain. "Let's run for the house," she said."Can't. Not yet. Might never find it. Might get lost ten feet away fromit. Sit over in this stall, near the horses. We'll rush for the housewhen the blizzard lifts.""I'm so stiff! I can't walk!"He carried her into the stall, stripped off her overshoes and boots,stopping to blow on his purple fingers as he fumbled at her laces.He rubbed her feet, and covered her with the buffalo robe andhorse-blankets from the pile on the feed-box. She was drowsy, hemmed inby the storm. She sighed:"You're so strong and yet so skilful and not afraid of blood or stormor----""Used to it. Only thing that's bothered me was the chance the etherfumes might explode, last night.""I don't understand.""Why, Dave, the darn fool, sent me ether, instead of chloroform like Itold him, and you know ether fumes are mighty inflammable, especiallywith that lamp right by the table. But I had to operate, ofcourse--wound chuck-full of barnyard filth that way.""You knew all the time that----Both you and I might have been blown up?You knew it while you were operating?""Sure. Didn't you? Why, what's the matter?"