CHAPTER IX

by Sinclair Lewis

　　ISHE had tripped into the meadow to teach the lambs a pretty educationaldance and found that the lambs were wolves. There was no way out betweentheir pressing gray shoulders. She was surrounded by fangs and sneeringeyes.She could not go on enduring the hidden derision. She wanted to flee.She wanted to hide in the generous indifference of cities. She practisedsaying to Kennicott, "Think perhaps I'll run down to St. Paul for a fewdays." But she could not trust herself to say it carelessly; could notabide his certain questioning.Reform the town? All she wanted was to be tolerated!She could not look directly at people. She flushed and winced beforecitizens who a week ago had been amusing objects of study, and in theirgood-mornings she heard a cruel sniggering.She encountered Juanita Haydock at Ole Jenson's grocery. She besought,"Oh, how do you do! Heavens, what beautiful celery that is!""Yes, doesn't it look fresh. Harry simply has to have his celery onSunday, drat the man!"Carol hastened out of the shop exulting, "She didn't make fun of me. . . .Did she?"In a week she had recovered from consciousness of insecurity, of shameand whispering notoriety, but she kept her habit of avoiding people. Shewalked the streets with her head down. When she spied Mrs. McGanum orMrs. Dyer ahead she crossed over with an elaborate pretense of lookingat a billboard. Always she was acting, for the benefit of every one shesaw--and for the benefit of the ambushed leering eyes which she did notsee.She perceived that Vida Sherwin had told the truth. Whether she entereda store, or swept the back porch, or stood at the bay-window in theliving-room, the village peeped at her. Once she had swung along thestreet triumphant in making a home. Now she glanced at each house, andfelt, when she was safely home, that she had won past a thousandenemies armed with ridicule. She told herself that her sensitivenesswas preposterous, but daily she was thrown into panic. She saw curtainsslide back into innocent smoothness. Old women who had been enteringtheir houses slipped out again to stare at her--in the wintry quiet shecould hear them tiptoeing on their porches. When she had for a blessedhour forgotten the searchlight, when she was scampering through a chilldusk, happy in yellow windows against gray night, her heart checkedas she realized that a head covered with a shawl was thrust up over asnow-tipped bush to watch her.She admitted that she was taking herself too seriously; that villagersgape at every one. She became placid, and thought well of herphilosophy. But next morning she had a shock of shame as she enteredLudelmeyer's. The grocer, his clerk, and neurotic Mrs. Dave Dyer had beengiggling about something. They halted, looked embarrassed, babbled aboutonions. Carol felt guilty. That evening when Kennicott took her to callon the crochety Lyman Casses, their hosts seemed flustered at theirarrival. Kennicott jovially hooted, "What makes you so hang-dog, Lym?"The Casses tittered feebly.Except Dave Dyer, Sam Clark, and Raymie Wutherspoon, there were nomerchants of whose welcome Carol was certain. She knew that she readmockery into greetings but she could not control her suspicion, couldnot rise from her psychic collapse. She alternately raged and flinchedat the superiority of the merchants. They did not know that theywere being rude, but they meant to have it understood that they wereprosperous and "not scared of no doctor's wife." They often said, "Oneman's as good as another--and a darn sight better." This motto, however,they did not commend to farmer customers who had had crop failures. TheYankee merchants were crabbed; and Ole Jenson, Ludelmeyer, and Gus Dahl,from the "Old Country," wished to be taken for Yankees. James MadisonHowland, born in New Hampshire, and Ole Jenson, born in Sweden, bothproved that they were free American citizens by grunting, "I don'tknow whether I got any or not," or "Well, you can't expect me to get itdelivered by noon."It was good form for the customers to fight back. Juanita Haydockcheerfully jabbered, "You have it there by twelve or I'll snatch thatfresh delivery-boy bald-headed." But Carol had never been able to playthe game of friendly rudeness; and now she was certain that she neverwould learn it. She formed the cowardly habit of going to Axel Egge's.Axel was not respectable and rude. He was still a foreigner, and heexpected to remain one. His manner was heavy and uninterrogative. Hisestablishment was more fantastic than any cross-roads store. No one saveAxel himself could find anything. A part of the assortment of children'sstockings was under a blanket on a shelf, a part in a tin ginger-snapbox, the rest heaped like a nest of black-cotton snakes upon aflour-barrel which was surrounded by brooms, Norwegian Bibles, driedcod for ludfisk, boxes of apricots, and a pair and a half of lumbermen'srubber-footed boots. The place was crowded with Scandinavian farmwives,standing aloof in shawls and ancient fawn-colored leg o' mutton jackets,awaiting the return of their lords. They spoke Norwegian or Swedish, andlooked at Carol uncomprehendingly. They were a relief to her--they werenot whispering that she was a poseur.But what she told herself was that Axel Egge's was "so picturesque andromantic."It was in the matter of clothes that she was most self-conscious.When she dared to go shopping in her new checked suit with theblack-embroidered sulphur collar, she had as good as invited all ofGopher Prairie (which interested itself in nothing so intimately as innew clothes and the cost thereof) to investigate her. It was a smartsuit with lines unfamiliar to the dragging yellow and pink frocks of thetown. The Widow Bogart's stare, from her porch, indicated, "Well Inever saw anything like that before!" Mrs. McGanum stopped Carol atthe notions shop to hint, "My, that's a nice suit--wasn't it terriblyexpensive?" The gang of boys in front of the drug store commented, "Hey,Pudgie, play you a game of checkers on that dress." Carol could notendure it. She drew her fur coat over the suit and hastily fastened thebuttons, while the boys snickered.IINo group angered her quite so much as these staring young roues.She had tried to convince herself that the village, with its fresh air,its lakes for fishing and swimming, was healthier than the artificialcity. But she was sickened by glimpses of the gang of boys from fourteento twenty who loafed before Dyer's Drug Store, smoking cigarettes,displaying "fancy" shoes and purple ties and coats of diamond-shapedbuttons, whistling the Hoochi-Koochi and catcalling, "Oh, you baby-doll"at every passing girl.She saw them playing pool in the stinking room behind Del Snafflin'sbarber shop, and shaking dice in "The Smoke House," and gathered ina snickering knot to listen to the "juicy stories" of Bert Tybee, thebartender of the Minniemashie House. She heard them smacking moist lipsover every love-scene at the Rosebud Movie Palace. At the counter of theGreek Confectionery Parlor, while they ate dreadful messes of decayedbananas, acid cherries, whipped cream, and gelatinous ice-cream, theyscreamed to one another, "Hey, lemme 'lone," "Quit dog-gone you, lookawhat you went and done, you almost spilled my glass swater," "Like hellI did," "Hey, gol darn your hide, don't you go sticking your coffinnail in my i-scream," "Oh you Batty, how juh like dancing with TillieMcGuire, last night? Some squeezing, heh, kid?"By diligent consultation of American fiction she discovered that thiswas the only virile and amusing manner in which boys could function;that boys who were not compounded of the gutter and the mining-campwere mollycoddles and unhappy. She had taken this for granted. She hadstudied the boys pityingly, but impersonally. It had not occurred to herthat they might touch her.Now she was aware that they knew all about her; that they were waitingfor some affectation over which they could guffaw. No schoolgirl passedtheir observation-posts more flushingly than did Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. Inshame she knew that they glanced appraisingly at her snowy overshoes,speculating about her legs. Theirs were not young eyes--there was noyouth in all the town, she agonized. They were born old, grim and oldand spying and censorious.She cried again that their youth was senile and cruel on the day whenshe overheard Cy Bogart and Earl Haydock.Cyrus N. Bogart, son of the righteous widow who lived across the alley,was at this time a boy of fourteen or fifteen. Carol had already seenquite enough of Cy Bogart. On her first evening in Gopher Prairie Cyhad appeared at the head of a "charivari," banging immensely upon adiscarded automobile fender. His companions were yelping in imitationof coyotes. Kennicott had felt rather complimented; had gone out anddistributed a dollar. But Cy was a capitalist in charivaris. He returnedwith an entirely new group, and this time there were three automobilefenders and a carnival rattle. When Kennicott again interrupted hisshaving, Cy piped, "Naw, you got to give us two dollars," and he got it.A week later Cy rigged a tic-tac to a window of the living-room, and thetattoo out of the darkness frightened Carol into screaming. Sincethen, in four months, she had beheld Cy hanging a cat, stealing melons,throwing tomatoes at the Kennicott house, and making ski-tracks acrossthe lawn, and had heard him explaining the mysteries of generation,with great audibility and dismaying knowledge. He was, in fact, a museumspecimen of what a small town, a well-disciplined public school, atradition of hearty humor, and a pious mother could produce from thematerial of a courageous and ingenious mind.Carol was afraid of him. Far from protesting when he set his mongrel ona kitten, she worked hard at not seeing him.The Kennicott garage was a shed littered with paint-cans, tools, alawn-mower, and ancient wisps of hay. Above it was a loft which CyBogart and Earl Haydock, young brother of Harry, used as a den, forsmoking, hiding from whippings, and planning secret societies. Theyclimbed to it by a ladder on the alley side of the shed.This morning of late January, two or three weeks after Vida'srevelations, Carol had gone into the stable-garage to find a hammer.Snow softened her step. She heard voices in the loft above her:"Ah gee, lez--oh, lez go down the lake and swipe some mushrats out ofsomebody's traps," Cy was yawning."And get our ears beat off!" grumbled Earl Haydock."Gosh, these cigarettes are dandy. 'Member when we were just kids, andused to smoke corn-silk and hayseed?""Yup. Gosh!"Spit. "Silence.""Say Earl, ma says if you chew tobacco you get consumption.""Aw rats, your old lady is a crank.""Yuh, that's so." Pause. "But she says she knows a fella that did.""Aw, gee whiz, didn't Doc Kennicott used to chew tobacco all the timebefore he married this-here girl from the Cities? He used to spit---Gee!Some shot! He could hit a tree ten feet off."This was news to the girl from the Cities."Say, how is she?" continued Earl."Huh? How's who?""You know who I mean, smarty."A tussle, a thumping of loose boards, silence, weary narration from Cy:"Mrs. Kennicott? Oh, she's all right, I guess." Relief to Carol, below."She gimme a hunk o' cake, one time. But Ma says she's stuck-up as hell.Ma's always talking about her. Ma says if Mrs. Kennicott thought as muchabout the doc as she does about her clothes, the doc wouldn't look sopeaked."Spit. Silence."Yuh. Juanita's always talking about her, too," from Earl. "She saysMrs. Kennicott thinks she knows it all. Juanita says she has to laughtill she almost busts every time she sees Mrs. Kennicott peerading alongthe street with that 'take a look--I'm a swell skirt' way she's got. Butgosh, I don't pay no attention to Juanita. She's meaner 'n a crab.""Ma was telling somebody that she heard that Mrs. Kennicott claimed shemade forty dollars a week when she was on some job in the Cities, andMa says she knows posolutely that she never made but eighteen a week--Masays that when she's lived here a while she won't go round making a foolof herself, pulling that bighead stuff on folks that know a whole lotmore than she does. They're all laughing up their sleeves at her.""Say, jever notice how Mrs. Kennicott fusses around the house? Otherevening when I was coming over here, she'd forgot to pull down thecurtain, and I watched her for ten minutes. Jeeze, you'd 'a' diedlaughing. She was there all alone, and she must 'a' spent five minutesgetting a picture straight. It was funny as hell the way she'd stick outher finger to straighten the picture--deedle-dee, see my tunnin' 'ittlefinger, oh my, ain't I cute, what a fine long tail my cat's got!""But say, Earl, she's some good-looker, just the same, and O Ignatz! theglad rags she must of bought for her wedding. Jever notice these low-cutdresses and these thin shimmy-shirts she wears? I had a good squint at'em when they were out on the line with the wash. And some ankles she'sgot, heh?"Then Carol fled.In her innocence she had not known that the whole town could discusseven her garments, her body. She felt that she was being dragged nakeddown Main Street.The moment it was dusk she pulled down the window-shades, all the shadesflush with the sill, but beyond them she felt moist fleering eyes.IIIShe remembered, and tried to forget, and remembered more sharply thevulgar detail of her husband's having observed the ancient customsof the land by chewing tobacco. She would have preferred a prettiervice--gambling or a mistress. For these she might have found a luxuryof forgiveness. She could not remember any fascinatingly wicked hero offiction who chewed tobacco. She asserted that it proved him to be a manof the bold free West. She tried to align him with the hairy-chestedheroes of the motion-pictures. She curled on the couch a pallid softnessin the twilight, and fought herself, and lost the battle. Spitting didnot identify him with rangers riding the buttes; it merely bound him toGopher Prairie--to Nat Hicks the tailor and Bert Tybee the bartender."But he gave it up for me. Oh, what does it matter! We're all filthy insome things. I think of myself as so superior, but I do eat and digest,I do wash my dirty paws and scratch. I'm not a cool slim goddess ona column. There aren't any! He gave it up for me. He stands by me,believing that every one loves me. He's the Rock of Ages--in a storm ofmeanness that's driving me mad . . . it will drive me mad."All evening she sang Scotch ballads to Kennicott, and when she noticedthat he was chewing an unlighted cigar she smiled maternally at hissecret.She could not escape asking (in the exact words and mental intonationswhich a thousand million women, dairy wenches and mischief-makingqueens, had used before her, and which a million million women willknow hereafter), "Was it all a horrible mistake, my marrying him?" Shequieted the doubt--without answering it.IVKennicott had taken her north to Lac-qui-Meurt, in the Big Woods. It wasthe entrance to a Chippewa Indian reservation, a sandy settlement amongNorway pines on the shore of a huge snow-glaring lake. She had her firstsight of his mother, except the glimpse at the wedding. Mrs. Kennicotthad a hushed and delicate breeding which dignified her woodenyover-scrubbed cottage with its worn hard cushions in heavy rockers.She had never lost the child's miraculous power of wonder. She askedquestions about books and cities. She murmured:"Will is a dear hard-working boy but he's inclined to be too serious,and you've taught him how to play. Last night I heard you both laughingabout the old Indian basket-seller, and I just lay in bed and enjoyedyour happiness."Carol forgot her misery-hunting in this solidarity of family life.She could depend upon them; she was not battling alone. Watching Mrs.Kennicott flit about the kitchen she was better able to translateKennicott himself. He was matter-of-fact, yes, and incurably mature. Hedidn't really play; he let Carol play with him. But he had his mother'sgenius for trusting, her disdain for prying, her sure integrity.From the two days at Lac-qui-Meurt Carol drew confidence in herself,and she returned to Gopher Prairie in a throbbing calm like those goldendrugged seconds when, because he is for an instant free from pain, asick man revels in living.A bright hard winter day, the wind shrill, black and silver cloudsbooming across the sky, everything in panicky motion during the brieflight. They struggled against the surf of wind, through deep snow.Kennicott was cheerful. He hailed Loren Wheeler, "Behave yourself whileI been away?" The editor bellowed, "B' gosh you stayed so long thatall your patients have got well!" and importantly took notes for theDauntless about their journey. Jackson Elder cried, "Hey, folks! How'stricks up North?" Mrs. McGanum waved to them from her porch."They're glad to see us. We mean something here. These people aresatisfied. Why can't I be? But can I sit back all my life and besatisfied with 'Hey, folks'? They want shouts on Main Street, and I wantviolins in a paneled room. Why----?"VVida Sherwin ran in after school a dozen times. She was tactful,torrentially anecdotal. She had scuttled about town and pluckedcompliments: Mrs. Dr. Westlake had pronounced Carol a "very sweet,bright, cultured young woman," and Brad Bemis, the tinsmith at Clark'sHardware Store, had declared that she was "easy to work for and awfuleasy to look at."But Carol could not yet take her in. She resented this outsider'sknowledge of her shame. Vida was not too long tolerant. She hinted,"You're a great brooder, child. Buck up now. The town's quit criticizingyou, almost entirely. Come with me to the Thanatopsis Club. Theyhave some of the BEST papers, and current-events discussions--SOinteresting."In Vida's demands Carol felt a compulsion, but she was too listless toobey.It was Bea Sorenson who was really her confidante.However charitable toward the Lower Classes she may have thoughtherself, Carol had been reared to assume that servants belong toa distinct and inferior species. But she discovered that Bea wasextraordinarily like girls she had loved in college, and as a companionaltogether superior to the young matrons of the Jolly Seventeen. Dailythey became more frankly two girls playing at housework. Bea artlesslyconsidered Carol the most beautiful and accomplished lady in thecountry; she was always shrieking, "My, dot's a swell hat!" or, "Ayt'ink all dese ladies yoost die when dey see how elegant you do yourhair!" But it was not the humbleness of a servant, nor the hypocrisy ofa slave; it was the admiration of Freshman for Junior.They made out the day's menus together. Though they began withpropriety, Carol sitting by the kitchen table and Bea at the sink orblacking the stove, the conference was likely to end with both of themby the table, while Bea gurgled over the ice-man's attempt to kiss her,or Carol admitted, "Everybody knows that the doctor is lots more cleverthan Dr. McGanum." When Carol came in from marketing, Bea plunged intothe hall to take off her coat, rub her frostied hands, and ask, "Vosdere lots of folks up-town today?"This was the welcome upon which Carol depended.VIThrough her weeks of cowering there was no change in her surface life.No one save Vida was aware of her agonizing. On her most despairingdays she chatted to women on the street, in stores. But withoutthe protection of Kennicott's presence she did not go to the JollySeventeen; she delivered herself to the judgment of the town only whenshe went shopping and on the ritualistic occasions of formal afternooncalls, when Mrs. Lyman Cass or Mrs. George Edwin Mott, with clean glovesand minute handkerchiefs and sealskin card-cases and countenances offrozen approbation, sat on the edges of chairs and inquired, "Do youfind Gopher Prairie pleasing?" When they spent evenings of socialprofit-and-loss at the Haydocks' or the Dyers' she hid behind Kennicott,playing the simple bride.Now she was unprotected. Kennicott had taken a patient to Rochesterfor an operation. He would be away for two or three days. She had notminded; she would loosen the matrimonial tension and be a fanciful girlfor a time. But now that he was gone the house was listeningly empty.Bea was out this afternoon--presumably drinking coffee and talking about"fellows" with her cousin Tina. It was the day for the monthly supperand evening-bridge of the Jolly Seventeen, but Carol dared not go.She sat alone.