CHAPTER XVI

by Sinclair Lewis

　　KENNICOTT was heavily pleased by her Christmas presents, and he gave hera diamond bar-pin. But she could not persuade herself that he was muchinterested in the rites of the morning, in the tree she had decorated,the three stockings she had hung, the ribbons and gilt seals and hiddenmessages. He said only:"Nice way to fix things, all right. What do you say we go down to JackElder's and have a game of five hundred this afternoon?"She remembered her father's Christmas fantasies: the sacred old ragdoll at the top of the tree, the score of cheap presents, the punch andcarols, the roast chestnuts by the fire, and the gravity with which thejudge opened the children's scrawly notes and took cognizance of demandsfor sled-rides, for opinions upon the existence of Santa Claus. Sheremembered him reading out a long indictment of himself for being asentimentalist, against the peace and dignity of the State of Minnesota.She remembered his thin legs twinkling before their sled----She muttered unsteadily, "Must run up and put on my shoes--slippers socold." In the not very romantic solitude of the locked bathroom she saton the slippery edge of the tub and wept.IIKennicott had five hobbies: medicine, land-investment, Carol, motoring,and hunting. It is not certain in what order he preferred them. Solidthough his enthusiasms were in the matter of medicine--his admirationof this city surgeon, his condemnation of that for tricky ways ofpersuading country practitioners to bring in surgical patients,his indignation about fee-splitting, his pride in a new X-rayapparatus--none of these beatified him as did motoring.He nursed his two-year-old Buick even in winter, when it was stored inthe stable-garage behind the house. He filled the grease-cups, varnisheda fender, removed from beneath the back seat the debris of gloves,copper washers, crumpled maps, dust, and greasy rags. Winter noons hewandered out and stared owlishly at the car. He became excited over afabulous "trip we might take next summer." He galloped to the station,brought home railway maps, and traced motor-routes from Gopher Prairieto Winnipeg or Des Moines or Grand Marais, thinking aloud and expectingher to be effusive about such academic questions as "Now I wonder if wecould stop at Baraboo and break the jump from La Crosse to Chicago?"To him motoring was a faith not to be questioned, a high-church cult,with electric sparks for candles, and piston-rings possessing thesanctity of altar-vessels. His liturgy was composed of intoned andmetrical road-comments: "They say there's a pretty good hike from Duluthto International Falls."Hunting was equally a devotion, full of metaphysical concepts veiledfrom Carol. All winter he read sporting-catalogues, and thought aboutremarkable past shots: "'Member that time when I got two ducks on along chance, just at sunset?" At least once a month he drew his favoriterepeating shotgun, his "pump gun," from its wrapper of greased cantonflannel; he oiled the trigger, and spent silent ecstatic moments aimingat the ceiling. Sunday mornings Carol heard him trudging up to theattic and there, an hour later, she found him turning over boots, woodenduck-decoys, lunch-boxes, or reflectively squinting at old shells,rubbing their brass caps with his sleeve and shaking his head as hethought about their uselessness.He kept the loading-tools he had used as a boy: a capper for shot-gunshells, a mold for lead bullets. When once, in a housewifely frenzy forgetting rid of things, she raged, "Why don't you give these away?" hesolemnly defended them, "Well, you can't tell; they might come in handysome day."She flushed. She wondered if he was thinking of the child they wouldhave when, as he put it, they were "sure they could afford one."Mysteriously aching, nebulously sad, she slipped away, half-convincedbut only half-convinced that it was horrible and unnatural, thispostponement of release of mother-affection, this sacrifice to heropinionation and to his cautious desire for prosperity."But it would be worse if he were like Sam Clark--insisted on havingchildren," she considered; then, "If Will were the Prince, wouldn't IDEMAND his child?"Kennicott's land-deals were both financial advancement and favoritegame. Driving through the country, he noticed which farms had goodcrops; he heard the news about the restless farmer who was "thinkingabout selling out here and pulling his freight for Alberta." He askedthe veterinarian about the value of different breeds of stock; heinquired of Lyman Cass whether or not Einar Gyseldson really had had ayield of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He was always consultingJulius Flickerbaugh, who handled more real estate than law, and more lawthan justice. He studied township maps, and read notices of auctions.Thus he was able to buy a quarter-section of land for one hundred andfifty dollars an acre, and to sell it in a year or two, after installinga cement floor in the barn and running water in the house, for onehundred and eighty or even two hundred.He spoke of these details to Sam Clark . . . rather often.In all his games, cars and guns and land, he expected Carol to take aninterest. But he did not give her the facts which might have createdinterest. He talked only of the obvious and tedious aspects; never ofhis aspirations in finance, nor of the mechanical principles of motors.This month of romance she was eager to understand his hobbies. Sheshivered in the garage while he spent half an hour in deciding whetherto put alcohol or patent non-freezing liquid into the radiator, or todrain out the water entirely. "Or no, then I wouldn't want to takeher out if it turned warm--still, of course, I could fill theradiator again--wouldn't take so awful long--just take a few pailsof water--still, if it turned cold on me again before I drainedit----Course there's some people that put in kerosene, but they say itrots the hose-connections and----Where did I put that lug-wrench?"It was at this point that she gave up being a motorist and retired tothe house.In their new intimacy he was more communicative about his practise;he informed her, with the invariable warning not to tell, that Mrs.Sunderquist had another baby coming, that the "hired girl at Howland'swas in trouble." But when she asked technical questions he did not knowhow to answer; when she inquired, "Exactly what is the method of takingout the tonsils?" he yawned, "Tonsilectomy? Why you just----If there'spus, you operate. Just take 'em out. Seen the newspaper? What the devildid Bea do with it?"She did not try again.IIIThey had gone to the "movies." The movies were almost as vitalto Kennicott and the other solid citizens of Gopher Prairie asland-speculation and guns and automobiles.The feature film portrayed a brave young Yankee who conquered a SouthAmerican republic. He turned the natives from their barbarous habits ofsinging and laughing to the vigorous sanity, the Pep and Punch andGo, of the North; he taught them to work in factories, to wear KlassyKollege Klothes, and to shout, "Oh, you baby doll, watch me gatherin the mazuma." He changed nature itself. A mountain which had bornenothing but lilies and cedars and loafing clouds was by his Hustle soinspirited that it broke out in long wooden sheds, and piles of ironore to be converted into steamers to carry iron ore to be converted intosteamers to carry iron ore.The intellectual tension induced by the master film was relieved by alivelier, more lyric and less philosophical drama: Mack Schnarken andthe Bathing Suit Babes in a comedy of manners entitled "Right on theCoco." Mr. Schnarken was at various high moments a cook, a life-guard,a burlesque actor, and a sculptor. There was a hotel hallway up whichpolicemen charged, only to be stunned by plaster busts hurled upon themfrom the innumerous doors. If the plot lacked lucidity, the dual motifof legs and pie was clear and sure. Bathing and modeling were equallysound occasions for legs; the wedding-scene was but an approach to thethunderous climax when Mr. Schnarken slipped a piece of custard pie intothe clergyman's rear pocket.The audience in the Rosebud Movie Palace squealed and wiped their eyes;they scrambled under the seats for overshoes, mittens, and mufflers,while the screen announced that next week Mr. Schnarken might be seenin a new, riproaring, extra-special superfeature of the Clean ComedyCorporation entitled, "Under Mollie's Bed.""I'm glad," said Carol to Kennicott as they stooped before the northwestgale which was torturing the barren street, "that this is a moralcountry. We don't allow any of these beastly frank novels.""Yump. Vice Society and Postal Department won't stand for them. TheAmerican people don't like filth.""Yes. It's fine. I'm glad we have such dainty romances as 'Right on theCoco' instead.""Say what in heck do you think you're trying to do? Kid me?"He was silent. She awaited his anger. She meditated upon his gutterpatois, the Boeotian dialect characteristic of Gopher Prairie. Helaughed puzzlingly. When they came into the glow of the house he laughedagain. He condescended:"I've got to hand it to you. You're consistent, all right. I'd ofthought that after getting this look-in at a lot of good decent farmers,you'd get over this high-art stuff, but you hang right on.""Well----" To herself: "He takes advantage of my trying to be good.""Tell you, Carrie: There's just three classes of people: folks thathaven't got any ideas at all; and cranks that kick about everything; andRegular Guys, the fellows with sticktuitiveness, that boost and get theworld's work done.""Then I'm probably a crank." She smiled negligently."No. I won't admit it. You do like to talk, but at a show-down you'dprefer Sam Clark to any damn long-haired artist.""Oh--well----""Oh well!" mockingly. "My, we're just going to change everything, aren'twe! Going to tell fellows that have been making movies for ten yearshow to direct 'em; and tell architects how to build towns; and make themagazines publish nothing but a lot of highbrow stories about old maids,and about wives that don't know what they want. Oh, we're a terror! . .. Come on now, Carrie; come out of it; wake up! You've got a fine nerve,kicking about a movie because it shows a few legs! Why, you're alwaystouting these Greek dancers, or whatever they are, that don't even weara shimmy!""But, dear, the trouble with that film--it wasn't that it got in so manylegs, but that it giggled coyly and promised to show more of them, andthen didn't keep the promise. It was Peeping Tom's idea of humor.""I don't get you. Look here now----"She lay awake, while he rumbled with sleep"I must go on. My 'crank ideas;' he calls them. I thought that adoringhim, watching him operate, would be enough. It isn't. Not after thefirst thrill."I don't want to hurt him. But I must go on."It isn't enough, to stand by while he fills an automobile radiator andchucks me bits of information."If I stood by and admired him long enough, I would be content. I wouldbecome a 'nice little woman.' The Village Virus. Already----I'm notreading anything. I haven't touched the piano for a week. I'm lettingthe days drown in worship of 'a good deal, ten plunks more per acre.' Iwon't! I won't succumb!"How? I've failed at everything: the Thanatopsis, parties, pioneers,city hall, Guy and Vida. But----It doesn't MATTER! I'm not trying to'reform the town' now. I'm not trying to organize Browning Clubs,and sit in clean white kids yearning up at lecturers with ribbonyeyeglasses. I am trying to save my soul."Will Kennicott, asleep there, trusting me, thinking he holds me. AndI'm leaving him. All of me left him when he laughed at me. It wasn'tenough for him that I admired him; I must change myself and grow likehim. He takes advantage. No more. It's finished. I will go on."IVHer violin lay on top of the upright piano. She picked it up. Since shehad last touched it the dried strings had snapped, and upon it lay agold and crimson cigar-band.VShe longed to see Guy Pollock, for the confirming of the brethren inthe faith. But Kennicott's dominance was heavy upon her. She could notdetermine whether she was checked by fear or him, or by inertia--bydislike of the emotional labor of the "scenes" which would be involvedin asserting independence. She was like the revolutionist at fifty:not afraid of death, but bored by the probability of bad steaks and badbreaths and sitting up all night on windy barricades.The second evening after the movies she impulsively summoned VidaSherwin and Guy to the house for pop-corn and cider. In the living-roomVida and Kennicott debated "the value of manual training in grades belowthe eighth," while Carol sat beside Guy at the dining table, butteringpop-corn. She was quickened by the speculation in his eyes. Shemurmured:"Guy, do you want to help me?""My dear! How?""I don't know!"He waited."I think I want you to help me find out what has made the darkness ofthe women. Gray darkness and shadowy trees. We're all in it, ten millionwomen, young married women with good prosperous husbands, and businesswomen in linen collars, and grandmothers that gad out to teas, and wivesof under-paid miners, and farmwives who really like to make butter andgo to church. What is it we want--and need? Will Kennicott there wouldsay that we need lots of children and hard work. But it isn't that.There's the same discontent in women with eight children and one morecoming--always one more coming! And you find it in stenographers andwives who scrub, just as much as in girl college-graduates who wonderhow they can escape their kind parents. What do we want?""Essentially, I think, you are like myself, Carol; you want to go backto an age of tranquillity and charming manners. You want to enthronegood taste again.""Just good taste? Fastidious people? Oh--no! I believe all of us wantthe same things--we're all together, the industrial workers and thewomen and the farmers and the negro race and the Asiatic colonies, andeven a few of the Respectables. It's all the same revolt, in all theclasses that have waited and taken advice. I think perhaps we want amore conscious life. We're tired of drudging and sleeping and dying.We're tired of seeing just a few people able to be individualists. We'retired of always deferring hope till the next generation. We're tiredof hearing the politicians and priests and cautious reformers (and thehusbands!) coax us, 'Be calm! Be patient! Wait! We have the plans for aUtopia already made; just give us a bit more time and we'll produce it;trust us; we're wiser than you.' For ten thousand years they've saidthat. We want our Utopia NOW--and we're going to try our hands at it.All we want is--everything for all of us! For every housewife and everylongshoreman and every Hindu nationalist and every teacher. We wanteverything. We shatn't get it. So we shatn't ever be content----"She wondered why he was wincing. He broke in:"See here, my dear, I certainly hope you don't class yourself with a lotof trouble-making labor-leaders! Democracy is all right theoretically,and I'll admit there are industrial injustices, but I'd rather have themthan see the world reduced to a dead level of mediocrity. I refuse tobelieve that you have anything in common with a lot of laboring menrowing for bigger wages so that they can buy wretched flivvers andhideous player-pianos and----"At this second, in Buenos Ayres, a newspaper editor broke his routine ofbeing bored by exchanges to assert, "Any injustice is better than seeingthe world reduced to a gray level of scientific dullness." At thissecond a clerk standing at the bar of a New York saloon stopped millinghis secret fear of his nagging office-manager long enough to growlat the chauffeur beside him, "Aw, you socialists make me sick! I'm anindividualist. I ain't going to be nagged by no bureaus and take ordersoff labor-leaders. And mean to say a hobo's as good as you and me?"At this second Carol realized that for all Guy's love of dead eleganceshis timidity was as depressing to her as the bulkiness of Sam Clark. Sherealized that he was not a mystery, as she had excitedly believed; nota romantic messenger from the World Outside on whom she could count forescape. He belonged to Gopher Prairie, absolutely. She was snatched backfrom a dream of far countries, and found herself on Main Street.He was completing his protest, "You don't want to be mixed up in allthis orgy of meaningless discontent?"She soothed him. "No, I don't. I'm not heroic. I'm scared by all thefighting that's going on in the world. I want nobility and adventure,but perhaps I want still more to curl on the hearth with some one Ilove.""Would you----"He did not finish it. He picked up a handful of pop-corn, let it runthrough his fingers, looked at her wistfully.With the loneliness of one who has put away a possible love Carol sawthat he was a stranger. She saw that he had never been anything buta frame on which she had hung shining garments. If she had let himdiffidently make love to her, it was not because she cared, but becauseshe did not care, because it did not matter.She smiled at him with the exasperating tactfulness of a woman checkinga flirtation; a smile like an airy pat on the arm. She sighed, "You'rea dear to let me tell you my imaginary troubles." She bounced up, andtrilled, "Shall we take the pop-corn in to them now?"Guy looked after her desolately.While she teased Vida and Kennicott she was repeating, "I must go on."VIMiles Bjornstam, the pariah "Red Swede," had brought his circular sawand portable gasoline engine to the house, to cut the cords of poplarfor the kitchen range. Kennicott had given the order; Carol knew nothingof it till she heard the ringing of the saw, and glanced out to seeBjornstam, in black leather jacket and enormous ragged purplemittens, pressing sticks against the whirling blade, and flingingthe stove-lengths to one side. The red irritable motor kept up a redirritable "tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip." The whine of the saw rose till itsimulated the shriek of a fire-alarm whistle at night, but always at theend it gave a lively metallic clang, and in the stillness she heard theflump of the cut stick falling on the pile.She threw a motor robe over her, ran out. Bjornstam welcomed her, "Well,well, well! Here's old Miles, fresh as ever. Well say, that's all right;he ain't even begun to be cheeky yet; next summer he's going to take youout on his horse-trading trip, clear into Idaho.""Yes, and I may go!""How's tricks? Crazy about the town yet?""No, but I probably shall be, some day.""Don't let 'em get you. Kick 'em in the face!"He shouted at her while he worked. The pile of stove-wood grewastonishingly. The pale bark of the poplar sticks was mottled withlichens of sage-green and dusty gray; the newly sawed ends werefresh-colored, with the agreeable roughness of a woolen muffler. To thesterile winter air the wood gave a scent of March sap.Kennicott telephoned that he was going into the country. Bjornstam hadnot finished his work at noon, and she invited him to have dinner withBea in the kitchen. She wished that she were independent enough to dinewith these her guests. She considered their friendliness, she sneered at"social distinctions," she raged at her own taboos--and she continuedto regard them as retainers and herself as a lady. She sat in thedining-room and listened through the door to Bjornstam's booming andBea's giggles. She was the more absurd to herself in that, after therite of dining alone, she could go out to the kitchen, lean against thesink, and talk to them.They were attracted to each other; a Swedish Othello and Desdemona, moreuseful and amiable than their prototypes. Bjornstam told his scapes:selling horses in a Montana mining-camp, breaking a log-jam, beingimpertinent to a "two-fisted" millionaire lumberman. Bea gurgled "Ohmy!" and kept his coffee cup filled.He took a long time to finish the wood. He had frequently to go into thekitchen to get warm. Carol heard him confiding to Bea, "You're a darnnice Swede girl. I guess if I had a woman like you I wouldn't be sucha sorehead. Gosh, your kitchen is clean; makes an old bach feel sloppy.Say, that's nice hair you got. Huh? Me fresh? Saaaay, girl, if I ever doget fresh, you'll know it. Why, I could pick you up with one finger,and hold you in the air long enough to read Robert J. Ingersoll cleanthrough. Ingersoll? Oh, he's a religious writer. Sure. You'd like himfine."When he drove off he waved to Bea; and Carol, lonely at the windowabove, was envious of their pastoral."And I----But I will go on."