CHAPTER XVII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　ITHEY were driving down the lake to the cottages that moonlit Januarynight, twenty of them in the bob-sled. They sang "Toy Land" and "SeeingNelly Home"; they leaped from the low back of the sled to race over theslippery snow ruts; and when they were tired they climbed on the runnersfor a lift. The moon-tipped flakes kicked up by the horses settled overthe revelers and dripped down their necks, but they laughed, yelped,beat their leather mittens against their chests. The harness rattled,the sleigh-bells were frantic, Jack Elder's setter sprang beside thehorses, barking.For a time Carol raced with them. The cold air gave fictive power. Shefelt that she could run on all night, leap twenty feet at a stride. Butthe excess of energy tired her, and she was glad to snuggle under thecomforters which covered the hay in the sled-box.In the midst of the babel she found enchanted quietude.Along the road the shadows from oak-branches were inked on the snowlike bars of music. Then the sled came out on the surface of LakeMinniemashie. Across the thick ice was a veritable road, a short-cutfor farmers. On the glaring expanse of the lake-levels of hard crust,flashes of green ice blown clear, chains of drifts ribbed like thesea-beach--the moonlight was overwhelming. It stormed on the snow, itturned the woods ashore into crystals of fire. The night was tropicaland voluptuous. In that drugged magic there was no difference betweenheavy heat and insinuating cold.Carol was dream-strayed. The turbulent voices, even Guy Pollock beingconnotative beside her, were nothing. She repeated: Deep on the convent-roof the snows Are sparkling to the moon. The words and the light blurred into one vast indefinite happiness, andshe believed that some great thing was coming to her. She withdrew fromthe clamor into a worship of incomprehensible gods. The night expanded,she was conscious of the universe, and all mysteries stooped down toher.She was jarred out of her ecstasy as the bob-sled bumped up the steeproad to the bluff where stood the cottages.They dismounted at Jack Elder's shack. The interior walls of unpaintedboards, which had been grateful in August, were forbidding in the chill.In fur coats and mufflers tied over caps they were a strange company,bears and walruses talking. Jack Elder lighted the shavings waiting inthe belly of a cast-iron stove which was like an enlarged bean-pot.They piled their wraps high on a rocker, and cheered the rocker as itsolemnly tipped over backward.Mrs. Elder and Mrs. Sam Clark made coffee in an enormous blackened tinpot; Vida Sherwin and Mrs. McGanum unpacked doughnuts and gingerbread;Mrs. Dave Dyer warmed up "hot dogs"--frankfurters in rolls; Dr. TerryGould, after announcing, "Ladies and gents, prepare to be shocked; shockline forms on the right," produced a bottle of bourbon whisky.The others danced, muttering "Ouch!" as their frosted feet struck thepine planks. Carol had lost her dream. Harry Haydock lifted her by thewaist and swung her. She laughed. The gravity of the people who stoodapart and talked made her the more impatient for frolic.Kennicott, Sam Clark, Jackson Elder, young Dr. McGanum, and JamesMadison Howland, teetering on their toes near the stove, conversedwith the sedate pomposity of the commercialist. In details the men wereunlike, yet they said the same things in the same hearty monotonousvoices. You had to look at them to see which was speaking."Well, we made pretty good time coming up," from one--any one."Yump, we hit it up after we struck the good going on the lake.""Seems kind of slow though, after driving an auto.""Yump, it does, at that. Say, how'd you make out with that Sphinx tireyou got?""Seems to hold out fine. Still, I don't know's I like it any better thanthe Roadeater Cord.""Yump, nothing better than a Roadeater. Especially the cord. The cord'slots better than the fabric.""Yump, you said something----Roadeater's a good tire.""Say, how'd you come out with Pete Garsheim on his payments?""He's paying up pretty good. That's a nice piece of land he's got.""Yump, that's a dandy farm.""Yump, Pete's got a good place there."They glided from these serious topics into the jocose insults which arethe wit of Main Street. Sam Clark was particularly apt at them. "What'sthis wild-eyed sale of summer caps you think you're trying to pulloff?" he clamored at Harry Haydock. "Did you steal 'em, or are you justovercharging us, as usual? . . . Oh say, speaking about caps, d'I evertell you the good one I've got on Will? The doc thinks he's a prettygood driver, fact, he thinks he's almost got human intelligence, but onetime he had his machine out in the rain, and the poor fish, he hadn'tput on chains, and thinks I----"Carol had heard the story rather often. She fled back to the dancers,and at Dave Dyer's masterstroke of dropping an icicle down Mrs.McGanum's back she applauded hysterically.They sat on the floor, devouring the food. The men giggled amiably asthey passed the whisky bottle, and laughed, "There's a real sport!" whenJuanita Haydock took a sip. Carol tried to follow; she believed that shedesired to be drunk and riotous; but the whisky choked her and as shesaw Kennicott frown she handed the bottle on repentantly. Somewhat toolate she remembered that she had given up domesticity and repentance."Let's play charades!" said Raymie Wutherspoon."Oh yes, do let us," said Ella Stowbody."That's the caper," sanctioned Harry Haydock.They interpreted the word "making" as May and King. The crown was a redflannel mitten cocked on Sam Clark's broad pink bald head. They forgotthey were respectable. They made-believe. Carol was stimulated to cry:"Let's form a dramatic club and give a play! Shall we? It's been so muchfun tonight!"They looked affable."Sure," observed Sam Clark loyally."Oh, do let us! I think it would be lovely to present 'Romeo andJuliet'!" yearned Ella Stowbody."Be a whale of a lot of fun," Dr. Terry Gould granted."But if we did," Carol cautioned, "it would be awfully silly to haveamateur theatricals. We ought to paint our own scenery and everything,and really do something fine. There'd be a lot of hard work. Wouldyou--would we all be punctual at rehearsals, do you suppose?""You bet!" "Sure." "That's the idea." "Fellow ought to be prompt atrehearsals," they all agreed."Then let's meet next week and form the Gopher Prairie DramaticAssociation!" Carol sang.She drove home loving these friends who raced through moonlit snow,had Bohemian parties, and were about to create beauty in the theater.Everything was solved. She would be an authentic part of the town,yet escape the coma of the Village Virus. . . . She would be free ofKennicott again, without hurting him, without his knowing.She had triumphed.The moon was small and high now, and unheeding.IIThough they had all been certain that they longed for the privilege ofattending committee meetings and rehearsals, the dramatic association asdefinitely formed consisted only of Kennicott, Carol, Guy Pollock,Vida Sherwin, Ella Stowbody, the Harry Haydocks, the Dave Dyers, RaymieWutherspoon, Dr. Terry Gould, and four new candidates: flirtatious RitaSimons, Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon and Myrtle Cass, an uncomely butintense girl of nineteen. Of these fifteen only seven came to the firstmeeting. The rest telephoned their unparalleled regrets and engagementsand illnesses, and announced that they would be present at all othermeetings through eternity.Carol was made president and director.She had added the Dillons. Despite Kennicott's apprehension the dentistand his wife had not been taken up by the Westlakes but had remainedas definitely outside really smart society as Willis Woodford, who wasteller, bookkeeper, and janitor in Stowbody's bank. Carol had noted Mrs.Dillon dragging past the house during a bridge of the Jolly Seventeen,looking in with pathetic lips at the splendor of the accepted. Sheimpulsively invited the Dillons to the dramatic association meeting, andwhen Kennicott was brusque to them she was unusually cordial, and feltvirtuous.That self-approval balanced her disappointment at the smallness of themeeting, and her embarrassment during Raymie Wutherspoon's repetitionsof "The stage needs uplifting," and "I believe that there are greatlessons in some plays."Ella Stowbody, who was a professional, having studied elocution inMilwaukee, disapproved of Carol's enthusiasm for recent plays. MissStowbody expressed the fundamental principle of the American drama: theonly way to be artistic is to present Shakespeare. As no one listened toher she sat back and looked like Lady Macbeth.IIIThe Little Theaters, which were to give piquancy to American drama threeor four years later, were only in embryo. But of this fast coming revoltCarol had premonitions. She knew from some lost magazine article thatin Dublin were innovators called The Irish Players. She knew confusedlythat a man named Gordon Craig had painted scenery--or had he writtenplays? She felt that in the turbulence of the drama she was discoveringa history more important than the commonplace chronicles which dealtwith senators and their pompous puerilities. She had a sensation offamiliarity; a dream of sitting in a Brussels cafe and going afterwardto a tiny gay theater under a cathedral wall.The advertisement in the Minneapolis paper leaped from the page to hereyes: The Cosmos School of Music, Oratory, and Dramatic Art announces a program of four one-act plays by Schnitzler, Shaw, Yeats, and Lord Dunsany. She had to be there! She begged Kennicott to "run down to the Cities"with her."Well, I don't know. Be fun to take in a show, but why the deuce do youwant to see those darn foreign plays, given by a lot of amateurs? Whydon't you wait for a regular play, later on? There's going to be somecorkers coming: 'Lottie of Two-Gun Rancho,' and 'Cops and Crooks'--realBroadway stuff, with the New York casts. What's this junk you wantto see? Hm. 'How He Lied to Her Husband.' That doesn't listen so bad.Sounds racy. And, uh, well, I could go to the motor show, I suppose. I'dlike to see this new Hup roadster. Well----"She never knew which attraction made him decide.She had four days of delightful worry--over the hole in her one goodsilk petticoat, the loss of a string of beads from her chiffon and brownvelvet frock, the catsup stain on her best georgette crepe blouse. Shewailed, "I haven't a single solitary thing that's fit to be seen in,"and enjoyed herself very much indeed.Kennicott went about casually letting people know that he was "going torun down to the Cities and see some shows."As the train plodded through the gray prairie, on a windless day withthe smoke from the engine clinging to the fields in giant cotton-rolls,in a low and writhing wall which shut off the snowy fields, she did notlook out of the window. She closed her eyes and hummed, and did not knowthat she was humming.She was the young poet attacking fame and Paris.In the Minneapolis station the crowd of lumberjacks, farmers, andSwedish families with innumerous children and grandparents and paperparcels, their foggy crowding and their clamor confused her. She feltrustic in this once familiar city, after a year and a half ofGopher Prairie. She was certain that Kennicott was taking the wrongtrolley-car. By dusk, the liquor warehouses, Hebraic clothing-shops,and lodging-houses on lower Hennepin Avenue were smoky, hideous,ill-tempered. She was battered by the noise and shuttling of therush-hour traffic. When a clerk in an overcoat too closely fitted at thewaist stared at her, she moved nearer to Kennicott's arm. The clerk wasflippant and urban. He was a superior person, used to this tumult. Washe laughing at her?For a moment she wanted the secure quiet of Gopher Prairie.In the hotel-lobby she was self-conscious. She was not used to hotels;she remembered with jealousy how often Juanita Haydock talked of thefamous hotels in Chicago. She could not face the traveling salesmen,baronial in large leather chairs. She wanted people to believe that herhusband and she were accustomed to luxury and chill elegance; she wasfaintly angry at him for the vulgar way in which, after signing theregister "Dr. W. P. Kennicott & wife," he bellowed at the clerk, "Got anice room with bath for us, old man?" She gazed about haughtily, but asshe discovered that no one was interested in her she felt foolish, andashamed of her irritation.She asserted, "This silly lobby is too florid," and simultaneously sheadmired it: the onyx columns with gilt capitals, the crown-embroideredvelvet curtains at the restaurant door, the silk-roped alcove wherepretty girls perpetually waited for mysterious men, the two-pound boxesof candy and the variety of magazines at the news-stand. The hiddenorchestra was lively. She saw a man who looked like a European diplomat,in a loose top-coat and a Homburg hat. A woman with a broadtail coat,a heavy lace veil, pearl earrings, and a close black hat entered therestaurant. "Heavens! That's the first really smart woman I've seen in ayear!" Carol exulted. She felt metropolitan.But as she followed Kennicott to the elevator the coat-check girl, aconfident young woman, with cheeks powdered like lime, and a blouselow and thin and furiously crimson, inspected her, and under thatsupercilious glance Carol was shy again. She unconsciously waitedfor the bellboy to precede her into the elevator. When he snorted "Goahead!" she was mortified. He thought she was a hayseed, she worried.The moment she was in their room, with the bellboy safely out of theway, she looked critically at Kennicott. For the first time in monthsshe really saw him.His clothes were too heavy and provincial. His decent gray suit, madeby Nat Hicks of Gopher Prairie, might have been of sheet iron; it hadno distinction of cut, no easy grace like the diplomat's Burberry. Hisblack shoes were blunt and not well polished. His scarf was a stupidbrown. He needed a shave.But she forgot her doubt as she realized the ingenuities of the room.She ran about, turning on the taps of the bathtub, which gushed insteadof dribbling like the taps at home, snatching the new wash-rag out ofits envelope of oiled paper, trying the rose-shaded light between thetwin beds, pulling out the drawers of the kidney-shaped walnut desk toexamine the engraved stationery, planning to write on it to every oneshe knew, admiring the claret-colored velvet armchair and the blue rug,testing the ice-water tap, and squealing happily when the water reallydid come out cold. She flung her arms about Kennicott, kissed him."Like it, old lady?""It's adorable. It's so amusing. I love you for bringing me. You reallyare a dear!"He looked blankly indulgent, and yawned, and condescended, "That's apretty slick arrangement on the radiator, so you can adjust it at anytemperature you want. Must take a big furnace to run this place. Gosh, Ihope Bea remembers to turn off the drafts tonight."Under the glass cover of the dressing-table was a menu with the mostenchanting dishes: breast of guinea hen De Vitresse, pommes de terre ala Russe, meringue Chantilly, gateaux Bruxelles."Oh, let's----I'm going to have a hot bath, and put on my new hat withthe wool flowers, and let's go down and eat for hours, and we'll have acocktail!" she chanted.While Kennicott labored over ordering it was annoying to see him permitthe waiter to be impertinent, but as the cocktail elevated her to abridge among colored stars, as the oysters came in--not canned oystersin the Gopher Prairie fashion, but on the half-shell--she cried, "If youonly knew how wonderful it is not to have had to plan this dinner, andorder it at the butcher's and fuss and think about it, and thenwatch Bea cook it! I feel so free. And to have new kinds of food, anddifferent patterns of dishes and linen, and not worry about whether thepudding is being spoiled! Oh, this is a great moment for me!"IVThey had all the experiences of provincials in a metropolis. Afterbreakfast Carol bustled to a hair-dresser's, bought gloves and a blouse,and importantly met Kennicott in front of an optician's, in accordancewith plans laid down, revised, and verified. They admired the diamondsand furs and frosty silverware and mahogany chairs and polished moroccosewing-boxes in shop-windows, and were abashed by the throngs in thedepartment-stores, and were bullied by a clerk into buying too manyshirts for Kennicott, and gaped at the "clever novelty perfumes--justin from New York." Carol got three books on the theater, and spentan exultant hour in warning herself that she could not afford thisrajah-silk frock, in thinking how envious it would make Juanita Haydock,in closing her eyes, and buying it. Kennicott went from shop to shop,earnestly hunting down a felt-covered device to keep the windshield ofhis car clear of rain.They dined extravagantly at their hotel at night, and next morningsneaked round the corner to economize at a Childs' Restaurant. They weretired by three in the afternoon, and dozed at the motion-pictures andsaid they wished they were back in Gopher Prairie--and by eleven in theevening they were again so lively that they went to a Chinese restaurantthat was frequented by clerks and their sweethearts on pay-days. Theysat at a teak and marble table eating Eggs Fooyung, and listened to abrassy automatic piano, and were altogether cosmopolitan.On the street they met people from home--the McGanums. They laughed,shook hands repeatedly, and exclaimed, "Well, this is quite acoincidence!" They asked when the McGanums had come down, and begged fornews of the town they had left two days before. Whatever theMcGanums were at home, here they stood out as so superior to all theundistinguishable strangers absurdly hurrying past that the Kennicottsheld them as long as they could. The McGanums said good-by as thoughthey were going to Tibet instead of to the station to catch No. 7 north.They explored Minneapolis. Kennicott was conversational and technicalregarding gluten and cockle-cylinders and No. I Hard, when they wereshown through the gray stone hulks and new cement elevators of thelargest flour-mills in the world. They looked across Loring Park andthe Parade to the towers of St. Mark's and the Procathedral, and thered roofs of houses climbing Kenwood Hill. They drove about the chain ofgarden-circled lakes, and viewed the houses of the millers and lumbermenand real estate peers--the potentates of the expanding city. Theysurveyed the small eccentric bungalows with pergolas, the houses ofpebbledash and tapestry brick with sleeping-porches above sun-parlors,and one vast incredible chateau fronting the Lake of the Isles. Theytramped through a shining-new section of apartment-houses; not the tallbleak apartments of Eastern cities but low structures of cheerful yellowbrick, in which each flat had its glass-enclosed porch with swingingcouch and scarlet cushions and Russian brass bowls. Between a waste oftracks and a raw gouged hill they found poverty in staggering shanties.They saw miles of the city which they had never known in their daysof absorption in college. They were distinguished explorers, and theyremarked, in great mutual esteem, "I bet Harry Haydock's never seen theCity like this! Why, he'd never have sense enough to study the machineryin the mills, or go through all these outlying districts. Wonder folksin Gopher Prairie wouldn't use their legs and explore, the way we do!"They had two meals with Carol's sister, and were bored, and felt thatintimacy which beatifies married people when they suddenly admit thatthey equally dislike a relative of either of them.So it was with affection but also with weariness that they approachedthe evening on which Carol was to see the plays at the dramatic school.Kennicott suggested not going. "So darn tired from all this walking;don't know but what we better turn in early and get rested up." It wasonly from duty that Carol dragged him and herself out of the warmhotel, into a stinking trolley, up the brownstone steps of the convertedresidence which lugubriously housed the dramatic school.VThey were in a long whitewashed hall with a clumsy draw-curtain acrossthe front. The folding chairs were filled with people who looked washedand ironed: parents of the pupils, girl students, dutiful teachers."Strikes me it's going to be punk. If the first play isn't good, let'sbeat it," said Kennicott hopefully."All right," she yawned. With hazy eyes she tried to read the lists ofcharacters, which were hidden among lifeless advertisements of pianos,music-dealers, restaurants, candy.She regarded the Schnitzler play with no vast interest. The actorsmoved and spoke stiffly. Just as its cynicism was beginning to rouse hervillage-dulled frivolity, it was over."Don't think a whale of a lot of that. How about taking a sneak?"petitioned Kennicott."Oh, let's try the next one, 'How He Lied to Her Husband.'"The Shaw conceit amused her, and perplexed Kennicott:"Strikes me it's darn fresh. Thought it would be racy. Don't know as Ithink much of a play where a husband actually claims he wants a fellowto make love to his wife. No husband ever did that! Shall we shake aleg?""I want to see this Yeats thing, 'Land of Heart's Desire.' I used tolove it in college." She was awake now, and urgent. "I know you didn'tcare so much for Yeats when I read him aloud to you, but you just see ifyou don't adore him on the stage."Most of the cast were as unwieldy as oak chairs marching, and thesetting was an arty arrangement of batik scarfs and heavy tables, butMaire Bruin was slim as Carol, and larger-eyed, and her voice wasa morning bell. In her, Carol lived, and on her lifting voice wastransported from this sleepy small-town husband and all the rows ofpolite parents to the stilly loft of a thatched cottage where in a greendimness, beside a window caressed by linden branches, she bent over achronicle of twilight women and the ancient gods."Well--gosh--nice kid played that girl--good-looker," said Kennicott."Want to stay for the last piece? Heh?"She shivered. She did not answer.The curtain was again drawn aside. On the stage they saw nothing butlong green curtains and a leather chair. Two young men in brown robeslike furniture-covers were gesturing vacuously and droning crypticsentences full of repetitions.It was Carol's first hearing of Dunsany. She sympathized with therestless Kennicott as he felt in his pocket for a cigar and unhappilyput it back.Without understanding when or how, without a tangible change in thestilted intoning of the stage-puppets, she was conscious of another timeand place.Stately and aloof among vainglorious tiring-maids, a queen in robesthat murmured on the marble floor, she trod the gallery of a crumblingpalace. In the courtyard, elephants trumpeted, and swart men with beardsdyed crimson stood with blood-stained hands folded upon their hilts,guarding the caravan from El Sharnak, the camels with Tyrian stuffsof topaz and cinnabar. Beyond the turrets of the outer wall the jungleglared and shrieked, and the sun was furious above drenched orchids.A youth came striding through the steel-bossed doors, the sword-bittendoors that were higher than ten tall men. He was in flexible mail, andunder the rim of his planished morion were amorous curls. His hand wasout to her; before she touched it she could feel its warmth----"Gosh all hemlock! What the dickens is all this stuff about, Carrie?"She was no Syrian queen. She was Mrs. Dr. Kennicott. She fell with ajolt into a whitewashed hall and sat looking at two scared girls and ayoung man in wrinkled tights.Kennicott fondly rambled as they left the hall:"What the deuce did that last spiel mean? Couldn't make head or tail ofit. If that's highbrow drama, give me a cow-puncher movie, every time!Thank God, that's over, and we can get to bed. Wonder if we wouldn'tmake time by walking over to Nicollet to take a car? One thing I willsay for that dump: they had it warm enough. Must have a big hot-airfurnace, I guess. Wonder how much coal it takes to run 'em through thewinter?"In the car he affectionately patted her knee, and he was for a secondthe striding youth in armor; then he was Doc Kennicott of GopherPrairie, and she was recaptured by Main Street. Never, not all her life,would she behold jungles and the tombs of kings. There were strangethings in the world, they really existed; but she would never see them.She would recreate them in plays!She would make the dramatic association understand her aspiration. Theywould, surely they would----She looked doubtfully at the impenetrable reality of yawning trolleyconductor and sleepy passengers and placards advertising soap andunderwear.