CHAPTER XXXIX

by Sinclair Lewis

　　SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations would be. She wonderedabout it so much that she had every sensation she had imagined. She wasexcited by each familiar porch, each hearty "Well, well!" and flatteredto be, for a day, the most important news of the community. She bustledabout, making calls. Juanita Haydock bubbled over their Washingtonencounter, and took Carol to her social bosom. This ancient opponentseemed likely to be her most intimate friend, for Vida Sherwin, thoughshe was cordial, stood back and watched for imported heresies.In the evening Carol went to the mill. The mystical Om-Om-Om of thedynamos in the electric-light plant behind the mill was louder in thedarkness. Outside sat the night watchman, Champ Perry. He held up hisstringy hands and squeaked, "We've all missed you terrible."Who in Washington would miss her?Who in Washington could be depended upon like Guy Pollock? When she sawhim on the street, smiling as always, he seemed an eternal thing, a partof her own self.After a week she decided that she was neither glad nor sorry to be back.She entered each day with the matter-of-fact attitude with which shehad gone to her office in Washington. It was her task; there would bemechanical details and meaningless talk; what of it?The only problem which she had approached with emotion provedinsignificant. She had, on the train, worked herself up to such devotionthat she was willing to give up her own room, to try to share all of herlife with Kennicott.He mumbled, ten minutes after she had entered the house, "Say, I've keptyour room for you like it was. I've kind of come round to your way ofthinking. Don't see why folks need to get on each other's nerves justbecause they're friendly. Darned if I haven't got so I like a littleprivacy and mulling things over by myself."IIShe had left a city which sat up nights to talk of universal transition;of European revolution, guild socialism, free verse. She had fanciedthat all the world was changing.She found that it was not.In Gopher Prairie the only ardent new topics were prohibition, the placein Minneapolis where you could get whisky at thirteen dollars a quart,recipes for home-made beer, the "high cost of living," the presidentialelection, Clark's new car, and not very novel foibles of Cy Bogart.Their problems were exactly what they had been two years ago, what theyhad been twenty years ago, and what they would be for twenty years tocome. With the world a possible volcano, the husbandmen were plowing atthe base of the mountain. A volcano does occasionally drop a riverof lava on even the best of agriculturists, to their astonishment andconsiderable injury, but their cousins inherit the farms and a year ortwo later go back to the plowing.She was unable to rhapsodize much over the seven new bungalows and thetwo garages which Kennicott had made to seem so important. Her intensestthought about them was, "Oh yes, they're all right I suppose." Thechange which she did heed was the erection of the schoolbuilding, withits cheerful brick walls, broad windows, gymnasium, classrooms foragriculture and cooking. It indicated Vida's triumph, and it stirred herto activity--any activity. She went to Vida with a jaunty, "I think Ishall work for you. And I'll begin at the bottom."She did. She relieved the attendant at the rest-room for an hour aday. Her only innovation was painting the pine table a black and orangerather shocking to the Thanatopsis. She talked to the farmwives andsoothed their babies and was happy.Thinking of them she did not think of the ugliness of Main Street as shehurried along it to the chatter of the Jolly Seventeen.She wore her eye-glasses on the street now. She was beginning to askKennicott and Juanita if she didn't look young, much younger thanthirty-three. The eye-glasses pinched her nose. She consideredspectacles. They would make her seem older, and hopelessly settled.No! She would not wear spectacles yet. But she tried on a pair atKennicott's office. They really were much more comfortable.IIIDr. Westlake, Sam Clark, Nat Hicks, and Del Snafflin were talking inDel's barber shop."Well, I see Kennicott's wife is taking a whirl at the rest-room, now,"said Dr. Westlake. He emphasized the "now."Del interrupted the shaving of Sam and, with his brush dripping lather,he observed jocularly:"What'll she be up to next? They say she used to claim this burg wasn'tswell enough for a city girl like her, and would we please tax ourselvesabout thirty-seven point nine and fix it all up pretty, with tidies onthe hydrants and statoos on the lawns----"Sam irritably blew the lather from his lips, with milky small bubbles,and snorted, "Be a good thing for most of us roughnecks if we did havea smart woman to tell us how to fix up the town. Just as much to herkicking as there was to Jim Blausser's gassing about factories. And youcan bet Mrs. Kennicott is smart, even if she is skittish. Glad to seeher back."Dr. Westlake hastened to play safe. "So was I! So was I! She's got anice way about her, and she knows a good deal about books, or fictionanyway. Of course she's like all the rest of these women--notsolidly founded--not scholarly--doesn't know anything about politicaleconomy--falls for every new idea that some windjamming crank puts out.But she's a nice woman. She'll probably fix up the rest-room, and therest-room is a fine thing, brings a lot of business to town. And nowthat Mrs. Kennicott's been away, maybe she's got over some of her foolideas. Maybe she realizes that folks simply laugh at her when she triesto tell us how to run everything.""Sure. She'll take a tumble to herself," said Nat Hicks, sucking inhis lips judicially. "As far as I'm concerned, I'll say she's as nice alooking skirt as there is in town. But yow!" His tone electrified them."Guess she'll miss that Swede Valborg that used to work for me! They wasa pair! Talking poetry and moonshine! If they could of got away with it,they'd of been so darn lovey-dovey----"Sam Clark interrupted, "Rats, they never even thought about making love,Just talking books and all that junk. I tell you, Carrie Kennicott'sa smart woman, and these smart educated women all get funny ideas, butthey get over 'em after they've had three or four kids. You'll see hersettled down one of these days, and teaching Sunday School and helpingat sociables and behaving herself, and not trying to butt into businessand politics. Sure!"After only fifteen minutes of conference on her stockings, her son, herseparate bedroom, her music, her ancient interest in Guy Pollock, herprobable salary in Washington, and every remark which she was known tohave made since her return, the supreme council decided that they wouldpermit Carol Kennicott to live, and they passed on to a consideration ofNat Hicks's New One about the traveling salesman and the old maid.IVFor some reason which was totally mysterious to Carol, Maud Dyer seemedto resent her return. At the Jolly Seventeen Maud giggled nervously,"Well, I suppose you found war-work a good excuse to stay away and havea swell time. Juanita! Don't you think we ought to make Carrie tell usabout the officers she met in Washington?"They rustled and stared. Carol looked at them. Their curiosity seemednatural and unimportant."Oh yes, yes indeed, have to do that some day," she yawned.She no longer took Aunt Bessie Smail seriously enough to struggle forindependence. She saw that Aunt Bessie did not mean to intrude; thatshe wanted to do things for all the Kennicotts. Thus Carol hit upon thetragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth,but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness,so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejectedwith laughter. She divined that when Aunt Bessie came in with a jar ofwild-grape jelly she was waiting in hope of being asked for the recipe.After that she could be irritated but she could not be depressed by AuntBessie's simoom of questioning.She wasn't depressed even when she heard Mrs. Bogart observe, "Now we'vegot prohibition it seems to me that the next problem of the countryain't so much abolishing cigarettes as it is to make folks observe theSabbath and arrest these law-breakers that play baseball and go to themovies and all on the Lord's Day."Only one thing bruised Carol's vanity. Few people asked her aboutWashington. They who had most admiringly begged Percy Bresnahan for hisopinions were least interested in her facts. She laughed at herself whenshe saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returnedhero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just asmuch as ever.Her baby, born in August, was a girl. Carol could not decide whether shewas to become a feminist leader or marry a scientist or both, but didsettle on Vassar and a tricolette suit with a small black hat for herFreshman year.VIHugh was loquacious at breakfast. He desired to give his impressions ofowls and F Street."Don't make so much noise. You talk too much," growled Kennicott.Carol flared. "Don't speak to him that way! Why don't you listen to him?He has some very interesting things to tell.""What's the idea? Mean to say you expect me to spend all my timelistening to his chatter?""Why not?""For one thing, he's got to learn a little discipline. Time for him tostart getting educated.""I've learned much more discipline, I've had much more education, fromhim than he has from me.""What's this? Some new-fangled idea of raising kids you got inWashington?""Perhaps. Did you ever realize that children are people?""That's all right. I'm not going to have him monopolizing theconversation.""No, of course. We have our rights, too. But I'm going to bring him upas a human being. He has just as many thoughts as we have, and I wanthim to develop them, not take Gopher Prairie's version of them. That'smy biggest work now--keeping myself, keeping you, from 'educating' him.""Well, let's not scrap about it. But I'm not going to have him spoiled."Kennicott had forgotten it in ten minutes; and she forgot it--this time.VIIThe Kennicotts and the Sam Clarks had driven north to a duck-passbetween two lakes, on an autumn day of blue and copper.Kennicott had given her a light twenty-gauge shotgun. She had a firstlesson in shooting, in keeping her eyes open, not wincing, understandingthat the bead at the end of the barrel really had something to do withpointing the gun. She was radiant; she almost believed Sam when heinsisted that it was she who had shot the mallard at which they hadfired together.She sat on the bank of the reedy lake and found rest in Mrs. Clark'sdrawling comments on nothing. The brown dusk was still. Behind them weredark marshes. The plowed acres smelled fresh. The lake was garnet andsilver. The voices of the men, waiting for the last flight, were clearin the cool air."Mark left!" sang Kennicott, in a long-drawn call.Three ducks were swooping down in a swift line. The guns banged, anda duck fluttered. The men pushed their light boat out on the burnishedlake, disappeared beyond the reeds. Their cheerful voices and the slowsplash and clank of oars came back to Carol from the dimness. In the skya fiery plain sloped down to a serene harbor. It dissolved; the lakewas white marble; and Kennicott was crying, "Well, old lady, how abouthiking out for home? Supper taste pretty good, eh?""I'll sit back with Ethel," she said, at the car.It was the first time she had called Mrs. Clark by her given name; thefirst time she had willingly sat back, a woman of Main Street."I'm hungry. It's good to be hungry," she reflected, as they drove away.She looked across the silent fields to the west. She was conscious of anunbroken sweep of land to the Rockies, to Alaska, a dominion whichwill rise to unexampled greatness when other empires have grown senile.Before that time, she knew, a hundred generations of Carols will aspireand go down in tragedy devoid of palls and solemn chanting, the humdruminevitable tragedy of struggle against inertia."Let's all go to the movies tomorrow night. Awfully exciting film," saidEthel Clark."Well, I was going to read a new book but----All right, let's go," saidCarol.VIII"They're too much for me," Carol sighed to Kennicott. "I've beenthinking about getting up an annual Community Day, when the whole townwould forget feuds and go out and have sports and a picnic and a dance.But Bert Tybee (why did you ever elect him mayor?)--he's kidnapped myidea. He wants the Community Day, but he wants to have some politician'give an address.' That's just the stilted sort of thing I've tried toavoid. He asked Vida, and of course she agreed with him."Kennicott considered the matter while he wound the clock and theytramped up-stairs."Yes, it would jar you to have Bert butting in," he said amiably. "Areyou going to do much fussing over this Community stunt? Don't you everget tired of fretting and stewing and experimenting?""I haven't even started. Look!" She led him to the nursery door, pointedat the fuzzy brown head of her daughter. "Do you see that object on thepillow? Do you know what it is? It's a bomb to blow up smugness. If youTories were wise, you wouldn't arrest anarchists; you'd arrest all thesechildren while they're asleep in their cribs. Think what that baby willsee and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000! She may see anindustrial union of the whole world, she may see aeroplanes going toMars.""Yump, probably be changes all right," yawned Kennicott.She sat on the edge of his bed while he hunted through his bureau for acollar which ought to be there and persistently wasn't."I'll go on, always. And I am happy. But this Community Day makes me seehow thoroughly I'm beaten.""That darn collar certainly is gone for keeps," muttered Kennicott and,louder, "Yes, I guess you----I didn't quite catch what you said, dear."She patted his pillows, turned down his sheets, as she reflected:"But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures by sneering atmy aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond them. I do not admitthat Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit thatGopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admitthat dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have foughtthe good fight, but I have kept the faith.""Sure. You bet you have," said Kennicott. "Well, good night. Sort offeels to me like it might snow tomorrow. Have to be thinking aboutputting up the storm-windows pretty soon. Say, did you notice whetherthe girl put that screwdriver back?"