CHAPTER XXXVIII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　SHE had lived in Washington for a year. She was tired of the office.It was tolerable, far more tolerable than housework, but it was notadventurous.She was having tea and cinnamon toast, alone at a small round table onthe balcony of Rauscher's Confiserie. Four debutantes clattered in. Shehad felt young and dissipated, had thought rather well of her black andleaf-green suit, but as she watched them, thin of ankle, soft under thechin, seventeen or eighteen at most, smoking cigarettes with the correctennui and talking of "bedroom farces" and their desire to "run up to NewYork and see something racy," she became old and rustic and plain, anddesirous of retreating from these hard brilliant children to a lifeeasier and more sympathetic. When they flickered out and one child gaveorders to a chauffeur, Carol was not a defiant philosopher but a fadedgovernment clerk from Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.She started dejectedly up Connecticut Avenue. She stopped, her heartstopped. Coming toward her were Harry and Juanita Haydock. She ran tothem, she kissed Juanita, while Harry confided, "Hadn't expected to cometo Washington--had to go to New York for some buying--didn't have youraddress along--just got in this morning--wondered how in the world wecould get hold of you."She was definitely sorry to hear that they were to leave at nine thatevening, and she clung to them as long as she could. She took them toSt. Mark's for dinner. Stooped, her elbows on the table, she heardwith excitement that "Cy Bogart had the 'flu, but of course he was toogol-darn mean to die of it.""Will wrote me that Mr. Blausser has gone away. How did he get on?""Fine! Fine! Great loss to the town. There was a real public-spiritedfellow, all right!"She discovered that she now had no opinions whatever about Mr. Blausser,and she said sympathetically, "Will you keep up the town-boostingcampaign?"Harry fumbled, "Well, we've dropped it just temporarily, but--sure youbet! Say, did the doc write you about the luck B. J. Gougerling hadhunting ducks down in Texas?"When the news had been told and their enthusiasm had slackened shelooked about and was proud to be able to point out a senator, to explainthe cleverness of the canopied garden. She fancied that a man withdinner-coat and waxed mustache glanced superciliously at Harry's highlyform-fitting bright-brown suit and Juanita's tan silk frock, which wasdoubtful at the seams. She glared back, defending her own, daring theworld not to appreciate them.Then, waving to them, she lost them down the long train shed. She stoodreading the list of stations: Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Chicago. BeyondChicago----? She saw the lakes and stubble fields, heard the rhythmof insects and the creak of a buggy, was greeted by Sam Clark's "Well,well, how's the little lady?"Nobody in Washington cared enough for her to fret about her sins as Samdid.But that night they had at the flat a man just back from Finland.IIShe was on the Powhatan roof with the captain. At a table, somewhatvociferously buying improbable "soft drinks" for two fluffy girls, was aman with a large familiar back."Oh! I think I know him," she murmured."Who? There? Oh, Bresnahan, Percy Bresnahan.""Yes. You've met him? What sort of a man is he?""He's a good-hearted idiot. I rather like him, and I believe that as asalesman of motors he's a wonder. But he's a nuisance in the aeronauticsection. Tries so hard to be useful but he doesn't know anything--hedoesn't know anything. Rather pathetic: rich man poking around andtrying to be useful. Do you want to speak to him?""No--no--I don't think so."IIIShe was at a motion-picture show. The film was a highly advertisedand abysmal thing smacking of simpering hair-dressers, cheap perfume,red-plush suites on the back streets of tenderloins, and complacent fatwomen chewing gum. It pretended to deal with the life of studios. Theleading man did a portrait which was a masterpiece. He also saw visionsin pipe-smoke, and was very brave and poor and pure. He had ringlets,and his masterpiece was strangely like an enlarged photograph.Carol prepared to leave.On the screen, in the role of a composer, appeared an actor called EricValour.She was startled, incredulous, then wretched. Looking straight out ather, wearing a beret and a velvet jacket, was Erik Valborg.He had a pale part, which he played neither well nor badly. Shespeculated, "I could have made so much of him----" She did not finishher speculation.She went home and read Kennicott's letters. They had seemed stiff andundetailed, but now there strode from them a personality, a personalityunlike that of the languishing young man in the velvet jacket playing adummy piano in a canvas room.IVKennicott first came to see her in November, thirteen months after herarrival in Washington. When he announced that he was coming she was notat all sure that she wished to see him. She was glad that he had madethe decision himself.She had leave from the office for two days.She watched him marching from the train, solid, assured, carrying hisheavy suit-case, and she was diffident--he was such a bulky person tohandle. They kissed each other questioningly, and said at the same time,"You're looking fine; how's the baby?" and "You're looking awfully well,dear; how is everything?"He grumbled, "I don't want to butt in on any plans you've made or yourfriends or anything, but if you've got time for it, I'd like to chasearound Washington, and take in some restaurants and shows and stuff, andforget work for a while."She realized, in the taxicab, that he was wearing a soft gray suit, asoft easy hat, a flippant tie."Like the new outfit? Got 'em in Chicago. Gosh, I hope they're the kindyou like."They spent half an hour at the flat, with Hugh. She was flustered, buthe gave no sign of kissing her again.As he moved about the small rooms she realized that he had had his newtan shoes polished to a brassy luster. There was a recent cut onhis chin. He must have shaved on the train just before coming intoWashington.It was pleasant to feel how important she was, how many people sherecognized, as she took him to the Capitol, as she told him (he askedand she obligingly guessed) how many feet it was to the top of the dome,as she pointed out Senator LaFollette and the vice-president, andat lunch-time showed herself an habitue by leading him through thecatacombs to the senate restaurant.She realized that he was slightly more bald. The familiar way in whichhis hair was parted on the left side agitated her. She looked downat his hands, and the fact that his nails were as ill-treated as evertouched her more than his pleading shoe-shine."You'd like to motor down to Mount Vernon this afternoon, wouldn't you?"she said.It was the one thing he had planned. He was delighted that it seemed tobe a perfectly well bred and Washingtonian thing to do.He shyly held her hand on the way, and told her the news: they wereexcavating the basement for the new schoolbuilding, Vida "made him tiredthe way she always looked at the Maje," poor Chet Dashaway had beenkilled in a motor accident out on the Coast. He did not coax her to likehim. At Mount Vernon he admired the paneled library and Washington'sdental tools.She knew that he would want oysters, that he would have heard ofHarvey's apropos of Grant and Blaine, and she took him there. At dinnerhis hearty voice, his holiday enjoyment of everything, turned intonervousness in his desire to know a number of interesting matters, suchas whether they still were married. But he did not ask questions, andhe said nothing about her returning. He cleared his throat and observed,"Oh say, been trying out the old camera. Don't you think these arepretty good?"He tossed over to her thirty prints of Gopher Prairie and the countryabout. Without defense, she was thrown into it. She remembered that hehad lured her with photographs in courtship days; she made a note ofhis sameness, his satisfaction with the tactics which had proved goodbefore; but she forgot it in the familiar places. She was seeingthe sun-speckled ferns among birches on the shore of Minniemashie,wind-rippled miles of wheat, the porch of their own house where Hugh hadplayed, Main Street where she knew every window and every face.She handed them back, with praise for his photography, and he talked oflenses and time-exposures.Dinner was over and they were gossiping of her friends at the flat, butan intruder was with them, sitting back, persistent, inescapable. Shecould not endure it. She stammered:"I had you check your bag at the station because I wasn't quite surewhere you'd stay. I'm dreadfully sorry we haven't room to put you up atthe flat. We ought to have seen about a room for you before. Don't youthink you better call up the Willard or the Washington now?"He peered at her cloudily. Without words he asked, without speech sheanswered, whether she was also going to the Willard or the Washington.But she tried to look as though she did not know that they were debatinganything of the sort. She would have hated him had he been meek aboutit. But he was neither meek nor angry. However impatient he may havebeen with her blandness he said readily:"Yes, guess I better do that. Excuse me a second. Then how aboutgrabbing a taxi (Gosh, isn't it the limit the way these taxi shuffersskin around a corner? Got more nerve driving than I have!) and goingup to your flat for a while? Like to meet your friends--must be finewomen--and I might take a look and see how Hugh sleeps. Like to know howhe breathes. Don't think he has adenoids, but I better make sure, eh?"He patted her shoulder.At the flat they found her two housemates and a girl who had been tojail for suffrage. Kennicott fitted in surprisingly. He laughed at thegirl's story of the humors of a hunger-strike; he told the secretarywhat to do when her eyes were tired from typing; and the teacher askedhim--not as the husband of a friend but as a physician--whether therewas "anything to this inoculation for colds."His colloquialisms seemed to Carol no more lax than their habitualslang.Like an older brother he kissed her good-night in the midst of thecompany."He's terribly nice," said her housemates, and waited for confidences.They got none, nor did her own heart. She could find nothing definite toagonize about. She felt that she was no longer analyzing and controllingforces, but swept on by them.He came to the flat for breakfast, and washed the dishes. That was heronly occasion for spite. Back home he never thought of washing dishes!She took him to the obvious "sights"--the Treasury, the Monument, theCorcoran Gallery, the Pan-American Building, the Lincoln Memorial, withthe Potomac beyond it and the Arlington hills and the columns of the LeeMansion. For all his willingness to play there was over him a melancholywhich piqued her. His normally expressionless eyes had depths to themnow, and strangeness. As they walked through Lafayette Square, lookingpast the Jackson statue at the lovely tranquil facade of the WhiteHouse, he sighed, "I wish I'd had a shot at places like this. When I wasin the U., I had to earn part of my way, and when I wasn't doing thator studying, I guess I was roughhousing. My gang were a great bunch forbumming around and raising Cain. Maybe if I'd been caught early andsent to concerts and all that----Would I have been what you callintelligent?""Oh, my dear, don't be humble! You are intelligent! For instance, you'rethe most thorough doctor----"He was edging about something he wished to say. He pounced on it:"You did like those pictures of G. P. pretty well, after all, didn'tyou!""Yes, of course.""Wouldn't be so bad to have a glimpse of the old town, would it!""No, it wouldn't. Just as I was terribly glad to see the Haydocks.But please understand me! That doesn't mean that I withdraw all mycriticisms. The fact that I might like a glimpse of old friends hasn'tany particular relation to the question of whether Gopher Prairieoughtn't to have festivals and lamb chops."Hastily, "No, no! Sure not. I und'stand.""But I know it must have been pretty tiresome to have to live withanybody as perfect as I was."He grinned. She liked his grin.VHe was thrilled by old negro coachmen, admirals, aeroplanes, thebuilding to which his income tax would eventually go, a Rolls-Royce,Lynnhaven oysters, the Supreme Court Room, a New York theatrical managerdown for the try-out of a play, the house where Lincoln died, the cloaksof Italian officers, the barrows at which clerks buy their box-lunchesat noon, the barges on the Chesapeake Canal, and the fact that Districtof Columbia cars had both District and Maryland licenses.She resolutely took him to her favorite white and green cottages andGeorgian houses. He admitted that fanlights, and white shutters againstrosy brick, were more homelike than a painty wooden box. He volunteered,"I see how you mean. They make me think of these pictures of anold-fashioned Christmas. Oh, if you keep at it long enough you'll haveSam and me reading poetry and everything. Oh say, d' I tell you aboutthis fierce green Jack Elder's had his machine painted?"VIThey were at dinner.He hinted, "Before you showed me those places today, I'd already made upmy mind that when I built the new house we used to talk about, I'd fixit the way you wanted it. I'm pretty practical about foundations andradiation and stuff like that, but I guess I don't know a whole lotabout architecture.""My dear, it occurs to me with a sudden shock that I don't either!""Well--anyway--you let me plan the garage and the plumbing, and you dothe rest, if you ever--I mean--if you ever want to."Doubtfully, "That's sweet of you.""Look here, Carrie; you think I'm going to ask you to love me. I'm not.And I'm not going to ask you to come back to Gopher Prairie!"She gaped."It's been a whale of a fight. But I guess I've got myself to see thatyou won't ever stand G. P. unless you WANT to come back to it. I needn'tsay I'm crazy to have you. But I won't ask you. I just want you to knowhow I wait for you. Every mail I look for a letter, and when I get oneI'm kind of scared to open it, I'm hoping so much that you're comingback. Evenings----You know I didn't open the cottage down at the lake atall, this past summer. Simply couldn't stand all the others laughing andswimming, and you not there. I used to sit on the porch, in town, andI--I couldn't get over the feeling that you'd simply run up to the drugstore and would be right back, and till after it got dark I'd catchmyself watching, looking up the street, and you never came, and thehouse was so empty and still that I didn't like to go in. And sometimesI fell asleep there, in my chair, and didn't wake up till aftermidnight, and the house----Oh, the devil! Please get me, Carrie. I justwant you to know how welcome you'll be if you ever do come. But I'm notasking you to.""You're----It's awfully----""'Nother thing. I'm going to be frank. I haven't always been absolutely,uh, absolutely, proper. I've always loved you more than anything else inthe world, you and the kid. But sometimes when you were chilly to me I'dget lonely and sore, and pike out and----Never intended----"She rescued him with a pitying, "It's all right. Let's forget it.""But before we were married you said if your husband ever did anythingwrong, you'd want him to tell you.""Did I? I can't remember. And I can't seem to think. Oh, my dear, Ido know how generously you're trying to make me happy. The only thingis----I can't think. I don't know what I think.""Then listen! Don't think! Here's what I want you to do! Get a two-weeksleave from your office. Weather's beginning to get chilly here. Let'srun down to Charleston and Savannah and maybe Florida."A second honeymoon?" indecisively."No. Don't even call it that. Call it a second wooing. I won't askanything. I just want the chance to chase around with you. I guess Inever appreciated how lucky I was to have a girl with imagination andlively feet to play with. So----Could you maybe run away and see theSouth with me? If you wanted to, you could just--you could just pretendyou were my sister and----I'll get an extra nurse for Hugh! I'll get thebest dog-gone nurse in Washington!"VIIIt was in the Villa Margherita, by the palms of the Charleston Batteryand the metallic harbor, that her aloofness melted.When they sat on the upper balcony, enchanted by the moon glitter, shecried, "Shall I go back to Gopher Prairie with you? Decide for me. I'mtired of deciding and undeciding.""No. You've got to do your own deciding. As a matter of fact, in spiteof this honeymoon, I don't think I want you to come home. Not yet."She could only stare."I want you to be satisfied when you get there. I'll do everything I canto keep you happy, but I'll make lots of breaks, so I want you to taketime and think it over."She was relieved. She still had a chance to seize splendid indefinitefreedoms. She might go--oh, she'd see Europe, somehow, before she wasrecaptured. But she also had a firmer respect for Kennicott. She hadfancied that her life might make a story. She knew that there wasnothing heroic or obviously dramatic in it, no magic of rare hours,nor valiant challenge, but it seemed to her that she was of somesignificance because she was commonplaceness, the ordinary life of theage, made articulate and protesting. It had not occurred to her thatthere was also a story of Will Kennicott, into which she entered only somuch as he entered into hers; that he had bewilderments and concealmentsas intricate as her own, and soft treacherous desires for sympathy.Thus she brooded, looking at the amazing sea, holding his hand.VIIIShe was in Washington; Kennicott was in Gopher Prairie, writing as drylyas ever about water-pipes and goose-hunting and Mrs. Fageros's mastoid.She was talking at dinner to a generalissima of suffrage. Should shereturn?The leader spoke wearily:"My dear, I'm perfectly selfish. I can't quite visualize the needs ofyour husband, and it seems to me that your baby will do quite as well inthe schools here as in your barracks at home.""Then you think I'd better not go back?" Carol sounded disappointed."It's more difficult than that. When I say that I'm selfish I mean thatthe only thing I consider about women is whether they're likely to proveuseful in building up real political power for women. And you? Shall Ibe frank? Remember when I say 'you' I don't mean you alone. I'm thinkingof thousands of women who come to Washington and New York andChicago every year, dissatisfied at home and seeking a sign in theheavens--women of all sorts, from timid mothers of fifty in cottongloves, to girls just out of Vassar who organize strikes in their ownfathers' factories! All of you are more or less useful to me, but onlya few of you can take my place, because I have one virtue (only one): Ihave given up father and mother and children for the love of God."Here's the test for you: Do you come to 'conquer the East,' as peoplesay, or do you come to conquer yourself?"It's so much more complicated than any of you know--so much morecomplicated than I knew when I put on Ground Grippers and started out toreform the world. The final complication in 'conquering Washington' or'conquering New York' is that the conquerors must beyond all things notconquer! It must have been so easy in the good old days when authorsdreamed only of selling a hundred thousand volumes, and sculptorsof being feted in big houses, and even the Uplifters like me had asimple-hearted ambition to be elected to important offices and invitedto go round lecturing. But we meddlers have upset everything. Now theone thing that is disgraceful to any of us is obvious success. TheUplifter who is very popular with wealthy patrons can be pretty surethat he has softened his philosophy to please them, and the author whois making lots of money--poor things, I've heard 'em apologizing for itto the shabby bitter-enders; I've seen 'em ashamed of the sleek luggagethey got from movie rights."Do you want to sacrifice yourself in such a topsy-turvy world, wherepopularity makes you unpopular with the people you love, and the onlyfailure is cheap success, and the only individualist is the person whogives up all his individualism to serve a jolly ungrateful proletariatwhich thumbs its nose at him?"Carol smiled ingratiatingly, to indicate that she was indeed one whodesired to sacrifice, but she sighed, "I don't know; I'm afraid I'm notheroic. I certainly wasn't out home. Why didn't I do big effective----""Not a matter of heroism. Matter of endurance. Your Middlewest isdouble-Puritan--prairie Puritan on top of New England Puritan; blufffrontiersman on the surface, but in its heart it still has the ideal ofPlymouth Rock in a sleet-storm. There's one attack you can make on it,perhaps the only kind that accomplishes much anywhere: you can keep onlooking at one thing after another in your home and church and bank, andask why it is, and who first laid down the law that it had to be thatway. If enough of us do this impolitely enough, then we'll becomecivilized in merely twenty thousand years or so, instead of havingto wait the two hundred thousand years that my cynical anthropologistfriends allow. . . . Easy, pleasant, lucrative home-work for wives:asking people to define their jobs. That's the most dangerous doctrine Iknow!"Carol was mediating, "I will go back! I will go on asking questions.I've always done it, and always failed at it, and it's all I can do. I'mgoing to ask Ezra Stowbody why he's opposed to the nationalization ofrailroads, and ask Dave Dyer why a druggist always is pleased when he'scalled 'doctor,' and maybe ask Mrs. Bogart why she wears a widow's veilthat looks like a dead crow."The woman leader straightened. "And you have one thing. You have a babyto hug. That's my temptation. I dream of babies--of a baby--and I sneakaround parks to see them playing. (The children in Dupont Circle arelike a poppy-garden.) And the antis call me 'unsexed'!"Carol was thinking, in panic, "Oughtn't Hugh to have country air? Iwon't let him become a yokel. I can guide him away from street-cornerloafing. . . . I think I can."On her way home: "Now that I've made a precedent, joined the union andgone out on one strike and learned personal solidarity, I won't beso afraid. Will won't always be resisting my running away. Some day Ireally will go to Europe with him . . . or without him."I've lived with people who are not afraid to go to jail. I could invitea Miles Bjornstam to dinner without being afraid of the Haydocks . . . Ithink I could."I'll take back the sound of Yvette Guilbert's songs and Elman's violin.They'll be only the lovelier against the thrumming of crickets in thestubble on an autumn day."I can laugh now and be serene . . . I think I can."Though she should return, she said, she would not be utterly defeated.She was glad of her rebellion. The prairie was no longer empty land inthe sun-glare; it was the living tawny beast which she had fought andmade beautiful by fighting; and in the village streets were shadows ofher desires and the sound of her marching and the seeds of mystery andgreatness.IXHer active hatred of Gopher Prairie had run out. She saw it now as atoiling new settlement. With sympathy she remembered Kennicott's defenseof its citizens as "a lot of pretty good folks, working hard and tryingto bring up their families the best they can." She recalled tenderly theyoung awkwardness of Main Street and the makeshifts of the little browncottages; she pitied their shabbiness and isolation; had compassion fortheir assertion of culture, even as expressed in Thanatopsis papers, fortheir pretense of greatness, even as trumpeted in "boosting." She sawMain Street in the dusty prairie sunset, a line of frontier shantieswith solemn lonely people waiting for her, solemn and lonely as an oldman who has outlived his friends. She remembered that Kennicott and SamClark had listened to her songs, and she wanted to run to them and sing."At last," she rejoiced, "I've come to a fairer attitude toward thetown. I can love it, now."She was, perhaps, rather proud of herself for having acquired so muchtolerance.She awoke at three in the morning, after a dream of being tortured byElla Stowbody and the Widow Bogart."I've been making the town a myth. This is how people keep up thetradition of the perfect home-town, the happy boyhood, the brilliantcollege friends. We forget so. I've been forgetting that Main Streetdoesn't think it's in the least lonely and pitiful. It thinks it's God'sOwn Country. It isn't waiting for me. It doesn't care."But the next evening she again saw Gopher Prairie as her home, waitingfor her in the sunset, rimmed round with splendor.She did not return for five months more; five months crammed with greedyaccumulation of sounds and colors to take back for the long still days.She had spent nearly two years in Washington.When she departed for Gopher Prairie, in June, her second baby wasstirring within her.