THE house was haunted, long evening. Shadows the and waited every chair.
Did that door move?
No. She wouldn't go to the Jolly Seventeen. She hadn't energy to them, to at Juanita's rudeness. Not today. But she did want a party. Now! If some one would come in this afternoon, some one who liked her—Vida or Mrs. Sam Clark or old Mrs. Champ Perry or Mrs. Dr. Westlake. Or Guy Pollock! She'd telephone——
No. That wouldn't be it. They must come of themselves.
Perhaps they would.
Why not?
She'd have tea ready, anyway. If they came—splendid. If not—what did she care? She wasn't going to to the village and let down; she was going to keep up a in the of tea, to which she had always looked as the symbol of a existence. And it would be just as much fun, if it was so babyish, to have tea by herself and that she was men. It would!
She the into action. She to the kitchen, the wood-range, sang Schumann while she the kettle, up on a newspaper spread on the in the oven. She up-stairs to her tea-cloth. She a tray. She proudly it into the living-room and set it on the long table, pushing a of embroidery, a of Conrad from the library, copies of the Saturday Evening Post, the Literary Digest, and Kennicott's National Geographic Magazine.
She moved the and and the effect. She her head. She the sewing-table set it in the bay-window, the tea-cloth to smoothness, moved the tray. “Some time I'll have a tea-table,” she said happily.
She had in two cups, two plates. For herself, a chair, but for the guest the big wing-chair, which she to the table.
She had all the she think of. She sat and waited. She for the door-bell, the telephone. Her was stilled. Her hands drooped.
Surely Vida Sherwin would the summons.
She through the bay-window. Snow was over the of the Howland house like of water from a hose. The wide yards across the were with moving eddies. The black trees shivered. The was with of ice.
She looked at the cup and plate. She looked at the wing-chair. It was so empty.
The tea was cold in the pot. With she it. Yes. Quite cold. She couldn't wait any longer.
The cup across from her was clean, empty.
Simply to wait. She her own cup of tea. She sat and at it. What was it she was going to do now? Oh yes; how idiotic; take a of sugar.
She didn't want the tea.
She was up. She was on the couch, sobbing.
II
She was more than she had for weeks.
She to her to the town—awaken it, it, “reform” it. What if they were of lambs? They'd eat her all the sooner if she was to them. Fight or be eaten. It was to the town than to it! She not take their point of view; it was a negative thing; an squalor; a of and fears. She would have to make them take hers. She was not a Vincent de Paul, to and a people. What of that? The in their of would be the of the end; a to and some day with to their of mediocrity. If she not, as she desired, do a great thing and with laughter, yet she need not be with village nothingness. She would plant one in the blank wall.
Was she just? Was it a blank wall, this town which to three thousand and more people was the center of the universe? Hadn't she, returning from Lac-qui-Meurt, the of their greetings? No. The ten thousand Gopher Prairies had no of and hands. Sam Clark was no more than girl she in St. Paul, the people she had met in Chicago. And those others had so much that Gopher Prairie lacked—the world of and adventure, of music and the of bronze, of from and Paris nights and the of Bagdad, of and a God who not in hymns.
One seed. Which it was did not matter. All knowledge and were one. But she had so long in that seed. Could she do something with this Thanatopsis Club? Or should she make her house so that it would be an influence? She'd make Kennicott like poetry. That was it, for a beginning! She so clear a picture of their over large pages by the fire (in a non-existent fireplace) that the away. Doors no longer moved; were not but dark in the dusk; and when Bea came home Carol was at the piano which she had not touched for many days.
Their supper was the of two girls. Carol was in the dining-room, in a of black with gold, and Bea, in and an apron, in the kitchen; but the door was open between, and Carol was inquiring, “Did you see any in Dahl's window?” and Bea chanting, “No, ma'am. Say, ve have a time, afternoon. Tina she have coffee and knackebrod, and her dere, and ve laughed and laughed, and her say he president and he going to make me queen of Finland, and Ay a in may and say Ay going to go to var—oh, ve so and ve LAUGH so!”
When Carol sat at the piano again she did not think of her husband but of the book-drugged hermit, Guy Pollock. She that Pollock would come calling.
“If a girl him, he'd out of his and be human. If Will were as as Guy, or Guy were as executive as Will, I think I Gopher Prairie. It's so hard to mother Will. I be with Guy. Is that what I want, something to mother, a man or a or a town? I WILL have a baby. Some day. But to have him here all his years——
“And so to bed.
“Have I my level in Bea and kitchen-gossip?
“Oh, I do miss you, Will. But it will be to turn over in as often as I want to, without about you up.
“Am I this settled thing called a 'married woman'? I so tonight. So free. To think that there was once a Mrs. Kennicott who let herself worry over a town called Gopher Prairie when there was a whole world it!
“Of Will is going to like poetry.”
III
A black February day. Clouds of on the earth; an of upon the wastes. Gloom but no of angularity. The lines of and and inescapable.
The second day of Kennicott's absence.
She from the house for a walk. It was thirty zero; too cold to her. In the houses the wind her. It stung, it at nose and ears and cheeks, and she from to shelter, her in the of a barn, for the protection of a with under of paste-smeared green and red.
The of at the end of the Indians, hunting, snow-shoes, and she past the earth-banked to the open country, to a farm and a low hill with hard snow. In her coat, seal toque, by lines of village jealousies, she was as out of place on this as a on an ice-floe. She looked on Gopher Prairie. The snow, without from to beyond, out the town's of being a shelter. The houses were black on a white sheet. Her with that still as her with the wind.
She ran into the of streets, all the while that she wanted a city's yellow of shop-windows and restaurants, or the with and a rifle, or a warm and steamy, noisy with and cattle, not these houses, these yards with winter ash-piles, these of dirty and mud. The of winter was gone. Three months more, till May, the cold might on, with the filthier, the less resistent. She why the good citizens on adding the of prejudice, why they did not make the houses of their more warm and frivolous, like the wise of Stockholm and Moscow.
She the of the town and viewed the of “Swede Hollow.” Wherever as many as three houses are there will be a of at least one house. In Gopher Prairie, the Sam Clarks boasted, “you don't any of this that you in cities—always of work—no need of charity—man got to be if he don't ahead.” But now that the of and was gone, Carol and hope. In a of thin with tar-paper she saw the washerwoman, Mrs. Steinhof, in steam. Outside, her six-year-old boy wood. He had a jacket, of a like milk. His hands were with red through which his knuckles. He to on them, to disinterestedly.
A family of Finns were in an stable. A man of eighty was up of along the railroad.
She did not know what to do about it. She that these citizens, who had been that they to a democracy, would her trying to play Lady Bountiful.
She her in the activity of the village industries—the railroad-yards with a freight-train switching, the wheat-elevator, oil-tanks, a slaughter-house with blood-marks on the snow, the with the of farmers and of milk-cans, an “Danger—Powder Stored Here.” The tombstone-yard, where a in a red overcoat as he the of headstones. Jackson Elder's small planing-mill, with the of fresh and the of saws. Most important, the Gopher Prairie Flour and Milling Company, Lyman Cass president. Its were with flour-dust, but it was the most spot in town. Workmen were of into a box-car; a farmer on of in a with the wheat-buyer; the and whined, water in the ice-freed mill-race.
The was a to Carol after months of houses. She that she work in the mill; that she did not to the of professional-man's-wife.
She started for home, through the small slum. Before a tar-paper shack, at a gate, a man in and black cap with was her. His square was confident, his was picaresque. He erect, his hands in his side-pockets, his pipe slowly. He was forty-five or -six, perhaps.
“How do, Mrs. Kennicott,” he drawled.
She him—the town handyman, who had repaired their at the of winter.
“Oh, how do you do,” she fluttered.
“My name 's Bjornstam. 'The Red Swede' they call me. Remember? Always I'd of like to say to you again.”
“Ye—yes——I've been the of town.”
“Yump. Fine mess. No sewage, no cleaning, and the Lutheran minister and the the and sciences. Well, thunder, we tenth here in Swede Hollow are no off than you folks. Thank God, we don't have to go and at Juanity Haydock at the Jolly Old Seventeen.”
The Carol who herself as was at being as by a pipe-reeking odd-job man. Probably he was one of her husband's patients. But she must keep her dignity.
“Yes, the Jolly Seventeen isn't always so exciting. It's very cold again today, isn't it. Well——”
Bjornstam was not valedictory. He no of a forelock. His moved as though they had a life of their own. With a he on:
“Maybe I hadn't ought to talk about Mrs. Haydock and her Solemcholy Seventeen in that fresh way. I I'd be to death if I was to in with that gang. I'm what they call a pariah, I guess. I'm the town badman, Mrs. Kennicott: town atheist, and I I must be an anarchist, too. Everybody who doesn't love the bankers and the Grand Old Republican Party is an anarchist.”
Carol had from her of into an of listening, her full toward him, her lowered. She fumbled:
“Yes, I so.” Her own came in a flood. “I don't see why you shouldn't the Jolly Seventeen if you want to. They aren't sacred.”
“Oh yes, they are! The dollar-sign has the clean off the map. But then, I've got no kick. I do what I please, and I I ought to let them do the same.”
“What do you by saying you're a pariah?”
“I'm poor, and yet I don't the rich. I'm an old bach. I make money for a stake, and then I around by myself, and shake hands with myself, and have a smoke, and read history, and I don't to the of Brother Elder or Daddy Cass.”
“You——I you read a good deal.”
“Yep. In a hit-or-a-miss way. I'll tell you: I'm a wolf. I horses, and saw wood, and work in lumber-camps—I'm a first-rate swamper. Always I go to college. Though I s'pose I'd it slow, and they'd me out.”
“You are a person, Mr.——”
“Bjornstam. Miles Bjornstam. Half Yank and Swede. Usually as 'that lazy big-mouthed calamity-howler that ain't satisfied with the way we things.' No, I ain't curious—whatever you by that! I'm just a bookworm. Probably too much reading for the amount of I've got. Probably half-baked. I'm going to in 'half-baked' first, and you to it, it's sure to be to a that jeans!”
They together. She demanded:
“You say that the Jolly Seventeen is stupid. What makes you think so?”
“Oh, trust us into the to know about your class. Fact, Mrs. Kennicott, I'll say that as I can make out, the only people in this man's town that do have any brains—I don't ledger-keeping or duck-hunting or baby-spanking brains, but brains—are you and me and Guy Pollock and the at the flour-mill. He's a socialist, the foreman. (Don't tell Lym Cass that! Lym would fire a than he would a horse-thief!)”
“Indeed no, I sha'n't tell him.”
“This and I have some great set-to's. He's a regular old-line party-member. Too dogmatic. Expects to from to by saying phrases like 'surplus value.' Like reading the prayer-book. But same time, he's a Plato J. Aristotle with people like Ezry Stowbody or Professor Mott or Julius Flickerbaugh.”
“It's to about him.”
He his toe into a drift, like a schoolboy. “Rats. You I talk too much. Well, I do, when I of somebody like you. You want to along and keep your nose from freezing.”
“Yes, I must go, I suppose. But tell me: Why did you Miss Sherwin, of the high school, out of your list of the town intelligentsia?”
“I maybe she in it. From all I can she's in and that looks like a reform—lot more than most realize. She lets Mrs. Reverend Warren, the president of this-here Thanatopsis Club, think she's the works, but Miss Sherwin is the boss, and all the easy-going into doing something. But way I it out——You see, I'm not in these reforms. Miss Sherwin's trying to repair the in this barnacle-covered ship of a town by out the water. And Pollock to repair it by reading to the crew! Me, I want to it up on the ways, and fire the of a that it so it crooked, and have it right, from the up.”
“Yes—that—that would be better. But I must home. My nose is nearly frozen.”
“Say, you come in and warm, and see what an old bach's is like.”
She looked at him, at the low shanty, the that was with cord-wood, planks, a wash-tub. She was disquieted, but Bjornstam did not give her the opportunity to be delicate. He out his hand in a which that she was her own counselor, that she was not a Respectable Married Woman but a being. With a shaky, “Well, just a moment, to warm my nose,” she the to make sure that she was not on, and toward the shanty.
She for one hour, and had she a more than the Red Swede.
He had but one room: floor, small work-bench, with bed, frying-pan and ash-stippled coffee-pot on the the pot-bellied cannon-ball stove, chairs—one from a barrel, one from a plank—and a of books assorted; Byron and Tennyson and Stevenson, a manual of gas-engines, a book by Thorstein Veblen, and a on “The Care, Feeding, Diseases, and Breeding of Poultry and Cattle.”
There was but one picture—a magazine color-plate of a steep-roofed village in the Harz Mountains which and with hair.
Bjornstam did not over her. He suggested, “Might open your and put your up on the box in of the stove.” He his into the bunk, himself into the chair, and on:
“Yeh, I'm a yahoo, but by I do keep my by doing odd jobs, and that's more 'n these like the in the banks do. When I'm to some slob, it may be I don't know (and God I'm not no authority on and what you wear with a Prince Albert), but mostly it's I something. I'm about the only man in Johnson County that the in the Declaration of Independence about Americans being to have the right to 'life, liberty, and the of happiness.'
“I meet old Ezra Stowbody on the street. He looks at me like he wants me to he's a and two hundred thousand dollars, and he says, 'Uh, Bjornquist——'
“'Bjornstam's my name, Ezra,' I says. HE my name, all rightee.
“'Well, your name is,' he says, 'I you have a saw. I want you to come around and saw up four of for me,' he says.
“'So you like my looks, eh?' I says, of innocent.
“'What that make? Want you to saw that Saturday,' he says, sharp. Common going and fresh with a of a all walking around in a hand-me-down coat!
“'Here's the it makes,' I says, just to him. 'How do you know I like YOUR looks?' Maybe he didn't look sore! 'Nope,' I says, it all over, 'I don't like your for a loan. Take it to another bank, only there ain't any,' I says, and I walks off on him.
“Sure. Probably I was surly—and foolish. But I there had to be ONE man in town to the banker!”
He out of his chair, coffee, gave Carol a cup, and talked on, and apologetic, for and by her at the that there was a philosophy.
At the door, she hinted:
“Mr. Bjornstam, if you were I, would you worry when people you were affected?”
“Huh? Kick 'em in the face! Say, if I were a sea-gull, and all over silver, think I'd what a pack of dirty about my flying?”
It was not the wind at her back, it was the of Bjornstam's which her through town. She Juanita Haydock, her at Maud Dyer's nod, and came home to Bea radiant. She Vida Sherwin to “run over this evening.” She played Tschaikowsky—the an echo of the red laughing of the tar-paper shack.
(When she to Vida, “Isn't there a man here who himself by being to the village gods—Bjornstam, some such a name?” the reform-leader said “Bjornstam? Oh yes. Fixes things. He's impertinent.”)
IV
Kennicott had returned at midnight. At he said four times that he had missed her every moment.
On her way to market Sam Clark her, “The top o' the mornin' to yez! Going to stop and pass the time of day Sam'l? Warmer, eh? What'd the doc's say it was? Say, you come and visit with us, one of these evenings. Don't be so dog-gone proud, by yourselves.”
Champ Perry the pioneer, wheat-buyer at the elevator, stopped her in the post-office, her hand in his paws, at her with eyes, and chuckled, “You are so fresh and blooming, my dear. Mother was saying t'other day that a of you was 'n a of medicine.”
In the Bon Ton Store she Guy Pollock a scarf. “We haven't you for so long,” she said. “Wouldn't you like to come in and play cribbage, some evening?” As though he meant it, Pollock begged, “May I, really?”
While she was purchasing two yards of the Raymie Wutherspoon up to her, his long bobbing, and he besought, “You've just got to come to my and see a pair of leather I set for you.”
In a manner of more than he her boots, her skirt about her ankles, on the slippers. She took them.
“You're a good salesman,” she said.
“I'm not a salesman at all! I just like things. All this is so inartistic.” He with a hand the of shoe-boxes, the seat of thin in rosettes, the of shoe-trees and boxes of blacking, the of a woman with who in the of advertising, “My got to what perfection was till I got a pair of Cleopatra Shoes.”
“But sometimes,” Raymie sighed, “there is a pair of little shoes like these, and I set them for some one who will appreciate. When I saw these I said right away, 'Wouldn't it be if they Mrs. Kennicott,' and I meant to speak to you I had. I haven't our talks at Mrs. Gurrey's!”
That Guy Pollock came in and, though Kennicott him into a game, Carol was happy again.
V
She did not, in something of her buoyancy, her to the of Gopher Prairie by the easy and of teaching Kennicott to reading in the lamplight. The was delayed. Twice he that they call on neighbors; once he was in the country. The fourth he pleasantly, stretched, and inquired, “Well, what'll we do tonight? Shall we go to the movies?”
“I know what we're going to do. Now don't ask questions! Come and by the table. There, are you comfy? Lean and you're a practical man, and to me.”
It may be that she had been by the Vida Sherwin; she as though she was selling culture. But she it when she sat on the couch, her in her hands, a of Yeats on her knees, and read aloud.
Instantly she was from the of a town. She was in the world of things—the of linnets, the call of along a to which the out of darkness, the of Aengus and the gods and the that were, tall kings and with gold, the and the——
“Heh-cha-cha!” Dr. Kennicott. She stopped. She that he was the of person who tobacco. She glared, while he petitioned, “That's great stuff. Study it in college? I like fine—James Whitcomb Riley and some of Longfellow—this 'Hiawatha.' Gosh, I wish I that art stuff. But I I'm too old a dog to learn new tricks.”
With for his bewilderment, and a to giggle, she him, “Then let's try some Tennyson. You've read him?”
“Tennyson? You bet. Read him in school. There's that:
And let there be no (what is it?) of farewell
When I put out to sea,
But let the——
Well, I don't all of it but——Oh, sure! And there's that 'I met a little country boy who——' I don't how it goes, but the ends up, 'We are seven.'”
“Yes. Well——Shall we try 'The Idylls of the King?' They're so full of color.”
“Go to it. Shoot.” But he to himself a cigar.
She was not to Camelot. She read with an on him, and when she saw how much he was she ran to him, his forehead, cried, “You tube-rose that wants to be a turnip!”
“Look here now, that ain't——”
“Anyway, I sha'n't you any longer.”
She not give up. She read Kipling, with a great of emphasis:
There's a REGIMENT a-COMING the GRAND Trunk ROAD.
He his to the rhythm; he looked normal and reassured. But when he her, “That was fine. I don't know but what you can just as good as Ella Stowbody,” she the book and that they were not too late for the nine o'clock at the movies.
That was her last to the April wind, to teach by a course, to the of Avalon and the of Cockaigne in at Ole Jenson's Grocery.
But the is that at the motion-pictures she herself laughing as as Kennicott at the of an actor who a woman's frock. For a second she her laughter; for the day when on her hill by the Mississippi she had walked the with queens. But the jester's of into a soup-plate her into tittering, and the faded, the through darkness.
VI
She to the Jolly Seventeen's bridge. She had learned the of the game from the Sam Clarks. She played and badly. She had no opinions on anything more than union-suits, a on which Mrs. Howland for five minutes. She frequently, and was the complete canary-bird in her manner of the hostess, Mrs. Dave Dyer.
Her only period was the on husbands.
The the of with a and a which Carol. Juanita Haydock Harry's method of shaving, and his in deer-shooting. Mrs. Gougerling reported fully, and with some irritation, her husband's of and bacon. Maud Dyer Dave's disorders; a with him in to Christian Science, and the of upon vests; that she “simply wasn't going to his always girls when he and got crazy-jealous if a man just with her”; and more than sketched Dave's of kisses.
So did Carol give attention, so was she at last of being one of them, that they looked on her fondly, and her to give such of her as might be of interest. She was embarrassed than resentful. She misunderstood. She talked of Kennicott's and medical till they were bored. They her as but green.
Till the end she to satisfy the inquisition. She at Juanita, the president of the club, that she wanted to them. “Only,” she said, “I don't know that I can give you any as as Mrs. Dyer's salad, or that angel's-food we had at your house, dear.”
“Fine! We need a for the seventeenth of March. Wouldn't it be original if you it a St. Patrick's Day bridge! I'll be to death to help you with it. I'm you've learned to play bridge. At I didn't know if you were going to like Gopher Prairie. Isn't it that you've settled to being with us! Maybe we aren't as as the Cities, but we do have the times and—oh, we go in summer, and and—oh, of good times. If will just take us as we are, I think we're a good bunch!”
“I'm sure of it. Thank you so much for the idea about having a St. Patrick's Day bridge.”
“Oh, that's nothing. I always think the Jolly Seventeen are so good at original ideas. If you these other Wakamin and Joralemon and all, you'd out and that G. P. is the liveliest, town in the state. Did you know that Percy Bresnahan, the famous manufacturer, came from here and——Yes, I think that a St. Patrick's Day party would be and original, and yet not too or or anything.”
