SHE tried, more from than from desire, to call upon the Perrys on a November when Kennicott was away. They were not at home.
Like a child who has no one to play with she through the dark hall. She saw a light under an office door. She knocked. To the person who opened she murmured, “Do you to know where the Perrys are?” She that it was Guy Pollock.
“I'm sorry, Mrs. Kennicott, but I don't know. Won't you come in and wait for them?”
“W-why——” she observed, as she that in Gopher Prairie it is not to call on a man; as she that no, really, she wouldn't go in; and as she in.
“I didn't know your office was up here.”
“Yes, office, town-house, and in Picardy. But you can't see the and town-house (next to the Duke of Sutherland's). They're that door. They are a and a wash-stand and my other and the tie you said you liked.”
“You my saying that?”
“Of course. I always shall. Please try this chair.”
She about the office—gaunt stove, of law-books, desk-chair with newspapers so long sat upon that they were in and to grayness. There were only two which Guy Pollock. On the green of the table-desk, legal and a inkwell, was a vase. On a was a of books to Gopher Prairie: Mosher of the poets, black and red German novels, a Charles Lamb in levant.
Guy did not down. He the office, a on the scent; a with on his thin nose, and a mustache. He had a jacket of jersey, through at the in the sleeves. She noted that he did not for it, as Kennicott would have done.
He conversation: “I didn't know you were a friend of the Perrys. Champ is the salt of the earth but somehow I can't him joining you in dancing, or making on the Diesel engine.”
“No. He's a dear soul, him, but he in the National Museum, along with General Grant's sword, and I'm——Oh, I I'm for a that will Gopher Prairie.”
“Really? Evangelize it to what?”
“To anything that's definite. Seriousness or or both. I wouldn't it was a laboratory or a carnival. But it's safe. Tell me, Mr. Pollock, what is the with Gopher Prairie?”
“Is anything the with it? Isn't there something the with you and me? (May I join you in the of having something the matter?)”
“(Yes, thanks.) No, I think it's the town.”
“Because they more than biology?”
“But I'm not only more in than the Jolly Seventeen, but also in skating! I'll with them, or slide, or snowballs, just as as talk with you.”
(“Oh no!”)
(“Yes!) But they want to home and embroider.”
“Perhaps. I'm not the town. It's merely——I'm a of myself. (Probably I'm about my of conceit!) Anyway, Gopher Prairie isn't particularly bad. It's like all villages in all countries. Most places that have the of earth but not yet the of patchouli—or of factory-smoke—are just as and righteous. I wonder if the small town isn't, with some exceptions, a social appendix? Some day these market-towns may be as as monasteries. I can the farmer and his local store-manager going by monorail, at the end of the day, into a city more than any William Morris Utopia—music, a university, for like me. (Lord, how I'd like to have a club!)”
She asked impulsively, “You, why do you here?”
“I have the Village Virus.”
“It dangerous.”
“It is. More than the cancer that will me at fifty unless I stop this smoking. The Village Virus is the which—it's like the hook-worm—it people who too long in the provinces. You'll it among lawyers and doctors and ministers and college-bred merchants—all these people who have had a of the world that thinks and laughs, but have returned to their swamp. I'm a perfect example. But I sha'n't you with my dolors.”
“You won't. And do down, so I can see you.”
He into the desk-chair. He looked at her; she was of the of his eyes; of the that he was a man, and lonely. They were embarrassed. They away, and were as he on:
“The of my Village Virus is enough. I was in an Ohio town about the same size as Gopher Prairie, and much less friendly. It'd had more in which to an of respectability. Here, a is taken in if he is correct, if he and and God and our Senator. There, we didn't take in our own till we had got used to them. It was a red-brick Ohio town, and the trees it damp, and it of apples. The country wasn't like our and prairie. There were small corn-fields and brick-yards and oil-wells.
“I to a college and learned that since the Bible, and a perfect of ministers to it, God has done much but around and try to catch us it. From college I to New York, to the Columbia Law School. And for four years I lived. Oh, I won't about New York. It was dirty and noisy and and expensive. But with the in which I had been smothered——! I to twice a week. I saw Irving and Terry and Duse and Bernhardt, from the top gallery. I walked in Gramercy Park. And I read, oh, everything.
“Through a I learned that Julius Flickerbaugh was and needed a partner. I came here. Julius got well. He didn't like my way of five hours and then doing my work (really not so badly) in one. We parted.
“When I came here I I'd 'keep up my interests.' Very lofty! I read Browning, and to Minneapolis for the theaters. I I was 'keeping up.' But I the Village Virus had me already. I was reading four copies of fiction-magazines to one poem. I'd put off the Minneapolis till I had to go there on a of legal matters.
“A years ago I was talking to a lawyer from Chicago, and I that——I'd always so to people like Julius Flickerbaugh, but I saw that I was as and behind-the-times as Julius. (Worse! Julius through the Literary Digest and the Outlook faithfully, while I'm over pages of a book by Charles Flandrau that I already know by heart.)
“I to here. Stern resolution. Grasp the world. Then I that the Village Virus had me, absolute: I didn't want to new and men—real competition. It was too easy to go on making out and cases. So——That's all of the of a man, the last chapter, the about my having been 'a tower of and legal wisdom' which some day a will over my body.”
He looked at his table-desk, the vase.
She not comment. She pictured herself across the room to his hair. She saw that his were firm, under his soft mustache. She sat still and maundered, “I know. The Village Virus. Perhaps it will me. Some day I'm going——Oh, no matter. At least, I am making you talk! Usually you have to be to my garrulousness, but now I'm at your feet.”
“It would be to have you at my feet, by a fire.”
“Would you have a for me?”
“Naturally! Please don't me now! Let the old man rave. How old are you, Carol?”
“Twenty-six, Guy.”
“Twenty-six! I was just New York, at twenty-six. I Patti sing, at twenty-six. And now I'm forty-seven. I like a child, yet I'm old to be your father. So it's to you at my feet. . . . Of I it isn't, but we'll the of Gopher Prairie by officially announcing that it is! . . . These that you and I live up to! There's one thing that's the with Gopher Prairie, at least with the ruling-class (there is a ruling-class, despite all our of democracy). And the we pay is that our watch us every minute. We can't and relax. We have to be so about morals, and clothes, and doing our only in the ways, that none of us can live up to it, and we hypocritical. Unavoidably. The widow-robbing of can't help being hypocritical. The themselves it! They his unctuousness. And look at me. Suppose I did to make love to—some married woman. I wouldn't admit it to myself. I with the most over La Vie Parisienne, when I of one in Chicago, yet I shouldn't try to your hand. I'm broken. It's the Anglo-Saxon way of making life miserable. . . . Oh, my dear, I haven't talked to about myself and all our for years.”
“Guy! Can't we do something with the town? Really?”
“No, we can't!” He of it like a judge out an objection; returned to less energetic: “Curious. Most are unnecessary. We have Nature beaten; we can make her wheat; we can keep warm when she sends blizzards. So we the just for pleasure—wars, politics, race-hatreds, labor-disputes. Here in Gopher Prairie we've the fields, and soft, so we make ourselves artificially, at great and exertion: Methodists Episcopalians, the man with the Hudson laughing at the man with the flivver. The is the hatred—the that any man who doesn't with him is him. What me is that it to lawyers and doctors (and to their wives!) as much as to grocers. The doctors—you know about that—how your husband and Westlake and Gould one another.”
“No! I won't admit it!”
He grinned.
“Oh, maybe once or twice, when Will has positively of a case where Doctor—where one of the others has to call on longer than necessary, he has laughed about it, but——”
He still grinned.
“No, REALLY! And when you say the of the doctors these jealousies——Mrs. McGanum and I haven't any particular on each other; she's so stolid. But her mother, Mrs. Westlake—nobody be sweeter.”
“Yes, I'm sure she's very bland. But I wouldn't tell her my heart's if I were you, my dear. I that there's only one professional-man's wife in this town who doesn't plot, and that is you, you blessed, outsider!”
“I won't be cajoled! I won't that medicine, the of healing, can be into a penny-picking business.”
“See here: Hasn't Kennicott to you that you'd be to some old woman she tells her friends which doctor to call in? But I oughtn't to——”
She which Kennicott had offered the Widow Bogart. She flinched, looked at Guy beseechingly.
He up, to her with a step, her hand. She if she ought to be by his caress. Then she if he liked her hat, the new Oriental of rose and brocade.
He her hand. His her shoulder. He over to the desk-chair, his thin stooped. He up the vase. Across it he at her with such that she was startled. But his into as he talked of the of Gopher Prairie. He stopped himself with a sharp, “Good Lord, Carol, you're not a jury. You are your legal in to be to this summing-up. I'm a old the obvious, while you're the of rebellion. Tell me your side. What is Gopher Prairie to you?”
“A bore!”
“Can I help?”
“How you?”
“I don't know. Perhaps by listening. I haven't done that tonight. But normally——Can't I be the of the old French plays, the tiring-maid with the and the ears?”
“Oh, what is there to confide? The people are and proud of it. And if I liked you tremendously, I couldn't talk to you without twenty old watching, whispering.”
“But you will come talk to me, once in a while?”
“I'm not sure that I shall. I'm trying to my own large for and contentment. I've failed at every positive thing I've tried. I'd 'settle down,' as they call it, and be satisfied to be—nothing.”
“Don't be cynical. It me, in you. It's like blood on the of a humming-bird.”
“I'm not a humming-bird. I'm a hawk; a hawk, to death by these large, white, flabby, hens. But I am to you for me in the faith. And I'm going home!”
“Please and have some coffee with me.”
“I'd like to. But they've succeeded in me. I'm of what people might say.”
“I'm not of that. I'm only of what you might say!” He to her; took her hand. “Carol! You have been happy here tonight? (Yes. I'm begging!)”
She his hand quickly, then hers away. She had but little of the of the flirt, and none of the intrigante's in furtiveness. If she was the girl, Guy Pollock was the boy. He about the office; he his into his pockets. He stammered, “I—I—I——Oh, the devil! Why do I from to this rawness? I'll make I'm going to the and in the Dillons, and we'll all have coffee or something.”
“The Dillons?”
“Yes. Really a pair—Harvey Dillon and his wife. He's a dentist, just come to town. They live in a room his office, same as I do here. They don't know much of anybody——”
“I've of them. And I've to call. I'm ashamed. Do them——”
She stopped, for no very clear reason, but his said, her admitted, that they they had mentioned the Dillons. With he said, “Splendid! I will.” From the door he at her, in the leather chair. He out, came with Dr. and Mrs. Dillon.
The four of them coffee which Pollock on a burner. They laughed, and spoke of Minneapolis, and were tactful; and Carol started for home, through the November wind.
