I
IN three years of from herself Carol had as by the Dauntless, or by the Jolly Seventeen, but the event unchronicled, undiscussed, and controlling, was her slow of to her own people.
II
Bea and Miles Bjornstam were married in June, a month after “The Girl from Kankakee.” Miles had respectable. He had his of and society; he had up as horse-trader, and red in lumber-camps; he had gone to work as in Jackson Elder's planing-mill; he was to be upon the to be neighborly with men he had for years.
Carol was the and manager of the wedding. Juanita Haydock mocked, “You're a to let a good girl like Bea go. Besides! How do you know it's a good thing, her marrying a like this Red Swede person? Get wise! Chase the man off with a mop, and onto your Svenska while the holding's good. Huh? Me go to their Scandahoofian wedding? Not a chance!”
The other Juanita. Carol was by the of their cruelty, but she persisted. Miles had to her, “Jack Elder says maybe he'll come to the wedding! Gee, it would be to have Bea meet the Boss as a reg'lar married lady. Some day I'll be so well off that Bea can play with Mrs. Elder—and you! Watch us!”
There was an of only nine guests at the service in the Lutheran Church—Carol, Kennicott, Guy Pollock, and the Champ Perrys, all by Carol; Bea's parents, her Tina, and Pete, Miles's ex-partner in horse-trading, a surly, man who had a black and come twelve hundred miles from Spokane for the event.
Miles at the church door. Jackson Elder did not appear. The door did not once open after the entrance of the guests. Miles's hand closed on Bea's arm.
He had, with Carol's help, his over into a with white and a and a chair.
Carol the powerful to call on Bea. They scoffed, promised to go.
Bea's was the oldish, broad, Oscarina, who was of her for a month, so that Juanita Haydock was able to crow, “There, smarty, I told you you'd into the Domestic Problem!” But Oscarina Carol as a daughter, and with her as to the as Bea had been, there was nothing in Carol's life.
III
She was to the town library-board by Ole Jenson, the new mayor. The other members were Dr. Westlake, Lyman Cass, Julius Flickerbaugh the attorney, Guy Pollock, and Martin Mahoney, livery-stable and now owner of a garage. She was delighted. She to the meeting condescendingly, herself as the only one Guy who anything about books or library methods. She was to the whole system.
Her was and her when she the board, in the room on the second of the house which had been into the library, not the weather and to play checkers, but talking about books. She that old Dr. Westlake read in and “light fiction”; that Lyman Cass, the veal-faced, bristly-bearded owner of the mill, had through Gibbon, Hume, Grote, Prescott, and the other thick historians; that he repeat pages from them—and did. When Dr. Westlake to her, “Yes, Lym is a very well-informed man, but he's about it,” she and immodest, and at herself that she had missed the in this Gopher Prairie. When Dr. Westlake the “Paradiso,” “Don Quixote,” “Wilhelm Meister,” and the Koran, she that no one she knew, not her father, had read all four.
She came to the second meeting of the board. She did not plan to anything. She that the wise might be so as to to her about the of the juveniles.
Yet after four sessions of the library-board she was where she had been the session. She had that for all their in being reading men, Westlake and Cass and Guy had no of making the library familiar to the whole town. They used it, they passed about it, and they left it as as Moses. Only the Henty books and the Elsie books and the latest by female and were in demand, and the themselves were only in old, volumes. They had no for the of great literature.
If she was about her learning, they were at least as much so theirs. And for all their talk of the need of additional library-tax none of them was to by for it, though they now had so small a fund that, after paying for rent, heat, light, and Miss Villets's salary, they had only a hundred a year for the purchase of books.
The Incident of the Seventeen Cents killed her none too interest.
She had come to the board-meeting with a plan. She had a list of thirty European of the past ten years, with twenty books on psychology, education, and which the library lacked. She had Kennicott promise to give fifteen dollars. If each of the would the same, they have the books.
Lym Cass looked alarmed, himself, and protested, “I think it would be a for the board-members to money—uh—not that I mind, but it wouldn't be fair—establish precedent. Gracious! They don't pay us a for our services! Certainly can't us to pay for the of serving!”
Only Guy looked sympathetic, and he the table and said nothing.
The of the meeting they gave to a of the that there was seventeen less than there should be in the Fund. Miss Villets was summoned; she an hour in herself; the seventeen were over, by penny; and Carol, at the list which had been so and an hour before, was silent, and sorry for Miss Villets, and for herself.
She was regular in till her two years were up and Vida Sherwin was to the in her place, but she did not try to be revolutionary. In the of her life there was nothing changed, and nothing new.
IV
Kennicott an excellent land-deal, but as he told her none of the details, she was not or agitated. What did her was his announcement, and blurted, and medical, that they “ought to have a baby, now they it.” They had so long that “perhaps it would be just as well not to have any children for a while yet,” that had come to be natural. Now, she and and did not know; she assented, and that she had not assented.
As there appeared no in their relations, she all about it, and life was planless.
V
Idling on the of their at the lake, on afternoons when Kennicott was in town, when the water was and the whole air languid, she pictured a hundred escapes: Fifth Avenue in a snow-storm, with limousines, shops, a spire. A on above the of a river. A in Paris, high rooms, with and a balcony. The Enchanted Mesa. An in Maryland, at the turn of the road, and hills. An of sheep and sunlight. A where from Buenos Ayres and Tsing-tao. A Munich concert-hall, and a famous 'cellist playing—playing to her.
One had a witchery:
She on a a by the warm sea. She was certain, though she had no for it, that the place was Mentone. Along the drive her barouches, with a tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, and great with black and as the of an old man. In them were erect, slender, enameled, and as marionettes, their small hands upon parasols, their always forward, the men them, tall men with and faces. Beyond the drive were painted sea and painted sands, and and yellow pavilions. Nothing moved the carriages, and the people were small and wooden, in a picture with gold and hard blues. There was no of sea or winds; no of of petals; nothing but yellow and and light, and the never-changing tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot——
She startled. She whimpered. It was the of the clock which had her into the hoofs. No color of the sea and of people, but the of a round-bellied alarm-clock on a against a wall, with a wash-rag above it and a kerosene-stove below.
A thousand by the she had read, from the pictures she had envied, her afternoons, but always in the of them Kennicott came out from town, on which were with fish-scales, asked, “Enjoying yourself?” and did not to her answer.
And nothing was changed, and there was no to that there would be change.
VI
Trains!
At the she missed the of the trains. She that in town she had upon them for that there a world beyond.
The was more than a means of to Gopher Prairie. It was a new god; a of limbs, ribs, of gravel, and a for freight; a by man that he might keep himself to Property, as he had and as gods the mines, cotton-mills, motor-factories, colleges, army.
The East when there had been no railroad, and had no of it; but here the had been time was. The had been out on as points for train-halts; and in 1860 and 1870 there had been much profit, much opportunity to families, in the of knowledge as to where the would arise.
If a town was in disfavor, the it, cut it off from commerce, it. To Gopher Prairie the were verities, and of an omnipotence. The smallest boy or the most tell you No. 32 had a hot-box last Tuesday, No. 7 was going to put on an day-coach; and the name of the president of the road was familiar to every table.
Even in this new of the citizens to the station to see the go through. It was their romance; their only at the Catholic Church; and from the came of the world—traveling with on their waistcoats, and visiting from Milwaukee.
Gopher Prairie had once been a “division-point.” The and repair-shops were gone, but two still residence, and they were of distinction, men who and talked to strangers, who with buttons, and all about these of con-men. They were a special caste, neither above the Haydocks, but apart, and adventurers.
The night telegraph-operator at the station was the most in town: at three in the morning, alone in a room with of the key. All night he “talked” to twenty, fifty, a hundred miles away. It was always to be that he would be up by robbers. He was, but him was a of at the window, revolvers, him to a chair, his to to the key he fainted.
During about the was melodramatic. There were days when the town was off, when they had no mail, no express, no fresh meat, no newspapers. At last the snow-plow came through, the drifts, sending up a geyser, and the way to the Outside was open again. The brakemen, in and caps, along the of ice-coated freight-cars; the from the and looking out, inscrutable, self-contained, of the sea—they were heroism, they were to Carol the of the in a world of and sermons.
To the small boys the was a familiar playground. They the iron on the of the box-cars; of old ties; to brakemen. But to Carol it was magic.
She was with Kennicott, the car through darkness, the lights mud-puddles and by the road. A train coming! A chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck, chuck-a-chuck. It was past—the Pacific Flyer, an of flame. Light from the fire-box the under of the smoke. Instantly the was gone; Carol was in the long darkness; and Kennicott was his of that fire and wonder: “No. 19. Must be 'bout ten minutes late.”
In town, she from to the in the cut a mile north. Uuuuuuu!—faint, nervous, distrait, of the free night to the tall where were and and the of bells—Uuuuu! Uuuuu!—the world going by—Uuuuuuu!—fainter, more wistful, gone.
Down here there were no trains. The was very great. The the lake, her, raw, dusty, thick. Only the train cut it. Some day she would take a train; and that would be a great taking.
VII
She to the Chautauqua as she had to the association, to the library-board.
Besides the permanent Mother Chautauqua, in New York, there are, all over these States, Chautauqua which send out to every smallest town of and “entertainers” to give a week of under canvas. Living in Minneapolis, Carol had the Chautauqua, and the of its to Gopher Prairie gave her that others might be doing the which she had attempted. She pictured a to the people. Mornings when she came in from the with Kennicott she saw in every shop-window, and on a across Main Street, a line of alternately “The Boland Chautauqua COMING!” and “A solid week of and enjoyment!” But she was when she saw the program. It did not to be a university; it did not to be any of a university; it to be a of performance Y. M. C. A. lecture, and the of an class.
She took her to Kennicott. He insisted, “Well, maybe it won't be so intellectual, the way you and I might like it, but it's a whole than nothing.” Vida Sherwin added, “They have some speakers. If the people don't off so much information, they do a of new ideas, and that's what counts.”
During the Chautauqua Carol three meetings, two meetings, and one in the morning. She was by the audience: the in skirts and blouses, to be to think, the men in and shirt-sleeves, to be allowed to laugh, and the children, to away. She liked the plain benches, the portable stage under its red marquee, the great over all, above of at night and by day an on the patient crowd. The of and and sun-baked gave her an of Syrian caravans; she the speakers while she to the tent: two farmers talking hoarsely, a Main Street, the of a rooster. She was content. But it was the of the stopping to rest.
For from the Chautauqua itself she got nothing but wind and and laughter, the of at old jokes, a and like the of on a farm.
These were the in the university's seven-day course:
Nine lecturers, four of them ex-ministers, and one an ex-congressman, all of them “inspirational addresses.” The only or opinions which Carol from them were: Lincoln was a president of the United States, but in his poor. James J. Hill was the best-known railroad-man of the West, and in his poor. Honesty and in are to and trickery, but this is not to be taken personally, since all in Gopher Prairie are to be and courteous. London is a large city. A once Sunday School.
Four “entertainers” who told Jewish stories, Irish stories, German stories, Chinese stories, and Tennessee stories, most of which Carol had heard.
A “lady elocutionist” who Kipling and children.
A with motion-pictures of an Andean exploration; excellent pictures and a narrative.
Three brass-bands, a company of six opera-singers, a Hawaiian sextette, and four who played and as wash-boards. The most pieces were those, such as the “Lucia” inevitability, which the audience had most often.
The local superintendent, who through the week while the other to other Chautauquas for their daily performances. The was a bookish, man who hard at enthusiasm, at trying to make the audience by them into and telling them that they were and noises. He gave most of the lectures, with equal about poetry, the Holy Land, and the to in any of profit-sharing.
The final item was a man who neither lectured, inspired, entertained; a plain little man with his hands in his pockets. All the other speakers had confessed, “I cannot keep from telling the citizens of your city that none of the on this have a more spot or more and people.” But the little man that the of Gopher Prairie was haphazard, and that it was to let the lake-front be by the cinder-heaped of the embankment. Afterward the audience grumbled, “Maybe that guy's got the right dope, but what's the use of looking on the dark of all the time? New ideas are first-rate, but not all this criticism. Enough trouble in life without looking for it!”
Thus the Chautauqua, as Carol saw it. After it, the town proud and educated.
VIII
Two later the Great War Europe.
For a month Gopher Prairie had the of shuddering, then, as the settled to a of trench-fighting, they forgot.
When Carol talked about the Balkans, and the possibility of a German revolution, Kennicott yawned, “Oh yes, it's a great old scrap, but it's none of our business. Folks out here are too to monkey with any that those want to themselves into.”
It was Miles Bjornstam who said, “I can't it out. I'm to wars, but still, like Germany has got to be them Junkers in the way of progress.”
She was calling on Miles and Bea, early in autumn. They had her with cries, with of chairs, and a to water for coffee. Miles and at her. He often and into his old about the of Gopher Prairie, but always—with a difficulty—he added something and appreciative.
“Lots of people have come to see you, haven't they?” Carol hinted.
“Why, Bea's Tina comes in right along, and the at the mill, and——Oh, we have good times. Say, take a look at that Bea! Wouldn't you think she was a canary-bird, to to her, and to see that Scandahoofian tow-head of hers? But say, know what she is? She's a mother hen! Way she over me—way she makes old Miles wear a necktie! Hate to her by her it, but she's one nice—nice——Hell! What do we if none of the dirty come and call? We've got each other.”
Carol about their struggle, but she it in the of and fear. For that autumn she that a was coming, that at last life promised to be in the of the great change.
