I
GRAY that it so fast in the fly-wheel, in an of elms, with the sun it—this was the of Vida Sherwin's life at thirty-six.
She was small and active and sallow; her yellow was faded, and looked dry; her and and high black shoes and were as and as a desk; but her her appearance, her as a and a force, her in the and purpose of everything. They were blue, and they were still; they amusement, pity, enthusiasm. If she had been in sleep, with the her and the the irises, she would have her potency.
She was in a hill-smothered Wisconsin village where her father was a minister; she through a college; she for two years in an iron-range town of blurry-faced Tatars and Montenegrins, and of ore, and when she came to Gopher Prairie, its trees and the of the her that she was in paradise.
She to her fellow-teachers that the was damp, but she that the rooms were “arranged so conveniently—and then that of President McKinley at the of the stairs, it's a art-work, and isn't it an to have the brave, honest, president to think about!” She French, English, and history, and the Sophomore Latin class, which in of a nature called Indirect Discourse and the Ablative Absolute. Each year she was that the were to learn more quickly. She four in up the Debating Society, and when the was one Friday afternoon, and the speakers of pieces did not their lines, she rewarded.
She an useful life, and as and as an apple. But she was among fears, longing, and guilt. She what it was, but she not name it. She the of the word “sex.” When she of being a woman of the harem, with great white warm limbs, she to shudder, in the of her room. She prayed to Jesus, always to the Son of God, him the terrible power of her adoration, him as the lover, passionate, exalted, large, as she his splendor. Thus she to and surcease.
By day, about in many activities, she was able to her nights of darkness. With she everywhere, “I I'm a spinster,” and “No one will a plain schoolma'am like me,” and “You men, great big noisy creatures, we wouldn't have you the place, up clean rooms, if it wasn't that you have to be and guided. We just ought to say 'Scat!' to all of you!”
But when a man her close at a dance, when “Professor” George Edwin Mott her hand as they the of Cy Bogart, she quivered, and how she was to have her virginity.
In the autumn of 1911, a year Dr. Will Kennicott was married, Vida was his partner at a five-hundred tournament. She was thirty-four then; Kennicott about thirty-six. To her he was a superb, boyish, creature; all the in a body. They had been helping the to the Waldorf and coffee and gingerbread. They were in the kitchen, by on a bench, while the others in the room beyond.
Kennicott was and experimental. He Vida's hand, he put his arm about her shoulder.
“Don't!” she said sharply.
“You're a thing,” he offered, the of her in an manner.
While she away, she to move nearer to him. He over, looked at her knowingly. She at his left hand as it touched her knee. She up, started and to wash the dishes. He helped her. He was too lazy to further—and too used to in his profession. She was for the of his talk. It her to control. She that she had wild thoughts.
A month after, on a sleighing-party, under the in the bob-sled, he whispered, “You to be a grown-up schoolteacher, but you're nothing but a kiddie.” His arm was about her. She resisted.
“Don't you like the bachelor?” he in a way.
“No, I don't! You don't for me in the least. You're just on me.”
“You're so mean! I'm of you.”
“I'm not of you. And I'm not going to let myself be of you, either.”
He her toward him. She his arm. Then she off the robe, out of the sled, after it with Harry Haydock. At the which the sleigh-ride Kennicott was to the of Maud Dyer, and Vida was in up a Virginia Reel. Without to watch Kennicott, she that he did not once look at her.
That was all of her love-affair.
He gave no of that he was “terribly fond.” She waited for him; she in longing, and in a of she longed. She told herself that she did not want part of him; unless he gave her all his she would let him touch her; and when she that she was lying, she with scorn. She it out in prayer. She in a pink nightgown, her thin her back, her as full of as a of tragedy, while she her love for the Son of God with her love for a mortal, and if any other woman had been so sacrilegious. She wanted to be a and adoration. She a rosary, but she had been so as a Protestant that she not herself to use it.
Yet none of her in the and in the boarding-house of her of passion. They said she was “so optimistic.”
When she that Kennicott was to a girl, pretty, young, and from the Cities, Vida despaired. She Kennicott; from him the hour of marriage. At that hour, in her room, Vida pictured the wedding in St. Paul. Full of an which her, she Kennicott and the girl who had her place, them to the train, through the evening, the night.
She was when she had out a that she wasn't shameful, that there was a relation herself and Carol, so that she was yet with Kennicott, and had the right to be.
She saw Carol the five minutes in Gopher Prairie. She at the motor, at Kennicott and the girl him. In that world of of Vida had no normal but a that, since through Carol she had Kennicott's love, then Carol was a part of her, an self, a and more self. She was of the girl's charm, of the black hair, the and shoulders. But she was angry. Carol at her for a quarter-second, but looked past her, at an old barn. If she had the great sacrifice, at least she and recognition, Vida raged, while her mind her to this insanity.
During her call of her wanted to welcome a reader of books; the other to out Carol anything about Kennicott's in herself. She that Carol was not aware that he had touched another woman's hand. Carol was an amusing, naive, learned child. While Vida was most the of the Thanatopsis, and this on her as a worker, she was that this girl was the child of herself and Kennicott; and out of that she had a she had not for months.
When she came home, after supper with the Kennicotts and Guy Pollock, she had a and from devotion. She into her room, she her on the bed, and chattered, “I don't CARE! I'm a like her—except a years older. I'm light and quick, too, and I can talk just as well as she can, and I'm sure——Men are such fools. I'd be ten times as sweet to make love to as that baby. And I AM as good-looking!”
But as she sat on the and at her thin thighs, away. She mourned:
“No. I'm not. Dear God, how we ourselves! I I'm 'spiritual.' I my are graceful. They aren't. They're skinny. Old-maidish. I it! I that woman! A selfish cat, taking his love for granted. . . . No, she's adorable. . . . I don't think she ought to be so with Guy Pollock.”
For a year Vida loved Carol, to and did not into the of her relations with Kennicott, her of play as in tea-parties, and, with the them forgotten, was by Carol's that she was a come to save Gopher Prairie. This last of Vida's was the one which, after a year, was most often to the light. In a way she brooded, “These people that want to all of a without doing any work, make me tired! Here I have to go and work for four years, out the for debates, and them, and at them to them to look up references, and them to choose their own subjects—four years, to up a of good debates! And she comes in, and in one year to the whole town into a with stopping else to and drink tea. And it's a old town, too!”
She had such an after each of Carol's campaigns—for Thanatopsis programs, for Shavian plays, for more schools—but she herself, and always she was penitent.
Vida was, and always would be, a reformer, a liberal. She that be altered, but that things-in-general were and and immutable. Carol was, without or it, a revolutionist, a radical, and therefore of “constructive ideas,” which only the can have, since the that all the has already been done. After years of it was this opposition more than the of Kennicott's love which Vida fascinated.
But the birth of Hugh the emotion. She was that Carol should not be in having Kennicott's child. She that Carol to have and for the baby, but she to identify herself now with Kennicott, and in this phase to that she had too much from Carol's instability.
She other who had come from the Outside and had not Gopher Prairie. She the rector's wife who had been to and who was the town to have said, “Re-ah-ly I cawn't this in the responses.” The woman was positively to have in her as padding—oh, the town had at her. Of the and she were got of in a months.
Then there was the woman with the and eyebrows, who tight English dresses, like basques, who of musk, who with the men and got them to money for her in a lawsuit, who laughed at Vida's reading at a school-entertainment, and off a hotel-bill and the three hundred she had borrowed.
Vida that she loved Carol, but with some she her to these of the town.
II
Vida had Raymie Wutherspoon's in the Episcopal choir; she had the weather with him at Methodist and in the Bon Ton. But she did not know him till she moved to Mrs. Gurrey's boarding-house. It was five years after her with Kennicott. She was thirty-nine, Raymie a year younger.
She said to him, and sincerely, “My! You can do anything, with your and and that voice. You were so good in 'The Girl from Kankakee.' You me stupid. If you'd gone on the stage, I you'd be just as good as in Minneapolis. But still, I'm not sorry you to business. It's such a career.”
“Do you think so?” Raymie, across the apple-sauce.
It was the time that either of them had a companionship. They looked on Willis Woodford the bank-clerk, and his wife, the Lyman Casses, the traveling man, and the of Mrs. Gurrey's guests. They sat opposite, and they sat late. They were to that they in of faith:
“People like Sam Clark and Harry Haydock aren't about music and pictures and and movies, but then, on the other hand, people like Carol Kennicott put too much on all this art. Folks ought to things, but just the same, they got to be practical and—they got to look at in a practical way.”
Smiling, each other the pressed-glass pickle-dish, Mrs. Gurrey's supper-cloth by the light of intimacy, Vida and Raymie talked about Carol's rose-colored turban, Carol's sweetness, Carol's new low shoes, Carol's that there was no need of in school, Carol's in the Bon Ton, Carol's of wild ideas, which, honestly, just you trying to keep of them.
About the of gents' in the Bon Ton window as by Raymie, about Raymie's last Sunday, the that there weren't any of these new as as “Jerusalem the Golden,” and the way Raymie up to Juanita Haydock when she came into the store and to and he as much as told her that she was so to have think she was and that she said she didn't mean, and anyway, Raymie was the shoe-department, and if Juanita, or Harry either, didn't like the way he ran things, they go another man.
About Vida's new which her look thirty-two (Vida's estimate) or twenty-two (Raymie's estimate), Vida's plan to have the high-school Debating Society give a playlet, and the of the boys well on the when a big like Cy Bogart up so.
About the picture post-card which Mrs. Dawson had sent to Mrs. Cass from Pasadena, roses right in February, the in time on No. 4, the way Dr. Gould always his auto, the way almost all these people their autos, the of that these on a government for as much as six months if they did have a to try out their theories, and the way in which Carol jumped from to subject.
Vida had once Raymie as a thin man with spectacles, drawn-out face, and hair. Now she noted that his was square, that his long hands moved and were in a manner, and that his that he had “led a clean life.” She to call him “Ray,” and to in defense of his and every time Juanita Haydock or Rita Gould about him at the Jolly Seventeen.
On a Sunday of late autumn they walked to Lake Minniemashie. Ray said that he would like to see the ocean; it must be a sight; it must be much than a lake, a great big lake. Vida had it, she modestly; she had it on a to Cape Cod.
“Have you been clear to Cape Cod? Massachusetts? I you'd traveled, but I you'd been that far!”
Made and by his she out, “Oh my yes. It was a trip. So many points of through Massachusetts—historical. There's Lexington where we the redcoats, and Longfellow's home at Cambridge, and Cape Cod—just everything—fishermen and whale-ships and sand-dunes and everything.”
She that she had a little to carry. He off a branch.
“My, you're strong!” she said.
“No, not very. I wish there was a Y. M. C. A. here, so I take up regular exercise. I used to think I do good acrobatics, if I had a chance.”
“I'm sure you could. You're lithe, for a large man.”
“Oh no, not so very. But I wish we had a Y. M. It would be to have and everything, and I'd like to take a class in the memory—I a ought to go on himself and his mind if he is in business, don't you, Vida—I I'm of fresh to call you 'Vida'!”
“I've been calling you 'Ray' for weeks!”
He why she tart.
He helped her the bank to the of the but her hand abruptly, and as they sat on a and he her sleeve, he moved over and murmured, “Oh, me—accident.”
She at the mud-browned water, the reeds.
“You look so thoughtful,” he said.
She out her hands. “I am! Will you tell me what's the use of—anything! Oh, don't mind me. I'm a old hen. Tell me about your plan for a partnership in the Bon Ton. I do think you're right: Harry Haydock and that old Simons ought to give you one.”
He the old in which he had been Achilles and the Nestor, yet gone his by the kings. . . . “Why, if I've told 'em once, I've told 'em a dozen times to in a side-line of light-weight for gents' wear, and of here they go and let a like Rifkin them to it and the right off 'em, and then Harry said—you know how Harry is, maybe he don't to be grouchy, but he's such a sore-head——”
He gave her a hand to rise. “If you don't MIND. I think a is if a lady goes on a walk with him and she can't trust him and he to with her and all.”
“I'm sure you're trustworthy!” she snapped, and she up without his aid. Then, excessively, “Uh—don't you think Carol sometimes fails to Dr. Will's ability?”
III
Ray asked her about his window-trimming, the of the new shoes, the best music for the at the Eastern Star, and (though he was as a professional authority on what the town called “gents' furnishings”) about his own clothes. She him not to wear the small which him look like an Sunday School scholar. Once she out:
“Ray, I shake you! Do you know you're too apologetic? You always other people too much. You over Carol Kennicott when she has some that we all ought to turn or live on and nuts or something. And you when Harry Haydock to off and talk about and and you know than he does. Look in the eye! Glare at 'em! Talk deep! You're the man in town, if you only it. You ARE!”
He not it. He to her for confirmation. He and talking deep, but he to Vida that when he had to look Harry Haydock in the eye, Harry had inquired, “What's the with you, Raymie? Got a pain?” But Harry had asked about Kantbeatum in a manner which, Ray felt, was somehow different from his condescension.
They were on the yellow in the boarding-house parlor. As Ray that he wouldn't it many more years if Harry didn't give him a partnership, his hand touched Vida's shoulders.
“Oh, me!” he pleaded.
“It's all right. Well, I think I must be up to my room. Headache,” she said briefly.
IV
Ray and she had stopped in at Dyer's for a chocolate on their way home from the movies, that March evening. Vida speculated, “Do you know that I may not be here next year?”
“What do you mean?”
With her narrow she the which the top of the table at which they sat. She through the at the perfume-boxes of black and gold and in the table. She looked about at of red water-bottles, yellow sponges, wash-rags with borders, hair-brushes of backs. She her like a medium out of a trance, at him unhappily, demanded:
“Why should I here? And I must make up my mind. Now. Time to our teaching-contracts for next year. I think I'll go teach in some other town. Everybody here is of me. I might as well go. Before come out and SAY they're of me. I have to decide tonight. I might as well——Oh, no matter. Come. Let's skip. It's late.”
She up, his of “Vida! Wait! Sit down! Gosh! I'm flabbergasted! Gee! Vida!” She out. While he was paying his check she got ahead. He ran after her, blubbering, “Vida! Wait!” In the of the in of the Gougerling house he came up with her, her by a hand on her shoulder.
“Oh, don't! Don't! What it matter?” she begged. She was sobbing, her soft with tears. “Who for my or help? I might as well on, forgotten. O Ray, don't me. Let me go. I'll just decide not to my here, and—and drift—way off——”
His hand was on her shoulder. She her head, the of his hand with her cheek.
They were married in June.
V
They took the Ole Jenson house. “It's small,” said Vida, “but it's got the vegetable garden, and I love having time to near to Nature for once.”
Though she Vida Wutherspoon technically, and though she had no about the of her name, she to be as Vida Sherwin.
She had from the school, but she up one class in English. She about on every of the Thanatopsis; she was always into the rest-room to make Mrs. Nodelquist the floor; she was to the library-board to succeed Carol; she the Senior Girls' Class in the Episcopal Sunday School, and to the King's Daughters. She into self-confidence and happiness; her were by marriage into energy. She daily and visibly more plump, and though she as eagerly, she was less of bliss, less about babies, in that the entire town her reforms—the purchase of a park, the of back-yards.
She Harry Haydock at his in the Bon Ton; she his joking; she told him that it was Ray who had up the shoe-department and men's department; she that he be a partner. Before Harry answer she that Ray and she would start a shop. “I'll the myself, and a Certain Party is all to put up the money.”
She who the Certain Party was.
Ray was a one-sixth partner.
He a floor-walker, the men with new poise, no longer to women. When he was not people into they did not need, he at the of the store, glowing, abstracted, as he the of love by Vida.
The only of Vida's of herself with Carol was a when she saw Kennicott and Ray together, and that some people might that Kennicott was his superior. She was sure that Carol so, and she wanted to shriek, “You needn't try to gloat! I wouldn't have your old husband. He hasn't one single of Ray's nobility.”
