IT WAS at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August that Carol of “Elizabeth,” from Mrs. Dave Dyer.
Carol was of Maud Dyer, she had been particularly lately; had of the which she had once shown. Maud her hand when they met, and asked about Hugh.
Kennicott said that he was “kind of sorry for the girl, some ways; she's too emotional, but still, Dave is of to her.” He was to Maud when they all to the for a swim. Carol was proud of that in him, and now she took pains to with their new friend.
Mrs. Dyer was bubbling, “Oh, have you about this that's just come to town that the boys call 'Elizabeth'? He's in Nat Hicks's tailor shop. I he doesn't make eighteen a week, but my! isn't he the perfect lady though! He talks so refined, and oh, the he puts on—belted coat, and with a gold pin, and to match his necktie, and honest—you won't this, but I got it straight—this fellow, you know he's at Mrs. Gurrey's old boarding-house, and they say he asked Mrs. Gurrey if he ought to put on a dress-suit for supper! Imagine! Can you that? And him nothing but a Swede tailor—Erik Valborg his name is. But he used to be in a tailor shop in Minneapolis (they do say he's a needle-pusher, at that) and he to let on that he's a regular city fellow. They say he to make people think he's a poet—carries books around and to read 'em. Myrtle Cass says she met him at a dance, and he was around all over the place, and he asked her did she like flowers and and music and everything; he like he was a regular United States Senator; and Myrtle—she's a devil, that girl, ha! ha!—she him along, and got him going, and honest, what d'you think he said? He said he didn't any in this town. Can you BEAT it? Imagine! And him a Swede tailor! My! And they say he's the most mollycoddle—looks just like a girl. The boys call him 'Elizabeth,' and they stop him and ask about the books he lets on to have read, and he goes and tells them, and they take it all in and him terribly, and he onto the they're him. Oh, I think it's just TOO funny!”
The Jolly Seventeen laughed, and Carol laughed with them. Mrs. Jack Elder added that this Erik Valborg had to Mrs. Gurrey that he would “love to design for women.” Imagine! Mrs. Harvey Dillon had had a of him, but honestly, she'd he was handsome. This was by Mrs. B. J. Gougerling, wife of the banker. Mrs. Gougerling had had, she reported, a good look at this Valborg fellow. She and B. J. had been motoring, and passed “Elizabeth” out by McGruder's Bridge. He was the clothes, with the in like a girl's. He was on a doing nothing, but when he the Gougerling car he a book out of his pocket, and as they by he to be reading it, to off. And he wasn't good-looking—just of soft, as B. J. had pointed out.
When the husbands came they joined in the expose. “My name is Elizabeth. I'm the tailor. The skirts for me by the thou. Do I some more loaf?” Dave Dyer. He had some about the the town had played on Valborg. They had a into his pocket. They had on his a sign, “I'm the prize boob, me.”
Glad of any laughter, Carol joined the frolic, and them by crying, “Dave, I do think you're the thing since you got your cut!” That was an excellent sally. Everybody applauded. Kennicott looked proud.
She that she must go out of her way to pass Hicks's shop and see this freak.
II
She was at Sunday service at the Baptist Church, in a with her husband, Hugh, Uncle Whittier, Aunt Bessie.
Despite Aunt Bessie's the Kennicotts church. The doctor asserted, “Sure, religion is a influence—got to have it to keep the in order—fact, it's the only thing that to a of those and makes 'em respect the of property. And I this is O.K .; of wise old it all out, and they more about it than we do.” He in the Christian religion, and about it, he in the church, and near it; he was by Carol's of faith, and wasn't sure what was the nature of the that she lacked.
Carol herself was an and agnostic.
When she to Sunday School and the teachers that the of Shamsherai was a valuable problem for children to think about; when she with Wednesday prayer-meeting and to store-keeping their in and such Chaldean phrases as “washed in the blood of the lamb” and “a God”; when Mrs. Bogart that through his she had Cy upon the of the Ten Commandments; then Carol was to the Christian religion, in America, in the century, as as Zoroastrianism—without the splendor. But when she to church and the friendliness, saw the with which the sisters cold and potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry to her, on an call, “My dear, if you just how happy it makes you to come into grace,” then Carol the the and theology. Always she that the churches—Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Catholic, all of them—which had so to the judge's home in her childhood, so from the city in St. Paul, were still, in Gopher Prairie, the of the respectability.
This August Sunday she had been by the that the Reverend Edmund Zitterel would on the “America, Face Your Problems!” With the great war, in every nation a to industries, Russia a against Kerensky, woman coming, there to be of problems for the Reverend Mr. Zitterel to call on America to face. Carol her family and off Uncle Whittier.
The the with informality. Men with hair, so that their looked sore, their coats, sighed, and two of their Sunday vests. Large-bosomed, white-bloused, hot-necked, matrons—the Mothers in Israel, and friends of Mrs. Champ Perry—waved their palm-leaf fans in a rhythm. Abashed boys into the and giggled, while milky little girls, up with their mothers, self-consciously from around.
The church was and Gopher Prairie parlor. The was in its only by texts, “Come Me” and “The Lord is My Shepherd,” by a list of hymns, and by a and green diagram, upon hemp-colored paper, the with which a man may from Palaces of Pleasure and the House of Pride to Eternal Damnation. But the and the new red and the three large chairs on the platform, the reading-stand, were all of a rocking-chair comfort.
Carol was and neighborly and today. She and bowed. She out with the others the hymn:
How 'tis on Sabbath morn
To in the church
And there I'll have no thoughts,
Nor shall me besmirch.
With a of skirts and shirt-fronts, the sat down, and gave to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel. The was a thin, swart, man with a bang. He a black and a tie. He the Bible on the reading-stand, vociferated, “Come, let us together,” delivered a prayer Almighty God of the news of the past week, and to reason.
It proved that the only problems which America had to were Mormonism and Prohibition:
“Don't let any of these self-conceited that are always trying to up trouble you with the that there's anything to all these smart-aleck movements to let the and the Farmers' Nonpartisan League kill all our and enterprise by and prices. There isn't any movement that to a without it's got a background. And let me tell you that while are about what they call 'economics' and 'socialism' and 'science' and a of that are nothing in the world but a for atheism, the Old Satan is his and out there in Utah, under his of Joe Smith or Brigham Young or their to be today, it doesn't make any difference, and they're making game of the Old Bible that has this American people through its and to its position as the of the and the leader of all nations. 'Sit on my right hand till I make the of my feet,' said the Lord of Hosts, Acts II, the thirty-fourth verse—and let me tell you right now, you got to up a good in the than you up when you're going fishing, if you want to be than the Lord, who has us the and narrow way, and he that is in and, to return to this and terrible of Mormonism—and as I say, it is terrible to how little attention is to this right here in our and on our very doorstep, as it were—it's a and a that the Congress of these United States all its time talking about financial that ought to be left to the Treasury Department, as I it, of in their might and a law that any one he is a Mormon shall be and as it were out of this free country in which we haven't got any room for and the of Satan.
“And, to for a moment, as there are more of them in this than there are Mormons, though you can tell what will with this of girls, that think more about than about their mothers and learning to a good of bread, and many of them to these Mormon missionaries—and I actually one of them talking right out on a street-corner in Duluth, a years ago, and the officers of the law not protesting—but still, as they are a smaller but more problem, let me stop for just a moment to pay my respects to these Seventh-Day Adventists. Not that they are immoral, I don't mean, but when a of men go on that Saturday is the Sabbath, after Christ himself has the new dispensation, then I think the ought to step in——”
At this point Carol awoke.
She got through three more minutes by studying the of a girl in the across: a girl out with self-revelation as she Mr. Zitterel. Carol who the girl was. She had her at church suppers. She how many of the three thousand people in the town she did not know; to how many of them the Thanatopsis and the Jolly Seventeen were social peaks; how many of them might be through than her own—with courage.
She her nails. She read two hymns. She got some out of an knuckle. She on her the of the who, after killing time in the same manner as his mother, was so as to asleep. She read the introduction, title-page, and of copyrights, in the hymnal. She to a which would why Kennicott tie his so that it would the top of the in his turn-down collar.
There were no other to be in the pew. She at the congregation. She that it would be to to Mrs. Champ Perry.
Her slow stopped, galvanized.
Across the aisle, two back, was a man who among the cud-chewing citizens like a from the sun-amber curls, low forehead, nose, but not from Sabbath shaving. His her. The of men in Gopher Prairie are in the face, and grudging. The stranger's mouth was arched, the upper lip short. He a coat, a delft-blue bow, a white shirt, white trousers. He the beach, a tennis court, anything but the sun-blistered of Main Street.
A visitor from Minneapolis, here for business? No. He wasn't a man. He was a poet. Keats was in his face, and Shelley, and Arthur Upson, she had once in Minneapolis. He was at once too and too to touch as she it in Gopher Prairie.
With he was the noisy Mr. Zitterel. Carol was to have this from the Great World the pastor's maundering. She for the town. She his at their private rites. She flushed, away. But she to his presence.
How she meet him? She must! For an hour of talk. He was all that she was for. She not let him away without a word—and she would have to. She pictured, and ridiculed, herself as walking up to him and remarking, “I am with the Village Virus. Will you tell me what people are saying and playing in New York?” She pictured, and over, the of Kennicott if she should say, “Why wouldn't it be for you, my soul, to ask that complete in the to come to supper tonight?”
She brooded, not looking back. She herself that she was exaggerating; that no man have all these qualities. Wasn't he too smart, too glossy-new? Like a movie actor. Probably he was a traveling salesman who sang and himself in of Newport and spoke of “the that came the pike.” In a panic she at him. No! This was no salesman, this boy with the Grecian and the eyes.
She rose after the service, taking Kennicott's arm and at him in a mute that she was to him no what happened. She the Mystery's soft out of the church.
Fatty Hicks, the and son of Nat, his hand at the and jeered, “How's the kid? All up like a today, ain't we!”
Carol was sick. Her from the was Erik Valborg, “Elizabeth.” Apprentice tailor! Gasoline and goose! Mending dirty jackets! Respectfully a tape-measure about a paunch!
And yet, she insisted, this boy was also himself.
III
They had Sunday dinner with the Smails, in a dining-room which about a fruit and flower piece and a crayon-enlargement of Uncle Whittier. Carol did not Aunt Bessie's in to Mrs. Robert B. Schminke's necklace and Whittier's error in on the pants, day like this. She did not taste the of pork. She said vacuously:
“Uh—Will, I wonder if that man in the white trousers, at church this morning, was this Valborg person that they're all talking about?”
“Yump. That's him. Wasn't that the get-up he had on!” Kennicott at a white on his hard sleeve.
“It wasn't so bad. I wonder where he comes from? He to have in a good deal. Is he from the East?”
“The East? Him? Why, he comes from a farm right up north here, just this of Jefferson. I know his father slightly—Adolph Valborg—typical old Swede farmer.”
“Oh, really?” blandly.
“Believe he has in Minneapolis for some time, though. Learned his there. And I will say he's bright, some ways. Reads a lot. Pollock says he takes more books out of the library than else in town. Huh! He's of like you in that!”
The Smails and Kennicott laughed very much at this jest. Uncle Whittier the conversation. “That that's for Hicks? Milksop, that's what he is. Makes me to see a that ought to be in the war, or out in the earning his honest, like I done when I was young, doing a woman's work and then come out and dress up like a show-actor! Why, when I was his age——”
Carol that the carving-knife would make an excellent with which to kill Uncle Whittier. It would in easily. The would be terrible.
Kennicott said judiciously, “Oh, I don't want to be to him. I he took his physical for service. Got veins—not bad, but to him. Though I will say he doesn't look like a that would be so to his into a Hun's guts.”
“Will! PLEASE!”
“Well, he don't. Looks soft to me. And they say he told Del Snafflin, when he was a hair-cut on Saturday, that he he play the piano.”
“Isn't it how much we all know about one another in a town like this,” said Carol innocently.
Kennicott was suspicious, but Aunt Bessie, the pudding, agreed, “Yes, it is wonderful. Folks can away with all of and in these terrible cities, but they can't here. I was noticing this tailor this morning, and when Mrs. Riggs offered to her hymn-book with him, he his head, and all the while we was he just there like a on a and opened his mouth. Everybody says he's got an idea that he's got so much manners and all than what the of us have, but if that's what he calls good manners, I want to know!”
Carol again the carving-knife. Blood on the of a might be gorgeous.
Then:
“Fool! Neurotic impossibilist! Telling fairy-tales—at thirty. . . . Dear Lord, am I THIRTY? That boy can't be more than twenty-five.”
IV
She calling.
Boarding with the Widow Bogart was Fern Mullins, a girl of twenty-two who was to be teacher of English, French, and in the high this session. Fern Mullins had come to town early, for the six-weeks normal for country teachers. Carol had noticed her on the street, had almost as much about her as about Erik Valborg. She was tall, weedy, pretty, and rakish. Whether she a low or for in a black with a high-necked blouse, she was airy, flippant. “She looks like an totty,” said all the Mrs. Sam Clarks, disapprovingly, and all the Juanita Haydocks, enviously.
That Sunday evening, in lawn-chairs the house, the Kennicotts saw Fern laughing with Cy Bogart who, though still a junior in high school, was now a of a man, only two or three years than Fern. Cy had to go for with the pool-parlor. Fern on the Bogart porch, her in her hands.
“She looks lonely,” said Kennicott.
“She does, soul. I I'll go over and speak to her. I was to her at Dave's but I haven't called.” Carol was across the lawn, a white in the dimness, the grass. She was of Erik and of the that her were wet, and she was in her greeting: “Hello! The doctor and I if you were lonely.”
Resentfully, “I am!”
Carol on her. “My dear, you so! I know how it is. I used to be when I was on the job—I was a librarian. What was your college? I was Blodgett.”
More interestedly, “I to the U.” Fern meant the University of Minnesota.
“You must have had a time. Blodgett was a dull.”
“Where were you a librarian?” challengingly.
“St. Paul—the main library.”
“Honest? Oh dear, I wish I was in the Cities! This is my year of teaching, and I'm stiff. I did have the best time in college: and basket-ball and and dancing—I'm about dancing. And here, when I have the in class, or when I'm the basket-ball team on a out-of-town, I won't to move above a whisper. I they don't much if you put any into teaching or not, as long as you look like a Good Influence out of school-hours—and that means doing anything you want to. This normal is enough, but the regular will be FIERCE! If it wasn't too late to a job in the Cities, I I'd here. I I won't to go to a single all winter. If I cut and the way I like to, they'd think I was a perfect hellion—poor me! Oh, I oughtn't to be talking like this. Fern, you be cagey!”
“Don't be frightened, my dear! . . . Doesn't that old and kind! I'm talking to you the way Mrs. Westlake talks to me! That's having a husband and a range, I suppose. But I young, and I want to like a—like a hellion?—too. So I sympathize.”
Fern a of gratitude. Carol inquired, “What did you have with college dramatics? I to start a of Little Theater here. It was dreadful. I must tell you about it——”
Two hours later, when Kennicott came over to Fern and to yawn, “Look here, Carrie, don't you you be about in? I've got a hard day tomorrow,” the two were talking so that they each other.
As she home, by a husband, and up her skirts, Carol rejoiced, “Everything has changed! I have two friends, Fern and——But who's the other? That's queer; I there was——Oh, how absurd!”
V
She often passed Erik Valborg on the street; the unremarkable. When she was with Kennicott, in early evening, she saw him on the shore, reading a thin book which might easily have been poetry. She noted that he was the only person in the town who still took long walks.
She told herself that she was the of a judge, the wife of a doctor, and that she did not to know a tailor. She told herself that she was not to men . . . not to Percy Bresnahan. She told herself that a woman of thirty who a boy of twenty-five was ridiculous. And on Friday, when she had herself that the was necessary, she to Nat Hicks's shop, the not very of a pair of her husband's trousers. Hicks was in the room. She the Greek god who, in a way, was a on a sewing-machine, in a room of plaster walls.
She saw that his hands were not in with a Hellenic face. They were thick, with and iron and plow-handle. Even in the shop he in his finery. He a shirt, a scarf, thin shoes.
This she while she was saying curtly, “Can I these pressed, please?”
Not from the sewing-machine he out his hand, mumbled, “When do you want them?”
“Oh, Monday.”
The was over. She was out.
“What name?” he called after her.
He had and, despite the of Dr. Will Kennicott's over his arm, he had the of a cat.
“Kennicott.”
“Kennicott. Oh! Oh say, you're Mrs. Dr. Kennicott then, aren't you?”
“Yes.” She at the door. Now that she had out her to see what he was like, she was cold, she was as to as the Miss Ella Stowbody.
“I've about you. Myrtle Cass was saying you got up a and gave a play. I've always I had a to to a Little Theater, and give some European plays, or like Barrie, or a pageant.”
He it “pagent”; he “pag” with “rag.”
Carol in the manner of a lady being to a tradesman, and one of her sneered, “Our Erik is a John Keats.”
He was appealing, “Do you it would be possible to up another this fall?”
“Well, it might be of.” She came out of her poses, and said sincerely, “There's a new teacher, Miss Mullins, who might have some talent. That would make three of us for a nucleus. If we up a dozen we might give a play with a small cast. Have you had any experience?”
“Just a that some of us got up in Minneapolis when I was there. We had one good man, an decorator—maybe he was of and effeminate, but he was an artist, and we gave one play. But I——Of I've always had to work hard, and study by myself, and I'm sloppy, and I'd love it if I had in rehearsing—I mean, the the was, the I'd like it. If you didn't want to use me as an actor, I'd love to design the costumes. I'm about fabrics—textures and colors and designs.”
She that he was trying to keep her from going, trying to that he was something more than a person to one for pressing. He besought:
“Some day I I can away from this repairing, when I have the money saved up. I want to go East and work for some big dressmaker, and study art drawing, and a high-class designer. Or do you think that's a of fiddlin' for a fellow? I was up on a farm. And then monkeyin' with silks! I don't know. What do you think? Myrtle Cass says you're educated.”
“I am. Awfully. Tell me: Have the boys fun of your ambition?”
She was seventy years old, and sexless, and more than Vida Sherwin.
“Well, they have, at that. They've me a good deal, here and Minneapolis both. They say is ladies' work. (But I was to for the war! I to in. But they rejected me. But I did try! ) I some of up in a gents' store, and I had a to travel on the road for a house, but somehow—I this tailoring, but I can't to about salesmanship. I keep about a room in paper with prints in very narrow gold frames—or would it be in white paneling?—but anyway, it looks out on Fifth Avenue, and I'm a sumptuous——” He it “sump-too-ous”—“robe of green over cloth of gold! You know—tileul. It's elegant. . . . What do you think?”
“Why not? What do you for the opinion of city rowdies, or a of farm boys? But you mustn't, you mustn't, let like me have a to judge you.”
“Well——You aren't a stranger, one way. Myrtle Cass—Miss Cass, should say—she's spoken about you so often. I wanted to call on you—and the doctor—but I didn't have the nerve. One I walked past your house, but you and your husband were talking on the porch, and you looked so and happy I didn't in.”
Maternally, “I think it's of you to want to be in—in by a stage-director. Perhaps I help you. I'm a and schoolma'am by instinct; mature.”
“Oh, you aren't EITHER!”
She was not very successful at his with the air of woman of the world, but she impersonal: “Thank you. Shall we see if we can up a new club? I'll tell you: Come to the house this evening, about eight. I'll ask Miss Mullins to come over, and we'll talk about it.”
VI
“He has no of humor. Less than Will. But hasn't he——-What is a 'sense of humor'? Isn't the thing he the back-slapping that for here? Anyway——Poor lamb, me to and play with him! Poor lamb! If he be free from Nat Hickses, from people who say 'dandy' and 'bum,' would he develop?
“I wonder if Whitman didn't use Brooklyn back-street slang, as a boy?
“No. Not Whitman. He's Keats—sensitive to things. 'Innumerable of and as are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings.' Keats, here! A on Main Street. And Main Street laughs till it aches, till the his own self and to give up the use of for the of a 'gents' store.' Gopher Prairie with its eleven miles of walk. . . . I wonder how much of the is out of the of John Keatses?”
VII
Kennicott was to Fern Mullins, her, told her he was a “great hand for off with school-teachers,” and promised that if the school-board should object to her dancing, he would “bat 'em one over the and tell 'em how lucky they were to a girl with some go to her, for once.”
But to Erik Valborg he was not cordial. He hands loosely, and said, “H' are yuh.”
Nat Hicks was acceptable; he had been here for years, and owned his shop; but this person was Nat's workman, and the town's of perfect was not meant to be indiscriminately.
The on a Kennicott, but he sat back, yawns, of Fern's ankles, on the children at their sport.
Fern wanted to tell her grievances; Carol was every time she of “The Girl from Kankakee”; it was Erik who suggestions. He had read with breadth, and of judgment. His voice was to liquids, but he the word “glorious.” He a tenth of the he had from books, but he it. He was insistent, but he was shy.
When he demanded, “I'd like to stage 'Suppressed Desires,' by Cook and Miss Glaspell,” Carol to be patronizing. He was not the yearner: he was the artist, sure of his vision. “I'd make it simple. Use a big window at the back, with a of a that would you in the eye, and just one tree-branch, to a park below. Put the table on a dais. Let the colors be of and tea-roomy—orange chairs, and orange and table, and Japanese set, and some place, one big of black—bang! Oh. Another play I wish we do is Tennyson Jesse's 'The Black Mask.' I've it but——Glorious ending, where this woman looks at the man with his all away, and she just one scream.”
“Good God, is that your idea of a ending?” Kennicott.
“That fierce! I do love things, but not the ones,” Fern Mullins.
Erik was bewildered; at Carol. She loyally.
At the end of the they had nothing.