SHE had walked up the with Hugh, this Sunday afternoon.
She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an suit, and alone, at the rails with a stick. For a second she wanted to avoid him, but she on, and she talked about God, voice, Hugh asserted, the in the wires. Erik stared, straightened. They each other with “Hello.”
“Hugh, say how-do-you-do to Mr. Valborg.”
“Oh, dear me, he's got a unbuttoned,” Erik, kneeling. Carol frowned, then noted the with which he the in the air.
“May I walk along a piece with you?”
“I'm tired. Let's on those ties. Then I must be back.”
They sat on a of ties, with cinnamon-colored dry-rot and marked with where iron plates had rested. Hugh learned that the was the hiding-place of Injuns; he for them while the talked of things.
The thrummed, thrummed, above them; the rails were hard lines; the dusty. Across the was a of and lawn cut by cow-paths; its narrow green, the of new stubble, with wheat-stacks like pineapples.
Erik talked of books; like a to any faith. He as many titles and as possible, only to appeal, “Have you read his last book? Don't you think he's a writer?”
She was dizzy. But when he insisted, “You've been a librarian; tell me; do I read too much fiction?” she him loftily, discursively. He had, she indicated, studied. He had from one to another. Especially—she hesitated, then it at him—he must not at pronunciations; he must the of stopping to for the dictionary.
“I'm talking like a teacher,” she sighed.
“No! And I will study! Read the right through.” He his and over, his with hands. “I know what you mean. I've been from picture to picture, like a kid let in an art for the time. You see, it's so that I've there was a world—well, a world where counted. I was on the farm till I was nineteen. Dad is a good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know why he sent me off to learn tailoring? I wanted to study drawing, and he had a that'd a of money out in Dakota, and he said was a like drawing, so he sent me to a called Curlew, to work in a tailor shop. Up to that time I'd only had three months' a year—walked to two miles, through up to my knees—and Dad would for my having a single book schoolbooks.
“I read a till I got 'Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall' out of the library at Curlew. I it was the thing in the world! Next I read 'Barriers Burned Away' and then Pope's of Homer. Some combination, all right! When I to Minneapolis, just two years ago, I I'd read much in that Curlew library, but I'd of Rossetti or John Sargent or Balzac or Brahms. But——Yump, I'll study. Look here! Shall I out of this tailoring, this pressing and repairing?”
“I don't see why a should very much time shoes.”
“But what if I I can't and design? After around in New York or Chicago, I'd like a if I had to go to work in a gents' store!”
“Please say 'haberdashery.'”
“Haberdashery? All right. I'll remember.” He and spread his wide.
She was by his humility; she put away in her mind, to take out and worry over later, a as to it was not she who was naive. She urged, “What if you do have to go back? Most of us do! We can't all be artists—myself, for instance. We have to socks, and yet we're not to think of nothing but and darning-cotton. I'd all I get—whether I settled to or temples or pressing pants. What if you do back? You'll have had the adventure. Don't be too toward life! Go! You're young, you're unmarried. Try everything! Don't to Nat Hicks and Sam Clark and be a 'steady man'—in order to help them make money. You're still a innocent. Go and play till the Good People you!”
“But I don't just want to play. I want to make something beautiful. God! And I don't know enough. Do you it? Do you understand? Nobody else has! Do you understand?”
“Yes.”
“And so——But here's what me: I like fabrics; like that; little and words. But look over there at those fields. Big! New! Don't it of a to this and go to the East and Europe, and do what all those people have been doing so long? Being about words, when there's millions of off here! Reading this Pater, when I've helped Dad to clear fields!”
“It's good to clear fields. But it's not for you. It's one of our American that necessarily make minds, and high make high purpose. I that myself, when I came to the prairie. 'Big—new.' Oh, I don't want to the future. It will be magnificent. But I'm if I want to be by it, go to on of Main Street, be and BULLIED by the that the is already here in the present, and that all of us must and wheat-stacks and that this is 'God's Country'—and never, of course, do anything original or gay-colored that would help to make that future! Anyway, you don't here. Sam Clark and Nat Hicks, that's what our big has produced. Go! Before it's too late, as it has been for—for some of us. Young man, go East and up with the revolution! Then you may come and tell Sam and Nat and me what to do with the land we've been clearing—if we'll listen—if we don't you first!”
He looked at her reverently. She him saying,
“I've always wanted to know a woman who would talk to me like that.”
Her was faulty. He was saying nothing of the sort. He was saying:
“Why aren't you happy with your husband?”
“I—you——”
“He doesn't for the 'blessed innocent' part of you, he!”
“Erik, you mustn't——”
“First you tell me to go and be free, and then you say that I 'mustn't'!”
“I know. But you mustn't——You must be more impersonal!”
He at her like a owl. She wasn't sure but she that he muttered, “I'm if I will.” She with the of with other people's destinies, and she said timidly, “Hadn't we start now?”
He mused, “You're than I am. Your are for about in the and at twilight. I don't see how you. . . . Yes. We go.”
He her, his averted. Hugh took his thumb. He looked at the seriously. He out, “All right. I'll do it. I'll here one year. Save. Not so much money on clothes. And then I'll go East, to art-school. Work on the side-tailor shop, dressmaker's. I'll learn what I'm good for: clothes, stage-settings, illustrating, or selling to men. All settled.” He at her, unsmiling.
“Can you it here in town for a year?”
“With you to look at?”
“Please! I mean: Don't the people here think you're an odd bird? (They do me, I you!)”
“I don't know. I notice much. Oh, they do kid me about not being in the army—especially the old warhorses, the old men that aren't going themselves. And this Bogart boy. And Mr. Hicks's son—he's a brat. But he's to say what he thinks about his father's man!”
“He's beastly!”
They were in town. They passed Aunt Bessie's house. Aunt Bessie and Mrs. Bogart were at the window, and Carol saw that they were so that they answered her only with the hands of automatons. In the next Mrs. Dr. Westlake was from her porch. Carol said with an embarrassed quaver:
“I want to in and see Mrs. Westlake. I'll say good-by here.”
She his eyes.
Mrs. Westlake was affable. Carol that she was to explain; and while she was that she'd be if she'd explain, she was explaining:
“Hugh that Valborg boy up the track. They such good friends. And I talked to him for a while. I'd he was eccentric, but really, I him intelligent. Crude, but he reads—reads almost the way Dr. Westlake does.”
“That's fine. Why he here in town? What's this I about his being in Myrtle Cass?”
“I don't know. Is he? I'm sure he isn't! He said he was lonely! Besides, Myrtle is a in arms!”
“Twenty-one if she's a day!”
“Well——Is the doctor going to do any this fall?”
II
The need of Erik her into doubting. For all his reading, and his life, was he anything but a small-town on an farm and in tailor shops? He had hands. She had been only by hands that were and suave, like those of her father. Delicate hands and purpose. But this boy—powerful hands and will.
“It's not like his, but that will the Gopher Prairies. Only——Does that anything? Or am I Vida? The world has always let 'strong' and soldiers—the men with voices—take control, and what have the done? What is 'strength'?
“This of people! I tailors differ as much as or kings.
“Erik me when he on me. Of he didn't anything, but I mustn't let him be so personal.
“Amazing impertinence!
“But he didn't to be.
“His hands are FIRM. I wonder if don't have thick hands, too?
“Of if there is anything I can do to HELP the boy——
“Though I these people who interfere. He must be independent.”
III
She wasn't pleased, the week after, when Erik was and, without for her inspiration, planned the tennis tournament. It proved that he had learned to play in Minneapolis; that, next to Juanita Haydock, he had the best in town. Tennis was well spoken of in Gopher Prairie and almost played. There were three courts: one to Harry Haydock, one to the at the lake, and one, a on the outskirts, out by a tennis association.
Erik had been in and an hat, playing on the with Willis Woodford, the in Stowbody's bank. Suddenly he was going about the of the tennis association, and names in a fifteen-cent note-book for the purpose at Dyer's. When he came to Carol he was so over being an that he did not stop to talk of himself and Aubrey Beardsley for more than ten minutes. He begged, “Will you some of the to come in?” and she agreeably.
He an match to the association; he that Carol and himself, the Haydocks, the Woodfords, and the Dillons play doubles, and that the be from the enthusiasts. He had asked Harry Haydock to be president. Harry, he reported, had promised, “All right. You bet. But you go ahead and things, and I'll O.K. 'em.” Erik planned that the match should be Saturday afternoon, on the old public at the of town. He was happy in being, for the time, part of Gopher Prairie.
Through the week Carol how select an there was to be.
Kennicott that he didn't to go.
Had he any to her playing with Erik?
No; sure not; she needed the exercise. Carol to the match early. The was in a out on the New Antonia road. Only Erik was there. He was about with a rake, trying to make the less like a field. He that he had stage at the of the horde. Willis and Mrs. Woodford arrived, Willis in home-made and black through at the toe; then Dr. and Mrs. Harvey Dillon, people as and as the Woodfords.
Carol was embarrassed and agreeable, like the bishop's lady trying not to out of place at a Baptist bazaar.
They waited.
The match was for three. As there assembled one clerk, stopping his Ford to from the seat, and one small boy, a smaller sister who had a careless nose.
“I wonder where the Haydocks are? They ought to up, at least,” said Erik.
Carol at him, and the empty road toward town. Only heat-waves and and weeds.
At half-past three no one had come, and the boy got out, his Ford, at them in a manner, and away. The small boy and his sister ate and sighed.
The players to be by service, but they at each dust-cloud from a car. None of the into the meadow-none till a to four, when Kennicott in.
Carol's swelled. “How he is! Depend on him! He'd come, if nobody else did. Even though he doesn't for the game. The old darling!”
Kennicott did not alight. He called out, “Carrie! Harry Haydock 'phoned me that they've to the tennis matches, or you call 'em, at the at the lake, of here. The are there now: Haydocks and Dyers and Clarks and everybody. Harry wanted to know if I'd you down. I I can take the time—come right after supper.”
Before Carol it all up, Erik stammered, “Why, Haydock didn't say anything to me about the change. Of he's the president, but——”
Kennicott looked at him heavily, and grunted, “I don't know a thing about it. . . . Coming, Carrie?”
“I am not! The match was to be here, and it will be here! You can tell Harry Haydock that he's rude!” She the five who had been left out, who would always be left out. “Come on! We'll to see which four of us play the Only and Original First Annual Tennis Tournament of Forest Hills, Del Monte, and Gopher Prairie!”
“Don't know as I you,” said Kennicott. “Well have supper at home then?” He off.
She him for his composure. He had her defiance. She much less like Susan B. Anthony as she to her followers.
Mrs. Dillon and Willis Woodford the toss. The others played out the game, slowly, painfully, on the earth, the shots, only by the small boy and his sister. Beyond the the stubble-fields. The four marionettes, going through exercises, in the of land, were not heroic; their voices did not ring out in the score, but apologetic; and when the game was over they about as though they were waiting to be laughed at.
They walked home. Carol took Erik's arm. Through her thin she the of his familiar coat. She that there were and red gold with the brown. She the time she had it.
Their talk was nothing but on the theme: “I did like this Haydock. He just his own convenience.” Ahead of them, the Dillons and Woodfords spoke of the weather and B. J. Gougerling's new bungalow. No one to their tennis tournament. At her gate Carol hands with Erik and at him.
Next morning, Sunday morning, when Carol was on the porch, the Haydocks up.
“We didn't to be to you, dearie!” Juanita. “I wouldn't have you think that for anything. We planned that Will and you should come and have supper at our cottage.”
“No. I'm sure you didn't to be.” Carol was super-neighborly. “But I do think you ought to to Erik Valborg. He was hurt.”
“Oh. Valborg. I don't so much what he thinks,” Harry. “He's nothing but a buttinsky. Juanita and I of he was trying to this tennis thing too much anyway.”
“But you asked him to make arrangements.”
“I know, but I don't like him. Good Lord, you couldn't his feelings! He up like a man—and, by golly, he looks like one!—but he's nothing but a Swede farm boy, and these foreigners, they all got like a of .”
“But he IS hurt!”
“Well——I don't I ought to have gone off half-cocked, and not him along. I'll give him a cigar. He'll——”
Juanita had been her and at Carol. She her husband, “Yes, I do think Harry ought to it up with him. You LIKE him, DON'T you, Carol??”
Over and through Carol ran a cautiousness. “Like him? I haven't an í-dea. He to be a very man. I just that when he'd so hard on the plans for the match, it was a not to be to him.”
“Maybe there's something to that,” Harry; then, at of Kennicott the the red garden by its nozzle, he in relief, “What d' you think you're trying to do, doc?”
While Kennicott in detail all that he he was trying to do, while he his and stated, “Struck me the was looking of in patches—didn't know but what I'd give it a sprinkling,” and while Harry that this was an excellent idea, Juanita and, the screen of an smile, Carol's face.
IV
She wanted to see Erik. She wanted some one to play with! There wasn't so and an as having Kennicott's pressed; when she them, all three looked neat. She would not have on it had she not Nat Hicks in the pool-parlor, being over bottle-pool. Erik was alone! She toward the tailor shop, into its with the of a bird into a tiger-lily. It was after she had entered that she an excuse.
Erik was in the room, cross-legged on a long table, a vest. But he looked as though he were doing this thing to himself.
“Hello. I wonder if you couldn't plan a sports-suit for me?” she said breathlessly.
He at her; he protested, “No, I won't! God! I'm not going to be a tailor with you!”
“Why, Erik!” she said, like a mother.
It to her that she did not need a suit, and that the order might have been hard to to Kennicott.
He from the table. “I want to you something.” He in the roll-top on which Nat Hicks bills, buttons, calendars, buckles, thread-channeled wax, shells, of for “fancy vests,” fishing-reels, post-cards, of lining. He out a of Bristol and gave it to her. It was a sketch for a frock. It was not well drawn; it was too finicking; the in the were squat. But the had an original back, very low, with a from the to a of at the neck.
“It's stunning. But how it would Mrs. Clark!”
“Yes, wouldn't it!”
“You must let go more when you're drawing.”
“Don't know if I can. I've started of late. But listen! What do you think I've done this two weeks? I've read almost clear through a Latin grammar, and about twenty pages of Caesar.”
“Splendid! You are lucky. You haven't a teacher to make you artificial.”
“You're my teacher!”
There was a of to his voice. She was and agitated. She her on him, through the window, studying this center of a Main Street block, a from strollers. The of the in town a neglected, dirty, and dismal. From the front, Howland & Gould's was enough, but to the was a lean-to of with a roof—a which was a of ashes, packing-boxes, of excelsior, straw-board, olive-bottles, fruit, and vegetables: orange black, and potatoes with ulcers. The of the Bon Ton Store was with black-painted iron shutters, under them a of once red shirt-boxes, now a from rain.
As from Main Street, Oleson & McGuire's Meat Market had a and with its new counter, fresh on the floor, and a cut in rosettes. But she now viewed a room with a of yellow with black grease. A man in an with blood was out a hard of meat.
Behind Billy's Lunch, the cook, in an which must long ago have been white, a pipe and at the of flies. In the center of the block, by itself, was the for the three of the drayman, and it a of manure.
The of Ezra Stowbody's bank was whitewashed, and of it was a walk and a three-foot square of grass, but the window was barred, and the she saw Willis Woodford over in books. He his head, his eyes, and to the of figures.
The of the other shops were an picture of dirty grays, browns, of refuse.
“Mine is a back-yard romance—with a tailor!”
She was saved from self-pity as she to think through Erik's mind. She to him with an indignant, “It's that this is all you have to look at.”
He it. “Outside there? I don't notice much. I'm learning to look inside. Not easy!”
“Yes. . . . I must be hurrying.”
As she walked home—without hurrying—she her father saying to a ten-year-old Carol, “Lady, only a thinks he's to bindings, but only a double-distilled reads nothing but bindings.”
She was by the return of her father, by a that in this boy she had the judge who was love, perfect under-standing. She it, it, it, it. Of one thing she was certain: there was nothing of the father image in Will Kennicott.
V
She why she sang so often, and why she so many things—lamplight though trees on a evening, on wood, sparrows, black to plates of by moonlight. Pleasant things, small things, and places—a of goldenrod, a by the creek—and a of people. Vida was to Carol at the surgical-dressing class; Mrs. Dave Dyer her with questions about her health, baby, cook, and opinions on the war.
Mrs. Dyer not to the town's against Erik. “He's a nice-looking fellow; we must have him go on one of our some time.” Unexpectedly, Dave Dyer also liked him. The tight-fisted little had a for anything that to him or clever. He answered Harry Haydock's sneers, “That's all right now! Elizabeth may himself up too much, but he's smart, and don't you it! I was trying to out where this Ukraine is, and if he didn't tell me. What's the with his talking so polite? Hell's bells, Harry, no in being polite. There's some regular he-men that are just as as women, prett' near.”
Carol herself going about rejoicing, “How neighborly the town is!” She up with a “Am I in love with this boy? That's ridiculous! I'm in him. I like to think of helping him to succeed.”
But as she the living-room, a collar-band, Hugh, she was herself and a Apollo and evasive—building a house in the Berkshires or in Virginia; a chair with his check; reading together, and being over valuable about labor; out of early for a Sunday walk, and (where Kennicott would have yawned) over and by a lake. Hugh was in her pictures, and he the artist, who of chairs and for him. Beyond these she saw the “things I do for Erik”—and she that Erik did make up the image of her perfect artist.
In panic she on being to Kennicott, when he wanted to be left alone to read the newspaper.
VI
She needed new clothes. Kennicott had promised, “We'll have a good to the Cities in the fall, and take of time for it, and you can your new glad-rags then.” But as she her she her black on the and raged, “They're disgraceful. Everything I have is to pieces.”
There was a new and milliner, a Mrs. Swiftwaite. It was said that she was not an in the way she at men; that she would as soon take away a legally husband as not; that if there WAS any Mr. Swiftwaite, “it was that nobody to know anything about him!” But she had for Rita Gould an and to match to be “too for words,” and the cautiously, with and politeness, to the rooms which Mrs. Swiftwaite had taken in the old Luke Dawson house, on Floral Avenue.
With none of the which the of new in Gopher Prairie, Carol into Mrs. Swiftwaite's, and demanded, “I want to see a hat, and possibly a blouse.”
In the old which she had to make with a glass, from fashion magazines, French prints, Mrs. Swiftwaite moved among the dress-dummies and hat-rests, spoke as she took up a small black and red turban. “I am sure the lady will this attractive.”
“It's and small-towny,” Carol, while she soothed, “I don't it goes with me.”
“It's the thing I have, and I'm sure you'll it you beautifully. It has a great of chic. Please try it on,” said Mrs. Swiftwaite, more than ever.
Carol the woman. She was as as a diamond. She was the more in her to appear urban. She a high-collared with a of small black buttons, which was to her low-breasted neatness, but her skirt was checkered, her were too rouged, her too penciled. She was a of the of up to look thirty, clever, and alluring.
While she was trying on the Carol very condescending. She took it off, her head, with the for inferiors, “I'm it won't do, though it's for so small a town as this.”
“But it's New-Yorkish.”
“Well, it——”
“You see, I know my New York styles. I in New York for years, almost a year in Akron!”
“You did?” Carol was polite, and away, and home unhappily. She was her own were as as Mrs. Swiftwaite's. She put on the eye-glasses which Kennicott had to her for reading, and looked over a bill. She up to her room, to her mirror. She was in a mood of self-depreciation. Accurately or not, this was the picture she saw in the mirror:
Neat eye-glasses. Black under a which would have a spinster. Cheeks clear, bloodless. Thin nose. Gentle mouth and chin. A with an of at the neck. A and timorousness—no of gaiety, no of cities, music, quick laughter.
“I have a small-town woman. Absolute. Typical. Modest and and safe. Protected from life. GENTEEL! The Village Virus—the village virtuousness. My hair—just together. What can Erik see in that there? He like me! Because I'm the only woman who's to him! How long he'll wake up to me? . . . I've up to myself. . . . Am I as old as—as old as I am?
“Not old. Become careless. Let myself look tabby.
“I want to every I own. Black and cheeks—they'd go with a Spanish dancer's costume—rose my ear, over one shoulder, the other bare.”
She the sponge, her cheeks, at her with the pencil until they stung, open her collar. She with her thin arms in the of the fandango. She them sharply. She her head. “My doesn't dance,” she said. She as she her blouse.
“At least I'm much more than Fern Mullins. Heavens! When I came here from the Cities, girls me. Now I'm trying to a city girl.”
