I
SHE in the Bureau of War Risk Insurance. Though the with Germany was a after her to Washington, the work of the continued. She all day; then she to of inquiry. It was an of details, yet she that she had “real work.”
Disillusions she did have. She that in the afternoon, office to the grave. She that an office is as full of and as a Gopher Prairie. She that most of the in the government unhealthfully, on in their apartments. But she also that may have and as as men and may in a which no attains—a free Sunday. It did not appear that the Great World needed her inspiration, but she that her letters, her with the of men and all over the country, were a part of affairs, not to Main Street and a but with Paris, Bangkok, Madrid.
She that she do office work without any of the of domesticity; that cooking and cleaning, when of the of an Aunt Bessie, take but a tenth of the time which, in a Gopher Prairie, it is but to to them.
Not to have to for her to the Jolly Seventeen, not to have to report to Kennicott at the end of the day all that she had done or might do, was a which up for the office weariness. She that she was no longer one-half of a marriage but the whole of a being.
II
Washington gave her all the in which she had had faith: white across parks, avenues, alleys. Daily she passed a dark square house with a hint of and a it, and a tall second-story window through which a woman was always peering. The woman was mystery, romance, a which told itself every day; now she was a murderess, now the neglected wife of an ambassador. It was which Carol had most in Gopher Prairie, where every house was open to view, where every person was but too easy to meet, where there were no gates opening upon over which one might walk by moss-deadened paths to high in an garden.
As she up Sixteenth Street after a Kreisler recital, late in the for the government clerks, as the in of soft fire, as the into the street, fresh as and kindlier, as she up the of Massachusetts Avenue, as she was rested by the of the Scottish Rite Temple, she loved the city as she loved no one save Hugh. She into studios, with orange and of mignonette; marble houses on New Hampshire Avenue, with and limousines; and men who looked like and aviators. Her days were swift, and she that in her of away she had the to be wise.
She had a month of in the city. She had to in a hall-room in a by an gentlewoman, and Hugh to the of a nurse. But later she a home.
III
Her were the members of the Tincomb Methodist Church, a red-brick tabernacle. Vida Sherwin had her a to an woman with eye-glasses, waist, and a in Bible Classes, who her to the Pastor and the Nicer Members of Tincomb. Carol in Washington as she had in California a and Main Street. Two-thirds of the church-members had come from Gopher Prairies. The church was their and their standard; they to Sunday service, Sunday School, Christian Endeavor, lectures, church suppers, as they had at home; they that and and scientists of the were and to be avoided; and by to Tincomb Church they their from all contamination.
They Carol, asked about her husband, gave her in babies, passed her the and potatoes at church suppers, and in her very and lonely, so that she if she might not in the organization and be allowed to go to jail.
Always she was to in Washington (as she would have in New York or London) a thick of Main Street. The of a Gopher Prairie appeared in boarding-houses where bureau-clerks to army officers about the movies; a thousand Sam Clarks and a Widow Bogarts were to be in the Sunday procession, in parties, and at the dinners of State Societies, to which the from Texas or Michigan that they might themselves in the that their Gopher Prairies were “a whole and than this stuck-up East.”
But she a Washington which did not to Main Street.
Guy Pollock to a cousin, a temporary army captain, a and who took Carol to tea-dances, and laughed, as she had always wanted some one to laugh, about nothing in particular. The captain her to the of a congressman, a with many in the navy. Through her Carol met and majors, newspapermen, and and from the bureaus, and a teacher who was a familiar of the headquarters. The teacher took her to headquarters. Carol a suffragist. Indeed her only position was as an able of envelopes. But she was by this family of who, when they were not being or arrested, took dancing lessons or up the Chesapeake Canal or talked about the politics of the American Federation of Labor.
With the congressman's and the teacher Carol a small flat. Here she home, her own place and her own people. She had, though it most of her salary, an excellent nurse for Hugh. She herself put him to and played with him on holidays. There were walks with him, there were of reading, but Washington was with people, of them, about the flat, talking, talking, talking, not always but always excitedly. It was not at all the “artist's studio” of which, of its in fiction, she had dreamed. Most of them were in offices all day, and more in card-catalogues or than in and color. But they played, very simply, and they saw no why anything which cannot also be acknowledged.
She was sometimes as she had Gopher Prairie by these girls with their cigarettes and knowledge. When they were most about or canoeing, she listened, to have some special learning which would her, and that her had come so late. Kennicott and Main Street had her self-reliance; the presence of Hugh her temporary. Some day—oh, she'd have to take him to open and the right to climb about hay-lofts.
But the that she be among these did not keep her from being proud of them, from them in with Kennicott, who (she his voice), “They're a of wild sittin' the rag,” and “I haven't got the time to after a of these fads; I'm too a for our old age.”
Most of the men who came to the flat, they were army officers or who the army, had the easy gentleness, the of without embarrassed banter, for which she had in Gopher Prairie. Yet they to be as as the Sam Clarks. She that it was they were of secure reputation, not in by the fire of jealousies. Kennicott had that the villager's of is to his poverty. “We're no dudes,” he boasted. Yet these army and men, these experts, and of leagues, were on three or four thousand a year, while Kennicott had, of his land speculations, six thousand or more, and Sam had eight.
Nor she upon learn that many of this died in the poorhouse. That is for men like Kennicott who, after fifty years to “putting a stake,” the in oil-stocks.
IV
She was to that she had not been in Gopher Prairie as and slatternly. She the same not only in girls from but also in old ladies who, of husbands and old houses, yet managed to make a very thing of it by in small and having time to read.
But she also learned that by Gopher Prairie was a model of color, planning, and intellectuality. From her teacher-housemate she had a of a Middlewestern railroad-division town, of the same size as Gopher Prairie but of and trees, a town where the along the cinder-scabbed Main Street, and the shops, from and doorway, rolled out in coils.
Other she came to know by anecdote: a village where the wind all day long, and the was two thick in spring, and in the new-painted houses and the flowers set out in pots. New England mill-towns with the hands in of like of lava. A rich farming-center in New Jersey, off the railroad, pious, by old men, old men, about the talking of James G. Blaine. A Southern town, full of the and white which Carol had as proof of romance, but the negroes, to the Old Families. A Western mining-settlement like a tumor. A semi-city with and architects, visited by famous and lecturers, but from a labor and the manufacturers' association, so that in the of the new houses there was a and heresy-hunt.
V
The which plots Carol's progress is not easy to read. The lines are and of direction; often of they in scrawls; and the colors are and pink and the of pencil marks. A lines are traceable.
Unhappy are to protecting their by gossip, by whining, by high-church and new-thought religions, or by a of vagueness. Carol had in none of these from reality, but she, who was and merry, had been by Gopher Prairie. Even her had been but the temporary of panic. The thing she in Washington was not about office-systems and labor but courage, that called poise. Her of millions of people and a score of nations Main Street from to its pettiness. She again be so by the power with which she herself had the Vidas and Blaussers and Bogarts.
From her work and from her with who had in cities, or had political prisoners, she something of an attitude; saw that she had been as personal as Maud Dyer.
And why, she to ask, did she at individuals? Not but are the enemies, and they most the who the most them. They their under a hundred and names, such as Polite Society, the Family, the Church, Sound Business, the Party, the Country, the Superior White Race; and the only defense against them, Carol beheld, is laughter.
