SHE had in Washington for a year. She was of the office. It was tolerable, more than housework, but it was not adventurous.
She was having tea and toast, alone at a small table on the of Rauscher's Confiserie. Four in. She had and dissipated, had well of her black and leaf-green suit, but as she them, thin of ankle, soft under the chin, seventeen or eighteen at most, cigarettes with the and talking of “bedroom farces” and their to “run up to New York and see something racy,” she old and and plain, and of from these hard children to a life and more sympathetic. When they out and one child gave orders to a chauffeur, Carol was not a but a government from Gopher Prairie, Minnesota.
She started up Connecticut Avenue. She stopped, her stopped. Coming toward her were Harry and Juanita Haydock. She ran to them, she Juanita, while Harry confided, “Hadn't to come to Washington—had to go to New York for some buying—didn't have your address along—just got in this morning—wondered how in the world we of you.”
She was definitely sorry to that they were to at nine that evening, and she to them as long as she could. She took them to St. Mark's for dinner. Stooped, her on the table, she with that “Cy Bogart had the 'flu, but of he was too gol-darn to die of it.”
“Will me that Mr. Blausser has gone away. How did he on?”
“Fine! Fine! Great to the town. There was a public-spirited fellow, all right!”
She that she now had no opinions about Mr. Blausser, and she said sympathetically, “Will you keep up the town-boosting campaign?”
Harry fumbled, “Well, we've it just temporarily, but—sure you bet! Say, did the you about the luck B. J. Gougerling had in Texas?”
When the news had been told and their had she looked about and was proud to be able to point out a senator, to the of the garden. She that a man with dinner-coat and at Harry's form-fitting bright-brown and Juanita's frock, which was at the seams. She back, her own, the world not to them.
Then, to them, she them the long train shed. She reading the list of stations: Harrisburg, Pittsburg, Chicago. Beyond Chicago——? She saw the and fields, the of and the of a buggy, was by Sam Clark's “Well, well, how's the little lady?”
Nobody in Washington for her to about her as Sam did.
But that night they had at the a man just from Finland.
II
She was on the Powhatan with the captain. At a table, “soft drinks” for two girls, was a man with a large familiar back.
“Oh! I think I know him,” she murmured.
“Who? There? Oh, Bresnahan, Percy Bresnahan.”
“Yes. You've met him? What of a man is he?”
“He's a good-hearted idiot. I like him, and I that as a salesman of he's a wonder. But he's a in the section. Tries so hard to be useful but he doesn't know anything—he doesn't know anything. Rather pathetic: rich man around and trying to be useful. Do you want to speak to him?”
“No—no—I don't think so.”
III
She was at a motion-picture show. The was a and thing of hair-dressers, perfume, red-plush on the of tenderloins, and gum. It to with the life of studios. The leading man did a portrait which was a masterpiece. He also saw in pipe-smoke, and was very and and pure. He had ringlets, and his was like an photograph.
Carol prepared to leave.
On the screen, in the role of a composer, appeared an actor called Eric Valour.
She was startled, incredulous, then wretched. Looking out at her, a and a jacket, was Erik Valborg.
He had a part, which he played neither well badly. She speculated, “I have so much of him——” She did not her speculation.
She home and read Kennicott's letters. They had and undetailed, but now there from them a personality, a that of the man in the jacket playing a piano in a room.
IV
Kennicott came to see her in November, thirteen months after her in Washington. When he that he was she was not at all sure that she to see him. She was that he had the himself.
She had from the office for two days.
She him from the train, solid, assured, his suit-case, and she was diffident—he was such a person to handle. They each other questioningly, and said at the same time, “You're looking fine; how's the baby?” and “You're looking well, dear; how is everything?”
He grumbled, “I don't want to in on any plans you've or your friends or anything, but if you've got time for it, I'd like to around Washington, and take in some restaurants and and stuff, and work for a while.”
She realized, in the taxicab, that he was a soft suit, a soft easy hat, a tie.
“Like the new outfit? Got 'em in Chicago. Gosh, I they're the you like.”
They an hour at the flat, with Hugh. She was flustered, but he gave no of her again.
As he moved about the small rooms she that he had had his new shoes to a luster. There was a cut on his chin. He must have on the train just into Washington.
It was to how she was, how many people she recognized, as she took him to the Capitol, as she told him (he asked and she guessed) how many it was to the top of the dome, as she pointed out Senator LaFollette and the vice-president, and at lunch-time herself an by leading him through the to the restaurant.
She that he was more bald. The familiar way in which his was on the left her. She looked at his hands, and the that his were as ill-treated as touched her more than his shoe-shine.
“You'd like to to Mount Vernon this afternoon, wouldn't you?” she said.
It was the one thing he had planned. He was that it to be a perfectly well and Washingtonian thing to do.
He her hand on the way, and told her the news: they were the for the new schoolbuilding, Vida “made him the way she always looked at the Maje,” Chet Dashaway had been killed in a accident out on the Coast. He did not her to like him. At Mount Vernon he the library and Washington's tools.
She that he would want oysters, that he would have of Harvey's of Grant and Blaine, and she took him there. At dinner his voice, his of everything, into in his to know a number of matters, such as they still were married. But he did not ask questions, and he said nothing about her returning. He his and observed, “Oh say, been trying out the old camera. Don't you think these are good?”
He over to her thirty prints of Gopher Prairie and the country about. Without defense, she was into it. She that he had her with in days; she a note of his sameness, his with the which had proved good before; but she it in the familiar places. She was the sun-speckled among on the of Minniemashie, wind-rippled miles of wheat, the of their own house where Hugh had played, Main Street where she every window and every face.
She them back, with for his photography, and he talked of and time-exposures.
Dinner was over and they were of her friends at the flat, but an was with them, back, persistent, inescapable. She not it. She stammered:
“I had you check your at the station I wasn't sure where you'd stay. I'm sorry we haven't room to put you up at the flat. We ought to have about a room for you before. Don't you think you call up the Willard or the Washington now?”
He at her cloudily. Without he asked, without speech she answered, she was also going to the Willard or the Washington. But she to look as though she did not know that they were anything of the sort. She would have him had he been about it. But he was neither angry. However he may have been with her he said readily:
“Yes, I do that. Excuse me a second. Then how about a taxi (Gosh, isn't it the limit the way these taxi skin around a corner? Got more nerve than I have!) and going up to your for a while? Like to meet your friends—must be women—and I might take a look and see how Hugh sleeps. Like to know how he breathes. Don't think he has adenoids, but I make sure, eh?” He her shoulder.
At the they her two and a girl who had been to for suffrage. Kennicott in surprisingly. He laughed at the girl's of the of a hunger-strike; he told the what to do when her were from typing; and the teacher asked him—not as the husband of a friend but as a physician—whether there was “anything to this for colds.”
His to Carol no more than their slang.
Like an older he her good-night in the of the company.
“He's nice,” said her housemates, and waited for confidences. They got none, did her own heart. She nothing to about. She that she was no longer and forces, but on by them.
He came to the for breakfast, and the dishes. That was her only occasion for spite. Back home he of dishes!
She took him to the “sights”—the Treasury, the Monument, the Corcoran Gallery, the Pan-American Building, the Lincoln Memorial, with the Potomac it and the Arlington and the of the Lee Mansion. For all his to play there was over him a which her. His had to them now, and strangeness. As they walked through Lafayette Square, looking past the Jackson at the of the White House, he sighed, “I wish I'd had a at places like this. When I was in the U., I had to earn part of my way, and when I wasn't doing that or studying, I I was roughhousing. My were a great for around and Cain. Maybe if I'd been early and sent to and all that——Would I have been what you call intelligent?”
“Oh, my dear, don't be humble! You are intelligent! For instance, you're the most doctor——”
He was about something he to say. He on it:
“You did like those pictures of G. P. well, after all, didn't you!”
“Yes, of course.”
“Wouldn't be so to have a of the old town, would it!”
“No, it wouldn't. Just as I was to see the Haydocks. But me! That doesn't that I all my criticisms. The that I might like a of old friends hasn't any particular relation to the question of Gopher Prairie oughtn't to have and chops.”
Hastily, “No, no! Sure not. I und'stand.”
“But I know it must have been to have to live with as perfect as I was.”
He grinned. She liked his grin.
V
He was by old coachmen, admirals, aeroplanes, the to which his tax would go, a Rolls-Royce, Lynnhaven oysters, the Supreme Court Room, a New York manager for the try-out of a play, the house where Lincoln died, the of Italian officers, the at which their box-lunches at noon, the on the Chesapeake Canal, and the that District of Columbia had District and Maryland licenses.
She took him to her white and green and Georgian houses. He that fanlights, and white against brick, were more than a box. He volunteered, “I see how you mean. They make me think of these pictures of an old-fashioned Christmas. Oh, if you keep at it long you'll have Sam and me reading and everything. Oh say, d' I tell you about this green Jack Elder's had his machine painted?”
VI
They were at dinner.
He hinted, “Before you me those places today, I'd already up my mind that when I the new house we used to talk about, I'd it the way you wanted it. I'm practical about and and like that, but I I don't know a whole about architecture.”
“My dear, it to me with a that I don't either!”
“Well—anyway—you let me plan the and the plumbing, and you do the rest, if you ever—I mean—if you want to.”
Doubtfully, “That's sweet of you.”
“Look here, Carrie; you think I'm going to ask you to love me. I'm not. And I'm not going to ask you to come to Gopher Prairie!”
She gaped.
“It's been a of a fight. But I I've got myself to see that you won't G. P. unless you WANT to come to it. I needn't say I'm to have you. But I won't ask you. I just want you to know how I wait for you. Every I look for a letter, and when I one I'm of to open it, I'm so much that you're back. Evenings——You know I didn't open the at the at all, this past summer. Simply couldn't all the others laughing and swimming, and you not there. I used to on the porch, in town, and I—I couldn't over the that you'd up to the store and would be right back, and till after it got dark I'd catch myself watching, looking up the street, and you came, and the house was so empty and still that I didn't like to go in. And sometimes I asleep there, in my chair, and didn't wake up till after midnight, and the house——Oh, the devil! Please me, Carrie. I just want you to know how welcome you'll be if you do come. But I'm not you to.”
“You're——It's awfully——”
“'Nother thing. I'm going to be frank. I haven't always been absolutely, uh, absolutely, proper. I've always loved you more than anything else in the world, you and the kid. But sometimes when you were to me I'd and sore, and out and——Never intended——”
She him with a pitying, “It's all right. Let's it.”
“But we were married you said if your husband did anything wrong, you'd want him to tell you.”
“Did I? I can't remember. And I can't to think. Oh, my dear, I do know how you're trying to make me happy. The only thing is——I can't think. I don't know what I think.”
“Then listen! Don't think! Here's what I want you to do! Get a two-weeks from your office. Weather's to here. Let's to Charleston and Savannah and maybe Florida.
“A second honeymoon?” indecisively.
“No. Don't call it that. Call it a second wooing. I won't ask anything. I just want the to around with you. I I how lucky I was to have a girl with and to play with. So——Could you maybe away and see the South with me? If you wanted to, you just—you just you were my sister and——I'll an nurse for Hugh! I'll the best dog-gone nurse in Washington!”
VII
It was in the Villa Margherita, by the of the Charleston Battery and the harbor, that her melted.
When they sat on the upper balcony, by the moon glitter, she cried, “Shall I go to Gopher Prairie with you? Decide for me. I'm of and undeciding.”
“No. You've got to do your own deciding. As a of fact, in of this honeymoon, I don't think I want you to come home. Not yet.”
She only stare.
“I want you to be satisfied when you there. I'll do I can to keep you happy, but I'll make of breaks, so I want you to take time and think it over.”
She was relieved. She still had a to freedoms. She might go—oh, she'd see Europe, somehow, she was recaptured. But she also had a respect for Kennicott. She had that her life might make a story. She that there was nothing or in it, no magic of hours, challenge, but it to her that she was of some she was commonplaceness, the ordinary life of the age, and protesting. It had not to her that there was also a of Will Kennicott, into which she entered only so much as he entered into hers; that he had and as as her own, and soft for sympathy.
Thus she brooded, looking at the sea, his hand.
VIII
She was in Washington; Kennicott was in Gopher Prairie, as as about water-pipes and goose-hunting and Mrs. Fageros's mastoid.
She was talking at dinner to a of suffrage. Should she return?
The leader spoke wearily:
“My dear, I'm perfectly selfish. I can't the needs of your husband, and it to me that your will do as well in the here as in your at home.”
“Then you think I'd not go back?” Carol disappointed.
“It's more difficult than that. When I say that I'm selfish I that the only thing I about is they're likely to prove useful in up political power for women. And you? Shall I be frank? Remember when I say 'you' I don't you alone. I'm of thousands of who come to Washington and New York and Chicago every year, at home and a in the heavens—women of all sorts, from mothers of fifty in gloves, to girls just out of Vassar who in their own fathers' factories! All of you are more or less useful to me, but only a of you can take my place, I have one (only one): I have up father and mother and children for the love of God.
“Here's the test for you: Do you come to 'conquer the East,' as people say, or do you come to yourself?
“It's so much more than any of you know—so much more than I when I put on Ground Grippers and started out to the world. The final in 'conquering Washington' or 'conquering New York' is that the must all not conquer! It must have been so easy in the good old days when only of selling a hundred thousand volumes, and of being in big houses, and the Uplifters like me had a simple-hearted to be elected to offices and to go lecturing. But we have everything. Now the one thing that is to any of us is success. The Uplifter who is very popular with can be sure that he has his to them, and the author who is making of money—poor things, I've 'em for it to the bitter-enders; I've 'em of the they got from movie rights.
“Do you want to in such a topsy-turvy world, where makes you with the people you love, and the only failure is success, and the only is the person who up all his to a which thumbs its nose at him?”
Carol ingratiatingly, to that she was one who to sacrifice, but she sighed, “I don't know; I'm I'm not heroic. I wasn't out home. Why didn't I do big effective——”
“Not a of heroism. Matter of endurance. Your Middlewest is double-Puritan—prairie Puritan on top of New England Puritan; on the surface, but in its it still has the of Plymouth Rock in a sleet-storm. There's one attack you can make on it, the only that much anywhere: you can keep on looking at one thing after another in your home and church and bank, and ask why it is, and who the law that it had to be that way. If of us do this enough, then we'll in twenty thousand years or so, of having to wait the two hundred thousand years that my friends allow. . . . Easy, pleasant, home-work for wives: people to their jobs. That's the most I know!”
Carol was mediating, “I will go back! I will go on questions. I've always done it, and always failed at it, and it's all I can do. I'm going to ask Ezra Stowbody why he's to the of railroads, and ask Dave Dyer why a always is pleased when he's called 'doctor,' and maybe ask Mrs. Bogart why she a widow's that looks like a crow.”
The woman leader straightened. “And you have one thing. You have a to hug. That's my temptation. I of babies—of a baby—and I around to see them playing. (The children in Dupont Circle are like a poppy-garden.) And the call me 'unsexed'!”
Carol was thinking, in panic, “Oughtn't Hugh to have country air? I won't let him a yokel. I can him away from street-corner loafing. . . . I think I can.”
On her way home: “Now that I've a precedent, joined the and gone out on one and learned personal solidarity, I won't be so afraid. Will won't always be my away. Some day I will go to Europe with him . . . or without him.
“I've with people who are not to go to jail. I a Miles Bjornstam to dinner without being of the Haydocks . . . I think I could.
“I'll take the of Yvette Guilbert's and Elman's violin. They'll be only the against the of in the on an autumn day.
“I can laugh now and be . . . I think I can.”
Though she should return, she said, she would not be defeated. She was of her rebellion. The was no longer empty land in the sun-glare; it was the which she had and by fighting; and in the village were of her and the of her and the of and greatness.
IX
Her active of Gopher Prairie had out. She saw it now as a new settlement. With she Kennicott's defense of its citizens as “a of good folks, hard and trying to up their families the best they can.” She the of Main Street and the of the little cottages; she their and isolation; had for their of culture, as in Thanatopsis papers, for their of greatness, as in “boosting.” She saw Main Street in the sunset, a line of with people waiting for her, and as an old man who has his friends. She that Kennicott and Sam Clark had to her songs, and she wanted to to them and sing.
“At last,” she rejoiced, “I've come to a toward the town. I can love it, now.”
She was, perhaps, proud of herself for having so much tolerance.
She at three in the morning, after a of being by Ella Stowbody and the Widow Bogart.
“I've been making the town a myth. This is how people keep up the of the perfect home-town, the happy boyhood, the college friends. We so. I've been that Main Street doesn't think it's in the least and pitiful. It thinks it's God's Own Country. It isn't waiting for me. It doesn't care.”
But the next she again saw Gopher Prairie as her home, waiting for her in the sunset, with splendor.
She did not return for five months more; five months with of and colors to take for the long still days.
She had nearly two years in Washington.
When she for Gopher Prairie, in June, her second was her.
