Chapter: CHAPTER XXXIX


SHE wondered all the way home what her sensations would be. She wondered
about it so much that she had every sensation she had imagined. She was
excited by each familiar porch, each hearty "Well, well!" and flattered
to be, for a day, the most important news of the community. She bustled
about, making calls. Juanita Haydock bubbled over their Washington
encounter, and took Carol to her social bosom. This ancient opponent
seemed likely to be her most intimate friend, for Vida Sherwin, though
she was cordial, stood back and watched for imported heresies.

In the evening Carol went to the mill. The mystical Om-Om-Om of the
dynamos in the electric-light plant behind the mill was louder in the
darkness. Outside sat the night watchman, Champ Perry. He held up his
stringy hands and squeaked, "We've all missed you terrible."

Who in Washington would miss her?

Who in Washington could be depended upon like Guy Pollock? When she saw
him on the street, smiling as always, he seemed an eternal thing, a part
of her own self.

After a week she decided that she was neither glad nor sorry to be back.
She entered each day with the matter-of-fact attitude with which she
had gone to her office in Washington. It was her task; there would be
mechanical details and meaningless talk; what of it?

The only problem which she had approached with emotion proved
insignificant. She had, on the train, worked herself up to such devotion
that she was willing to give up her own room, to try to share all of her
life with Kennicott.

He mumbled, ten minutes after she had entered the house, "Say, I've kept
your room for you like it was. I've kind of come round to your way of
thinking. Don't see why folks need to get on each other's nerves just
because they're friendly. Darned if I haven't got so I like a little
privacy and mulling things over by myself."


II


She had left a city which sat up nights to talk of universal transition;
of European revolution, guild socialism, free verse. She had fancied
that all the world was changing.

She found that it was not.

In Gopher Prairie the only ardent new topics were prohibition, the place
in Minneapolis where you could get whisky at thirteen dollars a quart,
recipes for home-made beer, the "high cost of living," the presidential
election, Clark's new car, and not very novel foibles of Cy Bogart.
Their problems were exactly what they had been two years ago, what they
had been twenty years ago, and what they would be for twenty years to
come. With the world a possible volcano, the husbandmen were plowing at
the base of the mountain. A volcano does occasionally drop a river
of lava on even the best of agriculturists, to their astonishment and
considerable injury, but their cousins inherit the farms and a year or
two later go back to the plowing.

She was unable to rhapsodize much over the seven new bungalows and the
two garages which Kennicott had made to seem so important. Her intensest
thought about them was, "Oh yes, they're all right I suppose." The
change which she did heed was the erection of the schoolbuilding, with
its cheerful brick walls, broad windows, gymnasium, classrooms for
agriculture and cooking. It indicated Vida's triumph, and it stirred her
to activity--any activity. She went to Vida with a jaunty, "I think I
shall work for you. And I'll begin at the bottom."

She did. She relieved the attendant at the rest-room for an hour a
day. Her only innovation was painting the pine table a black and orange
rather shocking to the Thanatopsis. She talked to the farmwives and
soothed their babies and was happy.

Thinking of them she did not think of the ugliness of Main Street as she
hurried along it to the chatter of the Jolly Seventeen.

She wore her eye-glasses on the street now. She was beginning to ask
Kennicott and Juanita if she didn't look young, much younger than
thirty-three. The eye-glasses pinched her nose. She considered
spectacles. They would make her seem older, and hopelessly settled.
No! She would not wear spectacles yet. But she tried on a pair at
Kennicott's office. They really were much more comfortable.


III


Dr. Westlake, Sam Clark, Nat Hicks, and Del Snafflin were talking in
Del's barber shop.

"Well, I see Kennicott's wife is taking a whirl at the rest-room, now,"
said Dr. Westlake. He emphasized the "now."

Del interrupted the shaving of Sam and, with his brush dripping lather,
he observed jocularly:

"What'll she be up to next? They say she used to claim this burg wasn't
swell enough for a city girl like her, and would we please tax ourselves
about thirty-seven point nine and fix it all up pretty, with tidies on
the hydrants and statoos on the lawns----"

Sam irritably blew the lather from his lips, with milky small bubbles,
and snorted, "Be a good thing for most of us roughnecks if we did have
a smart woman to tell us how to fix up the town. Just as much to her
kicking as there was to Jim Blausser's gassing about factories. And you
can bet Mrs. Kennicott is smart, even if she is skittish. Glad to see
her back."

Dr. Westlake hastened to play safe. "So was I! So was I! She's got a
nice way about her, and she knows a good deal about books, or fiction
anyway. Of course she's like all the rest of these women--not
solidly founded--not scholarly--doesn't know anything about political
economy--falls for every new idea that some windjamming crank puts out.
But she's a nice woman. She'll probably fix up the rest-room, and the
rest-room is a fine thing, brings a lot of business to town. And now
that Mrs. Kennicott's been away, maybe she's got over some of her fool
ideas. Maybe she realizes that folks simply laugh at her when she tries
to tell us how to run everything."

"Sure. She'll take a tumble to herself," said Nat Hicks, sucking in
his lips judicially. "As far as I'm concerned, I'll say she's as nice a
looking skirt as there is in town. But yow!" His tone electrified them.
"Guess she'll miss that Swede Valborg that used to work for me! They was
a pair! Talking poetry and moonshine! If they could of got away with it,
they'd of been so darn lovey-dovey----"

Sam Clark interrupted, "Rats, they never even thought about making love,
Just talking books and all that junk. I tell you, Carrie Kennicott's
a smart woman, and these smart educated women all get funny ideas, but
they get over 'em after they've had three or four kids. You'll see her
settled down one of these days, and teaching Sunday School and helping
at sociables and behaving herself, and not trying to butt into business
and politics. Sure!"

After only fifteen minutes of conference on her stockings, her son, her
separate bedroom, her music, her ancient interest in Guy Pollock, her
probable salary in Washington, and every remark which she was known to
have made since her return, the supreme council decided that they would
permit Carol Kennicott to live, and they passed on to a consideration of
Nat Hicks's New One about the traveling salesman and the old maid.


IV


For some reason which was totally mysterious to Carol, Maud Dyer seemed
to resent her return. At the Jolly Seventeen Maud giggled nervously,
"Well, I suppose you found war-work a good excuse to stay away and have
a swell time. Juanita! Don't you think we ought to make Carrie tell us
about the officers she met in Washington?"

They rustled and stared. Carol looked at them. Their curiosity seemed
natural and unimportant.

"Oh yes, yes indeed, have to do that some day," she yawned.

She no longer took Aunt Bessie Smail seriously enough to struggle for
independence. She saw that Aunt Bessie did not mean to intrude; that
she wanted to do things for all the Kennicotts. Thus Carol hit upon the
tragedy of old age, which is not that it is less vigorous than youth,
but that it is not needed by youth; that its love and prosy sageness,
so important a few years ago, so gladly offered now, are rejected
with laughter. She divined that when Aunt Bessie came in with a jar of
wild-grape jelly she was waiting in hope of being asked for the recipe.
After that she could be irritated but she could not be depressed by Aunt
Bessie's simoom of questioning.

She wasn't depressed even when she heard Mrs. Bogart observe, "Now we've
got prohibition it seems to me that the next problem of the country
ain't so much abolishing cigarettes as it is to make folks observe the
Sabbath and arrest these law-breakers that play baseball and go to the
movies and all on the Lord's Day."

Only one thing bruised Carol's vanity. Few people asked her about
Washington. They who had most admiringly begged Percy Bresnahan for his
opinions were least interested in her facts. She laughed at herself when
she saw that she had expected to be at once a heretic and a returned
hero; she was very reasonable and merry about it; and it hurt just as
much as ever.

Her baby, born in August, was a girl. Carol could not decide whether she
was to become a feminist leader or marry a scientist or both, but did
settle on Vassar and a tricolette suit with a small black hat for her
Freshman year.


VI


Hugh was loquacious at breakfast. He desired to give his impressions of
owls and F Street.

"Don't make so much noise. You talk too much," growled Kennicott.

Carol flared. "Don't speak to him that way! Why don't you listen to him?
He has some very interesting things to tell."

"What's the idea? Mean to say you expect me to spend all my time
listening to his chatter?"

"Why not?"

"For one thing, he's got to learn a little discipline. Time for him to
start getting educated."

"I've learned much more discipline, I've had much more education, from
him than he has from me."

"What's this? Some new-fangled idea of raising kids you got in
Washington?"

"Perhaps. Did you ever realize that children are people?"

"That's all right. I'm not going to have him monopolizing the
conversation."

"No, of course. We have our rights, too. But I'm going to bring him up
as a human being. He has just as many thoughts as we have, and I want
him to develop them, not take Gopher Prairie's version of them. That's
my biggest work now--keeping myself, keeping you, from 'educating' him."

"Well, let's not scrap about it. But I'm not going to have him spoiled."

Kennicott had forgotten it in ten minutes; and she forgot it--this time.


VII


The Kennicotts and the Sam Clarks had driven north to a duck-pass
between two lakes, on an autumn day of blue and copper.

Kennicott had given her a light twenty-gauge shotgun. She had a first
lesson in shooting, in keeping her eyes open, not wincing, understanding
that the bead at the end of the barrel really had something to do with
pointing the gun. She was radiant; she almost believed Sam when he
insisted that it was she who had shot the mallard at which they had
fired together.

She sat on the bank of the reedy lake and found rest in Mrs. Clark's
drawling comments on nothing. The brown dusk was still. Behind them were
dark marshes. The plowed acres smelled fresh. The lake was garnet and
silver. The voices of the men, waiting for the last flight, were clear
in the cool air.

"Mark left!" sang Kennicott, in a long-drawn call.

Three ducks were swooping down in a swift line. The guns banged, and
a duck fluttered. The men pushed their light boat out on the burnished
lake, disappeared beyond the reeds. Their cheerful voices and the slow
splash and clank of oars came back to Carol from the dimness. In the sky
a fiery plain sloped down to a serene harbor. It dissolved; the lake
was white marble; and Kennicott was crying, "Well, old lady, how about
hiking out for home? Supper taste pretty good, eh?"

"I'll sit back with Ethel," she said, at the car.

It was the first time she had called Mrs. Clark by her given name; the
first time she had willingly sat back, a woman of Main Street.

"I'm hungry. It's good to be hungry," she reflected, as they drove away.

She looked across the silent fields to the west. She was conscious of an
unbroken sweep of land to the Rockies, to Alaska, a dominion which
will rise to unexampled greatness when other empires have grown senile.
Before that time, she knew, a hundred generations of Carols will aspire
and go down in tragedy devoid of palls and solemn chanting, the humdrum
inevitable tragedy of struggle against inertia.

"Let's all go to the movies tomorrow night. Awfully exciting film," said
Ethel Clark.

"Well, I was going to read a new book but----All right, let's go," said
Carol.


VIII


"They're too much for me," Carol sighed to Kennicott. "I've been
thinking about getting up an annual Community Day, when the whole town
would forget feuds and go out and have sports and a picnic and a dance.
But Bert Tybee (why did you ever elect him mayor?)--he's kidnapped my
idea. He wants the Community Day, but he wants to have some politician
'give an address.' That's just the stilted sort of thing I've tried to
avoid. He asked Vida, and of course she agreed with him."

Kennicott considered the matter while he wound the clock and they
tramped up-stairs.

"Yes, it would jar you to have Bert butting in," he said amiably. "Are
you going to do much fussing over this Community stunt? Don't you ever
get tired of fretting and stewing and experimenting?"

"I haven't even started. Look!" She led him to the nursery door, pointed
at the fuzzy brown head of her daughter. "Do you see that object on the
pillow? Do you know what it is? It's a bomb to blow up smugness. If you
Tories were wise, you wouldn't arrest anarchists; you'd arrest all these
children while they're asleep in their cribs. Think what that baby will
see and meddle with before she dies in the year 2000! She may see an
industrial union of the whole world, she may see aeroplanes going to
Mars."

"Yump, probably be changes all right," yawned Kennicott.

She sat on the edge of his bed while he hunted through his bureau for a
collar which ought to be there and persistently wasn't.

"I'll go on, always. And I am happy. But this Community Day makes me see
how thoroughly I'm beaten."

"That darn collar certainly is gone for keeps," muttered Kennicott and,
louder, "Yes, I guess you----I didn't quite catch what you said, dear."

She patted his pillows, turned down his sheets, as she reflected:

"But I have won in this: I've never excused my failures by sneering at
my aspirations, by pretending to have gone beyond them. I do not admit
that Main Street is as beautiful as it should be! I do not admit that
Gopher Prairie is greater or more generous than Europe! I do not admit
that dish-washing is enough to satisfy all women! I may not have fought
the good fight, but I have kept the faith."

"Sure. You bet you have," said Kennicott. "Well, good night. Sort of
feels to me like it might snow tomorrow. Have to be thinking about
putting up the storm-windows pretty soon. Say, did you notice whether
the girl put that screwdriver back?"

 Carol is happy to return home. She is given a warm welcome. Juanita accepts her as a friend, while Vida cautiously watches her for her old ideas. At the mill, Champ Perry tells her that he missed her very much. She feels happy to have been missed. She is happy to see the friendly Guy Pollock. She is even ready to give up her separate room. But Kennicott tells her that he understands her need for privacy and that he too would like to be by himself sometimes in his own room. Carol finds that her friends discuss the same topics that they were happy to discuss two years back. The new school building looks cheerful. Carol relieves the attendant at the rest room for one hour every day. She talks to the farmer's wives and soothes their babies. She even starts wearing her eyeglasses on the streets. The men of Gopher Prairie discuss Carol in the barber's shop. Sam points out that they need a smart woman like her to fix up the town. Dr. Westlake says that though she knows lots about books, her ideas of political economy are not sound. He hopes that she would not try to tell them how to run the town. Nat Hicks adds that she was very friendly with Erik Valborg and that he would miss him. Sam Clark tells him that they never thought about making love but only discussed books. After analyzing every aspect of her personality they decide to let her live. Carol is surprised to find that Maud resents her return. She asks Carol to tell them about the officers she met at Washington. They all look at her eagerly. Carol pats down a yarn and tells them that she would tell them about the officers some other time. She understands that Aunt Bessie interferes only because she needs her love. She is able to tolerate Mrs. Bogart's declaration that they need to prohibit cigarettes. She feels hurt that nobody asked her for her opinions about Washington. Carol's second baby is a girl. She is unable to decide if her daughter would be a feminist or marry a scientist. They have an argument about Hugh's discipline. Kennicott claims that he monopolized the conversation. Carol argues that Hugh had his own ideas and insists that they should listen to him. She goes for a ride with the Clarks and willingly sits at the back with Mrs. Clark. Kennicott gives her a light gun and she learns to shoot. Mrs. Clark suggests going to a movie and Carol agrees. Carol feels upset when her idea of a community day is highjacked by Mr. Bert Tybee-the mayor. He wants to invite a politician to address the meeting. She complains to Kennicott that Vida agreed without protest. Kennicott sympathizes with her and wonders at her energy to fuss about such things. Carol tells him that she has not even started anything but her daughter would blow up their smugness. She is certain that her daughter would see many changes. She tells Kennicott with satisfaction that she had won her war by keeping up the fight and by keeping her faith. He agrees with her and wonders if the maid kept the screwdriver back in its place.

