Chapter: CHAPTER XXXVI


KENNICOTT was not so inhumanly patient that he could continue to forgive
Carol's heresies, to woo her as he had on the venture to California. She
tried to be inconspicuous, but she was betrayed by her failure to glow
over the boosting. Kennicott believed in it; demanded that she say
patriotic things about the White Way and the new factory. He snorted,
"By golly, I've done all I could, and now I expect you to play the game.
Here you been complaining for years about us being so poky, and now when
Blausser comes along and does stir up excitement and beautify the town
like you've always wanted somebody to, why, you say he's a roughneck,
and you won't jump on the band-wagon."

Once, when Kennicott announced at noon-dinner, "What do you know
about this! They say there's a chance we may get another
factory--cream-separator works!" he added, "You might try to look
interested, even if you ain't!" The baby was frightened by the Jovian
roar; ran wailing to hide his face in Carol's lap; and Kennicott had to
make himself humble and court both mother and child. The dim injustice
of not being understood even by his son left him irritable. He felt
injured.

An event which did not directly touch them brought down his wrath.

In the early autumn, news came from Wakamin that the sheriff had
forbidden an organizer for the National Nonpartisan League to speak
anywhere in the county. The organizer had defied the sheriff, and
announced that in a few days he would address a farmers' political
meeting. That night, the news ran, a mob of a hundred business men
led by the sheriff--the tame village street and the smug village faces
ruddled by the light of bobbing lanterns, the mob flowing between the
squatty rows of shops--had taken the organizer from his hotel, ridden
him on a fence-rail, put him on a freight train, and warned him not to
return.

The story was threshed out in Dave Dyer's drug store, with Sam Clark,
Kennicott, and Carol present.

"That's the way to treat those fellows--only they ought to have lynched
him!" declared Sam, and Kennicott and Dave Dyer joined in a proud "You
bet!"

Carol walked out hastily, Kennicott observing her.

Through supper-time she knew that he was bubbling and would soon boil
over. When the baby was abed, and they sat composedly in canvas chairs
on the porch, he experimented; "I had a hunch you thought Sam was kind
of hard on that fellow they kicked out of Wakamin."

"Wasn't Sam rather needlessly heroic?"

"All these organizers, yes, and a whole lot of the German and
Squarehead farmers themselves, they're seditious as the devil--disloyal,
non-patriotic, pro-German pacifists, that's what they are!"

"Did this organizer say anything pro-German?"

"Not on your life! They didn't give him a chance!" His laugh was stagey.

"So the whole thing was illegal--and led by the sheriff! Precisely how
do you expect these aliens to obey your law if the officer of the law
teaches them to break it? Is it a new kind of logic?"

"Maybe it wasn't exactly regular, but what's the odds? They knew this
fellow would try to stir up trouble. Whenever it comes right down to a
question of defending Americanism and our constitutional rights, it's
justifiable to set aside ordinary procedure."

"What editorial did he get that from?" she wondered, as she protested,
"See here, my beloved, why can't you Tories declare war honestly? You
don't oppose this organizer because you think he's seditious but
because you're afraid that the farmers he is organizing will deprive you
townsmen of the money you make out of mortgages and wheat and shops.
Of course, since we're at war with Germany, anything that any one of us
doesn't like is 'pro-German,' whether it's business competition or
bad music. If we were fighting England, you'd call the radicals
'pro-English.' When this war is over, I suppose you'll be calling them
'red anarchists.' What an eternal art it is--such a glittery delightful
art--finding hard names for our opponents! How we do sanctify our
efforts to keep them from getting the holy dollars we want for
ourselves! The churches have always done it, and the political
orators--and I suppose I do it when I call Mrs. Bogart a 'Puritan' and
Mr. Stowbody a 'capitalist.' But you business men are going to beat all
the rest of us at it, with your simple-hearted, energetic, pompous----"

She got so far only because Kennicott was slow in shaking off respect
for her. Now he bayed:

"That'll be about all from you! I've stood for your sneering at this
town, and saying how ugly and dull it is. I've stood for your refusing
to appreciate good fellows like Sam. I've even stood for your ridiculing
our Watch Gopher Prairie Grow campaign. But one thing I'm not going
to stand: I'm not going to stand my own wife being seditious. You can
camouflage all you want to, but you know darn well that these radicals,
as you call 'em, are opposed to the war, and let me tell you right here
and now, and you and all these long-haired men and short-haired women
can beef all you want to, but we're going to take these fellows, and if
they ain't patriotic, we're going to make them be patriotic. And--Lord
knows I never thought I'd have to say this to my own wife--but if you go
defending these fellows, then the same thing applies to you! Next thing,
I suppose you'll be yapping about free speech. Free speech! There's too
much free speech and free gas and free beer and free love and all the
rest of your damned mouthy freedom, and if I had my way I'd make you
folks live up to the established rules of decency even if I had to take
you----"

"Will!" She was not timorous now. "Am I pro-German if I fail to throb to
Honest Jim Blausser, too? Let's have my whole duty as a wife!"

He was grumbling, "The whole thing's right in line with the criticism
you've always been making. Might have known you'd oppose any decent
constructive work for the town or for----"

"You're right. All I've done has been in line. I don't belong to Gopher
Prairie. That isn't meant as a condemnation of Gopher Prairie, and it
may be a condemnation of me. All right! I don't care! I don't belong
here, and I'm going. I'm not asking permission any more. I'm simply
going."

He grunted. "Do you mind telling me, if it isn't too much trouble, how
long you're going for?"

"I don't know. Perhaps for a year. Perhaps for a lifetime."

"I see. Well, of course, I'll be tickled to death to sell out my
practise and go anywhere you say. Would you like to have me go with you
to Paris and study art, maybe, and wear velveteen pants and a woman's
bonnet, and live on spaghetti?"

"No, I think we can save you that trouble. You don't quite understand.
I am going--I really am--and alone! I've got to find out what my work
is----"

"Work? Work? Sure! That's the whole trouble with you! You haven't got
enough work to do. If you had five kids and no hired girl, and had to
help with the chores and separate the cream, like these farmers' wives,
then you wouldn't be so discontented."

"I know. That's what most men--and women--like you WOULD say. That's how
they would explain all I am and all I want. And I shouldn't argue with
them. These business men, from their crushing labors of sitting in an
office seven hours a day, would calmly recommend that I have a dozen
children. As it happens, I've done that sort of thing. There've been a
good many times when we hadn't a maid, and I did all the housework, and
cared for Hugh, and went to Red Cross, and did it all very efficiently.
I'm a good cook and a good sweeper, and you don't dare say I'm not!"

"N-no, you're----"

"But was I more happy when I was drudging? I was not. I was just
bedraggled and unhappy. It's work--but not my work. I could run
an office or a library, or nurse and teach children. But solitary
dish-washing isn't enough to satisfy me--or many other women. We're
going to chuck it. We're going to wash 'em by machinery, and come out
and play with you men in the offices and clubs and politics you've
cleverly kept for yourselves! Oh, we're hopeless, we dissatisfied women!
Then why do you want to have us about the place, to fret you? So it's
for your sake that I'm going!"

"Of course a little thing like Hugh makes no difference!"

"Yes, all the difference. That's why I'm going to take him with me."

"Suppose I refuse?"

"You won't!"

Forlornly, "Uh----Carrie, what the devil is it you want, anyway?"

"Oh, conversation! No, it's much more than that. I think it's a
greatness of life--a refusal to be content with even the healthiest
mud."

"Don't you know that nobody ever solved a problem by running away from
it?"

"Perhaps. Only I choose to make my own definition of 'running away' I
don't call----Do you realize how big a world there is beyond this Gopher
Prairie where you'd keep me all my life? It may be that some day I'll
come back, but not till I can bring something more than I have now. And
even if I am cowardly and run away--all right, call it cowardly, call me
anything you want to! I've been ruled too long by fear of being called
things. I'm going away to be quiet and think. I'm--I'm going! I have a
right to my own life."

"So have I to mine!"

"Well?"

"I have a right to my life--and you're it, you're my life! You've made
yourself so. I'm damned if I'll agree to all your freak notions, but I
will say I've got to depend on you. Never thought of that complication,
did you, in this 'off to Bohemia, and express yourself, and free love,
and live your own life' stuff!"

"You have a right to me if you can keep me. Can you?"

He moved uneasily.


II


For a month they discussed it. They hurt each other very much, and
sometimes they were close to weeping, and invariably he used banal
phrases about her duties and she used phrases quite as banal about
freedom, and through it all, her discovery that she really could get
away from Main Street was as sweet as the discovery of love. Kennicott
never consented definitely. At most he agreed to a public theory that
she was "going to take a short trip and see what the East was like in
wartime."

She set out for Washington in October--just before the war ended.

She had determined on Washington because it was less intimidating than
the obvious New York, because she hoped to find streets in which Hugh
could play, and because in the stress of war-work, with its demand for
thousands of temporary clerks, she could be initiated into the world of
offices.

Hugh was to go with her, despite the wails and rather extensive comments
of Aunt Bessie.

She wondered if she might not encounter Erik in the East but it was a
chance thought, soon forgotten.


III


The last thing she saw on the station platform was Kennicott, faithfully
waving his hand, his face so full of uncomprehending loneliness that he
could not smile but only twitch up his lips. She waved to him as long
as she could, and when he was lost she wanted to leap from the vestibule
and run back to him. She thought of a hundred tendernesses she had
neglected.

She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest
of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether
excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.

She sighed, "I couldn't do this if it weren't for Will's kindness, his
giving me money." But a second after: "I wonder how many women would
always stay home if they had the money?"

Hugh complained, "Notice me, mummy!" He was beside her on the red plush
seat of the day-coach; a boy of three and a half. "I'm tired of playing
train. Let's play something else. Let's go see Auntie Bogart."

"Oh, NO! Do you really like Mrs. Bogart?"

"Yes. She gives me cookies and she tells me about the Dear Lord. You
never tell me about the Dear Lord. Why don't you tell me about the
Dear Lord? Auntie Bogart says I'm going to be a preacher. Can I be a
preacher? Can I preach about the Dear Lord?"

"Oh, please wait till my generation has stopped rebelling before yours
starts in!"

"What's a generation?"

"It's a ray in the illumination of the spirit."

"That's foolish." He was a serious and literal person, and rather
humorless. She kissed his frown, and marveled:

"I am running away from my husband, after liking a Swedish ne'er-do-well
and expressing immoral opinions, just as in a romantic story. And my own
son reproves me because I haven't given him religious instruction. But
the story doesn't go right. I'm neither groaning nor being dramatically
saved. I keep on running away, and I enjoy it. I'm mad with joy over it.
Gopher Prairie is lost back there in the dust and stubble, and I look
forward----"

She continued it to Hugh: "Darling, do you know what mother and you are
going to find beyond the blue horizon rim?"

"What?" flatly.

"We're going to find elephants with golden howdahs from which peep young
maharanees with necklaces of rubies, and a dawn sea colored like the
breast of a dove, and a white and green house filled with books and
silver tea-sets."

"And cookies?"

"Cookies? Oh, most decidedly cookies. We've had enough of bread and
porridge. We'd get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on
no cookies at all."

"That's foolish."

"It is, O male Kennicott!"

"Huh!" said Kennicott II, and went to sleep on her shoulder.


IV

The theory of the Dauntless regarding Carol's absence:

Mrs. Will Kennicott and son Hugh left on No. 24 on Saturday last for
a stay of some months in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Washington.
Mrs. Kennicott confided to _Ye Scribe_ that she will be connected with one
of the multifarious war activities now centering in the Nation's
Capital for a brief period before returning. Her countless friends who
appreciate her splendid labors with the local Red Cross realize how
valuable she will be to any war board with which she chooses to become
connected. Gopher Prairie thus adds another shining star to its service
flag and without wishing to knock any neighboring communities, we would
like to know any town of anywheres near our size in the state that has
such a sterling war record. Another reason why you'd better Watch Gopher
Prairie Grow.

* * *

Mr. and Mrs. David Dyer, Mrs. Dyer's sister, Mrs. Jennie Dayborn of
Jackrabbit, and Dr. Will Kennicott drove to Minniemashie on Tuesday for
a delightful picnic.

 Kennicott feels hurt that Carol does not show any interest in the town boosting campaign and that she did not appreciate Mr. Blausser. They have an argument over an organizer for the National Non Partisan League who had announced that he would address a farmer's meeting in spite of the ban on such meetings. He was caught by a mob of a hundred businessmen and the sheriff and put in a freight train, with the warning never to return. When Kennicott, Sam Clark and Dave Dyer are happy that the organizer was thus got rid of, Carol does not show any happiness. Kennicott accuses Carol of not being capable of appreciating good people. He declares that he will not tolerate his wife making seditious remarks. He condemns all radicals and declares that the people of Gopher Prairie will make them all become patriotic. Carol wants to know if she is considered to be pro-German because she does not applaud Mr. Blausser. She tells Kennicott that she did not belong to Gopher Prairie and so she was going to leave it. Kennicott sarcastically asks her if she expected him to settle down in Paris and study arts. Carol tells him that she will leave Kennicott and take Hugh with her. She says that she wants to find out her work. He tells her that if she had five children and had to work like a farmer's wife she would not feel discontent. She points out that she had done a lot of housework, cared for Hugh and did the Red Cross work too. She says that she cannot be satisfied with mechanical work. She would like to teach children or run an office or a library. Kennicott asks her what would she do if he refused to let her take Hugh with her. She says that he will not refuse. He points out that she was running away from problems. She retorts that she is not afraid of being called such names and that she had a right to her own life. They discuss it for a month, hurting each other in the process. Finally he agrees to let her go. They inform their friends that she wants to go and see what the east was like in the wartime. She decides to go to Washington because she feels that it is less intimidating than New York and also because she will be able to find work there. When the train leaves Gopher Prairie, she sees Kennicott looking forlorn at the station. Hugh wants to see Aunt Bogart. He tells her that she gives him cookies and tells him about the Dear Lord. He asks Carol why she never tells him anything about the Dear Lord? He asks her if he can become a preacher when he grew up? She tells him that where they go they will find elephants and maharanis with necklaces of rubies. He wants to know if they will have cookies. She tells him that they will have cookies till they get sick of it. Hugh believes that it would be foolish. Carol realizes that Hugh is just like Kennicott. Dauntless of Gopher Prairie informs its readers that Carol Kennicott went to Washington to work in the war office and calls her another shining star in the service of the nation. The Dyers, Mrs. Dyer's sister and Kennicott go for a picnic to the lake.

