Kabanata Kabanata 28 · Chapter XXVIII

IT WAS at a supper of the Jolly Seventeen in August that Carol heard of

“Elizabeth,” from Mrs. Dave Dyer.

Carol was fond of Maud Dyer, because she had been particularly agreeable

lately; had obviously repented of the nervous distaste which she had

once shown. Maud patted her hand when they met, and asked about Hugh.

Kennicott said that he was “kind of sorry for the girl, some ways; she's

too darn emotional, but still, Dave is sort of mean to her.” He was

polite to poor Maud when they all went down to the cottages for a swim.

Carol was proud of that sympathy in him, and now she took pains to sit

with their new friend.

Mrs. Dyer was bubbling, “Oh, have you folks heard about this young

fellow that's just come to town that the boys call 'Elizabeth'? He's

working in Nat Hicks's tailor shop. I bet he doesn't make eighteen a

week, but my! isn't he the perfect lady though! He talks so refined, and

oh, the lugs he puts on--belted coat, and pique collar with a gold pin,

and socks to match his necktie, and honest--you won't believe this, but

I got it straight--this fellow, you know he's staying at Mrs. Gurrey's

punk old boarding-house, and they say he asked Mrs. Gurrey if he ought

to put on a dress-suit for supper! Imagine! Can you beat that? And him

nothing but a Swede tailor--Erik Valborg his name is. But he used to be

in a tailor shop in Minneapolis (they do say he's a smart needle-pusher,

at that) and he tries to let on that he's a regular city fellow. They

say he tries to make people think he's a poet--carries books around and

pretends to read 'em. Myrtle Cass says she met him at a dance, and he

was mooning around all over the place, and he asked her did she like

flowers and poetry and music and everything; he spieled like he was a

regular United States Senator; and Myrtle--she's a devil, that girl,

ha! ha!--she kidded him along, and got him going, and honest, what d'you

think he said? He said he didn't find any intellectual companionship

in this town. Can you BEAT it? Imagine! And him a Swede tailor! My! And

they say he's the most awful mollycoddle--looks just like a girl. The

boys call him 'Elizabeth,' and they stop him and ask about the books he

lets on to have read, and he goes and tells them, and they take it

all in and jolly him terribly, and he never gets onto the fact they're

kidding him. Oh, I think it's just TOO funny!”

The Jolly Seventeen laughed, and Carol laughed with them. Mrs. Jack

Elder added that this Erik Valborg had confided to Mrs. Gurrey that he

would “love to design clothes for women.” Imagine! Mrs. Harvey Dillon

had had a glimpse of him, but honestly, she'd thought he was awfully

handsome. This was instantly controverted by Mrs. B. J. Gougerling, wife

of the banker. Mrs. Gougerling had had, she reported, a good look

at this Valborg fellow. She and B. J. had been motoring, and passed

“Elizabeth” out by McGruder's Bridge. He was wearing the awfullest

clothes, with the waist pinched in like a girl's. He was sitting on

a rock doing nothing, but when he heard the Gougerling car coming he

snatched a book out of his pocket, and as they went by he pretended to

be reading it, to show off. And he wasn't really good-looking--just kind

of soft, as B. J. had pointed out.

When the husbands came they joined in the expose. “My name is Elizabeth.

I'm the celebrated musical tailor. The skirts fall for me by the thou.

Do I get some more veal loaf?” merrily shrieked Dave Dyer. He had some

admirable stories about the tricks the town youngsters had played on

Valborg. They had dropped a decaying perch into his pocket. They had

pinned on his back a sign, “I'm the prize boob, kick me.”

Glad of any laughter, Carol joined the frolic, and surprised them by

crying, “Dave, I do think you're the dearest thing since you got your

hair cut!” That was an excellent sally. Everybody applauded. Kennicott

looked proud.

She decided that sometime she really must go out of her way to pass

Hicks's shop and see this freak.

II

She was at Sunday morning service at the Baptist Church, in a solemn row

with her husband, Hugh, Uncle Whittier, Aunt Bessie.

Despite Aunt Bessie's nagging the Kennicotts rarely attended church. The

doctor asserted, “Sure, religion is a fine influence--got to have it to

keep the lower classes in order--fact, it's the only thing that appeals

to a lot of those fellows and makes 'em respect the rights of property.

And I guess this theology is O.K.; lot of wise old coots figured it

all out, and they knew more about it than we do.” He believed in the

Christian religion, and never thought about it, he believed in the

church, and seldom went near it; he was shocked by Carol's lack of

faith, and wasn't quite sure what was the nature of the faith that she

lacked.

Carol herself was an uneasy and dodging agnostic.

When she ventured to Sunday School and heard the teachers droning that

the genealogy of Shamsherai was a valuable ethical problem for children

to think about; when she experimented with Wednesday prayer-meeting and

listened to store-keeping elders giving their unvarying weekly testimony

in primitive erotic symbols and such gory Chaldean phrases as “washed

in the blood of the lamb” and “a vengeful God”; when Mrs. Bogart boasted

that through his boyhood she had made Cy confess nightly upon the basis

of the Ten Commandments; then Carol was dismayed to find the Christian

religion, in America, in the twentieth century, as abnormal as

Zoroastrianism--without the splendor. But when she went to church

suppers and felt the friendliness, saw the gaiety with which the sisters

served cold ham and scalloped potatoes; when Mrs. Champ Perry cried to

her, on an afternoon call, “My dear, if you just knew how happy it makes

you to come into abiding grace,” then Carol found the humanness behind

the sanguinary and alien theology. Always she perceived that the

churches--Methodist, Baptist, Congregational, Catholic, all of

them--which had seemed so unimportant to the judge's home in her

childhood, so isolated from the city struggle in St. Paul, were

still, in Gopher Prairie, the strongest of the forces compelling

respectability.

This August Sunday she had been tempted by the announcement that the

Reverend Edmund Zitterel would preach on the topic “America, Face Your

Problems!” With the great war, workmen in every nation showing a desire

to control industries, Russia hinting a leftward revolution against

Kerensky, woman suffrage coming, there seemed to be plenty of problems

for the Reverend Mr. Zitterel to call on America to face. Carol gathered

her family and trotted off behind Uncle Whittier.

The congregation faced the heat with informality. Men with highly

plastered hair, so painfully shaved that their faces looked sore,

removed their coats, sighed, and unbuttoned two buttons of their

uncreased Sunday vests. Large-bosomed, white-bloused, hot-necked,

spectacled matrons--the Mothers in Israel, pioneers and friends of Mrs.

Champ Perry--waved their palm-leaf fans in a steady rhythm. Abashed boys

slunk into the rear pews and giggled, while milky little girls, up front

with their mothers, self-consciously kept from turning around.

The church was half barn and half Gopher Prairie parlor. The streaky

brown wallpaper was broken in its dismal sweep only by framed texts,

“Come unto Me” and “The Lord is My Shepherd,” by a list of hymns, and by

a crimson and green diagram, staggeringly drawn upon hemp-colored paper,

indicating the alarming ease with which a young man may descend from

Palaces of Pleasure and the House of Pride to Eternal Damnation. But the

varnished oak pews and the new red carpet and the three large chairs on

the platform, behind the bare reading-stand, were all of a rocking-chair

comfort.

Carol was civic and neighborly and commendable today. She beamed and

bowed. She trolled out with the others the hymn:

How pleasant 'tis on Sabbath morn

To gather in the church

And there I'll have no carnal thoughts,

Nor sin shall me besmirch.

With a rustle of starched linen skirts and stiff shirt-fronts, the

congregation sat down, and gave heed to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel. The

priest was a thin, swart, intense young man with a bang. He wore a

black sack suit and a lilac tie. He smote the enormous Bible on the

reading-stand, vociferated, “Come, let us reason together,” delivered a

prayer informing Almighty God of the news of the past week, and began to

reason.

It proved that the only problems which America had to face were

Mormonism and Prohibition:

“Don't let any of these self-conceited fellows that are always trying to

stir up trouble deceive you with the belief that there's anything to

all these smart-aleck movements to let the unions and the Farmers'

Nonpartisan League kill all our initiative and enterprise by fixing

wages and prices. There isn't any movement that amounts to a whoop

without it's got a moral background. And let me tell you that while

folks are fussing about what they call 'economics' and 'socialism'

and 'science' and a lot of things that are nothing in the world but a

disguise for atheism, the Old Satan is busy spreading his secret net

and tentacles out there in Utah, under his guise of Joe Smith or Brigham

Young or whoever their leaders happen to be today, it doesn't make any

difference, and they're making game of the Old Bible that has led this

American people through its manifold trials and tribulations to its firm

position as the fulfilment of the prophecies and the recognized leader

of all nations. 'Sit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies

the footstool of my feet,' said the Lord of Hosts, Acts II, the

thirty-fourth verse--and let me tell you right now, you got to get up a

good deal earlier in the morning than you get up even when you're going

fishing, if you want to be smarter than the Lord, who has shown us the

straight and narrow way, and he that passeth therefrom is in

eternal peril and, to return to this vital and terrible subject of

Mormonism--and as I say, it is terrible to realize how little attention

is given to this evil right here in our midst and on our very doorstep,

as it were--it's a shame and a disgrace that the Congress of these

United States spends all its time talking about inconsequential

financial matters that ought to be left to the Treasury Department, as I

understand it, instead of arising in their might and passing a law that

any one admitting he is a Mormon shall simply be deported and as it were

kicked out of this free country in which we haven't got any room for

polygamy and the tyrannies of Satan.

“And, to digress for a moment, especially as there are more of them in

this state than there are Mormons, though you never can tell what will

happen with this vain generation of young girls, that think more about

wearing silk stockings than about minding their mothers and learning to

bake a good loaf of bread, and many of them listening to these sneaking

Mormon missionaries--and I actually heard one of them talking right out

on a street-corner in Duluth, a few years ago, and the officers of the

law not protesting--but still, as they are a smaller but more immediate

problem, let me stop for just a moment to pay my respects to these

Seventh-Day Adventists. Not that they are immoral, I don't mean, but

when a body of men go on insisting that Saturday is the Sabbath, after

Christ himself has clearly indicated the new dispensation, then I think

the legislature ought to step in----”

At this point Carol awoke.

She got through three more minutes by studying the face of a girl in

the pew across: a sensitive unhappy girl whose longing poured out

with intimidating self-revelation as she worshiped Mr. Zitterel. Carol

wondered who the girl was. She had seen her at church suppers. She

considered how many of the three thousand people in the town she did not

know; to how many of them the Thanatopsis and the Jolly Seventeen were

icy social peaks; how many of them might be toiling through boredom

thicker than her own--with greater courage.

She examined her nails. She read two hymns. She got some satisfaction

out of rubbing an itching knuckle. She pillowed on her shoulder the head

of the baby who, after killing time in the same manner as his mother,

was so fortunate as to fall asleep. She read the introduction,

title-page, and acknowledgment of copyrights, in the hymnal. She tried

to evolve a philosophy which would explain why Kennicott could never

tie his scarf so that it would reach the top of the gap in his turn-down

collar.

There were no other diversions to be found in the pew. She glanced back

at the congregation. She thought that it would be amiable to bow to Mrs.

Champ Perry.

Her slow turning head stopped, galvanized.

Across the aisle, two rows back, was a strange young man who shone among

the cud-chewing citizens like a visitant from the sun-amber curls, low

forehead, fine nose, chin smooth but not raw from Sabbath shaving. His

lips startled her. The lips of men in Gopher Prairie are flat in the

face, straight and grudging. The stranger's mouth was arched, the upper

lip short. He wore a brown jersey coat, a delft-blue bow, a white silk

shirt, white flannel trousers. He suggested the ocean beach, a tennis

court, anything but the sun-blistered utility of Main Street.

A visitor from Minneapolis, here for business? No. He wasn't a business

man. He was a poet. Keats was in his face, and Shelley, and Arthur

Upson, whom she had once seen in Minneapolis. He was at once too

sensitive and too sophisticated to touch business as she knew it in

Gopher Prairie.

With restrained amusement he was analyzing the noisy Mr. Zitterel. Carol

was ashamed to have this spy from the Great World hear the pastor's

maundering. She felt responsible for the town. She resented his gaping

at their private rites. She flushed, turned away. But she continued to

feel his presence.

How could she meet him? She must! For an hour of talk. He was all that

she was hungry for. She could not let him get away without a word--and

she would have to. She pictured, and ridiculed, herself as walking up

to him and remarking, “I am sick with the Village Virus. Will you please

tell me what people are saying and playing in New York?” She pictured,

and groaned over, the expression of Kennicott if she should say,

“Why wouldn't it be reasonable for you, my soul, to ask that complete

stranger in the brown jersey coat to come to supper tonight?”

She brooded, not looking back. She warned herself that she was probably

exaggerating; that no young man could have all these exalted qualities.

Wasn't he too obviously smart, too glossy-new? Like a movie actor.

Probably he was a traveling salesman who sang tenor and fancied himself

in imitations of Newport clothes and spoke of “the swellest business

proposition that ever came down the pike.” In a panic she peered at him.

No! This was no hustling salesman, this boy with the curving Grecian

lips and the serious eyes.

She rose after the service, carefully taking Kennicott's arm and smiling

at him in a mute assertion that she was devoted to him no matter what

happened. She followed the Mystery's soft brown jersey shoulders out of

the church.

Fatty Hicks, the shrill and puffy son of Nat, flapped his hand at the

beautiful stranger and jeered, “How's the kid? All dolled up like a

plush horse today, ain't we!”

Carol was exceeding sick. Her herald from the outside was Erik Valborg,

“Elizabeth.” Apprentice tailor! Gasoline and hot goose! Mending dirty

jackets! Respectfully holding a tape-measure about a paunch!

And yet, she insisted, this boy was also himself.

III

They had Sunday dinner with the Smails, in a dining-room which centered

about a fruit and flower piece and a crayon-enlargement of Uncle

Whittier. Carol did not heed Aunt Bessie's fussing in regard to Mrs.

Robert B. Schminke's bead necklace and Whittier's error in putting on

the striped pants, day like this. She did not taste the shreds of roast

pork. She said vacuously:

“Uh--Will, I wonder if that young man in the white flannel trousers, at

church this morning, was this Valborg person that they're all talking

about?”

“Yump. That's him. Wasn't that the darndest get-up he had on!” Kennicott

scratched at a white smear on his hard gray sleeve.

“It wasn't so bad. I wonder where he comes from? He seems to have lived

in cities a good deal. Is he from the East?”

“The East? Him? Why, he comes from a farm right up north here, just this

side of Jefferson. I know his father slightly--Adolph Valborg--typical

cranky old Swede farmer.”

“Oh, really?” blandly.

“Believe he has lived in Minneapolis for quite some time, though.

Learned his trade there. And I will say he's bright, some ways. Reads

a lot. Pollock says he takes more books out of the library than anybody

else in town. Huh! He's kind of like you in that!”

The Smails and Kennicott laughed very much at this sly jest. Uncle

Whittier seized the conversation. “That fellow that's working for Hicks?

Milksop, that's what he is. Makes me tired to see a young fellow that

ought to be in the war, or anyway out in the fields earning his living

honest, like I done when I was young, doing a woman's work and then come

out and dress up like a show-actor! Why, when I was his age----”

Carol reflected that the carving-knife would make an excellent dagger

with which to kill Uncle Whittier. It would slide in easily. The

headlines would be terrible.

Kennicott said judiciously, “Oh, I don't want to be unjust to him.

I believe he took his physical examination for military service. Got

varicose veins--not bad, but enough to disqualify him. Though I will say

he doesn't look like a fellow that would be so awful darn crazy to poke

his bayonet into a Hun's guts.”

“Will! PLEASE!”

“Well, he don't. Looks soft to me. And they say he told Del Snafflin,

when he was getting a hair-cut on Saturday, that he wished he could play

the piano.”

“Isn't it wonderful how much we all know about one another in a town

like this,” said Carol innocently.

Kennicott was suspicious, but Aunt Bessie, serving the floating island

pudding, agreed, “Yes, it is wonderful. Folks can get away with all

sorts of meannesses and sins in these terrible cities, but they can't

here. I was noticing this tailor fellow this morning, and when Mrs.

Riggs offered to share her hymn-book with him, he shook his head, and

all the while we was singing he just stood there like a bump on a log

and never opened his mouth. Everybody says he's got an idea that he's

got so much better manners and all than what the rest of us have, but if

that's what he calls good manners, I want to know!”

Carol again studied the carving-knife. Blood on the whiteness of a

tablecloth might be gorgeous.

Then:

“Fool! Neurotic impossibilist! Telling yourself orchard fairy-tales--at

thirty. . . . Dear Lord, am I really THIRTY? That boy can't be more than

twenty-five.”

IV

She went calling.

Boarding with the Widow Bogart was Fern Mullins, a girl of twenty-two

who was to be teacher of English, French, and gymnastics in the high

school this coming session. Fern Mullins had come to town early, for the

six-weeks normal course for country teachers. Carol had noticed her on

the street, had heard almost as much about her as about Erik Valborg.

She was tall, weedy, pretty, and incurably rakish. Whether she wore a

low middy collar or dressed reticently for school in a black suit with a

high-necked blouse, she was airy, flippant. “She looks like an absolute

totty,” said all the Mrs. Sam Clarks, disapprovingly, and all the

Juanita Haydocks, enviously.

That Sunday evening, sitting in baggy canvas lawn-chairs beside the

house, the Kennicotts saw Fern laughing with Cy Bogart who, though still

a junior in high school, was now a lump of a man, only two or three

years younger than Fern. Cy had to go downtown for weighty matters

connected with the pool-parlor. Fern drooped on the Bogart porch, her

chin in her hands.

“She looks lonely,” said Kennicott.

“She does, poor soul. I believe I'll go over and speak to her. I was

introduced to her at Dave's but I haven't called.” Carol was slipping

across the lawn, a white figure in the dimness, faintly brushing the

dewy grass. She was thinking of Erik and of the fact that her feet

were wet, and she was casual in her greeting: “Hello! The doctor and I

wondered if you were lonely.”

Resentfully, “I am!”

Carol concentrated on her. “My dear, you sound so! I know how it is. I

used to be tired when I was on the job--I was a librarian. What was your

college? I was Blodgett.”

More interestedly, “I went to the U.” Fern meant the University of

Minnesota.

“You must have had a splendid time. Blodgett was a bit dull.”

“Where were you a librarian?” challengingly.

“St. Paul--the main library.”

“Honest? Oh dear, I wish I was back in the Cities! This is my first year

of teaching, and I'm scared stiff. I did have the best time in college:

dramatics and basket-ball and fussing and dancing--I'm simply crazy

about dancing. And here, except when I have the kids in gymnasium class,

or when I'm chaperoning the basket-ball team on a trip out-of-town, I

won't dare to move above a whisper. I guess they don't care much if

you put any pep into teaching or not, as long as you look like a Good

Influence out of school-hours--and that means never doing anything you

want to. This normal course is bad enough, but the regular school will

be FIERCE! If it wasn't too late to get a job in the Cities, I swear I'd

resign here. I bet I won't dare to go to a single dance all winter. If

I cut loose and danced the way I like to, they'd think I was a perfect

hellion--poor harmless me! Oh, I oughtn't to be talking like this. Fern,

you never could be cagey!”

“Don't be frightened, my dear! . . . Doesn't that sound atrociously old

and kind! I'm talking to you the way Mrs. Westlake talks to me! That's

having a husband and a kitchen range, I suppose. But I feel young, and I

want to dance like a--like a hellion?--too. So I sympathize.”

Fern made a sound of gratitude. Carol inquired, “What experience did you

have with college dramatics? I tried to start a kind of Little Theater

here. It was dreadful. I must tell you about it----”

Two hours later, when Kennicott came over to greet Fern and to yawn,

“Look here, Carrie, don't you suppose you better be thinking about

turning in? I've got a hard day tomorrow,” the two were talking so

intimately that they constantly interrupted each other.

As she went respectably home, convoyed by a husband, and decorously

holding up her skirts, Carol rejoiced, “Everything has changed! I have

two friends, Fern and----But who's the other? That's queer; I thought

there was----Oh, how absurd!”

V

She often passed Erik Valborg on the street; the brown jersey coat

became unremarkable. When she was driving with Kennicott, in early

evening, she saw him on the lake shore, reading a thin book which might

easily have been poetry. She noted that he was the only person in the

motorized town who still took long walks.

She told herself that she was the daughter of a judge, the wife of a

doctor, and that she did not care to know a capering tailor. She told

herself that she was not responsive to men . . . not even to Percy

Bresnahan. She told herself that a woman of thirty who heeded a boy

of twenty-five was ridiculous. And on Friday, when she had convinced

herself that the errand was necessary, she went to Nat Hicks's shop,

bearing the not very romantic burden of a pair of her husband's

trousers. Hicks was in the back room. She faced the Greek god who, in a

somewhat ungodlike way, was stitching a coat on a scaley sewing-machine,

in a room of smutted plaster walls.

She saw that his hands were not in keeping with a Hellenic face. They

were thick, roughened with needle and hot iron and plow-handle. Even

in the shop he persisted in his finery. He wore a silk shirt, a topaz

scarf, thin tan shoes.

This she absorbed while she was saying curtly, “Can I get these pressed,

please?”

Not rising from the sewing-machine he stuck out his hand, mumbled, “When

do you want them?”

“Oh, Monday.”

The adventure was over. She was marching out.

“What name?” he called after her.

He had risen and, despite the farcicality of Dr. Will Kennicott's bulgy

trousers draped over his arm, he had the grace of a cat.

“Kennicott.”

“Kennicott. Oh! Oh say, you're Mrs. Dr. Kennicott then, aren't you?”

“Yes.” She stood at the door. Now that she had carried out her

preposterous impulse to see what he was like, she was cold, she was as

ready to detect familiarities as the virtuous Miss Ella Stowbody.

“I've heard about you. Myrtle Cass was saying you got up a dramatic club

and gave a dandy play. I've always wished I had a chance to belong to a

Little Theater, and give some European plays, or whimsical like Barrie,

or a pageant.”

He pronounced it “pagent”; he rhymed “pag” with “rag.”

Carol nodded in the manner of a lady being kind to a tradesman, and one

of her selves sneered, “Our Erik is indeed a lost John Keats.”

He was appealing, “Do you suppose it would be possible to get up another

dramatic club this coming fall?”

“Well, it might be worth thinking of.” She came out of her several

conflicting poses, and said sincerely, “There's a new teacher, Miss

Mullins, who might have some talent. That would make three of us for a

nucleus. If we could scrape up half a dozen we might give a real play

with a small cast. Have you had any experience?”

“Just a bum club that some of us got up in Minneapolis when I was

working there. We had one good man, an interior decorator--maybe he was

kind of sis and effeminate, but he really was an artist, and we gave one

dandy play. But I----Of course I've always had to work hard, and study

by myself, and I'm probably sloppy, and I'd love it if I had training in

rehearsing--I mean, the crankier the director was, the better I'd like

it. If you didn't want to use me as an actor, I'd love to design the

costumes. I'm crazy about fabrics--textures and colors and designs.”

She knew that he was trying to keep her from going, trying to indicate

that he was something more than a person to whom one brought trousers

for pressing. He besought:

“Some day I hope I can get away from this fool repairing, when I have

the money saved up. I want to go East and work for some big dressmaker,

and study art drawing, and become a high-class designer. Or do you think

that's a kind of fiddlin' ambition for a fellow? I was brought up on

a farm. And then monkeyin' round with silks! I don't know. What do you

think? Myrtle Cass says you're awfully educated.”

“I am. Awfully. Tell me: Have the boys made fun of your ambition?”

She was seventy years old, and sexless, and more advisory than Vida

Sherwin.

“Well, they have, at that. They've jollied me a good deal, here and

Minneapolis both. They say dressmaking is ladies' work. (But I was

willing to get drafted for the war! I tried to get in. But they

rejected me. But I did try! ) I thought some of working up in a gents'

furnishings store, and I had a chance to travel on the road for a

clothing house, but somehow--I hate this tailoring, but I can't seem

to get enthusiastic about salesmanship. I keep thinking about a room in

gray oatmeal paper with prints in very narrow gold frames--or would it

be better in white enamel paneling?--but anyway, it looks out on

Fifth Avenue, and I'm designing a sumptuous----” He made it

“sump-too-ous”--“robe of linden green chiffon over cloth of gold! You

know--tileul. It's elegant. . . . What do you think?”

“Why not? What do you care for the opinion of city rowdies, or a lot

of farm boys? But you mustn't, you really mustn't, let casual strangers

like me have a chance to judge you.”

“Well----You aren't a stranger, one way. Myrtle Cass--Miss Cass, should

say--she's spoken about you so often. I wanted to call on you--and the

doctor--but I didn't quite have the nerve. One evening I walked past

your house, but you and your husband were talking on the porch, and you

looked so chummy and happy I didn't dare butt in.”

Maternally, “I think it's extremely nice of you to want to be trained

in--in enunciation by a stage-director. Perhaps I could help you. I'm

a thoroughly sound and uninspired schoolma'am by instinct; quite

hopelessly mature.”

“Oh, you aren't EITHER!”

She was not very successful at accepting his fervor with the air of

amused woman of the world, but she sounded reasonably impersonal: “Thank

you. Shall we see if we really can get up a new dramatic club? I'll tell

you: Come to the house this evening, about eight. I'll ask Miss Mullins

to come over, and we'll talk about it.”

VI

“He has absolutely no sense of humor. Less than Will. But hasn't

he-----What is a 'sense of humor'? Isn't the thing he lacks the

back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here? Anyway----Poor lamb,

coaxing me to stay and play with him! Poor lonely lamb! If he could be

free from Nat Hickses, from people who say 'dandy' and 'bum,' would he

develop?

“I wonder if Whitman didn't use Brooklyn back-street slang, as a boy?

“No. Not Whitman. He's Keats--sensitive to silken things. 'Innumerable

of stains and splendid dyes as are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd

wings.' Keats, here! A bewildered spirit fallen on Main Street. And Main

Street laughs till it aches, giggles till the spirit doubts his own self

and tries to give up the use of wings for the correct uses of a 'gents'

furnishings store.' Gopher Prairie with its celebrated eleven miles of

cement walk. . . . I wonder how much of the cement is made out of the

tombstones of John Keatses?”

VII

Kennicott was cordial to Fern Mullins, teased her, told her he was a

“great hand for running off with pretty school-teachers,” and promised

that if the school-board should object to her dancing, he would “bat 'em

one over the head and tell 'em how lucky they were to get a girl with

some go to her, for once.”

But to Erik Valborg he was not cordial. He shook hands loosely, and

said, “H' are yuh.”

Nat Hicks was socially acceptable; he had been here for years, and

owned his shop; but this person was merely Nat's workman, and the

town's principle of perfect democracy was not meant to be applied

indiscriminately.

The conference on a dramatic club theoretically included Kennicott, but

he sat back, patting yawns, conscious of Fern's ankles, smiling amiably

on the children at their sport.

Fern wanted to tell her grievances; Carol was sulky every time she

thought of “The Girl from Kankakee”; it was Erik who made suggestions.

He had read with astounding breadth, and astounding lack of judgment.

His voice was sensitive to liquids, but he overused the word “glorious.”

He mispronounced a tenth of the words he had from books, but he knew it.

He was insistent, but he was shy.

When he demanded, “I'd like to stage 'Suppressed Desires,' by Cook and

Miss Glaspell,” Carol ceased to be patronizing. He was not the yearner:

he was the artist, sure of his vision. “I'd make it simple. Use a big

window at the back, with a cyclorama of a blue that would simply hit you

in the eye, and just one tree-branch, to suggest a park below. Put

the breakfast table on a dais. Let the colors be kind of arty and

tea-roomy--orange chairs, and orange and blue table, and blue Japanese

breakfast set, and some place, one big flat smear of black--bang! Oh.

Another play I wish we could do is Tennyson Jesse's 'The Black Mask.'

I've never seen it but----Glorious ending, where this woman looks at

the man with his face all blown away, and she just gives one horrible

scream.”

“Good God, is that your idea of a glorious ending?” bayed Kennicott.

“That sounds fierce! I do love artistic things, but not the horrible

ones,” moaned Fern Mullins.

Erik was bewildered; glanced at Carol. She nodded loyally.

At the end of the conference they had decided nothing.