Chương Chương 14 · Chapter XIV

SHE was marching home.

“No. I couldn't fall in love with him. I like him, very much. But

he's too much of a recluse. Could I kiss him? No! No! Guy Pollock at

twenty-six I could have kissed him then, maybe, even if I were married

to some one else, and probably I'd have been glib in persuading myself

that 'it wasn't really wrong.'

“The amazing thing is that I'm not more amazed at myself. I, the

virtuous young matron. Am I to be trusted? If the Prince Charming

came----

“A Gopher Prairie housewife, married a year, and yearning for a 'Prince

Charming' like a bachfisch of sixteen! They say that marriage is a magic

change. But I'm not changed. But----

“No! I wouldn't want to fall in love, even if the Prince did come. I

wouldn't want to hurt Will. I am fond of Will. I am! He doesn't stir me,

not any longer. But I depend on him. He is home and children.

“I wonder when we will begin to have children? I do want them.

“I wonder whether I remembered to tell Bea to have hominy tomorrow,

instead of oatmeal? She will have gone to bed by now. Perhaps I'll be up

early enough----

“Ever so fond of Will. I wouldn't hurt him, even if I had to lose the

mad love. If the Prince came I'd look once at him, and run. Darn fast!

Oh, Carol, you are not heroic nor fine. You are the immutable vulgar

young female.

“But I'm not the faithless wife who enjoys confiding that she's

'misunderstood.' Oh, I'm not, I'm not!

“Am I?

“At least I didn't whisper to Guy about Will's faults and his blindness

to my remarkable soul. I didn't! Matter of fact, Will probably

understands me perfectly! If only--if he would just back me up in

rousing the town.

“How many, how incredibly many wives there must be who tingle over the

first Guy Pollock who smiles at them. No! I will not be one of that

herd of yearners! The coy virgin brides. Yet probably if the Prince were

young and dared to face life----

“I'm not half as well oriented as that Mrs. Dillon. So obviously adoring

her dentist! And seeing Guy only as an eccentric fogy.

“They weren't silk, Mrs. Dillon's stockings. They were lisle. Her legs

are nice and slim. But no nicer than mine. I hate cotton tops on silk

stockings. . . . Are my ankles getting fat? I will NOT have fat ankles!

“No. I am fond of Will. His work--one farmer he pulls through diphtheria

is worth all my yammering for a castle in Spain. A castle with baths.

“This hat is so tight. I must stretch it. Guy liked it.

“There's the house. I'm awfully chilly. Time to get out the fur coat.

I wonder if I'll ever have a beaver coat? Nutria is NOT the same thing!

Beaver-glossy. Like to run my fingers over it. Guy's mustache like

beaver. How utterly absurd!

“I am, I AM fond of Will, and----Can't I ever find another word than

'fond'?

“He's home. He'll think I was out late.

“Why can't he ever remember to pull down the shades? Cy Bogart and all

the beastly boys peeping in. But the poor dear, he's absent-minded about

minute--minush--whatever the word is. He has so much worry and work,

while I do nothing but jabber to Bea.

“I MUSTN'T forget the hominy----”

She was flying into the hall. Kennicott looked up from the Journal of

the American Medical Society.

“Hello! What time did you get back?” she cried.

“About nine. You been gadding. Here it is past eleven!” Good-natured yet

not quite approving.

“Did it feel neglected?”

“Well, you didn't remember to close the lower draft in the furnace.”

“Oh, I'm so sorry. But I don't often forget things like that, do I?”

She dropped into his lap and (after he had jerked back his head to save

his eye-glasses, and removed the glasses, and settled her in a position

less cramping to his legs, and casually cleared his throat) he kissed

her amiably, and remarked:

“Nope, I must say you're fairly good about things like that. I wasn't

kicking. I just meant I wouldn't want the fire to go out on us. Leave

that draft open and the fire might burn up and go out on us. And the

nights are beginning to get pretty cold again. Pretty cold on my drive.

I put the side-curtains up, it was so chilly. But the generator is

working all right now.”

“Yes. It is chilly. But I feel fine after my walk.”

“Go walking?”

“I went up to see the Perrys.” By a definite act of will she added

the truth: “They weren't in. And I saw Guy Pollock. Dropped into his

office.”

“Why, you haven't been sitting and chinning with him till eleven

o'clock?”

“Of course there were some other people there and----Will! What do you

think of Dr. Westlake?”

“Westlake? Why?”

“I noticed him on the street today.”

“Was he limping? If the poor fish would have his teeth X-rayed, I'll bet

nine and a half cents he'd find an abscess there. 'Rheumatism' he calls

it. Rheumatism, hell! He's behind the times. Wonder he doesn't bleed

himself! Wellllllll----” A profound and serious yawn. “I hate to break

up the party, but it's getting late, and a doctor never knows when he'll

get routed out before morning.” (She remembered that he had given this

explanation, in these words, not less than thirty times in the year.) “I

guess we better be trotting up to bed. I've wound the clock and looked

at the furnace. Did you lock the front door when you came in?”

They trailed up-stairs, after he had turned out the lights and twice

tested the front door to make sure it was fast. While they talked

they were preparing for bed. Carol still sought to maintain privacy by

undressing behind the screen of the closet door. Kennicott was not so

reticent. Tonight, as every night, she was irritated by having to push

the old plush chair out of the way before she could open the closet

door. Every time she opened the door she shoved the chair. Ten times an

hour. But Kennicott liked to have the chair in the room, and there was

no place for it except in front of the closet.

She pushed it, felt angry, hid her anger. Kennicott was yawning, more

portentously. The room smelled stale. She shrugged and became chatty:

“You were speaking of Dr. Westlake. Tell me--you've never summed him up:

Is he really a good doctor?”

“Oh yes, he's a wise old coot.”

(“There! You see there is no medical rivalry. Not in my house!” she said

triumphantly to Guy Pollock.)

She hung her silk petticoat on a closet hook, and went on, “Dr. Westlake

is so gentle and scholarly----”

“Well, I don't know as I'd say he was such a whale of a scholar. I've

always had a suspicion he did a good deal of four-flushing about that.

He likes to have people think he keeps up his French and Greek and Lord

knows what all; and he's always got an old Dago book lying around the

sitting-room, but I've got a hunch he reads detective stories 'bout like

the rest of us. And I don't know where he'd ever learn so dog-gone many

languages anyway! He kind of lets people assume he went to Harvard

or Berlin or Oxford or somewhere, but I looked him up in the medical

register, and he graduated from a hick college in Pennsylvania, 'way

back in 1861!”

“But this is the important thing: Is he an honest doctor?”

“How do you mean 'honest'? Depends on what you mean.”

“Suppose you were sick. Would you call him in? Would you let me call him

in?”

“Not if I were well enough to cuss and bite, I wouldn't! No, SIR! I

wouldn't have the old fake in the house. Makes me tired, his everlasting

palavering and soft-soaping. He's all right for an ordinary bellyache

or holding some fool woman's hand, but I wouldn't call him in for an

honest-to-God illness, not much I wouldn't, NO-sir! You know I don't

do much back-biting, but same time----I'll tell you, Carrrie: I've never

got over being sore at Westlake for the way he treated Mrs. Jonderquist.

Nothing the matter with her, what she really needed was a rest, but

Westlake kept calling on her and calling on her for weeks, almost every

day, and he sent her a good big fat bill, too, you can bet! I never

did forgive him for that. Nice decent hard-working people like the

Jonderquists!”

In her batiste nightgown she was standing at the bureau engaged in the

invariable rites of wishing that she had a real dressing-table with a

triple mirror, of bending toward the streaky glass and raising her chin

to inspect a pin-head mole on her throat, and finally of brushing her

hair. In rhythm to the strokes she went on:

“But, Will, there isn't any of what you might call financial rivalry

between you and the partners--Westlake and McGanum--is there?”

He flipped into bed with a solemn back-somersault and a ludicrous kick

of his heels as he tucked his legs under the blankets. He snorted, “Lord

no! I never begrudge any man a nickel he can get away from me--fairly.”

“But is Westlake fair? Isn't he sly?”

“Sly is the word. He's a fox, that boy!”

She saw Guy Pollock's grin in the mirror. She flushed.

Kennicott, with his arms behind his head, was yawning:

“Yump. He's smooth, too smooth. But I bet I make prett' near as much

as Westlake and McGanum both together, though I've never wanted to grab

more than my just share. If anybody wants to go to the partners instead

of to me, that's his business. Though I must say it makes me tired when

Westlake gets hold of the Dawsons. Here Luke Dawson had been coming to

me for every toeache and headache and a lot of little things that just

wasted my time, and then when his grandchild was here last summer and

had summer-complaint, I suppose, or something like that, probably--you

know, the time you and I drove up to Lac-qui-Meurt--why, Westlake got

hold of Ma Dawson, and scared her to death, and made her think the kid

had appendicitis, and, by golly, if he and McGanum didn't operate, and

holler their heads off about the terrible adhesions they found, and what

a regular Charley and Will Mayo they were for classy surgery. They let

on that if they'd waited two hours more the kid would have developed

peritonitis, and God knows what all; and then they collected a nice

fat hundred and fifty dollars. And probably they'd have charged three

hundred, if they hadn't been afraid of me! I'm no hog, but I certainly

do hate to give old Luke ten dollars' worth of advice for a dollar and a

half, and then see a hundred and fifty go glimmering. And if I can't do

a better 'pendectomy than either Westlake or McGanum, I'll eat my hat!”

As she crept into bed she was dazzled by Guy's blazing grin. She

experimented:

“But Westlake is cleverer than his son-in-law, don't you think?”

“Yes, Westlake may be old-fashioned and all that, but he's got a certain

amount of intuition, while McGanum goes into everything bull-headed, and

butts his way through like a damn yahoo, and tries to argue his patients

into having whatever he diagnoses them as having! About the best thing

Mac can do is to stick to baby-snatching. He's just about on a par with

this bone-pounding chiropractor female, Mrs. Mattie Gooch.”

“Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. McGanum, though--they're nice. They've been

awfully cordial to me.”

“Well, no reason why they shouldn't be, is there? Oh, they're nice

enough--though you can bet your bottom dollar they're both plugging for

their husbands all the time, trying to get the business. And I don't

know as I call it so damn cordial in Mrs. McGanum when I holler at her

on the street and she nods back like she had a sore neck. Still, she's

all right. It's Ma Westlake that makes the mischief, pussyfooting around

all the time. But I wouldn't trust any Westlake out of the whole lot,

and while Mrs. McGanum SEEMS square enough, you don't never want to

forget that she's Westlake's daughter. You bet!”

“What about Dr. Gould? Don't you think he's worse than either Westlake

or McGanum? He's so cheap--drinking, and playing pool, and always

smoking cigars in such a cocky way----”

“That's all right now! Terry Gould is a good deal of a tin-horn sport,

but he knows a lot about medicine, and don't you forget it for one

second!”

She stared down Guy's grin, and asked more cheerfully, “Is he honest,

too?”

“Ooooooooooo! Gosh I'm sleepy!” He burrowed beneath the bedclothes in

a luxurious stretch, and came up like a diver, shaking his head, as

he complained, “How's that? Who? Terry Gould honest? Don't start me

laughing--I'm too nice and sleepy! I didn't say he was honest. I said

he had savvy enough to find the index in 'Gray's Anatomy,' which is more

than McGanum can do! But I didn't say anything about his being honest.

He isn't. Terry is crooked as a dog's hind leg. He's done me more than

one dirty trick. He told Mrs. Glorbach, seventeen miles out, that I

wasn't up-to-date in obstetrics. Fat lot of good it did him! She came

right in and told me! And Terry's lazy. He'd let a pneumonia patient

choke rather than interrupt a poker game.”

“Oh no. I can't believe----”

“Well now, I'm telling you!”

“Does he play much poker? Dr. Dillon told me that Dr. Gould wanted him

to play----”

“Dillon told you what? Where'd you meet Dillon? He's just come to town.”

“He and his wife were at Mr. Pollock's tonight.”

“Say, uh, what'd you think of them? Didn't Dillon strike you as pretty

light-waisted?”

“Why no. He seemed intelligent. I'm sure he's much more wide-awake than

our dentist.”

“Well now, the old man is a good dentist. He knows his business. And

Dillon----I wouldn't cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you.

All right for Pollock, and that's none of our business, but we----I

think I'd just give the Dillons the glad hand and pass 'em up.”

“But why? He isn't a rival.”

“That's--all--right!” Kennicott was aggressively awake now. “He'll work

right in with Westlake and McGanum. Matter of fact, I suspect they

were largely responsible for his locating here. They'll be sending him

patients, and he'll send all that he can get hold of to them. I don't

trust anybody that's too much hand-in-glove with Westlake. You give

Dillon a shot at some fellow that's just bought a farm here and drifts

into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with

him, you'll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!”

Carol reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed. She

draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Kennicott, her chin

in her hands. In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the

hall she could see that he was frowning.

“Will, this is--I must get this straight. Some one said to me the other

day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors

hate each other, because of the money----”

“Who said that?”

“It doesn't matter.”

“I'll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin. She's a brainy woman, but

she'd be a damn sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn't let

so much of her brains ooze out that way.”

“Will! O Will! That's horrible! Aside from the vulgarity----Some ways,

Vida is my best friend. Even if she HAD said it. Which, as a matter of

fact, she didn't.” He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and

green flannelette pajamas. He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his

fingers, and growled:

“Well, if she didn't say it, let's forget her. Doesn't make any

difference who said it, anyway. The point is that you believe it. God!

To think you don't understand me any better than that! Money!”

(“This is the first real quarrel we've ever had,” she was agonizing.)

He thrust out his long arm and snatched his wrinkly vest from a chair.

He took out a cigar, a match. He tossed the vest on the floor. He

lighted the cigar and puffed savagely. He broke up the match and snapped

the fragments at the foot-board.

She suddenly saw the foot-board of the bed as the foot-stone of the

grave of love.

The room was drab-colored and ill-ventilated--Kennicott did not “believe

in opening the windows so darn wide that you heat all outdoors.” The

stale air seemed never to change. In the light from the hall they were

two lumps of bedclothes with shoulders and tousled heads attached.

She begged, “I didn't mean to wake you up, dear. And please don't smoke.

You've been smoking so much. Please go back to sleep. I'm sorry.”

“Being sorry 's all right, but I'm going to tell you one or two things.

This falling for anybody's say-so about medical jealousy and competition

is simply part and parcel of your usual willingness to think the worst

you possibly can of us poor dubs in Gopher Prairie. Trouble with women

like you is, you always want to ARGUE. Can't take things the way they

are. Got to argue. Well, I'm not going to argue about this in any way,

shape, manner, or form. Trouble with you is, you don't make any effort

to appreciate us. You're so damned superior, and think the city is such

a hell of a lot finer place, and you want us to do what YOU want, all

the time----”

“That's not true! It's I who make the effort. It's they--it's you--who

stand back and criticize. I have to come over to the town's opinion;

I have to devote myself to their interests. They can't even SEE my

interests, to say nothing of adopting them. I get ever so excited about

their old Lake Minniemashie and the cottages, but they simply guffaw (in

that lovely friendly way you advertise so much) if I speak of wanting to

see Taormina also.”

“Sure, Tormina, whatever that is--some nice expensive millionaire

colony, I suppose. Sure; that's the idea; champagne taste and beer

income; and make sure that we never will have more than a beer income,

too!”

“Are you by any chance implying that I am not economical?”

“Well, I hadn't intended to, but since you bring it up yourself, I don't

mind saying the grocery bills are about twice what they ought to be.”

“Yes, they probably are. I'm not economical. I can't be. Thanks to you!”

“Where d' you get that 'thanks to you'?”

“Please don't be quite so colloquial--or shall I say VULGAR?”

“I'll be as damn colloquial as I want to. How do you get that 'thanks to

you'? Here about a year ago you jump me for not remembering to give you

money. Well, I'm reasonable. I didn't blame you, and I SAID I was to

blame. But have I ever forgotten it since--practically?”

“No. You haven't--practically! But that isn't it. I ought to have an

allowance. I will, too! I must have an agreement for a regular stated

amount, every month.”

“Fine idea! Of course a doctor gets a regular stated amount! Sure! A

thousand one month--and lucky if he makes a hundred the next.”

“Very well then, a percentage. Or something else. No matter how much you

vary, you can make a rough average for----”

“But what's the idea? What are you trying to get at? Mean to say I'm

unreasonable? Think I'm so unreliable and tightwad that you've got to

tie me down with a contract? By God, that hurts! I thought I'd been

pretty generous and decent, and I took a lot of pleasure--thinks I,

'she'll be tickled when I hand her over this twenty'--or fifty, or

whatever it was; and now seems you been wanting to make it a kind of

alimony. Me, like a poor fool, thinking I was liberal all the while, and

you----”

“Please stop pitying yourself! You're having a beautiful time feeling

injured. I admit all you say. Certainly. You've given me money both

freely and amiably. Quite as if I were your mistress!”

“Carrie!”

“I mean it! What was a magnificent spectacle of generosity to you was

humiliation to me. You GAVE me money--gave it to your mistress, if she

was complaisant, and then you----”

“Carrie!”

“(Don't interrupt me!)--then you felt you'd discharged all obligation.

Well, hereafter I'll refuse your money, as a gift. Either I'm your

partner, in charge of the household department of our business, with a

regular budget for it, or else I'm nothing. If I'm to be a mistress,

I shall choose my lovers. Oh, I hate it--I hate it--this smirking and

hoping for money--and then not even spending it on jewels as a mistress

has a right to, but spending it on double-boilers and socks for you!

Yes indeed! You're generous! You give me a dollar, right out--the only

proviso is that I must spend it on a tie for you! And you give it when

and as you wish. How can I be anything but uneconomical?”

“Oh well, of course, looking at it that way----”

“I can't shop around, can't buy in large quantities, have to stick to

stores where I have a charge account, good deal of the time, can't plan

because I don't know how much money I can depend on. That's what I pay

for your charming sentimentalities about giving so generously. You make

me----”

“Wait! Wait! You know you're exaggerating. You never thought about that

mistress stuff till just this minute! Matter of fact, you never have

'smirked and hoped for money.' But all the same, you may be right. You

ought to run the household as a business. I'll figure out a definite

plan tomorrow, and hereafter you'll be on a regular amount or

percentage, with your own checking account.”

“Oh, that IS decent of you!” She turned toward him, trying to be

affectionate. But his eyes were pink and unlovely in the flare of the

match with which he lighted his dead and malodorous cigar. His head

drooped, and a ridge of flesh scattered with pale small bristles bulged

out under his chin.

She sat in abeyance till he croaked:

“No. 'Tisn't especially decent. It's just fair. And God knows I want

to be fair. But I expect others to be fair, too. And you're so high and

mighty about people. Take Sam Clark; best soul that ever lived, honest

and loyal and a damn good fellow----”

(“Yes, and a good shot at ducks, don't forget that!”)

(“Well, and he is a good shot, too!) Sam drops around in the evening to

sit and visit, and by golly just because he takes a dry smoke and rolls

his cigar around in his mouth, and maybe spits a few times, you look

at him as if he was a hog. Oh, you didn't know I was onto you, and I

certainly hope Sam hasn't noticed it, but I never miss it.”

“I have felt that way. Spitting--ugh! But I'm sorry you caught my

thoughts. I tried to be nice; I tried to hide them.”

“Maybe I catch a whole lot more than you think I do!”

“Yes, perhaps you do.”

“And d' you know why Sam doesn't light his cigar when he's here?”

“Why?”

“He's so darn afraid you'll be offended if he smokes. You scare him.

Every time he speaks of the weather you jump him because he ain't

talking about poetry or Gertie--Goethe?--or some other highbrow junk.

You've got him so leery he scarcely dares to come here.”

“Oh, I AM sorry. (Though I'm sure it's you who are exaggerating now.”)

“Well now, I don't know as I am! And I can tell you one thing: if you

keep on you'll manage to drive away every friend I've got.”

“That would be horrible of me. You KNOW I don't mean to Will, what is it

about me that frightens Sam--if I do frighten him.”

“Oh, you do, all right! 'Stead of putting his legs up on another chair,

and unbuttoning his vest, and telling a good story or maybe kidding

me about something, he sits on the edge of his chair and tries to make

conversation about politics, and he doesn't even cuss, and Sam's never

real comfortable unless he can cuss a little!”

“In other words, he isn't comfortable unless he can behave like a

peasant in a mud hut!”

“Now that'll be about enough of that! You want to know how you scare

him? First you deliberately fire some question at him that you know darn

well he can't answer--any fool could see you were experimenting with

him--and then you shock him by talking of mistresses or something, like

you were doing just now----”

“Of course the pure Samuel never speaks of such erring ladies in his

private conversations!”

“Not when there's ladies around! You can bet your life on that!”

“So the impurity lies in failing to pretend that----”

“Now we won't go into all that--eugenics or whatever damn fad you choose

to call it. As I say, first you shock him, and then you become so darn

flighty that nobody can follow you. Either you want to dance, or you

bang the piano, or else you get moody as the devil and don't want to

talk or anything else. If you must be temperamental, why can't you be

that way by yourself?”

“My dear man, there's nothing I'd like better than to be by myself

occasionally! To have a room of my own! I suppose you expect me to sit

here and dream delicately and satisfy my 'temperamentality' while you

wander in from the bathroom with lather all over your face, and shout,

'Seen my brown pants?'”

“Huh!” He did not sound impressed. He made no answer. He turned out of

bed, his feet making one solid thud on the floor. He marched from the

room, a grotesque figure in baggy union-pajamas. She heard him drawing

a drink of water at the bathroom tap. She was furious at the

contemptuousness of his exit. She snuggled down in bed, and looked

away from him as he returned. He ignored her. As he flumped into bed he

yawned, and casually stated:

“Well, you'll have plenty of privacy when we build a new house.

“When?”

“Oh, I'll build it all right, don't you fret! But of course I don't

expect any credit for it.”

Now it was she who grunted “Huh!” and ignored him, and felt independent

and masterful as she shot up out of bed, turned her back on him,

fished a lone and petrified chocolate out of her glove-box in the

top right-hand drawer of the bureau, gnawed at it, found that it had

cocoanut filling, said “Damn!” wished that she had not said it, so that

she might be superior to his colloquialism, and hurled the chocolate

into the wastebasket, where it made an evil and mocking clatter among

the debris of torn linen collars and toothpaste box. Then, in great

dignity and self-dramatization, she returned to bed.

All this time he had been talking on, embroidering his assertion that

he “didn't expect any credit.” She was reflecting that he was a rustic,

that she hated him, that she had been insane to marry him, that she had

married him only because she was tired of work, that she must get her

long gloves cleaned, that she would never do anything more for him,

and that she mustn't forget his hominy for breakfast. She was roused to

attention by his storming:

“I'm a fool to think about a new house. By the time I get it built

you'll probably have succeeded in your plan to get me completely in

Dutch with every friend and every patient I've got.”

She sat up with a bounce. She said coldly, “Thank you very much for

revealing your real opinion of me. If that's the way you feel, if I'm

such a hindrance to you, I can't stay under this roof another minute.

And I am perfectly well able to earn my own living. I will go at once,

and you may get a divorce at your pleasure! What you want is a nice

sweet cow of a woman who will enjoy having your dear friends talk about

the weather and spit on the floor!”

“Tut! Don't be a fool!”

“You will very soon find out whether I'm a fool or not! I mean it! Do

you think I'd stay here one second after I found out that I was injuring

you? At least I have enough sense of justice not to do that.”

“Please stop flying off at tangents, Carrie. This----”

“Tangents? TANGENTS! Let me tell you----”

“----isn't a theater-play; it's a serious effort to have us get together

on fundamentals. We've both been cranky, and said a lot of things we

didn't mean. I wish we were a couple o' bloomin' poets and just talked

about roses and moonshine, but we're human. All right. Let's cut out

jabbing at each other. Let's admit we both do fool things. See here: You

KNOW you feel superior to folks. You're not as bad as I say, but you're

not as good as you say--not by a long shot! What's the reason you're so

superior? Why can't you take folks as they are?”

Her preparations for stalking out of the Doll's House were not yet

visible. She mused:

“I think perhaps it's my childhood.” She halted. When she went on

her voice had an artificial sound, her words the bookish quality of

emotional meditation. “My father was the tenderest man in the world, but

he did feel superior to ordinary people. Well, he was! And the Minnesota

Valley----I used to sit there on the cliffs above Mankato for hours at a

time, my chin in my hand, looking way down the valley, wanting to write

poems. The shiny tilted roofs below me, and the river, and beyond it the

level fields in the mist, and the rim of palisades across----It held my

thoughts in. I LIVED, in the valley. But the prairie--all my thoughts go

flying off into the big space. Do you think it might be that?”

“Um, well, maybe, but----Carrie, you always talk so much about getting

all you can out of life, and not letting the years slip by, and here you

deliberately go and deprive yourself of a lot of real good home pleasure

by not enjoying people unless they wear frock coats and trot out----”

(“Morning clothes. Oh. Sorry. Didn't mean t' interrupt you.”)

“----to a lot of tea-parties. Take Jack Elder. You think Jack hasn't got

any ideas about anything but manufacturing and the tariff on lumber.

But do you know that Jack is nutty about music? He'll put a grand-opera

record on the phonograph and sit and listen to it and close his

eyes----Or you take Lym Cass. Ever realize what a well-informed man he

is?”

“But IS he? Gopher Prairie calls anybody 'well-informed' who's been

through the State Capitol and heard about Gladstone.”

“Now I'm telling you! Lym reads a lot--solid stuff--history. Or take

Mart Mahoney, the garageman. He's got a lot of Perry prints of famous

pictures in his office. Or old Bingham Playfair, that died here 'bout a

year ago--lived seven miles out. He was a captain in the Civil War,

and knew General Sherman, and they say he was a miner in Nevada right

alongside of Mark Twain. You'll find these characters in all these small

towns, and a pile of savvy in every single one of them, if you just dig

for it.”

“I know. And I do love them. Especially people like Champ Perry. But I

can't be so very enthusiastic over the smug cits like Jack Elder.”

“Then I'm a smug cit, too, whatever that is.”

“No, you're a scientist. Oh, I will try and get the music out of Mr.

Elder. Only, why can't he let it COME out, instead of being ashamed of

it, and always talking about hunting dogs? But I will try. Is it all

right now?”

“Sure. But there's one other thing. You might give me some attention,

too!”

“That's unjust! You have everything I am!”

“No, I haven't. You think you respect me--you always hand out some

spiel about my being so 'useful.' But you never think of me as having

ambitions, just as much as you have----”

“Perhaps not. I think of you as being perfectly satisfied.”

“Well, I'm not, not by a long shot! I don't want to be a plug general

practitioner all my life, like Westlake, and die in harness because I

can't get out of it, and have 'em say, 'He was a good fellow, but he

couldn't save a cent.' Not that I care a whoop what they say, after I've

kicked in and can't hear 'em, but I want to put enough money away so you

and I can be independent some day, and not have to work unless I feel

like it, and I want to have a good house--by golly, I'll have as good

a house as anybody in THIS town!--and if we want to travel and see your

Tormina or whatever it is, why we can do it, with enough money in our

jeans so we won't have to take anything off anybody, or fret about our

old age. You never worry about what might happen if we got sick and

didn't have a good fat wad salted away, do you!”

“I don't suppose I do.”

“Well then, I have to do it for you. And if you think for one moment

I want to be stuck in this burg all my life, and not have a chance to

travel and see the different points of interest and all that, then you

simply don't get me. I want to have a squint at the world, much's you

do. Only, I'm practical about it. First place, I'm going to make the

money--I'm investing in good safe farmlands. Do you understand why now?”

“Yes.”

“Will you try and see if you can't think of me as something more than

just a dollar-chasing roughneck?”

“Oh, my dear, I haven't been just! I AM difficile. And I won't call on

the Dillons! And if Dr. Dillon is working for Westlake and McGanum, I

hate him!”