________________________________________________
_ IT was a frail and blue and lonely Carol who trotted to the
flat of the Johnson Marburys for Sunday evening supper. Mrs.
Marbury was a neighbor and friend of Carol's sister; Mr.
Marbury a traveling representative of an insurance company. They
made a specialty of sandwich-salad-coffee lap suppers, and they
regarded Carol as their literary and artistic representative.
She was the one who could be depended upon to appreciate the
Caruso phonograph record, and the Chinese lantern which Mr.
Marbury had brought back as his present from San Francisco.
Carol found the Marburys admiring and therefore admirable.
This September Sunday evening she wore a net frock with a
pale pink lining. A nap had soothed away the faint lines of
tiredness beside her eyes. She was young, naive, stimulated
by the coolness. She flung her coat at the chair in the hall of
the flat, and exploded into the green-plush living-room. The
familiar group were trying to be conversational. She saw Mr.
Marbury, a woman teacher of gymnastics in a high school, a
chief clerk from the Great Northern Railway offices, a young
lawyer. But there was also a stranger, a thick tall man of
thirty-six or -seven, with stolid brown hair, lips used to giving
orders, eyes which followed everything good-naturedly, and
clothes which you could never quite remember.
Mr. Marbury boomed, "Carol, come over here and meet
Doc Kennicott--Dr. Will Kennicott of Gopher Prairie. He
does all our insurance-examining up in that neck of the woods,
and they do say he's some doctor!"
As she edged toward the stranger and murmured nothing in
particular, Carol remembered that Gopher Prairie was a
Minnesota wheat-prairie town of something over three thousand
people.
"Pleased to meet you," stated Dr. Kennicott. His hand
was strong; the palm soft, but the back weathered, showing
golden hairs against firm red skin.
He looked at her as though she was an agreeable discovery.
She tugged her hand free and fluttered, "I must go out to the
kitchen and help Mrs. Marbury." She did not speak to him
again till, after she had heated the rolls and passed the
paper napkins, Mr. Marbury captured her with a loud, "Oh,
quit fussing now. Come over here and sit down and tell us
how's tricks." He herded her to a sofa with Dr. Kennicott,
who was rather vague about the eyes, rather drooping of bulky
shoulder, as though he was wondering what he was expected to
do next. As their host left them, Kennicott awoke:
"Marbury tells me you're a high mogul in the public library.
I was surprised. Didn't hardly think you were old enough
I thought you were a girl, still in college maybe."
"Oh, I'm dreadfully old. I expect to take to a lip-stick, and
to find a gray hair any morning now."
"Huh! You must be frightfully old--prob'ly too old to be
my granddaughter, I guess!"
Thus in the Vale of Arcady nymph and satyr beguiled the
hours; precisely thus, and not in honeyed pentameters,
discoursed Elaine and the worn Sir Launcelot in the pleached alley.
"How do you like your work?" asked the doctor.
"It's pleasant, but sometimes I feel shut off from things--
the steel stacks, and the everlasting cards smeared all over with
red rubber stamps."
"Don't you get sick of the city?"
"St. Paul? Why, don't you like it? I don't know of any
lovelier view than when you stand on Summit Avenue and
look across Lower Town to the Mississippi cliffs and the upland
farms beyond."
"I know but---- Of course I've spent nine years around
the Twin Cities--took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U., and
had my internship in a hospital in Minneapolis, but still, oh
well, you don't get to know folks here, way you do up home.
I feel I've got something to say about running Gopher Prairie,
but you take it in a big city of two-three hundred thousand,
and I'm just one flea on the dog's back. And then I like
country driving, and the hunting in the fall. Do you know
Gopher Prairie at all?"
"No, but I hear it's a very nice town."
"Nice? Say honestly---- Of course I may be prejudiced,
but I've seen an awful lot of towns--one time I went to
Atlantic City for the American Medical Association meeting,
and I spent practically a week in New York! But I never saw
a town that had such up-and-coming people as Gopher Prairie.
Bresnahan--you know--the famous auto manufacturer--he
comes from Gopher Prairie. Born and brought up there!
And it's a darn pretty town. Lots of fine maples and box-
elders, and there's two of the dandiest lakes you ever saw,
right near town! And we've got seven miles of cement walks
already, and building more every day! Course a lot of these
towns still put up with plank walks, but not for us, you
bet!"
"Really?"
(Why was she thinking of Stewart Snyder?)
"Gopher Prairie is going to have a great future. Some of the
best dairy and wheat land in the state right near there--some
of it selling right now at one-fifty an acre, and I bet it will
go up to two and a quarter in ten years!"
"Is---- Do you like your profession?"
"Nothing like it. Keeps you out, and yet you have a
chance to loaf in the office for a change."
"I don't mean that way. I mean--it's such an opportunity
for sympathy."
Dr. Kennicott launched into a heavy, "Oh, these Dutch
farmers don't want sympathy. All they need is a bath and a
good dose of salts."
Carol must have flinched, for instantly he was urging, "What
I mean is--I don't want you to think I'm one of these old
salts-and-quinine peddlers, but I mean: so many of my
patients are husky farmers that I suppose I get kind of case-
hardened."
"It seems to me that a doctor could transform a whole
community, if he wanted to--if he saw it. He's usually the
only man in the neighborhood who has any scientific training,
isn't he?"
"Yes, that's so, but I guess most of us get rusty. We land
in a rut of obstetrics and typhoid and busted legs. What we
need is women like you to jump on us. It'd be you that would
transform the town."
"No, I couldn't. Too flighty. I did used to think about
doing just that, curiously enough, but I seem to have drifted
away from the idea. Oh, I'm a fine one to be lecturing
you!"
"No! You're just the one. You have ideas without having
lost feminine charm. Say! Don't you think there's a lot
of these women that go out for all these movements and so on
that sacrifice----"
After his remarks upon suffrage he abruptly questioned her
about herself. His kindliness and the firmness of his
personality enveloped her and she accepted him as one who had
a right to know what she thought and wore and ate and read.
He was positive. He had grown from a sketched-in stranger
to a friend, whose gossip was important news. She noticed the
healthy solidity of his chest. His nose, which had seemed
irregular and large, was suddenly virile.
She was jarred out of this serious sweetness when Marbury
bounced over to them and with horrible publicity yammered,
"Say, what do you two think you're doing? Telling fortunes
or making love? Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky
bacheldore, Carol. Come on now, folks, shake a leg. Let's
have some stunts or a dance or something."
She did not have another word with Dr. Kennicott until their
parting:
"Been a great pleasure to meet you, Miss Milford. May
I see you some time when I come down again? I'm here quite
often--taking patients to hospitals for majors, and so on."
"Why----"
"What's your address?"
"You can ask Mr. Marbury next time you come down--if
you really want to know!"
"Want to know? Say, you wait!"
II
Of the love-making of Carol and Will Kennicott there is
nothing to be told which may not be heard on every summer
evening, on every shadowy block.
They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang
phrases and flares of poetry; their silences were contentment,
or shaky crises when his arm took her shoulder. All the
beauty of youth, first discovered when it is passing--and all
the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried man encountering
a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of
her employment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she
is glad to serve.
They liked each other honestly--they were both honest.
She was disappointed by his devotion to making money, but
she was sure that he did not lie to patients, and that he did
keep up with the medical magazines. What aroused her to
something more than liking was his boyishness when they went
tramping.
They walked from St. Paul down the river to Mendota,
Kennicott more elastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crepe shirt,
Carol youthful in a tam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge
suit with an absurdly and agreeably broad turn-down linen
collar, and frivolous ankles above athletic shoes. The High
Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting from low banks to a
palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paul side,
upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardens
and shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards,
sheets of corrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river.
Carol leaned over the rail of the bridge to look down at this
Yang-tse village; in delicious imaginary fear she shrieked that
she was dizzy with the height; and it was an extremely human
satisfaction to have a strong male snatch her back to safety,
instead of having a logical woman teacher or librarian sniff,
"Well, if you're scared, why don't you get away from the rail,
then?"
From the cliffs across the river Carol and Kennicott looked
back at St. Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from the dome
of the cathedral to the dome of the state capitol.
The river road led past rocky field slopes, deep glens, woods
flamboyant now with September, to Mendota, white walls and
a spire among trees beneath a hill, old-world in its placid ease.
And for this fresh land, the place is ancient. Here is the bold
stone house which General Sibley, the king of fur-traders, built
in 1835, with plaster of river mud, and ropes of twisted grass
for laths. It has an air of centuries. In its solid rooms Carol
and Kennicott found prints from other days which the house
had seen--tail-coats of robin's-egg blue, clumsy Red River carts
laden with luxurious furs, whiskered Union soldiers in slant
forage caps and rattling sabers.
It suggested to them a common American past, and it was
memorable because they had discovered it together. They
talked more trustingly, more personally, as they trudged on.
They crossed the Minnesota River in a rowboat ferry. They
climbed the hill to the round stone tower of Fort Snelling.
They saw the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota,
and recalled the men who had come here eighty years ago--
Maine lumbermen, York traders, soldiers from the Maryland
hills.
"It's a good country, and I'm proud of it. Let's make it all
that those old boys dreamed about," the unsentimental Kennicott
was moved to vow.
"Let's!"
"Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the
town--well--make it artistic. It's mighty pretty, but I'll
admit we aren't any too darn artistic. Probably the lumber-
yard isn't as scrumptious as all these Greek temples. But go
to it! Make us change!"
"I would like to. Some day!"
"Now! You'd love Gopher Prairie. We've been doing a
lot with lawns and gardening the past few years, and it's so
homey--the big trees and---- And the best people on earth.
And keen. I bet Luke Dawson----"
Carol but half listened to the names. She could not fancy
their ever becoming important to her.
"I bet Luke Dawson has got more money than most of the
swells on Summit Avenue; and Miss Sherwin in the high school
is a regular wonder--reads Latin like I do English; and Sam
Clark, the hardware man, he's a corker--not a better man in the
state to go hunting with; and if you want culture, besides Vida
Sherwin there's Reverend Warren, the Congregational preacher,
and Professor Mott, the superintendent of schools, and Guy
Pollock, the lawyer--they say he writes regular poetry and--
and Raymie Wutherspoon, he's not such an awful boob when
you get to KNOW him, and he sings swell. And---- And
there's plenty of others. Lym Cass. Only of course none of
them have your finesse, you might call it. But they don't make
'em any more appreciative and so on. Come on! We're
ready for you to boss us!"
They sat on the bank below the parapet of the old fort,
hidden from observation. He circled her shoulder with his
arm. Relaxed after the walk, a chill nipping her throat,
conscious of his warmth and power, she leaned gratefully against him.
"You know I'm in love with you, Carol!"
She did not answer, but she touched the back of his hand
with an exploring finger.
"You say I'm so darn materialistic. How can I help it,
unless I have you to stir me up?"
She did not answer. She could not think.
"You say a doctor could cure a town the way he does a
person. Well, you cure the town of whatever ails it, if
anything does, and I'll be your surgical kit."
She did not follow his words, only the burring resoluteness
of them.
She was shocked, thrilled, as he kissed her cheek and cried,
"There's no use saying things and saying things and saying
things. Don't my arms talk to you--now?"
"Oh, please, please!" She wondered if she ought to be
angry, but it was a drifting thought, and she discovered that
she was crying.
Then they were sitting six inches apart, pretending that they
had never been nearer, while she tried to be impersonal:
"I would like to--would like to see Gopher Prairie."
"Trust me! Here she is! Brought some snapshots down
to show you."
Her cheek near his sleeve, she studied a dozen village
pictures. They were streaky; she saw only trees, shrubbery, a
porch indistinct in leafy shadows. But she exclaimed over the
lakes: dark water reflecting wooded bluffs, a flight of ducks, a
fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide straw hat, holding up a
string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge of Plover
Lake had the air of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow in
the crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house,
reeds in thin black lines, arches of frosty grasses. It was an
impression of cool clear vigor.
"How'd it be to skate there for a couple of hours, or go
zinging along on a fast ice-boat, and skip back home for coffee
and some hot wienies?" he demanded.
"It might be--fun."
"But here's the picture. Here's where you come in."
A photograph of a forest clearing: pathetic new furrows
straggling among stumps, a clumsy log cabin chinked with
mud and roofed with hay. In front of it a sagging woman with
tight-drawn hair, and a baby bedraggled, smeary, glorious-
eyed.
"Those are the kind of folks I practise among, good share
of the time. Nels Erdstrom, fine clean young Svenska. He'll
have a corking farm in ten years, but now---- I operated his
wife on a kitchen table, with my driver giving the anesthetic.
Look at that scared baby! Needs some woman with hands
like yours. Waiting for you! Just look at that baby's eyes,
look how he's begging----"
"Don't! They hurt me. Oh, it would be sweet to help
him--so sweet."
As his arms moved toward her she answered all her doubts
with "Sweet, so sweet." _
Read next: CHAPTER 3
Read previous: CHAPTER 1
Table of content of Main Street
GO TO TOP OF SCREEN
Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book
