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The Innocents: A Story for Lovers, a novel by Sinclair Lewis |
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Chapter 17 |
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_ CHAPTER XVII The Lipsittsville Pioneer Shoe Store found Mr. Seth Appleby the best investment it had ever made. The proprietor was timorous about having given away thirty-three per cent. of his profits. But Mr. Appleby did attract customers--from the banker's college-bred daughter to farmers from the other side of the Lake--and he really did sell more shoes. He became a person of lasting importance. In a village, every clerk, every tradesman, has something of the same distinctive importance as the doctors, the lawyers, the ministers. It really makes a difference to you when Jim Smith changes from Brown's grocery to Robinson's, because Jim knows what kind of sugar-corn you like, and your second cousin married Jim's best friend. Bill Blank, the tailor, is not just a mysterious agent who produces your clothes, but a real personality, whose wife's bonnet is worth your study, even though you are the wife of the mayor. So to every person in Lipsittsville Mr. Seth Appleby was not just a lowly person on a stool who helped one in the choice of shoes. He was a person, he was their brother, to be loved or hated. If he had gone out of the shoe business there would have been something else for him to do--he would have sold farm machinery or driven on a rural mail route or collected rents, and have kept the same acquaintances. It was very pleasant to Father to pass down the village street in the sun, to call the town policeman "Ben" and the town banker "Major" and the town newspaperman "Lym," and to be hailed as "Seth" in return. It was diverting to join the little group of G. A. R. men in the back of the Filson Land and Farms Company office, and have even the heroes of Gettysburg pet him as a promising young adventurer and ask for his tales of tramping. Father was rather conscience-stricken when he saw how the town accepted his pretense of being an explorer, but when he tried to tell the truth everybody thought that he was merely being modest, and he finally settled down contentedly to being a hero, to the great satisfaction of all the town, which pointed out to unfortunate citizens of Freiburg and Hongkong and Bryan and other rival villages that none of them had a real up-to-date hero with all modern geographical improvements. In time, as his partner, the shoeman, had predicted, Father was elected president of the clubless country club, and organized a cross-country hike in which he outdistanced all the others, including the young and boastful Buck Simpson. He was slowly recognized as being "in society." To tell the truth, most of Lipsittsville was in society, but a few citizens weren't--Barney Bachschluss, the saloon-keeper; Tony, who sawed wood and mowed lawns; the workmen on the brick-yard and on the railway. Father was serenely established upon a social plane infinitely loftier than theirs. He wore a giddy, spotted, bat-wing tie, and his grand good gray trousers were rigidly creased. He read editorials in the Indianapolis paper and discussed them with Doc Schergan at the drug-store. The only trouble was that Mother had nothing to do. She was discontented, in their two rooms at the Star Hotel. No longer could she, as in her long years of flat life in New York, be content to sit dreaming and reading the paper. She was as brisk and strong and effective as Father. Open woods and the windy road had given her a restless joy in energy. She made a gown of gray silk and joined the Chautauqua Circle, but that was not enough. On an evening of late August, when a breeze was in the maples, when the sunset was turquoise and citron green and the streets were serenely happy, Father took her out for a walk. They passed the banker's mansion, with its big curving screened porch, and its tower, and brought up at a row of modern bungalows which had just been completed. "I wanted you to see these," said Father, "because some time--this is a secret I been keeping--some time I guess we'll be able to rent one of these! Don't see why we can't early next year, the way things are going!" "Oh, Father!" she said, almost tearfully. "Would you like it?" "Like it! With a real house and something to keep my hands busy! And maybe a kitty! And I would make you tea (I'm so tired of hotel food!) and we would sit out here on the porch--" "Yes, you'd have old Mr. Seth Appleby for tea-room customer. He's better 'n anybody they got on Cape Cod!" "Yes, and you _are_ better, too, Father!" "You old honeymooner! Say, I've got an idea. I wonder if we couldn't sneak in a look inside of one of these bungalows. Let's try this door." He shook the door-knob of a bungalow so new that laths and mortar were still scattered about the yard. The door was locked. He tried the windows as well. But he could not get in. Three other bungalows they tried, and the fourth, the last of the row, was already occupied. But they did steal up on the porch of one bungalow, and they exclaimed like children when they beheld the big living-room, the huge fireplace, the built-in shelves and, beyond the living-room, what seemed to be the dining-room, with an enormous chandelier which may not, perhaps, have been of the delicate reticence of a silver candlestick, but whose jags and blobs of ruby and emerald and purple glass filled their hearts with awe. "We _will_ get one of these houses!" Father vowed. "I thought you'd like them. I swear, I'll cut out my smoking, if necessary. Say! Got another idea! I wonder if we couldn't make up some excuse and butt into the bungalow that's been rented, and see how it looks furnished. I understand there's some new-comers living there. We'll sort of make them a neighborly call." "Oh, do you think we ought to?" Mother, she who had faced a sheriff's shot-gun, was timorous about facing an irate matron, and she tagged hesitatingly after Father as he marched along the row of bungalows, up the steps of the one that was rented, and rang the bell. The door was opened by a maid, in a Lipsittsville version of a uniform. "Lady or gent o' the house in?" asked Father, airily sticking his new derby on one side of his head and thrusting a thumb in an armhole, very impudent and fresh and youthful. "No, sir," said the maid, stupidly. Mother sighed. To tell the truth, she had wanted to see the promised land of this bungalow. "Well, say, girl, Mrs. Appleby and I are thinking of renting one of these here bungalonies, like the fellow says, and I wonder if we could take a look at this house, to see how it looks furnished?" The maid stared dumbly at him, looked suspiciously at Mother. Apparently she decided that, though the flamboyant Father was likely to steal everything in the house, Mother was a person to be trusted, and she mumbled, "Yass, I gass so." Father led the way in, and Mother stumbled over every possible obstacle, so absorbed was she by the intimate pleasantness which furniture gave to this big living-room--as large as the whole of their flat in New York. Actually, the furniture wasn't impressive--just a few good willow chairs, a big couch, a solid table. There were only two or three pictures, one rug, and, in the built-in shelves, no books at all. But it had space and cheerfulness; it was a home. "Here's the dining-room, with butler's pantry, and that door on the right looks like it might be a bedroom," Father announced, after a hasty exploration, while the maid stared doubtfully. He went on, half whispering, "Let's peep into the bedroom." "No, no, we mustn't do that," Mother insisted, but regretfully. For she was already wondering where, if she were running things, she would put a sewing-machine. She had always agreed with Matilda Tubbs that sewing-machines belonged in bedrooms. While the maid shadowed him and Mother opened her mouth to rebuke him, Father boldly pushed open the door on the right. He had guessed correctly. It was a bedroom. Mother haughtily stayed in the center of the living-room, but she couldn't help glancing through the open door, and she sighed enviously as she saw the splendor of twin beds, with a little table and an electric light between them, and the open door of a tiled bathroom. It was too much that the mistress of the house should have left her canary-yellow silk sweater on the foot of one bed. Mother had wanted a silk sweater ever since she had beheld one flaunted on Cape Cod. Father darted out, seized her wrists, dragged her into the bedroom, and while she was exploding in the lecture he so richly deserved she stopped, transfixed. Father was pointing to a picture over one bed, and smiling strangely. The picture was an oldish one, in a blackened old frame. It showed a baby playing with kittens. "Why!" gasped Mother--"why--why, it's just like the picture--it _is_ the picture--that we got when Lulu was born--that we had to leave on the Cape." "Yump," said Father. He still smiled strangely. He pointed at the table between the twin beds. On the table was a little brown, dusty book. Mother gazed at it dazedly. Her step was feeble as she tottered between the beds, picked up the book, opened it. It was the New Testament which she had had since girlhood, which she had carried all through their hike, which she supposed to be in their rooms back at the Star Hotel. There was a giggle from the doorway, and the apparently stupid maid was there, bowing. "Lena, has our trunk come from the hotel?" Father asked. "Yessir, I just been sneaking it in the back way. Welcome home, mum," said the maid, and shut the door--from the other side. Mother suddenly crumpled, burrowed her head against Father's shoulder and sobbed: "This is ours? Our own? Now?" "Yes, Mother, it sure am ours." Father still tried to speak airily, but in his voice were passion and a grave happiness. "It's ours--_yours_! And every stick of the furniture more than half paid for already! I didn't tell you how well we're doing at the store. Say, golly, I sure did have a time training Lena to play the game, like she didn't know us. She thought I was plumb nutty, at first!" "And I have a maid, too!" marveled Mother. "Yes, and a garden if you want to keep busy outdoors. And a phonograph with nineteen records, musical and comic, by Jiminy!" To prove which he darted back into the living-room, started "Molly Magee, My Girl," and to its cheerful strains he danced a fantastic jig, while the maid stared from the dining-room, and Mother, at the bedroom door, wept undisguisedly, murmuring, "Oh, my boy, my boy, that planned it all to surprise me!" _ |
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