<h2> CHAPTER XXX </h2>
<p>FERN Mullins rushed into the house on a Saturday morning early in
September and shrieked at Carol, “School starts next Tuesday. I've got to
have one more spree before I'm arrested. Let's get up a picnic down the
lake for this afternoon. Won't you come, Mrs. Kennicott, and the doctor?
Cy Bogart wants to go—he's a brat but he's lively.”</p>
<p>“I don't think the doctor can go,” sedately. “He said something about
having to make a country call this afternoon. But I'd love to.”</p>
<p>“That's dandy! Who can we get?”</p>
<p>“Mrs. Dyer might be chaperon. She's been so nice. And maybe Dave, if he
could get away from the store.”</p>
<p>“How about Erik Valborg? I think he's got lots more style than these town
boys. You like him all right, don't you?”</p>
<p>So the picnic of Carol, Fern, Erik, Cy Bogart, and the Dyers was not only
moral but inevitable.</p>
<p>They drove to the birch grove on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie.
Dave Dyer was his most clownish self. He yelped, jigged, wore Carol's hat,
dropped an ant down Fern's back, and when they went swimming (the women
modestly changing in the car with the side curtains up, the men undressing
behind the bushes, constantly repeating, “Gee, hope we don't run into
poison ivy”), Dave splashed water on them and dived to clutch his wife's
ankle. He infected the others. Erik gave an imitation of the Greek dancers
he had seen in vaudeville, and when they sat down to picnic supper spread
on a lap-robe on the grass, Cy climbed a tree to throw acorns at them.</p>
<p>But Carol could not frolic.</p>
<p>She had made herself young, with parted hair, sailor blouse and large blue
bow, white canvas shoes and short linen skirt. Her mirror had asserted
that she looked exactly as she had in college, that her throat was smooth,
her collar-bone not very noticeable. But she was under restraint. When
they swam she enjoyed the freshness of the water but she was irritated by
Cy's tricks, by Dave's excessive good spirits. She admired Erik's dance;
he could never betray bad taste, as Cy did, and Dave. She waited for him
to come to her. He did not come. By his joyousness he had apparently
endeared himself to the Dyers. Maud watched him and, after supper, cried
to him, “Come sit down beside me, bad boy!” Carol winced at his
willingness to be a bad boy and come and sit, at his enjoyment of a not
very stimulating game in which Maud, Dave, and Cy snatched slices of cold
tongue from one another's plates. Maud, it seemed, was slightly dizzy from
the swim. She remarked publicly, “Dr. Kennicott has helped me so much by
putting me on a diet,” but it was to Erik alone that she gave the complete
version of her peculiarity in being so sensitive, so easily hurt by the
slightest cross word, that she simply had to have nice cheery friends.</p>
<p>Erik was nice and cheery.</p>
<p>Carol assured herself, “Whatever faults I may have, I certainly couldn't
ever be jealous. I do like Maud; she's always so pleasant. But I wonder if
she isn't just a bit fond of fishing for men's sympathy? Playing with
Erik, and her married——Well——But she looks at him
in that languishing, swooning, mid-Victorian way. Disgusting!”</p>
<p>Cy Bogart lay between the roots of a big birch, smoking his pipe and
teasing Fern, assuring her that a week from now, when he was again a
high-school boy and she his teacher, he'd wink at her in class. Maud Dyer
wanted Erik to “come down to the beach to see the darling little minnies.”
Carol was left to Dave, who tried to entertain her with humorous accounts
of Ella Stowbody's fondness for chocolate peppermints. She watched Maud
Dyer put her hand on Erik's shoulder to steady herself.</p>
<p>“Disgusting!” she thought.</p>
<p>Cy Bogart covered Fern's nervous hand with his red paw, and when she
bounced with half-anger and shrieked, “Let go, I tell you!” he grinned and
waved his pipe—a gangling twenty-year-old satyr.</p>
<p>“Disgusting!”</p>
<p>When Maud and Erik returned and the grouping shifted, Erik muttered at
Carol, “There's a boat on shore. Let's skip off and have a row.”</p>
<p>“What will they think?” she worried. She saw Maud Dyer peer at Erik with
moist possessive eyes. “Yes! Let's!” she said.</p>
<p>She cried to the party, with the canonical amount of sprightliness,
“Good-by, everybody. We'll wireless you from China.”</p>
<p>As the rhythmic oars plopped and creaked, as she floated on an unreality
of delicate gray over which the sunset was poured out thin, the irritation
of Cy and Maud slipped away. Erik smiled at her proudly. She considered
him—coatless, in white thin shirt. She was conscious of his male
differentness, of his flat masculine sides, his thin thighs, his easy
rowing. They talked of the library, of the movies. He hummed and she
softly sang “Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.” A breeze shivered across the agate
lake. The wrinkled water was like armor damascened and polished. The
breeze flowed round the boat in a chill current. Carol drew the collar of
her middy blouse over her bare throat.</p>
<p>“Getting cold. Afraid we'll have to go back,” she said.</p>
<p>“Let's not go back to them yet. They'll be cutting up. Let's keep along
the shore.”</p>
<p>“But you enjoy the 'cutting up!' Maud and you had a beautiful time.”</p>
<p>“Why! We just walked on the shore and talked about fishing!”</p>
<p>She was relieved, and apologetic to her friend Maud. “Of course. I was
joking.”</p>
<p>“I'll tell you! Let's land here and sit on the shore—that bunch of
hazel-brush will shelter us from the wind—and watch the sunset. It's
like melted lead. Just a short while! We don't want to go back and listen
to them!”</p>
<p>“No, but——” She said nothing while he sped ashore. The keel
clashed on the stones. He stood on the forward seat, holding out his hand.
They were alone, in the ripple-lapping silence. She rose slowly, slowly
stepped over the water in the bottom of the old boat. She took his hand
confidently. Unspeaking they sat on a bleached log, in a russet twilight
which hinted of autumn. Linden leaves fluttered about them.</p>
<p>“I wish——Are you cold now?” he whispered.</p>
<p>“A little.” She shivered. But it was not with cold.</p>
<p>“I wish we could curl up in the leaves there, covered all up, and lie
looking out at the dark.”</p>
<p>“I wish we could.” As though it was comfortably understood that he did not
mean to be taken seriously.</p>
<p>“Like what all the poets say—brown nymph and faun.”</p>
<p>“No. I can't be a nymph any more. Too old——Erik, am I old? Am
I faded and small-towny?”</p>
<p>“Why, you're the youngest——Your eyes are like a girl's.
They're so—well, I mean, like you believed everything. Even if you
do teach me, I feel a thousand years older than you, instead of maybe a
year younger.”</p>
<p>“Four or five years younger!”</p>
<p>“Anyway, your eyes are so innocent and your cheeks so soft——Damn
it, it makes me want to cry, somehow, you're so defenseless; and I want to
protect you and——There's nothing to protect you against!”</p>
<p>“Am I young? Am I? Honestly? Truly?” She betrayed for a moment the
childish, mock-imploring tone that comes into the voice of the most
serious woman when an agreeable man treats her as a girl; the childish
tone and childish pursed-up lips and shy lift of the cheek.</p>
<p>“Yes, you are!”</p>
<p>“You're dear to believe it, Will—ERIK!”</p>
<p>“Will you play with me? A lot?”</p>
<p>“Perhaps.”</p>
<p>“Would you really like to curl in the leaves and watch the stars swing by
overhead?”</p>
<p>“I think it's rather better to be sitting here!” He twined his fingers
with hers. “And Erik, we must go back.”</p>
<p>“Why?”</p>
<p>“It's somewhat late to outline all the history of social custom!”</p>
<p>“I know. We must. Are you glad we ran away though?”</p>
<p>“Yes.” She was quiet, perfectly simple. But she rose.</p>
<p>He circled her waist with a brusque arm. She did not resist. She did not
care. He was neither a peasant tailor, a potential artist, a social
complication, nor a peril. He was himself, and in him, in the personality
flowing from him, she was unreasoningly content. In his nearness she
caught a new view of his head; the last light brought out the planes of
his neck, his flat ruddied cheeks, the side of his nose, the depression of
his temples. Not as coy or uneasy lovers but as companions they walked to
the boat, and he lifted her up on the prow.</p>
<p>She began to talk intently, as he rowed: “Erik, you've got to work! You
ought to be a personage. You're robbed of your kingdom. Fight for it! Take
one of these correspondence courses in drawing—they mayn't be any
good in themselves, but they'll make you try to draw and——”</p>
<p>As they reached the picnic ground she perceived that it was dark, that
they had been gone for a long time.</p>
<p>“What will they say?” she wondered.</p>
<p>The others greeted them with the inevitable storm of humor and slight
vexation: “Where the deuce do you think you've been?” “You're a fine pair,
you are!” Erik and Carol looked self-conscious; failed in their effort to
be witty. All the way home Carol was embarrassed. Once Cy winked at her.
That Cy, the Peeping Tom of the garage-loft, should consider her a
fellow-sinner——She was furious and frightened and exultant by
turns, and in all her moods certain that Kennicott would read her
adventuring in her face.</p>
<p>She came into the house awkwardly defiant.</p>
<p>Her husband, half asleep under the lamp, greeted her, “Well, well, have
nice time?”</p>
<p>She could not answer. He looked at her. But his look did not sharpen. He
began to wind his watch, yawning the old “Welllllll, guess it's about time
to turn in.”</p>
<p>That was all. Yet she was not glad. She was almost disappointed.</p>
<p>II</p>
<p>Mrs. Bogart called next day. She had a hen-like, crumb-pecking, diligent
appearance. Her smile was too innocent. The pecking started instantly:</p>
<p>“Cy says you had lots of fun at the picnic yesterday. Did you enjoy it?”</p>
<p>“Oh yes. I raced Cy at swimming. He beat me badly. He's so strong, isn't
he!”</p>
<p>“Poor boy, just crazy to get into the war, too, but——This Erik
Valborg was along, wa'n't he?”</p>
<p>“Yes.”</p>
<p>“I think he's an awful handsome fellow, and they say he's smart. Do you
like him?”</p>
<p>“He seems very polite.”</p>
<p>“Cy says you and him had a lovely boat-ride. My, that must have been
pleasant.”</p>
<p>“Yes, except that I couldn't get Mr. Valborg to say a word. I wanted to
ask him about the suit Mr. Hicks is making for my husband. But he insisted
on singing. Still, it was restful, floating around on the water and
singing. So happy and innocent. Don't you think it's a shame, Mrs. Bogart,
that people in this town don't do more nice clean things like that,
instead of all this horrible gossiping?”</p>
<p>“Yes. . . . Yes.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Bogart sounded vacant. Her bonnet was awry; she was incomparably
dowdy. Carol stared at her, felt contemptuous, ready at last to rebel
against the trap, and as the rusty goodwife fished again, “Plannin' some
more picnics?” she flung out, “I haven't the slightest idea! Oh. Is that
Hugh crying? I must run up to him.”</p>
<p>But up-stairs she remembered that Mrs. Bogart had seen her walking with
Erik from the railroad track into town, and she was chilly with
disquietude.</p>
<p>At the Jolly Seventeen, two days after, she was effusive to Maud Dyer, to
Juanita Haydock. She fancied that every one was watching her, but she
could not be sure, and in rare strong moments she did not care. She could
rebel against the town's prying now that she had something, however
indistinct, for which to rebel.</p>
<p>In a passionate escape there must be not only a place from which to flee
but a place to which to flee. She had known that she would gladly leave
Gopher Prairie, leave Main Street and all that it signified, but she had
had no destination. She had one now. That destination was not Erik Valborg
and the love of Erik. She continued to assure herself that she wasn't in
love with him but merely “fond of him, and interested in his success.” Yet
in him she had discovered both her need of youth and the fact that youth
would welcome her. It was not Erik to whom she must escape, but universal
and joyous youth, in class-rooms, in studios, in offices, in meetings to
protest against Things in General. . . . But universal and joyous youth
rather resembled Erik.</p>
<p>All week she thought of things she wished to say to him. High, improving
things. She began to admit that she was lonely without him. Then she was
afraid.</p>
<p>It was at the Baptist church supper, a week after the picnic, that she saw
him again. She had gone with Kennicott and Aunt Bessie to the supper,
which was spread on oilcloth-covered and trestle-supported tables in the
church basement. Erik was helping Myrtle Cass to fill coffee cups for the
waitresses. The congregation had doffed their piety. Children tumbled
under the tables, and Deacon Pierson greeted the women with a rolling,
“Where's Brother Jones, sister, where's Brother Jones? Not going to be
with us tonight? Well, you tell Sister Perry to hand you a plate, and make
'em give you enough oyster pie!”</p>
<p>Erik shared in the cheerfulness. He laughed with Myrtle, jogged her elbow
when she was filling cups, made deep mock bows to the waitresses as they
came up for coffee. Myrtle was enchanted by his humor. From the other end
of the room, a matron among matrons, Carol observed Myrtle, and hated her,
and caught herself at it. “To be jealous of a wooden-faced village girl!”
But she kept it up. She detested Erik; gloated over his gaucheries—his
“breaks,” she called them. When he was too expressive, too much like a
Russian dancer, in saluting Deacon Pierson, Carol had the ecstasy of pain
in seeing the deacon's sneer. When, trying to talk to three girls at once,
he dropped a cup and effeminately wailed, “Oh dear!” she sympathized with—and
ached over—the insulting secret glances of the girls.</p>
<p>From meanly hating him she rose to compassion as she saw that his eyes
begged every one to like him. She perceived how inaccurate her judgments
could be. At the picnic she had fancied that Maud Dyer looked upon Erik
too sentimentally, and she had snarled, “I hate these married women who
cheapen themselves and feed on boys.” But at the supper Maud was one of
the waitresses; she bustled with platters of cake, she was pleasant to old
women; and to Erik she gave no attention at all. Indeed, when she had her
own supper, she joined the Kennicotts, and how ludicrous it was to suppose
that Maud was a gourmet of emotions Carol saw in the fact that she talked
not to one of the town beaux but to the safe Kennicott himself!</p>
<p>When Carol glanced at Erik again she discovered that Mrs. Bogart had an
eye on her. It was a shock to know that at last there was something which
could make her afraid of Mrs. Bogart's spying.</p>
<p>“What am I doing? Am I in love with Erik? Unfaithful? I? I want youth but
I don't want him—I mean, I don't want youth—enough to break up
my life. I must get out of this. Quick.”</p>
<p>She said to Kennicott on their way home, “Will! I want to run away for a
few days. Wouldn't you like to skip down to Chicago?”</p>
<p>“Still be pretty hot there. No fun in a big city till winter. What do you
want to go for?”</p>
<p>“People! To occupy my mind. I want stimulus.”</p>
<p>“Stimulus?” He spoke good-naturedly. “Who's been feeding you meat? You got
that 'stimulus' out of one of these fool stories about wives that don't
know when they're well off. Stimulus! Seriously, though, to cut out the
jollying, I can't get away.”</p>
<p>“Then why don't I run off by myself?”</p>
<p>“Why——'Tisn't the money, you understand. But what about Hugh?”</p>
<p>“Leave him with Aunt Bessie. It would be just for a few days.”</p>
<p>“I don't think much of this business of leaving kids around. Bad for 'em.”</p>
<p>“So you don't think——”</p>
<p>“I'll tell you: I think we better stay put till after the war. Then we'll
have a dandy long trip. No, I don't think you better plan much about going
away now.”</p>
<p>So she was thrown at Erik.</p>
<p>III</p>
<p>She awoke at ebb-time, at three of the morning, woke sharply and fully;
and sharply and coldly as her father pronouncing sentence on a cruel
swindler she gave judgment:</p>
<p>“A pitiful and tawdry love-affair.</p>
<p>“No splendor, no defiance. A self-deceived little woman whispering in
corners with a pretentious little man.</p>
<p>“No, he is not. He is fine. Aspiring. It's not his fault. His eyes are
sweet when he looks at me. Sweet, so sweet.”</p>
<p>She pitied herself that her romance should be pitiful; she sighed that in
this colorless hour, to this austere self, it should seem tawdry.</p>
<p>Then, in a very great desire of rebellion and unleashing of all her
hatreds, “The pettier and more tawdry it is, the more blame to Main
Street. It shows how much I've been longing to escape. Any way out! Any
humility so long as I can flee. Main Street has done this to me. I came
here eager for nobilities, ready for work, and now——Any way
out.</p>
<p>“I came trusting them. They beat me with rods of dullness. They don't
know, they don't understand how agonizing their complacent dullness is.
Like ants and August sun on a wound.</p>
<p>“Tawdry! Pitiful! Carol—the clean girl that used to walk so fast!—sneaking
and tittering in dark corners, being sentimental and jealous at church
suppers!”</p>
<p>At breakfast-time her agonies were night-blurred, and persisted only as a
nervous irresolution.</p>
<p>IV</p>
<p>Few of the aristocrats of the Jolly Seventeen attended the humble
folk-meets of the Baptist and Methodist church suppers, where the Willis
Woodfords, the Dillons, the Champ Perrys, Oleson the butcher, Brad Bemis
the tinsmith, and Deacon Pierson found release from loneliness. But all of
the smart set went to the lawn-festivals of the Episcopal Church, and were
reprovingly polite to outsiders.</p>
<p>The Harry Haydocks gave the last lawn-festival of the season; a splendor
of Japanese lanterns and card-tables and chicken patties and Neapolitan
ice-cream. Erik was no longer entirely an outsider. He was eating his
ice-cream with a group of the people most solidly “in”—the Dyers,
Myrtle Cass, Guy Pollock, the Jackson Elders. The Haydocks themselves kept
aloof, but the others tolerated him. He would never, Carol fancied, be one
of the town pillars, because he was not orthodox in hunting and motoring
and poker. But he was winning approbation by his liveliness, his gaiety—the
qualities least important in him.</p>
<p>When the group summoned Carol she made several very well-taken points in
regard to the weather.</p>
<p>Myrtle cried to Erik, “Come on! We don't belong with these old folks. I
want to make you 'quainted with the jolliest girl, she comes from Wakamin,
she's staying with Mary Howland.”</p>
<p>Carol saw him being profuse to the guest from Wakamin. She saw him
confidentially strolling with Myrtle. She burst out to Mrs. Westlake,
“Valborg and Myrtle seem to have quite a crush on each other.”</p>
<p>Mrs. Westlake glanced at her curiously before she mumbled, “Yes, don't
they.”</p>
<p>“I'm mad, to talk this way,” Carol worried.</p>
<p>She had regained a feeling of social virtue by telling Juanita Haydock
“how darling her lawn looked with the Japanese lanterns” when she saw that
Erik was stalking her. Though he was merely ambling about with his hands
in his pockets, though he did not peep at her, she knew that he was
calling her. She sidled away from Juanita. Erik hastened to her. She
nodded coolly (she was proud of her coolness).</p>
<p>“Carol! I've got a wonderful chance! Don't know but what some ways it
might be better than going East to take art. Myrtle Cass says——I
dropped in to say howdy to Myrtle last evening, and had quite a long talk
with her father, and he said he was hunting for a fellow to go to work in
the flour mill and learn the whole business, and maybe become general
manager. I know something about wheat from my farming, and I worked a
couple of months in the flour mill at Curlew when I got sick of tailoring.
What do you think? You said any work was artistic if it was done by an
artist. And flour is so important. What do you think?”</p>
<p>“Wait! Wait!”</p>
<p>This sensitive boy would be very skilfully stamped into conformity by
Lyman Cass and his sallow daughter; but did she detest the plan for this
reason? “I must be honest. I mustn't tamper with his future to please my
vanity.” But she had no sure vision. She turned on him:</p>
<p>“How can I decide? It's up to you. Do you want to become a person like Lym
Cass, or do you want to become a person like—yes, like me! Wait!
Don't be flattering. Be honest. This is important.”</p>
<p>“I know. I am a person like you now! I mean, I want to rebel.”</p>
<p>“Yes. We're alike,” gravely.</p>
<p>“Only I'm not sure I can put through my schemes. I really can't draw much.
I guess I have pretty fair taste in fabrics, but since I've known you I
don't like to think about fussing with dress-designing. But as a miller,
I'd have the means—books, piano, travel.”</p>
<p>“I'm going to be frank and beastly. Don't you realize that it isn't just
because her papa needs a bright young man in the mill that Myrtle is
amiable to you? Can't you understand what she'll do to you when she has
you, when she sends you to church and makes you become respectable?”</p>
<p>He glared at her. “I don't know. I suppose so.”</p>
<p>“You are thoroughly unstable!”</p>
<p>“What if I am? Most fish out of water are! Don't talk like Mrs. Bogart!
How can I be anything but 'unstable'—wandering from farm to tailor
shop to books, no training, nothing but trying to make books talk to me!
Probably I'll fail. Oh, I know it; probably I'm uneven. But I'm not
unstable in thinking about this job in the mill—and Myrtle. I know
what I want. I want you!”</p>
<p>“Please, please, oh, please!”</p>
<p>“I do. I'm not a schoolboy any more. I want you. If I take Myrtle, it's to
forget you.”</p>
<p>“Please, please!”</p>
<p>“It's you that are unstable! You talk at things and play at things, but
you're scared. Would I mind it if you and I went off to poverty, and I had
to dig ditches? I would not! But you would. I think you would come to like
me, but you won't admit it. I wouldn't have said this, but when you sneer
at Myrtle and the mill——If I'm not to have good sensible
things like those, d' you think I'll be content with trying to become a
damn dressmaker, after YOU? Are you fair? Are you?”</p>
<p>“No, I suppose not.”</p>
<p>“Do you like me? Do you?”</p>
<p>“Yes——No! Please! I can't talk any more.”</p>
<p>“Not here. Mrs. Haydock is looking at us.”</p>
<p>“No, nor anywhere. O Erik, I am fond of you, but I'm afraid.”</p>
<p>“What of?”</p>
<p>“Of Them! Of my rulers—Gopher Prairie. . . . My dear boy, we are
talking very foolishly. I am a normal wife and a good mother, and you are—oh,
a college freshman.”</p>
<p>“You do like me! I'm going to make you love me!”</p>
<p>She looked at him once, recklessly, and walked away with a serene gait
that was a disordered flight.</p>
<p>Kennicott grumbled on their way home, “You and this Valborg fellow seem
quite chummy.”</p>
<p>“Oh, we are. He's interested in Myrtle Cass, and I was telling him how
nice she is.”</p>
<p>In her room she marveled, “I have become a liar. I'm snarled with lies and
foggy analyses and desires—I who was clear and sure.”</p>
<p>She hurried into Kennicott's room, sat on the edge of his bed. He flapped
a drowsy welcoming hand at her from the expanse of quilt and dented
pillows.</p>
<p>“Will, I really think I ought to trot off to St. Paul or Chicago or some
place.”</p>
<p>“I thought we settled all that, few nights ago! Wait till we can have a
real trip.” He shook himself out of his drowsiness. “You might give me a
good-night kiss.”</p>
<p>She did—dutifully. He held her lips against his for an intolerable
time. “Don't you like the old man any more?” he coaxed. He sat up and
shyly fitted his palm about the slimness of her waist.</p>
<p>“Of course. I like you very much indeed.” Even to herself it sounded flat.
She longed to be able to throw into her voice the facile passion of a
light woman. She patted his cheek.</p>
<p>He sighed, “I'm sorry you're so tired. Seems like——But of
course you aren't very strong.”</p>
<p>“Yes. . . . Then you don't think—you're quite sure I ought to stay
here in town?”</p>
<p>“I told you so! I certainly do!”</p>
<p>She crept back to her room, a small timorous figure in white.</p>
<p>“I can't face Will down—demand the right. He'd be obstinate. And I
can't even go off and earn my living again. Out of the habit of it. He's
driving me——I'm afraid of what he's driving me to. Afraid.</p>
<p>“That man in there, snoring in stale air, my husband? Could any ceremony
make him my husband?</p>
<p>“No. I don't want to hurt him. I want to love him. I can't, when I'm
thinking of Erik. Am I too honest—a funny topsy-turvy honesty—the
faithfulness of unfaith? I wish I had a more compartmental mind, like men.
I'm too monogamous—toward Erik!—my child Erik, who needs me.</p>
<p>“Is an illicit affair like a gambling debt—demands stricter honor
than the legitimate debt of matrimony, because it's not legally enforced?</p>
<p>“That's nonsense! I don't care in the least for Erik! Not for any man. I
want to be let alone, in a woman world—a world without Main Street,
or politicians, or business men, or men with that sudden beastly hungry
look, that glistening unfrank expression that wives know——</p>
<p>“If Erik were here, if he would just sit quiet and kind and talk, I could
be still, I could go to sleep.</p>
<p>“I am so tired. If I could sleep——”</p>
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