Yet that same evening she had an idea which solved the rebuilding of Gopher Prairie.
Within ten minutes she was jerking the old-fashioned bell-pull of Luke Dawson. Mrs. Dawson opened the door and peered doubtfully about the edge of it. Carol kissed her cheek, and frisked into the lugubrious sitting-room.
"Well, well, you"re a sight for sore eyes!" chuckled Mr. Dawson, dropping his newspaper, pushing his spectacles back on his forehead.
"You seem so excited," sighed Mrs. Dawson.
"I am! Mr. Dawson, aren"t you a millionaire?"
He c.o.c.ked his head, and purred, "Well, I guess if I cashed in on all my securities and farm-holdings and my interests in iron on the Mesaba and in Northern timber and cut-over lands, I could push two million dollars pretty close, and I"ve made every cent of it by hard work and having the sense to not go out and spend every----"
"I think I want most of it from you!"
The Dawsons glanced at each other in appreciation of the jest; and he chirped, "You"re worse than Reverend Benlick! He don"t hardly ever strike me for more than ten dollars--at a time!"
"I"m not joking. I mean it! Your children in the Cities are grown-up and well-to-do. You don"t want to die and leave your name unknown. Why not do a big, original thing? Why not rebuild the whole town? Get a great architect, and have him plan a town that would be suitable to the prairie. Perhaps he"d create some entirely new form of architecture.
Then tear down all these shambling buildings----"
Mr. Dawson had decided that she really did mean it. He wailed, "Why, that would cost at least three or four million dollars!"
"But you alone, just one man, have two of those millions!"
"Me? Spend all my hard-earned cash on building houses for a lot of shiftless beggars that never had the sense to save their money? Not that I"ve ever been mean. Mama could always have a hired girl to do the work--when we could find one. But her and I have worked our fingers to the bone and--spend it on a lot of these rascals----?"
"Please! Don"t be angry! I just mean--I mean----Oh, not spend all of it, of course, but if you led off the list, and the others came in, and if they heard you talk about a more attractive town----"
"Why now, child, you"ve got a lot of notions. Besides what"s the matter with the town? Looks good to me. I"ve had people that have traveled all over the world tell me time and again that Gopher Prairie is the prettiest place in the Middlewest. Good enough for anybody. Certainly good enough for Mama and me. Besides! Mama and me are planning to go out to Pasadena and buy a bungalow and live there."
VII
She had met Miles Bjornstam on the street. For the second of welcome encounter this workman with the bandit mustache and the muddy overalls seemed nearer than any one else to the credulous youth which she was seeking to fight beside her, and she told him, as a cheerful anecdote, a little of her story.
He grunted, "I never thought I"d be agreeing with Old Man Dawson, the penny-pinching old land-thief--and a fine briber he is, too. But you got the wrong slant. You aren"t one of the people--yet. You want to do something for the town. I don"t! I want the town to do something for itself. We don"t want old Dawson"s money--not if it"s a gift, with a string. We"ll take it away from him, because it belongs to us. You got to get more iron and cussedness into you. Come join us cheerful b.u.ms, and some day--when we educate ourselves and quit being b.u.ms--we"ll take things and run "em straight."
He had changed from her friend to a cynical man in overalls. She could not relish the autocracy of "cheerful b.u.ms."
She forgot him as she tramped the outskirts of town.
She had replaced the city hall project by an entirely new and highly exhilarating thought of how little was done for these unpicturesque poor.
VIII
The spring of the plains is not a reluctant virgin but brazen and soon away. The mud roads of a few days ago are powdery dust and the puddles beside them have hardened into lozenges of black sleek earth like cracked patent leather.
Carol was panting as she crept to the meeting of the Thanatopsis program committee which was to decide the subject for next fall and winter.
Madam Chairman (Miss Ella s...o...b..dy in an oyster-colored blouse) asked if there was any new business.
Carol rose. She suggested that the Thanatopsis ought to help the poor of the town. She was ever so correct and modern. She did not, she said, want charity for them, but a chance of self-help; an employment bureau, direction in washing babies and making pleasing stews, possibly a munic.i.p.al fund for home-building. "What do you think of my plans, Mrs.
Warren?" she concluded.
Speaking judiciously, as one related to the church by marriage, Mrs.
Warren gave verdict:
"I"m sure we"re all heartily in accord with Mrs. Kennicott in feeling that wherever genuine poverty is encountered, it is not only n.o.blesse oblige but a joy to fulfil our duty to the less fortunate ones. But I must say it seems to me we should lose the whole point of the thing by not regarding it as charity. Why, that"s the chief adornment of the true Christian and the church! The Bible has laid it down for our guidance.
"Faith, Hope, and CHARITY," it says, and, "The poor ye have with ye always," which indicates that there never can be anything to these so-called scientific schemes for abolishing charity, never! And isn"t it better so? I should hate to think of a world in which we were deprived of all the pleasure of giving. Besides, if these shiftless folks realize they"re getting charity, and not something to which they have a right, they"re so much more grateful."
"Besides," snorted Miss Ella s...o...b..dy, "they"ve been fooling you, Mrs.
Kennicott. There isn"t any real poverty here. Take that Mrs. Steinhof you speak of: I send her our washing whenever there"s too much for our hired girl--I must have sent her ten dollars" worth the past year alone!
I"m sure Papa would never approve of a city home-building fund. Papa says these folks are fakers. Especially all these tenant farmers that pretend they have so much trouble getting seed and machinery. Papa says they simply won"t pay their debts. He says he"s sure he hates to foreclose mortgages, but it"s the only way to make them respect the law."
"And then think of all the clothes we give these people!" said Mrs.
Jackson Elder.
Carol intruded again. "Oh yes. The clothes. I was going to speak of that. Don"t you think that when we give clothes to the poor, if we do give them old ones, we ought to mend them first and make them as presentable as we can? Next Christmas when the Thanatopsis makes its distribution, wouldn"t it be jolly if we got together and sewed on the clothes, and trimmed hats, and made them----"
"Heavens and earth, they have more time than we have! They ought to be mighty good and grateful to get anything, no matter what shape it"s in.
I know I"m not going to sit and sew for that lazy Mrs. Vopni, with all I"ve got to do!" snapped Ella s...o...b..dy.
They were glaring at Carol. She reflected that Mrs. Vopni, whose husband had been killed by a train, had ten children.
But Mrs. Mary Ellen Wilks was smiling. Mrs. Wilks was the proprietor of Ye Art Shoppe and Magazine and Book Store, and the reader of the small Christian Science church. She made it all clear:
"If this cla.s.s of people had an understanding of Science and that we are the children of G.o.d and nothing can harm us, they wouldn"t be in error and poverty."
Mrs. Jackson Elder confirmed, "Besides, it strikes me the club is already doing enough, with tree-planting and the anti-fly campaign and the responsibility for the rest-room--to say nothing of the fact that we"ve talked of trying to get the railroad to put in a park at the station!"
"I think so too!" said Madam Chairman. She glanced uneasily at Miss Sherwin. "But what do you think, Vida?"
Vida smiled tactfully at each of the committee, and announced, "Well, I don"t believe we"d better start anything more right now. But it"s been a privilege to hear Carol"s dear generous ideas, hasn"t it! Oh! There is one thing we must decide on at once. We must get together and oppose any move on the part of the Minneapolis clubs to elect another State Federation president from the Twin Cities. And this Mrs. Edgar Potbury they"re putting forward--I know there are people who think she"s a bright interesting speaker, but I regard her as very shallow. What do you say to my writing to the Lake Ojibawasha Club, telling them that if their district will support Mrs. Warren for second vice-president, we"ll support their Mrs. Hagelton (and such a dear, lovely, cultivated woman, too) for president."
"Yes! We ought to show up those Minneapolis folks!" Ella s...o...b..dy said acidly. "And oh, by the way, we must oppose this movement of Mrs.
Potbury"s to have the state clubs come out definitely in favor of woman suffrage. Women haven"t any place in politics. They would lose all their daintiness and charm if they became involved in these horried plots and log-rolling and all this awful political stuff about scandal and personalities and so on."
All--save one--nodded. They interrupted the formal business-meeting to discuss Mrs. Edgar Potbury"s husband, Mrs. Potbury"s income, Mrs.
Potbury"s sedan, Mrs. Potbury"s residence, Mrs. Potbury"s oratorical style, Mrs. Potbury"s mandarin evening coat, Mrs. Potbury"s coiffure, and Mrs. Potbury"s altogether reprehensible influence on the State Federation of Women"s Clubs.
Before the program committee adjourned they took three minutes to decide which of the subjects suggested by the magazine Culture Hints, Furnishings and China, or The Bible as Literature, would be better for the coming year. There was one annoying incident. Mrs. Dr. Kennicott interfered and showed off again. She commented, "Don"t you think that we already get enough of the Bible in our churches and Sunday Schools?"
Mrs. Leonard Warren, somewhat out of order but much more out of temper, cried, "Well upon my word! I didn"t suppose there was any one who felt that we could get enough of the Bible! I guess if the Grand Old Book has withstood the attacks of infidels for these two thousand years it is worth our SLIGHT consideration!"
"Oh, I didn"t mean----" Carol begged. Inasmuch as she did mean, it was hard to be extremely lucid. "But I wish, instead of limiting ourselves either to the Bible, or to anecdotes about the Brothers Adam"s wigs, which Culture Hints seems to regard as the significant point about furniture, we could study some of the really stirring ideas that are springing up today--whether it"s chemistry or anthropology or labor problems--the things that are going to mean so terribly much."