Kennicott was amazed. Ever since childhood he had seen these towns from trains on this same line. He grumbled, "Why, what"s the matter with "em?
Good hustling burgs. It would astonish you to know how much wheat and rye and corn and potatoes they ship in a year."
"But they"re so ugly."
"I"ll admit they aren"t comfy like Gopher Prairie. But give "em time."
"What"s the use of giving them time unless some one has desire and training enough to plan them? Hundreds of factories trying to make attractive motor cars, but these towns--left to chance. No! That can"t be true. It must have taken genius to make them so scrawny!"
"Oh, they"re not so bad," was all he answered. He pretended that his hand was the cat and hers the mouse. For the first time she tolerated him rather than encouraged him. She was staring out at Schoenstrom, a hamlet of perhaps a hundred and fifty inhabitants, at which the train was stopping.
A bearded German and his pucker-mouthed wife tugged their enormous imitation-leather satchel from under a seat and waddled out. The station agent hoisted a dead calf aboard the baggage-car. There were no other visible activities in Schoenstrom. In the quiet of the halt, Carol could hear a horse kicking his stall, a carpenter shingling a roof.
The business-center of Schoenstrom took up one side of one block, facing the railroad. It was a row of one-story shops covered with galvanized iron, or with clapboards painted red and bilious yellow. The buildings were as ill-a.s.sorted, as temporary-looking, as a mining-camp street in the motion-pictures. The railroad station was a one-room frame box, a mirey cattle-pen on one side and a crimson wheat-elevator on the other.
The elevator, with its cupola on the ridge of a shingled roof, resembled a broad-shouldered man with a small, vicious, pointed head. The only habitable structures to be seen were the florid red-brick Catholic church and rectory at the end of Main Street.
Carol picked at Kennicott"s sleeve. "You wouldn"t call this a not-so-bad town, would you?"
"These Dutch burgs ARE kind of slow. Still, at that----See that fellow coming out of the general store there, getting into the big car? I met him once. He owns about half the town, besides the store. Rauskukle, his name is. He owns a lot of mortgages, and he gambles in farm-lands. Good nut on him, that fellow. Why, they say he"s worth three or four hundred thousand dollars! Got a dandy great big yellow brick house with tiled walks and a garden and everything, other end of town--can"t see it from here--I"ve gone past it when I"ve driven through here. Yes sir!"
"Then, if he has all that, there"s no excuse whatever for this place!
If his three hundred thousand went back into the town, where it belongs, they could burn up these shacks, and build a dream-village, a jewel! Why do the farmers and the town-people let the Baron keep it?"
"I must say I don"t quite get you sometimes, Carrie. Let him? They can"t help themselves! He"s a dumm old Dutchman, and probably the priest can twist him around his finger, but when it comes to picking good farming land, he"s a regular wiz!"
"I see. He"s their symbol of beauty. The town erects him, instead of erecting buildings."
"Honestly, don"t know what you"re driving at. You"re kind of played out, after this long trip. You"ll feel better when you get home and have a good bath, and put on the blue negligee. That"s some vampire costume, you witch!"
He squeezed her arm, looked at her knowingly.
They moved on from the desert stillness of the Schoenstrom station. The train creaked, banged, swayed. The air was nauseatingly thick. Kennicott turned her face from the window, rested her head on his shoulder. She was coaxed from her unhappy mood. But she came out of it unwillingly, and when Kennicott was satisfied that he had corrected all her worries and had opened a magazine of saffron detective stories, she sat upright.
Here--she meditated--is the newest empire of the world; the Northern Middlewest; a land of dairy herds and exquisite lakes, of new automobiles and tar-paper shanties and silos like red towers, of clumsy speech and a hope that is boundless. An empire which feeds a quarter of the world--yet its work is merely begun. They are pioneers, these sweaty wayfarers, for all their telephones and bank-accounts and automatic pianos and co-operative leagues. And for all its fat richness, theirs is a pioneer land. What is its future? she wondered. A future of cities and factory s.m.u.t where now are loping empty fields? Homes universal and secure? Or placid chateaux ringed with sullen huts? Youth free to find knowledge and laughter? Willingness to sift the sanctified lies? Or creamy-skinned fat women, smeared with grease and chalk, gorgeous in the skins of beasts and the b.l.o.o.d.y feathers of slain birds, playing bridge with puffy pink-nailed jeweled fingers, women who after much expenditure of labor and bad temper still grotesquely resemble their own flatulent lap-dogs? The ancient stale inequalities, or something different in history, unlike the tedious maturity of other empires? What future and what hope?
Carol"s head ached with the riddle.
She saw the prairie, flat in giant patches or rolling in long hummocks.
The width and bigness of it, which had expanded her spirit an hour ago, began to frighten her. It spread out so; it went on so uncontrollably; she could never know it. Kennicott was closeted in his detective story.
With the loneliness which comes most depressingly in the midst of many people she tried to forget problems, to look at the prairie objectively.
The gra.s.s beside the railroad had been burnt over; it was a smudge p.r.i.c.kly with charred stalks of weeds. Beyond the undeviating barbed-wire fences were clumps of golden rod. Only this thin hedge shut them off from the plains-shorn wheat-lands of autumn, a hundred acres to a field, p.r.i.c.kly and gray near-by but in the blurred distance like tawny velvet stretched over dipping hillocks. The long rows of wheat-shocks marched like soldiers in worn yellow tabards. The newly plowed fields were black banners fallen on the distant slope. It was a martial immensity, vigorous, a little harsh, unsoftened by kindly gardens.
The expanse was relieved by clumps of oaks with patches of short wild gra.s.s; and every mile or two was a chain of cobalt slews, with the flicker of blackbirds" wings across them.
All this working land was turned into exuberance by the light. The sunshine was dizzy on open stubble; shadows from immense c.u.mulus clouds were forever sliding across low mounds; and the sky was wider and loftier and more resolutely blue than the sky of cities ... she declared.
"It"s a glorious country; a land to be big in," she crooned.
Then Kennicott startled her by chuckling, "D" you realize the town after the next is Gopher Prairie? Home!"
III
That one word--home--it terrified her. Had she really bound herself to live, inescapably, in this town called Gopher Prairie? And this thick man beside her, who dared to define her future, he was a stranger! She turned in her seat, stared at him. Who was he? Why was he sitting with her? He wasn"t of her kind! His neck was heavy; his speech was heavy; he was twelve or thirteen years older than she; and about him was none of the magic of shared adventures and eagerness. She could not believe that she had ever slept in his arms. That was one of the dreams which you had but did not officially admit.
She told herself how good he was, how dependable and understanding. She touched his ear, smoothed the plane of his solid jaw, and, turning away again, concentrated upon liking his town. It wouldn"t be like these barren settlements. It couldn"t be! Why, it had three thousand population. That was a great many people. There would be six hundred houses or more. And----The lakes near it would be so lovely. She"d seen them in the photographs. They had looked charming ... hadn"t they?
As the train left Wahkeenyan she began nervously to watch for the lakes--the entrance to all her future life. But when she discovered them, to the left of the track, her only impression of them was that they resembled the photographs.
A mile from Gopher Prairie the track mounts a curving low ridge, and she could see the town as a whole. With a pa.s.sionate jerk she pushed up the window, looked out, the arched fingers of her left hand trembling on the sill, her right hand at her breast.
And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been pa.s.sing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicott was it exceptional. The huddled low wooden houses broke the plains scarcely more than would a hazel thicket. The fields swept up to it, past it.
It was unprotected and unprotecting; there was no dignity in it nor any hope of greatness. Only the tall red grain-elevator and a few tinny church-steeples rose from the ma.s.s. It was a frontier camp. It was not a place to live in, not possibly, not conceivably.
The people--they"d be as drab as their houses, as flat as their fields.
She couldn"t stay here. She would have to wrench loose from this man, and flee.
She peeped at him. She was at once helpless before his mature fixity, and touched by his excitement as he sent his magazine skittering along the aisle, stooped for their bags, came up with flushed face, and gloated, "Here we are!"
She smiled loyally, and looked away. The train was entering town. The houses on the outskirts were dusky old red mansions with wooden frills, or gaunt frame shelters like grocery boxes, or new bungalows with concrete foundations imitating stone.
Now the train was pa.s.sing the elevator, the grim storage-tanks for oil, a creamery, a lumber-yard, a stock-yard muddy and trampled and stinking.
Now they were stopping at a squat red frame station, the platform crowded with unshaven farmers and with loafers--unadventurous people with dead eyes. She was here. She could not go on. It was the end--the end of the world. She sat with closed eyes, longing to push past Kennicott, hide somewhere in the train, flee on toward the Pacific.
Something large arose in her soul and commanded, "Stop it! Stop being a whining baby!" She stood up quickly; she said, "Isn"t it wonderful to be here at last!"
He trusted her so. She would make herself like the place. And she was going to do tremendous things----
She followed Kennicott and the bobbing ends of the two bags which he carried. They were held back by the slow line of disembarking pa.s.sengers. She reminded herself that she was actually at the dramatic moment of the bride"s home-coming. She ought to feel exalted. She felt nothing at all except irritation at their slow progress toward the door.
Kennicott stooped to peer through the windows. He shyly exulted:
"Look! Look! There"s a bunch come down to welcome us! Sam Clark and the missus and Dave Dyer and Jack Elder, and, yes sir, Harry Haydock and Juanita, and a whole crowd! I guess they see us now. Yuh, yuh sure, they see us! See "em waving!"
She obediently bent her head to look out at them. She had hold of herself. She was ready to love them. But she was embarra.s.sed by the heartiness of the cheering group. From the vestibule she waved to them, but she clung a second to the sleeve of the brakeman who helped her down before she had the courage to dive into the cataract of hand-shaking people, people whom she could not tell apart. She had the impression that all the men had coa.r.s.e voices, large damp hands, tooth-brush mustaches, bald spots, and Masonic watch-charms.
She knew that they were welcoming her. Their hands, their smiles, their shouts, their affectionate eyes overcame her. She stammered, "Thank you, oh, thank you!"
One of the men was clamoring at Kennicott, "I brought my machine down to take you home, doc."
"Fine business, Sam!" cried Kennicott; and, to Carol, "Let"s jump in.
That big Paige over there. Some boat, too, believe me! Sam can show speed to any of these Marmons from Minneapolis!"
Only when she was in the motor car did she distinguish the three people who were to accompany them. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essence of decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, rugged of neck but sleek and round of face--face like the back of a spoon bowl.
He was chuckling at her, "Have you got us all straight yet?"
"Course she has! Trust Carrie to get things straight and get "em darn quick! I bet she could tell you every date in history!" boasted her husband.