I
THEY were driving down the lake to the cottages that moonlit
January night, twenty of them in the bob-sled. They sang
"Toy Land" and "Seeing Nelly Home"; they leaped from the
low back of the sled to race over the slippery snow ruts; and
when they were tired they climbed on the runners for a lift.
The moon-tipped flakes kicked up by the horses settled over the
revelers and dripped down their necks, but they laughed, yelped,
beat their leather mittens against their chests. The harness
rattled, the sleigh-bells were frantic, Jack Elder's setter sprang
beside the horses, barking.
For a time Carol raced with them. The cold air gave
fictive power. She felt that she could run on all night, leap
twenty feet at a stride. But the excess of energy tired her, and
she was glad to snuggle under the comforters which covered the
hay in the sled-box.
In the midst of the babel she found enchanted quietude.
Along the road the shadows from oak-branches were inked
on the snow like bars of music. Then the sled came out on the
surface of Lake Minniemashie. Across the thick ice was a
veritable road, a short-cut for farmers. On the glaring
expanse of the lake-levels of hard crust, flashes of green ice
blown clear, chains of drifts ribbed like the sea-beach—the
moonlight was overwhelming. It stormed on the snow, it
turned the woods ashore into crystals of fire. The night was
tropical and voluptuous. In that drugged magic there was no
difference between heavy heat and insinuating cold.
Carol was dream-strayed. The turbulent voices, even Guy
Pollock being connotative beside her, were nothing. She
repeated:
Deep on the convent-roof the snows
Are sparkling to the moon.
The words and the light blurred into one vast indefinite
happiness, and she believed that some great thing was coming
to her. She withdrew from the clamor into a worship of
incomprehensible gods. The night expanded, she was conscious
of the universe, and all mysteries stooped down to her.
She was jarred out of her ecstasy as the bob-sled bumped up
the steep road to the bluff where stood the cottages.
They dismounted at Jack Elder's shack. The interior walls
of unpainted boards, which had been grateful in August, were
forbidding in the chill. In fur coats and mufflers tied over
caps they were a strange company, bears and walruses talking.
Jack Elder lighted the shavings waiting in the belly of a
cast-iron stove which was like an enlarged bean-pot. They
piled their wraps high on a rocker, and cheered the rocker as
it solemnly tipped over backward.
Mrs. Elder and Mrs. Sam Clark made coffee in an enormous
blackened tin pot; Vida Sherwin and Mrs. McGanum unpacked
doughnuts and gingerbread; Mrs. Dave Dyer warmed up "hot
dogs"—frankfurters in rolls; Dr. Terry Gould, after announcing,
"Ladies and gents, prepare to be shocked; shock line
forms on the right," produced a bottle of bourbon whisky.
The others danced, muttering "Ouch!" as their frosted feet
struck the pine planks. Carol had lost her dream. Harry
Haydock lifted her by the waist and swung her. She laughed.
The gravity of the people who stood apart and talked made
her the more impatient for frolic.
Kennicott, Sam Clark, Jackson Elder, young Dr. McGanum,
and James Madison Howland, teetering on their toes near the
stove, conversed with the sedate pomposity of the commercialist.
In details the men were unlike, yet they said the same things
in the same hearty monotonous voices. You had to look at
them to see which was speaking.
"Well, we made pretty good time coming up," from one—
any one.
"Yump, we hit it up after we struck the good going on the
lake."
"Seems kind of slow though, after driving an auto."
"Yump, it does, at that. Say, how'd you make out with
that Sphinx tire you got?"
"Seems to hold out fine. Still, I don't know's I like it any
better than the Roadeater Cord."
"Yump, nothing better than a Roadeater. Especially the
cord. The cord's lots better than the fabric."
"Yump, you said something— Roadeater's a good tire."
"Say, how'd you come out with Pete Garsheim on his
payments?"
"He's paying up pretty good. That's a nice piece of land
he's got."
"Yump, that's a dandy farm."
"Yump, Pete's got a good place there."
They glided from these serious topics into the jocose insults
which are the wit of Main Street. Sam Clark was particularly
apt at them. "What's this wild-eyed sale of summer caps
you think you're trying to pull off?" he clamored at Harry
Haydock. "Did you steal 'em, or are you just overcharging us,
as usual? . . . Oh say, speaking about caps, d'I ever tell
you the good one I've got on Will? The doc thinks he's a
pretty good driver, fact, he thinks he's almost got human
intelligence, but one time he had his machine out in the rain,
and the poor fish, he hadn't put on chains, and thinks I—"
Carol had heard the story rather often. She fled back
to the dancers, and at Dave Dyer's masterstroke of dropping an
icicle down Mrs. McGanum's back she applauded hysterically.
They sat on the floor, devouring the food. The men giggled
amiably as they passed the whisky bottle, and laughed,
"There's a real sport!" when Juanita Haydock took a sip.
Carol tried to follow; she believed that she desired to be drunk
and riotous; but the whisky choked her and as she saw Kennicott
frown she handed the bottle on repentantly. Somewhat
too late she remembered that she had given up domesticity and
repentance.
"Let's play charades!" said Raymie Wutherspoon.
"Oh yes, do let us," said Ella Stowbody.
"That's the caper," sanctioned Harry Haydock.
They interpreted the word "making" as May and King.
The crown was a red flannel mitten cocked on Sam Clark's
broad pink bald head. They forgot they were respectable.
They made-believe. Carol was stimulated to cry:
"Let's form a dramatic club and give a play! Shall we?
It's been so much fun tonight!"
They looked affable.
"Sure," observed Sam Clark loyally.
"Oh, do let us! I think it would be lovely to present
`Romeo and Juliet'!" yearned Ella Stowbody.
"Be a whale of a lot of fun," Dr. Terry Gould granted.
"But if we did," Carol cautioned, "it would be awfully
silly to have amateur theatricals. We ought to paint our own
scenery and everything, and really do something fine. There'd
be a lot of hard work. Would you—would we all be punctual
at rehearsals, do you suppose?"
"You bet!" "Sure." "That's the idea." "Fellow ought
to be prompt at rehearsals," they all agreed.
"Then let's meet next week and form the Gopher Prairie
Dramatic Association!" Carol sang.
She drove home loving these friends who raced through moonlit
snow, had Bohemian parties, and were about to create beauty
in the theater. Everything was solved. She would be an authentic
part of the town, yet escape the coma of the Village
Virus. . . . She would be free of Kennicott again, without
hurting him, without his knowing.
She had triumphed.
The moon was small and high now, and unheeding.
