V
Bresnahan had borrowed Jackson Elder's motor; he stopped
at the Kennicotts'; he bawled at Carol, rocking with Hugh
en the porch, "Better come for a ride."
She wanted to snub him. "Thanks so much, but I'm being
maternal."
"Bring him along! Bring him along!" Bresnahan was
out of the seat, stalking up the sidewalk, and the rest of her
protests and dignities were feeble.
She did not bring Hugh along.
Bresnahan was silent for a mile, in words, But he looked
at her as though he meant her to know that he understood
everything she thought.
She observed how deep was his chest.
"Lovely fields over there," he said.
"You really like them? There's no profit in them."
He chuckled. "Sister, you can't get away with it. I'm
onto you. You consider me a big bluff. Well, maybe I am.
But so are you, my dear—and pretty enough so that I'd
try to make love to you, if I weren't afraid you'd slap me."
"Mr. Bresnahan, do you talk that way to your' wife's
friends? And do you call them `sister'?"
"As a matter of fact, I do! And I make 'em like it.
Score two!" But his chuckle was not so rotund, and he was
very attentive to the ammeter.
In a moment he was cautiously attacking: "That's a wonderful
boy, Will Kennicott. Great work these country practitioners
are doing. The other day, in Washington, I was
talking to a big scientific shark, a professor in Johns Hopkins
medical school, and he was saying that no one has ever
sufficiently appreciated the general practitioner and the
sympathy and help he gives folks. These crack specialists, the
young scientific fellows, they're so cocksure and so wrapped
up in their laboratories that they miss the human element.
Except in the case of a few freak diseases that no respectable
human being would waste his time having, it's the old doc
that keeps a community well, mind and body. And strikes me
that Will is one of the steadiest and clearest-headed counter
practitioners I've ever met. Eh?"
"I'm sure he is. He's a servant of reality."
"Come again? Um. Yes. All of that, whatever that
is. . . . Say, child, you don't care a whole lot for Gopher
Prairie, if I'm not mistaken."
"Nope."
"There's where you're missing a big chance. There's nothing
to these cities. Believe me, I know! This is a good
town,
as they go. You're lucky to be here. I wish I could shy
on!"
"Very well, why don't you?"
"Huh? Why—Lord—can't get away fr—"
"You don't have to stay. I do! So I want to change it.
Do you know that men like you, prominent men, do quite a
reasonable amount of harm by insisting that your native towns
and native states are perfect? It's you who encourage the
denizens not to change. They quote you, and go on believing
that they live in paradise, and—" She clenched her fist.
"The incredible dullness of it!"
"Suppose you were right. Even so, don't you think you
waste a lot of thundering on one poor scared little town?
Kind of mean!"
"I tell you it's dull. Dull!"
"The folks don't find it dull. These couples like the
Haydocks have a high old time; dances and cards—"
"They don't. They're bored. Almost every one here is.
Vacuousness and bad manners and spiteful gossip—that's what
I hate."
"Those things—course they're here. So are they in Boston!
And every place else! Why, the faults you find in this town
are simply human nature, and never will be changed."
"Perhaps. But in a Boston all the good Carols (I'll admit
I have no faults) can find one another and play. But here—
I'm alone, in a stale pool—except as it's stirred by the great
Mr. Bresnahan!"
"My Lord, to hear you tell it, a fellow 'd think that all
the denizens, as you impolitely call 'em, are so confoundedly
unhappy that it's a wonder they don't all up and commit
suicide. But they seem to struggle along somehow!"
"They don't know what they miss. And anybody can
endure anything. Look at men in mines and in prisons."
He drew up on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie.
He glanced across the reeds reflected on the water, the quiver
of wavelets like crumpled tinfoil, the distant shores patched
with dark woods, silvery oats and deep yellow wheat. He
patted her hand. "Sis— Carol, you're a darling girl, but
you're difficult. Know what I think?"
"Yes."
"Humph. Maybe you do, but— My humble (not too
humble!) opinion is that you like to be different. You like
to think you're peculiar. Why, if you knew how many tens
of thousands of women, especially in New York, say just what
you do, you'd lose all the fun of thinking you're a lone genius
and you'd be on the band-wagon whooping it up for Gopher
Prairie and a good decent family life. There's always about
a million young women just out of college who want to teach
their grandmothers how to suck eggs."
"How proud you are of that homely rustic metaphor! You
use it at `banquets' and directors' meetings, and boast of
your climb from a humble homestead."
"Huh! You may have my number. I'm not telling. But
look here: You're so prejudiced against Gopher Prairie that
you overshoot the mark; you antagonize those who might be
inclined to agree with you in some particulars but— Great
guns, the town can't be all wrong!"
"No, it isn't. But it could be. Let me tell you a fable.
Imagine a cavewoman complaining to her mate. She doesn't
like one single thing; she hates the damp cave, the rats
running over her bare legs, the stiff skin garments, the eating
of half-raw meat, her husband's bushy face, the constant
battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her
unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace. Her man
protests, `But it can't all be wrong!' and he thinks he has
reduced her to absurdity. Now you assume that a world
which produces a Percy Bresnahan and a Velvet Motor Company
must be civilized. It is? Aren't we only about half-way
along in barbarism? I suggest Mrs. Bogart as a test. And
we'll continue in barbarism just as long as people as nearly
intelligent as you continue to defend things as they are
because they are."
"You're a fair spieler, child. But, by golly, I'd like to see
you try to design a new manifold, or run a factory and keep
a lot of your fellow reds from
Czech-slovenski-magyar-godknowswheria on the job! You'd drop your theories so
darn quick! I'm not any defender of things as they are.
Sure. They're rotten. Only I'm sensible."
He preached his gospel: love of outdoors, Playing the Game,
loyalty to friends. She had the neophyte's shock of discovery
that, outside of tracts, conservatives do not tremble and find
no answer when an iconoclast turns on them, but retort with
agility and confusing statistics.
He was so much the man, the worker, the friend, that she
liked him when she most tried to stand out against him; he
was so much the successful executive that she did not want
him to despise her. His manner of sneering at what he called
"parlor socialists" (though the phrase was not overwhelmingly
new) had a power which made her wish to placate his
company of well-fed, speed-loving administrators. When he
demanded, "Would you like to associate with nothing but a
lot of turkey-necked, horn-spectacled nuts that have
adenoids and need a hair-cut, and that spend all their time kicking
about `conditions' and never do a lick of work?" she said,
"No, but just the same—" When he asserted, "Even if
your cavewoman was right in knocking the whole works, I
bet some red-blooded Regular Fellow, some real He-man,
found her a nice dry cave, and not any whining criticizing
radical," she wriggled her head feebly, between a nod and a
shake.
His large hands, sensual lips, easy voice supported his
self-confidence. He made her feel young and soft—as Kennicott
had once made her feel. She had nothing to say when he
bent his powerful head and experimented, "My dear, I'm
sorry I'm going away from this town. You'd be a darling
child to play with. You are pretty! Some day in
Boston
I'll show you how we buy a lunch. Well, hang it, got to be
starting back."
The only answer to his gospel of beef which she could find,
when she was home, was a wail of "But just the same—"
She did not see him again before he departed for Washington.
His eyes remained. His glances at her lips and hair and
shoulders had revealed to her that she was not a
wife-and-mother alone, but a girl; that there still were men in the
world, as there had been in college days.
That admiration led her to study Kennicott, to tear at the
shroud of intimacy, to perceive the strangeness of the most
familiar.
