VI
She needed new clothes. Kennicott had promised, "We'll
have a good trip down to the Cities in the fall, and take plenty
of time for it, and you can get your new glad-rags then." But
as she examined her wardrobe she flung her ancient black
velvet frock on the floor and raged, "They're disgraceful.
Everything I have is falling to pieces."
There was a new dressmaker and milliner, a Mrs.
Swiftwaite. It was said that she was not altogether an elevating
influence in the way she glanced at men; that she would as
soon take away a legally appropriated husband as not; that if
there was any Mr. Swiftwaite, "it certainly was
strange that
nobody seemed to know anything about him!" But she had
made for Rita Gould an organdy frock and hat to match
universally admitted to be "too cunning for words," and the
matrons went cautiously, with darting eyes and excessive
politeness, to the rooms which Mrs. Swiftwaite had taken in
the old Luke Dawson house, on Floral Avenue.
With none of the spiritual preparation which normally
precedes the buying of new clothes in Gopher Prairie, Carol
marched into Mrs. Swiftwaite's, and demanded, "I want to
see a hat, and possibly a blouse."
In the dingy old front parlor which she had tried to make
smart with a pier glass, covers from fashion magazines,
anemic French prints, Mrs. Swiftwaite moved smoothly among
the dress-dummies and hat-rests, spoke smoothly as she took
up a small black and red turban. "I am sure the lady will
find this extremely attractive."
"It's dreadfully tabby and small-towny," thought Carol,
while she soothed, "I don't believe it quite goes with me."
"It's the choicest thing I have, and I'm sure you'll find
it suits you beautifully. It has a great deal of chic. Please
try it on," said Mrs. Swiftwaite, more smoothly than ever.
Carol studied the woman. She was as imitative as a glass
diamond. She was the more rustic in her effort to appear
urban. She wore a severe high-collared blouse with a row of
small black buttons, which was becoming to her low-breasted
slim neatness, but her skirt was hysterically checkered, her
cheeks were too highly rouged, her lips too sharply penciled.
She was magnificently a specimen of the illiterate divorcée of
forty made up to look thirty, clever, and alluring.
While she was trying on the hat Carol felt very condescending.
She took it off, shook her head, explained with the kind
smile for inferiors, "I'm afraid it won't do, though it's
unusually nice for so small a town as this."
"But it's really absolutely New-Yorkish."
"Well, it—"
"You see, I know my New York styles. I lived in New
York for years, besides almost a year in Akron!"
"You did?" Carol was polite, and edged away, and went
home unhappily. She was wondering whether her own airs
were as laughable as Mrs. Swiftwaite's. She put on the
eye-glasses which Kennicott had recently given to her for reading,
and looked over a grocery bill. She went hastily up to her
room, to her mirror. She was in a mood of self-depreciation.
Accurately or not, this was the picture she saw in the mirror:
Neat rimless eye-glasses. Black hair clumsily tucked under
a mauve straw hat which would have suited a spinster. Cheeks
clear, bloodless. Thin nose. Gentle mouth and chin. A
modest voile blouse with an edging of lace at the neck. A
virginal sweetness and timorousness—no flare of gaiety, no
suggestion of cities, music, quick laughter.
"I have become a small-town woman. Absolute. Typical.
Modest and moral and safe. Protected from life.
Genteel!
The Village Virus—the village virtuousness. My hair—just
scrambled together. What can Erik see in that wedded spinster
there? He does like me! Because I'm the only woman who's
decent to him! How long before he'll wake up to me? . . .
I've waked up to myself. . . . Am I as old as—as old
as I am?
"Not really old. Become careless. Let myself look tabby.
"I want to chuck every stitch I own. Black hair and
pale cheeks—they'd go with a Spanish dancer's costume—
rose behind my ear, scarlet mantilla over one shoulder, the
other bare."
She seized the rouge sponge, daubed her cheeks, scratched at
her lips with the vermilion pencil until they stung, tore open
her collar. She posed with her thin arms in the attitude of
the fandango. She dropped them sharply. She shook her head.
"My heart doesn't dance," she said. She flushed as she
fastened her blouse.
"At least I'm much more graceful than Fern Mullins.
Heavens! When I came here from the Cities, girls imitated
me. Now I'm trying to imitate a city girl."
