II
She had, she meditated, passed through the novelty of seeing
the town and meeting people, of skating and sliding and
hunting. Bea was competent; there was no household labor
except sewing and darning and gossipy assistance to Bea in
bed-making. She couldn't satisfy her ingenuity in planning
meals. At Dahl & Oleson's Meat Market you didn't give
orders—you wofully inquired whether there was anything
today besides steak and pork and ham. The cuts of beef were
not cuts. They were hacks. Lamb chops were as exotic as
sharks' fins. The meat-dealers shipped their best to the city,
with its higher prices.
In all the shops there was the same lack of choice. She
could not find a glass-headed picture-nail in town; she did
not hunt for the sort of veiling she wanted—she took what
she could get; and only at Howland & Gould's was there such
a luxury as canned asparagus. Routine care was all she could
devote to the house. Only by such fussing as the Widow
Bogart's could she make it fill her time.
She could not have outside employment. To the village
doctor's wife it was taboo.
She was a woman with a working brain and no work.
There were only three things which she could do: Have
children; start her career of reforming; or become so definitely
a part of the town that she would be fulfilled by the activities
of church and study-club and bridge-parties.
Children, yes, she wanted them, but— She was not quite
ready. She had been embarrassed by Kennicott's frankness,
but she agreed with him that in the insane condition of civilization,
which made the rearing of citizens more costly and perilous
than any other crime, it was inadvisable to have children till
he had made more money. She was sorry— Perhaps he had
made all the mystery of love a mechanical cautiousness but—
She fled from the thought with a dubious, "Some day."
Her "reforms," her impulses toward beauty in raw Main
Street, they had become indistinct. But she would set them
going now. She would! She swore it with soft fist beating
the edges of the radiator. And at the end of all her vows
she had no notion as to when and where the crusade was to
begin.
Become an authentic part of the town? She began to think
with unpleasant lucidity. She reflected that she did not know
whether the people liked her. She had gone to the women at
afternoon-coffees, to the merchants in their stores, with so many
outpouring comments and whimsies that she hadn't given them
a chance to betray their opinions of her. The men smiled—
but did they like her? She was lively among the women—
but was she one of them? She could not recall many times
when she had been admitted to the whispering of scandal
which is the secret chamber of Gopher Prairie conversation.
She was poisoned with doubt, as she drooped up to bed.
Next day, through her shopping, her mind sat back and
observed. Dave Dyer and Sam Clark were as cordial as
she had been fancying; but wasn't there an impersonal abruptness
in the "H' are yuh?" of Chet Dashaway? Howland the
grocer was curt. Was that merely his usual manner?
"It's infuriating to have to pay attention to what people
think. In St. Paul I didn't care. But here I'm spied on.
They're watching me. I mustn't let it make me self-conscious,"
she coaxed herself—overstimulated by the drug of thought,
and offensively on the defensive.