VI
She could—at times—agree with Kennicott that the
shaving-and-corsets familiarity of married life was not dreary vulgarity
but a wholesome frankness; that artificial reticences might
merely be irritating. She was not much disturbed when for
hours he sat about the living-room in his honest socks. But
she would not listen to his theory that "all this romance stuff
is simply moonshine—elegant when you're courting, but no
use busting yourself keeping it up all your life."
She thought of surprises, games, to vary the days. She
knitted an astounding purple scarf, which she hid under his
supper plate. (When he discovered it he looked embarrassed,
and gasped, "Is today an anniversary or something? Gosh,
I'd forgotten it!")
Once she filled a thermos bottle with hot coffee a corn-flakes
box with cookies just baked by Bea, and bustled to his office
at three in the afternoon. She hid her bundles in the hall and
peeped in.
The office was shabby. Kennicott had inherited it from a
medical predecessor, and changed it only by adding a white
enameled operating-table, a sterilizer, a Roentgen-ray
apparatus, and a small portable typewriter. It was a suite of
two rooms: a waiting-room with straight chairs, shaky pine
table, and those coverless and unknown magazines which are
found only in the offices of dentists and doctors. The room
beyond, looking on Main Street, was business-office,
consulting-room, operating-room, and, in an alcove, bacteriological and
chemical laboratory. The wooden floors of both rooms were
bare; the furniture was brown and scaly.
Waiting for the doctor were two women, as still as though
they were paralyzed, and a man in a railroad brakeman's
uniform, holding his bandaged right hand with his tanned left.
They stared at Carol. She sat modestly in a stiff chair, feeling
frivolous and out of place.
Kennicott appeared at the inner door, ushering out
a bleached man with a trickle of wan beard, and consoling him,
"All right, Dad. Be careful about the sugar, and mind the
diet I gave you. Gut the prescription filled, and come in and
see me next week. Say, uh, better, uh, better not drink too
much beer. All right, Dad."
His voice was artificially hearty. He looked absently at
Carol. He was a medical machine now, not a domestic machine.
"What is it, Carrie?" he droned.
"No hurry. Just wanted to say hello."
"Well—"
Self-pity because he did not divine that this was a surprise
party rendered her sad and interesting to herself, and she had
the pleasure of the martyrs in saying bravely to him, "It's
nothing special. If you're busy long I'll trot home."
While she waited she ceased to pity and began to mock
herself. For the first time she observed the waiting-room. Oh
yes, the doctor's family had to have obi panels and a wide
couch and an electric percolator, but any hole was good enough
for sick tired common people who were nothing but the one
means and excuse for the doctor's existing! No. She couldn't
blame Kennicott. He was satisfied by the shabby chairs. He
put up with them as his patients did. It was her neglected
province—she who had been going about talking of rebuilding
the whole town!
When the patients were gone she brought in her bundles.
"What's those?" wondered Kennicott.
"Turn your back! Look out of the window!"
He obeyed—not very much bored. When she cried "Now!"
a feast of cookies and small hard candies and hot coffee was
spread on the roll-top desk in the inner room.
His broad face lightened. "That's a new one on me! Never
was more surprised in my life! And, by golly, I believe I am
hungry. Say, this is fine."
When the first exhilaration of the surprise had declined
she demanded, "Will! I'm going to refurnish your waiting-room!"
"What's the matter with it? It's all right."
"It is not! It's hideous. We can afford to give your
patients a better place. And it would be good business." She
felt tremendously politic.
"Rats! I don't worry about the business. You look here
now: As I told you— Just because I like to tuck a few
dollars away, I'll be switched if I'll stand for your thinking
I'm nothing but a dollar-chasing—"
"Stop it! Quick! I'm not hurting your feelings! I'm not
criticizing! I'm the adoring least one of thy harem. I just
mean—"
Two days later, with pictures, wicker chairs, a rug, she had
made the waiting-room habitable; and Kennicott admitted,
"Does look a lot better. Never thought much about it. Guess
I need being bullied."
She was convinced that she was gloriously content in her
career as doctor's-wife.