II
Of the love-making of Carol and Will Kennicott there is
nothing to be told which may not be heard on every summer
evening, on every shadowy block.
They were biology and mystery; their speech was slang
phrases and flares of poetry; their silences were contentment,
or shaky crises when his arm took her shoulder. All the
beauty of youth, first discovered when it is passing—and all
the commonplaceness of a well-to-do unmarried man encountering
a pretty girl at the time when she is slightly weary of
her employment and sees no glory ahead nor any man she
is glad to serve.
They liked each other honestly—they were both honest.
She was disappointed by his devotion to making money, but
she was sure that he did not lie to patients, and that he did
keep up with the medical magazines. What aroused her to
something more than liking was his boyishness when they went
tramping.
They walked from St. Paul down the river to Mendota,
Kennicott more elastic-seeming in a cap and a soft crêpe shirt,
Carol youthful in a tam-o'-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge
suit with an absurdly and agreeably broad turn-down linen
collar, and frivolous ankles above athletic shoes. The High
Bridge crosses the Mississippi, mounting from low banks to a
palisade of cliffs. Far down beneath it on the St. Paul side,
upon mud flats, is a wild settlement of chicken-infested gardens
and shanties patched together from discarded sign-boards,
sheets of corrugated iron, and planks fished out of the river.
Carol leaned over the rail of the bridge to look down at this
Yang-tse village; in delicious imaginary fear she shrieked that
she was dizzy with the height; and it was an extremely human
satisfaction to have a strong male snatch her back to safety,
instead of having a logical woman teacher or librarian sniff,
"Well, if you're scared, why don't you get away from the rail,
then?"
From the cliffs across the river Carol and Kennicott looked
back at St. Paul on its hills; an imperial sweep from the dome
of the cathedral to the dome of the state capitol.
The river road led past rocky field slopes, deep glens, woods
flamboyant now with September, to Mendota, white walls and
a spire among trees beneath a hill, old-world in its placid ease.
And for this fresh land, the place is ancient. Here is the bold
stone house which General Sibley, the king of fur-traders, built
in 1835, with plaster of river mud, and ropes of twisted grass
for laths. It has an air of centuries. In its solid rooms Carol
and Kennicott found prints from other days which the house
had seen—tail-coats of robin's-egg blue, clumsy Red River carts
laden with luxurious furs, whiskered Union soldiers in slant
forage caps and rattling sabers.
It suggested to them a common American past, and it was
memorable because they had discovered it together. They
talked more trustingly, more personally, as they trudged on.
They crossed the Minnesota River in a rowboat ferry. They
climbed the hill to the round stone tower of Fort Snelling.
They saw the junction of the Mississippi and the Minnesota,
and recalled the men who had come here eighty years ago—
Maine lumbermen, York traders, soldiers from the Maryland
hills.
"It's a good country, and I'm proud of it. Let's make it all
that those old boys dreamed about," the unsentimental Kennicott
was moved to vow.
"Let's!"
"Come on. Come to Gopher Prairie. Show us. Make the
town—well—make it artistic. It's mighty pretty, but I'll
admit we aren't any too darn artistic. Probably the
lumber-yard isn't as scrumptious as all these Greek temples. But go
to it! Make us change!"
"I would like to. Some day!"
"Now! You'd love Gopher Prairie. We've been doing a
lot with lawns and gardening the past few years, and it's so
homey—the big trees and— And the best people on earth.
And keen. I bet Luke Dawson—"
Carol but half listened to the names. She could not fancy
their ever becoming important to her.
"I bet Luke Dawson has got more money than most of the
swells on Summit Avenue; and Miss Sherwin in the high school
is a regular wonder—reads Latin like I do English; and Sam
Clark, the hardware man, he's a corker—not a better man in the
state to go hunting with; and if you want culture, besides Vida
Sherwin there's Reverend Warren, the Congregational preacher,
and Professor Mott, the superintendent of schools, and Guy
Pollock, the lawyer—they say he writes regular poetry and—
and Raymie Wutherspoon, he's not such an awful boob when
you get to know him, and he sings swell. And—
And
there's plenty of others. Lym Cass. Only of course none of
them have your finesse, you might call it. But they don't make
'em any more appreciative and so on. Come on! We're
ready for you to boss us!"
They sat on the bank below the parapet of the old fort,
hidden from observation. He circled her shoulder with his
arm. Relaxed after the walk, a chill nipping her throat,
conscious of his warmth and power, she leaned gratefully against
him.
"You know I'm in love with you, Carol!"
She did not answer, but she touched the back of his hand
with an exploring finger.
"You say I'm so darn materialistic. How can I help it,
unless I have you to stir me up?"
She did not answer. She could not think.
"You say a doctor could cure a town the way he does a
person. Well, you cure the town of whatever ails it, if
anything does, and I'll be your surgical kit."
She did not follow his words, only the burring resoluteness
of them.
She was shocked, thrilled, as he kissed her cheek and cried,
"There's no use saying things and saying things and saying
things. Don't my arms talk to you—now?"
"Oh, please, please!" She wondered if she ought to be
angry, but it was a drifting thought, and she discovered that
she was crying.
Then they were sitting six inches apart, pretending that they
had never been nearer, while she tried to be impersonal:
"I would like to—would like to see Gopher Prairie."
"Trust me! Here she is! Brought some snapshots down
to show you."
Her cheek near his sleeve, she studied a dozen village
pictures. They were streaky; she saw only trees, shrubbery, a
porch indistinct in leafy shadows. But she exclaimed over the
lakes: dark water reflecting wooded bluffs, a flight of ducks, a
fisherman in shirt sleeves and a wide straw hat, holding up a
string of croppies. One winter picture of the edge of Plover
Lake had the air of an etching: lustrous slide of ice, snow in
the crevices of a boggy bank, the mound of a muskrat house,
reeds in thin black lines, arches of frosty grasses. It was an
impression of cool clear vigor.
"How'd it be to skate there for a couple of hours, or go
zinging along on a fast ice-boat, and skip back home for coffee
and some hot wienies?" he demanded.
"It might be—fun."
"But here's the picture. Here's where you come in."
A photograph of a forest clearing: pathetic new furrows
straggling among stumps, a clumsy log cabin chinked with
mud and roofed with hay. In front of it a sagging woman with
tight-drawn hair, and a baby bedraggled, smeary,
glorious-eyed.
"Those are the kind of folks I practise among, good share
of the time. Nels Erdstrom, fine clean young Svenska. He'll
have a corking farm in ten years, but now— I operated his
wife on a kitchen table, with my driver giving the anesthetic.
Look at that scared baby! Needs some woman with hands
like yours. Waiting for you! Just look at that baby's eyes,
look how he's begging—"
"Don't! They hurt me. Oh, it would be sweet to help
him—so sweet."
As his arms moved toward her she answered all her doubts
with "Sweet, so sweet."