V
But she hazily wanted some one to whom she could say
what she thought.
On a slow afternoon when she fidgeted over sewing and
wished that the telephone would ring, Bea announced Miss
Vida Sherwin.
Despite Vida Sherwin's lively blue eyes, if you had looked
at her in detail you would have found her face slightly lined,
and not so much sallow as with the bloom rubbed off; you
would have found her chest flat, and her fingers rough from
needle and chalk and penholder; her blouses and plain cloth
skirts undistinguished; and her hat worn too far back,
betraying a dry forehead. But you never did look at Vida
Sherwin in detail. You couldn't. Her electric activity veiled
her. She was as energetic as a chipmunk. Her fingers
fluttered; her sympathy came out in spurts; she sat on the
edge of a chair in eagerness to be near her auditor, to send
her enthusiasms and optimism across.
She rushed into the room pouring out: "I'm afraid you'll
think the teachers have been shabby in not coming near you,
but we wanted to give you a chance to get settled. I am
Vida Sherwin, and I try to teach French and English and a
few other things in the high school."
"I've been hoping to know the teachers. You see, I was
a librarian—"
"Oh, you needn't tell me. I know all about you! Awful
how much I know—this gossipy village. We need you so
much here. It's a dear loyal town (and isn't loyalty the finest
thing in the world!) but it's a rough diamond, and we need
you for the polishing, and we're ever so humble—" She
stopped for breath and finished her compliment with a smile.
"If I could help you in any way—
Would I
be committing
the unpardonable sin if I whispered that I think Gopher
Prairie is a tiny bit ugly?"
"Of course it's ugly. Dreadfully! Though I'm probably
the only person in town to whom you could safely say that.
(Except perhaps Guy Pollock the lawyer—have you met him?
—oh, you must!—he's simply a
darling—intelligence and
culture and so gentle.) But I don't care so much about the
ugliness. That will change. It's the spirit that gives me
hope. It's sound. Wholesome. But afraid. It needs live
creatures like you to awaken it. I shall slave-drive you!"
"Splendid. What shall I do? I've been wondering if it
would be possible to have a good architect come here to
lecture."
"Ye-es, but don't you think it would be better to work
with existing agencies? Perhaps it will sound slow to you, but
I was thinking— It would be lovely if we could get you to
teach Sunday School."
Carol had the empty expression of one who finds that she
has been affectionately bowing to a complete stranger. "Oh
yes. But I'm afraid I wouldn't be much good at that. My
religion is so foggy."
"I know. So is mine. I don't care a bit for dogma.
Though I do stick firmly to the belief in the fatherhood of
God and the brotherhood of man and the leadership of Jesus.
As you do, of course."
Carol looked respectable and thought about having tea.
"And that's all you need teach in Sunday School. It's
the personal influence. Then there's the library-board. You'd
be so useful on that. And of course there's our women's
study club—the Thanatopsis Club."
"Are they doing anything? Or do they read papers made
out of the Encyclopedia?"
Miss Sherwin shrugged. "Perhaps. But still, they are so
earnest. They will respond to your fresher interest. And
the Thanatopsis does do a good social work—they've made
the city plant ever so many trees, and they run the rest-room
for farmers' wives. And they do take such an interest in
refinement and culture. So—in fact, so very unique."
Carol was disappointed—by nothing very tangible. She
said politely, "I'll think them all over. I must have a while
to look around first."
Miss Sherwin darted to her, smoothed her hair, peered at
her. "Oh, my dear, don't you suppose I know? These first
tender days of marriage—they're sacred to me. Home, and
children that need you, and depend on you to keep them alive,
and turn to you with their wrinkly little smiles. And the
hearth and—" She hid her face from Carol as she made an
activity of patting the cushion of her chair, but she went on
with her former briskness:
"I mean, you must help us when you're ready. . . .
I'm afraid you'll think I'm conservative. I am! So much
to conserve. All this treasure of American ideals. Sturdiness
and democracy and opportunity. Maybe not at Palm Beach.
But, thank heaven, we're free from such social distinctions in
Gopher Prairie. I have only one good quality—overwhelming
belief in the brains and hearts of our nation, our state, our
town. It's so strong that sometimes I do have a tiny effect
on the haughty ten-thousandaires. I shake 'em up and make
'em believe in ideals—yes, in themselves. But I get into a
rut of teaching. I need young critical things like you to
punch me up. Tell me, what are you reading?"
"I've been re-reading `The Damnation of Theron Ware.'
Do you know it?"
"Yes. It was clever. But hard. Man wanted to tear
down, not build up. Cynical. Oh, I do hope I'm not a
sentimentalist. But I can't see any use in this high-art stuff
that doesn't encourage us day-laborers to plod on."
Ensued a fifteen-minute argument about the oldest topic
in the world: It's art but is it pretty? Carol tried to be
eloquent regarding honesty of observation. Miss Sherwin stood
out for sweetness and a cautious use of the uncomfortable
properties of light. At the end Carol cried:
"I don't care how much we disagree. It's a relief to have
somebody talk something besides crops. Let's make Gopher
Prairie rock to its foundations: let's have afternoon tea
instead of afternoon coffee."
The delighted Bea helped her bring out the ancestral folding
sewing-table, whose yellow and black top was scarred with
dotted lines from a dressmaker's tracing-wheel, and to set it
with an embroidered lunch-cloth, and the mauve-glazed Japanese
tea-set which she had brought from St. Paul. Miss
Sherwin confided her latest scheme—moral motion pictures for
country districts, with light from a portable dynamo hitched
to a Ford engine. Bea was twice called to fill the hot-water
pitcher and to make cinnamon toast.
When Kennicott came home at five he tried to be courtly,
as befits the husband of one who has afternoon tea. Carol
suggested that Miss Sherwin stay for supper, and that Kennicott
invite Guy Pollock, the much-praised lawyer, the poetic
bachelor.
Yes, Pollock could come. Yes, he was over the grippe which
had prevented his going to Sam Clark's party.
Carol regretted her impulse. The man would be an opinionated
politician, heavily jocular about The Bride. But at the
entrance of Guy Pollock she discovered a personality. Pollock
was a man of perhaps thirty-eight, slender, still, deferential.
His voice was low. "It was very good of you to want me,"
he said, and he offered no humorous remarks, and did not
ask her if she didn't think Gopher Prairie was "the livest little
burg in the state."
She fancied that his even grayness might reveal a thousand
tints of lavender and blue and silver.
At supper he hinted his love for Sir Thomas Browne,
Thoreau, Agnes Repplier, Arthur Symons, Claude Washburn,
Charles Flandrau. He presented his idols diffidently, but he
expanded in Carol's bookishness, in Miss Sherwin's voluminous
praise, in Kennicott's tolerance of any one who amused his
wife.
Carol wondered why Guy Pollock went on digging at routine
law-cases; why he remained in Gopher Prairie. She had no
one whom she could ask. Neither Kennicott nor Vida Sherwin
would understand that there might be reasons why a Pollock
should not remain in Gopher Prairie. She enjoyed the faint
mystery. She felt triumphant and rather literary. She already
had a Group. It would be only a while now before she provided
the town with fanlights and a knowledge of Galsworthy.
She was doing things! As she served the emergency
dessert of cocoanut and sliced oranges, she cried to Pollock,
"Don't you think we ought to get up a dramatic club?"
