Main Street, Sinclair Lewis [red white and royal blue hardcover txt] 📗

dramatic club? I’ll tell you: Come to the house this evening, about eight. I’ll ask Miss Mullins to come over, and we’ll talk about it.” VI

“He has absolutely no sense of humor. Less than Will. But hasn’t he⁠—What is a ‘sense of humor’? Isn’t the thing he lacks the back-slapping jocosity that passes for humor here? Anyway⁠—Poor lamb, coaxing me to stay and play with him! Poor lonely lamb! If he could be free from Nat Hickses, from people who say ‘dandy’ and ‘bum,’ would he develop?

“I wonder if Whitman didn’t use Brooklyn back-street slang, as a boy?

“No. Not Whitman. He’s Keats⁠—sensitive to silken things. ‘Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes as are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings.’ Keats, here! A bewildered spirit fallen on Main Street. And Main Street laughs till it aches, giggles till the spirit doubts his own self and tries to give up the use of wings for the correct uses of a ‘gents’ furnishings store.’ Gopher Prairie with its celebrated eleven miles of cement walk.⁠ ⁠… I wonder how much of the cement is made out of the tombstones of John Keatses?”

VII

Kennicott was cordial to Fern Mullins, teased her, told her he was a “great hand for running off with pretty schoolteachers,” and promised that if the school-board should object to her dancing, he would “bat ’em one over the head and tell ’em how lucky they were to get a girl with some go to her, for once.”

But to Erik Valborg he was not cordial. He shook hands loosely, and said, “H’ are yuh.”

Nat Hicks was socially acceptable; he had been here for years, and owned his shop; but this person was merely Nat’s workman, and the town’s principle of perfect democracy was not meant to be applied indiscriminately.

The conference on a dramatic club theoretically included Kennicott, but he sat back, patting yawns, conscious of Fern’s ankles, smiling amiably on the children at their sport.

Fern wanted to tell her grievances; Carol was sulky every time she thought of The Girl from Kankakee; it was Erik who made suggestions. He had read with astounding breadth, and astounding lack of judgment. His voice was sensitive to liquids, but he overused the word “glorious.” He mispronounced a tenth of the words he had from books, but he knew it. He was insistent, but he was shy.

When he demanded, “I’d like to stage Suppressed Desires, by Cook and Miss Glaspell,” Carol ceased to be patronizing. He was not the yearner: he was the artist, sure of his vision. “I’d make it simple. Use a big window at the back, with a cyclorama of a blue that would simply hit you in the eye, and just one tree-branch, to suggest a park below. Put the breakfast table on a dais. Let the colors be kind of arty and tea-roomy⁠—orange chairs, and orange and blue table, and blue Japanese breakfast set, and some place, one big flat smear of black⁠—bang! Oh. Another play I wish we could do is Tennyson Jesse’s The Black Mask. I’ve never seen it but⁠—Glorious ending, where this woman looks at the man with his face all blown away, and she just gives one horrible scream.”

“Good God, is that your idea of a glorious ending?” bayed Kennicott.

“That sounds fierce! I do love artistic things, but not the horrible ones,” moaned Fern Mullins.

Erik was bewildered; glanced at Carol. She nodded loyally.

At the end of the conference they had decided nothing.

XXIX I

She had walked up the railroad track with Hugh, this Sunday afternoon.

She saw Erik Valborg coming, in an ancient highwater suit, tramping sullenly and alone, striking at the rails with a stick. For a second she unreasoningly wanted to avoid him, but she kept on, and she serenely talked about God, whose voice, Hugh asserted, made the humming in the telegraph wires. Erik stared, straightened. They greeted each other with “Hello.”

“Hugh, say how-do-you-do to Mr. Valborg.”

“Oh, dear me, he’s got a button unbuttoned,” worried Erik, kneeling. Carol frowned, then noted the strength with which he swung the baby in the air.

“May I walk along a piece with you?”

“I’m tired. Let’s rest on those ties. Then I must be trotting back.”

They sat on a heap of discarded railroad ties, oak logs spotted with cinnamon-colored dry-rot and marked with metallic brown streaks where iron plates had rested. Hugh learned that the pile was the hiding-place of Injuns; he went gunning for them while the elders talked of uninteresting things.

The telegraph wires thrummed, thrummed, thrummed above them; the rails were glaring hard lines; the goldenrod smelled dusty. Across the track was a pasture of dwarf clover and sparse lawn cut by earthy cow-paths; beyond its placid narrow green, the rough immensity of new stubble, jagged with wheat-stacks like huge pineapples.

Erik talked of books; flamed like a recent convert to any faith. He exhibited as many titles and authors as possible, halting only to appeal, “Have you read his last book? Don’t you think he’s a terribly strong writer?”

She was dizzy. But when he insisted, “You’ve been a librarian; tell me; do I read too much fiction?” she advised him loftily, rather discursively. He had, she indicated, never studied. He had skipped from one emotion to another. Especially⁠—she hesitated, then flung it at him⁠—he must not guess at pronunciations; he must endure the nuisance of stopping to reach for the dictionary.

“I’m talking like a cranky teacher,” she sighed.

“No! And I will study! Read the damned dictionary right through.” He crossed his legs and bent over, clutching his ankle with both hands. “I know what you mean. I’ve been rushing from picture to picture, like a kid let loose in an art gallery for the first time. You see, it’s so awful recent that I’ve found there was a world⁠—well, a world where beautiful things counted. I was on the farm till I was nineteen. Dad is a good farmer, but nothing else. Do you know