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

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 crepe shirt, Carol youthful in a tam-o’-shanter of mole velvet, a blue serge suit with an absurdly and agreeably broad turndown 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 signboards, 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—tailcoats 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 lumberyard 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