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

cornet began to tune up and everyone behind the magic line of the proscenic arch was frightened into paralysis. Carol wavered to the hole in the curtain. There were so many people out there, staring so hard⁠—

In the second row she saw Miles Bjornstam, not with Bea but alone. He really wanted to see the play! It was a good omen. Who could tell? Perhaps this evening would convert Gopher Prairie to conscious beauty.

She darted into the women’s dressing-room, roused Maud Dyer from her fainting panic, pushed her to the wings, and ordered the curtain up.

It rose doubtfully, it staggered and trembled, but it did get up without catching⁠—this time. Then she realized that Kennicott had forgotten to turn off the houselights. Someone out front was giggling.

She galloped round to the left wing, herself pulled the switch, looked so ferociously at Kennicott that he quaked, and fled back.

Mrs. Dyer was creeping out on the half-darkened stage. The play was begun.

And with that instant Carol realized that it was a bad play abominably acted.

Encouraging them with lying smiles, she watched her work go to pieces. The settings seemed flimsy, the lighting commonplace. She watched Guy Pollock stammer and twist his mustache when he should have been a bullying magnate; Vida Sherwin, as Grimm’s timid wife, chatter at the audience as though they were her class in high-school English; Juanita, in the leading role, defy Mr. Grimm as though she were repeating a list of things she had to buy at the grocery this morning; Ella Stowbody remark “I’d like a cup of tea” as though she were reciting “Curfew Shall Not Ring Tonight”; and Dr. Gould, making love to Rita Simons, squeak, “My⁠—my⁠—you⁠—are⁠—a⁠—won’erful⁠—girl.”

Myrtle Cass, as the office-boy, was so much pleased by the applause of her relatives, then so much agitated by the remarks of Cy Bogart, in the back row, in reference to her wearing trousers, that she could hardly be got off the stage. Only Raymie was so unsociable as to devote himself entirely to acting.

That she was right in her opinion of the play Carol was certain when Miles Bjornstam went out after the first act, and did not come back.

VI

Between the second and third acts she called the company together, and supplicated, “I want to know something, before we have a chance to separate. Whether we’re doing well or badly tonight, it is a beginning. But will we take it as merely a beginning? How many of you will pledge yourselves to start in with me, right away, tomorrow, and plan for another play, to be given in September?”

They stared at her; they nodded at Juanita’s protest: “I think one’s enough for a while. It’s going elegant tonight, but another play⁠—Seems to me it’ll be time enough to talk about that next fall. Carol! I hope you don’t mean to hint and suggest we’re not doing fine tonight? I’m sure the applause shows the audience think it’s just dandy!”

Then Carol knew how completely she had failed.

As the audience seeped out she heard B. J. Gougerling the banker say to Howland the grocer, “Well, I think the folks did splendid; just as good as professionals. But I don’t care much for these plays. What I like is a good movie, with auto accidents and holdups, and some git to it, and not all this talky-talk.”

Then Carol knew how certain she was to fail again.

She wearily did not blame them, company nor audience. Herself she blamed for trying to carve intaglios in good wholesome jack-pine.

“It’s the worst defeat of all. I’m beaten. By Main Street. ‘I must go on.’ But I can’t!”

She was not vastly encouraged by the Gopher Prairie Dauntless:

… would be impossible to distinguish among the actors when all gave such fine account of themselves in difficult roles of this well-known New York stage play. Guy Pollock as the old millionaire could not have been bettered for his fine impersonation of the gruff old millionaire; Mrs. Harry Haydock as the young lady from the West who so easily showed the New York four-flushers where they got off was a vision of loveliness and with fine stage presence. Miss Vida Sherwin the ever popular teacher in our high school pleased as Mrs. Grimm, Dr. Gould was well suited in the role of young lover⁠—girls you better look out, remember the doc is a bachelor. The local Four Hundred also report that he is a great hand at shaking the light fantastic tootsies in the dance. As the stenographer Rita Simons was pretty as a picture, and Miss Ella Stowbody’s long and intensive study of the drama and kindred arts in Eastern schools was seen in the fine finish of her part.

… to no one is greater credit to be given than to Mrs. Will Kennicott on whose capable shoulders fell the burden of directing.

“So kindly,” Carol mused, “so well meant, so neighborly⁠—and so confoundedly untrue. Is it really my failure, or theirs?”

She sought to be sensible; she elaborately explained to herself that it was hysterical to condemn Gopher Prairie because it did not foam over the drama. Its justification was in its service as a market-town for farmers. How bravely and generously it did its work, forwarding the bread of the world, feeding and healing the farmers!

Then, on the corner below her husband’s office, she heard a farmer holding forth:

“Sure. Course I was beaten. The shipper and the grocers here wouldn’t pay us a decent price for our potatoes, even though folks in the cities were howling for ’em. So we says, well, we’ll get a truck and ship ’em right down to Minneapolis. But the commission merchants there were in cahoots with the local shipper here; they said they wouldn’t pay us a cent more than he would, not even if they was nearer to the market. Well, we found we could get higher prices in Chicago, but when we tried to get freight cars to ship there, the railroads wouldn’t let us have ’em⁠—even though they had