Main Street - Sinclair Lewis (little red riding hood ebook .txt) 📗

why I’m going to take him with me.”

“Suppose I refuse?”

“You won’t!”

Forlornly, “Uh⁠—Carrie, what the devil is it you want, anyway?”

“Oh, conversation! No, it’s much more than that. I think it’s a greatness of life⁠—a refusal to be content with even the healthiest mud.”

“Don’t you know that nobody ever solved a problem by running away from it?”

“Perhaps. Only I choose to make my own definition of ‘running away.’ I don’t call⁠—Do you realize how big a world there is beyond this Gopher Prairie where you’d keep me all my life? It may be that some day I’ll come back, but not till I can bring something more than I have now. And even if I am cowardly and run away⁠—all right, call it cowardly, call me anything you want to! I’ve been ruled too long by fear of being called things. I’m going away to be quiet and think. I’m⁠—I’m going! I have a right to my own life.”

“So have I to mine!”

“Well?”

“I have a right to my life⁠—and you’re it, you’re my life! You’ve made yourself so. I’m damned if I’ll agree to all your freak notions, but I will say I’ve got to depend on you. Never thought of that complication, did you, in this ‘off to Bohemia, and express yourself, and free love, and live your own life’ stuff!”

“You have a right to me if you can keep me. Can you?”

He moved uneasily.

II

For a month they discussed it. They hurt each other very much, and sometimes they were close to weeping, and invariably he used banal phrases about her duties and she used phrases quite as banal about freedom, and through it all, her discovery that she really could get away from Main Street was as sweet as the discovery of love. Kennicott never consented definitely. At most he agreed to a public theory that she was “going to take a short trip and see what the East was like in wartime.”

She set out for Washington in October⁠—just before the war ended.

She had determined on Washington because it was less intimidating than the obvious New York, because she hoped to find streets in which Hugh could play, and because in the stress of war-work, with its demand for thousands of temporary clerks, she could be initiated into the world of offices.

Hugh was to go with her, despite the wails and rather extensive comments of Aunt Bessie.

She wondered if she might not encounter Erik in the East but it was a chance thought, soon forgotten.

III

The last thing she saw on the station platform was Kennicott, faithfully waving his hand, his face so full of uncomprehending loneliness that he could not smile but only twitch up his lips. She waved to him as long as she could, and when he was lost she wanted to leap from the vestibule and run back to him. She thought of a hundred tendernesses she had neglected.

She had her freedom, and it was empty. The moment was not the highest of her life, but the lowest and most desolate, which was altogether excellent, for instead of slipping downward she began to climb.

She sighed, “I couldn’t do this if it weren’t for Will’s kindness, his giving me money.” But a second after: “I wonder how many women would always stay home if they had the money?”

Hugh complained, “Notice me, mummy!” He was beside her on the red plush seat of the day-coach; a boy of three and a half. “I’m tired of playing train. Let’s play something else. Let’s go see Auntie Bogart.”

“Oh, no! Do you really like Mrs. Bogart?”

“Yes. She gives me cookies and she tells me about the Dear Lord. You never tell me about the Dear Lord. Why don’t you tell me about the Dear Lord? Auntie Bogart says I’m going to be a preacher. Can I be a preacher? Can I preach about the Dear Lord?”

“Oh, please wait till my generation has stopped rebelling before yours starts in!”

“What’s a generation?”

“It’s a ray in the illumination of the spirit.”

“That’s foolish.” He was a serious and literal person, and rather humorless. She kissed his frown, and marveled:

“I am running away from my husband, after liking a Swedish ne’er-do-well and expressing immoral opinions, just as in a romantic story. And my own son reproves me because I haven’t given him religious instruction. But the story doesn’t go right. I’m neither groaning nor being dramatically saved. I keep on running away, and I enjoy it. I’m mad with joy over it. Gopher Prairie is lost back there in the dust and stubble, and I look forward⁠—”

She continued it to Hugh: “Darling, do you know what mother and you are going to find beyond the blue horizon rim?”

“What?” flatly.

“We’re going to find elephants with golden howdahs from which peep young maharanees with necklaces of rubies, and a dawn sea colored like the breast of a dove, and a white and green house filled with books and silver tea-sets.”

“And cookies?”

“Cookies? Oh, most decidedly cookies. We’ve had enough of bread and porridge. We’d get sick on too many cookies, but ever so much sicker on no cookies at all.”

“That’s foolish.”

“It is, O male Kennicott!”

“Huh!” said Kennicott II, and went to sleep on her shoulder.

IV

The theory of the Dauntless regarding Carol’s absence:

Mrs. Will Kennicott and son Hugh left on No. 24 on Saturday last for a stay of some months in Minneapolis, Chicago, New York and Washington. Mrs. Kennicott confided to Ye Scribe that she will be connected with one of the multifarious war activities now centering in the Nation’s Capital for a brief period before returning. Her countless friends who appreciate her splendid labors with the local Red Cross realize how valuable she will be to any war board with which she chooses to become connected. Gopher Prairie thus adds another shining star to its service flag and without wishing to knock any neighboring communities, we would like to know any town of anywheres near our size in