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

sure, I know. The doc is good for it. But that’s yoost a rule I made. I make low prices. I do business for cash.”

She stared at his red impassive face, and her fingers had the undignified desire to slap him, but her reason agreed with him. “You’re quite right. You shouldn’t break your rule for me.”

Her rage had not been lost. It had been transferred to her husband. She wanted ten pounds of sugar in a hurry, but she had no money. She ran up the stairs to Kennicott’s office. On the door was a sign advertising a headache cure and stating, “The doctor is out, back at ⸻” Naturally, the blank space was not filled out. She stamped her foot. She ran down to the drug store⁠—the doctor’s club.

As she entered she heard Mrs. Dyer demanding, “Dave, I’ve got to have some money.”

Carol saw that her husband was there, and two other men, all listening in amusement.

Dave Dyer snapped, “How much do you want? Dollar be enough?”

“No, it won’t! I’ve got to get some underclothes for the kids.”

“Why, good Lord, they got enough now to fill the closet so I couldn’t find my hunting boots, last time I wanted them.”

“I don’t care. They’re all in rags. You got to give me ten dollars⁠—”

Carol perceived that Mrs. Dyer was accustomed to this indignity. She perceived that the men, particularly Dave, regarded it as an excellent jest. She waited⁠—she knew what would come⁠—it did. Dave yelped, “Where’s that ten dollars I gave you last year?” and he looked to the other men to laugh. They laughed.

Cold and still, Carol walked up to Kennicott and commanded, “I want to see you upstairs.”

“Why⁠—something the matter?”

“Yes!”

He clumped after her, up the stairs, into his barren office. Before he could get out a query she stated:

“Yesterday, in front of a saloon, I heard a German farm-wife beg her husband for a quarter, to get a toy for the baby⁠—and he refused. Just now I’ve heard Mrs. Dyer going through the same humiliation. And I⁠—I’m in the same position! I have to beg you for money. Daily! I have just been informed that I couldn’t have any sugar because I hadn’t the money to pay for it!”

“Who said that? By God, I’ll kill any⁠—”

“Tut. It wasn’t his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And hereafter to remember it. The next time, I shan’t beg. I shall simply starve. Do you understand? I can’t go on being a slave⁠—”

Her defiance, her enjoyment of the role, ran out. She was sobbing against his overcoat, “How can you shame me so?” and he was blubbering, “Dog-gone it, I meant to give you some, and I forgot it. I swear I won’t again. By golly I won’t!”

He pressed fifty dollars upon her, and after that he remembered to give her money regularly⁠ ⁠… sometimes.

Daily she determined, “But I must have a stated amount⁠—be businesslike. System. I must do something about it.” And daily she didn’t do anything about it.

III

Mrs. Bogart had, by the simpering viciousness of her comments on the new furniture, stirred Carol to economy. She spoke judiciously to Bea about leftovers. She read the cookbook again and, like a child with a picture-book, she studied the diagram of the beef which gallantly continues to browse though it is divided into cuts.

But she was a deliberate and joyous spendthrift in her preparations for her first party, the housewarming. She made lists on every envelope and laundry-slip in her desk. She sent orders to Minneapolis “fancy grocers.” She pinned patterns and sewed. She was irritated when Kennicott was jocular about “these frightful big doings that are going on.” She regarded the affair as an attack on Gopher Prairie’s timidity in pleasure. “I’ll make ’em lively, if nothing else. I’ll make ’em stop regarding parties as committee-meetings.”

Kennicott usually considered himself the master of the house. At his desire, she went hunting, which was his symbol of happiness, and she ordered porridge for breakfast, which was his symbol of morality. But when he came home on the afternoon before the housewarming he found himself a slave, an intruder, a blunderer. Carol wailed, “Fix the furnace so you won’t have to touch it after supper. And for heaven’s sake take that horrible old doormat off the porch. And put on your nice brown and white shirt. Why did you come home so late? Would you mind hurrying? Here it is almost suppertime, and those fiends are just as likely as not to come at seven instead of eight. Please hurry!”

She was as unreasonable as an amateur leading woman on a first night, and he was reduced to humility. When she came down to supper, when she stood in the doorway, he gasped. She was in a silver sheath, the calyx of a lily, her piled hair like black glass; she had the fragility and costliness of a Viennese goblet; and her eyes were intense. He was stirred to rise from the table and to hold the chair for her; and all through supper he ate his bread dry because he felt that she would think him common if he said “Will you hand me the butter?”

IV

She had reached the calmness of not caring whether her guests liked the party or not, and a state of satisfied suspense in regard to Bea’s technique in serving, before Kennicott cried from the bay-window in the living-room, “Here comes somebody!” and Mr. and Mrs. Luke Dawson faltered in, at a quarter to eight. Then in a shy avalanche arrived the entire aristocracy of Gopher Prairie: all persons engaged in a profession, or earning more than twenty-five hundred dollars a year, or possessed of grandparents born in America.

Even while they were removing their overshoes they were peeping at the new decorations. Carol saw Dave Dyer secretively turn over the gold pillows to find a price-tag, and heard