Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [136]
Ole Jenson the grocer and Dahl the butcher moved on to South Dakota and Idaho. Luke and Mrs. Dawson picked up ten thousand acres of prairie soil, in the magic portable form of a small check book, and went to Pasadena, to a bungalow and sunshine and cafeterias. Chet Dashaway sold his furniture and undertaking business and wandered to Los Angeles, where, the Dauntless reported, “Our good friend Chester has accepted a fine position with a real-estate firm, and his wife has in the charming social circles of the Queen City of the Southwestland that same popularity which she enjoyed in our own society sets.”
Rita Simons was married to Terry Gould, and rivaled Juanita Haydock as the gayest of the Young Married Set. But Juanita also acquired merit. Harry’s father died, Harry became senior partner in the Bon Ton Store, and Juanita was more acidulous and shrewd and cackling than ever. She bought an evening frock, and exposed her collar-bone to the wonder of the Jolly Seventeen, and talked of moving to Minneapolis.
To defend her position against the new Mrs. Terry Gould she sought to attach Carol to her faction by giggling that “some folks might call Rita innocent, but I’ve got a hunch that she isn’t half as ignorant of things as brides are supposed to be—and of course Terry isn’t one-two-three as a doctor alongside of your husband.”
Carol herself would gladly have followed Mr. Ole Jenson, and migrated even to another Main Street; flight from familiar tedium to new tedium would have for a time the outer look and promise of adventure. She hinted to Kennicott of the probable medical advantages of Montana and Oregon. She knew that he was satisfied with Gopher Prairie, but it gave her vicarious hope to think of going, to ask for railroad folders at the station, to trace the maps with a restless forefinger.
Yet to the casual eye she was not discontented, she was not an abnormal and distressing traitor to the faith of Main Street.
The settled citizen believes that the rebel is constantly in a stew of complaining and, hearing of a Carol Kennicott, he gasps, “What an awful person! She must be a Holy Terror to live with! Glad my folks are satisfied with things way they are!” Actually, it was not so much as five minutes a day that Carol devoted to lonely desires. It is probably that the agitated citizen has within his circle at least one inarticulate rebel with aspirations as wayward as Carol’s.
The presence of the baby had made her take Gopher Prairie and the brown house seriously, as natural places of residence. She pleased Kennicott by being friendly with the complacent maturity of Mrs. Clark and Mrs Elder, and when she had often enough been in conference upon the Elders’ new Cadillac car, or the job which the oldest Clark boy had taken in the office of the flour-mill, these topics became important, things to follow up day by day.
With nine-tenths of her emotion concentrated upon Hugh, she did not criticize shops, streets, acquaintances ... this year or two. She hurried to Uncle Whittier’s store for a package of corn-flakes, she abstractedly listened to Uncle Whittier’s denunciation of Martin Mahoney for asserting that the wind last Tuesday had been south and not southwest, she came back along streets that held no surprises nor the startling faces of strangers. Thinking of Hugh’s teething all the way, she did not reflect that this store, these drab blocks, made up all her background. She did her work, and she triumphed over winning from the Clarks at five hundred.