Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [210]
“Let me sit down,” was all Carol could say. She drooped on the couch, wearily, without elasticity.
He yawned, “Gimme your coat and rubbers,” and while she stripped them off he twiddled his watch-chain, felt the radiator, peered at the thermometer. He shook out her wraps in the hall, hung them up with exactly his usual care. He pushed a chair near to her and sat bolt up. He looked like a physician about to give sound and undesired advice.
Before he could launch into his heavy discourse she desperately got in, “Please! I want you to know that I was going to tell you everything, tonight.”
“Well, I don’t suppose there’s really much to tell.”
“But there is. I’m fond of Erik. He appeals to something in here.” She touched her breast. “And I admire him. He isn’t just a ‘young Swede farmer.’ He’s an artist—”
“Wait now! He’s had a chance all evening to tell you what a whale of a fine fellow he is. Now it’s my turn. I can’t talk artistic, but———Carrie, do you understand my work?” He leaned forward, thick capable hands on thick sturdy thighs, mature and slow, yet beseeching. “No matter even if you are cold, I like you better than anybody in the world. One time I said that you were my soul. And that still goes. You’re all the things that I see in a sunset when I’m driving in from the country, the things that I like but can’t make poetry of. Do you realize what my job is? I go round twenty-four hours a day, in mud and blizzard, trying my damnedest to heal everybody, rich or poor. You—that ’re always spieling about how scientists ought to rule the world, instead of a bunch of spread-eagle politicians—can’t you see that I’m all the science there is here? And I can stand the cold and the bumpy roads and the lonely rides at night. All I need is to have you here at home to welcome me. I don’t expect you to be passionate—not any more I don’t—but I do expect you to appreciate my work. I bring babies into the world, and save lives, and make cranky husbands quit being mean to their wives. And then you go and moon over a Swede tailor because he can talk about how to put ruchings on a skirt! Hell of a thing for a man to fuss over!”
She flew out at him: “You make your side clear. Let me give mine. I admit all you say—except about Erik. But is it only you, and the baby, that want me to back you up, that demand things from me? They’re all on me, the whole town! I can feel their hot breaths on my neck! Aunt Bessie and that horrible slavering old Uncle Whittier and Juanita and Mrs. Westlake and Mrs. Bogart and all of them. And you welcome them, you encourage them to drag me down into their cave! I won’t stand it! Do you hear? Now, right now, I’m done. And it’s Erik who gives me the courage. You say he just thinks about ruches (which do not usually go on skirts, by the way!). I tell you he thinks about God, the God that Mrs. Bogart covers up with greasy gingham wrappers! Erik will be a great man some day, and if I could contribute one tiny bit to his success—”
“Wait, wait, wait now! Hold up! You’re assuming that your Erik will make good. As a matter of fact, at my age he’ll be running a one-man tailor shop in some burg about the size of Schoenstrom.”
“He will not!”
“That’s what he’s headed for now all right, and he’s twenty-five or -six and———What’s he done to make you think he’ll ever be anything but a pants-presser?”
“He has sensitiveness and talent—”
“Wait now! What has he actually done in the art line? Has he done one first-class picture or—sketch, d’ you call it? Or one poem, or played the piano, or anything except gas about what he’s going to do?”
She looked thoughtful.
“Then it’s a hundred to one shot that he never will. Way I understand it, even these fellows that do something pretty good at home and get to go to art school, there ain’t more than one out of ten of ‘em, maybe one out of a hundred, that ever get above grinding out a bum living—about as artistic as plumbing. And when it comes down to this tailor, why, can