At this second Carol realized that for all Guy’s
love of dead elegances his timidity was as depressing
to her as the bulkiness of Sam Clark. She realized
that he was not a mystery, as she had excitedly believed;
not a romantic messenger from the World Outside on
whom she could count for escape. He belonged
to Gopher Prairie, absolutely. She was snatched
back from a dream of far countries, and found herself
on Main Street.
He was completing his protest, “You don’t
want to be mixed up in all this orgy of meaningless
discontent?”
She soothed him. “No, I don’t.
I’m not heroic. I’m scared by all
the fighting that’s going on in the world.
I want nobility and adventure, but perhaps I want
still more to curl on the hearth with some one I love.”
“Would you——”
He did not finish it. He picked up a handful
of pop-corn, let it run through his fingers, looked
at her wistfully.
With the loneliness of one who has put away a possible
love Carol saw that he was a stranger. She saw
that he had never been anything but a frame on which
she had hung shining garments. If she had let
him diffidently make love to her, it was not because
she cared, but because she did not care, because it
did not matter.
She smiled at him with the exasperating tactfulness
of a woman checking a flirtation; a smile like an
airy pat on the arm. She sighed, “You’re
a dear to let me tell you my imaginary troubles.”
She bounced up, and trilled, “Shall we take
the pop-corn in to them now?”
Guy looked after her desolately.
While she teased Vida and Kennicott she was repeating,
“I must go on.”
Miles Bjornstam, the pariah “Red Swede,”
had brought his circular saw and portable gasoline
engine to the house, to cut the cords of poplar for
the kitchen range. Kennicott had given the order;
Carol knew nothing of it till she heard the ringing
of the saw, and glanced out to see Bjornstam, in black
leather jacket and enormous ragged purple mittens,
pressing sticks against the whirling blade, and flinging
the stove-lengths to one side. The red irritable
motor kept up a red irritable “tip-tip-tip-tip-tip-tip.”
The whine of the saw rose till it simulated the shriek
of a fire-alarm whistle at night, but always at the
end it gave a lively metallic clang, and in the stillness
she heard the flump of the cut stick falling on the
pile.
She threw a motor robe over her, ran out. Bjornstam
welcomed her, “Well, well, well! Here’s
old Miles, fresh as ever. Well say, that’s
all right; he ain’t even begun to be cheeky
yet; next summer he’s going to take you out
on his horse-trading trip, clear into Idaho.”
“Yes, and I may go!”
“How’s tricks? Crazy about the town
yet?”
“No, but I probably shall be, some day.”
“Don’t let ’em get you. Kick
’em in the face!”
He shouted at her while he worked. The pile of
stove-wood grew astonishingly. The pale bark
of the poplar sticks was mottled with lichens of sage-green
and dusty gray; the newly sawed ends were fresh-colored,
with the agreeable roughness of a woolen muffler.
To the sterile winter air the wood gave a scent of
March sap.
