They explored Minneapolis. Kennicott was conversational
and technical regarding gluten and cockle-cylinders
and No. I Hard, when they were shown through
the gray stone hulks and new cement elevators of the
largest flour-mills in the world. They looked
across Loring Park and the Parade to the towers of
St. Mark’s and the Procathedral, and the red
roofs of houses climbing Kenwood Hill. They drove
about the chain of garden-circled lakes, and viewed
the houses of the millers and lumbermen and real estate
peers—the potentates of the expanding city.
They surveyed the small eccentric bungalows with pergolas,
the houses of pebbledash and tapestry brick with sleeping-porches
above sun-parlors, and one vast incredible chateau
fronting the Lake of the Isles. They tramped
through a shining-new section of apartment-houses;
not the tall bleak apartments of Eastern cities but
low structures of cheerful yellow brick, in which
each flat had its glass-enclosed porch with swinging
couch and scarlet cushions and Russian brass bowls.
Between a waste of tracks and a raw gouged hill they
found poverty in staggering shanties.
They saw miles of the city which they had never known
in their days of absorption in college. They
were distinguished explorers, and they remarked, in
great mutual esteem, “I bet Harry Haydock’s
never seen the City like this! Why, he’d
never have sense enough to study the machinery in
the mills, or go through all these outlying districts.
Wonder folks in Gopher Prairie wouldn’t use
their legs and explore, the way we do!”
They had two meals with Carol’s sister, and
were bored, and felt that intimacy which beatifies
married people when they suddenly admit that they
equally dislike a relative of either of them.
So it was with affection but also with weariness that
they approached the evening on which Carol was to
see the plays at the dramatic school. Kennicott
suggested not going. “So darn tired from
all this walking; don’t know but what we better
turn in early and get rested up.” It was
only from duty that Carol dragged him and herself out
of the warm hotel, into a stinking trolley, up the
brownstone steps of the converted residence which
lugubriously housed the dramatic school.
V
They were in a long whitewashed hall with a clumsy
draw-curtain across the front. The folding chairs
were filled with people who looked washed and ironed:
parents of the pupils, girl students, dutiful teachers.
“Strikes me it’s going to be punk.
If the first play isn’t good, let’s beat
it,” said Kennicott hopefully.
“All right,” she yawned. With hazy
eyes she tried to read the lists of characters, which
were hidden among lifeless advertisements of pianos,
music-dealers, restaurants, candy.
She regarded the Schnitzler play with no vast interest.
The actors moved and spoke stiffly. Just as its
cynicism was beginning to rouse her village-dulled
frivolity, it was over.
