She was a proud and patriotic citizen, all evening.
She examined the city hall, next morning. She
had remembered it only as a bleak inconspicuousness.
She found it a liver-colored frame coop half a block
from Main Street. The front was an unrelieved
wall of clapboards and dirty windows. It had
an unobstructed view of a vacant lot and Nat Hicks’s
tailor shop. It was larger than the carpenter
shop beside it, but not so well built.
No one was about. She walked into the corridor.
On one side was the municipal court, like a country
school; on the other, the room of the volunteer fire
company, with a Ford hose-cart and the ornamental helmets
used in parades, at the end of the hall, a filthy two-cell
jail, now empty but smelling of ammonia and ancient
sweat. The whole second story was a large unfinished
room littered with piles of folding chairs, a lime-crusted
mortar-mixing box, and the skeletons of Fourth of July
floats covered with decomposing plaster shields and
faded red, white, and blue bunting. At the end
was an abortive stage. The room was large enough
for the community dances which Mrs. Nat Hicks advocated.
But Carol was after something bigger than dances.
In the afternoon she scampered to the public library.
The library was open three afternoons and four evenings
a week. It was housed in an old dwelling, sufficient
but unattractive. Carol caught herself picturing
pleasanter reading-rooms, chairs for children, an art
collection, a librarian young enough to experiment.
She berated herself, “Stop this fever of reforming
everything! I will be satisfied with the
library! The city hall is enough for a beginning.
And it’s really an excellent library. It’s—it
isn’t so bad. . . . Is it possible that
I am to find dishonesties and stupidity in every human
activity I encounter? In schools and business
and government and everything? Is there never
any contentment, never any rest?”
She shook her head as though she were shaking off
water, and hastened into the library, a young, light,
amiable presence, modest in unbuttoned fur coat, blue
suit, fresh organdy collar, and tan boots roughened
from scuffling snow. Miss Villets stared at her,
and Carol purred, “I was so sorry not to see
you at the Thanatopsis yesterday. Vida said you
might come.”
“Oh. You went to the Thanatopsis.
Did you enjoy it?”
“So much. Such good papers on the poets.”
Carol lied resolutely. “But I did think
they should have had you give one of the papers on
poetry!”
“Well——Of course I’m
not one of the bunch that seem to have the time to
take and run the club, and if they prefer to have papers
on literature by other ladies who have no literary
training—after all, why should I complain?
What am I but a city employee!”
“You’re not! You’re the one
person that does—that does—oh,
you do so much. Tell me, is there, uh——Who
are the people who control the club?”
