Main Street

"Why no. He seemed intelligent. I'm sure he's much more wide-awake than our dentist."

"Well now, the old man is a good dentist. He knows his business. And Dillon----I wouldn't cuddle up to the Dillons too close, if I were you.

All right for Pollock, and that's none of our business, but we----I think I'd just give the Dillons the glad hand and pa.s.s 'em up."

"But why? He isn't a rival."

"That's--all--right!" Kennicott was aggressively awake now. "He'll work right in with Westlake and McGanum. Matter of fact, I suspect they were largely responsible for his locating here. They'll be sending him patients, and he'll send all that he can get hold of to them. I don't trust anybody that's too much hand-in-glove with Westlake. You give Dillon a shot at some fellow that's just bought a farm here and drifts into town to get his teeth looked at, and after Dillon gets through with him, you'll see him edging around to Westlake and McGanum, every time!"

Carol reached for her blouse, which hung on a chair by the bed. She draped it about her shoulders, and sat up studying Kennicott, her chin in her hands. In the gray light from the small electric bulb down the hall she could see that he was frowning.

"Will, this is--I must get this straight. Some one said to me the other day that in towns like this, even more than in cities, all the doctors hate each other, because of the money----"

"Who said that?"

"It doesn't matter."

"I'll bet a hat it was your Vida Sherwin. She's a brainy woman, but she'd be a d.a.m.n sight brainier if she kept her mouth shut and didn't let so much of her brains ooze out that way."

"Will! O Will! That's horrible! Aside from the vulgarity----Some ways, Vida is my best friend. Even if she HAD said it. Which, as a matter of fact, she didn't." He reared up his thick shoulders, in absurd pink and green flannelette pajamas. He sat straight, and irritatingly snapped his fingers, and growled:

"Well, if she didn't say it, let's forget her. Doesn't make any difference who said it, anyway. The point is that you believe it. G.o.d!

To think you don't understand me any better than that! Money!"

("This is the first real quarrel we've ever had," she was agonizing.)

He thrust out his long arm and s.n.a.t.c.hed his wrinkly vest from a chair.

He took out a cigar, a match. He tossed the vest on the floor. He lighted the cigar and puffed savagely. He broke up the match and snapped the fragments at the foot-board.

She suddenly saw the foot-board of the bed as the foot-stone of the grave of love.

The room was drab-colored and ill-ventilated--Kennicott did not "believe in opening the windows so darn wide that you heat all outdoors." The stale air seemed never to change. In the light from the hall they were two lumps of bedclothes with shoulders and tousled heads attached.

She begged, "I didn't mean to wake you up, dear. And please don't smoke.

You've been smoking so much. Please go back to sleep. I'm sorry."

"Being sorry 's all right, but I'm going to tell you one or two things.

This falling for anybody's say-so about medical jealousy and compet.i.tion is simply part and parcel of your usual willingness to think the worst you possibly can of us poor dubs in Gopher Prairie. Trouble with women like you is, you always want to ARGUE. Can't take things the way they are. Got to argue. Well, I'm not going to argue about this in

"That's not true! It's I who make the effort. It's they--it's you--who stand back and criticize. I have to come over to the town's opinion; I have to devote myself to their interests. They can't even SEE my interests, to say nothing of adopting them. I get ever so excited about their old Lake Minniemas.h.i.+e and the cottages, but they simply guffaw (in that lovely friendly way you advertise so much) if I speak of wanting to see Taormina also."

"Sure, Tormina, whatever that is--some nice expensive millionaire colony, I suppose. Sure; that's the idea; champagne taste and beer income; and make sure that we never will have more than a beer income, too!"

"Are you by any chance implying that I am not economical?"

"Well, I hadn't intended to, but since you bring it up yourself, I don't mind saying the grocery bills are about twice what they ought to be."

"Yes, they probably are. I'm not economical. I can't be. Thanks to you!"

"Where d' you get that 'thanks to you'?"

"Please don't be quite so colloquial--or shall I say VULGAR?"

"I'll be as d.a.m.n colloquial as I want to. How do you get that 'thanks to you'? Here about a year ago you jump me for not remembering to give you money. Well, I'm reasonable. I didn't blame you, and I SAID I was to blame. But have I ever forgotten it since--practically?"

"No. You haven't--practically! But that isn't it. I ought to have an allowance. I will, too! I must have an agreement for a regular stated amount, every month."

"Fine idea! Of course a doctor gets a regular stated amount! Sure! A thousand one month--and lucky if he makes a hundred the next."

"Very well then, a percentage. Or something else. No matter how much you vary, you can make a rough average for----"

"But what's the idea? What are you trying to get at? Mean to say I'm unreasonable? Think I'm so unreliable and tightwad that you've got to tie me down with a contract? By G.o.d, that hurts! I thought I'd been pretty generous and decent, and I took a lot of pleasure--thinks I, 'she'll be tickled when I hand her over this twenty'--or fifty, or whatever it was; and now seems you been wanting to make it a kind of alimony. Me, like a poor fool, thinking I was liberal all the while, and you----"

"Please stop pitying yourself! You're having a beautiful time feeling injured. I admit all you say. Certainly. You've given me money both freely and amiably. Quite as if I were your mistress!"

"Carrie!"

"I mean it! What was a magnificent spectacle of generosity to you was humiliation to me. You GAVE me money--gave it to your mistress, if she was complaisant, and then you----"

"Carrie!"

"(Don't interrupt me!)--then you felt you'd discharged all obligation.

Well, hereafter I'll refuse your money, as a gift. Either I'm your partner, in charge of the household department of our business, with a regular budget for it, or else I'm nothing. If I'm to be a mistress, I shall choose my lovers. Oh, I hate it--I hate it--this smirking and hoping for money--and then not even spending it on jewels as a mistress has a right to, but spending it on double-boilers and socks for you!

Yes indeed! You're generous! You give me a dollar, right out--the only proviso is that I must spend it on a tie for you! And you give it when and as you wish. How can I be anything but uneconomical?"

"Oh well, of course, looking at it that way----"

"I can't shop around, can't buy in large quant.i.ties, have to stick to stores where I have a charge account, good deal of the time, can't plan because I don't know how much money I can depend on. That's what I pay for your charming sentimentalities about giving so generously. You make me----"

"Wait! Wait! You know you're exaggerating. You never thought about that mistress stuff till just this minute! Matter of fact, you never have 'smirked and hoped for money.' But all the same, you may be right. You ought to run the household as a business. I'll figure out a definite plan tomorrow, and hereafter you'll be on a regular amount or percentage, with your own checking account."

"Oh, that IS decent of you!" She turned toward him, trying to be affectionate. But his eyes were pink and unlovely in the flare of the match with which he lighted his dead and malodorous cigar. His head drooped, and a ridge of flesh scattered with pale small bristles bulged out under his chin.

She sat in abeyance till he croaked:

"No. 'Tisn't especially decent. It's just fair. And G.o.d knows I want to be fair. But I expect others to be fair, too. And you're so high and mighty about people. Take Sam Clark; best soul that ever lived, honest and loyal and a d.a.m.n good fellow----"

("Yes, and a good shot at ducks, don't forget that!")

("Well, and he is a good shot, too!) Sam drops around in the evening to sit and visit, and by golly just because he takes a dry smoke and rolls his cigar around in his mouth, and maybe spits a few times, you look at him as if he was a hog. Oh, you didn't know I was onto you, and I certainly hope Sam hasn't noticed it, but I never miss it."

"I have felt that way. Spitting--ugh! But I'm sorry you caught my thoughts. I tried to be nice; I tried to hide them."

"Maybe I catch a whole lot more than you think I do!"

"Yes, perhaps you do."

"And d' you know why Sam doesn't light his cigar when he's here?"

"Why?"