“No.  Not Whitman.  He’s Keats—­sensitive to silken things.  ’Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes as are the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wings.’  Keats, here!  A bewildered spirit fallen on Main Street.  And Main Street laughs till it aches, giggles till the spirit doubts his own self and tries to give up the use of wings for the correct uses of a ‘gents’ furnishings store.’  Gopher Prairie with its celebrated eleven miles of cement walk. . . .  I wonder how much of the cement is made out of the tombstones of John Keatses?”

VII

Kennicott was cordial to Fern Mullins, teased her, told her he was a “great hand for running off with pretty school-teachers,” and promised that if the school-board should object to her dancing, he would “bat ’em one over the head and tell ’em how lucky they were to get a girl with some go to her, for once.”

But to Erik Valborg he was not cordial.  He shook hands loosely, and said, “H’ are yuh.”

Nat Hicks was socially acceptable; he had been here for years, and owned his shop; but this person was merely Nat’s workman, and the town’s principle of perfect democracy was not meant to be applied indiscriminately.

The conference on a dramatic club theoretically included Kennicott, but he sat back, patting yawns, conscious of Fern’s ankles, smiling amiably on the children at their sport.

Fern wanted to tell her grievances; Carol was sulky every time she thought of “The Girl from Kankakee”; it was Erik who made suggestions.  He had read with astounding breadth, and astounding lack of judgment.  His voice was sensitive to liquids, but he overused the word “glorious.”  He mispronounced a tenth of the words he had from books, but he knew it.  He was insistent, but he was shy.

When he demanded, “I’d like to stage ‘Suppressed Desires,’ by Cook and Miss Glaspell,” Carol ceased to be patronizing.  He was not the yearner:  he was the artist, sure of his vision.  “I’d make it simple.  Use a big window at the back, with a cyclorama of a blue that would simply hit you in the eye, and just one tree-branch, to suggest a park below.  Put the breakfast table on a dais.  Let the colors be kind of arty and tea-roomy—­orange chairs, and orange and blue table, and blue Japanese breakfast set, and some place, one big flat smear of black—­bang!  Oh.  Another play I wish we could do is Tennyson Jesse’s ‘The Black Mask.’  I’ve never seen it but——­Glorious ending, where this woman looks at the man with his face all blown away, and she just gives one horrible scream.”

“Good God, is that your idea of a glorious ending?” bayed Kennicott.

“That sounds fierce!  I do love artistic things, but not the horrible ones,” moaned Fern Mullins.

Erik was bewildered; glanced at Carol.  She nodded loyally.

At the end of the conference they had decided nothing.

CHAPTER XXIX