Main Street by Sinclair Lewis (ink book reader .TXT) 📕

Mrs. Bogart went thoroughly into the rumor that the girl waiter at Billy’s Lunch was not all she might be⁠—or, rather, was quite all she might be.

“My lands, what can you expect when everybody knows what her mother was? And if these traveling salesmen would let her alone she would be all right, though I certainly don’t believe she ought to be allowed to think she can pull the wool over our eyes. The sooner she’s sent to the school for incorrigible girls down at Sauk Centre, the better for all and⁠—Won’t you just have a cup of coffee, Carol dearie, I’m sure you won’t mind old Aunty Bogart calling you by your first name when you think how long I’ve known Will, and I was such a friend of his dear lovely mother when she lived here and⁠—was that fur cap expensive? But⁠—Don’t you think it’s awful, the way folks talk in this town?”

Mrs. Bogart hitched her chair nearer. Her large face, with its disturbing collection of moles and lone black hairs, wrinkled cunningly. She showed her decayed teeth in a reproving smile, and in the confidential voice of one who scents stale bedroom scandal she breathed:

“I just don’t see how folks can talk and act like they do. You don’t know the things that go on under cover. This town⁠—why it’s only the religious training I’ve given Cy that’s kept him so innocent of⁠—things. Just the other day⁠—I never pay no attention to stories, but I heard it mighty good and straight that Harry Haydock is carrying on with a girl that clerks in a store down in Minneapolis, and poor Juanita not knowing anything about it⁠—though maybe it’s the judgment of God, because before she married Harry she acted up with more than one boy⁠—Well, I don’t like to say it, and maybe I ain’t up-to-date, like Cy says, but I always believed a lady shouldn’t even give names to all sorts of dreadful things, but just the same I know there was at least one case where Juanita and a boy⁠—well, they were just dreadful. And⁠—and⁠—Then there’s that Ole Jenson the grocer, that thinks he’s so plaguey smart, and I know he made up to a farmer’s wife and⁠—And this awful man Bjornstam that does chores, and Nat Hicks and⁠—”

There was, it seemed, no person in town who was not living a life of shame except Mrs. Bogart, and naturally she resented it.

She knew. She had always happened to be there. Once, she whispered, she was going by when an indiscreet window-shade had been left up a couple of inches. Once she had noticed a man and woman holding hands, and right at a Methodist sociable!

“Another thing⁠—Heaven knows I never want to start trouble, but I can’t help what I see from my back steps, and I notice your hired girl Bea carrying on with the grocery boys and all⁠—”

“Mrs. Bogart! I’d trust Bea as I would myself!”

“Oh, dearie, you don’t understand me! I’m sure she’s a good girl. I mean she’s green, and I hope that none of these horrid young men that there are around town will get her into trouble! It’s their parents’ fault, letting them run wild and hear evil things. If I had my way there wouldn’t be none of them, not boys nor girls neither, allowed to know anything about⁠—about things till they was married. It’s terrible the bald way that some folks talk. It just shows and gives away what awful thoughts they got inside them, and there’s nothing can cure them except coming right to God and kneeling down like I do at prayer-meeting every Wednesday evening, and saying, ‘O God, I would be a miserable sinner except for thy grace.’

“I’d make every last one of these brats go to Sunday School and learn to think about nice things ’stead of about cigarettes and goings-on⁠—and these dances they have at the lodges are the worst thing that ever happened to this town, lot of young men squeezing girls and finding out⁠—Oh, it’s dreadful. I’ve told the mayor he ought to put a stop to them and⁠—There was one boy in this town, I don’t want to be suspicious or uncharitable but⁠—”

It was half an hour before Carol escaped.

She stopped on her own porch and thought viciously:

“If that woman is on the side of the angels, then I have no choice; I must be on the side of the devil. But⁠—isn’t she like me? She too wants to ‘reform the town’! She too criticizes everybody! She too thinks the men are vulgar and limited! Am I like her? This is ghastly!”

That evening she did not merely consent to play cribbage with Kennicott; she urged him to play; and she worked up a hectic interest in land-deals and Sam Clark.

In courtship days Kennicott had shown her a photograph of Nels Erdstrom’s baby and log cabin, but she had never seen the Erdstroms. They had become merely “patients of the doctor.” Kennicott telephoned her on a mid-December afternoon, “Want to throw your coat on and drive out to Erdstrom’s with me? Fairly warm. Nels got the jaundice.”

“Oh yes!” She hastened to put on woolen stockings, high boots, sweater, muffler, cap, mittens.

The snow was too thick and the ruts frozen too hard for the motor. They drove out in a clumsy high carriage. Tucked over them was a blue woolen cover, prickly to her wrists, and outside of it a buffalo robe, humble and moth-eaten now, used ever since the bison herds had streaked the prairie a few miles to the west.

The scattered houses between which they passed in town were small and desolate in contrast to the expanse of huge snowy yards and wide street. They crossed the railroad tracks, and instantly were in the farm country. The big piebald horses snorted clouds of steam, and started to trot. The carriage squeaked in rhythm. Kennicott drove with clucks of “There boy,