Sinclair Lewis: Main Street

28. CHAPTER XXVIII (continued)

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."